CHAPTER XIX.
THE RIDERS ON THE MOOR.
I would be seeing very little of Bryde for many a day after that, for there was aye work to be doing at his hill farm, and hard work will be bringing sound sleep.
But Hugh was become the great gallant, with old Tam rubbing his stirrups with sand from the sand-brae, that and wet divots, till the irons shone like silver.
"Hoch-a-soch," he would say, "the young Laird is ta'en wi' the weemen. I will be at the polishing o' his horse's shoes next, and it iss the fine smells he will be haffin' on his claes—fine smells for the leddies, yess."
"Tush, man," said the Laird, "ye smell o' my Lady's bower. Your forebears had the reek o' peats about them, or a waft o' ships. . . ."
But the road to Scaurdale would be drawing Hugh.
"It is Mistress Helen that will be having the dainty lad, Hugh, my dear," his sister would be flashing; "your folk would not be hanging so long at a lassie's coat-tails, if old stories will be true."
But he had an answer for her.
"What tails will Bryde be hanging at, my lass?"
"His plough-tail, my dainty lad," said Margaret, and laughed to be provoking him.
"Maybe ay, Meg," says he, "and maybe no."
It was not long after that when Margaret would be wheedling me to be on the hill.
"See, Hamish, my little brown horse is wearying for the air o' the hills and the spring water," and she would smile with her brows raised a little and her lips pouting.
When we were on the brow of the black hill—
"I am thinking we will ride to the peat hags," said Margaret, "and we'll maybe be seeing Bryde," and she laughed in my face, and, indeed, after that she was always at the laughing.
"What would his father be like, Hamish—Bryde's father?"
"A fine man he was, Margaret, but a little wild."
"Ay," said she, "he would be spoiled with the lasses."
And for a while she was thoughtful. Bryde was at his plough-tail on an outlying bit, but his horses were standing at the head-rig, and Bryde was laughing and talking to a lady, and when I saw the serving-man holding a pair of Scaurdale's horse, I kent the lass.
"I am wondering," said I, "where is Hugh, and Mistress Helen so far from hame; but ye were in the right of it, Margaret, for Bryde is at his plough-tail."
"He will have good company even there, it seems," said the lass.
But in a little Helen and she were at the talking.
"And where would you be leaving all your cavaliers, Helen," said
Margaret, for Hugh had been telling us of the young sparks at Scaurdale.
"Cavaliers, Margaret!" with a very dainty moving of the shoulders. "Of these I am weary this day, and so I inflict myself on the dragoon," and here she bowed very low and gracefully to the ploughman, and there was a little devilry in her black eyes.
Bryde was at his furrow again when Hugh joined us with his very braw clothes, and he was a little dour-looking.
"We're all on the moor these days," says he, "and keeping a man from his work seemingly."
"But now you have come we will ride to Scaurdale," said Helen, but
Margaret would not be heeding.
"I am to see my cousin's wife," says she, "in the house yonder, with Hamish here; but here is Hugh on edge to be on the Scaurdale road, and Bryde eager to be ploughing." So Margaret and I made our way to the house, and it was hard to be knowing where the shepherd's hut was among the outbuildings of the steading, and as we turned into the stackyard and watched Hugh and Mistress Helen ride on, Margaret turned to me.
"Is it not droll," said she, "that a man o' my folk, my own brother, cannot be putting a ring on the finger of an easy lass like that?"
"Are you thinking she is easy?" said I.
"I am thinking she is a merry lass and wants a bold man—she will be loving a bold man."
"I think that too."
"Who is it?" said Margaret, like a flash.
"Oh, just Hugh."
"Hamish," said the lass, "ye never lied to me before."
A halflin lad took the horses and we came to the house, and there was Belle to meet us, smiling to Margaret, and her eyes wandering to where her son was at the ploughing.
Now it was a droll thing to me to watch these two, for Margaret McBride had the pride of her mother, and there were many times when she would be very haughty, and yet in this moorland farmhouse she would be all softness and the quiet laughter of gladness, and talking very wisely to Belle about homely things. And I would often be laughing at Margaret and her talk of milk, and fowls, and calves, and lambs, but she would be very serious.
"A woman should be knowing these things, Hamish," she would say.
But Belle was the slave of Margaret since the days when Hugh and Bryde and the little wild lass would be playing in the heather, and climbing for jackdaw's eggs or young rock-pigeons in Dun Dubh. But that day Margaret was beside old Betty, and making her comfortable in the chair by the fire of red peats.
"Will you be very wise, old Betty?" said she, looking down on the old one.
"Yess, yess, Betty has the wisdom, and Betty kens the secrets o' the hill folks, but ye will not be needing to ken the secrets, for will you not be keeping the lads away from ye with a stick. Na, na, ye will not be needing the love secret."
"My motherless lass!" cried Margaret, with a droll laugh, "and is there a secret way of it?"
"Yess, yess, a very goot way, mo leanabh; you will chust be scraping a little from the white of your nail and putting it in his dram, yess, and he will be yours through all the worlds. . . ."
"But what," said I, "if he'll not be taking a dram?"
"I could always be wheedling him, Hamish," she laughed. At that I looked at her.
"I am thinking of Hugh," says she, "Hugh and Mistress Helen," but she had the grace to be shamed a little.
"Indeed," said Belle, "they are a bonny pair, the young Laird and the young lady. She will be riding here many times, for the Laird of Scaurdale will have been telling her old tales of the place."
"Will they be making a match of it?" said I.
"I am hoping that, Hamish," said Belle—"and, indeed, she is liking the hills and the folk, and fond of the horses too, and will be keen to be seeing Bryde breaking the young beasts, and watching him for long. She will whiles be putting the old tartan shawl round her."
At that Margaret went out of the house, and in a while I saw her with Bryde, walking step for step with him on the lea he was breaking, and her hand would sometimes be beside his on the stilt of the plough.
On the home road that day I would be showing her the road we had travelled that night of the whin-burning, and where in the hills was McAllan's Locker, and wondering what had come to the Killer, the dead white man. And I would be minding a story of a dog that howled in the night and slunk by in the darkness of Lag 'a bheithe, and I wondered if the Nameless Man had gone to his love that beckoned in the pool, or if the ravens had got him at the last of it, and if the pigeons built still away in the cranny of the Locker, and there was a sadness in me.
She had not been speaking, the lass beside me, and her merriness was all gone, for she was aye merry with Bryde, and at last—
"Hamish," said she, "there is something will happen."
And on top of my own mood I was startled, and the words did not come to me.
"Am I not the daft lassie?" said she, and started to the singing of merry airs; but before we saw the rowan-tree that grows on the face of the black hill, her songs were sad again.
"He will be lonesome away there, Bryde," said she, looking back.
"He will be looking for a lass one of these nights," said I, a little angry, "and there are bonny lasses here and there, between here and Scaurdale."
"I am wishing, Hamish, I could be at the herding and the kelp-burning with the other lasses," said she, looking at me, and there was a little smile at her lips, and a kind of eagerness I did not understand.
"Do you think Bryde will be looking at these wenches," said I in great scorn (for I feared he did).
"No, Hamish, no," she cried amidst her laughter, and I understood then.
"Mistress Margaret," said I, "I am not a match for you in wit, it seems, but since we are agreed he canna just be suited with these lassies, there will just be two left by your way of it."
"Between here and Scaurdale, Hamish," said she, "it is your own words I am giving you."
"Bryde is a fine lad," said I, "but he's like to be spoiled, and," said
I, "your mother will have told you he has not even a name." At that
the dull anger I had been choking down most of that day broke over me.
"Damn the whole affair," said I, and dismounted.
When I lifted her from her horse, she was laughing and blinking tears from her lashes, and she put her arms very tightly about my neck.
"Oh, Hamish, Hamish," said she, "I will have been doing that this while."