CHAPTER XXIX.
THE RAKING BLACK SCHOONER.
I met Belle and Dan with the boy with them at the big stones away below the peat hags where the sea lies open to a man's look, and I took the young boy on my shoulder and laughed at Belle when she would be saying he was too big to be carried, and there was the look of pride in the swarthy face, pride and tenderness, as she stood, her hand on the arm of her man. But Dan kent me better.
"Out with it, Hamish. What good news gars ye giggle like a lass?"
"Man," I said, "have ye no' heard?—McKinnon's son is home, and has word o' Bryde. Betty will be seeing him with this boy in his arms yet. Bryde is coming home."
Belle's hands came to her heart for a little, and then her arms were round Dan like a wild thing.
"Oh, man, man, are you not glad?" she cried—"are you not glad?"
"Glad!" said Dan, and swallowed hard. "Ay, lass, glad is not the word," and then he kept shaking my hand, and looking at me without words, but Belle was afire.
"Hamish," she cried, clinging to me with her daftlike foreign ways, "will you always be bringing me good news till I am old and ugly?"
That night old Betty forgot her growing-pains and sang to the boy, Hamish Og, and it was a mercy that he had not much of the Gaelic so far, for the songs were not very douce, and not what a body might be expecting from an old woman that had seen much sorrow; but I am often thinking that she would have her good days too, for she would be enjoying her biting, and putting a pith into it that made Dan himself stare in wonder.
And I told my uncle and my aunt the news when Margaret was not by, for I kept mind of her talk of old wives' havers, and I kent the mother of Margaret would not be telling her, nor the Laird either for that part, for he was a good deal under her thumb in these matters; but for all that I might have been sparing myself the bother, for this is what came of it.
We were gathered for the reading and Hugh a little late, as was usual when he went 'sourrying—God forbid that he should—when he went courting, and after the reading there was a little time to talk, and, said he, stretching his legs—
"Helen was telling me Bryde will be home one of these days."
Now here, thinks I, is a bonny kettle of fish, for Margaret was sitting with us, but for all the suddenness of it she never geed her beaver, and I kent then that she had word some way.
"Mistress Helen has quick news," said I.
"She has a maid yonder, Dol Beag's lass, and she brought the word frae
McKinnon's son, it seems; Kate Dol Beag had the news."
"Imphm," said I, for Margaret was looking down and smiling in a way that angered me a little—"imphm," said I. "Did she say was he bringing his wife with him?"
"Wife?" said Hugh with a start.
Margaret was not smiling now, but I will say this; she was making a brave try at it.
"Some lady in Jamaica," said I, "wi' bonny bright eyes, young McKinnon was thinking."
At that Hugh left us, smiling.
"Hamish," said Margaret, "you are not being kind to me any more—it is not true."
"Margaret, when did you see Ronald's son?"
"Oh, I was looking for a sailor coming home," said she, "since yon day we went to old Mhari nic Cloidh's, and then the lassies told me Ronald's boy was home—and—and the night you were at Dan's they brought him here—a nice quiet boy—and I happened to go into the kitchen when he was there . . . and, Hamish, it is not nice to be unfriends like this, you and me, and I would not be meaning yon I said to you about old wives' havers—now," and after that she came and sat beside me, and put an arm round my neck.
"Will you tell me this, Hamish?" says she in her wheedling voice.
"Will you tell me truly?"
"What is it?" said I.
"Did McKinnon's son say anything about bonny bright eyes?"
"He said there were bonny bright eyes in Jamaica and the towns thereabout, Margaret, and he kind o' looked as though maybe he was wearying to be back there."
"Poof!" said she, "and was that all. I am thinking I would maybe be like that myself, if the Lord had made me a boy."
"Well, my lass, there's nane will deny that Bryde was a little that way himself—he would aye have a quick eye for a likely lass from what I can mind."
"Well," said she, being very merry and bold, and showing herself before me, "am not I a likely lass, Hamish, my dear?"
Now the old folk will use that expression with a very definite meaning, and when I thought of that I was feeling my face smiling, and me trying not to, as I looked at the lass.
"Hamish," she cried, "did you ever look at a lass like that before—it is a wonder to me you are not married long ago," and then with a frown on her face, but half laughing yet, "I ken," she cried, "she was married already, poor Hamish—was it Belle?"
But I was thinking it was time to be putting an end to her daffing.
"Listen, my dear," said I; "I ken another likely lass."
"Oh?"
"Helen," said I.
"Likely," she cried—"likely, the likeliest lass I will ever be seeing,
Hamish—for a sister."
But for all that she would be jibing at Hugh and his marriage. "Hughie," she would cry, "the fine sunny days are passing. When I get a man I am thinking it will be half the joy of it to be out with him on the hills and among the trees, and maybe on the sea. You will be waiting till the rainy days come, and that will not be so lucky."
"Och," said Hugh, "I will be sitting inside with the lass I marry on the wet days."
"Yes, Hugh; but I would be liking to be out with him in the rain and laughing at it and loving it, because I would be with him."
"The Lord should have made you a man," said I, "for you would be kissing your lass on some hill-top with the rain in her brown face and clinging to her curls, Margaret."
"Brown face and curls," she cried. "I wonder. Would my lass have been like that, Hamish, like Belle, or with a look—like Mistress Helen maybe; but I would be loving the kissing anyway," said she.
And Helen Stockdale was often with us, whiles, to my thinking, a little skeich[1] with Hugh, as though maybe she would rouse the temper in him, for that she seemed to delight in, but never would she be telling us what her man should be like.
"Husban'," she would say, with a shrug of her shoulder, "il faut necessaire—one must, I think, be sensible; is it not so?—perrhaps in anozer world one may know from the beginning," and I often wondered if she had forgotten how something should leap up at her heart. She would talk to Margaret about her gowns, using terms that never before had I heard tell of, and sending as far as Edinburgh for her braws, which, I am thinking, was a waste of good money, but I kept my thumb on that. For the wedding was to come off at the back-end, and I would be hoping that the weather would keep up, and the harvest be well got, wedding or not.
And in these long summer evenings very often I would be taking one of the men with me and a net, and taking the boat from the beach we would go out with the splash-net, for I would be fond of the sport as well as of the daintiness of the eating in salmon trout. In the dusk we would be leaving, and whiles not coming in till it was two or three o'clock in the morning.
I am thinking that maybe long ago the folk on the island would be watching for an enemy landing from the water, for with the sea as calm as a mill-pond and just the loom of the land—maybe through a haze—the senses will become very alert, and any little noise without the boat a man will be hearing, and wondering about, as well as listening to the splash of a fish falling into the water after a gladsome leap, and the noise of splashing of the oars to frighten the salmon-trout into the meshes.
On an August evening we were in the little bay near the rock at the mouth of the wee burn that passes the great granite stone on the shore—for that is a namely place for trout. There was a bright golden gleam as the oars dipped, and a swirl of phosphor fire at the stern like little wandering stars, when I heard the noise of oars and the creak of thole-pins, and I turned to look, thinking maybe some other was at the fishing, but the boat was heading for the port at the Point—wrack-grown now, and only to be seen at low tide.
In the bay at anchor was a schooner, a low raking black schooner, with the gleam of her riding light reflecting a long way over the water toward the shore—a sign of rain, we say. In a little I heard a gruff voice in the English, for the words came to me plainly—
"Easy, starbo'd; easy, all," and then the scrunch of a keel on sand, and after a little time I heard a boat being shoved off and the thrust of oars, and then the same voice again—
"Give way together," and it came to me that the quick command had the ring of a Government ship, and I was wondering if the Gull was making for her home port, for my heart somehow warmed to the Gull, and McNeilage, when I would be looking at the loom of that raking black schooner, and hearing the quick short strokes of the oars of the row-boat with no singing or any laughter. We had a good catch of fish when we got started to row back to the place where we beached the little boat, and it would be the best of an hour's rowing to get there. Little we spoke passing round the Point, except maybe to voice a wonder that a boat should come in there. And never another word was said till such times as we would be going gently, feeling, as it were, for the little gut in the rock, where we made a habit of coming ashore.
The sky was clearing to the eastward, the light giving a droll shape to the bushes, and showing a little mist hanging low when the keel grated on the gravel, and there on the shore-head was a man standing, a sea-coat, as I think they name it, round him. The eeriness of the dim light, the wild squawks of the sea-birds in the ears, and that great dark figure standing motionless, put a dread on the serving-man.
"In the name of God," said he, "cho-sin (who is it)?"
"If he is Finn himself," said I, trying to be bold, "he will be giving us a hand with the skiff whatever."
There came a ringing laugh from the stranger.
"Well done, Hamish; ye'll aye make good your putt—a bonny lan' tack they would make wanting you."
"It is he," cried the serving-man.
"Bryde," I cried, "what is it makes you come back this way and at this time of the night?"
These were the daftlike words I had for him, and me holding his hand and clapping him on the back, as if he were a wean again.
"It was a notion I had," said he, "to come back the way I would be leaving yon time—in the dark."
[1] Frisky.