Inchbracken: The Story of a Fama Clamosa

by Robert Cleland

CHAPTER XI.

[AN EXCURSION].

Mrs. Sangster decided that Mr. Wallowby ought to see something of the country during his stay. An excursion was planned, and to introduce some appearance of novelty into the party, the Rev. Roderick was summoned to join the expedition.

It was an early September morning when they started from Auchlippie. Peter drove the phaeton, and his friend sat beside him on the box. Inside were the ladies and the minister, in his quality of priest, or one of the third sex, which, as though not either male or female, possesses all the claims to deference of both, and owes the duties of neither. Roderick sat in the back seat beside his hostess, while the two young ladies faced him. The two gentlemen on the box looked back from time to time with some remark which was gaily responded to by the ladies, and Roderick occasionally joined in with a quiet jest. The presence of Sophia filled his mind with happiness too deep for merriment, and there she sat before him in full view.

Sophia being a placid person abounding in the beauty of repose, had worked her spell upon him more by looks, which he had interpreted into sympathy, and what he chose to imagine the beauty of her virgin soul, than by anything she had ever said. Looking in her eyes he had dreamt of all that was loveliest and then fancied he saw it there. Another Narcissus, he had gazed in their crystal depths, and, mistaking his own reflection for the spirit of the flood, had fallen in love with it.

It made little matter to him that they were in the midst of a merry company, he could sun himself in the presence that was so much of his own creating all the same, and save that he was more silent than at other times, no one could have observed any departure from his usual bearing. Sophia was aware of his mute observance, and thought it 'very nice,' she was used to it, and it required from her no irksome effort in response, which, as her thinking part was neither imaginative nor emotional, and somewhat sluggish besides, was comfortable. The contrast between Roderick's quiet and the lively loquacity of Mr. Wallowby, told all in favour of the former; for although Mary and her mother with their greater readiness relieved her from the necessity of reply, it was mortifying thus to realize her own slowness, and she found the constant smiling and laughter over jests whose point she had missed, fatiguing to her facial muscles, and at last she took refuge in a private chat with Roderick as to whether he thought the day would keep fine and such like weighty matters.

Loch Gorton and Inchbracken. Page 79.

They drove across the upland moors and the ridge dividing Glen Effick from the neighbouring valley of the Gorton, and down Gorton side to where it spreads into the lake of the same name. At that point it is crossed by a bridge, the road passing an old posting inn which looks down the loch, and is backed by Craig Findochart, the highest mountain of the district, and the goal of the day's expedition.

Loch Gorton is a basin among the hills, deep and narrow at its upper end, but broadening and shallowing towards its base. It fills the mouth of a valley whose precipitous slopes crowd down upon the water at its head, but draw back in lessening and ever-widening undulations from the lower end. Near the outlet is the broad low island of Inchbracken, connected with the mainland by a narrow neck of land. Here in the old time stood the castle of the Drysdales, commanding the isthmus, which they cut across and commanded by a drawbridge. The moat is filled up now, and the square old keep, ivy-grown and ruinous, has sunk into a mere picturesque feature in the shrubbery of the modern mansion.

Leaving their phaeton at the Bridge of Gorton Inn, the party secured a guide, and proceeded to ascend the hill. A steep footpath led across several enclosed fields, and brought them through a stretch of oak copsewood to a track of open pasture, whence they could look down on the lake spread out at their feet, while the great purple mountain reared its steep shoulders above them, swelling in broad sweeps of heath backward and upward to the beetling crags far up, thrusting their jagged outlines into the sky, and shutting out the climber from the distant summit.

The belt of pasture past, climbing began in earnest. The shaggy heather was knee deep in many places, and every here and there the rocky knuckles of the mountain projected through the peaty soil.

The party began to straggle. Mary, sound of wind and limb, light-footed and active, was in front with the guide. Peter and Wallowby toiled closely behind, the latter showing the first signs of distress in shortening breath, and handkerchief applied occasionally to his brow. Mrs. Sangster followed in steady mechanical fashion. Her fifty odd summers had no doubt impaired the elasticity of her frame, but had left behind a fund of tough endurance and sturdy will, which did very well in its stead. Sophia and Roderick brought up the rear, the coolest and calmest of the party. Her fine physique made the exertion both light and pleasant, and her tranquil soul supplied a wellspring of inward coolness, which even hill-climbing was unable to overheat, while Roderick by her side among the sunshine and the ever-widening view, walked on air, held forth at will, and dreamed aloud in words overflowingly; while his placid companion smiled and looked at him out of her beautiful eyes, listening, and sometimes understanding what he said. The path became steeper after a while, and Mrs. Sangster stopped to take breath, looking around the while for the others.

Mary and the young men were perched upon a rock high over her head, and when she looked down Roderick and Sophia came calmly following her. It seemed too much that Mary should monopolize not only Peter (though that was well enough), but also the wealthy party from Manchester, who had been sent by Providence, as she still thought, to open a larger sphere of usefulness to her daughter; meaning really, if self-delusion would ever let us speak plainly to ourselves, a carriage and pair and a handsome establishment. The ice between the two had been hard to break, what better way could there be to thaw it, than the small difficulties and adventures of a mountain ramble? And here the stupid girl was letting her opportunity escape, and trifling it away with a young man whom she could beckon to her side any day, and could always fall back upon if more ambitious aims did not succeed. A more worldly or a more single-minded mamma would no doubt have spoken plainly to her daughter, and so might have influenced that not very perspicuous person more effectually, but Mrs. Sangster had the misfortune to be looking two ways at once, or like the boatman in the Pilgrim's Progress, she looked one way while she pulled the other. She loved and appreciated the good things of the world, as thoroughly as any one, but at the same time she was wont to say, and to really think that she thought they were a snare, or dross, in comparison with higher interests. She could not bring her tongue to frame such advice to her daughter as would in any way derogate from true religion, or the old-fashioned 'true, true love,' she had thought and sang of in her own youth. She could only suggest and influence in a half-ashamed sort of way. But she was disappointed and mortified that a daughter of hers should be so wanting in common sense. After all the advantages of her upbringing, how came it that she should fail of that well-regulated mind, which, seeing both sides of a question, can both say what is 'nice' in regard to the higher, and at the same time follow the more profitable. The thing requires a little casuistry, but it must be of the unspoken kind. It cannot be decently uttered, so each must work it out alone in those secret chambers of the brain, where not the prying eye of conscience even may intrude. Any one would feel annoyed at a carefully and expensively-educated daughter throwing herself away, and all the proud hopes that have been formed for her, on a poor match; yet openly to preach the mercenary would be infamy. So felt Mrs. Sangster, and she was greatly disturbed; for hers was virtue of the uncomfortable, rather than of the heroic kind,--it could not make her choose the better way, but it would reproach her if she followed the worse. As for Sophia, her mother wronged her if she suspected her of unwisely preferring the good to the profitable. She was only dull. Money and all it could buy would, she felt, be delightful to have, but she did not feel equal to winning it. Roderick had looked and succumbed to her beauty, and it would be very pleasant if Mr. Wallowby would do likewise; it would be grand,--and no personal preference should prevent her making her fortune; but if Mr. Wallowby was only to be captured by something she was to do, she resigned the idea at once; she felt she could do nothing, and the very idea of doing anything to win his regard made her ashamed, which was what might have been expected. If people will bring up their girls to be high-minded and good, they have no right to expect scheming and meanness from them after they are grown.

'Oh, Mr. Roderick,' said Mrs. Sangster, 'I fear I must ask you to take pity on an old woman. This climbing is hot work, with the sun beating down so on my old back. I can bear the weight of my shawl no longer. If there was only a breeze! But the air seems stagnant, and my old limbs are not what they once were.'

'We have only to get a very little higher now to have wind enough,' said Roderick, doubling the shawl on his arm. 'See Mr. Wallowby's handkerchief up there how it blows about. If you will accept a little assistance over this steep place, you will soon reach the cooler level.'

'Sophia!' continued the mother, 'I believe that guide will break a bottle, or something, the way he swings the basket about. Pray bid him take care or we shall have a dry luncheon to eat when we get to the top of the hill,--there will be no water up there. It makes me quite nervous to look at him.'

So Sophia was despatched in advance while the older lady made a leisurely survey of the prospect at her feet.

'A beautiful place Inchbracken, with its woods spreading out beyond the island and rolling away into the distance, and the steeple of Kilrundle church rising from among them. Dives with his good things, and Lazarus with his evil things! You must feel thankful to have chosen the better part, Mr. Roderick.'

'I feel no misgiving about my choice whatever, but I hope there is no reason to look on General Drysdale as another Dives. Difference in people's circumstances, shows things in so different a light.'

'Ah! my young friend, charity is good, but it must be according to knowledge.'

'But, Mrs. Sangster, the General is a most worthy man, a kind master and a good landlord, and an honourable gentleman.'

'I will not say, Mr. Roderick, that his hands are red with the blood of the saints, because it has not been left in his power to take the lives of the Lord's people; but he has been very bitter against the Free Church. We may fairly include him among the persecutors, driving us forth to worship God according to our conscience, on the bare hill-side, and refusing us a stance to build our church on any part of his property. Now, I have always said, that that open place facing Inchbracken gate is where our new church should stand. There it could testify before the very walls of the Erastian temple, instead of being huddled away in the corner of widow Forester's kale-yard.'

'But how would you like a Roman Catholic or even an Episcopal Chapel set down opposite your own gate at Auchlippie?'

'Mr. Roderick! Popery and Prelacy! To hear you evening our true scriptural protesting Free Church to the Babylonish apostacy, with their white gowns, and their organs, and their traditions of men! I fear there's a leaven of latitudinarianism among you younger men. You should follow the staunch old lights like Mr. Dowlas, to steady your principles. How you can recall the doings of Archbishop Sharp, and speak lightly of Episcopacy, is what I can't comprehend!'

They had now reached the last steep ascent which ended on the summit. This left the old lady no spare breath to hold forth, and she was glad to catch hold of Roderick's arm to assist in pulling herself up the nearly vertical slope. The wind-swept cairn at the top was at length reached, and, notwithstanding her late complaints, Mrs. Sangster was forced to shelter herself from the keen breeze, under its lee, and to resume the shawl she had discarded.

Craig Findochart rises high over the surrounding hills especially towards the east. On that side they gradually diminish and die away in the belt of cultivation that borders the sea. To the north is a narrow glen running down into a fertile strath well-wooded and watered by a river of some size; beyond, the lofty Highland mountains toss their battered summits in the air, a very sea of emulously-surging peaks. Westward it is mountainous again but more various. The eye travels far up more than one winding strath, while glancing lakes shine out every here and there among the greys and purples of mountain and moor. Southward the view is narrower and loses itself in haze, a greyness which rises indistinctly from the distant country, but when once fairly launched in heaven, swells and curls and rears itself into vast white battlements of cloud, and drifts before the wind shining and luminous, like some great iceberg in a transparent sea.

Having surveyed the view, the party sought such shelter from the chilling breeze as was attainable, on the leeward slope, and proceeded to rest and refresh themselves, after their fatigues; the old lady, with some elation at having climbed the hill as cleverly as the youngest, doing the honours of her provision basket with garrulous hospitality, while the others reclined on the scanty herbage with infinite zeal. The warmth gained by exercise withstood the sharp upper air, whose biting keenness felt only bracing and exhilarating to those toilers upward from the airless heat below; but after half an hour they had parted with the surplus heat gained by exertion, and began to feel distinctly cold. There seemed a failing too in the brightness of the light, except over the distant sea, which still glittered crisp and bright in unclouded sunshine. A wan greyness seemed to be stealing over the landscape, not as when passing clouds dapple the view with well defined blocks of shadow, but rather a diffused withdrawal of warmth and light all undefined and vague, but ever deepening like the stealthy advances of sickness or death upon a living thing. Looking upwards they now for the first time observe great vaporous arms and wreaths extending over their heads and stretching out towards the still bright heavens in the north-east. Turning round they find the outlook completely obliterated. The shining cloud-masses of an hour before in the south-west have drifted down upon them, and are now nothing but curling wreaths of cold damp mist, seething and twisting, but ever downward and onward. They seem scarcely to have descried overhead its first advancing arms ere it has descended on them and lapped them from the world in cold damp greyness, above, below, and all around them. From far down the hill ascends the report of a gun, and by and by another, telling them that others besides themselves are on the mountain, and that they are still upon firm ground; but for that they might be anywhere or nowhere, the mist hems them in utterly, the very ground they stand on becomes indistinct, and they stretch their arms to touch each other and make sure they are not each alone. They gather close together standing perfectly still, a step in any direction may precipitate them they know not whither, and the damp clammy vapour creeps close about them soaking hair and clothing, and chilling them to the bone.

'It is only a cloud and will soon pass,' some one says; so they agree it will be safer to wait than to attempt a descent not knowing where their next step may carry them. They huddle closely together and watch and shiver; at one moment it seems growing lighter overhead, and glimmerings of the bright sky shine through, but anon a surging wreath drifts up, and the promising rift closes in again denser than before.

For more than an hour they stood thus afraid to move, stiffening and shivering in the cold. The day was passing, but the mist showed no sign of rising; on the contrary it grew thicker and more wetting, and the idea of spending the night where they were, began to present itself as a possibility unless they made a bold venture to move. To die of cold where they were, appeared a certainty if they remained, while there was at least a hope of escape, in tempting the uncertain dangers of the descent.

Wallowby being a stranger was told to keep hold of the guide, and Sophia was entrusted to their joint care. Mary and Peter having both some knowledge of the hills and the country followed next, while Roderick who had often shot over the ground, undertook to pilot the old lady. The three groups were to keep together as well as they could, and by constant shouting they hoped to keep within each other's ken.

With infinite care, groping and feeling around at every step, they commenced to descend, the grey obscurity swallowing them up, and concealing each group from the others. The voices seemed muffled by the fog, but they enabled them still to hold together.

Down they went, stumbling over loose stones, clambering down rocks and slipping among the heather now dripping with moisture, Mrs. Sangster vowing it should be her last expedition of the kind, if ever she got safe to 'bigget land' again.

'Hold more to the left!' shouted the guide, an injunction which Mrs. Sangster hastened to obey, though still very far from the point it was meant to apply to and thereby found herself on a steep rock face, where she was compelled to turn round, and grasping the heather bushes above, to step gingerly backwards, down into the unknown.

'Oh! Mr. Roderick, this is awful!'

'Another step and you will come to level foothold again.'

'Oh! but I can't; I am caught in something. There it goes--and now I have lost my gold spy-glass, something has caught the chain and broken it. Oh, Mr. Roderick! will you help me to find it! I shall never be able to read my psalm-book on Sunday, if I lose it. Oh dear! oh dear! what an old fool I have been. Skemmeling over Findochart like a nine-year old!'

Roderick shouted to the others to wait, but the cry lost itself in the mist, or was misunderstood. The voices from below came up fainter and fainter, and finally they were heard no more.

The search for the 'spy-glass' occupied some time, and all their attention, but eventually it was found within a foot or two of where they stood, and it was not till then that they discovered they were alone on the hillside. Roderick shouted till he was hoarse, but there came no response, and it became evident they must shift for themselves.

'Most disgraceful conduct! such heartlessness! To think that Peter Sangster, my own son, whom I have sat up with, and nursed through measles and hooping-cough, till my back was like to break, should drag his old mother up here among the clouds, and then desert her!' and here the old lady began to whimper, but took care to make the 'spy-glass' secure in some inner receptacle of her dress.

Roderick suggested that it was getting late, and that by making haste they might yet overtake the runaways.

'I hope we may. But who knows? They may have fallen over a precipice, and be lying maimed and mangled at the bottom. Oh dear! it may be days before they are found. My poor Sophia! that would have looked so well riding about Manchester in her own carriage! She may have broken her neck, or disfigured herself for life! lying bruised and bleeding on a heap of stones. And the crows come and pick at people, they tell me, when they are too much hurt to drive them away. Oh dear, oh dear!

Her active mind conjured up every imaginable horror, till, distracted by the pictures of her own invention, she lifted up her voice and wept sore.

Roderick stood by powerless, and eventually silent. Each word of consolation served but to start her imagination on a new track of suggestions more frightful than the last, so he held his peace and waited. Tears brought relief in time, and now fear for herself took the place of more fanciful terrors.

'Oh, come away, Roderick!' she cried, 'what are you standing there for?--glowering at nothing! Come away!'

The descent proceeded. And now they were on an extended flat, undulating in all directions, and lying between the steep ascent to the summit and the declivity which sloped to the next level below. Without the guidance afforded by continuous descent, they found very soon that they had completely lost their way, and could form no idea of what direction they were moving in.

'I thought you had often shot over this hill, and knew it well, Roderick Brown, or I would never have trusted myself in your hands; but it seems to me you know nothing about it. I'm thinkin' we may wander about here all night, for anything you can do to bring us home. So I am just going to sit down till the Lord sends us help! Home! I'll never see home again; and a sorrowful woman I am, that I ever set out on this fool's errand!'

'We must do as I have had to do more than once before, Mrs. Sangster, when I got befogged in the hills, follow a stream of running water--the first we can find. The water will find its way down somewhere, and will bring us to a house eventually, though it may take us through some difficult places.'

A burn was by-and-by found, and they set themselves to follow its course wherever that might lead, like the clue by which some devious labyrinth is disentangled. It led through swampy places sometimes, and sometimes tumbled downward among rocks and under high banks, but they were already so wet that walking in its bed where the sides were too craggy and difficult made small difference, and after clambering downwards for more than an hour, they were rejoiced by the barking of a dog some distance below them.

'Do you hear that? Mrs. Sangster; I think we are nearing a habitation at last!'

Mrs. Sangster drew a long breath, and stood upright to listen; letting go her hold of the bushes by whose help she was scrambling down in the bed of the burn. The rock she stood on was slippery. On changing her poise her feet slid from under her, and with a scream, and a clattering of stones, she shot forward and downward upon her companion, landing them both in a pool of water.

'Oh, Roderick Brown! You'll be the death of me! How dare you try your cantrips on a woman old enough to be your mother? Dragging me through bogs and down precipices, and ducking me in burns till I haven't a dry stitch on my back, or an easy bone in my body! I'll have ye up before the presbytery for a graceless loon! Oh, laddie! never mind what I say. My head's just going round and round, I think I'm demented! Lay me on the bank to drip--and let me die in peace! I can go no further.'

"She shot forward and downward upon her companion,
landing them both in a pool of water." Page 88.

'Nonsense, Mrs. Sangster. Just a few steps more! We must be very close to some shieling now. I declare I can smell the peat reek in the air! Here is a footpath going down the hill--come! let us follow it.'

'Give me your hand, then, for I do not think I have courage left to stand alone, far less walk. Oh! What an experience!'

They reached a shepherd's cottage in a few minutes more, where the wife of Stephen Boague, surrounded by dogs and children, came out to receive them. Roderick was not sorry to hand over his charge to the good woman's care, but he would not linger himself, he must hasten to the inn, though that was three miles off, to learn if the others had not arrived there, and if not to send searchers up the mountain after them. The mist had changed into a drizzling rain, but he was already too wet to feel it, and too anxious for the others to have any thought for himself.