Wayfaring Men: A Novel

by Edna Lyall

The woods were fill’d so full with song,

There seem’d no room for sense of wrong.”

“The Two Voices,” Tennyson.

It was just ten minutes past eleven by the station clock when Ralph, having parted with his companions, found himself outside in the highroad. He felt horribly desolate, and stood for a minute or two dismally contemplating a flaming red and yellow placard of a scene in “Cramond Prig,” which they had invariably played after “East Lynne.” Wretched as his experiences with the Company had been, they had at least been less dreary than solitude. He sorely missed Ivy’s bright face, and the comedian’s cheerful companionship. There was a certain bitterness too in the reflection that no one had taken much thought of what was to become of him, and that even Dudley, who had been kind and friendly enough in the past, had never dreamt of foregoing his journey to London and of taking two tickets to Glasgow.

With a last look at Forres he turned his steps southward and somewhat drearily set off on the first stage of his journey. He meant to reach Grantown that evening, and Grantown appeared to be at least two and twenty miles off. Fortunately the weather was all in his favour: it was one of those mornings of early May when the sun is bright and warm and the air deliciously fresh, and he had not gone far along the uphill road before his spirits revived. After all he was young and in good health, and there was something not altogether unpleasant in entire independence. He reflected with a laugh that although a change of clothes might be desirable, a knapsack would have been heavy to carry, that the great coat though useful on a cold night would have been unbearable at the present moment, and that the sixpence left to him after stamping the letter to his landlady and letters to the managers of an Edinburgh and a Glasgow theatre, would at any rate keep him for a few days from actual starvation. Then for a while he forgot his difficulties altogether in sheer enjoyment of the country. The lovely outline of the Cluny hills, the glimpses of the river Findhorn, the beautiful parks surrounding many stately houses, looked their very best on this perfect spring morning. He caught the glowing sunlight through the young leaves just unfolded and thought that the delicate tracery of dark boughs seemed as though ablaze with emeralds. He had walked for about two hours when he came to a little country church and burial ground, and paused partly to rest, partly to look up at the beautiful viaduct which at a great height spanned the river Divie.

“Ay, ay,” said a voice, that seemed to rise from one of the graves. “There are many tourists that stop to admire yonder seven-arched work of man’s devising, but few—very few that pay much heed to the works of the Almighty.”

There was a strong northern accent about the words; and the careful, precise English showed that the speaker was better used to reading than to speaking the language.

Ralph had started a little at the suddenness with which the silence had been broken, and on turning round, he saw a venerable-looking old man with bushy grey hair and beard, and shrewd yet kindly glance. Evidently he was the minister of this place. Ralph raised his hat, and smiled a little.

“May not the skill of man be taken as one of God’s works?” he said.

“No doubt, no doubt,” replied the minister. “When rightly applied that is to say. But railways, sir, are the devil’s own weapon; they desolate and mar the country they enter; they bring to the country folk all the evil of the towns and cities. You have a prophet in your own land that has told you this in plain words, but you will not heed him, but go on multiplying the works of evil to your own undoing.”