Geordie's Tryst: A Tale of Scottish Life

by Janet Milne Rae

iss Hume, Grace's aunt, left the management of Kirklands entirely in the hands of her business agent. Mr. Graham met the tenants, gathered the rents, arranged the leases, and directed the improvements without even a nominal interference on her part. And certainly he conscientiously performed these duties with a view to his client's interests. It may be wondered that Miss Hume did not take a more personal interest in her tenants, but various things had contributed to this state of matters. Indeed, she was now so infirm that it would have been difficult for her to take any active interest in things around her, especially as it had not been the habit of her earlier years to do so.

It was her younger sister, Grace's mother, who used to know all the dwellers in the valley so well that her white pony could calculate the distance to the pleasant farmyard at which he would get his next mouthful of crisp corn; or the muirland cottage, with its delicious bit of turf, where he would presently graze, as he waited for his young mistress, while she talked to the inmates. But if the little girl with her white pony could have come back again to Kirklands, they would have missed many a familiar face, and searched in vain for many a cottage. The pleasant little thatched dwellings, with velvety tufts of moss studding the roof, and pretty creepers climbing till they mingled with the brown thatch, telling of the inmates' loving fingers, were all swept away now, and in the place that once knew them, stretched trim drills of turnips, fenced by grim stone walls, to which time had not yet given a moss-covered beauty.

Mr. Graham had thought it wise for his client's interests to remove those little "crofts," and merge their kailyards into productive fields; so the dwellers in the greensward cottages had to wander townwards to seek shelter and work in city courts and alleys. The land was now divided into a few farms, on which stood imposing-looking houses, with knockers and latch-keys to the doors, where the little girl and the white pony would never have ventured to ask admittance, or cared to gain it--where "nobody wanted nothin' from nobody," old Adam, the gardener, had assured Margery, when she made anxious inquiries concerning the prospect of Grace's search, and who hoped that this circumstantial information might persuade her young mistress to abandon it.

The prophecy that it was "a fule's errand" rang unpleasantly in Grace's ear, as she crossed the park and climbed the rustic stiles which led to the high road. It was true she knew that during the last three years there had been many a "clearance" at Kirklands, for she remembered having overheard Mr. Graham congratulating her aunt on the larger returns owing to these improvements. But surely, she thought, there might still be found some little cottages like those to which she heard her mamma was so fond of going when she was a girl. Walter and she used certainly, she remembered, often to see children with bare, dust-stained feet on the road, when they happened to go beyond the grounds on a fishing expedition, or down with their aunt through her lands; but her brother had been an all-sufficient playmate, and Grace's interest in the peasant children did not extend beyond a glance of curiosity. But now how gladly would she gather a little company of them to tell them that old sweet story, which had come to her own heart with such new strange sweetness, during these winter days, though she had heard it ever since she could remember. Grace hurried eagerly along the high road, looking at every turn for traces of any lowly wayside dwellings. There used to be a little clump of cottages here, she thought, as she stopped at a bend of the road where there were traces of recent demolitions, and a great field of green corn was evidently going to reclaim the waste place, and presently swallow it up. Behind where the vanished cottages had stood there stretched a glade of birch-trees, with their low twisted stems rising from little knolls of turf so mossy and steep, that the drills of turnips and potatoes could not possibly be ranged there without destroying their symmetry, even though the crooked birch-trees were to be swept away.

Grace wandered among the budding trees, and through the soft springy turf that was growing green again in spite of the bitter spring winds, but she found no little native lurking among the birches, and was disappointed to come to the other side of the wood much more quickly than she expected, without the détour being of any practical use.

The turf sloped away to a little stream that went singing cheerily over sparkling pebbles, bubbling and foaming round the base of grey lichened rocks, that reared their heads above the water, as if in angry remonstrance at their daring to interfere with its progress. On the opposite bank there stretched a bit of muirland pasture, studded with little knolls of heather, growing green, in preparation for its richer autumn tints. The pale spring sunlight began to grow more mellow in its light at this afternoon hour; it glinted on the little gurgling stream, lighted up the feathery birch glade, and lay in golden patches on the opposite bank, where Grace noticed some cattle begin to gather on the heathery knolls, as if they had come to enjoy the last hour of bright sunshine. Perhaps some little cottages may be sheltered behind those hillocks, Grace thought; and she began to examine how the grey rocks lay among the water, and whether she could possibly find dry footing across the stream. Presently she came upon a smooth row of stones, that were evidently used as a thoroughfare. She had already begun to cross them, keeping her eye cautiously fixed on the stepping-stones as she went along, when she was startled by a voice which sounded close beside her. On glancing round she saw on the opposite bank a boy standing with a huge twisted cudgel in his hand, brandishing it in a warlike attitude. He seemed to have suddenly appeared round one of the hillocks, and was now shouting excitedly, in his rough northern dialect, as he waved his stick:

"Hold back, mem; hold back, I tell ye. Blackie is in one o' his ill moods the day, and he's no safe. Dinna come a foot farther."

Grace stood bewildered, balancing herself on the stepping-stones; the apparition was so sudden that it almost took away her breath, and the commands were so peremptory that she did not dare to disregard them by going forward; but it seemed very hard to beat an ignominious retreat, for here seemed to be just what she was in search of—a boy as neglected-looking as any that were to be seen in the courts and alleys of Edinburgh; of the very type which old Adam declared there was not one to be found in all the lands of Kirklands. His head was bare, and his flaxen hair so bleached by the sun that it looked quite white against his bronzed face. He looked at Grace with a grave interest in his large blue eyes, as if he would like to know a little more; but he still brandished his cudgel before her, and shouted resolutely:

"Hold back, or Blackie will be at ye."