A devil rises in my heart
Far worse than any death to me’—
there will be in him still some nobility of irrepressible impulse, some leap of the spirit unawares. Macleod’s usual method, however, is to take some unregenerate character—a wild tramp, a godless seaman, an express ecclesiastic—and reform him, not by religious admonition, but by living influences that seize upon the better feelings. In his Vanity Fair the evangelists are the affections. Thus in Billy Buttons the captain and crew are humanised by the accident of having upon their hands, in the middle of the Atlantic, the care of a new-born infant; the father of Wee Davie is made another being by his wife’s cry over the little coffin:—’O Willie, forgi’e me, for it’s no’ ma pairt to speak, but I canna help it enoo, and just, ma bonnie man, just agree wi’ me that we’ll gi’e oor hearts noo and for ever to oor ain Saviour, and the Saviour o’ wee Davie’; Jock Hall, the outcast in The Starling, thinking that he hates everybody and that everybody hates him, is made a new creature through the kindness and encouragement of an old soldier, who, when the bird cries, A man’s a man for a’ that, drives the lesson home, ‘And ye are a man; cheer up, Jock.’ Macleod’s good people are no hymn-book pietists, but, like those of Dickens, gentle and true. And his stories are entertaining, so that the most bigoted agnostic might put up with the religion for the sake of the amusement.
The most prevailing quality of Macleod’s fiction is the pathos, and though one must be a Christian to feel it all, there is much that no humane reader will be able to resist. To be sure the occasion is always simple and ordinary, never such, for instance, as the elaborate decline of a consumptive scholar in his garden-chair; and the cause of these tears may be only a remark or a gesture. Under the restrictions of Good Words he could not do his best as a humorist, yet he permitted himself to be thoroughly Scottish and provoke hearty laughter. Within a modest range he displays real genius in the portrayal of character and the rendering of Scottish conversation.
The Old Lieutenant, begun in Good Words before he knew it was to be a story, and continued without sight of an end, is disjointed in the narrative, and loaded with extraneous matter; but the elder Fleming is like one of Thackeray’s men, and, of the domestics of the good old days when the social bond was not cash payment but affection, where, outside of Scott, will you find a more delightful type than Babby? When Ned was about to leave home for his first voyage, ‘no one saw the tears which filled her large eyes, or heard her blowing her little nose half the night.’ After Ned’s marriage, his father, inviting the young couple to visit the old home, says simply, ‘I think that Babby will expect it.’ Babby has a tongue in her head, and is never so eloquent as when she rails at the new minister. Under the old one she had felt many a time ‘jist mad at hersel’ that she wasna a better woman.’ ‘But this chield Dalrymple that’s cam’ among us! Hech, sirs! what a round black crappit heid he has, like a bull-dog’s, and a body round and fat like a black pudding; and the cratur gangs struttin’ aboot wi’ his umbrella under his oxter, crawin’ like a midden cock, wha but him, keep us a’! an’ pittin’ his neb into every ane’s brose wi’ his impudence. And syne he rages and rampages in the poopit, wi’ the gowk’s spittle in his mouth, flytin’ on folk, and abusin’ them for a’ that’s bad, till my nerves rise, and I could jist cry oot, if it wasna for shame, “Haud yer tongue, ye spitefu’ cratur!” And again,—“Eh, I was glad ye werena married by Dalrymple! He routs in the poopit like a bull, and when the body’s crackin’ wi’ ye, he cheeps, cheeps like a chirted puddock.” “A what?” asked Kate. “A squeezed tade!” replied Babby; “d’ye no’ ken yer ain lang’age? And as for his sermons, they’re jist like a dog’s tail, the langer the sma’er.”’ If Ned is partly made to order, the crew are real old salts. Their conversation finally recalls Flint’s buccaneers, as when one (a milder Israel Hands) remarks, ‘But what, suppose I makes up my mind, do you see, to go ahead, and says, as it were, says I, I’ll not pray, nor read the Bible, nor give up my grog, nor anything else, nor be a saint, but a sinner, and sail when I like, and where I like, and be my own captain—eh?’
Macleod’s best effort in fiction is The Starling. Art demands some abatement of the happy close; there is didactic and explanatory matter that might well be spared; and the episode of the quack is an astounding excrescence. But it is a fine and touching story, and shows that the author possessed the distinctive power of a novelist. The starling was the pet of a little boy called Charlie. It could say, ‘I’m Charlie’s bairn,’ and ‘A man’s a man for a’ that,’ and whistle a few bars of the song, ‘Wha’ll be king but Charlie?’ To feed the bird and hear it speak and sing was the bairn’s delight. He was the only child of his parents, a pious and happy couple, the wife young, the husband a retired sergeant of the army, back at his old trade of shoemaker. The boy died, and there was the bird still repeating its remarks and tunes, and daily becoming dearer to the bereaved parents for Charlie’s sake. One Sunday morning, the starling being dowie, the sergeant hung out its cage at the door, for the sun was shining and the air sweet. Immediately the bird began to pour forth its budget; and a crowd of children gathered about the cage, and the street rang with their delight. Suddenly appeared the minister! at sight of whom the children fled, tumbling over one another and screaming in their fright, so that windows were thrown up, and mothers came flying into the rout, and there was a terrible ado. The Rev. Daniel Porteous, who was on his way to church, was scandalised at such a desecration of the Lord’s day. But what was his horror when he found that the prime offender was the sergeant, one of his elders? To the good couple, who looked up to Mr. Porteous with awe, and whose standing in the congregation was their greatest honour, the minister’s anger was no light matter; the wife was in distraction, the husband grave and puzzled. The clerical decree was that the starling should be destroyed. This the sergeant, with all deference, refused, whereupon the minister went away, uttering vague threats. But as the poor wife seemed to think it their duty to obey, her husband said, ‘If you, that kens as weel as me a’ the bird has been to us, but speak the word, the deed will be allowed by me.’ And he took down the cage, consenting that the other should put an end to the bird. ‘I’m Charlie’s bairn,’ exclaimed the starling. The wife thought that the killing should be the man’s work, but you see that she is beginning to waver, and when her husband lays his hand on the bird, saying, ‘Bid fareweel to your mistress, Charlie,’ she sprang forward with a cry, and prevented the deed. The sergeant was suspended from the eldership for contumacy, and shunned in the village like a leper. But it all comes right in the end. The motive of the tale would seem to verge on the ludicrous; a single false or strained note, and the whole thing were ruined; yet—call it literary skill or the unconscious art of perfect sympathy—the treatment is such that there is no improbability, and for the starling—as one might have felt when Marie Antoinette was in the cart, if it were a question whether some force might not come dashing up a back street to the rescue, so the reader feels when the fate of the bird is trembling in the balance. The minister with his scorn of the feelings and worship of church principles; his sister, who is like himself, only adding malice; the hypocritical elder who confesses, ‘There’s nane perfect, nane—the fac’ is, I’m no’ perfect masel’’; above all, the ne’er-do-weel, Jock Hall,—are depicted to the life.
That Macleod’s fiction has particular merits none will deny, though the critic, making the most of the defects, might say that his stories fail as wholes. His best achievement is perhaps The Reminiscences of a Highland Parish. This, at any rate, is a book, and it justifies the saying in The Old Lieutenant about the Highlands:—’In all this kind of scenery, along with the wild traditions which ghostlike float around its ancient keeps, and live in the tales of its inhabitants, there is a glory and a sadness most affecting to the imagination, and suggestive of a period of romance and song.’ The earlier chapters, describing his grandfather’s patriarchal home and the open-air education of the boys and girls of the manse, form a complete and charming piece—the idyll of Fiunary. There are exciting adventures on the misty hill and in the furious Sound.
What a sight it was to see that old man, when the storm was fiercest, with his one eye, under its shaggy grey brow, looking to windward, sharp, calm, and luminous as a spark: his hand clutching the tiller—never speaking a word, and displeased if any other broke the silence, except the minister who sat beside him, assigning this post of honour as a great favour to Rory during the trying hour. That hour was generally when wind and tide met, and gurly grew the sea, whose green waves rose with crested heads, hanging against the cloud-rack, and sometimes concealing the land; while black sudden squalls, rushing down from the glens, struck the foaming billows in fury and smote the boat, threatening with a sharp scream to tear the tiny sail in tatters, break the mast, or blow out of the water the small dark speck that carried the manse treasures. There was one moment of peculiar difficulty and concentrated danger when the hand of a master was needed to save them. The boat has entered the worst part of the tideway. How ugly it looks! Three seas higher than the rest are coming; and you can see the squall blowing their white crests into smoke.[6] In a few minutes they will be down upon the Row. ‘Look out, Ruari!’ whispers the minister. ‘Stand by the sheets!’ cries Rory to the boys, who, seated on the ballast, gaze on him like statues, watching his face and eagerly listening in silence. ‘Ready!’ is their only reply. Down come the seas, rolling, rising, breaking; falling, rising again, and looking higher and fiercer than ever. The tide is running like a race-horse and the gale meets it; and these three seas appear now to rise like huge pyramids of green water, dashing their foam up into the sky. The first may be encountered and overcome, for the boat has good way upon her; but the others will rapidly follow up the thundering charge and shock, and a single false movement of the helm by a hair’s breadth will bring down a cataract like Niagara, that would shake a frigate, and sink the Row into the depths like a stone. The boat meets the first wave, and rises dry over it. ‘Slack out the main-sheet, quick, and hold hard: there—steady!’ commands Rory, in a low, firm voice, and the huge back of the second wave is seen breaking to leeward. ‘Haul in, boys, and belay!’ Quick as lightning the little craft, having again gathered way, is up in the teeth of the wind and soon is spinning over the third topper, not a drop of water having come over the lee gunwale. ‘Nobly done, Rory!’ exclaims the minister, as he looks back to the fierce tideway which they have passed.
But what one least forgets is the figure of the aged pastor taking farewell of his flock. Blind he was, and lost his bearings in the pulpit, till the beadle, old Rory, who had accompanied him from Skye fifty years before, went up and turned him round so as to face the congregation.
And then stood up that venerable man, a Saul in height among the people, with his pure white hair falling back from his ample forehead over his shoulders. Few and loving and earnest were the words he spoke, amidst the silence of a passionately devoted people, which was broken only by their low sobs when he told them that they should see his face no more.
All Morven is in the book,—scenery from the heather to the waves, life from the manse to the shieling, mixed with strange old legends and romantic tales.