she gaed to her reward—just slipped awa’ in a fit o’ hoastin’. I’ve strauchten’d the corp and am gettin’ the deid claes ready—Mirren was aye prood o’ hers and keepit them fine and caller wi’ gall and rosmry. Come forrit, sir, and tak’ a look on her that’s gane. There was nae deid-thraws wi’ Mirren, and she’s lyin’ as peacefu’ as a bairn. Her face is sair faun in, but I mind when it was the bonniest face in a’ Roodwater.’
The dead woman lay with cheeks like wax, a coin on each eye so that for the moment her face had the look of a skull. Disease had sculptured it to an extreme fineness, and the nose, the jaw, and the lines of the forehead seemed chiselled out of ivory. David had rarely looked on death, and the sight gave him a sense first of repulsion and then of an intolerable pathos. He scarcely heard the clatter of the shepherd’s wife.
‘She’s been deein’ this mony a day and now she’s gane joyfully to meet her Lord. Eh, but she was blithe to gang in the hinner end. There was a time when she was sweir to leave Richie. “Elspet,” she says to me, “what will that puir man o’ mine dae his lee lane?” and I aye says to her, “Mirren, my wumman, the Lord’s a grand provider, and Richie will haud fast by Him. Are not twa sparrows,” I says—’
David went over to the husband on the creepie by the fireside, and laid his hand on his shoulder. The man sat hunched in a stupor of misery.
‘Richie,’ he said, ‘if I’m too late to pray with Marion, I can pray with you.’
He prayed, as he always prayed, not in a mosaic of Scripture texts, but in simple words; and as he spoke he felt the man’s shoulder under his hand shake as with a sob. He prayed with a sincere emotion, for he had been riding through a living coloured world and now felt like an icy blast the chill and pallor of death. Also he felt the pity of this lifelong companionship broken, and the old man left solitary. When he had finished, Richie lifted his face from his hands, and into his eyes which had been blank as a wall came the wholesome dimness of tears.
‘I’m no repinin’,’ he said. ‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, and I bless His name. What saith the Apostle—Mirren has gane to be with Christ, whilk is far better. There was mony a time when the meal-ark was toom, and the wind and weet cam in through the baulks, and the peats wadna kindle, and we were baith hungry and cauld. But Mirren’s bye wi’ a’ that, for she’s bielded in the everlasting arms and she’s suppin’ rich at the Lord’s ain table. But eh, sir, I could wish it had been His will to hae ta’en me wi’ her. I’m an auld man, and there’s nae weans, and for the rest o’ my days I’ll be like a beast in an unco loan. God send they binna mony.’
‘The purposes of the Lord are true and altogether righteous. If He spares you, Richie, it’s because He has still work for you to do on this earth.’
‘I kenna what it can be. My fit’s beginnin’ to lag on the hill, and ony way I’m guid for nocht but sheep. Lambin’s and clippin’s and spainin’s is ower puir a wark for the Lord to fash wi’.’
‘Whatever you put your hand to is the work of the Lord, if you keep His fear before you.’
‘Maybe, sir.’ The man rose from his stool and revealed a huge gaunt frame, much bowed at the shoulders. He peered in the rushlight at the minister’s face.
‘Ye’re a young callant to be a minister. I was strong on your side, sir, when ye got the call, for your preachin’ was like a rushin’ michty wind. I mind I repeated the heids o’ your sermon to Mirren …. Ye’ve done me guid, sir—I think it’s maybe the young voice o’ ye. Ye wad get the word from Johnnie Dow. Man, it was kind to mak siccan haste. I wish—I wish ye had seen Mirren in life …. Pit up anither petition, afore ye gang—for a blessin’ on this stricken house and on an auld man who has his title sure in Christ but has an unco rebellious heart.’
It seemed to David as he turned from the door, where the shepherd stood with uplifted arm, that a benediction had been given, but not by him.
The moon had risen and the glen lay in a yellow light, with the high hills between Rood and Aller shrunk to mild ridges. The stream caught the glow and its shallows were like silver chased in amber. The young man’s heart was full with the scene which he had left. Death was very near to men, jostling them at every corner, whispering in their ear at kirk and market, creeping between them and their firesides. Soon the shepherd of the Greenshiel would lie beside his wife; in a little, too, his own stout limbs would be a heap of dust. How small and frail seemed the life in that cottage, as contrasted with the rich pulsing world of the woods and hills and their serene continuance. But it was they that were the shadows in God’s sight. The immortal thing was the broken human heart that could say in its frailty that its Redeemer liveth. ‘Thou, Lord,’ he repeated to himself, ‘in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; they all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.’
But as the road twined among the birches David’s mood became insensibly more pagan. He could not resist the joy of the young life that ran in his members, and which seemed to be quickened by the glen of his childhood. Death was the portion of all, but youth was still far from death …. The dimness and delicacy of the landscape, the lines of hill melting into a haze under the moon, went to his head like wine. It was a world transfigured and spell-laden. On his left the dark blotch which was Melanudrigill lay like a spider over the hillsides and the mouths of the glens, but all in front and to his right was kindly and golden. He had come back to his own country and it held out its arms to him. ‘Salve, Ο venusta Sirmio,’ he cried, and an owl answered.
The glen road was reached, but he did not turn towards Roodfoot. He had now no dread of the wood of Melanudrigill, but he had a notion to stand beside Rood water, where it flowed in a ferny meadow which had been his favourite fishing-ground. So he pushed beyond the path into a maze of bracken and presently was at the stream’s edge.
And then, as he guided his horse past a thicket of alders, he came full upon a little party of riders who had halted there.
There were three of them—troopers, they seemed, with buff caps and doublets and heavy cavalry swords, and besides their own scraggy horses there was a led beast. The three men were consulting when David stumbled on them, and at the sight of him they had sprung apart and laid hands on their swords. But a second glance had reassured them.
‘Good e’en to you, friend,’ said he who appeared to be the leader. ‘You travel late.’
It was not an encounter which David would have sought, for wandering soldiery had a bad name in the land. Something of this may have been in the other’s mind, for his next words were an explanation.
‘You see three old soldiers of Leven’s,’ he said, ‘on the way north after the late crowning mercy vouchsafed to us against the malignants. We be Angus men and have the general’s leave to visit our homes. If you belong hereaways you can maybe help us with the road. Ken you a place of the name of Calidon?’
To their eyes David must have seemed a young farmer or a bonnet-laird late on the road from some errand of roystering or sweethearting.
‘I lived here as a boy,’ he said, ‘and I’m but now returned. Yet I think I could put you on your way to Calidon. The moon’s high.’
‘It’s a braw moon,’ said the second trooper, ‘and it lighted us fine down Aller, but the brawest moon will not discover you a dwelling in a muckle wood, if you kenna the road to it.’
The
