Part 16 (1/2)
Out from old Caer Luel, our road had crossed the Eden where Willie Armstrong escaped, and ran on white and smooth toward the Solway, whose sands glistened golden in the sun. The tide, which I'd read of as racing like a horse at gallop, was busy somewhere else, and the river lay untroubled, a broad, blue ribbon in the sandy plain where Prince Charlie's men and horses once struggled and drowned.
Now I knew we must be in the Debatable Lands, the hunting-ground of the border raiders, beautiful wild land, full of the sound of rivers, voices of the Teviot and the Eden, the Ettrick and the Yarrow, singing together and mingling with the voices of poets who loved them. Through the country of dead Knights of the Road my live Knight of To-day drove slowly, thinking maybe of dim centuries before history began, when the Picts and Gaels I have read of fought together among the billowy mountains; or of the Romans building Hadrian's wall against the ”little dark men”; or of the many heroes, Scottish and English, who had drenched the heather with their blood since then; or perhaps of himself, and the days of his boyhood when he said good-bye to bonny Scotland and went to try his fortune in the New World. Whatever his thoughts may have been, they made his face at first sad, then hard; I fancied that it was of himself as a boy he thought, and of his father and mother, whom he will not see when he goes home; so to bring him out of his brown study I began to tell him a story Mrs. Muir had told me about the border. It was the tale of the last Picts, and the secret of the heather ale. All, all the mysterious little dark people had been swept away in a great ma.s.sacre by the Scots after centuries of fighting with the Romans; and only a father and son were left alive. ”Give me thy Pictish secret of brewing heather ale,” said the King of the Scots, when the pair were brought before him, ”and I may perhaps spare thee and thy son.”
Then the dark Pict shut his eyes for a moment, and thought what to do.
He thought that the King would kill him and his son when he had their secret; and he thought of the mead which had the power of wafting the Picts to the Land of Pleasant Dreams.
From the bonny bells of heather, They brewed a drink langsyne, Was sweeter far than honey, Was stronger far than wine.
They brewed it and they drank it, And lay in blessed swound For days and days together, In their dwellings underground.
When he had thought with his eyes shut, the Pict said that he could not tell the secret while his son lived, because of the shame he would feel that his own flesh and blood should know him a traitor. He said this because he believed they would kill the boy quickly without torture; and the old man was right, for they bound his son hand and foot, and flung him out to sea. ”Now tell us the secret,” they said. But the Pict only laughed and answered, ”Now I will not tell, because there is nothing more you can do to hurt me.” So they killed him quickly too, in their rage, and the secret of the heather ale died with him.
Though he liked the story, the obstinate man argued that the last of the Picts were not really killed in this or any other way; that they had slowly died out as a race, and had married with the Scots, leaving a strain of their blood in the land to this day. ”You know,” he said, ”that Somerled of the Isles married a Pictish princess, and so there's Pictish blood in the veins of the MacDonalds, in your veins and in mine, though I'm of cottage birth, and you are of the castle.”
”I know that story of Somerled,” I answered, ”and how, hero though he was, he got his princess by a fraud. It makes Kim seem more human.”
”I wonder if his princess thought so?” said Somerled the Second.
”Why, of course she did,” I answered him as if I were in her confidence.
When I was in Carlisle, and proud of my English birth, I used to like reading about the great battle of the Solway Moss, where two hundred English hors.e.m.e.n killed or took prisoners more than a thousand Scots they'd chased into the bog; but now I've forgotten everything except that I'm a Scottish la.s.s; and though I'm of the Highlands, and these were Lowland men, I don't, as I did, love to dwell upon the raid of the Solway Moss. Still, I could not get it out of my head, and while I pictured it, as I have to do most things, whether I wish or no, I saw a bridge--a fine stone bridge, flung like the span of a petrified rainbow across a small stream.
”That must be the Sark!” I gasped. ”And we've come--we've come to the border!”
”Good la.s.s, to divine it!” said he. And how I liked his calling me a good la.s.s--it was better than princess!
We crossed the bridge slowly, lingering with half the car in England, half in Scotland; then suddenly we sprang on gayly, with a rush ahead, past the famous toll-house, which looked exactly like all its pictures.
”Ho for Scotland--our ain countree!” I cried; and though he did not turn to me, I saw his profile looking flushed and glad.
”Now you should take back your own name of MacDonald again, from this very minute of crossing the border,” I said, when I had drawn in my first long breath of Scotland. ”Somerled's a grand name, yet it was only the foundation of MacDonald. But I forgot! You've made your fame and money as Somerled. Which do you love more--your Scottish blood or your American fame and fortune?”
”Blood is stronger than water, and fame is running water,” he said. ”As for the money, I've cared too much for it--at least for the power it gave me. I didn't make the most of it with my pictures, and greed led me to love it better than my true work. That's why I lost the way to fairyland, little Princess. I buried myself under the 's.h.i.+elds and bracelets,' and I buried my talents, such as they were. For a while Somerled tried to deserve the great name he had chosen--but only for a little while. When by accident he grew rich, he began to wallow. Not a picture worthy of his boyish ambition has he painted for five years.
What he has done have been 'potboilers.' He forgot that he was an artist, and wanted only to be a millionaire. Disgusting! Now that I've told you this, do you--a MacDonald--bid me to take the name again at the border, where, as a boy, I laid it down--long ago, with high hopes and vows romantic enough to please even you?”
”Yes,” I said, ”I, a MacDonald, bid you to take up the name, and with it all the old hopes and the old ambitions, as you come back into your own land. Forget your silly money, and remember only that you're an artist in a lovely motor-car. Won't _that_ make you happy--and a boy again?”
”Something is making me happy--and a boy again,” he echoed.
IV
Any dull body who says that the minute you're over the border everything is not changed, can have no eyes--nor nose, because even the smell is different. It is--I'm sure it is--the adorable smell of peat. I have never yet smelt peat, but this is like my dreams.
Oh, how beautiful everything was as we crossed the span of the stone rainbow! A fresh wind had sprung up and out of the brilliant suns.h.i.+ne a shower was spurting, like diamonds set in gold. I saw the dazzling sight with eyes full of rain and curls.
”Here we'll find the rainbow key--on _this_ side the bridge, in the keeping of the Border Saints or Wizards,” said I; for the hills and lowlands that rolled away to the making of Scotland had a colour as if stained with the fadeless, dried rainbows of centuries. Mingled with peat was the tea-rose scent of summer rain and of running water, which is as the fragrance of fresh-cut melons. Clouds like huge white brooms swept the sky, and surging suddenly round us was a wave of sheep, charming, reserved, Scottish sheep with ears of a different shape from the English kind, like those of exaggerated rabbits. They looked at us with horizontal eyes of pale bra.s.s cut across with narrow slits of jet, and their thick wool, wet with rain, sparkled as if encrusted with diamond dust. With them was a collie, much collie-er than English collies, with a pawky Scottish smile. Not that I know what pawky means, but it seems a word I ought to use at once, now we are on Scottish soil.
n.o.body need tell me that the first houses of Scotland have any resemblance to the last houses of England. Maybe the country hasn't had time to change much, just in crossing the bridge. I won't argue about that. But the houses are as different from English houses as Scotsmen are from Englishmen. Could you ever mistake a Scot for an un-Scot? No!
Our wide-apart eyes and our dreamy yet practical expression, our high cheekbones, our sensitive, clear-cut nostrils, and the something mysterious in our gaze which no one can explain or understand, not even ourselves, is all our own. I have just found this out since crossing the border. And am I not a MacDonald of Dhrum?