Part 27 (1/2)
Closeburn is the place where the Kirkpatricks, the Empress Eugenie's family, used to live before they went to Spain. At Auldgirth we went over a bridge built by Carlyle's father. At Mauchline Burns grew from a boy into a man and fell in love. At Ellisland, Burns lived for a long time with his handsome wife, Jean Armour. At Dalswinton the first steamboat made its first trip, and Burns was on it. All round us now was Scott's ”Red-gauntlet” country; and the bridge crossing the Nith at Dumfries was built by Devorgilla. There was something to see and think of every minute; and in fifty-nine miles we had followed Burns's whole life-story on its slow way from Ayr to Dumfries. Only--we couldn't follow his thoughts to the stars!
We had stopped many times; still it wasn't yet five o'clock, and we had time to see all that's sacred to Burns at Dumfries, the ”Fair Queen of the South,” as Sir S. called it, quoting I don't know what.
First we went to the house in Bank Street where Burns came when he left Ellisland, and had seventy pounds a year to live on instead of fifty--a sad and grim little house, where in the wee closet that was his study we could hear the music of the Nith, but catch no sparkle of its water. He had hardly air enough to fan the fire of genius, yet it went on turning brightly because nothing could put it out. If it was a sad house to live in, it must have been even sadder to die in. He'd have liked his last look to be on sky and meadow, or he would not have said in his ”Song of Death”:
”Farewell, thou fair day, thou green earth and ye skies, Now gay with the broad setting sun.
Farewell, loves and friends.h.i.+ps, ye dear tender ties!
Our race of existence is run.”
I found those words in the Poems bound in tartan which Basil had bought for me in a fascinating bookshop at Ayr and I read them in the room where the poet died. Afterward I was glad to see in St. Michael's churchyard a great many of the ”loves and friends.h.i.+ps” resting near him in his long sleep. Their presence consoled me for the mausoleum which n.o.body can admire nowadays, or think worthy of him. Almost, I would rather have had him lie under one of those strange, enormous tombstones like stone cupboards or tables which clutter the graveyard.
While we were trying to find the burial-place of Napoleon's doctor, and some martyrs and cholera victims Mrs. James was interested in, Mrs. West and Basil appeared, and then the Americans. Sir S. looked horribly bored, when he saw the four tall, brown, nice-looking boys, and asked me quite fiercely if I'd given them permission to follow us every step of the way. I snapped back, ”No, of course not!” And immediately he said, ”Forgive me. If you had, after all where would be the harm?”
There was no time for more. We had to say, ”How do you do?” to Basil and Aline; and then the boys surged round us, in their high spirits rather like big Newfoundland puppies sacrilegiously racing each other among the graves. They had been reading up history on purpose to please me, they announced, and were ready to bet five pounds against a glove that they knew more than I did. Was I aware that Dumfries meant ”fort in the thorn bushes?” Had I learned that the British Christian chief, who was the real King Arthur, fought with pagan Saxons all along the Nith. Did I know it was in Grayfriars, or the Minories Church, that Bruce killed the Red Comyn, Devorgilla's grandson?
They won the glove; and then there was a scene when they took a penknife and cut it up in four pieces, one for each man. I tried to keep them from being so foolish, but might as well have tried to stop the wind from blowing; and it was no wonder that Mrs. West turned her back on us rather than see those dreadful boys ostentatiously stowing away the bits of gray kid in what Jack Morrison called their ”heart-pockets.”
I was afraid Sir S. might think it was my fault, their coming to stay at the pretty hotel he'd chosen for us because it overlooked the river; but it wasn't a bit. It was just as much a coincidence as Mrs. West and Basil finding three Canadian friends already there--perhaps even _more_ of a coincidence; for it didn't seem to me that Mrs. West was really astonished at finding these people at a Dumfries hotel, or they at finding her and Basil. I was there when they met in the hall: two rather handsome dark men, brothers, named Vanneck, and the fair, thin little wife of the younger one. All they said at first was, ”Well, this _is_ nice! How do you do?” And it struck me afterward, when I thought it over, that if it had been a great surprise, they would have mentioned it. I wondered if they hadn't corresponded and arranged it somehow, for they appeared to know each other very well, and to be the best of friends, especially the elder Mr. Vanneck and Mrs. West, who called each other ”Aline” and ”George.” After dinner it turned out that she had been inviting the Vannecks to go on to Melrose and Edinburgh in Old Blunderbore, without consulting the chauffeur-owner of the car. He thought the load, with extra luggage, too heavy for Blunderbore's powers; consequently Mrs. West threw herself on the mercy of Sir S. She asked if the Gray Dragon could take Basil, and the Gray Dragon's master quietly said yes.
After Mrs. West had walked with Sir S. in the churchyard of St.
Michael's, he seemed very thoughtful and a little gloomy, even stiff in his manner with me. At first I felt it must be that she had said something to change him toward me, but again I told myself that that was a silly and far-fetched suspicion. It was more likely that he disapproved of my ”larking” with the American boys and giving them a glove to divide in bits. Afterward, too, when they turned up at our hotel, he might easily have thought I'd encouraged them to follow us again.
I hoped for a chance to put that idea out of his mind, but next morning, starting for Melrose, Vedder had the place next Sir S., and Basil, Mrs.
James, and I were all three together behind.
We started before Aline West and her friends the Vannecks (her special one is a widower, very rich, who has proposed several times, she told Mrs. James); but the four boys waited for us to get off again, so they might know where we were going; and I began to be almost angry, because of the wrong impression their nonsense was making on Sir S. It had been so good to get him back yesterday that it was worse than ever so see him slipping quietly away once more.
If it hadn't been for these worries, it would have been a wonderful day.
From Dumfries we ran up and down nice scallopy hills, crossing the Annan at a place named Beattock, for Moffat, where there are sulphur wells a girl discovered two hundred years ago, and made the fortune of the town.
Then there was a lovely road along Moffat Water, with a succession of wild green dells and hillsides cleft with fern-choked ravines. Still we were in Burns's country, for by Craigie Burn lived Jean Lorimer, to whom he wrote love-songs; and a little farther on was the scene where ”Willie brewed a peck o' maut.” The next bit of beauty was a.s.sociated with the Ettrick Shepherd (I can't bear to think of his name being Hogg), for he wrote a Covenanter story, ”Brownie of Bodesbeck,” about a mountain we could see hovering in the distance.
All Moffatdale looked a haunt for fairies, so no wonder it is cram full of legends; and if I had been sitting with Sir S. I should have begged him to stop and let us scramble up a rocky path to the haunt of a pale spirit disguised as a waterfall. The Gray Mare's Tail is a disguising name, too, for there is nothing gray about it, but all white as streaming moonlight; and Sir S. and I together might have stood a good chance of finding the rainbow key, sparkling on some cus.h.i.+on of irridescent spray. We missed the chance, however; and who knows if it will ever come again?
Basil had bought a volume of Scott's poems for me, to match the Burns's and he found in ”Marmion”--where he knew it existed--a verse about the torrent:
Issuing forth one foamy wave, And wheeling round the Giant's Grave, White as a snowy charger's tail Drives down the pa.s.s of Moffatdale.
So already we were coming into Scott's country. I remember Birkhill, because it's the watershed between the Moffat and the Yarrow, and the word ”watershed” goes through my mind with a musical white rush, like a cataract. It suggests beautiful faraway things. Besides, there's another reason for remembering. Close by, at Dobbs Linn, the Covenanters used to hide in the time of the great persecution.
We swept through some bare, bleak country before coming to the Yarrow, but the rover brought us back to gentle, cultivated land, with thoughts of her favourite Wordsworth for Mrs. James; and soon we came to a very famous place, Tibbie s.h.i.+els's Inn. I had never heard of it, but that doesn't take from its fame! Basil and Mrs. James could both tell me how Scott, and Christopher North, and De Quincey, and a long list of other great men, used to meet at the house kept by Mrs. Richardson, ”Tibbie,”
who outlived all the n.o.ble company, and was buried at last in the same churchyard with the Ettrick Shepherd.
By and by our road dropped down and down to the sh.o.r.es of lonely St.
Mary's Loch (Scott wrote of it in ”Marmion”), and at the end of the still lake to Dryhope Tower, where brave Mary Scott, his ancestress, ”The Flower of Yarrow,” had her birthplace.
So we went on to Selkirk on its hill overlooking Ettrick Water, and stopped just long enough to buy some of the celebrated ”bannocks” for our picnic luncheon later on, and to have a glance at the statues of Sir Walter Scott and Mungo Park, the African traveller. Basil pretended to be shocked because I had never heard of him! ”And you had never heard of Aline and me till you met us,” he sighed, shaking his head. ”I suppose you never heard of the sutors of Selkirk, either? The burly sutors who 'firmly stood' at Flodden when other 'pow'rful clans gave way'? Well, I'm glad, anyhow, that we aren't the _only_ people you'd never heard of!”