Part 4 (1/2)
It was, as I said, a keen and bright morning, and the S. Q. N. feeling chilly, and the d.u.c.h.ess being away after a cat up a back entry, doing a chance stroke of business, and the mare looking only half breakfasted, I made them give her a full feed of meal and water, and stood by and enjoyed her enjoyment. It seemed too good to be true, and she looked up every now and then in the midst of her feast, with a mild wonder. Away she and I bowled down the sleeping village, all overrun with suns.h.i.+ne, the dumb idiot man and the birds alone up, for the ostler was off to his straw. There was the S. Q. N. and her small panting friend, who had lost the cat, but had got what philosophers say is better-the chase. ”_Nous ne cherchons jamais les choses, mais la recherche des choses_,” says Pascal. The d.u.c.h.ess would subst.i.tute for _les choses_-_les chats_.
Pursuit, not possession, was her pa.s.sion. We all got in, and off set the Maid, who was in excellent heart, quite gay, p.r.i.c.king her ears and casting up her head, and rattling away at a great pace.
We baited at St. Fillans, and again cheered the heart of the Maid with unaccustomed corn-the S. Q. N., Duchie, and myself, going up to the beautiful rising ground at the back of the inn, and lying on the fragrant heather looking at the Loch, with its mild gleams and shadows, and its second heaven looking out from its depths, the wild, rough mountains of Glenartney towering opposite. Duchie, I believe, was engaged in minor business close at hand, and caught and ate several large flies and a humble-bee; she was very fond of this small game.
There is not in all Scotland, or as far as I have seen in all else, a more exquisite twelve miles of scenery than that between Crieff and the head of Lochearn. Ochtertyre, and its woods; Benchonzie, the head-quarters of the earthquakes, only lower than Benvorlich; Strowan; Lawers, with its grand old Scotch pines; Comrie, with the wild Lednoch; Dunira; and St. Fillans, where we are now lying, and where the poor thoroughbred is tucking in her corn. We start after two hours of dreaming in the half sunlight, and rumble ever and anon over an earthquake, as the common folk call these same hollow, resounding rifts in the rock beneath, and arriving at the old inn at Lochearnhead, have a _tousie_ tea. In the evening, when the day was darkening into night, Duchie and I,-the S. Q. N. remaining to read and rest,-walked up Glen Ogle. It was then in its primeval state, the new road non-existent, and the old one staggering up and down and across that most original and Cyclopean valley, deep, threatening, savage, and yet beautiful-
”Where rocks were rudely heaped, and rent As by a spirit turbulent; Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild, And everything unreconciled;”
with flocks of mighty boulders, straying all over it. Some far up, and frightful to look at, others huddled down in the river, _immane pecus_, and one huge unloosened fellow, as big as a manse, up aloft watching them, like old Proteus with his calves, as if they had fled from the sea by stress of weather, and had been led by their ancient herd _altos visere montes_-a wilder, more ”unreconciled” place I know not; and now that the darkness was being poured into it, those big fellows looked bigger, and hardly ”canny.”
Just as we were turning to come home-Duchie unwillingly, as she had much multifarious, and as usual fruitless hunting to do-she and I were startled by seeing a dog _in_ the side of the hill, where the soil had been broken. She barked and I stared; she trotted consequentially up and snuffed _more canino_, and I went nearer: it never moved, and on coming quite close I saw as it were the _image_ of a terrier, a something that made me think of an idea unrealized; the rough, short, scrubby heather and dead gra.s.s, made a color and a coat just like those of a good Highland terrier-a sort of pepper and salt this one was-and below, the broken soil, in which there was some iron and clay, with old gnarled roots, for all the world like its odd, bandy, and st.u.r.dy legs. Duchie seemed not so easily unbeguiled as I was, and kept staring, and snuffing, and growling, but did not touch it,-seemed afraid. I left and looked again, and certainly it was very odd the _growing_ resemblance to one of the indigenous, hairy, low-legged dogs, one sees all about the Highlands, terriers, or earthy ones.
We came home, and told the S. Q. N. our joke. I dreamt of that visionary terrier, that son of the soil, all night; and in the very early morning, leaving the S. Q. N. asleep, I walked up with the d.u.c.h.ess to the same spot. What a morning! it was before sunrise, at least before he had got above Benvorlich. The loch was lying in a faint mist, beautiful exceedingly, as if half veiled and asleep, the cataract of Edinample roaring less loudly than in the night, and the old castle of the Lords of Lochow, in the shadow of the hills, among its trees, might be seen
”Sole sitting by the sh.o.r.e of old romance.”
There was still gloom in Glen Ogle, though the beams of the morning were shooting up into the broad fields of the sky. I was looking back and down, when I heard the d.u.c.h.ess bark sharply, and then give a cry of fear, and on turning round, there was she with as much as she had of tail between her legs, where I never saw it before, and her small Grace, without noticing me or my cries, making down to the inn and her mistress, a hairy hurricane. I walked on to see what it was, and there in the same spot as last night, in the bank, was a real dog-no mistake; it was not, as the day before, a mere surface or _spectrum_, or ghost of a dog; it was plainly round and substantial; it was much developed since eight P.M. As I looked, it moved slightly, and as it were by a sort of s.h.i.+ver, as if an electric shock (and why not?) was being administered by a law of nature; it had then no tail, or rather had an odd amorphous look in that region; its eye, for it had one-it was seen in profile-looked to my profane vision like (why not actually?) a huge blaeberry (_vaccinium Myrtillus_, it is well to be scientific) black and full; and I thought,-but dare not be sure, and had no time or courage to be minute,-that where the nose should be, there was a small s.h.i.+ning black snail, probably the _Limax niger_ of M. de Ferussac, curled up, and if you look at any dog's nose you will be struck with the typical resemblance, in the corrugations and moistness and jetty blackness of the one to the other, and of the other to the one. He was a strongly-built, wiry, bandy, and short-legged dog. As I was staring upon him, a beam-Oh, first creative beam!-sent from the sun-
”Like as an arrow from a bow, Shot by an archer strong”-
as he looked over Benvorlich's shoulder, and piercing a cloudlet of mist which clung close to him, and filling it with whitest radiance, struck upon that eye or berry, and lit up that nose or snail: in an instant he sneezed (the _nisus (sneezus?) formativus_ of the ancients); that eye quivered and was quickened, and with a shudder-such as a horse executes with that curious muscle of the skin, of which we have a mere fragment in our neck, the _Platysma Myoides_, and which doubtless has been lessened as we lost our distance from the horse-type-which dislodged some dirt and stones and dead heather, and doubtless endless beetles, and, it may be, made some near weasel open his other eye, up went his tail, and out he came, lively, entire, consummate, _warm_, wagging his tail, I was going to say like a Christian, I mean like an ordinary dog.
Then flashed upon me the solution of the _Mystery of Black and Tan_ in all its varieties: the body, its upper part gray or black or yellow according to the upper soil and herbs, heather, bent, moss, &c.; the belly and feet, red or tan or light fawn, according to the nature of the deep soil, be it ochrey, ferruginous, light clay, or comminuted mica slate. And wonderfullest of all, the DOTS of TAN above the eyes-and who has not noticed and wondered as to the philosophy of them?-_I saw made_ by the two fore feet, wet and clayey, being put briskly up to his eyes as he sneezed that genetic, vivifying sneeze, and leaving their mark, forever.
He took to me quite pleasantly, by virtue of ”natural selection,” and has accompanied me thus far in our ”struggle for life,” and he, and the S. Q. N., and the d.u.c.h.ess, and the Maid, returned that day to Crieff, and were friends all our days. I was a little timid when he was crossing a burn lest he should wash away his feet, but he merely colored the water, and every day less and less, till in a fortnight I could wash him without fear of his becoming a _solution_, or fluid extract of dog, and thus resolving the mystery back into itself.
The mare's days were short. She won the Consolation Stakes at Stirling, and was found dead next morning in Gibb's stables. The d.u.c.h.ess died in a good old age, as may be seen in the history of ”Our Dogs.” The S. Q. N., and the parthenogenesic earth-born, the _Cespes Vivus_-whom we sometimes called Joshua, because he was the Son of None (Nun), and even Melchisedec has been whispered, but only that, and Fitz-Memnon, as being as it were a son of the Sun, sometimes the Autochthon a?t???????; (indeed, if the relation of the _coup de soleil_ and the blaeberry had not been plainly causal and effectual, I might have called him _Filius Gunni_, for at the very moment of that shudder, by which he leapt out of non-life into life, the Marquis's gamekeeper fired his rifle up the hill, and brought down a stray young stag,) these two are happily with me still, and at this moment she is out on the gra.s.s in a low easy-chair, reading Emilie Carlen's _Brilliant Marriage_, and d.i.c.k is lying at her feet, watching, with c.o.c.ked ears, some noise in the ripe wheat, possibly a chicken, for, poor fellow, he has a weakness for worrying hens, and such small deer, when there is a dearth of greater.
If any, as is not unreasonable, doubt me and my story, they may come and see d.i.c.k. I a.s.sure them he is well worth seeing.
_HER LAST HALF-CROWN._
_Once I had friends-though now by all forsaken; Once I had parents-they are now in heaven.
I had a home once--_
_Worn out with anguish, sin, and cold, and hunger, Down sunk the outcast, death had seized her senses.
There did the stranger find her in the morning- G.o.d had released her._
SOUTHEY.
Hugh Miller, the geologist, journalist, and man of genius, was sitting in his newspaper office late one dreary winter night. The clerks had all left and he was preparing to go, when a quick rap came to the door. He said ”Come in,” and, looking towards the entrance, saw a little ragged child all wet with sleet. ”Are ye Hugh Miller?” ”Yes.” ”Mary Duff wants ye.” ”What does she want?” ”She's deein.” Some misty recollection of the name made him at once set out, and with his well-known plaid and stick, he was soon striding after the child, who trotted through the now deserted High Street, into the Canongate. By the time he got to the Old Playhouse Close, Hugh had revived his memory of Mary Duff: a lively girl who had been bred up beside him in Cromarty. The last time he had seen her was at a brother mason's marriage, where Mary was ”best maid,” and he ”best man.” He seemed still to see her bright young careless face, her tidy short gown, and her dark eyes, and to hear her bantering, merry tongue.
Down the close went the ragged little woman, and up an outside stair, Hugh keeping near her with difficulty; in the pa.s.sage she held out her hand and touched him; taking it in his great palm, he felt that she wanted a thumb. Finding her way like a cat through the darkness, she opened a door, and saying ”That's her!” vanished. By the light of a dying fire he saw lying in the corner of the large empty room something like a woman's clothes, and on drawing nearer became aware of a thin pale face and two dark eyes looking keenly but helplessly up at him. The eyes were plainly Mary Duff's, though he could recognize no other feature. She wept silently, gazing steadily at him. ”Are you Mary Duff?”
”It's a' that's o' me, Hugh.” She then tried to speak to him, something plainly of great urgency, but she couldn't, and seeing that she was very ill, and was making herself worse, he put half-a-crown into her feverish hand, and said he would call again in the morning. He could get no information about her from the neighbors; they were surly or asleep.
When he returned next morning, the little girl met him at the stair-head, and said, ”She's deid.” He went in, and found that it was true; there she lay, the fire out, her face placid, and the likeness to her maiden self restored. Hugh thought he would have known her now, even with those bright black eyes closed as they were, _in aeternum_.