Part 12 (1/2)

mice an' men” must ”gang aft aglee;” and the other field, also near by, where grew that mountain daisy,

”Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,”

whose name is immortal in our hearts as that of Burns. This farm-wife, however, knew nothing about them. The stern air of the north country in which she had been reared still chilled somewhat her thoughts of Burns and her interest in his inalienable bond on the fields of her farm.

It is but a mile from Mossgiel's gate to Mauchline, the town of ”bonnie Jean” and Nansie Tinnoch and Gavin Hamilton. Surely a strange-a.s.sorted trio to be comrades of one man. Their houses are still standing: Jean's a tumble-down thatched cottage, looking out of place enough between the smart, new houses built on either side of it; Gavin Hamilton's, a dark, picturesque stone house, joined to the ruins of Mauchline Castle; and Nansie Tinnoch's, a black and dilapidated hovel, into which it takes courage to go. It stands snugged up against the wall of the old graveyard, part below it and part above it,--a situation as unwholesome as horrible; a door at the head of the narrow stairway opening out into the graveyard itself, and the slanting old stones leering in at the smoky windows by crowds. In the days when all the ”country side” met at the open-air services in this churchyard,

”Some thinkin' on their sins, an' some on their claes,”

no doubt Nancy Tinnoch's was a lighter, whiter, cheerier place than now; else the ”Jolly Beggars” would never have gone there to tipple.

It was the nooning between services when I reached Mauchline, and church-goers from a distance were taking their beer and crackers decorously in the parlor of the inn. As the intermission was only three quarters of an hour long, this much of involuntary dissipation was plainly forced on them; but they did not abuse it, I can testify.

They partook of it as of a pa.s.sover: young men and maidens as sober and silent as if they had been doing solemn penance for sins, as indeed, from one point of view, it might perhaps be truly said that they were.

By dint of some difficult advances I drew one or two of them into conversation about the Mossgiel farm and the disappearance of the old relics of Burns's life in that region. It was a great pity, I said, that the Mossgiel house had to be taken down.

”'Deed, then, it was na such thing,” spoke up an elderly man. ”It was na moor than a wreck, an' I'm the mon who did it.”

He was the landlord of the farm, it appeared. He seemed much amused at hearing of the farm-wife's disapproval of Burns's verses, and of her father's prohibition of them.

”He was a heepocritical auld Radical, if ye knows him,” he said angrily. ”I hope we'll never have ony worse readin' in our country than Robert Bur-r-r-ns.” The prolongation of the ”r” in the Scotch way of saying ”Burns” is something that cannot be typographically represented. It is hardly a rolling of the ”r,” nor a multiplication of it; but it takes up a great deal more time and room than any one ”r” ought to.

After the landlady had shown to me the big hall where the Freemasons meet, ”the Burns' Mother Lodge,” and the chest which used to hold the regalia at Tarbolton in Burns's day, and the little bedroom in which Stedman and Hawthorne had slept,--coming also to look at Burns's fields,--she told me in a mysterious whisper that there was a nephew of Burns's in the kitchen, who would like to see me, if I would like to see him. ”A nephew of Burns's!” I exclaimed. ”Weel, not exactly,”

she explained, ”but he's a grand-nephew of Burns's wife; she thet was Jean, ye know,” with a deprecating nod and lowering of the eyelid. So fast is the clutch of a Scotch neighborhood on its traditions of offended virtue, even to-day poor Jean cannot be mentioned by a landlady in her native town without a small stone cast backward at her.

Jean's grand-nephew proved to be a middle-aged man; not ”ower weel-to-do,” the landlady said. He had tried his hand at doctoring both in Scotland and America,--a rolling stone evidently, with too much of the old fiery blood of his race in his veins for quiet and decorous prosperity. He, too, seemed only half willing to speak of poor ”Jean,”--his kinswoman; but he led me to the cottage where she had lived, and pointed out the window from which she was said to have leaned out many a night listening to the songs of her lover when he sauntered across from the Whiteford Arms, Johnny Pigeon's house, just opposite, ”not fou, but having had plenty” to make him merry and affectionate. Johnny Pigeon's is a ”co-operative store” now; and new buildings have altered the line of the street so that ”Rob Mossgiel”

would lose his way there to-day.

The room in which Burns and his ”bonnie Jean” were at last married in Gavin Hamilton's house, by Hamilton himself, is still shown to visitors. This room I had a greater desire to see than any other spot in Mauchline. ”We can but try,” said the grand-nephew; ”but it's a small chance of seeing it the Sabba.”

The sole tenant of this house now is the widow of a son of Gavin Hamilton's. Old, blind, and nearly helpless, she lives there alone with one family servant, nearly as old as herself, but hale, hearty, and rosy as only an old Scotchwoman can be. This servant opened the door for us, her cap, calico gown, and white ap.r.o.n all alike bristling with starch, religion, and pride of family. Her mistress would not allow the room to be shown on the Sabbath, she said. Imploringly it was explained to her that no other day had been possible, and that I had come ”all the way from America.”

”Ye did na do weel to tak the Sabbath,” was her only reply, as she turned on her heel to go with the fruitless appeal to her mistress.

Returning, she said curtly,--

”She winna shew it on the Sabbath.”

At this crisis my companion, who had kept in the background, stepped forward with,--

”You don't know me, Elspie, do ye?”

”No, sir,” she said stiffly, bracing herself up mentally against any further heathenish entreaties.

”What, not know ----?” repeating his name in full.

Presto! as if changed by a magician's trick, the stiff, starched, religious, haughty family retainer disappeared, and there stood, in the same cap, gown, and ap.r.o.n, a limber, rollicking, wellnigh improper old woman, who poked the grand-nephew in the ribs, clapped him on the shoulder, chuckling, ejaculating, questioning, wondering, laughing, all in a breath. Reminiscence on reminiscence followed between them.

”An' do ye mind Barry, too?” she asked. (This was an old man-servant of the house.) ”An' many's the quirrel, an' many's the gree we had.”

Barry was dead. Dead also was the beautiful girl whom my companion remembered well,--dead of a broken heart before she was eighteen years of age. Forbidden to marry her lover, she had drooped and pined. He went to India and died. It was in a December the news of his death came, just at Christmas time, and in the next September she followed him.