Part 12 (2/2)
”Ay, but she was a bonnie la.s.s,” said Elspie, the tears rolling down her face.
”I dare say she [nodding his head toward the house]--I dare say she's shed many a salt tear over it; but naebody 'ill ever know she repent.i.t,” quoth the grand-nephew.
”Ay, ay,” said Elspie. ”There's a wee bit closet in every hoos.”
”'Twas in that room she died,” pointing up to a small ivy-shaded window. ”I closed her eyes wi' my hands. She's never spoken of. She was a bonnie la.s.s.”
The picture of this desolate old woman, sitting there alone in her house, helpless, blind, waiting for death to come and take her to meet that daughter whose young heart was broken by her cruel will, seemed to shadow the very suns.h.i.+ne on the greensward in the court. The broken arches and crumbling walls of the old stone abbey ruins seemed, in their ivy mantles, warmly, joyously venerable by contrast with the silent, ruined, stony old human heart still beating in the house they joined.
In spite of my protestations, the grand-nephew urged Elspie to show us the room. She evidently now longed to do it; but, casting a fearful glance over her shoulder, said: ”I daur na! I daur na! I could na open the door that she'd na hear 't.” And she seemed much relieved when I made haste to a.s.sure her that on no account would I go into the room without her mistress's permission. So we came away, leaving her gazing regretfully after us, with her hand shading her eyes from the sun.
Going back from Mauchline to Ayr, I took another road, farther to the south than the one leading through Tarbolton, and much more beautiful, with superb beech-trees meeting overhead, and gentlemen's country-seats, with great parks, on either hand.
On this road is Montgomerie Castle, walled in by grand woods, which Burns knew so well.
”Ye banks and braes and streams around The castle o' Montgomery, Green be your woods and fair your flowers, Your waters never drumlie!
There simmer first unfauld her robes, And there the langest tarry, For there I took the last fareweel O' my sweet Highland Mary.”
Sitting in the sun, on a bench outside the gate-house, with his little granddaughter on his lap, was the white-haired gate-keeper. As the horses' heads turned toward the gate, he arose slowly, without a change of muscle, and set down the child, who accepted her altered situation also without a change of muscle in her sober little face.
”Is it allowed to go in?” asked the driver.
”Eh--ye'll not be calling at the hoos?” asked the old man, surprised.
”No, I'm a stranger; but I like to see all the fine places in your country,” I replied.
”I've no orders,” looking at the driver reflectively; ”I've no orders--but--a decent pairson”--looking again scrutinizingly at me,--”I think there can be no hairm.” And he opened the gate.
Grand trees, rolling tracts of velvety turf, an ugly huge house of weather-beaten stone, with white pillars in front; conservatories joining the wings to the centre; no attempt at decorative landscape art; gra.s.s, trees, distances,--these were all; but there were miles of these. It was at least a mile's drive to the other entrance to the estate, where the old stone gateway house was in ruin. I fancy that it was better kept up in the days before an Earl of Eglinstoune sold it to a plain Mr. Patterson.
At another fine estate nearer Ayr, where an old woman was gate-keeper, and also had ”no orders” about admitting strangers, the magic word ”America” threw open the gates with a sweep, and bent the old dame's knees in a courtesy which made her look three times as broad as she was long. This estate had been ”always in the Oswald family, an' is likely always to be, please G.o.d,” said the loyal creature, with another courtesy at the mention, unconsciously devout as that of the Catholic when he crosses himself. ”An' it's a fine country ye've yersel' in America,” she added politely. The Oswald estate has acres of beautiful curving uplands, all green and smooth and open; a lack of woods near the house, but great banks of suns.h.i.+ne instead, make a beauty all their own; and the Ayr Water, running through the grounds, and bridged gracefully here and there, is a possession to be coveted.
From all points is a clear sight of sea, and headlands north and south,--Ayr harbor lying like a crescent, now silver, now gold, afloat between blue sky and green sh.o.r.e, and dusky gray roof-lines of the town.
The most precious thing in all the parish of Ayr is the cottage in which Burns was born. It is about two miles south from the centre of the town, on the sh.o.r.e of ”Bonnie Doon,” and near Alloway Kirk. You cannot go thither from Ayr over any road except the one Tam o' Shanter took: it has been straightened a little since his day, but many a rod of it is the same that Maggie trod; and Alloway Kirk is as ghostly a place now, even at high noon, as can be found ”frae Maidenkirk to Johnny Groat's.” There is nothing left of it but the walls and the gable, in which the ancient bell still hangs, intensifying the silence by its suggestion of echoes long dead.
The Burns cottage is now a sort of inn, kept by an Englishman whose fortunes would make a tale by themselves. He fought at Balaklava and in our civil war; and side by side on the walls of his dining-room hang, framed, his two commissions in the Pennsylvania Volunteers and the menu of the Balaklava Banquet, given in London to the brave fellows that came home alive after that fight. He does not love the Scotch people.
”I would not give the Americans for all the Scotch ever born,” he says, and is disposed to speak with unjust satire of their apparent love of Burns, which he ascribes to a perception of his recognition by the rest of the world and a shamefaced desire not to seem to be behindhand in paying tribute to him.
”Oh, they let on to think much of him,” he said. ”It's money in their pockets.”
The room in which Burns was born is still unaltered, except in having one more window let in. Originally, it had but one small square window of four panes. The bed is like the beds in all the old Scotch cottages, built into the wall, similar to those still seen in Norway.
Stifling enough the air surely must have been in the cupboard bed in which the ”waly boy” was born.
”The gossip keekit in his loof; Quo' scho, 'Wha lives will see the proof,-- This waly boy will be nae coof; I think we'll ca' him Robin.'”
Before he was many days old, or, as some traditions have it, on the very night he was born, a violent storm ”tirled” away part of the roof of the poor little ”clay biggin,” and mother and babe were forced to seek shelter in a neighbor's cottage. Misfortune and Robin early joined company, and never parted. The little bedroom is now the show-room of the inn, and is filled with tables piled with the well-known boxes, pincus.h.i.+ons, baskets, paper-cutters, etc., made from sycamore wood grown on the banks of Doon and Ayr. These articles are all stamped with some pictures of scenery a.s.sociated with Burns or with quotations from his verses. It is impossible to see all this money-making without thinking what a delicious, rollicking bit of verse Burns would write about it himself if he came back to-day. There are those who offer for sale articles said to be made out of the old timbers of the Mossgiel house; but the Balaklava Englishman scouts all that as the most barefaced imposture. ”There wasn't an inch of that timber,” he says,--and he was there when the house was taken down--”which wasn't worm-eaten and rotten; not enough to make a knife-handle of!”
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