The adventures of Captain Horn/Chapter 53
CHAPTER LIII
A LITTLE GLEAM AFAR
It was late in the autumn of that year, and upon a lonely moor in Scotland, that a poor old woman stood shivering in the cold wind. She was outside of a miserable little hut, in the doorway of which stood, two men.
For five or six years she had lived alone in that little hut.
It was a very poor place, but it kept out the wind and the rain and the snow, and it was a home to her, and for the greater part of these years in which she had lived there alone, she had received,, at irregular and sometimes long intervals, sums of money, often very small and never large, from her son, who was a sailorman upon seas of which she did not even know the name.
But for many months no money had come from this wandering son, and it was very little that she had been able to earn. Sometimes she might have starved, had it not been for the charity of others almost as poor as she. As for rent, it had been due for a long time, and at last it had been due so long that her landlord felt that further forbearance would be not only unprofitable, but that it would serve as a bad example to his other tenants. Consequently, he had given orders to eject the old woman from her hut. She was now a pauper, and there were places where paupers would be taken care of.
The old woman stood sadly shivering. Her poor old eyes, a little dimmed with tears, were directed southward toward the far-away vanishing-point of the rough and narrow road which meandered over the moor and lost itself among the hills.
She was waiting for the arrival of a cart which a poor neighbor had promised to borrow, to take her and her few belongings to the nearest village, where there was a good road over which she might walk to a place where paupers were taken care of. A narrow stream, which roared and rushed around or over many a rock, ran at several points close to the road, and, swelled by heavy rains, had overflowed it to the depth of a foot or more. The old woman and the two men in the doorway of the hut stood and waited for the cart to come.
As they waited, heavy clouds began to rise in the north, and there was already a drizzle of rain. At last they saw a little black spot upon the road, which soon proved to be a cart drawn by a rough pony. On it came, until they could almost hear it splashing through the water where the stream had passed its bounds, or rattling over the rough stones in other places. But, to their surprise, there were two persons in the cart. Perhaps the boy Sawney had with him a traveller who was on his way north.
This was true. Sawney had picked up a traveller who was lad to find a conveyance going across the moor to his destination. This man was a quick-moving person in a heavy waterproof coat with its collar turned up over his ears.
As soon as the cart stopped, near the hut, he jumped down and approached the two men in the doorway.
"Is that the widow McLeish?" he said, pointing to the old woman.
They assured him that he was correct, and he approached er.
"You are Mrs. Margaret McLeish?" said he.
She looked at him in a vague sort of way and nodded. "That's me," said she. "Is it pay for the cart you're after? If that's it, I must walk."
"Had you a son, Mrs. McLeish?" said the man.
"Ay," said she, and her face brightened a little.
"And what was his name?"
"Andy," was the answer.
"And his calling?"
"A sailorman."
"Well, then," said the traveller in the waterproof, "there is no doubt that you are the person I came here to see. I was told I should find you here, and here you are. I may as well tell you at once, Mrs. McLeish, that your son is dead."
"That is no news," she answered. "I knew that he must be dead."
"But I didn't come here only to tell you that. There is money coming to you through him—enough to make you comfortable for the rest of your life."
"Money!" exclaimed the old woman. "To me?"
The two men who had been standing in the door way of the hut drew near, and Sawney jumped down from the cart. The announcement made by the traveller was very interesting.
"Yes," said the man in the waterproof, pulling his collar up a little higher, for the rain was increasing, "you are to have one hundred and four pounds a year, Mrs. McLeish, and that's two pounds a week, you know, and you will have it as long as you live."
"Two pounds a week!" cried the old woman, her eyes shining out of her weazened old face like two grouse eggs in a nest. "From my Andy?"
"Yes, from your son," said the traveller. And as the rain was now much more than a drizzle, and as the wind was cold, he made his tale as short as possible.
He told her that her son had died far away in South America, and, from what he had gained there, one hundred and four pounds a year would be coming to her, and that she might rely on this as long as she lived. He did not state—for he was not acquainted with all the facts—that Shirley and Burke, when they were in San Francisco hunting up the heirs of the Castor's crew, had come upon traces of the A. McLeish whose body they had found in the desert, lying flat on its back, with a bag of gold clasped to its breast—that they had discovered, by means of the agent through whom McLeish had been in the habit of forwarding money to his mother, the address of the old woman, and, without saying anything to Captain Horn, they had determined to do something for her.
The fact that they had profited by the gold her son had carried away from the cave, was the main reason for this resolution, and although, as Shirley said, it might appear that the Scotch sailor was a thief, it was true, after all, he had as much right to a part of the gold he had taken as Captain Horn could have. Therefore, as they had possessed themselves of his treasure, they thought it but right that they should provide for his mother. So they bought an annuity for her in Edinburgh, thinking this better than sending her the total amount which they considered to be her share, not knowing what manner of woman she might be, and they arranged that an agent should be sent to look her up, and announce to her her good fortune. It had taken a long time to attend to all these matters, and it was now late in the autumn.
"You must not stand out in the rain, Mrs. McLeish," said one of the men, and he urged her to come back into the hut. He said he would buid a fire for her, and she and the gentleman from Edinburgh could sit down and talk over matters. No doubt there would be some money in hand, he said, out of which the rent could be paid, and, even if this should not be the case, he knew the landlord would be willing to wait a little under the circumstances.
"Is there money in hand for me?" asked the old woman.
"Yes," said the traveller. "The annuity was to begin with October, and it is now the first of November, so there is eight pounds due to you."
"Eight pounds!" she exclaimed, after a moment's thought. "It must be more than that. There's thirty-one days in October!"
"That's all right, Mrs. McLeish," said the traveller. "I will pay you the right amount. But I really think you had better come into your house, for it is going to be a bad afternoon, and I must get away as soon as I can. I will go, as I came, in the cart, for you won't want it now."
Mrs. McLeish stood up as straight as she could, and glanced from the traveller to the two men who had put her out of her home. Then, in the strongest terms her native Gaelic would afford, she addressed these two men. She assured them that, sooner than enter that contemptible little hut again, she would sleep out on the bare moor. She told them to go to their master and tell him that she did not want his house, and that he could live in it himself, if he chose—that she was going in the cart to Killimontrick, and she would take lodgings in the inn there until she could get a house fit for the habitation of the mother of a man like her son Andy; and that if their master had anything to say about the rent that was due, they could tell him that he had satisfied himself by turning her out of her home, and if he wanted anything more, he could whistle for it, or, if he didn't choose to do that, he could send his factor to whistle for it in the main street of Killimontrick.
"Come, Sawney boy, put my two bundles in the cart, and then help me in. The gentleman will drive, and I'll sit on the seat beside him, and you can sit behind in the straw, and—you're sure it's two pounds a week, sir?" she said to the traveller, who told her that she was right, and then she continued to Sawney, "I'll make your mother a present which will help the poor old thing through the winter, and I'm sure she needs it."
With a heavier load than he had brought, the pony's head was turned homeward, and the cart rattled away over the rough stones, and splashed through the water on the roadway, and in the dark cloud which hung over the highest mountain beyond the moor, there came a little glint of lighter sky, as if some lustre from the Incas' gold had penetrated even into this gloomy region.