The House on the Muir

by S. R. Crockett

THE HOUSE ON THE MUIR.

A SEQUEL TO “A SCIENTIFIC SYMPOSIUM.”

By S. R. Crockett.

Author of “The Gray Man,” “Black Douglas.” “Joan of the Sword Hand,” etc.

This is the somewhat remarkable story the Hempie told my wife as she sat sewing in the little parlor overlooking the garden the day Master Alexander MeQuhirr, Tertius, cut his first tooth.^[1] Elizabeth Chrystie was a free-spoken young woman, and she told her tale generally in the English of the schools, but sometimes in the plain countryside talk she had spoken when, a barefoot, bare-legged lass she had scrieved the hills, the Companion of every questing collie and scapegrace herd lad 'twixt the Bennan and the Butt o' Benetick.

“When I first got to Craignesslin,” said the Hempie, “I thought I had better turn me about and come right back again. And if it had not been for pride, that is just what I should have done.”

“Were they not kind to you?” asked Nance.

“Kind? Oh, kind enough—it was not that. I could easily have put an end to any unkindness by walking over the hill. But I could not. To tell the truth, the place took hold of me from the first hour.

“Craignesslin, you know, is a great house, with many of the rooms unoccupied, sitting high on the hills, a place where all the winds blow and where the trees are mostly scrubby scrunts of thorn, turning up their branches like skeleton hands asking for alms, or shrivelled birches and firs all bent away from the west.

”When first I saw the place, I thought that I could newer bide there a day—and now it looks as if I were going to live there all my life.

“The hired man from the livery stables in Drumfern set my box down on the step of the front door and drove off as fast as he could. He had a long way before him, he said, the first five miles with not so much as a cottage by the wayside. He meant a public house. He was a rude boor. And when I told him so, he only laughed and said: 'For a' that, ye'll maybe glad to see me the next time I come-even if I bring a hearse for ye to ride to the kirk-yaird in!'

“And with that he cracked his whip and drove out of sight. I was left alone on the doorstep of the old House of Craignesslin. I looked at the windows set deep in the walls. Above one of them I made out the date 1658, and over the door were carven the letters W. F.

“Then I minded the tales my father used to tell me in the winter forenight of Wicked Wat Fergus of Craignesslin, how he used to rise from his bed and blow his horn and ride off to the Whig-hunting with Lag and Heughan, how he kept a tally on his bed-post of the men he had slain on the moors, making a bigger notch all the way round for such as were preachers.

“And while I was thinking all this, I stood knocking for admission. I could not hear a living thing about the place. The bell would not ring. At the first touch the brass pull came away in my hands and hung by the wire almost to the ground.

“Yet there was something pleasant about the place too, and if it had not been for the uncanny silence, I would have liked it well enough. The hills ran steeply up on all sides, brown with heather on the knolls, and the bogs yellow and green with bracken and moss. The sheep wandered everywhere, white against the hill breast or black against the sky-line. The whaups cried far and near. Snipe whinnied up in the lift. Magpies shot from thorn-bush to thorn-bush, and in the rose-bush by the door-cheek a goldfinch had built her nest.

“Still no one answered my knocking, and at last I opened the door and went in. The door closed of its own accord, and I found myself in a great hall with tapestries all round dim and rough, the bright colors tarnished with age and damp. There were suits of armor on the wail, old leathern coats, broadswords basket-hilted and tasselled, not made into trophies but depending from nails as if they might be needed the next moment. Two ancient saddles hung on huge pins, one on either side of the ancient eight-day clock, which ticked on and on with a solemn sound in that still place.

“I did not see a single thing of modern sort anywhere except an empty tin which had held McDowall's Sheep Dip. Nance, you cannot think how that simple thing reassured me. I opened the door again and pulled my box within. Then I turned into the first room on the right. I could see the doors of several other rooms, but they were all dark, and looked cavernous and threatening as the mouths of cannon.

“But the room to the right was bright and filled with the sunshine from end to end, though the furniture was old, the huge chairs uncovered and polished only by use, and the great oak table in the centre was hacked and chipped. From the window I could see an oblong of hillside with sheep coming and going. I opened the lattice and looked out. There came from somewhere far underneath, the scent of bees and honeycombs. I began to grow lonesome and eery. Yet somehow I dared not for the life of me explore further.

“It was a strange feeling to have in the daytime, and you know, Nance, I used to go up to the moor or down past the kirk-yard at any hour of the night.

“I did not take off my things. I did not sit down, though there were many chairs, all of plain oak, massive and ancient, standing about at all sorts of angles. One had been overturned by the great empty fireplace, and a man's worn riding-glove lay beside it.

“So I stood by the mantelpiece wondering idly if this could be Major Fergus's glove, and what scuffle there had been in this strange place to overturn that heavy chair, when I heard a stirring somewhere in the house. It was a curious shuffling tread, halting and slow. A faint tinkling sound accompanied it, like nothing in the world so much as the old glass chandelier in the room at Nether Neuk, when we danced in the parlor above.

“The sound of that shuffling tread came nearer, and I grew so terrified that I think if I had been sure that the way to the door was clear, I should have bolted there and then. But just at that moment I heard the foot trip. There was a muffled sound as of some one falling forward. The jingling sound became momentarily louder than ever, to which succeeded a rasping and a fumbling. Something or some one had tripped over my box, and was now examining it in a blind way. I stood turned to stone, with one hand on the cold mantelpiece and the other on my heart, to still the painful beating.

“Then I heard the shuffling come nearer again, and presently the door lurched forward violently. It did not open as an intelligent being would have opened a door. The passage was gloomy with out, and at first I saw nothing. But in a moment, out of the darkness there emerged the face and figure of an old woman. She wore a white cap or 'mutch' and had a broad and perfectly dead-white face. Her eves also were white, the color of chinaware, as though she had turned them up in agony and had never been able to get them back again. At her waist dangled a bundle of keys, and that was the cause of the faint musical tinkling I had heard. She was muttering rapidly to herself, in an undertone, as she shuffled forward. She felt with her hands till she touched the great oaken table in the centre.

“As soon as she had done, so she turned towards the window and, with a much brisker step, went towards it. I think she felt the fresh breeze blow in from the heather. Her groping hand went through the little hinged lattice I had opened. She started back.

“'Who has opened the window?' she said; 'surely he has not been here! Perhaps he has escaped? Walter—Walter Fergus—come oot!' she cried. 'Ah, I see you—you are under the table!'

“And with surprising activity the blind old woman bent down and scrambled under the table. She ran thither like a cat after a mouse, beating the floor with her hands and colliding with the legs of the table as she did so.

“Once as she passed, she rolled a wall-white eye up at me. Nance, I declare it was as if the dead had looked at you!

“Then she darted back to the door, opened it, and with her fingers to her mouth whistled shrilly. A great, surly-looking dog of a brown color lumbered in.

“'Here, Lagwine, he's lost. Seek him, Lagwine! Seize him, Lagwine!'

“And now indeed I thought, 'Bess Chrystie, your last hour is come!' But though the dog must have scented me—nay, though he passed me within a foot, his nose down as if on a hot trail, he never so much as glanced in my direction, but took round the room over the tumbled chairs, and with a dreadful bay ran out at the door. The old woman followed him, but most unfortunately (or as it might be fortunately) at that moment my foot slipped from the fender, and she turned upon me with a sharp cry.

“'Lagwine, Lanwine, he is here! He is here!' she cried.

And still on all fours like a beast, she rushed across the floor straight at me. She laid her hand on my shoe, and, as it were, ran up me like a cat, till her skinny hands fastened themselves about my throat. Then I gave a great cry and fainted.

“At least I must have done so, for when I came to myself a young man was bending over me with a white and anxious face. He had on velveteen knickerbockers and a jacket with a strap round the waist.

“'Where is that dreadful old woman?' I cried. For I was still in mortal terror.”

“I should have died,” said Nance. And from the sound of her voice I judged that she had given up the attempt to continue her seam in order to listen to the Hempie's tale, which not the most remarkable exposition of scientific truth on my part could induce her to abandon for a moment.

“'It is all my fault—all my fault for not being at home to meet the trap!' I heard him murmur as I sank vaguely back again into semi-unconsciousness. When I opened my eyes, I found myself in a pleasant room with modern furniture, and engravings on the wall of the Death of Nelson and of Washington crossing the Delaware.

As soon as I could speak I asked where I was, and if the horrible old woman with the white eyes would come back. The young man did not answer me directly, but called out over his shoulder, 'Mother—she is coming to!' And the next moment a placid, comfortable-looking lady entered with the air of one who has just left the room for a moment.

“'My poor lassie,' she said, bending over me, 'this is a rough homecoming you have got to the House of Craignesslin. But when you are better I will tell you all. You cannot, are not fit, to hear it now.'

“But' I sat up and protested that I was—that I must hear it all at once and be done with it.”

“Of course,” cried Nance, “you felt that you could not stay unless you knew. And I would not have stopped another minute—not if they had brought down the Angel Gabriel to explain.”

“Not if Alec had been there?” queried the Hempie, smiling.

“Alec!” cried Nance in great contempt. “Indeed, if Alec had been in such a place I would have made Alec come away inside of three minutes—yes, and take me with him if he had to carry me on his back! Stop there for Alec's sake! No fear!”

(That is the way my married wife speaks of me behind my back. But so far as I see, there is no legal remedy.)

“Go on, Hempie—you are dreadfully slow.”

“So,” continued the Hempie, placidly, “the nice matronly woman bade me lie down on a sofa, and put lavender water on my head. She petted me as if I had been a baby, and I lay there curiously content—me, Elizabeth Chrystie, that never before let man or woman lay a hand on me——”

“Of course,” said Nance; “was he very nice-looking?”

“Who?”

“The young man in the velveteen suit, of course.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“I mean, was he better-looking than Alec?”

“Better looking than Alec.—why, of course—Alec isn't a bit——”

“Hempie!”

There was a pause, and then to relieve the strain the Hempie laughed.

“Are you never going to get over it, Nance?”

“Get on with your story, and be sensible!” I could hear a thread bitten through.

“So the lady began to talk to me in a quiet, hushed tone, like a minister beside a sick-bed. She told me how some years ago her poor husband, Major Fergus, had had a dreadful accident. He was not only disfigured, but the shock had affected his brain.

“'At first,' she said, 'we thought of sending him to an asylum, but we could not find one exactly suited to his case. Besides which, his old nurse, Betty Hearseman, who had always had great influence with him, was wild to look after him. She is not quite right herself, but most faithful and kind. She cried out night and day that they were abusing him in the asylum. So at last he was brought here and placed in the old wing of the house, into which you penetrated by misadventure to-day.'

“'But the dog?' I asked; 'do they hunt the patient with a fierce dog like that?'

“'Ah, poor old Lagwine,' she sighed, 'he is devoted to his old master. He would not hurt a hair of his head or of anybody's head. Only sometimes, when he finds the door open, my poor Roger will slip out, and then nobody can find him on these weariful hills.'

“Then I asked her of the younger children whom I had been engaged to teach.

“'They are my grandchildren,' she said; 'you can hear them upstairs.'

“And through the clamor of voices that of the young man I had seen rang loudest of all.

“'They are playing with their father,' I said. She shook her head.

“'They are the children of my daughter Isobel,' she said, 'she married Captain Fergus of the Engineers, her own cousin, and died on her way to the West Indies. So Algernon brought them home, and here they are, settled on us. And what with my husband's wastefulness before he was laid aside, and the pour rents of the hill farms nowadays, I know not what we shall do. Indeed, if it were not for my dear son Harry, I know not how we should live. He takes care of everything, and is most scrupulous and saving.'

“So when she had told me all this, I lay still and thought. And the lady's hand went slower and slower across my forehead, till it ceased altogether.

“'I cannot expect you to stop with us after this, Miss Chrystie,' she said, 'and yet I know not what I shall do without you. I think we should have loved one another!'

“I told her that I was not going away—that I was not afraid at all.

“'But to tell you the truth, my dear,' she said, 'I do not rightly see where your wages are to come from.'

“'That does not matter in the least, if I like the place in other ways,' I told her.

(“He must be very good-looking!” interjected Nance.)

“So I told her I would like to see the children.

“She went up to call them, and presently down they came, a girl of six and a little boy of four. They had been having a rough and tumble, and their hair was all about their faces. So in a little while we were all great friends. They went up to the nursery with their grandmother, and I was following more slowly, when all at once Harry—I mean the young man—came hurrying in carrying a tray. He had an apron tied about him, and the bottom hem of it was tucked into the string at the waist. As soon as he saw me he blushed, and nearly dropped the tray he was carrying. I think he expected me to laugh, but I did not——”

“Of course not!” coincided Nance with decision.

“I just opened the top drawer in the sideboard, and took out the cloth and spread it while he stood with the tray in his arms, not knowing in his surprise what to do with it.

“'I thought you had gone upstairs with my mother,' he said. 'Old John Hearseman is up on the hill with the lambs, and we have no other servants except the children's little nurse.'

“And so—and so,” said the Hempie falteringly, “that is how it began!”

1 could hear a little scuffle, which being interpreted meant that Nance had dropped her work-basket and sewing on the floor in a heap, and had clasped her sister in her arms.

“Darling, cry all you want to—!” My heart would know that tone through six feet of kirkyard mould and leap to answer it.

“I am not crying—I don't want to cry!” It was the Hempie's voice, but I had never heard it before. Then it took a stronger tone, with little pauses where the tears were wiped away.

“And I found out that night from the children how good he was—how helpful and strong. He would be out before break of day on the hills after the sheep. Often with a gamebag over his shoulder, he would bring in all that there was for next day's dinner. Then when Betsy, the small maid, was busy with his mother, he would bathe Algie and Madge and put them to bed. For Mrs. Fergus, though a kind woman in her way, had been accustomed all her life to be waited on, and accepted everything from her son's hands without so much as 'I thank you.'

So I did not say a word, but got up early next morning and went down-stairs. And what do you think I found Harry doing?”

“What?”

“Blacking my boots!”

There was a sound like kissing and quiet crying, though for the life of me I cannot tell why there should have been. Perhaps the women who will read this will know. And then the Hempie's voice began again, striving after its kind to be master of itself.

“So of course what could I do, when his father died? He and I were with him night and day. For Betty Hearseman being blind could not handle him at all, and Harry's mother was of no use. Indeed, we did not say anything to alarm her till the last morning. No, I cannot tell even you, Nance, what it was like. But we came through it together. That is all.”

Nance had not gone back to her sewing. So I could not make out what was her next question. It was spoken too near the Hempie's ear. But I heard the answer plainly enough.

“A month next Wednesday we thought of—⁠ It ought to be soon, for the children's sake, poor little things!”

“Oh, yes,” echoed Nance, meaningly, “for the children's sake, of course.”

The Hempie ignored the tone of the remark.

“Harry is having the house done up. The old part is to be made into a kitchen. John and Betty Hearseman are to have a cottage down the glen.”

“And you are to be all alone,” cried Nance clapping her hands, “with only the old lady to look after. That will be like playing at house.”

“Yes,” said the Hempie, ironically, "it would—without the playing. Oh, no, I am going to have a pair of decent moorland lasses to train to my ways, and Harry will have a first-rate herd to help him on the hill.”

Then she laughed a little, very low, to herself.

“The best of it is, he still thinks I am poor,” she said. “I have never told him about mother's money, and I mean to ask father to give me as much as he gave you and Grace!”

“Of course,” said Nance promptly; “I'll come up and help you to make him!”

There was a cheerful prospect in front of Mr. Peter Chrystie of Nether Neuk, if he did not put his hand in his breeches' pocket to some purpose.

“Will Alec let you come?” queried the Hempie. “He will miss you.”

“Oh, I'll tell him it is for the sake of baby's health,” said Nance; “and besides, they are all the better of being left alone occasionally. They are so nice when they get you back again!”

“What,” cried the Hempie, “you don't mean to say that Alec has fits of temper—I never would have believed it of him!”

“Hush—” said Nance. There was again that irritating whispered converse, from which emerged the Hempie's clear voice.

“Oh, but my Harry will never be like that!”

“Wait! Only wait!” said Nance. “Hempie, they are all alike. And besides, they write you such nice letters when they are away. I suppose you get one everyday? Yes, of course! What, he walks six miles over the hills to post it! That is nice of him. Alec once came all the way from Edinburgh and went back the next day just because he thought I was cross with him.”

“Oh, but—my Harry——!”

(Left speaking.)

1. This, however, was not discovered till afterwards, and was then acclaimed as the reason why he cried so much on the arrival of his maternal Aunt Elizabeth. To his nearest relative on the father's side the young gentleman's performances seemed perfectly normal.