OF THE MAN WITH THE ONE EYE AND THE ENCOUNTER IN THE GREEN CLEUCH
I promise you I slept little that night, and it was with a heavy heart that I rose betimes and dressed in the chill of the morning. There was no one awake, and I left the house unobserved, whistling softly to keep up my spirits.
Just without, someone came behind me and cried my name. I turned round sharply, and there was my servant Nicol, slinking after me for all the world like a collie-dog which its master has left at home.
"What do you want with me?" I cried.
"Naething," he groaned sadly. "I just wantit to see ye afore ye gaed. I am awfu' feared, sir, for you gaun awa' yoursel'. If it werena for Mistress Marjory, it wad be a deal mair than your word wad keep me frae your side. But I cam to see if there was nae way o' gettin' word o' ye. My leddy will soon turn dowie, gin she gets nae sough o' your whereabouts. Ye'd better tell me where I can get some kind o' a letter."
"Well minded!" I cried. "You know the cairn on the backside of Caerdon just above the rising of Kilbucho Burn. This day three weeks I will leave a letter for your mistress beneath the stones, which you must fetch and give her. And if I am safe and well every three weeks it will be the same. Good day to you, Nicol, and see you look well to the charge I have committed to you."
"Guid day to you, sir," he said, and I protest that the honest fellow had tears in his eyes; and when I had gone on maybe half a mile and looked back, he was still standing like a stone in the same spot.
At first I was somewhat depressed in my mind. It is a hard thing thus to part from one's mistress when the air is thick with perils to both. So as I tramped through the meadows and leaped the brooks, it was with a sad heart, and my whole mind was taken up in conjuring back the pleasant hours I had spent in my lady's company, the old frolics in the wood of Dawyck, the beginnings of our love-making, even the ride hither from the Cor Water. Yesterday, I reflected, she was with me here; now I am alone and like to be so for long. Then I fell to cursing myself for a fool, and went on my way with a better heart.
But it was not till I had crossed the wide stream of the Douglas Water and begun to ascend the hills, that I wholly recovered my composure. Before, I had been straggling in low meadows which do not suit my temper, since I am above all things hill-bred and a lover of dark mountains. So now on the crisp spring grass of the slopes my spirits rose. Was not I young and strong and skilled in the accomplishments of a man? The world was before methat wide, undiscovered world which had always attracted the more heroic spirits. What hardship was there to live a free life among the hills, under the sunshine and the wind, the clouds and the blue sky?
But my delight could never be unmixed though I tried. After all, was I free? I felt of a sudden that I was not one half equipped for a gipsy, adventurous life. I was tied down to custom and place with too many ties. I came of a line of landed gentlemen. The taint of possession, of mastery and lordship over men and land, was strong in me. I could not bring me to think of myself as a kinless and kithless vagabond, having no sure place of abode. Then my love of letters, my learning, my philosophy, bound me down with indissoluble bands. To have acquired a taste for such things was to have unfitted myself for ever for the life of careless vagabondage. Above all there was my love; and ever, as I went on, my thoughts came home from their aërial flights and settled more and more in a little room in a house in a very little portion of God's universe. And more and more I felt myself a slave to beloved tyrants, and yet would not have been free if I could.
It was always thus with me when alone: I must fall to moralising and self-communing. Still perhaps the master feeling in my mind was one of curiosity and lightheartedness. So I whistled, as I went, all the old tunes of my boyhood which I was wont to whistle when I went out to the hills with my rod and gun, and stepped briskly over the short heather, and snapped my fingers in the face of the world.
Now I dared not go back to Tweeddale by the way by which I had come, for the Clyde valley above Abington would be a hunting-ground of dragoons for many days. There was nothing for it but to make for the lower waters, ford the river above Coulter, and then come to Tweeddale in the lower parts, and thence make my way to the Water of Cor. Even this course was not without its dangers; for the lower glen of Tweed was around Dawyck and Barns, and this was the very part of all the land the most perilous to me at the moment. To add to this, I was well at home among the wilder hills; but it was little I knew of Clydesdale below Abington, till you come to the town of Lanark. This may at first seem a trifling misfortune, but in my present case it was a very great one. For unless a man knows every house and the character of its inmates he is like to be in an ill way if close watched and threatened. However, I dreaded this the less, and looked for my troubles mainly after I had once entered my own lands in Tweeddale.
At the time when the sun rose I was on a long hill called Craigcraw, which hangs at the edge of the narrow crack in the hills through which goes the bridle-road from Lanark to Moffat. I thought it scarce worth my while to be wandering aimlessly among mosses and craigs when something very like a road lay beneath me; so I made haste to get down and ease my limbs with the level way. It was but a narrow strip of grass, running across the darker heath, and coiling in front like a green ribbon through nick or scaur or along the broad brae-face.
Soon I came to the small, roofless shieling of Redshaw, where aforetime lived a villain of rare notoriety, with whose name, "Redshaw Jock," Jean Morran embittered my childhood. I thought of all these old pleasing days, as I passed the bare rickle of stones in the crook of the burn. Here I turned from the path, for I had no desire to go to Abington, and struck up a narrow howe in the hills, which from the direction I guessed must lead to the lower Clyde. It was a lonesome place as ever I have seen. The spring sunshine only made the utter desolation the more apparent and oppressive. Afar on the hillside, by a clump of rowan trees, I saw the herd's house of Wildshaw, well named in its remote solitude. But soon I had come to the head of the burn and mounted the flat tableland, and in a little came to the decline on the other side, and entered the glen of the Roberton Burn.
Here it was about the time of noon, and I halted to eat my midday meal. I know not whether if was the long walk and the rough scrambling, or the clean, fresh spring air, or the bright sunshine, or the clear tinkle of the burn at my feet, or the sense of freedom and adventurous romance, but I have rarely eaten a meal with such serene satisfaction. All this extraordinary day I had been alternating between excessive gaiety and sad regrets. Now the former element had the mastery, and I was as hilarious as a young horse when he is first led out to pasture.
And after a little as I sat there my mirth grew into a sober joy. I remembered all the poets who had sung of the delights of the open air and the unshackled life. I laughed at my former feeling of shame in the matter. Was there any ignominy in being driven from the baseness of settled habitation to live like a prince under God's sky? And yet, as I exulted in the thought, I knew all too well that in a little my feelings would have changed and I would be in the depths of despondency.
In less than an hour I had turned a corner of hill and there before me lay the noble strath of Clyde. I am Tweedside born and will own no allegiance save to my own fair river, but I will grant that next to it there is none fairer than the upper Clyde. Were it not that in its lower course it flows through that weariful west country among the dull whigamores and Glasgow traders, it would be near as dear to me as my own well-loved Tweed. There it lay, glittering in light, and yellow with that strange yellow glow that comes on April waters. The little scrubs of wood were scarce seen, the few houses were not in the picture; nothing caught the eye save the giant mouldings of the hills, the severe barren vale, and the sinuous path of the stream.
I crossed it without any mishap, wading easily through at one of the shallows. There was no one in sight, no smoke from any dwelling; all was as still as if it were a valley of the dead. Only from the upper air the larks were singing, and the melancholy peewits cried ever over the lower moorlands. From this place my course was clear; I went up the prattling Wandel Burn, from where it entered the river, and soon I was once more lost in the windings of the dark hills. There is a narrow bridle-path which follows the burn, leading from Broughton in Tweeddale to Abington, so the way was easier walking.
And now I come to the relation of one of the strangest adventures of this time, which as often as I think upon it fills me with delight. For it was a ray of amusement in the perils and hardships of my wanderings.
A mile or more up this stream, just before the path begins to leave the waterside and strike towards the highlands, there is a little green cleuch, very fair and mossy, where the hills on either side come close and the glen narrows down to half a hundred yards. When I came to this place I halted for maybe a minute to drink at a pool in the rocks, for I was weary with my long wanderings.
A noise in front made me lift my head suddenly and stare before me. And there riding down the path to meet me was a man. His horse seemed to have come far, for it hung its head as if from weariness and stumbled often. He himself seemed to be looking all around him and humming some blithe tune. He was not yet aware of my presence, for he rode negligently, like one who fancies himself alone. As he came nearer I marked him more clearly. He was a man of much my own height, with a shaven chin and a moustachio on his upper lip. He carried no weapons save one long basket-handled sword at his belt. His face appeared to be a network of scars; but the most noteworthy thing was that he had but one eye, which glowed bright from beneath bushy brows. Here, said I to myself, is a man of many battles.
In a moment he caught my eye, and halted abruptly not six paces away. He looked at me quietly for some seconds, while his horse, which was a spavined, broken-winded animal at best, began to crop the grass. But if his mount was poor, his dress was of the richest and costliest, and much gold seemed to glisten from his person.
"Good day, sir," said he very courteously. "A fellow-traveller, I perceive." By this time I had lost all doubt, for I saw that the man was no dragoon, but of gentle birth by his bearing. So I answered him readily.
"I little expected to meet any man in this deserted spot, least of all a mounted traveller. How did you come over these hills, which if I mind right are of the roughest?"
"Ah," he said, "my horse and I have done queer things before this," and he fell to humming a fragment of a French song, while his eye wandered eagerly to my side.
Suddenly he asked abruptly: "Sir, do you know aught of sword-play?"
I answered in the same fashion that I was skilled in the rudiments.
He sprang from his horse in a trice and was coming towards me.
"Thank God," he cried earnestly, "thank God. Here have I been thirsting for days to feel a blade in my hands, and devil a gentleman have I met. I thank you a thousand times, sir, for your kindness. I beseech you to draw."
"But," I stammered, "I have no quarrel with you."
He looked very grieved. "True, if you put it in that way. But that is naught between gentlemen, who love ever to be testing each other's prowess. You will not deny me?"
"Nay," I said, "I will not," for I began to see his meaning, and I stripped to my shirt and, taking up my sword, confronted him.
So there in that quiet cleuch we set to with might and main, with vast rivalry but with no malice. We were far too skilled to butcher one another like common rufflers. Blow was given and met, point was taken and parried, all with much loving kindness. But I had not been two minutes at the work when I found I was in the hands of a master. The great conceit of my play which I have always had ebbed away little by little. The man before me was fencing easily with no display, but every cut came near to breaking my guard, and every thrust to overcoming my defence. His incomprehensible right eye twinkled merrily, and discomposed my mind, and gave me no chance of reading his intentions. It is needless to say more. The contest lasted scarce eight minutes. Then I made a head-cut which he guarded skilfully, and when on the return my blade hung more loose in my hand he smote so surely and well that, being struck near the hilt, it flew from my hand and fell in the burn.
He flung down his weapon and shook me warmly by the hand.
"Ah, now I feel better," said he. "I need something of this sort every little while to put me in a good humour with the world. And, sir, let me compliment you on your appearance. Most admirable, most creditable! But oh, am I not a master in the craft?"
So with friendly adieux we parted. We had never asked each other's name and knew naught of each other's condition, but that single good-natured contest had made us friends; and if ever I see that one-eyed man again in life I shall embrace him like a brother. For myself, at that moment, I felt on terms of good-comradeship with all, and pursued my way in a settled cheerfulness.