George Eyre-Todd

“ It is a night to inspire a poet or a lover; every faint wood-scent, the cool touch of the night air itself upon the cheek, bringing with it some subtle suggestion, the more delightful that it is undefined, setting the pulse of youth a-beating with thoughts of a glad to-morrow.
Alas for those to whom no morrow will come!
At the upper end of the long avenue a faint light is shining yet in two windows of the many-gabled mansion-house. One of the windows is open, and within, at a small table, leaning his head upon his hand, can be seen the figure of a man. It is the master of the house. ”

“ Yonder go the pipers, half a dozen of them, their ribbons and tartans streaming on the wind. Featly they step together to the quick tune of the shrill mountain march they are playing. Deftly they turn in a body at the boundary, and brightly the cairngorms of their broad silver shoulder-brooches flash all at once in the sun. No wonder it is that the Highlander has the tread of a prince, accustomed as he is to the spring of the heather beneath his feet, and to music like that in the air. The Highland garb, too, can hardly fail to be picturesque when it is worn by stalwart fellows like these. ”

“ All along the shore, on every hillock that affords a seat, are groups of eager enthusiasts, busy with straps and buckles; and the shrill whirring sound of the ice tells that many of the new-comers are already moving over it.
But the last refractory screw-nut is adjusted—Mercury has buckled on his wings; and yonder, two miles away, lies Inch Murren. Each winter, when the loch is frozen, the first person who crosses on foot to the island receives a pair of deer antlers as a trophy; and often, before the ice is very strong, the efforts of some bold skater to win the honours are exciting enough. ”

“ Here, above the fields, the air is sweet with the scent of clover; the stillness is only broken by the faint pipe of a yellowhammer sometimes in the depth of the wood; and the blue heavens shed their peace upon the heart. Nothing but the faintest breath of air is moving, just enough to stir gently the deep grasses of the hayfield, and to touch cheek and lip now and again with the soft warm sigh of the sweetbrier in the hedge. Gleaming flies, green and yellow, with gauzy wings, float like jewels in the sunshine; a shadow for a moment touches the page as a stray rook drifts silently overhead ”

“ The impulse to be abroad is born of the sunshine; and a few minutes serve, after a hurried toilet, to snatch a towel, bound down stairs, and go tramping across the heather to the well-known pool.
A magnificent day indeed it promises to be. The wreathing night-mists have already risen from the Bens, and the loch below gleams like melted sapphire round sylvan island and far-set promontory. Everywhere the mountains are clad in purple, and from the moor-bloom spreading its springy carpet underfoot rises a fragrance that fills air and heart alike with delight. ”

“ The tulips are in flower, and the long narrow beds which, with scant space between, fill the entire middle of the garden, are ablaze with the glory of their bloom. Queenly flowers they are and tall, each one with a gentle pedigree—for nothing common or unknown has entrance here—and crimson, white, and yellow—the velvet petals of some almost black—striped with rare and exquisite markings, they raise to the sun their large chaste chalices. The perfection of shape is theirs, as they rise from the midst of their green, lance-like leaves ”

“ Happy just now must be the speckled trout that dwell in the loch’s clear depths; and when the fiery-flowering sun rolls ablaze in the zenith there are few mortals who will not envy the cool green domain of the salmon king. But now that the sunset has died away upon the hills, like “the watch-fires of departing angels,” a breath of air begins mysteriously to stir along the shore, and from the undergrowth about the streamlet that runs close by into the loch, blackbird and water-ousel send forth more liquid pipings. ”

“ In the bosky hollow where the brown butterfly is hovering, old Pan might be asleep among the fern. The feathery grasses everywhere are in flower, as high as a man’s shoulder; above them shimmers the great green dragon-fly, two inches long, with his gossamer wings; and from among their clouds at places little ladybird beetles, like pin-heads, spotted scarlet and black, fall into the carriage in their flight. The wild strawberry, with its tiny white blossom, is growing on the sunny banks of the road, and wild rasps spread their tangle in the undergrowth beyond. ”

“ A FISHER TOWN. Keen and strong, and steady to-night in the gathering dusk, the wind is coming up the firth out of the east. Darkling clouds roll low along the sky, and, before the breeze, the waves in their unnumbered hosts, like dark hussars white-crested, ride past to break upon the beach-sands yonder inland at Fort George. The full, deep gale brings with it out of the shadowy east the health of a hundred tumbling seas, and sets the glad life dancing in lip, and eye, and heart ”

“ Ever since the train emerged from the murky gloom of the long city tunnel into the open freedom of the frost-covered fields, the sense of exhilaration has been increasing. Sounds of laughter from the compartments before and behind bespeak the high spirits of the occupants; while at every roadside station along the Clyde valley fresh parties of pleasure-seekers, their cheeks red and eyes bright with the cold, have added to the freight, and swelled the merriment. The ice on Loch Lomond is “bearing,” and the clash of skates is in the air. ”

“ For presently the rain ceases, the grey mist melts into the lucent blue of the sky, and wet hill and woodland sparkle and glow in a flood of hot sunshine. Immediately the shallow trout burn that comes down to the stepping-stones under the edge of the wood laughs gaily and dances over its pebbles; the mountain in front becomes a great sapphire burning gloriously under the blue; the larks rise, true sun-worshippers, pouring forth rills of song, libations to their God, at heaven’s own gate ”

“ No plebeian affair is the mating of these imperial denizens of the loch. Seldom do mortals witness even this wooing of the swans.
More commonplace, though not, perhaps, less happy, are the three brown ducks and their attentive drake, which having, one after another, splashed themselves methodically on the flat stone by the margin of the loch, now swim off in a string for home. Young trout are making silver circles in the water as they leap at flies under the grassy bank; and the keen-winged little swallows that skim the surface, sometimes tip the glassy wave with foot or wing. ”

“ Appetite comes here keen as a knife if one but stands a moment on the sunny doorstep, and the morning meal is enjoyed with a whole-hearted zest that brooks no scantiness. Indeed, if there be healing power anywhere on earth for the wasted body or the sorrowing soul, it is to be found here among the hills. Who can long be sick at heart with that glory of valley and sky about him? and who frail of step with his nostrils full of the clover-scent and his tread on the springing heather? ”

“ Already in the distance the wild playing of the pipes can be heard, and at the sound the kilted clansmen hurry faster along the streets; for the business of the day is on the greensward, and the hill folk, gentle and simple, are gathering from far and near to witness the Highland games.
A fair and appropriate scene is the tourney-ground, with the mountains looking down upon it, purple and silent—the Olympus of the North. The eager crowd gathers thick already, like bees, round the barricade. Little knots of friends there, from glens among the hills, discuss the chances of their village hero. ”

“ One has no ambition at such moments to court the suffrages even of the most delectable society. But the danger moves past, and though the fair ones on deck do smile at the phenomenal movements of our boat, and the ominous absence of occupants, who is a whit the worse? They will laugh with us, rather than at us, should we meet.
The breeze has freshened a little now, and will be enough to carry us up the loch amongst the currents and against the outflowing tide. Yonder goes the ferry-boat, crossing from Shian. ”

“ Everything is refreshed: wild rosebuds, red and white, are everywhere opening after the shower; the yellow broom-blossom is softer and brighter; the delicate forget-me-nots have a lovelier blue; and beyond, in the shady spaces of the woods, the foxgloves raise their spires of drooping bells. The rain, too, has brought out afresh every wayside scent; the new-cut clover there in the meadow, the flowerless sweetbrier and clambering yellow honeysuckle here in the hedge, all fill the air with fragrance. ”

“ It is not for nothing that rustic children day after day, as they start for school, hear the low of the farmyard kine coming in to the milking, and that day after day, as they tread the long miles of moorland path, they see the grouse whirr off to the mountain, and the trout dart away from the sunny shallows; and it is not for nothing that they spend long truant afternoons by ferny lanes and harebell copses in the seasons of bird-nesting and bramble-gathering. ”

“ Where unaccustomed eyes can make out no sign whatever of a track, and where a single mistake would send one wheel floundering into a peat-hag and the other spinning in the air, or capsize the whole equipage into the miry abysses of a bog, Hamish leads confidently on, with no worse result than the jolting of a rugged road. The mare is a sturdy beast of the small sure-footed Arran breed, now dying out, and she pulls away gallantly among rocks and heath-tufts that would bring any other sort of horse to quick disaster. ”

“ There is the quick trotting of a pony. A low phaeton drives past on the road beneath. And he has seen and shared the smiling glance of a gentle, lovely face—a sunny glimpse to be remembered. Again, he has been picnicking with friends, a family party, on the shore of a Highland loch, and has noticed with mingled admiration and resentment that while all others have been seeking their own enjoyment, one pair of frank and willing little hands has wrought the whole comfort of the group. ”

“ The white line glistening on the horizon far along the coast to the east, is a glimpse of the treacherous hillocks of the Culbin shifting sands. They are shining now like silver in the calm forenoon; but, as if restless under an eternal ban, they keep for ever moving, and, when stirred by the strong sea-wind, they are wont yet to rise and rush and overwhelm, like the dust-storm of the Sahara. For two hundred years a goodly mansion and a broad estate have lain buried beneath those wastes, and what was once called the Garden of Moray is nothing now but a desolate sea of sand. ”

“ Then, in a moment, as every reader is aware, the lights went out, the pipes stopped, and the wrathful revellers streamed after him like angry bees. A few bounds of his mare down that narrow, winding, and rather dangerous road would carry Tam to the bridge, and the clatter of terrified Maggie’s hoofs as she plunged off desperately through the trees seems to echo in the hollow way yet. All the world knows how she carried her master in safety across the keystone of the bridge at the cost of her own grey tail. ”

“ Overhead, occasionally, passes the heavy, rushing flight of a wild pigeon. And more than once across a gleam of sunshine on the path runs a red squirrel, like a bit of living gold.
And while one treads on the brown, fallen needles of spruce and larch, the subtle forest scents fill the heart with many pleasant memories.186 Never are these forest scents richer than when brought out by a shower, and it is curious how vividly some faint perfume drifting on the air will recall the happy scenes of other days, memories that are themselves the pensive fragrance of old age. ”

“ A ROMAN ROAD. Still and soft with the mild radiance of early spring the afternoon sunshine sleeps upon the rich country, moor and woodland and meadow, that stretches away southward towards the Border. The top of a ruined tower far off rises grey amid the shadowy woods, and a river, like a shining serpent, gleams in blue windings through the russet valley-land, while the smoke of an ancient Border town hangs in the distance, like an amber haze, above the side of its narrow strath. ”