Warlock o' Glenwarlock: A Homely Romance. George MacDonaldЧитать онлайн книгу.
he frequently found himself, more especially as drowsiness began to steal upon his praying soul, seeming to hold council with his wife concerning their boy, and asking her help towards such strength for him as human beings may minister to each other.
But Cosmo went up to bed without a suspicion that the air around him was full of such holy messengers heavenward for his sake. He imagined none anxious about him—either with the anxiety of grandmother or of servant-friend or of great-hearted father.
As he passed the door of the spare room, immediately above which was his own, his dream, preceded by a cold shiver, came to his memory. But he scorned to quicken his pace, or to glance over his shoulder, as he ascended the second stair. Without any need of a candle, in the still faint twilight which is the ghosts' day, he threw off his clothes, and was presently buried in the grave of his bed, under the sod of the blankets, lapt in the death of sleep.
The moment he woke, he jumped out of bed: a new era in his life was at hand, the thought of which had been subjacently present in his dreams, and was operative the instant he became conscious of waking life. He hurried on his clothes without care, for this dressing was but temporary. Going down the stairs like a cataract, for not a soul slept in that part but himself, and there was no fear of waking any one, then in like manner down the hill, he reached the place where, with a final dart, the torrent shot into the quiet stream of the valley, in whose channel of rock and gravel it had hollowed a deep basin. This was Cosmo's bath—and a splendid one. His clothes were off again more quickly than he put them on, and head foremost he shot like the torrent into the boiling mass, where for a few moments he yielded himself the sport of the frothy water, and was tossed and tumbled about like a dead thing. Soon however, down in the heart of the boil, he struck out, and shooting from under the fall, rose to the surface beyond it, panting and blowing. To get out on the bank was then the work of one moment, and to plunge in again that of the next. Half a dozen times, with scarce a pause between, he thus plunged, was tossed and overwhelmed, struggled, escaped, and plunged again. Then he ran for a few moments up and down the bank to dry himself—he counted the use of a towel effeminacy, and dressing again, ran home to finish his simple toilet. If after that he read a chapter of his Bible, it was no more than was required by many a parent of many a boy who got little good of the task; but Cosmo's father had never enjoined it, on him; and when next he knelt down at his bedside, he did not merely "say his prayers." Then he took his slate, to try after something Aggie had made him know he did not understand:—for the finding of our own intellectual defects, nothing is like trying to teach another. But before long, certain sensations began, to warn him there was an invention in the world called breakfast, and laying his slate aside, he went to the kitchen, where he found Grizzie making the porridge.
"Min' ye pit saut eneuch in't the day, Grizzie," he said. "It was unco wersh yesterday."
"An' what was't like thestreen (yestere'en), Cosmo?" asked the old woman, irritated at being found fault with in a matter wherein she counted herself as near perfection as ever mortal could come.
"I had nane last nicht, ye min'," answered Cosmo, "I was oot a' the evenin'."
"An' whaur got ye yer supper?"
"Ow, I didna want nane. Hoot! I'm forgettin'! Aggie gied me a quarter o' breid as I cam by, or rather as I cam awa', efter giein' her a han' wi' her algebra."
"What ca' ye that for a lass bairn to be takin' up her time wi'! I never h'ard o' sic a thing! What's the natur' o' 't, Cosmo?"
He tried to give her some far-off idea of the sort of thing algebra was, but apparently without success, for she cried at length,
"Na, sirs! I hae h'ard o' cairts, an' bogles, an' witchcraft, an' astronomy, but sic a thing as this ye bring me noo, I never did hear tell o'! What can the warl' be comin' till!—An' dis the father o' ye, laddie, ken what ye spen' yer midnicht hoors gangin' teachin' to the lass-bairns o' the country roon'?"
She was interrupted by the entrance of the laird, and they sat down to breakfast. The grandmother within the last year had begun to take hers in her own room.
Grizzie was full of anxiety to know what the laird would say to the discovery she had just made, but she dared not hazard allusion to the CONDUCT of his son, and must therefore be content to lead the conversation in the direction of it, hoping it might naturally appear. So, about the middle of Cosmo's breakfast, that is about two minutes after he had attacked his porridge, she approached her design, if not exactly the object she desired, with the remark,
"Did ye never hear the auld saw, sir—
"Whaur's neither sun nor mune, Laich things come abune—?"
"I 'maist think I have, Grizzie," answered the laird.
"But what gars ye come ower 't noo?"
"I canna but think, sir," returned Grizzie, "as I lie i' the mirk, o' the heap o' things 'at gang to nae kirk, oot an' aboot as sharp as a gled, whan the young laird is no in his bed—oot wi' 's algibbry an' astronomy, an' a' that kin' o' thing!'Deed, sir, it wadna be canny gien they cam to ken o' 't."
"Wha come to ken o' what, Grizzie?" asked the laird with a twinkle in his eye, and a glance at Cosmo, who sat gazing curiously at the old woman.
"Them 'at the saw speyks o', sir," said Grizzie, answering the first part of the double question, as she placed two boiled eggs before her master.
The laird smiled: he was too kind to laugh. Not a few laughed at old Grizzie, but never the laird.
"Did YE never hear the auld saw, Grizzie," he said:
"Throu the heather an' how gaed the creepin' thing,
But abune was the waught o' an angel's wing—?"
"Ay, I hae h'ard it—naegait 'cep' here i' this hoose," answered Grizzie: she would disparage the authority of the saying by a doubt as to its genuineness. "But, sir, ye sud never temp' providence. Wha kens what may be oot i' the nicht?"
"To HIM, Grizzie, the nicht shineth as the day."
"Weel, sir," cried Grizzie, "Ye jist pit me 'at I dinna ken mysel'! Is't poassible ye hae forgotten what's sae weel kent to a' the cuintry roon'?—the auld captain,'at canna lie still in's grave, because o'—because o' whatever the rizzon may be? Onygait he's no laid yet; an' some thinks he's doomed to haunt the hoose till the day o' jeedgment."
"I suspec' there winna be muckle o' the hoose left for him to haunt 'gen that time, Grizzie," said the laird. "But what for sud ye put sic fule things intil the bairn's heid? An' gien the ghaist haunt the hoose, isna he better oot o' 't? Wad ye hae him come hame to sic company?"
This posed Grizzie, and she held her peace for the time.
"Come, Cosmo," said the laird rising; and they set out together for Mr. Simon's cottage.
CHAPTER X.
PETER SIMON
This man was not a native of the district, but had for some two years now been a dweller in it. Report said he was the son of a small tradesman in a city at no great distance, but, to those who knew him, he made no secret of the fact, that he had been found by such a man, a child of a few months, lying on a pavement of that city, one stormy, desolate Christmas-eve, when it was now dark, with the wind blowing bitterly from the north, and the said tradesman seemingly the one inhabitant of the coldest city in Scotland who dared face it. He had just closed his shop, had carried home to one of his customers a forgotten order, and was returning to his wife and a childless hearth, when he all but stumbled over the infant. Before stooping to lift him, he looked all about to see if there was nobody to do it instead. There was not a human being, or even what comes next to one, a dog in sight, and the wind was blowing like a blast from a frozen hell. There was no help for it: he must take up the child! He did, and carried it home, grumbling all the way. What right had the morsel to be lying there, a trap and a gin for his character, in the dark and the cold? What would his wife say? And what would the neighbours think? All the way home he grumbled.
What happened there, how his wife received him with his burden, how she scolded and he grumbled, how it needed but the one day—the Christmas Day, in which nothing could well be done—to reconcile them to the gift, and how they brought him up, blessing