Robert Michael Ballantyne - The Eagle Cliff

“Well, you see, my sister is firmly convinced that there is deadly danger in wet feet, and one of her conditions is that Milly is not to be allowed to wet her feet. Now you know it is not easy for a Londoner to understand the difficulty of keeping one’s feet dry while skipping over the mountains and peat-hags of the Western Isles.”

“From which I conclude that Mrs Moss is a Londoner,” returned Barret, with a laugh.

“She is. Although a Gordon, and born in the Argyll Highlands, she was sent to school in London, where she was married at the age of seventeen, and has lived there ever since. Her husband is dead, and nothing that I have been able to say has yet tempted her to pay me a visit. She regards my home here as a wild, uninhabitable region, though she has never seen it, and besides, is getting too old and feeble to venture, as she says, on a long voyage. Certes, she is not yet feeble in mind, whatever she may be in body; but she’s a good, amiable, affectionate woman, and I have no fault to find with her, except in regard to her severe conditions about Milly, and her anxiety to get her home again. After all, it is not to be wondered at, for Milly is her only child; and I am quite sure if I had not gone to London, and made all sorts of promises to be extremely careful of Milly and personally take her home again, she never would have let her come at all. See, there is one of Milly’s favourite views,” said the laird, pulling up, and pointing with his whip to the scene in front, where a range of purple hills formed a fine background to the loch, with its foreground of tangle-covered stones; “she revels in depicting that sort of thing.”

Barret, after expressing his thorough approval of the young girl’s taste in the matter of scenery, asked if Milly’s delicate health was the cause of her mother’s anxiety.

“Delicate health!” exclaimed the laird. “Why, man, sylph-like though she appears, she has got the health of an Amazon. No, no, there’s nothing wrong with my niece, save in the imagination of my sister. We will stop at this cottage for a few minutes. I want to see one of my men, who is not very well.”

He pulled up at the door of a little stone hut by the roadside, which possessed only one small window and one chimney, the top of which consisted of an old cask, with the two ends knocked out. A bare-legged boy ran out of the hut to hold the horse.

“Is your brother better to-day?” asked the laird.

“No, sir; he’s jist the same.”

“Mind your head,” said the laird, as he stooped to pass the low doorway, and led his friend into the hut.

The interior consisted of one extremely dirty room, in which the confined air was further vitiated by tobacco smoke and the fumes of whisky. One entire side of it was occupied by two box-beds, in one of which lay a brawny, broad-shouldered man, with fiery red hair and scarcely less fiery red eyes, which seemed to glare out of the dark den in which he lay.

“Well, Ivor, are ye not better to-day, man?”

There was a sternness in Mr Gordon’s query, which not only surprised but grieved his young companion; and the surprise was increased when the sick man replied in a surly tone—

“Na, laird, I’m not better; an’ what’s more, I’ll not be better till my heed’s under the sod.”

“I’m afraid you are right, Ivor,” returned the laird, in a somewhat softer tone; “for when a man won’t help himself, no one else can help him.”

“Help myself!” exclaimed the man, starting up on one elbow, and gazing fiercely from under his shaggy brows. “Help myself!” he repeated. And then, as if resolving suddenly to say no more, he sank down and laid his head on the pillow, with a short groan.

“Here, Ivor, is a bottle o’ physic that my wife sends to ye,” said Mr Gordon, pulling a pint bottle from his pocket, and handing it to the man, who clutched it eagerly, and was raising it to his mouth when his visitor arrested his hand.

“Hoot, man,” he said, with a short laugh, “it’s not whisky! She bid me say ye were to take only half a glass at a time, every two hours.”

“Poor’t oot, then, laird—poor’t oot,” said the man, impatiently. “Ye’ll fin’ a glass i’ the wundy.”

Fetching a wine-glass from the window Mr Gordon half filled it with a liquid of a dark brown colour, which the sick man quaffed with almost fierce satisfaction, and then lay down with a sigh.

“It seems to have done ye good already, man,” said the laird, putting the bottle and glass on that convenient shelf—the window-sill. “I’ve no idea what the physic is, but my good wife seems to know, and that’s enough for me; and for you, too, I think.”

“Ay, she’s a good wumin. Thank her for me,” responded Ivor.

Remounting the dog-cart the old gentleman explained, as they drove along, that Ivor Donaldson’s illness was the result of intemperance.

“He is my gamekeeper,” said the laird; “and there is not a better or more trustworthy man in the island, when he is sober; but when he takes one of his drinking fits, he seems to lose all control over himself, and goes from bad to worse, till a fit of delirium tremens almost kills him. He usually goes for a good while after that without touching a drop, and at such times he is a most respectful, painstaking man, willing to take any amount of trouble to serve one, but when he breaks down he is as bad as ever—nay, even worse. My wife and I have done what we could for him, and have tried to get him to take the temperance pledge, but hitherto without avail. My wife has even gone the length of becoming a total abstainer, in order to have more influence over him; but I don’t quite see my way to do that myself.”

“Then you have not yet done all that you could for the man, though your wife has,” thought Barret; but he did not venture to say so.

At this point in the conversation they reached a place where the road left the shores of the loch and ascended into the hills. Being rather steep at its lower end, they alighted and walked; the laird pointing out, as they ascended, features in the landscape which he thought would interest his young guest.

“Yonder,” he said, pointing to a wood on the opposite side of the valley, “yonder is a good piece of cover for deer. The last time we had a drive there we got three, one o’ them a stag with very fine antlers. It was there that a young friend of mine, who was not much accustomed to sporting, shot a red cow in mistake for a deer! The same friend knocked over five or six of my tame ducks, under the impression that they were wild ones, because he found them among the heather! Are you fond of sport?”

“Not particularly,” answered Barret; “that is, I am not personally much of a sportsman, though I have great enjoyment in going out with my sporting friends and watching their proceedings. My own tastes are rather scientific. I am a student of natural history—a botanist and geologist—though I lay no claim to extensive knowledge of science.”

“Ah! my young friend, then you will find a powerful sympathiser in my niece Milly—that is, when the poor child gets well—for she is half mad on botany. Although only two weeks have passed since she came to us, she has almost filled her room with specimens of what she calls rare plants. I sometimes tease her by saying it is fortunate that bracken does not come under that head, else she’d pull it all up and leave no cover for the poor rabbits. She has also half-filled several huge books with gummed-in specimens innumerable, though I can’t see that she does more than write their names below them.”

“And that is no small advance in the science, let me tell you,” returned Barret, who was stirred up to defend his co-scientist. “No one can succeed in anything who does not take the first steps, and undergo the drudgery manfully.”