International Short Stories: English Part 41

Ebie took a brisk sidelong look at him.

'I'm some dootsome that'll be the Skyreburn coming doon aff o'

Cairnsmuir!'

The minister tramped unconcernedly on. Ebie Kirgan stared at him.

'He canna ken what a "Skyreburn warnin'" is--he'll be thinkin' it's some bit Machars burn that the laddies set their whurlie mills in. But he'll turn richt eneuch when he sees Skyreburn roarin' reed in a Lammas flood, I'm thinkin'!'

They took their way over the shoulder of the hill in the beautiful evening, leaning eagerly forward to get the first glimpse of the cause of that deep and resonant roar. In a moment they saw below them a narrow rock-walled gully, ten or fifteen yards across, filled to the brim with rus.h.i.+ng water. It was not black peat water like the Camelon Lane, but it ran red as keel, flecked now and then with a revolving white blur as one of the Cauldshaws sheep spun downward to the sea, with four black feet turned pitifully up to the blue sky.

Ebie looked at the minister. 'He'll turn noo if he's mortal,' he said.

But the minister held on. He looked at the water up and down the roaring stream. On a hill above, the farmer of Cauldshaws, having driven all his remaining sheep together, sat down to watch. Seeing the minister, he stood up and excitedly waved him back. But Douglas Maclellan from the Machars never gave him a look, and his shouting was of less effect than if he had been crying to an untrained collie.

The minister looked long up the stream, and at a point where the rocks came very close together, and many stunted pines were growing, he saw one which, having stood on the immediate brink, had been so much undercut that it leaned over the gully like a fis.h.i.+ng-rod. With a keen glance along its length, the minister, jamming his dripping soft felt hat on the back of his head, was setting foot on the perilous slope of the uneven red-brown trunk, when Ebie Kirgan caught him sharply by the arm.

'It's no' for me to speak to a minister at ordinar' times,' he stammered, gathering courage in his desperation; 'but, oh, man, it's fair murder to try to gang ower that water!'

The minister wrenched himself free, and sprang along the trunk with wonderful agility.

'I'm intimated to preach at Cauldshaws this night, and my text is, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might!"' he shouted.

He made his way up and up the slope of the fir tree, which, having little grip of the rock, dipped and swayed under his tread. Ebie Kirgan fell on his knees and prayed aloud. He had not prayed since his stepmother boxed his ears for getting into bed without saying his prayers twenty years ago. This had set him against it. But he prayed now, and to infinitely more purpose than his minister had recently done. But when the climber had reached the branchy top, and was striving to get a few feet farther, in order to clear the surging linn before he made his spring, Ebie rose to his feet, leaving his prayer unfinished. He sent forth an almost animal shriek of terror. The tree roots cracked like breaking cables and slowly gave way, an avalanche of stones plumped into the whirl, and the top of the fir crashed downwards on the rocks of the opposite bank.

'Oh, man, call on the name of the Lord,' cried Ebie Kirgan, the ragged preacher, at the top of his voice.

Then he saw something detach itself from the tree as it rebounded, and for a moment rise and fall black against the sunset. Then Ebie the Outcast fell on his face like a dead man.

In the white coverleted 'room' of the farmtown of Cauldshaws, a white-faced lad lay with his eyes closed, and a wet cloth on his brow.

A large-boned, red-cheeked, motherly woman stole to and fro with a foot as light as a fairy. The sleeper stirred and tried to lift an unavailing hand to his head. The mistress of Cauldshaws stole to his bedside as he opened his eyes. She laid a restraining hand on him as he strove to rise.

'Let me up,' said the minister, 'I must away, for I'm intimated to preach at Cauldshaws, and my text is, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."'

'My bonny man,' said the goodwife, tenderly, 'you'll preach best on the broad o' yer back this mony a day, an' when ye rise your best text will be, "He sent from above, He took me, and drew me out of many waters!"'

AN UNDERGRADUATE'S AUNT

By F. ANSTEY

_Author of "Vice Versa," etc._

Frederick Flus.h.i.+ngton belonged to a small college, and in doing so conferred upon it one of the few distinctions it could boast--namely, that of possessing the very bashfulest man in the whole university.

But his college did not treat him with any excess of adulation on that account, probably from a prudent fear of rubbing the bloom off his modesty; they allowed him to blush unseen--which was the condition in which he preferred to blush.

He felt himself oppressed by a paucity of ideas and a difficulty in knowing which way to look in the presence of his fellow-men, which made him never so happy as when he had fastened his outer door and secured himself from all possibility of intrusion; though it was almost an unnecessary precaution, for n.o.body ever thought of coming to see Flus.h.i.+ngton.

In appearance he was a man of middle height, with a long scraggy neck and a large head, which gave him the air of being much shorter than he really was; he had little, weak eyes, a nose and mouth of no particular shape, and very smooth hair of no definite color. He had a timid, deprecating air, which seemed due to the consciousness that he was an uninteresting anomaly, and he certainly was as impervious to the ordinary influence of his surroundings as any undergraduate well could be. He lived a colorless, aimless life in his little rooms under the roof, reading every morning from nine till two with a superst.i.tiously mechanical regularity, though very often his books completely failed to convey any ideas whatever to his brain, which was not a particularly powerful organ.

If the afternoon was fine he generally sought out his one friend, who was a few degrees less shy than himself, and they took a monosyllabic walk together; or if it was wet, he read the papers at the Union, and in the evening after hall he studied "general literature" (a graceful term for novels) or laboriously spelt out a sonata upon his piano--a habit which did not increase his popularity.

Fortunately for Flus.h.i.+ngton, he had no gyp, or his life might have been made a positive burden to him, and with his bedmaker he was rather a favorite as "a gentleman what gave no trouble"--meaning that, when he observed his sherry unaccountably sinking, like the water in a lock when the sluices are up, Flus.h.i.+ngton was too delicate to refer to the phenomenon.

He was sitting one afternoon over his modest lunch of bread and b.u.t.ter, potted meat and lemonade, when all at once he heard a sound of unusual voices and a strange flutter of dresses coming up the winding stone staircase outside, and was instantly seized with a cold dread.

There was no particular reason for being alarmed, although there were certainly ladies mounting the steps. Probably they were friends of the man opposite, who was always having his people up; but still Flus.h.i.+ngton had that odd presentiment which nervous people have sometimes that something unpleasant is on its way to them, and he half rose from his chair to shut his outer oak.

It was too late; the dresses were rustling now in his very pa.s.sage; there was a pause, a few faint, smothered laughs and little feminine coughs--then two taps at the door.

"Come in," cried Flus.h.i.+ngton, faintly; he wished he had been reading anything but the work by M. Zola, which was propped up in front of him.

It is your mild man, who frequently has a taste for seeing the less reputable side of life in this second-hand way, and Flus.h.i.+ngton would toil manfully through the voluminous pages, hunting up every third word in the dictionary; with a sense of injury when, as was often the case, it was not to be found. Still, there was a sort of intellectual orgie about it which had strong fascinations for him, while he knew enough of the language to be aware when the incidents approached the improper, though he was not always able to see quite clearly in what this impropriety consisted.

The door opened, and his heart seemed to stop, and all the blood rushed violently to his head as a large lady came sweeping in, her face rippling with a broad smile of affection.

She horrified Flus.h.i.+ngton, who knew n.o.body with the least claim to smile at him so expansively as that; he drank lemonade to conceal his confusion.

"You know me, my dear Fred?" she said, easily. "Of course not--how should you? I'm--for goodness sake, my dear boy, don't look so terribly frightened! I'm your aunt--your aunt Amelia, come over from Australia!"

The shock was a severe one to Flus.h.i.+ngton, who had not even known he possessed such a relative; he could only say, "Oh?" which he felt even then was scarcely a warm greeting to give an aunt from the Antipodes.

"Oh, but," she added, cheerily, "that's not all; I've another surprise for you: the dear girls would insist on coming up, too, to see their grand college cousin; they're just outside. I'll call them in--shall I?"

In another second Flus.h.i.+ngton's small room was overrun by a horde of female relatives, while he looked on gasping.

They were pretty girls, too, many of them; but that was all the more dreadful to him: he did not mind the plainer ones half so much; a combination of beauty and intellect reduced him to a condition of absolute imbecility.

He was once caught and introduced to a charming young lady from Newnham, and all he could do was to back feebly into a corner and murmur "Thank you," repeatedly.

He was very little better than that then as his aunt singled out one girl after another. "We won't have any formal nonsense between cousins," she said; "you know them all by name already, I dare say.

This is Milly; that's Jane; here's Flora, and Kitty, and Margaret; and that's my little Thomasina over there by the book-case."

Poor Flus.h.i.+ngton ducked blindly in the direction of each, and then to them all collectively: he had not presence of mind to offer them chairs or cake, or anything; and besides, there was not nearly enough of anything for all of them.

Meanwhile, his aunt had spread herself comfortably out in his armchair, and was untying her bonnet-strings and beaming at him until he was ready to expire with confusion. "I do think," she observed at last, "that when an old aunt all the way from Australia takes the trouble to come and see you like this, you might spare her just one kiss!"

Flus.h.i.+ngton dared not refuse; he tottered up and kissed her somewhere about the face, after which he did not know which way to look, he was so terribly afraid that he might have to go through the same ceremony with his cousins, which he simply could not have survived.

Happily for him, they did not appear to expect it and he balanced a chair on its hind legs and, resting one knee upon it, waited patiently for them to begin a conversation; he could not have uttered a single word.

The aunt came to his rescue: "You don't ask after your Uncle Samuel, who used to send you the beetles?" she said, reprovingly.

"No," said Flus.h.i.+ngton, who had forgotten Uncle Samuel and his beetles, too; "no, how is Uncle Samuel--quite well, I hope?"

"Only tolerably so, thank you, Fred; you see, he never got over his great loss."