Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood - George MacDonald (latest novels to read .txt) 📗

in his flashin' ee, Sayin', Darkness and sorrow a' work for me! Whaur the lark springs up on his ain sang borne, Wi' bird-shout and jubilee hailin' the morn; For his hert is fu' o' the hert o' the licht, An', come darkness or winter, a' maun be richt! Oh! the bonny, bonny dell, whaur the sun luikit in, Sayin', Here awa', there awa', hand awa', sin.

Oh! the bonny, bonny dell, whaur I used to lie Wi' Jeanie aside me, sae sweet and sae shy! Whaur the wee white gowan wi' reid reid tips, Was as white as her cheek and as reid as her lips. Oh, her ee had a licht cam frae far 'yont the sun, And her tears cam frae deeper than salt seas run! O' the sunlicht and munelicht she was the queen, For baith war but middlin' withoot my Jean. Oh! the bonny, bonny dell, whaur I used to lie Wi' Jeanie aside me, sae sweet and sae shy!

Oh! the bonny, bonny dell, whaur the kirkyard lies, A' day and a' nicht, luikin' up to the skies; Whaur the sheep wauk up i' the summer nicht, Tak a bite, and lie doon, and await the licht; Whaur the psalms roll ower the grassy heaps, And the wind comes and moans, and the rain comes and weeps!

But Jeanie, my Jeanie-she's no lyin' there, For she's up and awa' up the angels' stair. Oh! the bonny, bonny dell, whaur the kirkyard lies, And the stars luik doon, and the nicht-wind sighs!

[Footnote 1: The Yellow-hammer.]

[Footnote 2: Birch-trees.]

[Footnote 3: Singing.]

[Footnote 4: Nonsense.]

[Footnote 5: Slippery.]

Elsie's voice went through every corner of my brain: there was singing in all its chambers. I could not hear the words of the song well enough to understand them quite; but Turkey gave me a copy of them afterwards. They were the schoolmaster's work. All the winter, Turkey had been going to the evening school, and the master had been greatly pleased with him, and had done his best to get him on in various ways. A friendship sprung up between them; and one night he showed Turkey these verses. Where the air came from, I do not know: Elsie's brain was full of tunes. I repeated them to my father once, and he was greatly pleased with them.

On this first acquaintance, however, they put me to sleep; and little Jamie Duff was sent over to tell my father what had happened. Jamie gave the message to Mrs. Mitchell, and she, full of her own importance, must needs set out to see how much was the matter.

I was dreaming an unutterably delicious dream. It was a summer evening. The sun was of a tremendous size, and of a splendid rose-colour. He was resting with his lower edge on the horizon, and dared go no farther, because all the flowers would sing instead of giving out their proper scents, and if he left them, he feared utter anarchy in his kingdom before he got back in the morning. I woke and saw the ugly face of Mrs. Mitchell bending over me. She was pushing me, and calling to me to wake up. The moment I saw her I shut my eyes tight, turned away, and pretended to be fast asleep again, in the hope that she would go away and leave me with my friends.

"Do let him have his sleep out, Mrs. Mitchell," said Turkey's mother.

"You've let him sleep too long already," she returned, ungraciously. "He'll do all he can, waking or sleeping, to make himself troublesome. He's a ne'er-do-well, Ranald. Little good'll ever come of him. It's a mercy his mother is under the mould, for he would have broken her heart."

I had come to myself quite by this time, but I was not in the least more inclined to acknowledge it to Mrs. Mitchell.

"You're wrong there, Mrs. Mitchell," said Elsie Duff; and my reader must remember it required a good deal of courage to stand up against a woman so much older than herself, and occupying the important position of housekeeper to the minister. "Ranald is a good boy. I'm sure he is."

"How dare you say so, when he served your poor old grandmother such a wicked trick? It's little the children care for their parents nowadays. Don't speak to me."

"No, don't, Elsie," said another voice, accompanied by a creaking of the door and a heavy step. "Don't speak to her, Elsie, or you'll have the worst of it. Leave her to me.-If Ranald did what you say, Mrs. Mitchell, and I don't deny it, he was at least very sorry for it afterwards, and begged grannie's pardon; and that's a sort of thing
you never did in your life."

"I never had any occasion, Turkey; so you hold your tongue."

"Now don't you call me Turkey . I won't stand it. I was christened as well as you."

"And what are you to speak to me like that? Go home to your cows. I dare say they're standing supperless in their stalls while you're gadding about. I'll call you Turkey as long as I please."

"Very well, Kelpie-that's the name you're known by, though perhaps no one has been polite enough to use it to your face, for you're a great woman, no doubt-I give you warning that I know you. When you're found out, don't say I didn't give you a chance beforehand."

"You impudent beggar!" cried Mrs. Mitchell, in a rage. "And you're all one pack," she added, looking round on the two others. "Get up, Ranald, and come home with me directly. What are you lying shamming there for?"

As she spoke, she approached the bed; but Turkey was too quick for her, and got in front of it. As he was now a great strong lad, she dared not lay hands upon him, so she turned in a rage and stalked out of the room, saying,

"Mr. Bannerman shall hear of this."

"Then it'll be both sides of it, Mrs. Mitchell," I cried from the bed; but she vanished, vouchsafing me no reply.

Once more Turkey got me on his back and carried me home. I told my father the whole occurrence. He examined the cut and plastered it up for me, saying he would go and thank Turkey's mother at once. I confess I thought more of Elsie Duff and her wonderful singing, which had put me to sleep, and given me the strange lovely dream from which the rough hands and harsh voice of the Kelpie had waked me too soon.

After this, although I never dared go near her grandmother's house alone, I yet, by loitering and watching, got many a peep of Elsie. Sometimes I went with Turkey to his mother's of an evening, to which my father had no objection, and somehow or other Elsie was sure to be there, and we spent a very happy hour or two together. Sometimes she would sing, and sometimes I would read to them out of Milton-I read the whole of Comus to them by degrees in this way; and although there was much I could not at all understand, I am perfectly certain it had an ennobling effect upon every one of us. It is not necessary that the intellect should define and separate before the heart and soul derive nourishment. As well say that a bee can get nothing out of a flower, because she does not understand botany. The very music of the stately words of such a poem is enough to generate a better mood, to make one feel the air of higher regions, and wish to rise "above the smoke and stir of this dim spot". The best influences which bear upon us are of this vague sort-powerful upon the heart and conscience, although undefined to the intellect.

But I find I have been forgetting that those for whom I write are young-too young to understand this. Let it remain, however, for those older persons who at an odd moment, while waiting for dinner, or before going to bed, may take up a little one's book, and turn over a few of its leaves. Some such readers, in virtue of their hearts being young and old both at once, discern more in the children's books than the children themselves.


CHAPTER XXI

The Bees' Nest


It was twelve o'clock on a delicious Saturday in the height of summer. We poured out of school with the gladness of a holiday in our hearts. I sauntered home full of the summer sun, and the summer wind, and the summer scents which filled the air. I do not know how often I sat down in perfect bliss upon the earthen walls which divided the fields from the road, and basked in the heat. These walls were covered with grass and moss. The odour of a certain yellow feathery flower, which grew on them rather plentifully, used to give me special delight. Great humble-bees haunted the walls, and were poking about in them constantly. Butterflies also found them pleasant places, and I delighted in butterflies, though I seldom succeeded in catching one. I do not remember that I ever killed one. Heart and conscience both were against that. I had got the loan of Mrs. Trimmer's story of the family of Robins, and was every now and then reading a page of it with unspeakable delight. We had very few books for children in those days and in that far out-of-the-way place, and those we did get were the more dearly prized. It was almost dinner-time before I reached home. Somehow in this grand weather, welcome as dinner always was, it did not possess the same amount of interest as in the cold bitter winter. This day I almost hurried over mine to get out again into the broad sunlight. Oh, how stately the hollyhocks towered on the borders of the shrubbery! The guelder-roses hung like balls of snow in their wilderness of green leaves; and here and there the damask roses, dark almost to blackness, and with a soft velvety surface, enriched the sunny air with their colour and their scent. I never see these roses now. And the little bushes of polyanthus gemmed the dark earth between with their varied hues. We did not know anything about flowers except the delight they gave us, and I dare say I am putting some together which would not be out at the same time, but that is how the picture comes back to my memory.

I was leaning in utter idleness over the gate that separated the little lawn and its surroundings from the road, when a troop of children passed, with little baskets and tin pails in their hands; and amongst them Jamie Duff. It was not in the least necessary to ask him where he was going.

Not very far, about a mile or so from our house, rose a certain hill famed in the country round for its store of bilberries. It was the same to which Turkey and I had fled for refuge from the bull. It was called the Ba' Hill, and a tradition lingered in the neighbourhood that many years ago there had been a battle there, and that after the battle the conquerors played at football with the heads of the vanquished slain, and hence the name of the hill; but who fought or which conquered, there was not a shadow of a record. It had been a wild country, and conflicting clans had often wrought wild work in it. In summer the hill was of course the haunt of