308 THE HAUNTED WELL-ORDINARY OBSERVERS. in the moonlight dance, enclosed wi' laigh broomy rocks, amaist like a sheep-fauld, but at the upper end made lown in a' weathers by ae single stane, like the last ruin o' a towa, smelling sweet, nae doubt, at this blessed moment, wi' thyme that enlivens even the winter season,-ae spring there is— I say North. Dear me ! James-let me loosen your neckclothyou are getting black in the face. What sort of a knot is this? It would puzzle the ghost of Gordius to untie it. Shepherd. Dinna mind the crauvat. I say, Mr North, rather were my heart dried up to the last drop o' bluid, than that the pulses of that spring should cease to beat in the holy wilderness. North. Your emotion is contagious, James. I feel the rheum bedimming my aged eyes, albeit unused to the melting mood. Shepherd. You've heard me tell the tale afore-and it's no a tale I tell when I can help it—but sometimes, as at present, when sittin wi' the friend I love, and respect and venerate, especially if, like you, he be maist like a father, or at least an elder brither, the past comes upon me wi' a' the power o' the present, and though my heart be sair, ay, sair maist to the verra breakin, yet I maun speak-for though big and great griefs are dumb, griefs there are, rather piteous and profound, that will shape themselves into words, even when nane are by to hear, nane but the puir silly echoes that can only blab the twa-three last syllables o' a secret! North. To look on you, James, an ordinary observer would think that you had never had any serious trials in this life— that Doric laugh of thine, my dear Shepherd Shepherd. I hate and despise ordinary observers; and thank God that they can ken naething o' me or my character. The pitifu' creturs aye admire a man wi' a lang nose, hollow cheeks, black een, swarthy cheeks, and creeshy hair; and tauk to ane anither about his interesting melancholy, and severe misfortunes; and hoo he had his heart weel-nigh broken by the death o' twa wives, and the loss o' a third evangelical miss, wha eloped, after her wedding-claes had been taen aff at the haberdasher's, wi' a playactor wha had ance been a gentleman-that is, attached to the commissaw THE HAUNTED WELL. 309 riat department o' the army in the Peninsula, a dealer in adulterated flour and mule-flesh sausages. North. Interesting emigrants to Van Diemen's Land. Shepherd. A man wi' buck-teeth and a cockit nose, like me, they'll no alloo to be a martyr to melancholy; but because they see and hear me lauchin as in Peter's Letters,1 scoot the idea o' my ever geein way to grief, and afttimes thinkin the sweet light o' heaven's blessed sunshine darkened by a black veil that flings a correspondin shadow ower the seemingly disconsolate yearth. North. Most of the good poets of my acquaintance have light-coloured hair. Shepherd. Mine in my youth was o' a bricht yellow. North. And a fine animal you were, James, I am told, as you walked up the transe o' the kirk, with your mane flying over your shoulders, confined within graceful liberty by a blue ribbon, the love-gift of some bonny May, that wonned amang the braes, and had yielded you the parting kiss, just as the cottage clock told that now another week was past, and you heard the innocent creature's heart beating in the hush o' the Sabbath morn. Shepherd. Whisht, whisht! North. But we have forgotten the Tale of the Haunted Well. Shepherd. It's nae Tale-for there's naething that could be ca'd an incident in a' that I could say about that well! Oh! sir-she was only twa months mair than fifteen-and though she had haply reached her full stature, and was somewhat taller than the maist o' our Forest lassies, yet you saw at ance that she was still but a bairn. Her breast, white, and warm, and saft, and fragrant as the lily, whose leaves in the driest weather you'll never find without an inklin o' Heaven's dew, no perhaps what you would ca' a dew-drap, but a balmy freshness, that ever breathes o' delight in being alive beneath the fair skies, and on this fair planet, the greenest sure by far o' the seven that dance around the sun! North. Too poetical, James, for real feeling. Shepherd. Wha that ever saw-wha that ever touched that 1 Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, 1819. These lively sketches of Edinburgh society and its celebrities, were from the pen and the pencil of Mr Lockhart. 310 THE HAUNTED WELL. breast, would not hae been made a poet by the momentary bliss! Yet, as God is my judge, her mother's hand busked not that maiden's bosom wi' mair holy love than did I place within it, mony and mony a time, the yellow primroses and the blue violets, baith o' them wi' but single leaves, as you ken, amang the braes, but baith alike bonnier far-ohbonnier, bonnier far when sometimes scarcely to be seen at all atween the movings o' her breast, that when she and I pu'd them frae amang the moss and tufts o' lang grass, whisperin saft and dreamlike thochts, as the hill-breezes went by on a sudden, and then a' was again as lown as death. North. My dear Theocritus Shepherd. Whisht. I was a hantle aulder than her—and as she had nae brither-I was a brither to her-neither had she a father or mither, and ance on a day, when I said to her that she wad find baith in me, wha loved her for her goodness and her innocence, the puir britherless, sisterless, parentless orphan, had her face a' in ae single instant as drenched in tears, as a flower cast up on the sand at the turn o' a stream that has brought it down in a spate frae the far-aff hills. North. Her soul, James, is now in Heaven! Shepherd. The simmer afore she died, she didna use to come o' her ain accord, and, without being asked in aneath my plaid, when a skirring shower gaed by—I had to wise1 her in within its faulds—and her head had to be held down by an affectionate pressure, almost like a faint force, on my breast-and when I spak to her, half in earnest half in jest, o' love, she had nae heart to lauch,-sae muckle as to greet! As sure as God's in heaven, the fair orphan wept. North. One so happy and so innocent might well shed tears. Shepherd. There, beside that wee, still, solitary well, have we sat for hours that were swift as moments, and yet each o' them filled fu' o' happiness that wad noo be aneuch for years! North. For us, and men like us, James, there is on earth no such thing as happiness. Enough that we have known it. Shepherd. I should fear noo to face sic happiness as used to be there, beside that well-sic happiness would noo turn my brain-but nae fear, nae fear o' its ever returnin, for that voice went wavering awa up to heaven from this mute earth, and 1 Wise-entice. MARTIN'S PAPHIAN BOWER. 311 on the nicht when it was heard not, and never more was to be heard, in the psalm, in my father's house, I knew that a great change had been wrought within me, and that this earth, this world, this life was disenchanted for ever, and the place that held her grave a Paradise no more! North. A fitter place of burial for such an one is not on the earth's surface, than that lone hill kirkyard, where she hath for years been sleeping.1 The birch shrub in the south corner will now be quite a stately tree. Shepherd. I visit the place sae regularly every May-day in the morning, every Midsummer-day, the langest day in the year, that is, the twenty-second o' June, in the gloaming, that I see little or nae alteration on the spat, or onything that belangs to it. But nae doubt, we are baith grown aulder thegither; it in that solitary region, visited by few or noneexcept when there is a burial-and me sometimes at Mount Benger, and sometimes in here at Embro', enjoyin mysel at Ambrose's-for, after a', the world's no a bad world, although Mary Morison be dead-dead and buried thirty years ago, and that's a lang portion o' a man's life, which is, scripturally speakin, somewhere about threescore and ten. North. Look here, my dear James, don't say that you have not as exquisite a perception of beauty, and all that sort of thing, now, as thirty years ago. There, my man, there is the Paphian Bower, composed by Phillips, from a picture by Martin; saw ye ever anything more perfectly lovely? Shepherd. Never since the day I was born. Dinna tell me wha thae Three Female Figures are for it's a' ane whether they be the Three Muses, or Three o' the Nine Graces, or Venus and twa o' her handmaids, or ony ither Three o' God's fairest creatures, for whom that wee, winged, kneeling Cupid is pluckin flowers for them to wreathe round their heavenly 1 This lonely churchyard, on the shore of St Mary's Loch, is thus described by Scott: "Nought living meets the eye or ear, But well I ween the dead are near; Marmion, Introd. to Canto II. 312 DRAWING AS AN ACCOMPLISHMENT. hair; dinna tell me what they're doin, hae been doin, or are gaun to do, for it's delightfu' for the imagination to sink awa into its ain dreams amang thae lang withdrawing glades, and outower the wood-taps, if sae ane feel inclined, to flee awa to yonder distant hills, and from their pinnacles to take a flight up to yon pavilion-clouds, and lay a body's sel doon at full length on the yielding saftness! North. Look at Her with the frame-enveloping veil, James, and wish yourself a Pagan of the olden time, James, when mortals loved immortals, and Venus herself did not disdain to meet the Shepherd Shepherd. As sure's I'm leevin there's the same three Goddesses, and the same bit Cupid, standin on their heads in the water amang the floating lilies! North. Martin has a soul both for beauty and grandeur. Shepherd. He has that—and it's a wonderfu' thing to think that the same genius that saw yon sublime vision o' Belshazzar's Feast, an endless perspective o' Babylonian buildings, should delight to wanton thus with Nature in her prime -for were it no for the pillared roof o' that palace peering aboon the tree-taps, ane micht believe themselves in ane o' the woodland and waterland glades o' Paradise! North. I don't think, James, that you do much nowadays with the pencil? Shepherd. No me. I've gien ower the paintin noo a'thegither for I canna please mysel in the execution. But it's a fine art—and I'm geein lessons to my callant1 North. Right, James. Of all the accomplishments of a gentleman, I do not know one superior to that of being a good draughtsman. He who can use his pen and his pencil can seldom or never be at a loss in this world. One half the time often lost in learning to play the beautiful but pernicious game of billiards, would be sufficient to give a youth mastery over that other elegant and useful art. Yet how few gentlemen can draw or paint well! Shepherd. Sketchers are geyan apt, howsomever, to be wearisome wi' their critical cant, and even to talk o' Nature hersel, as if she were only worth studying for the sake o' art. North. Very true, James. There was a painter, some twenty years ago, of the name of Havel-dead now I suppose |