Books: Nonsense Novels
S >>
Stephen Leacock >> Nonsense Novels
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 | 5 |
6 |
7 |
8
The beautiful Highland girl gazed at him fascinated.
He seemed a higher order of being.
He carried a fishing-rod and basket in his hand. He was dressed
in a salmon-fishing costume of an English gentleman. Salmon-fishing
boots reached to his thighs, while above them he wore a
fishing-jacket fastened loosely with a fishing-belt about his waist.
He wore a small fishing-cap on his head.
There were no fish in his basket.
He drew near to the Highland girl.
Hannah knew as she looked at him that it must be Ian McWhinus, the
new laird.
At sight she loved him.
"Ye're sair welcome," she said, as she handed to the young man the
finest of her lobsters.
He put it in his basket.
Then he felt in the pocket of his jacket and brought out a
sixpenny-piece.
"You must let me pay for it," he said.
Hannah took the sixpence and held it a moment, flushing with true
Highland pride.
"I'll no be selling the fush for money," she said.
Something in the girl's speech went straight to the young man's
heart. He handed her half a crown. Whistling lightly, he strode
off up the side of the burn. Hannah stood gazing after him
spell-bound. She was aroused from her reverie by an angry voice
calling her name.
"Hannah, Hannah," cried the voice, "come away ben; are ye daft,
lass, that ye stand there keeking at a McWhinus?"
Then Hannah realised what she had done.
She had spoken with a McWhinus, a thing that no McShamus had done
for a hundred and fifty years. For nearly two centuries the
McShamuses and the McWhinuses, albeit both dwellers in the Glen,
had been torn asunder by one of those painful divisions by which
the life of the Scotch people is broken into fragments.
It had arisen out of a point of spiritual belief.
It had been six generations agone at a Highland banquet, in the
days when the unrestrained temper of the time gave way to wild
orgies, during which theological discussions raged with unrestrained
fury. Shamus McShamus, an embittered Calvinist, half crazed perhaps
with liquor, had maintained that damnation could be achieved only by
faith. Whimper McWhinus had held that damnation could be achieved
also by good works. Inflamed with drink, McShamus had struck
McWhinus across the temple with an oatcake and killed him. McShamus
had been brought to trial. Although defended by some of the most
skilled lawyers of Aucherlocherty, he had been acquitted. On the
very night of his acquittal, Whangus McWhinus, the son of the
murdered man, had lain in wait for Shamus McShamus, in the hollow of
the Glen road where it rises to the cliff, and had shot him through
the bagpipes. Since then the feud had raged with unquenched
bitterness for a century and a half.
With each generation the difference between the two families became
more acute. They differed on every possible point. They wore
different tartans, sat under different ministers, drank different
brands of whisky, and upheld different doctrines in regard to
eternal punishment.
To add to the feud the McWhinuses had grown rich, while the
McShamuses had become poor.
At least once in every generation a McWhinus or a McShamus had been
shot, and always at the turn of the Glen road where it rose to the
edge of the cliff. Finally, two generations gone, the McWhinuses
had been raised to sudden wealth by the discovery of a coal mine on
their land. To show their contempt for the McShamuses they had left
the Glen to live in America. The McShamuses, to show their contempt
for the McWhinuses, had remained in the Glen. The feud was kept
alive in their memory.
And now the descendant of the McWhinuses had come back, and bought
out the property of the Laird of Aucherlocherty beside the Glen.
Ian McWhinus knew nothing of the feud. Reared in another atmosphere,
the traditions of Scotland had no meaning for him. He had entirely
degenerated. To him the tartan had become only a piece of coloured
cloth. He wore a kilt as a masquerade costume for a Hallowe'en
dance, and when it rained he put on a raincoat. He was no longer
Scotch. More than that, he had married a beautiful American wife,
a talcum-powder blonde with a dough face and the exquisite rotundity
of the packing-house district of the Middle-West. Ian McWhinus was
her slave. For her sake he had bought the lobster from Hannah.
For her sake, too, he had scrutinised closely the beautiful Highland
girl, for his wife was anxious to bring back a Scotch housemaid with
her to Chicago.
And meantime Hannah, with the rapture of a new love in her heart,
followed her father, Oyster McOyster McShamus, to the cottage. Oyster
McOyster, even in advancing age, was a fine specimen of Scotch manhood.
Ninety-seven years of age, he was approaching the time when many of his
countrymen begin to show the ravages of time. But he bore himself
straight as a lath, while his tall stature and his native Highland
costume accentuated the fine outline of his form. This costume
consisted of a black velvet beetle-shell jacket, which extended from
the shoulder half-way down the back, and was continued in a short kilt
of the tartan of the McShamuses, which extended from the waist half-way
to the thigh. The costume reappeared again after an interval in the
form of rolled golf stockings, which extended half-way up to the knee,
while on his feet a pair of half shoes were buckled half-way up with a
Highland clasp. On his head half-way between the ear and the upper
superficies of the skull he wore half a Scotch cap, from which a tall
rhinoceros feather extended half-way into the air.
A pair of bagpipes were beneath his arm, from which, as he walked, he
blew those deep and plaintive sounds which have done much to imprint
upon the characters of those who hear them a melancholy and resigned
despair.
At the door of the cottage he turned and faced his daughter.
"What said Ian McWhinus to you i' the burnside?" he said fiercely.
"'Twas nae muckle," said Hannah, and she added, for the truth was
ever more to her than her father's wrath, "he gi'ed me saxpence for
a fush."
"Siller!" shrieked the Highlander. "Siller from a McWhinus!"
Hannah handed him the sixpence. Oyster McOyster dashed it fiercely
on the ground, then picking it up he dashed it with full force
against the wall of the cottage. Then, seizing it again he dashed
it angrily into the pocket of his kilt.
They entered the cottage.
Hannah had never seen her father's face so dour as it looked that
night.
Their home seemed changed.
Hannah and her mother and father sat down that night in silence to
their simple meal of oatmeal porridge and Scotch whisky. In the
evening the mother sat to her spinning. Busily she plied her work,
for it was a task of love. Her eldest born, Jamie, was away at
college at Edinburgh, preparing for the ministry. His graduation day
was approaching, and Jamie's mother was spinning him a pair of
breeches against the day. The breeches were to be a surprise.
Already they were shaping that way. Oyster McShamus sat reading the
Old Testament in silence, while Hannah looked into the peat fire and
thought of the beautiful young Laird. Only once the Highlander spoke.
"The McWhinus is back," he said, and his glance turned towards the old
flint-lock musket on the wall. That night Hannah dreamed of the feud,
of the Glen and the burn, of love, of lobsters, and of the Laird of
Loch Aucherlocherty. And when she rose in the morning there was a
wistful look in her eyes, and there came no song from her throat.
The days passed.
Each day the beautiful Highland girl saw the young Laird, though her
father knew it not.
In the mornings she would see him as he came fishing to the burn. At
times he wore his fishing-suit, at other times he had on a
knickerbocker suit of shepherd's plaid with a domino pattern
_neglige_ shirt. For his sake the beautiful Highland girl made
herself more beautiful still. Each morning she would twine a Scotch
thistle in her hair, and pin a spray of burdock at her heart.
And at times he spoke to her. How Hannah treasured his words. Once,
catching sight of her father in the distance, he had asked her who
was the old sardine in the petticoats, and the girl had answered
gladly that it was her father, for, as a fisherman's daughter, she
was proud to have her father mistaken for a sardine.
At another time he had asked her if she was handy about the work of
the house. How Hannah's heart had beat at the question. She made up
her mind to spin him a pair of breeches like the ones now finishing
for her brother Jamie.
And every evening as the sun set Hannah would watch in secret from
the window of the cottage waiting for the young Laird to come past in
his motor-car, down the Glen road to the sea. Always he would
slacken the car at the sharp turn at the top of the cliff. For six
generations no McWhinus had passed that spot after nightfall with his
life. But Ian McWhinus knew nothing of the feud.
At times Oyster McOyster would see him pass, and standing at the
roadside would call down Gaelic curses on his head.
Once, when her father was from home, Hannah had stood on the
roadside, and Ian had stopped the machine and had taken her with him
in the car for a ride. Hannah, her heart beating with delight, had
listened to him as he explained how the car was worked. Had her
father know that she had sat thus beside a McWhinus, he would have
slain her where she sat.
The tragedy of Hannah's love ran swiftly to its close.
Each day she met the young Laird at the burn.
Each day she gave him the finest of her lobsters. She wore a new
thistle every day.
And every night, in secret as her mother slept, she span a new
concentric section of his breeches.
And the young Laird, when he went home, said to the talcum blonde,
that the Highland fisher-girl was not half such a damn fool as she
seemed.
Then came the fateful afternoon.
He stood beside her at the burn.
"Hannah," he said, as he bent towards her, "I want to take you to
America."
Hannah had fallen fainting in his arms.
Ian propped her against a tree, and went home.
An hour later, when Hannah entered her home, her father was standing
behind the fireplace. He was staring fixedly into the fire, with the
flint-lock musket in his hands. There was the old dour look of the
feud upon his face, and there were muttered curses on his lips. His
wife Ellen clung to his arm and vainly sought to quiet him.
"Curse him," he muttered, "I'll e'en kill him the night as he passes
in his deil machine."
Then Hannah knew that Oyster McShamus had seen her with Ian beside
the burn. She turned and fled from the house. Straight up the road
she ran across towards the manor-house of Aucherlocherty to warn
Ian. To save him from her father's wrath, that was her one thought.
Night gathered about the Highland girl as she ran. The rain clouds
and the gathering storm hung low with fitful lightning overhead.
She still ran on. About her was the rolling of the thunder and the
angry roaring of the swollen burn. Then the storm broke upon the
darkness with all the fury of the Highland gale. They sky was rent
with the fierce play of the elements. Yet on Hannah ran. Again and
again the lightning hit her, but she ran on still. She fell over
the stones, tripped and stumbled in the ruts, butted into the
hedges, cannoned off against the stone walls. But she never
stopped. She went quicker and quicker. The storm was awful.
Lightning, fire, flame, and thunder were all about her. Trees were
falling, hurdles were flying, birds were being struck by lightning.
Dogs, sheep and even cattle were hurled through the air.
She reached the manor-house, and stood a moment at the door. The
storm had lulled, the rain ceased, and for a brief moment there was
quiet. The light was streaming from the windows of the house.
Hannah paused. Suddenly her heart misgave her. Her quick ear had
caught the sound of a woman's voice within. She approached the
window and looked in. Then, as if rooted to the spot, the Highland
girl gazed and listened at the pane.
Ian lay upon a sofa. The _neglige_ dressing-gown that he wore
enhanced the pallid beauty of his face. Beside him sat the
talcum-powder blonde. She was feeding him with chocolates. Hannah
understood. Ian had trifled with her love. He had bought her
lobsters to win her heart, only to cast it aside.
Hannah turned from the window. She plucked the thistle from her
throat and flung it on the ground. Then, as she turned her eye,
she caught sight of the motor standing in the shed.
"The deil machine!" she muttered, while the wild light of Highland
frenzy gathered in her eye; then, as she rushed to it and tore the
tarpaulin from off it, "Ye'll no be wanting of a mark the night,
Oyster McShamus," she cried.
A moment later, the motor, with Hannah at the wheel, was
thundering down the road to the Glen. The power was on to the
full, and the demented girl clung tight to the steering-gear as
the machine rocked and thundered down the descent. The storm was
raging again, and the thunder mingled with the roar of the machine
as it coursed madly towards the sea. The great eye of the motor
blazed in front. The lurid light of it flashed a second on the
trees and the burn as it passed, and flashed blinding on the eyes
of Oyster as he stood erect on the cliff-side below, musket in
hand, and faced the blazing apparition that charged upon him with
the old Highland blood surging in his veins.
It was all over in a moment--a blinding flash of lightning, the
report of a musket, a great peal of thunder, and the motor bearing
the devoted girl hurled headlong over the cliff.
They found her there in the morning. She lay on her side
motionless, half buried in the sand, upturned towards the blue
Highland sky, serene now after the passing of the storm. Quiet
and still she lay. The sea-birds seemed to pause in their flight
to look down on her. The little group of Scotch people that had
gathered stood and gazed at her with reverential awe. They made
no attempt to put her together. It would have been useless. Her
gasoline tubes were twisted and bent, her tank burst, her
sprockets broken from their sides, and her steering-gear an utter
wreck. The motor would never run again.
After a time they roused themselves from their grief and looked
about for Hannah. They found her. She lay among the sand and
seaweed, her fair hair soaked in gasoline. Then they looked
about for Oyster McShamus. Him, too, they found, lying half
buried in the grass and soaked in whisky. Then they looked about
for Ellen. They found her lying across the door of the cottage
half buried in Jamie's breeches.
Then they gathered them up. Life was not extinct. They chafed
their hands. They rubbed their feet. They put hot bricks upon
their stomachs. They poured hot whisky down their throats. That
brought them to.
Of course.
It always does.
They all lived.
But the feud was done for. That was the end of it. Hannah had
put it to the bad.
_VIII. -- Soaked in Seaweed: or, Upset in the Ocean_
_(An Old-fashioned Sea Story.)_
IT was in August in 1867 that I stepped on board the deck of the
_Saucy Sally_, lying in dock at Gravesend, to fill the berth of
second mate.
Let me first say a word about myself.
I was a tall, handsome young fellow, squarely and powerfully built,
bronzed by the sun and the moon (and even copper-coloured in spots
from the effect of the stars), and with a face in which honesty,
intelligence, and exceptional brain power were combined with
Christianity, simplicity, and modesty.
As I stepped on the deck I could not help a slight feeling of triumph,
as I caught sight of my sailor-like features reflected in a tar-barrel
that stood beside the mast, while a little later I could scarcely
repress a sense of gratification as I noticed them reflected again in
a bucket of bilge water.
"Welcome on board, Mr. Blowhard," called out Captain Bilge, stepping
out of the binnacle and shaking hands across the taffrail.
I saw before me a fine sailor-like man of from thirty to sixty,
clean-shaven, except for an enormous pair of whiskers, a heavy beard,
and a thick moustache, powerful in build, and carrying his beam well
aft, in a pair of broad duck trousers across the back of which there
would have been room to write a history of the British Navy.
Beside him were the first and third mates, both of them being quiet
men of poor stature, who looked at Captain Bilge with what seemed to
me an apprehensive expression in their eyes.
The vessel was on the eve of departure. Her deck presented that scene
of bustle and alacrity dear to the sailor's heart. Men were busy
nailing up the masts, hanging the bowsprit over the side, varnishing
the lee-scuppers and pouring hot tar down the companion-way.
Captain Bilge, with a megaphone to his lips, kept calling out to the
men in his rough sailor fashion:
"Now, then, don't over-exert yourselves, gentlemen. Remember, please,
that we have plenty of time. Keep out of the sun as much as you can.
Step carefully in the rigging there, Jones; I fear it's just a little
high for you. Tut, tut, Williams, don't get yourself so dirty with
that tar, you won't look fit to be seen."
I stood leaning over the gaff of the mainsail and thinking--yes,
thinking, dear reader, of my mother. I hope that you will think none
the less of me for that. Whenever things look dark, I lean up against
something and think of mother. If they get positively black, I stand
on one leg and think of father. After that I can face anything.
Did I think, too, of another, younger than mother and fairer than
father? Yes, I did. "Bear up, darling," I had whispered as she
nestled her head beneath my oilskins and kicked out backward with
one heel in the agony of her girlish grief, "in five years the voyage
will be over, and after three more like it, I shall come back with
money enough to buy a second-hand fishing-net and settle down on
shore."
Meantime the ship's preparations were complete. The masts were all
in position, the sails nailed up, and men with axes were busily
chopping away the gangway.
"All ready?" called the Captain.
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Then hoist the anchor in board and send a man down with the key to
open the bar."
Opening the bar! the last sad rite of departure. How often in my
voyages have I seen it; the little group of men soon to be exiled
from their home, standing about with saddened faces, waiting to see
the man with the key open the bar--held there by some strange
fascination.
* * * * *
Next morning with a fair wind astern we had buzzed around the corner
of England and were running down the Channel.
I know no finer sight, for those who have never seen it, than the
English Channel. It is the highway of the world. Ships of all
nations are passing up and down, Dutch, Scotch, Venezuelan, and
even American.
Chinese junks rush to and fro. Warships, motor yachts, icebergs,
and lumber rafts are everywhere. If I add to this fact that so
thick a fog hangs over it that it is entirely hidden from sight,
my readers can form some idea of the majesty of the scene.
* * * * *
We had now been three days at sea. My first sea-sickness was
wearing off, and I thought less of father.
On the third morning Captain Bilge descended to my cabin.
"Mr. Blowhard," he said, "I must ask you to stand double watches."
"What is the matter?" I inquired.
"The two other mates have fallen overboard," he said uneasily, and
avoiding my eye.
I contented myself with saying "Very good, sir," but I could not help
thinking it a trifle odd that both the mates should have fallen
overboard in the same night.
Surely there was some mystery in this.
Two mornings later the Captain appeared at the breakfast-table with
the same shifting and uneasy look in his eye.
"Anything wrong, sir?" I asked.
"Yes," he answered, trying to appear at ease and twisting a fried
egg to and fro between his fingers with such nervous force as almost
to break it in two--"I regret to say that we have lost the bosun."
"The bosun!" I cried.
"Yes," said Captain Bilge more quietly, "he is overboard. I blame
myself for it, partly. It was early this morning. I was holding him
up in my arms to look at an iceberg and, quite accidentally I assure
you--I dropped him overboard."
"Captain Bilge," I asked, "have you taken any steps to recover him?"
"Not as yet," he replied uneasily.
I looked at him fixedly, but said nothing.
Ten days passed.
The mystery thickened. On Thursday two men of the starboard watch
were reported missing. On Friday the carpenter's assistant
disappeared. On the night of Saturday a circumstance occurred which,
slight as it was, gave me some clue as to what was happening.
As I stood at the wheel about midnight, I saw the Captain approach in
the darkness carrying the cabin-boy by the hind leg. The lad was a
bright little fellow, whose merry disposition had already endeared
him to me, and I watched with some interest to see what the Captain
would do to him. Arrived at the stern of the vessel, Captain Bilge
looked cautiously around a moment and then dropped the boy into the
sea. For a brief instant the lad's head appeared in the phosphorus
of the waves. The Captain threw a boot at him, sighed deeply, and
went below.
Here then was the key to the mystery! The Captain was throwing the
crew overboard. Next morning we met at breakfast as usual.
"Poor little Williams has fallen overboard," said the Captain,
seizing a strip of ship's bacon and tearing at it with his teeth as
if he almost meant to eat it.
"Captain," I said, greatly excited, stabbing at a ship's loaf in my
agitation with such ferocity as almost to drive my knife into it--
"You threw that boy overboard!"
"I did," said Captain Bilge, grown suddenly quiet, "I threw them all
over and intend to throw the rest. Listen, Blowhard, you are young,
ambitious, and trustworthy. I will confide in you."
Perfectly calm now, he stepped to a locker, rummaged in it a moment,
and drew out a faded piece of yellow parchment, which he spread on
the table. It was a map or chart. In the centre of it was a circle.
In the middle of the circle was a small dot and a letter T, while at
one side of the map was a letter N, and against it on the other side
a letter S.
"What is this?" I asked.
"Can you not guess?" queried Captain Bilge. "It is a desert island."
"Ah!" I rejoined with a sudden flash of intuition, "and N is for
North and S is for South."
"Blowhard," said the Captain, striking the table with such force as
to cause a loaf of ship's bread to bounce up and down three or four
times, "you've struck it. That part of it had not yet occurred
to me."
"And the letter T?" I asked.
"The treasure, the buried treasure," said the Captain, and turning
the map over he read from the back of it--"The point T indicates
the spot where the treasure is buried under the sand; it consists of
half a million Spanish dollars, and is buried in a brown leather
dress-suit case."
"And where is the island?" I inquired, mad with excitement.
"That I do not know," said the Captain. "I intend to sail up and
down the parallels of latitude until I find it."
"And meantime?"
"Meantime, the first thing to do is to reduce the number of the crew
so as to have fewer hands to divide among. Come, come," he added in
a burst of frankness which made me love the man in spite of his
shortcomings, "will you join me in this? We'll throw them all over,
keeping the cook to the last, dig up the treasure, and be rich for
the rest of our lives."
Reader, do you blame me if I said yes? I was young, ardent,
ambitious, full of bright hopes and boyish enthusiasm.
"Captain Bilge," I said, putting my hand in his, "I am yours."
"Good," he said, "now go forward to the forecastle and get an idea
what the men are thinking."
I went forward to the men's quarters--a plain room in the front of
the ship, with only a rough carpet on the floor, a few simple
arm-chairs, writing-desks, spittoons of a plain pattern, and small
brass beds with blue-and-green screens. It was Sunday morning, and
the men were mostly sitting about in their dressing-gowns.
They rose as I entered and curtseyed.
"Sir," said Tompkins, the bosun's mate, "I think it my duty to tell
you that there is a great deal of dissatisfaction among the men."
Several of the men nodded.
"They don't like the way the men keep going overboard," he continued,
his voice rising to a tone of uncontrolled passion. "It is
positively absurd, sir, and if you will allow me to say so, the men
are far from pleased."
"Tompkins," I said sternly, "you must understand that my position
will not allow me to listen to mutinous language of this sort."
I returned to the Captain. "I think the men mean mutiny," I said.
"Good," said Captain Bilge, rubbing his hands, "that will get rid of
a lot of them, and of course," he added musingly, looking out of the
broad old-fashioned port-hole at the stern of the cabin, at the
heaving waves of the South Atlantic, "I am expecting pirates at any
time, and that will take out quite a few of them. However"--and here
he pressed the bell for a cabin-boy--"kindly ask Mr. Tompkins to step
this way."
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 | 5 |
6 |
7 |
8