CHAPTER II.

Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy; But he beholds the light and whence it flows-- He sees it in his joy.

I do not quite agree with Wordsworth.

I grant you that there is much in the earlier childhood, indefinite always and vague as twilight dreams, which proclaims the spiritual and infinite to be nearer to these unconscious dawning souls than it is to us. There is the instinct of wonder, which in its eager whys and wherefores strikes out intuitions of strange wisdom sometimes, concerning those common mysteries about us, with which, in the invulnerable might of their simplicity, philosophers dare not meddle--

“The obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things;”

the “visionary gleam” which this new inmate of the world throws about unawares from its own strangely luminous soul. I grant you all these in early childhood, but for your boy!

Your healthful boy is given to no manner of musing. He has begun to come in contact with the materialisms of the world, and battles with them lustily, with right good will and daring joyousness. It does not occur to him to tell you of the beauty of this water, but you shall find him eloquent on the subject of his anglings or swimmings--his feats upon it in boats--his miraculous slides--his inevitable fallings in. The delicate spiritual presence within him has forgotten how, a while ago, it seemed well nigh to touch, in dreamy awe and reverence, those other spiritual presences with which its teeming fancy had peopled the indefinite air everywhere. The warm blood is bounding in his veins in all its first exuberant impulse of life and motion. To construct--to destroy--to fight--to labour--to bend all these material obstructions under the absolute dominion of his strong young human will. To pour forth in boisterous glee, by shout and whoop, by leap and wrestle, by all that is joyous, and wild, and loud enough, the overflowing energy of his youthful powers. Your true boy does not pause in his manifold undertakings to consider natural joys and sunshine. If you would understand his enjoyment of these, you must see him breast the current as he swims across the river, and swing high up on perilous branches in the wood. His hands are full--let them talk or muse who will--his vocation is other than this.

The boy’s hero is the material man--the one single unapproachable Crusoe whom Genius has created for him--the many sailor-men of ruder flesh and blood, militant upon the sea--the hunter of unknown forests--the adventurous traveller of dangerous countries--there are the glorious ideals of the boy. He thirsts to throw the lasso with the fiery sportsman of Mexico, he burns with vain longing to have been one of the olden crew who were shipwrecked with the Byron of the sea. He clenches his hands and sets his teeth in burning indignation, when he reads how the gentle Cook fell in yon southern island far away, and knows by the valiant blood rising hot to his heart, that had he been there it had chanced otherwise. And if he returns to olden times, it is to fight by the side of Wallace, to row the forlorn boat of the Bruce, to do battle on the muirs for the Covenant, to guide Prince Charles through mountain pass and cavern. When he dreams, it is of the world without--the stirring, fighting, opposing world, which is to be quelled, and put down, and tamed into obedience to the young conqueror’s will. The sun sheds grateful light upon him, and the moon looks down from her broad skies in vain. If he could fight for her, she might enlist his youthful chivalry, as the Queen of old times, the hapless Mary, like her in lofty beauty, as in disastrous wading through stormy clouds, might have done: but to dream of her--to think of her serene pale smile--alas, no! he has other work in hand.

I remember I was fishing or appearing to fish one bright morning, in a link of our water, which was a kind of hermitage to me,--I might be twelve years old then--when my father suddenly approached me, leading in his hand a boy of my own years--a boy so differently endowed, so superior to myself as I felt at once in my shy consciousness.

My father visited Mossgray seldom: at this time we had received no intimation of his coming, and the timid constraint and awkward diffidence, which were always upon me in his presence, were heightened into exceeding pain by this sudden appearance.

“Adam,” said my father, “this is your cousin Charles. He is to stay with you in future at Mossgray.”

My father’s own name was Charles; he looked with favour on his namesake, as he watched our greeting. I so shy and rustic, and Charlie Graeme so bold and manly--I felt how disadvantageous was the comparison.

But when my father left us, and we became acquainted, as we did soon, for my cousin was as frank as I was shy, then the glorious new life of genuine boyhood which burst upon Mossgray and upon me! How I lavished upon Charlie the unsunned treasures of my solitary child’s heart; how I awoke out of my dreamy loneliness, to find myself enriched beyond all wealth in his companionship. How I discovered a new charm and attraction in my own beloved water and noble woods, from the wild shout of mirth with which Charlie plunged into riotous enjoyment of them. How the old walls and doorways that had been disturbed by few sounds louder than my pensive stealings out and in, resounded now with the ringing speed of boyish footsteps, and the blythe din of boyish laughter. It is pleasant to look back upon that time, when from a childish hermit I became a boy!

There was for me after that era no more solitary watching of the sports of others. The “haill water” ere long knew Charlie Graeme as the adventurous leader of every troop of juvenile mischief-makers, and I was by no means a slow or backward pupil. The complete revolution in my life which this produced gave these vigorous enjoyments a still greater zest to me, albeit I sometimes felt the pleasure of compassionate benevolence towards these strong fellows, my seniors in years, whose unthinking mirth of mood was so much younger than mine. I liked the sports for their sake, and they gave me some casual place in their regard for sake of the games in which I shared--we were different so far--but the lingerings of my recluse spirit did by no means operate disadvantageously upon my physical activities. I had emerged into a new existence. I had entered the second stage of life.

Charlie was the son of my father’s only brother. I had never seen, and scarcely ever heard of, my uncle; but at his death, which took place a short time before his son’s arrival at Mossgray, Charlie, with the very slender inheritance that remained to him, had been committed to my father’s care, as his only near relative and guardian. To keep us together at Mossgray was the cheapest and easiest way of getting rid of us, and accordingly we were despatched together to the academy of Fendie.

A somewhat famous school in our district, which in its day has sent forth men into the world--men of stature and nobleness, some few, albeit it has filled up its quota with perhaps a greater than usual commodity of packmen; but a school of high standing and character withal, to which the neighbouring gentry, and the smaller fry of “genteel families” in Fendie, could send their sons without derogation. We made the usual progress, as I fancy, in those routine affairs which were called our studies. We learnt lessons with as much painstaking industry as we could summon up in the morning, and forgot them with the most praiseworthy ease at night. We were conscientious enough to play truant seldom--we had no more than our average of accidents. Charlie only twice fell into the water, and only once broke his arm. My nautical mischances had all some connection with the mill-lead at the Dean, my favourite nook. On the whole we got through admirably. Never boys on the Border were blyther than we.

Young Fendie of the mount was at an English boarding-school. Our sturdy home academy was not good enough for the young laird of that ilk. What storms of ridicule we poured upon him--he knapped English, he had a holy horror of torn breeks, he never climbed a tree in his life; and, crowning shame of all, it was whispered among us in the utmost scorn and derision, that his dainty cambric handkerchief was perfumed like a lady’s! We looked at the indefinite looking things in our own miscellaneous pockets, and echoed it with a storm of laughter. “He has scent on his napkin!” It was the very climax of derision: we could go no further.

Hew Murray, of Murrayshaugh, was our warmest friend. We met sometimes, when out-of-door amusements were impracticable, in the vaulted room in Mossgray Tower, where lay in state various remnants of ancestral mail, and which we called the armoury--to compare notes as to the changes which must have happened in the fortunes of Scotland, had we three chanced to fight at Falkirk with Wallace, or with James at Flodden. But whereas Hew Murray and I were chivalrously engrossed with considerations of what we could have done for Scotland, it always happened, as I recollect, that Charlie rose in glorious anticipation of knighthoods and earldoms and broad lands to be won by his sword and by his bow. Innocent chevaliers errant were we, not without a weakness for beautiful disconsolate princesses, and imprisoned ladies to be set free by our valour and fidelity, but the dazzling chances of war had greater fascination for Charlie. _Our_ hero contented himself with freeing the lady, and reducing the castle--_his_, took possession of the conquered stronghold and reigned in the stead of his enemy.

But our friends were not all of our own degree. A mile or two on the other side of Fendie lay a pretty house, which made up in its snug and comfortable proportions for its entire want of all the antiquities which clustered in hoary grace about Mossgray. Pertaining to it was a small farm, which sufficed to give its proprietor the much-esteemed territorial designation. The name of the place was Greenshaw, its owner’s Johnstone. People said that he had driven a homely enough trade in former days; but never man on the northern side of Skiddaw had seen any vestige of the pack on the broad shoulders of Mr Johnstone of Greenshaw. Besides, we do rather hold the “wanderer’s” trade in good repute in our country, so the rumour did the comfortable man no harm.

His son Walter was one of our sworn brethren. Walter Johnstone surpassed us all in daring; but the greatest heat of boyish excitement could scarcely bring any additional glow to his cheek, or throw the slightest tremor into his hand. Walter could calculate his time to a moment; he was never late, he was never hurried. Prompt and bold, cool and acute, he was the regulator and time-keeper of our obstreperous band.

Then there was Edward Maxwell, the widow’s son at the Watch-brae. He was the detrimental of our joyous parties. He always became weary at unseasonable times; he continually shirked his share of the work, and evaded the perilous parts of our excursions; but he had good looks in his favour, and a winning, ingratiating, caressing manner, which overcame our reproaches. It always happened, too, that Maxwell’s weakness brought him prominently forward among us. Speculations as to what he would do next, when he would fail in a fatigue, how he would glide out of a danger, with what new expedients he would excuse himself, kept our conversation full of him, and he felt the distinction, such as it was.

Other companions we had, greater and smaller as it chanced, for we were perfectly republican. Many kindly ties I have from that school-time with men of all classes, in all places and quarters of the earth: Australian settlers in the bush, merchants in London and Liverpool, distinguished men of literature, poor subalterns in India, humble shopkeepers in Fendie, small farmer-lairds in my own county; these pleasant threads of old connection are spun out far and near. I like it--there is a kindly universality of brotherhood in this, that seems to me as much better, as it is wider and further reaching than any mere friendships of one especial class, isolated, and standing upon the bare platform of their position.