THE MAD LAIRD

When Mistress Catanach arrived at the opening of a street which was just opposite her own door, and led steep toward the sea-town, she stood, and shading her eyes with her hooded hand, although the sun was far behind her, looked out to sea. It was the forenoon of a day of early summer. The larks were many and loud in the skies above her—for, although she stood in a street, she was only a few yards from the green fields—but she could hardly have heard them, for their music was not for her. To the northward, whither her gaze—if gaze it could be called—was directed, all but cloudless blue heavens stretched over an all but shadowless blue sea; two bold, jagged promontories, one on each side of her, formed a wide bay; between that on the west and the sea-town at her feet, lay a great curve of yellow sand, upon which the long breakers, born of last night’s wind, were still roaring from the north-east, although the gale had now sunk to a breeze—cold and of doubtful influence. From the chimneys of the fishermen’s houses below, ascended a yellowish smoke, which, against the blue of the sea, assumed a dull green colour as it drifted vanishing towards the south-west. But Mrs Catanach was looking neither at nor for anything: she had no fisherman husband, or any other relative at sea; she was but revolving something in her unwholesome mind, and this was her mode of concealing an operation which naturally would have been performed with down-bent head and eyes on the ground.

While she thus stood, a strange figure drew near, approaching her with step almost as noiseless as that with which she had herself made her escape from Miss Horn’s house. At a few yards’ distance from her it stood, and gazed up at her countenance as intently as she seemed to be gazing on the sea. It was a man of dwarfish height and uncertain age, with a huge hump upon his back, features of great refinement, a long thin beard, and a forehead unnaturally large, over eyes which, although of a pale blue, mingled with a certain mottled milky gleam, had a pathetic, dog-like expression. Decently dressed in black, he stood with his hands in the pockets of his trowsers, gazing immovably in Mrs Catanach’s face.

Becoming suddenly aware of his presence, she glanced downward, gave a great start and a half scream, and exclaimed in no gentle tones:

“Preserve ’s! Whaur come ye frae?”

It was neither that she did not know the man, nor that she meant any offence: her words were the mere embodiment of the annoyance of startled surprise; but their effect was peculiar.

Without a single other motion he turned abruptly on one heel, gazed seaward with quick-flushed cheeks and glowing eyes, but, apparently too polite to refuse an answer to the evidently unpleasant question, replied in low, almost sullen tones:

“I dinna ken whaur I come frae. Ye ken ’at I dinna ken whaur I come frae. I dinna ken whaur ye come frae. I dinna ken whaur onybody comes frae.”

“Hoot, laird! nae offence!” returned Mrs Catanach. “It was yer ain wyte (blame). What gart ye stan’ glowerin’ at a body that gait, ohn telled (without telling) them ’at ye was there?”

“I thocht ye was luikin’ whaur ye cam frae,” returned the man in tones apologetic and hesitating.

“’Deed I fash wi’ nae sic freits,” said Mrs Catanach.

“Sae lang ’s ye ken whaur ye’re gaein’ till,” suggested the man.

“Toots! I fash as little wi’ that either, and ken jist as muckle aboot the tane as the tither,” she answered with a low oily guttural laugh of contemptuous pity.

“I ken mair nor that mysel’, but no muckle,” said the man. “I dinna ken whaur I cam frae, and I dinna ken whaur I’m gaun till; but I ken ’at I’m gaun whaur I cam frae. That stan’s to rizzon, ye see; but they telled me ’at ye kenned a’ aboot whaur we a’ cam frae.”

“Deil a bit o’ ’t!” persisted Mrs Catanach, in tones of repudiation. “What care I whaur I cam frae, sae lang ’s—”

“Sae lang ’s what, gien ye please?” pleaded the man, with a childlike entreaty in his voice.

“Weel——gien ye wull hae ’t—sae lang ’s I cam frae my mither,” said the woman, looking down on the inquirer with a vulgar laugh.

The hunchback uttered a shriek of dismay, and turned and fled; and as he turned, long, thin, white hands flashed out of his pockets, pressed against his ears, and intertwined their fingers at the back of his neck. With a marvellous swiftness he shot down the steep descent towards the shore.

“The deil’s in ’t ’at I bude to anger him!” said the woman, and walked away, with a short laugh of small satisfaction.

The style she had given the hunchback was no nickname. Stephen Stewart was laird of the small property and ancient house of Kirkbyres, of which his mother managed the affairs—hardly for her son, seeing that, beyond his clothes, and five pounds a year of pocket-money, he derived no personal advantage from his possessions. He never went near his own house, for, from some unknown reason, plentifully aimed at in the dark by the neighbours, he had such a dislike to his mother that he could not bear to hear the name of mother, or even the slightest allusion to the relationship.

Some said he was a fool; others a madman; some both; none, however, said he was a rogue; and all would have been willing to allow that whatever it might be that caused the difference between him and other men, throughout the disturbing element blew ever and anon the air of a sweet humanity.

Along the shore, in the direction of the great rocky promontory that closed in the bay on the west, with his hands still clasped over his ears, as if the awful word were following him, he flew rather than fled. It was nearly low water, and the wet sand afforded an easy road to his flying feet. Betwixt sea and shore, a sail in the offing the sole other moving thing in the solitary landscape, like a hunted creature he sped, his footsteps melting and vanishing behind him in the half-quick sand.

Where the curve of the water-line turned northward at the root of the promontory, six or eight fishing boats were drawn up on the beach in various stages of existence. One was little more than half built, the fresh wood shining against the background of dark rock. Another was newly tarred; its sides glistened with the rich shadowy brown, and filled the air with a comfortable odour. Another wore age-long neglect on every plank and seam; half its props had sunk or decayed, and the huge hollow leaned low on one side, disclosing the squalid desolation of its lean-ribbed and naked interior, producing all the phantasmic effect of a great swampy desert; old pools of water overgrown with a green scum, lay in the hollows between its rotting timbers, and the upper planks were baking and cracking in the sun. Near where they lay a steep path ascended the cliff, whence through grass and ploughed land, it led across the promontory to the fishing village of Scaurnose, which lay on the other side of it. There the mad laird, or Mad Humpy, as he was called by the baser sort, often received shelter, chiefly from the family of a certain Joseph Mair, one of the most respectable inhabitants of the place.

But the way he now pursued lay close under the cliffs of the headland, and was rocky and difficult. He passed the boats, going between them and the cliffs, at a footpace, with his eyes on the ground, and not even a glance at the two men who were at work on the unfinished boat. One of them was his friend, Joseph Mair. They ceased their work for a moment to look after him.

“That’s the puir laird again,” said Joseph, the instant he was beyond hearing. “Something’s wrang wi’ him. I wonder what’s come ower him!”

“I haena seen him for a while noo,” returned the other. “They tell me ’at his mither made him ower to the deil afore he cam to the licht; and sae, aye as his birthday comes roun’, Sawtan gets the pooer ower him. Eh, but he’s a fearsome sicht whan he’s ta’en that gait!” continued the speaker. “I met him ance i’ the gloamin’, jist ower by the toon, wi’ his een glowerin’ like uily lamps, an’ the slaver rinnin’ doon his lang baird. I jist laup as gien I had seen the muckle Sawtan himsel’.”

“Ye nott na (needed not) hae dune that,” was the reply. “He’s jist as hairmless, e’en at the warst, as ony lamb. He’s but a puir cratur wha’s tribble’s ower strang for him—that’s a’. Sawtan has as little to du wi’ him as wi’ ony man I ken.”