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Stories Of Bleakirk
by
“To me this form of the herb nicotiana commends itself by its cheapness: the sense is tickled, the purse consenting–like the complaisant husband in Juvenal: you take me? I am well acquainted with Bleakirk-super-sabulum. By the way, how is Squire Cartwright of the Hall?”
“If,” said I, “you mean my father, Angus Cartwright, he is dead these twelve years.”
“Hey?” cried the old gentleman, and added after a moment, “Ah, to be sure, time flies–quo dives Tullus et–Angus, eh? And yet a hearty man, to all seeming. So you are his son.” He took another pinch. “It is very sustaining,” he said.
“The snuff?”
“You have construed me, sir. Since I set out, just thirteen hours since, it has been my sole viaticum.” As he spoke he put his hand nervously to his forehead, and withdrew it.
“Then,” thought I, “you must have started in the middle of the night,” for it was now little past noon. But looking at his face, I saw clearly that it was drawn and pinched with fasting. Whereupon I remembered my flask and sandwich-box, and pulling them out, assured him, with some apology for the offer, that they were at his service. His joy was childish. Again he whipped off his hat, and clapping it to his heart, swore my conduct did honour to my dead father; “and with Angus Cartwright,” said he, “kindness was intuitive. Being a habit, it outran reflection; and his whisky, sir, was undeniable. Come, I have a fancy. Let us dismount, and, in heroic fashion, spread our feast upon the turf; or, if the hoar-frost deter you, see, here are boulders, and a running brook to dilute our cups; and, by my life, a foot-bridge, to the rail of which we may tether our steeds.”
Indeed, we had come to a hollow in the road, across which a tiny beck, now swollen with the rains, was chattering bravely. Falling in with my companion’s humour, I dismounted, and, after his example, hitched my mare’s rein over the rail. There was a raciness about the adventure that took my fancy. We chose two boulders from a heap of lesser stones close beside the beck, and divided the sandwiches, for though I protested I was not hungry, the old gentleman insisted on our sharing alike. And now, as the liquor warmed his heart and the sunshine smote upon his back, his eyes sparkled, and he launched on a flood of the gayest talk–yet always of a world that I felt was before my time. Indeed, as he rattled on, the feeling that this must be some Rip Van Winkle restored from a thirty years’ sleep grew stronger and stronger upon me. He spoke of Bleakirk, and displayed a knowledge of it sufficiently thorough–intimate even–yet of the old friends for whom he inquired many names were unknown to me, many familiar only through their epitaphs in the windy cemetery above the cliff. Of the rest, the pretty girls he named were now grandmothers, the young men long since bent and rheumatic; the youngest well over fifty. This, however, seemed to depress him little. His eyes would sadden for a moment, then laugh again. “Well, well,” he said, “wrinkles, bald heads, and the deafness of the tomb–we have our day notwithstanding. Pluck the bloom of it–hey? a commonplace of the poets.”
“But, sir,” I put in as politely as I might, “you have not yet told me with whom I have the pleasure of lunching.”
“Gently, young sir.” He waved his hand towards the encircling moors. “We have feasted more Homerico, and in Homer, you remember the host allowed his guest fourteen days before asking that question. Permit me to delay the answer only till I have poured libation on the turf here. Ah! I perceive the whisky is exhausted: but water shall suffice. May I trouble you–my joints are stiff–to fill your drinking-cup from the brook at your feet?”