Bob Son of Battle [5]
malice and all uncharitableness. And that is why it is ever memorable.
The little Scotsman with the sardonic face had been the tenant of the Grange these many years; yet he had never grown acclimatized to the land of the Southron. With his shrivelled body and weakly legs he looked among the sturdy, straight-limbed sons of the hill-country like some brown, wrinkled leaf holding its place midst a galaxy of green. And as he differed from them physically, so he did morally.
He neither understood them nor attempted to. The North-country character was an unsolved mystery to him, and that after ten years' study. "One-half o' what ye say they doot, and they let ye see it; t'ither half they -disbelieve, and they tell ye so," he once said. And that explained his attitude toward them, and consequently theirs toward him.
He stood entirely alone; a son of Hagar, mocking. His sharp, ill tongue was rarely still, and always bitter. There was hardly a. man in the land, from Langholm How to the market-cross in Grammoch-town, but had at one time known its sting, endured it in silence,--for they are slow of speech, these men of the fells and meres,--and was nursing his resentment till a day should bring that chance which always comes. And when at the Sylvester Arms, on one of those rare occasions when M'Adam was not present, Tammas summed up the little man in that historic phrase of his, "When he's drunk he's wi'lent, and when he bain't he's wicious," there was an applause to gratify the blas? heart of even Tammas Thornton.
Yet it had not been till his wife's death that the little man had allowed loose rein to his ill-nature. With her firmly gentle hand no longer on the tiller of his life, it burst into. fresh being. And alone in the world with David, the whole venom of his vicious temperament was ever directed against the boy's head. It was as though he saw in his fair-haired son the unconscious cause of his ever-living sorrow. All the more strange this, seeing that, during her life, the boy had been to poor Flora M'Adam as her heart's core. And the lad was growing up the very antithesis of his father. Big and hearty, with never an ache or ill in the whole of his sturdy young body; of frank, open countenance; while even his speech was slow and burring like any Dale-bred boy's. And the fact of it all, and that the lad was palpably more Englishman than Scot--ay, and gloried in it--exasperated the little man, a patriot before everything, to blows. While, on top of it, David evinced an amazing pertness fit to have tried a better man than Adam M'Adam.
On the death of his wife, kindly Elizabeth Moore had, more than once, offered such help to the lonely little man as a woman only can give in a house that knows no mistress. On the last of these occasions, after crossing the 'Stony Bottom, which divides the two farms, and toiling up the hill to the Grange, she had met M'Adam in the door.
"Yo' maun let me put yo' bit things straight .for yo', mister," she had said shyly; for she feared the little man.
"Thank ye, Mrs. Moore," he had answered with the sour smile the Dalesmen knew so well, "but ye maun think I'm a waefu' cripple." And there he had stood, grinning sardonically, opposing his small bulk in the very centre of the door.
Mrs. Moore had turned down the hill, abashed and hurt at the reception of her offer; and her husband, proud to a fault, had forbidden her to repeat it. Nevertheless her motherly heart went out in a great tenderness for the little orphan David. She knew well the desolateness of his life; his father's aversion from him, and its inevitable consequences.
It became an institution for the boy to call every morning at Kenmuir, and trot off to the village school with Maggie Moore. And soon the lad came to look on Kenmuir as his true home, and James and Elizabeth Moore as his real parents. His greatest happiness was to be away from the Grange. And the ferret-eyed little man there noted the fact, bitterly resented it, and vented his ill-humor accordingly.
It was this, as he deemed it, uncalled-for trespassing
The little Scotsman with the sardonic face had been the tenant of the Grange these many years; yet he had never grown acclimatized to the land of the Southron. With his shrivelled body and weakly legs he looked among the sturdy, straight-limbed sons of the hill-country like some brown, wrinkled leaf holding its place midst a galaxy of green. And as he differed from them physically, so he did morally.
He neither understood them nor attempted to. The North-country character was an unsolved mystery to him, and that after ten years' study. "One-half o' what ye say they doot, and they let ye see it; t'ither half they -disbelieve, and they tell ye so," he once said. And that explained his attitude toward them, and consequently theirs toward him.
He stood entirely alone; a son of Hagar, mocking. His sharp, ill tongue was rarely still, and always bitter. There was hardly a. man in the land, from Langholm How to the market-cross in Grammoch-town, but had at one time known its sting, endured it in silence,--for they are slow of speech, these men of the fells and meres,--and was nursing his resentment till a day should bring that chance which always comes. And when at the Sylvester Arms, on one of those rare occasions when M'Adam was not present, Tammas summed up the little man in that historic phrase of his, "When he's drunk he's wi'lent, and when he bain't he's wicious," there was an applause to gratify the blas? heart of even Tammas Thornton.
Yet it had not been till his wife's death that the little man had allowed loose rein to his ill-nature. With her firmly gentle hand no longer on the tiller of his life, it burst into. fresh being. And alone in the world with David, the whole venom of his vicious temperament was ever directed against the boy's head. It was as though he saw in his fair-haired son the unconscious cause of his ever-living sorrow. All the more strange this, seeing that, during her life, the boy had been to poor Flora M'Adam as her heart's core. And the lad was growing up the very antithesis of his father. Big and hearty, with never an ache or ill in the whole of his sturdy young body; of frank, open countenance; while even his speech was slow and burring like any Dale-bred boy's. And the fact of it all, and that the lad was palpably more Englishman than Scot--ay, and gloried in it--exasperated the little man, a patriot before everything, to blows. While, on top of it, David evinced an amazing pertness fit to have tried a better man than Adam M'Adam.
On the death of his wife, kindly Elizabeth Moore had, more than once, offered such help to the lonely little man as a woman only can give in a house that knows no mistress. On the last of these occasions, after crossing the 'Stony Bottom, which divides the two farms, and toiling up the hill to the Grange, she had met M'Adam in the door.
"Yo' maun let me put yo' bit things straight .for yo', mister," she had said shyly; for she feared the little man.
"Thank ye, Mrs. Moore," he had answered with the sour smile the Dalesmen knew so well, "but ye maun think I'm a waefu' cripple." And there he had stood, grinning sardonically, opposing his small bulk in the very centre of the door.
Mrs. Moore had turned down the hill, abashed and hurt at the reception of her offer; and her husband, proud to a fault, had forbidden her to repeat it. Nevertheless her motherly heart went out in a great tenderness for the little orphan David. She knew well the desolateness of his life; his father's aversion from him, and its inevitable consequences.
It became an institution for the boy to call every morning at Kenmuir, and trot off to the village school with Maggie Moore. And soon the lad came to look on Kenmuir as his true home, and James and Elizabeth Moore as his real parents. His greatest happiness was to be away from the Grange. And the ferret-eyed little man there noted the fact, bitterly resented it, and vented his ill-humor accordingly.
It was this, as he deemed it, uncalled-for trespassing