Towards The Sea It Swells Out The Coast-Line Into
A Protuberance, Like A Bay-Window In A Plan, And Is Fortified
Against The Surf Behind Bold Crags.
This hill is known as the
Brown Hill of Carrick, or, more shortly, Brown Carrick.
It had snowed overnight. The fields were all sheeted up; they were
tucked in among the snow, and their shape was modelled through the
pliant counterpane, like children tucked in by a fond mother. The
wind had made ripples and folds upon the surface, like what the
sea, in quiet weather, leaves upon the sand. There was a frosty
stifle in the air. An effusion of coppery light on the summit of
Brown Carrick showed where the sun was trying to look through; but
along the horizon clouds of cold fog had settled down, so that
there was no distinction of sky and sea. Over the white shoulders
of the headlands, or in the opening of bays, there was nothing but
a great vacancy and blackness; and the road as it drew near the
edge of the cliff seemed to skirt the shores of creation and void
space.
The snow crunched under foot, and at farms all the dogs broke out
barking as they smelt a passer-by upon the road. I met a fine old
fellow, who might have sat as the father in 'The Cottar's Saturday
Night,' and who swore most heathenishly at a cow he was driving.
And a little after I scraped acquaintance with a poor body tramping
out to gather cockles. His face was wrinkled by exposure; it was
broken up into flakes and channels, like mud beginning to dry, and
weathered in two colours, an incongruous pink and grey. He had a
faint air of being surprised - which, God knows, he might well be -
that life had gone so ill with him. The shape of his trousers was
in itself a jest, so strangely were they bagged and ravelled about
his knees; and his coat was all bedaubed with clay as tough he had
lain in a rain-dub during the New Year's festivity. I will own I
was not sorry to think he had had a merry New Year, and been young
again for an evening; but I was sorry to see the mark still there.
One could not expect such an old gentleman to be much of a dandy or
a great student of respectability in dress; but there might have
been a wife at home, who had brushed out similar stains after fifty
New Years, now become old, or a round-armed daughter, who would
wish to have him neat, were it only out of self-respect and for the
ploughman sweetheart when he looks round at night. Plainly, there
was nothing of this in his life, and years and loneliness hung
heavily on his old arms. He was seventy-six, he told me; and
nobody would give a day's work to a man that age: they would think
he couldn't do it. 'And, 'deed,' he went on, with a sad little
chuckle, ''deed, I doubt if I could.' He said goodbye to me at a
footpath, and crippled wearily off to his work. It will make your
heart ache if you think of his old fingers groping in the snow.
He told me I was to turn down beside the school-house for Dunure.
And so, when I found a lone house among the snow, and heard a
babble of childish voices from within, I struck off into a steep
road leading downwards to the sea. Dunure lies close under the
steep hill: a haven among the rocks, a breakwater in consummate
disrepair, much apparatus for drying nets, and a score or so of
fishers' houses. Hard by, a few shards of ruined castle overhang
the sea, a few vaults, and one tall gable honeycombed with windows.
The snow lay on the beach to the tidemark. It was daubed on to the
sills of the ruin: it roosted in the crannies of the rock like
white sea-birds; even on outlying reefs there would be a little
cock of snow, like a toy lighthouse. Everything was grey and white
in a cold and dolorous sort of shepherd's plaid. In the profound
silence, broken only by the noise of oars at sea, a horn was
sounded twice; and I saw the postman, girt with two bags, pause a
moment at the end of the clachan for letters.
It is, perhaps, characteristic of Dunure that none were brought
him.
The people at the public-house did not seem well pleased to see me,
and though I would fain have stayed by the kitchen fire, sent me
'ben the hoose' into the guest-room. This guest-room at Dunure was
painted in quite aesthetic fashion. There are rooms in the same
taste not a hundred miles from London, where persons of an extreme
sensibility meet together without embarrassment. It was all in a
fine dull bottle-green and black; a grave harmonious piece of
colouring, with nothing, so far as coarser folk can judge, to hurt
the better feelings of the most exquisite purist. A cherry-red
half window-blind kept up an imaginary warmth in the cold room, and
threw quite a glow on the floor. Twelve cockle-shells and a half-
penny china figure were ranged solemnly along the mantel-shelf.
Even the spittoon was an original note, and instead of sawdust
contained sea-shells. And as for the hearthrug, it would merit an
article to itself, and a coloured diagram to help the text. It was
patchwork, but the patchwork of the poor; no glowing shreds of old
brocade and Chinese silk, shaken together in the kaleidoscope of
some tasteful housewife's fancy; but a work of art in its own way,
and plainly a labour of love. The patches came exclusively from
people's raiment. There was no colour more brilliant than a
heather mixture; 'My Johnny's grey breeks,' well polished over the
oar on the boat's thwart, entered largely into its composition.
And the spoils of an old black cloth coat, that had been many a
Sunday to church, added something (save the mark!) of preciousness
to the material.
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