A Christmas Sketch.
Originally published in Leigh Hunt's Journal (Edward Moxon) vol.1 #4 (28 Dec 1850).
"I can bear it no longer, wife—the piteous moaning of that child rives my heart: I will set out, while it is yet light, and fetch help, if help is to be had from man; though it is upon God alone that we maun mainly trust."
"Weel, Malcolm, weel—sae be it! The puir bairn maun e'en hae help. But oh! it's an eerie nicht without. The lift's heavy and black, and I fear a storm's brewin'—sae mak haste, an' a' may be weel yet."
The moan of a child was heard wailing through the little chamber; at which the mother hastened to its side, and tried to soothe it by kind words and caresses. But the child only moaned, and convulsively stretched out its little hands as if in agony.
"Heaven help the puir wee lambie!" she sobbed, gazing on the child sorrowfully. "Far from frien's, and far from help!"
"No: help shall be found yet, Alice! Cheer up; it may be but a sma' thing after a'. I'll fetch a doctor from the town; and—down, Lauth, down!—keep the dog beside you; he'll be better company than nane. Down, I say, down!"
His thick plaid was now about his shoulders—his bonnet firm set upon his head, and affectionately embracing his wife, with a stout staff and a strong heart, he strode out into the night.
The wind was howling down the gullies of the hills, driving before it a congealed mist, which blew through the air, and scarcely yet touched the ground, hard with frost. As he turned the dyke-corner, the blast seized him like some fury, and had almost driven him back, but he wrestled onward along the path down the glen. The mountains behind looked black, and their heads were lost in the thick darkness which brooded over them. The clouds scudded across the sky overhead, which was becoming rapidly overcast, and the light was fast disappearing. As Malcolm turned out of the little valley, in the hollow of which his hut lay sheltered, he looked behind, and the light of the lamp, already trimmed by faithful Alice, looked bright and cheerful. But he averted his gaze, and strode on again, breasting the storm, which became more violent at every step.
He had now the long moor to cross, every inch of which was familiar to him from a child: he knew its every hollow, and bog, and cairn, and knoll—each stunted bush and briary thicket; and more than all, the wimpling burn where he had played so often in his boyish sports. But, somehow, he had never crossed it before so sad at heart. A nameless dread accompanied him, that seemed to whirl and eddy above his head and about his heart—a dreary, undefinable sensation of fear or awe, or both combined—a confused impression of the terrible and sorrowful, akin to the wild fury of the hurricane, and the moaning, howling gusts that swept across the waste. But still he pressed on, striking his staff into the ground, drawing his plaid more closely around him, and grappling with the tempest against which he made his way.
The snow was now falling thick, though on more exposed spots it was whirled away on the blast and drifted into the deep hollows, where it lay, or eddied behind the projecting spurs of the hills, or behind the cairns and knolls along the waste, where it gathered up into huge mounds of white. The air was thick with the drift, which beat upon the traveller's face, and the hurricane howled about him, until his senses became confused, stupified, and reeling. He no longer saw the road before him, but trusting to his intimate knowledge of it, he felt his way warily with his staff; but at length that too failed him, the fallen snow concealing the road, whose hard beat he could no longer detect, except in exposed places here and there, now becoming fewer as the snow fell more rapidly, without any abatement in the fury of the storm. The wind seemed now to beat the snow into the earth as it fell, and while it eddied the fierce flakes far and wide around, it had no longer power to wield the accumulated mass which now lay spread over the moor at every part.
Still he sped on, with a stout heart, praying inwardly for help as one in great peril and danger. Confused though he was, he lost not courage: the woman's face he had left behind, by the ingle in the lone hut, lighted him on, and nerved him to renewed efforts. For more than an hour he has thus wrestled; and by this time he must, if in the right path, have struck into the beaten high road leading to the little town for which he was journeying. It is true, he had lost note of time, from the hissing fury of the elements around him; but still he felt that he must now be near his destination, or—he knew not where!
But hark! what is that? He can see nothing, but he feels that he is descending a rapid steep, and he hears rising far above the roar of the wind, the thunderous rush of waters, and the shriek of the tempest howling through some rifted channel. Then he thinks that he discerns through the flaky gloom the swoln and impetuous river luring him on to his destruction. He starts back! a few more steps, and he would have been swept away, and the lone watcher's heart-light extinguished for ever. He now feels that he has lost his road! and on such a night! and on such an errand! Poor Alice, weep for him now! thy child moaning in pain, thy husband on the verge of death. But no; he loses not heart yet. He turns back on the road he has come, retraces his steps, tries to feel his way in the dark by the aid of his staff—every few steps halting to discern again the roar of the waters which he had just escaped.
He now tried to recollect himself of the direction in which he had come—that boiling, surging whirlpool, on whose brink he had just stood, must be the tiny stream—the wimpling burn of the summer-time, but how swoln and distorted now! So, then; by keeping to the right, wide of the stream, he must yet strike the high road, not very far from where he then was. He strode on—now into a snow-drift, out of which he struggled and toiled before it had enveloped him in its folds; then, fetching a compass, he endeavoured to reach the point beyond it, eager, if possible, to keep a straight line in the direction in which he imagined the high-road now lay; but, in so many turnings and windings, he again became more confused than ever, and an houwr's struggling seemed to bring him no nearer deliverance from the perils of the storm. His spirits dropped. He was exhausted, weary, and sick at heart. His ears rang, his eyes swam, and he sank down in a sheltered spot under cover of a snow-drift. Fatal rest; yet how sweet! A delicious calm steals over his senses; in fancy he hears the murmur of the summer breeze, the rustling of the waving fern, and the lark's ravishing song pouring from the silver-lined cloud; he is steeped in oblivion, and time and life and its cares are at once blotted from his memory.
But hark! the sharp, loud barking of a dog draws near! It is Lauth, honest Lauth, who runs up to his numbed and fast-expiring master, seizes his plaid with his teeth, as if to waken him up, lies down upon him, licks his hands and face, then barks again, and pulls at his garment. Malcolm slowly rouses himself from his stupor, the presence of the dog reminding him of the cause of his being there, and suddenly he starts again to his feet, and grasps his staff. He is numbed and stiff, but, thank God! awake. He shakes the snow from about him, the dog wagging his tail and barking the while, and then the pair set forth once more.
The storm has now somewhat subsided—the wind has gone down—and only the roaring of the angry waters, still close at hand, iS distinctly heard. Malcolm again set forward in the direction in which the town must lie; and the faint moonlight now enabled him to avoid the deeper snow-drifts with comparatively small difficulty. Lauth's bark was now echoed or responded to, not far off. He listened, and new the friendly sound. It proceeded from the herdsman's hut on the moor's edge, and now he knew directly where he was. A few minutes brought him to the high-road.
But now a new terror haunted his mind. What of the cottage in the howe of the glen, where he had left his Alice watching over the sick child, and, doubtless, now anxiously waiting his return? Would not the drift lie deep there? He shuddered to think of this; and when he saw how thick the snow lay along the highway—so thick that he had to skirt it about, and fetch a long compass to reach the little town, whose twinkling lights were now in sight—he feared the return home would be almost as difficult as be almost as difficult as the outward journey. But leaving him to find the doctor, and make his way back to the hut as he best can, we now return to Alice, who is holding her night-watch in her lonely cottage among the hills.
Scarcely had Malcolm departed than she felt a sudden sinking of the heart; and a sense of awe and dread came over her. She had often been left alone before, on nights as rude as this, when Malcolm was out tending the sheep, or watching them to their folds; but she remembered no such fear and anxiety on his account. She was nervous and alarmed by the state of her child, and all things presented themselves to her now in an aspect of gloom. The howling of the wind, also, had now become fearful; and it swept down the glen in furious gusts, driving clouds of snow before it.
The hut was placed in a sheltered spot, near the bottom of the valley, protected on its western side by a huge crag, which broke the force of the wind which raged along the glen from that quarter. But this very circumstance rendered it more liable to the drift, which eddied around the little cottage, and soon wrapt it in its fleecy folds. Some gusts, fiercer than the rest, had, in their wild eddyings, struck the cabin door, and, through its chinks, driven the fleecy shower into the very centre of the apartment. Looking at the little window, she saw that it was now battered with snow, and that the drift was already gathering round her dwelling. She shuddered to think of her husband, contending with the fury of the elements without, and bethought her of at once sending after him old Lauth, a sagacious brute, who still lay whining at the door, and occasionally scratching at it with his paws. Sh« at once proceeded to open the door—Lauth springing up, wagging his tail—and, swinging it back, she pointed with her finger down the glen, and said, "Seek him, Lauth! seek him!" The affectionate animal needed no encouragement; he bounded off, and was soon lost amid the drifts which whirled along the valley.
The night wore on slowly; the wife was now no less anxious for her husband's fate than for her child's. The little sufferer still moaned, but he slept, and she was thankful. She sat over the fire, rocking to and fro, and moaning her regrets to the night. Now she would sit and listen. It was an approaching voice—no! it was only the rattle of the cottage pane;—or was that Lauth's bark? No! it was only the screeching of the wind over the rude chimney-top. Or hark! was that the tread of feet? Ah, no! The snow now lies thick--it was only the cracking of the sand under the wooden stool on which she sits rocking and moaning.
Malcolm comes not. The night passes wearily by. Occasionally she falls into a doze, and starts up at the
fancied sound of voices. The little sufferer is quiet, he breathes more easily—but Malcolm!--where is he? And so the long night passes; and at length a feeble glimmer of light peers through the cottage window, but it is thick with snow, and nothing is to be seen beyond it. She opens the cottage door, and a solid mass of snow blocks up the opening! The hut is buried, and, from the smoke which has been accumulating in the apartment, she fears the chimney is becoming choked. In this dilemma, what is she to do? Low though the chimney was, its upper opening was quite beyond her reach, and there seemed no chance of escape for the inmates, save to let the turf fire go out entirely; and this while the hut lay enveloped in snow!
Her heart now sank, and her hopes gave way altogether. She and her dear infant son must thus perish in the slow agonies of cold and hunger! Malcolm must have been lost in this fearful storm, else he would have been here long ago! Why should she wish to survive? This home, where they had known joy and sorrow together--which had been their bridal-house--would now be her tomb. She clasped her child to her bosom: he looked up, and smiled in her face: her tears fell fast: she was choking: she was giddy and almost unconscious. Was it the fumes of the peat, or the cold now stealing upon her? Ha! thank Heaven! there is the sound of voices! and that, oh! Lauth's honest bark! It was almost too much joy to bear. She and her child would be rescued yet! There were many voices, but they sounded remote--deadened by the mass of snow which imbedded the hut.
But the sound comes nearer and nearer! It is now close at hand--it is at the door; and she hears Malcolm's voice above all--"Alice! Alice! dear Alice!" She tried to call out his name; she tried to shriek; but her voice stuck in her throat. He shouted louder; but no response. The door bursts open--Malcolm rushes in,--and making a last effort, she rises to meet him; and in another second she staggers into his open arms with her infant burden.
"Thank God!" he ejaculated. "She is saved; and the dear child too!" The fresh breath of air, and the help of the doctor, now at hand, soon revived them both; and, in a few hours, the friendly shepherds, with their spades, had cleared the shieling of its drift, and left the loving pair full of deep gratitude for their providential deliverance from the dangers of the fearful Snow-Storm.