The Guinea Stamp Part 12

'I think it would only be fair, Uncle Abel, if you told me now where we are going,' she said playfully.

For answer, he held out the ticket to her, and in amazement she read 'Mauchline' on it. The colour flushed all over her face, and she looked at him with eager, questioning eyes.

'Oh, Uncle Abel, what does it mean? Why are you going there to-day? I cannot understand it.'

'I have my reasons, Gladys. You will know them, perhaps, sooner than you think.'

'Is it a long journey, uncle? I am so afraid for you. Let me shut the window up quite. And are we really, really going into Ayrs.h.i.+re at last?'

She was full of excitement as a child. She sat close to the window, and when the train had left the city behind, looked out with eagerest interest on the wintry landscape.

'Oh, Uncle Abel, it is so beautiful to see it, the wide country, and the sky above it so clear and lovely. Oh, there is room to breathe!'

'I am sure it looks wintry and bleak enough,' the old man answered, with a grunt. 'I don't see much beauty in it myself.'

'How strange! To me it is wholly beautiful. Is this Ayrs.h.i.+re yet? Tell me when we come to Ayrs.h.i.+re.'

A slow smile was on the old man's face as he looked and listened. He enjoyed her young enthusiasm, but it seemed to awaken in him some sadder thought, for once he sighed heavily, and drew himself together as if he felt cold, or some bitter memory smote him.

In little more than an hour the train drew up at the quiet country station, and Gladys was told they had reached their journey's end. It was a lovely spring morning; the sun shone out cheerfully from a mild, bright sky, the air was laden with the awakening odours of spring, and the spirit of life seemed to be everywhere.

'Now, my girl, we have a great deal to do to-day,' said the old man, when they had crossed the footbridge. 'What do you want most to see here?'

'Mossgiel and Ballochmyle, and the house where you lived in Mauchline.'

'We'll go to that first; it's not a great sight, I warn you--only a whitewashed, thatched cottage in a by-street. When we've seen that, we'll take a trap and drive to the other places.'

'But that will cost a great deal,' said Gladys doubtfully, recalled for the moment to the small economies it was her daily lot to practise.

'Perhaps; but we'll manage it, I daresay. It is impossible for us to walk, so there's no use saying another word. Give me your arm.'

Gladys was ready in a moment. Never since the old fen days had she felt so happy, because the green earth was beneath her feet, the trees waving above her, the song of birds in her ears instead of the roar of city streets. They did not talk as they walked, until they turned into the quaint, wide street of the old-fas.h.i.+oned village; then it was as if the cloak of his reserve fell from Abel Graham, and he became garrulous as a boy over these old landmarks which he had never forgotten. He led Gladys by way of Poosie Nancie's tavern, showed her its cla.s.sic interior, and then, turning into a little narrow lane, pointed out the cottage where he and her father had been boys together.

It was the girl's turn to be silent. She was trying to picture the dear father a boy at his mother's knee, or running in and out that low doorway, or helping to swell the boyish din in the narrow street; and when they turned to go, her eyes were wet with tears.

'I would rather have come here to-day, Uncle Abel, than anywhere else in the whole wide world. But why did you wish to come? Did you take a sudden longing to see the old place?'

'No; that was not my object at all. You will know what it was some day.

Now we'll go to the inn and get something to eat while they get our machine ready. See, there's the old kirk; there's a lot of famous folk buried in that kirkyard. We'd better go in, and I'll show you where I want to be laid.'

They got the key of the churchyard gates, and, stepping across the somewhat untidily kept graves, stood before an uneven mound, surrounded by a very old mossgrown headstone.

'There's a name on it, child. You can't read it, but it doesn't matter,'

he said; but Gladys, bending down, brushed the tall gra.s.s from the stone, and read the name, John Bourhill Graham of Bourhill, and his spouse, Nancy Millar.

'Whose names are these, uncle--your father's and mother's?'

'Oh no; _they_ were not Grahams of Bourhill,' he answered dryly. 'That's generations back.'

'But the same family?'

'I suppose so--yes. I see you would like to explore this place; but we can't, it's not the most cheerful occupation, anyhow. Come on, let us to the inn.'

The lavish manner in which her uncle spent his money that day amazed Gladys, but she made no remark. Immediately after their hot and abundant dinner at the inn, they drove to the places Burns has immortalised, and which Gladys had so long yearned to see. Ballochmyle, in lovely spring dress, so far exceeded her expectation that she had no words wherein to express her deep enjoyment.

'Do not let us hurry away, uncle,' she pleaded, as they wandered through the wooded glades, 'unless you are very tired. It is so warm and pleasant, and it cannot be very late.'

'It is not late, half-past two only; but I want you to see Bourhill, where our forbears lived when we had them worth mentioning,' he said grimly. 'Did your father never speak to you about Bourhill?'

'No, never, Uncle Abel. I am quite sure I never heard the name until I read it to-day in the churchyard.'

'I will tell you why. He had a dream--a foolish one it proved--a dream that he might one day restore the name Graham of Bourhill again. He hoped to make a fortune by his pictures, but it was a vain delusion.'

A shadow clouded the bright face of Gladys as she listened to these words.

'This place, Bourhill, is it an estate, or what?' she asked.

'Not now. A hundred years ago it had some farms, and was a fair enough patrimony, but it's all squandered long syne.'

'How?'

'Oh, drink and gambling, and such-like. My grandfather, David Graham, kent the taste of Poosie Nancie's whisky too well to look after his ain, and it slipped through his fingers like a knotless thread.'

He had become even more garrulous, and unearthed from the storehouse of his memory a wealth of reminiscences of those old times, mingled with many bits of personal history, which Gladys listened to with breathless interest. She had never seen him so awakened, so full of life and vigour; she could only look at him in amazement. They drove leisurely through the pleasant spring suns.h.i.+ne over the wide, beautiful country, past fields where the wheat was green and strong, and others where sowing was progressing merrily--sights and sounds dear to Gladys, who had no part nor lot in cities.

'Oh, Uncle Abel, Ayrs.h.i.+re is lovely. Look at these low green hills in the distance, and the woods everywhere. I do not wonder that Burns could write poetry here. There is poetry everywhere.'

'Ay, to your eyes, because you are young and know no better. Look, away over yonder, as far as your eyes can see, is the sea. If it was a little clearer you would see the s.h.i.+ps in Ayr Harbour; and down there lies Tarbolton; away over there, the way we have come, Kilmarnock. And do you see that little wooded hill about two miles ahead to the left? Among these trees lies Bourhill.'

'It is a long drive to it, Uncle Abel. I hope it has not tired you very much?'

'No, no; I'm all right. We'll drive up the avenue to the house and back.

I want you to see it.'

'Does n.o.body live in it?'

'Not just now.'

Another fifteen minutes brought them to an unpretending iron gateway, which gave entrance to an avenue of fine old trees. The gate stood open, and though a woman ran out from the lodge when the trap pa.s.sed, she made no demur.

The avenue was nearly half a mile in length, and ended in a sharp curve, which brought them quite suddenly before the house--a plain, square, substantial family dwelling, with a pillared doorway and long wide windows, about which crept ivy of a century's growth. It was all shut up, and the gravel sweep before the door was overgrown with moss and weeds, the gra.s.s on the lawns, which stretched away through the shrubberies, long and rank; yet there was a homely look about it too, as if a slight touch could convert it into a happy home.

'This is Bourhill, my girl; and whatever ambitions your father may have had in later years, it was once his one desire to buy it back to the Grahams. Do you like the place?'

'Yes, uncle; but it is very desolate--it makes me sad.'

'It will not be long so,' he said; and, drawing himself together with a quick s.h.i.+ver, he bade the driver turn the horses' heads. But before the house vanished quite from view he cast his gaze back upon it, and in his eye there was a strange, even a yearning glance. 'It will not be long so,' he repeated under his breath,--'not long; and it will be a great atonement.'