Barracks, Bivouacs and Battles. Forbes Archibald
her rising sobs.
The simple service ended, the people streamed out through the door that Robbie had thrown open; we of the manse party were the last to emerge. It was part of Robbie’s duty, as kirk officer, to “cry” to the dispersing congregation all notices placed in his hands for purposes of publicity, the duplicates of which he had previously nailed on the kirk door. The kirk officer in those primitive regions was the chief medium for giving good advertisement. As we came out Robbie was standing in the centre of a large circle, calling out in his high falsetto the particulars of a “displenish sale.” “Fower good stots, three milk kye, a pair of workhorses, farm implements, household furniture,” and so on.
This finished, there was a pause. Sergeant Robbie folded up the sale advertisement; as he did this his hand was trembling so that it fell to the ground. He stooped, picked the paper up and put it in the rear pocket of his coat; then from out his breast-pocket he pulled a folded blue document. He braced himself firmly, came to rigid “attention” as if he were in the presence of his commanding officer, and slowly opened out the blue paper.
“Dinna read it, Robbie!” “Dinna read it, sergeant!” came from a dozen voices in the sympathising circle around him. “It’s no necessar’ – ye needna, ye maunna read it,” cried the senior elder, James Cameron, of the Gauldwell, with a sob in his thin old voice.
It was as if the sergeant heard no word of dissuasion. He had opened out the paper and was holding it between his hands, standing there braced at “attention” and fighting down the working in his throat that momentarily was staying his voice.
Behind him, as he thus struggled, broke out the piteous wail “Oh, my laddie, my laddie!” from the very depths of poor Tibbie’s heart, followed by a burst of loud sobs.
The sergeant did not turn to his wife – boy as I was, I remember it struck me that he dared not.
“Belnabreich,” he said to an old farmer standing directly in front of him, “Belnabreich, tak’ her hame, tak’ her awa’ frae this, in the name of God!”
Old Belnabreich moved towards Tibbie, but before he reached her she got the mastery of herself again.
“Thank ye, Belnabreich,” she said, “ye’ve a kind heart; but I’m gaun tae bide here, whaur my man is. We’ve come through muckle thegither, and we’ll thole this disgrace thegither, and syne him an’ me, bairnless noo, will tak’ our sorrow hame thegither.”
The water was standing in the sergeant’s eyes, but the spasm was out of his throat now, and in a steady strong voice that carried far, he read out the print on the face of the blue paper. And this was what it befell him to have to read:
Whereas No. 1420, Corporal Peter Strachan of the 92nd Regiment, age twenty-four years, height five feet eleven inches, complexion ruddy, hair red, eyes blue, distinguishing marks none, enlisted at Aberdeen on the – day of – 1844, born in the Parish of Auchterturff, in the County of Banff, and resident in said parish before enlistment: Deserted from the said regiment at Montreal, Canada, on the – day of – 1848: The lieges are hereby warned under pain of law against harbouring the said deserter, and are strictly enjoined to give immediate information to the nearest police officer should they become cognisant of his whereabouts, to the end that he may be apprehended and duly punished.
The sergeant uttered the final invocation in a loud firm tone, and a graceless callant in the background, unwitting of the tragedy of the situation, cried “Hurrah.” Otherwise there reigned a dead silence, as the old man, turning to his wife, gave her his arm with a certain courtliness rare among north country husbands of the humbler classes, and conducted her out of the little throng. The pair were allowed to get out of hearing ere the little stir of comment and condolence set in – it did not last long, for most of the folk had to trudge some distance to their homes. I remember watching the lonely couple as they wended their way along the path by the side of the wood, the dumpy huddled figure in the duffle shawl leaning against the tall spare form in the quaint old blue coat that had once belonged to the Duke, and the threadbare tartan trews that were a relic of the old regimentals.
From that Sunday old Sergeant Robbie was an altered man. Never more did he cross the hill for the once cherished “crack” with his Peninsular friend the Duke. Never more could the lads entice him to a dram in the Blackhillock public-house. He duly came to his work in the manse garden, but we boys hung about him in vain for stories of his old fighting days; a great silence had fallen upon the old man. His lean figure began to lose its erectness, and soon you scarcely would have known him for a veteran soldier. There remained one link only between him and my father, the interchange of the snuff-mull. But there were no more of the genial little chats that had been wont to accompany the give-and-take. From that Sunday Robbie was a man of monosyllables, and even my mother could not penetrate his grim reserve. He became yet more laconic after he lost Tibbie, who never held her head up from the day she knew of her son’s disgrace. The poor old woman faded out within a couple of years, and Robbie had no longer the consolation that comes from having sorrow shared. After her death he gave up his duties as bellman and kirk officer, and scarcely left his cottage except to attend church. When I went to say farewell to him before leaving home to go to school, I found him sitting in front of the fire, staring blankly at the smouldering peats. That was the last time I saw the old man.
A year or two later a letter from home told me that old Robbie had heard from his son. The deserter, it appeared, had made his way to Chicago, had gone into some business in that stirring place, and was making money fast. He had written home begging his parents – he had not heard of his mother’s death – to come out to him in America, and had enclosed a draft for an ample sum of money to pay the charges of the voyage and journey. The stern old man would hold no terms with the son who had disgraced his parents and dishonoured his uniform. He told my father curtly that he had folded the draft in a blank sheet of paper, and sent it back by return of post.
The tough old soldier, weary of life as he was, lasted a few years longer. At length one day the parish was stirred by the news that he had been found lying dead in a ditch some three miles away from his cottage, about half-way between it and the village of Keith. And before that day was done, the parish throughout its length and breadth knew also that Robbie’s son, the deserter, had been apprehended and carried off to jail by Neil Robertson, the head of the county police.
The strange details were gathered piecemeal. A niece, a girl, who had come to live with the old man in his later feebleness, told that one night late a knock had come to the cottage door. The old man had opened it himself and was confronted by his son. She had overheard their brief colloquy. The son had begged the father to forgive him, and to leave home at once with him for America; he had a conveyance close by, and they might start immediately. The stern father had bidden the son begone out of his sight. He would not let the young man pass the threshold of the cottage, and told him plainly that if he did not quit the neighbourhood without an hour’s delay, he would inform against him. With that he had shut the door in his son’s face, prayed with tears and groans for two hours, and then lain down in his clothes. Before daylight the son had returned to the cottage, having, he told her, spent the night in the adjacent wood, and from outside the window had adjured his father to see him, if but for a moment. The old man would speak no word, lying silent in the press-bed opposite the fire; and as the day dawned the son had gone away, calling out to his father that he would come back again at night. The old man had lain late, groaning and praying in bed; about noon he had got up, read a chapter of the Bible aloud, and taking his stick had gone forth. She had hoped he was gone to look for his son; but he never came back, and the next thing she heard was that he had been found dead. The son had returned at night, but she had “steekit” the door, and made no answer when he called.
Neil Robertson, the head of the county police, furnished the sequel of the sad story. The old sergeant had come to his house in Keith as the short day was waning, and said he had come to do his duty and formally lodge the information that Peter Strachan, a deserter from the 92nd Regiment, had been to his cottage that morning, and that he believed him to be still in its neighbourhood. Robertson, knowing the relationship, had been reluctant to take the information, but the sergeant had sternly bidden