John Splendid Part 19

"I favoured no such impolitic act," said he, slowly. "I saw you were bent on going, and I but backed you up, to leave you some rags of illusion to cover your naked sin."

"I thought no less," said Argile, sadly, "and yet, do you know, Iain, you did me a bad turn yonder. You made mention of my family's safety, and it was the last straw that broke the back of my resolution. One word of honest duty from you at that time had kept me in Inner-aora though Abijah's array and Jeroboam's horse and foot were coming down the glens."

For a little M'Iver gave no answer, but sat in a chair of torture.

"I am sorry for it," he said at last, in a voice that was scarce his own; "I'm in an agony for it now; and your horse was not round Strone before I could have bit out the tongue that flattered your folly."

MacCailein smiled with a solemn pity that sat oddly on the sinister face that was a mask to a complex and pliable soul.

"I have no doubt," said he, "and that's why I said you were a devil's counsellor. Man, cousin! have we not played together as boys on the sh.o.r.e, and looked at each other on many a night across a candid bowl? I know you like the open book; you and your kind are the weak, strong men of our Highland race. The soft tongue and the dour heart; the good man at most things but at your word!"

CHAPTER XVI.--OUR MARCH FOR LOCHABER.

The essence of all human melancholy is in the sentiment of farewells.

There are people roving about the world, to-day here, to-morrow afar, who cheat fate and avoid the most poignant wrench of this common experience by letting no root of their affection strike into a home or a heart Self-contained, aloof, unloved, and unloving, they make their campaign through life in movable tents that they strike as gaily as they pitch, and, beholding them thus evade the one touch of sorrow that is most inevitable and bitter to every sensitive soul, I have sometimes felt an envy of their fortune. To me the world was almost mirthful if its good-byes came less frequent. Cold and heat, the contumely of the slanderer, the insult of the tyrant, the agues and fevers of the flesh, the upheavals of personal fortune, were events a robust man might face with calm valiancy if he could be spared the cheering influence of the homely scene or the unchanged presence of his familiars and friends. I have sat in companies and put on an affected mirth, and laughed and sung with the most buoyant of all around, and yet ever and anon I chilled at the intruding notion of life's brevity.

Thus my leaving town Inneraora--its frozen hearths, its smokeless vents, its desecrated doorways, and the few of my friends who were back to it--was a stupendous grief. My father and my kinspeople were safe--we had heard of them by the returners from Lennox; but a girl with dark tresses gave me a closer pa.s.sion for my native burgh than ever I felt for the same before. If love of his lady had been Argile's reason for retreat (thought I), there was no great mystery in his act.

What enhanced my trouble was that Clan MacLachlan--as Catholics always safe to a degree from the meddling of the invaders--had re-established themselves some weeks before in their own territory down the loch, and that young Lachlan, as his father's proxy, was already manifesting a guardian's interest in his cousin. The fact came to my knowledge in a way rather odd, but characteristic of John Splendid's anxiety to save his friends the faintest breeze of ill-tidings.

We were up early betimes in the morning of our departure for Lorn, though our march was fixed for the afternoon, as we had to await the arrival of some officers from Ceanntyre; and John and I, preparing our accoutrements, began to talk of the business that lay heaviest at my heart--the leaving of the girl we had found in Strongara wood.

"The oddest thing that ever happened to me," he said, after a while, "is that in the matter of this child she mothers so finely she should be under the delusion that I have the closest of all interests in its paternity. Did you catch her meaning when she spoke of its antecedents as we sat, the four of us, behind the fir-roots?"

"No, I can't say that I did," said I, wonderingly.

"You're not very gleg at some things, Elrigmore," he said, smiling.

"Your Latin gave you no clue, did it, to the fact that she thought John M'Iver a vagabond of the deepest dye?"

"If she thought that," I cried, "she baffles me; for a hint I let drop in a mere careless badinage of your gallanting reputation made her perilously near angry."

John with pursed lips stroked his chin, musing on my words. I was afraid for a little he resented my indiscretion, but resentment was apparently not in his mind, for his speech found no fault with me.

"Man, Colin," he said, "you could scarcely have played a more cunning card if you had had myself to advise you. But no matter about that."

"If she thinks so badly of you, then," I said, "why not clear yourself from her suspicions, that I am willing to swear (less because of your general character than because of your conduct since she and you and the child met) are without foundation?"

"I could scarcely meet her womanly innuendo with a coa.r.s.e and abrupt denial," said he. "There are some shreds of common decency left in me yet."

"And you prefer to let her think the worst?"

He looked at me with a heightened colour, and he laughed shortly.

"You'll be no loser by that, perhaps," he said; and before I could answer he added, "Pardon a foolish speech, Colin; I learned the trick of fanfaron among foreign gentry who claimed a _conquete d'amour_ for every woman who dropped an eye to their bold scrutiny. Do not give me any share of your jealousy for Lachlan MacLachlan of that ilk--I'm not deserving the honour. And that reminds me----"

He checked himself abruptly.

"Come, come," said I, "finish your story; what about MacLachlan and the lady?"

"The lady's out of the tale this time," he said, shortly. "I met him stravaiging the vacant street last night; that was all."

"Then I can guess his mission without another word from you," I cried, after a little dumfounderment. "He would be on the track of his cousin."

"Not at all," said John, with a bland front; "he told me he was looking for a boatman to ferry him over the loch."

This story was so plainly fabricated to ease my apprehension that down I went, incontinent, and sought the right tale in the burgh.

Indeed it was not difficult to learn the true particulars, for the place rang all the worse for its comparative emptiness with the scandal of M'Iver's encounter with Mac-Lachlan, whom, it appeared, he had found laying a gallant's siege to the upper window of Askaig's house, whose almost unharmed condition had made it a convenient temporary shelter for such as had returned to the town. In the chamber behind the window that Mac-Lachlan threw his peebles at, were his cousin and the child, as M'Iver speedily learned, and he trounced him from the neighbourhood with indignities.

"What set you on the man?" I asked John when I came back after learning this.

"What do you think?" said he.

"You could have done no more if you had an eye on the girl yourself," I said, "and that, you a.s.sure me, is out of the question."

"The reason was very simple," he answered. "I have a sort of elder man's mischievous pleasure in spoiling a young buck's ploy, and--and--there might be an extra interest in my entertainment in remembering that you had some jealous regard for the lady."

All I had that was precious to take with me when we left Inneraora to follow the track of Montrose was the friendly wave of Mistress Betty's hand as we marched out below the Arches on our way to the North.

Argile and Auchinbreac rode at our head--his lords.h.i.+p on a black horse called Lepanto, a spirited beast that had been trained to active exercises and field-practice; Auchinbreac on a smaller animal, but of great spirit and beauty. M'Iver and I walked, as did all the officers.

We had for every one of our corps twelve shot apiece, and in the rear a sufficiency of centners of powder, with ball and match. But we depended more on the p.r.i.c.k of pike and the slash of sword than on our culverins.

Our Lowland levies looked fairly well disciplined and smart, but there was apparent among them no great gusto about our expedition, and we had more hope of our vengeance at the hands of our uncouth but eager clansmen who panted to be at the necks of their spoilers and old enemies.

M'Iver confided to me more than once his own doubts about the mettle of the companies from Dumbarton.

"I could do well with them on a foreign strand," he said, "fighting for the bawbees against half-hearted soldiery like themselves, but I have my doubts about their valour or their stomach for this broil with a kind of enemy who's like to surprise them terribly when the time comes. This affair's decision must depend, I'm afraid, for the most part on our own lads, and I wish there were more of them."

We went up the Glen at a good pace, an east wind behind us, and the road made a little easier for us since the snow had been trodden by the folks we were after. To-day you will find Aora Glen smiling--happy with crop and herd on either hand and houses at every turn of the road, with children playing below the mountain-ash that stands before each door.

You cannot go a step but human life's in sight Our march was in a desolate valley--the winds with the cold odour (one might almost think) of ruin and death.

Beyond Lecknamban, where the time by the shadow on Tom-an-Uarader was three hours of the afternoon, a crazy old _cailleach_, spared by some miracle from starvation and doom, ran out before us wringing her hands, and crying a sort of coronach for a family of sons of whom not one had been spared to her. A gaunt, dark woman, with a frenzied eye, her cheeks collapsed, her neck and temples like crinkled parchment, her clothes dropping off her in strips, and her bare feet bleeding in the snow.

Argile scoffed at the superst.i.tion, as he called it, and the Lowland levies looked on it as a jocular game, when we took a few drops of her blood from her forehead for luck--a piece of chirurgy that was perhaps favourable to her fever, and one that, knowing the ancient custom, and respecting it, she made no fraca about.

She followed us in the snow to the ruins of Camus, pouring out her curses upon Athole and the men who had made her home desolate and her widowhood worse than the grave, and calling on us a thousand blessings.

Lochow--a white, vast meadow, still bound in frost--we found was able to bear our army and save us the toilsome bend round Stronmealchan. We put out on its surface fearlessly. The horses pranced between the isles; our cannon trundled on over the deeps; our feet made a m.u.f.fled thunder, and that was the only sound in all the void. For Cruachan had looked down on the devastation of the enemy. And at the falling of the night we camped at the foot of Glen Noe.

It was a night of exceeding clearness, with a moon almost at the full, sailing between us and the south. A certain jollity was shed by it upon our tired brigade, though all but the leaders (who slept in a tent) were resting in the snow on the banks of the river, with not even a saugh-tree to give the illusion of a shelter. There was but one fire in the bivouac, for there was no fuel at hand, and we had to depend upon a small stock of peats that came with us in the stores-sledge.

Deer came to the hill and belled mournfully, while we ate a frugal meal of oat-bannock and wort. The Low-landers--raw lads--became boisterous; our Gaels, stern with remembrance and eagerness for the coming business, thawed to their geniality, and soon the laugh and song went round our camp. Argile himself for a time joined in our diversion. He came out of his tent and lay in his plaid among his more immediate followers, and gave his quota to the story or the guess. In the deportment of his lords.h.i.+p now there was none of the vexatious hesitancy that helped him to a part so poor as he played in his frowning tower at home among the soothing and softening effects of his family's domestic affairs. He was true Diarmaid the bold, with a calm eye and steadfast, a worthy general for us his children, who sat round in the light of the cheerful fire.

So sat his forebears and ours on the close of many a weary march, on the eve of many a perilous enterprise. That cold pride that c.o.c.ked his head so high on the causeway-stones of Inneraora relinquished to a mien generous, even affectionate, and he brought out, as only affection may, the best that was of accomplishment and grace in his officers around.

"Craignure," he would say, "I remember your story of the young King of Easaidh Ruadh; might we have it anew?" Or, "Donald, is the Gla.s.sary song of the Target in your mind? It haunts me like a charm."

And the stories came free, and in the owercome of the songs the dark of Glen Noe joined most l.u.s.tily.