John Splendid Part 26

M'Iver laughed at the sally, and "Well, well," said he, "we are not going to be debating the chance of love on Leven-side, with days and nights of slinking in the heather and the fern between us and our home."

Though this conversation of ours may seem singularly calm and out of all harmony with our circ.u.mstances, it is so only on paper, for in fact it took but a minute or two of our time as we walked down among those whins that inspired me with the peaceful premonition of the coming years. We were walking, the seven of us, not in a compact group, but scattered, and at the whins when we rested we sat in ones and twos behind the bushes, with eyes cast anxiously along the sh.o.r.e for sign of any craft that might take us over.

What might seem odd to any one who does not know the shrinking mood of men broken with a touch of disgrace in their breaking, was that for long we studiously said nothing of the horrors we had left behind us. Five men fleeing from a disastrous field and two new out of the clutches of a conquering foe, we were dumb or discoursed of affairs very far removed from the reflection that we were a clan at extremities.

But we could keep up this silence of shame no longer than our running: when we sat among the whins on Leven-side, and took a breath and scrutinised along the coast, for sign of food or ferry, we must be talking of what we had left behind.

Gordon told the story with a pained, constrained, and halting utterance: of the surprise of Auchinbrcac when he heard the point of war from Nevis Glen, and could not believe that Montrose was so near at hand; of the waver ing Lowland wings, the slaughter of the Campbell gentlemen.

"We were in a trap," said he, drawing with a stick on the smooth snow a diagram of the situation. "We were between brae and water. I am no man of war, and my heart swelled at the spectacle of the barons cut down like nettles. And by the most foolish of tactics, surely, a good many of our forces were on the other side of the loch."

"That was not Auchinbreac's doing, I'll warrant," said M'Iver; "he would never have counselled a division so fatal."

"Perhaps not," said the cleric, drily; "but what if a general has only a sort of savage army at his call? The gentry of your clan----"

"What about MacCailein?" I asked, wondering that there was no word of the chief.

"Go on with your story," said M'Iver, sharply, to the cleric.

"The gentry of your clan," said Gordon, paying no heed to my query, "were easy enough to guide; but yon undisciplined kerns from the hills had no more regard for martial law than for the holy commandments. G.o.d help them! They went their own gait, away from the main body, plundering and robbing."

"I would not just altogether call it plundering, nor yet robbing," said John, a show of annoyance on his face.

"And I don't think myself," said Sonachan, removing, as he spoke, from our side, and going to join the three others, who sat apart from us a few yards, "that it's a gentleman's way of speaking of the doings of other gentlemen of the same name and tartan as ourselves."

"Ay, ay," said the minister, looking from one to the other of us, his shaven jowl with lines of a most annoying pity on it--"Ay, ay," said he, "it would be pleasing you better, no doubt, to hint at no vice or folly in your army; that's the Highlands for you! I'm no Highlander, thank G.o.d, or at least with the savage long out of me; for I'm of an honest and orderly Lowland stock, and my trade's the Gospel and the truth, and the truth you'll get from Alexander Gordon, Master of the Arts, if you had your black joctilegs at his neck for it!"

He rose up, pursing his face, panting at the nostril, very crouse and defiant in every way.

"Oh, you may just sit you down," said McIver, sharply, to him. "You can surely give us truth without stamping it down our throats with your boots, that are not, I've noticed, of the smallest size."

"I know you, sir, from boot to bonnet," said Gordon.

"You're well off in your acquaintance," said M'Iver, jocularly. "I wish I kent so good a man."

"From boot to bonnet," said Gordon, in no whit abashed by the irony.

"Man, do you know," he went on, "there's a time comes to me now when by the grace of G.o.d I can see to one's innermost as through a lozen. I shudder, sometimes, at the gift. For there's the fair face, and there's the smug and smiling lip, and there's the flattery at the tongue, and below that masked front is Beelzebub himself, meaning well sometimes--perhaps always--but by his fall a traitor first and last."

"G.o.d!" cried M'Iver, with a very ugly face, "that sounds awkwardly like a roundabout way of giving me a bad character."

"I said, sir," answered Gordon, "that poor Beelzebub does not sometimes ken his own trade. I have no doubt that in your heart you are touched to the finest by love of your fellows."

"And that's the truth--when they are not clerics," cried John.

"Touched to the finest, and set in a glow too, by a manly and unselfish act, and eager to go through this world on pleasant footings with yourself and all else."

"Come, come," I cried; "I know my friend well, Master Gordon. We are not all that we might be; but I'm grateful for the luck that brought me so good a friend as John M'Iver."

"I never cried down his credit," said the minister, simply.

"Your age gives you full liberty," said John. "I would never lift a hand."

"The lifting of your hand," said the cleric with a flas.h.i.+ng eye, "is the last issue I would take thought of. I can hold my own. You are a fair and s.h.i.+ning vessel (of a kind), but Beelzebub's at your heart. They tell me that people like you; this gentleman of Elrigmore claims you for his comrade. Well, well, so let it be! It but shows anew the charm of the glittering exterior: they like you for your weaknesses and not for your strength. Do you know anything of what they call duty?"

"I have starved to the bone in Laaland without complaint, stood six weeks on watch in Stralsund's Franken gate, eating my meals at my post, and John M'Iver never turned skirts on an enemy."

"Very good, sir, very good," said the minister; "but duty is most ill to do when it is to be done in love and not in hate."

"d.a.m.n all schooling!" cried John. "You're off in the depths of it again, and I cannot be after you. Duty is duty in love or hate, is it not?"

"It would take two or three sessions of St Andrews to show you that it makes a great differ whether it is done in love or hate. You do your duty by your enemy well enough, no doubt,--a barbarian of the blackest will do no less,--but it takes the better man to do his duty sternly by those he loves and by himself above all Argile----"

"Yes," cried I, "what about Argile?"

The minister paid no heed to my question.

"Argile," said he, "has been far too long flattered by you and your like, M'Iver."

"Barbreck," put in my comrade.

"Barbreck be it then. A man in his position thus never learns the truth.

He sees around him but plausible faces and the truth at a cowardly compromise. That's the sorrow of your Highlands; it will be the black curse of your chiefs in the day to come. As for me, I'm for duty first and last--even if it demands me to put a rope at my brother's neck or my hand in the fire."

"Maybe you are, maybe you are," said John, "and it's very fine of you; and I'm not denying but I can fancy some admirable quality in the character. But if I'm no great hand at the duty, I can swear to the love."

"It's a word I hate to hear men using," said I.

The minister relaxed to a smile at John's amiability, and John smiled on me.

"It's a woman's word, I daresay, Colin," said he; "but there's no man, I'll swear, turning it over more often in his mind than yourself."

Where we lay, the Pap of Glencoe--Sgor-na-ciche, as they call it in the Gaelic--loomed across Loch Leven in wisps of wind-blown grey.

Long-beaked birds came to the sand and piped a sharp and anxious note, or chattered like children. The sea-banks floated on the water, rising and dipping to every wave; it might well be a dream we were in on the borderland of sleep at morning.

"What about Argile?" I asked again.

The minister said never a word. John Splendid rose to his feet, shook the last of his annoyance from him, and cast an ardent glance to those remote hills of Lorn.

"G.o.d's grandeur!" said he, turning to the Gaelic it was proper to use but sparingly before a Saxon. "Behold the unfriendliness of those terrible mountains and ravines! I am Gaelic to the core, but give me in this mood of mine the flat south soil and the dip of the sky round a bannock of country. Oh, I wish I were where Aora runs! I wish I saw the highway of Loch Firme that leads down the slope of the sea where the towns pack close together and fires are warm!" He went on and sang a song of the low country, its mult.i.tude of cattle, its friendly hearths, its frequented walks of lovers in the dusk and in the spring.

Sonachan and Ardkinglas and the tacksmen came over to listen, and the man with the want began to weep with a child's surrender.

"And what about Argile?" said I, when the humming ceased.

"You are very keen on that bit, lad," said the baron-bailie, smiling spitefully with thin hard lips that revealed his teeth gleaming white and square against the dusk of his face. "You are very keen on that bit; you might be waiting for the rest of the minister's story."

"Oh," I said, "I did not think there was any more of the minister's tale to come. I crave his pardon."