John Splendid Part 28

M'Iver's voice had a sneer in every word of it when he answered in a very affected tongue of English he was used to a.s.sume when he wished to be at his best before a Saxon.

"Is it the logic of your school," he asked, "that what's the right conduct of war when we are in regiments is robbery when we are but seven broken men? I'm trying to mind that you found fault with us for helping ourselves in this same Glencoe last week, and refused to eat Corrycrick's beef in Appin, and I cannot just recall the circ.u.mstance.

Are we not, think ye, just as much at war with Glencoe now as then? And have seven starving men not an even better right, before G.o.d, to forage for themselves than has an army?"

"There's a difference," said the minister, stiffly. "We were then legitimate troops of war, fighting for the Solemn League and Covenant under a n.o.ble lord with Letters. It was the Almighty's cause, and----"

"Was it indeed?" said John Splendid. "And was Himself on the other side of Loch Leven when His tulzie was on?"

"Scoffer!" cried Gordon, and M'Iver said no more, but led us through the dark to the house whose light so cheerfully smiled before us.

The house, when we came to it, proved a trig little edifice of far greater comfort than most of the common houses of the Highlands--not a dry-stone bigging but a rubble tenement, very snugly thacked and windowed, and having a piece of kail-plot at its rear. It was perched well up on the brae, and its light at evening must have gleamed like a friendly star far up the glen, that needs every touch of brightness to mitigate its gloom. As we crept close up to it in the snow, we could hear the crooning John Splendid had told us of, a most doleful sound in a land of darkness and strangers.

"Give a rap, and when she answers the door we can tell our needs peaceably," said the minister.

"I'm not caring about rapping, and I'm not caring about entering at all now," said M'I ver, turning about with some uneasiness. "I wish we had fallen on a more cheery dwelling, even if it were to be coerced with club and pistol. A p.r.i.c.kle's at my skin that tells me here is dool, and I can smell mort-cloth."

Sonachan gave a grunt, and thumped loudly on the fir boards. A silence that was like a swound fell on the instant, and the light within went out at a puff. For a moment it seemed as if our notion of occupancy and light and lament had been a delusion, for now the grave itself was no more desolate and still.

"I think we might be going," said I in a whisper, my heart thud-thudding at my vest, my mind sharing some of John Splendid's apprehension that we were intruders on some profound grief. And yet my hunger was a furious thing that belched red-hot at my stomach.

"Royal's my race!" said Stewart "I'll be kept tirling at no door-pin in the Highlands,--let us drive in the bar."

"What does he say?" asked the cleric, and I gave him the English of it.

"You'll drive no doors in here," said he firmly to Stewart "We can but give another knock and see what comes of it Knock you, M'Iver."

"Barbreck."

"Barbreck be it then."

"I would sooner go to the glen foot, and risk all," said John.

Sonachan grunted again; out he drew his dirk, and he rapped with the hilt of it loud and long at the door. A crying of children rose within, and, behold, I was a child again! I was a child again in s.h.i.+ra Glen, alone in a little chamber with a window uncurtained and unshuttered, yawning red-mouthed to the outer night My back was almost ever to the window, whose panes reflected a peat-fire and a face as long as a fiddle, and eyes that shone like coal; and though I looked little at the window yawning to the wood, I felt that it never wanted some curious spy outside, some one girning or smiling in at me and my book. I must look round, or I must put a hand on my shoulder to make sure no other hand was there,--then the Terror that drives the black blood from the heart through all the being, and a boy unbuckling his kilt with fevered fingers and leaping with frantic sobs to bed! One night when the black blood of the Terror still coursed through me, though I was dovering over to sleep, there came a knocking at the door, a knock commanding, a knock never explained. It brought me to my knees with a horror that almost choked me at the throat, a cold dew in the very palms of the hands. I dare not ask who rapped for fear I should have an answer that comes some day or other to every child of my race,--an answer no one told me of, an answer that then I guessed.

All this flashed through my mind when the children's crying rose in the dark interior--that cry of children old and young as they go through the mysteries of life and the alley-ways of death.

The woman soothed her children audibly, then called out, asking what we wanted.

"I'm a man from Appin," cried out Stewart with great promptness and cunning, "and I have a friend or two with me. I was looking for the house of Kilinchean, where a cousin of mine--a fine spinner and knitter, but thrawn in the temper--is married on the tenant, and we lost our way.

We're cold and we're tired, and we're hungry, and----"

"Step in," said the woman, lifting back the door. "You are many miles from Kilinchean, and I know Appin Mary very well."

But three of us entered, Stewart, M'Iver, and myself, the others on a sudden inspiration preferring not to alarm the woman by betraying the number of us, and concealing themselves in the byre that leaned against the gable of the dwelling.

"G.o.d save all here!" said M'Iver as we stepped in, and the woman lit the cruisie by sticking its nose in the peat-embers. "I'm afraid we come on you at a bad time."

She turned with the cruisie in her hands and seemed to look over his head at vacancy, with large and melting eyes in a comely face.

"You come," said she, "like grief, just when we are not expecting it, and in the dead of night But you are welcome at my door."

We sat down on stools at her invitation, bathed in the yellow light of cruisie and peat. The reek of the fire rose in a faint breath among the pot-chains, and lingered among the rafters, loath, as it were, to emerge in the cold night In a cowering group beneath the blankets of a bed in a corner were four children, the bed-clothes hurriedly clutched up to their chins, their eyes staring out on the intruders. The woman put out some food before us, coa.r.s.e enough in quality but plenty of it, and was searching in a press for platters when she turned to ask how many of us there were. We looked at each other a little ashamed, for it seemed as if she had guessed of our divided company and the four men in the byre.

It is likely she would have been told the truth, but her next words set us on a different notion.

"You'll notice," said she, still lifting her eyes to a point over our heads, "that I have not my sight."

"G.o.d! that's a pity," said M'Iver in genuine distress, with just that accent of fondling in it that a Highlander in his own tongue can use like a salve for distress.

"I am not complaining of it," said the woman; "there are worse hards.h.i.+ps in this world."

"Mistress," said John, "there are. I think I would willingly have been bl---- dim in the sight this morning if it could have happened."

"Ay, ay!" said the woman in a sad abstraction, standing with plates in her hand listening (I could swear) for a footstep that would never come again.

We sat and warmed ourselves and ate heartily, the heat of that homely dwelling--the first we had sat in for days--an indulgence so rare and precious that it seemed a thing we could never again tear ourselves away from to encounter the unkindness of those Lorn mounts anew. The children watched us with an alarm and curiosity no way abated, beholding in us perhaps (for one at least was at an age to discern the difference our tartan and general aspect presented from those of Glencoe) that we were strangers from a great distance, maybe enemies, at least with some rigour of warfare about our visage and attire.

The mother, finding her way with the readiness of long familiarity about the house, got ease for her grief, whatever it was, in the duties thus suddenly thrust upon her: she spoke but seldom, and she never asked--in that she was true Gael--any more particulars about ourselves than Stewart had volunteered. And when we had been served with our simple viands, she sat composedly before us with her hands in her lap, and her eyes turned on us with an appearance of sedate scrutiny no whit the less perplexing because we knew her orbs were but fair clean window-panes shuttered and hasped within.

"You will excuse my dull welcome," she said, with a wan smile, speaking a very pleasant accent of North Country Gaelic, that turned upon the palate like a sweet "A week or two ago you would have found a very cheerful house, not a widow's sorrow, and, if my eyes were useless, my man (_beannachd leis!_) had a lover's eyes, and these were the eyes for himself and me."

"Was he at Inverlochy?" I asked softly; "was he out with Montrose?"

"He died a week come Thursday," said the woman. "They're telling me of wars--weary on them and G.o.d's pity on the widow women they make, and the mothers they must leave lonely--but such a thing is sorrow that the world, from France to the Isles, might be in flames and I would still be thinking on my man that's yonder in the cold clods of the yard....

Stretch your hands; it's your welcome, gentlemen."

"I have one or two other friends out-bye there in the byre," put in Stewart, who found the vigilance of the youths in the bed gave no opportunity for smuggling provand to the others of our party.

The woman's face flamed up a little and took on the least of a look of alarm that Stewart--who was very cunning and quick in some matters--set about removing at once with some of those convenient lies that he seemed never out of the want of.

"Some of our lads," said he, with a duck of apology at M'Iver and myself for taking liberties with the reputation of our friends. "They're very well where they are among the bracken, if they had but the bite and sup, and if it's your will I could take them that."

"Could they not be coming in and sitting by the fire?" asked the woman, set at rest by Stewart's story; but he told her he would never think of filling her room with a rabble of plain men, and in a little he was taking out the viands for our friends in the byre.

The woman sat anew upon her stool and her hands on her lap, listening with a sense so long at double exercise that now she could not readily relax the strain on it M'Iver was in a great fidget to be off. I could see it in every movement of him. He was a man who ever disliked to have his feelings vexed by contact with the everlasting sorrows of life, and this intercourse with new widowhood was sore against his mind. As for me, I took, in a way of speaking, the woman to my heart She stood to me for all the griefs I had known in life, and was yet the representative, the figure of love--revealing an element of nature, a human pa.s.sion so different from those tumults and hatreds we had been encountering. I had been thinking as I marched among the wilds of Lochaber and Badenoch that vengeance and victory and dominion by the strong hand were the main spurs to action, and now, on a sudden, I found that affection was stronger than them all.

"Are you keeping the place on?" I asked the widow, "or do you go back to your folks, for I notice from your tongue that you are of the North?"

"I'm of the Grants," she said; "but my heart's in Glencoe, and I'll never leave it I am not grieving at the future, I am but minding on the past, and I have my bairns.... More milk for the lads outside; stretch your hands.... Oh yes, I have my bairns."

"Long may they prosper, mistress," said M'Iver, drumming with a horn spoon on his knee, and winking and smiling very friendly to the little fellows in a row in the bed, who, all but the oldest, thawed to this humour of the stranger. "It must be a task getting a throng like yon bedded at evening. Some day they'll be off your hand, and it'll be no more the lullaby of Crodh Chailein, but them driving at the beasts for themselves."

"Are you married?" asked the woman.

"No," said John, with a low laugh, "not yet. I never had the fortune to fill the right woman's eye. I've waited at the ferry for some one who'll take a man over without the ferry fee, for I'm a poor gentleman though I'm of a good family, and had plenty, and the ones with the tocher won't have me, and the tocherless girls I dare not betray."

"You ken the old word," said the woman; "the man who waits long at the ferry will get over some day."

Stewart put down a cogie and loosened a b.u.t.ton of his vest, and with an air of great joviality, that was marred curiously by the odd look his absence of lugs conferred, he winked cunningly at us and slapped the woman in a rough friends.h.i.+p on the shoulder.