John Splendid Part 39

He held up a finger and eyed me pawkily. "Come, man, cornel" he said, laughing, "On your oath now, is there not a lady? And that minds me; you have no more knowledge of the creatures, no more pluck in their presence, than a child. Heavens, what a soldier of fortune is this?

Seven years among the army; town to town, camp to camp, here to-day and away to-morrow, with a soldier's pa.s.s to love upon your back and haunch, and yet you have not learned to lift the sneck of a door, but must be tap-tapping with your finger-nails."

"I do not know what you mean," said I.

"Lorf! lord!" he cried, pretending amazement, "and here's schooling!

Just think it over for yourself. You are not an ill-looking fellow (though I think I swing a kilt better myself), you are the proper age (though it's wonderful what a youngish-looking man of not much over forty may do), you have a name for sobriety, and Elrigmore carries a good many head of cattle and commands a hundred swords,--would a girl with any wisdom and no other sweetheart in her mind turn her back on such a list of virtues and graces? If I had your reputation and your estate, I could have the pick of the finest women in Argile--ay, and far beyond it."

"Never mind about that just now," I demanded, gripping my preacher by the hand and forcing him with me out of the way of the pa.s.sers-by, whose glance upon us would have seemed an indelicacy when we were discussing so precious a thing as my lady's honour.

"But I shall mind it," insisted M'Iver, pursing his lips as much to check a hiccough as to express his determination. "It seems I am the only man dare take the liberty. Fie on ye! man, fie! you have not once gone to see the Provost or his daughter since I saw you last I dare not go myself for the sake of a very stupid blunder; but I met the old man coming up the way an hour ago, and he was asking what ailed you at them.

Will I tell you something, Colin? The Provost's a gleg man, but he's not so gleg as his wife. The dame for me! say I, in every household, if it's her daughter's love-affairs she's to keep an eye on."

"You know so much of the lady and her people," said I, almost losing patience, "that it's a wonder you never sought her for yourself."

He laughed. "Do you think so?" he said. "I have no doubt of the result; at least I would have had no doubt of it a week or two ago, if I had taken advantage of my chances." Then he laughed anew. "I said the good-wife was gleg; I'm just as gleg myself."

This tipsy nonsense began to annoy me; but it was useless to try to check it, for every sentence uttered seemed a spark to his vanity.

"It's about Betty I want to speak," I said.

"And it's very likely too; I would not need to be very gleg to see that She does not want to speak to me, however, or of me, as you'll find out when once you see her. I am in her black books sure enough, for I saw her turn on the street not an hour ago to avoid me."

"She'll not do that to MacLachlan," I put in, glad of the opening, "unless she hears--and G.o.d forbid it--that the scamp lightlies her name at common fairs."

M'Iver drew himself up, stopped, and seemed to sober.

"What's this you're telling me?" he asked, and I went over the incident on the quay. It was enough. It left him as hot as myself. He fingered at his coat-b.u.t.tons and his cuffs, fastening and unfastening them; he played nervously with the hilt of his dirk; up would go his brows and down again like a bird upon his prey; his lips would tighten on his teeth, and all the time he was muttering in his pick of languages sentiments natural to the occasion. Gaelic is the poorest of tongues to swear in: it has only a hash of borrowed terms from Lowland Scots; but my cavalier was well able to make up the deficiency.

"Quite so; very true and very comforting," I said at last; "but what's to be done?"

"What's to be done?" said he, with a start "Surely to G.o.d there's no doubt about that!"

"No, sir; I hope you know me better. But how's it to be done? I thought of going up in front of the whole quay and making him chew his lie at the point of my dagger. Then I thought more formality was needed--a friend or two, a select venue, and careful leisure time for so important a meeting."

"But what's the issue upon which the rencontre shall take place?" asked M'Iver, it seemed to me with ridiculous scrupulosity.

"Why need you ask?" said I. "You do not expect me to invite him to repeat the insult or exaggerate the same."

M'Iver turned on me almost roughly and shook me by the shoulder. "Man!"

said he, "wake up, and do not let your wits hide in the heels of your boots. Are you clown enough to think of sending a lady's name around the country tacked on to a sculduddry tale like this? You must make the issue somewhat more politic than that."

"I agree with you," I confessed; "it was stupid of me not to think of it, but what can I do? I have no other quarrel with the man."

"Make one, then," said M'Iver. "I cannot comprehend where you learned your trade as cavalier, or what sort of company you kept in Mackay's, if you did not pick up and practise the art of forcing a quarrel with a man on any issue you cared to choose. In ten minutes I could make this young fellow put down his gage in a dispute about the lacing of boots."

"But in that way at least I'm the poorest of soldiers; I never picked a quarrel, and yet here's one that sets my gorge to my palate, but cannot be fought on."

"Tuts, tuts! man," he cried, "it seems that, after all, you must leave the opening of this little play to John M'Iver. Come with me a bit yont the Cross here and take a lesson."

He led me up the wide pend close and round the back of old Stonefield's dwelling, and into a corner of a lane that gave upon the fields, yet at the same time kept a plain view of the door of Askaig's house, where we guessed MacLachlan was now on his visit to the Provost's family.

"Let us stand here," said he, "and I'll swear I'm not very well acquainted with our friend's habits if he's not pa.s.sing this way to Carlunnan sometime in the next ten minutes, for I saw Mistress Betty going up there, as I said, not so very long ago."

This hint at MacLachlan's persistency exasperated me the more. I felt that to have him by the throat would be a joy second only to one other in the world.

M'Iver saw my pa.s.sion--it was ill to miss seeing it--and seemed struck for the first time by the import of what we were engaged upon.

"We were not given to consider the end of a duello from the opening when abroad," he said; "but that was because we were abroad, and had no remonstrance and reminder in the face of familiar fields and houses and trees, and the pa.s.sing footsteps of our own people. Here, however, the end's to be considered from the beginning--have you weighed the risks in your mind?"

"I've weighed nothing," said I, shortly, "except that I feel in me here I shall have his blood before nightfall."

"He's a fairly good hand with his weapon, they tell me."

"If he was a wizard, with the sword of Great Donald, I would touch him to the vitals. Have I not learned a little, if you'll give me the credit, from Alasdair Mor?"

"I forgot that," said M'lver; "you'll come through it all right And here's our man coming up the lane. No anger now; nothing to be said on your side till I give you a sign, and then I can leave the rest to your wisdom."

MacLachlan came staving up the cobbles in a great hurry, flailing the air, as he went, with a short rattan, for he affected some of the foppish customs the old officers brought back from the Continent. He was for pa.s.sing us with no more than a jerk of the head, but M'Iver and I between us took up the mouth of the lane, and as John seemed to smile on him like one with gossip to exchange, he was bound to stop.

"Always on the going foot, MacLachlan," said John, airily. "I never see a young gentleman of your age and mettle but I wish he could see the wisdom of putting both to the best purpose on the field."

"With your cursed foreigners, I suppose you mean," said the young fellow. "I could scarcely go as a private pikeman like yourself."

"I daresay not, I daresay not," answered M'Iver, p.r.i.c.ked at his heart (I could tell by his eye) by this reflection upon his humble office, but keeping a marvellously cool front to his c.o.c.kerel. "And now when I think of it, I am afraid you have neither the height nor width for even so ornamental a post as an ensign's."

MacLachlan restrained himself too, unwilling, no doubt, as I thought, to postpone his chase of the lady by so much time as a wrangle with John M'Iver would take up. He affected to laugh at Splendid's rejoinder, turned the conversation upon the disjasket condition of the town, and edged round to get as polite a pa.s.sage as possible between us, without betraying any haste to sever himself from our company. But both John Splendid and I had our knees pretty close together, and the very topic he started seemed to be the short cut to the quarrel we sought.

"A poor town indeed," admitted M'Iver, readily, "but it might be worse.

It can be built anew. There's nothing in nature, from a pigsty to a name for valour and honour, that a wise man may not patch up somehow."

MacLachlan's retort to this opening was on the tip of his tongue; but his haste made him surrender a taunt as likely to cause trouble. "You're very much in the proverb way to-day," was all he said. "I'm sure I wish I saw Inneraora as hale and complete as ever it was: it never had a more honest friend than myself."

"That one has missed," thought I, standing by in a silent part of this three-cornered convention. M'Iver smiled mildly, half, I should think, at the manner in which his thrust had been foiled, half to keep MacLachlan still with us. His next attack was more adroit though roundabout, and it effected its purpose.

"I see you are on your way up to the camp," said he, with an appearance of indifference. "We were just thinking of a daunder there ourselves."

"No," said MacLachlan, shortly; "I'm for farther up the Glen."

"Then at least we'll have your company part of the way," said John, and the three of us walked slowly off, the young gentleman with no great warmth at the idea, which was likely to spoil his excursion to some degree. M'Iver took the place between us, and in the rear, twenty paces, came the _gille cas-fleuch_.

"I have been bargaining for a horse up here," said John in a while, "and I'm anxious that Elrigmore should see it. You'll have heard I'm off again on the old road."

"There's a rumour of it," said MacLachlan, cogitating on his own affairs, or perhaps wondering what our new interest in his company was due to.

"Ah! it's in my blood," said John, "in my blood and bones! Argile was a fairly good master--so to call him--but--well, you understand yourself: a man of my kind at a time like this feels more comfortable anywhere else than in the neighbourhood of his chief."

"I daresay," replied MacLachlan, refusing the hook, and yet with a sneer in his accent.