John Splendid Part 14

His company was not to be denied.

We made up some bear-meal bannocks, and a collop of boiled venison in a knapsack that I carried on my back, borrowed plaids from some of the common soldiery, and set out for Strongara at the mouth of the night, with the snow still driving over the land.

MacLachlan was for with us, but John turned on him with a great deal of determination, and dared him to give extra risk to our enterprise by adding another man to the chance of the enemy seeing us.

The lad met the objection ungraciously, and John took to his flattery.

"The fact is, MacLachlan," said he, taking him aside with a hand on his lapel, and a show of great confidence--"the fact is, we can't be leaving this place in charge of a lot of old _bodachs_--Sir Donald the least able of them all,--and if there's another attack the guidance of the defence will depend on you. You may relish that or you may not; perhaps after all you would be safer with us----"

MacLachlan put up his chest an inch or two, unconscious that he did it, and whistled a stave of music to give evidence of his indifference. Then he knitted his brows to cogitate, as it were, and--

"Very well!" said he. "If you come on my coz, you'll bring her back here, or to the castle, I suppose?"

"I had no thought of running away with the la.s.s, I'll take my oath,"

cried John, sticking his tongue in the cheek nearest me.

"I wish I could fathom yon fellow's mind," I said to my comrade, as we stepped out through the snow and into the wooded brae-side, keeping a wary eye about for spies of the enemy, whose footprints we came on here and there, but so faint in the fresh snowfall that it was certain they were now in the valley.

"Do you find it difficult?" asked John. "I thought a man of schooling, with Latin at his tongue's-end, would see to the deepest heart of MacLachlan."

"He's crafty."

"So's the polecat till the fox meets him. Tuts, man, you have a singular jealousy of the creature."

"Since the first day I saw him."

John laughed.

"That was in the Provost's," quo' he, and he hummed a song I caught the meaning of but slightly.

"Wrong, wrong!" said I, striding under the trees as we slanted to the right for Tombreck. "His manner is provoking."

"I've seen him polish it pretty well for the ladies."

"His temper's always on the boil."

"Spirit, man; spirit! I like a fellow of warmth now and then."

"He took it most ungraciously when we put him out of the Provost's house on the night of the squabble in the town."

"It was an awkward position he was in. I'd have been a bit black-browed about it myself," said John. "Man! it's easy to pick holes in the character of an unfriend, and you and MacLachlan are not friendly, for one thing that's not his fault any more than yours."

"You're talking of the girl," I said, sharply, and not much caring to show him how hot my face burned at having to mention her.

"That same," said he; "I'll warrant that if it wasn't for the girl (the old tale! the old tale!), you had thought the young sprig not a bad gentleman after all."

"Oh, d.a.m.n his soul!" I blurted out "What is he that he should pester his betters with his attentions?"

"A cousin, I think, a simple cousin-german they tell me," said John, drily; "and in a matter of betters, now--eh?"

My friend coughed on the edge of his plaid, and I could swear he was laughing at me. I said nothing for a while, and with my skin burning, led the way at a hunter's pace. But John was not done with the subject.

"I'm a bit beyond the age of it myself," he said; "but that's no reason why I shouldn't have eyes in my head. I know how much put about you are to have this young fellow gallivanting round the lady."

"Jealous, you mean," I cried.

"I didn't think of putting it that way."

"No; it's too straightforward a way for you,--ever the roundabout way for you. I wish to G.o.d you would sometimes let your Campbell tongue come out of the kink, and say what you mean."

With a most astonishing steady voice for a man as livid as the snow on the hair of his brogues, and with his hand on the hilt of his dirk, John cried--

"Stop a bit."

I faced him in a most unrighteous humour, ready to quarrel with my shadow.

"For a man I'm doing a favour to, Elrigmore," he said, "you seem to have a poor notion of politeness. I'm willing to make some allowance for a lover's tirravee about a woman who never made tryst with him; but I'll allow no man to call down the credit of my clan and name."

A pair of gowks, were we not, in that darkening wood, quarrelling on an issue as flimsy as a spider's web, but who will say it was not human nature? I daresay we might have come to hotter words and b.l.o.o.d.y blows there and then, but for one of the trifles that ever come in the way to change--not fate, for that's changeless, but the semblance of it.

"My mother herself was a Campbell of an older family than yours," I started to say, to show I had some knowledge of the breed, and at the same time a notion of fairness to the clan.

This was fresh heather on the fire.

"Older!" he cried; "she was a MacVicar as far as ever I heard; it was the name she took to kirk with her when she married your father."

"So," said I; "but----"

"And though I allow her grandfather Dpl-a-mhonadh [Donald-of-the-Hills]

was a Campbell, it was in a roundabout way; he was but the son of one of the Craignish gentry."

"You yourself----"

"Sir!" said he in a new tone, as cold as steel and as sharp, misjudging my intention.

"You yourself are no more than a M'Iver."

"And what of that?" he cried, cooling down a bit "The M'ivers of Asknish are in the direct line from Duncan, Lord of Lochow. We had Pennymore, Stron-shira, and Glenaora as cadets of Clan Campbell when your Craignish cross-breeds were under the salt."

"Only by the third cousin," said I; "my father has told me over and over again that Duncan's son had no heir."

And so we went into all this perplexity of Highland pedigree like old wives at a waulking, forgetting utterly that what we began to quarrel about was the more serious charge of lying. M'lver was most frantic about the business, and I think I was cool, for I was never a person that cared a bodle about my history bye the second generation. They might be lairds or they might be lackeys for all the differ it made to me. Not that there were any lackeys among them. My grandfather was the grandson of Tormaid Mor, who held the whole east side of Lochow from Ford to Sonachan, and we have at home the four-posted bed that Tormaid slept on when the heads of the house of Argile were lying on white-hay or chaff.

At last John broke into a laugh.

"Aren't you the _amadan_ to be biting the tongue between your teeth?" he said.

"What is it?" I asked, constrained to laugh too.