John Splendid Part 15

"You talk about the crook in our Campbell tongue in one breath," said he, "and in the next you would make yourself a Campbell more sib to the chief than I am myself. Don't you think we might put off our little affairs of family history till we find a lady and a child in Stron-gara?"

"No more of it, then," said I. "Our difference began on my fool's notion that because I had something of what you would call a liking for this girl, no one else should let an eye light on her."

By now we were in a wide glade in the Tombreck wood. On our left we could see lying among the grey snow the house of Tombreck, with no light nor lowe (as the saying goes); and though we knew better than to expect there might be living people in it, we sped down to see the place.

"There's one chance in a million she might have ventured here," I said.

A most melancholy dwelling! Dwelling indeed no more but for the hoodie-crow, and for the fawn of the hill that years after I saw treading over the gra.s.s-grown lintel of its door. To-night the place was full of empty airs and ghosts of sounds inexplicable, wailing among the cabars that jutted black and scarred mid-way from wall to wall The byre was in a huddle of damp thatch, and strewn (as G.o.d's my judge) by the bones of the cattle the enemy had refused to drive before them in the sauciness of their glut A desolate garden slept about the place, with bush and tree--once tended by a family of girls, left orphan and desolate for evermore.

We went about on tiptoes as it might be in a house of the dead, and peeped in at the windows at where had been chambers lit by the cheerful cruisie or dancing with peat-fire flame--only the dark was there, horrible with the odours of char, or the black joist against the dun sky. And then we went to the front door (for Tombreck was a gentle-house), and found it still on the hinges, but hanging half back to give view to the gloomy interior. It was a spectacle to chill the heart, a house burned in hatred, the hearth of many songs and the chambers of love, merrymaking, death, and the children's feet, robbed of every interest but its ghosts and the memories of them they came to.

"It were useless to look here; she is not here," I said in a whisper to my comrade.

He stood with his bonnet in his hand, dumb for a s.p.a.ce, then speaking with a choked utterance.

"Our homes, our homes, Colin!" he cried. "Have I not had the happy nights in those same walls, those harmless hospitable halls, those dead halls?"

And he looked broadcast over the country-side.

"The curse of Conan and the black stones on the hands that wrought this work!" he said. "Poison to their wells; may the brutes die far afield!"

The man was in a tumult of grief and pa.s.sion, the tears, I knew by his voice, welling to his eyes. And indeed I was not happy myself, had not been happy indeed, by this black home, even if the girl I loved was waiting me at the turn of the road.

"Let us be going," I said at last.

"She might be here; she might be in the little plantation!" he said (and still in the melancholy and quiet of the place we talked in whispers).

"Could you not give a call, a signal?" he asked; and I had mind of the call I had once taught her, the doleful pipe of the curlew.

I gave it with hesitancy to the listening night. It came back an echo from the hills, but brought no other answer.

A wild bird roosting somewhere in the ruined house flapped out by the door and over us. I am not a believer in the ghostly--at least to the extent of some of our people; yet I was alarmed, till my reason came to me and the badinage of the professors at college, who had twitted me on my fears of the mischancy. But M'Iver clutched me by the shoulder in a frenzy of terror. I could hear his teeth chittering as if he had come out of the sea.

"Name of G.o.d!" he cried, "what was yon?"

"But a night-hag," said I.

He was ashamed of his weakness; but the night, as he said, had too many holes in it for his fancy.

And so we went on again across the hill-face in the sombre gloaming. It was odd that the last time I had walked on this hillside had been for a glimpse of that same girl we sought to-night. Years ago, when I was a lad, she had on a summer been sewing with a kinswoman in Car-lunnan, the mill croft beside a linn of the river, where the salmon plout in a most wonderful profusion, and I had gone at morning to the hill to watch her pa.s.s up and down in the garden of the mill, or feed the pigeons at the round doo-cot, content (or wellnigh content) to see her and fancy the wind in her tresses, the song at her lip. In these mornings the animals of the hill and the wood and I were friendly; they guessed somehow, perhaps, no harm was in my heart: the young roes came up unafraid, almost to my presence, and the birds fluttered like comrades about me, and the little animals that flourish in the wild dallied boldly in my path. It was a soft and tranquil atmosphere, it was a world (I think now) very happy and unperplexed. And at evening, after a hurried meal, I was off over the hills to this brae anew, to watch her who gave me an unrest of the spirit, unappeasable but precious. I think, though the mornings were sweet, 'twas the eve that was sweeter still. All the valley would be lying soundless and sedate, the hills of Salachary and the forest of Creag Dubh purpling in the setting sun, a rich gold tipping Dunchuach like a thimble. Then the eastern woods filled with dark caverns of shade, wherein the tall trunks of the statelier firs stood grey as ghosts. What was it, in that precious time, gave me, in the very heart of my happiness, a foretaste of the melancholy of coming years? My heart would swell, the tune upon my lip would cease, my eyes would blur foolishly, looking on that prospect most magic and fine.

Rarely, in that happy age, did I venture to come down and meet the girl, but--so contrary is the nature of man!--the day was happier when I worshipped afar, though I went home fuming at my own lack of spirit.

To-day, my grief! how different the tale! That bygone time loomed upon me like a wave borne down on a mariner on a frail raft, the pa.s.sion of the past ground me inwardly in a numb pain.

We stumbled through the snow, and my comrade--good heart!--said never a word to mar my meditation. On our right the hill of Meall Ruadh rose up like a storm-cloud ere the blackest of the night fell; we walked on the edges of the plantations, surmising our way by the aid of the grey snow around us.

It was not till we were in the very heart of Strongara wood that I came to my reason and thought what folly was this to seek the wanderer in such a place in dead of night. To walk that ancient wood, on the coa.r.s.e and broken ground, among fallen timber, bog, bush, water-pa.s.s, and hillock, would have tried a st.u.r.dy forester by broad day; it was, to us weary travellers, after a day of sturt, a madness to seek through it at night for a woman and child whose particular concealment we had no means of guessing.

M'lver, natheless, let me flounder through that perplexity for a time, fearful, I suppose, to hurt my feelings by showing me how little I knew of it, and finally he hinted at three cairns he was acquaint with, each elevated somewhat over the general run of the country, and if not the harbourage a refugee would make for, at least the most suitable coign to overlook the Strongara wood.

"Lead me anywhere, for G.o.d's sake!" said I; "I'm as helpless as a mowdie on the sea-beach."

He knew the wood as 'twere his own garden, for he had hunted it many times with his cousiri, and so he led me briskly, by a kind of natural path, to the first cairn. Neither there nor at the second did I get answer to my whistle.

"We'll go up on the third," said John, "and bide there till morning; scouring a wood in this fashion is like hunting otters in the deep sea."

We reached the third cairn when the hour was long past midnight I piped again in vain, and having ate part of our coilop, we set us down to wait the dawn. The air, for mid-winter, was almost congenial; the snow fell no longer; the north part of the sky was wondrous clear and even jubilant with star.

CHAPTER XIV.--MY LADY AND THE CHILD.

I woke with a shiver at the hour before dawn, that strange hour when the bird turns on the bough to change his dream, when the wild-cat puts out his tongue to taste the air and curls more warmly into his own fur, when the leaf of the willows gives a tremor in the most airless morning.

M'Iver breathed heavily beside me, rolled in his plaid to the very nose, but the dumb cry of the day in travail called him, too, out of the chamber of sleep, and he turned on his back with a s.n.a.t.c.h of a soldier's drill on his lips, but without opening his eyes.

We were on the edge of a glade of the wood, at the watershed of a small burn that tinkled among its ice along the ridge from Tombreck, dividing close beside us, half of it going to Shira Glen and half to Aora. The tall trees stood over us like sentinels, coated with snow in every bough; a cool crisp air fanned me, with a hint in it, somehow, of a smouldering wood-fire. And I heard close at hand the call of an owl, as like the whimper of a child as ever howlet's vesper mocked. Then to my other side, my plaid closer about me, and to my dreaming anew.

It was the same whimper waked me a second time, too prolonged to be an owl's complaint, and I sat upright to listen. It was now the break of day. A faint grey light brooded among the tree-tops.

"John! John!" I said in my companion's ear, shaking his shoulder.

He stood to his feet in a blink, wide awake, fumbling at his sword-belt as a man at hurried wakings on foreign sh.o.r.es.

"What is it?" he asked, in a whisper.

I had no need to answer him, for anew the child's cry rose in the wood--sharp, petulant, hungry. It came from a thick clump of undergrowth to the left of our night's lodging, not sixty yards away, and in the half-light of the morning had something of the eerie about it.

John Splendid crossed himself ere he had mind of his present creed, and "G.o.d sain us!" he whispered; "have we here banshee or warlock!"

"I'll warrant we have no more than what we seek," said I, with a joyous heart, putting my tartan about me more orderly, and running a hand through my hair.

"I've heard of unco uncanny things a.s.sume a wean's cry in a wood," said he, very dubious in his aspect.

I laughed at him, and "Come away, '_ille_," I said; "here's the Provost's daughter." And I was hurrying in the direction of the cry.

M'Iver put a hand on my shoulder.

"Canny, man, canny; would ye enter a lady's chamber (even the glade of the wood) without tirling at the pin?"

We stopped, and I softly sounded my curlew-call--once, twice, thrice.

The echo of the third time had not ceased on the hill when out stepped Betty. She looked miraculous tall and thin in the haze of the dawn, with the aspiring firs behind her, pallid at the face, wearied in her carriage, and torn at her kirtle by whin or thorn. The child clung at her coats, a ruddy brat, with astonishment stilling its whimper.

For a little the girl half mis...o...b..ed us, for the wood behind us and the still sombre west left us in a shadow, and there was a tremor in her voice as she challenged in English--

"Is that you, Elrigmore?"