John Splendid Part 32

Gordon rose and joined me at the fireside. He seemed in a swither as to whether I was a fit confidant or not in such a matter, but at last would appear to decide in my favour.

"You have heard me speak well of Argile," he said, quietly. "I never said a word in his praise that was not deserved; indeed I have been limited in my valuation of his virtues and ornaments, lest they should think it the paid chaplain who spoke and not the honest acquaintance.

I know pious men, Highland and Lowland, but my lord of Argile has more than any of them the qualities of perfection. At home yonder, he rises every morning at five and is in private till eight. He prays in his household night and morning, and never went abroad, though but for one night, but he took his write-book, standish, and English New Bible, and Newman's Concordance with him. Last summer, playing one day with the bullats with some gentlemen, one of them, when the Marquis stopped to lift his bullat, fell pale, and said to them about him, 'Bless me, it is that I see my lord with his head off and all his shoulder full of blood.' A wicked man would have counted that the most gloomy portent and a fit occasion for dread, for the person who spoke was the Laird of Drimmindorren's seventh son, with a reputation for the second sight.

But Argile laughed at the thing, no way alarmed, and then with a grave demeanour he said, said he, 'The wine's in your head, sir; and even if it was an omen, what then? The axe in troublous times is no disgrace, and a chief of Clan Diarmaid would be a poor chief indeed if he failed to surrender his head with some show of dignity."'

"But to leave his people twice in one war with no apparent valid excuse must look odd to his unfriends," I said, and I toasted my hose at the fire.

"I wish I could make up my mind whether an excuse is valid or not," said the cleric; "and I'm willing to find more excuses for MacCailein than I'll warrant he can find for himself this morning, wherever he may happen to be. It is the humour of G.o.d Almighty sometimes to put two men in the one skin. So far as I may humbly judge, Argile is the poor victim of such an economy. You have seen the sort of man I mean: to-day generous to his last plack, to-morrow the widow's oppressor; Sunday a soul humble at the throne of grace, and writhing with remorse for some child's sin, Monday riding vain-gloriously in the glaur on the road to h.e.l.l, bragging of filthy amours, and inwardly gloating upon a crime antic.i.p.ated. Oh, but were the human soul made on less devious plan, how my trade of Gospel messenger were easy! And valour, too, is it not in most men a fever of the moment; at another hour the call for courage might find them quailing and flying like the coney of the rocks."

"Then Argile, you think, was on those occasions the sport of his weaker self?" I pushed. I found so many obstacles in the way of satisfaction to my natural curiosity that I counted no persistence too rude now.

"He was the result of his history," said the minister, quickly, his face flushing with a sudden inspiration. "From the start of time those black moments for the first Marquis of Argile have been preparing. I can speak myself of his more recent environment He has about him ever flatterers of the type of our friend the sentinel out there, well-meaning but a woeful influence, keeping from him every rumour that might vex his ear, colouring every event in such a manner as will please him. They kept the man so long in a delusion that fate itself was under his heel, that when the stress of things came--"

"Not another word!" cried M'Iver from the doorway.

We turned round and found him standing there wrapped up in his plaid, his bonnet over a frowning brow, menace in his eye.

"Not another word, if it must be in that key. Has Archibald Marquis of Argile and Lord of Lochow no friends in this convocation? I would have thought his own paid curate and a neighbour so close as Elrigmore would never waste the hours due to sleep upon treason to the man who deserved better of them."

"You should have eavesdropped earlier and you would have learned that there was no treason in the matter. I'm as leal friend to my lord of Argile as you or any of your clan. What do I care for your bubbly-jock Highland vanity?" said Gordon.

"We were saying nothing of MacCailein that we would not say to you," I explained to M'Iver, annoyed in some degree by his interference.

"Ay, ay," said he, with a pitying shrug of the shoulder, and throwing off his last objection to my curiosity; "you're on the old point again.

Man, but you're ill to satisfy! And yet we must have the story sooner or later, I suppose. I would rather have it anywhere than in this wauf and...

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...malcontents as we thought them, and found Montrose on the braes above us as the dawn broke. We had but a shot or two apiece to the musket, they tell me. Dun-barton's drums rolled, the pipes clamoured, the camp rose from its sleep in a confusion, and a white moon was fainting behind us. Argile, who had slept in a galley all night, came ash.o.r.e in a wherry with his left arm in a sling. His face was like the clay, but he had a firm lip, and he was buckling a hauberk with a steady hand as the men fell under arms. Left alone then, I have a belief that he would have come through the affair gallantly; but the Highland double-dealings were too much for him. He turned to Auchinbreac and said 'Shall I take the command, or----?' leaving an alternative for his relative to guess at Auchinbreac, a stout soldier but a vicious, snapped him very short 'Leave it to me, leave it to me,' he answered, and busied himself again in disposing his troops, upon whom I was well aware he had no great reliance. Then Sir James Rollock-Niddry, and a few others pushed the Marquis to take his place in his galley again, but would he? Not till Auchinbreac came up a second time, and seeing the contention of his mind, took your Highland way of flattering a chief, and made a poltroon act appear one of judgment and necessity. 'As a man and soldier only, you might be better here at the onset,' said Auchinbreac, who had a wily old tongue; 'but you are disabled against using sword or pistol; you are the mainstay of a great national movement, depending for its success on your life, freedom, and continued exertion.' Argile took to the galley again, and Auchinbreac looked after him with a shamed and dubious eye.

Well, well, Sir Duncan has paid for his temporising; he's in his place appointed. I pa.s.sed the knowe where he lay writhing to a terrible end, with a pike at his vitals, and he was moaning for the chief he had helped to a shabby flight."

"A shabby flight!" said M'Iver, with a voice that was new to me, so harsh was it and so high-set.

"You can pick the word for yourself," said the minister; "if by heaven's grace I was out of this, in Inneraora I should have my own way of putting it to Argile, whom I love and blame."

"Oh you Lowland dog!" cried John Splendid, more high-keyed than ever, "_you_ to blame Argile!" And he stepped up to the cleric, who was standing by the chimney-jambs, glowered h.e.l.lishly in his face, then with a fury caught his throat in his fingers, and pinned him up against the wall.

CHAPTER XXVI.--TRAPPED.

I caught M'Iver by the coat-lapels, and took him off the gasping cleric.

"Oh man!" I cried, "is this the Highland brigadier to be throttling an old soldier of Christ?"

"Let me get at him and I'll set him in the way of putting the last truth of his trade to its only test," said he, still with a face corp-white, tugging at my hold and eyeing Master Gordon with a very uplifted and ferocious demeanour.

I suppose he must, in the midst of his fury, have got just a glisk of the true thing before him--not a worthy and fair opponent for a man of his own years, but an old wearied man of peace, with a flabby neck, and his countenance blotched, and his wig ajee upon his head so that it showed the bald pate below, for he came to himself as it were with a start. Then he was ashamed most bitterly. He hung his head and sc.r.a.ped with an unconscious foot upon the floor. The minister recovered his wind, looked with contempt in every line at the man who had abused him, and sat down without a word before the fire.

"I'm sorry about this," said M'Iver, fumbling about his waist-belt with nervous ringers; "I'm sorry about this, Master Gordon. A Highlander cannot be aye keeping G.o.d's gift of a temper in leash, and yet it's my disgrace to have laid a hand on a gentleman of your age and calling, even for the name of my chief. Will you credit me when I say I was blind to my own act? Something in me rose uncontrollable, and had you been Hector in armour, or my grandfather from the grave, I was at your neck."

"Say no more about it," answered Gordon. "I have seen the wolf so often at the Highlander's heart that I need not be wondering to find him snarling and clawing now. And still--from a gentleman--and a person of travel----"

"Say away, sir," said M'Iver, bitterly; "you have the whole plea with you this time, and I'm a rogue of the blackest I can say no more than I'm sorry for a most dirty action."

Gordon looked at him, and seemed convinced that here was a genuine remorse; at least his mien softened and he said quietly, "You'll hear no more of it from me."

We were standing, M'Iver and I, in front of the hearth, warming to the peat glow, and the cleric sat in an oak arm-chair. Out in the vacant night the rain still pattered and the gale cried. And all at once, above the sound of wind and water, there came a wild rapping at the main door of the house, the alarum of a very crouse and angry traveller finding a hostel barred against him at unseasonable hours. A whole childhood of fairy tale rose to my mind in a second; but the plain truth followed with more conviction, that likely here was no witch, warlock, nor fairy, but some one with a better right to the tenancy of Dal-ness than seven broken men with nor let nor tack. We were speedily together, the seven of us, and gathered in the hall, and listening with mouths open and hearts dunting, to the rapping that had no sign of ceasing.

"I'll have a vizzy from an upper window of who this may be," said John, sticking a piece of pine in the fire till it flared at the end, and hurrying with it thus lighted up the stair. I followed at his heels, while the rest remained below ready to give whatever reception was most desirable to the disturbers of our night's repose. The window we went to looked out on the most utter blackness, a blackness that seemed to stream in at the window as we swung it softly back on its hinge. M'Iver put oat his head and his torch, giving a warder's keek at the door below where the knocking continued. He drew in his head quickly and looked at me with astonishment.

"It's a woman," said he. "I never saw a campaign where so many petticoats of one kind or another were going. Who, in G.o.d's name, can this one be, and what's her errand to Dalness at this hour? One of its regular occupants would scarcely make such to-do about her summons."

"The quickest answer could be got by asking her," I said.

"And about a feint?" he said, musing. "Well, we can but test it."

We went down and reported to our companions, and Gordon was for opening the door on the moment "A wanderer like ourselves," said he, "perhaps a widow of our own making from Glencoe. In any case a woman, and out in the storm."

We stood round the doors while M'Iver put back the bars and opened as much as would give entry to one person at a time. There was a loud cry, and in came the Dark Dame, a very spectacle of sorrow! Her torn garments clung sodden to her skin, her hair hung stringy at her neck, the elements had chilled and drowned the frenzied gleaming of her eyes. And there she stood in the doorway among us, poor woman, poor wretch, with a frame shaking to her tearless sobs!

"You have no time to lose," she said to our query, "a score of Glencoe men are at my back. They fancy they'll have you here in the trap this house's owner left you. Are you not the fools to be advantaging yourselves of comforts you might be sure no fairy left for Campbells in Dalness? You may have done poorly at Inverlochy--though I hear the Lowlanders and not you were the poltroons--but blood is thicker than water, and have we not the same hills beside our doors at home, and I have run many miles to warn you that MacDonald is on his way." She told her story with sense and straightness, her frenzy subdued by the day's rigour. Our flight from her cries, she said, had left her a feeling of lonely helplessness; she found, as she sped, her heart truer to the tartan of her name than her anger had let her fancy, and so she followed us round Loch Leven-head, and over the hills to Glencoe. At the blind woman's house in the morning, where she pa.s.sed readily enough for a natural, she learned that the eldest son in the bed had set about word of our presence before we were long out of his mother's door. The men we had seen going down in the airt of Tynree were the lad's gathering, and they would have lost us but for the beetle-browed rogue, who, guessing our route through the hills to Dalness, had run before them, and, unhampered by arms or years, had reached the house of Dalness a little before we came out of our journey in swamp and corry. A sharp blade, certes! he had seen that unless something brought us to pause a while at Dalness we would be out of the reach of his friends before they had gained large enough numbers and made up on him. So he had planned with the few folk in the house to leave it temptingly open in our way, with the shrewd guess that starved and wearied men would be found sleeping beside the fire when the MacDonalds came round the gusset. All this the Dame Dubh heard and realised even in her half frenzy as she spent some time in the company of the marching MacDonalds, who never dreamt that her madness and her denunciations of Clan Diarmaid were mixed in some degree with a natural interest in the welfare of every member of that clan.

M'Iver scrutinised the woman sharply, to a.s.sure himself there was no cunning effort of a mad woman to pay off the score her evil tongue of the day before revealed she had been reckoning; but he saw only here dementia gone to a great degree, a friend anxious for our welfare--so anxious, indeed, that the food Master Gordon was pressing upon her made no appeal to her famishing body.

"You come wonderfully close on my Frankfort story," said M'Iver, whimsically. "I only hope we may win out of Dalness as snugly as we won out of the castle of the cousin of Pomerania."

For a minute or two we debated on our tactics. We had no muskets, though swords were rife enough in Dalness, so a stand and a defence by weapons was out of the question. M'Iver struck on a more pleasing and cleanly plan. It was to give the MacDonalds t.i.t for tat, and decoy them into the house as their friends had decoyed us into it, and leave them there in durance while we went on our own ways.

We jammed down the iron pins of the shutters in the salmanger, so that any exit or entrance by this way was made a task of the greatest difficulty; then we lit the upper flats, to give the notion that we were lying there. M'Iver took his place behind a door that led from the hall to other parts of the house, and was indeed the only way there, while the rest of us went out into the night and concealed ourselves in the dark angle made by a turret and gable--a place where we could see, without being seen, any person seeking entry to the house.

All the paths about the mansion were strewn with rough sand or gravel from the river, and the rain, in slanting spears, played hiss upon them with a sound I never hear to-day but my mind's again in old Dalness. And in the dark, vague with rain and mist, the upper windows shone blear and ghostly, dull vapours from a swamp, corp-candles on the sea, more than the eyes of a habitable dwelling warm and lit within. We stood, the seven of us, against the gable (for the woman joined us and munched a dry crust between the chittering of her teeth), waiting the coming of the MacDonalds.

I got to my musing again, puzzled in this cold adventure, upon the mystery of life. I thought it must be a dream such as a man has lying in strange beds, for my spirit floated and cried upon that black and ugly air, lost and seeking as the soul of a man struggling under sleep. I had been there before, I felt, in just such piteous case among friends in the gable of a dwelling, yet all alone, waiting for visitors I had no welcome for. And then again ( I would think), is not all life a dream, the sun and night of it, the seasons, the faces of friends, the flicker of fires and the nip of wine; and am not I now stark awake for the first time, the creature of G.o.d, alone in His world before the dusk has been divided from the day and bird and beast have been let loose to wander about a new universe? Or again (I would think), am I not dead and done with? Surely I fell in some battle away in Low Germanie, or later in the sack of Inneraora town, that was a town long, long ago, before the wave threshed in upon Dunchuach?

The man with the want, as usual, was at his tears, whispering to himself reproach and memory and omens of fear, but he was alert enough to be the first to observe the approach of our enemy. Ten minutes at least before they appeared on the sward, lit by the lights of the upper windows, he lifted a hand, c.o.c.ked an ear, and told us he heard their footsteps.

There were about a score and a half of the Mac-Donalds altogether, of various ages, some of them old gutchers that had been better advised to be at home snug by the fire in such a night or saying their prayers in preparation for the looming grave, some of them young and strapping, all well enough armed with everything but musketry, and guided to the house by the blind woman's son and a gentleman in a laced coat, whom we took to be the owner of Dalness because two men of the bearing and style of servants were in his train and very pretentious about his safety in the course of a debate that took place a few yards from us as to whether they should demand our surrender or attack and cut us down with-out quarter.

The gentleman sent his two lackeys round the house, and they came back reporting (what we had been very careful of) that every door was barred.

"Then," said the gentleman, "well try a bland knock, and if need be, force the main door."

He was standing now in a half dusk, clear of the light of the windows, with a foot on the step of the door; behind him gathered the MacDonalds with their weapons ready, and I dare say, could we have seen it, with no very pretty look on their faces. As he spoke, he put his hand on the hasp, and, to his surprise, the heavy door was open. We had taken good care of that too.

The band gathered themselves together and dived into the place, and the plaiding of the last of them had scarcely got inside the door than Stewart ran up with the key and turned the lock, with a low whistle for the guidance of M'Iver at the inner door. In a minute or less, John was round in our midst again with his share of the contract done, and our rats were squealing in their trap.

For a little there was nothing but crying and cursing, wild beating against the door, vain attack on the windows, a fury so futile that it was sweet to us outsiders, and we forgot the storm and the hardship.