John Splendid Part 33

At last M'Iver rapped on the door and demanded attention.

"Is there any one there with the English?" he asked.

The gentleman of Dalness answered that he could speak English with the best cateran ever came out of MacCailein Mor's country, and he called for instant release, with a menace added that h.e.l.l itself could not excel the punishment for us if they were kept much longer under lock and bar. "We are but an advanced guard," said he, with a happy thought at lying, "and our friends will be at your back before long."

M'Iver laughed pawkily.

"Come, come, Dalness," said he, "do you take us for girls? You have every man left in Glencoe at your back there; you're as much ours as if you were in the tolbooth of Inneraora O; and I would just be mentioning that if I were in your place I would be speaking very soft and soothing."

"I'll argue the thing fairly with you if you let us out," said Dalness, stifling his anger behind the door, but still with the full force of it apparent in the stress of his accent.

M'Iver laughed again.

"You have a far better chance where you are," said he. "You are very snug and warm there; the keg of brandy's on the left-hand side of the fire, though I'm afraid there's not very much left of it now that my friend of Achnatra here has had his will of it. Tell those gentry with you that we intend to make ourselves cosy in other parts of the house till the morn's morning, and that if they attempt to force a way out by door or window before we let them, we'll have sentinels to blow out the little brains they have. I'm putting it to you in the English, Dalness--and I cry pardon for making my first gossip with a Highland gentleman in such a tongue--but I want you to put my message in as plausible a way as suits you best to the lads and _bodachs_ with you."

The man drew away from the neighbourhood of the door; there was a long silence, and we concluded they were holding parley of war as to what was next to be done. Meantime we made preparations to be moving from a place that was neither safe nor homely. We took food from the pantries, scourged Stewart from a press he was prying in with clawing fingers and bulging pockets, and had just got together again at the rear of the house when a cry at the front told us that our enemies, in some way we never learned the manner of, had got the better of our bolted doors and shutters.

Perhaps a chance of planning our next step would have been in our favour; perhaps on the other hand it would have been the worse for us, because in human folly we might have determined on staying to face the odds against us, but there was no time for balancing the chances; whatever was to be done was to be done quickly.

"Royal's my race!" cried Stewart, dropping a pillowslip full of goods he carried with him--"Royal's my race--and here's one with great respect for keeping up the name of it" And he leaped to a thicket on his left.

The man with the want ran weeping up to the Dark Dame and clung to her torn gown, a very child in the stupor of his grief and fear. The baron-bailie and Sonachan and the minister stood spellbound, and I cursed our folly at the weakness of our trap. Only M'Iver kept his wits about him.

"Scatter," said he in English--"scatter without adieus, and all to the fore by morning search back to the Brig of Urchy, comrades there till the middle of the day, then the devil take the hindmost."

More than a dozen MacDonalds came running round the gable end, lit by the upper windows, and we dispersed like chaff to the wind before M'Iver's speech concluded. He and I ran for a time together, among the bushes of the garden, through the curly kail, under low young firs that clutched at the clothing. Behind us the night rang with pursuing cries, with challenge and call, a stupid clamour that gave a clue to the track we could follow with greatest safety. M'Iver seemingly stopped to listen, or made up his mind to deviate to the side after a little; for I soon found myself running alone, and two or three men--to judge by their cries--keeping as close on me as they could by the sound of my plunging among twig and bracken. At last, by striking to an angle down a field that suddenly rolled down beside me, I found soft carpeting for my feet, and put an increasing distance between us. With no relaxation to my step, however, I kept running till I seemed a good way clear of Dalness policies, and on a bridle-path that led up the glen--the very road, as I learned later, that our enemy had taken on their way from Tynree. I kept on it for a little as well as I could, but the night was so dark (and still the rain was pouring though the wind had lowered) that by-and-by I lost the path, and landed upon rough water-broken rocky land, bare of tree or bush. The tumult behind me was long since stilled in distance, the storm itself had abated, and I had traversed for less than an hour when the rain ceased But still the night was solemn black, though my eyes by usage had grown apt and accustomed to separate the dense black of the boulder from the drab air around it. The country is one threaded on every hand by eas and brook that drop down the mountain sides at almost every yard of the way. Nothing was to hear but the sound of running and falling waters, every brook with its own note, a tinkle of gold on a marble stair as I came to it, declining to a murmur of sweethearts in a bower as I put its banks behind me after wading or leaping; or a song sung in a clear spring morning by a girl among heather hills m.u.f.fling behind me to the blackguard discourse of banditty waiting with poignards out upon a lonely highway.

I was lost somewhere north of Glen Etive; near me I knew must be Tynrce, for I had been walking for two hours and yet I dare not venture back on the straight route to to-morrow's rendezvous till something of daylight gave me guidance At last I concluded that the way through the Black Mount country to Bredalbane must be so dote at hand it would be stupidity of the densest to go back by Dalness. There was so much level land round me that I felt sure I must be rounding the Bredalbane hills, and I chanced a plunge to the left. I had not taken twenty steps when I ran up against the dry-stone d.y.k.e that bordered the Inns of Tynrec.

CHAPTER XXVII.--A TAVERN IN THE WILDS.

Tynree is the Gaelic of a name that in the English is King's House. What humour gave so gaudy a t.i.tle to so humble a place I have been always beat to know. For if the poorest of the chiefs of the poor isles had his choice of the gallows at once or Tynree for a long habitation, I'm thinking he would cry, "Out with your rope." Standing all its lee lone on the edge of the wildest moor of all the Scottish kingdom, bl.u.s.tered on by the winds of Glen-coe and Glen Etive, the house, far apart from any other (even a hunter's bothy among the corries), must be eerie, empty of all but its owner at most seasons of the year. He will have nothing about him but the flying plover that is so heart-breaking in its piping at the grey of morn, for him must the night be a dreariness no rowth of cruisie or candle may mitigate. I can fancy him looking out day after day upon plains of snow and cruel summits, blanching and snarling under sodden skies, and him wishing that G.o.d so good was less careless, and had given him a home and trade back among the cosy little glens, if not in the romping towns. But they tell me--people who rove and have tried Tynree in all weathers--that often it is cheerful with song and story; and there is a tale that once upon a time a little king, out adventuring in the kingly ways of winter stories, found this tavern in the wilds so warm, so hospitable, so resounding with the songs of good fellows, that he bided as a duc for a week of the winter weather.

When I came on Tynree, it was sounding with music, just, it might be, as in the day of the king in the story. Three of the morning, yet the hostel sent out a most hearty reek and firelight, the odours of stewing meats and of strong waters, and the sound of piping and trumping and laughing.

I stood back a piece from the house and debated with myself whether or not it was one where the tartan of Diarmaid would be sure of a welcome even if his sporran jingled with gold to the very jaws. All I wanted was shelter till the day broke and-this may seem odd to any one who has not known the utter wearisomeness of being a hunted man jinking in the dark among woods and alleys--the easy conversation of some human beings with no thought bothering them but what would be for the next meal, or the price of cattle at a town tryst And song and trump-come, I'll tell the G--s own truth upon that! They called me Sobersides in those days: Miver gave me the name and kept it on me lili the very last, and yet sobriety of spirit (in one way) was the last quality in those oh! days of no grace to find in my nature. I liknl to sit in taverns, drinking not deeply, but enough to keep the mood from flagging, with people of the young heart, people fond of each other, adrift from all commercial cunning, singing old staves and letting their fancy go free to a tunc tw.a.n.ged on a Jew's-tnimp or squeezed upon a lagulie or rigged upon a fiddle. So the merriment of I'ynree held me like a charm, and a mad whin last seized me, and in I went, confident that my insttn of comradery would not deceive me, and that at last I hail the boon-companion's chance.

Its company never even stopped their clamour to look at me; the landlord put a jug at my elbow, and a whang of bread and cheese, and I was joining with an affected gusto in a chorus less than ten minutes after I had been a hunted man on the edge of Moor Ran No ready to toss up a bawbee to learn whither my road should be.

It was an orra and remarkable gathering, convened surely by the trickery of a fantastic and vagabond providence,--"not a great many, but well picked," as Mac-gregor the Mottled said of his band of thieves. There were men and women to the number of a score, two or three travelling merchants (as they called themselves, but I think in my mind they were the kind of merchants who bargain with the dead corp on the abandoned battle-field, or follow expeditions of war to glean the spoil from burning homesteads); there were several gangrels, an Irishman with a silver eye, a strolling piper with poor skill of his n.o.ble instrument, the fiddler who was a drunken native of the place, a gipsy and his wife and some randy women who had dropped out of the march of Montrose's troops. Over this notable congregation presided the man of the house--none of your fat and genial-looking gentlemen, but a long lean personage with a lack-l.u.s.tre eye. You would swear he would dampen the joy of a penny wedding, and yet (such a deceit is the countenance) he was a person of the finest wit and humour, otherwise I daresay Tynree had no such wonderful party in it that night.

I sat by the fire-end and quaffed my ale, no one saying more to me for a little than "There you are!" Well enough they knew my side in the issue--my tartan would tell them that--but wandering bodies have no politics beyond the conviction that the world owes them as easy a living as they can cheat it out of, and they never mentioned war. The landlord's dram was on, and 'twas it I had shared in, and when it was over I pulled out a crown and bought the heartiest goodwill of a score of rogues with some flagons of ale.

A beetle-browed chamber, long, narrow, stifling with the heat of a great fire, its flagged floor at intervals would slap with bare or bauchled feet dancing to a short reel. First one gangrel would sing a verse or two of a Lowland ballant, not very much put out in its sentiment by the presence of the random ladies; then another would pluck a tune upon the Jew's-trump, a chorus would rise like a sudden gust of wind, a jig would shake upon the fiddle. I never saw a more happy crew, nor yet one that--judging from the doctrine that thrift and sobriety have their just reward--deserved it less. I thought of poor Master Gordon somewhere dead or alive in or about Dalness, a very pupil of Christ, and yet with a share of His sorrows, with nowhere to lay his head, but it did not bitter me to my company.

By-and-by the landlord came cannily up to me and whispered in my ear a sort of apology for the rabble of his house.

"You ken, sir," said he in very good English--"you ken yourself what the country's like just now, given over to unending brawl, and I am glad to see good-humoured people about me, even if they are penniless gangrels."

"My own business is war," I acknowledged; "I'll be frank enough to tell you I'm just now making my way to Inneraora as well as the weather and the MacDonalds will let me."

He was pleased at my candour, I could see; confidence is a quality that rarely fails of its purpose. He pushed the bottle towards me with the friendliest of gestures, and took the line of the fellow-conspirator.

"Keep your thumb on that," said he; "I'm not supposed to precognosce every lodger in Tynree upon his politics. I'm off Clan Chattan myself, and not very keen on this quarrel--that's to say, I'll take no side in it, for my trade is feeding folk and not fighting them. Might I be asking if you were of the band of Campbells a corps of MacDonalds were chasing down the way last night?"

I admitted I was.

"I have nothing to do with it," said he; "and I'll do a landlord's duty by any clan coming my way. As for my guests here, they're so pleased to see good order broken in the land and hamlets half-harried that they'll favour any man whose trade is the sword, especially if he's a gentleman," he added. "I'm one myself, though I keep a sort of poor hostel here. I'm a young son."

We were joined by the gipsy, a bold tall man with very black and lambent eyes, hiccoughing with drink but not by any means drunken, who took out a wallet and insisted on my joining now in his drink. I dare not refuse the courtesy.

"Would you like your fortune spaed, sir?" asked my black friend, twitching his thumb in the direction of his wife, who was leering on me with a friendliness begot of the bottle. The place was full of deafening noises and peat-smoke. Fiddle jigged and pipes snored in the deep notes of debauchery, and the little Jew's-trump tw.a.n.ged between the teeth of a dirty-faced man in a saffron shirt and hodden breeks, wanting jacket and hose--a wizen little old man, going around the world living like a poet in realms whereto trump and tipple could readily bring him.

"Spae my fortune!" said I, laughing; "such swatches of the same as I had in the past were of no nature to make me eager to see what was to follow."

"Still and on," said he, "who knows but you may find a wife and a good fortune in a little lurk of the thumb? Jean! Jean! woman," he cried across the chamber to his callet, and over she came to a very indifferent and dubious client.

I had got my hand read a score of times ere this (for I am of a nature curious and prying), and each time the reading was different, but it did not altogether shake my faith in wise women; so, half for the fun of it, I put some silver pieces in the loof of my hand and held it before the woman, the transaction unnoticed by the company. She gave the common harangue to start with. At last, "There's a girl with a child," said she.

"Faith, and she never went to the well with the dish-clout then," said the black man, using a well-known Gaelic proverb, meaning a compliment in his dirty a.s.sumption.

"She's in a place of many houses now," went on the woman, busy upon the lines of my hand, "and her mind is taken up with a man in the ranks of Argile."

"That's not reading the hand at all, goodwife," said I; "those small facts of life are never written in a line across the loof."

"Jean is no apprentice at the trade," said her man across her shoulder.

"She can find a life's history in the s.p.a.ce of a hair."

"The man found the woman and the child under a root of fir," said the woman, "and if the man is not very quick to follow her, he may find kinship's courting get the better of a far-off lover's fancy."

"_Dhe!_" said I; "you have your story most pat. And what now, would you say, would be the end of it all--coming to the real business of the palmist, which, I take it, is not to give past history but to forecast fate?"

I'll not deny but I was startled by the woman's tale, for here was Betty and here was MacLachlan put before me as plainly as they were in my own mind day and night since we left Inneraora.

The woman more closely scrutinised my hand, paused a while, and seemed surprised herself at its story.

"After all," said she, "the woman is not going to marry the man she loves."

I plucked my hand away with a "Pshaw! what does it matter? If I doubled your fee you would give me the very best fortune in your wit to devise."

The Irishman with the silver eye here jostled a merchantman, who drew his gully-knife, so that soon there was a fierce quarrel that it took all the landlord's threats and vigour of arm to put an end ta By this time I was becoming tired of my company; now that the spae-wife had planted the seed of distress in my mind, those people were tawdry, unclean, wretched. They were all in rags, foul and smelling; their music was but noise demented. I wondered at myself there in so vicious a company. And Betty--home--love--peace--how all the tribe of them suddenly took up every corner of my mind. Oh! fool, fool, I called myself, to be thinking your half-hearted wooing of the woman had left any fondness behind it. From the beginning you were second in the field, and off the field now--a soldier of a disgraced army, has the cousin not all the chances in the world? h.e.l.l be the true friend in trouble, h.e.l.l console her loneliness in a sacked burgh town; a woman's affection is so often her reward for simple kindness that he has got her long ago at no greater cost than keeping her company in her lonely hours. And you are but the dreamer, standing off trembling and flushing like a boy when you should be boldly on her cheek, because you dare not think yourself her equal The father's was the true word: "There's one thing a woman will not abide, that her lover should think lightly either of himself or her."

All that black stream of sorry thought went rushing through me as I sat with an empty jug in my hand in a room that was sounding like a market-place. With a start I wakened up to find the landlord making a buffoon's attempt at a dance in the middle of the floor to the tune of the Jew-trump, a transparent trick to restore the good-humour of his roysterers, and the black man who had fetched the spae-wife was standing at my side surveying me closely out of the corners of his eyes. I stood to my feet and ganted with great deliberation to pretend I had been half-sleeping. He yawned too, but with such obvious pretence that I could not but laugh at him, and he smiled knowingly back.

"Well," said he in English, "you'll allow it's a fair imitation, for I never heard that a put-on gant was smittal. I see that you are put about at my wife's fortune: she's a miracle at the business, as I said; she has some secrets of fate I would rather with her than me. But I would swear a man may sometime get the better even of fate if he has a warning of its approach."

"I can scarcely see that by the logic of Porphyrius or Peter Hispa.n.u.s with the categories, two scholars I studied at Glascow. But you are surely a queer man to be a vagabond at the petticoat-tails of a spae-wife," said I.