John Splendid Part 36

The castle had the stillness of the grave. Every guest had fled as quickly as he could from this retreat of a naked and ashamed soul. Where pipers played as a custom, and laughter rang, there was the melancholy hush of a monastery. The servants went about a-tiptoe, speaking in whispers lest their master should be irritated in his fever; the very banner on the tower hung limp about its pole, hiding the black galley of its blazon, now a lymphad of disgrace. As we went over the bridge a little dog, his lordship's favourite, lying at the door, weary, no doubt, of sullen looks and silence, came leaping and barking about us at John's cheery invitation, in a joy, as it would appear, to meet any one with a spark of life and friendliness.

Argile was in his bed-chamber and between blankets, in the hands of his physician, who had been bleeding him. He had a minister for mind and body, for Gordon was with him too, and stayed with him during our visit, though the chirurgeon left the room with a word of caution to his patient not to excite himself.

"Wise advice, is it not, gentlemen?" said the Marquis. "As if one stirred up his own pa.s.sions like a dame waiting on a drunken husband.

I am glad to see you back, more especially as Master Gordon was just telling me of the surprise at Dalness, and the chance that you had been cut down there by the MacDonalds, who, luckily for him and Sonachan and the others, all followed you in your flight, and gave them a chance of an easy escape."

He shook hands with us warmly enough, with fingers moist and nervous.

A raised look was in his visage, his hair hung upon a brow of exceeding pallor. I realised at a half-glance the commotion that was within.

"A drop of wine?"

"Thank you," said I, "but I'm after a gla.s.s in the town." I was yet to learn sorrow for this unhappy n.o.bleman whose conduct had bittered me all the way from Lom.

MacCailein scrutinised me sharply, and opened his lips as it were to say something, but changed his mind, and made a gesture towards the bottle, which John Splendid speedily availed himself of with a "Here's one who has no swither about it. Lord knows I have had few enough of life's comforts this past week!"

Gordon sat with a Bible in his hand, abstracted, his eyes staring on a window that looked on the branches of the highest tree about the castle.

He had been reading or praying with his master before the physician had come in; he had been doing his duty (I could swear by his stern jaw), and making MacCailein Mor writhe to the flame of a conscience revived.

There was a constraint on the company for some minutes, on no one more than Argile, who sat propped up on his bolsters, and, fiddling with long thin fingers with the fringes of his coverlet, looked every way but in the eyes of M'Iver or myself. I can swear John was glad enough to escape their glance. He was as little at ease as his master, made all the fuss he could with his bottle, and drank his wine with far too great a deliberation for a person generally pretty brisk with the beaker.

"It's a fine day," said he at last, breaking the silence. "The back of the winter's broken fairly." Then he started and looked at me, conscious that I might have some contempt for so frail an opening.

"Did you come here to speak about the weather?" asked MacCailein, with a sour wearied smile.

"No," said M'Iver, ruffling up at once; "I came to ask when you are going to take us back the road we came?"

"To--to--overbye?" asked MacCailein, baulking at the name.

"Just so; to Inverlochy," answered M'Iver. "I suppose we are to give them a call when we can muster enough men?"

"Hadn't we better consider where we are first?" said MacCailein. Then he put his fair hand through his ruddy locks and sighed. "Have you nothing to say (and be done with it) about my--my--my part in the affair? His reverence here has had his will of me on that score."

M'Iver darted a look of annoyance at the minister, who seemed to pay no heed, but still to have his thoughts far off.

"I have really nothing to say, your lordship, except that I'm glad to see you spared to us here instead of being left a corpse with our honest old kinsman Auchinbreac (_beannachd leas!_) and more gentry of your clan and house than the Blue Quarry will make tombs for in Kilmalieu. If the minister has been preaching, it's his trade; it's what you pay him for.

I'm no homilist, thank G.o.d, and no man's conscience."

"No, no; G.o.d knows you are not," said Argile, in a tone of pity and vexation. "I think I said before that you were the poorest of consciences to a man in a hesitancy between duty and inclination....

And all my guests have left me, John; I'm a lonely man in my castle of Inneraora this day, except for the prayers of a wife--G.o.d bless and keep her!--who knows and comprehends my spirit And I have one more friend here in this room------"

"You can count on John M'Iver to the yetts of h.e.l.l," said my friend, "and I am the proud man that you should think it."

"I am obliged to you for that, kinsman," said his lordship in Gaelic, with a by-your-leave to the cleric. "But do not give your witless vanity a foolish airing before my chaplain." Then he added in the English, "When the fairy was at my cradle-side and gave my mother choice of my gifts, I wish she had chosen rowth of real friends. I could be doing with more about me of the quality I mention; better than horse and foot would they be, more trusty than the claymores of my clan. It might be the slogan 'Cruachan' whenever it wist, and Archibald of Argile would be more puissant than he of Homer's story. People have envied me when they have heard me called the King of the Highlands--fools that did not know I was the poorest, weakest man of his time, surrounded by flatterers instead of friends. Gordon, Gordon, I am the victim of the Highland liar, that smooth-tongued----"

"Call it the Campbell liar," I cried bitterly, thinking of my father.

"Your clan has not the reputation of guile for nothing, and if you refused straightforward honest outside counsel sometimes, it was not for the want of its offering."

"I cry your pardon," said MacCailein, meekly; "I should have learned to discriminate by now. Blood's thicker than water, they say, but it's not so pure and transparent; I have found my blood drumly enough."

"And ready enough to run freely for you," said M'Iver, but half comprehending this perplexed mind. "Your lordship should be the last to echo any sentiment directed against the name and fame of Clan Campbell."

"Indeed they gave me their blood freely enough--a thousand of them lying yonder in the north--I wish they had been so lavish, those closest about me, with truth and honour. For that I must depend on an honest servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one man in my pay with the courage to confront me with no cloaked speech, but his naked thought, though it should lash me like whips. Oh, many a time my wife, who is none of our race, warned me against the softening influence, the blight and rot of this eternal air of flattery that's round about Castle Inneraora like a swamp vapour. She's in Stirling to-day--I ken it in my heart that to-night sh.e.l.l weep upon her pillow because she'll know fate has found the weak joint in her goodman's armour again."

John Splendid's brow came down upon a most perplexed face; this seemed all beyond him, but he knew his master was somehow blaming the world at large for his own error.

"Come now, John," said his lordship, turning and leaning on his arm and looking curiously at his kinsman. "Come now, what do you think of me here without a wound but at the heart, with Auchinbreac and all my gallant fellows yonder?"

"Auchinbreac was a soldier by trade and a good one too," answered M'Iver, at his usual trick of prevarication.

"And a flatterer like yourself, you mean," said his lordship. "He and you learned the lesson in the same school, I'm thinking. And as ill-luck had it, his ill counsel found me on the swither, as yours did when Colkitto came down the glens there to rape and burn. That's the Devil for you; he's aye planning to have the minute and the man together.

Come, sir, come, sir, what do you think, what do you think?"

He rose as he spoke and put his knees below him, and leaned across the bed with hands upon the blankets, staring his kinsman in the face as if he would pluck the truth from him out at the very eyes. His voice rose to an animal cry with an agony in it; the sinister look that did him such injustice breathed across his visage. His knuckle and collar-bones shone blae through the tight skin.

"What do I think?" echoed M'Iver. "Well, now----"

"On your honour now," cried Argile, clutching him by the shoulder.

At that M'Iver's countenance changed: he threw off his soft complacence, and cruelty and temper stiffened his jaw.

"I'll soon give you that, my Lord of Argile," said he. "I can lie like a Dutch major for convenience sake, but put me on honour and you'll get the truth if it cost me my life. Purgatory's your portion, Argile, for a Sunday's work that makes our name a mock to-day across the envious world. Take to your books and your preachers, sir--you're for the cloister and not for the field; and if I live a hundred years, I'll deny I went with you to Inverlochy. I left my sword in Badenoch, but here's my dagger" (and he threw it with a clatter on the floor); "it's the last tool I'll handle in the service of a scholar. To-morrow the old big wars for me; Hebron's troopers will welcome an umquhile comrade, and I'll find no swithering captains among the cavaliers in France."

Back sat my lord in bed, and laughed with a surrender shrill and distraught, until Master Gordon and I calmed him, and there was his cousin still before him in a pa.s.sion, standing in the middle of the floor.

"Stop, stop, John," he cried; "now that for once I've got the truth from you, let us be better friends than ever before."

"Never the same again," said M'I ver, firmly, "never the same again, for you ken my estimate of you now; and what avails my courtesy?"

"Your flatteries, you mean," said Argile, good-natured. "And, besides, you speak only of my two blunders; you know my other parts,--you know that by nature I am no poltroon."

"That's no credit to you, sir--it's the strong blood of Diarmaid; there was no poltroon in the race but what came in on the wrong side of the blanket I've said it first, and I'll say it to the last, your spirit is smoored among the books. Paper and ink will be the Gael's undoing; my mother taught me, and my mother knew. So long as we lived by our hands we were the world's invincibles. Rome met us and Rome tried us, and her corps might come in winter torrents, but they never tore us from our hills and keeps. What Rome may never do, that may paper and sheepskin; you, yourself, MacCailein, have the name of plying pen and ink very well to your own purpose in the fingers of old lairds who have small skill of that contrivance."

He would have pa.s.sed on in this outrageous strain without remission, had not Gordon checked him with a determined and unabashed voice. He told him to sit down in silence or leave the room, and asked him to look upon his master and see if that high fever was a condition to inflame in a fit of temper. John Splendid cooled a little, and went to the window, looking down with eyes of far surmise upon the pleasance and the town below, chewing his temper between his teeth.

"You see, Elrigmore, what a happy King of the Highlands I am," said the Marquis, despondently. "Fortunate Auchinbreac, to be all bye with it after a moment's agony!"

"He died like a good soldier, sir," I said; "he was by all accounts a man of some vices, but he wiped them out in his own blood."

"Are you sure of that? Is it not the old folly of the code of honour, the mad exaltation of mere valour in arms, that makes you think so? What if he was spilling his drops on the wrong side? He was against his king at least, and--oh, my wits, my wits, what am I saying?... I saw you did not drink my wine, Elrigmore; am I so low as that?"

"There is no man so low, my lord," said I, "but he may be yet exalted.

We are, the best of us, the instruments of a whimsical providence"

("What a rank doctrine," muttered the minister), "and Caesar himself was sometimes craven before his portents. You, my lord, have the one consolation left, that all's not bye yet with the cause you champion, and you may yet lead it to the highest victory."

Argile took a grateful glance at me. "You know what I am," he said, "not a man of the happy, single mood like our friend Barbreck here, but tossed between philosophies. I am paying bitterly for my pliability, for who so much the sport of life as the man who knows right well the gait he should gang, and prays fervently to be permitted to follow it, but sometimes stumbles in the ditch? Monday, oh Monday; I must be at Edinburgh and face them all! Tis that dauntons me." His eyes seemed to swim in blood, as he looked at me, or through me, aghast at the horror of his situation, and sweat stood in blobs upon his brow. "That," he went on, "weighs me down like lead. Here about me my people know me, and may palliate the mistake of a day by the recollection of a lifetime's honour. I blame Auchinbreac; I blame the chieftains,--they said I must take to the galley; I blame----"

"Blame no one, Argile," said Master Gordon, standing up before him, not a second too soon, for his lordship had his hand on the dirk M'Iver had thrown down. Then he turned to us with ejecting arms. "Out you go," he cried sternly, "out you go; what delight have you in seeing a n.o.bleman on the rack?"

As the door closed behind us we could hear Argile sob.