John Splendid Part 38

"And so much of the dandy too!" put in M'Iver, himself perjink enough about his apparel. "I'll wager there's a girl in the business." He laughed low, looked from one to the other of us, yet his meaning escaped, or seemed to escape, the lady.

"Elrigmore is none of the kind," she said, as if to protect a child.

"He has too many serious affairs of life in hand to be in the humour for gallivanting."

This extraordinary reading of my character by the one woman who ought to have known it better, if only by an instinct, threw me into a blend of confusion and chagrin. I had no answer for her. I regretted now that my evil star had sent me up Glenaora, or that having met her with M'Iver, whose presence increased my diffidence, I had not pretended some errand or business up among the farmlands in the Salachry hills, where distant relatives of our house were often found But now I was on one side of the lady and M'Iver on the other, on our way towards the burgh, and the convoy must be concluded, even if I were dumb all the way. Dumb, indeed, I was inclined to be. M'Iver laughed uproariously at madame's notion that I was too seriously engaged with life for the recreation of love-making; it was bound to please him, coming, as it did, so close on his own estimate of me as the Sobersides he christened me at almost our first acquaintance. But he had a generous enough notion to give me the chance of being alone with the girl he knew very well my feelings for.

"I've been up just now at the camp," he said, "anent the purchase of a troop-horse, and I had not concluded my bargain when Mistress Brown pa.s.sed. I'm your true cavalier in one respect, that I must be offering every handsome pa.s.senger an escort; but this time it's an office for Elrigmore, who can undertake your company down the way bravely enough, I'll swear, for all his blateness."

Betty halted, as did the other two of us, and bantered my comrade.

"I ask your pardon a thousand times, Barbreck," she said; "I thought you were hurrying on your way down behind me, and came upon me before you saw who I was."

"That was the story," said he, coolly; "I'm too old a hand at the business to be set back on the road I came by a lady who has no relish for my company."

"I would not take you away from your marketing for the world," she proceeded. "Perhaps Elrigmore may be inclined to go up to the camp too; he may help you to the pick of your horse--and we'll believe you the soldier of fortune again when we see you one."

She, at least, had no belief that the mine-manager was to be a mercenary again. She tapped with a tiny toe on the pebbles, affecting a choler the twinkle in her eyes did not h.o.m.ologate. It was enough for M'Iver, who gave a "Pshaw!" and concluded he might as well, as he said, "be in good company so long as he had the chance," and down the way again we went.

Somehow the check had put him on his mettle. He seemed to lose at once all regard for my interests in this. I became in truth, more frequently than was palatable, the b.u.t.t of his little pleasantries; my mysterious saunter up that glen, my sobriety of demeanour, my now silence-all those things, whose meaning he knew very well, were made the text for his amus.e.m.e.nt for the lady. As for me, I took it all weakly, striving to meet his wit with careless smiles.

For the first time, I was seized with a jealousy of him. Here was I, your arrant rustic; he was as composed as could be, overflowing with happy thoughts, laughable incident, and ever ready with the compliment or the retort women love to hear from a smart fellow of even indifferent character. I ic had the policy to conceal the vanity that was for ordinary his most transparent feature, and his trick was to admire the valour and the humour of others. Our wanderings in Lorn and I-ochaber, our adventures with the MacDonalds, all the story of the expedition, he danced through, as it were, on the tip-toe of light phrase, as if it had Ixrcn a strong man's scheme of recreation, scarcely once appealing to ma With a Mushed cheek and parted lips the lady hung upon his words, arched her dark eyebrows in fear, or bubbled into the merriest laughter as the occasion demanded. Worst of all, she teemed to share his amus.e.m.e.nt at my silence, and then I could have wished rather than a bag of gold I had the Mull witch's invisible coat, or that the earth would swallow me up. The very country-people pa.s.sing on the way were art and part in the conspiracy of circ.u.mstances to make me unhappy. Their salutes were rarely for Elrigmore, but for the lady and John Splendid, whose bold quarrel with MacCailein Mor was now the rumour of two parishes, and gave him a wide name for unflinching bravery of a kind he had been generally acknowledged as sadly want ing in before. And Mistress Betty could not but see that high or low, I was second to this fellow going off--or at least with the rumour of it--to Hebron's cavaliers in France before the week-end.

M'Iver was just, perhaps, carrying his humour at my cost a little too far for my temper, which was never readily stirred, but flamed fast enough when set properly alowe, and Betty--here too your true woman wit--saw it sooner than he did himself, quick enough in the uptake though he was. He had returned again to his banter about the supposit.i.tious girl I was trysted with up the glen, and my face showed my annoyance.

"You think all men like yourself," said the girl to him, "and all women the same--like the common soldier you are."

"I think them all darlings," he confessed, laughing; "G.o.d bless them, kind and foolish----"

"As you've known them oftenest," she supplied, coldly.

"Or sedate and sensible," he went on. "None of them but found John M'Iver of Barbeck their very true cavalier."

"Indeed," said Mistress Betty, colder than ever, some new thought working within her, judging from the tone. "And yet you leave to-morrow, and have never been to Carlunnan." She said the last words with a hesitancy, blushing most warmly. To me they were a dark mystery, unless I was to a.s.sume, what I did wildly for a moment, only to relinquish the notion immediately, that she had been in the humour to go visiting her friends with him. Mover's face showed some curious emotion that it baffled me to read, and all that was plain to me was that here were two people with a very strong thought of a distressing kind between them.

"It would be idle for me," he said in a little, "to deny that I know what you mean. But do you not believe you might be doing me poor justice in your suspicions?"

"It is a topic I cannot come closer upon," she answered; "I am a woman.

That forbids me and that same compels me. If nature does not demand your attendance up there, then you are a man wronged by rumour or a man dead to every sense of the human spirit I have listened to your humour and laughed at your banter, for you have an art to make people forget; but all the way I have been finding my lightness broken in on by the feeble cry of a child without a mother--it seems, too, without a father."

"If that is the trouble," he said, turning away with a smile he did not succeed in concealing either from the lady or me, "you may set your mind at rest The child you mention has, from this day, what we may be calling a G.o.dfather."

"Then the tale's true?" she said, stopping on the road, turning and gazing with neither mirth nor warmth in her countenance.

M'Iver hesitated, and looked upon the woman to me as if I could help him in the difficulty; but I must have seemed a clown in the very abjection of my ignorance of what all this mystery was about He searched my face and I searched my memory, and then I recollected that he had told me before of Mistress Brown's suspicions of the paternity of the child.

"I could well wish your answer came more readily," said she again, somewhat bitterly, "for then I know it would be denial."

"And perhaps untruth, too," said John, oddly. "This time it's a question of honour, a far more complicated turn of circ.u.mstances than you can fancy, and my answer takes time."

"Guilty!" she cried, "and you go like this. You know what the story is, and your whole conduct in front of my charges shows you take the very lightest view of the whole horrible crime."

"Say away, madame," said M'Iver, a.s.suming an indifference his every feature gave the lie to. "I'm no better nor no worse than the rest of the world. That's all I'll say."

"You have said enough for me, then," said the girl.

"I think, Elrigmore, if you please, I'll not trouble you and your friend to come farther with me now. I am obliged for your society so far."

She was gone before either of us could answer, leaving us like a pair of culprits standing in the middle of the road. A little breeze fanned her clothing, and they shook behind her as to be free from some contamination. She had overtaken and joined a woman in front of her before I had recovered from my astonishment M'Iver turned from surveying her departure with lowered eyebrows, and gave me a look with half-a-dozen contending thoughts in it.

"That's the end of it," said he, as much to himself as for my ear, "and the odd thing of it again is that she never seemed so precious fine a woman as when it was 'a bye wi' auld days and you,' as the Scots song says."

"It beats me to fathom," I confessed. "Do I understand that you admitted to the lady that you were the father of the child?"

"I admitted nothing," he said, cunningly, "if you'll take the trouble to think again. I but let the lady have her own way, which most of her s.e.x generally manage from me in the long-run."

"But, man! you could leave her only one impression, that you are as black as she thinks you, and am I not sure you fall far short of that?"

"Thank you," he said; "it is good of you to say it. I am for off whenever my affairs here are settled, and when I'm the breadth of seas afar from Inneraora, you'll think as well as you can of John M'Iver, who'll maybe not grudge having lost the lady's affection if he kept his friend's and comrade's heart."

He was vastly moved as he spoke. He took my hand and wrung it fiercely; he turned without another word, good or ill, and strode back on his way to the camp, leaving me to seek my way to the town alone.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.--A SCANDAL AND A QUARREL.

On some days I kept to Glen Shim as the tod keeps to the cairn when heather burns, afraid almost to let even my thoughts wander there lest they should fly back distressed, to say the hope I cherished was in vain. I worked in the wood among Use pines that now make rooftrees for my home, and at nights I went on ttilidh among some of the poorer houses of the Glen, and found a drug for a mind uneasy in the talcs our peasants told around the fire. A drug, and yet a drug sometimes with the very disease in itself I sought for it to kill. For the love of a man for a maid is the one story of all lands, of all ages, trick it as we may, and my good people, telling their old ancient histories round the lire, found, although they never knew it, a young man's quivering heart a score of times a night.

Still at times, by day and night--ay! in the very midmost watches of the stars-I walked, in my musing, as I thought, upon the causeyed street, where perhaps I had been sooner in the actual fact if M'Iver's departure had not been delayed. He was swaggering, they told me, about the town in his old regimentals, every pomp of the foreign soldier a.s.sumed again as if they had never been relaxed in all those yean of peace and commerce.

I drank stoutly in the taverns, and 'twas constantly, "Landlady, I'm the lawing," for the fishermen, that they might love him. A tale went round, too, that one morning he went to a burial in Kilmalieu, and Argile was there seeing the last of an old retainer to his long home, and old Macnachtan came riding down past corpse and mourner with his only reverence a finger to his cap. "Come down off your horse when death or Argile goes bye," cried M'Iver, hauling the laird off his saddle. But between Argile and him were no transactions; the pride of both would not allow it, though it was well known that their affections were stronger than ever they had been before, and that Gordon made more than one attempt at a plan to bring them together.

It is likely, too, I had been down--leaving M'Iver out of consideration altogether--had there not been the tales about MacLachlan, tales that came to my ears in the most miraculous way, with no ill intention on the part of the gossips--about his constant haunting of Inneraora and the company of his cousin. He had been seen there with her on the road to Carlunnan. That venue of all others! G.o.d! did the river sing for him too among its reeds and shallows; did the sun tip Dunchuach like a thimble and the wild beast dally on the way? That was the greatest blow of all!

It left plain (I thought in ray foolishness) the lady's coolness when last I met her; for rae henceforth (so said bitterness) the serious affairs of life, that in her notion set me more than courtship. I grew solemn, so gloomy in spirit that even my father observed the ceasing of my whistle and song, and the less readiness of my smile. And he, poor man, thought it the melancholy of Inverlochy and the influence of this ruined countryside.

When I went down to the town again the very house-fronts seemed inhospitable, so that I must pa.s.s the time upon the quay. There are days at that season when Loch Finne, so calm, so crystal, so duplicate of the sky, seems like water sunk and lost for ever to wind and wave, when the sea-birds doze upon its kindly bosom like bees upon the flower, and a silence hangs that only breaks in distant innuendo of the rivers or the low of cattle on the Cowal sh.o.r.e. The great bays lapse into hills that float upon a purple haze, forest nor lea has any sign of spring's extravagance or the flame of the autumn that fires Dunchuach till it blazes like a torch. All is in the light sleep of the year's morning, and what, I have thought, if G.o.d in His pious whim should never awake it any more?

It was such a day when I went up and down the rough cobble of the quay, and to behold men working there at their noisy and secular occupations seemed, at first, a Sabbath desecration. But even they seemed affected by this marvellous peace of sea and sky, as they lifted from the net or rested on the tackle to look across greasy gunnels with some vague unquiet of the spirit at the marvellous restfulness of the world. Their very voices learned a softer note from that lulled hour of the enchanted season, and the faint blue smoke of their den fires rose and mingled in the cl.u.s.tered masts or nestled wooing in the drying sails. Then a man in drink came roaring down the quay, an outrage on the scene, and the magic of the day was gone! The boats bobbed and nudged each other or strained at the tw.a.n.ging cord as seamen and fishers spanged from deck to deck; rose cries in loud and southward Gaelic or the lowlands of Air. The world was no longer dreaming but stark awake, all but the sea and the lapsing bays and the brown floating hills. Town Inneraora bustled to its marge. Here was merchandise, here the pack and the bale; snuffy men in perukes, knee-breeched and portly, came and piped in high English, managing the transport of their munitions ash.o.r.e.

I was standing in the midst of the throng of the quay-head, with my troubled mind rinding ease in the industry and interest of those people without loves or jealousies, and only their poor merchandise to exercise them, when I started at the sound of a foot coming up the stone slip from the wateredge. I turned, and who was there but MacLachlan? He was all alone but for a haunch-man, a gillie-wet-foot as we call him, and he had been set on the slip by a wherry that had approached from Cowal side unnoticed by me as I stood in meditation. As he came up the sloping way, picking his footsteps upon the slimy stones, he gave no heed to the ident.i.ty of the person before him; and with my mood in no way favourable to polite discourse with the fellow, I gave a pace or two round the elbow of the quay, letting him pa.s.s on his way up among the clanking rings and chains of the moored gaberts, the bales of the luggers, and the brawny and crying mariners. He was not a favourite among the quay-folk, this pompous little gentleman, with his nose in the air and his clothing so very gaudy. The Lowlands men might salute his gentility if they cared; no residenters of the place did so, but turned their shoulders on him and were very busy with their affairs as he pa.s.sed. He went bye with a waff of wind in his plaiding, and his haunch-man as he pa.s.sed at a discreet distance got the double share of jibe and glunch from the mariners.

At first I thought of going home; a dread came on me that if I waited longer in the town I might come upon this intruder and his cousin, when it would sore discomfort me to do so. Thus I went slowly up the quay, and what I heard in the bye-going put a new thought in my head.

Two or three seamen were talking together as I pa.s.sed, with nudges and winks and sly laughs, not natives of the place but from farther up the loch, yet old frequenters with every chance to know the full ins and outs of what they discoursed upon. I heard but three sentences as I pa.s.sed; they revealed that MacLachlan at Kilmichael market had once bragged of an amour in Inneraora. That was all! But it was enough to set every drop of blood in my body boiling. I had given the dog credit for a decent affection, and here he was narrating a filthy and impossible story. Liar! liar! liar! At first the word rose to my mouth, and I had to choke it at my teeth for fear it should reveal my pa.s.sion to the people as I pa.s.sed through among them with a face inflamed; then doubt arose, a contention of recollections, numb fears--but the girl's eyes triumphed: I swore to myself she at least should never know the villany of this vulgar and lying rumour set about the country by a rogue.

Now all fear of facing the street deserted me. I felt a man upright, imbued with a strong sense of justice; I felt I must seek out John Splendid and get his mind, of all others, upon a villany he eould teach me to avenge. I found him at Aakaig's comer, a flushed man with perhaps (as I thought at first) too much spirits in him to be the most sensible of advisers in a matter of such delicacy.

"Elrigmore!" he cried; "sir, I give you welcome to Inneraora! You will not know the place, it has grown so much since you last visited its humble street."

"I'm glad to see you now, John," I said, hurriedly. "I would sooner see you than any other living person here."