The Yeoman Adventurer Part 32

"Hanyards? Humph! Are you an Irishman?"

"No, my lord. Not even a Scotchman!"

He glared at me, but his companion laughed, and said, "That's one under your short ribs, Geordie!"

"d.a.m.n the Irish!" cried Murray. "They're the ruination of the whole business, Davie, and ye know it."

"Of course they are," he replied, "but that's no reason for telling it to an English loon who thinks less of a Scotchman than he does of a pickelt herring."

"That may be, my lord," said I to him, "but I think so well of one Scottish lady that I'm proud to be her humble courier." And I handed him his letter.

"Man! man!" he said ecstatically, as he ripped it open, "ye're welcome as sunshine in December. It's from Ishbel. G.o.d bless her pretty face!"

He read the letter eagerly and then thrust it into his bosom.

"I am, further," I went on, "entrusted with a message from her ladyship."

"G.o.d bless her! Out with it, man, out with it!"

"I was to inform you that she was very, very good," said I, soberly as a judge pa.s.sing sentence.

"What do you think of that, Geordie Murray? Very, very guid! Eh, man, isn't she a monkey? G.o.d bless her!"

"I'll send the whole lot of 'em packing off back to Edinburgh," said Murray. "Women are a nuisance on a campaign. Your Ishbel, be hanged to her, wants a carriage all her own and another for her fineries."

"Ye ken a lot about soldiering, Geordie," retorted Ogilvie, "no man more, but ye ken less about soldiers than a lad of ten. At Gladsmuir I said to MacIntosh, 'Let's get the d.a.m.n thing over, Sandy, and be back to breakfast wi' the leddies!' And we did."

"You did so," acknowledged Murray. "Now, Davie, take our courier out and feed him. I thank you, sir! You have ridden speedily. Your pace is faster than your tongue."

"My lord," said I, "although I am doing his Royal Highness such poor service as lies in me, I am not yet duly acting under his commission and authority."

"What of it?" he asked.

"Hence I am not an officer under your command, my lord!"

"Excellent logic! And the therefore, my beef-eating friend, is....?"

"That I would as lief knock your head off as look at you!"

"When you are an officer," cried he, "by gad, sir, I'll teach ye the manners of an officer. Till then, my birkie," rising and holding out his hand, "guid luck to ye!"

We shook hands heartily and so parted.

"He's a grand man is Geordie Murray," said Ogilvie, as he led me to another room across the landing. "Just a wee bit birsy, maybe, but these d.a.m.ned Irish have got his kail through the reek. They're o'ermuch on his spirits of late."

All his other talk was of his lady, though he looked well enough after me, and I made a good meal of the better half of a cold chicken, a cottage loaf, and a tankard of poor ale. Ashbourne is noted, say the wise in such matters, for the best malt and the poorest ale in England.

I am overmuch English, as is often the case with us who live in the very heart of England. The famous Mr. Johnson is a shire-fellow of mine, and very proud I am of it, and reckon it among the greatest events of my life that he has bullyragged me soundly for differing from him, and being right, about a line of Virgil he had misquoted in my hearing. Like Mr.

Johnson, I love men and loathe dancing-masters, and these Scotsmen were men indeed, my Lord Ogilvie, as I came to know later, one of the choicest.

He was a spare-built man, in years thirty or thereabouts, with a face all lines and angles, and dotted with pock-marks. For a lord, his purse was very bare of guineas, and nature had made up for it by giving him a belly full of pride. For him, the Highland line had been the boundary of the known world, so that his mind was a chequer-work of curious ignorance and knowledge.

From the first I liked him for his joy in his dainty lady. She was the daughter of a cadet of a distant branch of the famous Bobbing John's family, and had spent nearly all her life in France till, on a chance visit to Scotland, she had been snapped up by Ogilvie. They were a strangely matched pair, she from the gay _salons_ of Paris, he from the misty mountains of the north; but mutual love had a.s.sorted them to admiration, for the heart of each was sound as a bell.

Between bites I answered questions as to how she had looked, what she'd said, done, and so forth.

"Was she wearing her brown riding-coat with the pretty wee shoulder capes?" he asked.

"No," said I, becoming more interested.

"Or her creamy dress with the gold flowers all over it?"

"No," said I again, smiling at my discoveries.

"She's keeping 'em for London," he explained. "Gosh, man! She will look divine in 'em."

"She won't," said I, clipping away at the sweet bits still hanging on the carca.s.s of my chicken.

"It'll take your logic all its time to keep six inches o' cauld steel out of your brisket," he said very fiercely.

"Never had better chicken in my life," said I, watching him out of one eye--quite enough for any Scotsman.

"d.a.m.n the chicken!" he roared. "Why won't she?"

"Because she's given 'em away," I explained in my airiest tones.

"The blue blazes of h.e.l.l!" gasped his lordship. "Given 'em away, and they cost me twenty pounds English! Given 'em away!" he whined, utterly lost for words, "given 'em away! The callack's clean dawpit. Twenty pounds good English money!"

"Nothing like enough!" said I. "You'll be sorry it wasn't two hundred."

Two hundred pounds English was, however, something too stupendous for his mind to grasp, and the gibe had no effect on him. While I finished my ale he chuntered away in his own Gaelic.

"I'll mak' it up in London," he said at length, "but it'll be the deil's own job."

"It will indeed," I agreed, and drained my tankard dry.

A look at my watch told me it was time to set about my second commission.

Sultan was brought from the stable, fit as a fiddle and eager to be going.

I examined my pistols, ran the tuck up and down in its scabbard, leaped on Sultan, and asked for the Uttoxeter road.

My Lord Ogilvie parted from me on the fairest terms, bringing me with his own hands a great stirrup-cup, or "dock-an-torus," as he called it.

"Man," said he, "I'm right glad to be acquent wi' ye. I was thinking I'd gang all the way to London without coming across a man worth fighting, much less friending, but I was in the wrang of it. Here's to ye!"

"My lord," said I, "you match your sweet lady. Both of you have been wondrous kind to a hard-hit man."

We gripped hands, saluted, and parted.

It was all but pitch-dark, and the moon was not due to rise for more than an hour, but the sky was clear and the stars were out in ma.s.ses for company and guidance. Ellerton Grange was near Uttoxeter, and Uttoxeter was a sizeable townlet just inside my own county, and some fifteen miles from Ashbourne. The road was the usual cross-road, all of it bad and most of it vile. I left the going to Sultan, who did the best he could, like the gallant and experienced creature he was. There was nothing for me to do except to keep a good look out and the north star just behind my right hand.