John Splendid: The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn

by Neil Munro

  CHAPTER I.--FROM THE FOREIGN FIELD.

  Many a time, in college or in camp, I had planned the style of myhome-coming. Master Webster, in the Humanities, droning away like aBoreraig bagpipe, would be sending my mind back to Shira Glen, its braesand corries and singing waters, and Ben Bhuidhe over all, and with mychin on a hand I would ponder on how I should go home again when thisweary scholarship was over. I had always a ready fancy and some of thenatural vanity of youth, so I could see myself landing off the lugger atthe quay of Inneraora town, three inches more of a man than when Ileft with a firkin of herring and a few bolls of meal for my winter'sprovand; thicker too at the chest, and with a jacket of London greencloth with brass buttons. Would the fishermen about the quay-headnot lean over the gun'les of their skiffs and say, "There goes youngElrigmore from Colleging, well-knit in troth, and a pretty lad"? I couldhear (all in my daydream in yon place of dingy benches) the old womenabout the well at the town Cross say, "Oh _laochain!_ thou art come backfrom the Galldach, and Glascow College; what a thousand curious thingsthou must know, and what wisdom thou must have, but never a change onthine affability to the old and to the poor!" But it was not till I hadrun away from Glascow College, and shut the boards for good and all, asI thought, on my humane letters and history, and gone with cousin Gavinto the German wars in Mackay's Corps of true Highlanders, that I added amanlier thought to my thinking of the day when I should come home tomy native place. I've seen me in the camp at night, dog-wearied afterstoury marching on their cursed foreign roads, keeping my eyes open andthe sleep at an arm's-length, that I might think of Shira Glen. Whateverthey may say of me or mine, they can never deny but I had the right fondheart for my own countryside, and I have fought men for speaking of itspride and poverty--their ignorance, their folly!--for what did they kenof the Highland spirit? I would be lying in the lap of the night, andmy Ferrara sword rolled in my plaid as a pillow for my head, fancyingmyself--all those long wars over, march, siege, and sack--riding on agood horse down the pass of Aora and through the arches into the oldtown. Then, it was not the fishermen or the old women I thought of,but the girls, and the winking stars above me were their eyes, glintingmerrily and kindly on a stout young gentleman soldier with jack andmorion, sword at haunch, spur at heel, and a name for bravado never ahome-biding laird in our parish had, burgh or landward. I would sit onmy horse so, the chest well out, the back curved, the knees straight,one gauntlet off to let my white hand wave a salute when needed, andnone of all the pretty ones would be able to say Elrigmore thoughtanother one the sweetest Oh! I tell you we learnt many arts in theLowland wars, more than they teach Master of Art in the old biggin' inthe Hie Street of Glascow.

  One day, at a place called Nordlingen near the Mid Franken, bindinga wound Gavin got in the sword-arm, I said, "What's your wish at thismoment, cousin?"

  He looked at me with a melting eye, and the flush hove to his face.

  "'Fore God, Colin," said he, "I would give my twelve months' wage tostand below the lintel of my mother's door and hear her say 'Darlingscamp!'"

  "If you had your wish, Gavin, when and how would you go into Inneraoratown after those weary years away?"

  "Man, I've made that up long syne," said he, and the tear was at hischeek. "Let me go into it cannily at night-fall from the Cromalt end,when the boys and girls were dancing on the green to the pipes at theend of a harvest-day. Them in a reel, with none of the abulziements ofwar about me, but a plain civil lad like the rest, I would join in thestrathspey and kiss two or three of the girls ere ever they jaloused astranger was among them."

  Poor Gavin, good Gavin! he came home no way at all to his mother and hismountains; but here was I, with some of his wish for my fortune, ridingcannily into Inneraora town in the dark.

  It is wonderful how travel, even in a marching company of cavaliers offortune, gives scope to the mind. When I set foot, twelve years beforethis night I speak of, on the gabert that carried me down to Dunbartonon my way to the Humanities classes, I could have sworn I was leavinga burgh most large and wonderful. The town houses of old Stonefield,Craignish, Craignure, Asknish, and the other cadets of Clan Campbell,had such a strong and genteel look; the windows, all but a very few,had glass in every lozen, every shutter had a hole to let in the morninglight, and each door had its little ford of stones running across thegutter that sped down the street, smelling fishily a bit, on its way tothe shore. For me, in those days, each close that pierced the tall landswas as wide and high as a mountain _eas_, the street itself seemed broadand substantial, crowded with people worth kenning for their graces andthe many things they knew.

  I came home now on this night of nights with Munchen and Augsburg, andthe fine cities of all the France, in my mind, and I tell you I couldthink shame of this mean rickle of stones I had thought a town, were itnot for the good hearts and kind I knew were under every roof. Thebroad street crowded with people, did I say? A little lane rather; andElrigmore, with schooling and the wisdom of travel, felt he could seeinto the heart's core of the cunningest merchant in the place.

  But anyway, here I was, riding into town from the Cromalt end on a nightin autumn. It was after ten by my Paris watch when I got the length ofthe Creags, and I knew that there was nothing but a sleeping town beforeme, for our folks were always early bedders when the fishing season wason. The night hung thick with stars, but there was no moon; a stiff windfrom the east prinked at my right ear and cooled my horse's skin, as heslowed down after a canter of a mile or two on this side of Pennymore.Out on the loch I could see the lights of a few herring-boats lift andfall at the end of their trail of nets.

  "Too few of you there for the town to be busy and cheerful," said I tomyself; "no doubt the bulk of the boats are down at Otter, damming thefish in the narrow gut, and keeping them from searching up to our owngood townsmen."

  I pressed my brute to a trot, and turned round into the nether part ofthe town. It was what I expected--the place was dark, black out. Thepeople were sleeping; the salt air of Loch Finne went sighing throughthe place in a way that made me dowie for old days. We went over thecauseway-stones with a clatter that might have wakened the dead, but noone put a head out, and I thought of the notion of a cheery home-comingpoor Gavin had--my dear cousin, stroked out and cold under foreign clodsat Velshiem, two leagues below the field of Worms of Hessen, on thebanks of the Rhine, in Low Germanie.

  It is a curious business this riding into a town in the dark waste ofnight; curious even in a strange town when all are the same for you thatsleep behind those shutters and those doors, but doubly curious when youknow that behind the dark fronts are folk lying that you know well, thathave been thinking, and drinking, and thriving when you were faraway. As I went clattering slowly by, I would say at one house front,"Yonder's my old comrade, Tearlach, who taught me my one tune on thepipe-chanter; is his beard grown yet, I wonder?" At another, "Thereis the garret window of the schoolmaster's daughter--does she sing sosweetly nowadays in the old kirk?"

  In the dead middle of the street I pulled my horse up, just to study thefull quietness of the hour. Leaning over, I put a hand on his nostrilsand whispered in his ear for a silence, as we do abroad in ambuscade.Town Innera-ora slept sound, sure enough! All to hear was the spillingof the river at the cascade under the bridge and the plopping of thewaves against the wall we call the ramparts, that keeps the sea fromthrashing on the Tolbooth. And then over all I could hear a most strangemoaning sound, such as we boys used to make with a piece of lath nickedat the edges and swung hurriedly round the head by a string. It was madeby the wind, I knew, for it came loudest in the gusty bits of the nightand from the east, and when there was a lull I could hear it soften awayand end for a second or two with a dunt, as if some heavy, soft thingstruck against wood.

  Whatever it was, the burghers of Inneraora paid no heed, but slept,stark and sound, behind their steeked shutters.

  The solemnity of the place that I knew so much better in a naturallively mood annoyed me, and I played there and then a prank m
orebecoming a boy in his first kilt than a gentleman of education andtravel and some repute for sobriety. I noticed I was opposite the houseof a poor old woman they called Black Kate, whose door was ever thetarget in my young days for every lad that could brag of a boot-toe,and I saw that the shutter, hanging ajee on one hinge, was thrown openagainst the harled wall of the house. In my doublet-pocket there weresome carabeen bullets, and taking one out, I let bang at the old woman'slittle lozens. There was a splinter of glass, and I waited to see ifany one should come out to find who had done the damage. My trick wasin vain; no one came. Old Kate, as I found next day, was dead sinceMartinmas, and her house was empty.

  Still the moaning sound came from the town-head, and I went slowlyriding in its direction. It grew clearer and yet uncannier as I sped on,and mixed with the sough of it I could hear at last the clink of chains.

  "What in God's name have I here?" said I to myself, turning round IslayCampbell's corner, and yonder was my answer!

  The town gibbets were throng indeed! Two corpses swung in the wind, likenet bows on a drying-pole, going from side to side, making the woefulsough and clink of chains, and the dunt I had heard when the winddropped.

  I grued more at the sound of the soughing than at the sight of thehanged fellows, for I've seen the Fell Sergeant in too many uglyfashions to be much put about at a hanging match. But it was such a poorhome-coming! It told me as plain as could be, what I had heard rumoursof in the low country, riding round from the port of Leith, that theland was uneasy, and that pit and gallows were bye-ordinar busy at thegates of our castle. When I left for my last session at Glascow College,the countryside was quiet as a village green, never a raider nor areiver in the land, and so poor the Doomster's trade (Black George) thathe took to the shoeing of horses.

  "There must be something wicked in the times, and cheatery rampantindeed," I thought, "when the common gibbet of Inneraora has adrunkard's convoy on either hand to prop it up."

  But it was no time for meditation. Through the rags of plaiding on thechains went the wind again so eerily that I bound to be off, and I putmy horse to it, bye the town-head and up the two miles to Glen Shira. Iwas sore and galled sitting on the saddle; my weariness hung at the backof my legs and shoulders like an ague, and there was never a man in thisworld came home to his native place so eager for taking supper and sleepas young Elrigmore.

  What I expected at my father's door I am not going to set down here. Iwent from it a fool, with not one grace about me but the love of my goodmother, and the punishment I had for my hot and foolish cantrip was manya wae night on foreign fields, vexed to the core for the sore heart Ihad left at home.

  My mind, for all my weariness, was full of many things, and shame aboveall, as I made for my father's house. The horse had never seen GlenShira, but it smelt the comfort of the stable and whinnied cheerfullyas I pulled up at the gate. There was but one window to the gable-end ofElrigmore, and it was something of a surprise to me to find a light init, for our people were not overly rich in these days, and candle orcruisie was wont to be doused at bedtime. More was my surprise when,leading my horse round to the front, feeling my way in the dark bymemory, I found the oak door open and my father, dressed, standing inthe light of it.

  A young _sgalag_ came running to the reins, and handing them to him, Istepped into the light of the door, my bonnet in my hand.

  "Step in, sir, caird or gentleman," said my father--looking more bent atthe shoulder than twelve years before.

  I went under the door-lintel, and stood a little abashed before him.

  "Colin! Colin!" he cried in the Gaelic "Did I not ken it was you?" andhe put his two hands on my shoulders.

  "It is Colin sure enough, father dear," I said, slipping readily enoughinto the mother tongue they did their best to get out of me at GlascowCollege. "Is he welcome in this door?" and the weariness weighed me downat the hip and bowed my very legs.

  He gripped me tight at the elbows, and looked me hungrily in the face.

  "If you had a murdered man's head in your oxter, Colin," said he, "youwere still my son. Colin, Colin! come ben and put off your boots!"

  "Mother------" I said, but he broke in on my question.

  "Come in, lad, and sit down. You are back from the brave wars you neverwent to with my will, and you'll find stirring times here at your ownparish. It's the way of the Sennachies' stories."

  "How is that, sir?"

  "They tell, you know, that people wander far on the going foot foradventure, and adventure is in the first turning of their native lane."

  I was putting my boots off before a fire of hissing logs that filled thebig room with a fir-wood smell right homely and comforting to my heart,and my father was doing what I should have known was my mother's officeif weariness had not left me in a sort of stupor--he was laying on theboard a stout and soldierly supper and a tankard of the red Bordeauxwine the French traffickers bring to Loch Finne to trade for curedherring. He would come up now and then where I sat fumbling sleepily atmy belt, and put a hand on my head, a curious unmanly sort of thing Inever knew my father do before, and I felt put-about at this petting,which would have been more like my sister if ever I had had the luck tohave one.

  "You are tired, Colin, my boy?" he said.

  "A bit, father, a bit," I answered; "rough roads you know. I was landedat break of day at Skipness and--Is mother------?"

  "Sit in, _laochain!_ Did you meet many folks on the road?"

  "No, sir; as pestilent barren a journey as ever I trotted on, and thepeople seemingly on the hill, for their crops are unco late in thefield."

  "Ay, ay, lad, so they are," said my father, pulling back his shoulders abit--a fairly straight wiry old man, with a name for good swordsmanshipin his younger days.

  I was busy at a cold partridge, and hard at it, when I thought again howcurious it was that my father should be a-foot in the house at such timeof night and no one else about, he so early a bedder for ordinary andnever the last to sneck the outer door.

  "Did you expect any one, father," I asked, "that you should be waitingup with the collation, and the outer door unsnecked?"

  "There was never an outer door snecked since you left, Colin," said he,turning awkwardly away and looking hard into the loof of his hand likea wife spaeing fortunes--for sheer want, I could see, of some engagementfor his eyes. "I could never get away with the notion that some way likethis at night would ye come back to Elngmore."

  "Mother would miss me?"

  "She did, Colin, she did; I'm not denying."

  "She'll be bedded long syne, no doubt, father?"

  My father looked at me and gulped at the throat.

  "Bedded indeed, poor Colin," said he, "this very day in the clods ofKilmalieu!"

  And that was my melancholy home-coming to my father's house of Elngmore,in the parish of Glcnaora, in the shire of Argile.