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

by Neil Munro

  CHAPTER III.--THE LADY ON THE STAIR.

  John Splendid looked at me from the corner of an eye as we came outagain and daundered slowly down the town.

  "A queer one yon!" said he, as it were feeling his way with arapier-point at my mind about his Marquis.

  "Do you tell me?" I muttered, giving him parry of low quarte like a goodswordsman, and he came to the recover with a laugh.

  "Foil, Elrigmore!" he cried. "But we're soldiers and lads of the world,and you need hardly be so canny. You see MacCailein's points as well asI do. His one weakness is the old one--books, books,--the curse of theHighlands and every man of spirit, say I. He has the stuff in him bynature, for none can deny Clan Diarmaid courage and knightliness; butfor four generations court, closet, and college have been taking theheart out of our chiefs. Had our lordship in-bye been sent a fosteringin the old style, brought up to the chase and the sword and manlycomportment, he would not have that wan cheek this day, and thatswithering about what he must be at next!"

  "You forget that I have had the same ill-training," I said (in no badhumour, for I followed his mind). "I had a touch of Glascow Collegemyself."

  "Yes, yes," he answered quickly; "you had that, but by all accounts itdid you no harm. You learned little of what they teach there."

  This annoyed me, I confess, and John Splendid was gleg enough to see it

  "I mean," he added, "you caught no fever for paper and ink, though youmay have learned many a quirk I was the better of myself. I could nevereven write my name; and I've kept compt of wages at the mines with apickle chuckie-stones."

  "That's a pity," says I, drily.

  "Oh, never a bit," says he, gaily, or at any rate with a way as if tocarry it off vauntingly. "I can do many things as well as most, and afew others colleges never learned me. I know many winter tales, from'Minochag and Morag' to 'The Shifty Lad'; I can make passable poetry byword of mouth; I can speak the English and the French, and I have seenenough of courtiers to know that half their canons are to please andwitch the eye of women in a way that I could undertake to do by my looksalone and some good-humour. Show me a beast on hill or in glen I havenot the history of; and if dancing, singing, the sword, the gun, thepipes--ah, not the pipes,--it's my one envy in the world to play thebagpipes with some show of art and delicacy, and I cannot. Queer isthat, indeed, and I so keen on them! I would tramp right gaily a nightand a day on end to hear a scholar fingering 'The Glen is Mine.'"

  There was a witless vanity about my friend that sat on him almost likea virtue. He made parade of his crafts less, I could see, because hethought much of them, than because he wanted to keep himself on anequality with me. In the same way, as I hinted before, he never, in allthe time of our wanderings after, did a thing well before me but he bodeto keep up my self-respect by maintaining that I could do better, or atleast as good.

  "Books, I say," he went on, as we clinked heels on the causeway-stones,and between my little bit cracks with old friends in the by-going,--"books, I say, have spoiled Mac-Cailein's stomach. Ken ye what he told meonce? That a man might readily show more valour in a conclusion cometo in the privacy of his bed-closet than in a victory won on the field.That's what they teach by way of manly doctrine down there in thenew English church, under the pastorage of Maister Alexander Gordon,chaplain to his lordship and minister to his lordship's people! It mustbe the old Cavalier in me, but somehow (in your lug) I have no broo ofthose Covenanting cattle from the low country--though Gordon's a goodsoul, there's no denying."

  "Are you Catholic?" I said, in a surprise.

  "What are you yourself?" he asked, and then he flushed, for he sawa little smile in my face at the transparency of his endeavour to bealways on the pleasing side.

  "To tell the truth," he said, "I'm depending on salvation by reason of afairly good heart, and an eagerness to wrong no man, gentle or semple. Ilove my fellows, one and all, not offhand as the Catechism enjoins, butheartily, and I never saw the fellow, carl or king, who, if ordinaryhonest and cheerful, I could not lie heads and thraws with at acamp-fire. In matters of strict ritual, now,--ha--urn!"

  "Out with it, man!" I cried, laughing.

  "I'm like Parson Kilmalieu upbye. You've heard of him--easy-going soul,and God sain him! When it came to the bit, he turned the holy-water fontof Kilcatrine blue-stone upside-down, scooped a hole in the bottom,and used the new hollow for Protestant baptism. 'There's such a throngabout heaven's gate,' said he, 'that it's only a mercy to open two;'and he was a good and humour-some Protestant-Papist till the day he wentunder the flagstones of his chapel upbye."

  Now here was not a philosophy to my mind. I fought in the German warsless for the kreutzers than for a belief (never much studied out,but fervent) that Protestantism was the one good faith, and thather ladyship of Babylon, that's ever on the ran-don, cannothave her downfall one day too soon. You dare not be playingcorners-change-corners with religion as you can with the sword of whatthe ill-bred have called a mercenary (when you come to ponder on't, theswords of patriot or paid man are both for selfish ends unsheathed); andif I set down here word for word what John Splendid said, it must not bethought to be in homologation on my part of such latitudinarianism.

  I let him run on in this key till we came to the change-house of awidow--one Fraser--and as she curtsied at the door, and asked if thebraw gentlemen would favour her poor parlour, we went in and tossed aquaich or two of aqua, to which end she set before us a little brownbottle and two most cunningly contrived and carven cups made of theCoillebhraid silver.

  The houses in Inneraora were, and are, built all very much alike, ona plan I thought somewhat cosy and genteel, ere ever I went abroad andlearned better. I do not even now deny the cosiness of them, but ofthe genteelity it were well to say little. They were tall lands ortenements, three storeys high, with through-going closes, or what theEnglish might nominate passages, running from front to back, and leadingat their midst to stairs, whereby the occupants got to their domicilesin the flats above. Curved stairs they were, of the same blue-stone thecastle is built of, and on their landings at each storey they branchedright and left to give access to the single apartments or rooms andkitchens of the residenters. Throng tenements they are these, even yet,giving, as I write, clever children to the world. His Grace nowadaysmight be granting the poor people a little more room to grow in, somesoil for their kail, and a better prospect from their windows than thewhitewashed wall of the opposite land; but in the matter of air therewas and is no complaint The sea in stormy days came bellowing to thevery doors, salt and stinging, tremendous blue and cold. Staying in townof a night, I used to lie awake in my relative's, listening to thespit of the waves on the window-panes and the grumble of the tide, thatrocked the land I lay in till I could well fancy it was a ship. Throughthe closes the wind ever stalked like something fierce and blooded,rattling the iron snecks with an angry finger, breathing beastily atthe hinge, and running back a bit once in a while to leap all the harderagainst groaning lintel and post.

  The change-house of the widow was on the ground-flat, a but and ben, theceilings arched with stone--a strange device in masonry you'll seldomfind elsewhere, Highland or Lowland. But she had a garret-room up twostairs where properly she abode, the close flat being reserved for tradeof vending _uisgebeatha_ and ale. I describe all this old place so fullybecause it bears on a little affair that happened therein on that dayJohn Splendid and I went in to clink glasses.

  The widow had seen that neither of us was very keen on her aqua, which,as it happened, was raw new stuff brewed over at Karnes, Lochow, and sheasked would we prefer some of her brandy.

  "After his lordship's it might be something of a down-come," said JohnSplendid, half to me and half to the woman.

  She caught his meaning, though he spoke in the English; and in our owntongue, laughing toothlessly, she said--

  "The same stilling, Barbreck, the same stilling I make no doubtMacCailein gets his brown brandy by my brother's cart from FrenchForeland; it's a rough road, and some
times a bottle or two spills onthe way. I've a flagon up in a cupboard in my little garret, and I'll gofetch it."

  She was over-old a woman to climb three steep stairs for the sake oftwo young men's drought, and I (having always some regard for the frail)took the key from her hand and went, as was common enough with heryounger customers, seeking my own liquor up the stair.

  In those windy flights in the fishing season there is often the closesmell of herring-scale, of bow tar and the bark-tan of the fishing nets;but this stair I climbed for the wherewithal was unusually sweet-odouredand clean, because on the first floor was the house of Provost Brown--aCampbell and a Gael, but burdened by accident with a Lowland-soundingcognomen. He had the whole flat to himself--half-a-dozen snug apartmentswith windows facing the street or the sea as he wanted. I was just atthe head of the first flight when out of a door came a girl, and I cleanforgot all about the widow's flask of French brandy.

  Little more than twelve years syne the Provost's daughter had been achild at the grammar-school, whose one annoyance in life was that thedominie called her Betsy instead of Betty, her real own name: here shewas, in the flat of her father's house in Inneraora town, a full-grownwoman, who gave me check in my stride and set my face flaming. I tookin her whole appearance at one glance--a way we have in foreign armies.Between my toe on the last step of the stair and the landing I readthe picture: a well-bred woman, from her carriage, the neatness of herapparel, the composure of her pause to let me bye in the narrow passageto the next stair; not very tall (I have ever had a preference forsuch as come no higher than neck and oxter); very dark brown hair, eyessparkling, a face rather pale than ruddy, soft skinned, full of a keennervousness.

  In this matter of a woman's eyes--if I may quit the thread of myhistory--I am a trifle fastidious, and I make bold to say thatthe finest eyes in the world are those of the Highland girls ofArgile--burgh or landward--the best bred and gentlest of them, I mean:There is in them a full and melting friendliness, a mixture to mysometimes notion of poetry and of calm--a memory, as I've thoughtbefore, of the deep misty glens and their sights and secrets. I haveseen more of the warm heart and merriment in a simple Loch Finne girl'seyes than in all the faces of all the grand dames ever I looked on,Lowland or foreign.

  What pleased me first and foremost about this girl Betty, daughterof Provost Brown, were her eyes, then, that showed, even in yon duskypassage, a humoursome interest in young Elrigmore in a kilt comingup-stairs swinging on a finger the key of Lucky Fraser's garret. Shehung back doubtfully, though she knew me (I could see) for her oldschool-fellow and sometime boy-lover, but I saw something of a welcomein the blush at her face, and I gave her no time to chill to me.

  "Betty lass, 'tis you," said I, putting out a hand and shaking hersoft fingers. "What think you of my ceremony in calling at the earliestchance to pay my devoirs to the Provost of this burgh and his daughter?"

  I put the key behind my back to give colour a little to my words; butmy lady saw it and jumped at my real errand on the stair, with thatquickness ever accompanying eyes of the kind I have mentioned.

  "Ceremony here, devoir there!" said she, smiling, "there was surely noneed for a key to our door, Elrigmore---"

  "Colin, Mistress Brown, plain Colin, if you please."

  "Colin, if you will, though it seems daftlike to be so free with asoldier of twelve years' fortune. You were for the widow's garret Doessome one wait on you below?"

  "John Splendid."

  "My mother's in-bye. She will be pleased to see you back again if youand your friend call. After you've paid the lawing," she added, smilinglike a rogue.

  "That will we," said I; but I hung on the stair-head, and she leaned onthe inner sill of the stair window.

  We got into a discourse upon old days, that brought a glow to my heartthe brandy I forgot had never brought to my head. We talked of school,and the gay days in wood and field, of our childish wanderings on theshore, making sand-keps and stone houses, herding the crabs of God--solittle that bairns dare not be killing them, of venturings to sea manyells out in the fishermen's coracles, of journeys into the brave deepwoods that lie far and wide round Inneraora, seeking the branch for theBeltane fire; of nutting in the hazels of the glens, and feasts uponthe berry on the brae. Later, the harvest-home and the dance in green orbarn when I was at almost my man's height, with the pluck to put a barelip to its apprenticeship on a woman's cheek; the songs at _ceilidh_fires, the telling of _sgeulachdan_ and fairy tales up on the mountainsheiling----

  "Let me see," said I; "when I went abroad, were not you and one of theGlenaora Campbells chief?"

  I said it as if the recollection had but sprung to me, while the truthis I had thought on it often in camp and field, with a regret that thegirl should throw herself off on so poor a partner.

  She laughed merrily with her whole soul in the business, and her facewithout art or pretence--a fashion most wholesome to behold.

  "He married some one nearer him in years long syne," said she. "Youforget I was but a bairn when we romped in the hay-dash." And webuckled to the crack again, I more keen on it than ever. She was a mostmarvellous fine girl, and I thought her (well I mind me now) like theblue harebell that nods upon our heather hills.

  We might, for all I dreamt of the widow's brandy, have been conversingon the stair-head yet, and my story had a different conclusion, hadnot a step sounded on the stair, and up banged John Splendid, hissword-scabbard clinking against the wall of the stair with the haste ofhim.

  "Set a cavalier at the side of an anker of brandy," he cried, "an----"

  Then he saw he was in company. He took off his bonnet with a sweep I'llwarrant he never learned anywhere out of France, and plunged into thethick of our discourse with a query.

  "At your service, Mistress Brown," said he. "Half my errand to townto-day was to find if young MacLach-lan, your relative, is to be at themarket here to-morrow. If so----"

  "He is," said Betty.

  "Will he be intending to put up here all night, then?"

  "He comes to supper at least," said she, "and his biding overnight isyet to be settled."

  John Splendid toyed with the switch in his hand in seeming abstraction,and yet as who was pondering on how to put an unwelcome message inplausible language.

  "Do you know," said he at last to the girl, in a low voice, for fear hiswords should reach the ears of her mother in-bye, "I would as well seeMacLachlan out of town the morn's night. There's a waft of cold airsabout this place not particularly wholesome for any of his clan or name.So much I would hardly care to say to himself; but he might take itfrom you, madam, that the other side of the loch is the safest place forsound sleep for some time to come."

  "Is it the MacNicolls you're thinking of?" asked the girl.

  "That same, my dear."

  "You ken," he went on, turning fuller round to me, to tell a story heguessed a new-comer was unlikely to know the ins and outs of--"you kenthat one of the MacLachlans, a cousin-german of old Lachie the chief,came over in a boat to Braleckan a few weeks syne on an old feud, andput a bullet into a Mac Nicoll, a peaceable lad who was at work in afield. Gay times, gay times, aren't they? From behind a dyke wall too--afar from gentlemanly escapade even in a MacLa---- Pardon, mistress;I forgot your relationship, but this was surely a very low dog of hiskind. Now from that day to this the murtherer is to find; there are someto say old Lachie could put his hand on him at an hour's notice if hehad the notion. But his lordship, Justiciar-General, upbye, has sent hisprovost-marshal with letters of arrest to the place in vain. Now here'smy story. The MacNicolls of Elrig have joined cause with their cousinsand namesakes of Braleckan; there's a wheen of both to be in the townat the market to-morrow, and if young Mac-Lachlan bides in this house ofyours overnight, Mistress Betty Brown, you'll maybe have broken delf andworse ere the day daw."

  Mistress Brown took it very coolly; and as for me, I was thinking of atiny brown mole-spot she used to have low on the white of her neck whenI put daisy-links on her on the summer
s we played on the green, andwondering if it was still to the fore and hid below her collar. In bythe window came the saucy breeze and kissed her on a curl that dancedabove her ear.

  "I hope there will be no lawlessness here," said she: "whether he goesor bides, surely the burghers of Inner-aora will not quietly see theirProvost's domicile invaded by brawlers."

  "Exactly so," said John Splendid, drily. "Nothing may come of it, butyou might mention the affair to MacLachlan if you have the chance. Forme to tell him would be to put him in the humour for staying--dour foolthat he is--out of pure bravado and defiance. To tell the truth, I wouldbide myself in such a case. 'Thole feud' is my motto. My granddad writit on his sword-blade in clear round print letters I've often marvelledat the skill of. If it's your will, Elrigmore, we may be doing withoutthe brandy, and give the house-dame a call now."

  We went in and paid our duties to the goodwife--a silver-haired damewith a look of Betty in every smile.