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

by Neil Munro

  CHAPTER XIV.--MY LADY AND THE CHILD.

  I woke with a shiver at the hour before dawn, that strange hour when thebird turns on the bough to change his dream, when the wild-cat puts outhis tongue to taste the air and curls more warmly into his own fur,when the leaf of the willows gives a tremor in the most airless morning.M'Iver breathed heavily beside me, rolled in his plaid to the verynose, but the dumb cry of the day in travail called him, too, out of thechamber of sleep, and he turned on his back with a snatch of a soldier'sdrill on his lips, but without opening his eyes.

  We were on the edge of a glade of the wood, at the watershed of a smallburn that tinkled among its ice along the ridge from Tombreck, dividingclose beside us, half of it going to Shira Glen and half to Aora. Thetall trees stood over us like sentinels, coated with snow in everybough; a cool crisp air fanned me, with a hint in it, somehow, of asmouldering wood-fire. And I heard close at hand the call of an owl, aslike the whimper of a child as ever howlet's vesper mocked. Then to myother side, my plaid closer about me, and to my dreaming anew.

  It was the same whimper waked me a second time, too prolonged to be anowl's complaint, and I sat upright to listen. It was now the break ofday. A faint grey light brooded among the tree-tops.

  "John! John!" I said in my companion's ear, shaking his shoulder.

  He stood to his feet in a blink, wide awake, fumbling at his sword-beltas a man at hurried wakings on foreign shores.

  "What is it?" he asked, in a whisper.

  I had no need to answer him, for anew the child's cry rose in thewood--sharp, petulant, hungry. It came from a thick clump of undergrowthto the left of our night's lodging, not sixty yards away, and in thehalf-light of the morning had something of the eerie about it.

  John Splendid crossed himself ere he had mind of his present creed, and"God sain us!" he whispered; "have we here banshee or warlock!"

  "I'll warrant we have no more than what we seek," said I, with a joyousheart, putting my tartan about me more orderly, and running a handthrough my hair.

  "I've heard of unco uncanny things assume a wean's cry in a wood," saidhe, very dubious in his aspect.

  I laughed at him, and "Come away, '_ille_," I said; "here's theProvost's daughter." And I was hurrying in the direction of the cry.

  M'Iver put a hand on my shoulder.

  "Canny, man, canny; would ye enter a lady's chamber (even the glade ofthe wood) without tirling at the pin?"

  We stopped, and I softly sounded my curlew-call--once, twice, thrice.

  The echo of the third time had not ceased on the hill when out steppedBetty. She looked miraculous tall and thin in the haze of the dawn,with the aspiring firs behind her, pallid at the face, wearied in hercarriage, and torn at her kirtle by whin or thorn. The child clung ather coats, a ruddy brat, with astonishment stilling its whimper.

  For a little the girl half misdoubted us, for the wood behind us andthe still sombre west left us in a shadow, and there was a tremor in hervoice as she challenged in English--

  "Is that you, Elrigmore?"

  I went forward at a bound, in a stupid rapture that made her shrink inalarm; but M'Iver lingered in the rear, with more discretion than myrelations to the girl gave occasion for.

  "Friends! oh, am not I glad to see yoa?" she said simply, her wan facelighting up. Then she sat down on a hillock and wept in her hands. Igave her awkward comfort, my wits for once failing me, my mind in aconfusion, my hands, to my own sense, seeming large, coarse, and in theway. Yet to have a finger on her shoulder was a thrill to the heart, toventure a hand on her hair was a passionate indulgence.

  The bairn joined in her tears till M'Iver took it in his arms. He had away with little ones that had much of magic in it, and soon this one wasnestling to his breast with its sobs sinking, an arm round his neck.

  More at the pair of them than at me did Betty look with interest whenher tears were concluded.

  "Amn't I like myself this morning?" asked John, jocularly, dandling thebairn in his arms.

  Betty turned away without a reply, and when the child was put down andran to her, she scarcely glanced on it, but took it by the hand and madeto go before us, through the underwood she had come from.

  "Here's my home, gentlemen," she said, "like the castle of Colin Dubh,with the highest ceiling in the world and the stars for candles."

  We might have passed it a score of times in broad daylight and neverguessed its secret. It was the beildy side of the hill. Two fir-treeshad fallen at some time in the common fashion of wind-blown pines,with their roots clean out of the earth, and raised up, so that comingtogether at two edges they made two sides of a triangle. To add to itsefficiency as a hiding-place, some young firs grew at the open thirdside of the triangle.

  In this confined little space (secure enough from any hurried search)there was still a _greasach_ as we call it, the ember of a fire that thegirl had kindled with a spark from a flint the night before, to warm thechild, and she had kept it at the lowest extremity short of lettingit die out altogether, lest it should reveal her whereabouts to anysearchers in the wood.

  We told her our story and she told us hers. She had fled on the morningof the attack, in the direction of the castle, but found her way cut offby a wing of the enemy, a number of whom chased her as she ran with thechild up the river-side to the Cairnbaan, where she eluded her pursuersamong his lordship's shrubberies, and discovered a road to the wood. Fora week she found shelter and food in a cow-herd's abandoned bothy amongthe alders of Tarra-dubh; then hunger sent her travelling again, and shereached Leacainn Mhor, where she shared the cotter's house with a widowwoman who went out to the burn with a kail-pot and returned no more, forthe tardy bullet found her. The murderers were ransacking the housewhen Betty and the child were escaping through the byre. This place ofconcealment in Strongara she sought by the advice of a Glencoe man wellup in years, who came on her suddenly, and, touched by her predicament,told her he and his friends had so well beaten that place, it was likelyto escape further search.

  "And so I am here with my charge," said the girl, affecting a gaietyit were hard for her to feel "I could be almost happy and content, ifI were assured my father and mother were safe, and the rest of mykinsfolk."

  "There's but one of them in all the countryside," I said. "YoungMacLachlan, and he's on Dunchuach."

  To my critical scanning her cheek gave no flag.

  "Oh, my cousin!" she said. "I am pleased that he is safe, though I wouldsooner hear he was in Cowal than in Campbell country."

  "He's honoured in your interest, madam," I could not refrain fromsaying, my attempt at raillery I fear a rather forlorn one.

  She flushed at this, but said never a word, only biting her nether lipand fondling the child.

  I think we put together a cautious little fire and cooked some oats frommy _dorlach_, though the ecstasy of the meeting with the girl left meno great recollection of all that happened. But in a quiet part of theafternoon we sat snugly in our triangle of fir roots and discoursed oftrifles that had no reasonable relation to our precarious state. Bettyhad almost an easy heart, the child slept on my comrade's plaid, and Iwas content to be in her company and hear the little turns and accentsof her voice, and watch the light come and go in her face, and the smilehover, a little wae, on her lips at some pleasant tale of Mover's.

  "How came you round about these parts?" she asked--for our briefaccount of our doings held no explanation of our presence in the wood ofStrongara.

  "Ask himself here," said John, cocking a thumb over his shoulder at me;"I have the poorest of scents on the track of a woman."

  Betty turned to me with less interest in the question than she had shownwhen she addressed it first to my friend.

  I told her what the Glencoe man had told the parson, and she sighed."Poor man!" said she, "(blessing with him!) it was he that sent me hereto Strongara, and gave me tinder and flint."

  "We could better have spared any of his friends, then," said I. "But youwould expect some of us to come
in search of you?"

  "I did," she said in a hesitancy, and crimsoning in a way that tingledme to the heart with the thought that she meant no other than myself.She gave a caressing touch to the head of the sleeping child, andturned to M'Iver, who lay on his side with his head propped on an elbow,looking out on the hill-face.

  "Do you know the bairn?" she asked.

  "No," he said, with a careless look where it lay as peaceful as in acradle rocked by a mother's foot.

  "It's the oe of Peggie Mhor," she said.

  "So," said he; "poor dear!" and he turned and looked out again at thesnow.

  We were, in spite of our dead Glencoe man's assurance, in as wickeda piece of country as well might be. No snow had fallen since we leftTombreck, and from that dolorous ruin almost to our present retreat wasthe patent track of our march.

  "I'm here, and I'm making a fair show at an easy mind," said M'I ver;"but I've been in cheerier circumstances ere now."

  "So have I, for that part of it," said Betty with spirit, halfhumorously, half in an obvious punctilio.

  "Mistress," said he, sitting up gravely, "I beg your pardon. Do youwonder if I'm not in a mood for saying dainty things? Our state'sprecarious (it's needless to delude ourselves otherwise), and our friendSandy and his bloody gang may be at a javelin's throw from us as we sithere. I wish--"

  He saw the girl's face betray her natural alarm, and amended his wordsalmost too quickly for the sake of the illusion.

  "Tuts, tuts!" he cried. "I forgot the wood was searched before, andhere I'm putting a dismal black face on a drab business. We might be athousand times worse. I might be a clay-cold corp with my last week'swage unspent in my sporran, as it happens to be, and here I'm tothe fore with four or five MacDonalds to my credit If I've lost mymercantile office as mine-manager (curse your trades and callings!) mysword is left me; you have equal fortune, Elrigmore; and you, MistressBrown, have them you love spared to you."

  Again the girl blushed most fiercely. "Thank God! Thank God!" she criedin a stifled ecstasy, "and O! but I'm grateful." And anew she fondledthe little bye-blow as it lay with its sunny hair on the soldier'splaid.

  John glanced at her from the corners of his eyes with a new expression,and asked her if she was fond of bairns.

  "Need you ask that of a woman?" she said. "But for the company of thisone on my wanderings, my heart had failed me a hundred times a-day. Itwas seeing him so helpless that gave me my courage: the dark at night inthe bothy and the cot and the moaning wind of this lone spot had sent mecrazy if I had not this little one's hand in mine, and his breath in myhair as we lay together."

  "To me," said John, "they're like flowers, and that's the long and theshort of it."

  "You're like most men, I suppose," said Betty, archly; "fond of them inthe abstract, and with small patience for the individuals of them. Thisone now--you would not take half the trouble with him I found a delightin. But the nursing of bairns--even their own--is not a soldier'sbusiness."

  "No, perhaps not," said M'Iver, surveying her gravely; "and yet I'veseen a soldier, a rough hired cavalier, take a wonderful degree oftrouble about a duddy little bairn of the enemy in the enemy's country.He was struck--as he told me after--by the look of it sitting in a sceneof carnage, orphaned without the sense of it, and he carried it beforehim on the saddle for a many leagues' march till he found a peacefulwayside cottage, where he gave it in the charge of as honest a woman, toall appearance, as these parts could boast He might even--for all I knowto the contrary--have fairly bought her attention for it by a season'spaying of the kreutzers, and I know it cost him a duel with a fool whomocked the sentiment of the deed."

  "I hope so brave and good a man was none the worse for his duel in acause so noble," said the girl, softly.

  "Neither greatly brave nor middling good," said John, laughing, "atleast to my way of thinking, and I know him well. But he was no poorerbut by the kreutzers for his advocacy of an orphan bairn."

  "I think I know the man," said I, innocently, "and his name would beJohn."

  "And John or George," said the girl, "I could love him for his story."

  M'Iver lifted a tress of the sleeping child's hair and toyed with itbetween his fingers.

  "My dear, my dear!" said he; "it's a foolish thing to judge a man'scharacter by a trifle like yon: he's a poor creature who has not hisfine impulse now and then; and the man I speak of, as like as not, wasdirling a wanton flagon (or maybe waur) ere nightfall, or slaying withcruelty and zest the bairn's uncles in the next walled town he came to.At another mood he would perhaps balance this lock of hair against acompany of burghers but fighting for their own fire-end."

  "The hair is not unlike your own," said Betty, comparing with quick eyesthe curl he held and the curls that escaped from under the edge of hisflat blue bonnet.

  "May every hair of his be a candle to light him safely through a mirkand dangerous world," said he, and he began to whittle assiduously at astick, with a little black oxter-knife he lugged from his coat.

  "Amen!" said the girl, bravely; "but he were better with the guidanceof a good father, and that there seems small likelihood of hisenjoying--poor thing!"

  A constraint fell on us; it may have been there before, but only now Ifelt it myself. I changed the conversation, thinking that perhapsthe child's case was too delicate a subject, but unhappily madethe plundering of our glens my dolorous text, and gloom fell like amort-cloth on our little company. If my friend was easily uplifted, madebuoyantly cheerful by the least accident of life, he was as prone to ahellish melancholy when fate lay low. For the rest of the afternoon hewas ever staving with a gloomy brow about the neighbourhood, keeping aneye, as he said, to the possible chance of the enemy.

  Left thus for long spaces in the company of Betty and the child, thatdaffed and croodled about her, and even became warmly friendly with mefor the sake of my Paris watch and my glittering waistcoat buttons, Imade many gallant attempts to get on my old easy footing. That was thewonder of it: when my interest in her was at the lukewarm, I could faceher repartee with as good as she gave; now that I loved her (to say theword and be done with it), my words must be picked and chosen andmy tongue must stammer in a contemptible awkwardness. Nor was she,apparently, quite at her ease, for when our talk came at any point tooclose on her own person, she was at great pains adroitly to change it toother directions.

  I never, in all my life, saw a child so muckle made use of. It seemed,by the most wonderful of chances, to be ever needing soothing orscolding or kissing or running after in the snow, when I had a word tosay upon the human affections, or a compliment to pay upon some grace ofits most assiduous nurse.

  "I'm afraid," said Betty at last, "you learned some courtiers'flatteries and coquetries in your travels. You should have taken thelesson like your friend and fellow-cavalier M'Iver, and got the trick ofkeeping a calm heart."

  "M'Iver!" I cried. "He's an old hand at the business."

  She put her lips to the child's neck and kissed it tumultuously.

  "Not--not at the trade of lovier?" she asked after a while, carelesslykeeping up the crack.

  "Oh no!" I said, laughing. "He's a most religious man."

  "I would hardly say so much," she answered, coldly; "for there havebeen tales--some idle, some otherwise--about him, but I think his friendshould be last to hint at any scandal."

  Good heavens! here was a surprise for one who had no more notion oftraducing his friend than of miscalling the Shorter Catechism. Thecharge stuck in my gizzard. I fumed and sweat, speechless at theinjustice of it, while the girl held herself more aloof than ever, busypreparing for our evening meal.

  But I had no time to put myself right in her estimate of me beforeM'Iver came back from his airing with an alarming story.

  "It's time we were taking our feet from here," he cried, running upto us. "I've been up on Meall Ruadh there, and I see the wholecountryside's in a confusion. Pipers are blowing away down the glen andguns are firing; if it's not a muster of the enemy prepara
tory to theirquitting the country, it's a call to a more particular search in thehills and woods. Anyway we must be bundling."

  He hurriedly stamped out the fire, that smoked a faint blue reek whichmight have advertised our whereabouts, and Betty clutched the child toher arms, her face again taking the hue of hunt and fear she wore whenwe first set eyes on her in the morning.

  "Where is safety?" she asked, hopelessly. "Is there a sheep-fank ora sheiling-bothy in Argile that is not at the mercy of thoseblood-hounds?"

  "If it wasn't for the snow on the ground," said M'Iver, "I could find ascore of safe enough hidings between here and the Beannan." "Heavens!"he added, "when I think on it, the Beannan itself is the place for us;it's the one safe spot we can reach by going through the woods withoutleaving any trace, if we keep under the trees and in the bed of theburn."

  We took the bairn in turns, M'Iver and I, and the four of us set out forthe opposite side of Glenaora for the _eas_ or gully called the Beannan,that lay out of any route likely to be followed by the enemy, whethertheir object was a retreat or a hunting. But we were never to reach thisplace of refuge, as it happened; for M'Iver, leading down the burn bya yard or two, had put his foot on the path running through the passbeside the three bridges, when he pulled back, blanching more in chagrinthan apprehension.

  "Here they are," he said "We're too late; there's a band of them on themarch up this way."

  At our back was the burned ruin of a house that had belonged to ashepherd who was the first to flee to the town when the invaders came.Its byre was almost intact, and we ran to it up the burn as fast as wecould, and concealed ourselves in the dark interior. Birds came chirpingunder the eaves of thatch and by the vent-holes, and made so muchbickering to find us in their sanctuary that we feared the bye-passers,who were within a whisper of our hiding, would be surely attracted Bandafter band of the enemy passed, laden in the most extraordinary degreewith the spoil of war. They had only a rough sort of discipline in theirretirement: the captains or chieftains marched together, leaving thecompanies to straggle as they might, for was not the country desertedby every living body but themselves? In van of them they drove severalhundreds of black and red cattle, and with the aid of some rough ponies,that pulled such sledges (called _carns_) as are used for the haulinghome of peat on hilly land, they were conveying huge quantities ofhousehold plenishing and the merchandise of the burgh town.

  Now we had more opportunity of seeing those coarse savage forces thanon any occasion since they came to Argile, for the whole of them hadmustered at Inneraora after scouring the shire, and were on their marchout of the country to the north, fatter men and better put-on than whenthey came. Among them were numerous tartans, either as kilt, trews, orplaid; the bonnet was universal, except that some of the officers woresteel helms, with a feather tip in them, and a clan badge of heather orwhin or moss, and the dry oak-stalk whimsy of Montrose. They hadcome bare-footed and bare-buttocked (many of the privates of them) toCampbell country; now, as I say, they were very snod, the scurviest ofthe knaves set up with his hosen and brogues. Sturdy and black, or lankand white-haired like the old sea-rovers, were they, with few among themthat ever felt the razor edge, so that the hair coated them to the veryeyeholes, and they looked like wolves. The pipers, of whom there werethree, were blasting lustily at Clanranald's march when they came upthe lower part of the Glen, according to M'Iver, who had heard them fromMeall Ruadh; but now the music was stopped, and all were intent upondriving the cattle or watching their stolen gear', for doubtless amongsuch thieves there was not as much honour as would prevent one frompicking his neighbour's sporran.

  We lay buried to the head in bracken that filled one side of the byre,and keeked through the plenteous holes in the dry-stone wall at thepassing army. Long gaps were between the several clans, and the Irishcame last It seemed--they moved so slowly on account of the cattle--thatthe end of the cavalcade was never to come; but at length came thebaggage and the staff of Montrose himself. Then I got my first lookof the man whose name stinks in the boar's snout to this day. A fellowabout thirty-three years of age, of mid height, hair of a very dark red,hanging in a thick fell on the shoulders of the tartan jacket (for hewore no armour), with a keen scrutinising eye, and his beard trimmed inthe foreign vein. He sat his horse with considerable ease and grace,and was surrounded by half-a-dozen of the chiefs who had come under hisbanner. The most notable-looking of these was Alasdair MacDonald, theMajor-General, an uncouth dog, but a better general, as I learned later,than ever God or practice made James Grahame of Montrose; with John ofMoidart, the Captain of Clanranald, Donald Glas MacRanald of Keppoch,the laird of Glencoe, Stewart of Appin, and one of the Knoydart house,all of whilk we distinguished by their tartans and badges.

  In the mien of these savage chiefs there was great elation that Montrosehad little share in, to all appearance. He rode moodily, and when fairopposite our place of concealment he stopped his horse as if to quit thesell, but more likely to get, for a little, out of the immediate companyof his lawless troops. None of those home-returning Gaels paid heedto his pause, for they were more Alasdair Macdonald's men than his;Mac-Donald brought them to the lair of the boar, MacDonald glutted theirHighland thirst for Campbell blood, Mac-Donald had compelled this raidin spite of the protests of the nobleman who held the King's Commissionand seal.

  For some minutes his lordship stood alone on the pathway. The housewhere we lay was but one, and the meanest, among a numerous cluster ofsuch drear memorials of a black business, and it was easy to believethis generalissimo had some gloomy thoughts as he gazed on the work hehad lent consent to. He looked at the ruins and he looked up the pass athis barbarians, and shrugged his shoulders with a contempt there was nomistaking.

  "I could bring him down like a capercailzie," said M'Iver, coolly,running his eye along his pistol and cocking it through his keek-hole.

  "For God's sake don't shoot!" I said, and he laughed quietly.

  "Is there anything in my general deportment, Colin, that makes ye thinkme an assassin or an idiot? I never wantonly shot an unsuspecting enemy,and I'm little likely to shoot Montrose and have a woman and bairnsuffer the worst for a stupid moment of glory."

  As ill luck would have it, the bairn, that had been playing peacefullyin the dusk, at this critical minute let up a cry Montrose plainlyheard.

  "We're lost, we're lost," said Betty, trembling till the crisp drybracken rustled about her, and she was for instant flight.

  "If we're lost, there's a marquis will go travelling with us," saidM'Iver, covering his lordship's heart with his pistol.

  Had Montrose given the slightest sign that he intended to call back hismen to tread out this last flicker of life in Aora Glen he would neverhave died on the gibbet at the Grassmarket of Dunedin, Years after,when Grahame met his doom (with much more courtliness and dignity thanI could have given him credit for), M'Iver would speak of his narrowescape at the end of the raiding.

  "I had his life in the crook of my finger," he would say; "had I actedon my first thought, Clan Campbell would never have lost Inverlochy; but_bha e air an dan_,--what will be will be,--and Grahame's fate was notin the crook of my finger, though so I might think it Aren't we thefools to fancy sometimes our human wills decide the course of fate, andthe conclusions of circumstances? From the beginning of time, my LordMarquis of Montrose was meant for the scaffold."

  Montrose, when he heard the child's cry, only looked to either hand tosee that none of his friends heard it, and finding there was no onenear him, took off his Highland bonnet, lightly, to the house where hejaloused there was a woman with the wean, and passed slowly on his way.

  "It's so honest an act," said John, pulling in his pistol, "that I wouldbe a knave to advantage myself of the occasion."

  A generous act enough. I daresay there were few in the following ofJames Grahame would have borne such a humane part at the end of a bloodybusiness, and I never heard our people cry down the name of Montrose(bitter foe to me and mine) but I minded to his credit
that he had acompassionate ear for a child's cry in the ruined hut of Aora Glen.

  Montrose gave no hint to his staff of what he had heard, for when hejoined them, he nor they turned round to look behind. Before us now,free and open, lay the way to Inneraora. We got down before the duskfell, and were the first of its returning inhabitants to behold whata scandal of charred houses and robbed chests the Athole and Antrimcaterans had left us.

  In the grey light the place lay tenantless and melancholy, the snow ofthe silent street and lane trodden to a slush, the evening star peepingbetween the black roof-timbers, the windows lozenless, the doors burnedout or hanging off their hinges. Before the better houses were piles ofgoods and gear turned out on the causeway. They had been turned about bypike-handles and trodden upon with contemptuous heels, and the pick ofthe plenishing was gone. Though upon the rear of the kirk there were twogreat mounds, that showed us where friend and foe had been burled, thatsolemn memorial was not so poignant to the heart at the poor relics ofthe homes gutted and sacked. The Provost's tenement, of all the lesserhouses in the burgh, was the only one that stood in its outer entirety,its arched ceils proof against the malevolent fire. Yet its windowsgaped black and empty. The tide was in close on the breast-wall behind,and the sound of it came up and moaned in the close like the sough of asea-shell held against the ear.

  We stood in the close, the three of us (the bairn clinging in wonder tothe girl's gown), with never a word for a space, and that sough of thesea was almost a coronach.