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

by Neil Munro

  CHAPTER XXVII.--A TAVERN IN THE WILDS.

  Tynree is the Gaelic of a name that in the English is King's House. Whathumour gave so gaudy a title to so humble a place I have been alwaysbeat to know. For if the poorest of the chiefs of the poor isles hadhis choice of the gallows at once or Tynree for a long habitation, I'mthinking he would cry, "Out with your rope." Standing all its lee loneon the edge of the wildest moor of all the Scottish kingdom, blusteredon by the winds of Glen-coe and Glen Etive, the house, far apart fromany other (even a hunter's bothy among the corries), must be eerie,empty of all but its owner at most seasons of the year. He will havenothing about him but the flying plover that is so heart-breaking in itspiping at the grey of morn, for him must the night be a dreariness norowth of cruisie or candle may mitigate. I can fancy him looking out dayafter day upon plains of snow and cruel summits, blanching and snarlingunder sodden skies, and him wishing that God so good was less careless,and had given him a home and trade back among the cosy little glens,if not in the romping towns. But they tell me--people who rove and havetried Tynree in all weathers--that often it is cheerful with song andstory; and there is a tale that once upon a time a little king, outadventuring in the kingly ways of winter stories, found this tavern inthe wilds so warm, so hospitable, so resounding with the songs of goodfellows, that he bided as a duc for a week of the winter weather.

  When I came on Tynree, it was sounding with music, just, it might be,as in the day of the king in the story. Three of the morning, yet thehostel sent out a most hearty reek and firelight, the odours of stewingmeats and of strong waters, and the sound of piping and trumping andlaughing.

  I stood back a piece from the house and debated with myself whether ornot it was one where the tartan of Diarmaid would be sure of a welcomeeven if his sporran jingled with gold to the very jaws. All I wanted wasshelter till the day broke and-this may seem odd to any one who has notknown the utter wearisomeness of being a hunted man jinking in the darkamong woods and alleys--the easy conversation of some human beings withno thought bothering them but what would be for the next meal, or theprice of cattle at a town tryst And song and trump-come, I'll tell theG--s own truth upon that! They called me Sobersides in those days: Mivergave me the name and kept it on me lili the very last, and yet sobrietyof spirit (in one way) was the last quality in those oh! days of nograce to find in my nature. I liknl to sit in taverns, drinking notdeeply, but enough to keep the mood from flagging, with people of theyoung heart, people fond of each other, adrift from all commercialcunning, singing old staves and letting their fancy go free to a tunctwanged on a Jew's-tnimp or squeezed upon a lagulie or rigged upon afiddle. So the merriment of I'ynree held me like a charm, and a mad whinlast seized me, and in I went, confident that my insttn of comraderywould not deceive me, and that at last I hail the boon-companion'schance.

  Its company never even stopped their clamour to look at me; the landlordput a jug at my elbow, and a whang of bread and cheese, and I wasjoining with an affected gusto in a chorus less than ten minutes afterI had been a hunted man on the edge of Moor Ran No ready to toss up abawbee to learn whither my road should be.

  It was an orra and remarkable gathering, convened surely by the trickeryof a fantastic and vagabond providence,--"not a great many, but wellpicked," as Mac-gregor the Mottled said of his band of thieves. Therewere men and women to the number of a score, two or three travellingmerchants (as they called themselves, but I think in my mind they werethe kind of merchants who bargain with the dead corp on the abandonedbattle-field, or follow expeditions of war to glean the spoil fromburning homesteads); there were several gangrels, an Irishman with asilver eye, a strolling piper with poor skill of his noble instrument,the fiddler who was a drunken native of the place, a gipsy and his wifeand some randy women who had dropped out of the march of Montrose'stroops. Over this notable congregation presided the man of thehouse--none of your fat and genial-looking gentlemen, but a long leanpersonage with a lack-lustre eye. You would swear he would dampen thejoy of a penny wedding, and yet (such a deceit is the countenance) hewas a person of the finest wit and humour, otherwise I daresay Tynreehad no such wonderful party in it that night.

  I sat by the fire-end and quaffed my ale, no one saying more to me fora little than "There you are!" Well enough they knew my side in theissue--my tartan would tell them that--but wandering bodies have nopolitics beyond the conviction that the world owes them as easy aliving as they can cheat it out of, and they never mentioned war. Thelandlord's dram was on, and 'twas it I had shared in, and when it wasover I pulled out a crown and bought the heartiest goodwill of a scoreof rogues with some flagons of ale.

  A beetle-browed chamber, long, narrow, stifling with the heat of a greatfire, its flagged floor at intervals would slap with bare or bauchledfeet dancing to a short reel. First one gangrel would sing a verse ortwo of a Lowland ballant, not very much put out in its sentiment by thepresence of the random ladies; then another would pluck a tune upon theJew's-trump, a chorus would rise like a sudden gust of wind, a jigwould shake upon the fiddle. I never saw a more happy crew, nor yet onethat--judging from the doctrine that thrift and sobriety have their justreward--deserved it less. I thought of poor Master Gordon somewhere deador alive in or about Dalness, a very pupil of Christ, and yet witha share of His sorrows, with nowhere to lay his head, but it did notbitter me to my company.

  By-and-by the landlord came cannily up to me and whispered in my ear asort of apology for the rabble of his house.

  "You ken, sir," said he in very good English--"you ken yourself whatthe country's like just now, given over to unending brawl, and I amglad to see good-humoured people about me, even if they are pennilessgangrels."

  "My own business is war," I acknowledged; "I'll be frank enough to tellyou I'm just now making my way to Inneraora as well as the weather andthe MacDonalds will let me."

  He was pleased at my candour, I could see; confidence is a quality thatrarely fails of its purpose. He pushed the bottle towards me with thefriendliest of gestures, and took the line of the fellow-conspirator.

  "Keep your thumb on that," said he; "I'm not supposed to precognosceevery lodger in Tynree upon his politics. I'm off Clan Chattan myself,and not very keen on this quarrel--that's to say, I'll take no sidein it, for my trade is feeding folk and not fighting them. Might I beasking if you were of the band of Campbells a corps of MacDonalds werechasing down the way last night?"

  I admitted I was.

  "I have nothing to do with it," said he; "and I'll do a landlord's dutyby any clan coming my way. As for my guests here, they're so pleased tosee good order broken in the land and hamlets half-harried thatthey'll favour any man whose trade is the sword, especially if he'sa gentleman," he added. "I'm one myself, though I keep a sort of poorhostel here. I'm a young son."

  We were joined by the gipsy, a bold tall man with very black and lambenteyes, hiccoughing with drink but not by any means drunken, who took outa wallet and insisted on my joining now in his drink. I dare not refusethe courtesy.

  "Would you like your fortune spaed, sir?" asked my black friend,twitching his thumb in the direction of his wife, who was leering on mewith a friendliness begot of the bottle. The place was full of deafeningnoises and peat-smoke. Fiddle jigged and pipes snored in the deep notesof debauchery, and the little Jew's-trump twanged between the teeth of adirty-faced man in a saffron shirt and hodden breeks, wanting jacket andhose--a wizen little old man, going around the world living like a poetin realms whereto trump and tipple could readily bring him.

  "Spae my fortune!" said I, laughing; "such swatches of the same as Ihad in the past were of no nature to make me eager to see what was tofollow."

  "Still and on," said he, "who knows but you may find a wife and a goodfortune in a little lurk of the thumb? Jean! Jean! woman," hecried across the chamber to his callet, and over she came to a veryindifferent and dubious client.

  I had got my hand read a score of times ere this (for I am of a naturecurious and prying), and each time th
e reading was different, but it didnot altogether shake my faith in wise women; so, half for the fun of it,I put some silver pieces in the loof of my hand and held it before thewoman, the transaction unnoticed by the company. She gave the commonharangue to start with. At last, "There's a girl with a child," saidshe.

  "Faith, and she never went to the well with the dish-clout then," saidthe black man, using a well-known Gaelic proverb, meaning a complimentin his dirty assumption.

  "She's in a place of many houses now," went on the woman, busy upon thelines of my hand, "and her mind is taken up with a man in the ranks ofArgile."

  "That's not reading the hand at all, goodwife," said I; "those smallfacts of life are never written in a line across the loof."

  "Jean is no apprentice at the trade," said her man across her shoulder."She can find a life's history in the space of a hair."

  "The man found the woman and the child under a root of fir," said thewoman, "and if the man is not very quick to follow her, he may findkinship's courting get the better of a far-off lover's fancy."

  "_Dhe!_" said I; "you have your story most pat. And what now, wouldyou say, would be the end of it all--coming to the real business of thepalmist, which, I take it, is not to give past history but to forecastfate?"

  I'll not deny but I was startled by the woman's tale, for here was Bettyand here was MacLachlan put before me as plainly as they were in my ownmind day and night since we left Inneraora.

  The woman more closely scrutinised my hand, paused a while, and seemedsurprised herself at its story.

  "After all," said she, "the woman is not going to marry the man sheloves."

  I plucked my hand away with a "Pshaw! what does it matter? If I doubledyour fee you would give me the very best fortune in your wit to devise."

  The Irishman with the silver eye here jostled a merchantman, who drewhis gully-knife, so that soon there was a fierce quarrel that it tookall the landlord's threats and vigour of arm to put an end ta By thistime I was becoming tired of my company; now that the spae-wife hadplanted the seed of distress in my mind, those people were tawdry,unclean, wretched. They were all in rags, foul and smelling; theirmusic was but noise demented. I wondered at myself there in so viciousa company. And Betty--home--love--peace--how all the tribe of themsuddenly took up every corner of my mind. Oh! fool, fool, I calledmyself, to be thinking your half-hearted wooing of the woman had leftany fondness behind it. From the beginning you were second in the field,and off the field now--a soldier of a disgraced army, has the cousin notall the chances in the world? Hell be the true friend in trouble, hellconsole her loneliness in a sacked burgh town; a woman's affection is sooften her reward for simple kindness that he has got her long ago at nogreater cost than keeping her company in her lonely hours. And you arebut the dreamer, standing off trembling and flushing like a boy when youshould be boldly on her cheek, because you dare not think yourself herequal The father's was the true word: "There's one thing a woman willnot abide, that her lover should think lightly either of himself orher."

  All that black stream of sorry thought went rushing through me as Isat with an empty jug in my hand in a room that was sounding like amarket-place. With a start I wakened up to find the landlord making abuffoon's attempt at a dance in the middle of the floor to the tune ofthe Jew-trump, a transparent trick to restore the good-humour of hisroysterers, and the black man who had fetched the spae-wife was standingat my side surveying me closely out of the corners of his eyes. I stoodto my feet and ganted with great deliberation to pretend I had beenhalf-sleeping. He yawned too, but with such obvious pretence that Icould not but laugh at him, and he smiled knowingly back.

  "Well," said he in English, "you'll allow it's a fair imitation, for Inever heard that a put-on gant was smittal. I see that you are put aboutat my wife's fortune: she's a miracle at the business, as I said; shehas some secrets of fate I would rather with her than me. But I wouldswear a man may sometime get the better even of fate if he has a warningof its approach."

  "I can scarcely see that by the logic of Porphyrius or Peter Hispanuswith the categories, two scholars I studied at Glascow. But youare surely a queer man to be a vagabond at the petticoat-tails of aspae-wife," said I.

  "I've had my chance of common life, city and town, and the company ofladies with broidery and camisole and washen faces," he answered with nohesitation, "and give me the highroad and freedom and the very brute ofsimplicity. I'm not of these parts. I'm not of the Highlands at all, asyou may guess, though I've been in them and through them for many a day.I see you're still vexed about my woman's reading of your palm. It seemsto have fitted in with some of your experience."

  I confessed her knowledge of my private affairs surprised me, and hisblack eyes twinkled with humour.

  "I'll explain the puzzle for just as much money as you gave her," saidhe, "and leave you more satisfied at the end than she did. And there'sno black art at the bottom of my skill either."

  "Very well," said I; "here's your drink-money; now tell me the trick ofit, for trick I suppose it is."

  He pocketed the money after a vagabond's spit on the coin for luck, andin twenty words exposed his by-love's device. They had just come fromInneraora two or three days before, and the tale of the Provost'sdaughter in Strongara had been the talk of the town.

  "But how did your wife guess the interest of the lady in a man ofArgile's army?" I asked.

  "Because she spaed the lady's fortune too," he answered, "and she had tofind out in the neighbourhood what it was like to be before she did so;you know that is half the art of the thing."

  "Yet your woman's guess that I was the man--that's beyond me!"

  "I was struck myself when she out with that," he confessed. "Oh, she's adeep one, Jean! But your manner and tongue betrayed the returned soldierof fortune; of such officers in the ranks of Argile there are not somany that it was risking too much to believe all of them knew the storyof the Provost's daughter, and your conduct, once she got that length,did the rest."

  "And about kinship's courting?" I asked, amazed at the simplicity of thething.

  The man dashed his fee on the board and ordered more liquor.

  "Drink up," said he, "and drown care if you're the man my good-wifethought you, for faith there's a little fellow from over the loch makinghimself very snug in the lady's company in your absence."

  There was no more drinking for me; the fumes of this wretched companystank in my nostril, and I must be off to be alone with melancholy. UpI got and walked to the door with not fair-good-e'en nor fair-good-day,and I walked through the beginnings of a drab disheartening dawn in thedirection that I guessed would lead me soonest to Bredalbane. I walkedwith a mind painfully downcast, and it was not till I reached a littlehillock a good distance from the Inns at Tynree, a hillock clothed withsaugh saplings and conspicuously high over the flat countryside, that Ilooked about me to see where I was.