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

by Neil Munro

  CHAPTER XXXI.--MISTRESS BETTY.

  I dressed myself up in the morning with scrupulous care, put my hair ina queue, shaved cheek and chin, and put at my shoulder the old heirloombrooch of the house, which, with some other property, the invaders hadnot found below the _bruach_ where we had hid it on the day we had leftElngmore to their mercy. I was all in a tremor of expectation, hotand cold by turns in hope and apprehension, but always with a singularuplifting at the heart, because for good or ill I was sure to meet inthe next hour or two the one person whose presence in Inneraora madeit the finest town in the world. Some men tell me they have felt theexperience more than once; light o' loves they, errant gallants, I'llswear (my dear) the tingle of it came to me but at the thought ofmeeting one woman. Had she been absent from Inneraora that morningI would have avoided it like a leper-house because of its gloomymemorials; but the very reek of its repairing tenements as I saw themfrom the upper windows of my home floating in a haze against the blueover the shoulder of Dun Torvil seemed to call me on. I went about theempty chambers carolling like the bird. Aumrie and clothes-press wereburst and vacant, the rooms in all details were bereft and cheerlessbecause of the plenishing stolen, and my father sat among his losses andmourned, but I made light of our spoiling.

  As if to heighten the rapture of my mood, the day was full of sunshine,and though the woods crowding the upper glen were leafless andslumbering, they were touched to something like autumn's gold. Somepeople love the country but in the time of leafage! And laden withdelights in every season of the year, and the end of winter as cheerya period as any, for I know that the buds are pressing at the bark,and that the boughs in rumours of wind stretch out like the arms of thesleeper who will soon be full awake.

  Down I went stepping to a merry lilt, banishing every fear from mythoughts, and the first call I made was on the Provost. He was over inAkaig's with his wife and family pending the repair of his own house,and Askaig was off to his estate. Master Brown sat on the balusters ofthe outer stair, dangling his squat legs and studying through horn specsthe talc of thig and theft which the town officer had made up a reporton. As I put my foot on the bottom step he looked up, and his welcomewas most friendly.

  "Colin! Colin!" he cried, hastening down to shake me by the hand, "comeyour ways in. I heard you got home yesterday, and I was sure you wouldgive us a call in the by-going to-day. And you're little the waur ofyour jaunt-hale and hearty. We ken all about your prisoning; M'Iverwas in last night and kept the crack going till morning--a most humorousdevil."

  He pinched rappee as he spoke, in rapid doses from a snuff-box, andspread the brown powder in extravagant carelessness over his vest.He might affect what light-heartedness he could; I saw that the pastfortnight had made a difference for the worse on him. The pouches belowthe eyes had got heavier and darker, the lines had deepened on his brow,the ruddy polish had gone off his cheek, and it was dull and spotted;by ten o'clock at night-when he used to be very jovial over a glass--Icould tell he would be haggard and yawning. At his years men begin toage in a few hours; a sudden wrench to the affections, or shock toa long-disciplined order of things in their lives, will send themstaggering down off the braehead whereon they have been perched with agood balance so long that they themselves have forgot the natural courseof human man is to be progressing somewhere.

  "Ah, lad, lad! haven't we the times?" he said, as he led me within tothe parlour. "Inneraora in the stour in her reputation as well as in hertenements. I wish the one could be amended as readily as the other; butwe mustn't be saying a word against princes, ye ken," he went on inthe discreet whisper of the conspirator. "You were up and saw him lastnight, I'm hearing. To-day they tell me he's himself again, and comingdown to a session meeting at noon. I must put myself in his way to saya friendly word or two. Ah! you're laughing at us. I understand, man,I understand. You travellers need not practise the art of civility; butwe're too close on the castle here to be out of favour with MacCaileinMor. Draw in your chair, and--Mary, Mary, goodwife! bring in the bottlewith you and see young Elrigmore."

  In came the goodwife with even greater signs of trouble than herhusband, but all in a flurry of good-humoured welcome. They sat, thepair of them, before me in a little room poorly lit by a narrow windowbut half-glazed, because a lower portion of it had been destroyed inthe occupation of the Irish, and had to be timbered up to keep the windoutside. A douce pathetic pair; I let my thoughts stray a little evenfrom their daughter as I looked on them, and pondered on the tragedy ofage that is almost as cruel as war, but for the love that set ProvostBrown with his chair haffit close against his wife's, so that lessnoticeably he might take her hand in his below the table and renew theglow that first they learned, no doubt, when lad and lass awandering insummer days, oh long ago, in Eas-a-chosain glen.

  They plied me with a hundred questions, of my adventures, and of myfather, and of affairs up in Shira Glen. I sat answering very often athazard, with my mind fixed on the one question I had to ask, which was asimple one as to the whereabouts and condition of their daughter. But Ileave to any lad of a shrinking and sensitive nature if this was not atask of exceeding difficulty. For you must remember that here were twovery sharp-eyed parents, one of them with a gift of irony discomposingto a lover, and the other or both perhaps, with no reason, so far asI knew, to think I had any special feeling for the girl. But I knew aswell as if I had gone over the thing a score of times before, how mymanner of putting that simple question would reveal me at a flash to theirony of the father and the wonder of the mother. And in any case theygave me not the smallest chance of putting it As they plied me withaffairs a thousand miles beyond the limits of my immediate interest, andI answered them with a brevity almost discourteous, I was practising twoor three phrases in my mind.

  "And how is your daughter, sir?" might seem simple enough, but it wouldbe too cold for an inquirer to whom hitherto she had always beenBetty; while to ask for Betty outright would--a startling new spring ofdelicacy in my nature told me--be to use a friendly warmth only the mostcordial relations with the girl would warrant No matter how I mooted thelady, I knew something in my voice and the very flush in my face wouldreveal my secret My position grew more pitiful every moment, for tothe charge of cowardice I levelled first at myself for my backwardness,there was the charge of discourtesy. What could they think of raybreeding that I had not mentioned their daughter? What could I thinkfrom their silence regarding her but that they were vexed at myindifference to her, and with the usual Highland pride were determinednot even to mention her name till she was asked for. Upon my word,I was in a trouble more distressing than when I sat in the mist in theMoor of Rannoch and confessed myself lost! I thought for a little, in amomentary wave of courage, of leading the conversation in her directionby harking back to the day when the town was abandoned, and she tookflight with the child into the woods. Still the Provost, now doing allthe talking, while his wife knit hose, would ever turn a hundred by-waysfrom the main road I sought to lead him on.

  By-and-by, when the crack had drifted hopelessly away from allconnection with Mistress Betty, there was a woman's step on the stair.My face became as hot as fire at the sound, and I leaned eagerly forwardin my chair before I thought of the transparency of the movement.

  The Provost's eyes closed to little slits in his face; the corner of hismouth curled in amusement.

  "Here's Peggy back from Bailie Campbell's," he said to his wife, and Iwas convinced he did so to let me know the new-comer, who was now movingabout in the kitchen across the lobby, was not the one I had expected.My disappointment must have shown in my face; I felt I was wastingmoments the most precious, though it was something to be under the sameroof as my lady's relatives, under the same roof as she had slept belowlast night, and to see some of her actual self almost, in the smilesand eyes and turns of the voice of her mother. I stood up to go, slylycasting an eye about the chamber for the poor comfort of seeing solittle as a ribbon or a shoe that was hers, but even that was deniedme. The Provost, who, I'll
swear now, knew my trouble from the outset,though his wife was blind to it, felt at last constrained to relieve it.

  "And you must be going," he said; "I wish you could have waited to seeBetty, who's on a visit to Carlunnan and should be home by now."

  As he said it, he was tapping his snuff-mull and looking at me pawkilyout of the corners of his eyes, that hovered between me and his wife,who stood with the wool in her hand, beaming mildly up in my face. Ihalf turned on my heel and set a restless gaze on the corner of theroom. For many considerations were in his simple words. That he shouldsay them at all relieved the tension of my wonder; that he shouldsay them in the way he did, was, in a manner, a manifestation that heguessed the real state of ray feelings to the lady whose very name I hadnot dared to mention to him, and that he was ready to favour any suitI pressed I was even inclined to push my reading of his remark further,and say to myself that if he had not known the lady herself favoured me,he would never have fanned my hope by even so little as an indifferentsentence.

  "And how is she--how is Betty?" I asked, lamely.

  He laughed with a pleasing slyness, and gave me a dunt with his elbow onthe side, a bit of the faun, a bit of the father, a bit of my father'sfriend.

  "You're too blate, Colin," he said, and then he put his arm through hiswife's and gave her a squeeze to take her into his joke. I would havelaughed at the humour of it but for the surprise in the good woman'sface. It fair startled me, and yet it was no more than the look of awoman who leams that her man and she have been close company with asecret for months, and she had never made its acquaintance. There wasperhaps a little more, a hesitancy in the utterance, a flush, a tonethat seemed to show the subject was one to be passed bye as fast aspossible.

  She smiled feebly a little, picked up a row of dropped stitches, and"Oh, Betty," said she, "Betty--is--is--she'll be back in a little. Willyou not wait?"

  "No, I must be going," I said; "I may have the happiness of meeting herbefore I go up the glen in the afternoon."

  They pressed me both to stay, but I seemed, in my mind, to have a newdemand upon me for an immediate and private meeting with the girl; shemust be seen alone, and not in presence of the old couple, who wouldgive my natural shyness in her company far more gawkiness than it mighthave if I met her alone.

  I went out and went down the stair, and along the front of the land, mybeing in a tumult, yet with my observation keen to everything, no matterhow trivial, that happened around me. The sea-gulls, that make the townthe playground of their stormy holidays, swept and curved among thepigeons in the gutter and quarrelled over the spoils; tossed in the airwind-blown, then dropped with feet outstretched upon the black joistsand window-sills. Fowls of the midden, new brought from other parts tomake up the place of those that had gone to the kail-pots of Antrimand Athole, stalked about with heads high, foreign to this causied andgravelled country, clucking eagerly for meat I made my way amid the birdof the sea and the bird of the wood and common bird of the yard witha divided mind, seeing them with the eye for future recollection, butseeing them not Peats were at every close-mouth, at every door almostthat was half-habitable, and fuel cut from the wood, and all about thethoroughfare was embarrassed.

  I had a different decision at every step, now to seek the girl, now togo home, now finding the most heartening hints in the agitation of theparents, anon troubled exceedingly with the reflection that there wassomething of an unfavourable nature in the demeanour of her mother,however much the father's badinage might soothe my vanity.

  I had made up my mind for the twentieth time to go the length ofCarlunnan and face her plump and plain, when behold she came suddenlyround the corner at the Maltland where the surviving Lowland troops weregathered! M'Iver was with her, and my resolution shrivelled and shookwithin me like an old nut kernel. I would have turned but for thestupidity and ill-breeding such a movement would evidence, yet as I heldon my way at a slower pace and the pair approached, I felt every limb anencumbrance, I felt the country lout throbbing in every vein.

  Betty almost ran to meet me as we came closer together, with anagreeableness that might have pleased me more had I not the certaintythat she would have been as warm to either of the two men who hadrescued her from her hiding in the wood of Strongara, and had just comeback from her country's battles with however small credit to themselvesin the result. She was in a very happy mood, for, like all women, shecould readily forget the large and general vexation of a reverse to herpeople in war if the immediate prospect was not unpleasant and thingsaround were showing improvement Her eyes shone and sparkled, theordinary sedate flow of her words was varied by little outbursts ofgaiety. She had been visiting the child at Carlunnan, where it hadbeen adopted by her kinswoman, who made a better guardian than itsgrandmother, who died on her way to Dunbarton.

  "What sets you on this road?" she asked blandly.

  "Oh, you have often seen me on this road before," I said, boldly andwith meaning. Ere I went wandering we had heard the rivers sing manya time, and sat upon its banks and little thought life and time werepassing as quickly as the leaf or bubble on the surface. She flushedever so little at the remembrance, and threw a stray curl back from hertemples with an impatient toss of her fingers.

  "And so much of the dandy too!" put in M'Iver, himself perjink enoughabout his apparel. "I'll wager there's a girl in the business." Helaughed low, looked from one to the other of us, yet his meaningescaped, or seemed to escape, the lady.

  "Elrigmore is none of the kind," she said, as if to protect a child."He has too many serious affairs of life in hand to be in the humour forgallivanting."

  This extraordinary reading of my character by the one woman who ought tohave known it better, if only by an instinct, threw me into a blend ofconfusion and chagrin. I had no answer for her. I regretted now that myevil star had sent me up Glenaora, or that having met her with M'Iver,whose presence increased my diffidence, I had not pretended some errandor business up among the farmlands in the Salachry hills, where distantrelatives of our house were often found But now I was on one side ofthe lady and M'Iver on the other, on our way towards the burgh, and theconvoy must be concluded, even if I were dumb all the way. Dumb, indeed,I was inclined to be. M'Iver laughed uproariously at madame's notionthat I was too seriously engaged with life for the recreation oflove-making; it was bound to please him, coming, as it did, so close onhis own estimate of me as the Sobersides he christened me at almost ourfirst acquaintance. But he had a generous enough notion to give me thechance of being alone with the girl he knew very well my feelings for.

  "I've been up just now at the camp," he said, "anent the purchase ofa troop-horse, and I had not concluded my bargain when Mistress Brownpassed. I'm your true cavalier in one respect, that I must be offeringevery handsome passenger an escort; but this time it's an office forElrigmore, who can undertake your company down the way bravely enough,I'll swear, for all his blateness."

  Betty halted, as did the other two of us, and bantered my comrade.

  "I ask your pardon a thousand times, Barbreck," she said; "I thought youwere hurrying on your way down behind me, and came upon me before yousaw who I was."

  "That was the story," said he, coolly; "I'm too old a hand at thebusiness to be set back on the road I came by a lady who has no relishfor my company."

  "I would not take you away from your marketing for the world," sheproceeded. "Perhaps Elrigmore may be inclined to go up to the camp too;he may help you to the pick of your horse--and we'll believe you thesoldier of fortune again when we see you one."

  She, at least, had no belief that the mine-manager was to be a mercenaryagain. She tapped with a tiny toe on the pebbles, affecting a choler thetwinkle in her eyes did not homologate. It was enough for M'Iver, whogave a "Pshaw!" and concluded he might as well, as he said, "be in goodcompany so long as he had the chance," and down the way again we went.Somehow the check had put him on his mettle. He seemed to lose at onceall regard for my interests in this. I became in truth, more frequentlythan was p
alatable, the butt of his little pleasantries; my mysterioussaunter up that glen, my sobriety of demeanour, my now silence-all thosethings, whose meaning he knew very well, were made the text for hisamusement for the lady. As for me, I took it all weakly, striving tomeet his wit with careless smiles.

  For the first time, I was seized with a jealousy of him. Here was I,your arrant rustic; he was as composed as could be, overflowing withhappy thoughts, laughable incident, and ever ready with the complimentor the retort women love to hear from a smart fellow of even indifferentcharacter. I ic had the policy to conceal the vanity that was forordinary his most transparent feature, and his trick was to admire thevalour and the humour of others. Our wanderings in Lorn and I-ochaber,our adventures with the MacDonalds, all the story of the expedition, hedanced through, as it were, on the tip-toe of light phrase, as if it hadIxrcn a strong man's scheme of recreation, scarcely once appealing to maWith a Mushed cheek and parted lips the lady hung upon his words, archedher dark eyebrows in fear, or bubbled into the merriest laughter as theoccasion demanded. Worst of all, she teemed to share his amusement atmy silence, and then I could have wished rather than a bag of gold I hadthe Mull witch's invisible coat, or that the earth would swallow meup. The very country-people passing on the way were art and part inthe conspiracy of circumstances to make me unhappy. Their salutes wererarely for Elrigmore, but for the lady and John Splendid, whose boldquarrel with MacCailein Mor was now the rumour of two parishes, and gavehim a wide name for unflinching bravery of a kind he had been generallyacknowledged as sadly want ing in before. And Mistress Betty could notbut see that high or low, I was second to this fellow going off--or atleast with the rumour of it--to Hebron's cavaliers in France before theweek-end.

  M'Iver was just, perhaps, carrying his humour at my cost a little toofar for my temper, which was never readily stirred, but flamed fastenough when set properly alowe, and Betty--here too your true womanwit--saw it sooner than he did himself, quick enough in the uptakethough he was. He had returned again to his banter about thesupposititious girl I was trysted with up the glen, and my face showedmy annoyance.

  "You think all men like yourself," said the girl to him, "and all womenthe same--like the common soldier you are."

  "I think them all darlings," he confessed, laughing; "God bless them,kind and foolish----"

  "As you've known them oftenest," she supplied, coldly.

  "Or sedate and sensible," he went on. "None of them but found JohnM'Iver of Barbeck their very true cavalier."

  "Indeed," said Mistress Betty, colder than ever, some new thoughtworking within her, judging from the tone. "And yet you leave to-morrow,and have never been to Carlunnan." She said the last words with ahesitancy, blushing most warmly. To me they were a dark mystery, unlessI was to assume, what I did wildly for a moment, only to relinquish thenotion immediately, that she had been in the humour to go visitingher friends with him. Mover's face showed some curious emotion that itbaffled me to read, and all that was plain to me was that here were twopeople with a very strong thought of a distressing kind between them.

  "It would be idle for me," he said in a little, "to deny that I knowwhat you mean. But do you not believe you might be doing me poor justicein your suspicions?"

  "It is a topic I cannot come closer upon," she answered; "I am a woman.That forbids me and that same compels me. If nature does not demand yourattendance up there, then you are a man wronged by rumour or a man deadto every sense of the human spirit I have listened to your humour andlaughed at your banter, for you have an art to make people forget; butall the way I have been finding my lightness broken in on by the feeblecry of a child without a mother--it seems, too, without a father."

  "If that is the trouble," he said, turning away with a smile he did notsucceed in concealing either from the lady or me, "you may set your mindat rest The child you mention has, from this day, what we may be callinga godfather."

  "Then the tale's true?" she said, stopping on the road, turning andgazing with neither mirth nor warmth in her countenance.

  M'Iver hesitated, and looked upon the woman to me as if I could help himin the difficulty; but I must have seemed a clown in the very abjectionof my ignorance of what all this mystery was about He searched my faceand I searched my memory, and then I recollected that he had told mebefore of Mistress Brown's suspicions of the paternity of the child.

  "I could well wish your answer came more readily," said she again,somewhat bitterly, "for then I know it would be denial."

  "And perhaps untruth, too," said John, oddly. "This time it's a questionof honour, a far more complicated turn of circumstances than you canfancy, and my answer takes time."

  "Guilty!" she cried, "and you go like this. You know what the story is,and your whole conduct in front of my charges shows you take the verylightest view of the whole horrible crime."

  "Say away, madame," said M'Iver, assuming an indifference his everyfeature gave the lie to. "I'm no better nor no worse than the rest ofthe world. That's all I'll say."

  "You have said enough for me, then," said the girl.

  "I think, Elrigmore, if you please, I'll not trouble you and your friendto come farther with me now. I am obliged for your society so far."

  She was gone before either of us could answer, leaving us like a pair ofculprits standing in the middle of the road. A little breeze fannedher clothing, and they shook behind her as to be free from somecontamination. She had overtaken and joined a woman in front of herbefore I had recovered from my astonishment M'Iver turned fromsurveying her departure with lowered eyebrows, and gave me a look withhalf-a-dozen contending thoughts in it.

  "That's the end of it," said he, as much to himself as for my ear, "andthe odd thing of it again is that she never seemed so precious fine awoman as when it was 'a bye wi' auld days and you,' as the Scots songsays."

  "It beats me to fathom," I confessed. "Do I understand that you admittedto the lady that you were the father of the child?"

  "I admitted nothing," he said, cunningly, "if you'll take the trouble tothink again. I but let the lady have her own way, which most of her sexgenerally manage from me in the long-run."

  "But, man! you could leave her only one impression, that you are asblack as she thinks you, and am I not sure you fall far short of that?"

  "Thank you," he said; "it is good of you to say it. I am for offwhenever my affairs here are settled, and when I'm the breadth of seasafar from Inneraora, you'll think as well as you can of John M'Iver,who'll maybe not grudge having lost the lady's affection if he kept hisfriend's and comrade's heart."

  He was vastly moved as he spoke. He took my hand and wrung it fiercely;he turned without another word, good or ill, and strode back on his wayto the camp, leaving me to seek my way to the town alone.