On some days I kept to Glen Shim as the tod keeps to the cairn when heather burns, afraid almost to let even my thoughts wander there lest they should fly back distressed, to say the hope I cherished was in vain. I worked in the wood among Use pines that now make rooftrees for my home, and at nights I went on ttilidh among some of the poorer houses of the Glen, and found a drug for a mind uneasy in the talcs our peasants told around the fire. A drug, and yet a drug sometimes with the very disease in itself I sought for it to kill. For the love of a man for a maid is the one story of all lands, of all ages, trick it as we may, and my good people, telling their old ancient histories round the lire, found, although they never knew it, a young man’s quivering heart a score of times a night.
Still at times, by day and night--ay! in the very midmost watches of the stars-I walked, in my musing, as I thought, upon the causeyed street, where perhaps I had been sooner in the actual fact if M’Iver’s departure had not been delayed. He was swaggering, they told me, about the town in his old regimentals, every pomp of the foreign soldier assumed again as if they had never been relaxed in all those yean of peace and commerce. I drank stoutly in the taverns, and ‘twas constantly, “Landlady, I’m the lawing,” for the fishermen, that they might love him. A tale went round, too, that one morning he went to a burial in Kilmalieu, and Argile was there seeing the last of an old retainer to his long home, and old Macnachtan came riding down past corpse and mourner with his only reverence a finger to his cap. “Come down off your horse when death or Argile goes bye,” cried M’Iver, hauling the laird off his saddle. But between Argile and him were no transactions; the pride of both would not allow it, though it was well known that their affections were stronger than ever they had been before, and that Gordon made more than one attempt at a plan to bring them together.
It is likely, too, I had been down--leaving M’Iver out of consideration altogether--had there not been the tales about MacLachlan, tales that came to my ears in the most miraculous way, with no ill intention on the part of the gossips--about his constant haunting of Inneraora and the company of his cousin. He had been seen there with her on the road to Carlunnan. That venue of all others! God! did the river sing for him too among its reeds and shallows; did the sun tip Dunchuach like a thimble and the wild beast dally on the way? That was the greatest blow of all! It left plain (I thought in ray foolishness) the lady’s coolness when last I met her; for rae henceforth (so said bitterness) the serious affairs of life, that in her notion set me more than courtship. I grew solemn, so gloomy in spirit that even my father observed the ceasing of my whistle and song, and the less readiness of my smile. And he, poor man, thought it the melancholy of Inverlochy and the influence of this ruined countryside.
When I went down to the town again the very house-fronts seemed inhospitable, so that I must pass the time upon the quay. There are days at that season when Loch Finne, so calm, so crystal, so duplicate of the sky, seems like water sunk and lost for ever to wind and wave, when the sea-birds doze upon its kindly bosom like bees upon the flower, and a silence hangs that only breaks in distant innuendo of the rivers or the low of cattle on the Cowal shore. The great bays lapse into hills that float upon a purple haze, forest nor lea has any sign of spring’s extravagance or the flame of the autumn that fires Dunchuach till it blazes like a torch. All is in the light sleep of the year’s morning, and what, I have thought, if God in His pious whim should never awake it any more?
It was such a day when I went up and down the rough cobble of the quay, and to behold men working there at their noisy and secular occupations seemed, at first, a Sabbath desecration. But even they seemed affected by this marvellous peace of sea and sky, as they lifted from the net or rested on the tackle to look across greasy gunnels with some vague unquiet of the spirit at the marvellous restfulness of the world. Their very voices learned a softer note from that lulled hour of the enchanted season, and the faint blue smoke of their den fires rose and mingled in the clustered masts or nestled wooing in the drying sails. Then a man in drink came roaring down the quay, an outrage on the scene, and the magic of the day was gone! The boats bobbed and nudged each other or strained at the twanging cord as seamen and fishers spanged from deck to deck; rose cries in loud and southward Gaelic or the lowlands of Air. The world was no longer dreaming but stark awake, all but the sea and the lapsing bays and the brown floating hills. Town Inneraora bustled to its marge. Here was merchandise, here the pack and the bale; snuffy men in perukes, knee-breeched and portly, came and piped in high English, managing the transport of their munitions ashore.
I was standing in the midst of the throng of the quay-head, with my troubled mind rinding ease in the industry and interest of those people without loves or jealousies, and only their poor merchandise to exercise them, when I started at the sound of a foot coming up the stone slip from the wateredge. I turned, and who was there but MacLachlan? He was all alone but for a haunch-man, a gillie-wet-foot as we call him, and he had been set on the slip by a wherry that had approached from Cowal side unnoticed by me as I stood in meditation. As he came up the sloping way, picking his footsteps upon the slimy stones, he gave no heed to the identity of the person before him; and with my mood in no way favourable to polite discourse with the fellow, I gave a pace or two round the elbow of the quay, letting him pass on his way up among the clanking rings and chains of the moored gaberts, the bales of the luggers, and the brawny and crying mariners. He was not a favourite among the quay-folk, this pompous little gentleman, with his nose in the air and his clothing so very gaudy. The Lowlands men might salute his gentility if they cared; no residenters of the place did so, but turned their shoulders on him and were very busy with their affairs as he passed. He went bye with a waff of wind in his plaiding, and his haunch-man as he passed at a discreet distance got the double share of jibe and glunch from the mariners.
At first I thought of going home; a dread came on me that if I waited longer in the town I might come upon this intruder and his cousin, when it would sore discomfort me to do so. Thus I went slowly up the quay, and what I heard in the bye-going put a new thought in my head.
Two or three seamen were talking together as I passed, with nudges and winks and sly laughs, not natives of the place but from farther up the loch, yet old frequenters with every chance to know the full ins and outs of what they discoursed upon. I heard but three sentences as I passed; they revealed that MacLachlan at Kilmichael market had once bragged of an amour in Inneraora. That was all! But it was enough to set every drop of blood in my body boiling. I had given the dog credit for a decent affection, and here he was narrating a filthy and impossible story. Liar! liar! liar! At first the word rose to my mouth, and I had to choke it at my teeth for fear it should reveal my passion to the people as I passed through among them with a face inflamed; then doubt arose, a contention of recollections, numb fears--but the girl’s eyes triumphed: I swore to myself she at least should never know the villany of this vulgar and lying rumour set about the country by a rogue.
Now all fear of facing the street deserted me. I felt a man upright, imbued with a strong sense of justice; I felt I must seek out John Splendid and get his mind, of all others, upon a villany he eould teach me to avenge. I found him at Aakaig’s comer, a flushed man with perhaps (as I thought at first) too much spirits in him to be the most sensible of advisers in a matter of such delicacy.
“Elrigmore!” he cried; “sir, I give you welcome to Inneraora! You will not know the place, it has grown so much since you last visited its humble street.”
“I’m glad to see you now, John,” I said, hurriedly. “I would sooner see you than any other living person here.”
He held up a finger and eyed me pawkily. “Come, man, cornel” he said, laughing, “On your oath now, is there not a lady? And that minds me; you have no more knowledge of the creatures, no more pluck in their presence, than a child. Heavens, what a soldier of fortune is this? Seven years among the army; town to town, camp to camp, here to-day and away to-morrow, with a soldier’s pass to love upon your back and haunch, and yet you have not learned to lift the sneck of a door, but must be tap-tapping with your finger-nails.”
“I do not know what you mean,” said I.
“Lorf! lord!” he cried, pretending amazement, “and here’s schooling! Just think it over for yourself. You are not an ill-looking fellow (though I think I swing a kilt better myself), you are the proper age (though it’s wonderful what a youngish-looking man of not much over forty may do), you have a name for sobriety, and Elrigmore carries a good many head of cattle and commands a hundred swords,--would a girl with any wisdom and no other sweetheart in her mind turn her back on such a list of virtues and graces? If I had your reputation and your estate, I could have the pick of the finest women in Argile--ay, and far beyond it.”
“Never mind about that just now,” I demanded, gripping my preacher by the hand and forcing him with me out of the way of the passers-by, whose glance upon us would have seemed an indelicacy when we were discussing so precious a thing as my lady’s honour.
“But I shall mind it,” insisted M’Iver, pursing his lips as much to check a hiccough as to express his determination. “It seems I am the only man dare take the liberty. Fie on ye! man, fie! you have not once gone to see the Provost or his daughter since I saw you last I dare not go myself for the sake of a very stupid blunder; but I met the old man coming up the way an hour ago, and he was asking what ailed you at them. Will I tell you something, Colin? The Provost’s a gleg man, but he’s not so gleg as his wife. The dame for me! say I, in every household, if it’s her daughter’s love-affairs she’s to keep an eye on.”
“You know so much of the lady and her people,” said I, almost losing patience, “that it’s a wonder you never sought her for yourself.”
He laughed. “Do you think so?” he said. “I have no doubt of the result; at least I would have had no doubt of it a week or two ago, if I had taken advantage of my chances.” Then he laughed anew. “I said the good-wife was gleg; I’m just as gleg myself.”
This tipsy nonsense began to annoy me; but it was useless to try to check it, for every sentence uttered seemed a spark to his vanity.
“It’s about Betty I want to speak,” I said.
“And it’s very likely too; I would not need to be very gleg to see that She does not want to speak to me, however, or of me, as you’ll find out when once you see her. I am in her black books sure enough, for I saw her turn on the street not an hour ago to avoid me.”
“She’ll not do that to MacLachlan,” I put in, glad of the opening, “unless she hears--and God forbid it--that the scamp lightlies her name at common fairs.”
M’Iver drew himself up, stopped, and seemed to sober.
“What’s this you’re telling me?” he asked, and I went over the incident on the quay. It was enough. It left him as hot as myself. He fingered at his coat-buttons and his cuffs, fastening and unfastening them; he played nervously with the hilt of his dirk; up would go his brows and down again like a bird upon his prey; his lips would tighten on his teeth, and all the time he was muttering in his pick of languages sentiments natural to the occasion. Gaelic is the poorest of tongues to swear in: it has only a hash of borrowed terms from Lowland Scots; but my cavalier was well able to make up the deficiency.
“Quite so; very true and very comforting,” I said at last; “but what’s to be done?”
“What’s to be done?” said he, with a start “Surely to God there’s no doubt about that!”
“No, sir; I hope you know me better. But how’s it to be done? I thought of going up in front of the whole quay and making him chew his lie at the point of my dagger. Then I thought more formality was needed--a friend or two, a select venue, and careful leisure time for so important a meeting.”
“But what’s the issue upon which the rencontre shall take place?” asked M’Iver, it seemed to me with ridiculous scrupulosity.
“Why need you ask?” said I. “You do not expect me to invite him to repeat the insult or exaggerate the same.”
M’Iver turned on me almost roughly and shook me by the shoulder. “Man!” said he, “wake up, and do not let your wits hide in the heels of your boots. Are you clown enough to think of sending a lady’s name around the country tacked on to a sculduddry tale like this? You must make the issue somewhat more politic than that.”
“I agree with you,” I confessed; “it was stupid of me not to think of it, but what can I do? I have no other quarrel with the man.”
“Make one, then,” said M’Iver. “I cannot comprehend where you learned your trade as cavalier, or what sort of company you kept in Mackay’s, if you did not pick up and practise the art of forcing a quarrel with a man on any issue you cared to choose. In ten minutes I could make this young fellow put down his gage in a dispute about the lacing of boots.”
“But in that way at least I’m the poorest of soldiers; I never picked a quarrel, and yet here’s one that sets my gorge to my palate, but cannot be fought on.”
“Tuts, tuts! man,” he cried, “it seems that, after all, you must leave the opening of this little play to John M’Iver. Come with me a bit yont the Cross here and take a lesson.”
He led me up the wide pend close and round the back of old Stonefield’s dwelling, and into a corner of a lane that gave upon the fields, yet at the same time kept a plain view of the door of Askaig’s house, where we guessed MacLachlan was now on his visit to the Provost’s family.
“Let us stand here,” said he, “and I’ll swear I’m not very well acquainted with our friend’s habits if he’s not passing this way to Carlunnan sometime in the next ten minutes, for I saw Mistress Betty going up there, as I said, not so very long ago.”
This hint at MacLachlan’s persistency exasperated me the more. I felt that to have him by the throat would be a joy second only to one other in the world.
M’Iver saw my passion--it was ill to miss seeing it--and seemed struck for the first time by the import of what we were engaged upon.
“We were not given to consider the end of a duello from the opening when abroad,” he said; “but that was because we were abroad, and had no remonstrance and reminder in the face of familiar fields and houses and trees, and the passing footsteps of our own people. Here, however, the end’s to be considered from the beginning--have you weighed the risks in your mind?”
“I’ve weighed nothing,” said I, shortly, “except that I feel in me here I shall have his blood before nightfall.”
“He’s a fairly good hand with his weapon, they tell me.”
“If he was a wizard, with the sword of Great Donald, I would touch him to the vitals. Have I not learned a little, if you’ll give me the credit, from Alasdair Mor?”
“I forgot that,” said M’lver; “you’ll come through it all right And here’s our man coming up the lane. No anger now; nothing to be said on your side till I give you a sign, and then I can leave the rest to your wisdom.”
MacLachlan came staving up the cobbles in a great hurry, flailing the air, as he went, with a short rattan, for he affected some of the foppish customs the old officers brought back from the Continent. He was for passing us with no more than a jerk of the head, but M’Iver and I between us took up the mouth of the lane, and as John seemed to smile on him like one with gossip to exchange, he was bound to stop.
“Always on the going foot, MacLachlan,” said John, airily. “I never see a young gentleman of your age and mettle but I wish he could see the wisdom of putting both to the best purpose on the field.”
“With your cursed foreigners, I suppose you mean,” said the young fellow. “I could scarcely go as a private pikeman like yourself.”
“I daresay not, I daresay not,” answered M’Iver, pricked at his heart (I could tell by his eye) by this reflection upon his humble office, but keeping a marvellously cool front to his cockerel. “And now when I think of it, I am afraid you have neither the height nor width for even so ornamental a post as an ensign’s.”
MacLachlan restrained himself too, unwilling, no doubt, as I thought, to postpone his chase of the lady by so much time as a wrangle with John M’Iver would take up. He affected to laugh at Splendid’s rejoinder, turned the conversation upon the disjasket condition of the town, and edged round to get as polite a passage as possible between us, without betraying any haste to sever himself from our company. But both John Splendid and I had our knees pretty close together, and the very topic he started seemed to be the short cut to the quarrel we sought.
“A poor town indeed,” admitted M’Iver, readily, “but it might be worse. It can be built anew. There’s nothing in nature, from a pigsty to a name for valour and honour, that a wise man may not patch up somehow.”
MacLachlan’s retort to this opening was on the tip of his tongue; but his haste made him surrender a taunt as likely to cause trouble. “You’re very much in the proverb way to-day,” was all he said. “I’m sure I wish I saw Inneraora as hale and complete as ever it was: it never had a more honest friend than myself.”
“That one has missed,” thought I, standing by in a silent part of this three-cornered convention. M’Iver smiled mildly, half, I should think, at the manner in which his thrust had been foiled, half to keep MacLachlan still with us. His next attack was more adroit though roundabout, and it effected its purpose.
“I see you are on your way up to the camp,” said he, with an appearance of indifference. “We were just thinking of a daunder there ourselves.”
“No,” said MacLachlan, shortly; “I’m for farther up the Glen.”
“Then at least we’ll have your company part of the way,” said John, and the three of us walked slowly off, the young gentleman with no great warmth at the idea, which was likely to spoil his excursion to some degree. M’Iver took the place between us, and in the rear, twenty paces, came the gille cas-fleuch.
“I have been bargaining for a horse up here,” said John in a while, “and I’m anxious that Elrigmore should see it. You’ll have heard I’m off again on the old road.”
“There’s a rumour of it,” said MacLachlan, cogitating on his own affairs, or perhaps wondering what our new interest in his company was due to.
“Ah! it’s in my blood,” said John, “in my blood and bones! Argile was a fairly good master--so to call him--but--well, you understand yourself: a man of my kind at a time like this feels more comfortable anywhere else than in the neighbourhood of his chief.”
“I daresay,” replied MacLachlan, refusing the hook, and yet with a sneer in his accent.
“Have you heard that his lordship and I are at variance since our return from the North?”
“Oh! there’s plenty of gossip in the town,” said MacLachlan. “It’s common talk that you threw your dagger in his face. My father, who’s a small chief enough so far as wealth of men and acres goes, would have used the weapon to let out the hot blood of his insulter there and then.”
“I daresay,” said M’Iver. “You’re a hot-headed clan. And MacCailein has his own ways.”
“He’s welcome to keep them too,” answered the young fellow, his sneer in no ways abated I became afraid that his carefully curbed tongue would not give us our opening before we parted, and was inclined to force his hand; but M’Iver came in quickly and more astutely.
“How?” said he; “what’s your meaning? Are you in the notions that he has anything to learn of courtesy and gallantry on the other side of the loch at Strath-lachlan?”
MacLachlan’s eyes faltered a little under his pent brows. Perhaps he had a suspicion of the slightest that he was being goaded on for some purpose, but if he had, his temper was too raw to let him qualify his retort with calmness.
“Do you know, Barbreck,” said he, “I would not care to say much about what your nobleman has to learn or unlearn? As for the gallantry--good Lord, now!--did you ever hear of one of my house leaving his men to shift for themselves when blows were going?”
M’Iver with an utterance the least thought choked by an anger due to the insult he had wrought for, shrugged his shoulders, and at the same time gave me his elbow in the side for his sign.
“I’m sorry to hear you say that about Gillesbeg Gruamach,” said he. “Some days ago, half as much from you would have called for my correction; but I’m out of his lordship’s service, as the rumour rightly goes, and seeing the manner of my leaving it was as it was, I have no right to be his advocate now.”
“But I have!” said I, hotly, stopping and facing MacLachlan, with my excuse for the quarrel now ready. “Do you dare come here and call down the credit of MacCailein Mor?” I demanded in the English, with an idea of putting him at once in a fury at having to reply in a language he spoke but indifferently.
His face blanched; he knew I was doubling my insult for him. The skin of his jaw twitched and his nostrils expanded; a hand went to his dirk hilt on the moment.
“And is it that you are the advocate?” he cried to me in a laughable kind of Scots. I was bitter enough to mock his words and accent with the airs of one who has travelled far and knows other languages than his own.
“Keep to your Gaelic,” he cried in that language; “the other may be good enough to be insolent in; let us have our own for courtesies.”
“Any language,” said I, “is good enough to throw the lie in your face when you call MacCailein a coward.”
“Grace of God!” said he; “I called him nothing of the kind; but it’s what he is all the same.”
Up came his valet and stood at his arm, his blade out, and his whole body ready to spring at a signal from his master.
I kept my anger out of my head, and sunk to the pit of my stomach while I spoke to him. “You have said too much about Archibald, Marquis of Argile,” I said. “A week or two ago, the quarrel was more properly M’Iver’s; now that he’s severed by his own act from the clan, I’m ready to take his place and chastise you for your insolence. Are you willing, John?” I asked, turning to my friend.
“If I cannot draw a sword for my cousin I can at least second his defender,” he answered quickly. MacLachlan’s colour came back; he looked from one to the other of us, and made an effort to laugh with cunning.
“There’s more here than I can fathom, gentlemen.” said he. “I’ll swear this is a forced quarrel; but in any case I fear none of you. Alasdair,” he said, turning to his man, who it seemed was his dalta or foster-brother, “we’ll accommodate those two friends of ours when and where they like.”
“Master,” cried the gillie, “I would like well to have this on my own hands,” and he looked at me with great venom as he spoke.
MacLachlan laughed. “They may do their dangerous work by proxy in this part of the shire,” said he; “but I think our own Cowal ways are better; every man his own quarrel.”
“And now is the time to settle it,” said I; “the very place for our purpose is less than a twenty minutes’ walk off.”
Not a word more was said; the four of us stepped out again.
