On the 27th of July in this same year 1644 we saw his lordship and his
clan march from Inneraora to the dreary north. By all accounts (brought
in to the Marquis by foot-runners from the frontier of Lorn), the
Irishry of Colkitto numbered no more than 1200, badly armed with old
matchlocks and hampered by two or three dozen camp-women bearing the
bairns of this dirty regiment at their breasts. Add to this as many
Highlanders under Montrose and his cousin Para Dubh of Inchbrackie, and
there was but a force of 3500 men for the good government of Argile to
face. But what were they? If the Irish were poorly set up in weapons the
Gaels were worse. On the spring before, Gillesbeg had harried Athole,
and was cunning enough to leave its armouries as bare as the fields he
burned, so now its clans had but home-made claymores, bows, and arrows,
Lochaber _tuaghs_ and cudgels, with no heavy pieces. The cavalry of this
unholy gang was but three garrons, string and bone. Worse than their
ill-arming, as any soldier of experience will allow, were the jealousies
between the two bodies of the scratched-up army. Did ever one see a Gael
that nestled to an Irishman? Here’s one who will swear it impossible,
though it is said the blood is the same in both races, and we nowadays
read the same Gaelic Bible. Colkitto MacDonald was Gael by birth
and young breeding, but Erinach by career, and repugnant to the most
malignant of the west clans before they got to learn, as they did
later, his quality as a leader. He bore down on Athole, he and his towsy
rabble, hoping to get the clans there to join him greedily for the sake
of the old feud against MacCailein Mor, but the Stewarts would have
nothing to say to him, and blows were not far off when Montrose and his
cousin Black Pate came on the scene with his king’s licence.
To meet this array now playing havoc on the edge of Campbell country,
rumour said two armies were moving from the north and east: if Argile
knew of them he kept his own counsel on the point, but he gave colour
to the tale by moving from Inneraora with no more than 2000 foot and a
troop of horse. These regimentals had mustered three days previously,
camping on the usual camping-ground at the Maltland, where I spent
the last day and night with them. They were, for the main part, the
Campbells of the shire: of them alone the chief could muster 5000
half-merkland men at a first levy, all capable swordsmen, well drilled
and disciplined _soldadoes_, who had, in addition to the usual schooling
in arms of every Gael, been taught many of the niceties of new-fashioned
war, countermarch, wheeling, and pike-drill. To hear the orders,
“Pouldron to pouldron; keep your files; and middlemen come forth!” was
like an echo from my old days in Germanie. These manoeuvres they were
instructed in by hired veterans of the Munro and Mackay battalions who
fought with Adolphus. Four or five companies of Lowland soldiers from
Dunbarton and Stirling eked out the strength; much was expected from the
latter, for they were, unlike our clansmen, never off the parade-ground,
and were in receipt of pay for their militant service; but as events
proved, they were MacCailein’s poor reed.
I spent, as I have said, a day and a night in the camp between Aora
river and the deep wood of Tarradubh. The plain hummed with our little
army, where now are but the nettle and the ivied tower, and the yellow
bee booming through the solitude; morning and night the shrill of the
_piob-mhor_ rang cheerily to the ear of Dun-chuach; the sharp call of
the chieftains and sergeants, the tramp of the brogued feet in their
simple evolutions, the clatter of arms, the contention and the laughing,
the song, the reprimand, the challenge, the jest,--all these were
pleasant to me.
One morning I got up from a bed of gall or bog-myrtle I shared with John
Splendid after a late game of chess, and fared out on a little eminence
looking over the scene. Not a soldier stirred in his plaid; the army was
drugged by the heavy fir-winds from the forest behind. The light of the
morning flowed up wider and whiter from the Cowal hills, the birds woke
to a rain of twittering prayer among the bushes ere ever a man stirred
more than from side to side to change his dream. It was the most
melancholy hour I ever experienced, and I have seen fields in the wan
morning before many a throng and bloody day. I felt “fey,” as we say at
home--a premonition that here was no conquering force, a sorrow for the
glens raped of their manhood, and hearths to be desolate. By-and-by the
camp moved into life, Dun-barton’s drums beat the reveille, the pipers
arose, doffed their bonnets to the sun, and played a rouse; my gloom
passed like a mist from the mountains.
They went north by the Aora passes into the country of Bredalbane, and
my story need not follow them beyond.
Inneraora burghers went back to their commercial affairs, and I went
to Glen Shira to spend calm days on the river and the hill. My father
seemed to age perceptibly, reflecting on his companion gone, and he
clung to me like the _crotal_ to the stone. Then it was (I think) that
some of the sobriety of life first came to me, a more often cogitation
and balancing of affairs. I began to see some of the tanglement of
nature, and appreciate the solemn mystery of our travel across this
vexed and care-warped world. Before, I was full of the wine of youth,
giving doubt of nothing a lodgment in my mind, acting ever on the
impulse, sucking the lemon, seeds and all, and finding it unco sappy and
piquant to the palate. To be face to face day after day with this old
man’s grief, burdened with his most apparent double love, conscious that
I was his singular bond to the world he would otherwise be keen to be
leaving, set me to chasten my dalliance with fate. Still and on, our
affection and its working on my prentice mind is nothing to dwell on
publicly. I’ve seen bearded men kiss each other in the France, a most
scandalous exhibition surely, one at any rate that I never gazed on
without some natural Highland shame, and I would as soon kiss my father
at high noon on the open street as dwell with paper and ink upon my
feeling to him.
We settled down to a few quiet weeks after the troops had gone. Rumours
came of skirmishes at Tippermuir and elsewhere. I am aware that the
fabulous Wishart makes out that our lads were defeated by Montrose at
every turning, claiming even Dundee, Crief, Strathbogie, Methven Wood,
Philiphaugh, Inverness, and Dunbeath. Let any one coldly calculate the
old rogue’s narrative, and it will honestly appear that the winner was
more often Argile, though his lordship never followed up his advantage
with slaughter and massacre as did his foes at Aberdeen. All these
doings we heard of but vaguely, for few came back except an odd lad
wounded and cut off in the wilds of Athole from the main body.
Constant sentinels watched the land from the fort of Dunchuach, that
dominates every pass into our country, and outer guards took day and
night about on the remoter alleys of Aora and Shira Glens. South, east,
and west, we had friendly frontiers; only to the north were menace
and danger, and from the north came our scaith--the savage north and
jealous.
These considerations seemed, on the surface, little to affect Inneraora
and its adjacent parts. We slept soundly at night, knowing the warders
were alert; the women with absent husbands tempered their anxiety with
the philosophy that comes to a race ever bound to defend its own doors.
The common folks had _ceilidhs_ at night--gossip parties in each other’s
houses, and in our own hall the herds and shepherds often convocat to
change stories, the tales of the Fingalians, Ossian and the Firme. The
burgh was a great place for suppers too, and never _ceilidh_ nor supper
went I to but the daughter of Provost Brown was there before me. She
took a dislike to me, I guessed at last, perhaps thinking I appeared too
often; and I was never fully convinced of this till I met her once with
some companions walking in the garden of the castle, that always stood
open for the world.
I was passing up the Dame’s Pad, as it was called, a little turfed road,
overhung by walnut trees brought by the old Earl from England. I had on
a Lowland costume with a velvet coat and buckled shoes, and one or
two vanities a young fellow would naturally be set up about, and the
consciousness of my trim clothing put me in a very complacent mood as I
stopped and spoke with the damsels.
They were pretty girls all, and I remember particularly that Betty had a
spray of bog-myrtle and heather fastened at a brooch at her neck.
She was the only one who received me coldly, seemed indeed impatient to
be off, leaving the conversation to her friends while she toyed with a
few late flowers on the bushes beside her.
“You should never put heather and gall together,” I said to her,
rallyingly.
“Indeed!” she said, flushing. “Here’s one who wears what she chooses,
regardless of custom or freit.”
“But you know,” I said, “the badge of the Campbell goes badly with that
of so bitter a foe as the MacDonald. You might as well add the oak-stalk
of Montrose, and make the emblem tell the story of those troubles.”
It was meant in good-humour, but for some reason it seemed to sting her
to the quick. I could see it in the flash of her eyes and the renewed
flush at her temples.
There was a little mischievous girl in the company, who giggled and
said, “Betty’s in a bad key to-day; her sweetheart has vexed her
surely.”
It was a trivial remark, but I went off with it in my mind.
A strange interest in the moods of this old school-friend had begun to
stir me. Meeting her on my daily walks to town by the back way through
the new avenue, I found her seemingly anxious to avoid me, and difficult
to warm to any interest but in the most remote and abstract affairs.
Herself she would never speak of, her plans, cares, ambitions,
preferences, or aversions; she seemed dour set on aloofness. And though
she appeared to listen to my modestly phrased exploits with attention
and respect, and some trepidation at the dangerous portions, she had
notably more interest in my talk of others. Ours was the only big
house in the glen she never came calling to, though her father was an
attentive visitor and supped his curds-and-cream of a Saturday with
friendly gusto, apologising for her finding something to amuse and
detain her at Roderick’s over the way, or the widow’s at Gearran Bridge.
I would go out on these occasions and walk in the open air with a heart
uneasy.
And now it was I came to conclude, after all, that much as a man may
learn of many women studied indifferently, there is something magical
about his personal regard for one, that sets up a barrier of mystery
between them. So long as I in former years went on the gay assumption
that every girl’s character was on the surface, and I made no effort
to probe deeper, I was the confidant, the friend, of many a fine woman.
They all smiled at my douce sobriety, but in the end they preferred it
to the gaudy recklessness of more handsome men.
But here was the conclusion of my complacent belief in my knowledge of
the sex. The oftener I met her the worse my friendship progressed. She
became a problem behind a pretty mask, and I would sit down, as it were,
dumb before it and guess at the real woman within. Her step on the road
as we would come to an unexpected meeting, her handling of a flower I
might give her in a courtesy, her most indifferent word as we met or
parted, became a precious clue I must ponder on for hours. And the more
I weighed these things, the more confused thereafter I became in her
presence. “If I were in love with the girl,” I had to say to myself at
last, “I could not be more engrossed on her mind.”
The hill itself, with days of eager hunting after the red-deer, brought
not enough distraction, and to stand by the mountain tarns and fish the
dark trout was to hold a lonely carnival with discontent.
It happened sometimes that on the street of Inneraora I would meet Betty
convoying her cousin young Mac-Lachlan to his wherry (he now took care
to leave for home betimes), or with his sister going about the shops. It
would be but a bow in the bye-going, she passing on with equanimity and
I with a maddening sense of awkwardness, that was not much bettered
by the tattle of the plainstanes, where merchant lads and others made
audible comment on the cousinly ardour of young Lachie.
On Sundays, perhaps worst of all, I found my mind’s torment. Our kirk
to-day is a building of substantiality and even grace; then it was
a somewhat squalid place of worship, in whose rafters the pigeon
trespassed and the swallow built her home. We sat in torturous
high-backed benches so narrow that our knees rasped the boards before
us, and sleep in Master Gordon’s most dreary discourse was impossible.
Each good family in the neighbourhood had its own pew, and Elrigmore’s,
as it is to this day, lay well in the rear among the shadows of the
loft, while the Provost’s was a little to the left and at right angles,
so that its occupants and ours were in a manner face to face.
Gordon would be into many deeps of doctrine no doubt while I was in the
deeper depths of speculation upon my lady’s mind. I think I found no
great edification from the worship of those days--shame to tell it!--for
the psalms we chanted had inevitably some relevance to an earthly
affection, and my eyes were for ever roaming from the book or from the
preacher’s sombre face.
They might rove far and long, but the end of each journey round that
dull interior was ever in the Provost’s pew, and, as if by some hint of
the spirit, though Betty might be gazing steadfastly where she ought,
I knew that she knew I was looking on her. It needed but my glance to
bring a flush to her averted face. Was it the flush of annoyance or
of the conscious heart? I asked myself, and remembering her coldness
elsewhere, I was fain to think my interest was considered an
impertinence. And there I would be in a cold perspiration of sorry
apprehension.