In a few hours, as it were, the news that the enemy had left the country
was put about the shire, and people returned to pick up the loose ends
of the threads of family and affairs. Next day my lord the Marquis came
round Lochlong and Glencroe in a huge chariot with four wheels, the
first we had ever seen in these parts, a manner of travel incumbent upon
him because of a raxed shoulder he had met with at Dunbarton. He came
back to a poor reception: the vestiges of his country’s most bitter
extremity were on every hand, and, what was bound to be embarrassing to
any nobleman of spirit, there was that in the looks and comportment of
his clansmen that must have given MacCailein some unpleasant thought.
Behind his lordship came eleven hundred Lowland levies that had been
with Baillie in England, and to command them came his cousin, Sir Duncan
Campbell of Auchinbreac, luckily new over from Ireland, and in the
spirit for campaigning. A fiery cross was sent round the clan, that in
better times should easily have mustered five thousand of the prettiest
lads ever trod heather, but it brought only a remnant of a thousand, and
the very best that would have been welcome under the galley flag
were too far afield for the summons to reach them in time. But every
well-affected branch of Clan Campbell sent its gentlemen to officer our
brigade.
A parley of war held in the castle determined on immediate pursuit
of Montrose to Lochaber, keeping within easy distance, but without
attacking till he was checked in front by troops that had gone up to
flank him by way of Stirling. I was at the council, but had little to do
with its decision, though the word of M’Iver and myself (as was due to
cavaliers of experience) was invited with respect.
We were to march in two days; and as I had neither house nor ha’ to
shelter me, seeing the old place up the glen was even more of a ruin
than in Donald Gorm’s troubles, when the very roof-tree was thrown
in Dhuloch, I shared quarters with M’Iver in the castle, where every
available corner was occupied by his lordship’s guests.
When these other guests were bedded, and the house in all our wing of
it was still, my comrade and I sat down to a tasse of brandy in our
chamber, almost blythe, as you would say, at the prospect of coming to
blows with our country’s spoilers. We were in the midst of a most genial
crack when came a faint rap at the door, and in steps the goodman, as
solemn as a thunder-cloud, in spite of the wan smile he fixed upon his
countenance. He bore his arm out of his sleeve in a sling, and his hair
was un-trim, and for once a most fastidious nobleman was anything but
perjink.
“I cry pardon, gentlemen!” he said in Gaelic, “for breaking in on my
guests’ privacy; but I’m in no humour for sleeping, and I thought you
might have a spare glass for a friend.”
“It’s your welcome, Argile,” said I, putting a wand chair to the front
for him. He sat himself down in it with a sigh of utter weariness, and
nervously poking the logs on the fire with a purring-iron, looked sadly
about the chamber.
It was his wife’s tiring-room, or closet, or something of that nature,
fitted up hastily for our accommodation, and there were signs of a
woman’s dainty hand and occupation about it The floor was carpeted, the
wall was hung with arras; a varnish ‘scrutoire, some sweet-wood boxes,
two little statues of marble, two raised silver candlesticks with
snuffers conform, broidery-work unfinished, and my lord’s picture, in
a little gilded frame hanging over a dressing-table, were among its
womanly plenishing.
“Well, coz,” said his lordship, breaking an awkward silence, “we have an
enormous and dastardly deed here to avenge.”
“We have that!” said M’Iver. “It’s a consolation that we are in the mood
and in the position to set about paying the debt. Before the glad news
came of your return, I was half afraid that our quarry would be too far
gone ere we set loose the dogs on him. Luckily he can be little farther
than Glenurchy now. Elrigmore and I had the honour to see the visitors
make their departure. They carried so much stolen gear, and drove so big
a prize of cattle, that I would not give them more than a twenty miles’
march to the day.”
“Will they hang together, do you think?” asked his lordship, fingering a
crystal bottle for essence that lay on the ‘scrutoire.
“I misdoubt it,” said M’Iver. “You know the stuff, MacCailein? He may
have his Irish still; but I’ll wager the MacDonalds, the Stewarts, and
all the rest of that reiving crowd are off to their holds, like the
banditty they are, with their booty. A company of pikes on the rear of
him, as like as not, would settle his business.”
The Marquis, besides his dishevelment, was looking very lean and pale. I
am wrong if I had not before me a man who had not slept a sound night’s
sleep in his naked bed since the point of war beat under his castle
window.
“Your arm, my lord “--I said in a pause of his conversation with Mlver,
“is it a fashious injury? You look off your ordinary.”
“I do,” he said. “I daresay I do, and I wish to God it was only this
raxed arm that was the worst of my ailment.”
His face burned up red in the candle-light, his nostrils swelled, and
he rose in his chair. A small table was between us. He put his uninjured
hand on it to steady himself, and leaned over to me to make his words
more weighty for my ear.
“Do you know,” he added, “I’m Archibald, Marquis of Argile, and under
the cope and canopy of heaven this January night there’s not a creature
of God’s making more down in the heart and degraded than I? If the
humblest servant in my house pointed a scornful finger at me and cried
‘Coward,’ I would bow my head. Ay, ay! it’s good of you, sir, to shake
a dissenting head; but I’m a chief discredited. I know it, man. I see
it in the faces about me. I saw it at Rosneath, when my very gardener
fumbled, and refused to touch his bonnet when I left. I saw it to-night
at my own table, when the company talked of what they should do, and
what my men should do, and said never a word of what was to be expected
of MacCailein Mor.”
“I think, my lord,” I cried “that you’re exaggerating a very small
affair.”
“Small affair!” he said (and he wetted his lips with his tongue before
the words came). “Small affair! Hell’s flame! is there anything smaller
than the self-esteem of a man who by some infernal quirk of his nature
turns his back on his most manifest duty--leaves the blood of his
blood and the skin of his skin to perish for want of his guidance and
encouragement, and wakens at morning to find it no black nightmare but
the horrible fact? Answer me that, Elrigmore!”
“Tut, tut,” said M’Iver, pouring his cousin a glass; “you’re in the
vapours, and need a good night’s sleep. There’s no one in Argile dare
question your spirit, whatever they may think of your policy.”
Argile relapsed into his chair, and looked with a pitiful eye at his
kinsman.
“My good Iain,” he said, “do you ken the old Lochow wife’s story of the
two daws? ‘Thou didst well,’ said the one, ‘though thy wings _are_ cut;
thou didst well to do as I told thee.’ I’m not blaming you; you are a
brave man of your own hands, and a middling honest man too, as honesty
goes among mercenaries; but your tongue’s plausible, plausible, and you
are the devil’s counsellor to any other man who slackens his will by so
much as a finger-length.”
M’Iver took on a set stern jaw, and looked his chief very dourly in the
face.
“My Lord of Argile,” he said, “you’re my cousin-ger-man, and you’re in a
despondent key, and small blame to you with your lands smoking about
you from Cruachan to Kilmartin; but if you were King Tearlach himself,
I would take no insult from you. Do you charge me with any of your
misfortunes?”
“I charge you with nothing, John,” said Argile, wearily. “I’m only
saying that at a time of stress, when there’s a conflict in a man’s mind
between ease and exertion, you’re not the best of consciences. Are we
two going to quarrel about a phrase while our clansmen’s blood is crying
from the sod? Sit down, sir; sit down, if it please you,” he said more
sternly, the scowl that gave him the _gruamach_ reputation coming on his
face; “sit down, if it please you, and instead of ruffling up like the
bubbly-jock over words, tell me, if you can, how to save a reputation
from the gutter. If it was not that I know I have your love, do you
think I should be laying my heart bare here and now? You have known me
some time now, M’Iver--did you ever find me without some reserve in my
most intimate speech? Did you ever hear me say two words that I had not
a third in the background to bring forward if the policy of the moment
called for it?”
M’Iver laughed slyly, and hesitated to make any answer.
“It’s a simple question,” said the Marquis; “am I to think it needs too
straightforward an answer for John Splendid to give it?”
“I’m as frank as my neighbours,” said M’Iver.
“Well, sir, do not check the current of my candour by any picking and
choosing of words. I ask if you have ever found me with the babbling and
unbridled tongue of a fool in my mouth, giving my bottom-most thought to
the wind and the street?”
“You were no Gael if you did, my lord. That’s the sin of the shallow
wit. I aye kept a bit thought of my own in the corner of my vest.”
MacCailein sighed, and the stem of the beaker he was fingering broke in
his nervous fingers. He threw the fragments with an impatient cry into
the fireplace.
“It’s the only weakness of our religion (God pardon the sin of hinting
at any want in that same!) that we have no chance of laying the heart
bare to mortal man. Many a time I could wish for the salving influence
of the confessional, even without the absolution to follow.”
“I think,” said John Splendid, “it would be a strange day when
MacCailein Mor, Marquis of Argile, would ask or need shriving from
anything or any one. There was never a priest or vicar in the shire you
couldn’t twist the head off!”
The Marquis turned to me with a vexed toss of his shoulder. “It’s a
hopeless task to look for a pagan’s backbone,” said he. “Come, I’ll
confess. I dare not hint at my truant thought to Auchinbreac or before
any of these fiery officers of mine, who fear perhaps more than they
love me. At the black tale of my weakness they would make no allowance
for my courage as the same was shown before.”
“Your courage, sir,” said I, “has been proved; it is the inheritance of
your race. But I dare not strain my conscience, my lord, much as I
love and honour your house, to say I could comprehend or concur in the
extraordinary retirement you made from these parts when our need for
your presence was the sorest.”
“I thank you for that, Elrigmore,” said his lordship, cordially. “You
say no more now than you showed by your face (and perhaps said too)
on the night the beacon flamed on Dunchuach. To show that I value your
frankness--that my kinsman here seems to fancy a flaw ol character--I’ll
be explicit on the cause of my curious behaviour in this crisis. When
I was a boy I was brought up loyally to our savage Highland tradition,
that feuds were to carry on, and enemies to confound, and that no logic
under heaven should keep the claymore in its sheath while an old grudge
was to wipe out in blood or a wrong to right.”
“A most sensible and laudable doctrine!” cried M’Iver. “With that and
no more of a principle in life--except paying your way among friends--a
good man of his hands could make a very snug and reputable progress
through the world.”
“Some men might,” said Argile, calmly; “I do not know whether to envy
or pity their kind. But they are not my kind. I think I bore myself
not ungracefully in the Cabinet, in the field too, so long as I took my
father’s logic without question. But I have read, I have pondered----”
“Just so,” whispered M’Iver, not a bit abashed that a sneer was in his
interjection and his master could behold it.
“--And I have my doubts about the righteousness of much of our warfare,
either before my day or now. I have brought the matter to my closet I
have prayed----”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed M’Iver, but at once he asked pardon.
“--I am a man come--or wellnigh come--to the conclusion that his life
was never designed by the Creator to be spent in the turmoil of faction
and field. There is, I allow, a kind of man whom strife sets off, a
middling good man in his way, perhaps, with a call to the sword whose
justice he has never questioned. I have studied the philosophies; I have
reflected on life--this unfathomable problem--and ‘fore God I begin to
doubt my very right to wear a breastplate against the poignard of fate.
Dubiety plays on me like a flute.”
To all this I listened soberly, at the time comprehending that this was
a gentleman suffering from the disease of being unable to make up his
mind. I would have let him go on in that key while he pleasured it, for
it’s a vein there’s no remedy for at the time being; but M’Iver was not
of such tolerant stuff as I. He sat with an amazed face till his passion
simmered over into a torrent of words.
“MacCailein!” said he, “I’ll never call you coward, but I’ll call you
mad, book mad, closet mad! Was this strong fabric your house of Argile
(John M’Iver the humblest of its members) built up on doubt and whim and
shillyshally hither and yond? Was’t that made notable the name of your
ancestor Cailein Mor na Sringe, now in the clods of Kilchrenan, or
Cailein Iongataich who cooled his iron hide in Linne-na-luraich; or your
father himself (peace with him!), who did so gallantly at Glenlivet?”
“----And taught me a little of the trade of slaughter at the Western
Isles thirty years ago come Candlemas,” said the Marquis. “How a man
ages! Then--then I had a heart like the bird of spring.”
“He could have taught you worse! I’m your cousin, and I’ll say it
to your beard, sir! Your glens and howes are ruined, your cattle are
houghed and herried, your clan’s name is a bye-word this wae day in
all Albainn, and you sit there like a chemist weighing the wind on your
stomach.”
“You see no farther than your nose, John,” said the Marquis, petulantly,
the candle-light turning his eyes blood-red.
“Thank God for that same!” said Mlver, “if it gives me the wit to keep
an enemy from striking the same. If the nose was Argile’s, it might be
twisted off his face while he debated upon his right to guard it.”
“You’re in some ways a lucky man,” said the Marquis, still in the most
sad and tolerant humour. “Did you never have a second’s doubt about the
right of your side in battle?”
“Here’s to the doubt, sir!” said M’Iver. “I’m like yourself and every
other man in a quandary of that kind, that thinking on it rarely brought
me a better answer to the guess than I got from my instinct to start
with.”
Argile put his fingers through his hair, clearing the temples, and
shutting wearied eyes on a perplexing world.
“I have a good deal of sympathy with John’s philosophy,” I said,
modestly. “I hold with my father that the sword is as much God’s scheme
as the cassock. What are we in this expedition about to start but the
instruments of Heaven’s vengeance on murtherers and unbelievers?”
“I could scarcely put it more to the point myself,” cried M’Iver. “A
soldier’s singular and essential duty is to do the task set him with
such art and accomplishment as he can--in approach, siege, trench, or
stronghold.”
“Ay, ay! here we are into our dialectics again,” said his lordship,
laughing, with no particular surrender in his merriment. “You gentlemen
make no allowance for the likelihood that James Grahame, too, may be
swearing himself Heaven’s chosen weapon. ‘Who gave Jacob to the spoil
and Israel to the robbers--did not I, the Lord?’ Oh, it’s a confusing
world!”
“Even so, MacCailein; I’m a plain man,” said M’Iver, “though of a good
family, brought up roughly among men, with more regard to my strength
and skill of arm than to book-learning; but I think I can say that here
and in this crisis I am a man more fit, express, and appropriate than
yourself. In the common passions of life, in hate, in love, it is the
simple and confident act that quicker achieves its purpose than the
cunning ingenuity. A man in a swither is a man half absent, as poor a
fighter as he is indifferent a lover; the enemy and the girl will escape
him ere he has throttled the doubt at his heart There’s one test to my
mind for all the enterprises of man--are they well contrived and carried
to a good conclusion? There may be some unco quirks to be performed, and
some sore hearts to confer at the doing of them, but Heaven itself, for
all its puissance, must shorten the pigeon’s wing that the gled of the
wood may have food to live on.”
“Upon my word, M’Iver,” said Argile, “you beat me at my own trade of
debate, and--have you ever heard of a fellow Machiavelli?”
“I kent a man of that name in a corps we forgathered with at Mentz--a
‘provient schriever,’ as they called him. A rogue, with a hand in the
sporran of every soldier he helped pay wage to.”
“This was a different person; but no matter. Let us back to the
beginning of our argument--why did you favour my leaving for Dunbarton
when Montrose came down the Glen?”
The blood swept to M’Iver’s face, and his eye quailed.
“I favoured no such impolitic act,” said he, slowly. “I saw you were
bent on going, and I but backed you up, to leave you some rags of
illusion to cover your naked sin.”
“I thought no less,” said Argile, sadly, “and yet, do you know, Iain,
you did me a bad turn yonder. You made mention of my family’s safety,
and it was the last straw that broke the back of my resolution. One word
of honest duty from you at that time had kept me in Inner-aora though
Abijah’s array and Jeroboam’s horse and foot were coming down the
glens.”
For a little M’Iver gave no answer, but sat in a chair of torture.
“I am sorry for it,” he said at last, in a voice that was scarce his
own; “I’m in an agony for it now; and your horse was not round Strone
before I could have bit out the tongue that flattered your folly.”
MacCailein smiled with a solemn pity that sat oddly on the sinister face
that was a mask to a complex and pliable soul.
“I have no doubt,” said he, “and that’s why I said you were a devil’s
counsellor. Man, cousin! have we not played together as boys on the
shore, and looked at each other on many a night across a candid bowl? I
know you like the open book; you and your kind are the weak, strong men
of our Highland race. The soft tongue and the dour heart; the good man
at most things but at your word!”