I caught M’Iver by the coat-lapels, and took him off the gasping cleric.
“Oh man!” I cried, “is this the Highland brigadier to be throttling an
old soldier of Christ?”
“Let me get at him and I’ll set him in the way of putting the last truth
of his trade to its only test,” said he, still with a face corp-white,
tugging at my hold and eyeing Master Gordon with a very uplifted and
ferocious demeanour.
I suppose he must, in the midst of his fury, have got just a glisk of
the true thing before him--not a worthy and fair opponent for a man of
his own years, but an old wearied man of peace, with a flabby neck,
and his countenance blotched, and his wig ajee upon his head so that
it showed the bald pate below, for he came to himself as it were with a
start. Then he was ashamed most bitterly. He hung his head and scraped
with an unconscious foot upon the floor. The minister recovered his
wind, looked with contempt in every line at the man who had abused him,
and sat down without a word before the fire.
“I’m sorry about this,” said M’Iver, fumbling about his waist-belt with
nervous ringers; “I’m sorry about this, Master Gordon. A Highlander
cannot be aye keeping God’s gift of a temper in leash, and yet it’s my
disgrace to have laid a hand on a gentleman of your age and calling,
even for the name of my chief. Will you credit me when I say I was blind
to my own act? Something in me rose uncontrollable, and had you been
Hector in armour, or my grandfather from the grave, I was at your neck.”
“Say no more about it,” answered Gordon. “I have seen the wolf so often
at the Highlander’s heart that I need not be wondering to find him
snarling and clawing now. And still--from a gentleman--and a person of
travel----”
“Say away, sir,” said M’Iver, bitterly; “you have the whole plea with
you this time, and I’m a rogue of the blackest I can say no more than
I’m sorry for a most dirty action.”
Gordon looked at him, and seemed convinced that here was a genuine
remorse; at least his mien softened and he said quietly, “You’ll hear no
more of it from me.”
We were standing, M’Iver and I, in front of the hearth, warming to the
peat glow, and the cleric sat in an oak arm-chair. Out in the vacant
night the rain still pattered and the gale cried. And all at once, above
the sound of wind and water, there came a wild rapping at the main door
of the house, the alarum of a very crouse and angry traveller finding
a hostel barred against him at unseasonable hours. A whole childhood
of fairy tale rose to my mind in a second; but the plain truth followed
with more conviction, that likely here was no witch, warlock, nor fairy,
but some one with a better right to the tenancy of Dal-ness than seven
broken men with nor let nor tack. We were speedily together, the seven
of us, and gathered in the hall, and listening with mouths open and
hearts dunting, to the rapping that had no sign of ceasing.
“I’ll have a vizzy from an upper window of who this may be,” said John,
sticking a piece of pine in the fire till it flared at the end, and
hurrying with it thus lighted up the stair. I followed at his heels,
while the rest remained below ready to give whatever reception was most
desirable to the disturbers of our night’s repose. The window we went
to looked out on the most utter blackness, a blackness that seemed to
stream in at the window as we swung it softly back on its hinge. M’Iver
put oat his head and his torch, giving a warder’s keek at the door below
where the knocking continued. He drew in his head quickly and looked at
me with astonishment.
“It’s a woman,” said he. “I never saw a campaign where so many
petticoats of one kind or another were going. Who, in God’s name, can
this one be, and what’s her errand to Dalness at this hour? One of its
regular occupants would scarcely make such to-do about her summons.”
“The quickest answer could be got by asking her,” I said.
“And about a feint?” he said, musing. “Well, we can but test it.”
We went down and reported to our companions, and Gordon was for opening
the door on the moment “A wanderer like ourselves,” said he, “perhaps
a widow of our own making from Glencoe. In any case a woman, and out in
the storm.”
We stood round the doors while M’Iver put back the bars and opened as
much as would give entry to one person at a time. There was a loud cry,
and in came the Dark Dame, a very spectacle of sorrow! Her torn garments
clung sodden to her skin, her hair hung stringy at her neck, the
elements had chilled and drowned the frenzied gleaming of her eyes. And
there she stood in the doorway among us, poor woman, poor wretch, with a
frame shaking to her tearless sobs!
“You have no time to lose,” she said to our query, “a score of Glencoe
men are at my back. They fancy they’ll have you here in the trap
this house’s owner left you. Are you not the fools to be advantaging
yourselves of comforts you might be sure no fairy left for Campbells
in Dalness? You may have done poorly at Inverlochy--though I hear the
Lowlanders and not you were the poltroons--but blood is thicker than
water, and have we not the same hills beside our doors at home, and I
have run many miles to warn you that MacDonald is on his way.” She told
her story with sense and straightness, her frenzy subdued by the day’s
rigour. Our flight from her cries, she said, had left her a feeling
of lonely helplessness; she found, as she sped, her heart truer to the
tartan of her name than her anger had let her fancy, and so she followed
us round Loch Leven-head, and over the hills to Glencoe. At the blind
woman’s house in the morning, where she passed readily enough for a
natural, she learned that the eldest son in the bed had set about word
of our presence before we were long out of his mother’s door. The men we
had seen going down in the airt of Tynree were the lad’s gathering, and
they would have lost us but for the beetle-browed rogue, who, guessing
our route through the hills to Dalness, had run before them, and,
unhampered by arms or years, had reached the house of Dalness a little
before we came out of our journey in swamp and corry. A sharp blade,
certes! he had seen that unless something brought us to pause a while
at Dalness we would be out of the reach of his friends before they had
gained large enough numbers and made up on him. So he had planned with
the few folk in the house to leave it temptingly open in our way, with
the shrewd guess that starved and wearied men would be found sleeping
beside the fire when the MacDonalds came round the gusset. All this the
Dame Dubh heard and realised even in her half frenzy as she spent some
time in the company of the marching MacDonalds, who never dreamt that
her madness and her denunciations of Clan Diarmaid were mixed in some
degree with a natural interest in the welfare of every member of that
clan.
M’Iver scrutinised the woman sharply, to assure himself there was no
cunning effort of a mad woman to pay off the score her evil tongue of
the day before revealed she had been reckoning; but he saw only here
dementia gone to a great degree, a friend anxious for our welfare--so
anxious, indeed, that the food Master Gordon was pressing upon her made
no appeal to her famishing body.
“You come wonderfully close on my Frankfort story,” said M’Iver,
whimsically. “I only hope we may win out of Dalness as snugly as we won
out of the castle of the cousin of Pomerania.”
For a minute or two we debated on our tactics. We had no muskets, though
swords were rife enough in Dalness, so a stand and a defence by weapons
was out of the question. M’Iver struck on a more pleasing and cleanly
plan. It was to give the MacDonalds tit for tat, and decoy them into the
house as their friends had decoyed us into it, and leave them there in
durance while we went on our own ways.
We jammed down the iron pins of the shutters in the salmanger, so
that any exit or entrance by this way was made a task of the greatest
difficulty; then we lit the upper flats, to give the notion that we were
lying there. M’Iver took his place behind a door that led from the hall
to other parts of the house, and was indeed the only way there, while
the rest of us went out into the night and concealed ourselves in the
dark angle made by a turret and gable--a place where we could see,
without being seen, any person seeking entry to the house.
All the paths about the mansion were strewn with rough sand or gravel
from the river, and the rain, in slanting spears, played hiss upon them
with a sound I never hear to-day but my mind’s again in old Dalness. And
in the dark, vague with rain and mist, the upper windows shone blear and
ghostly, dull vapours from a swamp, corp-candles on the sea, more than
the eyes of a habitable dwelling warm and lit within. We stood, the
seven of us, against the gable (for the woman joined us and munched a
dry crust between the chittering of her teeth), waiting the coming of
the MacDonalds.
I got to my musing again, puzzled in this cold adventure, upon the
mystery of life. I thought it must be a dream such as a man has lying in
strange beds, for my spirit floated and cried upon that black and ugly
air, lost and seeking as the soul of a man struggling under sleep. I had
been there before, I felt, in just such piteous case among friends in
the gable of a dwelling, yet all alone, waiting for visitors I had no
welcome for. And then again ( I would think), is not all life a dream,
the sun and night of it, the seasons, the faces of friends, the flicker
of fires and the nip of wine; and am not I now stark awake for the first
time, the creature of God, alone in His world before the dusk has been
divided from the day and bird and beast have been let loose to wander
about a new universe? Or again (I would think), am I not dead and done
with? Surely I fell in some battle away in Low Germanie, or later in the
sack of Inneraora town, that was a town long, long ago, before the wave
threshed in upon Dunchuach?
The man with the want, as usual, was at his tears, whispering to himself
reproach and memory and omens of fear, but he was alert enough to be the
first to observe the approach of our enemy. Ten minutes at least before
they appeared on the sward, lit by the lights of the upper windows, he
lifted a hand, cocked an ear, and told us he heard their footsteps.
There were about a score and a half of the Mac-Donalds altogether, of
various ages, some of them old gutchers that had been better advised to
be at home snug by the fire in such a night or saying their prayers in
preparation for the looming grave, some of them young and strapping, all
well enough armed with everything but musketry, and guided to the house
by the blind woman’s son and a gentleman in a laced coat, whom we took
to be the owner of Dalness because two men of the bearing and style of
servants were in his train and very pretentious about his safety in the
course of a debate that took place a few yards from us as to whether
they should demand our surrender or attack and cut us down with-out
quarter.
The gentleman sent his two lackeys round the house, and they came back
reporting (what we had been very careful of) that every door was barred.
“Then,” said the gentleman, “well try a bland knock, and if need be,
force the main door.”
He was standing now in a half dusk, clear of the light of the windows,
with a foot on the step of the door; behind him gathered the MacDonalds
with their weapons ready, and I dare say, could we have seen it, with
no very pretty look on their faces. As he spoke, he put his hand on the
hasp, and, to his surprise, the heavy door was open. We had taken good
care of that too.
The band gathered themselves together and dived into the place, and
the plaiding of the last of them had scarcely got inside the door than
Stewart ran up with the key and turned the lock, with a low whistle for
the guidance of M’Iver at the inner door. In a minute or less, John was
round in our midst again with his share of the contract done, and our
rats were squealing in their trap.
For a little there was nothing but crying and cursing, wild beating
against the door, vain attack on the windows, a fury so futile that it
was sweet to us outsiders, and we forgot the storm and the hardship.
At last M’Iver rapped on the door and demanded attention.
“Is there any one there with the English?” he asked.
The gentleman of Dalness answered that he could speak English with the
best cateran ever came out of MacCailein Mor’s country, and he called
for instant release, with a menace added that Hell itself could not
excel the punishment for us if they were kept much longer under lock and
bar. “We are but an advanced guard,” said he, with a happy thought at
lying, “and our friends will be at your back before long.”
M’Iver laughed pawkily.
“Come, come, Dalness,” said he, “do you take us for girls? You have
every man left in Glencoe at your back there; you’re as much ours as if
you were in the tolbooth of Inneraora O; and I would just be mentioning
that if I were in your place I would be speaking very soft and
soothing.”
“I’ll argue the thing fairly with you if you let us out,” said Dalness,
stifling his anger behind the door, but still with the full force of it
apparent in the stress of his accent.
M’Iver laughed again.
“You have a far better chance where you are,” said he. “You are very
snug and warm there; the keg of brandy’s on the left-hand side of the
fire, though I’m afraid there’s not very much left of it now that my
friend of Achnatra here has had his will of it. Tell those gentry with
you that we intend to make ourselves cosy in other parts of the house
till the morn’s morning, and that if they attempt to force a way out by
door or window before we let them, we’ll have sentinels to blow out
the little brains they have. I’m putting it to you in the English,
Dalness--and I cry pardon for making my first gossip with a Highland
gentleman in such a tongue--but I want you to put my message in as
plausible a way as suits you best to the lads and _bodachs_ with you.”
The man drew away from the neighbourhood of the door; there was a long
silence, and we concluded they were holding parley of war as to what was
next to be done. Meantime we made preparations to be moving from a
place that was neither safe nor homely. We took food from the pantries,
scourged Stewart from a press he was prying in with clawing fingers
and bulging pockets, and had just got together again at the rear of the
house when a cry at the front told us that our enemies, in some way we
never learned the manner of, had got the better of our bolted doors and
shutters.
Perhaps a chance of planning our next step would have been in our
favour; perhaps on the other hand it would have been the worse for us,
because in human folly we might have determined on staying to face
the odds against us, but there was no time for balancing the chances;
whatever was to be done was to be done quickly.
“Royal’s my race!” cried Stewart, dropping a pillowslip full of goods he
carried with him--“Royal’s my race--and here’s one with great respect
for keeping up the name of it” And he leaped to a thicket on his left.
The man with the want ran weeping up to the Dark Dame and clung to
her torn gown, a very child in the stupor of his grief and fear. The
baron-bailie and Sonachan and the minister stood spellbound, and I
cursed our folly at the weakness of our trap. Only M’Iver kept his wits
about him.
“Scatter,” said he in English--“scatter without adieus, and all to the
fore by morning search back to the Brig of Urchy, comrades there till
the middle of the day, then the devil take the hindmost.”
More than a dozen MacDonalds came running round the gable end, lit
by the upper windows, and we dispersed like chaff to the wind before
M’Iver’s speech concluded. He and I ran for a time together, among the
bushes of the garden, through the curly kail, under low young firs that
clutched at the clothing. Behind us the night rang with pursuing cries,
with challenge and call, a stupid clamour that gave a clue to the
track we could follow with greatest safety. M’Iver seemingly stopped to
listen, or made up his mind to deviate to the side after a little; for I
soon found myself running alone, and two or three men--to judge by their
cries--keeping as close on me as they could by the sound of my plunging
among twig and bracken. At last, by striking to an angle down a field
that suddenly rolled down beside me, I found soft carpeting for my feet,
and put an increasing distance between us. With no relaxation to my
step, however, I kept running till I seemed a good way clear of Dalness
policies, and on a bridle-path that led up the glen--the very road, as I
learned later, that our enemy had taken on their way from Tynree. I kept
on it for a little as well as I could, but the night was so dark (and
still the rain was pouring though the wind had lowered) that by-and-by
I lost the path, and landed upon rough water-broken rocky land, bare of
tree or bush. The tumult behind me was long since stilled in distance,
the storm itself had abated, and I had traversed for less than an hour
when the rain ceased But still the night was solemn black, though my
eyes by usage had grown apt and accustomed to separate the dense black
of the boulder from the drab air around it. The country is one threaded
on every hand by eas and brook that drop down the mountain sides at
almost every yard of the way. Nothing was to hear but the sound of
running and falling waters, every brook with its own note, a tinkle
of gold on a marble stair as I came to it, declining to a murmur of
sweethearts in a bower as I put its banks behind me after wading or
leaping; or a song sung in a clear spring morning by a girl among
heather hills muffling behind me to the blackguard discourse of banditty
waiting with poignards out upon a lonely highway.
I was lost somewhere north of Glen Etive; near me I knew must be Tynrce,
for I had been walking for two hours and yet I dare not venture back on
the straight route to to-morrow’s rendezvous till something of daylight
gave me guidance At last I concluded that the way through the Black
Mount country to Bredalbane must be so dote at hand it would be
stupidity of the densest to go back by Dalness. There was so much level
land round me that I felt sure I must be rounding the Bredalbane hills,
and I chanced a plunge to the left. I had not taken twenty steps when I
ran up against the dry-stone dyke that bordered the Inns of Tynrec.