This need for waiting upon his lordship so soon after the great reverse
was a sour bite to swallow, for M’Iver as well as myself. M’Iver, had
he his own way of it, would have met his chief and cousin alone; and he
gave a hint delicately of that kind, affecting to be interested only in
sparing me the trouble and helping me home to Elrigmore, where my father
and his men had returned three days before. But I knew an officer’s duty
too well for that, and insisted on accompanying him, certain (with some
mischievous humour in spoiling his fair speeches) that he dared scarcely
be so fair-faced and flattering to MacCailein before me as he would be
alone with him.
The castle had the stillness of the grave. Every guest had fled as
quickly as he could from this retreat of a naked and ashamed soul. Where
pipers played as a custom, and laughter rang, there was the melancholy
hush of a monastery. The servants went about a-tiptoe, speaking in
whispers lest their master should be irritated in his fever; the very
banner on the tower hung limp about its pole, hiding the black galley
of its blazon, now a lymphad of disgrace. As we went over the bridge
a little dog, his lordship’s favourite, lying at the door, weary, no
doubt, of sullen looks and silence, came leaping and barking about us at
John’s cheery invitation, in a joy, as it would appear, to meet any one
with a spark of life and friendliness.
Argile was in his bed-chamber and between blankets, in the hands of his
physician, who had been bleeding him. He had a minister for mind and
body, for Gordon was with him too, and stayed with him during our
visit, though the chirurgeon left the room with a word of caution to his
patient not to excite himself.
“Wise advice, is it not, gentlemen?” said the Marquis. “As if one
stirred up his own passions like a dame waiting on a drunken husband.
I am glad to see you back, more especially as Master Gordon was just
telling me of the surprise at Dalness, and the chance that you had been
cut down there by the MacDonalds, who, luckily for him and Sonachan and
the others, all followed you in your flight, and gave them a chance of
an easy escape.”
He shook hands with us warmly enough, with fingers moist and nervous.
A raised look was in his visage, his hair hung upon a brow of exceeding
pallor. I realised at a half-glance the commotion that was within.
“A drop of wine?”
“Thank you,” said I, “but I’m after a glass in the town.” I was yet to
learn sorrow for this unhappy nobleman whose conduct had bittered me all
the way from Lom.
MacCailein scrutinised me sharply, and opened his lips as it were to say
something, but changed his mind, and made a gesture towards the bottle,
which John Splendid speedily availed himself of with a “Here’s one who
has no swither about it. Lord knows I have had few enough of life’s
comforts this past week!”
Gordon sat with a Bible in his hand, abstracted, his eyes staring on a
window that looked on the branches of the highest tree about the castle.
He had been reading or praying with his master before the physician had
come in; he had been doing his duty (I could swear by his stern jaw),
and making MacCailein Mor writhe to the flame of a conscience revived.
There was a constraint on the company for some minutes, on no one more
than Argile, who sat propped up on his bolsters, and, fiddling with long
thin fingers with the fringes of his coverlet, looked every way but in
the eyes of M’Iver or myself. I can swear John was glad enough to escape
their glance. He was as little at ease as his master, made all the
fuss he could with his bottle, and drank his wine with far too great a
deliberation for a person generally pretty brisk with the beaker.
“It’s a fine day,” said he at last, breaking the silence. “The back of
the winter’s broken fairly.” Then he started and looked at me, conscious
that I might have some contempt for so frail an opening.
“Did you come here to speak about the weather?” asked MacCailein, with a
sour wearied smile.
“No,” said M’Iver, ruffling up at once; “I came to ask when you are
going to take us back the road we came?”
“To--to--overbye?” asked MacCailein, baulking at the name.
“Just so; to Inverlochy,” answered M’Iver. “I suppose we are to give
them a call when we can muster enough men?”
“Hadn’t we better consider where we are first?” said MacCailein. Then he
put his fair hand through his ruddy locks and sighed. “Have you nothing
to say (and be done with it) about my--my--my part in the affair? His
reverence here has had his will of me on that score.”
M’Iver darted a look of annoyance at the minister, who seemed to pay no
heed, but still to have his thoughts far off.
“I have really nothing to say, your lordship, except that I’m glad to
see you spared to us here instead of being left a corpse with our honest
old kinsman Auchinbreac (_beannachd leas!_) and more gentry of your clan
and house than the Blue Quarry will make tombs for in Kilmalieu. If the
minister has been preaching, it’s his trade; it’s what you pay him for.
I’m no homilist, thank God, and no man’s conscience.”
“No, no; God knows you are not,” said Argile, in a tone of pity
and vexation. “I think I said before that you were the poorest of
consciences to a man in a hesitancy between duty and inclination....
And all my guests have left me, John; I’m a lonely man in my castle of
Inneraora this day, except for the prayers of a wife--God bless and keep
her!--who knows and comprehends my spirit And I have one more friend
here in this room------”
“You can count on John M’Iver to the yetts of Hell,” said my friend,
“and I am the proud man that you should think it.”
“I am obliged to you for that, kinsman,” said his lordship in Gaelic,
with a by-your-leave to the cleric. “But do not give your witless vanity
a foolish airing before my chaplain.” Then he added in the English,
“When the fairy was at my cradle-side and gave my mother choice of my
gifts, I wish she had chosen rowth of real friends. I could be doing
with more about me of the quality I mention; better than horse and foot
would they be, more trusty than the claymores of my clan. It might be
the slogan ‘Cruachan’ whenever it wist, and Archibald of Argile would be
more puissant than he of Homer’s story. People have envied me when they
have heard me called the King of the Highlands--fools that did not know
I was the poorest, weakest man of his time, surrounded by flatterers
instead of friends. Gordon, Gordon, I am the victim of the Highland
liar, that smooth-tongued----”
“Call it the Campbell liar,” I cried bitterly, thinking of my father.
“Your clan has not the reputation of guile for nothing, and if you
refused straightforward honest outside counsel sometimes, it was not for
the want of its offering.”
“I cry your pardon,” said MacCailein, meekly; “I should have learned to
discriminate by now. Blood’s thicker than water, they say, but it’s not
so pure and transparent; I have found my blood drumly enough.”
“And ready enough to run freely for you,” said M’Iver, but half
comprehending this perplexed mind. “Your lordship should be the last to
echo any sentiment directed against the name and fame of Clan Campbell.”
“Indeed they gave me their blood freely enough--a thousand of them lying
yonder in the north--I wish they had been so lavish, those closest about
me, with truth and honour. For that I must depend on an honest servant
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one man in my pay with the courage to
confront me with no cloaked speech, but his naked thought, though it
should lash me like whips. Oh, many a time my wife, who is none of our
race, warned me against the softening influence, the blight and rot of
this eternal air of flattery that’s round about Castle Inneraora like
a swamp vapour. She’s in Stirling to-day--I ken it in my heart that
to-night shell weep upon her pillow because she’ll know fate has found
the weak joint in her goodman’s armour again.”
John Splendid’s brow came down upon a most perplexed face; this seemed
all beyond him, but he knew his master was somehow blaming the world at
large for his own error.
“Come now, John,” said his lordship, turning and leaning on his arm and
looking curiously at his kinsman. “Come now, what do you think of me
here without a wound but at the heart, with Auchinbreac and all my
gallant fellows yonder?”
“Auchinbreac was a soldier by trade and a good one too,” answered
M’Iver, at his usual trick of prevarication.
“And a flatterer like yourself, you mean,” said his lordship. “He and
you learned the lesson in the same school, I’m thinking. And as ill-luck
had it, his ill counsel found me on the swither, as yours did when
Colkitto came down the glens there to rape and burn. That’s the Devil
for you; he’s aye planning to have the minute and the man together.
Come, sir, come, sir, what do you think, what do you think?”
He rose as he spoke and put his knees below him, and leaned across the
bed with hands upon the blankets, staring his kinsman in the face as if
he would pluck the truth from him out at the very eyes. His voice rose
to an animal cry with an agony in it; the sinister look that did him
such injustice breathed across his visage. His knuckle and collar-bones
shone blae through the tight skin.
“What do I think?” echoed M’Iver. “Well, now----”
“On your honour now,” cried Argile, clutching him by the shoulder.
At that M’Iver’s countenance changed: he threw off his soft complacence,
and cruelty and temper stiffened his jaw.
“I’ll soon give you that, my Lord of Argile,” said he. “I can lie like
a Dutch major for convenience sake, but put me on honour and you’ll get
the truth if it cost me my life. Purgatory’s your portion, Argile, for a
Sunday’s work that makes our name a mock to-day across the envious
world. Take to your books and your preachers, sir--you’re for the
cloister and not for the field; and if I live a hundred years, I’ll deny
I went with you to Inverlochy. I left my sword in Badenoch, but here’s
my dagger” (and he threw it with a clatter on the floor); “it’s the last
tool I’ll handle in the service of a scholar. To-morrow the old big wars
for me; Hebron’s troopers will welcome an umquhile comrade, and I’ll
find no swithering captains among the cavaliers in France.”
Back sat my lord in bed, and laughed with a surrender shrill and
distraught, until Master Gordon and I calmed him, and there was his
cousin still before him in a passion, standing in the middle of the
floor.
“Stop, stop, John,” he cried; “now that for once I’ve got the truth from
you, let us be better friends than ever before.”
“Never the same again,” said M’I ver, firmly, “never the same again, for
you ken my estimate of you now; and what avails my courtesy?”
“Your flatteries, you mean,” said Argile, good-natured. “And, besides,
you speak only of my two blunders; you know my other parts,--you know
that by nature I am no poltroon.”
“That’s no credit to you, sir--it’s the strong blood of Diarmaid; there
was no poltroon in the race but what came in on the wrong side of the
blanket I’ve said it first, and I’ll say it to the last, your spirit is
smoored among the books. Paper and ink will be the Gael’s undoing; my
mother taught me, and my mother knew. So long as we lived by our hands
we were the world’s invincibles. Rome met us and Rome tried us, and her
corps might come in winter torrents, but they never tore us from our
hills and keeps. What Rome may never do, that may paper and sheepskin;
you, yourself, MacCailein, have the name of plying pen and ink very well
to your own purpose in the fingers of old lairds who have small skill of
that contrivance.”
He would have passed on in this outrageous strain without remission, had
not Gordon checked him with a determined and unabashed voice. He told
him to sit down in silence or leave the room, and asked him to look upon
his master and see if that high fever was a condition to inflame in a
fit of temper. John Splendid cooled a little, and went to the window,
looking down with eyes of far surmise upon the pleasance and the town
below, chewing his temper between his teeth.
“You see, Elrigmore, what a happy King of the Highlands I am,” said the
Marquis, despondently. “Fortunate Auchinbreac, to be all bye with it
after a moment’s agony!”
“He died like a good soldier, sir,” I said; “he was by all accounts a
man of some vices, but he wiped them out in his own blood.”
“Are you sure of that? Is it not the old folly of the code of honour,
the mad exaltation of mere valour in arms, that makes you think so? What
if he was spilling his drops on the wrong side? He was against his king
at least, and--oh, my wits, my wits, what am I saying?... I saw you did
not drink my wine, Elrigmore; am I so low as that?”
“There is no man so low, my lord,” said I, “but he may be yet exalted.
We are, the best of us, the instruments of a whimsical providence”
(“What a rank doctrine,” muttered the minister), “and Caesar himself
was sometimes craven before his portents. You, my lord, have the one
consolation left, that all’s not bye yet with the cause you champion,
and you may yet lead it to the highest victory.”
Argile took a grateful glance at me. “You know what I am,” he said,
“not a man of the happy, single mood like our friend Barbreck here, but
tossed between philosophies. I am paying bitterly for my pliability, for
who so much the sport of life as the man who knows right well the gait
he should gang, and prays fervently to be permitted to follow it,
but sometimes stumbles in the ditch? Monday, oh Monday; I must be at
Edinburgh and face them all! Tis that dauntons me.” His eyes seemed to
swim in blood, as he looked at me, or through me, aghast at the horror
of his situation, and sweat stood in blobs upon his brow. “That,” he
went on, “weighs me down like lead. Here about me my people know me, and
may palliate the mistake of a day by the recollection of a lifetime’s
honour. I blame Auchinbreac; I blame the chieftains,--they said I must
take to the galley; I blame----”
“Blame no one, Argile,” said Master Gordon, standing up before him, not
a second too soon, for his lordship had his hand on the dirk M’Iver had
thrown down. Then he turned to us with ejecting arms. “Out you go,” he
cried sternly, “out you go; what delight have you in seeing a nobleman
on the rack?”
As the door closed behind us we could hear Argile sob.
Seventeen years later, if I may quit the thread of my history and take
in a piece that more properly belongs to the later adventures of John
Splendid, I saw my lord die by the maiden. Being then in his tail, I
dined with him and his friends the day before he died, and he spoke with
exceeding cheerfulness of that hour M’Iver and I found him in bed in
Inneraora. “You saw me at my worst,” said he, “on two occasions; bide
till to-morrow and you’ll see me at my best I never unmasked to mortal
man till that day Gordon put you out of my room.” I stayed and saw him
die; I saw his head up and his chin in the air as behoved his
quality, that day he went through that noisy, crowded, causied
Edinburgh--Edinburgh of the doleful memories, Edinburgh whose ports I
never enter till this day but I feel a tickling at the nape of my neck,
as where a wooden collar should lie before the shear fall.
“A cool enough reception this,” said M’Iver, as we left the gate. “It
was different last year, when we went up together on your return from
Low Germanie. Then MacCailein was in the need of soldiers, now he’s in
the need of priests, who gloze over his weakness with their prayers.”
“You are hardly fair either to the one or the other,” I said. “Argile,
whom I went in to meet to-day with a poor regard for him, turns out a
better man than I gave him credit for being; he has at least the grace
to grieve about a great error of judgment, or weakness of the spirit,
whichever it may be. And as for Master Gordon, I’ll take off my hat to
him. Yon’s no type of the sour, dour, anti-prelatics; he comes closer on
the perfect man and soldier than any man I ever met.”
M’Iver looked at me with a sign of injured vanity.
“You’re not very fastidious in your choice of comparisons,” said he. “As
for myself, I cannot see much more in Gordon than what he is paid for--a
habit of even temper, more truthfulness than I have myself, and that’s a
dubious virtue, for see the impoliteness that’s always in its train! Add
to that a lack of any clannish regard for MacCailein Mor, whom he treats
just like a common merchant, and that’s all. Just a plain, stout, fozy,
sappy burrow-man, keeping a gospel shop, with scarcely so much of a
man’s parts as will let him fend a blow in the face. I could march four
miles for his one, and learn him the A B _ab_ of every manly art.”
“I like you fine, man,” I cried; “I would sooner go tramping the glens
with you any day than Master Gordon; but that’s a weakness of the
imperfect and carnal man, that cares not to have a conscience at his
coat-tail every hour of the day: you have your own parts and he his,
and his parts are those that are not very common on our side of the
country--more’s the pity.”
M’Iver was too busy for a time upon the sudden rupture with Argile to
pay very much heed to my defence of Master Gordon. The quarrel--to call
that a quarrel in which one man had all the bad temper and the other
nothing but self-reproach--had soured him of a sudden as thunder
turns the morning’s cream to curd before noon. And his whole demeanour
revealed a totally new man. In his ordinary John was very pernicketty
about his clothing, always with the most shining of buckles and buttons,
always trim in plaiding, snod and spruce about his hair and his hosen, a
real dandy who never overdid the part, but just contrived to be pleasant
to the eye of women, who, in my observation, have, the most sensible of
them, as great a contempt for the mere fop as they have for the sloven.
It took, indeed, trimness of apparel to make up for the plainness of
his face. Not that he was ugly or harsh-favoured,--he was too genial
for either; he was simply well-favoured enough to pass in a fair, as the
saying goes, which is a midway between Apollo and plain Donald But what
with a jacket and vest all creased for the most apparent reasons, a
plaid frayed to ribbons in dashing through the wood of Dalness, brogues
burst at the toes, and a bonnet soaked all out of semblance to itself by
rains, he appeared more common. The black temper of him transformed his
face too: it lost the geniality that was its main charm, and out of his
eyes flamed a most wicked, cunning, cruel fellow.
He went down the way from the castle brig to the “arches cursing with
great eloquence. A soldier picks up many tricks of blasphemy in a career
about the world with foreign legions, and John had the reddings of
three or four languages at his command, so that he had no need to repeat
himself much in his choice of terms aboat his chief. To do him justice
he had plenty of condemnation for himself too.
“Well,” said I, “you were inclined to be calm enough with MacCailein
when first we entered his room. I suppose all this uproar is over his
charge of flattery, not against yourself alone but against all the
people about.”
“That’s just the thing,” he cried, turning round and throwing his arms
furiously about “Could he not have charged the clan generally, and let
who would put the cap on? If yon’s the policy of Courts, heaven help
princes!”
“And yet you were very humble when you entered,” I protested.
“Was I that?” he retorted. “That’s easy to account for. Did you ever
feel like arguing with a gentleman when you had on your second-best
clothes and no ruffle? The man was in his bed, and his position as he
cocked up there on his knees was not the most dignified I have seen; but
even then he had the best of it, for I felt like a beggar before him in
my shabby duds. Oh, he had the best of us all there! You saw Gordon had
the sense to put on a new surtout and clean linen and a freshly dressed
peruke before he saw him; I think he would scarcely have been so bold
before Argile if he had his breek-bands a finger-length below his belt,
and his wig on the nape of his neck as we saw him in Glencoe.”
“Anyhow,” said I, “you have severed from his lordship; are you really
going abroad?”
He paused a second in thought, smiled a little, and then laughed as if
he had seen something humorous.
“Man,” said he, “didn’t I do the dirk trick with a fine touch of
nobility? Maybe you thought it was done on the impulse and without any
calculation. The truth was, I played the whole thing over in my mind
while he was in the preliminaries of his discourse. I saw he was working
up to an attack, and I knew I could surprise him. But I must confess
I said more than I intended. When I spoke of the big wars and Hebron’s
troopers--well, Argile’s a very nice shire to be living in.”
“What, was it all play-acting then?”
He looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.
“You must be a singularly simple man, Elrigmore,” he said, “to ask that
of any one. Are we not play-acting half our lives once we get a little
beyond the stage of the ploughman and the herd? Half our tears and half
our laughter and the great bulk of our virtues are like your way of
cocking your bonnet over your right ear; it does not come by nature, and
it is done to pleasure the world in general Play-acting! I’ll tell you
this, Colin, I could scarcely say myself when a passion of mine is
real or fancied now. But I can tell you this too; if I began in play to
revile the Marquis, I ended in earnest I’m afraid it’s all bye with me
yonder. No more mine-managing for me; I struck too close on the marrow
for him to forget it.”
“He has forgotten and forgiven it already,” I cried “At least, let us
hope he has not forgotten it (for you said no more than was perhaps
deserved), but at least it’s forgiven. If you said to-morrow that you
were sorry for your temper----”
“Said ten thousand fiends in Hell!” cried M’Iver. “I may be vexed I
angered the man; but I’ll never let him know it by my words, if he
cannot make it out from my acts.”