On the morrow, John Splendid came riding up the street on his way to
the foreign wars. He had attired himself most sprucely; he rode a good
horse, and he gave it every chance to show its quality. Old women cried
to him from their windows and close-mouths. “Oh! _laochain,_” they said,
“yours be the luck of the seventh son!” He answered gaily, with the
harmless flatteries that came so readily to his lips always, they seemed
the very bosom’s revelation. “Oh! women!” said he, “I’ll be thinking of
your handsome sons, and the happy days we spent together, and wishing
myself soberly home with them when I am far away.”
But not the old women alone waited on his going; shy girls courtesied or
applauded at the corners. For them his horse caracoled on Stonefield’s
causeway, his shoulders straightened, and his bonnet rose. “There
you are!” said he, “still the temptation and the despair of a decent
bachelor’s life. I’ll marry every one of you that has not a man when I
come home.”
“And when may that be?” cried a little, bold, lair one, with a laughing
look at him from under the blowing locks that escaped the snood on her
hair.
“When may it be?” he repeated. “Say ‘Come home, Barbreck,’ in every one
of your evening prayers, and heaven, for the sake of so sweet a face,
may send me home the sooner with my fortune.”
Master Gordon, passing, heard the speech. “Do your own praying,
Barbreck------”
“John,” said my hero. “John, this time, to you.”
“John be it,” said the cleric, smiling warmly. “I like you, truly, and I
wish you well.”
M’Iver stooped and took the proffered hand. “Master Gordon,” he said, “I
would sooner be liked and loved than only admired; that’s, perhaps, the
secret of my life.”
It was not the fishing season, but the street thronged with fishers from
Kenmore and Cairndhu and Kilcatrine and the bays of lower Cowal. Their
tall figures jostled in the causeway, their white teeth gleamed in their
friendliness, and they met this companion of numerous days and nights,
this gentleman of good-humour and even temper, with cries as in a
schoolboy’s playground. They clustered round the horse and seized upon
the trappings. Then John Splendid’s play-acting came to its conclusion,
as it was ever bound to do when his innermost man was touched. He forgot
the carriage of his shoulders; indifferent to the disposition of his
reins, he reached and wrung a hundred hands, crying back memory for
memory, jest for jest, and always the hope for future meetings.
“O scamps! scamps!” said he, “fishing the silly prey of ditches when
you might be with me upon the ocean and capturing the towns. I’ll never
drink a glass of Rhenish, but I’ll mind of you and sorrow for your sour
ales and bitter _aqua!_”
“Will it be long?” said they--true Gaels, ever anxious to know the lease
of pleasure or of grief.
“Long or short,” said he, with absent hands in his horse’s mane, “will
lie with Fate, and she, my lads, is a dour jade with a secret It’ll be
long if ye mind of me, and unco short if ye forget me till I return.”
I went up and said farewell. I but shook his hand, and my words were few
and simple. That took him, for he was always quick to sound the depth of
silent feeling.
“_Mo thruadh! mo thruadh!_ Colin,” said he. “My grief! my grief! here
are two brothers closer than by kin, and they have reached a gusset of
life, and there must be separation. I have had many a jolt from my fairy
relatives, but they have never been more wicked than now. I wish you
were with me, and yet, ah! yet----. Would her ladyship, think ye, forget
for a minute, and shake an old friend’s hand, and say good-bye?”
I turned to Betty, who stood a little back with her father, and conveyed
his wish. She came forward, dyed crimson to the neck, and stood by his
horse’s side. He slid off the saddle and shook her hand.
“It is very good of you,” said he. “You have my heart’s good wishes to
the innermost chamber.”
Then he turned to me, and while the fishermen stood back, he said, “I
envied you twice, Colin--once when you had the foresight of your fortune
on the side of Loch Loven, and now that it seems begun.”
He took the saddle, waved his bonnet in farewell to all the company,
then rode quickly up the street and round the castle walls.
It was a day for the open road, and, as we say, for putting the seven
glens and the seven bens and the seven mountain moors below a young
man’s feet,--a day with invitation in the air and the promise of gifts
around The mallards at morning had quacked in the Dhuloch pools, the
otter scoured the burn of Maam, the air-goat bleated as he flew among
the reeds, and the stag paused above his shed antlers on Torvil-side to
hide them in the dead bracken.
M’Iver rode beside flowering saugh and alder tree through those old
arches, now no more, those arches that were the outermost posterns
where good-luck allowed farewells. He dare not once look round, and his
closest friends dare not follow him, as he rode alone on the old road
so many of our people have gone to their country’s wars or to sporran
battles.
A silence fell upon the community, and in upon it broke from the
river-side the wail of a bagpipe played by the piper of Argile. It
played a tune familiar in those parts upon occasions of parting and
encouragement, a tune they call “Come back to the Glen.”
Come back to the glen, to the glen, to the glen,
And there shall the welcome be waiting for you.
The deer and the heath-cock, the curd from the pen,
The blaeberry fresh from the dew!
We saw the piper strut upon the gravelled walk beside the bridgegate, we
saw Argile himself come out to meet the traveller.
“MacCailein! MacCailein! Ah the dear heart!” cried all our people,
touched by this rare and genteel courtesy.
The Marquis and his clansman touched hands, lingered together a little,
and the rider passed on his way with the piper’s invitation the last
sound in his ears. He rode past Kilmalieu of the tombs, with his bonnet
off for all the dead that are so numerous there, so patient, waiting for
the final trump. He rode past Boshang Gate, portal to my native glen
of chanting birds and melodious waters and merry people. He rode past
Gearron hamlet, where the folk waved farewells; then over the river
before him was the bend that is ever the beginning of home-sickness for
all that go abroad for fortune.
I turned to the girl beside me, and “Sweetheart,” said I softly,
“there’s an elder brother lost. It is man’s greed, I know; but rich
though I am in this new heart of yours, I must be grudging the comrade
gone.”
“Gone!” said she, with scarcely a glance after the departing figure.
“Better gone than here a perpetual sinner, deaf to the cry of justice
and of nature.”
“Good God!” I cried, “are you still in that delusion?” and I hinted at
the truth.
She saw the story at a flash; she paled to the very lips, and turned
and strained her vision after that figure slowly passing round the woody
point; she relinquished no moment of her gaze till the path bent and hid
John Splendid from her eager view.
THE END.