The Boar's Head Inn, for all its fine cognomen, was little better than
any of the numerous taverns that kept discreet half-open doors to the
wynds and closes of the Duke's burgh town, but custom made it a preserve
of the upper class in the community. There it was the writers met their
clients and cozened them into costly law pleas over the genial jug
or chopine; the through-going stranger took his pack there and dwelt
cheaply in the attics that looked upon the bay and upon the little
harbour where traffic dozed upon the swinging tide, waiting the goodwill
of mariners in no hurry to leave a port so alluring; in its smoke-grimed
public-room skippers frequented, full of loud tales of roving, and even
the retinue of MacCailen was not averse from an evening's merriment in a
company where no restraint of the castle was expected, and his Grace was
mentioned but vaguely as a personal pronoun.
There was in the inn a _sanctum sanctorum_ where only were allowed the
bailies of the burgh, a tacksman of position, perhaps, from the landward
part, or the like of the Duke's Chamberlain, who was no bacchanal, but
loved the company of honest men in their hours of manumission. Here the
bottle was of the best, and the conversation most genteel--otherwise
there had been no Sim MacTaggart in the company where he reigned the
king. It was a state that called for shrewd deportment. One must not be
too free, for an excess of freedom cheapened the affability, and yet
one must be hail fellow with magistrate--and even an odd master
mariner--with no touch of condescension for the Highland among them who
could scent the same like _aqua vito_ and resent it like a push of the
hand.
He came not often, but ever was he welcome, those nights the more
glorious for his qualities of humour and generosity, his tales that
stirred like the brassy cry of trumpets, his tolerance of the fool and
his folly, his fatalist excuse for any sin except the scurviest. And
there was the flageolet! You will hear the echo of it yet in that burgh
town where he performed; its charm lingers in melodies hummed or piped
by old folks of winter nights, its magic has been made the stuff of
myth, so that as children we have heard the sound of Simon's instrument
in the spring woods when we went there white-hay-gathering, or for
fagots for the schoolhouse fire.
A few nights after that thundering canter from the spider's den where
Kate Petullo sat amid her coils, the Chamberlain went to wander care
among easy hearts. It was a season of mild weather though on the eve
of winter; even yet the perfume of the stubble-field and of fruitage in
forest and plantation breathed all about the country of Mac-Cailen
Mor. Before the windows of the inn the bay lay warm and placid, and
Dunchuach, wood-mantled, and the hills beyond it vague, remote, and
haunted all by story, seemed to swim in a benign air, and the
outer world drew the souls of these men in a tavern into a brief
acquaintanceship. The window of the large room they sat in looked
out upon this world new lit by the tender moon that hung on Strome.
A magistrate made to shutter it and bring the hour of Bacchus all the
faster.
“Hold there, Bailie!” cried the Chamberlain. “Good God! let us have so
long as we can of a night so clean and wholesome.”
It needed but a hint of that nature from this creature of romance and
curious destiny to silence their unprofitable discourse over herds
and session discipline, and for a space they sat about the window,
surrendered to the beauty of the night. So still that outer world, so
vacant of living creature, that it might have been a picture! In the
midst of their half circle the Chamberlain lay back in his chair and
drank the vision in by gloating eyes.
“Upon my word,” said he at last in a voice that had the rich profound of
passion--“upon my word, we are the undeserving dogs!” and at an impulse
he took his flageolet and played a Highland air. It had the proper
spirit of the hour--the rapturous evening pipe of birds in dewy
thickets, serene yet someway touched by melancholy; there was no man
there among them who did not in his breast repeat its words that have
been heard for generations in hillside milking-folds where women put
their ruddy cheeks against the kine and look along the valleys, singing
softly to the accompaniment of the gushing pail.
He held his audience by a chain of gold: perhaps he knew it, perhaps he
joyed in it, but his half-shut eyes revealed no more than that he still
saw the beauty and peace of the night and thus rendered an oblation.
His melody ceased as abruptly as it began. Up he got hastily and stamped
his foot and turned to the table where the bottle lay and cried loud out
for lights, as one might do ashamed of a womanly weakness, and it is the
Highland heart that his friends should like him all the more for that
display of sentiment and shyness to confess it.
“By the Lord, Factor, and it's you have the skill of it!” said the
Provost, in tones of lofty admiration.
“Is't the bit reed?” said the Chamberlain, indifferently. “Your boy
Davie could learn to play better than I in a month's lessons.”
“It's no' altogether the playing though,” said the Provost slowly,
ruminating as on a problem; “it's that too, but it's more than that;
it's the seizing of the time and tune to play. I'm no great musicianer
myself, though I have tried the trump; but there the now--with the
night like that, and us like this, and all the rest of it--that lilt of
yours--oh, damn! pass the bottle; what for should a man be melancholy?”
He poured some wine and gulped it hurriedly.
“Never heard the beat of it!” said the others. “Give us a rant, Factor,”
and round the table they gathered: the candles were being lit, the
ambrosial night was to begin.
Simon MacTaggart looked round his company--at some with the maudlin tear
of sentiment still on their cheeks, at others eager to escape this soft
moment and make the beaker clink.
“My sorrow!” thought he, “what a corps to entertain! Is it the same
stuff as myself? Is this the best that Sim MacTaggart that knows and
feels things can be doing? And still they're worthy fellows, still I
must be liking them.”
“Rants!” he cried, and stood among them tall and straight and handsome,
with lowering dark brows, and his face more pale than they had known it
customarily,--“a little less rant would be the better for us. Take my
word for it, the canty quiet lilt in the evening, and the lights low,
and calm and honest thoughts with us, is better than all the rant and
chorus, and I've tried them both. But heaven forbid that Sim MacTaggart
should turn to preaching in his middle age.”
“Faith! and it's very true what you say, Factor,” acquiesced some
sycophant.
The Chamberlain looked at him half in pity, half in amusement. “How do
_you_ ken, Bailie?” said he; “what are yearlings at Fa'kirk Tryst?” And
then, waiting no answer to what demanded none, he put the flageolet to
his lips again and began to play a strathspey to which the company in
the true bucolic style beat time with feet below the table. He changed
to the tune of a minuet, then essayed at a melody more sweet and
haunting than them all, but broken ere its finish.
“A hole in the ballant,” commented the Provost. “Have another skelp at
it, Factor.”
“Later on perhaps,” said Sim MacTaggart. “The end of it aye escapes my
memory. Rather a taking tune, I think--don't you? Just a little--just a
little too much of the psalm in it for common everyday use, but man!
it grips me curiously;” and then on a hint from one at his shoulder he
played “The Devil in the Kitchen,” a dance that might have charmed the
imps of Hallowe'en.
He was in the midst of it when the door of the room opened and a beggar
looked in--a starven character of the neighbourhood parish, all bedecked
with cheap brooches and babs of ribbon, leading by the hand the little
child of his daughter wronged and dead. He said never a word but stood
just within the door expectant--a reproach to cleanliness, content, good
clothes, the well fed, and all who make believe to love their fellows.
“Go away, Baldy!” cried the Bailies sharply, vexed by this intrusion on
their moments of carouse; no one of them had a friendly eye for the old
wanderer, in his blue coat, and dumb but for his beggar's badge and the
child that clung to his hand.
It was the child that Sim MacTaggart saw. He thought of many things as
he looked at the little one, white-haired, bare-footed, and large-eyed.
“Come here, my dear!” said he, quite tenderly, smiling upon her.
She would have been afraid but for the manifest kindness of that dark
commanding stranger; it was only shyness that kept her from obeying.
The Chamberlain rose and went over to the door and cried upon the
landlord. “You will have a chopine of ale, Baldy,” said he to the old
wreck; “sometimes it's all the difference between hell-fire and content,
and--for God's sake buy the bairn a pair of boots!” As he spoke he
slipped, by a motion studiously concealed from the company, some silver
into the beggar's poke.
The ale came in, the beggar drank for a moment, the Chamberlain took the
child upon his knee, his face made fine and noble by some sweet human
sentiment, and he kissed her, ere she went, upon the brow.
For a space the _sanctum sanctorum_ of the Boar's Head Inn was ill at
ease. This sort of thing--so common in Sim MacTaggart,who made friends
with every gangrel he met--was like a week-day sermon, and they
considered the Sunday homilies of Dr. Macivor quite enough. They much
preferred their Simon in his more common mood of wild devilry, and
nobody knew it better than the gentleman himself.
“Oh, damn the lousy tribe of them!” cried he, beating his palm upon the
table; “what's Long Davie the dempster thinking of to be letting such
folk come scorning here?”
“I'll warrant they get more encouragement here than they do in Lorn,”
said the Provost, shrewdly, for he had seen the glint of coin and knew
his man. “You beat all, Factor! If I lived a hundred years, you would be
more than I could fathom. Well, well, pass the bottle, and ye might have
another skelp at yon tune if it's your pleasure.”
The Chamberlain most willingly complied: it was the easiest retort to
the Provost's vague allusion.
He played the tune again; once more its conclusion baffled him, and as
he tried a futile repetition Count Victor stood listening in the lobby
of the Boar's Head Inn.