MR. EPHRAIM SNAGGS.
Our residence, the old jointure-house, now shorn of its fair
proportions, and diminished in aspect, since it was built for the
widow of Lachlan Mohr Mac Innon, who led his clan to Worcester, was
small, low in the roof, and heavily thatched with warm heather. The
two principal rooms were wainscoted; the entrance was floored with
hard-beaten clay, and above the door was a rudely-carved
representation of the arms of Mac Innon, a boar's head erased,
holding in its mouth the legbone of a deer, supported by a lion and,
a leopard. This uncouth piece of heraldry, the pride of my mother's
heart, was the _chef d'oeuvre_ of some local sculptor. The aspect of
the house was cheerless and indicative of the decay that had fallen
upon us; the carpets were faded and worn; the furniture antique and
rickety; there were corner cupboards, where old china, worm-eaten
books, bottles of whisky, powder-flasks, bullet-moulds, deer-horns,
fishing-gear, teapots, and coffee-cups, dogs' collars, an old dirk
and skene, mingled pell-mell with innumerable other etcetera.
Far off on the mountain slope, the strong square tower of Lachlan
Mohr (who was besieged therein by the Campbells after Inverlochy) was
a landmark for two hundred years; but now it was removed to make way
for a modern mansion, the windows of which, on this evening, were
brilliantly lighted up; and then, I doubted not, Sir Horace
Everingham was sitting down to a sumptuous entertainment after his
visit to Ben Ora, while I, the heir of all these hills and glens, had
scarcely a crust to place before me.
I thought of all these things--the present and the past--with a
bitterness renewed by the recent conversation with my foster-brother.
I tossed aside my fishing-gear, basket, and bonnet, and with a sigh
of weariness and dejection, entered the half-dilapidated mansion. As
I had been abroad the whole day, I sought, with some anxiety, the
apartment of my sick and aged mother. I heard the sound of voices
proceeding from it; she was expostulating, and a stranger was
threatening! I made a forward stride, when a hand was timidly laid
on my arm; I turned, and met the anxious face of pretty Minnie Mac
Omish.
'A chial! a chial!' she whispered, with tears in her soft hazel eyes;
'Snaggs, the factor, is with your mother, Allan, and I fear he brings
bad news.'
'Can other come to us now, Minnie?' said I; 'but take my
fish-basket--I have brought a good stipper from the Uisc Dhu and Loch
Ora.'
I then entered the little dining-room where we usually had all our
meals served up.
I see it yet in memory.
Like many apartments in old Highland houses, its ceiling was low,
pannelled with fir, and painted in a dull white colour; the stone
fireplace, heavily moulded, bore the motto of the Mac Innons,
_Cuimhuich bas Alpin_, in raised letters, and the grate, a little
brass-knobbed basket, at which, as my nurse affirmed, Prince Charles
had once warmed his royal feet, stood upon two blocks of stone. A
few old prints of battles in black frames, an oil-portrait or two, an
old ebony table, with a huge family-bible, an inverted punch-bowl
cracked and riveted, chairs of a fashion that has long since
disappeared from the Lowlands, made up the plenishing of this little
chamber, which was alike my mother's dining-room and peculiar sanctum
sanctorum--and the palladium of which, were the old gilt gorget and
regimental claymore of my father, suspended above the chimney-piece.
He had worn these during the campaigns with the Black Watch in Egypt
and in Spain.
With gold spectacles on nose, my mother, a thin, pale woman of a
dignified aspect, in an old-fashioned costume, with black silk
_mittens_ on her hands, was seated in her cushioned chair, affecting
to work at some ornament or article of attire, which lay on a little
tripod table. She seemed nervous and agitated; how could she be
otherwise, when opposite sat he, who was the horror of the glens from
Lochness to Loch Ora--Ephraim Snaggs, with his malevolent visage,
perched on the top of a bamboo-cane, over the silver knob of which
his hands were crossed.
Bald-headed, hollow in the temples, with a prominent chin, and more
of the serpent than the dove in his sinister grey eye, there sat Mr.
Snaggs with his truculent smile, and an affectation of sympathy on
his tongue.
'Beware, sir, of what you say,' my mother was exclaiming, 'for ours
is an honoured line--an ancient house.'
'So I perceive,' said Snaggs, impertinently, as he fixed his eyes on
a very palpable hole in the ceiling; 'ah, the old story--the old
story, Mrs. Mac Innon! Bad times and no price for sheep, eh? I
would beg to remind you, my dear madam, that a certain pious writer
says, "However unfortunate we may deem ourselves, yet let us remember
there is an eye watching over us; it is a heavenly will, not a blind
fate, that guides the world;" ah me--ah me!'
Fire and pride were flashing in my mother's dark grey eyes as I
entered; then she burst into tears, and throwing down her work,
exclaimed to me in Gaelic, and with all the spirit of the olden time--
'My son, God has sent you here in a lucky hour! I have come of a
race that have smiled often in the face of death--why then, do I weep
before this wretched worm?'
'What have you dared to say, Mr. Snaggs?' I asked, turning sharply to
that personage; 'why do I find my mother in tears?'
'Because she is out of cash,' was the cool reply; 'a simple reason,
my dear sir, and a plain one; but it is very little that _you_ do to
furnish her with any. I have called for the last time anent the
arrears of rent due to Sir Horace Everingham--the new proprietor of
this estate--arrears due before he acquired the lands, and I receive
still the same unvaried excuses, about sheep with the rot, cattle
with the murrain, or scraps of traditions and antediluvian nonsense,
about the time when Loch Ora belonged to the Mac Innons--and about
your great-grandfather who fought at Culloden, and was nearly hanged
at Carlisle, as, I think, he deserved to be, for opposing the House
of Hanover, and the Kirk as established by law. Now the law, of
which I am an unworthy representative--_the law says_, young man,
that when a tenant--but I need not quote the cases before the Lords
of Council and Session in 1792 or 1756 on this point, to _you_. If
an instalment at least, of the aforesaid arrears--say about fifty
pounds--is not paid to me--to _me_, sir,' he continued, laying a fat
finger impressively into the palm of his left hand, 'then a notice of
eviction shall be duly served upon you, with the rest of the lazy
wretches in Glen Ora, who must all sail for Canada this summer, sure
as my name is Ephraim Snaggs. Moreover, sir, I may inform you, that
Sir Horace, by my recommendation--mine, sir--has some intentions of
pulling down this absurd-looking old house, and erecting here a box
for his friend, Captain Clavering, or for Mr. Snobleigh, of Snobleigh
Park, I know not which; and if so, the law must be put in force
against you, sir--the law of expulsion--you hear me!'
The reader may imagine the pride, wrath, and bitterness that swelled
up within me, at this insolent speech, which had gradually approached
the bullying point. I made a stride towards Snaggs, and my fingers
twitched with an irresistible desire to grasp his throat.
My mother (poor old woman!) had long been in ill health. Mhari Mac
Innon the 'wise woman' of our locality, and other aged people of the
glen, alleged her illness was caused by her declining to drink of St.
Colme's well, a famous medicinal spring in Glen Ora, where, for ages,
the Mac Innons and adjacent tribes had been wont to quaff the water
at midnight, as a sovereign remedy for all diseases; and thereafter
drop in a coin, or tie a rag to the alders which overshadowed it, as
an offering to the guardian spirit of the fountain. Pale, sad, and
sickly, my mother sat in her high-backed chair, motionless and silent
as if overwhelmed by the approaching tide of ruin, in the form of
debt which we had not a shilling to meet--and of avarice which we
could not satisfy.
'Mr. Snaggs,' said I, 'you should have reserved your detestable
communications for my ears alone, and thus spared my poor mother the
humiliation of a moment so bitter as this. She is old, and her
thoughts and ideas have come down to her from other times. She
cannot see, nor believe, that any man has authority to turn her off
the land of the Mac Innons--'
'Pooh, my dear sir,' said Snaggs, waving his hand, and rising; 'if
you are about to begin your old-world nonsense and twaddle about
Celtic right in the soil, I must leave you. The sheriff's warrants
will tell another story next week, if fifty pounds at least--'
'Listen to me, Ephraim Snaggs,' said I, forcing him into a seat, and
grasping his shoulder like a vice. 'I am here on the land that
belonged to my forefathers--to Angus Mac Innon, who fought for King
James at Culloden--'
'Ha-ha--stuff--there you go again!'
'There was a time,' I continued, fiercely, 'when had you, or such as
you, spoken above your breath in Glen Ora, you had been flung into
the loch with a hundred weight of stone at your neck. There was a
time when the Mac Innons owned all the land we may see from Ben Ora;
when we had Griban in Mull, the Isles of Tiree, of Pabay, and Scalpa,
with Strathardle in Skye. Poor as we are now, we owned all that, but
only in common--mark me, sir, _in common_, with the people of our
name. Listen to me, Mr. Snaggs,' I continued, as the fierce sob of
pride, so difficult to repress, rose to my throat; 'I am the last of
a long line, whose misfortune it has been to fight for the losing
side. Our people marched to Worcester under Lachlan M'hor, and
perished there in heaps; we were at Sheriffmuir, under the banner of
the Marquis of Seaforth, for a marquis he was, by order of the king;
we were "out" in the '45, under Angus Mac Innon, and of all the
swordsmen he marched from yonder glen, which you are about to
depopulate, not a man came back from Culloden--as God hears me--not
one. Since then our people have gone forth in the Highland regiments
to every part of the world. Some have left their bones on the
heights of Abraham and in the isles of the Western Indies; some sleep
under the shadow of the Pyramids and on the plains of the Peninsula.
In India, Egypt, Africa, and Spain, wherever Britain wanted men to
fight her battles, there have they been faithful and true, loyal and
brave, standing foremost in the ranks of war, and giving place to
none! All my own family have perished in the service of their
country since this century began--I am the last of them, and as their
reward, our roof is to be torn from us, and we are to be expelled
from the home and the graves of our kindred--we, the descendants of
the old aboriginal race, who first trod the land after God separated
it from the waters, and why? because a miserable fifty pounds may not
be forthcoming by a certain day! There was a time, Mr. Ephraim
Snaggs, when the cry of _Bas Alpin_ from yonder rock would easily
have brought six hundred swordsmen to guard the roof you threaten;
and he whom you beard--he, who from the first Mac Innon, has come
through twenty generations in the right line.'
'Had you come through twenty generations in the _wrong_ line I would
have respected you quite as much, sir,' said Mr. Snaggs, with his
bland professional sneer, as he rose again, and smoothed the nap of
his hat, preparatory to retiring, as if wearied by the torrent of
Gaelic I had poured upon him. 'All these fine arguments about
broadswords and barbarism won't pay the rent or satisfy the just
claims of Sir Horace, thus the law of landlord and tenant must take
its course. You have no means of raising money, I suppose?'
'None!'
'No friends--eh?'
'None.'
'Nothing you can sell?'
'Nothing!'
'Then, take my advice, and quietly quit the glen altogether; there
are plenty of counting-rooms, offices, and shops in the Lowlands,
where such great sturdy fellows as you may easily make yearly, triple
the rent of this old tumble-down place, with its patch of potatoes
and corn. Quit your gun and fishing-rod--betake yourself to some
honest and industrious occupation, instead of indulging in the very
sophistry of vanity, and in wandering about these hills the livelong
day, sighing over an imaginary past and an impossible future. No man
has any right in the soil but such as the law gives him. Why, Mr.
Allan, before I was half your age, I was one of the smartest writer's
clerks in Glasgow, earning my threepence a page of a hundred and
twenty-five words; but perhaps you would prefer a shopman's place--'
The shout with which Rob Roy greeted honest Bailie Jarvie's proposal
to take his two sons as apprentices, was nothing to the shrill cry of
anger with which my mother interrupted the sneer I was too poor to
resent with pride--besides in its soundness, the advice of Snaggs
humbled, while it exasperated me.
'I would rather see my boy Allan buried in his grave at the Stones of
St. Colme than truckling to a Lowland dog like you, Ephraim Snaggs!
Begone, lest I smite you on the face, weak though my hand, for
recommending a calling so vile to Mac Innon of Glen Ora!'
'Mother, mother!' I exclaimed, 'what can I do?'
'Shoulder a musket and march to fight the Russians, if God opens up
no brighter or better path to the son of a line that led their
hundreds to battle in the times of old!' was the fierce and Spartan
response.
'Very well, ma'am--very well,' continued the matter-of-fact Snaggs,
smoothing the nap of his beaver, and smiling with his ticket-of-leave
look. '"The gentle mind," saith the divine Blair, "is like the
smooth stream, which reflects every object in its just proportion and
in its fairest colours;" but these outbursts of anger, in the style
of Helen Mac Gregor or Lady Macbeth, won't satisfy Sir Horace
Everingham; and if the sum of fifty pounds, at least, be not
forthcoming----'
A tremendous knocking at the outer door, and the sound of voices in
great agitation, arrested the factor's angry farewell. Minnie grew
pale, and hurried to open, and hastening into the passage, I met two
of the Englishmen and the ladies, with disorder apparent in their
attire and alarm in their faces. The oldest of their party, Sir
Horace, was absent; and now the danger of the mountain, and the
warnings withheld by Callum Dhu, rushed reproachfully on my memory.
'My father, Mr. Mac Innon--my father, Mr. Snaggs!' exclaimed Miss
Everingham, rushing towards us, with clasped hands. 'I seek succour
for my father!' she continued, trembling, agitated, pale, and in
tears, and with hair and dress disordered.
'How--your father--Sir Horace?'
'We missed him at the rock, Mr. Snaggs, on Ben Ora--the steep rock, I
know not how you name it!'
'The Craig-na-tuirc,' said I.
'Yes--thank you--yes; and he did not come back to us.'
'Some dreadful event must have occurred,' added her dark-eyed
companion, Miss Clavering, whose usual bloom was blanched and gone;
'so many accidents--'
'Get us some aid, my good man,' said her brother, a tall and
soldier-like fellow, with a heavy black moustache and a dragoon air;
'ropes, poles, and a couple of stable-lanterns, if you have such
things. We must make a search after the old gentleman--come
Snobleigh, my boy, look sharp!'
'Oh-aw-yaas,' drawled his companion, who had a very used-up air, and
wore a short-tailed tartan shooting-jacket, an eye-glass, a cigar in
his mouth, and a faint moustache under his snub nose; 'young fellow,
eh-aw-aw, what is your name?'
'Glen Ora,' said my mother, interrupting me, and half springing from
her chair, irate at his nonchalance.
'Aw--odd--very, Mr. Glen Ora; you'll look aftaw the ladies, whom we
shall leave here in your chawge.'
'I am master here, at least,' said I, haughtily; 'Snaggs, hand
chairs--see to the ladies, while I go to the Craig-na-tuirc, to
search for Sir Horace.'
'Oh thank you--bless you!' exclaimed Miss Everingham, grasping my
arm; 'all my trust is in you, Allan.'
'Lanterns--eh, aw-aw, you'll require--'
'The moon is up, and we require no other light,' said I, cutting
short this mouthing drawler; 'come, Callum Mac Ian,' I added, as that
personage, whose solitary hut the alarm had reached, appeared among
us; 'old Sir Horace has fallen over the Craig-na-tuirc, or lost his
way on the hills--let us seek him.'
Though weak and tottering, my mother had propped herself upon her
cane, and risen to her full height, which was tall and commanding, to
welcome those agitated and unceremonious visitors.
'Mr. Snaggs,' said she, pointing to the door, with the air of a
Siddons, 'you may retire.'
Snaggs bowed with a malevolent smile, and withdrew.
'Ladies, be seated--gentlemen, assist the ladies to seats--thank you;
be composed, Miss Everingham, and be assured that we will leave
nothing undone to discover your father, who must have lost his way on
the mountains. They were not made for Lowland legs to climb,' she
added, with a cold smile.
Her stature, her lofty air, and calm decisive manner, awed the two
English girls, and calmed their excessive agitation, while it dashed
the somewhat brusque air of the gentlemen; and, reseating herself in
her wide, old-fashioned chair, she spread her skirt all over it, in a
way peculiar to ladies of 'the old school,' and then fixed her keen
grey Highland eyes upon her unexpected and not over-welcome visitors,
to learn the cause of all this commotion and alarm for one towards
whom it may easily be supposed she felt but little love, as she
deemed poor Sir Horace little better than a usurper, and was wont to
stigmatize him roughly in Gaelic as 'a Hanoverian rat.'
I snatched a hunting-horn, Callum threw off his plaid, and leaving
the two perfumed gentlemen to follow us as they best could in their
well-glazed boots and tightly-strapped pantaloons, we took our way
with all speed towards the rocky summit of Ben Ora.