“Not a bit, cousin,” said the Marquis, looking quizzingly at me.
“I could not make such good play with the gun against a fort gable at so many feet,” said I.
“You could, sir, you could,” said John Splendid in an easy, offhand, flattering way, that gave me at the start of our acquaintance the whole key to his character. “I’ve little doubt you could allow me half-a-dozen paces and come closer on the centre of the target.”
By this time we were walking down the street, the Marquis betwixt the pair of us commoners, and I to the left side. Lowlanders and Highlanders quickly got out of the way before us and gave us the crown of the causeway. The main part of them the Marquis never let his eye light on; he kept his nose cocked in the air in the way I’ve since found peculiar to his family. It was odd to me that had in wanderings got to look on all honest men as equal (except Camp-Master Generals and Pike Colonels), to see some of his lordship’s poor clansmen cringing before him. Here indeed was the leaven of your low-country scum, for in all the broad Highlands wandering before and since I never saw the like! “Blood of my blood, brother of my name!” says our good Gaelic old-word: it made no insolents in camp or castle, yet it kept the poorest clansmen’s head up before the highest chief. But there was, even in Baile Inneraora, sinking in the servile ways of the incomer, something too of honest worship in the deportment of the people. It was sure enough in the manner of an old woman with a face peat-tanned to crinkled leather who ran out of the Vennel or lane, and, bending to the Marquis his lace wrist-bands, kissed them as I’ve seen Papists do the holy duds in Notre Dame and Bruges Kirk.
This display before me, something of a stranger, a little displeased Gillesbeg Gruamach. “Tut, tut!” he cried in Gaelic to the cailltach, “thou art a foolish old woman!”
“God keep thee, MacCailein!” said she; “thy daddy put his hand on my head like a son when he came back from his banishment in Spain, and I keened over thy mother dear when she died. The hair of Peggy Bheg’s head is thy door-mat, and her son’s blood is thy will for a foot-bath.”
“Savage old harridan!” cried the Marquis, jerking away; but I could see he was not now unpleased altogether that a man new from the wide world and its ways should behold how much he was thought of by his people.
He put his hands in a friendly way on the shoulders of us on either hand of him, and brought us up a bit round turn, facing him at a stand-still opposite the door of the English kirk. To this day I mind well the rumour of the sea that came round the corner.
“I have a very particular business with both you gentlemen,” he said. “My friend here, M’Iver, has come hot-foot to tell me of a rumour that a body of Irish banditry under Alasdair MacDonald, the MacColkitto as we call him, has landed somewhere about Kinlochaline or Knoydart This portends damnably, if I, an elder ordained of this kirk, may say so. We have enough to do with the Athole gentry and others nearer home. It means that I must on with plate and falchion again, and out on the weary road for war I have little stomach for, to tell the truth.”
“You’re able for the best of them, MacCailein,” cried John Splendid, in a hot admiration. “For a scholar you have as good judgment on the field and as gallant a seat on the saddle as any man ever I saw in haberschone and morion. With your schooling I could go round the world conquering.”
“Ah! flatterer, flatterer! Ye have all the guile of the tongue our enemies give Clan Campbell credit for, and that I wish I had a little more of. Still and on, it’s no time for fair words. Look! Elrigmore. You’ll have heard of our kittle state in this shire for the past ten years, and not only in this shire but all over the West Highlands. I give you my word I’m no sooner with the belt off me and my chair pulled in to my desk and papers than its some one beating a point of war or a piper blowing the warning under my window. To look at my history for the past few years any one might think I was Dol’ Gorm himself, fight and plot, plot and fight! How can I help it—thrust into this hornets’ nest from the age of sixteen, when my father (beannachd leis!) took me out warring against the islesmen, and I only in the humour for playing at shinty or fishing like the boys on the moor-lochs behind the town. I would sooner be a cottar in Auchnagoul down there, with porridge for my every meal, than constable, chastiser, what not, or whatever I am, of all these vexed Highlands. Give me my book in my closet, or at worst let me do my country’s work in a courtier’s way with brains, and I would ask no more.”
“Except Badenoch and Nether Lochaber—fat land, fine land, MacCailein!” said John Splendid, laughing cunningly.
“You’re an ass, John,” he said; “picking up the countryside’s gossip. I have no love for the Athole and Great Glen folks as ye ken; but I could long syne have got letters of fire and sword that made Badenoch and Nether Lochaber mine if I had the notion. Don’t interrupt me with your nonsense, cousin; I’m telling Elrigmore here, for he’s young and has skill of civilised war, that there may, in very few weeks, be need of every arm in the parish or shire to baulk Colkitto. The MacDonald and other malignants have been robbing high and low from Lochow to Loch Finne this while back; I have hanged them a score a month at the town-head there, but that’s dealing with small affairs, and I’m sore mistaken if we have not cruel times to come.”
“Well, sir,” I said, “what can I do?”
The Marquis bit his moustachio and ran a spur on the ground for a little without answering, as one in a quandary, and then he said, “You’re no vassal of mine, Baron” (as if he were half sorry for it), “but all you Glen Shira folk are well disposed to me and mine, and have good cause, though that Macnachtan fellow’s a Papisher. What I had in my mind was that I might count on you taking a company of our fencible men, as John here is going to do, and going over-bye to Lorn with me to cut off those Irish blackguards of Alasdair MacDonald’s from joining Montrose.”
For some minutes I stood turning the thing over in my mind, being by nature slow to take on any scheme of high emprise without some scrupulous balancing of chances. Half-way up the closes, in the dusk, and in their rooms, well back from the windows, or far up the street, all aloof from his Majesty MacCailein Mor, the good curious people of Inneraora watched us. They could little guess the pregnancy of our affairs. For me, I thought how wearily I had looked for some rest from wars, at home in Glen Shira after my years of foreign service. Now that I was here, and my mother no more, my old father needed me on hill and field, and Argile’s quarrel was not my quarrel until Argile’s enemies were at the foot of Ben Bhuidhe or coming all boden in fier of war up the pass of Shira Glen. I liked adventure, and a captaincy was a captaincy, but——
“Is it boot and saddle at once, my lord?” I asked.
“It must be that or nothing. When a viper’s head is coming out of a hole, crunch it incontinent, or the tail may be more than you can manage.”
“Then, my lord,” said I, “I must cry off. On this jaunt at least. It would be my greatest pleasure to go with you and my friend M’lver, not to mention all the good fellows I’m bound to know in rank in your regiment, but for my duty to my father and one or two other considerations that need not be named. But—if this be any use—I give my word that should MacDonald or any other force come this side the passes at Accurach Hill, or anywhere east Lochow, my time and steel are yours.”
MacCailein Mor looked a bit annoyed, and led us at a fast pace up to the gate of the castle that stood, high towered and embrasured for heavy pieces, stark and steeve above town Inneraora. A most curious, dour, and moody man, with a mind roving from key to key. Every now and then he would stop and think a little without a word, then on, and run his fingers through his hair or fumble nervously at his leathern buttons, paying small heed to the Splendid and I, who convoyed him, so we got into a crack about the foreign field of war.
“Quite right, Elrigmore, quite right!” at last cried the Marquis, pulling up short, and looked me plump in the eyes. “Bide at hame while bide ye may. I would never go on this affair myself if by God’s grace I was not Marquis of Argile and son of a house with many bitter foes. But, hark ye! a black day looms for these our home-lands if ever Montrose