John Splendid: the tale of a poor gentleman and the Little Wars of Lorn

Chapter I

Many a time, in college or in camp, I had planned the style of my home-coming. Master Webster, in the Humanities, droning away like a Boreraig bagpipe, would be sending my mind back to Shira Glen, its braes and corries and singing waters, and Ben Bhuidhe over all, and with my chin on a hand I would ponder on how I should go home again when this weary scholarship was over. I had always a ready fancy and some of the natural vanity of youth, so I could see myself landing off the lugger at the quay of Inneraora town, three inches more of a man than when I left with a firkin of herring and a few bolls of meal for my winter's provand; thicker too at the chest, and with a jacket of London green cloth with brass buttons. Would the fishermen about the quay head not lean over the gun'les of their skiffs and say, "There goes young Elrigmore from Colleg ing, well-knit in troth, and a pretty lad !

" I could hear (all in my day dream in yon place of dingy benches) the old women about the well at the town Cross say, " Oh lochain! thou art come back from the Galldach, and Glascow College, what a thousand curious things thou must know, and what wisdom thou must have, but never a change on thy affability to the old and to the poor ! " But it was not till I had run away from Glascow College and shut the boards for good and all, as I thought, on my humane letters and history, and gone with Cousin Gavin to the Ger man wars in Munro's Corps of true Highlanders that I added a manlier thought to my thinking of the day when I should come home to my native place. I 've seen me in the camp at night, dog wearied after stoury marching on their cursed foreign roads, keeping my eyes open and the sleep at an arm's-length, that I might think of Shira Glen.

Whatever they may say of me or mine, they can never deny but I had the right fond heart for my own country-side, and I have fought men for speaking of its pride and poverty — their igno rance-, their folly! — for what did they ken of the Highland spirit? I would be lying in the lap of the night, and my Ferrara sword rolled in my plaid as a pillow for my head, fancying myself — all those long wars over, march, siege, and sack — riding on a good horse down the pass of Aora and through the arches into the old town. Then, it was not the fishermen or the old women I thought of, but the girls, and the winking stars above me were their eyes, glinting merrily and kindly on a stout young gentleman soldier with jack and morion, sword at haunch, spur at heel, and a name for bravado, never a home-biding laird in our parish had, burgh or land-ward.

I would sit on my horse so, the chest well out, the back curved, the knees straight, one gauntlet off to let my white hand wave a salute when needed, and none of all the pretty ones would be able to say Elrigmore thought another one the sweetest. Oh! I tell you we learnt many arts in the Low land wars, more than they teach Master of Art in the old biggin' in the Hie Street of Glascow. One day, at a place called Nordlingen in the Mid Franken, binding a wound Gavin got in the sword-arm, I said, "What's your wish at this moment, cousin ? " He looked at me with a melting eye, and the flush hove to his face. "'Fore God, Colin," said he, "I would give my twelve months' wage to stand below the lintel of my mother's door and hear her say ' Darling scamp ! ' " " If you had your wish, Gavin, when and how would you go into Inneraora town after those weary years away ?

" " Man, I 've made that up long syne," said he, and the tear was at his cheek. " Let me go into it cannily at night-fall from the Cromalt end, when the boys and girls were dancing on the green to the pipes at the end of a harvest -day. Them in a reel, with none of the abulziements of war about me, but a plain civil lad like the rest, I would join in the strathspey and kiss two or three of the girls ere ever they jaloused a stranger was among them. " Poor Gavin, good Gavin ! he came home no way at all to his mother and his mountains, but here was I, with some of his wish for my fortune, riding cannily into Inneraora town in the dark. It is wonderful how travel, even in a marching company of cavaliers of fortune, gives scope to the mind. When I set foot, twelve years before this night I speak of, on the gabbard that carried me down to Dunbarton on my way to the Humani ties classes, I could have sworn I was leaving a burgh most large and wonderful.

The town houses of old Stonefield, Craignish, Craignure, Askaig, and the other cadets of Clan Campbell, had such a strong and genteel look ; the windows, all but a very few, had glass in every lozen, every shutter had a hole to let in the morning light, and each door had its little ford of stones running across the gutter that sped down the street, smell ing fishily a bit, on its way to the shore. For me, in those days, each close that pierced the tall lands was as wide and high as a mountain eas, the street itself seemed broad and substan tial, crowded with people worth kenning for their graces and the many things they knew. I came home now on this night of nights with Munchen and Augsburg, and the fine cities of all the France, in my mind, and I tell you I could think shame of this mean rickle of stones I had thought a town, were it not for the good hearts and kind I knew were under every roof.

The broad street crowded with people, did I say? A little lane rather; and Elrigmore, with schooling and the wisdom of travel, felt he could see into the heart's core of the cunningest merchant in the place. But anyway, here I was, riding into town from the Cromalt end on a night in autumn. It was after ten — between the twenty and the half -past by my Paris watch — when I got the length of the Creags, and I knew that there was nothing but a sleeping town before me, for our folks were always early bedders when the fishing season was on. The night hung thick with stars, but there was no moon ; a stiff wind from the east prinked at my right ear and cooled my horse's skin, as he slowed clown after a canter of a mile or two on this side of Pennymore. Out on the loch I could see the lights of a few herring-boats lift and fall at the end of their trail of nets.

" Too few of you there for the town to be busy and cheerful," said I to myself; "no doubt the bulk of the boats are down at Otter, damming the fish in the narrow gut, and keeping them from searching up to our own good townsmen." I pressed my brute to a trot, and turned round into the nether part of the town. It was what I expected — the place was dark, black out. The people were sleeping ; the salt air of Loch Finne went sighing through the place in a way that made me dowie for old days. We went over the causeway-stones with a clatter that might have wakened the dead, but no one put a head out, and I thought of the notion of a cheery home-coming poor Gavin had — my dear cousin, stroked out and cold under foreign clods at Velshiem, two leagues below the field of Worms of Hessen, on the banks of the Rhine, in Low Germanic It 's a curious business this riding into a town in the dark waste of night ; curious even in a strange town when all are the same for you that sleep behind those shutters and those doors, but doubly curious when you know that behind the dark fronts are lying folks that you know well, that have been thinking, and drinking, and thriv ing when you were far away.

As I went clatter ing slowly by, I would say at one house front, " Yonder 's my old comrade, Tearlach, that taught me my one tune on the pipe-chanter; is his beard grown yet, I wonder?" At another, "There is the garret window of the schoolmaster's daughter — does she sing so sweetly nowadays in the old kirk?" In the dead middle of the street I pulled my horse up, just to study the full quietness of the hour. Leaning over, I put a hand on his nos trils and whispered in his ear for a silence, as we do abroad in ambuscade. Town Inneraora slept sound, sure enough ! All to hear was the spill ing of the river at the cascade under the bridge and the plopping of the waves against the wall we call the ramparts, that keeps the sea from thrashing on the Tolbooth. And then over all I could hear a most strange moaning sound, such as we boys used to make with a piece of lath nicked at the edges and swung hurriedly round the head by a string.

It was made by the wind, I knew, for it came loudest in the gusty bits of the night and from the east, and when there was a lull I could hear it soften away and end for a second or two with a dunt, as if some heavy, soft thing struck against wood. Whatever it was, the burghers of Inneraora paid no heed, but slept, stark and sound, behind their steeked shutters. The solemnity of the place, that I knew so much better in a natural lively mood, annoyed me, and I played there and then a prank more becoming a boy in his first kilt than a gentle man of education and travel and some repute for sobriety. I noticed I was opposite the house of a poor old woman they called Kate Dubh, whose door was ever the target in my young days for every lad that could brag of a bo.ot-toe, and I saw that the shutter, hanging ajee on one hinge, was thrown open against the harled wall of the house.

In my doublet-pocket there were some carabeen bullets, and taking one out, I let bang at the old woman's little lozens. There was a splinter of glass, and I waited to see if any one should come out to see who was up to such damage. My trick was in vain; no one came. Old Kate, as I found next day, was dead since Martinmas, and her house was empty. Still the moaning sound came from the town head, and I went slowly riding in its direction. It grew clearer and yet uncannier as I sped on, and mixed with the sough of it I could at last hear the clink of chains. "What in God's name have I here? " said I to myself, turning round Islay Campbell's corner, and yonder was my answer! The town gibbets were throng indeed ! Two corpses swung in the wind, like net bows on a drying-pole, going from side to side, making the woeful sough and clink of chains, and the dunt I had heard when the wind dropped.

I grued more at the sound of the soughing than at the sight of the hanged fellows, for I 've seen the Fell Sergeant in too many ugly fashions to be much put about at a hanging match. But it was such a poor home-coming! It told me as plain as could be, what I had heard rumours of in the low country riding round from the port of Leith, that the land was uneasy, and that pit and gallows were bye-ordinar busy at the gates of our castle. When I left for my last session at Glas cow College, the countryside was quiet as a vil lage green, never a raider nor a reiver in the land, and so poor the Doomster's trade (Black George), that he took to the shoeing of horses. "There must be something wicked in the times, and cheatery rampant indeed," I thought, "when the common gibbet of Inneraora has a drunkard's convoy on either hand to prop it up."

But it was no time for meditation. Through the rags of plaiding on the chains went the wind again so eerily that I bound to be off, and I put my horse to it, bye the town-head and up the two miles to Glen Shira. I was sore and galled sitting on the saddle ; my weariness hung at the back of my legs and shoulders like an ague, and there was never a man in this world came home to his native place so eager for taking supper and sleep as young Elrigmore. What I expected at my father's door I am not going to set down here. I went from it a fool, with not one grace about me but the love of my good mother, and the punishment I had for my hot and foolish cantrip was many a wae night on foreign fields, vexed to the core for the sore heart I had left at home. My mind, for all my weariness, was full of many things, and shame above all, as I made for my father's house.

The horse had never seen Glen Shira, but it smelt the comfort of the stable and whinnied cheerfully as I pulled up at the gate. There was but one window to the gable end of Elrigmore, and it was something of a sur prise to me to find a light in it, for our people were not overly rich in these days, and candle or cruisie was wont to be doused at bedtime. More was my surprise, when leading my horse round to the front, feeling my way in the dark by memory, I found the oak door open and my father, dressed, standing in the light of it. A young sqalag came running to the reins, and handing them to him, I stepped into the light of the door, my bonnet in my hand. "Step in, sir, caird or gentleman," said my father — looking a little more bent at the shoulder than twelve years before. I went under the door-lintel, and stood a little abashed before him.

" Colin ! Colin ! " he cried in the Gaelic. " Did I not ken it was you? " and he put his two hands on my shoulders. "It is Colin sure enough, father dear," I said, slipping readily enough into the mother tongue they did their best to get out of me at Glascow College. " Is he welcome in this door ? " and the weariness weighed me down at the hip and bowed my very legs. He gripped me tight at the elbows, and looked me hungrily in the face. "If you had a murdered man's head in your oxter, Colin," said he, "you were still my son. Colin, Colin ! come ben and put off your boots ' " "Mother," I said, but he broke in on my question. " Come in, lad, and sit down. You are back from the brave wars you never went to with my will, and you Tl find stirring times here at your own parish. It 's the way of the Sennachies' , tories.

" "How is that, sir?" "They tell, you know, that people wander far on the going foot for adventure, and adventure is in the first turning of their native lane." I was putting my boots off before a fire of hiss ing logs that filled the big room with a fir-wood smell right homely and comforting to my heart, and my father was doing what I should have known was my mother's office if weariness had not left me in a sort of stupor — he was laying on the Spanish mahogany board with carved legs a stout and soldierly supper and a tankard of the red Bordeaux wine the French traffickers bring to Loch Finne to trade for cured herring. He would come up now and then where I sat fumbling sleepily at my laces, and put a hand on my head, a curious unmanly sort of thing I never knew my father do before, and I felt put -about at this pet ting, which would have been more like my sister if ever I had had the luck to have one.

"You are tired, Colin, my boy? " he said. " A bit, father, a bit, " I answered, " tough roads you know. I was landed at break of day at Skipness and — Is mother " " Sit in, lochain ! Did you meet many folks on the road ? " "No, sir; a pestilent barren journey as ever I trotted on, and the people seemingly on the hill, for their crops are unco late in the field. " "Ay, ay, lad, so they are," said my father, pull ing back his shoulders a bit — a fairly straight wiry old man, with a name for good swordsman ship in his younger days. I was busy at a cold partridge, and hard at it, when I thought again how curious it was that my father should be afoot in the house at such time of night and no one else about, he so early a bedder for ordinary and never the last to sneck the outer door. "Did you expect any one, father?"

I asked, "that you should be waiting up with the colla tion, and the outer door unsnecked?" " There was never an outer door snecked since you left, Colin," said he, turning awkwardly away and looking hard into the loos of his hand like a wife spaeing fortunes — for sheer want, I could see, of some engagement for his eyes. "I could never get away with the notion that some way like this at night would ye come back to Elrigmore." " Mother would miss me ? " "She did, Colin, she did; I 'm not denying." "She'll be bedded long syne, no doubt, father?" My father looked at me and gulped at the throat. "Bedded indeed, poor Colin," said he, "this very day in the clods of Kilmalieu!" And that was my melancholy home-coming to my father's house of Elrigmore, in the parish of Glenaora, in the shire of Argile.

Chapter II

Every land, every glen or town, I make no doubt, has its own peculiar air or atmosphere that one familiar with the same may never puzzle about in his mind, but finds come over him with a waft at odd moments like the scent of bog-myrtle and tansy in an old clothes-press. Our own air in Glen Shira had ever been very genial and encour aging to me. Even when a young lad, coming back from the low country or the scaling of school, the cool fresh breezes of the morning and the riper airs of the late afternoon went to my head like a mild white wine; very heartsome too, rous ing the laggard spirit that perhaps made me, before, over-apt to sit and dream of the doing of grand things instead of putting out a hand to do them. In Glascow the one thing that I had to grumble most about next to the dreary hours of schooling was the clammy airs of street and close; in Germanie it was worse, a moist weakening windiness full of foreign smells, and I 've seen me that I could gaily march a handful of leagues to get a sniff of the spirity salt sea.

Not that I was one who craves for wrack and bilge at my nose all the time. What I think best is a stance inland from the salt water, where the mountain air, brushing over gall and heather, takes the sting from the sea air, and the two blended give a notion of the fine variousness of life. We had a herdsman once in Elrigmore, who could tell five miles up the glen when the tide was out on Loch Finne. I was never so keen-scented as that ; but when I awakened next day in a camceiled room in Elrigmore, and put my head out at the window to look around, I smelt the heather for a second like an escapade in a dream. Down to Ealan Eagal I went for a plunge in the linn in the old style, and the airs of Shira Glen hung about me like friends and lovers, so well acquaint and jovial. Shira Glen, Shira Glen ! if I was bard I 'd have songs to sing to it, and all I know is one scul duddry verse on a widow that dwelt in Maam !

There at the foot of my father's house, were the winding river, and north and south the brown hills, split asunder by God's goodness, to give a sample of His bounty. Maam, Elrigmore and Elrigbeg, Kilblaan and Ben Bhuidhe — their steep sides hung with cattle, and below crowded the reeking homes of tacksman and cottar; the burns poured hurriedly to the flat beneath their borders of hazel and ash ; to the south, the fresh water we call Dubh Loch, flapping with ducks and fringed with shelisters or water flags and bulrush, and further off the Cowal hills ; to the north, the wood of Drimlee and the wild pass the red Macgregors sometimes took for a back-road to our cattle-folds in cloud of night and darkness. Down on it all poured the polished and hearty sun, birds chirmed on every tree, though it was late in the year; blackcock whirred across the alders, and sturdy heifers bellowed tunefully, knee-deep at the ford.

"Far have I wandered," thinks I to myself, "warring other folks' wars for the humour of it and small wages, but here 's the one place I 've seen yet that was worth hacking good steel for in earnest ! " But still my heart was sore for mother, and sore, too, for the tale of changed times in Camp bell country my father told me over a breakfast of braddan fresh caught in a creel from the Garron River, oaten bannock, and cream. After breakfast I got me into my kilt for town. There are many costumes going about the world, but, with allowance for one and all, I make bold to think our own tartan duds the gallantest of them all. The kilt was my wear when first I went to Glascow College, and many a St. Mungo keelie, no better than myself at classes or at English language, made fun of my brown knees, sometimes not to the advantage of his headpiece when it came to argument and neifs on the Fleshers Haugh.

Pulling on my old breacan this morning in Elrigmore was like donning a fairy garb, and getting back ten years of youth. We have a way of belting on the kilt in real Argile I have seen nowhere else. Ordinarily, our lads take the whole web of tartan cloth, of twenty ells or more, and coil it once round their middle, there belting it, and bring the free end up on the shoulder to pin with a dcalg, not a bad fashion for display and long marches and for sleeping out on the hill with, but sometimes discommodious for warm weather. It was our plan sometimes to make what we called a philabeg, or little kilt, maybe eight yards long, gathered in at the haunch and hung in many pleats behind, the plain brat part in front decked off with a leather sporran, tagged with thong points tied in knots, and with no plaid on the shoulder.

I 've never seen a more jaunty and suitable garb for campaigning, better by far for short sharp tulzies with an enemy than the philamore or the big kilt our people some times throw off them in a skirmish, and fight (the coarsest of them) in their gartered hose and scragged bonnets. With my kilt and the memory of old times about me, I went walking down to Inneraora in the middle of the day. I was prepared for change from the complaints of my father, but never for half the change I found in the burgh town of MacCailein Mor. In my twelve foreign years the place was swamped by incomers, black unwel come Covenanters from the shires of Air and Lanrick — Brices, Yuilles, Rodgers, and Richies — all brought up here by Gillesbeg Gruamach, Marquis of Argile, to teach his clans the art of peace and merchandise.

Half the folk I met be tween the arches and the Big Barns were strangers that seemingly never had tartan on their hurdies, but settled down with a firm foot in the place, I could see by the bold look of them as I passed on the plain-stanes of the street. A queer town this on the edge of Loch Finne, and far in the High lands! There were shops with Lowland stuffs in them, and over the doors signboards telling of the most curious trades for a Campbell burgh — horologers, cordiners, baxters, and suchlike mechanicks that I felt sure poor Donald had small call for. They might be incomers, but they were thirled to Gillesbeg all the same, as I found later on. It was the court day, and his lordship was sitting in judgment on two Strathlachlan fellows, who had been brawling at the Cross the week before and came to knives, more in a frolic than in hot blood, with some of the town lads.

With two or three old friends I went into the Tolbooth to see the play — for play it was, I must confess — in town Inneraora, when justice was due to a man whose name by ill-luck was not Campbell, or whose bonnet-badge was not the myrtle stem. The Tolbooth hall was, and is to this day, a spacious high-ceiled room, well lighted from the bay-side. It was crowded soon after we got in, with Cowalside fishermen and townpeople all the one way or the other, for or against the poor lads in bilboes, who sat, simple-looking enough, be tween the town officers, a pair of old bodaclis in long scarlet coats and carrying tuaghs, Lochaber axes, or halberds that never smelt blood since they came from the smith. It was the first time ever I saw Gillesbeg Grua mach sitting on the bench, and I was startled at the look of the man.

I 've seen some sour dogs in my day — few worse than Ruthven 's rittmasters we met in Swabia, but I never saw a man who, at the first vizzy, had the dour sour countenance of Archibald, Marquis of Argile and Lord of Lochow. Gruamach, or grim-faced, our good Gaels called him in a bye-name, and well he owned it, for over necklace or gorget, I 've seldom seen a sterner jowl or a more sinister eye. And yet, to be fair and honest, this was but the notion one got at a first glint; in awhile I thought little was amiss with his looks as he leaned on the table and cracked in a humoursome laughing way with the panelled jury. He might have been a plain cottar in Glen Aora side rather than King of the Highlands for all the airs he assumed, and when he saw me, better put on in costume than my neighbours in court, he seemingly asked my name in a whisper from the clerk beside him, and finding who I was, cried out in St. Andrew's English — "What !

Young Elrigmore back to the Glens ! I give you welcome, sir, to Baile Inneraora! " I but bowed, and in a fashion saluted, saying nothing in answer, for the whole company glowered at me, all except the home-bred ones, who had better manners. The two MacLachlans denied in the Gaelic the charge the sheriff clerk read to them in a long farrago of English with more foreign words to it than ever I learned the sense of in College. His lordship paid small heed to the witnesses who came forward to swear to the unruliness of the Strathlachlan men, and the jury talked heed lessly with one another in a fashion scandalous to see. The man who had been stabbed — it was but a jag at the shoulder, where the dirk had gone through from front to back with only some loss of blood — was averse to being hard on the panels.

He was a jocular fellow with the right heart for a duello ; and in his nipped burgh Gaelic he made light of the disturbance and his injury. "Nothing but a bit play, my jurymen — Mac- Cailein — ■ my lordship — a bit play. If the poor lad did n't happen to have his dirk out and I to run on it, nobody was a bodle the worse. " " But the law, man " — started the clerk to say. "No case for law at all," said the witness. "It 's an honest brawl among friends, and I could settle the account with them at the next market day, when my shoulder's mended." " Better if you would settle my account for your last pair of brogues, Alasdair M'lver," said a black-avised juryman. "What's your trade?" asked the Marquis of the witness. "I'm at the Coillebhraid silver-mines," said he. " We had a little too much drink, or these MacLachlan gentlemen and I had never come to variance."