CHAPTER XXXV.—FAREWELL.
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.