“Mother!” he exclaimed, with his arms around her, almost doubtful of her actual presence. “I thought it was your wraith.”
“I fear I come at an awkward time,” she said pathetically; “but all alone in this strange city, what was I to do?”
“You come at the very time I want you,” he replied. “I had—I had forgotten things. I have been play-acting, and the play is done! Was this”—and he turned to the pseudo-secretary—“was this a part of your entertainment, Lord Balgowie?”
“It is a most effective curtain,” said the other, smiling kindly on the little woman; “but it was not, strictly speaking, in the manuscript. I am glad the play, as you say, is over; for I had begun to think you took the part, in one respect, too seriously. I am honoured to meet you, madam; you must be wearied after such a journey. Both of you go at once to the rue Adolphe Yvon, and I shall make the requisite apologies to the company.”
He saw them to the street, and returned to join the guests. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, with a manner they had never seen in him before, “Le Pompadour has taken his leave à l’anglais, and my little joke has terminated in the most dramatic fashion. I have long had a desire to see, as a spectator, what for a dozen years I was under the absurd impression was a life of pleasure; and, at the cost of paying the bills myself and lending my worthy young compatriot my name for a few months, I have had the most delicious and instructive entertainment. In many respects he filled the part of Lord Balgowie better than ever I could do; but two things rather spoiled his admirable presentation—a homely taste in viands, and his honest heart!”
THE TALE OF THE BOON COMPANION.
“Every man his boon companion, every man his maid,” they say in Argyll. Somewhere in the wide world are both the man and the maid, but not always do they come to your door. You may pass the maid at the market, never thinking she was meant to mother your bairns, and her lot thereafter may be over many hills, baking bannocks of oaten meal on another man’s hearth—that’s your ill-fortune; the boon companion may wander by the change-house where you sit drinking late—drinking late and waiting to learn the very songs he knows, and he may never come that road again; but whether that is good for you or ill is the most cunning of God’s secrets. I could tell nine hundred tales and nine of boon companions who met the friend they were meant for, but I have still to learn the art of seeing the end from the beginning of any comradeship.
This particular and ancient history that I am telling is a story that is to be heard on winter nights in the fir-wood bothies of Upper Loch Finne. It is the story of an affair that happened in the wild year before the beginning of the little wars of Lorn.
Colkitto Macdonald and his Irishry and the Athol clans came, as the world knows, to Argyll, and carried the flambeau and the sword through every glen in the country-side. Into our peaceable neighbourhood, so harmless, so thriving and content, they marched on a winter’s end—wild bearded fellows, ravenous at the eyes, lean as starved roebucks, cruel as the Badenoch wolves. They put mother and child to the pike; the best men of all our Gaelic people found the hero’s death when standing up against these caterans, but uselessly. Carnus, Cladich, and Knapdale are thick with green spots where Clan Diarmaid’s massacred people fell in the troubles.
To that rich and beautiful country the spring of the year comes always with vigour for the young heart. One feels the fumes of myrtle and fir in the head like a strong wine. It is the season of longing and exploits, and, if adventure is not in the way, the healthy young blood will be stirred to love or manly comradeship. Then the eye is keenest for the right girl, or (it may happen) the boon companion comes by the right chance, and leads the one waiting for him into the highroads where magic is at every corner, and old care is a carle to snap a finger at. There are no meats so sappy, no drink so generous and hearty, no sleep so sound as in that age and time.