Читать книгу The New Road - Munro Neil - Страница 8

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A better day for travel never shone, and Æneas rode through it till the gloaming with uplifted spirit on a track that, till he reached Loch Lomond, gave no trouble to his riding, for, so far, it was the trail to Lowland markets, and the very rock of it was stripped by feet of men and beast. The way was new to him; he saw the wild abyss below Ben Arthur and Ben Ime with wonder, gladdened in the salt breeze of the yellow beaches of Loch Long, and, having come to Tarbet, rested. His way was rougher in the afternoon—along Loch Lomond-side and through Glen Falloch, where Macfarlane crofts were thick upon the braes, and folks were harvesting, and it was not yet dusk when he passed through Tyndrum. There was he on the main route of the Appin drovers and the men from Skye; a change-house by the wayside hummed like a skep of bees with voices, and a field beside the change was occupied by big-horned shaggy cattle bellowing.

Two or three men came out and looked at him when he rode past, themselves no gentler-looking than their herds,—thick, hairy fellows, wearing tartan, one of them at least in fier of war with a target on his back and a leather coat.

Æneas gave a wave in by-going.

“You’re surely at the start of fortune, trim young lad, to be at the riding for’t,” cried out the fellow of the targe: “come in and drop your weariness!” and Æneas looked at him again—he was so like a Roman, with bare knees!

But he went on, unheeding them, and by-and-by his track rose up among the heather for a bit above a plain all strewn with shingle of the winter storms, and there he saw the sun go down upon the wild turmoil of bens they called the Black Mount of Breadalbane. The dark was on when he came to the Bridge of Orchy, and the sky all shivering with stars.

There, too, were droves of cattle round the inn; no sooner had he clattered in upon the hamlet than a score of men were out upon him, even shaggier than the fellows of Tyndrum, and only reassured about the safety of their charges when they found he was a gentleman alone.

The inn was shabby to the point of scandal, no better than a common tavern, smoke-blackened, smelling of the reek of peat and mordants used in dyeing cloth; lit by cruisies, going like a fair with traffic. In the kitchen of it men were supping broth with spoons chained to the tables, and a lad with his head to the side as if in raptures at his own performance stood among the ashes with a set of braying bagpipes.

“Failte!” said the landlord courteously to Æneas. “Stick your horse in anywhere, just man, and what’s your will for supper?”

“Cook for me a bannock and roast a cock,” said Æneas, like a traveller of the hero stories.

The landlord had the hue of drink upon him, and seemed in a merry key.

“Son,” said he (and he, too, thinking of the story), “wouldst thou prefer the big bannock of my anger or the little wee bannock and my blessing?” and Æneas laughed. He took a squint at the baking-board upon the dresser, and said he, more wisely—

“I think we will not mind the bannock, big or little, but I have a friend who should be here by this time from Glen Orchy, and the bird will do between us.”

He had hardly put his horse into a stall when the company burst out again upon the house-front at a clack of hooves, and going out himself he heard the voice of Ninian. Before he could address him, Ninian was off the saddle at a jump, had ordered his attendant to put up the horses for the night, and dashed into the inn without the slightest notice of his friend.

“What is wrong?” asked Æneas, following him.

“Nothing at all,” said Ninian cautiously in English, with a look about him at the drovers. “But ye’ll be better in your bed before the man that’s with me there puts bye the beasts. I wouldn’t for the world that he would see us here together.”

“I’m sorry to be such a bother to you,” said Æneas stiffly. “I thought the width of two good parishes between you and Drimdorran made you master of yourself!”

“That’s the best word ever I heard from ye!” said Ninian heartily. “I’m glad to see ye have your tongue, and I’m thinking we’ll get on no’ bad together. But still-and-on I’m serious about that fellow with me, and if we can get a chamber by ourselves I’ll tell ye what’s my reason.”

The only chamber they could get was that in which they were to sleep, and that not stately. Thither were they led by the landlord’s wife, who said the fowl was now at plucking for their supper, and when the door was shut on her, Ninian turned on Æneas and looked him firmly in the eye.

“Ye didna tell me all, my lad,” says he, “about Drimdorran’s anger. I’m doubting you’re a close one!”

“What else have you been hearing now?” asked Æneas, greatly downed.

“When I was coming up the glen this morning he was out upon the road with letters for my man to leave round here, but I was not long of learning that he knew you were away from Inveraray, and what he really wanted was to know if I could tell your destination. That, I’ll assure ye, put me in a corner. But I was able for his lordship! ‘By all accounts,’ says I, ‘he is riding to the Lowlands.’ Then what in all the earth should happen but Drimdorran burst upon you for a thief——”

“Now is not that the swine!” cried Æneas, furious.

“Stop you! I knew the man was talking nonsense, and I was right, for in a bit the only thing he had against you was a snuffbox. But a body more concerned about a snuffbox never breathed the morning air of Scotland! He swore he would be even with you if ye ever set a foot again within the barony. You will see yourself, now, the position I was in—I had myself to think about as well as you, and if I was kent to be tramping through the North in company with the gentleman who stole the snuffbox, after telling Old Drimdorran yon about the Lowlands road, it would not look respectable.”

“Good God!” cried Æneas, “you’re surely not believing that I have the body’s snuffbox!”

“Tach! What’s the odds about a paltry snuffbox?” Ninian said lightly.

“But, man! I haven’t got it! It’s yonder in his house,” cried Æneas. “Will you not believe me?”

“I believe every word of you,” said Ninian, “but if there’s not a snuffbox missing, what’s the cause of yon one’s tirravee?”

“I’ll tell you that,” said Æneas, and straightway laid before him all his tale without a word of reservation. Away from Janet Campbell’s presence the dovecote incident now appeared quite innocent; he did not even baulk to tell Drimdorran’s charge about the desk.

“If ye had told me this before,” said Ninian, “I could have cleared the air for you. It’s droll that my girl Janet should jalouse the truth before myself. She didna know, of course, about the doocot, but she guessed ye were with Margaret somewhere when ye should have been at your tasks whenever I said that Drimdorran had been angry looking for ye. Now I can tell ye something. When I was there colloguing with Drimdorran in his closet, he turned him from the window once as he was walking up and down the room, and with a changed complexion made a dash to look his desk; he went out of the room and in again like lightning. ‘Ye havena seen the young folk?’ he inquired of me, and I had not, but thought ye would be at your lessons. Ye werena there, he said, and out again and left me cooling twenty minutes, by my lone. I started wondering in the Gaelic what was bothering him, and walking to the window saw a thing that put me to my calculations. The window of his room, you may have noticed, shows the window of the doocot in between the branches of the thicket, and a light was there, the first time I have ever seen it. I watched it six or seven minutes, then the light went out.”

“Then after all it was her father!” cried out Æneas, “and he knew that we were there.”

“Not a bit of doubt of it! I can see that now, although I thought when he came back he had not left the house, because he still had on his slippers. But there was something in his manner curious; he was a troubled man who found it hard to keep his mind upon our business. He asked me just the once again if I had seen you anywhere, and in a key that showed ye werena in his graces, and all the time was I not thinking it was just because of the neglected lessons?”

“There’s no doubt it was he,” said Æneas. “We thought at first it was, and then I was led astray by thinking he and you had been together all the time.”

“He had plenty of time to reach the doocot and be back,” said Ninian.

“But what,” said Æneas, “was he lamenting for?”

“I would lament myself if I had any thought a girl of mine was yonder,” answered Ninian. “It’s aye a chancy thing a buzzard in a doocot. The difference with me is that the neck of ye would likely have been twisted. He’s so keen on Campbell for the girl he wouldna risk that scandal. But that’s all bye wi’t; there’s this business of the snuffbox; it’s a handy story to give colour to his putting ye away without entangling the reputation of his daughter, and it’s maybe just a pity that we’re on the march together after that bit tale of mine about the Lowlands road. If this man with me takes the story back to-morrow that ye met me here, the tune is through the fiddle, and that’s the way I want ye in your bed, or out of sight at least till he is gone.”

So Æneas took his supper in the bedded room, and Ninian kept his man engaged till he too went to bed, and in the morning got him off at break of day.

“All clear now; we’ll have a bite of breakfast, and take our feet to it ourselves,” he said to Æneas, who had not slept a wink.

“First of all I have to send my horse back,” mentioned Æneas, and the other started.

“No other horse goes back from here!” he said with firmness. “The man ye would send back wi’t couldna hold his tongue. No, no, ye’ll have to sell it. Some of these men there for the Tryst at Crieff will buy it from ye.”

To this was Æneas willing, since he had his uncle’s consent to do what he thought best with the horse, and Ninian soon found among the drovers one who had a fancy for a bargain. They went together to the stable, and no sooner had the Messenger beheld the pony, dapple-grey, that carried Æneas from Inveraray, than he gave a cry.

“My grief! we’re done for’t now!” says he, and backed out of the stable, Æneas behind him.

“What’s the use of me telling lies if ye go and bring a horse like that with ye?” he asked, dejected. “Ye might as well go round the country with a drum, to call attention. That speckled one is known to everybody in the seven parishes, and my man’s off to Inveraray with the story that it’s here. He couldna well mistake it, and in the stall next to his own! I thought there was something droll about his manner when we parted.”

For a while this new misfortune dauntened Ninian, but he was not a man to nurse despair: they sold the horse, between them, for a sum of fifteen pounds shaken out of as many sporrans. They humped their pokes in which they put some cakes and cheese; Æneas cut for himself a hazel stick, to be upsides with Ninian who bore a curious thick rattan, and it seemed as if the world would fly below them till the dusk as they took up the water-side.

It was a mountain step that Ninian had—spanged out and supple, and the burgess of him left behind. He sniffed the air of gale and heather with applause, and searched the mounts before them and their corries with the eyes of birds that have come far from wandering and know their home. Now would he run upon a hillock with droll sounds of pleasure like a whinny, now leap the boulders and stretch flat among the thyme and thrift to peer into the dark, small pools of stream. “Ah, now,” thought Æneas, “I have here with me but a child,” and yet it was, himself, a boy he felt, so bland and pleasant was the morning and his heart so strong, so sweet the thinking of the North before him, and the things that might befall. So he, too, stretched brave legs, and in the great wide moorland hollow of the upper Orchy looked ardently upon the massing clouds that floated silverly about the confines of the world.

They had walked but half an hour when Ninian all at once stopped short, and staring at a pool saw salmon leaping.

“Mo chreach!” said he, “Look yonder!” and began to fidget with his stick. “I was just thinking what two daft fellows we are to be taking the world for our pillow like this, as the saying goes, without first making up our minds together what’s to be the tack we’ll steer on.” And aye the corner of his eye was on the leaping fish.

“The nearest way is the best as far as I am concerned,” said Æneas.

“I would never take the nearest way anywhere,” said Ninian. “Half the sport of life is starting and the other half is getting on the way, and everything is finished when it’s done,” and he almost jumped as another fellow in the water splashed. “Put we down our packs just here and be considering cautiously what airts we are to follow, for, thank God, there’s many ways before us, every one as splendid as the other, like MacVurich’s songs. To save the time when we’re considering, I’ll try a cast,” and in a second he had whipped the ferrule off his sturdy cane and out of it there came three parts, at sight of which the other smiled to have Miss Janet’s reading of her father proved so soon.

Off went the poke from Ninian’s back, and out of it he fetched some tackle ready busked with flies. He put the rod together, trembling with excitation, keeping up the while a constant chatter on their plans as if no other thing engaged his mind, and still and on his eye was aye upon the bonny fish.

“What we’ll do, lad,” he said, “is to put the night bye in a change-house yonder close on Buachaille Etive. It’s only fourteen miles or thereabouts, but it’s the only one between us and the Spean, and that is twice as far again. For a gentleman on my business there’s many a bit of information to be picked up on a night in that inn beside the Moor of Rannoch. It’s close enough on Glen Coe to learn what’s stirring there among MacIan’s folk I darena venture in among; forbye there’s lochs beside it on the moor that’s full of fish.”

“If it’s fish we’re out for it is not soon we will be at Inverness,” said Æneas ruefully, sitting down upon his pack and looking at the other stepping out already on the stones.

“Men and love! look at yon fellow!” cried Ninian in Gaelic over his shoulder. “God’s splendour! is he not the heavy gentleman! And me with this bit trifle of a stick not better than a wand.” All his wind seemed fighting in his breast; his very voice was changed with agitation. But still he kept up for a moment longer the pretence of interest in their route, and cried back to the lad upon the bank, “Up Loch Laggan-side or through Glen Roy.... Oh, Mary! is not that the red one!”

For half an hour was not another word from him; he was a man bewitched, that crawled among the rushes of the bank and crouched in shadows of the boulders, and threw the lures across the linn among the playing fish, with eyes that seemed to grudge each moment that they were not on the water.

Æneas lay back and crushed the mint and thyme that gave the day a scent for ever after in his memory: fishing had never been a sport of his, and he but wondered at his comrade’s patience. For long it looked as if the fisher worked in vain; great fishes surged and leaped about his hair-lines and his feathers, but they never touched them.

“Aren’t they the frightened dirt!” cried Ninian at last. “Not a bit of gallant spirit in them! And me so honest, striving wi’ them! Stop you, though!” and he fixed another lure.

And Æneas, lying in his hollow, fell asleep. When he awoke the sun was straight above them, and his friend was still bent on the water-edge and whipping in the eddies where the fish still lay. An ear of Æneas was on the ground; he rather felt than heard a horseman galloping upon the track a little way above the river. Such furious haste was in the rider’s manner that Æneas walked up the brae to watch him, and hailed him as he galloped past.

He got no answer. The horseman never even raised a hand, but swept upon his way as if some fiend were after him—a boorish fellow with a head like a two-boll bag of meal and a plaid upon him.

“We are in the land of poor manners, surely,” thought Æneas, and went down again beside his friend, and just as he got to him, saw him give a twitch. Ninian, crouched knee-deep now in the water, turned as he came nigh him with an aspect that astonished Æneas. All his face was puckered up with exaltation; in his eyes a curious glitter, proud and savage.

“Tha e agam, a bhruide!—I have him, the brute!” he screamed, and slowly backed out of the stream with his rod-point bent. Æneas watched him, fascinated, play the fish. It threw itself into the air, and fell with great commotion in the middle of the pool, and then the line went whirling out of the wooden pirn the whole length of the pool, which ended in a shallow narrow channel. Ninian, with his teeth clenched and his lips drawn back from them, all in a kind of a glorious agony, strained lightly on the rod and span the reel at every yard he gained upon his quarry. Repeatedly it burst away again and leaped until the pool was boiling with its fury.

“If I had only just a decent stick instead of this child’s playock!” said the angler in anguish. “I never had it in my mind to touch such big ones!”

He fought with it for near an hour; at last he had it close upon the bank; they saw it rolling at their feet blue-backed, and Æneas stretched a hand to grasp the line and lift it.

“Put a finger upon a hair of that and there is not a timber of your body but I’ll break!” roared Ninian. “I will take him to this stone and you must tail him. Catch him by the small and grip as if it were the very bars of heaven and you by God rejected!”

Æneas gripped. The fish moved mightily within his hand, writhed with extraordinary power, and breaking slimy from his grasp, snapped Ninian’s line. It slowly turned a moment, and Ninian with a yell dropped rod, plucked out the knife below his elbow, threw himself upon the fish, and stabbed it through the gills.

“Sin thu!” he roared, and heaved it high upon the bank. “Oh, Æneas!” he cried with brimming eyes, and, all dripping, put his arms about his friend and squeezed him to his breast. He skipped then, like a child, about the fish, and fondled it like one that loved it, saying the most beautiful things in death were a child, a salmon, and a woodcock. Then broke he into a curious Gaelic brag about his prey,—he spoke of it as if it were leviathan.

“It is not so very big a fish as all that!” said Æneas, and at that the other looked again upon his prize, and his jaw fell.

“By the Books and you’re right!” said he with some vexation. “It’s just a middling one, and red at that! And that is mighty droll, for I was sure this moment that he was a monster, and the side of him like a silver ship. But I think you’ll must agree I played him pretty! Look you at this stick, that’s only meant for catching trouts! But now we must be stretching. You were sleeping yonder like a headstone and I hadna the heart to waken you.”

With two slashes of the small black knife he ripped the ends from off the salmon, and he shoved its middle, wrapped with ferns, into his knapsack.

“Whatever comes of it we have our dinner,” he exclaimed.

“That was a surly dog who passed,” said Æneas, as they turned to leave the river.

“Where? When?” cried Ninian, surprised; so keen had he been on the fish he had not heard nor seen the horseman.

“That’s gey droll!” he said, when Æneas told him what had happened. “A gentleman might pass like that without the word of day to you but not a common man in all Argyll; there’s something curious in it—something curious! He wasna, was he, like a man in drink?”

“I think not,” answered Æneas.

“There’s two or three things only sends a man at gallop through Breadalbane when he’s sober—the ailment of bairns in women and the need for knee-wives; a bit of mischief in the rear to run away from, or a scheme ahead.”

“He might be just a man who went with letters,” said Æneas.

“Letters don’t go at the gallop through this country yet,” said Ninian, “whatever they may do when the Road is finished. They crawl. But still-and-on there’s something in the notion; it might well be that the man had letters. And I don’t like letters. They make trouble. They’re sly and underhand. They may be going past ye in broad daylight and you not know. I never write a letter myself if I can help it; it’s putting words in jail, and it’s not the man alone who puts them in can get them out again; too many have the keys. I wish I had seen the fellow; there would certainly be something in him that you did not notice that would mean a lot to me.”

It seemed to Æneas that this was making far too much of what was, after all, a commonplace affair, but he was soon to find that everything that happened, night or day, set up this curious kind of speculation in his friend.