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CHAPTER XXIX: FLORIMEL AND DUNCAN

In the course of a fortnight, Lord Meikleham and his aunt, the bold faced countess, had gone, and the marquis, probably finding it a little duller in consequence, began to pay visits in the neighbourhood. Now and then he would be absent for a week or two—at Bog o' Gight, or Huntly Lodge, or Frendraught, or Balvenie, and although Lady Florimel had not much of his society, she missed him at meals, and felt the place grown dreary from his being nowhere within its bounds.

On his return from one of his longer absences, he began to talk to her about a governess; but, though in a playful way, she rebelled utterly at the first mention of such an incubus. She had plenty of material for study, she said, in the library, and plenty of amusement in wandering about with the sullen Demon, who was her constant companion during his absences; and if he did force a governess upon her, she would certainly murder the woman, if only for the sake of bringing him into trouble. Her easygoing father was amused, laughed, and said nothing more on the subject at the time.

Lady Florimel did not confess that she had begun to feel her life monotonous, or mention that she had for some time been cultivating the acquaintance of a few of her poor neighbours, and finding their odd ways of life and thought and speech interesting. She had especially taken a liking to Duncan MacPhail, in which, strange to say, Demon, who had hitherto absolutely detested the appearance of any one not attired as a lady or gentleman, heartily shared. She found the old man so unlike anything she had ever heard or read of—so full of grand notions in such contrast with his poor conditions; so proud yet so overflowing with service—dusting a chair for her with his bonnet, yet drawing himself up like an offended hidalgo if she declined to sit in it—more than content to play the pipes while others dined, yet requiring a personal apology from the marquis himself for a practical joke! so full of kindness and yet of revenges—lamenting over Demon when he hurt his foot, yet cursing, as she overheard him once, in fancied solitude, with an absolute fervour of imprecation, a continuous blast of poetic hate which made her shiver; and the next moment sighing out a most wailful coronach on his old pipes. It was all so odd, so funny, so interesting! It nearly made her aware of human nature as an object of study. But lady Florimel had never studied anything yet, had never even perceived that anything wanted studying, that is, demanded to be understood. What appeared to her most odd, most inconsistent, and was indeed of all his peculiarities alone distasteful to her, was his delight in what she regarded only as the menial and dirty occupation of cleaning lamps and candlesticks; the poetic side of it, rendered tenfold poetic by his blindness, she never saw.

Then he had such tales to tell her—of mountain, stream, and lake; of love and revenge; of beings less and more than natural —brownie and Boneless, kelpie and fairy; such wild legends also, haunting the dim emergent peaks of mist swathed Celtic history; such songs—come down, he said, from Ossian himself—that sometimes she would sit and listen to him for hours together.

It was no wonder then that she should win the heart of the simple old man speedily and utterly; for what can bard desire beyond a true listener—a mind into which his own may, in verse or tale or rhapsody, in pibroch or coronach, overflow? But when, one evening, in girlish merriment, she took up his pipes, blew the bag full, and began to let a highland air burst fitfully from the chanter, the jubilation of the old man broke all the bounds of reason. He jumped from his seat and capered about the room, calling her all the tenderest and most poetic names his English vocabulary would afford him; then abandoning the speech of the Sassenach, as if in despair of ever uttering himself through its narrow and rugged channels, overwhelmed her with a cataract of soft flowing Gaelic, returning to English only as his excitement passed over into exhaustion—but in neither case aware of the transition.

Her visits were the greater comfort to Duncan, that Malcolm was now absent almost every night, and most days a good many hours asleep; had it been otherwise, Florimel, invisible for very width as was the gulf between them, could hardly have made them so frequent. Before the fishing season was over, the piper had been twenty times on the verge of disclosing every secret in his life to the high born maiden.

"It's a pity you haven't a wife to take care of you, Mr MacPhail," she said one evening. "You must be so lonely without a woman to look after you!"

A dark cloud came over Duncan's face, out of which his sightless eyes gleamed.

"She'll haf her poy, and she'll pe wanting no wife," he said sullenly. "Wifes is paad."

"Ah!" said Florimel, the teasing spirit of her father uppermost for the moment, "that accounts for your swearing so shockingly the other day?"

"Swearing was she? Tat will pe wrong. And who was she'll pe swearing at?"

"That's what I want you to tell me, Mr MacPhail."

"Tid you'll hear me, my laty?" he asked in a tone of reflection, as if trying to recall the circumstance.

"Indeed I did. You frightened me so that I didn't dare come in."

"Ten she'll pe punished enough. Put it wass no harm to curse ta wicket Cawmill."

"It was not Glenlyon—it wasn't a man at all; it was a woman you were in such a rage with."

"Was it ta rascal's wife, ten, my laty?" he asked, as if he were willing to be guided to the truth that he might satisfy her, but so much in the habit of swearing, that he could not well recollect the particular object at a given time.

"Is his wife as bad as himself then?"

"Wifes is aalways worser."

"But what is it makes you hate him so dreadfully? Is he a bad man?"

"A fery pad man, my tear laty! He is tead more than a hundert years."

"Then why do you hate him so?"

"Och hone! Ton't you'll never hear why?"

"He can't have done you any harm."

"Not done old Tuncan any harm! Tidn't you'll know what ta tog would pe toing to her aancestors of Glenco? Och hone! Och hone! Gif her ta tog's heart of him in her teeth, and she'll pe tearing it—tearing it—tearing it!" cried the piper in a growl of hate, and with the look of a maddened tiger, the skin of his face drawn so tight over the bones that they seemed to show their whiteness through it.

"You quite terrify me," said Florimel, really shocked. "If you talk like that, I must go away. Such words are not fit for a lady to hear."

The old man heard her rise: he fell on his knees, and held out his arms in entreaty.

"She's pegging your pardons, my laty. Sit town once more, anchel from hefen, and she'll not say it no more. Put she'll pe telling you ta story, and then you'll pe knowing tat what 'll not pe fit for laties to hear, as coot laties had to pear!"

He caught up the Lossie pipes, threw them down again, searched in a frenzy till he found his own, blew up the bag with short thick pants, forced from them a low wail, which ended in a scream—then broke into a kind of chant, the words of which were something like what follows: he had sense enough to remember that for his listener they must be English. Doubtless he was translating as he went on. His chanter all the time kept up a low pitiful accompaniment, his voice only giving expression to the hate and execration of the song.

Black rise the hills round the vale of Glenco; Hard rise its rocks up the sides of the sky; Cold fall the streams from the snow on their summits; Bitter are the winds that search for the wanderer; False are the vapours that trail o'er the correi Blacker than caverns that hollow the mountain, Harder than crystals in the rock's bosom Colder than ice borne down in the torrents, More bitter than hail windswept o'er the correi, Falser than vapours that hide the dark precipice, Is the heart of the Campbell, the hell hound Glenlyon.

Is it blood that is streaming down into the valley? Ha! 'tis the red coated blood hounds of Orange.

To hunt the red deer, is this a fit season? Glenlyon, said Ian, the son of the chieftain: What seek ye with guns and with gillies so many?

Friends, a warm fire, good cheer, and a drink, Said the liar of hell, with the death in his heart.

Come home to my house—it is poor, but your own.

Cheese of the goat, and flesh of black cattle, And dew of the mountain to make their hearts joyful, They gave them in plenty, they gave them with welcome; And they slept on the heather, and skins of the red deer.

Och hone for the chief! God's curse on the traitors! Och hone for the chief—the father of his people! He is struck through the brain, and not in the battle!

Och hone for his lady! the teeth of the badgers Have torn the bright rings from her slender fingers! They have stripped her and shamed her in sight of her clansmen! They have sent out her ghost to cry after her husband.

Nine men did Glenlyon slay, nine of the true hearts! His own host he slew, the laird of Inverriggen.

Fifty they slew—the rest fled to the mountains. In the deep snow the women and children Fell down and slept, nor awoke in the morning.

The bard of the glen, alone among strangers, Allister, bard of the glen and the mountain, Sings peace to the ghost of his father's father, Slain by the curse of Glenco, Glenlyon.

Curse on Glenlyon! His wife's fair bosom Dry up with weeping the fates of her children! Curse on Glenlyon! Each drop of his heart's blood Turn to red fire and hum through his arteries! The pale murdered faces haunt him to madness! The shrieks of the ghosts from the mists of Glenco Ring in his ears through the caves of perdition! Man, woman, and child, to the last born Campbell, Rush howling to hell, and fall cursing Glenlyon—The liar who drank with his host and then slew him!

While he chanted, the whole being of the bard seemed to pour itself out in the feeble and quavering tones that issued from his withered throat. His voice grew in energy for a while as he proceeded, but at last gave way utterly under the fervour of imprecation, and ceased. Then, as if in an agony of foiled hate, he sent from chanter and drone a perfect screech of execration, with which the instrument dropped from his hands, and he fell back in his chair, speechless.

Lady Florimel started to her feet, and stood trembling for a moment, hesitating whether to run from the cottage and call for help, or do what she might for the old man herself. But the next moment he came to himself, saying, in a tone of assumed composure:

"You'll pe knowing now, my laty, why she'll pe hating ta very name of Clenlyon."

"But it was not your grandfather that Glenlyon killed, Mr MacPhail—was it?"

"And whose grandfather would it pe then, my lady?" returned Duncan, drawing himself up.

"The Glenco people weren't MacPhails. I've read the story of the massacre, and know all about that."

"He might haf been her mother's father, my laty."

"But you said father's father, in your song."

"She said Allister's father's father, my laty, she pelieves."

"I can't quite understand you, Mr MacPhail."

"Well, you see, my laty, her father was out in the forty-five, and fought ta redcoats at Culloden. Tat's his claymore on ta wall there—a coot plade—though she's not an Andrew Ferrara. She wass forched in Clenco, py a cousin of her own, Angus py name, and she's a fery coot plade: she'll can well whistle ta pibroch of Ian Loin apout ta ears of ta Sassenach. Her crandfather wass with his uncle in ta pattle of Killiecrankie after Tundee—a creat man, my laty, and he died there; and so tid her cranduncle, for a fillain of a Mackay, from Lord Reay's cursed country—where they aalways wass repels, my laty—chust as her uncle was pe cutting town ta wicket Cheneral Mackay, turned him round, without gifing no warnings, and killed ta poor man at won plow."

"But what has it all to do with your name? I declare I don't know what to call you."

"Call her your own pard, old Tuncan MacPhail, my sweet laty, and haf ta patience with her, and she'll pe telling you aall apout eferyting, only you must gif her olt prams time to tumple temselfs apout. Her head grows fery stupid.—Yes, as she was saying, after ta ploody massacre at Culloden, her father had to hide himself away out of sight, and to forge himself—I mean to put upon himself a name tat tidn't mean himself at aal. And my poor mother, who pored me—pig old Tuncan—ta fery tay of ta pattle, would not be hearing won wort of him for tree months tat he was away; and when he would pe creep pack like a fox to see her one fine night when ta moon was not pe up, they'll make up an acreement to co away together for a time, and to call temselfs MacPhails. But py and py tey took their own nems again."

"And why haven't you your own name now? sure it 's a much prettier name."

"Pecause she'll pe taking the other, my tear laty."

"And why?"

"Pecause—pecause … She will tell you another time. She'll pe tired to talk more apout ta cursed Cawmills this fery tay."

"Then Malcolm's name is not MacPhail either?"

"No, it is not, my lady."

"Is he your son's son, or your daughter's son."

"Perhaps not, my laty."

"I want to know what his real name is. Is it the same as yours? It doesn't seem respectable not to have your own names."

"Oh yes, my laty, fery respectable. Many coot men has to porrow nems of teir neighpours. We've all cot our fery own names, only in pad tays, my laty, we ton't aalways know which tey are exactly; but we aal know which we are each other, and we get on fery coot without the names. We lay tem py with our Sappath clothes for a few tays, and they come out ta fresher and ta sweeter for keeping ta Sappath so long, my laty. And now she'll pe playing you ta coronach of Clenco, which she was make herself for her own pipes."

"I want to know first what Malcolm's real name is," persisted Lady Florimel.

"Well, you see, my laty," returned Duncan, "some people has names and does not know them; and some people hasn't names, and will pe supposing they haf."

"You are talking riddles, Mr MacPhail, and I don't like riddles," said Lady Florimel, with an offence which was not altogether pretended.

"Yes surely—oh, yes! Call her Tuncan MacPhail, and neither more or less, my laty—not yet," he returned, most evasively.

"I see you won't trust me," said the girl, and rising quickly, she bade him goodnight, and left the cottage.

Duncan sat silent for a few minutes, as if in distress: then slowly his hand went out feeling for his pipes, wherewithal he consoled himself till bedtime.

Having plumed herself upon her influence with the old man, believing she could do anything with him she pleased, Lady Florimel was annoyed at failing to get from him any amplification of a hint in itself sufficient to cast a glow of romance about the youth who had already interested her so much. Duncan also was displeased, but with himself; for disappointing one he loved so much. With the passion for confidence which love generates, he had been for some time desirous of opening his mind to her upon the matter in question, and had indeed, on this very occasion, intended to lead up to a certain disclosure; but just at the last he clung to his secret, and could not let it go.

Compelled thereto against the natural impulse of the Celtic nature, which is open and confiding, therefore in the reaction cunning and suspicious, he had practised reticence so long, that he now recoiled from a breach of the habit which had become a second, false nature. He felt like one who, having caught a bird, holds it in his hand with the full intention of letting it go, but cannot make up his mind to do it just yet, knowing that, the moment he opens his hand, nothing can make that bird his again.

A whole week passed, during which Lady Florimel did not come near him, and the old man was miserable. At length one evening, for she chose her time when Malcolm must be in some vague spot between the shore and the horizon, she once more entered the piper's cottage. He knew her step the moment she turned the corner from the shore, and she had scarcely set her foot across the threshold before he broke out:

"Ach, my tear laty! and tid you'll think old Tuncan such a stoopit old man as not to 'll pe trusting ta light of her plind eyes? Put her laty must forgif her, for it is a long tale, not like anything you'll pe in ta way of peliefing; and aalso, it'll pe put ta tassel to another long tale which tears ta pag of her heart, and makes her feel a purning tevil in ta pocket of her posom. Put she'll tell you ta won half of it that pelongs to her poy Malcolm. He 's a pig poy now, put he wasn't aalways. No. He was once a fery little smaal chylt, in her old plind aarms. Put tey wasn't old ten. Why must young peoples crow old, my laty? Put she'll pe clad of it herself; for she'll can hate ta petter."

Lady Florimel, incapable either of setting forth the advantages of growing old, or of enforcing the duty, which is the necessity, of forgiveness, answered with some commonplace; and as, to fortify his powers of narration, a sailor would cut himself a quid, and a gentleman fill his glass, or light a fresh cigar, Duncan slowly filled his bag. After a few strange notes as of a spirit wandering in pain, he began his story. But I will tell the tale for him, lest the printed oddities of his pronunciation should prove wearisome. I must mention first, however, that he did not commence until he had secured a promise from Lady Florimel that she would not communicate his revelations to Malcolm, having, he said, very good reasons for desiring to make them himself so soon as a fitting time should have arrived.

Avoiding all mention of his reasons either for assuming another name or for leaving his native glen, he told how, having wandered forth with no companion but his bagpipes, and nothing he could call his own beyond the garments and weapons which he wore, he traversed the shires of Inverness and Nairn and Moray, offering at every house on his road, to play the pipes, or clean the lamps and candlesticks, and receiving sufficient return, mostly in the shape of food and shelter, but partly in money, to bring him all the way from Glenco to Portlossie: somewhere near the latter was a cave in which his father, after his flight from Culloden, had lain in hiding for six months, in hunger and cold, and in constant peril of discovery and death, all in that region being rebels—for as such Duncan of course regarded the adherents of the houses of Orange and Hanover; and having occasion, for reasons, as I have said, unexplained, in his turn to seek, like a hunted stag, a place far from his beloved glen, wherein to hide his head, he had set out to find the cave, which the memory of his father would render far more of a home to him now than any other place left him on earth.

On his arrival at Portlossie, he put up at a small public house in the Seaton, from which he started the next morning to find the cave—a somewhat hopeless as well as perilous proceeding; but his father's description of its situation and character had generated such a vivid imagination of it in the mind of the old man, that he believed himself able to walk straight into the mouth of it; nor was the peril so great as must at first appear, to one who had been blind all his life. But he searched the whole of the east side of the promontory of Scaurnose, where it must lie, without finding such a cave as his father had depicted. Again and again he fancied he had come upon it, but was speedily convinced of his mistake. Even in one who had his eyesight, however, such a failure would not surprise those who understand how rapidly as well as constantly the whole faces of some cliffs are changing by the fall of portions —destroying the very existence of some caves, and utterly changing the mouths of others.

From a desire of secrecy, occasioned by the haunting dread of its approaching necessity, day and night being otherwise much alike to him, Duncan generally chose the night for his wanderings amongst the rocks, and probings of their hollows. One night, or rather morning, for he believed it was considerably past twelve o'clock, he sat weary in a large open cave, listening to the sound of the rising tide, and fell fast asleep, his bagpipes, without which he never went abroad, across his knees. He came to himself with a violent start, for the bag seemed to be moving, and its last faint sound of wail was issuing. Heavens! there was a baby lying upon it.—For a time he sat perfectly bewildered, but at length concluded that some wandering gipsy had made him a too ready gift of the child she did not prize. Some one must be near. He called aloud, but there was no answer. The child began to cry. He sought to soothe it, and its lamentation ceased. The moment that its welcome silence responded to his blandishments, the still small "Here I am" of the Eternal Love whispered its presence in the heart of the lonely man: something lay in his arms so helpless that to it, poor and blind and forsaken of man and woman as he was, he was yet a tower of strength. He clasped the child to his bosom, and rising forthwith set out, but with warier steps than heretofore, over the rocks for the Seaton.

Already he would have much preferred concealing him lest he should be claimed—a thing, in view of all the circumstances, not very likely—but for the child's sake, he must carry him to The Salmon, where he had free entrance at any hour—not even the public house locking its doors at night.

Thither then he bore his prize, shielding him from the night air as well as he could, with the bag of his pipes. But he waked none of the inmates; lately fed, the infant slept for several hours, and then did his best both to rouse and astonish the neighbourhood.

Closely questioned, Duncan told the truth, but cunningly, in such manner that some disbelieved him altogether, while others, who had remarked his haunting of the rocks ever since his arrival, concluded that he had brought the child with him and had kept him hidden until now. The popular conviction at length settled to this, that the child was the piper's grandson—but base born, whom therefore he was ashamed to acknowledge, although heartily willing to minister to and bring up as a foundling. The latter part of this conclusion, however, was not alluded to by Duncan in his narrative: it was enough to add that he took care to leave the former part of it undisturbed.

The very next day, he found himself attacked by a low fever; but as he had hitherto paid for everything he had at the inn, they never thought of turning him out when his money was exhausted; and as he had already by his discreet behaviour, and the pleasure his bagpipes afforded, made himself not a few friends amongst the simple hearted people of the Seaton, some of the benevolent inhabitants of the upper town, Miss Horn in particular, were soon interested in his favour, who supplied him with everything he required until his recovery. As to the baby, he was gloriously provided for; he had at least a dozen foster mothers at once—no woman in the Seaton who could enter a claim founded on the possession of the special faculty required, failing to enter that claim—with the result of an amount of jealousy almost incredible.

Meantime the town drummer fell sick and died, and Miss Horn made a party in favour of Duncan. But for the baby, I doubt if he would have had a chance, for he was a stranger and interloper; the women, however, with the baby in their forefront, carried the day. Then his opponents retreated behind the instrument, and strove hard to get the drum recognised as an essential of the office. When Duncan recoiled from the drum with indignation, but without losing the support of his party, the opposition had the effrontery to propose a bell: that he rejected with a vehemence of scorn that had nearly ruined his cause; and, assuming straightway the position of chief party in the proposed contract, declared that no noise of his making should be other than the noise of bagpipes; that he would rather starve than beat drum or ring bell; if he served in the case, it must be after his own fashion—and so on. Hence it was no wonder, some of the bailies being not only small men and therefore conceited, but powerful whigs, who despised everything highland, and the bagpipes especially, if the affair did for awhile seem hopeless. But the more noble minded of the authorities approved of the piper none the less for his independence, a generosity partly rooted, it must be confessed, in the amusement which the annoyance of their weaker brethren afforded them—whom at last they were happily successful in outvoting, so that the bagpipes superseded the drum for a season.

It may be asked whence it arose that Duncan should now be willing to quit his claim to any paternal property in Malcolm, confessing that he was none of his blood.

One source of the change was doubtless the desire of confidences between himself and Lady Florimel, another, the growing conviction, generated it may be by the admiration which is born of love, that the youth had gentle blood in his veins; and a third, that Duncan had now so thoroughly proved the heart of Malcolm as to have no fear of any change of fortune ever alienating his affections, or causing him to behave otherwise than as his dutiful grandson.

It is not surprising that such a tale should have a considerable influence on Lady Florimel's imagination: out of the scanty facts which formed but a second volume, she began at once to construct both a first and a third. She dreamed of the young fisherman that night, and reflecting in the morning on her intercourse with him, recalled sufficient indications in him of superiority to his circumstances, noted by her now, however, for the first time, to justify her dream: he might indeed well be the last scion of a noble family.

I do not intend the least hint that she began to fall in love with him. To balance his good looks, and the nobility, to keener eyes yet more evident than to hers, in both his moral and physical carriage, the equally undeniable clownishness of his dialect and tone had huge weight, while the peculiar straightforwardness of his behaviour and address not unfrequently savoured in her eyes of rudeness; besides which objectionable things, there was the persistent odour of fish about his garments—in itself sufficient to prevent such a catastrophe. The sole result of her meditations was the resolve to get some amusement out of him by means of a knowledge of his history superior to his own.