The Proud Servant

by Margaret Irwin

  He had reason to fear her, for she influenced his old father so much that he became a Roman Catholic for her sake. That flung young Archibald into a panic lest he should lose his patrimony. With precocious prudence he wrote to all his kinsmen, entreating them to stand by him against his father, and see to it that he should not suffer by his father’s folly.

  He was only twelve years old, but had already gone to Saint Andrews, as he did not get on with Morton’s children, and only his tender-hearted cousin, Margaret, would take his side against them. Also he had shown himself old beyond his years; and now this letter was to prove it damnably in the eyes of his fellows. Someone of his college made a copy of it and stuck it up in the banqueting hall, with an additional note, asking everyone to send round the hat and subscribe a few shillings (Scots) for the poor little starveling. And wherever he went, he heard chanted behind him the ancient prayer against his race:

  From the greed of the Campbells,

  Good Lord, deliver us!

  Even the loyalty of his own clan was slightly shaken. This lad to be MacCaillan Mhor, the greatest of the Highland chieftains, and lead his clan into battle? Why, he was a cringing clerk, who put more faith in a legal bond than in the fighting power of his men to defend his patrimony!

  He understood the situation, and they did not; that only added to his bitterness. Brains then counted for nothing. Any good-looking swaggerer could get appreciation and applause, but not he.

  And so it was in love. At nineteen he went to Court in England, he was kindly received by the new King Charles, who arranged a splendid match for him with his own cousin. But the Lady Elizabeth Stuart eloped on the eve of the wedding, with an attractive but penniless fellow – she preferred a crooked sixpence to a crooked man, people said, laughing – and back went the slighted lover, to marry his faithful cousin, Margaret Douglas, within four months of the injury. But all her tenderness for him could not wipe it out.

  There were furious disputes with his father over money, and the allowances to be made to his stepbrothers at college, and the dowries to his stepsisters. Archibald complained that he had been neglected, he had not been consulted; his halfbrother James treated him like a stranger; his kind uncle and father-in-law, Morton, like a slave; he would not put up with such contempt.

  King Charles himself took his side; he won every point, and was made guardian to the rest of his family, instead of his Papist father. But let King Charles expect no gratitude for that, said the angry old Argyll. He knew his son, and though Charles had helped him, that would not prevent his doing the King an ill turn; for he added the miserable indictment – ‘he can love no man.’

  This then was the Campbell who had won the silver medal for archery six years before James Graham, Earl of Montrose, did so, when only in his second year at college.

  The winners had their own medals made; the Campbell’s, with the galley of Lorne on its coat of arms, now hung in the porter’s lodge; where Jamie was determined his too would hang when he had left college – and he would have his made much bigger.

  He won it; and commemorated his victory with an uproarious supper party, at which songs were sung and toasts were drunk, and the only flaw was that he had to ask Archibald Campbell, Lord Lorne, as he was up at Saint Andrews for the moment on an admonishing visit to his young stepbrother, James Campbell, whom he kept painfully short of pocket-money, and lectured as though he were his uncle – so that gay lad complained, who had none of his youthful guardian’s priggish inclination to ‘swat’ as he called it, using a Saxon word long obsolete, though still preserved like a fly in amber in schoolboy slang. But he had good wits, and when Montrose asked him to the supper party, he advised him to ask his stepbrother, Lorne, as well, ‘or he might turn it against you – he is sure to grudge your winning the medal, anyhow.’

  These were the last persuasions he should have used.

  ‘Why should he grudge it me? He won it himself when he was up. Is he such a dog in the manger that no one can have what he has done with?’

  ‘Yes,’ said James Campbell, rather comically, but Montrose was rushing on that he did not care a farthing what Lorne might do against him – he had never met the fellow, never wanted to, and certainly would not do so now, merely in order to propitiate the future head of the Campbells. They had been the hereditary enemies of his family – and the present Lorne was nothing but an usurer. He lent people money and got them to mortgage their lands to him, did it even with his own brother-in-law, the Marquis of Huntly. Montrose would see the usurer damned before he asked him to supper – and his peaked eyebrows knit.

  James Campbell, who had learned diplomacy between a Papist father and a Presbyterian stepbrother, regarded his heated young host with the eye of a watchful parrot – then put it to him that he personally must not risk offending his guardian, and would be grateful if Montrose would ask him for his sake.

  So Montrose did, and Lord Lorne came; and the two looked at each other across the low dark little room, where the candlelight shone on so many flushed and youthful faces, with the in-sinctive antagonism of dog and cat. A long, tallow-pale face, freckled only just under its straight red hair, looked with crooked and uncertain gaze at Montrose, ‘—and which eye is looking at me?’ he asked himself in unreasoning annoyance. While the future Earl of Argyll, accustomed to dislike from childhood, knew at once how his hesitating speech, his cautious step, his tentative, self-conscious manner irritated Montrose.

  As he watched this boy of fifteen, who had so quickly taken the place of a leader among his fellows – who had already and so easily won the only honour in sport that he himself had ever obtained, and then after such obstinate efforts, Lorne felt his sense of the injustice done him more bitter than ever he had tasted it in all his injured life.

  This boy’s unconscious carriage of himself – his happy certainty that he and all these good fellows round him were one and the same good fellow – his freedom from any doubting, hesitating, hindering thoughts (—’thoughts are cripples, like myself,’ he discovered, with some satisfaction, for he sought his chief amusement in his worst enemies, self-analysis and self-pity) – so might he himself have been, had he, like Montrose, been spoilt by an adoring family from his cradle – instead of blighted by a cruel stepmother, a neglectful father, ungrateful brothers and sisters. His uncle and wife slid out of his mind, as always in these categories.

  But in the folly of his company he found consolation. What he had cared for at college had been argumentative discussions lasting till far into the night. The present generation had plainly degenerated.

  His oblique vision flickered with distaste over the flaunting scarlet curtains and all those bright embroidered cushions – gifts from adoring sisters and other silly girls, no doubt. He was disgusted with the noisy rowdiness of the company, their idiotic songs, some of them feeblest doggerel, made up on the spur of the moment – with the travelling tumbler and his performing dogs, ordered in from the town to amuse them, who made low jokes and stood on his head, and so did his dogs, in the middle of the table, and capered about among the wine-cups and flagons without upsetting them, but with such a clatter and a din that Lord Lorne’s head nearly split with it.

  Yet he would not be the first to slink away from the company. He dreaded what they would say of him as soon as his back was turned – and his own brother, whose interests he guarded, would never stand up for him – not he! And still more than their unheard criticism, he dreaded the actual fact of going. How should he say good-bye? What compliments must he make to this new insolent young rival, who had won his own great distinction? And what hidden sneers would greet his congratulations, insincere as he now knew they would be?

  So, miserably, self-consciously, he sat on, when – horror upon horror! two pipers marched in and strutted up and down, magnificent as fighting cocks, while their music went wheedling and teasing through the room, swelling louder and louder; and all those boys and young men rushed to push back the table upsetting cups and smashing bottle
s with as much delight as though this were the cleverest part of their performance, and started to leap into the air and utter shrill, inarticulate cries, and to dance up and down and round and round and in and out in an intricate pattern of good-fellowship – and now there was no help for it, Lord Lorne had to show how out of it he was, for there was no reel nor round that he could dance.

  ‘Now I must go,’ he thought, and tried to say the words aloud, but still stood uneasily in his corner, while the whirling of hot faces and flying curls and outflung arms and stamping feet and hoarse shouts against the fierce music of the pipes went whizzing on in front of him, ignoring him – until Montrose suddenly stopped it by challenging all of them to see who could shoot the highest over Saint Salvator’s tower.

  Out they trooped into Butts Wynd with their bows and arrows – and there stood the tower, vast and black in the moonlight, while the air blew cool on their cheeks after the stuffy heat of the crowded little room, and the noise fell into a hush as wide as the ends of the world. And in the friendly dark, Lorne got his chance to slip away.

  Montrose did not see him go. He was shooting his arrow. All life, all thought, all effort left him in that instant, and became one with its soaring flight. High over the tower it rose, only just under the moon. It disappeared; and thought, released, came back to him, singing in his head.

  He, too, slid away from the company, that was now capering like goblins in the moonlight at his superb shot; and he too went up to his empty room, but not to brood over his rival, as his rival was doing, for he had forgotten all about ‘old Lord For-Lorne’.

  He pulled out of its shelf the vellum-covered copy of Caesar’s Commentaries that he had been reading that morning in discontent with this smaller, safer age in which he had to live; and wrote in the margin of the little book :

  Though Caesar’s paragon I cannot be,

  Yet shall I soar in thoughts as high as he.

  Chapter Eight

  It happened that some of the Saint Andrews citizens were passing in the street on their way home from a belated wedding party, on the night when young Montrose celebrated his victory as a marksman. As they went past Saint Salvator’s, they were alarmed by three or four arrows that came whizzing down through the still, moonlit air, as though they had been shot from the top of the tower. The company scampered to their homes for safety, their footsteps thudding along the cobbled street, awakening terrified echoes of the old lawless days of raid and killing affray.

  The ruined tower of the Cathedral, which had seen the town rise to murder the last of the Cardinals, looked grimly down on the citizens that fled from a prank of the scholars. Not till they were safe at home did they have breath or time or wit to discover that that was all it was. And it naturally only inflamed the rage of the Provost at the discovery that the high crown of his hat was neatly pierced by one of the arrows like a jaunty feather. He carried his complaints and demands for justice, together with his hat and arrow, to the Principal next day. The arrow was proved to belong to the young Earl of Montrose, who was ordered to make public apology and promises of future good behaviour.

  He did so, hat in hand, in token of submission, but as he put it on again, it was seen that he had stuck an arrow through its crown; and so had all his fellows. The derisive fashion caused a riot between Town and Gown; and Montrose, as cause and leader of all the trouble, was sent down for a short time. In his absence, a new statute appeared in Saint Salvator’s rule-book – viz. ‘That students may not vie one with another in shooting arrows over the college tower.’

  Montrose’s many holidays were scattered widely over the country, so that he had a large choice of where to go in his disgrace.

  There was excellent sport to be had with gun and fishing rod at Rossdhu on Loch Lomond, where he often stayed for weeks together; and Sir John would be sure to laugh his loud, rather determined laugh over his prank, and Lilias would croon murmurs of that flattering amusement that pretends to be shocked, and that little dare-devil Kat would envy and long to emulate.

  Or, if he felt studious for a change, there was the best library in the country at Balcarres, where the gentle old Sir David Lindsay had pointed out to him no less than ten different works on the Philosopher’s Stone, which must surely now, after all this modern research, be within an inch of its certain discovery.

  And there were the six pretty, lively daughters of Lord Carnegie at Kinnaird; and all his cousins to the ninth and tenth degrees all over the country, who would rush out into their courtyards, proud and eager to welcome him with a stirrup cup of ale, and another for his horse – for it was my young lord’s arbitrary fancy that he would never dismount till his horse had been given as good as himself – ‘and see how well he carries it!’ he would cry, as he caracoled round the courtyard.

  Among all these indulging and admiring friends, Archie, Lord Napier, his chief guardian, was the person most inclined to disapprove of his escapades, and to be disappointed at their hindrance to his studies. Yet, rather oddly, it was to the Napiers’ home at Merchiston just outside Edinburgh that he chose to go this time. He was, to tell the truth, a little tired of all his popularity and good-fellowship which after all never gave a fellow any chance to be alone.

  And every now and then through the fun of this latest bicker with authority, there had been a disturbing glimpse of the thrawn face and limp red hair of Archibald Campbell, Lord Lorne. He knew that his usual high hospitality had shown itself as little as possible with Lorne; irritated by his presence, he had done his best to ignore it – with the result that he had been uneasily conscious of it from time to time ever since.

  Now he wanted to be with his sister Margaret and Archie Napier, even though they made him feel a child again. He slept, as he had always done, in the little room above the battlements, where years ago Archie Napier’s learned father had invented logarithms. So strange a pursuit had given the room the name of the magician’s chamber, and some of the female servants were afraid to go down the three huge stone steps that led into it. But Jamie felt it more his room than any in his own castles. He could see Arthur’s Seat from it, like a crouching lion, and the jagged outline of Edinburgh Castle cut sharp against the sky. When the King came to Scotland, he would ride with him out of that castle, down the long mile to Holyrood, and see him crowned.

  Napier helped him with his mathematics, and bought a swine’s bladder solely for the purpose of trying a mathematical conclusion which made the hated study surprisingly interesting. He took him hunting and shooting; and in the evening, as they sat in the room with the carved ceiling that was always called Queen Mary’s room, Napier told old stories to him and his own children, of Wallace and of Bruce, or, older still, of King Arthur and his knights, who sleep even now in full armour, hidden within those three hills, the Eildons, that rise so suddenly by the river Tweed, until they shall hear the bugle that will awaken tham to life.

  ‘But that bugle,’ he said, ‘will only be blown when Scotland again has need of them.’

  ‘Then why was it not blown at Falkirk or on Flodden Field?’ asked Jamie.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Napier, ‘but the time had not come, and they still sleep, and it is time now for you to go and do the same, if you are going to get up at dawn to go duck-shooting tomorrow.’

  Jamie picked himself up from the sheep-rug on the floor as reluctantly sleepy as his very small nephew who had gone off hours ago; he wished that, since he had to go to sleep, he might do so as Sir Launcelot had done by the water called Mortoise, ‘awaiting the adventure that should be sent to him.’

  ‘What adventure will be sent to me?’ he asked himself, as he said good night to his brother-in-law and his sister; and she bade him good dreams, and he, good sport next morning – their faces smiling at him like the reverse sides of a coin, so much at one did they appear to be, and yet so different; for his was long and fine, shaped like a fir-cone with its pointed beard and the domed forehead that spread smoothly up from his arched eyebrows; and hers was tender an
d rather tired, with irregular lines and angles running here and there in it, which no one who knew her noticed.

  She was sitting in the wide window-seat that ran inwards at an angle to the window, looking out over the orchards and farm buildings; the late evening light of summer still clung about that corner, so that her head showed dark against it, bent over her loom. She was weaving fine white linen, a favourite occupation of hers, and this a favourite pattern – ‘the hundred rose knot,’ she called it.

  ‘What is it you are making?’ Jamie asked idly, as excuse to linger.

  ‘A pillow-case for your marriage bed,’ she told him, putting up her face to kiss him, ‘I shall have at least a dozen ready for you by the time you are seventeen.’

  He knew he would probably marry by then, before going abroad to finish his education at Rome or Padua; it was the correct procedure that he, the head of his house, should provide it with an heir before he saw the world. But it was not till the marriage of his sister Dorothea to Sir James Rollock of Dun-cruib that he knew who it was that he himself would marry.

  Dorothea’s wedding took place, as Margaret had promised, after the two years of waiting; and her young brother opened his castle of Kincardine again for the early days of the wedding festivities; then moved the whole house party on to his house at Old Montrose, near to the little harbour and fishing village of Montrose on the broad estuary of the South Esk. This was not very far up the east coast from Saint Andrews, and within four miles of Kinnaird Castle, the home of Lord Carnegie, who had been a close friend of the late Earl of Montrose.

  So that those of Carnegie’s daughters who were not married at too great a distance (like Catherine, who was Lady Traquair now, and down at the Court in London), or who were not already staying with one or other of the Graham sisters (like Marjory and her husband, William Haliburton of Pitcur, who had come over with Lilias and Kat from Rossdhu), rode out every day by the path that had been built up through the bog, and met the party from Old Montrose for hunting or hawking over the flat uplands, or sailing at high tide over the smooth waters of the estuary.