Chapter VII: Rory of the Shelties

The Broomielaw has not borne a broom ‘cow’ for many a year. ‘Ane little quay’ has gradually extended to a long line of wharves, where traffic reigns. Warehouses abound with goods from the four quarters of the globe, shops with a seafaring flavour, though the sea is not at hand, and they deal in the common necessaries of shore life; the homely dwellings of these humbler shopkeepers, sailors’ lodging-houses, commercial hotels, look down upon the busy thoroughfare and the river highway.

Among the crowd of shipping, steamboats, multiplied mightily since Henry Bell’s little _Comet_ plied between Glasgow and Greenock, and was the wonder of the day--arrive at all hours at the Broomielaw. Many of them are Highland boats from ‘Glasgow down the water,’ the villa settlements that fringe the Clyde and the lochs. And far beyond the islands that begin with Bute and Arran is a Scotch archipelago--shaggy, heathery, rocky, castle-crowned here and there, guarded by savage mountains and wild sounds. That is the region of green Morven near thunder-haunted Knapdale, pillared Staffa, sacred Iona, lonely Barra and Canna, and the primitive, desolate Western Hebrides, in which Stornoway ranks as a big town.

The communication between all these places and the more civilized south is by water, and mainly by steamboat. The passengers and the cargo in these Highland boats, when the first do not consist of enterprising English and American tourists, and the second of their baggage, are sometimes strange enough, but they are sufficiently common in that quarter of the world to attract little attention. Besides, people are too much engrossed with their own affairs to have notice to spare for those of their neighbours. Thus nobody looked and nobody cared, when, on a rainy April afternoon, an odd figure stepped out of one of the boats that touched at some of the farthest-off islands, shook himself, clutched an ancient knapsack that might have seen service in the Peninsular War, and stumbled along, casting wary glances out of the red-lashed eyes, right and left, like a spy reconnoitring a new country.

The stranger was a man a little over thirty, weather-beaten, and with the shambling gait that often accompanies a defective intellect, which makes up in cunning what it lacks in strength. The Highlander did not wear the kilt, which he perhaps regarded as inappropriate in the low country. He had compounded with the claims of the Sassenach in his own territory, by assuming one of his few remaining articles of dress--a pair of tartan trews, in which the greens and reds were faded into sickly olives and dingy browns. With these he had on a little tartan coat originally made for a much smaller man, so that the waist was between his shoulders, and the sleeves ended not far below his elbows. The dress was completed by a Glengarry of the same set, perched on the wearer’s shock head of red hair. His face was as ugly as a ferret complexion, high cheek bones, a wide mouth twisted slightly to one side, and the longest chin on record, could make it.

But in the middle of this man’s ugliness and the guile which blinked out of his eyes, there was a strain of simplicity and patience in the whole aspect of the creature. There was also a manifest determination not to betray any surprise at whatever he might see, but to affect that his native clachan was as fine a place as Glasgow any day. He glanced at the long lines of houses that opened from the quay, and betrayed, by the blankness of his gaze, that he did not expect to see a living soul he knew, amongst the thousands in the great city. He instinctively turned his eyes from the eating-houses and provision-shops, conveying a suspicion that he was both hungry and thirsty, but dare not indulge in a supererogatory meal, till he had ascertained where he should find and what he should pay for the cheapest and humblest of suppers and beds.

He wandered along Clyde Street, not caring to ask his way, past the old Gaol, giving a doubtful, almost timorous look at its sombre exterior, and came out upon the Green--the glory of East-End Glasgow. If the Earl of Moray were to see it now, would he know it to be the same Green on which he encamped his army before he crossed the river to win, under Mary’s despairing eyes, the battle of Langside? Would Prince Charlie recognise the spot where he reviewed his Highlanders on their return from Derby, after their rags had been exchanged for the twelve thousand linen shirts, the six thousand cloth coats, and the thousand blue bonnets required by the rebels from the Whig town which flourished by the preaching of the Word? Even the Chartists, who not more than thirty years ago gathered there, ten thousand strong, with wolfish famine-pinched faces and bony hands, brandishing the iron bars torn from the railing, or the guns snatched from the locksmiths, would not have felt themselves at home on the smooth turf, amidst the flower-beds, resting on the seats provided for wayfarers, gazing their fill at the water which, though it is less clear than when Moray and Prince Charlie crossed it, is still dear to the born and bred Glaswegian.

Rory of the Shelties, who had travelled all the way from the farther Uist, where he had left his charge of rough ponies behind him, was much puzzled by the Green. He thought he had strayed into some gentleman’s grounds, and with due consideration for the gloomy building he had passed near the entrance, he behaved himself most gingerly, and sought anxiously for the nearest mode of exit. Then he remarked the style of the occupants of some of the benches, and proceeded far enough to come on the spot set aside for the operation of carpet-beating, which was going on briskly; and even his dull brain took in the conception that those fine walks were somehow free after the fashion of his own bare hills, and that he might, without fear of being called to order, sit down, as he could not do in the street, and consider what should be his next movement.

Rory dropped promiscuously on a seat, and stared rather vacantly at an empty and stationary merry-go-round, which waited for the Fair, to revolve with a noisy load. Rory had never seen anything like it before, and was inclined to think it was some new-fangled threshing mill, though why put down so far from any trace of a farm, he could not pretend to say. The only sign he had given that he observed a fellow-sitter near him, was his clutching more tightly his old knapsack.

Rory’s neighbour was an aged man with a nut-cracker face, and his fustians so clean as to suggest an infirmary or a poorhouse, or at least that their wearer was beyond work, with possibly a notable wife or daughter who took pride in the respectability of a well-washed and whole, though patched, suit for the ‘man body’ of the house. But if the bent body and feeble, wrinkled hands, grasping and sustaining themselves on a blackthorn stick, were beyond labour, the bleared eyes were not beyond observation or the tongue seen between the shrivelled lips and nearly toothless jaws destitute of the power of wagging whenever the opportunity of ‘a crack’ presented itself. With a little cough by way of introduction, the patriarch began the conversation most affably:

‘Frien’, I’m no a Gaelishioner myself; but my faither’s auntie married a Dumbarton chap, so that I’ve cousins on the edge of the Hielants. But you maybe canna speak the English?’ he interrupted himself to ask, led to do it by the stony suspicious look of the new-comer in return for his politeness.

‘Ye’re wrang there,’ said Rory half-haughtily, half with a childish satisfaction; ‘I have the English.’

‘That’s lucky, for the Gaelic is deein’ oot, though there’s mony a Hielant man an’ woman that could understand you in your ain tongue in the Sautmarket or the Gallowgate; still, ye ken, ye michtna licht on them without a deeficulty.’

‘I telled ye I had the English,’ said the stranger, with dry offence in his tones.

‘Weel, I said the better aff ye were the day,’ returned the other, declining to be offended in turn, or held at arm’s length. ‘Ye’ll hae come for the hairst? but ye’re fu’ soon, Tonalt.’

‘My name’s not Tonalt,’ snarled the Highlander; ‘and I’m not for the hairst.’

‘Ye’ll be seeking a porter’s job? that’s aye in season,’ persisted the untroubled questioner. ‘There was a rowth [plenty] o’ Hielant porters when I was a young lad; but we haena so mony now. We rear a breed o’ oor ain, I’m thinking;’ and he finished by a cackling laugh.

Rory glared at his tormentor.

‘I’m no a porter any more than a shearer,’ he spluttered indignantly. ‘You’ll ask, perhaps, if I’m a beggar-man next. When I’m at home I’m Rory o’ the Shelties, no less, to Maclean of Cairnbreck; and I’m come to Glasgy on my ain private business.’

‘I wish it may thrive,’ said the old man, still with a suspicion of mischief and mockery in his words. ‘Is it with the Lord Provost, or ony of the great shipbuilders or boilermakers? I was an engineer aince on a time mysel’, my lad; and I could work long hours at a stretch when orders were thrang and men scarce. Whiles, as I sit here doing naething, a dream comes ower me, and I hear the rattle of the locomotives, and the whiz of the steam-valves, and the swing and ring of the hammers, and it’s like the sweetest music I ever heard. But it never comes to you, man, I see by your face.’ His own old face, which had lighted up, lost its faint glow, and the former monkey-like mischief hovered again about its lines and furrows. ‘Your erran’ maun be to the sugar-trade or the cotton-mills, or aiblins to the whisky-shops to spier whether Campbelton or Glenlivat’s maist in favour.’

Rory hunched rather than shrugged his shoulders, then suddenly rose up and walked away, lugging his knapsack.

‘I think he has his fortune in that bit boxie,’ reflected the humble student of mankind sardonically, ‘but I jalouse he’s no better than a born natural. However, I maun hame to Jenny for my fower-hours, and syne it will be time for my bed.’

Rory quitted the Green, where, in place of an inspiration coming to him, he had been badgered by an impertinent fool, old enough to be his grandfather--as old as his grandmother Morag when she left him the kit and the treasure which was to make his fortune. It was not his fortune yet which he carried in the soldier’s kit that might have been at the wars with some old Maclean, it was only the materials of which that fortune was to be made.

He strayed up the Saltmarket and got into the Gallowgate. There, in the dirt and din and crush, he saw an occasional man with a Glengarry, or a bareheaded woman with a tartan plaid over her head, or round her shoulders, frequently binding a child to her--Highland fashion. The sight bore out the statement of Rory’s single acquaintance in Glasgow, that here were countrymen and women who might listen to his story and take an interest in his fortunes. But the stranger was bent on keeping his secret as far as he could, lest the sharers in it should steal a march on him and rob him of its price.

As he wandered on, he noticed, side by side with the whisky-shops of which he had been told, so many milk-shops and dairies, that the days when the Cowcaddens received its name might have returned, and Glasgow again have had its staple article of produce in the milk which the students at the college and the brethren in the religious houses consumed. It might be the most baseless scandal that mountaindew flowed freely there, and as many crowns were cracked on Saturday night as in any city in the kingdom; while luckless wights, boasting that the moon would ‘bide a wee,’ before she served as their lantern to guide them home, staggered blindly into the brimming Clyde, and the waters closed sullenly over human loves and hates, hopes and fears.

At the most crowded and noisy crossing, where waggons, carts and barrows, and a stray cab or two were in lively contest with the pedestrians, Rory was unexpectedly brought up by one of the women who still retained the tartan screen--though no longer the honourable curch of old custom:

‘What pairt of the country are ye frae? It’ll no be Ballachulish? Ye’ll no ken M‘Leish--the auld sodger wi’ the wudden leg up at the big hoose, ye ken?’ She put her questions in rapid succession, without waiting for a separate answer, till she had opened out the whole budget.

Rory, who was taken aback, while he was now both tired and faint in the unaccustomed scene, stared at her in silence with a dazed look. She was untidy, but not sordid or wretched in her dress. There was a certain lingering comeliness and kindly impulsiveness in her middle-aged face, though the lines had worn stronger, and the fresh colour grown mottled and hard. She broke the silence by a laugh at herself, in which there was no bitterness.

‘I’m an auld fule,’ she said. ‘I daur say ye never heard of Ballachulish or Col M‘Leish--that’s the uncle who was gude to me when I was a mitherless bairn with a randy of a step-mother. I’ll no say she had nocht to complain o’ though, for I’ve grown a hantle wiser since I had a man and bairns of my ain. But, eh, I wuss I could hear tell o’ the auld man, gin he be in the land of the living yet, and how he’s farin’. They would mind his comforts up at the big hoose; but maybe, ye see, they’re a’ gane too. My man winna let me write--no that I’m a scholar, but I micht manage a scrape o’ the pen--only he threeps [insists] I micht bring a burden upon mysel’ and him, and there’s seven mooths o’ bairns to fill, and the farther he wull gang on the strike, though I were to lay the hairs o’ my head aneath his feet to prevent it. I’m aye speerin’ and speerin’ whenever I can get the chance, but I never hear a word.’

The speaker bestowed her confidence with the utmost candour on the bewildered listener, who had enough to do to protect himself and his knapsack from the jostling occasioned by the two stopping the way.

‘Losh! man, can ye no speak?’ she asked in sudden surprise, not unmingled with consternation. ‘You’re a Hielanter, by the cut o’ ye. It is mony a day since I ran awa’ from Ballachulish, and my tongue has lost the Gaelic; but my ears can tak’ it in yet, gin it’s yeer only speech.’

‘No,’ said Rory, piqued once more by not getting credit for the education he had acquired; ‘I have the English as well as any man in North Uist. But I div not know Ballachulish or any M‘Leish, and my head is bizzin’ a bit, what with comin’ aff the water and this confounded whirl.’

‘Puir chiel!’ said the good-natured woman, with a quick change to patronizing pity in her accent, ‘ye’ll be strange to a muckle toon. I mind the feeling mysel’. Hae ye ony acquaintance here, or ony hole to gang to? If ye like, ye can come my gate--I live in the next street--and have a bite, till ye see what ye’re to do. Andry Sed--that’s my man--canna find faut wi’ a ca’, forbye he’s no at hame at this hour. Noo when I think o’t, ye’ll meet anither lad frae the hills, a ludger we’ve had for as gude as a week; but he’s bund for his maister’s place the morn. He’s weel-to-do, a credit to the North; he’s at the head of the kennels at Semple Barns--no less!’

Roaming at random as he was in the deafening smothering city, without a clue to his object, Rory could not resist the frank invitation, though he was not guiltless of a suspicion that his countrywoman had penetrated somehow into the bowels of his knapsack, and was cherishing insidious designs upon its contents.

Mrs. Sed or Seth’s house made up in heartiness and ease for what it lacked in dignity and refinement. That wet blanket, her Lowland husband, did not turn up to extinguish her Celtic hospitality. The bairns were at school or at their various trades, and so were not in the way to engross their mother’s energies. The ‘ludger,’ a profitable guest, crammed into a space cleared out for him, gave himself no airs, though he had attained the high degree of being the supreme authority over the dogs at Semple Barns. He was pleased with himself and with the world--this strapping, black (instead of red) headed, kilted man, an effusive, gossiping Highlander, a male example of the type to which Mrs. Seth belonged, with the same inclination to find his heart warm to any ‘John Hielantman,’ the rawer the better, whom he met among the crowds in the Low country.

Under these benign influences, including whangs of a goat-milk kebbock, a ‘stack’ of oat-cakes, a newly-baked loaf, a couple of bottles of ale, and sundry tastings of the peat-reekiest whisky, Rory thawed perceptibly. He did not yet tell his errand, but he began to throw out dark hints of its importance, and to fish for such straws of information as he could gather from the talk of his companions, better versed than he was in the intricacies of Lowland and city life.

‘You’ll be knowing most o’ the fine folk in Glasgow?’ he addressed Mrs. Seth insinuatingly.

‘The deil’s in the man! is he makin’ fun of me?’ exclaimed his hostess, with a dash of anger in her tones; ‘or is his ignorance just past believing? What trade have I wi’ leddies in their carriages, or wi’ gentlemen that dine aff cheeny and silver?’

‘By name, mistress; I was only meaning by name!’ exclaimed the inquirer, in some alarm.

‘Oo, I ken a feck [number] o’ them by name, whatever,’ she granted placably, the moment she was relieved from the disgrace of being laughed at by a ‘bogle’ like her new acquaintance. ‘I was in gude enough places when I was at service afore I took a man, and sair fashed I was with fikes [finical ways] about keeping mysel’ clean and tidy.’

‘As if dirt didna bode [promise] luck, and there was no sic saw [saying] in braid Scots--not in Gaelic--as “the clartier the cosier.” [the more sluttish the warmer],’ interposed the keeper of the kennels, glancing down at the kilt he wore, which was by no means spotless, and having a fellow-feeling derived from similar trials.

‘Deed, ay, Sandy Macnab, if ye’re no ower muckle up in the buckle [too proud] to be ca’d Sandy by a woman that kenned your mither--moreover, she was living in a land [a pile of building] in this very street, and you were a loon no bigger than wee Andry, who’s that dour he’ll reive his faither’s bannet some day. But what need they have made sic a stour aboot jappet tails [muddy skirts] or a wheen blades on a brat [spots on an apron] or bauchled shoon [shoes down at heel]!’ exclaimed Mrs. Seth, with a broad smile of superior wisdom.

Then she began to tell of her great employers. ‘There were the Gilroys, where I was bairn’s-maid. He was in the hoose-pentin’ business, and he made a heap o’ money, and left her a rich widdy, to fling hersel’ awa’ on a fule of a lad from Ayr. There were the Leishmans, where I was under-kitchen maid. He was a grosser with a grand connection, and his sons at college, and his dochters in furrin pairts for an eddication they would have been better without. And there were the Ores in the ship-chandler line, with a braw hoose at the West-End and a villy on the Clyde, where I gaed for a day at a time after I was married, when there was nae bairn in my arms, and they were oot o’ servants or changing them at term-time. But eh! man, it would take a year to gang owre the bare names o’ the big Glasgy folk.’

Rory’s face fell a little, as if he were overpowered with the number of the great of the earth.

‘But even among so mony,’ he said again, after a pause, ‘you micht come across certain titles.’

‘Speak oot, man, among your country-folk and frien’s, and dinna gang for ever about the buss!’ the man of dogs adjured him. ‘Wha are you seekin’?--name him.’

‘I div not want ony man,’ insisted Rory; ‘only I micht like to hear a name.’

‘Weel, whatna name, and be hanged to ye for a sly, half-daft deevil!’ Sandy Macnab muttered the last half of his sentence in his beard.

Thus pressed, Rory took heart, stroked his long chin, and suggested, ‘You’ll have heard of Mackinnon?’

‘There’s a wale [choice] o’ Mackinnons,’ announced Mrs. Seth; ‘not that I pretend to be thick wi’ ony of them. But whilk Mackinnon are you after?’

‘It micht be Mackinnon of Drysdale Haugh,’ admitted Rory, but, if possible, more reluctantly and dubiously than ever.

‘You’re wrang there,’ Sandy Macnab contradicted him flatly. ‘I ken about Drysdale Haugh. It is the bleaching and dye-works that belong to the maister of Drysdale Ha’. He’s a friend of my maister’s. His young leddy dochter was biding with us at Semple Barns last week. She’s thrang [intimate] with my leddy. There’s no Mackinnon of Drysdale Haugh, but Drysdale of Drysdale Ha’ and Haugh an’ a’.’

Mrs. Seth confirmed the tale.

‘They are braw warks. I kenned a lass that married a bleacher; and I took my fit in my hand and gaed out and see’d her aince.’

‘There micht have been mention of a Drysdale,’ said Rory cautiously, ‘but it was ane Mackinnon of Drysdale Haugh that the concern was wi’.’

‘It’s Drysdale the noo, onyway,’ maintained Sandy, unshaken in his testimony. ‘I’m as sure of that as that my head’s on my shoulders. But there’s Captain Mackinnon, a sodger lad, a frien’ of the young maister’s, if that will serve you.’

Rory shook his head, but did not absolutely reject the suggestion.

‘What will be his whole name?’

‘How should I ken? Stop, it was half furrin, but I’ve heard it in the North; “Eneas,” “captain,” or “major,” I’m not pertikler about the milintary handle to the name. “Eneas Mackinnon”--I’ve read it on his valise. He kens a dug when he sees him, and he’s often doun at the kennels when he’s at Semple Barns.’

‘No, it will not be Eneas,’ said Rory, letting his head fall disconsolately on his breast.

‘Cheer up, auld shaver!’ cried the brotherly Sandy, using a term which was not strictly of Gaelic origin, but, to tell the truth, borrowed from the slang vocabulary of the young master of Semple Barns. Sandy punched Rory in the chest with a vigorous arm as he spoke. ‘You’ve hit on Drysdale Haugh, and that’s the main thing, I’m thinking, and Drysdale Ha’ is end on to Semple Barns. I’ll gie you a leg up for the sake of the North and auld lang syne. But you maun mind what ye’re after, and behave yoursel’, or I swear I’ll have naething to do with you. I’m an honest, ‘sponsible man, and I’ll no fling aboot my maister’s money like chuckie-stanes [pebbles] without work in return. We’re wantin’ a dug-laddie, and you may do as weel as anither gin you’ll obey orders. You’re an able-bodied chiel enough, and you’ve as muckle wut as a hafflin callant [half-grown lad], I daur say. Whatever berth you’ve had in the Uist, ye’re no like to get a better offer here. You’ll be cheek for jowl with Drysdale Ha’, and can mak’ up your mind wha and what you want without starving in the street, or being coupet [overturned] back the road you came to your muirlan’ pariss--just when the minister, and the dominie [school-master], and the bethel [church officer] think they’re weel quit of you. Is’t a bargain?’

‘Eh! you’ll be a fule gin you refuse,’ chimed in Mrs. Seth, with benevolent urgency. ‘Sandy Macnab’s a gude sort, and Semple Barns is a canny doon-sitting--even among the dugs. My laddies are wild to get a day there when the haws and the hips are ripe, and the gentlemen are oot with their guns, and there’s pappin’ o’ shot and drappin’ o’ birds on a’ hands. That’s a’ very weel at a time, but the faither says the big toon’s the place to lippen [trust] to for laddies that want to mak’ their way in the world, unless maybe they come from the hill-country and lo’e their freedom in the open air better than ony wage, and are as keen as the gentles on the sport, like Sandy there.’

* * * * *

Rory of the Shelties accepted the good advice, not seeing how he could make any better of his quest, till he had tracked his game. He was promised one thing, he would be set down ‘end on’ to Drysdale Haugh.