Chapter XXIV

The Flight in the Heather: The Quarrel

Alan and I were put across Loch Errocht under cloud of night, and went down its eastern shore to another hiding-place near the head of Loch Rannoch, whither we were led by one of the gillies from the Cage. This fellow carried all our luggage and Alan’s great-coat in the bargain, trotting along under the burthen.

Doubtless it was a great relief to walk disencumbered; and perhaps without that relief, and the consequent sense of liberty and lightness, I could not have walked at all. I was but new risen from a bed of sickness.

For long, we said nothing; marching alongside or one behind the other, each with a set countenance: I, angry and proud, and drawing what strength I had from these two violent and sinful feelings; Alan angry and ashamed, ashamed that he had lost my money, angry that I should take it so ill.

The thought of a separation ran always the stronger in my mind; and the more I approved of it, the more ashamed I grew of my approval.

And yet Alan had behaved like a child, and (what is worse) a treacherous child. Wheedling my money from me while I lay half-conscious was scarce better than theft; and yet here he was trudging by my side, without a penny to his name, and by what I could see, quite blithe to sponge upon the money he had driven me to beg. True, I was ready to share it with him; but it made me rage to see him count upon my readiness.

So I said nothing, nor so much as looked once at my companion, save with the tail of my eye.

At last he could bear it no longer, and came close to me.

‘David,’ says he, ‘this is no way for two friends to take a small accident. I have to say that I’m sorry; and so that’s said. And now if you have anything, ye’d better say it.’

‘O,’ says I, ‘I have nothing.’

He seemed disconcerted; at which I was meanly pleased.

‘No,’ said he, with rather a trembling voice, ‘but when I say I was to blame?’

‘Why, of course, ye were to blame,’ said I, coolly; ‘and you will bear me out that I have never reproached you.’

‘Never,’ says he; ‘but ye ken very well that ye’ve done worse. Are we to part? Ye said so once before. Are ye to say it again? There’s hills and heather enough between here and the two seas, David; and I will own I’m no very keen to stay where I’m no wanted.’

This pierced me like a sword, and seemed to lay bare my private disloyalty.

‘Alan Breck!’ I cried; and then: ‘Do you think I am one to turn my back on you in your chief need? You dursn’t say it to my face. My whole conduct’s there to give the lie to it. It’s true, I fell asleep upon the muir; but that was from weariness, and you do wrong to cast it up to me —’

‘Which is what I never did,’ said Alan.

‘But aside from that,’ I continued, ‘what have I done that you should even me to dogs by such a supposition?’

‘I will only say this to ye, David,’ said Alan, very quietly, ‘that I have long been owing ye my life, and now I owe ye money. Ye should try to make that burden light for me.’

This ought to have touched me, and in a manner it did, but the wrong manner. I felt I was behaving badly; and was now not only angry with Alan, but angry with myself in the bargain; and it made me the more cruel.

‘You asked me to speak,’ said I. ‘Well, then, I will. You own yourself that you have done me a disservice; I have had to swallow an aff ront: I have never reproached you, I never named the thing till you did. And now you blame me,’ cried I. ‘The next thing will be that I’m to go down upon my knees and thank you for it! Ye should think more of others, Alan Breck. If ye thought more of others, ye would perhaps speak less about yourself; and when a friend that likes you very well has passed over an offence without a word, you would be blithe to let it lie, instead of making it a stick to break his back with. By your own way of it, it was you that was to blame; then it shouldnae be you to seek the quarrel.’

‘Aweel,’ said Alan, ‘say nae mair.’

And we fell back into our former silence; and came to our journey’s end, and supped, and lay down to sleep, without another word.

The gillie put us across Loch Rannoch in the dusk of the next day, and gave us his opinion as to our best route. Alan was little pleased with a route which led us through the country of his blood-foes, the Glenorchy Campbells. But the gillie, who was indeed the chief man of Cluny’s scouts, had good reasons to give him on all hands, naming the force of troops in every district, and alleging finally (as well as I could understand) that we should nowhere be so little troubled as in a country of the Campbells.

Alan gave way at last, but with only half a heart. ‘It’s one of the dowiest countries in Scotland,’ said he. ‘But I see that ye’re a man of some penetration; and be it as ye please!’

We set forth accordingly by this itinerary. By day, we lay and slept in the drenching heather; by night, incessantly clambered upon break-neck hills and among rude crags.

This was a dreadful time, rendered the more dreadful by the gloom of the weather and the country. I was never warm; my teeth chattered in my head; I was troubled with a very sore throat; I had a painful stitch in my side, which never left me; and when I slept in my wet bed, with the rain beating above and the mud oozing below me, it was to live over again in fancy the worst part of my adventures – to see the tower of Shaws lit by lightning, Ransome carried below on the men’s backs, Shuan dying on the round-house floor, or Colin Campbell grasping at the bosom of his coat. From such broken slumbers, I would be aroused in the gloaming, to sit up in the same puddle where I had slept, and sup cold drammach; the rain driving sharp in my face or running down my back in icy trickles; the mist enfolding us like as in a gloomy chamber – or, perhaps, if the wind blew, falling suddenly apart and showing us the gulf of some dark valley where the streams were crying aloud.

The sound of an infinite number of rivers came up from all round. In this steady rain the springs of the mountain were broken up; every glen gushed water like a cistern. During our night tramps, it was solemn to hear the voice of them below in the valleys, now booming like thunder, now with an angry cry.

During all these horrid wanderings we had no familiarity, scarcely even that of speech. The truth is that I was sickening for my grave, which is my best excuse. But besides that I was of an unforgiving disposition from my birth, slow to take offence, slower to forget it, and now incensed both against my companion and myself. For the best part of two days he was unweariedly kind; silent, indeed, but always ready to help, and always hoping (as I could very well see) that my displeasure would blow by. For the same length of time I stayed in myself, nursing my anger, roughly refusing his services, and passing him over with my eyes as if he had been a bush or a stone.

The second night, or rather the peep of the third day, found us upon a very open hill, so that we could not follow our usual plan and lie down immediately to eat and sleep. Alan, looking in my face, showed some marks of concern.

‘Ye had better let me take your pack,’ said he, for perhaps the ninth time since we had parted from the scout beside Loch Rannoch.

‘I do very well, I thank you,’ said I, as cold as ice.

Alan flushed darkly. ‘I’ll not offer it again,’ he said. ‘I’m not a patient man, David.’

‘I never said you were,’ said I, which was exactly the rude, silly speech of a boy of ten.

Alan made no answer at the time, but his conduct answered for him. Henceforth, it is to be thought, he quite forgave himself for the affair at Cluny’s; cocked his hat again, walked jauntily, whistled airs, and looked at me upon one side with a provoking smile.

The third night we were to pass through the western end of the country of Balquhidder. It came clear and cold, with a touch in the air like frost, and a northerly wind that blew the clouds away and made the stars bright. I observed that Alan was in high good spirits. As for me, the change of weather came too late. I was dead weary, deadly sick and full of pains and shiverings; the chill of the wind went through me, and the sound of it confused my ears. In this poor state I had to bear from my companion something in the nature of a persecution. He spoke a good deal, and never without a taunt. ‘Whig’ was the best name he had to give me. ‘Here,’ he would say, ‘here’s a dub for ye to jump, my Whiggie! I ken you’re a fine jumper!’ And so on; all the time with a gibing voice and face.

I knew it was my own doing, and no one else’s; but I was too miserable to repent. I felt I could drag myself but little farther; pretty soon, I must lie down and die on these wet mountains like a sheep or a fox, and my bones must whiten there like the bones of a beast. Alan would repent then, I thought; he would remember, when I was dead, how much he owed me, and the remembrance would be torture.

All the while, I was growing worse and worse. Once I had fallen, my leg simply doubling under me, and this had struck Alan for the moment; but I was afoot so briskly, and set off again with such a natural manner, that he soon forgot the incident. Flushes of heat went over me, and then spasms of shuddering. The stitch in my side was hardly bearable. At last I began to feel that I could trail myself no farther: and with that, there came on me all at once the wish to have it out with Alan, let my anger blaze, and be done with my life in a more sudden manner. He had just called me ‘Whig.’ I stopped.

‘Mr. Stewart,’ said I, in a voice that quivered like a fiddle-string, ‘you are older than I am, and should know your manners. Do you think it either very wise or very witty to cast my politics in my teeth? I thought, where folk differed, it was the part of gentlemen to differ civilly; and if I did not, I may tell you I could find a better taunt than some of yours.’

Alan had stopped opposite to me, his hat cocked, his hands in his breeches pockets, his head a little on one side. He listened, smiling evilly, as I could see by the starlight.

‘It’s time these manners ceased,’ I continued; ‘and I mean you shall henceforth speak civilly of my King and my good friends the Campbells.’

‘I am a Stewart —’ began Alan.

‘O!’ says I, ‘I ken ye bear a king’s name. But you are to remember, since I have been in the Highlands, I have seen a good many of those that bear it; and the best I can say of them is this, that they would be none the worse of washing.’

‘Do you know that you insult me?’ said Alan, very low.

‘I am sorry for that,’ said I, ‘for I am not done. Both the Campbells and the Whigs have beaten you; you have run before them like a hare. It behoves you to speak of them as of your betters.’

Alan stood quite still, the tails of his great-coat clapping behind him in the wind.

‘This is a pity,’ he said at last. ‘There are things said that cannot be passed over.’

‘I never asked you to,’ said I. ‘I am as ready as yourself.’

‘Ready?’ said he.

‘Ready,’ I repeated. ‘I am no blower and boaster like some that I could name. Come on!’ And drawing my sword, I fell on guard as Alan himself had taught me.

‘David!’ he cried. ‘Are ye daft? I cannae draw upon ye, David. It’s fair murder.’

‘That was your look-out when you insulted me,’ said I.

‘It’s the truth!’ cried Alan, and he stood for a moment, wringing his mouth in his hand like a man in sore perplexity. He drew his sword but before I could touch his blade with mine, he had thrown it from him and fallen to the ground. ‘Na, na,’ he kept saying, ‘na, na – I cannae, I cannae.’

At this the last of my anger oozed all out of me; and I found myself only sick, and sorry, and blank, and wondering at myself. I would have given the world to take back what I had said; but a word once spoken, who can recapture it? I minded me of all Alan’s kindness and courage in the past, how he had helped and cheered and borne with me in our evil days; and then recalled my own insults, and saw that I had lost for ever that doughty friend. At the same time, the sickness that hung upon me seemed to redouble, and the pang in my side was like a sword for sharpness. I thought I must have swooned where I stood.

This it was that gave me a thought. Where an apology was vain, a mere cry for help might bring Alan back to my side. I put my pride away from me.

‘Alan!’ I said; ‘if ye cannae help me, I must just die here.’

He started up sitting, and looked at me.

‘It’s true,’ said I. ‘I’m by with it. O, let me get into the bield of a house – I’ll can die there easier.’ I had no need to pretend; whether I chose or not, I spoke in a weeping voice that would have melted a heart of stone.

‘Can ye walk?’ asked Alan.

‘No,’ said I, ‘not without help. This last hour my legs have been fainting under me; If I die, ye’ll can forgive me, Alan? In my heart, I liked ye fine – even when I was the angriest.’

‘Wheesht, wheesht!’ cried Alan. ‘Dinna say that! Let me get my arm about ye,’ he continued; ‘that’s the way! Now lean upon me hard. Gude kens where there’s a house! Do ye gang easier so, Davie?’

‘Ay,’ said I, ‘I can be doing this way;’ and I pressed his arm with my hand.

He came near sobbing. ‘Davie,’ said he, ‘I’m no a right man at all; I have neither sense nor kindness; I could nae remember ye were just a bairn, I couldnae see ye were dying on your feet; Davie, ye’ll have to try and forgive me.’

‘O man, let’s say no more about it!’ said I. ‘We’re neither one of us to mend the other – that’s the truth! We must just bear and forbear, man Alan. O, but my stitch is sore! Is there nae house?’

‘I’ll find a house to ye, David,’ he said, stoutly. ‘We’ll follow down the burn, where there’s bound to be houses. My poor man, will ye no be better on my back?’

‘O Alan,’ says I, ‘and me a good twelve inches taller?’

‘Ye’re no such a thing,’ cried Alan, with a start. ‘There may be a trifling matter of an inch or two,’ he added, his voice tailing off in a laughable manner, ‘now when I come to think of it, I dare say ye’ll be just about right. Ay, it’ll be a foot, or near hand; or may be even mair!’

It was sweet and laughable to hear Alan eat his words up in the fear of some fresh quarrel. I could have laughed, had not my stitch caught me so hard.

‘Alan,’ cried I, ‘what makes ye so good to me? What makes ye care for such a thankless fellow?’

‘Deed, and I don’t, know,’ said Alan. ‘For just precisely what I thought I liked about ye, was that ye never quarrelled: – and now I like ye better!’