Part 32 (1/2)
”Hanyards? Humph! Are you an Irishman?”
”No, my lord. Not even a Scotchman!”
He glared at me, but his companion laughed, and said, ”That's one under your short ribs, Geordie!”
”d.a.m.n the Iris.h.!.+” cried Murray. ”They're the ruination of the whole business, Davie, and ye know it.”
”Of course they are,” he replied, ”but that's no reason for telling it to an English loon who thinks less of a Scotchman than he does of a pickelt herring.”
”That may be, my lord,” said I to him, ”but I think so well of one Scottish lady that I'm proud to be her humble courier.” And I handed him his letter.
”Man! man!” he said ecstatically, as he ripped it open, ”ye're welcome as suns.h.i.+ne in December. It's from Ishbel. G.o.d bless her pretty face!”
He read the letter eagerly and then thrust it into his bosom.
”I am, further,” I went on, ”entrusted with a message from her ladys.h.i.+p.”
”G.o.d bless her! Out with it, man, out with it!”
”I was to inform you that she was very, very good,” said I, soberly as a judge pa.s.sing sentence.
”What do you think of that, Geordie Murray? Very, very guid! Eh, man, isn't she a monkey? G.o.d bless her!”
”I'll send the whole lot of 'em packing off back to Edinburgh,” said Murray. ”Women are a nuisance on a campaign. Your Ishbel, be hanged to her, wants a carriage all her own and another for her fineries.”
”Ye ken a lot about soldiering, Geordie,” retorted Ogilvie, ”no man more, but ye ken less about soldiers than a lad of ten. At Gladsmuir I said to MacIntosh, 'Let's get the d.a.m.n thing over, Sandy, and be back to breakfast wi' the leddies!' And we did.”
”You did so,” acknowledged Murray. ”Now, Davie, take our courier out and feed him. I thank you, sir! You have ridden speedily. Your pace is faster than your tongue.”
”My lord,” said I, ”although I am doing his Royal Highness such poor service as lies in me, I am not yet duly acting under his commission and authority.”
”What of it?” he asked.
”Hence I am not an officer under your command, my lord!”
”Excellent logic! And the therefore, my beef-eating friend, is....?”
”That I would as lief knock your head off as look at you!”
”When you are an officer,” cried he, ”by gad, sir, I'll teach ye the manners of an officer. Till then, my birkie,” rising and holding out his hand, ”guid luck to ye!”
We shook hands heartily and so parted.
”He's a grand man is Geordie Murray,” said Ogilvie, as he led me to another room across the landing. ”Just a wee bit birsy, maybe, but these d.a.m.ned Irish have got his kail through the reek. They're o'ermuch on his spirits of late.”
All his other talk was of his lady, though he looked well enough after me, and I made a good meal of the better half of a cold chicken, a cottage loaf, and a tankard of poor ale. Ashbourne is noted, say the wise in such matters, for the best malt and the poorest ale in England.
I am overmuch English, as is often the case with us who live in the very heart of England. The famous Mr. Johnson is a s.h.i.+re-fellow of mine, and very proud I am of it, and reckon it among the greatest events of my life that he has bullyragged me soundly for differing from him, and being right, about a line of Virgil he had misquoted in my hearing. Like Mr.
Johnson, I love men and loathe dancing-masters, and these Scotsmen were men indeed, my Lord Ogilvie, as I came to know later, one of the choicest.
He was a spare-built man, in years thirty or thereabouts, with a face all lines and angles, and dotted with pock-marks. For a lord, his purse was very bare of guineas, and nature had made up for it by giving him a belly full of pride. For him, the Highland line had been the boundary of the known world, so that his mind was a chequer-work of curious ignorance and knowledge.