CHAPTER XIIVOLNEY PAYS A DEBT
There are some to whom strange changes never come. They pursue the even tenor of their way in humdrum monotony, content to tread the broad safe path of routine. For them the fascination of the mountain peaks of giddy chance has no allurement, the swift turbulent waters of intrigue no charm. There are others with whom Dame Fortune plays many an exciting game, and to these adventure becomes as the very breath of life. To such every hazard of new fortune is a diversion to be eagerly sought.
Something of this elation seized me—for I am of this latter class—as Murdoch and his gillies rowed me across the sound to Skye in the darkness of the early morning. It was a drab dawn as ever I have seen, and every tug at the oars shot me nearer to the red bloodhounds who were debouched over the island. What then? Was I not two years and twenty, and did I not venture for the life of a king’s son? To-day I staked my head on luck and skill; to-morrow—but let the future care for her own.
In a grove of beeches about half a mile from Portree we landed, and Murdoch gave the call of the whaup to signal Donald Roy. From a clump of whins in the gorse the whistle echoed back to us, and presently Captain Macdonald came swinging down to the shore. It appeared that another boatload of soldiers had been landed during the night, a squad of clan militia under the command of a Lieutenant Campbell. We could but guess that this portended some knowledge as to the general whereabouts of the Prince, and ’twas my mission to learn the extent and reliability of that knowledge if I could. That there was some danger in the attempt I knew, but it had been minimized by the philibeg and hose, the Glengarry bonnet and Macleod plaid which I had donned at the instance of Malcolm.
I have spoken of chance. The first stroke of it fell as I strode along the highway to Portree. At a crossroad intersection I chanced on a fellow trudging the same way as myself. He was one of your furtive-faced fellows, with narrow slits of eyes and an acquired habit of skellying sidewise at one out of them. Cunning he was beyond doubt, and from the dour look of him one to bear malice. His trews were like Joseph’s coat for the colour of the many patches, but I made them out to have been originally of the Campbell plaid.
“A fine day, my man,” says I with vast irony.
“Wha’s finding faut wi’ the day?” he answers glumly.
“You’ll be from across the mountains on the mainland by the tongue of you,” I ventured.
“Gin you ken that there’ll be nae use telling you.”
“A Campbell, I take it.”
He turned his black-a-vised face on me, scowling.
“Or perhaps you’re on the other side of the hedge—implicated in this barelegged rebellion, I dare say.”
Under my smiling, watchful eye he began to grow restless. His hand crept to his breast, and I heard the crackle of papers.
“Deil hae’t, what’s it to you?” he growled.
“To me? Oh, nothing at all. Merely a friendly interest. On the whole I think my first guess right. I wouldn’t wonder but you’re carrying dispatches from Lieutenant Campbell.”
The fellow went all colours and was as easy as a worm on a hook.
“I make no doubt you’ll be geyan tired from long travel, and the responsibility of carrying such important documents must weigh down your spirits,” I drolled, “and so I will trouble you”—with a pistol clapped to his head and a sudden ring of command in my voice—“to hand them over to me at once.”
The fellow’s jaw dropped lankly. He looked hitherand thither for a way of escape and found none. He was confronting an argument that had a great deal of weight with him, and out of the lining of his bonnet he ripped a letter.
“Thanks, but I’ll take the one in your breast pocket,” I told him dryly.
Out it came with a deal of pother. The letter was addressed to the Duke of Cumberland, Portree, Skye. My lips framed themselves to a long whistle. Here was the devil to pay. If the butcher was on the island I knew he had come after bigger game than muircocks. No less a quarry than the Prince himself would tempt him to this remote region. I marched my prisoner back to Captain Roy and Murdoch. To Donald I handed the letter, and he ripped it open without ceremony. ’Twas merely a note from the Campbell Lieutenant of militia, to say that the orders of his Highness regarding the watching of the coast would be fulfilled to the least detail.
“Well, and here’s a pirn to unravel. What’s to be done now?” asked the Macdonald.
“By Heaven, I have it,” cried I. “Let Murdoch carry the news to Raasay that the Prince may get away at once. Do you guard our prisoner here, while I, dressed in his trews and bonnet, carry the letter to the Duke. His answer may throw more light on the matter.”
Not to make long, so it was decided. We made fashion to plaster up the envelope so as not to show a casual looker that it had been tampered with, and I footed it to Portree in the patched trews of the messenger, not with the lightest heart in the world. The first redcoat I met directed me to the inn where the Duke had his headquarters, and I was presently admitted to a hearing.
The Duke was a ton of a little man with the phlegmatic Dutch face. He read the letter stolidly and began to ask questions as to the disposition of our squad. I lied generously, magnificently, my face every whit as wooden as his; and while I was still at it the door behind me opened and a man came in leisurely. He waited for the Duke to have done with me, softly humming a tune the while, his shadow flung in front across my track; and while he lilted there came to me a dreadful certainty that on occasion I had heard the singer and his song before.
“‘Then come kiss me sweet and twenty.
Youth’s a stuff will not endure,’”
carolled the melodious voice lazily. Need I say that it belonged to my umquhile friend Sir Robert Volney.
Cumberland brushed me aside with a wave of his hand.
“Donner! If the Pretender is on Skye—and he must be—we’ve got him trapped, Volney. Our cordon stretches clear across the isle, and every outlet is guarded,” he cried.
“Immensely glad to hear it, sir. Let’s see! Is this the twelfth time you’ve had him sure? ’Pon honour, he must have more lives than the proverbial cat,” drawled Sir Robert insolently.
There was one thing about Volney I could never enough admire. He was no respecter of persons. Come high, come low, the bite of his ironic tongue struck home. For a courtier he had the laziest scorn of those he courted that ever adventurer was hampered with; and strangely enough from him his friends in high place tolerated anything. The Prince of Wales and his brother Cumberland would not speak to each other, yet each of them fought to retain Volney as his follower. Time-servers wondered that his uncurbed speech never brought him to grief. Perhaps the secret of his security lay in his splendid careless daring; in that, and in his winning personality.
“By God, Volney, sometimes I think you’re half a Jacobite,” said Cumberland, frowning.
“Your Grace does me injustice. My bread is buttered on the Brunswick side,” answered the baronet, carelessly.
“But otherwise—at heart——”
Volney’s sardonic smile came into play. “Otherwise my well-known caution, and my approved loyalty,—Egad, I had almost forgotten that!—refute such an aspersion.”
“Himmel! If your loyalty is no greater than your caution it may be counted out. At the least you take delight in tormenting me. Never deny it, man! I believe you want the Pretender to get away.”
“One may wish the Prince——”
“The Prince?” echoed Cumberland, blackly.
“The Young Chevalier then, if you like that better. ’Slife, what’s in a name? One may wish him to escape and be guilty of no crime. He and his brave Highlanders deserve a better fate than death. I dare swear that half your redcoats have the sneaking desire to see the young man win free out of the country. Come, my good fellow”—turning to me—“What do they call you—Campbell? Well then, Campbell, speak truth and shame the devil. Are you as keen to have the Young Chevalier taken as you pretend?”
Doggedly I turned my averted head toward him, saw the recognition leap to his eyes, and waited for the word to fall from his lips that would condemn me. Amusement chased amazement across his face.
A moment passed, still another moment. The word was not spoken. Instead he began to smile, presently to hum,
“‘You’ll on an’ you’ll march to Carlisle ha’
To be hanged and quartered, an’ a’, an’ a’.’
“Come, Mont-Campbell, you haven’t answered my question yet. If you knew where Charles Edward Stuart was in hiding would you give him up?” He looked at me from under lowered lids, vastly entertained, playing with me as a cat does with a mouse.
“I am a fery good servant of the King, God bless him whatefer, and I would just do my duty,” answered I, still keeping the rôle I had assumed.
“Of course he would. Ach, liebe himmel! Any loyal man would be bound to do so,” broke in Cumberland.
Volney’s eyes shone. “I’m not so sure,” said he. “Now supposing, sir, that one had a very dear friend among the rebels; given the chance, ought he to turn him over to justice?”
“No doubt about it. Friendship ends when rebellion begins,” said the Duke, sententiously.
Sir Robert continued blandly to argue the case, looking at me out of the tail of his eye. Faith, he enjoyed himself prodigiously, which was more than I did, for I was tasting a bad quarter of an hour. “Put it this way, sir: I have a friend who has done me many good turns. Now assume that I have but to speak the word to send him to his death. Should the word be spoken?”
The Duke said dogmatically that a soldier’s first duty was to work for the success of his cause regardless of private feelings.
“Or turn it this way,” continued Volney, “that the man is not a friend. Suppose him a rival claimant to an estate I mean to possess. Can I in honour give him up? What would you think, Mont—er—Campbell?”
“Not Mont-Campbell, but Campbell,” I corrected. “I will be thinking, sir, that it would be a matter for your conscience, and at all events it iss fery lucky that you do not hafe to decide it.”
“Still the case might arise. It’s always well to be prepared,” he answered, laughing.
“Nonsense, Robert! What the deuce do you mean by discussing such a matter with a Highland kerne? I never saw your match for oddity,” said the Duke.
While he was still speaking there was a commotion in the outer room of the inn. There sounded a rap at the door, and on the echo of the knock an officer came into the room to announce the capture of a suspect. He was followed by the last man in the world I wanted to see at that moment, no other than the Campbell soldier whose place I was usurping. The fat was in the fire with a vengeance now, and though I fell back to the rear I knew it was but a question of time till his eye lit on me.
The fellow began to tell his story, got nearly through before his ferret eyes circled round to me, then broke off to burst into a screed of the Gaelic as he pointed a long finger at me.
The Duke flung round on me in a cold fury. “Is this true, fellow?”
I came forward shrugging.
“To deny were folly when the evidence is writ so plain,” I said.
“And who the devil are you?”
“Kenneth Montagu, at your service.”
Cumberland ordered the room cleared, then turned on Volney a very grim face. “I’ll remember this, Sir Robert. You knew him all the time. It has a bad look, I make plain to say.”
“’Twas none of my business. Your troopers can find enough victims for you without my pointing out any. I take the liberty of reminding your Highness that I’m not a hangman by profession,” returned Volney stiffly.
“You go too far, sir,” answered the Duke haughtily. “I know my duty too well to allow me to be deterred from performing it by you or by anybody else. Mr. Montagu, have you any reason to give why I should not hang you for a spy?”
“No reason that would have any weight with your Grace,” I answered.
He looked long at me, frowning blackly out of the grimmest face I had ever fronted; and yet that countenance, inexorable as fate, belonged to a young man not four years past his majority.
“Without dubiety you deserve death,” he said at the last, “but because of your youth I give you one chance. Disclose to me the hiding-place of the Pretender and you shall come alive out of the valley of the shadow.”
A foretaste of the end clutched icily at my heart, but the price of the proffered safety was too great. Since I must die, I resolved that it should be with a good grace.
“I do not know whom your Grace can mean by the Pretender.”
His heavy jaw set and his face grew cold and hard as steel.
“You fool, do you think to bandy words with me? You will speak or by heaven you will die the death of a traitor.”
“I need not fear to follow where so many of my brave comrades have shown the way,” I answered steadily.
“Bah! You deal in heroics. Believe me, this is no time for theatricals. Out with it. When did you last see Charles Stuart?”
“I can find no honourable answer to that question, sir.”
“Then your blood be on your own head, fool. You die to-morrow morning by the cord.”
“As God wills; perhaps to-morrow, perhaps not for fifty years.”
While I was being led out another prisoner passed in on his way to judgment. The man was Captain Roy Macdonald.
“I’m wae to see you here, lad, and me the cause of it by sending you,” he said, smiling sadly.
“How came they to take you?” I asked.
“I was surprised on the beach just after Murdoch left,” he told me in the Gaelic so that the English troopers might not understand. “All should be well with the yellow haired laddie now that the warning has been given. Are you for Carlisle, Kenneth?”
I shook my head. “No, my time is set for to-morrow. If they give you longer you’ll find a way to send word to Aileen how it went with me, Donald?”
He nodded, and we gripped hands in silence, our eyes meeting steadily. From his serene courage I gathered strength.
They took me to a bothy in the village which had been set apart as a prison for me, and here, a picket of soldiers with loaded muskets surrounding the hut, they left me to myself. I had asked for paper and ink, but my request had been refused.
In books I have read how men under such circumstancecame quietly to philosophic and religious contemplation, looking at the issue with the far-seeing eyes of those who count death but an incident. But for me, I am neither philosopher nor saint. Connected thought I found impossible. My mind was alive with fleeting and chaotic fragmentary impulses. Memories connected with Cloe, Charles, Balmerino, and a hundred others occupied me. Trivial forgotten happenings flashed through my brain. All the different Aileens that I knew trooped past in procession. Gay and sad, wistful and merry, eager and reflective, in passion and in tender guise, I saw my love in all her moods; and melted always at the vision of her.
I descended to self-pity, conceiving myself a hero and a martyr, revelling in an agony of mawkish sentiment concerning the post-mortem grief of my friends. From this at length I snatched myself by calling to mind the many simple Highlanders who had preceded me in the past months without any morbid craving for applause. Back harked my mind to Aileen, imagination spanning the future as well as the past. Tender pity and love suffused me. Mingled with all my broken reflections was many a cry of the heart for mercy to a sinner about to render his last account and for healing balm to that dear friend who would be left to mourn the memory of me painted in radiant colours.
Paradoxical though it may seem, the leaden hours flew on feathered foot. Dusk fell, then shortly darkness. Night deepened, and the stars came out. From the window I watched the moon rise till it flooded the room with its pale light, my mind at last fallen into the sombre quiet of deep abstraction.
A mocking voice brought me to earth with a start.
“Romantic spectacle! A world bathed in moonlight. Do you compose verses to your love’s bright eyes, Mr. Montagu? Or perhaps an epitaph for some close friend?”
An elegant figure in dark cloak, riding boots, and three-cornered hat confronted me, when I slowly turned.
“Hope I don’t intrude,” he said jauntily.
I gave him a plain hint. “Sir Robert, like Lord Chesterfield, when he was so ill last year, if I do not press you to remain it is because I must rehearse my funeral obsequies.”
His laugh rang merrily. Coming forward a step or two, he flung a leg across the back of a chair.
“Egad, you’re not very hospitable, my friend. Or isn’t this your evening at home?” he fleered.
I watched him narrowly, answering nothing.
“Cozy quarters,” he said, looking round with polite interest. “May I ask whether you have taken them for long?”
“The object of your visit, sir,” I demanded coldly.
“There you gravel me,” he laughed. “I wish I knew the motives for my visit. They are perhaps a blend—some pique, some spite, some curiosity, and faith! a little admiration, Mr. Montagu.”
“All of which being presumably now satisfied——”
“But they’re not, man! Far from it. And so I accept the courteous invitation you were about to extend me to prolong my call and join you in a glass of wine.”
Seeing that he was determined to remain willy-nilly, I made the best of it.
“You have interpreted my sentiments exactly, Sir Robert,” I told him. “But I fear the wine will have to be postponed till another meeting. My cellar is not well stocked.”
He drew a flask from his pocket, found glasses on the table, and filled them.
“Then let me thus far play host, Mr. Montagu. Come, I give you a toast!” He held the glass to the light and viewed the wine critically. “’T is a devilish good vintage, though I say it myself. Montagu, may you always find a safe port in time of storm!” he said with jesting face, but with a certain undercurrent of meaning that began to set my blood pounding.
But though I took a glimmer of the man’s purposeI would not meet him half-way. If he had any proposal to make the advances must come from him. Nor would I allow myself to hope too much.
“I’ faith, ’tis a good port,” I said, and eyed the wine no less judicially than he.
Volney’s gaze loitered deliberately over the cottage furnishings. “Cozy enough, but after all not quite to my liking, if I may make so bold as to criticise your apartments. I wonder now you don’t make a change.”
“I’m thinking of moving to-morrow,” I told him composedly. “To a less roomy apartment, but one just as snug.”
“Shall you live there permanently?” he asked with innocent face.
“I shall stay there permanently,” I corrected.
Despite my apparent unconcern I was playing desperately for my life. That Volney was dallying with some plan of escape for me I became more confident, and I knew from experience that nothing would touch the man on his weak side so surely as an imperturbable manner.
“I mentioned pique and spite, Mr. Montagu, and you did not take my meaning. Believe me, not against you, but against that oaf Cumberland,” he said.
“And what may your presence here have to dowith your pique against the Duke? I confess that the connection is not plain to me,” I said in careless fashion.
“After you left to-day, Mr. Montagu, I humbled myself to ask a favour of the Dutchman—the first I ever asked, and I have done him many. He refused it and turned his back on me.”
“The favour was——?”
“That you might be taken to London for trial and executed there.”
I looked up as if surprised. “And why this interest on my behalf, Sir Robert?”
He shrugged. “I do not know—a fancy—a whim. George Selwyn would never forgive me if I let you be hanged and he not there to see.”
“Had you succeeded Selwyn would have had you to thank for a pleasant diversion, but I think you remarked that the Dutchman was obstinate. ’Tis a pity—for Selwyn’s sake.”
“Besides, I had another reason. You and I had set ourselves to play out a certain game in which I took an interest. Now I do not allow any blundering foreigners to interfere with my amusements.”
“I suppose you mean you do not like the foreigner to anticipate you.”
“By God, I do not allow him to when I can prevent it.”
“But as in this instance you cannot prevent it——” My sentence tailed into a yawn.
“That remains to be seen,” he retorted, and whipped off first one boot and then the other. The unfastened cloak fell to the floor, and he began to unloose his doublet.
I stared calmly, though my heart stood still.
“Really, Sir Robert! Are you going to stay all night? I fear my accommodations are more limited than those to which you have been accustomed.”
“Don’t stand gaping there, Montagu. Get off those uncivilized rags of yours and slip on these. You’re going out as Sir Robert Volney.”
“I am desolated to interfere with your revenge, but—the guards?”
“Fuddled with drink,” he said. “I took care of that. Don’t waste time asking questions.”
“The Duke will be in a fearful rage with you.”
His eyes grew hard. “Am I a child that I should tremble when Cumberland frowns?”
“He’ll make you pay for this.”
“A fig for the payment!”
“You’ll lose favour.”
“I’ll teach the sullen beast to refuse me one. The boots next.”
He put on the wig and hat for me, arranged themuffler over the lower part of my face, and fastened the cloak.
“The watchword for the night is ‘Culloden.’ You should have no trouble in passing. I needn’t tell you to be bold,” he finished dryly.
“I’ll not forget this,” I told him.
“That’s as you please,” he answered carelessly. “I ask no gratitude. I’m settling a debt, or rather two—one due Cumberland and the other you.”
“Still, I’ll remember.”
“Oh, all right. Hope we’ll have the pleasure of renewing our little game some day. Better take to the hills or the water. You’ll find the roads strictly guarded. Don’t let yourself get killed, my friend. The pleasure of running you through I reserve for myself.”
I passed out of the hut into the night. The troopers who guarded the bothy were in either the stupid or the uproarious stage of their drink. Two of them sang a catch of a song, and I wondered that they had not already brought down on them the officer of the day. I passed them carelessly with a nod. One of them bawled out, “The watchword!” and I gave them “Culloden.” Toward the skirts of the village I sauntered, fear dogging my footsteps; and when I was once clear of the houses, cut across a meadow towardthe shore, wary as a panther, eyes and ears alert for signals of danger. Without mishap I reached the sound, beat my way up the sand links for a mile or more, and saw a boat cruising in the moonlight off shore. I gave the whaup’s cry, and across the water came an answer.
Five minutes later I was helping the gillie in the boat pull across to Raasay. When half way over we rested on our oars for a breathing space and I asked the news, the rug-headed kerne shot me with the dismal tidings that Malcolm Macleod and Creagh, rowing to Skyes for a conference with Captain Roy, had fallen into the hands of the troopers waiting for them among the sand dunes. He had but one bit of comfort in his budget, and that was “ta yellow-haired Sassenach body wass leaving this morning with Raasay hersel’ and Murdoch.” At least I had some assurance that my undertaking had secured the safety of the Prince, even though three staunch men were on their way to their death by reason of it.
Once landed on Raasay, I made up the brae to the great house. Lights were still burning, and when I got close ’twas easy to be seen that terror and confusion filled it. Whimpering, white-faced women and wailing bairns ran hither and thither blindly. Somewhere in the back part of the house the bagpipes weresoughing a dismal kind of dirge. Fierce-eyed men with mops of shock hair were gathered into groups of cursing clansmen. Through them all I pushed my way in to Aileen.
CHAPTER XIIITHE LITTLE GOD HAS AN INNINGS
By the great fireplace she stood, hands clasped, head upturned as in prayer. The lips moved silently in the petition of her heart. I saw in profile a girl’s troubled face charged with mystery, a slim, tall, weary figure all in white against the flame, a cheek’s pure oval, the tense curve of a proud neck, a mass of severely snodded russet hair. So I recalled her afterward, picture of desolation seeking comfort, but at the moment when I blundered on her my presence seemed profanity and no time was found for appraisement. Abashed I came to a halt, and was for tiptoeing back to the door; but hearing me she turned.
“Kenneth!” she cried, and stood with parted lips. Then, “They told me——”
“That I was taken. True, but I escaped. How, I will tell you later. The Prince— Is he safe?”
“For the present, yes. A lugger put in this morning belonging to some smugglers. In it he sailed for the mainland with Ronald and Murdoch. You will have heard the bad news,” she cried.
“That Malcolm, Creagh, and Donald are taken?”
“And Flora, too. She iss to be sent to London for assisting in the escape of the Prince. And so are the others.”
I fell silent, deep in thought, and shortly came to a resolution.
“Aileen, the Highlands are no place for me. I am a stranger here. Every clachan in which I am seen is full of danger for me. To-morrow I am for London.”
“To save Malcolm,” she cried.
“If I can. Raasay cannot go. He must stay to protect his clansmen. Murdoch is a fugitive and his speech would betray him in an hour. Remains only I.”
“And I.”
“You?”
“Why not? After ‘the ’15’ women’s tears saved many a life. And I too have friends. Sir Robert Volney, evil man as he iss, would move heaven and earth to save my brother.”
There was much truth in what she said. In these days of many executions a pardon was to be secured less by merit than by the massing of influence, and I knew of no more potent influence than a beautiful woman in tears. Together we might be able to do something for our friends. But there was the longjourney through a hostile country to be thought of, and the probability that we might never reach our destination in freedom. I could not tell the blessed child that her presence would increase threefold my chances of being taken, nor indeed was that a thing that held weight with me. Sure, there was her reputation to be considered, but the company of a maid would obviate that difficulty.
Ronald returned next day, and I laid the matter before him. He was extraordinarily loath to let Aileen peril herself, but on the other hand he could not let Malcolm suffer the penalty of the law without making an effort on his behalf. Raasay was tied hand and foot by the suspicions of the government and was forced to consent to leave the matter in our hands. He made only the one stipulation, that we should go by way of Edinburgh and take his Aunt Miss MacBean with us as chaperone.
We embarked on the smuggler next day for the Long Island and were landed at Stornoway. After a dreary wait of over a week at this place we took shipping on a brig bound for Edinburgh. Along the north coast of Scotland, through the Pentland Firth, and down the east shoreThe Lewisscudded. It seemed that we were destined to have an uneventful voyage till one day we sighted a revenue cutter which gave chase. As we had on boardThe Lewisacargo of illicit rum, the brig being in the contraband trade, there was nothing for it but an incontinent flight. For some hours our fate hung in the balance, but night coming on we slipped away in the darkness. The Captain, however, being an exceedingly timid man for one in his position, refused absolutely to put into the Leith Road lest his retreat should be cut off. Instead he landed us near Wemyss Castle, some distance up the coast, and what was worse hours before the dawn had cleared and in a pelting rain.
I wrapped Volney’s cloak around Aileen and we took the southward road, hoping to come on some village where we might find shelter. The situation might be thought one of extreme discomfort. There were we three—Aileen, her maid, and I—sloshing along the running road in black darkness with the dreary splashing of the rain to emphasize our forlorn condition. Over unknown paths we travelled on precarious errand. Yet I for one never took a journey that pleased me more. The mirk night shut out all others, and a fair face framed in a tartan shawl made my whole world for me. A note of tenderness not to be defined crept into our relationship. There was a sweet disorder in her hair and more than once the wind whaffed it into my face. In walking our fingers touched once and again; greatly daring, mine slipped over hers, and so like children we went hand in hand.An old romancer tells quaintly in one of his tales how Love made himself of the party, and so it was with us that night. I found my answer at last without words. While the heavens wept our hearts sang. The wine of love ran through me in exquisite thrills. Every simple word she spoke went to my heart like sweetest music, and every unconscious touch of her hand was a caress.
“Tired, Aileen?” I asked. “There is my arm to lean on.”
“No,” she said, but presently her ringers rested on my sleeve.
“’T will be daylight soon, and see! the scudding clouds are driving away the rain.”
“Yes, Kenneth,” she answered, and sighed softly.
“You will think I am a sad blunderer to bring you tramping through the night.”
“I will be thinking you are the good friend.”
Too soon the grey dawn broke, for at the first glimmer my love disengaged herself from my arm. I looked shyly at her, and the glory of her young beauty filled me. Into her cheeks the raw morning wind had whipped the red, had flushed her like a radiant Diana. The fresh breeze had outlined her figure clear as she struggled against it, and the billowing sail was not more graceful than her harmonious lines.
Out of the sea the sun rose a great ball of flaming fire.
“A good omen for the success of our journey,” I cried. “Look!
“‘Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.’
“The good God grant it prove so, Kenneth, for Malcolm and for all our friends.”
After all youth has its day and will not be denied. We were on an anxious undertaking of more than doubtful outcome, but save when we remembered to be sober we trod the primrose path.
We presently came to a small village where we had breakfast at the inn. For long we had eaten nothing but the musty fare of the brig, and I shall never forget with what merry daffing we enjoyed the crisp oaten cake, the buttered scones, the marmalade, and the ham and eggs. After we had eaten Aileen went to her room to snatch some hours sleep while I made arrangements for a cart to convey us on our way.
A wimpling burn ran past the end of the inn garden, and here on a rustic bench I found my comrade when I sought her some hours later. The sun was shining on her russet-hair. Her chin was in her hands, her eyes on the gurgling brook. The memoriesof the night must still have been thrilling her, for she was singing softly that most exquisite of love songs “Annie Laurie.”
“‘Maxwelton’s braes are bonnie,
Where early fa’s the dew,
Where me and Annie Laurie
Made up the promise true.’”
Her voice trembled a little, and I took up the song.
“‘Made up the promise true,
And ne’er forget will I;
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I’d lay me doun and dee.’”
At my first words she gave a little start, her lips parted, her head came up prettily to attention, and though I could not see them I was ready to vow that she listened with shining eyes. Softly her breath came and went. I trod nearer as I sang.
“‘Her brow is like the snaw-drift,
Her throat is like the swan,
She’s jimp about the middle,
Her waist ye weel micht span.’
“Oh, Aileen, if I might—if I only had the right! Won’t you give it me, dear heart?”
In the long silence my pulse stopped, then throbbed like an aching tooth.
“I’m waiting, Aileen. It is to be yes or no?”
The shy blue eyes met mine for an instant beforethey fluttered groundward. I could scarce make out the low sweet music of her voice.
“Oh, Kenneth, not now! You forget—my brother Malcolm——”
“I forget everything but this, that I love you.”
In her cheeks was being fought the war of the roses, with Lancaster victorious. The long-lashed eyes came up to meet mine bravely, love lucent in them. Our glances married; in those clear Highland lochs of hers I was sunk fathoms deep.
“Truly, Kenneth?”
“From the head to the heel of you, Aileen, lass. For you I would die, and that is all there is about it,” I cried, wildly.
“Well then, take me, Kenneth! I am all yours. Of telling love there will be many ways in the Gaelic, and I am thinking them all at once.”
And this is the plain story of how the great happiness came into Kenneth Montagu’s life, and how, though all unworthy, he won for his own the daughter of Raasay.
CHAPTER XIVTHE AFTERMATH
At Edinburgh we received check one. Aileen’s aunt had left for the Highlands the week before in a fine rage because the Duke of Cumberland, who had foisted himself upon her unwilling hospitality, had eaten her out of house and home, then departing had borne away with him her cherished householdpenatesto the value of some hundred pounds. Years later Major Wolfe told me with twinkling eyes the story of how the fiery little lady came to him with her tale of woe. If she did not go straight to the dour Duke it was because he was already out of the city and beyond her reach. Into Wolfe’s quarters she bounced, rage and suspicion speaking eloquent in her manner.
“Hech, sir! Where have ye that Dutch Prince of yours?” she demanded of Wolfe, her keen eyes ranging over him.
“’Pon honour, madam, I have not him secreted on my person,” returned the Major, gravely turning inside out his pockets for her.
The spirited old lady glowered at him.
“It’s ill setting ye to be sae humoursome,” she told him frankly. “It wad be better telling ye to answer ceevilly a ceevil question, my birkie.”
“If I can be of any service, madam——”
“Humph, service! And that’s just it, my mannie. The ill-faured tykes hae rampaigned through the house and taen awa’ my bonnie silver tea service that I hae scoured every Monday morning for thirty-seven years come Michelmas, forby the fine Holland linen that my father, guid carefu’ man, brought frae the continent his nainsel.”
“I am sorry——”
“Sorry! Hear till him,” she snorted. “Muckle guid your sorrow will do me unless——” her voice fell to a wheedling cajolery—“you just be a guid laddie and get me back my linen and the silver.”
“The Duke has a partiality for fine bed linen, and quaint silver devices are almost a mania with him. Perhaps some of your other possessions”—
“His Dutch officers ate me out of house and home. They took awa’ eight sacks of the best lump sugar.”
“The army is in need of sugar. I fear it is not recoverable.”
Miss MacBean had a way of affecting deafness when the occasion suited her.
“Eih, sir! Were you saying you wad see it was recovered? And my silver set wi’ twenty solid teaspoons,forby the linen?” she asked anxiously, her hand to her ear.
Wolfe smiled.
“I fear the Duke——”
“Ou ay, I ken fine you fear him. He’s gurly enough, Guid kens.”
“I was about to say, madam, that I fear the Duke will regard them as spoils from the enemy not to be given up.”
The Major was right. Miss MacBean might as well have saved her breath to cool her porridge, for the Duke carried her possessions to London despite her remonstrances. Five years later as I was passing by a pawnbroker’s shop on a mean street in London Miss MacBean’s teapot with its curious device of a winged dragon for a spout caught my eye in the window. The shopkeeper told me that it had been sold him by a woman of the demi-monde who had formerly been a mistress of the Duke of Cumberland. She said that it was a present from his Royal Highness, who had taken the silver service from the house of a fiery rebel lady in the north.
Our stay in the Scottish capital was of the shortest. In the early morning we went knocking at the door of Miss MacBean’s house. All day I kept under cover and in the darkness of night we slipped out of the city southwest bound. Of that journey, itssweet comradeship, its shy confidences, its perpetual surprises for each of us in discovering the other, I have no time nor mind to tell. The very danger which was never absent from our travel drew us into a closer friendliness. Was there an option between two roads, or the question of the desirability of putting up at a certain inn, our heads came together to discuss it. Her pretty confidence in me was touching in the extreme. To have her hold me a Captain Greatheart made my soul glad, even though I knew my measure did not fit the specifications by a mile. Her trust in me was less an incense to my vanity than a spur to my manhood.
The mere joy of living flooded my blood with happiness in those days. I vow it made me a better man to breathe the same air as she, to hear the lilt of her merry laugh and the low music of her sweet voice. Not a curve in that dimpled cheek I did not love; not a ripple in the russet hair my hungry eyes had not approved. When her shy glance fell on me I rode in the sunshine of bluest sky. If by chance her hand touched mine, my veins leaped with the wine of it. Of such does the happiness of youth consist.
’Tis strange how greedy love is in its early days of the past from which it has been excluded, how jealous sometimes of the point of contact with other lives in the unknown years which have gone to make upthe rungs of the ladder of life. I was never tired of hearing of her childhood on the braes of Raasay: how she guddled for mountain trout in the burn with her brother Murdoch or hung around his neck chains of daisies in childish glee. And she— Faith, she drew me out with shy questions till that part of my life which would bear telling must have been to her a book learned by rote.
Yet there were times when we came near to misunderstanding of each other. The dear child had been brought up in a houseful of men, her mother having died while she was yet an infant, and she was in some ways still innocent as a babe. The circumstances of our journey put her so much in my power that I, not to take advantage of the situation, sometimes held myself with undue stiffness toward her when my every impulse was to tenderness. Perhaps it might be that we rode through woodland in the falling dusk while the nesting birds sang madrigals of love. Longing with all my heart to touch but the hem of her gown, I would yet ride with a wooden face set to the front immovably, deaf to her indirect little appeals for friendliness. Presently, ashamed of my gruffness, I would yield to the sweetness of her charm, good resolutions windwood scattered, and woo her with a lover’s ardour till the wild-rose deepened in her cheek.
“Were you ever in love before, Kennie?” she asked me once, twisting at a button of my coat. We were drawing near Manchester and had let the postillion drive on with the coach, while we loitered hand in hand through the forest of Arden. The azure sky was not more blue than the eyes which lifted shyly to mine, nor the twinkling stars which would soon gaze down on us one half so bright.
I laughed happily. “Once—in a boy’s way—a thousand years ago.”
“And were you caring for her—much?”
“Oh, vastly.”
“And she—wass she loving you too?”
“More than tongue could tell, she made me believe.”
“Oh, I am not wondering at that,” said my heart’s desire. “Of course she would be loving you.”
’Twas Aileen’s way to say the thing she thought, directly, in headlong Highland fashion. Of finesse she used none. She loved me (oh, a thousand times more than I deserved!) and that was all there was about it. To be ashamed of her love or to hide it never, I think, occurred to her. What more natural then than that others should think of me as she did?
“Of course,” I said dryly. “But in the end my sweetheart, plighted to me for all eternity, had to choose betwixt her lover and something she hadwhich he much desired. She sighed, deliberated long—full five seconds I vow—and in end played traitor to love. She was desolated to lose me, but the alternative was not to be endured. She sacrificed me for a raspberry tart. So was shattered young love’s first dream. ’Tis my only consolation that I snatched the tart and eat it as I ran. Thus Phyllis lost both her lover and her portion. Ah, those brave golden days! The world, an unexplored wonder, lay at my feet. She was seven, I was nine.”
“Oh.” There was an odd little note of relief in the velvet voice that seemed to reproach me for a brute. I was forever forgetting that the ways of ’Toinette Westerleigh were not the ways of Aileen Macleod.
The dying sun flooded the topmost branches of the forest foliage. My eyes came round to the aureole which was their usual magnet.
“When the sun catches it ’tis shot with glints of gold.”
“It is indeed very beautiful.”
“In cloudy weather ’tis a burnished bronze.”
She looked at me in surprise.
“Bronze! Surely you are meaning green?”
“Not I, bronze. Again you might swear it russet.”
“That will be in the autumn when they are turning colour just before the fall.”
“No, that is when you have it neatly snodded and the firelight plays about your head.”
She laughed, flushing. “You will be forever at your foolishness, Kenn. I thought you meant the tree tips.”
“Is the truth foolishness?”
“You are a lover, Kennie. Other folks don’t see that when they look at me.”
“Other folks are blind,” I maintained, stoutly.
“If you see all that I will be sure that what they say is true and love is blind.”
“The wise man is the lover. He sees clear for the first time in his life. The sun shines for him—and her. For them the birds sing and the flowers bloom. For them the world was made. They——”
“Whiles talk blethers,” she laughed.
“Yes, they do,” I admitted. “And there again is another sign of wisdom. Your ponderous fool talks pompous sense always. He sees life in only one facet. Your lover sees its many sides, its infinite variety. He can laugh and weep; his imagination lights up dry facts with whimsical fancies; he dives through the crust of conventionality to the realities of life. ’Tis the lover keeps this old world young. The fire of youth, of eternal laughing youth, runs flaming through his blood. His days are radiant, his nights enchanted.”
“I am thinking you quite a poet.”
“Was there ever a better subject for a poem? Life would be poetry writ into action if all men were lovers—and all women Aileens.”
“Ah, Kenneth! This fine talk I do not understand. It’s sheer nonsense to tell such idle clavers about me. Am I not just a plain Highland lassie, as unskilled in flattering speeches as in furbelows and patches? Gin you will play me a spring on the pipes I’ll maybe can dance you the fling, but of French minuets I have small skill.”
“Call me dreamer if you will. By Helen’s glove, your dreamer might be the envy of kings. Since I have known you life has taken a different hue. One lives for years without joy, pain, colour, all things toned to the dull monochrome of gray, and then one day the contact with another soul quickens one to renewed life, to more eager unselfish living. Never so bright a sun before, never so beautiful a moon. ’Tis true, Aileen. No fear but one, that Fate, jealous, may snatch my love from me.”
Her laughter dashed my heroics; yet I felt, too, that back of her smiles there was belief.
“I dare say. At the least I will have heard it before. The voice iss Jacob’s voice, but——”
I blushed, remembering too late that my text and its application were both Volney’s.
“’Tis true, even if Jacob said it first. If a man is worth his salt love must purify him. Sure it must. I am a better man for knowing you.”
A shy wonder filled her eyes; thankfulness too was there.
“Yet you are a man that has fought battles and known life, and I am only an ignorant girl.”
I lifted her hand and kissed it.
“You are my queen, and I am your most loyal and devoted servant.”
“For always, Kenn? When you are meeting the fine ladies of London will you love a Highland lassie that cannot make eyes and swear choicely?”
“Forever and a day, dear.”
Aileen referred to the subject again two hours later when we arose from the table at the Manchester ordinary. It was her usual custom to retire to her room immediately after eating. To-night when I escorted her to the door she stood for a moment drawing patterns on the lintel with her fan. A fine blush touched her cheek.
“Were you meaning all that, Kennie?”
“All what, dear heart?”
“That—nonsense—in the forest.”
“Every bit of it.”
Her fan spelt Kenneth on the door.
“Sometimes,” she went on softly, “a fancy is builton moonlight and laughing eyes and opportunity. It iss like sunshine in winter on Raasay—just for an hour and then the mists fall.”
“For our love there will be no mists.”
“Ah, Kenn, you think so now, but afterward, when you take up again your London life, and I cannot play the lady of fashion, when you weary of my simpleness and are wishing me back among the purple heather hills?”
“That will be never, unless I wish myself there with you. I am no London Mohawk like Volney. To tramp the heather after muircocks or to ride to hounds is more my fancy. The Macaronis and I came long since to the parting of the ways. I am for a snug home in the country with the woman I love.”
I stepped to the table, filled a glass with wine, and brought it to her.
“Come, love! We will drink together. How is it old Ben Jonson hath it?
“‘Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth seek a drink divine;
But might I of Jove’s nectar sup
I would not change from thine.’
“Drink, sweetheart.”
She tasted, then I drained the glass and let it fall from my fingers to shiver on the floor.
Before we parted Aileen had one more word for me, “Kennie.”
“Yes, dear heart,” I cried, and was back at her side in a moment.
“What you said in the woods—I am knowing it all true. It is great foolishness, but my heart is singing the same song,” and with that she whipped the door to in my face.
I sauntered into the common room, found a seat by the fireplace, and let my eye wander over the company. There were present some half dozen yokels, the vicar’s curate, a country blood or two, and a little withered runt of a man in fustian with a weazened face like a wrinkled pippin. The moment I clapped eyes on him there came to my mind the dim recollection of a former acquaintance and the prescient fear of an impending danger. That I had seen him I was ready to take oath, yet I could not put my finger upon the circumstances. But the worst of it was that the old fellow recognized me, unless I were much mistaken, for his eyes never left me from the first.
From my mother I have inherited a Highland jauntiness which comes stealing over me when sobriety would set me better. Let the situation be adifferent one, uncertain of solution, with heads tipping in the balance, and an absurd spirit of recklessness straightway possesses me. But now, with this dear child on my hands, carelessness and I were far apart as the poles. Anxiety gripped me, and I sweated blood. Yet I must play the careless traveller, be full of good stories, unperturbed on the surface and apparently far from alarm. I began to overdo the part, recognized the fact, and grew savage at myself. Trying to conciliate him, I was free with the ale, and again overdid it.
He drank my ale and listened to my stories, but he sat cocking on his seat like an imp of mischief. I rattled on, insouciant and careless to all appearances, but in reality my heart like lead. Behind my smiling lips I cursed him up hill and down dale. Lard, his malicious grin was a thing to rile the gods! More than once I wake up in the night from dreaming that his scrawny hand was clapping the darbies on my wrists.
When we were ready to start next morning the post boy let me know that one of the horses had gone lame. Here was a pretty pickle. I pished and pshawed, but in the end had to scour the town to find another in its place. ’Twas well on toward noon when the boy and I returned to the ordinary with a nag that would serve.
Of other lovers I have scant knowledge, but the one I know was wont to cherish the memory of things his love had said and how she had said them; with what a pretty tilt to her chin, with what a daring shyness of the eyes, with what a fine colour and impetuous audacity she had done this or looked that. He was wont in advance to plan out conversations, to decide that he would tell her some odd brain fancy and watch her while he told it. Many an hour he spent in the fairy land of imagination; many a one he dreamed away in love castles built of fancied rambles in enchanted woods, of sweet talks in which he always said and did the right thing; destined alas! never to pass from mind to speech, for if ever tongue essayed the telling it faltered some fatuous abortion as little like love’s dream as Caliban resembled Ariel. Fresh from the brave world of day-dreams, still smiling happily from some whimsical conceit as well as with anticipation of Aileen’s gladness at sight of me, I passed through the courtyard and into the ordinary.
A hubbub at the foot of the stairway attracted me. A gaping crowd was gathered there about three central figures. My weasened pippin-face of the malicious grin was one of them; a broad-shouldered, fair-faced and very much embarrassed young officer in the King’s uniform stood beside him; and from the stairway some three steps up Aileen, plainly frightened,fronted them and answered questions in her broken English.
“I am desolated to distress you, madam,” the boy officer was saying, “but this man has laid an information with me that there is a rebel in your party, one who was in Manchester with the Pretender’s force some months since. It will be necessary that I have speech with him.”
“There iss no rebel with me, sir. The gentleman with whom I travel iss of most approved loyalty,” she faltered.
“Ah! He will no doubt be able to make that clear to me. May I ask where he is at present?”
Aileen went white as snow. Her distress was apparent to all.
“Sir, I do entreat you to believe that what I say iss true,” she cried whitely.
The little rat in fustian broke out screaming that he would swear to me among ten thousand: as to the girl she must be the rebel’s accomplice, his mistress mayhap. Aileen, her big, anxious eyes fixed on the officer, shrank back against the stair rail at her accuser’s word. The lad commanded him sharply to be quiet, but with the utmost respect let Aileen understand that he must have talk with me.
All this one swift glance had told me, and at this opportune moment I sauntered up, Volney’s snuff-boxin my hand. If the doubt possessed me as to how the devil I was to win free from this accusation, I trust no shadow of fear betrayed itself in my smirking face.
“Egad, here’s a gathering of the clans. Hope I’m notde trop,” I simpered.
The lieutenant bowed to me with evident relief.
“On the contrary, sir, if you are the gentleman travelling with this lady you are the desired complement to our party. There has been some doubt expressed as to you. This man here claims to have recognized you as one of the Pretender’s army; says he was present when you bought provisions for a troop of horsemen during the rebel invasion of this town.”
“’Slife, perhaps I’m Charles Stuart himself,” I shrugged.
“I swear to him. I swear to him,” screamed fustian.
On my soul merely to look at the man gave me a nausea. His white malevolence fair scunnered me.
I adjusted Volney’s eye-glass with care and looked the fellow over with a candid interest, much as your scientist examines a new specimen.
“What the plague! Is this rusty old last year’s pippin an evidence against me? Rot me, he’s a pretty scrub on which to father a charge against a gentleman, Lud, his face is a lie. No less!”
“May I ask your name, sir, and your business in this part of the country?” said the lieutenant.
Some impulse—perhaps the fact that I was wearing his clothes—put it into my head to borrow Volney’s name. There was risk that the lad might have met the baronet, but that was a contingency which must be ventured. It brought him to like a shot across a lugger’s bows.
“Sir Robert Volney, the friend of the Prince,” he said, patently astonished.
“The Prince has that honour,” I smiled.
“Pray pardon my insistence. Orders from headquarters,” says he apologetically.
I waved aside his excuses peevishly.
“Sink me, Sir Robert Volney should be well enough known not to be badgered by every country booby with a king’s commission. Lard, I vow I’ll have a change when Fritz wears the crown.”
With that I turned on my heel in a simulation of petty anger, offered my arm to Aileen, and marched up the stairs with her. My manner and my speech were full of flowered compliments to her, of insolence to the young gentleman below, for there is nothing more galling to a man’s pride than to be ignored.
“’Twas the only way,” I said to Aileen when the door was closed on us above. “’Tis a shame to flout an honest young gentleman so, but in such fashionthe macaroni would play the part. Had I stayed to talk with him he might have asked for my proof. We’re well out of the affair.”
But we were not out of it yet. I make no doubt that no sooner was my back turned than the little rat in fustian, his mind set on a possible reward, was plucking at the lad’s sleeve with suggestions and doubts. In any case there came presently a knock at the door. I opened. The boy officer was there with a red face obstinately set.
“Sir, I must trouble you again,” he said icily. “You say you are Sir Robert Volney. I must ask you for proofs.”
At once I knew that I had overdone my part. It had been better to have dealt with this youth courteously; but since I had chosen my part, I must play it.
“Proofs,” I cried blackly. “Do you think I carry proofs of my identity for every country bumpkin to read? Sink me, ’tis an outrage.”
He flushed, but hung doggedly to his point.
“You gain nothing by insulting me, Sir Robert. I may be only a poor line officer and you one high in power, but by Heaven! I’m as good a man as you,” cried the boy; then rapped out, “I’ll see your papers, if you have me broke for it.”
My papers! An inspiration shot into my brain.When Volney had substituted for me at Portree he had given me a pass through the lines, made out in his name and signed by the Duke of Cumberland, in order that I might present it if challenged. Hitherto I had not been challenged, and indeed I had forgotten the existence of it, but now— I fished out the sheet of parchment and handed it to the officer. His eye ran over the passport, and he handed it back with a flushed face.
“I have to offer a thousand apologies for troubling you, Sir Robert. This paper establishes your identity beyond doubt.”
“Hope you’re quite satisfied,” I said with vast irony.
“Oh, just one more question. The lady travelling with you?”
I watched him silently.
“She is from the Highlands, is she not?” he asked.
“Is she?”
“To be sure ’tis sufficient if Sir Robert Volney vouches for her.”
“Is it?”
“And of course the fact that she travels in his company——”
My answer was a yawn, half stifled behind my hand. The lad glared at me, in a rage at me for my insolence and at himself for his boyish inability tocope with it. Then he swung on his heel and stamped down-stairs. Five years later I met him at a dinner given by a neighbour of mine in the country, and I took occasion then to explain to him my intolerable conduct. Many a laugh we have since had over it.
We reached London on a dismal Wednesday when the rain was pouring down in sheets. Aileen I took at once to our town house that she might be with Cloe, though I expected to put up with my old nurse in another part of the city. I leave you to conceive the surprise of Charles and my sister when we dropped in on them.
The news they had for us was of the worst. Every week witnessed the execution of some poor Jacobites and the arrival of a fresh batch to take their place in the prisons. The Scotch Lords Balmerino, Cromartie and Kilmarnock were already on trial and their condemnation was a foregone conclusion. The thirst for blood was appalling and not at all glutted by the numerous executions that had already occurred. ’Twas indeed for me a most dismal home-coming.