VTHE HUE AND CRY
Languidly I came back to a world that faded and grew clear again most puzzlingly, that danced and jerked to and fro in oddly irresponsible fashion. At first too deadly weary to explain the situation to myself, I presently made out that I was in a coach which lurched prodigiously and filled me with sharp pains. Fronting me was the apparently lifeless body of a man propped in the corner with the head against the cushions, the white face grinning horridly at me. ’Twas the face of Volney. I stirred to get it out of my line of vision, and a soft, firm hand restrained me gently.
“You are not to be stirring,” a sweet voice said. Then to herself its owner added, ever so softly and so happily, “Thaing do Dhia (Thank God.) He iss alive—he iss alive!”
I pointed feebly a leaden finger at the white face over against me with the shine of the moon on it.
“Dead?”
“No. He hass just fainted. You are not to talk!”
“And Donald Roy——?”
The imperious little hand slipped down to cover my mouth, and Kenneth Montagu kissed it where it lay. For a minute she did not lift the hand, what time I lay in a dream of warm happiness. A chuckle from the opposite seat aroused me. The eyes in the colourless face had opened, and Volney sat looking at us with an ironic smile.
“I must have fallen asleep—and before a lady. A thousand apologies! And for awaking so inopportunely, ten thousand more!”
He changed his position that he might look the easier at her, a half-humorous admiration in his eyes. “Sweet, you beggar my vocabulary. As the goddess of healing you are divine.”
The flush of alarmed maiden modesty flooded her cheek.
“You are to lie still, else the wound will break out again,” she said sharply.
“Faith, it has broken out,” he feebly laughed, pretending to misunderstand. Then, “Oh, you mean the sword cut. ’Twould never open after it has been dressed by so fair a leech.”
The girl looked studiously out of the coach window and made no answer. Now, weak as I was—in pain and near to death, my head on her lap with her dear hand to cool my fevered brow—yet was I fool enough to grow insanely jealous that she had used her kerchiefto bind his wound. His pale, handsome face was so winning and his eyes so beautiful that they thrust me through the heart as his sword had been unable to do.
He looked at me with an odd sort of friendliness, the respect one man has for another who has faced death without flinching.
“Egad, Montagu, had either of us driven but a finger’s breadth to left we had made sure work and saved the doctors a vast deal of pother. I doubt ’twill be all to do over again one day. Where did you learn that mad lunge of yours? I vow ’tis none of Angelo’s teaching. No defense would avail against such a fortuitous stroke. Methought I had you speeding to kingdom come, and Lard! you skewered me bravely. ’Slife, ’tis an uncertain world, this! Here we ride back together to the inn and no man can say which of us has more than he can carry.”
All this with his easy dare-devil smile, though his voice was faint from weakness. An odd compound of virtues and vices this man! I learnt afterwards that he had insisted on my wounds being dressed before he would let them touch him, though he was bleeding greatly.
But I had no mind for badinage, and I turned my face from him sullenly. Silence fell till we jolted into the courtyard of “The Jolly Soldier,” where Creagh,Macdonald, and Hamish Gorm, having dismounted from their horses, waited to carry us into the house. We were got to bed at once, and our wounds looked to more carefully. By an odd chance Volney and I were put in the same room, the inn being full, and the Macdonald nursed us both, Creagh being for the most part absent in London on business connected with the rising.
Lying there day after day, the baronet and I came in time to an odd liking for each other, discussing our affairs frankly with certain reservations. Once he commented on the strangeness of it.
“A singular creature is man, Montagu! Here are we two as friendly as—as brothers I had almost said, but most brothers hate each other with good cause. At all events here we lie with nothing but good-will; we are too weak to get at each other’s throats and so perforce must endure each the other’s presence, and from mere sufferance come to a mutual—shall I say esteem? A while since we were for slaying; naught but cold steel would let out our heat; and now—I swear I have for you a vast liking. Will it last, think you?”
“Till we are on our feet again. No longer,” I answered.
“I suppose you are right,” he replied, with the first touch of despondency I had ever heard in his voice.“The devil of it is that when I want a thing I never rest till I get it, and after I have won it I don’t care any more for it.”
“I’m an obstinate man myself,” I said.
“Yes, I know. And when I say I’ll do a thing and you say I sha’n’t nothing on earth can keep us from the small sword.”
“Did you never spare a victim—never draw back before the evil was done?” I asked curiously.
“Many a time, but never when the incentive to the chase was so great as now. ’Tis the overcoming of obstacles I cannot resist. In this case—to pass by the acknowledged charms of the lady—I find two powerful reasons for continuing: her proud coyness and your defense of her. Be sure I shall not fail.”
“I think you will,” I answered quietly.
Out of doubt the man had a subtle fascination for me, even though I hated his principles in the same breath. When he turned the batteries of his fine winning eyes and sparkling smile on me I was under impulse to capitulate unconditionally; ’twas at remembrance of Aileen that my jaws set like a vice again.
But as the days passed I observed a gradual change in Volney’s attitude toward the Highland lass. Macdonald had found a temporary home for her at the house of a kind-hearted widow woman who lived inthe neighbourhood, and so long as we were in danger the girl and her grey-haired friend came often to offer their services in nursing. Aileen treated the baronet with such shy gentle womanliness, her girlish pity struggling through the Highland pride, forgetting in the suffering man the dastard who had wronged her, that he was moved not a little from his cynical ironic gayety. She was in a peculiar relation toward us, one lacking the sanction of society and yet quite natural. I had fought for her, and her warm heart forbade her to go her way and leave me to live or die as chance might will. As she would move about the room ministering to our wants, wrapped in her sweet purity and grace, more than once I caught on his face a pain of wistfulness that told me of another man beneath the polished heartless Macaroni. For the moment I knew he repented him of his attempted wrong, though I could not know that a day of manly reparation would come to blot out his sin against her.
As we grew better Aileen’s visits became shorter and less frequent, so that our only temptation to linger over our illness was removed. One day Sir Robert limped slowly across the floor on the arm of Creagh while I watched him enviously. From that time his improvement was rapid and within a week he came to make his adieux to me. Dressed point-devise, he was once more every inch a fop.
“I sha’n’t say good-bye, Montagu, to either you or the lady, because I expect to see you both again soon. I have a shot in my locker that will bring you to mighty short one of these days. Tony Creagh is going to London with me in my coach. Sorry you and the lady won’t take the other two seats. Well, au revoir. Hope you’ll be quite fit when you come up for the next round.” And waving a hand airily at me he went limping down the stairs, devoid of grace yet every motion eloquent of it, to me a living paradox.
Nor was it long before I too was able to crawl out into the sunshine with Aileen Macleod and Captain Macdonald as my crutches. Not far from the inn was a grove of trees, and in it a rustic seat or two. Hither we three repaired for many a quiet hour of talk. Long ago Donald had established his relationship with Aileen. It appeared that he was a cousin about eight degrees removed. None but a Highlander would have counted it at all, but for them it sufficed. Donald Roy had an extraordinary taking way with women, and he got on with the girl much more easily than I did. Indeed, to hear them daffing with each other one would have said they had been brought up together instead of being acquaintances of less than three weeks standing.
Yet Donald was so clever with it all that I was never the least jealous of him. He was forever takingpains to show me off well before her, making as much of my small attainments as a hen with one chick. Like many of the West country Highlanders he was something of a scholar. French he could speak like a native, and he had dabbled in the humanities; but he would drag forth my smattering of learning with so much glee that one might have thought him ignorant of the plainest A B C of the matter. More than once I have known him blunder in a Latin quotation that I might correct him. Aileen and he had a hundred topics in common from which I was excluded by reason of my ignorance of the Highlands, but the Macdonald was as sly as a fox on my behalf. He would draw out the girl about the dear Northland they both loved and then would suddenly remember that his pistols needed cleaning or that, he had promised to “crack” with some chance gentleman stopping at the inn, and away he would go, leaving us two alone. While I lay on the grass and looked at her Aileen would tell me in her eager, impulsive way about her own kindly country, of tinkling, murmuring burns, of hills burnt red with the heather, of a hundred wild flowers that blossomed on the braes of Raasay, and as she talked of them her blue eyes sparkled like the sun-kissed lochs themselves.
Ah! Those were the good days, when the wine of life was creeping back into my blood and I was fallingforty fathoms deep in love. Despite myself she was for making a hero of me, and my leal-hearted friend, Macdonald, was not a whit behind, though the droll look in his eyes suggested sometimes an ulterior motive. We talked of many things, but in the end we always got back to the one subject that burned like a flame in their hearts—the rising of the clans that was to bring back the Stuarts to their own. Their pure zeal shamed my cold English caution. I found myself growing keen for the arbitrament of battle.
No earthly Paradise endures forever. Into those days of peace the serpent of my Eden projected his sting. We were all sitting in the grove one morning when a rider dashed up to the inn and flung himself from his horse. ’Twas Tony Creagh, and he carried with him a placard which offered a reward of a hundred guineas for the arrest of one Kenneth Montagu, Esquire, who had, with other parties unknown, on the night of July first, robbed Sir Robert Volney of certain jewelry therein described.
“Highwayman it says,” quoth I in frowning perplexity. “But Volney knows I had no mind to rob him. Zounds! What does he mean?”
“Mean? Why, to get rid of you! I tore this down from a tavern wall in London just after ’twas pasted. It seems you forgot to return the gentleman his jewelry.”
I turned mighty red and pleaded guilty.
“I thought so. Gad! You’re like to keep sheep by moonlight,” chuckled Creagh.
“Nonsense! They would never hang me,” I cried.
“Wouldn’t, eh! Deed, and I’m not so sure. The hue and cry is out for you.”
“Havers, man!” interrupted Macdonald sharply. “You’re frightening the lady with your fairy tales, Creagh. Don’t you be believing him, my dear. The hemp is not grown that will hang Kenneth.”
But for all his cheery manner we were mightily taken aback, especially when another rider came in a few minutes later with a letter to me from town. It ran:—
Dear Montagu,“Once more unto the breach, dear friends.” Our pleasant little game is renewed. The first trick was, I believe, mine; the second yours. The third I trump by lodging an information against you for highway robbery. Tony I shall not implicate, of course, nor Mac-What’s-His-Name. Take wings, my Fly-by-night, for the runners are on your heels, and if you don’t, as I live, you’ll wear hemp. Give my devoted love to the lady. I am,Your most obedtservtto command,RobtVolney.
Dear Montagu,
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends.” Our pleasant little game is renewed. The first trick was, I believe, mine; the second yours. The third I trump by lodging an information against you for highway robbery. Tony I shall not implicate, of course, nor Mac-What’s-His-Name. Take wings, my Fly-by-night, for the runners are on your heels, and if you don’t, as I live, you’ll wear hemp. Give my devoted love to the lady. I am,
Your most obedtservtto command,RobtVolney.
Your most obedtservtto command,
RobtVolney.
In imagination I could see him seated at his table, pushing aside a score of dainty notes from Phyllis indiscreet or passionate Diana, that he might dash offhis warning to me, a whimsical smile half-blown on his face, a gleam of sardonic humour in his eyes. Remorseless he was by choice, but he would play the game with an English sportsman’s love of fair play. Eliminating his unscrupulous morals and his acquired insolence of manner, Sir Robert Volney would have been one to esteem; by impulse he was one of the finest gentlemen I have known.
Though Creagh had come to warn me of Volney’s latest move, he was also the bearer of a budget of news which gravely affected the State at large and the cause on which we were embarked. The French fleet of transports, delayed again and again by trivial causes, had at length received orders to postpone indefinitely the invasion of England. Yet in spite of this fatal blow to the cause it was almost certain that Prince Charles Edward Stuart with only seven companions, of whom one was the ubiquitous O’Sullivan, had slipped from Belleisle on the Doutelle and escaping the British fleet had landed on the coast of Scotland. The emotions which animated us on hearing of the gallant young Prince’s daring and romantic attempt to win a Kingdom with seven swords, trusting sublimely in the loyalty of his devoted Highlanders, may better be imagined than described. Donald Roy flung up his bonnet in a wild hurrah, Aileen beamed pride and happiness, and Creagh’svolatile Irish heart was in the hilltops. If I had any doubts of the issue I knew better than to express them.
But we were shortly recalled to our more immediate affairs. Before we got back to the inn one of those cursed placards offering a reward for my arrest adorned the wall, and in front of it a dozen open-mouthed yokels were spelling out its purport. Clearly there was no time to be lost in taking Volney’s advice. We hired a chaise and set out for London within the hour. ’Twas arranged that Captain Macdonald and Hamish Gorm should push on at once to Montagu Grange with Aileen, while I should lie in hiding at the lodgings of Creagh until my wounds permitted of my travelling without danger. That Volney would not rest without attempting to discover the whereabouts of Miss Macleod I was well assured, and no place of greater safety for the present occurred to me than the seclusion of the Grange with my brother Charles and the family servants to watch over her. As for myself, I was not afraid of their hanging me, but I was not minded to play into the hands of Volney by letting myself get cooped up in prison for many weeks pending a trial while he renewed his cavalier wooing of the maid.
Never have I spent a more doleful time than that which followed. For one thing my wounds healedbadly, causing me a good deal of trouble. Then too I was a prisoner no less than if I had been in The Tower itself. If occasionally at night I ventured forth the fear of discovery was always with me. Tony Creagh was the best companion in the world, at once tender as a mother and gay as a schoolboy, but he could not be at home all day and night, and as he was agog to be joining the Prince in the North he might leave any day. Meanwhile he brought me the news of the town from the coffee-houses: how Sir Robert Walpole was dead; how the Camerons under Lochiel, the Macdonalds under Young Clanranald, and the Macphersons under Cluny had rallied to the side of the Prince and were expected soon to be defeated by Sir John Cope, the Commander-in-Chief of the Government army in Scotland; how Balmerino and Leath had already shipped for Edinburgh to join the insurgent army; how Beauclerc had bet Lord March a hundred guineas that the stockings worn by Lady Di Faulkner at the last Assembly ball were not mates, and had won. It appeared that unconsciously I had been a source of entertainment to the club loungers.
“Sure ’tis pity you’re mewed up here, Kenn, for you’re the lion of the hour. None can roar like you. The betting books at White’s are filled with wagers about you,” Creagh told me.
“About me?” I exclaimed.
“Faith, who else? ‘Lord Pam bets Mr. Conway three ponies against a hundred pounds that Mr. Kenneth Montagu of Montagu Grange falls by the hand of justice before three months from date,’” he quoted with a great deal of gusto. “Does your neck ache, Kenn?”
“Oh, the odds are in my favour yet. What else?” I asked calmly.
“‘Mr. James Haddon gives ten pounds each to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and to Sir Robert Volney and is to receive from each twenty guineas if Mr. K. Montagu is alive twelve months from date.’ Egad, you’re a topic of interest in high quarters!”
“Honoured, I’m sure! I’ll make it a point to see that his Royal Highness and my dear friend Volney lose. Anything else?”
“At the coffee-house they were talking about raising a subscription to you because they hear you’re devilish hard up and because you made such a plucky fight against Volney. Some one mentioned that you had a temper and were proud as Lucifer. ‘He’s such a hothead. How’ll he take it?’ asks Beauclerc. ‘Why, quarterly, to be sure!’ cries Selwyn. And that reminds me: George has written an epigram that is going the rounds. Out of some queer whim—tokeep them warm I suppose—Madame Bellevue took her slippers to bed with her. Some one told it at the club, so Selwyn sat down and wrote these verses:
“‘Well may Suspicion shake its head—
Well may Clorinda’s spouse be jealous,
When the dear wanton takes to bed
Her very shoes—because they’re fellows.’”
Creagh’s merry laugh was a source of healing in itself, and his departure to join the Prince put an edge to the zest of my desire to get back into the world. Just before leaving he fished a letter from his pocket and tossed it across the room to me.
“Egad, and you are the lucky man, Kenn,” he said. “The ladies pester us with praises of your valour. This morning one of the fair creatures gave me this to deliver, swearing I knew your whereabouts.”
’Twas a gay little note from my former playmate Antoinette Westerleigh, and inclosed was a letter to her from my sister. How eagerly I devoured Cloe’s letter for news of Aileen may be guessed.
My Dearest ’Toinette:—Since last I saw you (so the letter ran) seems a century, and of course I am dying to come to town. No doubt the country is very healthy, but Lud! ’tis monstrous dull after a London season. I vow I am already a lifetime behind the fashions. Is’t true that prodigious bustles are the rage? And while I think of it I wish you would call at Madame Ronald’s and get the lylack lute-string scirt she is making for me.Also at Duprez’s for the butifull little hat I ordered. Please have them sent by carrier. I know I am a vast nuisance; ’tis the penalty, my dear, for having a country mawkin as your best friend.Of course you know what that grate brother of mine has been at. Gaming I hear, playing ducks and drakes with his money, and fighting duels with your lover. For a time we were dreadfully anxious about him. What do you think he has sent me down to take care of for him? But you would never guess. My love, a Scotch girl, shy as one of her own mountain deer. I suppose when he is recovert of his wounds he will be down here to philander with her. Aileen Macleod is her name, and really I do not blame him. I like her purely myself. In a way quite new she is very taking; speaks the prettiest broken English, is very simple, sweet, and grateful. At a word the pink and white comes and goes in her cheeks as it never does in ours. I wish I could acquire her manner, but Alack! ’tis not to be learnt though I took lessons forever. The gracefull creature dances the Scottish flings divinely. She is not exactly butifull, but—well, I can see why the men think so and fall down in worship! By the way, she is very nearly in love—tho she does not know it—with that blundering brother of mine; says that “her heart iss always thanking him at all events.” If he knew how to play his cards—but there, the oaf will put his grate foot in it.She came here with a shag-headed gillie of a servant, under the protection of a Captain Macdonald who is a very fine figure of a man. He was going to stay only an hour or two, butCharlespersuaded him to stop three days. Charles teases me about him, swears the Captain is already my slave, but you may depend on’t there is nothing in it. Last night we diverted ourselves with playing Hide the Thimble, and the others lost the Scotch Captain and me in thearmory. He is a peck of fun. This morning he left for the North, and do you think the grate Mr. Impudence did not buss us both; Aileen because she is his cousin a hundred times removed and me because (what a reason!) “my eyes dared him.” Of course I was in a vast rage, which seemed to hily delight Captain Impudence. I don’t see how he dared take so grate a preaviledge. Do you?Aileen is almost drest, and I must go smart myself. My dear, an you love me, write toYour ownCloe.P. S.—Lard, I clear forgot! ’Tis a secret that the Scotch enchantress is here. You must be sure not to mention it, my dear, to your Sir Robert, But la! I have the utmost confidence in your discretion.
My Dearest ’Toinette:—
Since last I saw you (so the letter ran) seems a century, and of course I am dying to come to town. No doubt the country is very healthy, but Lud! ’tis monstrous dull after a London season. I vow I am already a lifetime behind the fashions. Is’t true that prodigious bustles are the rage? And while I think of it I wish you would call at Madame Ronald’s and get the lylack lute-string scirt she is making for me.
Also at Duprez’s for the butifull little hat I ordered. Please have them sent by carrier. I know I am a vast nuisance; ’tis the penalty, my dear, for having a country mawkin as your best friend.
Of course you know what that grate brother of mine has been at. Gaming I hear, playing ducks and drakes with his money, and fighting duels with your lover. For a time we were dreadfully anxious about him. What do you think he has sent me down to take care of for him? But you would never guess. My love, a Scotch girl, shy as one of her own mountain deer. I suppose when he is recovert of his wounds he will be down here to philander with her. Aileen Macleod is her name, and really I do not blame him. I like her purely myself. In a way quite new she is very taking; speaks the prettiest broken English, is very simple, sweet, and grateful. At a word the pink and white comes and goes in her cheeks as it never does in ours. I wish I could acquire her manner, but Alack! ’tis not to be learnt though I took lessons forever. The gracefull creature dances the Scottish flings divinely. She is not exactly butifull, but—well, I can see why the men think so and fall down in worship! By the way, she is very nearly in love—tho she does not know it—with that blundering brother of mine; says that “her heart iss always thanking him at all events.” If he knew how to play his cards—but there, the oaf will put his grate foot in it.
She came here with a shag-headed gillie of a servant, under the protection of a Captain Macdonald who is a very fine figure of a man. He was going to stay only an hour or two, butCharlespersuaded him to stop three days. Charles teases me about him, swears the Captain is already my slave, but you may depend on’t there is nothing in it. Last night we diverted ourselves with playing Hide the Thimble, and the others lost the Scotch Captain and me in the
armory. He is a peck of fun. This morning he left for the North, and do you think the grate Mr. Impudence did not buss us both; Aileen because she is his cousin a hundred times removed and me because (what a reason!) “my eyes dared him.” Of course I was in a vast rage, which seemed to hily delight Captain Impudence. I don’t see how he dared take so grate a preaviledge. Do you?
Aileen is almost drest, and I must go smart myself. My dear, an you love me, write to
Your ownCloe.
Your ownCloe.
P. S.—Lard, I clear forgot! ’Tis a secret that the Scotch enchantress is here. You must be sure not to mention it, my dear, to your Sir Robert, But la! I have the utmost confidence in your discretion.
Conceive my dismay! Discretion and Antoinette Westerleigh were as far apart as the poles. What more likely than that the dashing little minx would undertake to rally her lover about Aileen, and that the adroit baronet would worm out of her the information he desired? The letter crystallized my desire to set out at once for Montagu Grange, and from there to take the road with Miss Macleod hotspur for Scotland. It appeared to me that the sooner we were out of England the better it would be for both of us.
I made the journey to the Grange by easy stages, following so far as I could little used roads and lanes on account of a modest desire to avoid publicity. ’Twas early morning when I reached the Grange. I remember the birds were twittering a chorus as I rodeunder the great oaks to the house. Early as it was, Cloe and Aileen were already walking in the garden with their arms entwined about each other’s waists in girl fashion. They made a picture taking enough to have satisfied a jaded connoisseur of beauty: the fair tall Highland lass, jimp as a willow wand, with the long-lashed blue eyes that looked out so shyly and yet so frankly on those she liked, and the merry brown-eyed English girl so ready of saucy tongue, so worldly wise and yet so innocent of heart.
Cloe came running to meet me in a flutter of excitement and Mistress Aileen followed more demurely down the path, though there was a Highland welcome in her frank face not to be denied. I slid from the horse and kissed Cloe. Miss Macleod gave me her hand.
“We are hoping you are quite well from your wounds,” she said.
“Quite,” I answered. “Better much for hearing your kind voices and seeing your bright faces.”
I dare say I looked over-long into one of the bright faces, and for a punishment was snatched into confusion by my malapert sister.
“I didn’t know you had heard my kind voice yet,” mimicked Miss Madcap. “And are you thinking of holding Aileen’s hand all day?”
My hand plumped to my side like a shot. Both ofus flamed, I stammering apologies the while Cloe no doubt enjoyed hugely my embarrassment. ’Tis a sister’s prerogative to teach her older brothers humility, and Cloe for one did not let it fall into neglect.
“To be sure I do not know the Highland custom in the matter,” she was continuing complacently when Aileen hoist her with her own petard.
“I wass thinking that perhaps Captain Macdonald had taught you in the armory,” she said quietly; and Cloe, to be in the fashion, ran up the red flag too.
It appeared that my plan for an immediate departure from England jumped with the inclination of Miss Macleod. She had received a letter from her brother, now in Scotland, whose plans in regard to her had been upset by the unexpected arrival of the Prince. He was extremely solicitous on her behalf, but could only suggest for her an acceptance of a long-standing invitation to visit Lady Strathmuir, a distant relative living in Surrey, until times grew more settled. To Aileen the thought of throwing herself upon the hospitality of one she had never met was extremely distasteful, and she hailed my proposal as an alternative much to be desired.
The disagreeable duty of laying before my lawyer the involved condition of my affairs had to be endured, and I sent for him at once to get it over with the sooner. He pulled a prodigious long face at mystatement of the gaming debts I had managed to contract during my three months’ experiment as the prodigal son in London, but though he was extraordinarily severe with me I made out in the end that affairs were not so bad as I had thought. The estate would have to be plastered with a mortgage, but some years of stiff economy and retrenchment, together with a ruthless pruning of the fine timber, would suffice to put me on my feet again. The expenditures of the household would have to be cut down, but Mr. Brief thought that a modest establishment befitting my rank might still be maintained. If I thought of marrying——
A ripple of laughter from the lawn, where Aileen and Charles were arranging fishing tackle, was wafted through the open window and cut athwart the dry speech of the lawyer. My eyes found her and lingered on the soft curves, the rose-leaf colouring, the eager face framed in a sunlit aureola of radiant hair. Already my mind had a trick of imagining her the mistress of the Grange. Did she sit for a moment in the seat that had been my mother’s my heart sang; did she pluck a posy or pour a cup of tea ’twas the same. “If I thought of marrying——” Well, ’twas a thing to be considered one day—when I came back from the wars.
CHAPTER VIIN THE MATTER OF A KISS
It may be guessed that the music of the gray morn when we started found a ready echo in my heart. The whistle of a plover cut the breaking day, the meadow larks piped clear above us in chorus with the trilling of the thrush, the wimpling burn tinkled its song, and the joy that took me fairly by the throat was in tune with all of them. For what does a lover ask but to be one and twenty, to be astride a willing horse, and to be beside the one woman in the world for him? Sure ’tis heaven enough to watch the colour come and go in her face, to hear the lilt of her voice, and to see the changing light in her eye. What though at times we were shy as the wild rabbit, we were none the less happy for that. In our hearts there bubbled a childlike gaiety; we skipped upon the sunlit hilltops of life.
And here was the one drop of poison in the honey of my cup: that I was wearing an abominable misfit of a drab-coloured suit of homespun more adapted to some village tradesman than to a young cavalier of fashion, for on account of the hue and cry against meI had pocketed my pride and was travelling under an incognito. Nor did it comfort me one whit that Aileen also was furbished up in sombre gray to represent my sister, for she looked so taking in it that I vow ’twas more becoming than her finery. Yet I made the best of it, and many a good laugh we got from rehearsing our parts.
I can make no hand at remembering what we had to say to each other, nor does it matter; in cold type ’twould lose much of its charm. The merry prattle of her pretty broken English was set to music for me, and the very silences were eloquent of thrill. Early I discovered that I had not appreciated fully her mental powers, on account of a habit she had of falling into a shy silence when several were present. She had a nimble wit, an alert fancy, and a zest for life as earnest as it was refreshing. A score of times that day she was out of the shabby chaise to pick the wild flowers or to chat with the children by the wayside. The memory of her warm friendliness to me stands out the more clear contrasted with the frigid days that followed.
It may be thought by some that our course in travelling together bordered on the edge of the proprieties, but it must be remembered that the situation was a difficult one for us both. Besides which my sister Cloe was always inclined to be independent, ofa romantical disposition, and herself young; as for Aileen, I doubt whether any thought of the conventions crossed her mind. Her people would be wearying to see her; her friend Kenneth Montagu had offered his services to conduct her home; Hamish Gorm was a jealous enough chaperone for any girl, and the maid that Cloe had supplied would serve to keep the tongues of the gossips from clacking.
We put up that first evening at The King’s Arms, a great rambling inn of two stories which caught the trade of many of the fashionable world on their way to and from London. Aileen and I dined together at a table in the far end of the large dining-room. As I remember we were still uncommon merry, she showing herself very clever at odd quips and turns of expression. We found matter for jest in a large placard on the wall, with what purported to be a picture of me, the printed matter containing the usual description and offer of reward. Watching her, I was thinking that I had never known a girl more in love with life or with so mobile a face when a large company of arrivals from London poured gaily into the room.
They were patched and powdered as if prepared for a ball rather than for the dust of the road. Dowagers, frigid and stately as marble, murmured racy gossip to each other behind their fans. Famous beauties flitted hither and thither, beckoning languid fops with theiralluring eyes. Wits and beaux sauntered about elegantly even as at White’s. ’Twas plain that this was a partyen routefor one of the great county houses near.
Aileen stared with wide-open eyes and parted lips at these great dames from the fashionable world about which she knew nothing. They were prominent members of the leading school for backbiting in England, and in ten minutes they had talked more scandal than the Highland lass had heard before in a lifetime. But the worst of the situation was that there was not one of them but would cry “Montagu!” when they clapped eyes on me. Here were Lord March, George Selwyn, Sir James Craven, Topham Beauclerc, and young Winton Westerleigh; Lady Di Davenport and the Countess Dowager of Rocksboro; the Hon. Isabel Stanford, Mistress Antoinette Westerleigh, and others as well known to me. They had taken us at unawares, and as Creagh would have put it in an Irish bull the only retreat possible for us was an advance through the enemy. At present they paid no more attention to us than they would to the wooden negro in front of a tobacco shop, but at any moment detection might confront me. Faith, here was a predicament! Conceive me, with a hundred guineas set upon my head, thrust into the very company in all England I would most have avoided.
And of all the people in the world they chanced on me as a topic of conversation. George Selwyn, strolling up and down the room, for want of something better to do, stopped in front of that confounded placard and began reading it aloud. Now I don’t mind being described as “Tall, strong, well-built, and extremely good-looking; brown eyes and waving hair like ilk; carries himself with distinction;” but I grue at being set down as a common cutpurse, especially when I had taken the trouble to send back Sir Robert’s jewelry at some risk to myself.
“Wonder what Montagu has done with himself,” queried Beauclerc after Selwyn had finished.
“Or what Volney has done with him,” muttered March behind his hand. “I’ll lay two to one in ponies he never lives to cross another man.”
“You’re wrong, March, if you think Volney finished him. He’s alive all right. I heard it from Denman that he got safe across to France. Pity Volney didn’t pink the fellow through the heart for his d——d impudence in interfering; not that I can stand Volney either, curse the popinjay!” snarled Craven sourly.
“If Montagu reaches the continent, ’twill be a passover the Jews who hold his notes will not relish,” suggested Selwyn in his sleepy way.
A pink-and-white-faced youth shimmering in creamsatin was the animated heart of another group. His love for scandal and his facility for acquiring the latest tidbit made him the delight of many an old tabby cat. Now his eyes shone with the joy of imparting a delicious morsel.
“Egad, then, you’re all wrong,” he was saying in a shrill falsetto. “Stap me, the way of it was this! I have it on the best of authority and it comes direct, rot me if it doesn’t! Sir Robert’s man, Watkins, told Madame Bellevue’s maid, from whom it came straight to Lord Pam’s fellow and through him to old Methuselah, who mentioned it to——”
“You needn’t finish tracing the lineage of the misinformation. We’ll assume it began with Adam and ended with a dam—with a descendant of his,” interrupted Craven with his usual insolence. “Now out with the lie!”
“’Pon honour, Craven, ’tis gospel truth,” gasped Pink-and-White.
“Better send for a doctor then. If he tries to tell the truth for once he’ll strangle,” suggested Selwyn whimsically to March.
“Spit it out then!” bullied Craven coarsely.
“Oh, Lard! Your roughness gives me the flutters, Sir James. I’m all of a tremble. Split me, I can’t abide to be scolded! Er— Well, then, ’twas a Welsh widow they fought about—name of Gwynneand rich as Crœsus—old enough to be a grandmother of either of ’em, begad! Volney had first claim and Montagu cut in; swore he’d marry her if she went off the hooks next minute. They fought and Montagu fell at the first shot. Next day the old Begum ran off with her footman. That’s the story, you may depend on’t. Lud, yes!”
“You may depend on its being wrong in every particular,” agreed Lady Di coolly. “You’d better tell the story, ’Toinette. They’ll have it a hundred times worse.”
“Oh Lard! Gossip about my future husband. Not I!” giggled that lively young woman.
“Don’t be a prude, miss!” commanded the Dowager Countess sharply. “’Tis to stifle false reports you tell it.”
“Slidikins! An you put it as a duty,” simpered the young beauty. “’Twould seem that—it would appear—the story goes that— Do I blush?—that Sir Robert— Oh, let Lady Di tell it!”
Lady Di came to scratch with the best will in the world.
“To correct a false impression then; for no other reason I tell it save to kill worse rumours. Everybody knows I hate scandal.”
“’Slife, yes! Everybody knows that,” agreed Craven, leering over at March.
“Sir Robert Volney then was much taken with a Scotch girl who was visiting in London, and of course she dreamed air castles and fell in love with him. ’Twas Joan and Darby all the livelong day, but alack! the maid discovered, as maids will, that Sir Robert’s intentions were—not of the best, and straightway the blushing rose becomes a frigid icicle. Well, this Northern icicle was not to be melted, and Sir Robert was for trying the effect of a Surrey hothouse. In her brother’s absence he had the maid abducted and carried to a house of his in town.”
“’Slife! A story for a play. And what then?” cried Pink-and-White.
“Why then—enter Mr. Montagu with a ‘Stay, villain!’ It chanced that young Don Quixote was walking through the streets for the cooling of his blood mayhap, much overheated by reason of deep play. He saw, he followed, at a fitting time he broke into the apartment of the lady. Here Sir Robert discovered them——”
“The lady all unready, alackaday!” put in the Honourable Isabel, from behind a fan to hide imaginary blushes.
“Well, something easy of attire to say the least,” admitted Lady Di placidly.
“I’ faith then, Montagu must make a better lover than Sir Robert,” cried March.
“Every lady to her taste. And later they fought on the way to Surrey. Both wounded, no graves needed. The girl nursed Montagu back to health, and they fled to France together,” concluded the narrator.
“And the lady—is she such a beauty?” queried Beauclerc.
“Slidikins! I don’t know. She must have points. No Scotch mawkin would draw Sir Robert’s eye.”
You are to imagine with what a burning face I sat listening to this devil’s brew of small talk. What their eyes said to each other of innuendo, what their lifted brows implied, and what they whispered behind white elegant hands, was more maddening than the open speech. For myself, I did not value the talk of the cats at one jack straw, but for this young girl sitting so still beside me— By Heaven, I dared not look at her. Nor did I know what to do, how to stop them without making the matter worse for her, and I continued to sit in an agony grizzling on the gridiron of their calumnies. Had they been talking lies outright it might have been easily borne, but there was enough of truth mixed in the gossip to burn the girl with the fires of shame.
At the touch of a hand I turned to look into a face grown white and chill, all the joy of life struck out of it. The girl’s timorous eyes implored me to spare her more of this scene.
“Oh Kenneth, get me away from here. I will be dying of shame. Let us be going at once,” she asked in a low cry.
“There is no way out except through the crowd of them. Will you dare make the attempt? Should I be recognized it may be worse for you.”
“I am not fearing if you go with me. And at all events anything iss better than this.”
There was a chance that we might pass through unobserved, and I took it; but I was white-hot with rage and I dare say my aggressive bearing bewrayed me. In threading our way to the door I brushed accidentally against Mistress Westerleigh. She drew aside haughtily, then gave a little scream of recognition.
“Kenn Montagu, of all men in the world—and turned Quaker, too. Gog’s life, ’tis mine, ’tis mine! The hundred guineas are mine. I call you all to witness I have taken the desperate highwayman. ‘Tall, strong, and extremely well-looking; carries himself like a gentleman.’ This way, sir,” she cried merrily, and laying hold of my coat-tails began to drag me toward the men.
There was a roar of laughter at this, and the pink-white youth lounged forward to offer me a hand of welcome I took pains not to see.
“Faith, the lady has the right of it, Montagu. Thatbig body of yours is worth a hundred guineas now if it never was before,” laughed Selwyn.
“Sorry to disappoint the lady, but unfortunately my business carries me in another direction,” I said stiffly.
“But Lud! ’Tis not fair. You’re mine. I took you, and I want the reward,” cries the little lady with the sparkling eyes.
Aileen stood by my side like a queen cut out of marble, turning neither to the right nor to the left, her head poised regally on her fine shoulders as if she saw none in the room worthy a look.
“This must be the baggage about which they fought. Faith, as fine a piece as I have seen,” said Craven to March in an audible aside, his bold eyes fixed insolently on the Highland girl.
Aileen heard him, and her face flamed. I set my teeth and swore to pay him for that some day, but I knew this to be no fitting time for a brawl. Despite me the fellow forced my hand. He planted himself squarely in our way and ogled my charge with impudent effrontery. Me he quite ignored, while his insulting eyes raked her fore and aft. My anger seethed, boiled over. Forward slid my foot behind his heel, my forearm under his chin. I threw my weight forward in a push. His head went back as though shot from a catapult, and next moment Sir James Cravenmeasured his length on the ground. With the girl on my arm I pushed through the company to the door. They cackled after me like solan-geese, but I shut and locked the door in their faces and led Aileen to her room. She marched up the stairs like a goddess, beautiful in her anger as one could desire. The Gaelic heart is a good hater, and ’twas quite plain that Miss Macleod had inherited a capacity for anger.
“How dare they? How dare they? What have I done that they should talk so? There are three hundred claymores would be leaping from the scabbard for this. My grief! That they would talk so of my father’s daughter.”
She was superbly beautiful in her wrath. It was the black fury of the Highland loch in storm that leaped now from her eyes. Like a caged and wounded tigress she strode up and down the room, her hands clenched and her breast heaving, an impetuous flood of Gaelic pouring from her mouth.
For most strange logic commend me to a woman’s reasoning, I had been in no way responsible for the scene down-stairs, but somehow she lumped me blindly with the others in her mind, at least so far as to punish me because I had seen and heard. Apparently ’twas enough that I was of their race and class, for when during a pause I slipped in my word of soothing explanation the uncorked vials of her rage showereddown on me. Faith, I began to think that old Jack Falstaff had the right of it in his rating of discretion, and the maid appearing at that moment I showed a clean pair of heels and left her alone with her mistress.
As I was descending the stairs a flunky in the livery of the Westerleighs handed me a note. It was from Antoinette, and in a line requested me to meet her at once in the summer-house of the garden. In days past I had coquetted many an hour away with her. Indeed, years before we had been lovers in half-earnest boy and girl fashion, and after that the best of friends. Grimly I resolved to keep the appointment and to tell this little worldling some things she needed much to know.
I found her waiting. Her back was turned, and though she must have heard me coming she gave no sign. I was still angry at her for her share in what had just happened and I waited coldly for her to begin. She joined me in the eloquent silence of a Quaker meeting.
“Well, I am here,” I said at last.
“Oh, it’s you.” She turned on me, mighty cold and haughty. “Sir, I take it as a great presumption that you dare to stay at the same inn with me after attempting to murder my husband that is to be.”
“Murder!” I gasped, giving ground in dismay at this unexpected charge.
“Murder was the word I used, sir. Do you not like it?”
“’Twas a fair fight,” I muttered.
“Was it not you that challenged? Did you not force it on him?”
“Yes, but——”
“And then you dare to come philandering here after me. Do you think I can change lovers as often as gloves, sir? Or as often as you?”
“Madam, I protest——”
“La! You protest! Did you not come here to see me? Answer me that, sir!” With an angry stamp of her foot.
“Yes, Mistress Westerleigh, your note——”
“And to philander? Do you deny it?”
“Deny it. Odzooks, yes! ’Tis the last thing I have in my mind,” I rapped out mighty short. “I have done with women and their follies. I begin to see why men of sense prefer to keep their freedom.”
“Do you, Kenn? And was the other lady so hard on you? Did she make you pay for our follies? Poor Kenn!” laughed my mocking tormentor with so sudden a change of front that I was quite nonplussed. “And did you think I did not know my rakehellylover Sir Robert better than to blame you for his quarrels?”
I breathed freer. She had taken the wind out of my sails, for I had come purposing to give her a large piece of my mind. Divining my intention, womanlike she had created a diversion by carrying the war into the country of the enemy.
She looked winsome in the extreme. Little dimples ran in and out her peach-bloom cheeks. In her eyes danced a kind of innocent devilry, and the alluring mouth was the sweetest Cupid’s bow imaginable. Laughter rippled over her face like the wind in golden grain. Mayhap my eyes told what I was thinking, for she asked in a pretty, audacious imitation of the Scotch dialect Aileen was supposed to speak,
“Am I no’ bonny, Kenneth?”
“You are that, ’Toinette.”
“But you love her better?” she said softly.
I told her yes.
“And yet——” She turned and began to pull a honeysuckle to pieces, pouting in the prettiest fashion conceivable.
The graceful curves of the lithe figure provoked me. There was a challenge in her manner, and my blood beat with a surge. I made a step or two toward her.
“And yet?” I repeated, over her shoulder.
One by one the petals floated away.
“There was a time——” She spoke so softly I had to bend over to hear.
I sighed. “A thousand years ago, ’Toinette.”
“But love is eternal, and in eternity a thousand years are but as a day.”
The long curving lashes were lifted for a moment, and the dancing brown eyes flashed into mine. While mine held them they began to dim. On my soul the little witch contrived to let the dew of tears glisten there. Now a woman’s tears are just the one thing Kenneth Montagu cannot resist. After all I am not the first man that has come to make war and stayed to make love.
“’Toinette! ’Toinette!” I chided, resolution melting fast.
“And y’are commanded to love your neighbours, Kenn.”
I vow she was the takingest madcap in all England, and not the worst heart neither. I am no Puritan, and youth has its day in which it will be served. My scruples took wing.
“Faith, one might travel far and not do better,” I told her. “When the gods send their best to a man he were a sorry knave to complain.”
Yet I stood helpless, in longing desire and yet afraid to dare. No nicety of conscience held me now, rather apprehension. I had not lived my one andtwenty years without learning that a young woman may be free of speech and yet discreet of action, that alluring eyes are oft mismated with prim maiden conscience. ’Tis in the blood of some of them to throw down the gauntlet to a man’s courage and then to trample on him for daring to accept the challenge.
Her eyes derided me. A scoffing smile crept into that mocking face of hers. No longer I shilly-shallied. She had brought me to dance, and she must pay the piper.
“Modesty is a sweet virtue, but it doesn’t butter any bread,” I cried gaily. “Egad, I embrace my temptation.”
Which same I did, and the temptress too.
“Am I your temptation, Adam?” quoth the lady presently.
“I vow y’are the fairest enticement, Eve, that ever trod the earth since the days of the first Garden. For this heaven of your lips I’ll pay any price in reason. A year in purgatory were cheap——”
I stopped, my florid eloquence nipped in bud, for the lady had suddenly begun to disengage herself. Her glance shot straight over my shoulder to the entrance of the summer-house. Divining the presence of an intruder, I turned.
Aileen was standing in the doorway looking at us with an acrid, scornful smile that went to my heart like a knife.