Читать книгу The Dark Mile - D. K. Broster - Страница 8

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June 17th.

“Eh, Alison, my lass, she’s going to be a beauty!” declared Miss Margaret Cameron, indicating a red and puckered object in which only the eye of faith or of close kinship could discern any such promise. Both these requirements, however, were fulfilled by the keen gaze of Miss Cameron, the infant’s great-aunt, who had brought up Ewen Cameron himself from a child.

“You really think so?” asked Alison Cameron as, propped up in bed, she stooped her pretty becapped head with a smile over the sleeping baby in the crook of her arm. “I am afraid that Donald and Keithie may not be of that opinion when they return to-morrow. It was to-morrow that Ewen said, was it not, Aunt Marget?”

“To-morrow it was, my dear. Now, shall I open your window a wee, since ’tis such a fine afternoon?” Erect, silver-haired and comely, she went to the window for that purpose, and gave an exclamation. “Preserve us, there’s about half a score of gillies or what not down below there! Now, might they but wear the tartan again, one could tell whose they were.”

She continued to look out, uttering various surmises as to the identity of the invaders, until bent old Marsali, who had the entrée, came into the bedchamber.

“There’s a gentleman below asking for Mac ’ic Ailein, and he from home,” she announced in the Gaelic and unemotionally.

“A gentleman? Who is it?” inquired Miss Cameron with interest.

“By what he says, it will be MacPhair of Glenshian.”

Alison uttered a little exclamation, and her arm tightened round Miss Cameron the younger.

“Glenshian!” exclaimed the elder lady. “And what’s Glenshian wanting here?”

“He’s wanting the laird on an affair of business,” replied the old woman. “Then he asked could he see Lady Ardroy.”

“The idea!” exclaimed Miss Cameron. “I will come down, Marsali, and find out what he desires. Am I sufficiently à la mode, think you, Alison? This is the first time the present Glenshian has set foot in this house, and I must not disgrace its master.”

Alison beckoned her to the bed. “Aunt Margaret,” she said in a rather troubled voice, “I do not know how much you know, but Ewen and Glenshian are . . . not good friends. I wonder what has brought him?”

“Not good friends? Since when?—Aye, I have fancied something of the sort. Then ’tis as well that Ewen is away,” deduced Miss Cameron briskly. “Glenshian can’t but be polite to an old woman, and he a young man too.”

“But you say he has brought a number of gillies with him!”

“Isn’t he but nine months or so Chief, and likes to swagger about with his tail on? Never fash yourself for that, Alison, my doo,” replied Aunt Margaret, and, after setting her cap carefully to rights at the mirror, she left the bedchamber.

As she entered the big living-room below, a tall, red-haired young man turned round from his contemplation either of the antlers over the hearth or, possibly, of the worn escutcheon on the stone, where the motto Fideliter could more clearly be read than the half defaced bearings of the shield. For a second or two he stared at the elderly lady as if surprised; then he bowed politely in response to her rustling curtsey.

“Good day to you, sir,” said Aunt Margaret pleasantly. “My nephew Ardroy is from home, as I expect you’ll have been told already, and his wife lies upstairs with a newborn bairn, so the task of welcoming you here falls upon me. I am Miss Cameron. Will you not be seated?”

“When you are, madam,” replied the Chief of Glenshian politely, and waited until Miss Cameron had disposed herself. Then he sat down at no great distance and looked at her, drawing his light eyebrows together in a contraction that was half puzzled, half annoyed.

“Ardroy will be sorry to miss you,” observed Miss Cameron after a moment. “We do not expect him back before the morrow.”

“Aye, that makes my errand the more awkward,” responded the visitor, fingering his chin.

“Perhaps your errand can wait, sir?” suggested Aunt Margaret. “Though I would not wish to give you the trouble of bringing yourself and your tail”—she gave a glance through the window—“these many miles again. Can I not give my nephew a message?”

Finlay MacPhair shook his head. “My business is not an agreeable one for a gentleman to come upon to another gentleman,” he remarked.

“Then perhaps,” suggested Miss Cameron, quite unperturbed, “you’ll find it easier to transact with a lady?”

“Not at all,” said the new Chief, frowning. “Not at all. ’Tis no matter for a woman.”

“Improper, do you mean?” queried his hostess. “I am old, Glenshian—nearly sixty-five. You may risk scandalising me.”

Mr. MacPhair gave an impatient movement. “Has Ardroy no factor with whom I could deal?” he demanded.

“I’m all the factor he’s ever had in the past,” replied Aunt Margaret with perfect truth. “He’s his own grieve now. See now, if it’s some matter of affairs, I’m sure he’ll be pleased to wait upon you at Invershian when he returns from Appin.”

The young man’s lip curled in a sarcastic smile. “I doubt it, madam. And that would not serve, neither; the business cannot be transacted anywhere but here.”

“Then you’ll e’en have to put yourself to the trouble of coming again, sir, or stay until Ardroy returns. This house is at your disposal.”

“That’s out of the question,” said the visitor rather rudely. “I must then do what I have come for in Ardroy’s absence.”

The very tiniest stiffening was apparent in Miss Cameron’s upright figure as she sat there. “If you will kindly enlighten me as to what you propose, sir, we will see about that,” quoth she.

“Madam,” returned Mr. MacPhair with emphasis, “I will enlighten you. You have lived in the Highlands, I daresay, for——”

“For well over half a century,” filled in Miss Cameron.

“And you will not be a stranger to the fact that Lochaber has always been noted for cattle-lifting.”

“Aye, nearly as noted as Glenshian,” agreed the lady, smiling.

The Chief of that region could not have relished the quite justified retort, but he could affect not to show that he felt it. “All that,” he pursued, “is supposed—supposed—to be old history now, but . . . I’m wanting two of my best steers this week past, and I have but just come upon proof of where they went to. I regret to have to say it, madam . . . but you’ll find them amongst Ardroy’s cattle!”

Miss Cameron jumped up, a sparkle in her eye. “You accuse——”

The young man also rose. “No, no, madam,” he protested with apparent sincerity. “I should be loth to bring such an accusation against a gentleman. But what laird in these parts knows precisely what his tenants will be about when his back is turned . . . and you say Ardroy is from home now. Yet, since the steers are branded——”

“Aye,” broke in Miss Cameron with vivacity, “that alone proves, my good sir, that you are talking nonsense—and very offensive nonsense too! Had the cattle come here, by straying or even by reiving, you would have had them back by now, branded as you say they are.”

“Yet I have not had them back.”

“Then they never came here.”

Glenshian looked at her loftily. “I have the best of reasons for knowing that they did . . . I should like to see Ardroy’s herdsman.”

“I have no authority to allow that in his absence,” replied Miss Cameron. “I perceive,” she went on with warmth, “that you’re almost upon saying that I went and lifted your steers myself one dark night, and have them hidden—in my bedchamber belike! You may go and look, sir. But warrant you to interfere with Ardroy’s dependents I cannot.”

“Then,” said the visitor still more loftily, “I regret, but I shall have to do it without your warrant, madam. I am not going back without my steers.”

“You’ll go back without much reputation for civility, Mr. MacPhair!” retorted the lady. “But as you have brought some sort of an army with you, and we are only women in this house . . .” She made a gesture. “Forbye, are you sure you did not know all the while that Ardroy was from home?”

To this suggestion Glenshian deigned no answer. He said, looking black, “There are men on Ardroy’s land, at any rate—the men who drove off my cattle.”

“And do you think, sir, that they are going to help you find those phantom beasts?”

“Someone is going to help me find them. I have come for that!”

And like two duellists, the young man and the old woman faced each other. Miss Cameron made the first lunge.

“Very good then,” she said after a moment. “Take your tail that’s out there, and go up the braeside, Glenshian, and look for your steers. But if you think that one of Ardroy’s gillies will lift a finger to help you without orders from him you are sore mistaken! In the latter end you and your gathering will likely all spend the night in a bog!” And she followed up this attack by a second. “Here’s another point for your consideration: God knows what sort of faces my nephew’s tenants, and particularly the MacMartins, will show you when you go marching over his land and driving his cattle!”

“You will please to send word in advance, madam, upon what errand I am come.”

“And have the look of countenancing it! I shall do nothing of the sort!”

To the ears of the disputants, both now thoroughly roused—and the younger and stronger aware, too, that this damned old lady had him at something of a disadvantage by her refusal of support—there came in the momentary silence the rumble of carriage-wheels. Miss Cameron, if her older hearing did not perceive it quite as quickly, was, however, at once aware, from the way he turned his head, that the intruder had heard something or other.

“That’s maybe Ardroy returning before he’s expected,” she remarked casually, though she did not think it was. “You will be able to make your request to him in person, which will no doubt be more agreeable to a gentleman like yourself than trying to bully an old woman.”

“Request,” said Finlay MacPhair, throwing back his head. “I’d have you know, madam——”

But, then, out of the corner of his eye, he perceived a chaise pass the window, and did not finish the sentence.

“Losh, it is Ardroy and the bairns!” exclaimed Miss Cameron in genuine surprise. “What brings him back before his time?” She went to the parlour door (the vehicle having meanwhile passed out of sight, and being presumably by now in the act of discharging its occupants) and called out, “Ewen, come away ben at once; here’s a visitor to see you!”

And so, a moment or two later, Ewen Cameron entered to find the enemy who, as he had declared only two nights ago, was not likely ever to trouble his house, standing in a very haughty manner almost upon its hearthstone. He had not seen Finlay MacPhair face to face—though he had seen his back—since the revelation of his treachery, two years ago, in the Chief’s London lodging, when he himself had interposed between his sword and Hector Grant’s. He stopped, speechless, in the doorway.

* * * * *

“You are surprised to see me, Ardroy?” said the visitor, showing no embarrassed consciousness at all of their last meeting. “But when you hear why I am come, I can’t but think that you will put fewer obstacles in my path than your good aunt here has seen fit to do.”

“I wonder!” thought Aunt Margaret. Her nephew’s dour expression suggested that there was one path at least in which he would place no obstacles, and that was Mr. MacPhair’s homeward one. His lips were so firmly closed that, to her, it seemed as if he were only keeping back with difficulty the utterance of this sentiment; but the traditions of Highland hospitality were too strong for him to give way to his visible desire.

“In what then can I serve you, Glenshian?” he asked in the most frigid tones, laying his hat and a riding whip upon the table as he spoke.

And Finlay the Red answered him with much directness: “By restoring to me the cattle which your tenants have lifted from me.”

A quick flush dyed Ewen’s fair skin. “I think I cannot have heard you aright, sir. My tenants do not lift cattle . . . from anyone!”

The young Chief smiled a half pitying smile. “Not with your knowledge, perhaps; I do not suggest that. But, as I was just remarking to Miss Cameron, who knows what goes on behind the laird’s back?”

“In the case of a man with so many dependents as yourself, that question may perhaps be asked,” retorted Ewen. “But I, with my mere handful”—there was no humility, rather the reverse, in his tone—“I flatter myself that I know their employments pretty well.”

Glenshian sniggered. “I would not be too ready to claim that knowledge if I were in your place, Ardroy. In the end it might prove awkward for you.”

But, before her nephew could reply to this innuendo, Aunt Margaret, already standing at the door, had slipped out of the room. Although by nature she relished a fight, it seemed to her that Ewen would prefer to have out this preposterous business unhampered by the presence of a woman. Moreover she must prepare Alison for the onslaught of her small sons. The sound of their excited voices and of racing feet was even now audible upstairs, and the hall door had just opened to admit a man in riding costume whom she recognised, without much surprise, as young Invernacree.

“Is that Ian Stewart?” she asked, and, Ian coming forward to salute her, she went on, in a voice which, despite herself, showed signs of trouble, “MacPhair of Glenshian is here, making a great pother about a couple of steers which he swears Ewen’s people have lifted from him. Whether you’d best go in on them or not I don’t know. Ewen looks very angry, but I suppose they’ll not come to blows—at least I hope not.”

Ian hesitated a moment; then he remembered something which Ewen had let fall about a dark night and a sgian dubh. “I can always leave the room if necessary,” he answered, and opening the parlour door, went in, on the sound of a voice which was not his cousin’s, to catch the words, “. . . if you refuse to put it to the proof!”

By the inflection it was the end of a sentence, and then he saw the speaker, standing at the far end of the room, young, arrogant-looking, red-haired and tall. Ewen (still taller) who faced this visitor, swung round for a second as the door opened, saw his kinsman, then turned back and said, rather as if he were hurling a missile at the man on his hearthstone:

“Very good, then! It shall be put to the proof—and here is a witness. Ian, let me present you to Mr. MacPhair of Glenshian, who has come here to accuse me of stealing two of his cattle. Glenshian, this is my cousin, Mr. Stewart the younger of Invernacree.”