Читать книгу Almond, Wild Almond - D. K. Broster - Страница 13

It was but natural that this scrap of conversation should ring again in Ranald Maclean’s head when some days later he rode along Loch Rannoch side. As he had foreseen, his brother had been surprised at his electing to take ship for Bordeaux from the east coast, which involved so much longer a sea voyage; but Ranald said that having come from France last year by that route he would return the same way; moreover he had a fancy to see Struan again and to tell him that he himself was now the possessor of his old friend’s inheritance. And since he had never mentioned Bride Stewart’s name at Fasnapoll, and had just thrown cold water on the idea of marrying a Scottish girl, Norman could have no suspicion of the real motive underlying, not only his preference for Leith over Glasgow, but his preference for the roundabout approach to Leith by Perth, instead of by Stirling.

Ranald Maclean was always inclined to reserve over his own affairs—some might have called him secretive—and those few who knew him well were quite aware of this as of the proud and passionate temper which lay, usually unstirring, beneath his self-contained demeanour; a temper which (like a wise young man) he had struggled, and with fair success, to bit and bridle. But one is not always wise at nine-and-twenty, nor, at any age, is one always consistent. For in conjunction with what in a Lowlander would be termed dourness, Ranald possessed a strong vein of the startling impetuosity of the Celt.

And he was, he knew it himself, giving rein to something a little unbridled and impulsive now, coming this long way to indulge a whim. He had journeyed very slowly, giving himself as long as possible to feed his eyes on the last glimpses of his native Highlands, on the sweeps of heather or scree, the flash of the narrow mountain torrent or the mist stealing from the mountain crag. And even as he crossed the upper end of Rannoch Moor, that great tract of mortal desolation, all quagmire and stones, he had said to himself, “What will the vineyards of the Gironde have to show as dear . . . to me?”

And what like this, he thought now? He had already seen, before ever he got to Loch Rannoch, the pointed peak of Schiehallion lifting itself in perfect symmetry twenty miles away. Now, much nearer, and more lovely still, it welcomed him across the lazy sunlit water, between the birch trees—her mountain.

This fine afternoon the old Chief of Clan Donnachaidh was in his garden, sitting near the beloved spring which he had enshrined in his verse under the name of Fons Argentinus. Among the flowers hummed the bees, three pints of whose honey was the rent he paid every Martinmas to the Duke of Atholl for the right of fishing in Loch Rannoch. He welcomed the traveller warmly and gave orders for a bedchamber to be prepared for him.

“Exile!” he exclaimed that evening over the wine. “Faith, I have known enough of that to have no wish to see France again! Too many years have I spent there! But your absence will not be exile, for there’s no Government ban on you, Mr. Maclean. You’ll soon be coming back to the Highlands with your pockets full of louis d’ors to pick yourself a châtelaine for Girolac.”

Why would everybody harp upon this question of marriage? Ranald turned the conversation; yet it was not long before he asked after his late hosts at Auchendrie—as a preliminary to another enquiry—saying in a sufficiently unconcerned tone that he supposed Mr. Malcolm Robertson was a married man now.

There was a twinkle in old Struan’s eye. “Nay, and I doubt if he ever will be. The young lady would not take him—I know not why—but I wager he will ask her again. Did you meet the nymph in question when you were a guest at Auchendrie last year?”

“If you mean Miss Stewart of Inchrannoch, yes, I had the honour of making her acquaintance,” replied his visitor with a most curious feeling, as though someone else were answering for him. “A good lass, and a very fair one,” commented the “Great Solitaire,” thus revealing that his title had become somewhat outmoded. “You might do worse than try your own luck with her, Mr. Maclean!”

Outwardly quite unmoved, Ranald smiled. “I think, sir, that I should have small chance of success, seeing that I must needs ask my wife to forsake her own kindred and come with me into a foreign land.”

“Well, there’s no knowing but that she’d do that, and willingly. Bride Stewart was gotten in a foreign land herself, and she’s the lass, I believe, to sail the seven seas with the man she loved—if such an one came her way. Little and saint-like she may be to look at, Mr. Maclean; but the heart in her, unless I’m vastly mistaken, is that of a lion.—However, these are no days for wooing and wedding.” The old Jacobite dropped his voice and lent forward with a light in his eyes. “You are newly come from the West, and the Inner Isles; tell me, does not a wind from France blow strong there now?”

Ranald took his meaning without difficulty. He shook his head. “I doubt it never will.”

The old Chief drew back a little. “You need not play so close with me, Mr. Maclean,” he said, good-humouredly, but with an accent of reproach. “So much circumspection is uncalled for, since I assure you I am pretty well posted up in the plans of a Certain Young Man. We are at the beginning of August; unless there has been some miscarriage, the day has already arrived.”

Ranald stared at him in amazement. That smile had knowledge behind it.

“I assure you, sir, that I should not dream of using reserve towards you if I had anything to communicate on that subject. But I have not; I am completely ignorant. You will remember, for one thing, that our Chief was arrested and imprisoned last June.”

“Ay, and that was an unchancy business for other people besides himself,” said Alexander Robertson, shaking his grey head. For Sir Hector Maclean of Maclean, the head of Ranald’s clan, an officer in the French service, who had come to Scotland to enlist recruits, had been arrested in Edinburgh, and was now a prisoner in the Tower. The despatches which, in addition, he had been carrying to the Jacobite Duke of Perth and that very active Jacobite agent, Murray of Broughton, were nearly fatal to both those gentlemen, though the authorities did not dare openly to arrest the Duke at Drummond Castle, his seat, because he was so much beloved there, and an attempt to do so by a ruse failed. But both he and Murray had had to go into hiding. “Dhé, Mr. Maclean,” went on Struan, “don’t you know in Askay—for your brother’s on the right side like yourself, surely!—that the Prince should have arrived in the Long Island or even possibly at the mainland by now?”

And now Ranald stared indeed. The old Jacobite was surely romancing, to speak of that vague possibility of the arrival of Prince Charles Edward as a matter cut and dried! He could not credit anything so definite. “Sir, on what grounds——” he began.

“On the grounds of his own letter to Murray of Broughton, Mr. Maclean! I heard it all from Mr. Murray’s own lips, and not so very long ago neither. He was here awhile under another name, in his forced rambles after the discovery of those despatches. It seems there was a letter writ to the Prince last winter by the members of the ‘Association’ begging him not to come unless he brought some thousands of French troops, arms for still more, and plenty of louis d’ors. But the letter was delayed sending—by Lord Traquair, I know not why—for months; and when at last it was despatched it brought no answer. Mr. Murray, fearing that it had miscarried, began like a wise man to collect money and arms; they are hidden, what’s more, here in Perthshire, at Leny House, near Callander. Meanwhile, he wrote another letter to His Royal Highness, and to that he had a reply more than a couple of months ago, informing him that the Prince had made all his dispositions, and would be in South Uist in July.”

“But . . . but it is impossible!” exclaimed Ranald, more and more astounded.

“Why do you say that, lad? He may be there by now! When did you leave Askay, may I ask?”

Ranald told him. But he was still full of incredulity. The unquenchable old Jacobite might be correctly informed of what Murray of Broughton knew and expected, but the fulfilment of those expectations was another matter altogether. Had the Prince been coming with a considerable French force some whisper of the fact would surely have been blown on the winds to Fasnapoll; while without a considerable force he would not come (despite those brave words at Dunkirk), for what could he hope to accomplish? Scotland was quiet; Whig and Jacobite lived peaceably side by side. Here in Perthshire, for instance, Ranald had observed that their relations seemed almost cordial. And then he perceived, with a sting of shame, that in his inmost heart he was protesting against the idea of a fresh rising in favour of the White Rose at all—and hastened to excuse himself by the reflection that this lack of enthusiasm arose from the knowledge that before anything of the kind came to pass (if ever it did) he would no longer be on Scottish soil.

These uncomfortable thoughts all went through his mind while his host, having poured fresh wine for both of them, was rising from his chair preparatory to saying devoutly with lifted glass, “May we soon hear the good news!”

And Ranald, on his feet honouring that toast, was put to shame anew.