Читать книгу Almond, Wild Almond - D. K. Broster - Страница 16

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It was very misty next afternoon when Ranald went to pay his respects at Inchrannoch—misty and cold. For Mr. Stewart’s sake there was a fire. He had not been well of late, and the death of his wife, if not unexpected, had greatly shaken him. After about twenty minutes of talk he suddenly fell into a doze, though he was still sitting upright in his chair.

“You must excuse him, sir,” said Bride in a low voice. “It happens thus at times. When he wakes he will be distressed at his discourtesy to a guest.”

“Perhaps,” hazarded Ranald, equally low, “he will not realise that he has slept.”

It seemed to join them in a bond, this hushed colloquy in the firelight; the mist without also joined them, shutting them off together from the world. Miss Stewart glanced at the window.

“You will never experience haar like this at Girolac, Mr. Maclean.”

“My sorrow that I shall not, madam!”

“You mean that you will regret it?” questioned she in a whisper. “But in its place you will have the sun, and I suppose much of it—more than we ever see here!”

He looked at her sitting there, nun-like, in a little sober grey gown—no, blend of nun and sidhe. “It will not be the sun of my own country.”

Bride clasped her hands on her knee. “And yet you must go?”

“If I am to accept my uncle’s legacy, Miss Stewart, I cannot continue to live in Scotland and leave the care of the estate to a deputy—not, at any rate, for many years yet.”

“You expect then to be absent from Scotland for a long while?”

“For a long while.”

“And you are going alone,” she pursued in the same hushed voice, “taking no one with you—not even a servant?”

“Quite alone, Miss Stewart. It is exile; could I impose it on another who like myself loves the wind down the corrie and the burn in spate?”

There was a silence. The old man still slept, his head a little fallen forward; the fire flickered, the mist pressed on the window-panes, and Fiona, stretched at Bride’s feet, gave a deep sigh. And Bride herself, though her eyes were fixed on the fire, knew that the guest was looking at her very intently.

At last he said slowly, with little pauses between the phrases: “When I have been in France a while, and have learnt how pleasant a land it is . . . and that indeed I know already, since I was there two years ago at vintage time—perhaps I may have gained a sufficiently persuasive tongue to paint its praises to . . . to the one person whom I would have share its sunlight with me. Nevertheless, even so, I fear that would be too much to ask . . . from a Highlander.”

Still Bride looked into the fire, at the flames branching like a deer’s antlers—the antlers of a stag thrusting horns of lightning all round the charred wood. Her thoughts went flickering with them, now here, now there. . . .

“You cannot tell that, sir, until you try.” Had she really said that?

“But what if I am afraid to try?” he answered, almost inaudibly; and then was silent.

She stole a look at him again; but he, too, was gazing at the fire now. Yet she could see that he was frowning.

“Does your friend know of your intention?” she hazarded. One of them must say something; the silence was too difficult. Her heart was beating in a strange fashion—an unaccountable fashion, for what were Mr. Maclean’s future plans to her?

But the answer to the question which she had put to him she was destined not to hear. Those lithe, twisting antlers of flame played her a sorry trick, for through their agency a piece of half-burnt log just then subsided with a crash sufficient to break Mr. Stewart’s light slumber, impervious though it had been to the murmur of voices. He woke with a start, but seemed indeed not to know that he had been asleep.

“You were saying, Mr. Maclean, that in the district of Bordeaux the vines——”

The moment was gone; and none like it recurred during the brief remainder of Ranald Maclean’s visit.

* * * * *

The mist seemed denser than ever when he left Inchrannoch House; old Donald was even inclined to grumble at having to ferry him across the river. It was not so thick, however, as to hinder progress if one knew the way, and Ranald set out eastwards on the four miles or so to Mount Alexander with the long stride habitual to him.

When could he contrive to see Miss Stewart again? If need be, he must extend his stay in Rannoch. After all, she hardly knew him; she was a little person with pride, he guessed, under all her sweetness—no girl to fling herself into the arms of the first stranger. And what had he to offer her more than another? He could not hope to sweep her off her feet; he must lay a certain amount of siege. He did not know whether he had been maladroit this afternoon, but he had been unfortunate. Yet he had approached the subject nearest his heart; she must surely have guessed. . . .

Dully through the fog, when he had got as far as Drumchastle, came the clop-clop of a horse’s hoofs, not behind him, but in front. He was, in fact, overtaking the horseman. As man and beast began to loom up before him, Ranald could tell that both must be tired; the horse was but a shaggy pony—poor little beast! The man jogging along on him had a weary back; a rolled plaid strapped behind him suggested that he was a traveller. And the odd thing was that both rider and garron had a familiar look; yet surely that must be a trick of the mist. A few strides more and Ranald stopped dead with an exclamation—and immediately afterwards set forward still more rapidly, calling out: “MacVeagh, MacVeagh, is it you?”

The rider, startled, pulled up; Ranald, alongside, found himself indeed looking into the little wizened visage of Murdoch MacVeagh, his brother’s factotum, sometimes dignified by the title of grieve.

“Indeed, Mr. Ranald, it is—at least, I’m thinking so, but I’m none too sure of it! Mo thruaigh, it might be that I was nothing but a piece of old board, so stiff as I am!”

Premonition of some disaster at Fasnapoll now swept surprise from Ranald’s heart. “In God’s name, what is it? You have come after me with ill news, I fear. My brother . . . the children . . . ?”

“Do not be troubling yourself now, Mr. Ranald,” replied the little monkey-like man consolingly. “They are all well and hearty. But there was a bit of a letter come for you from France——”

“Well, give it me, man!”

“Wait now, Mr. Ranald; I’ve more for you than that, and when you hear what it is you’ll maybe not open the letter . . . or maybe you’ll open it the quicker. But let’s be getting off the middle of the road!” Swearing under his breath, he creaked out of the saddle and pulled his shaggy mount to the side of the way, where the wooded slopes, shrouded and dripping, lifted above them. “Come closer now, Mr. Ranald, for there’s no knowing who may be passing in this haar.” And as Ranald, mystified, stooped his head the little man said in a penetrating whisper: “He’s come!”

“Who has come?”

“You can ask that?” exclaimed MacVeagh in shocked tones. “Why, he that’s waited for, to be sure—Phrionnsa òg Tearlach mac Sheumais! The French brig that brought him passed under Muick the very day you left—I mind marking a strange sail, but I was busy, and thought little of it at the time. And she put into Loch nan Uamh, and there he is, it seems, in the house of Angus MacDonald of Borradale!”

Ranald stared almost petrified at the bringer of such tidings out of the mist. There were beads of fog on the nap of his old hat, on his eyebrows. Then Struan was right! “Come! He has really come! . . . And what force has he brought with him?”

“Force, is it? Not a soldier, not a gun—just himself, blessings on him, and a few Scots gentlemen—or maybe Irish.”

The young man ran his hand through and through the pony’s tangled forelock. “This is likely some fantastic tale that’s got about,” he said after a moment. “Without men, without arms—it can’t be true!” Then some words came back to him, ringing through a little room on a night of storm: Though I go with but three followers . . . though I go alone! By God, then the Prince had done as he swore he would! It was fine, extraordinary fine and spirited, but—what next?

“Has the laird written to me on this matter, Murdoch?”

MacVeagh shook his grizzled head. “He would not. And I was first to tell you this news for your private ear alone, in the case that you should wish—you’ll be understanding, now?—to be off to France as though you had known nothing of it!”

Ranald tore at the patient garron’s hair. “But—how can I? If this news be true one at least of us must follow the Prince!”

“Ay, ’tis so,” agreed MacVeagh, wiping his face. “You will have talked about it with Fasnapoll; he said as much.”

“If my brother goes out, Murdoch, and the business comes to naught, as well it may, then——”

“Ay,” said old MacVeagh again. He was perfectly conversant with the situation; for him it was but a day since the Fifteen with its confiscations and attainders. “Ay. If it comes to naught, there’s the estate will be taken by the Government and the weans dispossessed, not to speak of himself in danger, maybe, of Tyburn.”

“But one of us must go! It must not be said that no Maclean of Askay fought for his Prince!”

“Forbye Maclean of Maclean will not be leading out the clan,” MacVeagh, himself of a Maclean sept, reminded him.

“Only because he is a prisoner in the Tower of London. ’Tis I will have to go out, MacVeagh; last year when I came back from France we settled that, the laird and I.” But in those days he had not had an inheritance waiting for him. . . . Well, the inheritance must wait a while longer. The young man of Dunkirk had come almost alone, almost in the fishing smack he had spoken of—for very shame another young man, a professed Jacobite, who only last night had drunk to his coming, could not slink out of Scotland just as he set foot on it, slink out to cultivate his vineyards and lie soft in a French bed when he might be belting on the claymore and lying with Prince Tearlach in the heather.

“You must start back to-morrow, Murdoch, and tell my brother I am going out. But come along now to Mount Alexander, and the Chief will give you a bed. I doubt, however, if this poor beast will carry you there.”

Murdoch fumbled in a pouch. “And here’s the French letter.”

Ranald broke the seal and glanced at the beginning and signature with preoccupied eyes. The letter was from M. Marcelin, his late uncle’s lawyer, requesting to know when he might expect him at Girolac. When indeed? He read no further, but thrust the letter into his pocket and went forward in the mist with MacVeagh, the pony and the news. What would Struan, that inveterate old Jacobite, say to what he had to tell?

Ranald found at Mount Alexander much excitement and a number of Robertsons, Malcolm among them. For the tidings had already reached “the earthly paradise” by another channel, and Struan, brewing with his own hands a vast bowl of punch, and surrounded by arrack, brandy and lemons, was declaiming the combined Nunc Dimittis and Te Deum of an enthusiast who for all his seventy-seven years and past outlawries did not intend to sit quietly at home merely to observe the progress of the Lord’s Anointed.

“Faith, we scarce know ourselves, from the Chief downwards,” exclaimed Malcolm Robertson, wringing Ranald’s hand. “(I heard you were here, Mr. Maclean, and have been looking to see you at Auchendrie.) If ’tis true, as they say, that Lord Tullibardine—Duke William—has come with the Prince, what a to-do there will shortly be at Blair!” And he laughed like a schoolboy at the prospect of mischief, his fair face quite flushed with excitement.

It was not until he was in his own bedchamber that night that Ranald had leisure to think coolly. It was late, and to mark the occasion he had been obliged to imbibe a certain quantity of claret as well as of punch—but he could put away a bottle and be none the worse of it. As he sat by the open window he was glad to exchange the heat and noise of festivity for the sound of the unseen Tummel pouring over its rock-pools between him and Schiehallion. The mist had completely vanished and the moon was coming up. What would this postponement of his taking possession of Girolac, his taking up, instead, arms for the Prince, what effect would this have upon his chances with Miss Stewart? Why, surely, it would increase them! She was, he had seen last year, heart and soul a Jacobite; she must approve his action. It was true that in the end he would still have to take her over the sea, because he had not the means of supporting a wife elsewhere . . . unless indeed with a Stuart once more upon the throne he could obtain suitable employment in Scotland. And it was true that if he was to join the Prince at once he must immediately turn back again to the west coast, giving up his plan of remaining here to woo. But he could not think that this conduct would impair his chances of winning her in the end.

Yet the venture was terribly precarious . . . no French help, no money, no arms! Even the fumes of punch had not entirely obscured that aspect from the excited throng downstairs. Ranald considered it. Would the country rise? Would the Hanoverians prove too strong? Only the gods knew; and all the more call was there that Fasnapoll should give a hostage to either side. Then, if the English won, Norman and his family were safe; on the other hand, the Prince, if he were successful, would never harm a man whose brother had drawn the sword for him immediately upon his landing. It was a not unusual arrangement. He must write and explain matters to M. Marcelin.

He drew the French lawyer’s letter out of his pocket, pulled the candle nearer, and for the first time read it through; read it again with a changed countenance, and then sat very still, staring at the foreign handwriting. For the letter was not, as he had thought at the first hasty glance, a mere enquiry as to the date of his arrival at Girolac; it was an urgent appeal to come at once, to lose not a day. M. d’Ormeuil, the nephew of feu Madame, was claiming the estate on the ground that Madame’s foreign husband had not the right to will away what had originally been her property, and unless the Scottish claimant made great haste the courts would have settled the matter and, the writer greatly feared, in M. d’Ormeuil’s favour. This had been sprung upon M. Marcelin out of the blue; he had had no warning of such a procedure; but unless M. Maclean could be in Bordeaux before the end of August it might, the writer cried with pessimism, be useless his giving himself the trouble to come there at all.

The end of August! If he left for Perth to-morrow morning . . . yes, he might possibly reach Bordeaux in time . . . more than possibly, certainly. But then—what of his duty to the Cause, to his brother, to his own convictions? And what of Bride and his chance of her hand?

But Bride was lost if he did not go! For without means and a home how could he ask her to be his wife; and unless he set out instantly for France to fight his case, it was abundantly clear that these would be taken from him ere he had possessed them. Never in that case would he walk among the hot alien vineyards, longing for the sands and the heather of Askay, for the vineyards would never be his. Nor Bride Stewart . . . nor Bride Stewart either!

Ranald stood leaning against the side of the open window, deaf to the rush of the river, his senses chained by the dumb clamour of an inner struggle where the warring armies swayed now that way, now this . . . though up till now in his life he had found little difficulty in making up his mind. “Deoch slàinte an righ!” the cry had gone round the board this evening, and like all there he had swelled it and lifted an exultant glass. But there would be more than that in following a Prince who had come alone and unbefriended, more than merely drinking the health of James III in Struan Robertson’s punch! Who knew where the road from Borradale would lead them all in the end? And to tread it he at least must forgo safety, possessions and her he had set his heart upon. Nor could he wait: the decision must be taken to-night, before he slept—the double decision. For he, a poor man and in love, must choose not only between his duty—if it were a duty—to the Jacobite cause, and his heritage; but also between his duty to that cause, and Bride Stewart. Two such weighty inducements in one side of the scales against a claim so impalpable, so questionable even—how could a sane man hesitate?

For some time now the moon had been mounting the southern sky, but Ranald had not marked her progress to serener heights. Now at last he realised that she had topped Schiehallion, full-orbed, and both she and that peak of peaks swam together in almost unimaginable glory. The young man drew a long breath and stood gazing at the sight. Then he turned away and began to make ready for bed. His choice was made.