Читать книгу Almond, Wild Almond - D. K. Broster - Страница 8

The snow had ceased when the two visitors left Inchrannoch House; it had indeed little more than laid a fine carpet upon the ground. But against a livid sky rose up the white cone of Schiehallion, so near, though in appearance so inaccessible, a shape of ethereal purity. The short winter’s daylight was almost spent, yet away in the south-west lingered a fading wound of rose-colour. Ranald Maclean was curiously silent as he and Malcolm Robertson were ferried over the Tummel. He would carry away with him from Perthshire a companion picture to hang beside those canvases of storm and disappointment painted at Dunkirk. Out of them also stood a vivid young figure, a young, never-to-be-forgotten face—but it was a man’s.

It was nearly a week since he had presented himself at Mount Alexander, the seat of Robertson of Struan, with that letter from his uncle which was the cause of his being in Perthshire. He was royally welcomed at the romantically situated house by the old poet-chief of Clan Donnachaidh, who had fought as a youth at Killicrankie fifty-five years before, and, being subsequently captured, had spent an enforced exile of thirteen years on the Continent in sowing a good many wild oats and in writing poems whose tenor was such that in these his reformed and septuagenarian days he was not likely to publish them. On Queen Anne’s accession his sister Margaret had personally obtained from her a pardon for Struan and the return of his confiscated estates. Unfortunately this pardon never passed the Great Seal, and no sooner was Queen Anne in her coffin than he was promptly expelled from them again. It was scarcely wonderful, therefore, that he joined the Earl of Mar’s rising in 1715, when he was once more taken prisoner, rescued by a gentleman of the clan, recaptured, taken to Edinburgh Castle, re-rescued by a party headed, so it was said, by the dauntless Margaret, and for the second time driven to seek refuge abroad.

This second exile, most of which Struan spent in French service, lasted for eight years, and was terminated by his sister’s again interceding personally with royalty on his behalf, her chief plea being that his health was breaking down. In 1723 George I allowed him to return, giving his estates, however, to his sister. Nursed by her, Alexander Robertson went to Bath, put himself in the hands of the celebrated Dr. Cheyne, and, returning with a resolution to lead a more regular life, swung to the other extreme and took a step worthy of St. Anthony, for he expelled from his “hermitage” or “earthly paradise,” as he liked to call it, every woman not of his own kin, and inscribed a poem to that effect over the door, winning by this behaviour the title of “The Great Solitaire” from the ladies of the neighbourhood.

But Struan was an old man of seventy-six now, the inscription, no longer needed, was fading, his sister Margaret was long dead. He remained, nevertheless, intensely Jacobite, still employed his excellent education and ready pen in writing verse (now, however, exemplary and even edifying in tone), and was, as Ranald discovered, a “character.” Indeed when the Chief found that his guest, anxious to get home to Askay after so long an absence, would not accept his hospitality for more than four days, he declared that at least his last night should be one to be remembered, and with the assistance of seven or eight neighbouring lairds, Robertsons, Stewarts, or Menzies, proceeded to carry out his boast.

Towards the end of the feast, when all the Jacobite toasts had been honoured, and the most inflammatory anti-Hanoverian sentiments sent echoing round the table, under which one of the guests had already subsided, and when their host had without too much difficulty been persuaded to recite some of the less scurrilous verses of his youth, a fair, pleasant-looking young man rose suddenly from his seat and came, perhaps the least trifle unsteadily, to Ranald’s chair.

“Sir,” he said, “I hold myself to blame for not having realised sooner who you were. Are you not the son of the late Mr. Angus Maclean of Fasnapoll, in the island of Askay?”

“I am,” answered Ranald, faintly surprised.

“Then it behoves you, sir, being his son, to allow my father—who is not here to-night—the pleasure of repaying the hospitality which Mr. Maclean extended to him in the year 1738, when the vessel in which he was returning from the Lews went aground in Camus a’ Chaisteil. Indeed, sir, I’ll take no denial! My father will be grieved to the heart if you refuse!”

So next day Ranald, instead of starting for home, had almost willy-nilly to transfer himself to the neighbouring and lesser domain of the Robertsons of Auchendrie, where, among a family of daughters, Malcolm, his acquaintance of the banquet, was the only surviving son. Having so recently met the Prince, having, indeed, entertained him, and having first-hand experience of the storm which had wrecked such high hopes, Ranald Maclean was, as he had already discovered, a prize to be exhibited in local Jacobite society; and thus he had found himself this afternoon being borne off by Malcolm Robertson to Inchrannoch House.

And certainly they had listened eagerly enough, old Mr. Walter Stewart and the girl from fairyland, to what he had to tell them. Miss Stewart had produced a little engraving of Prince Charles Edward as a boy which someone had brought her from Rome, and had asked if it were like him now. In the candid child’s eyes with which she had gazed at Mr. Maclean of Fasnapoll—eyes of the hue of sea-water, neither blue nor green, it seemed to him—there was a light which might have dizzied him could he have flattered himself that he had lit it. But he knew that he had not; it burnt for that young Desire of all true Scottish hearts, whom now, perhaps, they would never see. . . .

* * * * *

“You were going to tell me Miss Stewart’s history, I think,” said Ranald suddenly, a minute or two after they had got out of the ferry-boat on the further side of the river. “I am sorry to hear that it is a tragic one.”

“Fortunately,” replied young Robertson, “my cousin does not remember her parents nor the catastrophe which robbed her of them both. They were drowned coming over from the West Indies, where her father had established himself as a planter. Bride was a child of two—their only child, for they were young, and not long married—and she had a narrow escape of sharing the same fate. They were on their way from Jamaica to Liverpool; Mrs. Stewart was delicate and the West Indian climate did not agree with her constitution, so she was returning for a while to Perthshire with her little girl; her husband was merely escorting her thither. Their vessel was wrecked in a fog off the Calf of the Isle of Man, and went down so suddenly that no boats could be launched. Only those who were able to swim and to clamber up the surf-beaten rocks survived, and there were not many of these. Mr. and Mrs. Stewart both perished; their bodies were cast up later in Castletown Bay.”

“And the child?”

“A sailor from Lancashire who had played with her on the voyage snatched her from her mother’s arms and swore that he would save her. He did, although in protecting his charge he himself received injuries from the rocks which eventually resulted in the loss of a leg—as you may have observed when he admitted us this afternoon.”

“The lame English servant?”

“Yes, Jonas Worrall. He has been at Inchrannoch ever since; he has never been separated from Bride. I believe he feels that he has more claim to her than her uncle, Mr. Walter Stewart, has!”

So it was not from a fairy dun, but out of the waves that she had come to Perthshire! “I hope Miss Stewart does not have occasion often to think of this very sad story of hers,” observed Ranald Maclean. “Perhaps it is as well that she does not live by the sea.”

“Perhaps so; though our loch here is sometimes so agitated as to resemble it. Yet I speak from hearsay,” added Malcolm, smiling, “for I have never seen the sea.”