Читать книгу The Greatest Historical Novels & Stories of D. K. Broster - D. K. Broster - Страница 60

The day after, which was Saturday, Ewen’s plan of exchanging one compromising visitor for another should have completed itself, but in the early afternoon, to his dismay, the cart which he had sent the previous day to Inverlair to fetch his damaged brother-in-law returned without him. Mr. Grant was no longer at the farm; not, reported Angus MacMartin, who had been sent in charge of it, that he had wandered away lightheaded, as Ewen immediately feared; no, the farmer had said that the gentleman was fully in his right mind, and had left a message that his friends were not to be concerned on his behalf, and that they would see him again before long.

A good deal perturbed, however, on Alison’s account as well, Ewen went up to Slochd nan Eun to tell Doctor Cameron the news. He found his kinsman sitting over the peat fire with a book in his hand, though indeed the illumination of the low little dwelling had not been designed in the interests of study. Doctor Cameron thought it quite likely, though surprising, that Hector really had fully recovered, and added some medical details about certain blows on the head and how the disturbance which they caused was often merely temporary.

“Nevertheless,” he concluded, “one would like to know what notion the boy’s got now into that same hot pate of his. You young men——”

“Don’t talk like a grandfather, Archie! You are only twelve years older than I!”

“I feel more your senior than that, lad!—How’s the bairn?”

“He is leaving his bed this afternoon—since both you and your colleague from Maryburgh allowed it.”

Doctor Cameron laughed. Then he bit his lip, stooped forward to throw a peat on the fire, and, under cover of the movement, pressed his other hand surreptitiously to his side. But Ewen saw him do it.

“What’s wrong with you, Archie—are you not well to-day?”

“Quite well,” answered his cousin, leaning his elbows on his knees. “But my old companion is troublesome this afternoon—the ball I got at Falkirk, you’ll remember.”

“You’ll not tell me that you are still carrying that in your body!” cried Ewen in tones of reprobation.

Archie was pale, even in the peat glow. “How about the gash you took at Culloden Moor?” he retorted. “You were limping from it that morning in Glen Mallie; I saw it, but I don’t make it a matter for reproach, Eoghain! ’Tis impossible to have the bullet extracted, it’s too awkwardly lodged, and I shall carry it to my grave with me . . . and little regard it if it did not pester me at times. However, here I am comfortably by your good Angus’s fire, not skulking in the heather, and cared for as if I were yourself.”

But Ewen went down from Slochd nan Eun with an impression of a man in more discomfort than he would acknowledge, and a fresh trouble to worry over. Yet how could he worry in the presence of Keithie, to whom he then paid a visit in the nursery—Keithie, who, now out of bed, sat upon his knee, and in an earnest voice told him a sorrowful tale of how the fairies, having mistaken his ‘deers’ for cows, had carried them off, as all Highland children knew was their reprehensible habit with cattle. And so he could not find them, for they were doubtless hidden in the fairy dun, and when they were restored they would not be real ‘deers’ any more, they would only look like them, as happened with cows stolen and restored by the sidhe. His father, holding the little pliant body close, and kissing him under the chin, said that more probably his deers were somewhere in the house, and that he would find them for him.

Which was the reason why, somewhat later, he went in search of Donald, and discovered him in his mother’s room, watching her brush out her dark, rippling hair, which she had evidently been washing, for the room smelt faintly and deliciously of birch.

“Do you want me, my dear?” asked Alison, tossing back her locks.

“Do I not always want you, heart of mine?—As a matter of fact, I am here on an errand for Keithie. Do either you or Donald know anything of the present whereabouts of his ‘deers’? He tells me that the daoine sidhe have taken them.”

But they both denied any knowledge of the animals.

“Angus is going to make Keithie a much larger deer,” announced Donald, his hand in his father’s. “I asked him to. A stag—with horns. Father, have you ever heard the queer crackling sound that Mother’s hair makes when she brushes it. Does yours?”

“I doubt it,” replied Ewen, and he looked first at Alison’s slim, pretty figure as with arms upraised she began to braid her hair about her head, and then at her amused face in the glass. And in the mirror she caught his gaze and smiled back, with something of the bride about her still.

But in the glass Ewen saw her smile abruptly die out. Her eyes had wandered away from his, reflected there, to the window, and she stood, all at once, like a statue with uplifted arms.

“What——” he began . . . and in the same moment she said breathlessly, “Ewen—look!”

He took a step or two forward, and saw, about a quarter of a mile away on the far side of the avenue, a moving growth of scarlet: and more, two thinner streams of it, like poppies, spreading out to right and left to encircle the house. Alison’s arms fell; the soft masses of her hair slipped in a coil on to her shoulder. “Soldiers!” shouted Donald, and gave a little skip of excitement.

For a second Ewen also stood like a statue. “My God! and Archie half-disabled to-day! . . . Have I the time to get up to him? Yes, this way.” He indicated the window at the far side of the room, which looked over the back premises. “Listen, my heart, and you too, Donald! If the soldiers cut me off, and I cannot get up to Slochd nan Eun to warn him—if I see that it is hopeless to attempt it, then I shall run from them. Likely enough they’ll think I am the man they’re after, and I shall lead them as long a chase as I can, in order to give Archie time to get away . . . for some of the MacMartins may meanwhile take the alarm. Do you understand?”

“Oh, Ewen . . .” said his wife, hesitating. He took her hands.

“And should I be caught . . . nay, I think I’ll let myself be caught in the end . . . and they bring me to the house, you may feign to be agitated at the sight of me, but you must not know me for who I am; you must let them think that I am the man you are hiding. But you must not call me Doctor Cameron neither—you must not name me at all! If they take me off to Fort William, all the better. By the time they have got me there Archie will be miles away. Then all Colonel Leighton can do, when he recognises me, will be to send me back again. Heaven grant, though,” he added, “that the officer with these men does not know me!—Dearest love,” for Alison had turned rather white, “remember that it was for Keithie’s sake—for our sakes—that Archie came here at all! I must get him safely away if . . . if it should cost more than that!”

“Yes,” said Alison a little faintly. “Yes . . . go—I will do as you say.”

He held her to him for an instant and the next was throwing up the sash of the far window. “You understand too, Donald? And, Alison, I think you will have to tell a lie, and say that I myself am away from home.—One thing more”—Ewen paused with a leg over the window-sill—“if I fail to warn Archie, which I’ll contrive to let you know somehow, you must send another messenger, provided that messenger can get away without being followed.”

He hung by his hands a moment and dropped: a loud cackling of astonished hens announced his arrival below. Lady Ardroy went back to the glass and began hastily to fasten up her hair.

“How near are they, Donald?—Run quickly to the kitchen and tell the servants to say, if they are asked, that the laird went away to Inverness . . . yesterday . . . and that if they see him they are to pretend not to know him. And then come back to me.”

Donald left the room like a stone from a catapult. This was great sport—and fancy a lie’s being actually enjoined by those authorities who usually regarded the mere tendency to one as so reprehensible!