Читать книгу D. K. Broster Collection - D. K. Broster - Страница 42

Table of Contents

The fresh wind scouring the mouth of the Seine kept the fishing boats from Honfleur lying well over, and at the foot of the cliffs of Ste. Adresse the waves were shivering themselves in a joyful welter of foam. Long pennants of cloud streamed and vanished in the blue; all the shipping rocked at anchor, and Alison Cameron, crossing the market-place of Havre-de-Grâce with a basket on her arm, had to clutch at her black cloak lest it should be whirled off her shoulders.

She had reached the French port in time to see her father alive; in time, indeed, to give him nearly six weeks of the most devoted care. But in May he died peacefully, ignorant of the catastrophe which had torn for ever the webs that he had helped to weave. Since he was ill it had not been very difficult to keep from him the news of the downfall of Jacobite hopes and the fugitive state of the Prince, and to invent reasons for the absence of any news of Ewen Cameron. Of Hector’s capture he had known before leaving Scotland. It was the thought of Ewen, to whose care he knew Alison now definitely committed, which had made his last hours easy. “Your man will never let you want for aught, my lass,” he had said, near the end; and Alison had had the strength to keep from him the anxiety which racked her.

And so one morning she found herself left alone in the lodging where her father had lain ill, a little house belonging to a youthful married couple, kind and sympathetic enough, and glad that the Scottish lady should stay on there, waiting for the husband who, Madame Grévérend was privately sure, would never come now, having without doubt been slain in the deserts of l’Ecosse. And when, later on, a gossip would ask her why the young Scottish lady did not voyage back to those deserts to find her husband, or to procure news of him, or at least to have the solace of weeping on his tomb, Madame Grévérend would explain that the poor creature was so persuaded that her husband would in the end come to Havre-de-Grâce seeking her that she feared to miss him if she went away.

“But she will wait for ever, one fears,” Madame Grévérend would finish; “and she left without even a good-for-nothing like this to plague her!” And here she would snatch up her fat, curly-headed Philippe and kiss him. “Yes, she has lost everything, poor lady, and she only five months married.”

But one has never lost everything. Alison still had that possession which Madame Grévérend could not understand, the certitude which had come to her in the cabin of the brig at Inverness. Sooner or later Ewen would come for her.

Yet it was hard, sometimes, to cling to that belief when the weeks went by and there was not the slightest crumb of authentic news of him. All she had was negative; for there was in Havre-de-Grâce another Scots refugee, a Mr. Buchanan who had served in the Duke of Perth’s regiment, and he had convinced her, on evidence that seemed conclusive to a mind which only longed to believe it, that Ardroy had not been among the slain or massacred in the battle. Where, then, was he?

Her marketing finished, Alison took her way homewards through the bright windy weather, and came, down the little Rue des Vergers, to the small, sanded courtyard with the pear-tree where she dwelt above M. and Mme Grévérend. In that sunlit space there was at the moment only the grey cat curled in a corner, a pair of pigeons promenading, and Philippe, seated rosily upon his mother’s doorstep, deliberately pouring sand on to his curls, as if in penitence for some misdeed, by means of an old teacup.

“My bairnie, don’t do that!” called Alison, half laughing, half horrified. “Fi donc, quelle saleté!”

Philippe gave her a most roguish glance, scooped up and emptied upon his locks a sort of final bumper cupful, and then rose uncertainly to his fat legs and came to her, lifting a beaming, smeared face for a kiss. Alison wiped his countenance and gave him one.

“Are you all alone, Philippe?”

The child intimated that he was, and then entered unasked upon a long explanation of the complicated reasons which had led him to make a garden of his head.

“I think you had better come up to my room with me and let me brush out that horrid sand, my pretty,” said Alison, wondering what would happen if she held him upside down and shook him. “Veux-tu bien?”

He nodded, and Alison held out a hand. But neither of his were available, since one still clutched his teacup, and the other was tightly closed over some small object.

“What have you there?” asked the girl. It might so well be a beetle or a worm.

Philippe was coy about revealing his treasure, though he evidently desired to display it. But at last he opened a fat fist. “De l’argent!” he said exultingly, for, though immature, he was a true Norman. And indeed there lay in his pink palm a small coin.

There was something about that piece of money which caused Alison’s heart to leap suddenly into her throat; and, to the infant’s dismay, she snatched his treasure from his hand and looked at it closely. It was no coin of France: no coin of any realm at all, in fact, but a Scottish trade token of the town of Inverness.

“Who gave you this, Philippe?” she asked, looking almost frightened. For Mr. Buchanan, who might otherwise have been the donor, had gone away three days ago.

But her plundered companion was plainly making preparations for one of the most resonant howls of his short life. “There, there, darling,” said Alison hastily, going down on her knees and restoring him his token. “I am not going to take it away. But who in God’s name gave it to you?”

It required time for the little boy to master his emotion, but when this was done he embarked upon another tortuous narrative, from which a close attention could gather that a strange gentleman had come and asked for Madame Cameron and had presented him with this earnest of his regard.

“And where is the gentleman now?” asked Alison breathlessly.

Philippe turned his rotund person and pointed up the stairs with the teacup.

Next moment he was alone in the middle of the courtyard, alone with the pigeons and the cat and Madame Cameron’s abandoned basket, and Alison was flying up those stairs to her room. But half-way she stopped, with her hand to her heart, for her own light footfalls had not prevented her from hearing those others going impatiently to and fro above her—unknown steps, belonging to a man with a halt in his walk.

No, of course she had been too sanguine. It was not Ewen. The tumult of her heart died down again to the old sad patience. Yet it must be someone from Scotland, someone from the Highlands, too, for the token proved that; and if he asked for her it was because he came with news of Ewen, or of Hector.

And perhaps because at the bottom of her heart she trembled to think what that news might be, Alison turned and went down the stairs again and picked up her basket from the courtyard (and none too soon, for it had already riveted Philippe’s attention as well as the cat’s) and went a great deal more soberly up the stairs once more, and opened the door.

* * * * *

It was she who recovered speech the first, but scarcely coherent speech.

“Oh, Ewen, darling of my heart . . . you look so thin, so ill! And why are you lame? I thought it could not be you. . . . I knew you would come. . . . Sit down, for pity’s sake!” She dragged him to a chair. “Are you hungry—when did you eat? I must get you——”

But she was powerless in the arm he put about her, though the arm was trembling a little, and she fell on her knees beside the chair and cried into his coat; and then Ewen dried her eyes by a method which he had just discovered.

“I am neither thin, nor ill, nor lame, nor hungry, and I have all I want. Open your eyes and look at me like that again!”

His dear voice, at least, was not altered. “I shall tell Madame Grévérend, when she returns, to make ready——”

“How concerned are women with food! I have no wish to eat at present; I only want to be sure that I am here,” said her husband, half laughing. “If you go away to give orders, m’eudail, I may perhaps fancy I am back on the sea again, or . . . back on the sea,” he repeated rather hastily, turning his head a moment aside.

“You are here,” said Alison earnestly, as if he really needed the assurance; “you are here, Ewen, heart’s dearest, and I always knew that you would come!”

* * * * *

Long, long afterwards, that is to say, when Philippe and the pigeons had gone to roost, and the windy day had flamed itself out in a royal sunset, Alison, in her husband’s arms, where she had been clasped for fully five minutes without stirring or speaking, fingered the back of his hand and said half-dreamily, “How came you by this strange ring, dear heart?”

Ewen moved abruptly; something like a shudder ran through him. “I will tell you some time,” he said hesitatingly, “but not yet. Oh, Alison, I cannot speak of it yet. . . .”

Some dreadful remembrance of the defeat, she thought pitifully, then, seeing how pale he had become, slipped off his knee, and, bending over him, drew his head with a lovely gesture to her breast. And Ewen hid his eyes there like a child.

But leagues on leagues away the tide from the Outer Isles was beginning to fill the silver cup of Morar, and he stood there once again, helpless and heartbroken, looking down at Lachlan’s handiwork. Not even Alison, whose arms held him close, whose cheek was pressed on his hair, not even Alison could stand with him in that place, where Keith Windham had come to the last of their meetings, and the bitter grief of Angus’s prediction had reached its real fulfilment.

Yet he must not sadden Alison on this, of all days. It was Keith who had given it to him.

He lifted his head from its resting-place. “My dearest on earth,” he said, but not as he had said it a year ago, for the gift he asked meant even more now,—“my dearest on earth, give me your kiss!”