Читать книгу D. K. Broster Collection - D. K. Broster - Страница 87

The fitful sun of the March afternoon came flooding straight through the open door of Mr. Stewart of Glenbuckie’s house into the hall, which was also the living-room, and through this same open door little Peggy Stewart, the room’s sole occupant, had she not been otherwise engaged, could have looked out across the drop in front of the high-standing house to the tossing slopes beyond the Calair burn. But Peggy had earlier begged from her mother, who had been baking to-day, a piece of dough, and, following the probably immemorial custom of children, had fashioned out of it, after countless remodellings, an object bearing some resemblance to the human form, with two currants for eyes. And while she sat there, regarding her handiwork with the fond yet critical gaze of the artist, before taking it to the kitchen to be baked, there suddenly appeared without warning, in the oblong of pale sunlight which was the doorway, the figure of a large, very tall man. This stalwart apparition put out a hand to knock, and then, as if disconcerted at finding the door open, withdrew it.

Miss Peggy, who was no shyer than she need be, rose from her little stool near the spinning-wheel and advanced into the sunlight. And to a man who had ridden all night on a stolen horse, and had since, tortured by the feeling that every delay was the final and fatal one, stumbled and fought his way over the steep and unfamiliar mountain paths on the western slopes of Ben More and Stobinian, to such a man the appearance at Stewart of Glenbuckie’s door of a chubby little girl of six, dressed in a miniature tight-waisted gown of blue which almost touched the floor, and clasping in one hand what he took to be an inchoate kind of doll, was vaguely reassuring.

“Is this the house of Mr. Duncan Stewart?” he asked.

Gazing up at this tall stranger with her limpid blue eyes the child nodded.

“Is he within, my dear?”

Miss Peggy Stewart shook her curly head. “My papa is from home.”

“And . . . have you a gentleman staying here?”

“He is not here neither. Only Mother is here.”

Instantly Ewen’s thoughts swung round to the worst. They had both been arrested, then, Stewart as well as Archie. The noticeable quiet of the house was due to its emptiness—only a woman and a child left there. He was too late, as he had expected all along. He put his head mutely against the support of the door, and so was found an instant later by Mrs. Stewart, who, hearing voices, had come from the kitchen.

“Is aught amiss, sir? Are you ill?”

Ardroy raised his head and uncovered. But this lady did not sound or look like a woman whose husband had recently been torn from her. Hope stirred again. “Madam, have the soldiers been here after . . . any person?”

Mrs. Stewart’s calm, fair face took on a look of surprise. “No, sir, I am glad to say. But will you not enter?”

At this bidding Ewen walked, or rather stalked, over the threshold; he was stiff. “Thank God for that!” he said fervently. “But they may be here at any moment.” He bethought him, and closed the door behind him. “There is a warrant out for . . . that person.”

Mrs. Stewart lowered her voice. “Then it is fortunate that he is not in the house.”

“He is away, with your husband?”

“No, sir. Mr. Stewart is in Perth on affairs. I do not know where ‘Mr. Chalmers’ has gone this afternoon, but he will return before dark.”

“He must at all costs be prevented from doing that, madam,” said Ewen earnestly, while Peggy tugged at her mother’s skirts whispering, with equal earnestness, something about her ‘bread mannie’ and the oven. “If he comes back here, he will be running into a trap. I cannot understand why the warrant has not already been executed, but, since it has not, let us take advantage of the mercy of heaven—My own name, by the way, madam, is Cameron, and I am ‘Mr. Chalmers’s’ near kinsman. He must be found and stopped before he reaches this house!”

“Certainly he should be,” agreed Mrs. Stewart. “Unfortunately—be quiet, my child—unfortunately, I do not know in which direction he has gone, whether down the glen or up it.”

“Mr. Chalmers was going to Balquhidder,” observed Peggy with composure. “He telled me; he said tell Mother, but I forgot—Mother, please put my bread mannie in the oven!”

The two adults looked down anxiously at the source of this information.

“Are you sure, Peggy, that that is where Mr. Chalmers has gone?—Yes, darling,” added her mother hastily, “I will have your bread mannie put in at once if this gentleman will excuse me.” She gave Ewen a look which seemed to say, ‘I am not usually so weak and indulgent, but it is politic in this case, for if she cries we shall get no more out of her.’

Yet, as it happened, indulgence got no more either, for there seemed no more for Peggy to tell when she was asked, and so Ewen stood on the threshold of Mrs. Stewart’s spotless kitchen and watched with troubled eyes the consignment of Peggy’s masterpiece to the oven. And, with his own boys in mind, he found time to wonder at that world set apart, that fairy world in which children dwell, and to think how happily and uncomprehendingly they move amid the tragedies and anxieties of the other, touching them at every point, and often by sheer contrast heightening them, but usually unaffected by the contact. . . .

Then Mrs. Stewart came out, saying over her shoulder to someone within, “Janet, keep the child with you for a while. Mr. Cameron, you’ll take some refreshment before you start?”

But Ewen refused, hungry and spent though he was, for he would not spare the time. Mrs. Stewart, however, returned swiftly to the kitchen, and was heard giving orders for bread and meat to be made ready for him to take with him.

“Now I’ll give you directions,” she said, hurrying out again. “Yet, Mr. Cameron, I cannot think that this is true about a warrant, for had there been any soldiers on the march from Loch Lomond side the country people would most certainly have sent messengers on ahead to warn us. For I have heard my husband say that since the garrison at Inversnaid makes a practice of selling meal and tobacco to the Highlanders, and there is a canteen in one of the barrack rooms itself, many a piece of news leaks out to us that way. For this is all, as you know, what the English call a ‘disaffected’ region, and ‘Mr. Chalmers’ has been with us for some time quite unmolested.”

“Yet in this case extraordinary precautions may have been taken against any tidings reaching you,” urged Ewen. “And I have seen a letter from a member of General Churchill’s household which stated that a warrant had been issued on the fifteenth—six days ago. It was in fact that letter which brought me here, for I did not know my cousin’s whereabouts. But they certainly know it in Edinburgh. Someone has informed against him, Mrs. Stewart.”

She was plainly shocked. “Oh, sir, that’s impossible! No one in these parts would do such a thing!”

But Ardroy shook his head. “It may not have been a man from this district, but it has been done—and by someone who had speech with the Doctor recently. It remains now to circumvent the traitor. Supposing the child to have been mistaken, have you any trusty person whom you can send in the opposite direction, or in any other where you think ‘Mr. Chalmers’ likely to have gone?”

“Only the gardener; but I will send him at once up the glen. Yet if Peggy is right, ’tis you will meet the Doctor, though I know not how far you’ll have to go, nor whether you had best——” She stopped and drew her brows together. “Nay, I believe he ever takes the track through the wood when he goes to Balquhidder, for the path down the open glen gives no shelter in case of danger. It will be best for you to go by the wood. You saw the burn, no doubt, as you came up to the house? Follow it a space down the glen till it goes into the wood, and go in with it. The track then runs by the water till it mounts higher than the burn; but you cannot miss it. And I must tell you,” she finished, “that Mr. Chalmers is wearing a black wig, which changes him very much; and commonly, unless he forgets, he makes to walk with a stoop to reduce his height. But you’ll be knowing his appearance well, perhaps?”

“Very well indeed,” said Ewen, checking a sigh. “God grant I meet him! I am to begin by following the burn, then?” He repeated her simple instructions and went towards the door. Every moment he expected it to be flung wide by a redcoat.

But he opened it, and there was nothing but the pale unclouded sun, almost balanced now on one of the crests opposite, the sharp sweet hill air, and a murmur of wind in the pines below the house. On the threshold Mrs. Stewart tendered him the packet of bread and meat, and a small voice from a lesser altitude was also heard offering turn, as sustentation, ‘my bread mannie’. It was true that this gift, withdrawn from too brief a sojourn in the oven, was far from being bread, but Ewen gravely accepted the amorphous and sticky object and wrapped it in his handkerchief. He could not refuse this fair-haired child whose tidings might be destined to prove the salvation of Archibald Cameron, and he stooped and kissed her. The little figure waving an adieu was the last thing he saw as he walked quickly away from the house towards the wood which clung about the downward course of the Calair.