Читать книгу The Flight of the Heron - Historical Novel - Страница 11

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In spite of a certain amount of turmoil earlier in the day, almost the usual Sunday calm lay on the house of Ardroy between five and six that evening, and in it Alison Grant sat at one of the windows of the long living-room, her arms on the sill, her cheek on her joined hands. Her father had gone to Achnacarry, Ewen was she knew not where, her aunt, she believed, in her bedchamber. It would be better, Alison thought, if she were in hers, upon her knees.

But she could pray here, too, looking out on this blue and purple loveliness of distance, and here she might get a passing glimpse of Ewen, busy though he was, and would not thus be missing any of these precious last moments of him. The sands were slipping so fast now . . .

Alison pulled herself up. The sands were indeed running out, but towards how glorious an hour! Prayed for and wrought for with so much faith and selfless devotion (as well as with so much crooked counter-plot and intrigue), it was to strike to-morrow, when his banner would proclaim to all the winds that the fairy prince of the hopes of a generation was here at last on Scottish soil. And to-morrow Ewen would lay his sword at those long-expected feet. Happy Ewen—happy to be among the faithful, when many were forsworn; happy in that he was a man and could play a man’s part. For what could a woman do but hope, and what had she to give but prayers!

Again Alison checked her thoughts, or rather, a new thought came to her. Why, she gave what no one else in wide Scotland had to give—Ewen himself!

For a moment she saw herself, as it were, irradiated by the splendour of that priceless gift; then, with a sudden terror, she knew that her will was not to a gift, but to a loan. She was only lending Ewen to the Prince. A gift is gone from one’s hands for ever; a loan comes back. She made this loan willingly—more than willingly; but as a free gift, never to be resumed—no, no!

The door in the far corner of the room opened, and Alison swiftly withdrew the hands that she was pressing over her eyes. Miss Cameron came in, looking exactly as usual in her Sunday paduasoy, not a hair out of place beneath her cap, and no sign of agitation or excitement on her firm-featured, pleasant visage. By only one thing was this Sunday of last preparations marked off from any other, that she wore at her waist the capacious black silk pocket in which she kept the household keys.

“Ah, there you are, child! Your father is not returned, I suppose? Where is Ewen?”

“I do not know, Aunt Margaret.” Alison’s voice seemed to herself a little unsteady, so, with some idea of covering this deviation from the usual she added, “Nor do I know where Captain Windham is got to either.”

“Captain Windham is down by the loch, my dear; I saw him set out in that direction. And I have my reasons for thinking he’ll not have gone farther.” There was an odd tone in Miss Cameron’s voice, and a twinkle in her eye, as she sat down on the window seat by the girl, plunging her hand into that capacious pocket of hers. “ ’Twas our redcoat that I came to speak to you about. Alison, do you know what these are?”

She laid on the window-sill between them two buttons covered with gold thread.

“They look,” said Alison, studying them, “like the buttons on the lapels of Captain Windham’s uniform. I noticed this morning that some were missing. How did you come by them, Aunt Margaret?”

“Neil MacMartin brought them to me about half an hour ago. Before that they were reposing in the heather up at Slochd nan Eun, where their owner also reposed, very uncomfortably, I fear, yesterday afternoon. I can’t keep from laughing when I think of it!” declared Miss Cameron. “And, Alison, are not men the sly creatures! To think that Ewen knew of this yesterday evening, and said never a word!”

“Knew of what, Aunt Margaret?”

“I will tell you,” said Aunt Margaret, with visible enjoyment of the prospect. “It seems that yesterday afternoon my fine Captain very incautiously walked up to Slochd nan Eun by his lane, and arrived there just as the arms were being taken out of Angus’s thatch. Not unnaturally the MacMartins and the others thought that he was a Government spy, so they fell upon him, tied him up, and might have proceeded to I know not what extremities if Ardroy had not appeared in the very nick of time.”

“Oh, what a dreadful thing!” said Alison, aghast.

“Exactly Ewen’s view, as you may imagine. He has not yet forgiven the two MacMartins, whom he holds most to blame. Neil, in the greatest despair, has just been to beg me to intercede for him and Lachlan, and seemed to think that the restoration of these buttons, torn off, so I gathered, in the struggle, would go to prove their penitence.”

“Was Captain Windham at all hurt, do you think?”

“No, I do not think so, though I can quite believe that it was not his mother’s bosom he was in—you know the Erse saying. Neil admits that they had him on his face in the heather when they trussed him up, and that two of them sat upon him. Well, they are paying for it now. As you know, Ardroy is not in general easily angered, but when he is, he is not easily pacified neither. Neil looks like a whipped dog; ’tis really comical, and I dare say Lachlan is ready to cut his own throat. I think you had best do the interceding, my dear; and you can give Ewen the buttons to return, for we women cannot restore them to Captain Windham without his knowing that his misadventure is no longer the secret that he and Ewen hoped it was.”

But Alison left the buttons on the sill as if she dreaded to touch them. “I wish, oh, I wish that mishap had not befallen Captain Windham!”

“Never fash yourself about Captain Windham, my lass; I warrant he can fend for himself. Ewen should not have brought him here at a moment so inopportune—just what a man would do, without thought of consequences! At the least he might have locked him up somewhere out of harm’s way, and not made all this parade of his being a guest and the like.”

“I think it fine of Ewen to have behaved so,” retorted Alison rather mutinously.

“Bless you, child,” said Miss Cameron, smiling, “so it is. I’d not have him a churl. But they must have made a compact, the two deceitful bodies, not to let us know. And to think that I asked the Captain at supper last night had he seen our taibhsear—do you mind of it? And he smiling and saying he was well entertained up at Slochd nan Eun!”

“But Ewen did not smile,” amended Alison. “He was displeased; I saw it, and wondered why.”

“Now that you mention it, I remember I saw him glower a wee. He’s not so deep as yon Englishman, I’m thinking. All the same, he can keep a secret. . . . Alison, my bonny lass, do you think he’ll have secrets from you when you are wed?”

“No,” said Alison, shaking her dark curls with a half-secret smile. “Or if he has, I’ll know ’tis something I had best be ignorant of.”

“Then you’ll make a dutiful wife, my dear,” pronounced Miss Cameron, smiling too.

“If ever I am a wife at all!” suddenly came from Alison with a catch of the breath, and she turned her head away.

Margaret Cameron, who was never known to show much emotion, who even now, at this last hour before what might prove so tremendous a dawn, seemed mainly occupied with amusement at Captain Windham’s misfortune, gazed at that little dark head, so beautifully and proudly set on its long neck, and a profound change came over her cheerful and practical face. Thirty years ago, in the Fifteen, she too had stood where Alison stood now, and had seen her lover go from her down the dark defile. She had never seen him return. . . . Alison did not know this, and even Ewen, though he had heard the story, thought that Aunt Margaret had long ago forgotten her tragedy.

“Oh, my dear, do not say that!”

Struck by the unfamiliar note in the elder woman’s voice, Alison turned her head quickly, and met the look in those eyes, nearly as blue as Ewen’s. It was a surprise to her, and yet—how could she have imagined that Aunt Margaret did not realise what she, Alison, risked . . . what they both risked!

“I did not mean that,” she exclaimed rather tremulously. “To be sure Ewen will come back, and we shall be wed some day; but I cannot help knowing, as he does, how even Lochiel himself has been torn in two by the Prince’s coming without the aid that was promised. But when Ewen goes to-morrow he shall never guess how cowardly my heart is.”

Miss Cameron bent forward and kissed her.

“That’s my brave lass! We shall both be as gay as the laverock, I dare say, till he’s fairly away, and then we can be as hare-hearted as we please, with no one to see. Hark, there’s the boy’s step! I’ll leave you, my dear; don’t forget to put in a word for poor Neil.”

‘ ’Till he is fairly away.’ It echoed in the girl’s ears as Miss Cameron slipped from the room. Why, one could not even imagine what the house of Ardroy would be like without Ewen!

“Heart’s darling, are you there?” He had come in by the door from the hall, and now threw himself down beside her on the window seat. “Hardly a word have I had with you this livelong day! And now I must ride over to Achnacarry for Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh’s final orders, and shall not be back till late, I fear me. But all’s ready here, I think.”

“I wish I were more ready,” thought Alison, devouring him with her eyes. His bright hair grew down in such an enchanting square on his wide forehead, and a desire came upon her to pass her hand over some of its thick waves. “Ah, to see the Prince at last, at last, Ewen, with one’s own eyes!”

“You’ll see him yourself before long, Alison, I hope, in Edinburgh, or maybe Perth—or even, before that, at Achnacarry, if he honours it. Who knows? Meanwhile you can be practising your curtsy, m’eudail!”

“You do not know what His Royal Highness will do after the standard is set up?”

“I’ve not a notion. But I shall contrive to send you word of our movements, never fear. I suppose that somewhere or other we shall be obliged to try conclusions with Sir John Cope and the Government troops.”

The words reminded Alison of the commission just laid upon her. She took up the buttons from the window-sill and held them out towards him.

“Ewen, these have just been brought down from Slochd nan Eun.”

Her lover looked at them with a surprise not quite free from embarrassment. “They must have come off Captain Windham’s uniform,” he observed non-committally. “I will give them back to him.” And he took them from her.

“I must tell you that I have just heard how it was that he lost them,” confessed the girl.

Ewen’s mouth tightened. He laid the buttons on the sill again. “How came that? I had hoped——”

“Yes, dearest, I know; but the matter came out by reason of Neil’s bringing the buttons to Aunt Margaret this afternoon as a kind of peace-offering, it would seem. But, Ewen, what a shocking thing to have happened. I do not wonder that you were angry.”

By the laird of Ardroy’s looks, he was angry still. Alison trusted that he would never look at her, on her own account, in that stern way; and perhaps indeed Ewen realised that he was frowning on the innocent, for his brow relaxed and he took her hand into his as if in apology.

“Indeed, Alison, my heart was in my mouth when I came upon the MacMartins and the rest up there yesterday; for all I knew they had dirked Captain Windham. It seems they had thought of throwing him into the loch. He should not have gone so far from the house; I had warned him against it. But he behaved very well over the affair, and we agreed not to tell you or Aunt Margaret, so you must neither of you say a word to him about the matter this evening.”

“But he must have been greatly offended and incensed. It is true that he was very agreeable at supper, even though Aunt Margaret asked him had he seen Angus.” She paused, wrinkling her brows. “Ewen, do you think that he was only feigning?”

“No, I do not think so, although he was very angry at first—and naturally. Afterwards he made to treat the affair almost as a joke. But I do not think that in his heart he can have considered it as a joke. And considering that his person should have been held sacred, it was a very black disgrace for me, and I did well to be angry. I am still angry,” he added somewhat unnecessarily, “and I have not yet resolved whether I shall allow the two MacMartins to accompany me to-morrow.”

“Not take Neil and Lachlan to Glenfinnan—not take your piper and your right-hand man!” exclaimed Alison, almost incredulous. “But, Ewen, dearest, you will break their hearts for ever if you leave them behind! That punishment is too great! It was surely in ignorance that they sinned; you yourself said that Captain Windham should not have gone there, and in that uniform they must naturally have thought——”

“Neil and Lachlan did not sin in ignorance,” interrupted Ewen sternly. “I had particularly told them that morning what was Captain Windham’s position here. The others, if you like, had more excuse, though why Angus did not prevent their setting upon him, as he could have done, I cannot think. The reason he gave was so——” He broke off, and pushed about the buttons on the sill for a moment or two, then, raising his head, said, “I have not yet told you, Alison, how Angus ‘saw’ last month that this fellow Windham and I would meet.”

“Angus ‘saw’ that you would meet!” repeated Alison, wide-eyed. “Oh, Ewen, why did you not tell me?”

“Because I forgot all about it till last Friday night. Yes, and what is more, it appears that we are to keep on meeting, confound him!”

“Do you then dislike Captain Windham so much?” asked Alison quickly.

“I do not dislike him at all,” Ewen assured her, “though I confess that I cannot quite make him out. But I have no desire for the continual rencontres with him which Angus promises me. And I am sure that Captain Windham cannot possibly view me with anything but dislike for capturing him—and now comes yesterday’s affair.—Don’t look so troubled, my heart!”

“Tell me what Angus said.”

Ewen looked at her a moment as if considering. “But you must not believe it too implicitly, darling; I do not. Though I admit,” he added, as though wishing to be quite just, “that the old man’s predictions have sometimes fulfilled themselves in an extraordinary way. . . . This one began by something about a heron.”

“That, then, was why you were so much surprised on Friday evening,” interpolated Alison in a flash. “I mean, when Captain Windham said that a heron had brought down his horse. I saw it, Ewen. But how——”

“I will tell you from the beginning,” said her betrothed. He got up and put a knee on the window seat. “It was that day at the end of last month when Lochiel’s message came about the Prince’s landing—you remember? Early that morning Lachlan had been very troublesome, wanting to shoot the heron that lives on the island in the loch, because his father had been having a vision about one. I forbade him to do it.—That reminds me, I have not seen the bird of late, but I do not think that Lachlan dare have disobeyed me.—After I had taken leave of you that evening, darling, and was just about to set off to Achnacarry, I met Angus by the Allt Buidhe burn. He had come down from Slochd nan Eun on purpose to see me, and he told me very solemnly that I should soon meet with a man whose destiny would in some unknown way be bound up with mine, and that I should meet him through the agency of a heron. Angus went on to say, ‘And as the threads are twisted at your first meeting, foster-son, so will they always shape themselves at all the rest—a thread of one colour, a thread of another.’ I said on that, ‘At all the rest, Angus? How many more, then?’ and he thought a while and answered, ‘I saw you meeting five times. The first time and the last were by water . . . but always the place changed. Oh, my son, if only I could know what it means!’ I asked then whether I ought to avoid this man, and Angus said, ‘You will not be able to avoid him; the heron by the waterside will bring you to him.’ ‘Ah,’ said I, ‘that then is why Lachlan wanted to shoot the curra this morning!’ But Angus shook his head and muttered, ‘A man cannot change the future in that way. What is to be will be.’

“I thought at the time, Alison,” went on Ewen explanatorily, looking down at her intent face, “that I should come on this man some day, if ever I did, when I was out with a fowling-piece, or something of the sort, and then, to tell truth, I forgot all about the matter in the stir of the news from Moidart; and thus it never crossed my mind when I encountered Captain Windham that he could be the man . . . till he mentioned the heron which startled his horse, and so indirectly—or directly, if you will—led to my overtaking him by Loch Oich, and our fight.”

“And is that all that Angus said?” asked Alison breathlessly.

“There was one thing more, I remember, for when, after he had assured me that I should not be able to avoid this man, I said, ‘He is an enemy, then?’ Angus replied, ‘That I cannot see. He will do you a great service, yet he will cause you bitter grief. It is dark.’ You know how vexatious it is when one with the two sights cannot see any more. It is like beginning to read a book of which the last pages are lost.”

“I do not think that I should wish to read any more,” said the girl, shivering a little, and she too got up from the window seat. “I have never before met anyone who had the gift so strongly as Angus, and indeed it is not canny. You are used to it, Ewen, since you have known him all your life, and I think you do not believe in it very much, either.”

“No, I do not,” admitted her lover. “But it would not be kind to tell my foster-father so.”

Alison looked out of the window for a moment, biting her lip hard. “Ewen, when a taibhsear ‘sees’ any person it is nearly always a warning of that person’s imminent death!”

Ewen put his arm round her. “No, you are wrong, my dear. A taibhsear has been known to see a man’s future wife—sometimes, indeed his own. I wonder Angus never ‘saw’ you, sitting by the hearth here in the days when you were in Paris . . . long days those were for me, mo chridhe! Moreover, in this matter of the heron he ‘saw’ two people, and neither Captain Windham nor I can be going to die very soon, can we, if we must meet each other four times more?”

She looked up and met his expression, tender but half quizzical. “No, that is true.”

“Angus said nothing about death,” went on Ewen reassuringly. “And he seemed completely puzzled by his vision—or visions. If it were not for that heron by Loch Oich, I vow I should think that he had dreamed the whole business.”

“Have you told Captain Windham any of this?” asked Alison.

“Not I. He would only laugh at it, and I am sure, too, that he has no desire to meet me again, so that I should not be telling him anything to pleasure him.”

“Do you think,” suggested Alison slowly, “that Angus did not hinder his sons and the others from attacking Captain Windham because he thought that he would be better out of the way—on your account?”

Her lover looked down at her with a rather startled expression. “I never thought of that. . . . But no, I do not believe that was the reason—it could not have been, unless he was lying over the reason he gave me.”

“And what was that?”

“It was outrageous enough. He said that there was no cause for interference, because he knew that the saighdear dearg and I had yet several times to meet, so he would take no harm! What do you think of that? Had he not been an old man, and nearly blind, and my foster-father to boot, I declare that I could have shaken him when I went back to Slochd nan Eun and upbraided him and was given that for justification. It might very well have been Captain Windham’s wraith that I was to tryst with!” He glanced at the clock. “I must go, darling.”

“What will become of Captain Windham to-morrow?” asked Alison with a tiny frown.

“I do not know; it is a question I have to ask Lochiel.”

“One thing more, Ewen; did not Angus, after he had seen Captain Windham in the flesh yesterday, as I suppose he did—did he not tell you any more about him and . . . and the future?”

“Not a word. No, as I say, the last pages of the book are torn out . . . but then it is so with every book in which our lives are written.”

He had both his arms round her now, and Alison hid her eyes against his breast, for he was so tall that even the top of her head was scarcely level with his chin. “Why do you say that, Ewen? Oh, Ewen, why do you say that?”

“What ails you, heart’s darling?” he asked, looking down at that dark head tenderly. “It is true. You’re not thinking, surely, that at the end of the book I can care for you any less, little white love? That’s impossible . . . and I think it’s impossible that I should care for you more, either,” he added, and put a kiss on the soft hair.

Alison clung to him, saying nothing, mindful of her proud promise to Aunt Margaret, but shaken with the knowledge of the red close of many a life across whose pages the name of Stuart had been written. Devotion to that name and cause was the religion in which she had been reared; but the claims of religion can sometimes make the heart quail . . . and Ewen was so splendid, so real and so dear! She forced a smile and raised her head; her eyes were quite dry. “I must not keep you from Lochiel; but when you return, Ewen, will you not tell your foster-brothers that you have remitted their punishment?”

“For your sake, Alison?”

“No, for his who is waiting for them! Is he not needing every sword that we can bring him?”

Ewen smiled down at her appreciatively. “You find clever arguments, miss! I never said that they should not join me later.”

“As ghosts? You may find yourselves trysting with wraiths, as you spoke of doing a while ago! Are they not capable of drowning themselves in the loch, particularly Lachlan, if you put that shame upon them, Ewen?”

“Yes,” said Ewen after a moment’s silence, “I’ll not deny that Lachlan, at least, might throw himself into Loch na h-Iolaire. I suppose that I must allow them to come with me, and if you see them before my return, you can tell them so, rose of my heart.”

* * * * *

The room was empty once more, almost as empty as it would be to-morrow. And, since there was no one to see, Alison put her head down upon her arms on the window-sill.

When she raised it again after some moments a small object rolled off the sill and fell tinkling to the floor—one of Captain Windham’s unfortunate buttons, which Ewen had forgotten after all to take with him. As Alison stooped to recover it the thought of its owner came sharply and forbiddingly into her mind, accompanied by all that she had just heard about him. Ewen’s destiny bound up with his . . . and he, yesterday, disgracefully handled by Ewen’s followers! Surely, however he had passed it off, he must retain a grudge about that, and it might be that in the future he would seize an opportunity of repaying the outrage. Alison wished for a moment that she were not Highland, and that belief in second sight did not run so in her blood. She could not shake from her mind the conviction that for old Angus to have seen the doubles of Ewen and the English officer meant the death of one or both of them within the year. It was true that the prediction had not seemed to trouble Ewen much, but he was a man, and had his head full of Glenfinnan at present. Yet there was Captain Windham, with nothing to do but to brood over the injury. Already, as Ewen had felt, he might well have a dislike to his captor. And did it not seem as though he had a horrid gift for dissimulation if, so soon afterwards, he could pretend to find amusement in the mortifying thing which had happened to him? What sort of a man was he really, this stranger who was to cause her Ewen bitter grief?

Alison jumped to her feet and stood with clasped hands. “I’ll go along the loch side, as though I were taking a walk, and if he is still there I’ll engage him in talk, and perhaps I can find out a little about him.” For in the house she could not so easily get speech with him alone, and to-morrow he would surely be gone altogether. Yes, she would do that; Captain Windham would never guess that she had come on purpose. She slipped the buttons into her pocket and left the room.