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Chapter 1. Lady Lochmore

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In this twentieth century the Earl of Lochmore would probably be described as a permanent adolescent. In his own more direct and less sophisticated age he was quite simply called a fool, and so dismissed by men of sense and sensibility.

There is little to be said in his favour. At forty years of age he was callow, obstinate, rather vicious, and imbued with more than an ordinary amount of the self-assertion in which a stupid man will endeavour to swaddle his stupidity.

You conceive that to the high-spirited daughter of that high-spirited chieftain, Macdonald of Invernaion, Lochmore was hardly the husband of her romantic dreams. But it was only after marriage that she discovered how far he failed to realize them.

In the brief season of his courtship she had perceived no more than the surface of the man.

And on the surface of him there was a certain deceptive glitter. He had travelled a good deal, and in his travels he had acquired a certain veneer, impressive to a child whose age was not half his own and who had been reared in the stern environment of Invernaion. For although her father's domain was wide—second only among the Macdonalds to that of Keppoch—and although he could bring a thousand claymores into the field, as, indeed, he had done at Killiecrankie, yet in the Castle of Invernaion life was uncouthly lived. The pale reflection of southern graces in which Lochmore arrayed himself lent him almost an effulgence against such a background. His powerful, stocky figure, in itself inelegant, gathered a spurious elegance from his satin coat, his laces and silk stockings. His self-assertiveness she mistook for strength of character. Moreover she did not see it at its most flagrant in those days when his chief concern was to render himself pleasing. And so, notwithstanding the disparity in their ages, she had suffered herself without undue reluctance to be married to him, whereafter she had gone south with him to reap completest disillusion.

It was unfortunate for her that his qualities were such as to exclude him from the friendship of his peers. Men of birth and culture, the very men whose society he desired, were aloof with him. Because he found them so, he increased in self-assertiveness, and as a result found himself so shunned that to avoid isolation he was driven to low company. By nature crudely jealous, his jealousy was nourished into a singular malevolence by the fact that the persons of quality who found him repellent discovered attractions in his wife. Had it not been for her, his fine house in the Strand would have seen little of the company it was equipped to receive. As it was, this house became, in spite of him, a resort of men and women of that courtly society by which his lordship would have sought in vain to surround himself. But because in his heart he was not deceived, their presence brought him less satisfaction than secret resentment.

And there were jealousies of another, less general kind, resulting more or less directly out of this.

So recklessly, in his fundamental boorishness, did Lochmore manifest the bad relations which had come to prevail between himself and his wife, that more than one of those professors of gallantry who perceive their opportunity in marital discord, became of a particular assiduity in attentions to her ladyship.

Of these the most enterprising was Lady Lochmore's kinsman, the elegant, courtly Viscount Glenleven. He made use of his kinship so as to mask his approach, and assumed towards her ladyship a fraternal manner, which Lochmore, whilst observing it with suspicion, felt that he could not openly resent without rendering himself ridiculous. My Lord Glenleven, moreover, enjoyed a reputation as a swordsman considerable enough to be almost sinister. And this made men slow to affront him.

Slightly above the middle height, and of a figure which whilst slender gave signs of exceptional vigour, the young Viscount was possessed of a singularly pleasant, melodious voice, which had often served to correct the harsh impression made by his narrow face, with its hard blue eyes, long, straight nose and obstinate mouth. In age he was barely thirty and looked even younger as a result of the care he bestowed on his appearance. He was gifted, moreover, with a ready tongue, and could, when he cared to do so, display a peculiar charm of manner. He displayed it in full to her ladyship; but he displayed it in vain. Glenleven was an avowed Whig, enjoying a measure of favour at the court of the Dutch usurper; and this in a Macdonald was, from her ladyship's point of view, to be a renegade.

So utterly was her own romantic loyalty given to the exiled King James that she was incapable of understanding that any Macdonald should hold different sentiments; and since sooner or later the tongue must touch where the tooth aches, she gave vehement and downright expression one day, at last, to the contempt with which Glenleven's politics inspired her. She chose to do so in the presence of her husband, perhaps so that, obliquely, she might reprove him also for the complacency with which he accepted the usurpation.

Whilst Lochmore scowled and bit his fingernails, Glenleven smiled with a singularly sweet wistfulness.

"Dear Ailsa, there are times when it is possible to be right without being just. This is one of those rare occasions. Consider my shrunken means, so inadequate to my station. Active loyalty is a luxury beyond them. Our kinsmen in the Highlands may be as staunch as they please. They are safe in their fastnesses. But a Macdonald here in London must tread warily."

"A man may tread too warily for honour," said her downright ladyship.

This brought Lochmore into the discussion. "And a woman may talk too much for safety. My God, girl, have you never heard of treason and its consequences? Let me have no more of this Jacobite cant from you. Busy yourself with the concerns that are proper to a woman."

"You see," said Glenleven, with his gentle smile, "that I am not the only Scot who prizes prudence."

"Lochmore is not a Macdonald."

She spoke at once with pride of her race and scorn of those who were not of it. It was as if she said: "Lochmore is just a poor blind earthworm of whom nothing is to be expected."

His lordship, perfectly understanding, empurpled. "I thank God for't. You seem to think, girl, that all the virtues are resident in the offspring of that Highland dunghill. God a' mercy! Did you ever hear tell of the Campbells?"

"I seem to be hearing one now," said her fiery ladyship. "Only a vile son of Diarmid would speak as you do."

Here was a chance for the astute Glenleven; and he took it promptly, suddenly severe of manner.

"Indeed, Lochmore, you push insult a little far. You seem to forget that I, too, am a Macdonald."

"My wife's reproof to you is that you've forgotten it, yourself." With that jeer and a malevolent glance at her ladyship, Lochmore stamped boorishly out of the room without so much as a leave-taking.

Glenleven, standing over his seated kinswoman, sighed.

"Just now you uttered a veiled reproach of my prudence, Ailsa."

"I did not mean to veil it," said she.

"The more reason then why, if you need it, I should give you a proof of my courage." He touched his sword-hilt caressingly with his long delicate fingers. "Shall I prove it on that lowland boor? You have but to say the word, and I'll deliver you."

She sat quite still, with hands folded in her lap, a woman of an arresting beauty. Her neck and shoulders and finely chiselled face were of the warm pallor of ivory under a cloud of blackest hair above. Slender black eyebrows were level above liquid eyes so deeply blue as to seem black in any but the clearest daylight. The lips of her delicately sensitive mouth grew faintly scornful now as she considered his proposal.

"Let be," she said at last. "My deliverance is not your concern."

"If I were so to make it?" He was eager. "That oaf has said enough to justify me. I am a Macdonald, as I reminded him."

"And as I reminded you. He said so." Her scorn became more marked. "You are too good a Whig, Jamie, to have retained anything of the Macdonald but the name."

He hung his head. "Is that what stands between us, Ailsa?"

"It certainly stands between us."

"You know what I mean. Is that what prevents you loving me?"

"To be sure you have all else to command the passion."

"Why will you rally me, Ailsa? I am so earnest. So deeply sincere."

"But still so ignorant of what it means to be a Macdonald, though you profess yourself one. When were our women wantons, Jamie?"

"Love is not wantonness."

"So says gallantry. And the same of the betrayal of the marriage vows."

"Is Lochmore true to them?"

"We are not talking of Lochmore, but of you and me, Jamie."

"Yet Lochmore may not be left out. If he were what a husband—what your husband—should be, we should not be talking so at all."

She looked up at him, and her dark eyes smiled serenely. The habitual serenity and self-command of one reared in an environment that to Glenleven was nothing short of barbarous, had long been a source of amazement to him. Himself born and reared at a distance from those Highlands to which his family belonged, he knew nothing of that innate dignity and self-assurance with which those who sprang from its princely houses were naturally imbued. As reasonably might he have marvelled at those accepted marks of breeding displayed in her lofty countenance, in the proud carriage of her small head, in the fine shapeliness of her hands, and in her clean-limbed grace.

Slowly she shook her dark head. "This will not serve. You lose your time and destroy the little regard I retain for you. I do not love you, Jamie. Perhaps that is the reason. Anyway, let us leave it there, since that, at least, you must understand, whatever else may elude you."

"You do not love me," he said slowly, a touch of the tragic in his manner. "Is it because I am not a hare-brained Jacobite?"

"What a man! Does it matter why?"

"More than life. Show me the reason; and, if it lie in human power, I will amend it. If you cannot love me because you hate all Whigs, why then I'll cease to be a Whig tomorrow, whatever the cost."

"Vanity deludes you, Jamie. I do not love you because I do not love you, Whig or Tory."

He stood awhile silent, with bowed head. Then, since the heroic part was the only one which would permit him to retreat in good order, he played it bravely. He drew himself up, grave and calm.

"After all, to deserve your love was more than I should have ventured to hope. All that I ask is to be allowed to love you, who are of all women the most adorable. All that matters is that you should remember it against your need. If this boor to whom they have married you should strain your endurance beyond its strength, or if in anything else it should ever lie in my power to serve you, a word is all that I require. So that you remember that, Ailsa, I am, if not happy, at least resigned."