Читать книгу The Collected Western Classics & Adventures Novels - William MacLeod Raine - Страница 11

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Languidly I came back to a world that faded and grew clear again most puzzlingly, that danced and jerked to and fro in oddly irresponsible fashion. At first too deadly weary to explain the situation to myself, I presently made out that I was in a coach which lurched prodigiously and filled me with sharp pains. Fronting me was the apparently lifeless body of a man propped in the corner with the head against the cushions, the white face grinning horridly at me. ’Twas the face of Volney. I stirred to get it out of my line of vision, and a soft, firm hand restrained me gently.

“You are not to be stirring,” a sweet voice said. Then to herself its owner added, ever so softly and so happily, “Thaing do Dhia (Thank God.) He iss alive—he iss alive!”

I pointed feebly a leaden finger at the white face over against me with the shine of the moon on it.

“Dead?”

“No. He hass just fainted. You are not to talk!”

“And Donald Roy——?”

The imperious little hand slipped down to cover my mouth, and Kenneth Montagu kissed it where it lay. For a minute she did not lift the hand, what time I lay in a dream of warm happiness. A chuckle from the opposite seat aroused me. The eyes in the colourless face had opened, and Volney sat looking at us with an ironic smile.

“I must have fallen asleep—and before a lady. A thousand apologies! And for awaking so inopportunely, ten thousand more!”

He changed his position that he might look the easier at her, a half-humorous admiration in his eyes. “Sweet, you beggar my vocabulary. As the goddess of healing you are divine.”

The flush of alarmed maiden modesty flooded her cheek.

“You are to lie still, else the wound will break out again,” she said sharply.

“Faith, it has broken out,” he feebly laughed, pretending to misunderstand. Then, “Oh, you mean the sword cut. ’Twould never open after it has been dressed by so fair a leech.”

The girl looked studiously out of the coach window and made no answer. Now, weak as I was—in pain and near to death, my head on her lap with her dear hand to cool my fevered brow—yet was I fool enough to grow insanely jealous that she had used her kerchief to bind his wound. His pale, handsome face was so winning and his eyes so beautiful that they thrust me through the heart as his sword had been unable to do.

He looked at me with an odd sort of friendliness, the respect one man has for another who has faced death without flinching.

“Egad, Montagu, had either of us driven but a finger’s breadth to left we had made sure work and saved the doctors a vast deal of pother. I doubt ’twill be all to do over again one day. Where did you learn that mad lunge of yours? I vow ’tis none of Angelo’s teaching. No defense would avail against such a fortuitous stroke. Methought I had you speeding to kingdom come, and Lard! you skewered me bravely. ’Slife, ’tis an uncertain world, this! Here we ride back together to the inn and no man can say which of us has more than he can carry.”

All this with his easy dare-devil smile, though his voice was faint from weakness. An odd compound of virtues and vices this man! I learnt afterwards that he had insisted on my wounds being dressed before he would let them touch him, though he was bleeding greatly.

But I had no mind for badinage, and I turned my face from him sullenly. Silence fell till we jolted into the courtyard of “The Jolly Soldier,” where Creagh, Macdonald, and Hamish Gorm, having dismounted from their horses, waited to carry us into the house. We were got to bed at once, and our wounds looked to more carefully. By an odd chance Volney and I were put in the same room, the inn being full, and the Macdonald nursed us both, Creagh being for the most part absent in London on business connected with the rising.

Lying there day after day, the baronet and I came in time to an odd liking for each other, discussing our affairs frankly with certain reservations. Once he commented on the strangeness of it.

“A singular creature is man, Montagu! Here are we two as friendly as—as brothers I had almost said, but most brothers hate each other with good cause. At all events here we lie with nothing but good-will; we are too weak to get at each other’s throats and so perforce must endure each the other’s presence, and from mere sufferance come to a mutual—shall I say esteem? A while since we were for slaying; naught but cold steel would let out our heat; and now—I swear I have for you a vast liking. Will it last, think you?”

“Till we are on our feet again. No longer,” I answered.

“I suppose you are right,” he replied, with the first touch of despondency I had ever heard in his voice. “The devil of it is that when I want a thing I never rest till I get it, and after I have won it I don’t care any more for it.”

“I’m an obstinate man myself,” I said.

“Yes, I know. And when I say I’ll do a thing and you say I sha’n’t nothing on earth can keep us from the small sword.”

“Did you never spare a victim—never draw back before the evil was done?” I asked curiously.

“Many a time, but never when the incentive to the chase was so great as now. ’Tis the overcoming of obstacles I cannot resist. In this case—to pass by the acknowledged charms of the lady—I find two powerful reasons for continuing: her proud coyness and your defense of her. Be sure I shall not fail.”

“I think you will,” I answered quietly.

Out of doubt the man had a subtle fascination for me, even though I hated his principles in the same breath. When he turned the batteries of his fine winning eyes and sparkling smile on me I was under impulse to capitulate unconditionally; ’twas at remembrance of Aileen that my jaws set like a vice again.

But as the days passed I observed a gradual change in Volney’s attitude toward the Highland lass. Macdonald had found a temporary home for her at the house of a kind-hearted widow woman who lived in the neighbourhood, and so long as we were in danger the girl and her grey-haired friend came often to offer their services in nursing. Aileen treated the baronet with such shy gentle womanliness, her girlish pity struggling through the Highland pride, forgetting in the suffering man the dastard who had wronged her, that he was moved not a little from his cynical ironic gayety. She was in a peculiar relation toward us, one lacking the sanction of society and yet quite natural. I had fought for her, and her warm heart forbade her to go her way and leave me to live or die as chance might will. As she would move about the room ministering to our wants, wrapped in her sweet purity and grace, more than once I caught on his face a pain of wistfulness that told me of another man beneath the polished heartless Macaroni. For the moment I knew he repented him of his attempted wrong, though I could not know that a day of manly reparation would come to blot out his sin against her.

As we grew better Aileen’s visits became shorter and less frequent, so that our only temptation to linger over our illness was removed. One day Sir Robert limped slowly across the floor on the arm of Creagh while I watched him enviously. From that time his improvement was rapid and within a week he came to make his adieux to me. Dressed point-devise, he was once more every inch a fop.

“I sha’n’t say good-bye, Montagu, to either you or the lady, because I expect to see you both again soon. I have a shot in my locker that will bring you to mighty short one of these days. Tony Creagh is going to London with me in my coach. Sorry you and the lady won’t take the other two seats. Well, au revoir. Hope you’ll be quite fit when you come up for the next round.” And waving a hand airily at me he went limping down the stairs, devoid of grace yet every motion eloquent of it, to me a living paradox.

Nor was it long before I too was able to crawl out into the sunshine with Aileen Macleod and Captain Macdonald as my crutches. Not far from the inn was a grove of trees, and in it a rustic seat or two. Hither we three repaired for many a quiet hour of talk. Long ago Donald had established his relationship with Aileen. It appeared that he was a cousin about eight degrees removed. None but a Highlander would have counted it at all, but for them it sufficed. Donald Roy had an extraordinary taking way with women, and he got on with the girl much more easily than I did. Indeed, to hear them daffing with each other one would have said they had been brought up together instead of being acquaintances of less than three weeks standing.

Yet Donald was so clever with it all that I was never the least jealous of him. He was forever taking pains to show me off well before her, making as much of my small attainments as a hen with one chick. Like many of the West country Highlanders he was something of a scholar. French he could speak like a native, and he had dabbled in the humanities; but he would drag forth my smattering of learning with so much glee that one might have thought him ignorant of the plainest A B C of the matter. More than once I have known him blunder in a Latin quotation that I might correct him. Aileen and he had a hundred topics in common from which I was excluded by reason of my ignorance of the Highlands, but the Macdonald was as sly as a fox on my behalf. He would draw out the girl about the dear Northland they both loved and then would suddenly remember that his pistols needed cleaning or that, he had promised to “crack” with some chance gentleman stopping at the inn, and away he would go, leaving us two alone. While I lay on the grass and looked at her Aileen would tell me in her eager, impulsive way about her own kindly country, of tinkling, murmuring burns, of hills burnt red with the heather, of a hundred wild flowers that blossomed on the braes of Raasay, and as she talked of them her blue eyes sparkled like the sun-kissed lochs themselves.

Ah! Those were the good days, when the wine of life was creeping back into my blood and I was falling forty fathoms deep in love. Despite myself she was for making a hero of me, and my leal-hearted friend, Macdonald, was not a whit behind, though the droll look in his eyes suggested sometimes an ulterior motive. We talked of many things, but in the end we always got back to the one subject that burned like a flame in their hearts—the rising of the clans that was to bring back the Stuarts to their own. Their pure zeal shamed my cold English caution. I found myself growing keen for the arbitrament of battle.

No earthly Paradise endures forever. Into those days of peace the serpent of my Eden projected his sting. We were all sitting in the grove one morning when a rider dashed up to the inn and flung himself from his horse. ’Twas Tony Creagh, and he carried with him a placard which offered a reward of a hundred guineas for the arrest of one Kenneth Montagu, Esquire, who had, with other parties unknown, on the night of July first, robbed Sir Robert Volney of certain jewelry therein described.

“Highwayman it says,” quoth I in frowning perplexity. “But Volney knows I had no mind to rob him. Zounds! What does he mean?”

“Mean? Why, to get rid of you! I tore this down from a tavern wall in London just after ’twas pasted. It seems you forgot to return the gentleman his jewelry.”

I turned mighty red and pleaded guilty.

“I thought so. Gad! You’re like to keep sheep by moonlight,” chuckled Creagh.

“Nonsense! They would never hang me,” I cried.

“Wouldn’t, eh! Deed, and I’m not so sure. The hue and cry is out for you.”

“Havers, man!” interrupted Macdonald sharply. “You’re frightening the lady with your fairy tales, Creagh. Don’t you be believing him, my dear. The hemp is not grown that will hang Kenneth.”

But for all his cheery manner we were mightily taken aback, especially when another rider came in a few minutes later with a letter to me from town. It ran:—

Dear Montagu,

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends.” Our pleasant little game is renewed. The first trick was, I believe, mine; the second yours. The third I trump by lodging an information against you for highway robbery. Tony I shall not implicate, of course, nor Mac-What’s-His-Name. Take wings, my Fly-by-night, for the runners are on your heels, and if you don’t, as I live, you’ll wear hemp. Give my devoted love to the lady. I am,

Your most obed^t serv^t to command, Rob^t Volney.

In imagination I could see him seated at his table, pushing aside a score of dainty notes from Phyllis indiscreet or passionate Diana, that he might dash off his warning to me, a whimsical smile half-blown on his face, a gleam of sardonic humour in his eyes. Remorseless he was by choice, but he would play the game with an English sportsman’s love of fair play. Eliminating his unscrupulous morals and his acquired insolence of manner, Sir Robert Volney would have been one to esteem; by impulse he was one of the finest gentlemen I have known.

Though Creagh had come to warn me of Volney’s latest move, he was also the bearer of a budget of news which gravely affected the State at large and the cause on which we were embarked. The French fleet of transports, delayed again and again by trivial causes, had at length received orders to postpone indefinitely the invasion of England. Yet in spite of this fatal blow to the cause it was almost certain that Prince Charles Edward Stuart with only seven companions, of whom one was the ubiquitous O’Sullivan, had slipped from Belleisle on the Doutelle and escaping the British fleet had landed on the coast of Scotland. The emotions which animated us on hearing of the gallant young Prince’s daring and romantic attempt to win a Kingdom with seven swords, trusting sublimely in the loyalty of his devoted Highlanders, may better be imagined than described. Donald Roy flung up his bonnet in a wild hurrah, Aileen beamed pride and happiness, and Creagh’s volatile Irish heart was in the hilltops. If I had any doubts of the issue I knew better than to express them.

But we were shortly recalled to our more immediate affairs. Before we got back to the inn one of those cursed placards offering a reward for my arrest adorned the wall, and in front of it a dozen open-mouthed yokels were spelling out its purport. Clearly there was no time to be lost in taking Volney’s advice. We hired a chaise and set out for London within the hour. ’Twas arranged that Captain Macdonald and Hamish Gorm should push on at once to Montagu Grange with Aileen, while I should lie in hiding at the lodgings of Creagh until my wounds permitted of my travelling without danger. That Volney would not rest without attempting to discover the whereabouts of Miss Macleod I was well assured, and no place of greater safety for the present occurred to me than the seclusion of the Grange with my brother Charles and the family servants to watch over her. As for myself, I was not afraid of their hanging me, but I was not minded to play into the hands of Volney by letting myself get cooped up in prison for many weeks pending a trial while he renewed his cavalier wooing of the maid.

Never have I spent a more doleful time than that which followed. For one thing my wounds healed badly, causing me a good deal of trouble. Then too I was a prisoner no less than if I had been in The Tower itself. If occasionally at night I ventured forth the fear of discovery was always with me. Tony Creagh was the best companion in the world, at once tender as a mother and gay as a schoolboy, but he could not be at home all day and night, and as he was agog to be joining the Prince in the North he might leave any day. Meanwhile he brought me the news of the town from the coffee-houses: how Sir Robert Walpole was dead; how the Camerons under Lochiel, the Macdonalds under Young Clanranald, and the Macphersons under Cluny had rallied to the side of the Prince and were expected soon to be defeated by Sir John Cope, the Commander-in-Chief of the Government army in Scotland; how Balmerino and Leath had already shipped for Edinburgh to join the insurgent army; how Beauclerc had bet Lord March a hundred guineas that the stockings worn by Lady Di Faulkner at the last Assembly ball were not mates, and had won. It appeared that unconsciously I had been a source of entertainment to the club loungers.

“Sure ’tis pity you’re mewed up here, Kenn, for you’re the lion of the hour. None can roar like you. The betting books at White’s are filled with wagers about you,” Creagh told me.

“About me?” I exclaimed.

“Faith, who else? ‘Lord Pam bets Mr. Conway three ponies against a hundred pounds that Mr. Kenneth Montagu of Montagu Grange falls by the hand of justice before three months from date,’” he quoted with a great deal of gusto. “Does your neck ache, Kenn?”

“Oh, the odds are in my favour yet. What else?” I asked calmly.

“‘Mr. James Haddon gives ten pounds each to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and to Sir Robert Volney and is to receive from each twenty guineas if Mr. K. Montagu is alive twelve months from date.’ Egad, you’re a topic of interest in high quarters!”

“Honoured, I’m sure! I’ll make it a point to see that his Royal Highness and my dear friend Volney lose. Anything else?”

“At the coffee-house they were talking about raising a subscription to you because they hear you’re devilish hard up and because you made such a plucky fight against Volney. Some one mentioned that you had a temper and were proud as Lucifer. ‘He’s such a hothead. How’ll he take it?’ asks Beauclerc. ‘Why, quarterly, to be sure!’ cries Selwyn. And that reminds me: George has written an epigram that is going the rounds. Out of some queer whim—to keep them warm I suppose—Madame Bellevue took her slippers to bed with her. Some one told it at the club, so Selwyn sat down and wrote these verses:

“‘Well may Suspicion shake its head—

Well may Clorinda’s spouse be jealous,

When the dear wanton takes to bed

Her very shoes—because they’re fellows.’”

Creagh’s merry laugh was a source of healing in itself, and his departure to join the Prince put an edge to the zest of my desire to get back into the world. Just before leaving he fished a letter from his pocket and tossed it across the room to me.

“Egad, and you are the lucky man, Kenn,” he said. “The ladies pester us with praises of your valour. This morning one of the fair creatures gave me this to deliver, swearing I knew your whereabouts.”

’Twas a gay little note from my former playmate Antoinette Westerleigh, and inclosed was a letter to her from my sister. How eagerly I devoured Cloe’s letter for news of Aileen may be guessed.

My Dearest ’Toinette:—

Since last I saw you (so the letter ran) seems a century, and of course I am dying to come to town. No doubt the country is very healthy, but Lud! ’tis monstrous dull after a London season. I vow I am already a lifetime behind the fashions. Is’t true that prodigious bustles are the rage? And while I think of it I wish you would call at Madame Ronald’s and get the lylack lute-string scirt she is making for me.

Also at Duprez’s for the butifull little hat I ordered. Please have them sent by carrier. I know I am a vast nuisance; ’tis the penalty, my dear, for having a country mawkin as your best friend.

Of course you know what that grate brother of mine has been at. Gaming I hear, playing ducks and drakes with his money, and fighting duels with your lover. For a time we were dreadfully anxious about him. What do you think he has sent me down to take care of for him? But you would never guess. My love, a Scotch girl, shy as one of her own mountain deer. I suppose when he is recovert of his wounds he will be down here to philander with her. Aileen Macleod is her name, and really I do not blame him. I like her purely myself. In a way quite new she is very taking; speaks the prettiest broken English, is very simple, sweet, and grateful. At a word the pink and white comes and goes in her cheeks as it never does in ours. I wish I could acquire her manner, but Alack! ’tis not to be learnt though I took lessons forever. The gracefull creature dances the Scottish flings divinely. She is not exactly butifull, but—well, I can see why the men think so and fall down in worship! By the way, she is very nearly in love—tho she does not know it—with that blundering brother of mine; says that “her heart iss always thanking him at all events.” If he knew how to play his cards—but there, the oaf will put his grate foot in it.

She came here with a shag-headed gillie of a servant, under the protection of a Captain Macdonald who is a very fine figure of a man. He was going to stay only an hour or two, but Charles persuaded him to stop three days. Charles teases me about him, swears the Captain is already my slave, but you may depend on’t there is nothing in it. Last night we diverted ourselves with playing Hide the Thimble, and the others lost the Scotch Captain and me in the

armory. He is a peck of fun. This morning he left for the North, and do you think the grate Mr. Impudence did not buss us both; Aileen because she is his cousin a hundred times removed and me because (what a reason!) “my eyes dared him.” Of course I was in a vast rage, which seemed to hily delight Captain Impudence. I don’t see how he dared take so grate a preaviledge. Do you?

Aileen is almost drest, and I must go smart myself. My dear, an you love me, write to

Your own Cloe.

P. S.—Lard, I clear forgot! ’Tis a secret that the Scotch enchantress is here. You must be sure not to mention it, my dear, to your Sir Robert, But la! I have the utmost confidence in your discretion.

Conceive my dismay! Discretion and Antoinette Westerleigh were as far apart as the poles. What more likely than that the dashing little minx would undertake to rally her lover about Aileen, and that the adroit baronet would worm out of her the information he desired? The letter crystallized my desire to set out at once for Montagu Grange, and from there to take the road with Miss Macleod hotspur for Scotland. It appeared to me that the sooner we were out of England the better it would be for both of us.

I made the journey to the Grange by easy stages, following so far as I could little used roads and lanes on account of a modest desire to avoid publicity. ’Twas early morning when I reached the Grange. I remember the birds were twittering a chorus as I rode under the great oaks to the house. Early as it was, Cloe and Aileen were already walking in the garden with their arms entwined about each other’s waists in girl fashion. They made a picture taking enough to have satisfied a jaded connoisseur of beauty: the fair tall Highland lass, jimp as a willow wand, with the long-lashed blue eyes that looked out so shyly and yet so frankly on those she liked, and the merry brown-eyed English girl so ready of saucy tongue, so worldly wise and yet so innocent of heart.

Cloe came running to meet me in a flutter of excitement and Mistress Aileen followed more demurely down the path, though there was a Highland welcome in her frank face not to be denied. I slid from the horse and kissed Cloe. Miss Macleod gave me her hand.

“We are hoping you are quite well from your wounds,” she said.

“Quite,” I answered. “Better much for hearing your kind voices and seeing your bright faces.”

I dare say I looked over-long into one of the bright faces, and for a punishment was snatched into confusion by my malapert sister.

“I didn’t know you had heard my kind voice yet,” mimicked Miss Madcap. “And are you thinking of holding Aileen’s hand all day?”

My hand plumped to my side like a shot. Both of us flamed, I stammering apologies the while Cloe no doubt enjoyed hugely my embarrassment. ’Tis a sister’s prerogative to teach her older brothers humility, and Cloe for one did not let it fall into neglect.

“To be sure I do not know the Highland custom in the matter,” she was continuing complacently when Aileen hoist her with her own petard.

“I wass thinking that perhaps Captain Macdonald had taught you in the armory,” she said quietly; and Cloe, to be in the fashion, ran up the red flag too.

It appeared that my plan for an immediate departure from England jumped with the inclination of Miss Macleod. She had received a letter from her brother, now in Scotland, whose plans in regard to her had been upset by the unexpected arrival of the Prince. He was extremely solicitous on her behalf, but could only suggest for her an acceptance of a long-standing invitation to visit Lady Strathmuir, a distant relative living in Surrey, until times grew more settled. To Aileen the thought of throwing herself upon the hospitality of one she had never met was extremely distasteful, and she hailed my proposal as an alternative much to be desired.

The disagreeable duty of laying before my lawyer the involved condition of my affairs had to be endured, and I sent for him at once to get it over with the sooner. He pulled a prodigious long face at my statement of the gaming debts I had managed to contract during my three months’ experiment as the prodigal son in London, but though he was extraordinarily severe with me I made out in the end that affairs were not so bad as I had thought. The estate would have to be plastered with a mortgage, but some years of stiff economy and retrenchment, together with a ruthless pruning of the fine timber, would suffice to put me on my feet again. The expenditures of the household would have to be cut down, but Mr. Brief thought that a modest establishment befitting my rank might still be maintained. If I thought of marrying——

A ripple of laughter from the lawn, where Aileen and Charles were arranging fishing tackle, was wafted through the open window and cut athwart the dry speech of the lawyer. My eyes found her and lingered on the soft curves, the rose-leaf colouring, the eager face framed in a sunlit aureola of radiant hair. Already my mind had a trick of imagining her the mistress of the Grange. Did she sit for a moment in the seat that had been my mother’s my heart sang; did she pluck a posy or pour a cup of tea ’twas the same. “If I thought of marrying——” Well, ’twas a thing to be considered one day—when I came back from the wars.