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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
D. K. Broster's "The Gleam in the North" is an evocative blend of historical fiction and supernatural elements, set against the stunning backdrop of early 20th-century Scotland. Through richly detailed prose, Broster immerses the reader in a world where myth intertwines with reality, exploring themes of love, loss, and the fleeting nature of existence. The narrative is marked by its lyrical style and deep psychological insight, portraying characters whose inner lives reflect the turbulent societal changes of the era. The book draws upon both historical and folkloric sources, offering layers of meaning that resonate with contemporary issues of identity and belonging. D. K. Broster, a prominent figure of the Scottish literary revival, drew on her rich Scottish heritage and keen interest in folklore to craft this poignant narrative. Her upbringing in a culturally vibrant environment, along with her academic pursuits in archaeology and history, provided her with a unique perspective on the ethereal quality of Scottish landscapes and their storied past. Broster's personal experiences, intertwined with her desire to revive Scottish tales, significantly influenced her writing, making "The Gleam in the North" a testament to her deep connection with her homeland. This novel is highly recommended for readers who appreciate lyrical prose and intricate storytelling that transcends mere entertainment, encouraging deep reflection on the intersection of myth and reality. Fans of historical fiction and those intrigued by the supernatural will find themselves captivated by Broster's masterful storytelling. "The Gleam in the North" is not only a tale of personal quests but also a meditative exploration of the essence of Scotland's mystical heritage.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The Gleam in the North
Table of Contents
“He sent our Lawfull Prince amongst us, and I followed him.”
Laurence Oliphant the younger of Gask.
“A brighter courage and a gentler disposition were never married together.”
Lord Clarendon (of Sir Bevil Grenville).
In all that concerns Doctor Archibald Cameron this story follows historical fact very closely, and its final scenes
CHAPTER I THE BROKEN CLAYMORE
(1)
“And then,” said the childish voice, “the clans charged . . . but I expect you do not know what that means, Keithie; it means that they ran very fast against the English, waving their broadswords, and all with their dirks in their left hands under the targe; and they were so fierce and so brave that they broke through the line of English soldiers which were in front, and if there had not been so many more English, and they well-fed—but we were very hungry and had marched all night. . . .”
The little boy paused, leaving the sequel untold; but the pause itself told it. From the pronoun into which he had dropped, from his absorbed, exalted air, he might almost have been himself in the lost battle of which he was telling the story this afternoon, among the Highland heather, to a boy still younger. And in fact he was not relating to those small, inattentive ears any tale of old, unhappy, far-off things, nor of a battle long ago. Little more than six years had passed since these children’s own father had lain badly wounded on the tragic moorland of Culloden—had indeed died there but for the devotion of his foster-brothers.
“And this,” concluded the story-teller, leaving the gap still unbridged, “this is the hilt of a broadsword that was used in the battle.” He uncovered an object of a roundish shape wrapped in a handkerchief and lying on his knees. “Cousin Ian Stewart gave it to me last week, and now I will let you see it. . . . You’re not listening—you’re not even looking, Keithie!”
The dark, pansy-like eyes of his little hearer were lifted to his.
“Yes, My was,” he replied in his clear treble. “But somesing runned so fast down My’s leg,” he added apologetically. “It comed out of the fraoch.”
Not much of his small three-year-old person could be seen, so deep planted was it in the aforesaid heather. His brother Donald, on the contrary, was commandingly situated on a fallen pine-stem. The sun of late September, striking low through the birch-trees, gilded his childish hair, ripe corn which gleamed as no cornfield ever did; he was so well-grown and sturdy that he might have passed for seven or eight, though in reality a good deal younger, and one could almost have imagined the winged helm of a Viking on those bright locks. But the little delicate face, surmounted by loose dark curls, which looked up at him from the fading heather, was that of a gently brooding angel—like that small seraph of Carpaccio’s who bends so concernedly over his big lute. Between the two, tall, stately and melancholy, sat Luath, the great shaggy Highland deerhound; and behind was the glimmer of water.
The historian on the log suddenly got up, gripping his claymore hilt tight. It was big and heavy; his childish hand was lost inside the strong twining basketwork. Of the blade there remained but an inch or so. “Come along, Keithie!”
Obediently the angel turned over, as small children do when they rise from the ground, took his brother’s outstretched hand and began to move away with him, lifting his little legs high to clear the tough heather stems.
“Not going home now, Donald?” he inquired after a moment, tiring, no doubt, of this prancing motion.
“We will go this way,” replied the elder boy somewhat disingenuously, well aware that he had turned his back on the house of Ardroy, his home, and was making straight for Loch na h-Iolaire, where the two were never allowed to go unaccompanied. “I think that Father is fishing here somewhere.”
(2)
Conjecture or knowledge, Donald’s statement was correct, though, as an excuse for theirs, his father’s presence was scarcely sufficient, since nearly a quarter of a mile of water intervened between Ewen Cameron of Ardroy and his offspring. He could not even see his small sons, for he sat on the farther side of the tree-covered islet in the middle of the loch, a young auburn-haired giant with a determined mouth, patiently splicing the broken joint of a fishing-rod.
More than four years had elapsed since Ardroy had returned with his wife and his little son from exile after Culloden. As long as Lochiel, his proscribed chief, was alive, he had never contemplated such a return, but in those October days of 1748 when the noblest and most disinterested of all the gentlemen who had worn the White Rose lay dying in Picardy of brain fever (or, more truly, of a broken heart) he had in an interval of consciousness laid that injunction on the kinsman who almost felt that with Lochiel’s his own existence was closing too. All his life Lochiel’s word had been law to the young man; a wish uttered by those dying lips was a behest so sacred that no hesitations could stand in the way of carrying it out. Ewen resigned the commission which he bore in Lochiel’s own regiment in the French service, and breathed once more the air of the hills of home, and saw again the old grey house and the mountain-clasped loch which was even dearer. But he knew that he would have to pay a price for his return.
And indeed he had come back to a life very different from that which had been his before the year 1745—to one full of petty annoyances and restrictions, if not of actual persecution. He was not himself attainted and thereby exempted, like some, from the Act of Indemnity, or he could not have returned at all; but he came back to find his religion proscribed, his arms taken from him, and the wearing of his native dress made a penal offence which at its second commission might be punished with transportation. The feudal jurisdiction of the chiefs was shattered for ever, and now the English had studded the Highlands with a series of military outposts, and thence (at a great expenditure of shoe-leather) patrolled all but the wildest glens. It was a maimed existence, a kind of exile at home; and though indeed to a Highlander, with all a Celt’s inborn passion for his native land, it had its compensations, and though he was most happily married, Ewen Cameron knew many bitter hours. He was only thirty-three—and looked less—and he was a Jacobite and fighter born. Yet both he and his wife believed that he was doing right in thus living quietly on his estate, for he could thereby stand, in some measure, between his tenants and the pressure of authority, and his two boys could grow up in the home of their forefathers. Keith, indeed, had first opened his eyes at Ardroy, and even Donald in England, whither, like other heroic Jacobite wives in similar circumstances, Lady Ardroy had journeyed from France for her confinement, in order that the heir should not be born on foreign soil.
Besides, Lochiel had counselled return.
Moreover, the disaster of Culloden had by no means entirely quenched Jacobite hopes. The Prince would come again, said the defeated among themselves, and matters go better . . . next year, or the year after. Ewen, in France, had shared those hopes. But they were not so green now. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had rendered French aid a thing no more possible; and indeed Jacobite claims had latterly meant to France merely a useful weapon with which to threaten her ancient foe across the Channel. Once he who was the hope of Scotland had been hunted day and night among these Western hills and islands, and the poorest had sheltered him without thought of consequences; now on the wide continent of Europe not a crowned head would receive him for fear of political complications. More than three years ago, therefore, poor, outcast and disillusioned, he who had been “Bonnie Prince Charlie” had vanished into a plotter’s limbo. Very few knew his hiding-places; and not one Highlander.
(3)
“My want to go home,” said little Keith, sighing. The two children were now standing, a few yards from the verge, looking over the Loch of the Eagle, where the fringeing birches were beginning to yellow, and the quiet water was expecting the sunset.
Donald took no notice of this plaint; his eyes were intently fixed on something up on the red-brown slopes of Meall Achadh on the far side—was it a stag?
“Father not here,” began the smaller boy once more, rather wistfully. “Go home to Mother now, Donald?”
“All in good time,” said Master Donald in a lordly fashion. “Sit down again, if you are tired.”
“Not tired,” retorted little Keith, but his mouth began to droop. “Want to go home—Luath goned!” He tugged at the hand which held him.
“Be quiet!” exclaimed his brother impatiently, intent on the distant stag—if stag it were. He loosed his hold of Keith’s hand, and, putting down the claymore hilt, used both his own to shade his eyes, remembering the thrill, the rather awful thrill, of coming once upon an eight-pointer which severe weather had brought down almost to the house. This object was certainly moving; now a birch-tree by the loch-side blocked his view of it. Donald himself moved a little farther to the left to avoid the birch branches, almost as breathless as if he had really been stalking the beast. But in a minute or two he could see no further sign of it on the distant hill-side, and came back to his actual surroundings to find that his small brother was no longer beside him, but had trotted out to the very brink of the loch, in a place where Donald had always been told that the water was as deep as a kirk.
“Keith, come back at once!” he shouted in dismay. “You know that you are not to go there!”
And then he missed the claymore hilt which he had laid down a yard or so away; and crying, “How dare you take my sword!” flung himself after the truant.
But before he could reach it the small figure had turned an exultant face. “My got yours toy!” And then he had it no longer, for with all his childish might he had thrown it from him into the water. There was a delightful splash. “It’s away!” announced Keithie, laughing gleefully.
Donald stood there arrested, his rosy face gone white as paper. For despite the small strength which had thrown the thing, the irreplaceable relic was indeed ‘away’ . . . and since the loch was so deep there, and he could not swim. . . . Then the hot Highland blood came surging back to his heart, and, blind with a child’s unthinking rage, he pounced on the malefactor. One furious push, and he had sent his three-year-old brother to join the claymore hilt in the place where Loch na h-Iolaire was as deep as a kirk.
(4)
A child’s scream—two screams—made Ewen Cameron throw down his rod and spring to his feet. In that stillness of the heart of the hills, and over water, sounds travelled undimmed, and he had for a little time been well aware of childish voices at a distance, and had known them, too, for those of his own boys. But since it never occurred to him that the children were there unattended, he was not perturbed: he would row over to them presently.
But now. . . . He ran across the islet in a panic. The screams prolonged themselves; he heard himself called. God! what had happened? Then he saw.
On the shore of the loch, looking very small against the great old pines behind him, stood a boy rigid with terror, screaming in Gaelic and English for his father, for Angus, for anyone . . . and in the water not far from shore was something struggling, rising, disappearing. . . . Ardroy jumped into the small boat in which he had rowed to the island, and began to pull like a madman towards the shore, his head over his shoulder the while. And thus he saw that there was something else in the loch also—a long, narrow head forging quickly through the water towards the scene of the accident, that place near land, indeed, but deep enough to drown twenty children. Luath, bless him, thought the young man, has gone in from a distance. Before he had rowed many more strokes he himself dropped his oars, and, without pausing even to strip off his coat, had plunged in himself. Even then, strong swimmer though he was, he doubted if he should be in time. . . . The dog had got there first, and had seized the child, but was more occupied in trying to get him bodily out of the loch than in keeping his head above water. But with a stroke or two more Ardroy was up to them, only praying that he should not have to struggle with Luath for possession. Mercifully the deerhound obeyed his command to let go, and in another moment Ewen Cameron was scrambling out of Loch na h-Iolaire, himself fully as terrified as either of the children, but clutching to him a sodden, choking little bundle, incoherent between fright and loch-water.
(5)
The old house of Ardroy stood some quarter of a mile from the loch, rather strangely turning its back upon it, but, since it thus looked south, capturing the sun for a good part of the day, even in midwinter. Comfortable and unpretentious, it had already seen some hundred and thirty autumns, had sometimes rung with youthful voices, and sometimes lacked them. Now once again it had a nursery, where at this moment, by a fire of peat and logs, a rosy-cheeked Highland girl was making preparations for washing two small persons who, after scrambling about all afternoon in the heather and bracken, would probably stand in need of soap and water.
And presently their mother came through the open door, dark-haired like her younger son, slight, oval-faced, almost a girl still, for she was but in her late twenties, and combining a kind of effortless dignity with a girlish sweetness of expression.
“Are the children not home yet, Morag?” she asked, using the Gaelic, and Morag answered her lady that surely they would not be long now, and it might be that the laird himself was bringing them, for he had gone up past the place where they were playing.
“Ah, there they are,” said Lady Ardroy, for she had heard her husband’s step in the hall, and as she left the room his soft Highland voice floated up to her, even softer than its wont, for it seemed to be comforting someone. She looked over the stairs and gave an exclamation. Ardroy was dripping wet, all save his head, and in his arms, clinging to him with an occasional sob, was a pitiful little object with dark hair streaked over its face.
Ewen looked up at the same moment and saw her. “All is well, dear heart,” he said quickly. “Keithie has had a wee mishap, but here he is, safe and sound.”
He ran up the stairs and put the small wet thing, wrapped in Donald’s coat, into its mother’s arms. “Yes—the loch . . . he fell in. No harm, I think; only frightened. Luath got to him first; I was on the island.”
Alison gave a gasp. She had seized her youngest almost as if she were rescuing him from the rescuer, and was covering the damp, forlorn little face with kisses. “Darling, darling, you are safe with mother now! . . . He must be put into a hot bath at once!” She ran with him into the nursery. “Is the water heated, Morag?”
Ardroy, wet and gigantic, followed her in, and behind came the mute and coatless Donald, who stood a moment looking at the bustle, and then went and seated himself, very silent, on the window-seat. Close to the fire his mother was getting the little sodden garments off Keith, Morag was pouring out the hot water, his father, who could be of no use here, was contributing a damp patch to the nursery floor. But Keithie had ceased to cry now, and as he was put into the bath he even patted the water and raised a tiny splash.
And then, after he was immersed, he said to his mother, raising those irresistible velvety eyes, “Naughty Donald, to putch Keithie into the water!”
“Oh, my darling, my peeriewinkie, you must not say things like that!” exclaimed Alison, rather shocked. “There, we’ll forget all about falling in; you are safe home now. Towel, Morag!”
“Donald putched Keithie into the water,” repeated the little naked boy from the folds of the towel. And again, with deeper reprobation in his tone, “Naughty Donald!”
Ardroy, anxiously and helplessly watching these operations, knelt down on one knee beside his wife and son and said gently, “Donald should not have gone near the loch; that was naughty of him, but you must not tell a lie about it, Keithie!”
“Did putch My in!” reiterated the child, now wrapped in a warm blanket, and looking not unlike a chrysalis. “Did—did!”
“Yes, I did,” said a sudden voice from behind. “It’s not a lie—I did push him in.” And with that Donald advanced from the window.
His kneeling father turned so suddenly that he almost overbalanced. “You—you pushed your little brother into Loch na h-Iolaire!” he repeated, in a tone of utter incredulity, while Alison clutched the chrysalis to her, looking like a mother in a picture of the massacre of the innocents. “You pushed him in—deliberately!” repeated Ardroy once more, getting to his feet.
The child faced him, fearless but not defiant, his golden head erect, his hands clenched at his sides.
“He threw my broadsword hilt in. It was wicked of him—wicked!” The voice shook a moment. “But he is not telling a lie.”
For a second Ewen gazed, horrified, at his wife, then at his heir. “I think you had better go downstairs to my room, Donald. When I have changed my clothes I will come and talk to you there.—You’ll be getting Keithie to bed as soon as possible, I suppose, mo chridhe?”
“Donald . . . Donald!” murmured his mother, looking at the culprit with all the sorrow and surprise of the world in her eyes.
“Naughty Donald,” chanted his brother with a flushed face. “Naughty . . . naughty . . . naughty!”
“A great deal more than naughty,” thought the young father to himself, as he went to his bedroom and stripped off his wet clothes. “Good God, how came he to do such a thing?”
In the hall Luath, wet too, rose and poked a cold nose into his hand. “Yes,” said his master, “you did your duty, good dog . . . but my boy—how could he have acted so!”
He put that question squarely to the delinquent, who was waiting for him in the little room where Ardroy kept his books and rods and saw his tenantry. Donald’s blue eyes met his frankly.
“I suppose because I was angry with Keithie for being so wicked,” he replied.
Ewen sat down, and, afraid lest his horror and surprise should make him too stern, drew the child towards him. “But, surely, Donald, you are sorry and ashamed now? Think what might have happened!”
The fair head drooped a little—but not, evidently, in penitence. “I am not sorry, Father, that I threw him in. He was wicked; he took my claymore hilt that was used at Culloden and threw it in. So it was right that he should be punished.”
“Great heavens!” exclaimed his parent, loosing his hold of him at this pronouncement, “don’t you think that your little brother is of more importance than a bit of an old broadsword?”
To which Donald made the devastating reply: “No, Father, for I don’t suppose that I can ever have the hilt again, because the loch is so deep there. But some day I may have another brother; Morag said so.”
Words were smitten from the laird of Ardroy, and for a moment he gazed speechless at this example of infantile logic. “Donald,” he said at last, “I begin to think you’re a wee thing fey. Go to bed now; I’ll speak to you again in the morning.”
“If you are going to punish me, Father,” said the boy, standing up very straight, and looking up at him with his clear, undaunted eyes, “I would liefer you did it now.”
“I am afraid that you cannot have everything you wish, my son,” replied Ardroy rather grimly. “Go to your bed now, and pray to God to show you how wicked you have been. I had rather you felt that than thought about getting your punishment over quickly. Indeed, if the sight of your little brother all but drowning through your act was not punishment. . . .” He stopped, for he remembered that Donald had at least screamed for help.
But the executor of vengeance stuck to his guns. “It was Keithie who deserved punishment,” he murmured, but not very steadily.
“The child’s bewitched!” said Ewen to himself, staring at him. Then he put a hand on his shoulder. “Come now,” he said in a softer tone, “get you to bed, and think of what you would be feeling like now if Keithie had been drowned, as he certainly would have been had I not happened to be on the island, for Luath could not have scrambled right out with him. . . . And you see what disobedience leads to, for if you had not taken Keithie to the loch he could not have thrown your hilt into it.”
This argument appeared to impress the logical mind of his son. “Yes, Father,” he said in a more subdued tone. “Yes, I am sorry that I was disobedient.”
And, though Ardroy at once divined a not very satisfactory reason for this admission, he wisely did not probe into it. “Go to bed now.”
“Am I to have any supper?”
“Supper’s of small account,” replied Ewen rather absently, gazing at the golden-haired criminal. “Yes . . . I mean No—no supper.”
On that point at least he was able to come to a decision. And Donald seemed satisfied with its justice. He left the room gravely, without saying good-night.
* * * * *
Later, bending with Alison over the little bed where Donald’s victim was already nearly asleep, Ewen repeated his opinion that their elder son was fey. “And what are we to do with him? He seems to think that he was completely justified in what he did! ’Tis . . . ’tis unnatural!”
And he looked so perturbed that his wife smothered her own no less acute feelings on the subject and said consolingly, “He must at least have done it in a blind rage, dear love.”
“I hope so, indeed. But he is so uncannily calm and judicial over it now. I don’t know what to do. Ought I to thrash him?”
“You could not,” murmured Lady Ardroy. Like many large,strong men, Ewen Cameron was extraordinarily gentle with creatures that were neither. “No, I will try whether I cannot make Donald see what a dreadful thing he did. Oh, Ewen, if you had not been there. . . .” Her lips trembled, and going down on her knees she laid her head against the little mound under the bedclothes.
Keithie half woke up and bestowed a sleepy smile upon her. In common with his impenitent brother he seemed to have recovered from his fright; it was the parents of both in whose cup the dregs of the adventure were left, very disturbing to the palate.
CHAPTER II LIEUTENANT HECTOR GRANT OF THE RÉGIMENT D’ALBANIE
Alison retired early that evening, to keep an eye upon her youngest born after his immersion. But Ardroy did not go to bed at his usual hour; indeed, he remained far beyond it, and half-past eleven found him pacing up and down the big living-room, his hands behind his back. Now and again, as he turned in his perambulation, there was to be seen the merest trace of his memento of Culloden, the limp which, when he was really tired, was clearly to be recognised for one.
Deeply shocked at this fratricidal tendency in his eldest son, and puzzled how best to deal with it, the young man could not get his mind off the incident. When he looked at Luath, lying on the deerskin in front of the hearth, nose on paws and eyes following his every movement, he felt almost ashamed that the dog should have witnessed the crime which made Donald, at his early age, a potential Cain!
At last, in desperation, he went to his own sanctum, seized an account book and bore it back to the fireside. Anything to take his mind off this afternoon’s affair, were it only the ever-recurring difficulty of making income and expenditure tally. For Ewen had never received—had never wished to receive—a single louis of the French gold buried at Loch Arkaig, though it had been conveyed into Cameron territory by a Cameron, and though another Cameron, together with the proscribed chief of the Macphersons (still in hiding in Badenoch), was agent for its clandestine distribution among the Jacobite clans. Ardroy had told Doctor Archibald Cameron, Lochiel’s brother, and his own cousin and intimate, who had been the hero of its transportation and interment, that he did not need any subsidy; and John Cameron of Fassefern, the other brother, representative in the Highlands of the dead Chief’s family now in France, was only too relieved not to have another applicant clamouring for a dole from that fast dwindling hoard.
And Ardroy himself was glad of his abstention, for by this autumn of 1752 it was becoming clear that the money landed from the French ships just after the battle of Culloden, too late to be of any use in the campaign, had now succeeded in setting clan against clan and kinsman against kinsman, in raising jealousies and even—for there were ugly rumours abroad—in breeding informers. Yes, it was dragon’s teeth, after all, which Archibald Cameron had with such devotion sowed on Loch Arkaig side—seed which had sprung up, not in the guise of armed men to fight for the Stuarts, but in that of a crop of deadly poison. Even Ewen did not suspect how deadly.
In the midst of the young laird’s rather absent-minded calculations Luath suddenly raised his head and growled. Ardroy laid down his papers and listened, but he could hear nothing. The deerhound growled again, on a deep, threatening note, and rose, the hair along his neck stiffening. His eyes were fixed on the windows.
“Quiet!” said his master, and, rising also, went to one, drew aside the curtains, and looked out. He could see nothing, and yet he, too, felt that someone was there. With Luath, still growling, at his heels, he left the room, opened the door of the house, and going through the porch, stood outside.
The cool, spacious calm of the Highland night enveloped him in an instant; he saw Aldebaran brilliant in the south-east between two dark continents of cloud. Then footsteps came out of the shadows, and a slim, cloaked figure slipped quickly past him into the porch.
“Est-il permis d’entrer, mon cher?” it asked, low and half laughing. “Down, Luath—it’s a friend, good dog!”
“Who is it?” had been surprised out of Ewen in the same moment, as he turned.
“Sure, you know that!” said the voice. “But shut your door, Ardroy!”
The intruder was in the parlour now, in the lamplight, and as Ewen hastened after him he flung his hat upon the table, and advanced with both hands outstretched, a dark, slender, clear-featured young man of about five and twenty, wearing powder and a long green roquelaure.
“Hector, by all the powers!” exclaimed his involuntary host. “What——”
“What brings me here? I’ll tell you in a moment. How does Alison, and yourself, and the bairns? Faith, I’ll hardly be knowing those last again, I expect.”
“Alison is very well,” replied Ewen to Alison’s only brother. “We are all well, thank God. And Alison will be vastly pleased to see you, as I am. But why this unannounced visit, my dear Hector—and why, if I may ask, this mysterious entrance by night? ’Tis mere chance that I am not abed like the rest of the house.”
“I had my reasons,” said Hector Grant cheerfully. “Nay, I’m no deserter” (he was an officer in French service) “but I thought it wiser to slip in unnoticed if I could. I’ll tell you why anon, when I am less—you’ll pardon me for mentioning it?—less sharp-set.”
“My sorrow!” exclaimed his host. “Forgive me—I’ll have food before you in a moment. Sit down, Eachainn, and I will tell Alison of your arrival.”
Hector caught at him. “Don’t rouse her now. The morn will be time enough, and I’m wanting a few words with you first.” He threw off his roquelaure. “May I not come and forage with you, as we did—where was it . . . at Manchester, I think—in the ’45.”
“Come on then,” said his brother-in-law, a hand on his shoulder, and they each lit a candle and went, rather like schoolboys, to rifle the larder. And presently Ardroy was sitting at the table watching his midnight visitor give a very good account of a venison pie. This slim, vivacious, distinctly attractive young man might almost have passed for a Frenchman, and indeed his long residence in France had given him not a few Gallic tricks of gesture and expression. For Hector Grant had lived abroad since he entered French service at the age of sixteen—and before that too; only during the fateful year of the Rising had he spent any length of time in Britain. It was, indeed, his French commission which had saved him from the scaffold, for he had been one of the ill-fated garrison of Carlisle.
“Venison—ah, good to be back where one can have a shot at a deer again!” he presently observed with his mouth full. “I envy you, mon frère.”
“You need not,” answered Ewen. “You forget that I cannot have a shot at one; I have no means of doing it—no firearms, no, not the smallest fowling-piece. We have to snare our deer or use dogs.”
“C’est vrai; I had forgotten. But I cannot think how you submit to such a deprivation.”
“Submit?” asked Ardroy rather bitterly. “There is no choice: every Highland gentleman of our party has to submit to it, unless he has ‘qualified’ to the English Government.”
“And you still have not done that?”
Ewen flushed. “My dear Hector, how should I take an oath of fidelity to the Elector of Hanover? Do you think I’m become a Whig?”
“Faith, no—unless you’ve mightily changed since we marched into England together, seven years ago come Hallowmas. But, Eoghain, besides the arms which you have been forced to give up, there’ll surely be some which you have contrived to keep back, as has always been done in the past when these distasteful measures were imposed upon us?”
Ewen’s face darkened. “The English were cleverer this time. After the Act of ’25 no one was made to call down a curse upon himself, his kin and all his undertakings, to invoke the death of a coward and burial without a prayer in a strange land if he broke his oath that he had not, and never would have in his possession, any sword or pistol or arm whatsoever, nor would use any part of the Highland garb.”
Hector whistled. “Ma foi, you subscribed to that!”
“I had to,” answered Ewen shortly.
“I never realised that when I was here two years ago, but then my visit was so short. I did indeed know that the wearing of the tartan in any form was forbidden.”
“That,” observed Ardroy, “bears harder in a way upon the poor folk than upon us gentry. I had other clothes, if not, I could buy some; but the crofters, what else had they but their homespun plaids and philabegs and gowns? Is it any wonder that they resorted at first to all sorts of shifts and evasions of the law, and do still, wearing a piece of plain cloth merely wrapped round the waist, sewing up the kilt in the hope that it may pass for breeches, and the like?”
“But that is not the only side to it,” said the young Franco-Scot rather impatiently. “You are eloquent on the money hardship inflicted on the country folk, but surely you do not yourself relish being deprived by an enemy of the garb which has always marked us as a race?”
He was young, impetuous, not remarkable for tact, and his brother-in-law had turned his head away without reply, so that Hector Grant could not see the gleam which had come into those very blue eyes of his, nor guess the passionate resentment which was always smouldering in Ardroy’s heart over a measure which, in common with the poorest Highlander, he loathed with every fibre of his being, and which he would long ago have disobeyed but for the suffering which the consequences to him would have brought upon his wife and children.
“I should have thought——” young Grant was going on, when Ewen broke in, turning round and reaching for the claret, “Have some more wine, Hector. Now, am I really not to wake Alison to tell her that you are here?”
Hector finished his glass. “No, let her sleep, the darling! I’ll have plenty of time to talk with her—that is, if you will keep me a few days, Ardroy?”
“My dear brother, why ask? My house is yours,” said Ewen warmly.
Hector made a little gesture of thanks. “I’ll engage not to wear the tartan,” he said smiling, “nor my uniform, in case the English redcoats should mislike it.”
“That is kind of you. And, as I guess, you could not, having neither with you” (“A moi,” said Hector to this, like a fencer acknowledging a hit). “I’ll see about a bed for you now. There is one always ready for a guest, I believe.”
Again the young officer stayed him. “ ’Tis not much past midnight yet. And I want a word with you, Ewen, a serious word. I’d liefer indeed say it before I sleep under your roof, I think . . . more especially since (for your family’s sake) you have become . . . prudent.”
Ardroy’s face clouded a little. He hated the very name of ‘prudence’, and the thing too; but it was true that he had to exercise it. “Say on,” he responded rather briefly.
“Eh bien,” began Hector, his eyes on the empty wine-glass which he was twirling in his fingers, “although it is quite true that I am come hither to see my sister and her children, there is someone else whom I am very anxious to have speech with.”
“And who’s that?” asked Ewen a trifle uneasily. “You are not come, I hope, on any business connected with the Loch Arkaig treasure? ’Tis not Cluny Macpherson whom you wish to see?”
Hector looked at him and smiled. “I hope to see Cluny later—though not about the treasure. Just now it’s a man much easier to come at, a man in Lochaber, that I’m seeking—yourself, in short.”
Ewen raised his eyebrows. “You have not far to go, then.”
“I am not so sure of that,” responded young Grant cryptically. He paused a moment. “Ewen, have you ever heard of Alexander Murray?”
“The brother of Lord Murray of Elibank do you mean? Yes. What of him?”
“And Finlay MacPhair of Glenshian—young Glenshian—did you ever meet him in Paris?”
“No, I have never met him.”
“N’importe. Now listen, and I will tell you a great secret.”
He drew closer, and into Ardroy’s ears he poured the somewhat vague but (to Ewen) alarming details of a plot to surprise St. James’s Palace and kidnap the whole English Royal Family, by means, chiefly, of young officers like himself in the French service, aided by Highlanders, of whom five hundred, he alleged, could be raised in London. The German Elector, his remaining son and his grandsons once out of the way, England would acquiesce with joy in the fait accompli, and welcome her true Prince, who was to be ready on the coast. The Highlands, of course, must be prepared to rise, and quickly, for Hector believed that an early date in November had been fixed for the attempt. The Scots whom he had just mentioned were in the plot; the Earl Marischal knew of it. And Hector himself, having already resolved to spend his leave in visiting his sister, had also, it was evident, conceived the idea of offering Ardroy a share in the enterprise, apparently hoping to induce him to go to London and enrol himself among the putative five hundred Highlanders.
“But, before we discuss that,” he finished, “tell me what you think of the whole notion of this coup de main? Is it not excellent, and just what we ought to have carried out long ago, had we been wise?” And he leant back with a satisfied air as if he had no fear of the reply.
But there was no answering light on the clear, strong face opposite him. Cameron of Ardroy was looking very grave.
“You want to know what I think?” he asked slowly. “Well, first I think that the scheme is mad, and could not succeed; and secondly, that it is unworthy, and does not deserve to.”
Hector sat up in his chair. “Hé! qu’est-ce que tu me chantes là?” he cried with a frown. “Say that again!”
Ewen did not comply; instead he went on very earnestly: “You surely do not hold with assassination, Hector! But no doubt you do not see the affair in that light . . . you spoke of kidnapping, I think. O, for Heaven’s sake, have nothing to do with a plot of that kind, which the Prince would never soil his hands with!”
“You are become very squeamish on a sudden,” observed his visitor, surveying him with an air at once crestfallen and deeply resentful. “And somewhat behind the times, too, since you retired to these parts. The Prince not only knows but approves of the plan.”
His brother-in-law’s face expressed complete scepticism. “I think your enthusiasm misleads you, Hector. His Royal Highness has always refused to countenance schemes of the kind.”
“You are a trifle out of date, as I was forced to observe to you, my dear Ewen! I suppose His Royal Highness may change his mind. And, after all, it is five years or so since you have been able to know anything of his opinions. As it happens, it is in connection with this enterprise that he is sending MacPhair of Lochdornie and Doctor Cameron to Scotland. They are to work the clans meanwhile, so that when the blow is struck in London by those responsible——”
But by now Ewen was interrupting him. “Archie—Archie Cameron is connected with this plot! I’m sorry to appear to doubt you, Hector, but—since at this point we had best be frank—I don’t believe it.”
Hector’s lips were compressed, his eyes glinting. He seemed to be making an effort to keep his temper. “He’ll tell you differently, parbleu, when you meet him!”
“When I meet him! He’s not in Scotland.”
“He is, by this time! And I suppose, since he’s your cousin, and you have always been intimate with him, that he’ll come here, and mayhap you will accord him a more courteous welcome than you have me!” He pushed back his chair and got up.
Ewen did the same. “I ask your pardon if I was uncivil,” he said with some stiffness. “But I cannot be courteous over a scheme so ill-judged and so repugnant. Moreover Archibald Cameron will not come here. When he was over in ’49 on the business of the Loch Arkaig gold he purposely kept away from Ardroy.”
“Purposely? Why?—Oh, ay, lest he should compromise you, I suppose!”
“Something of the sort,” answered Ewen without flinching.
“Yes, that’s your chief preoccupation now, I see!” flared out Hector, hot as ginger. “It were much better I had not come here either, but I’ll go at once, lest I should commit that unpardonable sin!”
“Hector, Hector, do not be so hasty!” cried Ewen, angry enough himself, but still able to control his tongue. “You asked me what I thought—I told you. Give me your cloak; sit down again! Let’s leave this business till the morning, and we’ll talk of it again then.”
“No, indeed we will not!” retorted the young plotter defiantly. “I’ll find some other roof to shelter me to-night—some humbler dwelling where the White Rose is still cherished. It grows no longer at Ardroy—I see that very plainly.” He flung the cloak round him with a swing. “I’ll bid you good-night, monsieur mon beau-frère!”
Ewen had put his hands behind him; one was gripping the wrist of the other. He had turned a little pale. “You can say what you please to me in this house,” he answered between his teeth, “for you know that I cannot touch you. But if you still feel minded to repeat that about the White Rose to me to-morrow, somewhere off my land——”
“The White Rose,” broke in a gentle voice from the doorway. “Who is speaking of—— O Hector!”
It was Lady Ardroy, in her nightshift with a shawl about her. Both men stood looking at her and wondering how much she had heard.
“Hector, dear brother, what a surprise!” She ran across the big room to him. “Have you but just arrived? Take off your cloak—how delightful is this!” With the words she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him warmly.
But there must have been something amiss in her brother’s answering salute, as in her husband’s silence. “What is troubling you?” she asked, looking from one to the other, her hand still on Hector’s shoulder. “Is anything wrong? Is there . . . ill news?”
Neither of the men answered her for a moment. “Ewen considers it ill,” said Hector at last, curtly. “But it does not touch him—nor you, my dear. So I’ll say good-night; I must be going on my way.”
“Going on your way—to-night!” There was almost stupefaction in his sister’s tone. “But ’tis long past midnight; you cannot go, Hector—and where are you bound at such an hour? Ewen, make him bide here!”
“Hector must please himself,” replied her husband coldly. “But naturally I have no desire that he should continue his journey before morning.”
Alison gazed at him in dismay. Highland hospitality—and to a kinsman—offered in so half-hearted a fashion! “Surely you have not been . . . differing about anything?” (They had always been such good friends in the past.)
Again neither of them answered her at once, but they both looked a trifle like children detected in wrong-doing. “You had better go back to bed, my heart,” said Ewen gently. “Did you come down because you heard voices?”
“I came,” said Alison, her eyes suddenly clouding, “because of Keithie—I don’t know, but I fear he may be going to be ill.”
“You see, I had best go,” said her brother instantly, in a softer tone. “If you have a child ill——”
“But that is neither here nor there,” replied Alison. “O Hector, stay, stay!”
Of course the young soldier wanted to stay. But having announced in so fiery a manner that he was going, and having undeniably insulted the master of the house, how could he with dignity remain unless that master begged him to? And that Ardroy, evidently, was not minded to do.
“If Hector wishes to please you, Alison, he will no doubt bide here the night,” was all the olive-branch that he tendered. “But I gather that he fears he will compromise us by his presence. If you can persuade him that his fear is groundless, pray do so.”
“No,” said Hector, not to Ewen but to Alison. “No, best have no more words about it. It were wiser I did not sleep here to-night. I’ll come on my return . . . or perhaps to-morrow,” he added, melted by his sister’s appealing face. “I’ll find a shelter, never fear. But things have changed somewhat of late in the Highlands.”
With which mysterious words he kissed Alison again, flung his cloak once more about him, and made for the door. Lady Ardroy followed him a little way, distressed and puzzled, then stopped; half her heart, no doubt, was upstairs. But Ewen left the room after the young officer, and found him already opening the front door.
“Do me the justice to admit that I am not turning you out,” said Ardroy rather sternly. “It is your own doing; the house is open to you to-night . . . and for as long afterwards as you wish, if you apologise——”
“I’ll return when you apologise for calling me an assassin!” retorted Hector over his shoulder.
“You know I never called you so! Hector, I hate your going off in anger in this fashion, at dead of night—and how am I to know that you will not stumble into some ill affair or other with the redcoats or with broken men?”
Hector gave an unsteady laugh. “If I do, you may be sure I shall not risk ‘compromising’ you by asking for your assistance! Sleep quietly!” And, loosing that last arrow, he was lost in the darkness out of which he had come.
Ardroy stood on the edge of that darkness for a moment, swallowing down the anger which fought with his concern, for he had himself a temper as hot as Hector’s own, though it was more difficult to rouse. Hector’s last thrust was childish, but his previous stab about the White Rose had gone deep; did not Ewen himself sometimes lie awake at night contrasting past and present? . . . Yet he knew well that the root of that flower was not dead at Ardroy, though scarce a blossom might show on it. It was not dead, else one had not so felt at every turn of daily life both the ghost of its wistful fragrance and the sting of its perennial thorns.
He went back with bent head, to find Alison saying in great distress, “O dearest, what has happened between you and Hector? And Keithie is feverish; I am so afraid lest the cold water and the exposure . . . for you know he’s not very strong . . .”
Ewen put his arm round her. “Please God ’tis only a fever of cold he’s taken. . . . As for Hector—yes, I will tell you about it. He’ll think better of it, I dare say, foolish boy, in the morning.” He put out the lights on the improvised supper-table; they went upstairs, and soon there was no sound in the dark room but an occasional sigh from the deerhound stretched out in front of the dying fire.
CHAPTER III A FRENCH SONG BY LOCH TREIG
By three o’clock next afternoon Ewen Cameron was riding fast to Maryburgh to fetch a doctor. Little Keith was really ill, and it was with a sickening pang at his own heart that Ardroy had tried to comfort the now extremely penitent Donald, whom he had found weeping bitterly because Keithie, flushed and panting, had refused the offer of some expiatory treasure or other, had indeed beaten him off pettishly when he attempted to put it into the hot little hand.
Ardroy had to try to comfort himself, too, as he went along Loch Lochy banks, where the incomparable tints of the Northern autumn were lighting their first fires in beech and bracken. Children had fever so easily; it might signify nothing, old Marsali had said. For himself, he had so little experience that he did not know; but Alison, he could see, was terribly anxious. He wished that his aunt, Miss Margaret Cameron, who had brought him up, and still lived with them, were not away visiting; she could have borne Alison company on this dark day. He wished that he himself could have stayed at home and sent a gillie for the doctor, but even one who spoke English might get involved in some difficulty with the military at Fort William, and the message never be delivered. It was safer to go himself.
There was also last night’s unfortunate business with his brother-in-law to perturb him. High-spirited and impulsive as he was, Hector might repent and come back in a day or two, if only for his sister’s sake. Ewen devoutly hoped that he would. For that same sister’s sake he would forgive the young man his wounding words. It was worse to reflect that Hector had evidently mixed himself up in some way with this mad, reprehensible plot against the Elector. And he had averred that Archibald Cameron, of all men, had come or was coming to Scotland on the same enterprise.
Ewen involuntarily tightened his reins. That he did not believe. His respect and affection for Archibald Cameron were scarcely less than those he had borne his elder brother Lochiel himself. Archie had probably come over again to confer with Cluny Macpherson about that accursed Loch Arkaig gold, very likely in order to take some of it back to France with him—a risky business, as always, but a perfectly justifiable one. It was true, as Ewen had told Hector, that Archie purposely avoided coming to Ardroy, though it lay not far from the shores of Loch Arkaig, yet if Doctor Cameron really were in Scotland again Ewen hoped that they should meet somehow. He had not seen his cousin for nearly three years.
On the other hand, if Archie had come over to work in any way for the Cause in the Highlands, there was certainly a good deal of ferment here at present, and a proportionately good chance of fishing in troubled waters. There were ceaseless annoyances of one kind or another; there were the evictions of Jacobite tenants in favour of Whig . . . above all, there was this black business of the Appin murder trial soon to open at Inveraray, the Campbell stronghold, which everyone knew would end in the condemnation of an innocent man by the Campbell jury because the victim of the outrage had been a Campbell. Yes, it might be fruitful soil, but who was to organise a new rising; still more, who was to lead it? There was only one man whom the broken, often jealous clans would follow, and he was far away . . . and some whispered that he was broken too.
Although he was not well mounted (for a good horse was a luxury which he could not afford himself nowadays) Ardroy, thus occupied in mind, found himself crossing the Spean, almost before he realised it, on that bridge of General Wade’s erection which had been the scene of the first Jacobite exploit in the Rising, and of his own daring escape in the summer of ’46. But he hardly gave a thought to either to-day. And, in order to examine one of his horse’s legs, he pulled up at the change-house on the farther side without reflecting that it was the very spot where, six years ago, he had been made to halt, a prisoner with his feet tied together under a sorrel’s belly.
While he was feeling the leg, suspecting incipient lameness, the keeper of the change-house came out; not a Cameron now, but a Campbell protégé, yet a decent fellow enough. Though on the winning side, he too was debarred from the use of the tartan—which was some consolation to a man on the losing.
“Good day to you, Ardroy,” he said, recognising the stooping rider. “You’ll be for Maryburgh the day? Has the horse gone lame on you, then?”
“Hardly that yet,” answered Ewen, “but I fear me there’s a strain or something of the sort. Yes, I am going to Maryburgh, to fetch Doctor Kincaid. Can I do aught for you there, MacNichol?”
“Dhé! ye’ll not find the doctor at Maryburgh,” observed the other. “He’s away up Loch Treig side the day.”
“Loch Treig!” exclaimed Ewen, dismayed. “How do you know that, man?—and are you very sure of it?”
MacNichol was very sure. His own wife was ill; the doctor had visited her that same morning, and instead of returning to Maryburgh had departed along the south bank of the Spean—the only practicable way—for a lonely farm on Loch Treig. It was of no use waiting at the change-house for his return, since he would naturally go back to Maryburgh along the shorter road by Corriechoille and Lianachan. There was nothing then to be done but ride after him. MacNichol did not know how far along Loch Treig was the farm to which the doctor had gone, but he did know that the latter had said its occupant was very ill, and that he might be obliged to spend the night there.
Ewen’s heart sank lower and lower. It would be getting dusk by the time that he had covered the twelve or fourteen miles to the nearer end of that desolate loch. Suppose he somehow missed the doctor, or suppose the latter either could not or would not start back for Ardroy so late? Yet at least it would be better than nothing to have speech with him, and to learn what was the proper treatment for that little coughing, shivering, bright-cheeked thing at home.
So he went by Spean side where it hurried in its gorges, where it swirled in wide pools; by the dangerous ford at Inch, past the falls where it hurled itself to a destruction which it never met; he rode between it and the long heights of Beinn Chlianaig and finally turned south with the lessening river itself. And after a while there opened before him a narrow, steel-coloured trough of loneliness and menace imprisoned between unfriendly heights—Loch Treig. On its eastern side Cnoc Dearg reared himself starkly; on the other Stob Choire an Easain Mhóir, even loftier, shut it in—kinsmen of Ben Nevis both. The track went low by the shore under Cnoc Dearg, for there was no place for it on his steep flanks.
As there was no habitation anywhere within sight, Ewen concluded that the farm to which Doctor Kincaid had gone was probably at Loch Treig head, at the farther end of the lake, where the mountains relaxed their grip—another five or six miles. He went on. The livid surface of the water by which he rode was not ruffled to-day by any wind; a heavy, sinister silence lay upon it, as on the dark, brooding heights which hemmed it about. One was shut in between them with that malevolent water. It hardly seemed surprising that after a mile and a half of its company Ewen’s horse definitely went lame; the strain which he feared had developed—and no wonder. But he could not spare the time to lead him; he must push on at all costs.
The halting beast had carried him but a little way farther before he was aware of distant sounds like—yes, they were snatches of song. And soon he saw coming towards him through the September dusk the indistinct figure of a man walking with the uncertain gait of one who has been looking upon the wine-cup. And Ewen, thinking, ‘That poor fool will either spend the night by the roadside or fall into the loch’, pulled up his horse to a walk, for the drunkard was staggering first to one side of the narrow road and then to the other, and he feared to knock him down.
As he did so he recognised the air which the reveller was singing. . . . But the words which belonged to that tune were neither Gaelic, Scots nor English, so how should they be sung here, by one of the loneliest lochs in the Highlands?
“Aux nouvell’s que j’apporteVos beaux yeux vont pleurer . . .”
What was a Frenchman doing here, singing ‘Malbrouck’?
“Quittez vos habits roses,”
sang the voice, coming nearer:
“Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,Quittez vos habits roses,Et vos satins brochés.”
Cnoc Dearg tossed the words mockingly to the other warder of Loch Treig, and Ewen jumped off his horse. It was not perhaps, after all, a Frenchman born who was singing that song in so lamentable and ragged a fashion along this lonely track to nowhere.
The lurching figure was already nearly up to him, and now the singer seemed to become aware of the man and the horse in his path, for he stopped in the middle of the refrain.
“Laissez-moi passer, s’il vous plaît,” he muttered indistinctly, and tried to steady himself. He was hatless, and wore a green roquelaure.
Ewen dropped his horse’s bridle and seized him by the arm.
“Hector! What in the name of the Good Being are you doing here in this state?”
Out of a very white face Hector Grant’s eyes stared at him totally without recognition. “Let me pass, if you pl—please,” he said again, but in English this time.
“You are not fit to be abroad,” said Ewen in disgust. The revelation that Hector could ever be as drunk as this came as a shock; he had always thought him a temperate youth, if excitable . . . but it was true that he had seen nothing of him for the past two years. “Where have you been—what, in God’s name, have you been doing?”
The young officer of the régiment d’Albanie did indeed cut a sorry figure. His waistcoat hung open, his powdered hair was disordered and streaked with wet, there was mud on his breeches as well as on his boots.
“Answer me!” said Ewen sternly, giving him a little shake. “I am in haste.”
“So am I,” replied Hector, still more thickly. “Let me pass, I say, whoever you are. Let me pass, or I’ll make you!”
“Don’t you even know me?” demanded his brother-in-law indignantly.
