The Collected Western Classics & Adventures Novels. William MacLeod RaineЧитать онлайн книгу.
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 obedt servt to command, Robt 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