William MacLeod Raine

“ Aileen stole one shy, quick, furtive look at me. It seemed to question whether her lover was such a pattern of meek obedience.
“And you never falter? There iss no other woman for you?”
“Saving your presence, there is no other woman in the world?”
Her eyes glistened.
“Kneel down, sir,” she commanded.
Tony dropped to a knee. She touched him lightly on the shoulder with his sword.
“In love’s name I dub you worthy knight. Be bold, be loyal, be fortunate. Arise, Sir Anthony Creagh, knight of the order of Cupid!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of such does the happiness of youth consist.
’Tis strange how greedy love is in its early days of the past from which it has been excluded, how jealous sometimes of the point of contact with other lives in the unknown years which have gone to make up 235 the rungs of the ladder of life. I was never tired of hearing of her childhood on the braes of Raasay: how she guddled for mountain trout in the burn with her brother Murdoch or hung around his neck chains of daisies in childish glee. ”

“ The Scotchman buckled on his sword and disappeared into the next room. When he returned a pair of huge cavalry pistols peeped from under his cloak.
“Going to the wars, my Lord?” I quizzed gaily.
“Perhaps. Will you join me?”
“Maybe yes and maybe no. Is the cause good?”
“The best in the world.”
“And the chances of success?”
“Fortune beckons with both hands.”
“Hm! Has she by any chance a halter in her hands for Kenn Montagu and an axe for Balmerino since he is a peer?”
“Better the sharp edge of an axe than the dull edge of hunger for those we love,” he answered with a touch of bitterness. ”

“ His politeness and affability, as well as the charms of his conversation and the graces of his person, swept the ladies especially from their lukewarm allegiance to the Hanoverians. They would own no lover who did not don the white cockade of Jacobitism. They would hesitate at no sacrifice to advance the cause of this romantic young gambler who used swords for dice. All this my three days residence in the city had taught me. I was now to learn whether a personal meeting with him would inspire me too with the ardent devotion that animated my friends. ”

“ Thus Phyllis lost both her lover and her portion. Ah, those brave golden days! The world, an unexplored wonder, lay at my feet. She was seven, I was nine.”
“Oh.” There was an odd little note of relief in the velvet voice that seemed to reproach me for a brute. I was forever forgetting that the ways of ’Toinette Westerleigh were not the ways of Aileen Macleod.
The dying sun flooded the topmost branches of the forest foliage. My eyes came round to the aureole which was their usual magnet.
“When the sun catches it ’tis shot with glints of gold.” ”

“ I cried. “Lend yourselves to me on a mission of some danger for one night and I will pledge myself a partner in your enterprise. I can promise you that the help I ask of you may be honourably given. A fair exchange is no robbery. What say you?”
“Gad’s life, I cry agreed. You’re cheap at the price, Mr. Montagu. I’m yours, Rip me, if you want me to help rum-pad a bishop’s coach,” exclaimed the Irishman.
“Mr. Creagh has just taken the words out of my mouth,” cried Donald Roy. “If you’re wanting to lift a lassie or to carry the war to a foe I’ll be blithe to stand at your back. ”

“ Of all the London beaux not one had apartments more elegant than Sir Robert Volney. [3] It was one of the man’s vanities to play the part of a fop, to disguise his restless force and eager brain beneath the vapid punctilios of a man of fashion. There were few suspected that his reckless gayety was but a mask to hide a weary, unsatisfied heart, and that this smiling debonair gentleman with the biting wit was in truth the least happy of men. ”

“ Volney’s sardonic smile came into play. “Otherwise my well-known caution, and my approved loyalty,—Egad, I had almost forgotten that!—refute such an aspersion.”
“Himmel! If your loyalty is no greater than your caution it may be counted out. At the least you take delight in tormenting me. Never deny it, man! I believe you want the Pretender to get away.”
“One may wish the Prince——”
“The Prince?” echoed Cumberland, blackly.
“The Young Chevalier then, if you like that better. ’Slife, what’s in a name? One may wish him to escape and be guilty of no crime. ”

“ For myself, misery spoke in every motion, and to say the same of Creagh and Macdonald is to speak by the card. Fatigue is not the name for our condition. Fagged out, dispirited, with legs moving automatically, we still slithered down cleughs, laboured through dingles and corries, clambered up craggy mountainsides all slippery with the wet heather, weariness tugging at our leaden feet like a convict’s chain and ball. ”

“ Here were French and Irish adventurers, Highland chiefs and Lowland gentlemen, all emulating each other in loyalty to the ladies who had gathered from all over Scotland to dance beneath the banner of the white rose. The Hall was a great blaze of moving colour, but above the tartans and the plaids, the mixed reds, greens, 135 blues, and yellows, everywhere fluttered rampant the white streamers and cockades of the Stuarts. ”

“ Gin you will play me a spring on the pipes I’ll maybe can dance you the fling, but of French minuets I have small skill.”
“Call me dreamer if you will. By Helen’s glove, your dreamer might be the envy of kings. Since I have known you life has taken a different hue. One lives for years without joy, pain, colour, all things toned to the dull monochrome of gray, and then one day the contact with another soul quickens one to renewed life, to more eager unselfish living. Never so bright a sun before, never so beautiful a moon. ’Tis true, Aileen. ”

“ Y’are the most interesting man I know. A dozen characters are 286 wrapped up in you. You have the appearance of being as great a rip as the rest of us, and I vow your looks do not belie you, yet at times you have the conscience of a ranting dissenter. I find in you a touch both of Selwyn’s dry wit and of Balmerino’s frostly bluntness; the cool daring of James Wolfe combined with as great a love of life as Murray has shown; the chivalry of Don Quixote and the hard-headedness of Cumberland; sometimes an awkward boy, again the grand manner Chesterfield himself might envy you ”

“ Volney, his eyes fixed on the fire, asked the question as much to himself as to the Highlander. The manner of his tone suggested that it was not a new one to him.
“Gain! Who spoke of gain? Are you a Jew peddler or an English gentleman?” cried Donald.
“They call me dissolute, gambler, profligate. These be hard names, but I have earned them all. I make no apologies and offer no excuses. As I have lived my life, so have I lived it. For buttered phrases I have no taste. Call me libertine, or call me man of fashion; ’tis all one. My evil nature—C’est plus fort que moi. ”

“ My news had flung a shadow across the bright track of her gayety. ’Tis one thing for a high-spirited woman to buckle on the sword of her friend; ’tis another to see him go out to the fight.
“Let us not be thinking of that at all, Kenneth,” she cried.
“Why not? ’Tis a fact to face,” I insisted cruelly. “There’ll be many a merry lusty gentleman lying quiet under the sod, Aileen, before we reach London town. From the ownership of broad moorland and large steading they will come down to own no more of earth than six foot by two.” ”

“ Though dressed to make love and not war, I’ll do him the justice to say that one was as welcome to him as the other. He was shining in silver satin and blue silk and gold lace, but in each hand he carried a great horse pistol, one of which was still smoking at the barrel. The other he pointed at me, but with my sword I thrust up the point and it went off harmlessly in the air. Then I flung him from me and covered him with my barker. Creagh also was there to emphasize the wisdom of discretion. Sir Robert Volney was as daring a man as ever lived, but he was no fool neither. ”

“ 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 84 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. ”

“ I smiled.
“Yet I’d bet a pony you don’t care a pinch of snuff for James Stuart. ’Tis loyalty to yourselves that animates you.”
Presently he harked back to the topic that was never closed between us.
“By this time next week you will have touched the heart of our eternal problem. The mystery of it will perhaps be all clear to you then. ’Tis most strange how at one sweep all a man’s turbulent questing life passes into the quiet of—of what? That is the question: of unending death or of achieved knowledge?” ”

“ Her fan spelt Kenneth on the door.
“Sometimes,” she went on softly, “a fancy is built 241 on moonlight and laughing eyes and opportunity. It iss like sunshine in winter on Raasay—just for an hour and then the mists fall.”
“For our love there will be no mists.”
“Ah, Kenn, you think so now, but afterward, when you take up again your London life, and I cannot play the lady of fashion, when you weary of my simpleness and are wishing me back among the purple heather hills?”
“That will be never, unless I wish myself there with you. I am no London Mohawk like Volney. ”

“ Any loyal man would be bound to do so,” broke in Cumberland.
Volney’s eyes shone. “I’m not so sure,” said he. “Now supposing, sir, that one had a very dear friend among the rebels; given the chance, ought he to turn him over to justice?”
“No doubt about it. Friendship ends when rebellion begins,” said the Duke, sententiously.
Sir Robert continued blandly to argue the case, looking at me out of the tail of his eye. Faith, he enjoyed himself prodigiously, which was more than I did, for I was tasting a bad quarter of an hour. “Put it this way, sir: I have a friend who has done me many good turns. ”

“ I will be so bold as to ask you to do more. Here iss my lover’s life in danger. I ask you to save it.”
“That he may marry you?”
“If God wills.”
Volney looked at her out of a haggard face, all broken by the emotions which stirred him.
A minute passed, two minutes. He fought out his fight and won.
“Aileen,” he said at last, “before heaven I fear it is too late, but what man can do, that will I do.”
He came in and shook hands with me. “I’ll say good-bye, Montagu. ’Tis possible I’ll see you but once more in this world. Yet I will do my best. Don’t hope too much, but don’t despair.” ”

“ I am no hero of romance, but a plain Englishman, a prosaic lover of roast beef and old claret, of farming and of fox-hunting. Our cause was dead, and might as well be buried. Not to make long of the matter, I took the oath without scruple. To my pardon there was one other proviso: that I must live on my estate until further notice. If at any time I were found ten miles from Montagu Grange, the pardon was to be void.
Aileen and I moved to our appointed home at once. ”

“ The pipers of each clan in turn dirled out triumphant marches, and my heart began to beat in faster time. Water must have filled the veins of a man who could stand unmoved such contagious enthusiasm. For me, I confess it, a climax came a moment later that made my eyes swim.
Balmerino was talking with Malcolm Macleod and James Hepburn of Keith, a model of manly simplicity and honour who had been “out” in the ’15; and as usual their talk fell on our enterprise and its gallant young leader. ”

“ With a whispered word Balmerino left me and made his way to the side of the Prince, about whom were grouped the Duke of Perth, Lord Lewis Gordon, Lord Elcho, the ill-fated Kilmarnock, as well as Lochiel, Cluny, Macleod, Clanranald, and other Highland gentlemen who had taken their fortune in their hands at the call of this young adventurer with the enchanting smile. To see him was to understand the madness of devotion that had carried away 139 these wise gray-haired gentlemen, but to those who never saw him I despair of conveying in cold type the subtle quality of charm that radiated from him. ”