Almond, Wild Almond. D. K. Broster

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СКАЧАТЬ Mistress Stewart in her bed, and the laird no’ hame yet. Ye canna leave puir Mr. Robertson by his lane.”

      Bride made a tiny gesture, perhaps called forth by the mention of that name, perhaps not. “But you say that he is not alone! However, if Uncle Walter is out. . . .” She rose resignedly. “Why, I declare ’tis snowing!”

      “Aye, and as I gaed across the ha’ I heard the gentleman that’s come wi’ Mr. Robertson say he hadna aft seen snow upon the ground.”

      “Then where can he be from—the tropics belike! I think,” said Bride, “that I will go down.—The gentleman’s not black, I suppose?”

      “Now would young Mr. Robertson bring a black man to wait upon your uncle and auntie, Miss Bride! Sometimes I declare ye have not the sense of a whaup!”

      “Sometimes,” retorted Bride, with an elfin smile, “you have not the sense of a joke, Phemie! But I will go down. We see enough snow and to spare in Rannoch. Ah, never mind the wool; I’ll soon be back.”

      Standing before the dim, discoloured little mirror on her modest toilet table, which gave back her dazzling fairness transfigured to a singularly unflattering, greenish tint—but Bride looked little at her reflection in any glass—she hastily tucked a rebel lock or two more firmly into place under her snood and left the room.

      Downstairs by the generous fire, in the room dark with panelling, old furniture and old portraits, under the great stag’s head, noble and threatening, with crossed claymores resting on its tines, two gentlemen, both young, were waiting. That Mrs. Stewart was abed indisposed had just been conveyed to them, rather in the way of an after-thought, by the middle-aged manservant, bearded and lame, who had ushered them in.

      “Is Miss Stewart at least at home?”

      “Ay, Mr. Robertson, Miss Bride’s to whoam. Phemie will tell her yo’re here, sir. But t’laird hissel’ ’ll soon be back, by what he said.”

      “That man is surely English!” exclaimed Mr. Robertson’s companion as the door closed.

      “Yes, he is English, a Lancashire man. He was a sailor once, Jonas Worrall; he has been at Inchrannoch, however, these seventeen or eighteen years.”

      “Is there but the one daughter, Mr. Robertson?”

      “Miss Bride Stewart,” answered Malcolm Robertson, turning away as he spoke, “is not a daughter; she is a niece—and ward. The laird’s own children are scattered or dead. Bride”—he so palpably lingered over the brief name, as though he wished it not so soon gone from his lips, that the other man glanced at him—“Bride—she’s a sort of cousin of mine—is an orphan with a tragic history. Her parents——” He stopped short. “Here she is!”

      The visitor whom he had brought with him turned and saw that there had come into the sombre, firelit room a golden-haired little figure with no faintest hint of tragedy about it, as one usually reads that word. This girl belonged surely to the race which lives feasting for ever in the fairy duns, where the only tragedy is not mortality but the lack of a soul. The young man was quite startled; the colour deepened in his lean cheek. A curtsey in response to their bows, and she who was “Bride” to his companion came forward, and he heard himself being formally presented: Mr. Ranald Maclean of Fasnapoll in Isle Askay.

      (2)

      The snow had ceased when the two visitors left Inchrannoch House; it had indeed little more than laid a fine carpet upon the ground. But against a livid sky rose up the white cone of Schiehallion, so near, though in appearance so inaccessible, a shape of ethereal purity. The short winter’s daylight was almost spent, yet away in the south-west lingered a fading wound of rose-colour. Ranald Maclean was curiously silent as he and Malcolm Robertson were ferried over the Tummel. He would carry away with him from Perthshire a companion picture to hang beside those canvases of storm and disappointment painted at Dunkirk. Out of them also stood a vivid young figure, a young, never-to-be-forgotten face—but it was a man’s.

      It was nearly a week since he had presented himself at Mount Alexander, the seat of Robertson of Struan, with that letter from his uncle which was the cause of his being in Perthshire. He was royally welcomed at the romantically situated house by the old poet-chief of Clan Donnachaidh, who had fought as a youth at Killicrankie fifty-five years before, and, being subsequently captured, had spent an enforced exile of thirteen years on the Continent in sowing a good many wild oats and in writing poems whose tenor was such that in these his reformed and septuagenarian days he was not likely to publish them. On Queen Anne’s accession his sister Margaret had personally obtained from her a pardon for Struan and the return of his confiscated estates. Unfortunately this pardon never passed the Great Seal, and no sooner was Queen Anne in her coffin than he was promptly expelled from them again. It was scarcely wonderful, therefore, that he joined the Earl of Mar’s rising in 1715, when he was once more taken prisoner, rescued by a gentleman of the clan, recaptured, taken to Edinburgh Castle, re-rescued by a party headed, so it was said, by the dauntless Margaret, and for the second time driven to seek refuge abroad.

      This second exile, most of which Struan spent in French service, lasted for eight years, and was terminated by his sister’s again interceding personally with royalty on his behalf, her chief plea being that his health was breaking down. In 1723 George I allowed him to return, giving his estates, however, to his sister. Nursed by her, Alexander Robertson went to Bath, put himself in the hands of the celebrated Dr. Cheyne, and, returning with a resolution to lead a more regular life, swung to the other extreme and took a step worthy of St. Anthony, for he expelled from his “hermitage” or “earthly paradise,” as he liked to call it, every woman not of his own kin, and inscribed a poem to that effect over the door, winning by this behaviour the title of “The Great Solitaire” from the ladies of the neighbourhood.

      But Struan was an old man of seventy-six now, the inscription, no longer needed, was fading, his sister Margaret was long dead. He remained, nevertheless, intensely Jacobite, still employed his excellent education and ready pen in writing verse (now, however, exemplary and even edifying in tone), and was, as Ranald discovered, a “character.” Indeed when the Chief found that his guest, anxious to get home to Askay after so long an absence, would not accept his hospitality for more than four days, he declared that at least his last night should be one to be remembered, and with the assistance of seven or eight neighbouring lairds, Robertsons, Stewarts, or Menzies, proceeded to carry out his boast.

      Towards the end of the feast, when all the Jacobite toasts had been honoured, and the most inflammatory anti-Hanoverian sentiments sent echoing round the table, under which one of the guests had already subsided, and when their host had without too much difficulty been persuaded to recite some of the less scurrilous verses of his youth, a fair, pleasant-looking young man rose suddenly from his seat and came, perhaps the least trifle unsteadily, to Ranald’s chair.

      “Sir,” he said, “I hold myself to blame for not having realised sooner who you were. Are you not the son of the late Mr. Angus Maclean of Fasnapoll, in the island of Askay?”

      “I am,” answered Ranald, faintly surprised.

      “Then it behoves you, sir, being his son, to allow my father—who is not here to-night—the pleasure of repaying the hospitality which Mr. Maclean extended to him in the year 1738, when the vessel in which he was returning from the Lews went aground in Camus a’ Chaisteil. Indeed, sir, I’ll take no denial! My father will be grieved to the heart if you refuse!”

      So next day Ranald, instead of starting for home, had almost willy-nilly to transfer himself to СКАЧАТЬ