Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated), page 54
The thing so set his teeth on edge that he resolved with obstinacy to see the game to the end.
“Do you accept me, my lord?” he said humbly.
But Lovat had seen fit to change his mood. He adopted a gushing, patriarchical kindness and welcomed him with effusion. “I accept you,” he cried. “Ye are my one true freend, my one support, the son of my old age. May the Lord in Heaven reward ye for standing by an auld man in the day of his affliction. I can give ye nocht in return but my blessing.” And there and then he pronounced solemn beatitudes on the confused Francis with the air of a desert saint.
At the door his natural manners returned. “Keep the door wide open, ye gander,” he yelled. “Can a camel win through the eye of a needle or an auld gross man through a key-hole?”
CHAPTER XIII. Crabbed Age and Youth.
In two hours Francis found himself at the tail of a little troop of men heading across the hills to the North. There were four stout bearers, for Lovat could move only in a litter, three strong fellows who carried food, and one special servant of the chief, — these were all the House of Gortuleg could muster. The night was moonless, but the men picked their way with surprising rapidity over the break-neck land. At first they seemed to traverse an interminable ascent, up which the bearers struggled with short breath. Then at a ridge they dipped all but sheer into a woody valley, where thickets of birch and ash made a tanglewood around a brawling river. In a little they lighted on the shore of a loch at a place where a cottage was built and a boat lay beached. The thing was rough and tarry, but four strong arms sent it quickly across the moonlit water. Then began another dreary climb, this time up a rocky cleft in the hills, where fine hill-gravel made the feet slip and an incessant dust troubled the eye. Once more they were on the high moors, crossing one shoulder of hill, skirting another great barrier ridge, till Francis — East-country bred — felt a whiff of salt in the air and knew the near presence of the sea. His legs ached with travel, he had been hurried since midnight up dale and over mountain at a speed which he could only marvel at. These tall men, even with the burden of a litter, could cover their hills like a good horse on a level road. For himself he was all but broken down; only the thought of the sneering Lovat kept him from yielding to exhaustion.
Just before dawn they came to the last ridge and looked down on a green strath with a firth lying pale in the midst of it. The place looked faint and far-away in the haze of night, save that in the foreground an angry glow told of burning dwellings. The men stopped and looked over the edge with scowling faces and harsh Gaelic oaths. Lovat himself awoke from his broken sleep and made shift to look down on the valley. Instantly his brows grew dark, and he cried shrilly for Francis. “Look there,” he cried, “that is my braw house, my ain Castle Dounie, loweing like a pharos on a rock.” His tone was half-jocular, but in a moment his rage mastered him. “God, my lads,” he cried, “if I had just my fingers on your thrapples, I’d thraw them fine and send your gutsy sauls to the deil that begat them.” He clenched his thick hands and remained staring at the sight. But soon rage gave place to deep self-pity, and in a little he was moaning on his back for the hours he had once dwelled in it, and calling on his fathers to pity their miserable son.
With the open daylight they shifted their course to the wilder parts, and marched with frequent pauses in the deep recesses of the hills. Lovat slept, snoring loudly under the midday heat. Francis drank of every well to ease his thirst, and followed the strange procession with no sense of purpose or hope. No one there save the chief himself, had any English, and even though they had spoken his own tongue, it is like that he would have had small disposition to talk. The man had lost all interest in his life; cold, sickness, and war for months had so wrought upon him that he had grown a new creature from the fantastic Mr. Birkenshaw of the Edinburgh taverns, even from the punctilious gentleman of the journey to the North. Again and again through the dreary day he asked himself the cause of this mournful position. Whence had flown his hopes; what had befallen that far-reaching scheme of high ambition which he had once planned to follow? Yet in the severing of each strand one remained firm. Had he looked to the bottom of that dogged instinct to share Lovat’s fortunes he would have found the lingering sentiment which inspired his whole errand. His mission had been to Lovat, a lady’s lips had joined their names in one command, and by Lovat’s side he would see the end of the play.
As he stumbled along, when his thoughts rose from his immediate bodily weakness, they rested with disgust on the sleeping figure in the litter. To Francis — thin, blackavised, in the main free from gross excess — this cumbrous load of elderly flesh was indescribably repellant. He could not resist a dim affection, for the old lord had that tolerant humour, that sudden warmth of kindliness, which is no unfailing sign of charity of heart. The first interview had produced on his mind an impression of an extraordinary intellect and an abundant knowledge of life. Somewhere in his heart pity lurked, — pity for the ruin of it all, the frustration of deep-laid plans, and the misfortunes of one already feeble with age. When he did not look at the litter he was prepared to serve this fallen chieftain to the last, but one sight of the heavy face and his nice senses revolted. Times had changed with one who had revelled once in the raw vulgarities of the Pleasaunce that now he could not abide a slovenly, unheroic old man. Nor is the explanation hard; for he had met this man when still in the first heat of sentiment, he had grouped him in his mind with the choicer figures of memory, and now he resented the degradation with the fierceness of one whose sacred places are profaned.
At midday they stopped for food, and a rough feast was spread on the grass from the stores they carried. It was good, even rare, of its kind, for the indomitable gourmand had left Gortuleg with excellent provision for meat and drink. It seemed a strange thing to be drinking rich French wines on the short heather under a blazing sun, when the limbs were aching, and to Francis, at least, an hour’s sleep would have been more than all the vintage in the world. Lovat’s eyes brightened at the display; he fell back to his old humour, and was for quizzing Francis. But the poor boy turned on him so dull an eye that he forbore, and had recourse instead to crazy affection, which was harder still to bear. Once more the poles of his chair were raised, and the troop climbed slowly the skirts of a great, mossy hill, where the feet sank at every step and savage water-courses barred the road. Then they came to a greener country, — an upland valley between precipitous hill-walls, level for many yards on either side the stream, and sweet with hawthorn-blossom. Here stood a sheiling, a heather-roofed place of some pretensions, and the shepherd came running out and talked darkly with the chair-bearers. Lovat asked him some questions in Gaelic, and his face cleared at the replies. “The road is open yet,” he cried to Francis. “He says that no one has come this way for a month save two packmen from Dingwall, and that he saw no sign of any man when he went round the hill this morning. We’ll jink the lads yet, Mr. Birkenshaw, for the Fraser is on his ain rock, as the auld proverb says.”
The shepherd accompanied them to the Glenhead, while the old lord plied him with questions on his work, his kin, and his profits. “Is the lambing to be guid this year?” he asked, and the man replied in good Lowland Scots, for he was from the south of Perth, and had another tongue than the Gaelic. Then he wandered into a string of tales about the shepherd’s south-country kinsmen, and though the thing was the purest fancy the intention was kindly and the result good, for the lonely man’s eyes brightened and he drank in the stories with greedy ear. Francis walked on the other side of the chair, and as he watched the shepherd’s placid face, the strength and ease of his great stride, and his open front to the world, he felt a sudden envy. The hills were full of the crying of sheep; it was the time of the shepherd’s harvest, the birth-time of the flocks, when a man is on his feet from dawn to sunset, striving against the weather for the life of his charge. This man spent his quiet days here in this fragrant solitude, face to face with nature and death and life, an intimate of the elements, an heir of deep mountain calm. And here was he, a poor straw on the whirlpool of events, playing a desperate game with little spirit. At other times he would have consoled himself with the thought that after all he played for high stakes in a high region where success, if won, was more worthy than in a little field. But now every vestige of self-esteem had been driven forth; his eyes looked blankly upon naked facts, and he knew himself for the puppet of Fortune.
The way had grown more perilous as the stream grew smaller, and soon they were walled between sheer sides of rock, while water brawled far down in scooped troughs of slate-grey stone. The road seemed to end again and again, but always there was some passage around some shoulder of hill, some byway among tanglewood which the shepherd showed them. At length they came out on the shore of a dark lake, which ran from the shadow of frowning hills to an open ridge of moor, whence the eye could discern a wide sunset country falling to the sea. By the loch shore was a cottage, empty save for a boat which lay across the floor. The men launched it and pulled to an island near the further shore, a place some hundred yards either way and planted with wind-blown firs. Here all had been made ready for a prolonged concealment. The low hut was scarcely distinguishable from the banks of heather, and the smoke of a fire was so sheltered by trees that no one from the shore could see a sign of habitation. Once inside, the place seemed extraordinarily large and well-equipped. There were barrels of meal in one end, and dried venison hams hung from the roof. A little old man greeted them, casting himself before the chief’s litter and mumbling blessings. Lovat cut him short with a word, and surlily bade his bearers lift him to a chair. The sight of this final rest, which was like cold water to the wearied Francis, vexed him with the thought of his great stone halls now the shelter of others.
Throughout the evening the place was scarce habitable for his venomous tongue. There are some men — great souls — whom no trouble can crush; there are some — little souls — who are prostrate at its advent. Lovat, a mixture of both, laughed at misfortunes, but his ridicule was filled with irritation and chiefly affected his friends. He stormed at every servant in impetuous Gaelic, for his voice had lost none of its strength, and had found with old age a harsh, penetrating note which rasped on the ears. He had out the French wine from the baggage, and drank it greedily without the common civility of passing the bottle. Francis noticed nothing, for he slept in snatches since ever he had come to the hut. But Lovat needed someone to torment in such frolicsome moods, and he preferred one nearer his own quality than his clansmen. So he woke him effectually from his slumbers, and poured into his unwilling ears much low gossip about great folk, many tales of his own wrongs, and much other scandal without point or foundation. Francis listened, patiently polite. He had volunteered to share this man’s exile, and whatever the provocation, he swore to do it with a good grace. The filth wearied him, for had he not once been a connoisseur in the unbecoming, but he gave exact attention with a fixed smile, till Lovat returned to an easy humour.
* * * * *
A week passed in the place, and Francis would have called it years. He could go abroad as he pleased, but the country was the most desolate conceivable, a plain of broken moor flanked by abrupt treeless hills. It was a type of that cold land to which the greater royalists were already fleeing, and round which Cumberland’s lines were slowly drawing. But as yet no redcoat came to the lake shore, and Francis was left, with illimitable moors abroad and a querulous old man indoors, to pass his laggard days. The weather was broken by cold and wet, and the few bright days that intervened found a soaked and blackened country and brimming rivers. Once he shot a deer, which caused a violent outburst on the old lord’s part, inasmuch as the animal was out of its proper season. The fare, too, in the cottage dwindled to poverty. The finer viands were soon consumed by the chief’s improvidence, and the party were reduced in three days to oatmeal brose, tough venison steaks, and plain water from the loch. This last was the prime grievance, for by an oversight little spirits had been brought, and though the Lovat men searched the country round, none were to be had for love or money. Lovat groaned deeply over his tasteless dishes, and observing that Francis ate with equanimity, heaped on him the most childish insults. “Does that mind ye o’ the day when your mother fed ye, Mr. Francis?” he would say. “Parritch is halesome fare, an excellent diet for the lower classes in this land, as doubtless ye ken by experience, sir.” Then, failing to irritate him by such clumsy means, he inevitably fell back on the subject of the Secretary and the Secretary’s wife, and when the poor boy with burning cheeks marched out of doors he was pursued by the chuckle of elderly malice.
Yet with it all these days had the strange effect of strengthening the tie between the ill-matched pair. The helplessness of the one in spite of his bravado appealed to the good nature of the other. The more Lovat stormed and fumed, the harder was Francis’ life and consequently the easier was his conscience, for then and only then he felt the satisfaction of the man who is struggling to accomplish the wholly unpleasant. Every hint of comfort vexed his soul, for he felt bitterly that he had marred everything he had laid his hand to, and that while wiser and better men were in peril of their lives, it was a disgrace that he should be in safety. So much for his humility, but the novel virtue in his nature had not rid itself of his awkward pride. It was a torture for him to be mocked at before the servants; had they understood English well, it is probable that he would have finally revolted. A dozen times a day he found himself pulling savagely across the loch with an odious, leering face dancing in his memory. The old lord knew nothing of his family history, and but the barest scraps of his life; but by shrewd inconsequence he stumbled upon the truth not once but many times, and Francis had a hard fight of it to keep from rage. Once he was betrayed into reprisals. Lovat was on his unfailing topic of women, — a topic in this case not localised but airily, generally treated by a master mind.
“What’s become o’ your wife a’ this time, Mr. Birkenshaw?” he asked.
Now this was a subject on which Francis was open to no assault, so he had a less strict guard on his tongue, since there was no anger at heart to preach carefulness.
“What’s become o’ yours, my lord?” he said, in unthinking, rude repartee.
In a moment he remembered the notorious scandals of the Lovat household, and repented his words. His companion became a volcano of emotions. Screaming out curses he lay back in his seat with a purple face and eyes red and starting. His men rushed to help him, but he waved them back and bade them leave him alone with this Lowland swine. Then for an hour he made Francis’ ears tingle with abuse, ending it all with a sudden flight to the pathetic. Sobbing like a child, he deplored the ingratitude of youth. “Me that micht be your father, Francie, an auld man that surely deserves the consideration due to a loving parent. But ye’re of a piece with the rest. Auld Simon is the butt of one and all, and every midden-cock craws ower the Fraser’s downfa’.” Then came a near approach to apoplexy, and Francis loosed his cravat amid maudlin upbraidings.
Two days later Francis went out to the hill to shoot hares. It was the breeding season, but necessity compelled, since the table must be replenished. He stayed out till the late afternoon, and as he came down to the loch he saw to his amazement the boat leave the island with several men on board. Horses were waiting for them at the shore, and they rode off to the deeps of the moor. Twenty minutes later he arrived breathless at the edge and pulled himself over. A dozen vague notions ran in his head: was this some treachery, an attack upon their solitude, or was it a lonely conclave of the army’s remnants? When the keel touched the reeds he leaped on shore and ran hard for the hut.
In a corner of the place the servants were talking eagerly in whispers. Lovat was as usual huddled by the fire, but something in his look struck Francis as strange. His forehead was puckered into large knots, and the veins on his face and neck stood out with extraordinary prominence. He spoke to himself, and his lips were twitching with what might be anger or delight. Francis laid his hand on his shoulder ere ever he looked round, and the great face turned slowly from its meditations. “Sit down, Mr. Birkenshaw,” he said, and he spoke with a precise accent very different from the freedom of his usual talk, “sit ye down, for I have much to say to ye.
“I have had a visit from some of our north-country gentlemen,” he said, “who are sojourning just now in these parts.”
Francis nodded in silence.
“I need give no names, but Lochiel and Clanranald were of the number, and there were others who are no less well-kenned.”
He took snuff gravely, and, for the first time, tendered his box. It marked the admission of the younger man to a great intimacy.
“We talked of the late unhappy events, and we had some words of a plan. I need have no secrets from you, Mr. Birkenshaw, for I can trust you. I proposed to defend these mountains with a body of men till we were granted fair terms of war. They jumped at the thought one and all, but when I looked at them I saw their unfitness. Brave, honest gentlemen, sir, but with no brains — no sae muckle as a spoonfu’ — in one o’ their skulls. So I told them I despaired of it, and they rounded on me and called me a turncoat.” All this he said with a certain mournful amusement, as of one above all base suspicion.
“A wheen men o’ strae, sir, I tell ye,” he went on. “Had I been a younger man I might have thought fit to move them to my purpose and guide their efforts; but I am auld, and I can but sit and look helpless on. They upbraided me, as if I were safe and they the ones in peril. My God, sir, it’s hell to me to bide here, to see my whole castle of ambition in the stour, and to thole these moorland vapours. And I foresee worse to come. When the redcoats warm to their work and the hunt gets hotter, it’ll no be a decent cot-house for Simon Fraser, but wet bogs and heathery hillsides. But I make no complaint. It is the common heritage of unfortunate Loyalists. What I have to say concerns ye more closely. The Secretary Murray was one of those who came here to-day.”
