The Captain, who had been with his corps in the Lowlands, came home,
thought hard, and made a plan. “If my factor is so fond of nature, I
must fight him with that same,” he said, and for two weeks before Lammas
he had every man in his service building a dam below the pass of
Kincreggan. It was so clever a way of getting the better of Alasdair Dhu
that the men who admired him most now turned most readily to spoil him.
They cut down big firs on either side of the pass, so that the trees fell
over and jammed between the cliffs. When the pile was high enough they
backed it up with brushwood and turf till it looked like a lofty wall.
“I’m thinking that will do now,” said the Captain when it was done. “Let
us have the first of the floods of Lammas, and you will see a rat come
squealing from his hole.”
When the dam was finished it was dry weather, the river at the pass a
trickle; but the Captain’s own luck was with him, for the very next day a
storm burst on the Islands. He went to the top of Ben Buidhe, and joined
the folk there who were looking down on Kincreggan. They saw a
spectacle! The river, pit-black in its linns and cream-white in its
falls, gulped down the narrow gorge as if all the waters of the world
were hasting there; the cliff above the keep was streaming, the path to
the house was flooded, the cattle were belly-deep in the fold, and
bellowed mournfully. Every minute saw the water perceptibly rise till it
lay like a loch deep about Kincreggan House. By the time the gloaming
came on the glen the water washed the lintels of the lower storey.
“It’s a dour rat, by my troth!” said the Captain. “I thought we would
have heard squealing by this time.” He shook the rain from his plaid,
and set off for home. Some say he was heedless of Macaulay’s fate;
others more plausibly argue that he knew very well Macaulay had friends
on the hillside who would rescue him when the need arose.
However it was Macaulay got out of his trap, he got out by himself, with
his clerk behind him. The lad ran over the island, took a boat to
Arisaig, and never came back again; the factor reached the door of his
home at dark an amazing figure in drenched and savage garments, with a
dirk lying flat against the brawn of his bare arm. He burst upon his
wife like a calamity, but she never blenched. The kettle hung upon its
chain; with a thrust of her foot she swung it over the fire, and rose to
her feet to put a hand on the shoulder of her soaking lord.
“Oh, Alick! come in, come in!” she said, and so mighty he looked and
strange in the room that had known the decent lawyer, it seemed to her as
if he filled it. The river ran from his garments, and when he moved, the
hides on his feet sucked upon the flooring.
“They tell me at Kilree the Captain is here,” he said, looking uplifted
about him, keeping the blade of his weapon out of her sight.
“He is just come,” she answered, “and is in front there, keeping your
place for you.”
A devilish satisfaction betrayed itself in Macaulay’s face. “I have
tasted life,” he said, stretching out his arms, and gloating, as it
seemed, upon himself. “I have tasted life, and I would not change with
kings! All the clan cries in me, and I am proud, proud! But there is
one thing wanting: I will make sure of him this time,” and saying that,
he flourished the dirk and made for the door that led to his writing
chamber.
His wife gave a cry, and put herself before him. “Oh, Alick!” she said,
as calm as she could be, “you are very wet; at least you will first of
all put on dry hose and take a dish of tea,” pushing him gently at the
same time towards his accustomed chair. He fondled his weapon, and sat
in the humour of one who is willing to put off a pleasure that it may be
greater by delay. She plucked the _cuarains_ from his feet and put on
him hose and slippers, all in a nervous haste, and the slippers were no
sooner on his feet than he shook himself, looked with disgust on his
drenched tartan, and threw the dirk away.
“My God!” said he; “what cantrip is this?”
“You will have a dish of tea,” said the wife, hurriedly preparing it; and
he wriggled his toes in the slippers and sat closer to the fire,
cherishing its warmth with that accustomed manner he forgot the day he
went astray. Again and again he looked at himself, and, sipping the tea,
“What a folly! What a folly!” he would utter. “What put such mischief
in my brain? And we were over head and ears with business at the office!
I must work night and day if I am to be ready for the rents. Young
Macdonald, too! Tut, tut! the thing was fair ridiculous! I’m black
affronted. Flora, woman, haste ye and get my breeks!”
The discarded broadcloth was put out; he sheared and shaved himself
before the glass till the wild man of the mountain was gone, and emerged
the lawyer, then walked into his writing chamber.
“Good evening, Captain,” he said briskly to his client, just as if he had
been out for an airing. “This has been a stupid business—a remarkably
stupid business. I must crave your pardon. At such an inconvenient
time, too! But I hope to make it up some way.”
The Captain could scarcely trust his senses. He had risen to defend
himself against the savage, and here was his sober man of business back!
“Well, it has been what might be called a fairly busy summer with us, Mr
Macaulay,” said the Captain, at his wits’ end how to meet so curious a
penitent. “And I have still got a twinge of your penknife in my breast
now and then.”
The factor’s face reddened. “I declare, I’m affronted,” said he. “With
a penknife! Tut, tut!—a villainously silly weapon, Captain; and still it
might have been a serious enough thing for you. I’m beat to understand
it; some lesion of the brain, as the medical jurisprudists say; I would
never harm a cat, except _durante furore_—if—if I deliberated on it. I
have little doubt I’m the talk of the country—most annoying, most
annoying! I should not wonder if the profession made it the occasion of
a complaint against me; and if it come to that, sir, I hope I may look
for your support?”
He took up his penknife again—it still lay on his desk—and the Captain
stood back from him abruptly, but he need not have done so, for the
lawyer was only going to sharp his pen, as benign and proper a man as
ever charged a fee. His client did not know whether to laugh or storm.
He felt like to laugh at the ludicrousness of the way Macaulay had
returned to his senses; he felt anger with the unaccountable spirit which
made the offender more perturbed about the figure he must henceforth cut
in public than that he should for a summer have played the part of
robber, and wellnigh been a murderer too. But the good humour of Kilree
prevailed, and he laughed—a demonstration that but visibly increased
Macaulay’s chagrin.
“It is no laughing affair, I assure you—at least for me,” said he. “Here
I am six months behind with my work, and I doubt not all my
correspondents furious.”
“Mrs Macaulay and I between us have made shift to deal with the
correspondence in your—in your holiday,” said the laird. “The most
serious thing, I’m thinking, is a drove of cattle sold by Alasdair Dhu at
Marinish tryst; I’m too poor a man to afford the loss of them.”
“You will not lose a penny,” said Macaulay. “I got the best of prices
for them, and have the money now. It was an irregularity.”
“So one might call it,” agreed the Captain.
“It was an irregularity, a sudden craze. If I had been a man who drank—”
“You would probably have drowned the flame of folly long before now,”
said the Captain, who sometimes took a dram.
“A flame, exactly! Just a flame; no word better describes it. When you
spoke of taking down that rotten den, I was for the time possessed. I
can honestly tell you that a score of thoughts came sweeping through me
that I never harboured for a second in my life before.”
“Nor had intruded on you before, eh, Macaulay?” said the Captain.
“That—that is neither here nor there; if every man confessed the thoughts
his better nature rejected we were all condemned for the gallows sooner
or later.”
“I must say I was looking for a little more contrition, Mr Macaulay,”
said the Captain. “You’ll allow the escapade was a little unusual, and
not without some inconvenience to myself? You seem to take it in so odd
a spirit that I cannot be sure against a recurrence. I may tell you that
I’m determined to have Kincreggan down—I can be as dour as yourself, you
see—and though I might be prepared to fight the point of its ownership
once in the old fashion, I cannot guarantee that I should be ready for
that a second time.”
“Not a word!” said Macaulay hastily. “My position was ridiculous in law
and equity. _Ne dominia rerum sint incerta neve lites sint
perpetuæ_—even if your folk had held the place for only forty years
instead of two hundred, your claim would be unassailable, as I’m prepared
to contest in any court in the land. Kincreggan, Captain—pooh! I esteem
the place so little that upon my word I would not grudge to put powder to
it myself. And, if you will permit me, I’ll take my desk again.”
Kilree rose from the lawyer’s seat with a chuckle, and Macaulay,
indicating another, sank into his old chair with a sigh of satisfaction.
“I would like to ask you one thing,” said the Captain. “How did it
feel?”
The lawyer flushed over his clean-shaven face and stared straight in
front of him out of the window at the sea-shore with the wild gulls
flying free.
“I hope it is the last time so shameful an affair will call for
reference,” he said; “but I’ll tell you this, it was—it was an ecstasy!
I would not have lost the experience for ten thousand pounds.”
“Ho! ho!” said the Captain.
“Nor have it again for twice ten thousand,” concluded the lawyer.
“And do you know this?” said the Captain, taking a grip of his arm and
speaking softly into his ear. “Do you know this? By heavens, I envy
you! What broke the spell?”
“I know, but I’m not going to tell you,” said the lawyer shamefacedly.
“Come, come! It is hardly worth while swallowing the rump and retching
at the tail.”
“Between ourselves, then,” replied Macaulay, “it was my slippers. That
and an indifferent dish of tea. If my wife had not got me into my
slippers, neither you nor I would be sitting so jocular here. The
freedom of the mountains is not to be compared with a pair of dry hose
and content beside the fire.”
At that the Captain grimaced. “Tut!” said he. “I wish I had not asked
you. I expected a miracle, and you give me only an epitome of
civilisation.”