The green May rolled around and below the Highland shelter where Ian
lay, fugitive, like thousands of others, after Culloden. The Prince
had stayed to give an order to his broken army. _Sauve qui peut!_ Then
he, too, became a fugitive, passing from one fastness to another of
these glens and the mountains that overtowered them. The Stewart hope
was sunk in the sea of dead hopes. Cumberland, with for the time and
place a great force and with an ugly fury, hunted all who had been in
arms against King George.
Ian Rullock couched high upon a mountain-side, in a shelter of stone
and felled tree built in an angle of crag, screened by a growth of
birch and oak, made long ago against emergencies. A path, devious and
hidden, connected it first with a hut far below, and then, at several
miles' distance, with the house of a chieftain, now a house of terror,
with the chieftain in prison and his sons in hiding, and the women
watching with hard-beating hearts. Ian, a kinsman of the house, had
been given, _faute de mieux_, this old, secret hold, far up, where at
least he could see danger if it approached. Food had been stored for
him here and sheepskins given for bedding. He was so masked by
splintered and fallen pieces of rock that he might, with great
precautions, kindle a fire. A spring like a fairy cup gave him water.
More than one rude comfort had been provided. He had even a book or
two, caught up from his kinsman's small collection. He had been here
fourteen days.
At first they were days and nights of vastly needed rest. Bitter had
been the fatigue, privation, wandering, immediately after Culloden!
Now he was rested.
He was by nature sanguine. When the sun had irretrievably blackened
and gone out he might be expected at least to attempt to gather
materials and ignite another. He was capable of whistling down the wind
those long hopes of fame and fortune that had hung around the Stewart
star. And now he was willing to let go the old half-acknowledged boyish
romance and sentiment, the glamour of the imagination that had dressed
the cause in hues not its own. Two years of actual contact with the
present incarnations of that cause had worn the sentiment threadbare.
Seated or lying upon the brown earth by the splintered crag, alone
save for the wheeling birds and the sound of wind and water and the
sailing clouds, he had time at last for the rise into mind, definitely
shaped and visible, of much that had been slowly brewing and forming.
He was conscious of a beginning of a readjustment of ideas. For a long
time now he had been pledged to personal daring, to thought forced to
become supple and concentrated, to hard, practical planning, physical
hardship and danger. In the midst of this had begun to grow up a
criticism of all the enterprises upon which he was engaged. Scope--in
many respects the Jacobite character, generally taken, was amiable and
brave, but its prime exhibit was not scope! Somewhat narrow, somewhat
obsolete; Ian's mind now saw Jacobitism in that light. As he sat
without his rock fortress, in the shadow of birch-trees, with lower
hills and glens at his feet, he had a pale vision of Europe, of the
world. Countries and times showed themselves contiguous. "Causes,"
dynastic wars, political life, life in other molds and hues, appeared
in chords and sequences and strokes of the eye, rather than in the old
way of innumerable, vivid, but faintly connected points. "I begin to
see," thought Ian, "how things travel together, like with like!" His
body was rested, recovered, his mind invigorated. He had had with him
for long days the very elixir of solitude. Relations and associations
that before had been banked in ignorance came forth and looked at him.
"You surely have known us before, though you had forgotten that you
knew us!" He found that he was taking delight in these expansions of
meaning. He thought, "If I can get abroad out of this danger, out of
old circles, I'll roam and study and go to school to wider plans!" He
suddenly thought, "This kind of thing is what Old Steadfast meant when
he used to say that I did not see widely enough." He moved sharply. A
hot and bitter flood seemed to well up within him. "He himself is
seeing narrowly now--Alexander Jardine!"
He left the crag and went for a scrambling and somewhat dangerous walk
along the mountain-side. There was peril in leaving that one
rock-curtained place. Two days before he had seen what he thought to
be signs of red-coated soldiers in the glen far below. But he must
walk--he must exercise his body, note old things, not give too much
time to new perceptions! He breathed the keen, sweet mountain air;
with a knife that he had he fell to making a staff from a young oak;
he watched the pass below and the shadows of the clouds; he climbed
fairly to the mountain-top and had a great view; he sang an old song,
not aloud, but under his breath; and at last he must come back with
solitude to his fastness. And here was brooding thought again!
Two more days passed. The man from the hut below in the pass came at
dusk with food carefully sent from the chieftain's hall. Redcoats had
gone indeed through the glen, but they could never find the path to
this place! They might return or they might not; they were like the
devil who rose by your side when you were most peaceful! Angus went
down the mountain-side. The sound of his footstep died away. Ian had
again Solitude herself.
Another day and night passed. He watched the sun climb toward noon,
and as the day grew warm he heard a step upon the hidden path. With a
pistol in either hand he moved, as stealthily, as silently as might
be, to a platform of rock that overhung the way of the intruder. In
another moment the latter was in sight--one man climbing steadily the
path to the old robber fastness. He saw that it was Glenfernie. No one
followed him. He came on alone.
Rullock put by his pistols and, moving to a chair of rock, sat there.
The other's great frame rose level with him, stepped upon the rocky
floor. Ian had been growing to feel an anger at solitude. When he saw
Alexander he had not been able to check an inner movement of welcome.
He felt an old--he even felt a new--affection for the being upon whom,
certainly, he had leaned. There flowed in, in an impatient wave, the
consideration that he must hate....
But Glenfernie hated. Ian rose to face him.
"So you've found your way to my castle? It is a climb! You had best
sit and rest yourself. I have my sword now, and I will give you
satisfaction."
Glenfernie nodded. He sat upon a piece of fallen rock. "Yes, I will
rest first, thank you! I have searched since dawn, and the mountain is
steep. Besides, I want to talk to you."
Ian brought from his cupboard oat-cake and a flask of brandy. The
other shook his head.
"I had food at sunrise, and I drank from a spring below."
"Very good!"
The laird of Glenfernie sat looking down the mountain-sides and over
to far hills and moving clouds, much as he used to sit in the crook of
the old pine outside the broken wall at Glenfernie. There was a trick
of posture when he was at certain levels within himself. Ian knew it
well.
"Perhaps I should tell you," said Alexander, "that I came alone
through the pass and that I have been alone for some days. If there
are soldiers near I do not know of them."
"It is not necessary," answered Ian. While he spoke he saw in a flash
both that his confidence was profound that it was not necessary, and
that that incapacity to betray that might be predicated of Old
Steadfast was confined to but one of the two upon this rock. The
enlightenment stung, then immediately brought out a reaction. "To each
some specialty in error! I no more than he am monstrous!" There arose
a desire to defend himself, to show Old Steadfast certain things. He
spoke. "We are going to fight presently--"
"Yes."
"That's understood. Now listen to me a little! For long years we were
together, friends near and warm! You knew that I saw differently from
you in regard to many things--in regard, for instance, to women. I
remember old discussions.... Well, you differed, and sometimes you
were angry. But for all that, friendship never went out with violence!
You knew the ancient current that I swam in--that it was narrower,
more mixed with earth, than your own! But you were tolerant. You took
me as I was.... What has developed was essentially there then, and you
knew it. The difference is that at last it touched what you held to be
your own. Then, and not till then, the sinner became _anathema!_"
"In some part you say truth. But my load of inconsistency does not
lighten yours of guilt."
"Perhaps not. We were friends. Five-sixths of me made a fair enough
friend and comrade. We interlocked. You had gifts and possessions I
had not. I liked the oak-feeling of you--the great ship in sail! In
turn, I had the key, perhaps, to a few lands of bloom and flavor that
you lacked. We interchanged and thought that we were each the richer.
Five-sixths.... Say, then, that the other sixth might be defined as
no-friend, or as false friend! Say that it was wilful, impatient of
superiorities, proud, vain, willing to hurt, betray, and play the
demon generally! Say that once it gave itself swing it darkened some
of the other sixths.... Well, it is done! Yet there was gold. Perhaps,
laird of Glenfernie, there is still gold in the mine!"
"You are mistaken in your proportions. Gold! You are to me the specter
of the Kelpie's Pool!"
Silence held for a minute or two. The clouds, passing between earth
and sun, made against the mountain slopes impalpable, dark, fantastic
shapes. An eagle wheeled above its nest at the mountain-top. Ian spoke
again. His tone had altered.
"If I do not decline remorse, I at least decline the leaden cope of it
you would have me wear! There is such a thing as fair play to oneself!
Two years ago come August Elspeth Barrow and I agreed to part--"
"Oh, 'agreed'--"
"Have it so! I said that we must part. She acquiesced--and that
without the appeals that the stage and literature show us. Oh,
doubtless I might have seen a pierced spirit, and did not, and was
brute beast there! But one thing you have got to believe, and that is
that neither of us knew what was to happen. Even with that, she was
aware of how a letter might be sent, with good hope of reaching me.
She was not a weak, ignorant girl.... I went away, and within a
fortnight was deep in that long attempt that ends here. I became
actively an agent for the Prince and his father. A hundred names and
their fates were in my hands. You can fill in the multitude of
activities, each seeming small in itself, but the whole preoccupying
every field.... If Elspeth Barrow wrote I never received her letter.
When my thought turned in that direction, it saw her well and not
necessarily unhappy. Time passed. For reasons, I ceased to write home,
and again for reasons I obliterated paths by which I might be reached.
For months I heard nothing, as I said nothing. I was on the very eve
of quitting Paris, under careful disguise, to go into Scotland. Came
suddenly your challenge--and still, though I knew that to you at least
our relations must have been discovered, I knew no more than that! I
did not know that she was dead.... I could not stay to fight you then.
I left you to brand me as you pleased in your mind."
"I had already branded you."
"Later, I saw that you had. Perhaps then I did not wonder. In
September--almost a year from that Christmas Eve--I yet did not know.
Then, in Edinburgh, I came upon Mr. Wotherspoon. He told me.... I had
no wicked intent toward Elspeth Barrow--none according to my canon,
which has been that of the natural man. We met by accident. We loved
at once and deeply. She had in her an elf queen! But at last the human
must have darkened and beset her. Had I known of those fears, those
dangers, I might have turned homeward from France and every shining
scheme...."
"Ah no, you would not--"
"... If I would not, then certainly I should have written to Jarvis
Barrow and to others, acknowledging my part--"
"Perhaps you would have done that. Perhaps not. You might have found
reasons of obligation for not doing so. 'Loved deeply'! You never
loved her deeply! You have loved nothing deeply save yourself!"
"Perhaps. Yet I think," said Ian, "that I would have done as much as
that. But Alexander Jardine, of course, would not have taken one
erring step!"
"Have you done now?"
"Yes."
Glenfernie rose to his feet. He stood against the gulf of air and his
great frame seemed enlarged, like the figure of the Brocken. He was
like his father, the old laird, but there glowed an extremer dark
anger and power. The old laird had made himself the dream-avenger of
injuries adopted, not felt at first hand. The present laird knew the
wounding, the searing. "All his life my father dreamed of grappling
with Grierson of Lagg. My Grierson of Lagg stands before me in the
guise of a false friend and lover!... What do I care for your weighing
to a scruple how much the heap of wrong falls short of the uttermost?
The dire wrong is there, to me the direst! Had I deep affection for
you once? Now you speak to me of every treacherous morass, every
_ignis fatuus_, past and present! The traveler through life does right
to drain the bogs as they arise--put it out of their power to suck
down man, woman, and child! It is not his cause alone. It is the
general cause. If there be a God, He approves. Draw your sword and let
us fight!"
They fought. The platform of rock was smooth enough for good footing.
They had no seconds, unless the shadows upon the hills and the
mountain eagles answered for such. Ian was the highly trained fencer,
adept of the sword. Glenfernie's knowledge was lesser, more casual.
But he had his bleak wrath, a passion that did not blind nor overheat,
but burned white, that set him, as it were, in a tingling, crackling
arctic air, where the shadows were sharp-edged, the nerves braced and
the will steel-tipped. They fought with determination and long--Ian
now to save his own life, Alexander for Revenge, whose man he had
become. The clash of blade against blade, the shifting of foot upon
the rock floor, made the dominant sound upon the mountain-side. The
birds stayed silent in the birch-trees. Self-service, pride, anger,
jealousy, hatred--the inner vibrations were heavy.
The sword of Ian beat down his antagonist's guard, leaped, and gave a
deep wound. Alexander's sword fell from his hand. He staggered and
vision darkened. He came to his knees, then sank upon the ground. Ian
bent over him. He felt his anger ebb. A kind of compunction seized
him. He thought, "Are you so badly hurt, Old Steadfast?"
Alexander looked at him. His lips moved. "Lo, how the wicked prosper!
But do you think that Justice will have it so?" The blood gushed; he
sank back in a swoon.
On this mountain-side, some distance below the fastness, a stone,
displaced by a human foot, rolled down the slope with a clattering
sound. The fugitive above heard it, thought, too, that he caught other
sounds. He crossed to the nook whence he had view of the way of
approach. Far down he saw the redcoats, and then, much nearer, coming
out from dwarf woods, still King George's men.
Ian caught up his belt and pistols. He sheathed his sword. "They'll
find you and save you, Glenfernie! I do not think that you will die!"
Above him sprang the height of crag, seemingly unscalable. But he had
been shown the secret, just possible stair. He mounted it. Masked by
bushes, it swung around an abutment and rose by ledge and natural
tunnel, perilous and dizzy, but the one way out to safety. At last, a
hundred feet above the old shelter, he dipped over the crag head to a
saucer-like depression walled from all redcoat view by the surmounted
rock. With a feeling of triumph he plunged through small firs and
heather, and, passing the mountain brow, took the way that should lead
him to the next glen.