Produced by Al Haines
THE BLACK COLONEL
BY
JAMES MILNE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE ROMANCE OF A PRO-CONSUL
THE EPISTLES OF ATKINS
JOHN JONATHAN AND COMPANY
NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE
MY SUMMER IN LONDON
THE GORDON HIGHLANDERS
"A tale of the times
of old, of the deeds of
the days of other years."
_Ossian_.
JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LIMITED
LONDON
MCMXXI.
TO J. T. M., WHO KNOWS THE
STORY OF THE BLACK COLONEL
_Chapters and Contents_
I. WE MEET IN THE PASS
II. TRAPPED BY THE RED-COATS
III. OVER THE HILLS OF HOME
IV. THE OPENING ROAD
V. A CAIRN OF REMEMBRANCE
VI. THE FINGER OF FATE
VII. A PARLEY AND A SURPRISE
VIII. THE CONQUERING HERO
IX. 'TWIXT NIGHT AND MORN
X. THE WAY OF A WOMAN
XI. THE CRACK OF THUNDER
XII. RAIDERS OF THE DARK
XIII. THE WOUND OF ABSENCE
XIV. THE CARDS OF LOVE
XV. NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE
XVI. THE WOOIN' O'T!
XVII. A SONG OF OTHER SHORES
XVIII. MY GARDEN OF CONTENT
_Personal and Particular_
The strangest thing about this tale is that it happened, though not,
may be, as I here relate it; which is merely to seek, in a humble
spirit, the great company of George Washington, who could not tell--a
story!
That of the Black Colonel came to me in scraps of talk from my mother
when, as Byron grandly sang of himself, "I roved, a Young Highlander,
o'er Dark Lochnagar," a wild landscape beloved of Queen Victoria, at
Balmoral, for, you see, the eminences will come in. My mother had it
from her people, a Forbes family long planted in the brave uplands of
Deeside, and I was taken a generation nearer to it in the conversation
of my grandfather, whose folk were on the no less brave uplands of
Donside. Nay, he could remember, what my own father, born like him,
and myself, in the Forbes Country, first stirred me by saying, when the
Red Coats still garrisoned the Castle of Braemar and the Castle of
Corgarff, old Grampian strongholds where they had been installed to
overawe the Jacobites of the Aberdeenshire Highlands.
The "Seventeen-Forty-Five," with the "Standard on the Braes o'
Mar . . . up and streamin' rarely" for Bonnie Prince Charlie, saw fiery
times in those remote parts, and knew times of dule afterwards, and the
difficulty about any authentic tale of events, is that, in its passage
down time, from mouth to mouth, it necessarily loses immediacy of
phrase, even of fable, and that rude frame of living and loving,
fighting and dying, in which it was originally set. But human nature
does not change, we only think it does in changed circumstances, and if
Jock Farquharson, of Inverey, could return from the Hills of Beyond and
read our chronicle of himself and others, why, he might recognize it,
which would mean, perhaps, that some of the romantic colour, the
dancing atmosphere, and the high spirit of adventure of those ancient
years, has been saved from them. It was little he did not know about
the gallantries and the intrigues of war-making and love-making,
holding them the natural occupations of a Highland gentleman, even when
he had become a "broken man" and an "outlaw"; as you may now, if you
please, go on to learn, with many other things of surprise, diversion
and quality.
J. M.
THE CALEDONIAN CLUB,
LONDON,
_Midsummer Day_, 1921.
THE BLACK COLONEL
_I--We Meet in the Pass_
We might have gone by each other in
the Pass, the Black Colonel and
I, if his horse had not kicked a
stone as we came together. It
struck my foot and then a rock, making a rattle
in the dark night. You know how noise gains
when you cannot see the cause of it, and all
your senses are in your ears.
"Woa, Mack!" said the Black Colonel to
his beast; "can't you stand still with those
mettlesome legs of yours? You may," he went
on, more to himself than to the horse, "need
them to-night, for our friend, Captain Ian
Gordon of his Hanoverian Majesty's forces, is
late, and when a man is late it generally bodes
trouble; for a woman anyhow, I might confess
from my experience. It is less matter if a
woman be late, because it is a fashion with the
sweet sex that you should wait upon it, and
I am always willing to oblige out of my own
warmth in gallantry, or so folk say. Eh!
Mack? Kept you waiting at many a gate,
have I, forgetful that it was cold outside?"
The Black Colonel and I had met before,
though slightly, distantly, and I knew his habit
of talking to his horse. Not an unnatural
thing, because Mack was an animal of fine
intelligence, coupled, it is true, with the
stallion's devil of a temper, and they had spent
much time alone together, which begets
understanding. Were they, indeed, not a romance
of the countryside, inseparable, with a
friendship only found between a lonely man and his
horse or his dog? They had been through a
whole chapter of adventures together, and were
willing to face more, or they would not have
been there in the Pass.
When the stone hit my foot I stood still,
knowing it must be the Black Colonel, yet
wishful to be certain before I spoke. His
words to Mack revealed his presence, but left
me unsure whether he knew that I was within
a few yards of him. Of course the horse knew,
for animals of the higher order have an instinct
which is often more sure than reason in a man.
It is their reason, the shield of guidance which
Nature gives to all her creatures.
Suddenly communication seemed to arise
between us, although no word of mutual
greeting had been spoken. You know how
those things come about! No, you don't,
nor do I, nor does anybody else, but they do
happen out of a world 'twixt earth and heaven.
They call them uncanny in our land, which
only means they are unknown, the mysteries
of them, but some day they will grow clear
and be no more black witchery, only golden light.
"Walked all the way from Corgarff Castle?"
he abruptly asked, preparing the way, with the
usual nothings of conversation. It is oddly
difficult to get into natural talk in a dark,
dividing night, when eyes, faces, gestures, are
hidden, and I just answered, "Yes, walked
over the hills, as I've often done before,
knowing them well, without having the honour
of a safe conduct from you."
"Some day," he snapped, "you'll be able
to bring your red-coats by the same paths,
knowing them, as you say, well, and capture
me for the Lowland money your Government
puts on my Highland head. Nobody is too
well off in our parts in these times. Captain
Gordon, not, it may be, even you, who was
born, I suppose, with an eye for prosperity."
It was unfair of him to say that, and as he
climbed off Mack and threw the bridle loose
on the horse's neck he mumbled as much.
"A touch of temper against your royal
employer, nothing worse; not bad temper,
merely temper, so pray excuse it. Mostly I
have, as you know, been accustomed to express
myself with the sword. . . ."
"Except," I interrupted with some sharpness,
for I was still nettled, "when you have
confided your language to the dirk, or let it
speak in silence for itself."
"Now we are even, Captain Gordon, for
that is not worthy of you, if, as I take it, you
suggest that, on occasion, I have struck foul.
No, sir, not that, never on my honour, as a
gentleman; outlawed, if you like, though that
troubles me little. But the fine ethics of the
broad-sword and the dirk are too nice for
discussion between a Gordon and a Farquharson;
met as we are with, I suspect, a Forbes to
attract and divide us. Besides, I spoke
clumsily, not meaning any personal insult,
since I want, sincerely want, to be friendly, if
that be possible. Anger is a poor hostess,
believe me, and I, who have been in its way,
should know better than you who are young, amiably young."
Mine melted under his soft words, because
such, even when they are not deeply sincere,
may turn wrath aside like balm. Moreover,
he had a wild charm of manner which, if it
did not quite capture another man, as almost
surely it would have won a woman, yet had
its effect. Where exactly it lay I have never
been able to decide, but the melody of his
tongue had something to do with it, even when
he spoke in Sassenach English. We could
have talked in the Gaelic, I also having it
natively, but the Black Colonel would always
speak English if he met somebody to whom
he could show his command of the language.
It was one of his several accomplishments,
acquired by study and travel in England and
France, and he prided and guarded them all,
as a woman does her graces of the person.
So we stood in the chasm of night and the
Pass, one waiting upon the other, because our
trouble, as in all affairs where two men and
a maid are concerned, was how to begin,
more particularly as we had no idea what
would be the end. The Black Colonel had
said as much when he spoke the name Forbes,
the third of our Aberdeenshire clans, though
it may not have all the lustre of the Gordons
or the Farquharsons.
"Ehum," he murmured, dropping into a
Scots mannerism which made no more than
an overture to speech between us, and yet
signified something already said.
"Your letter was urgent," I said. "It
might have been a summons to another
hoisting of the Stuart Standard on the Braes
of Mar."
"And would you have come?" he inquired;
"would you have come?"
"It is hard," I answered coldly, "to tell
what a man would or would not do if his
honour could always march with his inclination.
But no summons from you would bring
me to the colours, even of those who were our
rightful Scottish kings."
"Still, you have come to-night."
"True, but it must occur to you that it is
not of the first order of a gentleman to force
a meeting, by wrapping a threat in a woman's
Christian name, even when you send your
message by so secure a hand as that of your
ghillie, Red Murdo."
He turned his head and, I felt, though I
could still only see vaguely, was looking straight
at me, as, certainly, I was looking at him.
While we looked and saw not, a quick, low
whistle came from the foot of the Pass and an
answering whistle, just as low, blew from the
top of it.
_II--Trapped by the Red-Coats_
Never, in all my experience of the hills, their fragrant peace and
their rude surprises, have I been so moved by an unexpected noise as I
was then, standing with the Black Colonel in the black Pass. Partly
this was because the surprise was complete, being unheralded by a
rustle or a movement, but, still more, because it was the magic hour at
which the womb of night moves to the birth of a new day.
Mingle the void of heaven and earth, and the sense of unseen spaces;
the long, sleeping mountains, with the drowsy trees that guard the
foot-hills; the caressing sigh of the wind, and, maybe, the murmur of a
stream flowing to the sea, and out of all this catch a whistle and its
answer. They sounded strangely eerie as they died into the hills,
touching us like the still small voice of the Scriptures and, also,
like it, carrying a note of apprehension, even of awe.
Under stress a mind moves instantly, and two thoughts leapt into mine,
that a trap had been set for the Black Colonel, and that he must
suspect me of it. To be sure I was, myself, within the wings of that
trap, but this perfect retort was like a gun in a bad position, it
could not be brought to bear. However, my own situation, peculiar as I
realized it to be, troubled me less, at the moment, than did the Black
Colonel's thoughts, as I conceived them, about my honour, and I do
suggest that it would have been the same with any other gentleman.
Ugly thoughts have a trick of riding double, and I fancied I heard him
trying his stirrup leathers and bridle, to be satisfied they were in
order. Even I thought I saw his hand drop down to his right garter,
where a Highlander wears his skean-dhu, or short dirk, an ornament
mostly, with its Cairngoram stone in the handle, but likewise a solid
weapon in an emergency, like the present.
There, probably, I did him an injustice or, if his hand did make the
furtive inquiry, I could think wrongly of the reason behind it.
Anyhow, he said never a word, hating to be openly suspicious, where, as
I could have sworn, on my conscience, there was no reason for
suspicion, whatever might have happened among others, apart from me and
my night's doings.
Thus we held our places, two unarmed men, for the Black Colonel had
said in his letter that he would come weaponless, as he expected me to
come, and a hose-dirk did not count, being, as I have said, in the
first place, an ornament for a well-made leg, an Order of the Garter,
to borrow an ancient title. We had met in the habiliments and
disposition of peace, and if we were to close in strife it would not, I
reasoned and hoped, be at our direct wish or bidding. Would it?
He must have been asking himself the same question, for he broke the
silence in a changed voice which seemed doubly changed, because he had
to keep it low, lest it should be overheard, and what he said was, "How
comes all this, sir?"
"I don't know," I answered simply, naturally, truthfully, to his
charge, for it was a charge in words and in directness.
"You don't," he went on, and I could not miss the tone which was like
the growl of a dog, an ill-natured dog; not like that of my own little
Scots terrier, Rob, whose bark is only meant to give himself confidence
and never had the snap of biting in it.
"You don't!" repeated the Black Colonel. "I must believe you, though a
suspicious man might read the signs otherwise. Still, why should you
have kept the red-coats from their sleep this night and morn, in the
castles of Braemar and Corgarff? There is no reason, for a talk
between Highland gentlemen, if so we be, about a Highland lady, whose
ladyship is beyond doubt, needed no garrison as audience. No, no, if
the red-coats had been summoned to round-up some poor Jacobite devil,
say myself, Captain Ian Gordon would have been with his men, as a
soldier should, much as he might--and I put this to his credit--have
disliked the mission."
It was idle for me to pretend any misunderstanding of the Black
Colonel's meaning. He was taunting me with suspicions which he would
not bring himself to believe, having a generous side to his nature, a
state of mind that has inflicted much suffering on the human race, ever
since the world began to go round. Mostly it occurs between men, for
women are more elemental, more red in beak and claw, even when the claw
is bejewelled, which indeed may give it another sharpness.
Could I blame him? Not to his face, at all events, because that would
be to notice his challenge, to admit that it was not unnatural on his
part. Events must be my guarantee, and if there were to be no more,
well, let him say quickly why he had asked me very specially to meet
him on an urgent private affair. Yes, although it were to have a
casual ending, such as characterizes half the affairs of life.
Aye! good thinking, my friends, but our relations were cast in a
sterner mould, and they were not to take the road of well-being. This
became manifest when the now growing dawn lightly touched the eastern
door of the Pass at its highest crag. The Black Colonel put his hand
to his eyes, using them as you would a spy-glass, made a hawk-like
sweep of the point I have indicated, and murmured harshly, "A red-coat,
ah!"
Quickly he followed the wispy, growing light towards the western end of
the Pass, and after another moment of hawkish searching growled: "A
red-coat there also! It has been shrewdly arranged, this affair,
Captain Gordon. My congratulations, for you have earned them well, as
well, perhaps, as something else from me."
I said nothing, and indeed I was too full of surprise to think, except
in a wondering fashion. It was only by an effort of attention that I
heard the Black Colonel's further words, cursed out in a wrath not bred
of any anxiety for himself, but, naturally enough, directed at me.
"So the moving picture declares itself, my dear, thoughtful kinsman,"
he hissed. "The red-coats from Braemar are at the western end of the
Pass, those from Corgarff are at the eastern end, and the Black Colonel
is within somewhere--isn't he?--keeping a private meeting with an
officer in his Georgian Majesty's uniform, an officer and a gentleman!
Shrewdly planned, as I say, shrewdly planned, and I suppose you want to
intrigue me here until I cannot get away any more. Would you think of
trying to hold me yourself, eh? It would be like your adventurous
spirit? No!"
This was said with a rough sneer, and the Black Colonel made the sting
sharper by adding, "You'll be thinking it an assured capture, with the
ends of the Pass sealed by red-coats and its sides so steep that only
those tough sheep over there can climb them."
"Truth," said I quickly, gaining my tongue, "will force you to eat
those words, for I knew nothing of all this. It will be a bitter meal
for you to digest, if I, by good chance, am there to assist you."
"A Highland welcome will be yours," quoth he arrogantly; "a welcome as
warm as if I were to bring my riding whip round your shoulders now."
His words, cracking as if they were a lash, stung me beyond endurance.
I made a step to strike him, and we might have been at it, like common
brawlers, only he saved us from that shame. He had been waiting with
his left foot in the stirrup. When I drove at him he swung on to the
back of Mack, who turned half round, as a spirited horse does in the
process of being mounted. This threw his big body between us, but the
Black Colonel leant down and said in my ear, "To our next meeting, my
kinsman! May it be soon!"
Then he rode for an opening in the undergrowth which braided the lower
slopes of the precipitous Pass, and I was left alone, a man all
a-wonder, for events were growing beyond me, as they do when suddenly
we find our whole personal fortune, even our spiritual destiny, put to
the ordeal of the unexpected.
_III.--Over the Hills of Home_
How shall I tell, with proper restraint and yet efficiency, what
followed the going of the Black Colonel on his black horse?
The Pass, wherein we had met so sharply, lies almost due east and due
west. You would have a good idea of its appearance, if you were to
suppose a hill twice as long from east to west as it is broad from
north to south. Then imagine its length sliced in two, and each half,
by force of dead weight, falling away from the other. Heather and
whins had seeded on the sliced faces, and after them the hardy silver
birch and the hardier green fir had sprung up. Nature makes coverings
for the sores suffered by Mother Earth, as a dog licks a bruise until
the hair grows again.
The strong Highland winds and the heavy Highland rains and snows had
wrinkled the riven hill in a hundred ways. Its twin faces were warted
with rocks, from which most of the soil had been washed away, leaving
them as though suspended in mid-air. Waters, draining from the higher
hills, had run down those faces, making ribboned scores to the bottom.
There had been constant falls of earth from above, and here and there a
large tree had been thrown over the abyss, and, in that position,
holding on by its roots, had taken a new lease of life.
Thanks then to Nature, working for long years, the twin, or rather the
divorced hill-cheeks which, at their separation, were raw earth, now
had a covering of undergrowth and overgrowth. It would be dead in the
winter when the sap is down, budding in the spring when the sap rises,
green in the summer when it has run into leafage, brown in the autumn
when the storage roots begin to call their own back again.
A sort of rough road, worn by usage, as a short-cut for the folk of the
region, ran on the level between the halves of the Pass. Big rocks
fallen from above lay around, and I confusedly sat down beside one of
these. It broke the snellish wind which had begun to blow with the
first dawn, as it often does in those parts, a blast to the parting
night and the coming day.
Presently a shot was fired from one end of the Pass and I could make no
mistake as to the weapon used. It was the military flintlock, a clumsy
gun, better suited to scare crows than shoot straight, but it was the
best we had.
A warning, a signal for some purpose, I judged, because it was followed
by what I can only describe as a waiting silence. You had the echoes
of the shot scattering up the heights of the Pass, and then a tense
feeling in the atmosphere, as if a hundred men expected an answer. It
came, in another straggling shot, from the other end of the Pass.
Next there was solid evidence that what I heard had been a pre-arranged
signal, to which a plan of campaign attached. At each end of the Pass
I saw the red-coats multiply until they formed faint bunches of colour.
Who, I wonder, first clothed the soldier man in scarlet, for an easier
target he could not offer, even to an ill-shooting flint-lock. Scarlet
and the pageantry of courts, scarlet and the capturing of women's
hearts, but for the soldier himself, when he gets down to his trade, it
is scarlet and death.
As I waited intently and looked, I could almost count, up on the brows
of the Pass, how many red-coats the sentinels of our first alarm had
grown into. They made dots, moving against the skyline, and, as I next
made out, they were in concert with other knots of scarlet, active at
the end of the Pass below. I did not need to be a soldier of some
instinct, which I hope I always have been, to grasp the order and
purpose of those doings.
Clearly the plan was to search the bottom of the Pass and its northern
top with men who would meet midway, two parties below, and two above.
The Black Colonel could not, therefore, get away by the western end,
which led to his habitual fastness up the valley of the Dee, for the
door of escape was sealed. No hope could lie south, or east, because
that would be to come out into open country where numbers would capture
any fugitive. There was nothing but the northern side, no possibility
of escape except up its stern face, and it was a forlorn possibility,
alike on account of the terrible climb and because the red-coats were
already there, shaping to cut off even an attempt in this direction.
What would the Black Colonel do? What was he doing? I wondered, and
two thoughts came to me, one that as an animal pursued ever makes for
home, if only to reach it and die, so a hunted man will do likewise,
should there be the smallest prospect of success; the other that
possibly it is the sounder doctrine to face great perils in getting
clear, when you are sure of an open road and a place of refuge, rather
than seek deliverance by an easier door and then land in unknown
plights.
True strategy in any tight place, military or civil, is based on a
knowledge of human nature, what the enemy will do. That entails the
gift of imagination, and there was a touch of it in the disposition
going on before my eyes. The knots of red on the bottom pathway drew
together, and the red strings on the northern height were also
approaching each other. They progressed warily, but I could see an
occasional gleam of bare bayonets against the skyline, silhouetted by
the trees.
Presently a rumble of displaced stones reached my ear from the other
side of the Pass. My eye searched for the spot, halfway up, where the
trees grew sparser and the hard, sharp rocks gained the dominance. Out
from this streak of trees and rocks rode the Black Colonel on black
Mack, and I gasped at his dare-devilry.
I understood instinctively that, by cautious pilotage, probably
dismounting and leading his horse at places, he had managed,
undiscovered, to get thus far up that northern cliff, for it was almost
sheer. But he must next make the upper, still steeper half, with
little shelter from the on-coming flint-locks, and the worst kind of
footing for Mack. Could any horse foaled of a mare climb that crag and
bear his rider to safety, for this was the double, doubtful issue?
When, a moment later, the soldiers caught sight of the Black Colonel
they halted in mute surprise, then shouted, as a dog barks on sight of
a quarry, the killing instinct in man and beast finding tongue. It was
instantly a gamble of the pursued and the pursuers, to escape or to
capture, the keenest yet least noble game which can be played, that
with a human life for the prize. The Black Colonel, a man with a
bar-sinister, but a remarkable man, was the hunted, and two companies
of King George's soldiers, decent fellows enough each man of them, were
the hunters. The outcome depended chiefly on a horse, but such a
horse, Mack!
The King's word had gone round the countryside that our rebel and
canteran was to be taken alive or dead. That is a mandate which loses
its dividing line when the guns begin to shoot. Therefore, while the
soldiers shouted, on getting sight of the Black Colonel, they also
began to fire wildly at him. The immediate range was too far for harm
to hit him, but it would shorten swiftly enough. Realizing this, he
stretched himself along his horse's neck, thus showing a smaller
target, and, as I felt sure, whispering words of encouragement into the
great creature's ear.
The tradition is that the Black Colonel used his dirk for spur on that
ride, but I, who was a witness, know better. He did not need to use
it, and would not have done so in any event, loving Mack as he did.
His soft Gaelic whisper of bidding was his only spur, and up, up,
slowly, yet surely, went the gallant animal. Ah! you should have seen
it all. It was fine.
Mack's shapely, muscular body was stretched like whip-cord against the
dull grey of the broken precipice. You could fancy you heard the very
cracking of his sinews as he rose foot by foot. The reins lay on his
neck, and I saw the Black Colonel slip oft the bridle, with its heavy
iron bit, to give him the uttermost chance. The rivulet of stones
which his hoofs had set going grew into a stream, telling me that,
while ever he lost a little on the treacherous ground, he more than
made it good with the next stride.
The sight so moved me that I nearly shouted in admiration and quite
forgot the pursuers. The soldiers in the hollow of the Pass had met
and were loading and shooting with a certain discipline. The Black
Colonel's real danger, however, was not from this fusilade but from the
intercepting soldiers at the top of the Pass. Theirs had been a longer
and rougher way to travel; would they, by the time he reached the
summit, if reach it he did, be near enough to capture or shoot him?
Up, up, still panted the noble Mack, almost exhausted, until, with a
final effort, he gained the last ridge and, oh, what a relief! His
flanks heaved, his beautiful head dropped to the heather, and I could
see that his forequarters had turned from black to a lather of white
foam, testimony to the great strain of the climb. The Black Colonel
sprang from the saddle, walked to the edge of the crag, took his dirk
from his garter and put it to his lips. He was vowing the oath of a
"broken" Highlander, to be revenged, or thanking Providence for his
escape, perhaps both.
He did all this, as I could follow, in the grey morning light, coolly,
nay disdainfully, seeming to regard the bullets from the converging
sharp-shooters as just so many bees buzzing harmlessly about him.
Next, he tightened the girth, which Mack's panting had loosened,
bridled the horse again, vaulted lightly into the saddle, touched his
bonnet in mock salutation, and rode over the hills for home.
There were those who saw a white horse go up the strath that morning
with, as they swore, the Black Colonel for rider, though all knew the
actual colour of Mack to be black. There were others who said it was
Death on his White Horse, and because a man died in the same small
hours those mongers of destiny were believed.
_IV--The Opening Road_
If this were a story invented, and not a tale of true happenings, there
would be an end when the Black Colonel rode triumphantly from the Pass.
But, sitting alone and lonely a few days later in my room at Corgarff
Castle, and reflecting on the affair, I said to myself that it was only
the beginning. A drama of real life rarely closes with the hero in
heroics, the heroine a-swoon in her beauty, and the world a-clap with
admiration.
No doubt the Black Colonel had got away very well, almost as if he had
leapt through a lighted window, with a resounding crash of broken
glass. Well, there would be the fragments to gather up, for the
fragments have always to be remembered, or they may cause harm. Here I
was a fragment, and I asked myself into what basket I was to be
gathered, because, you should know, the hills give those of us who
dwell among them a sense of fate--of the inevitable.
I was awakened from these thoughts by the entrance of my lieutenant,
who said, "Still sighing that you were out of the chase after the Black
Colonel?"
I answered vaguely, "A soldier who is a real soldier, which I may or
may not be, is always sorry to miss an enterprise, whether it be duty
or merely an adventure."
"Well," he remarked, "you had not been long gone when word came from
Braemar Castle that the Black Colonel was to be in the Pass of Ballater
about midnight, meeting some unknown person, and asking us to help
capture him. We saw nothing of the other person, whether man or woman."
He looked slyly at me, and I remembered having said to him that I had
had a tryst to keep among the hills. You must not, I think, mislead
people by telling what is untrue, but you need not tell everything if
it is going to make mischief. Mostly it is poor policy to try and ram
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, down a man's
throat, because your version of it may not be his, and, anyhow, it
makes dry eating.
My thoughts have a habit of wandering, of dreaming dreams, often when
they should be otherwise occupied, and isn't there a bunch of
manuscript verse somewhere in testimony of the same? Knowing this the
lieutenant lighted and smoked a pipe of American tobacco, then a
novelty and a luxury in the Scottish Highlands. With a wink of the eye
he asked, "Who was she, captain? Wench or maid?" And he pronounced
the words in different tones, as if I needed to be instructed about the
difference he implied by them. A man says nothing to an
arch-pleasantry like that, unless he be no man and only a babbler and
boaster of his conquests. Then he has had none, and is a liar. No
sort of fellow more fills men with contempt, and women, by their
woman's instinct, pass him by, for any confidence whatever, in word or
in deed.
"Don't let it be one of the Black Colonel's flames," said the
lieutenant with a laugh, as he went out again, without the answer he
had not expected, being himself a gentleman. "It needs a long spoon to
sup with that dark devil at any time, but come between him and his
rustic gallantries and you'll need a longer spoon than Corgarff Castle
happens to possess."
The Black Colonel and I, as you will have gathered, were on different
sides in politics, though we belonged to neighbouring clans which had
many associations; he a Farquharson, I a Gordon. He was Jock
Farquharson of Inverey, the last of his house, as I can say looking
back on him, and doomed, so a woman of second-sight had declared, when
he was born, to be the last; while I, Ian Gordon, was a cadet of the
Balmoral Gordons, captain in his Majesty's Highland Foot, with no more
to expect than what my commission brought me, and that was little
enough.
He was a Jacobite, keeping that rebel flame alive in the Aberdeenshire
Highlands, when, on the heels of the "Forty-Five," a red and woeful
time, we were half-heartedly scotching it with garrisons in the Castles
of Braemar and Corgarff. Yes, I wore the scarlet tunic of King George,
thanks to family circumstances which had woven themselves before I was
born, but the tartan lay under it, next my heart. We were rivals in
war, thrown on different sides by the fates which gamble so strangely
with mere men. Was there to be a still more vital rivalry? As has
been hinted, I had more than rumours of the Black Colonel's strange
powers among women. What if he had Marget Forbes in his dark eye?
Wherever the heart is concerned you have intuition, and that is why a
woman has more of such super-sense, or rather, I would say, of
wonderously delicate feeling, than a man. She needs it, being oftener
heart-strung, because the wells of her heart are more emotional.
I suspected, from the first, why the Black Colonel wanted to meet me,
and for no other reason would I have consented to meet him. But our
meeting had been so brief, so disturbed, so futile as regards its
purpose, that I had got no light from him whatever. Still, ever since
then I had been seeing, in the mirror of life, the face of Marget
Forbes, a daughter of the clan whose name she bore, a handsome lass
with a long pedigree, heiress to the lands of Corgarff, now forfeit for
the Jacobite cause, when they should come back to her line, and
incidentally, but all importantly, a kinswoman both of Jock Farquharson
and myself.
Memory is rarely honest with us, because it is imperfect, and
unconsciously we tell the best account of things, but I fancy I was
wondering on this text when there came at my door the sharp rap of
bony, hurried knuckles. "Enter!" I said, and in marched the corporal
of the guard. His hand went easily to the salute. He had a message in
his face.
"What is it?" said I, for I expected nothing of moment, beyond a poor
devil of a Jacobite captured, or a "sma' still" raided and its rude
whisky drunk by the red-coat raiders until they were merrily "fou."
"Sir," he answered in the parade voice which the regular soldier soon
acquires, this, softened by his nice Scots drawl, "Sir, there's a man
outside an' he says he's a letter for you and that he maun gie it to
yoursel'."
"What's he like? Where does he come from? Is he friend or no friend?"
"Canna' say, sir. I should think no friend. He's short and swack o'
body, red of hair and face, wears a kilt o' Farquharson tartan, and
winna' say where he comes frae. He has a letter for you, sir, and is
to deliver it himself, an' that's a' he'll tell."
"Bring him in," I ordered, and in came, as, by now, I half expected,
Red Murdo, the Black Colonel's henchman. I had seen him before, and by
hearsay was more than familiar with his repute as an excellent servant
to his not so excellent master.
"A letter," he whispered in his hoarse voice, as if he did not want the
corporal to hear. I took the letter, and before I could even break the
seal he was gone again, without motion of salute or further word, all
quite in the Black Colonel's manner of doing things.
It was addressed "To Captain Ian Gordon," and when I opened the
envelope and unfolded the contents I found them to commence with these
same words and no other form of ceremony. I instantly knew the strong,
irregular, aggressive and yet persuasive handwriting to be that of the
Black Colonel, but unconsciously, as a girl tries at the end of a story
to find whether happiness be there, I turned to the signature--"your
kinsman, Jock Farquharson of Inverey." What went before, when I had
time to master it, was this:
"These greetings, which I am inditing in the cold safety of the
Colonel's Bed, a fastness where no enemy has yet tracked me, though all
my true friends in the countryside know the secret roads to it, will be
delivered to you by my faithful Red Murdo, who deserves blessings,
whereas I sometimes give him curses; and their purpose is to tell you
explicitly why I asked you to meet me in the Pass the other evening,
since events, on which I here offer no comment, made it impossible for
us to have any plain, forthright talk.
"I'll reveal the heart of my business by recalling that there is a long
association between our families, who have always been friends and
enemies, and that the Corgarff Forbeses also come into this
association, and continue it, in a fashion which takes me to our
personal quarrel of Stuart and Guelph, because, by the exercise of a
little ingenuity, such as is permissible, and a kinsmanship such as is
proper, there may emerge good seasoning for us all.
"Pray remember that if the Corgarff Forbeses were to fail in issue, and
there is only one life between them and that failure, the life of a
young unmarried lady, I, by descent on the distaff side, which I need
not outline in particularity, would be heir to the estates; only as a
Jacobite outlawed, a broken man, I can inherit nothing, not even
possess, little as it is now, my own in peace.
"But, if I am not ill-informed, and news travels among the hills as
swiftly as, we are told, it travels in the desert, King George's
advisers would gladly return the Corgarff estates to the Forbes family
if that family had a strong man at its head and so such an influence as
would keep the region, always a key to the Highlands, I will not
exactly say in order for the German king, because that would be a
tactless fashion of arranging, but wean it gradually from its sympathy
for Prince Charlie, and his house of misadventure and ill-luck.
"Now, if you will be good enough to assume in me qualities for this
mission and the willingness to undertake it; if you will accept the
circumstance that it would merely be a case of a remote legal heir
coming into his own by a round-about way; and if you will set those
facts in what I consider the national importance of the matter and help
it forward in a form so delicate and chivalrous that I must not even
hint it, why, you will be rendering a potent service to the cause which
enlists you and which might, who knows, enlist me also!"
That was the letter, considered in language, crafty in purpose, really,
an overture for the hand of Marget Forbes, and I sat far into the
night, while my peat fire died out in Corgarff Castle, wondering how I
was to answer it, and, even more, how I myself stood towards the acute
personal situation which it created. For I saw that the Black Colonel
meant to make love and do business at the same stroke, not for the
first time, perhaps, in his life of emprise; and certainly here was no
new thing in the world's queer story.
_V.--A Cairn of Remembrance_
It is a good way, when you are in doubt, to wait and let events shape a
decision, and this was how I came to regard the Black Colonel's letter.
He had set me a pretty puzzle in his written words, because, contrasted
with the light touch-and-go of spoken words, these always seem to have
something fateful in them, as of a king's signature to a decree.
Moreover, I was vaguely conscious of being the guardian of a woman's
instinct for safety, an instinct which arrives with the cradle and only
goes with the grave, and that made me feel somewhat helpless; a man in
depths he cannot fathom, for such is the uncharted sea of womanhood.
Marget Forbes and her mother lived in the Dower House, thrown to them,
as a piece of bread might be tossed from a rich man's table, when
Corgarff was declared forfeit and the castle occupied by soldiery. Her
men-folk had been out with Charlie and had not come back from Culloden,
as the Cairn of Remembrance on the hills might have told any seeker for
them. Each clansman, as he departed, had put a stone to it, and none
had returned to lift that stone again, so it became a tombstone.
They were dead for ever to Corgarff and to the lands which had been the
property of their forbears, almost since time was in those
blood-heathered Highlands. Families rose and fell, for family reasons,
or as the clans to which they belonged prospered or had adversity.
Thus vital changes in a corner of the Scottish Highlands, like this of
ours, were more frequent than the historians, men apt to assess on
surface generalities and neglectful of the hidden human wells, usually
make out.
But, as the changes took place within what I may call the ring-fence of
the clan system, they really only mattered to those who were directly
concerned. Corgarff Castle, however, had been held by the same Forbes
family in direct, unbroken line, partly because its successive chiefs
had strong right arms, partly because the domain had little to make
anybody else covetous. The Sabine women whom the old Romans took,
would have been the beautiful ones, and it is the same with the face of
Mother Earth. What appears best is taken first!
There was no great personal bitterness in the Aberdeenshire Highlands
as between clans or families who were on different sides in the
"Forty-Five." The ambition, or the greed of chiefs, often determined
the sides, and a consciousness of that made lesser men tolerant with
each other. Thus, an acquaintanceship between Marget and her mother
and myself, although begun under a certain stress of circumstance,
passed naturally into friendship, and, on my part, into something
warmer. We were of the same Celtic strain, and, in the heart and mind
of upbringing, blood tells all the time. But I had not seen much of
them, and nothing at all since the tale of the Black Colonel's escape
in the Pass had set the countryside talking and, doubtless, secretly
rejoicing.
It was a fine thing, a very fine thing, that he should have escaped
from the red-coats so perfectly, so dramatically. They were the living
tokens of a government which, on every ground of sentiment, was alien
to the Highland people, a government, moreover, that had been tactless
in its plans and its acts. The Black Colonel stood for a native royal
cause which had colour and flair, even if its genius for government had
been exhausted.
We soldiers were only disliked for what we represented, for the dry
Hanoverian salt we ate, not for ourselves, because most of us were
Highland by bone and heart. The Black Colonel was liked for what he
represented, rather than for himself. He had, indeed, a way of
commandeering other men's goods, when he needed them, that was
inconvenient to those others. But there was a strong local pride in
his name and achievements, as the name and achievements of a first-rate
fighting man, whose sword-handle held in its silver-work the letter
"S," standing for Stuart, an allegiance and a challenge never hidden by
him.
Naturally, like every other Forbes, Farquharson, or Gordon--I omit none
with those names--Marget would be quietly rejoicing over the Black
Colonel's success in out-manoeuvring us. I say "us," although I was
not in the pursuit, a fact, I reflected, which might relieve me a
little of Marget's scorn if she knew. Did she know? Had gossip
carried her that news also? It could not tell her that I was out of
the chase after the Black Colonel, because I was meeting him privately,
and that her affairs were the occasion of the meeting.
Of the dangers wrapped in all this, I was to have an inkling when I did
meet Marget, and that came about as if it did not matter, as if nothing
matters! I had been up the Don valley with a patrol, was returning,
and scarce a mile from Corgarff Castle, when I saw a woman's figure
ahead, going my road, a very soft and gracious sight, believe me,
against the hill-side. Soon, thanks either to my eyes which could then
see far, or to a man's feeling of instinct for the presence of a woman
who interests him, I discovered that it was Marget Forbes. She turned
round, perhaps at the approaching sound of our steady tramp, or perhaps
moved by some unconscious woman's sense, and, as my men passed on and I
fell behind them, she said, "Ah, Captain Gordon, where have you been
these many days? Chasing the Black Colonel, eh?"
It was said easily, with a half-smile, as if she were alluding to
something which had happened since we last met, as, indeed, it had. It
was good, however, that the light was failing, because I could feel my
face burn, not with shame, but with a confusion in which there was more
than the Black Colonel.
"Oh no, Mistress Marget," I answered, "one cannot always be in the
company of the Black Colonel, however interesting some of us may find
him." This, observe, was intended as a delicate touch for her, but it
probably struck her as clumsy, so much finer is a woman's feeling than
a man's.
"You found him interesting then," she merely replied. "I'm glad to
hear that, because, as a distant relative of ours, he is really one of
the men-folk of the family. Perhaps he has some of the nature which,
so they say, characterizes our women? His Forbes grandmother or
great-grandmother, whichever she was, would have passed it on to him."
She stopped when she noticed the sweet conceit into which she had
fallen, for certainly what she had claimed in name of the Forbes women,
was richly present in herself. She had sparkle, bloom, charm, that
witching, elusive, mixed something in a woman which nobody can describe
but which every true man feels, and she looked it all in the gloamin'
of that perfect Highland evening.
"My dear Mistress Forbes," I said more formally, "I could forgive the
Black Colonel much if I thought he had any of the qualities of your
Forbes women-folk. As it is, I envy him your championship," at which
she looked at me with considering eyes.
"A woman naturally champions all her men," she said with a deft smile
for me, as being also a relation, "and it would be sad if she didn't;
but I have never yet seen the Black Colonel. He has not come our way,
although, no doubt, we should, for what has been, make him as welcome
as your men, quartered in our old castle, might permit."
"Naturally! Why not?" I said, for I understand her feelings though,
somehow, the remark stung me a little. "Perhaps," I added, "you may
have your wish gratified and meet him one of these days."
"Do you mean as a prisoner," she asked quickly.
"No. I mean that when the Black Colonel wants to call on anybody, he
does not let danger or ceremony stand in his path. So far, I take it,
there has been no occasion for you to make his personal acquaintance,
and may that continue."
"Why should you say that? Whether he be good or ill, he is a
picturesque figure, a stout fighter, a man who has stood up for his
faith through thick and thin, and, moreover, one of us. I have heard
the things that are said about him, things no woman cares to hear about
a man, but to hear is not to believe, is it? Only," and Marget laughed
quietly, "here am I defending a rank Jacobite to the Georgian commander
of Corgarff Castle, whose business it is to lay that rank Jacobite by
the heels--if he can!"
"Oh, we'll catch him some day," I lightly, rather wryly, observed, "but
his luck does serve him well."
"There's often a reason for luck," answered she; "more in it than just
luck. Now, if a company of soldiers went after a man of resource, like
the Black Colonel, would their chance of catching him not be less if
they had no captain leading them? A boyish lieutenant may have
energetic qualities, but they are hardly likely to be a match for those
of the Black Colonel."
We were getting on to ground perilous for me, because Marget had
evidently heard something and was determined to test it at first hand.
Behind the curiosity there seemed, judging by her tone, to be a fight
going on between friendliness and pique. It is a dangerous mixture for
a man to have to counteract in a woman, because, responding to the
friendliness, he may make admissions which increase the pique.
Therefore I sought to give our talk a turn by saying, "Everybody seems
to know everything there is to be known about the Black Colonel's
escape, so there's an end of it--until next time."
"But, Captain Gordon, although one knows generally, one may still keep
wondering--may one not? A woman always wonders; it is one of her
privileges, and often wonder is kinder to her than certainty."
"Wonder, dear lady, is a hard thing to gratify, being illimitable,
like . . . !
"Like the hills," she caught me up, "when one is alone among
them--alone, or going to meet somebody in the dark of the night, or the
dimness of early morning."
"It would depend on the somebody," I said boldly, facing her boldness,
"and whether it was a man or a woman that was to be met."
"But," she said quite softly, "it must be a man that any other man
would be meeting in these parts, because . . ." She stopped abruptly.
"Because what? Tell me!"
"Nothing; only that every man needs to be mothered by a woman, a charge
which any good woman, young or old, will instinctively assume, even if
she knows that it may be only a cross for her to bear." Her voice was
low, almost a whisper, may be a first whisper of the mother of men in
her, a revelation to all women, come it when it may; and that thought
kept me silent.
We had, by this time, reached the Dower House, and she said
"Good-night," and I answered, as simply, "Good-night."
What I really said to myself was, "Philandering, was I, instead of
soldering, on the night the Black Colonel was raided--that's the story
she's heard!"
And I was concerned, strangely concerned--like Marget herself.
_VI--The Finger of Fate_
Here I was in a double tangle of private affairs, for I had the Black
Colonel's designs upon Marget Forbes to handle, and I had her mistaken
notion of my doings to disperse. It was a drumly outlook for one whose
chief equipment was honesty of purpose, with, I am afraid, little of
the arts of human diplomacy.