Offence is always a soldier's best defence, although it is a sailor's
phrase, so I would go out and make a reconnaissance from the back of
the Dower House. This should cause the invaders to show themselves,
and might, if they thought the move stood for any force, even alarm
them into a quiet retreat, which, for several reasons, was what I most
desired.
Quickly I told Marget of my intention, and the need for it, and asked
her to remain on guard where she was. She answered briskly, a woman
determined to be brave and not a burden, that nobody should enter the
place without feeling the weight of her grandfather's stick. She
added, and here came in the other woman, that I was not to be long
absent. This touched me sweetly, for it showed that Marget was
thinking less of her own safety, or, at the moment, even of her
mother's, than of mine in the night outside. Honestly, I went dancing
from her side with a wine of joy in me that I had never tasted, for she
had shown that I was something to her, perhaps more than something. I
might have been drunk, and if I had I could not have been more lost
than I was in the darkness behind the Dover House, because it instantly
swallowed me up.
There is a darkness to which, after a little, the eye so accustoms
itself that it can see trees and rocks and even faces in contour.
There is another darkness which seals the eyes and numbs the mind and
even weights the feet as with lead. This was that night's darkness, so
pall-like that I was simply lost in it.
Nevertheless, calling up all my sense of locality, and feeling the way
lightly with my bare, ready sword, I started to make a circle of the
Dower House. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty cautious steps, with my
sword-point probing the way, and it touched something soft and
yielding. That something a-sort of whimpered, as a dog caught poaching
would, or as a man might who felt a quick pain. A sword-prick stings,
and the something leapt erect and with a curse turned at me, when I
instinctively fell on guard. Another sword struck at mine, my blade
slid up this other, caught in the handle and wrenched it from the
unseen hand. The weapon fell among the bracken, but my man thought
more of getting away than of looking for it, so he doubled round a tree
and was gone.
Evidently I had struck the investing circle, and I went on cautiously,
but never another figure did I perceive, though, before me, ran many
soft noises of as many retreats. Finally there was a suppressed rush
away, and with that I arrived at the front door of the Dower House to
hear a mother's cry of distress, "Marget, Marget! oh, Marget, Marget!"
"Where is she?" said I anxiously.
"She grew alarmed for you," answered her mother more anxiously, "and
went out, although I tried to keep her. Hardly had she gone when I
heard a smothered sob, and then there was a hustle of feet as if she
were being carried oft by force."
There was a boding of ill in her cry, like a coronach, and the
domestics took it up in sympathy, as Highland women will. "Marget!
Marget! Mistress Marget!" rose the cry, and we became aware that all
the inmates of the castle were stirring to it. But never a response
came from Marget, never a token from the raiders, and it was forced on
me that she and they were both gone from us.
We called on her, and searched for them until the dawn came, but only
found the sword which I had encountered, and I knew it as one the Black
Colonel had long worn, and then, when he himself got a better, that
with the "S" for "Stuart" on its handle, had given to Red Murdo. The
larger knowledge, brought by the dawn, was that the raiders had
vanished as secretly as they had come, and that they had, beyond doubt,
taken Marget with them. For though--
"We sought her baith by bower and ha',
The lady was not seen."
_XIII--The Wound of Absence_
You will probably know what it is to lose somebody who by physical
fragrance, the mystery of a common spirituality, or both, has become
essential to you. The wound is twice as bitter if, until the parting,
you were unaware how much that presence really meant. It is as if you
had come into a new world of your own and then found it vanish, before
you could take possession.
I had no doubt, thanks to the hearing of his voice and the leaving
behind of his sword, that the raiders were headed by Red Murdo, the
Black Colonel's henchman. Actual light came during the morning, in the
form of a message by word of mouth: "I am a prisoner in the topmost
room of Lonach Tower, and Red Murdo and his men are camped below."
When the Highland woman who brought it had said that, she melted away
again without taking bite or sup. She lived in the ruin of Lonach
Tower, and that was how Marget had been able to send her with the
message. She could not be too long absent, however, or she might be
missed by Red Murdo, whom, she said, she had left snoring out his lost
night's sleep.
I found a Highlander who had engaged in relations with Red Murdo,
though their nature need not be mentioned, and who was anxious to score
them off for a settled life. Working on that, I told him to go to
Lonach Tower, where he would find Red Murdo, and say the Black Colonel
was waiting at a fold of the hills, which I named--waiting to hear how
the night's work had fared! That, as you will mark, was the nice
significance of the message, which I hoped would move Red Murdo and his
merry men--his master waited "to hear how the night's work had fared!"
If the Black Colonel was behind the business it would seem a natural
message, nay, a command, and my messenger went off with it. When he
had gone, I picked out a dozen of our best soldiers, and, hinting the
mission, without explaining it, we followed at a distance. We halted
behind the last peak of the hill which looks down on Lonach Tower and
awaited events.
We saw the receding Highland figure wend slowly towards the bare, lean
turret, and, when he reached it, my eyes lifted to its queer little
windows, seeking to look through them. They gave no sign of anybody
inside, and, indeed, the mullioning of time had so dimmed them that,
perhaps, the outside world could hardly be seen from within.
My Highlander hammered at the one entrance door, and he had to hammer a
while before it opened to him. Then it only opened partly, as if the
guardian kept a shoulder to it, while he spoke the visitor. Next it
shut again, leaving my man outside, but evidently the colloquy had not
finished, for he waited.
Ten minutes more and the door drew wide, as we could see, and Red Murdo
came out, his comrades with him, and there was more questioning of the
bringer of news. Evidently he played his part well, perhaps because,
knowing nothing of what lay behind, he simply stuck to the terms of his
delivery, for presently Red Murdo's party set off towards the
meeting-place I had named for them.
Here was my time to act, and I only waited until the coast, or rather
the valley, was clear. When the tartans of Red Murdo's party had
fluttered out of sight, in obedience, as they fancied, to the commands
of their chief, I got my fellows quickly a-foot for Lonach Tower and
she who was a captive there.
The heavy oaken, iron-clasped door had been locked by the departed
raiders, and no sign of any tenant within fluttered out to us.
Half-measures are no more useful in opening bolted doors, of which you
have not the key, than they are in accomplishing other difficult
things. So, finally, we put our collective weights against it, pushed
hard and steadily, and when the weather-worn bars and hinges gave way,
tumbled headlong into the old keep.
Nobody was in the ground-room floor, nothing, except the untidiness
left by half-a-dozen rough men, and I mounted the narrow stair and
tried the room above. Again we had to use force, and when the door
flew inward I almost landed in the lap of Marget Forbes. There she
was, bound to a rough seat, in the middle of the room, with a cravat
tied round the lower part of her face, to keep her silent. Gently but
swiftly I undid the gag, and after that cut the rough tow which bound
her to the seat. Being thus freed, she told me, with an agitation
which I tried to still, what had happened just before we came and on
the previous night.
Red Murdo, she said, when she could speak, had told her, with awkward
apologies, that he did not want to be unchivalrous but that he and his
men were called away for a little and that he must make siccar about
her custody, and no alarm giving, against his return. She had ceased
asking him why she had been forcibly abducted and what was intended for
her, because on that he would say nothing except, "You are quite safe,
my young lady, quite safe. We may be plain fellows, but we are
Highland men towards a woman, especially towards Mistress Marget Forbes
of Corgarff." "But how," I asked, for she had now somewhat recovered
her nerve and composure, and the agreeable surprise our arrival had
caused her, "how did you fall into their hands at the Dower House?"
"Oh," said she, "that was simple. You went out to reconnoitre, and,
hearing in the stillness, words and a noise like a passage of swords, I
became anxious about you. Under this impulse I opened the front door
and stepped out a few yards when a Highland plaid fell round my head,
silencing me effectually before I could shout an alarm, and I was borne
swiftly away by two men. My astonishment was so great that I am not
sure if I attempted to resist until I was some distance from the Dower
House. Then two other men relieved my captors in carrying me, and by
stages, for I absolutely declined to walk a step, I was brought here
and placed in this room."
"Where you have been unable to give any alarm?"
"That you can see, and all I knew was that Red Murdo was the leader of
my captivity, because he grumbled about having been stabbed in the leg
and about losing his sword. 'What,' I asked, 'could he and his master,
the Black Colonel, want by spiriting me away?' But Red Murdo wouldn't
answer the question, and I haven't been able to answer it myself.
Somehow I have felt that no personal harm was intended me because my
captors, if not exactly friends, were not strangers, but men in some
relationship to our own people. Mostly I have been anxious for the
anxiety of my mother," and her eyes looked concern at me.
"Well," I said, "we shall relieve that anxiety very soon now; you have
probably had enough of Lonach Tower, which, I notice, is sadly in need
of the repairer. Let us go home!"
I said that last word out of my heart, and I thought Marget answered
with a gleam which comes into a woman's eyes only when her heart is
somewhere behind it. We went down the slender, creaky stair, the
soldiers following, and came to the door, where, if you please, we ran
slap into the Black Colonel, Red Murdo, and the other caterans. In the
unexpected lies drama, and here, indeed, was a dramatic confronting.
We stared at each other for a moment as if asking who was to speak
first, and, like himself, the Black Colonel managed to do it.
"I heard only an hour ago," he said, "of a lady in distress in this old
house. I have come, at my best speed, to help her, as who would not,
when that lady is Mistress Marget Forbes."
"Would it not have been better," I cut in, "if you had heard of her
distress before and come earlier to remedy it?"
"Possibly," he answered, "but if I had been earlier, Captain Gordon, I
might not have met you here. So you see," he added challengingly,
"there are compensations, although these are things, as far as my
experience goes, with which we could often dispense."
"Well," said I, "I have been able to render first aid to Mistress
Forbes, but it would be a satisfaction if you could explain to us how
she came to need it."
"Explain! How can I explain?"
"You have cultivated a name for gallantry, Colonel"--he bowed--"and it
would be gallant to a lady if you would say why Red Murdo invaded the
Dower House last night and carried its young mistress away?"
"Did he, the villain? He did not tell me of that, when I ran into him
and his following this morning. He said he came to where we met, in
response to an order from me. There was no such order, though it is
true that I was keeping an open eye for Red Murdo, a habit I have when
I know he is abroad, lest he might have anything for me."
By this time it was clear that the Black Colonel had commissioned Red
Murdo to kidnap Marget in order that he might rescue her, and, by the
act of so doing, advocate his plans towards her. He was denying it now
that he found in Lonach Tower not Marget alone and a captive, but
Marget with a good, stout bodyguard to look after her.
She had not spoken so far, partly because she had not been directly
addressed, partly because, as I could see, she was in a hot fury with
the Black Colonel. But the strange fascination of the man was working
on her, as I could also see, and, woman-like, speak she would or die.
"If," she demanded of him quietly, slowly, for she had herself in hand,
"you had anything special, even private to say to me, why did you not
come to the Dower House instead of sending your handy men to scare us
all and run off with me? Whatever you hoped to gain, that, you must
know, was not the way to gain it."
The Black Colonel looked at her composedly for a moment and said,
"Mistress Marget, I am the last person in the world to think that any
form of duress would influence your actions. On the other hand, since
the opportunity has come, I make bold, even in the presence of Captain
Gordon and our respective followers, to say a word in frankness, out of
regard for you and your house. There are events pending which might go
far to re-establish your family, and you should know about them, not
merely indirectly but directly from me, who am deeply concerned in the
business."
Marget blushed and flushed and glanced at me, as if asking me to
protect her from what was very like a manifesto for public knowledge,
thrust upon her when she could not help it. Her unconscious appeal
warmed my heart like the sun, but I held back, preferring she should
give the word which would, once and for all, put the Black Colonel in
his place.
"By what right," she said with dignity, "do you address your proposals
to me as you have done? You have schemed them in an underground way.
Must you commit the affront of offering them to me in public, after
using force to bring me here?"
"I have told you," broke in the Black Colonel, "what I know of Red
Murdo and his doings on this morning, and if you do not believe me,
why, I cannot help it. It may be that I had a plan for meeting you
face to face, but no plan like what has now emerged."
"No," said I, intervening, "your plan was to find Marget alone in this
eerie place, to work on her woman's feelings, her anxiety for her
mother, her regard for her house, all that you might commit her with
the Crown authorities as assenting to the secret negotiations which you
are ripening."
"Doesn't that reflection come oddly from an officer of the Crown," he
retorted, "because I have not heard you have resigned your commission?
You should leave it to us who are not honoured with service under the
foreign king, to flout his Majesty."
"There are moments, Jock Farquharson," I hotly replied, "when one's
first duty is to be a man, and this is such a moment. I tell you if
you do not drop your persecution of this lady you will have to count on
a forthright quarrel with me."
"A pretty speech, my Captain Gordon," he said, adding: "Pretty speeches
have a habit of coming from those whose tongues are their boldest
weapons."
"You credit me," I said warmly, "with an accomplishment which I may or
may not have; you assail me for want of a quality which I beg you to
permit me to prove here and now."
There was no mistaking that, and he and his men looked their
understanding. My feelings were what you can imagine, but I spoke
deliberately. Perhaps I realized the need for quiet resolution rather
than temper, which is ever too brittle a weapon to work well. As I
understood, the Black Colonel, having failed to get Marget into his
hands, with the object of mentally coercing her, now wanted to break
me, if he could, in her presence. There was no end to the man's
resource when the bad side of his character got going, and no measure
at which he would stick.
His insult to me had been spoken in a voice loud enough to be heard by
everybody. He so meant it to be heard, but my reply, an instant
acceptance of his challenge, surprised him for a moment. He looked at
me, hesitating what to say, and I looked at him with a perfectly clear
purpose in my face. We both looked at Marget, at his Highlanders and
at my men, knowing that with all these for witness of what had
happened, more must follow.
Deep down in my heart I felt relief, because I was sure that some day
we must fight out the odds between us, and when you come to that pass
with any man, it is best it should be settled. They say that delay is
fatal in love and deadly in war, and with me the two risks combined,
for mine was both a question of love and a question of war.
"Is it elegant," the Black Colonel said in a purring voice of which I
knew the worth, "that two men who are kinsmen in a degree, should
fight, in the presence of a young lady who is a kinswoman?"
"You should have thought of that before," I quickly retorted.
"I agree with Captain Cordon," said Marget, interrupting us, "for I
come of a people who have never been afraid to see trouble through, and
I beg of you, Colonel Jock Farquharson, not to let me stand in the way.
Nay, if you will accept me, I shall be referee!"
I bent my head to thank her for this, and he bowed in the over-polite
fashion which he had learned among the French. By this time our
respective followers, now taking a fight for granted, had lined
themselves up to watch it, one set of men in one row, the other set in
another, with space between them. A spirit of the love of combat for
combat's sake, shone in their expectant eyes and echoed in their
suppressed, excited talk.
There had once been a small garden attached to the Tower of Lonach, but
it had been so overgrown with grass, and the grass had been so
industriously eaten by sheep and deer, that now it was a rough, hard
green, an entirely good place for swordsmen. On it, as the sun began
to dip behind the hills, we took our stand, with my sergeant for second
to me, while Red Murdo filled the same office towards the Black Colonel.
Things had happened so swiftly that I had scarcely time to think, and
perhaps that was well, for thought never nerves you in such business as
I had before me. There was I confronted with one of the best swordsmen
in the Highlands, while I was--well, passably good. He was bigger,
stronger, a more heroic, more impressive figure altogether than I was,
and these pictorial attitudes count by the impression they make. I had
to rely on a cool head, a nimble wrist, and I must in no wise depart
from the style of fighting by which alone, as I well knew, I could hope
to hold my own.
The Black Colonel would be sure, following the untutored Highland
manner, and keeping his French training in reserve, to attack
furiously, hoping so to destroy me at the beginning. My plan, based
upon the barracks and camp training of a regular soldier, was to parry
with him, to hold him off, to wear him down, and then, if I had the
luck, which Heaven give me, get a blow home.
Marget, for all her courage, had walked over to a far corner of the
green, where, however, she could still see us, because my soldiers and
the Black Colonel's men stood aside to let her do that. Their common
instinct for a fight flamed while they waited, but I knew that there
would be no interference from either party of retainers, however things
fell out, and so I had no anxiety as to the quarrel going beyond the
Black Colonel and myself. All men of Highland degree were brought up
to believe that honest disputes could be settled better by combat than
anyhow else, and, indeed, they almost have a traditional reverence for
the broad-sword of their country.
Nobody called on us to begin, but when the Black Colonel and I, our few
preparations made, had looked at each other for a minute from the
measured distance which divided us, we both advanced. As I had
expected, he came with a rush, and if it had not been for my sound
training in defence he might have smitten me at once. As it was, by a
turn which seemed new to him, I caught his sword under the point and
lifted it lightly upward into the empty air. He almost flew past me
with the motion which he had gathered, and we both had to face squarely
round in order that we might continue.
This time, apparently, he meant to be more deliberate, thinking,
perhaps, that if he missed me again with one of his wild lunges, he
might meet the sting of my thrust. He played with me, and I responded
to his caution, so far as he could be cautious, in the same spirit.
Our swords were of equal length and about the same weight, but he had a
longer arm than I, as well as a stronger one. Still, I made up for
this, as he began to realize, by quicker work in what might be called
the smaller craft of fighting. I could be here and there and somewhere
else with my sword, while he was making a parry or a lunge or a level
stroke, for he tried everything.
Now his sword ran safely under my left arm where I guided it, and the
point of mine caught the breast-high edge of his kilt, where the cloth
is closely plaited and therefore very resisting. My blade bent so that
if it had been other than the finest steel it might have snapped. Then
the grip in the cloth broke, the sword was free again, and we were
without hurt, only the battle was growing warm.
Its contagion had agitated the men looking on, to a point where,
forgetting themselves, they began to shout encouragement to us
severally, the Black Colonel's men to him, mine to me. Red Murdo was
urgently demonstrative, and my sergeant, as he afterwards told me, kept
an eye on him lest he should be tempted to intervene. In the distance
Marget, as I saw momentarily, stood still and quiet, but there was a
fixed anxiety in her face, and the woman's horror of two men seeking to
take each other's life on her account!
Now came the third bout, and knowing the limits of my strength I
determined to make it the last, if I could. The Black Colonel, it
encouraged me to notice, had also grown a little tired. His rush and
dash were less strong when he came at me, and I thought I caught in his
eye a new doubtfulness of success. He was famed for the quickness with
which he could finish a duel, and probably he had also decided to
settle this one at the third time of asking.
We parried and thrust, sword to sword, and I was driven to give way a
few paces by the Colonel's onslaught. This led him to take risks, as I
had hoped he might. Let him tire out his sword arm with heavy lunges
and elaborate recoveries, while I kept myself on guard, and then,
perhaps, my turn would come, for getting him. It did come, but it
came, as most things come, in an unexpected fashion.
Sweating like a man in a fever, with his eyes wild and savage, the
Black Colonel at last fairly flung himself on me. My face was also
streaming with perspiration, but my head remained cool, perhaps because
I felt that Marget was looking on. A warm heart and a cool head should
neighbour an ordeal, and, in that assailing of me, my maintenance of
this combination was everything.
As he leapt forward, purposing to overwhelm me, the Black Colonel's
foot appeared to catch an uprising tuft that had been left unnibbled by
the sheep, possibly on account of the coarse toughness of its grass.
He lost his balance and shot heavily at me, holding his sword straight
out, as if to drive it through me. Here was my chance, for he could
not, in this act of falling, change the position of his weapon. I did
that for him by a mere touch, and it ran by me, near, it is true, but
without hurting me. Mine, on the other hand, pierced the muscle of the
Black Colonel's right arm, and instantly his sword fell from his hand,
rattling close to my foot. The blood spurted from him to the cry of
the onlookers, "Ah, he's ill hit," for he looked it, lying there on the
ground with a long, red gash in his arm.
"No," he said, slowly rising, "I am not ill hurt, but I am hurt in a
measure which will keep me from fighting any more this afternoon. Here
I am with a useless right hand, and I have never learned to use the
left, so we must stop."