DONALD
I got my wound in the early forenoon of December the 10th. About eight
o'clock on the night of the 17th I sat down in a deserted shepherd's hut
to the meal Donald had got ready for me. The week had been in one respect
a blank, for I had not seen Margaret. In every other respect it had been
laborious, strenuous, and exciting, and we had just seen the end of the
toughest job so far. We, meaning my dragoons and myself, were on the top
of Shap. Some ammunition wagons had broken down on the upward climb,
bunging up the road at its stiffest bit and delaying us for hours. His
lordship and the Colonel, with the infantry of the rear-guard, were in
Shap village a mile or two ahead. The Prince was still farther on,
probably in Penrith.
The delay was dangerous. Our army had rested one full day at Preston and
another at Lancaster. Even at Preston the Colonel and I, with my dragoons,
had barely ridden out of the town when a strong body of enemy horse rode
in from the east, sent by Wade to reinforce the Duke. Our margin of safety
was being cut down daily. We should have to fight before long, and I was
posted here, on the top of Shap, to see that no surprise was sprung upon
us.
The shieling, as Donald called it, was about a hundred yards past the
highest point of the road, where a picket was on the watch. Across the
road was a bit of a dip, and here my dragoons were making themselves
comfortable round a roaring fire, fuel for which was provided by the
smashed-up carcass of a derelict wagon. The country was as bare as a
bird's tail, but by a slice of great good luck one of them had shot a
stray sheep on the way up, and the air was thick with the smell of singed
mutton.
Here I must say of my dragoons that they were men I loved to command.
After twelve days' work of a sort to knock up an elephant they were as
fresh as daisies. Donald they all feared, and as Donald, for my behoof,
made no bones about telling them how the laddie's nief, sma' as it lookit,
'ad dinged 'im, Donald, oot o' his seven senses, they feared me. I think
they even liked me. Anyhow, I never had an ugly look or a glum word from
one of them. Some people express surprise at the splendid Highland
regiments now, thanks to Mr. Pitt's politic genius, serving in our army.
It is no surprise to me who have commanded a body of clansmen for a
fortnight in the back-end of a retreat.
Donald was a very jewel of a man. He was servant, sergeant, nurse, and
companion, and unbeatable in all capacities. My wound had given me more
trouble than I expected, even though Mr. Bamford had told me that one of
the larger arteries was injured. Once or twice since, as occasion served,
a doctor had dressed it, but it was Donald's incessant care that did most
for it. I still wore my left arm in a sling.
He had made me a fire of wood and turfs; given me roast mutton, a slice
of cheese sprinkled with oatmeal, and good bread to eat, and a pint of
milk laced with whisky to drink. Refinements which he would have scouted
for himself in any place, he had taken thought to provide for me in these
wilds--a pewter plate and a silver beaker, both stolen. The only
furnishing in the hut was a squat log, almost the size of a butcher's
block, which served as a table. For seat, Donald rigged up half the
tail-board of the wagon across two heaps of turfs. He completed his work
by producing a tallow candle stuck in a dab of clay by way of candlestick.
Donald had left me to my food and gone over to the camp to get his own. I
made a nourishable meal and then sat down before the fire to smoke and
think.
I had not seen Margaret since Leek, and had not been alone with her
since, her hand in mine, we had crept out of the gracious presence of the
dead. And I had got into a mood in which I felt that it was well I did not
see her. Some day I should have to do without her altogether, and this was
a chance of learning how to do it.
Though I had not seen her, I had heard of her. While our army stayed the
day in Lancaster I had been watching the road within sight of the spires
of Preston, wondering why the Duke's horse, after their accession of
strength, did not come after us. The Marquess of Tiverton has since told
me that the Duke had been kept a day at Preston by rumours of a French
landing on the south coast. Being far behind, I had ridden through
Lancaster without drawing rein, but in the main street a stranger--one of
us, however, as his white cockade showed--had stepped up to my saddle and
handed me a letter. It was plainly of a woman's writing, and I burned to
think that it was Margaret's hand that had penned the direction to "Oliver
Wheatman, Esquire, Captain of Dragoons in the army of His Royal Highness
the Prince Regent." I tore it open, and found it was from the Lady
Ogilvie. She would understand and forgive if she could ever know how
disappointed I was.
It had been written that morning before leaving the town, and bore traces
of hasty composition. It ran as follows:--
"SIR,--This is to let ye know, dear Oliver, that I'm sure M. has got a
bee in his bonnet. I'm thinking that some one we know has tell't him she
will hae no trokings with him in the way he wants. I dinna ken for
certain, mark ye, but they were taegither last night, and this morning
he's not hanging round to pit us in ye carriage, as he ordinarily does,
and she is pale and quiet, and says she wishes her father was at hand, and
I like it not, dear Oliver. I call you dear Oliver because y'are such a
guid laddie, just as I'm a guid girl. Davie tell't me how you stood up and
saluted him, and I was glad I'd kissed ye ance upon a time, though it was
only to plague ye. Remember what I tell't ye about these Highland boddys.
M. is like all the rest of 'em, and moreover the Prince made ye his
aide-de-camp, and it was to have been him, tho' he didna mind at the first
because it left him free to be courting his leddy, but noo he'll hae it
rankling in his heart like poison. And keep your eye on that chiel,
Donald. He's foster-brother to M., and wad stick his dirk in the Prince
himself if M. tell't him to. They're not bad boddys, but that's how they
are. She says naething about ye, and that's a guid sign, I'm thinking. I
wish ye knew the French instead of that silly Lattin, for then I cud write
ye a propper letter wi' nice words in it, but she says yell hae to learn
Italian first to suit her, but that's only her daffery. Excuse this
ill-writ note, for the paper is bad and I'm no sure o' my English when
it's guid.--Your obedient servant and loving guid friend,
"ISHBEL OGILVIE"
I pulled the dab of mud close to my elbow and read it again. In part it
was plain enough. That Maclachlan was madly in love with Margaret had
become almost a matter of common gossip. My Lord George Murray had hinted
at it more than once, as he had at my displacing the young Chief in the
Prince's favour. Maclachlan was son and heir to a chief of considerable
power and reputation. That he should fall in love with Margaret was
natural, and had she fallen in love with him I should not have been
surprised. Even after the event, I still say that he was a fine,
upstanding man, delightful to look on, and, so far as I knew, worthy of
any woman, even of such a one as Margaret. But the heart is master not
servant, and cannot be commanded. She loved him not and there was an end
of it.
Next, Lady Ogilvie hinted at danger to me from him. Well, if he wanted a
fight, a fight he should have. There's no Englishman living thinks more of
Scotsmen than I do, but I have never thought enough of the best Scot
breathing to run away from him. As for Donald, unless I was an idiot and
he a better actor than Mr. Garrick, he would far sooner have driven his
dirk into himself than into me. That matter could rest. There would be no
fighting that night, and I never put on my breeches till it's time to get
up.
Where her ladyship was wrong was in supposing, as clearly she did, that
Margaret's love affairs interested me otherwise than as being Margaret's.
I loved her, loved her dearly, all the more dearly because hopelessly. I
had no qualifications which would enable me to speak my love. At my best
nothing but a poor yeoman, I was now not even that, I was a declared rebel
in a rebellion that had failed. And if I had had every qualification that
rank and wealth could give me, it would still have been the same. Between
her and me was the dead body of my friend and the widowed heart of my
sister.
I was meditatively refilling my pipe when I heard Donald's voice without,
raised in earnest explanation.
"An' if I didna think it wass auld Nick comin' for me afore ma reetfu'
time, may I never drink anither drap whisky as lang as I live."
Some one laughed at the explanation, and Donald, still explaining, pushed
open the door and made way for Margaret, who, before I could rise, was
glowering over me, in the delightful way she had, girlish pretence just
dashed with womanly earnest.
"I shall never forgive you, nor father, nor Donald, nor anybody else. And
you're not to move, sir!"
"I'm sorry, madam," said I.
"You always are. It's your favourite mood. You live on sorrow," she said,
pelting me with the terse, sharp sentences. Then, for I twitched at her
telling me I lived on sorrow, she melted at once, and said, "Oh, Oliver,
I'm so sorry. Why did you not send for me and let me nurse it better?
Surely that was my right as well as my duty."
There was no contenting her till she had seen and dressed my wound. She
had brought lint and linen with her, some kind of balsam which nearly made
me glad she had not had the daily dressing of my arm, and even a basin and
a huge bottle of clear spring water, which were brought in from the calash
by Bimbo, Lady Ogilvie's little black coachman. The hut looked like a
surgery, and Donald and Bimbo got mixed up in the most laughable way in
dodging about to wait on her.
"Com' oot of it!" said Donald desperately, unwinding the little black out
of his plaid for the second time.
"You one big elephant in pekkaloats!" he retorted, grinning bare his big
white teeth. "You tread on Bimbo, Bimbo go squash."
"How does it feel now?" asked Margaret, when her task was over.
"I shall be able to clout Donald with it in the morning," I answered.
"Tat's petter," said he, grinning with delight. "I'm thinkin' I'd suner
be dinged wi' 'er again than see 'er hinging there daein' naethin'."
He took Bimbo off to the camp-fire and left us alone. We wrangled about
the seating accommodation of the hut, for the cart-tail was but short, and
I wanted her to have it to herself. She flouted the idea, and in the end
we shared it, and I minded its shortness no longer. She would fill my pipe
for me, and held a burning splinter to the bowl while I got it going. Over
her doctoring she had been very pale and quiet. Now she got her colour
back in the light and warmth of the fire, but she quietened down again as
soon as I was smoking in comfort.
She told me briefly that she had stayed in Shap to see her father. Lady
Ogilvie had insisted on her keeping the calash, so that she could come on
in comfort in the morning. From her father she had learned of my wound,
and had come on at once to see for herself how I was. She would start back
for Shap shortly, where she was to stay the night with her father.
She told me this and then leaned forward, cupping her chin in her hands,
and went quiet again.
I was glad of her silence, glad that she was hiding her face from me, for
I needed to pull myself together. That something had happened was clear,
and, whatever it was, it had struck home. In some way of deep concernment
there was a new Margaret by my side, but in another way it was the old
familiar Margaret as well, for she was wearing mother's long grey domino.
She had unclasped it so that it now hung loosely on her, and flung back
the hood so that the firelight made lambent flickerings in her hair.
"I have not seen you for twelve days," she said at last.
"No, madam."
"Have you been neglecting me, sir?" Just a touch of vigour was in her
voice, but she still gazed at the fire.
"You are a soldier's daughter, not an alderman's," I said quietly, and
the retort brought her head round with a jerk.
"And how does that excuse your neglect?"
"By giving you the chance of ascertaining from your father whether my
military duties have left me any opportunity of neglecting you," I
answered steadily. As usual with me, since I could not woo, I would be
master where I could. It was a source of mean delight to me.
"More logic," she said briefly, and turned to the fire again.
Apparently she tested the logic in her mind and came to the conclusion
that it was sound. She got up, threw some wood on the fire, thrusting me
back playfully when I tried to forestall her, and then said merrily, "What
do you think dad said to-night?"
"It would take hours to guess, I expect, so tell me at once, since I see
it hipped you."
"It did," she said, with playful emphasis. "I fear I've not trained him
up as fathers should be trained, for he coolly told me that if I had not
had the misfortune to be a girl, I might perhaps have turned out as good a
lad as you."
"Misfortune!" I echoed almost angrily.
"The exact word," she replied.
"Misfortune! To be the most beautiful woman in England, with the world at
your feet--he calls that a misfortune?"
I spoke energetically as the occasion demanded, being, moreover, glad of
an outlet. Before I had finished, however, she was back in her old
position, with her face hidden from me by her hands. She puzzled me more
than ever, for, after a long silence, she burst out, "Not my world,
Oliver!"
The phrase shot up like a spout of lava from some deep centre of molten
thought. I pitied and loved her, but I was helpless. To make a diversion I
looked at my watch and luckily it was the time when the picket at the top
should be changed, so I went to the door and opened it. A splendid blare
of piping came in from the camp-fire as I did so, and Margaret tripped to
the door to listen.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"Donald," said I. "He's one of the great masters of the pipes. I believe
in the tale of Amphion and the walls of Thebes now, for this afternoon I
saw Donald pipe some broken-down wagons out of the road."
I went across to see to the change of picket, and when I got back into
the hut I saw that the tension was over. I relit my pipe, sat down again
at her side, and started a rapid series of questions as to what she had
seen and heard during the retreat. Try how I would, nay, try as we would,
we did not get back to our old footing. We were afraid of silences, and
skipped from topic to topic at breakneck speed. We two who had sauntered
together in the sunlight, now stumbled along in a mist.
At last she said she must be going, and I went out and shouted to Donald
to get Bimbo and the calash ready, and four men as an escort. When I got
back to her, she arose, somewhat wearily, and I put the domino on fully
and fitted the hood round her head.
"You see I've gone back to the domino, Oliver," she said.
"It's the very thing for a cold night and a dirty road," I replied
cheerfully, stepping in front of her, a couple of paces off, to take my
last look at her in the light.
"I have never met a man who understands so much about women as you do,"
she said.
"Thank you, madam," I cried boisterously, and bowed so as to avoid her
eyes. But when I was upright again, they caught mine once more, and
something in them made me tremble.
"Or so little," she whispered, and she was pitifully white and miserable.
If it had not been for what I saw between us--there, on the floor of
crazed and trampled mud, I should have flung my arms around her. But I
could not step over _that_.
"Ta carrish iss ready," cried Donald from the door-sill.
I packed her snugly in the calash and started two dragoons ahead. Bimbo
clucked to his horse and was off. I walked a hundred yards by the side of
the carriage till it was time to whistle for the other dragoons to start.
Then I made Bimbo pull up.
The young moon was battling with great stacks of clouds, but just at that
moment won a brief victory, and gave me a clear view of Margaret. She put
out her hand, which she had not yet gloved, and I took it in mine, bowed
my head over it, and kissed it.
"Good night, Oliver," she whispered.
"Good night, Margaret," I replied, and whistled shrilly to hide my
emotions. Something sent her away with her eyes ashine and her face
glorious with a smile.
The dragoons clattered by, and I stood for a few minutes staring
downhill. _And so little. Not my world. And so little. Not my world_.
The words rang in my ears like a peal of bells. Then, by one of the odd
tricks the mind plays us, I remembered that I had left the Hanyards for
the work's sake, and that my love for Margaret could only be justified to
myself--the only one who could ever know it--by my work. Over the black
top there, down in the blacker valley, was the enemy, her enemy, nibbling
up the space between us as a rabbit nibbles up a lettuce leaf. I closed my
mind to the maddening chime, and started forthright to visit my picket.
The road was flush with the bare windswept summit. The crumpled ground
was matted with coarse grass, almost too poor for sheep-feed. The
camp-fire still blazed; near it a bagpipe crooned; now and again a horse
shook in its harness. The moon whipped out for a moment, and then it was
pitch dark again.
As I stepped it out there was a rush at me from the grass, behind and to
my left. Down I dropped full length, and a man shot over me and sprawled
in the road, but he was quick and lithe as a cat, and was up before me,
for my slung arm disadvantaged me. I could just see his sword poised for a
cut as he fairly pounced on me. I dived outward as he jumped, and he
missed me, but before I could get behind him he was round and at me again
like a fury. I was weaponless and crippled, but if I could once get past
his sword, it would be all over with him. The pace was so hot, and my mind
was so bent on the work, that I did not call for aid. At last I tricked
him, for in jumping aside I flung my hat hard in his face, and in a flash
had my right hand at his throat. He jabbed at me with his left, and I
twisted round to his right side, pressing his sword-arm against his body,
and digging my fingers into his windpipe. I heard his sword drop, and felt
him feeling for a pistol. He was as hard as a nail, and I began to dream
that he would get me before I had choked him.
Donald ended the matter. He, doglike in his fidelity, came striding down
the road after me. The moon outpaced the clouds again. He saw us at our
death-grips, and came on with a rush and a yell. He drove his dirk into
the nape of the man's neck and twisted the blade in its ghastly socket. A
sharp, sickening click--and the man dropped out of my fingers like a
stone. The moon went in again, and hid the evil thing from us.
"Pe she hurtit?" asked Donald anxiously.
"Not a scratch!" I replied.
"Tat's goot! Carry 'er up to the fire," he added to three or four men who
had run up on hearing his yell. "She's English and, maybe, she sall hae
fine pickins on 'er."
He stooped down, careless of a dead man as of a dead buck, and stropped
his dirk clean and dry on the man's breeches. Then the men, equally
indifferent, picked up the body and started off.
"D'ye ken wha the chiel is?" asked Donald, as we walked after them.
"A certain sergeant of dragoons, or one of his men," I answered.
"He winna fash ye ony more," said he. "Tat's a fine way of mine, when I
can get behint a mon. I've killt mony a stot like it, shoost t' keep in
the way of it." And he stabbed the air, twisted his wrist, and clicked
delightedly.
The men dumped the body near the fire. One of them stooped down and was
for putting his hand in the man's pocket, but drew it back as if he had
thrust it by mischance into the flames.
Then I knew.
I have heard a mare squeal in a burning stable, but I have never heard
agony in sound as I heard it there, on the top of Shap, when Donald flung
himself across the dead body of his chief and foster-brother.
There is one tender memory of this distressing scene. Neither by look,
word, nor tone did Donald attach blame or responsibility to me. He
recovered himself in a few minutes, and then stood up, and gave a brief
command in Gaelic. Four awe-struck men spread a plaid on the ground,
placed the dead body on it, and carried it into the hut. Donald, gravely
silent, took the pipes from the man who had been playing, and followed
them. I bared my head and went after him miserably.
Maclachlan's body lay on the floor of the hut. The eyes were wide open,
but on his fine composed face there was no trace of the agony and passion
in which he had gone before his God. It was as if, in that last terrible
second, some vision of beauty had swept his soul clean. I knelt down and
reverently closed the staring eyes.
"Donald," said I, when I arose, "I would to God that you had killed me
instead."
"It's weird," said he solemnly, "and weird mun hae way."
I looked at him closely. That he was struck to the heart was plain to
see, but, the first uprush of grief over, he had become sober, steadfast,
almost business-like, as if he had something great in hand to do, and
would be doing it.
He took the candle, now only the length of my ring-finger, and stuck it
on the narrow window-ledge. Again he spoke to the men in Gaelic, and they
moved out of the hut. Turning to me, he said, "Com in when ta licht gaes
oot!"
He had the right to be alone with his dead. I wrung his hand and left
him. When I looked back from the doorway, he was filling his bag with
wind, but stopped to say, "Weird mun hae way." And as he said it he smiled.
I crossed the road to the edge of the dip. More wood had been piled on
the fire, which now blazed cheerfully. Most of the men lay asleep in their
plaids, but a few stood guard over the horses, and the men who had carried
the body into the hut were squatting on the grass by the roadside. I took
my stand near them, and looked and listened.
The terrible similarity of Donald's case to mine appalled me. Each of us,
in saving another, had struck down in the darkness a man near and dear to
him. Two good men and true had gone when the lust of life is sweetest and
the will to live strongest. I, who three weeks ago had never seen human
life taken, had taken it, and seen it taken, as if men were of no more
account than cattle. Between the house-place of the Hanyards and the top
of Shap, Death had become my familiar.
For Maclachlan I had nothing but pity. He had thought that I stood
between him and Margaret. Clearly he had learned of her coming back to me,
and the thought had maddened him. He had disguised himself as an
Englishman and come after me, and this was the end of it.
These were my thoughts as I watched the flickering flame dropping nearer
and nearer to the window-ledge, and listened to the pipes. Donald was
inspired. He and the pipes were one. In his hands they became a living
thing. What he felt, they felt. They wept as he wept, they gloried as he
gloried, they triumphed as he triumphed.
He began with a murmur of grief that grew into a wail, became a
passionate tempest, and died into a prolonged sob. Then he changed his
note as memory wandered backward. The music became tenderly reminiscent,
subduedly cheerful. They were again boys together at their play, youthful
hunters swinging over the mountains after the red deer; young men with the
maidens; warriors on their first foray. The threads of life ran in and out
through the pattern of sounds he was weaving, and the older days of
fighting and victories followed as I listened. There was hurrying,
marching, charging; the groan of defeat; the mad slogan of final victory.
"He's fechtin' the Macleans noo," cried out one of the men, who had some
English, and the others chattered vigorously for a minute in their own
Gaelic.
The candle was now guttering on the window-ledge. These glories over,
Donald came hard up against the end of them all--the Chief dead at his
feet, slain by his own hand. For a time he faltered, playing only in
little, melancholy snatches. Then he got surer, and the music began to
come in blasts. He was seeing his way, learning what it all meant to him
and the Maclachlans. Weird mun hae way. Destiny must work itself out. We
children of a day are helpless before it.
The flame fell to a golden bead as the music grew in strength and
purpose. There was a burst of light, a peal of triumph, and the music and
the flame went out together.
Across the road I raced, threw open the door, and rushed in. Everything
was dark and still.
"Donald!" I called passionately.
There was no reply. I crept on tip-toe to the fire and kicked the embers
into a flame.
Donald was lying dead across the dead body of his Chief, his dirk buried
to the hilt in his own heart.
* * * * *
At daybreak we buried them side by side in one grave on the top of Shap,
their feet pointing northward to their own mountains. When the last clod
had been replaced, and a great boulder reverently carried up to mark the
spot, I turned, covered my head, and prepared to go, but the men stood on.
I looked back. They were loath to go. Something that should be done, had
been left undone.
I divined what they had in mind, turned back, bared my head as they
uncovered, and repeated the Lord's Prayer aloud.
I am thankful to this day to those men whom fools and bigots call
savages. They taught me to pray again.
"Man Captain," said the one who had English, as we walked away in a body,
"ye wad mak' a gran' meenister."
I could not withhold a smile, but before I could reply there was a
scattered rattle of shots from the dip. Looking around, I saw a body of
enemy horse on the lower hill across the valley to my left.
We were overtaken. We should have to fight.