“Are you the gentleman that was for stopping the carriage as we came?” she asked.
“I am that same unlucky gentleman that was sent speldering in the glaur.[2] I won an entrance to the house by a trick, and I am here at your service,” I said, throwing in my tag of Scotch to reassure her.
“You will be English, but you speak the kindly Scots,” she cried.
“My mother was from the Highlands,” I told her.
“What! You have the Highland blood in you? Oh then, it is the good heart you will have too. Will you ever have been on the braes of Raasay?”
I told her no; that I had always lived in England, though my mother was a Campbell. Her joy was the least thing in the world daunted, and in her voice there was a dash of starch.
“Oh! A Campbell!”
I smiled. ’Twas plain her clan was no friend to the sons of Diarmaid.
“My father was out in the ’15, and when he wass a wounded fugitive with the Campbell bloodhounds on his trail Mary Campbell hid him till the chase was past. Then she guided him across the mountains and put him in the way of reaching the Macdonald country. My father married her after the amnesty,” I explained.
The approving light flashed back into her eyes.
“At all events then I am not doubting she wass a good lassie, Campbell or no Campbell; and I am liking it that your father went back and married her.”
“But we are wasting time,” I urged. “What can I do for you? Where do you live? To whom shall I take you?”
She fell to earth at once. “My grief! I do not know. Malcolm has gone to France. He left me with Hamish Gorm in lodgings, but they will not be safe since——” She stopped, and at the memory of what had happened there the wine crept into her cheeks.
“And who is Malcolm?” I asked gently.
“My brother. He iss an agent for King James in London, and he brought me with him. But he was called away, and he left me with the gillie. To-night they broke into my room while Hamish was away, weary fa’ the day! And now where shall I go?”
“My sister is a girl about your age. Cloe would be delighted to welcome you. I am sure you would like each other.”
“You are the good friend to a poor lass that will never be forgetting, and I will be blithe to burden the hospitality of your sister till my brother returns.”
The sharp tread of footsteps on the stairs reached us. A man was coming up, and he was singing languidly a love ditty.
| “What is love? ’Tis not hereafter, Present mirth has present laughter, What’s to come is still unsure; In delay there lies no plenty, Then come kiss me sweet and twenty. Youth’s a stuff will not endure.” |
Something in the voice struck a familiar chord in my memory, but I could not put a name to its owner. The girl looked at me with eyes grown suddenly horror-stricken. I noticed that her face had taken on the hue of snow.
“We are too late,” she cried softly.
We heard a key fumbling in the lock, and then the door opened—to let in Volney. His hat was sweeping to the floor in a bow when he saw me. He stopped and looked at me in surprise, his lips framing themselves for a whistle. I could see the starch run through and take a grip of him. For just a gliff he stood puzzled and angry. Then he came in wearing his ready dare-devil smile and sat down easily on the bed.
“Hope I’m not interrupting, Montagu,” he said jauntily. “I dare say though that’s past hoping for. You’ll have to pardon my cursedly malapropos appearance. Faith, my only excuse is that I did not know the lady was entertaining other visitors this evening.”
He looked at her with careless insolence out of his beautiful dark eyes, and for that moment I hated him with the hate a man will go to hell to satisfy.
“You will spare this lady your insults,” I told him in a low voice. “At least so far as you can. Your presence itself is an insult.”
“Egad, and that’s where the wind sits, eh? Well, well, ’tis the manner of the world. When the cat’s away!”
A flame of fire ran through me. I took a step toward him, hand on sword hilt. With a sweep of his jewelled hand he waved me back.
“Fie, fie, Kenn! In a lady’s presence?”
Volney smiled at the girl in mock gallantry and my eyes followed his. I never saw a greater change. She was transformed. Her lithe young figure stood out tall and strong, every line of weariness gone. Hate, loathing, scorn, one might read plainly there, but no trace of fear or despair. She might have been a lioness defending her young. Her splendour of dark auburn hair, escaped and fallen free to her waist, fascinated me with the luxuriance of its disorder. Volney’s lazy admiration quickened to a deeper interest. For an instant his breath came faster. His face lighted with the joy of the huntsman after worthy game. But almost immediately he recovered his aplomb. Turning to me, he asked with his odd light smile,
“Staying long, may I ask?”
My passion was gone. I was possessed by a slow fire as steady and as enduring as a burning peat.
“I have not quite made up my mind how long to stay,” I answered coldly. “When I leave the lady goes with me, but I haven’t decided yet what to do with you.”
He began to laugh. “You grow amusing. ’Slife, you are not all country boor after all! May it please you, what are the alternatives regarding my humble self?” he drawled, leaning back with an elbow on the pillow.
“Well, I might kill you.”
“Yes, you might. And—er—What would I be doing?” he asked negligently.
“Or, since there is a lady present, I might leave you till another time.”
His handsome, cynical face, with its curious shifting lights and shadows, looked up at me for once suffused with genuine amusement.
“Stap me, you’d make a fortune as a play actor. Garrick is a tyro beside you. Some one was telling me that your financial affairs had been going wrong. An it comes to the worst, take my advice and out-Garrick Garrick.”
“You are very good. Your interest in my affairs charms me, Sir Robert. ’Tis true they are not promising. A friend duped me. He held the Montagu estates higher than honour.”
He appeared to reflect. “Friend? Don’t think I’m acquainted with any of the kind, unless a friend is one who eats your dinners, drinks your wines, rides your horses, and”—with a swift sidelong look at the girl—“makes love to your charming adored.”
Into the girl’s face the colour flared, but she looked at him with a contempt so steady that any man but Volney must have winced.
“Friendship!” she cried with infinite disdain. “What can such as you know of it? You are false as Judas. Did you not begowk my honest brother with fine words till he and I believed you one of God’s noblemen, and when his back was fairly turned——?”
“I had the best excuse in London for my madness, Aileen,” he said with the wistful little laugh that had gone straight to many a woman’s heart.
Her eye flashed and her bosom heaved. The pure girl-heart read him like an open book.
“And are you thinking me so mean a thing as still to care for your honeyed words? Believe me, there iss no viper on the braes of Raasay more detestable to me than you.”
I looked to see him show anger, but he nursed his silk-clad ankle with the same insolent languor. He