“I must e’en do as the rest,” I smiled.
“Yet I’d bet a pony you don’t care a pinch of snuff for James Stuart. ’Tis loyalty to yourselves that animates you.”
Presently he harked back to the topic that was never closed between us.
“By this time next week you will have touched the heart of our eternal problem. The mystery of it will perhaps be all clear to you then. ’Tis most strange how at one sweep all a man’s turbulent questing life passes into the quiet of—of what? That is the question: of unending death or of achieved knowledge?” Then he added, coming abruptly to the issue: “The day draws near. Do you think better of my offer now?”
“Sir Robert, I have lived a tempestuous life these past months. I have known hunger and cold and weariness; I have been at the top of fortune’s wave and at the bottom; but I have never found it worth my while to become divorced from honour. You find me near dead from privations and disease. Do you think I would pay so much for such an existence? Believe me, when a man has passed through what I have he is empty of fears.”
“I could better spare a better man,” he said.
“Sorry to inconvenience you,” I told him grimly.
“I’ faith, I think you’re destined to do that dead or alive.”
“I think I am. You will find me more in your way dead than alive.”
“I’ll outlive your memory, never fear.” Then quietly, after a moment’s hesitation: “There’s one thing it may be a comfort for you to know. I’ve given up any thought of putting her on the rack. I’ll win fairly or not at all.”
I drew a deep free breath. “Thank you for telling me.”
“I mean to marry her though. I swear to you, Montagu, that my heart is wrapped up in her. I thought all women alike until I met this one. Now I know better. She could have made a different man of me; sometimes I think she could even yet. I vow to you I would not now injure a hair of her head, but willy-nilly, in the end I shall marry the girl.”
“To ruin her life?”
“To save mine rather.”
“Do you think yourself able to change the whole course of your life for her?”
He mused. “Ah, Montagu! There your finger falls pat on the pulse of my doubt. My heart cries aye, my reason gives a negative.”
“Don’t worry overmuch about it,” I answered, railing at him. “She’ll never look at you, man. My grave will be an insurmountable barrier. She will idealize my memory, think me a martyr and herself a widowed maid.”
The shot scored. ’Twas plain he must have often thought of that himself.
“It may interest you to know that we are engaged to be married,” I added.
“Indeed! Let me congratulate you. When does the happy event occur, may I ask? Or is the day set?”
He had no need to put into words more clearly the irony of the fate that encompassed us.
“Dead or alive, as you say, I bar your way,” I said tartly.
“Pooh, man! I give you six weeks of violent grief, six months of tender melancholy.”
“You do not know the Scotch. She will die a maid,” I answered.
“Not she! A live lover is more present than a dead one. Has she sworn pretty vows to you, Montagu? ‘At lovers’ perjuries, they say, love laughs.’ Is there nothing to be said for me? Will her heart not always whisper that I deserve gratitude and love, that I perilled my life for her, saved the lives of her brother and her lover, neither of them friends of mine, again reprieved her lover’s life, stood friend to her through all her trouble? You know a woman’s way—to make much of nothing.”
“Forgive, if I prod a lagging memory, Miss Westerleigh?”
Long he laughed and merrily.
“Eloped for Gretna Green with Tony Creagh last night, and I, poor forsaken swain, faith! I do not pursue.”
You may be sure that dashed me. I felt as a trapped fox with the dogs closing in. The future loomed up clear before me, Aileen hand in hand with Volney scattering flowers on my grave in sentimental mood. The futility of my obstinacy made me bitter.
“Come, Montagu! Listen to reason,” urged the tempter. “You get in my way, but I don’t want to let you be sponged out. The devil of it is that if I get you a pardon—and I’m not sure that I can get it—you’ll marry the girl. I might have you shipped to the Barbadoes as a slave with some of the others, but to be frank I had rather see you hanged than give you so scurvy an end. Forswear what is already lost and make an end of it.”
I turned away blackly. “You have my answer. Sir Robert, you have played your last card. Now let me die in peace.”
He shrugged impatiently and left me. “A fool’s answer, yet a brave man’s too,” he muttered.
Aileen, heart-broken with the failure of her mission, reached town on Thursday and came at once to the prison. Her face was as the face of troubled waters. I had no need to ask the question on my lips. With a sobbing cry she threw herself on my breast. My heart was woe for her. Utter weariness was in her manner. All through the long days and nights she had agonized, and now at last despaired. There seemed no tears left to shed.
Long I held her tight, teeth set, as one who would keep his own perforce from that grim fate which would snatch his love from him. She shivered to me half-swooning, pale and of wondrous beauty, nesting in my arms as a weary homing-bird. A poignant grief o’erflowed in me.
“Oh, Aileen! At least we have love left,” I cried, breaking the long silence.
“Always! Always!” her white lips answered.
“Then let us regret nothing. They can do with me what they will. What are life and death when in the balance dwells love?” I cried, rapt in unearthly worship of her.
Her eyes found mine. “Oh, Kenneth, I cannot—I cannot—let you go.”
Sweet and lovely she was beyond the dream of poet. I trembled in an ecstasy of pain. From the next cell there came to us softly the voice of a poor condemned Appin Stewart. He was crooning that most tender and heart-breaking of all strains. Like the pibroch’s mournful sough he wailed it out, the song that cuts deep to a Scotchman’s heart in time of exile.
“Lochabar no more, Lochabar no more.
We’ll maybe return to Lochabar no more.”
I looked at Aileen, my face working. A long breath came whistling through her lips. Her dear face was all broken with emotion. I turned my eyes aside, not daring to trust myself. Through misty lashes again I looked. Her breast lifted and fell in shaking sobs, the fount of tears touched at last. Together we wept, without shame I admit it, while the Stewart’s harrowing strain ebbed to a close. To us it seemed almost as the keening of the coronach.
So in the quiet that comes after storm, her dear supple figure still in my arms, Sir Robert Volney came in unexpectedly and found us. He stopped at the door, startled at her presence, and methought a shadow fell on his face. Near to death as I was, the quality of his courage was so fine and the strength of the passion in him so great that he would have changed places with me even then.
Aileen went up to him at once and gave him her hand. She was very simple, her appeal like a child’s for directness.
“Sir Robert, you have already done much for me. I will be so bold as to ask you to do more. Here iss my lover’s life in danger. I ask you to save it.”
“That he may marry you?”
“If God wills.”
Volney looked at her out of a haggard face, all broken by the emotions which stirred him.
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