Miss MacBean had a way of affecting deafness when the occasion suited her.
"Eih, sir! Were you saying you wad see it was recovered? And my silver set wi" twenty solid teaspoons, forby the linen?" she asked anxiously, her hand to her ear.
Wolfe smiled.
"I fear the Duke----"
"Ou ay, I ken fine you fear him. He"s gurly enough, Guid kens."
"I was about to say, madam, that I fear the Duke will regard them as spoils from the enemy not to be given up."
The Major was right. Miss MacBean might as well have saved her breath to cool her porridge, for the Duke carried her possessions to London despite her remonstrances. Five years later as I was pa.s.sing by a p.a.w.nbroker"s shop on a mean street in London Miss MacBean"s teapot with its curious device of a winged dragon for a spout caught my eye in the window. The shopkeeper told me that it had been sold him by a woman of the demi-monde who had formerly been a mistress of the Duke of c.u.mberland. She said that it was a present from his Royal Highness, who had taken the silver service from the house of a fiery rebel lady in the north.
Our stay in the Scottish capital was of the shortest. In the early morning we went knocking at the door of Miss MacBean"s house. All day I kept under cover and in the darkness of night we slipped out of the city southwest bound. Of that journey, its sweet comradeship, its shy confidences, its perpetual surprises for each of us in discovering the other, I have no time nor mind to tell. The very danger which was never absent from our travel drew us into a closer friendliness. Was there an option between two roads, or the question of the desirability of putting up at a certain inn, our heads came together to discuss it. Her pretty confidence in me was touching in the extreme. To have her hold me a Captain Greatheart made my soul glad, even though I knew my measure did not fit the specifications by a mile. Her trust in me was less an incense to my vanity than a spur to my manhood.
The mere joy of living flooded my blood with happiness in those days. I vow it made me a better man to breathe the same air as she, to hear the lilt of her merry laugh and the low music of her sweet voice. Not a curve in that dimpled cheek I did not love; not a ripple in the russet hair my hungry eyes had not approved. When her shy glance fell on me I rode in the sunshine of bluest sky. If by chance her hand touched mine, my veins leaped with the wine of it. Of such does the happiness of youth consist.
"Tis strange how greedy love is in its early days of the past from which it has been excluded, how jealous sometimes of the point of contact with other lives in the unknown years which have gone to make up the rungs of the ladder of life. I was never tired of hearing of her childhood on the braes of Raasay: how she guddled for mountain trout in the burn with her brother Murdoch or hung around his neck chains of daisies in childish glee. And she-- Faith, she drew me out with shy questions till that part of my life which would bear telling must have been to her a book learned by rote.
Yet there were times when we came near to misunderstanding of each other.
The dear child had been brought up in a houseful of men, her mother having died while she was yet an infant, and she was in some ways still innocent as a babe. The circ.u.mstances of our journey put her so much in my power that I, not to take advantage of the situation, sometimes held myself with undue stiffness toward her when my every impulse was to tenderness.
Perhaps it might be that we rode through woodland in the falling dusk while the nesting birds sang madrigals of love. Longing with all my heart to touch but the hem of her gown, I would yet ride with a wooden face set to the front immovably, deaf to her indirect little appeals for friendliness. Presently, ashamed of my gruffness, I would yield to the sweetness of her charm, good resolutions windwood scattered, and woo her with a lover"s ardour till the wild-rose deepened in her cheek.
"Were you ever in love before, Kennie?" she asked me once, twisting at a b.u.t.ton of my coat. We were drawing near Manchester and had let the postillion drive on with the coach, while we loitered hand in hand through the forest of Arden. The azure sky was not more blue than the eyes which lifted shyly to mine, nor the twinkling stars which would soon gaze down on us one half so bright.
I laughed happily. "Once--in a boy"s way--a thousand years ago."
"And were you caring for her--much?"
"Oh, vastly."
"And she--wa.s.s she loving you too?"
"More than tongue could tell, she made me believe."
"Oh, I am not wondering at that," said my heart"s desire. "Of course she would be loving you."
"Twas Aileen"s way to say the thing she thought, directly, in headlong Highland fashion. Of finesse she used none. She loved me (oh, a thousand times more than I deserved!) and that was all there was about it. To be ashamed of her love or to hide it never, I think, occurred to her. What more natural then than that others should think of me as she did?
"Of course," I said dryly. "But in the end my sweetheart, plighted to me for all eternity, had to choose betwixt her lover and something she had which he much desired. She sighed, deliberated long--full five seconds I vow--and in end played traitor to love. She was desolated to lose me, but the alternative was not to be endured. She sacrificed me for a raspberry tart. So was shattered young love"s first dream. "Tis my only consolation that I s.n.a.t.c.hed the tart and eat it as I ran. Thus Phyllis lost both her lover and her portion. Ah, those brave golden days! The world, an unexplored wonder, lay at my feet. She was seven, I was nine."
"Oh." There was an odd little note of relief in the velvet voice that seemed to reproach me for a brute. I was forever forgetting that the ways of "Toinette Westerleigh were not the ways of Aileen Macleod.
The dying sun flooded the topmost branches of the forest foliage. My eyes came round to the aureole which was their usual magnet.
"When the sun catches it "tis shot with glints of gold."
"It is indeed very beautiful."
"In cloudy weather "tis a burnished bronze."
She looked at me in surprise.
"Bronze! Surely you are meaning green?"
"Not I, bronze. Again you might swear it russet."
"That will be in the autumn when they are turning colour just before the fall."
"No, that is when you have it neatly snodded and the firelight plays about your head."
She laughed, flushing. "You will be forever at your foolishness, Kenn. I thought you meant the tree tips."
"Is the truth foolishness?"
"You are a lover, Kennie. Other folks don"t see that when they look at me."
"Other folks are blind," I maintained, stoutly.
"If you see all that I will be sure that what they say is true and love is blind."
"The wise man is the lover. He sees clear for the first time in his life.
The sun shines for him--and her. For them the birds sing and the flowers bloom. For them the world was made. They----"
"Whiles talk blethers," she laughed.
"Yes, they do," I admitted. "And there again is another sign of wisdom.
Your ponderous fool talks pompous sense always. He sees life in only one facet. Your lover sees its many sides, its infinite variety. He can laugh and weep; his imagination lights up dry facts with whimsical fancies; he dives through the crust of conventionality to the realities of life. "Tis the lover keeps this old world young. The fire of youth, of eternal laughing youth, runs flaming through his blood. His days are radiant, his nights enchanted."
"I am thinking you quite a poet."
"Was there ever a better subject for a poem? Life would be poetry writ into action if all men were lovers--and all women Aileens."
"Ah, Kenneth! This fine talk I do not understand. It"s sheer nonsense to tell such idle clavers about me. Am I not just a plain Highland la.s.sie, as unskilled in flattering speeches as in furbelows and patches? Gin you will play me a spring on the pipes I"ll maybe can dance you the fling, but of French minuets I have small skill."
"Call me dreamer if you will. By Helen"s glove, your dreamer might be the envy of kings. Since I have known you life has taken a different hue. One lives for years without joy, pain, colour, all things toned to the dull monochrome of gray, and then one day the contact with another soul quickens one to renewed life, to more eager unselfish living. Never so bright a sun before, never so beautiful a moon. "Tis true, Aileen. No fear but one, that Fate, jealous, may s.n.a.t.c.h my love from me."
Her laughter dashed my heroics; yet I felt, too, that back of her smiles there was belief.
"I dare say. At the least I will have heard it before. The voice iss Jacob"s voice, but----"
I blushed, remembering too late that my text and its application were both Volney"s.
""Tis true, even if Jacob said it first. If a man is worth his salt love must purify him. Sure it must. I am a better man for knowing you."
A shy wonder filled her eyes; thankfulness too was there.
"Yet you are a man that has fought battles and known life, and I am only an ignorant girl."