CHAPTER XV
IN THE MOORLANDS
I was in bed, there was no doubt about that, and a strange sort of bed too, for it moved lightly and deliciously through the keen, open air like the magic carpet of the Eastern tale. The bedposts at my feet were most curiously carved into life-like images of warriors, so life-like, indeed, that when the one on the right turned its s.h.a.ggy head and spoke to the one on the left, I was not shocked and scarcely surprised. Bed it was, however, for mother"s soft, smooth hand was on my cheek, and under the balm of its touch I went off to sleep again.
When my eyes opened again, the mists had cleared out of them and I was no longer in the land of shadows. The carven bedposts were Highlanders; the bed was a litter slung between four of them; the touch was hers. Somebody spoke, the Highlanders came to a halt, and Margaret bent over me. Her face was pale, grave, and anxious.
"Are you better, Oliver?" she whispered.
"As right as rain," I answered, pushing my new trouble behind me and speaking stoutly because of the whiteness of her face.
"Try to sleep again. You"ve had a bad fall, and there"s an ugly cut in your skull."
"Indeed, I"ll do no such thing," was my reply. "I don"t want carrying like a great baby, and I do want my breakfast. I"m as empty as a drum."
"Can you stand?"
"Sure of it, and also hop, skip, jump, and, above all, eat and drink with any man alive. So, if you can make these men-women understand you, tell them I"m very grateful, but I"ve had enough."
The four tousled warriors were easily made to understand what I wanted, and, stout and strong as they were, welcomed the end of their labours with broad grins of satisfaction. They lowered me to the ground, and immediately Margaret"s hands were outstretched to help me to my feet. But for the black death between us, it would have been new life indeed to see the colour and sunshine creeping back to her face, and to hear her whispered "Thank G.o.d!"
My head was b.u.mming and throbbing, but nothing to speak of. The gash was behind and above my right ear, so I must have somersaulted down the stairs. Margaret, as I learned later, had bathed and bandaged the wound, and after my recovery of consciousness, it only gave me the happy trouble of persuading Margaret that it gave me no trouble.
I stamped and shook myself experimentally, took a few strides, and jumped once or twice, Margaret watching me as curiously and carefully as a hen watches her first chicken.
"Do mind, Oliver!" she said. "It bled horribly, and you"ll start it again."
"I believe I needed a blood-letting," said I.
"Should you ever need another," she said crisply, "I hope you"ll take it in the usual way. How did it happen?"
I had steeled myself for the inevitable question, and so answered ruefully, "I must have tripped over the domino."
"If it were not your mother"s I would never wear it again," she said, plucking the skirt of it into her hand and shaking it as if it were a naughty child. "I thought you would never come round. For nearly an hour, I should think, you looked stone-dead. Then you just opened your eyes, but closed them before I dared speak, and lay so at least another hour. You have given me such a fright, sir, that, now you are up and about again, I"m beginning to feel I have a grievance against you."
"I"m sorry, madam," said I, very soberly.
"Now you"re laughing at me, sir," was the brisk reply.
The word made me shiver. "Laughing"--over Jack"s body! Margaret was in her stride back to her mistress-ship again yet her eye changed instantly with her mood when she saw me wince. Indeed, her mind flashed after my mind like a hawk after a pigeon, but I dodged the trouble by looking casually around to examine our whereabouts.
We were following a track down a dip in an open moorland. Across the shallow valley, and climbing the slope ahead of us, was another small body of Highlanders, whom I took to be our scouting party. The sun was a dim blob in the sky, and I saw from its position that our direction was easterly. A joyous hail from behind made me spin round, whereupon I saw the Colonel on Sultan and the young Chief on the sorrel turning the brow behind us. It took them a few minutes to trot down to us, and before they reached us four more wild warriors, our rear-guard apparently, came in view. One of them was my son of Anak, astride Margaret"s mare, and so looking more gigantesque than ever.
"Good morning, commander!" was the Colonel"s greeting. "Slids! But I"m glad to see you on your feet again. How"s the head?"
"It still b.u.mbles a bit," said I, "but, truth to tell, I"m thinking more of my breakfast than my head. I"m as empty as a drum."
"It"s a guid prognostick to feel hungry after sic a crack o" the head,"
said the chieftain, smiling, and I thought with a twinge what a handsome, wholesome sight he made.
"I"m another drum," said the Colonel, "but deuce take me, Oliver, if I know how we"re to be filled. Madge would have us start off with you at once, quite rightly too, and we"d neither bite nor sup before we took the road."
"And where were you taking me?" cried I.
"To the doctor"s," explained the Colonel. "There"s one in a village tucked away somewhere among these hills, and we"ve a lad on ahead to guide us. Colonel Ker, who commands the Highlanders who rescued us, gave us our friend here, Captain Maclachlan in the Prince"s army, and a great chieftain among his own people"--here the chief and I bowed to one another--"and a dozen or so of his stout men as an escort. Two plaids were knitted into a litter, a log of a man named Wheatman was bundled into it, and off we started breakfastless, as I said before."
"I"m very grateful to you, Mistress Margaret," said I.
"Don"t be silly!" she answered very sharply. "It is no praise to tell me I acted with common decency. And you weren"t bundled in!"
"I was not praising you, madam," I retorted, quick as ever to return like for like. "I was thanking you, and I venture, with respect, to thank you again."
"Bother old Bloggs!" she said, suddenly all of a glow.
"Bloggs? Who"s Bloggs?" asked the Colonel, plainly enjoying the fun.
"A rascally schoolmaster," she explained, "who flogged Oliver into a precision of speech which I find most trying. But I must not miscall the dear old man, for I stole his supper."
"I wish he"d flogged him into precision on a staircase," said the Colonel. "Damme, I am hungry."
"I"m thinking there"ll be a dub of water in the bottom yonder," said the chieftain, "and Mistress Waynflete shall, if she will, take her first meal Highland fashion."
As I firmly declined to be carried another yard, the Highlanders unmade my litter and resumed their plaids. In the trough of the valley we found a streamlet of clear sweet water, and our repast consisted of a handful of oatmeal, of which every clansman carried a supply in a linen bag, stirred in a horn of water. It was not our Staffordshire notion of a breakfast, but it was better than nothing.
"Water-brose is a guid enough thing at a pinch," said Maclachlan to Margaret, "guid enough to take a big loon like yon Donald to London and back."
Donald, it appeared, liked an addition to it, notwithstanding his chief"s praise of it, for he was taking a long pull from a leather bottle. This, he explained, was usquebaugh, "ta watter of life," and the spice of poetry in the description tempted the Colonel and me to try a dram. The Colonel probably had had worse drink in his time, but even he made no comment. I would almost as lief have had a blank charge fired into my mouth.
While we all took our brose, and Maclachlan squired Margaret, the Colonel told me how it had happened that the Highlanders chanced to come to our rescue in the very nick of time. My own trouble is to get my tale straight and simple, and I have no intention of making a hard task harder by trying to interweave with the threads of my own story a poor history of these important days. Mr. Volunteer Ray saw much more of these things than ever I did, and the curious reader may turn to his fat, little, brown volume for particulars. He was on the other side, and is too partial for a perfect historiographer, but the account of things is there, and reasonably well done too. But as what happened to Margaret, the Colonel, and me, happened because of the campaign of the rival armies, I must boil down what the Colonel told me if I am to make my tale clear. The Colonel, to his credit, as I think, was so enthusiastic over all matters military that he was rather long-winded in his account, and, in like fashion with our housewifely Kate, it behoves me, so to speak, to make a jar of jelly out of a pan of fruit, which is easier done with crab-apples than words.
According to the Colonel, one of the master maxims of the military art is, "Find out what the enemy thinks you are going to do, and then don"t do it." My Lord George Murray, the Prince"s chief adviser in military matters, had acted on this plan, and had given the go-by to the Duke of c.u.mberland in grand style. At Macclesfield, the traveller to London had choice of two high roads, one through Leek and Derby, and the other through Congleton and Stafford. Leaving the Prince at Macclesfield with the bulk of his men, Murray had pushed with a big force as far as Congleton on the Stafford road, and the news of his advance had made c.u.mberland withdraw all his northerly outposts to his head-quarters at Stone. It was the last body of horse, routed out of Congleton, which we had watched from the pines last night, racing in fear and disorder back to the main of their army. Before daybreak Murray had sent on a force of Highlanders under Colonel Ker towards Newcastle, to maintain the illusion that the Stafford road was the one the Prince would take, and the vanguard of this force, under Maclachlan, had saved us at the "Red Bull." Murray himself was marching from Congleton across country to Leek, while the Prince was marching thither also from Macclesfield. Murray would be there first, and did not mean to wait for the Prince, but to push on as far as possible towards Derby. We, too, were bound for Leek, where we should be safe at last, and the end of the Colonel"s explanation came, not because he had said all he could have said, but because Donald was yelling to the clansmen in preparation for our retaking the road.
Maclachlan accepted with alacrity an offer I made to go ahead and join our advance. He ordered Donald to accompany me, giving as his reason: "For he kens the English fine when the spirit of understanding is on him, and ye"ll easy get it on him by raxing him a crack in the wame, same as ye did back yonder at the yill-house."
The Highlander maintained the expression of a wooden doll throughout this explanation, but, as I leaped hard after him across the brook, I overtook a grin on his face that promised well for my future entertainment.
"She pe recovert," he said. "Tat was a foine shump."
Before I could reply Margaret was upon us.
"The mare is quite frisky. She thinks me a mere _fardello_ after Donald. You"re sure you"re all right, Oliver?"
"So near right, madam, that I beg you not to worry about me further,"
said I.
"Worry about you or worry you?"