my mother!"
She ceased as if in despair.
"Surely, Nannie, you will be at home with your chief!" said Alister.
"My house is your house now, and your dead will come to it and be welcome!"
"It is their chief"s house, and they will!" she returned hopefully.
"They loved their chief.--Shall we not make a fine clan when we"re all gathered, we Macmadhs! Man nor woman can say I did anything to disgrace it!"
"Lest we should disgrace it," answered the chief, "we must bear with patience what is sent upon it."
He carried her into the drawing-room and told her story, then stood, to the delighted amus.e.m.e.nt of his mother, with his little old sister in his arms, waiting her orders, like a big boy carrying the baby, who now and then moaned a little, but did not speak.
Mrs. Macruadh called Nancy, and told her to bring the tea-tray, and then, get ready for Mistress Conal the room next Nancy"s own, that she might be near to wait on her; and thither, when warmed and fed, the chief carried her.
But the terrible excitement had so thinned the mainspring of her time-watch, that it soon broke. She did not live many weeks. From the first she sank into great dejection, and her mind wandered. She said her father never came to see her now; that he was displeased with her for leaving the house; and that she knew now she ought to have stayed and been burned in it. The chief reminded her that she had no choice, but had been carried bodily away.
"Yes, yes," she answered; "but they do not know that! I must make haste and tell them! Who can bear her own people to think ill of her!--I"m coming! I"m coming! I"ll tell you all about it! I"m an honest woman yet!"
Another thing troubled her sorely, for which she would hear no consolation; Blackie had vanished!--whether he was killed at the time of his onslaught on Mr. Palmer, or was afterwards shot; whether, disgusted with the treatment of his old home, or the memory of what he had there suffered, he had fled the strath, and gone to the wild cats among the hills, or back to the place which some averred he came from, no one could tell. In her wanderings she talked more of her cat than of anything else, and would say things that with some would have gone far to justify the belief that the animal was by nature on familiar terms with the element which had yet driven him from his temporary home.
Nancy was more than uneasy at having the witch so near, but by no means neglected her duty to her. One night she woke, and had for some time lain listening whether she stirred or not, when suddenly quavered through the dark the most horrible cat-cry she had ever heard. In abject terror she covered her head, and lay shuddering.
The cry came again, and kept coming at regular intervals, but drawing nearer and nearer. Its expression was of intense and increasing pain. The creature whence it issued seemed to come close to the house, then with difficulty to scramble up on the roof, where it went on yowling, and screeching, and throwing itself about as if tying itself in knots, Nancy said, until at last it gave a great choking, gobbling scream, and fell to the ground, after which all was quiet. Persuading herself it was only a cat, she tried to sleep, and at length succeeded. When she woke in the morning, the first thing she did was to go out, fully expecting to find the cat lying at the foot of the wall. No cat was there. She went then as usual to attend to the old woman. Mistress Conal was dead and cold.
The clan followed her body to the grave, and the black cat was never seen.
CHAPTER IX
THE MARCHES.
It was plainly of no use for the chief to attempt mollifying Mr.
Palmer. So long as it was possible for him to be what he was, it must be impossible for him to understand the conscience that compelled the chief to refuse partic.i.p.ation in the results of his life. Where a man"s own conscience is content, how shall he listen to the remonstrance of another man"s! But even if he could have understood that the offence was unavoidable, that would rather have increased than diminished the pain of the hurt; as it was, the chief"s determination must seem to Mr. Palmer an unprovoked insult!
Thus reflecting, Alister tried all he could to be fair to the man whom he had driven to cut his acquaintance.
It was now a lonely time for Alister, lonelier than any ever before.
Ian was not within reach even by letter; Mercy was shut up from him: he had not seen or heard from her since writing his explanation; and his mother did not sympathize with his dearest earthly desire: she would be greatly relieved, yea heartily glad, if Mercy was denied him! She loved Ian more than the chief, yet could have better borne to see him the husband of Mercy; what was wanting to the equality of her love was in this regard more than balanced by her respect for the chief of the clan and head of the family. Alister"s light was thus left to burn in very darkness, that it might burn the better; for as strength is made perfect through weakness, so does the light, within grow by darkness. It was the people that sat in darkness that saw a great light. He was brought closer than ever to first principles; had to think and judge more than ever of the right thing to do--first of all, the right thing with regard to Mercy. Of giving her up, there was of course no thought; so long as she would be his, he was hers as entirely as the bonds of any marriage could make him!
But she owed something to her father! and of all men the patriarchal chief was the last to dare interfere with the RIGHTS of a father.
BUT THEY MUST BE RIGHTS, not rights turned into, or founded upon wrongs. With the first in acknowledging true, he would not be with the last even, in yielding to false rights! The question was, what were the rights of a father? One thing was clear, that it was the duty, therefore the right of a father, to prevent his child from giving herself away before she could know what she did; and Mercy was not yet of age. That one woman might be capable of knowing at fifteen, and another not at fifty, left untouched the necessity for fixing a limit. It was his own duty and right, on the other hand, to do what he could to prevent her from being in any way deceived concerning him. It was essential that nothing should be done, resolved, or yielded, by the girl, through any misunderstanding he could forestall, or because of any falsehood he could frustrate. He must therefore contrive to hold some communication with her!
First of all, however, he must learn how she was treated! It was not only in fiction or the ancient clan-histories that tyrannical and cruel things were done! A tragedy is even more a tragedy that it has not much diversity of incident, that it is acted in commonplace surroundings, and that the agents of it are commonplace persons--fathers and mothers acting from the best of low or selfish motives.
Where either Mammon or Society is worshipped, in love, longing, or fear, there is room for any falsehood, any cruelty, any suffering.
There were several of the clan employed about the New House of whom Alister might have sought information; but he was of another construction from the man of fashion in the old plays, whose first love-strategy is always to bribe the lady"s maid: the chief scorned to learn anything through those of a man"s own household. He fired a gun, and ran up a flag on the old castle, which brought Rob of the Angels at full speed, and comforted the heart of Mercy sitting disconsolate at her window: it was her chiefs doing, and might have to do with her!
Having told Rob the state of matters between him and the New House--
"I need not desire you, Rob," he concluded, "to be silent! You may of course let your father know, but never a soul besides. From this moment, every hour your father does not actually need you, be somewhere on the hills where you can see the New House. I want to learn first whether she goes out at all. With the dark you must draw nearer the house. But I will have no questioning of the servants or anyone employed about it; I will never use a man"s pay to thwart his plans, nor yet make any man even unconsciously a traitor."
Rob understood and departed; but before he had news for his master an event occurred which superseded his service.
The neighbours, Mr. Peregrine Palmer and Mr. Brander, had begun to enclose their joint estates for a deer-forest, and had engaged men to act as curators. They were from the neighbourhood, but none of them belonged to Strathruadh, and not one knew the boundaries of the district they had to patrol; nor indeed were the boundaries everywhere precisely determined: why should they be, where all was heather and rock? Until game-sprinkled s.p.a.ce grew valuable, who would care whether this or that lump of limestone, rooted in the solid earth, were the actual property of the one or the other!
Either would make the other welcome to blast and cart it away!
There was just one person who knew all about the boundaries that was to be known; he could not in places draw their lines with absolute a.s.surance, but he had better grounds for his conclusions than anyone else could have; this was Hector of the Stags. For who so likely to understand them as he who knew the surface within them as well as the clay-floor of his own hut? If he did not everywhere know where the marchline fell, at least he knew perfectly where it ought to fall.
It happened just at this time that THE MISTRESS told Hector she would be glad of a deer, intending to cure part for winter use; the next day, therefore,--the first of Rob of the Angels" secret service--he stalked one across the hill-farm, got a shot at it near the cave-house, brought it down, and was busy breaking it, when two men who had come creeping up behind, threw themselves upon him, and managed, well for themselves, to secure him before he had a chance of defending himself. Finding he was deaf and dumb, one of them knew who he must be, and would have let him go; but the other, eager to ingratiate himself with the new laird, used such, argument to the contrary as prevailed with his companion, and they set out for the New House, Hector between them with his hands tied. Annoyed and angry at being thus treated like a malefactor, he yet found amus.e.m.e.nt in the notion of their mistake. But he found it awkward to be unable to use that readiest weapon of human defence, the tongue.
If only his EARS AND MOUTH, as he called Rob in their own speech, had been with him! When he saw, however, where they were taking him, he was comforted, for Rob was almost certain to see him: wherever he was, he was watching the New House! He went composedly along with them therefore, fuming and snorting, not caring to escape.
When Rob caught sight of the three, he could not think how it was that his father walked so unlike himself. He could not be hurt, for his step was strong and steady as ever; not the less was there something of the rhythm gone out of his motion! there was "a broken music" in his gait! He took the telescope which the chief had lent him, and turned it upon him. Discovering then that his father"s hands were bound behind his back, fiercest indignation overwhelmed the soul of Rob of the Angels. His father bound like a criminal!--his father, the best of men! What could the devils mean? Ah, they were taking him to the New House! He shut up his telescope, laid it down by a stone, and bounded to meet them, sharpening his knife on his hand as he went.
The moment they were near enough, signs, unintelligible to the keepers, began to pa.s.s between the father and son: Rob"s meant that he must let him pa.s.s unnoticed; Hector"s that he understood. So, with but the usual salutation of a stranger, Rob pa.s.sed them. The same moment he turned, and with one swift sweep of his knife, severed the bonds of his father. The old man stepped back, and father and son stood fronting the enemy.
"Now," said Rob, "if you are honest men, stand to it! How dared you bind Hector of the Stags?"
"Because he is not an honest man," replied one of them.
Rob answered him with a blow. The man made at him, but Hector stepped between.
"Say that again of my father," cried Rob, "who has no speech to defend himself, and I will drive my knife into you."
"We are only doing our duty!" said the other. "We came upon him there cutting up the deer he had just killed on the new laird"s land."
"Who are you to say which is the stranger"s, and which the Macruadh"s? Neither my father nor I have ever seen the faces of you in the country! Will you pretend to know the marches better than my father, who was born and bred in the heather, and knows every stone on the face of the hills?"
"We can"t help where he was born or what he knows! he was on our land!"
"He is the Macruadh"s keeper, and was on his own land. You will get yourselves into trouble!"
"We"ll take our chance!"
"Take your man then!"
"If he try to escape, I swear by the bones of my grandfather," said the more inimical of the two, inheritor of a clan-feud with the Macruadhs, "I will shoot him."
Rob of the Angels burst into a scornful laugh.
"You will! will you?"
"I will not kill him; I don"t want to be hanged for him! but I will empty my shot-barrel into the legs of him! So take your chance; you are warned!"
They had Hector"s gun, and Rob had no weapon but his knife. Nor was he inclined to use either now he had cooled a little. He turned to his father. The old man understood perfectly what had pa.s.sed between them, and signed to Rob that he would go on to the New House, and Rob might run and let the chief know what had happened. The same thing was in Rob"s mind, for he saw how it would favour the desires of his chief, bringing them all naturally about the place. But he must first go with his father on the chance of learning something.
"We will go with you," he said.
"We don"t want YOU!"