First, you must make what you like of—

"She kept him till mornin', then bade him begane, And showed him the road that he might na be ta'en."

Next, you have the news let loose, for—

"Word went to the kitchen An' word went to the ha'."

Finally, when my lord of the lady rides home from a far journey and hears that news, and meets her, he goes red, wud mad and—

"O bonnie, bonnie was her mouth And cherry were her cheeks; And cleir, cleir was her yellow hair Whereon the reid blude dreips."

There the Black Colonel had found a tangle which he could not cut through, and he sought a side-way out. How he discovered it he was good enough to inform me, though I had no claim to his confidence, in an epistle drafted in his best style, which reached me at Corgarff, hard on the tidings of what had made the necessity for it.

"To Captain Ian Gordon, for his privy knowledge only," it opened, and it continued, in his usual, even manner, for, mind you, he had the trick of writing, as well as the odd weakness towards it already remarked on, all of which appears in what follows, so:

"It may oblige your calculations that I have a proposal through proper channels to go on a special mission to New France, where a state of war now exists between the British and the French. Ordinarily I should have hesitated to take a step which would remove me, even for a time, from my most particular affairs here, these being familiar to you.

"The offer is put to me, however, as part of earlier overtures in those same affairs, and that recommends it. Moreover, there are urgent private reasons, not here to be gone into, but perhaps to be j'aloused by you, which favour an early change of air and scenery for yours dutifully. Accordingly I am departing for North America by the first government ship on to which I can be smuggled, that, as I grimly note, being the elegant word used in a dispatch of instruction to my hand.

"You cannot fail to be curious as to the nature of my mission, and I shall inform you thereon so far as its delicate nature permits. I am offered by Government—your Government—a free pardon for the past and a captain's commission in Fraser's Regiment of Highlanders, now in Canada with General Wolfe, if I succeed in the undertaking which is this . . . but its delicacy tries my power of pen.

"Briefly I, a proscribed Jacobite, am to depart from Scotland, find my way to Canada, and offer my sword and service to the Marquis Montcalm commanding his French Christian Majesty's troops for the defence of Quebec. There I am to keep an open eye, and a close tongue, for all and every information of possible use to General Wolfe, and transmit the same to him personally, by what safe channels I can devise. He is to be informed of my mission, and he alone, and that's all, though it may be enough for you to digest, as it has been, I beg you to believe, for me.

"Will you, I pray, make my humble excuses to Mistress Marget Forbes and her mother, and accept them for yourself, and you may rely upon hearing from me oversea, because I have no intention to relinquish a shred of my attachment to my native Highlands and the well-being of the name I bear; whereof it is the purpose of this epistle to inform you, as between one man of honour and another."

News indeed, intensely personal, therefore intensely interesting news, and I let it be known without delay at the Dower House, taking care, in delicacy, not to seem curious as to the impression it made there. Somewhat later I had intelligence of the actual sailing of the Black Colonel for New France, across the Atlantic, with his inseparable Red Murdo, whom, I was sure, the adventure would suit grandly, though he probably would not be told its secret meaning.

Then came a long silence, and I began to wonder whether the Black Colonel had not, somewhere and somehow, been caught in the last kink of his pre-destined hair-rope. While I wondered, off and on, in this sense, and our small world of Corgarff drifted uneventfully on, a much-worn, salt-sprayed letter reached me, and I recognized in it the Black Colonel's writing.

What account had he to give of himself?



XV.—News from Somewhere

"Quebec," the Black Colonel had written above the first sheet of his letter and he had forgotten to put any date, so I was left to guess how long it had taken to reach me. Nor did it bear any form of address to myself, but just began abruptly, "I do not suppose you will be specially glad to hear of me in this land of New France. There was, however, an understanding that I should write you, and I am doing it by a sure and confidential messenger." Then it went on as follows, for I transcribe it fully, as is needful for the conveyance of its atmosphere and even a certain quality of elegance natural to the writer:

"No man is happy who has had disappointments like me, but, at least, I survive and am usefully occupied. If I may say it, my not inconsiderable fame in our native Highlands had gone ahead of me to this country. That made it easy to secure service in one of the French corps in Quebec, for I speak the language, as you know, with no undue stranger accent, and it always brings me gay memories of hours in Old France.

"The regimental wages are not great, and they are not paid with exact punctuality, because there are too many empty hands waiting between his French Christian Majesty's coffers and his soldiers in Canada. But that, to a man like myself who wants little of the so-called comforts of life, and has, moreover, other sources, is no great hardship, and there are comfortings, sometimes, in unexpected quarters.

"The French, who know the art of romance, and how to spin it to the last drop without getting to the dregs, have already peopled this new land of theirs with colour, but I doubt me if it will last, which is their affair, not mine, or yours. King Louis himself is indulgent to the human colouring of his dominion, in that he sends out shipments of wives from the Old Country for the French settlers.

"Therefore they are called 'King's girls,' and being flowers of a kingdom which has bloomed rarely with women, they are in much demand. It is a joke, when a ship-load arrives, that the plumpest are married first, and this, I gather, for two reasons: Being less active, it is thought they will more readily stay at home, as honest married women should, and, being well covered—not fat, oh no! not that—that they will the better resist the icy cold of New France in the winter. For myself they do not interest me, not on account of the reason which drove my late Count Frontenac here, he having in the Old Country a shrewish wife whose temper he could not bear, but because I have found attractions more to my taste, of which you shall know something.

"I may admit, with some assurance, that my luck in the regard of the sweet sex, holds amid the altered conditions in which I find myself. Those French women have not the freshness, and I am certain not the innocence—you will admit me a judge on both counts—of my own country-women in the Scots Highlands. But they have a wondrous charm, a quality of attractiveness which is as deadly to a Highlander as if a dirk slit his heart. I speak, you may think, in poetry numbers, but you must do that, if, speaking of women, you would do them justice, and, incidentally, yourself. We have all sorts and most conditions of women, and the trade in laces and ribbons and the gew-gaws with which they adorn themselves, is wonderful for so small a place as Quebec. No sooner does a consignment of finery come in than it is snapped up, and the men, too, are admirable dandies, ruffling it, some of them, as if Louis Quatorze himself were here with his Court.

"Now, only last night I was at the party of the Intendant Bigot, and a gay crowd we were until the small hours of the morning grew again. His Excellency, the Marquis Montcalm, has the Frenchman's natural love for pleasure, but he is a serious, honest man who resolutely puts his duty before it. Monsieur Vaudreuil is more the gentleman of pleasure, a governor with a large token of the gallant in him, but for chicane, knavery and devilry commend me to this fellow the Intendant Bigot. They say he grows richer every day by robbing his gracious master, the King, first, and the King's subjects next. I cannot speak with authority of that, and it matters not, but I can tell you of what goes on at his chateau, the Chateau Bigot, because, as I write, I am scarcely cool from its doings.

"There was Bigot himself as master of the revels, a short, stout, awkward man of more than middle-age, who did not well become the part. He is, I must add, coarse for my taste, and by his appearance you might judge him capable of any venture in the getting of money. He would say in his cynical, loud way that the end justifies the means, and with him the end is Angelique des Meloises. She is probably going to be the Delilah of New France, the woman who is shearing it of its upholding strength, but she is fine.

"Ah, ha! the name of Angelique is fresh to you, has no meaning, and I see you halting and asking me to tell you more of her. But here she is a household word—or, should it be, by-word?—and I, a stranger, am counted fortunate in having come close to the rustle of her skirt. That skirt, you can believe me, is in many fabrics, and ever of the best, and, though I cannot confirm it, the other women of Quebec say that no parcel of lace, or silk, or satin, freshly sent by Old France to New France, is free of being tampered with by Bigot in the pleasuring of his mistress. Without that news in your ear, you would not, my friend, comprehend the Chateau Bigot.

"Angelique was not the first flame with whom the old sinner has lit his fires in Canada, for there was Caroline, the Algonquin maid, not to mention others. Bigot, the story goes, had been hunting and, be it conceded, he is, for a Frenchman, a sound shot, and had lost himself in the wilds. Presently, while he pondered on his course, there appeared a fascinating Indian girl, and he made her guide him to his chateau and there kept her. The woman pays in such affairs, be she white, brown, or black, all the complexions I have seen, and that Indian lass came to a sad end, being found stark one morning in bed, with a knife through her lissom body.

"But that was Bigot of the Garden of Eden, the primitive savage of passion who would have his apple without having to eat the punishment, so far, anyhow, though, I suppose, the devil, who has seven-league boots when he likes, will overtake him. If he were to do it now he would find him engrossed in the smiles and, maybe, the caresses of Angelique. I have, myself, pretended to be some judge of woman-folk, and Angelique pleases me in divers manners. That is an admission I would not mind making to herself, though, to be sure, I have found it the silent gallantry towards women which reaps most harvest. She is, by marriage, Madame Pean, wife of a creature whom Bigot uses, and she is a note of lovely abandon which a man with half my insurgency would like to pluck an' he could.

"We have been introduced, Madame Angelique and I, for here all goes by the most correct form on the surface. We have even drunk from the same cup of wine, because she preferred me hers yester-night, saying, 'To our gallant recruit Monsieur Inverey, and to his gallant nation, les Ecossais.' Ah, the laughing witch! You should have seen the languor in her eyes, the blushing red of her lips, the delicate contour of her arm, as she raised her glass to me and then bade me empty it.

"'Ah,' said I, bowing and taking it from her hand, against whose baby pinkness the champagne sparkled; 'ah, it is good to see, chere Madame, that you know the ceremony of the Loving Cup, and how, elegantly, to express it.' My phrase of the Loving Cup took her, I saw, it and my significance in using it, and her dark eyes, her pouting lips, and the turn of her lovely head, all had a new meaning as, saying, 'To our Lady Venus, in New France,' I emptied the glass and set it on the table beside her.

"We fell a-talking, Madame Angelique and I, and she was good enough to praise my French, and I said that, alas! it was not sufficient to do justice to her charms. She flushed with pleasure, and said archly that she wished her husband, Monsieur Pean, or even her very good friend the Intendant, would pay her like compliments. 'But,' she added, 'you Scotsmen are so gallant and so truthful,' and in her sweet French the token rang true. With it she raised her eyebrows, expecting me to confirm her raillery, which I did, for I said, 'Madame, truth is the only gallantry that tells twice, and so I am content to employ it, for I hope we are to be friends.'

"It was a bold measure to take, but Madame Angelique, I judged, with her on-coming air, was precisely the woman who would respond to bold measures. She is none of your woo-me-slowly ladies, her bosom, as it rose and fell in her French laces, being eloquent of that. She is a singularly fine animal to whom Providence has, by an unusual generosity, given a soul, though mostly, maybe, it hides in the silken dalliance which is the note of Angelique.

"You will perceive, my old friend and, I hope, old enemy, that I present to you a whole bouquet of charms: beauty of form, the radiance of a personality, and brains with an edge to flatter or flout. Very rarely does Providence dower so many graces to one woman, but they are all in Madame Angelique. Moreover, she has the subtlest of sex strategy, for in greeting me she made a stumble with her lace petticoat so that I might catch the daintiness of her foot and ankle. She also has the swiftest, as well as the softest of glances, and I felt it travel from my brogues to my head, approving the journey, I fancied.

"I have been particular about Madame Angelique because she is a woman in a thousand, this frail beauty of New France, its Madame de Pompadour in brilliance, however the comparison may hold in virtue, and because, if I prosper at all in the friendship, I hope to hear from her the inner news of events here which, by its usefulness to General Wolfe, is to lead me far in my home desires. When I left Scotland I had a sore heart, for truly it fills that heart, but you will gather that I have found a fresh land which also has its milk and honey.

"How much of them shall I sip? That's the gamble, and time will tell, but it is a great gamble in which I am enlisted, and, by my faith, I like a gamble. It stirs the blood in me, makes it run as it ran when I made love to my first sweetheart, and a strapping lass she was, though, alas! I have almost forgotten her very existence. Poor Carrie! I wonder, I wonder, but hi, ho! what use to ask of the flowers of yesterday, where are they?

"Only, my dear Captain Gordon, I wish I could have taken you with me last evening to that romp at the Chateau Bigot. Yes, I remember, your tastes are different from my own—less elastic, shall we say?—and you might not have come. Well, set love and gambling and sport, all done with abandon, in a choice, beflowered fold of this New France country and you may realize what you have missed and I have seen.

"Revelry! That is not the word for the night, and it took all the seriousness in me to recall that I had other interests among the revellers besides theirs. My elegance in our Highland dress, for to be sure I wore it, cost me many a temptation, and if Madame Angelique, late in the evening, had gone a minute longer with her whimsical measurings of my leg where it garters, why, sir, I should have made a fool of myself. But she merely said she wanted to test whether I was not modelled to perfection for dancing the Highland dances, and wouldn't I oblige her and the company?

"Monsieur Bigot, lolling in a chair, beslippered, be-hosed in the fatness of his limbs, be-waistcoated round his windy paunch, wearing velvet knee-breeches and a plum-coloured coat, what should he do, for his ears miss little, but catch this remark and, wishing, I suppose, to keep me from any further impressing of Madame Angelique, he cried, 'Surely, surely, let us have a Scottish dance from our gallant friend, Comte Farquharfils!'

"He ennobled me in one breath, and in the next made French of the ancient surname I bear, but that was of no consequence, and his cry was taken up instantly by his guests: 'Beautiful ladies and gallant gentlemen,' he went on, 'the Chevalier Ecossais—more ennobling of me!—will entertain us with a dance of his native country!'

"For a moment I was abashed with confusion, yes, sir, believe it or not, because this was a thing which had not come into my plans. But I have not lived for ten years by my wits and my sword without learning to make rapid resolutions, and I decided to dance, not alone! The gallants and the ladies had now formed a circle, and I said very quietly, 'I am honoured, Monsieur L'Intendant, and your desire will be to me a pleasure, if Madame will permit.'

"A glance of curious inquiry went round the circle as I looked at Madame Angelique, a radiant and bewitching picture, standing at the end of the room, eager to see the Scottish dance for which she had made measurements—yes, yes! Perhaps some of the company had penetrated the real purpose of Monsieur Bigot's interference as being what I have said, and in that case they saw a challenge in my acceptance of his invitation.

"But he was prompt to the occasion, for he said in his lordliest fashion, 'Madame, I am sure, will be happy to permit,' and he bowed to Angelique, who, in turn, bowed to me her gracious permission for a dance Eccosais. Neither had counted on what was to happen, for I quietly walked over to her, invited her to take my arm, and, while every one wondered, led her into the middle of the room. I did this amid a buzz of surprise, and I heard one gallant say, 'Parbleu, this Scotsman asked the lady's patronage and takes herself.' Neatly put, I thought, and the French mind is neat, as well as swift.

"The music struck up as I passed my right hand about the responding waist of Madame and lifted her elegance through a Highland round-dance. There was no need to lift her through it a second time, because the god of dancing was in that woman's feet, and between us we fairly wove poetry on the polished floor. Never, after the first moment, was there such a partner as Angelique; never, perhaps, if I may be allowed the conceit, such a pair of partners, a picture, my friend, a picture!

"As we warmed to the dance we lost all sense of an audience, and only drank the intoxication of the music. At first there had been a cold silence around us, but we infected it with our own sultry spirit and melted it. 'Bravo!' shouted the Frenchmen, and 'Divine!' said the ladies, and I took the praise of the women and Madame Angelique the praise of the men, a fair division, pleasing to us both.

"Monsieur Bigot alone remained aloof from praise, and as we turned once very close to him—so close that he wilted in the hot draught made by our wrapt figures—I saw a hard look come into his eyes and a hard expression cross his coarse mouth. When we finished at last and I had conducted Madame Angelique to a chair and thanked her, a huzza rang to the roof, but the Intendant took no part in it. He did, however, approach me with what others thought to be words of congratulation, only you shall judge when I repeat them.

"'You dance like the devil himself,' were his words, 'but you had better not dance again with Madame Angelique or you may find yourself in the devil's company. We have other uses in Quebec for you than this, and your native Scottish wisdom will convince you of it without more ado.'

"Well, the thing was done, the harm or good of it, for one cannot always act with deliberation, and never, I should say, when Madame Angelique beckons, for she is a witch incarnate. Rarely is it any use revising what has been done, and, frankly, I would not have missed that dance even if it were to have cost me my head. At the moment I am not sure whether or not it has cost me my heart; temporarily, shall I say, keeping on the safe side of truth?

"Anyhow, my dear Captain Ian Gordon, you will be made aware by these greetings, should they reach you in the goodness of time, and the friend who carries them, that I am having an experience which agrees with me, and so I sign myself with the more heartiness,

"Your very faithful "JOCK FARQUHARSON OF INVEREY."



XVI—The Wooin' O't!

There are two kinds of people who make a difference in our lives when they leave us: those we like and who like us, and those we do not like and who dislike us, for that is one way in which the world wags.

We feel, in the first case, a quick sadness, we dwell on happy memories, now tinted to a soft melancholy, and we ask ourselves, "Have we been all to them we could have been, and they the most to us?"

Our feeling in the second case is one of relief, coupled with the passing of an influence which, if not sympathetic, may yet have been a stimulus to us. Something that has been roused in our nature, goes back into its hidden place with the cause which unhappily called it out, rivalry, perhaps. It is a whip that may carry you to the top of a hill when otherwise, tempted by a warm sun and a soft wind, you might recline on a half-way bank of heather. Ah! it is good to day-dream at the sun, our Highland sun, which plays hide-and-seek with the sailing clouds.

But, may be, the incomplete parting is the best, that which has many things unsaid, silences which are not silent; because it leaves room for the imagination, lets us gild the picture in the roses of hope.

The going of the Black Colonel had meant a difference for myself certainly, and also, I could suppose, for Marget and her mother. But it was a mixture of the two feelings which I have suggested, because, in a fashion, I had a regard for the man, as well as something else, and to the ladies of the Dower House he was both the kinsman and the venturer who wanted to be more. I admired his manly qualities and was willing to clothe the others in a veil, as long as he did not make that impossible. They had the bond of family with him, a quiet pride in his championage of the Stuart side, which had been theirs, and, well, they wished no more of him. But what, perhaps, we mostly felt, Marget and I, without daring for a moment to confess as much, was that some element which kept us apart, and might, unhappily, even divide us, had passed across the sea to the New World with the Black Colonel.

We began unconsciously, and then, I suspect, noticeably, to grow closer, to live the vital little things of life nearer to each other, as it this were natural. That, perhaps, is the most critical period in the mating of two young people, as you may learn from the delicate nurturing of Mother Nature herself in the spring-time, when the earth grows warm. They are so in the thrill of emotion, that they have no thought for the building of the permanent house of the spirit in which they are to dwell. But it goes forward about them and otherwise the prospect would be bleak for them, sad for them, and sadness should not come to lovers in the honeymoon of their hopes.

"I suppose," Marget said to me one evening while we chatted in the Dower House and her mother, tempted by the long summer light of the north, read in the garden, "I suppose you really have nothing to do now that the Black Colonel is gone, and his disturbance—for you—with him."

"Oh," answered I, "there are still things to do, things, some of them, which I don't like, as my military superiors down there in Aberdeen town may be suspecting, for only last week, you know, they sent up a troop of horse to make a special search of Corgarff for any hidden Jacobite powder and shot. What happened you also know. Our friends of your Stuart faith heard of this expedition long before it arrived, filled their knapsacks with bannocks, and went to the hills. The troopers came, found, by persistent search in deserted homes, a few barrels of Spanish powder, some hundreds of bullets and a broken cannon, and threw them all into the Water of Don. It was not very exciting, especially to me, because it was a kind of censure; but nothing worse happened than the breaking of a drunken trooper's neck, by a fall from his horse. Here was one more way of death, not a pretty way, for the man's commanding officer said jocosely, 'The idiot, he must have come upon bad drink in his searches, and a bad woman is less dangerous.'"

"Your statement," said Marget, "is, I see, a confidential apology to me for the ongoings of those set over us and you! I hope you don't spend too many hours in reflections as unprofitable as the subject of these," and she made, with this advice, to be a very serious young woman.

"What," I asked, "would you have me do with my spare time?"

"I'm afraid I don't know."

"Well, if you don't, who does?"

"I think I see a compliment in what you say, but I'm not quite sure."

"It's against rules, isn't it, to repeat a compliment? It would be no compliment then."

"The more need to make it clear at first."

"I thought I had."

"Men think such a lot of things which are too unsubtle, too clumsy, for a woman to comprehend. Yes, it is so."

"Men—myself—the Black Colonel?"

"He is far away; why bring him back?"

"Only because it may concern you, and anything which concerns you . . . is not to be spoken."

"It is more interesting to speculate on what might have happened if he had stayed, instead of running from his guns—no, I mean to his guns, for he was no coward. Discount a good deal from him and he remains a taking man. It flatters any woman to be coveted by a man of parts, good or bad. She likes the homage thus implied, and if she did not she would be no woman. She says to herself, 'What a pity that man should be in love with me because I would not have him at all.' With her next breath she says, 'A resolute lover, something like a lover, a great lover.'"

"The unconventional lover—and more," said I; "that's it, all down time, the primitive trait of sex, he who can lift a woman out of her groove into a surprise."

"Well," said Marget, "the Black Colonel has the right blood for an unconventional lover. You cannot make a Farquharson respectable by force, and I'm not sure about the Gordons!"

She looked at me with amusement in one eye and the rebel woman in the other and I laughed, and that was all. No; not all.

Such talks between Marget and myself may have seemed to lead nowhere, but actually they did. The unspoken side of them was full of those secrets which cannot be put into language, because they would perish in the effort. What is spoken may be good, but what is unspoken in love is still better. Behind the word, there hides the speech of the soul. You say one thing, and with the eye mean another, or you say it in a fashion only intelligible to a particular person. There is a telegraphy of souls, as well as of hearts and minds, and the lesson is never to believe your ears.

Things came to be understood between myself and Marget, and the Black Colonel had a part in this, far away as he had taken himself and his troubles. He was not out of the picture, because he might return to it, but we could paint him in or out as we liked, and that left us canvas room. One day he was returning to set us all by the heels again; another day he was gone, to return no more, leaving us to fashion our own lives, as we were doing.

"Marget," I asked, "suppose the Colonel comes back, is he to find us just as he left us?"

"Not very friendly—or more friendly?" she replied vaguely, teasingly. And then a little anxiously, as I thought, "Did you and the Black Colonel make any bargain about our old Forbes property which need ever call him back?"

"Dear me, no! But if it would give you pleasure to see him again soon, why, let us pray for his coming."

Marget was hurt at this, for she said, "I was only wondering whether the Black Colonel will renew the quest here, if he does not reach his ends through the New France venture."

That question was to be answered by a last long epistle from him, which came to me about this time, and which tells his further part in our story, a wandering story, like Jock Farquharson.



XVII—-A Song of Other Shores

"Quebec, North America.

My Worthy Kinsman,

"You have not written me in reply to a previous letter of mine, nor did I expect you would, but I hope you have not lost all interest in my fortunes, and I make sure that the great events which have happened here, in New France, must interest you, when told with some particularity by me.

"You will be well aware, before this reaches you, that the fleur-de-lys of his Christian Majesty, King Louis, no longer flies over the citadel of Quebec, and that in its place there blows the flag of His Britannic Majesty—whom God bless, I suppose! But of how all this happened you will only have general intelligence, and none about my own fortunate part in it.

"Well, it was not mere fortune, because I did exert myself strenuously to discharge the mission confided to me, and General Wolfe said privily, before he marched to a glorious victory and a glorious death, that I had succeeded beyond his expectation. But I should tell you that I had necessary audiences of him more than once, while I served with the French in Quebec, and these we managed with perfect secrecy, thanks to methods which I may not disclose, except that the high esteem felt by the French for the Black Colonel, and their faith in his honour, alone made them possible.

"Saying so much of General Wolfe, I wish to set down my own monument to his evident high parts as a soldier and a man. I found him modest in demeanour, graceful of manner, reasonable in attitude, altogether a gallant gentleman. He was simple and to the point, and when he had finished with you he dispatched you courteously, pleased with him and with yourself.

"His excellency, the Marquis Montcalm, who also did me the honour of various conversations, and who likewise fell gloriously, had qualities not dissimilar. He was a French gentleman with the grand manner, meaning he carried his air so quietly that you hardly knew its presence, except by feeling it. I will further say, in token to his attributes, that he was of a moral stature in whose presence I felt ashamed of my secret trade, a trade which a man can only follow once in a life time, and then because he must.

"Perhaps you will scarce believe that several times my tongue was bubbling to deliver all to his knowledge, and to throw myself on his mercy. His very trustfulness made that impossible, because in each of us there is a natural refusal to destroy confidence, wherever we find it. That would be uprooting a plant which does not grow strongly enough anywhere, and I, for one, love to cultivate it. 'So, so,' I hear you say, my friend!

"Certainly at times I wished that my Lord Montcalm would treat me with less consideration and not ask me questions about the British invading forces, because I gathered information from those questions, and, in truth, here was the basis of much I imparted to General Wolfe. He asked, did Monsieur Montcalm, in some detail, about the Highlanders of Fraser's Regiment, and said that, far away as he had seen them from the ramparts, they appeared so picturesque in their tartans as to be hardly associable with the even, undeviating, outward English character.

"I answered that there were greater similarities between the Highlanders of Scotland and the French than between those same Highlanders and the English, both having Celtic blood in them, and that this resulted in a natural brotherhood which even the hazards of war could not disturb, or only temporarily. Nay, I said once to his excellency that we Jacobites still look more over the water to France and to our Stuart King than we look, or ever may look, over the Scottish border to England.

"You will mark how I sprawl between my native land and this New France, as it was termed until the other month. A man's heart can be in many places, a woman's only in one, and my affections, I confess, have mostly been a divided allegiance. They have gone out and come home again, and now, thanks to my prosperity here, they have a tendency to abide where my epistle finds me. For there is grateful comfort in Quebec, and a freshness glad to experience, and the society remains merry, though the fleur-de-lys has perished for ever. All the French women here in Quebec did not see, in its changed governors, a burial for the living, and some of them said, 'It is destiny; let us make the best of things.'

"But I anticipate events, and that would be to miss their drama and my own little share in them, a share with which, in the result, I am satisfied, although I could sincerely have wished the ways and means to be more aboveboard. However, you cannot remain the complete gentleman and make history, and my justification lies in this signal fact: that I inspired and counselled General Wolfe to his scaling of the cliffs at the one place where that was possible, a matter on which I beg you will see that right credit and justice be done towards Jock Farquharson of Inverey, commonly called the Black Colonel. He and I alone knew beforehand where exactly the escalade was to be, and it was a singular joy to share a large, potential secret with another able to make it good, as General Wolfe most handsomely did, though, once being shown how, no great difficulty remained.

"When, in the hurry of Quebec that fated morning, I heard Fraser's Highlanders had climbed the cliffs, swinging from foothold to foothold like the wild cats of their native mountains, I said to myself, 'This is, indeed, my venture, and it is fitting my own people should carry it out.' But how odd it is that two Highland threads should come together in such a fashion, only we Celts have been destined to weave many of the red warps of story. I had knowledge of the part my kinsmen were to play in the bloody gamble between General Wolfe and the Marquis Montcalm, and, without desiring to appear on the field of battle, which was no part of my diplomacy and not hard, with my privileges from the French, to avoid, I sought an elevation where I could behold the kilted Frasers drawn up in battle array.

"My certes, they made a brave picture, with the sun shining on the colours of their kilts and the cool Canadian breeze waving them as in a rhythm of martial motion. Ah! the heart aye warms to the tartan, and I could have given my soul, if it be left me, which I must hope, to stand in front of that red and green line, an officer of the Fraser's, as I have now become, by virtue of the successful completion of my contract. They awaited orders with impatience, for the headlong charge has ever been the natural form of battle with Highlanders, only the appearance of General Wolfe, fearlessly wearing a new, conspicuous uniform, and the entire confidence of his step forward and backward while history boiled in the pot, held them in like a rein.

"It was the French who joined battle first, making some confusion among themselves as they did so, because their several units fired differently. This wasted and scattered their salvoes, but they advanced gallantly to within forty yards of the British lines. Then General Wolfe ordered 'Fire!' and before its solid stroke the French reeled like trees stricken by lightning. Swiftly, then, the Highlanders leapt forward with bayonets gleaming, and in what I say of them—my own people—I say of the British army as a whole: it caught the French before they could reform, and thus the issue was already decided.

"Now here was a change on the message, my Comte Frontenac, in earlier years, returned to a British admiral who demanded his surrender. 'The only answer,' he swore, 'I will give will be from the mouth of my cannon and musketry, that he may learn that it is not in such a style that a man of my rank may be summoned.' It was a change, too, from the ill-success of General Wolfe's assault on Montmorency, over beside the little river falling into the big one, where the very elements were unfavourable.

"Montcalm won then, very fairly won, for his fire upon the British was of a nature which none could overcome. Monsieur Vaudreuil, the Governor, who, like the Intendant Bigot, had an eternal desire to reap where he had not sown, was so patronizing as to say after the Montmorency fight, 'I have no more anxiety about Quebec. Monsieur Wolfe, I am sure, will make no progress.' 'La, la,' as Madame Angelique would say when she teases me, what a poor prophet was his excellency Vaudreuil, but, indeed, prophecy has a trick of falling into incapable hands and I, being, I trust, capable, have rarely tried it.

"You needed my broad account of events in Quebec to do me justice, and that is why I have lingered over it. I have given you hints enough for the proper fitting of me into those events, as when, most casually, I hope, I mentioned my advising of General Wolfe precisely where to make his ascent to the Plains of Abraham. However, there are small personal items you cannot know, without they are told you, and very chiefly that refers to the ingenuity with which, my mission, as compacted, being done, I passed from the ranks of the vanquished French to those of the conquering British, where I had been expected.

"There was such confusion everywhere, such a tearing up of things, that I could do what I wished, and have it go unchallenged. Moreover, there was a want of bitterness between the contending parties, for one reason, possibly, because the deaths of Wolfe and Montcalm had softened enmity: and nobody has yet hurled the words 'traitor,' 'spy,' at me, and I feel I am not truly open to them, my task having been that of an intelligence officer on the highest scale. As much is recognized in the affability which I have continued to find among the French since the close of the siege, but they are by nature surprisingly agreeable, as I would wish, with my heart to subscribe.

"Why, man, and this will make you curious, if envy there be in you, young French ladies take pains and pleasure to teach British officers French, with what view I know not, if it be not to hear themselves praised, flattered and courted, without loss of time. To praise comes natural to me, to flatter is not amiss, and, as to courting, I judge you have always appreciated that in me. You may have doubted me in some respects; you had no doubts I fancy, in that particular.

"This quality of mine—I claim it a quality—has made me take, with growing kindness, to where I am, and the idea of coming home again, when it arises in my mind, I rather put aside. My natural dream is that I shall return, but mostly I am content to play with the fancy, to catch it up, put it aside, and again catch it up, and once more let it rest.

"There I am backed by the circumstance that I have no tidings whatever touching my plans, as declared to you, in regard to Corgarff, and I suppose that your thankless rulers have forgotten me. They were willing to use me as a pacifier, and when that did not promise an immediate result they found me of use in the war of New France. This service being completed, faithfully, honourably, I dare aver, and to the very letter of the bargain, I am, I repeat, for much I repeat, given my commission in Fraser's Highlanders. But, of a settlement in the larger spirit which the inclusion of Corgarff would have implied, I have no intelligence, and it is conceivable that I may get none.

"Therefore I may remain at Quebec with the Fraser Highlanders so long as they continue here, and, when they go hence, still remain as an independent gentleman, provided I were, by happy chance, shall I say? to find genial companionship. I am not old, not of the sort ever to grow actually old, but the excursions of life have wearied me, and I begin to sigh for a permanent holding ground, the anchorage of rest which should come to us all.

"That desire, if I may make you a great confidence, would satisfy itself in a woman of the qualities of Mistress Marget Forbes. I do no more than quote her because she is known to us both, and therefore she makes clear the exact shade of my meaning. But I imply no freedom with her name, except what the honouring of it carries, and if any man implied anything more she would know how to answer him. She has, I will say, the tang of the Forbes blood full in her, and I have always thought it warmer in its flow of both love and pride than the Gordon blood, although of that you should be a better judge than I am.

"One needs a wife of parts if one is, as I hope, to found a new clan in a new country, for, mind you, many of the Fraser Highlanders, when they end their period of enrolment, will prefer to settle in this lush, virgin country where the days go by like a dream. They will sit down on the untilled lands, and out of them find a competence of food and raiment, and they will marry French women who are buxom and healthy and will be good wives and mothers.

"Granted all this, and it follows that there will be materials for a new house of Inverey in some valley by the River Saint Lawrence, where the Red Man at present reigns in indolence. He who can sit on a knoll for an hour and let old Mother Earth spin her tune to the fathering sun, is ever a friend of mine. But the Red Man carries the pastime beyond me, unless when he is on the warpath, and then he is a devil. It would give me no compunction to reign with a hundred or more Fraser Highlanders, in a strath from which the Red Man has to be persuaded away, or driven by force. Perhaps I could even hold out a helping invitation to smaller 'broken men' still in the Aberdeenshire Highlands or elsewhere in dear Scotland, and that would please my self-importance.

"I renounce nothing, give up no legitimate claim that I have put forward for hand or land in our native country, but I see that I am come to leaving them unclaimed. Madame Angelique, to whom, mayhap, I have confided those consolations and aspirations, and who has a comely sense as well as comely looks, says very properly that changed circumstances carry other changes, and that even a Highland gentleman may recognize as much without loss of self-respect.

"Madame has, in the crash which sank Bigot's fortunes, come to plain faring, but I have made no difference in my friendship to her, and she, I feel, has increased hers towards me. She tells me she has no clamant ties left in Old France, any more than in New France, where the lustre of her powerful French friends has set, and my heart goes out to her in sympathy, and, I know not what more, except that she is a very fine woman and would adorn the home of. . . . Why give a name?

"You must make what you can of this scattered epistle and read it into my future because you may not hear from me again, or, if you do, only briefly in unlikelihoods. I am no practised writer, though I might have acquired the trade, and it is only out of a felt duty, combined with a personal regard of some durability, that I have set down, for you, those epistles of my doings far across the sea. Farewell, if it be farewell, and to Mistress Marget Forbes the like salutation, if she will accept it, as I am sure she will, when presented through you; and similarly to Madame Forbes, her mother, my humble duty.

"Always your well-wisher, "JOCK FARQUHARSON, late of Inverey."



XVIII—My Garden of Content

"Said Edom o' Gordon to his men We maun draw to a close."

That close, whether to a love story or a life, should come in the quiet, natural way which Providence orders, unexpectedly almost, not in tumult and trappings.

I am of a family which has been accustomed to storm through the world, sometimes with all the world could give, at other times with mighty little. This element has got into our blood, become, you might say, a habit, and often, myself, I have felt its prickings. After all, it must be a finely insurgent thing to drive to the devil in a golden carriage built for two, or more; and the Gordons have never been accustomed to count their guests, so long as they made good company.

Then I had grown up at a time in our Highlands when the kettle of history was about to boil over, scalding a great many people in the process. The fiery cross of war carried its message from one valley to another and left its embers on new graves wherever it went.

You are asking what this excursion in deep waters has to do with Marget and myself and the Black Colonel, Jock Farquharson. It has everything to do with us, because it is the lamp of the road along which we journeyed. Anybody can count turnings in a path, but it is harder to catch the other-world glow which sees us past them to our desired haven.

We were in sight of it, and, although we said little, I knew that we both rejoiced exceedingly over the news which the Black Colonel sent in his last letter. When we met I looked at Marget as much as to ask, "Shall I say it?" And she looked at me answering, "No, you need not, because I understand."

It is a curious state this which, at some time or other, exists between two loving people cast for each other's welfaring. A delicate mystery lies in it, and that is an essential strand in every true affection, but it can readily be destroyed. Break it rudely, even shock it a little, and a chasm may yawn where, before, there was a silken thread of union, tender in its fibre, but beautifully elastic.

You may exclaim, when you read these confidences and remember others to which I have confessed, that I was not so awkward a lover as I sometimes appeared to be. No, I was not awkward in thought, but I could be, I know full well, very awkward in its expression as deeds. Often I would go wrong in form, rarely in feeling, if you can assume a man built on those colliding lines.

Marget has told me, in raillery, that she was more than once tempted to give me "a good shaking," as the woman's saying goes. It was not, perhaps, that she expected to shake much out of me, or to shake me out of myself, but that she would herself have been relieved by the exercise, for women, you see, are like that.

My reflection has to do with a day when we spoke of it as settled that the Black Colonel would never come back, that the whole episode which he represented was over, and that an open road, undisturbed surely by any more surprises and alarms, lay before us. How could I forget the scene, for it was to open out our true life, our deep, full love.

She looked at me as much as to ask had I been planning a stratagem, I the unsophisticated, which I had not. She looked again, and I saw she knew, that at long length, we were face to face with the soft realities which, hitherto, had remained dumb, or only whispered. I waited to take her in my arms, and she told me later her instinct expected me to do it, and I didn't. What poor fools men may be, to miss so much, and to place a good woman in the position of having her consent rebuffed, for that is to outrage her sex-respect.

I seem to remember that Marget turned her head away in despair with me, only she pretended to be watching the sun and the clouds as they dipped the hills in light and shadow. This threw her face into profile, and I thought I had never seen it quite so beautiful. There was an expectant vibrancy in it, from the fair forehead to the dimpled chin, but its flower of expression was in the flowing eye, the ripe mouth, and the tremulous lips.

"A wonderful scene," she said, her look lost in the river and the hills; "a scene which makes one think in parables, as the old men of Scriptures did."

"Parables," I replied, remembering, as I saw she did, "are very unuseful."

"Why do you say that?" she asked gently, still looking at the dance of sunlight and shadow upon the heather and the water.

"Oh, because they are," I said absurdly enough.

"That's a woman's reason," she observed, "and it should be left to a woman. Have you nothing more original to say?"

"Well, if I were to tell you a parable, a parable of my own, as you once told me one of yours, what would happen?"

"I'm sure I don't know," she laughed, "but why trouble about what may happen? A little risk gives a spice to life, and, anyhow, it can mostly be run away from at the last moment!"

"Then," said I, fairly and warmly hit by that, "it is the parable of a maid and a man, the old, old story, in a new setting. They met under cross circumstances, when things around them were difficult and their families took separate sides in politics and war. But if it had not been those very troubles they might never have met, or, what is even worse, have met too late, as maids and men often do. Perhaps trouble, because it brought them together in sympathy, also began to bring them together in heart, that being one road to affection. Love at first sight? Yes, for a winning face, an elegant figure, a silvery voice, or even a shapely foot. But that, surely, is the stuff of passion which may bloom in the morning and fade at night, not love the enduring as, I promise you, in my parable."

Marget nodded her head, unconsciously, as if some far voice were calling to her from the spreading country of red heath and green fir-trees, of dancing sunshine and rippling stream, that lay beneath us. She did not speak, and I went on:

"You do not in parables say much of people, and never by name, but I must tell you of my maid, the man, and of the other man who came between them—nearly! She was all simple charm, yet also of pulsing womanliness, the healthy product of a country life, a fair survival of many ordeals. Deep in her nature was that intense power of feeling which belongs to complete womanhood, as music belongs to an ancient fiddle. There were strings so sweet and subtle, so strange and strong, that she herself feared to play on them, and when the man appeared she greeted him as a friend, nothing more."

Marget waited as I paused, for when one's heart is in one's mouth words are hard to find, and I am not much in command of them at any time.

"The man," I resumed, "what shall I say of him, for he had no personal history. He had an old name, however, which he hoped not to sully, and he bent himself quietly to duty, as, crookedly and undesirably, it came his way. He found no call to do great things of the world, but rather to straighten out the small things of a wee corner of it, and there to keep the peace. The maid just came into his life, and he, in his plain way, thanked Providence and held his tongue, except when secrets would half slip out and tell-tale acts come about."

Marget made no sign as to whether or not she recognized the portrait, and thus I was brought up abruptly against the other man of our parable.

"He," I said, "had all the ruder qualities admired by women, those of manliness, which good women may like, and the others which the other women secretly like. It was not difficult to see him, both as a hero and as a villain, and either way the pull of romance lay about him. He had particular ambitions which brought him between the maid and the first man, and there was, thanks to certain elements in human ties and high affairs, a strong influence favourable to those ambitions. But, as chance or Providence would have it, he was translated to another land, and there he found such comfort and companionship that he decided to stay. This left the maid and the man who feared too much, free to be to each other what they desired; and there ends my parable."

"But," asked Marget with unsteady words which betrayed her agitation, "where is its moral? A parable must have a moral."

"Has it none?" I boldly asked her, taking her hand in mine, before she or I knew it, and kissing it and then her rosy, rebellious lips.

By-and-by she looked at me through wet eye-lashes and asked, "Shall I tell you a parable which had a moral, though maybe it has lost it," and her tears laughed.

"Do," I said; "I can stand the moral now, whatever it may be."

"It should be a severe moral for you," she whispered, "because you have been so foolish, so little understanding with me, yet I'll try and make it light. It also concerns a maiden and two men, but she only cared for one of the men, never at all for the other. Nor would all the family interests in the world have made her marry the other. The real man, well, he seemed not to know that there is a precipice of influences, of circumstances, for every woman, over which she may be let slip by his hesitation; and this without possibility of return, for, even if she could return, her sex pride would not let her."

"Ah," I whispered, "and the moral?"

"That you deserved to lose me; and that it would have broken my heart if you had."

We sat very close, hand in hand, mind in mind, heart in heart, and watched the sun go down behind the silent hills of our beloved Corgarff, both of us silent, like them.

Years have gone by since then, and they have proved to us how sure a conduct is the heart alike to happiness, and, though it matters less, to prosperity. March where the tune of its soft beating calls, and you are blessed. Traffic with it, and you miss the real lift of life, that which makes life good, whatever betides.

Marget and I had learned this in the school of sweet-hearting, and now we knew it in the joy of confiding words. Nothing else mattered, because it mattered all, but when the inner world is well the outer world responds to it in kind. The private happiness which we had won made a larger good fortune for us without, or at all events, we saw the morning radiance, not the morning mists.

Our poor ruined Highlands still lay under their covering of sorrow, as grass grows indifferently upon a grave. But they were mending, even while they suffered, for they had spirit in them. Virile men and womanly women do not cry all the time, but give thanks to God for his mercies and go forward.

It was my fortunate destiny to be helpful beyond myself at Corgarff, and I will tell you how. When gossip of a purpose of marriage between Ian Gordon and Marget Forbes reached high quarters, friends in the two political camps got to work on our behalf. The outcome was that before Marget Forbes became Marget Forbes, or Gordon, as the Scots legal form has it, the lands which were her peoples had been returned to her, a sort of wedding gift.

Good and bad news like not to travel alone, and what must a kinsman of my own, an aged bachelor Gordon, do, but say that instead of waiting for his estate until he was dead, and his will read, I should come into it and its perquisites at once, if only because there must be acre for acre exchanged, as between a Gordon and a Forbes. Thus our heart's house of joy was dowered with worldly goods, though I should, in justice especially to Marget, add that we laid no stress on that, apart from the usefulness towards others which it carried.

At such usefulness, I can fairly say, we laboured whole-heartedly from the hour when we took each other for better, and never a minute for worse, in the Castle of Corgarff, with Marget's mother saying, "Children, you have all my poor old heart, to keep the fire of your young hearts warm."

She was a gracious lady, and she dwelt with us until we bore her to the little churchyard on the hill-side, where there is a clump of trees to break the cold sough of the winds into a lullaby. By that time another Marget, beautiful of face like the Forbeses, lithe of limb like the Gordons—we never could agree whom she most resembled!—had been given to us. She was our guerdon of the reverent gospel of home, which is the high altar of this world, the source and sanctuary of our well-being as men and women.

We have tried to live up to that ideal, and none can do more, unless, indeed, it be to seek the perfect heights of the Sermon on the Mount itself. It is good to look upward there, even if one cannot hope to reach the golden peaks of that world without an end—Amen!



THE END