I got my wound in the early forenoon of December the 10th. About eight o'clock on the night of the 17th I sat down in a deserted shepherd's hut to the meal Donald had got ready for me. The week had been in one respect a blank, for I had not seen Margaret. In every other respect it had been laborious, strenuous, and exciting, and we had just seen the end of the toughest job so far. We, meaning my dragoons and myself, were on the top of Shap. Some ammunition wagons had broken down on the upward climb, bunging up the road at its stiffest bit and delaying us for hours. His lordship and the Colonel, with the infantry of the rear-guard, were in Shap village a mile or two ahead. The Prince was still farther on, probably in Penrith.
The delay was dangerous. Our army had rested one full day at Preston and another at Lancaster. Even at Preston the Colonel and I, with my dragoons, had barely ridden out of the town when a strong body of enemy horse rode in from the east, sent by Wade to reinforce the Duke. Our margin of safety was being cut down daily. We should have to fight before long, and I was posted here, on the top of Shap, to see that no surprise was sprung upon us.
The shieling, as Donald called it, was about a hundred yards past the highest point of the road, where a picket was on the watch. Across the road was a bit of a dip, and here my dragoons were making themselves comfortable round a roaring fire, fuel for which was provided by the smashed-up carcass of a derelict wagon. The country was as bare as a bird's tail, but by a slice of great good luck one of them had shot a stray sheep on the way up, and the air was thick with the smell of singed mutton.
Here I must say of my dragoons that they were men I loved to command. After twelve days' work of a sort to knock up an elephant they were as fresh as daisies. Donald they all feared, and as Donald, for my behoof, made no bones about telling them how the laddie's nief, sma' as it lookit, 'ad dinged 'im, Donald, oot o' his seven senses, they feared me. I think they even liked me. Anyhow, I never had an ugly look or a glum word from one of them. Some people express surprise at the splendid Highland regiments now, thanks to Mr. Pitt's politic genius, serving in our army. It is no surprise to me who have commanded a body of clansmen for a fortnight in the back-end of a retreat.
Donald was a very jewel of a man. He was servant, sergeant, nurse, and companion, and unbeatable in all capacities. My wound had given me more trouble than I expected, even though Mr. Bamford had told me that one of the larger arteries was injured. Once or twice since, as occasion served, a doctor had dressed it, but it was Donald's incessant care that did most for it. I still wore my left arm in a sling.
He had made me a fire of wood and turfs; given me roast mutton, a slice of cheese sprinkled with oatmeal, and good bread to eat, and a pint of milk laced with whisky to drink. Refinements which he would have scouted for himself in any place, he had taken thought to provide for me in these wilds--a pewter plate and a silver beaker, both stolen. The only furnishing in the hut was a squat log, almost the size of a butcher's block, which served as a table. For seat, Donald rigged up half the tail-board of the wagon across two heaps of turfs. He completed his work by producing a tallow candle stuck in a dab of clay by way of candlestick.
Donald had left me to my food and gone over to the camp to get his own. I made a nourishable meal and then sat down before the fire to smoke and think.
I had not seen Margaret since Leek, and had not been alone with her since, her hand in mine, we had crept out of the gracious presence of the dead. And I had got into a mood in which I felt that it was well I did not see her. Some day I should have to do without her altogether, and this was a chance of learning how to do it.
Though I had not seen her, I had heard of her. While our army stayed the day in Lancaster I had been watching the road within sight of the spires of Preston, wondering why the Duke's horse, after their accession of strength, did not come after us. The Marquess of Tiverton has since told me that the Duke had been kept a day at Preston by rumours of a French landing on the south coast. Being far behind, I had ridden through Lancaster without drawing rein, but in the main street a stranger--one of us, however, as his white cockade showed--had stepped up to my saddle and handed me a letter. It was plainly of a woman's writing, and I burned to think that it was Margaret's hand that had penned the direction to "Oliver Wheatman, Esquire, Captain of Dragoons in the army of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent." I tore it open, and found it was from the Lady Ogilvie. She would understand and forgive if she could ever know how disappointed I was.
It had been written that morning before leaving the town, and bore traces of hasty composition. It ran as follows:--
"SIR,--This is to let ye know, dear Oliver, that I'm sure M. has got a bee in his bonnet. I'm thinking that some one we know has tell't him she will hae no trokings with him in the way he wants. I dinna ken for certain, mark ye, but they were taegither last night, and this morning he's not hanging round to pit us in ye carriage, as he ordinarily does, and she is pale and quiet, and says she wishes her father was at hand, and I like it not, dear Oliver. I call you dear Oliver because y'are such a guid laddie, just as I'm a guid girl. Davie tell't me how you stood up and saluted him, and I was glad I'd kissed ye ance upon a time, though it was only to plague ye. Remember what I tell't ye about these Highland boddys. M. is like all the rest of 'em, and moreover the Prince made ye his aide-de-camp, and it was to have been him, tho' he didna mind at the first because it left him free to be courting his leddy, but noo he'll hae it rankling in his heart like poison. And keep your eye on that chiel, Donald. He's foster-brother to M., and wad stick his dirk in the Prince himself if M. tell't him to. They're not bad boddys, but that's how they are. She says naething about ye, and that's a guid sign, I'm thinking. I wish ye knew the French instead of that silly Lattin, for then I cud write ye a propper letter wi' nice words in it, but she says yell hae to learn Italian first to suit her, but that's only her daffery. Excuse this ill-writ note, for the paper is bad and I'm no sure o' my English when it's guid.--Your obedient servant and loving guid friend,
"ISHBEL OGILVIE"
I pulled the dab of mud close to my elbow and read it again. In part it was plain enough. That Maclachlan was madly in love with Margaret had become almost a matter of common gossip. My Lord George Murray had hinted at it more than once, as he had at my displacing the young Chief in the Prince's favour. Maclachlan was son and heir to a chief of considerable power and reputation. That he should fall in love with Margaret was natural, and had she fallen in love with him I should not have been surprised. Even after the event, I still say that he was a fine, upstanding man, delightful to look on, and, so far as I knew, worthy of any woman, even of such a one as Margaret. But the heart is master not servant, and cannot be commanded. She loved him not and there was an end of it.
Next, Lady Ogilvie hinted at danger to me from him. Well, if he wanted a fight, a fight he should have. There's no Englishman living thinks more of Scotsmen than I do, but I have never thought enough of the best Scot breathing to run away from him. As for Donald, unless I was an idiot and he a better actor than Mr. Garrick, he would far sooner have driven his dirk into himself than into me. That matter could rest. There would be no fighting that night, and I never put on my breeches till it's time to get up.
Where her ladyship was wrong was in supposing, as clearly she did, that Margaret's love affairs interested me otherwise than as being Margaret's. I loved her, loved her dearly, all the more dearly because hopelessly. I had no qualifications which would enable me to speak my love. At my best nothing but a poor yeoman, I was now not even that, I was a declared rebel in a rebellion that had failed. And if I had had every qualification that rank and wealth could give me, it would still have been the same. Between her and me was the dead body of my friend and the widowed heart of my sister.
I was meditatively refilling my pipe when I heard Donald's voice without, raised in earnest explanation.
"An' if I didna think it wass auld Nick comin' for me afore ma reetfu' time, may I never drink anither drap whisky as lang as I live."
Some one laughed at the explanation, and Donald, still explaining, pushed open the door and made way for Margaret, who, before I could rise, was glowering over me, in the delightful way she had, girlish pretence just dashed with womanly earnest.
"I shall never forgive you, nor father, nor Donald, nor anybody else. And you're not to move, sir!"
"I'm sorry, madam," said I.
"You always are. It's your favourite mood. You live on sorrow," she said, pelting me with the terse, sharp sentences. Then, for I twitched at her telling me I lived on sorrow, she melted at once, and said, "Oh, Oliver, I'm so sorry. Why did you not send for me and let me nurse it better? Surely that was my right as well as my duty."
There was no contenting her till she had seen and dressed my wound. She had brought lint and linen with her, some kind of balsam which nearly made me glad she had not had the daily dressing of my arm, and even a basin and a huge bottle of clear spring water, which were brought in from the calash by Bimbo, Lady Ogilvie's little black coachman. The hut looked like a surgery, and Donald and Bimbo got mixed up in the most laughable way in dodging about to wait on her.
"Com' oot of it!" said Donald desperately, unwinding the little black out of his plaid for the second time.
"You one big elephant in pekkaloats!" he retorted, grinning bare his big white teeth. "You tread on Bimbo, Bimbo go squash."
"How does it feel now?" asked Margaret, when her task was over.
"I shall be able to clout Donald with it in the morning," I answered.
"Tat's petter," said he, grinning with delight. "I'm thinkin' I'd suner be dinged wi' 'er again than see 'er hinging there daein' naethin'."
He took Bimbo off to the camp-fire and left us alone. We wrangled about the seating accommodation of the hut, for the cart-tail was but short, and I wanted her to have it to herself. She flouted the idea, and in the end we shared it, and I minded its shortness no longer. She would fill my pipe for me, and held a burning splinter to the bowl while I got it going. Over her doctoring she had been very pale and quiet. Now she got her colour back in the light and warmth of the fire, but she quietened down again as soon as I was smoking in comfort.
She told me briefly that she had stayed in Shap to see her father. Lady Ogilvie had insisted on her keeping the calash, so that she could come on in comfort in the morning. From her father she had learned of my wound, and had come on at once to see for herself how I was. She would start back for Shap shortly, where she was to stay the night with her father.
She told me this and then leaned forward, cupping her chin in her hands, and went quiet again.
I was glad of her silence, glad that she was hiding her face from me, for I needed to pull myself together. That something had happened was clear, and, whatever it was, it had struck home. In some way of deep concernment there was a new Margaret by my side, but in another way it was the old familiar Margaret as well, for she was wearing mother's long grey domino. She had unclasped it so that it now hung loosely on her, and flung back the hood so that the firelight made lambent flickerings in her hair.
"I have not seen you for twelve days," she said at last.
"No, madam."
"Have you been neglecting me, sir?" Just a touch of vigour was in her voice, but she still gazed at the fire.
"You are a soldier's daughter, not an alderman's," I said quietly, and the retort brought her head round with a jerk.
"And how does that excuse your neglect?"
"By giving you the chance of ascertaining from your father whether my military duties have left me any opportunity of neglecting you," I answered steadily. As usual with me, since I could not woo, I would be master where I could. It was a source of mean delight to me.
"More logic," she said briefly, and turned to the fire again.
Apparently she tested the logic in her mind and came to the conclusion that it was sound. She got up, threw some wood on the fire, thrusting me back playfully when I tried to forestall her, and then said merrily, "What do you think dad said to-night?"
"It would take hours to guess, I expect, so tell me at once, since I see it hipped you."
"It did," she said, with playful emphasis. "I fear I've not trained him up as fathers should be trained, for he coolly told me that if I had not had the misfortune to be a girl, I might perhaps have turned out as good a lad as you."
"Misfortune!" I echoed almost angrily.
"The exact word," she replied.
"Misfortune! To be the most beautiful woman in England, with the world at your feet--he calls that a misfortune?"
I spoke energetically as the occasion demanded, being, moreover, glad of an outlet. Before I had finished, however, she was back in her old position, with her face hidden from me by her hands. She puzzled me more than ever, for, after a long silence, she burst out, "Not my world, Oliver!"
The phrase shot up like a spout of lava from some deep centre of molten thought. I pitied and loved her, but I was helpless. To make a diversion I looked at my watch and luckily it was the time when the picket at the top should be changed, so I went to the door and opened it. A splendid blare of piping came in from the camp-fire as I did so, and Margaret tripped to the door to listen.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"Donald," said I. "He's one of the great masters of the pipes. I believe in the tale of Amphion and the walls of Thebes now, for this afternoon I saw Donald pipe some broken-down wagons out of the road."
I went across to see to the change of picket, and when I got back into the hut I saw that the tension was over. I relit my pipe, sat down again at her side, and started a rapid series of questions as to what she had seen and heard during the retreat. Try how I would, nay, try as we would, we did not get back to our old footing. We were afraid of silences, and skipped from topic to topic at breakneck speed. We two who had sauntered together in the sunlight, now stumbled along in a mist.
At last she said she must be going, and I went out and shouted to Donald to get Bimbo and the calash ready, and four men as an escort. When I got back to her, she arose, somewhat wearily, and I put the domino on fully and fitted the hood round her head.
"You see I've gone back to the domino, Oliver," she said.
"It's the very thing for a cold night and a dirty road," I replied cheerfully, stepping in front of her, a couple of paces off, to take my last look at her in the light.
"I have never met a man who understands so much about women as you do," she said.
"Thank you, madam," I cried boisterously, and bowed so as to avoid her eyes. But when I was upright again, they caught mine once more, and something in them made me tremble.
"Or so little," she whispered, and she was pitifully white and miserable.
If it had not been for what I saw between us--there, on the floor of crazed and trampled mud, I should have flung my arms around her. But I could not step over that.
"Ta carrish iss ready," cried Donald from the door-sill.
I packed her snugly in the calash and started two dragoons ahead. Bimbo clucked to his horse and was off. I walked a hundred yards by the side of the carriage till it was time to whistle for the other dragoons to start. Then I made Bimbo pull up.
The young moon was battling with great stacks of clouds, but just at that moment won a brief victory, and gave me a clear view of Margaret. She put out her hand, which she had not yet gloved, and I took it in mine, bowed my head over it, and kissed it.
"Good night, Oliver," she whispered.
"Good night, Margaret," I replied, and whistled shrilly to hide my emotions. Something sent her away with her eyes ashine and her face glorious with a smile.
The dragoons clattered by, and I stood for a few minutes staring downhill. And so little. Not my world. And so little. Not my world. The words rang in my ears like a peal of bells. Then, by one of the odd tricks the mind plays us, I remembered that I had left the Hanyards for the work's sake, and that my love for Margaret could only be justified to myself--the only one who could ever know it--by my work. Over the black top there, down in the blacker valley, was the enemy, her enemy, nibbling up the space between us as a rabbit nibbles up a lettuce leaf. I closed my mind to the maddening chime, and started forthright to visit my picket.
The road was flush with the bare windswept summit. The crumpled ground was matted with coarse grass, almost too poor for sheep-feed. The camp-fire still blazed; near it a bagpipe crooned; now and again a horse shook in its harness. The moon whipped out for a moment, and then it was pitch dark again.
As I stepped it out there was a rush at me from the grass, behind and to my left. Down I dropped full length, and a man shot over me and sprawled in the road, but he was quick and lithe as a cat, and was up before me, for my slung arm disadvantaged me. I could just see his sword poised for a cut as he fairly pounced on me. I dived outward as he jumped, and he missed me, but before I could get behind him he was round and at me again like a fury. I was weaponless and crippled, but if I could once get past his sword, it would be all over with him. The pace was so hot, and my mind was so bent on the work, that I did not call for aid. At last I tricked him, for in jumping aside I flung my hat hard in his face, and in a flash had my right hand at his throat. He jabbed at me with his left, and I twisted round to his right side, pressing his sword-arm against his body, and digging my fingers into his windpipe. I heard his sword drop, and felt him feeling for a pistol. He was as hard as a nail, and I began to dream that he would get me before I had choked him.
Donald ended the matter. He, doglike in his fidelity, came striding down the road after me. The moon outpaced the clouds again. He saw us at our death-grips, and came on with a rush and a yell. He drove his dirk into the nape of the man's neck and twisted the blade in its ghastly socket. A sharp, sickening click--and the man dropped out of my fingers like a stone. The moon went in again, and hid the evil thing from us.
"Pe she hurtit?" asked Donald anxiously.
"Not a scratch!" I replied.
"Tat's goot! Carry 'er up to the fire," he added to three or four men who had run up on hearing his yell. "She's English and, maybe, she sall hae fine pickins on 'er."
He stooped down, careless of a dead man as of a dead buck, and stropped his dirk clean and dry on the man's breeches. Then the men, equally indifferent, picked up the body and started off.
"D'ye ken wha the chiel is?" asked Donald, as we walked after them.
"A certain sergeant of dragoons, or one of his men," I answered.
"He winna fash ye ony more," said he. "Tat's a fine way of mine, when I can get behint a mon. I've killt mony a stot like it, shoost t' keep in the way of it." And he stabbed the air, twisted his wrist, and clicked delightedly.
The men dumped the body near the fire. One of them stooped down and was for putting his hand in the man's pocket, but drew it back as if he had thrust it by mischance into the flames.
Then I knew.
I have heard a mare squeal in a burning stable, but I have never heard agony in sound as I heard it there, on the top of Shap, when Donald flung himself across the dead body of his chief and foster-brother.
There is one tender memory of this distressing scene. Neither by look, word, nor tone did Donald attach blame or responsibility to me. He recovered himself in a few minutes, and then stood up, and gave a brief command in Gaelic. Four awe-struck men spread a plaid on the ground, placed the dead body on it, and carried it into the hut. Donald, gravely silent, took the pipes from the man who had been playing, and followed them. I bared my head and went after him miserably.
Maclachlan's body lay on the floor of the hut. The eyes were wide open, but on his fine composed face there was no trace of the agony and passion in which he had gone before his God. It was as if, in that last terrible second, some vision of beauty had swept his soul clean. I knelt down and reverently closed the staring eyes.
"Donald," said I, when I arose, "I would to God that you had killed me instead."
"It's weird," said he solemnly, "and weird mun hae way."
I looked at him closely. That he was struck to the heart was plain to see, but, the first uprush of grief over, he had become sober, steadfast, almost business-like, as if he had something great in hand to do, and would be doing it.
He took the candle, now only the length of my ring-finger, and stuck it on the narrow window-ledge. Again he spoke to the men in Gaelic, and they moved out of the hut. Turning to me, he said, "Com in when ta licht gaes oot!"
He had the right to be alone with his dead. I wrung his hand and left him. When I looked back from the doorway, he was filling his bag with wind, but stopped to say, "Weird mun hae way." And as he said it he smiled.
I crossed the road to the edge of the dip. More wood had been piled on the fire, which now blazed cheerfully. Most of the men lay asleep in their plaids, but a few stood guard over the horses, and the men who had carried the body into the hut were squatting on the grass by the roadside. I took my stand near them, and looked and listened.
The terrible similarity of Donald's case to mine appalled me. Each of us, in saving another, had struck down in the darkness a man near and dear to him. Two good men and true had gone when the lust of life is sweetest and the will to live strongest. I, who three weeks ago had never seen human life taken, had taken it, and seen it taken, as if men were of no more account than cattle. Between the house-place of the Hanyards and the top of Shap, Death had become my familiar.
For Maclachlan I had nothing but pity. He had thought that I stood between him and Margaret. Clearly he had learned of her coming back to me, and the thought had maddened him. He had disguised himself as an Englishman and come after me, and this was the end of it.
These were my thoughts as I watched the flickering flame dropping nearer and nearer to the window-ledge, and listened to the pipes. Donald was inspired. He and the pipes were one. In his hands they became a living thing. What he felt, they felt. They wept as he wept, they gloried as he gloried, they triumphed as he triumphed.
He began with a murmur of grief that grew into a wail, became a passionate tempest, and died into a prolonged sob. Then he changed his note as memory wandered backward. The music became tenderly reminiscent, subduedly cheerful. They were again boys together at their play, youthful hunters swinging over the mountains after the red deer; young men with the maidens; warriors on their first foray. The threads of life ran in and out through the pattern of sounds he was weaving, and the older days of fighting and victories followed as I listened. There was hurrying, marching, charging; the groan of defeat; the mad slogan of final victory.
"He's fechtin' the Macleans noo," cried out one of the men, who had some English, and the others chattered vigorously for a minute in their own Gaelic.
The candle was now guttering on the window-ledge. These glories over, Donald came hard up against the end of them all--the Chief dead at his feet, slain by his own hand. For a time he faltered, playing only in little, melancholy snatches. Then he got surer, and the music began to come in blasts. He was seeing his way, learning what it all meant to him and the Maclachlans. Weird mun hae way. Destiny must work itself out. We children of a day are helpless before it.
The flame fell to a golden bead as the music grew in strength and purpose. There was a burst of light, a peal of triumph, and the music and the flame went out together.
Across the road I raced, threw open the door, and rushed in. Everything was dark and still.
"Donald!" I called passionately.
There was no reply. I crept on tip-toe to the fire and kicked the embers into a flame.
Donald was lying dead across the dead body of his Chief, his dirk buried to the hilt in his own heart.
At daybreak we buried them side by side in one grave on the top of Shap, their feet pointing northward to their own mountains. When the last clod had been replaced, and a great boulder reverently carried up to mark the spot, I turned, covered my head, and prepared to go, but the men stood on. I looked back. They were loath to go. Something that should be done, had been left undone.
I divined what they had in mind, turned back, bared my head as they uncovered, and repeated the Lord's Prayer aloud.
I am thankful to this day to those men whom fools and bigots call savages. They taught me to pray again.
"Man Captain," said the one who had English, as we walked away in a body, "ye wad mak' a gran' meenister."
I could not withhold a smile, but before I could reply there was a scattered rattle of shots from the dip. Looking around, I saw a body of enemy horse on the lower hill across the valley to my left.
