| Chapter I. |
| Chapter II. |
| Chapter III. |
Carlisle Castle
21st October 1746
...and it grieves me very much to think of my dear Alison, and what a sad Affliction it will be to her to learn of my Fate. I cannot write much of what I feel at the Thought of her—— I believe that she will be tolerably well provided for under the Terms of our Marriage Contract, and I hope this will lighten her Cares a very little. I need not ask you, my dear Aunt, to remember her, for I know you will—and I hope that you will go to her, or she to you, when she returns to Scotland, and that she will be a Comfort to you also in the Days to come.
One more Matter must I relate to you before I conclude this poor Letter. My Days here at Carlisle have been greatly lighten'd by the Visits of my Friend, Major Windham, who came here to give Evidence at my Trial as to my good Character and honourable Conduct (they are his Words!) when he was my Prisoner the August before last. Alas, the Jury were not sway'd. But this is not the only Kindness he has done me; indeed, it is due to him that I am here and can write to you now, for he saved my Life after the Battle upon Drumossie Moor. That his incredible Goodness should be remember'd, I will relate to you the Particulars; and, my dear Aunt, I recommend him to you, and pray that you will greet him as a Friend, should your Paths ever cross...
A restless and capricious wind was lifting the branches of the pine trees, tossing the feathery bunches of needles up and down like waves upon a stormy sea, before suddenly leaving them behind and going to shiver over the heather on the high slopes, or raise real, though smaller, waves upon the waters of the loch. The sounds it made were heard clearly from within the house, for all else was quiet.
Alison sat on the window-seat in the long living-room, watching the wind. A book was open upon her lap, but she had not looked at it for several minutes, and could not have recalled the sense of what words she had read. Now, with a little sigh, she closed the book, set it down on the seat beside her, and rose to pace about the room, twisting her hands together before her as she walked.
'Alison?'
She glanced round, startled; but, recovering herself, went towards the doorway with a smile. 'Aunt Marget!'
'I had a letter from my brother-in-law a few days ago,' said Margaret, holding out the epistle in question. Alexander Stewart had not himself been 'out' in the Rising, and his nephew had—in what was a common stratagem amongst those Jacobites who risked their own lives and property in the service of their cause—willed the estate of Ardroy to him, that it might remain in good hands should Ewen himself lose its ownership. And now, when a greater loss than that had come to pass, Alexander's intentions for his new property were of no little importance to the two women whom Ewen had left there.
'Alexander says,' continued Margaret, reading from the letter, 'that he is sorry he can't come to visit us in person, in the present troubled state of the country, but he has been arranging the legal matters relating to Ardroy, and wishes to keep us informed... Here, you may read it.' She handed the letter to Alison, indicating the place with a finger.
The letter went on to explain that, as Alexander had his own estate at Invernacree to live upon (and, Alison remembered, there must be plenty of cares to occupy him there, for his eldest son had been killed upon the field at Culloden), and as he knew Margaret well and had heard many times from Ewen of what a good and capable factor she was, he had decided that the best way he could arrange matters was for her to continue in that office, living at Ardroy and managing the place much as she always had, with himself merely overseeing its affairs from afar.
'Oh, that is good news!' said Alison. 'He is kind—and he's quite right! I'm glad for you, dear aunt.'
Margaret Cameron smiled. 'There is another matter,' she said, 'about which I asked Alexander, and he has given his approval, so I may tell you about it now. Alison'—she put the folded letter in her pocket, and took Alison's hands in both her own—'this would have been your home; and it has been a great comfort to me having you here, these last few weeks. You will do me a great service if you make Ardroy your home still, and stay here with me. Will you?'
Margaret's blue eyes were bright. She spoke quite as though the request were for nothing but a favour to herself.
'Yes—yes, of course,' said Alison. 'Oh, I'd like nothing better. Dear Aunt Marget!'
'Thank you,' said Margaret, with emphasis, and still as though it were really a favour to her—but perhaps it was that also.
Unable to express her feelings in mere words, Alison put her arms round her aunt's neck and embraced her. Margaret held her tightly in return. Over her shoulder, Alison could see the pine trees by the loch, their branches still swaying over the unsettled water.
'Oh, dear me,' said Margaret after a while, pulling back from the embrace. 'I'm quite forgetting my business! I must go and begin making up the list of things we need from the market. Alison, dear, will you come and help me?'
The autumn winds had died down for a little while over the loch and its shores—though they must still be blowing keenly in the high air above, for the clouds were moving rapidly overhead, and the day altered almost every minute from sunlight to shade. Alison paused for a moment by a clump of birch trees, upon whose branches a few last stragglers of the summer's leaves still remained, golden and tenacious. Their fellows floated in yellow drifts upon the still waters of the little inlet below.
She had escaped for the morning from her various domestic responsibilities. Dear Aunt Marget! she always seemed to know just when it would be the best thing for Alison to have her mind occupied by some steady work about the house ('well, Alison, dear, now that you are to be one of the household and not merely a guest, you shall have to come and help us in the kitchen!'), and when it was better to leave her to herself. It occurred to Alison for the first time this morning that perhaps it was in this quiet and cheerfully given service—one for which Alison was inexpressibly grateful—to her companion in grieving that Margaret found some comfort from her own grief.
She had wandered about for a while round the crofts near the house, speaking to the tenants—most of whom were very ready to discuss the change in Ardroy's management and in her own position, as well as their own little affairs; they had been touchingly glad to learn that she was to stay, and she felt she was beginning to know them all quite well already—and then she had set off into the quieter country further up the loch, to be alone with her thoughts.
Turning from the birch copse to resume her walk, she looked up at the hillsides above. There the shifting light passed over tawny bracken and dark heather, bringing out new colours in them with each change. Beinn Tigh was visible at first only as a vague outline; but as she watched, the view of the great mountain bulk sharpened and became clearer, revealing more of the slopes below the summit—the shape of rocks, the contours of the heather, the little gullies and fissures and the channels of burns running down the hillside.
Whatever else she did, and whatever work and cares she had to occupy her, Ewen was always in her heart—for how could it be otherwise?—but nowhere more than out here, amongst the wild places he had so loved. Alison had once told him that he would be hard put to it to choose between Ardroy and herself, if he ever had to; now, when he was beyond the necessity of making any choices, the common love he had borne her and the place she now dwelt seemed rather a link between them. She could almost see him there still—perhaps he was walking down the deer-track ahead of her, or clambering up the side of the great crag...
As they had done so many times, her thoughts returned to the last time she had seen Ewen, in their two brief days of happiness at Inverness. When he had first come to her there, she had been reluctant to agree to his plan of marrying at once, for reasons she could not quite articulate to herself at the time. In fact she had wished desperately to hold onto the belief that they might still wait until the terrible storm of misfortune then upon them was past, and that afterwards, in secure peace and happiness, the joyful, carefree wedding to which they had looked forward before the Prince had landed in Scotland might still be theirs; marrying in such haste as they had done was tantamount to admitting the all too real likelihood that nothing of that future would ever exist. But Alison had known even then the hopelessness of that wish; and her hesitance had come also from a sort of uncomprehending horror at the prospect of becoming a widow after so very little time as a wife.
And now the worst had happened. That shadow of horror, foreseen too truly, had become reality; and Alison was still here, and she must go on living—without Ewen.
The scent of the bog-myrtle's last leaves, adding their sweet freshness to that of the cool autumn air, filled Alison's nostrils and her mouth as she took an uneven breath in. When she raised her eyes from her handkerchief, it was to the sight of the creag ruadh standing over the water before her.
The journey from France had been the worst time of all. After the first great sorrow of her father's death she had gone on alone, patiently waiting and quietly hoping, with a hope that grew smaller and fainter as the weeks passed with no word of Ewen. Still she had clung to the conviction that he would come for her, with a steadfastness which became harder to sustain with every day of silence. At last had come Archibald Cameron, with the news which turned all that dread to reality. Archie had travelled to see her at Havre-de-Grâce as soon as he and his brother had made their own escape, and their kindness in helping her to arrange her passage back to Scotland had been immense; nevertheless, on the ship carrying her to a country where Ewen was no longer, with no father by her side and with all the bright hopes of the cause she loved in ruins—then she had felt unbearably alone. But yet it was there, and afterwards in the uncertainty over her own future which she had endured while staying at Ardroy with Aunt Margaret, that she first found the reserves of a strength which the carefree girl who sat with Ewen beside this loch in the golden light of July more than a year ago would never have suspected in herself. She knew that it was a Christian duty to resign oneself to God's will in misfortune. The Lord giveth and taketh away; and if it pleases Him to call away one we love before we would let them go, we must accept it, and relinquish our own will to a greater wisdom. Alison had believed this all her life, like the dutiful Christian girl she had been; but the last year had taught her its true meaning in a way she had never understood before. It was not, after all, a quiet and self-abnegating submission, but a strength to trust and to endure...
She looked up again, to where the clouds were flying away over the hills, and to the sky beyond them, bright in the glimpses which showed between the moving clouds. She hoped that the souls in heaven could look down upon the earth, and that Ewen could still see Ardroy and all that he had loved so well—and that he could see her also, here to take care of it. For she would surely do so.
'Major Windham! I hear you've got leave for the day; are you travelling somewhere?'
Keith, who had been absorbed in his own thoughts, looked up to see Captain Elliott, who had stopped in the middle of crossing from the officers' quarters towards the stores and was regarding Keith with his usual manner, a sort of quiet cheerfulness.
'Yes,' he said, a little hurriedly. 'A visit I must pay to one of the local families—they are acquaintances of mine.'
'I didn't know you had friends in these parts! Well, you must tell me about them when you get back,' said Captain Elliot. 'I wish you a pleasant time—let's hope this weather holds,' he added, glancing upwards.
Keith expressed his agreement; and a few minutes later he was riding out of Fort William and up towards the Lochy. His horse—an animal of somewhat uneven temper—seemed in a good mood to-day, and the fair weather promised a smooth journey ahead. But Keith's thoughts were not of the weather, or of what state the mountain tracks might be in; he thought only of the reason for his making this journey—tucked safely inside his coat. It was with some difficulty that he stopped himself trying to take it out again now and look at it once more.
It had been after his failure to intercept the escape of the Pretender's son that Keith had heard the news—though, of course, it had not been unexpected—that Ewen Cameron had been brought to Carlisle and was to be tried there. This fact, in combination with the failure of his own mission, had brought on a mood of frustrated defiance which had, perhaps, been the reason why he had changed his mind, and decided to go after all to Carlisle and present to the court his testimony as to just what sort of treasonous rebel Ewen had really been; but, surely, he had also been led by the memory of his last meeting with Ewen in the prison cell at Fort Augustus, and the desperate hope of doing anything he might to save his friend and to set things right at the last. And at Carlisle he had indeed met Ewen again, as Ewen had once wished they might meet—by water, where the Castle overlooked the little River Caldew as it wound on its way towards its meeting with the Eden. He treasured the memory.
But, in the end, he had failed again.
For a little while afterwards he could almost have sunk back into his old cynicism. What was the use of caring for a friend who was so soon and so cruelly torn away from him, and—which was more to the point—of exerting himself so much in fruitless, vain efforts to express his own friendship in actions that would do his friend some good? But he had found that he could not so regress; for Ewen would not let him. He remembered Ewen's manner when they had met at Carlisle: a cheerful and composed courageousness which it had almost broken his heart to see, and which had given way, at last, to an intensity which expressed something of what it meant to him that Keith should listen to him as he exhorted Keith to be cheerful also. And so Keith had found that he must live on, and that he must continue to be the man he had become because he had known Ewen Cameron.
Meanwhile he had been assigned, on his return to Scotland, to the garrison at Fort William. It was not an enviable position, or one likely to present many opportunities to distinguish himself. It was, perhaps, a result of what he had said at Ardroy's trial, or of the previous behaviour of which those words had reminded superiors who felt that they had been patient enough with this philanthropical Major Windham; or perhaps that aspect of it had more to do with the late escape, unapprehended, of Charles Edward Stuart. Whatever the cause, Lord Albemarle had certainly been cooler towards Keith than at their previous meeting; and the result of it all was that he was, against his wishes for more than one reason, to remain in the Highlands for the foreseeable future.
However, his position had given him another opportunity: that of learning that Ewen's wife, Alison Grant, had returned to Ardroy and was now living there—and thus of fulfilling the promise he had made to Ewen at Fort Augustus of delivering to her the letter Ewen had written. At Carlisle, so Ewen had told him, he had managed to write to his aunt at Ardroy, but there had been no way to get word to France, and nor had Keith himself ever had any chance to send the letter. Now, of course, Mrs Cameron knew of her husband's fate, and it seemed a little cruelly useless to deliver the letter anyway; but yet it might be some comfort to her to receive the words he had written to her so long ago, and to have the lock of his hair which might have been a promise of hope, and which could now be only a remembrance. And so Keith was travelling up the Great Glen to-day—to see again the house where Ewen had lived, and where he himself had stayed as Ewen's prisoner and guest.
The memories of those days last August occupied his thoughts all through the long, quiet journey, superimposing themselves strangely upon the places and scenes which he had seen for the first time then. The long summer sunlight glittering upon the water of the lochs and fading into brilliant evening behind the hills had been very different from the dark autumn gloom that now lay upon land and water; as the hurrying excitement of bright, brave, foolish Jacobites gathering in their hundreds to their Prince's standard was different from the worn, subdued few local people who passed Keith on his road to-day. A cold wind was blowing down the Glen; it might have been trying to blow the ghostly past away, leaving only the present. But it was not strong enough—or, rather, the past was stronger.
Yet the chimneys and roofs of Ardroy itself, followed in turn by the stately pines of its avenue and the sturdy, ivy-clad dark stone of its walls, were no ghosts. Keith was glad to see the house still standing, as so many Jacobite houses were not. Captain Elliott, who had been in command of the troop sent to Ardroy with orders to burn it, had told Keith what had really happened there; this confession, made in confidence upon hearing something of the story of Keith's journey to Carlisle, had led the captain's superior to think with shame of his own late 'prudence' at Inverness, but to think more of his gratitude to Elliott now. It seemed immensely important that Ewen's family, at least, should be spared this additional loss, and that Ewen himself had not suffered every insult of his fate. And yet what little consolation it was... The past was stronger than ever as Keith approached the house; yes, here was the coat-of-arms, obscure beneath its whitewash above the porch, just as he had seen it then...
The door was opened by a young maidservant clearly a little frightened at the sight of an unexpected visitor, and a stranger also (though not, in the literal sense, a redcoat; Keith was not on duty, and had decided that it would be the decent thing to wear other clothes than his uniform on this visit).
He introduced himself. 'I've come to see Mrs Cameron,' he said. 'I have a letter of some importance to deliver to her. She will know my name.'
The maid nodded, and, after showing Keith into the parlour, disappeared into the depths of the house to fetch her mistress.
The parlour, much like the outside of the house, was very much what Keith remembered—yet how much quieter it was now... He was examining the mantelpiece, upon which stood a little vase of yellow-leaved birch twigs and fronds of dry auburn bracken arranged as if they were spring flowers, when there was a sound from the doorway, and Alison Cameron entered the room.
'Mrs Cameron,' he said, stepping forward.
'Major Windham,' she replied.
Keith bowed, and they exchanged a few polite words. He could not help comparing Mrs Cameron too with the last time he had seen her. He had thought then that she was a pretty girl; her looks, in the literal detail of feature and countenance, were very much what they had been, but yet she was something rather different now, and not only because she looked something more than a year and a half older. The marks of grief were plain upon her brow and in her dark eyes, but she spoke clearly and carried herself with purpose, and with a sort of quiet dignity which reminded Keith somehow of Ewen himself in the cell at Carlisle Castle. She looked very pale in her black gown.
'I hope you remember me,' he said, 'though it is more than a year since we last met.'
'Yes, of course,' said Alison, 'I remember you, Major Windham. Won't you sit down?' And she led him over to the easy chairs in front of the fireplace, where they sat, one on either side of the cold hearth and the vase of autumn leaves.
There was a silence of a few moments, as Keith hesitated over how to begin on such a painful subject; perhaps he ought to have spent more time on the journey here planning what he would say... Alison watched him with a sort of enquiring kindness. At last he said, 'You say you have heard of me; then I suppose you know that your husband was a great friend to me—that is, despite our being enemies. I had the opportunity of seeing him when he was in prison at Fort Augustus in July; he spoke of you during that meeting, and—of how he could not get a letter to you in France, and I offered to take any letter he wished to write and use my best endeavours to see that it reached you. I regret that I never did manage to find a means of sending the letter to France; but I have it still, and so when I heard that you had returned to Ardroy, I thought that—that you might still wish to receive it.'
Mrs Cameron's expression had changed very little during this speech, but the grip of her hands upon the arms of her chair had slowly tightened. Now she released the arms, and raised one hand to brush back a loose strand of hair in a slightly distracted gesture. 'Thank you, sir,' she said, in a tone which resembled the movement. 'That is very kind of you indeed.'
Keith brought out the little parcel from his coat pocket and handed it to her; she took it, and he averted his eyes from her as she held it and looked at it. When he returned his gaze from the shelf of books on the other side of the room she was adjusting her skirts, having placed the parcel in her own pocket, and her expression was more composed than it had been.
'Thank you,' she said again.
There was, Keith felt, very little he could say in answer to that; so he only bowed his head in acknowledgement.
'Forgive me, sir,' began Alison now, 'but you saw Ewen at Carlisle as well, did you not?'
'I did,' said Keith carefully.
'He mentioned you in the letter he wrote from there to his aunt,' she explained. Her hands were joined on her lap now, and she was twisting her fingers together nervously, but her voice remained steady. 'How was he?' she said.
It was some moments before Keith answered—and he looked again at the bookshelf, and at the pine trees outside the window, before he did. He could hardly tell her everything of how Ewen had been at their last meeting—he believed he could hardly have explained that to himself, were there no questions of what it was appropriate to tell her—but he must answer honestly. She deserved that much, and so did Ewen. So he said, speaking slowly, 'He was cheerful and courageous, all the time I was there. I was humbled at it. His kindness, generosity and goodness of spirit were all I had always known them. He spoke of you—and of Miss Cameron, and of Ardroy.'
He looked back at her; her eyes were bright, and fixed on him with a strange look which might have had in it something of desperation. But she said, 'I read his letter to his aunt. He told us that you spoke at his trial—about his good treatment of you last year, in the hope that it would influence the jury to be merciful.'
Keith inclined his head, trying to hide under the respectful gesture his shock and dismay. Unsure in any case of how much she would know about the part he had played at Ewen's trial, he had determined not to mention it. This was the last time in the world at which to show anything like pride or self-congratulation over an action which had been so useless. He had not, of course, expected this to be an easy meeting, but to be confronted with that failure again—while the bare reality of its consequences was so clear before him—was more than he could easily bear.
'Thank you,' Alison went on. 'I can't say how good of you that was, Major Windham.'
And there were no words at all which could be returned to that. With difficulty, Keith nodded; and they sat for some moments more in silence, during which she gazed reflectively at the fireplace and he looked with ever-increasing discomfort back towards the window.
At last Keith rose, and began some not very articulate speech about taking his leave. He had done what he had come here to do; and she must want nothing so much as the chance to go away and read her letter and take out the lock of hair in private. The sooner he was away, the better.
But Alison said, 'Oh, but you'll stay and dine with us, won't you, sir? It must have been a long journey to come here—you should have some refreshment before you return.'
Her tone was cheerful, and the expression of her face one of real generosity. Keith had no wish whatever to accept the invitation, but politeness obliged him to do so; and there were other motives, for it really seemed that politeness had not been the sole reason for its being made, and he felt that he somehow owed it to Mrs Cameron to answer what was in her eyes as she spoke.
And so, a short while later, the three of them—for Miss Cameron now joined them—sat down to dinner together. To Keith's relief, and in harmony with his own rapidly formed plan for getting through the meal, the subject of his first conversation with Mrs Cameron was avoided. Instead Alison turned the conversation onto what commonplace, happy topics were available: some repairs to the dairy which she and her aunt were overseeing; the litter of kittens which one of the farm cats had lately produced, their names and characters, and her intentions to keep one as a pet for herself and distribute the others as gifts to various neighbours; Keith's posting at the fort, and how he was finding life in the Highlands (about this last he was carefully polite). Keith, appreciating what she was doing and admiring her strength more and more, did his best to support her; and in the end the dinner really went far less unpleasantly than it might have done.
After the meal Keith did at last take his leave, thanking both ladies sincerely for their hospitality.
'And my thanks to you also,' said Alison quietly, with a brief smile. Keith nodded, likewise briefly but not without meaning, and turned to go.
Perhaps this reminder was what caused his thoughts, as he began the ride away from Ardroy under the narrowing heights of the dark hills, to turn once again towards Ewen. Now that he was finally parted from it, he found himself remembering the little packet which he had given Mrs Cameron with strange specificity. That letter and the lock of hair had been the last material things Keith had had from Ewen; a short while ago he had been obliged to change the outer wrapping of the parcel, it having become damaged when he caught his coat on a particularly intractable thorn-bush, and he had seen the direction of the letter in Ewen's handwriting, and the strands of auburn hair just as he had last seen their fellows, with the weak sunlight which streamed in upon them from the narrow window of the cell in Carlisle Castle lighting them to red gold... Though never meant for him beyond his temporary keeping, in some strange way these things seemed to have become signifiers of the tie between Ewen and himself, and Keith was a little surprised to find how much it pained him to give them up. All that was left to him of his friend now were his own memories, and the very great change worked upon his heart and character by having known Ewen... no small things, but one could not hold them in one's hand.
Of course all this was very foolish, as Keith tried to convince himself as he emerged into the Great Glen with the shore of Loch Lochy before him. It was the right thing that the parcel should be delivered to Alison, its intended recipient, and more importantly than that, the proper thing; for Ewen's memory was hers to keep, not his. It was not the part of a friend to hold the lover's keepsake of a lock of hair, nor the letter meant for the wife who, as was right and natural, had been the first in Ewen's own heart, and would keep him now and always first in hers. Keith truly hoped that his errand of to-day had done something to comfort her in her mourning, if not to make it easier; and this was as it should be, for it was her part to mourn.
Why, at the end of all this reasoning, he still felt so keenly bereft, Keith could not explain to himself.
That winter was a hard one in Lochaber. At Ardroy the repairs to the crofts were all finished before the real cold set in—thanks in large part to Aunt Margaret's careful superintendence—and sufficient numbers of the cattle and sheep, recovered from the mountain refuges to which they had been driven in the desperate summer, were returned in time to provide food for the winter, but there was still more than the usual amount of work to be done both within and without the house, and Alison's and Aunt Margaret's days remained long while those of the sun grew shorter and shorter. And as they worked, the frost set in and the snow fell from lowering clouds; and Alison remembered how much colder and darker these northern winters were than those she had known in the more clement lands of France in her younger days, and she shivered at an ever-present feeling that the dense grey clouds were settling over her own head. Once again, she was glad that there was so much work to keep her occupied.
However, there were Ewen's letter and the lock of his hair... She kept them shut away in her room, but, when the cares of the day were done with and she was alone, she would sometimes take them out again simply to look at them—and to remember.
At first the words of the letter—as though Ewen spoke to her again, when she had thought never to hear a word more from him in this world—and the physical reminder of his presence were all she was aware of, for her heart could not hold anything more. But, as she read the letter over again, and the plain sense of what Ewen was saying impressed itself more clearly upon her mind, she was more and more surprised to see how much of it concerned the man who had brought it to her. Even before Major Windham had gone to Carlisle to speak for him, Ewen had clearly been thinking very much of him, and it seemed that they had been much together after that first meeting which Alison herself had witnessed. Of course, they were to have met five times—five meetings, and Major Windham was to do Ewen a great service and bring him bitter grief... She shivered at the memory of that first whispering of the fate which had now come down so decisively, and bitterly indeed, upon them all.
Ewen did not go into great detail; clearly there had not been space on this little paper—it seemed to be the flyleaf taken out of a book: fine, delicate paper, rather worn and jaggedly torn all along one edge—and probably not time either. But here again were those things about which he had written in his letter to Aunt Margaret from Carlisle, and to which Alison had paid only scant attention when she had first read that letter, her mind then being more occupied with other things. Now they seemed to stand out more and more sharply. Ewen said that Windham had saved his life, and had shown him such kindness as he could hardly have believed, had it not been there before him... The phrases, brief as they were, were characteristic of Ewen expressing a passionate conviction, and Alison thought again of the solemn-faced English officer who had lately come to visit her: his serious and gentle manner, his patent distress at her situation and—she realised now, turning him over in her mind and interpreting him more accurately—his own grief for Ewen, who had been his friend. She wondered more and more about him.
Besides this, and the letter from Carlisle, there was very little to tell her anything more. But one morning, Lachlan and young Angus MacMartin came over from Slochd nan Eun to help with some work on the outbuildings at Ardroy, and this reminded her of something else she had heard about Major Windham. Later that day, when she and Aunt Margaret were in the kitchen together—Alison making the pastry for a pie, Margaret making up the hens' feed—she asked, 'Aunt Margaret?... When Lachlan first came back here, there was some trouble with him, wasn't there, about Major Windham?'
Margaret looked up, evidently surprised at the question. 'Oh, don't worry about that, Alison,' she said. ''Tis an old trouble, quite done with now.'
Alison nodded slowly. 'But what was it that happened?' she persisted, brushing the crumbs of barley-flour and butter from her hands as she turned from the mixing-bowl in expectation of an answer to listen to.
'Well,' said Margaret, and pressed her lips together in a sort of disapproving consideration, 'Lachlan had got some mistaken ideas into his head about the Major, I believe from some rumours that he had somehow heard, and he had formed all sorts of wild and rash plans about it. I heard that he was at Slochd nan Eun, and that he was saying these things, just after Ewen's letter had arrived, and that made it quite clear how he regarded Major Windham. And it was the last time for us to be making any more trouble for ourselves... So I went over there and used the letter to persuade Lachlan that his purpose was mistaken, and that Ewen would not like it. He was very upset about the whole affair for a while, but he acknowledged that he must have been mistaken, and that the best thing he could do for Ewen would be to stay here, and that was that.'
Alison was listening in growing alarm. 'Do you mean Lachlan had some terribly wrong idea about what Major Windham did for Ewen? That sounds as if he meant to get revenge on him—did he think the Major was Ewen's enemy?'
'That he was!' said Margaret with a rather dry smile; but immediately she went on, more seriously, 'He thought Major Windham had betrayed Ewen, and was responsible for his capture. I suppose he was somehow badly mistaken about what had really happened. Ewen certainly seemed in no doubt that the real situation was quite the reverse.'
A little silence followed, while Alison added the water to her pastry and Margaret returned to the bowl of feed for the hens. This latter being much simpler in preparation than a pigeon-pie, she was soon ready to take it out to the birds, and her hand was all but on the worn brass handle of the kitchen door when Alison suddenly spoke again. 'I should very much like,' she said, 'to know what really happened.'
Margaret turned round. 'Well,' she said slowly, 'I can give you Ewen's letter from Carlisle to read again, if you would like... but, Alison, I don't think you ought to worry about it.' Her tone was soft and very kind. She set down the bowl of feed, returned into the kitchen and put her hand on Alison's shoulder. 'I'm very grateful for what Major Windham did for Ewen, and it was good of him to visit us as he did and bring you that letter. But 'tis not good for you to worry yourself over things that are past. 'Tis not good for any of us. Ewen is at peace now... and I think he would want you to remember him as you do, and take that memory with you as you live in the present, and not to fret about things that can't be changed.'
Alison nodded, and squeezed her aunt's hand with a little smile. 'Tis not good for any of us... Perhaps she was thinking, not only of Ewen, but of her own lover, dead these thirty years and more. They had only spoken of him once or twice since Alison's return to Ardroy—a confidence which had amazed her, for she had known nothing of it before—but it was often in her mind that she and Margaret shared this particular grief, in more than that they had both lost Ewen himself. Her aunt had once stood where she stood, and, mourning and alone, had learnt things with which she now tried to answer and comfort Alison's own loneliness. She wondered what depths of struggle lay behind this simple advice; those were not for her to know, but surely it was the least she could do to respect them.
Yet they were not the same, she and Margaret; and she must sometimes follow the promptings of her own heart also. Left alone in the kitchen, to roll out her pastry with unwontedly slow and distracted motions of the rolling-pin, Alison tried to reason to herself. She was not, she thought, worried about the past—or, rather, not only about the past. It was Major Windham now whom she was thinking of—he who had brought her the letter, and spoken to her of Ewen with such heartfelt kindness. For some reason which she could not quite understand, she wanted to know more about him—in the past and the present.
And so, in the week after Christmas, she wrote to Major Windham and asked him to come and pay another visit to Ardroy. It would appear a strange and unexpected thing to do; and the phrases were clumsy enough, and her own thoughts inadequately explained (I must thank you again for your great Kindness in delivering to me the Letter, she wrote, and I cannot forget the much greater Kindness you have done...). It would surely, she thought even as she handed the invitation to young Angus MacMartin and bid him convey it to Fort William, receive a polite refusal.
But she must try... She remembered again the prophecy which Angus's grandfather had made. It had been fate that Windham and Ewen should meet, and that all should happen between them as it had done—a great service, and a bitter grief... It felt as though something like the same fate still impelled her onwards now.
And, somewhat to her surprise, her letter received a prompt and courteous reply from Major Windham, thanking her and accepting the invitation.
The winter days were still short, but a spell of mild, dry weather promised easier travel than might usually have been possible at that time of the year. Major Windham arrived at Ardroy some time before the darkness—the onset of which was already, in any case, retreating later into the afternoon with each passing day—began to set in, and assured Alison that his journey had been quite smooth and uneventful.
A few hours later they sat down to supper together. As Marsali brought the food out, Major Windham entertained them with some stories about the grey mare, now safely ensconced in the stables, whose evidently forceful personality was a feature of his life at Fort William and might have made to-day's journey less easy than it had been, 'but, really, she gives very little trouble, if one takes care to give her due consideration. I'm quite fond of the beast.'
Aunt Marget laughed heartily. As Alison had discovered, it was one of the peculiarities of her aunt's character that, despite her dislike of travelling, she too was fond of horses. She was glad that Margaret, although she had at first disapproved of Alison's having invited Major Windham, was generous enough to enjoy his conversation now that he was here.
After this it took surprisingly little effort to keep the conversation going, fluently and on neutral subjects. Alison, perhaps prompted by a memory of the first time she had sat down to a meal at which Major Windham had been present, began speaking of her old life in France, remarking on the great differences between that country and the Highlands in food, customs, weather and life in general. 'I have had to adapt myself to new conditions,' she said, 'for before last year I was hardly ever in Scotland.' Major Windham, who seemed really interested in these stories, questioned her further, and she told him something of the life she and her father and brother had led in France in the old days. From here they got onto the subjects of French architecture and art, and then Aunt Margaret mentioned a novel which she had lately been reading.
'The Surprising Life and Adventures of Molly Spencer—it purports to be a translation from the French,' she said, 'but I am afraid 'tis really no such thing.'
'I have read it myself,' said Major Windham. 'One of my fellow officers at the garrison lent me his copy when I wanted reading material. I'm afraid I would not have picked it up otherwise.'
'And did you enjoy thus broadening your experience of literature?' said Margaret with a smile.
Major Windham considered. 'Well, 'twas certainly diverting,' he said; 'a pleasant way to pass a few idle hours. But I could scarcely approve Miss Spencer's conduct, and the hero was hardly believable at all.'
'I fear the shocking conduct and the implausible hero serve very much the same purpose as the spurious French origin,' said Margaret gravely, and then, lapsing back into levity, 'but the world would be so much poorer without people in books doing such things! And surely they were all reformed at the end; the affair with the parson and the goose on the green was very edifying.'
'Oh, surely it was,' agreed the Major.
Throughout this exchange Alison had been looking from one to the other of them with a feeling of growing warmth and delight; and now Keith glanced back at her, and their eyes met, and she surprised a smile in him—a rather dry, sideways look, but one which, along with his twinkling comments upon the novel, seemed to reveal a new side of his character.
From here the conversation turned to literature in general, and music, and still other things, and so it went on through the apple tart which made their dessert and after the meal when they sat together in the parlour, Alison working on a cushion-cover which she was embroidering. The awkward stage seemed to be entirely over, and she found Major Windham a pleasant companion, modest and polite, with now and then more of those odd glints of humour. By the end of the evening all three of them were talking together quite as easily as old friends.
The next morning, after the various small domestic tasks which followed breakfast in the routine of her day were done with, Alison set out for a walk, wandering for a while through the garden and along the avenue before turning back and setting out down towards the loch. The mild weather was holding. The tall, stately pines cast long shadows in the low winter sunlight; sparrows were making a constant noise of rustling and chirping amongst the ivy and in the bushes, and here and there the sweet, softly-falling notes of a robin's winter song floated out upon the clear air. Winter was a long way from being over, and in the changeable climate of the Highlands there would surely be more cruel weather to come yet; but it was beginning, nevertheless, to be the kind of world in which one could imagine the existence of spring.
It was by the loch, in a clump of pine trees, that she found Major Windham, who had disappeared from the house after breakfast. It came upon her suddenly that they had sat and talked together here once before, a long time ago; and perhaps he was thinking of the past too, for the expression of his face was solemn.
Hearing Alison's step behind him, he turned round—calmly, but with the odd pensive look gone from his face. 'I see we have had the same thought of how to spend the morning,' he said, smiling.
'I hope you have been enjoying your walk, sir,' said Alison.
'Thank you; I have. I'm glad 'tis not too cold to allow for a leisurely walk outside!'
They exchanged a few more such commonplace words, while a particularly determined robin took up a place in the pine tree above them and started to sing, its voice falling away towards the loch as though it was another Allt Buidhe. Little columns and spirals of smoke were rising from the cottages along the shore, now outlined against the patches of clear sky, now merging into the clouds. One such bank of cloud stopped just before it met the eastern horizon, allowing the sun to shine unimpeded across the water and to strike red-gold upon the creag ruadh.
A short silence followed their polite greetings. After hesitating a little while, Alison broke it.
'I hope, sir, you will not think me too bold,' she began, 'or that I say anything I ought not to. But I wish to speak of—the reason I asked you here.'
He seemed to see what that was; of course, it would not be difficult to guess. 'I'm sure you would not be too bold, Mrs Cameron,' he said. 'What is it that you wish to ask me?'
So she plunged on bravely. 'You saw so much of Ewen last year,' she said; 'you were his friend—I suppose you understand...'
'You wish to hear about him?' said Major Windham quietly.
She nodded. 'Will you tell me more? I mean, of what happened after... well, after you and I last met here?'
He smiled at the reference to that shared memory; but the smile was quickly gone, perhaps in remembrance of what he had said to her on that occasion. For some time he said nothing; he turned away from her to face the water, raising his head with a little movement of his lips as if to settle his thoughts. The sun began slowly to disappear behind the bank of cloud, and the winter air turned a little colder.
Then he began to speak. He was hesitant at first; but, gradually, by question and careful answer, more of the story came out.
They walked along together as they talked. It was too cold to stand still outside for very long; and the gentle variety of scenery, passing slowly by in familiar procession, gave some relief from the varied and not at all easy emotions which Major Windham's stories brought her. Alison was almost amused to hear Windham's side of the story about the adventure in Edinburgh, which she had already heard from another source soon after it happened. Poor Major Windham, deserted by his men a second time, and left to ignominious capture so soon after he thought he had himself captured the Prince—and how noble of Ewen to let him go! But the things he told her about his subsequent meetings with Ewen were very different, and she listened in something increasingly like solemn awe. That Windham was taking care to place the emphasis upon Ewen and his honourable, courageous and admirable behaviour was painfully obvious; but he could hardly avoid giving a fairly clear picture of his own conduct, and Alison, hearing of the things he had done again and in more detail, marvelled at them all the more. Such unlooked-for kindness, and to one who ought to have been his enemy! And he had taken such risks—for it seemed that his own military career had more than once been seriously threatened by his superiors' views of the actions he had taken on Ewen's behalf.
After recounting his final meeting with Ewen at Fort Augustus, Major Windham paused. Alison, walking by his side, was looking away from him; her gaze was fixed upon a swan which was following their progress in a parallel track upon the water of the loch. As she watched, it shuffled and resettled the heaped white feathers of its wings across its back, and dipped its head with its great orange-and-black bill towards the water, as if to meet the dim, dappled reflection which the weak winter sun had conjured up beneath it.
'And then you did not see him again until Carlisle,' she said at last. Her voice seemed to come from a long way away; it was almost unfamiliar to her.
'No,' said Windham. He sighed, looked about him for a moment, and then went on. 'I had thought at first that I could not possibly give evidence against him as I was asked. But the authorities had other witnesses to testify as to his presence in the Jacobite army and his actions in the rebellion—he told me so himself at Fort Augustus. So, when I heard that he was to be tried at last, I reasoned that my confirmation of those things could do him no more harm than was already done, while my account of his gentlemanly conduct and his good treatment of me might influence the jury to be merciful. 'Twas the hope in which I went there. But it did not,' he said, and his voice stumbled a little on those last words. 'I am more sorry than I can say that it did not.'
The swan was still keeping pace with them, paddling sedately through the shallow water, its long neck now held steady as a ship's mast.
'Thank you,' said Alison, and then, 'I don't—You gave Ewen... you gave me... those few months more of his life—his letter from Carlisle—the other letter, which you brought to me—all those moments of courage and cheerfulness you speak of.' She did not like actually to say that she suspected him of thinking all his own effort in vain because of what had happened at Carlisle; yet she wanted him to know how very much it had not been. 'I know him in those stories; 'tis as if I can see him there now... All that means—far more than I can well say.'
Major Windham, who was himself now watching the swan upon the water, said nothing.
Alison looked at him for a few moments more. And it was in more or less unconsidered bewilderment—for, had the situation been less fraught with feeling and significance, she would have had the presence of mind to control her tongue better—that she asked, 'But—why did you do it? You were so good, and there was so little reason to do so much... I cannot understand it.'
For that he had been Ewen's true friend, surprising as the fact might be, she now accepted. Indeed, it was natural to her to suppose that anyone, becoming acquainted with Ewen as Windham must have done in that week in August, must recognise his merits and his goodness, and it did not after all seem very surprising that even an enemy might, under such circumstances, become the friend of one who so attracted and so deserved friendship and admiration. But she wondered—very much as Ewen himself had once done—at such a friend as this, who had gladly risked the ruin of his own career, a possession he evidently valued highly, in attempting to save the life of a man whom he had, after all, only met a few times, and who had been his enemy. Indeed, in the consideration of this new observer, Keith Windham found himself once again regarded as a complete and rather wonderful mystery.
Immediately Alison knew her lack of discretion, and as soon as she knew it she regretted it. Major Windham was surprised at being asked such a frank question, and in his shock he withdrew from the unwonted expression of emotion which had accompanied his stories. He turned away from his idle contemplation of the swan; the very manner with which he walked seemed to change, taking on more of the careful, upright soldier's bearing.
'Forgive me, sir,' said Alison. 'I—'
'Not at all, Mrs Cameron,' he said. 'I... did what I did, in the first place because I felt that my honour demanded it. Honour does sometimes demand actions contrary to other reasonings and interests. In the second place, I acted so because Ardroy made a very great impression upon me, in those first days I knew him. It was—how I wished to act for a friend.'
Another long silence followed. Further apologies would, Alison felt, be inappropriate, though she did not really understand the answer she had been given, and suspected somehow that neither did he who had given it.
At last she thanked him again for telling her all he had done. 'It is such a comfort to me to hear more of Ewen,' she said, and smiled. The simple, conventional words seemed horribly inadequate for what she wanted to convey, but she did not like to risk too much more again. 'I know... it is a grief to us both.'
And Keith Windham looked at her, and nodded slowly; and then he gave her his arm, and they returned together to the house.
For the next several months Keith's time was largely filled by his duties at the garrison. The worst excesses of the aftermath of Culloden were, thankfully, over, and there was not much to demand Keith's prudence—not that he would have given it, in any case, now... Instead his duties formed part of what was a broader effort to subdue rebellion and to ensure that the Highlands would never rise for the Stuarts again; and surely it would be better for them all if they never did. Yet it was a hard time for the inhabitants of the country, and made worse by the absence of so many of their lairds, who had had their lands confiscated or who were in exile upon the Continent. Keith often had occasion to reflect upon what a terrible shame and waste the rebellion had been, from start to finish. But Ardroy, he mused more than once, was fortunate in having so capable a manager as Miss Cameron evidently was—and Mrs Alison Cameron to help her.
And so the time went by, in patrolling, going out after cattle thieves, making preparations for the enforcement of the Disarming and Dress Acts—which, having been passed into law the previous summer, were to come into force later that year—and in generally ensuring that order was maintained. Keith would far rather have been engaged in real fighting, in Flanders or some other foreign land. It was what his ambition desired, what his talents were suited for, what might even now have given him some chance to prove and distinguish himself—and it would have meant a clean break with a land so full of memories, in which he sometimes bitterly regretted being obliged to remain. But his life was not without its small brightnesses. He and Captain Elliott, finding themselves of a similar temper, and thrown so much together in the performance of their duties, had struck up a warm friendship, and they spent many a pleasant evening together discussing such things as some new article in the Gentleman's Magazine, the potential of the new recruits at the garrison and their memories of England (Captain Elliott was a Gloucestershire man, and made many comparisons, gloomy or wistful as his mood might be, between the hills and woods of his native country and those of his present surroundings) and of Flanders. Keith reflected with some amusement, and also with another kind of warmth, on how he could think so casually of himself as becoming friends with another man; it would have been otherwise a few years ago. And this was not his only reason for thinking so; for he had learnt, in the comings and goings which went on between the fort and the government post at Glenfinnan, that his old acquaintance Lieutenant Paton was in command at that post. Paton had heard of Keith's journey to Carlisle, and it was amongst the many things they discussed in the little spaces of time when their respective duties brought them together.
And he often thought of Ardroy. He thought of his conversation with Alison Cameron on his last visit there, at some length and in many different aspects. Sometimes he was sure that he had said far too much—that it had not been proper to describe such scenes in such detail to a lady, even one so closely interested in them as she was, or perhaps that he had exposed more of his own feelings than was either decent or bearable. At other times he was immensely glad that he had said as much as he had. After all, it was good that they should talk to each other; they understood each other, because Ewen had been so much to both of them, and he was glad that he could bring Mrs Cameron some comfort in her grief. God knew he had brought her little else. But, when these meditations had run round his head long enough to weary themselves with reiteration, he thought also a great deal of Ardroy itself. When he had first answered Mrs Cameron's invitation he could hardly have said why that answer was in the affirmative—for his previous visit, worthwhile as it had been, had not been a pleasant duty. But he had been glad to go to the house of Ardroy and see the shores of Loch na h-Iolaire again, and now he understood—or saw more clearly in the acknowledged part of his understanding—something of why. It was the place Ewen had loved. In that house Ewen had grown to manhood, and had ruled his little realm in the happy years of his man's life which had been so few; upon that path by the Eagle's Lake had he walked, and he had swum in its waters, and chased the deer over the high slopes that looked down on it; from thence had he set out to fight for his Chief and his King in the horribly bright and naive gladness of the August before last. Sometimes Keith would picture him there, as he must have been in the years before the great tragedy of the Jacobite cause had overtaken him, and smile to himself at the picture.
Such associations were not a familiar thing to Keith's mind, least of all in relation to a country about which his general feelings were anything but fond or sentimental; but for Ewen's sake they seemed entirely natural. Ewen had brought—or brought out—many new things in Keith's heart, and perhaps had done so all the more keenly for the cruel end to which they had led. So he would think of Ewen and of Ardroy, where the memories of the brief happiness of Ewen's life still lived. At Carlisle—it was the brightest of his memories, and the sharpest grief—Ewen had promised him that they would be friends always; Keith, mourning the loss of all the 'always' he and Ewen might have had, wanted to know more about him, and perhaps in the places that had known so much of Ewen's earthly love and happiness, he might feel himself still close to his friend.
The house of Ardroy was today a more cheerful place than it had been for many long months. Major Windham, enjoying a few days' respite from his duties, was once again paying them a visit; this time he had been gladly invited by both Alison and Margaret Cameron, for, to Alison's equal relief and pleasure, her aunt had taken a decided liking to the Major, and had also perhaps had reason to revise her opinion of the wisdom of Alison's interest in his acquaintance. And he was not their only guest. Alison had rejoiced to learn, through her correspondence with Windham, that there was another man who had known Ewen during the last year of his life and, though Ewen's enemy, had been kind to him when the currents of war brought them together; now she, glad to gather friends about her, had welcomed Lieutenant Paton and his wife here also. Indeed, she had found another friend in Mrs Paton, who was a perfect match for her young husband in kindness and good humour, and whose ready laughter brightened every company of which she formed part.
Meanwhile, it was spring. The house martins flew industriously back and forth between the eaves of the old house and the shores of the loch, their bills full of the clumps of mud which they fashioned into the tiny knobbly cups of their nests. A pair of wrens had built their own nest in the ivy just above the parlour window, and Alison would sit upon the window-seat of an afternoon, the window open, listening to the rustling of the ivy and the powerful little voices of the tiny birds as they went about their business. In the low, marshy ground by the side of the loch the delicate pink petals of the cuckoo-flowers hung at the top of their long stems, and below them perched butterflies, the mottled green of their wings unfurling into brilliant white and orange as they took flight with a sudden burst of fluttering confidence. The birches drooped beneath fresh green leaves, and the air above the loch was full of the whistling of the sandpipers, and of the stranger call of the curlews, whose voices, heard afar off in mountainous places, always seem to come from another world.
'I dare say this is a better time of year to see the place than your last visit, Major Windham,' said Alison.
This morning she and Major Windham had, by a sort of unspoken mutual agreement, taken the chance once more to walk out along the lochside together. The sun shone with a shy, halting warmth before them, and the breeze that blew across the glen was full of the sweet scent of the high mountains in spring, come down from the slopes of Beinn Tigh.
Keith smiled his sideways smile. 'I suppose it is,' he said.
And yet it was the first spring she had ever seen at Ardroy... and perhaps they both remembered this, for neither of them said anything more for several minutes. And when Alison did speak again, she said, 'Ewen used to say this spot—just up here, between those pine trees—was the best place to watch the sandpipers without disturbing them. They build their nests along the Allt Buidhe burn, you see—just over there.' She pointed, and as she did so an obliging bird flew in on its narrow, bowed wings and landed upon the far side of the burn, where it immediately set about searching for food in the mud of the bank, bobbing constantly up and down as though so full of the gladness of the day that it could not keep still for a moment. 'He said they would sometimes come very close if you stood still and waited patiently,' Alison went on, lowering her voice so as not to startle the bird. 'Once, when he was a small boy, he hid himself behind that tree and the sandpipers came right up to the patch of mud in front of him. He tried to reach out and touch them, but he only got a tail-feather, for they were too quick for him, though they were so close!'
Keith laughed softly. 'I can imagine it,' he said.
'He told me about it when we first visited this spot together,' said Alison. She went up to one of the pine trees and broke off a sprig of needles—the stiff, dark growth of last year—from just above the level of her head. 'He loved this place so well,' she went on in a quiet voice, turning the fine, strong green strands over between her fingers; 'every spot and part of it.'
'I remember the way he spoke of it,' said Keith, who was thinking of Ewen's face as it had looked in the cell at Carlisle, when their conversation had turned to the home Ewen would never see again. 'Of course I only saw him here for a few days, but—'
He broke off, perhaps hesitant to say more—as if he feared intruding upon territory which was, as he admitted, not his own. Yet in saying as much as this, he had already begun to confirm something which Alison had wondered about ever since he had been so generous as to tell her his own stories of Ewen, all those months ago. To hear his accounts of Ewen's conduct and experiences in the Rising had been such a comfort and a blessing to her who had spent the year of war, as a woman must do, waiting and watching at home; might he, who was also grieving for his friend, desire just as much to hear what she could tell of Ewen, as he had been in his domestic surroundings, in the happier days of the past? It had taken such difficulty and delicacy, at the beginning of their recent acquaintance, for her to be able to ask him those questions; but he surely could not ask her the same things even so easily as that, for the kind of feeling they revealed was not one for a man to express so openly as a grieving widow might. But a man could mourn the loss of his friend, and wish to know more of him. Perhaps Major Windham only needed a little of her help.
So, wandering along the burn and twisting the cluster of pine needles between her fingers, she went on talking for a while. 'He was always very kind to animals,' she said. 'You know the old dog which sat on the hearthrug in the parlour with us last night—the one with the torn ear? Ewen got it in Paris—where we met, you know, when he was studying at the Sorbonne and I was living with my father. The dog was a stray, only a puppy then, and it used to come searching for food outside his lodgings. One day when we were there together, we saw that it was injured, and Ewen took it in and nursed it back to health. And he brought it back to Scotland with him afterwards; he told me it became one of his best hunting hounds, though not bred to it! 'Tis too old for the chase now, but you see it is a faithful companion still.'
Keith was smiling, a look which blended something of his characteristic sardonic humour with something else of much greater sweetness. 'I remarked that the animal did not look like the typical Scotch deerhound,' he said.
And Alison went on to more stories of how she had first met Ewen in Paris, years ago, and the parties and visits and quiet domestic scenes amongst which she had known him there; of the things he had written to her after his return to Scotland, and the life at Ardroy about which she had then so eagerly wished to know more; of the time, all too short, after her father had been permitted to return home, and she and Ewen had enjoyed a few brief months of visits before the news of the Prince's landing had turned their world upside down. After that there had been only the two days at Inverness—and here, of course, she must stop. But the more she said, the more Keith responded, asking questions and—avoiding, with that great delicacy of feeling which he always showed, anything which might go too far or ask too much of her—eliciting more details; laughing with her over the relived happiness of those days that were gone.
And, in the middle of a story about a visit they had made together to Ewen's Stewart cousins in Appin—it had been just a week before the news from Moidart—and a lengthy, involved and entirely facetious argument in which Ewen and his young cousin Ian had become embroiled about whether the great Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, Ewen's namesake and great-uncle, had or had not really killed the last wolf in Scotland with his bare hands, Alison knew all at once that it was indeed a relived happiness. She was glad to be speaking of these things and sharing her memories of Ewen with one who had known him. Ewen was in heaven, and sometimes it seemed that everything of him had vanished away into the next world, where she could not reach; but these memories remained on earth, and in speaking of them, she seemed to reach out and bring him back for a few moments to herself.
They were quiet for a long time after she had finished speaking. The sun, risen higher now and able to proclaim its own strength with a sureness that presaged summer, glittered upon the water before them—but it was not only that keen brightness which stung Alison's eyes as she watched it... A pipit, flying up from a tree as though seeking itself the height of the sun before fluttering back earthwards, sent its lively twittering down above their heads; now and then the stream of its song was cut across by the brief, sharp notes of a stonechat which was perched upon a stem of bog-myrtle a few paces away.
And it was here—in between telling her stories, watching Keith's reactions to them, becoming aware of her own response to what she said and thinking again over what she already knew of him—that Alison knew just why he had done what he had for Ewen. It was very simple, in the end.
Her words and her memories had brought her own old feeling for Ewen sharp and fresh into her heart again. She knew that, had she been a man and able to follow Ewen when he went to fight for the Prince, she would have acted for him just as Keith had done: she would have helped him, tended his wounds and comforted him when he was hurt; she would have thrown herself before the muskets raised against him, and without a thought risked everything that was dear to her for the smallest chance of saving his life; and, seeing how he conducted himself in the world of battles and parole prisoners and the honour of gentlemen, she would also have admired him just as Keith had done. Keith never had said very much about the night in the hut on Beinn Laoigh, which now raised itself in these comparisons, and it occurred to her that this was for very much the same reason she had said so little about Inverness. What is sacred cannot truly be described in ordinary speech, or easily shared with one who was not part of its holiness.
It surprised her to recognise two such different things as the same. She remembered her reflections, the last time she had seen Ewen at Ardroy, on what a woman could give to the Jacobite cause; she had not seen the whole of it then—for how little she had known what it meant to give what she had given—and now she thought that perhaps there were other aspects of it still. Love such as that with which she had watched Ewen go away from her was not confined to the hearts of women, or to the world from which he had gone when he went to join the Prince.
She was glad to think that Ewen had been so loved, when she was not there. And here, with the sunlight shining upon the places he had loved, when she felt him so close to her still, it seemed that he too accepted all the love that she and Keith Windham had to give him—and that Ardroy itself, in this happy acceptance, gave them back that peace and rest which soothe hearts in mourning.
Her thoughts were interrupted by another burst of song from the pipit.
'He seems to have been following us,' remarked Keith, squinting towards where the bird had disappeared behind a ridge of granite. 'Or perhaps there are several of them. Are there usually many?'
They had come quite a distance from the house by now—easily, as Alison said, several birds' territories. From here their conversation meandered easily from birds to farming and the house; and the other things of which they had spoken remained as if left in the air and amongst the trees and heather and bog-myrtle about them.
That evening after supper, Keith sat alone in his bedchamber as the colours of a gentle sunset faded away beyond the window. It was the same room—the very armchair—in which once he had sat and thought with such different feelings of Ewen. He glanced up at the shelf above the fireplace, where some of Ewen's old books still stood. That volume of Plato was leaning at an angle against the other books; Ewen might just now have replaced it carelessly on the shelf, having taken it down to look up some half-remembered reference; he might be standing just outside the door this moment...
But he was not; and Keith, as he sat beside the fire generously lit for this cool spring evening, thought over the things which Ewen's widow had told him earlier that day. He was glad to have become such friends with Mrs Cameron, difficult and painful as their relations had been at the beginning. She was an intelligent, kind and perceptive lady—and of course the friendship had a greater significance for both of them, held in what they shared. The thought struck him unbidden that if Ewen was indeed in heaven, looking down upon those who remained on earth, it would please him to see Keith and Alison friends. It was a fanciful notion; but Keith found himself unable entirely to dismiss it. Dwelling on the thought without troubling himself with questions of credulity, he smiled to himself.
He felt he knew Ewen better, or knew another side of him, from the things Alison had told him to-day. And he knew other things better also. As he had listened to them, those stories had gradually illuminated what had for many months been haunting his mind, half-understood; he had recognised a great deal of his own heart to-day in Alison. Those brief moments—the visit before the Pretender's son had landed; the days at Inverness—had been the prefigurement of a happy future life of love that would never now be; and, in thinking of that life which Alison would never know, and in seeing how she spoke of what she had known, Keith recognised for what they were his own desires, and what had been in his heart when he had known Ewen.
It seemed immensely simple and very obvious. He wondered that he had not understood it before. The physical admiration with which he had regarded Ewen from his first sight of him ought not to have been an unfamiliar thing, at least, for it was long since he had first understood his own capacity for such feelings as those; but the significance of the other side of it had taken many months and a great deal of turmoil to accept even as friendship, and he supposed that this was the reason. It had never before appeared in so noble a form. Indeed, even now the recognition might have been a shock, and perhaps more shocking for being seen in the light in which he did see it; but the calm of the spring day, lingering as the spirit of such days does upon the evening, and the peace brought by Alison's memories, seemed to forestall anything like blame or any great fuss. It was a good thing to know it; that was all.
Perhaps, then, it was for the best that he had not recognised it until now. It was impossible that he could ever have had anything like what Alison had looked forward to, if for no other reason than that Ewen and she had looked forward to it, together; one or two of the broken-hearted jealousies which such passions do inspire in men of his own kind had been, until recently, amongst the emotional attachments which he had congratulated himself upon spurning entirely, and indeed were especially senseless, for he who sets his own heart against nature and expects to come off anything but the loser is a fool. But he had none of that worry; what harm could it do now? He had been Ewen's friend; he had been there that night in the hut on Ben Loy. That was the essential thing. It was what lasted...
For this—though neither Keith himself nor Alison, who had understood in their own ways the same things, would have reasoned it in quite these terms—was the final logic of it all. In the bitter tragedy which had cast a shadow over both their lives, they were the same, and his love and hers could face each other as equals. That happy Love who had smiled on Ewen and Alison for those few days before the Rising began, who does smile upon the love of happy boy and girl, has a shadow, who walks beside him and is not glad. But now that bright place was cast into gloom, and the mourning Love could turn and greet the other as the equal he had become. It would not have been so had Ewen lived. Fate has its own implacable logic, and it waited, calm and steady, behind that possibility of escape from his captivity which Ewen had failed to realise. It was the other Love, in Keith's uncomprehending heart, who had striven so greatly to save Ewen; but had that effort succeeded, and Ewen lived to enjoy the happiness of the life he had looked forward to with Alison, the Love who had given it to him must have gone back into his old sorrowful place, unquiet in the shadow of the brightness he had made, and Keith gone—nobly, without a thought, giving his life as he had given so much already—with him.
All these things the heron had known. It must have been so, had Ewen lived; but he had died, and it was otherwise. And perhaps in another life, in that world where there is no marrying or giving in marriage, it would be otherwise again; but in this world, where the sun shone and the clouds hurried and the curlew sang above the shores of Loch na h-Iolaire, this was the ending.
Keith and the Patons set out together for Fort William two mornings later.
The general bustle and activity of their departure was made into order, out of the chaos it might have been, by the capable superintendence of Miss Cameron, who stood outside the porch while the horses were being brought round from the stable and smiled upon the party, as they readied themselves for departure, with a manner which combined the farewell wishes of friendly hospitality and satisfaction in a job well done. Keith stood for a few minutes talking to her; they had got to know each other better in the last few days, and he had, he found, come to appreciate and to admire those good qualities which it had once somewhat surprised him to find in her. Now he bade her farewell, thanking her for her hospitality and generosity.
His thanks were also due, of course, to Alison, who stood a little aside from the preparations. He went over to speak to her. 'And I thank you—for more than your hospitality,' he added, in a lower voice, to the more simply conventional part of his speech.
She nodded; she knew what he meant, without further explanation. 'Oh, I've thanked you before,' she said, 'for what you have done, but I shall say so again—for being Ewen's friend, as you were. As you are!'
Behind them, Mrs Paton's maidservant called out something to her about the packing away of her best hat. One of the horses whinnied, as if impatient to be on its way. Keith, glancing back for a moment, smiled slightly. Then he took the hand Alison extended to him and kissed it; and they said their farewells, and then Keith and Lieutenant and Mrs Paton started on their journey.
The lovely weather of a few days earlier had begun, inevitably, to turn, and the conditions this morning might have been called equivocal. The sun still shone in occasional golden beams above the landscape, but those Highland mists with which Keith was becoming so familiar were descending from the hillsides, and as the party made their way across the little glen of Ardroy, the farther shore of the loch disappeared from them into the grey obscurity. Yet the near shore was still in plain view; as Keith was about to turn away from the sight, his gaze was drawn back there by a hint of movement, and he found its source in time to see the heron—which had begun by raising its head from the statue-like stillness of its posture—take flight, on broad, beating wings, towards the little island.
And then Keith knew that it did not, after all, matter that he had given up that letter and the lock of hair. The heron, symbol and prophet of all that had been and still was between him and Ewen, would remain here. Keith was glad to see it. Something of himself would stay with it, and with Ewen—here on his own spot of earth, in the place he loved best.