Foes Part 25

"In an hour's time I must wait on Lord George Murray. But I have till then."

They entered a close, and climbed the stair of a tall, tall house, dusky and old. Here, half-way up, was the lawyer's lair. He unlocked a door and the two came, through a small vestibule, into a good-sized, comfortable, well-furnished room. Rullock glanced at the walls.

"I was here once or twice, years ago. I remember your books. What a number you have!"

"I recall," said Mr. Wotherspoon, "a visit that you paid me with the now laird of Glenfernie."

The window to which they moved allowed a glimpse of the colorful street. Mr. Wotherspoon closed it against the invading noise and the touch of chill in the misty air. He then pushed two chairs to the table and took from a cupboard a bottle and gla.s.ses.

"My man is gadding, with eyes like saucers--like the rest of us, like the rest of us, Captain Rullock!" They sat down. "My profession," said the lawyer, "can be made to be narrow and narrowing. On the other hand, if a man has an apt.i.tude for life, there is much about life to be learned with a lawyer's spy-gla.s.s! A lawyer sees a variety of happenings in a mixed world. He quite especially learns how seldom black and white are found in anything like a pure condition. A thousand thousand blends. Be wise and tolerant--or to be wise be tolerant!" He pushed the bottle.

Ian smiled. "I take that, sir, to mean that you find _G.o.d save King James!_ not wholly harsh and unmusical--"

"Perhaps not wholly so," said the lawyer. "I am Whig and Presbyterian and I prefer _G.o.d save King George!_ But I do not look for the world to end, whether for King George or King James. I did not have in mind just this public occasion."

His tone was dry. Ian kept his gold-brown eyes upon him. "Tell me what you have heard from Black Hill."

"I was there late in May. Mr. Touris learned at that time that you had quitted France."

"May I ask how he learned it?"

"The laird of Glenfernie, who had been in the Low Countries, told him.

Apparently Glenfernie had acquaintances, agents, who traced it out for him that you had sailed from Dunkirk for Beauly Firth, under the name of Robert Bonshaw."

"_So he was there, pacing the beach_," thought Ian. He lifted his gla.s.s and drank Mr. Wotherspoon's very good wine. That gentleman went on.

"It was surmised at Black Hill that you were helping on the event--the great event, perhaps--that has occurred. Indeed, in July, Mr. Touris, writing to me, mentioned that you had been seen beyond Inverness. But the Highlands are deep and you traveled rapidly. Of course, when it was known that the Prince had landed, your acquaintance a.s.sumed your joining him and becoming, as you have become, an officer in his army."

He made a little bow.

Ian inclined his head in return. "All at Black Hill are well, I hope?

My aunt--"

"Mrs. Alison is a saint. All earthly grief, I imagine, only quickens her homeward step."

"What grief has she had, sir, beyond--"

"Beyond?"

"I know that my aunt will grieve for the break that has come between my uncle and myself. I have, too," said Ian, with deliberation, "been quarreled with by an old friend. That also may distress her."

The lawyer appeared to listen to sounds from the street. Rising, he moved to the window, then returned. "Bonnet lairds coming into town!

You are referring now to Glenfernie?"

"Then he has made it common property that he chose to quarrel with me?"

"Oh, chose to--" said Mr. Wotherspoon, reflectively.

There was a silence. Ian set down his wine-gla.s.s, made a movement of drawing together, of determination.

"I am sure that there is something of which I have not full understanding. You will much oblige me by attention to what I now say, Mr. Wotherspoon. It is possible that I may ask you to see that its substance reaches Black Hill." He leaned back in his chair and with his gold-brown eyes met the lawyer's keen blue ones. "Nothing now can be injured by telling you that for a year I have acted under responsibility of having in keeping greater fortunes than my own. That kind of thing, none can know better than you, binds a man out of his own path and his own choices into the path and choices of others.

Secrecy was demanded of me. I ceased to write home, and presently I removed from old lodgings and purposely blurred indications of where I was or might be found. In this way--the warring, troubled time aiding--it occurred that there practically ceased all communication between me and those of my blood and friends.h.i.+p whose political thinking differs from mine.... I begin to see that I know little indeed of what may or may not have occurred in that countryside. Early in April, however, there came to my hand in Paris two letters--one from my uncle, written before Christmas, one from Alexander Jardine, written a month later. My uncle's contained the information that, lacking my immediate return to this island and the political faith of his side of the house, I was no longer his nephew and heir. The laird of Glenfernie, upon an old quarrel into which I need not enter, chose to send me a challenge simply. _Meet him, on such a sands in Holland_.... Well, great affairs have right of way over small ones!

Under the circ.u.mstances, he might as well have appointed a plain in the moon! The duel waits.... I tell you what I know of home affairs. I shall be obliged for any information you may have that I have not."

Mr. Wotherspoon's sharp blue eyes seemed to consider it. He drummed on the table. "I am a much older man than you, Captain Rullock, and an old adviser of your family. Perhaps I may speak without offense? That subject of quarrel, now, between you and the laird of Glenfernie--"

The other made a movement, impatient and imperious. "It is not likely, sir, that he divulged that!"

"He? No! But fate--fortune--the unrolling course of things--plain Providence--whatever you choose to call it--seems at times quite below or above that reticence which we others so naturally prize and exhibit!"

"You'll oblige me, sir, by not speaking in riddles."

The irony dropped from Mr. Wotherspoon's tone. He faced the business squarely. "Do you mean to say that you do not know of the suicide of Elspeth Barrow?"

The chair opposite made a grating sound, pushed violently back upon the bare, polished floor. Down the street, through the window, came the sound of Cluny Macpherson's pipers, playing down from the Lawnmarket. Rullock seemed to have thrust his chair back into the shadow. Out of it came presently his voice, low and hoa.r.s.e:

"No."

"They found her on Christmas Day--drowned in the Kelpie's Pool.

Self-murder--murder also of a child that would have been."

Again silence. The lawyer found that he must go through with it, having come so far. "It seems that there is a cripple fellow of the neighborhood who had stumbled, unseen, upon your trysts. He told--spoke it all out to the crowd gathered. There was a letter, too, upon her which gave a clue. But she never named you and evidently meant not to name you.... Poor child! She may have thought herself strong, and then things have come over her wave on wave. Her grandfather--that dark upbringing on tenets harsh and wrathful--certainty of disgrace.

Pitiful!"

There came a sound from the chair pushed back from the light. Mr.

Wotherspoon measured the table with his fingers.

"It seems that the countryside was searching for her. It was the laird of Glenfernie who, alone and coming upon some trace, entered the Kelpie's Pool and found her there. They say that he carried her, dead, in his arms through the glen to White Farm."

Some proclamation or other was being made at the Cross of Edinburgh. A trumpet blew and the street was filled with footsteps.

"The laird of Glenfernie," said the lawyer, "has joined, I hear, Sir John Cope at Dunbar. It is not impossible that you may have speech together from opposing battle-lines." He poured wine. "My bag of news is empty, Captain Rullock."

Ian rose from his seat. His face was gray and twisted, his voice, when he spoke, hollow, low, and dry. "I must go now to Lord George Murray.... It was all news, Mr. Wotherspoon. I--What are words, anyhow? Give you good day, sir!"

Mr. Wotherspoon, standing in his door, watched him down the stair and forth from the house. "He goes brawly! How much is night, and how much streak of dawn?"

Sir John Cope, King George's general in Scotland, had but a small army. It was necessary in the highest degree that Prince Charles Edward should meet and defeat this force before it was enlarged, before from England came more and more regular troops.... A battle won meant prestige gained, the coming over of doubting thousands, an echo into England that would bring the definite accession of great Tory names. Cope and his twenty-five hundred men, regulars and volunteers, approaching Edinburgh from the east, took position near the village of Prestonpans. On the morning of the 20th of September out moved to meet him the Prince and Lord George Murray, behind them less than two thousand men.

By afternoon the two forces confronted each the other; but Cope had chosen well, the right position. The sea guarded one flank, a deep and wide field ditch full of water the other. In his rear were stone walls, and before him a wide marsh. The Jacobite strength halted, reconnoitered, must perforce at last come to a standstill before Cope's natural fortress. There was little artillery, no great number of horse. Even the bravest of the brave, Highland or Lowland, might draw back from the thought of trying to cross that marsh, of meeting the moat-like ditch under Cope's musket-fire. Sunset came amid perturbation, a sense of check, impending disaster.

Ian Rullock, acting for the moment as aide-de-camp, had spent the day on horseback. Released in the late afternoon, lodged in a hut at the edge of the small camp, he used the moment's leisure to climb a small hill and at its height to throw himself down beside a broken cairn. He shut his eyes, but after a few moments opened them and gazed upon the camp of Cope, covering also but a little s.p.a.ce, so small were the armies. His lips parted.

"Well, Old Steadfast, and what if you are there, waiting?..."

The sun sank. A faint red light diffused itself, then faded into brown dusk. He rose and went down into the camp. In the brows of many there might be read depression, uncertainty. But in open places fires had been built, and about several of these Highlanders were dancing to the screaming of their pipes. Rullock bent his steps to headquarters. An officer whom he knew, coming forth, drew him aside in excitement.

"We've got it--we've got it, Rullock!"