Chapter Nine.
The Cove.
Rollo brought word that Macdonald and his people had left the eastern caves, and were now exploring the large northern one called Asdrafil. It was time the lady was returning to her hiding place.
“O dear!” exclaimed she. “May I not rest under a roof for one night? Will Macdonald come here again so soon?”
The widow had little doubt he would. He would be popping in at all times of the day or night till he could learn where his prisoner was. She could not advise the lady to stay here, if she wished to remain on the island till the minister came.
“I must,” said Lady Carse. “But I dread that cave. I hate it, with its echoes that startle one every moment, and the rough walls that look so strangely in the red light of the fire. I hate it. But,” she continued impetuously, “no matter! I hate this place” (looking round with disgust). “I hate every place that I ever was in. I wish I was dead. I wish I had never been born. Now don’t look at me so piteously. I won’t be pitied. I can’t bear to be pitied: and do you think I will let you pity me? No, indeed, I may have my own troubles. God knows I have troubles enough. But I would not change places with you—no, not for all else that God or man could give me. Now what are you smiling at? Woman, do you mean to insult my misfortunes? I am brought low indeed, if I am to be smiled at by a hag in a desert—I who once—O! I see; you don’t choose to yield me the small respect of listening to what I say.”
Annie was now looking round her cottage to see what she could send down to render the lady more comfortable in her retreat. She tried to absorb her own attention in this business till Lady Carse should have exhausted her anger and become silent. But Lady Carse once again seized the oil can.
“Pardon me, madam,” said Annie, “I cannot spare that, as you know. Rollo is carrying some things that I hope may make you comfortable. If you see anything else that you wish for, you shall have it—anything but my lamp and my oil.”
“The oil is the only thing I want; and a small matter it is for me, who had dozens of wax-lights burning in my house at Edinburgh, and will have dozens more before I die.”
“Your fire must serve you, madam. I give you what I have to bestow. My light is not mine to give: it belongs to wanderers on the sea. You cannot think, madam, of taking what belongs, as I may say, neither to you nor me.”
Lady Carse had that in her countenance at this moment which alarmed the widow for her light; and she therefore desired her son, with authority, to relieve the lady of the oil can, and trim the lamp ready for night.
Lady Carse, setting her teeth, and looking as malicious as an ill-bred cur, said that if the light belonged to nobody here nobody else should have the benefit of it; and attempted to empty the oil upon the hearth. This was more than Rollo was disposed to permit. He seized her arm with no gentle grasp, and saved all the oil but a few drops, which blazed amongst the peats. He moreover told the lady, with an air of superiority, that he had almost begun to think she had as much wit as the islanders; but that he now saw his mistake; and she must manage her own affairs. He should stay with his mother to-night.
It was his mother who, rebuking his incivility, desired him to attend upon the lady. It was his mother who, when Lady Carse burst away from them and said she would be followed by nobody, awoke in Rollo something of the feeling which she herself entertained.
“Carry down these things,” she said. “It is too true; as she says, that every place is hateful to her; and that is the more reason why we should do what we can to make some comfort in the place she is in.”
“But she says such things to you, mother! I don’t want to hear any more such things.”
“When people are in torment, Rollo, they do not know what they say. And she has much to torment her, poor lady! Now go; and let us try to hide her from Macdonald. If she and the minister can have speech of each other, I trust she may become more settled in mind. You know God has made His creatures to differ one from another. There are some that sit all the more still in storms; and there are others that are sadly bewildered in tempests: but, if one ray of God’s sun is sent to them, it is like a charm. They stop and watch it; and when it spreads about them, it seems to change their nature: they lie down and bask in it, and find content. It may be so with this lady if the minister gives her a glimpse of light from above.”
“She shall not be carried off, if David and I can hide her,” declared Rollo. “One of us must watch the Macdonalds, while the other entertains the lady.”
“While she entertains you, you mean,” said Annie, smiling. “She has many wonderful things to tell to such as we are.”
“Not more than we have to tell her. Why, mother, she knows no more—”
“Well, well,” said the mother, smiling; “you cannot do wrong in amusing her to the best of your ability, till she can see the minister, and hear better things. So go, my son.”
Rollo trimmed the lamp; saw that his mother was provided with fuel and water, and departed; leaving her maternal heart cheered, so that her almost bare cottage was like a palace to her. She was singing when Macdonald put his head in, as he said, to bid her good night, but in fact to see if Lady Carse had come home, David and Rollo acted in turn as scouts; and from their report it appeared that, though the minister’s boat had not shown itself, there was a blockade of the eastern caves. The lady’s retreat was certainly suspected to be somewhere in this part of the shore; for some of Macdonald’s people were always in sight. Now and then, a man, or a couple of women, came prying along the rocks; and once two men took shelter in a cave which adjoined that in which the trembling lady was sitting, afraid to move, and almost to breathe, lest the echoes should betray her. The entrance to her retreat was so curiously concealed by projections of rock, that she had nothing to fear but from sound. But she could not be sure of this; and she would have extinguished her fire by heaping sand upon it, and left herself in total darkness in a labyrinth which was always sufficiently perplexing, if Rollo had not held her hand. He stepped cautiously through the sand to the nearest point to the foe, listened awhile, and then smiled and nodded to Lady Carse, and seemed wonderfully delighted. This excited her impatience so much that it seemed to her that the enemy would never decamp. She was obliged to control herself; but by the time she might speak, she was very irritable. She told Rollo not to grin and fidget in that manner, but to let her know his news.
“Great news!” Rollo declared. “The sloop which was to bring the minister and his wife was to lie-to this very night, in a deep cove close at hand; and the reason for its coming here, instead of into the harbour, was—the best of reasons for the lady—that Macdonald had fears that the Macleods who manned the vessel would be friendly to his prisoner. So the minister and his party were to be landed in the sloop’s yawl; and the sloop was to be quietly brought into the cove after dark, that the lady, supposed to be still on the island, might not have any opportunity of getting on board.”
This did appear a most promising opportunity of deliverance. The sloop came round when expected; and, soon after she was moored, Rollo and David went on their raft, and spoke from it to a man who appeared to be in command, and who was, after some time, persuaded to think that he could, for sufficient payment, go so far out of his way as to land a lady passenger on the main—the lady being in anxiety about her family, and able to pay handsomely for an early opportunity of joining them. The negotiation was rather a long one, as some of the points were difficult to arrange; and the master of the vessel appeared somewhat careless about the whole matter. But at last Lady Carse’s anxious ear heard the slight splash of the raft approaching through the water; and then the tall figures of the young men were dimly seen between her and the sky. Her tongue was so parched that she could not speak the question which swelled in her heart.
“Come,” said Rollo, aloud. “The master will land you on the main. You had better get on board now, before the sea roughens. Come, they are looking out for you.”
Lady Carse endeavoured to make haste; but her limbs would hardly support her. Her companions lifted her upon the raft, and one held her steady while the other paddled. Strong arms were ready on board the sloop to hoist her up and carry her to a heap of plaids, made into a sort of bed on deck. In another moment she sprang up, saying that she must speak to her companions one more word. A sailor who stood over her held her back; but she declared that she must thank those who had rendered her a great service. At the bidding of someone who spoke in Gaelic, the sailor withdrew his opposition, and she tottered to the side of the vessel, called to Rollo, desired him to give her love to his mother, and promised that he and David should find that she was not ungrateful.
Rollo and his comrade leaped ashore with a comfortable feeling that their business was all achieved; but yet with some little regret at losing the excitements of their late employment, and of the lady’s presence and conversation. They talked her over while eating their suppers, wondered what rewards she would send, and how angry Macdonald would be; and they were about to lie down to sleep, when the night air was rent by such a scream as they had never heard. They ran out upon the rocks, and there they heard from the sloop shriek upon shriek.
“What is it?” exclaimed David. “They are murdering her!”
“No,” said Rollo, after a pause. “They may be up to that, if this is a trick; but they would not do it here, nor so soon. They could do it more safely between this and Saint Kilda, with a rope and heavy stone. No—they are not murdering her, whoever they may be.”
“What, then? Who are they?”
“It may be a trick, and that would put the lady in a great passion; and when she is in a passion, let me tell you, not all the birds in the face of this rock can make more noise. I am not sure, but I think that is a passionate scream.”
“I wish it would leave off,” said David, turning away. “I don’t like it.”
“If you don’t like it,” said Rollo, “I should hardly think she can. I must see about it. I think it is a trick, and that she is in a passion.”
It was a trick from beginning to end. It was Macdonald’s sloop; and Macdonald himself was on board, prepared to carry his prisoner to Saint Kilda. The conversation overheard by Rollo in the cavern was a trick. A similar conversation had been held that day in every cave known to Macdonald along that part of the shore, in hopes of some one version being overheard by the lady’s accomplices. She had fallen into the trap very easily.
“And now,” said Macdonald to a clansman, “I have nearly done with the business. We have only to land her in Saint Kilda; and then it will be the Macleod’s affair. I shall be glad to have done with the witch. I have no wish to carry people anywhere against their wishes; and I never would, if Sir Alexander Macdonald were not in it. But I shall have done with the business presently.”