The flight of the heron

by D. K. Broster

Lochiel indeed, now a man of fifty, had always been to his young cousin elder brother and father in one, for Ewen’s own father had been obliged to flee the country after the abortive little Jacobite attempt of 1719, leaving behind him his wife and the son of whom she had been but three days delivered. Ewen’s mother—a Stewart of Appin—did not survive his birth a fortnight, and he was nursed, with her own black-haired Lachlan, by Seonaid MacMartin, the wife of his father’s piper—no unusual event in a land of fosterage. But after a while arrived Miss Cameron, the laird’s sister, to take charge of the deserted house of Ardroy and to look after the motherless boy, who before the year had ended was fatherless too, for John Cameron died of fever in Amsterdam, and the child of six months old became ‘Mac ’ic Ailein,’ the head of the cadet branch of Cameron of Ardroy. Hence Ewen, with Miss Cameron’s assistance—and Lochiel’s supervision—had ruled his little domain for as long as he could remember, save only for the two years when he was abroad for his education.

It was there, in the Jacobite society of Paris, that he had met Alison Grant, the daughter of a poor, learned and almost permanently exiled Highland gentleman, a Grant of Glenmoriston, a plotter rather than a fighter. But because Alison, though quite as much in love with her young chieftain as he with her, had refused to leave her father alone in exile—for the brother of sixteen just entering a French regiment could not take her place—Ewen had had to wait for four long years without much prospect of their marriage. But this very spring Mr. Grant had received intimation that his return would be winked at by the Government, and accordingly returned; and so there was nothing to stand in the way of his daughter’s marriage to the young laird of Ardroy in the autumn. And Alison’s presence here now, on a visit with her father, was no doubt the reason that, though her lover was of the same political creed as they, never questioning its fitness, since it was as natural to him as running or breathing, he was not paying very particular attention to the rumours of Prince Charles Edward’s plans which were going about among the initiated.

With deliberate and unnecessary splashings, like a boy, Ewen now turned over again, swam for a while under water, and finally landed, stretched himself in the sun, and got without undue haste into a rather summary costume. There was plenty of time before breakfast to make a more ordered toilet, and his hair would be dry and tied back with a ribbon by then. Perukes and short hair were convenient, but, fashionable or no, he found the former hot. When he was Lochiel’s age, perhaps, he would wear one.

Before long he was striding off towards the house, whistling a French air as he went.

(2)

Between the red crag and the spot where he had rated his foster-brother that morning Ardroy stood alone now with his betrothed. The loch was almost more beautiful in the sunset light than when its waters had closed over his head all those hours ago, and even with Alison on his arm Ewen was conscious of this, for he adored Loch na h-Iolaire with little less than passion. So they stood, close together, looking at it, while here and there a fish rose and made his little circle, widening until it died out in the glassy infinity, and near shore a shelduck with her tiny bobbing brood swam hastily from one patch of reeds to another.

Presently Ewen took off his plaid and spread it for Alison to sit upon, and threw himself down too on the carpet of cranberries; and now he looked, not at the loch, but at her, his own (or nearly his own) at last. Alison’s hand, waited for so patiently . . . no, not always so patiently . . . strayed among the tiny leaves, and Ewen caught the little fingers, with his ring upon the least but one, and kissed them.

“And to think,” he said softly, “that by this time to-morrow we shall be contracted in writing, and you not able to get away from me!”

Alison looked down at him. In her dark eyes swam all kinds of sweetness, but mischief woke and danced now at the corners of her small, fine, close-shut mouth, which could be so tender too.

“Oh, Ewen, does the contract make you more sure of me? You’d not hold me to a bit of paper if I were to change my mind one fine morning and say, ‘Ardroy, I’m sweir to tell it, but wed you I cannot’?”