They went to Portree, and found an eight-oared boat there, with seven rowers in it. Rupert went on board, took his place at the eighth oar. And again, as far away in Uist—and years ago, it seemed—he watched the Prince and Miss MacDonald foregathered on the shore. In Uist they had met, these two, under a driving wind that blew across the tempered radiance of the June night hours. Here they were standing in hot daylight, with never a breeze to ruffle the happy face of land and sea. And yet they had been glad in Uist, with the storm about them; and here in Skye they stood, and looked at one another, and were empty of all hope.
They had spent few days together, as time is reckoned, the Prince and Miss MacDonald of the isles. But the days they shared had been packed full of hardship, danger of pursuing soldiery, peril of their warm, human liking for each other—the human liking that gains depth and strength from trouble. The Prince had gone through a Scotland set thick with women who asked a love-lock, a glance, and all that follows. He had kept troth instead with the stubborn march of men who followed the open road with him. Women came before and after strife—that had been his gospel, until he met Miss MacDonald, good to look at, and brave to rescue him.
And now they stood together on the shore of Portree Bay. They were Prince and loyal subject, and yet they were children crying in the dark, needing each other, heart-sick at parting, ready, if their faith had been a little weaker, to catch at the coward’s proverb that the world is well lost for a love forbidden.
To these two, parting on the edge of Portree Bay, there came a sudden intuition of the soul. They saw—almost as if it stood between them—a sword, keen-edged, and clean, and silvery—the sword that had guarded them safely through worse dangers than gunboats and the stormy seas. They saw the days behind—the few days granted them for comradeship—the years stretching out and out ahead, empty and steep and wind-swept as the lone hill-tracks of Skye.
The rowers waited, impatient to be off, because each moment lost was packed with danger. But these two would never again fear any sort of hazard; they had gained too much, were losing too much.
Their glances met. One was taking the high road trod by the bleeding feet of royalty; the other was taking the low road, that led to the house of Kingsborough, its maddening, quiet routine of housewifery—mending of the laird’s stockings, seeing that Mrs. MacDonald’s fowls were tended, going, day by day, and year by year, through the sick, meaningless routine of housework.
And one knew that, wherever his feet were planted, his heart would return constantly to the misty isle that had taught him the strong love and the lasting. And the other knew that she would never cease to look out from Kingsborough’s windows, when leisure served, and trick herself into the belief that her man was returning—crowned or uncrowned, she cared not which—was returning, with the wind in his feet and the glad look in his face, to tell her all the things unspoken during these last days of trial.
The sun beat hot on the rowers’ backs, and this parting seemed long to them. To Miss MacDonald and the Prince it seemed brief, because the coming separation showed endless as eternity.
And then at last the Prince stooped to her hand, and kissed it. “Your servant, Miss MacDonald,” he said—“your servant till I die, God knows.”
Rupert watched it all with eyes trained to understanding. And, when the fugitives were aboard and they were straining at their oars, he was sure that the Prince would give one long, backward glance at Miss MacDonald. But the Stuart was older to life’s teaching, and would not look behind when he had chosen the plain road ahead. His eyes were set forward—forward, over the dappled, summer seas, to the days of hiding and unrest waiting for him. And through his bitterness and lonely need for Miss MacDonald he found a keen, high courage, as the man’s way is. And Flora MacDonald, as the woman’s way is, watched the boat grow less and less until it was a dark speck dancing on a sea of violet, and green, and amethyst, and fought for the resignation that brings peace, but never the trumpet-note of gladness that had kept her company on the dangerous seas.