And so he hoped and thought, and watched and waited, but that new day of battle never came!
His secret aspirations were shared to the full by his young wife, Mary MacDonald, who was a grand-daughter of MacVicIan, the chieftain of Glencoe, the terrible Williamite episode in whoso history can yet make the brow of every Highlander darken. But Mary was gentle and timid; she had seen too much of war and bloodshed, of butchery and terror in her girlhood, during the time that followed Culloden; and though she prayed in her innocent little heart for the restoration of Scotland's exiled kings, it was in peace she would have wished it achieved.
In the ancient fashion of the Highlands, Roderick on the day of their marriage had bestowed on Mary—in addition to the espousal ring—an antique brooch; one of those old marriage gifts which were usually given on such occasions. It had been worn by many matrons of his house, and thus became invested with many deep and endearing memories: association, old tales of the love, the spirit and virtue of the dead, hallowed the gift, for it had shone on many a soft breast that had long since mouldered in the dust. Being circular, it was the mystic emblem of eternity, and bore the crest of the Clan Gillibhreac—a cat, with the significant motto in the old Gaelic letter—
"Touch not the cat without the glove;"
and as her own life Mary prized this old bridal brooch, the dearest gift her husband could bestow upon her.
When MacGillivray joined the regiment, Mary was in her twentieth year. She was pale and more than pretty, having that dazzling white skin for which the women of her clan are said to excel all others in Scotland; but of old the same was said of the Campbells and the Drummonds. Her hair was black; her eyes, deep and quiet, were dark hazel, and her features were unexceptionable. She was neither brilliant nor beautiful, but there was a sweetness and delicacy in her smile and manner that touched and won the hearts of all who knew her. There was a sadness, too, in her air and tone, for the most of her kindred had perished in the Glencoe massacre, or at Culloden. She was thus alone in the world, with none to shield or shelter her but her husband—he who was now beginning a life of war and peril—the savage war and double peril of a campaign in America, a wild and untrodden land of barbarous hordes and mighty forests. She shrank with a terror of the prospect before them, and viewed with dismay the many lesser horrors which surrounded her in a crowded transport of those days.
MacGillivray sailed on board the Mercury, the master of which was James Cooke, afterwards the celebrated navigator.
"Twain of heart and of purpose," husband and wife were to each other all in all; and the Celtic soldiers, who knew their story well, said in their own forcible language, that if the bullet of a Frenchman or the arrow of an Indian brought death to Roderick Ruadh, the daughter of MacVicIan would not survive him long.
Each scarcely knew how deep was the love of the other; for the Scots are not a demonstrative people, and the most powerful emotions of the heart are those which they have been taught, perhaps erroneously, to conceal; but of this negative quality we find less in the more impulsive Celt. The ardour of love had now been succeeded by the affection of marriage, and the sincerity of friendship had replaced the glow of passion; but Roderick's enthusiasm in the estimate of perfect excellence by which he judged his own little wife was only equalled by the standard which she had formed for him. To make her happy was to be himself happy, and it was the study of his life to surround her with such comforts as a camp and barrack or transport afforded upon the pay of a lieutenant of the line in the days of George II. "England," says honest Harry Coverdale, "expects every man to do his duty, and occasionally recompenses him for it with honourable starvation." And such was indeed a subaltern's pay in 1757.
In their new mode of existence all seclusion was destroyed; and amid the whirl of a military life, the hurry of embarkation for foreign service, and in the narrow recess allotted to her in the transport, odious by the odour of tar, tobacco, and bilge water, poor Mary sighed for the hum of the summer bee, and for the free, pure breeze that waved the heather bells in Glencoe, or for her husband's once happy home in Glenarrow, roofless and ruined now, as the flames and the devastators of the ducal butcher had left it.