All night I jogged behind them, and in the morning rode up to the inn where they stopped for breakfast. From Mistress Aileen I got the slightest bow in the world as I passed to my solitary breakfast at a neighbouring table. Within the hour they were away again, and I after to cover the rear. Late in the day the near wheeler fell very lame. The rest of the animals were dead beat, and I rode to the nearest hamlet to get another horse. The night was falling foul, very mirk, with a rising wind, and methought the lady’s eyes lightened when she saw me return with help to get them out of their difficulty. She thanked me stiffly with a very straight lip.
“At all events there will be no end to the obligations I am under, Mr. Montagu. They will be piling high as Ben Nevis,” she said, but ’twould have taken a penetrating man to have discovered any friendliness in the voice.
Yet henceforth I made myself one of the party, admitted on sufferance with a very bad grace. More than once I tried to break through the chill conventionals that made the staple of our conversation, but the girl was ice to me. In the end I grew stiff as she. I would ride beside the coach all day with scarce a word, wearying for a reconciliation and yet nourishing angry pride. When speech appeared to be demanded between us ’twas of the most formal. Faith, I think we were liker a pair of spoilt children than sensible grown folks.
While we were still in the northern counties rumours began to reach us that General Cope’s army had been cut to pieces by the Highlanders. The stories ran that not a single man had escaped, that the clans, twenty thousand strong, were headed for England, that they were burning and destroying as they advanced. Incredible reports of all kinds sprang out of the air, and the utmost alarm prevailed. The report of Cope’s defeat was soon verified. We met more than one redcoat speeding south on a foam-flecked weary steed, and it did not need the second sight to divine that the dispatches they carried spoke loudly of disaster fallen and of reinforcements needed.
After we had crossed the border parties of foraging Highlanders began to appear occasionally, but a word in the Gaelic from Hamish Gorm always served as a password for us. To make short, early in October we reached the Scottish capital, the formal relations which had been established between Miss Macleod and me continuing to the end of the journey.
There lived in Edinburgh an unmarried aunt of Aileen, a Miss Flora MacBean by name, and at her house I left the girl while I went to notify her brother of our arrival. I found him lodged in High Street near the old Flesh-market Close. Malcolm Macleod was a fine manly fellow of about three and thirty, lusty and well-proportioned, very tanned and ruddy. He had a quick lively eye and a firm good-humoured mouth. In brief, he was the very picture of a frank open-hearted Highland gentleman, and in the gay Macleod tartan looked as gallant a figure of a soldier as one would wish to see. He greeted me with charming friendliness and expressed himself as deeply gratified for my care of his sister, offering again and again to put himself at my service in any way I might desire.
We walked down the street together, and more than once a shot plumped at our feet, for the city was under fire from the Hanoverian garrison at the castle. Everywhere the clansmen were in evidence. Barefooted and barelegged Celts strutted about the city with their bonnets scrugged low on their heads, the hair hanging wild over their eyes and the matted beards covering their faces. For the most part they were very ragged, and tanned exceedingly wherever the flesh took a peep through their outworn plaids. They ran about the streets in groups, looking in shop windows like children and talking their outlandish gibberish; then presently their Highland pride would assert itself at the smile of some chance passer and would send them swinging proudly off as though they had better things at home.
Out of a tobacco shop came Captain Donald Roy singing blithely,
| “‘Will ye play me fair, Highland laddie, Highland laddie?’” |
He was of course in the full Macdonald tartan regimentals—checkered kilt, sporran, plaid, a brace of pistols, a dirk in his stocking, and claymore. At sight of me his face lighted and he came running forward with both hands outstretched.