most exquisite of love songs “Annie Laurie.”
“‘Maxwelton’s braes are bonnie,
Where early fa’s the dew,
Where me and Annie Laurie
Made up the promise true.’”
Her voice trembled a little, and I took up the song.
“‘Made up the promise true,
And ne’er forget will I;
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I’d lay me doun and dee.’”
At my first words she gave a little start, her lips parted, her head came up prettily to attention, and though I could not see them I was ready to vow that she listened with shining eyes. Softly her breath came and went. I trod nearer as I sang.
“‘Her brow is like the snaw-drift,
Her throat is like the swan,
She’s jimp about the middle,
Her waist ye weel micht span.’
“Oh, Aileen, if I might—if I only had the right! Won’t you give it me, dear heart?”
In the long silence my pulse stopped, then throbbed like an aching tooth.
“I’m waiting, Aileen. It is to be yes or no?”
The shy blue eyes met mine for an instant before they fluttered groundward. I could scarce make out the low sweet music of her voice.
“Oh, Kenneth, not now! You forget—my brother Malcolm——”
“I forget everything but this, that I love you.”
In her cheeks was being fought the war of the roses, with Lancaster victorious. The long-lashed eyes came up to meet mine bravely, love lucent in them. Our glances married; in those clear Highland lochs of hers I was sunk fathoms deep.
“Truly, Kenneth?”
“From the head to the heel of you, Aileen, lass. For you I would die, and that is all there is about it,” I cried, wildly.
“Well then, take me, Kenneth! I am all yours. Of telling love there will be many ways in the Gaelic, and I am thinking them all at once.”
And this is the plain story of how the great happiness came into Kenneth Montagu’s life, and how, though all unworthy, he won for his own the daughter of Raasay.
Chapter XIV
The Aftermath
At Edinburgh we received check one. Aileen’s aunt had left for the Highlands the week before in a fine rage because the Duke of Cumberland, who had foisted himself upon her unwilling hospitality, had eaten her out of house and home, then departing had borne away with him her cherished household penates to the value of some hundred pounds. Years later Major Wolfe told me with twinkling eyes the story of how the fiery little lady came to him with her tale of woe. If she did not go straight to the dour Duke it was because he was already out of the city and beyond her reach. Into Wolfe’s quarters she bounced, rage and suspicion speaking eloquent in her manner.
“Hech, sir! Where have ye that Dutch Prince of yours?” she demanded of Wolfe, her keen eyes ranging over him.
“’Pon honour, madam, I have not him secreted on my person,” returned the Major, gravely turning inside out his pockets for her.
The spirited old lady glowered at him.
“It’s ill setting ye to be sae humoursome,” she told him frankly. “It wad be better telling ye to answer ceevilly a ceevil question, my birkie.”
“If I can be of any service, madam——”
“Humph, service! And that’s just it, my mannie. The ill-faured tykes hae rampaigned through the house and taen awa’ my bonnie silver tea service that I hae scoured every Monday morning for thirty-seven years come Michelmas, forby the fine Holland linen that my father, guid carefu’ man, brought frae the continent his nainsel.”
“I am sorry——”
“Sorry! Hear till him,” she snorted. “Muckle guid your sorrow will do me unless——” her voice fell to a wheedling cajolery—“you just be a guid laddie and get me back my linen and the silver.”
“The Duke has a partiality for fine bed linen, and quaint silver devices are almost a mania with him. Perhaps some of your other possessions”—
“His Dutch officers ate me out of house and home. They took awa’ eight sacks of the best lump sugar.”
“The army is in need of sugar. I fear it is not recoverable.”
Miss MacBean had a way of affecting deafness when the occasion suited her.
“Eih, sir! Were you saying you wad see it was recovered? And my silver set wi’ twenty solid teaspoons, forby the linen?” she asked anxiously, her hand to her ear.
Wolfe smiled.
“I fear the Duke——”
“Ou ay, I ken fine you fear him. He’s gurly enough, Guid kens.”
“I was about to say, madam, that I fear the Duke will regard them as spoils from the enemy not to be given up.”
The Major was right. Miss MacBean might as well have saved her breath to cool her porridge, for the Duke carried her possessions to London despite her remonstrances. Five years later as I was passing by a pawnbroker’s shop on a mean street in London Miss MacBean’s teapot with its curious device of a winged dragon for a spout caught my eye in the window. The shopkeeper told me that it had been sold him by a woman of the demi-monde who had formerly been a mistress of the Duke of Cumberland. She said that it was a present from his Royal Highness, who had taken the silver service from the house of a fiery rebel lady in the north.
Our stay in the Scottish capital was of the shortest. In the early morning we went knocking at the door of Miss MacBean’s house. All day I kept under cover and in the darkness of night we slipped out of the city southwest bound. Of that journey, its sweet comradeship, its shy confidences, its perpetual surprises for each of us in discovering the other, I have no time nor mind to tell. The very danger which was never absent from our travel drew us into a closer friendliness. Was there an option between two roads, or the question of the desirability of putting up at a certain inn, our heads came together to discuss it. Her pretty confidence in me was touching in the extreme. To have her hold me a Captain Greatheart made my soul glad, even though I knew my measure did not fit the specifications by a mile. Her trust in me was less an incense to my vanity than a spur to my manhood.
The mere joy of living flooded my blood with happiness in those days. I vow it made me a better man to breathe the same air as she, to hear the lilt of her merry laugh and the low
