XXII
CALLUM MACILVESTY had been soon at Jock Lesly’s side to afford him such succor and countenance as was possible under the circumstances. He asked for leave to aid him in transporting Lilias, so stiff with the cold was she, back to the cave house, where she sat on the buffalo rug before the flaring fire, her glittering hair all tumbling about her shoulders, her eyes shining with triumph, and laughing with gay outbursts of flattered joy to learn how wretched they had all been because of her absence, and how wrong and wicked they esteemed her sudden arbitrary release of the prisoner.
“I amna sorry,” she protested, “except for that the callant hae on my gude red rokelay, an’ my best puce-colored serge gownd, an’ my gude murrey screen, wi’ only ae wee tear in the weft o’ it,—an’ I’se warrant I’ll no see a’ that braw gear again!”
It was Callum who sought to impress her with the magnitude of the offense that she had committed, for Jock Lesly cared for naught else on earth save that she was safe and sat once more on the rug before the blazing fire of the ha’ house.
“An’ what care I how far ye went an’ how hard ye fared to tak him, Callum!” she cried indignantly. “Gin I hadna tauld you the callant was French, you wad ne’er hae kenned it. An’ ye tauld yon Captain Howard—that bluidy-minded chiel! I wuss he was in his ain cauld tolbooth to freeze stiff like my nainsell!”
“Whist, whist, hinny!” remonstrated Jock Lesly. “Callum wadna hae tauld the lad was French had he kenned you wad wuss to keep it secret; wad ye, Callum?”
With this direct appeal the Highland soldier, sitting in his armchair opposite Jock Lesly at the fire, with Lilias between them on the rug, gazed steadily into the glowing coals. He could not evade the question.
“Yes,” he answered, “I wad! I wad ha’ tauld e’en if Lilias had bid me keep a quiet sough aboot it!”
“Na, Callum! surely na!” exclaimed Jock Lesly irritably. “Ye wadna vex the bairn!” For Lilias had lifted her head with its wealth of flaring hair, and was gazing at Callum with intent, questioning, speculative eyes. “Ye care too muckle for Lilias for that!” Jock Lesly prompted him.
“I care more for my oath, for my duty, than for any lassie alive!” protested the blunt soldier.
There was a moment’s silence, while the fire roared and the smoke rushed up the chimney into the wild wintry storm without, of which they here heard naught. Jock Lesly, with a knitted brow, filled his pipe and said no more. Callum, his glass poised upon his knee, gazed steadfastly into the flames, and Lilias, with dewy, gleaming eyes fixed upon him, suddenly exclaimed, as if in delighted reminiscence, “Ou, ay, that was what Tam Wilson said! His oath, his honor aboon a’! No woman’s wile, no woman’s smile could win him awa’! Ah, the leal heart he had! That is what Tam Wilson aye said!”
“I care na for Tam Wilson, nor for what he said!” declared the dour Callum glumly.
“Not the ane you kenned!” cried Lilias. “This Tam Wilson ye never saw!”
The Highland soldier thought the cold and excitement and anxiety had shaken her balance a trifle.
“But Callum,” she persisted, “suppose it wad gar me like you better if you had hid that the puir lad is French?”
“I wadna hae dune it! I wadna hae hid it!” He shook his head sadly, and her father stared at him in amazement. Inch by inch he teemed renouncing his chance for the girl’s good graces.
“A-weel, a-weel,” she said slowly. “But since a’s come an’ gane, an’ the march was for naething, an’ the prisoner is flitted, an’ I was frozen wi’ cauld an’ misery, an’ am like to be sent to Charlestoun to answer for my crimes, ye can say now, lad, that ye are verra sorry that ye disclosed my gossip to your officer, an’ ye wadna do it again if it were to be done anew! Ye will say that?” She looked at him with keen expectant eyes.
“I wad do it all the same,” he protested deliberately. Then, “Lilias, why wad ye torment me wi’ a’ these questions? They tear out my heart!”
“I sall ne’er forget it!” she cried. “Ye did it against my wull. An’ now ye say that if ye had the chance anew ye wad e’en do it agen, though I suld hate ye for it!”
“It’s my oath, Lilias! My duty! I canna look to you instead o’ thae great obligations. I suld do it again an’ again, whate’er ye might say or feel, an’ keep my oath till death!”
She suddenly broke out laughing afresh, in shrill sweet ecstatic joy. “That Tam Wilson! Wha wad think! That Tam Wilson at last!”
She seemed enigmatic to them both, but they hardly had space to read the riddle, for Callum, recognising the passage of time, sprang up to return to the fort before his limited leave expired. He ran briskly up the ladder with Jock Lesly clambering after him to take down the barricade to let him out, and to secure the bars subsequent to his exit. There was still fire upon the hearth of the great trading-house, and a dull red glow suffused its dusky brown spaces. It was only as Lesly turned to close the door of the counter that he noticed that Lilias, agile enough despite the congealed condition she so graphically described, had followed also, and after the soldier had sprung down the front steps and strode off through the snow the two, father and daughter, stood for a moment gazing into the vast dark stormy wilderness, permeated by the sense of silent unseen motion in the whirling flakes, of which only the nearest were visible in the red glow of the dying fire from within.
“Hegh, come, bairnie, we’se e’en steek the door,” Lesly said.
The lantern in his hand showed her face to be all sweetly smiling. She was looking into the blank voids of the snowy gloom and carrying first one hand and then the other to her lips with an engaging free curve and tossing each toward the wilderness.
“And what now?” he demanded, staring owlishly down at her in amaze.
“Just throwing a wheen kisses to Tam Wilson,—oh puir Tam Wilson! Wha wad hae thought he wad e’er win hame agen!”
“Wow!” said her father glumly. “Tam Wilson!—drat Tam Wilson, I say! We hae had an unco pother ower Tam Wilson, now!”
But she ran in ahead of him laughing in great glee, and he overheard her in her little chamber while she disrobed for bed talking about Tam Wilson and Tam Wilson to Luckie Meg, who answered acquiescently to whatever she said, “Ou,—ay! I’se warrant!” and apparently gave scant heed, even if she heard at all.
For some weeks Callum MacIlvesty felt anew that he was admitted into a sort of Paradise in frequenting the ha’ house, albeit his heart was sore. The rescue that she had planned and achieved for the prisoner at such risk and suffering to herself argued much for the strength of her attachment to Laroche, and this forbade hope even when hope seemed most possible. She herself was so gay, so whimsically cheery, so blithe about the hearth, where the Highlander loved to sit as of yore with her father. She noted Callum’s depressed mien, and ascribing it to the fruitless result of the long laborious march and triumphant capture, argued that he had done all that he could and more than any other man would, his whole duty, and the sequence was the affair of Captain Howard,—and then remarked most pertinently that if she were that officer and had no better a tassel to a nightcap than that frayed thing he sported in public at the guard-house, she would resign from the army!
In order to prove that Captain Howard had himself sustained no damage in the loss of his notable prisoner, she cited the fact that the war with France was now over, cessation of hostilities had been announced on the 21st of January, and since the treaty had been signed in February, it had become known that the French forts, Toulouse, Tombecbé, Condé, were to be surrendered as early as English officers could be detailed to receive the transfer. All prisoners were to be released,—among those specially demanded she had seen in the Gazette the name of Lieutenant de Laroche,—already escaped though he was!
But all this, though so prettily urged, did not suffice to lift the gloom that weighed on Callum’s mind. He was soon to say farewell, to rejoin the Forty-Second, to go he knew not whither, nor when to return!
It was one day when he was thus a-mope, as Lilias was wont to describe his state of mind, that Callum discovered her secret, if so candid an emotion can be so called. The ha’ house had fallen into its ancient habitudes cannily enough, as if sorrows had never menaced it, and Lilias in her brilliant blue gown with roses scattered adown its white stripes sat at her wheel spinning as heedfully and dexterously as if she had never fashioned toils of more significance. Callum on the settle, his arms folded, his head a little bent, gazed into the red coals. All that he had once hoped, nay expected, was annulled by the sentiments implied in her release of Laroche, and the resentment she had expressed toward himself for revealing aught that she had told him, albeit she had not bespoken secrecy. Therefore he experienced a revulsion of feeling so complete, so acute, as almost to resemble pain in its breathless keenness. He had suddenly lifted his eyes and caught hers fixed upon him with an expression he had never seen in them before, wistful, smiling, yet serious, and deeply tender. His heart gave a great plunge and every nerve was tense. He rose, and still looking at her, as if he feared she might vanish like some lovely dream, advanced across the hearth. He sat down beside her in her father’s chair, still seeking to read—the dullard!—the obvious mystery of the sapphire light in her eyes.
“Lilias,” he said clumsily and all tremulous, “have you something to tell me?”
“I trow not!” she exclaimed, her face roseate with smiles and blushes, but giving a lofty nod of her golden head. “I was thinking, man, you may hae something to tell to me!”
“Ah, Lilias, I hae tauld it sae often!” he cried bewildered.
“An’ sae you are tired o’ telling it?” she retorted. “Eh, sirs, to be tired sae early!”
“I can never be tired of telling it, Lilias, if only you will listen to it,—how I love you more and more day by day!”
“It’s just as weel, then,”—she cast a radiant smile upon him as she bent anew to her wheel,—“for I expect to listen to it—that is—whiles—at orra times—when I hae naething better to do—as lang as I live.”
It was not in Callum’s scheme of love-making to suggest the suddenness of this acceptability of a suit so long urged. Luckie Meg herself could not have assented more acquiescently than he in every detail that Lilias chose to propound. It was only once, in the course of those long sunless afternoons in the cavern, with the red glow of the fire about them and the impenetrable walls to fend off the alien world so far away from their consciousness, when all their talk was of their mutual experience of the sentiment that swayed them, what each had felt and thought, that Callum showed symptoms of rebellion—being informed that she looked upon him and he might consider himself as “Tam Wilson.”
“But I will not!” cried Callum, ready to put the question to the torture at once. Jealousy is not so easily vanquished. Indeed it hardly dies even under the heel of victory!
“Not the ane that you knew,” she stipulated. “Just ane auld love o’ my ain! He wad put his oath before all. An’ he loved a woman well, but honor mair! an’ he had no deceit nor guile in his heart (though I hinna forgot about your report to Captain Howard, neither, an’ I’ll sort ye weel for it some day), an’ he had no false nations nor false tongues (he had mickle ado to speak his ain), an’ no false names (‘Tam Wilson’ bein’ laid to him because he was sae like ‘Tam Wilson’). An’ I suld hae kenned ye earlier for him,—though your hair hae aye got a place that is streakit wi’ brown an’ lighter brown an’ I think it wadna show gin it were brushed backward,—but I aye loved the look o’ ye, only I never saw ye put to the test, and sae I thought ye were just plain ‘Callum McIlvesty.’ But now I ken ye are Tam Wilson!”
And smiling at him with lips so joyous, so red and sweet, Callum yielded the point and assumed in this wise the sobriquet which personified her girlish ideal.
Still it nettled him grievously. She might have called her ideal “Callum.”
“Whist, lad, whist,” said her father to him one day, “an’ I’se tell ye something ye will ne’er find out frae her.”
Then with much solemnity, with circumspection, he pulled out a paper from his wallet, to which he could not have paid more respectful and close attention if it had been a schedule of prices current. It was a letter from Laroche, dated on the French man-of-war L’Aigle, and was addressed jointly to Jock Lesly and his daughter. It was an offer of marriage to Lilias, and begged that they would fix a date to meet him in Charlestown, where the ceremony might be performed by both Catholic and Protestant clergy. It set forth his rank, means, and expectations, which were very considerable, and gave references which were both accessible and unimpeachable.
“An’, lad,” said Jock Lesly, looking owlishly at Callum while leaning over the counter at the trading-house where he had driven so many bargains, “seeing that she is my only child, and that ensigncy of yours is gey far to seek, and this man is a sure enough lieutenant, not o’ red Injuns but of the French army, and is a chevalier or a sieur,—there’s no rebate on that,—and has lands an’ a château and some income, and the lassie seemed fond o’ him on the Tennessee, and here she set him free when they had him by the heels at the fort,—why I downa say, but I advised her—weel, to marry the fallow, when we go down this spring, an’ gae to live in France. It’s far awa’, is France, but they hae gude glimmerings o’ sense about their weaving there. I hae seen some gude camlets frae France, an’ ye ken there’s no place like Lyons for silk—though that’s na for my trade neither.”
Callum’s heart sank for the mere consciousness that his happiness had trembled in such jeopardy. “And what did she say?”
“Lilias?—why, she said ae sentence, ‘He isna Tam Wilson!’ Sae, lad, if ye will be advised by me, ye’ll be Tam Wilson as near as ye can find out how!”
About this time an ensigncy was secured for Callum through his family’s influence, and when he returned shortly to Charlestown he met there Everard, who was in a state of exuberant and facetious triumph in the manner of the escape of Captain Howard’s prisoner, having earlier eluded him also, and who was the first to congratulate the young Highlander upon the attainment of his commission and the near approach of his wedding day. For in the early summer Callum and Lilias were married in Charlestown and sailed away, leaving auld Jock still deeply immersed in the problems of the Indian trade. These problems became much simplified by the withdrawal of the French from the country, and soon the Cherokees began to present those curious symptoms of degeneracy which seem the inevitable incident of the first stages of civilization, an interregnum, so to speak, which ensues upon the last vestiges of the ancient status. Thereafter they were only formidable locally and in small predatory bands, and represented no more a definitely organized menace to the British provinces. In the course of some years a great happiness and source of pride fell to the lot of Jock Lesly. The reversal of the attainder had restored the chief of the ancient house of MacIlvesty to his pristine position with others of his kinsmen of minor rank. By reason of several deaths Callum MacIlvesty succeeded to a baronetcy, and Jock Lesly, despite his quondam bluff expressions of scorn of a title, found its taste exceedingly sweet as applied to his daughter; he was proud too of Callum’s rise in the army through successive promotions for gallant conduct in the field.
“He smacks his lips ower ‘Captain Sir Callum an’ Leddy MacIlvesty’ as if the words were fitten to eat,” Dougal commented dourly, “an’ somehow he says ’em fifty times a day!”
There was another who heartily rejoiced in this advance of fortune when it came to his ears, for Lady MacIlvesty’s beauty and what were called her “eccentricities” made her of some social note in her day. Laroche had loved the girl very truly for herself, and although he had sought to look upon her rejection of his suit as in a certain sense an escape for himself, in view of her humble station, her plebeian father, her simple education and limited experience, and their incongruity with his objects of ambition and the sphere of his association, he could not entertain the reminiscence without a keen sentimental regret, albeit blended with tender pleasure to know that the world had gone well with her. He too had reached, as he deserved, promotion, and at no small danger, as the sabre slashes received in the hand-to-hand warfare of that day, and which disfigured his bland handsome face, might betoken. He lived several years after his retirement from active service. One who had known him in those halcyon days on the Tennessee River might hardly have recognized him later, so scarred, gray-haired, wrinkled, and very thin he had become,—a mere rack on which to hang his decorations and the ribbons of his orders. He had always been esteemed a man of unique ability, and his conversation was long valued by the judicious in the cafés and salons of Paris which he frequented. When he reached the discursive and reminiscent stage of advancing age, often, as the night would wear on in a choice company, he would discourse of high themes of national possibilities, and regretfully rehearse disastrous phases of the country’s past that had fallen within his personal knowledge,—of the great territories that France had developed and forfeited; plans of empire that she had failed to utilize; strange peoples of martial values who had sought her protectorate in vain. Then he would revert to his own life among them,—reciting details of their curious customs and mysterious antiquity; telling thrilling stories of personal adventure, now of an escape from the menace of the torture and the stake, and now of his release from the trebly guarded stronghold of a British fort by the aid of a beautiful English lady of rank who loved him and whom he adored.
And although as he grew older and his audiences younger they believed this unnamed English lady of rank to be entirely apocryphal, the tear was obviously genuine with which he sweetened his glass as he told that she was dead now,—years ago—ah yes—dead!
“Il y a une autre vie! C’est une belle espérance!” he would sigh, for he was always deeply religious. “But alas, that the sweets of this life are transitory!”
And presently he would be talking of the triumphs of engineering possible in that vast America. Sometimes he would trace out on the tablecloth with the aid of the scroll-like pattern of the damask the outline of the great bend of a river which he affirmed had singly saved that country to the English and reft it from the French, as its extraordinary obstructions to navigation prevented all adequate conveyance of munitions of war to the Cherokees, who held the balance of power. He would mark off the canal which he had purposed to build in the fullness of time, and the site he had selected for the barrier towns to guard the region of the portages, necessary to evade the obstructions, as a temporary substitute. The technical terms of the oft-told tale, the abstruse calculations of the elaborately demonstrated problem, would finally wear out the interest of his auditors; they would slip away one by one, and leave him bending over the table, gloating upon the symmetrical possibilities of his plan, bewailing its untimely frustration, seeing, instead of the blank cloth, that rich new land with its gigantic growths of primeval forests and those dizzy whirls of turbulent waters, that stretch out miles and miles impassably, where even now, despite the advance of modern science and the exorcising appropriations of Congress, the devils, hottuk ookproose, still dance in the riotous rapids and sing tumultuously as of yore.