Catriona

“To be sure you are mistaken there,” she said, with a white face. “Neil is in Edinburgh on errands from my father.”

“It is what I fear,” said I, “the last of it. But for his being in Edinburgh I think I can show you another of that. For sure you have some signal, a signal of need, such as would bring him to your help, if he was anywhere within the reach of ears and legs?”

“Why, how will you know that?” says she.

“By means of a magical talisman God gave to me when I was born, and the name they call it by is Common-sense,” said I. “Oblige me so far as make your signal, and I will show you the red head of Neil.”

No doubt but I spoke bitter and sharp. My heart was bitter. I blamed myself and the girl and hated both of us: her for the vile crew that she was come of, myself for my wanton folly to have stuck my head in such a byke of wasps.

Catriona set her fingers to her lips and whistled once, with an exceeding clear, strong, mounting note, as full as a ploughman’s. A while we stood silent; and I was about to ask her to repeat the same, when I heard the sound of some one bursting through the bushes below on the braeside. I pointed in that direction with a smile, and presently Neil leaped into the garden. His eyes burned, and he had a black knife (as they call it on the Highland side) naked in his hand; but, seeing me beside his mistress, stood like a man struck.

“He has come to your call,” said I; “judge how near he was to Edinburgh, or what was the nature of your father’s errands. Ask himself. If I am to lose my life, or the lives of those that hang by me, through the means of your clan, let me go where I have to go with my eyes open.”

She addressed him tremulously in the Gaelic. Remembering Alan’s anxious civility in that particular, I could have laughed out loud for bitterness; here, sure, in the midst of these suspicions, was the hour she should have stuck by English.

Twice or thrice they spoke together, and I could make out that Neil (for all his obsequiousness) was an angry man.

Then she turned to me. “He swears it is not,” she said.

“Catriona,” said I, “do you believe the man yourself?”

She made a gesture like wringing the hands.

“How will I can know?” she cried.

“But I must find some means to know,” said I. “I cannot continue to go dovering round in the black night with two men’s lives at my girdle! Catriona, try to put yourself in my place, as I vow to God I try hard to put myself in yours. This is no kind of talk that should ever have fallen between me and you; no kind of talk; my heart is sick with it. See, keep him here till two of the morning, and I care not. Try him with that.”

They spoke together once more in the Gaelic.

“He says he has James More my father’s errand,” said she. She was whiter than ever, and her voice faltered as she said it.

“It is pretty plain now,” said I, “and may God forgive the wicked!”

She said never anything to that, but continued gazing at me with the same white face.

“This is a fine business,” said I again. “Am I to fall, then, and those two along with me?”

“O, what am I to do?” she cried. “Could I go against my father’s orders, him in prison, in the danger of his life!”

“But perhaps we go too fast,” said I. “This may be a lie too. He may have no right orders; all may be contrived by Simon, and your father knowing nothing.”

She burst out weeping between the pair of us; and my heart smote me hard, for I thought this girl was in a dreadful situation.

“Here,” said I, “keep him but the one hour; and I’ll chance it, and may God bless you.”

She put out her hand to me, “I will he needing one good word,” she sobbed.

“The full hour, then?” said I, keeping her hand in mine. “Three lives of it, my lass!”

“The full hour!” she said, and cried aloud on her Redeemer to forgive her.

I thought it no fit place for me, and fled.

CHAPTER XI – THE WOOD BY SILVERMILLS

I lost no time, but down through the valley and by Stockbridge and Silvermills as hard as I could stave. It was Alan’s tryst to be every night between twelve and two “in a bit scrog of wood by east of Silvermills and by south the south mill-lade.” This I found easy enough, where it grew on a steep brae, with the mill-lade flowing swift and deep along the foot of it; and here I began to walk slower and to reflect more reasonably on my employment. I saw I had made but a fool’s bargain with Catriona. It was not to be supposed that Neil was sent alone upon his errand, but perhaps he was the only man belonging to James More; in which case I should have done all I could to hang Catriona’s father, and nothing the least material to help myself. To tell the truth, I fancied neither one of these ideas. Suppose by holding back Neil, the girl should have helped to hang her father, I thought she would never forgive herself this side of time. And suppose there were others pursuing me that moment, what kind of a gift was I come bringing to Alan? and how would I like that?

I was up with the west end of that wood when these two considerations struck me like a cudgel. My feet stopped of themselves and my heart along with them. “What wild game is this that I have been playing?” thought I; and turned instantly upon my heels to go elsewhere.

This brought my face to Silvermills; the path came past the village with a crook, but all plainly visible; and, Highland or Lowland, there was nobody stirring. Here was my advantage, here was just such a conjuncture as Stewart had counselled me to profit by, and I ran by the side of the mill-lade, fetched about beyond the east corner of the wood, threaded through the midst of it, and returned to the west selvage, whence I could again command the path, and yet be myself unseen. Again it was all empty, and my heart began to rise.

For more than an hour I sat close in the border of the trees, and no hare or eagle could have kept a more particular watch. When that hour began the sun was already set, but the sky still all golden and the daylight clear; before the hour was done it had fallen to be half mirk, the images and distances of things were mingled, and observation began to be difficult. All that time not a foot of man had come east from Silvermills, and the few that had gone west were honest countryfolk and their wives upon the road to bed. If I were tracked by the most cunning spies in Europe, I judged it was beyond the course of nature they could have any jealousy of where I was: and going a little further home into the wood I lay down to wait for Alan.

The strain of my attention had been great, for I had watched not the path only, but every bush and field within my vision. That was now at an end. The moon, which was in her first quarter, glinted a little in the wood; all round there was a stillness of the country; and as I lay there on my back, the next three or four hours, I had a fine occasion to review my conduct.

Two things became plain to me first: that I had no right to go that day to Dean, and (having gone there) had now no right to be lying where I was. This (where Alan was to come) was just the one wood in all broad Scotland that was, by every proper feeling, closed against me; I admitted that, and yet stayed on, wondering at myself. I thought of the measure with which I had meted to Catriona that same night; how I had prated of the two lives I carried, and had thus forced her to enjeopardy her father’s; and how I was here exposing them again, it seemed in wantonness. A good conscience is eight parts of courage. No sooner had I lost conceit of my behaviour, than I seemed to stand disarmed amidst a throng of terrors. Of a sudden I sat up. How if I went now to Prestongrange, caught him (as I still easily might) before he slept, and made a full submission? Who could blame me? Not Stewart the Writer; I had but to say that I was followed, despaired of getting clear, and so gave in. Not Catriona: here, too, I had my answer ready; that I could not bear she should expose her father. So, in a moment, I could lay all these troubles by, which were after all and truly none of mine; swim clear of the Appin Murder; get forth out of hand-stroke of all the Stewarts and Campbells, all the Whigs and Tories, in the land; and live henceforth to my own mind, and be able to enjoy and to improve my fortunes, and devote some hours of my youth to courting Catriona, which would be surely a more suitable occupation than to hide and run and be followed like a hunted thief, and begin over again the dreadful miseries of my escape with Alan.

At first I thought no shame of this capitulation; I was only amazed I had not thought upon the thing and done it earlier; and began to inquire into the causes of the change. These I traced to my lowness of spirits, that back to my late recklessness, and that again to the common, old, public, disconsidered sin of self-indulgence. Instantly the text came in my head, “How can Satan cast out Satan?” What? (I thought) I had, by self-indulgence; and the following of pleasant paths, and the lure of a young maid, cast myself wholly out of conceit with my own character, and jeopardised the lives of James and Alan? And I was to seek the way out by the same road as I had entered in? No; the hurt that had been caused by self-indulgence must be cured by self-denial; the flesh I had pampered must be crucified. I looked about me for that course which I least liked to follow: this was to leave the wood without waiting to see Alan, and go forth again alone, in the dark and in the midst of my perplexed and dangerous fortunes.

I have been the more careful to narrate this passage of my reflections, because I think it is of some utility, and may serve as an example to young men. But there is reason (they say) in planting kale, and even in ethic and religion, room for common sense. It was already close on Alan’s hour, and the moon was down. If I left (as I could not very decently whistle to my spies to follow me) they might miss me in the dark and tack themselves to Alan by mistake. If I stayed, I could at the least of it set my friend upon his guard which might prove his mere salvation. I had adventured other peoples’ safety in a course of self-indulgence; to have endangered them again, and now on a mere design of penance, would have been scarce rational. Accordingly, I had scarce risen from my place ere I sat down again, but already in a different frame of spirits, and equally marvelling at my past weakness and rejoicing in my present composure.

Presently after came a crackling in the thicket. Putting my mouth near down to the ground, I whistled a note or two, of Alan’s air; an answer came in the like guarded tone, and soon we had knocked together in the dark.

“Is this you at last, Davie?” he whispered.

“Just myself,” said I.

“God, man, but I’ve been wearying to see ye!” says he. “I’ve had the longest kind of a time. A’ day, I’ve had my dwelling into the inside of a stack of hay, where I couldnae see the nebs of my ten fingers; and then two hours of it waiting here for you, and you never coming! Dod, and ye’re none too soon the way it is, with me to sail the morn! The morn? what am I saying? – the day, I mean.”

“Ay, Alan, man, the day, sure enough,” said I. “It’s past twelve now, surely, and ye sail the day. This’ll be a long road you have before you.”

“We’ll have a long crack of it first,” said he.

“Well, indeed, and I have a good deal it will be telling you to hear,” said I.

And I told him what behooved, making rather a jumble of it, but clear enough when done. He heard me out with very few questions, laughing here and there like a man delighted: and the sound of his laughing (above all there, in the dark, where neither one of us could see the other) was extraordinary friendly to my heart.

“Ay, Davie, ye’re a queer character,” says he, when I had done: “a queer bitch after a’, and I have no mind of meeting with the like of ye. As for your story, Prestongrange is a Whig like yoursel’, so I’ll say the less of him; and, dod! I believe he was the best friend ye had, if ye could only trust him. But Simon Fraser and James More are my ain kind of cattle, and I’ll give them the name that they deserve. The muckle black deil was father to the Frasers, a’body kens that; and as for the Gregara, I never could abye the reek of them since I could stotter on two feet. I bloodied the nose of one, I mind, when I was still so wambly on my legs that I cowped upon the top of him. A proud man was my father that day, God rest him! and I think he had the cause. I’ll never can deny but what Robin was something of a piper,” he added; “but as for James More, the deil guide him for me!”

“One thing we have to consider,” said I. “Was Charles Stewart right or wrong? Is it only me they’re after, or the pair of us?”

“And what’s your ain opinion, you that’s a man of so much experience?” said he.

“It passes me,” said I.

“And me too,” says Alan. “Do ye think this lass would keep her word to ye?” he asked.

“I do that,” said I.