by John Buchan
Meantime Francis was in no better plight. He had been with this man in fair and foul, he knew his innumerable vices, his treachery, his selfishness, and yet in this last moment he could look on him only as a heroic gentleman. On this scaffold in the midst of the waiting crowd he lived again the days in the hot weather, the fury of the lost battle, and the whole tale of his undoing; and always for a centre was the figure of this man with whom all his toils had been shared. It was a quivering hand that took Lovat’s wrinkled palm, and his lips were drawn to a thin line.
“And you, Francie,” said the old lord, “what shall I say to you? You have been more than a son to me, and, O lad, I wish you had been Master o’ Lovat, and we two would have set a different face upon the business. You have the blessing of an auld man, my dear lad, and may you live long and die happy and be kindly treated as you have been kind to me.”
And then with great deliberation he turned to the block, and looking over the throng uttered the wellworn line, the last in the mouth of the hopeless, —
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”
[*It is sweet and seemly to die for one’s country. — Horace, Odes, III.2.13.]
The next moment he had kneeled down, and ere Francis could look clearly the axe had fallen, and the head lay in the basket.
As, with brain in a ferment and eyes hot with unshed tears, he staggered from the platform, he heard in the hushed silence the voice of the headsman crying, “This is the head of a traitor!”
* * * * *
With head lowered like a mad animal, Francis pushed his way through the choking streets. Some turned to stare at him, but his speed was so great that he left no time for more than a glance. A great impulse was on him to run to the ends of the earth till the madness of his physical strength and burning heart should be quelled. He comprehended the joys of battle; he would have gloried in that hour to stand with his back to the wall against a multitude. One insulted citizen gripped him by the arm as if to demand some apology for jostling; but before he knew the man was sitting in the gutter and Francis was many yards down the street. And all the while there was the cold of rain about him and a wind which blew grateful on his forehead. He was going out into the cold earth, kinless, purposeless; yet a man who had once lived and dared.
When he came to his lodging, he found Margaret sunk motionless in a chair in her outdoor clothes, her eyes fixed vacantly on the leaping fire. She rose quickly with burning cheeks at his entrance.
“Oh, tell me all! I saw nothing save the horrid deed. How did my lord bear himself to the end?”
Then Francis told her the whole tale, marvelling the while at his excitement. His voice rose high ere he had done, and with unconscious art he pictured the old lion in the midst of the crowd dying with a brave word on his lips. He told of the last greetings and the message to his kinsfolk. And all the while Margaret stood twining her hands, tears shining in her eyes.
“It was great, it was the death of a hero. Oh, God send we all show as brave a face to death. My heart has been bursting with rage all day, Francis, and yet I am half crazy with joy. We have not failed, though the Cause is lost and the Prince an exile, for we have shown a poor-spirited people how gentlemen may die. I shall pray ever for the soul of the Lord Lovat and the true men who have fallen. Dona æternam quietem, Domine,” and as the soft Latin fell from her lips, her wearied nerves failed her, and she fled sobbing like a child.
CHAPTER XXI. The Temptation of Mr. Francis.
That night there was little sleep for Francis. The figures and deeds of the day formed a long procession through his brain. He felt again in all their acuteness the emotions which had branded his soul. The truth is that the man was tired to death, what with physical labour and the more wearing toil of spirit. He was no more the sober, passionless man who had carried the message to Lovat in the North, but a tempest-tossed, sorely-battered creature who had been strung to a pitch of high excitement, and was now sinking to a dull recoil.
But when he got some quiet from such vain dreaming, he set himself to shape out the future. It stretched grey and level before him, featureless, even now irrevocable. There was but one thing for him to do. For the last year he had been striving desperately to virtue. Now he must return to the writer’s office and his old evil reputation. He must go back to Dysart and settle there as the sober man of law, and try to work out for himself a position of respect. There must be no more quixotry, no thought of mad capers in wars over sea. He must shape out his salvation in the place he had been called to, and settle to a life of loneliness cut off for ever from the past.
The thought was bleak, but he never wavered, for the man had true steel and fire in his soul, and had the daring to face an age of melancholy and routine, and he too in years but at the threshold of life. There seemed even something grimly humourous in it all. That he who had been a firebrand, all but an outlaw, should go back to the common task, was an irony for the gods to laugh at.
But this outlook of his own was but a little matter; there remained the graver question of the woman whose path fate had joined with his. He had seen how day by day her eyes sought his with a growing confusion; even in his blindness he had felt that this lady had come to regard all things as less than a word of his mouth. He stood to her as a hero, girt with the purple and fine gold of her fancy; he was the embodied Cause for which she had striven; and now at the turning of the ways there must come a day of reckoning. Her love was his for the accepting, — she the great lady, with that delicate beauty and that marvellous spirit; and for a second his heart beat exultantly. But the thought was banished, scarcely even with regret. For this man had outgrown temptation, and now this subtlest of all failed to touch him. He had but to join his life with hers, to go abroad and push his fortunes aided by her abundant wealth; it was a dazzling career which gleamed in the avenues of the future. Yet the renunciation cost him little, for with all his fire his nature was cold to the commoner human affections. He was returning to the vulgarity of home; and always in his mind would remain the image of the woman he had once toiled for. But to be with her always, to bring her into the glare of common day and the pettiness of household life, — he had no heart for such degradation. In his soul he knew that each was better apart, living for the other’s memory, fighting the hard battle with the other’s name on the lips. But for aught else he was cold and careless; for his nature was capable of all the heroical virtues, but unfit for the little moralities. He was ever in revolt from the domestic, the eternal wanderer in the ways of the world. He had no care for ease or settled delights, he must be ever up and following the old hopeless, goalless path, even though it led through grey and dreary years.
Lady Manorwater alone came to breakfast the next morning. He had always been a little in fear of this austere virginal woman who carried devotion writ on her face. She had an air of the monastic which seemed strange to the prosaic Francis. But now she talked gravely and kindlily.
“It is now time for my cousin Margaret to make up her mind, Mr. Birkenshaw. I have tried to induce her to bide with me, but she cannot bear the thought of this land longer and declares she must go abroad. She is of my religion, but I have never tried to influence her plans. But she declares for a convent now. She would devote her life to God after the many sorrows she has faced in this world; and I have not tried to persuade her otherwise, for it would give her the days of rest which only He can give to the weary.”
“Where would she go?” he asked.
“I have already thought of that. I once knew the Abbess well at the little convent of St. Thérèse by Arras. For my sake she would gladly receive the poor lass and tend her like a mother. It will vex me sorely to part with Margaret, but I cannot grudge her to God. And she will be happy if they can be happy who dwell in quiet and purity.”
“And I too must be going,” said Francis.
“And where?” said Lady Manorwater.
“I go North again, back to my own people.”
“But why?” she said
. “You are young and stirring. Is there not a better field for you than that sad and bloodstained land? A word, and I can get you service abroad, and then you would find a chance for a man’s work.”
“It cannot be,” said Francis, resolutely. “I thank your ladyship, but I have some faults to amend and some restitution to make before I can be at peace with myself. Forbye I am but a pedestrian nature after all, and cannot easily get old things out of my mind. I must bide in my own land, for I cannot flee from myself, and to go to the foreign wars would be to try to forget a sore heart in the hurry of battle.”
Later in the forenoon a servant brought him word that her mistress wished to speak with him. He found her in the library, where above the fireplace the three lions’ heads of Manorwater were cut deep in the oak. She was standing by the window, and her face seemed pale above her dark gown.
“Good morning, Francis,” she said. “I was so weary with yesterday that I was late of rising this morning. Our work is over now, my friend, so we can take a rest.”
“I have heard of your plans,” he said. “Your cousin has told me that you go to France to a convent. And I too am about to go, so it is time for good-byes.”
She bit her lips at the words, and her voice had a quaver. “These months have tired me so that I longed for quiet to think and remember. Now that my work is done and all that I have lived for made hopeless, you cannot wonder that I wish for peace.”
Francis listened with bowed head. “You can do no wrong, Margaret,” he said.
“And you?” she said suddenly; “what will you do?”
“I go back to where I came from.”
“Oh, never,” she cried. “It cannot be, it is too hideous and cruel. You might hew your way to fortune wherever you pleased. There is always need of a strong man all over the earth, and you are strong and sure.”
He did not speak, but the words were bitter to him, — the very quintessence of gall in his parting.
Then she turned round till she looked full in his eyes.
“You cannot mean it?” she said. “Ah, mercy! we have shared too many hopes together, we cannot part thus and go each our way into the bleak unknown. I was never fit for a life of piety, and you are too strong for a narrow fate. Oh, take me, Francis, and let us go away together. I am too noble a woman for God, it is a sacrifice which the Blessed Virgin herself could not bear to look upon. I know that I am speaking of sin, but what matters sin if we both can share it? Why, we might yet change the woful fate of this land if we worked together.”
In a deep-set mirror on the wall she caught a glimpse of her face.
“See, dear,” she said, “I am near as tall as you,” and she smiled tremulously. “We are a handsome pair, and we will yet make great men bow to us.” And she laid her cheek on his shoulder.
“You are not angry with me?” she cried. “I know I am wicked, but I cannot help it. I cannot part from you, and what are old foolish ties to a woman’s love? O my love, take me and let us face fortune hand in hand.”
Francis held her wrists very gently and looked into the deeps of her marvellous eyes. His heart never wavered, but in his soul he felt a great tenderness towards this beautiful, loving woman.
“Nay, dear,” he said, “you know better than I that this cannot be. Long ago you gave me a hand to raise me out of the mire, and I cannot have you be false to yourself. Be sure that I shall ever have you in my mind as the best and bravest woman God ever made. But we have each our own ways to take, and one cannot fight the battle better by beginning it with a foolish step. Marriage and love are for the peaceable settled folk, but you and I are not of their order. For good or ill we are on the open road of life, and we cannot turn back or aside.”
Margaret covered her face with her hands when he let her go, and her bosom heaved with sobbing. Then she lay back in a deep chair with closed eyelids.
“I am so weary,” she said, “and, oh, I am so foolish. You are right, Francis, and God forgive me for my weakness. But we cannot forget each other, and there in that foreign place my thoughts will always be of you and the lost days. It is near the time for farewells, dear. Kiss me, that I may have something to remember, for I am sure that no other woman’s lips will ever touch you.”
With bursting heart he leaned over her, and for an instant the long white arms were about his neck. Then she let him go, and he stumbled from the room, a mere plaything of emotions.
* * * * *
That evening the house was unwontedly gay, for some few Jacobite gentlemen had been bidden to supper, and the friends of the Manorwaters had come to bid good-byes before the journey into France. After the fashion of the broken party they allowed no sign of melancholy to appear, and the scene was as gay as if the time had been happy alike for all. Francis was in no mood for any meeting with others, but he could not in grace refuse to appear. In a little he was glad, for it comforted him to see how the end of the drama was played with spirit. As he watched the brave sight he felt how little a thing is failure in act if the heart be unbroken.
But the vision of Margaret fairly surprised him. She had dressed herself in her gayest gown, putting on her old jewels which had lain untouched for months. Like a girl at the dawning of life she moved among the guests, cheerful, witty, incomparably fresh and lovely. Once again she was the grande dame who had guided the Prince’s councils and the honest gentlemen who stood for his Cause. For a second, he felt an overpowering, jealous craving for this woman, a repugnance to the greyness of his lot. And then it passed, and he could look on her and be thankful for this final spirit. It was the last brave flickering of life before the ageless quiet of her destiny.
CHAPTER XXII. A Long Leave-Taking.
The way lay over grassy ridges of hill and then at intervals among the bracken and gnarled boles of a great wood. The mist of the morning lay in all the far distances, and one might guess that behind the veil lay a wild and tangled land, that the slope did not stop a little beyond the edge of the haze but rose sheer into precipitous crags. It might have been Scotland, and as the coach rumbled down the highway Margaret when she looked to right and left saw a glimpse of a landscape now for ever lost to her.
To Francis, who rode as before at her side, the same sentiment kept recurring. It was the air and look of a northern glen, here in this soft English south country. He noted Margaret’s abstraction.
“I am looking my last at a sight I love dearly,” she said. “Oh, is not that cold, misty place like the kind country I have left? I can almost smell the heather and the old fragrance of the fir-wood at Broughton. You are happy, Francis, in your lot, for you will always be at home, and sleep at the end among kindly folk.”
Slowly the land changed till by the afternoon they were on the seaward slopes and caught afar the long sweep of waters. In front rose the spires of the little fishing town whence they were to sail, and on the red roofs the evening light fell in a burning haze.
Amid the bustle of departure on the quay Margaret was left unnoticed. She stood apart, under the weather-worn sea-wall, looking wistfully to the maze of waters.
“There is a text from the Scriptures running in my head,” she said. “Some one of the prophets wrote it. It is, ‘Weep not for the dead neither bemoan her; but weep sore for her that goeth away, for she shall return no more nor see her native country.’ My life is ended, Francis, for all my joy has perished.”
“Nay, my dear lady,” he said, with something rising in his throat, “you will have many happy days, and you will forget old sorrows. These last years have been but a little confusion of moorland wars, fought in the wind and rain by a poor people. You will soon cease to think of them and wonder at your present grief.”
“Do you think so?” she said sadly. “I fear it will be very different with me. It is not the way of our exiles to forget easily. Nay, rather they fight all their battles with the old words in their heart, and at the last, why, as my song says, they ‘fall, and dying have mind of sweet Argos.’”
Then she turned ab
ruptly.
“How long will you take to be back in the North?”
“A matter of weeks,” he said, “for it will be done on foot. I am a poor man once more, and shall sell my horse before I start.”
“And what will you do then?”
“Seek a place in Mr. Shillinglaw’s office and give my mind to my work.”
“And after that?”
“Why, I shall grow old, like all men, and wander about the doors. Then death will come with a kindly face and I shall bid good-bye to the world — perchance to find a better.”
She smiled as if at the moment she saw the whole comic littleness of life.
“Our ways are not so different. After the colours the sober grey, for you as well as for me, Francis.”
Lady Manorwater was already aboard, and Margaret followed. The cables were slipped, and soon with a creaking of cordage and a flapping of canvas the vessel stood out from the quay. Slowly the faces grew less, till a mere blur of white marked where Margaret stood by the ship’s side. A kerchief fluttered for a moment and he answered, and then only a speck remained in the circle of sea.
He stood at the far end of the quay, one foot on a broken stone, watching the sails melt into the evening. The salt fresh smell of the air was growing rawer with the advent of night; the once shimmering waters were sobbing below the piles; and afar to east and west a leaden dulness crept over the waves. But to the south there was still a track of light, and suddenly, clear and sharp, rose the vessel’s outline against the rising dusk. In a second it was no more, and over the whole sky was rolled the curtain of evening.