The Black Colonel

by James Milne

  _XII--Raiders of the Dark_

  A man does something in a natural way and it takes the world's ear andis called heroism. Another man does a like thing, to all purpose, butthe world does not listen to it, or, anyhow, sings him no praises, allof which we try to explain by saying "Luck."

  It is natural for a man to show courage in extremes, for a woman to beloving, self-sacrificing. Every now and then the Great Bookkeeperrecords an example for the common good; and the rest are a lost legion.We do not know why, and if we did what good would it do us, though thecuriosity for knowledge is inbred, like inability, sometimes, to use it?

  News of my rescue of the Black Colonel from the flood got about, and Iwas acclaimed as a hero of sorts. He, I fancy, for his own ends,fathered a glowing account of what happened, and as it passed frommouth to mouth it grew in glory. He meant to be grateful, and hisgratitude took that form. It was his airy way, for egotism, even whenit is not dislikeable, must ever carry its possessor into the picture.

  Perhaps he also thought to please me, and thus to win a point towardshis larger ends, for I knew they would, in no wise, be modified by whathad happened. By them, as he saw his case, he had to stand or fall,and thus, in this reasoning, he had no choice at all. His bonds, inthat sense, were entwined with coming events, which do not necessarilycast their shadows before, anyhow when they are events of the heart.

  Now, my secret hope for the Black Colonel, the inner prayer which Ihardly whispered to myself, was that he should escape his troubles as arebel, by going away to the foreign wars, and there make a new name. Ithought I might help him out of the country, even if it had to be atthe risk of my commission. He would be welcome wherever he found aBritish camp across the sea, and no questions would be asked. Truly,there would be need to ask none, because his repute as a fighting manamong the Jacobites had gone far and wide. By-and-by he could return,when the feuds of Stuart and Guelph had died down to the dross theywere, though they had made a bloody toll, and sit in the home of hisfathers, not merely unmolested, but honoured by both sides.

  I am not going to pretend that my own inclinations were not behind thisplan, for they were. Why should I seek to hide them, even from theBlack Colonel himself; a hopeless thing to try, anyhow. He had onescheme for getting back to the world, and it struck bitterly across mypath. I offered him another, which would attain his end, and if thatwere so, why should he not take it and thank me? I was notill-disposed to him personally; certainly well enough disposed to helphim--to help me. When were we to make the reckoning?

  He was seeking to live up to his new pretensions as a head of a clan,and he had to find the wherewithal on which to do it. The consequencewas that he used Red Murdo for taxing the country in the matter of hisnecessaries. If somebody, early some morning while it was still dark,awoke to ask the question: "Are you come to harry and spulzie my ha'?"it would most likely be Red Murdo who gave an insolent answer. Thefellow, in fact, got swollen upon the little plunderings which hismaster ordered, until he was hard to keep in hand. But this, again,suited the Black Colonel, because, to push his claims, he found moneyhandy, there being always smaller fry of the other side of friendship,who have hungry purses, or none at all.

  So Red Murdo, flown as he was with a lowly man's pride, which tends toan unbalancing, must launch upon an expedition of no common sort. Itembellishes a ballad of which only two lines come to me as I write:

  "There's four-and-twenty milk-white nowt, twal o' them kye In the woods of Glen-Tanner, it's there that they lie."

  Beyond what the lines tell of a bold piece of rieving and spulzy byJock Farquharson's henchman, and done for him, I need not trouble toinstruct you, because the event only leads into our chronicle as by atributary wind. When there is a mystery, and you cannot fathom it bydirect evidence, you are driven back on motives. They are, in fact,the nut and kernel of what lawyers call circumstantial evidence, afitting together of suspicions which have made the coffin of many anhonest Highland rebel.

  I sought to keep my soldiers as unseen as a not over-great distancefrom Marget and her mother at the Dower House would permit. Naturallythe Hanoverian uniform was a sore sight for their eyes, and even apersonal grief, in that it recalled dear ones who had perished on thelosing side. My desire to spare them was known to my men, who, in thesame spirit, would often walk a mile round not to show themselves tothe desolated inmates of the Dower House.

  But it was essential, if anything unusual were to happen there, that weshould know, since it was part of our charge to protect Marget and hermother from perils incidental to an unsettled country. Therefore, Ihad a private understanding with an old retainer of the family that hewas to hasten to me, should protection at the Dower House ever benecessary.

  This he was to do quietly, before giving any general alarm, as thatmight not prove necessary, and also because I remembered an oldHighland wisdom, "Never cry fire, unless you want the heather tocatch." Its bearing, as you will grasp is on strifes and feuds setalive, not on the actual burning of heather, which is done to letgrass, for the sheep beasts, grow without being choked.

  Well, on a night which I recall for its dense blackness, there came atap, tap, tap, three of them, slowly and distinctly, at the smallwindow of my room in the Castle. I knew by the method of thedisturbance that it was not an accident, but I was on my feet andpeering hard into the outer darkness before I realized that here wasthe prearranged signal of danger at the Dower House.

  A hand moved close to the window, signalling me, and I motioned back,though, on either side, all this was divined, as divination takes placein the dark, rather than seen at all. I picked up my sword, whichalways stood in a certain corner of my room, pulled the door gentlytowards me and stepped softly out on to the grass, which grew close upto the Castle walls.

  "Come ye, fast, Captain Gordon," quietly said a figure gliding besideme, and without another word we made for the Dower House. When I feltmyself beyond ear-shot of the sentry, I asked:

  "What's happened--what's wrong?"

  "I'm no' exac'ly sure," was the old retainer's answer, "but men haebeen surroundin' the place, as if to attack it. They wakened me, bein'a light sleeper, because they made sounds different fae' the ordinary.It was like men crawlin' amon' the grass on a plan, and I slippit doonfor you."

  "What had we better do?" I asked formally, and not because I expectedany answer, for I had decided to get into the Dower House withoutalarming anybody, if that could be done.

  We managed to open a window and step through it, but then the dogssleeping inside set up an alarm. This quickly awoke everybody, and theconfusion set affairs moving outside, where I heard a voice that seemedfamiliarly like Red Murdo's cry hoarsely:

  "Lie close, lie close!"

  Presently Marget and her mother, who had both dressed hastily, came tothe stair-head, holding a glimmering light over the darkness beneath.Behind them crowded their few scared domestics, and odd the whole scenelooked, although, indeed, between keeping off the barking dogs andwondering what was to happen outside, I had no desire or time to studyit.

  "Who's there?" called Marget, in a not uncomposed but expectant voice,and I answered, telling in a few words what I knew. Quick in thoughtand action she thanked me for coming, and said she would just get hercloak. She took her mother with her, but in a moment was back againasking, "How can I be of service?"

  She carried a stout walking-stick, and I looked at it as she came downthe stairs to where I stood in the lobby, her mother following. "Yes,"she said, "my hand lighted on it somewhere, perhaps because it has beenthrough troubles and wars and is in the presence of more. Shall we saythat the fighting instinct, even in a stick, leaps to the call?" Shelaughed quietly, but with a concerned note in the laugh, and I knew shewas thinking of her mother's safety and health, both threatened by thisstrange incursion of ill-disposed men.

  Wishful as one would be at such a moment to magnify a trifle, in order,if possible, to occupy an anxious woman's mind, I remarked, "Oh, asti
ck can be a very sound weapon in a good hand."

  "It's about all that the orders of search and suppression have left usJacobites," remarked Marget; "openly confessed, anyhow, for I supposethere may be a small, concealed arsenal or two, even among our Corgarffhills."

  Nothing, apparently, had happened outside in those tense minutes, andit was the strain of waiting which made us resolutely talk ofnothing--but a stick. There had been no further cry since the "Lieclose" already mentioned, and it, no doubt, had been a mischance on thepart of Red Murdo. All was silence and black without, and within allquiet alarm, such as you get when a household suppresses itself inobedience to some demand.

  It was an oppressive silence, this waiting, and I was glad to hearMarget tap the floor with her sinewy hazel and say merrily, thinking tolighten her mother's concern, "My grandfather insisted that a stickwith a nob was no stick for a Highland gentleman. It escaped, he wouldsay, when it was most needed, and that might, at times, leave the bestof Highland gentlemen by the wayside." Joking, under difficulties!

  She paused, for there arose a crack-cracking as of men coming closeramong the scrub of heather and fern which surrounded the Dower House,only it was quite momentary. The stick which she had half-lifted, anunconscious act of readiness for defence, tapped back on to the floor,and my sword-point made a sharper rattle, though I was unaware that myhand had even moved it. The tyranny of doing nothing began to beintolerable and to insist on an issue, be it what it might.

  Think of the situation for me, and although I am, I hope, neither moreselfish nor more cowardly than other men, I could not help doing that.Here was I, the chief and head of his Majesty's garrison at CorgarffCastle, standing defence on the door-step of a Jacobite household. Whywas I there at all? What was I there to accomplish? How was I to dothis unknown something and return with composure to my quarters, securein my loyalty to King George and his ministers?

  Moreover, what had I come out for to see? A mere expedition ofburglary by a band of hungry caterans who took the chattels of friendor foe indifferently? Possibly that was all. Then I could havefetched half-a-dozen soldiers and apprehended those same footpads, or,at all events, driven them to the hills again. But at the head of whatdefensive force did I find myself? Why, a few domestics withoutresource enough even to escape from the danger, a dear old lady whoanxiously wanted to mother the trouble about her, and a young woman ofnerve and resolve, my only stand-by.

  There, for it was a new discovery in our relationship, I realized thatto have Marget by me was a very welcome comradeship, and, somehow, sonatural, that it made the other things of no burden. I was curiouslyhappy, and could have left matters at that, but what to do, what to do?

  There must, in all of us, be an instinct for our keeping, when we arein danger. Give it headway and you will probably win through, as athirsty horse knows how to reach a springwell among the hills. Arguewith it and it says, "Take your reasoned method, your road of thebetter judgment, but don't blame me, your natural guardian, if you cometo harm."

  With this I got the strong intuition, possibly communicated to my mindor heart by Marget's nearness, that here was no ordinary raid forspoilage. Something else of a personal and intimate sort was behind, Iwas sure of it, something to which acute danger attached for my dearestwishes.

  When you are, in small authority, set over the people of a locality,you are apt to develop a small official mind which obscures the powerof seeing, understanding, divining. Such an attitude, as I hadpainfully seen in various parts of the Highlands, fretted the greatsore of defeat that lay upon the Jacobites, whereas the effort shouldhave been to heal it. My own mind I had tried to keep fresh and freein all my relationships at Corgarff, impelled, may be, by a naturewhich liked, possibly out of vanity, to give sympathy. From this and amute speaking with one near and dear, I now had my personal reward, forI understood. Marget was the trophy sought in this dark raid, and shewas to be the Black Colonel's trophy.

  "Action, front!" I said to myself, in one of the drill-book commands.Offence is always a soldier's best defence, although it is a sailor'sphrase, so I would go out and make a reconnaissance from the back ofthe Dower House. This should cause the invaders to show themselves,and might, if they thought the move stood for any force, even alarmthem into a quiet retreat, which, for several reasons, was what I mostdesired.

  Quickly I told Marget of my intention, and the need for it, and askedher to remain on guard where she was. She answered briskly, a womandetermined to be brave and not a burden, that nobody should enter theplace without feeling the weight of her grandfather's stick. Sheadded, and here came in the other woman, that I was not to be longabsent. This touched me sweetly, for it showed that Marget wasthinking less of her own safety, or, at the moment, even of hermother's, than of mine in the night outside. Honestly, I went dancingfrom her side with a wine of joy in me that I had never tasted, for shehad shown that I was something to her, perhaps more than something. Imight have been drunk, and if I had I could not have been more lostthan I was in the darkness behind the Dover House, because it instantlyswallowed me up.

  There is a darkness to which, after a little, the eye so accustomsitself that it can see trees and rocks and even faces in contour.There is another darkness which seals the eyes and numbs the mind andeven weights the feet as with lead. This was that night's darkness, sopall-like that I was simply lost in it.

  Nevertheless, calling up all my sense of locality, and feeling the waylightly with my bare, ready sword, I started to make a circle of theDower House. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty cautious steps, with mysword-point probing the way, and it touched something soft andyielding. That something a-sort of whimpered, as a dog caught poachingwould, or as a man might who felt a quick pain. A sword-prick stings,and the something leapt erect and with a curse turned at me, when Iinstinctively fell on guard. Another sword struck at mine, my bladeslid up this other, caught in the handle and wrenched it from theunseen hand. The weapon fell among the bracken, but my man thoughtmore of getting away than of looking for it, so he doubled round a treeand was gone.

  Evidently I had struck the investing circle, and I went on cautiously,but never another figure did I perceive, though, before me, ran manysoft noises of as many retreats. Finally there was a suppressed rushaway, and with that I arrived at the front door of the Dower House tohear a mother's cry of distress, "Marget, Marget! oh, Marget, Marget!"

  "Where is she?" said I anxiously.

  "She grew alarmed for you," answered her mother more anxiously, "andwent out, although I tried to keep her. Hardly had she gone when Iheard a smothered sob, and then there was a hustle of feet as if shewere being carried oft by force."

  There was a boding of ill in her cry, like a coronach, and thedomestics took it up in sympathy, as Highland women will. "Marget!Marget! Mistress Marget!" rose the cry, and we became aware that allthe inmates of the castle were stirring to it. But never a responsecame from Marget, never a token from the raiders, and it was forced onme that she and they were both gone from us.

  We called on her, and searched for them until the dawn came, but onlyfound the sword which I had encountered, and I knew it as one the BlackColonel had long worn, and then, when he himself got a better, thatwith the "S" for "Stuart" on its handle, had given to Red Murdo. Thelarger knowledge, brought by the dawn, was that the raiders hadvanished as secretly as they had come, and that they had, beyond doubt,taken Marget with them. For though--

  "We sought her baith by bower and ha', The lady was not seen."