The Black Colonel

by James Milne

  _XIV--The Cards of Love_

  A man who serves the cause of a good woman is serving well, her andhimself, even if he only waits in the garden of the emotions. He isprobably helping that woman in subtle, beautiful ways, to be herself,to realize the full majesty of her womanhood, which otherwise she mightmiss. I had the highest wish to help the interests of Marget, and ifmy heart beat an accompaniment, that was only another test of mysincerity.

  There, perhaps, I have written as if I had grown sure of Marget, whichI had no right to be, which no man can ever be of any Marget, elseromance would perish. Typical of other youth and maid stories wasours, a story without a beginning, a middle, or an apparent ending; asort of skein of hope and unspoken understanding such as links twopeople, until they come closer or drift apart, ships that pass in thenight that should be the morning.

  When did we begin to care for each other, if that state of regard asbetween us was to be assumed, because people do ask themselves suchquestions, and if they do, why not admit it? When does a flower beginto bloom? Who can tell? You see it, one unheralded high-noon, as ifit were just ready to burst beautifully upon its world. So it is,still much depends on how the world is going to treat it. The flowerblows, if sunshine greets and warms it. But let the sky be grey,sombre, leaden, and that flower cometh not to its full kingdom--comethnot, she said.

  We had not spoken, Marget and I, to each other of love; we had notcalled it by a name to each other; we had only felt and dreamt it.Possibly, that is the natural course of a simple, true love, for it isundemonstrative. It likes the half-lights of the dusk, to live in theshadow of its silvery clouds, and to arrive round corners, if only thatit may have a safe way of escape, should it be frightened. Ever itlikes running away, and, better still, it likes being pursued!

  All this goes with one dark little story of my love for Marget, and Iwould only tell it under the compulsion of a full-breasted honesty,because I judge it to be sacred to her as well as to me. It was when Ifirst felt as if something hitherto unknown to me had come into my lifeat Corgarff. I had seen Marget once, with interest, because she wasgood to look upon, the second time with pleasure, because she seemed tosee me, the third time with a sense of awkwardness, as if a mysteriouscontact had arisen between us.

  Words will not take me nearer to the uncanny, covetous feeling thanthat, for they are bald, empty contrivances invented of this world andnot, like love itself, the fruit of the spirit world. But perhaps youwill understand, certainly if you have experienced yourself, and,understanding so much, you will be able to follow what came next.

  Marget had been going somewhere, taking a mere walk, perhaps, and I hadsaid, "May I not come," and she said, "No, there is really no need,"and I did not go.

  Unknowing youth! I saw my condemnation in her eye as she went her pathresolutely, turning neither to the right nor to the left, a maidendetermined to give me a lesson in this; that love, even when it is onlydawning, loves to be assailed. That was a chapter of the spiritualstory which lay within the outer story of our doings in Corgarff. Youmay say that it was a trifle, a thing not worth recalling, and thatwould be true for everybody except Marget and myself, who knew betterthen and confessed it to each other afterwards, because it was a firstflicker of realization.

  And, indeed, behind my marchings and counter-marchings around the grimold Castle of Corgarff there lay a mystery of feeling nearer to me thanany call of arms could be. It was always present, the most potentinfluence that can exercise a man, born of one woman and in love withanother. No doubt Marget and I shirked any admission, but it was inour bearing towards each other, that whisper of the heart's thronewhich calls and is answered.

  This feeling was my settled comfort now that a cloud of events, as Iassessed them, was hurrying the Black Colonel into a new necessitytowards his personal aims and so towards Marget and myself. The"rough, raging, roaring, roystering, robustious rascal" side of him,and the description is not mine but taken from an extant document, hadlong been filling up. Presently it would overflow in happenings urgentenough to sweep our pilgrimage along like a high wind on the high hillsof Corgarff.

  They began with a fall out between the Black Colonel and his Red Murdo,some little time after the duel at Lonach. To get his injured butrecovered sword-arm in trim again the Colonel had taken to practisingon his man, also a sufficient swordsman, though always liable to make afoul stroke. This time he had to defend himself from a sudden,half-angry, half-playful, wholly energetic assault on the part of hismaster, and that without a sword in hand.

  What do you think he did, this Red Murdo, when the Colonel's provokingblade had positively pinked him in the leg, above the garter and drawnblood? He picked up Jock Farquharson's pet dog, a wise and livelyScots terrier, and flung it, a protection against further pinking, onthe sword-point, with the remark, "A good soldier never lacks a weapon."

  The Black Colonel was fondly attached to his dog, and its death, for itdied from the wound, upset him into other troubles. It is often theway, when one thing goes wrong that many things go wrong, time gettingout of joint generally. Naturally, too, if we remember that life is adelicate machine which a small first unbalancing will throw intodisorder, as take the Black Colonel in witness.

  It became necessary for him to "raise the wind," as he spoke of theprocess, and to that end he sent Red Murdo on a foraging expedition.This worthy, wishful to do the business with as little trouble aspossible, went after the first batch of cattle he could find. Heplanned to get them away in the dark of night, have them at a safedistance by morning, and then, at his leisure, drive them to a southernmarket and bring back to the Black Colonel what he got for them, lesshis own expenditure on victuals and drink, and the due entertaining ofother gentlemen of the same kidney, met on the road, because itscomradeship had to be justly handselled.

  Now, shrewdly, as a matter of precaution against raiders high, or kernlowly, the owner of the grazing kine had put a white beast among them.Consequently when he was wakened by a loud lowing and came forth tofind the reason, he saw that his cattle were being stolen away, forthere walked the white one, a guiding star to his eye. He followed thedrove quietly at a distance, summoning friends as he passed theirseveral homes, and when he had gathered recruits enough, and while itwas still dark, he set upon Red Murdo and his thieves, gave them theheartiest beating you could fancy, and re-captured the cattle.

  This attempt to steal the kine was laid at the door of the BlackColonel, rightly so, and when he heard of it and its failure he sworeat Red Murdo, saying he had lost all a henchman and provider'sartistry. He was one of those men, very numerous in the world, whocould ill-support a failure made by himself, and could not bear it atall when another failed who was acting for him.

  "Why," he rated Red Murdo, "you can neither steal nor lie, as aHighland gentleman's ghillie should. You would have me do those pettythings myself, and they are not for me, although, mayhap, I'd be equalenough to them."

  Red Murdo answered nothing to his enraged chief, but perhaps made upfor his silence by some hard thinking. When a rebuke is taken silentlythe wrath behind it is apt, in average human nature, to simmer out, butthe Black Colonel's black fire burned on.

  "Why," he roared, "didn't you think of an expedient to keep thosecattle, the white one and all, for very probably it was a beast tofetch a good price? Where were your wits? You recollect when, for anact which has since been counted brave, I had to fly with half-a-dozenmen on my heels, and how, coming to a mill, and nobody being there, Iput on the miller's dusty suit. I was asked by my pursuers, sure thatthey had seen the man they pursued disappear into the mill a fewminutes before, 'Did any one enter here?' 'Only the miller is here,' Itold them, and, as it seemed so, they went their way, and, after awhile, I went mine."

  "But," said Red Murdo, "they wid na' hae believed me if I had sworn ascore o' oaths that I was the miller. I'm nae sae good at swearin'untrooths as some folk you ken!"

  "Possibly," quoth the Colonel loftily. "To be be
lieved one must, afterall, look one's words and you might find it a difficulty. But still aghillie of better strategy would have kept those cattle and, what isworse, my friend, saved the suspicion which has fallen upon me."

  "Nae for the first time," Red Murdo shot at the Black Colonel.

  "It's not first times that matter," he retorted more quietly, beingpleased, in a manner, with Red Murdo's spirit; "it's last times thatcount, and the need is to take care of them."

  Possibly the Black Colonel might have met his material troubles for awhile longer without having to fly from them, because he was full ofstratagems. But on the sentimental side he fell into an affair of muchsadness for a comely lady who, at her mid-age, should have knownbetter, though, indeed, the forties have their storms, like the sealatitudes sailors call the "roaring forties." Delectable as detailmight be, and desirable to illumine what all befell, I must, for I amno scandal-monger, be content to give you the romance and the tragedyin three snatches of verse begotten by the same.

  First, you must make what you like of--

  "She kept him till mornin', then bade him begane, And showed him the road that he might na be ta'en."

  Next, you have the news let loose, for--

  "Word went to the kitchen An' word went to the ha'."

  Finally, when my lord of the lady rides home from a far journey andhears that news, and meets her, he goes red, wud mad and--

  "O bonnie, bonnie was her mouth And cherry were her cheeks; And cleir, cleir was her yellow hair Whereon the reid blude dreips."

  There the Black Colonel had found a tangle which he could not cutthrough, and he sought a side-way out. How he discovered it he wasgood enough to inform me, though I had no claim to his confidence, inan epistle drafted in his best style, which reached me at Corgarff,hard on the tidings of what had made the necessity for it.

  "To Captain Ian Gordon, for his privy knowledge only," it opened, andit continued, in his usual, even manner, for, mind you, he had thetrick of writing, as well as the odd weakness towards it alreadyremarked on, all of which appears in what follows, so:

  "It may oblige your calculations that I have a proposal through properchannels to go on a special mission to New France, where a state of warnow exists between the British and the French. Ordinarily I shouldhave hesitated to take a step which would remove me, even for a time,from my most particular affairs here, these being familiar to you.

  "The offer is put to me, however, as part of earlier overtures in thosesame affairs, and that recommends it. Moreover, there are urgentprivate reasons, not here to be gone into, but perhaps to be j'alousedby you, which favour an early change of air and scenery for yoursdutifully. Accordingly I am departing for North America by the firstgovernment ship on to which I can be smuggled, that, as I grimly note,being the elegant word used in a dispatch of instruction to my hand.

  "You cannot fail to be curious as to the nature of my mission, and Ishall inform you thereon so far as its delicate nature permits. I amoffered by Government--your Government--a free pardon for the past anda captain's commission in Fraser's Regiment of Highlanders, now inCanada with General Wolfe, if I succeed in the undertaking which isthis . . . but its delicacy tries my power of pen.

  "Briefly I, a proscribed Jacobite, am to depart from Scotland, find myway to Canada, and offer my sword and service to the Marquis Montcalmcommanding his French Christian Majesty's troops for the defence ofQuebec. There I am to keep an open eye, and a close tongue, for alland every information of possible use to General Wolfe, and transmitthe same to him personally, by what safe channels I can devise. He isto be informed of my mission, and he alone, and that's all, though itmay be enough for you to digest, as it has been, I beg you to believe,for me.

  "Will you, I pray, make my humble excuses to Mistress Marget Forbes andher mother, and accept them for yourself, and you may rely upon hearingfrom me oversea, because I have no intention to relinquish a shred ofmy attachment to my native Highlands and the well-being of the name Ibear; whereof it is the purpose of this epistle to inform you, asbetween one man of honour and another."

  News indeed, intensely personal, therefore intensely interesting news,and I let it be known without delay at the Dower House, taking care, indelicacy, not to seem curious as to the impression it made there.Somewhat later I had intelligence of the actual sailing of the BlackColonel for New France, across the Atlantic, with his inseparable RedMurdo, whom, I was sure, the adventure would suit grandly, though heprobably would not be told its secret meaning.

  Then came a long silence, and I began to wonder whether the BlackColonel had not, somewhere and somehow, been caught in the last kink ofhis pre-destined hair-rope. While I wondered, off and on, in thissense, and our small world of Corgarff drifted uneventfully on, amuch-worn, salt-sprayed letter reached me, and I recognized in it theBlack Colonel's writing.

  What account had he to give of himself?