The Black Colonel

by James Milne

  _XVII---A Song of Other Shores_

  "Quebec, North America.

  My Worthy Kinsman,

  "You have not written me in reply to a previous letter of mine, nor didI expect you would, but I hope you have not lost all interest in myfortunes, and I make sure that the great events which have happenedhere, in New France, must interest you, when told with someparticularity by me.

  "You will be well aware, before this reaches you, that the_fleur-de-lys_ of his Christian Majesty, King Louis, no longer fliesover the citadel of Quebec, and that in its place there blows the flagof His Britannic Majesty--whom God bless, I suppose! But of how allthis happened you will only have general intelligence, and none aboutmy own fortunate part in it.

  "Well, it was not mere fortune, because I did exert myself strenuouslyto discharge the mission confided to me, and General Wolfe saidprivily, before he marched to a glorious victory and a glorious death,that I had succeeded beyond his expectation. But I should tell youthat I had necessary audiences of him more than once, while I servedwith the French in Quebec, and these we managed with perfect secrecy,thanks to methods which I may not disclose, except that the high esteemfelt by the French for the Black Colonel, and their faith in hishonour, alone made them possible.

  "Saying so much of General Wolfe, I wish to set down my own monument tohis evident high parts as a soldier and a man. I found him modest indemeanour, graceful of manner, reasonable in attitude, altogether agallant gentleman. He was simple and to the point, and when he hadfinished with you he dispatched you courteously, pleased with him andwith yourself.

  "His excellency, the Marquis Montcalm, who also did me the honour ofvarious conversations, and who likewise fell gloriously, had qualitiesnot dissimilar. He was a French gentleman with the grand manner,meaning he carried his air so quietly that you hardly knew itspresence, except by feeling it. I will further say, in token to hisattributes, that he was of a moral stature in whose presence I feltashamed of my secret trade, a trade which a man can only follow once ina life time, and then because he must.

  "Perhaps you will scarce believe that several times my tongue wasbubbling to deliver all to his knowledge, and to throw myself on hismercy. His very trustfulness made that impossible, because in each ofus there is a natural refusal to destroy confidence, wherever we findit. That would be uprooting a plant which does not grow stronglyenough anywhere, and I, for one, love to cultivate it. 'So, so,' Ihear you say, my friend!

  "Certainly at times I wished that my Lord Montcalm would treat me withless consideration and not ask me questions about the British invadingforces, because I gathered information from those questions, and, intruth, here was the basis of much I imparted to General Wolfe. Heasked, did Monsieur Montcalm, in some detail, about the Highlanders ofFraser's Regiment, and said that, far away as he had seen them from theramparts, they appeared so picturesque in their tartans as to be hardlyassociable with the even, undeviating, outward English character.

  "I answered that there were greater similarities between theHighlanders of Scotland and the French than between those sameHighlanders and the English, both having Celtic blood in them, and thatthis resulted in a natural brotherhood which even the hazards of warcould not disturb, or only temporarily. Nay, I said once to hisexcellency that we Jacobites still look more over the water to Franceand to our Stuart King than we look, or ever may look, over theScottish border to England.

  "You will mark how I sprawl between my native land and this New France,as it was termed until the other month. A man's heart can be in manyplaces, a woman's only in one, and my affections, I confess, havemostly been a divided allegiance. They have gone out and come homeagain, and now, thanks to my prosperity here, they have a tendency toabide where my epistle finds me. For there is grateful comfort inQuebec, and a freshness glad to experience, and the society remainsmerry, though the _fleur-de-lys_ has perished for ever. All the Frenchwomen here in Quebec did not see, in its changed governors, a burialfor the living, and some of them said, 'It is destiny; let us make thebest of things.'

  "But I anticipate events, and that would be to miss their drama and myown little share in them, a share with which, in the result, I amsatisfied, although I could sincerely have wished the ways and means tobe more aboveboard. However, you cannot remain the complete gentlemanand make history, and my justification lies in this signal fact: that Iinspired and counselled General Wolfe to his scaling of the cliffs atthe one place where that was possible, a matter on which I beg you willsee that right credit and justice be done towards Jock Farquharson ofInverey, commonly called the Black Colonel. He and I alone knewbeforehand where exactly the escalade was to be, and it was a singularjoy to share a large, potential secret with another able to make itgood, as General Wolfe most handsomely did, though, once being shownhow, no great difficulty remained.

  "When, in the hurry of Quebec that fated morning, I heard Fraser'sHighlanders had climbed the cliffs, swinging from foothold to footholdlike the wild cats of their native mountains, I said to myself, 'Thisis, indeed, my venture, and it is fitting my own people should carry itout.' But how odd it is that two Highland threads should come togetherin such a fashion, only we Celts have been destined to weave many ofthe red warps of story. I had knowledge of the part my kinsmen were toplay in the bloody gamble between General Wolfe and the MarquisMontcalm, and, without desiring to appear on the field of battle, whichwas no part of my diplomacy and not hard, with my privileges from theFrench, to avoid, I sought an elevation where I could behold the kiltedFrasers drawn up in battle array.

  "My certes, they made a brave picture, with the sun shining on thecolours of their kilts and the cool Canadian breeze waving them as in arhythm of martial motion. Ah! the heart aye warms to the tartan, and Icould have given my soul, if it be left me, which I must hope, to standin front of that red and green line, an officer of the Fraser's, as Ihave now become, by virtue of the successful completion of my contract.They awaited orders with impatience, for the headlong charge has everbeen the natural form of battle with Highlanders, only the appearanceof General Wolfe, fearlessly wearing a new, conspicuous uniform, andthe entire confidence of his step forward and backward while historyboiled in the pot, held them in like a rein.

  "It was the French who joined battle first, making some confusion amongthemselves as they did so, because their several units fireddifferently. This wasted and scattered their salvoes, but theyadvanced gallantly to within forty yards of the British lines. ThenGeneral Wolfe ordered 'Fire!' and before its solid stroke the Frenchreeled like trees stricken by lightning. Swiftly, then, theHighlanders leapt forward with bayonets gleaming, and in what I say ofthem--my own people--I say of the British army as a whole: it caughtthe French before they could reform, and thus the issue was alreadydecided.

  "Now here was a change on the message, my Comte Frontenac, in earlieryears, returned to a British admiral who demanded his surrender. 'Theonly answer,' he swore, 'I will give will be from the mouth of mycannon and musketry, that he may learn that it is not in such a stylethat a man of my rank may be summoned.' It was a change, too, from theill-success of General Wolfe's assault on Montmorency, over beside thelittle river falling into the big one, where the very elements wereunfavourable.

  "Montcalm won then, very fairly won, for his fire upon the British wasof a nature which none could overcome. Monsieur Vaudreuil, theGovernor, who, like the Intendant Bigot, had an eternal desire to reapwhere he had not sown, was so patronizing as to say after theMontmorency fight, 'I have no more anxiety about Quebec. MonsieurWolfe, I am sure, will make no progress.' 'La, la,' as MadameAngelique would say when she teases me, what a poor prophet was hisexcellency Vaudreuil, but, indeed, prophecy has a trick of falling intoincapable hands and I, being, I trust, capable, have rarely tried it.

  "You needed my broad account of events in Quebec to do me justice, andthat is why I have lingered over it. I have given you hints enough forthe proper fitting of me into those events, as when, most casually, Ihope,
I mentioned my advising of General Wolfe precisely where to makehis ascent to the Plains of Abraham. However, there are small personalitems you cannot know, without they are told you, and very chiefly thatrefers to the ingenuity with which, my mission, as compacted, beingdone, I passed from the ranks of the vanquished French to those of theconquering British, where I had been expected.

  "There was such confusion everywhere, such a tearing up of things, thatI could do what I wished, and have it go unchallenged. Moreover, therewas a want of bitterness between the contending parties, for onereason, possibly, because the deaths of Wolfe and Montcalm had softenedenmity: and nobody has yet hurled the words 'traitor,' 'spy,' at me,and I feel I am not truly open to them, my task having been that of anintelligence officer on the highest scale. As much is recognized inthe affability which I have continued to find among the French sincethe close of the siege, but they are by nature surprisingly agreeable,as I would wish, with my heart to subscribe.

  "Why, man, and this will make you curious, if envy there be in you,young French ladies take pains and pleasure to teach British officersFrench, with what view I know not, if it be not to hear themselvespraised, flattered and courted, without loss of time. To praise comesnatural to me, to flatter is not amiss, and, as to courting, I judgeyou have always appreciated that in me. You may have doubted me insome respects; you had no doubts I fancy, in that particular.

  "This quality of mine--I claim it a quality--has made me take, withgrowing kindness, to where I am, and the idea of coming home again,when it arises in my mind, I rather put aside. My natural dream isthat I shall return, but mostly I am content to play with the fancy, tocatch it up, put it aside, and again catch it up, and once more let itrest.

  "There I am backed by the circumstance that I have no tidings whatevertouching my plans, as declared to you, in regard to Corgarff, and Isuppose that your thankless rulers have forgotten me. They werewilling to use me as a pacifier, and when that did not promise animmediate result they found me of use in the war of New France. Thisservice being completed, faithfully, honourably, I dare aver, and tothe very letter of the bargain, I am, I repeat, for much I repeat,given my commission in Fraser's Highlanders. But, of a settlement inthe larger spirit which the inclusion of Corgarff would have implied, Ihave no intelligence, and it is conceivable that I may get none.

  "Therefore I may remain at Quebec with the Fraser Highlanders so longas they continue here, and, when they go hence, still remain as anindependent gentleman, provided I were, by happy chance, shall I say?to find genial companionship. I am not old, not of the sort ever togrow actually old, but the excursions of life have wearied me, and Ibegin to sigh for a permanent holding ground, the anchorage of restwhich should come to us all.

  "That desire, if I may make you a great confidence, would satisfyitself in a woman of the qualities of Mistress Marget Forbes. I do nomore than quote her because she is known to us both, and therefore shemakes clear the exact shade of my meaning. But I imply no freedom withher name, except what the honouring of it carries, and if any manimplied anything more she would know how to answer him. She has, Iwill say, the tang of the Forbes blood full in her, and I have alwaysthought it warmer in its flow of both love and pride than the Gordonblood, although of that you should be a better judge than I am.

  "One needs a wife of parts if one is, as I hope, to found a new clan ina new country, for, mind you, many of the Fraser Highlanders, when theyend their period of enrolment, will prefer to settle in this lush,virgin country where the days go by like a dream. They will sit downon the untilled lands, and out of them find a competence of food andraiment, and they will marry French women who are buxom and healthy andwill be good wives and mothers.

  "Granted all this, and it follows that there will be materials for anew house of Inverey in some valley by the River Saint Lawrence, wherethe Red Man at present reigns in indolence. He who can sit on a knollfor an hour and let old Mother Earth spin her tune to the fatheringsun, is ever a friend of mine. But the Red Man carries the pastimebeyond me, unless when he is on the warpath, and then he is a devil.It would give me no compunction to reign with a hundred or more FraserHighlanders, in a strath from which the Red Man has to be persuadedaway, or driven by force. Perhaps I could even hold out a helpinginvitation to smaller 'broken men' still in the Aberdeenshire Highlandsor elsewhere in dear Scotland, and that would please my self-importance.

  "I renounce nothing, give up no legitimate claim that I have putforward for hand or land in our native country, but I see that I amcome to leaving them unclaimed. Madame Angelique, to whom, mayhap, Ihave confided those consolations and aspirations, and who has a comelysense as well as comely looks, says very properly that changedcircumstances carry other changes, and that even a Highland gentlemanmay recognize as much without loss of self-respect.

  "Madame has, in the crash which sank Bigot's fortunes, come to plainfaring, but I have made no difference in my friendship to her, and she,I feel, has increased hers towards me. She tells me she has no clamantties left in Old France, any more than in New France, where the lustreof her powerful French friends has set, and my heart goes out to her insympathy, and, I know not what more, except that she is a very finewoman and would adorn the home of. . . . Why give a name?

  "You must make what you can of this scattered epistle and read it intomy future because you may not hear from me again, or, if you do, onlybriefly in unlikelihoods. I am no practised writer, though I mighthave acquired the trade, and it is only out of a felt duty, combinedwith a personal regard of some durability, that I have set down, foryou, those epistles of my doings far across the sea. Farewell, if itbe farewell, and to Mistress Marget Forbes the like salutation, if shewill accept it, as I am sure she will, when presented through you; andsimilarly to Madame Forbes, her mother, my humble duty.

  "Always your well-wisher, "JOCK FARQUHARSON, late of Inverey."

  _XVIII--My Garden of Content_

  "Said Edom o' Gordon to his men We maun draw to a close."

  That close, whether to a love story or a life, should come in thequiet, natural way which Providence orders, unexpectedly almost, not intumult and trappings.

  I am of a family which has been accustomed to storm through the world,sometimes with all the world could give, at other times with mightylittle. This element has got into our blood, become, you might say, ahabit, and often, myself, I have felt its prickings. After all, itmust be a finely insurgent thing to drive to the devil in a goldencarriage built for two, or more; and the Gordons have never beenaccustomed to count their guests, so long as they made good company.

  Then I had grown up at a time in our Highlands when the kettle ofhistory was about to boil over, scalding a great many people in theprocess. The fiery cross of war carried its message from one valley toanother and left its embers on new graves wherever it went.

  You are asking what this excursion in deep waters has to do with Margetand myself and the Black Colonel, Jock Farquharson. It has everythingto do with us, because it is the lamp of the road along which wejourneyed. Anybody can count turnings in a path, but it is harder tocatch the other-world glow which sees us past them to our desired haven.

  We were in sight of it, and, although we said little, I knew that weboth rejoiced exceedingly over the news which the Black Colonel sent inhis last letter. When we met I looked at Marget as much as to ask,"Shall I say it?" And she looked at me answering, "No, you need not,because I understand."

  It is a curious state this which, at some time or other, exists betweentwo loving people cast for each other's welfaring. A delicate mysterylies in it, and that is an essential strand in every true affection,but it can readily be destroyed. Break it rudely, even shock it alittle, and a chasm may yawn where, before, there was a silken threadof union, tender in its fibre, but beautifully elastic.

  You may exclaim, when you read these confidences and remember others towhich I have confessed, that I was not so awkward a lover as Isometimes appeared to be. No, I was no
t awkward in thought, but Icould be, I know full well, very awkward in its expression as deeds.Often I would go wrong in form, rarely in feeling, if you can assume aman built on those colliding lines.

  Marget has told me, in raillery, that she was more than once tempted togive me "a good shaking," as the woman's saying goes. It was not,perhaps, that she expected to shake much out of me, or to shake me outof myself, but that she would herself have been relieved by theexercise, for women, you see, are like that.

  My reflection has to do with a day when we spoke of it as settled thatthe Black Colonel would never come back, that the whole episode whichhe represented was over, and that an open road, undisturbed surely byany more surprises and alarms, lay before us. How could I forget thescene, for it was to open out our true life, our deep, full love.

  She looked at me as much as to ask had I been planning a stratagem, Ithe unsophisticated, which I had not. She looked again, and I saw sheknew, that at long length, we were face to face with the soft realitieswhich, hitherto, had remained dumb, or only whispered. I waited totake her in my arms, and she told me later her instinct expected me todo it, and I didn't. What poor fools men may be, to miss so much, andto place a good woman in the position of having her consent rebuffed,for that is to outrage her sex-respect.

  I seem to remember that Marget turned her head away in despair with me,only she pretended to be watching the sun and the clouds as they dippedthe hills in light and shadow. This threw her face into profile, and Ithought I had never seen it quite so beautiful. There was an expectantvibrancy in it, from the fair forehead to the dimpled chin, but itsflower of expression was in the flowing eye, the ripe mouth, and thetremulous lips.

  "A wonderful scene," she said, her look lost in the river and thehills; "a scene which makes one think in parables, as the old men ofScriptures did."

  "Parables," I replied, remembering, as I saw she did, "are veryunuseful."

  "Why do you say that?" she asked gently, still looking at the dance ofsunlight and shadow upon the heather and the water.

  "Oh, because they are," I said absurdly enough.

  "That's a woman's reason," she observed, "and it should be left to awoman. Have you nothing more original to say?"

  "Well, if I were to tell you a parable, a parable of my own, as youonce told me one of yours, what would happen?"

  "I'm sure I don't know," she laughed, "but why trouble about what mayhappen? A little risk gives a spice to life, and, anyhow, it canmostly be run away from at the last moment!"

  "Then," said I, fairly and warmly hit by that, "it is the parable of amaid and a man, the old, old story, in a new setting. They met undercross circumstances, when things around them were difficult and theirfamilies took separate sides in politics and war. But if it had notbeen those very troubles they might never have met, or, what is evenworse, have met too late, as maids and men often do. Perhaps trouble,because it brought them together in sympathy, also began to bring themtogether in heart, that being one road to affection. Love at firstsight? Yes, for a winning face, an elegant figure, a silvery voice, oreven a shapely foot. But that, surely, is the stuff of passion whichmay bloom in the morning and fade at night, not love the enduring as, Ipromise you, in my parable."

  Marget nodded her head, unconsciously, as if some far voice werecalling to her from the spreading country of red heath and greenfir-trees, of dancing sunshine and rippling stream, that lay beneathus. She did not speak, and I went on:

  "You do not in parables say much of people, and never by name, but Imust tell you of my maid, the man, and of the other man who camebetween them--nearly! She was all simple charm, yet also of pulsingwomanliness, the healthy product of a country life, a fair survival ofmany ordeals. Deep in her nature was that intense power of feelingwhich belongs to complete womanhood, as music belongs to an ancientfiddle. There were strings so sweet and subtle, so strange and strong,that she herself feared to play on them, and when the man appeared shegreeted him as a friend, nothing more."

  Marget waited as I paused, for when one's heart is in one's mouth wordsare hard to find, and I am not much in command of them at any time.

  "The man," I resumed, "what shall I say of him, for he had no personalhistory. He had an old name, however, which he hoped not to sully, andhe bent himself quietly to duty, as, crookedly and undesirably, it camehis way. He found no call to do great things of the world, but ratherto straighten out the small things of a wee corner of it, and there tokeep the peace. The maid just came into his life, and he, in his plainway, thanked Providence and held his tongue, except when secrets wouldhalf slip out and tell-tale acts come about."

  Marget made no sign as to whether or not she recognized the portrait,and thus I was brought up abruptly against the other man of our parable.

  "He," I said, "had all the ruder qualities admired by women, those ofmanliness, which good women may like, and the others which the otherwomen secretly like. It was not difficult to see him, both as a heroand as a villain, and either way the pull of romance lay about him. Hehad particular ambitions which brought him between the maid and thefirst man, and there was, thanks to certain elements in human ties andhigh affairs, a strong influence favourable to those ambitions. But,as chance or Providence would have it, he was translated to anotherland, and there he found such comfort and companionship that he decidedto stay. This left the maid and the man who feared too much, free tobe to each other what they desired; and there ends my parable."

  "But," asked Marget with unsteady words which betrayed her agitation,"where is its moral? A parable must have a moral."

  "Has it none?" I boldly asked her, taking her hand in mine, before sheor I knew it, and kissing it and then her rosy, rebellious lips.

  By-and-by she looked at me through wet eye-lashes and asked, "Shall Itell you a parable which had a moral, though maybe it has lost it," andher tears laughed.

  "Do," I said; "I can stand the moral now, whatever it may be."

  "It should be a severe moral for you," she whispered, "because you havebeen so foolish, so little understanding with me, yet I'll try and makeit light. It also concerns a maiden and two men, but she only caredfor one of the men, never at all for the other. Nor would all thefamily interests in the world have made her marry the other. The realman, well, he seemed not to know that there is a precipice ofinfluences, of circumstances, for every woman, over which she may belet slip by his hesitation; and this without possibility of return,for, even if she could return, her sex pride would not let her."

  "Ah," I whispered, "and the moral?"

  "That you deserved to lose me; and that it would have broken my heartif you had."

  We sat very close, hand in hand, mind in mind, heart in heart, andwatched the sun go down behind the silent hills of our belovedCorgarff, both of us silent, like them.

  Years have gone by since then, and they have proved to us how sure aconduct is the heart alike to happiness, and, though it matters less,to prosperity. March where the tune of its soft beating calls, and youare blessed. Traffic with it, and you miss the real lift of life, thatwhich makes life good, whatever betides.

  Marget and I had learned this in the school of sweet-hearting, and nowwe knew it in the joy of confiding words. Nothing else mattered,because it mattered all, but when the inner world is well the outerworld responds to it in kind. The private happiness which we had wonmade a larger good fortune for us without, or at all events, we saw themorning radiance, not the morning mists.

  Our poor ruined Highlands still lay under their covering of sorrow, asgrass grows indifferently upon a grave. But they were mending, evenwhile they suffered, for they had spirit in them. Virile men andwomanly women do not cry all the time, but give thanks to God for hismercies and go forward.

  It was my fortunate destiny to be helpful beyond myself at Corgarff,and I will tell you how. When gossip of a purpose of marriage betweenIan Gordon and Marget Forbes reached high quarters, friends in the twopolitical camps got to work on our behalf.
The outcome was that beforeMarget Forbes became Marget Forbes, or Gordon, as the Scots legal formhas it, the lands which were her peoples had been returned to her, asort of wedding gift.

  Good and bad news like not to travel alone, and what must a kinsman ofmy own, an aged bachelor Gordon, do, but say that instead of waitingfor his estate until he was dead, and his will read, I should come intoit and its perquisites at once, if only because there must be acre foracre exchanged, as between a Gordon and a Forbes. Thus our heart'shouse of joy was dowered with worldly goods, though I should, injustice especially to Marget, add that we laid no stress on that, apartfrom the usefulness towards others which it carried.

  At such usefulness, I can fairly say, we laboured whole-heartedly fromthe hour when we took each other for better, and never a minute forworse, in the Castle of Corgarff, with Marget's mother saying,"Children, you have all my poor old heart, to keep the fire of youryoung hearts warm."

  She was a gracious lady, and she dwelt with us until we bore her to thelittle churchyard on the hill-side, where there is a clump of trees tobreak the cold sough of the winds into a lullaby. By that time anotherMarget, beautiful of face like the Forbeses, lithe of limb like theGordons--we never could agree whom she most resembled!--had been givento us. She was our guerdon of the reverent gospel of home, which isthe high altar of this world, the source and sanctuary of ourwell-being as men and women.

  We have tried to live up to that ideal, and none can do more, unless,indeed, it be to seek the perfect heights of the Sermon on the Mountitself. It is good to look upward there, even if one cannot hope toreach the golden peaks of that world without an end--Amen!

  THE END