Jamie MacLeod

by Michael Phillips

  At that moment Kenny had almost zeroed in on a bee on a nearby bush. The imminent danger of reaching his pudgy little hand around it roused Jamie from her reverie and she shouted, “Kenny!”

  Startled, he jumped back and the bee buzzed off.

  “Kenny, don’t you know what would have happened to your hand if you had grabbed that bee?” Jamie remonstrated gently.

  “Oh,” he replied with a grin that meant he knew very well it had not been a good idea.

  “He’s already been stung twice,” offered Cecilia.

  “But I got one once, in a jar,” said the boy proudly.

  “Did he like being in the jar?” asked Jamie.

  “Well . . .” said Kenny, drawing out the word sheepishly. “I guess he died in two days.” Now a look of genuine remorse came over his face. “Is that what killed him?”

  “I don’t know,” Jamie answered. “But if a creature likes to fly and gather nectar, I wouldn’t think he’d enjoy being bottled up in a jar, flying continually against the sides trying to get out. I suppose he could die from sheer unhappiness and frustration after a while.”

  “I’m sorry I did it.”

  “Well, you didn’t know. But God’s creatures are happiest when they are doing what God intended them to do.”

  “Like making honey?” Kenny asked.

  Jamie nodded.

  They proceeded on their walk, approaching the upper end of Union Street where they began to encounter some shops of the central region of the city. Kenny now absorbed himself in banging a stick against a fence as they passed. Jamie realized there was a lesson for herself in what she had just said. “True happiness comes in doing the will of God,” Mr. Avery had once taught her. But now that she recalled the lesson, she also remembered he had smiled and added, “knowing the will of God, now that’s sometimes the hard part!”

  What was God’s will for her? Was that uncertain disquiet in her soul a feeling from God telling her that she should have stayed at Aviemere and faced whatever rumors were flung at her? Or was it the enemy trying to make her doubt that she had indeed done the right thing? She was happy here. But how could she know if God meant her to be here . . . or there?

  She thought of Iona Lundie with a cold shudder. She had not wanted to hear those terrible things about her father—nor the inferences about the Graystones. Had she closed her eyes to the truth? And yet, what of the effects on Andrew? His future had to be considered too.

  Yes, she had made the right decision. Perhaps the only possible decision. But still that gnawing, undefined feeling remained within her. She would simply have to trust God to continue to lead her in spite of her own uncertainties.

  All at once Kenny ran ahead to the end of the street, attracted by a bright blue naval uniform. Jamie hastened after him, but did not reach the boy until he had gone up to the man, who stooped down and was now talking with him. As she approached she was struck with the white trim and ornamental brass buttons which offset the deep blue—this must be a dress uniform; it was much too fancy for normal use. She wondered if the man was an officer. The visor of his hat shadowed his face as she walked toward them, but from the laughter she heard it was already clear the friendly officer was taken with the boy.

  She took Kenny’s hand and began to urge him away.

  “I’m sorry for his disturbing you—” she began, but as the man stood up and turned toward her, she forgot everything she had intended to say and exclaimed, “Robbie Taggart!”

  With his smile still on his face but a confused look of uncharacteristic hesitancy in his eyes, the man paused momentarily, then tipped his hat and slowly replied, “M-a-d-a-m-e?”

  It was hardly any wonder he did not recognize the woman, or governess, or whoever she was, dressed as she was in a burgundy linen suit with fine white lace blouse and elegantly plumed hat. In fact, he took her for the boy’s mother, for she looked considerably more mature than her nearly twenty-one years.

  “You have me at a disadvantage,” he said. “You seem to know my name, but I don’t know yours.” He spoke in the same friendly voice and appraised her with a hint of the same merry twinkle in his eyes.

  Jamie smiled, remembering what she had looked like the last time Robbie had seen her.

  “I know,” he added, warming to the still somewhat mystifying but no less delightful interchange, “that if I had indeed met you someplace before, I would not have easily forgotten!”

  “But we can both see, Mr. Taggart,” said Jamie coyly, “that we have met before and you have indeed forgotten.”

  “Then please extend me a thousand pardons. I shall not be so stupid again.”

  Now Jamie laughed outright.

  “Robbie, it’s me—Jamie MacLeod!”

  37

  The Call of Love

  It took some moments for Robbie to regain his composure after Jamie’s name dropped like a bombshell out of his past. Then he threw out his arms and gave her a great exuberant embrace.

  “Yes!” said Robbie at last. “I see it now—my dear little snow-waif!”

  “I shall never forget,” said Jamie.

  “And neither will I. But you mustn’t take me by surprise like this again!” laughed Robbie heartily. “But come, may I stroll with you? You can tell me everything!”

  With the children skipping ahead, he took her arm and they walked along Union Street, much as they had more than two years ago in the dark of a winter’s night. Only now they made a handsome pair, Jamie with her green eyes shining and her fine dress, and Robbie decked out gallantly as an officer in the Queen’s navy. For indeed, he too had come up in the world and it did not take much prodding for Jamie to get his story from him.

  “I was bound for the Cape when I last saw you,” he said. “Since the Suez Canal was completed in ’69 we don’t often get the thrill of rounding the Cape anymore. But we had a load of supplies and a handful of miners who were to disembark in Capetown and make their way overland to the diamond mines. There we took on the illustrious Duke of Dunsleve who declared himself game for a bit of adventure when he learned we planned to round the Cape and sail for Bombay. Well, I’m afraid old Dunsleve got more adventure than he bargained for. We had smooth sailing until about a week out of Capetown, then a squall as I’d never seen hit us. Sixty-mile-an-hour winds and buckets of rain—all free hands had to bail for their lives. Of course no one expected the Duke to pitch in, for aside from his station, the man must have been sixty years old. However, the old boy came up on deck to see where he could help just as a twenty-foot wave washed over the deck. And he was washed clean overboard.”

  “Oh, dear!” exclaimed Jamie. “Was the poor man lost?”

  “He would have been! You can never hope to retrieve someone in water as fierce as that.”

  “But you found him?”

  “I was close by and saw him go in.”

  “What did you do?”

  “The only thing anyone could do—I jumped in after him! Luckily I was standing near a long coil of rope. I slit the band around it and grabbed the end as I jumped, hanging on to that rope for dear life. Even so, it was a foolhardy thing to do. Our shouts couldn’t begin to be heard above the storm, and it was all I could do to keep Dunsleve from going under and hang on to that thin line of a rope.”

  “And what happened next?”

  “Eventually another of the hands spotted us bobbing up and down like corks in the waves, and threw out more ropes and hauled us in.”

  “Robbie, you saved the man’s life!”

  “That’s life on the sea. You never know what you’re going to have to do!”

  “But that’s no small thing. I’m so proud of you!”

  “Old Dunsleve was pretty taken with the valor of it all, too, although any man on our ship would have done the same. But he insisted on showing his gratitude and said I could have anything within his reach. The only thing I ever wanted was to have my own ship, and that seemed out of anyone’s reach, even as wealthy as Dunsleve was supposed to be. So I to
ld him as much and said there was really nothing I needed or wanted. But he said he was going to do something for me and that was that. So some time after we reached London on the return voyage from India, I received a letter from the duke. He had purchased a commission for me in the navy! He said it wasn’t my own ship, but there was no reason it couldn’t lead to that and he had a brother in the Admiralty if I should need further assistance.”

  “I’m so happy for you, Robbie. That’s just what you wanted!”

  By now they had turned and were making their way back through Queen’s Cross toward Cornhill.

  “But here I’ve done all the talking!” exclaimed Robbie. “It was your story I wanted to hear. From the looks of it, I’d say some of your dreams have come true also.”

  So Jamie told her own story, commencing with her misadventures in the fish market on behalf of Sadie Malone and her rescue by Emily Gilchrist, but touching only lightly on the parts involving Edward Graystone and his history, and not at all on Iona Lundie, although she did make a veiled reference to her father’s past in order to explain her sudden departure from Aviemere. Why she held back, she was not sure, although it seemed to be more for her own sake than for Robbie’s. He had seen the world and would certainly never be shocked at anything she could say.

  “So you see,” she concluded, “I haven’t exactly become a lady—but I’ve found something far more important.”

  “I’m glad for you, Jamie,” he said. “I’ve never had what you might call a strong faith myself, but it seems to have done quite well by you. I’m glad it has made you happy. But I think you’re wrong about one thing—you have become a lady.”

  He took her hands in his and gazed steadily at her. “You’ve become a grand lady—the grandest I’ve ever seen.”

  “Now I know why I was always so taken with you, Robbie Taggart,” Jamie replied, coloring slightly.

  “Yes, you were taken with me. How could I have been such a fool as to walk away from you?”

  “Because you had Sadie. And I was a grubby child.”

  “You are that no longer.” He brought her hands to his lips and kissed them gently. “You have grown up, little Jamie MacLeod! You are indeed now a beautiful woman!”

  “But there’s more than that to being a lady, Robbie.”

  “Not in my book.”

  “But you always were a rogue!”

  He laughed. “But a rogue still knows beauty when he sees it.”

  “And no doubt you have seen many beautiful women in your travels, haven’t you, roguish Captain Taggart?”

  “No doubt, no doubt!” he returned playfully. “But I’m still only a lieutenant.”

  “But growing up, having a position in a nice home, or even being beautiful, none of that makes a lady, Robbie. Surely you know that. That takes breeding! It must be in your blood, your heritage. And that I will never have, Robbie.”

  “And does that matter?”

  “No, that no longer concerns me. To be a lady was a childhood fancy that my father instilled in me because his life was not all he had hoped it would be. But I am content with the lot the Lord has chosen to give me. More than content, I am happy and blessed. To love the Lord in my heart—as my grandfather told me, as Emily taught me, and as pain and loneliness has made real to me in a more personal way—is all that matters to me now. My life is fulfilled, not because of who I am on the outside, but because of who loves me and whom I serve on the inside.”

  By now they had reached the front steps of the Gilchrist home. The children ran on inside, but Robbie and Jamie lingered on the porch.

  “Won’t you come in for tea?” Jamie asked. “I would so like Mr. and Mrs. Gilchrist to meet you. When I first came to them, all I talked about was Robbie Taggart!”

  “In your thick mountain dialect?”

  “Nae doobt, nae doobt! Ye canna ferget that, can ye noo, Robbie!” she laughed.

  “Ah, you’ve come a long way in a short time, Jamie MacLeod! But regretfully, I must return to my duties. I am certain I have already passed the time I was to have reported back. But I shall be in Aberdeen a month or so. May I call on you?”

  “Certainly!” replied Jamie with a smile.

  ———

  For the following week scarcely a day passed in which Robbie did not contrive to see her. And as the first days passed into the following weeks of his sojourn in Aberdeen’s harbor, day followed day in a pleasurable succession of evening dinners, tea when Robbie could get away, walks and carriage rides and picnics and outings with the children when the weather would allow it. They were days of pure, unspotted enjoyment, for whatever else could be said about Robbie Taggart, he knew how to have fun. His humor and laughter and bright spirits and rousing stories were infectious. Unlike her previous times with him, when she had been but a child and Robbie and Sadie had seemed so much older and wiser in the ways of the world than she, now Jamie was able to enjoy his company on the equal footing of a shared relationship to which each offered a unique contribution.

  For Jamie, the carefree hours spent with Robbie were somehow reminiscent of the years on Donachie. There were no cares or heartaches or confusion, but only gaiety and lightheartedness. The sorrows of Aviemere had suddenly receded far into the distant background. She gave no thought to where it all might lead. Maybe she was afraid to allow her thoughts to look in that direction, remembering how he had left so suddenly before, with scarcely a word. Nor did she stop to ask herself how she really felt about this captivating soldier of fortune, this happy-go-lucky sailor whose feet never stopped wandering over the next horizon for adventure.

  Robbie, on his part, had been stunned when first he saw Jamie on Union Street. In his sleep he found himself dreaming about her—that lustrous dark hair that looked like the silk he had seen in India with the sun shimmering on it, and her bottomless rich green eyes which could beguile him simply by their innocence and their unabashed intensity. He saw her image while he tried to concentrate upon his duties, and occasionally left half his meal on his plate. Had Sadie observed his behavior, she would have said, “Hmph! Ye been smitten, man! Plain smitten!” Then she would have excused herself. For Robbie had never been one rightly to understand Sadie’s tears; thus she had learned to shed them in private.

  Robbie had been what he thought was in love many times. As he had told Jamie on the day he had met, he had friends in nearly every port in the world, and a good many of these friends were women who had broken their poor hearts over adventurous Robbie Taggart. He was a good man, and would hurt no one—man or woman—intentionally. He simply did not recognize the signs of fluttering hearts when they fluttered for him. So for every woman Robbie loved, there were three that loved him.

  But suddenly the tables were reversed. He was now smitten with the very one who had, as an orphan waif from the mountain, first been smitten with him. He had an altogether new feeling for Jamie than he had had before, something that almost made him tremble. There was a voice, an urging within that told him he would be a fool to let her get away. He had walked away from her once, not knowing what a woman she would soon grow to become. Now fate had given him another chance.

  But even as such thoughts came to him, another voice—this time one of caution—told him: “Don’t you know what this means?” He had run away from it all his adult life, never allowing a relationship to become so serious that he would have to make a commitment which would hinder his restlessness. Though he might not have known how to define the word wanderlust, he nevertheless knew that he had to remain free. Free to go! He could not breathe without room to roam, to travel, to explore, to see the world.

  Signing on as an officer in the navy was no small pledge. But it was nothing like commitment to a woman, for even as an officer he had a certain amount of freedom. Having a wife tell you what to do was far different than the orders of a superior officer! And in the navy, the world still lay at his fingertips!

  But now Jamie had changed everything!

  In the presence of a love
like this, would not all these fears disappear? Would not a love like this supersede everything else? And every day he and Jamie were together, and he beheld the light of her smile, he loved her more and more. No one had ever been like this!

  Something had to be done!

  One evening he went to The Golden Doubloon. He had been going there less frequently of late. But on this night perhaps he sought a little courage, perhaps he wanted to test his resolve in the place that was most representative of his freedom.

  Sadie was serving a table of thirsty dock workers when Robbie ambled in.

  “Evenin’ to ye, Robbie Taggart,” she said, somewhat coolly, for she had seen less of him lately than she had hoped during his stay in Aberdeen.

  “Ah, Sadie, darlin’! And how are you this evening?”

  “I’m fine, but if you don’t mind me sayin’ so, you’re looking a bit pale, Robbie.”

  Robbie sighed. “I’ve been sleeping none too well these past two nights.”

  “I thought life became easier for the highly placed,” said Sadie, with the hint of a half-cynical sneer directed at Robbie’s new position.

  “’Tis nothing like that.”

  “What, then?”

  “Sadie, we’ve been friends for a long time. Can I confide in you?”

  Sadie could hardly be blamed if a small stab of hope shot through her well-protected but not altogether hard heart. She still dreamed of Robbie, although she had all but given up on him.

  “You can tell Sadie anything, you know that.”

  Robbie took a seat at a nearby table where, in a moment, Sadie joined him. He leaned forward and peered thoughtfully at her. “Sadie—” he began, “I’m in love.”

  Sadie’s first inclination was to laugh. This, from man-of-the-world Robbie Taggart! Was it a joke?

  Suddenly her heart seized her! Invisibly she clutched the edges of the table to keep herself from swooning. This she had given up expecting! Could he possibly mean—? It was too much to hope for! In the mere twinkling of an eye these thoughts raced through her brain before she came to herself and surrounded herself with a protective wall of jest to keep from exposing herself to any unnecessary pain.