Smouldering Fire

by D. E. Stevenson

  Linda told him. “You see,” she said, “it would be the only thing to do—to go right away. I shouldn’t do Richard any good by remaining.”

  “Linda—couldn’t we? Couldn’t you?”

  “No,” she said. “How could we? You have your place here—your duties. We couldn’t possibly. It would be an untenable situation. You must never see me again if we lose the case. You must forget me, Iain.”

  “I couldn’t—how could I?”

  She looked down at him pityingly, her determined eyes looked softly into his, they were full of tears.

  “You must—try,” she said brokenly. “I’m not going to ruin you, Iain. That would make it worse—for me. I’ve thought about it day and night—day and night.”

  “Oh, Linda,” he said. “Oh, Linda—I love you so . . . I would lay down my life for you—is there nothing I can do?”

  She gave him her hand, and he held it against his cheek. They were silent for a long time. Neither of them felt any passion, only an immense tenderness. They were too worn and weary with their anxieties, too shattered for passion.

  After a little they rose and went on. The bothy stood in a little green hollow surrounded with boulders. It was a small hut, built of rough stones. Linda thought it looked right in the wild setting of mountain and moor. The eye, sweeping over the landscape, scarcely dwelt upon the bothy—it was part of the scene. There were no trees here, no bushes, nor any kind of cultivated plants; only the sweeping line of moor and mountain and rock with the small lonely building crouching in the hollow like a child’s toy. It was strange to think that the place had been built by men’s hands, and that people had lived here and called it home. The moor was so vast and so utterly deserted that she and Iain might have been the only people in the world, the only people who had ever been in the world.

  The door was an aperture in the wall. Linda looked inside and saw that the walls were black with peat smoke; there was a hole in the roof which had served as a chimney; the floor was of trodden mud.

  “It looks very old,” Linda said in a quiet voice.

  “About three hundred years—possibly,” Iain told her. “Prince Charlie slept here for a night after his defeat at Culloden. He was to have lain at Ardfalloch, but it was too dangerous to have him there. He was a hunted man with a price upon his head—”

  “You were Jacobites, of course,” Linda exclaimed, looking at Iain with heightened interest.

  “Some of us were,” Iain said. “It was one of the most ghastly things about the Jacobite cause that it divided families, so that brothers found themselves fighting against each other. Our family was divided in that way. MacAslan himself was a far-seeing man (some people called him by a less pleasant name); he saw the futility of it all. He knew that the Stuarts had no real backing, no real friends, for all the high-sounding promises they had obtained. He knew that England would never acknowledge a Catholic king. All these things he knew, and he saw the end. He refused to call out the clan. His attitude was very unpopular—even with his own people. There was a younger brother who raised part of the clan and joined the White Standard—he was wounded at Culloden. He crawled home and took to the heather when the tide turned against the Highlanders. There were many like him, skulking in caves amongst the mountains, wounded and starving.”

  Linda had known of all this, but it had never seemed real to her before. She forgot her own troubles for a little as she thought of those hunted men lying amongst the mountains. She could imagine the loneliness of their lives, the fear that stalked them. She could imagine the grim discomforts of their plight.

  “How could Prince Charlie have stayed here if the MacAslan was not on his side?” Linda said at last.

  “There is a difference between wanting a man as a king and handing over a hunted fugitive to his pursuers,” Iain pointed out. “MacAslan was loyal to the Prince’s person. He had no wish to see him taken and beheaded, and he was able to help him better because he was known to have held aloof from the rebellion. He was not the only big chief who refused to join the rebels, and yet had a warm corner in his heart for the rightful heir to the throne—there were others like him who saw the frightfulness of civil war, and refused to sacrifice their men. Civil war is a dreadful thing, it bites deep into a nation’s heart. The bitterness of those days still lingers—”

  “Still lingers!” exclaimed Linda in amazement.

  “I believe so. It lingers subconsciously.”

  “It was so long ago.”

  “So long ago, but we have long memories,” said Iain with a sigh. “The mountains shut us away from the world and we have time to brood upon old wrongs—upon hangings and stabbings and massacres. My people were oppressed, they were hunted like wild beasts, they were forced to bear injustice, and bound by cruel laws that they could not understand. Oppression breeds treachery.”

  “Are they treacherous?” Linda asked—she thought of Donald as she spoke, and Morag, and Alec MacNeil.

  “Treacherous to their enemies, and loyal to their friends,” Iain said, smiling a little as he read her thoughts. “After all, treachery and loyalty may go hand in hand» for a man could be treacherous through intense loyalty. It all depends whether the action is performed in your service or in the service of your enemy,” he added, smiling a trifle sadly at the jest. “But, perhaps, when I said that oppression breeds treachery, I really meant that it breeds secrecy. My people are secretive. You think you see them, Linda, but you can never read their hearts—”

  “But you—” she whispered, half afraid of the strange things he was saying—“you aren’t—like that.”

  He laughed bitterly. “You forget that I am a mongrel dog,” he said. “I don’t know what I am. The two strains in me are always at war, pulling me in different directions, making me helpless and useless. We should not be in this mess if I had been whole and powerful and free.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, looking up at him with an anxious frown.

  “It’s easy to explain. If I had been all Lowland, with the good sense, and the ‘look before you leap’ attitude of the Lowlander, I would have foreseen what might happen, and avoided the danger; and, if I had been all Highland, I would have killed Medworth and not listened to you when you held me back.”

  She gazed at him in silence, she could find no words to express the turmoil in her brain. Was it true that Highland blood was so fierce and reckless? She began to feel that there were things in Iain she had not understood, had not reckoned with. She began to realise something of the war that went on in Iain’s body. There was deep sadness in him beneath the gaiety, there was secrecy beneath the frankness of his brow. She thought: He needs me dreadfully—I could understand and help him—and she loved him more because he needed her.

  “It’s no good talking about it,” Iain continued, trying to speak more calmly. “Medworth has gone. It’s no good saying what I might have done now—I didn’t mean to speak of it, but, somehow or other, every subject I start upon leads back to this—let’s have tea, shall we, Linda?”

  They had tea, sitting with their backs against a boulder in the lee of the bothy. The sun shone bravely in its bowl of blue sky. Far away on the heathery slopes of the mountain a grouse called harshly to its mate. Iain and Linda were very silent. They were so near to each other that they could be silent without constraint. Their thoughts were busy with the same subject, but they had said all that there was to be said—each knew what the other thought.

  Mrs. Hetherington Smith had given them an immense amount of food—they could not eat a quarter of it.

  “She is a dear,” Linda said, as she repacked the basket. “I can’t tell you how kind she is to me. Sometimes I feel I should like to tell her the whole thing—she knows something is wrong.”

  “There would be no harm in telling her,” Iain said.

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “Why should I? She might help us—I thought her a very sensible matter-of-fact sort of person—”

  �
�I’ll wait a little and see,” Linda said thoughtfully. “I’ll wait until we hear something definite—we must hear soon—”

  They walked back to Ardfalloch rather slowly, making the most of their time together. It had not been a happy time for either of them, but they were loath to part. It might be days before they saw each other alone.

  As they neared the place where the path joined the main track from Ardfalloch House they saw a man coming up from the village. He was evidently on his way to the old cottage, but, when he saw Iain and Linda, he turned and came towards them. It was MacTaggart from the inn. Iain was surprised, for MacTaggart was no walker; it was said in the village—half in jest—that MacTaggart never put his foot outside his own door. What could the man want, Iain wondered.

  “Were you coming to see me?” he asked, after they had met and exchanged greetings in the usual manner.

  “I wass indeed,” replied MacTaggart. He took off his hat and passed his handkerchief over his head. He was hot, and very red in the face from his unaccustomed exercise.

  “It wass yourself I wass coming to see, MacAslan, but now that I have seen you I will not be coming up to the house—no indeed—it wass chust a thing I wass wanting to tell you, so it wass.”

  “You had better come in and have a drink—” Iain began.

  “No, indeed, and thank you, MacAslan,” he replied. “It is back to my place I will be going, for I do not like to be leaving it for long. It is chust that I wass thinking I would be telling you about the young man that is living with me chust now.”

  “A young man?” Iain enquired.

  “He is not so very young either, but not so old. And indeed he is harmless enough; but it is a strange thing for a young man to be living with me, and him neither shooting nor fishing, and I wass saying to myself I would be seeing MacAslan and telling him about it.”

  Iain was used to the Highland manner of conveying information and found no difficulty in interpreting MacTaggart’s news. He found it rather disquieting. Strangers sometimes came to Ardfalloch, and, finding the inn more comfortable than the usual run of Highland inns, stayed on for a little. They tried to obtain leave to shoot or fish, or climbed some of the hills if that was their line. But this stranger neither shot nor fished, and there was obviously something queer about him or MacTaggart would not have troubled about the man. Iain would not have paid much heed to MacTaggart’s story in ordinary circumstances—he would have listened with feigned interest, and turned the whole thing into a joke—but the position in which he and Linda were placed was so precarious that the least suspicion of anything out of the ordinary was alarming. He determined to find out all he could from MacTaggart and proceeded to do so in his own way.

  “Well,” he said, smiling, “and I suppose the young man is waiting for an invitation to shoot my birds or to catch a salmon in Mr. Finlay’s water—is that what it is, MacTaggart?”

  “It is not then,” replied the landlord promptly. “For the young man hass neither rod nor gun, nor even a pair of strong boots for the hills.”

  At this information Iain became definitely alarmed. What on earth could a young man be doing at Ardfalloch if he had not come for sport.

  “What has he come for, MacTaggart?” he enquired.

  “And how will I be knowing?” said the landlord in reply. “He is a nice enough young man and he is going about the place talking to people and asking about this and that. There is a great talk in the village about him—so there is—and nobody knowing what to be saying at all.”

  “What is he asking?”

  “He is asking about everything,” MacTaggart replied, throwing out his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “He is asking about who is at the House and he is asking about MacAslan, but chiefly he is asking all about Mister Middleton.”

  Iain heard Linda give a little gasp, and he put his hand on her arm to steady her.

  “All about Mr. Middleton!” he said lightly. “Well, I suppose he is a friend of Mr. Middleton’s and was recommended to your inn by Mr. Middleton—there would be nothing strange in that.”

  “It is what I thought myself,” agreed MacTaggart; “chust at first it is what I thought. But if the two gentlemen are friends, then it is a queer thing that Mister Howles should be asking so much about his friend. Och, I cannot explain it, MacAslan, but he is asking things that he would not be asking if he did be knowing Mister Middleton well. And yet, if he does not be knowing Mister Middleton well, what interest can there be for him in the gentleman’s doings. I cannot be making head or tail of the thing—” added MacTaggart with a sigh.

  Iain could not make head or tail of it either. He questioned MacTaggart closely, but there was no more information to be gained anent the strange visitor who neither shot nor fished, nor even possessed a pair of stout boots for the moors. MacTaggart had already told all that he knew. Presently they parted from him, and he waddled off down the path to Ardfalloch village.

  He walks like a duck, Iain thought, as he watched the corpulent figure of the landlord out of sight. He walks like a duck, and yet, in spite of that, there is something dignified about the man.

  “Did he come all the way from Ardfalloch to tell you that?” Linda was saying.

  “Yes,” said Iain, and then he added thoughtfully: “It’s a queer tale—who can the man be?”

  “A friend of Jack’s,” Linda replied. “That’s obvious. It gave me a shock when he mentioned ‘Mister Middleton,’ but of course I see now that it has nothing to do with us—how could it? You’re not worried, are you, Iain?”

  “No, of course not,” replied Iain, trying to sound convincing.

  “A friend of Jack’s,” Linda continued. “Jack has scores of friends of all sorts and conditions—people he meets casually, I mean. He probably met this man somewhere, and told him about Ardfalloch, and that the inn was comfortable, and the man has come—why shouldn’t he?”

  “There’s no reason why he shouldn’t,” Iain admitted, “except that a young man who neither shoots nor fishes would find Ardfalloch frightfully dull—there’s nothing else to do.”

  “I don’t find it dull!”

  “But you’re not a young man, and you’re not living alone at MacTaggart’s Inn.”

  “That’s true, of course,” agreed Linda, smiling a little in spite of herself.

  They had reached the small bridge over the burn by this time—it had been agreed that they were to part here. They both felt it was better that they should not be seen too much in each other’s company. Now that the moment had come to part they both felt that the hours had been wasted—there was so much that they might have said—but now it was too late.

  “Try not to worry,” Iain said miserably. He knew, as he said the words, that they were foolish and futile.

  “I shall be all right,” replied Linda bravely. She took the basket out of his hand, and turned away.

  Iain let her go. It was better to part like this without saying good-bye. He didn’t know when he would see her again alone—perhaps Mrs. Hetherington Smith would manage it for them. He thought: Being alone with Linda isn’t much good, really. There’s so much between us that I can’t find her—it’s almost worse than not seeing her at all.

  As he went home through the woods he thought again about the young man at MacTaggart’s. It was just as well that Linda had missed the point of the landlord’s story—the part that he found so disturbing. MacTaggart had said that the young man had asked things about Middleton that he would not have asked if he had known him well, and yet if he did not know Middleton (or Medworth) well, why should he be so interested in his doings. That seemed to Iain the most significant feature in MacTaggart’s story—and the most puzzling. Iain wrestled with the problem for the rest of the evening. Could he be a friend of Medworth’s, sent to keep an eye on himself and Linda in Medworth’s absence, and merely asking questions to throw dust in the eyes of the villagers? Could he be an enemy of Medworth’s, prying into the man’s affairs with some ulterior motive? Iain cou
ld not fathom the mystery to his own satisfaction.

  Linda was already too full of anxieties and perplexities to trouble herself over this new complication. It seemed of little importance to her, and she could not see that it had any bearing upon the chief problem. She had no room in her mind to think of anything except Richard and Iain and herself. While she was with Iain she had been a little comforted, she had actually believed that his plan for Richard’s safety might work. But, after she had parted from him, and the magic of his presence had faded from her mind, Iain’s plan seemed childish and crude. She thought of it that night as she lay in bed—tossing and turning, sleepless with anxiety—and tried to decide whether Iain’s plan was sense or madness. Was Iain as powerful as he thought? Could he keep Richard here, at Ardfalloch, if the law gave him to Jack? Was it possible to defy the law and to hide Richard in the glen, or was it only the dream of a man who was divorced from reality? Iain lived in a different world from the world she knew; he lived in a world where might was right, where a man took what he wanted and kept it. For centuries his forbears had been a law unto themselves—kings in their own domain—and their blood ran in Iain’s veins. The inexorable strength of the law was not realised by Iain—how could he know the law’s strength? At Ardfalloch the law was represented by Mac Var—Morag’s brother—a mild-mannered man who spent most of his time digging in his garden or helping his neighbours to get in their harvest. Iain liked Mac Var, but he did not respect him as a potential force. He did not see the vast machinery behind Mac Var, the machinery that ground you out like powder.

  Linda remembered the conversation between Sir Julius and Mr. Hetherington Smith at the dance. She had scarcely heard it at the time, but now it came back to her. Sir Julius had said that the people here were decadent; that they looked backwards instead of forwards; that they lived in the past. Wasn’t that true of Iain? Linda turned over in bed and thought about it seriously. Iain was not decadent, she was sure of that, but she had sometimes thought that he lived in dreams. She had sometimes thought that he was not really living in the twentieth century. Iain’s mind moved differently from hers, differently from anybody else’s—it was a part of his charm that he was so different from other people—did this quality of difference make him a competent adviser? Linda sighed, she remembered how he had wanted to go after Jack and kill him. Was that a sign of an unbalanced mind, of the hysteria that Sir Julius had spoken of, or was it merely a sign that he was more natural than other men, less bound by convention? She supposed that it was innate in Iain, the desire to sweep an enemy from his path—that old brigand in the library (of whom Mrs. Hetherington Smith was so fond) would not have hesitated for a moment. He would have made short work of anybody who stood in his way. Linda had no illusions at all about Iain’s seriousness and strength of purpose. He had not merely said he would kill Jack Medworth, as another man might have said it in a sudden burst of anger—Iain had meant it in deadly earnest. She had been terrified that she would not be able to prevent him from doing it. She had clung to him and reasoned with him until she was limp and exhausted with the struggle.