The Black Colonel Read online

  _IV--The Opening Road_

  If this were a story invented, and not a tale of true happenings, therewould be an end when the Black Colonel rode triumphantly from the Pass.

  But, sitting alone and lonely a few days later in my room at CorgarffCastle, and reflecting on the affair, I said to myself that it was onlythe beginning. A drama of real life rarely closes with the hero inheroics, the heroine a-swoon in her beauty, and the world a-clap withadmiration.

  No doubt the Black Colonel had got away very well, almost as if he hadleapt through a lighted window, with a resounding crash of brokenglass. Well, there would be the fragments to gather up, for thefragments have always to be remembered, or they may cause harm. Here Iwas a fragment, and I asked myself into what basket I was to begathered, because, you should know, the hills give those of us whodwell among them a sense of fate--of the inevitable.

  I was awakened from these thoughts by the entrance of my lieutenant,who said, "Still sighing that you were out of the chase after the BlackColonel?"

  I answered vaguely, "A soldier who is a real soldier, which I may ormay not be, is always sorry to miss an enterprise, whether it be dutyor merely an adventure."

  "Well," he remarked, "you had not been long gone when word came fromBraemar Castle that the Black Colonel was to be in the Pass of Ballaterabout midnight, meeting some unknown person, and asking us to helpcapture him. We saw nothing of the other person, whether man or woman."

  He looked slyly at me, and I remembered having said to him that I hadhad a tryst to keep among the hills. You must not, I think, misleadpeople by telling what is untrue, but you need not tell everything ifit is going to make mischief. Mostly it is poor policy to try and ramthe truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, down a man'sthroat, because your version of it may not be his, and, anyhow, itmakes dry eating.

  My thoughts have a habit of wandering, of dreaming dreams, often whenthey should be otherwise occupied, and isn't there a bunch ofmanuscript verse somewhere in testimony of the same? Knowing this thelieutenant lighted and smoked a pipe of American tobacco, then anovelty and a luxury in the Scottish Highlands. With a wink of the eyehe asked, "Who was she, captain? Wench or maid?" And he pronouncedthe words in different tones, as if I needed to be instructed about thedifference he implied by them. A man says nothing to anarch-pleasantry like that, unless he be no man and only a babbler andboaster of his conquests. Then he has had none, and is a liar. Nosort of fellow more fills men with contempt, and women, by theirwoman's instinct, pass him by, for any confidence whatever, in word orin deed.

  "Don't let it be one of the Black Colonel's flames," said thelieutenant with a laugh, as he went out again, without the answer hehad not expected, being himself a gentleman. "It needs a long spoon tosup with that dark devil at any time, but come between him and hisrustic gallantries and you'll need a longer spoon than Corgarff Castlehappens to possess."

  The Black Colonel and I, as you will have gathered, were on differentsides in politics, though we belonged to neighbouring clans which hadmany associations; he a Farquharson, I a Gordon. He was JockFarquharson of Inverey, the last of his house, as I can say lookingback on him, and doomed, so a woman of second-sight had declared, whenhe was born, to be the last; while I, Ian Gordon, was a cadet of theBalmoral Gordons, captain in his Majesty's Highland Foot, with no moreto expect than what my commission brought me, and that was littleenough.

  He was a Jacobite, keeping that rebel flame alive in the AberdeenshireHighlands, when, on the heels of the "Forty-Five," a red and woefultime, we were half-heartedly scotching it with garrisons in the Castlesof Braemar and Corgarff. Yes, I wore the scarlet tunic of King George,thanks to family circumstances which had woven themselves before I wasborn, but the tartan lay under it, next my heart. We were rivals inwar, thrown on different sides by the fates which gamble so strangelywith mere men. Was there to be a still more vital rivalry? As hasbeen hinted, I had more than rumours of the Black Colonel's strangepowers among women. What if he had Marget Forbes in his dark eye?

  Wherever the heart is concerned you have intuition, and that is why awoman has more of such super-sense, or rather, I would say, ofwonderously delicate feeling, than a man. She needs it, being oftenerheart-strung, because the wells of her heart are more emotional.

  I suspected, from the first, why the Black Colonel wanted to meet me,and for no other reason would I have consented to meet him. But ourmeeting had been so brief, so disturbed, so futile as regards itspurpose, that I had got no light from him whatever. Still, ever sincethen I had been seeing, in the mirror of life, the face of MargetForbes, a daughter of the clan whose name she bore, a handsome lasswith a long pedigree, heiress to the lands of Corgarff, now forfeit forthe Jacobite cause, when they should come back to her line, andincidentally, but all importantly, a kinswoman both of Jock Farquharsonand myself.

  Memory is rarely honest with us, because it is imperfect, andunconsciously we tell the best account of things, but I fancy I waswondering on this text when there came at my door the sharp rap ofbony, hurried knuckles. "Enter!" I said, and in marched the corporalof the guard. His hand went easily to the salute. He had a message inhis face.

  "What is it?" said I, for I expected nothing of moment, beyond a poordevil of a Jacobite captured, or a "sma' still" raided and its rudewhisky drunk by the red-coat raiders until they were merrily "fou."

  "Sir," he answered in the parade voice which the regular soldier soonacquires, this, softened by his nice Scots drawl, "Sir, there's a manoutside an' he says he's a letter for you and that he maun gie it toyoursel'."

  "What's he like? Where does he come from? Is he friend or no friend?"

  "Canna' say, sir. I should think no friend. He's short and swack o'body, red of hair and face, wears a kilt o' Farquharson tartan, andwinna' say where he comes frae. He has a letter for you, sir, and isto deliver it himself, an' that's a' he'll tell."

  "Bring him in," I ordered, and in came, as, by now, I half expected,Red Murdo, the Black Colonel's henchman. I had seen him before, and byhearsay was more than familiar with his repute as an excellent servantto his not so excellent master.

  "A letter," he whispered in his hoarse voice, as if he did not want thecorporal to hear. I took the letter, and before I could even break theseal he was gone again, without motion of salute or further word, allquite in the Black Colonel's manner of doing things.

  It was addressed "To Captain Ian Gordon," and when I opened theenvelope and unfolded the contents I found them to commence with thesesame words and no other form of ceremony. I instantly knew the strong,irregular, aggressive and yet persuasive handwriting to be that of theBlack Colonel, but unconsciously, as a girl tries at the end of a storyto find whether happiness be there, I turned to the signature--"yourkinsman, Jock Farquharson of Inverey." What went before, when I hadtime to master it, was this:

  "These greetings, which I am inditing in the cold safety of theColonel's Bed, a fastness where no enemy has yet tracked me, though allmy true friends in the countryside know the secret roads to it, will bedelivered to you by my faithful Red Murdo, who deserves blessings,whereas I sometimes give him curses; and their purpose is to tell youexplicitly why I asked you to meet me in the Pass the other evening,since events, on which I here offer no comment, made it impossible forus to have any plain, forthright talk.

  "I'll reveal the heart of my business by recalling that there is a longassociation between our families, who have always been friends andenemies, and that the Corgarff Forbeses also come into thisassociation, and continue it, in a fashion which takes me to ourpersonal quarrel of Stuart and Guelph, because, by the exercise of alittle ingenuity, such as is permissible, and a kinsmanship such as isproper, there may emerge good seasoning for us all.

  "Pray remember that if the Corgarff Forbeses were to fail in issue, andthere is only one life between them and that failure, the life of ayoung unmarried lady, I, by descent on the distaff side, which I neednot outline in particularity, woul
d be heir to the estates; only as aJacobite outlawed, a broken man, I can inherit nothing, not evenpossess, little as it is now, my own in peace.

  "But, if I am not ill-informed, and news travels among the hills asswiftly as, we are told, it travels in the desert, King George'sadvisers would gladly return the Corgarff estates to the Forbes familyif that family had a strong man at its head and so such an influence aswould keep the region, always a key to the Highlands, I will notexactly say in order for the German king, because that would be atactless fashion of arranging, but wean it gradually from its sympathyfor Prince Charlie, and his house of misadventure and ill-luck.

  "Now, if you will be good enough to assume in me qualities for thismission and the willingness to undertake it; if you will accept thecircumstance that it would merely be a case of a remote legal heircoming into his own by a round-about way; and if you will set thosefacts in what I consider the national importance of the matter and helpit forward in a form so delicate and chivalrous that I must not evenhint it, why, you will be rendering a potent service to the cause whichenlists you and which might, who knows, enlist me also!"

  That was the letter, considered in language, crafty in purpose, really,an overture for the hand of Marget Forbes, and I sat far into thenight, while my peat fire died out in Corgarff Castle, wondering how Iwas to answer it, and, even more, how I myself stood towards the acutepersonal situation which it created. For I saw that the Black Colonelmeant to make love and do business at the same stroke, not for thefirst time, perhaps, in his life of emprise; and certainly here was nonew thing in the world's queer story.