Midwinter (Buchan)/Chapter 18
XVIII
IN WHICH THREE GENTLEMEN CONFESS THEIR NAKEDNESS
Fresh horses were found, and at four in the morning, four hours before daylight in that murky weather, Alastair and Johnson left the inn. At the first cross-roads Midwinter joined them.
"Set your mind at ease about Sir John," he said. "He will travel securely to the Cherwell side, and none but the Spoonbills will know of his journey. I think you have read him right, sir, and that he is a prosy fellow who by accident has slipped into roguery and will return gladly to his natural rut. But in case you are mistaken, he will be overlooked by my people, for we are strong in that countryside. Be advised, sir, and ride gently, for you have no bodily strength to spare, and your master will not welcome a sick man."
"Do you ride to Derby with us?" Alastair asked.
"I have business on that road and will convey you thus far," was the answer.
It was a morning when the whole earth and sky seemed suffused in moisture. Fog strung its beads on their clothes, every hedgerow tree dripped clammily, the roads were knee-deep in mud, flood-water lay in leaden streaks in the hollows of flat fields, each sluggish brook was a torrent, and at intervals the air would distil into a drenching shower. Alastair's body was still weary, but his heart was lightened. He had finished now with dalliance and was back at his old trade; and for the moment the memory of Claudia made only a warm background to the hopes of a soldier. Little daggers of doubt stabbed his thoughts—he had sacrificed another day and night in his chase of Sir John, and the Prince had now been at Derby the better part of forty hours without that report which he had promised. But surely, he consoled himself, so slight a delay could matter nothing; an army which had marched triumphant to the heart of England, and had already caused the souls of its enemies to faint, could not falter when the goal was within sight. But the anxiety hung like a malaise about the fringes of his temper and caused him now and then to spur his horse fifty yards beyond his companion.
The road they travelled ran to Derby from the south-west, and its deep ruts showed the heavy traffic it had lately borne. By it coaches, wagons and every variety of pack and riding horse had carried the timid folks of Derbyshire into sanctuaries beyond the track of the Highland army. To-day the traffic had shrunk to an occasional horseman or a farmer's wife with panniers, and a jovial huntsman in red who, from his greeting, seemed thus early to have been powdering his wig. Already the country was settling down, thought Alastair, as folk learned of the Prince's clemency and good-will. … The army would not delay at Derby, but was probably now on the move southward. It would go by Loughborough and Leicester, but cavalry patrols might show themselves on the flank to the west. At any moment some of Elcho's or Pitsligo's horse, perhaps young Tinnis himself, might canter out of the mist.
He cried to Midwinter, asking whether it would not be better to assume that the Prince had left the town, and to turn more southward so as to cut in on his march.
"Derby is the wiser goal," Midwinter answered. "It is unlikely that His Highness himself will have gone, for he will travel with the rear-guard. In three hours you will see All Saints' spire."
At eight they halted for food at a considerable village. It was Friday, and while the other two attacked a cold sirloin, Alastair broke his fast on a crust, resisting the landlord's offer of carp or eels from the Trent on the ground that they would take too long to dress. Then to pass the time while the others finished their meal he wandered into the street, and stopped by the church door. The place was open, and he entered to find a service proceeding and a thin man in a black gown holding forth to an audience of women. No Jacobite this parson, for his text was from the 18th chapter of Second Chronicles. "Wilt thou go up with me to Ramoth-Gilead?" and the sermon figured the Prince as Ahab of Israel and Ramoth-Gilead as that (unspecified) spot where he was to meet his fate.
"A bold man the preacher," thought Alastair, as he slipped out, "to croak like a raven against a triumphing cause." But it appeared there were other bold men in the place. He stopped opposite a tavern, from which came the sound of drunken mirth, and puzzled at its cause, when the day's work should be beginning. Then he reflected that with war in the next parish men's minds must be unsettled and their first disposition to stray towards ale-houses. Doubtless these honest fellows were celebrating the deliverance of England.
But the words, thickly uttered, which disentangled themselves from the tavern were other than he had expected:
"George is magnanimous,
Subjects unanimous,
Peace to us bring."
ran the ditty, and the chorus called on God to save the usurper. He stood halted in a perplexity which was half anger, for he had a notion to give these louts the flat of his sword for their treason. Then someone started an air he knew too well:
"O Brother Sawney, hear you the news?
Twang 'em, we'll bang 'em and
Hang 'em up all.
An army's just coming without any shoes,
Twang 'em, we'll bang 'em, and
Hang 'em up all."
It was that accursed air "Lilibulero" which had drummed His Highness's grandfather out of England. Surely the ale-house company must be a patrol of Kingston's or Richmond's, that had got perilously becalmed thus far north. He walked to the window and cast a glance inside. No, they were heavy red-faced yokels, the men-folk of the village. He had a second of consternation at the immensity of the task of changing this leaden England.
As they advanced the roads were better peopled, market folk for the most part returning from Derby, and now and then parties of young men who cried news to women who hung at the corners where farm tracks debouched from the highway. In all these folk there was an air of expectancy and tension natural in a land on the confines of war. The three travellers bettered their pace. "In an hour," Midwinter told them, "we reach the Ashbourne road and so descend on Derby from the north." As the minutes passed, Alastair's excitement grew till he had hard work to conform his speed to that of his companions. He longed to hasten on—not from anxiety, for that had left him, but from a passion to see his Prince again, to be with comrades-in-arms, to share in the triumph of these days of marvel. Somewhere in Derby His Highness would now be kneeling at mass; he longed to be at his side in that sacrament of dedication.
Then as they topped a ridge in a sudden clearing of the weather a noble spire rose some miles ahead, and around it in the flat of a wide valley hung the low wisps of smoke which betokened human dwellings. It did not need Midwinter's cry of "All Saints" to tell Alastair that he was looking at the place which held his master and the hope of the Cause. By tacit consent the three men spurred their beasts, and rode into a village, the long street of which ran north and south. "’Tis the high-road from Ashbourne to Derby," said Midwinter. "To the right, sirs, unless you are for Manchester and Scotland."
But there was that about the village which made each pull on his bridle rein. It was as still as a churchyard. Every house door was closed, and at the little windows could be seen white faces and timid eyes. The inn door had been smashed and the panes in its front windows, and a cask in the middle of the street still trickled beer from its spigot. It might have been the night after a fair, but instead it was broad daylight, and the after-taste was less of revelry than of panic.
The three men slowly and silently moved down the street, and the heart of one of them was the prey of a leaping terror. Scared eyes, like those of rabbits in a snare, were watching them from the windows. In the inn-yard there was no sign of a soul, except the village idiot who was playing ninepins with bottles. Midwinter hammered on a back door, but there was no answer. But as they turned again towards the street they were aware of a mottled face that watched them from a side window. Apparently the face was satisfied with their appearance, for the window was slightly opened and a voice cried "Hist!" Alastair turned and saw a troubled fat countenance framed in the sash of a pantry casement.
"Be the salvages gone, gen'lemen?" the voice asked. "The murderin' heathen has blooded my best cow to make their beastly porridge."
"We have but now arrived," said Alastair. "We are for Derby. Pray, sir, what pestilence has stricken this place?"
"For Derby," said the man. "Ye'll find a comfortable town, giving thanks to Almighty God and cleansin' the lousiness of its habitation. What pestilence, says you? A pestilence, verily, good sir, for since cockcrow the rebel army has been meltin' away northwards like the hosts o' Sennacherib before the blast of the Lord. Horse and foot and coaches, and the spawn o' Rome himself in the midst o' them. Not but what he be a personable young man, with his white face and pretty white wig, and his sad smile, and where he was the rebels marched like an army. But there was acres of breechless rabbledom at his heels that thieved like pyots. Be they all passed, think ye?"
The chill at Alastair's heart turned to ice.
"But the Prince is in Derby," he stammered. "He marches south."
"Not so, young sir," said the man. "I dunno the why of it, but since cockcrow he and his rascality has been fleein' north. Old England's too warm for the vermin and they're hastin' back to their bogs."
The head was suddenly withdrawn, since the man saw something which was still hid from the others. There was a sound of feet in the road, the soft tread which deer make when they are changing their pasture. From his place in the alley Alastair saw figures come into sight, a string of outlandish figures that without pause or word poured down the street. There were perhaps a score of them—barefoot Highlanders, their ragged kilts buckled high on their bodies, their legs blue with cold, their shirts unspeakably foul and tattered, their long hair matted into elf-locks. Each man carried plunder, one a kitchen clock slung on his back by a rope, another a brace of squalling hens, another some goodman's wraprascal. Their furtive eyes raked the houses, but they did not pause in the long loping trot with which of a moonlight night they had often slunk through the Lochaber passes. They wore the Macdonald tartan, and the familiar sight seemed to strip from Alastair's eyes the last film of illusion.
So that was the end of the long song. Gone the velvet and steel of a great crusade, the honourable hopes, the chivalry and the high adventure, and what was left was this furtive banditti slinking through the mud like the riff-raff of a fair. … It was too hideous to envisage, and the young man's mind was mercifully dulled after the first shattering certainty. Mechanically the three turned into the street.
The courage of the inhabitants was reviving. One or two men had shown themselves, and one fellow with a flageolet was starting a tune. Another took it up, and began to sing.
"O Brother Sawney, hear you the news?"
and presently several joined in the chorus of
"Twang 'em, we'll bang 'em, and
Hang 'em up all."
"Follow me," said Midwinter, and they followed him beyond the houses, and presently turned off into a path that ran among woods into the dale. In Alastair's ears the accursed tune rang like the voice of thousands, till it seemed that all England behind him was singing it, a scornful valedictory to folly.
He dismounted in a dream and found himself set by the hearth in the well-scrubbed kitchen of a woodland inn. Midwinter disappeared and returned with three tankards of home-brewed, which he distributed among them. No one spoke a word, Johnson sprawling on a chair with his chin on his breast and his eyes half-closed, while his left hand beat an aimless tattoo, Midwinter back in the shadows, and Alastair in the eye of the fire, unseeing and absorbed. The palsy was passing from the young man's mind, and he was enduring the bitterness of returning thought, like the pain of the blood flowing back to a frozen limb. No agony ever endured before in his life, not even the passion of disquiet when he had been prisoner in the hut and had overheard Sir John Norreys's talk, had so torn at the roots of his being.
For it was clear that on him and on him alone had the Cause shipwrecked. At some hour yesterday the fainthearts in the Council had won, and the tragic decision had been taken, the Prince protesting—he could see the bleached despair in his face and hear the hopeless pleading in his voice. He imagined Lochiel and others of the stalwarts pleading for a day's delay, delay which might bring the lost messenger, himself, with the proofs that would convince the doubters. All was over now, for a rebellion on the defensive was a rebellion lost. With London at their mercy, with Cumberland and the Whig Dukes virtually in flight, and a dumb England careless which master was hers, they had turned their back on victory and gone northward to chaos and defeat. And all because of their doubt of support, which was even then waiting in the West for their summons. Mr. Nicholas Kyd had conquered in his downfall, and in his exile would chuckle over the discomfiture of his judges.
But it had been his own doing—his and none other's. Providence had provided an eleventh-hour chance, which he had refused. Had he ridden straight from Brightwell, he could have been with the Prince in the small hours of the morning, time enough to rescind the crazy decision and set the army on the road for Loughborough and St. James's. But he had put his duty behind him for a whim. Not a whim of pleasure—for he had sacrificed his dearest hopes—but of another and a lesser duty. A perverse duty, it seemed to him now, the service of a woman rather than of his King. Great God, what a tangle was life! He felt no bitterness against any mortal soul, not even against the oafs who were now singing "George is magnanimous." He and he alone must bear the blame, since in a high mission he had let his purpose be divided, and in a crisis had lacked that singleness of aim which is the shining virtue of the soldier. … His imagination, heated to fever point, made a panorama of tragic scenes. He saw the Prince's young face thin and haggard and drawn, looking with hopeless eyes into the northern mists, a Pretender now for evermore, when he might have been a King. He saw his comrades, condemned to lost battles with death or exile at the end of them. He saw his clan, which might have become great again, reduced to famished vagrants, like the rabble of Macdonalds seen an hour ago scurrying at the tail of the army. … That knot of caterans was the true comment on the tragedy. Plunderers of old wives' plenishing when they should have been a King's bodyguard in the proud courts of palaces!
The picture maddened him with its bitter futility. He dropped his head on his breast and cried like a heartbroken child. "Ah, my grief, my grief! I have betrayed my Prince and undone my people. There is no comfort for me any more in the world." At the cry Johnson lifted his head, and stared with eyes not less tragic than his own.
Midwinter had carried that day at his saddle-bow an oddly-shaped case which never left him. Back in the shadow he had opened it and taken out his violin, and now drew from it the thin fine notes which were the prelude to his playing. Alastair did not notice the music for a little, but gradually familiar chords struck in on his absorption and awoke their own memories. It was the air of "Diana," which was twined with every crisis of the past weeks. The delicate melody filled the place like a vapour, and to the young man brought not peace, but a different passion.
A passion of tenderness was in it, a wayward wounded beauty. Claudia's face again filled his vision, the one face that in all his life had brought love into his bustling soldierly moods and moved his heart to impulses which aforetime he would have thought incredible. Love had come to him and he had passed it by, but not without making sacrifice, for to the goddess he had offered his most cherished loyalties. Now it was all behind him—but by God, he did not, he would not regret it. He had taken the only way, and if it had pleased Fate to sport cruelly with him, that was no fault of his. He had sacrificed one loyalty to a more urgent, and with the thought bitterness went out of his soul. Would Lochiel, would the Prince blame him? Assuredly no. Tragedy had ensued, but the endeavour had been honest. He saw the ironic pattern of life spread out beneath him, as a man views a campaign from a mountain, and he came near to laughter—laughter with an undertone of tears.
Midwinter changed the tune, and the air was now that which he had played that night on Otmoor in the camp of the moor-men.
"Three naked men we be,
Stark aneath the blackthorn tree."
He laid down his violin. "I bade you call me to your aid, Alastair Maclean, if all else failed you and your pride miscarried. Maybe that moment has come. We in this place are three naked men."
"I am bare to the bone," said Alastair, "I have given up my lady, and I have failed in duty to my Prince. I have no rag of pride left on me, nor ambition, nor hope."
Johnson spoke. "I am naked enough, but I had little to lose. I am a scholar and a Christian and, I trust, a gentleman, but I am bitter poor, and ill-favoured, and sore harassed by bodily affliction. Naked, ay, naked as when I came from the womb."
Midwinter moved into the firelight, with a crooked smile on his broad face. "We be three men in like case," he said. "Nakedness has its merits and its faults. A naked man travels fast and light, for he has nothing that he can lose, and his mind is free from cares, so that it is better swept and garnished for the reception of wisdom. But if he be naked he is also defenceless, and the shod feet of the world can hurt him. You have been sore trampled on, sirs. One has lost a lady whom he loved as a father, and the other a mistress and a Cause. Naturally your hearts are sore. Will you that I help in the healing of them? Will you join me in Old England, which is the refuge of battered men?"
Alastair looked up and gently shook his head. "For me," he said, "I go up to Ramoth-Gilead, like the King of Israel I heard the parson speak of this morning. It is fated that I go there and it is fated that I fail. Having done so much to wreck the Cause, the least I can do is to stand by it to the end. I am convinced that the end is not far off, and if it be also the end of my days I am content."
"And I," said Johnson, "have been minded since this morning to get me a sword and fight in His Highness's army."
Alastair looked at the speaker with eyes half affectionate, half amused.
"Nay, that I do not permit. In Scotland we strive on our own ground and in our own quarrel, and I would involve no Englishman in what is condemned to defeat. You have not our sentiments, sir, and you shall not share our disasters. But I shall welcome your company to within sight of Ramoth-Gilead."
"I offer the hospitality of Old England," said Midwinter.
There was no answer and he went on—
"It is balm for the wearied, sirs, and a wondrous opiate for the unquiet. If you have lost all baggage, you retire to a world where baggage is unknown. If you seek wisdom, you will find it, and you will forget alike the lust of life and the dread of death."
"Can you teach me to forget the fear of death?" Johnson asked sharply. "Hark you, sir, I am a man of stout composition, for there is something gusty and gross in my humour which makes me careless of common fear. I will face an angry man, or mob, or beast with equanimity, even with joy. But the unknown terrors of death fill me, when I reflect on them, with the most painful forebodings. I conjecture, and my imagination wanders in labyrinths of dread. I most devoutly believe in the living God, and I stumblingly attempt to serve Him, but 'tis an awful thing to fall into His hand."
"In Old England," said Midwinter, "they look on death as not less natural and kindly than the shut of evening. They lay down their heads on the breast of earth as a flower dies in the field."
Johnson was looking with abstracted eyes to the misty woods beyond a lozenged window, and he replied like a man thinking his own thoughts aloud.
"The daedal earth!" he muttered. "Poets, many poets, have sung of it, and I have had glimpses of it. … A sweet and strange thing when a man quits the servitude of society and goes to nurse with Gaea. I remember …"
Then a new reflection seemed to change his mood and bring him to his feet with his hands clenched.
"Tut, sir," he cried, "these are but brutish consolations. I can find that philosophy in pagan writers, and it has small comfort for a Christian. I thank you, but I have no part in your world of woods and mountains. I am better fitted for a civil life, and must needs return to London and bear the burden of it in a garret. But I am not yet persuaded as to that matter of taking arms. I have a notion that I am a good man of my hands."
Midwinter's eyes were on Alastair, who smiled and shook his head.
"You offer me Old England, but I am of another race and land. I must follow the road of my fathers."
"That is your answer?"
"Nay, it is not all my answer. Could you understand the Gaelic, or had I my fingers now on the chanter-reed, I could give it more fully. You in England must keep strictly to the high-road, or flee to the woods—one or the other, for there is no third way. We of the Highlands carry the woods with us to the high-roads of life. We are natives of both worlds, wherefore we need renounce neither. But my feet must tread the high-road till my strength fails."
"It was the answer I looked for," said Midwinter, and he rose and slung his violin on his arm. "Now we part, gentlemen, and it is not likely that we shall meet again. But nevertheless you are sealed of our brotherhood, for you are of the Naked Men, since the film has gone from your sight and you have both looked into your own hearts. You can never again fear mortal face or the tricks of fortune, for you are men indeed, and can confront your Maker with honest eyes. Farewell, brother." He embraced Alastair and kissed him on the cheek, and held for a second Johnson's great hand in his greater. Then he left the room, and a minute later a horse's hooves drummed on the stones of the little yard.
For a little the two left behind sat in silence. Then Johnson spoke:
"My dear young lady should by this time be across Trent. I take it that she is safe from all perils of the road in Her Grace's carriage." Then he took up a poker and stirred the logs. "Clear eyes are for men an honourable possession, but they do not make for happiness. I pray God that those of my darling child may to the end of a long life be happily blinded."