No sign yet. He peered through the window down the quiet road, the hushed houses standing to attention behind their prim hedges. He sighed as he felt a hankering for Edinburgh’s humming gray stone tenements.
Ah, was that him approaching? A young man stalked along the leafy road. Pernickety as a wading bird probing stones he stopped at each entrance, cocking his head before pottering on. He reached the right gate and screwed up his eyes at the ivy-draped walls. Starting as he noticed the model of the lighthouse by the gate post, he nodded at the name Skerryvore on the wall and scurried up to the front door. The bell clanged. It sounded through the house, but he seemed too agitated to wait for an answer. He darted past the French windows toward the side of the house where the lawn sloped down into a steep gully, glossy with rhododendrons. His steps faltered.
Louis decided it was time to rescue the poor fellow and strolled out of the side door. The man jumped as he heard the hinges creak.
“Ah, Mr. Ferguson? Do come in this way. You found my retreat without too much difficulty?”
The man stood dumbstruck until Louis walked up to him, holding out his hand.
“Er … yes indeed, sir. Thank you for agreeing to see me.” He lunged at Louis’s hand as if it were a flailing rope on a storm-battered ship.
“What do you think of my home-away-from-home? My miniature Scottish glen, my wife calls it.” He grinned. “Though what does she know as a mere American? Still she’s done miracles. Planting trees and making paths with seats where I can recline and think deep thoughts. Do come inside.”
He led Ferguson into a large airy room fitted out as a study, with a glowing fire in the grate. Apart from a desk and a hard chair the only furniture was a well-worn armchair and a daybed. The russet oriental rug in the center of the room had nearly disappeared under heaps of books, craning toward each other like half-timbered houses across a narrow lane. Landscapes were displayed on the walls—mountains, waterfalls, and sea cliffs. Among them was a portrait of Louis. It showed him walking toward the corner of a drawing room. On the opposite side of the picture was the suggestion of another figure, indicated by a swirl of fabric and a pointing bare foot. Louis smiled as he noticed his visitor staring at it.
“Your accent sounds American, Mr. Ferguson, although your name suggests Scottish forebears.”
“Well, I do believe so, although I have Irish and German ancestry, too.”
Louis gestured for his guest to take the armchair while he lowered himself into a seat behind a desk laden with books and papers. He shrugged a blood-red shawl over his shoulders. “I apologize for looking like an ancient crone with this decrepit old thing. It’s called a poncho, I believe. But I find the summer wind a little chill, even this far south. Fire away with your questions.” He folded his arms and ran his fingers over the nap of his black velvet jacket. Tilting back on his chair he perched his feet on the edge of the desk.
He watched as Samuel Ferguson shifted in his seat. Drawing out a notebook and pencil from his jacket pocket, he stroked his sparse moustache, “Well, our readers are eager to know what inspired you to write Kidnapped. It’s a very different work from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, if I may say so. Are you perhaps returning to adventure stories like Treasure Island?”
“Back to the boys’ yarns, you mean?” Louis replied sharply.
Ferguson flushed. “I didn’t mean to suggest that Kidnapped and Treasure Island were merely children’s books. The action appeals to young minds, of course, but there is also a subtle portrayal of character.”
Louis shrugged, “Forgive me for being peremptory but I’m a little sensitive on the subject. Some critics dismissed Treasure Island as only a boys’ book. When it was successful, they changed their tune. To answer your question. I’ve long wanted to write a story set in my homeland but it was only after traveling abroad that I felt able to do so.”
“May I ask you about your choice of title? You see, sir, as an American, I may have misunderstood the meaning of this word. I’ve always taken kidnapped to mean someone who’s been taken prisoner so that his family has to pay a ransom to release him. What you describe is something different. David Balfour is captured in order to sell him into servitude. Now, the abomination of slavery stained our nation until recent times. A Negro could be bought and sold as if he were a beast of burden. But I hadn’t realized that white men could be treated like that in Europe, or at least not in recent history.”
“Mmm … an interesting point. I don’t think it happened regularly here, but there were certainly stories of poor Highlanders being bundled aboard a ship with the connivance of a landlord. It was kept secret of course, like the rest of the terrible treatment meted out after Culloden. I’ve always known about it, but for the life of me I couldn’t tell you where I first heard of it.”
Ferguson nodded and scribbled some notes down. “Again, if I could ask you about the historical background which will not be familiar to American readers? In the States there was, and is, a gulf between Yankees and Southerners. It seems to me that your heroes, David Balfour and Alan Breck Stewart, represent a similar divide between Lowlanders and Highlanders.”
“Aye, you’re right. They have opposing virtues—Highland courage versus Lowland caution.”
“You’re from the Lowlands yourself, I believe, and yet your portrayal of Alan is very sympathetic. How did you achieve that?”
Louis leaned forward and flicked a hank of hair behind his ear while he considered the question.
“I congratulate you, Mr. Ferguson. You’ve identified something I can’t explain. My family are Lowland Scots through and through. Practical, no-nonsense sort of people who built lighthouses. Even my old nurse, Cummy, was from Fife and fiercely proud of it. So where did the Highland influence come from?” He cleared his throat. “Yet coiled deep within me in bone and blood is this knowledge of the Highlands. Imagination can’t be tied down. As a writer I have an idea. I warp the loom but the weave of the cloth comes from dreams beyond my control. I was often ill as a child and when I was delirious my visions would melt into reality so that the two couldn’t be distinguished. If I were being fanciful, I would say that my inspiration comes from hidden creatures, colored brown-gray like sealskin.”
He looked sideways at Ferguson who was sitting motionless, creasing his brow and sucking his pencil. Louis’s shoulders heaved but his laughter turned into a fit of coughing. He slammed his feet back on the floor and groped in his jacket pocket. Hauling out a handkerchief, he turned away to spit out blood-speckled phlegm.
Ferguson leaped to his feet, looking alarmed, “May I help in any way? A glass of water perhaps?”
Louis shook his head, “It’ll pass. Just give me a minute,” he gasped, wiping his mouth. He could see Ferguson peering at the portrait again, especially at the partial figure at the edge of the canvas. As the coughing subsided, he said, “It’s Fanny. She told John Singer Sargent that she was only a cipher and a shadow. He took her at her word and put only part of her in the picture.” Ferguson looked sheepish.
“You must think me a queer fish altogether, with these strange ramblings,” Louis said.
“Not at all. I’m honored that you should share your thoughts with me.”
“It’s a strange sensation. There’s a presence there, images just out of reach. A wild sea, a galloping horseman, a fire in the darkness. The stuff of nightmares dissolved by daylight.” He sighed. “It’s beyond my ken but I tried to show the pride of the Highlander and the canniness of the Lowland mind.”
“Will you write a sequel? There is surely more to be told about the two men.”
“I hope so although maybe not—”
He started coughing again and the inside door juddered open. “What’s going on? I heard you spluttering for breath. I only agreed to that reviewer coming if you didn’t get overexcited,” a woman scolded.
She glowered at Ferguson. “Have you been exhausting my husband? You know he has delicate health?”
Ferguson jumped up, his notebook dropping to the floor.
“Fanny, my dear, this is Mr. Samuel Ferguson, a compatriot of yours. He’s innocent of all charges of upsetting me. It was my laughing that brought on the wretched cough.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Stevenson,” Ferguson stuttered. The woman continued to frown.
“Mr. Ferguson has been admiring your beautiful garden, Fanny.”
She made no reply but moved to stand beside her husband, chafing his arm.
“Your husband told me how you have turned the garden into a miniature Scotland.”
A clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half-hour before she replied, “I wanted it to be somewhere where he could feel inspiration.” Her ruffled feathers seemed to be settling. “I’ve planted fruit trees and tiger lilies, too.”
“And there’s a dovecote, kennels and stables, too. A veritable Noah’s Ark.” Louis squeezed his wife’s hand. He smiled to himself, thinking how the three of them formed an ill-assorted menagerie. Fanny with her dumpy figure was a bustling hen. Samuel Ferguson in his ill-advised tweeds with their startling scarlet and emerald check was an exotic but timid wader. What about himself? With his spiky limbs and bony head he feared that he resembled a pterodactyl, or more generously, a hunched gray heron.
Ferguson bent to retrieve his notebook. He scanned Fanny and Louis anxiously. Fanny’s expression was disapproving but Louis winked at him. Ferguson opened his mouth to speak but his nose twitched and he let out a trumpeting sneeze. As he scrabbled in his pocket for his handkerchief, Fanny screamed, “You’ve brought a cold with you. How could you? Louis must be kept away from germs.”
She lunged at him, dragging him toward the door. Louis huddled his shoulders deeper into his shawl, shaking his head as the reporter was hustled outside. Ferguson tripped over the step as she crashed the door behind him.
“Well, my dear, you defend me as well as the geese that warned the Ancient Romans of invaders,” he said as Fanny returned. “I have only one concern. I heard a clatter as Mr. Ferguson beat his retreat. Naturally I hope he didn’t hurt himself, but I would be even more worried if he knocked over the model of the Skerryvore Lighthouse. Papa would never forgive me if that monstrosity was damaged.”