An hour and a half later Æneas came through Drimdorran garden, his hat in his hand, and his coat thrown open to the wind of night, for he was melting from the heat of an outrageous fire in a room where airlessness and his own commotion suffocated. So rapt was he in agitating thoughts he saw at first the dovecote lit, and even stared at it, without his mind’s attention. He had almost passed the path that led to it, when its light went out, and thus gave a jolt to his curiosity. The tower had played so strange a part in the revelations lately made and now so baffling, that he was seized with a desire to find out who was in it at so odd an hour, and for a moment he was half inclined to think it might be a repentant girl.
He went through the thicket on his tiptoes, and just as he had reached its heart he heard the door pushed softly shut. For a little he stood hesitant, and then had a queer illusion. It was that all this past month’s happenings were a dream; that he had fallen asleep while seeking for his pupils, and that Margaret was behind the door with the lantern-candle smouldering. In the grip of this strange fancy forth he went, and pushing the door ajar, slid in. Again he fumbled in his coat and struck a light. The first sparks showed him Ninian! He almost cried out loud to see that face where should be Margaret’s.
‘What in fortune’s name are you doing here?’ he asked, and Ninian made no reply but lit the lantern.
‘What notion brought ye here?’ he said when the wick had caught. ‘How kent ye it was open?’
Æneas did as he had done with Margaret when she had asked that question; he pointed to the window.
‘My grief!’ said Ninian, ‘I meant to sort that,’ and he hurriedly stuffed sacks into the opening. ‘What said the old man to ye? Did ye see him?’
‘So much as is left of him,’ said Æneas, with a catch in his voice. ‘The man is shattered so greatly I was wae to look at him.’ He wiped his brow and stared about him vacantly. ‘I felt in front of him my strength, my youth, my anger, and my hopes a sort of crime. Oh, Ninian! Ninian! what breast of man who likes his fellows could withstand a sight like yon? Can any pang be sorer to our manhood than to see a creature, made like us, with every spark of what ennobles us and makes us other than the brutes, stamped out of him? Everything gone! Health, cool reason, self-respect, and nothing left but a cringing bag of bones and shameful terrors. … It humbles, Ninian! It is an affront to the race. I would take the poor wretch, broken, in below a nook of plaid and hide him from the trees and flowers, for they would grue at him. I declare to God I share his scathe and shame; they’re mine, too; they’re all mankind’s. You and I have seen him; for pity’s sake and for our human pride can we not conceal him?’
He was wrought up to a feeling that was painful even to witness; his lips were quivering. Nothing in the dovecote caught his eye – the scattered grain nor Ninian’s stern demeanour that changed at the close of that impetuous burst to a look that had some hue of tenderness.
‘Are ye sorry for him?’ asked the other.
‘I ache to the very soul with pity for myself and him!’
Ninian puckered up his face. ‘I can peety, too,’ said he, ‘and just as keen as you. I never like to see a broken man: it might be, with a twist of chance, mysel’; for we are like the fir-trees, some will grow up straight and others crooked, and the woodman kens not why. Oh yes, I can peety, too, but I can peety most the man that’s wronged, and better than peety in a man is justice. Peety and justice should be like a body’s lugs – aye close enough together and both listening, but they never meet. … What lies was he telling ye?’
Æneas sat on the bin. ‘It was just what we thought,’ he said. ‘Craft, greed, spite, and cowardice. He has confessed it all, and though he has wronged me cruelly, I have hardly a spark of anger left for him.’
‘If I was you,’ said Ninian drily, ‘I would not let out the light of anger altogether; I would keep a wee bit griosach for the morning just in case.’
‘He admits he urged my father off to France, and was in correspondence with him for a year, and that deliberately he kept my uncle ignorant of the truth.’
‘What for? What for?’ cried Ninian. ‘I’m sure he’s quirking ye!’
‘No. The thing is quite patent. He was in mortal terror to do anything fourteen years ago that should expose his own connivance in my father’s hiding. Then again he feared that any dispute might arise as to the validity of his possession of Drimdorran. You see he had himself at first believed the rumour of my father’s drowning, and before he learned the truth from Lovat, he had claimed the property and quarrelled with my uncle. His greed to keep it when he learned my father still was living prompted him to clear him out the country and hush the whole affair for he felt that only my father’s death could justify a closure on the estate. My uncle couldn’t clear the debt, he knew—’
‘Stop!’ said Ninian sniffing. ‘Do ye smell soot?’
‘No,’ said Æneas with surprise and some impatience.
‘I could swear I do,’ said Ninian. ‘Never mind! Go on wi’ Sandy’s lies.’
‘Do you doubt him, Mr Campbell?’
‘Yes, I doubt him, Mr Macmaster! I would doubt him if it was his deathbed and I was his priest. Ye’re far too good and simple, Æneas, for a man like yon. What way did yor father die, and where?’
‘I am coming to that. Duncanson, part from spite at my uncle, as he now admits, but mostly, as he says with abject shame, to stick to what he had prematurely grabbed, never divulged that he was keeping my father abroad, supplied with Drimdorran rents. And just as we suspected, he destroyed my father’s letters to my uncle and to me.’
Ninian started. ‘Let me think!’ said he, and held his chin. ‘Well, well! What else?’ he said in a little, with a steely glitter in his eyes.
‘My father lived a shiftless life in France—’ A cloud came over Æneas’ manner. ‘He went about from place to place without a settlement. All Duncanson’s letters to him were addressed to the care of a Scot, Macfarlane, with a shop in Havre; and the thing came to an end with a letter from Macfarlane sending back the last of Duncanson’s. My father died in Paris—’
‘Who saw him die?’ shot Ninian.
Æneas wrung his hands, with his visage furrowed. ‘That is the bitter thing!’ he said. ‘That is – that is what revolts me! I have only the old man’s word for it, but he says my father at the last – … He changed his politics. … He mixed among the Jacobites, and sent their plans—’
‘A spy!’ cried Ninian, and spat. ‘A turncoat spy! Oh-h-h, isn’t that the damned rogue!’
‘My father, sir?’ said Æneas, whitening.
‘No, no, no, no! Ye silly boy! But Duncanson! I knew your father little, Æneas, but I knew his stamp and know his kin. There never was a traitor named Macmaster! There, sure enough is Sandy lying. Blow on your griosach now, and have a fire; ye never can wrestle wi’ a rogue until ye hate him.’
‘You hearten me!’ cried Æneas. ‘I doubted it! I doubted it! Oh, Ninian, if you could understand what it means to me to have my father’s memory clean! It was the last that was left to me of that romance that made the Highlands cry in me like trumpets. And what have I seen? – the ruffian chiefs with their men for instruments, their cunning and their crimes; a land held under bondage to mere names! More poetry is in the life of the poorest fisher on Loch Fyne! But I couldna think my father such a man, nor moved by the springs that actuate such men as Lovat. He must have had some gleam, some vision worth the dying for; ’twas that that sent me North. I went a prince, in a mood of glory, and I came back a beggar, for I saw nothing there I would lift my hat to. There was only left for me the hope that there might, one time, have really been a cause that justified my father’s ruin. His story was the only scrap left to me of my old romantics, and the sorest blow I have had in my life was this tale of Duncanson’s. He says my father was suspected by his friends and challenged, that he died in the encounter twelve months after he left Scotland, and no one knows now where he lies.’
‘The lying’s up in the big house with the candles in’t,’ said Ninian hotly. ‘Where’s Macfarlane?’
‘He’s dead, according to Duncanson. He died ten years ago.’
‘And where’s the letters of your father and Macfarlane?’
‘That I asked, of course. But they’re no longer in existence. Duncanson had kept them in his desk till the day he fancied I had searched it, and then in terror of exposure he destroyed them all.’
‘My grief! isn’t he the master-hand? Ye’re in grips wi’ the cleverest scamp in Scotland!’
He took off a shoe and shook the grains from it, the mildewed corn was to his ankles. Æneas for the first time saw with surprise the signs of questing.
‘What were you doing here?’ asked he.
‘Seeking. Just seeking what’s no in’t that I can see – the cause of Sandy’s terrors. When you were gone from your uncle’s house I took Jennet home and came up the glen to meet you. It wasna altogether to meet you either, but to glisk again through this place. I was here tonight before and put it to the probe like any gauger – Can ye tell me this? Did Sandy leave the house this evening?’
‘He did,’ said Æneas. ‘He was found in the park two hours ago with neither hat nor cloak on by the Muileach, who missed him, and was sure he was in the river.’
‘That’s just what I was thinking! It wasna the river he was for at all, but here. I left the door shut close wi’ a stone at the foot to latch it, and when I came back just now the stone was gone and the door was locked. It didna fash me much to burst it in, for I had loosed the staple. I’m feared he’s got the better of me, Æneas; he was here for something that I failed to see. I thought I had searched in everything, but no! – there was something I overlooked, and Duncanson has got it.’
He grimaced with vexation.
‘Of what nature?’ queried Æneas.
‘That’s just what I canna tell ye! But this I’ll stake my soul on – the end of my hank was here! It’s no’ in the desk at all! It was something in the doocot. In the talk I had wi’ Duncanson I got that quite plain. Man, I played him like a fish! … Did you say oucht about his trappin’ ye in Inverness?’
Æneas flushed. ‘Upon my soul,’ said he, ‘I couldna.’
‘What way?’
‘It seemed a trivial thing in the light of what he said about my father. And then – and then he looked so wretched! With a load of such disgrace on him, I felt to add another roguery to his charge.’
Ninian shrugged. ‘Ye beat all!’ said he. ‘But it doesna matter. He ran off from me wi’ his hands on his lugs before I got that length. But I got this from him – there was nothing in his desk that night he needed to bother about beyond the doocot key. His whole concern – what put him bedfast on his back – was this, that you were in the doocot. Now what was here that he should be afraid ye might find out?’
Once more Æneas reddened. ‘You said yourself it might well distress him to think his girl was here.’
‘I did!’ said Ninian. ‘But I ken better now. He never thought for a moment she was here until I told him so, mysel’, this very evening. It was no consideration for his girl that vexed him; it was you being in the doocot, and he thought that ye were searching. If he had not something o’ the most dangerous character hidden here, what for should he be troubled at your looking? Tell me that, ille!’
‘You have found nothing?’
‘Not one iota! It was here, I’ll swear, when I came first, and now it’s gone. I’ve ransacked over again; there’s nothing here now but trash and useless papers.’
‘What sort of papers?’ asked Æneas.
‘Oh, just the kind that a man of the law would have – the kind that show men trust each other even less in the days of written sheepskins than they did when they held by swords. I’ll warrant ye I looked them, for I’m sure it must be papers Sandy’s hiding. It might have been the very letters from your father or Macfarlane! … But no!’ he added quickly. ‘There never was Macfarlane! The mind that made your father out a spy made up Macfarlane.’
He took up the haft of a pick and beat on the dovecote wall. ‘Cry out!’ said he. ‘Cry out! Oh, Æneas! if lime had not the heart burned out of it, this place would tell me what I’m wanting. It kens what troubles Duncanson! There’s no’ a hole in this house he hasna boarded up to keep birds out. It was done when he got the property; the wood looks fresh as yesterday’s but tastes of years of weather. What for did he take this trouble? Ninian can tell ye that! Wherever birds are breeding will come folk, and he was not for folk about his doocot. There was here the proof – and not in the desk – that he had plucked your father; ay, and worse! By mankind unbeheld your father died, and that grey rogue is the worst who was ever whelped, who sent Prim Campbell to her cell! But I’m no done wi’ him yet; come you away down home, my hero, and we’ll see your uncle Alan.’
Without another word he blew the lantern out, and this time did not even trouble with the door, but left it swinging open.
But on the threshold he sniffed again, and asked again if Æneas smelled soot. ‘Ye don’t?’ he said with disappointment. ‘I could swear I do, and maybe it’s the lantern.’