Corporal Cameron of the North West Mounted Police Part 19

His last day in the Glen Allan spent making his painful way through the cottages, leaving his farewell, and with each some slight gift of remembrance. It was for him, indeed, a pilgrimage of woe. It was not only that his heart roots were in the Glen and knit round every stick and stone of it; it was not that he felt he was leaving behind him a love and loyalty as deep and lasting as life itself. It was that in tearing himself from them he could make no response to the dumb appeal in the eyes that followed him with adoration and fidelity: "Wherefore do you leave us at all?" and "Why do you make no promise of return?" To that dumb appeal there was no answer possible from one who carried on his heart for himself, and on his life for some few others, and among these his own father, the terrible brand of the criminal. It was this grim fact that stained black the whole landscape of his consciousness, and that hung like a pall of death over every living and delightsome thing in the garden of his soul. While none could, without challenge, condemn him, yet his own tongue refused to proclaim his innocence.

Every face he loved drove deeper into his heart his pain. The deathless loyalty and unbounded pride of the Glen folk rebuked him, without their knowing, for the dishonour he had done them. The Glen itself, the hills, the purpling heather, the gleaming loch, how dear to him he had never known till now, threw in his face a sad and silent reproach. Small wonder that the Glen, that Scotland had become intolerable to him. With this bitter burden on his heart it was that young Mr. Allan went his way through the Glen making his farewells, not daring to indulge the luxury of his grief, and with never a word of return.

His sister, who knew all, and who would have carried--oh! how gladly!--on her own heart, and for all her life long, that bitter burden, pleaded to be allowed to go with him on what she knew full well was a journey of sorrow and sore pain, but this he would not permit.

This sorrow and pain which were his own, he would share with no one, and least of all with her upon whose life he had already cast so dark a shadow. Hence she was at the house alone, her father not having yet returned from an important meeting at a neighbouring village, when a young man came to the door asking for young Mr. Cameron.

"Who is it, Kirsty?" she inquired anxiously, a new fear at her heart for her brother.

"I know not, but he has neffer been in this Glen before whateffer,"

replied Kirsty, with an ominous shake of the head, her primitive instincts leading her to view the stranger with suspicion. "But!" she added, with a glance at her young mistress' face, "he iss no man to be afraid of, at any rate. He is just a laddie."

"Oh, he is a YOUNG man, Kirsty?" replied her mistress, glancing at her blue serge gown, her second best, and with her hands striving to tuck in some of her wayward curls.

"Och, yess, and not much at that!" replied Kirsty, with the idea of relieving her young mistress of unnecessary fears.

Then Moira, putting on her grand air, stepped into the parlour, and saw standing there and awaiting her, a young man with a thin and somewhat hard face, a firm mouth, and extraordinarily keen, grey eyes. Upon her appearing the young man stood looking upon her without a word. As a matter of fact, he was struggling with a problem; a problem that was quite bewildering; the problem, namely, "How could hair ever manage to get itself into such an arrangement of waves and curls, and golden gleams and twinkles?" Struggling with this problem, he became conscious of her voice gravely questioning him. "You were wis.h.i.+ng to see my brother?" The young man came back part way, and replied, "Oh! how does it--? That is--. I beg your pardon." The surprise in her face brought him quite to the ground, and he came at once to his business. "I am Mr.

Martin," he said in a quick, sharp voice. "I know your brother and Mr.

Dunn." He noted a light dawn in her eyes. "In fact, I played with them on the same team--at football, you know."

"Oh!" cried the girl, relief and welcome in her voice, "I know you, Mr. Martin, quite well. I know all about you, and what a splendid quarter-back you are." Here she gave him both her hands, which Mr.

Martin took in a kind of dream, once more plunged into the mazes of another and more perplexing problem, viz., Was it her lips with that delicious curve to them? or her eyes so sunny and brown (or were they brown?) with that alluring, bewitching twinkle? or was it both lips and eyes that gave to the smile with which she welcomed him its subtle power to make his heart rise and choke him as it never had been known to do in the most strenuous of his matches? "I'm awfully glad," he heard himself say, and her voice replying, "Oh, yes! Allan has often and often spoken of you, Mr. Martin." Mr. Martin immediately became conscious of a profound and grateful affection to Allan, still struggling, however, with the problem which had been complicated still further by the charm of her soft, Highland voice. He was on the point of deciding in favour of her voice, when on her face he noted a swift change from glad welcome to suspicion and fear, and then into her sunny eyes a sudden leaping of fierce wrath, as in those of a lioness defending her young.

"Why do you look so?" she cried in a voice sharp and imperious. "Is it my brother--? Is anything wrong?"

The shock of the change in eyes and voice brought Martin quite to himself.

"Wrong? Not a bit," he hastened to say, "but just the finest thing in the world. It is all here in this letter. Dunn could not come himself, and there was no one else, and he thought Cameron ought to have it to-day, so here I am, and here is the letter. Where is he?"

"Oh!" cried the girl, clasping her hands upon her heart, her voice growing soft, and her eyes dim with a sudden mist. "I am so thankful!

I am so glad!" The change in her voice and in her eyes so affected Mr.

Martin that he put his hands resolutely behind his back lest they should play him tricks, and should, without his will, get themselves round her and draw her close to his heart.

"So am I," he said, "awfully glad! Never was so glad in all my life!" He was more conscious than ever of bewilderment and perplexity in the midst of increasing problems that complicated themselves with mist brown eyes, trembling lips, and a voice of such pathetic cadences as aroused in him an almost uncontrollable desire to exercise his utmost powers of comfort. And all the while there was growing in his heart a desperate anxiety as to what would be the final issue of these bewildering desires and perplexities; when at the extremity of his self-control he was saved by the girl's suggestion.

"Let us go and find my brother."

"Oh, yes!" cried Martin, "for heaven's sake let us."

"Wait until I get my hat."

"Oh! I wouldn't put on a hat," cried he in dismay.

"Why?" enquired the girl, looking at him with surprised curiosity.

"Oh! because--because you don't need one; it's so beautiful and sunny, you know." In spite of what he could do Mr. Martin's eyes kept wandering to her hair.

"Oh, well!" cried Moira, in increasing surprise at this strange young man, "the sun won't hurt me, so come, let us go."

Together they went down the avenue of rugged firs. At the highway she paused. Before them lay the Glen in all the splendid sweep of its beauty.

"Isn't it lovely!" she breathed.

"Lovely!" echoed Martin, his eyes not on the Glen. "It is so sunny, you know."

"Yes," she answered quickly, "you notice that?"

"How could I help it?" said Martin, his eyes still resting upon her.

"How could I?"

"Of course," she replied, "and so we call it the Glen Cuagh Oir, that is the 'Glen of the Cup of Gold.' And to think he has to leave it all to-morrow!" she added.

The pathetic cadences in her voice again drove Martin to despair. He recovered himself, however, to say, "But he is going to Canada!"

"Yes, to Canada. And we all feel it so dreadfully for him, and," she added in a lower voice, "for ourselves."

Had it been yesterday Martin would have been ready with scorn for any such feeling, and with congratulations to Cameron upon his exceptionally good luck in the expectation of going to Canada; but to-day, somehow it was different. He found the splendid lure of his native land availed not to break the spell of the Glen, and as he followed the girl in and out of the little cottages, seeking her brother, and as he noted the perfect courtesy and respect which marked her manner with the people, and their unstudied and respectful devotion to their "tear young leddy," this spell deepened upon him. Unconsciously and dimly he became aware of a mysterious and mighty power somehow and somewhere in the Glen straining at the heart-strings of its children. Of the nature and origin of this mysterious and mighty power, the young Canadian knew little. His country was of too recent an origin for mystery, and its people too heterogeneous in their ethnic characteristics to furnish a soil for tribal instincts and pa.s.sions. The pa.s.sionate loves and hatreds of the clans, their pride of race, their deathless lealty; and more than all, and better than all, their religious instincts, faiths and prejudices; these, with the mystic, wild loveliness of heather-clad hill and rock-rimmed loch, of roaring torrent and jagged crags, of lonely muir and sunny pasture nuiks; all these, and ten thousand nameless and unnamable things united in the weaving of the spell of the Glen upon the hearts of its people. Of how it all came to be, Martin knew nothing, but like an atmosphere it stole in upon him, and he came to vaguely understand something of what it meant to be a Highlander, and to bid farewell to the land into whose grim soil his life roots had struck deep, and to tear himself from hearts whose life stream and his had flowed as one for a score of generations. So from cot to cot Martin followed and observed, until they came to the crossing where the broad path led up from the highroad to the kirkyard and the kirk. Here they were halted by a young man somewhat older than Martin. Tall and gaunt he stood. His face, pale and pock-marked and lit by light blue eyes, and crowned by brilliant red hair, was, with all its unloveliness, a face of a certain rugged beauty; while his manner and bearing showed the native courtesy of a Highland gentleman.

"You are seeking Mr. Allan?" he said, taking off his bonnet to the girl.

"He is in yonder," waving his hand towards the kirkyard.

"In yonder? You are sure, Mr. Maclise?" She might well ask, for never but on Sabbath days, since the day they had laid his mother away under the birch trees, had Allan put foot inside the kirkyard.

"Half an hour ago he went in," replied the young Highlander, "and he has not returned."

"I will go in, then," said the girl, and hesitated, unwilling that a stranger's eyes should witness what she knew was waiting her there.

"You, Sir, will perhaps abide with me," suggested Mr. Maclise to Martin, with a quick understanding of her hesitation.

"Oh, thank you," cried Moira. "This is Mr. Martin from Canada, Mr.

Maclise--my brother's great friend. Mr. Maclise is our schoolmaster here," she added, turning to Martin, "and we are very proud of him."

The Highlander's pale face became the colour of his brilliant hair as he remarked, "You are very good indeed, Miss Cameron, and I am glad to make the acquaintance of Mr. Martin. It will give me great pleasure to show Mr. Martin the little falls at the loch's end, if he cares to step that far." If Mr. Martin was conscious of any great desire to view the little falls at the loch's end, his face most successfully dissembled any such feeling, but to the little falls he must go as the schoolmaster quietly possessed himself of him and led him away, while Miss Cameron, with never a thought of either of them, pa.s.sed up the broad path into the kirkyard. There, at the tower's foot, she came upon her brother, p.r.o.ne upon the little gra.s.sy mound, with arms outspread, as if to hold it in embrace. At the sound of his sister's tread upon the gravel, he raised himself to his knees swiftly, and with a fierce gesture, as if resenting intrusion.

"Oh, it is you, Moira," he said quietly, sinking down upon the gra.s.s. At the sight of his tear-stained, haggard face, the girl ran to him with a cry, and throwing herself down beside him put her arms about him with inarticulate sounds of pity. At length her brother raised himself from the ground.

"Oh, it is terrible to leave it all," he groaned; "yet I am glad to leave, for it is more terrible to stay; the very Glen I cannot look at; and the people, I cannot bear their eyes. Oh," he groaned, wringing his hands, "if she were here she would understand, but there is n.o.body."

"Oh, Allan," cried his sister in reproach.

"Oh, yes, I know! I know! You believe in me, Moira, but you are just a la.s.sie, and you cannot understand."

"Yes, you know well I believe in you, Allan, and others, too, believe in you. There is Mr. Dunn, and--"

"Oh, I don't know," said her brother bitterly, "he wants to believe it."

"Yes, and there is Mr. Martin," she continued, "and--Oh, I forgot! here is a letter Mr. Martin brought you."

"Martin?"

"Yes, your Martin, a strange little man; your quarter-back, you know. He brought this, and he says it is good news." But already Allan was into his letter. As he read his face grew white, his hand began to shake, his eyes to stare as if they would devour the very paper. The second time he read the letter his whole body trembled, and his breath came in gasps, as if he were in a physical struggle. Then lifting arms and voice towards the sky, he cried in a long, low wail, "Oh G.o.d, it is good, it is good!"