Smouldering Fire

by D. E. Stevenson

  But, to-night, he would not wait—he leaned forward to start his engine.

  “Donald!”

  The stretched-out hand was arrested in mid-air.

  “Donald I’ve done—I’ve done something rather serious to-day. Already I am regretting it but there was no other way—I want you to help me, Donald.”

  MacAslan was speaking in the Gaelic now, and Donald was glad. It was their custom to speak to each other in both languages—sometimes in English and sometimes in Gaelic. MacAslan chose, and Donald followed. For ordinary everyday affairs connected with the estate MacAslan used English; but when they spoke together heart to heart of the things that mattered, or when MacAslan was happy and at peace with the world, or unhappy and in need of sympathy, it was always the Gaelic. Donald was glad when he heard the Gaelic from MacAslan’s lips and was at liberty to speak in return. He felt nearer to MacAslan then; he could let his heart speak.

  To-night his heart sang when he heard MacAslan’s words, not only for the usual reason, but also because MacAslan had asked for his help. It was foolishness, of course, MacAslan had no need to ask. Did MacAslan doubt him that he should ask his help? Did he not know that Donald would lay down his life in the service of MacAslan? What could this thing be—this thing that MacAslan had done and already regretted? If it were that he had killed a man, Donald would hide him until the danger was past but no, it would not be that.

  “And who else would help you, MacAslan?” he said quietly.

  “People must not know—not yet. It must be known later but I do not want a lot of talk—I must get away from here before it is known—and yet how can I leave Ardfalloch?”

  It was a killing, then, Donald thought. “I will hide you,” he said; “Morag and I. They will not find you. There is a place I know—a deep cave amongst the heather. There is no need for MacAslan to be leaving his own land—”

  He was startled by a low chuckle from the other boat. “Oh, Donald—and if it were for murder I was wanted, you would hide me, and I should be safe.”

  “That is true indeed.”

  “But it is not murder, Donald.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I have let Ardfalloch for the season.”

  There was silence for a few moments, and then the voice continued in a low tone full of bitterness. “You think it worse than murder, Donald? A betrayal of Ardfalloch—but what was I to do? I have tried to think of other ways. I went to Balnafin this morning and I saw Mr. Simpson. He had a letter from a London gentleman who wanted to rent the MacLaggans’ place at Athnabeg, and the place was taken already. ‘Offer him Ardfalloch for three months,’ said Mr. Simpson. ‘You need the money.’ I told him I did not want to let Ardfalloch. ‘You will sell a farm then,’ he told me. ‘Something you must do, MacAslan.’ He showed me figures in a book, Donald, and I saw, then, that it was true. Something must be done. Figures are strange things,” continued the voice in the darkness thoughtfully. “Columns of figures—and when they are added up—”

  Donald was silent, he was not listening now, he was too overwhelmed. His thoughts were chaotic—MacAslan was in trouble, but it was no trouble that he could help. He could be of no assistance at all. Money! In his own life he knew what it was to lack money, to pinch and scrape and make do with uncomfortable substitutes for the necessities of life, but that MacAslan should lack money was incredible, unthinkable—it was all wrong, thought Donald dazedly. If Ben Falloch had moved he would have been less surprised, less helpless. Ardfalloch to be let—let to strangers! A London gentleman fishing on MacAslan’s water, shooting MacAslan’s birds—and his deer!

  Other big landowners had done it, of course—Donald knew that. Only this afternoon there had been talk at the inn about Athnabeg and the people who had taken it for the season. It was a London gentleman who had taken Athnabeg—Lord Somebody—Donald could not remember the name, he had not paid much attention to the name. The same people had come last year, and MacFarlane—the head-keeper—had told Donald about the way these people had carried on at the Big House. Well, let them—Donald had thought—that is what is to be expected if a place is let to strangers. Yes, other places were let, but Ardfalloch was different from other places, just as MacAslan was different from other landowners. MacLaggan was a new-comer, a mere upstart compared with MacAslan, whose line stretched back into the dim prehistoric past. Worse than murder, MacAslan had said. That was a joke, of course. It was not worse than murder—and yet in a way it was more worrying. There was precedence for murder in Ardfalloch glen. . . . (It was not called murder in those days. If a man were killed in the heat of anger, or in cold and reasoned necessity, it was a killing . . .) but for letting there was no precedence—letting was a new thing. Donald would have been less shocked at murder, less surprised at all events, less helpless. He would have known what to do—that cave in the deep heather at the back of the old bothy at Ballochgorm—Donald had discovered it himself one day when they were shooting on the south moor. He had discovered it by falling into it, and, at once, he had seen its possibilities an admirable retreat for a man who should have need to disappear for a week or two and wanted a roof above his head and a dry floor beneath him. Donald was almost sorry that there would be no need to hide MacAslan in the cave at Ballochgorm. In this thing, he was helpless, he could not help MacAslan. And then, suddenly, he remembered that MacAslan had asked for his help, and he was filled with pride that it was to him that MacAslan had come—to him and no other. But how could he help. If I could but see through it! he thought, for the thing was like a mist about his brain.

  “Are you listening, Donald?”

  “I was not,” he owned humbly. “I was thinking.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking of many things, MacAslan. One of the things I was thinking was this—the London gentleman—you will have given him the forest and the moor—”

  “Yes, I have given it all.”

  The forest too—and the moor! “If it were the only way—” Donald said in a low voice.

  “Would I have done it otherwise?”

  Donald was silent. There was another way that MacAslan might have taken—he knew that, all the glen knew it. Not a creature in Ardfalloch but knew that MacAslan might have Miss Margaret Finlay for the asking—and all her money too. And Miss Margaret was a nice lady—“Tha i cho math’s a tha i cho breagha”—(She is as good as she is pretty) they would say in the village when they spoke of her, and was that not high praise? She had lived amongst them all her life; she was almost one of themselves; almost good enough for MacAslan. But, if MacAslan said there was no other way, it was not for Donald to question his decision, not for Donald to make any suggestion.

  “It was the only way,” Iain repeated. “There was nothing else to be done—yet, even so, I am regretting it—wondering what I shall do, wondering how I am to tell my mother—”

  There was silence on that word. An owl cried eerily from the small rocky island where the old castle of the MacAslans was crumbling into ruins.

  “That is almost the worst, Donald,” the low voice continued. It was easy to talk like this in the darkness—you could say things that you could never have said in the light of day. Already Iain had told more—much more—than he had intended. Donald’s dark bulk in the motor-launch was an easy thing to talk to. “It is almost the worst, Donald. Will it kill her?”

  “It will not kill her,” replied Donald with convincing readiness. “There is a strength about her—”

  “She must go to Edinburgh,” Iain said. “She will be near my uncle and aunt, and Janet shall go with her.”

  “And what will you do, MacAslan?”

  Iain flung out his hand with a movement that set the boat rocking. “I shall remain,” he said firmly. “I have said to myself a dozen times that I must leave the glen, but I know I cannot. I cannot leave the glen, Donald—”

  “There is no need for that—we will think of a way—”

  “I have thought of a way.
I shall stay in the old cottage down by the loch.”

  Donald drew in his breath quickly—MacAslan in the old cottage, and strangers in the Big House! He said quietly, “The roof is not sound-it is a damp cold place—”

  “Have the roof patched,” Iain told him. “But go about it quietly. Nobody must know—”

  “If I could be telling Morag,” Donald said slowly. “She is handy-she could be helping with one thing and another—”

  Iain laughed lightly. “Oh, Morag!” he said, “You must tell Morag, of course. I will not burden you with a secret to keep from Morag.”

  “You are before her and above her,” Donald replied. He, too, was finding the darkness a safe curtain for speech—and it is easier for the thoughts of the heart to find expression in the Gaelic tongue. “You come first, MacAslan.”

  “I am fortunate,” said Iain in a low voice, and then he added in a different tone. “It is the question of ghillies that is troubling me, Donald. We do not want a strange keeper here, one who would not care for the forest—and the moor.”

  “God forbid!”

  “If you would stay—if you would do it, Donald—and look after other things for me.”

  There was a little silence, and then out of the darkness the voice came—“I will do it for you, MacAslan.”

  CHAPTER II

  JANET

  Iain waited until the sound of the motor-launch had died away, and then he sighed heavily, and taking up his oars, rowed slowly towards the shore. A small pier, or jetty, of rocks and stones, roughly plastered together, made a harbourage for his motor-launch and the fishing coble. There they lay all summer side by side, protected from storms by the jetty on the east, and, on the west, by a promontory of rock welded together by the roots of fir-trees. In the winter the boats were dragged up on rollers and stowed in the boat-house—a ramshackle building on the southern shore. To-night the loch was calm—so calm that it was difficult to believe in storm, difficult to believe that the loch, lashed to fury by an easterly gale, should break upon the pier with a sound like thunder. It was impossible to visualise storm to-night—flying spray and fir-trees bent like live rods before the gale’s force—impossible to visualise . . .

  Tonight the water was like green glass. The seaweed floated upon the surface of the water, buoyed by its thousands of tiny brown bladders. The tide was out, and the bare rocks rose from the tangle of weed like weird black monsters of the deep. Iain made the boat fast and climbed out. He was tired now—deadly tired—and his feet and hands were stiff with cold. For a moment he was tempted to sleep in the launch. There was a bunk in the tiny cabin, with a brown army blanket and a horse-hair pillow which he used occasionally when he was fishing at night. It would be pleasant to crawl into that bunk and sleep there, rocked by the incoming tide. But he must not do that, he had been out all day and Janet would be anxious if he were not in his bed when she went to call him in the morning. It was even possible that Janet was waiting up for him, he hoped not, because he did not feel equal to a talk with Janet to-night; he felt utterly worn out, and his nerves were on edge. A sleep would make a difference. He would feel stronger in the morning, more able to battle with the problems which beset him.

  Iain threw his mackintosh over his shoulder and went up through the dark trees. There was now a faint lightness in the sky, dawn was not far off, the short night was almost past. But, beneath the trees, it was still very dark, and if Iain’s feet had not known every inch of the stony path, and every pine root that straggled across it, he would have had some difficulty in picking his way.

  The house of Ardfalloch stood in a small strath—all about it were woods, mostly of pine, and thickly carpeted with brown needles. In front of the house ran Ardfalloch burn, dropping from pool to pool with a pleasant splashing. Iain stood for a few minutes on the little bridge that crossed the burn and looked at the house—he felt that he had betrayed it. No people save his own had ever lived in the house, and now he had sold it into slavery. For three months it would shelter strangers beneath its roof, for three months it would not belong to him. Iain loved every part of his home—the loch, the moors, the forest—even the little farms nestling in the sheltered crevices of the hills were dear to his heart. The house was the core of his home, the hub of the wheel round which everything revolved. The house lay before his eyes in the grey light of dawn, it was large and square with high windows and a close-fitting roof. There were three steps up to the narrow-pillared portico, three curved steps, broad and shallow. Perhaps Ardfalloch House was not strictly beautiful, but its proportions were good and it was thoroughly sound and thoroughly fitted to its surroundings. There was no nonsense about Ardfalloch House, no useless ornamentations, no excrescences. It had been built for comfort, and it was warm in winter and cool in summer. Iain had been born in the house, and his father had been born in it; his father’s father had been born in the old castle in the middle of the loch. It was when Iain’s grandfather was a child that his father had built the house and moved his family into more comfortable and convenient quarters. The house was large, comfortable, airy. It was too large for Iain and his mother and their small staff, so part of it was shut—the drawing-room and some of the bedrooms had been shut for years, the furniture swathed in dust sheets. Every now and then Janet would enter these quiet rooms like a tornado, with brooms and pails and dusters—the windows would be thrown wide open, and fires lighted to dry the air.

  The house slept before Iain’s eyes, the high windows were shuttered. It was all dark save for one room on the second floor—here a light burned and the curtains were looped back from the open window. Janet is awake, thought Iain. He gave a soft call, and in a moment, the head and shoulders of a woman were silhouetted against the light.

  “These are strange hours to keep!” said a low-pitched voice. “These are strange hours, MacAslan.”

  He signalled to her to come down, and crossed the gravel sweep to the side door. He had not long to wait. The door opened quietly and Janet stood in the lintel, candle in hand. Iain went in, and, together, in silence, they chained the door.

  Like Donald, Janet sensed at once that something was the matter. (She, too, had known Iain all his life.) It was not only that he was tired and cold, there was more to it than that, thought Janet, there was trouble in MacAslan’s air. Unlike Donald, she approached the matter squarely.

  “What’s wrang, MacAslan?” she demanded.

  He did not answer at once, the dull weariness that lay upon his spirit made words difficult.

  “Come away into the morning-room,” Janet said. “The fire’s not oot yet—you’re starved with the cold.”

  Iain followed her across the square hall into the morning-room. She set the candle on the table and moved over to the fire of peats that smouldered on the hearth. She was an elderly woman, but she moved well and easily, with a straight back and lithe hips. She sank on to her knees by the fire, took the poker in her hand, and lifting one corner of the smouldering turf, blew it into flames.

  Iain cast himself into a shabby leather chair and watched the trickle of flame curl upwards through the rent in the turf. The fibres caught—the firelight flowed out over the floor; Janet’s kneeling figure was bathed in a red glow; her strong-featured face with its high cheek-bones, firm mouth and broad brow was accentuated by the ruddy light; her shadow filled the room from ceiling to floor.

  She sat back on her heels and looked at him. “What’s wrang, MacAslan?” she said again.

  Iain moistened his lips, it was no use to beat about the bush with Janet—besides, she had to know sometime.

  “I’ve let Ardfalloch for the season,” he said.

  Janet did not speak for a moment, she watched him quietly. His face was in shadow, but in the red glow of the fire she could see the tension of his thin nervous hands. Her heart went out to him in an almost unbearable spasm of tenderness.

  “I’m hoping you’ve got a guid price for it, then,” she said in a firm tone.

  He laughed involu
ntarily. “Oh, Janet!” he said. “Here have I been grieving over it the whole day, making a tragedy of the thing, and you bring it all down to a matter of pounds, shillings and pence.”

  Janet glanced at him sideways—the hands had relaxed a little. “And what else is it, pray?” she enquired tartly. “It’s for the money you’re daeing it, I’m thinking.”