Part 36 (1/2)

Long he laughed and merrily.

”Eloped for Gretna Green with Tony Creagh last night, and I, poor forsaken swain, faith! I do not pursue.”

You may be sure that dashed me. I felt as a trapped fox with the dogs closing in. The future loomed up clear before me, Aileen hand in hand with Volney scattering flowers on my grave in sentimental mood. The futility of my obstinacy made me bitter.

”Come, Montagu! Listen to reason,” urged the tempter. ”You get in my way, but I don't want to let you be sponged out. The devil of it is that if I get you a pardon--and I'm not sure that I can get it--you'll marry the girl. I might have you s.h.i.+pped to the Barbadoes as a slave with some of the others, but to be frank I had rather see you hanged than give you so scurvy an end. Forswear what is already lost and make an end of it.”

I turned away blackly. ”You have my answer. Sir Robert, you have played your last card. Now let me die in peace.”

He shrugged impatiently and left me. ”A fool's answer, yet a brave man's too,” he muttered.

Aileen, heart-broken with the failure of her mission, reached town on Thursday and came at once to the prison. Her face was as the face of troubled waters. I had no need to ask the question on my lips. With a sobbing cry she threw herself on my breast. My heart was woe for her.

Utter weariness was in her manner. All through the long days and nights she had agonized, and now at last despaired. There seemed no tears left to shed.

Long I held her tight, teeth set, as one who would keep his own perforce from that grim fate which would s.n.a.t.c.h his love from him. She s.h.i.+vered to me half-swooning, pale and of wondrous beauty, nesting in my arms as a weary homing-bird. A poignant grief o'erflowed in me.

”Oh, Aileen! At least we have love left,” I cried, breaking the long silence.

”Always! Always!” her white lips answered.

”Then let us regret nothing. They can do with me what they will. What are life and death when in the balance dwells love?” I cried, rapt in unearthly wors.h.i.+p of her.

Her eyes found mine. ”Oh, Kenneth, I cannot--I cannot--let you go.”

Sweet and lovely she was beyond the dream of poet. I trembled in an ecstasy of pain. From the next cell there came to us softly the voice of a poor condemned Appin Stewart. He was crooning that most tender and heart-breaking of all strains. Like the pibroch's mournful sough he wailed it out, the song that cuts deep to a Scotchman's heart in time of exile.

”Lochabar no more, Lochabar no more.

We'll maybe return to Lochabar no more.”

I looked at Aileen, my face working. A long breath came whistling through her lips. Her dear face was all broken with emotion. I turned my eyes aside, not daring to trust myself. Through misty lashes again I looked.

Her breast lifted and fell in shaking sobs, the fount of tears touched at last. Together we wept, without shame I admit it, while the Stewart's harrowing strain ebbed to a close. To us it seemed almost as the keening of the coronach.

So in the quiet that comes after storm, her dear supple figure still in my arms, Sir Robert Volney came in unexpectedly and found us. He stopped at the door, startled at her presence, and methought a shadow fell on his face. Near to death as I was, the quality of his courage was so fine and the strength of the pa.s.sion in him so great that he would have changed places with me even then.

Aileen went up to him at once and gave him her hand. She was very simple, her appeal like a child's for directness.

”Sir Robert, you have already done much for me. I will be so bold as to ask you to do more. Here iss my lover's life in danger. I ask you to save it.”

”That he may marry you?”

”If G.o.d wills.”

Volney looked at her out of a haggard face, all broken by the emotions which stirred him.

A minute pa.s.sed, two minutes. He fought out his fight and won.

”Aileen,” he said at last, ”before heaven I fear it is too late, but what man can do, that will I do.”

He came in and shook hands with me. ”I'll say good-bye, Montagu. 'Tis possible I'll see you but once more in this world. Yet I will do my best.