The Master of Stair 60

The Master of Stair 60

With a curious impulse, she leaned forward and kissed the lips of her

reflection, kissed the cold glass and smiled into her own eyes, with an

utter sadness.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER III

 

THE TRIUMPH OF THE CAMPBELLS

 

 

The guests had gone; the roses hung limp and faded; guttering, dying

candles cast a dull light over the Countess Peggy as she stood in her

deserted ball-room.

 

She leaned against a mirror; her red hair fell over her bare white

shoulders and purple dress; at her bosom drooped a cluster of crimson

roses; with anxious eyes she looked at the gray-clad figure of her

husband, who sat beside her in an attitude of utter weariness.

 

“What will be the end of it, Jock?” she asked in a hushed voice.

 

“Ruin for the Earl o’ Stair,” he answered, “They’ve set their minds to

it, Tweeddale and his crew, and they’ll na be letting him escape, there

is enough against him to hang him—though he’ll no’ be persuaded of it.”

 

“Let Lord Stair go,” said the Countess, “I dinna care—what will be the

end of it for _ye_, Jock?”

 

He gave her a tender look.

 

“Why—they hay’na’ ony evidence against me, Peggy—I didna’ put my name

to rash letters—they canna prove onything—I’m safe enow—and sae is

Argyll—though he is half-demented wi’ fear.”

 

“But this trumped up foolery o’ Glenlyon feasting a fortnicht in the

Glen, Jock—that touches us—”

 

The Earl smiled.

 

“It doesna’—Glenlyon had his commands frae Hamilton na frae me—and

Glenlyon—Glenlyon hae been bought by the Jacks—I hae heard—this vera

evening—that he hae appeared and will be examined before the

commissioners.”

 

“But however Glenlyon lee—we can disprove that the Campbells were in

the Glen a fortnicht.”

 

“We can,” answered the Earl, “but we willna’. Dinna ye see, Peggy—we

must ken naething o’ what occurred—we were miles awa’—at Kilchurn, we

must say—we ken naething—naething. If we disprove lees that dinna harm

us we must reveal the truth—which wad be vera damaging.”

 

“Then Lord Stair will indeed be ruined,” said the Countess slowly. “But

it is na ony business o’ ours. Ye may trust my silence, Jock.”

 

She moved to the window and pulled aside the curtain; the stars hung

bright and luminous above the sleeping city; a church clock struck one.

 

The Countess Peggy leaned her head against the mullions and her face

fell into lines of weariness; she twisted the ends of her bright hair

in and out of slack fingers and the withered roses on her breast,

crushed against the window-frame, shed their faded leaves at her feet.

 

Many of the candles had guttered to the socket and gone out; only two

or three, burning ghostly before the tall mirrors, remained to cast a

light through the darkened room.

 

Silence and loneliness were abroad; the Countess gazed up at the

infinite distance of the stars and shivered through her slender body;

against the sky rose a misty vision often seen by her: the vision of a

man with a beautiful face and clothes clay-stained and bloody, holding

a lace cravat and looking at her with mournful eyes.

 

She smiled bitterly as she thought of the uselessness of that blood on

her soul; Jerome Caryl might have lived. An obscure traitor had

informed and the plot to be carried out at Turnham Green had come to

nothing.

 

She turned from the stars and her eyes sought her husband.

 

“Jock!” she cried, and there was a world of tenderness, of appeal, of

passion in her voice. “Jock!”

 

She crossed the great shadowy room to where he sat and went on her

knees beside him.

 

“I did it for ye,” she murmured, as if answering an accusation. “Jock—I

hae served ye weel?”

 

He took her hands in his and smiled down at her.

 

“Peggy, ye ken vera weel ye are all the world to me,” he said most

tenderly.

 

Her head drooped against his arm.

 

“Then I dinna care for onything,” she whispered. “Yet at times I’m no’

sae brave—I’m afraid.”

 

Breadalbane’s wide light eyes gazed across the dark.

 

“Afraid o’ what, Peggy?”

 

She drew a little closer to him.

 

“Of wraiths—o’ the dead.”

 

He smiled, fondling her hair.

 

“I wad’na’ fear when dead what I had’na’ feared when living, Peggy.”

 

“Nay, nay, I dinna fear—at least I’m no’ afraid, Jock, when ye are

close—but—Ah, Jock—wad I could forget!”

 

He frowned above his smile.

 

“Are ye thinking of the Macdonalds, Peggy?”

 

With a little uneasy movement she lifted her head; her long throat

gleamed unnaturally white above her dark dress.

 

“Sometimes—I—think o’ the Macdonalds.”

 

Breadalbane laughed as if he cast aside some foolish fancy.

 

“We hae triumphed ower the Macdonalds, Peggy—the auld thief Makian got

his deserts.”

 

“Yea, I ken.”

 

“And Ronald Macdonald—ye hated him, Peggy.”

 

“I ken,” she said hastily, with yearning eyes on his face. “I wad I

might forget.”

 

“Wherefore, Peggy?”

 

“Ah!—sleeping and waking—I see it—the Glen o’ Weeping—as I rode through

it that day wi’ the smoke drifting ower the corpses—and the bitter dawn

a-breaking—the bluid ower the heather and the silence, the silence.”

 

With a half-shudder her eyes drooped and her clasp of his arm tightened.

 

“This is fules’ talk,” said Breadalbane imperiously. “Sic sights are

common in the Hielands—ye ken vera weel—the Campbells hae fed the

eagles often enow—I shouldna’ hae thought that ye, Peggy, wad hae

sickened at the bluid o’ the Macdonalds.”

 

“I dinna—but—I canna forget.”

 

Breadalbane’s eyes flashed.

 

“Nay—because the Hielands are clear o’ the thieves—we canna forget,

when we see Argyllshire and Invernesshire free to the Campbells, when

we can ride unarmed with nae to question us—lords o’ the Hielands. Ye

say weel we canna forget.”

 

She warmed a little in response to his tone. “I dinna regret or

repent,” she said. “Hate o’ the Macdonalds is in the bluid—it is na

sorrow for them but fear—fear maybe, Jock, o’ the reckoning.”