The hostess, her round face afire from her labours in the kitchen, flung open the door, and a slatternly wench brought in a steaming tureen of broth. More candles were lit, logs were laid on the fire, and the mean room took on an air of rough comfort. After the sombre afternoon Alastair surrendered himself gladly to his good fortune, and filled a tankard of the doctored ale, which he found very palatable. The soup warmed his blood and, having eaten nothing since morning, he showed himself a good trencherman. Mr. Kyd in the intervals of satisfying his own appetite beamed upon his companion, hospitably happy at being able to provide such entertainment.
“It’s a thing I love,” he said, “to pass a night in an inn with a friend and a bottle. Coming out of the darkness to a warm fire and a good meal fair ravishes my heart, and the more if it’s unexpected. That’s your case at this moment, Captain Maclean, and you may thank the Almighty that you’re not supping off fat bacon and stinking beer. A lucky meeting for you. Now I wonder at what hostel ‘Menelaus’ and ‘Alcinous’ could have foregathered. Maybe, the pair of them went to visit Ulysses in Ithaca and shoot his paitricks. But it’s no likely.”
“How did ‘Menelaus’ prosper at Badminton?” Alastair asked.
“Wheesht, man! We’ll get in the condiments for the punch and steek the door before we talk.”
The landlady brought coarse sugar in a canister and half a dozen lemons, and placed a bubbling kettle on the hob. Mr. Kyd carefully closed the door behind her and turned the key. With immense care and a gusto which now and then revealed itself in a verse of song, he poured the sugar into a great blue bowl, squeezed the lemons over it with his strong fingers, and added boiling water, with the quantities of each most nicely calculated. Then from a silver-mounted case-bottle he poured the approved modicum of whisky (“the real thing, Captain Maclean, that you’ll no find south of the Highland line”) and sniffed affectionately at the fragrant steam. He tasted the brew, gave it his benediction, and filled Alastair’s rummer. Then he lit one of the churchwardens which the landlady had supplied, stretched his legs to the blaze, and heaved a prodigious sigh.
“If I shut my eyes I could believe I was at Greyhouses. That’s my but-and-ben in the Lammermuirs, sir. It’s a queer thing, but I can never stir from home without the sorest kind of homesickness. I was never meant for this gangrel job. … But if I open that window it will no be a burn in the howe and the peesweeps that I’ll hear, but just the weariful soughing of English trees. … There’s a lot of the bairn in me, Captain Maclean.”
The pleasant apathy induced by food and warmth was passing from Alastair’s mind, and he felt anew the restlessness which the Spaniard’s news had kindled. He was not in a mood for Mr. Kyd’s sentiment.
“You will soon enough be in the North, I take it,” he said.
“Not till the New Year, for my sins. I’m the Duke’s doer, and I must be back at Amesbury to see to the plantings.”
“And the mission of ‘Menelaus?’ ”
“Over for a time. My report went north a week syne by a sure hand.”
“Successful?”
Mr. Kyd pursed his lips. “So-so.” He looked sharply towards door and window. “Beaufort is with us—on conditions. And you?”
“I am inclined to be cheerful. We shall not lack the English grandees, provided we in the North play the game right.”
“Ay. That’s gospel. You mean a victory in England.”
Alastair nodded. “Therefore ‘Alcinous’ has done with Phaeacia and returns to the Prince as fast as horse will carry him. But what does ‘Menelaus’ in these parts? You are far away from Badminton and farther from Amesbury.”
“I had a kind of bye-errand up this way. Now I’m on my road south again.”
“Has the Cause friends hereabouts? I saw a horseman at the door in talk with your servant.”
Mr. Kyd looked up quickly. “I heard tell of none. What was he like?”
“I saw only a face in the mist—a high collar and a very sharp nose.”
The other shook his head. “It beats me, unless it was some forwandered traveller that speired the road from Edom. I’ve seen no kenned face for a week, except”—and he broke into a loud guffaw—“except yon daft dominie we met at Cornbury—the man that wanted us all to mount and chase a runaway lassie. I passed him on the road yestereen mounted like a cadger and groaning like an auld wife.”
Mr. Kyd’s scornful reference to the tutor of Chastlecote slightly weakened in Alastair the friendliness which his geniality had inspired.
“It will be well for us if we are as eager in our duties as that poor creature,” he said dryly. “I must be off early tomorrow and not spare horseflesh till I see the Standard.”
“Ay, you maun lose no time. See, and I’ll make you a list of post-houses, where you can command decent cattle. It is the fruit of an uncommon ripe experience. Keep well to the east, for there’s poor roads and worse beasts this side of the Peak.”
“That was the road I came, but now I must take a different airt. I had news today—disquieting news. The Prince is over the Border.”
Mr. Kyd was on his feet, his chair scraping hard on the stone floor, and the glasses rattling on the shaken table.
“I’ve heard nothing of it. Man, what kind of news reaches you and not me?”
“It is true all the same. I had it from one who came long ago to Morvern and knows my clan. This day
