Haward sat down upon a keg of powder, crossed his knees, and, with his
chin upon his hand, looked from between the curled lengths of his periwig
at the figure opposite. "I am glad to find that in Virginia, at least,
there is honesty," he said dryly. "I will try to remember the cost of the
cup and the wine against the expiry of your indenture. In the mean time, I
am curious to know why you are angry with me whom you have never seen
before to-day."
With the dashing of the wine to earth the other's passion had apparently
spent itself. The red slowly left his face, and he leaned at ease against
the cask, drumming upon its head with his fingers. The sunlight, shrinking
from floor and wall, had left but a single line of gold. In the half light
strange and sombre shapes possessed the room; through the stillness,
beneath the sound of the tattoo upon the cask head, the river made itself
heard.
"For ten years and more you have been my--master," said the storekeeper.
"It is a word for which I have an invincible distaste. It is not
well--having neither love nor friendship to put in its place--to let
hatred die. When I came first to this slavery, I hated all Campbells, all
Whigs, Forster that betrayed us at Preston, and Ewin Mor Mackinnon. But
the years have come and the years have gone, and I am older than I was at
twenty-five. The Campbells I can never reach: they walk secure, overseas,
through Lorn and Argyle, couching in the tall heather above Etive,
tracking the red deer in the Forest of Dalness. Forster is dead. Ewin
Mackinnon is dead, I know; for five years ago come Martinmas night I saw
his perjured soul on its way to hell. All the world is turning Whig. A man
may hate the world, it is true, but he needs a single foe."
"And in that capacity you have adopted me?" demanded Haward.
MacLean let his gaze travel over the man opposite him, from the looped hat
and the face between the waves of hair to the gilt spurs upon the great
boots; then turned his eyes upon his own hand and coarsely clad arm
stretched across the cask. "I, too, am a gentleman, the brother of a
chieftain," he declared. "I am not without schooling. I have seen
something of life, and of countries more polite than the land where I was
born, though not so dear. I have been free, and have loved my freedom. Do
you find it so strange that I should hate you?"
There was a silence; then, "Upon my soul, I do not know that I do," said
Haward slowly. "And yet, until this day I did not know of your existence."