第35章

"Ay, there's a great deer-forest in Ballochbrinkie, and there's part of Loch Phillibeg in Cairngormshire, and there's Kelpie Island off Moreovershire. Ay, there's enough land when the crofters are cleared off, and the small sheep-tenants evicted. It will be a grand property then."The consul stared. "The crofters and tenants evicted!" he repeated. "Are they not part of the clan, and loyal to the McHulish?""The McHulish," said Sir James with great deliberation, "hasn't set foot there for years. They'd be burning him in effigy.""But," said the astonished consul, "that's rather bad for the expectant heir--and the magic of the McHulish presence.""I'm not saying that," returned Sir James cautiously. "Ye see he can be making better arrangements with the family on account of it.""With the family?" repeated the consul. "Then does he talk of compromising?""I mean they would be more likely to sell for a fair consideration, and he'd be better paying money to them than the lawyers. The syndicate will be rich, eh? And I'm not saying the McHulish wouldn't take Kentucky lands in exchange. It's a fine country, that blue grass district."The consul stared at Sir James so long that a faint smile came into the latter's shrewd eyes; at which the consul smiled, too. A vague air of relief and understanding seemed to fill the apartment.

"Oh, ay," continued Sir James, drawing on his gloves with easy deliberation, "he's a fine lad that Malcolm, and it's a praiseworthy instinct in him to wish to return to the land of his forebears, and take his place again among them. And I'm noticing, Mr. Consul, that a great many of your countrymen are doing the same. Eh, yours is a gran' country of progress and ceevel and religious liberty, but for a' that, as Burns says, it's in your blood to turn to the auld home again. And it's a fine thing to have the money to do it--and, I'm thinking, money well spent all around. Good-morning. Eh, but I'm forgetting that I wanted to ask you to dine with me and Malcolm, and your Mr. Custer, and Mr.

Watson, who will be one of your syndicate, and whom I once met abroad. But ye'll get a bit note of invitation, with the day, from me later."The consul remembered that Custer had said that one of the "Eagle boys" had known Sir James. This was evidently Watson. He smiled again, but this time Sir James responded only in a general sort of way, as he genially bowed himself out of the room.

The consul watched his solid and eminently respectable figure as it passed the window, and then returned to his desk, still smiling.

First of all he was relieved. What had seemed to him a wild and reckless enterprise, with possibly some grim international complications on the part of his compatriots, had simply resolved itself into an ordinary business speculation--the ethics of which they had pretty equally divided with the local operators. If anything, it seemed that the Scotchman would get the best of the bargain, and that, for once at least, his countrymen were deficient in foresight. But that was a matter between the parties, and Custer himself would probably be the first to resent any suggestion of the kind from the consul. The vision of the McHulish burned in effigy by his devoted tenants and retainers, and the thought that the prosaic dollars of his countrymen would be substituted for the potent presence of the heir, tickled, it is to be feared, the saturnine humor of the consul. He had taken an invincible dislike to the callow representative of the McHulish, who he felt had in some extraordinary way imposed upon Custer's credulity. But then he had apparently imposed equally upon the practical Sir James.

The thought of this sham ideal of feudal and privileged incompetency being elevated to actual position by the combined efforts of American republicans and hard-headed Scotch dissenters, on whom the soft Scotch mists fell from above with equal impartiality, struck him as being very amusing, and for some time thereafter lightened the respectable gloom of his office. Other engagements prevented his attendance at Sir James's dinner, although he was informed afterward that it had passed off with great eclat, the later singing of "Auld lang Syne," and the drinking of the health of Custer and Malcolm with "Hieland honors." He learned also that Sir James had invited Custer and Malcolm to his lacustrine country-seat in the early spring. But he learned nothing more of the progress of Malcolm's claim, its details, or the manner in which it was prosecuted. No one else seemed to know anything about it; it found no echo in the gossip of the clubs, or in the newspapers of St.

Kentigern. In the absence of the parties connected with it, it began to assume to him the aspect of a half-humorous romance. He often found himself wondering if there had been any other purpose in this quest or speculation than what had appeared on the surface, it seemed so inadequate in result. It would have been so perfectly easy for a wealthy syndicate to buy up a much more valuable estate.

He disbelieved utterly in the sincerity of Malcolm's sentimental attitude. There must be some other reason--perhaps not known even to the syndicate.