“So, in this snare which holds me and appals me,Where honour hardly lives nor loves remain . . .”—H. Belloc.On Battersea Bridge.
“So, in this snare which holds me and appals me,Where honour hardly lives nor loves remain . . .”
“So, in this snare which holds me and appals me,
Where honour hardly lives nor loves remain . . .”
—H. Belloc.On Battersea Bridge.
The mist shrouded every mountain-top, sagging downwards in some places like the roof of a tent, and in others, where a perpetual draught blew down a corrie, streaming out like smoke. How different from last week, when, cold as it was up there, the top of the Corryarrick Pass had presented to Major Windham’s eyes a view from Badenoch to the hills of Skye. To-day, recrossing it, and looking back, he could hardly distinguish through the greyish-white blanket more than three or four of its many traverses winding away below him.
But here, on the lower levels of the mountain road, where it prepared to debouch into that which ran along the Great Glen, this clogging mist had become a fine and most penetrating rain, bedewing every inch of the rider’s cloak and uniform, his hat, the edges of his wig, his very eyebrows and lashes, and insinuating itself down his collar. Major Windham did not know which was the more objectionable form of moisture, and wished it were late enough in the day to cease exposing himself to either, and to put up for the night at Fort Augustus, which he should reach in another twenty minutes or so. But it was still too early for that, and, bearer as he was of a despatch from Lord Albemarle to the Duke of Cumberland, he must push on beyond Fort Augustus before nightfall; must, indeed, reach the only halting-place between that spot and Inverness, the tiny inn known, from Wade’s occupation of it when he was making the road, as the General’s Hut. However, he intended to stop at Fort Augustus to bait the horses—and to make an enquiry.
It was six days since he had left Guthrie’s camp, and he was not altogether surprised to-day to find it gone, but, to judge from the litter lying about, only recently gone. There was, therefore, no one to give him news of Ardroy, but he was sure that, if the Jacobite had been made prisoner, he would have been sent or taken to Fort Augustus, and he could get news of him there.
That night in the shieling, just a week ago, seemed to Keith much farther off than that, and the emotions he had known then to have lost their edge. ‘Gad, what a fit of philanthropy I had on me that day!’ he reflected. If ‘Hangman Hawley’ came to know of it how he would sneer at him, and the rest of the staff, too. Luckily they would not know. So consoling himself, and cursing the rain anew, he came to Fort Augustus, or rather to what remained of it. Its Highland captors who, during their attack upon it, had partially demolished the new fort, had, on the summons to face Cumberland, blown up and fired most of the residue. A small temporary garrison had been sent there after the victory to secure the abandoned stronghold for the Government; but it had now been taken possession of by a larger force in the shape of the Earl of Loudoun’s regiment, under the Earl himself, and eighteen ‘independent companies’. These had only marched in a few hours before, in consequence of which influx the whole place was in a state of great turmoil.
There was so little accommodation in the ruined fort that a small village of tents was being erected in the meadows by the mouth of the Tarff, and between the confusion of camp-pitching and the fact that nearly everyone whom he encountered was a new-comer, Keith found it difficult to discover who was or had been responsible for prisoners sent in before Lord Loudoun’s arrival. He did, however, elicit the information that Major Guthrie’s detachment was now somewhere on the road between Fort Augustus and Inverness. And at last, though he did not succeed in seeing anybody directly responsible, he was told that a wounded Cameron, said to be the head of one of the cadet branches of the clan, had been captured the previous week and sent in by that very detachment, and that he had been given proper care and was progressing favourably.
That was all Keith wanted to know for the moment, and he delayed no longer. A certain vague disquiet which had teased him during the past week about Guthrie’s possible treatment of his prisoner was allayed. For the rest, he had already made his plans about Ardroy. It was at Inverness, with Cumberland, that he could really do Ewen service, especially if the Duke did take him on to his personal staff. To His Royal Highness he could then represent what he owed to the captured rebel, and, before he himself returned with the Commander-in-Chief to Flanders, he might very well have the satisfaction of knowing that the object of his ‘philanthropy’ had been set at liberty.
As he turned away from Fort Augustus, where the vista of Loch Ness was completely blotted out in rain, and addressed himself to the long steep climb up the Inverness road, Keith’s thoughts went back to the Earl of Albemarle in Perth, craving like himself to get overseas once more—whence, though colonel of the Coldstream Guards, he had come to serve as a volunteer under Cumberland. His lordship, who had, moreover, greatly preferred commanding the front line in the recent battle to his present post with the Hessian troops in Perth, had lamented his situation quite openly to Cumberland’s messenger; he detested Scotland, he announced, and had fears, from a sentence in the despatch which that messenger had delivered to him, that he might be appointed to succeed Hawley in this uncongenial country. Having thus, somewhat unwisely, betrayed his sentiments to Major Windham, he was more or less obliged to beg his discretion, in promising which Keith had revealed his own fellow-feeling about the North. When they parted, therefore, Lord Albemarle had observed with much graciousness that if this horrid fate of succeeding General Hawley should overtake him, he would not forget Major Windham, though he supposed that the latter might not then be in Scotland for him to remember. No; Keith, though grateful for his lordship’s goodwill, distinctly hoped that he would not. He trusted to be by then in a dryer climate and a country less afflicted with steep roads . . . less afflicted also with punitive measures, though, since Perth was not Inverness, he was not so much dominated by those painful impressions of brutality as he had been a week ago.
The greater part of the lengthy and tiresome ascent from the level of Loch Ness was now over, and Keith and Dougal Mackay found themselves again more or less in the region of mist, but on a flat stretch of road with a strip of moorland on one hand. Water glimmered ahead on the left; it was little Loch Tarff, its charms dimmed by the weather. Keith just noticed its presence, tightened his reins, and, trotting forward on the welcome level, continued his dreams about the future.
Twenty-five yards farther, and these were brought abruptly to a close. Without the slightest warning there came a sharp report on his right, and a bullet sped in front of him, so close that it frightened his horse. Himself considerably startled too, he tried simultaneously to soothe the beast and to tug out a pistol from his holster. Meanwhile, Dougal Mackay, with great promptitude and loud Gaelic cries, was urging his more docile steed over the heather towards a boulder which he evidently suspected of harbouring the marksman.
As soon as he could get his horse under control Keith also made over the strip of moorland, and arrived in time to see a wild, tattered, tartan-clad figure, with a musket in its hands, slide down from the top of the boulder, drop on to hands and knees among the heather and bogmyrtle, and begin to wriggle away like a snake. Major Windham levelled his pistol and fired, somewhat at random, for his horse was still plunging; and the Highlander collapsed and lay still. Keith trotted towards him; the man had already abandoned his musket and lay in a heap on his side. The Englishman was just going to dismount when shouts from Dougal Mackay, who had ridden round the boulder, stayed him. “Do not pe going near him, sir; the man will not pe hit whateffer!” And as this statement coincided with Keith’s own impression that his bullet had gone wide, he stayed in the saddle and covered the would-be assassin with his other pistol, while Mackay, who certainly did not lack courage, slid off his own horse and came running.
And it was even as Mackay had said. At the sound of the feet swishing through the heather the heap of dirty tartan lying there was suddenly, with one bound, a living figure which, leaping up dirk in hand, rushed straight, not at the dismounted orderly, but at the officer on the horse. Had Keith not had his pistol ready he could hardly have saved himself, mounted though he was, from a deadly thrust. The man was at his horse’s head when he fired. . . . This time he did not miss; he could not. . . .
“I suppose I have blown his head to pieces,” he said next moment, with a slightly shaken laugh.
“Inteet, I will pe thinking so,” replied Mackay, on his knees in the heather. “But it will pe pest to make sure.” And he put his hand to his own dirk.
“No, no!” commanded Keith, as he bent from the saddle, for somehow the idea of stabbing a dead man, even a potential murderer, was repugnant to him. “It is not necessary; he was killed instantly.”
There could be small doubt of that. One side of the Highlander’s bearded face was all blackened by the explosion, and as he lay there, his eyes wide and fixed, the blood ran backwards through his scorched and tangled hair like a brook among waterweeds. The ball had struck high up on the brow. It came to Keith with a sense of shock that the very torn and faded philabeg which he wore was of the Cameron tartan. He was sorry. . . .
Deterred, unwillingly, from the use of his dirk, the zealous Mackay next enquired whether he should not put the cateran’s body over his horse and bring him to Inverness, so that, dead or alive, he could be hanged at the Cross there as a warning.
“No, leave him, poor devil,” said Keith, turning his horse. “No need for that; he has paid the price already. Let him lie.” He felt curiously little resentment, and wondered at the fact.
Dougal Mackay, however, was not going to leave the musket lying too.
“Tagunna—she is Sassenach,” he announced, examining it.
“Take it, then,” said Keith. “Come, we must get on to the General’s Hut before this mist grows thicker.”
So they rode away, leaving the baffled assailant staring into vacancy, his dirk still gripped in his hand, and under his head the heather in flower before its time.
Once more the road mounted; then fell by a long steep gradient. The General’s Hut, a small and very unpretentious hostelry, of the kind known as a ‘creel house’, was at Boleskine, down on its lower levels, and before Keith reached it he could see that its outbuildings were occupied by soldiers. They were probably Major Guthrie’s detachment. Indeed, as he dismounted, a uniformed figure which he knew came round the corner of the inn, but it stopped dead on seeing him, then, with no further sign of recognition, turned abruptly and disappeared again. It was Lieutenant Paton.
So thesewereGuthrie’s men, and he could hear more of Ardroy. But he would have preferred to hear it from Paton rather than from Guthrie, and wished that he had been quick enough to stop that young man.
The first person whom Keith saw when he entered the dirty little parlour was Guthrie himself—or rather, the back of him—just sitting down to table.
“Come awa’, Foster, is that you?” he called out. “Quick noo; the brose is getting cauld.” Receiving no response he turned round. “Dod! ’tis Major Windham!”
Keith came forward perforce. “Good evening, Major Guthrie. Yes, I am on my way back to Inverness.”
“Back frae Perth, eh?” commented Guthrie. “By the high road this time, then, I’m thinkin’. Sit ye doun, Major, and Luckie whate’er she ca’s hersel’ shall bring anither cover. Ah, here comes Foster—let me present Captain Foster of ma regiment tae ye, Major Windham. Whaur’s yon lang-leggit birkie of a Paton?”
“Not coming to supper, sir,” replied Captain Foster, saluting the new arrival. “He begs you to excuse him; he has a letter to write, or he is feeling indisposed—I forget which.”
“Indeed!” said Guthrie, raising his sandy eyebrows. “He was weel eneugh and free o’ correspondence a while syne. However, it’s an ill wind—— Ye ken the rest. Major Windham can hae his place and his meat.”
Keith sat down, with as good a grace as he could command, at the rough, clothless table. This Foster was presumably the officer whose bed he had occupied in the camp, a man more of Guthrie’s stamp than of Paton’s, but better mannered. Lieutenant Paton’s excuse for absence, coupled with his abrupt disappearance, was significant, but why should the young man not wish to meet Major Keith Windham? Perhaps because the latter had got him into trouble after all over his ‘philanthropy’.
Between the three the talk ran on general topics, and it was not until the meal was half over that Guthrie suddenly said:
“Weel, Major, I brocht in yer Cameron frien’ after ye left.”
Keith murmured that he was glad to hear it.
“But I got little for ma pains,” continued Guthrie, pouring himself out a glass of wine—only his second, for, to Keith’s surprise, he appeared to be an abstemious man. He set down the bottle and looked hard at the Englishman. “But ye yersel’ were nae luckier, it seems.”
Keith returned his look. “I am afraid that I do not understand.”
“Ye see, I ken ye went back tae the shieling yon nicht.”
“Yes, I imagined that you would discover it,” said Keith coolly. “I trust that you received my message of apology for departing without taking leave of you?”
“Yer message of apology!” repeated Major Guthrie. “Ha, ha! Unfortunately ye didna apologise for the richt offence! Ye suld hae apologised for stealing a march on me ahint ma back. ’Twas a pawky notion, yon, was it no’, Captain Foster?”
“I must repeat that I am completely in the dark as to your meaning, Major Guthrie!” said Keith in growing irritation.
“Isna he the innocent man! But I forgie ye, Major—since ye gained naething by gangin’ back.”
“Gained!” ejaculated Keith. “What do you mean, sir? I did not go back to the shieling to gain anything. I went——”
“Aye, I ken what ye said ye gaed for,” interrupted Guthrie with a wink. “’Twas devilish canny, as I said, and deceived the rebel himsel’ for a while. All yon ride in the nicht juist tae tak’ him food and dress his wounds! And when ye were there tendin’ him sae kindly ye never speired aboot Lochiel and what he kennt o’ him, and whaur the chief micht be hidin’, did ye?—Never deny it, Major, for the rebel didna when I pit it tae him!”
“You devil!” exclaimed Keith, springing up. “What did you say to him about me?”
Guthrie kept his seat, and pulled down Captain Foster, who, murmuring “Gentlemen, gentlemen!” had risen too. “Nae need tae be sae distrubel’d, Captain Foster; I’m na. That’s for them that hae uneasy consciences. What did I say tae him? Why, I tellt him the truth, Major Windham: why ye set such store on saving his life, and how ye thocht he micht be persuaded tae ‘drap a hint’ aboot Lochiel. Forbye he didna believe that at first.”
Keith caught his breath. “You told him those lies . . . to his face . . . and he believed . . .” He could get no farther.
“Lies, were they?” asked Guthrie, leaning over the table. “Ye ne’er advised me tae bring him into camp tae ‘complete ma knowledge’? Eh, I hae ye there fine! Aweel, I did ma best, Major Windham; nane can dae mair. But I doot he has the laugh of us, the callant, for he tellt me naething, either by hints or ony ither gait, a’ the time I had him in ma care. So I e’en sent him wi’ a bit report tae Fort Augustus, and there he is the noo, as ye may have heard, if ye speired news o’ him when ye came by.”
Keith had turned very white. “I might have known that you would play some dirty trick or other!” he said, and flung straight out of the room.
Fool, unspeakable fool that he was not to have foreseen something of this kind with a man of Guthrie’s stamp! Hehadhad moments of uneasiness at the thought of Ardroy’s probable interview with him, but he had never anticipated anything quite so base as this. “Take me to Lieutenant Paton at once!” he said peremptorily to the first soldier he came across.
The man led him towards a barn looming through the mist at a little distance. The door was ajar, and Keith went in, to see a dimly lit space with trusses of straw laid down in rows for the men, and at one end three horses, his own among them, with a soldier watering them. The young lieutenant, his hands behind his back, was watching the process. Keith went straight up to him.
“Can I have a word with you alone, Mr. Paton?”
The young man stiffened and flushed; then, with obvious reluctance, ordered the soldier out. And when the man with his clanging buckets had left the building, Paton stood rather nervously smoothing the flank of one of the horses—not at all anxious to talk.
“Mr. Paton,” said Keith without preamble, “what devil’s work went on in your camp over the prisoner from Ben Loy?” And then, at sight of the look on Paton’s face, he cried out, “Good God, man, do you think that I had a hand in it, and is that why you would not break bread with me?”
Lieutenant Paton looked at the ground. “I . . . indeed I found it hard to believe that you could act so, when you seemed so concerned for the prisoner, but——”
“In Heaven’s name, let us have this out!” cried Keith. “What did Major Guthrie say to Mr. Cameron? He appears to have tried to make him believe an infamous thing of me—that I went back to the shieling that night merely in order to get information out of him! Surely he did not succeed in making him think so—even if he succeeded with you? . . . Answer me, if you please!”
The younger man seemed very ill at ease. “I cannot say, sir, what Mr. Cameron believed about you in the end. He certainly refused, and indignantly, to believe it at first.”
“Hecannothave believed it!” said Keith passionately. “‘In the end’? How long, then, did Major Guthrie have him in his custody?”
“He kept him for twenty-four hours, sir—in order to see if he would make any disclosures about Lochiel.” And Lieutenant Paton added, in a very dry tone, turning away and busying himself with a horse’s headstall, “A course which it seems that you yourself advised.”
Keith gave a sound like a groan. “Did the Major tell Mr. Cameron that also?”
Paton nodded. “Yes, he did—and more, too: whether true or not I have no means of judging.”
Keith had the sensation that the barn, or something less material, was closing in round him. This honest boy, too—— “Look here, Mr. Paton, I will be frank with you. I was so desperately afraid that Ardroy would be left to die there in the shieling that I did suggest to Major Guthrie that it might be of advantage to bring him into camp, though I knew that he would have his trouble for nothing. Though I unfortunately recommended that course I was perfectly certain that Mr. Cameron would not give the slightest inkling of any knowledge that he might have.”
“No, it was plain from the beginning that he would not,” said the young man, “and that was why . . .” He broke off. “If Mr. Cameron is a friend of yours it is a good thing that you were not in our camp that morning . . . or no, perhaps a misfortune, because you might have succeeded in stopping it sooner. I could not.”
“Succeeded in stopping what?” asked Keith. Then the inner flavour of some of Guthrie’s recent words began to be apparent to him. He caught Paton by the arm. “You surely do not mean that Major Guthrie resorted to—violent measures? It’s impossible!”
Thus captured, the young soldier turned and faced him. “Reassure yourself, sir,” he said quickly, seeing the horror and disgust on his companion’s face. “He could not carry them out; the prisoner was in no state for it. He could only threaten, and . . . question.”
“He threatened to shoot him after all?”
“No, not to shoot him, to flog him.” And as Keith gave an exclamation and loosed his hold, Paton added, “And he went very near doing it, too.”
“Threatened to flog him! Mr. Paton, you are jesting!” said Keith incredulously. “Flog a badly wounded prisoner, and a gentleman—a chieftain—to boot!”
“I am not jesting, sir; I wish I were. But I am thankful to say that it was not carried out.—Now, if you will excuse me, Major Windham, I must be about my duties.” His tone indicated that he would be glad to leave a distasteful subject.
But Keith made a movement to bar his passage. “Mr. Paton, forgive my insistence, but your duties must wait a little. You cannot leave the matter there! For my own sake I must know what was said to Mr. Cameron. You see how nearly it concerns my honour. I implore you to try to recall everything that passed!”
Reluctantly the young man yielded. “Very well, sir; but I had best speak to the sergeant to ensure that we are not disturbed, for this barn is the men’s quarters.”
He went out to give an order. Hardly knowing what he did, Keith turned to his horse, busy pulling hay from the rack, and looked him over to see that Mackay had rubbed him down properly. Threatened with flogging—Ewen Cameron!
Paton came back, closed the door and brought up a couple of pails, which he inverted and suggested as seats. “You must be tired, Major, after your long ride, and I am afraid that this will be a bit of a sederunt.” So Keith sat down in the stall to hear what his ill-omened suggestion had brought on the man whom he had saved.
It appeared that Major Guthrie, on learning next morning of Major Windham’s departure on his errand of mercy, had been not only exceedingly angry, but suspicious as well—“or at least,” said Paton, “he declared that he was suspicious”—and sent off a party almost immediately to fetch in the wounded rebel from the shieling. About a couple of hours later they returned, carrying him on a litter, which they deposited outside their commander’s tent, where Paton happened to be at the moment. Guthrie immediately went out to him, and said—the narrator remembered his first words exactly—‘Well, my fine fellow, and so you know where Lochiel is like to be skulking!’ The prisoner replied by asking whether Major Guthrie thought he should tell him if he did? Major Guthrie retorted, with a grin, that he knew it was the thing to begin with a little bluster of the sort, but that they had better get to business without wasting time. “And he added, sir,” said the young soldier, looking away, “‘I know that you know; Major Windham says so.’”
Keith had put his hand over his eyes. “Yes; go on,” he said after a moment.
“This was plainly rather a blow to Mr. Cameron,” continued Paton. “I saw the blood rush to his face. ‘Whatdid you say?’ he asked. The Major replied that you, sir, being a loyal subject of King George, were just as eager to secure Lochiel as himself, which was the reason why you had very properly stopped him from having the prisoner shot. To that Mr. Cameron replied, short and sharp, ‘I don’t believe it!’ The Major affected to misunderstand this, and . . . well, sir, he said a good many things incriminating you in the affair, twisting what you had, perhaps, said . . .”
“Try, for God’s sake, to remember what those things were,” begged Keith miserably, without looking up.
The young man paused a moment, evidently trying to remember accurately.
“First, I think, he told Mr. Cameron that you had said he was Cameron of Ardroy, Lochiel’s cousin, and had had you as his prisoner after the affair at High Bridge, and he added, ‘I doubt he wanted to get even with you for that!’ And to make his assertion more credible he asked Mr. Cameron how otherwise he should have known who he was, since he took him for a gillie when he had him up against the shieling wall. And the Major went on to say that for the news of Mr. Cameron’s identity he was grateful to you, but not so grateful when he found that you had stolen a march on him by sneaking back to the shieling by night in order to get information out of the prisoner before he could. But at that Mr. Cameron tried to raise himself on the litter, and burst out, ‘That’s a lie!’ And then the Major silenced him by what I can only suppose was an arrow drawn at a venture, since you . . . I don’t suppose that you . . .” Paton began to stumble.
“Let me have it!” said Keith, looking up this time.
“He said, ‘And so he never speired about Lochiel . . . where he was . . . if you kenned where he was?’”
Keith stared at the narrator half dazed. “How did he know that . . . hecouldnot have known it!”
“As I say, it seemed to silence Mr. Cameron altogether,” continued Paton, glancing at him with a sort of pity. “He looked quite dizzy as he dropped back on the litter. But the Major laughed. And he went on, in that bantering way he has: ‘I hope you did not tell him, for I want you to tellme. Did you tell him?’ The rebel took no notice of this question; he had shut his eyes. It was as I looked at him then, sir, and saw the effect which that question had had on him, that I first began, I confess, to have doubts of your good faith.”
“You had cause,” answered Keith with a groan. “I did ask him about Lochiel—in all innocence. My God, what he must think of me!” He took his head between his hands. “Go on!”
“Finding that Mr. Cameron was silent,” resumed Paton, “Major Guthrie went nearer and said something, I do not exactly remember what, about dropping a hint inadvertently with regard to Lochiel’s hiding-place, which it was easy to do, he said, and which he should give the prisoner every opportunity of doing, keeping him there, indeed, until he did. He kept harping for awhile on this question of dropping a hint, and he brought you even into that, for he said that it was your suggestion, that you had advised him to bring the rebel into camp and watch him well for that purpose. . . . And from what you have just told me, sir, it seems that that was true.”
Paton paused; but Keith, his head between his hands, said nothing; he was beyond it. This was what came of doing evil in order to accomplish good!
“Still Mr. Cameron took no notice,” pursued Paton, “even when the Major went on to say in so many words that you had betrayed him—Mr. Cameron—and had then ridden off, leavinghimthe dirty work to do. Then he changed his tone, and said, ‘But I shall not flinch from it; ’tis my duty. Do you know, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy, how we deal with folk that have valuable information and will not part with it?’ At that the prisoner did open his eyes, and said with a good deal of contempt that, from what he had seen of the Major, he could very well guess.
“The Major at that bent over him and gripped him by the nearer arm. He may not have observed that it was bandaged—I cannot say—and repeated, ‘Ah, you can quite imagine, can you? D’you think you’ll like it?’ Mr. Cameron did not answer; perhaps he could not, for he was biting his lip, and I saw the sweat come out on his brow. Major Guthrie let go and stood up again, and said that a flogging with belts would soon loosen his tongue; and that did rouse Mr. Cameron, for he coloured hotly and said he thought the Major forgot that he was a gentleman. But the Major replied with a chuckle that he looked so little like one at present that it was easy to assume that he was not. Then he asked him whether he intended to save himself from this unpleasant experience, as he easily could do; Mr. Cameron’s look was sufficient answer to that. So, to my horror, the Major sent for the drummers and ordered a tent to be struck, in order to have the pole available to tie him up to.”
“This is intolerable!” exclaimed Keith, starting up. “Stop! I had rather not——” He pulled himself together. “No, I have got to hear it. Go on!”
“I assure you that I did not enjoy it,” said the young officer, “forIthought that the matter was going through. They lifted Mr. Cameron off the litter; he could not stand, it appeared, owing to the wound in his thigh, and the men were obliged to support him. But the Major said to him that he would not be able to fall this time, as he had done yesterday, because we had ropes here. . . . I myself, who would willingly have interfered before, sir, had there been any chance of being listened to, now took the Major by the arm and told him plainly that he would kill the prisoner if he was so barbarous as to have him flogged in his present condition. But he shook me off, and said, when everything was ready (except Mr. Cameron himself, who was still held up there, facing him, as white as you please, but perfectly unyielding and defiant): ‘Now, before you make acquaintance with His Majesty’s leather, will you tell me what you know about Lochiel?’ And the rebel, with his eyes blazing, said, in a sudden access of fury, ‘Not if you cut me to pieces!’
“Well, sir, though I am convinced that the Major was not acting a part and merely threatening, but that he really meant to go through with the horrid business, I think it must have come to him then that, if he did, he would have Mr. Cameron dead on his hands, as I had warned him, and there would be an end to that source of information. (It is possible, too, that he thought he might be called to account for it afterwards.) And even the men were looking uneasy and murmuring a little. So he said that he would postpone the flogging until the afternoon. He had the prisoner carried into his own tent, not much, I fear, the better for this scene; and in his tent Mr. Cameron was all the rest of the day and the night. I do not know what passed in there, for whenever I made an effort to go in, I was stopped; but I am sure the Major questioned him pretty continuously. He still spoke of the flogging taking place, but it never did. Next morning I was not surprised to hear that the prisoner seemed worse, and in a fever, so that the Major resolved to be rid of him, and sent him to Fort Augustus. I was heartily glad, for his own sake, to see Mr. Cameron taken away. And at Fort Augustus he must have had care, or he would not be alive now, which he is, for I asked news of him yesterday, as we came by. But that I should be ashamed to meet him, I would fain have seen him to ask his pardon.”
Paton’s voice ceased; in the silence one of the horses near them stamped and blew out its nostrils. Keith, standing there very still, released his own tightly gripped elbows.
“Mr. Paton, I thank you most heartily for your frankness. I, too, am ashamed—with much more cause than you, I think—yet I am going back to Fort Augustus to see Mr. Cameron.”
“Back to Fort Augustus—to-night!” said Paton, rather startled.
“Yes, to-night. My horse,” he glanced at that animal, “can still carry me so far—a matter of ten or twelve miles, is it not? I intended to lie here the night, and to start about six o’clock to-morrow morning for Inverness. I shall lie at Fort Augustus instead, and start proportionately earlier, that is all. I must find my orderly at once, but I shall not take him back with me.”
Paton said no more, and they went out of the barn together, by which evacuation the waiting soldiers outside, huddled against its wall for shelter, were enabled to enter their sleeping-place. While the surprised Mackay resaddled his officer’s horse, Keith strode back to the inn parlour. But just outside, where he could hear Guthrie’s voice in conversation, he paused. If he meant to get back to Fort Augustus he must not enter Guthrie’s presence first; the fury and resentment which possessed him could have but one result—a quarrel with the Lowlander. Moreover, Lieutenant Paton might suffer for his communicativeness. Clenching his hands, Keith turned away from temptation.
But there was one last question to ask.
“Mr. Paton,” he said in a low voice as his horse was brought towards him, “have you any notion why Major Guthrie hates me so, for it is plain that he does?”
And to his surprise the young man answered, in a voice equally low:
“I have a very good notion why, sir. He had had great hopes of securing that post on General Hawley’s staff which was eventually given to you. Your obtaining it was a very sore point with him, because he thought his claims superior to those of an officer who—who . . .” Paton hesitated.
“Yes, I understand,” said Keith, his mouth tightening. “Who had lost one of the companies at High Bridge.” Guthrie’s sneers on that fatal ride were explained now. “So that was my offence!” he said under his breath, as he swung into the saddle. “And this is how he has avenged himself!”
The wind had risen greatly in the last hour, and the rain was no longer a fine, almost caressing, drizzle; it beat upon the rider as he urged his horse back along the lower levels with a vehemence which predicted real difficulty in proceeding when he should reach the higher. But he did not notice it.
There could not be the slightest doubt that Ewen Cameron must believe him to have acted in a manner unspeakably treacherous and vile. From the deadly success of Guthrie’s ‘arrow at a venture’, as Paton had rightly called it, he must even think that his visitor had gone straight back from tending him in the shieling to Guthrie’s camp with the news that he had succeeded in gaining the fugitive’s confidence, and had ascertained that he did know of Lochiel’s hiding-place. It was an absolutely intolerable thought, and nothing, nothing should stop him until he had seen Ardroy and assured him of his innocence—neither the rising storm nor fatigue, nor the possible danger in riding thus alone at night (though to that, despite the afternoon’s attempt on his life, he gave scarcely a thought), nor Lord Albemarle’s despatch. It was a mercy that this contained, as he knew, nothing of urgency, nothing but a mere expression of compliments, and that he could therefore retrace his steps consistently with his military obligations. In any case, the letter would reach Inverness no later than if he had spent the night at the General’s Hut, so on that score at least his mind was at rest.
It was certainly the only score on which it was. The more Keith thought of the situation, the more it horrified him. Why, good God, Ardroy might even imagine that the infamous proposal of flogging, which turned him hot to think of, came fromhim! Guthrie was evidently quite capable of stating that it had, and though Paton had not reported him as having done so in his hearing, who knew what had been said, what had been done, during the rest of the twenty-four hours in Guthrie’s tent? He was utterly without scruple, and Ardroy completely helpless.
Yet even now Keith could hardly blame himself for his total absence of suspicion that Guthrie might be tempted to do more than question his prisoner . . . rather closely perhaps. No, he told himself again and again, he could not have guessed to what he was delivering up Ardroy. A prisoner-of-war—above all, an officer—in a Christian country and a civilised century stood in no danger of such proceedings. It was true that there had been barbarity after the battle, barbarity which had sickened him, but there had never been any suggestion of deliberately torturing prisoners in order to extract information. (For Major Lockhart of Cholmondeley’s regiment, Captain Carolina Scott of Guise’s, and Captain Ferguson of H.M.S.Furness—all Scots, too—had still to win their spurs in this field.)
Keith was up on the higher levels now, where the wind was really savage, and the rain stung like missiles. It seemed as though the elements desired to oppose his return. But his thoughts ran ahead of him to Fort Augustus. Would there be difficulty in getting access to the prisoner? There might be some, but an officer on Hawley’s staff, riding on the Duke’s business, would be hard to gainsay. If necessary he should approach the Earl of Loudoun himself. And in what state should he find Ardroy? What sort of a captivity had been his now that he was out of that scoundrel Guthrie’s clutches? Remembrances of Inverness, very sinister remembrances, kept floating into his mind. No, it would be different here; and, as Paton had pointed out, they must have taken good care of the Highlander, or he would hardly be alive now, judging from his state a week ago—a state which must have been, which evidently had been, rendered even more precarious by Guthrie’s damnable proceedings. On Guthrie himself he hardly dared allow his mind to dwell; but there could not be another like him at Fort Augustus!
And when he had got access to Ardroy? Surely it would not be difficult to convince him that it was Major Guthrie’s almost incredible spite and jealousy which had wrought this mischief, that nothing in the world had been farther from his own thoughts than the belief that Ewen would betray his Chief? Yes, but unfortunately, though he could deny everything else (save the mere fact of having been forced to establish Ardroy’s identity) he could not deny that most unlucky suggestion to which, in desperation, he had been reduced on the hillside. Oh, if only he had not shirked telling Ewen Cameron of it that night in the shieling! Better, far better, to have faced a measure of shame on that occasion than to have left in Major Guthrie’s hands a weapon capable of working this havoc!
For Guthrie, it was clear, had, in his calculated spite, struck at him through Ewen and at Ewen through him. He had evidentlywishedthe Highlander to believe himself betrayed. Did he then think the ties between them so close when they were only . . . What were they then? Was it really only philanthropy, as Keith had assured himself a few hours ago, which had sent him back to the shieling that night? It was certainly not philanthropy which was driving him to Fort Augustus now.
At nine o’clock, wet and buffeted, he was back in the lines of Loudoun’s camp, still humming with life. Mentioning that he was on the staff he asked, as he had asked that afternoon, to see the officer in charge of prisoners there. Once again there was an obstacle; this time it appeared that the officer, a certain Captain Greening, was closeted with Lord Loudoun, who was very busy, and not to be disturbed save for a matter of great importance.
Keith still retained enough sense of proportion to realise that a private enquiry after the well-being of a rebel prisoner was not likely to wear that aspect in the eyes of Cope’s late adjutant-general. However, perhaps he could arrive at seeing Ardroy without the consent of Captain Greening, so he said to his informant, the officer of the guard:
“I wish to see a certain Mr. Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, who lies here a prisoner. He was taken last week not far from the Corryarrick Pass. Do you think this would be possible without deranging Captain Greening?”
“Cameron of Ardroy?” said the lieutenant with an accent of enlightenment. “Oh, have you come from Inverness about the question of Lochiel’s capture, sir? Then you will be glad to hear that we have got the necessary information at last.”
Keith’s heart gave a great twist—foolishly, surely! “Ah, from whom?”
“Why, from him—from Cameron of Ardroy, naturally. We knew that he had it.”
This time Keith’s heart did not twist—it seemed to die in his breast. “Got it from him—fromhim!” he faltered with cold lips. “When?”
“Last night, I believe,” answered the lieutenant carelessly, pulling his cloak closer about him. “But I fear that I cannot give you permission to visit him, sir, and as Captain Greening is——”
But to his surprise the staff officer was gripping him hard by the arm. “Tell me, in God’s name, what means you used? Ardroy would never——” He seemed unable to finish.
“Means? I really don’t know,” replied the lieutenant, still more surprised. “I should be obliged if you would let go my arm, sir! I have nothing to do with the prisoners. Perhaps this Cameron was promised his liberty or something of the sort—but on my soul I don’t know . . . or care,” he muttered under his breath, rubbing his arm as Keith released it.
“Promised!” cried Keith in a tempest of fury and horror. “No, he has been tortured into it!—that is the only possible explanation of his giving that information—if it be true that he has done so. My God, what has this campaign reduced men to! Take me to Lord Loudoun at once!”
“I cannot, sir,” protested the lieutenant. “He has given the strictest orders——”
“Take me to him at once,” repeated Keith in a dangerous voice; and the young officer, probably thinking that the safest way to deal with a superior who seemed off his balance was to humour him, shrugged his shoulders, and began to lead him in the rain between the tents.
Last night! That meant, then, that for nearly a week they had been trying . . . and had succeeded at last in wresting the secret from a man badly wounded, ill from starvation, and now, perhaps, dying—dying as much of a broken heart as from their usage of him. It was with that unbearable picture of Ewen Cameron in his mind that, after parleys with sentries of which he heard nothing, Keith stepped into the Earl of Loudoun’s presence without any clear idea of what he was going to do there.
He found himself in a large, well-furnished tent, with a brazier burning in one corner, and, round a table, several officers of various ranks (most of them, like the Earl himself, wearing tartan), was announced as an officer of the staff from Inverness, and, duly saluting, gave his name and regiment.
The Earl of Loudoun—more Lowland Scot than Highlander in his appearance—looked less annoyed at the interruption than might have been expected; indeed his air showed that he supposed the intruder to be the bearer of some tidings of importance from head-quarters.
“You are on His Royal Highness’s staff, Major Windham?” he asked.
“On General Hawley’s, my Lord,” replied Keith. “I am on my way back to Inverness from Perth, and I have ventured to ask for this interview because——”
“You have not a despatch for me from the Duke, then—or from General Hawley?”
“No, my Lord. I have but seized this opportunity of appealing to your Lordship on behalf of a prisoner here”—the Earl’s homely, blunt-featured face changed—“who, if he has really made any disclosures, can only have done so under violent measures, taken unknown to your Lordship, and I——”
“What is all this about a prisoner?” interrupted Loudoun, frowning. “You mean to say, Major Windham, that you are here on a purely private matter, when I especially gave orders—— Who admitted you to me under false pretences?”
But the officer of the guard had discreetly vanished.
“Is it a purely private matter, my Lord,” retorted Keith hotly, “that a badly wounded Highland gentleman should be tortured into giving information against his own Chief? It seems to me a matter affecting the good name of the whole army. I only hope that I have been misinformed, and that no such disclosures have been dragged from him.”
“Have you come here, sir,” asked Lord Loudoun with increasing displeasure, “and on no one’s authority but your own, to dictate to me on the treatment of prisoners?”
“No, indeed, my Lord,” replied Keith, making an effort to be properly deferential. “I have come, on the contrary, because I feel sure that your Lordship——”
“If you want news of any prisoner,” interrupted his Lordship with a wave of the hand, “you must wait until Captain Greening here is at liberty. Meanwhile you will perhaps have the goodness to remember that I only marched in to Fort Augustus this morning, and am still so pressed with business that I see small chance of sleep to-night if I am to be interrupted in this manner.”
It was a dismissal: less harsh than at one moment seemed likely, but proving to Keith that he had gained nothing. He tried another tack.
“My Lord, give me permission then, I implore you, to visit the prisoner in question, Mr. Ewen Cameron of Ardroy.”
Loudoun’s eyebrows went up. “Is there anyone of that name confined here, Captain Greening?” he asked in an annoyed voice, turning to a fair, rather womanish looking young man on his left.
Captain Greening smiled a peculiar little smile. “Oh, yes, my Lord; he has been here nearly a week. Major Windham has already made enquiries for him once to-day, so I hear—when he passed on his way to Inverness this afternoon. I was out of camp at the time.”
“What!” exclaimed the Earl, looking from the officer to Keith in astonishment. “Major Windham has been through Fort Augustus once already to-day? This is very singular! Instead of your questioning me, Major Windham, I will ask you to explain your own conduct. Kindly tell me on what errand you originally left head-quarters?”
Keith saw a possible gulf opening for himself now. But he was too passionately indignant to care much. “I have been to Perth, my Lord, with a despatch from His Royal Highness to Lord Albemarle. I was on my way back to Inverness to-day when I heard that Cameron of Ardroy——”
“Leave Cameron of Ardroy out of it, if you please!” said Lord Loudoun in growing anger. “What I want, Major Windham, is some explanation of your own extraordinary behaviour. I gather that you are now on your way back from Perth. Are you carrying despatches from Lord Albemarle to His Royal Highness, or are you empty-handed?”
“I have a letter, of no particular moment, from Lord Albemarle to the Duke,” replied Keith more warily.
“You have, at any rate, a despatch, sir. You have passed this place already on your way to Inverness, carrying it. Some hours later you are back again, making fresh enquiries about a rebel. Had you confided your despatch to another hand in the interval?”
“No, my Lord,” confessed Keith. “Knowing that the matter was not urgent, and that it was impossible for me to reach Inverness to-night, I resolved to lie at the General’s Hut. There I heard something which determined me to have more reliable news of Mr. Cameron of Ardroy, to whom I owe it that I am alive at all to-day. Instead of going to bed at the General’s Hut I rode back here, and whether I start from Boleskine at six or from Fort Augustus at half-past four, Lord Albemarle’s letter will reach His Royal Highness’s hands at exactly the same hour.”
“You seem to have a strangely easy idea of your military duties, Major Windham,” commented Lord Loudoun, drumming on the table. “May I ask how long you have borne His Majesty’s commission?”
“Twelve years,” answered Keith curtly.
“And in all those years you have not learnt the sacredness of a despatch! You are entrusted with one to the Commander-in-Chief, and you take upon yourself to turn back in order to assure yourself of the welfare of a rebel prisoner!—Is it true that this man has made a disclosure?” he asked suddenly of Captain Greening.
“Quite true, my Lord,” responded the fair young officer. “I have notes of it here; it was one of the matters which I desired to bring to your Lordship’s notice. It relates to Lochiel’s hiding-place near Loch Arkaig, and will prove of the greatest service in your Lordship’s future operations.”
At that reply all thoughts of his own situation abandoned Keith; he was caught up again in a wave of fury and shame. “My God!” he cried, striding forward, his eyes fixed on Captain Greening, “are there devils here too? You have tortured him into it . . . never deny it, I’ll not believe you! As well be in a camp of Red Indians or African savages! Inverness was bad enough, with its prisons stuffed with purposely neglected wounded; then that man Guthrie, and now——”
Lord Loudoun sprang up, very threatening of aspect. “Major Windham, may I ask you to remember where you are! I’ll not be spoken to in such a manner!”
“I was not addressing you, my Lord,” said Keith fiercely. “I know that you only reached Fort Augustus this morning. You are not responsible for what has been going on—God knows what it was—before you came. But this officer here——”
“Be silent, sir!” shouted the Earl of Loudoun. “Neither will I have aspersions cast on officers now under my command . . . and by a member of General Hawley’s staff, too! Are your own hands so clean, pray? You do not deserve that I should reply to your insinuations, but—Captain Greening,wasthis information got from the Cameron prisoner by unlawful means?”
“No, my Lord, I assure you that it was not. He gave it . . . voluntarily.” But again there was that little smile.
“There, you hear, sir!” said the Earl. “Your charges——”
“I don’t believe it,” said Keith in the same moment. “I will not believe it until I hear it from Ardroy himself.”
And at that Lord Loudoun completely lost his temper. “God’s name, am I to suffer you to browbeat me in my own tent?—you, who have just behaved in a manner unpardonable in a soldier! Major Windham, I place you under arrest for insubordination. You will kindly give up your sword!”
It was as if a douche of cold water had descended on Keith’s head. His left hand went to his swordhilt. “Insubordination, my Lord? No, I protest!”
“Very well, it shall be for neglect of duty, then,” said the Earl, still very angry. “Lord Albemarle’s despatch is in truth not safe with a man who can go twenty miles out of his way while carrying it. I shall send it on by one of my own aides-de-camp to-night. Give it up at once, if you do not wish to be searched. Captain Munro, call a guard!”
Like rain upon a bonfire, the cold douche had, after a temporary extinction, only inflamed Keith Windham’s rage. He unhooked his sword, scabbard and all, and flung it at Loudoun’s feet, saying that he was glad to be rid of it. By this time—seeing too that the falling weapon had nearly caught his Lordship on the toes—every officer in the tent was rushing towards him. “Reassure yourselves, gentlemen,” said Keith, laughing angrily, and, opening his uniform, took out Lord Albemarle’s despatch and tendered it to the nearest. Then, without more ado, he followed the guard out into the rain, his last memory, as he left the lighted tent, not of Lord Loudoun’s affronted, angry face, but of Captain Greening’s, with that sly, secretly amused smile round his girlish mouth.
The early morning bugle, close at hand, woke Keith Windham with a start. He had had little sleep during the night, and was all the deeper buried now. Where was he? He stared round the tent—an unfamiliar one. Then he remembered.
And all that endless day he sat in his canvas prison and did little else save remember. For the first time in his life he was in the midst of camp routine without a share in it—with no right to a share in it. No sword hung upon the tent-pole, and a sentry paced outside whose business was not to keep intruders out, but him in.
Had he not still been sustained by rage he might have felt more dejection than he did. The rage was not against Lord Loudoun, to whose severity he could not deny some justification, nor was it on his own account; it was against the effeminate Captain Greening and other persons unknown. Not for a moment did he believe that officer’s half-sniggering asseveration of voluntary betrayal on the part of Ewen Cameron . . . though at times the other alternative haunted him so horribly that he almost wished he could believe it. Far better to have let Ardroy go down riddled by bullets on the mountain-side than to have saved him for agony and dishonour; far better had henotcome upon him in time!
And wherewasArdroy? Unable to make personal investigations, Keith could not well ask the soldier who brought him his meals. And, even if he discovered, even if he were allowed an interview with the prisoner—very improbable now—was he so sure that he himself wanted it? Could he bear to see the Highlander again, in the state which must be his by now?
His own plight seemed negligible in comparison. He thought of it, indeed, but only with a sort of dull wonder. Up till now his own advancement had been for him the one star in a grey heaven. Now the heaven was black and there was no star at all.
A rainy yellow sunset was smearing the sky when the flap of the tent was pulled aside and an officer came in—a very stiff young aide-de-camp.
“I am to inform you, sir,” he said, “that as this tent is required to-night a room has been prepared for you in the fort. And Major-General Lord Loudoun supposes that rather than be marched through the camp under escort, you will agree to make no attempt to escapeen route, in which case I am to conduct you there now myself.”
“His Lordship is extremely considerate,” replied Keith. “I am only surprised that he is willing to rely on my word. But no doubt he is aware that I should hardly better my situation by deserting.”
“Then if you will kindly follow me,” said the aide-de-camp still more stiffly, “I will lead you to the fort.”
But, for all his own sarcastic words, for all the absence of an escort, Keith did not enjoy that short journey very much. Everyone whom they met, either among the tents or on the brief stretch of muddy road, must know why he went thus without a sword and whither he was going; and it was with some instinct of avoiding their scrutiny that he tried to lag behind two lieutenants of independent companies who were strolling ahead of him deep in talk. It was impossible, however, not to overtake them in the end; and, as he and his escort drew nearer, scraps of their conversation floated backwards to the Englishman’s ears bearing, so he thought, the word ‘Cameron’. Instantly he strained his ears to catch more; perhaps they were discussing Ardroy. As he drew still nearer he found that he was mistaken, but that one officer must be concluding an account of his experiences in a scouting party from which he had recently returned.
“. . . The same everywhere by Loch Lochy; and there’s not a doubt the rebels are much more numerous in that neighbourhood than we had any notion of—Camerons and MacDonalds, too. ’Tis thought they even contemplate making a stand in a few days’ time. His Lordship will be sending out a fresh reconnaissance . . .”
Here they passed the speaker, and the rest was lost; but what he had heard did not particularly interest Major Windham. Only one Cameron was in his mind at present.
And now they were at the shell of the fort, where the remains of the burnt-out buildings within the enceinte hardly looked as if they could afford any accommodation at all.
“I suppose,” said Keith carelessly to his guide, “that the rebel prisoners, if you have any, are confined here?”
“Yes. But you must not think, sir,” explained the ever correct aide-de-camp, “that Lord Loudoun has any wish to put your case on a level with theirs. We are indeed short of tents, and you will not, I believe, find the room assigned to you in the fort any less comfortable.”
Keith thanked him for the assurance, but he was not really listening. Ewen Cameron was somewhere in this half-ruined enclosure.
His new quarters turned out to be bare, but not more so, certainly, than the tent. In the night, tossing on the camp bed, he made up his mind that if it proved impossible to obtain access to Ardroy in person, he would at least contrive to get a letter smuggled in to him somehow. Surely he could find a venal sentry or gaoler. He wondered what his own custodian was like, for on arrival, being much absorbed in his own thoughts, he had only received an impression of someone stout and middle-aged.
Morning and breakfast revealed him; a sergeant who might have been a well-to-do sufferer from gout, so painfully did he hobble in with the meal. Talkative upon encouragement, and apologetic for his bodily shortcomings, he explained that his lameness was due to a wound in the foot received when Fort Augustus was besieged by the Highlanders, he being a sergeant of Guise’s regiment, three companies of which then held it. When they surrendered and marched out, he was left behind. “And though I looked to have my throat cut, sir, by the wild MacDonalds and what not, I was very well treated, and my wound cared for. Is this what you wish for breakfast, sir?”
“I am not in a position to exercise much choice,” said Keith. “You know that Lord Loudoun has put me under arrest?”
The stout sergeant seemed shocked at this blunt reference to an unfortunate fact. “If I may presume on your being English, sir, same as I am myself——”
“You may,” replied Keith.
“I would say, sir, that it don’t seem right that a Scotchman should be able——” But there he stopped, aware no doubt that he was about to make a remark even blunter.
Keith could not help smiling. “I think, my friend, that we had better not pursue that subject. May I ask whether it is by a delicate attention of the authorities that you have been detailed to wait upon me?”
“No, sir; I only come to the fort yesterday, the corporal that was here before having gone off duty sick; and me not being capable of much at present with this foot, I was told off in his place.”
“Are the ordinary prisoners—the rebels, I mean—in your charge?”
“Yes, sir, so I find; though there’s only a few, picked up in the last week. Them’s in the rooms below, the dungeons as we call ’em—all but a young man as has been kept by himself at the top of this very building; he’s been ill, I understand.”
Small doubt who that was. “You have seen this young man already, I suppose, sergeant,” asked Keith, making no attempt to begin his breakfast. “How did he seem? I am interested in him.”
“Indeed, sir! Well, he looks in but a poor way, and seems very melancholy like.”
“You do not know . . . you have not heard—anything particular about his previous treatment?” asked Keith, his heart suddenly beating hard. “You have not heard, for instance, that . . . that forcible measures have been used to wring certain information out of him?”
“Lord, no, sir! Have they so? Yes, ’tis true he looks as though something of the sort might have happened to him, but I put it down to his having been ill with his wound.”
Keith had turned away his face. “Do you mean,” he said after a moment, “that he is actually in this very corner of the fort?”
“Yes, sir; up a-top of you, as it were. ’Tis the least damaged portion, and even at that there’s some holes in it. You know them Highlanders used near twenty barrels of powder a-blowing of this place up.—Have you all you want, sir?”
“By the way,” said Keith, as his attendant was hobbling out, “do not tell the young man—Mr. Cameron of Ardroy—that I was asking about him.”
“No, sir, I won’t mention of it. Mr. Cameron, is that his name now? Why, ’twas a Dr. Cameron dressed my foot; a very kind gentleman he was, too.”
Keith’s breakfast was totally cold before he began it, and when the sergeant appeared again he opened his campaign at once. His guardian proved much less obdurate than he had feared. Obdurate indeed he was not; it was quite natural caution on his own behalf which withheld him from acceding sooner to Major Windham’s request to be taken up to see the rebel prisoner ‘up a-top of him’. It was fortunate for Keith’s case that Sergeant Mullins was unaware of the close connection between that prisoner and the English Major’s arrest; he believed the latter to be suffering merely for hot words to General Lord Loudoun, cause unknown. The fact of Keith’s being a fellow-countryman went for something, as did also the remembrance of the Highlanders’ good treatment of himself. Finally he yielded, on condition that he chose his own time for letting the sequestered officer out of his room, and that Major Windham gave him his word of honour not to take any steps to help the rebel to escape. Keith promised without difficulty that he would not even speak of such a thing; it was the past, and not the future, which was more likely to engage his tongue.
So about six o’clock in the evening he followed his limping guide up the stair and found himself standing, with real dread in his heart, outside a door which the sergeant unlocked, saying to an unseen occupant:
“I have brought someone to see you, Mr. Cameron.”
The room was light and airy—rather too airy, for one wall had in it a good-sized breach, across which a piece of canvas had been stretched in an attempt to keep out rain and wind. Facing the door was a semicircular embrasure pierced with three narrow windows, and having a stone seat running round it. And on the floor of this embrasure, on some sort of a pallet, with his back propped against the seat, his legs stretched out in front of him, and his eyes fixed on the slit of window opposite him (though from his position on the floor he could not have seen anything but a strip of sky) Ewen Cameron was sitting motionless. He did not turn his head or even move his eyes when the door opened and closed again; and Keith stood equally motionless, staring at a haggard and unshaven profile which he found difficulty in recognising.
At last he took a few steps forward. Ewen turned his head indifferently . . . and then was as suddenly frozen as one who looks on Medusa. There was a long shivering pause.
“Why are you here . . .Judas?”
Half prepared though he was, Keith felt slashed across the face. He caught his breath.
“If I were that, I should not be here,” he answered unsteadily. “I have come . . . I came directly I had news of you, to explain . . . to put right if I could . . .” But the words died on his lips; it seemed a mockery to talk of putting anything right now.
“Toexplain!” repeated Ewen with an indescribable intonation. “To explain why you told your confederate Major Guthrie everything you knew about me, to explain why you came back that night and fooled me, why you urged him to tear from me what I knew, having first made sure that I knew it—it needs no explanation! You wanted to pay off old scores—Edinburgh, Loch Oich side. Be content, you have done it—you have more than done it!”
“Ardroy, no, no, as God’s my witness,” struck in Keith desperately, “I had no such thought!” But he was not heeded, for Ewen tore on hoarsely:
“Since you desired so greatly to be even with me for a moment of triumph, could you not have let me be shot, and watched it? Or was that not sufficient for you because I did not know that you were there? . . . Oh, if God would but give me back that moment against the shieling wall, and allow it to finish as it was meant to! Then I should not be to-day what you have made me—a worse traitor than you are yourself!”
After that there was silence. What use in talking of his good faith and his charitable intentions when they had resulted in this! For it was true then—Ardroyhadgiven the information. Indeed the fact was written on his haunted face.
But at last Keith said, in a scarcely audible voice and with his eyes on the floor, “What did they . . . do to you?”
There was no answer, and, looking up, he saw that the wounded man’s outburst had exhausted him; breathing fast, he had put his head back against the edge of the seat behind him, and his eyes were half shut. His appearance was so ghastly that Keith went forward and seized a bowl of water from the floor beside him.
But a shaking hand came up to keep him off, and he hesitated. “What, are you trying to actthat nightover again?” asked Ewen bitterly. And Keith stood there helpless, his fingers tightening on the bowl. Was this anguished hostility utterly to defeat him?
The Highlander looked as if he had not slept for nights and nights; his eyes, naturally rather deepset, were fearfully sunk, and glittered with a feverish brilliance. All his courtesy, all his self-command, his usual rather gentle address, every quality which Keith had observed and carelessly admired in him, seemed obliterated by the event which had brought him almost to breaking-point. “Will you not go?” he gasped out, clenching his hands; “will you not go now that you are satisfied?”
Keith put down the bowl; the action seemed symbolic. “Ardroy, if you would only listen for a moment!” he pleaded. “Indeed it is not as you think! I never betrayed you—I would as soon betray my own brother! There has been a horrible——”
“Why must I endure this, too, after all the rest?” broke out Ewen violently. “You cannot make a fool of me again, Major Windham! Have a little pity at the last, and leave me!”
“No, for your own sake youmusthear me!” urged Keith. “It is Major Guthrie who is respon——”
But Ewen Cameron, with a face like stone (save that no stone image ever had eyes like that), had put his hands over his ears.
It was hopeless then! Baffled, Keith slowly turned and went to the door. He had wrecked his own career to no purpose. . . . But it was not of that catastrophe which he thought as, having rapped to be let out, he stood there with bent head. He was not even conscious of resentment at the more than taunts which had been flung at him, for it was he who had brought the man who uttered them to this pass.
He knocked again, louder; but the sergeant must have gone away, possibly to keep watch below. It came to Keith dimly, like a shape seen through fog, that Ardroy and he had once before been locked in together. . . . Then he was aware that the half-prostrate man on the floor had moved a little, that he was leaning on his left hand, and that those glittering blue eyes were on him again.
“Cannot you get out?” There was impatience in the icy voice.
“No, for I also am locked in,” answered Keith very low.
“You—the informer!”
Keith swallowed hard. “I am a prisoner . . . like you.” But the words would hardly come.
“Why?”
“For neglect of duty,” replied Keith wearily. “For turning back while carrying a despatch.”
“So you cannot even serve your own side faithfully!” observed Ewen with contempt.
Keith turned a little whiter and gripped the handle of the locked door. For an instant the flame of his hot temper flickered, only to subside among the ashes. “No,” he answered after a moment; “no, so it seems. I have disgraced myself, as well as ruining you. . . . The gaoler must have gone away, I am afraid, and I cannot relieve you of my presence until he returns.”
“It is of no moment,” replied Ewen coldly, and he shifted himself a trifle so as to look at his visitor no longer, and propped his head on his clenched fist. The plaid in which he was partly wrapped had slipped from his shoulders when he put his hands up to his ears, and there was now nothing to hide his torn and dirty shirt—which, after all, was only of a piece with the general neglect of his person. The only evidence of care or cleanliness was the fresh bandage round his sword-arm. . . . ‘So that has been recently dressed,’ thought Keith, ‘and he can use it. . . . That must be the plaid which I spread over him in the shieling. He was a very different man then. . . .’
He was surprised, after another appreciable silence, to find himself being addressed again, though not looked at.
“Why did you turn back?”
“What is the use of telling you—you will not believe me! Indeed I wonder whether you believe me when I say that I am under arrest; that might be a lie also.”
He had at least succeeded in gaining Ardroy’s attention, for the latter dropped his arm and once again looked across the room at him. “I should like to know why you turned back?” he repeated, without comment on the reply which he had drawn forth.
Yes, that at all events he should hear! Keith left the door, where there was no sound of Sergeant Mullins’ approach.
“Cannot you guess? I came because of you—because, a dozen miles beyond here, on my way back to Inverness, I learnt both of the abominable way in which you had been treated in Guthrie’s camp, and of the manner in which that scoundrel had twisted my words and my actions in order to misrepresent me to you. It was the night before last; it was late, but I resaddled and came back at once—neglecting my duty, Lord Loudoun said. I rode back in the greatest haste to see you, I was in such apprehension about you. When I got here I heard that you——” Ewen drew his breath sharply, and the sentence was not finished. “I insisted on seeing Lord Loudoun at once, and when I was told that you had . . . had made disclosures of your own free will, I demanded to see you. I said that I would never believe that unless you told me so yourself. Then there was a scene of some violence, and I had to give up my sword and my despatch—and I suppose that in a few days my commission will go the same road. Should I have acted so—so madly against my own interests if I had been what you think me? . . . But I am forgetting; you will say that this is false also, though every officer in Fort Augustus should tell you that it is true!”
Ewen had put his head down on his updrawn right knee. A shaft of sunlight, striking through one of the narrow windows, fell across its auburn disorder. And, looking with something more painful than pity at the utter desolation of his aspect, Keith thought that life could scarcely hold anything more terrible for a gallant man than to feel himself at once a traitor and betrayed. But betrayed he had not been! If only he could be brought to see that!
And perhaps Ewen was being brought to it, for from his huddled figure there came a long sigh, and, after another silence, words which sounded as though they were wrung from his very heart: