‘My Dear John,—‘It will no doubt be your Labours in His Royal Highness’s Service that have hitherto hindered you frae waiting upon an old Woman who has not set Eyes upon you since you were a Lad. I see I’ll e’en have to bid you to my House, and maybe set a Bait to bring you there. Well then—do you mind of William Craig of Craigmains, him that’s sib to your Uncle Dickson on the Mother’s Side, with a pretty Fortune, and Kin that went out, severals of them, in the Fifteen? He comes to Edinburgh to-day on Affairs, and will likely stay two-three Days with me; and I’m thinking that could he be gained for the Good Cause others of the Fife Lairds might follow his Example. Forbye there’s his Siller. Try then could you not dine with me the morn at three of the Clock, and have a bit Crack with Craigmains, and tell him how well Things go for our bonny Prince, and you’ll maybe do as good an Afternoon’s Work as writing Proclamations.‘Your loving Great-aunt,‘ANNA EASTERHALL.’
‘My Dear John,—
‘It will no doubt be your Labours in His Royal Highness’s Service that have hitherto hindered you frae waiting upon an old Woman who has not set Eyes upon you since you were a Lad. I see I’ll e’en have to bid you to my House, and maybe set a Bait to bring you there. Well then—do you mind of William Craig of Craigmains, him that’s sib to your Uncle Dickson on the Mother’s Side, with a pretty Fortune, and Kin that went out, severals of them, in the Fifteen? He comes to Edinburgh to-day on Affairs, and will likely stay two-three Days with me; and I’m thinking that could he be gained for the Good Cause others of the Fife Lairds might follow his Example. Forbye there’s his Siller. Try then could you not dine with me the morn at three of the Clock, and have a bit Crack with Craigmains, and tell him how well Things go for our bonny Prince, and you’ll maybe do as good an Afternoon’s Work as writing Proclamations.
‘Your loving Great-aunt,
‘ANNA EASTERHALL.’
This letter was superscribed ‘To Mr. John Murray of Broughton at Holyroodhouse’, and was of the same day’s date. Ewen gave it back to the royal hand in silence.
“Mr. Murray is indisposed and keeps his room, and I am going to pay his great-aunt a visit in his stead,” said the Prince, going to the bed and taking up his cloak. “And ‘our bonny Prince’ himself will have the necessary bit crack with this Fife laird of the moneybags. You can see from the letter that Lady Easterhall thinks a little persuasion might induce him to open them, and I flatter myself that he’ll yield to me sooner than to Murray.”
“But your Royal Highness could cause this kinsman of Mr. Murray’s to come here, instead of venturing yourself in the Grassmarket,” objected Ewen, to whom this Haroun-al-Raschid scheme—unknown, he felt sure, to the secretary himself—did not at all appeal.
“Not before he had made up his mind, man! He would not; your Lowland Scot is too canny.”
“But would not a visit to this lady to-morrow——”
“Would you have me approach the Castle in daylight, my friend?”
“But consider the other dwellers in the house,” urged Ewen. “Your Royal Highness knows that nearly all Edinburgh lives pell-mell, one above the other. Lady Easterhall’s neighbour on the next land may well be a Whig gentleman or——”
“My dear Ulysses,” said the Prince, laying a hand familiarly on his aide-de-camp’s arm, “you may have an old head on young shoulders, but so have I too! Lady Easterhall is very singular; she has a whole house to herself. I found this out from Murray. And if report says true, the house itself is singular also.”
At that moment there was another discreet tap at the door, and O’Sullivan, who had been listening to this conversation in a sardonic silence, opened it to admit Mr. Francis Strickland in a cloak. In response to the displeased query on the last-comer’s face the Quartermaster-General observed that Captain Cameron was going with them, “though one gathers that he disapproves.”
“He has my leave to disapprove,” said the Prince lightly, “provided he comes too.” He was evidently in great spirits at the prospect of this escapade, as pleased as a boy at stealing a march on his bedridden secretary—relieved too, perhaps, at having laid the storm which he had himself raised; and when Ewen asked him whether he should not procure him a chair, scouted the idea. He would go on his own feet as less likely to attract attention. “And when I have my cloak so”—he threw it round his face up to the very eyes—“who will know me? I learnt the trick in Rome,” he added.
But his gaze then fell upon his aide-de-camp’s attire. “Faith, Ardroy, you must have a cloak, too, to cover up that finery—nay, you cannot go to fetch one now. I know where Morrison keeps another of mine.”
“And the sentinel at your Royal Highness’s ante-chamber door?” enquired Strickland in an injured voice.
“The door must go wanting one after all—unless you yourself covet the post, Strickland? In that case you can lendyourcloak to Captain Cameron.” And at the look on Strickland’s face he laughed. “I was but jesting. Like the man in the Gospel, I have two cloaks—here, Ardroy, if ’twill serve for that excessive height of yours. . . . Now for my great-great-great-grandsire’s private stair!”
The three men followed him in silence down the narrow, twisting stair, Ewen bringing up the rear, and wondering why disapproval made one feel so old. And, after O’Sullivan had given the word of the day and passed them out of Holyrood House, they were soon walking briskly, not up the Canongate itself, but up the slope parallel to it, the ‘back of the Canongate’, the Prince in front with the Irishman, Ewen behind with Strickland, both the latter very silent. Flurries of the October wind plucked at their cloaks as they went in the semi-darkness, sometimes swooping at them from the open grassy spaces of the King’s Park on their left, at others appearing to originate mysteriously in the tall line of houses of the Canongate with their intervening gardens on the right. They met nobody until they came to the Cowgate Port, and, O’Sullivan again giving the word to the guard, were admitted within the town walls and the nightly stenches of Edinburgh proper.
In the Cowgate there were still a few folk abroad, and a couple of drunkards, emerging unexpectedly from a close, all but knocked into the Prince. As he moved quickly aside to avoid collision, a man passing in the opposite direction was obliged to step into the gutter. It was quite natural that this man should turn his head to see the reason for being thus incommoded, but unfortunate that the Prince’s cloak should at that instant slip from its position. Ewen could only hope that the passer-by had not recognised him; there was at least nothing to indicate that he had. He went on his way without a pause, and the four adventurers resumed theirs.
As they emerged into the Grassmarket the great mass of the Castle Rock, half distinguishable against the sky, and crowned with a few lights, lifted itself as if in menace; but a few steps farther and it was blocked from view by the houses on the other side of that wide open space. Lights still burned in some of these, but everything was quiet.
“That is the house,” said the Prince in a low voice, but it was not easy to know at which he was pointing across the Grassmarket, since they all adjoined each other. “The entrance, however, is neither here nor in the West Bow, but up a close leading out of the Grassmarket, so Murray says.”
Holding their fluttering cloaks about them they crossed the Grassmarket. Away to their right, when they were over, wound the curve of the West Bow. At the mouth of the close which the Prince indicated Ewen, seeing that O’Sullivan seemed to be going to allow his master to walk first up the dark passage, strode forward, and without apology placed himself in front, and so preceded them all up the alley, his hand on his sword. He liked this place not at all.
In a moment he felt a twitch on his cloak from behind. “This will be the door of the house,” said the Prince’s voice. “See if you can summon someone. They keep uncommonly early hours hereabouts; I trust the household is not already abed.”
But Ewen, tirling the risp on the door in the gloom, welcomed this suggestion with delight, since, if it were so, the Prince would be obliged to go home again. And for some little time it did appear as if his hope were to be fulfilled, for no one came in answer to his summons. He peered up the close; it seemed to him possible that its upper end debouched on the Castle Hill itself. It was madness to have come here.
The Prince himself then seized the ring and rasped it impatiently up and down, and very soon Ewen’s heart sank again as he heard bolts being withdrawn inside. An old serving-man opened the door a little way and put his head out.
“Will Lady Easterhall receive her kinsman, Mr. Murray of Broughton, and his friends?” asked Mr. Murray’s impersonator.
The ancient servitor opened the door a little wider. “Ou, ay, Mr. Murray o’ Broughton,” he said, stifling a yawn. “Mr. Murray o’ Broughton,” he repeated, in an owl-like manner which hinted at recent refreshment. “An’ Mr. Murray’s frien’s,” he added, with another yawn but no motion to admit the visitors. “Hoo mony o’ ye wull there be then—is yon anither?” For footsteps had been coming up the close, and at the words a man passed the group, walking quickly. He did not glance at them, and it was too dark in the alley to see faces; but Ewen felt an uncomfortable suspicion that it was the same man who had passed them in the Cowgate and had looked at the Prince. But no, surely this man was shorter; moreover he had betrayed no interest in them.
“Come, man, conduct us to Lady Easterhall,” said O’Sullivan sharply. “Or is she abed?”
“Nay, her leddyship’s taking a hand at the cartes or playing at the dambrod wi’ Miss Isobel. Come ben then, sirs. Which o’ ye wull be Mr. Murray?”
But nobody answered him. They followed him towards the staircase, up which he began laboriously to toil. “Forbye her leddyship’s no’ expectin’ Mr. Murray till the morn,” they heard him mutter to himself, but soon he did little save cough as he panted and stumbled upwards, pausing once to announce that whiles he had a sair hoast.
“Take heart, my Nestor,” said the Prince in Ewen’s ear, as they arrived at the first floor. “It may be difficult to get into this house, but I have heard that it is easy to get out of it.”
Before he could explain himself the old man had opened the door of a large room, economically and most insufficiently lit by the flickering firelight and a couple of candles on a small table near the hearth, at which sat an old lady and a young playing draughts. There was no one else in the room.
“My leddy, here’s yer leddyship’s kinsman, Mr. Murray o’ Broughton, and a wheen frien’s tae veesit ye. Wull I bring some refreshment?”
From the island of light the old lady looked up surprised. “Ye veesit ower late, nephew,” she said in a little, cracked, but authoritative voice, in the Scots common even to persons of breeding. “Nane the less ye are welcome. But did ye no get my letter the day? Saunders, light the sconces and bring wine.” And, as one or two candles on the walls sprang to life and the Prince took a few steps forward, she leant from her easy chair. “Eh, John, ye’ve made a finer figure of a man than aince I thocht ye like to do! But hae ye the toothache that ye are sae happed up? Come and present your friends, and I’ll make ye acquainted with Miss Isobel Cochran, your aunt Margaret’s niece. Bestir yersel’ now wi’ the candles, Saunders—dinna don’er, man!”
The Prince removed his cloak from the lower part of his face. “Madam,” he said, bowing, “I must crave your pardon for having used your great-nephew’s name as a passport. I am not Mr. Murray, and—though I hope indeed that you will not be so cruel—I await only your word to have your good Saunders show us the door again.”
The old lady peered still farther into the only half-dispelled dimness. “Presairve us—wha’s gotten intil the hoose?” she exclaimed. “Wha is’t . . . I canna see . . .”
But the girl was on her feet, the colour rushing into her face. “Great-aunt, great-aunt, ’tis the Prince himself!”
Even Ewen’s disapproval was hardly proof against the scene that followed. Old Lady Easterhall rose tremulously on her ebony stick, her face working almost painfully, and attempted to kneel, which the Prince of course would not allow; while Miss Cochran, from pale that she was become, had the colour restored to her cheeks by the salute which he set on her hand as she rose from the deepest curtsy of her life. In a short time Saunders, babbling joyfully, had lit every sconce in the room, till the candle-light swam and glittered on the well-polished furniture and the half-seen satins of the visitors’ coats, seeming to concentrate itself upon the winking star of St. Andrew which—most ill-advisedly, thought the aide-de-camp—still adorned the Royal breast. And when chairs had been set, and wine brought, then at last, in a warm atmosphere of loyalty and emotion, the Prince tactfully explained his errand.
Lady Easterhall shook her becapped head. “Ah, I jaloused ’twas not to see an auld woman that your Royal Highness came here! But Craigmains is no’ come yet; he wasna to reach the toun till noon the morn. I thocht I had writ that in my letter to my nephew. Sae your Royal Highness has come here for naething.”
The Prince’s face had indeed fallen, but he recovered himself quickly. “Do not say that, madam. Have I not gained the pleasure of your acquaintance, and of Miss Cochran’s, not to speak of drinking the best claret I have tasted since I came to Edinburgh? So let us pledge the missing guest, gentlemen, and the real Murray shall deal with him to-morrow.”
On which, lifting his glass, he drank again, and Colonel O’Sullivan and Mr. Strickland followed his example. But Ewen did not; he had risen, and now remained standing behind the Prince’s chair, as one awaiting the signal to depart. Now that he had learnt the uselessness of his escapade His Highness would no doubt speedily withdraw. But that young gentleman showed no sign of such an intention. On the contrary, he began in an animated manner to question Lady Easterhall on her recollections of the Fifteen, while Miss Cochran’s hand played nervously with the neglected draughtsmen on the little table, though her eyes, wide and glamour-stricken, never left the unbidden guest. She at least, even if she knew it not, was uneasy.
And after a few minutes the Prince became aware of his aide-de-camp’s attitude. He turned his head.
“What a plague ails you, Captain Cameron, standing there like a grenadier! Sit down, man, and do not so insult our hostess’s excellent vintage.”
“I had rather, with Your Highness’s and Lady Easterhall’s leave,” replied Captain Cameron, “post myself in some part of the house whence I can get a view of the approach to it. Does not the close run up towards the Castle Hill, madam?”
“You are very nervous, sir,” commented O’Sullivan, half-sneeringly. “Why should the nearness of the Castle trouble Lady Easterhall, since his Royal Highness’s presence cannot possibly be known there? And of what use is the guard at the Weighhouse—your own clansmen, too—if they cannot prevent the garrison from coming out?”
But Lady Easterhall herself seemed of Ewen’s opinion. “The young gentleman is verra richt,” she declared. “He shall keep watch if he’s minded tae, though, as ye say, sir, the Castle’s little likely to trouble my hoose. Isobel, gang ye with Captain Cameron and show him the best windy for the purpose. Though even if they should send a picket here,” she added smiling, “His Royal Highness and all could be oot of the hoose before they could win entrance. There’s a secret stair, gentlemen, leads frae this verra room doun under the hoose to a bit door in the West Bow, and the entry to’t lies ahint yon screwtore at the side of the chimley, sae ye may be easy.”
All eyes turned towards the spot indicated, where, not far from the hearth, an ebony writing-table with inlay of metal and tortoiseshell—evidently a French importation—stood against the panelling. “A secret stair!” exclaimed the Prince, and, in a lower tone, “ma foi, rumour was right!—You hear, Ardroy? So now you need not deprive us of your society . . . nor of Miss Cochran’s.”
“Miss Cochran’s I need not in any case take from your Royal Highness,” responded Ewen, preparing to leave the room, “for I doubt not I can find a suitable look out without troubling her. But, even with the secret stair, I think it would be better to post a sentry.” A laugh from O’Sullivan followed him as he closed the door, and stirred his simmering wrath against the Quartermaster-General and Strickland to a still higher temperature. That they should without remonstrance allow the Prince to remain here, under the very shadow of the Castle, for no more valid object than to drink Lady Easterhall’s claret—and, of course, to give her pleasure by the honour done to her—was monstrous! It was true that it needed a certain amount of skill and courage to make a dash from the Castle, on account of the Highland guards in its neighbourhood, but it was dark, and he was still uneasy about the man who had passed them in the close.
The landing and stairway were ill lit, and he hesitated; he had better summon Saunders, perhaps. Then the door behind him opened and shut, a rather timid voice said, “Captain Cameron!” and turning, he beheld Miss Isobel Cochran with a lighted candle in her hand.
“I came, sir, because I thought you would need this.” She held it out none too steadily. “Oh, sir, you are the only one right of all of us! The Prince should not bide longer; it is too dangerous.”
“So I think,” said Ewen, looking down at her gravely. “I thank you, Miss Cochran.” He took the light from her. “Could you not persuade Lady Easterhall to hasten his departure?”
“Hardly,” answered the girl regretfully. “You can see what it means to her to have the Prince under her roof. . . . If you will go along that passage, sir, you will find a window out of which you can see some way up the close. . . . Stay, I will show you, since I am here.”
She slipped along the passage in front of him, and he followed with the candlestick.
“There,” said Miss Cochran, “this window.” She unlatched it, Ewen setting down the light at some distance. He saw the girl put her head out . . . and then draw back, her hand over her mouth as though to stifle a scream. “Too late, too late already! Look, look!”
Ewen leaned out. Down the dark alley, already echoing to the quick tramp of feet, a file of soldiers were advancing two by two, an officer leading. He drew in his head.
“Go back at once and warn the Prince, madam. I will stay a moment to watch. Blow out the light, if you please; I do not want them to see me.”
Obeying him, the girl fled, while Ewen, crouching by the open window, held his breath as the heavy, hasty footsteps drew nearer and nearer, and he was looking down at last on three-cornered hats and tilted bayonets. There were fully a score of soldiers, and theywerestopping at Lady Easterhall’s entrance; he saw the officer raise a lantern to make sure of the door. Waiting no longer, he ran back along the passage and pelted down the stairs. “Saunders, Saunders!”
Fortunately the old man heard him at once and emerged from some lair of his own on the ground-floor. “What’s to do, sir?”
“There are soldiers from the Castle at the door. Don’t admit them, on your life! They are after . . . ‘Mr. Murray’. Is the door stout?”
“No’ by-ordinar’ stout. Dod, they’ll be for coming in; nae doot o’ that!” For a sword-hilt, it might have been, was clamouring on the door. “If I’m no’ tae open, they’ll ding the door doun!”
“Let them,” commanded Ewen. “’Twill take some time to do it. And remember, you know nothing at all about her ladyship’s visitors!”
He ran up again, thanking Heaven with all his heart for the secret passage and its exit in a spot where the redcoats would never dare to show their faces—since there was a Highland post in the West Bow also.
Three minutes, perhaps, had elapsed since the first discovery and Miss Cochran’s return to the drawing-room; Ewen hoped, therefore, as he burst into that apartment, to find no one but the ladies remaining. To his dismay, however, they were all there, in a group against the wall on the right of the hearth. The writing-table had been pushed aside, Strickland was holding a candle close to a panel, and O’Sullivan seemed to be struggling with something in the carving of this. Lady Easterhall, looking incredibly old, was clinging to her great-niece, and the eyes of both were fixed agonisedly on the Irishman and his efforts. The Prince, though he too was watching O’Sullivan narrowly, appeared the most unconcerned of the five.
“Ah, Ardroy, it seems you were justified of your nervousness, then,” he observed coolly. “And the spring of the panel is unfortunately stiff. It is long, evidently,” he added in a lower tone, “since a lover left this house by that road!”
“The soldiers are at the door,” said Ewen in a stifled voice. His heart felt like hot lead within him; was all to end thus, so foolishly and so soon? The dull sound of battering came up from below.
“Let Miss Cochran try,” suggested the Prince. “I think it is rather skill than strength which is needed.” And O’Sullivan relinquished his place to the girl. He was very pale, and Strickland had obvious difficulty in keeping the candle upright.
“Isobel, Isobel, can ye no’ stir it?” exclaimed Lady Easterhall, wringing her old hands.
The girl’s slender fingers were striving with the boss of carved woodwork which concealed the spring. “O God!” she whispered, and shut her eyes. “Is there no other possible hiding-place——” Ewen was beginning in desperation when, with a loud grinding noise, the panel ran back, revealing a dark wall and the first few steps of a winding stair which plunged steeply downwards.
“Quick!” said O’Sullivan, seizing Strickland by the arm. “You first, to light the stair. Now, your Highness!” The Prince stepped through the aperture and O’Sullivan himself followed. But Ewen lingered a moment on the threshold of safety.
“Madam,” he said earnestly to the shaken old lady, “if I may advise, do not you or Miss Cochran stay a moment longer in this room! To be in your bedchambers retiring for the night, when the soldiers succeed in forcing an entrance, as I fear they will, is the best answer you can make to the charge of entertaining the Prince. Do not, I beg of you, be found here—for he has still to get clear of the house!”
“Ye’re richt,” said Lady Easterhall. The frozen terror had left her face now. “’Tis you hae had the wits all along, young sir! In wi’ ye! Noo, Isobel, pit tae the door—and then let’s rin for it!”
Behind Ewen came grinding and a snap, and he was left in almost complete darkness to find his way as best he could down the stair. Somewhere below he heard echoing steps and cautious voices, so the Prince and his companions were still in the house. There must, indeed, be a passage as well as a stair if one was to emerge into the West Bow right on the other side of it. For him there was no hurry; it was just as well to play rear-guard. He started leisurely to descend, feeling his way by the newel, and hoping that he would never again go through another five minutes like the last.
He had certainly not accomplished more than a dozen steps of the descent when he stopped and stiffened, his heart jumping into his throat. There had suddenly floated down from above an ominous dragging, rasping sound which he had heard too recently not to recognise. It was the panel sliding open again! Had the soldiers found it already? It seemed almost impossible.
Tugging at his sword, Ewen half leapt, half stumbled, up the dark twisting stair again, and was met by an oblong of light, barred across its lower half by the replaced writing-table. But, as he was instantly aware, the room, though still brilliantly lit—for there had been no time to extinguish the sconces—was empty, and silent save for the sounds of furious battering which came up from below through its closed door. It was clear what had happened. The spring of the secret entrance, damaged perhaps, had failed to catch, and after the hurried departure of the two ladies it had released the panel again . . . and so the first thing to attract the notice of anyone entering the room would be that yawning gap in the wall.
Ewen sprang at the sliding door and tried to push it to again, but on its smooth inner surface there was nothing by which to get sufficient purchase. Closed it must be, at whatever cost, and on whichever side of it he was left. He thrust aside the escritoire, stepped out into the room, and pressed the boss which concealed the spring. The panel obediently returned . . . to within half an inch of its place. By getting hold of a projecting line of carving with his nails, Ewen feverishly contrived to push it completely home, but was instantly aware that it would no longer engage itself securely in whatever mechanism usually kept it fast there—in short that, having first refused to open, it now refused to shut. And if the Prince were not yet clear of the passage down below, if the fastenings of the door into the West Bow, for instance, were rusty from disuse, as well they might be, he would yet be taken.
There was a final crash from below; the door was undoubtedly down and the invaders in the house. If only the existence of the sliding panel could be concealed for a few moments longer! To stand before it sword in hand (as was Ewen’s impulse) were only to advertise its presence. He looked round in desperation. Perhaps the corner of the escritoire, pressed well against the line of carving, would eliminate that betraying crack in the woodwork? Yes, the escritoire was sufficiently heavy to keep the panel in place, and, provided that it was not itself moved away from its position, all might yet be well . . . though not for him, who must now throw himself to the wolves to keep the secret inviolate.
To ensure that the writing-table stayed as he had put it he must be near it, and have a reasonable excuse, too, for his position. The most natural was the best; so, throwing off his hat and cloak, he pulled up a chair, sat down—unfortunately this necessitated his having his back to the door—and, seizing a sheet of paper and a quill, began hastily to write a letter. His heart might be beating faster than usual, but his hand, as he saw with pleasure, was quite steady.
“My dear Aunt Margaret,—I told you in my last Letter of the Victory gain’d——” They were coming up the stairs now, and at the noise of their approach he realised how unnatural it would look to be found writing a letter in the midst of such a disturbance as had been going on below. He let his head sink forward on his arm as if he were overcome by sleep; and so was sitting when a second or two later the door was flung violently open, heavy feet came tumbling in, and there was a triumphant shout of “Here’s one o’ them, sir.”
Ewen judged it time to wake. He lifted his head and turned in his chair with a start; and then sprang to his feet in simulated astonishment. “Soldiers!What are you doing here?”
There were a sergeant and three men of Lascelles’ regiment in Lady Easterhall’s drawing-room, and the sergeant advanced resolutely towards the tall gentleman in amber satin. “’Tis for us to ask that of you, sir.” Then he stopped, his face lighting up with a sort of incredulous joy. “Lord, it’s him himself!” he exclaimed. “Call the officer quick, one of ye! Bide where ye are, sir,” he said with a mixture of triumph and respect. “If ye don’t stir ye’ll not be harmed.”
Ewen saw that the man took him for the Prince—a mistake well worth encouraging if possible, though it was not very likely that an officer from the Castle would make the same mistake. In any case he had no intention of stirring from his place; as it was he imagined that the crack of the panel was widening behind his back, and dared not turn his head to look. What would be the end of this? Edinburgh Castle and captivity, at the best; perhaps a fate even less agreeable.
Ah, here was the officer pushing eagerly through the soldiers round the doorway. One glance at the figure in front of the escritoire and that eagerness was wiped away.
“That is not the Prince, you fool!” he said to the sergeant. “What was he doing when you came in—did he offer any resistance?”
Through the sergeant’s reply that the gentleman was sitting at the table and seemed to be asleep, Ewen was striving not to manifest a surprise which, this time, was perfectly genuine. For, however he had become part of the marooned garrison of Edinburgh Castle, his captor was no officer of Lascelles’ regiment from that fortress; he was Captain Keith Windham of the Royal Scots.
But Ewen’s own powder, satin and lace were, apparently, as good as a disguise to him, for it was quite clear that Captain Windham had not recognised in this fine gentleman the tartan-clad victor of Loch Oich side, nor even his seven days’ host—no, even though he was now looking at his capture more directly, and saying, with military abruptness, “You are my prisoner, sir!”
Ewen drew himself up. “By what right, if you please?” he demanded. “By what right indeed do you break at all into a private house? The Lord Provost shall know of this to-morrow,” he went on, with a sudden idea of passing himself off as an ordinary peaceful burgess. “The Lord Provost shall know of it, and will require an explanation from General Guest.”
Alas, his voice, at any rate, was not unfamiliar, like his hair and costume. Captain Windham suddenly strode forward, gave an exclamation, and recoiled a little. “What! It isyou, Ardroy! Then I know that the Pretender’s son is in this house, for you are one of his aides-de-camp! Sergeant, leave a couple of men here, and search the next floor with the others; I will follow in a moment.”
“Is that your pretext for breaking into an old lady’s house at this hour of night?” asked Ewen with a fine show of indignation, as the sergeant withdrew. “Surely you know the way to Holyrood House, Captain Windham—though in truth it may not be so easy to force an entrance there!”
In spite of his anxiety he was able to view with pleasure Captain Windham’s visible annoyance at this speech.
“Mr. Cameron,” said the soldier, with a steely light in his eyes, “I am not to be played with like this! The Pretender’s son, with three companions, was seen to enter this house a short while——”
“I am sorry to disappoint you, sir,” broke in Ewen, “but it wasIwho entered with three companions. As you see, I have just been mistaken anew for the Prince. My three friends have left—yes, those are their wineglasses on the table—Lady Easterhall has retired, and I was beginning to write a letter when I fell into the doze which your noisy and illegal entry has cut short.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Keith starkly, though at the mention of the letter his eyes had strayed for a second to the escritoire—and Ewen immediately wished he had not called attention to it. “Nor do I believe that our informant mistook you for the Pretender’s son; tall though he is, you are much taller. He is somewhere hidden in this house.”
“Tall . . . taller . . .” observed Ewen meditatively. “Ah, yes, I was forgetting your opportunities of observation at Glenfinnan. I suppose you were able to tell them his exact height at Fort William after you had so craftily given me the slip.”
This effort at provoking an argument about the ethics of that action was unsuccessful, though he could see that his late prisoner did not relish the expression which he had applied to it. But Captain Windham merely repeated, with more emphasis, “He is somewhere hidden in this house!”
“If so, then perhaps you will have the good fortune to find and recognise him,” said Ewen with an air of levity. “Or if not His Royal Highness, one of the other two, perhaps.”
“I have no doubt I shall,” replied Keith shortly. “Meanwhile—your sword, if you please, Mr. Cameron!”
This object Ewen had not the slightest intention of surrendering. But any kind of parley with the enemy gained time, which was the important matter. So, after a long look at the floor, as though seeking counsel there, he put his hand to the hilt, and very slowly drew the small-sword from its velvet sheath. But, once the blade was out, his fingers retained their grip.
“After all, I find that I dislike making you an unconditional gift of it,” he announced coolly, while the candle light played menacingly up and down the steel. “But I cannot prevent yourtakingit, Captain Windham—if you think it worth the trouble.” And with his free hand he tucked his lace ruffle out of the way.
But, as he had expected—half hoped, yet half feared, for at bottom he was pining for a fight—the Prince’s pursuer did not wish to engage either himself or his men in personal conflict while part of the house still remained unexplored. “I’ll deal with you later, Mr. Cameron,” he replied curtly, and turned to the soldiers. “See that the prisoner does not move from that spot, men. I am going to fasten the door.” He went out and, sure enough, could be heard to bolt the door on the outside.
Ewen smiled to himself to think how little he desired to quit his self-chosen position. “You’ll not object to my sitting down, I hope?” he observed politely to his two guardians, and, turning round the chair from which he had risen—casting, too, a quick glance at the panel behind him, still in place—he sat down, facing his gaolers, his sword across his knees. Though they had no orders to that effect, he thought it just possible that they might attempt to disarm him, but they showed no sign of such a desire, standing stiffly by the door with their muskets and screwed bayonets, and glancing nervously at him out of the corners of their eyes, mere young north-country English lads, overawed by his dress and his air. Had they not been there, however, he could have decamped through the secret door, and what a charming surprise that would have been for Captain Windham when he returned—Fassefern House the other way round! But on second thoughts Ewen was obliged to admit to himself that this withdrawal would not have been feasible in any case, because he could not close the panel from the inside.
Meanwhile Captain Windham, in pursuit of a prey already (please God!) out of the snare, was presumably searching Lady Easterhall’s bedchamber, and, a still more delicate matter, Miss Cochran’s. Ewen could not suppose that the task would be to his liking, and the thought of his opponent’s embarrassment afforded him much pleasure, as he sat there with one silk-stockinged leg crossed over the other. His ill-temper had gone. Too young a man to have at all enjoyed the rôle of disapproving critic forced upon him this evening, with his two elders covertly sneering at his prudence, and even the Prince amused at him, he was more than relieved to be free of his ungrateful part. Events had most amply justified his attitude, and now, with rising spirits, he was free to try what his wits—and perhaps, in the end, his arm—could accomplish against Captain Windham and his myrmidons. It was true that, short of getting himself killed outright, he did not see much prospect of escaping imprisonment in the Castle, but at any rate he might first have the satisfaction of a good fight—though it was to be regretted that he had not his broadsword instead of this slender court weapon. Still, to get the chance of using it against what he knew to be overwhelming odds was better than having to submit to being told that he had an old head on young shoulders!
Sooner than he had expected he heard returning feet, and now Captain Windham and he would really come to grips! It was by this time, he guessed, some twenty minutes since the Prince had slipped down the stair, and, provided that there had been no difficulty about exit, he must be almost back at Holyrood House by this time. But one could not be sure of that. And in any case Ewen had no mind to have the way he took discovered. Here, at last, was an opportunity of repaying to Captain Windham the discomfiture which he had caused him last August over his expired parole, perhaps even of wiping out, somehow, the insult of the money which he had left behind. The young man waited with rather pleasurable anticipations.
And Captain Windham came in this time, as Ewen knew he would, with an overcast brow and a set mouth. He was followed in silence by the sergeant and five men, so that the room now contained nine soldiers in all.
“Ah, I was afraid that you would have no luck,” observed Ewen sympathetically. He was still sitting very much at his ease, despite his drawn sword. “A pity that you would not believe me. However, you have wasted time.”
Keith Windham shot a quick, annoyed, questioning glance at him, but made no reply. His gaze ran rapidly round Lady Easterhall’s drawing-room, but there was in it no article of furniture large enough to afford a hiding-place to a man, and no other visible door. He turned to the two soldiers whom he had left there. “Has the prisoner made any suspicious movement?”
“He has not moved from yonder chair,” he was assured in a strong Lancashire accent.
“And yet this is the room they were in,” muttered the Englishman to himself, looking at the disordered chairs and the used wineglasses. After frowning for a moment he started to tap the panelling on his side of the room, a proceeding which made Ewen uneasy. Had they heard up at the Castle of the existence of a secret passage somewhere in this house? It was unpleasantly possible. But when Captain Windham came to the three windows giving on to the Grassmarket he naturally desisted. And the farther side of the room—that where Ewen and his writing-table were situated—faced, obviously, down the close by which the soldiers had entered, so (if the Highlander followed his reasoning correctly) Captain Windham concluded that there was no room there for a hiding-place, and did not trouble to sound the wall.
Ewen, however, judged it time to rise from his chair. “I told you, Captain Windham, that my friends had gone,” he remarked, brushing some fallen powder off his coat. “Will you not now take your own departure, and allow an old lady to resume the rest which I suppose you have just further disturbed?”
He saw with satisfaction that the invader (who was, after all, a gentleman) did not like that thrust. However, the latter returned it by responding dryly: “You can render that departure both speedier and quieter, Mr. Cameron, by surrendering yourself without resistance.”
“And why, pray, should I be more accommodating than you were last August?” enquired Ewen with some pertinence.
Keith Windham coloured. “To bring back the memory of that day, sir, is to remind me that you then put me under a deep obligation, and to make my present task the more odious. But I must carry it out. Your sword, if you please!”
Ewen shrugged his shoulders in the way Miss Cameron condemned as outlandish. “I had no intention, sir, of reminding you of an obligation which I assure you I had never regarded as one. But whyshouldI render your task, as you call it, more pleasant? And why make a task of it at all? The Prince, as you see, is not here, and Generals Guest and Preston will find me a very disappointing substitute.”
Keith Windham came nearer and dropped his voice. His face looked genuinely troubled. “I wish, Ardroy, for your own sake, that you would let me take you unharmed! Take you I must; you are a chieftain and the Prince’s aide-de-camp, as I happen to know. It is the fortune of war, as it was last August, when our positions were reversed. So, for the sake of the courtesy and hospitality which I then received from you——”
“My sorrow!” burst out Ewen. “Must my past good conduct, as you are pleased to consider it, lead to my undoing now? . . . And I very much doubt whether our positionsarereversed, and whether any further disturbance—and you have made not a little already—do not bring the guard from the West Bow about your ears. If I might give advice in my turn, it would be to get back to the Castle while yet you can!”
“Thank you,” said Keith with extreme dryness; “we will. Sergeant, have your men secure the prisoner.”
He stood back a little. Ewen had already decided in the event of a fight to abandon his post by the writing-table, where, on one side at least, he could be taken in flank, and where any shifting of the table itself, highly probable in a struggle, would cause the panel to reveal its secret. (Not that that would greatly matter now.) Immediately the Englishman stepped back, therefore, he darted across the room and ensconced himself in the corner by the nearest window, hastily wrapping his cloak, which he had snatched up for the purpose, round his left arm. His eyes sparkled; he was going to have his fight!
“I am ready,” he remarked cheerfully, seeing the much slower preparations of his assailants. “Is it to be a charge with the bayonet, or are you going to use the butt, my friends?”
“You’ll not use either!” said Keith sharply to his men. “I do not wish this gentleman injured.”
“Then make him put up his sword, sir,” retorted the sergeant in justifiable indignation. “Else it’s ourselves will be injured, I’m thinking!”
Ewen was about to endorse this opinion when a familiar and most welcome sound came to him through the closed window behind him. No mistaking that strain; and that the soldiers should hear it too he turned a little and dashed his elbow, protected by the curtain, through the nearest pane of glass. In it flowed, wailing and menacing, the Cameron rant: ‘Sons of the dogs, come hither, come hither and you shall have flesh . . .’
“I think you had best call off your men altogether, Captain Windham, if they are to save their own skins!” And in the uneasy silence which he had procured Ewen added, with some exultation, “It is my own clan, the Camerons; they are coming down the West Bow into the Grassmarket. There will not be much left of you, my good fellows, if you so much as scratch me!” And, seeing the effect of his words, he tugged aside the curtain, flung open the partly shattered casement, and called out in Gaelic to the line of kilted figures just emerging from the West Bow.
The long yell of the slogan answered him as he swung quickly back on guard. But there was no need of his sword. Prestonpans had taught the Castle garrison exaggerated terror of those who uttered such cries. The soldiers, the sergeant included, were already huddling towards the door, and Keith Windham was not in time to get between them and the exit. He stamped his foot in fury.
“Do your duty, you dirty cowards!” he shouted, pointing at the figure by the window. But a second heartshaking yell came up from the Grassmarket: ‘Chlanna nan con, thigibh an so, thigibh an so . . .’ Perfectly deaf to their officer’s objurgations, the English soldiers were occupied only with the question of which should be first from the room. Keith seized the last fugitive by the collar, but the only result of this appeal to force was that the man, who was very powerful, shook him off, thrust him back with small regard for his rank, and banged the door behind himself. Captain Windham, livid, threw himself upon the handle to pluck it open again—but the knob merely turned in his hand. The violent slam had evidently shot to the bolt on the outside. Hunter and quarry—only now it was hard to know which was which—were equally prisoners.
Ewen, over at the window, laughed aloud; he could not help it. “You seem always to be unfortunate in your men, Captain Windham,” he remarked, and, shaking the cloak off his left arm, slid his blade back into the scabbard. “I fear it is I who shall have to ask you foryoursword. Would you prefer to give it up to me before the guard arrives?”
He got it . . . but not in the fashion which he had expected. Keith, quite beside himself with mortification and rage, had already whipped out his weapon while Ewen, with bent head, was sheathing his own, and now, really blind to the fact that the Highlander was for the moment defenceless and off his guard, Captain Windham sprang furiously at him without warning of any sort. Ewen had no chance to draw again, no space to spring aside, no time for anything but to catch wildly at the blade in the hope of diverting it. At the cost of a badly cut right hand he succeeded in saving himself from being spitted, and the deflected point, sliding through his clutching fingers, went by his hip into the panelling where, both men loosing their hold at the same moment, the weapon stuck for the fraction of a second, and then fell ringing to the floor.
Horrified and sobered, Keith had sprung back; Ewen, after a first instinctive movement to catch him by the throat, had checked himself, and, clasping his bleeding hand tightly with the other, leant back against the wall and looked at him with a mixture of sternness and enquiry. His breath was coming rather quickly, but, compared with his assailant, he was the image of calm.
“My God!” stammered the Englishman, as white as a sheet. “I never saw . . .” He indicated Ardroy’s sheathed sword. “I might have killed you. . . .” He took a long breath and drew a hand across his eyes. Still looking at him curiously his victim fished out his lace-bordered handkerchief and began to wrap it round his palm, a very inadequate precaution, for in a moment the cambric was crimson.
In another Keith was at his side. “How deeply is it cut? Let me . . .” And he pulled out his own more solid handkerchief.
“I don’t know,” answered Ewen composedly, putting back his Mechlin ruffle, which had slipped down again. “Pretty deeply, it seems.” He surrendered his hand. “Thanks; over mine then—tie it tighter still.”
“Good God, I might have killed you!” said Keith again under his breath as he bandaged and knotted. “I . . . I lost my temper, but, as Heaven’s my witness, I thought you had your sword out.”
“Why, so I had, a moment earlier,” replied Ewen. “You did not intend murder, then?”
“I deserve that you should think so,” murmured the soldier, still very much shaken. “Perhaps as it is I have disabled you for life.”
Ewen had nearly retorted, “Why should that trouble you?” but he was so much astonished at the depth of feeling in his enemy’s tone that he merely stared at his bent head as he tied the last knot.
“These handkerchiefs are not enough,” said Keith suddenly, relinquishing the wounded hand. He pushed aside the little brass gorget at his neck, untied and unwound his own lace cravat, and bound that over all. Then he stood back.
“You will soon get attention now, Ardroy. Keep your hand up, so. . . . There is my sword.” He made a jerky movement towards the floor, and walking abruptly away to the hearth, stood there with his back turned.
For a moment or two Ewen also stood quite still where he was, looking at that back. That Captain Windham was ashamed of his attack on a practically unarmed man he could understand; he would have had precisely the same scruples in his place, and he would certainly have felt the same rage and humiliation had he been deserted by his followers in so disgraceful a manner (though he could not imagine Highlanders ever acting so). And, observing the dejection revealed in Captain Windham’s attitude, where he stood with bowed head and folded arms by the dying fire, and the complete absence in him of any of that mocking irony with which he himself had more than once made acquaintance at Ardroy, Ewen began to feel less vindictive about the incident of the guineas. Captain Windham, being an Englishman, did not understand Highland pride, and had probably never intended any insult at all. And now, with this sudden turning of the tables, he was again a prisoner, made in rather an absurd and ignominious fashion. Ewen could find it in his heart to be sorry for him. And what would be the advantage of yet another prisoner? The officers taken at Gladsmuir had had to be paroled and sent away. . . .
He picked up the fallen sword, faintly smeared with red along its edges, and went over to the hearth.
“Captain Windham!”
The scarlet-clad figure turned. “Your Camerons are very tardy!” he said with a bitter intonation. “Or are those yells all we are to know of them?” It was indeed sufficiently surprising that the rescuers had not entered the house some minutes ago, particularly as the door was broken open.
Ewen listened. “I think that they are possibly chasing . . . a retreating enemy. But in any case”—he held out Keith’s sword—“I cannot stomach taking advantage of your being left in the lurch by those rascals. Put on your sword again, and I’ll convey you safely out of the house.”
A dull flush swept over the English soldier’s face. “You mean that I am to run the gauntlet of those caterans, when they return, under your protection? No; I have been humiliated enough this evening; it would be less galling to go as a prisoner. Keep my sword; ’tis the second of mine you have had, Mr. Cameron.”
Yes, he was sore, and no wonder! Ewen decided that he would not even mention the objectionable guineas. “I cannot hold this sword much longer,” he said lightly, “having but the one hand at present.—No, the caterans shall not see you at all, Captain Windham, and you shall go alone. Only, for Heaven’s sake, be quick, for some of them must soon be here!”
Bewildered, half reluctant, Keith closed his fingers on the hilt held out to him, and Ewen drew him to the escritoire on the right of the hearth. When he pushed it aside the panel behind slid slowly back.
Keith Windham stood before the gap momentarily speechless. “That, then——” he began at last, thickly.
“Yes, that is the way my friends went. But you can use the same road. It comes out, I understand, in the West Bow; there you will have to trust to chance, but it seems a dark night. Here, take my cloak,”—he went and picked it up—“’twill cover your uniform. And you must have a candle to light you down.”
To these directions and the proffered candlestick and cloak the baffled hunter paid no heed. “Your friends!” he said between his teeth. “The Pretender’s son, you mean! Hewashere this evening, then, in this very room!”
“Yes, but he was gone a little time before you entered,” answered Ewen soothingly. “I was only troubled lest the door should slide open and betray the path he took. But ’tis of no moment now.”
“No, it’s of no moment now!” repeated Windham bitterly. Wrath, reluctant admiration, disappointment and concern for what he had so nearly done—and not in fair fight—to the man before him strove openly in his tone as he went on: “Is this your revenge for——”—he pointed to the swathed right hand—“and for my outwitting you last August? It’s a sharp one, for all that it’s generous. . . . Yes, you have fairly outmanœuvred me, Ardroy, with your secret stair and your clansmen so pat to the moment, like a stage play! But I warn you that this mumming will turn to grim earnest some day; there’ll be a bloody curtain to the comedy, and you will regret that ever you played a part in it!”
“That depends, does it not, on how many more battles of Gladsmuir we have?” retorted Ewen, with a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his eyes. “But go—go!” for at last there had come a rush of feet up the stairs, and the rescue party (oblivious of the bolt) were hammering upon the door with cries. He thrust the candlestick and the cloak—the Prince’s cloak—into the Englishman’s hands, calling out something in Gaelic over his shoulder the while. “Go—they’ll have the door down in another minute!”
He almost pushed Captain Windham into the aperture, pressed the spring, and wedged the returning panel with the table, only a second or two before the unfortunate door of Lady Easterhall’s drawing-room fell inwards with a crash, and Cameron kilts plunged over it.
Walking home with her father next day up the crowded Canongate after rain, Miss Alison Grant suddenly became aware of a tall Highland officer striding up the street some way ahead. From the occasional glimpses of him, which were all that she was able to obtain in the moving throng, it seemed to be her betrothed; but, if so, he was carrying his right arm in a sling. This was disturbing. Moreover Ewen, if it were he—and at any rate the officer was a Cameron—was walking at such a pace that Alison and her parent would never overtake him, unless indeed he were on his way to visit them where they lodged in Hyndford’s Close, a little beyond the Netherbow.
“Papa,” whispered Alison, “let us walk quicker; yonder’s Ewen, unless I am much mistaken, on his way to wait upon us, and he must not find us from home.”
They quickened their pace, without much visible effect, when lo! their quarry was brought to a standstill by two gentlemen coming downwards who encountered and stopped him.
“Now let us go more slowly, sir,” suggested Alison, dragging at her father’s arm. To which Mr. Grant, complying, said, “My dear, to be alternately a greyhound and a snail is hard upon a man of my years, nor do I understand why you should be stalking Ardroy in this fashion.”
“Ewenisrather like a stag,” thought Alison; “he carries his head like one.—Papa,” she explained, “I want to know—Imustknow—why he wears his arm in a sling! Look, now that he has turned a little you can see it plainly. And, you remember, he disappeared so strangely last night.”
And now, crawl as they would, they must pass the three gentlemen, who made way for them instantly, not to turn the lady with her hooped petticoats into the swirling gutter. As Ewen—for it was he—raised his bonnet with his left hand, Alison cast a swift and comprehensive glance over him, though she did not pause for the fraction of a second, but, acknowledging his salutation and those of his companions, went on her way with dignity.
But she walked ever slower and slower, and when she came to the narrow entrance of their close she stopped. Yet even then she did not look back down the Canongate.
“Papa, did you hear, those gentlemen were asking Ewen what had befallen him. I heard something about ‘disturbance’ and ‘Grassmarket’. You saw his hand was all bandaged about. He looked pale, I thought. What can he have been at last night—not fighting a duel, surely!”
“Well, my dear, here he is, so he can tell us—that is, if he is disposed to do so,” observed Mr. Grant. “Good day, Ardroy; were you coming in-bye?”
“I intended it, later on,” replied Ewen with more truth than tact, “but——”
“But now you see that you behove to at this moment,” finished Alison with determination, looking very significantly at his arm; and Ewen, without another word, went obediently up the close with them, secretly admired from above by a well-known Whig lady who happened to be at her window, and who remarked to her maid that the Jacobite Miss lodging overhead had a braw lover, for all he was a wild Hielandman.
And presently the wild Hielandman was standing in the middle of Mr. Grant’s parlour, and the Jacobite Miss was declaring that she could shake him, so little could she get out of him. “They say you can ask anything of a Cameron save butter,” she said indignantly, “but it’s clear that there are other things too you’ll never get from them!”
Ewen smiled down at her, screwing up his eyes in the way she loved. He was a little pale, for the pain of his cut hand had kept him wakeful, but he was not ill-pleased with life this afternoon.
“Yes, other people’s secrets, to wit,” he said teasingly; and then, feigning to catch himself up, “My sorrow, have I not the unlucky tongue to mention that word in a woman’s hearing! What I have told you,m’eudail, is the truth; I had an encounter last night with some of the Castle garrison, and my hand, as I say, was hurt—scratched, that is, as I warrant you have sometimes scratched yourself with a needle or a bodkin.”
“The needle’s never been threaded whose scratch required as much bandaging asthat!” retorted Alison, with her eyes on the muffled member in the sling. “And what was yon I heard as I passed about a disturbance in the Grassmarket?”
“Has she not the ears of a hare?” observed Ewen to Mr. Grant. “’Tis true, there was a disturbance in the Grassmarket.”
“If that is so, then I’ll learn more of it before the day’s out,” deduced Alison with satisfaction. “And you, sir, that ought to know better, brawling in the town at such an hour! I thought the Prince had summoned you last night. Not that I remarked your absence from the ball,” she added. “I was quite unaware of it, I assure you, in the society of my cousins of Glenmoriston.”
Ewen looked across at Mr. Grant and smiled. “My dear,” protested the old gentleman, “an encounter with the Castle garrison can scarce be called brawling. We are, it may be said, at war with them.”
“But are they not all as mild as milk up there now that the Prince has lifted the blockade?” enquired Alison. “And how could Ewen have met any of them in the Grassmarket? The poor men dare not show their faces there; the place is hotching with Camerons and MacDonalds!”
“Who said I met them in the Grassmarket?” retorted Ewen. “But never fret, Miss Curiosity; some day I’ll be free to tell you where it was.”
“Wherever it was,” said Miss Grant with decision, “I’ll be bound ’twas you provoked the disturbance!”
Her lover continued to smile at her with real amusement. In a sense there was truth in this last accusation. “It’s a fine character you give me, indeed! I think I’d best be taking my leave until you appreciate me better!” And he put out his left hand to take his bonnet from the table where he had laid it. Something sparkled on the hand as he moved it.
“Who gave you that ring?” exclaimed Alison. “Nay, that I have a right to know!”
Ewen put his hand behind him. “No woman, Alison.”
“Then you can tell me who it was. . . . Come,Eoghain mhóir, if there be a mystery over the ring also, why, you should not be wearing it for all the world to see!”
“That’s true,” said Ardroy, and he relinquished his hand. “Yes, you can take it off. ’Tis not so plain as it looks, neither. There is a spring beneath.”
“Oh!” breathed Alison, her eyes very wide. The chased gold centre of the ring had moved aside in the midst of the rose diamonds, and it was a tiny miniature of the Prince which she held. “Ewen,hegave you this?”
“I did not steal it, my dear. Yes, he gave it me this morning.”
“For . . . on account of what happened last night?”
Ewen nodded. “For my prudence. You see, the Prince does not write me down so turbulent as you do.”
There was something like tears in Alison’s eyes. “Prudence? No! It was because you gained that ‘needle-scratch’ for him!” She kissed the ring, and, taking the strong, passive hand, slipped it on again. “I will not plague you any more. Does the wound pain you, dearest heart?”
But next day Hector Grant came into possession of the story, more or less correct, which was flying about Edinburgh, and presented his sister with a fine picture of her lover, alone against a score of the Castle redcoats, standing with his back to the secret stair hewing down the foe until his sword broke in his hand, and the Cameron guard rushed in only just in time to save him. And, Alison unveiling this composition to the hero himself at their next meeting, Ewen was constrained in the interests of truth to paint out this flamboyant battle-piece and to substitute a more correct but sufficiently startling scene. Alison certainly found his sober account quite lurid enough.
“And you let the English officer go, after that!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “But, Ewen dearest, why?”
“For one reason, because ’twas such curst ill luck that his men should run away for the second time!” replied Ewen, settling his silken sling more comfortably.
“For the second time?”
“I have not yet told you who the officer was. Cannot you guess?”
“Surely ’twas not . . .Captain Windham. . . here in Edinburgh?”
“It was Captain Windham himself. I have no notion how he got here; it must have been before we took the town. But I was sorry for him, poor man, and it was quite plain that he had no real intention of killing me; indeed he was greatly discomposed over the affair. So you must not lay that to his charge, Alison.”
“And so youhavemet again!” said Alison slowly, her eyes fastened on her lover. (‘A great service’ . . . ‘a bitter grief’ . . . This was neither.) “It was not then because of your foster-father’s prophecy that you let him go?”
And now Ewen stared at her. “Faith, no, darling, for I had clean forgot about it.Dhé!It begins to fulfil itself then!”
Bright and cold, or wet and windy, the October days went by in Edinburgh. Ewen’s hand healed, and that secret fear which he had mentioned to no one save Dr. Cameron, who dressed it, that he would never be able to grip a broadsword again, passed also. And having waited upon Lady Easterhall and Miss Cochran a day or two after the fracas to ask how they did (not that he had omitted to reassure himself of this on the night itself, before he left) he then, by the old lady’s desire, carried Alison to visit them also. And it is possible that Miss Cochran envied Miss Grant.
But up at the Castle the days went a great deal more slowly, particularly for Captain Keith Windham, who had little to do but to pace the battlements and look down, as he was doing this morning, when October was almost sped, on that unrivalled vista of which he was now heartily sick, and remember all the mortifications, professional as well as personal, which he had suffered there since the end of August, when he had made his way thither from Fort William with the news of the Highland advance. For after the startling tidings of Cope’s avoidance of the rebels, leaving the road open before them to Edinburgh, Keith, secure but chafing, had endured the spectacle of vain attempts by the frightened citizens to repair and man the walls, and to raise a body of volunteers (almost immediately disbanded lest their lives should be endangered), and the sight of two regiments of His Majesty’s dragoons in full flight along the Lang Dykes with no man pursuing. Finally, to complete and symbolise the great scandal and shock of Cope’s lightning defeat, he had with his own eyes seen, struck defiantly into the outer gate of the Castle, the dirk of the single Jacobite officer who on that occasion had chased a party of terrified troopers thither like rabbits to their burrow.
On top of all this had come his own personal humiliation and disappointment, and of this Ewen Cameron and no other had been the cause. The soldiers of Lascelles’ regiment who had so shamefully deserted the officer in charge of them had been severely punished, but this did little to heal the very sore place in Captain Windham’s memory. Sometimes it was only anger which coloured his recollections of that scene in Lady Easterhall’s house, sometimes it was shame. Sometimes he wondered if he had not permanently injured Ardroy, and though, as a loyal subject of King George, he ought no doubt to have been glad of the possibility, in view of how the hurt had been inflicted and of the Highlander’s subsequent behaviour, the idea filled him with a feeling far removed from satisfaction. And even worse might easily have come of his onslaught. Keith was inclined to shudder still when he thought of that contingency, and not merely because, with Ewen dead or dying on the floor, he himself would have received short shrift from the Camerons when they broke in.
How nearly he had succeeded in capturing the Prince he supposed he would never know, but there was no doubt that it was Ardroy who had destroyed whatever chance he might have had. Chosen as Keith had been to lead the flying raid that evening because he was the only officer in the Castle who had seen Charles Edward Stuart face to face, he could then have blessed Fate for having sent him to Glenfinnan. Thus, he had reflected as they marched stealthily down the close, does profit come out of the unpleasant. Already he saw his name in every news sheet as the captor of the Pretender’s son. . . . Alas, he had merely come anew into collision with the same stubborn and generous character, and once again, though their positions this time had seemed to be reversed, he had had the worst of it. And on this occasion the Highlander had shown him a new and unsuspected side of himself, for it was Ardroy who had played withhim, sitting so coolly in front of that table on which hung the secret. God! if he had only guessed!
And so Keith had come back empty-handed, with the knowledge that but for Ardroy’s quixotry he would not have come back at all. Huddled in his enemy’s own cloak (for its real ownership, luckily for his peace of mind, he never discovered), pushed ignominiously to safety down the very passage by which his quarry had eluded him, he had been ever since weighed down by a debt which was wellnigh a grievance. There were times when he almost regretted that he had not remained and been made prisoner . . . and always times when he asked himself why Ewen Cameron had acted as he did. He was sure that he himself would not have been so foolish. The days of chivalry were over; one did not go about in this century behaving like the knights in the old romances. An enemy was an enemy—at least to a professional soldier—and it was one’s business to treat him as such.
The cursed part of it was that people who were insane enough to behave as Ardroy had behaved somehow attained a position of superiority which was distinctly galling. And galling also was it to realise, as Keith Windham suddenly did at this moment, how much time he spent in speculating what that curious young man might be doing down there in the city spread out like a map. . . . Strange that he had not at first recognised him that night—extraordinarily handsome Ardroy had looked, and devilish cool he had kept, too, in a tight place! . . . Fool that he was, he was at it again. Keith turned from the battlements, glad of a diversion, for he had become aware of the approach of a wheeled chair, which he knew to contain the aged but spirited form of General Preston.
General George Preston, deputy-governor of Edinburgh Castle since 1715, to whom, old and infirm though he was, it was likely that his Hanoverian Majesty owed it that that fortress had not been surrendered to the invaders, was a veteran of Marlborough’s wars, bearing in fact souvenirs of Ramillies which had ever since affected his health and his prospects of promotion. He was eighty-six years of age, even older than General Guest (now, since Cope’s flight, commander-in-chief); but whereas that warrior had scarcely left his quarters since he had removed for safety into the Castle, Preston, during the more strenuous days of the ‘blockade’, had caused himself to be wheeled round in a chair every two hours to supervise and encourage. Since Colonel Philip Windham, Keith’s father, had also fought under Marlborough, Keith had on one occasion asked the old soldier some questions about the great Duke’s battles, and found Preston very ready to hold forth on them, and in particular on that bloody fight of Malplaquet, where he had commanded the Cameronian regiment. And Keith remembered suddenly that the Scottish friend of his father’s after whom he himself was named had met his death at Malplaquet, and spoke to the old soldier about that misty John Keith of whom he knew so little.
“Aye,” said the General, a Perthshire man himself, “I wondered that ye should bear a Scots name in front of an English, Captain Windham. I suppose yon Keith will have been in a Scottish regiment, but I don’t mind of him. ’Tis thirty-six years syne, ye ken—a lang time, more than your hale lifetime, young man.”
So John Keith, who had fallen on a Flanders battlefield nearly forty years before, became more misty than ever. But Captain Windham’s pre-natal connection with a Scot of Malplaquet had interested old Preston in him, and he announced an intention of reporting on the zeal and vigilance which the officer of the Royals had displayed in the defence of the Castle.
From his chair the old General beckoned to that officer now, and sent his servant out of hearing.
“Captain Windham, a word in your ear!” And, as Keith stooped, he said gleefully, “’Tis a good word, if ever there was one. I’ve every reason to believe that Edinburgh will be free of these Highland pests the morn!”
Keith gave an exclamation. “They are evacuating the city, sir?”
The veteran chuckled. “They intend marching for England, whence I pray not a man of ’em will return alive. The news has just come in by a sure hand, but I had jaloused it already. In a day or two ye’ll not see a plaid between Greyfriars and the Nor’ Loch!”
General Preston’s sure hand had carried perfectly correct tidings. Against the wishes and the instincts of the Chiefs, Prince Charles was about to march into England, believing that he would thus rally to his standard those cautious English Jacobites on whose promised support he built such large hopes, and many others too, who had made no promises, but who would surely declare for him when he appeared in person to lead them against their alien ruler.
And early on the morning of the first of November Ewen took his farewell of Alison in Hyndford’s Close. Lochiel’s regiment, like the bulk of the army, was already assembled at Dalkeith; for since Prestonpans the Prince had never quartered troops in the city to any great extent, and he himself was already gone. But Ewen, in order to be with his own men in this strange country to which they were bound, had resigned his position as aide-de-camp, and remained behind in order to bring away the Cameron guard, who would presently march out of Edinburgh with colours flying and the pipes playing.
But here there was no martial display, only a knowledge that this, and not the farewell at Ardroy in August, was the real parting. Ewen was setting off to-day for something much more portentous than a mere rendezvous—armed invasion. Yet some unspoken instinct made them both try to be very matter-of-fact, especially Alison.
“Here is a sprig of oak for your bonnet, Ewen—you’ll be wearing your clan badge now, I’m thinking. I picked it yesterday.” And she fastened beside the eagle’s feathers a little bunch of sere leaves. “And see, I have made you a new cockade . . . I doubt you’ll get your clothes mended properly. England’s a dour place, I’m sure. Oh, I wish you were not crossing the Border!”
“Nothing venture, nothing win,” replied Ewen tritely, looking down at his bonnet, about which her fingers were busy. “I doubt, for my part, that those oakleaves will bide long on their stalks, Alison, but you may be sure I’ll wear them as long as they do. And the cockade—’tis a very fine one, my dear—I’ll bring back to you somehow. Or maybe you’ll get your first sight of it again in London!”