“I wish to God that I could trust you again!”
Keith ventured nearer. “Why is it so difficult? You trusted me that night.” His own voice was not much less moved than the Highlander’s. “I am not changed: it is circumstances which have brought about this horrible situation.”
The head stirred, but did not raise itself. “Yes . . . that night I thought you . . . generous, kind, charitable beyond anything that could be imagined. . . . It was not what I should have expected from you. Afterwards I saw what a simpleton I was to think you could have done all that for me without some very good reason . . . for by that time next day I had learnt what that reason was.”
“Is it fair, is it just,” pleaded Keith, “to believe what a brute, and my enemy, said of me behind my back rather than to judge me by my own actions, Ardroy?”
“You were . . . too humane,” said the voice dully. “And you did ask me about Lochiel . . .”
“And must I have had an ill motive behind my humanity, as you call it? You cannot say I pressed you for information about your Chief!”
“But you found out that I had it!”
It was so difficult to answer this that Keith did not attempt it. “What motive, then,” he urged, “brought me hastening back here, into disgrace, into complete ruin, perhaps? Is there nothing in your own heart to tell you? When you hear that I have been broke for neglecting my duty and offending my superior officer on your behalf, Ardroy, will you still think that I betrayed you to Major Guthrie?”
Ewen raised his ravaged face. “Will you swear to me on your word of honour that you never told him that I knew Lochiel’s hiding-place?”
“I do most solemnly swear it, on my honour as a gentleman. I never saw Guthrie again till the day before yesterday.”
“And will you swear, too, that you had notalreadysuggested to him that I knew it, and would tell?” asked Ewen, narrowing his eyes.
“No, I never suggested that,” answered Keith, with a steady mien but a sinking heart. Nothing but the naked truth would avail now . . . and yet its nakedness might prove too ugly. “I am going to tell you exactly what I did suggest.”
“You will not swear it—I thought as much!”
“No, I will not swear until I have made clear to you what I am swearing to.—Yes, you must listen, Ardroy; ’tis as much for your own sake as for mine!” He dragged forward a stool for himself. “Go back to that scene on the mountain—if you can remember it. Do you think it was easy for me to find weapons to save you with? When I rushed in and caught you as you sank down by the wall, when I stood between you and the firing-party, with that scoundrel cursing me and ordering me out of the way and telling the men to set you up there again, I had to snatch at anything,anythingto stop your execution. I told Guthrie who you were—too important to shoot out of hand like that. Afterwards he asserted that I had implied that you, as Lochiel’s kinsman, would give information about him. As God sees us, such an impossible notion never entered my head, and I said that you would never do it. It was as we were riding away; so he replied, that devil, ‘Then it is not worth my while to fetch him into camp to-morrow; he can rot there in the hut for all I care!’ And I saw that you would rot there unless I could persuade him to send for you. Being at my wits’ end I made a most disastrous suggestion, and said, loathing myself the while for saying it, that it might perhaps be worth his while to fetch you into camp on the chance of your . . . of your dropping some hint by inadvertence. And he——”
Ewen had given a sharp exclamation. “You said that—you did say that! It was true, then, what he told me! God! And how much more?”
“No more,” said Keith, wincing. “No more, on my soul. And I only said that to hoodwink him into sending for you. You cannot think that I——”
“You advised him to take me for that reason!” interrupted Ewen, dropping out every word, while his eyes, which had softened, began to turn to ice again. “And, when you came back that night, you never told me what you had done. Is not that . . . somewhat difficult to explain?”
“No,” said Keith with a sigh, “it is easy. I was ashamed to tell you—that is the explanation . . . and yet I only made the suggestion because your life, so it seemed to me, was in the balance. When at last I had brought myself to the point of confession you had fallen into the sleep in which I left you. If I had guessed—— But of what use is regret now! And, Ardroy, you cannot imagine that I really thought that you would . . . or that anyone would try by force to . . .” He suddenly covered his eyes with his hand.
And presently he heard the Highlander say, in a strange, dry, reflective tone, “Yes, it ill becomes me to accuse another man of treachery.” And then, even more quietly, “You say you did not believe it when they told you that I had made a disclosure . . . voluntarily. I ought to thank you for that.”
The tired voice seemed for the moment empty of emotion; and yet it wrung Keith’s heart as its frenzied reproaches had not. He uncovered his eyes. “Nor do I believe it now,” he said vehemently. “If it is true that they have got your secret from you, then I know that they must have . . . half killed you first.”
“No,” said Ardroy in the same dull tone, “they have not laid a finger on me here. . . . Yet I have told them what Major Guthrie nearly flogged me to get from me.”
If Keith had seen a visitant from the dead he could not have stared more wildly. “That’s impossible!” he stammered. “I don’t believe it—you don’t know what you are saying!”
Ewen’s lip twisted a little. “Why, by your own admission you said that I might drop a hint inadvertently!” The shaft went visibly deep. “Forgive me!” he exclaimed hastily. “It is true—I think I do not know what I am saying!”
“Oh, let it pass,” said Keith, recovering himself. “Only, in God’s name, tell me what happened!”
Ewen shut his eyes. “It is quite simple, after all. It seems that I still at times talk in my sleep, as I used when a boy. I was warned of it, not so very . . . not so very long ago.” He paused; Keith gave a stifled ejaculation, and had time to taste the immensity of his own relief. This then, was the explanation of what had been to him so inexplicable—or else so abhorrent. Under his breath he murmured, “Thank God!”
But Ewen, his eyes open now, and fixed on the other side of the room, was going on.
“When I was first brought here I was too ill and feverish to realise what they wanted of me. Afterwards, when I knew well enough (since they openly asked me for it so often, and it was what Major Guthrie had wanted too) and when I felt that the secret might slip from me in sleep, because it was so perpetually in my mind, I resolved never to allow myself to go to sleep except when I was alone. But I so seldom was alone. At first I thought, very foolishly, that this was from care for me; then I discovered the real reason, for I think they must have been hoping for this result from the first. Perhaps I talked when I was in Guthrie’s hands; I do not know. But, for all my endeavours,” he gave a dreary smile, “it seems that onemustsleep some time or other. And the fifth night—two nights ago—I could hold out no longer, and being left by myself I went to sleep . . . and slept a long time, soundly. I had thought that I was safe, that I should wake if anyone came in.” Ewen stopped. “I ought to have cut my tongue out before I did it. . . . And I would have died for him—died for him!” His head went down on his knee again.
“Good God!” murmured Keith to himself. The methods that he feared might not have been used, but those which had been were pretty vile. And though their victim had neither given the information voluntarily—not, at least, in the true meaning of the word—nor had had it dragged out of him by violence, his distress was not less terrible. Yet surely——
“Ardroy,” he said quickly, and touched him on the shoulder, “are you not leaping too hastily to conclusions? No doubt you may have saidsomethingabout your secret, since it was so much on your mind, but that in your sleep you can have given any precise information about it I cannot believe. Granted that you were told that you had—perhaps in hopes that you would really betray yourself—why did you believe it, and give yourself all this torment?”
Ewen raised his head, and out of his sunken, dark-rimmed eyes gave Keith a look which wavered away from him as if undecided, and then came back to his face and stayed there. Despair sat in those blue windows, but behind despair could be caught now a glimpse of a more natural craving for sympathy which had not been there before.
“Because,” he answered, his hand gripping hard the plaid over his legs, “they had written down every word I said—every word. In the morning they read it over to me. Of course I denied that it was correct . . . but there it all was—the secret that only I and one other besides Lochiel himself knew. Never having seen the actual spot myself I had learnt the directions off by heart; ’twas the last thing I did before the battle.” He shuddered violently, and once more dropped his head on to his knee. “O God, that ever I was brought away from Drumossie Moor!”
“Devils!” said Keith under his breath, “cold-blooded devils!” But who had first suggested that Ardroy should be watched? He sprang up, and began to pace distractedly about the room; but that thought could not so be shaken off. Yet a rather stinging consolation dawned on him: since the prisoner had acknowledged to him, what he had denied to his inquisitors, that the information was correct, he must trust him again—he must indeed, for he had thus put it in his power to go and betray him afresh.
“You’ll tell me, I suppose,” began Ewen’s dragging voice again, “that a man cannot be expected to control his tongue in sleep, and it is true; he cannot. But they will keep that part out, and Lochiel, all the clan, will hear that I gave the information of my own free will. Is not that what you have been told already?” And as Keith, unable to deny this, did not answer, Ewen went on with passion: “However it was done, it has been done; I have betrayed my Chief, and he will know it. . . . If I were only sure that it would kill me outright, I would crawl to the breach there and throw myself down. I wish I had done it two nights ago!”
From the camp, where a drum was idly thudding, there came the sound of cheering, and the broken room where this agony beat its wings in vain was flooded with warm light as the sun began to slip down to the sea behind the hills of Morven, miles away. And Keith remembered, with wonder at his obtuseness, that he had once decided that Ewen Cameron was probably a very impassive person. . . .
What was he to say? For indeed the result of Ardroy’s disclosure might very well be just the same for Lochiel as if he had made it when in full possession of his senses. One argument, however, leapt unbidden to Keith’s lips: his Chief would never believe that Ardroy had willingly betrayed him. Would Ardroy believe such a thing of him, he asked.
But Ewen shook his head, uncomforted. “Lochiel would not have allowed himself to go to sleep—I did.”
“But you must have gone to sleep sooner or later!” expostulated Keith. “Lochiel himself would have done the same, for no human being can go very long without sleep.”
“How do you know?” asked Ewen listlessly. “I cannot sleep now when I wish to . . . when it is of no moment if I do.”
Keith looked at him in concern. That admission explained a good deal in his appearance. If this continued he might go out of his mind, and yet one was so powerless to help him; for indeed, as Ardroy had said, what was done, was done. He began to pace the room again.
Suddenly he stopped and swung round. Perhaps he was not so impotent to help after all. Somehow that idle drum, still beating out there, with its suggestion of march and movement, had revived a memory only twenty-four hours old.
“Listen to me, Ardroy,” he said quickly, coming back and sitting down again. “But tell me first: you would only expect Lochiel to take to this refuge, would you not, if he were skulking, as the phrase goes here, not if he had a considerable body of followers with him?”
“No,” admitted Ewen, looking faintly surprised. “Only if he were alone, or nearly so. But he is alone, or at the best he can have but a handful with him.”
“It is there that I think you are wrong,” retorted Keith. “Though that may have been the case at first, it is evidently so no longer. This is what I overheard yesterday.”
And he told him, word for word, what had fallen from the officer who had been scouting down the Glen. Ardroy listened with the look of a drowning man sighting a distant spar.
“My God, if only that is true! No, if the clan has rallied somewhat he would not be in hiding. Yet, after a skirmish, or if he were surprised——”
“But consider,” urged Keith, “that, if they are so numerous, only an attack in force would be possible, and Lochiel could hardly be surprised by that: he would have scouts posted, surely. And after a skirmish, supposing the results unfavourable to him, he would probably withdraw altogether with his men, not go to earth in the neighbourhood. If the place is searched, believe me, it will be found empty!”
The eagerness with which Ewen hung upon his words was pathetic to witness.
“You are not,” he asked painfully, “inventing this story . . . out of compassion?”
“No, no; I heard it exactly as I have told it to you, and I can see no reason why the speaker’s statement should not have been true.”
(And, whether true or no, he thought, it will have served a very good purpose if it prevents this too tightly stretched string from snapping altogether.)
Ewen drew a long breath and passed his hand over his eyes as if to wipe out a sight which was too much there. Then his head sank back against the edge of the seat behind him, his hand fell away, and Keith saw that he had fainted, or as near it as made little difference. He supposed that his attentions would be permitted now, and, grabbing up the bowl, dashed some of the water in the Highlander’s face; then, putting his arms round him, succeeded in shifting him so that he could lay him flat upon the pallet.
But Ardroy was not gone far. In a moment or two he raised a hand to his head as he lay there, and murmured something about a ray of hope. Then his eyes opened, and looking straight up into Keith’s face as he bent over him he said clearly, but with a catch of the breath, “Forgive me—if you can!”
“I have so much to be forgiven myself,” answered Keith, looking down unhappily at the dirty, haggard wreck of his ‘young Achilles’, “that I can scarce resent what you, of all people, have thought of me. Oh, Ardroy, what a curst tangle it has been!—Are you well like that—your wounded leg . . . ?”
The blue eyes held on to him. “You have not answered my question. If you could forgive me for so wronging you . . . I know I have said unpardonable things to you . . . you who saved my life!”
Keith took into his own the hand he had scarred. “Forgotten—if you will forget what I said of you?”
“But what have I to forget?” asked Ewen, and he suddenly bit his lip to keep it steady. “I think I have to remember! And indeed, indeed, Windham, I did not doubt you lightly! I fought against it; but it all fitted together so devilishly . . . and I was not sound in mind or body. And now—selfish wretch that I am—if you are broke through what you have done for me——”
But it seemed as if it were a third person who fancied himself in more imminent danger of that fate, for Ardroy had got no farther when there were hasty, hobbling steps outside the door, a fumbling with the lock, and there stood Sergeant Mullins, much flustered.
“If you please, Major,” he said, sadly out of breath, “will you come away at once? I misdoubt you’ll be found up here if you stay a minute longer, for I saw Lord Loudoun’s aide-de-camp coming along the road—and I shall be sent packing without the pension that’s been promised me!”
“Go—go quickly, Windham,” said Ewen earnestly. “It will doyouno good, either, to be found up here.”
There was nothing for it. “Yes, I’m coming, Sergeant.—We cannot undo the past, Ardroy, but for God’s sake try to torment yourself less about a calamity which may never befall—a certain person.”
Ewen looked up at him with a faint, forlorn smile. “Andyourcalamity?” he asked.
“I must endeavour to take my own advice,” said his visitor rather grimly. “I shall try to see you again if possible . . . that is, if you . . .” he hesitated.
Ewen’s left hand reached up and gripped his wrist. “You say the past cannot be undone. There are some hours in it which I am glad I can never lose again—that night in the shieling, now I know that you were . . . what at the time I thought you!”
Three minutes after Keith had got back to his quarters the correct aide-de-camp appeared to announce to him that he would be taken to Inverness under escort early next morning, as he had been sent for from head-quarters. Keith shrugged his shoulders. That meant a court-martial, in all probability, and the loss of his commission. But at any rate the sacrifice was not all in vain, for he had cleared himself, in Ewen Cameron’s eyes, of charges far worse than any court-martial could bring against him.
All evening he thought of Ardroy up there, destitute in body and tormented in mind—though less tormented, fortunately, by the time he had left him. . . . Yet why, he asked himself, should he care what Ardroy was suffering, now that he had cleared his account with him? Was it because he had somehow become responsible for him by snatching him from death? God knew.
But that, he supposed, was why, when Mullins hobbled in with his supper, he handed the sergeant a sheet of paper.
“I want you to take this to Mr. Cameron to-night, Sergeant. Read it, and you can satisfy yourself that it contains nothing which it should not.”
The note briefly said that the writer would not be able to see the recipient again, since he was obliged to go to Inverness next morning, but that he would go thither with a mind vastly more at peace than he had come; and would go even more cheerfully if he were permitted to leave with the sergeant a sum of money sufficient to provide for the captive’s immediate needs in the way of food and clothes. “You can repay it at your convenience,” Keith had added, “but, if you will not accept this loan, I shall depart feeling that you have not truly forgiven me.”
As he expected, Sergeant Mullins made no bones about delivering a missive when he had connived at a much more serious breach of discipline. But when, on his return, he handed his letter back to Keith, the Englishman’s heart fell, until he saw that Ardroy, having no writing materials of his own, had used the back of it for his reply. And thereon was scrawled with a blunt pencil of the sergeant’s these words:
“If there is any Justice on Earth, you should not only be reinstated but advanc’d at Inverness. I pray you to inform me, if you can, of what happens. I accept your Loan with Gratitude; it is for me to ask your Forgiveness still. Perhaps I shall sleep to-night.—Your Debtor,Ewen Cameron.”
“If there is any Justice on Earth, you should not only be reinstated but advanc’d at Inverness. I pray you to inform me, if you can, of what happens. I accept your Loan with Gratitude; it is for me to ask your Forgiveness still. Perhaps I shall sleep to-night.—Your Debtor,Ewen Cameron.”
Keith at any rate slept, though he was rather bitterly amused at the idea of being given advancement by the Duke of Cumberland because he had got himself into a scrape for the sake of a rebel. The cause of his dereliction of duty would be the chief count in his probable disgrace.
It was raining hard, and blowing too, and rain and wind kept up a constant siege of the inadequate canvas stretched over the breach in Ewen’s place of confinement, the drops pattering against it like small shot. Ewen himself, shaved and wearing a clean shirt, but the same disreputable kilt, was sitting on the seat which ran round the embrasure, to which, with some difficulty, he could now hoist himself. His object in so doing was to see out, but this morning there was little to see when he had got there.
Ten days had passed since his momentous interview with Major Windham, ten days of wearing, grinding suspense. Every hour, almost, he had expected to learn of Lochiel’s capture. But, as day followed day, and nothing of the sort occurred, nor, from what Sergeant Mullins told him, was any attempt being made against Achnacarry, the spar of hope which his visitor had flung to him began to have more sustaining qualities. It did look as if Windham’s information were correct, and that the clan was known to be in such force that it was not a mere question of hunting down the wounded Chief, of plucking him out of the refuge whose secret was a secret no longer. For the comfort of that thought he had to thank the generosity of an enemy whom he had accused to his face of an infamous action.
Major Windham had always been something of an enigma to Ewen, and the depth of the concern which he had shown the other day still surprised him. That he had personally attracted the English soldier would never have occurred to him. Apart from wishing to clear himself of the charge of treachery, Major Windham, he supposed, felt a somewhat exaggerated sense of obligation for having been allowed to go free in Edinburgh—though indeed some men might have resented that clemency, and there had been a time when Guthrie’s insinuations had driven Ewen to the belief that this was so. Yet now the remembrance of the night in the shieling hut was no longer a draught of poison, but what it had been at the time, that cup of cold water which holds a double blessing.
But it was strange how accurate had been his foster-father’s prophecy, that the man to whom the heron would bring him should alike do him a great service and cause him bitter grief. Both predictions had been fulfilled; and by the same act on Major Windham’s part.
Ewen himself seemed to have been forgotten by the authorities. The same military surgeon came from time to time and grumblingly dressed his wounds, but, though rough and quite devoid of consideration, he was tolerably skilful, and the patient’s own splendid physique was doing the rest, now that he had proper care and that his mind was a little more at ease. Old Mullins, mindful alike of a substantialdouceurfrom Major Windham and of his own good treatment by the Highlanders, looked after him to the best of his ability, particularly when he discovered him to be Dr. Cameron’s cousin. He still boggled, however, at procuring the captive entirely new clothes (for how, he said, should he account to Captain Greening for having the money to pay for them), but he brought him better food than was provided, a couple of clean shirts and a second blanket, and shaved him every other day. But Captain Greening, whom Ewen loathed, he thought, even more than he had loathed the brute Guthrie, never came near him now. He had got what he wanted, presumably, and troubled no more about the prisoner whom at one time he had had so assiduously watched.
The outcome of those horrible days and nights remained deeply branded on Ewen’s soul: he was a traitor, if an unconscious and most unwilling one; but the actual memory of them, and of the twenty-four hours in Guthrie’s hands, he was now beginning, with the natural instinct of a healthy mind, to put behind him. And with the slight relaxation of tension due to Major Windham’s suggestion and the inactivity of the authorities—due also to the wild hope which sometimes visited him, that Lochiel was no longer near Achnacarry at all, and that they knew it—he was beginning to feel the pressure of captivity, and would spend hours peering hungrily through the narrow slits of windows. Even if, as to-day, he could see little for the rain and mist, he could always smell the blessed air, and he now screwed himself into a still more uncomfortable position in an endeavour to get as much of this as possible. Yes, the rain, as he thought, was stopping; the wind was blowing it away. Often, on such a morning, on the braes above Loch na h-Iolaire——
Several people seemed to be coming quickly up the stairs. The surgeon and others? Ewen turned his head. No; when the door was unlocked and flung open there came in three officers all unknown to him. The foremost was of high rank, and Ewen, after a second’s astonishment, realised that he could be none other than the Earl of Loudoun himself.
Sitting there, he instinctively stiffened. With the opening of the door the wind had swooped through the breach in the wall, and even the Earl’s dark, heavy tartans fluttered for a moment. There was a sheet of paper in his hand, and he wore a look of great annoyance.
“Mr. Cameron,” he said, like a man too much pressed for time to indulge in any preamble, “when you gave us this information about Lochiel’s hiding-place a couple of weeks since,” he tapped the paper, “why did you name as the spot a mountain-side which does not exist anywhere near Loch Arkaig?”
Ewen’s heart gave a bound so sudden and violent that he thought it must suffocate him. What did Lord Loudoun mean? He stared at him breathlessly.
“Come, sir,” said the Earl impatiently, “do not play the innocent! On May 7 you gave Captain Greening a detailed account of a cave on a mountain-side which Lochiel would be apt to use in an emergency, how its whereabouts could be recognised, its concealed opening found, and the rest. The mountain, according to you, was called Ben Loy. But you made a slip—or something more intentional—for guides who know the district well declare that there is no mountain of that name in the neighbourhood, though it is true that there is a Glen Loy farther down the Lochy, but much too far to serve as a convenient refuge from Achnacarry. This makes nonsense of your information.” His voice was warm with a sense of injury. “The mistake has only been discovered in the nick of time . . . Why, what’s wrong with you, man?”
For Ewen, with an exclamation, had leant forward and buried his face in his hands. Was it possible that his rebel tongue had, all unknown to himself and to his inquisitor, undone so much of the harm it had wrought? And how had he not realised it himself?
Lord Loudoun much mistook the cause of his emotion. “The slip can easily be repaired, Mr. Cameron,” he said impatiently. “You cannot possibly have meant any of the heights of Glen Loy—none of which, moreover, appears to be called Ben Loy. It must be one of the other names I have on this paper.—Come, my time is precious! I am about to set out for Achnacarry to-day.” And as Ewen, really too much overcome by his ‘slip’ to pay much attention to these adjurations, still remained with his face hidden, a new note crept into the Earl’s voice. “You are not, I hope, indulging in scruplesnow, Mr. Cameron? ’Tis too late for that; nor is it any manner of use to withhold a part when you have told us so much. We shall know the place when we come upon it.”
Ewen raised his head at last and looked at him, but still dizzily. “Withhold!” he said. “Is it possible, Lord Loudoun, that you do not know how such information as you have was extracted from me?”
“Extracted from you!” repeated the Earl. “Why, you gave it of your own free will when you were asked for it; I have Captain Greening’s word for that.”
“My own free will! Did Captain Greening tell your Lordship that he had me watched and questioned day and night for nearly a week, hoping that I should tell it in my sleep, as at last I did, unknowingly? While I had life in my body he should never have got it otherwise!” And, seeing clearly from Loudoun’s face that this was indeed news to him, Ewen went on with more heat, “Whatever lies you were told by your English underlings, how dare you, my Lord, believe that a Cameron would ever willingly betray Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh?”
“Go and see if you cannot find Captain Greening this time, and bring him here,” said the Earl to one of the officers. He took a turn up and down, his hands behind his back, looking very much disturbed.
“I had no idea of this; ’tis a method which should never have been used,” he muttered after a moment. It was evident that he entirely believed the prisoner’s assertion. “But you must admit, Mr. Cameron,” he went on mildly, “that I am not to blame for it, seeing that I was not here at the time. And, as to believing that you made the disclosure willingly, I confess that I ought to have remembered—since I have the honour to be one myself—that a Highland gentleman does not willingly betray his Chief.”
Yet, having elicited thisamende, Ewen said nothing, his racial distrust of a Campbell inclining him to wait for what was to come next.
“I cannot pretend, however,” began the Earl again, “that I am sorry to possess this information, since I am a soldier, and must obey orders. In accordance with these, I set out to-day with two thousand men for Loch Arkaig and Achnacarry.” He gave time for this news to sink in. “But, Mr. Cameron, though our clans have unfortunately been at enmity in the past, that shall not prevent me from treating Lochiel, when he is in my hands, with all the regard due to his position and merit.”
“As his kinsman,” replied Ewen to this, “I thank your Lordship for the intention, even though I trust that you may never have the chance of carrying it out.” Why had the Campbell become thus smooth-spoken, and was it true that he was going with so overwhelmingly large a force against Lochiel?
Before Lord Loudoun could offer any further remarks, Captain Greening came in, apologising that he should have been sought for twice, and evidently ignorant of what was in store for him. The Earl cut short his excuses.
“Why did you assure me, Captain Greening, that the information about Lochiel obtained from Mr. Cameron of Ardroy here was given of his own free will? Mr. Cameron tells me that, as the result of unceasing persecution on your part, it was dragged out of him in sleep, which is a very different matter!”
Somehow Captain Greening, while appearing to have his eyes fixed respectfully on his superior, contrived to shoot a glance of a very different nature at Ewen.
“If your Lordship believes that story,” he said with a scarcely concealed sneer, “it does credit to your Lordship’s nobility of disposition—as well as to Mr. Cameron’s powers of invention! Sleep! As if he could have given all that detail in his sleep! But the tale may serve to patch the hole in his reputation, though I’ll wager he was no more asleep than you or I!”
“You are a pretty consummate scoundrel, are you not!” observed Ewen softly.
“Yet, whether he was asleep or awake, my Lord,” went on Greening quickly, “I submit that what I said was perfectly correct—no force of any kind was used. I certainly had no intention of misleading your Lordship on that point, when you asked me that question in order to satisfy . . . a somewhat indiscreet enquirer after Mr. Cameron.”
But Lord Loudoun, frowning heavily, declined to be drawn into a side issue. “It was playing with words, sir, to call information thus given ‘voluntary’. I am very much displeased at the means employed. And even so, as might have been foreseen, the matter was bungled, for the information itself, on which you led me to rely, is not complete!”
“Not complete!” stammered Greening, flushing. “My Lord——”
“No, sir, it is not complete—and only now, within an hour or so of setting out for the neighbourhood, has its insufficiency been discovered! The guide, who knows that district well, swears that there is no mountain of the name of Ben Loy anywhere near. And Ben Loy is the name you have written here.”
Captain Greening almost snatched the paper from the Earl’s hand, and ran his eyes feverishly over it.
“My Lord, the guide is perhaps mis——”
“I tell you that he knows that part of the country like the palm of his hand,” interrupted Lord Loudoun angrily. “It might, he says, be any of the three mountains whose names are written below. But how can I hope to surprise Lochiel if I have to go searching every brae-side near Loch Arkaig for this cave? And I tell you further, Captain Greening, that this ridiculous wrong name, occurring thus, gives me very much to doubt whether the whole description be not the product of . . . of a dream, or of imagination—whether this cave near a waterfall is to be found on any mountain-side whatever, be the mountain called what it may!”
In the extremely mortified silence which ensued on Captain Greening’s part at this, Ewen saw his opportunity.
“I was wondering,” he observed mockingly, “how long your Lordship would be before you discovered the real value of Captain Greening’s dirty work!”
“Do not believe him, my Lord,” urged Greening, his light, womanish voice roughened by rage and disappointment. “If I cannot answer for the name of the mountain, I can, by God, for the rest! Had you seen the prisoner’s face when I read over to him next morning what he had told me, you would know that his description was accurate enough. It is only a question of finding out which mountain he had in mind, and if your Lordship will give me half an hour or so with him——”
Lord Loudoun turned on him. “You have mismanaged this business quite enough,” he snapped. “I do not desire you, Captain Greening, to meddle with it any further. Nor is Mr. Cameron asleep now.”
There was that in Captain Greening’s expression as he turned away, biting his lip, which suggested that he would not consider that state necessary for his purpose.
Ewen shut his eyes and leant his head against the wall. The Earl and his two officers were talking together in low voices, and he longed for them to go away and leave him to turn over, as if it were a grain of gold out of a muddy river, the thought of this wonderful and saving slip of the tongue. He could not understand how he came to have stumbled so mercifully; was it because in his illness he fancied himself at times back in the shieling on that mountain which was, he believed, called Beinn Laoigh, the calf’s mountain? That he had not himself noticed the mistake in the name when Captain Greening read over to him, next morning, what he was pleased to call his deposition, he could, after all, understand; the horror of the accuracy of the rest had too much swamped his soul. He tried now to calculate how much security was given back to the secret place by his happy blunder, but it was not easy.
Then he heard a movement to the door. Thank God, they had done with him! No, feet were approaching him again. He opened his eyes and saw Lord Loudoun standing looking out through one of the narrow windows only a few feet away. Save for him, the room was empty, though the door remained ajar. Evidently the Earl desired a measure of privacy.
“I am very sorry about your treatment, Mr. Cameron,” he began, his eyes still fixed on the narrow slit. “It has been an unfortunate business.”
“Which, my Lord,” asked Ewen coolly, “my treatment or the information which proves to be worthless?”
“I referred, naturally, to your treatment,” said Lord Loudoun with dignity (but Ewen did not feel so sure). “However, you must admit that I may fairly consider the other affair a . . . disappointment. As a soldier, with my duty to carry out, I must avail myself of any weapon to my hand.”
“Evidently,” commented his prisoner. “Even of one which is not very clean!”
Lord Loudoun sighed. “Alas, one cannot always choose. You yourself, Mr. Cameron, had no choice in the matter of your disclosure, and are therefore in no sense to blame. . . . I should wish everyone to know that,” he added graciously, turning round and looking down at him.
“Then our wishes coincide, my Lord, which is gratifying,” observed Ardroy. “And is it to discuss with me some means of compassing this end that your Lordship is good enough to spare time for this interview now?”
Although Lord Loudoun could not possibly have been insensitive to the irony of this query, it apparently suited him to ignore it. In fact he sat down upon the stone bench, on the opposite side of the embrasure.
“Chance made your revelation incomplete, Mr. Cameron,” he said, giving him a rather curious look. “Yet, if the missing link in the chainhadbeen there, the same . . . blamelessness would have covered it.”
Ewen, his eyes fixed upon him, said something under his breath and gripped the edge of the seat. But the Earl went on meaningly, “There is still time for the true name of that mountain to have been . . .spoken by you in your sleep!”
And still his captive merely looked at him; yet Lord Loudoun evidently enjoyed his gaze so little that his own seemed to be caught by the breach in the wall, and stayed there.
“This room appears a very insecure place of confinement,” he murmured. “Has that thought never occurred to you?”
Ewen was still looking at him. “I cannot walk, much less climb, my Lord.”
“But with a little help from outside, a little connivance,” suggested the Earl, gazing at the breach. “Sentries, I am afraid, are sometimes both venal and careless . . . especially when the commander is away. But I dare say the negligence would be overlooked at head-quarters, in view of the—the exceptional circumstances.” There was a little silence as he turned his head and at last looked the Highlander in the face again. “Is it useless to hope that you will see reason, Mr. Cameron?”
“Reason!” exclaimed Ewen. Contempt had warmed to rage by this time. “Treason is what you mean, you false Campbell!” With difficulty he shuffled himself along the seat to a greater distance. “I wish I had the use of both my legs! I like ill at any time to sit upon the same seat with a son of Diarmaid, and to sit near one who after all that fine talk tries to bribe me to betray my Chief, who offers me my liberty as the price of his——” And he somehow dragged himself to his feet, and stood clutching at the corner of the wall, breathless with anger and effort.
Lord Loudoun, his smile completely vanished, was on his feet, too, as flushed as his prisoner was pale. “Youhavebetrayed him, Cameron—what use to take that tone? You might as well complete the disclosure . . . and if your pride will not stomach the gift, I’ll not offer you your liberty in exchange. I had already made you an offer which would mend your self-esteem, not hurt it. Here’s another: tell me what is the real name of that mountain and I’ll engage that Lochiel shall never know who told us of the cave upon it!”
“And I’m to rely on nothing but a Campbell’s word for that!” cried Ewen, still at white heat, but sinking down again on the seat despite himself. “No, thank you, my Lord; the security’s not good enough! Nor am I going to tell you the name on any security, so you were best not waste your time.”
“Then,” said the Earl, and there was a new and dangerous note in his voice, “I warn you that Cameron of Lochiel will have the mortification of knowing that it was a Cameron who betrayed him. But I repeat that if you will give it to me——”
“There is one place the name of which I feel at liberty to give you,” interrupted Ewen, half closing his eyes, in which the light of battle was gleaming. “I think I should be doing my Chief no harm if I told you the way——” He paused as if uncertain, after all, whether to go on, and Greening and the two other officers, who, hearing voices raised, had reappeared in the doorway, pressed quickly forward.
Lord Loudoun fell into the trap. “The way to where?” he asked eagerly.
“The way to Moy,” answered Ewen, and the glint in his eyes was plain to see now. “To Moy in Lochaber—thereisa place of that name there. Though whether you will encounter a second Donald Fraser too I don’t know.”
Lord Loudoun gave a stifled exclamation and grew very red. Consternation overcame his officers. The too-famous ‘rout of Moy’, as Ewen had well guessed, was not mentioned in the Earl’s hearing. But the Earl was the first to recover himself.
“You are not only insolent but foolish, Mr. Cameron. When Lochiel falls into my hands I shall not now be inclined to keep silence on the subject of his refuge, whether he is found in it or no, and it will depend upon me whether he is told that you made your disclosure about it involuntarily, as you declare that you did, or of your own free will.”
And thus did the Earl of Loudoun, a not ill-natured nor inhumane man, who in calmer moments would have been ashamed of such an impulse, threaten to use a calumny which he knew to be such in order to bring a captive foe to heel. The merest sign of pleading on the Cameron’s part and he would have relented. But nothing was farther from Ardroy’s mind than pleading. All he craved, in his wrath, was a fresh weapon with which to draw blood. He found it.
“But you may not capture Lochiel at all,” he said with an appearance of carelessness. “He may have followed your Lordship’s example when, after your amusing performances on the Dornoch Firth, you ran away from your captured troops and sought safety in Skye. Only,” he added venomously, “in my Chief’s case, it will beafterthe battle, not, as in yours, John Campbell,beforeit!”
The effect on Lord Loudoun, who was no coward, of this really undeserved interpretation of his misfortunes was all that Ewen could have wished. His hand clenched on his swordhilt. “By God, sir, if we were . . . elsewhere . . . I’d make you pay for that!”
And alike from him, fourth earl of his line, representative peer of Scotland and royal aide-de-camp, and from the defiant, ragged young man on the seat before him, with his French training and his natural courtesy (which an Englishman had not long ago thought almost excessive), there slipped for a moment the whole cloak of eighteenth-century civilisation, and they were merely two Highlanders, heirs of an age-long feud, waiting to spring at each other, dirk in hand, amongst the heather. The metamorphosis lasted but a second or two, and they were themselves again, but John Campbell had had his answer; he knew better now the temper with which he had to deal than to expect an appeal for mercy, much less the revelation he coveted.
“I am only sorry that your future is not likely to allow of your giving me satisfaction for that insult, Mr. Cameron,” he said grimly, and turned his back upon him. “Captain Greening, you will have the prisoner removed from this room to some securer place of confinement. But bear in mind, if you please, that he is not to be ill-treated.” And, without another look behind him, he left the room. Nor was his going devoid of dignity.
As the hated Diarmaid tartan vanished Ewen’s whole body relaxed against the wall. But he soon became aware that Captain Greening had stayed behind, and was standing there in Loudoun’s place addressing him, his delicate features contorted with rage.
“If I had only guessed, you dirty cattle-thief, that you had fooled me after all! It would not have taken a fortnight to get the real name out of you somehow!” His teeth ground together. “Perhaps in the dungeons you’ll learn at least to keep a civil tongue in your head, as long as it is on your shoulders.” He flung away towards the door, then turned again. “Yes, smile while you can! ‘Not to be ill-treated’, eh? We’ll see about that when the Earl is gone, my fine Highlander!”
As the door slammed behind his guardian the contemptuous smile died off Ewen’s face, and, lowering himself with some difficulty from the stone bench, he lay down on the pallet below and pulled his plaid over his head. Now that the clash of the interview was over he felt shaken and sick. A great consolation had indeed emerged from it, but even that consolation could do little for him against the immediate anguish of knowing that the hounds were on the trail at last, and the quarry perhaps unsuspecting. How could Lochiel escape so large a force? He and his few hundreds would be surrounded as in a net; he would be killed or captured even if he did not take to the cave on Beinn Bhreac. And, if he did, chance might always lead the pursuers straight to it. Could Ewen in that hour have sent a message to Lochiel he would willingly have bought the privilege not merely by his own death—that went without saying—but by a death in any manner protracted and horrible. Yet no suffering could buy that chance; there was nothing to do but lie there helpless, at the lowest ebb of dejection, and hear from the camp the drums and bugles of departure.
At last came evening, and Mullins with food and water.
“Is there any news, Sergeant?” asked Ewen, raising himself.
“Yes, sir, His Royal Highness the Duke’s expected here to-morrow with nine regiments of foot and some horse. And Captain Greening ain’t in charge of prisoners no longer; his Lordship saw to that before he left—seems he was annoyed with the Captain about something or other. I can’t say as I’m sorry. But I’m afraid, Mr. Cameron, you’re going to be moved from here to-morrow, and put in one of them nasty places they call the dungeons, though they ain’t scarcely that, so to speak, and——”
Ewen cut short this bulletin. “You can put me in my grave for all I care at present! It’s the expedition to Loch Arkaig I want news of. Is therenone?”
“No, sir, how could there be, so soon?—Bless me, how wild you look! Have you kin in those parts?”
“More than kin,” said Ewen brokenly. “My heart and my honour . . . O God, send a mist, a storm—send someone to warn him!”
Next day Cumberland and his ten regiments marched in from Inverness. But of this great stir Ewen heard nothing. He was down in a damp little cell under the fort, with fever once more in his blood, fighting a desire to knock his head against the wall. The old sergeant, who still had charge of him, could tell him nothing of what he wanted to know, save that there was report of great burnings going on down the Glen, and of quantities of cattle driven off.
So Ewen had to endure the suspense as best he might until the following evening, when a light suddenly streamed through the open door, and a kilted figure was roughly pushed down the steps by a couple of redcoats. But in the short-lived radiance Ewen had recognised the tartan of his own clan.
“Who is it—are you from Loch Arkaig?” he asked hoarsely, raising himself on his heap of straw.
“Aye; Alexander Cameron from Murlaggan,” answered the new-comer. “My sorrow, but it is dark in here! Who are you—a Cameron also?”
Ewen dragged himself to one knee. “Lochiel . . . Lochiel—is he safe? Tell me quickly, for God’s sake!”
The Cameron groped his way to the corner. “Yes, God be praised! There were but a handful of us captured; the rest scattered while the redcoats were fording the river of Lochy.—There, honest man, sure that’s good news, not bad!”
For—the first time in his grown life—Ewen was shaken by uncontrollable sobs, by a thankfulness which tore at his heart like a grief. Alexander Cameron sat down by him in the straw, seeming very well to understand his emotion, and told him more fully the story of what had happened: how the Argyll militia with Lord Loudoun had at first been mistaken for a body of MacDonald reinforcements which were expected, but distinguished in time by the red crosses on their bonnets; how the Camerons had thought of disputing the passage over Lochy, but, realising the overwhelming force of the enemy, had withdrawn swiftly along the northern shore of Loch Arkaig, so that by the time the latter got to the neighbourhood of Achnacarry the Chief must have been well on his way to the wild country at the head of the loch, where they would never pursue him. But the burnings and pillagings had begun already, and one could guess only too well the heavy measure of vengeance which was going to be meted out in Lochaber.
The two men lay close together that night under one plaid for warmth, and Ewen at last knew a dreamless sleep. Not only had Lochiel escaped, but he was not likely ever to hear now that the secret of the cave by the waterfall had been partly betrayed; nor, if he had left the district altogether, would he be tempted to make use of it in the future. The horror was lifted.
It was the seventeenth of July, and Keith Windham in his quarters at Inverness was turning over an official letter which had just come to him from Fort Augustus. It was, he saw, in the handwriting of Sir Everard Faulkner, Cumberland’s secretary, and as he looked at it hope whispered to him that it might, perhaps, portend the lifting of the cloud under which he had lived for the last two months. And, not to silence that voice too soon, he left the letter unopened for a minute or two, and sat staring at it.
His case had never come before a court-martial; it had been privately dealt with by Hawley and the Duke. Three things had combined to save him from being cashiered: the fact that Cumberland was graciously pleased to set his conduct at Fontenoy against his present lapse, that Lord Albemarle had written some words of appreciation of him in that despatch which Keith had never delivered, and that Hawley had regarded, and succeeded in making Cumberland regard, Lord Loudoun’s action in putting his staff-officer under arrest as high-handed, and to be resented. “I can’t understand your conduct, Windham,” he had said angrily to his erring subordinate, “but I’m damned if I’ll stand Lord Loudoun’s!” Hawley chafed all the more because he knew his own star to be on the decline; and thus military jealousy played no small part in saving Keith from complete disaster.
But all was over, naturally, with his chance of being appointed to Cumberland’s staff, nor could Hawley keep him on his, even for the short time that should elapse before he resigned his own none-too-fortunate command. Although Major Windham’s might be regarded as a mere technical offence—and even Cumberland, severe as he was showing himself in matters of discipline, did not seem to regard it as more—Lord Loudoun’s treatment of it had given it so much publicity that for appearances’ sake the defaulter had to be punished. Keith had hoped that he might escape from Scotland by being sent back to his own battalion of the Royals, now in Kent, or that perhaps he would be attached to the second, just proceeding to Perth; but he was offered instead a vacancy in Battereau’s regiment, which was to remain behind with Blakeney’s when the bulk of the army should move with Cumberland to Fort Augustus. He was, in short, put on the shelf; but he was very plainly shown that it was a choice between accepting this position or sending in his papers altogether. He might indeed count himself extremely lucky that he had escaped being broke, and so the Duke himself had told him.
The last week in May, therefore, had found him left behind in Inverness, no longer the centre of military activity now that Cumberland was gone, but rather a depôt for prisoners, entailing on the two regiments remaining in the town duties which were both dull and—to Keith Windham at least—hateful. But the shelf has an uncommonly sobering effect upon a hot-tempered and ambitious man, and it did not require two months of it to bring reflection to Major Windham. Before they were half over he was viewing his own irregular conduct in a much more critical light, and from cursing his impetuosity he had come to marvelling at his folly. Saving Ewen Cameron’s life he did not for an instant regret; he would have done the same again without a moment’s hesitation, nor did he regret his return to the shieling in the guise of the Good Samaritan; but to have dashed in that manner back to Fort Augustus while carrying a despatch, still more to have thrust himself into Lord Loudoun’s presence and almost to have brawled there—was it any wonder that he had found himself under arrest? Prudence could not undo the past, but it might modify the future, and he therefore set himself to practise this virtue in Inverness, much as it went against the grain. Warned by the fate of an officer who was court-martialled for having shown the wretched captives there some kindness, he did not go out of his way to emulate him, nor did his old wound again furnish a pretext for his withdrawal from scenes which he disliked. If the officers of Battereau’s had known him previously they would have thought him remarkably changed. General Blakeney, a hard man, had no fault to find with Hawley’s disgraced staff-officer.
The first fruit of this new prudence had been Keith’s abstention, not only from writing to Ewen Cameron, but even from sending him a direct message. He had sent instead by an acquaintance in Bligh’s regiment, when it proceeded to Fort Augustus, a verbal recommendation to Sergeant Mullins to be faithful to the ‘commission’ which he had given him, in the hope that the sergeant would, besides obeying this injunction, pass on unsolicited to Ardroy the scanty news of himself which his messenger was instructed to add. A man under a cloud could not, he felt, afford to compromise himself still further in the matter of open friendship with a rebel—though to Cumberland and Hawley he had vigorously denied any such relations with Ewen Cameron. Made wary by his experiences with Guthrie, and afraid of giving a handle against Ewen, he had merely urged in defence of his own conduct a not unnatural anxiety about a Scottish acquaintance—the name, of course, he had been unable to withhold—who had shown him hospitality and kindnessbeforethe raising of the standard of rebellion. It was disingenuous, but in the absence of close questioning the version had served its purpose.
And as the weeks went by he had not only made no attempt to communicate in any way with the captive Jacobite, but was careful never to enquire for him by name whenever an officer came from Fort Augustus, whence indisposition (induced, so they asserted, by their melancholy surroundings) was always bringing a few. Yet, as the clearing out of Lochaber and Badenoch proceeded, he did his best always to ascertain what prisoners were arriving at Inverness for transhipment to England, but he never found Ewen Cameron’s name among them. And at last, since he felt sure that the latter would never have been kept until July at Fort Augustus, he came to the conclusion that he must have overlooked his name in the lists, and that he had been shipped off from Inverness without his knowledge—unless he had been despatched by land from Fort Augustus to Edinburgh. Keith hoped indeed that the latter course had been taken, for he knew something of the horrible condition in which the prisoners were kept in the ships, packed together like cattle with nothing to lie upon but the stones and earth of the ballast. He was sorry, very sorry, that he had not been able to see Ardroy once more, but it was the fortune of war; and there was no denying the fact, once recognised, that this young man, to whom he had been so unusually attracted, had brought him nothing but ill-luck.
The letter, its seal broken at last, merely said that His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland commanded Major Windham’s attendance without delay at Fort Augustus. Now Cumberland, as Keith knew, was on the very eve of departure for England; the summons must evidently have some connection with that fact, and it was full of the most hopeful speculations that he went at once to procure leave of absence from his colonel.
And when, some five hours later, he came down the descent to Loch Ness, he could not but remember the last time that he had ridden into Fort Augustus, on that wet night in May, on fire with indignation and disgust. Well, he had learnt his lesson now!
Since Cumberland’s advent, Fort Augustus had naturally become an armed camp of a much greater size; there were hundreds more tents pitched by the Tarff, and besides these, the women’s quarters, the horse lines of the dragoon regiment of Kingston’s Horse, and quantities of cattle and ponies driven in from the ravaged countryside. As had been foreshadowed, the Earl of Albemarle, who had already been there for some time, was to succeed the Duke as commander-in-chief on the latter’s departure to-morrow. Remembering his lamentations at Perth in May, Keith wondered whether his Lordship were more reconciled to the prospect now.
But the Duke sending forhimat this juncture—itmustmean something to his own advantage!
He asked, as he had been instructed to do, for Sir Everard Faulkner, and found the ex-banker, ex-ambassador to Constantinople and patron of Voltaire at a table in a tent, very busy writing.
“Good afternoon, Major Windham,” said he, looking up. “You have made good speed hither, which is commendable.”
“So your letter bade me, sir.”
“Yes,” said Sir Everard, laying down his pen. “I sent for you by His Royal Highness’s recommendation, to request your assistance on a certain matter of importance to His Majesty’s Government. If you can give it, you will lay not only me, but the Duke also, under a considerable obligation.”
“If you will tell me what the matter is . . .” murmured Keith, amazed. To be able to lay Cumberland under an obligation was a chance not to be made light of, but he could not for the life of him imagine how he had it in his power to do so unlikely a thing.
“I have for some time,” proceeded Sir Everard, fingering the sheets before him, “been collecting evidence against such prisoners in Inverness and elsewhere as are to be sent to England in order to take their trials. Yesterday I received a letter from the Lord Justice Clerk in Edinburgh transmitting a copy of the Duke of Newcastle’s order that prisoners are to set out as soon as may be, and that particular care is to be taken that the witnesses sent to give evidence against them should be able to prove”—he took up a paper and read from it—“‘that they had seen the prisoners do some hostile act on the part of the rebels, or marching with the rebel army’. You appreciate that point, of course?”
“Certainly,” agreed Keith. “But surely there is no lack of such evidence?”
“No, in most cases there is not,” replied the secretary. “But—to come to the point—we have here in Fort Augustus a prisoner of some importance, who is most undoubtedly guilty of overt acts of hostility in this late unnatural rebellion, but to my chagrin (and His Royal Highness’s) I cannot put my hand on any person who actually saw him commit such acts, though there must be numbers who witnessed them—not even on anyone who observed him in the company of the rebels. There is indeed a probability—but only a probability—that if he is sent to Fort William he may be identified by someone or other as having taken part in the attack upon it in the spring, for it is pretty certain that he was there with Cameron of Lochiel. The prisoner’s name, by the way,” he added, with a carelessness too complete to be quite natural, “is also Cameron—Ewen Cameron of Ardroy.”
There was a silence in the tent. “So heisstill here!” said Keith under his breath. “And that is why you have sent for me, Sir Everard; because you think that I can supply the evidence which will bring Cameron of Ardroy to the scaffold?” He checked himself, and added, in a studiously expressionless tone, “Why, to what do you suppose that I can witness against him?”
Deceived perhaps by the manner of his last words, Sir Everard referred complacently to his notes.
“I understand that you can testify to his taking you prisoner by force on the outbreak of hostilities at High Bridge in Lochaber. That in itself would be more than sufficient, but it seems that you also encountered him in Edinburgh, and can therefore bear witness to his being in the Pretender’s son’s so-called army.”
Keith stared at Sir Everard Faulkner’s wig, which was awry, with dismay in his soul. Surely Ardroy could not have been so mad as to have admitted these facts—whichhehad so carefully suppressed—to anyone at Fort Augustus! “Who told you these details, sir—not that I admit their truth?”
“Major Guthrie of Campbell’s regiment was so obliging as to mention to me the service which you could render to the Government in this matter. And he had the facts, it seems, from you yourself, shortly after the victory on Culloden Moor. Release from your duties at Inverness,” pursued Sir Everard amiably, “can easily be obtained, Major Windham, and no expense would be incurred by you for your journey to Carlisle; it would be defrayed . . .”
But Keith was not listening; he was wishing that he had Guthrie in some private spot with a couple of swords between them—no, better, one horsewhip! This was his crowning piece of malevolence!
Sir Everard stopped short in his beguiling recital, which had reached the assurance that the Duke would not forget the service which the hearer was about to render. “What is the matter, Major Windham?” he enquired. “You seem discomposed. Has Major Guthrie misinformed me?”
Keith did not answer that question. “Why does not Major Guthrie go as witness himself?” he asked in a half-choked voice.
“Because he cannot testify to overt acts, as you can,” explained Sir Everard. “It is true that he captured Cameron of Ardroy, badly wounded—and there is no room for doubt where he took those wounds—but a jury might not convict on that evidence alone, whereas yours, Major Windham——”
“Whereas mine—supposing it to be what you say—would successfully hang him?” finished Keith, looking straight at the secretary.
Sir Everard nodded with a gratified expression. “You would have the satisfaction of rendering that service to His Majesty, and at the same time—if you’ll permit me to be frank, Major Windham—of purging yourself of any suspicion of undue tenderness towards the rebels. I fancy,” he added with an air of finesse, “that the accusation arose in connection with this very man, Ewen Cameron, did it not? You see how triumphantly you could clear your honour of any such aspersions!” And Sir Everard smiled good-humouredly.
“My honour must be in sad case, sir,” said Keith, “if to act hangman to a man who spared my own life will cleanse it! I am obliged to you for your solicitude, but I must beg to decline. Had it been some other rebel I might perhaps have been able to gratify you, but against Cameron of Ardroy I cannot and will not give evidence. I will therefore wish you good day.” He bowed and turned to go, inwardly seething.
“Stop, stop!” cried Sir Everard, jumping up; but it was not his summons which stayed Keith (in whose head at that moment was some wild idea of going to search for Major Guthrie), but the fact that he almost collided with a stout young officer of exalted rank just coming through the aperture of the tent. Keith hastily drew back, came to attention, and saluted respectfully, for it was Cumberland himself.
The Duke took no notice of him, but went straight over to his secretary. There had come in with him another stout officer of high rank, twenty years or so his senior, in whom Keith recognised the Earl of Albemarle. The couple of aide-de-camps who followed posted themselves just inside the tent door.
“I hope you have completed those damned tiresome notes about evidence, Faulkner,” said the Prince rather fretfully, “for there are a thousand and one matters to be attended to before to-morrow, and Lord Albemarle also desires some talk with you.”
“All are in order, your Royal Highness,” responded Sir Everard deferentially, “save the case of Cameron of Ardroy, for which we shall have to rely on evidence at Fort William. With your permission, my Lord,” he turned to the Earl of Albemarle, “I will speak to your secretary about it.”
“But have you not summoned Major Windham from Inverness, as I bade you?” exclaimed the Duke. “You told me yourself that his testimony would be invaluable. Why the devil didn’t you send for him?”
“Your Royal Highness’s commands were obeyed to the letter,” responded Sir Everard with some stiffness. “But it seems that Major Windham has scruples about giving his testimony—as he can explain in person to your Royal Highness, since he is present.”
Cumberland swung round his bulk with an alertness which showed his five-and-twenty years. He glanced at Keith, standing motionless at the side of the tent. “Won’t give it—scruples? Nonsense! You must have misunderstood him, Faulkner. Write a line to Major-General Blakeney at once, informing him that Major Windham is seconded, as he sets out with me for England to-morrow. Now, Major, you see how easy it is to leave your new regiment, so no difficulty remains, eh?”
Keith’s head went round. Advancement at last—and good-bye to Scotland! But his heart was cold. There was a condition to this favour impossible of fulfilment.
He came forward a little. “If the honour your Royal Highness designs to do me,” he said in a very low voice, “depends upon my giving evidence against Cameron of Ardroy, I must beg leave, with the greatest respect, to decline it. But if it is without such a condition, your Royal Highness has no more grateful servant.”
“Condition, sir—what do you mean?” demanded the Prince sharply. “Are you trying to bargain with me?”
“Indeed, no, your Royal Highness. I thought,” ventured Keith, still very respectfully, “that it was rather the other way about . . . But I was no doubt mistaken.”
The pale, prominent eyes stared at him a moment, and their owner gave vent to what in any other but a scion of royalty would have been termed a snort. “Indeed you are mistaken, sir! I do not bargain with officers under my command; I give them orders. Be ready to start for Edinburgh to-morrow with the rest of my staff at the time I design to leave Fort Augustus. In England leave will be given you for the purpose of attending the trial of this rebel at Carlisle, whenever it shall take place. After that you will rejoin my staff and accompany me—or follow me, as the case may be—to the Continent. It is part of the duty of a commander-in-chief, gentlemen,” went on the Duke, addressing the remainder of the company, “to remember and reward individual merit, and Major Windham’s gallantry at Fontenoy has not passed from my mind, although I have not until now been able to recompense it as it deserves.”
The aides-de-camp, Sir Everard and even Lord Albemarle expressed in murmurs or in dumb show their appreciation of His Royal Highness’s gracious good memory. As for Keith, he was conscious of an almost physical nausea, so sickened was he by the unblushing hypocrisy of the bribe—it was nothing less. He looked at the ground as he answered.
“Your Royal Highness overwhelms me, and I hope to show my gratitude by always doing my duty—which is no more than I did at Fontenoy. But there are private reasons why I cannot give evidence against Cameron of Ardroy; I am too much in his debt for services rendered in the past. I appeal therefore to your Highness’s generosity to spare me so odious a task.”
The Duke frowned. “You forget, I think, Major Windham, with what kind of men we are dealing—bloody and unnatural rebels, who have to be exterminated like vermin—like vermin, sir! Here is a chance of getting rid of one rat the more, and you ask that your private sentiments shall be allowed to excuse you from that duty! No, Major Windham, I tell you that they shall not!”
Keith drew himself up, and this time he met Cumberland’s gaze full.
“I would beg leave to say to your Royal Highness, speaking as a soldier to the most distinguished soldier in Britain, that it is no part of military duty, even in the crushing of a rebellion, to play the informer.”
The faces of the aides-de-camp (one of them a most elegant young man) expressed the kind of shock produced on a refined mind by an exhibition of bad taste; Lord Albemarle shook his head and put his hand over his mouth, but Sir Everard Faulkner’s demonstration of horror could not be seen, since he was behind his royal master, and the latter had almost visibly swollen in size.
“What, you damned impertinent dog, are you to tellmewhat is a soldier’s duty!” he got out. “Why, this is mutiny!”
“Nothing is farther from my thoughts,” replied Keith quietly and firmly. “Give me any order that a soldier may fitly execute and your Royal Highness will soon see that. But I have been accustomed to meet the enemies of my country in the field, and not in the dock.” And as the Duke was still incoherent from fury and incredulity he repeated, “With the utmost respect, I must decline to give evidence in this case.”
“Damn your respect, sir!” shouted the Commander-in-Chief, finding his tongue again. “You’re little better than a rebel yourself! A soldier—any soldier—under my command does what he is ordered, or I’ll know the reason why!” He stamped his royal foot. “By Heaven, youshallgo to Carlisle, if I have to send you there under guard! But you need not flatter yourself that there will be any vacancy for you on my staff after this. Now, will you go willingly as a witness, or must the provost-marshal take you?”
Keith measured his princely and well-fed opponent, the adulated victor, the bloodstained executioner. He was tolerably certain that the Duke, for all his powers, could not force him to give evidence, and that this talk of sending him to Carlisle by force was only a threat. But he knew that civilians, at all events, could be subpœnaed as witnesses, and was not too sure of his own ultimate position. He brought out therefore a new and unexpected weapon.
“If my presence should be constrained at the trial, I must take leave to observe to your Royal Highness that I shall then be obliged to give the whole of my testimony—how Mr. Cameron spared my life when he had me at his mercy after the disaster at High Bridge last summer, and how, in Edinburgh, he saved me from the hands of the Cameron guard and gave me my liberty when I was abandoned by the soldiers with me and trapped. Since those facts would undoubtedly have some influence on an English jury, I cannot think that I should prove an altogether satisfactory witness for the Crown.”
The victor of Culloden stood a moment stupefied with rage. When he could command his voice he turned to his secretary. “Is this true, Faulkner, what this—mutineer says?” (For indeed, owing to Keith’s calculated reticence at Inverness, it was news to him.) To Sir Everard’s reply that he did not know, the Duke returned furiously, “It’s your business to know, you blockhead!” and after that the storm was loosed on Keith, and a flood of most unprincely invective it was. The names he was called, however, passed him by without really wounding him much. They were nothing compared to those he would have called himself had he sold Ardroy’s life as the price of his own advancement.