“You are too kind, Captain Windham. But if the matter of your warning be what I suppose, you must forgive me for saying that you would only be wasting your time.” His tone was courteous but very cold.
Keith shrugged his shoulders. After all, if a manwouldrush on his doom it was his own affair. “My time is far from valuable at present,” he replied flippantly, “but yours no doubt is precious, Mr. Cameron. On what matter did you wish to speak to me?”
“I have come to tell you from my Chief, Lochiel, that you are free from to-morrow—on one condition.”
“And that is?”
“That you engage not to bear arms against the Prince for the remainder of the campaign. Lochiel will accept an assurance given to me.”
“‘For the remainder of the campaign’!” exclaimed Keith rather indignantly. “An impossible condition, on my soul!” He gave a short laugh. “It is true that your ‘campaign’ is not like to be of long duration!”
Ewen ignored the sneer. “You cannot tell, sir,” he replied gravely. “But those are the terms which I am to offer you. Captain Scott has accepted them, and has to-day gone to Fort William to have his wound cared for.”
“Precisely,” retorted Keith. “Captain Scott is wounded; I am not.” There was still indignation in his voice; nevertheless he was thinking that if he accepted the offer he would be able to leave the Highlands and return to Flanders and real warfare. It was a temptation. But some deep-rooted soldierly instinct revolted.
He shook his head. “My sword is the King’s, and I cannot enter into an indefinite engagement not to use it against his enemies. Indeed it is fully time that I should ask you, Mr. Cameron, to restore me the parole of honour which I gave you. I should prefer henceforward to be your prisoner upon ordinary terms.”
But at this his gaoler seemed taken aback. “I fear that is impossible at present, sir,” he replied with some hesitation. “If I left you behind here there would be no one to guard you. As you will not accept your freedom on the condition which is offered you, I have no choice but to take you with me to-morrow—still on parole, if you please,” he added, looking his captive straight in the face.
“I have requested you to give me back my parole, Mr. Cameron!”
“And I have already said that I cannot do so, Captain Windham!”
Once more they were facing each other across the candle-flames. Keith began to feel annoyance.
“Am I then to go ranging the mountains with you for ever? You will find me a great nuisance, Mr. Cameron.” (Mr. Cameron looked at that moment as if he shared this opinion.) “But perhaps this is your way of forcing Lochiel’s offer on me, for, by Gad, that is what it comes to!”
“No, no,” said Ewen hastily, and with a frown. “I had no such intention. I will consult Lochiel again about the matter to-morrow, and——”
“Can’t you do anything on your own responsibility, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy? Must you always consult your Chief?”
He had goaded him at last. Ardroy’s head went up. “Had you not a commanding officer in your regiment, Captain Windham?” he enquired haughtily.
“Touché!” said Keith, with good humour. (It was a mutual hit, though.) He liked to see his civilised young barbarian on the high horse. “But suppose, Mr. Cameron, that I do not choose to wait so long, and tell you frankly that, if you will not restore my parole to me, I shall myself withdraw it from midnight to-night?”
“In that case,” said the barbarian with great promptitude, “I shall put two of my gillies in here with you, lock the door and sleep across it myself. . . . Do you tell me that you withdraw it?”
There was a second or two’s silence while Keith envisaged himself thus spending the remainder of the night. It was on the tip of his tongue to enquire whether the amiable Lachlan would be one of his guards, but he suppressed the query. “No,” he said with a little grimace, “you may keep my parole and I will keep my privacy. Let us hope that your ‘commanding officer’s’ wisdom will be able to cut the knot to-morrow. I am to be ready, then, to accompany you at daybreak?”
“If you please,” said Ardroy stiffly. “I am sorry that I can do nothing else. Good night.” He took up the candlestick and stalked out.
Captain Keith Windham remained staring for a moment at the closed door and then began to smile rather ruefully. “A droll captivity, ’pon my honour! Had I known that I was to be trailed about in this fashion my attempt at warning might have been less disinterested than it was. But I shall not make another.”
Four days later Captain Windham was sitting at evening in a dark little hut on the shores of Loch Eil, studying a pocket-book by the light of a small lantern hung on the wattled wall behind him. A pile of heather was all his seat; outside it was pouring with rain, but he, unlike almost every one else, was at least under cover and secure, as he had not been lately, from the attentions of the rapacious Highland midges.
It was Thursday, the twenty-second of August, and since Monday he had gone with Clan Cameron wherever it went. First of all Ardroy and his contingent had rendezvoused with the main body of the clan at the very place where Keith Windham now found himself again, Kinlochiel, at the upper end of Loch Eil. Here, on that eventful Monday, Keith had had his first meeting with the courteous and polished gentleman whom Clan Cameron followed, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, nineteenth of the name. And Lochiel had appeared so much distressed at the idea of the English officer’s continual conveyance with them under guard, even possibly in bonds, for they had no place in which they could conveniently leave him behind, that Keith had been prevailed upon to extend the parole which he had tried to take back from Ardroy, and to regard it as given for the space of one week, dating from the day and hour of his capture in the Great Glen. When that week was up, his gaolers seemed to think that they would be able to make other arrangements about his custody.
After the rendezvous the clan had proceeded westwards, in the direction of the coast, along a difficult road between close-pressed craggy mountains, where the grey rock pushed in a myriad places through its sparse covering, and came at last in the afternoon to the trysting place at Glenfinnan. Though he was treated with every civility, and rode in comfort on a horse of Ardroy’s, it had been a mortifying journey for Captain Windham. Between the ranks of Camerons marched sulkily the captured recruits of the Royals, without their arms—like himself—and even Captain Scott’s white charger formed part of the procession, to be offered to the ‘Prince’. As well, thought the Englishman, be the prisoner of wandering Arabs.
So, scornful but half interested too, Keith Windham had been present at a scene which, a week ago, he could little have imagined himself witnessing, when, on the stretch of level ground at the head of Loch Shiel, among that wild and lonely scenery, a thousand Highland throats acclaimed the fair-haired young man standing below the folds of his banner, and the very air seemed to flash with the glitter of their drawn blades. It was very romantical and absurd, of course, besides being rank rebellion; but there was no denying that these deluded and shaggy mountaineers were in earnest, and Lochiel too, who was neither shaggy nor—so it seemed to the observer—deluded in quite the same sense . . . and certainly not absurd.
None observing or hindering him during the following days, Captain Windham had taken the opportunity of keeping a fragmentary journal in his pocket-book, and it was these notes which, for want of anything better to do, he was now reading over in the little hut in the wet twilight.
‘What an Army! ’tis purely laughable!’ he had written on August 20th. ‘The Men are fine, tall Fellows enough, particularly the Camerons—but their Weapons! I have seen Muskets with broken Locks, Muskets with broken Stocks, Muskets without Ramrods, and Men without Muskets at all. There can’t be more than a Score of Saddlehorses all told, and the Draught Horses are quite insufficient for Transport over such a Road. Moreover the so-call’d “Army” is as yet compos’d of two Clans only, the Camerons and some Part of the Macdonalds, its Number being, I suppose, about thirteen hundred Men.
‘The Pretender’s Son I must admit to be a very personable young Man indeed, with theBel Air; they all appear craz’d about him. My own young Achilles still very well-bred and agreeable, like his Chief. I never lookt to see so much native Polish as Lochiel exhibits. Achilles, if I mistake not, pretty well adores him. There is also a younger Brother of the Chief’s, whom they call Doctor Archibald; with him also my Warrior seems on very friendly Terms.’
Captain Windham turned over to the next two days’ records, which were briefer, and brought him up to the present date.
‘August the 21st. Set out at last from that curst Spot, Glenfinnan. But, after an Advance of one Mile, the Road was found to be so bad, and the Horses so few, that the Rebels were oblig’d to leave twelve out of their Score of Swivel Guns behind, and spent some Hours burying ’em in a Bog. As their total March to-day, to a Place call’d Kinlocheil, was no more than four Miles, it looks as though ’twould be some Weeks before the Breechless reach Civilisation.
‘August the 22nd. At Kinlocheil all Day. Prodigious Rain. Much-needed Attempts seem to be going forward to organise the Transport, Wagons and Carts of all Sorts being collected. Have scarce seen E.C. all day.’
But he had hardly come to these last words, when a tall, wet figure appeared without warning in the low doorway, and the diarist restored his notebook somewhat hastily to his pocket. Ardroy stooped his head to enter, taking off his bonnet and swinging it to remove the raindrops. The dampness of the rest of his attire appeared to give him no concern.
“Good evening, Mr. Cameron! Have you been burying any more cannon?” enquired the soldier pleasantly.
Ardroy, reddening slightly, made no reply beyond returning the ‘Good evening’, but hung up his bonnet on a nail and began to unfasten the shoulder-brooch of his plaid. There was not a very great deal of satisfaction for Captain Windham to be got out of baiting this ‘young Achilles’ of his, because Achilles kept so tight a hold upon his temper and his tongue. Or was it that he was naturally impassive? Hardly, for Keith was sure that he felt the points of the darts which he contrived from time to time to plant in him. Perhaps Ardroy thought that the best way to meet his captive’s malice was to appear unaware of it; and indeed the archer himself had to confess that this course rather baffled him. He followed up his first shaft by another.
“You must admit that you should not have brought me here if you did not wish me to learn your military dispositions—if such I am to call that measure!”
And if the Highlander went on pretending that the unpinning of his plaid was engaging his whole attention Keith would feel that he had drawn blood. He knew that his own conduct verged on the puerile, but the pleasure of pursuing it was too strong.
The big brooch, however, was undone at last, and Ewen said rather dryly: “I am glad that your spirits are not suffering from the weather, Captain Windham.”
“On the contrary,” said his prisoner cheerfully, leaning back against the wall of the hut, his hands behind his head, “I am entertaining myself by trying to recall any other great commander who began his campaign by burying most of his artillery in a swamp; but I have failed. Yet, by Gad, the plan might work a revolution in warfare—in fact ’twould end it altogether if it were carried out to its logical conclusion. Armies would take the field only to bury their muskets—and perhaps,” he added maliciously, “thatwillbe your next step. I protest that some of them would not take much harm by the interment!”
Ewen swung off his plaid. “Your mirth at our lack of equipment is very natural,” he replied with complete equanimity. “But perhaps our ill provision may not be widely known to our enemies. And is it not a fact within your own military experience, Captain Windham,” he went on, looking him in the face, “that it is what one supposes an enemy’s forces to be rather than what they actually are which sometimes turns the scale?”
It was the Englishman who coloured this time. In its absence of specific reference to the mishap at High Bridge the retort was just sufficiently veiled to enable him, had he chosen, to affect unconsciousness of its sting. But he was too proud to do this.
“I deserved that,” he admitted, scrambling to his feet with the words. “I am not such a dolt as to be unaware to what you allude. That you feel obliged to remind me of last Friday’s disgrace proves that my own remarks were not in the best of taste—and I apologise for them.”
But his tormentor’s apology appeared to embarrass Ewen Cameron much more than his thrusts. “I am sorry I said that, Captain Windham!” he exclaimed, with a vivacity which rather astonished the other. “I ought not to have taunted you with a calamity for which you were not to blame. That was in worse taste still.”
“Egad, Mr. Cameron, you are too punctilious,” said Keith carelessly. “But if you are of that mind—I don’t say that I am—we may fairly cry quits.”
“For after all,” pursued Ewen, throwing down his plaid, “since you are not witnessing our preparations of your own free will, I suppose you are at liberty to make what observations you please upon them.”
“You seem bent upon making allowances for me!” returned Keith with a smile. “However, I do not complain of that; and if Fate should ever reverse our positions, and give you, for instance, into my hands, I hope I may be able to show the same generosity.”
Ardroy, who was now unbuckling his broadsword, stopped and gazed at him rather intently in the feeble lantern-light, feeble because it still had to contend with a measure of wet daylight. “Why, do you thenanticipateour meeting again, Captain Windham?” he asked after a moment.
“I anticipate nothing, Mr. Cameron. I am no wizard to foretell the future. Yet, but for the fact that we could not meet save as enemies, I vow ’twould give me pleasure to think that we might one day encounter each other again.” But, feeling somehow that the young man standing there looking at him took this for a merefaçon de parler, he added, with a return to his bantering tone, “You can have no notion how much this tour—albeit a trifle too reminiscent of a Roman triumph—has been alleviated by having so agreeable a cicerone. Though indeed in the last twenty-four hours my glimpses of you have been few—too few.”
So expressed, his sentiments had of course small chance of being taken for sincere. The Highlander, indeed, for all reply gave a little shrug that was almost like a Frenchman’s, spread his plaid upon the bare earth floor and laid his broadsword beside it.
“Surely you are not going to sleep in that plaid!” exclaimed Keith, stirred out of his levity. “Why, ’tis drenched! Take my cloak, I have no mind to sleep yet, and shall not need it.”
But Ewen, without stiffness, declined, saying that a wet plaid was of no consequence, and indeed but kept one the warmer. Some, he added, and the Englishman gasped at the information, wrung them out at night in water for that reason. All he would accept was some handfuls of heather for a pillow, and then, lying down, his sword convenient to his hand, he wrapped himself in the folds of damp tartan and in five minutes was fast asleep.
But Keith, as he had said, was not sleepy; and after a while, feeling restless, he strolled to the doorway—door the hut had none. When he got there he was aware of a rigid figure, muffled in a plaid, standing in the rain, just out of the direct line of vision—the inevitable Lachlan watching over his master’s slumbers. He turned his head, and Keith could see a contraction pass over his dark features. But the English officer was not to be intimidated by a scowl from studying, if he wished, the sodden, cloud-enfolded landscape, and the sheets of rain driving in the twilight over the waters of Loch Eil, though it was not a cheerful prospect.
What was going to happen to him when his parole expired to-morrow? At the far end of Loch Eil Loch Linnhe joined it at right angles, and on Loch Linnhe was Fort William, with its loyal garrison. To-morrow the Highland force would proceed along Loch Eil, and every step would bring him nearer to his friends. . . .
He left the doorway after a few moments, and looked down at the sleeper on the floor, his head sunk in the bundle of heather and his arm lying across his broadsword. “The embraces of the goddess of ague seem to be agreeable,” he thought. “I shall be sorry to say farewell to-morrow, my friend—deuce take me if I quite know why—but I hardly think you will!”
Then at last he went and lay down on his heap of heather, and listened to the sound of the rain, always, since he was a boy, connected with the worst memories of his life. There was the dismal day of his father’s funeral; he had been but five then, yet he remembered it perfectly: rain, rain on the nodding plumes of the great black carriage which had taken his father away; the day some years later on which his childish mind first realised that his adored mother cared nothing for him—rain, a soft mist of it. And the night in London, four years past now, the night that he had discovered what Lydia Shelmerdine really was. Against the closely-curtained windows of her boudoir it could be heard to dash in fury (for there was a great wind that evening) every time that there came a pause in her high, frightened, lying speech, which ran on the more that he stood there saying so little. The rose had slipped loose from her close-gathered powdered hair, her gauze and ivory fan lay snapped at her feet . . . and the rain sluiced pitilessly against the windows.
Into that tempest Keith Windham had presently gone out, and, once away from the scented room, had known nothing of its fury, though it drenched him to the skin; and he had forced his way all dripping into the presence of the man who had seduced her . . . no, the man whom she had seduced . . . and had told him to his face that he was welcome to his conquest, that he did not propose to dispute it with him, nor even to demand satisfaction. The lady was not worth fighting about; “not worth the risking of a man’s life—even of yours!” There had been witnesses, vastly surprised witnesses, of conduct so unusual. But he thought his way of dealing with the situation more effective than the ordinary; and perhaps it was. He never saw either of the two who had betrayed him again.
Riding behind his young Achilles next afternoon Keith Windham kept looking at Loch Eil, now shining and placid, the seaweed of its level shore orange in the sun, and the great mountain miles away over Fort William mirrored, upside down, as clear as the original. If only he could reach Fort William! But Ardroy, to whom his word of honour still bound him, would certainly see to it that at the expiry of his parole this evening he was secured in some other way. “I dare say he will make it as little irksome for me as he can,” thought Keith, looking at the tall, easy figure sitting the horse just ahead of him, on whose gay tartan and ribbon-tied auburn hair the westering sun was shining full. “He’s an uncommon good fellow . . . and we shall never see each other again, I suppose.” And again he thought, “Not that he will care—and why the devil should I?”
Then the stream of men and conveyances began to leave the loch side, making towards Mr. John Cameron’s house of Fassefern, standing where Glen Suilag made a breach into the mountains; though Lochiel’s burgess brother, who would not join the Prince, had carried his prudence to the length of absenting himself from his property lest he should be open to the charge of having entertained that compromising guest. It was not until they came to the gate in their turn that Ardroy slewed himself round in his saddle to speak to the captive, and said that he would do what he could for him in the way of accommodation, if he did not object to waiting a little. So Keith gave up his horse to one of Ewen’s gillies, and, working his way through the press, waited under a tree and revolved plans. But in truth he could make none until he knew how he was to be secured.
Sooner than he had expected his warden reappeared and, taking him in at a side entry, conducted him to the very top of the humming house.
“I thought this little room might serve for us,” he said, opening the door of a small, half-furnished garret, and Keith saw that their mails were already there. “I do not know how many others may be thrust in here, but there is at least one bed.” And so there was, a sort of pallet. “You had best establish your claim to it at once, Captain Windham, or, better still, I will do it for you.” And, mindful as ever of his prisoner’s comfort, he unfastened his plaid and tossed it on to the mattress. “I will come and fetch you to supper; I suppose there will be some.”
Keith could not help looking after his departing figure with a smile which held both amusement and liking. He could not, however, afford to let sensibility interfere with what was in his mind now. Whatever were the reason, Ardroy seemed to have completely forgotten that in—Keith consulted his watch—in another twenty minutes his captive’s parole would expire, and he would be free to take himself off . . . if he could. Or was it that he had not mentioned the coming change of conditions from some feeling of delicacy, because it would involve setting a guard?
The Englishman sat down upon the pallet and considered his chances. They depended almost entirely upon whether in twenty minutes’ time there was a Highlander posted at the door of this room. But Ardroy had spoken of fetching him to supper. Heaven send then that supper was delayed! Perhaps he could creep out of the garret and conceal himself elsewhere until he found an opportunity of getting clear away later in the evening. Yet there was no special advantage in waiting for nightfall (even if Ardroy’s forgetfulness extended so far) because the nights were apt to be so disconcertingly light. No, the great difficulty at any hour was his uniform. . . .
And here he found himself looking at the roll from Ewen Cameron’s saddle, lying on the solitary half-broken chair.
But Keith Windham was much too proud a man not to have a strict regard for his pledged word. He could hardly prevent the entrance of a plan of escape into a brain which was, as yet, on parole, but he would not take the smallest step to put it into execution before the appointed hour should strike. To pass the time he would scribble a note to explain his conduct; and, wondering the while whether he should not have to destroy it even before he had finished it, he tore out a leaf from his pocket-book and began:
“Dear Mr. Cameron,—“To justify my unadvertis’d Departure I am fain to put you in Mind that I gave my Parole of Honour for the Space of a Se’nnight from the Day and Hour of my Capture by you in the Evening of last Friday. In ten Minutes more that Period will have expir’d, and I trust you will not think it any Infraction of Military Honour that, without having previously recall’d that Fact to your Memory, I intend at half after six to attempt my Freedom.“I shall always retain the most cordial Remembrance of your Hospitality, and though the Pilgrimage of the last few Days has been somewhat prolong’d, it has enabled me to be present upon a most interesting Occasion.“Adieu, and forgive me for supposing that when you are more accustom’d to a military Life, you will not repeat the Oversight by which I am hoping to profit,“Your most obedient, humble Servant,“Keith Windham,Captain.”
“Dear Mr. Cameron,—
“To justify my unadvertis’d Departure I am fain to put you in Mind that I gave my Parole of Honour for the Space of a Se’nnight from the Day and Hour of my Capture by you in the Evening of last Friday. In ten Minutes more that Period will have expir’d, and I trust you will not think it any Infraction of Military Honour that, without having previously recall’d that Fact to your Memory, I intend at half after six to attempt my Freedom.
“I shall always retain the most cordial Remembrance of your Hospitality, and though the Pilgrimage of the last few Days has been somewhat prolong’d, it has enabled me to be present upon a most interesting Occasion.
“Adieu, and forgive me for supposing that when you are more accustom’d to a military Life, you will not repeat the Oversight by which I am hoping to profit,
“Your most obedient, humble Servant,
“Keith Windham,Captain.”
When he had finished this effusion, of which the last paragraph, it cannot be denied, afforded him a special pleasure, he still waited, watch in hand. At half-past six exactly he rose from the pallet and, feeling remarkably like a footpad, opened Ardroy’s modest baggage with hasty fingers. It proved to contain a clean shirt, a pair of stockings, a few odds and ends and—a kilt. The plunderer held this up in some dismay, for he would very greatly have preferred trews, such as Ardroy was wearing at present, but it was this nether garment or his own, and in a remarkably short space of time he was surveying his bare knees with equal disgust and misgiving. No knees that he had seen this week under tartan were as white as that! Happily the garret was dusty, and therefore his legs, if not respectably tanned, could at least look dirty. He thought at first of retaining his uniform coat, which he fancied could be fairly well hidden by Ardroy’s plaid—how he blessed him for leaving it behind—but the skirts were a little too long, and the blue cuffs with their galons too conspicuous, and so he decided to go coatless. Thereupon he began experiments with the plaid—what a devil of a lot of it there was! He wished he had a bonnet to pull forward on his brows . . . but one could not expect everything to be provided. The want, however, reminded him of his incongruous wig, and he took this off and placed it, with his discarded uniform, under the mattress. And so there he was, clad in a costume he would as soon have assumed as the trappings of a Red Indian—and clad very insecurely too, he feared, for Ardroy’s kilt was too big for him, and he could not fasten it any tighter.
Still no sign of any person coming. Keith looked doubtfully at his host’s rifled baggage. It was his duty to regain his liberty by any lawful means, but he had certainly acted the part of a pickpocket. The only compensation in his power was to pay for the clothes he had taken, since those he had left behind were no adequate exchange. He pulled out his purse, having small idea of the worth of the purloined garments, and still less of how Ardroy would view the payment; he suspected that the Highlander might not relish it, but for his own peace of mind he felt constrained to make it. And so he wrapped three guineas in his farewell letter and laid the letter on the chair. Then he softly opened the garret door, went to the head of the stairs, and listened.
The immediate neighbourhood of the little room was deserted, and the sounds from below suggested that the bustle which existed in Fassefern House that evening was more likely to help than to hinder a pretended Cameron who desired to slip out unnoticed. Captain Windham settled the plaid more to his satisfaction and began with an unconcerned air to descend the stairs. But he was clutching nervously at the top of the philabeg, and his legs felt abominably cold.
Some three-quarters of an hour later Donald Cameron of Lochiel and Alexander MacDonald of Keppoch, he whose clansmen had held High Bridge, were talking together outside the front of Fassefern House. About an hour previously it had been arranged that the heavy baggage was to go forward that night along Loch Eil side with a strong convoy of Camerons; a large escort was required because at Corpach they would have to run the gauntlet of the neighbourhood of Fort William on the other side of the water—a danger which the Prince and the rest of the little force would avoid next day by taking a route through Glen Suilag impossible to the baggage train.
“And I am sending my young cousin Ardroy in command of it,” concluded Lochiel, “though the news was something of the suddenest to him. But he will be ready; he is a very punctual person, is Ewen.”
And they went on to speak of other matters: of Macleod of Macleod’s refusal to observe his solemn engagement to join the Prince (even if he came alone), which was still more resented than the withdrawal of Sir Alexander MacDonald of the Isles; and of what Sir John Cope would do, and where he would elect to give them battle. For that the English general would take his alarmed way up to Inverness without daring to face them had not occurred to the most sanguine.
Lochiel, indeed, was looking very grave. Keith Windham’s flash of insight had been correct; he was not deluded. His was the case of a man who was risking everything—life, fortune, lands, the future of his young family—against his better judgment because, more scrupulous of his plighted word than the Chief of Macleod or MacDonald of Sleat, he felt himself too deeply engaged to draw back without loss of honour. Yet, unlike Macleod’s, his engagement only pledged his support in the case that the Prince came with French assistance—and he had come without it. The fate of his whole clan lay on Lochiel’s shoulders—more, the fate of every man in the rising, for if he had held back the spark would have been quenched at the outset for lack of fuel. That knowledge was a heavy burden to be laid on a man who, far from being a freebooting chief, had striven all his life for the betterment of his people.
“Yes,” he was saying for the second time, “if we can reach and hold the pass over the Corryarrick before Cope——”
At that moment there was a rapid step behind the two men, Lochiel heard his own name uttered in sharp accents, and, turning quickly, beheld the young commander of the baggage convoy in a state of high discomposure.
“My dear Ewen, what is wrong?”
“He’s gone!” And so agitated was Ardroy’s tone, so black his brow, that Lochiel’s own colour changed. “Who—not the Prince!”
“The English officer—my prisoner . . . he’s escaped! His parole expired at half-past six this evening, and I, fool that I was, had forgot it over this business of the escort. He’ll go straight to Fort William with information of our numbers and our arms. . . . Oh, I deserve you should dismiss me, Lochiel! He’s been away near an hour, I suppose. Shall I ride after him? . . . No, I cannot, unless you give the convoy to someone else—and truly I think I am not fit——”
Lochiel broke in, laying a hand on his arm. “’Tis not worth while pursuing him, my dear Ewen, nor any very great loss to be rid of him. I doubt not, too, that they have already at Fort William all the information that Captain Windham can give. But how, with that uniform, did he get away?”
The enraged young man ground his teeth. “He was not wearing his uniform. He stole some clothes from me—a philabeg and my plaid. And he left me a damned impertinent letter . . . and these.” He unclosed a hand and held out three gold coins. “Isn’t that the final insult, that he must leave so much more than the things were worth, as though to——” He appeared unable to finish the sentence. “If ever I meet him again——” Back went his arm, and Captain Windham’s guineas hurtled violently into the shrubbery of Fassefern House.
“To wanton me, to wanton me,Ken ye what maist would wanton me?To see King James at Edinburgh Cross,Wi’ fifty thousand foot and horse,And the usurper forced to flee,Oh this is what maist would wanton me.”—Jacobite Song.
“To wanton me, to wanton me,Ken ye what maist would wanton me?To see King James at Edinburgh Cross,Wi’ fifty thousand foot and horse,And the usurper forced to flee,Oh this is what maist would wanton me.”
“To wanton me, to wanton me,
Ken ye what maist would wanton me?
To see King James at Edinburgh Cross,
Wi’ fifty thousand foot and horse,
And the usurper forced to flee,
Oh this is what maist would wanton me.”
—Jacobite Song.
The dusk of early October had fallen on the city of Edinburgh, that stately city, which for some three weeks now had been experiencing a situation as odd as any in its varied and turbulent history. For Prince Charles and his Highlanders held the town, but not the Castle, secure on its lofty and impregnable rock; this they could neither storm, owing to its position, nor, from lack of artillery, batter down, while King George’s military representatives in the Castle were, for their part, unable to regain control of the city below them. The stalemate thus established was perfectly in harmony with the spirit of unconscious comedy which had reigned throughout these weeks, beginning with the ludicrous indecisions and terrors of the city fathers on the news of the Highland advance, and the casual method by which the city had suffered itself to be captured, or rather walked into, by Lochiel and his men. For the opening of the Netherbow Port very early on the morning of the 17th of September, just as the Highlanders outside were preparing to withdraw disappointed, was due to nothing more momentous than the exit of a hackney carriage on its way to its stable in the Canongate—though it is true that it was the carriage which had just brought back the discomfited envoys sent to interview the Prince at Gray’s Mill.
Yesterday only had come to an end the latest (and not entirely humorous) episode, of some days’ duration, when, the Prince having ‘blockaded’ the Castle, in other words, having cut off daily supplies, the garrison had retaliated by firing on the town, killing some innocent inhabitants, striking terror into them all, and making it very undesirable to be seen in the neighbourhood of the Castle in the company of a Highlander. Violent representations on the part of the city to the Prince, embodying ‘the most hideous complaints against the garrison’, had brought this uncomfortable state of affairs to an end by the raising of the ‘blockade’—itself originated, so the story went, by the discovery of smuggled information in a pat of butter destined for the valetudinarian General Guest, for whom milk and eggs were permitted to pass daily into the Castle. Yet the old gentleman’s treacherous butter was only one of the many whimsical touches of the goddess Thalia, who had devised, during these weeks of occupation, such ingenious surprises as the descent of a soldier from the Castle by means of a rope into Livingston’s Yard, where he set a house on fire, and returned in triumph, by the same method, with a couple of captured Jacobite muskets; the discomfiture, by a sudden illumination from above, of three Camerons sent experimentally to scale the Castle rock under cover of darkness, and—perhaps the most genuinely comic of all—the solemn paying out to the cashier and directors of the Royal Bank of Scotland, within the very walls of the Castle, and in exchange for Prince Charles’s notes, of the ready money which had been taken there for safety, but the lack of which inconvenienced the Edinburgh shopkeepers as much as anybody. This transaction had taken place, under the white flag, during the blockade itself.
But to-night, the guns being silent, and General Joshua Guest once more in possession of his invalid diet, the lately terrified citizens in the high, crammed houses with their unsavoury approaches were preparing to sleep without fear of bombardment next day by their own defenders. Those outposts of the invading foe, which always kept a wary eye upon the Castle and its approaches—and which had not passed through a very enviable time the last few days—the Highland guard at the Weighhouse, the West Bow, and elsewhere, had received their night relief, and Mr. Patrick Crichton, saddler and ironmonger, was writing in his diary further caustic and originally spelt remarks anent these ‘scownderalls’, ‘scurlewheelers’ and ‘hillskipers’. Inside the walls all was quiet.
But at the other end of the town Holyrood House was lit up, for there was dancing to-night in the long gallery under the eyes of that unprepossessing series of early Scottish kings due to the brush of an ill-inspired Dutchman . . . and under a pair of much more sparkling ones. For the Prince was gay to-night, as he was not always; and though, following his usual custom, he himself did not dance, it was plain that the growing accessions to his cause during the last few days had raised his spirits. For, besides all those who had joined him soon after Glenfinnan—Stewarts of Appin, MacDonalds of Glengarry, Grants of Glenmoriston—two days ago had come in fierce old Gordon of Glenbucket with four hundred men, and the day before that young Lord Ogilvy, the Earl of Airlie’s son, with six hundred, and Farquharson of Balmoral with two hundred, and his kinsman of Monaltrie with more. And others were coming. Whatever the future might hold, he was here as by a miracle in the palace of his ancestors, having defeated in a quarter of an hour the general who had slipped out of his path in August and returned by sea to the drubbing which awaited him among the morasses and the cornstubble of Prestonpans.
So there, at the end of the gallery nearest to his own apartments, in a costume half satin, half tartan, stood the living embodiment of Scotland’s ancient dynasty, and drew to himself from time to time the gaze of every lady in the room. But it was to those of his own sex that he chiefly talked.
At the other end of the gallery, which looked out on to the garden and the chapel, Alison Grant, very fine in her hoop and powder, her flowered brocade of blue and silver, with a scarf of silken tartan and a white autumn rose on her breast, was talking with animation to three young men, one of whom, in a French uniform, bore a strong resemblance to her, and was in fact her young brother Hector, just come over from France. The others were distant kinsmen, Grants of Glenmoriston and Shewglie respectively. Right in the corner, on a gilded chair, sat Mr. Grant in a not very new coat (for it was more fitting that Alison should go braw than he). His hands rested on his cane, and his lined face, half shrewd and half childlike, wrinkled into a smile as he saw the likelihood that neither young Glenmoriston nor young Shewglie, who seemed to be disputing in a friendly way for the honour of the next dance, would obtain it, since someone else was making his way between the knots of talkers to this corner. To judge by the glances cast at him as he passed, it appeared that Alison was not the only lady there to think that a certain tall cadet of Clan Cameron, a captain in Lochiel’s regiment and one of the Prince’s aides-de-camp, who wore powder for the nonce and amber satin instead of tartan, was the match of any other gentleman in the room—except, of course, of him with the star on his breast.
Yet Alison, for some reason, gave the new-comer the briefest glance now, though it was a sweet one enough; then her eyes wandered away again. The two Grants, evidently thinking their cause hopeless, took themselves off.
“Alison, here is your cavalier come to claim you,” said her father from his corner.
“Alison has not a look or a thought to give to me nowadays,” observed Ewen, looking at his love from behind, at the back of her white neck, where the sacque fell in imposing folds from the square of the bodice, and where two little unruly tendrils of hair, having shaken off their powder, were beginning to show their true colour. “Like the rest of the ladies, she has eyes only for the Prince. ’Tis pity I am not a Whig, for then she might pay me some attention, if only in order to convert me.”
At that Alison turned round, laughing.
“Well, sir,” she said, looking him up and down, “your costume, I vow, is almost Whiggish. In those clothes, and without a scrap of tartan upon you, you might be an Englishman!”
“Or a Frenchman,” suggested her father from his corner.
But this accusation Alison repudiated somewhat indignantly. “No; Frenchmen are all little men!” Yet, having lived so much in France, she must have known better.
“No one could call Ardroy little, I admit,” agreed Mr. Grant. “And he has not the French physiognomy. But in that dress he has quite the French air.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Ewen, bowing, “since I suppose I am to take that as a compliment.”
“There are some tall fellows enough in my regiment,” declared Hector Grant, drawing up his slim and active figure. “For my part, I’ve no ambition to attain the height of a pine tree. Alison, is it customary in Scotland, think you, for a brother to lead out his sister?”
“Not unless they are so unlike that the company cannot guess the kinship,” responded Ewen for his betrothed. “Not, therefore, in this case, Eachain!”
“Proprietary airs already, I see,” retorted the young soldier, a smile in the dark eyes which were Alison’s too. “Eh bien, if I may not have Alison, I vow I’ll dance with the oldest dame present. I like not your young misses.” And away he went, while Ewen, offering his hand, carried off his lady for the minuet which was just about to begin.
And, intoxicated by the violins, the lights, the shimmer of satin and silk—with just enough tartan to show the gathering’s heart—thinking of Cope soundly beaten, Edinburgh in their hands, Ewen distinguished by the Prince for Lochiel’s sake, Alison felt that she was stepping on rosy clouds instead of on a mortal floor. Her feet ached to dance a reel rather than this stately measure. And Ewen—the darling, how handsome, though how different, he looked in powder!—did he too know this pulsing exhilaration? He always kept his feelings under control. Yet when his eyes met hers she could see in them, far down, an exultation profounder, perhaps, than her own.
The music ceased; her betrothed bowed low, and Alison sank smiling in a deep curtsy that spread her azure petticoat about her like a great blue blossom. Then she took his hand and they went aside.
“Now you must fan yourself, must you not, whether you be hot or no? What are these little figures on your fan—Cupids or humans?” asked Ewen.
“Mercy on us!” exclaimed Miss Grant suddenly, looking towards the end of the apartment, “the Prince is no longer here!”
“Is he not?” responded Ewen calmly. “I had not observed.”
“And you one of his aides-de-camp! Fie on you!” cried Alison, and took her fan out of his hand.
“I was looking at you,mo chridhe,” said her lover in his deep, gentle voice, and offered no other excuse.
“But where can His Royal Highness have got to?”
“My dear, His Royal Highness is under no vow that I know of to watch us dance any longer than he pleases. However, there’s another of his aides-de-camp, Dr. Cameron; perhaps he can assuage your anxiety. Archie!”
Dr. Archibald Cameron, Lochiel’s brother, turned round at his kinsman’s summons. He was a man only a dozen years or so older than Ewen himself, with much of Lochiel’s own wisdom and serenity, and Ewen had for him a respect and affection second only to that which he bore his Chief.
“Archie, come and protect me from Miss Grant! She declares that I am a Whig because I am wearing neither trews nor philabeg, and unworthy of the position I occupy towards the Prince because I had not observed his withdrawal, nor can tell her the reason for it.”
But already the fiddles had struck up for another dance, and one of the young Grants had returned and was proffering his request anew. So Ewen relinquished his lady and watched her carried off, sailing away like a fair ship.
“Taken to task so soon!” said Dr. Cameron with a twinkle. He was a married man himself, with several children. “No doubt if my Jean were here I should be in like case, for though I knew the Prince had withdrawn I have not fashed myself about it.”
Neither did Ewen now. “Is it true,” he asked, “that Donald will not be here to-night at all?”
“Yes; I left him by his own fireside in the Canongate.”
“He’s not ill, Archie?”
“No, no; he’s older and wiser than we, that’s all.” And giving his young cousin a nod and a little smile Dr. Cameron went off.
Ewen abode where he was, for it was too late to secure a partner. Suddenly, hearing his name uttered in a low tone behind him, he turned to see Mr. Francis Strickland, one of the ‘seven men of Moidart’, the gentlemen who had landed with the Prince in the west.
“Captain Cameron,” said he, coming closer and speaking still lower, though at the moment there was no one within a couple of yards or so, “Captain Cameron, the Prince desires that in a quarter of an hour you will station yourself at the door of the ante-room leading to his bedchamber, and see to it that no one approaches his room. His Royal Highness finds himself indisposed, and obliged to withdraw from the ball; but he particularly wishes that no attention shall be called to his absence. Do you understand?”
Ewen stared at him, a good deal astonished at this commission. There was something furtive, too, about Mr. Strickland’s manner which he did not relish, and, in common with many of the Highland chiefs, he was coming to dislike and mistrust the Irish followers of the Prince—though Strickland, to be accurate, was an Englishman.
“This indisposition is very sudden, Mr. Strickland,” he observed. “A short while ago the Prince was in the best of health and spirits.”
“I suppose, sir,” retorted Strickland tartly, “that you scarcely consider yourself to be a better judge of the Prince’s state of health than he is himself?”
“No,” returned Ewen, his Highland pride all at once up in arms, “but I do conceive that, as his personal aide-de-camp, I take my orders from His Royal Highness himself, and not from any . . . intermediary.”
Mr. Strickland’s eye kindled. “You are not very polite, Captain Cameron,” he observed with truth. Indeed he seemed to be repressing a warmer retort. “I am to tell the Prince, then, that you refuse the honour of his commands, and that he must find another aide-de-camp to execute them?”
“No, since I have not refused,” said Ewen with brevity, and he turned upon his heel. But Strickland clutched at his arm. “Not yet—you are not to go yet! In a quarter of an hour’s time.”
And Ewen stopped. “The Prince intends to be indisposed in a quarter of an hour’s time!” he exclaimed. “Then indeed ’tis a very strange seizure; I doubt Dr. Cameron would be better for the post.”
“For God’s sake, Captain Cameron!” said Strickland in an agitated whisper, pulling Ewen by the sleeve. “For God’s sake show some discretion—moderate your voice!” And he murmured something about a delicate task and a wrong choice which only inflamed Ewen’s suspicions the more. What intrigue was afoot that the Prince’s door should be guarded, under plea of illness, in a quarter of an hour’s time? He was expecting a visit, perhaps—from whom? Ewen liked the sound of it very little, the less so that Strickland was plainly now in a fever of nervousness.
“Pray let go my arm, sir,” he said, and, the Englishman not at once complying, added meaningly, “if you do not wish me to be still more indiscreet!” On which Mr. Strickland hastily removed his grasp, and Ewen turned and began to make his way down the room, careless whether Strickland were following or no, since if that gentleman’s desire for secrecy were sincere he dared not make an open protest among the dancers.
As he went Ewen very much regretted Lochiel’s absence to-night, and also the indisposition of Mr. Murray of Broughton, the Prince’s secretary, who had delicate health. Mr. Strickland must be aware of both those facts. . . . And if Strickland were in this business, whatever it might be, it was fairly certain that Colonel O’Sullivan, the Irish Quartermaster-General, was in it also. For a second or so the young man hesitated, and glanced about for Dr. Cameron, but he was nowhere to be seen now. Then he himself would try to get to the bottom of what was going on; and as when his mind was made up an earthquake would scarcely have turned him from his path, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy made straight for the Prince’s bedchamber with that intention.
The drawing-room leading directly from the picture gallery had about a dozen couples in it; the ante-room which gave at right angles from this was fortunately empty, although the door between was open. The investigator went quietly through, closing this, marched across the ante-room and knocked at the Prince’s door.
“Avanti!” cried a voice, and Ewen went into the bedchamber which had once been the ill-fated Darnley’s. The Prince was sitting on the other side of the gilded and embroidery-hung bed, with his back to the door, engaged, it seemed, in the absence of Morrison, his valet, in pulling on his own boots. A black cloak and plain three-cornered hat lay upon the gold and silver coverlet.
“Is that you, O’Sullivan?” he asked without turning his head. “I shall be ready in a moment.”
Ewen thought, “I was right; O’Sullivan is in it! . . . Your Royal Highness, . . .” he said aloud.
At that the Prince looked quickly behind him, then, still seated on the bed, turned half round, leaning on one hand. “My orders, Captain Cameron, were for you to post yourself at the outer door. There has evidently been some mistake, either on your part or on Mr. Strickland’s.”
“On mine then, may it please Your Highness,” admitted Ewen coolly. “As the order puzzled me somewhat, I have ventured to ask that I may receive it from Your Royal Highness’s own mouth.”
The mouth in question betrayed annoyance, and the Prince arose from his position on the bed and faced his aide-de-camp across it. “Mon Dieu, I thought it was plain enough! You will have the goodness to station yourself outside the farther door and to let no one attempt to see me. I am indisposed.”
“And the quarter of an hour’s interval of which Mr. Strickland spoke, sir?”
“That is of no moment now. You can take up your place at once, Captain Cameron.” And with a gesture of dismissal the Prince turned his back and walked across the room towards the curtained window. It was thus plainly to be seen that he had his boots on.
He was not then expecting a visit; he was going to pay one! Hence the sentinel before the outer door, that his absence might not be known. Ewen looked at the cloak on the bed, thought of the dark Edinburgh streets, the hundred and one narrow little entries, the chance of a scuffle, of an encounter with some unexpected patrol from the Castle, and took the plunge.
“Your Royal Highness is going out—at this hour?”
The Prince spun round. “Who told you that I was going out? And if I were, what possible affair is it of yours, sir?”
“Only that, as your aide-de-camp, it is my great privilege to watch over your Royal Highness’s person,” answered Ewen respectfully but firmly. “And if you are going out into the streets of Edinburgh at night without a guard——”
Charles Edward came nearer. His brown eyes, striking in so fair-complexioned a young man, sparkled with anger. “Captain Cameron, when I appointed you my aide-de-camp, I did not think that I was hampering myself with a s——” He bit off the short, pregnant word, that aide-de-camp’s suddenly paling face evidently recalling to him whither he was going. But he instantly started off again on the same road. “Dieu me damne!” he said irritably, “am I to have your clan always at my elbow? Lochiel may have walked first into Edinburgh, but he was not the first to declare for me. He sent his brother to beg me to go back again! I think you Camerons would do well to remem——” Again he broke off, for there had come a knock at the door.
But Ewen, white to the very lips, had put his hand behind him and turned the key. “Will your Royal Highness kindly give your orders to some other man?” he asked, in a voice which he did not succeed in keeping steady. “I’ll not endure to hear either my Chief or myself insulted, no, not though it be by my future King!”
The Prince was brought up short. His aide-de-camp might have taken upon himself a good deal more than his position warranted, but to offend a chieftain of Clan Cameron at this juncture was madness. Charles was not yet a slave to the petulant temper which from his boyhood had given anxiety to those about him, and which in later unhappy years was to work so much disaster, and his great personal charm was still undimmed.
“Wait a little!” he called through the door, and then looked with appeal in his beautiful eyes at the tall figure in front of it, rigid with the stillness of a consuming anger. “Ardroy, forgive me for a moment of irritation! I scarce knew what I was saying. You cannot think that there is any thought in my breast for my good Lochiel but gratitude—all the greater gratitude that he knew and weighed the risk he ran and yet drew that true sword of his! And as for you, how did I insult you?”
“I think,” said Ewen, still very pale and haughty, and using to the full the physical advantage which he had—not very many had it—of being able to look down on his Prince, “I think that your Royal Highness was near calling me . . . something that no gentleman can possibly call another.”
“Why, then, I could not have been near it—since I hope I am a gentleman!” The Prince smiled his vanquishing smile. “And to prove that you are imagining vain things, my dear Ardroy, I will tell you on what errand I am bound to-night, and you shall accompany me, if you still insist upon your right to watch over my royal person.”
Ewen was not vanquished. “Your Royal Highness is too good,” he answered, bowing, “but I should not dream of claiming that right any longer, and I will withdraw.”
“I always heard that you Highlanders were unforgiving,” lamented the Prince, between jest and earnest. (Devoted though they were, they were certainly not easy to manage.) “Come, Ardroy, you are much of an age with myself, I imagine—doyounever say in heat what you designed not—and regret the moment after?”
Their eyes met, the warm Southern brown and the blue.
“Yes, my Prince,” said Ewen suddenly. “Give me what orders you will, and they shall be obeyed.”
“I am forgiven then?” asked the Prince quickly, and he held out his hand as though to clasp his aide-de-camp’s. But Ewen bent his knee and put his lips to it.
During this touching scene of reconciliation it was evident from various discreet but not too patient taps upon the door that the excluded person on the other side still desired admittance.
“Open the door,mon ami,” said Charles Edward, and Ewen, unlocking it, did so; and in walked Colonel John William O’Sullivan, not too pleased, as was obvious, at his exclusion. He carried a cloak over his arm.
“I thought your Royal Highness was admitting no one except——” He stopped and looked in dumb annoyance at the intruder. Ewen showed a stony front. There was no love lost between the Quartermaster-General and the Camerons whom he had posted so badly at Tranent before the recent battle.
“Strickland has not come yet,” observed the Prince, and added, with a spice of malice, “I think it well to take an aide-de-camp with me, O’Sullivan. We shall therefore be apartie carrée.”
“As your Highness pleases, of course,” said O’Sullivan stiffly.
“And in that case,” went on his Royal Highness, “he had best know whither we are bound. We are going, my dear Ardroy, to pay a visit to a lady.”
Ewen was astonished, for he had seen enough since their coming to Edinburgh to make him conclude that the Prince was—perhaps fortunately—very cold where women were concerned, no matter how much incense they burnt before him. Then disgust succeeded to astonishment: was this the time for intrigues of that nature? But the latter emotion, at least, was very transitory, for the Prince went on almost at once: “’Tis the Jacobite widow of a Whig Lord of Session—an old lady, but no doubt charming, and certainly loyal—who dwells at the corner of the West Bow and the Grassmarket.”
“So near the Castle!” broke from Ewen in spite of himself.
“Donc, the last place in which I shall be looked for! Moreover,” said the young Prince gaily, “I am borrowing Murray’s name, since Lady Easterhall is his kinswoman, and is expecting a visit from him—though not, I’m bound to say, to-night. You look blank, Captain Cameron” (and Ewen had no doubt he did). “See then, read the old lady’s letter to Murray.”
Ewen took the paper which the Prince drew from his pocket, and read the following, written in a slightly tremulous hand: