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Title: The flight of the heron
Author: D. K. Broster
Release date: February 10, 2024 [eBook #72918]
Language: English
Original publication: London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1925
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON ***
THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
“MR. ROWL”
THE WOUNDED NAME
THE YELLOW POPPY
SIR ISUMBRAS AT THE FORD
THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON
BY
D. K. BROSTER
“But the heron’s flight is that of a
celestial messenger bearing important, if
not happy, tidings to an expectant people.”
—“V.”, _As You See It_.
1925
London: William Heinemann Ltd.
_First published . . . 1925_
Made and Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and
London
TO
VIOLET JACOB
IN HOMAGE
CONTENTS
PAGE
_PROLOGUE_. A PROMISE OF FAIR WEATHER. . . . . . . . . . . 11
I THROUGH ENGLISH EYES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
II FLOOD-TIDE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
III THE EBB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
IV ‘YOUR DEBTOR, EWEN CAMERON’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
V THE HERON’S FLIGHT IS ENDED. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
_EPILOGUE_. HARBOUR OF GRACE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
PROLOGUE
A PROMISE OF FAIR WEATHER
THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON
PROLOGUE
A PROMISE OF FAIR WEATHER
(1)
The sun had been up for a couple of hours, and now, by six o’clock,
there was scarcely a cloud in the sky; even the peaked summit of Ben
Tee, away to the north-east, had no more than the faintest veil
floating over it. On all the western slopes the transfiguring light,
as it crept lower and lower, was busy picking out the patches of July
bell-heather and painting them an even deeper carmine; and the
mountains round were smiling (where sometimes they frowned) on Loch na
h-Iolaire, to-day a shining jewel which to-morrow might be a mere blot
of grey steel. It was going to be a very fine day, and in the West of
Scotland such are none too plentiful.
Loch na h-Iolaire, the Loch of the Eagle, was not large—little more
than a mile long, and at its greatest breadth perhaps a quarter of a
mile wide. It lay among the encircling hills like a fairy pool come
upon in dreams; yet it had not the desolate quality of the high
mountain tarns, whose black waters lie shoreless at the foot of
precipices. Loch na h-Iolaire was set in a level space as wide as
itself. At one end was a multitude of silver-stemmed birches, of
whom some loved the loch (or their own reflection) so dearly that they
leaned over it until the veil of their hair almost brushed its
surface; and with these court ladies stood a guard of very old pines,
severe and beautiful, and here and there was the feathered bravery of
a rowan tree. Everywhere underfoot lay a carpet of bogmyrtle and
cranberry, pressing up to the feet of the pungent-berried junipers and
the bushes of the flaming broom, now but dying fires. And where this
shore was widest it unexpectedly sent out into the lake a jutting crag
of red granite, grown upon in every cranny with heather, and crowned
with two immense Scots pines.
The loch’s beauty, on this early summer morning of 1745, seemed at
first to be a lonely and unappreciated loveliness, yet it was neither.
On its northern shore, where the sandy bank, a little hollowed by the
water, rose some three feet above it, a dark, wiry young Highlander,
in a belted plaid of the Cameron tartan, was standing behind a couple
of large juniper bushes with a fowling-piece in his hands. He,
however, was plainly not lost in admiration of the scene, for his keen
eyes were fixed intently on the tree-grown islet which swam at anchor
in the middle of the loch, and he had all the appearance of a hunter
waiting for his quarry.
Suddenly he gave an exclamation of dismay. Round the point of the
island had just appeared the head, shoulder and flashing arm of a man
swimming, and this man was driving fast through the barely rippled
water, and was evidently making for the shore in his direction. The
Highlander dropped out of sight behind the junipers, but the swimmer
had already seen him.
“Who is there?” he called out, and his voice came ringing imperiously
over the water. “Stand up and show yourself!”
The discovered watcher obeyed, leaving the fowling-piece on the
ground, and the swimmer, at some six yards’ distance, promptly trod
water, the better to see.
“Lachlan!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing there?”
And as the Highlander did not answer, but suddenly stooped and pushed
the fowling-piece deeper into the heather at his feet, the occupant of
the loch, with a few vigorous strokes, brought himself in until he was
able to stand breast-high in the water.
“Come nearer,” he commanded in Gaelic, “and tell me what you are
doing, skulking there!”
The other advanced to the edge of the bank. “I was watching yourself,
Mac ’ic Ailein,” he replied in the same tongue, and in the sulky tone
of one who knows that he will be blamed.
“And why, in the name of the Good Being? Have you never seen me swim
before?”
“I had it in my mind that someone might steal your clothes,” answered
Lachlan MacMartin, looking aside.
“_Amadain!_” exclaimed the swimmer. “There is no one between the Garry
and the water of Arkaig who would do such a thing, and you know it as
well as I! Moreover, my clothes are on the other side, and you cannot
even see them! No, the truth, or I will come out and throw you into
the loch!” And, balancing his arms, he advanced until he was only
waist-deep, young and broad-shouldered and glistening against the
bright water and the trees of the island behind him. “Confess now, and
tell me the reason in your heart!”
“If you will not be angry I will be telling you,” replied Lachlan to
his chieftain Ewen Cameron, who was also his foster-brother.
“I shall make no promises. Out with it!”
“I cannot shout it to you, Mac ’ic Ailein; it would not be lucky.”
“Do you think that I am coming out to hear it before I have finished
my swim?”
“I will walk in to you if you wish,” said Lachlan submissively, and
began to unfasten his plaid.
“Do not be a fool!” said the young man in the loch, half laughing,
half annoyed; and, wading to the bank, he pulled himself up by the
exposed root of a birch-tree, and threw himself unconcernedly down
among the heather and bogmyrtle. Now it could be seen that he was some
inches over six feet and splendidly made; a swift runner, too, it was
likely, for all his height and breadth of shoulder. His thick auburn
hair, darkened by the water to brown, was plaited for the nonce into a
short pigtail like a soldier’s; his deepset blue eyes looked out of a
tanned face, but where the sunburn ended his skin was as fair as a
girl’s. He had a smiling and determined mouth.
“Now tell me truly why you are lurking here like a grouse on Beinn
Tigh,” he repeated.
The half-detected culprit glanced from the naked young man at his feet
to the only partially concealed fowling-piece. “You will not be
pleased, I am thinking.”
“All the more reason for knowing, then,” responded his chieftain
promptly, hugging his bent knees. “I shall stay here until you tell
me . . . _dhé_, how these vegetables prick! No, I do not want your
plaid; I want the truth.”
“I am here,” began Lachlan MacMartin with great unwillingness,
“because there is something in the loch which may bring you ill-fortune,
and——”
“In the loch! What, an _each uisge_, a water-horse?” He was smiling.
“No, not a water-horse. But my father says——”
“Ah, it is a matter of the two sights? Angus has been ‘seeing’ again!
What was the vision?”
But at that moment the speaker himself saw something, though not by
the supernatural gift to which he was referring. He stretched out a
wet, accusing arm and pointed towards the juniper bush. “What is that
gun doing here?” And at the very plain discomposure on its owner’s
face a look of amusement came into his own. “You cannot shoot a
water-horse, Lachlan—not with a charge of small shot!”
“It is not a water-horse,” repeated his foster-brother. He suddenly
crouched down in the heather close to the swimmer. “Listen, Mac ’ic
Ailein,” he said in a low, tense voice. “My father is much troubled,
for he had a ‘seeing’ last night across the fire, and it concerned
you, but whether for good or ill he could not tell; neither would he
tell me what it was, save that it had to do with a heron.”
“It is a pity Angus cannot be more particular in his predictions,”
observed the young man flippantly, breaking off a sprig of bogmyrtle
and smelling it. “Well?”
“You know that I would put the hair of my head under your feet,” went
on Lachlan MacMartin passionately. “Now on the island yonder there
lives a heron—not a pair, but one only——”
The young chieftain laid a damp but forcible hand on his arm. “I will
not have it, Lachlan, do you hear?” he said in English. “I’ll not
allow that bird to be shot!”
But Lachlan continued to pour out Gaelic. “_Eoghain_, marrow of my
heart, ask me for the blood out of my veins, but do not ask me to let
the heron live now that my father has seen this thing! It is a bird of
ill omen—one to be living there alone, and to be spying when you are
swimming; and if it is not a _bòchdan_, as I have sometimes thought,
it may be a witch. Indeed, if I had one, I would do better to put a
silver bullet——”
“Stop!” said the marrow of his heart peremptorily. “If my father Angus
has any warning to give me, he can tell it into my own ear, but I will
not have that heron shot, whatever he saw! What do you suppose the
poor bird can do to me? Bring your piece here and unload it.”
Out of the juniper bush and the heather Lachlan, rising, pulled the
fowling-piece, and, very slowly and reluctantly, removed the priming
and the charge.
“Yet it is an evil bird,” he muttered between his teeth. “You must
know that it is unlucky to meet a heron when one sets out on a
journey.”
“Yes,” broke in Ewen Cameron impatiently, “in the same way that it is
unlucky to meet a sheep or a pig—or a snake or a rat or a mouse,
unless you kill them—or a hare, or a fox, or a woman, or a flat-footed
man . . . and I know not what besides! Give me the gun.” He examined
it and laid it down. “Now, Lachlan, as you have not yet promised to
respect my wishes in this matter, and a gun is easily reloaded, you
shall swear on the iron to obey me—and that quickly, for I am getting
cold.”
Startled, the Highlander looked at his young chieftain to see
whether he were serious when he suggested the taking of so great and
inviolable an oath. But, unable from his expression to be sure, and
being blindly, fanatically devoted to him, he obediently drew his dirk
from its sheath, and was about to raise it to his lips to kiss it when
his foster-brother caught his arm.
“No, I was jesting, Lachlan. And . . . you do not keep your _biodag_
very clean!”
“Not clean?” exclaimed its owner, lowering the formidable, hiltless
blade. Then he bit his lip. “_Dhia gleidh sinn_! you are right—how
came that rust there?”
“Rust? It is blood!” Ewen took it from him by its black handle of
interlaced design and ran a finger down it. “No, I am wrong; it was
only the early sun on the steel.”
For the weapon lay across his palm, spotless and shining, the whole
foot and a half of it.
The dark Lachlan had turned very pale. “Give it to me, Mac ’ic Ailein,
and let me throw it into the loch. It is not well to keep it if we
both saw . . . what we saw.”
“No,” said his master with more composure, “it is a good dirk, and too
old a friend for that—and what I imagined can only have been some
memory of the times when it has gralloched a deer for us two.” He gave
it back. “We are neither of us _taibhsear_ like your father. I forbid
you to throw it away. Nor are you to shoot that heron—do you hear?”
If his young chief was not, Lachlan MacMartin was plainly shaken by
what had happened. He thrust the dirk deep into the heather as though
to cleanse it before he returned it to the sheath. “I hear,” he
muttered.
“Then see that you remember!” Shivering slightly, the young man sprang
to his feet. “Now, as you have forced me to land on this side of the
loch, Lachlan, I shall dive off the _creag ruadh_. A score of times
have I meant to do it, but I have never been sure if there were enough
water below. So, if a water-horse gets me, you will know whose was the
fault of it!” And laughing, disregarding entirely his foster-brother’s
protests, which went so far as the laying of a detaining hand on his
bare shoulder, he slid down the bank, ran along the narrow strip of
sand below it, and disappeared round a bend of the shore. A moment or
two later his white figure was seen clambering up the heather-clad
side of the red crag which gave the whole property its name. A pause,
then he shot down towards the lake in the perfect dive of the athlete;
and the water received him with scarcely a splash.
“The cross of Christ be upon us!” murmured Lachlan, shutting his eyes;
and, though he was no Papist, he signed himself. When he opened them
the beloved head had reappeared safely, and he watched it till the
island once more hid it from his view.
* * * * * *
Still tingling with his dive, Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, when he had
reached the other side of the little island, suddenly ceased swimming
and, turning on his back, gave himself to floating and meditation. He
was just six-and-twenty and very happy, for the sun was shining, and
he felt full of vigour, and the water was like cold silk about him,
and when he went in to breakfast there would be Alison, fresh as the
morning, to greet him—a foretaste of the mornings to come when they
would greet each other earlier than that. For their marriage contract
was even now in his desk at Ardroy awaiting signature, and the Chief
of Clan Cameron, Lochiel himself, Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh, Ewen’s near
kinsman by marriage as well as his overlord, was coming to-morrow from
his house of Achnacarry on Loch Arkaig to witness it.
Lochiel indeed, now a man of fifty, had always been to his young
cousin elder brother and father in one, for Ewen’s own father had been
obliged to flee the country after the abortive little Jacobite attempt
of 1719, leaving behind him his wife and the son of whom she had been
but three days delivered. Ewen’s mother—a Stewart of Appin—did not
survive his birth a fortnight, and he was nursed, with her own
black-haired Lachlan, by Seonaid MacMartin, the wife of his father’s
piper—no unusual event in a land of fosterage. But after a while
arrived Miss Cameron, the laird’s sister, to take charge of the
deserted house of Ardroy and to look after the motherless boy, who
before the year had ended was fatherless too, for John Cameron died of
fever in Amsterdam, and the child of six months old became ‘Mac ’ic
Ailein,’ the head of the cadet branch of Cameron of Ardroy. Hence
Ewen, with Miss Cameron’s assistance—and Lochiel’s supervision—had
ruled his little domain for as long as he could remember, save only
for the two years when he was abroad for his education.
It was there, in the Jacobite society of Paris, that he had met Alison
Grant, the daughter of a poor, learned and almost permanently exiled
Highland gentleman, a Grant of Glenmoriston, a plotter rather than a
fighter. But because Alison, though quite as much in love with her
young chieftain as he with her, had refused to leave her father alone
in exile—for the brother of sixteen just entering a French regiment
could not take her place—Ewen had had to wait for four long years
without much prospect of their marriage. But this very spring Mr. Grant
had received intimation that his return would be winked at by the
Government, and accordingly returned; and so there was nothing to
stand in the way of his daughter’s marriage to the young laird of
Ardroy in the autumn. And Alison’s presence here now, on a visit with
her father, was no doubt the reason that, though her lover was of the
same political creed as they, never questioning its fitness, since it
was as natural to him as running or breathing, he was not paying very
particular attention to the rumours of Prince Charles Edward’s plans
which were going about among the initiated.
With deliberate and unnecessary splashings, like a boy, Ewen now
turned over again, swam for a while under water, and finally landed,
stretched himself in the sun, and got without undue haste into a
rather summary costume. There was plenty of time before breakfast to
make a more ordered toilet, and his hair would be dry and tied back
with a ribbon by then. Perukes and short hair were convenient, but,
fashionable or no, he found the former hot. When he was Lochiel’s age,
perhaps, he would wear one.
Before long he was striding off towards the house, whistling a French
air as he went.
(2)
Between the red crag and the spot where he had rated his foster-brother
that morning Ardroy stood alone now with his betrothed. The loch was
almost more beautiful in the sunset light than when its waters had
closed over his head all those hours ago, and even with Alison on his
arm Ewen was conscious of this, for he adored Loch na h-Iolaire with
little less than passion. So they stood, close together, looking at it,
while here and there a fish rose and made his little circle, widening
until it died out in the glassy infinity, and near shore a shelduck
with her tiny bobbing brood swam hastily from one patch of reeds to
another.
Presently Ewen took off his plaid and spread it for Alison to sit upon,
and threw himself down too on the carpet of cranberries; and now he
looked, not at the loch, but at her, his own (or nearly his own) at
last. Alison’s hand, waited for so patiently . . . no, not always so
patiently . . . strayed among the tiny leaves, and Ewen caught the
little fingers, with his ring upon the least but one, and kissed them.
“And to think,” he said softly, “that by this time to-morrow we shall
be contracted in writing, and you not able to get away from me!”
Alison looked down at him. In her dark eyes swam all kinds of
sweetness, but mischief woke and danced now at the corners of her
small, fine, close-shut mouth, which could be so tender too.
“Oh, Ewen, does the contract make you more sure of me? You’d not hold
me to a bit of paper if I were to change my mind one fine morning and
say, ‘Ardroy, I’m sweir to tell it, but wed you I cannot’?”
“Would I not hold you to it! Try, and see!”
One of Alison’s dimples appeared. “Indeed, I’m minded to try it, just
for that, to see what you would do. What would you do, _Eoghain
mhóir_?”
“Carry you off,” replied Ewen promptly.
“And marry me by force?”
“And marry you by force.”
“There speaks the blood of Hieland reivers! I’d think shame to say
such a thing!”
“And are you not Hieland yourself, Miss Grant?” enquired her lover.
“And was there never cattle-lifting done in Glenmoriston?”
“Cattle!” exclaimed Alison, the other dimple in evidence. “That I
should be likened, by him that’s contracted to be married to me, to a
steer or a cow!”
“I likened you to no such thing! You are like a hind, a hind that one
sees just a glimpse of before it is gone, drinking at the lake on a
misty morning. Oh, my heart’s darling,” he went on, dropping into
Gaelic, “do not make jests upon our marriage! If I thought that you
were in earnest—Alison, say that you are not in earnest!”
Alison Grant looked into the clear blue eyes, which had really grown
troubled, and was instantly remorseful. “Oh, my dear, what a wretch am
I to torment you thus! No, no, I was teasing; Loch na h-Iolaire shall
run dry before I break my troth to you. I’ll never force you to carry
me off; ’tis like I’ll be at the kirk before you.” She let him draw
her head without words upon his shoulder, and they sat there silent,
looking at happiness: both the happiness which they knew now, and the
greater, the long happiness which was coming to them—as stable and
secure in their eyes as the changeless mountains round them.
Yet Alison knew her lover’s mind, or at least a part of it, so well
that she presently said, “And yet I am not jesting, Ewen, when I say
that I think you would be hard put to it to choose between me and Loch
na h-Iolaire—Loch na h-Iolaire and the house of Ardroy.”
His arm tightened round her. “Alison, how can you——”
“But you’ll never have to choose, _m’eudail_. I love this place most
dearly already. I have never had a home like it to love, living as we
have for so long, now in France, now in Holland. But your heart is as
strongly rooted here as . . . the red crag yonder.”
Ewen gave a little sigh. “You see a long way into my heart, you that
are the core of it. Indeed, when I am dying I think this is the last
place I shall have sight of in my mind. I hope I may be seeing it with
my eyes also.”
Alison did not shudder or change the subject, or implore him not to
speak of such things, for she was Highland too, with her race’s
half-mystical preoccupation with the dead. But she thought, “I hope
I’ll die the same day, the same hour. . . .”
The shadows on the loch crept a little farther. Behind them Ben Tee
changed colour for the hundredth time; his pointed peak seemed to
soar. It grew cooler too, and Ewen wrapped the ends of the plaid about
his lady.
“On Wednesday we will spend the day at Loch Arkaig,” he announced. “We
will take ponies, and you and Mr. Grant shall ride.”
“And Miss Cameron?”
“Aunt Marget detests such jaunts. Meals for the parlour, and the
parlour for meals, that is her creed.—Alison, are you not cold?”
“In this?” She fingered the plaid where it hung over her shoulders,
and added after a moment: “How strange it will be, to wear another
tartan than one’s own!”
“You shall always wear the Grant if it pleases you better.”
“No, it does not please me better,” answered Alison softly. “I
feel . . . very warm in the Cameron.”
He kissed her for that, smiling, and, raising his head from his kiss,
became aware of a dark object beating towards them out of the sunset
sky. It was the solitary heron of the island, winging his strong way
home with a deceptive slowness. The sight reminded Ewen of his
morning’s encounter with Lachlan, and he was about to tell Alison of
it when Fate’s messenger, who for the last five minutes had been
hurrying round the loch, came past the red crag of Ardroy, and Ewen’s
quick ear caught the snap of a breaking stick under the deerskin
brogues. He looked quickly round. A bearded Highlander was trotting
towards them under the birches and pines.
“It is Neil—what can he want? Forgive me!” He rose to his feet, and
Neil MacMartin, who was Lachlan’s elder brother and Ewen’s piper,
broke into a run.
“Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh has just sent this by a man on horseback,” he
said somewhat breathlessly, pulling a letter from his sporran.
Ewen broke the seal. “Perhaps it is to say that Lochiel cannot come
to-morrow,” he observed to his betrothed. But as he read his face
showed stupefaction. “Great God!”
Alison sprang to her feet. “Ewen! Not bad news?”
“Bad? No, no!” He waved Neil out of hearing and turned to her with
sparkling eyes. “The Prince has landed in Scotland!”
She was at first as amazed as he. “The Prince! Landed! When . . .
where?”
Ewen consulted his letter again. “He landed at Borradale in Arisaig on
the twenty-fifth. Lochiel desires me to go to Achnacarry at once.”
“He has come—at last!” said Alison to herself, almost with awe. “And
you will go with Lochiel to kiss his hand, to—Oh, Ewen, how I envy
you!”
The light which had come into her lover’s eyes died out a little. “I
do not know that Lochiel _is_ going to Arisaig, darling.” He glanced at
the letter again. “He is troubled, I can see; there are no troops with
the Prince, none of the hoped-for French help.”
“But what of that?” cried the girl. “It is not to be thought of that
Lochiel’s sword, of all others, should stay in the scabbard!”
“Lochiel will do what is right and honourable; it is impossible for
him ever to act otherwise,” answered Ewen, who was devoted to his
Chief. “And he wants speech with me; I must set out at once. Yes, Clan
Cameron will rise, not a doubt of it!”
And, youth and the natural ardour of a fighting race reasserting
themselves, he snatched up his bonnet and tossed it into the air. “Ah,
now I know why Lachlan and I thought we saw blood on his dirk this
morning!” Then he caught Alison to him. “_My dearest on earth, give me
your kiss!_”
It was the title of one of the ancient pibrochs that he was quoting,
and the Highland girl put her arms round his neck and gave him what he
asked.
* * * * * *
Loch na h-Iolaire, bereft of the echoing voices, sank into a silence
that was not broken until the heron rose again from the island and
began to fly slowly towards the sunset. Then the stillness was rent by
a sharp report; the great bird turned over twice, its wings beating
wildly, and fell all huddled into the lake. A little boat shot out
from the side of the _creag ruadh_, and in a moment or two Lachlan
MacMartin, leaving his oars, was bending over the side with the end of
a cord in his hand. There was a splash as he threw overboard the large
stone to which the cord was fastened; and having thus removed the
evidence of his blind effort to outwit destiny, he pulled quickly back
to the shelter of the crag of Ardroy.
Soon the same unbroken calm, the same soft lap and ripple, the same
gently fading brightness were once more round Loch na h-Iolaire; yet
for all those who to-day had looked on its waters the current of life
was changed for ever.
I
THROUGH ENGLISH EYES
“One of them asked . . . how he liked the Highlands. The question
seemed to irritate him, for he answered, ‘How, sir, can you ask me
what obliges me to speak unfavourably of a country where I have been
hospitably entertained? Who _can_ like the Highlands—I like the
inhabitants very well.’”
—BOSWELL. _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_.
CHAPTER I
In all Lochaber—perhaps in all the Western Highlands—there was no
more bored or disgusted man this sixteenth of August than Captain
Keith Windham of the Royal Scots, as he rode down the Great Glen with
a newly-raised company of recruits from Perth; and no more nervous or
unhappy men than the recruits themselves. For the first time in their
lives the latter found themselves far north of ‘the Highland line’,
beyond which, to Lowland as well as to English minds, there stretched
a horrid region peopled by wild hill tribes, where the King’s writ
did not run, and where, until General Wade’s recent road-making
activities, horsed vehicles could not run either. Yesterday only had
they reached Fort Augustus, two companies of them, and this afternoon,
tired and apprehensive, were about half-way through their thirty-mile
march to Fort William. As for the English officer, he was cursing with
all his soul the young Adventurer whose absurd landing on the coast of
Moidart last month had caused all this pother.
Had it not been for that event, Captain Windham might have been
allowed to return to Flanders, now that his wound of Fontenoy was
healed, to engage in real warfare against civilised troops, instead of
marching through barbarous scenery to be shut up in a fort. He could
not expect any regular fighting, since the savage hordes of these
parts would probably never face a volley. Nevertheless, had he been in
command of the column, he would have judged it more prudent to have a
picket out ahead; but he had already had a slight difference of
opinion with Captain Scott, of the other company, who was senior to
him, and, being himself of a temper very intolerant of a snub, he
did not choose to risk one. Captain Windham had no great love for
Scotsmen, though, ironically enough, he bore a Scottish Christian name
and served in a Scottish regiment. As it happened, he was no more
responsible for the one fact than for the other.
It was hot in the Great Glen, though a languid wind walked occasionally
up Loch Lochy, by whose waters they were now marching. From time to
time Captain Windham glanced across to its other side, and thought
that he had never seen anything more forbidding. The mountain slopes,
steep, green and wrinkled with headlong torrents, followed each other
like a procession of elephants, and so much did they also resemble a
wall rising from the lake that there did not appear to be space for
even a track between them and the water. And, though it was difficult
to be sure, he suspected the slopes beneath which they were marching
to be very nearly as objectionable. As a route in a potentially
hostile country, a defile, astonishingly straight, with a ten-mile
lake in the middle of it, did not appeal to him.
However, the mountains on the left did seem to be opening out at last,
and General Wade’s new military road, upon which they were marching,
was in consequence about to leave the lake and proceed over more
open moorland country, which pleased Captain Windham better, even
though the wide panorama into which they presently emerged was also
disfigured by high mountains, in particular by that in front of them,
which he had been told was the loftiest in Great Britain. And about
twelve miles off, under those bastions, lay Fort William, their
destination.
But where was the river which, as he knew, they had first to cross? In
this wide, rough landscape Captain Windham could not see a sign of it.
Then, farther down the slope and about a mile ahead of them, he
discerned a long, thick, winding belt of trees, and remembered to
have heard an officer of Guise’s regiment at Fort Augustus say last
night that the Spean, a very rapid stream, had carved so deep a
channel for itself as almost to flow in a ravine, and that Wade must
have had some ado to find a spot where he could carry his road over
it. He had done so, it appeared, on a narrow stone structure whose
elevation above the river-bed had earned it the name of High Bridge.
Indeed the Englishman now saw that the road which they were following
was making for this deeply sunken river at an angle which suggested
that General Wade had had little choice in the position of his bridge.
Ahead of Captain Windham on his mettlesome horse the scarlet ranks
tramped down the gently sloping road through the heather; ahead of
them again, at the rear of the foremost company, Captain Scott sat his
white charger. The English officer looked with an unwilling curiosity
at the great mountain mass over Fort William; it actually had traces
of snow upon it . . . in August! What a country! Now in Flanders——
What the devil was that?
It was, unmistakably, the skirl of a bagpipe, and came from the
direction of the still invisible bridge. But if the bridge was not to
be seen, something else was—tartan-clad forms moving rapidly in and
out of those sheltering trees. Evidently a considerable body of
Highlanders was massing by the river.
The senior officer halted his men and came riding back. “Captain
Windham, I believe there is an ambush set for us down yonder.”
“It does not _sound_ like an ambush, egad!” replied his colleague
rather tartly, as the heathenish skirling grew louder. “But I
certainly think there are Highlanders posted at the bridge to dispute
our crossing.”
“I’ll just send forward a couple of men to get some notion of their
numbers,” said Scott, and rode back again. Keith shrugged his
shoulders. “Somewhat of a tardy precaution!” he thought to himself.
A sergeant and a private were thereupon dispatched by Captain Scott to
reconnoitre. Their fate was swift and not encouraging, for they had
not gone far ere, before the eyes of all their comrades, they were
suddenly pounced upon by two Highlanders who, with a yell, darted out
from the trees and hurried them out of sight.
The intimidated recruits began to shuffle and murmur. Captain Windham
spoke vigorously to his subaltern, and then rode forward to consult
with his senior.
Captain Scott wheeled his horse to meet him. “This is unco awkward,”
he said, dropping his voice. “The Deil knows how many of those fellows
there are down yonder, but do you observe them, Captain Windham,
skipping about like coneys among the trees? The bridge, I’ve heard, is
uncommon narrow and high, with naught but rocks and torrent below. I
doubt we can get the men over.”
“We _must_!” retorted Keith. “There’s no other means of reaching Fort
William. The Royals to hesitate before a few beggarly cattle-thieves!”
Alas, the Royals did more than hesitate. Even as he spoke there were
signs that the half-seen ‘cattle-thieves’ on the bridge were preparing
for a rush, for loud orders could be heard, and the piping swelled
hideously. And at that the scarlet-clad ranks on the slope wavered,
broke, turned, and began to flee up the rise as fast as their legs
could carry them.
It was in vain that their two captains endeavoured to rally them. A
man on a horse cannot do much to stem a flood of fugitives save
perhaps on a narrow road, and here the road had unlimited space on
either side of it. Helter-skelter the recruits ran, and, despite their
fatigue and their accoutrements, never ceased running for two miles,
till they stopped, exhausted, by Loch Lochy side once more.
By that time Captain Windham was without suitable words in which to
address them; his vocabulary was exhausted. Captain Scott was in like
case. There was another hasty consultation beneath the unmoved stare
of those steep green mountains. Scott was for sending back to Fort
Augustus for a detachment of Guise’s regiment to help them force the
bridge, and Captain Windham, not seeing what else was to be done,
concurred in this opinion. Meanwhile the recruits should be marched at
an easy pace in the direction of Fort Augustus to their junction with
these reinforcements, which were, of course, to come up with all
speed. There had been no sign of pursuit by the successful holders of
the bridge, and it might be hoped that in a little the morale of the
fugitives would be somewhat restored.
Captain Scott thereupon suggested that Captain Windham should lend one
of the lieutenants his horse, which was much faster than his own white
charger—no other officers but they being mounted—but Keith objected
with truth that a strange rider would never manage his steed, and
offered to make over his company to his lieutenant and himself ride
back to Fort Augustus if Captain Scott thought good. And Captain Scott
hastily agreed to what both officers felt was a somewhat unusual
course justified by circumstances.
To a man who, three months ago, had borne his part in the wonderful
retreat at Fontenoy, that epic of steadiness under fire, and who had
even been complimented by the Duke of Cumberland on his conduct, the
last half-hour had been a nightmare of shame, and Keith Windham, glad
to be able to extricate himself from it with the confidence that he
was not abandoning his men on the eve of a fight, he set spurs to his
horse with great relief.
He had gone about five miles along the loch—always with those
abominable mountains on either side of him—when a report echoed
soundingly among them, and a bullet struck the road a little ahead of
him. His pulling, nervous horse reared and plunged; and Keith swore.
He was not unobserved, then, and might very well be picked off by some
unseen marksman up there. Bullets, however, did not discompose him
like cowardice, and, cramming his hat farther down upon his head, he
merely urged the animal to greater speed.
In the next few miles, as occasional bullets winged their way at
varying distances past his person, Keith Windham began to think that
the hapless Royals behind him were perhaps being outflanked by some
enemy marching parallel to them on the hillside—and marching much
faster. The prospect of their being attacked seemed by no means so
remote. Still, in any case, it was now his business to go on. But when
he came in sight of the village beyond the end of Loch Lochy through
which they had passed that morning, he could see armed Highlanders
there in such numbers that it was unlikely he would be allowed to ride
through it. Gad! he thought, the rout at the bridge had served, then,
as a spark to all this tinder! For a moment—since under a mask of
indifference and cynicism he was a very hot-tempered young man—the
sting of that knowledge prompted him to attempt cutting his way
through regardless of consequences. Then common sense triumphed.
Better to avoid the enemy altogether by crossing to the farther side
of the smaller lake just ahead of him (he did not know its name) on
the wide flat isthmus which separated it from Loch Lochy. If there
were no ambushes on that side he would yet reach Fort Augustus, since,
as the Highlanders did not appear to have horses, he was safe from
mounted pursuit.
It became, however, a question whether he would get to the isthmus in
time to evade the enemy ahead, of whom half a dozen or so, suspecting
his intention, were running down the road towards him, targe on arm
and broadsword in hand, to cut him off. Keith spurred his horse hard,
fired at the foremost figure (which he missed) and next moment dropped
his own pistol with an exclamation, his arm tingling to the shoulder.
A bullet had struck the barrel, ricocheting off Heaven knew where;
in any case it was one of the nearest escapes which he had ever
experienced. For the moment his right arm was useless; but here, at
last, was the end of the waters of this interminable Loch Lochy. He
turned his almost frantic horse and galloped like mad across the
green, spongy isthmus, pursued now only by ineffectual yells which he
soon ceased to hear.
The neck of land, though narrow, was longer than he remembered; there
were perhaps two miles of it before the next lake came to separate
him from his enemies. But, whether or no the fact of his having a
fast horse deterred them from pursuit, not one Highlander attempted
to cross after him. Possibly they were reserving their forces
undiminished for the attack on the main body of the Royals, a thought
which caused the Englishman to maintain his headlong pace. Fortunately
this side of the lake seemed deserted; no man was going to stop him
now!
And no man did. But he had not gone a mile by the lake side when a
large grey-and-white object flapped up suddenly from the water’s edge
almost under the nose of his excited horse; the beast shied, swerved,
crossed its legs and came heavily down, flinging its rider against a
fallen tree with a force which knocked him senseless.
* * * * * *
Captain Windham was not stunned for very long, though to him it was an
unknown space of time that he lay sprawling in the dust by the side of
the pine-trunk. When he dizzily raised himself and looked about him no
human being was in sight, but there on the road, within a few feet of
him, with snorting nostrils and terrified eyes, lay his unfortunate
horse, trying desperately and repeatedly to get to its feet again,
despite a broken foreleg. For an instant Keith stared at the poor
sweating, plunging brute, then, passing a hand over his bruised and
bleeding forehead, he got to his own feet. There was only one thing to
be done; though the sound of a shot would very likely draw undesirable
attention upon himself, he could not leave the animal there in agony.
His remaining pistol was in his holster, and during the process of
extracting it he realized that he had twisted an ankle in his fall. A
moment or two later the sound of a shot went ringing over the waters
of Loch Oich, and the troubles of Captain Windham’s charger were over.
But his were not; indeed he fancied that they had but just begun.
Dismounted, his brilliant scarlet-and-blue uniform rendering him in
the highest degree conspicuous, his head aching, and in one place
excoriated by contact with the tree-trunk, he saw that he could never
summon reinforcements in time now; it was doubtful whether he would
reach Fort Augustus at all. His ankle, as he soon discovered, was
swollen and painful; moreover he had somehow to get back to Wade’s
road when he reached the end of this lake. With his hand to his head
he glanced in disgust at the prostrate trunk with which it had just
made such painful acquaintance. Detestable country, where even the
wildfowl and the vegetation were in league with the inhabitants!
Hearing a sound of water, he looked about till he found a tiny
ice-cold spring between the track and the lake, and, dipping his
handkerchief into this, bathed his forehead. Had he known of the seven
gory severed heads which had been washed in that innocent-looking
little source less than a hundred years before, perhaps he would not
have done so. Hardly had he reloaded his pistol, his next care, when a
distant noise, like many running feet, sent him hurriedly to the
shelter of the steep, tree-clad hillside on his left. Here, among the
scanty undergrowth, he crouched as best he could while, some minutes
later, a score of armed Highlanders poured past on the track below
him. So this side of the lake was gathering, too!
Captain Windham waited in his concealment until the way was clear and
silent again, and then descended, since it was impossible for him to
keep in cover if he meant to reach Fort Augustus—and where else should
he make for? Leaning on the branch of oak which he had broken off to
assist his steps, he began to trudge grimly forward.
There soon came in sight, on its rock by the lake side, the keep of
Invergarry Castle. Captain Windham did not know that it belonged to
the chief of Glengarry, but he was sure that it was the hold of some
robber or other, and that he himself might not improbably see the
inside of it. It looked ruinous, but that was no safeguard—on the
contrary. And here were some dwellings, little, roughly thatched
buildings, but obviously inhabited. Yet all he saw of their occupants
were a few white-haired children who ran screaming away, and one old
woman at her door, who crossed herself devoutly at sight of him. So,
to add to all their other vices, the people of these parts were
Papists!
The next obstacle was a river, which he had to cross as best he could
on insecure and slippery stones, and the difficulties of doing this
with an injured ankle took his mind off remoter possibilities, so that
when he was safely over he was surprised to find the ominous tower
well behind him, and he went on somewhat cheered. The sun was now
getting lower, and though the other side of the glen was in full warm
light, this side felt almost cold. Another peculiarity of this
repulsively mountainous district. Gently swelling hills one could
admire, but masses of rock, scored with useless and inconvenient
torrents, had nothing to recommend them. He did not wonder at the
melancholy complaints he had heard last night from the officers
quartered at Fort Augustus.
And what would the garrison there say when they heard of this
afternoon’s disgrace? Captain Windham’s thoughts went angrily back to
it. What, too, had happened to those chicken-hearted recruits by this
time? He pulled out his watch; to his surprise it was already after
six o’clock. And he still had the watch in his hand when his ear was
caught by the sound of horse’s hoofs behind him. He stopped to listen.
The pace, a smart trot, did not seem hurried; the rider might be some
unconcerned traveller. But he might on the other hand be an enemy.
Keith Windham looked for cover, but here there was none convenient as
a while ago, and the best he could do was to hobble on ahead to where
a solitary oak-tree reared itself by the side of the road, for he was
minded to have something to set his back against if necessary.
When he was nearly there he looked round, and saw the rider, a big
Highlander on a grey horse. He was not alone, for at his heels came
another, keeping up with the horse with long loping strides like a
wolf’s. To Keith one tartan was as yet like another, so, for all he
knew, these two might be of a friendly clan. He awaited them by the
oak-tree.
As the horseman came on Keith saw that he was young, vigorous-looking
and well armed. He wore trews, not a kilt like the other. But as he
came he rose in his stirrups and shouted something in which Keith
clearly caught the word ‘surrender’. So he was not friendly. Very well
then! Captain Windham raised the pistol which he had ready, and
fired—rather at the horse than the rider. The young Highlander, with a
dexterity which he could not but admire, pulled aside the animal in
the nick of time, and the shot missed. Keith’s sword leapt out as,
with a yell, the man on foot flung himself past the horse towards him,
dirk in hand. But the rider called out something in Gaelic, which had
an immediate effect, for the gillie, or whatever he was, came to an
abrupt stop, his eyes glowering and his lips drawn back, as like a
wolf about to spring as possible.
Meanwhile, to Keith’s surprise, the horseman sprang to earth, flung
the reins to his henchman, and came forward empty-handed—a magnificent
specimen of young manhood, as the soldier could not help admitting.
“I advise you to surrender, sir,” he said courteously, lifting his
bonnet, in which were fastened two eagle’s feathers. “I am sorry to
take advantage of an injured man, but I have my Chief’s orders. You
are completely cut off, and moreover your men are all prisoners—indeed
Captain Scott is at this moment in Lochiel’s custody. If you will give
up your sword I shall be honoured to take you into mine.”
“The deuce you will!” exclaimed Keith, secretly astonished at the
polish of his manner—a man who wore a plaid! “And who are you, pray?”
“Cameron of Ardroy,” answered the young man. “Lochiel’s second
cousin,” he added.
“I don’t care whose second cousin you are, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy,”
returned Captain Windham to this, “but if you think that you are going
to have my sword for the asking, you and your cut-throat there, you
are vastly mistaken!”
For provided—but it was a big proviso—that the two did not rush upon
him at once he thought that he could deal with each separately.
Splendidly built as this young Highlander was, lean too, and,
doubtless, muscular, he probably knew no more of swordplay than was
required to wield that heavy basket-hilted weapon of his, and Captain
Windham himself was a good swordsman. Yes, provided Lochiel’s second
cousin did not use the pistol that he wore (which so far he had made
no motion to do) and provided that the wolf-like person remained
holding the horse . . .
“Come on and take me,” he said provocatively, flourishing his sword.
“You are not afraid, surely, of a lame man!” And he pointed with it to
the rough staff at his feet.
Under his tan the large young Highlander seemed to flush slightly. “I
know that you are lame; and your forehead is cut. You had a fall; I
came upon your dead horse. That is why I do not wish to fight you.
Give up your sword, sir; it is no disgrace. We are two to one, and you
are disabled. Do not, I pray you, constrain me to disable you
further!”
Hang the fellow, why did he behave so out of his cateran’s rôle? “You
are considerate indeed!” retorted Captain Windham mockingly. “Suppose
you try first whether you _can_ disable me further!—Now, Mr. Cameron,
as I don’t intend to be stopped on my road by mere words, I must
request you to stand out of my way!” And—rashly, no doubt, since in so
doing he no longer had one eye on that murderous-looking gillie—he
advanced sword in hand upon his reluctant opponent. Frowning, and
muttering something under his breath, the young man with the eagle’s
feathers at last drew his own weapon, and the blades rang together.
Thirty seconds of it, and Keith Windham knew that he had attacked a
swordsman quite as good if not better than himself. Breathing hard, he
was being forced back to the trunk of the oak again, and neither his
aching head nor his damaged ankle was wholly to blame for this.
Who said that broadsword play was not capable of finesse? This
surprisingly scrupulous young barbarian could have cut him down just
then, but he drew back when he had made the opening. The certitude of
being spared irritated the soldier; he lost his judgment and began to
fight wildly, and so the end came, for his sword was suddenly torn
from his hand, sailed up into the oak-tree above him, balanced a
moment on a branch, and then fell a couple of yards away. And his
adversary had his foot upon it in a second.
As for Keith Windham, he leant back against the oak-tree, his head all
at once going round like a mill-wheel, with the noise of a sluice,
too, in his ears. For a flash everything was blank; then he felt that
someone was supporting him by an arm, and a voice said in his ear,
“Drink this, sir, and accept my apologies. But indeed you forced me to
it.”
Keith drank, and, though it was only water, sight was restored to him.
It was his late opponent who had his arm under his, and who was
looking at him with a pair of very blue eyes.
“Yes, I forced you to it,” confessed Captain Windham, drawing a long
breath. “I surrender—I can do nothing else, Mr. . . . Cameron.”
“Then I will take you home with me, and your hurts can be dressed,”
said the Highlander, showing no trace of elation. “We shall have to go
back as far as the pass, but fortunately I have a horse. _Lachuin,
thoir dhomh an t’each!_”
The gillie, scowling, brought forward the grey. His captor loosed
Keith’s arm and held the stirrup. “Can you mount, sir?”
“But I am not going to ride your horse!” said Keith, astonished. “It
will not carry two of us—and what will you do yourself?”
“I? Oh, I will walk,” answered the victor carelessly. “I assure you
that I am more accustomed to it. But you would never reach Ardroy on
foot, lame as you are.” And as Keith hesitated, looking at this
disturbing exponent of Highland chivalry, the exponent added,
hesitating a little himself, “There is only one difficulty. If you are
mounted, I fear I must ask you for your parole of honour?”
“I give it you—and that willingly,” answered Keith, with a sudden
spurt of good feeling. “Here’s my hand on it, if you like, Mr.
Cameron!”
CHAPTER II
If to ride along a road in these mountain solitudes was distasteful,
to be following a mere track (and that a very steep one) in amongst
their very folds was worse. When first he had seen the path which they
were to ascend, and the V-shaped depression, sharp against the sunset
sky, up to which it led, Captain Windham had with difficulty repressed
an exclamation of alarm. However, he could not really believe that Mr.
Cameron of Ardroy was taking him up this terrifying route in order to
slay him, since he could already have done this with so much less
trouble on level ground. Therefore, though he had raised his eyebrows,
he had said nothing. After all, it was the horse, and not he, who had
to do the climbing. And now they were half-way up.
The wolf-like attendant, carrying the surrendered sword, kept in the
rear, but Captain Windham was almost physically conscious of his frown
behind him. This unattractive person was, he felt, no willing party to
his capture; he would much have preferred that the redcoat should have
been left cold beneath the oak-tree. Meanwhile his master, the young
chieftain, or whatever he was, walked with a mountaineer’s elastic
step at the horse’s head, occasionally taking hold of the bridle;
rather silent, but uncommonly well-made and good-looking, thought his
captive again, glancing down at him.
Captain Windham’s own dark, rather harsh features were not unpleasing,
save when he frowned, which he was somewhat given to doing, nor were
they devoid of a certain distinction, and he had really fine hazel
eyes. But his mouth had already taken a cynical twist unusual in a
young man of thirty. If he had a passion left in life, it was military
ambition. Earlier he had known others, and they had brought him
nothing but unhappiness. As a boy he had had an extraordinary devotion
to his lovely mother—whom he had not been alone in thinking fair. But
she, too, was ambitious, and her second marriage, to the Earl of
Stowe, with its attendant advantages, was more to her than the claims
of her own son. Then the beautiful boy she bore to Lord Stowe usurped
the place which Keith had never had in her heart. So, in respect of
affection, sometimes even of ordinary attention, he had passed through
a neglected childhood and a starved boyhood, and they had left an
indelible mark on him—more indelible, though he did not guess it,
than the scars of another woman’s betrayal of him four years ago.
The consequence was that at thirty, with a nature at bottom passionate
and impulsive, he had become as disillusioned, as little prone to
enthusiasms, as a man of twice his age. His creed was that it was a
mistake to desire anything very much—a fatal mistake to desire a place
in any person’s affections, or to admit anyone, man or woman, to a
place in your own. By the end of life, no doubt, every human being had
discovered this truth; he had done so early, and could count himself
the more fortunate.
At the same time it needed a rather different kind of detachment to
take his present situation philosophically; and yet, to his own
surprise, Keith Windham knew that he was doing so, even though he had
by now gleaned from his captor the later history of the day’s
disaster, and had learnt its mortifying completeness. Matters had
fallen out for the unfortunate recruits almost exactly as Captain
Windham had afterwards feared; for another body of Highlanders _was_
following them unseen on the hillside, and near the head of Loch Lochy
further progress had been barred by those who had attempted to stay
Keith himself. Though Captain Scott too had tried to cross the
isthmus, it was impossible, since more Highlanders were hastening to
the spot from that direction also. Too tired and panic-stricken to use
their muskets to good effect, the redcoats had, on the contrary,
received a fire which had killed five of them and wounded a dozen,
including Captain Scott himself. Some leader called ‘Keppoch’, Captain
Windham heard, had then called on the Royals to surrender, or they
would be cut to pieces, and to save his men Captain Scott had done so.
Immediately on this had come up Ewen Cameron’s chief, Lochiel (who had
been asked for assistance), with a number of his clan, including the
present narrator, had taken charge of the prisoners, and marched them
off to his house of Achnacarry. But as the Highlanders from the far
side of Loch Oich reported having seen a dead charger on the road, and
one company of the redcoats was plainly captainless, Lochiel had sent
his young kinsman, since he happened to be mounted, in pursuit of the
missing officer. (And at this point the officer in question had
remarked rather stiffly that he trusted Mr. Cameron knew that his
absence from the scene of conflict was due only to his having gone for
reinforcements, and Mr. Cameron had replied politely that no other
explanation had even occurred to him.)
They were at the top of the pass at last, and had a fine view before
them; but the captive did not find it so, the mountains being too high
for his taste and the downward path too steep. Stones rolled away from
beneath the grey’s hoofs; now and then he slipped a trifle, for which
his owner, leading him carefully by the bridle, apologised. He would
not have come this way, he said, but that it was the shortest from the
spot where he and Captain Windham had ‘chanced to meet’, as he put
it. And then all at once the descent was less steep and they were
looking down on a glen among the mountains, with a little lake, some
signs of cultivation, grazing sheep and cattle, and, in the midst of
trees, the roof and chimneys of a house, whence a welcome smoke
ascended.
“There is Loch na h-Iolaire,” said the young Highlander at Captain
Windham’s bridle, pointing to the sheet of water; and he paused after
he had said it, because, though Captain Windham could not guess it, he
never came upon the loch from any point of the compass without a
little fountain of joy bubbling up and singing to itself in his heart.
“And there is the house of Ardroy, our destination. I am sure that you
will be glad of a meal and a bed, sir.”
Keith admitted it, and the descent continued, in the face of the
sunset afterglow. His captor did not live in a cave, then—but the
Englishman had abandoned that idea some time ago. Indeed Mr. Cameron
was apparently a landed proprietor with tenants, for besides sheep,
goats and cows, there were a good many roughly constructed cottages
scattered about. By and by, skirting the end of the little lake and
its birch-trees, they struck into another track, and Keith saw the
house in front of him, a simple but not undignified two-storeyed
building of which one end was slightly lower than the other, as if
it had been added to. Over the porch was a coat-of-arms, which
successive layers of whitewash had made difficult to decipher.
“I expect that my aunt, who keeps house for me, and my guests are
already supping,” observed the young owner of this domain, assisting
his prisoner to dismount. “We will join them with as little delay as
possible. Excuse me if I precede you.” He walked in and opened a door
on his right. “Aunt Marget, I have brought a visitor with me.”
From behind him the ‘visitor’ could see the large raftered room, with
a long table spread for a meal, and a generous hearth, by which were
standing an elderly man and a girl. But in the foreground was a
middle-aged lady, well-dressed and comely, exclaiming, “My dear
Ewen, what possesses you to be so late? And what’s this we hear about
a brush with the Elector’s troops near Loch Lochy? . . . Mercy on us,
who’s this?”
“A guest whom I have brought home with me from the Glen,” replied the
late-comer. “Yes, there has been a skirmish.—Captain Windham, let me
present you to my aunt, Miss Cameron, to Miss Grant, and to Mr. Grant,
sometime of Inverwick.”
Keith bowed, and the two ladies curtseyed.
“You are just going to sit down to supper?” queried the master of the
house. “We shall be glad of it; and afterwards, Aunt Margaret, pray
find some bandages and medicaments for Captain Windham, who has met
with a bad fall.”
“I had perhaps better tell you, madam,” interpolated Keith at this
point, holding himself rather erect, “that, though Mr. Cameron is kind
enough to call me a guest, I am in reality his prisoner.—But not one
who will put you to any inconvenience of wardership,” he added
quickly, seeing the look which passed over the lady’s expressive
countenance. “I have given Mr. Cameron my parole of honour, and I
assure you that even ‘the Elector’s’ officers observe that!” (For he
believed so then.)
Miss Cameron surveyed him with humour at the corners of her mouth.
“Every country has its own customs, Captain Windham; now I warrant you
never speak but of ‘the Pretender’ in London. You are English, sir?”
“I have that disability, madam.”
“Well, well,” said Miss Cameron, breaking into a smile, “even at that,
no doubt you can eat a Highland supper without choking. But take the
Captain, Ewen, and give him some water, for I’m sure he’ll be wanting
to wash off the traces of battle.”
“I should be grateful indeed,” began Keith uncomfortably, wondering
how much blood and dirt still decorated his face; but his captor broke
in: “You must not think that I am responsible for Captain Windham’s
condition, Aunt Margaret. His horse came down as he was riding to
fetch reinforcements from Kilcumein, and he was disabled before ever I
overtook him.”
“An accident, sir—or was the poor beast shot?” queried Miss Cameron.
“An accident, madam,” responded Keith. “A heron, I presume it was,
rose suddenly from the lake and startled him; I was riding very fast,
and he came down, breaking his leg. I twisted my ankle, besides being
stunned for a while, so that I must apologise if my appearance——” And
this time he put up his hand to his forehead.
“A heron, did you say?” exclaimed Ewen Cameron’s voice beside him,
surprised and almost incredulous. “A _heron_ brought your horse down?”
“Yes,” replied Keith, surprised in his turn. “Why not, Mr. Cameron? An
unusual mischance, I dare say, and none of my seeking, I assure you;
but it is true.”
“I don’t doubt your word, sir,” replied the young man; yet there was
something puzzled in the gaze which he turned on his prisoner. “It is
. . . yes, unusual, as you say. Herons, as a rule——” He broke off. “If
you will come with me, Captain Windham, you shall refresh yourself
before we eat.”
* * * * * *
Captain Windham sat down to a better supper than he had met since he
left London, and even in London he would not have tasted such trout
and venison, and might well have drunk worse claret. Out of regard for
him, perhaps, or out of discretion, the conversation never touched on
political matters, though he thought that he could feel a certain
excitement simmering below the surface of the talk. (And well it
might, he reflected; had not the master of the house this day
committed himself to overt hostilities against His Majesty’s
Government?) The elderly gentleman in the grey wig, who appeared to
have been living recently in Paris, discoursed most innocuously of
French châteaux and their gardens, with frequent references to
Versailles and Marly, and appeals to his daughter—“You remember the
day of our little expedition to the château of Anet, my dear?” Keith
would have thought the deserted shrine of St. Germain a more likely
goal of pilgrimage, for he took Mr. Grant, from his mere presence
here, to be a Jacobite.
But surely his daughter would have preferred to this mild talk of
parterres and façades a recital by Mr. Ewen Cameron of his afternoon’s
prowess! As far as their personal conflict went, Captain Windham was
perfectly willing that this encounter should be related by a victor
who was evidently disposed to allow the fullest weight to the physical
disabilities of the vanquished; yet he was grateful for the tact with
which Mr. Cameron (in his presence at least) had glossed over the
flight of the Royal Scots from the bridge. Only questions, indeed,
drew from him the partial information which he furnished. He would
tell them more afterwards, no doubt. . . . Who was this pretty Miss
Grant with the blue fillet in her dark hair—a kinswoman? If she was
the future mistress of the house, young Cameron had good taste. So, to
be just, had the lady.
But, despite the courtesy shown him, the unwilling guest was not sorry
when, very soon after supper, it was suggested that he should retire,
for his ankle was painful and one shoulder ached, though he protested
that he could look after his own hurts. His conqueror showed him to
his bedchamber exactly as a host might have done. The room was of a
fair size, and had good old-fashioned furniture; and, presumably
because it had been for some time unused, there was even a fire
burning. An elderly woman brought up a crock of hot water, a salve
and linen for bandages, and the Englishman was then left to her
ministrations. And it was not long before his discreet questions had
drawn from this dame, who was not very communicative, and spoke
English as though it were a foreign tongue to her, the information
that Miss Grant was to marry the laird in the autumn. Keith privately
hoped that the prospective bridegroom might not find himself in prison
before that time, as a consequence of having laid hands on himself—if
of nothing worse—though, after that venison, he resolved that he would
not lift a finger to send him there.
When his ankle had been bathed and bound up, and the elderly servant
had withdrawn, the soldier removed his sash, coat and wig, and
extended himself in a comfortable chair in front of the fire, with
his bandaged foot on another. There were books to his hand, as he
discovered by reaching up to a shelf on the wall; but, having pulled
some down, he did not, at first, find that the effort had repaid him.
He had captured a Terence, a Horace, _Télémaque_, and Montesquieu’s
_Lettres Persanes_. They all had Ewen Cameron’s name written in them.
Keith whistled. He was turning over the leaves of the _Lettres_ when
there was a knock and his host—or gaoler—re-entered.
“I hope that Marsali has made you comfortable, sir?—Those books are
not very entertaining, I am afraid. If you intend reading into the
night—which I fear must mean that your foot is paining you—I will see
whether I cannot find you something else. I believe that my aunt has
Mr. Fielding’s novel of _Joseph Andrews_ somewhere.”
“Pray do not trouble, sir,” replied Keith. “I intend to go to bed and
sleep; it was only idleness which directed my hand to that shelf
there. I see that you read French and Latin, Mr. Cameron?” And even as
he uttered the words he thought how ill-bred was the remark, and the
surprise which he had not been able entirely to keep out of his tone.
But the young Highlander answered quite simply, in his gentle, rather
slow voice: “I was partly educated in France—for that, you know, is
easier for us Jacobites. As to Latin, yes, I can read it still, though
I am afraid that my iambics would only procure me the ferule
nowadays.”
Captain Windham’s ideas about the Northern barbarians were undergoing
startling changes. He had already noticed that none of the inmates of
this house used the vernacular which he was accustomed to hear in the
Lowlands; they spoke as good English as himself, if with an unfamiliar
and not displeasing lilt. A little to cover his annoyance at his own
lack of breeding he remarked, “France, yes; I suppose that your
connection is close. And now that the . . . that a certain young
gentleman has come thence——”
“Yes?” asked the other in a slightly guarded manner.
“No, perhaps we had best not engage upon that topic,” said Keith, with
a slight smile. “I will imitate your own courteous discretion at
supper, Mr. Cameron, in saying so little about the episode at the
bridge, of which indeed, as a soldier, I am not proud.—By the way,
having myself introduced that subject, I will ask you if you can make
clear a point in connection with it which has puzzled me ever since.
How was it that no attempt at pursuit—or at least no immediate
attempt—was made by the body posted there?”
“That is easily explained,” replied Ewen Cameron promptly. “The
Keppoch MacDonalds there dared not let you see how few they were, lest
your men should have rallied and crossed the bridge after all.”
“How few?” repeated Captain Windham, thinking he had not heard aright.
“But, Mr. Cameron, there were a quantity of Highlanders there, though,
owing to the trees it was impossible to form an accurate estimate of
their numbers.”
“No, that would be so,” said his captor, looking at him rather oddly.
“You may well have thought the bridge strongly held.”
“You mean that it was not?” And, as his informant merely shook his
head, Keith said impatiently, but with a sudden very unpleasant
misgiving, “Do you _know_ how many men were there, Mr. Cameron?”
Mr. Cameron had taken up a fresh log, and now placed it carefully in
position on the fire before answering. “I believe,” he said, with what
certainly sounded like reluctance, “that there were not above a dozen
there—to be precise, eleven men and a piper.”
Keith’s fingers closed on the arms of his chair. “Are you jesting,
sir?”
“Not in the least,” replied the young man, without any trace either of
amusement or of elation. “I know it to be a fact, because I spoke
afterwards with their leader, MacDonald of Tiendrish. They used an old
trick, I understand, to pass themselves off as more than they really
were.”
He continued to look at the fire. Captain Windham, with a suppressed
exclamation, had lowered his injured foot to the ground, and then
remained silent, most horribly mortified. Two companies of His
Majesty’s Foot turning tail before a dozen beggarly Highlanders with
whom they had not even stayed to exchange shots! The solace, such as
it had been, of reflecting that the recruits had in the end been
surrounded and outnumbered, was swept clean away, for he knew now
that they would never have come to this pass but for their initial
poltroonery. Keith had lost all desire for further converse, and every
instinct of patronage was dead within him. Why the devil had he ever
asked that question?
“I think, sir,” observed his captor, turning round at last, “that it
would be better, would it not, if you went to bed? I hope that you
have been given everything that is necessary?”
“Everything, thank you,” replied Keith shortly. “And also, just now,
something that I could well have done without.” He tried to speak
lightly, yet nothing but vexation, he knew, sounded in his tone.
“I am sorry,” said the Highlander gravely. “I would not have told you
the number had you not pressed me for it. Forget it, sir.” He went to
the door. “I hope that your injured ankle will not keep you awake.”
That ill office was much more likely to be performed by the piece of
news which he had presented to the sufferer. “Eleven men and a piper!”
repeated Captain Keith Windham of the Royal Scots when the door was
shut; and with his sound leg he drove his heel viciously into the logs
of Highland pine.
CHAPTER III
Captain Keith Windham, unwillingly revisiting the neighbourhood of
High Bridge, which was populated with leaping Highlanders about nine
feet high, and permeated, even in his dream, with the dronings and
wailings of the bagpipe, woke, hot and angry, to find that the
unpleasant strains at least were real, and were coming through the
window of the room in which he lay. He remained a moment blinking,
wondering if they portended some attack by a hostile clan; and finally
got out of bed and hobbled to the window.
In front of the house a bearded piper was marching solemnly up and
down, the ribbons on the chanters of his instrument fluttering in the
morning breeze. There was no sign of any armed gathering. “Good Gad,
it must be the usual reveillé for the household!” thought the
Englishman. “Enough to put a sensitive person out of temper for the
rest of the day.” And he returned to bed and pulled the blankets over
his ears.
At breakfast, an excellent meal, and a pleasant one also, where very
civil enquiries were made concerning the night he had spent and the
state of his injuries, Miss Cameron expressed a hope that he had not
been unduly disturbed by Neil MacMartin’s _piobaireachd_, adding that
he was not as fine a piper as his father Angus had been. Keith was
then thankful that he had not heard Angus.
When the meal was over he strayed to the window and looked out,
wondering how he should occupy himself all day, but determined upon
one thing, that he would not let these Camerons guess how bitterly he
was mortified over the matter of the bridge. Outside the porch his
host (save the mark!) was already talking earnestly to a couple of
Highlanders, in one of whom Captain Windham had no difficulty in
recognising the ‘cut-throat’ of the previous day; the other, he
fancied, was the musician of the early morning. “I wish I could
persuade myself that Mr. Cameron were putting a ban upon that
performance,” he thought; but he hardly hoped it.
Presently the young laird came in. He was wearing the kilt to-day,
and for the first time Keith Windham thought that there was something
to be said for that article of attire—at least on a man of his
proportions.
“Is not that your attendant of yesterday out there?” remarked the
soldier idly.
“Lachlan MacMartin? Yes. The other, the piper who, I am afraid, woke
you this morning, is his brother Neil.—Captain Windham,” went on the
piper’s master in a different tone, “what I am going to tell you may
be news to you, or it may not, but in either case the world will soon
know it. To-day is Saturday, and on Monday the Prince will set up his
standard at Glenfinnan.”
There was a second’s silence. “And you, I suppose, Mr. Cameron, intend
to be present . . . and to cross the Rubicon in his company?”
“All Clan Cameron will be there,” was the reply, given with a probably
unconscious lift of the head. “And as in consequence of this I shall
be pretty much occupied to-day, and little at home, I would advise
you, if I may, not to go out of sight of the house and policies. You
might——” Ewen Cameron hesitated for a moment.
“I might find myself tempted to abscond, you were going to say?”
struck in his captive . . . and saw at once, from the bleak look which
came into those blue eyes, that his pleasantry did not find favour.
“I should not dream of so insulting you,” replied Ardroy coldly. “I
was merely going to say that it might not be oversafe for you, in that
uniform, if you did.” And as he was evidently quite offended at the
idea that he could be supposed to harbour such a suspicion of his
prisoner, there was nothing for the latter to do but to beg his
pardon, and to declare that he had spoken—as indeed he had—in the
merest jest.
“But perhaps this young mountaineer cannot take a jest,” he thought to
himself when they had parted. “I’ll make no more—at least outwardly.”
But he was not to keep this resolution.
And indeed he had little but occasional glimpses of young Ardroy or
of any of the family that morning. The whole place was in a bustle
of preparation and excitement. Tenants were (Keith surmised from
various indications) being collected and armed; though only single
Highlanders, wild and unintelligible persons, appeared from time to
time in the neighbourhood of the house. Miss Cameron and Miss Grant
seemed to be equally caught up in the swirl, and Mr. Grant was
invisible. The only idle person in this turmoil, the captive
Englishman, sat calmly on the grass plot at a little distance from the
house, with _The History of the Adventures of Mr. Joseph Andrews_ in
his hand, half amused to see the inhabitants of this ant-heap—thus he
thought of them—so busy over what would certainly come to nothing,
like all the other Jacobite attempts.
And yet he reflected that, for all the futility of such preparations,
those who made them were like to pay very dearly for them. Ewen
Cameron would get himself outlawed at the least, and somehow he, whom
Ewen Cameron had defeated yesterday, would be sorry. The young
Highlander had certainly displayed towards his captive foe the most
perfect chivalry and courtesy, and to this latter quality Keith
Windham, who could himself at will display the most perfect rudeness,
was never blind. And yet—a sardonically comforting reflection—a rebel
must find the presence of an English soldier not a little embarrassing
at this juncture.
It was partly a desire to show that he too possessed tact, and partly
pure boredom, which caused Captain Windham, in the latter half of the
afternoon, to disregard the warning given him earlier, and to leave
the neighbourhood of the house. He helped himself to a stout stick on
which to lean in case of necessity, though his ankle was remarkably
better and hardly pained him at all, and started to stroll along the
bank of the loch. Nobody had witnessed his departure. And in the mild,
sometimes obscured sunshine, he followed the path round to the far
side, thinking that could the little lake only be transported from
these repellent mountains and this ugly purple heather into more
civilised and less elevated surroundings, it would not be an ill piece
of water.
Arrived on the farther side, he began idly to follow a track which led
away from the lake and presently started to wind upwards among the
heather. He continued to follow it without much thinking of what he
was doing, until suddenly it brought him round a fold of the mountain
side to a space of almost level ground where, beside a group of pine
trees, stood three low thatched cottages. And there Captain Windham
remained staring, not exactly at the cottages, nor at the score or so
of Highlanders—men, women, and children—in front of these dwellings,
with their backs turned to him, but at the rather puzzling operations
which were going forward on top of the largest croft.
At first Captain Windham thought that the man astride the roof and the
other on the short ladder must be repairing the thatch, until he saw
that, on the contrary, portions of this were being relentlessly torn
off. Then the man on the roof plunged in his arm to the shoulder and
drew forth something round and flat, which he handed to the man on the
ladder, who passed it down. Next came something long that glittered,
then another round object, then an unmistakable musket; and with that
Keith realised what he was witnessing—the bringing forth of arms which
should have been given up at the Disarming Act of 1725, but which had
been concealed and saved for just such an emergency as the present.
Now there came bundling out several broadswords tied together and
another musket. But a man in a bright scarlet coat with blue facings
and long white spatterdashes is altogether too conspicuous a figure in
a mountain landscape, and Keith had not in fact been there more than a
minute before a boy who had turned to pick up a targe saw him, gave a
yell, and pointing, screamed out something in Gaelic. Every face was
instantly turned in the intruder’s direction, and moved by the same
impulse each man snatched up a weapon and came running towards him,
even he on the roof sliding down with haste.
Captain Windham was too proud to turn and flee, nor would it much have
advantaged him; but there he was, unarmed save for a staff, not even
knowing for certain whether these hornets upon whose nest he had
stumbled were Mr. Cameron’s tenants or no, but pretty sure that they
would not understand English, and that he could not therefore convince
them of his perfect innocence. Deeply did he curse his folly in that
moment.
He had at any rate the courage not to attempt to defend himself; on
the contrary, he deliberately threw his stick upon the ground, and held
out his hands to show that they were empty. The foremost Highlander,
who was brandishing one of those unpleasant basket-hilted swords,
hesitated, as Keith had hoped, and shouted something; on which
the rest rushed round, and as many hands as possible laid hold of
Captain Windham’s person. He staggered under the impact, but made no
resistance, for, to his great relief, he had already recognised in the
foremost assailant with the broadsword the scowling visage of Lachlan
MacMartin, and beside him the milder one of his brother Neil, Mr.
Cameron’s piper. Even if they did not understand English, these two
would at least know who he was.
“I am your master’s prisoner,” he called out, wishing the others would
not press so upon him as they clutched his arms. “You had better do me
no harm!”
In Lachlan’s face there was a sort of sullen and unwilling recognition.
He spoke rapidly to his brother, who nodded and gave what was
presumably an order. Reluctantly the clutching hands released their
grip of Keith, their owners merely glowering at him; but they did not
go away, though the circle now opened out a little. A couple of women
had joined the group, and a small child or two; all talked excitedly.
Keith had never thought to feel gratitude towards the wolf-like
Lachlan, but at this moment he could almost have embraced him, since
but for him and Neil his own might well have been the first blood on
those resuscitated claymores.
His preserver now advanced, his hand on his dirk, and addressed the
soldier, rather to his surprise, in English. “You may pe the laird’s
prisoner,” he said between his teeth, “but why did you come up
here?—You came to spy, to spy!” He almost spat the words in the
intruder’s face. “And with spiess, who haf seen what they should
not haf seen, there iss a ferry short way . . . either thiss,” he
unsheathed an inch or two of his dirk, “or the lochan down yonder
with a stone round the neck!”
“I am not a spy,” retorted Captain Windham haughtily. “I knew nothing
of there being cottages here; I was taking a walk, and came upon you
entirely by accident.”
“A walk, when yesterday your foot wass so hurt that you must ride the
laird’s horse!” hissed Lachlan, bringing out all the sibilants in
this not ineffective retort. “All thiss way for pleasure with a foot
that iss hurt! And then you will pe going back to the _saighdearan
dearg_—to the red soldiers—at Kilcumein and pe telling them. . . .
Ach, it will certainly pe petter . . .” And his fingers closed round
the black hilt at his groin; Keith had never seen fingers which more
clearly itched to draw and use a weapon.
But at this point Neil the piper intervened, laying his hand on his
brother’s arm, shaking his head, and speaking earnestly in their
native tongue, and Keith, concluding that a professional musician (if
that term could possibly be extended to one who produced sounds like
this morning’s) would be a man of peace, felt more secure, not knowing
that in a fray the piper habitually gave his pipes to his boy and
fought with the best. But he heartily wished himself back at the house
again; it would have been far better had he taken his host’s warning
to heart instead of making a foolish jest about it.
During the colloquy, however, there approached the group a handsome,
venerable old man whom Keith had not previously noticed. He came
towards them tapping the ground with a long staff, as if of uncertain
sight, and said something first to Lachlan and then to Neil. The piper
appeared to listen with attention, and on that turned to the captive.
“My father iss asking you,” he said, in a manner which suggested that
he was seeking for his words in an unfamiliar tongue, “to permit him
to touch you, and to pe speaking with you. He iss almost blind. He
hass not the English, but I will pe speaking for him.”
“Certainly, if he wishes it,” replied Captain Windham with
resignation, thinking that ‘permission’ to touch him might well have
been asked earlier, and not taken so violently for granted.
Neil took his father’s hand, and led him up to the interview. The
old man, who was obviously not completely blind, peered into the
Englishman’s face, while his hands strayed for a moment or two over
his shoulders and breast. He then addressed a question to his elder
son, who translated it.
“He asks if you wass meeting a _curra_ yesterday?”
“If I had any notion what a _curra_ was,” returned Keith, “I might be
able to satisfy your father’s curiosity. As it is——”
“A _curra_,” explained Neil, struggling, “iss . . . a large bird,
having a long . . . a long . . .”
“It iss called ‘heron’ in the English,” interposed Lachlan. And he
added violently, “_Mallachd ort_! wass you meeting a heron yessterday?”
The Erse sounded like an objurgation (which it was) and the speaker’s
eyes as they glared at Keith had turned to dark coals. It was
evidently a crime in these parts to encounter that bird, though to the
heron’s victim himself it wore rather the aspect of a calamity.
Ignoring this almost frenzied query he replied shortly to the official
interpreter: “Yes, unfortunately I did meet a heron yesterday, which
by frightening my horse led to—my being here to-day.”
Lachlan MacMartin smote his hands together with an exclamation
which seemed to contain as much dismay as anger, but Neil contented
himself with passing on this information to his parent, and after a
short colloquy turned once more to the Englishman. “My father iss
_taibhsear_,” he explained. “That iss, he hass the two sights. He knew
that the heron would pe making Mac—the laird to meet with you.”
“Gad, I could wish it had not!” thought Keith; but judged it more
politic not to give this aspiration utterance.
“And he asks you whether you wass first meeting Mac ’ic Ailein near
watter?”
“If that name denotes Mr. Ewen Cameron,” replied Keith, “I did. Near a
good deal of ‘watter’.”
This was passed on to the seer, involving the repetition of a word
which sounded to Captain Windham like “whisky,” and roused in his mind
a conjecture that the old man was demanding, or about to demand,
that beverage. None, however, was produced, and after thanking the
Englishman, in a very courtly way, through the medium of his son, the
soothsayer departed again, shaking his head and muttering to himself;
and Keith saw him, when he reached the cottages, sit down upon a bench
outside the largest and appear to fall into a reverie.
Directly he was safely there, Lachlan MacMartin reverted with
startling suddenness to his former character and subject of
conversation.
“You haf seen what you should not haf seen, redcoat!” he repeated
fiercely. “Pefore you go away from thiss place you shall be swearing
to keep silence!”
“That I certainly shall not swear to do,” replied Captain Windham
promptly. “I am not accustomed to take an oath at any man’s bidding,
least of all at a rebel’s.”
Again the dark flame shone in the Highlander’s eyes.
“And you think that we will pe letting you go, Sassenach?”
“I think that you will be extremely sorry for the consequences if you
do not,” returned the soldier. “You know quite well that if you lay a
finger upon me you will have to answer for it to your master or chief,
or whatever he is!”
“We are the foster-brothers of Mac ’ic Ailein,” responded Lachlan
slowly. (“What, all of you?” interjected Keith. “I wish him joy of
you!”) “He knows that all we do iss done for him. If we should pe
making a misstake, not knowing hiss will . . . or if you should fall
by chance into the loch, we should pe sorry, but we could not help it
that your foot should pe slipping, for it wass hurt yessterday . . .
and you would nefer go back to Kilcumein to tell the _saighdearan
dearg_ what you haf peen seeing.”
He did not now seem to be threatening, but rather, with a kind of
gloomy satisfaction, thinking out a plausible course of action with
regard to the intruder, and it was a good deal more disquieting to the
latter than his first attitude. So was the expression on the faces of
the other men when Lachlan harangued them volubly in his own language.
His brother Neil alone appeared to be making some remonstrance, but in
the end was evidently convinced, and almost before the unlucky officer
realised what was toward, the whole group had launched themselves upon
him.
Keith Windham fought desperately, but he had no chance at all, having
been surrounded and almost held from the outset, and in a moment he was
borne down by sheer weight of numbers. Buttons came off his uniform,
his wig was torn bodily from his head by some assailant who probably
imagined that he had hold of the Sassenach’s own hair, he was buffeted
and nearly strangled, and lay at last with his face pressed into the
heather, one man kneeling upon his shoulders, while another tied his
hands behind his back, and a third, situated upon his legs, secured
his ankles. Outraged and breathless, the soldier had time for only two
sensations: surprise that no dirk had yet been planted in him, and
wonder whether they really meant to take him down and throw him into
the lake.
The struggle had been conducted almost in silence; but conversation
broke out again now that he was overpowered. Only for a moment,
however; then, as suddenly, it ceased, and the heavy, bony knees on
Captain Windham’s shoulder-blades unexpectedly removed themselves. A
sort of awestruck silence succeeded. With faint thoughts of Druids and
their sacrifices in his mind Keith wondered whether the patriarchal
soothsayer were now approaching to drive a knife with due solemnity
into his back . . . or, just possibly, to denounce his descendants’
violence. But he could not twist himself to look, for the man on his
legs, though apparently smitten motionless, was still squatting there.
And then a voice that Keith knew, vibrating with passion, suddenly
shouted words in Erse whose purport he could guess. The man on his
legs arose precipitately. And next moment Ewen Cameron was kneeling
beside him in the heather, bending over him, a hand on his shoulder.
“Captain Windham, are you hurt? God forgive me, what have they been
doing? _Tied!_” And in a moment he had snatched a little knife out of
his stocking and was cutting Keith’s bonds. “Oh, why did I let you out
of my sight! For God’s sake tell me that you are not injured!”
He sounded in the extreme of anxiety—and well he might be, thought the
indignant Englishman, who made no haste to reply that, if exhausted,
he was as yet unwounded. He made in fact no reply at all, while the
young chieftain, white with agitation and anger, helped him to his
feet. When at last he stood upright, hot and dishevelled, and very
conscious of the fact, Captain Windham said, in no friendly tone:
“You were just in time, I think, Mr. Cameron—that is, if, now that you
are here, your savages will obey you.”
From pale the young man turned red. “I warned you, if you remember,”
he said rather low, and then, leaving Captain Windham to pick up his
hat and wig and to restore some order to his attire, strode towards
the silent and huddled group of his retainers, who had retreated in a
body nearer to the crofts. Angry and humiliated as Keith felt, it was
some consolation to him, as he brushed the pieces of heather off his
uniform, and pulled his wig once more over his own short dark hair, to
observe that, whatever their master was saying to them in the Erse,
it seemed to have a most salutary and withering effect. Even the
redoubtable Lachlan, who hoarsely uttered some remark, presumably an
excuse, was reduced to complete silence, either by the very terse and
vigorous reply which he drew upon himself, or by the threatening
attitude of the speaker.
All this time the prophetic elder had sat at his cottage door
listening, with his head tilted back in the manner of the blind, but
taking no part in the reckoning which was falling upon the offenders,
just as (presumably) he had sat throughout the assault. And having
made short work of the culprits, the rescuer now seemed in haste to
remove the rescued, and came towards him, his eyes still very blue and
fierce.
“If you will allow me, Captain Windham, I will take you back to the
house, away from these savages, as you rightly call them.”
“Thanks, I can return safely enough, no doubt,” replied Keith
indifferently, pulling down his waistcoat. “There are no more
encampments of them, I believe, on the way back.”
“I should prefer to escort you,” returned Ardroy, most acutely vexed,
as was evident. And, since his vexation did not at all displease the
Englishman, he picked up his staff and preceded him in silence off the
plateau.
They had gone some way down the mountain path before Ewen Cameron
spoke again.
“I had no right to accept your sword,” he said, in a voice still
bitter with mortification, “if I could not protect you against my own
followers. I would not have had this happen for a thousand pounds. I
can offer you no apologies that are deep enough for such an outrage.”
“Except for the loss of some buttons, I am not much the worse,”
replied Keith dryly without turning his head.
“But I am,” he heard the Highlander say behind him in a low voice.
Nothing more passed between them until they had arrived at the level
of the loch, but by that time a rather remarkable change had come upon
Keith. Much better and more dignified to make light of the outrage
which he had just suffered than to exaggerate it by sulking over it.
Besides, he was beginning to be sorry for the palpable distress of
that punctilious young man, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy, who could not in
very justice be blamed for what had happened.
So he stopped and turned round. “Mr. Cameron,” he said frankly, “I
have no one but myself to thank for the rough handling I received up
yonder. You warned me not to go far afield; and moreover I acted like
a fool in staying there to watch. Will you forgive my ill-temper, and
let me assure you that I shall think no more of the episode except to
obey your warnings more exactly in future.”
Ardroy’s face cleared wonderfully. “You really mean that, sir?”
“Assuredly. I ran my head into the lion’s mouth myself. I shall be
obliged if you will not mention my folly to the ladies; a soldier’s
self-esteem, you know, is easily hurt.” His smile went up a little at
the corner.
A sparkle came into Ewen Cameron’s eyes. “You are generous, Captain
Windham, and I am not deceived by your plea for silence. I am
so ashamed, however, that I welcome it for the sake of my own
self-esteem.”
“But I mean what I say,” returned Keith. (He was quick enough in the
uptake, this young chief of barbarians!) “It was the act of an utter
fool for me, in this uniform, to stand gaping at . . . at what was
going on up there. You know what it was, I presume?” he added, with a
lift of the eyebrows.
“Naturally,” said Ewen without embarrassment. “It was that which
brought me up there—most fortunately. But now,” he went on with a
frown, “now I am not sure that I shall allow those arms to be carried
by men in my tail who have so disgraced themselves and me.—Let us go
on, if you will, for when I have escorted you to the house I shall
return to deal with that question.”
“You seemed,” observed Keith, as they went on once more, “to be
dealing with it pretty satisfactorily just now!” (So he proposed, as
a punishment, to debar the offenders from the pleasures of armed
rebellion!)
“At least, before I consent to their following me on Monday,” said the
dispenser of justice, striding on, “they shall all beg your pardon!”
“Oh, pray excuse them that!” exclaimed Keith, not at all welcoming the
prospect. “I should be horribly embarrassed, I assure you. Moreover, I
can almost sympathise with their zeal—now that there is no prospect of
my being thrown into the lake here with a stone round my neck.”
His captor stopped. “Was that what they were going to do?” he asked in
a horrified tone.
“They spoke of it, since I would not promise to keep silence on what I
had seen. They were quite logical, you know, Mr. Cameron, for what I
saw was certainly not meant for the eyes of an English officer!”
“You were my prisoner—my guest—they had no excuse whatever!” declared
the young man, wrath beginning to seize on him again. “Neil and
Lachlan knew that, if the others did not. And Angus—what was Angus
about not to stop them?”
“Is that the blind veteran who takes such an interest in the natural
history of these parts?”
“What do you mean?” asked his companion.
“Why,” answered Keith, who was after all enjoying a kind of secret
revenge by quizzing him, “that he was particular to enquire, through
his estimable son, your piper, whether I had encountered a heron
before I made your acquaintance yesterday.”
The mention of that fowl appeared for the second time to startle his
host (though until that moment Keith had forgotten its effect upon him
last night). “Ah, my foster-father asked you that?” he murmured, and
looked upon the Englishman with a rather troubled and speculative
gaze. But Keith had found a new subject of interest. “Is the old
gentleman really your foster-father?” he enquired. “But of course he
must be, if his sons are your foster-brothers.”
“I think,” said the foster-son somewhat hastily, “that you can return
safely from here, so, if you will excuse me, Captain Windham, I will
now go back to Slochd nan Eun.”
“To execute judgment,” finished Keith with a smile. “Indeed, I am not
so devoid of rancour as to wish to hinder you. But if you do condemn
your foster-relations to stay at home,” he added rather meaningly,
“you will be doing them a good turn rather than an ill one.”
It seemed doubtful, however, if Ewen Cameron had heard this remark,
for he was already striding lightly and quickly back in the direction
of the mountain path, his kilt swinging about his knees as he went.
* * * * * *
It was an odd coincidence that at supper that evening, after Angus
MacMartin’s name had come up in some talk between Miss Cameron and Mr.
Grant, the former should turn to Captain Windham and ask if he had
seen their _taibhsear_ or seer? Seeing instantly from Ardroy’s face
that he was regretting the introduction of his foster-father’s name
into the conversation, Keith made malicious haste to reply that he had
contrived to get as far as the soothsayer’s dwelling, and that his
reception there had been a memorable experience. Immediately the
ladies asked if Angus had ‘seen’ anything while the visitor was there,
to which Keith, with a glance at his host, replied with great suavity
that such might well have been the case, since he appeared, towards
the end of the visit, to be entirely withdrawn from outward events.
“He left the honours to his interesting sons,” he explained with a
smile, “who entertained me so . . . so wholeheartedly that if Mr.
Cameron had not appeared upon the scene I might be there still.” But
at this point Ewen, with a heightened colour, forcibly changed the
conversation.
CHAPTER IV
In spite of a certain amount of turmoil earlier in the day, almost the
usual Sunday calm lay on the house of Ardroy between five and six that
evening, and in it Alison Grant sat at one of the windows of the long
living-room, her arms on the sill, her cheek on her joined hands. Her
father had gone to Achnacarry, Ewen was she knew not where, her aunt,
she believed, in her bedchamber. It would be better, Alison thought,
if she were in hers, upon her knees.
But she could pray here, too, looking out on this blue and purple
loveliness of distance, and here she might get a passing glimpse of
Ewen, busy though he was, and would not thus be missing any of these
precious last moments of him. The sands were slipping so fast
now . . .
Alison pulled herself up. The sands were indeed running out, but
towards how glorious an hour! Prayed for and wrought for with so much
faith and selfless devotion (as well as with so much crooked
counter-plot and intrigue), it was to strike to-morrow, when his
banner would proclaim to all the winds that the fairy prince of the
hopes of a generation was here at last on Scottish soil. And to-morrow
Ewen would lay his sword at those long-expected feet. Happy Ewen—happy
to be among the faithful, when many were forsworn; happy in that he
was a man and could play a man’s part. For what could a woman do but
hope, and what had she to give but prayers!
Again Alison checked her thoughts, or rather, a new thought came to
her. Why, _she_ gave what no one else in wide Scotland had to
give—Ewen himself!
For a moment she saw herself, as it were, irradiated by the splendour
of that priceless gift; then, with a sudden terror, she knew that her
will was not to a gift, but to a loan. She was only lending Ewen to
the Prince. A gift is gone from one’s hands for ever; a loan comes
back. She made this loan willingly—more than willingly; but as a free
gift, never to be resumed—no, no!
The door in the far corner of the room opened, and Alison swiftly
withdrew the hands that she was pressing over her eyes. Miss Cameron
came in, looking exactly as usual in her Sunday paduasoy, not a hair
out of place beneath her cap, and no sign of agitation or excitement
on her firm-featured, pleasant visage. By only one thing was this
Sunday of last preparations marked off from any other, that she wore
at her waist the capacious black silk pocket in which she kept the
household keys.
“Ah, there you are, child! Your father is not returned, I suppose?
Where is Ewen?”
“I do not know, Aunt Margaret.” Alison’s voice seemed to herself a
little unsteady, so, with some idea of covering this deviation from
the usual she added, “Nor do I know where Captain Windham is got to
either.”
“Captain Windham is down by the loch, my dear; I saw him set out in
that direction. And I have my reasons for thinking he’ll not have gone
farther.” There was an odd tone in Miss Cameron’s voice, and a twinkle
in her eye, as she sat down on the window seat by the girl, plunging
her hand into that capacious pocket of hers.
“’Twas our redcoat that I came to speak to you about. Alison, do you
know what these are?”
She laid on the window-sill between them two buttons covered with gold
thread.
“They look,” said Alison, studying them, “like the buttons on the
lapels of Captain Windham’s uniform. I noticed this morning that some
were missing. How did you come by them, Aunt Margaret?”
“Neil MacMartin brought them to me about half an hour ago. Before that
they were reposing in the heather up at Slochd nan Eun, where their
owner also reposed, very uncomfortably, I fear, yesterday afternoon. I
can’t keep from laughing when I think of it!” declared Miss Cameron.
“And, Alison, are not men the sly creatures! To think that Ewen knew
of this yesterday evening, and said never a word!”
“Knew of what, Aunt Margaret?”
“I will tell you,” said Aunt Margaret, with visible enjoyment of the
prospect. “It seems that yesterday afternoon my fine Captain very
incautiously walked up to Slochd nan Eun by his lane, and arrived
there just as the arms were being taken out of Angus’s thatch. Not
unnaturally the MacMartins and the others thought that he was a
Government spy, so they fell upon him, tied him up, and might have
proceeded to I know not what extremities if Ardroy had not appeared in
the very nick of time.”
“Oh, what a dreadful thing!” said Alison, aghast.
“Exactly Ewen’s view, as you may imagine. He has not yet forgiven the
two MacMartins, whom he holds most to blame. Neil, in the greatest
despair, has just been to beg me to intercede for him and Lachlan, and
seemed to think that the restoration of these buttons, torn off, so I
gathered, in the struggle, would go to prove their penitence.”
“Was Captain Windham at all hurt, do you think?”
“No, I do not think so, though I can quite believe that it was not his
mother’s bosom he was in—you know the Erse saying. Neil admits that
they had him on his face in the heather when they trussed him up, and
that two of them sat upon him. Well, they are paying for it now. As
you know, Ardroy is not in general easily angered, but when he is he
is not easily pacified neither. Neil looks like a whipped dog; ’tis
really comical, and I dare say Lachlan is ready to cut his own throat.
I think you had best do the interceding, my dear; and you can give
Ewen the buttons to return, for we women cannot restore them to
Captain Windham without his knowing that his misadventure is no longer
the secret that he and Ewen hoped it was.”
But Alison left the buttons on the sill as if she dreaded to touch
them. “I wish, oh, I wish that mishap had not befallen Captain
Windham!”
“Never fash yourself about Captain Windham, my lass; I warrant he can
fend for himself. Ewen should not have brought him here at a moment so
inopportune—just what a man would do, without thought of
consequences! At the least he might have locked him up somewhere out
of harm’s way, and not made all this parade of his being a guest and
the like.”
“_I_ think it fine of Ewen to have behaved so,” retorted Alison rather
mutinously.
“Bless you, child,” said Miss Cameron, smiling, “so it is. I’d not
have him a churl. But they must have made a compact, the two deceitful
bodies, not to let us know. And to think that I asked the Captain at
supper last night had he seen our _taibhsear_—do you mind of it? And
he smiling and saying he was well entertained up at Slochd nan Eun!”
“But Ewen did not smile,” amended Alison. “He was displeased; I saw
it, and wondered why.”
“Now that you mention it, I remember I saw him glower a wee. He’s not
so deep as yon Englishman, I’m thinking. All the same, he can keep a
secret. . . . Alison, my bonny lass, do you think he’ll have secrets
from you when you are wed?”
“No,” said Alison, shaking her dark curls with a half-secret smile.
“Or if he has, I’ll know ’tis something I had best be ignorant of.”
“Then you’ll make a dutiful wife, my dear,” pronounced Miss Cameron,
smiling too.
“If ever I am a wife at all!” suddenly came from Alison with a catch
of the breath, and she turned her head away.
Margaret Cameron, who was never known to show much emotion, who even
now, at this last hour before what might prove so tremendous a dawn,
seemed mainly occupied with amusement at Captain Windham’s misfortune,
gazed at that little dark head, so beautifully and proudly set on its
long neck, and a profound change came over her cheerful and practical
face. Thirty years ago, in the Fifteen, she too had stood where Alison
stood now, and had seen her lover go from her down the dark defile.
She had never seen him return. . . . Alison did not know this, and
even Ewen, though he had heard the story, thought that Aunt Margaret
had long ago forgotten her tragedy.
“Oh, my dear, do not say that!”
Struck by the unfamiliar note in the elder woman’s voice, Alison
turned her head quickly, and met the look in those eyes, nearly as
blue as Ewen’s. It was a surprise to her, and yet—how could she have
imagined that Aunt Margaret did not realise what she, Alison, risked
. . . what they both risked!
“I did not mean that,” she exclaimed rather tremulously. “To be sure
Ewen will come back, and we shall be wed some day; but I cannot help
knowing, as he does, how even Lochiel himself has been torn in two by
the Prince’s coming without the aid that was promised. But when Ewen
goes to-morrow he shall never guess how cowardly my heart is.”
Miss Cameron bent forward and kissed her.
“That’s my brave lass! We shall both be as gay as the laverock, I dare
say, till he’s fairly away, and then we can be as hare-hearted as we
please, with no one to see. Hark, there’s the boy’s step! I’ll leave
you, my dear; don’t forget to put in a word for poor Neil.”
‘Till he is fairly away.’ It echoed in the girl’s ears as Miss Cameron
slipped from the room. Why, one could not even imagine what the house
of Ardroy would be like without Ewen!
“Heart’s darling, are you there?” He had come in by the door from the
hall, and now threw himself down beside her on the window seat.
“Hardly a word have I had with you this livelong day! And now I must
ride over to Achnacarry for Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh’s final orders, and
shall not be back till late, I fear me. But all’s ready here, I
think.”
“I wish I were more ready,” thought Alison, devouring him with her
eyes. His bright hair grew down in such an enchanting square on his
wide forehead, and a desire came upon her to pass her hand over some
of its thick waves. “Ah, to see the Prince at last, at last, Ewen,
with one’s own eyes!”
“You’ll see him yourself before long, Alison, I hope, in Edinburgh, or
maybe Perth—or even, before that, at Achnacarry, if he honours it. Who
knows? Meanwhile you can be practising your curtsy, _m’eudail_!”
“You do not know what His Royal Highness will do after the standard is
set up?”
“I’ve not a notion. But I shall contrive to send you word of our
movements, never fear. I suppose that somewhere or other we shall be
obliged to try conclusions with Sir John Cope and the Government
troops.”
The words reminded Alison of the commission just laid upon her. She
took up the buttons from the window-sill and held them out towards
him.
“Ewen, these have just been brought down from Slochd nan Eun.”
Her lover looked at them with a surprise not quite free from
embarrassment. “They must have come off Captain Windham’s uniform,” he
observed non-committally. “I will give them back to him.” And he took
them from her.
“I must tell you that I have just heard how it was that he lost them,”
confessed the girl.
Ewen’s mouth tightened. He laid the buttons on the sill again. “How
came that? I had hoped——”
“Yes, dearest, I know; but the matter came out by reason of Neil’s
bringing the buttons to Aunt Margaret this afternoon as a kind of
peace-offering, it would seem. But, Ewen, what a shocking thing to
have happened! I do not wonder that you were angry.”
By the laird of Ardroy’s looks, he was angry still. Alison trusted
that he would never look at her, on her own account, in that stern
way; and perhaps indeed Ewen realised that he was frowning on the
innocent, for his brow relaxed and he took her hand into his as if in
apology.
“Indeed, Alison, my heart was in my mouth when I came upon the
MacMartins and the rest up there yesterday; for all I knew they had
dirked Captain Windham. It seems they had thought of throwing him into
the loch. He should not have gone so far from the house; I had warned
him against it. But he behaved very well over the affair, and we
agreed not to tell you or Aunt Margaret, so you must neither of you
say a word to him about the matter this evening.”
“But he must have been greatly offended and incensed. It is true that
he was very agreeable at supper, even though Aunt Margaret asked him
had he seen Angus.” She paused, wrinkling her brows. “Ewen, do you
think that he was only feigning?”
“No, I do not think so, although he was very angry at first—and
naturally. Afterwards he made to treat the affair almost as a joke.
But I do not think that in his heart he can have considered it as a
joke. And considering that his person should have been held sacred, it
was a very black disgrace for me, and I did well to be angry. I am
still angry,” he added somewhat unnecessarily, “and I have not yet
resolved whether I shall allow the two MacMartins to accompany me
to-morrow.”
“Not take Neil and Lachlan to Glenfinnan—not take your piper and your
right-hand man!” exclaimed Alison, almost incredulous. “But, Ewen,
dearest, you will break their hearts for ever if you leave them
behind! That punishment is too great! It was surely in ignorance that
they sinned; you yourself said that Captain Windham should not have
gone there, and in that uniform they must naturally have thought——”
“Neil and Lachlan did _not_ sin in ignorance,” interrupted Ewen
sternly. “I had particularly told them that morning what was Captain
Windham’s position here. The others, if you like, had more excuse,
though why Angus did not prevent their setting upon him, as he could
have done, I cannot think. The reason he gave was so——” He broke off,
and pushed about the buttons on the sill for a moment or two, then,
raising his head, said, “I have not yet told you, Alison, how Angus
‘saw’ last month that this fellow Windham and I would meet.”
“Angus ‘saw’ that you would meet!” repeated Alison, wide-eyed. “Oh,
Ewen, why did you not tell me?”
“Because I forgot all about it till last Friday night. Yes, and what
is more, it appears that we are to keep on meeting, confound him!”
“Do you then dislike Captain Windham so much?” asked Alison quickly.
“I do not dislike him at all,” Ewen assured her, “though I confess
that I cannot quite make him out. But I have no desire for the
continual rencontres with him which Angus promises me. And I am sure
that Captain Windham cannot possibly view me with anything but dislike
for capturing him—and now comes yesterday’s affair.—Don’t look so
troubled, my heart!”
“Tell me what Angus said.”
Ewen looked at her a moment as if considering. “But you must not
believe it too implicitly, darling; I do not. Though I admit,” he
added, as though wishing to be quite just, “that the old man’s
predictions have sometimes fulfilled themselves in an extraordinary
way. . . . This one began by something about a heron.”
“That, then, was why you were so much surprised on Friday evening,”
interpolated Alison in a flash. “I mean, when Captain Windham said
that a heron had brought down his horse. I saw it, Ewen. But how——”
“I will tell you from the beginning,” said her betrothed. He got up
and put a knee on the window seat. “It was that day at the end of last
month when Lochiel’s message came about the Prince’s landing—you
remember? Early that morning Lachlan had been very troublesome,
wanting to shoot the heron that lives on the island in the loch,
because his father had been having a vision about one. I forbade him
to do it.—That reminds me, I have not seen the bird of late, but I do
not think that Lachlan dare have disobeyed me.—After I had taken leave
of you that evening, darling, and was just about to set off to
Achnacarry, I met Angus by the Allt Buidhe burn. He had come down from
Slochd nan Eun on purpose to see me, and he told me very solemnly that
I should soon meet with a man whose destiny would in some unknown way
be bound up with mine, and that I should meet him through the agency
of a heron. Angus went on to say, ‘And as the threads are twisted at
your first meeting, foster-son, so will they always shape themselves
at all the rest—a thread of one colour, a thread of another.’ I said
on that, ‘At all the rest, Angus? How many more, then?’ and he thought
a while and answered, ‘I saw you meeting five times. The first time
and the last were by water . . . but always the place changed. Oh, my
son, if only I could know what it means!’ I asked then whether I ought
to avoid this man, and Angus said, ‘You will not be able to avoid him;
the heron by the waterside will bring you to him.’ ‘Ah,’ said I, ‘that
then is why Lachlan wanted to shoot the _curra_ this morning!’ But
Angus shook his head and muttered, ‘A man cannot change the future in
that way. What is to be will be.’
“I thought at the time, Alison,” went on Ewen explanatorily, looking
down at her intent face, “that I should come on this man some day, if
ever I did, when I was out with a fowling-piece, or something of the
sort, and then, to tell truth, I forgot all about the matter in the
stir of the news from Moidart; and thus it never crossed my mind when
I encountered Captain Windham that he could be the man . . . till he
mentioned the heron which startled his horse, and so indirectly—or
directly, if you will—led to my overtaking him by Loch Oich, and our
fight.”
“And is that all that Angus said?” asked Alison breathlessly.
“There was one thing more, I remember, for when, after he had assured
me that I should not be able to avoid this man, I said, ‘He is an
enemy, then?’ Angus replied, ‘That I cannot see. He will do you a
great service, yet he will cause you bitter grief. It is dark.’ You
know how vexatious it is when one with the two sights cannot see any
more. It is like beginning to read a book of which the last pages are
lost.”
“I do not think that I should wish to read any more,” said the girl,
shivering a little, and she too got up from the window seat. “I have
never before met anyone who had the gift so strongly as Angus, and
indeed it is not canny. You are used to it, Ewen, since you have known
him all your life, and I think you do not believe in it very much,
either.”
“No, I do not,” admitted her lover. “But it would not be kind to tell
my foster-father so.”
Alison looked out of the window for a moment, biting her lip hard.
“Ewen, when a _taibhsear_ ‘sees’ any person it is nearly always a
warning of that person’s imminent death!”
Ewen put his arm round her. “No, you are wrong, my dear. A _taibhsear_
has been known to see a man’s future wife—sometimes, indeed his own. I
wonder Angus never ‘saw’ you, sitting by the hearth here in the days
when you were in Paris . . . long days those were for me, _mo
chridhe_! Moreover, in this matter of the heron he ‘saw’ two people,
and neither Captain Windham nor I can be going to die very soon, can
we, if we must meet each other four times more?”
She looked up and met his expression, tender but half quizzical. “No,
that is true.”
“Angus said nothing about death,” went on Ewen reassuringly. “And he
seemed completely puzzled by his vision—or visions. If it were not for
that heron by Loch Oich, I vow I should think that he had dreamed the
whole business.”
“Have you told Captain Windham any of this?” asked Alison.
“Not I. He would only laugh at it, and I am sure, too, that he has no
desire to meet me again, so that I should not be telling him anything
to pleasure him.”
“Do you think,” suggested Alison slowly, “that Angus did not hinder
his sons and the others from attacking Captain Windham because he
thought that he would be better out of the way—on your account?”
Her lover looked down at her with a rather startled expression. “I
never thought of that. . . . But no, I do not believe that was the
reason—it could not have been, unless he was lying over the reason he
gave me.”
“And what was that?”
“It was outrageous enough. He said that there was no cause for
interference, because he knew that the _saighdear dearg_ and I had yet
several times to meet, so he would take no harm! What do you think of
that? Had he not been an old man, and nearly blind, and my
foster-father to boot, I declare that I could have shaken him when I
went back to Slochd nan Eun and upbraided him and was given that for
justification. It might very well have been Captain Windham’s wraith
that I was to tryst with!” He glanced at the clock. “I must go,
darling.”
“What will become of Captain Windham to-morrow?” asked Alison with a
tiny frown.
“I do not know; it is a question I have to ask Lochiel.”
“One thing more, Ewen; did not Angus, after he had seen Captain
Windham in the flesh yesterday, as I suppose he did—did he not tell
you any more about him and . . . and the future?”
“Not a word. No, as I say, the last pages of the book are torn out
. . . but then it is so with every book in which our lives are written.”
He had both his arms round her now, and Alison hid her eyes against
his breast, for he was so tall that even the top of her head was
scarcely level with his chin.
“Why do you say that, Ewen? Oh, Ewen, why do you say that?”
“What ails you, heart’s darling?” he asked, looking down at that dark
head tenderly. “It is true. You’re not thinking, surely, that at the
end of the book I can care for you any less, little white love? That’s
impossible . . . and I think it’s impossible that I should care for
you more, either,” he added, and put a kiss on the soft hair.
Alison clung to him, saying nothing, mindful of her proud promise to
Aunt Margaret, but shaken with the knowledge of the red close of many
a life across whose pages the name of Stuart had been written.
Devotion to that name and cause was the religion in which she had been
reared; but the claims of religion can sometimes make the heart quail
. . . and Ewen was so splendid, so real and so dear! She forced a
smile and raised her head; her eyes were quite dry. “I must not keep
you from Lochiel; but when you return, Ewen, will you not tell your
foster-brothers that you have remitted their punishment?”
“For your sake, Alison?”
“No, for his who is waiting for them! Is he not needing every sword
that we can bring him?”
Ewen smiled down at her appreciatively. “You find clever arguments,
miss! I never said that they should not join me later.”
“As ghosts? You may find yourselves trysting with wraiths, as you
spoke of doing a while ago! Are they not capable of drowning
themselves in the loch, particularly Lachlan, if you put that shame
upon them, Ewen?”
“Yes,” said Ewen after a moment’s silence, “I’ll not deny that
Lachlan, at least, might throw himself into Loch na h-Iolaire. I
suppose that I must allow them to come with me, and if you see them
before my return, you can tell them so, rose of my heart.”
* * * * * *
The room was empty once more, almost as empty as it would be
to-morrow. And, since there was no one to see, Alison put her head
down upon her arms on the window-sill.
When she raised it again after some moments a small object rolled off
the sill and fell tinkling to the floor—one of Captain Windham’s
unfortunate buttons, which Ewen had forgotten after all to take with
him. As Alison stooped to recover it the thought of its owner came
sharply and forbiddingly into her mind, accompanied by all that she
had just heard about him. Ewen’s destiny bound up with his . . . and
he, yesterday, disgracefully handled by Ewen’s followers! Surely,
however he had passed it off, he must retain a grudge about that, and
it might be that in the future he would seize an opportunity of
repaying the outrage. Alison wished for a moment that she were not
Highland, and that belief in second sight did not run so in her blood.
She could not shake from her mind the conviction that for old Angus to
have seen the doubles of Ewen and the English officer meant the death
of one or both of them within the year. It was true that the
prediction had not seemed to trouble Ewen much, but he was a man, and
had his head full of Glenfinnan at present. Yet there was Captain
Windham, with nothing to do but to brood over the injury. Already, as
Ewen had felt, he might well have a dislike to his captor. And did it
not seem as though he had a horrid gift for dissimulation if, so soon
afterwards, he could pretend to find amusement in the mortifying thing
which had happened to him? What sort of a man was he really, this
stranger who was to cause her Ewen bitter grief?
Alison jumped to her feet and stood with clasped hands. “I’ll go along
the loch side, as though I were taking a walk, and if he is still
there I’ll engage him in talk, and perhaps I can find out a little
about him.” For in the house she could not so easily get speech with
him alone, and to-morrow he would surely be gone altogether. Yes, she
would do that; Captain Windham would never guess that she had come on
purpose. She slipped the buttons into her pocket and left the room.
CHAPTER V
It was not difficult to find Captain Windham by the loch, for the
delicate veils of birch foliage made no effective screen for his
strong scarlet. Alison saw him, therefore, before he was aware of her
presence. He was sitting a yard or two from the edge of Loch na
h-Iolaire, on the stump of a felled pine, with his arms folded on his
breast, staring at the water. Was he thinking of yesterday—meditating
some revenge? She would never know, because she dared not refer, even
indirectly, to that unlucky contretemps. The buttons were in her
pocket only for safe keeping.
Alison came very slowly along the ribbon of track through the heather,
her eyes fixed on the soldier’s unconscious figure. Ewen’s destiny in
_his_ hands! No, Angus had not said that exactly. Nor had Angus said
that he was an enemy; on the contrary, he was to render Ewen a great
service. . . . Technical enemy of course he was. She had his profile
now, clear against a reddish pine-trunk; he looked rather sad. He was
an enigma, neither friend nor enemy, and she would find out nothing,
do no good . . . and wished she had not come.
Then the best was to turn and go back again. No, it was too late for
that now. At that very moment Captain Windham must have heard her
step, for he turned his head, sprang up, and, uncovering, came towards
her between the pines.
“Pray do not let me drive Miss Grant away,” he said civilly.
“I . . . I fear I disturb you, sir,” said Miss Grant, really
discomposed.
“Disturb me! But I was not asleep, I assure you, and in breaking into
my meditations you may have been doing me a service.”
He smiled a little as he said it, but Alison looked at him warily,
wondering what he meant by that remark. Here they were, alone
together, and neither could see what was uppermost in the other’s
mind. _He_ did not know that strange thing prophesied of him, linking
him to an enemy, nor could she in the least read what were his
feelings with regard to Ewen, although it was a matter which concerned
her so vitally. But, notwithstanding that she had a moment ago turned
away like a coward from this interview, now she resolved to pursue it.
Surely her wits could point out some road by which she might arrive at
Captain Windham’s real sentiments?
Quite close to her was another convenient pine-stump, so she sank down
upon it murmuring something about resting for a moment. Captain
Windham stood beside her, his hands behind his back and his head bent,
and before she had settled upon her own line of attack startled her by
saying slowly, and even a trifle hesitatingly, that he had for the
last hour been greatly wishing for the privilege of a few minutes’
conversation with her.
Considerably surprised at this reversal of parts, Alison glanced up at
him. Was this remark a prelude to compliments or gallantry of some
kind? No; Captain Windham’s manner quite disposed of that idea. Yet he
said again, gravely, “I desire to ask a favour of you, Miss Grant.”
“Pray ask it, sir,” replied Alison, just a little stiffly.
There was a moment’s pause. “I believe that Mr. Cameron—Ardroy, I
suppose I should say—has ridden off to see his Chief, has he not?”
said the soldier.
“Yes,” said Alison, still less encouragingly.
“And by this time to-morrow——” Captain Windham left the sentence
unfinished, and, to her surprise, walked away from her with bent head
and stood at a little distance carefully pushing two or three fallen
pine-cones together with his foot. Finally he stooped, picked one up,
and came back, twirling it in his fingers.
“Miss Grant,” he said, studying it with apparent absorption, “I wish
that I could make Ardroy some return for his generous treatment of me.
This is not a mere figure of speech; I am in complete earnest. But the
only return that I can make he would never take at my hands.” He
raised his eyes and looked at her musingly. “What I wonder is, whether
he would take it at yours.”
“What do you mean, sir?” asked Alison, lifting her head a trifle
haughtily. Surely he was not going to offer Ewen money! She must
prevent that at all costs, or Heaven knew what might happen!
Captain Windham threw away the fir-cone. “Will you believe, Miss
Grant, that in what I am going to say I speak as a friend might
(though I dare not presume to call myself one) and that I have but one
aim in speaking—Mr. Cameron’s good and yours?”
Alison met his eyes, and they convinced her of his sincerity. She had
scarcely time to be amazed. “Yes, I do believe it,” she said in a
softened tone. “Please say what you wish, Captain Windham.”
“Then let me ask you,” said the Englishman earnestly, “whether you and
Ardroy realise on what a hopeless adventure he is embarking? Is it
possible that, on the strength of having captured two wretched
companies of raw recruits—for indeed they were no more than that—the
clans of these parts think that they will be able to defy the whole
military force of the Crown? Yes, Miss Grant, it is advice that I
should like to give Mr. Cameron, if he would only take it. Cannot you
use your interest with him? Forgive me if I trespass on delicate
ground, but . . . this is to be your home together, is it not? Think
again before you let him stake it on so hazardous a throw! You know
what happens to the property of a declared rebel. And he stakes more
than his property, Miss Grant!”
His voice was very grave. Alison, who had heard him through, answered
firmly, “Yes, I know that.” But the lovely colour was gone from her
cheeks, and her hands were holding each other tightly.
“It is not too late, even now,” urged her companion. “If I choose to
suppress the fact that I was brought here as Mr. Cameron’s prisoner,
who is to gainsay my assertion that I came as a guest? Only keep him
back from this crazy rendezvous to-morrow, which can but herald
disaster, and he may be able——”
“Keep him back!” exclaimed Alison. She had got up from her tree-stump.
“Do you suppose that I could? Do you suppose that if I could, I
would?” Her voice trembled a little.
“But, Miss Grant, consider! If this young man, this Prince of yours,
had come with an army——”
“Then it would have been safe to declare for him!” broke in Alison,
and her dark eyes flashed. “Oh, if that is the English way of
thinking, it is not the Highland! Because he comes alone, and trusts
himself to us, is not that the best of reasons why we should follow
him who has the right, Captain Windham, and who may yet prove to have
the might also?”
There was a short silence between them. On the other side of the loch
a curlew uttered its plaintive, liquid cry. Captain Windham drew
himself up a little.
“If you feel thus about the matter, Miss Grant,” he said rather dryly,
“there is no more to be said. I see that you will not take my
offering. The best I can wish you, then, is that the affair may burn
itself out as quickly as possible, for the longer it lasts the more
victims there are likely to be . . . afterwards. And I would give
much, believe me, to know that Mr. Cameron of Ardroy will not be among
them.”
Alison held out her hand impulsively. And she had been thinking that
he was brooding on revenge! “I thank you for those words, sir,” she
said with great sweetness, “because I believe that you mean them. But,
though I shall not easily forget your kindness, it is—forgive
me—useless to discuss the matter further.”
Captain Windham kissed her hand in silence, and offered her his arm
back to the house, if she were returning thither. Alison took it
readily enough, and as they left the loch, conversing on indifferent
topics, she had time to taste the surprise and relief which had come
to her there. If Fate’s chosen instrument—supposing he were really
that—were so well disposed towards Ewen, how could he in the future be
used against him?
And yet, later in the evening, waiting for Ewen’s return, she found
that, unreasonably perhaps, she disliked Captain Windham’s presumption
that she could, if she tried, influence her lover to betray his
convictions even more than the supposition that she could be induced
to try. She felt that the soldier understood neither Highlanders nor
Jacobites. But for his kindly and even generous intentions she had
nothing but gratitude.
* * * * * *
As for Keith Windham, whose meditations by Loch na h-Iolaire had moved
him to an effort which surprised him, he told himself that he had
never expected any other result. They were all blinded and besotted,
these Jacobites. He wondered whether Miss Grant would tell her
betrothed of his attempt. With Ardroy himself he naturally should not
think of expostulating; to do so would be mere waste of breath.
There was no Ardroy at supper, though it appeared that he was expected
back at any moment, and Keith shortly afterwards excused himself and
withdrew to his own bedchamber, having no wish to be an intruder on
the lovers’ last hours together, rebels though they were. But it was
too early to go to bed, so once more he pulled a couple of books at
random from the shelf on the wall, and settled down by the window to
read. One of them he opened before he realised what it was, and found
himself staring at ‘Most heartily do we beseech Thee with Thy favour
to behold our most gracious Sovereign Lord King——’ but ‘James’ had
been neatly pasted over the ‘George’.
Captain Windham smiled. He held in his hand the Book of Common Prayer
as used and amended by the nonjuring Episcopalian Jacobites, and saw
with his own eyes the treason to which his ears might have listened
earlier in the day. For though, on rising, he had forgotten that it
was Sunday, this was a fact of which he had not long been suffered to
remain ignorant, since after breakfast Miss Cameron had said to him in
matter-of-fact tones—they were alone for the moment: “I doubt you
will wish to attend Morning Prayer with us, Captain Windham, even if
you be an Episcopalian, like most of the English, for I must not
disguise from you that we pray, not for King George, but for King
James.”
“‘Morning Prayer,’” Keith had stammered. “Is—do you—I had thought
that you were all Presbyterians hereabouts . . . or Papists,” he
added, suddenly remembering the old woman on Friday.
“Ah, not at all,” replied Miss Cameron composedly. “The MacDonalds of
the mainland and the most of the Frasers indeed are Papists, but we
Camerons are Episcopalians, and so are our neighbours, the Stewarts of
Appin. But we can get to kirk but rarely, and to-day in especial,
being, as you will understand, somewhat throng, we shall be obliged to
worship at home.”
“And who——”
“Why, my nephew the laird, naturally,” replied Miss Cameron. “Though
as Mr. Grant is with us, ’tis possible he may read the service
to-day.”
“Leaving your nephew free to preach, no doubt?” suggested Keith,
trying to control a twitch of the lip.
“Now you are laughing at us, sir,” observed Miss Cameron shrewdly, but
with perfect good humour. “No, Ardroy does not preach. But I have the
habit of reading a sermon to myself of a Sunday afternoon, and if you
scoff any more ’tis likely the same exercise would benefit you, and
I’ll be happy to lend you a volume of some English divine—Bishop
Jeremy Taylor, for instance.”
Keith bowed and gravely assured her that if she saw fit to do this he
would duly read a homily. But he had gone out into the garden smiling
to himself. That model young man—he could not be more than five- or
six-and-twenty—reading the Church service every Sunday to his
household! He thought of the young men of his acquaintance in the army
or in the fashionable world of London, the careless, loose-living
subalterns, the young beaux of White’s. Ye gods, what ribald laughter
would have gone up at the tale! . . . Yes, but not one of those
potential mockers could have beaten Ardroy in stature or looks or at
swordplay. Keith would not forget Loch Oich side in a hurry.
But he had not attended Morning Prayer.
Now he was rather wishing that he had done so, for he supposed that he
would never again have the chance of seeing a young man who could
fight in that style acting as chaplain. But perhaps Mr. Grant had
superseded him; Keith had not enquired. At any rate Ewen Cameron was
not engaged on particularly prayerful business at this moment, over at
his Chief’s house, nor would he be on his knees to-morrow. Afterwards
. . . well, it was likely that his relatives would have need to pray
for _him_!
He turned over the Prayer Book idly, and it opened next at the feast
of the Conversion of St. Paul, and the words of the Gospel leapt at
him: ‘Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or
father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my Name’s sake
. . .’
Though not much of a churchgoer himself, Captain Windham was shocked
at the analogy which occurred to him, and closing the Prayer Book
hastily, fell to wondering what was going to be done with him
to-morrow; also, whose hand had retrieved and laid upon his
dressing-table the two missing buttons from his uniform which he had
found there a short while ago.
It was nearly ten o’clock when he heard the beat of hoofs. They
stopped in front of the porch, but he did not look out. Someone
dismounted, then Keith heard Miss Grant’s voice, with her heart in it:
“Ewen, you are come at last; it has been a long evening!”
“And will be a short night, Alison,” came the half-exultant reply.
“We march at daybreak for Glenfinnan.” And from the sudden silence
Keith guessed that the girl was in her lover’s arms. He moved away
from the window and began to pace up and down. So there was to be no
holding back. Ah, what a pity, what a pity!
Half an hour later he was back in his old place reading, but with a
lighted candle at his elbow now, when there was a knock, and Ardroy
himself came in, a big branched candlestick in his hand.
“You are not abed, Captain Windham! I must apologise, none the less,
for so late a visit.”
There was a kind of suppressed elation about him, and his eyes were as
blue as the sea.
“Your Highland nights are so light,” returned Keith, as he rose to his
feet, “that it is hard to believe it late.” Why should he, who cared
for no human being, feel regret that this young man was going to
destruction?
“My excuse,” went on Ewen, setting down the light he carried, “is that
I leave this house again in a few hours, and must speak with you first
on a matter that concerns you.”
“You will be setting out for—the rendezvous of which you told me?”
“Yes. And before I go——”
“Mr. Cameron,” broke in the Englishman, “you gave me a warning
yesterday to which I should have done well to listen. I suppose it is
too much to hope that, at this eleventh hour, you will listen to one
from me?”
As he said it he knew that he was a fool for his pains; that his
words, uttered on that astonishing impulse, so contrary to his
intention, were as useless as the little puff of air which at that
moment entered by the open window and set the candles a-quiver. And
over the bending flames the Highlander, looking very tall, gazed at
him straight and unyieldingly.
“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 man _would_ rush 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.”
CHAPTER VI
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 the _Bel 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, “that _will_ be 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 then
_anticipate_ our 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 mere _façon 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_.”
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.
II
FLOOD-TIDE
“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_.
CHAPTER I
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—do _you_ never 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 a _partie 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:
‘MY DEAR JOHN,—
‘It will no doubt be your Labours in His Royal Highness’s Service
that have hitherto hindered you frae waiting upon an old Woman who
has not set Eyes upon you since you were a Lad. I see I’ll e’en
have to bid you to my House, and maybe set a Bait to bring you
there. Well then—do you mind of William Craig of Craigmains, him
that’s sib to your Uncle Dickson on the Mother’s Side, with a
pretty Fortune, and Kin that went out, severals of them, in the
Fifteen? He comes to Edinburgh to-day on Affairs, and will likely
stay two-three Days with me; and I’m thinking that could he be
gained for the Good Cause others of the Fife Lairds might follow
his Example. Forbye there’s his Siller. Try then could you not
dine with me the morn at three of the Clock, and have a bit Crack
with Craigmains, and tell him how well Things go for our bonny
Prince, and you’ll maybe do as good an Afternoon’s Work as writing
Proclamations.
‘Your loving Great-aunt,
‘ANNA EASTERHALL.’
This letter was superscribed ‘To Mr. John Murray of Broughton at
Holyroodhouse’, and was of the same day’s date. Ewen gave it back to
the royal hand in silence.
“Mr. Murray is indisposed and keeps his room, and I am going to pay
his great-aunt a visit in his stead,” said the Prince, going to the
bed and taking up his cloak. “And ‘our bonny Prince’ himself will have
the necessary bit crack with this Fife laird of the moneybags. You can
see from the letter that Lady Easterhall thinks a little persuasion
might induce him to open them, and I flatter myself that he’ll yield
to me sooner than to Murray.”
“But your Royal Highness could cause this kinsman of Mr. Murray’s to
come here, instead of venturing yourself in the Grassmarket,” objected
Ewen, to whom this Haroun-al-Raschid scheme—unknown, he felt sure, to
the secretary himself—did not at all appeal.
“Not before he had made up his mind, man! He would not; your Lowland
Scot is too canny.”
“But would not a visit to this lady to-morrow——”
“Would you have me approach the Castle in daylight, my friend?”
“But consider the other dwellers in the house,” urged Ewen. “Your
Royal Highness knows that nearly all Edinburgh lives pell-mell, one
above the other. Lady Easterhall’s neighbour on the next land may well
be a Whig gentleman or——”
“My dear Ulysses,” said the Prince, laying a hand familiarly on his
aide-de-camp’s arm, “you may have an old head on young shoulders, but
so have I too! Lady Easterhall is very singular; she has a whole house
to herself. I found this out from Murray. And if report says true, the
house itself is singular also.”
At that moment there was another discreet tap at the door, and
O’Sullivan, who had been listening to this conversation in a sardonic
silence, opened it to admit Mr. Francis Strickland in a cloak. In
response to the displeased query on the last-comer’s face the
Quartermaster-General observed that Captain Cameron was going with
them, “though one gathers that he disapproves.”
“He has my leave to disapprove,” said the Prince lightly, “provided he
comes too.” He was evidently in great spirits at the prospect of this
escapade, as pleased as a boy at stealing a march on his bedridden
secretary—relieved too, perhaps, at having laid the storm which he
had himself raised; and when Ewen asked him whether he should not
procure him a chair, scouted the idea. He would go on his own feet as
less likely to attract attention. “And when I have my cloak so”—he
threw it round his face up to the very eyes—“who will know me? I
learnt the trick in Rome,” he added.
But his gaze then fell upon his aide-de-camp’s attire. “Faith, Ardroy,
you must have a cloak, too, to cover up that finery—nay, you cannot go
to fetch one now. I know where Morrison keeps another of mine.”
“And the sentinel at your Royal Highness’s ante-chamber door?”
enquired Strickland in an injured voice.
“The door must go wanting one after all—unless you yourself covet the
post, Strickland? In that case you can lend _your_ cloak to Captain
Cameron.” And at the look on Strickland’s face he laughed. “I was but
jesting. Like the man in the Gospel, I have two cloaks—here, Ardroy,
if ’twill serve for that excessive height of yours. . . . Now for my
great-great-great-grandsire’s private stair!”
CHAPTER II
The three men followed him in silence down the narrow, twisting stair,
Ewen bringing up the rear, and wondering why disapproval made one feel
so old. And, after O’Sullivan had given the word of the day and passed
them out of Holyrood House, they were soon walking briskly, not up the
Canongate itself, but up the slope parallel to it, the ‘back of the
Canongate’, the Prince in front with the Irishman, Ewen behind with
Strickland, both the latter very silent. Flurries of the October wind
plucked at their cloaks as they went in the semi-darkness, sometimes
swooping at them from the open grassy spaces of the King’s Park on
their left, at others appearing to originate mysteriously in the tall
line of houses of the Canongate with their intervening gardens on the
right. They met nobody until they came to the Cowgate Port, and,
O’Sullivan again giving the word to the guard, were admitted within
the town walls and the nightly stenches of Edinburgh proper.
In the Cowgate there were still a few folk abroad, and a couple of
drunkards, emerging unexpectedly from a close, all but knocked into
the Prince. As he moved quickly aside to avoid collision, a man
passing in the opposite direction was obliged to step into the gutter.
It was quite natural that this man should turn his head to see the
reason for being thus incommoded, but unfortunate that the Prince’s
cloak should at that instant slip from its position. Ewen could only
hope that the passer-by had not recognised him; there was at least
nothing to indicate that he had. He went on his way without a pause,
and the four adventurers resumed theirs.
As they emerged into the Grassmarket the great mass of the Castle
Rock, half distinguishable against the sky, and crowned with a few
lights, lifted itself as if in menace; but a few steps farther and it
was blocked from view by the houses on the other side of that wide
open space. Lights still burned in some of these, but everything was
quiet.
“That is the house,” said the Prince in a low voice, but it was not
easy to know at which he was pointing across the Grassmarket, since
they all adjoined each other. “The entrance, however, is neither here
nor in the West Bow, but up a close leading out of the Grassmarket, so
Murray says.”
Holding their fluttering cloaks about them they crossed the
Grassmarket. Away to their right, when they were over, wound the curve
of the West Bow. At the mouth of the close which the Prince indicated
Ewen, seeing that O’Sullivan seemed to be going to allow his master to
walk first up the dark passage, strode forward, and without apology
placed himself in front, and so preceded them all up the alley, his
hand on his sword. He liked this place not at all.
In a moment he felt a twitch on his cloak from behind. “This will be
the door of the house,” said the Prince’s voice. “See if you can
summon someone. They keep uncommonly early hours hereabouts; I trust
the household is not already abed.”
But Ewen, tirling the risp on the door in the gloom, welcomed this
suggestion with delight, since, if it were so, the Prince would be
obliged to go home again. And for some little time it did appear as if
his hope were to be fulfilled, for no one came in answer to his
summons. He peered up the close; it seemed to him possible that its
upper end debouched on the Castle Hill itself. It was madness to have
come here.
The Prince himself then seized the ring and rasped it impatiently up
and down, and very soon Ewen’s heart sank again as he heard bolts
being withdrawn inside. An old serving-man opened the door a little
way and put his head out.
“Will Lady Easterhall receive her kinsman, Mr. Murray of Broughton,
and his friends?” asked Mr. Murray’s impersonator.
The ancient servitor opened the door a little wider. “Ou, ay, Mr.
Murray o’ Broughton,” he said, stifling a yawn. “Mr. Murray o’
Broughton,” he repeated, in an owl-like manner which hinted at recent
refreshment. “An’ Mr. Murray’s frien’s,” he added, with another yawn
but no motion to admit the visitors. “Hoo mony o’ ye wull there be
then—is yon anither?” For footsteps had been coming up the close, and
at the words a man passed the group, walking quickly. He did not
glance at them, and it was too dark in the alley to see faces; but
Ewen felt an uncomfortable suspicion that it was the same man who had
passed them in the Cowgate and had looked at the Prince. But no,
surely this man was shorter; moreover he had betrayed no interest in
them.
“Come, man, conduct us to Lady Easterhall,” said O’Sullivan sharply.
“Or is she abed?”
“Nay, her leddyship’s taking a hand at the cartes or playing at the
dambrod wi’ Miss Isobel. Come ben then, sirs. Which o’ ye wull be Mr.
Murray?”
But nobody answered him. They followed him towards the staircase, up
which he began laboriously to toil. “Forbye her leddyship’s no’
expectin’ Mr. Murray till the morn,” they heard him mutter to himself,
but soon he did little save cough as he panted and stumbled upwards,
pausing once to announce that whiles he had a sair hoast.
“Take heart, my Nestor,” said the Prince in Ewen’s ear, as they
arrived at the first floor. “It may be difficult to get into this
house, but I have heard that it is easy to get out of it.”
Before he could explain himself the old man had opened the door of a
large room, economically and most insufficiently lit by the flickering
firelight and a couple of candles on a small table near the hearth, at
which sat an old lady and a young playing draughts. There was no one
else in the room.
“My leddy, here’s yer leddyship’s kinsman, Mr. Murray o’ Broughton,
and a wheen frien’s tae veesit ye. Wull I bring some refreshment?”
From the island of light the old lady looked up surprised. “Ye
veesit ower late, nephew,” she said in a little, cracked, but
authoritative voice, in the Scots common even to persons of breeding.
“Nane the less ye are welcome. But did ye no get my letter the day?
Saunders, light the sconces and bring wine.” And, as one or two
candles on the walls sprang to life and the Prince took a few steps
forward, she leant from her easy chair. “Eh, John, ye’ve made a finer
figure of a man than aince I thocht ye like to do! But hae ye the
toothache that ye are sae happed up? Come and present your friends,
and I’ll make ye acquainted with Miss Isobel Cochran, your aunt
Margaret’s niece. Bestir yersel’ now wi’ the candles, Saunders—dinna
don’er, man!”
The Prince removed his cloak from the lower part of his face. “Madam,”
he said, bowing, “I must crave your pardon for having used your
great-nephew’s name as a passport. I am not Mr. Murray, and—though I
hope indeed that you will not be so cruel—I await only your word to
have your good Saunders show us the door again.”
The old lady peered still farther into the only half-dispelled
dimness. “Presairve us—wha’s gotten intil the hoose?” she exclaimed.
“Wha is’t . . . I canna see . . .”
But the girl was on her feet, the colour rushing into her face.
“Great-aunt, great-aunt, ’tis the Prince himself!”
* * * * * *
Even Ewen’s disapproval was hardly proof against the scene that
followed. Old Lady Easterhall rose tremulously on her ebony stick, her
face working almost painfully, and attempted to kneel, which the
Prince of course would not allow; while Miss Cochran, from pale that
she was become, had the colour restored to her cheeks by the salute
which he set on her hand as she rose from the deepest curtsy of her
life. In a short time Saunders, babbling joyfully, had lit every
sconce in the room, till the candle-light swam and glittered on the
well-polished furniture and the half-seen satins of the visitors’
coats, seeming to concentrate itself upon the winking star of St.
Andrew which—most ill-advisedly, thought the aide-de-camp—still
adorned the Royal breast. And when chairs had been set, and wine
brought, then at last, in a warm atmosphere of loyalty and emotion,
the Prince tactfully explained his errand.
Lady Easterhall shook her becapped head. “Ah, I jaloused ’twas not to
see an auld woman that your Royal Highness came here! But Craigmains
is no’ come yet; he wasna to reach the toun till noon the morn. I
thocht I had writ that in my letter to my nephew. Sae your Royal
Highness has come here for naething.”
The Prince’s face had indeed fallen, but he recovered himself quickly.
“Do not say that, madam. Have I not gained the pleasure of your
acquaintance, and of Miss Cochran’s, not to speak of drinking the best
claret I have tasted since I came to Edinburgh? So let us pledge the
missing guest, gentlemen, and the real Murray shall deal with him
to-morrow.”
On which, lifting his glass, he drank again, and Colonel O’Sullivan
and Mr. Strickland followed his example. But Ewen did not; he had
risen, and now remained standing behind the Prince’s chair, as one
awaiting the signal to depart. Now that he had learnt the uselessness
of his escapade His Highness would no doubt speedily withdraw. But
that young gentleman showed no sign of such an intention. On the
contrary, he began in an animated manner to question Lady Easterhall
on her recollections of the Fifteen, while Miss Cochran’s hand played
nervously with the neglected draughtsmen on the little table, though
her eyes, wide and glamour-stricken, never left the unbidden guest.
She at least, even if she knew it not, was uneasy.
And after a few minutes the Prince became aware of his aide-de-camp’s
attitude. He turned his head.
“What a plague ails you, Captain Cameron, standing there like a
grenadier! Sit down, man, and do not so insult our hostess’s excellent
vintage.”
“I had rather, with Your Highness’s and Lady Easterhall’s leave,”
replied Captain Cameron, “post myself in some part of the house whence
I can get a view of the approach to it. Does not the close run up
towards the Castle Hill, madam?”
“You are very nervous, sir,” commented O’Sullivan, half-sneeringly.
“Why should the nearness of the Castle trouble Lady Easterhall, since
his Royal Highness’s presence cannot possibly be known there? And of
what use is the guard at the Weighhouse—your own clansmen, too—if they
cannot prevent the garrison from coming out?”
But Lady Easterhall herself seemed of Ewen’s opinion. “The young
gentleman is verra richt,” she declared. “He shall keep watch if he’s
minded tae, though, as ye say, sir, the Castle’s little likely to
trouble my hoose. Isobel, gang ye with Captain Cameron and show him
the best windy for the purpose. Though even if they should send a
picket here,” she added smiling, “His Royal Highness and all could be
oot of the hoose before they could win entrance. There’s a secret
stair, gentlemen, leads frae this verra room doun under the hoose to a
bit door in the West Bow, and the entry to’t lies ahint yon screwtore
at the side of the chimley, sae ye may be easy.”
All eyes turned towards the spot indicated, where, not far from
the hearth, an ebony writing-table with inlay of metal and
tortoiseshell—evidently a French importation—stood against the
panelling. “A secret stair!” exclaimed the Prince, and, in a lower
tone, “_ma foi_, rumour was right!—You hear, Ardroy? So now you need
not deprive us of your society . . . nor of Miss Cochran’s.”
“Miss Cochran’s I need not in any case take from your Royal Highness,”
responded Ewen, preparing to leave the room, “for I doubt not I can
find a suitable look out without troubling her. But, even with the
secret stair, I think it would be better to post a sentry.” A laugh
from O’Sullivan followed him as he closed the door, and stirred his
simmering wrath against the Quartermaster-General and Strickland to a
still higher temperature. That they should without remonstrance allow
the Prince to remain here, under the very shadow of the Castle, for no
more valid object than to drink Lady Easterhall’s claret—and, of
course, to give her pleasure by the honour done to her—was monstrous!
It was true that it needed a certain amount of skill and courage to
make a dash from the Castle, on account of the Highland guards in its
neighbourhood, but it was dark, and he was still uneasy about the man
who had passed them in the close.
The landing and stairway were ill lit, and he hesitated; he had better
summon Saunders, perhaps. Then the door behind him opened and shut, a
rather timid voice said, “Captain Cameron!” and turning, he beheld
Miss Isobel Cochran with a lighted candle in her hand.
“I came, sir, because I thought you would need this.” She held it out
none too steadily. “Oh, sir, you are the only one right of all of us!
The Prince should not bide longer; it is too dangerous.”
“So I think,” said Ewen, looking down at her gravely. “I thank you,
Miss Cochran.” He took the light from her. “Could you not persuade
Lady Easterhall to hasten his departure?”
“Hardly,” answered the girl regretfully. “You can see what it means to
her to have the Prince under her roof. . . . If you will go along that
passage, sir, you will find a window out of which you can see some way
up the close. . . . Stay, I will show you, since I am here.”
She slipped along the passage in front of him, and he followed with
the candlestick.
“There,” said Miss Cochran, “this window.” She unlatched it, Ewen
setting down the light at some distance. He saw the girl put her head
out . . . and then draw back, her hand over her mouth as though to
stifle a scream. “Too late, too late already! Look, look!”
Ewen leaned out. Down the dark alley, already echoing to the quick
tramp of feet, a file of soldiers were advancing two by two, an
officer leading. He drew in his head.
“Go back at once and warn the Prince, madam. I will stay a moment to
watch. Blow out the light, if you please; I do not want them to see
me.”
Obeying him, the girl fled, while Ewen, crouching by the open window,
held his breath as the heavy, hasty footsteps drew nearer and nearer,
and he was looking down at last on three-cornered hats and tilted
bayonets. There were fully a score of soldiers, and they _were_
stopping at Lady Easterhall’s entrance; he saw the officer raise a
lantern to make sure of the door. Waiting no longer, he ran back along
the passage and pelted down the stairs. “Saunders, Saunders!”
Fortunately the old man heard him at once and emerged from some lair
of his own on the ground-floor. “What’s to do, sir?”
“There are soldiers from the Castle at the door. Don’t admit them, on
your life! They are after . . . ‘Mr. Murray’. Is the door stout?”
“No’ by-ordinar’ stout. Dod, they’ll be for coming in; nae doot o’
that!” For a sword-hilt, it might have been, was clamouring on the
door. “If I’m no’ tae open, they’ll ding the door doun!”
“Let them,” commanded Ewen. “’Twill take some time to do it. And
remember, you know nothing at all about her ladyship’s visitors!”
He ran up again, thanking Heaven with all his heart for the secret
passage and its exit in a spot where the redcoats would never dare to
show their faces—since there was a Highland post in the West Bow also.
Three minutes, perhaps, had elapsed since the first discovery and Miss
Cochran’s return to the drawing-room; Ewen hoped, therefore, as he
burst into that apartment, to find no one but the ladies remaining. To
his dismay, however, they were all there, in a group against the wall
on the right of the hearth. The writing-table had been pushed aside,
Strickland was holding a candle close to a panel, and O’Sullivan
seemed to be struggling with something in the carving of this. Lady
Easterhall, looking incredibly old, was clinging to her great-niece,
and the eyes of both were fixed agonisedly on the Irishman and his
efforts. The Prince, though he too was watching O’Sullivan narrowly,
appeared the most unconcerned of the five.
“Ah, Ardroy, it seems you were justified of your nervousness, then,”
he observed coolly. “And the spring of the panel is unfortunately
stiff. It is long, evidently,” he added in a lower tone, “since a
lover left this house by that road!”
“The soldiers are at the door,” said Ewen in a stifled voice. His
heart felt like hot lead within him; was all to end thus, so foolishly
and so soon? The dull sound of battering came up from below.
“Let Miss Cochran try,” suggested the Prince. “I think it is rather
skill than strength which is needed.” And O’Sullivan relinquished his
place to the girl. He was very pale, and Strickland had obvious
difficulty in keeping the candle upright.
“Isobel, Isobel, can ye no’ stir it?” exclaimed Lady Easterhall,
wringing her old hands.
The girl’s slender fingers were striving with the boss of carved
woodwork which concealed the spring. “O God!” she whispered, and shut
her eyes. “Is there no other possible hiding-place——” Ewen was
beginning in desperation when, with a loud grinding noise, the panel
ran back, revealing a dark wall and the first few steps of a winding
stair which plunged steeply downwards.
“Quick!” said O’Sullivan, seizing Strickland by the arm. “You first,
to light the stair. Now, your Highness!” The Prince stepped through
the aperture and O’Sullivan himself followed. But Ewen lingered a
moment on the threshold of safety.
“Madam,” he said earnestly to the shaken old lady, “if I may advise,
do not you or Miss Cochran stay a moment longer in this room! To be in
your bedchambers retiring for the night, when the soldiers succeed in
forcing an entrance, as I fear they will, is the best answer you can
make to the charge of entertaining the Prince. Do not, I beg of you,
be found here—for he has still to get clear of the house!”
“Ye’re richt,” said Lady Easterhall. The frozen terror had left her
face now. “’Tis you hae had the wits all along, young sir! In wi’ ye!
Noo, Isobel, pit tae the door—and then let’s rin for it!”
Behind Ewen came grinding and a snap, and he was left in almost
complete darkness to find his way as best he could down the stair.
Somewhere below he heard echoing steps and cautious voices, so the
Prince and his companions were still in the house. There must, indeed,
be a passage as well as a stair if one was to emerge into the West Bow
right on the other side of it. For him there was no hurry; it was just
as well to play rear-guard. He started leisurely to descend, feeling
his way by the newel, and hoping that he would never again go through
another five minutes like the last.
He had certainly not accomplished more than a dozen steps of the
descent when he stopped and stiffened, his heart jumping into his
throat. There had suddenly floated down from above an ominous
dragging, rasping sound which he had heard too recently not to
recognise. It was the panel sliding open again! Had the soldiers found
it already? It seemed almost impossible.
Tugging at his sword, Ewen half leapt, half stumbled, up the dark
twisting stair again, and was met by an oblong of light, barred across
its lower half by the replaced writing-table. But, as he was instantly
aware, the room, though still brilliantly lit—for there had been no
time to extinguish the sconces—was empty, and silent save for the
sounds of furious battering which came up from below through its
closed door. It was clear what had happened. The spring of the secret
entrance, damaged perhaps, had failed to catch, and after the hurried
departure of the two ladies it had released the panel again . . . and
so the first thing to attract the notice of anyone entering the room
would be that yawning gap in the wall.
Ewen sprang at the sliding door and tried to push it to again, but on
its smooth inner surface there was nothing by which to get sufficient
purchase. Closed it must be, at whatever cost, and on whichever side
of it he was left. He thrust aside the escritoire, stepped out into
the room, and pressed the boss which concealed the spring. The panel
obediently returned . . . to within half an inch of its place. By
getting hold of a projecting line of carving with his nails, Ewen
feverishly contrived to push it completely home, but was instantly
aware that it would no longer engage itself securely in whatever
mechanism usually kept it fast there—in short that, having first
refused to open, it now refused to shut. And if the Prince were not
yet clear of the passage down below, if the fastenings of the door
into the West Bow, for instance, were rusty from disuse, as well they
might be, he would yet be taken.
There was a final crash from below; the door was undoubtedly down and
the invaders in the house. If only the existence of the sliding panel
could be concealed for a few moments longer! To stand before it sword
in hand (as was Ewen’s impulse) were only to advertise its presence.
He looked round in desperation. Perhaps the corner of the escritoire,
pressed well against the line of carving, would eliminate that
betraying crack in the woodwork? Yes, the escritoire was sufficiently
heavy to keep the panel in place, and, provided that it was not itself
moved away from its position, all might yet be well . . . though not
for him, who must now throw himself to the wolves to keep the secret
inviolate.
To ensure that the writing-table stayed as he had put it he must be
near it, and have a reasonable excuse, too, for his position. The most
natural was the best; so, throwing off his hat and cloak, he pulled up
a chair, sat down—unfortunately this necessitated his having his back
to the door—and, seizing a sheet of paper and a quill, began hastily
to write a letter. His heart might be beating faster than usual, but
his hand, as he saw with pleasure, was quite steady.
“My dear Aunt Margaret,—I told you in my last Letter of the Victory
gain’d——” They were coming up the stairs now, and at the noise of
their approach he realised how unnatural it would look to be found
writing a letter in the midst of such a disturbance as had been going
on below. He let his head sink forward on his arm as if he were
overcome by sleep; and so was sitting when a second or two later the
door was flung violently open, heavy feet came tumbling in, and there
was a triumphant shout of “Here’s one o’ them, sir.”
Ewen judged it time to wake. He lifted his head and turned in his
chair with a start; and then sprang to his feet in simulated
astonishment. “_Soldiers!_ What are you doing here?”
There were a sergeant and three men of Lascelles’ regiment in Lady
Easterhall’s drawing-room, and the sergeant advanced resolutely
towards the tall gentleman in amber satin. “’Tis for us to ask that of
you, sir.” Then he stopped, his face lighting up with a sort of
incredulous joy. “Lord, it’s him himself!” he exclaimed. “Call the
officer quick, one of ye! Bide where ye are, sir,” he said with a
mixture of triumph and respect. “If ye don’t stir ye’ll not be
harmed.”
Ewen saw that the man took him for the Prince—a mistake well worth
encouraging if possible, though it was not very likely that an officer
from the Castle would make the same mistake. In any case he had no
intention of stirring from his place; as it was he imagined that the
crack of the panel was widening behind his back, and dared not turn
his head to look. What would be the end of this? Edinburgh Castle and
captivity, at the best; perhaps a fate even less agreeable.
Ah, here was the officer pushing eagerly through the soldiers round
the doorway. One glance at the figure in front of the escritoire and
that eagerness was wiped away.
“That is not the Prince, you fool!” he said to the sergeant. “What was
he doing when you came in—did he offer any resistance?”
Through the sergeant’s reply that the gentleman was sitting at the
table and seemed to be asleep, Ewen was striving not to manifest a
surprise which, this time, was perfectly genuine. For, however he had
become part of the marooned garrison of Edinburgh Castle, his captor
was no officer of Lascelles’ regiment from that fortress; he was
Captain Keith Windham of the Royal Scots.
CHAPTER III
But Ewen’s own powder, satin and lace were, apparently, as good as a
disguise to him, for it was quite clear that Captain Windham had not
recognised in this fine gentleman the tartan-clad victor of Loch Oich
side, nor even his seven days’ host—no, even though he was now looking
at his capture more directly, and saying, with military abruptness,
“You are my prisoner, sir!”
Ewen drew himself up. “By what right, if you please?” he demanded. “By
what right indeed do you break at all into a private house? The Lord
Provost shall know of this to-morrow,” he went on, with a sudden idea
of passing himself off as an ordinary peaceful burgess. “The Lord
Provost shall know of it, and will require an explanation from General
Guest.”
Alas, his voice, at any rate, was not unfamiliar, like his hair and
costume. Captain Windham suddenly strode forward, gave an exclamation,
and recoiled a little. “What! It is _you_, Ardroy! Then I know
that the Pretender’s son is in this house, for you are one of his
aides-de-camp! Sergeant, leave a couple of men here, and search the
next floor with the others; I will follow in a moment.”
“Is that your pretext for breaking into an old lady’s house at this
hour of night?” asked Ewen with a fine show of indignation, as the
sergeant withdrew. “Surely you know the way to Holyrood House, Captain
Windham—though in truth it may not be so easy to force an entrance
there!”
In spite of his anxiety he was able to view with pleasure Captain
Windham’s visible annoyance at this speech.
“Mr. Cameron,” said the soldier, with a steely light in his eyes, “I
am not to be played with like this! The Pretender’s son, with three
companions, was seen to enter this house a short while——”
“I am sorry to disappoint you, sir,” broke in Ewen, “but it was _I_
who entered with three companions. As you see, I have just been
mistaken anew for the Prince. My three friends have left—yes, those
are their wineglasses on the table—Lady Easterhall has retired, and
I was beginning to write a letter when I fell into the doze which your
noisy and illegal entry has cut short.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Keith starkly, though at the mention of
the letter his eyes had strayed for a second to the escritoire—and
Ewen immediately wished he had not called attention to it. “Nor do I
believe that our informant mistook you for the Pretender’s son; tall
though he is, you are much taller. He is somewhere hidden in this
house.”
“Tall . . . taller . . .” observed Ewen meditatively. “Ah, yes, I was
forgetting your opportunities of observation at Glenfinnan. I suppose
you were able to tell them his exact height at Fort William after you
had so craftily given me the slip.”
This effort at provoking an argument about the ethics of that action
was unsuccessful, though he could see that his late prisoner did not
relish the expression which he had applied to it. But Captain Windham
merely repeated, with more emphasis, “He is somewhere hidden in this
house!”
“If so, then perhaps you will have the good fortune to find and
recognise him,” said Ewen with an air of levity. “Or if not His Royal
Highness, one of the other two, perhaps.”
“I have no doubt I shall,” replied Keith shortly. “Meanwhile—your
sword, if you please, Mr. Cameron!”
This object Ewen had not the slightest intention of surrendering. But
any kind of parley with the enemy gained time, which was the important
matter. So, after a long look at the floor, as though seeking counsel
there, he put his hand to the hilt, and very slowly drew the
small-sword from its velvet sheath. But, once the blade was out, his
fingers retained their grip.
“After all, I find that I dislike making you an unconditional gift of
it,” he announced coolly, while the candle light played menacingly up
and down the steel. “But I cannot prevent your _taking_ it, Captain
Windham—if you think it worth the trouble.” And with his free hand he
tucked his lace ruffle out of the way.
But, as he had expected—half hoped, yet half feared, for at bottom he
was pining for a fight—the Prince’s pursuer did not wish to engage
either himself or his men in personal conflict while part of the house
still remained unexplored. “I’ll deal with you later, Mr. Cameron,” he
replied curtly, and turned to the soldiers. “See that the prisoner
does not move from that spot, men. I am going to fasten the door.” He
went out and, sure enough, could be heard to bolt the door on the
outside.
Ewen smiled to himself to think how little he desired to quit his
self-chosen position. “You’ll not object to my sitting down, I hope?”
he observed politely to his two guardians, and, turning round the
chair from which he had risen—casting, too, a quick glance at the
panel behind him, still in place—he sat down, facing his gaolers, his
sword across his knees. Though they had no orders to that effect, he
thought it just possible that they might attempt to disarm him, but
they showed no sign of such a desire, standing stiffly by the door
with their muskets and screwed bayonets, and glancing nervously at him
out of the corners of their eyes, mere young north-country English
lads, overawed by his dress and his air. Had they not been there,
however, he could have decamped through the secret door, and what a
charming surprise that would have been for Captain Windham when he
returned—Fassefern House the other way round! But on second thoughts
Ewen was obliged to admit to himself that this withdrawal would not
have been feasible in any case, because he could not close the panel
from the inside.
Meanwhile Captain Windham, in pursuit of a prey already (please God!)
out of the snare, was presumably searching Lady Easterhall’s
bedchamber, and, a still more delicate matter, Miss Cochran’s. Ewen
could not suppose that the task would be to his liking, and the
thought of his opponent’s embarrassment afforded him much pleasure, as
he sat there with one silk-stockinged leg crossed over the other. His
ill-temper had gone. Too young a man to have at all enjoyed the rôle
of disapproving critic forced upon him this evening, with his two
elders covertly sneering at his prudence, and even the Prince amused
at him, he was more than relieved to be free of his ungrateful part.
Events had most amply justified his attitude, and now, with rising
spirits, he was free to try what his wits—and perhaps, in the end,
his arm—could accomplish against Captain Windham and his myrmidons. It
was true that, short of getting himself killed outright, he did not
see much prospect of escaping imprisonment in the Castle, but at any
rate he might first have the satisfaction of a good fight—though it
was to be regretted that he had not his broadsword instead of this
slender court weapon. Still, to get the chance of using it against
what he knew to be overwhelming odds was better than having to submit
to being told that he had an old head on young shoulders!
Sooner than he had expected he heard returning feet, and now Captain
Windham and he would really come to grips! It was by this time, he
guessed, some twenty minutes since the Prince had slipped down the
stair, and, provided that there had been no difficulty about exit, he
must be almost back at Holyrood House by this time. But one could not
be sure of that. And in any case Ewen had no mind to have the way he
took discovered. Here, at last, was an opportunity of repaying to
Captain Windham the discomfiture which he had caused him last August
over his expired parole, perhaps even of wiping out, somehow, the
insult of the money which he had left behind. The young man waited
with rather pleasurable anticipations.
And Captain Windham came in this time, as Ewen knew he would, with an
overcast brow and a set mouth. He was followed in silence by the
sergeant and five men, so that the room now contained nine soldiers in
all.
“Ah, I was afraid that you would have no luck,” observed Ewen
sympathetically. He was still sitting very much at his ease, despite
his drawn sword. “A pity that you would not believe me. However, you
have wasted time.”
Keith Windham shot a quick, annoyed, questioning glance at him,
but made no reply. His gaze ran rapidly round Lady Easterhall’s
drawing-room, but there was in it no article of furniture large enough
to afford a hiding-place to a man, and no other visible door. He
turned to the two soldiers whom he had left there. “Has the prisoner
made any suspicious movement?”
“He has not moved from yonder chair,” he was assured in a strong
Lancashire accent.
“And yet this is the room they were in,” muttered the Englishman to
himself, looking at the disordered chairs and the used wineglasses.
After frowning for a moment he started to tap the panelling on his
side of the room, a proceeding which made Ewen uneasy. Had they heard
up at the Castle of the existence of a secret passage somewhere in
this house? It was unpleasantly possible. But when Captain Windham
came to the three windows giving on to the Grassmarket he naturally
desisted. And the farther side of the room—that where Ewen and his
writing-table were situated—faced, obviously, down the close by which
the soldiers had entered, so (if the Highlander followed his reasoning
correctly) Captain Windham concluded that there was no room there for
a hiding-place, and did not trouble to sound the wall.
Ewen, however, judged it time to rise from his chair. “I told you,
Captain Windham, that my friends had gone,” he remarked, brushing some
fallen powder off his coat. “Will you not now take your own departure,
and allow an old lady to resume the rest which I suppose you have just
further disturbed?”
He saw with satisfaction that the invader (who was, after all, a
gentleman) did not like that thrust. However, the latter returned it
by responding dryly: “You can render that departure both speedier and
quieter, Mr. Cameron, by surrendering yourself without resistance.”
“And why, pray, should I be more accommodating than you were last
August?” enquired Ewen with some pertinence.
Keith Windham coloured. “To bring back the memory of that day, sir, is
to remind me that you then put me under a deep obligation, and to make
my present task the more odious. But I must carry it out. Your sword,
if you please!”
Ewen shrugged his shoulders in the way Miss Cameron condemned as
outlandish. “I had no intention, sir, of reminding you of an
obligation which I assure you I had never regarded as one. But why
_should_ I render your task, as you call it, more pleasant? And why
make a task of it at all? The Prince, as you see, is not here, and
Generals Guest and Preston will find me a very disappointing
substitute.”
Keith Windham came nearer and dropped his voice. His face looked
genuinely troubled. “I wish, Ardroy, for your own sake, that you would
let me take you unharmed! Take you I must; you are a chieftain and the
Prince’s aide-de-camp, as I happen to know. It is the fortune of war,
as it was last August, when our positions were reversed. So, for the
sake of the courtesy and hospitality which I then received from you——”
“My sorrow!” burst out Ewen. “Must my past good conduct, as you are
pleased to consider it, lead to my undoing now? . . . And I very much
doubt whether our positions _are_ reversed, and whether any further
disturbance—and you have made not a little already—do not bring the
guard from the West Bow about your ears. If I might give advice in my
turn, it would be to get back to the Castle while yet you can!”
“Thank you,” said Keith with extreme dryness; “we will. Sergeant, have
your men secure the prisoner.”
He stood back a little. Ewen had already decided in the event of a
fight to abandon his post by the writing-table, where, on one side at
least, he could be taken in flank, and where any shifting of the table
itself, highly probable in a struggle, would cause the panel to reveal
its secret. (Not that that would greatly matter now.) Immediately the
Englishman stepped back, therefore, he darted across the room and
ensconced himself in the corner by the nearest window, hastily
wrapping his cloak, which he had snatched up for the purpose, round
his left arm. His eyes sparkled; he was going to have his fight!
“I am ready,” he remarked cheerfully, seeing the much slower
preparations of his assailants. “Is it to be a charge with the
bayonet, or are you going to use the butt, my friends?”
“You’ll not use either!” said Keith sharply to his men. “I do not wish
this gentleman injured.”
“Then make him put up his sword, sir,” retorted the sergeant in
justifiable indignation. “Else it’s ourselves will be injured, I’m
thinking!”
Ewen was about to endorse this opinion when a familiar and most
welcome sound came to him through the closed window behind him. No
mistaking that strain; and that the soldiers should hear it too he
turned a little and dashed his elbow, protected by the curtain,
through the nearest pane of glass. In it flowed, wailing and menacing,
the Cameron rant: ‘Sons of the dogs, come hither, come hither and you
shall have flesh . . .’
“I think you had best call off your men altogether, Captain Windham,
if they are to save their own skins!” And in the uneasy silence which
he had procured Ewen added, with some exultation, “It is my own clan,
the Camerons; they are coming down the West Bow into the Grassmarket.
There will not be much left of you, my good fellows, if you so much as
scratch me!” And, seeing the effect of his words, he tugged aside the
curtain, flung open the partly shattered casement, and called out in
Gaelic to the line of kilted figures just emerging from the West Bow.
The long yell of the slogan answered him as he swung quickly back on
guard. But there was no need of his sword. Prestonpans had taught the
Castle garrison exaggerated terror of those who uttered such cries.
The soldiers, the sergeant included, were already huddling towards the
door, and Keith Windham was not in time to get between them and the
exit. He stamped his foot in fury.
“Do your duty, you dirty cowards!” he shouted, pointing at the figure
by the window. But a second heartshaking yell came up from the
Grassmarket: ‘_Chlanna nan con, thigibh an so, thigibh an so . . ._’
Perfectly deaf to their officer’s objurgations, the English soldiers
were occupied only with the question of which should be first from the
room. Keith seized the last fugitive by the collar, but the only
result of this appeal to force was that the man, who was very
powerful, shook him off, thrust him back with small regard for his
rank, and banged the door behind himself. Captain Windham, livid,
threw himself upon the handle to pluck it open again—but the knob
merely turned in his hand. The violent slam had evidently shot to the
bolt on the outside. Hunter and quarry—only now it was hard to know
which was which—were equally prisoners.
Ewen, over at the window, laughed aloud; he could not help it. “You
seem always to be unfortunate in your men, Captain Windham,” he
remarked, and, shaking the cloak off his left arm, slid his blade back
into the scabbard. “I fear it is I who shall have to ask you for
_your_ sword. Would you prefer to give it up to me before the guard
arrives?”
He got it . . . but not in the fashion which he had expected. Keith,
quite beside himself with mortification and rage, had already whipped
out his weapon while Ewen, with bent head, was sheathing his own, and
now, really blind to the fact that the Highlander was for the moment
defenceless and off his guard, Captain Windham sprang furiously at him
without warning of any sort. Ewen had no chance to draw again, no
space to spring aside, no time for anything but to catch wildly at the
blade in the hope of diverting it. At the cost of a badly cut right
hand he succeeded in saving himself from being spitted, and the
deflected point, sliding through his clutching fingers, went by his
hip into the panelling where, both men loosing their hold at the same
moment, the weapon stuck for the fraction of a second, and then fell
ringing to the floor.
Horrified and sobered, Keith had sprung back; Ewen, after a first
instinctive movement to catch him by the throat, had checked himself,
and, clasping his bleeding hand tightly with the other, leant back
against the wall and looked at him with a mixture of sternness and
enquiry. His breath was coming rather quickly, but, compared with his
assailant, he was the image of calm.
“My God!” stammered the Englishman, as white as a sheet. “I never saw
. . .” He indicated Ardroy’s sheathed sword. “I might have killed you.
. . .” He took a long breath and drew a hand across his eyes. Still
looking at him curiously his victim fished out his lace-bordered
handkerchief and began to wrap it round his palm, a very inadequate
precaution, for in a moment the cambric was crimson.
In another Keith was at his side. “How deeply is it cut? Let me . . .”
And he pulled out his own more solid handkerchief.
“I don’t know,” answered Ewen composedly, putting back his Mechlin
ruffle, which had slipped down again. “Pretty deeply, it seems.” He
surrendered his hand. “Thanks; over mine then—tie it tighter still.”
“Good God, I might have killed you!” said Keith again under his breath
as he bandaged and knotted. “I . . . I lost my temper, but, as
Heaven’s my witness, I thought you had your sword out.”
“Why, so I had, a moment earlier,” replied Ewen. “You did not intend
murder, then?”
“I deserve that you should think so,” murmured the soldier, still very
much shaken. “Perhaps as it is I have disabled you for life.”
Ewen had nearly retorted, “Why should that trouble you?” but he was so
much astonished at the depth of feeling in his enemy’s tone that he
merely stared at his bent head as he tied the last knot.
“These handkerchiefs are not enough,” said Keith suddenly,
relinquishing the wounded hand. He pushed aside the little brass
gorget at his neck, untied and unwound his own lace cravat, and bound
that over all. Then he stood back.
“You will soon get attention now, Ardroy. Keep your hand up, so. . . .
There is my sword.” He made a jerky movement towards the floor, and
walking abruptly away to the hearth, stood there with his back turned.
For a moment or two Ewen also stood quite still where he was, looking
at that back. That Captain Windham was ashamed of his attack on a
practically unarmed man he could understand; he would have had
precisely the same scruples in his place, and he would certainly have
felt the same rage and humiliation had he been deserted by his
followers in so disgraceful a manner (though he could not imagine
Highlanders ever acting so). And, observing the dejection revealed in
Captain Windham’s attitude, where he stood with bowed head and folded
arms by the dying fire, and the complete absence in him of any of that
mocking irony with which he himself had more than once made
acquaintance at Ardroy, Ewen began to feel less vindictive about the
incident of the guineas. Captain Windham, being an Englishman, did not
understand Highland pride, and had probably never intended any insult
at all. And now, with this sudden turning of the tables, he was again
a prisoner, made in rather an absurd and ignominious fashion. Ewen
could find it in his heart to be sorry for him. And what would be the
advantage of yet another prisoner? The officers taken at Gladsmuir had
had to be paroled and sent away. . . .
He picked up the fallen sword, faintly smeared with red along its
edges, and went over to the hearth.
“Captain Windham!”
The scarlet-clad figure turned. “Your Camerons are very tardy!” he
said with a bitter intonation. “Or are those yells all we are to know
of them?” It was indeed sufficiently surprising that the rescuers had
not entered the house some minutes ago, particularly as the door was
broken open.
Ewen listened. “I think that they are possibly chasing . . . a
retreating enemy. But in any case”—he held out Keith’s sword—“I cannot
stomach taking advantage of your being left in the lurch by those
rascals. Put on your sword again, and I’ll convey you safely out of
the house.”
A dull flush swept over the English soldier’s face. “You mean that I
am to run the gauntlet of those caterans, when they return, under your
protection? No; I have been humiliated enough this evening; it would
be less galling to go as a prisoner. Keep my sword; ’tis the second of
mine you have had, Mr. Cameron.”
Yes, he was sore, and no wonder! Ewen decided that he would not even
mention the objectionable guineas. “I cannot hold this sword much
longer,” he said lightly, “having but the one hand at present.—No, the
caterans shall not see you at all, Captain Windham, and you shall go
alone. Only, for Heaven’s sake, be quick, for some of them must soon
be here!”
Bewildered, half reluctant, Keith closed his fingers on the hilt held
out to him, and Ewen drew him to the escritoire on the right of the
hearth. When he pushed it aside the panel behind slid slowly back.
Keith Windham stood before the gap momentarily speechless. “That,
then——” he began at last, thickly.
“Yes, that is the way my friends went. But you can use the same road.
It comes out, I understand, in the West Bow; there you will have to
trust to chance, but it seems a dark night. Here, take my cloak,”—he
went and picked it up—“’twill cover your uniform. And you must have a
candle to light you down.”
To these directions and the proffered candlestick and cloak the
baffled hunter paid no heed. “Your friends!” he said between his
teeth. “The Pretender’s son, you mean! He _was_ here this evening,
then, in this very room!”
“Yes, but he was gone a little time before you entered,” answered Ewen
soothingly. “I was only troubled lest the door should slide open and
betray the path he took. But ’tis of no moment now.”
“No, it’s of no moment now!” repeated Windham bitterly. Wrath,
reluctant admiration, disappointment and concern for what he had so
nearly done—and not in fair fight—to the man before him strove openly
in his tone as he went on: “Is this your revenge for——”—he pointed to
the swathed right hand—“and for my outwitting you last August? It’s a
sharp one, for all that it’s generous. . . . Yes, you have fairly
outmanœuvred me, Ardroy, with your secret stair and your clansmen so
pat to the moment, like a stage play! But I warn you that this mumming
will turn to grim earnest some day; there’ll be a bloody curtain to
the comedy, and you will regret that ever you played a part in it!”
“That depends, does it not, on how many more battles of Gladsmuir we
have?” retorted Ewen, with a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his
eyes. “But go—go!” for at last there had come a rush of feet up the
stairs, and the rescue party (oblivious of the bolt) were hammering
upon the door with cries. He thrust the candlestick and the cloak—the
Prince’s cloak—into the Englishman’s hands, calling out something in
Gaelic over his shoulder the while. “Go—they’ll have the door down in
another minute!”
He almost pushed Captain Windham into the aperture, pressed the
spring, and wedged the returning panel with the table, only a second
or two before the unfortunate door of Lady Easterhall’s drawing-room
fell inwards with a crash, and Cameron kilts plunged over it.
CHAPTER IV
Walking home with her father next day up the crowded Canongate after
rain, Miss Alison Grant suddenly became aware of a tall Highland
officer striding up the street some way ahead. From the occasional
glimpses of him, which were all that she was able to obtain in the
moving throng, it seemed to be her betrothed; but, if so, he was
carrying his right arm in a sling. This was disturbing. Moreover Ewen,
if it were he—and at any rate the officer was a Cameron—was walking at
such a pace that Alison and her parent would never overtake him,
unless indeed he were on his way to visit them where they lodged in
Hyndford’s Close, a little beyond the Netherbow.
“Papa,” whispered Alison, “let us walk quicker; yonder’s Ewen, unless
I am much mistaken, on his way to wait upon us, and he must not find
us from home.”
They quickened their pace, without much visible effect, when lo! their
quarry was brought to a standstill by two gentlemen coming downwards
who encountered and stopped him.
“Now let us go more slowly, sir,” suggested Alison, dragging at her
father’s arm. To which Mr. Grant, complying, said, “My dear, to be
alternately a greyhound and a snail is hard upon a man of my years,
nor do I understand why you should be stalking Ardroy in this
fashion.”
“Ewen _is_ rather like a stag,” thought Alison; “he carries his head
like one.—Papa,” she explained, “I want to know—I _must_ know—why he
wears his arm in a sling! Look, now that he has turned a little you
can see it plainly. And, you remember, he disappeared so strangely
last night.”
And now, crawl as they would, they must pass the three gentlemen, who
made way for them instantly, not to turn the lady with her hooped
petticoats into the swirling gutter. As Ewen—for it was he—raised his
bonnet with his left hand, Alison cast a swift and comprehensive
glance over him, though she did not pause for the fraction of a
second, but, acknowledging his salutation and those of his companions,
went on her way with dignity.
But she walked ever slower and slower, and when she came to the narrow
entrance of their close she stopped. Yet even then she did not look
back down the Canongate.
“Papa, did you hear, those gentlemen were asking Ewen what had
befallen him. I heard something about ‘disturbance’ and ‘Grassmarket’.
You saw his hand was all bandaged about. He looked pale, I thought.
What can he have been at last night—not fighting a duel, surely!”
“Well, my dear, here he is, so he can tell us—that is, if he is
disposed to do so,” observed Mr. Grant. “Good day, Ardroy; were you
coming in-bye?”
“I intended it, later on,” replied Ewen with more truth than tact,
“but——”
“But now you see that you behove to at this moment,” finished Alison
with determination, looking very significantly at his arm; and Ewen,
without another word, went obediently up the close with them, secretly
admired from above by a well-known Whig lady who happened to be at her
window, and who remarked to her maid that the Jacobite Miss lodging
overhead had a braw lover, for all he was a wild Hielandman.
And presently the wild Hielandman was standing in the middle of Mr.
Grant’s parlour, and the Jacobite Miss was declaring that she could
shake him, so little could she get out of him. “They say you can ask
anything of a Cameron save butter,” she said indignantly, “but it’s
clear that there are other things too you’ll never get from them!”
Ewen smiled down at her, screwing up his eyes in the way she loved. He
was a little pale, for the pain of his cut hand had kept him wakeful,
but he was not ill-pleased with life this afternoon.
“Yes, other people’s secrets, to wit,” he said teasingly; and then,
feigning to catch himself up, “My sorrow, have I not the unlucky
tongue to mention that word in a woman’s hearing! What I have told
you, _m’eudail_, is the truth; I had an encounter last night with some
of the Castle garrison, and my hand, as I say, was hurt—scratched, that
is, as I warrant you have sometimes scratched yourself with a needle
or a bodkin.”
“The needle’s never been threaded whose scratch required as much
bandaging as _that_!” retorted Alison, with her eyes on the muffled
member in the sling. “And what was yon I heard as I passed about a
disturbance in the Grassmarket?”
“Has she not the ears of a hare?” observed Ewen to Mr. Grant. “’Tis
true, there was a disturbance in the Grassmarket.”
“If that is so, then I’ll learn more of it before the day’s out,”
deduced Alison with satisfaction. “And you, sir, that ought to know
better, brawling in the town at such an hour! I thought the Prince had
summoned you last night. Not that I remarked your absence from the
ball,” she added. “I was quite unaware of it, I assure you, in the
society of my cousins of Glenmoriston.”
Ewen looked across at Mr. Grant and smiled. “My dear,” protested the
old gentleman, “an encounter with the Castle garrison can scarce be
called brawling. We are, it may be said, at war with them.”
“But are they not all as mild as milk up there now that the Prince has
lifted the blockade?” enquired Alison. “And how could Ewen have met
any of them in the Grassmarket? The poor men dare not show their faces
there; the place is hotching with Camerons and MacDonalds!”
“Who said I met them in the Grassmarket?” retorted Ewen. “But never
fret, Miss Curiosity; some day I’ll be free to tell you where it was.”
“Wherever it was,” said Miss Grant with decision, “I’ll be bound ’twas
you provoked the disturbance!”
Her lover continued to smile at her with real amusement. In a sense
there was truth in this last accusation. “It’s a fine character you
give me, indeed! I think I’d best be taking my leave until you
appreciate me better!” And he put out his left hand to take his bonnet
from the table where he had laid it. Something sparkled on the hand as
he moved it.
“Who gave you that ring?” exclaimed Alison. “Nay, that I have a right
to know!”
Ewen put his hand behind him. “No woman, Alison.”
“Then you can tell me who it was. . . . Come, _Eoghain mhóir_, if
there be a mystery over the ring also, why, you should not be wearing
it for all the world to see!”
“That’s true,” said Ardroy, and he relinquished his hand. “Yes, you
can take it off. ’Tis not so plain as it looks, neither. There is a
spring beneath.”
“Oh!” breathed Alison, her eyes very wide. The chased gold centre of
the ring had moved aside in the midst of the rose diamonds, and it was
a tiny miniature of the Prince which she held. “Ewen, _he_ gave you
this?”
“I did not steal it, my dear. Yes, he gave it me this morning.”
“For . . . on account of what happened last night?”
Ewen nodded. “For my prudence. You see, the Prince does not write me
down so turbulent as you do.”
There was something like tears in Alison’s eyes. “Prudence? No! It was
because you gained that ‘needle-scratch’ for him!” She kissed the
ring, and, taking the strong, passive hand, slipped it on again. “I
will not plague you any more. Does the wound pain you, dearest heart?”
* * * * * *
But next day Hector Grant came into possession of the story, more or
less correct, which was flying about Edinburgh, and presented his
sister with a fine picture of her lover, alone against a score of the
Castle redcoats, standing with his back to the secret stair hewing
down the foe until his sword broke in his hand, and the Cameron guard
rushed in only just in time to save him. And, Alison unveiling this
composition to the hero himself at their next meeting, Ewen was
constrained in the interests of truth to paint out this flamboyant
battle-piece and to substitute a more correct but sufficiently
startling scene. Alison certainly found his sober account quite lurid
enough.
“And you let the English officer go, after that!” she exclaimed
breathlessly. “But, Ewen dearest, why?”
“For one reason, because ’twas such curst ill luck that his men should
run away for the second time!” replied Ewen, settling his silken sling
more comfortably.
“For the second time?”
“I have not yet told you who the officer was. Cannot you guess?”
“Surely ’twas not . . . _Captain Windham_ . . . here in Edinburgh?”
“It was Captain Windham himself. I have no notion how he got here; it
must have been before we took the town. But I was sorry for him, poor
man, and it was quite plain that he had no real intention of killing
me; indeed he was greatly discomposed over the affair. So you must not
lay that to his charge, Alison.”
“And so you _have_ met again!” said Alison slowly, her eyes fastened
on her lover. (‘A great service’ . . . ‘a bitter grief’ . . . This was
neither.) “It was not then because of your foster-father’s prophecy
that you let him go?”
And now Ewen stared at her. “Faith, no, darling, for I had clean
forgot about it. _Dhé!_ It begins to fulfil itself then!”
Bright and cold, or wet and windy, the October days went by in
Edinburgh. Ewen’s hand healed, and that secret fear which he had
mentioned to no one save Dr. Cameron, who dressed it, that he would
never be able to grip a broadsword again, passed also. And having
waited upon Lady Easterhall and Miss Cochran a day or two after the
fracas to ask how they did (not that he had omitted to reassure
himself of this on the night itself, before he left) he then, by the
old lady’s desire, carried Alison to visit them also. And it is
possible that Miss Cochran envied Miss Grant.
But up at the Castle the days went a great deal more slowly,
particularly for Captain Keith Windham, who had little to do but to
pace the battlements and look down, as he was doing this morning, when
October was almost sped, on that unrivalled vista of which he was now
heartily sick, and remember all the mortifications, professional as
well as personal, which he had suffered there since the end of August,
when he had made his way thither from Fort William with the news of
the Highland advance. For after the startling tidings of Cope’s
avoidance of the rebels, leaving the road open before them to
Edinburgh, Keith, secure but chafing, had endured the spectacle of
vain attempts by the frightened citizens to repair and man the walls,
and to raise a body of volunteers (almost immediately disbanded lest
their lives should be endangered), and the sight of two regiments of
His Majesty’s dragoons in full flight along the Lang Dykes with no man
pursuing. Finally, to complete and symbolise the great scandal and
shock of Cope’s lightning defeat, he had with his own eyes seen,
struck defiantly into the outer gate of the Castle, the dirk of the
single Jacobite officer who on that occasion had chased a party of
terrified troopers thither like rabbits to their burrow.
On top of all this had come his own personal humiliation and
disappointment, and of this Ewen Cameron and no other had been the
cause. The soldiers of Lascelles’ regiment who had so shamefully
deserted the officer in charge of them had been severely punished, but
this did little to heal the very sore place in Captain Windham’s
memory. Sometimes it was only anger which coloured his recollections
of that scene in Lady Easterhall’s house, sometimes it was shame.
Sometimes he wondered if he had not permanently injured Ardroy, and
though, as a loyal subject of King George, he ought no doubt to have
been glad of the possibility, in view of how the hurt had been
inflicted and of the Highlander’s subsequent behaviour, the idea
filled him with a feeling far removed from satisfaction. And even
worse might easily have come of his onslaught. Keith was inclined to
shudder still when he thought of that contingency, and not merely
because, with Ewen dead or dying on the floor, he himself would have
received short shrift from the Camerons when they broke in.
How nearly he had succeeded in capturing the Prince he supposed he
would never know, but there was no doubt that it was Ardroy who had
destroyed whatever chance he might have had. Chosen as Keith had been
to lead the flying raid that evening because he was the only officer
in the Castle who had seen Charles Edward Stuart face to face, he
could then have blessed Fate for having sent him to Glenfinnan. Thus,
he had reflected as they marched stealthily down the close, does
profit come out of the unpleasant. Already he saw his name in every
news sheet as the captor of the Pretender’s son. . . . Alas, he had
merely come anew into collision with the same stubborn and generous
character, and once again, though their positions this time had seemed
to be reversed, he had had the worst of it. And on this occasion the
Highlander had shown him a new and unsuspected side of himself, for it
was Ardroy who had played with _him_, sitting so coolly in front of
that table on which hung the secret. God! if he had only guessed!
And so Keith had come back empty-handed, with the knowledge that but
for Ardroy’s quixotry he would not have come back at all. Huddled in
his enemy’s own cloak (for its real ownership, luckily for his peace
of mind, he never discovered), pushed ignominiously to safety down the
very passage by which his quarry had eluded him, he had been ever
since weighed down by a debt which was wellnigh a grievance. There
were times when he almost regretted that he had not remained and been
made prisoner . . . and always times when he asked himself why Ewen
Cameron had acted as he did. He was sure that he himself would not
have been so foolish. The days of chivalry were over; one did not go
about in this century behaving like the knights in the old romances.
An enemy was an enemy—at least to a professional soldier—and it was
one’s business to treat him as such.
The cursed part of it was that people who were insane enough to behave
as Ardroy had behaved somehow attained a position of superiority which
was distinctly galling. And galling also was it to realise, as Keith
Windham suddenly did at this moment, how much time he spent in
speculating what that curious young man might be doing down there in
the city spread out like a map. . . . Strange that he had not at first
recognised him that night—extraordinarily handsome Ardroy had looked,
and devilish cool he had kept, too, in a tight place! . . . Fool that
he was, he was at it again. Keith turned from the battlements, glad of
a diversion, for he had become aware of the approach of a wheeled
chair, which he knew to contain the aged but spirited form of General
Preston.
General George Preston, deputy-governor of Edinburgh Castle since
1715, to whom, old and infirm though he was, it was likely that his
Hanoverian Majesty owed it that that fortress had not been surrendered
to the invaders, was a veteran of Marlborough’s wars, bearing in fact
souvenirs of Ramillies which had ever since affected his health and
his prospects of promotion. He was eighty-six years of age, even older
than General Guest (now, since Cope’s flight, commander-in-chief); but
whereas that warrior had scarcely left his quarters since he had
removed for safety into the Castle, Preston, during the more strenuous
days of the ‘blockade’, had caused himself to be wheeled round in a
chair every two hours to supervise and encourage. Since Colonel Philip
Windham, Keith’s father, had also fought under Marlborough, Keith had
on one occasion asked the old soldier some questions about the great
Duke’s battles, and found Preston very ready to hold forth on them,
and in particular on that bloody fight of Malplaquet, where he had
commanded the Cameronian regiment. And Keith remembered suddenly that
the Scottish friend of his father’s after whom he himself was named
had met his death at Malplaquet, and spoke to the old soldier about
that misty John Keith of whom he knew so little.
“Aye,” said the General, a Perthshire man himself, “I wondered that ye
should bear a Scots name in front of an English, Captain Windham. I
suppose yon Keith will have been in a Scottish regiment, but I don’t
mind of him. ’Tis thirty-six years syne, ye ken—a lang time, more than
your hale lifetime, young man.”
So John Keith, who had fallen on a Flanders battlefield nearly forty
years before, became more misty than ever. But Captain Windham’s
pre-natal connection with a Scot of Malplaquet had interested old
Preston in him, and he announced an intention of reporting on the zeal
and vigilance which the officer of the Royals had displayed in the
defence of the Castle.
From his chair the old General beckoned to that officer now, and sent
his servant out of hearing.
“Captain Windham, a word in your ear!” And, as Keith stooped, he said
gleefully, “’Tis a good word, if ever there was one. I’ve every reason
to believe that Edinburgh will be free of these Highland pests the
morn!”
Keith gave an exclamation. “They are evacuating the city, sir?”
The veteran chuckled. “They intend marching for England, whence I pray
not a man of ’em will return alive. The news has just come in by a
sure hand, but I had jaloused it already. In a day or two ye’ll not
see a plaid between Greyfriars and the Nor’ Loch!”
* * * * * *
General Preston’s sure hand had carried perfectly correct tidings.
Against the wishes and the instincts of the Chiefs, Prince Charles was
about to march into England, believing that he would thus rally to his
standard those cautious English Jacobites on whose promised support he
built such large hopes, and many others too, who had made no promises,
but who would surely declare for him when he appeared in person to
lead them against their alien ruler.
And early on the morning of the first of November Ewen took his
farewell of Alison in Hyndford’s Close. Lochiel’s regiment, like the
bulk of the army, was already assembled at Dalkeith; for since
Prestonpans the Prince had never quartered troops in the city to any
great extent, and he himself was already gone. But Ewen, in order to
be with his own men in this strange country to which they were bound,
had resigned his position as aide-de-camp, and remained behind in
order to bring away the Cameron guard, who would presently march out
of Edinburgh with colours flying and the pipes playing.
But here there was no martial display, only a knowledge that this, and
not the farewell at Ardroy in August, was the real parting. Ewen was
setting off to-day for something much more portentous than a mere
rendezvous—armed invasion. Yet some unspoken instinct made them both
try to be very matter-of-fact, especially Alison.
“Here is a sprig of oak for your bonnet, Ewen—you’ll be wearing your
clan badge now, I’m thinking. I picked it yesterday.” And she fastened
beside the eagle’s feathers a little bunch of sere leaves. “And see, I
have made you a new cockade . . . I doubt you’ll get your clothes
mended properly. England’s a dour place, I’m sure. Oh, I wish you were
not crossing the Border!”
“Nothing venture, nothing win,” replied Ewen tritely, looking down at
his bonnet, about which her fingers were busy. “I doubt, for my part,
that those oakleaves will bide long on their stalks, Alison, but you
may be sure I’ll wear them as long as they do. And the cockade—’tis a
very fine one, my dear—I’ll bring back to you somehow. Or maybe you’ll
get your first sight of it again in London!”
“I wonder will you meet Captain Windham anywhere in England?” said
Alison.
“How that fellow runs in your head, my darling! I vow I shall soon be
jealous of him. And I marching away and leaving him here in the
Castle—for I suppose he is there still. Make him my compliments if you
should meet him before setting out for Ardroy,” said Ewen, smiling.
For to Ardroy were his betrothed and her father retiring in a day or
two.
“Ewen,” said the girl seriously, taking him by the swordbelt that
crossed his breast, “will you not tell me something? Was there ever a
danger that, from the injury Captain Windham did you, you might never
have had the full use of your hand again?”
“Why, what put that notion into your head?”
“A word you let fall once, and an expression on Dr. Cameron’s face one
day when I mentioned the hurt to him.”
“For a day or two Archie did think it might be so,” conceded her lover
rather unwillingly. “And I feared it myself for longer than that, and
was in a fine fright about it, as you may imagine.—But, Alison,” he
added quickly, as, exclaiming, “Oh, my poor darling!” she laid her
head against him, “you are not to cast that up against Captain
Windham. It was I that took hold of his blade, as I told you, and I am
sure that he never meant——”
“No, no,” cried Alison, lifting her head, “you mistake me. No, I am
glad of what you tell me, because that hurt he did you is perhaps the
fulfilment of the ‘bitter grief’ which Angus said that he should
cause you . . . only happily it is averted,” she added, taking his
right hand and looking earnestly at the two red, puckered seams across
palm and fingers. “For that _would_ have caused you bitter grief,
Ewen, my darling.” She covered the scars with her own soft little
hands, held the captive hand to her breast, and went on, eagerly
pursuing her exegesis. “Indeed, if for a time you believed that you
would be disabled always—how dare you have kept that from me?—he has
already caused you great grief . . . and so, that part is over, and
now he will only do you a service!”
But Ewen, laughing and touched, caught her to him with his other arm.
“The best service Captain Windham can do is never to let me see his
face again, or I may remember how angry I was with him when I found
his letter and his guineas that night at Fassefern. Nor do I think
he’ll want to see mine, for in his soul he was not best pleased, I’ll
undertake, at being so lightly let off the other evening and shown
down the very secret stair he could not find.—But now, _mo chridhe_,
do not let us talk of the tiresome fellow any more. . . .”
And five minutes later, when Hector Grant in his French uniform
appeared at the door, they had forgotten everything except that they
were parting.
“Come, Ardroy, you’ll be left behind,” he called gaily. “Dry your
tears, Alison, and let him go; we’ve eight good miles to cover.”
“I was not greeting, never think it,” said Alison as she was released.
“But oh, I’m wishing sore I could come with you two!”
“Indeed, I wish you could,” said Hector. “For I doubt the English
ladies cannot dance the reel.”
Alison looked from her brother to her lover and back again. She might
not have been crying, but there was little gaiety in her. “There’ll be
more than dancing over the Border, Hector!”
“There’ll be better than dancing, you mean, my lass,” said Hector
Grant, and his left hand fell meaningly on his sword-hilt. “I suppose
I may take a kiss of her, Ardroy?”
III
THE EBB
“Then all went to wreck.”
—_The Lyon in Mourning_.
CHAPTER I
There was a bitter wind sweeping across the Beauly Firth, and
Inverness on the farther shore lay shivering under a leaden sky. The
Kessock ferryman had to tug at his oars, although he carried but one
passenger, a gaunt, broad-shouldered young man, fully armed, who sat
looking across at the little town with rather harassed blue eyes.
Four months—four months and a week over—for to-day was the seventh of
March—since, full of hope and determination, the Prince’s army had set
out on the road to England. Of what avail those hopes? England had not
risen for the Stuarts, had not stirred. And yet, just when it seemed
that, if the invaders had put their fortunes to the touch and pushed
on, they might have gained a kingdom, they found themselves turning
their backs on their goal and trailing home again over the Border.
Little more than forty days had been spent on the other side, and,
save for the rear-guard action near Penrith, the sword had not left
its sheath there. The invasion had been a failure.
Yet, in spite of weariness and heartburnings, the little army had at
least recrossed Esk in safety—except those of it so mistakenly left to
garrison Carlisle—and many were not sorry to be back on Scottish soil.
But to have retreated once more after beating Hawley at Falkirk in
January, even though the bad weather had hindered pursuit and
prevented a more decisive victory, to have left Stirling, after
failing to take it, in such haste and disorder that the withdrawal had
been more like a rout, what name best befitted that strategy? For
gradually all the Lowlands had been occupied in their rear, and there
was a slow tide setting northwards after them which one day might be
slow no longer.
The Prince, maddened at the decision to withdraw north, which was
against his every instinct, had been told that the daily desertions
were so great as to leave no choice, that the only course was to
master the forts in the north, keep together a force until the spring,
and then increase it to fighting strength. But had the desertions been
so extensive? It was hard to judge, yet, from his own experience,
Ardroy would not have said so. Still, there were other difficulties,
other divisions; there was the preponderating influence of the Irish
favourites, who always had the Prince’s ear because they always fell
in with his opinions; there was the growing ill-feeling between him
and his able but hot-tempered general-in-chief, so acute that Ewen
had with his own ears heard Charles Edward charge Lord George Murray
behind his back with treachery. Yet Lochiel had been for withdrawal,
and whatever Lochiel did was right in Ewen’s eyes. He was wondering
to-day whether the Chief were still of the same opinion; he had not
seen him for over a fortnight.
The ferryman’s voice broke in on his passenger’s reflections. “’Tis
all much changed in Inverness now, sir, and for the better.”
Evidently, like most of the inhabitants, he was Jacobite at heart. “To
think that only two weeks agone I ferried Lord Loudoun and the Lord
President and the Chief of Macleod over in this very boat, and all
their troops crossing helter-skelter too, to get away from the Prince.
. . . You’ll be yourself, perhaps, from chasing after Lord Loudoun
yonder?” he added tentatively.
“Yes,” answered Ewen, his eyes still fixed on Inverness, “I am from
Lord Cromarty’s force.”
The reason why the Earl of Loudoun, commanding the district for the
Government, had evacuated Inverness without a battle, was really due
to the somewhat ludicrous failure of his attempt to seize the person
of the Prince when, in mid-February, the latter was the guest of Lady
Mackintosh at Moy Hall. Conceiving the idea of surprising him there,
the Earl had set out secretly at night with a force of fifteen hundred
men for that purpose. But timely warning having been sent from
Inverness, the Prince slipped out of Moy Hall, and the whole of Lord
Loudoun’s force was thrown into confusion, and a part of it into
headlong flight, by the ruse of Donald Fraser, the Moy blacksmith, and
four of Lady Mackintosh’s Highland servants, who, by firing off their
pieces in the dark and calling to imaginary regiments to come up,
re-enacted the comedy of High Bridge on an even more piquant scale.
Not only was the Earl obliged to return ignominiously to Inverness,
but the desertions from his Highland companies consequent upon this
affair were so great that he thought it better to await Cumberland’s
advance among the Whig clans of Ross and Cromarty, to which he and his
force accordingly retired; and Prince Charles’s army had entered
Inverness without a blow.
The water lapped the sides of the ferryboat impatiently. The sky
looked full of snow, and nearly as dark as on the day of Falkirk,
while the wind was even colder than Ewen remembered it as they had
plodded over Shap Fell in the December retreat from England. In
Cæsar’s time, as he used to read in his boyhood, armies went into
winter quarters. But all _their_ marching and fighting had been done
in the severest season of the year, in autumn and winter; and who knew
what awaited them in the not less cruel rigours of a Highland spring?
For Cumberland, he knew, had been at Aberdeen since the end of
February.
Ewen frowned, and his thoughts went back to the somewhat comic warfare
from which he had just been recalled. For when Lord Cromarty had been
sent with a Jacobite force over the Moray Firth after Lord Loudoun,
the latter, retreating farther north into Sutherland, established
himself at Dornoch on the other side of the deep-winding firth of that
name, which Cromarty, having no boats, could not cross. But directly
Cromarty attempted to go round by the head of the firth Lord Loudoun
sent his men across by ferry to Tain, on the Ross-shire side, once
more; and when Lord Cromarty returned to Ross, Lord Loudoun recalled
his followers to Dornoch. And thus a vexatious and absurd game of
catch as catch can had been going on, and might go on for ever unless
the Prince could send another detachment to hold Tain. No, Ewen was
not sorry that Lochiel had recalled him.
He pulled his bonnet with the draggled eagle’s feathers and the soiled
cockade farther down on his brows, and wrapped his plaid round him,
for they were now in the icy middle of the firth. The ferryman babbled
on, telling him for the most part things he knew already; how, for
instance, when the Prince had had the castle here blown up after its
surrender, an unfortunate French engineer had been blown up with it.
It was useless to ask the man what he really wanted to know, how Miss
Alison Grant did over there in Inverness, Alison on whom he had not
set eyes since Hector and he had said farewell to her last All Hallows
in Edinburgh. It was a question whether they three would ever meet
again, for Hector had been one of the officers left behind as part of
the ill-fated garrison of Carlisle, and since the thirtieth of
December he had been a prisoner in English hands. How Alison was
bearing this ill news Ewen could only guess; it was all the heavier
for her too, because her father was in France, having been despatched
thither on a mission by the Prince directly after Falkirk.
Ewen knew that Alison and his aunt had come to Inverness in the hopes
of seeing him, immediately on the news of the town’s surrender to the
Highland army on February 18, but as it was before their arrival that
Ewen himself had been sent off with Lord Cromarty’s composite force,
the meeting had not taken place. Miss Cameron, as a letter had since
told him, had thought it best on that to return to Ardroy, but,
feeling sure that sooner or later Ewen’s duties would bring him to
Inverness, she had left Alison there in the care of Lady Ogilvy, whose
husband, with his regiment, was on the other side of the Spey. And now
Lochiel had recalled Ewen—but only to accompany him on another
enterprise. Of his approaching return Ewen had told Alison in a letter
which he had despatched yesterday by Lachlan, but he had not told her
how brief his stay would be, nor had he broached the project which was
in his own mind—the determination which had been growing there since
the retreat northward.
But, as he thought of what that was, the harassed look went out of his
eyes, and he became deafer than ever to the ferryman’s chatter.
* * * * * *
At the guardhouse by the bridge over the Ness Ewen stopped to enquire
where Lady Ogilvy was to be found, for he was not sure of her lodging,
and as he was talking to the officer there he heard a youthful voice
behind him asking exactly the same question in Gaelic.
Ewen turned quickly, for he knew that voice. There in the entry stood
a half-shy, half-excited boy of fifteen, who had never been in a town
before—young Angus, Neil MacMartin’s eldest son. His face lit up, and
he darted forward. “Letters, Mac ’ic Ailein!” And out of an old
sporran too big for him he produced two, none the better for their
sojourn in that receptacle.
With a smile and a kind word his master took them. One was from Miss
Cameron to himself, the other, addressed to Miss Alison Grant at
Ardroy, in an unknown and foreign-seeming hand, had been redirected by
his aunt to Inverness. He put them both in his pocket, gave the lad
money to procure himself food and lodging and a new pair of brogues to
go home in, told him where to find his father and not to return to
Ardroy without seeing him again, and himself set off in haste for Lady
Ogilvy’s lodging.
But Angus _Og_, footsore and hungry though he was, seeing his young
chieftain quite unaccompanied, pattered at a little distance behind him
with all the air of a bodyguard, his head full of wild plans for
joining his father and uncle in this place of many houses instead of
returning to Slochd nan Eun. If they were in Mac ’ic Ailein’s tail,
why not he?
Young Lady Ogilvy lodged in one of the larger houses at the lower end
of Kirk Street, and as Ewen passed the many-paned projecting window on
the ground floor he caught sight of a blue ribbon confining dark
curls. After that he was not much conscious of being admitted, or of
anything until he found its wearer in his arms.
“Oh, my darling! . . . You were expecting me—Lachlan brought you my
letter?”
Alison nodded, holding very fast to him, her eyes closed like one
surrendered to ecstasy. Much as they had to say to one another, for a
time neither said it; it was enough merely to be together again after
the months of strain and waiting and endurance and disillusioned
hopes. But when they had had their fill of looking at each other they
began to talk.
“I knew that you would come back to Inverness,” said Alison happily.
They were both sitting on the window seat now. And she added, with all
her old gaiety, “If Lochiel would permit so forward an act, I would
kiss him for having recalled you from Lord Cromarty’s force.”
“But he has not recalled me in order to stay in Inverness, darling—at
least not for more than a couple of days. He and Keppoch are shortly
going with reinforcements to the siege of Fort William, and I go too.”
All the peace and content was dashed out of Alison’s face. “Oh, Ewen
. . . and I thought you would be staying here!” She bit her lip and the
tears came into her eyes.
Her hand was in Ewen’s, and he sat a moment silent, looking down with
some intentness at his ring upon it. “But we shall have two days
together, _m’eudail_. And . . . do you not think that those two days
are long enough . . . that the time has come . . . to change this ring
of my mother’s for another?”
The colour ran over Alison’s face and her hand made a movement as if to
withdraw itself. “Oh, my dear,” she said rather breathlessly, “not
when my father is absent—not till he comes back! And not when . . .
when one does not know what will befall next!”
“But, my heart,” said Ewen quietly, “that is just why I want to make
you my wife. Do you not see that? Why, you should have been mine these
six months. I have waited even longer than I had thought to wait, and
God knows that was long enough.” And as Alison said nothing, but
looked down, twisting her ring, he went on, suppressing a little sigh,
“There are many reasons why we should be wed without further loss of
time, and these two days that we have now seem designed for that. Our
marriage could easily be arranged in the time; Mr. Hay, the Episcopal
minister of Inverness is, I believe, in the town; Lochiel would take
your father’s place. And I could carry you back to Ardroy, as its
mistress, when we start for Fort William . . . Alison, dear love, say
Yes!”
He was very gentle as he pleaded, for she seemed oddly reluctant,
considering that they had been formally contracted since last July,
and should indeed have been married in the autumn. She even mentioned
Hector and his perilous situation, rather tentatively, as a reason for
delay; but Ewen told her that her brother’s prospects were ten times
better than those of most who wore the white cockade, for he held a
French commission, and could not be treated otherwise than as a
prisoner-of-war. And finally Alison said that she would ask Lady
Ogilvy’s opinion.
Ewen tried not to be hurt. Since he had not the mistaken conviction of
some young men that he knew all about women, even Alison’s feelings
were sometimes a mystery to him. He longed to say, “_I_ have not a
French commission, Alison,” and leave her to draw a conclusion which
might get the better of her hesitancy, but it would have been cruel.
And as he looked at her in perplexity he remembered a commission of
another kind, and put his hand into his pocket.
“When I saw you, Alison, everything else went out of my head. But here
is a letter I should have given you ere this; forgive me. It was sent
to you at Ardroy, and Aunt Marget despatched one of the MacMartin lads
hither with it; and meeting me by the bridge just now he gave it to me
for you. It is from France, I think.”
“I do not know the hand,” said Alison, studying the superscription,
and finally breaking the seal. Ewen looked out of the window; but he
did not see any of the passers-by.
Suddenly there was an exclamation from the girl beside him on the
window seat. He turned; her face was drained of colour.
“My father . . . Ewen, Ewen, I must go at once—he is very ill . . .
dying, they think. Oh, read!”
Horrified, Ewen read a hasty French letter, already more than two
weeks old, which said that M. Grant, on the point of leaving France
again, had been taken seriously ill at Havre-de-Grâce; the writer,
apparently a recent French acquaintance of his, appealed to Mlle Grant
to sail for France at once, if she wanted to see her father alive—not
that the state of M. Grant at the moment was desperate, but because
the doctor held out small hope of ultimate recovery.
Alison had sprung to her feet, and clasping and unclasping her hands
was walking up and down the room.
“Ewen, Ewen, what if I am not in time! My dearest, dearest father, ill
and quite alone over there—no Hector anywhere near him now! I must go
at once. I heard Lady Ogilvy say that there was a French vessel in
port here due to sail for France in a day or two; I could go in that.
Perhaps the captain could be persuaded to sail earlier . . .”
In contrast to her restlessness, Ewen was standing quite still by the
window.
“Ewen,” she began again, “help me! Will you make enquiries of the
captain of the ship? I think she is for St. Maloes, but that would
serve; I could post on into Normandy. Will you find out the captain
now—this afternoon? . . . Ewen, what ails you?”
For her lover was gazing at her with an expression which was quite new
to her.
“I am deeply sorry to hear this ill news of Mr. Grant,” he said in a
low voice, and seemed to find a difficulty in speaking, “—more sorry
than I have words for. But, Alison, what of _me_?”
“You would not wish to keep me back, surely?”
“What do you think?” asked the young man rather grimly. “But I will
not—no, it would not be right. I will let you go, but only as my wife.
You’ll marry me to-morrow, Alison!”
There was no pleading about him now. He moved a step or two nearer,
having to keep a tight hold on himself neither to frighten her nor to
let slip a word against this other claim which, much as he respected
it, was coming in once more to sweep her away from him, when he had
waited so long. Whatever might be read on his face, his actions were
perfectly gentle.
And Alison came to him, the tears running down her cheeks, and put her
two hands in his. “Yes, Ewen, I am ready. Heart’s darling, I wish it,
too; you must not think I am unwilling. . . . And you said that you
would carry me off by force if I were,” she added, laughing a little
hysterically, as he folded her once again in his arms.
* * * * * *
So next day they were married in the little Episcopal meeting-house of
Inverness. Only a very few people were present, but the Prince was
among them: not the lighthearted adventurer of the escapade in
Edinburgh in which the bridegroom had played so belauded a part, but a
young man who looked what the last three months had made him, soured
and distrustful. Yet he gave them a glimpse of his old charming smile
after the ceremony, when he kissed the bride and wished them both
happiness.
“I would I were venerable enough to give you my blessing, my friends,”
he said, “since ’tis all I have to give; but I think I am somewhat the
junior of your husband, Lady Ardroy; and in any case how could I
bestow my benediction upon a bridegroom who has the bad taste to be so
much taller than his future King!”
“But you know that I am at your feet, my Prince,” said Ewen, smiling,
and he kissed once more the hand which he had kissed that night at
Holyrood.
Last of all Lochiel, grave and gentle, who had given Alison away,
kissed her too, and said, “Ewen is a very fortunate man, my dear; but
I think you are to be congratulated also.”
For their brief wedded life a little house which Mr. Grant had hired
the previous summer had been hastily prepared; it was bare almost to
penury, a tent for a night or two, meet shelter for those who must
part so soon. And Ewen had no gift ready for his bride—save one. When
they came home he put on her middle finger the ring which the Prince
had given him in Edinburgh.
Next day was theirs to play at housekeeping, and they were a great
deal more gay over it than Jeanie Wishart, Alison’s woman, who went
about her work perpetually murmuring, “Puir young things!” In the
afternoon, since the March sun had come out to look at them, they
wandered among the Islands and gazed down at Ness, hurrying past,
broad and clear and shallow, to the firth. That evening they had
thought to spend alone by their own fireside; yet nothing would serve
Lady Ogilvy save to give a supper for the new-married pair, and Lady
Ardroy, in a rose-coloured gown, was toasted by not a few who would
never drink a pledge again; and all the Jacobite songs were sung . . .
but not, somehow, that only too appropriate, ‘Oh, this is my departing
time, for here nae longer maun I stay,’ with which gatherings were
wont to conclude.
Yet Ewen and Alison sat by their fire after all, sat there until the
last peat crumbled, and it began to grow cold; but Alison, as once
before, was warm in the Cameron tartan, for Ewen had wrapped it round
her knees over her pretty gown. He sat at her feet, looking very long
and large, the firelight, while it lasted, playing on the shining
golden brown of his hair, accentuating too the faint hollow in his
cheek, the slight suggestion of a line between the brows which the
last two months had set there.
“Ewen, I want to tell you something.” Alison hesitated and a tinge of
colour stole over her face. “Do you know, _m’eudail_, that you talk in
your sleep?”
He looked up at her surprised. “Do I? No, dearest, I did not know. Did
I talk much—to disturb you?”
She shook her head. Ewen seemed to turn over this information for a
moment. “I believe,” he said thoughtfully, “that as a boy I used to do
it sometimes, so Aunt Margaret said, but I thought that I had outgrown
it. What did I talk of—you, sweetheart, I’ll warrant?”
“No,” said Alison, smiling down upon him. “Not a word of your wife.
You seemed to think that you were speaking to someone of whom she may
well be jealous; and what is more, when I spoke to you, thinking for a
moment that you were awake, you answered quite sensibly.”
“Jealous!” exclaimed Ewen, turning his clear, candid gaze full upon
her. “My little white love, there’s no one in this world of whom you
have occasion to be jealous, nor ever has been. Do not pretend to be
ignorant of where my heart is kept!” He took her clasped hands, opened
them gently, and kissed the palms. “The space is small,” he said,
looking critically at it, “but, such as the heart is, all of it lies
_there_.”
Alison enveloped him in a warm, sweet smile, and slid the hands round
his neck. “All? No; there’s a corner you have kept for someone else,
and in it you have set up a little shrine, as the Papists do, for your
saint—for Lochiel. But I am not jealous,” she added very softly. “I
understand.”
Ewen gave her a look, put his own hands over those clasped round his
neck, and dropped his head on to her knee in silence. After a while
she put her cheek against the thick, warm waves of his hair. Joy and
apprehension had so clasped hands about Alison Cameron this day that
it was hard to know which was the stronger.
But in the night she knew. The icy fingers of foreboding seemed
gripped about her heart. Not even Ewen’s quiet, unhurried breathing
beside her, not even the touch of his hand, over which her fingers
stole in search of comfort, could reassure her; his nearness but made
the pain the sharper. Oh, to have him hers only to lose him so soon!
But her father—alone, dying, over the seas! She reached out and lit a
candle, that she might look once more at the husband she was leaving
for her father’s sake, for God knew whether she should ever see him
asleep beside her again. It was not the seas alone which were about to
sunder them. . . .
Ewen was sleeping so soundly, too, so quietly; and he looked as young
and untroubled as the boy she had known five years ago in Paris. There
was no sign on his face, in its rather austere repose, of the trouble
which had forced its way through his unconscious lips last night.
Alison had not told him by the fire, that on their bridal night he had
uttered protests, bewildered questionings, against that double retreat
in which he had shared. ‘Must we go back, Lochiel—must we go back?’
She gazed at him a long time, until for tears she could see him no
longer, and, blowing out the light, lay and sobbed under her breath.
She thought she should die of her unhappiness; she almost wished that
she might; yet she sobbed quietly lest she should wake Ewen to
unhappiness also. But quite suddenly, though he had not stirred, she
heard his voice in the darkness; and then she was in his arms, and he
was comforting her in their own Highland tongue, with all its soft
endearments and little words of love. And there at last she fell
asleep.
But Ewen stayed awake until the grudging March daylight crept into the
little room where he lay wide-eyed, with Alison’s dark curls on his
heart, and within it a chilly sword that turned and turned. He would
never hold her thus again; he was sure of it.
* * * * * *
The morning was very cold, and when he took Alison to the French brig
a little snow was falling; the gang-plank was slippery too with rime.
He carried her bodily over it, and down to the cabin which she would
share with Jean Wishart.
There under the low beams Alison’s courage broke at last. Clinging to
him convulsively she said, in a voice that was not hers, that he must
come with her; that she could not go without him—she could not! He
must come too, and then he would be safe . . .
Ewen turned even paler than she. “My darling, my heart’s darling, you
don’t mean that!”
Alison swayed; her eyes closed. Alarmed, he put her on a seat against
the bulkhead, and, kneeling by her, began to chafe her hands. Soon
they clenched in his, and she opened her eyes, dark pools of sorrow,
and said firmly through colourless lips, “No, no, I did not mean it! I
know that you cannot come. Will you . . . can you forget what I said,
Ewen?”
“It is forgotten. It was not you who spoke,” he answered, trying to
keep his own voice steady as he knelt there, holding her hands very
tightly. There was a trampling sound on deck; how long had they for
all the thousand, thousand things that remained to say? There was
no time to say even one. He bent his head and pressed his lips
passionately upon the hands he held. Anguish though it was to lose
her, it was better that she should go. For since he had urged her to
marry him that he might take her back to Ardroy he saw with different
eyes. The future looked blacker than he had realised; away in Ross
he had not known of the desperate want of money, even of food,
the gradually thinning ranks. He knew of these now, and saw even
Cumberland’s delay at Aberdeen in a sinister light, as if the
Hanoverian commander knew that the fates were working on his side and
that there was no need for haste. . . .
Above him Alison’s voice said suddenly, “Ewen . . . Ewen, why do you
not say, ‘Stay then in Scotland with me—do not go to France
yourself!’?”
He was startled; had she read his thoughts? “Why, my darling,” he
answered as readily as he could, “because your father needs you so
sorely.”
Her voice sank still lower. “There is another reason, too—do not deny
it! You think that I am safer away!”
And Ewen did not answer.
“And you gave me this ring—the Prince’s ring—not only as a wedding
gift, but because you feared that one day . . . soon . . . it might be
taken from you!”
After a pause he said, “Partly, perhaps.”
“Then . . . I cannot leave you, even for my father,” said Alison, and
sprang up. “I must stay in Scotland, beside you. I am your wife. Take
me back to the quay, Ewen—tell Mrs. Wishart . . .”
But Ewen, on his feet too, caught her in his arms. “No, darling, no!
Think of your father, whom you may never see again. And, love of my
heart”—he tried to make his voice light—“you cannot come besieging
Fort William with me! When we have beaten Cumberland, as we beat Cope
and Hawley, I will come to France and fetch you home to Ardroy.”
“When we have beaten Cumberland.” Alison looked up into her husband’s
eyes with a most insistent question in her own. But he did not answer
the question, though he knew very well what it was, for he said
gently, “How can one see into the future, darling? One can only . . .
do one’s duty.”
Even as he uttered that rigorous word there came a knock at the cabin
door, and a gruff French voice announced that they would be casting
off in another minute or two, and that if Monsieur wished to land he
must be quick.
So the sword slid down between them. Ewen’s grasp tightened.
“Alison, white love, rose of my heart, we are one for ever now! You
will know, I think, what befalls me.”
Her face was hidden on his breast, so close that he could not even
kiss it. “Darling, darling, let me go . . .” he whispered. But it was
rather a question, he felt, whether he could ever unloose his own
clasp and cast his heart from him. And men were running about shouting
overhead; the hawser was coming inboard . . .
Suddenly Alison lifted her face, and it was almost transfigured. “Yes,
I shall know . . . for I think you will come back to me, God keeping
you.” She took her arms from his shoulders; he bent to her lips for
the kiss that first turned his heart to water and then ran through it
like wine, loosed his hold of her, and walked straight out of the
cabin without another word or look. With the same unchecked movement
he crossed the gang-plank from the deck, as if he could not trust
himself to remain the moment or so longer that it would take the
sailors to cast off the second hawser.
But on the quay he turned, wishing they would be quick, and make it
impossible for him to leap on board again, though the plank was now
withdrawn, and be carried off with Alison. And at last, after an
eternity which was all too short, the end of the rope splashed into
the water. More sails went up; the distance began to widen. Alison was
going from him.
He stood there motionless, long after the brig had left the shore,
watching her move to the waters of the firth. The sparse snowflakes
whirled relentlessly against him, but they melted as soon as they came
to rest, as brief in their stay as his two days’ happiness.
* * * * * *
From the quay Ewen went straight to Lochiel’s head-quarters and
reported himself for duty. Two hours later his body was marching out
of Inverness in the van of the Cameron reinforcements. Where his soul
was he hardly knew.
CHAPTER II
To rid the Great Glen of both its obnoxious English forts was an
enterprise which highly commended itself to those clans whom they
chiefly incommoded, the Camerons and the Glengarry and Keppoch
MacDonalds. There had been jubilation among these when, on March 5,
Fort Augustus had surrendered after two days’ siege, and what
artillery the besiegers possessed was free to be turned against Fort
William.
But Fort William, between Inverlochy Castle and the little town of
Maryburgh, was not so accommodating as its fellow. For one thing, it
was in a better position to defend itself, since sloops of war could
come up Loch Linnhe to revictual it, even though the Highlanders held
the narrows at Corran. It had a garrison of five hundred men, both
regulars and Argyll militia, plenty of guns, and, after the middle of
March, that zealous officer Captain Carolina Scott to assist
Major-General Campbell in the defence. Already, by the time that Ewen
arrived with Lochiel and the reinforcements, there had been some
severe skirmishes, and the Highlanders had fought an engagement with
the soldiers from the fort and the sailors from the _Baltimore_ and
_Serpent_ sloops, in which the latter succeeded in landing and
destroying the ferry-house and several small villages on the Ardgour
side. On this the Camerons ensconced themselves at Corpach, where Loch
Linnhe bends to its junction with Loch Eil, and there beat off an
armed flotilla of boats with such success that the _Baltimore_ was
ordered thither to open fire and cover a landing. But the Highlanders’
position was so good that the bombardment made no impression, and
Captain How had to withdraw baffled.
Ewen was with these adventurers at Corpach, enjoying himself and
finding in conflict an anodyne for his thoughts; it made the blood run
pleasantly and enabled him to forget Alison for an hour or so. But the
ordinary business of the siege was less stimulating, since he had
nothing to do with the artillery under Stapleton and Grant and their
Franco-Irish gunners, and the only chance of hand-to-hand fighting lay
in repelling the constant raids of the garrison and trying to protect
the unfortunate dwellers in the countryside who suffered by them. He
seemed to himself to live in a series of disconnected scenes,
sometimes here in Lochaber, where Ben Nevis, thickly capped with snow,
looked down impartially on assailants and defenders alike, sometimes
back in Inverness, going through every moment of those short two days
with Alison. But no one who did not observe him constantly and closely
could have guessed this. Lochiel, who knew him well and did observe
him closely, gave him as much to do as possible.
But it was certainly not Lochiel who enjoined on him the feat which
brought his share in the siege to an abrupt end.
* * * * * *
It was a fine morning in the latter half of March, blown through with
a gusty wind. Brigadier Stapleton, having got some mortars into
position on one of the little eminences about half a mile from the
fort, had started to shell it from that point, and the fort was
replying. Since its fire was directed towards destroying the hostile
batteries, there was no great danger from it to those not serving the
guns, and the Highlanders had no doubt grown a little careless, which
might account for the fact that near the crest of another hillock,
about a quarter of a mile away from Stapleton’s mortars and the
same distance as they from Fort William, Lochiel and Keppoch were
standing unconcernedly in the midst of a little group of Camerons and
MacDonalds. Below them, on the slope looking towards the fort, a
half-ruined stone wall hinted at a bygone attempt at cultivation or
enclosure. The two chiefs were interested in some rather suspicious
activities on board the _Baltimore_ sloop, visible at anchor in the
loch beyond the counterscarp and bastions of the fort.
“I vow it seems like another raid preparing,” said Alexander
MacDonald. “Do you look, Lochiel.”
He passed the Cameron his spyglass. Ewen, who was sitting comfortably
in the heather at a few yards’ distance, nearer the battery, rested
his elbows on his knees and shaded his eyes the better to see also,
his brain at these words busy with a vision of a possibly gratified
desire for what he considered real fighting.
Suddenly, as it were with half an eye, he became aware of something
unusual in the fort, where, a mere eight hundred yards away, movements
were perfectly visible. Surely the defenders had altered the position
of one of their six-pounders . . . could they be intending . . .
Lochiel standing there with the glass to his eye looking at the sloop
was fully exposed to their view . . .
In a second Ewen was on his feet, shouting a warning, but as he sprang
came the flash and the roar. “God!” he cried in agony, and with
another bound was up on the crest of the hillock, his arms wide. Could
one man’s body suffice?
There was a crash as the shot pitched into the ruined wall on the
slope below, breaking and scattering the big rough stones in all
directions. Ewen never saw what struck him, but at the moment of
impact, which seemed to drive his soul from his body, he had just time
to think, “It is for _him_! Alison, forgive me . . .” Then he went
into darkness.
When he came out of it again he found himself lying on the farther
slope in the midst of a group of people, with his head on someone’s
arm, and hands unfastening his coat. A voice said, “No, the head wound
is only slight; ’tis here on the breast that the large stone must have
struck him.”
Ewen tried to get his own voice. It was difficult, and the world
heaved. “Is . . . Lochiel safe?”
Archibald Cameron, kneeling beside him, looked up for a second. “He is
holding you at this moment, dear lad. No—lie still!” He went on with
his examination.
But Ewen disobediently turned his swimming head a little, and saw that
he was indeed in Lochiel’s hold, so Lochiel must be unharmed. Why then
had he his other hand over his eyes? Puzzled but content, he shut his
own again.
When next he thought much about his surroundings he was lying in the
same place, wrapped in a plaid, with Lachlan squatting near, gazing at
him with anguished eyes. Over the level top of Ben Nevis clouds, as
white as the snow which crowned it, were hurrying against the blue. It
came back to Ewen that he had heard Archie say that he was greatly
bruised, but that no bones seemed broken, and no internal injury, he
hoped, inflicted; so, after speaking a word or two of reassurance to
his foster-brother, he relapsed into his state of happy content, with
pain every time he drew a breath and a violent headache. But Lochiel
was safe.
Presently he felt his hand taken, and there was Lochiel himself
kneeling by him, and Lachlan on the other side removing himself
respectfully to a distance.
“Ewen, Ewen,” said the well-beloved voice, with trouble in it, “you
should not have done it!”
Ewen gave him a radiant smile. He felt neither penitence nor any need
for it.
“I saw . . . what was going to happen,” he observed.
“I do not think that anything would have reached me. No one was struck
but you, who deliberately threw yourself in the way of the fragments,
and one of Keppoch’s gillies, slightly. If you had been killed on my
behalf——” Lochiel left the sentence unfinished, and glanced down at
the cuff of his coat; there was a stain on it.
Ewen’s eyes had followed his. “Do not say that you are hurt after
all!” he exclaimed in a tone of horror.
“It is your own blood, Ewen. Your head was not much cut, Archie says.
But oh, my child, if I had had your death too at my door, when there
is so much that I must answer for!”
And the young man saw that his Chief was moved—more deeply moved than
he had ever seen him; but, being still stupid from the blow on the
head, he thought, “Why does he say that . . . whose death is at his
door?” And he lay looking with a mixture of affection and perplexity
at the kinsman who was still as much his pattern of all that was
noble, wise and generous as when he himself had been a boy under his
tutelage. Then the fort fired one of its twelve-pounders at the
battery, and through the din Lochiel told him that a litter had been
sent for to take him to Glen Nevis House, where he should see him
again later.
Soon after, therefore, four of his men carried Ewen to that house of
Alexander Cameron’s at the opening of the glen which Lochiel and
Keppoch had made their head-quarters; and he heard the voice of the
Nevis, telling of the heights from which it had descended; and a
little later, when that had faded from his hearing, a less agreeable
one, Lowland and educated, saying how disgraceful it was that a
peaceful writer could not go a mile from Maryburgh to visit a client
without being seized by cattle-thieves; that indeed the said thieves
could do no less than send him back under escort and safe-conduct. And
here the indignant speaker’s gaze must have fallen upon the litter
with its burden, for his next remark was: “What have we here—another
of ye killed? I’m rejoiced to see it!”
Ewen felt constrained to deny this imputation. “I am not in the least
killed,” he rejoined with annoyance, opening his eyes to find himself
almost at the door of Glen Nevis House, and to see, in the midst of a
group of rather shamefaced Highlanders, Mr. Chalmers, the Whig notary
of Maryburgh, whom he knew and who knew him. The lawyer gave an
exclamation.
“Gude sakes, ’tis Mr. Ewen Cameron of Ardroy! I’m unco sorry to see
you in this condition—and in such company, Ardroy!”
“Why, what other company do you suppose I should be in?” asked Ewen,
and shut his eyes again and heard no more of Mr. Chalmers and his
grievances. But that chance meeting was to mean a great deal to him
afterwards.
What meant more to him at the moment, however, was that Dr. Cameron
kept him in bed longer than he had anticipated, and he had not been on
his legs again for more than a day or two when the siege of Fort
William was suddenly abandoned. The defenders were too resolute, the
besiegers unfortunate, and their artillery not sufficiently powerful;
and in the night of April 3, after spiking their remaining cannon, the
attacking force withdrew. And, since they were in their own land of
Lochaber, and it was seed-time or past it, Lochiel and Keppoch gave
permission to their men to go home for a few days. So Ewen and his
little force returned to Ardroy, and he saw Loch na h-Iolaire again,
and caused Neil to row him upon it, for it was too cold for a swim; in
the middle of which voyage he was struck by a sudden suspicion, and,
landing on the islet, examined it for traces of the heron. There were
none; and the nest, up at the top of the tallest pine-tree, must long
have been uninhabited, for the winds had blown it nearly all away.
Shortly afterwards Lachlan had a singularly unpleasant interview with
his chieftain, in which, upbraided with the most direct disobedience,
he replied that his concern for the being he loved best on earth was
even stronger than his wish to obey him; after which, in a dramatic
but perfectly sincere manner, he drew his dirk and said that rather
than Mac ’ic Ailein should look at him with such anger he would plunge
it into his own heart. In the end Ewen was constrained to forgive him,
after pointing out how little his disobedience had availed. There were
more herons than one in Lochaber.
And other officers than Captain Windham in King George’s army, he
might have added. His twice-held prisoner had indeed passed from his
thoughts these many weeks; the question of the slaughtered heron
necessarily brought him back there for a moment, but without any
permanence. Ewen did not anticipate another meeting with him, for were
Angus’s prophecy going to be fulfilled to the letter, they would
surely have encountered each other in the confusion of Falkirk fight,
where the second battalion of the Royals had—until it fled—faced the
Camerons across the ravine. No; that two meetings should come to pass
out of the five predicted was quite a reasonable achievement for the
old _taibhsear_.
And then one afternoon, when he was absorbed in thoughts of Alison,
with all the final suddenness of the expected came a panting messenger
from Achnacarry, with a scrawl in Lochiel’s writing: “Gather your men
and march at once. Cumberland is moving. God send we reach Inverness
in time!”
* * * * * *
A bad dream is sometimes only a dream to the sleeper; he may know it
to be such, and tell himself so. But this, though it held some of the
elements of nightmare, was no dream; it was reality, this tramping of
a tired and half-starved army through the night in a hopeless attempt
to surprise the Duke of Cumberland’s camp—hopeless because it was
plain that they would never get to Nairn before daylight now.
Aide-de-camp after aide-de-camp, officer after officer, had come
riding past to the head of the column of Highlanders and Atholl men to
urge Lord George Murray to halt, for the rear could not keep up. And
yet, thought Ewen rather scornfully, they had not just marched more
than fifty miles over mountainous country in two days, as most of Clan
Cameron had.
It was by this feat of endurance and speed that Lochiel and his men
had reached Inverness the previous evening, to learn, to their dismay,
that Cumberland had been allowed to cross the Spey unopposed. Despite
fatigue they had made but a brief halt in the town and had proceeded
to Culloden House, whither the Prince had gone earlier in the day. A
warm welcome had been theirs, for he was becoming alarmed at their
non-appearance, the more so that by no means all his scattered forces
were yet returned from the various enterprises on which they had been
despatched. Cromarty, the Macgregors and the Mackinnons were still
north of the Moray Firth, no one knew where, and Keppoch had not yet
appeared, nor the Frasers, nor Cluny Macpherson and his men. To-day,
since early morning, the whole army had been drawn up on the chosen
ground on Drumossie Moor, in the belief that Cumberland would advance
that day and attempt to reach Inverness. But the hours went by and the
enemy did not appear, and then the cravings of hunger began to be
felt, for all the food which had passed any man’s lips that day was a
single biscuit served out at noon. And at last it was clear that, the
fifteenth of April being his birthday, Cumberland was remaining at
Nairn to allow his troops fitly to celebrate it. The Prince’s hungry
forces therefore withdrew from the moor again to the vicinity of
Duncan Forbes’s mansion.
It was known that Lord George Murray had not liked the ground chosen
for their stand, and Brigadier Stapleton and Colonel Ker of Graden,
the ablest staff officer the Prince possessed, had crossed the water
of Nairn that morning to seek for a better. They reported that the
boggy, hilly ground there was much more suitable than the open moor
for receiving the Hanoverian attack, since it was almost impossible
for cavalry and artillery, and the foot might perhaps be tempted into
some pass where they could be fallen upon and annihilated. On the
other hand, it was urged that, if the Highlanders withdrew over the
stream into the hills, Cumberland would almost certainly slip by them
to Inverness, seize the baggage and stores and starve them out. The
matter was still unsettled when, at an informal council of officers in
the afternoon, someone (Ewen was not clear who) had proposed to
surprise the Hanoverian camp by a night attack. Most of the soldiers
there, it was thought, would be more or less drunk after the
festivities of the birthday. Lord George Murray and the Prince were
both found to be in favour of the idea; moreover, owing to the
scandalous neglect of the commissariat shown by Hay of Restalrig, who
had succeeded Murray of Broughton as secretary, there was not a crumb
of food for the men next day. Objections to the plan there were
indeed: the distance—a good ten miles—the danger of a spy’s carrying
the news to the English camp, the absence of so many contingents. But
the arrival of Keppoch with two hundred MacDonalds when the meeting
was in progress clinched the matter, and the night attack was resolved
upon.
The decision had purposely been kept from the men themselves, and it
was with remorseful knowledge of the futility of their preparations
that Ewen had watched his own little company choosing the driest spots
on the heathery hillside for a night’s repose, making a fire and
rolling themselves supperless in their plaids to seek in sleep a
palliative for the gnawing hunger which possessed them. Perhaps it
would have been better if the rank and file had been told what was
afoot, for by the time planned for the start, seven o’clock, it was
found that hundreds of them had stolen off in search of food. And to
the mounted officers sent out in the utmost haste to beat them up and
bring them back—no easy task—many had replied that the officers might
shoot them if they pleased, but go back they would not until they had
had meat. The Prince was urged to give up the plan, but he refused;
and as those who had remained were assembled, the word had been given
to march off.
It was an excellent night for a surprise, dark and misty; but it was
also very favourable for tired and hungry men to drop unobserved out
of the ranks, and many of them did so. Ewen was as tired and hungry as
anyone else, but he shut his mouth and plodded on like an automaton at
the head of his company. Lochiel was in front, and where Lochiel went
he followed as a matter of course. And close on his heels came Neil
and Lachlan, of the same mind regarding him.
Although Lord George had never consented actually to stop, he had been
obliged to march slower and slower in consequence of the messages from
the rear; but now at last there came a halt, and a prolonged one. The
Duke of Perth rode past, and presently Hay of Restalrig. Discussion
was evidently going forward in the van. And meanwhile the unwished-for
light was growing in the east, not yet daybreak, but its harbinger.
Faces began to be distinct, and haggard faces they were.
And here came back one of the Mackintosh guides, the same who, not
long before, had brought the order to attack with the sword only.
Before he spoke to him Ewen guessed what orders he brought now. They
were to retrace their steps; the surprise was being abandoned. Too
much time had been lost on the way, and to attack in daylight would be
madness. All the nightmare effort had been for nothing—for worse than
nothing . . .
* * * * * *
Between five and six of that cold, grey morning Ewen found himself
once more before the gates of Culloden House. Men were dropping where
they stood; some, he knew, were lying worn out along the roadside. He
was in no better case himself; in some ways, indeed, in a worse, for
it was not three weeks since he had left his bed after his experience
at Fort William. But in anger and desperation he despatched Neil and
Lachlan, who still seemed capable of movement, to Inverness with
orders to get food for their comrades if they had to steal it. It was
all he could do, and when he got inside the house he sat down
exhausted in the hall, and fell asleep with his head on a table. He
was hardly conscious of the stir a little later, when the Prince
arrived, tired, dispirited and sore from the complaints which he could
not avoid hearing. But from scraps of talk about him (for the place
was full of officers in the same plight as himself) Ewen’s weary brain
did receive the welcome impression that they would at least have some
hours to rest and recuperate—and later, please Heaven, to get some
food—for Cumberland was evidently not going to attack to-day.
He was dreaming that he was at home, and sitting down to a good meal,
when he felt someone shaking him, and, raising his head, saw one of
his own cousins from Appin, Ian Stewart.
“What is it?” he asked stupidly.
“A straggler has just come in with news that some troops are advancing
from Nairn. He did not know whether it was the main body or only
skirmishers . . .”
Ewen dragged himself to his feet. All round the hall others were doing
the same, but some would require more to rouse them than a mere
rumour. It was broad daylight; a clock near marked nine o’clock. “It
cannot be the main body—the attack!” he said incredulously. “There was
no sign of general movement at Nairn; the camp fires were burning—we
could see them four miles away. However, the truth can soon be
discovered.”
The weary-faced Appin lad shrugged his shoulders. “It will not be very
easy to make sure,” he said. “Fitz-James’s Horse is all dispersed
after fugitives and food. I tell you, Ardroy, I do not much care which
it is, if only I can get an hour’s sleep.”
“I must find Lochiel,” said Ewen. He had no idea where he was—a
sufficient comment on his own state—but was told that he was upstairs
with the Prince, who, on coming in, had thrown himself just as he was
upon his bed. Half dizzy with sleep and hunger, Ewen went up the wide
staircase, hearing everywhere voices discussing the report, and
arguing and wondering what was to be done, and declaring that the
speakers disbelieved the news—because they desired to disbelieve it.
When he reached the landing the door of the Prince’s bedchamber
opened, and Lord George Murray and Ker of Graden came out together,
the latter looking very grim, Lord George plainly in a rage. They went
down the stairs to the encumbered hall, Lord George calling for his
aides-de-camp. The door meanwhile had been left ajar; loud voices came
through it, and Ewen had a glimpse of the Prince, sitting on the edge
of his bed, still booted, with Sir Thomas Sheridan, his old tutor,
beside him. He was speaking, not to him, but to someone invisible.
“I tell you,” his voice came sharply, edged with fatigue and
obstinacy, “I tell you the English will be seized with panic when they
come to close quarters. They cannot face my Highlanders in the charge;
’twill be again as it was at Gladsmuir and——”
Then the door shut behind Lochiel, coming slowly out. He did not see
the young man waiting for him, and on his tired, unguarded face Ewen
could read the most profound discouragement.
As he crossed the landing Ewen took a couple of strides after him,
laying hold of his plaid, and the Chief stopped.
“Is it true, Donald?”
“I suppose so,” answered Lochiel quietly. “At any rate we must take up
our positions at once.”
“Over the water of Nairn, then, I hope?”
“No. The Prince is immovable on that point. We are to take our stand
on our old positions of yesterday on the moor.”
“When you and Lord George disapprove!—It’s the doing, no doubt, of the
same men who were for it yesterday, those who have nothing to lose,
the French and Irish officers!”
Lochiel glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t speak so loud, Ewen. But you
are right—may God forgive them!”
“May God—reward them!” said Ewen savagely. “We are to march our
companies back to the moor then?”
“Yes. And we and Atholl are to be on the right wing to-day.”
Ewen was surprised, the MacDonalds always claiming and being conceded
this privilege. But he did not seek the reason for the change, and
followed his Chief in silence down the stairs. The confusion in the
hall had increased, and yet some officers were still lying on the
floor without stirring, so spent were they.
“Find me Dungallon and Torcastle,” said Lochiel. “By the way, have you
had anything to eat, Ewen, since noon yesterday?”
“Have you, which is more to the point?” asked Ewen.
Lochiel smiled and shook his head. “But fortunately a little bread and
whisky was discovered for the Prince.”
Ewen found Ludovic Cameron of Torcastle, the Chief’s uncle, and
Cameron of Dungallon, major of the regiment, and himself went out in a
shower of sleet to rouse his men, having in several cases to pull them
up from the ground. He had got them into some kind of stupefied order
when he saw Lochiel and Dungallon come by. A body of MacDonalds was
collecting near, and as the two Camerons passed—Ewen scarcely realised
it then, but he remembered it afterwards—there were muttered words and
a black look or two.
But he himself was thinking bitterly, “I wonder are we all fey? We had
the advantage of a good natural barrier, the Spey, and we let
Cumberland cross it like walking over a burn. Now we might put the
Nairn water between him and us—and we will not!” An insistent question
suddenly leapt up in his heart; he looked round, and by good fortune
Lochiel came by again, alone. Ewen intercepted and stopped him.
“For God’s sake, one moment!” He drew his Chief a little apart towards
the high wall which separated the house from the parks. “If the day
should go against us, Lochiel, if we have all to take to the
heather——”
“Yes?” said his cousin gravely, not repudiating the possibility.
“Where will you make for? Give us a rendezvous—give me one, at all
events!”
“Why, my dear boy, I shall make for Achnacarry.”
“But that is just where you would be sought for by the Elector’s
troops!”
“Yet I must be where the clan can find me,” said the Chief. “Loch
Arkaig is the best rallying point. ’Tis not easy neither to come at it
suddenly in force because there is always the Lochy to ford. And if I
were strictly sought for in person, there are plenty of skulking
places round Achnacarry, as you know.”
“But none beyond the wit of man to discover, Donald—and most of them
known to too many.”
“Of the clan, perhaps, yes. But you do not imagine, surely, that any of
them would be betrayed by a Cameron! Moreover, Archie came on a new
one the other day when we were there; he showed it to me. Truly I do
not think the wit of man could find that unaided, and no one knows of
it but he and I. So set your mind at rest, dear lad.” He took a step
or two away. “I’ll tell you too, Ewen.”
The young man’s face, which had become a little wistful, lit up. “Oh,
Donald . . .”
“Listen,” said Lochiel, dropping his voice, and coming closer to the
wall. “Half-way up the southern slope of Beinn Bhreac, about a hundred
paces to the right of the little waterfall. . . .”
And Ewen, listening eagerly, heard of an overhanging birch tree whose
old roots grasped like hinges an apparently immovable block of stone,
which could be moved if one knew just where to push it, and of a cave,
long disused, which Dr. Cameron had found behind it—a place whose
existence could never be suspected. And there, if hard pressed . . .
“Yes, surely there you would be safe!” said Ewen with satisfaction.
“That is a thousand times better than any of the old places. I thank
you for telling me; I shall not forget.”
“Whom should I tell if not you, my dear Ewen,” said his Chief, laying
his hand for a moment on his shoulder. “You have always been to me——”
More he did not say, for Dungallon was at his elbow, urgently
summoning him. But perhaps, also, he could not.
* * * * * *
Ewen pulled his bonnet lower on his brows, and, bending his head
against the sleety blast, set his face with the rest towards the fatal
stretch of moorland, the last earthly landscape that many a man there
would ever see. But over that possibility he was not troubling
himself; he was wondering whether it were possible to be much
hungrier, and what his foster-brothers would do when they returned and
found him gone into battle without them. And like a litany he repeated
to himself, to be sure that he remembered them aright, the directions
Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh had given him: “Half-way up the southern slope of
Beinn Bhreac, about a hundred paces to the right of the waterfall . . .”
Just as they were all taking up their positions a gleam of sun shot
through the heavy, hurrying clouds, and fell bright upon the moving
tartans, Stewart and Cameron, Fraser, Mackintosh, Maclean and
MacDonald, lighting too the distant hills of Ross across the firth,
whence Cromarty came not, and the high ground over the Nairn water on
the other hand, where Cluny Macpherson was hurrying towards them with
his clan, to arrive too late. Then the gleam went out, and the wind
howled anew in the faces of those who should spend themselves to death
unavailingly, and those who should hold back for a grudge; it
fluttered plaid and tugged at eagle’s feather and whipped about him
the cloak of the young man for whom the flower of the North stood here
to be slain; and faint upon it, too, came now and then the kettledrums
of Cumberland’s advance.
CHAPTER III
Once more Keith Windham—but he was Major Windham now, and on General
Hawley’s staff—was riding towards Lochaber. This time, however, he
was thankful to find himself so occupied, for it was a boon to get
away from what Inverness had become since the Duke of Cumberland’s
victory a couple of weeks ago—a little town crammed with suffering and
despair, and with men who not only gloated over the suffering but who
did their best to intensify it by neglect. One could not pass the
horrible overcrowded little prison under the bridge without hearing
pitiful voices always crying out for water. And as for last Sunday’s
causeless procession of those poor wretches, in their shirts or less,
the wounded too, carried by their comrades, simply to be jeered
at—well, Major Windham, feigning twinges from his wound of Fontenoy,
had withdrawn, sick with disgust, from the neighbourhood of the
uproariously laughing Hawley.
And not only was he enjoying a respite, if only of a few days, from
what was so repugnant to him, but he had been chosen by the Duke
himself to carry a despatch to the Earl of Albemarle at Perth. It
seemed that the Duke remembered a certain little incident at Fontenoy.
General Hawley, relinquishing his aide-de-camp for the mission, had
slapped him on the shoulder and wished him good luck. The errand
seemed to promise transference to the Duke’s own staff; and, if that
should occur, it meant real advancement at last, and, when Cumberland
returned to Flanders, a return with him.
So Keith was in better spirits than he had been for the last week.
Surely the end of this horrid Scottish business was approaching for
him! Falkirk—a bitter memory—was more than avenged, for the late
victory on the moor of Culloden could not have been completer—he only
wished he could get out of his mind some of the details of its
completion. But there was this to be said for ruthless methods of
suppression, that they were the sooner finished with.
To tell truth, Major Windham’s immediate situation was also exercising
his mind a good deal. Wade’s road from Fort Augustus to Dalwhinnie and
Perth ran over the steep Corryarrick Pass into Badenoch, and he had
been told that somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Pass he would
find a military post under a certain Major Guthrie of Campbell’s
regiment, in which bivouac he proposed to spend the night. (There had
been a time last August when Sir John Cope with all his force dared
not risk crossing the Corryarrick; it was different now.) Keith had
first, of course, to get to Fort Augustus, and had set out from
Inverness with that intention; but about half-way there, just before
the road reared itself from the levels of Whitebridge to climb to its
highest elevation, he had been inexplicably tempted by a track which
followed a stream up a valley to the left, and, on an impulse which
now seemed to him insane, had decided to pursue this rather than the
main road. His Highland orderly, a Mackay from Lord Reay’s country,
only too pleased, like all his race, to get off a high road, even
though he was riding a shod horse, jumped at the suggestion, averring,
in his not always ready English, that he knew the track to be a
shorter way to the Corryarrick road. So they had ridden up that
tempting corridor.
It was a most unwise proceeding. At first all had gone well, but by
this time it was clear to Keith that he and his orderly, if not lost,
were within measurable distance of becoming so. The original track had
ceased, the stream had divided and they knew not which branch to
follow; and either only seemed to take them higher and higher towards
its source. Bare and menacing, the mountain-sides closed in more and
more straitly upon the foolhardy travellers. The Highlander was of use
as a pioneer, but Keith had expected him to be a guide, whereas it
soon appeared that he had no qualifications for the post, never having
been in these parts before, despite his confident assertion of an hour
ago. Every now and then they were obliged to lead their horses, and
they were continually making detours to avoid boggy ground. Keith
trudged on silent with annoyance at his own folly, his orderly voluble
in assurances that ‘herself’ need not be alarmed; there were worse
places than this in Sutherland, yet Dougal the son of Dougal had never
lost himself.
It was hard to believe that it was the first of May, so cold was it;
not only were the surrounding mountains capped with snow, but it lay
in all the creases of the northern slopes to quite a low level. There
were even patches not far above the route which the travellers were
painfully making out for themselves. And it was actually a pocket of
snow in a sort of overhanging hollow some way off to their left, a
little above them, which drew Keith’s eyes in that direction. Then he
saw, to his surprise, that there was a figure with a plaid drawn over
its head sitting in the hollow—a woman, apparently.
He called Mackay’s attention to it at once. “Ask her if she can tell
us the best way to the Corryarrick road.”
The Highlander shouted out something in his own tongue, but there was
no answer, and the woman huddled in her plaid, which completely hid
her face, did not move. “She will pe asleep, whateffer,” observed
Mackay. “_A bhean_!—woman, woman!”
But another thought had struck the Englishman. Tossing the reins of
his horse to Mackay, he strode up to the hollow where the woman sat,
and stooping, laid a hand on her shoulder. For any warmth that struck
through the tartan he might as well have touched the rock against
which she leant. He gave an exclamation, and, after a moment, drew the
folds of the plaid a little apart.
If the young woman who sat crouched within it, stiff now, like the
year-old child in her arms, knew the way anywhere, it was not to the
Pass of Corryarrick. There was a little wreath of half-melted snow in
a cranny near her head; it was no whiter than her face. The upper half
of her body was almost naked, for she had stripped herself to wrap all
she could round the little bundle which she was still clasping tightly
to her breast. But it was only a bundle now, with one tiny, rigid
waxen hand emerging to show what it had been.
Keith removed his three-cornered hat, and signed to Mackay to leave
the horses and come.
“The poor woman is dead,” he said in a hushed voice, “—has been dead
for some time. Can she have met with an accident?”
“I think she will haf peen starfed,” said his orderly, looking at the
pinched face. “I haf heard that there are many women wandering in the
hills of Lochaber and Badenoch, and there iss no food and it hass been
fery cold.”
“But why should she have gone wandering like this, with her child,
too?”
The Mackay turned surprised eyes upon him. “Because you English from
Fort William will haf burnt her house and perhaps killed her man,” he
replied bluntly. “Then she wass going trying to find shelter for
herself and the wean. . . . And now there iss no one to streak her and
to lay the platter of salt on her preast. It iss a pity.”
He, too, with the innate reverence of his race for the dead, was
standing bareheaded.
“I wish we could bury them,” said Keith. But it was out of the
question; they had neither the implements nor the time; indeed, but
for the food that they carried, and their horses, the same end might
almost be awaiting them in these solitudes. So Mackay replaced the
plaid, and they went silently back to the horses and continued their
journey.
‘You English’—we English—have done this; we whose boast it has always
been that we do not war with women and children; we English whose
vengeance (Keith had realised it ere this) is edged by the remembrance
of past panic, of the disgrace of Prestonpans and Falkirk and
invasion. He went on his way with a sensation of being branded.
Yes, he had been too true a prophet. The comedy _had_ turned to grim
and bloody earnest. And, despite relief and natural exhilaration at
victory—of which there was not much left in him now—despite the
liberation of his native country from a menace which she affected to
despise, but which in the end had terrified her, despite the
vindication, at last, of the worth of trained troops, Keith Windham
could say with all his heart, ‘Would God we were back in the days of
farce!’ Yes, even in the days when last he was in Lochaber, for the
very mortification of the rout at High Bridge last summer and of his
subsequent captivity had been easier to bear than the feeling that he
belonged now to a band of executioners—was indeed closely connected
with the most brutal of them all. He had been gratified when Hawley,
on his arrival at Edinburgh, had, on Preston’s recommendation, chosen
him to fill a vacancy on his staff; but during the last two weeks he
had come to loathe the position. Yet his ambitious regard for his own
career forbade him to damage it by asking permission to resign his
post; indeed, had he taken such a remarkable step, he would not now be
on his way to Perth, having turned his back for a while on what had so
sickened him.
Another half-hour passed, and the memories which had been sweeping
like dark clouds over Keith’s mind began to give way to a real
sensation of alarm, not so much for his personal safety as for the
carrying out of his mission. Suppose they did not find their way
before nightfall out of this accursed maze into which he had so
blindly ventured? He consulted anew with Mackay, and they resolved to
abandon the line which they had been taking, and try instead to find a
way over a spur on their right, for the mountain which sent it forth
was neither craggy nor strewn with scree, and the slope of the spur
was such that it was even possible to make use of their horses. At the
worst its summit would give them a view, and they might then be able
to strike out a better route for themselves.
As Keith was putting his foot in the stirrup Dougal Mackay caught his
arm and said excitedly, “I wass hearing a shout, sir!”
“I heard nothing,” responded Major Windham, listening. “Where did it
come from?”
The orderly pointed ahead. “The men that shouted will pe round the
other side of this _beinn_. Let uss make haste, sir!”
Praying that the Highlander was not mistaken Keith scrambled into the
saddle, and his horse began to strain up the slope. He himself could
hear nothing but the melancholy notes of a disturbed plover, which was
wheeling not far above their heads, and he cursed the bird for
drowning more distant sounds. Then, sharp through the mournful cry,
there did come a sound, the crack of a shot—of two shots—and the
mountains re-echoed with it.
For a moment both Keith and his orderly instinctively checked their
horses; then Keith struck spurs into his, and in a few minutes the
panting beast had carried him to the top of the shoulder . . . and he
had his view.
Directly before him rose another mountain-side, much greener than the
rest, and this greenness extended downwards into the almost level
depression between it and the slope whose summit he had now reached.
Below him, in this narrow upland valley, stood a small group of rough
huts for use when the cattle were driven up to the summer pasture, and
in front of these was drawn up a body of redcoats, to whom a mounted
officer was shouting orders. On the ground near the entrance of the
largest shieling lay a motionless Highlander. The shots thus explained
themselves; the soldiers were at their usual work, and Keith had
ridden into the midst of it. He felt weariness and disgust, but he
needed direction too badly not to be glad to meet with those who could
give it. Presumably the detachment was from the post on Wade’s road,
and the officer might even be Major Guthrie himself. Hoping that the
worst was now over, he rode slowly down the hillside through the
bloomless heather, unnoticed by the group below.
The fern-thatched roof of one of the shielings had already been fired,
and to its first cracklings Keith realised with distaste that the
butchery was not yet finished. Three or four scarlet-clad figures came
out of the hut before which the dead man lay, half carrying, half
dragging another Highlander, alive, but evidently wounded. The officer
pointed, and they followed the usual summary method in such cases,
and, after planting him against the dry-stone wall of the building
itself, withdrew, leaving him face to face with the firing-party. But
apparently their victim could not stand unsupported, for a moment or
so after they had retired he slid to one knee and then to the ground.
“Detestable!” said Major Windham to himself. He had recognised the
tartan now—the one of all others that he would never mistake, for he
had worn it himself—the Cameron. But that did not surprise him. The
doomed Highlander was now struggling to his feet again; he gained them
unaided, and, steadying himself with one hand against the wall behind
him, stood once more upright, so tall that his head was well above the
edge of the low thatch. Now Keith was near enough to see the lower end
of a dirty bandage round his left thigh, and the whole of another on
his sword arm, for all that he had upon him was a kilt and a ragged
shirt. And——
“Good God!” exclaimed the Englishman aloud; and, calling out at the
top of his voice, “Stop! stop!” he drove the spurs into his horse,
came slithering down the last part of the slope, raced towards the
shieling, leapt off, and, holding up his hand—but all faces were now
turned towards him—ran in between the already levelled muskets and
Ewen Cameron.
Ewen alone had not seen him. His face was the colour of the wall
behind him; his eyes were half closed, his teeth set in his lower lip,
and it was plain that only his force of will was keeping him upright
there. A tiny trickle of blood was beginning to course down his bare
leg. And even the blind instinct to face death standing could keep him
there no longer; for the second time he swayed, and the wounded leg
gave way under him again. But this time Keith’s arms caught him as he
sank.
Oblivious of the stupefaction which had descended upon the soldiers,
and of the more than stupefaction manifested by the officer behind
them, Keith lowered that dead weight to the ground and knelt beside
it. In Ardroy’s gaunt face a line of white showed under the closed
lids, and Keith’s hand pressed on the torn shirt found a heartbeat so
faint that he thought, ‘He was dying when they dragged him out, the
brutes!’ Perhaps he had not been in time after all. He remembered that
there was brandy in his holster, and looked up with an idea of
summoning Mackay.
But by this time the officer had ridden up, and was there a pace or
two away, towering over the pair by the wall.
“Am I tae tak ye for a surgeon, sir?” he enquired in a strong Lowland
accent, and in a tone compounded of hot rage and cold. “If sae, an’
ye’ll hae the kindness tae shift yersel’ oot o’ the way for a meenut,
there’ll be nae further need o’ yer sairvices!”
Keith laid Ewen’s head down on the grass, and, standing up, regarded
the rider, a neat, fair-complexioned Scot of about five-and-forty,
with little light eyes under sandy brows.
“Major Guthrie, I think?” he suggested, and saluted him. “I am Major
Keith Windham of the Royals, on General Hawley’s staff, and now on my
way with despatches from His Royal Highness to Perth.”
“I care little if ye hae despatches frae God Himsel’!” retorted Major
Guthrie with increasing fury. “And this isna Perth . . . Haud awa frae
yon wa’—unless ye’ve a fancy tae be shot tae!”
But Keith did not move. “This is not a common Highlander, sir,” he
said, as calmly as he could. “He is an officer, despite his dress.”
For officers, as Major Guthrie must know, were not shot in cold
blood—now.
“What’s that tae me?” enquired Guthrie. He turned. “Here, ye sumphs,
pit him up afore the wa’ again!”
Two of the men made an undecided move forwards, but the sight of this
other officer of equal rank standing so resolutely in front of the
prostrate Highlander daunted them.
“But listen, Major Guthrie,” pleaded Keith, keeping a tight hold upon
his own rapidly rising temper and disgust, “this gentleman is really
of more than ordinary importance, for he was at one time aide-de-camp
to the Pretender’s son, and he is Lochiel’s near kinsman—some kind of
cousin, I think. You surely would not——”
“Lochiel’s near kinsman, did ye say?” interrupted Guthrie, bending
down a little. “Hoo is he called?”
“Cameron of Ardroy, a captain in Lochiel’s regiment. I am sure,” went
on Keith, eager to follow up the impression which Lochiel’s name
appeared to have made, “I am sure you will recognise, Major, that the
Duke would not wish him to be shot out of hand like this!”
“Indeed I’m obliged tae ye, Major Somebody or ither, for sae kindly
instructing His Royal Highness’s wishes tae me,” retorted the
Lowlander, but he bent still farther from the saddle, and gazed down
for a moment at what was lying so still by the wall—at the dirty,
bloodstained, half-clothed figure which Keith had last seen so gallant
in powder and satin, cool, smiling and triumphant. The plea he had
offered—the only plea that he could think of—was it going to save
Ewen Cameron from lying there stiller yet? He tried to read Guthrie’s
intentions on his face, but all that he could see there was its innate
meanness and cruelty.
The saddle creaked as the rider came upright again. He looked down at
Keith himself now with eyes that seemed to hold a flickering light.
“This is God’s truth ye’re tellin’ me, that yon”—he pointed
contemptuously—“is Lochiel’s cousin?”
“Yes, on my honour as an officer.”
“And may I speir hoo ye ken it?”
“Because I have met him before. I assure you, sir, that if they knew
at Inverness——”
“This is nae mair Inverness than it is Perth, Major—Keith! I’m actin’
here on my ain authority, and if yon lousy rebel lying there had the
Duke’s ain protection on him I wudna regard it if I thocht fit. Still
and on, I’m weel aware that as Lochiel’s near kinsman he may be of
mair value alive than deid—we shall see of hoo much in a day or two.
. . . Aye, I doot they’ll be wishing they had him at Inverness!”
“But you cannot send him all the way to Inverness,” protested Keith,
rather alarmed. “He is evidently badly wounded—ill. . . .” He dropped
on one knee beside Ewen again.
Guthrie gave a short laugh. “Did I say I was gaun to? Ye maun tak me
for a fule, Major. Findin’s keepin’, as they say.—But deil kens,” he
added, suddenly dismounting, “hoo I’m tae transport the man even to my
ain camp the nicht; I’ve naething tae carry him on, and I dinna
jalouse——” Here he too came and stooped over the unconscious figure.
“Aye, _he’s_ no’ for sittin’ a horse, that’s plain. I’m thinkin’ I’ll
e’en hae to leave him here till the morn, and send doun a party wi’ a
litter. There’s ane thing,” he added coolly, raising himself with a
shrug of his shoulders, “he’ll no’ rin awa’, and there’s naebody left
aboot the place. Aye, that’s what I’ll dae.”
“You are going to leave him here alone all night, in this state?”
exclaimed Keith, loosing the almost pulseless wrist.
Guthrie stared angrily at him. “Upon my saul, Major! Are ye expectin’
a spital on Ben Loy? For a man on Hawley’s staff ye’re unco tender tae
a rebel! If I canna tak the prisoner wi’ me I’ve nae choice but leave
him here . . . unless ye’d prefer me tae blaw his harns oot after a’.
It’s nane too late for it yet, ye ken.” And he laid a hand on one of
his own pistols.
“No, you are quite right, sir,” said Keith hastily, almost humbly. “I
see that you can do nothing else but leave him till the morning.”
“Sergeant,” called out Major Guthrie, “pit the prisoner ben the hoose
again, and dinna fire yon shieling. Noo, Major Keith, in payment for
the guid turn ye’ve done me, I’ll hae the pleasure of offerin’ ye
hospeetality for the nicht, and settin’ ye on the richt road for
Perth, which ye’re no’ on the noo, ye ken!”
“I am much beholden to you, sir,” replied Keith stiffly. “But I am not
aware of having laid you under any obligation.”
Guthrie raised his sandy eyebrows. “Are ye no’? Aweel, ye may be
richt; we’ll see, we’ll see.—Aye, sergeant, fire the lave o’ them; we
mauna leave ony bield for the rebels.”
The thatch of the next shieling, going up with a roar, lit sharply the
uniforms of the men who, roughly enough, lifted Ardroy from the
ground, and, staggering a little, for he was no light weight,
disappeared with him round the corner of the miserable little
dwelling. Biting his lip, Keith watched them go; and then Mackay
brought up his horse, restive at the flames. The men came out again.
“Well, Major, are ye no’ satisfied?” asked Guthrie, already back in
the saddle.
Satisfied? No. But he was on such dangerous ground; this man’s mercy,
if so it could be called, was like a bog; at any moment there might be
no more foothold. A little more pressing for better treatment, and he
would have Ardroy shot out of mere spite; Keith was sure of it.
But—left alone, scarcely breathing . . . and in what condition _had_
Ewen been left in there?
“I’ll ride after you in a moment, sir,” he said. “You see, I am under
a sort of obligation to this young Cameron. I’ll just go in and leave
him my brandy-flask.”
Really Major Guthrie of Campbell’s regiment had the most unpleasant
eyes he had ever encountered! “As ye will, sir,” he returned. “I doot
he’ll no’ be able tae thank ye. But I advise ye no’ tae be ower lang
wi’ him, for I canna wait, and ’tis for me tae warn ye this time that
the Duke’ll no’ be verra pleased if ye lose the way tae Perth again.”
He turned his horse; Keith took the flask out of his holster, said a
word to Mackay, and went round to the door of the shieling.
It was Neil MacMartin who lay shot not far from the entrance; Keith
recognised him instantly. No doubt it was only over his dead body that
they had been able to get at his wounded foster-brother. Inside the
tiny place it was so dark that for a moment Keith could hardly see
anything; then, by a sudden red glow from without, he distinguished
Ewen’s body in the far corner, on a heap of something which proved to
be dried fern and heather. The soldiers had flung him back there with
little regard for his wounds or for the coming cold of night. But
there was a plaid lying in a heap on the floor; Keith picked this up
and spread it over him. Ardroy was still senseless, but when Keith
tried to arrange him more comfortably he moaned; yet it was only the
faintest trickle of brandy which the Englishman could get down his
throat. He desisted finally, for fear of choking him, and closed his
cold, nerveless hand round the flask instead. Looking about he saw not
a trace of food nor even of water, though there was an overturned bowl
on the floor; he hurried out with this to the burn which he had
noticed, filled it and placed it within reach. But it seemed rather a
mockery, now that the only hand which might have held it to Ewen
Cameron’s lips was lifeless outside. Had he done Ardroy a kindness
after all in saving him from the volley?
Mackay was in the doorway. “The redcoats iss all gone, Major. I am not
seeing them now.”
Keith jumped up. His duty came before an enemy’s plight, whatever were
his feelings towards that enemy. He could do no more.
The leaping flames outside had died down to mere incandescence, and
the dead man and the senseless were left in possession of the
darkening hollow where the burn’s voice, babbling on in protest or
unconcern, was now the only sound to break the silence.
CHAPTER IV
“Weel, sir, and was yer _frien_’ able tae thank ye?” enquired Major
Guthrie when the Englishman overtook him at the end of the little
column as it wound along the mountain-side. Keith said No, that he had
not yet recovered his senses.
“’Tis tae be hoped he’ll hae gotten them again when I send for him,”
commented the Lowlander. “He’ll no’ be o’ muckle use else. But are ye
sure, Major, that he kens whaur Lochiel is the noo?”
“How do I know what he knows? And use—of what use do you expect him to
be?” asked Keith shortly.
“What use?” Guthrie reined up. “Losh, man, dinna ye ken there’s a
thousand punds on Lochiel’s heid, that he’s likely skulking somewhere
round Achnacarry or Loch Arkaig, and that tae ken his hiding-place wad
be half-way tae the apprehension o’ the man himsel’! Gin ye come frae
Inverness ye canna be ignorant o’ that!—And why for else did ye lay
sic a stress upon yon rebel bein’ sib tae Lochiel, if ye didna mean
that he wad be o’ use tae us in that capacity?”
Keith sat his horse like a statue, and stared at the speaker with
feelings which slowly whitened his own cheek. “Is it possible you
imagine that I thought Ewen Cameron, a Highlander and a gentleman,
would turn informer against his own Chief?”
“Then for what ither reason,” retorted Guthrie, “when ye came wi’ yer
damned interference, did ye insist on his kinship wi’ Lochiel, and
imply that he kenned o’ his whereaboots?”
“I never implied such a thing!” burst out Keith indignantly. “Not for
a moment! You must most strangely have mistaken me, Major Guthrie. And
if Cameron of Ardroy did know, he would never dream of betraying his
knowledge!”
“Ah,” commented Guthrie, surveying him slowly. “Then it’s no’ worth
the fash o’ sendin’ for him the morn.” And smiling crookedly he
touched his horse with his heel, and moved on again after his men.
But Keith Windham remained behind on the mountain path, almost stunned
with disgust. That he should be thought capable of suggesting such a
reason for sparing Ewen Cameron’s life! This then was the cause of
Major Guthrie’s change of intention at the mention of Lochiel’s name,
the meaning of his reference to the ‘good turn’ which Major Windham
had done him! Keith’s impulse was to leave the very path which
Guthrie’s horse had trodden. But he could not gratify this desire; he
was dependent on Guthrie’s guidance. Besides, Ardroy lay helpless and
utterly alone in the hut; he had not saved him yet. Great heavens,
what line was he to take to that end now?
He moved on slowly after the Lowlander, who took no notice of him. On
the narrow path they were obliged to ride in single file, but soon the
track, descending to a lower level, joined a wider one, and here the
Major waited for him to come abreast.
“Since your object in hinderin’ the execution a while syne wasna zeal
for His Majesty’s sairvice, as I thocht,” he observed, “ye maun gie me
leave to say, Major . . . I didna richtly get yer name—that I find yer
conduct unco strange.”
“I am fully prepared to answer to my superiors for my conduct, sir,”
replied Keith very stiffly. “As I told you just now, I am under an
obligation to that young Cameron such as any soldier may owe to an
enemy without dishonour. He spared my life when it was his for the
taking, and as his prisoner last year I received very different
treatment from that which we are now giving to ours!”
“Ah, sae ye were his prisoner?” repeated Guthrie, fixing his little
ferret eyes upon him. “When micht that hae been?”
“It was after the affair at High Bridge last summer,” answered Keith
shortly.
“High Bridge!” A light seemed to dawn on Guthrie’s face—not a pleasant
light. “What, it’s _you_ that lost the twa companies of Sinclair’s
there, along wi’ Scott last August—ye’ll be Major Windrum then?”
“Windham,” corrected Keith, still more shortly.
“Ou aye, Windham. Tae think I didna ken the man I was gangin’ wi’, me
that’s aye been ettlin’ tae meet ye, for I mind hearin’ ye were pit on
Hawley’s staff after yon tuilzie—ha, ha! Aye, I mind hearin’ that
verra weel.—Nae offence meant, Major Windham”—for Keith’s expression
was distinctly stormy—“we all hae oor meelitary misfortunes, . . . but
we dinna a’ get promoted for them!—And ye were sayin’ yon rebel made
ye prisoner. What did he dae wi’ ye?”
“He accepted my parole,” said the Englishman between his teeth.
“And let ye gang?”
“No. I was at his house for some days, and afterwards accompanied him
to Glenfinnan.”
“Ye seem tae hae been chief wi’ him! And whaur was this hoose of his,
if ye please?”
“Can that be of any moment to you, sir?” retorted Keith, goaded by
this interrogatory.
“Dod! I should think sae! It’s o’ moment tae me tae ken hoo far it lay
frae Lochiel’s ain hoose of Achnacarry.”
“Well, that I am afraid I cannot tell you,” replied Keith sourly. “I
was never at Achnacarry, and I have no knowledge of the neighbourhood.
I am not a Scotsman.”
“Fine I ken that! But e’en a Southron has lugs tae his heid, and ye
maun hae heard tell the name o’ the district whaur yon rebel’s hoose
was situate? If ye canna tell me that I’ll be forced tae think——” He
broke off with a grin.
“And what, pray, will you be forced to think?” demanded Keith,
surveying him from under his lids.
“Aweel, I suld think ye could jalouse that,” was Guthrie’s reply.
“Come noo, Major, ye can surely mind some landmark or ither?”
It was no use fencing any more. “Mr. Cameron’s house was near a little
lake called the Eagle’s Lake, in the mountains some way to the north
of Loch Arkaig.”
“Ah, thank ye, Major Windham, for the effort,” said Guthrie with
another grin. “I hae a map in the camp. . . . And syne ye couldna be
pairted frae yer rebel frien’, but gaed wi’ him to Glenfinnan tae see
the ploy there?”
“Do you suppose I went willingly? I have told you that I was his
prisoner.”
“But ye were at Glenfinnan wi’ him, and that’s o’ moment too, for nae
doot ye’d see him an’ Lochiel thegither. Did ye no’?”
“Once or twice.”
“And hoo did they seem—on intimate terrms wi’ ane anither?”
“I was not concerned to spy upon them,” retorted Keith, who had an
instant picture of the Chief as he had once seen him, with an
affectionate hand on Ewen’s shoulder, a picture he was not going to
pass on. “I have told you that they were cousins.”
“Aye, ye tellt me that. But ilka Highlander is cousin tae twenty
mair.” They rode on for perhaps a moment in silence, and then Guthrie
began again. “See here, Major Windham, what the de’il’s the gude o’
tellin’ me the Cameron’s this and that, and syne, when ye’ve hindered
me frae shootin’ him as he desairves, tae begin makin’ oot he’s
naething o’ the sort? I suppose ye’ll say noo he wasna aide-de-camp
tae the Pretender’s son neither?”
“I am not in the habit of telling lies,” replied Keith. “He _was_
aide-de-camp to the Pretender’s son, at least when the Highland army
occupied Edinburgh, and that, as I said, and say still, is an
excellent reason for not shooting him out of hand.”
“Ye met him in Enbra, then?”
“I did.”
“As an enemy or a frien’?”
“As an enemy, of course.” Keith was having to keep a tight hold of
himself. “Yet there again he put me under an obligation.” And at
Guthrie’s expression he was unable to resist adding, “But I dare
warrant the recognition of an obligation is no part of your creed,
sir.”
Guthrie met this thrust instantly. “And me that gleg the noo tae allow
mine tae ye! Fie, Major! But as a plain soldier I’m thinkin’ there’s
ower muckle obleegation atween you and yer Cameron; ye’re gey frien’ly
wi’ him for an enemy, rinnin’ in like that when ye micht hae gotten a
ball in yer ain wame. But since ye assure me he’ll no’ tell what he
kens aboot Lochiel, he maun e’en bide in yon shieling and rot there,
for it’s no’ worth a brass bodle tae bring him in.”
Keith’s heart sank at these words. Yet he could not bring himself to
assert that Ardroy would impart his knowledge (if he had any), for he
was certain that he would rather die than do such a thing. Yet somehow
he _must_ be got out of that desolate place.
He summoned up all his own powers of dissimulation.
“You are quite mistaken, Major Guthrie,” he said carelessly. “I am not
a friend of Mr. Cameron’s in the sense that you imply, and I should be
as glad as anyone to hear of Lochiel’s capture—if it would advance His
Majesty’s affairs in this kingdom.” He added this qualifying clause to
salve his own conscience, since Lochiel’s capture was about the last
he would rejoice at. But he had to say something worse than this, and
he did it with loathing, and a hesitation which perhaps served him
better than he knew, fidgeting meanwhile with his horse’s reins. “You
know, sir, that although I am sure Mr. Cameron would never answer a
direct question, he might perhaps drop . . . inadvertently drop . . .
some hint or other—and I presume you have a certain measure of
knowledge and might find a hint valuable—I mean that it might, by good
luck, complete your information. At least I should think that it would
be worth your while to bring him into camp on the chance of it.”
It sounded to him so desperately feeble a bait that it was surely to
no purpose that he had soiled his lips with its utterance. Yet Guthrie
appeared to respond to the suggestion with surprising alacrity.
“Drap a hint,” he said meditatively, rubbing his chin. “Aye, maybe.
Thank ye for the notion, Major; I’ll e’en think it ower. I could
aiblins drap a hint mysel’.” And they rode on in silence for a few
minutes after that, Keith not knowing whether he more detested himself
or the man beside him.
But by the time that they came in sight of the little river Tarff,
which they must ford before they could get up to the Corryarrick road,
Major Guthrie was busy weaving what he evidently considered a highly
diverting explanation of his companion’s interest in ‘yon rebel’,
which he now refused to attribute to the alleged ‘obligation’ under
which Major Windham professed to labour. “I see it a’,” he chuckled;
“he had a bonny sister, and she was kind tae ye, Major—kind as yon
ither lass of a Cameron was kind to the Pretender’s son. Or a wife
maybe? Oot wi’ it, ye sly dog——” And for a moment or two he gave rein
to a fancy so coarse that Keith, no Puritan himself, yet innately
fastidious, longed to shut his mouth.
“And that’s how ye repaid his hospitality, Major,” finished the
humorist as they splashed through the Tarff. “’Tis a guilty
conscience, not gratitude, garred ye save him!”
After that he reverted to the subject of his companion’s staff
appointment, which seemed to possess a sort of fascination for him,
and tapped a very galling and indeed insulting vein of pleasantry in
regard to it. And Keith, who would not have endured a quarter of this
insolence from anyone else in the world, no, not from the Duke of
Cumberland himself, swallowed it because he knew that Ewen Cameron’s
life hung on this man’s pleasure. First of all his companion supposed
that General Hawley did not know what a viper he was cherishing in his
bosom, in the shape of an officer who possessed a weakness for rebels
which could certainly not be attributed to that commander himself; of
this Keith took no notice, so Major Guthrie passed on to affect to
find something mightily amusing in the distinction of staff rank
having been bestowed on a man who had run away at the first shot of
the campaign. He actually used the expression, but at once safeguarded
himself by adding, with a laugh, “Nae offence, my dear Major! I ken
weel the twa companies o’ Sinclair’s just spat and gied ower, and you
and Scott could dae nae less but gang wi’ them—’twas yer duty.” But
after a moment he added with a chuckle, “Forbye ye rinned farther than
the rest, I’ve heard!”
Ardroy or no Ardroy, this was too much. Keith reined up. Yet, since it
seemed deliberate provocation, he kept surprisingly cool. “Major
Guthrie, I’d have you know I do not take such insinuations from any
man alive! If you know so much about me, you must know also that
Captain Scott sent me back to fetch reinforcements from Fort
Augustus.”
Guthrie, pulling up too, smote himself upon the thigh. “Aye, I micht
ha’ kent it! Forgie me, Major Windham—yon was a pleasantry. I aye
likit ma joke!”
“Allow me to say, then, that I do not share your taste,” riposted
Keith, with a brow like thunder. “If we were not both on active
service at the moment——”
“Ye’d gar me draw, eh? Dinna be that hot, man! ’Twas an ill joke, I
confess, and I ask yer pardon for it,” said Guthrie with complete
good-humour. “See, yonder’s the camp, and ye’re gaun tae sup wi’ me.”
Keith wished with all his heart that he were not. But he felt, rightly
or wrongly, that he must preserve a certain measure of amenity in his
relations with the arbiter of Ardroy’s fate, and, though it seemed to
him that he had never done anything more repugnant (except make his
recent speech about the possibility of Ewen’s dropping a hint) he
affected a demeanour modelled in some remote degree upon his
companion’s, and insincerely declared that he was foolish not to see
that Major Guthrie was joking, and that he bore him no ill-will for
his jest.
What baffled him was the reason for the ill-will which he could hardly
doubt that Guthrie bore _him_. Was it because he had hindered the
shooting of a rebel? But, according to his own showing, Major Guthrie
hoped to find the rebel more useful alive than dead.
It was certainly no deprivation to the Englishman when he discovered,
on arriving at Guthrie’s camp athwart the road, some miles from the
top of the pass, that he was not to share the commanding officer’s
tent. Finding, as he now did, that the distance from the mountain-side
where he had come upon the soldiers was not so great as he had feared,
he would much have preferred to push on over the pass to Meallgarva,
but his horse and his orderly’s were too obviously in need of rest for
this to be prudent, and when he was offered a vacant bed in another
tent (for it appeared that the captain of the company had gone to Fort
Augustus for the night) his worst apprehensions were relieved. The
lieutenant, indeed, who made a third at the meal which he was
nevertheless obliged to share with Guthrie, was of a different stamp
entirely, an open-faced lad from the Tweed named Paton, whom Keith at
once suspected of disliking his major very heartily.
On the plea that he must make an early start, the guest afterwards
excused himself from playing cards with Guthrie and his subaltern, and
withdrew to Lieutenant Paton’s tent. Once there, however, he made no
attempt to undress, but flung himself on the camp bed and lay staring
at the lantern on the tent pole. A few miles away on the other side of
the Tarff the man whom he had tried so hard to save lay dying,
perhaps, for want of food and care. What Guthrie’s real intentions
were about fetching him in to-morrow he, probably of set purpose, had
not allowed his visitor to know. And the question rather was, would
Ewen Cameron be alive at all in the morning—he seemed at so low an
ebb, and the nights were still so cold. Do what Keith would he could
not get him out of his head. It was useless to tell himself that he
had, alas, witnessed worse episodes; that it was the fortune of war;
that he was womanish to be so much distracted by the thought of an
enemy’s situation. He had been that enemy’s guest; he had seen his
domestic circumstances, met his future wife, knew what his very
furniture looked like. Was not all that even more of a tie than that
double debt which he felt he owed him? His instincts were stronger
than his judgment, and when, an hour or so later, Lieutenant Paton
slipped quietly through the flap of the tent, he rose up and abruptly
addressed him.
“Mr. Paton, you look as if you had the natural sentiments of humanity
still left in you. Can you tell me where I could procure some food,
and if possible some dressings, for that unfortunate rebel left alone
upon the mountain-side, about whom you heard at supper?”
The young man looked considerably taken aback, as well he might. “But
how would you propose, sir, to get them to him? And the Major, I
thought, spoke of fetching him into camp to-morrow.”
“I am not at all sure that he will, however,” replied Keith. “And even
if he does I fear he may fetch in a corpse. If I can get some food
and wine I propose to take them to him myself; I think I can find the
way back without difficulty, and my orderly is a Highlander.” And as
Lieutenant Paton looked still more astonished he added, “You must not
think me a mere philanthropist, Mr. Paton. I owe the man in that hut a
good deal, and I cannot endure the thought of having turned my back
upon him in such a plight. In any case I should be making an early
start for Dalwhinnie. Is there any cottage in this neighbourhood where
I could buy bread?”
“No, but I could procure you some in the camp, sir,” said the boy
quite eagerly. “And, as for dressings, you are welcome to tear up a
shirt of mine. I . . . I confess I don’t like these extreme measures,
even with rebels, and I should be very glad to help you.”
“You’ll not get into trouble, eh?”
“Not to-night, at any rate, sir; the Major is in bed by now. And
to-morrow, if it is discovered, I can say that you ordered me to do
it, and that I dared not dispute the orders of a staff officer.”
CHAPTER V
And thus it was that a few hours later Major Windham started back to
Beinn Laoigh again with bread and meat and wine, and an orderly who
plainly thought him mad. Lieutenant Paton had seen them clear of the
camp, whose commander was fortunately wrapped in slumber. Keith would
not need to pass its sentries on his return, for the track up from the
Tarff joined the road to the pass on the farther side of it.
He found that he had noted the position of the shieling hut better
than he could have hoped, considering the disagreeable preoccupation
of his mind during the ride thence with Major Guthrie, and by good
chance there was a moon not much past the full. In her cold light the
mountains looked inexpressibly lonely and remote as Keith rode up the
sheep track to the pasture where the harmless little shelters had
stood. A faint exhausted smoke yet lifted itself from one or two of
the blackened ruins. The stream was chanting its changeless little
song, and in the moonlight Neil MacMartin still lay on guard outside
the broken door of the one unburnt shieling. Keith bent over him as he
passed; he was stiffening already in the plaid which was his only
garment. And Ardroy?
Taking from Mackay the lantern which he had brought for the purpose,
and the food and wine, Keith went rather apprehensively into the dark,
low-roofed place. Except that he had flung his left arm clear, its
occupant was lying as he had left him, long and quiet under the tartan
covering; his eyes were closed and he did not look very different from
his dead foster-brother outside. But as the light fell on his face he
moved a little and faintly said some words in Gaelic, among which
Keith thought he heard Lachlan’s name. He stooped over him.
“Ardroy,” he said gently, and laid a hand on the arm emerging from the
tattered shirt-sleeve.
At the touch Ewen opened his eyes. But all that he saw, evidently, in
the lantern light, was the bright scarlet uniform above him. “What,
again!” he said with an accent of profound weariness. “Shoot me in
here, then; I cannot stand. Have you not . . . a pistol?”
Keith set the lantern on the floor and knelt down by him. “Ardroy,
don’t you know me—Windham of the Royals? I am not come for that, but
to help you if I can.”
The dried fern rustled as the wounded man turned his head a little.
Very hollow in their orbits, but blue as Keith remembered them, his
eyes stared up full of unbelief. “_Windham!_” he said at last, feebly;
“no, it’s not possible. You are . . . someone else.”
“No,” said Keith, wondering how clear his mind might be, “it is really
Windham, come to help you.” He was searching meanwhile for the flask
of brandy which he had left, and finding it slipped down, untouched,
among the sprigs of heather, he wetted Ewen’s lips with a little of
the spirit.
“Yes, it _is_ Windham,” said Ewen to himself. His eyes had never left
his visitor’s face. “But . . . there were other soldiers here before
. . . they took me out to shoot . . . I think I must have . . . swooned.
Then I was . . . back in this place. . . . I do not know why. . . .
Are you sure you . . . have not orders to . . . take me out again?”
“Good God, no!” said Keith. “I have nothing to do with shootings; I am
alone, carrying despatches. Tell me, you are wounded—how severely?”
“My right arm . . . that is nothing much. . . . This thigh . . .
badly. I cannot . . . move myself.”
“And what of food?” queried Keith. “I do not see any here—but I have
brought some with me.” He began to get it out. “Are you not hungry?”
“Not now,” answered Ewen. “I was once . . . Captain Windham,” he went
on, apparently gathering together what forces he had, “your coming . . .
this charity . . . I cannot . . .”
“Do not try!” put in Keith quickly. “Not hungry? How long, then, is it
since you have eaten?”
“Eaten!” said the Highlander, and what might be interpreted as a smile
dawned on his bony face. “There is no food . . . in these hills. I
have had nothing but water . . . for three days . . . I think. . . .
That is why Lachlan has gone . . . to try . . .” The words tailed off
as the spark of astonishment and animation in him went out quite
suddenly, leaving his face the mask it had been when Keith entered.
Three days! No wonder that he was weak. Keith threw the water out of
the bowl, poured some wine into it, and lifting Ewen’s head from the
bracken held it to his lips. “Drink this!” he commanded, and had to
say it two or three times before Ewen obeyed.
“But this is wine, Lachlan,” he murmured confusedly. “How did you come
by wine?” Then his eyes turned on Keith as if he recognised him again,
and the recognition was only a source of bewilderment.
Keith meanwhile was breaking bread into the wine. He knew that one
must not give a starving man too much food at first. But the fugitive,
far from being ravenous, seemed to find it difficult to swallow the
sops which were put to his lips. Keith, however, persevered, and even
added some meat to the bread, and patiently fed him with that, till
Ewen intimated that he could eat no more. Keith’s next intention was
then announced.
“Now I am going to dress your wounds, if they need it,” he said.
“You’ll permit me?”
“_Permit_ you!” repeated Ewen, gazing at him with a renewal of his
former wonder.
Keith took the bowl, and went out for water. The moon was hidden
behind a bank of cloud, but a planet hung like a great flower over one
of the black mountain-tops. The grazing horses lifted their heads
enquiringly, and Mackay, sitting propped against the shieling wall,
scrambled sleepily to his feet.
“No, I am not going on yet. Get me that torn linen from my saddlebag.”
To his surprise, when he went back into the hut after even so
momentary an absence, Ewen had fallen asleep, perhaps as the result of
eating after so long a fast. Keith decided not to rouse him, and
waited. But five minutes saw the end of the snatch of feverish
slumber, for Ardroy woke with a little cry and some remark about the
English artillery which showed that he had been back at Culloden
Moor. However, he knew Keith instantly, and when the Englishman
began to unbandage his wounded sword-arm, murmured, “That was a
bayonet-thrust.”
The arm had indeed been transfixed, and looked very swollen and
painful, but, as far as Keith could judge, gave no particular cause
for anxiety. He washed the wound, and as he bound it up again saw
clearly in the rays of the lantern, which for greater convenience he
had set upon an old stool that he had found, a curious white seam on
the palm of the hand; another ran across the fingers. He wondered for
a moment what they were; then he guessed.
But when he came round and unbandaged Ewen’s thigh—and miserably
enough was it bandaged—and found there a deep gash, in no satisfactory
state, he was somewhat horrified. This injury called for a surgeon,
and he had nearly said so; but, reddening, checked himself, recalling
the deliberate denial of care to the Jacobite wounded at Inverness,
and the actual removal of their instruments from the few of their own
surgeons imprisoned with them. Would Ewen Cameron get real attention
in Major Guthrie’s hands?
He glanced at him, lying with his eyes shut and his hands gripped
together on his breast, but making neither sound nor movement, and
wondered whether he were hurting him intolerably, and what he should
do if he went off into another of those long swoons, and thereupon
finished his task as quickly as he could and had recourse to the
brandy flask once more. And then he sat down at the bottom of the
rough bed—for the heather and fern was spread on a rude wooden
framework standing about a foot from the floor—and gazed at him with a
furrowed brow. The lantern on the stool beside him revealed the
Highlander’s pallor and exhaustion to the full, but, though his eyes
were closed, and he lay quiet for a considerable time, he was not
asleep, for he suddenly opened them, and said:
“I cannot understand; did you know that I was here, Captain Windham
. . . or is it chance that has brought you . . . so opportunely?”
“It was chance the first time—for this is the second time that I have
been here,” replied Keith. “I will tell you about it. I was on my way
this afternoon from Inverness to Perth when some impulse made me
attempt a very foolish short cut among the mountains. I think now that
it must have been the finger of Fate pushing me, for thus I came upon
this place just a moment or two before they dragged you out and set
you against the wall . . . only just in time, in fact. I protested and
argued with the officer in charge—a Major Guthrie, who has a camp on
the Corryarrick road up there—and was fortunately able to prevent his
shooting you in cold blood.” And, as Ewen gave a little exclamation,
he hurried on in order not to give him time to ask (should he think of
it) how he had accomplished this feat. “But he intends—at least I
think he intends—to send a party in the morning and take you prisoner;
and indeed, brute though he is, I hope that he will do so, for
otherwise what will become of you, alone here?”
But Ewen left that question unanswered, and was equally far from
asking on what ground he had been spared. The fact itself seemed
enough for him, for he was trying agitatedly to raise himself a
little. “It was you . . . though I saw no one . . . you saved my life,
then!” he exclaimed rather incoherently. “And now . . . is it possible
that you have come back _again_ . . . out of your way! Captain
Windham, this debt . . . this more than kindness . . .” He struggled
to go on, but between emotion, weakness and recent pain it was more
than he could do, and seeing him almost on the point of breaking down
Keith stopped him quickly.
“For God’s sake don’t talk of debts, Ardroy—or, if you must, remember
what I owe you! See, you are horribly weak; could you not eat a little
more now?”
Ewen nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and put out a shaky left
hand, apparently to show that he could feed himself. And while he
nibbled in a rather half-hearted way at the slice of bread and meat
which Keith put into it, Major Windham himself wandered slowly about
the hovel. The ashes of last summer’s fires lay white in the middle of
the floor, and through the hole in the roof which was the only outlet
for the smoke a star looked in as it passed.
It seemed to Keith that before he went on his way he must tell Ardroy
the means he had used to save him. Surely there was nothing
blameworthy or unnatural in his having revealed who Ewen was, when he
stood between him and imminent death? But from telling him the reason
which Guthrie supposed or feigned to suppose lay at the back of his
action, he mentally shied away like a nervous horse, the Lowlander had
rendered the whole subject so horribly distasteful to him. Moreover it
was not Guthrie who had suggested that Cameron of Ardroy might
‘inadvertently drop a hint’. How _could_ he tell Ewen that he had said
that about him?
He turned round, miserably undecided. Ewen had finished his pretence
at a meal, and his eyes were fixed on his visitor. Keith had a sudden
access of panic; he was sure that the Jacobite was going to ask him on
what plea he had stopped his execution. He would put a question to him
instead.
“How did you get so far with a wound like that?” he asked, coming back
to his former place, and sitting down again. “You had Neil MacMartin
to help you, I suppose? You mentioned Lachlan, too, just now.”
He had not anticipated more than a brief reply, but Ewen, once
started, told him the whole story—not indeed, with any superfluity of
words, and slowly, with pauses here and there. But the narrative was
quite connected, though the speaker gave a certain dreamy impression
of having half forgotten his listener, and of going on as if he were
living his experiences over again rather than narrating them.
It appeared that he had received both his wounds in that desperate
charge into which the clans of the right wing had broken, maddened by
the cruel artillery pounding which they had endured, a charge so
furious that it had pierced and scattered the English front line
regiments, only to dash itself to pieces on the bayonets of Sempill’s
behind them. At the second and severer injury he fell, and was unable
to get to his feet again, for it seemed as if a muscle had been
severed in his thigh, and he was besides losing blood very fast. Only
the devotion of one of his followers got him away from the heap of
dead and wounded strewn like seaweed along the front of the second
line; this man, powerful and unhurt, tied up the gash as best he
could, and succeeded in carrying his chieftain a little out of the
carnage, but in doing so he was shot dead, and once more Ewen was on
the ground among the fallen. This time he was lying among the dead and
wounded of the Atholl men, with none of his own clan to succour him,
and here a strange—and yet ultimately a lucky—mischance befell him.
For a wounded Stewart, half crazed no doubt by a terrible cut on the
head, crawled to him where he lay across his dead clansman and,
cursing him for one of the Campbells who had taken them in flank,
dealt him a furious blow on the forehead with the butt of a pistol.
The result for Ewen was hours of unconsciousness, during which he was
stripped by some redcoats who would certainly have finished him off
had they not thought him dead already. He came to his senses in the
very early morning, naked, and stiff with cold, but so thirsty that he
contrived to drag himself as far as the little burn which crossed the
end of the English line in the direction of their own. There, almost
in the stream, and unconscious again, Lachlan and his brother, who had
been searching for him since evening, almost miraculously found him.
His foster-brothers carried him to a farm-house on the moor, where,
indeed, he was not the only wounded fugitive, but by noon that day,
fearing (and with good reason) a search and a massacre, they somehow
procured an old worn-out horse, and taking turns to ride it and to
hold him on its back, succeeded in crossing the Water of Nairn and
gaining the slopes of the Monadhliath Mountains. What happened then
Ewen was not quite clear about; between pain, loss of blood, and
exposure he was always more or less fevered, but he remembered an
eternity of effort and of going on. At last the old horse fell dead;
for a whole day Neil and Lachlan carried him between them till,
weakened by want of food, they could get him no farther, and had taken
shelter on Beinn Laoigh because the shieling hut at least gave him a
roof from the cold and the rain. They did not know of Guthrie’s camp
on the Corryarrick road, which indeed was pitched after they got to
Beinn Laoigh; in any case they could not entirely avoid the road, for
it would have to be crossed somewhere if they were ever to get back to
Ardroy. But in these lonely mountains they were really faced with
starvation, and Lachlan had at last been forced to go out scouting for
food, and must either have gone far afield or have met with disaster,
for he had been gone since the day before.
“But if he still breathes,” finished Ewen, “I know that he will
return; and if he is in time perhaps he can contrive to get me away to
some other hiding-place before the soldiers come for me to-morrow. But
in any case, Captain Windham—no, I see that it is Major—I am not
likely to forget this extraordinary charity of yours . . . nor your
intervention yesterday. . . . Was it yesterday?” he added rather
vaguely.
“Yes, since it must now be after midnight. The tartan attracted my
notice first,” said Keith, “and then, by great good fortune, I looked
again, and recognised you.”
“This is Neil’s kilt that I have on,” said Ewen with a faint smile.
“There was not a stitch of my own left upon me. . . . You wore the
philabeg too, once . . . it seems a long time ago. . . . But I do not
think,” he went on, rather feverishly talkative now, “that you would
have recognised me the day before, with a two weeks’ beard on me. It
happened, however, that I had made poor Neil shave me as best he could
with his _sgian_.”
“That was good fortune, too,” agreed Keith. “Certainly I should not
have known you bearded.”
“And it is because I had been shaved that I am alive now?” Ewen gave a
little laugh. “Do you know, Windham, that before ever I met you old
Angus, my foster-father—you remember him?—predicted that our lives
would cross . . . I think he said five times. And this is . . . I
can’t count. . . . How many times have we met already?”
“The old man predicted five meetings!” exclaimed Keith, struck. “How
strange! This is the third . . . yes, the third time we have met. If
he is right, then we shall meet again, and more than once. I hope it
may be in happier circumstances.”
“And that I can thank you more fitly,” murmured Ewen. “Last time . . .
do you remember the house in the Grassmarket? . . . You told me the
comedy would end some day, and the players be sorry they ever took
part in it.”
Keith nodded. It was not the first time in the last twelve hours that
he had remembered the house in the Grassmarket.
“But I, for one, do not regret it,” went on Ewen, with a touch of
defiance. “Not for myself, that is. I would do it again. Yet there is
poor Neil outside, killed defending me . . . and so many others on
that horrible moor. . . . You were there, I suppose?”
“I was there,” said Keith. “But _my_ hands are clean of the blood of
massacre!” he added almost fiercely. “If I could have stopped—— We’d
best not speak of it. But your cause is lost, Ardroy, and I suppose
you know it. It only remains for you to escape the consequences, if
you can.”
“I do not seem to be in very good trim for doing that,” said Ewen, and
again he gave the shadow of a smile. “But, since we speak so frankly,
I cannot think that our cause is lost while the Prince and Lochiel
remain at large. We may be scattered, but—— The Prince has not been
captured, has he?” he asked sharply, having evidently seen the change
which the mention, not of the Prince but of Lochiel, had brought to
Keith’s face.
“No, no, nor is it known where he is.”
“Thank God! And Lochiel?”
Keith shrank inwardly. Now it was coming. His momentary hesitation had
a cruel effect on Ewen, who dragged himself to his elbow. “Windham,”
he said hoarsely and imploringly, “surely he’s not . . . what have you
heard? . . . My God, don’t keep me in suspense like this! If he’s
captured tell me!”
“You mistake me,” said Keith, nearly as hoarsely. “He has not been
captured. . . . I am sorry if I misled you.”
Ewen had relapsed again, and put a hand over his eyes. It was fairly
clear that his Chief’s fate was even more to him than that of his
Prince. And now that odious information must be imparted.
Keith tried to gain a little time first. “But Lochiel was wounded
in the battle. Did you know that?”
Ewen removed his hand. “Yes, and have thanked God for it, since it
caused him to be early carried off the field.”
“You saw him fall?”
“No, but afterwards we met with some of the clan, and got news of
him.”
“That must have been a great relief to you,” murmured the Englishman.
Suddenly he was possessed with a desire to find out how much Ewen knew
about Lochiel. Half of him hoped that he knew very little—why, he
could not have said—but the other half thought: If he knows a certain
amount, Guthrie will take better care of him. “But you can have had no
news of your Chief since then?” he hazarded.
“No,” answered the Highlander. “There has been no opportunity.”
Keith looked at him nervously. Ardroy was lying gazing upwards;
perhaps he could see that peering star. Would it be possible to advise
him, if he found himself in Major Guthrie’s custody, to pretend to
have definite knowledge of Lochiel’s whereabouts, even though that
were not the case? Dare he suggest such a thing? It was not one-half
as offensive as what he had already suggested to Guthrie!
Ewen himself broke the silence. “Since we speak as friends,” he said,
his eyes travelling to the open doorway “—and how could I regard you
as an enemy after this?—I may tell you that I have, none the less,
the consolation of knowing where Lochiel is at this moment—God bless
him and keep him safe!”
Keith’s mouth felt suddenly dry. His unspoken question was answered,
and the frankness of the acknowledgment rather took his breath away.
Yet certainly, if Ardroy was as frank with Guthrie it might serve him
well.
“You know where Lochiel is?” he half stammered.
Ewen shut his eyes and smiled, an almost happy smile. “I think he is
where (please God) he will never be found by any redcoat.”
“You mean that he has gone overseas?” asked Keith, almost without
thinking.
Ardroy’s eyes opened quickly, and for a second, as he looked up at the
speaker, there was a startled expression in them. “You are not
expecting me to tell you——”
“No, no,” broke in Keith, very hastily indeed. “Of course not! But I
should be glad if he were so gone, for on my soul there is none of
your leaders whom I should be so sorry to see captured.”
Yet with the words he got up and went to the doorway. Yes, Ardroy
_had_ the secret; and he wished, somehow, that he had not. The moment
could no longer be postponed when he must tell him of his conversation
with Guthrie, were it only to put him on his guard. Bitterly as he was
ashamed, it must be done.
He stood in the doorway a moment, choosing the words in which he
should do it, and they were hatefully hard to choose. Hateful, too,
was it to leave Ardroy here helpless, but there was no alternative,
since he could not possibly take him with him. Yet if Lachlan
returned, and in time, and especially if he returned with assistance,
he might be able to get his foster-brother away somewhere. Then Ewen
Cameron would never fall into Guthrie’s hands. In that case what use
to torment him with prospects of an interrogatory which might never
take place, and which could only be very short?
No; it was mere cowardice to invent excuses for silence; he must do
it. He came back very slowly to the pallet.
“I must tell you——” he began in a low voice, and then stopped. Ewen’s
lashes were lying on his sunken cheek, and did not lift at the
address. It was plain that he had fallen anew into one of those sudden
exhausted little slumbers, and had not heard even the sentence which
was to herald Keith’s confession. It would be unnecessarily cruel to
rouse him in order to make it. One must wait until he woke naturally,
as he had done from the last of these dozes.
Keith took the lantern off the stool and sat down there. And soon the
wounded man’s sleep became full of disjointed scraps of talk, mostly
incoherent; at one time he seemed to think that he was out after the
deer on the hills with Lachlan; then he half woke up and muttered,
“But it’s we that are the deer now,” and immediately fell into another
doze in which he murmured the name of Alison. Gradually, however, his
slumber grew more sound; he ceased to mutter and to make little
restless movements, and in about five minutes he was in the deep sleep
of real repose, which he had not known, perhaps, for many nights—a
sleep to make a watcher thankful.
But Keith Windham, frowning, sat watching it with his chin on his
hand, conscious that his time was growing very short, that it was
light outside, and almost light in this dusky hovel, and that the pool
of lantern-shine on the uneven earth floor looked strange and sickly
there. He glanced at his watch. No, indeed, he ought not to delay any
longer. He took up and blew out the lantern, went outside and roused
Mackay, washed the bowl and, filling it with water, placed it and the
rest of the food and wine within reach.
His movements had not roused the sleeper in the least. For the last
time Keith stooped over him and slipped a hand round his wrist. He
knew nothing of medicine, but undoubtedly the beat there was stronger.
It would be criminal to wake Ardroy merely in order to tell him
something unpleasant. There came to the soldier a momentary idea of
scribbling a warning on a page of his pocket-book and leaving this on
the sleeper’s breast; but it was quite possible that the first person
to read such a document would be Guthrie himself.
He rearranged the plaid carefully, and stood for a moment longer
looking at the fugitive where he lay at his feet, his head sunk in the
dried fern. And he remembered the hut at Kinlochiel last summer, where
he had done much the same thing. He had talked somewhat earlier on
that occasion, had he not, of obligation and repayment; well, he had
more than repaid. Ewen Cameron owed him his life—owed it him, very
likely, twice over. Yet Keith was conscious again that no thought of
obligation had drawn him to dash in front of those muskets yesterday,
nor had the idea of a debt really brought him back now. What then? . . .
Absurd! He was a man who prided himself on being unencumbered with
friends. Moreover, Ewen Cameron was an enemy.
It was strange, then, with what reluctance, with what half-hopes,
half-apprehensions, he got into the saddle and rode away under the
paling stars, leaving his enemy to rescue or capture; very strange,
since that enemy was likewise a rebel, that he should so greatly have
desired the former.
IV
‘YOUR DEBTOR, EWEN CAMERON’
“So, in this snare which holds me and appals me,
Where honour hardly lives nor loves remain . . .”
—H. BELLOC. _On Battersea Bridge_.
CHAPTER I
The mist shrouded every mountain-top, sagging downwards in some places
like the roof of a tent, and in others, where a perpetual draught blew
down a corrie, streaming out like smoke. How different from last week,
when, cold as it was up there, the top of the Corryarrick Pass had
presented to Major Windham’s eyes a view from Badenoch to the hills of
Skye. To-day, recrossing it, and looking back, he could hardly
distinguish through the greyish-white blanket more than three or four
of its many traverses winding away below him.
But here, on the lower levels of the mountain road, where it prepared
to debouch into that which ran along the Great Glen, this clogging
mist had become a fine and most penetrating rain, bedewing every inch
of the rider’s cloak and uniform, his hat, the edges of his wig, his
very eyebrows and lashes, and insinuating itself down his collar.
Major Windham did not know which was the more objectionable form of
moisture, and wished it were late enough in the day to cease exposing
himself to either, and to put up for the night at Fort Augustus, which
he should reach in another twenty minutes or so. But it was still too
early for that, and, bearer as he was of a despatch from Lord
Albemarle to the Duke of Cumberland, he must push on beyond Fort
Augustus before nightfall; must, indeed, reach the only halting-place
between that spot and Inverness, the tiny inn known, from Wade’s
occupation of it when he was making the road, as the General’s Hut.
However, he intended to stop at Fort Augustus to bait the horses—and
to make an enquiry.
It was six days since he had left Guthrie’s camp, and he was not
altogether surprised to-day to find it gone, but, to judge from the
litter lying about, only recently gone. There was, therefore, no one
to give him news of Ardroy, but he was sure that, if the Jacobite had
been made prisoner, he would have been sent or taken to Fort Augustus,
and he could get news of him there.
That night in the shieling, just a week ago, seemed to Keith much
farther off than that, and the emotions he had known then to have lost
their edge. ‘Gad, what a fit of philanthropy I had on me that day!’ he
reflected. If ‘Hangman Hawley’ came to know of it how he would sneer
at him, and the rest of the staff, too. Luckily they would not know.
So consoling himself, and cursing the rain anew, he came to Fort
Augustus, or rather to what remained of it. Its Highland captors who,
during their attack upon it, had partially demolished the new fort,
had, on the summons to face Cumberland, blown up and fired most of the
residue. A small temporary garrison had been sent there after the
victory to secure the abandoned stronghold for the Government; but it
had now been taken possession of by a larger force in the shape of the
Earl of Loudoun’s regiment, under the Earl himself, and eighteen
‘independent companies’. These had only marched in a few hours before,
in consequence of which influx the whole place was in a state of great
turmoil.
There was so little accommodation in the ruined fort that a small
village of tents was being erected in the meadows by the mouth of the
Tarff, and between the confusion of camp-pitching and the fact that
nearly everyone whom he encountered was a new-comer, Keith found it
difficult to discover who was or had been responsible for prisoners
sent in before Lord Loudoun’s arrival. He did, however, elicit the
information that Major Guthrie’s detachment was now somewhere on the
road between Fort Augustus and Inverness. And at last, though he did
not succeed in seeing anybody directly responsible, he was told that a
wounded Cameron, said to be the head of one of the cadet branches of
the clan, had been captured the previous week and sent in by that very
detachment, and that he had been given proper care and was progressing
favourably.
That was all Keith wanted to know for the moment, and he delayed no
longer. A certain vague disquiet which had teased him during the past
week about Guthrie’s possible treatment of his prisoner was allayed.
For the rest, he had already made his plans about Ardroy. It was at
Inverness, with Cumberland, that he could really do Ewen service,
especially if the Duke did take him on to his personal staff. To His
Royal Highness he could then represent what he owed to the captured
rebel, and, before he himself returned with the Commander-in-Chief to
Flanders, he might very well have the satisfaction of knowing that the
object of his ‘philanthropy’ had been set at liberty.
As he turned away from Fort Augustus, where the vista of Loch Ness was
completely blotted out in rain, and addressed himself to the long
steep climb up the Inverness road, Keith’s thoughts went back to the
Earl of Albemarle in Perth, craving like himself to get overseas once
more—whence, though colonel of the Coldstream Guards, he had come to
serve as a volunteer under Cumberland. His lordship, who had,
moreover, greatly preferred commanding the front line in the recent
battle to his present post with the Hessian troops in Perth, had
lamented his situation quite openly to Cumberland’s messenger; he
detested Scotland, he announced, and had fears, from a sentence in the
despatch which that messenger had delivered to him, that he might be
appointed to succeed Hawley in this uncongenial country. Having thus,
somewhat unwisely, betrayed his sentiments to Major Windham, he was
more or less obliged to beg his discretion, in promising which Keith
had revealed his own fellow-feeling about the North. When they parted,
therefore, Lord Albemarle had observed with much graciousness that if
this horrid fate of succeeding General Hawley should overtake him, he
would not forget Major Windham, though he supposed that the latter
might not then be in Scotland for him to remember. No; Keith, though
grateful for his lordship’s goodwill, distinctly hoped that he would
not. He trusted to be by then in a dryer climate and a country less
afflicted with steep roads . . . less afflicted also with punitive
measures, though, since Perth was not Inverness, he was not so much
dominated by those painful impressions of brutality as he had been a
week ago.
The greater part of the lengthy and tiresome ascent from the level of
Loch Ness was now over, and Keith and Dougal Mackay found themselves
again more or less in the region of mist, but on a flat stretch of
road with a strip of moorland on one hand. Water glimmered ahead on
the left; it was little Loch Tarff, its charms dimmed by the weather.
Keith just noticed its presence, tightened his reins, and, trotting
forward on the welcome level, continued his dreams about the future.
Twenty-five yards farther, and these were brought abruptly to a close.
Without the slightest warning there came a sharp report on his right,
and a bullet sped in front of him, so close that it frightened his
horse. Himself considerably startled too, he tried simultaneously to
soothe the beast and to tug out a pistol from his holster. Meanwhile,
Dougal Mackay, with great promptitude and loud Gaelic cries, was
urging his more docile steed over the heather towards a boulder which
he evidently suspected of harbouring the marksman.
As soon as he could get his horse under control Keith also made over
the strip of moorland, and arrived in time to see a wild, tattered,
tartan-clad figure, with a musket in its hands, slide down from the
top of the boulder, drop on to hands and knees among the heather and
bogmyrtle, and begin to wriggle away like a snake. Major Windham
levelled his pistol and fired, somewhat at random, for his horse was
still plunging; and the Highlander collapsed and lay still. Keith
trotted towards him; the man had already abandoned his musket and lay
in a heap on his side. The Englishman was just going to dismount when
shouts from Dougal Mackay, who had ridden round the boulder, stayed
him. “Do not pe going near him, sir; the man will not pe hit
whateffer!” And as this statement coincided with Keith’s own
impression that his bullet had gone wide, he stayed in the saddle and
covered the would-be assassin with his other pistol, while Mackay, who
certainly did not lack courage, slid off his own horse and came
running.
And it was even as Mackay had said. At the sound of the feet swishing
through the heather the heap of dirty tartan lying there was suddenly,
with one bound, a living figure which, leaping up dirk in hand, rushed
straight, not at the dismounted orderly, but at the officer on the
horse. Had Keith not had his pistol ready he could hardly have saved
himself, mounted though he was, from a deadly thrust. The man was at
his horse’s head when he fired. . . . This time he did not miss; he
could not. . . .
“I suppose I have blown his head to pieces,” he said next moment, with
a slightly shaken laugh.
“Inteet, I will pe thinking so,” replied Mackay, on his knees in the
heather. “But it will pe pest to make sure.” And he put his hand to
his own dirk.
“No, no!” commanded Keith, as he bent from the saddle, for somehow the
idea of stabbing a dead man, even a potential murderer, was repugnant
to him. “It is not necessary; he was killed instantly.”
There could be small doubt of that. One side of the Highlander’s
bearded face was all blackened by the explosion, and as he lay there,
his eyes wide and fixed, the blood ran backwards through his scorched
and tangled hair like a brook among waterweeds. The ball had struck
high up on the brow. It came to Keith with a sense of shock that the
very torn and faded philabeg which he wore was of the Cameron tartan.
He was sorry. . . .
Deterred, unwillingly, from the use of his dirk, the zealous Mackay
next enquired whether he should not put the cateran’s body over his
horse and bring him to Inverness, so that, dead or alive, he could be
hanged at the Cross there as a warning.
“No, leave him, poor devil,” said Keith, turning his horse. “No need
for that; he has paid the price already. Let him lie.” He felt
curiously little resentment, and wondered at the fact.
Dougal Mackay, however, was not going to leave the musket lying too.
“Ta _gunna_—she is Sassenach,” he announced, examining it.
“Take it, then,” said Keith. “Come, we must get on to the General’s
Hut before this mist grows thicker.”
So they rode away, leaving the baffled assailant staring into vacancy,
his dirk still gripped in his hand, and under his head the heather in
flower before its time.
Once more the road mounted; then fell by a long steep gradient. The
General’s Hut, a small and very unpretentious hostelry, of the kind
known as a ‘creel house’, was at Boleskine, down on its lower levels,
and before Keith reached it he could see that its outbuildings were
occupied by soldiers. They were probably Major Guthrie’s detachment.
Indeed, as he dismounted, a uniformed figure which he knew came round
the corner of the inn, but it stopped dead on seeing him, then, with
no further sign of recognition, turned abruptly and disappeared again.
It was Lieutenant Paton.
So these _were_ Guthrie’s men, and he could hear more of Ardroy. But
he would have preferred to hear it from Paton rather than from
Guthrie, and wished that he had been quick enough to stop that young
man.
The first person whom Keith saw when he entered the dirty little
parlour was Guthrie himself—or rather, the back of him—just sitting
down to table.
“Come awa’, Foster, is that you?” he called out. “Quick noo; the brose
is getting cauld.” Receiving no response he turned round. “Dod! ’tis
Major Windham!”
Keith came forward perforce. “Good evening, Major Guthrie. Yes, I am
on my way back to Inverness.”
“Back frae Perth, eh?” commented Guthrie. “By the high road this time,
then, I’m thinkin’. Sit ye doun, Major, and Luckie whate’er she ca’s
hersel’ shall bring anither cover. Ah, here comes Foster—let me
present Captain Foster of ma regiment tae ye, Major Windham. Whaur’s
yon lang-leggit birkie of a Paton?”
“Not coming to supper, sir,” replied Captain Foster, saluting the new
arrival. “He begs you to excuse him; he has a letter to write, or he
is feeling indisposed—I forget which.”
“Indeed!” said Guthrie, raising his sandy eyebrows. “He was weel
eneugh and free o’ correspondence a while syne. However, it’s an ill
wind—— Ye ken the rest. Major Windham can hae his place and his meat.”
Keith sat down, with as good a grace as he could command, at the
rough, clothless table. This Foster was presumably the officer whose
bed he had occupied in the camp, a man more of Guthrie’s stamp than of
Paton’s, but better mannered. Lieutenant Paton’s excuse for absence,
coupled with his abrupt disappearance, was significant, but why should
the young man not wish to meet Major Keith Windham? Perhaps because
the latter had got him into trouble after all over his ‘philanthropy’.
Between the three the talk ran on general topics, and it was not until
the meal was half over that Guthrie suddenly said:
“Weel, Major, I brocht in yer Cameron frien’ after ye left.”
Keith murmured that he was glad to hear it.
“But I got little for ma pains,” continued Guthrie, pouring himself
out a glass of wine—only his second, for, to Keith’s surprise, he
appeared to be an abstemious man. He set down the bottle and looked
hard at the Englishman. “But ye yersel’ were nae luckier, it seems.”
Keith returned his look. “I am afraid that I do not understand.”
“Ye see, I ken ye went back tae the shieling yon nicht.”
“Yes, I imagined that you would discover it,” said Keith coolly. “I
trust that you received my message of apology for departing without
taking leave of you?”
“Yer message of apology!” repeated Major Guthrie. “Ha, ha!
Unfortunately ye didna apologise for the richt offence! Ye suld hae
apologised for stealing a march on me ahint ma back. ’Twas a pawky
notion, yon, was it no’, Captain Foster?”
“I must repeat that I am completely in the dark as to your meaning,
Major Guthrie!” said Keith in growing irritation.
“Isna he the innocent man! But I forgie ye, Major—since ye gained
naething by gangin’ back.”
“_Gained!_” ejaculated Keith. “What do you mean, sir? I did not go
back to the shieling to gain anything. I went——”
“Aye, I ken what ye said ye gaed for,” interrupted Guthrie with a
wink. “’Twas devilish canny, as I said, and deceived the rebel himsel’
for a while. All yon ride in the nicht juist tae tak’ him food and
dress his wounds! And when ye were there tendin’ him sae kindly ye
never speired aboot Lochiel and what he kennt o’ him, and whaur the
chief micht be hidin’, did ye?—Never deny it, Major, for the rebel
didna when I pit it tae him!”
“You devil!” exclaimed Keith, springing up. “What did you say to him
about me?”
Guthrie kept his seat, and pulled down Captain Foster, who, murmuring
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” had risen too. “Nae need tae be sae
distrubel’d, Captain Foster; I’m na. That’s for them that hae uneasy
consciences. What did I say tae him? Why, I tellt him the truth, Major
Windham: why ye set such store on saving his life, and how ye thocht
he micht be persuaded tae ‘drap a hint’ aboot Lochiel. Forbye he didna
believe that at first.”
Keith caught his breath. “You told him those lies . . . to his face
. . . and he believed . . .” He could get no farther.
“Lies, were they?” asked Guthrie, leaning over the table. “Ye ne’er
advised me tae bring him into camp tae ‘complete ma knowledge’? Eh, I
hae ye there fine! Aweel, I did ma best, Major Windham; nane can dae
mair. But I doot he has the laugh of us, the callant, for he tellt me
naething, either by hints or ony ither gait, a’ the time I had him in
ma care. So I e’en sent him wi’ a bit report tae Fort Augustus, and
there he is the noo, as ye may have heard, if ye speired news o’ him
when ye came by.”
Keith had turned very white. “I might have known that you would play
some dirty trick or other!” he said, and flung straight out of the
room.
Fool, unspeakable fool that he was not to have foreseen something of
this kind with a man of Guthrie’s stamp! He _had_ had moments of
uneasiness at the thought of Ardroy’s probable interview with him, but
he had never anticipated anything quite so base as this. “Take me to
Lieutenant Paton at once!” he said peremptorily to the first soldier
he came across.
The man led him towards a barn looming through the mist at a little
distance. The door was ajar, and Keith went in, to see a dimly lit
space with trusses of straw laid down in rows for the men, and at one
end three horses, his own among them, with a soldier watering them.
The young lieutenant, his hands behind his back, was watching the
process. Keith went straight up to him.
“Can I have a word with you alone, Mr. Paton?”
The young man stiffened and flushed; then, with obvious reluctance,
ordered the soldier out. And when the man with his clanging buckets
had left the building, Paton stood rather nervously smoothing the
flank of one of the horses—not at all anxious to talk.
“Mr. Paton,” said Keith without preamble, “what devil’s work went on
in your camp over the prisoner from Ben Loy?” And then, at sight of
the look on Paton’s face, he cried out, “Good God, man, do you think
that I had a hand in it, and is that why you would not break bread
with me?”
Lieutenant Paton looked at the ground. “I . . . indeed I found it hard
to believe that you could act so, when you seemed so concerned for the
prisoner, but——”
“In Heaven’s name, let us have this out!” cried Keith. “What did Major
Guthrie say to Mr. Cameron? He appears to have tried to make him
believe an infamous thing of me—that I went back to the shieling that
night merely in order to get information out of him! Surely he did not
succeed in making him think so—even if he succeeded with you? . . .
Answer me, if you please!”
The younger man seemed very ill at ease. “I cannot say, sir, what Mr.
Cameron believed about you in the end. He certainly refused, and
indignantly, to believe it at first.”
“He _cannot_ have believed it!” said Keith passionately. “‘In the
end’? How long, then, did Major Guthrie have him in his custody?”
“He kept him for twenty-four hours, sir—in order to see if he would
make any disclosures about Lochiel.” And Lieutenant Paton added, in a
very dry tone, turning away and busying himself with a horse’s
headstall, “A course which it seems that you yourself advised.”
Keith gave a sound like a groan. “Did the Major tell Mr. Cameron that
also?”
Paton nodded. “Yes, he did—and more, too: whether true or not I have
no means of judging.”
Keith had the sensation that the barn, or something less material, was
closing in round him. This honest boy, too—— “Look here, Mr. Paton, I
will be frank with you. I was so desperately afraid that Ardroy would
be left to die there in the shieling that I did suggest to Major
Guthrie that it might be of advantage to bring him into camp, though I
knew that he would have his trouble for nothing. Though I
unfortunately recommended that course I was perfectly certain that Mr.
Cameron would not give the slightest inkling of any knowledge that he
might have.”
“No, it was plain from the beginning that he would not,” said the
young man, “and that was why . . .” He broke off. “If Mr. Cameron is a
friend of yours it is a good thing that you were not in our camp that
morning . . . or no, perhaps a misfortune, because you might have
succeeded in stopping it sooner. I could not.”
“Succeeded in stopping what?” asked Keith. Then the inner flavour of
some of Guthrie’s recent words began to be apparent to him. He caught
Paton by the arm. “You surely do not mean that Major Guthrie resorted
to—violent measures? It’s impossible!”
Thus captured, the young soldier turned and faced him. “Reassure
yourself, sir,” he said quickly, seeing the horror and disgust on his
companion’s face. “He could not carry them out; the prisoner was in no
state for it. He could only threaten, and . . . question.”
“He threatened to shoot him after all?”
“No, not to shoot him, to flog him.” And as Keith gave an exclamation
and loosed his hold, Paton added, “And he went very near doing it,
too.”
“Threatened to flog him! Mr. Paton, you are jesting!” said Keith
incredulously. “Flog a badly wounded prisoner, and a gentleman—a
chieftain—to boot!”
“I am not jesting, sir; I wish I were. But I am thankful to say that
it was not carried out.—Now, if you will excuse me, Major Windham, I
must be about my duties.” His tone indicated that he would be glad to
leave a distasteful subject.
But Keith made a movement to bar his passage. “Mr. Paton, forgive my
insistence, but your duties must wait a little. You cannot leave the
matter there! For my own sake I must know what was said to Mr.
Cameron. You see how nearly it concerns my honour. I implore you to
try to recall everything that passed!”
Reluctantly the young man yielded. “Very well, sir; but I had best
speak to the sergeant to ensure that we are not disturbed, for this
barn is the men’s quarters.”
He went out to give an order. Hardly knowing what he did, Keith turned
to his horse, busy pulling hay from the rack, and looked him over to
see that Mackay had rubbed him down properly. Threatened with
flogging—Ewen Cameron!
Paton came back, closed the door and brought up a couple of pails,
which he inverted and suggested as seats. “You must be tired, Major,
after your long ride, and I am afraid that this will be a bit of a
sederunt.” So Keith sat down in the stall to hear what his ill-omened
suggestion had brought on the man whom he had saved.
CHAPTER II
It appeared that Major Guthrie, on learning next morning of Major
Windham’s departure on his errand of mercy, had been not only
exceedingly angry, but suspicious as well—“or at least,” said Paton,
“he declared that he was suspicious”—and sent off a party almost
immediately to fetch in the wounded rebel from the shieling. About a
couple of hours later they returned, carrying him on a litter, which
they deposited outside their commander’s tent, where Paton happened to
be at the moment. Guthrie immediately went out to him, and said—the
narrator remembered his first words exactly—‘Well, my fine fellow, and
so you know where Lochiel is like to be skulking!’ The prisoner
replied by asking whether Major Guthrie thought he should tell him if
he did? Major Guthrie retorted, with a grin, that he knew it was the
thing to begin with a little bluster of the sort, but that they had
better get to business without wasting time. “And he added, sir,” said
the young soldier, looking away, “‘I know that you know; Major Windham
says so.’”
Keith had put his hand over his eyes. “Yes; go on,” he said after a
moment.
“This was plainly rather a blow to Mr. Cameron,” continued Paton. “I
saw the blood rush to his face. ‘_What_ did you say?’ he asked. The
Major replied that you, sir, being a loyal subject of King George,
were just as eager to secure Lochiel as himself, which was the reason
why you had very properly stopped him from having the prisoner shot.
To that Mr. Cameron replied, short and sharp, ‘I don’t believe it!’
The Major affected to misunderstand this, and . . . well, sir, he said
a good many things incriminating you in the affair, twisting what you
had, perhaps, said . . .”
“Try, for God’s sake, to remember what those things were,” begged
Keith miserably, without looking up.
The young man paused a moment, evidently trying to remember
accurately.
“First, I think, he told Mr. Cameron that you had said he was Cameron
of Ardroy, Lochiel’s cousin, and had had you as his prisoner after the
affair at High Bridge, and he added, ‘I doubt he wanted to get even
with you for that!’ And to make his assertion more credible he asked
Mr. Cameron how otherwise he should have known who he was, since he
took him for a gillie when he had him up against the shieling wall.
And the Major went on to say that for the news of Mr. Cameron’s
identity he was grateful to you, but not so grateful when he found
that you had stolen a march on him by sneaking back to the shieling by
night in order to get information out of the prisoner before he could.
But at that Mr. Cameron tried to raise himself on the litter, and
burst out, ‘That’s a lie!’ And then the Major silenced him by what I
can only suppose was an arrow drawn at a venture, since you . . . I
don’t suppose that you . . .” Paton began to stumble.
“Let me have it!” said Keith, looking up this time.
“He said, ‘And so he never speired about Lochiel . . . where he was
. . . if you kenned where he was?’”
Keith stared at the narrator half dazed. “How did he know that . . .
he _could_ not have known it!”
“As I say, it seemed to silence Mr. Cameron altogether,” continued
Paton, glancing at him with a sort of pity. “He looked quite dizzy as
he dropped back on the litter. But the Major laughed. And he went on,
in that bantering way he has: ‘I hope you did not tell him, for I want
you to tell _me_. Did you tell him?’ The rebel took no notice of this
question; he had shut his eyes. It was as I looked at him then, sir,
and saw the effect which that question had had on him, that I first
began, I confess, to have doubts of your good faith.”
“You had cause,” answered Keith with a groan. “I did ask him about
Lochiel—in all innocence. My God, what he must think of me!” He took
his head between his hands. “Go on!”
“Finding that Mr. Cameron was silent,” resumed Paton, “Major Guthrie
went nearer and said something, I do not exactly remember what, about
dropping a hint inadvertently with regard to Lochiel’s hiding-place,
which it was easy to do, he said, and which he should give the
prisoner every opportunity of doing, keeping him there, indeed, until
he did. He kept harping for awhile on this question of dropping a
hint, and he brought you even into that, for he said that it was your
suggestion, that you had advised him to bring the rebel into camp and
watch him well for that purpose. . . . And from what you have just
told me, sir, it seems that that was true.”
Paton paused; but Keith, his head between his hands, said nothing; he
was beyond it. This was what came of doing evil in order to accomplish
good!
“Still Mr. Cameron took no notice,” pursued Paton, “even when the
Major went on to say in so many words that you had betrayed him—Mr.
Cameron—and had then ridden off, leaving _him_ the dirty work to do.
Then he changed his tone, and said, ‘But I shall not flinch from it;
’tis my duty. Do you know, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy, how we deal with
folk that have valuable information and will not part with it?’ At
that the prisoner did open his eyes, and said with a good deal of
contempt that, from what he had seen of the Major, he could very well
guess.
“The Major at that bent over him and gripped him by the nearer arm. He
may not have observed that it was bandaged—I cannot say—and repeated,
‘Ah, you can quite imagine, can you? D’you think you’ll like it?’ Mr.
Cameron did not answer; perhaps he could not, for he was biting his
lip, and I saw the sweat come out on his brow. Major Guthrie let go
and stood up again, and said that a flogging with belts would soon
loosen his tongue; and that did rouse Mr. Cameron, for he coloured
hotly and said he thought the Major forgot that he was a gentleman.
But the Major replied with a chuckle that he looked so little like
one at present that it was easy to assume that he was not. Then he
asked him whether he intended to save himself from this unpleasant
experience, as he easily could do; Mr. Cameron’s look was sufficient
answer to that. So, to my horror, the Major sent for the drummers and
ordered a tent to be struck, in order to have the pole available to
tie him up to.”
“This is intolerable!” exclaimed Keith, starting up. “Stop! I had
rather not——” He pulled himself together. “No, I have got to hear it.
Go on!”
“I assure you that I did not enjoy it,” said the young officer, “for
_I_ thought that the matter was going through. They lifted Mr. Cameron
off the litter; he could not stand, it appeared, owing to the wound in
his thigh, and the men were obliged to support him. But the Major said
to him that he would not be able to fall this time, as he had done
yesterday, because we had ropes here. . . . I myself, who would
willingly have interfered before, sir, had there been any chance of
being listened to, now took the Major by the arm and told him plainly
that he would kill the prisoner if he was so barbarous as to have him
flogged in his present condition. But he shook me off, and said, when
everything was ready (except Mr. Cameron himself, who was still held
up there, facing him, as white as you please, but perfectly unyielding
and defiant): ‘Now, before you make acquaintance with His Majesty’s
leather, will you tell me what you know about Lochiel?’ And the rebel,
with his eyes blazing, said, in a sudden access of fury, ‘Not if you
cut me to pieces!’
“Well, sir, though I am convinced that the Major was not acting a part
and merely threatening, but that he really meant to go through with
the horrid business, I think it must have come to him then that, if he
did, he would have Mr. Cameron dead on his hands, as I had warned him,
and there would be an end to that source of information. (It is
possible, too, that he thought he might be called to account for it
afterwards.) And even the men were looking uneasy and murmuring a
little. So he said that he would postpone the flogging until the
afternoon. He had the prisoner carried into his own tent, not much, I
fear, the better for this scene; and in his tent Mr. Cameron was all
the rest of the day and the night. I do not know what passed in there,
for whenever I made an effort to go in, I was stopped; but I am sure
the Major questioned him pretty continuously. He still spoke of the
flogging taking place, but it never did. Next morning I was not
surprised to hear that the prisoner seemed worse, and in a fever, so
that the Major resolved to be rid of him, and sent him to Fort
Augustus. I was heartily glad, for his own sake, to see Mr. Cameron
taken away. And at Fort Augustus he must have had care, or he would
not be alive now, which he is, for I asked news of him yesterday, as
we came by. But that I should be ashamed to meet him, I would fain
have seen him to ask his pardon.”
Paton’s voice ceased; in the silence one of the horses near them
stamped and blew out its nostrils. Keith, standing there very still,
released his own tightly gripped elbows.
“Mr. Paton, I thank you most heartily for your frankness. I, too, am
ashamed—with much more cause than you, I think—yet I am going back to
Fort Augustus to see Mr. Cameron.”
“Back to Fort Augustus—to-night!” said Paton, rather startled.
“Yes, to-night. My horse,” he glanced at that animal, “can still carry
me so far—a matter of ten or twelve miles, is it not? I intended to
lie here the night, and to start about six o’clock to-morrow morning
for Inverness. I shall lie at Fort Augustus instead, and start
proportionately earlier, that is all. I must find my orderly at once,
but I shall not take him back with me.”
Paton said no more, and they went out of the barn together, by which
evacuation the waiting soldiers outside, huddled against its wall for
shelter, were enabled to enter their sleeping-place. While the
surprised Mackay resaddled his officer’s horse, Keith strode back to
the inn parlour. But just outside, where he could hear Guthrie’s voice
in conversation, he paused. If he meant to get back to Fort Augustus
he must not enter Guthrie’s presence first; the fury and resentment
which possessed him could have but one result—a quarrel with
the Lowlander. Moreover, Lieutenant Paton might suffer for his
communicativeness. Clenching his hands, Keith turned away from
temptation.
But there was one last question to ask.
“Mr. Paton,” he said in a low voice as his horse was brought towards
him, “have you any notion why Major Guthrie hates me so, for it is
plain that he does?”
And to his surprise the young man answered, in a voice equally low:
“I have a very good notion why, sir. He had had great hopes of
securing that post on General Hawley’s staff which was eventually
given to you. Your obtaining it was a very sore point with him,
because he thought his claims superior to those of an officer who—who
. . .” Paton hesitated.
“Yes, I understand,” said Keith, his mouth tightening. “Who had lost
one of the companies at High Bridge.” Guthrie’s sneers on that fatal
ride were explained now. “So that was my offence!” he said under his
breath, as he swung into the saddle. “And this is how he has avenged
himself!”
* * * * * *
The wind had risen greatly in the last hour, and the rain was no
longer a fine, almost caressing, drizzle; it beat upon the rider as he
urged his horse back along the lower levels with a vehemence which
predicted real difficulty in proceeding when he should reach the
higher. But he did not notice it.
There could not be the slightest doubt that Ewen Cameron must believe
him to have acted in a manner unspeakably treacherous and vile. From
the deadly success of Guthrie’s ‘arrow at a venture’, as Paton had
rightly called it, he must even think that his visitor had gone
straight back from tending him in the shieling to Guthrie’s camp with
the news that he had succeeded in gaining the fugitive’s confidence,
and had ascertained that he did know of Lochiel’s hiding-place. It was
an absolutely intolerable thought, and nothing, nothing should stop
him until he had seen Ardroy and assured him of his innocence—neither
the rising storm nor fatigue, nor the possible danger in riding thus
alone at night (though to that, despite the afternoon’s attempt on
his life, he gave scarcely a thought), nor Lord Albemarle’s despatch.
It was a mercy that this contained, as he knew, nothing of urgency,
nothing but a mere expression of compliments, and that he could
therefore retrace his steps consistently with his military obligations.
In any case, the letter would reach Inverness no later than if he had
spent the night at the General’s Hut, so on that score at least his
mind was at rest.
It was certainly the only score on which it was. The more Keith
thought of the situation, the more it horrified him. Why, good God,
Ardroy might even imagine that the infamous proposal of flogging,
which turned him hot to think of, came from _him_! Guthrie was
evidently quite capable of stating that it had, and though Paton had
not reported him as having done so in his hearing, who knew what had
been said, what had been done, during the rest of the twenty-four
hours in Guthrie’s tent? He was utterly without scruple, and Ardroy
completely helpless.
Yet even now Keith could hardly blame himself for his total absence of
suspicion that Guthrie might be tempted to do more than question his
prisoner . . . rather closely perhaps. No, he told himself again and
again, he could not have guessed to what he was delivering up Ardroy.
A prisoner-of-war—above all, an officer—in a Christian country and a
civilised century stood in no danger of such proceedings. It was true
that there had been barbarity after the battle, barbarity which had
sickened him, but there had never been any suggestion of deliberately
torturing prisoners in order to extract information. (For Major
Lockhart of Cholmondeley’s regiment, Captain Carolina Scott of
Guise’s, and Captain Ferguson of H.M.S. _Furness_—all Scots, too—had
still to win their spurs in this field.)
Keith was up on the higher levels now, where the wind was really
savage, and the rain stung like missiles. It seemed as though the
elements desired to oppose his return. But his thoughts ran ahead of
him to Fort Augustus. Would there be difficulty in getting access to
the prisoner? There might be some, but an officer on Hawley’s staff,
riding on the Duke’s business, would be hard to gainsay. If necessary
he should approach the Earl of Loudoun himself. And in what state
should he find Ardroy? What sort of a captivity had been his now that
he was out of that scoundrel Guthrie’s clutches? Remembrances of
Inverness, very sinister remembrances, kept floating into his mind.
No, it would be different here; and, as Paton had pointed out, they
must have taken good care of the Highlander, or he would hardly be
alive now, judging from his state a week ago—a state which must have
been, which evidently had been, rendered even more precarious by
Guthrie’s damnable proceedings. On Guthrie himself he hardly dared
allow his mind to dwell; but there could not be another like him at
Fort Augustus!
And when he had got access to Ardroy? Surely it would not be difficult
to convince him that it was Major Guthrie’s almost incredible spite
and jealousy which had wrought this mischief, that nothing in the
world had been farther from his own thoughts than the belief that Ewen
would betray his Chief? Yes, but unfortunately, though he could deny
everything else (save the mere fact of having been forced to establish
Ardroy’s identity) he could not deny that most unlucky suggestion to
which, in desperation, he had been reduced on the hillside. Oh, if
only he had not shirked telling Ewen Cameron of it that night in the
shieling! Better, far better, to have faced a measure of shame on that
occasion than to have left in Major Guthrie’s hands a weapon capable
of working this havoc!
For Guthrie, it was clear, had, in his calculated spite, struck at him
through Ewen and at Ewen through him. He had evidently _wished_ the
Highlander to believe himself betrayed. Did he then think the ties
between them so close when they were only . . . What were they then?
Was it really only philanthropy, as Keith had assured himself a few
hours ago, which had sent him back to the shieling that night? It was
certainly not philanthropy which was driving him to Fort Augustus now.
At nine o’clock, wet and buffeted, he was back in the lines of
Loudoun’s camp, still humming with life. Mentioning that he was on the
staff he asked, as he had asked that afternoon, to see the officer in
charge of prisoners there. Once again there was an obstacle; this time
it appeared that the officer, a certain Captain Greening, was closeted
with Lord Loudoun, who was very busy, and not to be disturbed save for
a matter of great importance.
Keith still retained enough sense of proportion to realise that a
private enquiry after the well-being of a rebel prisoner was not
likely to wear that aspect in the eyes of Cope’s late adjutant-general.
However, perhaps he could arrive at seeing Ardroy without the consent
of Captain Greening, so he said to his informant, the officer of the
guard:
“I wish to see a certain Mr. Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, who lies here a
prisoner. He was taken last week not far from the Corryarrick Pass. Do
you think this would be possible without deranging Captain Greening?”
“Cameron of Ardroy?” said the lieutenant with an accent of
enlightenment. “Oh, have you come from Inverness about the question of
Lochiel’s capture, sir? Then you will be glad to hear that we have got
the necessary information at last.”
Keith’s heart gave a great twist—foolishly, surely! “Ah, from whom?”
“Why, from him—from Cameron of Ardroy, naturally. We knew that he had
it.”
This time Keith’s heart did not twist—it seemed to die in his breast.
“Got it from him—from _him_!” he faltered with cold lips. “When?”
“Last night, I believe,” answered the lieutenant carelessly, pulling
his cloak closer about him. “But I fear that I cannot give you
permission to visit him, sir, and as Captain Greening is——”
But to his surprise the staff officer was gripping him hard by the
arm. “Tell me, in God’s name, what means you used? Ardroy would
never——” He seemed unable to finish.
“Means? I really don’t know,” replied the lieutenant, still more
surprised. “I should be obliged if you would let go my arm, sir! I
have nothing to do with the prisoners. Perhaps this Cameron was
promised his liberty or something of the sort—but on my soul I don’t
know . . . or care,” he muttered under his breath, rubbing his arm as
Keith released it.
“Promised!” cried Keith in a tempest of fury and horror. “No, he has
been tortured into it!—that is the only possible explanation of his
giving that information—if it be true that he has done so. My God,
what has this campaign reduced men to! Take me to Lord Loudoun at
once!”
“I cannot, sir,” protested the lieutenant. “He has given the strictest
orders——”
“Take me to him at once,” repeated Keith in a dangerous voice; and the
young officer, probably thinking that the safest way to deal with a
superior who seemed off his balance was to humour him, shrugged his
shoulders, and began to lead him in the rain between the tents.
Last night! That meant, then, that for nearly a week they had been
trying . . . and had succeeded at last in wresting the secret from a
man badly wounded, ill from starvation, and now, perhaps, dying—dying
as much of a broken heart as from their usage of him. It was with that
unbearable picture of Ewen Cameron in his mind that, after parleys
with sentries of which he heard nothing, Keith stepped into the Earl
of Loudoun’s presence without any clear idea of what he was going to
do there.
He found himself in a large, well-furnished tent, with a brazier
burning in one corner, and, round a table, several officers of various
ranks (most of them, like the Earl himself, wearing tartan), was
announced as an officer of the staff from Inverness, and, duly
saluting, gave his name and regiment.
The Earl of Loudoun—more Lowland Scot than Highlander in his
appearance—looked less annoyed at the interruption than might have
been expected; indeed his air showed that he supposed the intruder to
be the bearer of some tidings of importance from head-quarters.
“You are on His Royal Highness’s staff, Major Windham?” he asked.
“On General Hawley’s, my Lord,” replied Keith. “I am on my way back to
Inverness from Perth, and I have ventured to ask for this interview
because——”
“You have not a despatch for me from the Duke, then—or from General
Hawley?”
“No, my Lord. I have but seized this opportunity of appealing to your
Lordship on behalf of a prisoner here”—the Earl’s homely,
blunt-featured face changed—“who, if he has really made any
disclosures, can only have done so under violent measures, taken
unknown to your Lordship, and I——”
“What is all this about a prisoner?” interrupted Loudoun, frowning.
“You mean to say, Major Windham, that you are here on a purely private
matter, when I especially gave orders—— Who admitted you to me under
false pretences?”
But the officer of the guard had discreetly vanished.
“Is it a purely private matter, my Lord,” retorted Keith hotly, “that
a badly wounded Highland gentleman should be tortured into giving
information against his own Chief? It seems to me a matter affecting
the good name of the whole army. I only hope that I have been
misinformed, and that no such disclosures have been dragged from him.”
“Have you come here, sir,” asked Lord Loudoun with increasing
displeasure, “and on no one’s authority but your own, to dictate to me
on the treatment of prisoners?”
“No, indeed, my Lord,” replied Keith, making an effort to be properly
deferential. “I have come, on the contrary, because I feel sure that
your Lordship——”
“If you want news of any prisoner,” interrupted his Lordship with a
wave of the hand, “you must wait until Captain Greening here is at
liberty. Meanwhile you will perhaps have the goodness to remember that
I only marched in to Fort Augustus this morning, and am still so
pressed with business that I see small chance of sleep to-night if I
am to be interrupted in this manner.”
It was a dismissal: less harsh than at one moment seemed likely, but
proving to Keith that he had gained nothing. He tried another tack.
“My Lord, give me permission then, I implore you, to visit the
prisoner in question, Mr. Ewen Cameron of Ardroy.”
Loudoun’s eyebrows went up. “Is there anyone of that name confined
here, Captain Greening?” he asked in an annoyed voice, turning to a
fair, rather womanish looking young man on his left.
Captain Greening smiled a peculiar little smile. “Oh, yes, my Lord; he
has been here nearly a week. Major Windham has already made enquiries
for him once to-day, so I hear—when he passed on his way to Inverness
this afternoon. I was out of camp at the time.”
“What!” exclaimed the Earl, looking from the officer to Keith in
astonishment. “Major Windham has been through Fort Augustus once
already to-day? This is very singular! Instead of your questioning me,
Major Windham, I will ask you to explain your own conduct. Kindly tell
me on what errand you originally left head-quarters?”
Keith saw a possible gulf opening for himself now. But he was too
passionately indignant to care much. “I have been to Perth, my Lord,
with a despatch from His Royal Highness to Lord Albemarle. I was on my
way back to Inverness to-day when I heard that Cameron of Ardroy——”
“Leave Cameron of Ardroy out of it, if you please!” said Lord Loudoun
in growing anger. “What I want, Major Windham, is some explanation of
your own extraordinary behaviour. I gather that you are now on your
way back from Perth. Are you carrying despatches from Lord Albemarle
to His Royal Highness, or are you empty-handed?”
“I have a letter, of no particular moment, from Lord Albemarle to the
Duke,” replied Keith more warily.
“You have, at any rate, a despatch, sir. You have passed this place
already on your way to Inverness, carrying it. Some hours later you
are back again, making fresh enquiries about a rebel. Had you confided
your despatch to another hand in the interval?”
“No, my Lord,” confessed Keith. “Knowing that the matter was not
urgent, and that it was impossible for me to reach Inverness to-night,
I resolved to lie at the General’s Hut. There I heard something which
determined me to have more reliable news of Mr. Cameron of Ardroy, to
whom I owe it that I am alive at all to-day. Instead of going to bed
at the General’s Hut I rode back here, and whether I start from
Boleskine at six or from Fort Augustus at half-past four, Lord
Albemarle’s letter will reach His Royal Highness’s hands at exactly
the same hour.”
“You seem to have a strangely easy idea of your military duties, Major
Windham,” commented Lord Loudoun, drumming on the table. “May I ask
how long you have borne His Majesty’s commission?”
“Twelve years,” answered Keith curtly.
“And in all those years you have not learnt the sacredness of a
despatch! You are entrusted with one to the Commander-in-Chief, and
you take upon yourself to turn back in order to assure yourself of the
welfare of a rebel prisoner!—Is it true that this man has made a
disclosure?” he asked suddenly of Captain Greening.
“Quite true, my Lord,” responded the fair young officer. “I have notes
of it here; it was one of the matters which I desired to bring to your
Lordship’s notice. It relates to Lochiel’s hiding-place near Loch
Arkaig, and will prove of the greatest service in your Lordship’s
future operations.”
At that reply all thoughts of his own situation abandoned Keith; he
was caught up again in a wave of fury and shame. “My God!” he cried,
striding forward, his eyes fixed on Captain Greening, “are there
devils here too? You have tortured him into it . . . never deny it,
I’ll not believe you! As well be in a camp of Red Indians or African
savages! Inverness was bad enough, with its prisons stuffed with
purposely neglected wounded; then that man Guthrie, and now——”
Lord Loudoun sprang up, very threatening of aspect. “Major Windham,
may I ask you to remember where you are! I’ll not be spoken to in
such a manner!”
“I was not addressing you, my Lord,” said Keith fiercely. “I know that
you only reached Fort Augustus this morning. You are not responsible
for what has been going on—God knows what it was—before you came. But
this officer here——”
“Be silent, sir!” shouted the Earl of Loudoun. “Neither will I have
aspersions cast on officers now under my command . . . and by a member
of General Hawley’s staff, too! Are your own hands so clean, pray? You
do not deserve that I should reply to your insinuations, but—Captain
Greening, _was_ this information got from the Cameron prisoner by
unlawful means?”
“No, my Lord, I assure you that it was not. He gave it . . .
voluntarily.” But again there was that little smile.
“There, you hear, sir!” said the Earl. “Your charges——”
“I don’t believe it,” said Keith in the same moment. “I will not
believe it until I hear it from Ardroy himself.”
And at that Lord Loudoun completely lost his temper. “God’s name, am I
to suffer you to browbeat me in my own tent?—you, who have just
behaved in a manner unpardonable in a soldier! Major Windham, I place
you under arrest for insubordination. You will kindly give up your
sword!”
It was as if a douche of cold water had descended on Keith’s head. His
left hand went to his swordhilt. “Insubordination, my Lord? No, I
protest!”
“Very well, it shall be for neglect of duty, then,” said the Earl,
still very angry. “Lord Albemarle’s despatch is in truth not safe with
a man who can go twenty miles out of his way while carrying it. I
shall send it on by one of my own aides-de-camp to-night. Give it up
at once, if you do not wish to be searched. Captain Munro, call a
guard!”
Like rain upon a bonfire, the cold douche had, after a temporary
extinction, only inflamed Keith Windham’s rage. He unhooked his sword,
scabbard and all, and flung it at Loudoun’s feet, saying that he was
glad to be rid of it. By this time—seeing too that the falling weapon
had nearly caught his Lordship on the toes—every officer in the tent
was rushing towards him. “Reassure yourselves, gentlemen,” said Keith,
laughing angrily, and, opening his uniform, took out Lord Albemarle’s
despatch and tendered it to the nearest. Then, without more ado, he
followed the guard out into the rain, his last memory, as he left the
lighted tent, not of Lord Loudoun’s affronted, angry face, but of
Captain Greening’s, with that sly, secretly amused smile round his
girlish mouth.
CHAPTER III
The early morning bugle, close at hand, woke Keith Windham with a
start. He had had little sleep during the night, and was all the
deeper buried now. Where was he? He stared round the tent—an
unfamiliar one. Then he remembered.
And all that endless day he sat in his canvas prison and did little
else save remember. For the first time in his life he was in the midst
of camp routine without a share in it—with no right to a share in it.
No sword hung upon the tent-pole, and a sentry paced outside whose
business was not to keep intruders out, but him in.
Had he not still been sustained by rage he might have felt more
dejection than he did. The rage was not against Lord Loudoun, to whose
severity he could not deny some justification, nor was it on his own
account; it was against the effeminate Captain Greening and other
persons unknown. Not for a moment did he believe that officer’s
half-sniggering asseveration of voluntary betrayal on the part of Ewen
Cameron . . . though at times the other alternative haunted him so
horribly that he almost wished he could believe it. Far better to have
let Ardroy go down riddled by bullets on the mountain-side than to
have saved him for agony and dishonour; far better had he _not_ come
upon him in time!
And where _was_ Ardroy? Unable to make personal investigations, Keith
could not well ask the soldier who brought him his meals. And, even if
he discovered, even if he were allowed an interview with the
prisoner—very improbable now—was he so sure that he himself wanted it?
Could he bear to see the Highlander again, in the state which must be
his by now?
His own plight seemed negligible in comparison. He thought of it,
indeed, but only with a sort of dull wonder. Up till now his own
advancement had been for him the one star in a grey heaven. Now the
heaven was black and there was no star at all.
A rainy yellow sunset was smearing the sky when the flap of the tent
was pulled aside and an officer came in—a very stiff young
aide-de-camp.
“I am to inform you, sir,” he said, “that as this tent is required
to-night a room has been prepared for you in the fort. And
Major-General Lord Loudoun supposes that rather than be marched
through the camp under escort, you will agree to make no attempt to
escape _en route_, in which case I am to conduct you there now
myself.”
“His Lordship is extremely considerate,” replied Keith. “I am only
surprised that he is willing to rely on my word. But no doubt he is
aware that I should hardly better my situation by deserting.”
“Then if you will kindly follow me,” said the aide-de-camp still more
stiffly, “I will lead you to the fort.”
But, for all his own sarcastic words, for all the absence of an
escort, Keith did not enjoy that short journey very much. Everyone
whom they met, either among the tents or on the brief stretch of muddy
road, must know why he went thus without a sword and whither he was
going; and it was with some instinct of avoiding their scrutiny that
he tried to lag behind two lieutenants of independent companies who
were strolling ahead of him deep in talk. It was impossible, however,
not to overtake them in the end; and, as he and his escort drew
nearer, scraps of their conversation floated backwards to the
Englishman’s ears bearing, so he thought, the word ‘Cameron’.
Instantly he strained his ears to catch more; perhaps they were
discussing Ardroy. As he drew still nearer he found that he was
mistaken, but that one officer must be concluding an account of his
experiences in a scouting party from which he had recently returned.
“. . . The same everywhere by Loch Lochy; and there’s not a doubt the
rebels are much more numerous in that neighbourhood than we had any
notion of—Camerons and MacDonalds, too. ’Tis thought they even
contemplate making a stand in a few days’ time. His Lordship will be
sending out a fresh reconnaissance . . .”
Here they passed the speaker, and the rest was lost; but what he had
heard did not particularly interest Major Windham. Only one Cameron
was in his mind at present.
And now they were at the shell of the fort, where the remains of the
burnt-out buildings within the enceinte hardly looked as if they could
afford any accommodation at all.
“I suppose,” said Keith carelessly to his guide, “that the rebel
prisoners, if you have any, are confined here?”
“Yes. But you must not think, sir,” explained the ever correct
aide-de-camp, “that Lord Loudoun has any wish to put your case on a
level with theirs. We are indeed short of tents, and you will not, I
believe, find the room assigned to you in the fort any less
comfortable.”
Keith thanked him for the assurance, but he was not really listening.
Ewen Cameron was somewhere in this half-ruined enclosure.
His new quarters turned out to be bare, but not more so, certainly,
than the tent. In the night, tossing on the camp bed, he made up his
mind that if it proved impossible to obtain access to Ardroy in
person, he would at least contrive to get a letter smuggled in to him
somehow. Surely he could find a venal sentry or gaoler. He wondered
what his own custodian was like, for on arrival, being much absorbed
in his own thoughts, he had only received an impression of someone
stout and middle-aged.
Morning and breakfast revealed him; a sergeant who might have been a
well-to-do sufferer from gout, so painfully did he hobble in with the
meal. Talkative upon encouragement, and apologetic for his bodily
shortcomings, he explained that his lameness was due to a wound in the
foot received when Fort Augustus was besieged by the Highlanders, he
being a sergeant of Guise’s regiment, three companies of which then
held it. When they surrendered and marched out, he was left behind.
“And though I looked to have my throat cut, sir, by the wild
MacDonalds and what not, I was very well treated, and my wound cared
for. Is this what you wish for breakfast, sir?”
“I am not in a position to exercise much choice,” said Keith. “You
know that Lord Loudoun has put me under arrest?”
The stout sergeant seemed shocked at this blunt reference to an
unfortunate fact. “If I may presume on your being English, sir, same
as I am myself——”
“You may,” replied Keith.
“I would say, sir, that it don’t seem right that a Scotchman should be
able——” But there he stopped, aware no doubt that he was about to make
a remark even blunter.
Keith could not help smiling. “I think, my friend, that we had better
not pursue that subject. May I ask whether it is by a delicate
attention of the authorities that you have been detailed to wait upon
me?”
“No, sir; I only come to the fort yesterday, the corporal that was
here before having gone off duty sick; and me not being capable of
much at present with this foot, I was told off in his place.”
“Are the ordinary prisoners—the rebels, I mean—in your charge?”
“Yes, sir, so I find; though there’s only a few, picked up in the last
week. Them’s in the rooms below, the dungeons as we call ’em—all but
a young man as has been kept by himself at the top of this very
building; he’s been ill, I understand.”
Small doubt who that was. “You have seen this young man already, I
suppose, sergeant,” asked Keith, making no attempt to begin his
breakfast. “How did he seem? I am interested in him.”
“Indeed, sir! Well, he looks in but a poor way, and seems very
melancholy like.”
“You do not know . . . you have not heard—anything particular about
his previous treatment?” asked Keith, his heart suddenly beating hard.
“You have not heard, for instance, that . . . that forcible measures
have been used to wring certain information out of him?”
“Lord, no, sir! Have they so? Yes, ’tis true he looks as though
something of the sort might have happened to him, but I put it down to
his having been ill with his wound.”
Keith had turned away his face. “Do you mean,” he said after a moment,
“that he is actually in this very corner of the fort?”
“Yes, sir; up a-top of you, as it were. ’Tis the least damaged
portion, and even at that there’s some holes in it. You know them
Highlanders used near twenty barrels of powder a-blowing of this place
up.—Have you all you want, sir?”
“By the way,” said Keith, as his attendant was hobbling out, “do not
tell the young man—Mr. Cameron of Ardroy—that I was asking about him.”
“No, sir, I won’t mention of it. Mr. Cameron, is that his name now?
Why, ’twas a Dr. Cameron dressed my foot; a very kind gentleman he
was, too.”
Keith’s breakfast was totally cold before he began it, and when the
sergeant appeared again he opened his campaign at once. His guardian
proved much less obdurate than he had feared. Obdurate indeed he was
not; it was quite natural caution on his own behalf which withheld him
from acceding sooner to Major Windham’s request to be taken up to see
the rebel prisoner ‘up a-top of him’. It was fortunate for Keith’s
case that Sergeant Mullins was unaware of the close connection between
that prisoner and the English Major’s arrest; he believed the latter
to be suffering merely for hot words to General Lord Loudoun, cause
unknown. The fact of Keith’s being a fellow-countryman went for
something, as did also the remembrance of the Highlanders’ good
treatment of himself. Finally he yielded, on condition that he chose
his own time for letting the sequestered officer out of his room, and
that Major Windham gave him his word of honour not to take any steps
to help the rebel to escape. Keith promised without difficulty that he
would not even speak of such a thing; it was the past, and not the
future, which was more likely to engage his tongue.
So about six o’clock in the evening he followed his limping guide up
the stair and found himself standing, with real dread in his heart,
outside a door which the sergeant unlocked, saying to an unseen
occupant:
“I have brought someone to see you, Mr. Cameron.”
* * * * * *
The room was light and airy—rather too airy, for one wall had in it a
good-sized breach, across which a piece of canvas had been stretched
in an attempt to keep out rain and wind. Facing the door was a
semicircular embrasure pierced with three narrow windows, and having a
stone seat running round it. And on the floor of this embrasure, on
some sort of a pallet, with his back propped against the seat, his
legs stretched out in front of him, and his eyes fixed on the slit of
window opposite him (though from his position on the floor he could
not have seen anything but a strip of sky) Ewen Cameron was sitting
motionless. He did not turn his head or even move his eyes when the
door opened and closed again; and Keith stood equally motionless,
staring at a haggard and unshaven profile which he found difficulty in
recognising.
At last he took a few steps forward. Ewen turned his head indifferently
. . . and then was as suddenly frozen as one who looks on Medusa.
There was a long shivering pause.
“Why are you here . . . _Judas_?”
Half prepared though he was, Keith felt slashed across the face. He
caught his breath.
“If I were that, I should not be here,” he answered unsteadily. “I
have come . . . I came directly I had news of you, to explain . . . to
put right if I could . . .” But the words died on his lips; it seemed
a mockery to talk of putting anything right now.
“To _explain_!” repeated Ewen with an indescribable intonation. “To
explain why you told your confederate Major Guthrie everything you
knew about me, to explain why you came back that night and fooled me,
why you urged him to tear from me what I knew, having first made sure
that I knew it—it needs no explanation! You wanted to pay off old
scores—Edinburgh, Loch Oich side. Be content, you have done it—you
have more than done it!”
“Ardroy, no, no, as God’s my witness,” struck in Keith desperately,
“I had no such thought!” But he was not heeded, for Ewen tore on
hoarsely:
“Since you desired so greatly to be even with me for a moment of
triumph, could you not have let me be shot, and watched it? Or was
that not sufficient for you because I did not know that you were
there? . . . Oh, if God would but give me back that moment against
the shieling wall, and allow it to finish as it was meant to! Then I
should not be to-day what you have made me—a worse traitor than you
are yourself!”
After that there was silence. What use in talking of his good faith
and his charitable intentions when they had resulted in this! For it
was true then—Ardroy _had_ given the information. Indeed the fact was
written on his haunted face.
But at last Keith said, in a scarcely audible voice and with his eyes
on the floor, “What did they . . . do to you?”
There was no answer, and, looking up, he saw that the wounded man’s
outburst had exhausted him; breathing fast, he had put his head back
against the edge of the seat behind him, and his eyes were half shut.
His appearance was so ghastly that Keith went forward and seized a
bowl of water from the floor beside him.
But a shaking hand came up to keep him off, and he hesitated. “What,
are you trying to act _that night_ over again?” asked Ewen bitterly.
And Keith stood there helpless, his fingers tightening on the bowl.
Was this anguished hostility utterly to defeat him?
The Highlander looked as if he had not slept for nights and nights;
his eyes, naturally rather deepset, were fearfully sunk, and glittered
with a feverish brilliance. All his courtesy, all his self-command,
his usual rather gentle address, every quality which Keith had
observed and carelessly admired in him, seemed obliterated by the
event which had brought him almost to breaking-point. “Will you not
go?” he gasped out, clenching his hands; “will you not go now that you
are satisfied?”
Keith put down the bowl; the action seemed symbolic. “Ardroy, if you
would only listen for a moment!” he pleaded. “Indeed it is not as you
think! I never betrayed you—I would as soon betray my own brother!
There has been a horrible——”
“Why must I endure this, too, after all the rest?” broke out Ewen
violently. “You cannot make a fool of me again, Major Windham! Have a
little pity at the last, and leave me!”
“No, for your own sake you _must_ hear me!” urged Keith. “It is Major
Guthrie who is respon——”
But Ewen Cameron, with a face like stone (save that no stone image
ever had eyes like that), had put his hands over his ears.
It was hopeless then! Baffled, Keith slowly turned and went to the
door. He had wrecked his own career to no purpose. . . . But it was
not of that catastrophe which he thought as, having rapped to be let
out, he stood there with bent head. He was not even conscious of
resentment at the more than taunts which had been flung at him, for it
was he who had brought the man who uttered them to this pass.
He knocked again, louder; but the sergeant must have gone away,
possibly to keep watch below. It came to Keith dimly, like a shape
seen through fog, that Ardroy and he had once before been locked in
together. . . . Then he was aware that the half-prostrate man on the
floor had moved a little, that he was leaning on his left hand, and
that those glittering blue eyes were on him again.
“Cannot you get out?” There was impatience in the icy voice.
“No, for I also am locked in,” answered Keith very low.
“_You_—the informer!”
Keith swallowed hard. “I am a prisoner . . . like you.” But the words
would hardly come.
“Why?”
“For neglect of duty,” replied Keith wearily. “For turning back while
carrying a despatch.”
“So you cannot even serve your own side faithfully!” observed Ewen
with contempt.
Keith turned a little whiter and gripped the handle of the locked
door. For an instant the flame of his hot temper flickered, only to
subside among the ashes. “No,” he answered after a moment; “no, so it
seems. I have disgraced myself, as well as ruining you. . . . The
gaoler must have gone away, I am afraid, and I cannot relieve you of
my presence until he returns.”
“It is of no moment,” replied Ewen coldly, and he shifted himself a
trifle so as to look at his visitor no longer, and propped his head on
his clenched fist. The plaid in which he was partly wrapped had
slipped from his shoulders when he put his hands up to his ears, and
there was now nothing to hide his torn and dirty shirt—which, after
all, was only of a piece with the general neglect of his person. The
only evidence of care or cleanliness was the fresh bandage round his
sword-arm. . . . ‘So that has been recently dressed,’ thought Keith,
‘and he can use it. . . . That must be the plaid which I spread over
him in the shieling. He was a very different man then. . . .’
He was surprised, after another appreciable silence, to find himself
being addressed again, though not looked at.
“Why did you turn back?”
“What is the use of telling you—you will not believe me! Indeed I
wonder whether you believe me when I say that I am under arrest; that
might be a lie also.”
He had at least succeeded in gaining Ardroy’s attention, for the
latter dropped his arm and once again looked across the room at him.
“I should like to know why you turned back?” he repeated, without
comment on the reply which he had drawn forth.
Yes, that at all events he should hear! Keith left the door, where
there was no sound of Sergeant Mullins’ approach.
“Cannot you guess? I came because of you—because, a dozen miles beyond
here, on my way back to Inverness, I learnt both of the abominable way
in which you had been treated in Guthrie’s camp, and of the manner in
which that scoundrel had twisted my words and my actions in order to
misrepresent me to you. It was the night before last; it was late, but
I resaddled and came back at once—neglecting my duty, Lord Loudoun
said. I rode back in the greatest haste to see you, I was in such
apprehension about you. When I got here I heard that you——” Ewen drew
his breath sharply, and the sentence was not finished. “I insisted on
seeing Lord Loudoun at once, and when I was told that you had . . .
had made disclosures of your own free will, I demanded to see you. I
said that I would never believe that unless you told me so yourself.
Then there was a scene of some violence, and I had to give up my sword
and my despatch—and I suppose that in a few days my commission will
go the same road. Should I have acted so—so madly against my own
interests if I had been what you think me? . . . But I am forgetting;
you will say that this is false also, though every officer in Fort
Augustus should tell you that it is true!”
Ewen had put his head down on his updrawn right knee. A shaft of
sunlight, striking through one of the narrow windows, fell across its
auburn disorder. And, looking with something more painful than pity at
the utter desolation of his aspect, Keith thought that life could
scarcely hold anything more terrible for a gallant man than to feel
himself at once a traitor and betrayed. But betrayed he had not been!
If only he could be brought to see that!
And perhaps Ewen was being brought to it, for from his huddled figure
there came a long sigh, and, after another silence, words which
sounded as though they were wrung from his very heart:
“I wish to God that I could trust you again!”
CHAPTER IV
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 not _already_ suggested 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, _anything_ to 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 one _must_ sleep 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 said
_something_ about 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 do _you_ no
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. “And _your_
calamity?” 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.”
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.
CHAPTER V
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 substantial
_douceur_ from 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 scruples _now_, 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 this _amende_, 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 chain
_had_ been 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. “You _have_ betrayed 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—there _is_ a 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 be _after_ the battle, not,
as in yours, John Campbell, _before_ it!”
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
there _none_?”
“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.
CHAPTER VI
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
kindness _before_ the 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 for _him_ at this juncture—it _must_ mean
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 he _is_ still 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—which _he_ had 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 tell _me_ what 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, you
_shall_ go 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.
But it was pretty clear that he had finally consummated his own ruin,
and when he heard the angry voice declaring its owner’s regret that he
had overlooked his previous ill-conduct with regard to this
misbegotten rebel, Keith fully expected the Duke to add that he
intended to break him for his present. Perhaps that would come later;
for the moment the Duke contented himself with requesting him, in
language more suggestive of the guardroom than the palace, to take his
—— face where he would never see it again. “And you need not think,”
he finished, out of breath, “that you will save the rascally rebel who
has suborned you from your duty; there are plenty other witnesses who
will see to it that he hangs!”
But that Keith did not believe, or the Duke and Sir Everard would not
have been so eager to secure his evidence. And as, at last, he saluted
and rather dizzily left the tent where he had completed the wreck of
his ambitions, it was resentment which burnt in him more fiercely than
any other emotion. That it should be supposed that anyone—even a
Prince of the blood—could bribe him into an action which revolted
him!
Late as it was, he would much have preferred to start back to
Inverness that evening, but his horse had to be considered. And, while
he was seeing that the beast was being properly looked after, he was
surprised to find himself accosted by an elegant young officer whom he
recognised as one of the two aides-de-camp present at the recent
scene.
“Major Windham, is it not? General Lord Albemarle requests that you
will not leave the camp without further orders, and that you will wait
upon him at some time after His Royal Highness’s departure to-morrow.”
“Do you mean, sir,” asked Keith bluntly, “that I am to consider myself
under arrest?”
“Oh, my dear Major, by no means!” answered the young man, greatly
shocked. “On the contrary! His Lordship—but I am being prodigious,
indiscreet—recognised in you, it seems, an acquaintance, so do not
fail to wait upon him to-morrow.”
“I will do so,” said Keith. “Meanwhile, can you tell me if a certain
Major Guthrie of Campbell’s regiment is in camp?”
“Major Guthrie—la, sir, I’ve not the pleasure of his acquaintance. But
stay, part of Campbell’s regiment marched the day before yesterday for
Badenoch, so it is like the Major is gone with them.”
“If it be a question of further burnings and floggings, I am sure
he will be gone with them,” commented Keith. “Perhaps it is as
well. . . . Tell his Lordship that I will certainly obey his commands
to-morrow.”
Once again he spent a night at Fort Augustus after a clash with
authority. But this time it was a collision with a much more
devastating force than Lord Loudoun. Cumberland was not likely to
forget or forgive. And Keith felt quite reckless, and glad to be rid
of the prudence which had shackled him since May. He had no more to
lose now. If he could have shaken the life out of Guthrie it would
have been some consolation. From Lord Albemarle’s message it did not
seem as if he were going to be relieved of his commission after all;
but, if he were, then, by God, he would get at Guthrie somehow, and
challenge him!
* * * * * *
When Cumberland first came to Fort Augustus he had been housed in a
‘neat bower’ which was specially constructed for him, and
Lieutenant-General Lord Albemarle evidently preferred this abode of
his predecessor’s to a tent. It was there, at any rate, that he received
Major Windham next afternoon when the racket of the Duke’s departure
was over.
William Anne Keppel, second Earl of Albemarle, the son of King
William’s Dutch favourite, was at this time forty-two years of age,
but his portly habit of body made him look older. Plain as well as
stout, he gave the impression of a kind but easily flustered nature.
“We met at Perth, did we not, Major Windham?” he asked, and as Keith
bowed and assented the Earl said pleasantly, “I should like a few
minutes’ conversation with you. You can leave us, Captain Ferrers.”
And when the elegant aide-de-camp had withdrawn, Albemarle, pacing
up and down with short steps, his hands behind his broad back, began:
“I must say that I am very sorry, Major Windham, that you felt
constrained to take up such an attitude towards His Royal Highness
yesterday.”
“So am I, my Lord,” returned the culprit, with truth. “But I had no
choice. I hope your Lordship is not going to renew the same request,
for there are some things which a man cannot do, and one of those is,
to help hang a man who has spared his own life.”
“Is that so—the prisoner in question spared your life?” asked
Albemarle with an appearance of surprise, though, thought Keith,
unless he had not been listening he must have learnt that fact
yesterday. “Surely you did not make that clear to His Royal Highness,
who is as remarkable for clemency as for just severity!”
Keith looked at him askance; was my Lord Albemarle joking or sincere?
“No, Major Windham,” went on the new Commander-in-Chief, “I do not
intend to renew the request, for I should not presume to flatter
myself that I could succeed where one with so much stronger a claim on
your obedience has failed. Your revealing this fact alters matters; I
sympathise with your scrupulosity, and so must the excellent Prince
have done had you but presented the case fairly to him. A pity, Major
Windham!”
Keith inclined his head, but said nothing. A grim amusement possessed
him, and he could not imagine why Lord Albemarle should be at pains to
make this elaborate pretence.
“His Royal Highness’s zeal has been wonderful,” pursued the Earl. He
sighed, sat down, and began to drum his fingers on the table beside
him. “How I am expected to replace him I do not know. He has indeed
accomplished most of his great task, but I am left with part of it
still upon my hands—the capturing of the Pretender’s son, if indeed he
has escaped the last search party of fifteen hundred men sent out from
here and from Fort William three days ago. . . . And again, I fear
that relations with the Scottish authorities may be sadly difficult.
_L’Ecosse est ma bête_, Major Windham, as I think I said to you
before, on a certain occasion when I was very indiscreet. Had I
then had an indiscreet listener I might have harmed myself by my
imprudence.” He stopped drumming and looked up. “I shall see what I
can do for you, Major Windham,” he concluded, with a suddenness which
took Keith’s breath away.
“Your Lordship . . .” he stammered, and found no more words. Albemarle
smiled.
“The opportunity may shortly present itself of employing you. I must
see. Meanwhile I wish you to remain here; I will arrange that with
Major-General Blakeney and your colonel.”
And Keith murmured he knew not what. It seemed impossible that at
Perth he should have made an impression so deep as to lead to this;
and in a moment it appeared that there was another factor in the case,
for Lord Albemarle, fidgeting with the sandbox on the table, revealed
it.
“Years ago,” he said reflectively, “when I was a younger man, I used
to know a lady—the most beautiful, I think, whom I have ever met in my
life. Perhaps you can guess whom I mean? . . . I did not know when you
brought me the despatch at Perth, Major Windham, that Lady Stowe was
your mother; I have learnt it since. It would give me pleasure to
extend to her son a trifle of help at a crisis in his fortunes.—No,
say no more about it, Windham; ’tis but the payment of a debt to
Beauty, who allowed unreproved worship at her shrine!”
And he raised his eyes to the roof of the neat bower, apparently
absorbed in sentimental retrospect, while Keith, startled, grateful,
yet rather sardonically amused, tried to picture this plain and
unwieldy Anglo-Dutch peer paying his devoirs to a lady who had almost
certainly made game of him behind his back. Or had she found him
useful, like Lord Orkney, who, when Keith was a mere boy, had promised
the pair of colours in the Royal Scots which had saved his mother so
much trouble and expense—and had deprived him of any choice in the
matter of a regiment.
But the adorer in question at this moment had now brought his eyes to
the ordinary level again.
“You are not like the Countess, Major Windham,” he observed.
“My Lord, I am only too well aware of that. My half-brother Aveling
resembles her much more closely. He is a very handsome youth.”
“I must make Lord Aveling’s acquaintance some day,” said the Earl
rising. “Commend me meanwhile to Lady Stowe.”
“I shall not fail to do so, my Lord,” replied Keith, preparing to
withdraw, but hesitating. Yes, this unlooked-for and melting mood was
certainly that in which to proffer his request. “Your Lordship’s
extreme generosity towards a disgraced man,” he went on, “emboldens me
to ask a small favour, which is, that I may see Cameron of Ardroy once
before he goes south to his trial—giving my most sacred word of
honour that nothing shall pass between us relative to escape. I desire
only to say farewell to him, and your Lordship, who has shown yourself
so sensible of my obligation towards him——”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted his Lordship, putting up a plump hand. “Yes,
before he goes you shall see him, I promise you, Major Windham. But
not at present—not at present,” he added, as if he felt that the line
of his complaisance must be drawn somewhere. “Send me in Captain
Ferrers, if you please, as you go out.”
So Keith left, meditating on the hopeful change in his outlook. It was
strange that Lord Albemarle did not fear Cumberland’s wrath, if the
Duke ever learnt of the favour shown to a man under his extremest
displeasure. If it was solely for the sake of the beautiful Countess
of Stowe that his Lordship was braving this possibility, the situation
was still more ironical, for Keith knew well that his mother would not
feel any particular gratitude for this clemency towards her elder son.
She would rather that some special token of favour had fallen on the
head of his young half-brother, who had no need of it.
The next few days went slowly by, and Keith began to wonder whether
Lord Albemarle’s lenity were not going to end in nothing but the
assurance to him of an idle existence at Fort Augustus. He was glad,
however, to be there, for he could fairly well assure himself that
Ardroy was not taken away without his knowledge. Enquiries revealed
the fact that old Sergeant Mullins was no longer his gaoler, but Keith
got speech with his successor, a Scot, and learnt that Ewen was to be
taken on the twenty-fifth of the month to Fort William to be
identified. On the morning of the twenty-fourth, fearing to wait any
longer, he sought out the exquisite Captain Ferrers and begged him to
recall to Lord Albemarle’s mind his promise that he should see the
prisoner before departure; and in the afternoon was duly handed a
signed order permitting an interview.
CHAPTER VII
In thinking of Ewen, Keith had always pictured him where last he had
seen him, in the upper room, light and wind-blown, and when he was
conducted to the regions under the remains of the fort, he realised
with something approaching dismay that Ardroy’s quarters had not been
changed for the better. And as the door was opened, and he saw before
him, down a few steps, a sort of cellar which seemed darker than it
really was, and which smelt of damp, he was horrified, though in
reality, the fort being of quite recent construction, its ‘dungeons’
were not nearly as noisome as their name suggested.
There was one small grated window, high up, and under this Ewen was
sitting on a stool with his back to the door, reading, though there
hardly appeared sufficient light for it. He did not turn his head. “Is
that supper already, Corporal?” he asked. “What time is it then?”
“No, Mr. Cameron, nae supper, but an officer tae veesit ye.—Hae a care
o’ yon steps, sir!”
But Ewen had turned on his stool, had seen who his visitor was, and
was getting to his feet. He clashed as he moved, for he was in irons.
“Windham!” he exclaimed with an accent of surprise and pleasure. “This
is very good of you! Where have you come from?”
And as Keith, distressed by everything, the darkness, the want of
accommodation and the chains, stood rooted, Ewen, with more jangling,
limped towards him, holding out a fettered hand. He was blanched by
two months of semi-darkness, worn down by illness and insufficient
food to the framework of himself, but he was shaven and respectably
clothed, and he had all his old erectness of poise.
Keith took the proffered hand. “How long have you had _those_ on?” was
his first question.
“These irons? Only for a few days. They have just come off a man
imprisoned for a short time with me who had the distinction of helping
the Prince to escape when he was in Skye, MacDonald of Kingsburgh, and
when he was carried to Edinburgh they put them on me. I was flattered,
not having the same qualification for them. Sit down, Major, on the
stool he had, which still remains to me—or take mine, if you consider
that less treasonable. Faith, no, I suppose Kingsburgh, who was never
‘out’, is less of a rebel than I.” He laughed, shuffled to a corner,
and came back with another stool. “Now tell me how you came here, and
what your situation is now? Mullins gave me some news of you—very
scanty—in May. Are you quit of the cloud you drew upon yourself for my
sake?”
“It is of yourself that we must speak,” said Keith, hoarsely, thrown
off his balance by this unaffected cheerfulness, and deeply ashamed,
all at once, of the cowardly ‘prudence’ which had left Ardroy without
a letter. “Sit down; you should not stand, I am sure. How does your
wound?”
Rather stiffly, Ewen sat down. “Quite healed, though the leg is weak.
However, I am to ride thirty miles to-morrow, for I go to Fort William
to be identified, thence to Carlisle for trial—by what means of
transport I do not know.”
“You think that you will be identified by this man at Fort William?”
“Man? There is more than one; indeed there’ll be a measure of
jealousy, I’m thinking, who shall travel to Carlisle on my affair at
the expense of the Government.—Why, I vow it never occurred to me
before that _you_ might go, Windham, and save me the journey to Fort
William; for you can identify me, none better!”
Keith winced. “Don’t jest,” he said in a sombre voice; “don’t jest on
such a theme, I beg of you. And, Ardroy,” he added earnestly, “I doubt
whether the authorities here really place very much reliance on this
testimony from Fort William, or they would not have——” He pulled up,
biting his lip, for he had no intention of speaking of his encounter
with Cumberland. Though he had no cause for shame, he was ashamed;
moreover he did not wish to parade his own self-abnegation.
In the dim light, momentarily becoming to Keith, however, a little
less dim, the prisoner looked at him with those clear eyes of his.
Then, with a jangle, he laid his bony hand on the Englishman’s wrist.
“My sorrow, I believe my jest went near the truth! They did want you
to go as a witness against me—was not that what you were about to say?
Why, then, did you not comply?”
Keith turned on him almost savagely. “How dare you ask me that, Ewen
Cameron! Do you think I baulked Guthrie only to go in cold blood and
bring you to the scaffold myself? Are you like the Duke, that you can
fancy I would do such a thing for any consideration on earth . . . and
witness moreover to acts by which I had been the gainer?”
“I beg your pardon,” said Ewen mildly. “In truth I was not thinking of
the implications of what I said. But, Windham,” he went on anxiously,
“has not your refusal involved you once more in Cumberland’s
displeasure? I’m sure it has!”
“No, no,” said Keith mendaciously. “He was angry, but he has not
punished me further. He could not force me to be a witness; and Lord
Albemarle has subsequently shown me some favour, and holds out hopes
of employing me, which is why I am here at Fort Augustus. As far as I
am concerned, therefore, good may yet come out of evil.—But, tell me,
to what does this evidence at Fort William amount?”
But Ewen replied by another question. “What was the bribe which
Cumberland offered you to give evidence against me?”
“Bribe!” exclaimed Keith, rather over-hastily. “I said nothing about a
bribe. I want to hear about these witnesses at Fort William.”
“But _I_ want to know what you have sacrificed for my sake? Or perhaps
it would be truer to say, for the sake of your own self-respect?
Cumberland did offer you something, did he not?”
“Nothing of consequence,” answered Keith carelessly.
“You will not tell me what it was? Then I know that it was something
which you coveted. I seem fated to bring you misfortune, Windham,”
said the Highlander rather sadly. “And yet I never really wished you
other than well.”
“But I have brought you even more,” said Keith; “and indeed I wished
you well, too.” His eyes were on the heap of straw in the corner which
constituted Ewen’s bed. “If I had not ridden by the shieling hut that
day, you would be lying quietly among the mountains of your own land
and not—not about to set out for the chance, at least, of a death far
away, and . . . and much less merciful. I should like to hear you say
that you forgive me for that.”
“Forgive you for saving my life!” exclaimed Ewen. “My dear Windham,
you are really absurd! Don’t, for God’s sake, go recalling the crazy
things I said to you at our last meeting! You must remember that I was
nearly out of my senses then.”
“I know that, and I have never given them another thought, I assure
you. But there is a count,” said Keith rather hesitatingly, “on which
you must find it hard to forgive me—suffering of the mind for which I
must always hold myself in a measure responsible. You know to what I
refer.”
Ewen looked down at the floor. “I had some dark days, it is true. . . .
Yes, they were very dark . . . but not so dark after your return.
You gave me hope; and above all you gave me back that night in the
hut.” He smiled. “I often think of it. I think of it when I hear very
different stories of the English. And I suppose you know that nothing
came of my betrayal—they never even searched the place for Lochiel, I
believe. And, moreover”—he suddenly looked almost boyishly elated and
mischievous—“by some wonderful mischance I never gave the name of the
mountain where the secret place was. In my sleep I presented them with
the name of Ben Loy, where you came upon me, and they did not discover
the error until too late.”
Keith put his hand on the speaker’s knee. “I heard at Inverness, to my
satisfaction, that Lochiel had escaped capture. Then that is all over,
and your mind at rest; I am thankful.”
Ewen looked grave again. “No, it cannot be at rest until I am sure
that Lochiel knows the truth.”
“But why should he ever hear anything at all about the matter?”
“And I have thought that at my trial,” went on Ewen without taking
notice of the interruption, “I may get the chance of publicly denying
that I gave the information knowingly. And then I believe that I could
die in peace.”
Keith withdrew his hand. “Why do you make so sure of your condemnation?”
he asked almost irritably. “Of what real worth is the testimony of
persons who imagine that they saw you during a siege? No one could
swear to you out of so many Camerons!”
“You think we are all as alike as sheep?” queried Ewen, looking amused.
“But I had at least one hand-to-hand conflict with the Argyll
militia, and another day I encountered a writer of Maryburgh with whom
I had had dealings; he knew me at once, and will be only too glad to
give evidence against me; I cannot think how they have not got hold of
it already.—No, Windham, ’tis better to face the truth; once I reach
Fort William I am certainly for Carlisle, and with such good evidence
against me I have small chance of acquittal. I have known that for the
last ten days; though naturally I have not acquainted the authorities
with the excellent case they are like to have.”
And to this Keith found nothing to say. It was strange, it was
alarming, to feel, as by this time he did, how strongly their intimacy
had progressed in two months of absence and, on his side, of
deliberate abstention from communication—like the roots of two trees
growing secretly towards each other in darkness. But it was so; and
now the roots must be severed.
“I hear that some of the prisoners at Inverness intend to swear that
they were forced out,” he remarked after a silence.
“I dare say that may be true of some of them,” replied Ewen with
composure. “But you are not suggesting that I should employ that plea,
are you?”
“I know too well that you would not,” returned his visitor, and then
murmured something about transportation as a possible alternative to a
worse fate.
“Transportation!” exclaimed the Highlander. “To be sent to work in the
plantations oversea as an indentured servant! I’d far liefer be hanged
and quartered!”
Keith sighed heavily. “Yes, I have brought you nothing but harm. I
would give my right hand to save you—and I can do nothing!”
Ewen twisted round on his stool. “How can you say that? Who knows what
the want of your evidence at Carlisle may mean to me? For there is
always a chance that the witnesses at Fort William may have left or
died.”
“You have just said that once you reached Fort William there was no
chance of escaping Carlisle. I am not a child, Ardroy!” retorted
Keith, glowering at him in his own pain.
“Neither am I,” replied Ewen with a sudden smile. “Do not, therefore,
talk about wishing in vain to give your right hand for my sake, for I
strongly suspect that you have already given what means as much or
more to you.”
Keith got up, that the speaker might not see in his face how near this
guess went to the truth. “Even in my refusal to witness against you,”
he said gloomily, “I begin to think that I acted like a fool. For, as
I told His Royal Highness, if he sent me to Carlisle by force, as he
threatened to do, nothing should have prevented my testifying also to
your granting me my life in Lochaber and my liberty in Edinburgh. I
have thought since that, on that score, it might have been better to
agree to go. . . . But no, I could not have done it!” he added.
Ewen smiled up at him with a look that was almost affection, and laid
his manacled hand on his cuff. “I almost wish that you had consented,
so that we might meet again. For, if old Angus is right, this is our
last meeting—I have counted them many times. And, indeed, I do not see
how it could be otherwise. So”—his voice was very gentle—“we cannot
bring each other misfortune any more.”
The words knocked sharply at Keith’s heart. And how young the speaker
looked, for all his half-starved air; a boy going to extinction, while
he, only four years his senior, felt as if he were middle-aged. (But
no, at their last meeting, when he had trembled before him, Ewen had
not been a boy.)
“Is there nothing I can do for you?” he asked painfully. “Do your
kindred know of your situation; I suppose so?”
“I am not sure if my aunt knows. If she does, she has no doubt tried
to communicate with my wife in France, but——”
“Your wife! Then you——”
“Yes. Miss Grant and I were married at Inverness in March. She is in
France with her sick father, and since the battle I have been unable
to write to her, so that, unless my aunt has contrived to do so, she
may not know whether I am alive or dead. If _you_ would write to her,
Windham—you remember her, no doubt—that would indeed be a kindness.
Will you?”
“Certainly, if you wish it,” answered Keith, though he did not like
the prospect. “But,” he went on with a little hesitation, “why do you not
write yourself, and I would use my best endeavours that the letter
should reach her.”
“I cannot write,” said Ewen. “They will not allow me the materials; I
have often tried to come by them. You must tell her of me, if you
will; and I particularly charge you not to omit how you saved my life
and visited me, and . . . and all the rest that you have done,” he
concluded a trifle unsteadily. “That is a last command, Windham.”
But Keith had drawn a pencil from his pocket. “You had a book in your
hand when I came in; can you not tear out a blank page and write upon
that? I promise you that, if I can compass it, no eye shall see the
letter but your wife’s.”
“A book?” queried Ewen. “Ah, yes, but ’tis only a little Gaelic
psalter which I contrived to get hold of. However——” He took it out of
his pocket, remarking that the pages were but small, and, carefully
tearing out the fly-leaf, accepted the proffered pencil. Keith, unable
to withdraw as he would have wished, walked slowly up and down the
narrow place with bent head. “I have saved him for this!” was still
the burden of his thoughts. Had Ardroy been shot that day he would
have known little about it; he was barely conscious. It would have
been over in a moment, and it would have been a man’s death, too. Now
. . . he shuddered to think of the alternative, purposely prolonged
and horrible, the death of an animal in the shambles. He hoped with
all his heart that Alison Cameron, away in France, did not know, and
would never hear, the details of the English sentence for treason.
Ewen did not write much, for there was not a great deal of space on
his paper. He read it over very composedly and signed his name. Then
he folded the letter, stooped his head and put his lips to it. Keith
turned his back, but the distance between them was so small that he
knew that the writer, after that, had buried his face in his hands.
Ah, if only he had listened to him on that evening last summer, which
now seemed such centuries ago, he would not now be giving up his love,
as well as his life and lands!
But there was a clashing behind him; Ewen was getting to his feet. “I
beg your pardon for keeping you waiting so long. Since you are so good
I think that I should like to send my wife also the only remembrance
that I can send. Have you a knife, and can you trust me with it?—or,
better still, will you cut off a piece of this for her?”
He indicated his hair, and coming closer, bent his head. So Keith,
with a rather blunt penknife, and not particularly good eyesight at
the moment, sawed off a little lock on his temple.
“Women like such things,” said the young man half apologetically as
Keith, his mouth tight shut, wrapped the trophy in his handkerchief.
“And the more of which one can cheat Carlisle gate the better.” He
spoke quite lightly and calmly, but his little letter, which he gave
Keith the moment after, had been so tightly held in his hand that it
was marked with his nail-prints. “I have written the direction upon
it,” he went on, watching the Englishman put it carefully away.
“Perhaps I may be able to write to her once more from Carlisle, but
who knows? And the messenger might not be trustworthy, whereas I know
that you are.—Now, Windham, there is another matter. The money you so
generously left for my use——”
“For God’s sake don’t think of that now!” cried Keith, quite
distracted.
“But I must! Miss Cameron, if I can communicate with her, which may be
allowed at Carlisle——”
“Will you waste time over a few guineas? In Heaven’s name, take them as
a gift—cannot you see that it would be kinder to me?”
Ewen evidently saw; he could hardly fail to see it. “Very well, then I
will; and thank you for the gift. After all, I took a greater at your
hands on Beinn Laoigh. And do you remember the money you left as
payment for my clothes at Fassefern House? My sorrow, but I was angry
with you! I threw it away into the bushes, and Clanranald’s and
Keppoch’s men hunted for it all night, so I heard afterwards.” His
tone suddenly changed. “Do you mean to leave this penknife here—is
that a gift, too?”
He pointed to that object, lying where Keith had laid it down on one
of the stools in order to have both hands free to wrap up the lock of
hair. The Englishman hesitated, looking from it to the prisoner, and
read, plain to see in his eyes, the value which he would set on even
so small and blunt a weapon to-morrow. For a moment he was tempted,
against honour and duty.
“Why did you put me in mind of it?” he asked reproachfully. “I had
indeed honestly forgotten it, and had I so left it, you could have
taken it with you to-morrow! . . . But I gave Lord Albemarle my word
not to help you in any way to escape . . .”
Ewen instantly picked up the penknife, shut it, and held it out to
him. “Take it. They are sure, too, to search me before I go to-morrow.
Come,” he still held it out, “you have sacrificed enough for me; your
honour you shall not sacrifice!”
As Keith reluctantly took the knife from the shackled hand he had a
shock as if a lightning flash had stabbed asunder the sky above him
and shown him something he had never seen—never wished to see—before.
The barren and solitary path which he had marked out for himself
through life was _not_ the best! Here was a man who would never
willingly fail friend or lover, much less play them false. Now, at
this their last meeting, when friendship with him was a thing
impossible of realisation, he knew that he would have asked nothing
better—he who never wished for a friend.
Like a lightning flash too in its speed the revelation was over.
Mechanically he put the penknife away, and Ewen limped the few paces
back to his stool. “Come and sit down again, Windham,” he said, “for
once more you cannot get out if you wish to. And there is a matter
about which I have long been curious. Why do you bear a Scots name—if
I may ask without indiscretion? Have you perhaps Scottish kin?”
Keith, sitting down beside him again, shook his head. “There’s not a
soul of my blood north of Tweed. But my father, who was a soldier
also, had once a Scottish friend, killed at Malplaquet before I was
born, for whom he must have had a great affection, since he gave me
his name.”
They looked at each other, and the shadowy dead Scot of Marlborough’s
wars seemed, to his namesake at least, to assume the shape of a symbol
or a prophecy. Keith shivered suddenly.
“I can hardly hope,” said the Jacobite, “that you will care to name
your son after me when I have ended . . . not on a battlefield . . .
but I should like to feel that you will remember sometimes, not me,
but what you did for me. For whereas you think but poorly of your
fellow-men and yourself—or am I wrong?—you act, Keith Windham, very
much otherwise!”
Moved and startled, Keith dropped his gaze and stared between his
knees at the floor. Yes, they might have been friends; they were meant
to be friends—Ardroy felt that too, did he? “I . . . in truth I do not
well know what I think,” he murmured; “and, as for my actions, why, I
seem to have failed on every side.—But one thing I do know,” he went
on with a touch of defiance, “and that is, that I do not believe in
your Highland second sight. Who can say that we shall not meet
again—and you a free man?”
Ewen looked hard at him a moment. Outside the jangling of keys could
be heard coming nearer. “I wish very much that I could think so too,”
he answered simply, as he rose to his feet with a corresponding
clashing. And again the strange constriction in his throat betrayed
Keith into irritation.
“Are you so superstitious, Ardroy, that you’ll read into an old man’s
maunderings a menace that was never there? Did your foster-father say
a word about death in his precious prophecy? I warrant he did not!”
Ewen smiled. “My dear Windham, at bottom I believe as little in the
two sights as you. But surely ’tis not superstition to realise that I
am at least threatened with that fate. Yet who knows? If it pass me
by, and we ever meet again in this world, then maybe I’ll have more
time to thank you fitly for all you have done and given up for me. Yet
I do thank you now, from my heart—from my inmost heart!”
He held out his fettered hands, and Keith as he took them was hardly
capable of speech.
“I have failed in everything,” he muttered. “But your letter—I promise
you it shall go by a safe hand. I . . . I . . .” The door, opening,
recalled him to an Englishman’s last obligation, the suppression of
emotion before witnesses. “To-morrow,” he said, loosing his grasp, and
in a tolerably composed voice, “to-morrow you will at least be out of
this dismal place and free of those irons.”
“Aye, will he,” commented the gaoler in the doorway. “And riding a
braw horse forbye!”
“I doubt I’ll make much show as a horseman,” replied Ewen. “I fear I
shall fall off.”
“Ye’re no’ like tae hae the chance, Mr. Cameron,” replied the man
dryly. “Ye’ll be tied on.—Noo, sir, if ye please.”
“What time is he to start?” asked Keith.
“Sax o’ the clock.” The keys jingled impatiently.
Keith took a resolve. But he did not put it into words. All he said
was “Good-bye,” and, for fear of being totally unmanned, stole only
the most cursory glance at the pale, gravely smiling face under the
rather untidy auburn hair.
But Ewen held out his hand again. “_Beannachd leat_, as we say in the
Erse. ‘Blessings go with you; may a straight path be before you, and a
happy end to your journey’!”
Without answering Keith wrung the hand and went quickly up the steps
past the gaoler and into the passage. He was hardly there before the
heavy door clanged to between him and his last meeting with Ewen
Cameron.
“A peety,” said the gaoler reflectively, taking the key from the lock,
“a peety yon muckle young man behoves to hae a rope aboot his
thrapple. But there, wha will tae Cupar maun tae Cupar . . . Yon’s the
way up, sir.”
* * * * * *
At twenty minutes to seven next morning Keith Windham, having propped
himself up on one elbow in his camp bed, was staring with incredulous
and remorseful eyes at the watch which he had just drawn from beneath
his pillow. That he should not wake in time to catch a final glimpse
of Ardroy as he rode away had never occurred to him; the question last
night had rather been whether he should ever get to sleep . . .
Well, evidently old Angus MacMartin’s fates were determined that he
should not see Ewen Cameron again. And after all, he thought, trying
to stifle regret, did I really desire to see him carried away, bound
upon a horse, by Kingston’s dragoons?
When he was dressed he went to the door of the tent, which opened
towards Loch Ness, and looked out. It was a beautiful, fresh morning,
and the loch was smiling up at the flanking hills. Even the ruins of
the fort, rearing themselves against that brightness, looked less
blackened in the sunshine. But for Keith those gutted buildings held
nothing now; and the busy camp around him was empty, too. How far on
the road were they got by this time, and were the troopers riding too
fast . . . ?
He dropped the flap of the tent and, going over to the table, took
out from the breast of his uniform the handkerchief with the curl of
hair and the scrap of a letter, and sealed them up carefully in a
little packet, first copying down the address and scrupulously
averting his eyes from the rest of the torn fly-leaf in doing so.
Then, wondering how soon and in what manner he should find an
opportunity of fulfilling his trust, he sat on, staring at the packet,
now directed in his own hand to Mrs. Ewen Cameron at an address in
Havre-de-Grâce.
What was it that Ardroy had wished him yesterday—a straight path and a
happy end to his journey. Ewen’s own path seemed straighter than his,
now, but the end to which it led? Keith had a sudden horrible vision,
corollary of those which had haunted him in the night. He pressed his
hands over his eyes and bade it begone, bade himself be as little
perturbed at the prospect as Ewen himself had been yesterday—Ewen who
would certainly go cheerfully and courageously to that ghastly
business, but who, had it not been for his interference, might be
lying now unmutilated under the turf of Ben Loy, with only the plovers
and the curlews to disturb his rest.
Keith suddenly got up and began to pace restlessly to and fro, his
head on his breast. He was finding his self-defensive philosophy of a
very meagre assistance now. If he were again the child he had been,
the child who every night at his nurse’s knee asked so simply and
naturally for what he desired, it would have been easy to utter the
prayer in his heart. But of what use such supplication to the Power
whose only concern with the world was that He had set it a-rolling?
Yet it was some time before he came to a standstill, and, with a heavy
sigh, replaced in his breast the little packet for Ewen Cameron’s
wife; with this for consolation in his mind, that he who was riding
southward was not yet condemned, and that till the sentence was spoken
his case was not hopeless.
* * * * * *
All that afternoon there came marching wearily back to Fort Augustus,
in a woeful state of fatigue and rags, the various units of the
fifteen hundred men whom Cumberland had sent out in his last battue
for Prince Charles nearly a fortnight before. They had met with no
success whatever.
At nine o’clock that evening Keith, to his surprise, received a
summons from Lord Albemarle, and found him heated and discomposed.
“’Tis a most extraordinary and vexatious thing,” declared the Earl,
pacing up and down his quarters with his heavy tread. “It seems as
though the Pretender’s son must have broken through the chain of
sentry posts round Clanranald’s country, and yet I can scarce believe
it, they were so close together. I shall make a fresh effort, with
fresh men; these poor fellows are quite worn out with their exertions.
For my part, Major Windham, I declare that to capture that young man,
source of all our woes, I should with infinite pleasure walk barefoot
from Pole to Pole!”
Had Lord Albemarle but known, no such heroic pilgrimage was required
of him; a ten-mile expedition that night to a certain cave in
Glenmoriston would have been sufficient.
“Your Lordship’s zeal is common knowledge,” murmured Keith, wondering
what the Commander-in-Chief wanted him for. “If it could only be
crowned with success . . .”
“Aye, if only it could! One report says,” continued the Earl, going to
a table and turning over some papers, “that the Pretender’s son is in
Badenoch on his way to the east coast; another that he has gone north
to Caithness. Some say he is still in Morar and Knoidart; and the very
latest of all declares that he has gone back to the Long Island—as you
know they call that chain of islands from South Uist to Lewis. It is
distracting!”
It was; but Keith could not think why he should have been summoned to
hear this truth.
“Why, bless my soul,” said Albemarle, as if he had read his thoughts,
“I am so prodigiously put about that I have forgotten, I believe, to
tell you, Major Windham, that you are one of the officers whom I
design to employ in my new effort.”
“My Lord!” ejaculated Keith, flushing.
“Yes, I intend to send you without delay to the neighbourhood of
Arisaig, not because I think that the young man is there at the
moment, though one report says so, but because I think it not unlikely
he may try in the end to escape from the very spot where he landed
last July.”
“Your Lordship is really too good,” stammered Keith, rather overcome.
“If the most active vigilance——”
“Yes,” cut in Albemarle, “I depend upon you to show that, Major
Windham. Your future is in your own hands, and my reputation, too. For
reasons upon which I touched the other day, it is you whom I am
sending to what I cannot but consider the most likely spot for
securing the person of the arch-rebel. The day that you bring him back
a prisoner your difference with His Royal Highness will be no more
remembered against you. And perhaps I, too,” added the Earl with a
sigh, “shall be able to leave this most distasteful country.”
“I assure your Lordship,” said Keith with a beating heart, “that
failure shall not be due to any want of exertion on my part. Your
generous selection of me for this expedition overwhelms me with
gratitude, and whether I secure the prize or no I shall be your
Lordship’s lifelong debtor for the opportunity.”
Lord Albemarle nodded, pleased as one who knows that he confers a
benefit. “You will march at daybreak with a hundred men. I do not say
that you are to station yourself exclusively at this Loch nan—on my
soul, I cannot pronounce its outlandish name. Dispose your men as you
think best. My secretary is preparing a few notes for your guidance.
The devil of it is, however,” confessed the harassed commander in a
further burst of confidence, “that these informations, when one
receives them, are always a se’nnight or two out of date.” And, after
adding a few more recommendations as to Keith’s conduct, he said
kindly, “Now go and get some sleep, Windham—and good luck to your
endeavours!”
Keith went out as one who walks on air. A chance at last—the greatest,
if only he could seize it! So the day which had taken from him
something which he felt that he had never really possessed had brought
him . . . no, not compensation for the loss, for that, perhaps, he
could never have, but opportunity to do more than purge his
disgrace—to make himself the most envied man in the three kingdoms.
V
THE HERON’S FLIGHT IS ENDED
“Hereafter, in a better world than this,
I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.”
—SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER I
It was fortunate for Ewen that the sorrel horse on which he was tied
had easy paces, and that the troopers did not ride fast; fortunate too
that his arms had been bound to his sides and not behind his back, as
had at first been proposed when, limping badly, and shielding his eyes
against the unaccustomed daylight, he was brought out into the
courtyard of the fort to be mounted. For by midday so many hours in
the saddle, under a July sun, were making heavy demands on a man come
straight from close confinement and not long recovered of a severe
wound.
But from Ewen’s spirit a much heavier toll was being exacted; not by
the prospect of the death which was in all likelihood awaiting him,
not even by the remembrance of his lost Alison, but by the pain which
was actually tearing at him now, this taking leave of what he loved
better than life, the lakes and mountains of his home. This was the
real death, and he kept his lips locked lest he should cry out at its
sharpness.
The picture which had been tormenting Keith Windham he could look at
without undue shrinking; or rather, he did not trouble to look at it
any more now. Like the man who had saved him, he could not avoid the
thought that Guthrie’s musket balls had been more merciful, but the
choice had not lain in his hands; and for the last two months it had
been more important to try to keep his equanimity day after day in the
cold and darkness of his prison than to think what he should do or
feel when he came to stand in the hangman’s cart. And the parting with
Alison was over; and because he had known that the kiss in the cabin
of the brig might be their last, it had held the solemnity which had
enwrapped their hurried marriage and the bridal night whose memory was
so holy to him. Alison had been his, though for so brief a space; and
one day, as he firmly believed, they would meet again. But Beinn Tigh
. . . would he ever see again, in _that_ world, his beloved sentinel
of the stars?
Ever since its peak had appeared, all flushed by the morning sun, as
they began to ride by Loch Oich, he had kept his eyes hungrily upon
it, praying that the horses might go slower, or that one might cast a
shoe; watching it like a lover as it revealed more of its shapeliness
and dominated the shoulder, between it and the loch, behind which, as
they went farther, it would inevitably sink. And Loch na h-Iolaire,
_his_ loch, away behind there, invisible, secluded by its own
mountains! If only he could get free of these cords, swim the water
between, climb those intervening miles of scree and heather, and see
the Eagle’s Lake once more! No, never again; neither in this world nor
the next. For Loch na h-Iolaire was not like Alison and him; it had
not a soul free of time and space. Loch na h-Iolaire existed over
there, only there, on that one spot of earth, and in all the fields of
heaven there would be no lake so lovely, and in heaven the grey mists
would never swoop down on one who ambushed the deer.
At Laggan-ach-drum they had halted and rested and eaten. It was
Glengarry’s country, yet on the border of the Cameron, and Ardroy was
known there; but in the burnt and ravaged clachan there seemed to be
no man left, and no risk of a rescue. The troopers of Kingston’s Horse
had shown themselves rough but not unkindly, and the sergeant,
probably thinking that unless they gave the prisoner some attention
they would hardly get him to Fort William at the end of the day, had
him unfastened and taken off the sorrel and set down amongst them by
the roadside with food and drink. But they were very careful of him,
tying his ankles together, and putting a cord from one wrist to the
belt of the next man. And Ewen had eaten and drunk in silence, looking
at the sunlit desolation. _This_ was what had been done in the
Glen . . . done in all the countryside . . .
A young girl had passed once or twice to a half-burnt croft carrying a
bucket of water, and presently the sergeant, wanting some for the
horses, called to ask where the water came from, since here they were
no longer by a lake side. Setting down the heavy bucket, she came and
stood before him, looking on the troopers with eyes like coals, and
only once at their prisoner. (But the softness of evening was in them
then.) The sergeant, without harshness, put his question, but the girl
shook her head, and Ewen knew that she had not the English. Already he
had seen a sight that set his heart beating, for as she stooped to put
down the bucket he had caught a glimpse of the black handle of a
_sgian dubh_ in her bosom.
“Shall I ask her for you?” he suggested to the sergeant, and, hardly
waiting for the answer, he spoke rapidly to her in Gaelic, putting the
question about water indeed, but adding at the end of it, “Try to give
me your knife when I am on the horse again—if you have another for
yourself!”
The girl gave him a glance of comprehension, and turned away to show
where to fetch the water; and the sergeant had no inkling that another
question besides his had been put and answered. He even threw a word
of thanks to the interpreter.
But while they were tying Ewen on again the girl came among them, as
if curiosity had brought her to see the sight, and, heedless of the
jests which she did not understand, slipped nearer and nearer among
the horses until she seemed to be jostled against the sorrel’s
shoulder. And Ewen felt the little knife, warm from its hiding-place,
slide into his right stocking; it was only with an effort that he kept
his eyes averted and seemed unaware of her presence. But he turned his
head as they rode away, and saw her standing at gaze with her hands
joined, as though she were praying.
That was an hour agone and more. How he should ever get at, much less
use, the blade against his leg he had no idea, seeing that his arms
were immovably pinioned, but to know it there made a world of
difference. His thoughts reverted to Major Windham, to that interview
yesterday. They might have been friends had Fate willed it otherwise;
indeed he could not but think of him already as a friend, and with
wonder at what he had done for him. But why had Angus’s heron brought
them together to so little purpose, to meet, and meet, and then to
part for ever, as they had met at first, ‘by the side of water’—Loch
Oich and Loch Ness? Yet he owed his life to one of those encounters;
there was no possible doubt of that. But it was still a mystery to him
why the Englishman should have cared so much for his fate as to wreck
his own career over it. He had really behaved to Loudoun and (as far
as he could make out) to Cumberland—all honour to him for it—as if he
were fey. And he had seemed at the outset of their acquaintance of so
mocking a temper, so lightly contemptuous as scarcely even to be
hostile. One saw him with different eyes now.
But Keith Windham was swept from his thoughts again, as he realised
afresh that he was going for the last time along Loch Lochy side. It
was bright pain to look at it, but Ewen looked greedily, trying to
burn those high green slopes for ever on his memory, to be imaged
there as long as that memory itself was undissolved. There was the
steep corrie and the wall shutting out his home. What though the house
of Ardroy were ashes now, like Achnacarry and a score of others, there
were things the marauders could not touch, things dearer even than the
old house—the sweeps of fern and heather, the hundred little burns
sliding and tinkling among stones and mosses, the dark pine-trees, the
birches stepping delicately down the torrent side, the mist and the
wind, the very mountain air itself. But these, though they would
remain, were not for him any more.
And then Ewen bit his lip hard, for, to his horror, his eyes had begun
to fill, and, since he could not move a hand, all that was left was to
bow his head and pray desperately that the troopers on either side
might not observe his weakness. But they were just then absorbed in
heartfelt complaints at the detour which they were obliged to make on
his account, instead of setting out with the rest of Kingston’s Horse,
in two days’ time, for Edinburgh; and Ewen quickly swallowed the salt
upon his lips, thinking, ‘Since I am so little of a man, I must fix
my mind on something else.’ Yet here, in this dear and familiar
neighbourhood, he could think of nothing else but what was before his
eyes; and his eyes told him now that the radiance of the morning was
gone, and that clouds were coming up the Glen from the south-west,
from Loch Linnhe, with that rapidity which he knew so well of old. In
an hour it would very likely be raining hard; in less, for beyond the
Loch Arkaig break he could see that it _was_ raining . . .
Here he was, looking just as intently at the hills as before! So he
shut his eyes, afraid lest moisture should spring into them again; and
also a little because the waters of Loch Lochy, still bright, despite
the advancing clouds, were beginning queerly to dazzle him. And when
his eyes were shut he realised with increasing clearness that
physically too he was nearing the boundary-line of endurance. He had
wondered himself how he should ever accomplish the thirty-mile ride,
but the problem had not troubled him much, and the untying and rest at
Laggan had been a relief. Now—and they still had a long way to go—it
was astonishing how this sea of faintness seemed to be gaining upon
him. He reopened his eyes as he felt himself give a great lurch in the
saddle.
“Hold up!” said the trooper who had the reins. “Were ye asleep?”
Ewen shook his head. But what curious specks were floating over the
darkening landscape! He fixed his eyes on his horse’s ears; but once
or twice the whole head of the animal disappeared from his sight
altogether; and the second time that this phenomenon occurred he felt a
grip on his arm, and found the soldier on the other side looking at
him curiously. However, the man released him, saying nothing, and
Ewen, mute also, tried to straighten himself in the saddle, and looked
ahead in the direction of Ben Nevis, since perhaps it was a mistake to
look at anything close at hand. The mountain’s top was veiled. The last
time that he had seen it . . . with Lochiel . . .
But that memory had poison in it now. Oh, to have speech with Lochiel
once before he went hence! Ewen set his teeth, as waves of faintness
and of mental pain broke on him together. If he could only say to
Donald . . .
And there followed on that, surprisingly, a period in which he thought
he was speaking to Lochiel; but it must have been by some
waterfall—the waterfall near the hiding-place, perhaps—and through the
noise of the rushing water he could not make Lochiel hear what he was
saying to him. He tried and tried . . . Then all at once someone was
holding him round the body, and a voice called out, miles away, yet
close, “He was near off that time, Sergeant!”
Ewen left the waterfall and became conscious, to his astonishment,
that they were away from Lochy and within full sight of Ben Nevis and
all his brethren. Also that the whole escort had stopped. Landscape
and horses then whirled violently round. His head fell on a trooper’s
shoulder.
“The prisoner’s swounding, Sergeant! What are we to do?”
Swearing under his breath, the sergeant brought his horse alongside.
“Shamming? No, he ain’t shamming. Here,” he brought out something from
his holster, “give him a drink of his own Highland whisky—nasty stuff
it is!”
They held up Ewen’s head and put the spirit to his lips. It revived
him a little, and he tried to say something, but he himself did not
know what it was. The sergeant eyed him doubtfully.
“I’ll tell you what,” he remarked to his men, “we’ll untie his
arms—not his feet, mind you—and maybe then he can help himself by
taking a holt of the mane.—Can ye do that?”
Ewen nodded, too sick and dizzy to realise what possibilities would
thus be put within his reach.
The dragoons unfastened the cords round his arms and body, gave him
some more spirit, rubbed his cramped arms, and in a little while he
was able to do what the sergeant suggested; and presently, he leaning
hard upon the sorrel’s crest, his fingers twined in the mane, they
were going slowly down the moorland slope towards the Spean. Ewen felt
less faint now, after the whisky and the release of his arms; the fine
misty rain which had now set in was refreshing, too, so, although the
landscape showed a disposition to swim at times, he could certainly
keep in the saddle—indeed, how could he fall off, he thought, with
this rope passing from ankle to ankle beneath the horse’s belly? And
he began to think about High Bridge, still unseen, which they were
approaching, and of the part which it had played in this great and
ill-fated adventure—and in his own private fortunes, too. For down
there the first spark of revolt had flashed out; down there Keith
Windham had been turned back by MacDonald of Tiendrish and his men;
and because he had been turned back, Ewen himself was alive to-day,
and not mouldering by Neil MacMartin’s side on Beinn Laoigh.
But he was none the less on his way to death, and there was no one to
stay the redcoats from passing High Bridge now. Tiendrish, marked for
the scaffold, lay already in Edinburgh Castle; Keppoch, his chief,
slept with his broken heart among the heather on Culloden Moor;
Lochiel was a wounded outlaw with a price on his head. The gods had
taken rigorous dues from all who had been concerned in the doings of
that August day here by the Spean. Yes, strangely enough, even from
Keith Windham, who was on the other side. They had made him pay for
having dared to show compassion to those whom they pursued. It was
singular.
Unconsciously Ewen was back in the dungeon again, seeing the
Englishman’s troubled face, hearing his voice as it asked him why he
had put him in mind of the forgotten penknife . . .
And then Keith Windham’s face and voice were blotted out in an instant
by a thought which made him draw a long breath and clutch the sorrel’s
mane almost convulsively. He had something better than a blunt
penknife on his person at this very moment, and now, now that his arms
were untied, he could perhaps get it into his hand. For the last hour
he had completely forgotten the girl’s _sgian_ in his stocking; and
indeed, until recently it might as well not have been there. But now,
if he could draw it out unobserved . . .
And then? Rags of a wild, a desperate plan began to flutter before his
eyes. And only here, by the Spean, could the plan be put into
execution, because, High Bridge once crossed, it was all open moorland
to Fort William. Only by the Spean, racing along between its steep,
thickly wooded banks, was there a chance of shelter, if one could gain
it. It was a mad scheme, and would very likely result in his being
shot dead, but, if they stopped at the little change-house on the
other side of Spean, as they surely would, he would risk that. Better
to die by a bullet than by the rope and the knife. How his body would
carry out the orders of his brain he did not know; very ill, probably,
to judge from his late experiences. Yet, as he hastily plotted out
what he would do, and every moment was carried nearer to High Bridge,
Ewen had an illusory feeling of vigour; but he knew that he must not
show it. On the contrary, his present partially unbound condition
being due to his recent only too real faintness, he must continue to
simulate what for the moment he no longer felt. If only the faintness
did not come on again in earnest!
Here was the Spean in its ravine, and here the narrow bridge reared
on its two arches, its central pier rising from a large rock in the
river-bed. They clattered over it, three abreast. The bridge was
invisible, as Ewen knew, when one was fairly up the other side,
because the approach was at so sharp an angle, and the trees so
thick. And as they went up that steep approach the trees seemed even
thicker than he remembered them. If Spean did not save him, nothing
could.
The change-house came into view above them, a little low building by
the side of the road, and for a moment the prisoner knew an agonising
doubt whether the escort were going to halt there after all. Yes,
thank God, they were! Indeed, it would have been remarkable had they
passed it.
The moment the troopers stopped it was evident how little they
considered that their prisoner needed guarding now; it was very
different from the care which they had bestowed in this particular at
Laggan. Drink was brought out; nearly all swung off their horses, and
broke into jests and laughter among themselves. Ewen’s all but
collapse of a few miles back, his real and evident exhaustion now,
served him as nothing else could have done. Realising this, he let
himself slide slowly farther over his horse’s neck as though he could
scarcely sit in the saddle at all; and in fact this manœuvre called
for but little dissimulation.
And at that point the trooper who had charge of his reins, a young
man, not so boisterous as the others, was apparently smitten with
compassion. His own half-finished chopin in his hand, he looked up at
the drooping figure. “You’d be the better of another drink, eh? Shall
I fetch you one?”
Not quite sure whether this solicitude was to his advantage, Ewen
intimated that he would be glad of a cup of water. The dragoon
finished his draught, tossed the reins to one of his fellows, and
sauntered off. But the other man was too careless or too much occupied
to catch the reins, and they swung forward below the sorrel’s head,
free. This was a piece of quite unforeseen good luck. Ewen’s head sank
right on to his horse’s crest; already his right hand, apparently
dangling helpless, had slipped the little black knife out of his
stocking; now he was able unsuspected to reach the rope round his
right ankle. . . . Five seconds, and it was cut through, and the next
instant his horse was snorting and rearing from a violent prick with
the steel. The dismounted men near scattered involuntarily; Ewen
reached forward, caught a rein, turned the horse, and, before the
startled troopers in the least realised what was happening, was racing
down the slope and had disappeared in the thick fringe of trees about
the bridge.
The sorrel was so maddened that to slip off before he reached the
bridge, as he intended, was going to be a matter of difficulty, if not
of danger. But it had to be done; he threw himself across the saddle
and did it. As he reached ground he staggered and fell, wrenching his
damaged thigh, but the horse continued its wild career across the
bridge and up the farther slope as he had designed. Ewen had but a
second or two in which to pick himself up and lurch into the thick
undergrowth of the gorge ere the first of a stream of cursing horsemen
came tearing down the slope. But, as he hoped, having heard hoof-beats
on the bridge, they all went straight over it in pursuit of the now
vanished horse, never dreaming that it was riderless.
Once they were over Ewen cut away the trailing rope from his other
ankle, pocketed it, and started to plunge on as fast as he could among
the birch and rowan trees, the moss-covered stones and the undergrowth
of Spean side. He was fairly sure that he was invisible from above,
though not, perhaps, from the other side, if and when the troopers
returned. But the farther from the bridge the better. His breath came
in gasps, the jar of throwing himself off the horse had caused him
great pain and made him lamer than ever, and at last he was forced to
go forward on his hands and knees, dragging his injured leg after him.
But as he went he thought how hopeless it was; how the dragoons would
soon overtake the horse, or see from a distance that he was no longer
on its back, and, returning, would search along the river bank and
find him. And he could not possibly go much farther, weak and out of
condition as he was, with the sweat pouring off him, and Spean below
seeming to make a noise much louder than its diminished summer
clamour.
Thus crawling he finally came up against a huge green boulder, and the
obstacle daunted him. He would stop here . . . just round the farther
side. He dragged himself round somehow, and saw that what he had
thought to be one stone was two, leaning together. He tried to creep
into the dark hollow between them, a place like the tomb, but it was
too narrow for his breadth of shoulder. So he sank down by it, and lay
there with his cheek to the damp mould, and wondered whether he were
dying. Louder and louder roared the Spean below, and he somehow was
tossing in its stream. Then at least he could die in Scotland after
all. Best not to struggle . . . best to think that he was in Alison’s
arms. She would know how spent he was . . . and how cold . . . The
brawling of the river died away into darkness.
CHAPTER II
When Ewen came fully to himself again it was night, the pale Highland
summer night; he could not guess the hour. He had not been discovered,
then! He lay listening; there was no sound anywhere save the rushing
of the river below him, nothing to tell him whether the troopers had
returned or no. But now was undoubtedly the time to quit his lair and
get back over the bridge and along the short but dangerous stretch of
high road, until he could leave it and make for the river Lochy. When
he had forded Lochy and was on the other side of the Great Glen he
would be safer.
Alas, the next few minutes implanted in him a horrible doubt whether
he would ever ford Lochy, seeing that between the swimming head of
exhaustion and the twist which he had given his damaged leg in
throwing himself off the horse he could scarcely even stand, much less
walk. And although the people up at the change-house, almost within
call were, unless they had been removed, of a Cameron sept, he dared
not risk attracting their attention, for a double reason: soldiers,
his own escort or others from Fort William, might very well halt
there; and to shelter him would probably in any case be disastrous to
the poor folk themselves.
His prospects did not seem too bright. All his hope was that he might
feel more vigorous after a little more of this not very comfortable
rest. Huddled together on his side under the lee of the boulder, to
get what shelter he could from the soft, misty rain which he felt
rather than saw, he said a prayer and fell into the sleep of the
worn-out.
He was wakened by a strange, sharp noise above him, and the sensation
of something warm and damp passing over his face. Stiff and
bewildered, he opened his eyes and saw in the now undoubted, though
misty daylight, the author of these two phenomena, an agitated
sheepdog, of a breed unknown to him. As he raised himself on an elbow
the dog gave another excited bark, and immediately darted away up the
tree-grown bank.
So numbed and exhausted was the fugitive that it took him a few
seconds to realise that he was discovered. But by whom? Not by
soldiers, certainly; nor could that be the dog from the change-house.
He dragged himself into a sitting posture, got his back against the
boulder, pulled the little black knife, his only resource, from his
stocking, and waited.
Feet were coming down the steep bank, and soon two men could be seen
plunging through the birch and alder, shouting to each other in an
unfamiliar accent; in front of them plunged and capered the sheepdog,
with its tail held high, and Ewen heard a loud hearty voice saying,
“Clivver lass—aye, good bitch th’art indeed! See-ye, yon’s rebel,
Jan!” He reflected, “I can kill the dog, but what good would that do
me? Moreover I have no wish to.” And as the intelligent creature came
bounding right up to him, wagging a friendly tail, and apparently
proud of its accomplishment in having found him, he held out his left
hand in invitation. The dog sniffed once, and then licked it.
“See thon!” cried the former voice. “Dang it, see Lassie so freendly
and all!”
“Yet you had best not come too near!” called Ewen threateningly. “I am
armed!” He raised his right hand.
The larger of the men, pushing through an alder bush, instantly lifted
a stout cudgel. “If thou harmst t’ bitch—— Coom here, Lassie!”
“No, I will not harm her,” said Ewen, fending off the dog’s
demonstrations with his other arm. “But call her off; I owe her no
gratitude.”
“For foindin’ thee, thou meanst,” supplied Lassie’s owner. “Aye,
thou’st the fellow that gie t’ sogers the slip yesterday; we heerd all
aboot thee oop at t’ little hoose yonder. Eh, but thou’rt a reet smart
lad!” There was genuine admiration in his tone. “’Twere smart ti hide
thee here, so near an’ all, ’stead o’ gooin’ ower t’ brig—eh, Jan?”
“Main smart,” agreed the smaller man. “Too smart fur th’ redcoats, Ah
lay!”
The smart lad, very grim in the face, and rather grey to boot, sat
there against his boulder with the _sgian_ clutched to his breast,
point outwards, and eyed the two men with a desperate attention, as
they stood a little way higher up amid the tangle of bushes, stones
and protruding tree-roots, and looked at him. They had the appearance
of well-to-do farmers, particularly the larger, who was a tremendously
burly and powerful man with a good-tempered but masterful expression.
The smaller was of a more weazened type, and older.
“See-thee, yoong man,” said the burly stranger suddenly, “’tis no
manner o’ use ti deny that thou’rt one of these danged Highland
rebels, seein’ we’s heerd all the tale oop yonder.”
Ewen’s breath came quickly. “But I’ll not be retaken without
resistance!”
“Who says we be gooin’ ti taake thee? Happen we’ve summut else ti
moind. Coom here, Lassie, wilt thou! Dunnot be so freendly tiv a chap
wi’ a knife in his hand!”
“I tell you the dog has nothing to fear from me,” repeated Ewen. “See
then!” And on a sudden impulse he planted the _sgian_ in the damp soil
beside him and left it sticking there.
“Ah, that’s reet, yoong man—that’s jannock!” exclaimed the large
stranger in evident approval and relief. “Happen we can ’ev some clack
together noo. Hoo dost thou rackon ti get away fra this tod’s den o’
thine?”
Here, quite suddenly, the little man began to giggle. “He, he! maakes
me laugh to think of it—t’ sogers chasing reet away ower t’ brig and
Lord knaws wheer beyond! They nivver coom back, so t’ folk oop yonder
tells.”
“Aye, a good tale to tell when we gan back ower Tyne,” agreed the
large man, shaking gently with a more subdued mirth. And as Ewen, for
his part, realised that the reference to Tyne must mean that the
strangers were English, though he could not imagine what they were
doing in Lochaber, this large one burst into a great rumbling upheaval
of laughter, causing the sheepdog to bark in sympathy.
“Quiet, lass!” commanded her master, making a grab at her. “Thy new
freend here has no wish for thy noise, Ah’ll lay.” He looked straight
at the fugitive sitting there. “Hadn’t thee best get thee gone, lad,
before ’tis onny loighter?” he asked.
Was the man playing with him, or was he genuinely friendly? Ewen’s
heart gave a great bound. A momentary mist passed before his eyes.
When it cleared the large man was stooping over him, a bottle in his
hand.
“Thoo’rt nigh clemmed, lad, or ma name’s not Robert Fosdyke. Here’s t’
stuff for thee—reet Nantes. Tak’ a good soop of it!”
The fiery spirit ran like lightning through Ewen’s cramped limbs. “Why
. . . why do you treat me so kindly?” he gasped, half stupid between
the brandy and astonishment, as he returned the bottle. “You are
English, are you not? Why do you not give me up?”
Mr. Fosdyke, who had now seated himself on a large stone near, struck
his knee with some vehemence. “Ah’ll tell thee whoy! First, because t’
bitch here foond thee and took ti thee, and thou didna stick yon knife
o’ thine intiv her—but Ah’d ’ev driven in thy skool if thou hadst . . .
second, because thou’rt a sharp lad and a bold one, too; and last
because Ah’ve seen and heerd tell o’ things yonder at Fort Augustus,
wheer we went ti buy cattle, that Ah ’evn’t loiked at all. No, Ah
didn’t loike what Ah heerd of goings on.—Aye, and foorthly, t’ cattle
was woorth danged little when we’d gotten ’em; all t’ best were sold
awready.”
Ewen knew what cattle they would be; the one possession of many a
poor Highland home, as well as the herds of the gentry. He remembered
now having heard that some of the many thousands collected from
Lochaber and Badenoch were sold to English and Lowland dealers.
Apparently, then, these men were on their way south through Glencoe
and Breadalbane with such as they had bought, and now he knew why once
or twice during this conversation he had fancied that he heard sounds
of lowing at no great distance.
“I wonder if mine are all gone!” he said half to himself.
“Thou hadst cattle of thy own, lad?” enquired Mr. Fosdyke. “If thou
canst see onny o’ thine among oors oop there thou shalt have them back
again—and that’s none so generous as thou medst think, for there’s
some Ah’d as soon give away as drive all t’ waay ower t’ Border.”
Ewen gave a weak laugh. “What should I do with cattle now? I cannot
get home myself, much less drive cattle there.”
“And whoy canst thou not get home, when thou’st put summut in thy
belly?” asked the Yorkshireman.
Ewen told him why he should find it difficult, if not impossible, and
why he dared not go to the change-house either. The farmer pronounced
that he was right in the latter course, and then made the astonishing
suggestion that ‘Jan Prescott here’ should run up to the house and
bring the fugitive something to eat and drink. “Dunnot say who ’tis
for, Jan; say Ah’ve a moind ti eat by river, if thou loikes.” And
while Jan, with amazing docility, removed the birch twig which he had
been twisting between his lips and betook himself up the bank, his
companion questioned Ewen further as to the direction of his home.
“T’ other soide of t’ other river? T’ other river’s nobbut a couple of
moiles away . . . Tell thee what, lad,” he exclaimed, slapping himself
once more, “Ah’ll tak thee as far as t’ river on one of t’ nags.
Happen thou canst sit a horse still?”
“Take me there!” Ewen could only stare in amazement.
“Aye. And when thou’st gotten to this river o’ thine, hoo medst thou
cross it; happen there’s brig, or ferry?”
“No, there is a ford. The ford by which we all . . .” His voice died
away. How long ago it seemed, that elated crossing last August after
Glenfinnan!
“And when thou’rt on t’ other soide?” pursued Mr. Fosdyke.
“I’ll reach my home somehow, if I have to crawl there.”
“And who’lt thou foind theer—thy parents?”
“My aunt, who brought me up. My parents are dead.”
“No wife nor childer?”
“My wife is in France.” And why he added, “We were only married two
days before parting,” Ewen did not know.
“Poor lad,” said Mr. Fosdyke. “Whoy didstna stop at home loike a wise
man?”
Ewen, his head resting against the boulder, said, “That I could not
do,” his eyes meanwhile fixed on the form of Mr. Jan Prescott, already
descending the slope with a tankard in his hand and two large bannocks
clasped to his person. Mr. Fosdyke turned and hailed him, and in
another moment Ewen had started upon the bannocks, finding that he was
famished, having tasted nothing solid since the halt at Laggan
yesterday morning. And while he ate Mr. Robert Fosdyke unfolded his
intention to his companion, who raised no objection, except to remark,
“Happen thou’lt meet redcoats on t’ road.”
“Ah shall say t’ lad’s a drover o’ mine, then.”
“In yon petticoat thing?” queried Mr. Prescott, pointing at Ewen’s
kilt.
“He shall have thy great-coat ti cover him oop.”
“Ah dunno hoo he’ll get intiv it, then,” returned Mr. Prescott. “See
ye, Robert, Ah’d sooner he had a horse blanket than split ma coat.”
“He can have t’ loan of ma coat then,” said Mr. Fosdyke. “He’ll not
split that.—Beasts all reet oop there?” he enquired.
“As reet as ivver they’ll be,” returned his partner with gloom.
“Ah knawed as we peed too mooch for them,” growled Mr. Fosdyke in a
voice like subterranean thunder. “Goviment notice saays—well, nivver
moind what, but ’twere main different fra what t’ cattle were loike.
Hooivver, Ah weren’t comin’ all the way fra t’ other soide o’ York for
nowt.”
“York?” asked Ewen with his mouth full, since this information seemed
addressed to him. “You come from York, sir.”
“Fra near by. Dost thou knaw the toon?”
“No,” said Ewen.
“T’ sogers werena takin’ thee there yistiday?”
“It was Carlisle that I was going to in the end.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Fosdyke comprehendingly. “But some poor devils are
setting oot for York, too, we hear. Thou’s best coom along wi’ us.”
And giving his great laugh he began to embroider his pleasantry. “Thou
doesna loike the notion? Whoy not? York’s a foine toon, Ah can tell
thee, and more gates tiv it for setting rebels’ heads on than
Carlisle. Ah lay we have a row o’ them ower Micklegate Bar come
Christmas. And thou’st not wishful ti add thine?”
Ewen shook the imperilled head in question with a smile.
“No,” agreed Mr. Fosdyke, “best keep it ti lay on t’ pillow besoide
they wife’s. If she’s in France, then thou’rt not a poor man, eh?”
“I am what you call a gentleman,” replied Ewen, “though I expect that
I am poor enough now.”
“If thou’rt a gentleman,” pronounced Mr. Fosdyke, “then thou dost reet
ti keep away fra York and Carlisle, aye, and fra Lunnon, too.—Noo,
Jan, we’ll gan and see aboot t’ nags. Thou medst bide here, lad. Come
on, Lassie.”
With tramplings and cracklings they were gone, dog and all, and, but
for the yet unfinished food and drink, which were putting new life
into Ewen, the whole encounter might have been a dream. As he waited
there for their return he wondered whether Alison’s prayers had sent
these good angels, which, to his simple and straightforward faith,
seemed quite likely.
Presently the larger of the angels came back and helped him along the
slope to the scene of his exploit at the bridge. Here was the
satellite Jan with two stout nags, a flea-bitten grey and a black. A
long and ample coat (certainly not Mr. Prescott’s) was provided for
the Jacobite. “If thou wert clothed like a Christian there’d ha’ been
no need for this,” said Mr. Fosdyke with frankness as he helped him
into it; and then, the difficulty of getting into the saddle
surmounted, Ewen found himself half incredulously riding behind the
broad back of his benefactor over the brawling Spean, in his hand a
stout cattle goad to assist his steps when he should be on his feet
again.
In the two miles before they came to the river Lochy they had the luck
to meet no one. There the clouds hung so low that the other side of
the Great Glen was scarcely visible. When they came to the ford Ewen
pulled up and made to dismount. But Mr. Fosdyke caught him by the
arm. “Nay, if thou canst scarce walk on land, Ah doot thou’ll walk
thruff water! Daisy will tak thee ower. Coom on, mare.”
The two horses splashed placidly through in the mist. On the other
side Ewen struggled off, and got out of the coat.
“I cannot possibly recompense you, Mr. Fosdyke,” he began, handing it
up to him.
“If thou offer me money,” said Mr. Fosdyke threateningly, “danged if
Ah don’t tak thee back ti wheer Ah foond thee!”
“You can be reassured,” said Ewen, smiling, “for I have none. But in
any case, money does not pass between gentlemen for a service like
this. I only pray God that you will not suffer for it.”
“Ah’d loike ti see the mon that’s going ti mak me,” was the
Yorkshireman’s reply. “And Ah feel noo as Ah’ve got even wi’ Goviment
in t’ matter of t’ cattle,” he added with immense satisfaction. “And
thou think’st me a gentleman? Well, Ah’m nobbut a farmer, but Ah’m
mooch obliged ti thee for the compliment.” He shook Ewen’s hand. “Good
luck ti thee, ma lad. . . . If thou lived a few hoondred moiles nearer,
danged if Ah wouldna gie thee a pup o’ Lassie’s—but thou’rt ower far
away, ower far!” He chuckled, caught the bridle of the grey, and the
eight hoofs could be heard splashing back through the ford. Then
silence settled down again, silence, and the soft folds of mist; and
after a moment Ewen, leaning heavily on his goad, began his difficult
pilgrimage.
* * * * * *
Twenty-four hours later, very nearly at the end of his tether, he was
hobbling slowly along the last mile of that distance which ordinarily
he could have covered between one meal and the next. So slow and
painful had been his progress, and with such frequent halts, that it
had been late afternoon before he reached Loch Arkaig. And there he
had seen the pitiful charred remains left by vengeance of Lochiel’s
house of Achnacarry, almost as dear to him as his own. In that
neighbourhood above all others he had feared to come on soldiers, but
the Campbells in Government pay who had burnt and ravaged here had
long ago done their work, and the place was deserted; there was
nothing to guard now, and none against whom to hold it. A poor Cameron
woman, whose husband had been shot in cold blood as he was working in
his little field, had given Ewen shelter for the night. She told him,
what he expected to hear, that the house of Ardroy had been burnt down
by a detachment of redcoats; this she knew because the soldiers had
returned that way, and she had heard them boasting how they had left
the place in flames. Of Miss Cameron’s fate she knew nothing; but then
she never saw anyone now that her man was gone; the burnt countryside
was nearly depopulated. That Ewen had seen for himself already.
And she said with tears, as, thanking her from his soul for her
hospitality, he turned away from her door in the morning grey, “Oh Mac
’ic Ailein, for the Chief and the Chief’s kin I’d give the last rag,
the last mouthful that’s left to me—but I’m asking God why He ever let
Prince Tearlach come to Scotland.” And Ewen had no heart to find an
answer.
Against his will the question had haunted him as he hobbled on. Just a
year ago he had had the news of that coming; yes, just a year ago he
had sat with Alison by the loch and been happy—too happy perhaps. So
his father’s house was gone! But all the more was his mind set to
reach Ardroy, to find out what had befallen those who had remained
behind there: Aunt Margaret first and foremost, the servants, old
Angus and his grandchildren, the womenfolk, the fugitives from
Drumossie Moor . . . And here at last he was, going incredibly slowly,
and accompanied by a dull pain in the thigh which by this time seemed
an inseparable part of himself, but come to the spot where, after
crossing the Allt Buidhe burn, one used to discern the chimneys of the
house of Ardroy between the pines of the avenue. Since he knew that he
would never see them thus again, Ewen did not look up, but he thought,
as he crossed the burn on the stepping-stones, nearly overbalancing
from fatigue, that one thing, at least, would be the same, for not
even Cumberland could set fire to Loch na h-Iolaire.
Then, unable for the moment to get farther, he sank down among the
welcoming heather for a rest. That, just coming into bloom, was
unchanged; ‘thou art the same and thy years shall not fail’—the words
floated into his head and out again, as he felt its springy resistance
give beneath his body. Then, half lying there, twisting a tuft round
and round the fingers of one hand for the pleasure of feeling it
again, Ewen let his eyes stray to the spot where his father’s house
and his had stood. And so strong were habit and memory that he could
see its roof and chimneys still. He put a hand over his eyes to rub
away the false sight . . . but when he removed it the chimneys were
still there, and from one there floated a wisp of smoke. . . .
Trembling, he dragged himself clumsily to his feet.
* * * * * *
Like a man who dreams the impossible he stood a little later outside
the entrance door of Ardroy. The whole affair was like a dream; for
fire had certainly passed upon the house, and yet it was unharmed. The
lintel, the sides of the stone porch were blackened with smoke; the
ivy was brown and shrivelled, but not even the woodwork was injured.
The house seemed occupied; the door stood open as on fine days it was
wont to do; but there was not a creature about. Where was Aunt Marget?
Slowly Ewen went over the threshold, feeling the stone and wood like a
blind man to make sure that it was real. He could have kissed it—his
house that was not burnt after all. The sun was pouring into the
long room; there was a meal laid on the table—for Aunt Margaret?
Then where was she? The place was very silent. Perhaps—a horrible
notion—strangers held Ardroy now, enemies. He would rather it were
burnt. . . . But had harm befallen Aunt Margaret? He must find her;
shame on him to be thinking first of the house!
He was giddy with hunger and fatigue, but he had no thought of
approaching the table; he left the room and, holding very tightly by
the rail, went up the stairs. The door of Miss Cameron’s room was a
little ajar, so he pushed it gently open, too confused to knock.
Where, where was she?
And he stood in the doorway rooted, because, so unexpectedly,
everything in that neat, sunny room which he had known from a child
was just as he had always known it . . . even to Aunt Margaret
herself, sitting there by the window reading a chapter in her big
Bible, as she always did before breakfast. The surprise of its
usualness after his experiences and his fears almost stunned him, and
he remained there motionless, propping himself by the doorpost.
It was odd, however, that Aunt Marget had not heard him, for she had
not used to be deaf. The thought came to Ewen that he was perhaps
become a ghost without knowing it, and he seriously considered the
idea for a second or two. Then he took a cautious step forward.
“Aunt Margaret!”
He was not a ghost! She heard and looked up . . . it was true that her
face was almost frightened. . . .
“I have come back!” said Ewen baldly. “May I . . . may I sit on your
bed?”
He crashed on to it rather than sat upon it, hitting his head against
the post at the bottom, since all at once he could not see very well.
But Aunt Margaret did not scold him; in fact he perceived, after a
little, that she was crying as she sat beside him, and attempting, as
if he were a child again, to kiss his head where he had struck it.
“Oh, Ewen, my boy—my darling, darling boy!”
* * * * * *
“Then did that poor woman dream that the house was burnt down?” asked
Ewen some quarter of an hour later, gazing at Miss Cameron in
perplexity, as she planted before him, ensconced as he was in the
easy-chair in her bedroom, the last components of a large repast. For
allow him to descend and eat downstairs she would not; indeed, after
the first questions and emotions were over, she was for hustling him
up to the attics and hiding him there. But, Ewen having announced with
great firmness that he was too lame to climb a stair that was little
better than a ladder, she compromised on her bedchamber for the
moment, and, with Marsali’s assistance, brought up thither the first
really satisfying meal which Ewen had seen for more than three months.
In answer to his question she now began to laugh, though her eyes were
still moist. “The house _was_ set fire to—in a way. Eat, _Eoghain_,
for you look starving; and you shall hear the tale of its escape.”
Ewen obeyed her and was told the story. But not yet having, so it
seemed to him, the full use of his faculties, he was not quite clear
how much of the house’s immunity was due to chance, to connivance on
the part of the officer commanding the detachment sent to burn it, and
to the blandishments of Miss Cameron herself. At any rate, after
searching, though not plundering, the house of Ardroy from top to
bottom (for whom or what was not quite clear to Ewen, since at that
date he was safely a prisoner at Fort Augustus), firing about half the
crofts near, collecting what cattle they could lay their hands on, the
most having already been sent up into the folds of the mountains, and
slaying a dozen or so of Miss Cameron’s hens, they had piled wood
against the front of the house, with what intention was obvious. It
was a moment of great anguish for Miss Cameron. But the soldiers were
almost ready to march ere the fuel was lighted. And as they were
setting fire to the pine-branches and the green ash-boughs the
officer approached her and said in a low voice, “Madam, I have carried
out my instructions—and it is not my fault if this wood is damp.
That’s enough, Sergeant; ’twill burn finely. Column, march!”
Directly they were out of sight Miss Cameron and Marsali, the younger
maidservants and the old gardener, seizing rakes and brooms and
fireirons, had pulled away the thickly smoking but as yet harmless
branches. “And then I bethought me, Ewen, that ’twould be proper there
should be as much smoke as possible, to convince the world, and
especially the redcoats, should they take a look back. A house cannot
burn, even in a spot so remote as this, without there being some
evidence of it in the air. So we made a great pile of all that stuff
at a safe distance from the house—and, my grief, the trouble it was to
get it to burn! Most of the day we tended it; and a nasty thick reek
it made, and a blaze in the end. That’s how the house was burnt. . . .
What ails you, my bairn?”
But this time Ewen was able hastily to dash the back of his hand over
his eyes. He could face her, therefore, unashamed, and reaching out
for her hand, put his lips to it in silence.
CHAPTER III
Not infrequently in the past had Miss Margaret Cameron animadverted on
the obstinacy which lay hidden (as his temper was hidden) under her
nephew’s usually gentle speech and ways. And now, at the greatest
crisis in his life, when that life itself might hang upon his
prudence, poor Miss Cameron was faced in her young relative with a
display of this quality which really distracted her.
On that joyful and wonderful morning of his return she had allowed him
(she put it so) to retire to his own bed in his own room ‘just for the
once’; the garrets, the cellar or a bothy on the braeside being
designated as his future residences. Ewen did not argue—indeed he was
not capable of it; he fell into his bed and slept for fourteen hours
without waking.
Once he was there, and so obviously in need of rest and attention,
Miss Cameron had not, of course, the heart to turn him out; but she
kept a guard of young MacMartins and others round the house ready to
give tongue in case of a surprise, and promised herself to banish the
returned fugitive to more secluded regions directly he was able to
leave his room. But when, after three days, Ewen did so, it was not to
retire into this destined seclusion; on the contrary, he began at once
to limp about, acquainting himself with what had happened to his
tenants in his absence, trying to discover the fate of those who had
never returned—among whom was Lachlan MacMartin—visiting the nearer
crofts in person, and interviewing the inhabitants of the farther at
the house. Presently, he said, he would ‘take to the heather,’
perhaps; but, as his aunt could see, he was yet too lame for it; and,
as for the garrets or the cellar, he was just as safe in his own
bedchamber as in those uncomfortable retreats.
Yielding on this point with what she hoped was the wisdom of the
serpent, Miss Cameron then returned to a subject much nearer her
heart: Ardroy’s departure for France or Holland, which he would
attempt, she assumed, as soon as he could hear of a likely vessel and
was fit to undertake the journey to the coast.
“France?” queried Ewen, as if he had heard this suggestion for the
first time. It was the fifth evening after his return; Miss Cameron
was sitting knitting in the long parlour, and he stretched in a chair
opposite to her. The windows were closely curtained, and young Angus
MacMartin and a still younger brother prowled delightedly in the
avenue keeping watch. “France, Aunt Margaret? What put that into your
head?”
Miss Cameron laid down her knitting. “Because you cannot stay here,
Ewen. And France is in my head rather than Holland or Denmark
because—well, surely you can guess—because your wife is there.”
Ewen got out of his chair and limped to one of the windows. “I am not
leaving Scotland at present,” he said quietly, and drew aside the
curtain. “We need not therefore discuss the claims of one country over
another.”
“You cannot mean to stay here at Ardroy! Ewen, are you daft? And, in
the name of the Good Being, don’t show yourself at a lighted window
like that!”
“’Tis so light outside that the candles do not carry,” returned her
nephew. Indeed but for Miss Cameron’s prudence they would not have
been sitting thus curtained, but in daylight. “Moreover no one will
come to look for me here; the house has been ‘burnt,’” he went on,
using the argument he had already used half a dozen times. And he
continued to look out; at least Margaret Cameron thought that he was
looking out. In reality he had his eyes shut, that he might not see
Alison’s face—a vain device, for he saw it all the clearer.
His aunt was silent for a moment, for he had implanted in her mind a
most disturbing doubt.
“Well,” she said at last dryly, “I should think that if Major Windham,
to whom you owe so much, knew of this freak of yours, he would regret
the sacrifices which he had made in order to save you, when this is
the use to which you put your liberty.”
“I think Major Windham would understand,” said Ewen rather shortly.
“Understand what?”
There was no answer. “Then I doubt if the ghost of poor Neil, who died
for you, or of Lachlan, would understand!”
Ewen turned at that, but stayed where he was. “Poor Neil indeed; may
his share of Paradise be his!” he said in a softened tone. “And
Lachlan, too, if he be dead. Since you speak of my foster-brothers,
Aunt Margaret, and reproachfully, then you must know that this is one
reason why I do not wish to leave Ardroy, because it shames me to take
ship for France myself and desert those others who cannot flee, for
whose fate I am responsible. Moreover, I have started the rebuilding
of the burnt crofts, and——”
“Trust a man to think that he is the only being who can oversee
anything practical! I wonder,” observed Miss Cameron, “how much of
rebuilding and repairs I have not ordered and supervised when you were
nothing but a small wild boy, Ewen, falling into the loch and losing
yourself on the braes above it!”
He hobbled over to her. “I know, I know. No laird ever had a better
factor than you, Aunt Margaret!”
Miss Cameron’s knitting slid to the floor. “Had! Aye, I’m getting an
old wife now, ’tis plain, that you dare not leave the reins to me for
a year or so, while you take your head out of the lion’s mouth for a
while.”
“No, no, you know that’s not my thought,” said Ewen, distressed. “I’d
leave Ardroy to you as blithely as I did a year ago—I will so leave it
. . . presently.”
“Aye, that you will do presently—but not by your own will. You’ll go
off from this door as you left Fort Augustus a week ago, tied on a
horse again, and your father’s house really in flames behind you—and
all because you will not listen to advice!”
“You make me out more obstinate than I am,” said Ewen gently. “Your
advice is excellent, Aunt Marget, but you do not know . . . all the
circumstances.”
“That can easily be remedied,” said Miss Cameron with meaning. But to
that suggestion Ewen made no reply.
Miss Cameron turned round in her chair, and then got up and faced him.
“Ewen, my dear, what is wrong? What is it that is keeping you from
getting out of the country? Surely it is not . . . that there is
something amiss between you and Alison?”
Ewen did not meet her eyes. But he shook his head. “Alison and I——” he
began, but never finished. How put into words what Alison was to him?
Moreover, that which was keeping him back did stand between him and
her—at least in his own soul. “Some day, perhaps, I will tell you,
Aunt Marget,” he said quietly. “But I’d be glad if you would not
discuss my departure just now.—You have dropped your knitting.”
He picked it up for her, and Margaret Cameron stood quite still,
looking up uneasily at the height of him, at his brow all wrinkled
with some pain of whose nature she was quite ignorant, at the sudden
lines round his young mouth. She ended her survey with a sigh.
“And to think that—since we cannot get a letter to her—the lassie may
be breaking her heart over there, believing that you are dead!”
Ewen took a step away, with a movement as though to ward off a blow.
Then he translated the movement into a design to snuff the candles on
the table behind him. After a moment his voice came, unsteady and
hurt: “Aunt Margaret, you are very cruel.” And his hand must have been
unsteady, too, for he snuffed the flame right out.
“’Tis for your own good,” replied Miss Cameron, winking hard at the
engraving of King James the Third as a young man over the mantelshelf
in front of her. Ewen relighted from another the candle he had
slain, saying nothing, and with the air of one who does not quite
know what he is doing. “At least, I’m sure ’tis not for mine,” went
on Miss Cameron, and now, little given to tears as she was, she
surreptitiously applied a corner of a handkerchief to one eye. “You
cannot think that I _want_ you to go away again . . . and leave the
house the . . . the mere shell of emptiness it is when you are not
here!”
Ewen looked round and saw the scrap of cambric. In an instant, despite
the pain it cost him, he had knelt down by her side and was taking her
hands into his, and saying how sorry he was to grieve her, and
assuring her that there was nothing, nothing whatever wrong between
him and Alison.
Yet even then he made no promises about departure.
* * * * * *
Nor had he made any a week later, when, one hot afternoon, he lay,
reflecting deeply, on the bed in his own room, with his hands behind
his head. Although his wounded leg was already much stronger, it
rebelled with effect against unremitting use all day, and to Ewen’s
intense disgust he found it imperative to spend a portion of the
afternoon thus. He regarded this necessity as not only burdensome but
disgraceful.
The wind soughed faintly through the pines of the little avenue, and
then passed on to ruffle the ivy outside his open window. A little
brown, some of them, after their fiery ordeal, the topmost of those
tough leaves were still there, and made just the same rustling noise
as of old. And there Ewen lay, apparently at peace; back in his own
room, among his modest possessions, his life and liberty snatched from
the enemy, his home unharmed after all, and over the seas his young
wife waiting for him in safety, the call of the sword no longer
keeping him back from her, since the sword was shattered.
But he was by no means at peace; there was unceasing war in his
breast. The way to Alison was barred by a spectre which he could not
lay. It was in vain to tell himself that, by God’s mercy, his most
unwilling lapse at Fort Augustus had done no harm, that no one of his
own party knew of it, that it was not even a complete revelation. To
his acutely sensitive Highland pride the mere fact of the betrayal of
his Chief’s trust was agony. Alison could not heal that wound, which,
now that Ewen was back again in his old surroundings, almost in his
old life, seemed to have broken out bleeding afresh. There was only
one man who could draw the poison from it, and Ewen knew neither where
he was nor how he could come at him.
And meanwhile his dreams were full of Alison; and a night or two ago
he had even seemed to hear her voice in one, asking in so pitiful and
faint an accent why he delayed to come to her, now that honour no
longer forbade it. She was so lonely . . .
Ewen sighed deeply, and withdrew his hands from beneath his head. The
double scar on his right palm caught his eye for an instant. He
wondered, not by any means for the first time, whether Windham had
heard of his escape; if he had, he would know that he had indeed given
him his life—yes, even by his refusal to witness against him, since
that was the direct cause of the prisoner’s being taken over the
Spean, where he had met and seized his great opportunity. To judge by
the Englishman’s palpable distress at their farewell interview,
Windham would be exceedingly glad of the news of his escape. Some day,
perhaps, he might contrive to get a letter conveyed to his hands. He
would like to tell him in person. But he was never to see him again,
so it seemed, for the five meetings were over. Again he counted them:
here, at Edinburgh, on Beinn Laoigh, at Fort Augustus. And suddenly
his pulse quickened with pleasure—that made four, only four! . . . No,
of course, there had been two at Fort Augustus. . . . Yet what (save
his own recapture) stood now in the way of their meeting again some
day?
But the ivy leaves went on rubbing their hands together, and through
the window at the other side of the room came the clucking of Miss
Cameron’s remaining hens, drowsy sounds both, and Ewen, pondering this
question, began to fall asleep. Yet, just before he lost
consciousness, there shot through his mind, apparently from nowhere, a
last flicker of Angus’s prediction of a year ago . . . something about
twisted threads . . . a thread of one colour and a thread of another.
It had meant nothing at the time and he had totally forgotten it
since. Now, between the two worlds of sleep and waking, it not only
came back to him, but, with the curious pictorial clarity sometimes
vouchsafed in that state, he seemed to see what it meant. Then picture
and meaning faded, and he slept.
He slept quietly for a while, and then dreamt that a man had come into
the room and was standing looking down at him. Yet somehow he knew
that it was not a dream, that there was really someone there. He tried
to rouse himself, but could not; and then the man laid a hand on his
wrist. And at that, still half in a dream, he began to struggle and to
speak.
“Let go my arm, you damned torturer! . . . No, not if you cut me in
pieces! . . . Ah, my God, but there’s another way . . . another way!”
The hand had left his wrist quickly, and now it was laid on his
shoulder, and a voice—Lochiel’s voice—said, “Ewen, wake up. No one is
hurting you.”
He woke instantly, crying, “Donald! Donald!” half sure, all the time,
that it was but a dream. Then he caught his breath and lay staring
upwards. It was not indeed Lochiel, but it was his brother who stood
there, looking down at him with a good deal of attention.
“_Archie!_” he gasped in the most complete astonishment. “You here!
Why?”
“Don’t you think you would be the better of a doctor, my dear Ewen?”
enquired his cousin cheerfully. “That is why I am here.”
“But there’s a price on your head,” protested Ewen. “You should not,
should not have come here!”
Archibald Cameron smiled his gentle, quizzical smile and sat down on
the bed. “I understand from Miss Margaret that you daily affirm the
house of Ardroy to be perfectly safe. Moreover, one does not dictate
to a physician, my dear boy, how and when he shall visit his patients.
I heard how you escaped as you were being carried to Fort William, and
I did not believe that it was your body which was found some days
after in one of the pools of Spean. (You do not know, perhaps, that
that is what has been given out at Fort Augustus.) But I guessed that
that same body needed attention, so, being yesterday in Glendessary, I
made my way hither. Now, let me look at those wounds of yours.”
And, though Ewen protested that these were quite healed and that he
was only a trifle lame, Dr. Cameron insisted. The extent of the
lameness, very patent when he made the young man walk about the room,
evidently displeased him.
“When you get to France, Ewen, you must have the care of a good
surgeon. I greatly fear that an important muscle in the thigh has been
severed; but with proper treatment it may reunite again.”
“I suppose you have been talking to Aunt Margaret,” remarked his
patient, sitting down upon the bed. “But, as I have told her, I am not
going to France—yet. The muscle must reunite at home.”
Archie looked at him keenly. He _had_ been talking to Aunt Margaret.
“I am not advising France solely in the interests of your lameness,
Ewen.”
“Well I know that! But I shall stay in Scotland for the present.”
“Until you are captured again, I suppose?” said Dr. Cameron, crossing
one leg over the other and leaning back against the post at the bottom
of the bed. “But I do not know on what grounds you assume that you
will have so lucky an escape a second time.”
“Oh, I shall not be captured here,” said Ewen carelessly. “And when I
can walk a little better, I shall very likely take to the heather for
a while—like you!” And as Archibald Cameron raised his eyebrows he
said with more warmth, “My God, Archie, I’d rather skulk in sight of
Loch na h-Iolaire with nothing but my plaid and a handful of meal,
even were there a redcoat behind every whin-bush, than lie in the
French King’s bed at Versailles!”
“No doubt,” responded his cousin, unmoved. “And so would I. Yet I
shall certainly make for France—if God will—when my tasks here are
done. I hope indeed that it may not be for long; who knows but next
year may see another and a more successful effort, with support from
the French. The Prince——”
“Yes, indeed,” said Ewen eagerly, “what of the Prince? My last news
of him was from a fellow-prisoner at Fort Augustus, MacDonald of
Kingsburgh, who, though he is Sleat’s factor, brought him to his
own house in Skye disguised as the maidservant of one Miss Flora
MacDonald, and was arrested in consequence. I heard much from him, and
laughable some of it was, too, for Kingsburgh’s wife and daughter seem
to have been frightened at the queer figure that His Royal Highness
made in his petticoats. But you will have later news of him, Archie?”
“The Prince was at the end of July in Glenmoriston,” said Dr. Cameron,
“but he is now, I think, in Chisholm’s country, farther north. There
is so plainly a Providence watching over him that I have no doubt he
will be preserved from his enemies to the end; and it is therefore the
duty of his friends to preserve themselves, too. Yes, I am going to
read you a lecture, _Eoghain mhóir_, so you had better lie down again;
I shall not begin until you do.” He waited until Ewen had grumblingly
complied, and then began, ticking off the points on his fingers.
“_Imprimis_, you stubborn young man, there is this house, almost
miraculously preserved from destruction, and, if you keep clear of it,
likely to continue immune. There is your good aunt, who can well
continue to look after it, but who, if you are found under its roof,
will certainly be driven out of it and very possibly imprisoned. You
are not on the list of attainted persons, and you have the advantage
at this moment of an official report declaring you drowned. Most of
all, have you not someone already in France who is breaking her heart
for a sight of you?”
Lying there, Ewen changed colour perceptibly, and it was only after a
moment that he answered: “There are broken hearts in plenty, Archie,
in Lochaber.”
“But I do not see, my dear lad, how they are to be mended by your
offering up the fragments of Alison’s—and your own.”
Ewen uttered a sound like a groan, and, twisting over, buried his face
in the pillow; and presently there emerged some muffled words to the
effect that he longed to go to Alison, but that . . . and then
something wholly unintelligible in which the word ‘honour’ was alone
distinguishable.
Dr. Cameron looked down at the back of the uneasy auburn head with the
affectionate tolerance which one might display to the caprices of a
younger brother. “No, Ewen, to my mind honour points to your
going—aye, and duty and common sense as well. You cannot help your
tenants by remaining here; Miss Cameron can now do that much more
effectively—so long as you do not compromise her by your presence. You
cannot help the Cause or the Prince; you cannot help Lochiel;”—the
head gave a sudden movement—“he is for France with me when the
opportunity comes. Another day—that is a different tale; but ’tis
likely there will never be another day for you if you persist in
remaining here now. . . . And there is another point, which I hope you
will pardon me for mentioning: is your wife going to bear you a child,
Ewen?”
“How do I know?” answered Ewen in a stifled voice from the pillow.
“Our happiness was so short . . . and I have had no letter.”
“Then, before you throw your life uselessly away,” said Archibald
Cameron gravely, “it is your duty to make sure that there will be a
son to follow you here, Mac ’ic Ailein. Do you wish your ghost to see
strangers at Ardroy?”
No Highlander could ever affect to disregard that argument, and Ewen
remained silent.
“And Alison—do you suppose that she found her wedded happiness any
longer or more satisfying than you did? God knows, my dear Ewen, I
hold that neither wife, children, nor home should stand in a man’s way
when duty and loyalty call him—for, as you know, I have turned my back
on all mine—but when duty and loyalty are silent, then he does very
wrong if he neglects those ties of nature.”
And on that Archibald Cameron, conceiving that he had preached long
enough, got up from the bed. Ewen was still lying with his face
hidden: was there something on his mind, as Miss Cameron affirmed? The
doctor went and looked out of the far window, and saw the lady in
question scattering meal to her hens.
“Archie,” came from the bed after a moment or two, “if I go, it is
only on one condition, which you can grant.”
“I?” said Dr. Cameron, turning round, rather surprised. Ewen had
raised himself on to an elbow. He looked oddly pale and strained. “What
is the condition, _’ille_?”
“That I see Lochiel first.” And over his fair skin there swept a wave
of red.
It occurred to Dr. Archibald then how strange it was that Ewen, for
all his intense devotion, had not yet asked news of his kinsman and
Chief. But he looked doubtful. “I am afraid that would be difficult,
because you are both disabled; you cannot travel to him, nor he to
you.”
“Yes, I had thought of that,” said Ewen, now quite pale again. “But I
must contrive it somehow.” And as Archie was silent, reflecting, he
added, with a sharp note in his soft voice, “Is there any other reason
why I should not?”
“Of course not—save that you will meet in France, please God.”
“That will not serve. I must see him before I leave Scotland. I know
that he is no longer in Lochaber.” The short phrases were jerked out;
even more so the last one: “Archie, where _is_ he?”
“He——” Archie was beginning, when unfortunately he heard Miss Cameron
calling to him from below, possibly uttering a warning of some kind.
He turned sharply to the window and never finished. But on Ewen
the effect was of a man who has second thoughts about answering
a question, and is not only mute, but turns his back upon the
questioner.
In his present state of mind, it was quite enough, and next moment, to
his visitor’s amazement, he had thrown himself off the bed with such
violence that he staggered. “I knew it!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “You
will not tell me where he is because you have heard what I did at Fort
Augustus—because Lochiel has heard it. I am not to be trusted! That is
why you came, I believe—why you want me gone at any price from
Scotland!” And as Archibald Cameron, already swung round again from
the window, stared at him in consternation, Ewen added, clenching his
hands, “I’ll not go! I’ll not be got rid of like that! I’ll get myself
killed here in Lochaber . . . the only thing I can do in expiation.”
And with that he sank down on the side of the bed and hid his face in
his hands.
Dr. Cameron hastily left the window, but before his amazement allowed
him words, Ewen was adding, in a strangled voice, “You are quite
right, from your point of view, neither to let me see him nor to tell
me where he is. But, Archie, I swear to you by my father’s memory that
I did not do it willingly! How can he believe that of me!”
His cousin stooped and put a hand on his shoulder. “Ewen,” he said
with great gentleness, “I have not the least notion what you are
talking about. What did you do at Fort Augustus? Nothing, I’d stake my
soul, that your father’s son need ever be ashamed of. You would have
let yourself be ‘cut in pieces’ first, eh? I was just on the point of
telling you where Lochiel was; he is in Badenoch, hiding in a hut on
Ben Alder with Macpherson of Cluny. Now,” he sat down and slipped his
arm completely along the bowed shoulders, “will you tell me what is on
your mind, and why you must see him?”
CHAPTER IV
Thinking it over afterwards, Ewen knew why it had been such a comfort
to tell Archie; it was that Dr. Cameron seemed to understand so well
what he had suffered that he never tried to belittle the cause of it.
Instead of attempting to minimise this he said that he would have felt
exactly the same had such a terrible mischance befallen him. Only how
could Ewen at any stage have imagined that Donald, if he heard of his
lapse, would ever believe that he had made a disclosure willingly?
“I blame you for that, my poor Ewen,” he said, shaking his head. “You
must surely have known that he would as soon suspect me as you, who
have been like an elder son to him, who so nearly threw away your life
for him at Fort William. . . . I think that’s the worst part of your
confession, but as you say that I am not to suppress anything I must
tell him that too, though it will hurt him.”
Ewen raised his colourless face, to which, however, a measure of
tranquillity had already returned. “I am sorry for that; but you must
not keep back a word. Tell him how I allowed myself to fall asleep
when I suspicioned it might be dangerous; tell him that I insulted
Lord Loudoun somewhat unworthily—_he_ would not have done that—tell
him everything. You are only a proxy, you know, Archie—though a very
satisfactory one,” he added gratefully. “There’s no other man save
Lochiel that I could have told. _Dhé_, but I feel as if Ben Nevis had
been lifted off me!”
Archibald Cameron gave his arm a little pressure. “Now ’tis my turn to
make a confession to you. When I first came into this room I found
myself emulating that Captain Greening of yours—whom, by the way, I
should rejoice to meet on some good lonely brae, with a precipice near
by. But, like your talking, my dear lad, my overhearing was
accidental.”
“Do you mean that I was saying things in my sleep again? Archie, this
is intolerable!”
“You bade me loose your arm when I touched you, and spoke of
preferring to be ‘cut in pieces’ and of ‘another way’. You have just
told me what that ‘other way’ was. Ewen, what was the first way, and
who took it with you? You have not told me everything, after all.”
The young man was looking on the floor, and there was colour enough in
his face now. “I do not very much wish to revive that memory. . . .
But if you must know, I was near being flogged by order of the Lowland
officer who captured me. He had been going to shoot me first—I’ll
tell you of that anon. It was because he wanted . . . what they wanted
and got at Fort Augustus.—No, do not look so horrified, Archie; he
did not carry it out (though I’ll admit I believed he was going to).
It was only a threat.”
“Then, if it was only a threat,” remarked Dr. Cameron, looking at him
closely, “why did you call me a ‘damned torturer’ when I touched you?”
“I . . . Really, Archie, I cannot be responsible for everything I say
in my sleep. I apologise, but if you were worth your salt you would
give me some drug to cure me of the cursed habit!”
“I’m afraid the drug does not exist, my dear boy. When your mind is at
peace you will not do it any more. And don’t you think that it would
conduce to that state if you told me why you called me so unpleasant a
name?”
Ewen gave him a little shake. “_Mo thruaigh_, Archie Cameron,” he said
with vivacity, “I begin to think it was because you merit it with this
persistence of yours! If I said that, I suppose I must have been
remembering that when one has had a bayonet through one’s arm not long
before, it is conveniently sensitive, that is all. But after a few
experiments, Major Guthrie found that it was not sensitive enough.
They knew better how to do things at Fort Augustus.”
Archibald Cameron still gazed at him, compressing his lips. “So the
Lowlander tried ‘experiments’, did he? And do you still consider
yourself a traitor, Ewen? I’d give you a rather different name, and
so, I fancy, will Lochiel.”
“But I don’t mean you to tell Lochiel _that_! No, Archie, that was not
confession—you got it out of me unfairly!”
“Unfortunately you made me promise to tell him everything,” retorted
his cousin, smiling. “To turn to another aspect of this matter, then,”
for Ewen was really looking unhappy, “it was, I suppose, to this Major
Guthrie with a fancy for experiments that you were betrayed by the
English officer who was your prisoner here—I might almost say your
guest—last August. I hope that he did not go so far as to take part in
these proceedings, too?—Bless us, what is wrong now?”
For this partial change of topic had proved far from soothing. With a
sharp exclamation Ewen had got up from the bed.
“Good God, Archie, how did you hear that story? It’s not true—Major
Windham did not betray me—he saved me!”
“Did he? Well, I’d far liefer hear that than the other thing. But that
was what Lachlan MacMartin told us, when he came hotfoot to us at
Achnacarry at the beginning of May.”
“Lachlan—_Lachlan_ went to Achnacarry!” exclaimed Ewen in amazement.
“Yes, he appeared there one day nearly crazy with rage and remorse
because you had been captured while he had left you in order to get
food. He wanted Donald to march against Fort Augustus and deliver
you.”
Ewen had begun to limp distractedly about the room. “I did not know
that. But, great heavens, what a story to get abroad about Major
Windham! Archie, he saved my life at the last minute; I was actually
up against the wall before the firing-party when he dashed in between
at the risk of his own. I should not be here now for you to bully but
for him. It is true that I, too, God forgive me, was deluded enough
for a short time to think his goodness calculated treachery, but at
least I did not spread it abroad. And that is only part of what he has
done and given up for me.” He gave his cousin a sketch of the rest. “I
cannot think how Lachlan got such a mistaken notion into his head, for
he was not there when I was found and taken, and he can hardly have
met with that scoundrel Guthrie, who is capable of any lie.”
“What has become of Lachlan—is he here at Ardroy?”
“No, he has never returned, and no one knows anything of him; he has
undoubtedly been either captured or killed, and much more probably
killed, I fear. But I wish he had not spread this slander; ’tis at
least to be hoped that no word of it reaches poor Windham!”
“I like to see in you, Ewen,” said his cousin, “the same concern for
another man’s honour as for your own. But you know the Erse proverb,
‘A lie goes but on one leg’.”
“Like me,” commented Ewen with a smile. “Yet you think that in France
I may go on two again?”
“You will certainly have a better chance of it. Then I may tell
Lochiel, when I get back to Badenoch, that you consent to be
reasonable?”
“Yes, thanks to you, I will go—since he is going. But I must wait a
chance of getting off.”
“There’s a chance now,” said his cousin quickly; “but you must start
for the coast to-morrow.”
“To-morrow!” Ewen’s face fell. “So soon!” His glance swept round the
room and lingered for a moment on the heathery distances visible
through the window. “Very well,” he said with a little sigh. “Tell me
what I must do—no,” he caught himself up, “first tell me a little
about Donald. Those wounds of his, are they healed? Archie, I hope due
care is being taken of him on Ben Alder?”
“You look as if you think I ought not to have left him,” said Dr.
Cameron, smiling. “But he has had Sir Stuart Threipland of Edinburgh
with him, and the wounds are healing, though slowly. And I assure you
that I have been too busy following Mercury of late to pay much
attention to Æsculapius; I have been to and fro in Lochaber and
Moidart a great deal more regularly than the post. More by token I am
become a sort of banker. For I suppose you did not hear in your
captivity, Ewen, that at the beginning of May two French ships landed
six barrels of gold—forty thousand louis d’or—in Moidart for the
Prince; and with some ado, owing to the reluctance of Clanranald’s
people to lose sight of it, I got it conveyed to Loch Arkaig, and it
has been buried there against future requirements.—I know what you are
going to say, ‘If only we had had that money earlier, when we needed
it so!’”
Those were indeed the words which leapt to the young man’s lips. Yet
since over the ruined fortunes of to-day there still danced, like
will-of-the-wisps, the hopes of to-morrow, he fell to discussing the
possible uses of this money with the man to whose endeavours (as he
soon discovered) it was due that the French had not carried it off
again when they heard the news of the disaster at Culloden. Archibald
Cameron had indeed played post and banker to some purpose! Ewen looked
at him with admiration not free from concern.
“Archie, are you duly careful of your own safety in these constant
journeyings of yours, seeing that you are proscribed by name?”
His cousin smiled. “You may be sure that I am careful. Am I not
pre-eminently a man of peace?”
Nevertheless not even Balmerino, the dauntless old soldier, was to
make a more memorable end on the scaffold than Archibald Cameron. But
his time was not yet—not by seven years; though, all unknowing, he had
just been talking of what was to bring him there—the belated French
treasure, fatal as the fabled gold of the river maidens to nearly
every man who touched it.
“Now, for your getting off to France,” he resumed. “There has lately
been a French privateer off Loch Broom, and she may very well be
hanging off the coast farther south, therefore you should start for
Moidart without a day’s delay. Since the twenty-fifth of July the
coast is not so closely watched for the Prince as it was; the cordon
of sentries has been removed. Make for Arisaig or Morar; at either you
will be able to find a fisherman to take you off at night to the
French vessel if she is still there. You speak French, so the rest
should be easy.”
“And will Lochiel and the Prince try to leave by her?”
“I doubt it, for I fear she will be gone by the time Donald could
reach the coast, or His Royal Highness either. But do not delay your
departure on that account, Ewen, for the larger the party getting off
from shore the more hazardous is the attempt—at least, if there are
any soldiers left in those parts now. (There cannot, at any rate, be
many.) Now I must be getting on my way.”
“You will not pass the night with us?” suggested Ewen. “Aunt Margaret
seems to have a high opinion of the garrets as a refuge.”
Dr. Cameron shook his head. “I must push on; ’tis only five o’clock.
God bless you, my dear Ewen, and bring us to meet again—even though it
be not in Scotland!”
“I wish I were coming with you to Ben Alder,” said Ewen rather
wistfully, halting after his visitor down the stairs.
“Trust me to do your business with Donald as well as you could do it
yourself—nay, better, for I suspect that you would leave out certain
episodes.—You’ll be rid of this fellow at last, Miss Margaret,” he
said to the figure waiting at the foot of the stairs. “I’ve sorted
him!”
“’Tis you have the skill, Archibald Cameron,” replied the lady,
beaming on him. “None of _my_ prayers would move him. You’ll drink a
health with us before you go?”
And under the picture of King James the Third and Eighth the three of
them drained their glasses to the Cause which had already taken its
last, its mortal wound.
* * * * * *
Next day Ewen kept his word, and set about his departure. A garron was
found for him to ride, and two of his men who had followed him through
the campaign were to accompany him to the coast. Yielding to pressure,
he had agreed to take young Angus MacMartin with him to France as his
personal servant. He could not refuse it to Neil’s memory and to old
Angus’s prayers that a MacMartin should be about him still.
He was to leave at dusk, since travelling by night would be less
hazardous, and a little before sundown he went up to Slochd nan Eun to
take leave of his foster-father, with whom he had had little converse
since his return, for Angus had been ill and clouded in mind. But he
had borne the loss of his two sons with an almost fierce resignation;
it seemed as if he had asked no better fate for them, especially for
Neil. He had recovered from his illness now, but he was rather frail
and still at times a little confused. A daughter looked after him in
the old cottage which had once rung with the laughter of many
children, and with Ewen’s own; but the old man was alone, crouched
over the fire, with a plaid across his knees when Ewen, helping
himself on the ascent with a staff, arrived at the door.
Half blind though he was, Angus’s hearing was as keen as ever, and,
even with the unfamiliar halt in it, he knew his foster-son’s step.
“Mac ’ic Ailein, is it you? Blessings on your head! You have come to
say farewell to me, who shall never see you again.”
Tremblingly and slowly he arose, and embraced the young man. “Neil and
Lachlan shall go with you, son of my heart, that you take no harm
before you embark on the great water.”
“Neil is dead, foster-father, do you not remember?” asked Ewen gently.
“He gave his life for me. And Lachlan—I fear Lachlan is dead also.”
“It is true that I do not see them any more,” replied the old man,
with a singular detachment, “for I grow blinder every day; yet I hear
Neil’s pipes very well still, and when the fire burns up I know that
Lachlan has put on a fresh peat for me. Good sons both, but I have
between my hands a son who is dearer, though I did not beget him—O my
tall and beautiful one, glad was the day when you came back after the
slaughter, but gladder this day, for you carry your head out of reach
of your foes!” He passed his hand lingeringly over the bright locks.
“And yet . . . all is not well. I do not know why, but all is not
well. There is grief on the white sand . . . grief and mourning, and a
sound of tears in the wind that blows there.”
“Indeed there is grief,” said Ewen sighing, “grief enough in my heart
at going, at leaving Alba and my father’s house. I was almost for
staying, Angus, did I take to the heather; but the brother of Mac
Dhomhnuill Duibh has been here, and he bids me go. The Chief himself
is going. But we shall return——”
“Some will return,” broke in Angus, sinking his head upon his breast.
“Aye, some will return.” Sitting there, he stared with his almost
sightless eyes into the fire.
Ewen stood looking down at him. “Shall _I_ return?” he asked after a
moment.
“I shall not see you, treasure of my heart . . . But these eyes will
see my own son come back to me, and he too grieving.”
“But I fear that Lachlan is dead, foster-father,” repeated Ewen,
kneeling on one knee beside him. “Is it not his wraith that puts the
peats on the fire for you?”
“It may be,” answered the old man. “It may well be, for when I speak
to him he never answers. Yet one night he stood here in the flesh, and
swore the holy oath on his dirk to be avenged on the man who betrayed
you to the _saighdearan dearg_. My own two eyes beheld him, my two
ears heard him, and I prayed the Blessed One to give strength to his
arm—for it was then that you were gone from us, darling of my heart,
and fast in prison.”
“But you surely do not mean, Angus,” said his foster-son, puzzled,
“that Lachlan came back here after I was captured? You mean that you
saw his _taibhs_. For in the flesh he has never returned to Slochd nan
Eun.”
“Yes, for one night he returned,” persisted the old man, “for one
night in the darkness. None saw him but I, who opened to him; and he
would not go near the house of Ardroy, nor let any see him but his
father, because he was sick with grief and shame that he had left you
on Beinn Laoigh to the will of your enemy. Ah, Mac ’ic Ailein, did I
not feel that many things would come upon you because of the man to
whom the heron led you! But that I never saw—that he would betray you
to the _saighdearan dearg_! May Lachlan soon keep his oath, and the
raven pick out the traitor’s eyes! May his bones never rest! May his
ghost——”
Ewen had sprung up, horrified. “Angus, stop! What are you saying! That
man, the English officer, did not betray me: he saved me, at great
risk to himself. But for him the redcoats would have shot me like a
dog—but for him I should not have escaped from their hands on the way
to Inverlochy. Take back that curse . . . and for Heaven’s sake tell
me that you are mistaken, that Lachlan did not swear vengeance on
_him_, but on the man who took me prisoner, a Lowland Scot named
Guthrie. That is what you mean, Angus, is it not?”
But Angus shook his grey head. “My son swore vengeance on the man who
was your guest, the English officer who found you in the bothy on
Beinn Laoigh, and delivered you up, and told the soldiers who you
were. Lachlan found this out from the talk as he skulked round the
Lowlander’s camp in the dark. Vengeance on the Lowlander he meant to
have if he could, but he swore it for certain against the other, the
English officer, because he had broken your bread. So he took oath on
the iron to rest neither day nor night till that evil deed was repaid
to him—he swore it here on the _biodag_ on which you both saw blood
that day by the lochan, and which you bade him not throw away. I think
he meant to hasten back and lie in wait for the English officer as he
returned over the pass of Corryarrick, and to shoot him with the
musket which he had stolen from one of the redcoats. But whether he
ever did it I do not know.”
Bewildered, and with a creeping sense of chill, Ewen had listened
mutely in order that he might, perhaps, contrive to disentangle the
true from the false in this fruit of the old man’s clouded brain. But
with these last words came a gleam of comfort. No, Lachlan had not
succeeded in any such attempt, thank God. And since then—for it was in
May that Windham had returned over the Corryarrick—his complete
disappearance pointed to but one conclusion, that he was gone where he
could never keep his dreadful and deluded vow. Ewen drew a long breath
of relief; yet it was rather terrible to hope that his foster-brother
was dead.
Still, he would take what precaution he could.
“If, when I am gone, Angus,” he said, “Lachlan should return here,
charge him most straightly from me that he abandon this idea of
vengeance; tell him that but for the English officer I should be lying
to-day where poor Neil is lying.—I wonder if anyone gave Neil burial,”
he added under his breath.
But Angus heard. He raised himself. “Lachlan buried him when he came
there after yourself, _Eoghain_, and found you gone, and was near
driving the dirk into his own heart, as he told me. Yes, he stayed to
bury his brother; and so when he came to the camp of the redcoats they
had taken you to Kilcumein. But all night long he prowled round the
tents, and heard the redcoats talk—he having the English very well, as
you know—and tried to get into the tent of their commander to kill him
while he slept, and could not. So he hastened to Achnacarry, and found
Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh, and besought him to go with the clan and besiege
the fort of Kilcumein and take you out of it; but the Chief had not
enough men. So Lachlan came here secretly, to tell me that he had not
been able to stay the redcoats from taking you, and that Neil had been
happier than he, for he had died outside the door before they entered
to you; and all that was left for him was to slay the Englishman—and
so he vowed. But now, it seems, the Englishman is not to be slain?”
“A thousand times, no!” cried Ewen, who had listened very attentively
to this recital, which certainly sounded as if it had come originally
from Lachlan’s own lips, and some of which, as he knew from Archie,
was true. “Remember that, if Lachlan should come here.—But I cannot
understand,” he went on, frowning, “how, if Lachlan overheard so much
of the soldiers’ talk, he did not overhear the truth, and learn how
Major Windham ran in and saved me from being shot. Surely that is the
matter which must most have engaged their tongues, and in that there
was no question of delivering me up.”
“I do not know what more my son heard,” said Angus slowly, “but, when
a man hates another, does not his ear seek to hear the evil he may
have done rather than the good?”
“Yes, I suppose he did hate Major Windham,” said Ewen thoughtfully.
“That was the reason then—he wanted a pretext. . . . Indeed I must
thank God that he never got a chance of carrying out his vow. And,
from his long absence, I fear—nay, I am sure—that he has joined poor
Neil. Alas, both my brothers slain through me, and Neil’s children
fatherless!”
“But Angus _Og_ goes with you, is it not, son of my heart, that he too
may put his breast between you and your foes?”
‘That he shall never do’, thought Ewen. “Yes, he goes with me. Give me
your blessing, foster-father; and when I come again, even if your eyes
do not see me, shall your hands not touch me, as they do now?” And he
guided the old hands to his shoulders as he knelt there.
“No, I shall not touch you, treasure of my heart,” said Angus, while
his fingers roved over him. “And I cannot see whether you will ever
come back again, nor even whether you will sail over the great water
away from your foes. All is dark . . . and the wind that comes off the
sea is full of sorrow.” He put his hands on Ewen’s head. “But I bless
you, my son, with all the blessings of Bridget and Michael; the charm
Mary put round her Son, and Bridget put in her banners, and Michael
put in his shield . . . edge will not cleave thee, sea will not
drown thee. . . .” He had slid into reciting scraps of a _sian_ or
protective charm, but he did not go through to the end; his hands fell
on to his knees again, and he leant back and closed his eyes.
Ewen bent forward and threw some peats on to the fire. “Tell me one
thing, foster-father,” he said, looking at him again. “Even if I never
leave the shores of Moidart, but am slain there, or am drowned in the
sea, which is perhaps the meaning of the wind that you hear moaning,
tell me, in the days to come shall a stranger or a son of mine rule
here at Ardroy?”
Angus opened his eyes; but he was so long silent that Ewen’s hands
began to clench themselves harder and harder. Yet at last the old man
spoke.
“I have seen a child running by the brink of Loch na h-Iolaire, and
his name is your name.”
Ewen drew a long breath and rose, and, his foster-father rising too
with his assistance, he kissed him on both cheeks.
“Whatever you have need of, Angus, ask of Miss Cameron as you would of
me.”
“You are taking away from me the only thing of which I have need,”
said the old man sadly. “Nevertheless, it must be. Blessings,
blessings go with you, and carry you safely away from the white sands
to her who waits for you . . . and may my blessings draw you back
again, even though I do not greet you at your returning.”
* * * * * *
When Ewen came slowly down the path again he found himself thinking of
how he had descended it last August behind Keith Windham, nearly a
year ago. The story of Lachlan’s vow had perturbed him, but now he saw
it in a far less menacing light. Either his foster-brother’s unquiet
spirit was by this time at rest, or the whole thing was a dream of
that troubled imagination of the old seer’s, where the distinction
between the living and the dead was so tenuous.
Soon he forgot Keith Windham, Angus and everyone. Loch na h-Iolaire
lay before him under the sunset, a sunset so tranquil and so smiling
that in its sleepy brightness, which mirrored all the mountains round,
the loch seemed to hold the very heart of content. Ewen had the
sensation that his heart, too, was drowned there. And by his own will
he was saying farewell to loch and mountain, island and red crag. He
remembered how Alison had said that he would be hard put to it to
choose between her and them. Was she right?
There was a place where for a little there was no bank, but marshy
ground, and where the water came brimming into the reeds and grasses,
setting them faintly swaying. He went to it, and, stooping with
difficulty, dipped a cupped hand into the water and raised it to his
lips. Perhaps that sacramental draught would give him to see this
scene as bright and sharp in dreams, over there in the land of exile
whither, like his father, like all who had not counted the cost, he
was going.
As he drank there was a loud croak over his head, and, looking up, he
saw a heron winging its slow, strong way over the loch towards the
sunset. It might almost have been the same heron which he and Alison
had watched that evening last summer, when it had seemed to arrive
from the western coast like a herald from him who had landed there.
Now it was going towards the coast once more, as he, the outlaw, was
going, and as his Chief and his fugitive Prince would soon be going.
In a little year, between two flights of a heron seen over Loch na
h-Iolaire, the whole adventure of ruin had been begun and consummated.
Well, if one’s life remained to one it was in order to come back some
day and renew the struggle. Ewen took off his bonnet. “God save King
James!” he said firmly, and turned away from the mirrored mountains to
take the same path as the heron.
CHAPTER V
This sea-fog, Keith Windham decided, was worse than the inland mist;
thicker, more woolly, more capricious. Yesterday, for instance, one
had wakened to it, and all day it had cloaked sea and shore and the
wild, tumbled mountains of the ‘Rough Bounds’. Yet towards evening it
had suddenly lifted, and the night had been clear and moonlit. But
this morning the white veil was down again, and only now, some hours
after sunset, was it clearing away.
And this was all the more vexatious because in the silver clearness of
last night he had distinctly made out a strange vessel—a Frenchman, he
was sure—anchored somewhere off the isle of Rum. But in the day,
thanks to that muffling fog, who knew whether she was still off the
coast or no! Yet in a few minutes more, when the moon came up from
behind the mountains, he hoped to be able to see as far as her
anchorage; meanwhile, followed by his orderly, he rode slowly along
the flat shore in the direction of Morar.[1]
[1]Pronounced Mórar.
No one could accuse Major Keith Windham of neglecting Lord
Albemarle’s instructions; if anything, he went beyond them in his
ceaseless vigilance. Quartered himself at Arisaig, he thence patrolled
the coast in both directions, from Loch nan Uamh, the Adventurer’s
original landing-place, to Morar of the white sands on the other, and
had his grumbling men out in all weathers, at all hours of the day and
night, and for any kind of false alarm. But he spared himself still
less than them, taking little sleep and covering miles every day,
often on foot. If fatigue, like virtue, were its own reward, then he
had that recompense. And so far it was his only one.
But at least Keith felt tolerably certain that no fugitives had yet
made their escape from his strip of coast, no fugitives of any kind.
For, apart from using every endeavour to secure the person of the
Pretender’s son, he had been instructed to prevent all communication
with French vessels, of whom one or two might always be hovering off
the coast. These nights, therefore, that this ghostly ship was
visible, it naturally behoved him to be extraordinarily vigilant,
since it was unlikely that she was there by chance; she was probably
hanging about in hopes of taking off the prize that he was after, and
he was duly grateful to the moon last night for showing her to him.
And surely it was time for the moon to appear now! Keith put his hand
impatiently into the breast of his uniform for a little almanac which
he carried there, and, encountering a packet which he also carried,
was swept at the touch of it away for a moment from shore and ship and
moonrise.
Having left Fort Augustus for the coast so soon after Ewen Cameron had
confided to his care the letter to his wife, Keith had had no
opportunity of despatching it; moreover, why send that farewell letter
now that its writer had escaped? So not knowing where else to dispose
it, he still carried the packet with the lock of hair upon him, a
material token of the tie between him and the foe who had captured him
a year ago, and had held him in a species of bondage ever since. The
thought had never formulated itself so definitely until to-night, but,
by gad, it was true!
He had been hard put to it to conceal his exultation when, just before
setting out from Fort Augustus for Moidart, he had heard of Ewen’s
escape and disappearance; and this news had, ever since, been a source
of the most unfeigned pleasure to him. His sacrifices had not been in
vain; they had been well worth the making. He thought of Ewen back at
Ardroy—_his_ doing, that! Ewen would recognise it, too. He had not
failed in everything!
And now he pictured Ewen lying hid in the mountains round Loch na
h-Iolaire until the worst of the storm had blown over. He could not
imagine him leaving Ardroy unless he were obliged, and surely, not
being on the list of proscribed, he could contrive to elude capture in
those wilds. His wife would doubtless get news of him somehow, return
to Scotland and visit him secretly; and in the end, when the price had
been paid by those who had not had his good fortune, and there was for
the others an amnesty or some act of indemnity, he might be able to
occupy his home again in peace. It had so happened, Keith believed,
after the Fifteen.
Was then his hope that they should meet again some day so impossible
of fulfilment now? It was true that if he himself succeeded in
capturing the ‘Prince’, Ewen would not readily take his hand. However,
no need to face that dilemma yet. But, in a sense, every day that ‘the
young gentleman’ was still in Scotland brought nearer the hour when he
must try to leave it, and if Lord Albemarle were right in supposing
that he would make for this stretch of coast, already familiar to him,
he must soon approach the snare laid for him there.
And the presence of that unknown ship last night seemed to indicate
that the actual moment of that approach was very near. Ah! now at last
he would be able to look for her, for the moon had pushed up over the
craggy eastern summits at his back into a cloudless sky.
Keith gave his horse to his orderly, and going along a low spur of
rock gazed steadily out to sea. The fantastic peaks of Rum were
even more unreal in the moonlight than in the day, and the isle of
Eigg of an even odder shape. At first he thought that the stranger
was gone, and then all at once he saw her, a ghostly bark on the
rippling silver. She seemed to be off Morar, and, since some of her
square-sails appeared to be set, he doubted if she were at anchor; but
she was certainly not sailing away.
Keith had to make a rapid decision. At Morar he had an officer and
thirty men stationed. That, surely, was enough. He could, if he
wished, send back to Arisaig and bring up some more from there; yet
should Arisaig and not Morar prove after all the destined spot, and he
had denuded Arisaig of watchers, he would be undone. Loch nan Uamh,
the original landing-place, was also provided with a quota, but the
distance did not admit of bringing any soldiers thence to-night.
He returned to his orderly and mounted his horse. “I shall ride on to
Morar. Go back to Arisaig and tell the Captain so; desire him to keep
a close watch on the shore, for the Frenchman is lying off the coast
again and nearer in than last night.”
The man saluted and rode off along the rough sandy road, and Keith was
left alone with the ship, the moonlight and his own excited thoughts.
Not that he stayed to contemplate any of these; he pushed on at a
smart trot for Morar, turning over the question of a boat, without
which no fugitive could, naturally, reach the ship. He had temporarily
confiscated every boat on this stretch of coast except such as were
genuinely needed for fishing, to which he had granted a permit. Even
of the owners of these he was not sure, for they were all MacDonald of
Clanranald’s dependents. It would no doubt have been better to have
burnt every one of their craft. Yet even then a vessel could easily
despatch one of her own, at the risk of being fired on.
Keith took a last look at the burnished and gently moving expanse of
which he must now lose sight, for here the track turned sharply to the
right to run round the deep little inlet of Morar. But there was no
visible speck upon the sea which might be a boat.
And before long he was approaching the shoreward end of the inlet on
the rough sandy track of a road, bordered by dense undergrowth, which
ran round, a little higher than the level shore, under trees of no
great stature. The tide was coming in fast over the dazzling white
sands of Morar, snow under the moon, and drowning the little river
which tumbled from the wild, deep freshwater loch behind, where Lord
Lovat had sought his last refuge. It was so intensely quiet, and the
tide was slipping in so noiselessly, that the roar of the double falls
was carried very clearly over the water. Reining up, Major Windham
listened for some sign of the patrol which should be going its rounds
from the quarters on the other side of the bay, across the river; and,
to his displeasure, could detect none. This on a night when a French
ship was off the coast! The men must be got out at once.
He touched his horse with the spur and then pulled up again. What was
that dark shape down there on the sand? A small boat, and so near the
incoming tide that in another quarter of an hour or so it would be
afloat. No fisherman could have been so careless as to leave it there,
unless it were secured in some way. Brimful of suspicion as Keith was
to-night, he had jumped off his horse in an instant, and thrown the
bridle over a convenient branch. He knew better than to take the
animal plunging into the soft, dry sand of the slope; he was almost up
to his ankles himself before he was down.
Yes, he was right; the boat was there for no purpose authorised by
him. It had only recently been brought there, for it was not made fast
to anything. There were oars in it, but no nets or fishing-lines. It
needed no more evidence to convince him that the little craft had been
placed there in readiness to take off some person or persons to-night
to the strange vessel.
The most lively anger seized Major Windham. What was that damned
patrol about not to have discovered this? He must certainly gallop
round to their quarters without a moment’s delay and turn out the lazy
brutes. His pulses leaping, he plunged up the yielding sand to the
tree-shadowed road, turned to throw himself into the saddle—and stood
staring like a man bewitched. His horse was gone . . . gone as if
swallowed up!
“It is not possible!” said Keith to himself. “I have not been down
there two minutes!”
But, evidently, it was possible. Black though the shadows were under
the trees, he could tell that they held nothing so solid as a horse.
He looked up and down the empty white track, streaked and dappled with
those hard shadows; he examined the branch. It was not broken, and the
beast could certainly not have twitched his bridle off it. Someone had
been watching him, then, and human hands had conveyed the animal
away—whither?
Furious, he began to run back along the road; its sandy surface was
already too much churned up to show any hoof-marks. He did not
remember passing any crofts as he came. Though a man could hide in the
thick bushes on the seaward side, a horse could not be concealed in
them. He turned abruptly and went back again, remembering that there
was a dwelling or two farther along, between him and the river. If
some of these MacDonalds had stolen his horse and hidden it there, by
Heaven it should be the worse for them!
What, however, was of paramount importance now was not the finding of
his horse, but the beating up of the patrol with the least possible
delay. Yet by the time that he, on foot, could get round to their
quarters, or at least by the time that the soldiers arrived on the
spot, the boat would probably have put out with her freight. That was
why his horse had been spirited away by the ambushed spy in league
with to-night’s fugitives.
Keith set his jaw and cursed himself most fervently for having come
alone. The extraordinarily skilful way in which his horse had been
made to vanish, joined to the inexplicable lateness of the patrol,
only confirmed his conviction that it was the Pretender’s son for whom
that boat was waiting. Then, at all costs, he must delay its putting
out. . . . Could he disable it in some way? Not easily, without tools,
but he would do his best.
Once more he plunged down the sandy slope. But the boat, though old,
was solid. A knife, a sword, could make no impression on those
timbers. Keith had a moment of angry despair; then he remembered
having seen in one of these craft the other day a plugged hole,
designed to allow water to drain out if necessary. Suppose this boat
had one!
Getting in he peered and felt over the bottom, and at last, to his
joy, his fingers encountered, toward the after end, a rough peg of
wood sticking up like a cork. After some tugging he succeeded in
wrenching it out, and slipped it into his pocket. He could get his
thumb through the hole he had thus unplugged. He leapt out and ran
towards the slope again in triumph. One of two things would happen
now: either the Pretender’s son and his companions would discover what
had been done, and a new plug would have to be fashioned to fit the
hole, which would delay them not a little, or—what seemed to Keith
more probable—they would launch the boat and pull off without
examining it, on which it would almost immediately fill and sink, and
its occupants be forced to struggle back at a disadvantage to a shore
by that time, it was to be hoped, straitly guarded.
Keith was half-way up the slope again when he stopped abruptly, for in
the stillness he had distinctly heard voices—low voices at no very
great distance. The patrol at last, perhaps? He did not think so. The
speakers seemed to be coming along the tree-shadowed road between him
and the end of the inlet, the very road along which he was preparing
to hasten. A party of Jacobite fugitives would most certainly not
allow a soldier in uniform to run past them if they could help it. Was
the prize going to slip through his fingers after all?
No, hardly, in that unseaworthy boat! But he must perforce let the
owners of these cautious voices pass him and get on to the beach
before he started for the quarters of the patrol. Had the tide not
already been so high he could have cut across the sands and swum or
waded the river, but that was out of the question now; he could only
go by the road. He looked round for shelter, and slipped cautiously
into a high bush of hazel which itself stood in a patch of shadow so
deep that he felt sure of being invisible.
Not only voices, but muffled footsteps were audible by this time, and
presently a man—a fisherman, he thought—ran down the slope towards the
boat. He had scarcely passed before it came to Keith with a gust of
despair that he had set himself an almost impossible task. Now that
the fugitives were already here, before he had even started, he could
never get round and fetch the patrol in time, for if the Jacobites
were left to embark undisturbed they would discover and repair the
loss of the plug—that man down there was probably discovering it
now. But there was another way of rousing his dilatory men, for,
unbelievably negligent as they were this evening, they could not fail
to hear a pistol-shot. That would bring them to the place in double
quick time; and although to fire would naturally alarm the fugitives,
and make them embark with all the greater despatch, there was gain in
that, since—if it were not already done—they would pretty certainly
not discover the loss of the plug. Keith drew the loaded pistol from
his belt, but he put it at half-cock only, because he must wait until
the party was well past him before firing, seeing that he was only one
against he knew not how many.
Centuries seemed to pass while he waited, and considered, only to
dismiss, the idea of deliberately shooting at the Pretender’s son with
a view to disabling him; for he could not in this light be sure of
stopping short at that. His heart beat faster than ever it had done at
Fontenoy or Culloden Moor, for this business was fraught for him with
issues more momentous than any battle. What happened in the next
quarter of an hour would decide his whole future—and no fighting had
done that for him.
A sudden fall of sand behind him startled him for a moment, but he
dared not turn his head to look what had caused it, for three . . .
four dim shapes were coming at last out of the shadows above and
beyond him, and beginning to descend the slope. The tallest was
limping badly; and he was also the principal figure, for the others,
he could see now, were only gillies, and one was a boy. Had the
Pretender’s son gone lame in his wanderings? It was quite possible.
Or . . . or . . . God of Heaven! The sand seemed to swim under Keith’s
feet. It was not Charles Edward Stuart, it was Ewen Cameron who had
walked into his trap, Ewen Cameron who had just limped down past him
on the arm of one of the gillies . . . Ewen, his friend, whom he had
thought safely hidden in Lochaber!
The bitter disappointment and the disastrous surprise of it overwhelmed
Keith, and he stood there stupefied. Once more he had come on a fool’s
errand—not the first since he had watched the coast. This was
Edinburgh over again . . . but a much more sinister repetition of it.
For the net which he had spread for the arch-rebel was not empty;
it held a lesser but indubitable prize—a chieftain, Lochiel’s kinsman.
With a wild sense of being in a net himself he realised the cogency of
the arguments which he had used against Guthrie; if Ewen Cameron was
too important to shoot out of hand, he was also too important to let
go. . . . And he saw Ewen sent back to the scaffold after all, and by
him: tied on a horse again, by his hands. . . . Or, since the boat was
holed, and Ewen was lame, he would drown, perhaps, when it sank . . .
the men were already pushing it nearer to the water. . . .
Stabbed to alarm by that thought he stepped almost unconsciously out
of his sheltering hazel bush, and stood at the edge of the shadow with
some vague notion of shouting to warn Ardroy. . . . No, what he had to
do was to fire, and bring the patrol here quickly and arrest him. He
was to stop all communication, to allow no one to leave . . . much
less a chieftain and a kinsman of Lochiel’s. . . .
“God help me!” he said aloud, and put a hand over his eyes.
There was a sudden crackling of broken stems, a fierce exclamation
behind him, something glittered out of the shadow, and Keith swung
quickly round just as the man who had been tracking him for over a
week sprang down upon him. And so he did not receive Lachlan
MacMartin’s dirk between the shoulders, as Lachlan had intended, but
in his breast.
* * * * * *
Leaning on young Angus’s shoulder by the boat, Ewen watched the Morar
fisherman hastily fitting in the spare plug which he had brought with
him (because, as he had explained, the redcoats had played the trick
of removing one from Ranald Mor’s boat the other night). The fates had
indeed been kind—no patrol this evening—if they were quick they would
get out of the bay without a single shot being fired at them.
The boat was being pushed down to the water when all at once the lad
Angus gave a little cry, clutched at his master’s arm and pointed up
the beach. Ewen, turning his head, saw two men locked together on the
sandy slope, saw one drop and roll over, had a dim impression that he
wore uniform, and a much clearer one of a wild figure running over the
sand towards him with a naked dirk in his hand. Young Angus tried to
throw himself in front of his chieftain, but the grip on his shoulder,
suddenly tightening, stayed him. Moreover in another moment the
spectre with the dirk was on his knees at Ewen’s feet, holding up the
weapon, and, half sobbing with excitement, was pouring out a flood of
words as hot as lava:
“Mac ’ic Ailein, I have kept my vow, I have avenged you—and saved you,
too, though I knew not till the _biodag_ was bare in my hand that it
was you who had passed. The Englishman would have betrayed you a
second time . . . but he lies there and will not rise again. Oh, make
haste, make haste to embark, for there are redcoats at Morar!”
Despite his disfigured face, Ewen had recognised him at once, and the
meaning of his words, for all their tumbling haste, was clearer
still—horribly clear. Frozen, he tried to beat that meaning from him.
“God’s curse on you, what have you done!” he exclaimed, seizing his
foster-brother by the shoulder. “If you have really harmed Major
Windham——” But the moon showed him the bloody dirk. With a shudder he
thrust the murderer violently from him, and, deaf to young Angus’s
shrill remonstrances, started to run haltingly back towards the slope.
Surely, surely Lachlan had mistaken his victim, for what could Windham
be doing here at Morar?
But it _was_ Keith Windham. He was lying on his side, full in the
moonlight, almost at the bottom of the slope, as if he had been thrown
there . . . stunned, perhaps, thought Ewen wildly, with a recollection
of how he himself had lain on Culloden Moor—though how a dirk could
stun him God alone knew. Half-way down the slope lay a pistol. Calling
his name he knelt and took him into his arms. Oh, no hope; it was a
matter of minutes! Lachlan had used that long blade too well.
As he was lifted, Keith came back from a moment’s dream of a shore
with long green rollers roaring loudly under a blood-red sunset, to
pain and difficult breath and Ewen’s arms. He knew him.
“I . . . I did not have to . . . fire,” he gasped; but Ewen could not
realise what lay behind the words. “Go . . . go before . . . they come
from Morar . . .”
“My God, my God!” exclaimed Ewen, trying to staunch the blood which
that spotless sand was already drinking. “Oh, Windham, if I could only
have warned you—if I had known that _he_ was here . . .”
“There is a hole . . . in the boat,” said Keith with increasing
difficulty. “I . . . took out . . . the plug.”
“They have put in another—one they had in readiness. Windham, for
God’s sake try to——”
Try to do what? “Your letter . . . is still . . . I had no . . .”
“Duncan—Angus!” called Ewen desperately, “have none of you any
brandy?”
But his men, who had run up, were intent on another matter. “Come, the
boat is ready—and I think the redcoats are stirring over the river,”
said Duncan Cameron, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Come, Mac ’ic
Ailein, come!”
Ewen answered him in Gaelic. “I shall not stir while he breathes.”
But the dying man seemed to understand. “Go . . . Ardroy! . . . I
implore you!” He began to fumble at one hand with the other, and
managed to pull off the signet-ring which he always wore, and to hold
it out a little way. Ewen took it, not knowing what he did.
“I was watching for . . . the Pretender’s son,” went on Keith, lower
and lower; “then I saw . . . it was you . . . and I had to try . . .
to decide . . . duty . . . no, it is just as well . . . I could not
. . . have borne . . .” He sighed and shut his eyes.
Ewen held him closer, still trying to stay the flood, and trying, as
he knew, in vain. Yet Keith only seemed to be going to sleep. He was
murmuring something now which Ewen had to stoop his head close to
hear. And then all that he could catch were the words, “. . . desire
. . . friends . . . always . . .”
“Yes, yes, always,” he answered in anguish. “Always!” But there would
be no ‘always’. “Oh, if only you had not been in that madman’s path!”
But that, at least, was not fortuitous. Yet to Keith the assassin had
only been some man of Morar in league with the embarkation.
He reopened his eyes. “Your hand . . .” Ewen gave it to him, and saw a
little smile in the moonlight. “Have you been . . . burying any more
cannon? . . . I always liked you,” said his enemy clearly; and a
moment after, with his hand in Ewen’s, was gone to that place ‘where
an enemy never entered and from whence a friend never went away’.
Ewen laid him back on the patched sand, and, getting to his feet,
stood looking down at the man to whom the heron had brought him—foe,
enigma, saviour, victim of a terrible mistake. And friend—yes; but it
was too late for friendship now. It had already been too late at their
last meeting—which had not been the last after all—when he himself, as
he thought, was standing on the threshold of death. But it was Keith
Windham who had gone through that door, not he. . . . Had he known
that he was dying? . . . Every word of the few he had spoken had been
about _him_ . . .
Then through the haze of shock and grief penetrated the sound of a
distant shot, and he remembered that there were other lives than his
at stake.
“Go—go and hide yourselves!” he commanded. But the two Camerons shook
their heads. “Not until you are in the boat, Mac ’ic Ailein!”
“I will come, then,” said Ewen. He would rather have stayed, now; but
he knelt again and kissed Keith’s forehead. And that it should not be
found on him, an equivocal possession, perhaps, he drew out his own
letter to Alison and slipped it, all sodden, into his pocket. Then he
suffered the gillies to hurry him down to the boat, for already it was
clear that the soldiers were crossing the river, and some twenty yards
away a couple of ill-aimed bullets raised spirts of sand.
By the boat was waiting Lachlan, Lachlan who, directly he was
recovered from the result of his first attempt by Loch Tarff, had once
more set about the fulfilment of his vow, who had hung about Inverness
through July and found no opportunity, lost track of his quarry when
he went to Fort Augustus, picked it up again in Moidart, and had
hardly let him out of his sight since. It was he who had removed the
horse.
“Ewen, my brother, forgive me—forgive me!”
Ewen turned on him a terrible face. “Never! You have killed my
friend!”
“Never? Then as well have my life, too!” cried Lachlan. The reddened
dirk which a year ago he had been moved to fling into the loch spun
glinting through the moonlight and splashed into the sea, and its
owner, turning, ran headlong towards the road and the oncoming patrol.
* * * * * *
Soon the noise of shots and shouting could be heard no longer, only
the creak of the oars in the rough rowlocks as young Angus and the
fisherman pulled hard over the moonlit sea towards the French
privateer. But Ewen sat in the sternsheets of the little boat with his
face buried in his hands, and cared not that he went to safety.
The day would come when, pondering over his memories of those broken
sentences, recalling the pistol lying on the sand, he would arrive at
a glimpse of the truth, and guess that Lachlan’s blade had saved Keith
Windham from a decision too cruel, and that perhaps he had been glad
to be so saved. But he would never realise—how should he?—that the
tide which for a year had been carrying the Englishman, half ignorant,
sometimes resisting, among unlooked-for reefs and breakers, away from
the safe, the stagnant Dead Sea of his choice, had borne him to no
unfitting anchorage in this swift death, devoid of thoughts of self.
For Ewen saw Keith only as a loser through meeting him—a loser every
way—whereas in truth he had been a gainer.
A hail came over the water; they were approaching the privateer. He
tried to rouse himself from his stupor of grief and regret, and from
the self-reproach which stabbed scarcely less deep because it was
causeless. And as he did so the kind moonlight showed him his friend’s
ring upon his finger.
EPILOGUE
HARBOUR OF GRACE
EPILOGUE
HARBOUR OF GRACE
The fresh wind scouring the mouth of the Seine kept the fishing boats
from Honfleur lying well over, and at the foot of the cliffs of Ste.
Adresse the waves were shivering themselves in a joyful welter of
foam. Long pennants of cloud streamed and vanished in the blue; all
the shipping rocked at anchor, and Alison Cameron, crossing the
market-place of Havre-de-Grâce with a basket on her arm, had to
clutch at her black cloak lest it should be whirled off her shoulders.
She had reached the French port in time to see her father alive; in
time, indeed, to give him nearly six weeks of the most devoted
care. But in May he died peacefully, ignorant of the catastrophe which
had torn for ever the webs that he had helped to weave. Since he was
ill it had not been very difficult to keep from him the news of the
downfall of Jacobite hopes and the fugitive state of the Prince, and
to invent reasons for the absence of any news of Ewen Cameron. Of
Hector’s capture he had known before leaving Scotland. It was the
thought of Ewen, to whose care he knew Alison now definitely
committed, which had made his last hours easy. “Your man will never
let you want for aught, my lass,” he had said, near the end; and
Alison had had the strength to keep from him the anxiety which racked
her.
And so one morning she found herself left alone in the lodging where
her father had lain ill, a little house belonging to a youthful married
couple, kind and sympathetic enough, and glad that the Scottish lady
should stay on there, waiting for the husband who, Madame Grévérend
was privately sure, would never come now, having without doubt been
slain in the deserts of l’Ecosse. And when, later on, a gossip would
ask her why the young Scottish lady did not voyage back to those
deserts to find her husband, or to procure news of him, or at least to
have the solace of weeping on his tomb, Madame Grévérend would explain
that the poor creature was so persuaded that her husband would in the
end come to Havre-de-Grâce seeking her that she feared to miss him if
she went away.
“But she will wait for ever, one fears,” Madame Grévérend would
finish; “and she left without even a good-for-nothing like this to
plague her!” And here she would snatch up her fat, curly-headed
Philippe and kiss him. “Yes, she has lost everything, poor lady, and
she only five months married.”
But one has never lost everything. Alison still had that possession
which Madame Grévérend could not understand, the certitude which had
come to her in the cabin of the brig at Inverness. Sooner or later
Ewen would come for her.
Yet it was hard, sometimes, to cling to that belief when the weeks
went by and there was not the slightest crumb of authentic news of
him. All she had was negative; for there was in Havre-de-Grâce another
Scots refugee, a Mr. Buchanan who had served in the Duke of Perth’s
regiment, and he had convinced her, on evidence that seemed conclusive
to a mind which only longed to believe it, that Ardroy had not been
among the slain or massacred in the battle. Where, then, was he?
Her marketing finished, Alison took her way homewards through the
bright windy weather, and came, down the little Rue des Vergers, to
the small, sanded courtyard with the pear-tree where she dwelt above
M. and Mme Grévérend. In that sunlit space there was at the moment
only the grey cat curled in a corner, a pair of pigeons promenading,
and Philippe, seated rosily upon his mother’s doorstep, deliberately
pouring sand on to his curls, as if in penitence for some misdeed, by
means of an old teacup.
“My bairnie, don’t do that!” called Alison, half laughing, half
horrified. “Fi donc, quelle saleté!”
Philippe gave her a most roguish glance, scooped up and emptied upon
his locks a sort of final bumper cupful, and then rose uncertainly to
his fat legs and came to her, lifting a beaming, smeared face for a
kiss. Alison wiped his countenance and gave him one.
“Are you all alone, Philippe?”
The child intimated that he was, and then entered unasked upon a long
explanation of the complicated reasons which had led him to make a
garden of his head.
“I think you had better come up to my room with me and let me brush
out that horrid sand, my pretty,” said Alison, wondering what would
happen if she held him upside down and shook him. “Veux-tu bien?”
He nodded, and Alison held out a hand. But neither of his were
available, since one still clutched his teacup, and the other was
tightly closed over some small object.
“What have you there?” asked the girl. It might so well be a beetle or
a worm.
Philippe was coy about revealing his treasure, though he evidently
desired to display it. But at last he opened a fat fist. “De
l’argent!” he said exultingly, for, though immature, he was a true
Norman. And indeed there lay in his pink palm a small coin.
There was something about that piece of money which caused Alison’s
heart to leap suddenly into her throat; and, to the infant’s dismay,
she snatched his treasure from his hand and looked at it closely. It
was no coin of France: no coin of any realm at all, in fact, but a
Scottish trade token of the town of Inverness.
“Who gave you this, Philippe?” she asked, looking almost frightened.
For Mr. Buchanan, who might otherwise have been the donor, had gone
away three days ago.
But her plundered companion was plainly making preparations for one of
the most resonant howls of his short life. “There, there, darling,”
said Alison hastily, going down on her knees and restoring him his
token. “I am not going to take it away. But who in God’s name gave it
to you?”
It required time for the little boy to master his emotion, but when
this was done he embarked upon another tortuous narrative, from which
a close attention could gather that a strange gentleman had come and
asked for Madame Cameron and had presented him with this earnest of
his regard.
“And where is the gentleman now?” asked Alison breathlessly.
Philippe turned his rotund person and pointed up the stairs with the
teacup.
Next moment he was alone in the middle of the courtyard, alone with
the pigeons and the cat and Madame Cameron’s abandoned basket, and
Alison was flying up those stairs to her room. But half-way she
stopped, with her hand to her heart, for her own light footfalls had
not prevented her from hearing those others going impatiently to and
fro above her—unknown steps, belonging to a man with a halt in his
walk.
No, of course she had been too sanguine. It was not Ewen. The tumult
of her heart died down again to the old sad patience. Yet it must be
someone from Scotland, someone from the Highlands, too, for the token
proved that; and if he asked for her it was because he came with news
of Ewen, or of Hector.
And perhaps because at the bottom of her heart she trembled to think
what that news might be, Alison turned and went down the stairs again
and picked up her basket from the courtyard (and none too soon, for it
had already riveted Philippe’s attention as well as the cat’s) and
went a great deal more soberly up the stairs once more, and opened the
door.
* * * * * *
It was she who recovered speech the first, but scarcely coherent
speech.
“Oh, Ewen, darling of my heart . . . you look so thin, so ill! And why
are you lame? I thought it could not be you. . . . I knew you would
come. . . . Sit down, for pity’s sake!” She dragged him to a chair.
“Are you hungry—when did you eat? I must get you——”
But she was powerless in the arm he put about her, though the arm was
trembling a little, and she fell on her knees beside the chair and
cried into his coat; and then Ewen dried her eyes by a method which he
had just discovered.
“I am neither thin, nor ill, nor lame, nor hungry, and I have all I
want. Open your eyes and look at me like that again!”
His dear voice, at least, was not altered. “I shall tell Madame
Grévérend, when she returns, to make ready——”
“How concerned are women with food! I have no wish to eat at present;
I only want to be sure that I am here,” said her husband, half
laughing. “If you go away to give orders, _m’eudail_, I may perhaps
fancy I am back on the sea again, or . . . back on the sea,” he
repeated rather hastily, turning his head a moment aside.
“You _are_ here,” said Alison earnestly, as if he really needed the
assurance; “you are here, Ewen, heart’s dearest, and I always knew
that you would come!”
* * * * * *
Long, long afterwards, that is to say, when Philippe and the pigeons
had gone to roost, and the windy day had flamed itself out in a royal
sunset, Alison, in her husband’s arms, where she had been clasped for
fully five minutes without stirring or speaking, fingered the back of
his hand and said half-dreamily, “How came you by this strange ring,
dear heart?”
Ewen moved abruptly; something like a shudder ran through him. “I will
tell you some time,” he said hesitatingly, “but not yet. Oh, Alison, I
cannot speak of it yet. . . .”
Some dreadful remembrance of the defeat, she thought pitifully, then,
seeing how pale he had become, slipped off his knee, and, bending over
him, drew his head with a lovely gesture to her breast. And Ewen hid
his eyes there like a child.
But leagues on leagues away the tide from the Outer Isles was
beginning to fill the silver cup of Morar, and he stood there once
again, helpless and heartbroken, looking down at Lachlan’s handiwork.
Not even Alison, whose arms held him close, whose cheek was pressed on
his hair, not even Alison could stand with him in that place, where
Keith Windham had come to the last of their meetings, and the bitter
grief of Angus’s prediction had reached its real fulfilment.
Yet he must not sadden Alison on this, of all days. It was Keith who
had given it to him.
He lifted his head from its resting-place. “_My dearest on earth,_” he
said, but not as he had said it a year ago, for the gift he asked
meant even more now,—“_my dearest on earth, give me your kiss!_”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Printing errors have been corrected as follows:
Title page: single quote changed to double before _But the heron’s
flight_
p. 57: _replied Keith. “I did._ changed to _replied Keith, “I did._
p. 88: _your commanding officer’s ’ wisdom_ changed to _your
commanding officer’s wisdom_
p. 108: single quotation mark changed to double before _like the
rest of the ladies_
p. 121: comma added after _the back of the Canongate_
p. 155: _he said gleefully. “’Tis a good word_ changed to _he said
gleefully, “’Tis a good word_
p. 165: _nor had be broached the project_ changed to _nor had
he broached the project_
p. 194: _hever lost himself_ changed to _never lost himself_
p. 223: _said Keith,” and then_ changed to _said Keith, “and then_
p. 375: _lous d’or_ changed to _louis d’or_; _like-will-of-the-wisps_
changed to _like will-of-the-wisps_
Otherwise, inconsistencies and possible errors are preserved.
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the
public domain.
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