Читать книгу The Collected Works of D. K. Broster - D. K. Broster - Страница 82

Next day Ewen set out from Invernacree on his journey to Edinburgh, a gillie of his uncle’s carrying his modest valise—not his, in truth, but one of Ian’s. He meant to go on foot through Benderloch to the ferry on the curve of Loch Etive at Bonawe, and there, in the little inn on the farther side, hoped to hire a horse. If he failed in this he would have to trudge on for another twelve or thirteen miles to the next hostelry at Dalmally, beyond the Pass of Brander and Loch Awe.

The proud mass of Ben Cruachan, monarch of all the heights around, with a wreath of cloud veiling the snow upon his summit, frowned at the Cameron as he came along the northern shore of beautiful Etive towards the heart of Lorne. Ewen dismissed the gillie, took his valise and was rowed across the wind-rippled blue water.

“Is it true that the innkeeper here has horses for hire?” he asked, as he paid the ferryman on the farther side.

“Ay, he has, though but the one now. The beast will not be hired out the day, however, for I saw him no later than noon.”

The tiny inn under the three wind-bent pines looked as if it could scarcely provide a decent meal, still less a horse, yet, somewhat to Ewen’s surprise, there was a very well-appointed chaise standing outside it. But there seemed something wrong with this equipage, for one of the horses was out of the shafts, and the middle-aged postilion was talking earnestly to an elegantly dressed young man, presumably the traveller. Various ragged underlings of the hostelry, possessing no knowledge of English, vociferated round them.

Ewen called one of these, told him he wanted a saddle-horse, and entered the inn to pay for its hire. He had some difficulty in finding the innkeeper, and the man had finally to be summoned.

“You have a saddle-horse for hire, I believe,” said Ardroy. “For how many stages are you willing to let it out?”

The Highlander seemed embarrassed. “I fear that I cannot let you have it at all, sir. I have but the one horse for hire, and the young gentleman out there, who is returning from Dunstaffnage Castle to Edinburgh, requires it for his chaise, for one of his own horses has suddenly gone lame.”

With instant resentment Ewen thought, “From Dunstaffnage? A Campbell, of course, who thinks all belongs to him in Lorne! I would like to show him that he’s wrong. . . . But I need the horse, to carry me,” he said aloud, with an unwonted haughtiness, “and this sprig of Clan Diarmaid must make shift with his remaining horse, and go the slower.”

“He is not a Campbell, sir,” returned the innkeeper quickly. “It is a Sassenach, a young English lord returning from a visit to Dunstaffnage.”

Ewen was slightly mollified. Even an Englishman was preferable, on the whole, to a Campbell. “Perhaps,” he suggested, “if he is told that this horse of yours is the only means of my getting on my way he will have the grace to relinquish it.”

Like the innkeeper he had used the Gaelic. The sentence was scarcely finished when a voice behind him made him start, he did not know why. “It seems that there is now some difficulty about this horse of yours,” it said, addressing the landlord with some impatience, “but I am unable to understand what your people say. Why cannot I hire the horse, since it is for hire?”

Ewen had turned, and saw a very handsome youth clad in what he, somewhat cut off of late from such vanities, guessed to be the latest mode. “I am myself the difficulty, I fear, sir,” he said civilly. “I had hoped to hire the horse to ride as far, at least, as Dalmally.”

“The horse iss for the saddle,” explained the innkeeper to the young Englishman. “Though, inteet, he iss going fery well in harness too.” He looked from one client to the other in evident perplexity.

“In that case it would seem as if I must ride postilion,” observed Ardroy with a recrudescence of annoyance.

The younger traveller—English nobleman, if the innkeeper were correct—came forward to the elder. He was not only extremely good-looking, but had a delightfully frank and boyish expression; and, indeed, he was not very much more than a boy. “Sir, could we not come to some arrangement, if we take the same road, and if I have unwittingly disappointed you of a horse? There is plenty of room in my chaise if you would do me the honour of driving in it.”

The offer was made so spontaneously, and speed was so desirable, that Ewen was tempted by it.

“You are too kind, sir,” he said, hesitating. “I should be incommoding you.”

“Not in the least, I assure you,” declared the agreeable young traveller. “There is ample room, for I left my man behind in Edinburgh, and it would be a pleasure to have a companion. My name is Aveling—Viscount Aveling.”

“And mine is Cameron,” replied Ewen; but he did not add ‘of Ardroy’. It flashed through his mind as ironical that a young English Whig—for Lord Aveling must be of Whig sympathies, or he would not have been visiting Campbell of Dunstaffnage—should propose to take the road with a man who not three months ago had escaped from Government hands at Fort William.

“Then you will give me the honour of your company, sir?” asked the young man eagerly. “Otherwise I shall feel bound to surrender the horse to you, and I will not disguise that I am anxious to reach Edinburgh with as little delay as possible.” He said this with something of a joyous air, as though some good fortune awaited him at his journey’s end. “I hope to lie to-night at Dalmally,” he went on, “and I think that even on horseback you would hardly go beyond that, for the next stage is, I am told, a long one.”

“No, that is quite true,” admitted Ewen, “and so, my lord, I will with gratitude take advantage of your very obliging proposal. And if we are to be fellow-travellers, may I not propose in my turn that before taking the road in company you should join me in a bottle of claret?”

As they went together to the little eating-room he reflected that the boy was exceptionally trusting. “He knows nothing of me—no more than I know of him, if it comes to that.” Then for a moment he wondered whether he were acting unfairly by this friendly youth in taking advantage of his offer, but to explain his own position, and perhaps thereby deprive himself of the means of proceeding quickly, was to be overscrupulous.

So they sat down to some indifferent claret, and over it this suddenly blossoming acquaintance ripened as quickly to a very unlooked-for harvest. Lord Aveling seemed to Ardroy a really charming and attractive young man, unspoilt, so far as he could judge, by the fashionable world of routs and coffee-houses in which he probably moved—for it transpired after a while that he was the only son of the Earl of Stowe, whose name was known even in the Highlands. It appeared, also, that he was really visiting in Edinburgh, and had only gone to Dunstaffnage on a short stay, from which he was now returning. He had never been in Scotland before, he said, and, but for a very particular circumstance, would not have come now, because the country, and especially the Highlands, held a most painful association for him, he having lost a brother there in the late rebellion.

Ewen said that he was sorry to hear it. “He was a soldier, I presume?”

The young man nodded. His bright face had saddened, and, looking down, he said as though to himself. “I am ashamed now that I did not attempt the pilgrimage when I was at Dunstaffnage—I suppose, sir,” he went on rather hesitatingly, “that you do not chance to know a wild spot on the coast, farther north, called Morar?”

Ewen put down his wine-glass very suddenly, the colour leaving his face. He tried to speak and could not. But his companion went on without waiting for an answer, “It was there that my brother met his death, Mr. Cameron. And he was not killed in fair fight, he was murdered. That is why I do not like the Highlands . . . yet I wish time had permitted of my going to Morar.”

A moment Ewen stared as though the handsome speaker were himself a ghost. Keith Windham’s brother—could it be true? The tiny inn-parlour was gone, and he was kneeling again in the moonlight on that bloodstained sand. He did not know that he had put his hand over his eyes.

And then the voice that was—he knew it now—so like Keith’s, was asking him breathlessly, fiercely, “Where did you get that ring—my God, where did you get it?”

Ewen dropped his hand and looked up almost dazedly at the young Englishman, who was on his feet, leaning over the table, with a face as white as his own, and eyes suddenly grown hard and accusing.

“He gave it to me . . . it was in my arms that he died at Morar . . . the victim of a terrible mistake.”

“A mistake, you say? He was killed, then, in the place of another?”

“No, no—not that kind of mistake. My unfortunate foster-brother——”

“Your foster-brother was the murderer! And by whose orders? Yours?”

Ewen gave a strangled cry, and leapt then to his own feet, and faced this stern, almost unrecognisable young accuser.

“God forgive you for the suggestion! I wished that day that Lachlan’s dirk had been in my own breast! Major Windham was my friend, Lord Aveling, my saviour . . . and yet he came to his death through me—And you are his brother! I felt . . . yes, that was it—you have his voice.”

“I am his brother of the half-blood,” said the young Viscount, standing very still and looking hard at him. “My mother was his mother too. . . . And so you wear his ring. But if you have not his blood upon your hands, what do you mean by saying that he came to his death through you?”

Ewen caught his breath. “His blood on my hands! If it is on anyone’s—besides poor deluded Lachlan’s—it is on those of another British officer who—” he stopped suddenly and then went on, “—who is probably gone to his account by this time.”

“And you are prepared to swear——”

“Great God, should I have worn his ring all these years if what you think were true? He drew it off his finger—’twas the last thing he did—and put it into my hand. I will swear it—” he glanced down in search of the dirk which he might not wear, and made a little gesture of desperation. “I cannot; I have no weapon.”

“Let that pass; I will take your word,” said the young Englishman, speaking with difficulty. “I can see that what you say is true, and I ask your pardon for my suspicions.” No one, indeed, could well have doubted that it was grief, not guilt, which had made the face of this Highland gentleman so drawn. “But,” added Lord Aveling after a moment, “I should be greatly your debtor if you could bring yourself to tell me a little more. All we heard was that while on patrol-duty on the western coast in the August of ’46 my unfortunate brother was murdered by a Highlander, either a Cameron or a MacDonald, and was buried where he died. It was impossible, in the then unsettled state of the country, to have his body exhumed and brought to England. And now, I suppose, if this place be as wild as we have heard, his very grave is forgotten?”

“No, it is not forgotten,” answered Ewen, in a much quieter voice. “I have been there twice—I was there last year. There is a stone I had put. . . . He did not love the Highlands overmuch, yet ’tis a peaceful and a beautiful spot, Lord Aveling, and though the wind blows sometimes the sand is very white there, and when the moon is full . . .” He broke off, and stood with his deep-set blue eyes steady and fixed, the young man staring at him a trifle awed, since he had heard of the second sight, and the speaker was a Highlander.

But Ardroy was seeing the past, not the future, and after a moment sat down again at the table and covered his face with his hands. His half-drained glass rolled over, and the claret stain widened on the coarse cloth. Keith Windham’s brother stood looking down at him until, an instant or two later, there came a knock at the door, when he went to it, and dismissed the intruder, the postilion anxious for his lordship to start.

When he came back Ardroy had removed his hands and regained control of himself.

“Since we have met so strangely, you would perhaps desire me to tell you the whole story, my lord?”

And sitting there, sometimes gazing with a strange expression at the stain on the cloth, sometimes looking as if he saw nothing, Ewen told it to the young man in detail.