Читать книгу The Greatest Historical Novels & Stories of D. K. Broster - D. K. Broster - Страница 106

When, that afternoon, Ewen had taken Jean Cameron back to her lodging in Tower Street he went to the ‘White Cock’, where he had arranged to meet Hector Grant. But that young man was to be seen walking to and fro in the Strand itself, outside the passage, evidently waiting for him.

“Don’t go in there, Ewen,” he said eagerly, “till I have at least told you my news. Young Glenshian is back in town—if he ever left it!”

“Are you sure?”

“I have seen his gillie. I met him by chance about an hour ago. He said that his master had been ill, though I could not make out from him whether he had really been away from London or no. At any rate, the man, who recognised me, admitted that Glenshian was able to receive visitors. It seems that he is recovering from a fever of cold which settled upon his lungs. So now I can perhaps find out the part which Finlay MacPhair has played in this slander upon me, for I am no nearer the truth than when I arrived here. Will you come with me? I think you have a score to settle too.”

“I promised not to settle it,” answered Ardroy. “And you, Hector, do not yet know that you have one.”

“Oh, I’ll be prudent,” promised the young soldier. “I will move cautiously in the matter, I assure you, for Fionnlagh Ruadh is not over peaceable himself. But I must at least put the question to him, and what time better than the present, if you are at liberty?”

Ewen said that he was, and would accompany him, though he was not himself anxious to meet Archie’s traducer, since he might not have his way with him. But it seemed unwise to let Hector go alone, and his presence might conceivably keep the bit a shade tighter in that young gentleman’s mouth.

At the house in Beaufort Buildings Hector was prepared to find his way unannounced to the upper floor, but the woman this time said that she would take the two gentlemen up, since Mr. MacPhair’s servant was out, and she thought his master as well. Indeed, she seemed sure of the latter’s absence, for she threw open the door with barely a knock, advanced into the room, and was consequently brought up short.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said in half-abashed tones. “I quite thought you was out. Two gentlemen from Scotland to see you.”

And there was visible, in a room less disorderly than Hector remembered, Mr. Finlay MacPhair sitting by a small fire fully dressed, with a large flowered shawl about his shoulders, and a book in his hand.

He turned his red head quickly. “I thought I had given orders——” he began with a frown—and then seemed by an effort to accept the inevitable. “Visitors from Scotland are always welcome,” said he, and rose, holding the shawl together. “Why, ’tis rather a visitor from France! Is it not Mr. Hector Grant?”

Hector bowed. “And my brother-in-law, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy. Ewen, let me present you to Mr. MacPhair of Glenshian.”

“The gentleman, I think, who went to prison in order to shield Doctor Cameron last autumn?” said Glenshian, and held out his hand. “I am honoured to make your acquaintance, sir—very greatly honoured. Be seated, if you please, gentlemen, and forgive my being happed up in this fashion. I am still somewhat of a sick man after a recent illness.”

Mr. MacPhair was easy and fluent, and apparently more concerned with apologies for his shawl than observant, which was perhaps as well, for the man whose acquaintance he professed to be so proud to make was gazing at him in what would have been a disconcerting manner had young Glenshian been fully aware of it.

Hector took a chair and said that he was sorry to hear of Mr. MacPhair’s indisposition. Ewen also seated himself, more slowly, but he said nothing. The cloaked gentleman who had come so secretly out of Mr. Pelham’s house that May night was here before him, and he was no Whig, but Finlay MacPhair, the son and heir of a great Chief whose clansmen had fought for the Cause. What had he been doing in Arlington Street?

“Yes,” said young Glenshian, going to a cupboard, “I had the ill-luck to take a cold at the Carnival ball in Paris (for I was over there, on the King’s affairs, in the spring) which ended in a fluxion de poitrine, and left me with somewhat of a cough and a general weakness. I doubt I shall not be my own man again for a while.—Now, gentlemen, before you tell me why I am thus honoured by your company, you’ll pledge me, I hope, in this excellent Bordeaux—But where the devil has Seumas put the glasses?”

His guests, however, both refused the offer of the Bordeaux with so much decision and unanimity that Finlay, raising his eyebrows, left the cupboard and came and sat down.

“Not even to drink the King’s health?” he observed. “Well, gentlemen, if you will not drink, let us get to business—unless this is a mere visit of ceremony?”

“No, ’tis not a visit of ceremony, Mr. MacPhair,” answered Ewen gravely. “Mr. Grant has a question to ask of you, which you will greatly oblige him by answering; and I, too, find that I have one which, by your leave, I should like to put when you have answered his.”

“This sounds, I declare, like an examination before the Privy Council,” remarked young Glenshian, his lip drawing up a little. “Pray proceed then, sirs, each in your turn! You’ll allow me, I hope, the liberty of not replying if I so wish?”

“Nay, Mr. MacPhair, do not imagine that we come as inquisitors,” said Hector with unwonted suavity. “It will be of your courtesy only that you reply.”

“Ask, then!” said Finlay, fixing his piercing light eyes upon him.

Even Hector hesitated for a second, choosing his words. “Mr. MacPhair, while eternally grateful to you for your assistance in procuring my return to France last January——” He paused again, seeing in those eyes something akin to the sudden violent resentment with which their owner had at first greeted the subject on that occasion, then went on: “I should nevertheless be glad of your assurance that you did not, by pure inadvertence, let it be somewhat freely known that I had lost, along with my other papers in the Highlands, the compromising cipher letter of which I told you?”

There was no outburst from Glenshian, but all and more of his native arrogance in his reply. “Certainly I did not,” he said contemptuously. “Why should I speak of your private affairs, Mr. Grant? They are nothing to me!”

Hector bit his lip. “I thank you for the assurance, Mr. MacPhair. Yet that letter was hardly a private affair, and. . . . the knowledge of the loss of it has undoubtedly gone about, and has much damaged my reputation, especially in my regiment.”

“Well, I am very sorry to hear that, Mr. Grant,” responded his host, pulling his shawl about him and crossing his legs. “But you must forgive me if I say that to lose a paper of that nature could hardly be expected to enhance it!”

At the half-amused, half-hortatory tone Ewen fully expected Hector to flare up. But that young man remained surprisingly controlled, and answered, though with rather pinched lips, “Yet the strange thing is, that I told no one save Mr. Cameron and yourself that I had lost it!”

Fionnlagh Ruadh turned his dangerous gaze on Mr. Cameron. “I suppose he has satisfied you that he is not the culprit?” he asked, again in that half-humorous tone. To this Hector vouchsafed no reply, and apparently Glenshian did not expect one, for he went on, “But surely, Mr. Grant, if a letter such as you told me of were sent, upon capture, to the English Government, as is natural, you could scarcely expect them to be so tender of your reputation as not to let it be known upon whom it was captured?”

“Ay, but was it sent to the Government?” demanded Hector.

Glenshian’s haughty head went back. “And pray how do you expect me to know that?”

Ewen leant forward. It was the same man; after this prolonged scrutiny he felt sure of it. “That is indeed an idle question, Hector,” he observed. “And Mr. MacPhair has assured you that he had no hand in spreading the knowledge of your misfortune, which assurance no doubt you accept. I think the moment has come for me to ask my question, if he will be good enough to answer it.”

“I hope yours is less offensive than the last!” rapped out Glenshian.

“I am afraid it is not very pleasant,” admitted Ardroy, “and I must crave your indulgence for putting it. . . . I should wish to learn how it is, Mr. MacPhair, that you know Mr. Pelham so well as to leave his house in Arlington Street between eleven and twelve at night?”

Oddly enough, it was Hector, not young Glenshian, who appeared most affected by this shot. “What!” he exclaimed, “do you mean to say that Mr. MacPhair was the man you saw that night?”

But Mr. MacPhair himself was frowning at his questioner in an angry and puzzled astonishment which seemed genuine enough, “Mr. Pelham, sir?” he said sharply “—whom do you mean? You cannot, I imagine, refer to Mr. Pelham the minister of state?”

“Yes,” said Ewen unperturbed, “I do—Mr. Henry Pelham, my Lord Newcastle’s brother. And as you leave his house so late at night, I conclude that you must know him very well.”

Now young Glenshian pushed back his chair, his eyes glittering. “You are crazy as well as infernally insulting, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy! I do not know Mr. Pelham even by sight.”

“Then why were you coming out of his house that night?” pursued Ardroy. “You were speaking Erse to your servant, who was carrying a link. I happened to be passing, and by its light I saw enough of your face and hair to recognise you. Perhaps you had quite legitimate business with Mr. Pelham, but it would be less disquieting if we knew what it was.”

The young Chief had jumped to his feet, the shawl sliding to the ground; his expression was sufficiently menacing. Hector, all attention, had sprung up too, and was now at Ewen’s side.

“Do you imagine,” said Glenshian between his teeth, “that we are in Lochaber, Mr. Cameron, and that you can safely come the bully over me, the two of you? I thought the late Lochiel had tried to civilise his clan; it seems he had not much success! I tell you that I do not know Mr. Pelham, and have never been inside his house—and God damn you to hell,” he added in an access of fury, “how dare you put such a question to me?”

“Because,” answered Ewen unmoved, “I desire to find out who was the man that came out of Mr. Pelham’s house on the night of the fifteenth of May, a red-haired, Erse-speaking man as like you, Mr. MacPhair, as one pea is like another.”

“I’d like to know,” broke in Finlay bitterly, “why, if you see a red-headed Highlander coming out of an English minister’s door, you must jump to the conclusion not only that he is a Jacobite playing fast and loose with his principles, but that it is the future chief of Glenshian, a man who has lain near two years in the Tower for Jacobitism? Dhé, if it were not so amazing in its impudence——”

“You mean that I am to consider myself mistaken?”

“I do indeed, Mr. Cameron; and before you leave this room you’ll apologise for your assumption in any words I choose to dictate! Faith, I am not sure that an apology, even the humblest, is adequate!”

And here—if the assumption in question were mistaken—Ewen agreed with him.

“I am quite ready to apologise, Mr. MacPhair,” he said, “if you’ll prove to me that I was wrong. On my soul, I am only too anxious that you should. Or if you will convince me that your clandestine business with the Elector’s chief minister was such as an honourable man of our party might fairly have.”

“And who made you a judge over me?” cried Finlay the Red, and his left hand went to his side, gripping at nothing, for he was not wearing his sword. Then he flung out the other in a fiery gesture. “I’ll have that apology, by Heaven! You’ll be only too ready to offer it when you hear my secret!”

“If you tell me that your errand to Mr. Pelham’s house——” began Ewen.

“God’s name!” broke out the angry MacPhair, “am I to shout it at you that I never went there! He went, I don’t doubt, and you saw him coming out. I suppose therefore that I should not have been so hot with you just now. You’ll pardon me for that when you hear . . . and perhaps you’ll pardon me if I sit down again. I am still weakly.” Indeed he was palish, and there was moisture on his brow. “Be seated again, gentlemen, and I will tell you both why Mr. Cameron thought he saw me coming out of the minister’s house one night—a night, too, when, if he had inquired, he would have found that I was not in London.”

The visitors somewhat doubtfully reseated themselves, Hector frowning tensely on their host, but content to leave the weight of the business for the moment on Ardroy’s shoulders, where Mr. MacPhair himself seemed to have put it.

“The explanation,” said Glenshian, coughing a little, and picking up his shawl, “is—that I have, to my sorrow, a double.”

“A double!” exclaimed Ewen, raising his eyebrows. “Do you mean a man who resembles you?”

“Ay, a man who so resembles me that even my close acquaintance have been deceived. He dogs my path, Mr. Cameron, and I get the credit of his ill-deeds. He can even imitate my hand of write.”

“But who—who is he?”

Young Glenshian shrugged his shoulders. “Some by-blow of my father’s, I must believe. And that, no doubt (since I never heard of the Chief’s recognising him nor doing aught for him), has led him to take this method of revenge, by bringing discredit, when he can, upon my good name. ’Tis not, as you may guess, a pleasant secret for a man of honour to unveil, and I must be glad that I am dealing with gentlemen.”

“You hardly called us that a while ago,” retorted Ewen, knitting his brows. Had he been mistaken that night, in the quick, passing glare of the torch? If he had been, then he was wronging young Glenshian even more deeply than young Glenshian had wronged Archie.

Hector’s voice, silent for some time, broke in. “Is it not possible, Mr. MacPhair,” it said, “that this discreditable double of yours counts for something in my affair?”

“And how could that be?” asked Finlay with a shade of contempt. “I hold no communication with him; he has not access to my papers.”

“Your papers!” said Hector like lightning. “If he had had access—you mean that he might know something of my loss?—By Heaven, Mr. MacPhair, I believe you have communicated the circumstances of it to someone!”

For a second a very strange look had slid over Glenshian’s features. He drew himself up under the shawl. “Allow me to say, Mr. Grant, that I am heartily tired of this inquisition about the damned letter over which you make such a pother. I wish I had never been so weak as to listen to your woeful tale. But I can hold my tongue with any man on earth, and my friends would tell you that I am incapable of setting about anything resembling a slander.”

Ewen could not let it pass. He had sworn not to make it a subject of quarrel, but he could not let it pass. “If you search your memory, Mr. MacPhair,” he said meaningly, “I am afraid that you will find that is not true. I have it on the best authority that it was you who put about the slander concerning Doctor Cameron and the Loch Arkaig treasure.”

“Slander?” queried Finlay with an undisguised sneer. “My dear Mr. Cameron, the fact that the unfortunate gentleman is shortly to suffer for his loyalty, which we must all deplore, does not make my statement a slander! And, upon my soul, your presumption in coming here to take me to task, first for one supposed action, then for another, is . . .” He seemed unable to find a word to satisfy him. “But, by the God above us, if we were alone in the Highlands, or somewhere quiet . . .” He did not finish, but gritted his teeth.

“I am not going to quarrel with you over it,” said Ewen very sternly, “—at least, not now. Perhaps some day we may argue as to the ethics of your conduct—in the Highlands or elsewhere. For the moment I’ll say no more than that the action of traducing an innocent and scrupulously honourable man of your own party is worthy of this unnamed shadow of yours in whom you invite me to believe.”

“But surely, Ewen,” broke in Hector, suddenly pushing back his chair, “you are not taken in by that cock-and-bull story of a double! Why, a child——” He stopped, and involuntarily glanced behind him, as a mild crash announced that his abrupt movement had overturned some small article of furniture, and, on seeing that this was a little table with some books upon it, he got up with a muttered apology to set it on its legs again, having no wish to give Mr. MacPhair a chance to reflect upon his breeding. “Such a tale might deceive a child,” he went on meanwhile, picking up the fallen books and some papers which had accompanied them to the floor, “but not a grown——” He gave a great gasp, and was silent.

Ewen, whose attention had been withdrawn from Hector’s little mishap to the remarkable agitation which it had caused in their host, looked round once more to see the reason for the sudden cessation of his brother-in-law’s remarks. Hector was standing rigid, staring at a paper which he held, as if he could not believe his senses. And Glenshian, Glenshian the invalid, was flinging himself like a wild beast out of his chair. “Give me that!” he shouted. “My private papers . . . how dare you——”

Ewen got quickly between them. “What is it—what is it, Hector?”

Hector looked at him with a livid, dazed face. “My stolen letter’s here, in his own possession! . . . it fell out from these books . . . he had it all the time! Stand aside, Ewen, and let me get at him! No, he’s not worth steel, I’ll wring the treacherous neck of him!”

“Will you?” rang out Glenshian’s voice, breathless yet mocking, behind Ardroy. “You’ll lose a little blood first, I fancy!” He had snatched up his sword from somewhere, got between the winged chair in which he had been sitting and the corner of the hearth, and was awaiting them, a flush on his pale face and his lips drawn back over his teeth—a real wolf at bay. “I suppose you’ll need to come on both at once to give each other courage!”

Ewen gripped at Hector’s shoulder, but fury had lent that young man the agility of an eel. He slipped past Ardroy and his sword came out with a swish. “Keep the door, you, lest we be interrupted!” he cried, pushed aside the chair, and next moment was thrusting frantically at the man backed against the wall.

Himself shocked and revolted, Ewen rushed to the door and locked it, but ran back at once crying, “Hector, stop! this is madness!” To have Hector either wounded by or wounding young Glenshian here, in a brawl in a London house, would be disastrous; moreover, by the vigour of his assault, it looked as if more than wounding was in Mr. Grant’s mind, and that would be more disastrous still. Ardroy’s protest went entirely disregarded; he might not have been there. Glaring at each other, the two combatants thrust and parried without pause, steel clicking upon steel with a celerity rarely heard in a school of arms. But Glenshian was already panting, and the sweat was running in little rivers down his face. “Stop, in God’s name!” cried Ewen again; “the man’s ill, remember, Hector!”

For all response the young officer unexpectedly cut over his opponent’s blade, and all but got him in the chest; and Ewen in despair tugged out his own sword with the intention of beating up both blades. But that was not easy to do without exposing one of the duellists to a thrust from the other; and if—another method—he seized Hector, the nearer, by the shoulder and dragged him away, Glenshian would almost certainly rush at his adversary and run him through during the operation. So Ewen dropped his own sword and snatched up the heavy shawl which had fallen from the convalescent’s shoulders; then, waiting his opportunity, flung it unfolded over its owner’s head, seized his brother-in-law by the collar and swung him away staggering, and rushing in, at no small risk to himself, upon the entangled young man against the wall, who, almost screaming with rage, was just freeing himself, he seized him round the body, pinning his arms to his sides so that his still-held sword was useless.

Behind him Hector, cursing him now, was evidently preparing to come on again, and Ewen was by no means sure that he might not find his excited point in his own back. But from Finlay MacPhair there was a most unlooked-for end of resistance. His objurgations ceased, his head fell back and his knees gave; the sword in his hand went clattering to the uncarpeted floor. He would have followed it had not Ewen held him up. Hector, breathing hard, came to a standstill.

“Where have you wounded him?” demanded Ewen.

“I haven’t touched the filthy carrion,” answered Hector, inexpressibly sulky. “You prevented me, curse you! Why the devil——”

“Then it is merely exhaustion,” said Ewen. “Here, help me lift him to the bed, or that chair; he’s swooning.”

“Shamming, more like,” said Hector disgustedly. “Put him on the floor; I’d say throw him out of window but that . . . Oh, very well.”

He came to lend a hand, for big and powerful as Ewen was, the now completely unconscious Glenshian was neither small nor light. They carried him with little ceremony to the bed in the corner and dumped him on it. Ewen leant over him for a moment, shrugged his shoulders and left him there, merely observing, “He said he had not recovered of his illness.”

“Luckily for him,” was Hector’s comment.

The two stood looking at each other in the middle of the room.

“I cannot believe it!” said Hector, out of breath and still a trifle livid. “But here’s the letter.” He pulled it out of his pocket. “I knew my own writing in an instant. But what would he want with it—and how did it get into his hands?”

“We do not know yet what he wanted with it,” answered Ewen gropingly. “As to the way in which it came to his hands—he may have got it from Mr. Pelham.”

“You don’t believe that tale of a double, of course?”

“Not now.” Ewen put his hand over his eyes. “Oh, Hector, as you say, ’tis incredible! It’s like a dark, dark passage . . . one cannot see where it leads. A MacPhair of Glenshian!”

“I am going to see if there are more papers of the sort,” said Hector, beginning to rummage feverishly among the books which he had tumbled to the floor. Ewen came to his assistance. But the little pile of volumes—most of them French, and indecent—had evidently not been used as a hiding-place, nor indeed would they have made a good one. A few bills had been pushed underneath or between them, and with the bills, by some extraordinary inadvertence, Hector’s stolen letter.

“Look at your letter again,” suggested Ardroy, “and see if it bears traces of what hands it has been in.”

Hector studied it anew. “Yes, the names have been deciphered, sometimes with queries. And on the back, see, are some words in pencil. ‘You will please to return this when you have finished with it.’ But they are not signed.”

“The question is,” said Ewen reflectively, “whether Mr. Pelham handed over the letter to Glenshian, for whatever purpose, or whether Glenshian sent it to him in the first instance.”

“Yes, that is the question. And how, in the latter case, did it first come into Glenshian’s hands?”

Dark and slippery paths indeed, such as Archie had hinted at last autumn! Ewen looked round the room. There was a writing-desk in one corner. Should they break it open? The key, no doubt, was on that limp, unstirring figure on the bed, but Ewen, at least, could not bring himself to search for it there. Hector was apparently less troubled with scruples or repugnance. He went and stooped over it, and came back not with keys, but with a pocket-book, and pulled the contents out on to the table.

“More bills,” said he. “A paper of accounts . . . an assignation, or what looks like it . . . a letter in cipher, addressed to Mr. Alexander Jeanson (who is he? ’tis probably an alias) and—hallo, here’s a letter from Lille!”

He caught it up, ran his eyes over it, uttered a sound as if he had been stabbed to the heart, and handed it to Ewen.

Ewen read: ‘Lille, February 15th, 1753. I shall punctually attend to the recommendation which you sent me by the young gentleman from Troy, and should it come to pass that my namesake is taken, I’ll contrive that the loss which that gentleman has sustained shall serve as a cloak to cover Pickle, to whom commend me. C. S.’

“I don’t understand,” said Ewen, puzzled. “Who signs ‘C. S.’—is it a pretended letter from the Prince? Who is ‘Pickle’, and who is ‘the young gentleman from Troy’?”

“Myself,” answered Hector in a suffocated voice. “Is not my name a Trojan one? And ‘C. S.’—I know his writing; he has but reversed his initials, and see the reference to ‘my namesake’s’ capture—is that fox Samuel Cameron, of my regiment, to whom, to oblige Glenshian there, I took a letter in January . . . the very letter, probably, that told him of my loss, which Glenshian had just learnt from me! Was there ever such infamy—double infamy!” He glared at the bed. “And he made me his catspaw—made me myself the instrument of what may yet be my ruin. I think I’ll——”

But Ewen, as white as a sheet, was gripping his arms with vice-like strength.

“Hector, let’s go, let’s go! A terrible thought has just come to me, and if I stay I, too, shall be tempted to run my sword through him! God preserve us both from murdering a senseless man! Come, come quickly!”

“But what ails you—what is it, your thought?”

Ewen shuddered, and began to drag at him. “Come!” He glanced at the bed in a kind of horror. “I saw him move; he is coming to himself.”

He unlocked the door, still with the same nervous haste, and only just in time to avert suspicion, for steps were hurrying up the stair. A thin, pale young man, who seemed a servant, stopped at the top on seeing the two gentlemen in the doorway.

Hector kept his head. “We were just about to seek assistance for your master, Seumas,” he said in Gaelic. “He has had some kind of a fainting fit, and we have laid him on his bed.”

The gillie uttered an inarticulate cry and rushed past them. Exclamations of grief and of endearment, in the same tongue, floated out through the open door.

“We need not stay to listen to that!” said Hector scornfully. “And the dog will recover to do fresh mischief. But when he does——”

“I think he has done the worst he can ever do,” said Ewen almost inaudibly, as they went down the stairs, and he put a shaking hand to his head as though he had received a physical shock.

“That was his gillie,” whispered young Grant when they were outside. “Did you recognise him as the man who held the torch that night?”

“Instantly,” answered Ardroy, who had a strange look, as of a man sleep-walking. “But it needed not that. That was not the first time his master had come out of that door! . . . Oh, Hector, Hector, now I know, I think, on whose account it was that Archie had no trial. For whether Finlay MacPhair himself, or the unknown man who sent the information to Edinburgh from Glenbuckie, be the ‘Pickle’ whom Samuel Cameron—of Archie’s own clan and regiment—has slandered you to shield, there’s not a doubt that the centre of the black business is Finlay—a MacPhair and a Chief’s son! God help us all! is there no faith or loyalty left . . . save in the Tower?”