Читать книгу The Greatest Historical Novels & Stories of D. K. Broster - D. K. Broster - Страница 109

It was with that despairing cry in his ears that Aveling had hastened upstairs to his father’s room and held council with him. As a result of this conclave Lord Stowe wrote a fresh letter to the Duke of Argyll, saying that he was anxious to wait upon his Grace with a friend whom he was desirous of presenting to him (he did not mention the friend’s name, lest by chance the audience should be refused), but that as he was himself confined to his room with gout he would send his son in his stead, if the Duke would allow. The same afternoon the Duke replied very civilly by messenger that he would receive Lord Aveling and his friend at eleven o’clock on Monday morning. The Sabbath, he explained, he kept strictly as a day set apart from all worldly matters.

So two days were lost; but, as Aveling assured that friend, the Duke’s influence was so great that he could no doubt have Doctor Cameron reprieved on the very steps of the scaffold. And to those the Jacobite would not come till Thursday.

Nor did Ardroy have to go to the Duke of Argyll with his hat in his hand and a letter of recommendation, like a lackey seeking a place (as he had pictured himself) since he went under the auspices of the Earl of Stowe, and accompanied by that nobleman’s heir.

“I shall present you,” said Aveling to him as they went, “and then take my leave at the first opportunity. Is not that what you would prefer?”

“As you will,” replied Ewen; and then, forcing a smile, “Yes, I believe I should prefer it. You are always consideration itself, my dear lord.”

That was almost all that passed between them till they came to Argyll House. And waiting in the portico, into which there drifted a faint perfume of late lilacs from the Duke’s garden, Ewen thought, “When next I stand here, the die will have been cast, one way or the other.” His heart began to beat violently, and when the door was flung open he was so pale that his companion looked at him with some uneasiness.

But as he stepped over MacCailein Mor’s threshold Ardroy had gathered up his forces, and regained at least his outward composure. The two were ushered into a large and lofty room, sparsely but massively furnished, at the end of which hung a great blue velvet curtain suggesting another room beyond. Over the hearth voyaged the lymphad, the proud galley of Lorne, a sinister device to many a clan of the West. Ewen averted his eyes from it. How long, he wondered, would he on whose ancestral banners it had fluttered keep the suppliant waiting? . . . but fortunately he neither knew as yet what name that suppliant bore, nor, indeed, that he came to sue.

But the Duke was punctual to the moment. A large clock by the wall with a heavy pendulum of gilt and crystal struck the hour, and the echo of its chimes had not died away before the velvet curtain parted in the middle, held back by an announcing lackey.

“His Grace the Duke of Argyll!”

And he who was sometimes called the King of Scotland came through—a man of seventy, upright, dignified, and rather cold, plainly but richly dressed, with a heavy full-bottomed wig framing a delicate-featured face of much intelligence—a man who had long wielded great authority, though he had only succeeded his brother the second Duke a decade ago. For more than forty years Archibald Campbell, once Lord Islay, had been the mainstay of the English Government in the North; and all this was written, without ostentation, in his air.

Lord Aveling, who had never seen the Duke at close quarters, was impressed, and wondered what the Highlander by his side was feeling, but abstained from looking at him.

“My Lord Aveling, I think?” said Argyll pleasantly, and the young man bowed. “I am sorry to hear that the Earl of Stowe is indisposed; it gives me, however, the chance of making your acquaintance.”

He came forward with a little smile and held out his hand. “Pray present me also to this gentleman, whose name I have not the honour of knowing.”

And all at once young Lord Aveling, used as he was to all the demands of society, knew nervousness—though not for himself. Something of it was apparent in his voice as he replied, “This, your Grace, is Mr. Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, a near kinsman of the gentleman now under sentence in the Tower.”

What age had left of the Duke’s eyebrows lifted. A line appeared on either side of his mouth. “And what does Mr. Ewen Cameron”—there was the faintest stress on the patronymic—“want of me?”

And his gaze, not hostile, not piercing, but unmistakably the gaze of command, rested on Aveling’s tall companion.

“Your Grace,” began Ewen; but it seemed to him that his voice was frozen in his throat. It was not awe which enchained it, for he was not in the least overawed, but realisation of this man’s power for life or death, and of his personality. He was MacCailein Mor, the Chief of the hated, swarming and triumphant race of Campbell . . . and he seemed to be feigning ignorance of why he, the Cameron, was there to wait upon him, so that he might have the reason, which he could well have guessed, put by the petitioner into words. The moment was as bitter as death to Ardroy, and he hoped that Lord Aveling would leave them alone together. But he finished his sentence.

“Your Grace, I am come on behalf of Mrs. Cameron, and by her express desire, she now having made herself close prisoner with her husband, and being therefore unable to wait upon you herself.”

“You come as the emissary of a lady, sir?” inquired the Duke smoothly. “Your errand must have my best attention then. But we stand all this while. Pray be seated, gentlemen.” He waved them towards chairs.

“If your Grace will excuse me,” put in Lord Aveling, “I will withdraw. I came but to present Mr. Cameron in my father’s stead.”

“Both of you deputies, in fact,” said Argyll, looking from one to the other, and again he smiled the little smile which did not reach his eyes. “I am sorry to lose your company, my lord, but I know that you young men (if you’ll forgive me for calling you one) have better things to occupy you than talking affairs with an old one. Mr. Cameron and I will then bid you farewell, with regret. Commend me, if you please, to his lordship, and convey to him my condolences on his indisposition.” He shook hands again with every appearance of cordiality, a footman appeared, and Aveling was gone.

The Duke turned with equal courtesy to the visitor who remained.

“And now Mr. Cameron—Cameron of Ardroy, is it not . . . Ardroy near Loch Arkaig, if I am not mistaken? Pray be seated, and let me know in what I can serve you on Mrs. Cameron’s behalf? The chance to do so is not a pleasure of frequent occurrence where one of your name is concerned.”

“If your Grace will permit me, I had rather stand,” said Ewen somewhat hoarsely. “I am come, as I am sure you can guess, as a suppliant.”

“Is that so?” remarked the Duke, looking long and steadily at him. His face betrayed nothing. “You will forgive me, perhaps, if I myself sit, for I am old and weary.” And he seated himself slowly in a high-backed chair. “You come, you say, as a suppliant, and I am to see in you the representative of Mrs. Cameron?”

“If you please, my Lord Duke—of a woman who turns to you, in her mortal distress, as her last hope.”

“I think,” said the Duke of Argyll in a soft voice, “that with a Highland gentleman such as yourself I prefer to be MacCailein Mor.”

Ewen swallowed hard. It had come to him that he could only get through his mission if he forgot that fact.

“Because for one thing,” went on Argyll, “if you are a kinsman of Doctor Cameron’s you are equally a kinsman of his brother, the late Lochiel, and of the boy who is Lochiel now.”

“Yes, I am a kinsman of all three,” said Ewen in a low voice. Archibald Campbell was trying, was he, to fancy that in some sort he had the Chief of Clan Cameron before him, about to beg for mercy? “A kinsman by marriage. And do not think, MacCailein Mor,”—he gave him the title since he wished it, and had every right to it—“do not think that Doctor Cameron himself knows of his wife’s appeal to you!”

“No? But let us be clear, Mr. Cameron, on what score she . . . you . . . which am I to say?—is appealing to me. You have not yet informed me.”

Ewen’s lip gave a little curl as he drew himself up. The Campbell knew perfectly well the nature of that appeal. He himself did not look much like a suppliant, as he stood there facing the Duke, nor did he feel like one, but he did his best to keep his tone that of a petitioner. “Mrs. Cameron desires to throw herself at your Grace’s feet, as at those of the foremost man in Scotland, whose wish is paramount with the Government in all things Scottish, to beg, to implore you to use your great influence to have the sentence on her husband commuted.”

“Commuted,” said Argyll after a moment. “Commuted to what?”

“To imprisonment, to transportation—to anything save an undeserved death.”

The Duke leant forward, his fine hands, half-hidden by their ruffles, grasping the lion-headed arms of his chair. “Undeserved, do you say, Mr. Cameron? A man comes from abroad, with every circumstance of secrecy, not once or twice only, but constantly, during a period of seven years, to work against the established government in the North, to foment disaffection by any means in his power, to promise foreign intervention in aid of it—all this in a country just settling down after a most disastrous upheaval, in which he, too, bore a prominent part . . . and you call his death undeserved!”

“Having regard to Doctor Cameron’s private character,” replied Ardroy firmly, “I do. Your Grace must know—what on all sides is acknowledged to be the case—how blameless a reputation he bears and how humane, and how strenuously, before the troubles, he upheld all Lochiel’s efforts for the betterment of the clan. It was largely due to him, too, that Glasgow did not fare worse during the hostilities, and that Kirkintilloch was spared, and Mr. Campbell of Shawfield’s house and property protected. Doctor Cameron’s is not the case of an ordinary plotter, my lord.”

“In what manner can any plotter be extraordinary, Mr. Cameron, save perchance in the amount of harm he does?” asked the Duke. “In that certainly Doctor Cameron has been singular. Since the year 1747 his comings and goings, or his supposed comings and goings, have kept Lochaber and the West in a continual ferment. In his private character he may be all that you urge and more, yet he has proved the veritable stormy petrel of the Highlands, and the sentence on him is so well deserved that if I were to crawl on all fours to the English Government they would not remit it.”

“You underrate your power, MacCailein Mor,” said Ewen in a low voice. O God, did he mean that, or was he merely holding out for more fervid, more grovelling entreaties? “You underrate your power,” he repeated. “And you would show more than your power, your . . . generosity . . . by intervening on behalf of a man whose ancestors and yours——”

“No doubt,” broke in Argyll before the sentence was completed. “But that would be somewhat of a selfish luxury. I have to consider my country, not my own reputation for magnanimity.”

Ewen seized upon this passionately. “My lord, my lord, you would be considering your country! The best interests of this Government are surely not served by the carrying out of this extraordinarily harsh sentence, which your Grace must be aware is agitating all London! There is no doubt whatever—and in your heart you must know it—that an act of mercy on the part of the present dynasty would do far more towards establishing it in popular esteem than the depriving one Jacobite of life on a seven-year-old attainder could possibly do.”

“When I spoke of my country, Mr. Cameron,” said the Duke with emphasis, “I meant my native land, Scotland, whose welfare and good settlement I had at heart before you were born. Now you desire that I should induce the English Government to commute Doctor Cameron’s sentence in order that he may have the opportunity of going back to injure her again.” And as Ewen tried to protest he went on more strongly: “No, Mr. Cameron, if I advise His Majesty’s ministers to commute the sentence to one of perpetual imprisonment, that is only to make of Doctor Cameron a constant centre of intrigue and trouble, ending after some years in his escape, as George Kelly escaped in the end (for there are plenty of crypto-Jacobites in London who will conspire though they will not fight). If transportation is substituted for imprisonment, then he may escape and return to Scotland more easily still. No, I cannot now go back upon the work and convictions of a lifetime, and deliberately plant again in my country’s breast the thorn which by good fortune has just been plucked from it.”

“You said a while ago,” murmured Ewen with stiff, cold lips, the great room grown a little misty and unreal about him, “you said that the Government would not grant you this boon though you crawled to them—and yet one of its first officials has stated that such a request would not be denied for a moment if you made it. Now you say that it goes against your conscience to make it. Which is it, my Lord Duke?”

Argyll got up from his chair.

“You are a very bold young man, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy! Are you trying to bring me to book?” The look which flickered over his pale, dignified features was nearer amusement than irritation. “I do not think that Mrs. Cameron would have taken that line. Believe me, it is not a wise one!”

“I will take any line that . . . that pleases your Grace!” declared Ewen, desperate. Was he throwing away what Jean Cameron might have won? “Do you wish me, who, though I am not of Lochiel, have a strain of the blood and am a cadet of the clan, do you wish me to kneel to you? I will, here and now, if you will ask for Archibald Cameron’s life!”

“There is no need for you to assume that uncomfortable position, Mr. Cameron,” replied the Duke drily. “Spiritually you are already upon your knees. And I am sorry if the floor is hard . . . since I cannot for a moment entertain your request. . . . It is a harsh saying, no doubt, but a very true one, when matters of this kind are in question (and it was an Englishman who uttered it)—‘Stone-dead hath no fellow’. I am grieved that I must endorse it in the case of Doctor Cameron, for I consider that the Government is more than justified in carrying out this long overdue sentence—a sentence better merited, indeed, to-day than it was even at the time of its infliction—and for the sake of Scotland’s welfare I cannot advise them to do otherwise.”

Ewen put his hand up to his throat. Otherwise he did not move. Those were the accents of finality; to entreat further was only to batter oneself against a rock, to lower Archie himself in the eyes of the Campbell. Would Jean Cameron now have wept, implored, clung round the knees of MacCailein Mor? Surely not.

“It is not,” went on Argyll, walking slowly to and fro with his hands behind his back, “it is not as though Doctor Cameron had shown the slightest sign of real repentance for his ill-doings, the slightest intention of future amendment. His answers before the Privy Council in April were inspired by the most obstinate intention of concealing every fact he knew under cover of having ‘forgotten’ it, and when last month, immediately after sentence had been passed upon him, he, in a conversation with Mr. Sharpe, the Solicitor to the Treasury, seemed to lament his unhappy position, and to say that if His Majesty extended his clemency to him he would strive to lead his fellow-clansmen into less treasonable paths, there was not one word of the only course which could conceivably merit such clemency—the making of disclosures.”

Through the silence the slow swing of the pendulum of the great gilt clock behind Ewen seemed to emphasise how fast the sands were slipping in the glass of Archibald Cameron’s life. Ardroy clenched one hand round the wrist of the other; his eyes were fixed, not on the Duke, who had come to a standstill, but on the shaft of yellowish light which penetrated the aperture between the curtains. So that was the one chance, a mocking rift of hope like that blade of thin sunlight, a spar in the tumbling sea which one must let drive by, and drown without clutching. . . .

“ ‘Disclosures’,” he said at last; and there was nothing in his voice to show what he thought of the word or the thing. “You mean, my Lord Duke, that if Doctor Cameron were to become a second Murray of Broughton, that if he would tell all he knows——”

The Duke held up his hand quickly. “Pray, Mr. Cameron, do not associate me with any suggestion so affronting to a Highlander! I merely mention that Mr. Sharpe, as I remember, seemed much disappointed—for the Government are well aware that there is some new scheme afoot. You must draw what conclusion you can from that. For myself, I think the bargain would scarce be worth the Government’s while. . . . Yet, out of a perhaps misplaced humanity, I will go so far as to point out that that door, which was once open, may, for aught I know, be open still.”

Open still—open still; the crystal pendulum swung on—but that was not what it was saying.

“Your Grace is very good . . .” Ewen heard his own voice, and wondered at its cold steadiness, since his heart felt neither cold nor steady. “But that is not a door at which a Cameron of Lochiel could ever knock. I will detain you no longer, MacCailein Mor.”

* * * * *

He supposed that Argyll must have summoned a footman, for soon after that he passed once more through the pillars of the portico. And once outside, in the brief summer shower, laden with that scent of lilacs, which was now making sweet the June dust, all the leaping flame of repressed feeling sank to extinction, and in its place there was nothing but ice about his heart. He had failed; the last hope of all was gone. On Thursday——

And now he must write to Jean Cameron and tell her.