Читать книгу The Greatest Historical Novels & Stories of D. K. Broster - D. K. Broster - Страница 73

Ten o’clock next morning saw Lieutenant Grant outside Beaufort Buildings, and knocking, as directed, at the second house on the right-hand side. The woman who opened told him to go to the upper floor, as the Scotch gentleman lodged there. Up, therefore, Hector went, and, knocking again, brought out a young, shabbily dressed manservant.

“Can I see Mr. MacPhair of Glenshian?”

“Himself is fery busy,” replied the man, frowning a little. He was obviously a Highlander too.

“Already?” asked Hector. “I came early hoping to find him free of company.”

“Himself is not having company; he is writing letters.”

Hector drew himself up. “Tell Mr. Macphair,” he said in Gaelic, “that his acquaintance Lieutenant Hector Grant of the régiment d’Albanie is here, and earnestly desires to see him.”

At the sound of that tongue the frown left the gillie’s face, he replied in the same medium that he would ask his master, and, after seeking and apparently receiving permission from within, opened wide the door of the apartment.

Hector, as he entered, received something of a shock. To judge from his surroundings, Finlay MacPhair, son and heir of a powerful chief, was by no means well-to-do, and he, or his servant, was untidy in his habits. A small four-post bed with dingy crimson hangings in one corner, together with an ash-strewn hearth upon whose hobs sat a battered kettle and a saucepan, showed that his bedchamber, living apartment and kitchen were all one. In the middle of the room stood a large table littered with a medley of objects—papers, cravats, a couple of wigs, a plate, a cane, a pair of shoes. The owner himself, in a shabby flowered dressing-gown, sat at the clearer end of this laden table mending a quill, a red-haired young man of a haughty and not over agreeable cast of countenance. A half-empty cup of coffee stood beside him. He rose as Hector came in, but with an air a great deal more arrogant than courteous.

“At your service, sir; what can I do for you?”

“It’s not from him I’ll ever borrow money!” resolved Hector instantly. But Finlay MacPhair’s face had already changed. “Why, ’tis Mr. Grant of Lord Ogilvie’s regiment! That stupid fellow of mine misnamed you. Sit down, I pray you, and take a morning with me. Away with that cold filth, Seumas!” he added petulantly, indicating the coffee cup with aversion.

They took a dram together, and Hector was able to study his host; a young man in the latter half of the twenties like himself, well-built and upstanding. The open dressing-gown showed the same mixture of poverty and pretension as the room, for Mr. Grant had now observed that over the unswept hearth with its cooking pots hung a small full-length oil portrait of a man whom he took to be old John MacPhair, the Chief himself, in his younger days, much betartaned and beweaponed, with his hand on an immensely long scroll which would no doubt on closer view be found to detail his descent from the famed Red Finlay of the Battles. In the same way the Chief’s son wore a very fine embroidered waistcoat over a shirt which had certainly been in the hands of an indifferent laundress.

“Well, Mr. Grant,” said he, when the ‘morning’ had been tossed off, “and on what errand do you find yourself here? I shall be very glad to be of assistance to you if it is within my power.”

He put the question graciously, yet with all the air of a chief receiving a not very important tacksman.

“I have had a misfortune, Mr. MacPhair, which, if you’ll permit me, I will acquaint you with,” said Hector, disliking the prospect of the recital even more than he had anticipated. And he made it excessively brief. Last September a spy had treacherously knocked him on the head in the Highlands, and abstracted the pocket-book containing all his papers. Since then he had been confined in Fort William. (Of the subsequent theft of his money in London he was careful not to breathe a word.)

“Lost all your papers in the Highlands, and been shut up in Fort William!” said Finlay MacPhair, his sandy eyebrows high. “I might say you’ve not the luck, Mr. Grant! And why, pray, do you tell me all this?”

Hector, indeed, was almost wondering the same thing. He swallowed hard.

“Because I don’t know how the devil I’m to get out of England without papers of some kind. Yet I must rejoin my regiment at once. And it occurred to me——”

“I can’t procure you papers, sir!” broke in young MacPhair, short and sharp.

“No, naturally not,” agreed Hector, surprised at the sudden acrimony of the tone. “But I thought that maybe you knew someone who——”

He stopped, still more astonished at the gaze which his contemporary in the dressing-gown had fixed upon him.

“You thought that I—I—knew someone who could procure you papers!” repeated Finlay the Red, getting up and leaning over the corner of the untidy table. “What, pray, do you mean by that, Mr. Grant? Why the devil should you think such a thing? I’d have you remember, if you please, that Lincoln’s Inn Fields are within convenient distance of this place . . . and I suppose you are familiar with the use of the small-sword!”

Hector, too, had leapt to his feet. He had apparently met with a temper more inflammable than his own. Yet he could imagine no reason for this sudden conflagration. He was too much taken aback for adequate anger. “Mr. MacPhair, I’ve no notion what I have done to offend you, so ’tis impossible for me to apologise. . . . Not that I’m in the habit of apologising to any man, Highland or Lowland!” he added, with his head well back.

For a moment or so the two young Gaels faced each other like two mutually suspicious dogs. Then for the second time Finlay MacPhair’s demeanour changed, and the odd expression went out of his eyes. “I see now it’s I that should apologise, Mr. Grant, and to a fellow-Highlander I can do it. I misjudged you; I recognise that you did not intend in any way to insult me by hinting that I was in relations with the English Government, which was what I took your words to mean.” And he swept with a cold smile over Hector’s protestation that he was innocent of any such intention. “I fear I’m ever too quick upon the point of honour; but that’s a fault you’ll pardon, no doubt, for I’m sure you are as particular of yours as I of mine. Sit down again, if you please, and let us see whether our two heads cannot find out some plan for you to get clear of England without the tracasserie at the ports which you anticipate.”

Rather bewildered, Hector complied. And now his fiery host had become wonderfully friendly. He stood with his hands in his breeches pockets and said thoughtfully, “Now, couldn’t I be thinking of someone who would be of use to you? There are gentlemen in high place of Jacobite leanings, and some of the City aldermen are bitten that way. Unfortunately, I myself have to be so prodigious circumspect, lest I find myself in prison again . . .”

“Nay, Mr. MacPhair, I’d not have you endanger your liberty for me!” cried Hector on the instant. “Once in the Tower is enough, I’m sure, for a lifetime.”

“Near two years there, when a man’s but twenty, is enough for a brace of lifetimes,” the ex-captive assured him. “Nay . . . let me think, let me think!” He thought, walking to and fro meanwhile, the shabby dressing-gown swinging round the fine athletic figure which Hector noted with a tinge of envy. “Yes,” he resumed after a moment, “there’s an old gentleman in Government service who is under some small obligation to me, and he chances to know Mr. Pelham very well. I should have no scruples about approaching him; he’ll remember me—and as I say, he is in my debt. I’ll do it . . . ay, I’ll do it!” He threw himself into his chair again, and in the same impulsive manner pulled towards him out of the confusion a blank sheet of paper which, sliding along, revealed a half-written one beneath.

At that lower sheet young Glenshian looked and smiled. “I was about writing to Secretary Edgar at Rome when you came, as you see.” He pushed the page towards his visitor, and Hector, who had no wish to supervise Mr. MacPhair’s correspondence, but could not well avert the eyes which he was thus specifically invited to cast upon it, did see a few scraps of Finlay MacPhair’s ill-spelt if loyal remarks to that trusted servant of their exiled King’s, something about ‘constant resolucion to venture my owne person’, ‘sincer, true and reale sentiments’, and a desire to be ‘laid at his Majesty and Royal Emenency’s feet’. But he could not think why he should be invited to peruse them.

The letter upon which he was now engaged on his compatriot’s behalf Finlay did not offer to show the latter, though had Hector looked over the writer’s shoulder he would have been more impressed with its wording than with the vagaries of its orthography, and would certainly have found its contents more arresting than those of the loyal epistle to Rome.

“Dear Grandpapa,” wrote Finlay MacPhair of Glenshian with a scratching quill to the old gentleman in Government service whom, since he was no relation of his, he must have known very well thus playfully to address, “Dear Grandpapa, Get our ffrind to writ a pass for a Mr. Hector Grant to go to France without delai. Hee’s harmlesse, and my oblidging an oficer of Lord Ogilby’s regt. in this maner will not faile to rayse my creditt with the party, which is a matter I must now pay particular atention tow. Besides, I am in hopes to make some litle use of him leater. And let me know, if you please, when we shall meet to talk of the afair I last wrot of, otherwise I must undow what I have begun. Excuse my ansiety, and belive me most sincerly, with great estime and affection, Your most oblidged humble servt, Alexander Jeanson.”

And this was addressed, in the same independent spelling, to “The Honble Guin Voughan at his house in Golden Square,” but Hector did not see the direction, for the writer folded and sealed in the letter in an outer sheet on which he wrote, “To Mr. Tamas Jones, at Mr. Chelburn’s, a Chimmist in Scherwood Street.”

“That is not the real name of my acquaintance, Mr. Grant,” said the scribe with great frankness, handing him the missive. “And yon is the address of an apothecary at whose shop you should leave this letter with as little delay as possible. Call there again by noon to-morrow, and I’ll engage there’ll be somewhat awaiting you that will do what you wish.”

Hector thanked him warmly, so genuinely grateful that he failed to perceive that he had not wronged the punctilious Mr. MacPhair after all, for he did know someone who could procure useful papers for a Jacobite in difficulties. The benefactor, however, cut short his thanks by asking him a question which somewhat allayed his gratitude.

“I hope, Mr. Grant,” he said, looking at him meaningly, “that there was nothing of a compromising nature among the papers which were taken from you in the Highlands?”

Hector reddened, having all along desired to obscure that fact. He fenced.

“No papers lost in such a manner, Mr. MacPhair, but must, I fear, be regarded as compromising.”

“But naturally,” replied young Glenshian somewhat impatiently. “As you no doubt found when you were in Fort William. Did they question you much there about them?”

“No. My papers were not in their hands, as far as I know.”

“Then why were you?”

“Oh, ’tis a long story, not worth troubling you with. But the gist of it is that I gave myself up.”

He had succeeded in astonishing Mr. MacPhair. “Gave yourself up!” exclaimed the latter. “In God’s name, what for? Gave yourself up at Fort William! I fear the knock on your head must have been a severe one!”

“Perhaps it was,” said Hector shortly. “At any rate I accomplished nothing by doing it, and on Christmas Day I escaped.”

“My dear Mr. Grant, you astonish me more and more! I took it that you had been released. And after escaping you come to London, of all places!”

“It was on my way to France,” said the adventurer sulkily. And he then added, in a not very placatory manner, “If you wish to give me to understand that on this account you prefer to withdraw the letter you have written, here it is!” He drew it out of his pocket.

Finlay MacPhair waved his hand. “Not for worlds, not for worlds! It is the more needed; and your escape shall make no difference, even though it was unknown to me when I penned that request. But I should like to know, Mr. Grant, why you gave yourself up. You must have had some extraordinary reason for so extraordinary a proceeding.” And, as Hector hesitated, foreseeing to what a truthful answer might lead, he added, in a tone which very plainly showed offence, “I have surely earned the right to a little more frankness on your part, Mr. Grant!”

The claim could not be gainsaid. Hector resigned himself, and in as few words as possible gave that reason. Even then he somehow contrived to keep out Doctor Cameron’s name.

Glenshian threw himself back in his chair, and looked at the narrator under lowered lids. “So you played this heroic rôle because you considered that you had compromised your brother-in-law by the loss of your papers. Then there was something compromising in them?”

“No, not to him . . . I see I had best explain the whole matter,” said Hector in an annoyed voice, and being tired of cross-examination, came out bluntly and baldly with everything—the loss of his prematurely written letter to Cluny Macpherson (mostly unintelligible, he hoped, owing to its cipher), Ardroy’s going back to warn Lochdornie, his finding instead Doctor Cameron and bringing him to his house, the search there and Ewen’s arrest. To all this the young chief listened with the most unstirring attention, his hand over his mouth, and those curiously pale hazel eyes of his fixed immovably on the speaker.

“Dhé, that’s a tale!” said he slowly at the end. “And this letter of yours, with its mention of the arrival of Lochdornie and Doctor Cameron—you never discovered what had become of it?”

“No. But I am pretty sure, as I say,” replied Hector, “that it never found its way to Fort William. I was, I confess, in despair lest harm should come to either of them through its loss, but I cannot think that any has. ’Tis now more than three months since it was stolen from me, and by this time the Government has probably learnt, from other sources of their presence in Scotland.”

Frowning over his own confession, and remembering too at that moment how Alison that day at Fort William had spoken of searches made by the military after the Doctor, he did not see the sharp glance which was cast at him.

“Ay, ’tis very probable they know it,” said Mr. MacPhair drily. “What part your lost letter may have played in their knowledge . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “And indeed,” he went on, with an air of disapproval, “I cannot anyways commend this mission of my kinsman Lochdornie’s and Doctor Cameron’s. Had the Prince taken my advice on the matter when he made it known to me—as, considering my large interests and influence in the Western Highlands, he had done well to—they would not have been sent upon so risky an undertaking. However, since it has been set on foot, I hope my cousin Lochdornie will find means to report to me on his proceedings there; which indeed,” added the future Chief, “it is no less than his duty to do. As yet I have had no word from him. It would be well did I hear from the Doctor also. I only trust he may not be engaged in damping down the ardour of the clans, as he did three years ago.”

“Doctor Cameron damp down the clans!” exclaimed Hector, thinking he had not heard aright. “My dear Mr. MacPhair, he’s more like, surely, to inflame them with too little cause. . . . And how should the Prince have selected him for this mission if that were his habit?”

Finlay shrugged his shoulders. “Archie Cameron has always had the Prince’s ear since the day when Lochiel sent him to Arisaig to dissuade His Royal Highness from his enterprise. Moreover, ’twas to the Doctor’s own interest to come to Scotland again. There’s always the treasure of Loch Arkaig, about which he knows even more than Cluny—more than any man alive.” The half-sneering expression habitual to his face leapt into full life as he went on, “That gold is like honey to a bee in his case. He dipped pretty deeply into it, did the immaculate Doctor Archibald, when we were in Lochaber together in the ’49!”

“But not upon his own account!” cried Hector. “Not for himself, Mr. MacPhair! That I’ll never believe!”

“Your sister is married to a man that’s akin to the Doctor, you told me,” was Glenshian’s retort to this. “Unfortunately, I was there with Archibald Cameron at the time . . . Well, there’s many a man that’s true enough to the Cause, but can’t keep his fingers from the Cause’s money. I don’t blame him overmuch, with that throng family of young children to support. I’ve known what it is to be so near starving myself, Mr. Grant, that I have had to sell my shoe-buckles for bread—’twas when I was released from the Tower. So I’m aware why Archie Cameron finds it suits him to go back to the Highlands at any cost.”

Hector stared at him, incredulous, yet conscious of a certain inner discomfort. For it was quite true that young Glenshian had accompanied Doctor Cameron and his own kinsman Lochdornie to the Highlands in 1749, and rumours had run among the Scottish exiles over the water that since that date the two latter were scarcely on speaking terms. But when Hector had learnt that these two were going over again together, he had supposed the report much exaggerated. Still, he who spoke with such conviction was the future Chief of Glenshian, and deeper, surely, in the innermost councils of Jacobitism than he, a mere landless French officer.

“Mr. Grant, I am going to ask you a favour in my turn,” here said Finlay the Red, with an air of having dealt conclusively with the last subject. “I expect you know Captain Samuel Cameron of your regiment?”

“Crookshanks, as we call him?” answered Hector a little absently, being engaged in dissipating the momentary cloud of humility by the reflection that as one Highland gentleman he was the equal of any other, Chief or no. “The brother of Cameron of Glenevis—that’s the man you mean?”

“That is the man. They say that one good turn deserves another; will you then take him a letter from me? I’m wanting a messenger this while back, and since you are returning to the regiment, here is my chance, if you will oblige me?”

Only too pleased to confer some obligation, as a species of set-off against his own, Hector replied that he would be delighted, so Finlay once more seized paper and took up his pen. For a few seconds he nibbled the quill reflectively, the fraction of a smile at the corner of his mouth; then he dashed off a few lines, sealed the missive carefully, and handed it to its bearer. “You’ll not, I hope, be robbed again, Mr. Grant!” he observed, and yet, despite the little laugh which accompanied the words, Hector felt that after what had passed he could not well take offence at them. He accepted the gibe and the letter with meekness, and prepared to take his leave. Young Glenshian rose too.

“Your visit, Mr. Grant,” he said agreeably, “has been of this advantage to me, that I know now from a first hand source that my kinsman and Doctor Cameron did really make their appearance in the Highlands this autumn. In the absence of news from either of them I have sometimes wondered whether the plan had not fallen through at the last. Though even at that,” he added, smiling, “the evidence is scarcely first hand, since you did not actually set eyes on either of them.”

“But my brother-in-law, with whom I was imprisoned——” began Hector.

“Ay, I forgot—a foolish remark of mine that! I’ll pass the testimony as first hand,” said Finlay lightly. “But where, I wonder, did the Doctor go after he had evaded capture at your brother-in-law’s house?”

“That I never knew,” responded Hector. “In Fort William neither Ardroy nor I had much opportunity for learning such things.”

“He’ll have made for Loch Arkaig as usual, I expect,” commented young MacPhair. He looked at the table. “Mr. Grant, you’ll take another dram before you leave?”

“No, thank you, Mr. MacPhair,” replied Hector with a heightened colour. If he could not swallow Mr. MacPhair’s insinuations against Doctor Cameron’s honesty, neither would he swallow his whisky. He went and took up his hat, young Glenshian watching him with that curl of the lip so natural to him that he appeared always to be disdaining his company.

And then Hector remembered the question which, during these days in London, no Englishman had satisfactorily answered for him. Striving to banish the resentment from his voice and look, he said, “May I venture to ask a question in my turn, Mr. MacPhair? Pray do not answer it if it be too indiscreet. But, as I have told you, it was the proposed scheme for . . . a certain course of action in London which brought me over the sea last September. Why did that scheme come to naught?”

Mr. MacPhair did not seem to find the question indiscreet, nor did he pause to consider his answer. “Why, for the same reason that the Rising failed in ’46,” he replied with prompt scorn. “Because your English Jacobite is a man of fine promises and no performance, and as timid as a hare! The very day was fixed—the tenth of November—and nothing was done. However, perhaps you’ll yet hear something to rejoice you before the summer is out. Well, a good journey to you, Mr. Grant; commend me to my friends over there. I am very glad to have been of service to you.”

In his worn dressing-gown, surrounded by that clamorous disorder, Fionnlagh Ruadh nevertheless dismissed his visitor with an air so much de haut en bas that a sudden heavy strain was thrown on the cord of Hector’s gratitude. He bowed, biting his lip a little.

“I hope I may be able to repay you one day, Mr. MacPhair,” he said formally, and thought, “May the Devil fly with me to the hottest corner of hell if I don’t . . . somehow!”

“Seumas,” called the young chief, raising his voice, “show this gentleman downstairs.”

And the gillie, who was peeling potatoes on the landing, hastened to obey. Hector was chagrined that he could not slip a vail into the bony hand, but, not having a penny himself, how could he?

‘Arrogant, touchy, and vain as a peacock!’ was his summary of his late host as he walked away from the Strand in the direction of the ‘chimmist’ in Sherwood Street. But the peacock had done him a real service, and in mere gratitude he ought to try to forget that to-day’s impression of Finlay MacPhair of Glenshian had not been a pleasant one.

In any case it was soon swept away by the mingled relief and mortification caused by a small packet awaiting him at his lodging, which, on being opened, was found to contain his purse. Then they had known of his loss all the time at the ‘White Cock’—or guessed! He had only made himself more of a laughing-stock by refusing to receive his property!