Читать книгу Collected Works (Historical Novel) - D. K. Broster - Страница 101

The Earl of Stowe received the Highlander in his own study that afternoon. He was extremely gracious, made many references to his rescue and to his gratitude, announced that, after reflection, he had come to the conclusion that the Government would certainty do well to spare the life of so amiable and humane a gentleman as Doctor Cameron appeared to be, and that he should use his utmost endeavours to persuade them to do so. He could not, naturally, say what success would attend his efforts, and he warned his visitor not to be too sanguine. Yet a great deal of public interest and sympathy was undoubtedly being aroused by the case. For his part, he had been very favourably impressed by the Jacobite’s appearance, and by his manly and decent bearing on a most trying occasion.

“You, I understand, Mr. Cameron, were not able to be present in the King’s Bench when he was sentenced. My son made a suggestion to me with regard to that, after seeing you this morning. I fancy, from what he said, that you would be gratified if I could procure you an order to visit Doctor Cameron in the Tower?”

“Gratified!” exclaimed Ewen, in a tone which left no doubt of the fact. “My lord, you would be repaying my trifle of assistance last night a hundred times over! Does your lordship mean that?”

“Certainly I do,” replied his lordship, “and I think that it is a matter within my power, since I know Lord Cornwallis somewhat well. To-day is Friday; I will try to procure you an order for next Monday. But if it is granted you would, I fear, have to submit to a search on entering the Tower, for I understand that they are keeping Doctor Cameron very strictly.”

Ewen intimated that that process would not deter him, and, thanking the Earl almost with tears in his eyes, prepared to withdraw, a little uncertain about his next step. Was Lord Stowe, for instance, aware that the Countess also wished to see his visitor? Yes, fortunately, for he was saying so.

“. . . And you will excuse me if I do not myself take you to my lady. An enemy who, I trust, will not attack you for many years yet is threatening me to-day, and just at present I am using this foot as little as possible.” It was with a wry smile that the Earl hobbled to the bell-pull.

* * * * *

A large portrait of Aveling as a ravishingly beautiful child, playing with a spaniel, hung over the fireplace in Lady Stowe’s boudoir; another of him as a young man was on the wall opposite to the door, while a miniature of a boy who could only have been he stood conspicuously on a table among various delicate trifles in porcelain or ivory. All these Ewen saw while looking eagerly round for some memento of his dead friend, of which he could detect no trace. Then a door at the other end of the warm, perfumed room opened, and the mistress of the place came in, regally tall, in dove-grey lutestring, the black ribbon, with its single dangling pearl, which clasped her slender throat, defining the still perfect contour of her little chin—a famous toast who could afford to dress simply, even when she had a mind to a fresh conquest.

“Mr. Cameron, this is kind of you,” she said, as he bent over her hand. Save Alison’s he had heard no sweeter voice. “It is even generous, for I fear that your reception by my son last night was not what it should have been, considering the debt we all owe you.”

Wondering not a little what explanation Lord Aveling had subsequently given his mother of his behaviour, Ewen replied that the difference which had unfortunately arisen between them in Scotland had quite justified Lord Aveling’s coldness, but that they had afterwards come to a complete understanding.

“So my lord told me,” said the Countess, “and indeed my son also. But he was mysterious, as young men delight to be. I know not whether you disagreed over the weather, or politics, or over the usual subject—a woman.” Here she flashed a smiling glance at him. “But I see Mr. Cameron, that you are not going to tell me . . . therefore it was the last. I hope she was worth it?”

“If it had been a woman,” replied her visitor, “surely your son’s choice, Lady Stowe, would have been such as you would have approved. However, our difference was over something quite other. You will remember that I do not share Lord Aveling’s political allegiances.”

Lady Stowe smiled. “I suppose I must be content with that, and put away the suspicion that you fell out over . . . sharing an allegiance which was not political!”

“As to that, my lady,” said Ewen, “I give you my word of honour.” Entirely wrong as she was in her diagnosis, the remembrance of that love-letter made him very wishful to leave the dangerous proximity of Miss Georgina Churchill, lest by any look or word he should betray the secret he had so discreditably learnt and so faithfully sworn to keep.

“But you are standing all this while,” exclaimed Lady Stowe. “Be seated, I pray. Have you seen my lord, and is he able to do what you wish?”

“His lordship has been most kind, and promised to use his influence,” said Ewen as he obeyed—extremely relieved at the change of subject. “And knowing that influence to be great, I have proportionate hopes.”

“You must command me too, if there is anything that I can do,” said the Countess softly. “The Princess Amelia might be approached, for instance; no stone must be left unturned. But fortunately there is a good while yet. Do you know many people in London, Mr. Cameron?”

Ewen replied that he did not, that he had never been there before, though he knew Paris well.

“Ah, there you have the advantage of me, sir,” observed his hostess. “I have never been to Paris; it must by all accounts, be a prodigious fine city. Do you know the Ambassador, the Earl of Albemarle?”

“No, my lady—not as an ambassador, at least. He was in command at Fort Augustus when I was a prisoner there in the summer of ’46. But I never saw him.”

He wanted to talk about Keith Windham, not to exchange banalities about Paris and diplomats, and hoped that a reference to the Rising might bring about this consummation. In a measure, it did. Lady Stowe turned her powdered head away for a moment.

“Yes, I remember,” she said in a low voice. “It was the Earl who gave my unfortunate elder son the commission which led to his death. Aveling has told me the story which he had from you—no, no need to repeat it, Mr. Cameron, for the recital must be painful to you also. And to a mother . . . you can guess . . . her first-born, murdered——” She was unable to continue; she put a frail handkerchief, with a scent like some dream of lilies, for an instant to her mouth, and Ewen could see that her beautiful eyes were full of tears.

And he pictured Alison (or, for the matter of that, himself) bereaved by violent means of Donald. . . . He began to say, with deep feeling, how good of her it was to receive him, seeing that he had been, in a sense, the cause of Major Windham’s death, and once again the moonlit sands of Morar blotted out for a second what was before his eyes.

“I was . . . wholly devoted to him,” went on Keith’s mother, in the same sweet, shaken voice; “so proud of his career . . . so—— But that must not make me unjust. It was to be, no doubt. . . . And I am very glad to have you here, Mr. Cameron, the last person who saw my dear son alive.”

And she looked at him with a wonderfully soft and welcoming glance, considering what painful memories the sight of him might be supposed to call up. Who was Ewen, the least personally vain of men, and absorbed besides in far other reflections, to guess that Lady Stowe, like old Invernacree, had found him the finest piece of manhood she had ever seen, and that she was wondering whether the charm which had never yet failed her with the opposite sex would avail to bring to her feet this tall Highlander, already bound by a sentimental tie—though not exactly the tie which a lady desirous of forgetting her years would have chosen.

She put away her handkerchief. “But it is wrong and selfish, do you not think, Mr. Cameron, to dwell too much on painful memories? I am sure my dear Keith would not wish to see us sad. He is happy in Heaven, and it is our duty to make the best of this sometimes uncheerful world.—I am holding a small rout here upon the Thursday in next week; will you give me the pleasure of your company at it?”

Ewen was conscious of the kind of jolt caused when a hitherto decorously travelling chaise goes unexpectedly over a large stone.

“I fear I shall be too much occupied, my lady,” he stammered. “I thank you, but I must devote all my time to——”

“Now, do not say to conspiring,” she admonished him, smiling. “As a good Whig I shall have to denounce you if you do!”

“If it be conspiracy to try to procure the commutation of Doctor Cameron’s sentence,” answered Ewen, “then his lordship is conspiring also.”

“Very true,” admitted Lady Stowe. “We will not, then, call it by that name. But, Mr. Cameron, you cannot spend all your time writing or presenting petitions. What do you say to coming to a small card-party of my intimate friends, on Monday? You can hardly hope to be accomplishing anything so soon as that!”

Ewen bowed. “I am deeply grateful to your ladyship, but I am in hopes of an order to visit Doctor Cameron in the Tower on that day, and since I do not know for what hour the permission will be granted——”

“Mr. Cameron, you are as full of engagements as any London beaux! And an order for the Tower! How are you going to procure that—’twill not be easy. Ah, the Earl, I suppose?”

“His lordship has been so good as to promise to try to obtain one.”

Lady Stowe made a moue. “I vow I shall ask Lord Cornwallis not to grant it! Nay, I was but jesting. Yet you are vastly tiresome, sir. If you should not get the order will you promise me to come and take a hand at quadrille on Monday?”

“I am a poor man, Lady Stowe, with a wife and children, and cannot afford to play quadrille,” replied Ewen bluntly.

His hostess stared at him. “You are married . . . and have children!”

“I have been married these seven years,” said Ewen in a tone of some annoyance. Lady Stowe was, he knew, old enough to be his mother, but that was no reason why she should think, or pretend to think him a boy.

The Countess began to laugh. “I cry you mercy, sir, for having supposed you a bachelor, since it seems to displease you. Tell me of your wife and children.”

“There is little to tell,” responded Ewen. At least, there seemed little to tell this fine lady.

“Seven years,” said her ladyship reflectively. “Then you were married soon after the Re—the Rising?”

“No, during it,” replied her guest. “About five weeks before the battle of Culloden—But I am sure that this cannot interest you, my lady.”

“On the contrary,” said Lady Stowe, smiling her sweet, slow smile. “And your wife—how romantical! Tell me, did she seek and find you upon the battlefield . . . for something tells me that you were left there for dead?”

“My wife was then in France,” replied Ardroy rather shortly.

“But you were left upon the battlefield?” pursued Lady Stowe, looking at him with fresh interest.

“Yes, I was,” admitted Ewen, with a good deal of unwillingness. “But you must forgive me for saying once more that I do not see of what interest it can be to your ladyship whether I was or no.”

“O Mr. Cameron, do not snub me so!” cried the Countess. Secretly she was charmed; what man in the whole of London would have spoken to her with such uncompromising directness? “I protest I meant nothing uncomplimentary in the assumption—rather the reverse!”

“Few men who were so left were lucky enough to come off with their lives,” remarked Ewen grimly.

“Why? Ah, I remember hearing that it was very cold in the North then. Did you suffer from the severity of the weather?”

“I suppose I did,” admitted Ardroy, “though I knew little about it at the time. And it was not, for the most part, the weather which killed our wounded. . . . But I am occupying too much of your ladyship’s time, and if you will permit me I will take my leave.” And he rose from his chair with that intention.

But Lady Stowe remained sitting there, looking up at him. “Have you taken a vow never to speak of your past life, Mr. Cameron? For I protest that you are singularly uncommunicative, which is, I believe, a trait of your countrymen from the Lowlands. That provokes a woman, you know, for she is naturally all curiosity about persons in whom she is interested. And in your case, too, there is the link with my poor Keith. Did you tell him nothing?”

“It was about him, not myself, that I came to talk,” was almost upon Ewen’s lips; but he kept the remark unuttered. If Keith’s mother wanted to know more of his past history he supposed he must gratify the desire; moreover, he was afraid that he had taken up a churlish attitude towards this gracious and beautiful lady. He had not yet got over the jolt.

So he tried to make amends. “I fear that I am being extremely uncivil, and that you will think me very much of a barbarian, Lady Stowe. Anything that you care to hear about me I am very ready to tell you; and in exchange you will perhaps (if I do not ask too much) tell me something of Major Windham. I knew so little of his past life.”

The Countess of Stowe studied him as he stood there in her boudoir, nothing of the barbarian about him save, perhaps, his stalwart height. He would evidently come to see her to talk about her dead son, though he would not come to a rout or a tea-party. Very well then. And for how many occasions could she make her reminiscences of Keith last out? There must not be too many served up at each meeting. And would those deep blue eyes look at her again with that appealing gaze? On such a strong face that fleeting expression held an irresistible charm . . . but then so had his very different air when she tried to make him speak of what he had no mind to. Like a true connoisseur Lady Stowe decided to cut short the present interview in order to have the pleasure of looking forward to others. She glanced at the cupid-supported clock on the mantelpiece, gave an exclamation and rose.

“I had forgotten the time . . . I must go and dress. . . . Then it is a bargain, Mr. Cameron? You’ll come again and hear of my poor boy? Come at any time when you are not conspiring, and I will give orders that you shall be instantly admitted—that is, if I am without company. You shall not, since you do not wish it, find yourself in the midst of any gatherings. Nor indeed,” she added with a faint sigh, “could we then speak of my dear Keith.” And with that, swaying ever so little towards him, she gave him her hand.

No, thought Ewen as he went down the great staircase, but they might have spoken of him this afternoon a great deal more than they had done. Lady Stowe had told him nothing, yet the shock of Keith’s death, even to a mother’s heart, must be a little softened after seven years. And what could it have mattered to her whether or no he had been left out all night on a battlefield, and whether he were married or single? He concluded that fashionable ladies were strange creatures, and wondered what Alison would have made of the Countess of Stowe.

* * * * *

Not far from the steps of Stowe House, when Ewen got into the square, there was waiting an extremely respectable elderly man who somehow gave the impression of being in livery, though he was not. As Ardroy came towards him he stepped forward, and, saluting him in the manner of an upper servant, asked very respectfully for the favour of a few words with him.

“Certainly,” said Ewen. “What is it that you wish to speak to me about?”

“I understand, sir,” said the man, “that you are the gentleman that was with Major Windham when he was killed, and was telling my lady his mother how it happened. I’m only a servant, sir, but if you would have the goodness . . . I taught him to ride, sir, held him on his first pony, in the days when I was with Colonel Philip Windham his father, and I was that fond of him, sir, and he always so good to me! ’Twas he got me the place in his lordship’s household that I have still; and if, sir, you could spare me a moment to tell me of his end among those murdering Highlanders . . . ?” His voice was shaking, and his face, the usually set, controlled face of a superior and well-trained servant, all quivering with emotion.

Ewen was touched; moreover no chance of learning more of the friend about whom he really knew so little, was to be lost. “Come back with me to my lodging,” he said, “and I will tell you anything you desire to know.”

The man protested at first, but, on Ewen’s insisting, followed him at a respectful distance to Half Moon Street. So yet another inmate of Stowe House came to the vintner’s that day. The name of this one was Masters, and Ewen, bidding him sit down, told him the whole story.

“It must have been a terrible grief to Lady Stowe,” he ended sympathetically, and was surprised to see a remarkable transformation pass over the old servant’s saddened face.

“Did her ladyship give you that impression, sir? Nay, I can see that she did.” He hesitated, his hand over his mouth, and then broke out: “I must say it—in justice to him I must say it—and I’m not in her service, but in my lord’s—Mr. Cameron, she never cared the snap of a finger for Mr. Keith, and when he was a boy it used near to break his heart, for he worshipped her, lovely as she was. But ’twas my young lord she cared for, when he came, and rightly, for he is a very sweet-natured young gentleman. Yet she had Mr. Keith’s devotion before her second marriage, when he was her only son, and she took no heed of it—she neglected him. I could tell you stories, sir . . . but ’tis better not, and he’s dead now, my Mr. Keith, and few enough people in his life to appreciate him as they should have done. But if you did, sir, that’s a great thing for me to think of . . . and your being with him at the end, too. . . . Might I look at that ring of his you spoke of, sir, if not asking too great a favour? Oh, thank you, thank you, sir!”

For Ewen had taken off Keith Windham’s signet ring and put it into the old man’s hand. Then he went to the window and stood looking out.

He could not but believe the old servant. What he had told him interpreted the whole of this afternoon’s interview. Lady Stowe had avoided speaking of Keith to him at any length not from grief, but from indifference. He could hardly credit it, yet it must have been so—unless perchance it was from remorse. Well, now he knew what he thought of ladies of fashion. Poor Keith, poor Keith!

“Masters,” he said at last, without looking round, “since you knew him well I will ask you to tell me something of Major Windham’s young days—but not now. I hope, by the way, that he and Lord Aveling were upon good terms?”

“Very good, very good indeed,” the old man hastened to assure him. “My young lord admired Mr. Keith, I think; and Mr. Keith was fond of him, there’s no doubt, though he teased him at times for being, as he said, as pretty as a girl. But my young lord took it in good part. ’Twas he, young as he was then, that wanted to have Mr. Keith’s body brought to England for burial, but her ladyship would not. May I give you back this ring, sir, and thank you for allowing me . . .” He faltered, and, holding out the ring with one hand, sought hastily with the other for his handkerchief.