Читать книгу Collected Works (Historical Novel) - D. K. Broster - Страница 102

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So smart a coach drawing up on Tower Hill this fine May morning soon drew a little crowd of idlers, mostly small boys, some shouting their conviction that it contained the Lord Mayor, against others who upheld that the Prince of Wales would emerge from it. But the two gentlemen who presently stepped out did not fulfil either expectation.

“I have brought you to this spot, Mr. Cameron,” said the younger of the two in a lowered voice, “that you may see for yourself how vain are any dreams of a rescue from that!”

And Ewen, standing, as he knew, on perhaps the most blood-drenched spot in English history, gazed at the great fortress-prison whence most of those who had died here had come forth to the axe. And at the sight of it his heart sank, though he knew Edinburgh Castle on its eagle’s nest, and how the Bastille upreared its sinister bulk in the Faubourg St. Antoine at Paris.

“It is a bitter kindness, Lord Aveling, but it is a kindness, and I thank you.”

The young man motioned to him to enter the coach again, and they drove down to the entrance under the Lion Tower, where he would leave him.

It was indeed a kind thought of the young lord’s, not only to bring him, on his father’s behalf, the permit from Lord Cornwallis to visit Doctor Cameron, but also to carry him to the Tower in his own coach. Yet as Ardroy, showing the precious paper with the Constable’s signature, followed his conductor over the moat and under the archway of the Middle Tower, he felt how powerless after all were the very real friendship of the Earl of Stowe and his son, and all their prestige. Archibald Cameron was in a place whence it would take more than aristocratic influence to free him.

At the third, the Byward Tower, his guide halted and informed him that he must be searched here, and led him to a room for that purpose. The officials were extremely civil and considerate, but they did their work thoroughly taking from him every object about him and in his pocket save his handkerchief; his sword as a matter of course, his money, a little notebook of accounts and a pencil, even his watch. All, naturally, would be restored to him as he came out. Ewen rather wondered that he was allowed to retain his full complement of clothes, but he did not feel in spirits to make a jest of the affair.

And then he heard, to his surprise, that Doctor Cameron was confined in the Deputy-Lieutenant’s own quarters, and that therefore he had little farther to go. Soon he found himself in a house within the fortress—in reality the lodgings of the Lieutenant of the Tower, who occupied the rank next the Constable’s in this hierarchy; but neither he nor the Constable resided here. On one side this house looked out to the river, and on the other to the Parade, Tower Green and the Chapel of St. Peter, and Ewen was told that it was by no means unusual for State prisoners to be confined in its precincts; several of the Jacobite lords had been imprisoned here.

Then he was suddenly in the presence of the Deputy-Lieutenant himself, General Charles Rainsford. The soldier was as considerate as the rest, and even more courteous. His affability chilled Ewen to the core. Had the authorities seemed hostile or anxious . . . but no, they knew that once they were on their guard no one escaped or was rescued from the Tower of London.

“You will find Doctor Cameron well, I think, sir,” volunteered the Deputy-Lieutenant. “My orders are so strict that I cannot allow him out of doors, even attended by a warder, to take the air, but as he has two rooms assigned to him he walks a good deal in the larger, and by that means keeps his health.”

“Does he know that I am to visit him?”

“He does, and has expressed the greatest pleasure at it.”

“Mrs. Cameron is not yet arrived in London, I think?”

“No, but the Doctor expects her shortly.”

And on that the visitor was entrusted to a warder, and went with him up the shallow oaken stairs. They stopped before a door guarded by a private of the regiment of Guards, and when it was opened Ewen found himself in a long, narrowish room, almost a gallery, at whose farther end a figure which had evidently been pacing up and down its length had turned expectantly. They each hurried to the other, and, for the first time in their lives, embraced.

Ewen could never remember what were the first words which passed between them, but after a while he knew that Archie and he were standing together in the embrasure of one of the windows, and that Archie was holding him by the arms and saying, in a voice of great contentment, “Ever since I heard that you were coming I have been asking myself how in the name of fortune you contrived to get permission!”

“It was fortune herself contrived it,” answered his cousin, laughing a trifle unsteadily. “ ’Tis indeed a fairy story of luck; I will tell you of it presently. But first,” and he looked at him searchingly, “are you well, Archie? They told me you were, but are you?”

“Ay, I am wonderfully well,” said the Doctor cheerfully; “and more, I am happy, which you don’t ask me. I have done my duty, as well as I can, to my Prince; I am to have my Jean’s company for more than a week; none of the Privy Council nor any of the Government is a whit the wiser for aught I have told them. And for the resolution which God has given me to die without enlightening them—and, I hope, with becoming firmness—I thank Him every day upon my knees. You cannot think how well content I am, Ewen, now that there is no hope left to torment me.”

Ewen could not look at him then. Yet it was obviously true; one had only to hear the ring of quiet sincerity in Archibald Cameron’s voice to know that this attitude was no pose. That was the wonder, almost the terror of it.

“But there is hope, there is hope!” said Ewen, more to himself than to Archie. “Meanwhile, is there not anything you want?”

“Yes, one thing I do stand in need of, and have displayed a good deal of impatience, I fear, because it is denied me, and that is paper and pen. You have not such a thing as a bit of old pencil about you, ’ille?”

“I haven’t a thing about me save my pocket-handkerchief,” answered Ewen regretfully. “They took good care of that outbye. And why have they denied you writing materials? Oh, if I had but known, I might have smuggled in the pencil I had when I came, and some paper, perhaps, in my hat.”

“As to that, I must be patient,” said Archie with a little smile. “And, indeed, I am no hand at composition; yet there are some matters that I desire to set down. Perhaps I’ll contrive it still. Come, let me show you my other apartment, for I’d have you know that I am honoured with a suite of them, and the other is indeed the more comfortable for a sederunt, though I please myself with the glimpse of the river from this room. ’Tis low tide, I think.”

Ewen, following his gaze, saw without seeing the glitter of water, the tops of masts, a gay pennon or two and a gull balancing on the wind. Then Archie put his hand on his arm and drew him into a smaller room, not ill-furnished, looking in the opposite direction, and they sat down on the window-seat.

“Yes,” said the Doctor, “I fare very differently here from poor Alexander. I have been thinking much of late of him and his sufferings—God rest him!”

It was long since Ewen had heard any reference to that third of the Lochiel brothers who, by turning Roman Catholic and Jesuit, had cut himself off from his family, but who had been the first to die for the White Rose, a martyr to the horrible conditions on board the ship which brought him as a prisoner to London. “Yes,” went on Archie, “this is a Paradise compared to the place where Alexander was confined.”

Indeed, looking through the window by which they sat, one saw that May can come even to a prison. The pear-trees on the wall below, which General Rainsford’s predecessor had planted not so many years before, had lost their fair blossom by now, but below them was a little border of wallflowers, and Tower Green, at a short distance, deserved its name. On the spot, too, where the child queen had laid down her paper diadem after her nine days’ reign a little boy and girl were playing with a kitten.

“And your head, Ewen?” asked his cousin after a moment’s silence, “How long was it before you recovered from the effects of that blow? I was greatly afraid at the time that your skull was fractured.”

“It was you, then, who bound up my head? I thought it must have been. Oh, Archie, and by that the soldiers must have known for certain who you were! You should not have done it!”

“Tut—the redcoats knew that already! And I could not accomplish much in the way of surgery, my dear Ewen; I had not the necessaries. As you may guess, I have not had a patient since—you’ll be my last. So take off that wig, in which you seem to me so unfamiliar, and let me see the spot where the musket butt caught you.”

“There’s naught to see, I am sure, and not much to feel,” said Ewen, complying. “My head is uncommon hard, as I proved once before. I was laid by for some weeks, that was all,” he went on, as the cool, skilful fingers felt about among his close-cropped hair. “Just when I naturally was a-fire to get to London after you. But now, when I am here, there seems nothing that one can do. And, Archie, ’tis I have brought you to this place!”

Doctor Cameron had ended his examination and now faced him with, “My dear Ewen, I can, indeed, feel small trace of the blow. Yet it is clear that it must have severely shaken your wits, if you can utter such a piece of nonsense as that!”

“ ’Tis not nonsense,” protested Ewen sadly. “Was it not I who discovered that thrice-unlucky hut and persuaded you to go into it?”

“And I suppose it was you that surrounded the wood with soldiers from Inversnaid . . . you might have brought them from somewhere nearer, for ’twas a most pestilent long tramp back there that night! Nay, you’ll be telling me next that ’twas you sent the information to Edinburgh——”

“God! when I can find the man who did——” began Ewen, in a blaze at once.

“Ah, my dear Ewen,” said his kinsman soothingly, “leave him alone! To find him will not undo his work, whoever he is, and I have wasted many hours over the problem and am none the wiser. I had better have spent the time thinking of my own shortcomings. ‘Fret not thyself at the ungodly’—’tis sound advice, believe me. I can forgive him; he may have thought he was doing a service. It will cost me more of a struggle to forgive the man who slandered me over the Loch Arkaig gold . . . but I think I shall succeed even in that before the seventh of June.”

“Who was that man?” demanded Ewen instantly, and all the more fiercely because he winced to hear that date on Archie’s lips.

The Doctor shook his head with a smile. “Is it like I should tell you when you ask in that manner. ’Tis a man whom you have never met, I think, so let it pass.”

“Is he known to me by name, however?”

“How can I tell,” replied Doctor Cameron shrewdly, “unless I pronounce his name and see? But come, let’s talk of other folk better worth attention; there are so many I should be glad to have tidings of. How is Mrs. Alison, and the boys, especially my wee patient? And have you any news, since we parted, of your fellow-prisoner in Fort William?”

“Poor Hector’s over here in London, and in great distress,” began Ewen without reflecting, “for there’s an ill rumour abroad, in Lille at least, accusing him——” And there he stopped, biting his lip. He ought not to have brought up that subject in Archie’s hearing, blundering fool that he was!

“Accusing him of what, lad?”

So Ewen had to tell him. He hurried over the tale as much as he could, and, seeing how shocked and grieved Archie appeared, laid stress on the fact that, if ever Hector were really brought to book, he himself was in a position to disprove his connection with the capture of the Jacobite.

“But I would give much to know who set the story about,” he ended, “for there are only two persons whom he told of the loss of that letter, myself and the man who helped him to return to his regiment in January, young Finlay MacPhair of Glenshian, and it is almost incredible that he should have spread such a report.”

But the end of that sentence left Ardroy’s lips very slowly, in fact the last words were scarcely uttered at all. He was staring at his companion. Over Archie’s face, at the mention of Finlay MacPhair, there had flitted something too indefinable to merit a name. But in another moment Ewen had reached out and caught him by the wrist.

“Archie, look at me—no, look at me!” For Doctor Cameron had turned his head away almost simultaneously and was now gazing out of the window, and asking whether Ewen had seen the two bairns out there playing with the little cat?

Ewen uttered an impatient sound and gripped the wrist harder. “Deny it if you dare!” he said threateningly. “I have named your slanderer too!”

“Dear lad——”

“Yes or no?” demanded Ewen, as he might have demanded it of his worst enemy.

The Doctor was plainly rather chagrined as he faced him. “I am sorry that I have not better control of my features—Now, for God’s sake, Ewen—” for Ardroy, releasing his wrist, had got to his feet, “Ewen, I implore you not to take advantage of a secret which you have surprised out of me!”

But Ardroy was in one of his slow white rages. “The man who was associated with you when you risked your life for that accursed money in ’49 was viper enough to traduce you over it! It was he, then, who poisoned his cousin Lochdornie’s mind against you! God’s curse on him till the Judgment Day! And I warrant his dirty lie did not stop short with Lochdornie—did it now, Archie?”

Doctor Cameron, distressed, did not answer that. “Oh, my dear Ewen, if I could persuade you to leave this question alone. What does it matter now?”

“Your good name matters to me as much as my own,” said Ewen, towering and relentless.

“But ’tis all past history now, Ewen, and the slander will die with my death. . . . Ewen, Ewen, promise me that you’ll not go stirring up old scores with that young man! I cannot say I love him, but he is powerless to harm me any more now, and, as I say, I hope to forgive him without reservation. My dear lad, you will only cause me more distress than the lie itself, if I am to spend the short time which remains to me thinking of you quarrelling on my behalf with young Glenshian!”

Ewen had begun to stride up and down the little room, fighting with his resentment. “Very good then,” he said after a moment, coming and sitting down again, “I will not give you that distress; it is a promise. Moreover—perhaps this will reassure you a little,” he added with a wrathful snatch of a laugh, “the man is not in London now, I believe.”

“Then let’s cease to waste time over him,” said Doctor Cameron with evident relief. “And you have not told me yet, as you promised, how you procured this order to see me.”

Trying to put away the thought of Glenshian, Ewen told him. “Had I not good fortune—though indeed, at first, when I found myself in Stowe House, I thought it was the worst kind of ill-luck which had befallen me. The Earl and his son were both at the King’s Bench that day, too, which prejudiced them, it is clear, in your favour.—By the way,” he added with some hesitation, “was it a surprise to you that you had no trial?”

“No,” replied his cousin. “I always suspected that the Government would make use of the old sentence of attainder if ever they caught me.”

“Yes, perhaps it was inevitable,” murmured Ewen, but he was thinking—though he did not mean to speak—of the unknown informer protected by the Government, whose identity, according to Jacobite belief, a trial would have revealed.

“Yes, I was not long before their lordships in the King’s Bench,” went on Archie. “The Privy Council examination at Whitehall a month before was a more lengthy affair, but, I fear, very unsatisfactory to those honourable gentlemen. My memory was grown so extraordinarily bad,” he added, with a twinkle in his eye.

“All the world knows that you told them nothing of the slightest importance,” said Ewen admiringly. “Was that how you contrived to outwit them?”

“If you can call it outwitting. I think no man on earth could possibly have forgotten so many things as I made out to have done. And I admit that in the end their lordships lost patience with me, and told me squarely that, as I seemed resolved not to give any direct answers, which they assigned to a desire to screen others, they did not think it proper to ask me any further questions.” The remembrance seemed to entertain him. “But before that came to pass my Lord Newcastle (saving his presence) had become like a very bubblyjock for fury and disappointment because he thought that I was about to tell them that I had met the Prince quite recently in Paris. (I had met him recently, but ’twas not in Paris.) They made great preparations for noting the date, and when I told them that it was in 1748 the Duke positively bawled at me that it was ‘the height of insolence, insolence not to be borne with’, till I had hard work to keep my countenance. It is sad—and no doubt blameworthy—to rouse such emotions in the great!” And Archibald Cameron laughed a little laugh of genuine amusement.

“You know, Archie,” said Ewen earnestly, “—or more probably you do not know—that popular feeling is very strongly stirred about you, and that remonstrances are preparing on all sides. And when Mrs. Cameron comes, if she has any intention of petitioning——”

“I expect she will desire to—poor Jean! Can I commend her to you a little, ’ille?”

“You do not need to. I was about to ask you where she is likely to lodge? Near the Tower, no doubt?”

“I will tell her to leave her direction at the Tower gates, that you can learn it if necessary; and give me yours, that I may tell her of it. She may be lonely, poor soul; I doubt she will be allowed to stay here with me all day. And afterwards . . .”

It was Ewen who looked out at Tower Green this time, but more fixedly than Archie had done. “Afterwards,” he said in a moment, “if there is to be the ‘afterwards’ you mean, I will take Mrs. Cameron——” He stopped, wrenched his fingers together for a second, and said with great difficulty, “I cannot speak of that ‘afterwards’, Archie—I don’t know how you can. . . . Oh, if one could but push time back, and be again as we used to be eight years ago! The sunshine out there makes me think of that fine spring in Lochaber, before Lochiel and you had staked everything on the sword that was drawn in summer at Glenfinnan. But even Donald—even Alexander—did not pay as you are going to pay—though indeed there’s hope still,” he added quickly.

Doctor Cameron laid his hand on his. “But I am not unhappy, Eoghain,” he said gently. “Eight years ago I had done nothing for my Prince. I do not know that I would change.”

* * * * *

Hector Grant was having his supper when Ewen walked in upon him that evening.

“At last,” said Ardroy, throwing his hat upon a chair. “This is the second time that I have tried to find you to-day.”

“And I have been seeking you,” retorted Hector. “Where were you?”

“I have been in the Tower,” answered Ewen, and went and stood with his back turned and an elbow on the mantelpiece, and for a while said no more. After a moment Hector rose and put a hand on his shoulder, also without a word.

“I see no hope of rescue, even by guile. I see no way in which any man’s life can be given for his,” said Ewen after a long pause. “Nothing but a reprieve can save him. But I do not think that he is hoping for one.”

“I am,” said the sanguine Hector, who had recovered from his emotion of the morning of the sentence. “The Government must soon be aware how widespread is the feeling in favour of it.”

There was another silence.

“Go on with your supper,” said Ewen. “I have a piece of news for you meanwhile. From something which I learnt from Archie I think it may well have been young Glenshian who put about that slander on you concerning his capture.”

Hector showed no disposition to continue his forsaken meal. “Dieu du ciel, what makes you think that?”

“Because he was the man who vilified Archie himself over the matter of the Loch Arkaig treasure—but I don’t suppose you know of that dirty and cowardly action. Archie did not tell me that it was he; I surprised it out of him. Yet, by the same token, Finlay MacPhair is quite capable of having traduced you.”

Hector frowned. “Yes; and now that I come to think of it, he repeated that story about Doctor Cameron to me last January.”

“To you!” exclaimed Ewen in amazement. “Why have you never told me?”

“It has only once come into my mind since we have been in London, and then I thought it would needlessly distress you.”

“Archie has made me promise that I’ll not make it an occasion of quarrel with Glenshian,” said Ewen, looking not at all like a man who had given so pacific an undertaking. “Otherwise I would challenge him directly he returns to town, and make him withdraw his slander publicly.”

“But I have not promised to abstain from making my injury a cause of quarrel,” quoth Hector in tones of anticipation. “When Mr. MacPhair of Glenshian is returned, will you come with me, Ewen, and we will ask him a question or two?”

But Ewen, instead of replying, suddenly sat down at Hector’s supper-table and covered his face with his hands.