Читать книгу Collected Works (Historical Novel) - D. K. Broster - Страница 17

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The dusk of early October had fallen on the city of Edinburgh, that stately city, which for some three weeks now had been experiencing a situation as odd as any in its varied and turbulent history. For Prince Charles and his Highlanders held the town, but not the Castle, secure on its lofty and impregnable rock; this they could neither storm, owing to its position, nor, from lack of artillery, batter down, while King George’s military representatives in the Castle were, for their part, unable to regain control of the city below them. The stalemate thus established was perfectly in harmony with the spirit of unconscious comedy which had reigned throughout these weeks, beginning with the ludicrous indecisions and terrors of the city fathers on the news of the Highland advance, and the casual method by which the city had suffered itself to be captured, or rather walked into, by Lochiel and his men. For the opening of the Netherbow Port very early on the morning of the 17th of September, just as the Highlanders outside were preparing to withdraw disappointed, was due to nothing more momentous than the exit of a hackney carriage on its way to its stable in the Canongate—though it is true that it was the carriage which had just brought back the discomfited envoys sent to interview the Prince at Gray’s Mill.

Yesterday only had come to an end the latest (and not entirely humorous) episode, of some days’ duration, when, the Prince having ‘blockaded’ the Castle, in other words, having cut off daily supplies, the garrison had retaliated by firing on the town, killing some innocent inhabitants, striking terror into them all, and making it very undesirable to be seen in the neighbourhood of the Castle in the company of a Highlander. Violent representations on the part of the city to the Prince, embodying ‘the most hideous complaints against the garrison’, had brought this uncomfortable state of affairs to an end by the raising of the ‘blockade’—itself originated, so the story went, by the discovery of smuggled information in a pat of butter destined for the valetudinarian General Guest, for whom milk and eggs were permitted to pass daily into the Castle. Yet the old gentleman’s treacherous butter was only one of the many whimsical touches of the goddess Thalia, who had devised, during these weeks of occupation, such ingenious surprises as the descent of a soldier from the Castle by means of a rope into Livingston’s Yard, where he set a house on fire, and returned in triumph, by the same method, with a couple of captured Jacobite muskets; the discomfiture, by a sudden illumination from above, of three Camerons sent experimentally to scale the Castle rock under cover of darkness, and—perhaps the most genuinely comic of all—the solemn paying out to the cashier and directors of the Royal Bank of Scotland, within the very walls of the Castle, and in exchange for Prince Charles’s notes, of the ready money which had been taken there for safety, but the lack of which inconvenienced the Edinburgh shopkeepers as much as anybody. This transaction had taken place, under the white flag, during the blockade itself.

But to-night, the guns being silent, and General Joshua Guest once more in possession of his invalid diet, the lately terrified citizens in the high, crammed houses with their unsavoury approaches were preparing to sleep without fear of bombardment next day by their own defenders. Those outposts of the invading foe, which always kept a wary eye upon the Castle and its approaches—and which had not passed through a very enviable time the last few days—the Highland guard at the Weighhouse, the West Bow, and elsewhere, had received their night relief, and Mr. Patrick Crichton, saddler and ironmonger, was writing in his diary further caustic and originally spelt remarks anent these ‘scownderalls’, ‘scurlewheelers’ and ‘hillskipers’. Inside the walls all was quiet.

But at the other end of the town Holyrood House was lit up, for there was dancing to-night in the long gallery under the eyes of that unprepossessing series of early Scottish kings due to the brush of an ill-inspired Dutchman . . . and under a pair of much more sparkling ones. For the Prince was gay to-night, as he was not always; and though, following his usual custom, he himself did not dance, it was plain that the growing accessions to his cause during the last few days had raised his spirits. For, besides all those who had joined him soon after Glenfinnan—Stewarts of Appin, MacDonalds of Glengarry, Grants of Glenmoriston—two days ago had come in fierce old Gordon of Glenbucket with four hundred men, and the day before that young Lord Ogilvy, the Earl of Airlie’s son, with six hundred, and Farquharson of Balmoral with two hundred, and his kinsman of Monaltrie with more. And others were coming. Whatever the future might hold, he was here as by a miracle in the palace of his ancestors, having defeated in a quarter of an hour the general who had slipped out of his path in August and returned by sea to the drubbing which awaited him among the morasses and the cornstubble of Prestonpans.

So there, at the end of the gallery nearest to his own apartments, in a costume half satin, half tartan, stood the living embodiment of Scotland’s ancient dynasty, and drew to himself from time to time the gaze of every lady in the room. But it was to those of his own sex that he chiefly talked.

At the other end of the gallery, which looked out on to the garden and the chapel, Alison Grant, very fine in her hoop and powder, her flowered brocade of blue and silver, with a scarf of silken tartan and a white autumn rose on her breast, was talking with animation to three young men, one of whom, in a French uniform, bore a strong resemblance to her, and was in fact her young brother Hector, just come over from France. The others were distant kinsmen, Grants of Glenmoriston and Shewglie respectively. Right in the corner, on a gilded chair, sat Mr. Grant in a not very new coat (for it was more fitting that Alison should go braw than he). His hands rested on his cane, and his lined face, half shrewd and half childlike, wrinkled into a smile as he saw the likelihood that neither young Glenmoriston nor young Shewglie, who seemed to be disputing in a friendly way for the honour of the next dance, would obtain it, since someone else was making his way between the knots of talkers to this corner. To judge by the glances cast at him as he passed, it appeared that Alison was not the only lady there to think that a certain tall cadet of Clan Cameron, a captain in Lochiel’s regiment and one of the Prince’s aides-de-camp, who wore powder for the nonce and amber satin instead of tartan, was the match of any other gentleman in the room—except, of course, of him with the star on his breast.

Yet Alison, for some reason, gave the new-comer the briefest glance now, though it was a sweet one enough; then her eyes wandered away again. The two Grants, evidently thinking their cause hopeless, took themselves off.

“Alison, here is your cavalier come to claim you,” said her father from his corner.

“Alison has not a look or a thought to give to me nowadays,” observed Ewen, looking at his love from behind, at the back of her white neck, where the sacque fell in imposing folds from the square of the bodice, and where two little unruly tendrils of hair, having shaken off their powder, were beginning to show their true colour. “Like the rest of the ladies, she has eyes only for the Prince. ’Tis pity I am not a Whig, for then she might pay me some attention, if only in order to convert me.”

At that Alison turned round, laughing.

“Well, sir,” she said, looking him up and down, “your costume, I vow, is almost Whiggish. In those clothes, and without a scrap of tartan upon you, you might be an Englishman!”

“Or a Frenchman,” suggested her father from his corner.

But this accusation Alison repudiated somewhat indignantly. “No; Frenchmen are all little men!” Yet, having lived so much in France, she must have known better.

“No one could call Ardroy little, I admit,” agreed Mr. Grant. “And he has not the French physiognomy. But in that dress he has quite the French air.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Ewen, bowing, “since I suppose I am to take that as a compliment.”

“There are some tall fellows enough in my regiment,” declared Hector Grant, drawing up his slim and active figure. “For my part, I’ve no ambition to attain the height of a pine-tree. Alison, is it customary in Scotland, think you, for a brother to lead out his sister?”

“Not unless they are so unlike that the company cannot guess the kinship,” responded Ewen for his betrothed. “Not, therefore, in this case, Eachainn!”

“Proprietary airs already, I see,” retorted the young soldier, a smile in the dark eyes which were Alison’s too. “Eh bien, if I may not have Alison, I vow I’ll dance with the oldest dame present. I like not your young misses.” And away he went, while Ewen, offering his hand, carried off his lady for the minuet which was just about to begin.

And, intoxicated by the violins, the lights, the shimmer of satin and silk—with just enough tartan to show the gathering’s heart—thinking of Cope soundly beaten, Edinburgh in their hands, Ewen distinguished by the Prince for Lochiel’s sake, Alison felt that she was stepping on rosy clouds instead of on a mortal floor. Her feet ached to dance a reel rather than this stately measure. And Ewen—the darling, how handsome, though how different, he looked in powder!—did he too know this pulsing exhilaration? He always kept his feelings under control. Yet when his eyes met hers she could see in them, far down, an exultation profounder, perhaps, than her own.

The music ceased; her betrothed bowed low, and Alison sank smiling in a deep curtsy that spread her azure petticoat about her like a great blue blossom. Then she took his hand and they went aside.

“Now you must fan yourself, must you not, whether you be hot or no? What are these little figures on your fan—Cupids or humans?” asked Ewen.

“Mercy on us!” exclaimed Miss Grant suddenly, looking towards the end of the apartment, “the Prince is no longer here!”

“Is he not?” responded Ewen calmly. “I had not observed.”

“And you one of his aides-de-camp! Fie on you!” cried Alison, and took her fan out of his hand.

“I was looking at you, mo chridhe,” said her lover in his deep, gentle voice, and offered no other excuse.

“But where can His Royal Highness have got to?”

“My dear, His Royal Highness is under no vow that I know of to watch us dance any longer than he pleases. However, there’s another of his aides-de-camp, Dr. Cameron; perhaps he can assuage your anxiety. Archie!”

Dr. Archibald Cameron, Lochiel’s brother, turned round at his kinsman’s summons. He was a man only a dozen years or so older than Ewen himself, with much of Lochiel’s own wisdom and serenity, and Ewen had for him a respect and affection second only to that which he bore his Chief.

“Archie, come and protect me from Miss Grant! She declares that I am a Whig because I am wearing neither trews nor philabeg, and unworthy of the position I occupy towards the Prince because I had not observed his withdrawal, nor can tell her the reason for it.”

But already the fiddles had struck up for another dance, and one of the young Grants had returned and was proffering his request anew. So Ewen relinquished his lady and watched her carried off, sailing away like a fair ship.

“Taken to task so soon!” said Dr. Cameron with a twinkle. He was a married man himself, with several children. “No doubt if my Jean were here I should be in like case, for though I knew the Prince had withdrawn I have not fashed myself about it.”

Neither did Ewen now. “Is it true,” he asked, “that Donald will not be here to-night at all?”

“Yes; I left him by his own fireside in the Canongate.”

“He’s not ill, Archie?”

“No, no; he’s older and wiser than we, that’s all.” And giving his young cousin a nod and a little smile Dr. Cameron went off.

Ewen abode where he was, for it was too late to secure a partner. Suddenly, hearing his name uttered in a low tone behind him, he turned to see Mr. Francis Strickland, one of the ‘seven men of Moidart’, the gentlemen who had landed with the Prince in the west.

“Captain Cameron,” said he, coming closer and speaking still lower, though at the moment there was no one within a couple of yards or so, “Captain Cameron, the Prince desires that in a quarter of an hour you will station yourself at the door of the ante-room leading to his bedchamber, and see to it that no one approaches his room. His Royal Highness finds himself indisposed, and obliged to withdraw from the ball; but he particularly wishes that no attention shall be called to his absence. Do you understand?”

Ewen stared at him, a good deal astonished at this commission. There was something furtive, too, about Mr. Strickland’s manner which he did not relish, and, in common with many of the Highland chiefs, he was coming to dislike and mistrust the Irish followers of the Prince—though Strickland, to be accurate, was an Englishman.

“This indisposition is very sudden, Mr. Strickland,” he observed. “A short while ago the Prince was in the best of health and spirits.”

“I suppose, sir,” retorted Strickland tartly, “that you scarcely consider yourself to be a better judge of the Prince’s state of health than he is himself?”

“No,” returned Ewen, his Highland pride all at once up in arms, “but I do conceive that, as his personal aide-de-camp, I take my orders from His Royal Highness himself, and not from any . . . intermediary.”

Mr. Strickland’s eye kindled. “You are not very polite, Captain Cameron,” he observed with truth. Indeed he seemed to be repressing a warmer retort. “I am to tell the Prince, then, that you refuse the honour of his commands, and that he must find another aide-de-camp to execute them?”

“No, since I have not refused,” said Ewen with brevity, and he turned upon his heel. But Strickland clutched at his arm. “Not yet—you are not to go yet! In a quarter of an hour’s time.”

And Ewen stopped. “The Prince intends to be indisposed in a quarter of an hour’s time!” he exclaimed. “Then indeed ’tis a very strange seizure; I doubt Dr. Cameron would be better for the post.”

“For God’s sake, Captain Cameron!” said Strickland in an agitated whisper, pulling Ewen by the sleeve. “For God’s sake show some discretion—moderate your voice!” And he murmured something about a delicate task and a wrong choice which only inflamed Ewen’s suspicions the more. What intrigue was afoot that the Prince’s door should be guarded, under plea of illness, in a quarter of an hour’s time? He was expecting a visit, perhaps—from whom? Ewen liked the sound of it very little, the less so that Strickland was plainly now in a fever of nervousness.

“Pray let go my arm, sir,” he said, and, the Englishman not at once complying, added meaningly, “if you do not wish me to be still more indiscreet!” On which Mr. Strickland hastily removed his grasp, and Ewen turned and began to make his way down the room, careless whether Strickland were following or no, since if that gentleman’s desire for secrecy were sincere he dared not make an open protest among the dancers.

As he went Ewen very much regretted Lochiel’s absence to-night, and also the indisposition of Mr. Murray of Broughton, the Prince’s secretary, who had delicate health. Mr. Strickland must be aware of both those facts. . . . And if Strickland were in this business, whatever it might be, it was fairly certain that Colonel O’Sullivan, the Irish Quartermaster-General, was in it also. For a second or so the young man hesitated, and glanced about for Dr. Cameron, but he was nowhere to be seen now. Then he himself would try to get to the bottom of what was going on; and as when his mind was made up an earthquake would scarcely have turned him from his path, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy made straight for the Prince’s bedchamber with that intention.

The drawing-room leading directly from the picture gallery had about a dozen couples in it; the ante-room which gave at right angles from this was fortunately empty, although the door between was open. The investigator went quietly through, closing this, marched across the ante-room and knocked at the Prince’s door.

“Avanti!” cried a voice, and Ewen went into the bedchamber which had once been the ill-fated Darnley’s. The Prince was sitting on the other side of the gilded and embroidery-hung bed, with his back to the door, engaged, it seemed, in the absence of Morrison, his valet, in pulling on his own boots. A black cloak and plain three-cornered hat lay upon the gold and silver coverlet.

“Is that you, O’Sullivan?” he asked without turning his head. “I shall be ready in a moment.”

Ewen thought, “I was right; O’Sullivan is in it! . . . Your Royal Highness, . . .” he said aloud.

At that the Prince looked quickly behind him, then, still seated on the bed, turned half round, leaning on one hand. “My orders, Captain Cameron, were for you to post yourself at the outer door. There has evidently been some mistake, either on your part or on Mr. Strickland’s.”

“On mine then, may it please Your Highness,” admitted Ewen coolly. “As the order puzzled me somewhat, I have ventured to ask that I may receive it from Your Royal Highness’s own mouth.”

The mouth in question betrayed annoyance, and the Prince arose from his position on the bed and faced his aide-de-camp across it. “Mon Dieu, I thought it was plain enough! You will have the goodness to station yourself outside the farther door and to let no one attempt to see me. I am indisposed.”

“And the quarter of an hour’s interval of which Mr. Strickland spoke, sir?”

“That is of no moment now. You can take up your place at once, Captain Cameron.” And with a gesture of dismissal the Prince turned his back and walked across the room towards the curtained window. It was thus plainly to be seen that he had his boots on.

He was not then expecting a visit; he was going to pay one! Hence the sentinel before the outer door, that his absence might not be known. Ewen looked at the cloak on the bed, thought of the dark Edinburgh streets, the hundred and one narrow little entries, the chance of a scuffle, of an encounter with some unexpected patrol from the Castle, and took the plunge.

“Your Royal Highness is going out—at this hour?”

The Prince spun round. “Who told you that I was going out? And if I were, what possible affair is it of yours, sir?”

“Only that, as your aide-de-camp, it is my great privilege to watch over your Royal Highness’s person,” answered Ewen respectfully but firmly. “And if you are going out into the streets of Edinburgh at night without a guard——”

Charles Edward came nearer. His brown eyes, striking in so fair-complexioned a young man, sparkled with anger. “Captain Cameron, when I appointed you my aide-de-camp, I did not think that I was hampering myself with a s——” He bit off the short, pregnant word, that aide-de-camp’s suddenly paling face evidently recalling to him whither he was going. But he instantly started off again on the same road. “Dieu me damne!” he said irritably, “am I to have your clan always at my elbow? Lochiel may have walked first into Edinburgh, but he was not the first to declare for me. He sent his brother to beg me to go back again! I think you Camerons would do well to remem——” Again he broke off, for there had come a knock at the door.

But Ewen, white to the very lips, had put his hand behind him and turned the key. “Will your Royal Highness kindly give your orders to some other man?” he asked, in a voice which he did not succeed in keeping steady. “I’ll not endure to hear either my Chief or myself insulted, no, not though it be by my future King!”

The Prince was brought up short. His aide-de-camp might have taken upon himself a good deal more than his position warranted, but to offend a chieftain of Clan Cameron at this juncture was madness. Charles was not yet a slave to the petulant temper which from his boyhood had given anxiety to those about him, and which in later unhappy years was to work so much disaster, and his great personal charm was still undimmed.

“Wait a little!” he called through the door, and then looked with appeal in his beautiful eyes at the tall figure in front of it, rigid with the stillness of a consuming anger. “Ardroy, forgive me for a moment of irritation! I scarce knew what I was saying. You cannot think that there is any thought in my breast for my good Lochiel but gratitude—all the greater gratitude that he knew and weighed the risk he ran and yet drew that true sword of his! And as for you, how did I insult you?”

“I think,” said Ewen, still very pale and haughty, and using to the full the physical advantage which he had—not very many had it—of being able to look down on his Prince, “I think that your Royal Highness was near calling me . . . something that no gentleman can possibly call another.”

“Why, then, I could not have been near it—since I hope I am a gentleman!” The Prince smiled his vanquishing smile. “And to prove that you are imagining vain things, my dear Ardroy, I will tell you on what errand I am bound to-night, and you shall accompany me, if you still insist upon your right to watch over my royal person.”

Ewen was not vanquished. “Your Royal Highness is too good,” he answered, bowing, “but I should not dream of claiming that right any longer, and I will withdraw.”

“I always heard that you Highlanders were unforgiving,” lamented the Prince, between jest and earnest. (Devoted though they were, they were certainly not easy to manage.) “Come, Ardroy, you are much of an age with myself, I imagine—do you never say in heat what you designed not—and regret the moment after?”

Their eyes met, the warm Southern brown and the blue.

“Yes, my Prince,” said Ewen suddenly. “Give me what orders you will, and they shall be obeyed.”

“I am forgiven then?” asked the Prince quickly, and he held out his hand as though to clasp his aide-de-camp’s. But Ewen bent his knee and put his lips to it.

During this touching scene of reconciliation it was evident from various discreet but not too patient taps upon the door that the excluded person on the other side still desired admittance.

“Open the door, mon ami,” said Charles Edward, and Ewen, unlocking it, did so; and in walked Colonel John William O’Sullivan, not too pleased, as was obvious, at his exclusion. He carried a cloak over his arm.

“I thought your Royal Highness was admitting no one except——” He stopped and looked in dumb annoyance at the intruder. Ewen showed a stony front. There was no love lost between the Quartermaster-General and the Camerons whom he had posted so badly at Tranent before the recent battle.

“Strickland has not come yet,” observed the Prince, and added, with a spice of malice, “I think it well to take an aide-de-camp with me, O’Sullivan. We shall therefore be a partie carrée.”

“As your Highness pleases, of course,” said O’Sullivan stiffly.

“And in that case,” went on his Royal Highness, “he had best know whither we are bound. We are going, my dear Ardroy, to pay a visit to a lady.”

Ewen was astonished, for he had seen enough since their coming to Edinburgh to make him conclude that the Prince was—perhaps fortunately—very cold where women were concerned, no matter how much incense they burnt before him. Then disgust succeeded to astonishment: was this the time for intrigues of that nature? But the latter emotion, at least, was very transitory, for the Prince went on almost at once: “ ’Tis the Jacobite widow of a Whig Lord of Session—an old lady, but no doubt charming, and certainly loyal—who dwells at the corner of the West Bow and the Grassmarket.”

“So near the Castle!” broke from Ewen in spite of himself.

“Donc, the last place in which I shall be looked for! Moreover,” said the young Prince gaily, “I am borrowing Murray’s name, since Lady Easterhall is his kinswoman, and is expecting a visit from him—though not, I’m bound to say, to-night. You look blank, Captain Cameron” (and Ewen had no doubt he did). “See then, read the old lady’s letter to Murray.”

Ewen took the paper which the Prince drew from his pocket, and read the following, written in a slightly tremulous hand:

‘My Dear John,—

‘It will no doubt be your Labours in His Royal Highness’s Service that have hitherto hindered you frae waiting upon an old Woman who has not set Eyes upon you since you were a Lad. I see I’ll e’en have to bid you to my House, and maybe set a Bait to bring you there. Well then—do you mind of William Craig of Craigmains, him that’s sib to your Uncle Dickson on the Mother’s Side, with a pretty Fortune, and Kin that went out, severals of them, in the Fifteen? He comes to Edinburgh to-day on Affairs, and will likely stay two-three Days with me; and I’m thinking that could he be gained for the Good Cause others of the Fife Lairds might follow his Example. Forbye there’s his Siller. Try then could you not dine with me the morn at three of the Clock, and have a bit Crack with Craigmains, and tell him how well Things go for our bonny Prince, and you’ll maybe do as good an Afternoon’s Work as writing Proclamations.

‘Your loving Great-aunt,

‘Anna Easterhall.’

This letter was superscribed ‘To Mr. John Murray of Broughton at Holyroodhouse’, and was of the same day’s date. Ewen gave it back to the royal hand in silence.

“Mr. Murray is indisposed and keeps his room, and I am going to pay his great-aunt a visit in his stead,” said the Prince, going to the bed and taking up his cloak. “And ‘our bonny Prince’ himself will have the necessary bit crack with this Fife laird of the moneybags. You can see from the letter that Lady Easterhall thinks a little persuasion might induce him to open them, and I flatter myself that he’ll yield to me sooner than to Murray.”

“But your Royal Highness could cause this kinsman of Mr. Murray’s to come here, instead of venturing yourself in the Grassmarket,” objected Ewen, to whom this Haroun-al-Raschid scheme—unknown, he felt sure, to the secretary himself—did not at all appeal.

“Not before he had made up his mind, man! He would not; your Lowland Scot is too canny.”

“But would not a visit to this lady to-morrow——”

“Would you have me approach the Castle in daylight, my friend?”

“But consider the other dwellers in the house,” urged Ewen. “Your Royal Highness knows that nearly all Edinburgh lives pell-mell, one above the other. Lady Easterhall’s neighbour on the next land may well be a Whig gentleman or——”

“My dear Ulysses,” said the Prince, laying a hand familiarly on his aide-de-camp’s arm, “you may have an old head on young shoulders, but so have I too! Lady Easterhall is very singular; she has a whole house to herself. I found this out from Murray. And if report says true, the house itself is singular also.”

At that moment there was another discreet tap at the door, and O’Sullivan, who had been listening to this conversation in a sardonic silence, opened it to admit Mr. Francis Strickland in a cloak. In response to the displeased query on the last-comer’s face the Quartermaster-General observed that Captain Cameron was going with them, “though one gathers that he disapproves.”

“He has my leave to disapprove,” said the Prince lightly, “provided he comes too.” He was evidently in great spirits at the prospect of this escapade, as pleased as a boy at stealing a march on his bedridden secretary—relieved too, perhaps, at having laid the storm which he had himself raised; and when Ewen asked him whether he should not procure him a chair, scouted the idea. He would go on his own feet as less likely to attract attention. “And when I have my cloak so,”—he threw it round his face up to the very eyes—“who will know me? I learnt the trick in Rome,” he added.

But his gaze then fell upon his aide-de-camp’s attire. “Faith, Ardroy, you must have a cloak, too, to cover up that finery—nay, you cannot go to fetch one now. I know where Morrison keeps another of mine.”

“And the sentinel at your Royal Highness’s antechamber door?” enquired Strickland in an injured voice.

“The door must go wanting one after all—unless you yourself covet the post, Strickland? In that case you can lend your cloak to Captain Cameron.” And at the look on Strickland’s face he laughed. “I was but jesting. Like the man in the Gospel, I have two cloaks—here, Ardroy, if ’twill serve for that excessive height of yours. . . . Now for my great-great-great-grandsire’s private stair!”