Читать книгу D. K. Broster Collection - D. K. Broster - Страница 88

As Mrs. Stewart had said, the track through the wood was quite easy to find and follow, and Ewen hurried along it at a very fast pace, since the farther from Stewart’s house he could encounter Archie the better. And yet, it might be a wild goose chase into which he had flung himself; it might be for the sake of a mere rumour that he, Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, had assaulted the future Earl of Stowe and stolen, or rather borrowed, a horse. The pistols he had certainly stolen, for he had not left them, as he had the horse, at the inn at Tyndrum, but had kept them with him, and might be glad of them yet. For though, contrary to all his expectations, he was in time to warn Archie (if only he could come upon him) he could not feel at ease about the warrant, even though its execution was so strangely delayed, or believe that machinery of the kind, once set in motion, would cease to revolve.

So he hastened on; the path, fairly wide here, having quitted the stream, was full of holes crammed with damp, dead leaves; through the bare oaks and ashes and the twisted pine boughs on his left he saw the sun disappear behind the heights opposite. As its rays were withdrawn the air grew at once colder, and an uneasy wind began to move overhead; it left the oaks indifferent, but the pines responded to its harper’s touch. Ardroy had lived his life too much in the open air and in all weathers to be much mentally affected by wind, yet the sound tuned with his anxious thoughts almost without his being aware of it.

So far he had not met or even seen a single person, but now, as he heard steps approaching, his pulse quickened. He was wrong—it was not Archie, for there came into sight an elderly man bent under a load of sticks which he had evidently been gathering in the wood. No word issued from him as they passed each other, but he turned, sticks and all, and stared after the stranger. Meanwhile Ewen hastened on; he must, he thought, have come a considerable way by now, and for the first time he began to wonder what he should do if he got to Balquhidder itself without encountering his cousin, and to regret that he had not asked Mrs. Stewart’s advice about such a contingency.

It was while he was turning over this difficulty in his mind that he came round a bend in the woodland path and perceived, at the foot of a tree, a man with one knee on the ground, examining something at its foot. Was it? . . . it looked like . . . Yes! He broke into a run, and was upon Doctor Cameron before the latter had time to do more than rise to his feet and utter an amazed:

“Ewen! Ewen! . . . It can’t be! How, and why——”

And not till that moment did it occur to Ewen that all this had happened before, in different surroundings. “I am come to warn you—once again, Archie!” he said, seizing him by the arms in his earnestness. “You must come no farther—you must not return to Stewart’s house. There’s a warrant out against you from Edinburgh, and soldiers coming from Inversnaid. Your hiding-place has been betrayed.”

“Betrayed!” said Archibald Cameron in incredulous tones. “Dear lad, you must be mistaken. There’s but six or seven people know that I am in these parts, and I could answer for everyone of them.”

Ewen was not shaken. It was like Archie not to believe in treachery. “You may think that,” he replied, “but it has been done. I have the fact on too good authority to doubt it. I have seen Mrs. Stewart, and told her, and have come to intercept you. You must not go back there.”

Archie slid his arm into his. “But first, my dear Ewen, I must learn whence you come and how? I know that you escaped from Fort William before the New Year, but——”

“I’ll tell you everything in proper time,” broke in his kinsman, “but in the name of good sense let us find a more concealed place to talk in than this path!—What is occupying you by this tree, pray?” For at the mention of leaving the path Doctor Cameron’s gaze had strayed back to the spot over which he had been stooping. Ewen could see nothing there but some bright-coloured toadstools.

“It is, I think, a rare fungus,” said Archie meditatively. “I should like—well, why not?” He stooped and picked one, and then allowed Ewen to draw him away into the undergrowth, just there waist-high or more, and find a spot under an oak, where, if they chose to sit or crouch, they would be invisible from the track.

But for the moment they stood beneath the oak-tree looking at each other, the elder man still holding the little orange toadstool between his fingers. Even though the black tie-wig, in place of the brown one he usually wore, or of his own fair, slightly greying hair, did change Archibald Cameron, even though Ewen’s gaze, scanning his face closely, did seem to find there a hint of a fresh line or two about the kindly mouth, he looked much the same as when Ardroy had last set eyes on him in the dark little croft up at Slochd nan Eun. And, as he might have done then, he wanted most to know of Ewen’s affairs.

But Ewen took him to task. “Are you fey, Archie, that you waste time over questions of no moment, and won’t believe what I tell you? Someone has betrayed you and sent information to Edinburgh which has been acted upon. To come by the knowledge of this and of your whereabouts I have made a lifelong enemy of a man I liked, committed an assault on him, stolen a horse, and, worse than all, read a private letter by stealth. You must at least pay some heed to me, and pay it at once!”

His concern was too acute to be ignored any longer. “Forgive me, laochain,” said the elder man. “What do you wish me to do?”

“Move your quarters instantly. It means capture to return to Duncan Stewart’s.”

Archie was attentive enough now. “I doubt if there is anyone else in the neighbourhood who is anxious for my presence.”

“But it would be infinitely better to leave the neighbourhood altogether,” urged his cousin.

Doctor Cameron considered. “I might lie for a while in the braes of Balquhidder on the far side of the loch—’tis solitary enough there. But if the soldiers are coming from Inversnaid it would be well to avoid that direction, and better to make at right angles through this wood and up the slopes of Beinn an-t-Sithein. . . . Yet, Ewen, ’tis sore hearing and hard believing that anyone can have informed of me. From whom was this letter which you——”

The sound of a shot, followed by a scream, both quite near, killed the question on his lips, and drove the blood from Ewen’s heart, if not from the speaker’s own. In a moment more, as they both stood mute and tense, a patter of light running feet and the pound of heavier ones could be heard, and along the path which they had left came flying, with terror on her face, a little barefoot girl of about twelve, closely pursued by a soldier, musket in hand, who was shouting after her to stop.

Both men started indignantly to make their way out of the undergrowth towards the pair, but Ewen turned fiercely on his companion.

“Archie, are you quite mad?” he whispered. “Stay there—and down with you!” He gave him a rough push, and himself crashed through the bushes and burst out on to the path just in front of the runners. The little girl, sobbing with fright, almost collided with him; he seized her, swung her behind him, and angrily faced the panting soldier. “Put down that musket, you ruffian! This is not the Slave Coast!”

The man’s face was almost the colour of his coat from his exertions, but, at least, there was no evil intent written there. “I were only trying . . . to stop the varmint!” he explained, very much out of breath. “She’s sent on ahead by some rebels in a farm . . . we marched by a while since . . . to carry a warning belike . . . I’ve bin a-chasing of her up and down hills for the last half-hour. Orders it was . . . I wouldn’t lay a finger on a child . . . got two of me own . . . only fired to frighten her into stopping—Hold her, or she’ll be off again!”

But there did not seem much likelihood of that. The little girl was on her knees in a heap behind the Highlander, her hands over her ears. He stooped over her.

“You are not hurt, my child, are you?” he asked in the Gaelic. “Then get you home again; you have done your work. You need not be frightened any more; the redcoat will not harm you.” And he took out a piece of money and closed her fingers over it.

“What are you saying to her—what are you giving her money for?” demanded the soldier suspiciously. “I believe you’ll be in league with the rebels yourself!”

“I should scarce tell her to go home if I were,” answered Ewen with an indifference which he was far from feeling. Good God, if next moment a picket should appear and search the bushes—or if Archie did not now remain motionless beneath them! “I do not know what you mean,” he continued, “about a warning, but between us we have stopped the child, and the sixpence I have given her will make her forget her fright the quicker—Off with you!” he repeated to the girl.

Ewen’s words had no doubt conveyed to the child a sense that she had accomplished her mission, though the eyes under the elf-locks of rusty hair were still fixed on him, and her whole eager, thin little face asked a wordless question to which he dared not make a further reply. Then, without a sign, she sprang up and slipped into the undergrowth, apparently to avoid the proximity of the redcoat, emerged from it on the other side of him, and ran back the way she had come.

Her late pursuer turned and looked after her, while Ewen’s fingers closed round one of Lord Aveling’s pistols in his pocket. What was the soldier going to do next? If he took a dozen steps off the path to his right he must see Archie crouched there; and if he did that he would have to be shot in cold blood. If he even stayed where he was much longer he would have to be accounted for somehow, since his mere presence would prevent the Jacobite from getting away unobserved. And get away he must, at once.

“Where’s your main body?” asked Ardroy suddenly.

The soldier turned round again. “D’ye think I’m quite a fool that you ask me that?” he retorted scornfully. “If you’re one of the disaffected yourself, as I suspect you are, from speaking Erse so glibly, you’ll soon find that out.” And swinging suddenly round again, he went off at a trot on the way he had come.

“Why, the Duke of Argyll himself speaks Erse on occasions!” Ewen called after him mockingly. But there was no mockery in his heart, only the most sickening apprehension. He was right, only too right, about the warrant, and the child had been sent on ahead to carry a warning, just as Mrs. Stewart had said would probably happen. Had Mrs. Stewart herself sent her? No, the man said she had come from a farm.

Directly the redcoat was out of sight Ardroy hurled himself into his cousin’s lair. Doctor Cameron was already on his feet.

“You heard, Archie? There’s not a moment to lose! He’ll be back with a party, very like, from the child running this way . . . though how she knew . . .”

“Yes, we must make for the side of Beinn an-t-Sithein,” said Archibald Cameron without comment. “That is to say, I must. You——”

“Do you suppose I am going to leave you? Lead, and I’ll follow you.”

“There’s no path,” observed the Doctor. “Perhaps ’tis as well; we’ll not be so easy to track.”

For ten minutes or so Ewen followed his cousin uphill through the wood, sometimes pushing through tangle of various kinds, sometimes stooping almost double, sometimes running, and once or twice getting severely scratched by holly bushes. But they were not yet in sight of its upper edge when Doctor Cameron came to an abrupt stop and held up his hand.

“Listen! I thought I heard voices ahead.”

The wind, which had risen a good deal in the last half-hour, and now tossed the branches overhead, made it difficult to be sure of this. Ewen knelt and put his ear to the ground.

“I hear something, undoubtedly.” He got up and looked at Archie anxiously. “If we should prove to be cut off from the hill-side, is there any place in the wood where we could lie hid—a cave or even a heap of boulders?”

“There is nothing that I know of.—Ewen, where are you going?”

“Only a little farther on, to reconnoitre. Oh, I’ll be careful, I promise you. Meanwhile stay you there!” And he was off before Archie could detain him.

It took him but five minutes or so of careful stalking to be certain that there were soldiers between them and the slopes which they were hoping to gain. There were also, without doubt, soldiers somewhere in the lower part of the wood near the stream. If they could neither leave the wood, nor hide in it, Archie must infallibly be taken.

Ewen slid round the beech-trunk against which he was pressed, meaning to retrace his steps immediately to the spot where he had left his kinsman, but for a moment he stood there motionless, with a horrible premonition at his heart. O God, it could not be that this was the end for Archie! A sort of blindness seemed to pass over his vision, and when it cleared he found his eyes fixed on something farther down the slope of the wood, a little to his left, something that he must have been looking at already without recognising it for what it was—a small thatched roof.

It seemed like a miracle, an answer to prayer at the least. Ewen slipped back with all speed to the Doctor.

“Yes, we are cut off,” he whispered, “and we cannot go back. But, Archie, there’s some kind of little building farther down the wood. I saw but its roof, yet it may serve us better than nothing. Let us go and look at it.”

They hurried down the slope again. Here the dead leaves were dry, and rustled underfoot, but the need of haste overrode that of silent going. And in a few minutes they both stood looking at Ewen’s discovery, a small log hut. It stood on a level piece of the wood, with a little clearing of some ten yards square in front of it, but on its other sides bushes and stout hollies pressed close up to it.

“I never before heard of any hut in this wood,” commented Archie in surprise, “but there it is, certainly! Perhaps the Good People have put it there for us.”

If they had, it could not have been recently, for, as Ewen saw with relief, the logs of which it was constructed were so weathered and mossed that it was not at first very distinguishable from its surroundings. But it was in good repair, and, on going round to the front, the fugitives saw that it actually had a solid, well-fitting door—which, indeed, they found difficult to push open, though it was not secured in any way. To Ewen it seemed of good augury that it opened inwards. Some logs, years old, lay about near the entrance.

“I don’t know that we are wise to hide here,” murmured Ardroy, “but there seems no choice.” And they went in.

Within it was dark, for the hut had no windows. Finding that there was no means of securing the door on the inside save a crazy latch, Ewen suggested bringing in some of the stray logs and piling them against the door; so he and Archie hurriedly staggered in with several, and proceeded to lay some against the bottom, and to rear others against it at an angle in order to wedge it.

“But we cannot stand a regular siege in here, Ewen,” objected the Doctor, looking round their dim shelter.

“No; but if the soldiers find the door immovably fixed they may think it is so fastened up that no one could have got into the hut, and we meanwhile lying as close as weasels within they’ll likely go away again—that is, if they come at all. Please God, however, they’ll pass the place without seeing it, as we nearly did. Or they may never search this quarter of the wood at all.”

“Yes, I think they’ll have to break the door to match-wood before they get it open now,” opined Archie. “My sorrow, but it’s dark in here!”

Indeed, the only light now came from the hole in the thatch intended to let out the smoke, which hole also let in the rain, so that the ground beneath, in the middle of the hut, was more puddle than anything else. It seemed as if the place had been occupied by a woodcutter, for, in addition to the felled logs outside, there was a big but extremely rusty axe propped against the wall in one corner, by the side of the rough bench built into the latter; axe and bench were, with the exception of the blackened stones of the fireplace (some of which they had added to the logs against the door) the only objects there.

So, having now no occupation but waiting upon Fate, the cousins sat down in the gloom upon this bench; and it was then that Ewen realised that he was nearly famished, and ate his provisions. Archie would not share with him.

“And now, tell me——” each said to the other; and indeed there was much to tell, though they dared not utter more than a few sentences at a time, and those in a low voice, and must then stop to listen with all their ears.

And Ewen learnt that Archie had come to these parts because Lochaber and the West were getting too hot to hold him, owing to the constant searches which were carried out for him; he was, he admitted, all but captured in Strontian when he went to Dungallon’s house. That was when Ewen was in Fort William. But here, up till now, he had been unmolested, and who had given notice of his presence he could not imagine.

“And the assistance you hoped for,” asked Ewen, “is it to come soon?”

He heard his kinsman sigh. “I’m as much in the dark about it yet, Ewen, . . . as you and I are at this moment. I begin to wonder whether Frederick of Prussia——”

Ewen gave a stifled exclamation. “Prussia! It is Prussia then——”

“You did not know? Prussia, and perhaps Sweden, if certain conditions were fulfilled. But how have you not learnt that?”

“You forget; you did not tell me that night at Ardroy, and since then I have either been a close prisoner or skulking in the wilds. One night in Appin did not teach me much, especially as my cousin Ian was away. . . . And so troops are to land?”

“They were to. ’Twas inspiriting news at first, to me and to those I visited. But time has gone on, and on . . .” Archie paused. “I am totally without information now, Ewen. My communications with Lochdornie are cut off, though I believe he is still in Scotland. But I doubt if he knows any more than I do. I verily think that if May comes and brings nothing I shall return to the Prince. Talk of what is promised is windy fare to give to longing hearts when the fulfilment tarries thus.”

A little chill ran through his listener. He had never heard Archibald Cameron so plainly dispirited. For himself, he knew too little to proffer any encouragement; and his uncle’s words about the sunset of the Cause recurred to him. But he had not subscribed to them, nor did he now; it was too natural to hope. Even when months ago he had bitterly asked of the man at his side who was to lead them, he had not despaired, in his heart, of the coming of a day when they might be led. But, evidently, it was not to be yet . . . and here was poor Archie, risking his life to bring good tidings, and at last, after months of hardship and peril, himself doubting if the tidings were true.

“Yes, many thousands of men were, I believe, promised,” resumed Doctor Cameron, “when the ground should be prepared. But the preparing of it has not been easy when the weeks slipped away and I could hold out naught more definite than the hopes I had brought with me in September—Not that I blame the Prince one whit for that!” he added quickly. And they both fell, and this time quite naturally, into one of the prudent silences which had continually punctuated this conversation in the semi-darkness.

It was a longer silence than usual. Ewen’s thoughts went circling away. Had Archie, with all his devotion, merely been beating the air all these months?

“I hope Mrs. Stewart has not been molested,” said Archie’s voice after a while. “But I begin to believe that the soldiers have abandoned the search, or, at least, that they are not going to search this part of the wood.”

Ewen nodded. “I begin to think that it is so. I wonder how soon we might with safety leave this place, or whether we had best spend the night here.”

“I’ve no idea what time it may be,” said his cousin. He pulled out his watch and was peering at it when Ardroy gripped his other wrist. “Did you hear anything?” he asked in the lowest of whispers.

His watch in his hand, Doctor Cameron sat as still as he. With its ticking there mingled a distant sound of snapping sticks, of something pushing through bushes just as they had done in their approach to the hut. The sounds came nearer, accompanied by voices. Ewen’s grip grew tighter, and the Doctor put back his watch.

“Ay, it is a hut!” called out a man’s voice. “Come on, cully—damn these hollies! I warrant he’s in here! Come on, I tell you, or he may bolt for it!”

“I’m coming as quick as I can,” shouted another voice. The cracklings and tramplings increased in volume. Ewen slipped his hand into his pocket, took out one of Lord Aveling’s elegant pistols, and closed his cousin’s fingers over it.