Читать книгу Denounced - John Bloundelle-Burton - Страница 4

The month of May, 1746, was drawing to a close, and June was already giving signs of its approach, as my Lord Viscount Fordingbridge sat in the library of his house in Kensington-square and warmed his feet at the fire which, in spite of the genial spring weather, burned pleasantly on the hearth. By his side, on a table, lay the morning papers of the day to which he constantly referred, and which, after each occasion of doing so, he threw down with a very palpable expression of satisfaction.

"In truth," he muttered to himself, "nought could have gone much better. I am safe and--and the necks of all the rest are jeopardised. Jeopardised! Nay! 'tis much worse than that. Those who are caught must surely die, those who are not caught must be so ere long. As for Charles Edward himself he hath escaped. Well, let him go; I have no quarrel with him."

Again he took up one of the journals and read:

"This morning his Majesty's ship of war, Exeter, arrived from Scotland, having on board the Earls of Cromartie and Kilmarnock, and the Lord Balmerino. They have been committed prisoners to the Tower on a charge of high treason." "Ah," he mused, "that's well, so far as it goes, though for myself I care not whether their lordships finish on Tower Hill or are set free. Fools all! Yet they were near winning, the devil seize them! had they but pushed on from Derby they must have won, and the German who now sits secure would never have had my allegiance. Charles Edward would have transformed my title into that of a marquis, I doubt me if George will do as much in reward for my change of politics. But what I would fain know is, where is the wolf Elphinston, Balmerino's cousin? He fought at Culloden, I know well--recklessly, like a man sick of life. Perhaps 'twas for his lost love, Kitty! At least in Hawley's despatch he is mentioned as having killed four men of Barrell's regiment with his own blade. May Fate confound him! if taken his life is forfeit, but where is he?"

A knock came at the library door as he mused, and in reply to his answer Mr. Archibald entered. As usual, certainly since he left France, he was clothed as became the part he had now assumed, of a well-to-do Scotch merchant, there being only one new addition to any portion of his dress. His hat, which he threw carelessly upon the table, on the top of his lordship's journals, bore in it the black cockade!

"Ha, ha! my worthy merchant," exclaimed Lord Fordingbridge, as his quick eye perceived this, "my worthy dealer in brocades, broadcloth, and Colchester baize, so already thou trimmest the sails to catch the favouring German breezes. 'Tis well."

"Stop this fooling," said the Jesuit, looking angrily at him; "is this the time for you to be joking and jeering when everything is lost? You have the journals there, you know well what has happened. The principals of the noblest cause, of the most sublime restoration that would have ever taken place, are prisoners with their lives in forfeit, some in London, some in Carlisle gaol, and some at Inverness, and you sit gibing there. Pardieu! sometimes I think you are a fool instead of the knave I once deemed you."

"If," said the viscount, scowling at the other as he spoke, "you deem yourself called upon to address me in such a manner, I shall be forced, Mr. Archibald, to also alter my style of address to you, and to speak both to and of you as the Reverend Archibald Sholto, priest of the Society of Jesus, and an avowed Jacobite. And you will remember that here, in England, at such a moment as this, to be so proclaimed could not be otherwise than fraught with unpleasant consequences to you. Moreover, you will have the goodness to remember that now--since the disastrous events, to your side, of Culloden, the Viscount Fordingbridge is a fervent Hanoverian."

"I will remember," said the priest, "that however desirous the Viscount Fordingbridge may be to espouse the cause of the House of Hanover, it is not in his power to do so, so long as there remains one Stuart to assert a claim to the throne of his ancestors. When that race ceases to exist, when no living Stuart is left to call for aid, then perhaps, you may be permitted to become Hanoverian, not before. Now, my Lord Fordingbridge, listen to me, while I go over the cards I hold in my hand against Simeon Larpent, my whilom scholar at St. Omer, who----"

"Nay!" exclaimed the other, "do nothing of the sort. I retract, I had forgotten. Recall nothing. Yet, for my safety, I must appear an adherent of King George. Indeed, to-morrow I attend his levée."

"For the good of the Stuart cause," the other said, "you will continue as you have begun since your return to this country, to appear an adherent of this King George; for the good of the cause that is not yet lost. There will be another rising ere long, be sure of that; if it comes not before, it will do so at the death of the present usurper. Now, listen to the news I bring you."

"What is it?" the other asked, while he paled as he did so. "What?"

"The worst that you can hear. Elphinston is in London."

"Elphinston here! Is he mad? His life is not worth an hour's purchase."

"He knows that," replied the Jesuit coolly, "as well as you or I do. Yet he heeds it not. Why should he? Are not other men's lives doomed who are now in London? Men who," he went on, speaking coldly and with great distinctness, "brought money into England to aid the cause; men," still his voice fell more and more crisp upon the other's ear, "who did endeavour to compass the death of George as he returned from his last visit to Herrenhausen; men who----"

"Silence, you Jesuit devil," interrupted the other. "Sometimes I wonder that you do not fear to speak as you do; that you do not dread that your own death may be compassed."

"I have no fear," replied the priest, taking snuff as he spoke, "so long as the walls of St. Omer contain my papers. Rather should I fear for those whose secrets would be divulged if I were to die. To die even suddenly, without being assassinated."

"Well! to your news," exclaimed the other. "What of Elphinston! Where does he hide himself away?"

"At the moment," answered the priest, "he--and my brother Douglas----"

"So he is here, too!"

"He is here, too. They dwell together in lodgings at the village of Wandsworth. Perhaps later, if it goes ill with Balmerino, they may remove into the City."

"To make some mad attempt to save him!"

"Possibly. Meanwhile, do you not dread to meet the man yourself! You stole his bride from him, you will remember, and now he suspects how you brought it about. How will you answer to him for the falsehoods by which you persuaded her that he was already the husband of another woman?"

"By my sword," Lord Fordingbridge replied--though at the moment he was thinking of a far different manner in which Bertie Elphinstone should be answered.

"It will be your only plan," Sholto said. "For by treachery you can accomplish nothing. If Elphinston is blown upon he will know well who is his informer and will, in his turn, inform. Inform upon the man who plotted to have George's person seized by French pirates as he returned to England from France, the man who spread broadcast through England the reward offered by Prince Charles of £30,000 to whomsoever should seize and secure George----"^{[Note A]}

"Why," exclaimed Fordingbridge, maddened by the other's taunts, "why do you persecute me like this? What have I ever done to you that you threaten me thus?"

"Recall," replied the Jesuit, "your vows at St. Omer, your sins since, your broken pledges, your cancelled oaths. Then answer to yourself why I do these things. Moreover, remember I love my brother--he has been my charge since his boyhood--and if Elphinston is betrayed Douglas must fall too. Also remember, Elphinston has been ever beloved by me. You have inflicted one deadly wound on him, you have wrecked his life by striking him through his love--think you that I will ever permit you to injure him again? Man!" the Jesuit said, advancing nearer to Fordingbridge as he spoke, and standing before him in so threatening a manner that the other shrank back from him, "if evil comes to Elphinston through you, such evil shall in turn come to you through me that I will rend your life for ever and always. Remember, I say again, remember."

He took his hat from off the table as he finished, and left the room addressing no further remark to the other. And, quietly as he ever moved, he was about to descend the stairs when Lady Fordingbridge coming from out an open door, stopped him.

"I wish to speak to you," she said, in a soft, low voice, "come within a moment," and, followed by Sholto, she led him back into the room she had just quitted. Here, too, a warm pleasant fire burned in the grate, while an agreeable aroma of violets stole through the apartment; and motioning her visitor to a seat her ladyship said:

"Is the news true? Are they--is Mr. Elphinston in London?"

"It is true, Kitty," he said. "Yet I know not how you heard it."

"From my father who dreads as much to meet him as the craven in his library must do." She paused a moment, then she continued, "Have you seen him?"

"Yes," he said, "I have seen him."

"And," she asked, wistfully, "did he send no word of pardon--to me?"

The Jesuit shook his head, though in a gentle kindly manner, ere he replied. "No, child. He spoke not of you."

She sat gazing into the embers for a few moments more; then she went on.

"Yet he must know, he cannot but know how basely I was deceived. You told me months ago that he had learnt some of the story from your brother's lips, who learnt it from you. Is there no room for pity in his heart? Will he never forgive?"

"If he thinks aught," said the Jesuit, still very gently, to her, "it is that you should never have believed so base a tale. So at least he tells Douglas. To me he has never spoken of the matter."

"Alas!" she said. "How could I doubt? Lord Fordingbridge I might have disbelieved, but my father!" and here she shuddered. "How could I think that he would stoop to practise such lies, such duplicity, on his own child?"

Father Sholto made no answer to this remark, contenting himself with lifting his hands from his knees and warming the palms at the fire. And so they sat, neither speaking for two or three moments. Then she said:

"Father, will you take a letter to him from me?"

This time he lifted his bushy eyebrows instead of his hands, and looked at her from underneath them. Next he shrugged his shoulders, and then he said:

"Kitty, for you I will do anything, for you who have ever been a dutiful daughter of the Church, ay! and a loyal adherent to a now sadly broken cause. Yet, child, what use to write? Nothing can undo what is done; you must make the best of matters. Solace your wounded heart with the rank you have gained, with your husband's now comfortable means, your reception at the Court of the Hanoverian king, for king he is, and, I fear, must be. However great the evil that was done, it must be borne. You and Bertie Elphinston are sundered for ever in this world, unless----"

"Unless?" she repeated, with a swift glance from her eyes.

"You both survive him. Yet, how shall such a thing be! He is no older than Elphinston himself, and, much as he has wronged that other, no reparation, not even his life, would set things right. If Bertie slew him he could not marry his victim's widow."

"Alas! alas!" said Lady Fordingbridge, "the last thing he would wish to do now, even were I free, would be to have me for his wife. Me whom once he loved so tenderly."

Once more the Jesuit twitched up his great eyebrows and muttered something to himself, and then seemed bent in thought. And as Kitty sat watching him she caught disconnected whispers from his lips. "Douglas might do it," she heard him say; "that way the gate would be open. Yet he cannot be spared, not yet," until at last he ceased, after which, looking up from his reverie, he said to her:

"What do you wish to write to him, child? You, the Viscountess Fordingbridge, must have a care as to your epistles to unmarried men."

"Be under no apprehension," she replied. "Yet, if--if--he would pardon me, would send me one little line to say--God!--that he does not hate me--oh! that he who once loved me so should come to hate me--then, then I might again be happy, a little happy. Father, I must write to him."

"So be it," he answered. "Write if you must. I will convey the letter."