The Gleam in the North. D. K. Broster

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СКАЧАТЬ MacPhair of Glenshian in the Highlands too?”

      “No, he remains in London. He is thought to be more useful there.”

      “Why, what does he do there? But that brings to my mind, Archie—what is this cock-and-bull story which Hector has got hold of, about a plot to kidnap the Elector and his family? He called it ‘kidnap’, but I guessed the term to cover something worse. He coupled it, too, with the name of Alexander Murray of Elibank.”

      “Hector is a very indiscreet young man,” said Doctor Cameron.

      Ewen’s face clouded still more. “It is true, then, not an idle tale?”

      “It is true,” said Doctor Cameron with evident reluctance, “that there is such a scheme afoot.”

      “And I refused to believe or at least to approve it!” exclaimed Ewen. “That indeed was why Hector left the house in anger. I swore that the Prince, who was so set against the idea of an enemy’s being taken off, could not know of it, and that you of all men could not possibly have a share in it!”

      “I have not, Ewen, and I don’t approve. It is a mad scheme, and I doubt—I hope, rather—that it will never come to the ripening. It is quite another business which has brought me to Scotland, a business that for a while yet I’ll not fully open, even to you.”

      “I have no wish to hear more secrets,” retorted Ardroy with a sigh. “I like them little enough when I do hear them. It’s ill to learn of men who serve the same master and have notions so different. Yes, I must be glad that I do not have to tread those ways, even though I live here idly and do naught for the White Rose, as Hector pointed out to me the other night.”

      He saw his cousin look at him with an expression which he could not read, save that it had sadness in it, and what seemed, too, a kind of envy. “Ewen,” he said, and laid his hand on Ewen’s knee, “when the call came in ’45 you gave everything you had, your home, your hopes of happiness, your blood. And you still have clean hands and a single heart. You bring those to the Cause to-day.”

      “Archie, how dare you speak as if you had not the same!” began the younger man quite fiercely. “You——”

      “Don’t eat me, lad! God be thanked, I have. But, as I told you, I am not without unfriends. . . . We’ll not speak of that any more. And, Ewen, how can you say that you do naught for the White Rose now when only yesternight you threw aside what might have been your child’s sole chance of life in order to warn the Prince’s messenger? If that bonny bairn upstairs had died I’d never have been able to look you in the face again. . . . You have named him after poor Major Windham, as you said you should. I see you still have the Major’s ring on your finger.”

      Ewen looked down at the ring, with a crest not his own, which he always wore, a memento of the English enemy and friend to whom he owed it that he had not been shot, a helpless fugitive, after Culloden.

      “Yes, Keithie is named after him. Strangely enough Windham, in his turn, though purely English, was named for a Scot, so he once told me. Six years, Archie, and he lies sleeping there at Morar, yet it seems but yesterday that he died.” Ardroy’s eyes darkened; they were full of pain. “He lies there—and I stand here, because of him. I might well name Keithie after Keith Windham, for there had been no Keithie if Windham had not rushed between me and the muskets that day on Beinn Laoigh.”

      “You have never chanced upon that brute Major Guthrie again, I suppose?”

      The sorrow went out of the young man’s face and was succeeded by a very grim expression. “Pray that I do not, Archie, for if I do I shall kill him!”

      “My dear Ewen . . . do you then resent his treatment of you as much as that?”

      “His treatment of me!” exclaimed Ewen, and his eyes began to get very blue. “Dhé! I never think of that now! It is what he brought about for Windham. Had it not been for his lies and insinuations, poor Lachlan would never have taken that terrible and misguided notion into his head, and—have done what he did.” For, it was Lachlan MacMartin, Ewen’s own foster-brother, who, misapprehending that part which the English officer had played in his chieftain’s affairs, had fatally stabbed him just before Ewen’s own escape to France, and had then thrown away his own life—a double tragedy for Ardroy.

      “So you charge Major Guthrie with being the real cause of Keith Windham’s death?” said his cousin. “ ’Tis a serious accusation, Ewen; on what grounds do you base it?”

      “Why, I know everything now,” replied Ewen. “Soon after my return to Scotland I happened to fall in with one of Guthrie’s subalterns, a Lieutenant Paton, who was in charge of the English post there was then at Glenfinnan. He recognised me, for he had been in Guthrie’s camp on the Corryarrick road, and in the end I had the whole story, from which it was clear that Guthrie had talked about Windham’s ‘betrayal’ of me—false as hell though he knew the notion to be—so openly in those days after my capture that it became the subject of gossip among his redcoats too. And when Lachlan went prowling round the camp in the darkness, as I learnt afterwards from his father that he did, he overheard that talk, and believed it. It was Guthrie, no other, who put the fatal dirk in Lachlan’s hand. . . . And it is a curious thing, Archie,” went on the speaker, now pacing about the room, “that, though I have not the two sights, as some men, I have for some time felt a strange presentiment that before long I shall meet someone connected with Keith Windham, and that the meeting will mean much to me. For Alison’s sake, and the children’s—and for my own too—I hope the man is not Major Guthrie.”

      “I hope so too,” returned Doctor Cameron gravely, knowing that at bottom, under so much that was gentle, patient and civilised, Ardroy kept the passionate and unforgiving temper of the Highlander. “But is it not more like to be some relative of Major Windham’s? Had he no kin—did he not leave a wife, for instance?”

      His cousin’s eyes softened again. “I knew so little of his private affairs. I never heard him mention any of his family save his father, who died when he was a child.” He looked at the ring again, at its lion’s head surrounded by a fetterlock, and began to twist it on his finger. “I sometimes think that Windham would have been amused to see me as the father of two children—especially if he had been present at my interview with Donald last Monday.” His own mouth began to twitch at the remembrance. “He used to laugh at me, I know, in the early days of our acquaintance. At Glenfinnan, for instance, and Kinlocheil . . . about the guns we buried, and he remembered it, too, when he was dying. I wish he could have seen his namesake.”

      “I expect,” said Archibald Cameron, “that he knows, in some fashion or other, that you do not forget him.”

      “Forget him! I never forget!” exclaimed Ewen, the Celt again. “And that is why I pray God I do not meet the man who really has my friend’s blood upon his hands.”

      “If the Fates should bring you into collision, then I hope it may at least be in fair fight—in battle,” observed Doctor Cameron.

      “What chance is there of that?” asked Ewen. “Who’s to lead us now? We are poor, broken and scattered—and watched to boot! When Donald’s a man, perhaps . . .” He gave a bitter sigh. “But for all that I live here so tamely under the eyes of the Sassenach, I swear to you, Archie, that I’d give all the rest of my life for one year—one month—of war in which to try our fortunes again, and drive them out of our glens to their own fat fields for ever! I could die happy on the banks of Esk if I thought they’d never cross it again, and the King was come back to the land they have robbed СКАЧАТЬ