Almond, Wild Almond. D. K. Broster

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СКАЧАТЬ are therefore of our friends—I speak as a Jacobite.”

      “I have certainly the honour to be both,” returned M. de Lancize politely, observing—as did Ranald Maclean—how the second visitor, even more closely muffled, kept in the background out of the light.

      The Jacobite uncloaked himself. “My name is . . . Malloch. It is my privilege to be in the intimate confidence of the Prince of Wales.”

      “Malloch!” exclaimed both the young men together. But it was the Frenchman who first found speech. “Then are you not, monsieur, the gentleman who was the sole companion of the Prince Charles Edouard on his adventurous journey from Rome? A daring enterprise! Is it possible that I can be of any service to you?”

      “Indeed, monsieur, you can,” promptly replied Mr. “Malloch” (whose real name happened to be MacGregor of Balhaldie). “His Royal Highness desires particularly to see the Comte de Saxe without delay. You can doubtless inform me how he may best be come at—to whom application should be made?”

      But at that the young officer looked embarrassed. “You must be aware, monsieur,” he replied, returning to his native tongue, while one hand fidgeted with his sword-knot, “that M. de Saxe, solely for reasons of State, has never permitted himself the honour of an interview with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and that His Royal Highness, for the same sufficient cause, has perfectly concurred in this arrangement.”

      “But he concurs no more!” said a voice from behind, a young, strained, impatient voice with the faintest trace of some other accent in its French. “My God, it can be borne no longer! I am but flesh and blood, and reasons of State must go! I must know—I must know to-night what M. de Saxe intends! I must see him in person!”

      Balhaldie sprang round, Ranald Maclean recoiled, and Cyprien de Lancize, astounded beyond words, did the same, as into the middle of the shabby little room there strode, uncloaking himself as he came, a good-looking, fair-complexioned young man, beautifully proportioned, with an oval face, bright brown eyes, a rather small but imperious mouth, and an air charged with the will to command.

      “Your Royal Highness,” remonstrated his companion, “I thought you had not intended——”

      “To reveal myself until you had prepared Mr. Maclean for my arrival? But there is surely no need of that! The roof which shelters one Highland heart can surely shelter me! Is that not so, Mr. Maclean?”

      His eyes flashed; he held out his hand, and Ranald, thus beholding for the first time his lawful prince, dropped on one knee and reverently pressed the hand to his lips.

      “And this gentleman,” went on Charles Edward, “who wears, I see, the uniform of my royal cousin——”

      “Monseigneur,” said Cyprien de Lancize, with great deference, “deign to behold in me also one whose sword has been most willingly put at your Royal Highness’s service.” He bowed deeply. “I have the honour to name myself to your Royal Highness—the Vicomte de Lancize, of Dauphin-Dragons, aide-de-camp to the Comte de Saxe.”

      “Aide-de-camp to the Comte de Saxe!” exclaimed the Prince, his face lighting up. “Che buona ventura! Monsieur de Lancize, will you do me a favour?”

      “It will be for me a favour to receive your commands, mon prince!”

      “Merci, monsieur. Then I pray you to go and enquire of M. de Saxe—he is lodged at the Intendance de la Marine, is he not—whether he will receive me?”

      The Vicomte de Lancize was not expecting this.

      “To-night, monseigneur?” he asked, hesitating.

      “Yes, to-night,” returned the Prince firmly. “It is imperative that I should learn from his own lips what are his intentions, his instructions from Paris. ’Tis with that purpose that I have come from Gravelines. How can I continue to remain there inactive, hearing of disasters to the fleet, but ignorant of their extent and their consequences! I propose to stay awhile with Mr. Maclean, if he permits——”

      “Your Royal Highness!” ejaculated Ranald, somewhat overwhelmed.

      “—while Mr. Malloch goes to ask whether M. de Saxe will receive me.” He turned to Ranald. “Mr. Malloch conceived the idea of asking a brief hospitality for me, Mr. Maclean, from something which Lord Keith let fall about your having no other acquaintances in Dunkirk, so that my presence was unlikely to be noised abroad.—You see, Monsieur de Lancize, that I am desirous of embarrassing M. de Saxe as little as may be!”

      That was quite possible, but he was embarrassing M. de Saxe’s aide-de-camp a good deal, and all because that young gentleman knew too much. The last thing the Lieutenant-General of King Louis’ forces would do was to receive the Prince of Wales now.

      “Monseigneur,” he said, with a shade of deprecation, “I would willingly do your Royal Highness’s behest, but——”

      “But you conceive that I shall ask in vain?” finished Charles Edward, his brown eyes flashing. “Is that what you wish to convey?”

      “I think, monseigneur,” said the young Frenchman, “that your Royal Highness—if I may venture to say so with the greatest deference—would do better not to make the request. The Comte de Saxe is entirely devoted to your Royal Highness’s interests, but, for that very reason, he may think those interests are better served——”

      “By keeping me waiting at his door?” broke in the Prince hotly. “I’ll not believe it! If you prefer not to escort Mr. Malloch, he shall seek M. de Saxe alone—or, per Dio, I myself will go in person and knock at his door in the Intendance!”

      “No, no, your Royal Highness!” exclaimed all three men together, and Balhaldie, shocked, but a little, too, in the tone of one expostulating with a mutinous child, said: “We agreed, sir, that it would be totally unbecoming for you even to remain in the coach outside the Intendance while I approached the Comte de Saxe. Do you stay here with Mr. Maclean, as we devised; then, should M. de Saxe feel unable to receive you, no one need know that you ever came to Dunkirk to-night.”

      “Indeed, your Royal Highness,” said Ranald Maclean earnestly, “that is the better way, unworthy though my poor room be to shelter you.”

      As for the Vicomte de Lancize (who was aware that whether M. de Saxe agreed to receive the Prince or no, the result, as far as the expedition was concerned, would be exactly the same, and who sincerely wished that the Prince had not taken this step, bound to end in his discomfiture), he hastened to declare that he would conduct M. Malloch to the presence of the lieutenant-general, assured the Prince of Wales of his respectful devotion, asked leave to kiss his hand, and on that left the room to which the notary’s loose guttering had conducted him, and drove off with Mr. MacGregor of Balhaldie in the waiting coach.

      So Ranald Maclean found himself alone with that impetuous, fascinating young man of four-and-twenty over whose bright head hovered the shadow of a crown made more visionary still by the double tempest, and (though neither of them, naturally, knew this) by those instructions from Versailles, which lay upon the ink-bespattered inlay of the table in the Intendance. It was a half-hour which the Highlander was to remember all his life.

      “Cruel, cruel!” the Prince would reiterate, swinging round the room. “Just when all looked so promising—weather of this violence! It was more than flesh and blood could stand, to wait like a stock, sixteen miles away at Gravelines! God knows I have done enough of it already! . . . Do you think, Mr. Maclean, that СКАЧАТЬ