The Greatest Historical Novels & Romances of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster
unless my aunt has contrived to do so, she may not know whether I am alive or dead. If you would write to her, Windham—you remember her, no doubt—that would indeed be a kindness. Will you?”
“Certainly, if you wish it,” answered Keith, though he did not like the prospect. “But,” he went on with a little hesitation, “why do you not write yourself, and I would use my best endeavours that the letter should reach her.”
“I cannot write,” said Ewen. “They will not allow me the materials; I have often tried to come by them. You must tell her of me, if you will; and I particularly charge you not to omit how you saved my life and visited me, and . . . and all the rest that you have done,” he concluded a trifle unsteadily. “That is a last command, Windham.”
But Keith had drawn a pencil from his pocket. “You had a book in your hand when I came in; can you not tear out a blank page and write upon that? I promise you that, if I can compass it, no eye shall see the letter but your wife’s.”
“A book?” queried Ewen. “Ah, yes, but ’tis only a little Gaelic psalter which I contrived to get hold of. However——” He took it out of his pocket, remarking that the pages were but small, and, carefully tearing out the fly-leaf, accepted the proffered pencil. Keith, unable to withdraw as he would have wished, walked slowly up and down the narrow place with bent head. “I have saved him for this!” was still the burden of his thoughts. Had Ardroy been shot that day he would have known little about it; he was barely conscious. It would have been over in a moment, and it would have been a man’s death, too. Now . . . he shuddered to think of the alternative, purposely prolonged and horrible, the death of an animal in the shambles. He hoped with all his heart that Alison Cameron, away in France, did not know, and would never hear, the details of the English sentence for treason.
Ewen did not write much, for there was not a great deal of space on his paper. He read it over very composedly and signed his name. Then he folded the letter, stooped his head and put his lips to it. Keith turned his back, but the distance between them was so small that he knew that the writer, after that, had buried his face in his hands.
Ah, if only he had listened to him on that evening last summer, which now seemed such centuries ago, he would not now be giving up his love, as well as his life and lands!
But there was a clashing behind him; Ewen was getting to his feet. “I beg your pardon for keeping you waiting so long. Since you are so good I think that I should like to send my wife also the only remembrance that I can send. Have you a knife, and can you trust me with it?—or better still, will you cut off a piece of this for her?”
He indicated his hair, and coming closer, bent his head. So Keith, with a rather blunt penknife, and not particularly good eyesight at the moment, sawed off a little lock on his temple.
“Women like such things,” said the young man half apologetically as Keith, his mouth tight shut, wrapped the trophy in his handkerchief. “And the more of which one can cheat Carlisle gate the better.” He spoke quite lightly and calmly, but his little letter, which he gave Keith the moment after, had been so tightly held in his hand that it was marked with his nail-prints. “I have written the direction upon it,” he went on, watching the Englishman put it carefully away. “Perhaps I may be able to write to her once more from Carlisle, but who knows? And the messenger might not be trustworthy, whereas I know that you are.—Now, Windham, there is another matter. The money you so generously left for my use——”
“For God’s sake don’t think of that now!” cried Keith, quite distracted.
“But I must! Miss Cameron, if I can communicate with her, which may be allowed at Carlisle——”
“Will you waste time over a few guineas? In Heaven’s name, take them as a gift—cannot you see that it would be kinder to me?”
Ewen evidently saw; he could hardly fail to see it. “Very well, then I will; and thank you for the gift. After all, I took a greater at your hands on Beinn Laoigh. And do you remember the money you left as payment for my clothes at Fassefern House? My sorrow, but I was angry with you! I threw it away into the bushes, and Clanranald’s and Keppoch’s men hunted for it all night, so I heard afterwards.” His tone suddenly changed. “Do you mean to leave this penknife here—is that a gift, too?”
He pointed to that object, lying where Keith had laid it down on one of the stools in order to have both hands free to wrap up the lock of hair. The Englishman hesitated, looking from it to the prisoner, and read, plain to see in his eyes, the value which he would set on even so small and blunt a weapon to-morrow. For a moment he was tempted, against honour and duty.
“Why did you put me in mind of it?” he asked reproachfully. “I had indeed honestly forgotten it, and had I so left it, you could have taken it with you to-morrow! . . . But I gave Lord Albemarle my word not to help you in any way to escape . . .”
Ewen instantly picked up the penknife, shut it, and held it out to him. “Take it. They are sure, too, to search me before I go to-morrow. Come,” he still held it out, “you have sacrificed enough for me; your honour you shall not sacrifice!”
As Keith reluctantly took the knife from the shackled hand he had a shock as if a lightning flash had stabbed asunder the sky above him and shown him something he had never seen—never wished to see—before. The barren and solitary path which he had marked out for himself through life was not the best! Here was a man who would never willingly fail friend or lover, much less play them false. Now, at this their last meeting, when friendship with him was a thing impossible of realisation, he knew that he would have asked nothing better—he who never wished for a friend.
Like a lightning flash too in its speed the revelation was over. Mechanically he put the penknife away, and Ewen limped the few paces back to his stool. “Come and sit down again, Windham,” he said, “for once more you cannot get out if you wish to. And there is a matter about which I have long been curious. Why do you bear a Scots name—if I may ask without indiscretion? Have you perhaps Scottish kin?”
Keith, sitting down beside him again, shook his head. “There’s not a soul of my blood north of Tweed. But my father, who was a soldier also, had once a Scottish friend, killed at Malplaquet before I was born, for whom he must have had a great affection, since he gave me his name.”
They looked at each other, and the shadowy dead Scot of Marlborough’s wars seemed, to his namesake at least, to assume the shape of a symbol or a prophecy. Keith shivered suddenly.
“I can hardly hope,” said the Jacobite, “that you will care to name your son after me when I have ended . . . not on a battlefield . . . but I should like to feel that you will remember sometimes, not me, but what you did for me. For whereas you think but poorly of your fellowmen and yourself—or am I wrong?—you act, Keith Windham, very much otherwise!”
Moved and startled, Keith dropped his gaze and stared between his knees at the floor. Yes, they might have been friends; they were meant to be friends—Ardroy felt that too, did he? “I . . . in truth I do not well know what I think,” he murmured; “and, as for my actions, why, I seem to have failed on every side.—But one thing I do know,” he went on with a touch of defiance, “and that is, that I do not believe in your Highland second sight. Who can say that we shall not meet again—and you a free man?”
Ewen looked hard at him a moment. Outside the jangling of keys could be heard coming nearer. “I wish very much that I could think so too,” he answered simply, as he rose to his feet with a corresponding clashing. And again the strange constriction in his throat betrayed Keith into irritation.
“Are you so superstitious, Ardroy, that you’ll read into an old man’s maunderings a menace that was never there? Did your foster-father say a word about death in his precious prophecy? I warrant he did not!”
Ewen smiled. “My dear Windham, at bottom I believe as little in the two sights as you. But surely ’tis not superstition to realise that I am at least threatened with that fate. Yet who knows? If it pass me by, and we ever meet again in this world, then maybe I’ll have more time to thank you fitly for all you have done and given up for