The Collected Western Classics & Adventures Novels. William MacLeod RaineЧитать онлайн книгу.
must weigh down your spirits,” I drolled, “and so I will trouble you”—with a pistol clapped to his head and a sudden ring of command in my voice—“to hand them over to me at once.”
The fellow’s jaw dropped lankly. He looked hither and thither for a way of escape and found none. He was confronting an argument that had a great deal of weight with him, and out of the lining of his bonnet he ripped a letter.
“Thanks, but I’ll take the one in your breast pocket,” I told him dryly.
Out it came with a deal of pother. The letter was addressed to the Duke of Cumberland, Portree, Skye. My lips framed themselves to a long whistle. Here was the devil to pay. If the butcher was on the island I knew he had come after bigger game than muircocks. No less a quarry than the Prince himself would tempt him to this remote region. I marched my prisoner back to Captain Roy and Murdoch. To Donald I handed the letter, and he ripped it open without ceremony. ’Twas merely a note from the Campbell Lieutenant of militia, to say that the orders of his Highness regarding the watching of the coast would be fulfilled to the least detail.
“Well, and here’s a pirn to unravel. What’s to be done now?” asked the Macdonald.
“By Heaven, I have it,” cried I. “Let Murdoch carry the news to Raasay that the Prince may get away at once. Do you guard our prisoner here, while I, dressed in his trews and bonnet, carry the letter to the Duke. His answer may throw more light on the matter.”
Not to make long, so it was decided. We made fashion to plaster up the envelope so as not to show a casual looker that it had been tampered with, and I footed it to Portree in the patched trews of the messenger, not with the lightest heart in the world. The first redcoat I met directed me to the inn where the Duke had his headquarters, and I was presently admitted to a hearing.
The Duke was a ton of a little man with the phlegmatic Dutch face. He read the letter stolidly and began to ask questions as to the disposition of our squad. I lied generously, magnificently, my face every whit as wooden as his; and while I was still at it the door behind me opened and a man came in leisurely. He waited for the Duke to have done with me, softly humming a tune the while, his shadow flung in front across my track; and while he lilted there came to me a dreadful certainty that on occasion I had heard the singer and his song before.
“‘Then come kiss me sweet and twenty.
Youth’s a stuff will not endure,’”
carolled the melodious voice lazily. Need I say that it belonged to my umquhile friend Sir Robert Volney.
Cumberland brushed me aside with a wave of his hand.
“Donner! If the Pretender is on Skye—and he must be—we’ve got him trapped, Volney. Our cordon stretches clear across the isle, and every outlet is guarded,” he cried.
“Immensely glad to hear it, sir. Let’s see! Is this the twelfth time you’ve had him sure? ’Pon honour, he must have more lives than the proverbial cat,” drawled Sir Robert insolently.
There was one thing about Volney I could never enough admire. He was no respecter of persons. Come high, come low, the bite of his ironic tongue struck home. For a courtier he had the laziest scorn of those he courted that ever adventurer was hampered with; and strangely enough from him his friends in high place tolerated anything. The Prince of Wales and his brother Cumberland would not speak to each other, yet each of them fought to retain Volney as his follower. Time-servers wondered that his uncurbed speech never brought him to grief. Perhaps the secret of his security lay in his splendid careless daring; in that, and in his winning personality.
“By God, Volney, sometimes I think you’re half a Jacobite,” said Cumberland, frowning.
“Your Grace does me injustice. My bread is buttered on the Brunswick side,” answered the baronet, carelessly.
“But otherwise—at heart——”
Volney’s sardonic smile came into play. “Otherwise my well-known caution, and my approved loyalty,—Egad, I had almost forgotten that!—refute such an aspersion.”
“Himmel! If your loyalty is no greater than your caution it may be counted out. At the least you take delight in tormenting me. Never deny it, man! I believe you want the Pretender to get away.”
“One may wish the Prince——”
“The Prince?” echoed Cumberland, blackly.
“The Young Chevalier then, if you like that better. ’Slife, what’s in a name? One may wish him to escape and be guilty of no crime. He and his brave Highlanders deserve a better fate than death. I dare swear that half your redcoats have the sneaking desire to see the young man win free out of the country. Come, my good fellow”—turning to me—“What do they call you—Campbell? Well then, Campbell, speak truth and shame the devil. Are you as keen to have the Young Chevalier taken as you pretend?”
Doggedly I turned my averted head toward him, saw the recognition leap to his eyes, and waited for the word to fall from his lips that would condemn me. Amusement chased amazement across his face.
A moment passed, still another moment. The word was not spoken. Instead he began to smile, presently to hum,
“‘You’ll on an’ you’ll march to Carlisle ha’
To be hanged and quartered, an’ a’, an’ a’.’
“Come, Mont-Campbell, you haven’t answered my question yet. If you knew where Charles Edward Stuart was in hiding would you give him up?” He looked at me from under lowered lids, vastly entertained, playing with me as a cat does with a mouse.
“I am a fery good servant of the King, God bless him whatefer, and I would just do my duty,” answered I, still keeping the rôle I had assumed.
“Of course he would. Ach, liebe himmel! Any loyal man would be bound to do so,” broke in Cumberland.
Volney’s eyes shone. “I’m not so sure,” said he. “Now supposing, sir, that one had a very dear friend among the rebels; given the chance, ought he to turn him over to justice?”
“No doubt about it. Friendship ends when rebellion begins,” said the Duke, sententiously.
Sir Robert continued blandly to argue the case, looking at me out of the tail of his eye. Faith, he enjoyed himself prodigiously, which was more than I did, for I was tasting a bad quarter of an hour. “Put it this way, sir: I have a friend who has done me many good turns. Now assume that I have but to speak the word to send him to his death. Should the word be spoken?”
The Duke said dogmatically that a soldier’s first duty was to work for the success of his cause regardless of private feelings.
“Or turn it this way,” continued Volney, “that the man is not a friend. Suppose him a rival claimant to an estate I mean to possess. Can I in honour give him up? What would you think, Mont—er—Campbell?”
“Not Mont-Campbell, but Campbell,” I corrected. “I will be thinking, sir, that it would be a matter for your conscience, and at all events it iss fery lucky that you do not hafe to decide it.”
“Still the case might arise. It’s always well to be prepared,” he answered, laughing.
“Nonsense, Robert! What the deuce do you mean by discussing such a matter with a Highland kerne? I never saw your match for oddity,” said the Duke.
While he was still speaking there was a commotion in the outer room of the inn. There sounded a rap at the door, and on the echo of the knock an officer came into the room to announce the capture of a suspect. He was followed by the last man in the world I wanted to see at that moment, no other than the Campbell soldier whose place I was usurping. The fat was in the fire with a vengeance now, and though I fell back to the rear I knew it was but a question of time till his eye lit on me.
The fellow began to tell his story, got nearly through before his ferret eyes circled round to me, then broke off to burst into a screed of the Gaelic as he pointed a