Keith ventured nearer. “Why is it so difficult? You trusted me that
night.” His own voice was not much less moved than the Highlander’s.
“I am not changed: it is circumstances which have brought about this
horrible situation.”
The head stirred, but did not raise itself. “Yes . . . that night I
thought you . . . generous, kind, charitable beyond anything that
could be imagined. . . . It was not what I should have expected from
you. Afterwards I saw what a simpleton I was to think you could have
done all that for me without some very good reason . . . for by that
time next day I had learnt what that reason was.”
“Is it fair, is it just,” pleaded Keith, “to believe what a brute, and
my enemy, said of me behind my back rather than to judge me by my own
actions, Ardroy?”
“You were . . . too humane,” said the voice dully. “And you did ask me
about Lochiel . . .”
“And must I have had an ill motive behind my humanity, as you call it?
You cannot say I pressed you for information about your Chief!”
“But you found out that I had it!”
It was so difficult to answer this that Keith did not attempt it.
“What motive, then,” he urged, “brought me hastening back here, into
disgrace, into complete ruin, perhaps? Is there nothing in your own
heart to tell you? When you hear that I have been broke for neglecting
my duty and offending my superior officer on your behalf, Ardroy, will
you still think that I betrayed you to Major Guthrie?”
Ewen raised his ravaged face. “Will you swear to me on your word of
honour that you never told him that I knew Lochiel’s hiding-place?”
“I do most solemnly swear it, on my honour as a gentleman. I never saw
Guthrie again till the day before yesterday.”
“And will you swear, too, that you had not _already_ suggested to him
that I knew it, and would tell?” asked Ewen, narrowing his eyes.
“No, I never suggested that,” answered Keith, with a steady mien but a
sinking heart. Nothing but the naked truth would avail now . . . and
yet its nakedness might prove too ugly. “I am going to tell you
exactly what I did suggest.”
“You will not swear it—I thought as much!”
“No, I will not swear until I have made clear to you what I am
swearing to.—Yes, you must listen, Ardroy; ’tis as much for your own
sake as for mine!” He dragged forward a stool for himself. “Go back to
that scene on the mountain—if you can remember it. Do you think it was
easy for me to find weapons to save you with? When I rushed in and
caught you as you sank down by the wall, when I stood between you and
the firing-party, with that scoundrel cursing me and ordering me out
of the way and telling the men to set you up there again, I had to
snatch at anything, _anything_ to stop your execution. I told Guthrie
who you were—too important to shoot out of hand like that. Afterwards
he asserted that I had implied that you, as Lochiel’s kinsman, would
give information about him. As God sees us, such an impossible notion
never entered my head, and I said that you would never do it. It was
as we were riding away; so he replied, that devil, ‘Then it is not
worth my while to fetch him into camp to-morrow; he can rot there in
the hut for all I care!’ And I saw that you would rot there unless I
could persuade him to send for you. Being at my wits’ end I made a
most disastrous suggestion, and said, loathing myself the while for
saying it, that it might perhaps be worth his while to fetch you into
camp on the chance of your . . . of your dropping some hint by
inadvertence. And he——”
Ewen had given a sharp exclamation. “You said that—you did say that!
It was true, then, what he told me! God! And how much more?”
“No more,” said Keith, wincing. “No more, on my soul. And I only said
that to hoodwink him into sending for you. You cannot think that I——”
“You advised him to take me for that reason!” interrupted Ewen,
dropping out every word, while his eyes, which had softened, began to
turn to ice again. “And, when you came back that night, you never told
me what you had done. Is not that . . . somewhat difficult to
explain?”
“No,” said Keith with a sigh, “it is easy. I was ashamed to tell
you—that is the explanation . . . and yet I only made the suggestion
because your life, so it seemed to me, was in the balance. When at
last I had brought myself to the point of confession you had fallen
into the sleep in which I left you. If I had guessed—— But of what use
is regret now! And, Ardroy, you cannot imagine that I really thought
that you would . . . or that anyone would try by force to . . .” He
suddenly covered his eyes with his hand.
And presently he heard the Highlander say, in a strange, dry,
reflective tone, “Yes, it ill becomes me to accuse another man of
treachery.” And then, even more quietly, “You say you did not believe
it when they told you that I had made a disclosure . . . voluntarily.
I ought to thank you for that.”
The tired voice seemed for the moment empty of emotion; and yet it
wrung Keith’s heart as its frenzied reproaches had not. He uncovered
his eyes. “Nor do I believe it now,” he said vehemently. “If it is
true that they have got your secret from you, then I know that they
must have . . . half killed you first.”
“No,” said Ardroy in the same dull tone, “they have not laid a finger
on me here. . . . Yet I have told them what Major Guthrie nearly
flogged me to get from me.”
If Keith had seen a visitant from the dead he could not have stared
more wildly. “That’s impossible!” he stammered. “I don’t believe
it—you don’t know what you are saying!”
Ewen’s lip twisted a little. “Why, by your own admission you said that
I might drop a hint inadvertently!” The shaft went visibly deep.
“Forgive me!” he exclaimed hastily. “It is true—I think I do not know
what I am saying!”
“Oh, let it pass,” said Keith, recovering himself. “Only, in God’s
name, tell me what happened!”
Ewen shut his eyes. “It is quite simple, after all. It seems that I
still at times talk in my sleep, as I used when a boy. I was warned of
it, not so very . . . not so very long ago.” He paused; Keith gave a
stifled ejaculation, and had time to taste the immensity of his own
relief. This then, was the explanation of what had been to him so
inexplicable—or else so abhorrent. Under his breath he murmured,
“Thank God!”
But Ewen, his eyes open now, and fixed on the other side of the room,
was going on.
“When I was first brought here I was too ill and feverish to realise
what they wanted of me. Afterwards, when I knew well enough (since
they openly asked me for it so often, and it was what Major Guthrie
had wanted too) and when I felt that the secret might slip from me in
sleep, because it was so perpetually in my mind, I resolved never to
allow myself to go to sleep except when I was alone. But I so seldom
was alone. At first I thought, very foolishly, that this was from care
for me; then I discovered the real reason, for I think they must have
been hoping for this result from the first. Perhaps I talked when I
was in Guthrie’s hands; I do not know. But, for all my endeavours,” he
gave a dreary smile, “it seems that one _must_ sleep some time or
other. And the fifth night—two nights ago—I could hold out no longer,
and being left by myself I went to sleep . . . and slept a long time,
soundly. I had thought that I was safe, that I should wake if anyone
came in.” Ewen stopped. “I ought to have cut my tongue out before I
did it. . . . And I would have died for him—died for him!” His head
went down on his knee again.
“Good God!” murmured Keith to himself. The methods that he feared
might not have been used, but those which had been were pretty
vile. And though their victim had neither given the information
voluntarily—not, at least, in the true meaning of the word—nor had
had it dragged out of him by violence, his distress was not less
terrible. Yet surely——
“Ardroy,” he said quickly, and touched him on the shoulder, “are you
not leaping too hastily to conclusions? No doubt you may have said
_something_ about your secret, since it was so much on your mind, but
that in your sleep you can have given any precise information about it
I cannot believe. Granted that you were told that you had—perhaps in
hopes that you would really betray yourself—why did you believe it,
and give yourself all this torment?”
Ewen raised his head, and out of his sunken, dark-rimmed eyes gave
Keith a look which wavered away from him as if undecided, and then
came back to his face and stayed there. Despair sat in those blue
windows, but behind despair could be caught now a glimpse of a more
natural craving for sympathy which had not been there before.
“Because,” he answered, his hand gripping hard the plaid over his
legs, “they had written down every word I said—every word. In the
morning they read it over to me. Of course I denied that it was
correct . . . but there it all was—the secret that only I and one
other besides Lochiel himself knew. Never having seen the actual spot
myself I had learnt the directions off by heart; ’twas the last thing
I did before the battle.” He shuddered violently, and once more
dropped his head on to his knee. “O God, that ever I was brought away
from Drumossie Moor!”
“Devils!” said Keith under his breath, “cold-blooded devils!” But who
had first suggested that Ardroy should be watched? He sprang up, and
began to pace distractedly about the room; but that thought could not
so be shaken off. Yet a rather stinging consolation dawned on him:
since the prisoner had acknowledged to him, what he had denied to his
inquisitors, that the information was correct, he must trust him
again—he must indeed, for he had thus put it in his power to go and
betray him afresh.
“You’ll tell me, I suppose,” began Ewen’s dragging voice again, “that
a man cannot be expected to control his tongue in sleep, and it is
true; he cannot. But they will keep that part out, and Lochiel, all
the clan, will hear that I gave the information of my own free
will. Is not that what you have been told already?” And as Keith,
unable to deny this, did not answer, Ewen went on with passion:
“However it was done, it has been done; I have betrayed my Chief, and
he will know it. . . . If I were only sure that it would kill me
outright, I would crawl to the breach there and throw myself down. I
wish I had done it two nights ago!”
From the camp, where a drum was idly thudding, there came the sound of
cheering, and the broken room where this agony beat its wings in vain
was flooded with warm light as the sun began to slip down to the sea
behind the hills of Morven, miles away. And Keith remembered, with
wonder at his obtuseness, that he had once decided that Ewen Cameron
was probably a very impassive person. . . .
What was he to say? For indeed the result of Ardroy’s disclosure might
very well be just the same for Lochiel as if he had made it when in
full possession of his senses. One argument, however, leapt unbidden
to Keith’s lips: his Chief would never believe that Ardroy had
willingly betrayed him. Would Ardroy believe such a thing of him, he
asked.
But Ewen shook his head, uncomforted. “Lochiel would not have allowed
himself to go to sleep—I did.”
“But you must have gone to sleep sooner or later!” expostulated Keith.
“Lochiel himself would have done the same, for no human being can go
very long without sleep.”
“How do you know?” asked Ewen listlessly. “I cannot sleep now when I
wish to . . . when it is of no moment if I do.”
Keith looked at him in concern. That admission explained a good deal
in his appearance. If this continued he might go out of his mind, and
yet one was so powerless to help him; for indeed, as Ardroy had said,
what was done, was done. He began to pace the room again.
Suddenly he stopped and swung round. Perhaps he was not so impotent to
help after all. Somehow that idle drum, still beating out there, with
its suggestion of march and movement, had revived a memory only
twenty-four hours old.
“Listen to me, Ardroy,” he said quickly, coming back and sitting down
again. “But tell me first: you would only expect Lochiel to take to
this refuge, would you not, if he were skulking, as the phrase goes
here, not if he had a considerable body of followers with him?”
“No,” admitted Ewen, looking faintly surprised. “Only if he were
alone, or nearly so. But he is alone, or at the best he can have but a
handful with him.”
“It is there that I think you are wrong,” retorted Keith. “Though that
may have been the case at first, it is evidently so no longer. This is
what I overheard yesterday.”
And he told him, word for word, what had fallen from the officer who
had been scouting down the Glen. Ardroy listened with the look of a
drowning man sighting a distant spar.
“My God, if only that is true! No, if the clan has rallied somewhat
he would not be in hiding. Yet, after a skirmish, or if he were
surprised——”
“But consider,” urged Keith, “that, if they are so numerous, only an
attack in force would be possible, and Lochiel could hardly be
surprised by that: he would have scouts posted, surely. And after a
skirmish, supposing the results unfavourable to him, he would probably
withdraw altogether with his men, not go to earth in the
neighbourhood. If the place is searched, believe me, it will be found
empty!”
The eagerness with which Ewen hung upon his words was pathetic to
witness.
“You are not,” he asked painfully, “inventing this story . . . out of
compassion?”
“No, no; I heard it exactly as I have told it to you, and I can see no
reason why the speaker’s statement should not have been true.”
(And, whether true or no, he thought, it will have served a very good
purpose if it prevents this too tightly stretched string from snapping
altogether.)
Ewen drew a long breath and passed his hand over his eyes as if to
wipe out a sight which was too much there. Then his head sank back
against the edge of the seat behind him, his hand fell away, and Keith
saw that he had fainted, or as near it as made little difference. He
supposed that his attentions would be permitted now, and, grabbing up
the bowl, dashed some of the water in the Highlander’s face; then,
putting his arms round him, succeeded in shifting him so that he could
lay him flat upon the pallet.
But Ardroy was not gone far. In a moment or two he raised a hand to
his head as he lay there, and murmured something about a ray of hope.
Then his eyes opened, and looking straight up into Keith’s face as he
bent over him he said clearly, but with a catch of the breath,
“Forgive me—if you can!”
“I have so much to be forgiven myself,” answered Keith, looking down
unhappily at the dirty, haggard wreck of his ‘young Achilles’, “that I
can scarce resent what you, of all people, have thought of me. Oh,
Ardroy, what a curst tangle it has been!—Are you well like that—your
wounded leg . . . ?”
The blue eyes held on to him. “You have not answered my question. If
you could forgive me for so wronging you . . . I know I have said
unpardonable things to you . . . you who saved my life!”
Keith took into his own the hand he had scarred. “Forgotten—if you
will forget what I said of you?”
“But what have I to forget?” asked Ewen, and he suddenly bit his lip
to keep it steady. “I think I have to remember! And indeed, indeed,
Windham, I did not doubt you lightly! I fought against it; but it all
fitted together so devilishly . . . and I was not sound in mind or
body. And now—selfish wretch that I am—if you are broke through what
you have done for me——”
But it seemed as if it were a third person who fancied himself in more
imminent danger of that fate, for Ardroy had got no farther when there
were hasty, hobbling steps outside the door, a fumbling with the lock,
and there stood Sergeant Mullins, much flustered.
“If you please, Major,” he said, sadly out of breath, “will you come
away at once? I misdoubt you’ll be found up here if you stay a minute
longer, for I saw Lord Loudoun’s aide-de-camp coming along the
road—and I shall be sent packing without the pension that’s been
promised me!”
“Go—go quickly, Windham,” said Ewen earnestly. “It will do _you_ no
good, either, to be found up here.”
There was nothing for it. “Yes, I’m coming, Sergeant.—We cannot undo
the past, Ardroy, but for God’s sake try to torment yourself less
about a calamity which may never befall—a certain person.”
Ewen looked up at him with a faint, forlorn smile. “And _your_
calamity?” he asked.
“I must endeavour to take my own advice,” said his visitor rather
grimly. “I shall try to see you again if possible . . . that is, if
you . . .” he hesitated.
Ewen’s left hand reached up and gripped his wrist. “You say the past
cannot be undone. There are some hours in it which I am glad I can
never lose again—that night in the shieling, now I know that you were
. . . what at the time I thought you!”
* * * * * *
Three minutes after Keith had got back to his quarters the correct
aide-de-camp appeared to announce to him that he would be taken to
Inverness under escort early next morning, as he had been sent for
from head-quarters. Keith shrugged his shoulders. That meant a
court-martial, in all probability, and the loss of his commission.
But at any rate the sacrifice was not all in vain, for he had cleared
himself, in Ewen Cameron’s eyes, of charges far worse than any
court-martial could bring against him.
All evening he thought of Ardroy up there, destitute in body and
tormented in mind—though less tormented, fortunately, by the time he
had left him. . . . Yet why, he asked himself, should he care what
Ardroy was suffering, now that he had cleared his account with him?
Was it because he had somehow become responsible for him by snatching
him from death? God knew.
But that, he supposed, was why, when Mullins hobbled in with his
supper, he handed the sergeant a sheet of paper.
“I want you to take this to Mr. Cameron to-night, Sergeant. Read it,
and you can satisfy yourself that it contains nothing which it should
not.”
The note briefly said that the writer would not be able to see the
recipient again, since he was obliged to go to Inverness next morning,
but that he would go thither with a mind vastly more at peace than he
had come; and would go even more cheerfully if he were permitted to
leave with the sergeant a sum of money sufficient to provide for the
captive’s immediate needs in the way of food and clothes. “You can
repay it at your convenience,” Keith had added, “but, if you will not
accept this loan, I shall depart feeling that you have not truly
forgiven me.”
As he expected, Sergeant Mullins made no bones about delivering a
missive when he had connived at a much more serious breach of
discipline. But when, on his return, he handed his letter back to
Keith, the Englishman’s heart fell, until he saw that Ardroy, having
no writing materials of his own, had used the back of it for his
reply. And thereon was scrawled with a blunt pencil of the sergeant’s
these words:
“If there is any Justice on Earth, you should not only be
reinstated but advanc’d at Inverness. I pray you to inform me, if
you can, of what happens. I accept your Loan with Gratitude; it
is for me to ask your Forgiveness still. Perhaps I shall sleep
to-night.—Your Debtor, EWEN CAMERON.”
Keith at any rate slept, though he was rather bitterly amused at the
idea of being given advancement by the Duke of Cumberland because he
had got himself into a scrape for the sake of a rebel. The cause of
his dereliction of duty would be the chief count in his probable
disgrace.