A triumphant Stewart went back to Holyrood, an exultant army, calling
itself, now with some good show of bearing it through, the "royal"
army, carried into Edinburgh its confident step and sanguine hue.
Victory was with the old line, the magnificent attempt! The erstwhile
doubting throng began, stage by stage, to mount toward enthusiasm. It
was the quicker done that Charles Edward, or his wisest advisers, put
forth a series of judicious civic and public measures. And, now that
Cope had fled, King George had in Scotland no regular troops. Every
day there came open accessions to the Prince's strength. The old
Stewarts up again became a magnet, drawing more and more the filings.
The Prince had presently between five and six thousand troops. The
north was his, Edinburgh, the Jacobites scattered through the
Lowlands. The moderate Whig and Presbyterian might begin to think of
compounding, of finding virtues in necessity. The irreconcilables felt
great alarm and saw coming upon them a helplessness.
But the Stewarts, with French approval behind, aimed at the recovery
of England no less than Scotland. Windsor might well overdazzle
Holyrood. This interest had received many and strong protestations of
support from a wide swathe of English nobility and gentry. Lift the
victorious army over the border, set it and the young Prince bodily
upon English ground, would not great family after great family rouse
its tenants, arm them, join the Prince? So at least it seemed to the
flushed Stewart hope. King George was home from Hanover, British
troops being brought back from the Continent. Best to fan high the
fire of the rising while it might with most ease be fanned--best to
march as soon as might be into England!
On the 1st of November they marched, three detachments by three roads,
and the meeting-place Carlisle. All went most merrily well. On the
10th of November began the siege of Carlisle. The Prince had cannon
now, some taken at Prestonpans, some arrived, no great time before,
from France, first fruits of French support. The English General Wade
was at Newcastle with a larger army than that of the Jacobites. But
the siege of Carlisle was not lifted by Wade. After three days city
and castle surrendered. Charles Edward and his army entered England.
From Carlisle they marched to Penrith--to Kendal, Lancaster, Preston,
Manchester--clear, well-conducted marches, the army held well together
and in hand, here and there handfuls of recruits. But no flood of
loyally-shouting gentry, no bearers of great names drawing the sword
for King James III and a gallant, youthful Regent! Each dawn said they
will come! Each eve said they have not come! One month from leaving
Edinburgh found this army of Highland chiefs and their clans, Lowland
Scots, a few Englishmen, a few Irishmen, and a few Frenchmen, led by
skilful enough generals and by a Prince the great-grandson of Charles
I, deep in England, but little advanced in bulk for all that. Old
cavalier England stayed upon its acres. Other times, other manners!
And how to know when an old vortex begins to disintegrate and a mode
of action becomes antiquated, belated?
Wade was to one side with his army, and now there loomed ahead the
Duke of Cumberland and ten thousand English troops. Battle seemed
imminent, yet again the Scots force pushed by. The 4th of December
found this strange wedge, of no great mass, but of a tested,
rapier-like keenness and hardness, at the town of Derby, with London
not a hundred and thirty miles away. And still no English rising for
the rightful King! Instead Whig armies, and a slow Whiggish buzzing
beginning through all the country.
The Duke of Cumberland and Marshal Wade, two jaws opening for Jacobite
destruction, had between them twenty thousand men. Spies brought
report of thirty thousand drawn up before London, on Finchley Common.
The Prince might have so many lions of the desert in his Highlanders,
but multitude will make a net that lions cannot break. At Derby also
they had news from that Scotland now so dangerously far behind them.
Royal Scots had landed from France, the Irish brigade from the same
country was on the seas, and French regiments besides. Lord John
Drummond had in Scotland now at least three thousand men and good
promise of more. The Prince held council with the Duke of Perth, Lord
George Murray, Lord Nairn, the many chiefs and leading voices. Return
to Scotland, make with these newly gathered troops and with others a
greater army, expect aid from France, stand in a gained kingdom the
onslaught from Hanoverian England? Or go on--go on toward London?
Encounter, defeat, with half his number, the Duke of Cumberland's ten
thousand, keep Wade from closing in behind them, meet the Finchley
Common thousands, come to the enemy's capital of half a million souls?
Return where there were friends? Go on where false-promising friends
hugged safety? Go on to London, still hoping, trusting still to the
glamour and outcry that ran before them, to extraordinary events
called miracles? Hot was the debate! But on the 6th of December the
Jacobite army turned back toward Scotland.
It began its homeward march long before dawn. Not all nor most had
been told the decision. Even the changed direction, eyes upon
slow-descending not upon climbing stars, did not at first enlighten.
It might mean some détour, the Duke being out-maneuvered. But at last
rose the winter dawn and lit remembered scene after scene. The news
ran. The army was in retreat.
Ian Rullock, riding with a kinsman, Gordon, heard, up and down, an
angry lamenting sound. "Little do the clans like turning back!"
"Hark! The chieftains are telling them it is for the best."
"Is it for the best? I do not like this month or aught that is done in
it!"
A week later they were at Lancaster; three days after that at Kendal.
Here Wade might have fallen upon them, but did not. A day or two and
the main column approached Penrith. The no great amount of artillery
was yet precious. Heavy to drag over heavy roads, the guns and
straining horses were left in the rear. Four companies of Lowland
infantry, Macdonald of Glengarry and his five hundred Highlanders, a
few cavalrymen, and Lord George Murray himself tarried with the guns.
The main column disappeared, lost among mountains and hills; this
detached number had the wild country, the forbidding road, the
December day to themselves. To get the guns and ammunition-wagons
along proved a snail-and-tortoise business. Guns and escort fell
farther and farther behind.
Ian Rullock, acting still as aide, rode from the Prince nearing
Penrith to Lord George Murray, now miles to the rear. Why was the
delay? and 'ware the Duke of Cumberland, certainly close at hand! The
delay was greater, the distance between farther, than the Prince had
supposed. Rullock rode through the late December afternoon by huge
frozen waves of earth, under a roof of pallid blue, in his ears a
small complaining wind like a wailing child. He rode till nightfall,
and only then came to his objective, finding needed rest in the
village of Shap. Here he sought Lord George Murray, gave information
and was given it in turn, ate, drank, and then turned back through the
December night to the Prince.
He rode and the huge winter stars seemed to watch him with at once a
glittering intentness and a disdain of his pygmy being. Once he looked
up to them with a gesture of his head. "Are we so far apart and so
different?" he asked of Orion.
He was several miles upon his way to Penrith. Before him appeared a
crossroad, noted by him in the afternoon. A great salient of a hill
overhung it, and on the near side a fir wood crept close. He looked
about him, and as he rode kept his hand upon his pistol. He did not
think to meet an enemy in strength, but there might be lurkers, men of
the countryside ready to fall upon stragglers from the army that had
passed that way. He had left behind the crossroad when from in front,
around the jut of the hill, came four horsemen. He turned his head.
Others had started from the wood. He made to ride on as though he were
of their kindred and cause, but hands were laid upon his bridle.
"Courier, no doubt--"
All turned into the narrow road. Half an hour's riding brought in
sight a substantial farm-house and about it the dimly flaring lights
of a considerable camp, both cavalry and infantry. Rullock supposed it
to be a detachment of Wade's, though it was possible that the Duke of
Cumberland might have thrust advance troops thus far. He wished quite
heartily that something might occur to warn Lord George Murray, the
Macdonalds and the Prince's guns, asleep at Shap. For himself, he
might, if he chose, pick out among the glittering constellations a
shape like a scaffold.
When he dismounted he was brought past a bivouac fire and a coming and
going of men afoot and on horseback, into the farm-house, where two or
three officers sat at table. Questioned, threatened, and
re-questioned, he had of course nothing to divulge. The less pressure
was brought in that these troops were in possession of the facts which
the moment desired. His name and rank he gave, it being idle to
withhold them. In the end he was shut alone into a small room of the
farm-house, behind a guarded door. He saw that there was planned an
attack upon the detachment that with dawn would move from Shap. But
this force of Wade's or of the Duke's was itself a detachment and
apparently of no great mass. He could only hope that Lord George and
the Macdonalds would move warily and when the shock came be found
equal. All that was beyond his control. In the chill darkness he
turned to the consideration of his own affair, which seemed desperate
enough. He found, by groping, a bench against the wall. Wrapping
himself in his cloak, he lay down upon this and tried to sleep, but
could not. With all his will he closed off the future, and then as
best he might the immediately environing present. After all, these
armies--these struggles--these eery ambitions.... The feeling of _out
of it_ crept over him. It was an unfamiliar perception, impermanent.
Yet it might leave a trace to work in the under-consciousness, on a
far day to emerge, be revalued and added to.
This December air! Fire would be good--and with that thought he seemed
to catch a gleam through the small-paned, small window, and in a
moment through the opening door. He rose from the bench. A man in a
long cloak entered the room, behind him a soldier bearing a lantern
which he set upon a shelf above a litter of boards and kegs.
Dismissed by a gesture, he went out, shutting the door behind him.
The first man dropped his cloak, drew a heavy stool from the
thrust-aside lumber, and sat down beneath the lantern. He spoke:
"Of all our many meeting-places, this looks most like the old cave in
the glen!"
Ian moistened his lips. He resumed his seat against the wall. "I
wondered, after Prestonpans, if you went home."
"Did you?"
"No, you are right. I did not."
"At all times it is the liar's wont still to lie. Small things or
great--use or no use!"
"I am a prisoner and unarmed. You are the captor. To insult lies in
your power."
"That is a jargon that may be dropped between us. Yet I, too, am bound
by conventions! Seeing that you are a prisoner, and not my prisoner
only, I cannot give you your sword or pistols, and we cannot fight....
The fighting, too, is a convention. I see that, and that it is not
adequate. Yet so do I hold you in hatred that I would destroy you in
this poor way also!"
The two sat not eight feet apart. Time was when either, finding
himself in deadly straits, would have seen in the other a sure
rescuer, or a friend to perish with him. One would have come to the
other in a burst of light and warmth. So countless were the
associations between them, so much knowledge, after all, did they have
of each other, that even now, if they hated and contended, it must be,
as it were, a contention within an orb. To each hemisphere, repelling
the other, must yet come in lightning flashes the face of the whole.
Glenfernie, under the lantern-light, looked like the old laird his
father. "No long time ago," he said, "'revenge,' 'vengeance,' seemed
to me words of a low order! It was not so in my boyhood. Then they
were often to me passionate, immediate, personal, and vindicated
words! But it grew to be that they appeared words of a low order. It
is not so now. As far as that goes I am younger than I was a year ago.
I stand in a hot, bright light where they are vindicated. If fate sets
you free again, yet I do not set you free! I shall be after you. I
entered this place to tell you that."
"Do as you will!" answered Ian. Scorn mounted in his voice. "I shall
withstand the shock of you!"
The net of name and form hardened, grew more iron and closer meshed.
Each _I_ contracted, made its carapace thicker. Each _I_ bestrode,
like Apollyon, the path of the other.
"Why should I undertake to defend myself?" said Ian. "I do not
undertake to do so! So at least I shall escape the hypocrite! It is in
the nature of man to put down other kings and be king himself!"
"Aye so? The prime difficulty in that is that the others, too, are
immortal." Glenfernie rising, his great frame seemed to fill the
little room. "Sooner may the Kelpie's Pool sink into the earth than I
forego to give again to you what you have given! What is now all my
wish? It is to seem to you, here and hereafter, the avenger of blood
and fraud! Remember me so!"
He stood looking at the sometime friend with a dark and working face.
Then, abruptly turning, he went away. The door of the small room
closed behind him. Ian heard the bolt driven.
The night went leadenly by. At last he slept, and was waked by
trumpets blowing. He saw through the window that it was at faintest
dawn. Much later the door opened and a man brought him a poor
breakfast. Rullock questioned him, but could gain nothing beyond the
statement that to-day at latest the "rebels" would be wiped from the
face of the earth. When he was gone Ian climbed to the small window
that, even were it open and unguarded, was yet too small for his body
to pass. But, working with care, he managed to loosen and draw inward
without noise one of the round panes. Outside lay a trampled
farm-yard. A few soldiers, apparently invalided, lounged about, but
there was no such throng such as he had passed through when they
brought him here. He supposed that the attack upon the force at Shap
might be in progress. If the Duke of Cumberland's whole power was at
hand the main column might be set upon. All around him the hills, the
farm inclosure, and these petty walls cut off the outer world. The
hours, the day, limped somehow by. He walked to keep himself warm.
Back and forth and to and fro. December--December--December! How cold
was the Kelpie's Pool? Poisoned love--poisoned friendship--ambition in
ruin--bells ringing for executions! To and fro--to and fro. He had
always felt life as sensuous, rich, and warm, with garlands and
colors. It had been large and aglow, with a profusion of arabesques of
imagination and emotion. Thought had not lacked, but thought, too,
bore a personal, passional cast, and was much interested in a golden
world of sense. Just this December day the world seemed the ocean-bed
of life, where dull creatures moved slowly in cold, thick ooze, and
annihilation was much to be desired.... The day went by. The same man
brought him supper. There seemed to be triumph in his face. "They'll
be bringing in more prisoners--unless we don't make prisoners!"
Nothing more could be gained from that quarter. In the night it began
to rain. He listened to its dash against the window. Black Hill came
into mind, and the rain against his windows there. He was cold, and he
tried, with the regressive sense, to feel himself in that old, warm
nest. His Black Hill room rose about him, firelit. The fire lighted
that Italian painting of a city of refuge and a fleeing man, behind
whom ran the avenger of blood.... Then it was July, and he was in the
glen with Elspeth Barrow. He fought away from the recollection of
that, for it involved a sickness of the soul.... Italy! Think of
Italy. Venice, and a month that he had spent there alone--Old
Steadfast being elsewhere. It had been a warm season, warm and rich,
sun-kissed and languorous, like the fruit, like the Italian women....
Leave out the women, but try to feel again the sun of Venice!
He tried, but the cold of his prison fought with the sun. Then
suddenly sprang clamor without. The uproar increased. He rose, he
heard the bolts open, the door open. In came light and voices.
"Captain Rullock! We beat them at Clifton! We learned that you were
here! Lord George sent us back for you...."
Three days later Scotch earth was again beneath their feet. They
marched to Glasgow; they marched to Stirling; they fought the battle
of Falkirk and again there was Jacobite victory. And now there was an
army of eight thousand.... And then began a time of poor policy,
mistaken moves. And in April befell the battle of Culloden and
far-resounding ruin.