A DAUGHTER OF RAASAY A TALE OF THE '45
By WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE
Illustrated by STUART TRAVIS
NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright, 1901, by Frank Leslie Publishing House
Copyright, 1902, by Frederick A. Stokes Company
All rights reserved
Published in October, 1902
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: AILEEN]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO MR. ELLERY SEDGWICK
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. The Sport of Chance
II A Cry in the Night
III Deoch Slaint an Righ!
IV Of Love and War
V The Hue and Cry
VI In The Matter of a Kiss
VII My Lady Rages
VIII Charles Edward Stuart
IX Blue Bonnets are Over the Border
X Culloden
XI The Red Heather Hills
XII Volney Pays a Debt
XIII The Little God has an Innings
XIV The Aftermath
XV A Reprieve!
XVI Volney's Guest
XVII The Valley of the Shadow
XVIII The Shadow Falls
The Afterword
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE LADIES OF ST. JAMES'S
The ladies of St. James's
Go swinging to the play;
Their footmen run before them
With a "Stand by! Clear the way!"
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
She takes her buckled shoon.
When we go out a-courting
Beneath the harvest moon.
The ladies of St. James's!
They are so fine and fair,
You'd think a box of essences
Was broken in the air:
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
The breath of heath and furze
When breezes blow at morning,
Is not so fresh as hers.
The ladies of St. James's!
They're painted to the eyes;
Their white it stays forever,
Their red it never dies:
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
Her colour comes and goes;
It trembles to a lily,--
It wavers like a rose.
The ladies of St. James's!
You scarce can understand
The half of all their speeches,
Their phrases are so grand:
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
Her shy and simple words
Are clear as after raindrops
The music of the birds.
The ladies of St. James's!
They have their fits and freaks;
They smile on you--for seconds;
They frown on you--for weeks:
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
Come either storm or shine,
From shrovetide unto shrovetide
Is always true--and mine.
_Austin Dobson._
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOREWORD
When this romance touches history the author believes that it is, in every
respect, with one possible exception, in accord with the accepted facts.
In detailing the history of "the '45'" and the sufferings of the misguided
gentlemen who flung away the scabbard out of loyalty to a worthless cause,
care has been taken to make the story agree with history. The writer does
not of course indorse the view of Prince Charles' character herein set
forth by Kenneth Montagu, but there is abundant evidence to show that the
Young Chevalier had in a very large degree those qualities which were
lacking to none of the Stuarts: a charming personality and a gallant
bearing. If his later life did not fulfil the promise of his youth, the
unhappy circumstances which hampered him should be kept in mind as an
extenuation.
The thanks of the writer are due for pertinent criticism to Miss Chase, to
Mr. Arthur Chapman and to Mr. James Rain, and especially to Mr. Ellery
Sedgwick, whose friendly interest and kindly encouragement have been
unfailing.
Acknowledgment must also be made of a copious use of Horace Walpole's
Letters, the Chevalier Johnstone's History of the Rebellion, and other
eighteenth century sources of information concerning the incidents of the
times. The author has taken the liberty of using several anecdotes and
_bon mots_ mentioned in the "Letters"; but he has in each case put the
story in the mouth of its historical originator.
W. M. R.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
A DAUGHTER OF RAASAY
CHAPTER I
THE SPORT OF CHANCE
"Deep play!" I heard Major Wolfe whisper to Lord Balmerino. "Can Montagu's
estate stand such a drain?"
"No. He will be dipped to the last pound before midnight. 'Tis Volney's
doing. He has angled for Montagu a se'nnight, and now he has hooked him. I
have warned the lad, but----"
He shrugged his shoulders.
The Scotchman was right. I was past all caution now, past all restraint.
The fever of play had gripped me, and I would listen to nothing but the
rattle of that little box which makes the most seductive music ever sung
by siren. My Lord Balmerino might stand behind me in silent protest till
all was grey, and though he had been twenty times my father's friend he
would not move me a jot.
Volney's smoldering eyes looked across the table at me.
"Your cast, Kenn. Shall we say doubles? You'll nick this time for sure."
"Done! Nine's the main," I cried, and threw deuces.
With that throw down crashed fifty ancestral oaks that had weathered the
storms of three hundred winters. I had crabbed, not nicked.
"The fickle goddess is not with you to-day, Kenn. The jade jilts us all at
times," drawled Volney, as he raked in his winnings carelessly.
"Yet I have noted that there are those whom she forsakes not often, and I
have wondered by what charmed talisman they hold her true," flashed out
Balmerino.
The steel flickered into Volney's eyes. He understood it for no chance
remark, but as an innuendo tossed forth as a challenge. Of all men Sir
Robert Volney rode on the crest of fortune's wave, and there were not
lacking those who whispered that his invariable luck was due to something
more than chance and honest skill. For me, I never believed the charge.
With all his faults Volney had the sportsman's love of fair play.
The son of a plain country gentleman, he had come to be by reason of his
handsome face, his reckless courage, his unfailing impudence, and his gift
of _savoir-vivre_, the most notorious and fortunate of the adventurers who
swarmed at the court of St. James. By dint of these and kindred qualities
he had become an intimate companion of the Prince of Wales. The man had a
wide observation of life; indeed, he was an interested and whimsical
observer rather than an actor, and a scoffer always. A libertine from the
head to the heel of him, yet gossip marked him as the future husband of
the beautiful young heiress Antoinette Westerleigh. For the rest, he
carried an itching sword and the smoothest tongue that ever graced a
villain. I had been proud that such a man had picked me for his friend,
entirely won by the charm of manner that made his more evil faults sit
gracefully on him.
Volney declined for the present the quarrel that Balmerino's impulsive
loyalty to me would have fixed on him. He feared no living man, but he was
no hothead to be drawn from his purpose. If Lord Balmerino wanted to
measure swords with him he would accommodate the old Scotch peer with the
greatest pleasure on earth, but not till the time fitted him. He answered
easily:
"I know no talisman but this, my Lord; in luck and out of luck to bear a
smiling front, content with the goods the gods may send."
It was a fair hit, for Balmerino was well known as an open malcontent and
suspected of being a Jacobite.
"Ah! The goods sent by the gods! A pigeon for the plucking--the lad you
have called friend!" retorted the other.
"Take care, my Lord," warningly.
"But there are birds it is not safe to pluck," continued Balmerino,
heedless of his growing anger.
"Indeed!"
"As even Sir Robert Volney may find out. An eaglet is not wisely chosen
for such purpose."
It irritated me that they should thrust and parry over my shoulder, as if
I had been but a boy instead of full three months past my legal majority.
Besides, I had no mind to have them letting each other's blood on my
account.
"Rat it, 'tis your play, Volney. You keep us waiting," I cried.
"You're in a devilish hurry to be quit of your shekels," laughed the
Irishman O'Sullivan, who sat across the table from me. "Isn't there a
proverb, Mr. Montagu, about a--a careless gentleman and his money going
different ways, begad? Don't keep him waiting any longer than need be,
Volney."
There is this to be said for the Macaronis, that they plucked their pigeon
with the most graceful negligence in the world. They might live by their
wits, but they knew how to wear always the jauntiest indifference of
manner. Out came the feathers with a sure hand, the while they exchanged
choice _bon mots_ and racy scandal. Hazard was the game we played and I,
Kenneth Montagu, was cast for the rôle of the pigeon. Against these old
gamesters I had no chance even if the play had been fair, and my head on
it more than one of them rooked me from start to finish. I was with a vast
deal of good company, half of whom were rogues and blacklegs.
"Heard George Selwyn's latest?"[1] inquired Lord Chesterfield languidly.
"Not I. Threes, devil take it!" cried O'Sullivan in a pet.
"Tell it, Horry. It's your story," drawled the fourth Earl of
Chesterfield.
"Faith, and that's soon done," answered Walpole. "George and I were taking
the air down the Mall arm in arm yesterday just after the fellow Fox was
hanged for cutting purses, and up comes our Fox to quiz George. Says he,
knowing Selwyn's penchant for horrors, 'George, were you at the execution
of my namesake?' Selwyn looks him over in his droll way from head to foot
and says, 'Lard, no! I never attend rehearsals, Fox.'"
"'Tis the first he has missed for years then. Selwyn is as regular as Jack
Ketch himself. Your throw, Montagu," put in O'Sullivan.
"Seven's the main, and by the glove of Helen I crab. Saw ever man such
cursed luck?" I cried.
"'Tis vile. Luck's mauling you fearfully to-night," agreed Volney
languidly. Then, apropos of the hanging, "Ketch turned off that fellow Dr.
Dodd too. There was a shower, and the prison chaplain held an umbrella
over Dodd's head. Gilly Williams said it wasn't necessary, as the Doctor
was going to a place where he might be easily dried."
"Egad, 'tis his greatest interest in life," chuckled Walpole, harking back
to Selwyn. "When George has a tooth pulled he drops his kerchief as a
signal for the dentist to begin the execution."
Old Lord Pam's toothless gums grinned appreciation of the jest as he
tottered from the room to take a chair for a rout at which he was due.
"Faith, and it's a wonder how that old Methuselah hangs on year after
year," said O'Sullivan bluntly, before the door had even closed on the
octogenarian. "He must be a thousand if he's a day."
"The fact is," explained Chesterfield confidentially, "that old Pam has
been dead for several years, but he doesn't choose to have it known.
Pardon me, am I delaying the game?"
He was not, and he knew it; but my Lord Chesterfield was far too polite to
more than hint to Topham Beauclerc that he had fallen asleep over his
throw. Selwyn and Lord March lounged into the coffee house arm in arm. On
their heels came Sir James Craven, the choicest blackleg in England.
"How d'ye do, everybody? Whom are you and O'Sully rooking to-night,
Volney? Oh, I see--Montagu. Beg pardon," said Craven coolly.
Volney looked past the man with a wooden face that did not even recognize
the fellow as a blot on the landscape. There was bad blood between the two
men, destined to end in a tragedy. Sir James had been in the high graces
of Frederick Prince of Wales until the younger and more polished Volney
had ousted him. On the part of the coarse and burly Craven, there was
enduring hatred toward his easy and elegant rival, who paid back his
malice with a serene contempt. Noted duellist as Craven was, Sir Robert
did not give a pinch of snuff for his rage.
The talk veered to the new fashion of spangled skirts, and Walpole vowed
that Lady Coventry's new dress was covered with spangles big as a
shilling.
"'Twill be convenient for Coventry. She'll be change for a guinea,"
suggested Selwyn gloomily, his solemn face unlighted by the vestige of a
smile.
So they jested, even when the play was deepest and while long-inherited
family manors passed out of the hands of their owners. The recent French
victory at _Fontenoy_ still rankled in the heart of every Englishman.
Within, the country seethed with an undercurrent of unrest and
dissatisfaction. It was said that there were those who boasted quietly
among themselves over their wine that the sun would yet rise some day on a
Stuart England, that there were desperate men still willing to risk their
lives in blind loyalty or in the gambler's spirit for the race of Kings
that had been discarded for its unworthiness. But the cut of his Mechlin
lace ruffles was more to the Macaroni than his country's future. He made
his jest with the same aplomb at births and weddings and deaths.
Each fresh minute of play found me parted from some heirloom treasured by
Montagus long since dust. In another half hour Montagu Grange was stripped
of timber bare as the Row itself. Once, between games, I strolled uneasily
down the room, and passing the long looking glass scarce recognized the
haggard face that looked out at me. Still I played on, dogged and
wretched, not knowing how to withdraw myself from these elegant dandies
who were used to win or lose a fortune at a sitting with imperturbable
face.
Lord Balmerino gave me a chance. He clapped a hand on my shoulder and said
in his brusque kindly way--
"Enough, lad! You have dropped eight thou' to-night. Let the old family
pictures still hang on the walls."
I looked up, flushed and excited, yet still sane enough to know his advice
was good. In the strong sallow face of Major James Wolfe I read the same
word. I knew the young soldier slightly and liked him with a great
respect, though I could not know that this grave brilliant-eyed young man
was later to become England's greatest soldier and hero. I had even pushed
back my chair to rise from the table when the cool gibing voice of Volney
cut in.
"The eighth wonder of the world; Lord Balmerino in a new rôle--adviser to
young men of fashion who incline to enjoy life. Are you by any chance
thinking of becoming a ranting preacher, my Lord?"
"I bid him do as I say and not as I have done. To point my case I cite
myself as an evil example of too deep play."
"Indeed, my Lord! Faith, I fancied you had in mind even deeper play for
the future. A vastly interesting game, this of politics. You stake your
head that you can turn a king and zounds! you play the deuce instead."
Balmerino looked at him blackly out of a face cut in frowning marble, but
Volney leaned back carelessly in his chair and his insolent eyes never
flickered.
As I say, I sat swithering 'twixt will and will-not.
"Better come, Kenneth! The luck is against you to-night," urged Balmerino,
his face relaxing as he turned to me.
Major Wolfe said nothing, but his face too invited me.
"Yes, better go back to school and be birched," sneered Volney.
And at that I flung back into my seat with a curse, resolute to show him I
was as good a man as he. My grim-faced guardian angel washed his hands of
me with a Scotch proverb.
"He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar. The lad will have to gang his ain
gate," I heard him tell Wolfe as they strolled away.
Still the luck held against me. Before I rose from the table two hours
later I wrote out notes for a total so large that I knew the Grange must
be mortgaged to the roof to satisfy it.
Volney lolled in his chair and hid a yawn behind tapering pink
finger-nails. "'Slife, you had a cursed run of the ivories to-night, Kenn!
When are you for your revenge? Shall we say to-morrow? Egad, I'm ready to
sleep round the clock. Who'll take a seat in my coach? I'm for home."
I pushed into the night with a burning fever in my blood, and the waves of
damp mist which enveloped London and beat upon me, gathering great drops
of moisture on my cloak, did not suffice to cool the fire that burnt me
up. The black dog Care hung heavy on my shoulders. I knew now what I had
done. Fool that I was, I had mortgaged not only my own heritage but also
the lives of my young brother Charles and my sister Cloe. Our father had
died of apoplexy without a will, and a large part of his personal property
had come to me with the entailed estate. The provision for the other two
had been of the slightest, and now by this one wild night of play I had
put it out of my power to take care of them. I had better clap a pistol to
my head and be done with it.
Even while the thought was in my mind a hand out of the night fell on my
shoulder from behind. I turned with a start, and found myself face to face
with the Scotchman Balmerino.
"Whither away, Kenneth?" he asked.
I laughed bitterly. "What does it matter? A broken gambler--a ruined
dicer-- What is there left for him?"
The Scotch Lord linked an arm through mine. I had liefer have been alone,
but I could scarce tell him so. He had been a friend of my father and had
done his best to save me from my folly.
"There is much left. All is not lost. I have a word to say to your
father's son."
"What use!" I cried rudely. "You would lock the stable after the horse is
stolen."
"Say rather that I would put you in the way of getting another horse," he
answered gravely.
So gravely that I looked at him twice before I answered:
"And I would be blithe to find a way, for split me! as things look now I
must either pistol myself or take to the road and pistol others," I told
him gloomily.
"There are worse things than to lose one's wealth----"
"I hear you say it, but begad! I do not know them," I answered with a
touch of anger at his calmness.
"----When the way is open to regain all one has lost and more," he
finished, unheeding my interruption.
"Well, this way you speak of," I cried impatiently. "Where is it?"
He looked at me searchingly, as one who would know the inmost secrets of
my soul. Under a guttering street light he stopped me and read my face
line by line. I dare swear he found there a recklessness to match his own
and perhaps some trace of the loyalty for which he looked. Presently he
said, as the paving stones echoed to our tread:--
"You have your father's face, Kenn. I mind him a lad just like you when we
went out together in the '15 for the King. Those were great days--great
days. I wonder----"
His unfinished sentence tailed out into a meditative silence. His voice
and eyes told of a mind reminiscent of the past and perhaps dreamful of
the future. Yet awhile, and he snatched himself back into the present.
"Six hours ago I should not have proposed this desperate remedy for your
ills. You had a stake in the country then, but now you are as poor in this
world's gear as Arthur Elphinstone himself. When one has naught but life
at stake he will take greater risks. I have a man's game to play. Are you
for it, lad?"
I hesitated, a prophetic divination in my mind that I stood in a mist at
the parting of life's ways.
"You have thrown all to-night--and lost. I offer you another cut at
Fortune's cards. You might even turn a king."
He said it with a quiet steadfastness in which I seemed to detect an
undercurrent of strenuous meaning. I stopped, and in my turn looked long
at him. What did he mean? Volney's words came to my mind. I began to piece
together rumours I had heard but never credited. I knew that even now men
dreamed of a Stuart restoration. If Arthur Elphinstone of Balmerino were
one of these I knew him to be of a reckless daring mad enough to attempt
it.
"My Lord, you say I might turn a king," I repeated slowly. "'Tis more like
that I would play the knave. You speak in riddles. I am no guesser of
them. You must be plain."
Still he hung back from a direct answer. "You are dull to-night, Kenn. I
have known you more gleg at the uptake, but if you will call on me
to-morrow night I shall make all plain to you."
We were arrived at the door of his lodgings, a mean house in a shabby
neighbourhood, for my Lord was as poor as a church mouse despite his
title. I left him here, and the last words I called over my shoulder to
him were,
"Remember, I promise nothing."
It may be surmised that as I turned my steps back toward my rooms in
Arlington Street I found much matter for thought. I cursed the folly that
had led me to offer myself a dupe to these hawks of the gaming table. I
raged in a stress of heady passion against that fair false friend Sir
Robert Volney. And always in the end my mind jumped back to dally with
Balmerino's temptation to recoup my fallen fortunes with one desperate
throw.
"Fraoch! Dh 'aindeoin co theireadh e!" (The Heath! Gainsay who dare!)
The slogan echoed and reechoed through the silent streets, and snatched me
in an instant out of the abstraction into which I had fallen. Hard upon
the cry there came to me the sound of steel ringing upon steel. I legged
it through the empty road, flung myself round a corner, and came plump
upon the combatants. The defendant was a lusty young fellow apparently
about my own age, of extraordinary agility and no mean skill with the
sword. He was giving a good account of himself against the four assailants
who hemmed him against the wall, his point flashing here and there with
swift irregularity to daunt their valiancy. At the moment when I appeared
to create a diversion one of the four had flung himself down and forward
to cling about the knees of their victim with intent to knife him at close
quarters. The young man dared not shorten his sword length to meet this
new danger. He tried to shake off the man, caught at his white throat and
attempted to force him back, what time his sword still opposed the rest of
the villains.
Then I played my small part in the entertainment. One of the rascals
screamed out an oath at sight of me and turned to run. I pinked him in the
shoulder, and at the same time the young swordsman fleshed another of
them. The man with the knife scrambled to his feet, a ludicrous picture of
ghastly terror. To make short, in another minute there was nothing to be
seen of the cutpurses but flying feet scampering through the night.
The young gentleman turned to me with a bow that was never invented out of
France. I saw now that he was something older than myself, tall,
well-made, and with a fine stride to him that set off the easy grace of
his splendid shoulders. His light steady blue eyes and his dark ruddy hair
proclaimed him the Highlander. His face was not what would be called
handsome: the chin was over-square and a white scar zigzagged across his
cheek, but I liked the look of him none the less for that. His frank manly
countenance wore the self-reliance of one who has lived among the hills
and slept among the heather under countless stars. For dress he wore the
English costume with the extra splash of colour that betokened the vanity
of his race. "'Fore God, sir, you came none too soon," he cried in his
impetuous Gaelic way. "This riff-raff of your London town had knifed me in
another gliff. I will be thinking that it would have gone ill with me but
for your opportune arrival. I am much beholden to you, and if ever I can
pay the debt do not fail to call on Don--er--James Brown."
At the last words he fell to earth most precipitately, all the fervent
ring dropping out of his voice. Now James Brown is a common name enough,
but he happened to be the first of the name I had ever heard crying a
Highland slogan in the streets of London, and I looked at him with
something more than curiosity. I am a Scotchman myself on the mother's
side, so that I did not need to have a name put to his nationality.
There was the touch of a smile on my face when I asked him if he were
hurt. He gave me the benefit of his full seventy three inches and told me
no, that he would think shame of himself if he could not keep his head
with his hands from a streetful of such scum. And might he know the name
of the unknown friend who had come running out of the night to lend him an
arm?
"Kenneth Montagu," I told him, laughing at his enthusiasm.
"Well then, Mr. Kenneth Montagu, it's the good friend you've been to me
this night, and I'll not be forgetting it."
"When I find myself attacked by footpads I'll just look up Mr. James
Brown," I told him dryly with intent to plague.
He took the name sourly, no doubt in an itching to blurt out that he was a
Mac-something or other. To a Gaelic gentleman like him the Sassenach name
he used for a convenience was gall and wormwood.
We walked down the street together, and where our ways parted near
Arlington Street he gave me his hand.
"The lucky man am I at meeting you, Mr. Montagu, while we were having the
bit splore down the street. I was just weanying for a lad handy with his
blade, and the one I would be choosing out of all England came hot-foot
round the corner."
I made nothing of what I had done, but yet his Highland friendliness and
flatteries were balm to a sick heart and we parted at my door with a great
deal of good-will.
-----
[1] The author takes an early opportunity to express his obligations
to the letters of Horace Walpole who was himself so infinitely
indebted to the conversation of his cronies.