The Greatest Historical Novels & Romances of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

intuition savoured almost of the supernatural.

      “Well, Mr. Cameron, what is it?” inquired the Earl. “In what can I attempt to serve you? You have but to name the matter.”

      But Ewen was so bewildered at this volte-face in his enemy, not to mention his uncanny perspicacity, that he remained momentarily tongue-tied.

      “Mr. Cameron’s request is not, I believe, for himself at all,” said Lord Aveling softly. “There is a person upon whose behalf he has done and risked a good deal. I think he wishes, if possible, to enlist you on the same side.”

      “I take it,” said his father, “that you are referring to the unfortunate gentleman, Mr. Cameron’s kinsman, who was to-day condemned to death. Am I right, Mr. Cameron?”

      Ewen bent his head. “I ask too much, perhaps, my lord.” He lifted it again, and speech came to him, and he pleaded earnestly for commutation of the sentence, almost as though the decision had lain in Lord Stowe’s hands. “And surely, my lord,” he finished, “clemency in this case must prove to the advantage, not to the disadvantage, of the Government.”

      The Earl had listened with courtesy and attention. “I will certainly think over what you have said, Mr. Cameron,” he promised, “and if I can convince myself, from what I hear elsewhere, that a recommendation to mercy is advisable, I will take steps in the proper quarters. Come and see me again to-morrow afternoon, if you will give yourself the trouble.—Aveling, you wish me, I gather, to leave you to settle your own difference with Mr. Cameron?”

      “If you please, my lord.” He smiled a little, and opened the door for his father to pass out.

      “Why did you do that? How, in God’s name, did you know?” cried Ewen directly it was shut again.

      The dark mahogany panels behind him threw up Lord Aveling’s slight, shimmering figure. “It was not so difficult to read your mind, Mr. Cameron. I wish I could think that among my friends I numbered one with . . . the same notions that you have. As to my own mind . . . well, perhaps Doctor Cameron made an impression on me this morning other than I had expected, so that, to tell truth, I half-wished that you had been in time with the information which you stole from me.”

      Ewen sat down at the table and took his head between his fists. Once more Keith Windham’s ring glittered in the candle-light.

      “We heard a rumour in Edinburgh,” went on Aveling, “that there was one man and one man only with Doctor Cameron when he was taken, and that he resisted desperately, and was left behind too badly hurt to be taken away by the soldiers. I begin to have a suspicion who that man was . . .”

      Ewen was silent.

      “—Although you said that you arrived too late. . . . But I do not wish to press you to incriminate yourself.”

      “Yes, you have enough against me without seeking any more,” answered Ardroy without raising his head.

      “I think that I have wiped out that score,” said Aveling reflectively. “Indeed, that I have overpaid it.” He was silent for a second or two, and then went on with a very young eagerness, “Mr. Cameron, I am going to ask a favour of you, which may not displease you either. Will you, as a matter of form, cross swords with me—over the table if you prefer it—so that we may each feel that we have offered satisfaction to the other? I was too angry to know what I was saying when I refused your offer of it just now. See, I will shift the candlesticks a little. Will you do it?”

      Ewen got up, rather moved. “I shall be very glad to do it, my lord.” He drew his plain steel-hilted sword; out came the young man’s elegant damascened weapon; the glittering blades went up to the salute, and then kissed for a second above the mahogany.

      “Thank you, sir,” said Aveling, stepping back with a bow, and sheathing again. “Will you forgive me now for what I said about my brother? I am well content that you should keep his ring, and I am sure that the giver would have been pleased that you refused to surrender it, even to save yourself from what I had the bad taste to threaten you with.”

      Sword in hand, Ewen bowed; words, somehow, would not come. So much that was racking had happened this day, and he was not long over a convalescence. The young, delicate face looking gravely and rather sweetly at him across the table swam for a second in the candle-light, and when he tried to return his sword to the scabbard he fumbled over the process.

      “I can see that you are much fatigued, Mr. Cameron,” said Lord Aveling, coming round the table. “Will you take a glass of wine with me before you go?”

      CHAPTER XIX

       KEITH WINDHAM’S MOTHER

       Table of Contents

      (1)

      “A gentleman to see you, sir,” said the voice, not of Ewen’s landlady, Mrs. Wilson, but of the impish boy from the vintner’s shop below. And, coming nearer, he added confidentially, “He ain’t given no name, but he’s mighty fine—a lord, belike!”

      “Where is he, then—show him in at once!” ordered Ewen, picturing Mr. Galbraith, the only person, save Hector, likely to call at this morning hour, left standing at the top of the stairs. And yet what should make the soberly attired Galbraith ‘mighty fine’ at this time of day?

      But the impish boy’s diagnosis was exactly correct: the young gentleman who entered was fine—though not so fine as last night—and he was a lord. Ewen went forward amazed; despite the peaceful termination to last night’s encounter, Viscount Aveling was the last person he should have expected to walk into his humble apartment.

      “I am not intruding, I hope, Mr. Cameron, visiting you thus early?” inquired the young man in the voice which was so like his dead brother’s. “I wished to make sure that you would keep your promise of waiting upon my father this afternoon, for he is genuinely anxious to afford you any assistance in his power. Yet I feared that you might be kept away by the memory of my . . . my exceedingly inhospitable behaviour last night.”

      All the frank and boyish charm which had formed the essence of Ewen’s first impression of him was back—more than back.

      “I assure you, my lord,” replied Ewen warmly, “that any memories of that sort were drowned in the glass of wine we took together. I shall most gratefully wait upon Lord Stowe at any hour convenient to him. But will you not be seated? It is exceedingly good of you to have come upon this errand.”

      Lord Aveling laid down his tasselled cane upon the table, and lifting the full skirts of his murrey-coloured coat out of the way, complied.

      “I do not think that Lord Stowe can promise much, Mr. Cameron,” he said, “and it may be that any step will take time. But I believe that strong feeling is being aroused by the sentence, which is a hopeful sign. My father was himself present when judgement was given, and was much impressed, as I was, by Doctor Cameron’s bearing.”

      “Everyone seems to have been at the Court of King’s Bench but I,” said Ewen sadly.

      “Yet surely,” objected the young man, “it would have been very painful for you, Mr. Cameron, to hear the details of that sentence, which sound so barbarous and cold-blooded when enumerated beforehand; and I must own that the Lord Chief Justice hurled them, as it were, at the unfortunate gentleman with what seemed more like animus on his part than a due judicial severity.”

      “Yes, I have already been told that,” said Ewen. “Yet I should have seen my kinsman had I been present, even though I could not have had speech with him—that, I knew, would be too much to expect in the case of a State prisoner. It is I, alas,” he added with a sudden impulse towards confidence, “who am, in a measure at least, responsible for his capture.”

      “My dear Mr. Cameron,” exclaimed young Aveling with vivacity, “considering