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

      ‘August the 22nd. At Kinlocheil all Day. Prodigious Rain. Much-needed Attempts seem to be going forward to organise the Transport, Wagons and Carts of all Sorts being collected. Have scarce seen E.C. all day.’

      But he had hardly come to these last words, when a tall, wet figure appeared without warning in the low doorway, and the diarist restored his notebook somewhat hastily to his pocket. Ardroy stooped his head to enter, taking off his bonnet and swinging it to remove the raindrops. The dampness of the rest of his attire appeared to give him no concern.

      “Good evening, Mr. Cameron! Have you been burying any more cannon?” enquired the soldier pleasantly.

      Ardroy, reddening slightly, made no reply beyond returning the ‘Good evening’, but hung up his bonnet on a nail and began to unfasten the shoulder-brooch of his plaid. There was not a very great deal of satisfaction for Captain Windham to be got out of baiting this ‘young Achilles’ of his, because Achilles kept so tight a hold upon his temper and his tongue. Or was it that he was naturally impassive? Hardly, for Keith was sure that he felt the points of the darts which he contrived from time to time to plant in him. Perhaps Ardroy thought that the best way to meet his captive’s malice was to appear unaware of it; and indeed the archer himself had to confess that this course rather baffled him. He followed up his first shaft by another.

      “You must admit that you should not have brought me here if you did not wish me to learn your military dispositions—if such I am to call that measure!”

      And if the Highlander went on pretending that the unpinning of his plaid was engaging his whole attention Keith would feel that he had drawn blood. He knew that his own conduct verged on the puerile, but the pleasure of pursuing it was too strong.

      The big brooch, however, was undone at last, and Ewen said rather dryly: “I am glad that your spirits are not suffering from the weather, Captain Windham.”

      “On the contrary,” said his prisoner cheerfully, leaning back against the wall of the hut, his hands behind his head, “I am entertaining myself by trying to recall any other great commander who began his campaign by burying most of his artillery in a swamp; but I have failed. Yet, by Gad, the plan might work a revolution in warfare—in fact ’twould end it altogether if it were carried out to its logical conclusion. Armies would take the field only to bury their muskets—and perhaps,” he added maliciously, “that will be your next step. I protest that some of them would not take much harm by the interment!”

      Ewen swung off his plaid. “Your mirth at our lack of equipment is very natural,” he replied with complete equanimity. “But perhaps our ill provision may not be widely known to our enemies. And is it not a fact within your own military experience, Captain Windham,” he went on, looking him in the face, “that it is what one supposes an enemy’s forces to be rather than what they actually are which sometimes turns the scale?”

      It was the Englishman who coloured this time. In its absence of specific reference to the mishap at High Bridge the retort was just sufficiently veiled to enable him, had he chosen, to affect unconsciousness of its sting. But he was too proud to do this.

      “I deserved that,” he admitted, scrambling to his feet with the words. “I am not such a dolt as to be unaware to what you allude. That you feel obliged to remind me of last Friday’s disgrace proves that my own remarks were not in the best of taste—and I apologise for them.”

      But his tormentor’s apology appeared to embarrass Ewen Cameron much more than his thrusts. “I am sorry I said that, Captain Windham!” he exclaimed, with a vivacity which rather astonished the other. “I ought not to have taunted you with a calamity for which you were not to blame. That was in worse taste still.”

      “Egad, Mr. Cameron, you are too punctilious,” said Keith carelessly. “But if you are of that mind—I don’t say that I am—we may fairly cry quits.”

      “For after all,” pursued Ewen, throwing down his plaid, “since you are not witnessing our preparations of your own free will, I suppose you are at liberty to make what observations you please upon them.”

      “You seem bent upon making allowances for me!” returned Keith with a smile. “However, I do not complain of that; and if Fate should ever reverse our positions, and give you, for instance, into my hands, I hope I may be able to show the same generosity.”

      Ardroy, who was now unbuckling his broadsword, stopped and gazed at him rather intently in the feeble lantern-light, feeble because it still had to contend with a measure of wet daylight. “Why, do you then anticipate our meeting again, Captain Windham?” he asked after a moment.

      “I anticipate nothing, Mr. Cameron. I am no wizard to foretell the future. Yet, but for the fact that we could not meet save as enemies, I vow ’twould give me pleasure to think that we might one day encounter each other again.” But, feeling somehow that the young man standing there looking at him took this for a mere façon de parler, he added, with a return to his bantering tone, “You can have no notion how much this tour—albeit a trifle too reminiscent of a Roman triumph—has been alleviated by having so agreeable a cicerone. Though indeed in the last twenty-four hours my glimpses of you have been few—too few.”

      So expressed, his sentiments had of course small chance of being taken for sincere. The Highlander, indeed, for all reply gave a little shrug that was almost like a Frenchman’s, spread his plaid upon the bare earth floor and laid his broadsword beside it.

      “Surely you are not going to sleep in that plaid!” exclaimed Keith, stirred out of his levity. “Why, ’tis drenched! Take my cloak, I have no mind to sleep yet, and shall not need it.”

      But Ewen, without stiffness, declined, saying that a wet plaid was of no consequence, and indeed but kept one the warmer. Some, he added, and the Englishman gasped at the information, wrung them out at night in water for that reason. All he would accept was some handfuls of heather for a pillow, and then, lying down, his sword convenient to his hand, he wrapped himself in the folds of damp tartan and in five minutes was fast asleep.

      But Keith, as he had said, was not sleepy; and after a while, feeling restless, he strolled to the doorway—door the hut had none. When he got there he was aware of a rigid figure, muffled in a plaid, standing in the rain, just out of the direct line of vision—the inevitable Lachlan watching over his master’s slumbers. He turned his head, and Keith could see a contraction pass over his dark features. But the English officer was not to be intimidated by a scowl from studying, if he wished, the sodden, cloud-enfolded landscape, and the sheets of rain driving in the twilight over the waters of Loch Eil, though it was not a cheerful prospect.

      What was going to happen to him when his parole expired to-morrow? At the far end of Loch Eil Loch Linnhe joined it at right angles, and on Loch Linnhe was Fort William, with its loyal garrison. To-morrow the Highland force would proceed along Loch Eil, and every step would bring him nearer to his friends. . . .

      He left the doorway after a few moments, and looked down at the sleeper on the floor, his head sunk in the bundle of heather and his arm lying across his broadsword. “The embraces of the goddess of ague seem to be agreeable,” he thought. “I shall be sorry to say farewell to-morrow, my friend—deuce take me if I quite know why—but I hardly think you will!”

      Then at last he went and lay down on his heap of heather, and listened to the sound of the rain, always, since he was a boy, connected with the worst memories of his life. There was the dismal day of his father’s funeral; he had been but five then, yet he remembered it perfectly: rain, rain on the nodding plumes of the great black carriage which had taken his father away; the day some years later on which his childish mind first realised that his adored mother cared nothing for him—rain, a soft mist of it. And the night in London, four years past now, the night that he had discovered what Lydia Shelmerdine really was. Against the closely-curtained windows of her boudoir it could be heard to dash in fury (for there was a great wind that evening) every time that there came a pause in her high, frightened, lying speech, which ran on the more that he stood there saying so little. The rose had slipped loose from her close-gathered powdered hair, her gauze and ivory fan lay snapped at her feet