Chapter Twelve.
Bought with a Price.
Host. “Trust me, I think ’tis almost day.”
Julia. “Not so; but it hath been the longest night
That e’er I watched, and the most heaviest.”
Shakespeare.
I am writing four days later than my last sentence, and I wonder whether things have finished beginning to happen.
Grandmamma’s Tuesday was the day after I writ. The Newtons were there,—at least Mrs Newton and Miss Theresa,—and ever so many people whom I knew and cared nothing about. My Lady Parmenter came early, but did not stay long; and very late, long after every one else, Ephraim Hebblethwaite. Mr Raymond I did not see, and have not done so for several times.
I was not much inclined to talk, and I got into a corner with some pictures which I had seen twenty times, and turned them over just as an excuse for keeping quiet. All at once I heard Ephraim’s voice at my side:
“Cary, I want to speak to you. Go on looking at those pictures: other ears are best away. How is Hatty?”
“She is better,” I said; “but she is not the old Hatty.”
“I don’t think the old Hatty will come back,” he said. “Perhaps the new one may be better. Are the Miss Bracewells gone home?”
“They start to-morrow,” said I.
“Cary, I am going to ask you something. Don’t show any surprise. Are you a brave girl?”
“I hardly know,” said I, resisting the temptation to look up and see what he meant. “Why?”
“Because a woman is wanted for a piece of work, and we think you would answer.”
“What piece of work?—and who are ‘we’?” I asked, turning over some views of Rome with very little notion what they were.
“‘We’ are Colonel Keith, Raymond, and myself.”
“And what ‘piece of work’?” I asked again.
“To attempt the rescue of Angus.”
“How?—what am I to do?”
“Did you ever try to personate anybody?”
“Well, we used to act little pieces sometimes at Carlisle, I and the Grandison girls and Lucretia Carnwath. There has never been anything of the sort here.”
“Did they think you did it well?”
“Lucretia Carnwath and Diana Grandison were thought the best performers; but once they said I made a capital housemaid.”
“Were you ever a laundress?”
“No, but I dare say I could have managed it.”
“Are you willing to try?”
“I am ready to do anything, if it will help Angus. I don’t see at present how my playing the laundress is to do that.”
“You will not play it on a mock stage in a drawing-room, but in reality. Neither you nor I are to do the hardest part of the work; Colonel Keith takes that.”
“What have I to do?”
“To carry a basket of clothes into the prison, and bring it out again.”
“I hope Angus will not be in the basket,” said I, trying to smother my laughter; “I could not carry him.”
“Oh, no,” replied Ephraim, laughing too. “Now listen.”
“I am all attention,” said I.
“Next Tuesday evening, about nine o’clock, slip out of this room, and throw a large cloak over your dress—one that will quite hide you. You will find me at the foot of the back-stairs. We shall go out of the back-door, and get to Raymond’s house. A lady, whom you will find there, will help you to put on the dress which is prepared. Then you and I (who are brother and sister, if you please) will carry the basket to the prison. Just before reaching it, I shall pretend to hear something, and run off to see what is the matter. You will be left alone (in appearance), and will call after me in vain, and abuse me roundly when I do not return, declaring that you cannot possibly carry that heavy basket in alone. Then, but not before, you will descry a certain William standing close by,—who will be Colonel Keith,—and showing surprise at seeing him there, will ask him to help you with the basket. He and you will carry the basket into the prison, and you will stand waiting a little while, during which time he will (with the connivance of a warder in our pay) visit Angus’s cell. Presently ‘William’ will return to you, but it will be Angus and not Keith. You are to scold him for having kept you such an unconscionable time, and, declaring that you will have no more to do with him, to take up the empty basket and walk off. Our warder will then declare that he cannot do with all this row,—you must make as much noise as you can,—and push you both out of the prison door. Angus will follow you, expressing penitence and begging to be allowed to carry the basket, but you are not to let him. A few yards from the prison, I shall come running out of a side-street, seize the basket, give Angus a thump or two with it and bid him be off, for I am not going to have such good-for-noughts loitering about and making up to my sister. He will pretend to be cowed, and run away, and you will then abuse me in no measured terms for having left you without protector, in the first place, and for having behaved so badly to your dear Will in the second. When we are out of sight, we may gradually drop our pretended quarrel; and when we reach Mr Raymond’s house, you will return to Caroline Courtenay, and I shall be Ephraim Hebblethwaite. There is the programme. Can you carry out your part?—and are you willing?”
My heart stood still a moment, and then came up and throbbed violently in my throat.
“Could I? Yes, I think I could. But I want to know something first. How far I am willing will depend on circumstances. What is going to become of Colonel Keith in this business?”
“He takes Angus’s place—don’t you see?”
“Yes, but when Angus has got away, how is he to escape?”
“God knoweth. It is not likely that he can.”
“And do you mean to say that Colonel Keith is to be sacrificed to save Angus?”
“The sacrifice is his own. The proposal comes from himself.”
“And you mean to let him?”
“Not if I could do it myself,” was the quiet answer.
“I don’t want you to do it. Is there nobody else?”
“No one except Keith, Raymond, and myself. Raymond is too tall, and I am not tall enough. Keith and Angus are just of a height.”
“And if Colonel Keith cannot escape, what will become of him?”
Silence answered me,—a silence which said far more than words.
“Ephraim, Colonel Keith is worth fifty of Angus.”
“I have not spent these weeks at his bedside, Cary, without finding that out.”
“And is the worse to be bought with the better?”
“It was done once, upon the hill of Calvary. And ‘This is My commandment, that ye love one another as I have loved you.’”
I was silent. I did not like the idea at all.
“You must talk to Keith about it before we leave the house,” said Ephraim. “But I am afraid it will be of no use. We have all tried in vain.”
I said no more.
“Well, Cary,—will you undertake it?”
“Ephraim,” I said, looking up at last, “I cannot bear to think of sacrificing Colonel Keith. I could do it, I think, for anything but that. It would be hard work, no doubt, at the best; but I would go through with it to save Angus. But cannot it be done in some other way?”
Ephraim shook his head.
“We can see no other way at all. There are only three men who could do it—Colonel Keith, Mr Raymond, and myself; and Keith is far the best for personal reasons. Beside the matter of height, he has, or at any rate could easily put on, a slight Scots accent, which we should find difficult, and might very likely do it wrong. He is acquainted with all the places and people that Angus is; we are not. And remember, it is not only the getting Angus out of the place that is of consequence: whoever takes his place must personate Angus for some hours, till he can get safely away. (Note 3.) Only Keith can do this with any chance of success. As to sacrifice, why, soldiers sacrifice themselves every day, and he is a soldier. I can assure you, it seems to him a natural, commonplace affair. He is very anxious to do it.”
“He must be fonder of Angus—” I stopped.
“Than we are?” answered Ephraim, with a smile. “Perhaps he is. But I think he has other reasons, Cary.”
“What made you think of me?”
“Well, we must have a girl in the affair, and we were very much puzzled whom to ask. If Miss Keith had been here, we should certainly have asked her.”
“Annas? Oh, how could she?” I cried.
“She has pluck enough,” said Ephraim. “Of course, Miss Drummond would have been the most natural person to play the part, but Keith would not hear of that, and Raymond doubted if she were a suitable person. With her, the Scots accent would be in the way, and rouse suspicion; and I am not sure whether she could manage such a thing in other respects. Then we thought of Hatty and you; but Hatty, I suppose, is out of the question at present.”
“Oh yes, quite,” said I.
“She would have been the very one if she had been well and strong. She has plenty of go and dash in her. But Raymond and Keith both wanted you.”
“And you did not?” said I, feeling rather mortified that Ephraim should seem to think more of Hatty than of me.
“No, I did not, Cary,” he said, in a changed voice. “You think I am paying you a poor compliment. Perhaps, some day, you will know better.”
“Does anyone in this house know of the rescue plot?”
“Mr Desborough knows that an attempt may be made, but not that you are in it. Lucette is engaged to keep the coast clear while we get away. And now, Cary, what say you?”
“Yes, Ephraim, I will do it, though I almost wish it were anything else. May God help Colonel Keith!”
“Amen, with all my heart!”
We had no opportunity to say more.
So now I wait for next Tuesday, not knowing what it may bring forth.
It was about a quarter of an hour before the fated moment, when Miss Theresa Newton sat down by me.
“Very serious to-night, Miss Caroline!” said she, jestingly.
I thought I had good cause, considering what was about to happen. But I turned it off as best I could.
“Where is our handsome friend this evening?” said she.
“Have we only one?” replied I.
Miss Newton laughed that musical laugh of hers.
“I should hope we are rather happier. I meant Mr Hebblethwaite—horrible name!”
“I saw him a little while ago,” said I, wondering if he were then at the foot of the back-stairs.
“What has become of the Crosslands? Have you any idea? I have not seen them here now for—ever so long.”
“Nor have I. I do not know at all,” said I, devoutly hoping that I never should see them again.
“My sister is perfectly in despair. Her intended never comes to see her now. I tell her she had better find somebody else. It is too tiresome to keep on and off with a man in that way. Oh, you don’t know anything about it. Your time has not come yet.”
“When it do,” said I, “I will either be on or off, if you please. I should not like to be on and off, by any means.”
Miss Newton hid her laughing face behind her fan.
“My dear child, you are so refreshing! Don’t change, I beg of you. It is charming to meet any one like you.”
“I thank you for your good opinion,” I replied; and, my Aunt Dorothea just then coming up, I resigned my seat to her, and dropped the conversation.
For a minute or two I wandered about,—asked Hatty if she were tired (this was her first evening in the drawing-room with company), and when she said, “Not yet,” I inquired after Puck’s health from Mrs Newton, told Miss Emma Page that Grandmamma had been admiring her sister’s dress, and slipped out of the door when I arrived at it. In my room Lucette was standing with the cloak ready to throw over me.
“Monsieur Ebaté is at the escalier dérobé,” said she. Poor Lucette could get no nearer Hebblethwaite. “He tell me, this night, Mademoiselle goes on an errand for the good Lord. May the Lord keep safe His messenger!”
“Mr Hebblethwaite goes with me,” said I. “He will take all the care of me he can.”
“I will trust him for that!” said Lucette, with a little nod. “He is good man, celui-là. But, Mademoiselle, ‘except the Lord keep the city—’ you know.”
“‘The watchman waketh but in vain.’ Yes, Lucette, I know, in every sense. But how do you know that Mr Hebblethwaite is a good man?”
“Ah! I know, I. And I know what makes him stay in London, all same. Now Mademoiselle is ready, and Caesar is at the door, là-bas.”
Down-stairs I ran, joined Ephraim, who also wore a large cloak over his evening dress, and we went out of the back-door, which was guarded by Caesar, whose white teeth and gleaming eyes were all I could see of him in the dusk.
“Lucette asked leave to take Caesar into the affair,” said Ephraim. “She promised to answer for him as for herself. Now, Cary, we must step out: there is no time to lose.”
“As fast as you please,” said I.
In a few minutes, we came to Mr Raymond’s house. I never knew before where he lived. It is in a small house in Endell Street. An elderly woman opened the door, who evidently expected us, and ushered us at once into a living-room on the right hand. Here I saw Mr Raymond and a lady—a lady past her youth, who had, as I could not help seeing, been extreme beautiful. I thought there was no one else till I heard a voice beside me:
“I fear I am almost a stranger, Miss Cary.”
“Mr Keith!” I did not feel him a stranger, but a very old friend indeed. But how ill he looked! I told him so, and he said he was wonderfully better,—quite well again,—with that old, sweet smile that he always had. My heart came up into my throat.
“Mr Keith, must you go into this danger?”
“If I fail to go where my Master calls me, how can I look for His presence and blessing to go with me? They who go with God are they with whom God goes.”
“Are you quite sure He has called you?”
“Quite sure.” His fine eyes lighted up.
“Have you thought—”
“Forgive my interruption. I have thought of everything. Miss Cary, you heard the vow which I took to God and Flora Drummond—never to lose sight of Angus, and to keep him true and safe. I have kept it so far as it lay in me, and I will keep it to the end. Come what may, I will be true to God and her.”
And looking up into his eyes, I saw—revealed to me as by a flash of lightning—what was Duncan Keith’s most precious thing.
“Now, Miss Caroline,” said Mr Raymond, “will you kindly go up with this lady,”—I fancied I heard the shortest possible sign of hesitation before the last two words,—“and she will be so good as to help you to assume the dress you are to wear.”
I went up-stairs with the beautiful woman, who gave a little laugh as she shut the door.
“Poor Mr Raymond!” said she; “I feel so sorry for the man. Nature meant him to be a Tory, and education has turned him into a Whig. He has the kindest of hearts, and the most unmanageable of consciences. He will help us to free a prisoner, but he would not call me anything but ‘Mistress’ to save his life.”
“And your Ladyship—?” said I, guessing in an instant what she ought to be called, and that she was the wife of a peer—not a Hanoverian peer.
“Oh, my Ladyship can put up with it very well,” said she, laughing, as she helped me off with my evening dress. “I wish I may never have anything worse. The man would not pain me for the world. It is only his awful Puritan conscience; Methodist, perhaps, Puritan was the word in my day. When one lives in exile, one almost loses one’s native tongue.”
And I thought I heard a light sigh. Her Ladyship, however, said no more, except what had reference to our business. When the process was over, I found myself in a printed linen gown, with a linen hood on my head, a long white apron made quite plain, and stout clumsy shoes.
“Now, be as vulgar as you possibly can,” said her Ladyship. “Try to forget all your proprieties, and do everything th’ wrong way. You are Betty Walkden, if you please, and Mr Hebblethwaite is Joel Walkden, and your brother. You are a washerwoman, and your mistress, Mrs Richardson, lives in Chelsea. Don’t forget your history. Oh! I am forgetting one thing myself. Colonel Keith, and therefore Lieutenant Drummond, as they are the same person for this evening, is Will Clowes, a young gardener at Wandsworth, who is your lover, of whom your brother Joel does not particularly approve. Now then, keep up your character. And remember,”—her Ladyship was very grave now—“to call any of them by his real name may be death to all of you.”
I turned round and faced her.
“Madam, what will become of Colonel Keith?”
I thought her Ladyship looked rather keenly at me.
“‘The sword devoureth one as well as another,’” was her reply. “You know whence that comes, Miss Courtenay.”
“Is that all?” I answered. “If any act of mine lead to his death, how shall I answer it to his father and mother, and to Annas?”
“They gave him up to the Cause, my dear, when they sent him forth to join the Prince. A soldier must always do his duty.”
“Forgive me, Madam. I was not questioning his duty, but my own.”
“Too late for that, Miss Courtenay. My dear, he is ready for death. I would more of us were!”
I read in the superb eyes above me that she was not.
“Forward!” she said, as if giving a word of command.
Somehow, I felt as if I must go. Her Ladyship was right: it was too late to draw back. So Ephraim and I set forth on our dangerous errand.
I cannot undertake to say how we went, or where. It all comes back to me as if I had walked it in a dream: and I felt as if I were dreaming all the while. At last, as we went along, carrying the basket, Ephraim suddenly set it down with, “Hallo! what’s that?” I knew then that we must be close to the prison, and that he was about to leave me.
“I say, I must see after that. You go on, Bet!” cried Ephraim; and he was off in a minute—in what direction I could not even see.
“Gemini!” cried I, catching up the word I had heard from Mrs Cropland’s Betty. “Joel! I say, Joel! You bad fellow, can’t you come back? How am I to lift this great thing, I should like to know?”
A dark shadow close to the wall moved a little.
“Come now, can’t one of you lads help a poor maid?” said I. “It’s a shame of Joel to leave me in the lurch like this. Come, give us a hand!”
I was trembling like an aspen leaf. Suppose the wrong man offered to help me! What could I do then?
“Want a hand, my pretty maid?” said a voice which certainly was not Colonel Keith’s. “I’m your man! Give us hold!”
Oh, what was I to do! This horrid man would carry the basket, and how could I explain to the warder? How could I know which warder was the right one?
“Now then, hold hard, mate!” said a second voice, which I greeted with delight. “Just you let this here young woman be. How do, Betty? Why, wherever’s Joel? He’s no call to let the likes o’ you carry things o’ thisn’s.”
What had the Colonel done with his Scots accent? I did not hear a trace of it.
“Oh, Will Clowes, is that you?” said I, giving a little toss of my head, which I thought would be in character. “Well, I don’t know whether I shall let you carry it.”
The next minute I felt how wrong I was to say so.
“Yes, you will,” said Colonel Keith, and took the basket out of my hands. I should never have known him, dressed in corduroy, and with a rake over his shoulder. He shouted something, and the great prison door opened slowly, and a warder put his head out.
“Who goes there?”
“Washing for Cartwright’s ward.”
“Ay, all right. Come within. Cartwright!” shouted the porter.
We went in, and stood waiting a moment just inside the door, till a warder appeared, who desired Colonel Keith to “bring that ’ere basket up, now.”
“You can wait a bit, Betty,” said the Colonel, turning to me. “Don’t be afraid, my girl. Nobody ’ll touch you, and Will ’ll soon be back.”
They say it is unlucky to watch people out of sight. I hope it is not true. True or untrue, I watched him. Yes, Will Clowes might be back soon; but would Duncan Keith ever return any more?
And then a feeling came, as if a tide of fear swept over me,—Was it right of Flora to ask him to make that promise? I have wondered vaguely many a time: but in that minute, with all my senses sharpened, I seemed to see what a blunder it was. Is it ever right to ask people for such unconditional pledges to a distinct course of action, when we cannot know what is going to happen? To what agony—nay, even to what wrong-doing—may we pledge them without knowing it! It seems to me that influence is a very awful thing, for it reaches so much farther than you can see. May it not be said sometimes of us all, “They know not what they do”? And then to think that when we come out of that Valley of the Shadow into the clear light of the Judgment Bar, all our unknown sins may burst upon us like a great army, more than we can count or imagine—it is terrible!
O my God, save me from unknown sins! O Christ, be my Help and Advocate when I come to know them!
How I lived through the next quarter of an hour I can never say to anybody. I sat upon a settle near the door of the prison, praying—how earnestly!—for both of those in danger, but more especially for Colonel Keith. At last I saw a man coming towards me with the empty basket, in which he had inserted his head, like a bonnet, so that it rather veiled his face. I remembered then that I was to “make as much noise as I could,” and quarrel with my supposed lover.
“Well, you are a proper young man!” said I, standing up. “How long do you mean to keep me waiting, I should like to know? You think I’ve nothing in the world to do, don’t you, now? And Missis ’ll say nought to me, will she, for coming home late? Just you give me that basket—men be such dolts!”
“Come, my girl,”—in a deprecating tone—said a voice, which I recognised as that of Angus. I hoped nobody else would.
“I’m not your girl, and I’ll not come unless I’ve a mind, neither!” cried I, loudly, trying to put in practice her Ladyship’s advice to be as vulgar as I could. “I’m not a-going to have fellows dangling at my heels as keeps me a-waiting—”
“Come, young woman, you just clear out,” said the warder Cartwright. “My word, lad, but she’s a spitfire! You be wise, and think better of it. Now then, be off, both of you!”
And he laid his hand on my shoulder, as if to push me through the door, which I pretended to resent very angrily, and Angus flung down the basket and began to strip up his sleeves, as if he meant to fight the warder.
“Now, we can’t do with that kind of thing here!” cried another man, coming forward, whom I took to be somewhat above the rest. “Be off at once—you must not offer to fight the King’s warders. Turn them out, Cartwright, and shut the door on them.”
Angus caught up the basket and dashed through the door, and I followed, making all the noise I could, and scolding everybody. We had only just got outside the gate when Ephraim came running up, and snatched the basket from Angus. There was a few minutes’ pretended struggle between them, and then Ephraim chased Angus into a side-street, and came back to me, whom he began to scold emphatically for encouraging such idle ne’er-do-wells as that rascal Clowes. I tried to give him as good as he brought; and so we went on, jangling as we walked, until nearly within sight of Mr Raymond’s door. Then, declaring that I would not speak to him if he could not behave better, and that I was not going to walk in his leading-strings, I marched on with my head held very high, and Ephraim trudged after me, looking as sulky as he knew how. We rapped on the back-door, and Mr Raymond’s servant let us in. In the parlour we found Mr Raymond and her Ladyship.
“I am thankful to see you safe back!” cried the former; and his manner suggested to me the idea that he had not felt at all sure of doing so. “Is all well accomplished?”
“Angus Drummond is out, and Keith is in,” replied Ephraim. “As to the rest, we must leave it for time to reveal. I am frightfully tired of quarrelling; I never did so much in my life before.”
“Has Miss Courtenay done her part well?” asked her Ladyship.
“Too well, if anything,” said Ephraim. “I was sadly afraid of a slip once. If that fellow had insisted on carrying in the basket, Cary, we should have had a complete smash of the whole thing.”
“Why, did you see that?” said I.
“Of course I did,” he answered. “I was never many yards from you. I lay hidden in a doorway, close to. Cary, you make a deplorably good scold! I never guessed you would do that part of the business so well.”
“I am glad to hear it, for I found it the hardest part,” said I.
Her Ladyship came up and helped me to change my dress.
“The Cause owes something to you to-night, Miss Courtenay,” said she. “At least, if Colonel Keith can escape.”
“And if not, Madam?”
“If not, my dear, we shall but have done our duty. Good-night. Will you accept a little reminder of this evening—and of Lady Inverness?”
I looked up in astonishment. Was this beautiful woman, with her tinge of sadness in face and voice, the woman who had so long stood first at the Court of Montefiascone—the Mistress of the Robes to Queen Clementina, and as some said, of the heart of King James?
My Lady Inverness drew from her finger a small ring of chased gold. “It will fit you, I think, my dear. You are a brave maid, and I like you. Farewell.”
I am not at all sure that my Aunt Kezia would have allowed me to accept it. Some, even among the Tories, thought my Lady Inverness a wicked woman; others reckoned her an injured and a slandered one. I gave her what Father calls “the benefit of the doubt,” thanked her, and accepted the ring. I do not know whether I did right or wrong.
To run down-stairs, say good-bye to Mr Raymond,—by the way, would Mr Raymond have allowed my Lady to enter his house, if he had believed the tales against her?—and hasten back with Ephraim to Bloomsbury Square, took but few minutes. Lucette let us in; I think she had been watching.
“The good Lord has watched over Mademoiselle,” said she, as she took my cloak from me.
Ephraim had gone back to the drawing-room, and I followed. I glanced at the French clock on the mantelpiece, where a gold Cupid in a robe of blue enamel was mowing down an array of hearts with a scythe, and saw that we had been away a little over an hour. Could that be all? How strange it seemed! People were chattering, and flirting fans, and playing cards, as if nothing at all had happened. Miss Newton was sitting where I had left her, talking to Mr Robert Page. Grandmamma sat in her chair, just as usual. Nobody seemed to have missed us, except Hatty, who said with a smile,—“I had lost you, Cary, for the last half-hour.”
“Yes,” said I, “something detained me out of the room.”
I only exchanged one other sentence in the course of the evening with Ephraim:
“You will let me know how things go on? I shall be very anxious.”
“Of course. Yes, I will take care of that.”
And then the company broke up, and I helped Hatty to bed, and prayed from my heart for Colonel Keith and Angus, and did not fall asleep till I had heard Saint Olave’s clock strike two. When I woke, I had been making jumballs in the drawing-room with somebody who was both my Lady Inverness and my Aunt Kezia, and who told me that Colonel Keith had been appointed Governor of the American plantations, and that he would have to be dressed in corduroy.
When I arose in the morning, I could—and willingly would—have thought the whole a dream. But there on my finger, a solid contradiction, was my Lady Inverness’s ring.
For four days I heard nothing more. On the Friday, my Uncle Charles told us that rumours were abroad of the escape of a prisoner, and he hoped it might be Angus. My Aunt Dorothea wanted to hear all the particulars. I sat and listened, looking as grave as I could.
“Why, it seems they must have bribed some fellow to carry in a basket of foul clothes, and then to change clothes with the prisoner, and so let him get out. There appears to have been a girl in it as well—a girl and a man. I suppose they were both bribed, very likely. Anyhow, the prisoner is set free, I only hope it is young Drummond, Cary.”
I said I hoped so too.
“But, dear me, what will become of the man that went in?” asked my Aunt Dorothea.
“Oh, he’ll be hanged, sure enough,” said my Uncle Charles. “Only some low fellow, I suppose, that was willing to sell himself.”
“A man does not sell his life in a hurry,” said my Aunt Dorothea.
“My dear,” replied my Uncle Charles, “there are men who would sell their own mothers and children.”
“Oh, I dare say, but not themselves,” said she.
“I suppose somebody cared for him,” observed Hatty.
I found it hard work to keep silence.
“Only low people like himself,” said Grandmamma. “Those creatures will do anything for money.”
And then, Caesar bringing in a note with Mrs Newton’s compliments, the talk went off to something else.
On the Saturday evening there was an extra assembly, and I caught Ephraim as soon as ever I could.
“Ephraim, they have found it out!” I said, in a whisper.
“Turn your back on the room,” said he, quietly. “Yes, Cary, they have. There goes Keith’s first chance of safety—yet it was a poor one from the beginning.”
“Can nobody intercede for him?”
“With whom? The Electress is dead: and they say she was the only one who had much influence with the Elector.”
“He has daughters,” I suggested.
Ephraim shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that was a very poor hope.
“Your friend Mr Raymond, being a Whig,” I urged, “might be able to do something.”
“I will see,” said he. “Do you know that Miss Keith is to be in London this evening?”
“Annas? No! I have never heard a word about it.”
“I was told so,” said Ephraim, looking hard at an engraving which he had taken up.
I wondered very much who told him.
“She might possibly go to the Princess Caroline. People say she is the best of the family. Bad is the best, I am afraid.” (Note 2.)
“How did Mr Raymond come to know my Lady Inverness?”
“Oh, you discovered who she was, did you?”
“She told me herself.”
“Ah!—I cannot say; I am not sure that he knew anything of her before Tuesday night. She was our superior officer, and gave orders which we obeyed—that was all.”
“I cannot understand how Mr Raymond could have anything to do with it!” cried I.
“Nor I, precisely. I believe there are wheels within wheels. Is he not a friend of your uncle, Mr Drummond?—an old friend, I mean, when they were young men.”
“Possibly,” said I; “I do not know.”
Somebody came up now, and drew Ephraim away. I had no more private talk with him. But how could he come to know anything about Annas? And where is she going to be?
The next morning Caesar brought me a little three-cornered note. I guessed at once from whom it came, and eagerly tore it open.
“We arrived in London last night, my dear Caroline, and are very desirous of seeing you. Could you meet me at Mr Raymond’s house this afternoon? Mr Hebblethwaite will be so good as to call for you, if you can come. Love from both to you and Hester. Your affectionate friend, A. K.”
Come! I should think I would come! I only hoped Annas already knew of my share in the plot to rescue Angus. If not, what would she say to me?
I read the note again. “We”—who were “we”?—and “love from both.” Surely Flora must be with her! I kept wishing—and I could not tell myself why—that Ephraim had less to do with it. I did not like his seeming to be thus at the beck and call of Annas; and I did not know why it vexed me. I must be growing selfish. That would never do! Why should Ephraim not do things for Annas? I was an older friend, it is true, but that was all. I had no more claim on him than any one else. I recognised that clearly enough: yet I could not banish the feeling that I was sorry for it.
When Ephraim came, I thought he looked exceeding grave. I had told Grandmamma beforehand that Annas (and I thought Flora also) had returned to London, and asked me to go and see them, which I begged her leave to do. Grandmamma took a pinch of snuff over it, and then said that Caesar might call me a chair.
“Could I not walk, Grandmamma? It is very near.”
“Walk!” cried Grandmamma, and looked at me much as if I had asked if I might not lie or steal. “My dear, you must not bring country ways to Town like that. Walk, indeed!—and you a Courtenay of Powderham! Why, people would take you for a mantua-maker.”
“But, Grandmamma, please,—if I am a Courtenay, does it signify what people take me for?”
“I should like to know, Caroline,” said Grandmamma, with severity, “where you picked up such levelling ideas? Why, they are Whiggery, and worse. I cannot bear these dreadful mob notions that creep about now o’ days. We shall soon be told that a king may as well sell his crown and sceptre, because he would be a king without them.”
“He would not, Madam?” I am afraid I spoke mischievously.
“My dear, of course he would. Once a king, always a king. But the common people need to have symbols before their eyes. They cannot take in any but common notions of what they see. A monarch without a crown, or a judge without robes, or a bishop without lawn sleeves, would never do for them. Why, they would begin to think they were just men like themselves! They do think so, a great deal too much.”
And Grandmamma took two pinches in rapid succession, which proceeding with her always betrays uneasiness of mind.
“Dear, dear!” she muttered, as she snapped her box again, and dropped it into her pocket. “It must be that lamentable mixture in your blood. Whatever a Courtenay could be thinking of, to marry a Dissenter,—a Puritan minister’s daughter, too,—he must have been mad! Yet she was of good blood on the mother’s side.”
I believe Grandmamma knows the pedigree of every creature in this mortal world, up to the seventh generation.
“Was that Deborah Hunter, Grandmamma?”
“What do you know about Deborah Hunter?” returned Grandmamma pulling out her snuff-box, and taking a third pinch in a hurry, as if the mere mention of a Dissenter made her feel faint. “Who has been talking to you about such a creature? The less you hear of her the better.”
“Oh, we always knew her name, Madam,” said Hatty, “and that she was a presbyter’s daughter.”
“Well, that is as much as you will know of her with my leave!” said Grandmamma.
I do not know what more she might have said, if my Uncle Charles had not come in: but he brought news that the Prince’s army had been victorious at Falkirk, and the Cause is looking up again.
“They say the folks at Saint James’s are very uneasy,” said my Uncle Charles, “and the Elector’s son is to be sent against the Prince with a larger army. I hear he set forth for Edinburgh last night.”
“What, Fred?” said Grandmamma.
“Fred? No,—Will,” (Note 1.) answered my Uncle Charles.
“That is the lad who was wounded at Dettingen?” replied she.
“The same,” he made answer. “Oh, they are not without pluck, this family, foreigners though they be. The old blood is in them, though there’s not much of it.”
“They are a pack of rascals!” said Grandmamma, with another pinch. I thought the box would soon be empty if she were much more provoked.
“Nay, Madam, under your pleasure: the lad is great-grandson to the Queen of Bohemia, and she was without reproach. I would rather have Fred or Will than Oliver.”
Grandmamma sat extreme upright, and spoke in those measured tones, and with that nice politeness, which showed that she was excessively put out.
“May I trouble you, Charles, if you please, never to name that—person—in my hearing again!”
“Certainly, Madam,” said my Uncle Charles, with a naughty look at me which nearly upset my gravity. If I had dared to laugh, I do not know what would have happened to me.
“The age is quite levelling enough, and the scoundrels quite numerous enough, without your joining them, Mr Charles Carlingford Desborough!”
Saying which, Grandmamma arose, and as Hatty said afterwards, “swept from the room”—my Uncle Charles offering her his arm, and assuring her, with a most disconcerting look over his shoulder at us, that he would do his very best to mend his manners.
“Your manners are good enough, Sir,” said Grandmamma severely: “’tis your morals I wish to mend.”
When we thought Grandmamma out of hearing, we did laugh: and my Uncle Charles, coming down, joined us,—which I am afraid neither he nor we ought to have done.
“My mother’s infinitely put out,” said he. “Her snuff-box is empty: and she never gave me my full name but twice before, that I remember. When I am Charles Desborough, she is not pleased; when I am Mr Charles Desborough, she is gravely annoyed; but when I become Mr Charles Carlingford Desborough, matters are desperate indeed. I shall have to go to the cost of a new snuff-box, I expect, before I get forgiven. Yet I have no doubt Oliver was a pretty decent fellow—putting his politics on one side.”
“I am afraid, Uncle Charles,” said Hatty, “a snuff-box would hardly make your peace for that.”
“Oh, that’s for you maids, not for her. She is not a good forgiver,” said my Uncle Charles, more gravely. “She takes after her mother, my Lady Sophia. Don’t I remember my Lady Sophia!”
And I should say, from the expression of my Uncle Charles’s face, that his recollections of my Lady Sophia Carlingford were not among the pleasantest he had.
Hatty is growing much more like herself, with the pertness left out. She looks a great deal better, and can smile and laugh now; but her old sharp, bright ways are gone, and only show now and then, in a little flash, what she was once.
The Crosslands have disappeared—nobody knows where. But I do not think Miss Marianne Newton has broken her heart; indeed, I am not quite sure that she has one.
In the afternoon, Ephraim came, and I went in a chair under his escort to Mr Raymond’s house. Hatty declined to come; she seemed to have a dislike to go out of doors, further than just to take the air in the square, with Dobson behind her. I should not like that at all. It would make me feel as if the constable had me in custody. But Grandmamma insists on it; and Hatty does not seem to feel safe without somebody.
In Mr Raymond’s parlour, I found Annas and Flora, alone. I do not know what to say they looked like. Both are white and worn, as if a great strain had been on their hearts: but Flora is much the more broken-down of the two. Annas is more queenly than ever, with a strange, far-away look in the dear grey eyes, that I can hardly bear to see. I ran up to her first thing.
“O Annas, tell me!” I cried, amidst my kisses, “tell me, did I do right or wrong?”
I felt sure she would need no explanation.
“You did right, Cary,”—and the dark grey eyes looked full into mine. “Who are we, to refuse our best to the Master when He calls? But it is hard, hard to bear it!”
“Is there any hope of escape?” I asked.
“There is always hope where God is,” said Annas. “But it is not always hope for earth.”
Flora kissed me, and whispered, “Thank you for Angus!” but then she broke down, and cried like a child.
“Have you heard anything of Angus?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Annas, who shed no tears. “He is safe in France, with friends of the Cause.”
“In France!” cried I.
“Yes. Did you think he could stay in England? Impossible, except now and then in disguise, for a stolen visit, perhaps, when some years are gone.”
“Then if Colonel Keith could escape—”
“That would be his lot. Of course, unless the Prince were entirely successful.”
I felt quite dismayed. I had never thought of this.
“And how long do you stay here?” said I.
“Only till I can obtain a hearing of the Princess Caroline. That is arranged by Mr Raymond, through some friends of his. He and Mr Hebblethwaite have been very, very good to us.”
“I do not know what we should have done without them,” said Flora, wiping her eyes.
“And is the day fixed for you to see the Princess?”
“Not quite, but I expect it will be Thursday next. Pray for us, Cary, for that seems the last hope.”
“And you have heard nothing, I suppose, from the Colonel?”
“Yes, I have.” Annas put her hand into her bosom, and drew forth a scrap of paper. “You may read it, Cary. It will very likely be the last.”
My own eyes were dim as I carried the paper to the window. I could have read it where I was, but I wanted an excuse to turn my back on every one.
“My own dear Sister,—If it make you feel happier, do what you will for my release: but beyond that do nothing. I have ceased even to wish it. I am so near the gates of pearl, that I do not want to turn back unless I hear my Master call me. And I think He is calling from the other side.
“That does not mean that I love you less: rather, if it be possible, the more. Tell our father and mother that we shall soon meet again, and in the meantime they know how safe their boy must be. Say to Angus, if you have the opportunity, that so far as in him lies, I charge him to be to God and man all that I hoped to have been. Thank Miss C. Courtenay and Mr Hebblethwaite for their brave help: they both played their part well. And tell Flora that I kept my vow, and that she shall hear the rest when we meet again.
“God bless you, every one. Farewell, darling Annas.
“Your loving brother, not till, but beyond, death, Duncan Keith.”
Note 1. The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cumberland. The former distinguished himself by little beyond opposition to his father, and an extremely profligate life. The Jacobite epitaph written on his death, five years later, will show the light in which he and his relatives were regarded by that half of the nation:
“Here lies Fred,
Who was alive and is dead.
Had it been his father,
I had much rather;
Had it been his sister,
No one would have missed her;
Had it been his brother,
Still better than another:
But since ’tis only Fred,
Who was alive and is dead,
Why, there’s no more to be said.”
Note 2. Ephraim does the Princess Caroline an injustice. She was a lily among the thorns.
Note 3. How far such a personation is consistent with truth and righteousness may be reasonably questioned. But very few persons would have thought of raising the question in 1745.