“Then, if I may ask—”
“O yes; you may ask what I want the pistol for. It strikes me that the boat from yonder vessel may possibly be sent back for me yet. They may think me a prize worth having, if the stupid people carried my story right. I would go with them—I would go joyfully—for the chance of shooting that young gentleman through the head.”
“Young gentleman!” repeated Mr Ruthven, aghast.
“Yes, the young Pretender. My father lost his life for shooting a Lord President. His daughter is the one to go beyond him, by getting rid of a Prince Charlie. It would be a tale for history, that he was disposed of among these islands by the bravery of a woman. Why, you look so aghast,” she continued, turning from the husband to the wife, “that— Yes, yes. Oh, ho! I have found you out!—you are Jacobites! I see it in your faces. I see it. There now, don’t deny it Jacobites you are—and henceforth my enemies.”
With stammering eagerness, both husband and wife denied the charge. The fact was, they were not Jacobites; neither had they any sustaining loyalty on the other side. They understood very little of the matter, either way; and dreaded, above everything, being pressed to take any part. They thought it very hard to have their lot cast in precisely that corner of the empire where it was first necessary to take some part before knowing what the nation, or the majority, meant to do. First, they prevented the lady’s finding the pistol, as the safest proceeding on the whole; next, they wished themselves a thousand miles off, so earnestly and so often, that it occurred to them to consider whether they could not accomplish a part of this desire, and get a hundred miles away, or fifty, or twenty—somewhere, at least, out of sight of the Pretender’s privateer.
In a few hours the privateer was out of sight—“Gone about north,” the steward declared, “for supplies:” as nobody was willing to give them any help while under the shadow of Macdonald and Macleod. In the evening, little Kate rushed into Annie’s cottage, silently threw her arms about the widow’s neck, and almost strangled her with a tight hug. Adam followed, and struggled to do the same. When he wanted to speak, he began to cry; and grievously he cried, sobbing out, “What will you do without me? You can’t see the boats at sea well now; and soon, perhaps, you will hardly be able to see them at all. And I was to have helped you: and now what will you do?”
“And papa would not let us come sooner,” said the weeping Kate, “because we had to pack all our things in such a hurry. He said we need not come to you till he came to bid you good-bye. But I made haste, and then I came.”
“But, my dears, when are you going? where are you going?”
“Oh, we are going directly: the steward is in such a hurry! And papa says we are not to cry; and we are not to come back any more. And we shall never get any of those beautiful shells on the long sands, that you promised me; and—”
Here Mr Ruthven entered. He had no time to sit down. He told the children that they must not cry; but that they might kiss their friend, and thank her for her kindness to them, and tell her that they should never see her any more. There was so much difficulty with the sobbing children on this last point, that he gave it up for want of time, threatening to see about making them more obedient when he was settled on the mainland. While they clung to Annie, and hid their faces in her gown, he explained to her that his residence in this island had not answered to his expectation; that he did not find it a congenial sphere; that he was a man of peace, to whom neither domestic discord, nor the prospect of war and difficulty without, were agreeable; and that he was, therefore, taking advantage of the steward’s vessel to remove himself to some quiet retreat, where the pastoral authority might be exercised without disturbance, and a man like himself might be placed in a more congenial sphere. He was then careful to explain that, in speaking of domestic discord, he was far from referring to Mrs Ruthven, who, he thought he might say, however liable to the failings of humanity, was not particularly open to blame on the ground of conjugal obedience. She was, in fact, an excellent wife; and he should be grieved to cause the most transient impression to the contrary. It was, in truth, another person—a casual inmate of his family—whom he had in his eye; a lady who—