He could, even now, hardly realize that he had been actually turned from his purpose. It seemed to him incredible. But there was one thing more incredible still, and that was that he could raise his hand to strike again at the man who had been stricken so terribly, and with the same weapon of betrayal. It would be as if James lay wounded on a battle-field and he should come by to stab him anew. The blow he should deal him would have nothing to do with the past, but Archie felt that James had so connected him in mind with the memory of the woman he resembled—had, by that one burst of confidence, given him so much part in the sacred kingdom of remembrance wherein she dwelt—that it would be almost as if something from out of the past had struck at him across her grave.
Archie sighed, weary and sick with Fate’s ironic jests. There were some things he could not do.
The two men had avoided politics. Though Flemington’s insinuations had conveyed to the brothers that he was like-minded with themselves, the Prince’s name was not mentioned. There was so much brewing in James’s brain that the very birds of the air must not hear. Sorry as he was when Flemington met him with the news of his unexpected recall, he had decided that it was well the young man should go. When this time of stress was over, when—and if—the cause he served should prevail, he would seek out Archie. The “if” was very clear to James, for he had seen enough of men and causes, of troops and campaigns and the practical difficulties of great movements, to know that he was spending himself in what might well be a forlorn hope. But none the less was he determined to see it through, for his heart was deep in it, and besides that, he had the temperament that is attracted by forlorn hopes.
He was a reticent man, in spite of the opening of that page in his life which he had laid before Flemington; and reticent characters are often those most prone to rare and unexpected bouts of self-revelation. But when the impulse is past, and the load ever present with them has been lightened for a moment, they will thrust it yet farther back behind the door of their lips, and give the key a double turn. He had enjoined Flemington to come to him as he would come to a brother for assistance, and it had seemed to Archie that life would have little more to offer had it only given him a brother like James. A cloud was on his spirit as he neared Brechin.
When he left the inn and would have paid the landlord, he thrust his hand into his pocket to discover a thin sealed packet at the bottom of it; he drew it out, and found to his surprise that, though his name was on it, it was unopened, and that he had never seen it before. While he turned it over something told him that the unknown handwriting it bore was that of James Logie. The coat he wore had hung in the hall at Balnillo since the preceding night, and the packet must have been slipped into it before he started.
As he rode along he broke the seal. The paper it contained had neither beginning nor signature, yet he knew that his guess was right.
“You will be surprised at finding this,” he read, “but I wish you to read it when there are some miles between us. In these disturbed days it is not possible to tell when we may meet again. Should you return, I may be here or I may be gone God knows where, and for reasons of which I need not speak, my brother may be the last man to know where I am. But for the sake of all I spoke of yesterday, I ask you to believe that I am your friend. Do not forget that, in any strait, I am at your back. Because it is true, I give you these two directions: a message carried to Rob Smith’s Tavern in the Castle Wynd at Stirling will reach me eventually, wheresoever I am. Nearer home you may hear of me also. There is a little house on the Muir of Pert, the only house on the north side of the Muir, a mile west of the fir-wood. The man who lives there is in constant touch with me. If you should find yourself in urgent need, I will send you the sum of one hundred pounds through him.
“Flemington, you will make no hesitation in the matter. You will take it for the sake of one I have spoken of to none but you, these years and years past.”
And now he had to go home and to tell Madam Flemington that he had wantonly thrown away all the advantages gained in the last three days, that he had tossed them to the wind for a mere sentimental scruple! So far he had never quarrelled with his occupation; but now, because it had brought him up against a soldier of fortune whose existence he had been unaware of a few weeks ago, he had sacrificed it and played a sorry trick on his own prospects at the same time. He was trusted and valued by his own party, and, in spite of his youth, had given it excellent service again and again. He could hardly expect the determined woman who had made him what he was to see eye to eye with him.
Christian Flemington had kept her supremacy over her grandson. Parental authority was a much stronger thing in the mid-eighteenth century than it is now, and she stood in the position of a parent to him. His French blood and her long residence in France had made their relationship something like that of a French mother and son, and she had all his confidence in his young man’s scrapes, for she recognized phases of life that are apt to be ignored by English parents in dealing with their children. She had cut him loose from her apron-strings early, but she had moulded him with infinite care before she let him go. There was a touch of genius in Archie, a flicker of what she called the feu sacré, and she had kept it burning before her own shrine. The fine unscrupulousness that was her main characteristic, her manner of breasting the tide of circumstance full sail, awed and charmed him. For all his boldness and initiative, his devil-may-care independence of will, and his originality in the conduct of his affairs, he had never freed his inner self from her thrall, and she held him by the strong impression she had made on his imagination years and years ago. She had set her mark upon the plastic character of the little boy whom she had beaten for painting Mr. Duthie’s gate-post. That was an episode which he had never forgotten, which he always thought of with a smile; and while he remembered the sting of her cane, he also remembered her masterly routing of his enemy before she applied it. She had punished him with the thoroughness that was hers, but she had never allowed the minister to know what she had done. Technically she had been on the side of the angels, but in reality she had stood by the culprit. In spirit they had resented Mr. Duthie together.