Your most obedt servt to command,
Robt Volney.
In imagination I could see him seated at his table, pushing aside a score of dainty notes from Phyllis indiscreet or passionate Diana, that he might dash off his warning to me, a whimsical smile half-blown on his face, a gleam of sardonic humour in his eyes. Remorseless he was by choice, but he would play the game with an English sportsman’s love of fair play. Eliminating his unscrupulous morals and his acquired insolence of manner, Sir Robert Volney would have been one to esteem; by impulse he was one of the finest gentlemen I have known.
Though Creagh had come to warn me of Volney’s latest move, he was also the bearer of a budget of news which gravely affected the State at large and the cause on which we were embarked. The French fleet of transports, delayed again and again by trivial causes, had at length received orders to postpone indefinitely the invasion of England. Yet in spite of this fatal blow to the cause it was almost certain that Prince Charles Edward Stuart with only seven companions, of whom one was the ubiquitous O’Sullivan, had slipped from Belleisle on the Doutelle and escaping the British fleet had landed on the coast of Scotland. The emotions which animated us on hearing of the gallant young Prince’s daring and romantic attempt to win a Kingdom with seven swords, trusting sublimely in the loyalty of his devoted Highlanders, may better be imagined than described. Donald Roy flung up his bonnet in a wild hurrah, Aileen beamed pride and happiness, and Creagh’s volatile Irish heart was in the hilltops. If I had any doubts of the issue I knew better than to express them.
But we were shortly recalled to our more immediate affairs. Before we got back to the inn one of those cursed placards offering a reward for my arrest adorned the wall, and in front of it a dozen open-mouthed yokels were spelling out its purport. Clearly there was no time to be lost in taking Volney’s advice. We hired a chaise and set out for London within the hour. ’Twas arranged that Captain Macdonald and Hamish Gorm should push on at once to Montagu Grange with Aileen, while I should lie in hiding at the lodgings of Creagh until my wounds permitted of my travelling without danger. That Volney would not rest without attempting to discover the whereabouts of Miss Macleod I was well assured, and no place of greater safety for the present occurred to me than the seclusion of the Grange with my brother Charles and the family servants to watch over her. As for myself, I was not afraid of their hanging me, but I was not minded to play into the hands of Volney by letting myself get cooped up in prison for many weeks pending a trial while he renewed his cavalier wooing of the maid.
Never have I spent a more doleful time than that which followed. For one thing my wounds healed badly, causing me a good deal of trouble. Then too I was a prisoner no less than if I had been in The Tower itself. If occasionally at night I ventured forth the fear of discovery was always with me. Tony Creagh was the best companion in the world, at once tender as a mother and gay as a schoolboy, but he could not be at home all day and night, and as he was agog to be joining the Prince in the North he might leave any day. Meanwhile he brought me the news of the town from the coffee-houses: how Sir Robert Walpole was dead; how the Camerons under Lochiel, the Macdonalds under Young Clanranald, and the Macphersons under Cluny had rallied to the side of the Prince and were expected soon to be defeated by Sir John Cope, the Commander-in-Chief of the Government army in Scotland; how Balmerino and Leath had already shipped for Edinburgh to join the insurgent army; how Beauclerc had bet Lord March a hundred guineas that the stockings worn by Lady Di Faulkner at the last Assembly ball were not mates, and had won. It appeared that unconsciously I had been a source of entertainment to the club loungers.
“Sure ’tis pity you’re mewed up here, Kenn, for you’re the lion of the hour. None can roar like you. The betting books at White’s are filled with wagers about you,” Creagh told me.
“About me?” I exclaimed.
“Faith, who else? ‘Lord Pam bets Mr. Conway three ponies against a hundred pounds that Mr. Kenneth Montagu of Montagu Grange falls by the hand of justice before three months from date,’” he quoted with a great deal of gusto. “Does your neck ache, Kenn?”
“Oh, the odds are in my favour yet. What else?” I asked calmly.