D. Broster - The Jacobite Trilogy

And now, crawl as they would, they must pass the three gentlemen, who made way for them instantly, not to turn the lady with her hooped petticoats into the swirling gutter. As Ewen—for it was he—raised his bonnet with his left hand, Alison cast a swift and comprehensive glance over him, though she did not pause for the fraction of a second, but, acknowledging his salutation and those of his companions, went on her way with dignity.

But she walked ever slower and slower, and when she came to the narrow entrance of their close she stopped. Yet even then she did not look back down the Canongate.

“Papa, did you hear, those gentlemen were asking Ewen what had befallen him. I heard something about ‘disturbance’ and ‘Grassmarket’. You saw his hand was all bandaged about. He looked pale, I thought. What can he have been at last night—not fighting a duel, surely!”

“Well, my dear, here he is, so he can tell us—that is, if he is disposed to do so,” observed Mr. Grant. “Good day, Ardroy; were you coming in-bye?”

“I intended it, later on,” replied Ewen with more truth than tact, “but——”

“But now you see that you behove to at this moment,” finished Alison with determination, looking very significantly at his arm; and Ewen, without another word, went obediently up the close with them, secretly admired from above by a well-known Whig lady who happened to be at her window, and who remarked to her maid that the Jacobite Miss lodging overhead had a braw lover, for all he was a wild Hielandman.

And presently the wild Hielandman was standing in the middle of Mr. Grant’s parlour, and the Jacobite Miss was declaring that she could shake him, so little could she get out of him. “They say you can ask anything of a Cameron save butter,” she said indignantly, “but it’s clear that there are other things too you’ll never get from them!”

Ewen smiled down at her, screwing up his eyes in the way she loved. He was a little pale, for the pain of his cut hand had kept him wakeful, but he was not ill-pleased with life this afternoon.

“Yes, other people’s secrets, to wit,” he said teasingly; and then, feigning to catch himself up, “My sorrow, have I not the unlucky tongue to mention that word in a woman’s hearing! What I have told you, m’eudail, is the truth; I had an encounter last night with some of the Castle garrison, and my hand, as I say, was hurt—scratched, that is, as I warrant you have sometimes scratched yourself with a needle or a bodkin.”

“The needle’s never been threaded whose scratch required as much bandaging as that!” retorted Alison, with her eyes on the muffled member in the sling. “And what was yon I heard as I passed about a disturbance in the Grassmarket?”

“Has she not the ears of a hare?” observed Ewen to Mr. Grant. “ ’Tis true, there was a disturbance in the Grassmarket.”

“If that is so, then I’ll learn more of it before the day’s out,” deduced Alison with satisfaction. “And you, sir, that ought to know better, brawling in the town at such an hour! I thought the Prince had summoned you last night. Not that I remarked your absence from the ball,” she added. “I was quite unaware of it, I assure you, in the society of my cousins of Glenmoriston.”

Ewen looked across at Mr. Grant and smiled. “My dear,” protested the old gentleman, “an encounter with the Castle garrison can scarce be called brawling. We are, it may be said, at war with them.”

“But are they not all as mild as milk up there now that the Prince has lifted the blockade?” enquired Alison. “And how could Ewen have met any of them in the Grassmarket? The poor men dare not show their faces there; the place is hotching with Camerons and MacDonalds!”

“Who said I met them in the Grassmarket?” retorted Ewen. “But never fret, Miss Curiosity; some day I’ll be free to tell you where it was.”

“Wherever it was,” said Miss Grant with decision, “I’ll be bound ’twas you provoked the disturbance!”

Her lover continued to smile at her with real amusement. In a sense there was truth in this last accusation. “It’s a fine character you give me, indeed! I think I’d best be taking my leave until you appreciate me better!” And he put out his left hand to take his bonnet from the table where he had laid it. Something sparkled on the hand as he moved it.

“Who gave you that ring?” exclaimed Alison. “Nay, that I have a right to know!”

Ewen put his hand behind him. “No woman, Alison.”

“Then you can tell me who it was. . . . Come, Eoghain mhóir, if there be a mystery over the ring also, why, you should not be wearing it for all the world to see!”

“That’s true,” said Ardroy, and he relinquished his hand. “Yes, you can take it off. ’Tis not so plain as it looks, neither. There is a spring beneath.”

“Oh!” breathed Alison, her eyes very wide. The chased gold centre of the ring had moved aside in the midst of the rose diamonds, and it was a tiny miniature of the Prince which she held. “Ewen, he gave you this?”

“I did not steal it, my dear. Yes, he gave it me this morning.”

“For . . . on account of what happened last night?”

Ewen nodded. “For my prudence. You see, the Prince does not write me down so turbulent as you do.”

There was something like tears in Alison’s eyes. “Prudence? No! It was because you gained that ‘needle-scratch’ for him!” She kissed the ring, and, taking the strong, passive hand, slipped it on again. “I will not plague you any more. Does the wound pain you, dearest heart?”

But next day Hector Grant came into possession of the story, more or less correct, which was flying about Edinburgh, and presented his sister with a fine picture of her lover, alone against a score of the Castle redcoats, standing with his back to the secret stair hewing down the foe until his sword broke in his hand, and the Cameron guard rushed in only just in time to save him. And, Alison unveiling this composition to the hero himself at their next meeting, Ewen was constrained in the interests of truth to paint out this flamboyant battle-piece and to substitute a more correct but sufficiently startling scene. Alison certainly found his sober account quite lurid enough.

“And you let the English officer go, after that!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “But, Ewen dearest, why?”

“For one reason, because ’twas such curst ill luck that his men should run away for the second time!” replied Ewen, settling his silken sling more comfortably.

“For the second time?”

“I have not yet told you who the officer was. Cannot you guess?”

“Surely ’twas not . . . Captain Windham . . . here in Edinburgh?”

“It was Captain Windham himself. I have no notion how he got here; it must have been before we took the town. But I was sorry for him, poor man, and it was quite plain that he had no real intention of killing me; indeed he was greatly discomposed over the affair. So you must not lay that to his charge, Alison.”

“And so you have met again!” said Alison slowly, her eyes fastened on her lover. (‘A great service’ . . . ‘a bitter grief’ . . . This was neither.) “It was not then because of your foster-father’s prophecy that you let him go?”

And now Ewen stared at her. “Faith, no, darling, for I had clean forgot about it. Dhé! It begins to fulfil itself then!”

Bright and cold, or wet and windy, the October days went by in Edinburgh. Ewen’s hand healed, and that secret fear which he had mentioned to no one save Dr. Cameron, who dressed it, that he would never be able to grip a broadsword again, passed also. And having waited upon Lady Easterhall and Miss Cochran a day or two after the fracas to ask how they did (not that he had omitted to reassure himself of this on the night itself, before he left) he then, by the old lady’s desire, carried Alison to visit them also. And it is possible that Miss Cochran envied Miss Grant.