Aveling nodded. “But what if it be true, as my mother seems to have heard, that Mrs. Cameron has been shut up in the Tower with her husband? What then?”
“Shut up in the Tower!” exclaimed the Earl. “Oh, surely not!” He turned his head. “What is it, Rogers?”
“I understand, my lord, from the footman, that Mr. Cameron is below, inquiring for my Lord Aveling.”
“Mr. Cameron? I’ll see him at once,” quoth Aveling, getting up. “This is very opportune; I can tell him this hopeful news of yours, my lord.”
“Yes; and tell him to urge the poor lady to appeal to the Duke without wasting an hour . . . don’t for Heaven’s sake come near this foot, boy! . . . Tell him that I will give her an introduction to His Grace. Egad, I’ll be writing now to the Duke to ask for an audience for her, while you interview Mr. Cameron.”
“I’ll tell him, too, sir, at what cost you gained this promising notion,” said the young man, smiling at his father as he left the bedchamber.
Downstairs, in the library which had witnessed their reconciliation, Ewen Cameron was standing, staring at the marble caryatides of the hearth so fixedly that he hardly seemed to hear the door open. Aveling went up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“I have some hopeful news for you, my dear Mr. Cameron.”
Ewen turned. Aveling thought him looking very pale and harassed. “I have need of it, my lord.”
“In spite of his gout, my father has just been to see one of the Secretaries of State—no, no,” he added quickly, for such a light had dawned upon the Highlander’s face that out of consideration he hastened to quench it—“ ’tis no promise of anything, but an excellent piece of advice. Mr. Secretary Jardyne says that if his Grace of Argyll would intercede for Doctor Cameron’s life the Government would undoubtedly grant his request. Neither my father nor I can imagine why we never thought of that course earlier.”
A strange, hot wave of colour passed over Ardroy’s face, leaving it more haggard looking than before.
“Then I suppose it must be done,” he said in a sombre voice. “Do you know why I am here, Lord Aveling?—’tis a sufficiently strange coincidence to be met with this recommendation. I came to ask what his lordship thought of the prospects of an application to the Duke of Argyll!”
“Why,” cried the younger man, “this is indeed extraordinary, that you, also, should have thought of making application in that quarter!”
“Not I! I doubt if I should ever have thought of it,” responded Ewen, frowning. “The notion is Mrs. Cameron’s.”
“Excellent!” cried Lord Aveling, “because she is the one person to carry it out, as my father and I were just agreeing. If she will go, he will give her——”
“She cannot go,” broke in Ardroy. “That is the difficulty. She is herself a prisoner in the Tower now, at her own request, in order that she may be with her husband for . . . for the few days that remain. The only way, it seems, in which this request could be complied with was to make her as close a prisoner as he is. It was done the night before last. This morning I received a distracted letter from her; evidently this thought of appealing to the Duke to use his influence had come to her there—too late for her to carry it out.” He paused; his hands clenched and unclenched themselves. “So . . . she has asked me to be her deputy.”
“Well, after all,” said Aveling reflectively, “you are a near kinsman of her husband’s, are you not, which would lend you quite sufficient standing. My father will give you an introduction to the Duke; indeed, I believe he is now writing to him on Mrs. Cameron’s behalf.”
“Yes, I suppose I must do it,” said Ewen between his teeth. He was gazing at an impassive caryatid again.
“You will not carry so much less weight than poor Mrs. Cameron,” observed Aveling consolingly. “Of course—to put it brutally—there is much appeal in a woman’s tears, but on the other hand you will be able to plead more logically, more——”
“Plead!” exclaimed Ewen, facing round with flashing eyes. “Ay, that’s it, plead—beg mercy from a Campbell!”
Aveling stared at him, startled at his look and tone. “What is the obstacle? Ah, I remember, your clans are not friendly. But if Doctor Cameron can countenance——”
“He knows nothing about it,” said Ewen sharply.
“And his wife, not being a Cameron born, does not understand your natural repugnance.”
“She does,” answered Ewen starkly, “for she is a Cameron born. She knows what it means to me, but she implores me . . . and could I, in any case, hold back if I thought there were the faintest chance of success? And now you tell me that one of the Secretaries of State actually counsels it. God pity me, that I must go through with it, then, and kneel to MacCailein Mor for Archibald Cameron’s sake! I’d not do it for my own!”
The blank-eyed busts which topped the bookshelves in Lord Stowe’s sleepy, decorous library must have listened in amazement to this unchaining of Highland clan feeling, a phenomenon quite new to them, for even Lord Aveling was taken aback by the bitter transformation it had worked in a man already wrought upon by grief and protracted anxiety.
“Let me go, then, Cameron!” he cried. “God knows I am sorry enough for your cousin, and I have no objection to appealing to the Duke of Argyll. I would do my very utmost, I promise you . . . Or, perhaps, you could find some other substitute?”
“You are goodness itself,” said Ewen in a softened tone. “No, I am the man, since Jean Cameron cannot go. It may be,” he added in a rather strangled voice, “that, just because I am a Cameron and an enemy, MacCailein Mor may be moved to do a magnanimous act . . . O God, he must do it, for all other hopes are breaking . . . and there is so little time left!”
(2)
It was with that despairing cry in his ears that Aveling had hastened upstairs to his father’s room and held council with him. As a result of this conclave Lord Stowe wrote a fresh letter to the Duke of Argyll, saying that he was anxious to wait upon his Grace with a friend whom he was desirous of presenting to him (he did not mention the friend’s name, lest by chance the audience should be refused), but that as he was himself confined to his room with gout he would send his son in his stead, if the Duke would allow. The same afternoon the Duke replied very civilly by messenger that he would receive Lord Aveling and his friend at eleven o’clock on Monday morning. The Sabbath, he explained, he kept strictly as a day set apart from all worldly matters.
So two days were lost; but, as Aveling assured that friend, the Duke’s influence was so great that he could no doubt have Doctor Cameron reprieved on the very steps of the scaffold. And to those the Jacobite would not come till Thursday.
Nor did Ardroy have to go to the Duke of Argyll with his hat in his hand and a letter of recommendation, like a lackey seeking a place (as he had pictured himself) since he went under the auspices of the Earl of Stowe, and accompanied by that nobleman’s heir.
“I shall present you,” said Aveling to him as they went, “and then take my leave at the first opportunity. Is not that what you would prefer?”
