supposed that Argyll must have summoned a footman, for soon after that he passed once more through the pillars of the portico. And once outside, in the brief summer shower, laden with that scent of lilacs, which was now making sweet the June dust, all the leaping flame of repressed feeling sank to extinction, and in its place there was nothing but ice about his heart. He had failed; the last hope of all was gone. On Thursday——
And now he must write to Jean Cameron and tell her.
CHAPTER XXIII
CONSTANT AS STEEL
And after that came the death in life of those intervening two days, which seemed a whole lifetime on the rack, and yet a river hurrying with implacable haste to the sea.
There was no hope for Archibald Cameron now, except the faint possibility of that eleventh hour reprieve to which a few still pinned their faith. At one moment Ewen would feel that the intensity of his desire alone must call this into being; the next, that he had always known the sentence would take its course. Lord Stowe, grave and disappointed, advised him not to trust to a miracle. It was remarkable that Aveling, young and generous-hearted though he was, gave the same advice, and would not take the easier path of trying to buoy up his friend’s spirits with an anticipation which he did not share. But Lady Stowe, with whom Ewen had an interview, not of his seeking, on the Tuesday, proclaimed her conviction that the execution would not take place, and hinted at the influence which she herself had brought to bear on certain members of the Government. Hector Grant was in a frenzy, dashing hither and thither, sure that something could still be done, and talking wildly of a rescue at Tyburn itself, of kidnapping Lord Newcastle or Henry Pelham and holding them to ransom, and other schemes equally impossible.
But by noon on Wednesday Ewen had abandoned all dreams, sober and extravagant alike. His faint hope of seeing Archie once more was dead too, even the Earl of Stowe’s influence could not procure him another interview. And in the afternoon he shut himself up in his lodging, and would see no one, not even Hector. He could talk about to-morrow’s tragedy no longer, and, like a wounded animal which seeks solitude, only asked to be left alone. How desperately hard it was to meet a friend’s fate with composure and resignation—how much less hard to face one’s own! He knew, for he himself had once been almost as near the scaffold as Archibald Cameron was now.
He had sat for he knew not how long that afternoon immured in the close little parlour, with the window fast shut since the moment when he had overheard two men in the street below arranging to go to Tyburn on the morrow, and one of them, who was a trifle drunk, offering the other some only too vivid reminiscences of the execution of the Scottish Jacobites in 1746. Ewen had sprung up, and, calling upon his Maker, had slammed down the window with such violence that he had nearly shattered it. Then, after walking to and fro for a while like a man demented, he had flung himself down on the settle, and was still sitting there, his head in his hands, when a timid tap at the door announced Mrs. Wilson.
“I’d not disturb you, sir,” she whispered sympathetically, “but that there’s a messenger below from the Tower in a hackney-coach, and he brings this.” She held out a letter.
Ewen lifted his head from his hands.
“From the Tower?” he repeated, looking at her stupidly. Surely she did not mean that?
But, opening the letter, he saw the heading; saw, too, that it came from the Deputy-Lieutenant.
“Dear Sir,” it ran—
“Doctor Cameron having very earnestly desired to see you once more, and I myself having come to the conclusion that it were better Mrs. Cameron did not pass the night here, but left before the gates were shut, and that some friend should be present to take her away, I have obtained leave from the Constable for you to visit the prisoner and also to perform this office; and have therefore sent the bearer in a hackney-coach to bring you back with all speed, as the gates must infallibly be closed at six o’clock this evening.
“Your obedient humble servant,
“Charles Rainsford.”
Ewen drew a long breath. “I will come at once,” he said.
Nearly all the way, jolting in the coach with the warder, or whatever he was, Ardroy was turning over and over a once entertained but long abandoned idea of changing clothes with Archie. The same obstacle brought him up again—his own unusual stature, though Archie was of a good height himself. Yet this unexpected summons did so clearly seem as though Fate were holding out a last opportunity of rescue—but what opportunity? Ewen’s former visit had shown him how impregnable were the Tower walls, how closely guarded the gates. To-night every soul there would be doubly alert. And if Archie were by now in irons there was no hope of any kind . . . there was little enough in any case.
To his surprise, when he came to the Byward Tower, they did not offer to search him, and he was told, also, that Doctor Cameron had been moved from the Lieutenant’s house and was there, in the Byward Tower itself. Ewen asked the reason.
“It was thought safer, sir. My Lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino were lodged here in ’46, though my Lord Kilmarnock, too, was at first in the Lieutenant’s house.”
“And Mrs. Cameron, is she in this tower with her husband?”
“No, sir; she remains in the Lieutenant’s house until she leaves, before the gates are shut.”
He would see Archie alone, then, and he could not but be glad of that.
It had indeed a very different setting, this last meeting, and one which better fitted the circumstances than the former. Unlike the pleasant apartments with their glimpses of the outer world, this place was heavily charged with an atmosphere of finality, for the roof curved cage-like above the large, circular stone-vaulted room with its narrow windows. In the middle was a table with a couple of chairs; and at this table Archie was sitting with a book open before him; but his eyes were on the door. He was not in irons.
They clasped hands in silence as the door swung to and clashed home. Only then did Ewen see that they were not alone, for some distance away a wooden-faced warder sat stiffly on a chair against the wall.
“Cannot that man leave us for a little?” murmured Ewen.
“No,” said his cousin. “I must have a shadow now until—until there’s no more need of watching me. This good fellow must even sleep here to-night. But we can speak French or Erse; he’ll not understand either.”
Ewen was bitterly disappointed. If there were a witness present they had not the faintest chance of changing clothes. He said as much in his native tongue.
“My dear Ewen,” replied Archibald Cameron smiling, “Nature, when she gave you that frame, never intended you for such a rôle—and in any case it is quite impracticable. Come, sit down and let us talk. You see there is another chair.”
It seemed of a tragic incongruity to sit quietly talking at a table, but Ewen obeyed. Talk he could not, at first. But Archie began to speak with perfect calm of his last arrangements, such as they were; he had given his wife, he said, what he had been able to set down from time to time of his wishes and sentiments, by means of a bit of blunt pencil which he had contrived to get hold of after all.
“Four or five scraps
