hit, your Highness!”
“I trust it is not so bad as they say, Robert.”
“Bad or good, as one looks at it, but this night I go wandering into the great unknown. Enough of this. I sent for you, Fritz, to ask my last favour.”
The face of the stolid Dutchman was all broken with emotion.
“’Tis yours, Robert, if the thing is mine to grant.”
“I want Montagu spared. You must get his pardon before I die, else I shall not pass easy in mind. This one wrong I must right before the end. ’Twas I drove him to rebellion. You will get him pardoned and see to it that his estates are not confiscated?”
“I promise to do my best. It shall be attended to.”
“To-day?”
“This very hour if it can be arranged.”
“And you, Cumberland, will do your share.”
The Duke nodded, frowning to hide his emotion.
Volney fell back on the pillows. “Good! Where is the priest?”
A vicar of the Church of England came forward to offer the usual ministrations to the dying. Volney listened for a minute or two with closed eyes, then interrupted gently.
“Thank you. That will suffice. I’ll never insult my Maker by fawning for pardon in the fag hour of a misspent life.”
“The mercy of God is without limits——”
“I hope so. That I shall know better than you within the space of four-and-twenty hours. I’m afraid you mistake your mission here. You came to marry Antony, not to bury Cæsar.” Then, turning to me, he said with a flare of his old reckless wit: “Any time this six weeks you’ve been qualifying for the noose. If you’re quite ready we’ll have the obsequies to-night.”
He put Aileen’s hand in mine. The vicar married us, the Prince of Wales giving away the bride. Aileen’s pale face was shot with a faint flush, a splash of pink in either alabaster cheek. When the priest had made us man and wife she, who had just married me, leaned forward impulsively and kissed our former enemy on the forehead. The humorous gleam came back to his dulling eyes.
“Only one, Montagu. I dare say you can spare that. The rest are for a better man. Don’t cry, Aileen. ’Fore Heaven, ’tis a good quittance for you.”
He looked at the soft warmth and glow of her, now quickened to throbbing life, drew a long breath, then smiled and sighed again, her lover even to the last.
A long silence fell, which Sir Robert broke by saying with a smile, “In case Selwyn calls show him up. If I am still alive I’ll want to see him, and if I’m dead he’ll want to see me. ’Twill interest him vastly.”
Once more only he spoke. “The shadow falls,” he said to Aileen, and presently dozed fitfully; so slipped gradually into the deeper sleep from which there is no awakening this side of the tomb. Thus he passed quietly to the great beyond, an unfearing cynic to the last hour of his life.
The Afterword
My pardon came next day, duly signed and sealed, with the customary rider to it that I must renounce the Stuarts, and swear allegiance to King George. I am no hero of romance, but a plain Englishman, a prosaic lover of roast beef and old claret, of farming and of fox-hunting. Our cause was dead, and might as well be buried. Not to make long of the matter, I took the oath without scruple. To my pardon there was one other proviso: that I must live on my estate until further notice. If at any time I were found ten miles from Montagu Grange, the pardon was to be void.
Aileen and I moved to our appointed home at once. It may be believed that our hearts were full of the most tender joy and love, for I had been snatched from the jaws of death into the very sunshine of life. We had but one cloud to mar the bright light—the death of many a dear friend, and most of all, of that friendly enemy who had given his life for her good name. Moralists point out to me that he was a great sinner. I care not if it be so. Let others condemn him; I do not. Rather I cherish the memory of a gallant, faultful gentleman whose life found wrong expression. There be some to whom are given inheritance of evil nature. Then how dare we, who know not the measure of their temptation, make ourselves judges of their sin?
At the Grange we found awaiting us an unexpected visitor, a red-haired, laughing Highlander, who, though in hiding, was as full of merriment as a schoolboy home for the holidays. To Cloe he made most ardent love, and when, at last, Donald Roy slipped across the waters to St. Germains, he carried with him a promise that was redeemed after the general amnesty was passed.
Six weeks after my pardon Malcolm Macleod and Miss Flora Macdonald stopped at the Grange for a short visit with us. They were on their way north, having been at length released without a trial, since the passion for blood was now spent.
“We three, with Captain Donald Roy and Tony Creagh, came to London to be hangit,” smiled Major Macleod as they were about to resume their journey. “Twa-three times the rope tightened around the gullets of some of us, yet in the end we all win free. You and Tony have already embraced the other noose; Donald is in a geyan ill way, writing Latin verses to his lady’s eyes; and as for me,”—he smiled boldly at his companion—“I ride to the land of heather side by side with Miss Flora Macdonald.”
Here I drop the quill, for my tale is told. For me, life is full of many quiet interests and much happiness, but even now there grips me at times a longing for those mad wild days, when death hung on a hair’s breadth, and the glamour of romance beckoned the feathered foot of youth.
Wyoming
A Story of the Outdoor West
Chapter 2. The King of the Big Horn Country
Chapter 3. An Invitation Given and Accepted
Chapter 4. At the Lazy D Ranch
Chapter 5. The Dance at Fraser's
Chapter 7. The Man from the Shoshone Fastnesses
Chapter 8. In the Lazy D Hospital
