The Yeoman Adventurer Part 41

Our meagre collection of cannon had been packed here with their appendancies, and I was threading my way through them to the far side of the square, where stands Exeter House, and was within a flick of a pebble of it, when the Colonel ran out, bareheaded and eager, and came up to me.

"You young dog! What's happened?" said he.

"I've lost my hat, sir," I replied.

"Lost your--Damme! I'll have you court-martialled yet before I've done with you. Off you come! h.e.l.lo, my precious. Hitch him to the tail of yon wagon and come along. The Prince saw you from the window. Steady, my beauty! Come along, Noll! Fancy a town the size of this and not a d.a.m.ned pinch of Strasburg in it!"

I hurried after him through the hall and up the stairs. Something big was in hand beyond a doubt, for hall and stairs were thronged with groups of Highland leaders, and in one set, somewhat apart, I saw Murray and Ogilvie. The Colonel took no notice of the curious looks that were cast upon us, particularly me, but, after a word with the chief on duty, ushered me unceremoniously into the presence.

Charles was taking short turns up and down near the hearth, but stopped as I bowed before him.

"You've failed me!" he said bitterly.

"I have carried out your Royal Highness's commands exactly, though, to my deep regret, not punctually, but every hour I am late has been spent under arrest. In riding on your business, sir, I have ridden up to the foot of the gallows."

I spoke quietly but crisply, for I would not be girded at unjustly, no, not by a prince. He took my meaning, and answered generously, "As I knew you would, Master Wheatman, if need were."

The n.o.ble panelled room in which we were was set out with a long table and many chairs. At the head of the table a mean-looking man was busily writing. At the window two other men stood in earnest conversation, and these, as I learned later, were the Irishmen, Sir Thomas Sheridan and Colonel O'Sullivan.

"Leave your dispatch, Mr. Secretary, and come hither. And you, too, gentlemen!" said Charles.

So, with the Prince sitting near the fire and the four leaders ranged behind him, I stood and told my tale, cutting out all that was meaningless from their point of view. As I had expected, there was no mistaking its effect on him. I had indeed, come back empty-handed. Yet he pulled himself together and said lightly, "Well, gentlemen, if the men of the Midlands are not for me, they are certainly not against me."

"That is a strong point in your favour, sir," said O'Sullivan.

"When I've thrashed the Duke and got into London," said Charles, buoyed up at once by any straw of comfort, "they'll be round me like wasps round a honey-pot. I wasn't clear last night, but Master Wheatman has decided me. I ride into London in Highland dress."

"I applaud the decision of Your Royal Highness," said the foxy secretary.

"It is a merited compliment to your brave clansmen." He afterwards ratted and so helped to hang some of the best of them.

"Now for your dispatch to the Marquis," said Charles, going towards the secretary's papers. "There's time to look at it before Murray and his supports arrive." O'Sullivan walked softly to one of the windows overlooking the square, and we followed him.

"Faith, Colonel," said he. "The game's up if we go on."

"It is," said the Colonel, tapping at his box. "d.a.m.n this rappee, Oliver.

I'd as lief sniff at sawdust."

"But if the Prince wants to go on, I back him up," added O'Sullivan.

"So do I," said Sir Thomas.

"So do I," echoed the Colonel, "but, damme, I shall tell him the precise truth about the military aspect of the situation. One's my duty as a soldier just as much as the other. I haven't the least objection to dying, but be d.a.m.ned if I want my reputation to die with me. The most you can say of rappee, Oliver, is that it's better than nothing."

"That's just what I've been thinking, sir," said I, with equal gravity, "about my old hat."

"You're keeping that story for Margaret, you young dog, but she's bound to tell me. I was out of bed till two o'clock this morning, listening to her clatter about getting married quick, and walls of Troy, and ham and eggs. She nearly prated the top of my head off, and did not kiss me good-night till I'd told her for the seventeenth time that there was no need to worry about you. Seventeen times"--a vigorous sniff and a merry twinkle--"I counted 'em."

It was obvious nonsense, but it pained me.

"It was very kind of her, sir," I said at last.

"Humph!" said he, and turned to talk with the Irishmen. I kept a sharp look out on the square below, hoping for a glimpse of Margaret, paying no heed to the earnest conversation buzzing in my ear. Princes and dominions, and marches and battles, were nothing to me as I stood there fighting for mastery over myself.

I was pulled back from these slippery tracks of thought by the Colonel, who gripped my arm and whispered, "Here they come, Oliver."

I looked to the door and saw the chiefs filing into the room, led by Murray, with the greater ones immediately behind him and the others in due degree, till the room was fairly crowded. Charles continued his colloguing with Mr. Secretary while they disposed themselves according to their rank in council, though the Duke of Perth was pleased to take his stand on the hearth among some of the smaller sort. Sir Thomas Sheridan and Colonel O'Sullivan left us and seated themselves nearer the Prince, and when they had done so, and while there was still some noisy settling down to be done, I whispered to the Colonel, "Oughtn't I to go out now, sir?"

"I'm for going on to London," said he, grinning at me with his eyes, though he kept the face of a wooden image. "And first thing we do, Oliver, we'll lead a desperate attack, you and I, on a tobacco-man's. Damme!

There's wagon-loads of Strasburg in London!"

"Suppose I start off now, sir, and mark down one or two of the primest."

"Suppose you stay where you are, lad," he replied. "You're here by rights: first, because the Prince asked ye here and has not dismissed you, and you never leave the presence of royalty till royalty kicks you out; secondly"--pausing to take a pinch of rappee that would have lifted the roof of my head off--"because you can't have less sense than some of these chatterers. Council of war! Mob of parliament-men!"

Thus it came about that, thanks to Swift Nicks, I was present at the great council which was to decide the fate of the Stuarts. I pushed behind the Colonel, so that I could now and again steal a peep for Margaret. Just at the last minute, with Charles lifting his eyes up to begin, the door opened again to admit Maclachlan, red with the haste he had been making.

It made me grit my teeth to see him, for I knew why he was so hot. He had been fluttering around Margaret, and so had lost count of time. Then I stopped my gritting and started grinning. Much Margaret would think of a man who neglected his soldiering to dangle at her ap.r.o.n-strings!

His Royal Highness, after his usual habit, opened the Council by stating his own opinion.

"I have called you together, gentlemen," he said, "to consider our next step. The question is: Shall we march west, cut the Duke's forces in two, and so beat him, or, shall we take advantage of the fact that we are nearer London than he is, press on, and take possession of the Capital? I am strongly for the second plan."

"Damme, sir! Well put!" said the Colonel under his breath. And indeed it was so well put that the chiefs looked rather hopelessly at one another, for this was by no means the alternative that they had in mind. It was to them, as soon appeared, no choice between south and west that they had come to discuss, but the much more important choice between south and north. For a minute or two there was a muttering of Gaelic, which the Prince did not understand, at any rate, so far as the words were concerned. Then Lord George Murray rose, bowed profoundly to the Prince, and began the case for the chiefs.

"The Duke of c.u.mberland," he said, "was that night at Stafford with an army of ten thousand foot and two thousand horse. Mr. Wade was coming by hard marches down the east road and could easily get between His Royal Highness's army and Scotland. They had authentic news that an army was being encamped on the north of London. If, then, they marched to London they would have two armies in their rear and one in front of them, and, high as he rated the valour and prowess of the army he had the honour, under His Royal Highness, of commanding, it was vain to suppose that they could defeat three armies each at least twice as numerous as they. None of the advantages on which they had relied when they agreed to enter England had been realized. They had received no accession of strength worth considering from the English Jacobites; the population were not friendly but at all times surly and neutral, and on all possible occasions openly hostile; the promised French invasion had not even been attempted.

Scotland they had won for His Majesty and could and should keep it for him. To do this required them to return with all speed and with undiminished forces. On all these grounds he, and those for whom he spoke, implored His Royal Highness to return thither and consolidate his forces for a fresh attempt under more favourable conditions."

His lords.h.i.+p had spoken calmly and with no outward sign of feeling except that, as he got toward the end of his speech and his drift became open and manifest, his voice gained more and more emphasis as he saw the undisguised impatience and growing anger of Charles. The Prince paid no courteous attention to the arguments of his chief military adviser, but shot eager glances round the ring of faces, and particularly at His Grace of Perth, who was visibly flattered by this mute appeal. The Colonel, who noted all this by-play, was nettled by the Prince's indifference to military authority, and whispered, "Well done, Geordie Murray! Right as a trivet!"

The speech done, the Prince struck his clenched fist on the table and said, "I am for marching on London."

It was plain, however, that the chiefs were against him almost to a man.

Murray was clearly in the right, and his military skill and experience gave him great authority. As yet there was no open murmuring against the Prince; nothing but manifest determination not to be won over by his cajoleries or threats.

"Why should we not go on?" demanded the Prince pa.s.sionately. "Here we are, masters of the heart of England. A quick, bold stroke, and London is ours. The game is in our hands."

"Game?" cried a rugged, headstrong chief, Macdonald of Glencoe. "The game's up, sir, thanks to these beer-swilling English friends of your house, who are Jacobites only round a cosy fire with mugs in their hands."

"They are only awaiting an earnest of victory," said Charles.

"Waiting for us to do the work," said Glencoe bitterly, "and then blithe they'll be to hansel the profits. We can gang back to Scotland as quick as we like when we've ance got London for 'em!"

There was a growl of a.s.sent from the chiefs, but silence fell again when the venerable Tullibardine, too racked with gout to stand, took up the word.

He spoke as one who had grown old and weary and poor in the service of the exiled House. The conditions of success, he said, had always been the same: the Highland adherents of His Majesty could never hope to be more than the centre around which the real sources of strength, English support and French aid, might gather; and these had failed now as they had failed in '15. "I dare not," he concluded, "lift my voice to urge men to take risks which I am too feeble to share."

Charles put up a stout fight, but it was no use. Chief after chief had his say, and then said it again and again. Maclachlan s.h.i.+fted from his place near the door to the corner of the hearth and, after whispering a while with the Duke of Perth, confusedly gave his opinion in favour of going back.

He was no sort of a speaker, being ill at ease, and plainly occupied in rummaging about in his mind. Having wits, however, he stumbled on a new line of argument.