“—charged me with this letter to your Royal Highness,” he heard the aide-de-camp saying.
The Prince was standing motionless, his back to the window, with a flush across his face as though he had received a physical blow. He made no movement whatever to take the letter which the Vicomte de Lancize was respectfully tendering.
“Read it, Balhaldie!” There was more rage than disappointment in his voice; but he was keeping it under control, perhaps because of the presence of the French officer.
Mr. MacGregor, with a face of storm, took the missive and opened it.
“The King my master”—his voice was as hoarse as a crow’s, his French accent indifferent; he tried again: “The King my master orders me to make known to your Royal Highness that the untoward circumstances which have arisen oblige him to suspend at this moment the execution of the enterprise and to defer it to a more favourable opportunity.
“The bad weather, the contrary winds, the position of Admiral Norris and the uncertainty as to that of M. de Roquefeuil, and above all the damage done by the last storm to our transport vessels, nearly all of which have lost boats, anchors, cables or other furnishings which it is impossible or difficult to replace at this juncture, are so many misfortunes which justify the order given me by His Majesty to disembark the troops and bring them into Dunkirk.
“The King commands me at the same time, monseigneur, to assure your Highness that he will not lose sight of the interests of your august house, and that His Majesty delays the execution of the project only in the hope of resuming it at the first favourable opportunity which may present itself.”
There was a dead silence. MacGregor of Balhaldie slowly raised his eyes and looked at the Prince; they all looked at him. He was extremely pale, and his hands were clenched on the back of a chair.
“So—I am to say Amen!” he said in a stifled voice. “ ‘The first favourable opportunity’—there will never be another so favourable.” Then he broke out, with dilating nostrils: “If I must needs go in a fishing-boat, I will go! Though King Louis abandon me, though not a ship accompany me, I will go! In the Highlands there are still faithful hearts—I have proof of that here—in the Highlands I shall not have to wait upon the intrigues of Versailles——”
“Your Royal Highness!” interposed Balhaldie, with a warning glance at the French officer.
“—nor, once there, will ill-weather be allowed to break men’s hearts and a spell of wind keep my father from his crown. Before God I swear it, here and now: though I go with but six, with but three followers, though I go alone!” And with his words fire seemed to run round the room.
“Mon prince,” said Marie-Cyprien de Lancize, approaching him, “if ever you go thus, I pray Fate she give me leave to accompany you, though she deny it to-day!” And seizing Prince Charles’s hand, he bent his knee almost to the floor and kissed it.
(“An easy vow to make,” thought Ranald Maclean, more sadly than sardonically, “since he knows that he will never be at liberty to carry it out!”)
But the spontaneity of the declaration, mere gesture though it might be, seemed to touch the young man from whose grasp so much had just been dashed. “I thank you sincerely, Monsieur de Lancize. I shall need all the good-will I can reckon upon.—Come, Balhaldie, let us begone.”
“Your Royal Highness,” began Ranald, deeply troubled, “when the day comes . . . there are claymores in the Highlands—and mine will be among them. . . .”
The Prince tried to smile at him. “I know that, Mr. Maclean, and I am convinced that I shall see the glitter of them before long.—Balhaldie, the sooner we return to our obscurity at Gravelines the better. No, gentlemen, I will not have you attend me to the coach; I wish to go, as I came, without attracting attention.”
So, since his commands were precise, the two young men were left in the humble little room to listen to the sound of wheels grinding away along the Rue des Minimes until it was swallowed up in the clamour of the storm.
“Le malheureux!” said the Vicomte de Lancize under his breath. But the Highlander resented pity for his Prince.
“The more unfortunate, surely, are those who have undertaken a great enterprise which they have failed to carry out!” Glance, tone and words alike were challenging.
Surprisingly, the young French officer did not pick up the glove. “I agree with you entirely, monsieur. We also are the losers by this decision. But . . . how can one argue with le bon Dieu when He is so inconsiderate? Even Versailles has no ambassador là-haut”—he waved a hand towards the ceiling—“who can influence the celestial Minister of Weather! But my personal regret is sincere, now that I have had the honour of seeing His Royal Highness, and I beg you to believe it. Moreover, who can read the future, or the minds of His Majesty’s advisers? We may yet meet in some hamlet of the county of Kent when you march south from Scotland to support a French landing! I shall look for you there. For the present, then, if you permit, I will take my leave—with a thousand thanks for your hospitality!”
With him Ranald Maclean went to the street door, though he might not show this courtesy to his Prince. It was still raining hard, but the wind appeared to have dropped a little. “To our next meeting—over the sea!” said the young dragoon as he gave the end of his cloak a swing over his shoulder and jammed his hat firmly on his head. Then with a last salute he was gone.
* * * * *
When the Highlander returned to his empty little room he stared round that transitory habitation as if he could hardly believe that it had enshrined to-night the young idol of so many Scottish hearts, and that within it the final disastrous blow had been dealt him. For Ranald himself the evening had been an astonishing one. He alone of all the Jacobites in Dunkirk had been singled out to shelter the Prince in a black and bitter hour, he first had heard the final doom of the expedition pronounced. It was small wonder that he sat late by his dead fire, sat and heard the wind rise once more to shrieking point, as though to announce that it had not yet finished with the ships which presumed to cross the Channel on a Jacobite errand—as indeed it was to prove to-morrow that it had not.
But after an hour or so the thoughts of this particular Jacobite reverted, in spite of himself, to his own affairs and to that warm vine country of the south where he had just been spending eight months on the modest estate among the vineyards which his dead mother’s brother, old David Fraser, a Jacobite exile of the Fifteen, had inherited from his French wife. Mr. Fraser, a childless man, believing his end not far off, had sent to Fasnapoll for Ranald last summer, desiring to make his acquaintance with a view to leaving him his property, and Ranald had been at Girolac all through the vintage, his uncle initiating him into the mysteries of the production of the claret which was so plentifully and so cheaply to be had in Scotland. And in those days of labour under a cloudless sky the young man had been tempted to accept this inheritance if, when the time came, the choice was in his power.
For he was poor, and he dreaded always being a burden on his half-brother Norman, the laird (though they were excellent friends); he dreaded it the more since Norman’s wife was about to present him with a second child. The bitter lot of the consistent Jacobite was Ranald Maclean’s, for the army, the law and all Government posts were closed to him unless he could bring himself to take the oath to the house of Hanover. No profession was left but that of medicine, which had no attractions for a young man who, if his lot had been cast in less difficult times, would have chosen to be a soldier.
But to carry on Girolac and its vineyards as this should be done would mean exile, or practical exile, from the Highlands. He would have at the least to spend a good portion of each year in France, and the annual change of residence, the long journey, would be very costly. He was not sure that his uncle did not intend to make it a condition of his legacy that his heir should reside entirely at Girolac, and that Ranald did not know if he could bear. However, the decision was not yet to make.
The grey skies and the cold green water of his home