"Marvellous!" said I. "It"s as good as new."
Her ladyship screeched with laughter. "Oh, you courtier!" she said. "I never saw anything better done at the Tuileries. Look a foot higher, you rogue!"
Still even there the job was neatly and thoroughly done, and I thanked Margaret for it heartily. With my coat on, I brightened up, and indeed I had need to, for most of their talk was in and about a world of which I knew nothing. Thanks to Margaret"s hints and half-lights, I did well enough.
There came a gentle rap at the door and then, without further ceremony, the Colonel bowed in a visitor. In the twilight at the door there was no seeing who the new-comer was, but as he stepped forward the full light revealed him. It was Prince Charles.
"Stir not, ladies, on your allegiance!" he said gaily. I rose, bowed him into my chair, and stood behind him.
"Oddsfish, as my great uncle used to say, I"ve come to save your life, Master Wheatman!"
"You need not trouble, sir," said I, "to save what is freely yours to throw away."
"Very well said, sir," he answered, "and I shall not forget it."
"Good lad, Oliver!" said the Colonel, dipping for his snuff-box.
"Still, I must prove my point!" said Charles, smiling merrily. "My Court consists of precisely seven ladies and an unlimited number of gentlemen, the latter, for the most part, fiery chiefs who slash off men"s heads as if they were tops of thistles. Yet here are you, sir, keeping two of them all to yourself. And such a two! Lady Ogilvie, whose charms are without blemish--"
"Nay, sir," said I.
"May I pull his ears, Your Highness?" asked her ladyship tartly.
"You may," said Charles, "unless he proves his point. A Prince must be just, you know!"
"That"s fair," said Margaret.
"Of course," retorted Lady Ogilvie. "He"ll be right if he says I"ve an eye like an ox and a mouth like a frog."
"Save your ears, Master Wheatman!" said Charles, grinning at me. "What"s the blemish?"
"Davie!" said I.
The Prince rocked with laughter, and her ladyship enjoyed it quite as fully.
"It"s the smartest hit I"ve heard since I left Paris," said the Prince.
"Sir," said I, "be good enough to explain. Who is Davie?"
"Her ladyship"s husband," he replied.
"Damme!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "I thought he was only an ordinary Scotchman."
Whereat everybody laughed.
"A most delightful interlude in a heavy day"s work," said the Prince. "I am unfeignedly vexed, ladies, at having to rob you of so agreeable a cavalier, but I need Master Wheatman myself."
Half an hour later the Colonel stood with me at the town"s end to give me my final instructions. I was on Sultan, with urgent letters in my pocket and important work on hand.
We took a pinch of snuff together very solemnly. Then he snapped his box, rubbed Sultan"s velvet nose, shook my hand, said good-bye gruffly, and strode back townward. I cantered on into the open road and the night.
CHAPTER XVII
MY NEW HAT
Here was what I had dreamed of. Here was the dearest wish of my heart gratified. I was twenty-three, and I had three-and-twenty"s darling equipment--a magnificent horse, a pair of unerring pistols, a fine rapier, a pocket full of guineas, the memory of a woman"s grace and beauty, and a tough job in hand. The only material thing I really wanted was a new hat, for yester morning"s milk and subsequent bashings and bruisings had ruined my old one. I had not bothered about it as long as it had bobbed alongside the grey woollen hood of Margaret"s domino, but, cheek by jowl with her new hat, it had become an offence, and must be remedied.
The black shadow flitted in and out of my mind. I was clean and clear of all blood-guiltiness. I had struck for Margaret as he would have struck for Kate. Fate had been too strong for us, but whatever penance life should lay upon me should be paid to the uttermost farthing. I had this comfort that, could Jack ride up to me now, there would be no change in him. There would be for me the old hearty hand-grip and the boyish, affectionate smile, just as when he had run in to me on the town-hall steps.
I had been commissioned by the Prince to do three things: first, to deliver a dispatch to my Lord George Murray, wherever I should find him, which would probably be at Ashbourne, twelve miles ahead along a good road; second, to carry a letter to Sir James Blount at his house called Ellerton Grange, somewhere near Uttoxeter; third, to make a wide circuit west and south of Derby, picking up all the information I could as to the feeling of the populace and the disposition of the enemy"s forces, and to report on this to the Prince in person at Derby at six o"clock the following night. On this third commission the Prince and Colonel Waynflete had laid great stress. An independent and trustworthy report was, it appeared, of the utmost importance.
Finally, as a dependent commission arising out of the first of the duties imposed on me by the Prince, I bore a letter to my Lord Ogilvie from her ladyship. She had summoned me w.i.l.l.y-nilly to her room privily.
"Tell Davie yonder that I"m very well and very, very guid," she said, as she handed me the letter.
"With infinite pleasure, my lady," I replied.
"It will be true, ye ken," she a.s.serted, as if there was a corner for dubiety in her own mind regarding the matter.
"Solemnly and obviously true, my lady," I agreed.
"Oh, thou incomparable Oliver, I wish you were a la.s.s," she said, lifting her merry, girlish face level with mine, and putting a hand on each of my shoulders.
"Why, my lady?" I said, straightening at her touch.
"Then you could give Davie this as well!" which said, she pecked lightly at me with her sweet lips and kissed me.
It had fl.u.s.tered me greatly, but she only laughed ringingly and delightsomely as I backed out of the room. And when, door-k.n.o.b in hand, I made my last bow, she had wagged her finger at me for emphasis and said, "Dinna forget to tell Davie I"m very guid."
Good she was, as beaten gold, and she kept her spirits up to this high pitch to the very end. You can read in Mr. Volunteer Ray"s history of the whole affair of the "Forty-five" how, after Culloden, she was taken prisoner while dressing for the ball which was to crown the expected victory.
I smiled a young man"s smile as I thought of it. Experience was writing some items on the credit side of my new account with life. I had met a winsome lady of t.i.tle and she had kissed me. Margaret, behind my back and to a third party, had called me an "incomparable" something. What, I knew not,--"servant" probably, but I cared not what.
Mile after mile pa.s.sed without incident of any kind until, at a second"s notice, I rode into a ring of muskets which closed round me out of vacancy as if by magic. It was the outermost picket of the army at Ashbourne. I gave the parole, "Henry and Newcastle," and demanded a guide to my Lord George Murray"s quarters. There came a Gaelic grunt out of the gloom; men and muskets disappeared, with the exception of a single clansman, who seized Sultan"s bridle and led me into the town.
The General was quartered at the "Swan with Two Necks," a very respectable hostelry, where my first care was to have a cloth thrown over Sultan, and to order for him a bucket of warm small beer with three or four handfuls of oatmeal stirred into it. While this was adoing, and I was awaiting a summons to his lordship"s presence, I took a nip of brandy in the public room of the inn, and over it amused myself by reading a crude fly-sheet nailed on the wall, offering a reward of fifty guineas to anyone giving information leading to the arrest of one Samuel Nixon, commonly called "Swift Nicks," a notorious highwayman, six feet high, of very genteel appearance, well-spoken, but a cruel, b.l.o.o.d.y ruffian with it all.
The Highlander interrupted my reading by beckoning me to follow him.
Upstairs we went, and he ushered me into a room where were two gentlemen seated on opposite sides of a table on which were a small map and two large gla.s.ses containing a yellowish liquid.
The younger of them was of much the same general appearance as Maclachlan, though by the look of him a simpler and sweeter man. The other, a middle-aged, domineering man with a powerful face, looked angrily at me as I handed him my dispatch.
He read it impatiently, threw it down beside the map, and said, "They"re coming on to-night, Davie." Then, curtly to me, "Your name, sir?"
"Wheatman of the Hanyards."