A Daughter of Raasay Part 34

All the resources of the courtier and the beau were his. One could but admire the sparkle and the versatility of the man. His wit was brilliant as the play of a rapier's point. Set down in cold blood, remembered scantily and clumsily as I recall it, without the gay easy polish of his manner, the fineness is all out of his talk. After all 'tis a characteristic of much wit that it is apposite to the occasion only and loses point in the retelling.

He seated himself on the table with a leg dangling in air and looked curiously around on the ma.s.sive masonry, the damp floor, the walls oozing slime. I followed his eye and in some measure his thoughts.

"Stone walls do not a prison make," I quoted gaily.

"Ecod, they make a pretty fair imitation of one!" he chuckled.

I was prodigious glad to see him.

His presence stirred my sluggish blood. The sound of his voice was to me like the crack of a whip to a jaded horse. Graceful, careless, debonair, a man of evil from sheer reckless wilfulness, he was the one person in the world I found it in my heart to both hate and admire at the same time.

He gazed long at me. "You're looking devilish ill, Montagu," he said.

I smiled. "Are you afraid I'll cheat the hangman after all?"

His eyes wandered over the cell again. "By Heaven, this death's cage is enough to send any man off the hooks," he shivered.

"One gets used to it," I answered, shrugging.

He looked at me with a kind of admiration. "They may break you, Montagu, but I vow they will never bend you. Here are you torn with illness, the shadow of the gallows falling across your track, and never a whimper out of you."

"Would that avail to better my condition?"

"I suppose not. Still, self-pity is the very ecstasy of grief, they tell me."

"For girls and halfling boys, I dare say."

There he sat c.o.c.ked on the table, a picture of smiling ease, raffish and fascinating, as full of sentimental sympathy as a la.s.s in her teens. His commiseration was no less plain to me because it was hidden under a debonair manner. He looked at me in a sidelong fashion with a question in his eyes.

"Speak out!" I told him. "Your interest in me as evidenced by this visit has earned the right to satisfy your curiosity."

"I dare swear you have had your chance to save yourself?" he asked.

"Oh, the usual offer! A life for a life, the opportunity to save myself by betraying others."

"Do you never dally with the thought of it?" he questioned.

I looked up quickly at him. A hundred times I had nursed the temptation and put it from me.

"Are you never afraid, Montagu, when the night falls black and slumber is not to be wooed?"

"Many a time," I told him, smiling.

"You say it as easily as if I had asked whether you ever took the air in the park. 'Slife, I have never known you flinch. There was always a certain d----d rough plainness about you, but you play the game."

"'Tis a poor hound falls whining at the whip when there is no avoiding it."

"You will never accept their offer of a pardon on those terms. I know you, man. Y'are one of those fools hold by honour rather than life, and damme!

I like you for it. Now I in your place----"

"----Would do as I do."

"Would I? I'm not so sure. If I did it would be no virtue, but an obstinacy not to be browbeat." Then he added, "You would give anything else on earth for your life, I suppose?"

"Anything else," I told him frankly.

"Anything else?" he repeated, his eyes narrowing. "No reservations, Montagu?"

Our eyes crossed like rapiers, each searching into the other's very soul.

"Am I to understand that you are making me an offer, Sir Robert?"

"I am making you an offer of your life."

"Respectfully declined."

"Think again, man! Once you are dead you will be a long time dead. Refuse to give her up, and you die; she is not for you in any case. Give way, and I will move heaven and earth for a pardon. Believe me, never was such perfect weather before. The birds sing divinely, and Charles tells me Montagu Grange is sorely needing a master."

"Charles will look the part to admiration."

"And doubtless will console himself in true brotherly fashion for the loss of his brother by reciting his merits on a granite shaft and straightway forgetting them in the enjoyment of the estate."

"I think it likely."

He looked at me gloomily. "There is a way to save you, despite your obstinacy."

I shuffled across to him in a tumult of emotion. "You would never do it, would never be so vile as to trade on her fears for me to win her."

"I would do anything to win her, and I would do a great deal to save your life. The two things jump together. In a way I like you, man."

But I would have none of his liking. "Oh, spare me that! You are the most sentimental villain unhung, and I can get along without your liking."

"That's as may be," said he laughing, "but I cannot well get along without you. On my honour, you have become one of my greatest sources of interest."

"Do you mean that you would stake my life against her hand?" I demanded whitely.

He gave me look for look. "I mean just that. By Heaven, I shall win her fair or foul."

I could only keep saying over and over again, "You would never do it. Even you would never do that."

"Wouldn't I? You'll see," he answered laughing hardily. "Well, I must be going. Oh, I had forgot. Balmerino sent you this note. I called on him yesterday at the Tower. The old Scotchman is still as full of smiles as a bride."

Balmerino's letter was the friendliest imaginable. He stated that for him a pardon was of course out of the question, but that Sir Robert Volney had a.s.sured him that there was a chance for me on certain conditions; he understood that the conditions had to do with the hand of a young woman, and he advised me, if the thing were consistent with honour, to make submission, and let no foolish pride stand in the way of saving my life.

The letter ended with a touching reference to the cause for which he was about to die.

I was shaken, I confess it. Not that I thought for a moment of giving up my love, but my heart ached to think of the cruel position into which she would be cast. To save her lover's life, she must forsake her love, or if she elected the other alternative must send him to his death. That Volney would let this burden of choice fall on her I would scarce let myself believe; and yet--there was never a man more madly, hopelessly in love than he. His pa.s.sion for her was like a whirlwind tossing him hither and thither like a chip on the boiling waters, but I thought it very characteristic of the man that he used his influence to have me moved to a more comfortable cell and supplied with delicacies, even while he plotted against me with my love.

After that first visit he used to come often and entertain me with the news and gossip of the town. I have never met a more interesting man. He was an onlooker of life rather than an actor, an ironical cynic, chuckling with sardonic humour. The secret of his charm lay perhaps in a certain whimsical outlook and in an original turn of mind.