regshoe

Reading Ewen and Keith's interactions in chapter 3 this time, it really struck me just how far their positions are reversed from the situation towards the end of Part I. Ewen, finally free of his unwelcome role of The Cautious One, gets to show that he can be just as proud and martial as Keith in the right circumstances. He's witty too, and enjoys teasing and sarcastically insulting Keith—'he was able to view with pleasure Captain Windham’s visible annoyance at this speech'—just as Keith did with him in chapter 1.6. Ewen, 'pining for a fight' is delighted at the prospect of getting to fight Keith before being taken prisoner, while Keith, sincere and courteous, would really rather avoid the fuss and the risk of hurting him, much like Ewen did at their first meeting. 'As the threads are twisted...' indeed!

In any case, the contrast between Ewen's gleeful eagerness for a fight and Keith's careful concern is hilarious. Though one could argue how far their respective ardent desires to swordfight each other (er, as it were) really proceed from the same motives—it seems to me there's an element of naivety, the sort of boy's view of war, in Ewen's eagerness here that wasn't there with Keith in Part I—although they are both also motivated by injured pride, Keith at his being captured at all and Ewen at the embarrassment of Keith's escape at Fassefern and the insult of the money. And I think Keith sees it that way too, to judge by his repetition of the warning that all this will end badly.

Keith knows that Ewen is one of Charles's aides-de-camp, which seems only to have been the case since after Fassefern. I wonder how that happened? —presumably Keith heard about it in the course of his duties, and I like to imagine his reaction to hearing news of Ewen.

I do think it was rude of Ewen to break Lady Easterhall's window so casually! It's not as though just opening it wasn't an option, because he opens it in the next paragraph. He visits Lady Easterhall and Miss Cochran afterwards to make sure they're all right—I hope he paid for repairing the damage too.

Anyway, towards the end of chapter 3 we get the first of the book's really good hurt/comfort scenes, and I hope you all enjoyed it, because there's plenty more where that came from. :D 'Fannish catnip' indeed... Keith going in a moment from angrily trying to fight Ewen to horrified concern at having hurt him; Ewen 'astonished at the depth of feeling in his enemy’s tone' (note Broster's careful epithet use there!); Keith taking off his cravat to bind up the wound...! Aah, I love it.

I like the paragraph, beginning 'For a moment or two...', where Ewen tries to understand Keith while he sulks in the corner. For all the differences and divides between them, Ewen is very much aware of the similarities in their characters and values here. It's interesting that one of the things Ewen notices is 'the complete absence of that mocking irony' in Keith, when Ewen himself has been the one being mocking and ironic for much of this chapter! —perhaps the sincerity in Keith answers Ewen's own sincere and honourable side.

I love that Broster takes the trouble to tell us that Ewen was 'secretly admired from above by a well-known Whig lady'. Although I do wonder sometimes about the extent to which the slashiness in Keith's perspective on Ewen is simply a result of Broster's own admiration for Ewen and the fact that she more or less has all her characters and the omniscient narrator see him in this way (remembering the loving description in the prologue; and Isobel Cochran too!)...

...however, we then get that amazing introspective passage in which Keith thinks at length about how much he fancies Ewen and how annoying it is, and I decide that there is a bit more to it, after all. Lots of good characterisation and historical detail in there, as well as a little more about Keith's backstory. The 'misty' John Keith is, hmm, significant.

Given all the emotional weight in these two chapters, I'm a little inclined to doubt Ewen's casual dismissal of Keith as at all important to him at the end of chapter 4! Although perhaps it's more a dismissal of the prophecy, which Ewen clearly still doesn't take seriously—which, as we shall soon begin to see, is a grave error...