CHAPTER VI.I CONTINUE MY NIGHT ADVENTURES.
Ifthe prisoner were retaken in a week, the Earl, my papa, would have a pardon! This was indeed a grim fiat to take to bed and sleep upon. What was this rebel to me that I should be so concerned for him? Why should he not perish at Tyburn for his deeds, as had been the fate of more considerable men? He was but a baker’s son. I had only exchanged a glance and a few broken sentences with him in all my life, yet never once did I close my eyes that night but I saw him in the cart and the topsman preparing to fulfil his gruesome offices. More than once had curiosity prompted me to sit at a window with my friends, as was the fashion, and watch these malefactors hang. A kick at space, and all was over! But this handsome youth, with the fiery look, a baker’s son, who had committed crimes against the State—must he, a child, be strung up in ignominy? Brooding on this horrid matter through this interminable night, I grew so feverish and restless that sleep was banished utterly. At last I could endure my bed no more. I rose and covered up my nightrail with a cloak, relit thelamp, and read the timepiece. It wanted twenty minutes to three at present.
“Faugh!” I pondered, “these lonely speculations are so unendurable that I will fetch Emblem to bear me company the remainder of the night.”
But everything outside seemed muffled in such silence as with the hush of snow, that ere I started for her chamber I drew the blinds up of my own and looked out into the park.
Snow indeed! Quite a fall of it, though it now had ceased. The moon was shining on the breadths of white; every tree stood up weird and spectral, and such a perishing cold presided over all that the whole of Nature seemed to be succumbing to the blight of it. The lamp I held against the pane struck out for a quarter of a mile across the meadows and revealed the gaunt, white woods of Cleeby sleeping in the cold paleness of moon and snow. The night appeared to hold its breath in awe at the wonderful fair picture the white earth presented. And very soon I did also, but for a different reason.
To my left hand a hedge that stood a distance off was plainly to be seen. Suddenly a figure emerged stealthily from under it. ’Twas that of a man, who after looking cautiously about him began in a crouching and furtive fashion to approach the house.
He came creeping slowly through the snow, and at every yard he made it seemed as much as ever he could do to drag one leg behind the other. Once he stopped to listen and observe, and apparentlyheard sounds that did disquiet him, for he speedily resumed his motion, and at a more rapid pace than formerly. His form grew sharper and clearer as he came, and soon the moonlight fell on it so distinctly that I presently recoiled from the window with a thrill of very horror. It was the fugitive!
I think I was more frightened than surprised. During the weary vigil of that night this wanderer had held such entire dominion of my thoughts that after my brain had been fretted into a fever on his account, it seemed one of the most natural consequences to step from my bed and discover the cause of my distraction coming towards me through the night.
I quite supposed that his enemies had managed to turn him from the north, and that finding himself without money or any resources for escape, he had returned to Cleeby to implore the aid of the only friend he had in the cruel country of his foes. Yet his movements were so mysterious that I was by no means certain that this was so. Instead of coming underneath the window in which the blinds were up and a lamp was burning, that he should have known was mine (my figure must have been presented to him as clearly as by day), he renounced the front of the house entirely and turned into a path that led to the stables and kitchen offices on the servants’ side.
To try and find a motive for his action I pulled up the casement softly and thrust my head forth into the stinging air. Certain sounds at once disturbedthe almost tragic hush, and assailed my ears so horridly that I hastily withdrew them and shut the window down. The poor lad’s pursuers were shouting and holloaing from a distant meadow. In half an hour at most they must run the wretch to earth, for they were horsed, and he was not; besides, his painful gait told how nearly he was beaten.
They say that the deeds of women are the fruit of sentiment, and after this strange night I, for one, will not dispute with the doctors on that theory. There was no particular reason why I should give a second thought to the fate of this hunted rebel, this baker’s son, this proletariat. Nay, the sooner he was retaken the better for myself and my papa. Yet at three of the clock that snowy morning I did not review his end with such a cold, complacent heart. His affairs seemed very much my own. Once when I had played the friend to him his brave eyes had delighted and inspired me. No, I would not sit down tamely and let him perish. Why should I—I whose spirit was adventurous?
Therefore, my determination taken, I wisely put the lamp out, that its brightness might not attract attention from those enemies scouring the fields, then proceeded silently but swiftly to get into my clothes. Never was I drest less carefully, but haste meant the salvation of a friend. Warmly shod and clad, I descended the stairs with expeditious quietude, groped to the left at the bottom of the staircase, through dark doors and the ghostly silence of moonlit and deserted passages, until Ireached the kitchen part. Soon I found an outer door, unlocked it, slipped the bolt, and stepped into the night. The slight, soft breathing of a frost wind came upon my face, and a few straggling white flakes rode at intervals upon it, but only a film of snow was on the yard, of no more consistency than thistledown, but the sharp air was wonderfully keen.
However, ’twas precious little heed I paid the elements. The shoutings of the soldiers from the meadows was even distincter than before, and by that I knew the men were moving in the direction of the rebel and the house, and that if I hoped to put the lad in some safety not an instant must be lost. First, though, I had to find him.
I peered particularly on all sides for the fugitive, but failed to discover a solitary trace, and yet there was such a lustre in the hour’s bright conditions that the yard was nearly as luminous as day. Sure I was, however, that he must be close at hand, and accordingly was mighty energetic in my quest. And I had taken twenty steps or less when my eyes lit on a stable with an open door. Immediately I walked towards it, and as I did so, remembered that this was the very prison in which the lad had been previously held. This time there was not a bayonet and a sentry to repulse one, else a strategy had been called for; but, walking boldly in, I was rewarded for my labours. The prisoner was lying in the straw in the very posture of the night before. No sooner was my shadow thrown across hiseyes than he rose to his feet with every evidence of pain, and, casting the pistol I had lately given him upon the ground, said:
“All right, I am taken; I submit without resistance.”
“On the contrary, my friend,” I answered angrily, being bitterly disappointed of his character, “you are not taken, other than extremely with your cowardice. You do not care for fighting at close quarters, I observe. Bah!” and I turned my back upon him.
“My benefactress!” he cried, in a strangely altered tone, “my benefactress! What do you here at this place, and at this hour?”
“What did I here before?” I said in scorn. “And why, sir, may I ask, are you not footing it to Scotland, as I ordered you, instead of returning in your tracks? I suppose it is, my gallant, that rather than help yourself, you would choose to throw yourself upon the mercy of a friend, heedless of what degree she is incriminated so long as she can contrive to shield your valuable person. So you submit without resistance, do you?”
He was very white and weary, and his breast was heaving yet with the urgence of his flight, but it pleased me to discover that my speeches stung.
“As you will, madam,” he answered, with a head upthrown, but also with a quietude that had a fire underneath, “as you will; but you are a woman and my benefactress, and I bend the knee before you.”
“Not even that,” says I. “Do you suppose I will take a coward for my servant?”
“Madam,” says he, “say no more of this, for perhaps you would regret it at another time; and, madam, do you know that you are the last person in the world that I would have regret anything whatever? You have been so much my friend.”
“Thank you,” says I, bitingly; “but, Mr. Coward, you infer that when I act in the capacity of your friend I enjoy a privilege. Let me assure you I am deeply honoured by it.”
“Oh,” says he, “how good of you to think so!”
This was staggering simplicity, for I judged him to be too young to be ironical.
“But hark!” says he, “I hear the soldiers shouting and approaching. I must beg you, madam, to leave me to my fate; but do not think too hardly of my cowardice.”
“Then I will not leave you to your fate,” says I. “’Tis not in my nature, however I may despise your character, having once befriended you to desert you at the last. I came forth in this wintry night especially to save you, and that is what I’ll do.”
“No, no, madam,” he replied, “I will not have you further prejudice yourself with his Majesty for the sake of me.”
Now I could only accept this answer as something of an outlet for his wounded feelings, seeing that he must be back in his present spot expressly to implore my further aid.
“Mr. Coward,” says I, “I think you will, and readily, when you reflect that certain death awaits you, should you spurn my offices.”
“I think not,” says he, with a stoutness that astonished me.
“You think not!” cries I, “why, what in wonder’s name hath brought you back to the very spot you started from, if ’tis not to beseech my farther aid?”
“Madam,” he said, “had you refrained from my defamation I would not have told you this. But I will, to clear my name, for I could not bear to walk the scaffold with such a stigma on it.”
“Bravo!” says I; “boy, you use the grand manner like an orator. What was the school in which you learnt your rhetoric?”
“’Tis the very one in which you learnt your gentleness,” says he.
Being at a loss to answer him I made haste to turn the theme by warning him of his foes’ approach and his great danger.
“The sooner they are come,” he said, “the better I’ll be suited. But if you must know why I am here to-night, ’tis you that brought me, madam.”
I put my finger up and said: “Pray be careful, Mr. Coward, or I shall not believe you.”
“When my enemies four times foiled me,” he said, “in my attempts to make the north, and feeling that I had neither friends nor money in the south, that there every man would be my enemy, Iknew that sooner or later I must be caught. It then occurred to me that your kindness, madam, towards a rebel had probably exposed you to a severe penalty from a Government that respects not any person. Wherefore, I thought, should I deliver up my body in the very prison that I had lately broken, without any prejudice to my foes or to myself, the matter might be simplified, and as no one had been incommoded, your pardon would perhaps be made the easier.”
I knew this for the truth, as the simple and deep sincerity of his words cast me in a miserable rage at my own impulsiveness. This speech had taught me that his behaviour, instead of being craven, verged perilously near the fine. And of course in the height of the mortified anger that I indulged against myself, the moon must choose that moment to throw her rays about the lad’s white face, that made it even sterner and stronger than before.
“And,” says I, “had it not been for thoughts of me, what had you done when you found your plight extreme?”
“A bullet would have done my business,” he answered, with an eager, almost joyful, promptness, that showed how welcome to him was that prospect of escape. “Anything is kinder than Tyburn in the cart, madam. I would have you believe that even I have my niceties, and they draw the line at the ignominy of the mob.”
I chewed my lips in silence for a time, and you may be sure should have been very willing to forgetthe epithet I had so unsparingly clapped upon his conduct.
“My lad,” says I, “confound you! Why couldn’t you contrive to let me know, you unreasonable being, that a deed like this was in your mind? You wretched men are all alike, so monstrously unreasonable! How should I know that when you threw your pistol down you were trying to play the gentleman? I say, confound you! But here, here’s my hand. Kiss it, and we’ll say no more about it.”
The lad went gallantly upon one knee in the straw, like a very well-bred person, and did as he was bidden, with something of a relish too.
“Mr. Baker’s Son,” says I, “I confess that I should be glad to see you rather more diffident at the audacity of this; and a little more humbly rejoiceful in your fortune. For, my lad, you are the first of your tribe and species to be thus honoured. And you will be the last, I’m thinking.”
“I am none so sure of that,” says he, with a marvellous equanimity, “for that depends upon my tribe and species. If they ever should desire to kiss your hand, I reckon that they’ll do so.”
“Don’t be saucy, sir,” says I, and put an imperious warning in my tone.
“Humph!” says he, “I’ll admit it is a nice, clean, white one, and not so very fat. But when all is claimed, ’tis but a mortal woman’s.”
“Come, sir,” I says, “this is not the time for talk. Not an instant must we lose if you are to escape the soldiers.”
“But, madam, I do not intend to escape them,” he replied.
This startled and annoyed me, and promptly did I show him my displeasure.
“Nay, madam,” he said, “you have risked too much on my account already. I repeat, it was to lessen your culpability that I am come back to prison. Therefore, can you suppose that I will allow you to farther incriminate yourself?”
“Bah!” says I, “you had not these scruples formerly.”
“No,” says he, “and it is my shame. I was unthoughtful.”
“And do you suppose,” says I, “that if so much as my little finger were endangered in your service, that I would risk it?”
“You would,” says he, “for your high temper is writ upon your face. If my shoe required buckling, and she who buckled it did so at the peril of her neck, you would attempt the deed if you had the inclination. Ha! madam, I think I can read your wilfulness.”
For the moment I was baffled, as I had to admit that he read it very well.
“The danger,” I rejoined, “is quite nothing, I am certain. My papa, the Earl, hath a great interest with the Government. He can turn it round his little finger.”
“Can he so?” says he. “Then let him procure my pardon, for I would not willingly risk again the safety of his daughter.”
“He would not procure your pardon,” I replied, “for the good reason that he abhors all rebels and their work. Yet he is strong enough to protect his daughter if the need arose.”
This was flat lying, I believe, but when one is hard pressed one is rather summary with truth.
The lad was immovable as rock, though. His conduct threw me in a pet of downright anger and alarm. Having made my mind up long ago to save him if I could, and having planned it all so perfectly, ’twas not my disposition to let his foolish scruples interfere.
“My lad,” says I, flashing out at him, “any more of these absurdities and you will put me in a thorough rage. Come, we must not lose an instant now. Why do you view your life so lightly?”
“I only view it lightly where your safety is concerned, dear lady,” he replied, with a spice of the proper gallantry.
“It would require a person of a higher calibre than yours to affect it any way, either with the world or with the Government,” I answered, harshly. “My Lady Barbara Gossiter is able to take care of herself, I’ll hazard.”
“My Lady Barbara Gossiter!” he echoed, “whew! this is interesting. Now madam, do you know that I took you for a great lady at a glance! But I’ll confess that I thought you scarcely such a personage.”
I should have liked this confession better had there been more of embarrassment about it. Butthis baker’s son was as greatly at his ease as ever. I laughed and said: “Sir, you should reserve your judgment of my qualities until you see them underneath the candelabra instead of underneath the moon. But I think you will admit, sir, that I am one who should be strong enough to shield herself against the State if necessary.”
“Madam,” says he, and his proposal staggered me, “I will put my life in your hands once more on this condition: that you swear solemnly upon oath that you shall run no danger in my affair.”
Was anything more delightfully or more boyishlynaïve? I fear that I should have betrayed some laughter had he not worn a face of gravity, that said my word would have been unaccepted had I given him reason to suppose I was not equally as serious as he.
“Swear,” says I, “of course I’ll swear. There is not the remotest peril in the case.” I think it was a miracle that choked my mirth back.
“Very well,” says he, with a boon-conferring air, “I will remit myself entirely to your hands.”
“’Tis very good of you to do so,” says I, remarkably relieved, yet even more amused. “And now then follow me, sir, and I will take you into safety.”
But alas! we had tarried over long. Escape was now cut off. I had no sooner stepped outside the stable than I fled back in such a haste of fear that I nearly fell into the arms of the fugitive, who was obediently following. For the soldiers had arrivedat last, and I could see them leading their weary horses across the yard in the very direction of this block of stables that we occupied.
“Up, up,” I whispered my companion, “into the manger, force the hay-trap and mount into the loft! Up, I say! Can’t you hear their feet upon the yard?”
“After you,” says he, “I would not have these men see you for the world.”
“Oh, what madness, boy!” I cried; “don’t you hear them coming? Another moment and you are ta’en. ’Tis you, not me, they’re seeking.”
“Madam, after you,” says he.
“Then I won’t,” says I; “I will not be badgered by anybody.”
’Twas then that this delightful youth acted in a way that I could never sufficiently admire. He drew up his form and looked upon me with all the majesty of six husbands made in one, and pointed with his finger to the trap. “Madam,” says he, in a terribly stern voice, “you will go up first, for I’m infernal certain I won’t!”
At another season I must have dallied to enjoy the situation; but, knowing that the life of so remarkable a boy depended wholly on my obedience, I went up willy nilly.
With his assistance, I had soon scrambled into the manger, and had been pushed most comically upwards through the trap; whilst he came on my heels with a cat’s agility, the pistol in his teeth. On the instant we composed ourselves in security inthe straw, and in such a posture that we could enjoy a full view of the trap, peer down there through, and observe the movements of our enemies should they enter the lower chamber.
As it proved, we were not a second too early in our hiding. A clattering of hoofs announced that the horses had come to the stable door; and it was to our dire misfortune that their riders here dismounted and held a council, whose import was the reverse of comforting. Leaving their animals outside, they sought the protection of the stable against the bitter air, and without restraint discussed their future courses. From our vantage in the upper chamber we looked down and listened with all ears through the trap; and, as they had evidently not the least knowledge of our presence there, we felt quite a keen enjoyment in the situation, which was terribly dashed, however, by the resolution they arrived at.
“You men,” says one, with the authority proper to a corporal—Corporal Flickers was his title, as later I learned to my sorrow—“you men, this fox is a knowin’ varmint. Why did he come back here? I puts it to you. Why did he come back here?”
“’Cause o’ me lady,” was suggested by one of his companions.
“Eggsac’ly,” says the Corporal. “George, you’re knowin’, you are, you take my word for that. ’Cause o’ me lady. And if I was to have a free hand wi’ my lady, what is it I’d do to her?”
“Screw her blazin’ neck,” suggested the same authority.
“Eggsac’ly,” says the Corporal; “screw her blazin neck. George, you’re knowin’, you are. Oh the air’stocracy! They never was no good to England, and durn me if they don’t get wuss. Never did no honest labour in their naturals. Lives high; drinks deep—ow! it turns me pink to mention ’em. It does, George Marshal; it does, John Pensioner; fair congests my liver. And fer brazing plucky impidence their wimmen is the wust. This here ladyship in perticular, a sweet piece, isn’t she? Never does a stitch o’ honest labour, but sucks pep’mint to find a thirst, and bibs canary wine to quench it. And it’s you and me, George, you and me, John, as pervides this purple hussy wi’ canary wine and pep’mint. Us I say, honest tillers o’ the land, honest toilers o’ the sea, as is the prop o’ this stupendjous air’stocracy. It’s we, I say, what finds ’em in canary wine and pep’mint. Poor we, the mob, the scum, the three-damned we what’s not agoing to hevving when we dies. But who’s this ladyship as she should let a prisoner out in the middle o’ the night, and sends six humble men but honest a-scourin’ half Yorkshire for him. As Joseph Flickers allus was polite he’ll not tell you what her name is, but do you know what Joe’d do if he had a daughter who grew up to be a ladyship like her?”
“Drown her,” Mr. George modestly suggested.
“George,” says the Corporal, in a tone of admiration,“you are smart, my boy, downright smart, that’s what you are! Drown her’s what I’d do, with her best dress and Sunday bonnet on. I should take her so, by the back of her commode, gently but firmly, George, and lead her to the Ouse. And then I should say, ‘Ladyship, I allows you five minutes fer your prayers, for they never was more needed; because, ladyship, I’m a-going to drown you, like I would a ordinary cat what strays upon the tiles at night, and says there what she shouldn’t say. Ow, you besom wi’ your small feet and your mincing langwidge, you should smell hell if Joseph Flickers was your pa!”
Now I have sat long and often in a playhouse, but Sir John Vanbrugh, Mr. William Congreve, and all those other celebrated gentlemen of mirth have yet to give me an entertainment I enjoyed half so much as this. There was something so utterly delightful in the idea of Corporal Joseph Flickers being my papa, and his conception of a parent’s duties in that case, that I had perforce to stuff my cloak into my mouth to prevent my laughter disturbing my denouncers.
Next moment, though, there was scanty cause for mirth. The Corporal, having delivered this tremendous speech with a raucous eloquence, gave it as his opinion that the prisoner had already been let into the house with my connivance, and that I had put him in hiding there. They were unanimous in this, and came to the conclusion that he would abide some hours there at least, as he had been sosternly chased that he could not crawl another mile. This was true enough, as their quarry took occasion to whisper as they said so. It was considered inadvisable to challenge the house just then; the majority of its inmates being abed, the night not yet lifted, and therefore favouring concealment, and, above all, they were full of weariness themselves, and their horses beaten. Accordingly they determined to put them up, and also to allow their own weariness a few hours of much needed ease.
“Even us, the mob, the scum, can’t go on for ever; what do you say, John Pensioner?” the Corporal remarked.
“Truest word you’ve spoke this moon, Joe,” John Pensioner asserted, with a yawn for testimony.
“Where’ll we sleep, though, Corp’ral?” inquires my friend, Mr. George.
“There’s a hayloft top o’ this,” the Corporal replied; “pretty snug wi’ straw and fodder. Roomy, too; bed six like blazes. And warm, warm as that ’ere hussy of a ladyship will be in the other life, when the devil gives her pep’mint but no canary wine.”
“The very spot!” by general acclamation.
I could have cried out in my rage. This meant simply that we must be taken like a brace of pheasants in a snare. With the soldiers already established underneath there did not appear the remotest possibility of escape.
“The game’s up, madam,” the poor prisoner whispered to me, while I whispered curtly backagain that I’d be better suited if he’d hold his tongue.
“But you, my dear lady, you?” says he, heedless of my sharp reply, “’twill never do for you to be discovered with me thus. Nay, you shall not. Rat me, but I have a plan! They are still underneath this trap, you see, assembled in a talk. I’ll drop down in their midst, scuffle with ’em, and while we are thus engaged, you can get from here into the yard, and slip back to the house unseen, and so leave them none the wiser.”
“Very pretty,” says I, “but how am I to get from here into the yard? It means a ten-feet drop upon weak ankles, for the ladder, you observe, is no longer there.”
“Confound it!” says he. “I’d forgot the ladder. Of course it is not there. What a fool I am! But ’oons! here’s a means to overcome it, madam. We’ll drop a truss of straw down, and that will break your fall if you leap upon it carefully.”
“I’m to run away, then, while you, my lad, are to be delivered up to death?”
“Perhaps,” he dubiously said; “but then I am the least to be considered.”
“Then I intend to do nothing of the sort,” says I. “’Tis like man’s vanity to cast himself for the part of hero. But I think I can strut through that part just as handsomely as you.”
“You have your reputation, madam, to consider,” he reminded me. “They surely must not find you here.”
“A fig for reputation and her dowager proprieties. Am I not a law unto myself?”
This was a simulated flippancy, however, for we were in a grievous situation now. But the desperation of it spurred me, and very soon I found a plan by which the fugitive might after all go free. It called for a pretty daring act, and much kind fortune in its execution. Adventure nothing, nothing win, is however the device by which I am only too prone to order my behaviour. For even granting that your effort fails, the excitement it engenders is something of a compensation.
Briefly, my stratagem was this. I would exchange cloaks with the rebel, muffling my form up thoroughly in his military article, and don his three-cornered hat in lieu of the hood I wore. Thus arrayed, ’twas not too much to think that when his enemies caught a view of me in the uncertain moonlight, and expecting to see the prisoner there and at that season, they would mistake me for him. In an undertone that admitted of no parley I caused the prisoner to effect this alteration in his attire, and having done so speedily, I gave him further of my plan.
“My lad,” says I, “let us drop that truss of straw down, as you said, but we must take care that none of them see us do so. I am then to fall upon it, and having done so safely, shall contrive to advertise them of the fact. And when they run forth to seize me I shall flee hot foot across the park. They will, of course, pursue. Then, sir, will beyour time. While we are having our diversion in the grass, the path will be open for your flight into the house. You will find one of the kitchen bolts unslipped, and on my return I shall expect to then discover you awaiting further orders.”
“’Tis a sweet invention, madam,” he replied, “but how shall you fare when they catch you and your identity is known?”
“The chances are,” I answered stoutly, “that they will not catch me. A thick wood infringes on the path a quarter of a mile away. If I once reach that, and I think I can, for these men are dogweary and I shall have a start of them, I’ll wager that I am not ta’en. For I could traverse every inch of that wood in the darkest night.”
The rebel was exceedingly loth to let me do this. But the more I pondered the idea, the more I became enamoured of it; small the danger, the exertion not excessive, the prospect of success considerable, the promise of diversion great. There was all to win and nought to lose, I told him. Besides, in the end I did not condescend to argue, but simply set my foot down and led him to understand that when Bab Gossiter had made her mind up no mortal man could say her nay.
Therefore he submitted, with a degree of reluctancy, of course; yet none the less did he obey me to the letter. First we peered down through the trap to see what our enemies were at. They were succouring their horses. This being a three-stallstable only, three of their steeds had to be elsewhere furnished. The Corporal, John Pensioner, and another soldier, had led their animals into the one we occupied, whilst the others had taken theirs to the one adjoining. Choosing a moment when all the men were in the stables the prisoner dropped a truss of straw down gently ten feet to the stones. Then we listened painfully to learn if this movement had been discerned by those within. Seemingly they were all unconscious of it, for they went on uninterruptedly in the bedding of their horses. Therefore the moment was still propitious, and I ventured my descent. Quickly I stepped to the edge of the loft, got through the wide bars that enclosed the provender, dropped upon my knees, tightly grasped my companion’s outstretched hands, swayed an instant above the space that intervened between me and the straw, was lowered several inches nearer to the ground by virtue of the rebel’s offices, then renounced my grasp of him and leapt lightly on to the cushion that awaited me beneath. The shock of the fall was of the slightest, and left me ready for an immediate flight. This was truly fortunate, as it was evident that my descent had been duly noted by the Corporal and his men. Hearing a commotion in the stable and various astonished cries, I began to run at once, and was, perhaps, the best part of a hundred yards away ere they came fuming and shouting from the stables and were at last alive to my retreat.
“The horses, men, the horses!” bawled theCorporal, never doubting that it was the prisoner in full flight.
To lead forth their weary beasts, to saddle them, and to coax them to pursuit meant such a loss of time that I was far out in the middle of the park ere they had started on their way. I headed straight for the gaunt, shadowy line of woods that looked the veritable haunt of ghosts and the supernatural with their deep, dark masses of tree and foliage bathed in the eerieness of snow and moonlight. It always was my pride that, though a woman of the mode, I could, when in the country, run both easily and lightly, being blessed with the nimblest feet and a stride which, if not an athlete’s, had at least a spring and quickness in it not to be despised.
Further, it was easy running across the soft thin carpet of the snow, whilst the flakes had ceased to fall, and the bitter wind was dead. I was soon aware, however, that it was to be the sternest race. Once mounted and away, the hunters decreased the wide distance that was between us mighty soon. And presently I knew that my long start would prove not a yard too much to enable me to reach the woods. In a little while, being in no state for such violent and prolonged exertion, my chest became restricted and my breath grew dreadfully distressed. And every moment my pursuers drew more near. Therefore, despite my discomforts, I set my teeth and trotted on as determinedly as ever; and I would have you to believe that I felt a fierce delight in doing so, for after long months of a suppressed andartificial course of life, this strange race in the snow seemed a return to very nature. Sure, this tense, exhilarating agony of hope and fear and hot-breathing energy were worth a hundred triumphs in the drawing-room!
Yard by yard the horses ran me down. But I had fixed my eyes upon those weird trees ahead, that assumed shapes more palpable and familiar as I ran; and though I could hear the perpetual shoutings and hoof-thuds of my enemies, I never once looked back, but trotted valiantly on with a mind for nothing but the woods. There was no time then to enjoy the quaintness of the matter, or to laugh at my ridiculous employ. However, that lack hath been made up later. Soon I was so near the trees that I could plainly see the ditch I had to cross, and the very gap the hither side it in the fence that I proposed to scramble through. The proximity of safety lent me strength, and for a few yards my failing pace was perceptibly improved.
Here I had a horrid fright. My feet were almost on those dim, mysterious woods, the snow upon them pure, the moon upon them eerie, and such a mighty silence in the trees that if a squirrel cracked a beech twig the report of it rang among them like a gun, when a pistol barked out loud and brutally, and a bullet whistled by my ear and pattered ominously in the ditch. ’Twas a very cruel, peremptory means, I thought, and my heart stood still with terror. Not my feet, forsooth, for fear was a sharp spur to their flagging ardour. I durst not look behind,but the shot informed me that, despite the perilous nearness of my pursuers, they saw that I must be the first within the wood, where horses could not follow, and among that continent of branch and herbage they knew that their search must prove most difficult. Evidently they meant to stay my entrance, cost what it may.
Another shot yelped out at me, another, and then another. One touched my hat, I think, but that was all. Verily the devil was wonderfully kind this morning.
And strange as you may think it, I felt pretty callous to these bullets. Nay, I was not afraid of anything. My spirit had thrown for once the fetters of convention off. It was itself for one brief hour. It was part of the earth and the trees, the snow and the moonlight; free as air and primitive as nature. ’Twas running unimpeded under God’s moon, without any of our eighteenth-century fopperies of brocades and powders on it.
I scrambled through the ditch and out again, brushed through the hedge-gap at the cost of cloak rents and a briar in my hand, and found myself within the thicket. I plunged into the deepest I could find, but as I did so a new volley rattled above my head among the trees, and the splinters from a shattered bough missed my face by inches and fell across the path. Knowing the ground so thoroughly I could take a great advantage of it, and sure every bit of it was needed, for the soldiers were desperately close. There was so thick a roofof branches to this wood that the moon could hardly penetrate, and not the snow at all. Thus the question of footprints had not to be encountered, and the deep gloom that slumbered everywhere also lent me aid. Once under the protection of the trees I checked my pace, for in this sanctuary it would be easy to dodge a whole battalion.