"Your Majesty," I cried, and I felt my heart swell and leap within me, and my head spin with exultation. Here was the very thing of which I had dreamed hopelessly so often during those weary months at Paris, letting my fancies dally with it as with some bright and charming fairy tale, and, lo! it had come true. It had come true! The words made a silent music at my heart, and animated all my blood. It had come true! and then, of a sudden, there shot through me, chilling me to the centre, the rector's warning, and the forebodings that had flowed from it. Did this mission, which the King assigned to me, harbinger the hour of trial? Should I fail when it came? I set my teeth and clenched the nails into the palms of my hands. My whole body cried No! No! but underneath I seemed to hear a voice, very low, very persistent, speaking with full knowledge, and it said Yes! Yes!
"Then this will be your charge," continued the King, recalling me to myself. "You will journey with all speed to London, and bear with you a letter in my hand to the Duke of Ormond, at Richmond," and he paused upon the words. "It must pass from your hand into the Duke's. You will then go north to your estate, and collect knowledge for our use as to what help we may expect from Cumberland, and, so far as you can gather, from the counties adjoining. Lord Bolingbroke will inform you more of the particulars. Your errand, of course, you will keep secret—locked up from all—from our supporters, no less than from our opponents. It would be of detriment to us if they came to think that we distrusted them. Nor do we—it is their judgment, not their loyalty, about which we wish to be assured. We think, therefore, that it would be prudent in you to make no parade of your convictions. Hear both sides like one that holds the balance evenly. For, if you take one side openly, you will hear from our friends just what we hear so far away as Bar-le-Duc; and so God speed you!" and he held out his hand to me, and I kissed it. Then Mr. Edgar opened the door, and the King walked to it. He was already across the threshold, when he stopped and turned back, pulling a silver medal from his fob.
"This," said he, "is the fac-simile of that medal which the Duchess of Gordon presented to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, seven years back," and he gave it into my hand. "It may serve to keep me in your heart and memories. Moreover, a day may come when it will be necessary for you to convince our friends in the North, on whose side you stand; and this will help you to the end. For there is no other copy."
I knelt down and kissed the medal reverently. On the one side was struck the head of King James—very true and life-like—with the words "cujus est;" on the other a picture of the British Islands, with this motto inscribed beneath it, "Reddite."
"It is a text," I said, and indistinctly enough, for that simple word "Reddite," so charged was it with a sad and pitiful significance, brought the tears welling to my throat "It is a text I would have every man in England preach from."
"You will act on it," said the King; and I flattered myself with the thought that I noted something of a veritable tenderness in his accent "You will act on it; that is better;" and so he went out of the room.
Lord Bolingbroke closed the door, flung himself into a chair, and yawned prodigiously.
"Lawrence," he said, "I am very thirsty."
A bottle of Rhenish wine was standing on a sideboard at one end of the room. He went over and opened it, and filled two glasses.
"Let us drink," said he, and handed one to me "Let us drink to ourselves," and he raised the glass to his lips.
"Nay," I cried, "to the King first"
"Very well, to the King first, if you will, and to ourselves next. What matters the toast, so long as we drink it?" and he drained his glass to the bottom. I followed his example.
"Now to ourselves," said he; and he filled them again. "It is a good fashion," he continued, in a musing tone, "that of drinking to the King. For so one drinks double, and never a word can be said against it." I noticed, however, that he drank triple and quadruple before he had come to an end. Then he looked at my breeches and laughed.
"And so the wench boxed your ears," he said, and, becoming quite serious, he took me by the arm. "Lawrence, let's drink to her!"
"I should reel in my saddle if I did," said I, drawing back.
"Then don't sit in it!" he replied. "Let's drink to her several times, and then we'll go to bed."
"I trust to go to bed a good twenty miles from Commercy."
He shook his head at me.
"Lawrence, it is plain that you are new to the service of kings."
"You have a letter for me," said I.
"To the Duke of Ormond," and he looked at me in surprise. "You mean to start to-night?"
"Yes."
"Very well," and he sat himself down to the table, transformed in a second to a cool man of business. "The letter is in the chevalier's hand"—he drew it from his pocket as he spoke—"and there are many ships in the Channel. You had best charter a boat at Dunkirk, the smaller the better, and set sail at nightfall, so that you may strike the Downs before sunrise." Thereupon he proceeded to instruct me as to the precise details concerning which I was to inform myself in Cumberland—such as the number of troops they could put into the field, and how competent they were to face well-drilled and disciplined squadrons, their weapons, the least assistance from France they would hazard the rising upon, and such-like matters. Then he rose and prepared to accompany me downstairs. I was still holding the medal in my hand, and now and again fingering it, as a man will what he holds most precious. "And, Lawrence," he said, "I would hide the medal, even from yourself, if that be possible. You may find it a very dangerous gift before you have done."
He spoke with so solemn a warning as even then did something to sober my enthusiasm.
"It was a wise word that the Chevalier spoke when he bade you beware how you sided openly with the Jacks."
"Oh!" said I, as the thought struck me. "It was you, then, that prompted that advice—and for my sake."
"Not altogether."
"But in the main, for my sake."
"Lawrence," said he, leaning across the table, with his eyes fixed upon my face and his voice lowered to a whisper, "I misdoubt me, but this is a fool's business we're embarked upon. You heard the Chevalier. He has no fixed design," and he brought his hand down upon the table with a dunch. "One day he will land at Montrose, the next in Devonshire, the next in Cumberland, and, God knows, but the most likely place of all is the Tower steps."
"No!" I cried. "I'll not believe that. He has you to help him now."
Bolingbroke smiled, but shook his head.
"He has six other ministers besides myself, with Fanny Oglethorpe and Olive Trant at the head, and all of them have more power than I. He will concert a plan with me, and the hour after give a contrary order behind my back. It was the same when Berwick had the disposing of his affairs. No, Lawrence, I would have you be prudent, very prudent."
He came down the stairs with me and stood in the courtyard repeating ever the same advice, the while I mounted my horse. Of my steward I still could see no sign, and, leaving another direction that he should follow with all speed, I rode off towards the village of Isoncour, where Ashlock caught me up some two hours after I came there. I rated him pretty soundly, being much contraried by the melancholy forebodings of Lord Bolingbroke.
Ashlock made his excuses, however, very submissively, saying that he had dined at an ordinary in the town, and thereafter, being much fatigued with the hurry of our travelling, had fallen fast asleep. And I, bethinking me that, in spite of his gloomy forecast, Lord Bolingbroke would none the less serve the King with unremitting vigour, began to take heart again, and so pardoned Leonard Ashlock.
We came then to Dunkirk in the space of four days, and I was much put to it how I should get safely over into England with the King's letter. For the English warships were ever on the watch for the King's emissaries, and one of them, a sloop, was riding not so far out in full view of Dunkirk. In this difficulty Ashlock was of the greatest service to me, discovering qualities which I should never have suspicioned in him. For, espying a little pinnace drawn up on the beach, he said:
"The two of us could sail that across, sir."
"No doubt," said I, "if one of us could steer a course and the other handle the sails."
"I can do the first, sir, by myself, and the second with your help," he replied.
I went down the sands to the boat, and discovering to whom it belonged from a bystander, sought the owner out and forthwith bought it at his own price. For thus we need confide our business to no one, but waiting quietly till nightfall, we might slip past the big ship under cover of the dark. And this we did, launching the boat and bending the sails by the light of a lantern, which we kept as nearly as we could ever turned towards the land. The moon was in its fourth quarter and not yet risen when we started, so that the night, though not so black as we could wish, was still dark enough for our purpose. We had besides the lights from the port-holes of the warship to guide us, which gleamed pure and bright across the water like a triple row of candles upon an altar. We ran cautiously, therefore, for some distance to the west close under the shadow of the coast, and then fetching a wide compass about the ship, set our course straight for England. It was a light boat we were in, rigged with a lug-sail and a jib, and we slipped along under a fine reaching wind that heeled us over till the thwart was but an inch from the froth of the water.
"If only the wind hold!" said Ashlock, with a glance at the sail, and there was a lively ring of exultation in his voice. And, indeed, it was an inspiriting business this flight of ours across the Channel, or at all events this part of it I lay forward in the bows with a great coat atop of me, and my face upturned to the spacious skies, which were strewn with a gold-dust of stars and jewelled with the planets. The wind blew out of the night sharp and clean, the waves bubbled and tinkled against the planks as the prow split them into a white fire, and we sped across that broad floor of the sea as if licensed to an illimitable course. Now and again the lights of a ship would rise to the right or left, glimmer for a little like an ocean will-o'-the-wisp and vanish; now and again we would drive past a little fleet of fishing-smacks lying to for the night with never so much as a candle alight amongst them all, and only the stars, as it were, entangled amongst their bare poles and rigging; and, after a little, the moon rose.
I thought of my crib in the Rue St Antoine and the months of confinement there as of something intolerable. The wide freedom of the sea became an image of the life I was entering upon. I felt the brine like a leaven in my blood. And then of a sudden the sail flapped above me like the wing of a great bat, the strenuous motion of the pinnace ceased, and we were floating idly upon an even keel.
I looked towards Ashlock; he sat motionless in the stern with the tiller in his hand and the moonlight white upon his face. Then he took a turn about the tiller with a rope, glanced along the boat with his body bent as though he was looking forward beneath the sail, and came lightly stepping across the benches towards the bows. I lay still and watched him in a lazy contentment. Midway betwixt bow and stern he stopped and busied himself with tightening a stay; then again he crouched down and looked forwards, but this time it seemed to me that he was not looking out beyond the bowsprit, but rather into the bows to the spot where I lay huddled under my coat in the shadow of the thwart I could see his face quite plainly, and it appeared to me to have changed, in some way to have narrowed. It may have been a fancy, it may have been the moonlight upon his face, but his eyes seemed to glisten at me from out a countenance suddenly made trivial by cunning.
After a second he crept forward again, and I noticed how lightly—how very lightly he stepped. Would he stop at the mast, I asked myself? Was his business the tightening of a sheet even as he had tightened the stay? He stooped beneath the sail and still crept forward, running his hand along the top of the gunwale as he came; and it broke upon me as something new that he and I were alone in mid-channel, cabined within the planks of a little boat, he the servant,—but whose servant?—I not so much the master as the master's substitute and tripper-up.
I felt for my sword, but I remembered that I had loosed it from my belt when we had put to sea. From the spot where I lay I could see the scabbard shining by the tiller. At all events, Ashlock had not brought it with him. I watched him without a movement as he approached, but underneath the coat, every nerve and muscle in my body was braced to the tightness of a cord.
He bent over me, holding his breath, it seemed; his hands came forward hovering above my chest, but they held no weapon; his face sank out of the moonlight, dropped beneath the gunwale lower and lower down upon mine. Meanwhile I watched him, looking straight into his eyes. His face was but a few inches from mine when he drew back with a little quivering cry—it was, indeed, more of a startled in-drawing of the breath than a cry—and crouched on his hams by my side. Still I did not move, and again his face came forward over mine, very slowly, very cautiously, and down to where I lay in the dark, with my eyes open watching his. I could endure the suspense no longer.
"What is it, Ashlock?" I asked quietly, and in asking the question that moment, made a very great mistake, the importance whereof I did not discover until long afterwards.
Ashlock sprang back as though I had struck him in the face, I raised myself on one elbow and thrust the other outside the covering.
"I could not tell, sir, whether you waked or slept," he said; and I thought his voice trembled a little.
"I was awake, Ashlock. What is it?"
"The wind has shifted, sir," and now he answered confidently enough, "and blows dead in our teeth. We must needs tack if we are to reach the coast by daybreak."
"Well?"
"I cannot do it, sir, without your help. It needs two to tack if you sail with a lug-sail."
And that I found to be true. For the sail being what is called a square-sail with a gaff along the top of it, each time the pinnace went about it was necessary to lower it, and hoist it again on the other side of the mast. The which it fell to me to do, while Ashlock guided the tiller. So that I knew there was good reason for his waking me. However, I had little time for speculation upon the matter one way or another, since we sailed into a mist shortly afterwards, and were on the stretch, both eyes and ears, lest we should be run down by some vessel, or ever we could see it.
I was much exercised, too, what with the stars being hid, and our constant going about, whether Ashlock would be able to keep the boat in a course towards England. I need not, however, have troubled my head upon that score, for it was as though he had some sixth sense which found its occasion upon the sea, and when the day broke and the mist rolled down and massed itself upon the water, we were within five miles of the white cliffs with Dover Castle upon our starboard bow. The mist, I should say, was at that time about chin high, for standing up in the boat we looked across a grey driving floor, above which the smaller vessels only showed their masts.
"Shall I run her into the harbour?" asked Ashlock, and he turned the boat's head towards land.
"No!" I cried vehemently. For now that we were come within sight of England the letter that I carried began to burn in my pocket, and I felt the surest conviction that if we disembarked at Dover, we should be surrounded, catechised, and finally searched, upon the ground of a tell-tale face, which face would assuredly be mine. "No!" I said; "let us take advantage of the mist, and creep along the coast till we find some inlet where we can beach the boat."
This we did, and running now with a freer sail, we came in little more than an hour to a cove some four or five miles to the north-east of Dover, the cliffs breaking off very sharp at each side with a line of thin rocks jutting out at the south corner, and the walls of the cove steep all round and thickly wooded as low as we could see. Towards this cove we pointed, intending to run in there and abandon the boat. But when we were within half a mile of land the sun blazed out in the sky and the fog shredded like so much gauze burnt up in a fire. It was a fortunate thing for us that we had come no nearer to the shore. For there, low down on the beach, and but a yard or two from the water's edge, on a tiny strip of level ground, were four little cottages with the British ensign afloat. Ashlock rapped out an oath and thrust the tiller across to its further limit, meaning to go about and run back out of sight of the cove.
"The sail, sir!" he cried in great excitement, "Oh! damn it, sir, the sail!"
I sprang to the mast, loosed the sheets, lowered the sail, and of course must needs in my hurry get the spar entangled amongst the stays a foot above the thwart. Ashlock rose in a passion, and leaving the tiller to shift for itself, came leaping towards me.
"There, there, sir," he sneered, "leave it to me!" and losing at once his air of deference, he was for wresting rather than taking the spar out of my hands. "Did ever man see?" he exclaimed. "O Lord, did ever man see——"
"Such a fool-master and such a clever servant," said I, finishing the sentence for him. But the words were hardly out of my mouth when I let go of the spar. He staggered back, holding the one end of it in his hands, the other caught me a crack in the joint at the knees, and the next moment I was sprawling on my back at the bottom of the boat. I heard Ashlock mutter, "Lord send us less pride and a ha'porth of common sense," the while he busied himself with getting the sail into position, and then he turned to me.
"You'll find, sir, the Preventive men will make little difference between master and servant when they discover the pretty letter you are carrying."
"The Preventive men!" I cried, scrambling to my feet.
"Ay, sir, the Preventive men," said he with a glance at the beach.
Now Ashlock was standing with his back to me bowsprit, whereas I faced him, and looking across his shoulder, I saw a sheer face of white cliff, topped with a thatch of grass, glide, as it were, behind him. I turned me about. The boat was swinging round with the tide now that it had neither sail nor a hand at the rudder to direct it. Before, it had been pointing for the beach midway in the cove; now it was heading for the rocks at the south corner of the bay; and each moment it moved faster, as I could judge from the increasing noise of the ripple at the bows. I jumped across the benches to the rudder.
"Hoist the sail!" I said in a low, quick command.
Ashlock looked from me to the rocks.
"The tide is running round the corner like a mill-race," said he, doubtfully, and he made a movement as though he would take my place.
"Hoist the sail!" said I, and he obeyed, and again prepared to come astern.
"No, stay where you are," I ordered sharply. He looked at me sharply, shrugged his shoulders, and sat him down by the mast. I brought the boat's head up until the wind against which we had been tacking was directly astern of us, and the tiller kicked in my hand as we drove through the water. We were now within the line of rocks, and I saw Ashlock give a start as he noticed the point I was making.
"You must round the corner of the reef, sir," he cried.
"We have no time for that. The tide runs in shore. There's a gap in the reef; we'll make for the gap."
The gap was, in fact, in a bee-line with the tip of the bowsprit. I had wind and tide to quicken my speed, and I felt the boat leap and pulse beneath me like a live thing. Ashlock looked at me in surprise, and then gave a little pleased laugh, as though my action chimed in with his nature.
Doubtless the plan was foolhardy enough; but the day was clear, and we were within full sight of the cottages upon the beach. More, our boat was the only boat in this secluded bay. I thought, indeed, only of the latter point, and not at all of the narrowness of the passage, and maybe it was that very oblivion which kept my hand steady. So engrossed was I, in truth, in my one idea, that I could not forbear from glancing backwards now and then in a mortal dread, lest I should see the sun flash upon the disc of a perspective glass or mark a boat splash out through the surf into the sea. Upon one such occasion I heard Ashlock rise to his feet with a muttered "God save us!" and a second later we grazed past a tooth of chalky rock some half a foot below the surface.
"Sit down!" I cried sharply, for the fellow obscured my vision. He dropped into his seat; I bent forward, peering out beneath the sail. We were within twenty yards of the gap in the reef, and the water converging on it from right and left, foamless and oily like a rapid in the Severn. The boat gave a great spring, and then slid with a swift, easy motion like a sledge. I heard the waves burst over the rocks and patter back upon the sea; I felt the spray whipping my forehead; and then the cliffs fell away from my eyes and closed up behind my back. Ashlock lowered the sail and dropped the kedge from the bows. We were floating in still water, just round the point and close in to shore under the shadow of an overhanging cliff.
"Now, Ashlock!" said I, "you can come astern."
He came reluctantly, and in his coming began to babble an apology for the disrespect he had shown me. I cut him short at the outset of it.
"I am not concerned with your insolence," I said. "It is too small a thing. I am willing to believe, moreover, that you were hurried into it through devotion to a higher master than myself. I have forgotten it. But how came you to think that I carried a letter?"
"Your hand, sir," he replied readily, "was ever at your pocket on the road if we galloped—on the sea if we passed a ship."
It was truth that he said—every word of it—and it caused me no small humiliation. For here was I entrusted with a mission of some consequence, and I had betrayed a portion of my business at the outset.
"There is another thing," I continued sharply. "How comes it that you, Cumberland-born and Cumberland-bred, have so much knowledge of the sea?"
I looked at him steadily as I spoke, and I saw his face change, but not to any expression of suspicion or alarm. Rather it softened in a manner that surprised me; a look, tender and almost dreamy, came into his eyes, a regretful smile flickered on his lips. It was as though the soul and spirit of a poet peeped out at you from a busy, practical countenance.
"I should have been a sailor," he said, in a low, musing voice. "All my life I have longed for that one thing. The very wind in the branches for me does no more than copy the moan of the surf. But my parents would not have it so, and I live inland, restless, unsatisfied, like a man kept out of his own." He checked himself hastily, and continued in a flurry, for no reason which I could comprehend, "Still, I made such use as I could of the opportunities that presented. At Whitehaven and at Workington I learnt the handling of a boat."
"But," I interrupted him, "this is not the first time you have sailed from Dunkirk to England."
"No, sir," he answered, and his face hardened at my questioning. It was as though a lid had been slammed down upon an open box. "I have crossed more than once with young Mr. Rookley."
"That will do," I said; and he drew a breath of relief.
The explanation, I assured myself, was feasible enough, but—but—I could not get from before my eyes the vision of him creeping stealthily from the tiller to the bows. As he lay sleeping just where I had lain—for all that day we remained hidden within the cliffs—I saw him continually stoop beneath the sail; I saw his face sink out of the moonlight down and down to mine, and his hands hover above my breast. And with that a light flashed in on me. He knew of the letter I was carrying! He knew of the pocket I carried it in! I sat staring at him dumfounded. Was this the link? Was he playing me false?
"If I had only closed my eyes!" I cried, and in my perturbation I cried the words aloud.
Ashlock woke up with a start.
"What is it, sir?" he asked, in a whisper. "The Preventive men?" and the eagerness of his voice gave the lie to my suspicion. Yes, I reasoned, he had shown an anxiety equal with my own to escape from their clutches, was showing it now, and his anxiety was due to this very knowledge that I had the letter in my possession. I relapsed into perplexity, and in a little my fears took another and engrossing shape. Doubtless it was Ashlock's startled whisper set my thoughts particularly that way, and from minute to minute I lay expecting the Preventive men to row round the point and discover us. There was no possible escape for us if they did. The more I searched and searched the cliffs, the more clearly I saw how impossible they were to scale. It would, I think, have made the strain and tension of this waiting more tolerable had I been able to reach some point whence I could command a view of the bay, though it would have served no other end. But that too was denied to me. I lay the livelong day the impatient hanger-on of chance. No sound came to me but the ceaseless lapping of the waves beneath me, the ceaseless screaming of the gulls above my head, in a single monotonous note, sharp and clean like the noise that a large pebble makes hopping over ice. To add to my discomfort, we had no water in the boat, nothing, indeed, but a few hard biscuits, which served to choke us. And the sun was pitiless all day in a shadowless sky. The very colour of the sky seemed to have faded so that it curved over our heads, rather grey than blue, hot and hard—a cap of steel.
However, the day wore to sunset in the end, and the Preventive men had not come. We set sail as soon as it was dark, and coasting along, landed shortly after two in the morning, at a spot in the Downs a few miles from Deal. Thence, after setting our pinnace adrift, we made what haste we could to London.
Ah me! that ride through the night to London! I remember it as if I had ridden along that road yesterday. It was so long since I had been in England. I remember the homely little inn at which we roused a grumbling landlord and hired our horses. His very grumbles were music to my ears. I laughed at them, I remember, with such enjoyment that we had much ado to persuade him to part with the horses at all, and it was because of his grumbles that I paid him double what he asked. I remember, too, the hedgerows a-glimmer with wild-roses as with so many pale stars. To ride ever between hedgerows! It seemed the ultimate of happiness. And the larks in the early morning—never since have I heard larks sing so sweetly as they sang that morning over the Kentish meadows. We passed a little whitewashed church, I remember, with its mossy gravestones nestling in deep grass about its walls. Well, well, this is Avignon, and my old bones, I take it, will sleep just as easily under Avignon soil.
I wasted no long time in London, you may be sure, but leaving Ashlock at the Hercules' Pillars in Piccadilly, went down with my letter to Richmond. On my return I supplied myself with a wardrobe better suited to my present state and set out for the north.
The mansion of Blackladies lies off Borrowdale upon the flank of Green Comb. I got my first view of it from the top of Coldbarrow Fell; for on coming to Grasmere, Ashlock had informed me of a bridle-path leading by Harrop Tarn and Watendlath, which would greatly shorten the journey, and since my impatience had grown hotter with every mile we had traversed, I despatched my baggage by the roundabout high-road through Keswick, and myself took horse in company with Ashlock.
It was noonday when we came to the ridge of the fell, and the valley lay beneath us shimmering in a blue haze, very lonely and very quiet. Now and again the thin sharp cry of a pee-wit came to our ears. Now and again our voices waked a sleepy echo. A little hamlet of white cottages—Stonethwaite they called it—was clustered within view, and towards the centre of Borrowdale, but so small was it and so still that it seemed not so much a living village as a group of huts upon some remote island which a captain, putting in by chance for water, may discover, long since built by castaways long since perished.
"Look, sir!" cried Ashlock, pointing downwards with his whip. "That is your house of Blackladies."
It lay in the hollow at my feet, fronting Langstrath and endwise to me; so that I only saw the face of it obliquely, and got no very clear idea of that beyond that it was pierced with an infinity of windows, for a score of mimic suns were ablaze in the panes. It was a long house with many irregular gables, built in three stories, of grey stone, though this I could hardly make sure of at the time, for the purple bloom of a wisteria draped the walls close and clambered about the roof. What attracted my eyes, however, far more than the house, was the garden, of which I had the plainest view, since it was built up from the slope at the east end of Blackladies, and not so much on account of its beauty as because of the laborious care which had been bestowed upon it. It was laid out in the artificial fashion of half a century ago, with terraces and stone staircases, and the lawns cut into quincunces and etoiles, and I know not what geometrical figures. The box-trees, too, were fashioned into the likeness of animals; here and there were statues. I could see the spray of a fountain sparkling in the sun, and on the level below the first terrace, a great white grotto and an embroidered parterre like a fine lady's petticoat. Nature sprawls naked hereabouts; only at this one point had it been trimmed and dressed, and that with so quaint an extravagance as to make me conjecture whether I had not been suddenly translated within sight of some fairy pleasaunce of the Arabian Nights.
I sat in my saddle, gazing at the house silently, and bethinking me of what service it might prove in the enterprise on which I was embarked.
"It is a handsome property, sir," said Ashlock, from just behind my elbow, and he spoke in a tone of anxious inquiry, as though he would fain discover what effect the glimpse of it had wrought in me.
"With a handsome rent-roll to match?" I asked no less eagerly, as I looked downwards.
A shadow fell sharply along the neck of my horse. I turned and saw Ashlock's face stretched forward, and peering into mine with startled eyes.
"A very handsome rent-roll, sir," he replied; "so handsome that a plain man finds it difficult to understand how the heir could sacrifice it for any cause." He dropped the words very slowly one after the other.
I understood the fellow's suspicion, and I swung my horse round with a jerk, so as to look him squarely between the eyes. He drew himself straight on the instant, and it seemed to me that his hand tightened insolently upon his whip.
"Ashlock!" I exclaimed, "before we go down to Blackladies, I will say a word to you. In Paris you showed me a way by which I could hold this estate fairly and honourably."
"It was at your own wish, sir, that I spoke," he interrupted hurriedly, "and because I saw that you meant to refuse it."
"Yes, yes," I went on. "But I thanked you then for the readiness of your wits, and there was an end of your concern in the matter. I hold Blackladies in trust for this cousin of mine, Mr. Jervas Rookley. I have said so, and I need no mentor at my elbow to remind me of a pledge I gave to myself. Least of all will I permit my servant"—and in my heat I threw an ungenerous scorn into the term—"to take that office on himself. If he does, his first word sends him packing."
The man bent his head so that I could no longer see his face, and replied with all the confidence gone from his voice and manner.
"I came to Paris with no thought but of serving you as faithfully as I endeavoured to serve Sir John before you. But it was your reluctance that put the thought of Mr. Jervas into my head; and once it was there, it stayed and grew; for I loved Mr. Jervas, sir. It was Mr. Jervas I served in my heart, and not Sir John."
The fellow spoke with such evident contrition, and a devotion so seemingly sincere, that I felt reproved for the severity I had used, and I began to admire what sort of man my cousin must be who could leave so clear an image of himself in the hearts of his dependents. I was for saying something of the sort, when a movement which Ashlock made arrested me. It was an insignificant movement—just the reaching out of his hand to the snaffle of his bridle—but it woke all my distrust of him; for I noted the quick play of his long, sinuous fingers, and I recalled his stealthy advance from the tiller of the pinnace to the bows, and the hovering of his hands above my chest.
"Get down from your horse!" I cried suddenly.
He looked in surprise at me, as well he might. I repeated the order; he obeyed it.
"Are you Catholic or Protestant?" I asked.
Ashlock's surprise increased.
"Catholic, sir," he answered.
"Good! Now, understand this. Of the journey to Bar-le-Duc, of the passage from Dunkirk, you must never speak, you must never think. So much hangs on your silence and mine as you can have no notion of. You came to Paris, and from Paris I returned with you. That is all you know. Of the rest, whisper so much as a hint to the deafest yokel in the valley, and it will go very ill with you."
"I promise," he answered.
"But I need more than a promise; I need an oath. You are Catholic, you say, so there's better chance of your keeping it. Down on your knees here, and swear to me that not a word, whatever you know, whatever you believe, shall escape your lips."
Ashlock started back, looking about him, as though he would find some diversion or excuse. But the blue, sunlit sky was above us, the brown fells about us, and never a living soul beside us two.
"Come!" said I, insisting. "Swear it! Swear it by the Cross; swear it by the Holy Virgin."
"I swear," he began, holding up his hand.
"Nay," I broke in upon him. "On your knees! on your knees!"
Again he looked about him, and then to my face. But I kept my eyes stubbornly upon him. I would have him swear that oath, and I gathered all my strength into the resolution, that I might compel him; for I felt, in some strange way, that we were pitted in a contest for the mastery of Blackladies, and I was minded to settle that contest before I set foot across its door. I looked upon this oath that he would swear before me on his knees chiefly as an emblem of his submission. I might be to him a vicarious master; still, his master I would be, not having that confidence in him that I could allow him to harbour doubts upon the score.
Of a sudden his horse gave a startled plunge and broke away from him. It ran past me, and, leaning over as it passed, I caught it by the bridle and so held it.
"Come!" said I. "There will be many days on which I can see the sunset from Coldbarrow Fell."
There was no escape for Ashlock except by a direct refusal, and that he did not venture. So with a very ill grace he plumped down on his knees upon the heather and grumbled out his oath.
"Now," said I, "we will ride down to Blackladies;" and I descended the track mightily pleased with myself at the high way in which I had carried it. But my elation was short-lived, for so engaged was I in pluming myself, that I took little care of how my horse set his feet, and in a short while he slips on a stone, shies of one side, and I—I was lying with all the breath knocked out of my body on the grass.
I picked myself up on to my knees; I saw Ashlock sitting on his horse in front of me, and he held my horse by the bridle. I remained on my knees for a moment, recovering my breath and my wits. Then of a sudden I realised that here was I kneeling before Ashlock as but a minute since he had knelt before me; and here was Ashlock sitting his horse and holding mine by the bridle, precisely as I had sat and held his. In a word, we had just changed places, by the purest accident, no doubt, but I had set such great store upon bringing about that earlier position and relationship, that this complete reversal of it within the space of a few moments filled me with the keenest humiliation. And mingled with that humiliation was a certain fear that ran through my veins, chilling my blood. I felt that the man mocked at me. I looked into his face, expecting to discover on it a supercilious smile. But there was no trace of such a thing.
"You are hurt, sir?" he asked gravely, and dismounted.
"No," said I, rising to my feet
Ashlock moved a few steps from me, and stooped down, parting the grass with his hands.
"What is it?" I asked, setting a foot in the stirrup.
"Something, sir, that you dropped when you fell. It is too big for a coin."
He was standing with his back to me, turning that something over in his palms. I clapped my hand into my fob.
"It is mine, yes!" I cried, and I ran towards him. "Give it to me at once;" and I made as though I would take it from him.
"You asked me what it was," said Ashlock, and he placed in my hands the medal the King had given me. I looked it over carefully, noticing certain scratches upon the King's face, and seeking to rub them out I saw Ashlock looking at me shrewdly.
"I know," said I in a fluster; "but it has memories for me, and I would not lose it;" and with that we got again to our horses, and so down to the Blackladies.
The rest of that day I spent in examining the many corridors and galleries of the house, and in particular the garden, which had greatly whetted my curiosity. It had been laid out, Ashlock informed me, by Sir John Rookley's father, and with a taste so fantastic as would have gladdened Sir William Temple himself. There were three terraces linked to each other by three stone staircases—one at each of the two ends, and the third in the centre, and at the top of each of these last flights were heavy iron gates. From the bottom of these steps the parterre spread out, and beyond the parterre was a space of meadow-land, fringed by a grove of trees which they called the wilderness. The strangest device of all, however, was a sort of labyrinth beyond the trees at the extreme end of the garden. The labyrinth, in fact, was a number of little gardens, each with a tiny plot of grass, and flowers planted about it, like so many rows of buttons. These gardens were shut in by hedges of quickset ten feet or more in height, and led from one to the other by such a perplexing diversity of paths, that once you had entered deep among them it was as much as you could do to find your way out of them again. Even Ashlock, who guided me amongst them, ended by losing his way, so nearly alike was one to the other; and I, not stopping to consider that where he failed, I, a stranger, was little likely to succeed, must needs separate from him and go a-searching on my own account, with this very natural result—that I got more and more enmeshed in the labyrinth, and was parted from Ashlock into the bargain.
"Ashlock!" I shouted, and again and again, with never a reply, for the space of half an hour or more. At last, by the merest chance, I happened upon the right path, and so came out upon that meadow-like space they called the wilderness.
"Ashlock!" I called again, and again there was no answer. Had he got himself free, I wondered, and gone quietly about his business, leaving me there? I walked up the steps in an ill enough humour at the slight, and passed through the parlour into the hall.
It was of a great size and height, with long, painted windows from the ceiling to the ground; its roof, indeed, was the roof of the house, and somehow it struck upon me as very empty and desolate.
"Ashlock!" I cried, and I heard my voice reverberating and dying away down the corridors. Then came the sound of a man running from the inner part of the house.
"Ashlock!" I repeated, and a servant appeared. He was a tall, spare man, past the middle age, I should say, and was called Jonnage Aron. I sent him to look for the steward, but it was evening before he found him.
"I thought, sir, that you had hit upon the path before I did," Ashlock explained.
"But you heard me shouting?"
"No, sir," said he. "I found the way out a few minutes after you had parted from me, and thought that I was following you."
I bade him show me to his office and give me some account of the estate, which he did, laying considerable stress upon the wad-mines, from which some part of the revenue was derived.
"Sir John's attorney," said I, when he had finished, "lives at Keswick. It will be well that I should see him to-morrow."
"It is but nine miles from here to Keswick," he assented, "and the road is good."
"Then send a servant early in the morning to fetch him here." Ashlock shot a quick glance at me. "We will go over these matters again," I continued, "with his help—the three of us together."
Ashlock bent his head down upon the papers.
"Very well," he said, and seemed diligently to peruse them. Indeed, he held one in his hand so long that I believed he must be learning it by heart. "Very well," he repeated, in a tone of much thought.
But during the night I changed my mind, reasoning in this way. I recognised clearly enough that the advice which King James had given me—I mean that I should not disclose myself as a Jacobite—was due to the promptings of Lord Bolingbroke, and those promptings in their turn took their origin from a regard for my safety, rather than for the King's interest I was, therefore, inclined to look upon the recommendation as a piece of advice to be followed or not, as occasion pointed, rather than as a command. On the whole, I believed that it would be best, considering the ends I had in view, to express myself moderately as favouring the Stuart claims. Moderately, I say, because I could not avow myself an emissary of King James without stating the special business on which I had come, and that I was forbidden to do. At the same time, I had to carry that business to an issue, and with as little delay as might be. Now, it was evident to me that I should get little knowledge of the Jacobite resources, and less of their genuine thoughts, if I were to sit down at Blackladies in this nook of Borrowdale. I must go abroad to do that, and if I was to excite no suspicion, I must have a simple and definite excuse. The attorney at Keswick would, for the outset, at all events, serve my turn very well.
So the next morning I countermanded the order I had given to Ashlock, and rode in past Castle Crag and Rosthwaite to Keswick. And this I did on many a succeeding day, to the great perturbation of the little attorney, who had never been so honoured before by the courtesy of his clients. Also, I made it my business to attend the otter-hunts, coursing matches, fairs, and wrestling-bouts, of which there were many here and there about the country-side; so that in a short while I became acquainted with the principal gentry, and got some insight, moreover, into the dispositions of the ruder country folk.
Now amongst the gentry with whom I fell in, was my Lord Derwentwater and his lady, who were then living in their great house upon Lord's island of that lake, and from them I received great courtesy when they came to know of my religion and yet more after that I had made avowal of my politics; so that often I was rowed across and dined with them.
Upon one such occasion, some three weeks after I had come to Blackladies, that is to say, about midway through August, Lord Derwentwater showed to me a portrait of his wife, newly painted and but that day brought to the house. I was much struck by the delicacy of the craftsmanship, and stooped to examine the signature.
"You will not know the name," said Lord Derwentwater. "The man is young and, as yet, of no repute—Anthony Herbert."
"Anthony Herbert," I repeated. "No, I have never heard the name, though, were he better known, I should doubtless be as ignorant. For this long while I have lived in France."
"It is very careful work," said I, looking closely at the picture.
"Indeed, it errs through excess of care," replied he, "for one's attention is fixed thereby upon the details separately."
"One need have no fear of that," said I, with a bow to Lady Derwentwater, "when such details are so faithfully represented."
The pair smiled at one another, and she laid her hand upon her husband's arm in the prettiest way imaginable.
"The man is staying at Keswick," Lord Derwentwater continued. "That is how I chanced on him. He came hither in the spring for the sake of the landscapes."
"Oh," said I, "at Keswick? Is he, indeed?" and I spoke with something of a start. For a new idea had been brought to me from his words. For, having come clean to the end of my business with the attorney, I had been casting about during the last few days for some fresh cloak and pretext to cover my diurnal journeys from Blackladies, and here, it seemed to me, was as good a solution of the difficulty as a man could wish. It may be that I set too much stress on the need for such a pretext; it may be that I could have ridden hither and thither about the country without any one turning aside to busy himself about my errand. But, in the first place, I was the youngest scholar of conspiracy certainly in experience, if not quite in years, and I was on that account inclined to exaggerate the value of a mysterious secrecy. I took my responsibilitiesau plus grand sérieux, shrouding them from gaze with an elaborate care, when no one suspected so much as their existence. Moreover, it was the habit of the people in those parts to stay much within their native boundaries; they rarely went afield; indeed, I have heard a dalesman of Howray, by Keswick, confidently assert that at Seatoller, a little village not two miles from Blackladies, the sun never shone between the months of September and March owing to the height of the circumjacent mountains. In a word, those fells which these countrymen saw close before their eyes each morning that they rose, enclosed their country; what lay beyond was foreign land, wherein they had no manner of concern. And this same habit of mind was repeated in their betters, though in a less rude degree. Therefore I thought it did behove me to practise some dissimulation lest either my friends or my enemies should get the wind of my business. So again I said—
"The painter stays at Keswick. And where does he lodge?"
"In the High Street," said Lady Derwentwater; and she named the house.
"But, Mr. Clavering," added the husband, with a laugh, "the painter has a wife, very young and not ill-looking; and he is very jealous. I would warn you to pay no such compliments to her as you have paid to Lady Derwentwater." And he clapped me on the back, and so we went in to dinner.
He was silent through the first courses, and his wife rallied him on his reserve.
"I was thinking," said he, and he roused himself suddenly. "I was thinking," and then he stopped with a whimsical glance at me. "But perhaps I am forestalled."
Lady Derwentwater clapped her hands and gave a little laugh of delight.
"I know," she said, and turned to me. "My husband is the most inveterate match-maker in the kingdom, Mr. Clavering. He is like any old maid that sits by the window planning matrimony for every couple that passes in the streets. I should like to dress him up in a gown of linsey-woolsey and lappets of bone-lace."
"That's unfair," he returned "For there is this difference between the old maid and me—she is a match-maker by theory, I through experience."
He spoke lightly, as befitted him in the presence of an acquaintance, but his eyes were upon his wife's face, and her eyes met his. She reddened ever so little, and looked at her plate. Then she sent a shyish glance towards me, another to her husband—and all her heart was pulsing in that—and so again to her plate, with a ripple of happy laughter. I seemed to be trespassing upon the intimacy of a couple but half an hour married—and there were children asleep in their cots upstairs. A pang of genuine envy shot through me, the which Lady Derwentwater remarked, though she misunderstood it For—
"James," she said, turning reproachfully to her husband, "there is Mr. Clavering absolutely disconcerted, and no wonder. Darby and Joan may be well enough by themselves, but with a guest they are the most impertinent people in the world."
"True," said he, "and if Mr. Clavering patronises Herbert, he will have enough of Darby and Joan to sicken him for his lifetime, though it is a Darby and Joan in the April rather than the autumn of their years," he added, with a smile.
"Nay," I interrupted, "to tell the truth, I was thinking of the big, empty galleries of Blackladies."
"There!" he exclaimed, triumphantly, "Mr. Clavering justifies my match-making. Out of his own mouth he justifies me. We must marry him. Now, to whom?" and once or twice he patted the table with the flat of his hand in a weighty deliberation.
His wife broke into a ringing laugh.
"James, you are incorrigible," says she,
"There is Miss Burthwaite," says he.
"Impossible," says I. "I have met her. She says nothing but 'O La!' and 'Well, there!' and shakes her curls, and giggles."
"Her vocabulary is limited," he allowed "But there's the widow at Portinscale."
"She swears," I objected.
"Only when she's coursing," he corrected. "But, no matter, there's——"
"Nay," said I, interrupting his list. "This is no time, I take it, for a man to think of marrying. For who knows but what the country may be ablaze from sea to sea before we are three months older."
With that a sudden silence fell upon as all, and I sat inwardly cursing myself for the heedlessness which had prompted so inopportune a saying. Looking back upon that evening now, it seems to me as though all the disaster with which that year of 1715 was heavy, and near its time, for her, for him—ay, and for me, too, projected its shadow over our heads. I looked into their faces, grown at once grave and predestinate; the shadow was there, a cloud upon their brows, a veil across the brightness of their eyes. And then very solemnly my Lord Derwentwater rose from his chair, and lifted up his glass. The light from candle and lamp flashed upon the goblet, turning the wine to a ruby fire.
"The King!" he said simply, without passion, without heat. But the simplicity had in it something august. We also rose to our feet.
"The King!" he said again, his eyes fixed and steady upon the dark panels over against him, as though there he read the picture of his destiny. And so he drained his glass, pledging his life and his home in that wine he drank, making it sacramental.
We followed his example, and so sat ourselves down again. But, as you may think, there was little talk of any kind between us after that Lord Derwentwater made no effort at all that way, but remained engrossed in silence, with all his thoughts turned inwards. Once or twice his wife sought to break through the spell with some trivial word about the country-side, but ever her eyes turned with concern towards her husband's face, and ever the words flickered out upon her lips. And for my part, being sensible that my indiscretion had brought about this melancholy cloud, I seconded her but ill. At last, and just as I was intending to rise up and take my leave, Lord Derwentwater starts forward in his chair.
"I have it!" he cried triumphantly, bringing his fist smack upon the table.
"Well?" asked his wife, leaning forward.
"I have it!" he repeated, turning to me.
"What?" I asked anxiously.
"There's Dorothy Curwen, of Applegarth," said he, laying a finger on my arm; and at that we all fell to laughing like children, as though the unexpected rejoinder had been the wittiest sally in the world. "It would be very appropriate, too," he continued, with a laugh, "for it was rumoured that Mr. Jervas Rookley was paying his attentions in that quarter at one time, and the girl deserves a better fate."
"Jervas Rookley?" said I, curiously. "You knew him, of course. What sort of a man was he?"
For a moment there was a pause.
"The honestest man in the world," replied Lord Derwentwater—"to look at. But there it ends. His honesty, Mr. Clavering, is all on the outside of him, like the virtues of a cinnamon tree. He should have been a sailor. It was ever his wish, and maybe the hindrance to its fulfilment warped him."
How that evening lives again in my memories! Indeed, enough happened not so long after its event to keep it for ever green within my thoughts. I recalled Lord Derwentwater's solemn toasting of the King, when, no later than the next February, he went, with the King's name upon his tongue, to the block on Tower Hill. I recalled his wife's loving glance and happy laugh—with what pity!—when, dressed as a fishwife, she crept to Temple Bar and bribed the guardians of that gate to drop into her apron his head fixed there on the spikes. And more—that evening was a finger-post to me, pointing the road; but, alas! a finger-post that I passed unheeding, and only remembered after that I had gone astray into a slough.
For that device of a picture was fixed firmly in my mind, and I acted in the consequence of the thought. I rode home to Blackladies that night, and passed at once into the great hall. A fire of logs was burning on the hearth—for even in August I felt at times the nights fall chilly there—and the glow of the flames played upon the portraits of the Rookleys, dancing them into frowns and smiles and glances, as though the faces lived. Father and son, master and heir, they were ranged orderly about the walls in a double row, the father above the heir, who in his turn figured painted anew as the master. I turned to the lackey, a roughish fellow named Luke Blacket who had admitted me.
"Is Mr. Ashlock still up?"
"He is in the office, sir, I think," he answered in some doubt or hesitation. "I will go and see."
"I will go myself." And I crossed the hall.
A man was sitting at the table with his wig off, and his head was bald. His back was towards me, and he did not hear me enter, so engrossed was he about his papers. His pen scratched and scratched as if all time was against him. It was doubtless a fancy, but it seemed to me to run ever quicker and quicker as I stood in the doorway. Behind me the house was very dark and silent; only this pen was scratching across the paper nimble like a live thing. I stepped forward; I heard a startled cry, and Jonnage Aron stood facing me, with his mouth dropping and a look of terror in his eyes.
I waited for him to speak, comprehending neither his fear nor his business in my factor's office. At last in a jerky, trembling voice, resting one hand upon the table to steady him, he asked wherein he could serve me.
"It was Mr. Ashlock I needed," I replied.
"He is not here, sir," faltered Aron, looking about him like a trapped beast.
"I can see that for myself, Where is he?"
"I don't know, sir," and his confusion increased, "in bed, maybe. Shall I send him to you?"
He made a hasty movement as though he would escape from further questioning.
"No," said I, "stay where you are," and I stepped forward to the table. I took up the last paper he had been writing; the ink was still wet upon it, and I saw that it was a letter to one of my tenants in Johnny Wood concerning some improvements of which I had spoken to Ashlock.
"You do the work I pay my steward for," I said. "And how comes that about?"
"Very seldom, sir," he babbled out; "once or twice only, when Mr. Ashlock has been busy. It is not well done," and he made as though he would take the paper from my hands, "for I am no clerk, but he told me the letter was not of the first importance."
I looked at the sharp, precise characters of the letter.
"I'll tell you what is not well done, Aron," I cried in some heat, "and that is your excuse. The handwriting here tells of practice, and I see that you thrust your pen behind your ear."
Aron's yellow face flushed a dull red. He gave a start and plucked the pen from behind his ear; and the impulsive movement ludicrously betrayed his sense of detection.
"Ah!" said I with a sneer. "You had best ask Mr. Ashlock in the future to provide you with the excuse at the same time that he provides you with the work."
I bent over the table to examine the other papers which were littered upon it I had just time to remark that they were all in Aron's handwriting when a sharp click sounded through the silent house, not loud, but very clear, like the cocking of a trigger. The door was open; I stepped into the passage and peered along it. Aron moved uneasily in the room at my side, and his movement brought him betwixt me and the lamp, so that a shadow fell across my face and on the passage wall. I realized that I had been standing visible and distinct in a panel of light that was thrown from the open doorway. Aron moved again out of the light. I took a couple of paces into the dark, and again stretched forward, peering in front of me. I could see well nigh the length of the house. The corridor in which I stood ran straight to the hall. On the far side of the hall, opposite to me, there opened a wide gallery, which was closed at the end by a parlour, and this parlour lay at the east end of the house, and gave on to the topmost terrace of the garden. The door of the parlour stood open, so that I saw right through it to the moonlight shining white upon the window-panes. But I saw more than this. I saw the window opening—it was the catch of the window which I had heard—and a man, with his hat pulled down upon his brows and a heavy cloak about him, stealing in. I was the more astonished at the sight because Ashlock had informed me that there was no outlet from the garden at all; and that I had considered to be true, since on one side a cliff rose sheer above it, while on the other side and at the end it was enclosed with a sunk fence of stone. The intruder closed the window and came a-tiptoe down the passage. I drew close against the wall and held my breath. He passed by me insensible of my presence and walked into the room, and as he came into the light I saw that he was holding the ends of his peruke in his mouth. I did not, however, on that account fail to recognise that the new-comer was my steward. I followed very softly close upon his heels.
"Ashlock!" he began, and would have said more, but Aron held up a finger to his lips and grimaced at him.
I closed the door behind me with a bang and leaned against its panels. The steward swung round abruptly.
"And what stress of business keeps Mr. Ashlock so late from his bed?" I asked; and added pleasantly, "By the way, which of you is Mr. Ashlock?"
Seldom have I seen a man so completely taken aback, as my steward was then, and I was in the mind to profit by his confusion.
"And which of you is Mr.——" I continued, and came all at once to a dead stop. For the strangest suspicion flashed into my mind.
"I rode over to the farmer of Johnny Wood," explained the steward, and Aron's brows went up into his forehead, as well they might, "thinking that a word with him would expedite the business."
"It was a pity then," I returned, "that you kept Aron up so late writing a letter on that very subject."
I picked up the paper from the table and placed it in his hands. His face puckered for a second and then smoothed again. He read it through from beginning to end with the completest nonchalance.
"It will do very well," he said easily to Aron, and then turned to me with a smile. "The letter, of course, is a usual formality."
"Surely an unnecessary one," I insisted.
"Men of business," he returned suavely, "will hold it the reverse. I presume, sir, that you have some urgent need of me."
I recovered myself with a laugh.
"Not urgent," I replied, "but since you are here——" I took up the lamp from the table and went into the passage. The steward followed me, and after him, though at some distance, Aron stumbled in the dark. So we came into the hall. I held up the lamp above my head. At one point, in the lower row of pictures, there was a gap; the oak panels made as it were a black hollow amongst the bright colours of the figures, and the hollow was just beneath the portrait of Sir John.
I pointed an arm to it.
"It is the one vacant space left in the hall."
Ashlock glanced sharply at me.
"Mr. Jervas Rookley's picture should have hung there," he replied in a rising tone, which claimed the prerogative of that space still for Mr. Jervas Rookley.
"But it did not," I replied. "The space is vacant, and since it is the fashion of the house that the master's portrait should hang in the hall, why, I will take my predecessors for my example."
Ashlock took a quick step forward as though pushed by some instinct to get between me and the wall, and turned upon me such a look of perplexity and distrust, that for a moment I was well-nigh dissuaded from the project.
I heard a step behind me. It was Jonnage Aron drawing nearer. I turned and gave the lamp to him to hold, bidding him stand further off, and I said with a careless laugh, though I fixed my eyes significantly upon Ashlock—
"My successor has full licence from me to displace it when his time comes to inherit, but for the present my picture will hang there."
Ashlock looked me steadily In the eyes. The distrust faded out of his face, but the perplexity remained and deepened.
"Your picture, sir?" he asked in a wondering tone, as though he would be asking what in the devil's name I needed with a picture at all.
"Yes, Mr. Ashlock," said I with a swaggering air, which I doubt not was vilely overdone, "my picture. And why not, if you please?"
"It must needs be painted first," he said.
"That is very true," I replied. "I had even thought of that myself, and so apt an occasion has presented itself, that it would be folly to disregard it. For a painter has but lately come to Keswick. My Lord Derwentwater spoke of him to me, and indeed showed me some signal evidence of his skill."
"Lord Derwentwater?" exclaimed Ashlock, In a curious change of tone. The perplexity in its turn began to die off his face, and it was succeeded by an eager curiosity. It seemed as though the name gave to him a glimmering of comprehension. Though what it was that he comprehended I could not tell.
"Yes, Lord Derwentwater told me of the man," I repeated, anxious to colour my pretext with all the plausibility of which it was capable. "Mr. Anthony Herbert——"
"Mr. Anthony Herbert?" questioned Ashlock, slowly.
"It is the painter's name," said I, and he seemed to be, as it were, savouring it in his mind. "You will not have heard it before. Mr. Herbert has painted a portrait of Lady Derwentwater," and I turned away and got me to my room, with Aron to light the way. I left Ashlock standing in the hall, and as I mounted the lower steps of the staircase, I heard him murmur to himself in a tone of reflection—
"Mr. Anthony Herbert!"—and he shook his head and moved away.
Now, some half an hour afterwards, as I was lying in bed, a thought occurred to me. I got me to the door and opened it. The house was still as a pool. I took my candle in my hand and crept to the stairhead. The moonlight pouring through the tall windows, lay in great silver stripes upon the floor. I stood for a little and listened. Once or twice a board of the staircase cracked; once or twice an ember spurted into flame and chattered on the hearth, but that was all. I stole downstairs, not without a queer shame that I should be creeping about my own house. At the bottom I lighted my candle, and shading it with my hand, crossed swiftly to the vacant space among the portraits. I held the light close against the panels. Yes, there were the splintered holes where the nails had been driven in.
I lowered the candle till it was level with the lowest rim of the picture-frames on either side of the space. Yes, there was a dimming of the oak, like breath upon a window-pane, where the edge of a picture had rubbed and rested against it. I rose upright, blew the candle out, and stood in the dark, thinking. "Mr. Jervas Rookley's portrait should have hung there," he had said. Ithadhung there—not a doubt of it. Was it destroyed, I wondered? Was it in some lumber-room, hidden away? And I remembered a room in the upper part of the house which I had found locked, and was told the key was lost. Why had the picture been removed? Was it so that I might not recognize it? Well, it did not matter so long as I never stumbled across it. I groped my way up the staircase, repeating to myself one sentence from the will, "I must not knowingly support Mr. Jervas Rookley." I did notknow, I said to myself. I might suspect, I might believe, but I had no proof; I did not know. I clutched the phrase to my very heart. I could keep my trust—the estate need not enrich the Hanoverian—Jervas Rookley should come to his own, if God willed it, in his own time. For I did not know. My steward was my steward—no more. What if he was ever out of sight when a visitor reined in his horse at the door? He might be busy in his office. What if another wrote his letters? There was work enough for the steward, and who should blame him for that he lightened his labours, so long as his work was done? I did not know.
Yet how the man must hate me, I thought, as I recalled that hour on the ridge of Coldbarrow Fell.