XVIII
XVIII
XVIII
In the which Sir Percy steals a coach andfour and the living contents thereof andmakes off therewith at breakneckspeed for life and death.
In the which Sir Percy steals a coach andfour and the living contents thereof andmakes off therewith at breakneckspeed for life and death.
In the which Sir Percy steals a coach and
four and the living contents thereof and
makes off therewith at breakneck
speed for life and death.
At this very moment, two horsemen, sorry mounted enough, especially the master, are rounding the turn of the woodland path and about to emerge upon the open next the heath. He who rides the lame roan has his eyes bent upon the ground, a thousand sad and conflicting thoughts crowding his brain, as ’tis impossible even to urge his hurt steed, and a jog-trot is all that can be got out of her ever again. Garratt Lane had sent him away only with his own again.
“Sir Percy, with submission, Sir,” exclaimsGrigson, “this be Farnham Heath, Sir, and, ’pon my life, Sir!” jumping from his saddle and darting to the grassy side of the way, “a rapier, Sir Percy!” picking it up and dragging with it the straggling bed-cord and its appending bundle.
Percy leaped to the ground and seized the weapon.
“Grigson!” cried he, “there’s been foul work hereabouts. This is the sword of a gentleman I know, or my name’s not Percy de Bohun! He is a scurvy fellow, and my enemy, but if he has fallen among thieves, by the heaven above us! I’ll rescue him, even if ’tis to punish him later according to my own will. Take the rapier.”
As he hands it back to his man, the bed-cord from the Queen and Artichoke, being a full century old, gives entirely away and My Lady Peggy’s duds, long tail of dark hair, pins, needles, whatever else beside, fall, scatter, topsy-turvy to the ground, and at the very same moment Percy sees before him, as in a nest among the sedges and ferns of the marshy brookland, the wig that Her Ladyship had flung off, and a scrap of tumbled paper addressed to himself, flapping, spiked on a thistle-topnear it! Thunderstruck, he is about to read it, when Grigson, who has gone on afoot a few steps, starts back, and, reckless of all things, seizes his master’s arm and drags him to the turn of the road.
“Sir Percy! Hist! For the love of God, Sir, look!”
Thrusting the bit of paper into his waistcoat, Percy gasps and gazes. He beholds Sir Robin and his man lifting a limp and slender form, ill-defined, ’tis true, in its swathe of camlet cloak, into the coach; he beholds a head of dark short hair, a face of ashen pallor, and, in two seconds more, before he can rush back and leap into his saddle, motioning Grigson to do the same, the coach containing Sir Robin and his prize is dashing as fast as whip, spur, sixteen thoroughbred legs, and a backing-up of wholesome terror can urge it, over the bleak and gruesome waste of Farnham Heath!
“’Slife! Grigson, man,” cries Percy, digging steel into the poor roan’s flanks till they spurt blood in a stream. “We must overtake ’em, unhorse ’em, spill out the wretch inside; I’ll into thecoach then to protect the lady, you mount the leader and gallop us over the heath for your life!”
“Trust me, Sir Percy,” answers Grigson from a length behind his master. “God grant, Sir, that the roan drop not out of the race and leave us but one saddle betwixt you and me, Sir.”
“Poor beast,” says Percy, pricking her hard and striking her shoulder with the flat of his rapier. “She’ll die, and in a good cause if she gain me the goal.”
And all the while they’re speaking, flash and crack go the whips of Sir Robin’s postilions, and Sir Robin’s splendid beasts cover the ground with a swing and a will that keeps the coach rocking, but yet awakens not Lady Peggy, whose dark cropped head reposes on the crooked shoulder of Sir Robin, while her white eyelids remain sealed and no quiver of returning consciousness thrills about her drawn and bloodless lips.
“Gad!” exclaims Percy, as he beholds the vehicle swinging and spinning farther and farther from him, and as Grigson’s black now is up nose and nose with his own expiring mare. “Gad, girl,” bending his lips to the roan’s laid-back ear, “goon! help me to save her! to reach her; go on, I say, in God’s name!”
As if the faithful creature comprehended her master’s entreaty, with that not uncommon last flash of superhuman strength that inheres in man and beast alike, the roan raised her fine head in the air, pricked her ears, stretched out her neck, gathered herself up with a twitch of her nerves that thrilled to her rider’s heart, and off! as in her best days, when she could distance the fleetest mount in the county; off, with the whirl and whirr of those coach-wheels beckoning to her; off, with that pair of straining eyes, those parted lips, blessing her as she began to gain on Sir Robin,—began to? nay, ’twas all a matter of beginning and ending in a breath. Before the postilions, amid their own clatter and calling, had caught hint of the pursuit, the roan was up with the windows out of which the apprehensive little Baronet was peering; his scream of terror:
“Highwaymen! Faster! On! lads, on! A hundred pounds if we outrun ’em! On!” was their first advertisement of danger.
But while the two were drawing their hangersfrom their belts, Sir Percy, with a swerving dash, pulled the roan on her hind legs directly in front of the galloping leaders. ’Twas but an interposition of Providence (coupled with very excellent cool-headed horsemanship) that he was not then and there dispatched into the hereafter.
The leaders plunged, grinding the wheelers with their hind hoofs; the wheelers fell back of a heap, smashing in the fine front glass and cutting Sir Robin across the lip, but not so much as waking his burden from her deathlike sleep.
“Down with ye!” cries Sir Percy, a pistol in each hand, as Grigson rides up with another brace to reinforce his master, putting a hand as well to the quieting of the coach horses.
“Aye, aye, Sir! but spare our lives and we’ll do your bidding!” cry Sir Robin’s lackeys, leaping to the ground.
“We’ve not a groat betwixt us, Your Honor, on our life!”
“I want no groats, nor guineas either!” says Percy, now leaving his man to cover the steeds and the postilions, while he jumps off the roan’s back and springs to the side of the coach.
To wrest the door from the feeble clutch of the shrieking little gentleman from Kent; to open it; seize him, stopping his frantic and craven cries with a thrust of a pocket napkin in his mouth; to haul him out and send him spinning over the turf with his gold and silver scattering from purse and pockets, is, with Sir Percy, the work of a very few seconds.
“Mercy! Mercy! Mr. Highwayman!” whimpers the Baronet, cringing on his knees, as Grigson lifts himself up on the off leader’s back and Percy props the swooning figure within the coach.
“’Slife, Sir, whoever you are! Raise your eyes! I am Sir Percy de Bohun, at your service any time three hours hence.”
Sir Robin glances up, his crooked little legs now bowing more into an arc than before, as he hears the dread name of his rival.
Clapping hand to hilt, however, he stands up.
“Sir,” says he, pushed into a valiance he has no smallest sympathy with, solely from fear that Lady Peggy may have open ears by this time. “Sir, that Lady is my affianced. I command you, quit her and leave us to pursue our journey in peace.D’ye hear, Sir?” Sir Robin brandishes his weapon, now reinforced by the approach of his servants. “I’ll stick you where you stand, Sir!” shouts McTart, prancing a bit nearer and actually touching Percy’s shoulder with the point of his weapon,—be it remembered de Bohun’s back was toward him as he leaned into the coach arranging the cushions.
“Will you!” says Sir Percy, coolly turning and seizing the little man’s blade and administering therewith to its owner a smart box on his out-flapping ears. “Had I time to waste,” adds Percy, now jumping into the coach, “I’d leave your carcass here. Put up your pistol, Sir,” says he, aiming his own straight at Sir Robin’s now un-wigged pate, “or, damn you! you’ll be cold inside a second. On with you, Grigson,” calls master to man. “Life and death are in this matter. If the four beasts, and you, too, drop at the finish, get us to Kennaston faster than the wind travels.”
Even while he speaks, he watches the still white face so near him with his finger on his trigger, Sir Robin discreetly backing away and rending the air with noisy and impotent curses; then a plunge, along, resounding call from Grigson; the two lackeys agog at finding themselves alive, Sir Robin’s coach starts on as if the very devil himself were in its wake.
Percy does not draw Peggy to him; he lays her back among the pillows; he bathes her head and lips and hands with liquor from his flask; he holds the slender fingers in his palm, as, amid awful terror lest his Lady die, he is racked with consternation and wonder at the present outcome, and in his distraught mind endeavors to patch and piece out the strange network of the mystery now beginning to solve itself before his eyes.
As he prays God to spare her, if not for him, for some better man, a shrill, weird sound smites his ear.
Percy throws back his head and listens; ’tis the long roan neighing for the last time back on Farnham Heath, where Sir Robin, picking up his money, dejectedly shivering like an aspen (since he would rake hell with a nail to secure a ha’penny, and fairly weeps at the six-pences he can’t recover), presently and ruefully, one of his men behind him, pillion fashion, t’other running at his side,turns back to Tooting on top of Grigson’s black, his fox teeth chattering in his wide mouth as he congratulates himself on his second and miraculous escape from the famous Sir Percy de Bohun.
’Twas, in sooth, for this latter a bitterly sad hour which was spent in covering the distance between the heath and the Castle. Revived a bit, no doubt by the fumes of the liquor, Her Ladyship’s lids quivered, contracted, and finally opened, but it was with a distraught and unrecognizing stare that she surveyed her companion.
“’S death!” cries she aloud, her feeble right hand seeking her sword-side, “I tell ye, Chock, your mistress is now full-fledged a man! Hist, girl, an you love me, keep it close. Sir Percy’s wed to Lady Diana! Aye!” Peggy laughs with such a heart-break in her voice and such tears in her winkers as causes Percy a pang of cruelest misery.
“Tut, tut, Chock! What’s his marriage to me? Fetch the pack, Mr. Brummell; aye, I’m at your service, loo, crimp, or whist! I, Sir Robin McTart, ’ll lay you a thousand to nothing! Zounds! Sir, fetch coffee to stain my face with! and where,oh, where’s my precious bundle with my woman’s duds in’t, my patch-box that I burned, and the long tail of my hair I cut off when you, Chock, bought me the counterfeit of Sir Robin’s own wig at the perruquier’s in Lark Lane. Aye! So!—No! No! No!” and now a shiver and a lower tone, as Lady Peggy, with her wide wild eyes, shrank back in the far corner of the jolting coach.
“My Lady Mother,—I command you, Chock, tell her not of my escapades; and when Percy comes home with his bride, swear him, as will I, I was off pleasuring in Kent at my godmother’s. Mother! Mother!” cries she, piteously now, as Percy’s arms enfold her, and a thousand fond words jostle each other on his lips.
Then she sinks into the stupor again, and remains so until the great coach rolls through the park and up to the entrance of her home; until Percy, with few words, lays her in the stout arms of the faithful Chockey and sees her mother bending above her; her father distract in his night-rail and cap; cook wailing, being from Kerry and prompt at any sort of hubbub; Bickers’ toothless mouth agape with groans; sees his Lady carriedup, limp, little hands down-hanging, to her chamber out of his sight.
Sir Percy leaves Peggy’s bundle, which he had gathered up as best he could and slung about his shoulders, on the table in the hall. The little scrap of paper he carries away with him and reads when he reaches home that night; ’tis Her Ladyship’s note to him, written on the fly-leaf of the prayer-book of the young Curate of Brook-Armsleigh Village. As he scans it, presses it to his lips, sits until dawn, remembering many things since he parted from his Lady long ago in the parlor at Kennaston, the most of the mystery is unraveled by light of the scrawl; and the delirium of his joy at knowing himself to have been in her heart almost equals the mad anxiety that consumes him now as to her life and well-being.