CHAPTER XICHAPTER XIThe Psychology of cowardice
CHAPTER XI
SINCE that first strange hour of the King’s revelation, Gamaliel Hooker had sat in his chimney-side, except for the few brief minutes in which he had done his Majesty’s behests. Very naturally, in the first shock of the King’s appearance his wits had deserted him. An event of such magnitude had never happened in his life before.
It was not likely to happen in it again.
Presently, with the King upstairs out of the way, and his generous potations to strengthen him and to calm his nerves, the landlord’s wits strayed back slowly, one at a time. To think that the King should come in the guise of a serving-man, and that he should be such a blind fool as not to recognise him when he came! And ye gods, to think what sacrilegious hands he had laid upon the royal person! To think how roughly, not to say angrily, he had addressed him! Gamaliel never came so near being a sensitive man, as in the first horrified five minutes of his returning faculties.
These were the secondary thoughts which occupied his mind at first. But soon there were others. As he sat sipping his liquor and ruminating over the events of the morning, he felt them dimly to be shaping themselves. They were gradually coming forward. And they would have to be grappled with and considered on their merits. The landlord stiffened the fibres of his brain for the task.
One fact came uppermost. It would assertitself; it refused to be blinked. Now that the King was indeed here in his inn, the utmost must be made of him. For was there not to a poor man a fortune in the royal person? To some people it might seem distasteful to sell the King; yea, even to him, Gamaliel Hooker, when he thought of it in cold blood, it did not seem a pleasant thing. It would have its compensations, though.
If, however, the King was to be taken in his house, he must act at once. He would be hardly likely to tarry. And yet he might. As Will Jackson, he had already stayed two days. He was probably waiting for his friends. Still, it would be by no means safe to count upon his remaining. There was yet one drawback to sending for the soldiers. When they came they would most certainly take away the wounded cavalier as well as the King. And Gamaliel had not yet had time to deprive him and his wife of their money and jewels. That was indeed a fly in the ointment. In a sense, it considerably lessened the price upon the head of the King.
Still, it would be folly to risk losing the King’s price for the sake of a sum paltry by comparison. He would dearly like to grasp every penny. It was his nature; but in attempting to do so, he must not throw away the substance for the shadow. With a sudden access of resolution he called for his son.
“Joseph,” he said, in his lowest tone, “do you saddle the tit this minute. I want you to ride right away to Woolden Magna, and ask for Captain Culpeper at Master Parkin’s farm. You know it well. ’Tis on the top of Woolden Hill, overlooking the sea. And when you see Captain Culpeper, you are to whisper in his private ear: ‘The King, Charles Stuart, is at the “Sea Rover”; do you come at once.’”
Joseph looked a little bewildered.
“The King!” he said, excitedly.
“Hush, hush, thou fool!” said the nervous Gamaliel. “If we are overheard, we are undone.”
Turning round in his anxiety, he became aware that although Cicely the serving-maidwas ostensibly cleaning the warming-pan, she was really listening with all her ears.
“My wench,” said her master, sharply, “do you go into the cellar and broach that small barrel of October. I told ye to do so yesterday.”
When Cicely had disappeared to do his bidding, Gamaliel continued his instructions.
“Now, Joseph,” he said, in the same eager whisper as before, “you understand. You will do all this quickly and secretly, and your father’s fortune is made. But, Joseph, I think instead o’ saying to Captain Culpeper, ‘The King is at the “Sea Rover,”’ you had better say: ‘My father, Master Gamaliel Hooker, hath sent me to tell you that the King is at the “Sea Rover.”’ The Captain must understand that I sent ye, Joseph. But perhaps it would be better that I writ this information down on a piece of paper, and signed my name to it. Nobody can then take the credit of it from me.”
With this cunning end in view, he caused Joseph to procure him the materials for writing.He thereupon committed the message to paper with much anxious care and many laborious twistings of the mouth. At last it was written and sanded, signed and sealed, and delivered into Joseph’s hand. Five minutes afterwards Joseph’s nag stood at the door, and Joseph himself was superintending Cicely whilst she put up for him a hunch of bread and cheese to bear with him for his dinner. Then it was that the landlord suddenly rose from his chair, and began anxiously to hobble about the kitchen. Just as Joseph had put the bread and cheese in his pocket, and was going out of the door, the landlord stayed him.
“Joseph,” he said, hoarsely, “give me back again the paper I have writ, and go and unsaddle the tit. We will let this matter bide a bit; I must think upon it.”
He had his fourth glass of hot rum-and-water to aid him to do so. He meditated upon the grave matter until his head was ready to split. He was taken with a vacillation that he had never experienced before. His natural instincts were all for betraying the King. Therelay his pecuniary advantage, and even his personal safety. Should it become known that he had harboured the man, knowing him to be the King, he was as good as dead. A hundred times he arrived at that plain, inevitable conclusion; yet a hundred times, at the very moment he was about to act, his resolution weakened, and then appeared to snap. Some strange tremor would arise in the remotest recesses of his brain.
The landlord did not know what name to put to it. Conscience it was not. He knew himself too intimately ever to bring such an accusation against the power of his understanding. Pity it was not. Fear it was not. It might be superstition, yet he hardly thought so. It was the oddest thing in life, and not the least disconcerting. It was his plain duty to himself to sell the King, and yet a vague scruple he was unable to define had the power to restrain him.
He reasoned with himself; he fought with himself. It was too monstrous that a chance which could never occur again could be allowedto slip by. Long ago had he made up his mind what to do in the case of the King’s coming to his inn. And here was the King upstairs; and here was he going over the well-trodden ground again, reviewing all his settled conclusions, when every minute was of the first importance. Any moment the King might turn his back on the “Sea Rover” forever. Yes, he would cast out the qualm that was debasing his mind. It was sapping all its vigorous faculties. But try as he might, he could not do so. It was ingrained in the very marrow of his brain.
Minute by minute his chances were ticking away. Had he only had the strength of purpose to permit Joseph to start on his errand, he would have been halfway there by now! The malady that was besetting him had never come upon him before. It was the most singular he had ever experienced, or even heard of. It had already caused him to act in a manner for him unparalleled. To keep Joseph back for no cause whatever was, the poor landlord considered, the act of a madman. It was so entirelyopposed to reason; never before had he been blind to its dictates.
He called for his fifth glass of hot rum-and-water. By God! if he could not do it sober, he would do it drunk! To think that he was throwing away a fortune without the least reason for doing so! Again he got up and began to hobble unsteadily about the kitchen floor. He began to pant, to gasp; the sweat poured out of him, although the weather was still bitterly cold. Was he the master of his own mind, or was he not? That was what the whole thing amounted to. Had he lived to be sixty ere he put that question for the first time? But he would answer it.
Yes; he would answer it. He tossed off the sixth glass. The tremor was not quite so distinct in his brain. He felt a little stronger. He must stiffen every nerve of his resolution. Never mind the sweat shining on his forehead, his agitated breast, or his trembling flabby hands. He was slowly getting his teeth upon the bit; he was getting some control over this strange insanity.
The seventh glass, and he triumphed. It was a hard-won struggle; none harder. But at last, as the shadows of the wintry evening came stealing down the rocks, and Cicely lit the first candle, the struggle came to an end. Each individual nerve in Gamaliel’s body rioted within him; he was as unsubstantial as pulp; but at last his resolution was running clear and strong. The little flickering tremor that had a thousand times routed it and put it to shame was now dead. Hot rum-and-water had ultimately done its business. The crisis was past. He was master of himself after all.
In a voice so hoarse it resembled the croak of a raven, he summoned his son a second time.
“Joseph,” he said, “I want you to go now. Go speedily. Time presses; the business is very urgent. And when you come to Captain Culpeper, tell him to make all haste. It is now a little after four o’clock; at a little after eight he and his men should be at the door. Be a good lad now. Do not tarry an instant, and your old father’s fortune is made, likewise your own.”
Joseph listened to the low, excited utterance of the landlord in a purely mechanical manner. He was neither uplifted nor depressed; he was neither surprised nor disappointed. He took the sealed paper once more in his hands, and stepped out without a word into the sea-broken silence of the wintry evening. A little afterwards his horse was out of the stable, and he rode away.
The landlord still hobbled up and down the inn kitchen, until he heard the hoofs of the horse die away in the distance. He then sat down in his chair by the fireside for the first time for more than an hour. His head fell onto his chest. He was utterly worn out and overcome.