"Well, Sir," I found myself answering, "I hope you see that I have much to thank God for." And while this was being reported to him I recalled with a twinge my dejected thoughts of the morning. "I have made many mistakes," I began again.
But without seeming to hear, Master d'Arfet began to dictate to Martin, who, after a polite pause to give me time to finish if I cared to, translated in his turn.
"I have told you my name. It is Thomas d'Arfet, and I come fromBristol. You have heard my name before?"
I nodded, keeping my eyes on his.
"I also have heard of you, and of the two captains in whose company you discovered these islands."
I nodded again. "Their names," said I, "are John Gonsalvez Zarco and Tristram Vaz. You may visit them, if you please, on the greater island, which they govern between them."
He bent his head. "The fame of your discovery, Sir, reached England some years ago. I heard at the time, and paid it just so much heed as one does pay to the like news—just so much and no more. Themannerof your discovery of the greater island came to my ears less than a twelvemonth ago, and then but in rumours and broken hints. Yet here am I, close on my eightieth year, voyaging more than half across the world to put those broken hints together and resolve my doubts. Tell me"—he leaned forward over the table, peering eagerly into my eyes—"there was a tale concerning the island—concerning a former discovery—"
"Yes," said I, as he broke off, his eyes still searching mine, "there was a tale concerning the island."
"Brought to you by a Spanish pilot, who had picked it up on theBarbary coast?"
"You have heard correctly," said I. "The pilot's name was Morales."
"Well, it is to hear that tale that I have travelled across the world to visit you."
"Ah, but forgive me, Sir!" I poured out another glassful of wine, drew up my chair, rested both elbows on the table, and looked at him over my folded hands. "You must first satisfy me what reason you have for asking."
"My name is Thomas d'Arfet," he said.
"I do not forget it: but maybe I should rather have said—What aim you have in asking. I ought first to know that, methinks."
In his impatience he would have leapt from his chair had his old limbs allowed. Pressing the table with white finger-tips, he sputtered some angry words of English, and then fell back on the interpreter Martin, who from first to last wore a countenance fixed like a mask.
"Mother of Heaven, Sir! You see me here, a man of eighty, broken of wind and limb, palsied, with one foot in the grave: you know what it costs to fit out and victual a ship for a voyage: you know as well as any man, and far better than I, the perils of these infernal seas. I brave those perils, undergo those charges, drag my old limbs these thousands of miles from the vault where they are due to rest—and you ask me if I have any reason for coming!"
"Not at all," I answered. "I perceive rather that you must have an extraordinarily strong reason—a reason or a purpose clean beyond my power of guessing. And that is just why I wish to hear it."
"Men of my age—" he began, but I stopped Martin's translation midway.
"Men of your age, Sir, do not threaten the peace of such islands as these. Men of your age do not commonly nurse dangerous schemes. All that I can well believe. Men of your age, as you say, do not chase a wild goose so far from their chimney-side. But men of your age are also wise enough to know that governors of colonies—ay," for my words were being interpreted to him a dozen at a time and I saw the sneer grow on his face, "even of so poor a colony as this—do not give up even a small secret to the very first questioner."
"But the secret is one no longer. Even in England I had word of it."
"And your presence here," said I, "is proof enough that you learned less than you wanted."
He drew his brows together over his narrow eyes. I think what first set me against the man was the look of those eyes, at once malevolent and petty. You may see the like in any man completely ungenerous. Also the bald skin upon his skull was drawn extremely tight, while the flesh dropped in folds about his neck and under his lean chaps, and the longer I pondered this the more distasteful I found him.
"You forget, Sir," said he—and while Martin translated he still seemed to chew the words—"the story is not known to you only. I can yet seek out the pilot himself."
"Morales? He is dead these three years."
"Your friends, then, upon the greater island. Failing them, I can yet put back to Lagos and appeal to the Infante himself—for doubtless he knows. Time is nothing to me now." He sat his chin obstinately, and then, not without nobility, pushed his glass from him and stood up. "Sir," said he, "I began by asking if you were a happy man. I am a most unhappy one, and (I will confess) the unhappier since you have made it clear that you cannot or will not understand me. In my youth a great wrong was done me. You know my name, and you guess what that wrong was: but you ask yourself, 'Is it possible this old man remembers, after sixty years?' Sir, it is possible, nay, certain; because I have never for an hour forgotten. You tell yourself, 'It cannot be this only: there must be something behind.' There is nothing behind; nothing. I am the Thomas d'Arfet whose wife betrayed him just sixty years ago; that, and no more. I come on no State errand, I! I have no son, no daughter; I never, to my knowledge, possessed a friend. I trusted a woman, and she poisoned the world for me. I acknowledge in return a duty to no man but myself; I have voyaged thus far out of that duty. You, Sir, have thought it fitter to baffle than to aid me—well and good. But by the Christ above us I will follow that duty out; and, at the worst, death, when it comes, shall find me pursuing it!"
He spoke this with a passion of voice which I admired before his man began to interpret: and even when I heard it repeated in level Portuguese, and had time to digest it and extract its monstrous selfishness, I could look at him with compassion, almost with respect. His cheeks had lost their flush almost as rapidly as they had taken it on, and he stood awkwardly pulling at his long bony fingers until the joints cracked.
"Be seated, Sir," said I. "It is clear to me that I must be a far happier man than I considered myself only this morning, since I find nothing in myself which, under any usage of God, could drive me on such a pursuit as yours would seem to be. I may perhaps, without hypocrisy, thank God that I cannot understand you. But this, at any rate, is clear—that you seek only a private satisfaction: and although I cannot tell you the story here and now, something I will promise. As soon as you please I will sail with you to the greater island, and we will call together on Count Zarco. In his keeping lies one of the two copies of Morales' story as we took it down from his lips at Sagres, or, rather, compiled it after much questioning. It shall be for the Count to produce or withhold it, as he may decide. He is a just man, and neither one way nor the other will I attempt to sway him."
Master d'Arfet considered for a while. Then said he, "I thank you: but will you sail with me in my pinnace or in your own?"
"In my own," said I, "as I suspect you will choose to go in yours. I promise we shall outsail you; but I promise also to await your arriving, and give the Count his free choice. If you knew him," I added, "you would know such a promise to be superfluous."
My own pinnace arrived in sight of Funchal two mornings later, and a little after sunrise. We had outsailed the Englishman, as I promised, and lay off-and-on for more than two hours before he came up with us. I knew that Count Zarco would be sitting at this time in the sunshine before his house and above the fennel plain, hearing complaints and administering justice: I knew, moreover, that he would recognise my pinnace at once: and from time to time I laughed to myself to think how this behaviour of ours must be puzzling my old friend.
Therefore I was not surprised to find him already arrived at the quay when we landed; with a groom at a little distance holding his magnificent black stallion. For I must tell you that my friend was ever, and is to this day, a big man in all his ways—big of stature, big of voice, big of heart, and big to lordliness in his notions of becoming display. None but Zarco would have chosen for his title, "Count of the Chamber of the Wolves," deriving it from a cave where his men had started a herd of sea-calves on his first landing and taking seizin of the island. And the black stallion he rode when another would have been content with a mule; and the spray of fennel in his hat; and the ribbon, without which he never appeared among his dependents; were all a part of his large nature, which was guileless and simple withal as any child's.
Now, for all my dislike, I had found the old Englishman a person of some dignity and command: but it was wonderful how, in Zarco's presence, he shrank to a withered creature, a mere applejack without juice or savour. The man (I could see) was eager to get to business at once, and could well have done without the ceremony of which Zarco would not omit the smallest trifle. After the first salutations came the formal escort to the Governor's house; and after that a meal which lasted us two hours; and then the Count must have us visit his new sugar-mills and inspect the Candia vines freshly pegged out, and discuss them. On all manner of trifles he would invite Master d'Arfet's opinion: but to show any curiosity or to allow his guests to satisfy any, did not belong to his part of host—a part he played with a thoroughness which diverted me while it drove the Englishman well-nigh mad.
But late in the afternoon, and after we had worked our way through a second prodigious meal, I had compassion on the poor man, and taking (as we say) the bull by both horns, announced the business which had brought us. At once Zarco became grave.
"My dear Bartholomew," said he, "you did right, of course, to bring Master d'Arfet to me. But why did you show any hesitation?" Before I could answer he went on: "Clearly, as the lady's husband, he has a right to know what he seeks. She left him: but her act cannot annul any rights of his which the Holy Church gave him, and of which, until he dies, only the Holy Church can deprive him. He shall see Morales' statement as we took it down in writing: but he should have the story from the beginning: and since it is a long one, will you begin and tell so much as you know?"
"If it please you," said I, and this being conveyed to Master d'Arfet, while Zarco sent a servant with his keys for the roll of parchment, we drew up our chairs to the table, and I began.
"It was in September, 1419," said I, "when the two captains, John Gonsalvez Zarco and Tristram Vaz, returned to Lagos from their first adventure in these seas. I was an equerry of our master, the Infante Henry, at that time, and busy with him in rebuilding and enlarging the old arsenal on the neck of Cape Sagres; whence, by his wisdom, so many expeditions have been sent forth since to magnify God and increase the knowledge of mankind.
"We had built already the chapel and the library, with its map-room, and the Prince and I were busy there together on the plans for his observatory in the late afternoon when the caravels were sighted: and the news being brought, his Highness left me at work while he rode down to the port to receive his captains. I was still working by lamplight in the map-room when he returned, bringing them and a third man, the old Spaniard Morales.
"Seating himself at the table, he bade me leave my plans, draw my chair over, and take notes in writing of the captains' report. Zarco told the story—he being first in command, and Tristram Vaz a silent man, then and always: and save for a question here and there, the Prince listened without comment, deferring to examine it until the whole had been related.
"Now, in one way, the expedition had failed, for the caravels had been sent to explore the African coast beyond Cape Bojador, and as far south as might be; whereas they had scarcely put to sea before a tempest drove them to the westward, and far from any coast at all. Indeed, they had no hope left, nor any expectation but to founder, when they sighted the island; and so came by God's blessing to the harbour which, in their joy, they named Porto Santo. There, finding their caravels strained beyond their means to repair for a long voyage, and deeming that this discovery well outweighed their first purpose, they stayed but a sufficient time to explore the island, and so put back for Lagos. But their good fortune was not yet at an end: for off the Barbary coasts they fell in with and captured a Spaniard containing much merchandise and two score of poor souls ransomed out of captivity with the Barbary corsairs. 'And among them,' said my friend Gonsalvez, 'your Highness will find this one old man, if I mistake not, to be worth the charges of two such expeditions as ours.'
"Upon this we all turned our eyes upon the Spaniard, who had been shrinking back as if to avoid the lamplight. He must have been a tall, up-standing man in his prime; but now, as Tristram Vaz drew him forward, his knees bowed as if he cringed for some punishment. 'Twas a shock, this fawning carriage of a figure so venerable: but when Tristram Vaz drew off the decent doublet he wore and displayed his back, we wondered no longer. Zarco pushed him into a chair and held a lamp while the Prince examined the man's right foot, where an ankle-ring had bitten it so that to his death (although it scarcely hindered his walking) the very bone showed itself naked between the healed edges of the wound.
"Moreover, when Zarco persuaded him to talk in Spanish it was some while before we could understand more than a word or two here and there. The man had spent close upon thirty years in captivity, and his native speech had all but dried up within him. Also he had no longer any thought of difference between his own country and another: it was enough to be among Christians again: nor could we for awhile disengage that which was of moment from the rambling nonsense with which he wrapped it about. He, poor man! was concerned chiefly with his own sufferings, while we were listening for our advantage: yet as Christians we forbore while he muttered on, and when a word or two fell from him which might be of service, we recalled him to them (I believe) as gently as we could.
"Well, the chaff being sifted away, the grain came to this: His name was Morales, his birthplace Cadiz, his calling that of pilot: he had fallen (as I have said) into the hands of the Moors about thirty years before: and at Azamor, or a little inland, he had made acquaintance with a fellow-prisoner, an Englishman, by name Roger Prince, or Prance. This man had spent the best part of his life in captivity, and at one time had changed his faith to get better usage: but his first master dying at a great age, he passed to another, who cruelly ill-treated him, and under whose abominable punishments he quickly sank. He lay, indeed, at the point of death when Morales happened upon him. Upon some small act of kindness such as one slave may do for another, the two had made friends: and thus Morales came to hear the poor Englishman's story."
Here I broke off and nodded to the Count, who called for a lamp. And so for a few minutes we all sat without speech in the twilight, the room silent save for the cracking of Master d'Arfet's knuckles. When at length the lamp arrived, Zarco trimmed it carefully, unfolded his parchment, spread it on the table, and began to read very deliberately in his rolling voice, pausing and looking up between the sentences while the man Martin translated—
"This is the statement made to me by Roger Prance, the Englishman, Anno MCCCCIX., at various times in the month before he died.
"He said: My name is Roger Prance. I come from St. Lawrence on the River Jo,[A] in England. From a boy I followed the sea in the ships of Master Canynge,[B] of Bristol, sailing always from that port with cargoes of wool, and mostly to the Baltic, where we filled with stock-fish: but once we went south to your own city of Cadiz, and returned with wines and a little spice purchased of a Levantine merchant in the port. My last three voyages were taken in theMary RadclyforRedcliffe. One afternoon" [the year he could not remember, but it may have been 1373 or 1374] "I was idle on the Quay near Vyell's tower, when there comes to me Gervase Hankock, master, and draws me aside, and says he: 'The vessel will be ready sooner than you think,' and named the time—to wit, by the night next following. Now I, knowing that she had yet not any cargo on board, thought him out of his mind: but said he, 'It is a secret business, and double pay for you if you are ready and hold your tongue between this and then.'
[Footnote A: Wick St. Lawrence on the Yeo, in Somerset.]
[Footnote B: Grandfather of the famous merchant, William Canynge.]
"So at the time he named I was ready with the most of our old crew, and all wondering; with the ship but half ballasted as she came from the Baltic and her rigging not seen to, but moored down between the marshes at the opening of the River Avon.
"At ten o'clock then comes a whistle from the shore, and anon in a shore-boat our master with a young man and woman well wrapped, and presently cuts the light hawser we rode by; and so we dropped down upon the tide and were out to sea by morning.
"All this time we knew nothing of our two passengers; nor until we were past the Land's End did they come on deck. But when they did, it was hand in hand and as lovers; the man a mere youngster, straight, and gentle in feature and dress, but she the loveliest lady your eyes ever looked upon. One of our company, Will Tamblyn, knew her at once—as who would not that had once seen her?—and he cried out with an oath that she was Mistress d'Arfet, but newly married to a rich man a little to the north of Bristol. Afterwards, when Master Gervase found that we knew so much, he made no difficulty to tell us more; as that the name of her lover was Robert Machin or Macham, a youth of good family, and that she it was who had hired the ship, being an heiress in her own right.
"We held southward after clearing the land; with intent, as I suppose, to make one of the Breton ports. But about six leagues from the French coast a tempest overtook us from the north-east and drove us beyond Channel, and lasted with fury for twelve days, all of which time we ran before it, until on the fourteenth day we sighted land where never we looked to find any, and came to a large island, thickly wooded, with high mountains in the midst of it.
"Coasting this island we soon arrived off a pretty deep bay, lined with cedar-trees: and here Master Machin had the boat lowered and bore his mistress to land: for the voyage had crazed her, and plainly her time for this world was not long. Six of us went with them in the boat, the rest staying by the ship, which was anchored not a mile from shore. There we made for the poor lady a couch of cedar-boughs with a spare sail for awning, and her lover sat beside her for two nights and a day, holding of her hand and talking with her, and wiping her lips or holding the cup to them when she moaned in her thirst. But at dawn of the second day she died.
"Then we, who slept on the beach at a little distance, being waked by his terrible cry, looked up and supposed he had called out for the loss of the ship. Because the traitors on board of her, considering how that they had the lady's wealth, had weighed or slipped anchor in the night (for certainly there was not wind enough to drag by), and now the ship was nowhere in sight. But when we came to Master Machin he took no account of our news: only he sat like a statue and stared at the sea, and then at his dead lady, and 'Well,' he said; 'is she gone?' We knew not whether he meant the lady or the ship: nor would he taste any food though we offered it, but turned his face away.
"So that evening we buried the body, and five days later we buried Master Machin beside her, with a wooden cross at their heads. Then, not willing to perish on the island, we caught and killed four of the sheep which ran wild thereon, and having stored the boat with their flesh (and it was bitter to taste), and launched it, steered, as well as we could contrive, due east. And so on the eleventh day we were cast on the coast near to Mogador: but two had died on the way. Here (for we were starving and could offer no fight) some Moors took us, and carrying us into the town, sold us into that slavery in which I have passed all my miserable life since. What became of theMary RadclyfI have never heard: nor of the three who came ashore with me have I had tidings since the day we were sold."
Here Zarco came to the end of his reading: and facing again on Master d'Arfet (who sat pulling his fingers while his mouth worked as if he chewed something) I took up the tale.
"All this, Sir, by little and little the pilot Morales told us, there in the Prince's map-room: and you may be sure we kept it to ourselves. But the next spring our royal master must fit out two caravels to colonise Porto Santo; with corn and honey on board, and sugar-canes and vines and (that ever I should say it!) rabbits. Gonsalvez was leader, of course, with Tristram Vaz: and to my great joy the Prince appointed me third in command.
"We sailed from Lagos in June and reached Porto Santo without mishap. Here Gonsalvez found all well with the colonists he had left behind on his former visit. But of one thing they were as eager to tell as of their prosperity: and we had not arrived many hours before they led us to the top of the island and pointed to a dark line of cloud (as it seemed) lying low in the south-west. They had kept watch on this (they said) day by day, until they had made certain it could not be a cloud, for it never altered its shape. While we gazed at it I heard the pilot's voice say suddenly at my shoulder, 'That will be the island, Captain—the Englishman's island!' and I turned and saw that he was trembling. But Gonsalvez, who had been musing, looked up at him sharply. 'All my life' said he, 'I have been sailing the seas, yet never saw landfall like yonder. That which we look upon is cloud and not land.' 'But who,' I asked, 'ever saw a fixed cloud?' 'Marry, I for one,' he answered, 'and every seaman who has sailed beside Sicily! But say nothing to the men; for if they believe a volcano lies yonder we shall hardly get them to cross.' 'Yet,' said Morales, 'by your leave, Captain, that is no volcano, but such a cloud as might well rest over the thick moist woodlands of which the Englishman told me.' 'Well, that we shall discover by God's grace,' Gonsalvez made answer. 'You will cross thither?' I asked. 'Why to be sure,' said he cheerfully, with a look at Tristram Vaz; and Tristram Vaz nodded, saying nothing.
"Yet he had no easy business with his sailors, who had quickly made up their own minds about this cloud and that it hung over a pit of fire. One or two had heard tell of Cipango, and allowed this might be that lost wandering land. 'But how can we tell what perils await us there?' 'Marry, by going and finding out,' growled Tristram Vaz, and this was all the opinion he uttered. As for Morales, they would have it he was a Castilian, a foreigner, and only too eager to injure us Portuguese.
"But Gonsalvez had enough courage for all: and on the ninth morning he and Tristram set sail, with their crews as near mutiny as might be. Me they left to rule Porto Santo. 'And if we never come back,' said Gonsalvez, 'you will tell the Prince thatsomethinglies yonder which we would have found, but our men murdered us on the way—'"
"My dear brother Bartholomew," Gonsalvez broke in, "you are wearying Master d'Arfet, who has no wish to hear about me." And taking up the tale he went on: "We sailed, Sir, after six hours into as thick a fog as I have met even on these seas, and anon into a noise of breakers which seemed to be all about us. So I prayed to the Mother of Heaven and kept the lead busy, and always found deep water: and more by God's guidance than our management we missed the Desertas, where a tall bare rock sprang out of the fog so close on our larboard quarter that the men cried out it was a giant in black armour rising out of the waves. So we left it and the noises behind, and by-and-by I shifted the helm and steered towards the east of the bank, which seemed to me not so thick thereabouts: and so the fog rolled up and we saw red cliffs and a low black cape, which I named the Cape of St. Lawrence. And beyond this, where all appeared to be marshland, we came to a forest shore with trees growing to the water's edge and filling the chasms between the cliffs. We were now creeping along the south of the island, and in clearer weather, but saw no good landing until Morales shouted aft to me that we were opening the Gulf of Cedars. Now I, perceiving some recess in the cliffs which seemed likely to give a fair landing, let him have his way: for albeit we could never win it out of him in words, I knew that the Englishman must have given him some particular description of the place, from the confidence he had always used in speaking of it. So now we had cast anchor, and were well on our way shoreward in the boat before I could be certain what manner of trees clothed this Gulf: but Morales never showed doubt or hesitancy; and being landed, led us straight up the beach and above the tide-mark to the foot of a low cliff, where was a small pebbled mound and a plain cross of wood. And kneeling beside them I prayed for the souls' rest of that lamentable pair, and so took seizin of the island in the names of our King John, Prince Henry, and the Order of Christ. That, Sir, is the story, and I will not weary you by telling how we embarked again and came to this plain which lies at our feet. So much as I believe will concern you you have heard: and the grave you shall look upon to-morrow."
Master d'Arfet had left off cracking his joints, and for a while after the end of the story sat drumming with his finger-tips on the table. At length he looked up, and says he—
"I may suppose, Count Zarco, that as governor of this island you have power to allot and sell estates upon it on behalf of the King of Portugal?"
"Why, yes," answered Gonsalvez; "any new settler in Funchal must make his purchase through me: the northern province of Machico I leave to Tristram Vaz."
"I speak of your southern province, and indeed of its foreshore, the possession of which I suppose to be claimed by the crown of Portugal."
"That is so."
"To be precise I speak of this Gulf of Cedars, as you call it. You will understand that I have not seen it: I count on your promise to take me thither to-morrow. But it may save time, and I shall take it as a favour if—without binding yourself or me to any immediate bargain—you can give me some notion of the price you would want for it. But perhaps"—here he lifted his eyes from the table and glanced at Gonsalvez cunningly—"you have already conveyed that parcel of land, and I must deal with another."
Now Gonsalvez had opened his mouth to say something, but here compressed his lips for a moment before answering.
"No: it is still in my power to allot."
"In England just now," went on Master d'Arfet "we should call ten shillings an acre good rent for unstocked land. We take it at sixpence per annum rent and twenty years' purchase. I am speaking of reasonably fertile land, and hardly need to point out that in offering any such price for mere barren foreshore I invite you to believe me half-witted. But, as we say at home, he who keeps a fancy must pay a tax for it: and a man of my age with no heir of his body can afford to spend as he pleases."
Gonsalvez stared at him, and from him to me, with a puzzled frown.
"Bartholomew," said he, "I cannot understand this gentleman. What can he want to purchase in the Gulf of Cedars but his wife's grave? And yet of such a bargain how can he speak as he has spoken?"
I shook my head. "It must be that he is a merchant, and is too old to speak but as a haggler. Yet I am sure his mind works deeper than this haggling." I paused, with my eyes upon Master d'Arfet's hands, which were hooked now like claws over the table which his fingers still pressed: and this gesture of his put a sudden abominable thought in my mind. "Yes, he wishes to buy his wife's grave. Ask him—" I cried, and with that I broke off.
But Gonsalvez nodded. "I know," said he softly, and turned to theEnglishman. "Your desire Sir, is to buy the grave I spoke of?"
Master d'Arfet nodded.
"With what purpose? Come, Sir, your one chance is to be plain with us. It may be the difference in our race hinders my understanding you: it may be I am a simple captain and unused to the ways and language of the market. In any case put aside the question of price, for were that all between us I would say to you as Ephron the Hittite said to Abraham. 'Hear me, my lord,' I would say, 'what is four hundred shekels of silver betwixt me and thee? Bury therefore thy dead.' But between you and me is more than this: something I cannot fathom. Yet I must know it before consenting. I demand, therefore, what is your purpose?"
Master d'Arfet met him straightly enough with those narrow eyes of his, and said he, "My purpose, Count, is as simple as you describe your mind to be. Honest seaman, I desire that grave only that I may be buried in it."
"Then my thought did you wrong, Master d'Arfet, and I crave your pardon. The grave is yours without price. You shall rest in the end beside the man and woman who wronged you, and at the Last Day, when you rise together, may God forgive you as you forgave them!"
The Englishman did not answer for near a minute. His fingers had begun to drum on the table again and his eyes were bent upon them. At length he raised his head, and this time to speak slowly and with effort—
"In my country, Count, a bargain is a bargain. When I seek a parcel of ground, my purpose with it is my affair only: my neighbour fixes his price, and if it suit me I buy, and there's an end. Now I have passed my days in buying and selling and you count me a huckster. Yet we merchants have our rules of honour as well as you nobles: and if in England I bargain as I have described, it is because between me and the other man the rules are understood. But I perceive that between you and me the bargain must be different, since you sell on condition of knowing my purpose, and would not sell if my purpose offended you. Therefore to leave you in error concerning my purpose would be cheating: and, Sir, I have never cheated in my life. At the risk then, or the certainty, of losing my dearest wish I must tell you this—I do not forgive my wife Anne or Robert Machin: and though I would be buried in their grave, it shall not be beside them."
"How then?" cried Gonsalvez and I in one voice.
"I would be buried, Sirs, not beside but between them. Ah? Your eyes were moist, I make no doubt, when you first listened to the pretty affecting tale of their love and misfortune? Not yet has it struck either of you to what a hell they leftme. And I have been living in it ever since! Think! I loved that woman. She wronged me hatefully, meanly: yet she and he died together, feeling no remorse. It is I who keep the knowledge of their vileness which shall push them asunder as I stretch myself at length in my cool dead ease, content, with my long purpose achieved, with the vengeance prepared, and nothing to do but wait securely for the Day of Judgment. Pardon me, Sirs, that I say 'this shall be,' whereas I read in your faces that you refuse me. I have cheered an unhappy life by this one promise, which at the end I have thrown away upon a little scruple." He passed a hand over his eyes and stood up. "It is curious," he said, and stood musing. "It is curious," he repeated, and turning to Gonsalvez said in a voice empty of passion, "You refuse me, I understand?"
"Yes," Gonsalvez answered. "I salute you for an honest gentleman; butI may not grant your wish."
"It is curious," Master d'Arfet repeated once more, and looked at us queerly, as if seeking to excuse his weakness in our judgment. "So small a difficulty!"
Gonsalvez bowed. "You have taught us this, Sir, that the world speaks at random, but in the end a man's honour rests in no hands but his own."
Master d'Arfet waited while Martin translated; then he put out a hand for his staff, found it, turned on his heel and tottered from the room, the interpreter following with a face which had altered nothing during our whole discourse.
* * * * *
Master d'Arfet sailed at daybreak, having declined Gonsalvez' offer to show him the grave. My old friend insisted that I must stay a week with him, and from the terrace before his house we watched the English pinnace till she rounded the point to eastward and disappeared.
"After all," said I, "we treated him hardly."
But Gonsalvez said: "A husk of a man! All the blood in him sour! And yet," he mused, "the husk kept him noble after a sort."
And he led me away to the warm slopes to see how his young vines were doing.
A Story of 1644
I pray God to deal gently with my sister Margery Lantine; that the blood of her twin-brother Mark, though it cry out, may not prevail against her on the Day of Judgment.
We three were all the children of Ephraim Lantine, a widower, who owned and farmed (as I do to-day) the little estate of Lawhibbet on the right shore of the Fowey River, above the ford which crosses to St. Veep. The whole of our ground slopes towards the river; as also does the neighbour estate of Lantine, sometime in our family's possession, but now and for three generations past yielding us only its name. Three miles below us the river opens into Fowey Harbour, with Fowey town beside it and facing across upon the village of Polruan, and a fort on either shore to guard the entrance. Three miles above us lies Lostwithiel, a neat borough, by the bridge of which the tidal water ceases. But the traffic between these two towns passes behind us and out of sight, by the high-road which after climbing out of Lostwithiel runs along a narrow neck of land dividing our valley from Tywardreath Bay. This ridge comes to its highest and narrowest just over the chimneys of Lawhibbet, and there the old Britons once planted an earthwork overlooking the bay on one hand and the river-passage on the other. Castle Dore is its name; a close of short smooth turf set within two circular ramparts and two fosses choked with brambles. Thither we children climbed, whether to be alone with our games—for I do not suppose my father entered the earthwork twice in a year, and no tillage ever disturbed it, though we possessed a drawerful of coins ploughed up from time to time in the field outside—or to watch the sails in the bay and the pack-horses jingling along the ridge, which contracted until it came abreast of us and at once began to widen towards Fowey and the coast; so that it came natural to feign ourselves robbers sitting there in our fastness and waiting to dash out upon the rich convoys as they passed under our noses.
I talk as if we three had played this game with one mind. But indeed I was six years younger than the others, and barely nine years old when my brother Mark tired of it and left me, who hitherto had been his obedient scout, to play at the game alone. For Margery turned to follow Mark in this as in everything, although with her it had been more earnest play. For him the fun began and ended with the ambush, the supposed raid and its swashing deeds of valour; for her all these were but incident to a scheme, long brooded on, by which we were to amass plunder sufficient to buy back the family estate of Lantine with all the consequence due to an ancient name in which the rest of us forgot to feel any pride. But this was my sister Margery's way; to whom, as honour was her passion, so the very shadows of old repute, dead loyalties, perished greatness, were idols to be worshipped. By a ballad, a story of former daring or devotion, a word even, I have seen her whole frame shaken and her eyes brimmed with bright tears; nay, I have seen tears drop on her clasped hands, in our pew in St. Sampson's Church, with no more cause than old Parson Kendall's stuttering through the prayer for the King's Majesty—and this long before the late trouble had come to distract our country. She walked our fields beside us, but in company with those who walked them no longer; when she looked towards Lantine 'twas with an angry affection. In the household she filled her dead mother's place, and so wisely that we all relied on her without thinking to wonder or admire; yet had we stayed to think, we had confessed to ourselves that the love in which her care for us was comprehended reached above any love we could repay or even understand—that she walked a path apart from us, obedient to a call we could not hear.
In her was born the spirit which sends men to die for a cause; but since God had fashioned her a girl and condemned her to housework, she took (as it were) her own hope in her hands and laid it all upon her twin brother. They should have been one, not twain. He had the frame to do, and for him she nourished the spirit to impel. With her own high thoughts she clothed him her hero, and made him mine also. And Mark took our homage enough, without doubting he deserved it. He was in truth a fine fellow, tall, upright, and handsome, with the delicate Lantine hands and a face in which you saw his father's features refined and freshly coloured to the model of the Lantine portraits which hung in the best sitting-room to remind us of our lost glories. For me, I take after my mother, who was a farmer's daughter of no lineage.
I remember well the Christmas Eve of 1643, when the call came for Mark; a night very clear and crisp, with the stars making a brave show against the broad moon, and a touch of frost against which we wrapped ourselves warmly before the household sallied down to the great Parc an Wollas orchard above the ford, to bless the apple-trees. My father led the way as usual with his fowling-piece under his arm, Mark following with another; after them staggered Lizzie Pascoe, the serving maid, with the great bowl of lamb's wool; Margery followed, I at her side, and the men after us with their wives, each carrying a cake or a roasted apple on a string. We halted as usual by the bent tree in the centre of the orchard, and there, having hung our offerings on the bough, formed a circle, took hands and chanted, while Lizzie splashed cider against the trunk—
"Here's to thee, old apple-treeWhence to bud and whence to blow,And whence to bear us apples enow—Hats full, packs full,Great bushel sacks full,And every one a pocket full—With hurrah! and fire off the gun!"
I remember the moment's wait on the flint-lock and the flame and roar of my father's piece, shattering echoes across the dark water and far up the creek where the herons roosted. And out of the echoes a voice answered—a man's voice hailing across the ford.
Mark took a torch, and, running down to the water's edge, waved it to guide the stranger over. By-and-by we caught sight of him, a tall trooper on horseback with the moonlight and torchlight flaming together on his steel morion and gorget. He picked his way carefully to shore and up the bank and reined up his dripping horse in the midst of us with a laugh.
"Hats full, pockets full, eh? Good-evenin', naybours, and a merry Christmas, and I'm sure I wish you may get it. Which of 'ee may happen to be Master Ephr'm Lantine?"
My father announced himself, and the trooper drew out a parchment and handed it.
"'Tisn' no proper light here," said my father, fumbling with the packet, and not caring to own that he could not read. "Come to the house, honest man, and we'll talk it over; for thou'lt sleep with us, no doubt?"
"Ay, and drink to your apple-trees too," the trooper answered very heartily. So my father led the way and we followed, Margery gripping my hand tight, and the rest talking in loud whispers. They guessed what the man's business was.
An hour later, when the ashen faggot had been lit and the cider-drinking and carolling were fairly started in the kitchen, Margery packed me off to bed; and afterwards came and sat beside me for a while, very silent, listening with me to the voices below.
"Where is Mark?" I asked, for I missed his clear tenor.
"In the parlour. He and father and the soldier are talking there."
"Is Mark going to fight?"
She bent down, slipped an arm round my nee' and caught me to her in a sudden breathless hug.
"But he may be killed," I objected.
"No, no; we must pray against that." She said it confidently, and I knew Margery had a firm belief that what was prayed for fitly must be granted. "I will see to that, morning and evening: we will pray together. But you must pray sometimes between whiles, when I am not by to remind you—many times a day—promise me, Jack."
I promised, and it made me feel better. Margery had a way of managing things, a way which I had learned to trust. We said no more but Good-night: in a little while she left me and I jumped out of bed and punctually started to keep my new promise.
Next morning—Christmas Day—we all attended church together; that is to say, all we of the family, for our guest chose rather to remain in the parlour with the cider-mug. Parson Kendall preached to us at length on Obedience and the authority delegated by God upon kings; and working back to his text, which was I. Samuel, xvii. 42, wound up with some particular commendation of "the young man to-day going forth from amongst us"—which turned all heads towards the Lawhibbet pew and set Mark blushing and me almost as shamefacedly, but Margery, after the first flow of colour, turned towards her brother with bright proud eyes.
That same afternoon between three and four o'clock—so suddenly was all decided—Mark rode away from us on the young sorrel, and the trooper beside him, to join the force Sir Bevill Grenvill was collecting for Sir Ralph Hopton at Liskeard. To his father he said good-bye at the yard-gate, but Margery and I walked beside the horses to the ford and afterwards stood and watched their crossing, waving many times as Mark turned and waved a hand back, and the red sun over behind us blinked on the trooper's cap and shoulder-piece. Just before they disappeared we turned away together—for it is unlucky to watch anyone out of sight—and I saw that Margery was trembling from head to foot.
"But he will come back," said I, to comfort her.
"Yes," she answered, "he will come back." With that she paused, and broke forth, twisting her handkerchief, "Jack, if I were a man—" and so checked herself.
"Why, you think more of the Cause than Mark does, I believe!" I put in.
"Not more than Mark—not more than Mark! Jack, you mustn't say that: you mustn't think it!"
"And a great deal more of our name," I went on sturdily, disregarding her tone, which I considered vehement beyond reason. "'Tis a strange thing to me, Margery, that of us three you should be the one to think everything of the name of Lantine, who are a girl and must take another when you marry."
She halted and turned on me with more anger than I had ever seen on her face. She even stamped her foot. "Never!" she said, and again "Never!"
"Oh, well—" I began; but she had started walking rapidly, and although I caught her up, not another word would she say to me until we reached home.
For a year we saw no more of our brother, and received of him only two letters (for he hated penwork), the both very cheerful. Yet within a month of his going, on a still clear day in January, we listened together to the noise of a pitched battle in which he was fighting, a short six miles from us as the crow flies. I have often admired how men who were happily born too late to witness the troubles of those times will make their own pictures of warfare, as though it changed at once the whole face of the country and tenour of folk's lives; whereas it would be raging two valleys away and men upon their own farms ploughing to the tune of it, with nothing seen by them then or afterwards; or it would leap suddenly across the hills, filling the roads with cursing weary men, and roll by, leaving a sharp track of ruin for the eye to follow and remember it by. So on this afternoon, when Hopton and the Cornish troops were engaging and defeating Ruthen on Braddock Down, Margery and I counted the rattles of musketry borne down to us on the still reaches of the river and, climbing to the earthwork past the field where old Will Retallack stuck to his ploughing with an army of gulls following and wheeling about him as usual, spied the smoke rolling over the edge of Boconnoc woodland to the north-east; but never a soldier we saw that day or for months after.
A little before the end of the day the rebel army broke and began to roll back through Liskeard and towards the passes of the Tamar, and Mark followed with his troops to Saltash, into Devonshire, and as far as Chagford, where he rode by Mr. Sydney Godolphin in the skirmish which gave that valiant young gentleman his mortal wound. Soon after the whole of the King's forces retired upon Tavistock, where a truce was patched up between the opposing factions in the West. But this did not release Mark, who was kept at duty on the border until May—when the strife burst out again—and joined the pursuit after Stratton Heath. Thereafter he fought at Lansdowne, and in the operations against Bristol, and later in the same year, having won a cornetcy in the King's Horse, bore his part in the many brisk expeditions led by Hopton through Dorsetshire and Hampshire into Sussex.
'Twas from Worthing he came back to us a few days before Christmas, and his mission was to beat up recruits for his troop in the season of slackness before the Spring campaign. He had grown almost two inches, his chest was fuller, his voice manly, and his handsome face not spoiled (Margery declared it improved) by a scar across the cheek, won in a raid upon Poole. He had borne himself gallantly, and our prayers had prevailed with God to save him from serious hurt even in the furious charge at Lansdowne, when of two thousand horse no more than six hundred reached the crest of the hill. He greeted us all lovingly and made no disguise of his joy to be at home again, though but on a short furlough.
And yet even on the first happy evening, when we walked up through the dusk together to the old earthwork, and he told us the first chapter of his adventures, I seemed to see, or rather to feel, that our brother was not wholly a better man for his campaigning. To be sure, a soldier must be allowed an oath or two; but Mark slipped out one before his sister which took me like a slap across the cheek. He bit his lip the moment it was out, and talked rapidly and at random for a while, with a dark flush on his face. Margery pretended that she had not heard, and for the rest he told his story with a manly carelessness which became him. Once only, when he described the entry of the troops into Bristol and their behaviour there—while Margery turned her eyes aside for a moment, that were dim for the death of Slanning and Trevanion—he came to a pause with a grin that invited me to be knowing beyond my years. The old Mark would never have looked at me with that meaning.
On the whole he behaved well, and took Margery's adoration with great patience. He had the wit to wish to fall nothing in her eyes. His new and earthlier view of war, as a game with coarse rewards, he confided to me; and this not in words but in a smile now and then and a general air when safe from his sister's eyes, of being passably amused by her high-fangled nonsense. His business of beating up recruits took him away from us for days together; and we missed him on Christmas Eve when we christened the apple-trees as usual. It was I who discovered and kept it from Margery—who supposed him as far away as St. Austell, and tried to find that distance a sufficient excuse—that he had spent the night a bare mile away, hobnobbing with the owner of Lantine, a rich man who had used to look down on our family but thought it worth while to make friends with this promising young soldier.
"And I mean to be equal with him and his likes," said Mark to me afterwards by way of excuse. "A man may rise by soldiering as by any other calling—and quicker too, perhaps, in these days."
The same thought clearly was running in his head a week later, when he took leave of us once more by the ford.
"Come back to us, Mark!" Margery wept this time, with her arms about his neck.
"Ay, sweetheart, and with an estate in my pocket."
"Ah, forget that old folly! Come back with body safe and honour bright, and God may take the rest."
He slapped his pocket with a laugh as he shook up the reins.
Then followed five quiet anxious months. 'Twas not until early in June that, by an express from Ashburton in Devon, we heard that our brother's fortune was still rising, he having succeeded to the command of his company made vacant by the wounding of Captain Sir Harry Welcome. "And this is no mean achievement for a poor yeoman's son," he wrote, "in an army where promotion goes as a rule to them that have estates to pawn. But I hope in these days some few may serve his Majesty and yet prosper, and that my dear Margery may yet have her wish and be mistress in Lantine." Margery read this letter and knit her brow thoughtfully. "It was like Mark to think of writing so," said she; "but I have not thought of Lantine for this many a day."
"And he might have left thinking of it," said I, "until these troubles are over and the King's peace established."
"Tut," she answered smiling, "he does not think of it but only to please me. 'Tis his way to speak what comes to his tongue to give us pleasure."
"For all that, he need not have misjudged us," I grumbled; and then was sorry for the pain with which she looked at me.
"It is you, Jack, who misjudged!" She spoke it sharply. We still prayed together for our brother twice a day; but she knew—and either dared not or cared not to ask why—that since his first home-coming my love had cooled towards him. Very likely she believed me to be jealous.
The hay-harvest found and passed us in peace, and the wheat was near ripe, when, towards the close of July, rumours came to us of an army marching towards Cornwall under command of the Earl of Essex; by persuasion (it was said) of the Lord Robarts, whose seat of Lanhydrock lies on our bank of the river about three miles above Lostwithiel, facing the Lord Mohun's house of Boconnoc across the valley. My Lord Mohun, after some wavering at first, had cast in his fortune with the King's party, to which belonged well nigh all the gentry of our neighbourhood; and had done so in good time for his reputation. But the Lord Robarts was an obstinate clever man who chose the other side and stuck to it in despite of first misfortunes. We guessed therefore that if the Parliamentarians came by his invitation they would not neglect a district on which he staked so much for mastery; and sure enough, about July 25th, we heard that Essex had reached Bodmin with the mass of his forces, Sir Richard Grenvill having retired before him and moved hastily with the Queen's troop to Truro. After this, Margery and I used to climb every morning to the earthwork and spy all the country round for signs of the hated troopers. Yet day passed after day with nought to be seen, and little to be heard but further rumours, of which the most constant said that the King himself was following Essex with an army, and had already seized and crossed the passes of the Tamar.
'Twas on the 2nd of August that the bolt fell; when after mounting the slope at daybreak with nothing to warn us, we stepped through the dykes into the old camp. A heavy dew hung in beads on the brambles, and at the second dyke I had turned and was holding aside a brier to let Margery pass, when a short cry from her fetched me right-about and staring into the face of a tall soldier grinning at us over the bank. In the enclosure behind him (as we saw through a gap) were a number of men in mud-coloured jerkins, quietly mounting a couple of cannon.
"Good morning!" said the soldier amiably, with an up-country twang in his voice, "Good-morning, my pretty dears! And if you come from the farm below, what may be the name of it?"
"Lawhibbet," I answered, seeing that Margery closed her lips tight.
"Ay, Lawhibbet; that's the name I was told." He nodded in the friendliest manner.
"Are you the rebels?" I blurted out, while Margery gripped my arm; but this boldness only fetched a laugh from the big man.
"Some of 'em," said he; "though you'll have to unlearn that name, my young whipstercock, seein' we're here to stay for a while. The Earl marched down into Fowey last night while you were asleep, and is down there now making it right and tight. Do you ever play at blind-man's buff in these parts?"
Three or four soldiers had gathered behind him by this, and were staring down on us. One of them blew a clumsy kiss to Margery.
"Do you mean the child's game?" I asked, wondering whatever he could be driving at.
"I do; but perhaps, sir, you are too old to remember it." He winked at the men and they guffawed. "It begins, 'How many horses has your father got?' 'Six,' says you; 'black, red, and grey'—or that's the number according to our instructions. 'Very good then,' says we; 'turn round three times and catch which you may.' And the moral is, don't be surprised if you find the stable empty when you get home. There's a detachment gone to attend to it after seizing the ford below; hungry men, all of them. No doubt they'll be visiting the bacon-rack after the stable, and if missy knows where to pick up the new-laid eggs she might put a score aside for us poor artillerymen."
We turned from them and hurried down the slope. "Rebels!" said Margery once, under her breath; but the blow had stunned us and we could not talk. In the stable yard we found, as the artillerymen had promised, a company of soldiers leading out the horses, and my father watching them with that patient look which never deserted him. He turned to Margery—
"Go into the kitchen, my dear. They will want food next, and we have to do what we can. They have been civil, and promise to pay for all they take. I do not think they will show any roughness."
Margery obeyed with a set face. For the next hour she and Lizzie were busy in the kitchen, frying ham and eggs, boiling great pans of milk, cutting up all the bread of the last baking, and heating the oven for a fresh batch. The men, I am bound to say, took their food civilly, that morning and afterwards; and for a fortnight at least they paid reasonably for all they took. For several days I hung closer about the ingle than ever I had done in my life; not that a boy of fourteen could be any protection to the women-folk, but to be ready at least to give an alarm should insult be offered. But we had to do with decent men, who showed themselves friendly not only in the house but in their camp down by the ford, whither, after the first morning, Lizzie and I trudged it twice a day with baskets of provisions. Lizzie indeed talked freely with them, but I held my tongue and glowered (I dare say) in my foolish hate. Margery kept to the house.
'Twas, I think, on August 15th that the first hope of release came to us, by the King's troops seizing the ford-head across the river; and this happened as suddenly as our first surprise. Lizzie and I were carrying down our baskets at four o'clock that day, when we heard a sound of musketry on the St. Veep shore and on top of it a bugle twice blown. Running to the top of a knoll from which the river spread in view, I saw some rebels of our detachment splashing out from shore in a hurry. The leaders reached mid-stream or thereabouts, and paused. Doubtless they could see better than I what was happening; for after they had stood there a couple of minutes, holding their fire—the musketry on the St. Veep bank continuing all the while—some twenty men came running out of the woods there and fled across towards us, many bullets splashing into the water behind them. They reached their comrades in the river-bed, and the whole body stood irresolute, facing the shore where nothing showed but a glint of steel here and there between the trees. Thus for ten further minutes, perhaps, they hesitated; then turned and came sullenly back across the rising water. In this manner the royal troops won the ford-head, and kept it; for although the two cannon opened fire that evening from the earthwork above us, and dropped many balls among the trees, they did not dislodge the regiment (Colonel Lloyd's) which lay there and held one of the few passes by which the rebels could break away.
For—albeit I knew nothing of this at the time—by withdrawing his headquarters to Lostwithiel and holding our narrow ridge with Fowey at the end of it seaward, the Earl had led his army into a trap, and one which his Majesty was now fast closing. Already he had drawn his troops across the river-meadows above Lostwithiel; and, whatever help the Earl might have hoped to fetch from the sea at his base, he was there prevented by the quickness of Sir Jacob Astley in seizing a fort on the other side of the harbour's mouth as well as a battery commanding the town from that shore, and in flinging a hundred men into each, who easily beat off all ships from entering. From this comfortable sea-entrance then Essex perforce turned for his stores to Twyardreath Bay on the western side of the ridge, where he landed a couple of cargoes at the mouth of the little river Par; but on the 25th the Prince Maurice sent down 2,000 horse and 1,000 foot, and after sharp skirmishing blocked this inlet also. So now we had the whole rebel army cooped around us and along the two sides of the ridge, trampling our harvest and eating our larders bare, with no prospect but a surrender; which yet the Earl refused, although his Majesty thrice offered to treat with him.
This (I say) was the position, though we at Lawhibbet knew not how desperate 'twas for the rebels our guests; only that our food was pinched to short rations of bread and that payment had ceased, though the sergeants still gave vouchers duly for the little we could supply. The battery above us kept silence day after day, save twice when the Royalists made a brief show of forcing the pass; but at intervals each day we would hear a brisk play of artillery a little higher up the stream, where they had planted a fort on the high ground by St. Nectan's Chapel, to pound at Lostwithiel in the valley. For my part I could have pitied the rebels, so worn they were with weeks of hunger and watching, to which the weather added another misery, turning at the close of the month to steady rain with heavy fogs covering land and sea, and no wind to disperse them. Margery had no pity; but I believed would have starved cheerfully—if that could have helped—to see these poor sodden wretches in worse plight.
I think 'twas on the morning of the 28th that the Royalists across the ford showed a flag of truce; which having been answered, a small party of horse came riding over, the leader with a letter for the Earl of Essex which he was suffered to carry to Fowey, riding thither in the midst of an escort of six and leaving his own men behind on the near side of the ford.
While they waited by their horses I drew near to one of them and asked him if he knew aught of my brother, Captain Mark Lantine. He answered, after eyeing me sharply, that he knew my brother well—a very gallant officer, now serving with the Earl of Cleveland's brigade.
"That will be on the slope beneath Boconnoc," said I.
"How know you that?" he asked briskly, and I was telling him that the dispositions of the Royal troops were no secret to the rebels (warning of all fresh movements being brought daily to the ford from Lostwithiel), when a sergeant interrupted and, forbidding any further converse, packed me off homeward, yet not unkindly.
For what came of this talk Margery—to whom I reported it that same evening—must bear the credit. For two days she brooded over it, keeping silence even beyond her wont, and then on the night of the 30th, at nine o'clock, when I was scarce abed, she tapped at my door and bade me arise and dress myself. She had an expedition to propose, no less than that we should cross the river and pay Mark a visit in his quarters.
Her boldness took away my breath: yet as she whispered her plan it did not seem impossible or, bating the chance of being shot by a stray outpost, so very dangerous. A heavy fog lay over the hills, as it had lain for nights. The tide was flowing. My father's boat had been dragged ashore and lay bottom upwards under a cliff about three hundred yards above the ford. If we could reach and right it without being discovered, either one of us was clever enough, with an oar over the stern, to scull noiselessly across to the entrance of a creek where the current would take us up towards Boconnoc between banks held on either side by Royalists; to whom, if they surprised us, we could tell our business.
The plan (I say) was a promising one. It miscarried only after we had righted the boat and were dragging it across the strip of shingle between the meadow bank and the water's edge. A quick-eared sentry caught the sound and challenged at two gunshots' distance. I had the boat's nose afloat as I heard his feet stumbling over the uneven foreshore: but the paddles and even the bottom-boards were lying on the beach behind us. There was no help for it. Margery stepped on board swiftly and silently, and I pushed well out into the stream, following until the water rose to my middle and so standing while the fellow challenged again. For a minute we kept mute as mice. The footsteps hesitated and came to a halt by the water's edge a full twenty yards below, and I guessed that the fog had blurred for him the distance as well as the direction of the sound. Very quietly I heaved myself over the stern and into the boat, which swung broadside to the current and so was borne up and beyond danger from him. But the mischief was, we were drifting up the main channel which ended in the Lostwithiel marshes and must pretty certainly lead us into the enemy's hands, unless before striking the moors below the town we could by some means push across to the farther bank. We leaned over, dipped our arms in the water, and with the least possible noise began to paddle. Even in the darkness the tall banks were familiar, and between skill and good fortune we came to shore on the left bank below a coppice and just within sight of the town lights. Between us and them lay a broad marsh-land through which the river wound, and along the edge of which, under the trees skirting this shore, we started at a timorous run, pulling up now and again to listen.
So we had come abreast of the town without challenge, when the sky almost on a sudden grew lighter, and we saw the church spire glimmering and the weather-cock above it, and knew that the moon had risen over the woodland in the shadow of which we crouched. And with that Margery glanced back and plucked at my arm.
The moor we had skirted was full of horsemen, drawn up in rank and motionless. They loomed through the river fog like giants—rank behind rank, each man stiff and upright and silent in his saddle—as it were a vale full of mounted ghosts awaiting the dreadful trumpet, and in my terror I forgot to tremble at the nearness of our escape (for we had all but blundered into them). But while I stared, and the wreaths of fog hid and again disclosed them, I heard Margery's whisper—
"They are escaping to-night. It can only be by the bridge and acrossBoconnoc downs. If we can win to Mark and warn him!"
She drew me off into the wood at a sharp angle, and we began to climb beneath the branches. They dripped on us, soaking us to the skin; but this we scarcely felt. We knew that we must be moving along the narrow interval between the two lines of outposts. Beneath us, in the centre of a basin of fog, a cluster of lights marked Lostwithiel: above, the moon and the glow of Royalist camp-fires threw up the outline of the ridge. Alongside of this we kept, and a little below it, crossing the high-road which leads east from Lostwithiel bridge, and, beyond that, advancing more boldly under the lee of a hedge beside a by-road which curves towards the brow of Boconnoc downs. I began to find it strange that, for all our secrecy, no one challenged us here. At a bend of the lane, we came in view of a solitary cottage with one window lit and blurring its light on the mist. We crept close, still on the far side of the hedge, and, parting the bushes, peered at it.
It must be here or hereabouts (by all information) that the Earl of Cleveland kept his quarters. The light shone into our eyes through a drawn blind which told nothing; and Margery was dragging me forward to knock at the door when it opened and two men stepped quickly across the threshold and passed down the lane. They crossed the bar of light swiftly and were gone into the dark; and they trod softly—so softly that we listened in vain for their footfalls.
Then, almost before I knew it, Margery had dragged me across a gap in the hedge and was rapping at the cottage door. No one answered. She lifted the latch and entered, I at her heels. The kitchen—an ordinary cottage kitchen—was empty A guttered candle stood on the table to the right, and beside it lay a feathered cap. Margery stepped toward this and had scarce time to touch the brim of it before a voice hailed us in the doorway behind my shoulder.
"Hullo!"
It was our brother Mark.
"Well, of all—" he began, and came to a stop; his face white as a sheet, as well it might be.
Margery rounded upon him. She must have been surprised, but she began without explanation running to him and kissing him swiftly—
"Mark—dear Mark, we have news for thee, instant news! Sure, Heaven directed us to-night that you should be the first to hear it. Mark, we passed the rebel cavalry in the valley, and for certain they will attempt to break through to-night."
"Yes, yes," said he peevishly, pulling at an end of his long love-locks, "we have had that scare often enough, these last few nights."
"But we passed them close—saw them plainly in rank below Lostwithiel bridge, and every man in saddle. Even now they will be moving—"
Mark swung about and passed out at the open door. He had not returned Margery's kiss. "I must be off, then, to visit my videttes," said he quickly, and then paused as if considering. "For you, the cottage here will not be safe: it stands close beside the line of march and I must get down a company of musketeers. You had best follow me—" he took a step and paused again: "No, there will not be time."
"Tell us in what direction to go and we will fend for ourselves and leave you free."
"Through the garden, then, at the back and into the woods—the fence has a gap and from it a path leads up to a quarry among the trees; you cannot miss. The quarry is full of brambles—good hiding, in case we have trouble. No cavalryman will win so far, you may be sure."
Margery gathered her skirts about her, and we stole out into the darkness. At the door she turned up her face to Mark. "Kiss me, my brother." He kissed her, and breaking away (as I thought) with a low groan, strode from us up the lane.
"Now why should he go up the lane?" mused Margery: and I too wondered. For the first alarm must needs come from the lower end towards which he had been walking with his other visitor, when we first spied on the cottage through the bushes.
But 'twas not for us to guess how the troops were disposed or where the outposts lay. We made our escape through the little garden, and, blundering along the woodland path behind it, came at length to a thicket of brambles over which hung the scarp of the quarry with a fringe of trees above it pitch-black against the foggy moonlight. Here on the soaked ground I found a clear space and a tumbled stone or two, on which we crouched together, sleepless and intently listening.
For an hour we heard no sound. Then the valley towards Lostwithiel shook with a dull explosion, which puzzled us a great deal. (But the meaning, I have since learnt was this:—Two prisoners in the church there had contrived to climb up into the steeple and, pulling the ladder after them, jeered down upon the rebels' Provost Marshal, who was now preparing for a night retreat of the Infantry upon Fowey and in a hurry to be gone. "I'll fetch you down," said he, and with a barrel of powder blew most of the slates off the roof but without harming the defiant pair who were found still perched on the steeple next morning.)
After this the hours passed without sound. It seemed incredible, this silence in the ring of wakeful outposts. Margery shivered now and again, and I knew that her eyes were open, though she said nothing. For me, towards morning, I dropped into a doze, and woke to the tightening of her hand upon my arm.
"Hist!"
I listened with her. The sky had grown grey about us, and up through the dripping trees came a soft and regular footfall, as of a body of horse moving past. "It will be Mark's troop," I whispered, and listened again. It seemed to me that the noise moved away to our right instead of towards Lostwithiel. A quick suspicion took me then: I scaled the right-hand side of the quarry at a run, burst through the fringe of pines, and came out suddenly upon a knoll in full view of the down. The first gleam of sunshine was breaking over this slope, and towards it at an easy trot rode the whole body of rebel cavalry, in number above a thousand.
"Escaped!"
While I stood and stared, Margery caught up with me. We looked into each other's face. Then without a word she went from me. I lingered there for perhaps ten minutes; for now, from behind the trees above, a squadron of Royalist horse charged across the slope at a gallop. They were less than four hundred, however, and as the rebel rearguard turned to face them, drew rein and exchanged but a few harmless shots. I watched the host as it wound slowly over the crest with its pursuers hanging sullenly at heel: then I turned and descended in search of Margery. As I reached the gap in the hedge, Mark entered the garden by the little gate opposite. He came hastily, but halted as if shot, with his hand on the gatepost to steady him—yet not at sight of me. I looked across the gap into the garden between us. Beside a heap of freshly turned mould, with her back to the currant-bush, stood Margery, her hands stained with soil; and on the ground before her lay a small chest with its lid open.