“Blythewood,” said Mr. Tuke, “’twould be a rare thing could we light on this bogle-gem—succeed where a whole troop of cut-throats had failed—and bribe Luvaine to sanity thereby. But, I confess, it strikes me hard that I am to serve meanwhile as whipping-boy to his rueful worship; to know him warm in his blankets, while the vermin overrun my estate o’ cold nights for a treasure he hath lost.”
“’Tis the fortune of battle, Tuke, and like cryin’ ‘God bless his Majesty!’ for the favour of a bayonet-thrust under king’s button.”
“Yes, but I seek no glory.”
“But you seek a jewel that could serve you with an army of it. And, consider, the wound will go on sloughin’ while the bullet is in. We must get to work to-morrow, by your leave; portion ‘Delsrop’ into squares, like a chess-board, and hunt it over foot by foot.”
“’Tis the only way.”
The two were riding in company, whereby it will be seen that not only was the breach between them healed, but that the older man had taken the younger into his further confidence.
This was all as it should be. The quarrel had been a paltry one; and once convinced of his wrong-headedness, the lord of Wastelands, like the gracious gentleman he was, had not hesitated to offer a handsome apology that was as courteously received. A few words, a jolly laugh or so over a bottle of Oporto, and the two were faster friends than they had been as yet.
Now, as fruit of close discussion, they were on their way to an interview with Mr. Breeds; and Dennis rode in their company, at a distance behind, like a feat squire of knight-errantry.
It was comical and pathetic, this good fellow’s earnest conduct of the post he had long coveted. His eye was bright and alert for surprises; his air a perpetual rehearsal of keenness that should not be caught napping. An atmosphere of mild braggadocio went with him—an assumption of swagger that was like a “property” cuirass on the breast of an inoffensive super. And yet, having regard to his upbringing, he was fine and faithful, and even courageous in a certain degree of proportion.
The two gentlemen rode up to the “Dog and Duck,” and, dismounting, committed their horses to the servant, and walked straightway into the tap. As they entered, a scuffling sound, like the dive of a ponderous rat behind the wainscot, preceded them; and, standing still, they were aware of some apoplectic breathing stifling in the little bar-parlour.
Mr. Tuke stepped up to the counter.
“Landlord,” said he loudly, “a bottle of port, if you please.”
The breathing subsided with a rolling noise, as if a heap of nuts were settling down on the floor; and suddenly the great blotched face of Mr. Breeds appeared in the doorway.
“Port, your honour?” said he, in a tremulous voice. “I take your honour’s order.”
He disappeared and returning in a moment with a bottle hugged in his fat hands, moved officiously to the counter, where he tweaked a greasy forelock to his worshipful customers.
“Hold it up, man—hold it up! the cork to your eye, and the good black body to your own. So shall I see to tap it.”
The landlord uttered a thick scream.
“Mr. Tuke! Oh, God’s pity, sir, you ain’t a-goin’ to shoot me?”
He had lifted the bottle as bidden, and lo! there was the muzzle of a wicked horse-pistol pointed straight at his breast.
The two gentlemen laughed.
“Why,” said the elder, “I want to make sure this time the stuff isn’t tampered with. Hold steady, while I knock the neck off.”
Nerveless with terror the man let fall the bottle, simply because he couldn’t hold it; and, dropping on his pads of knees, howled for mercy.
“God save me, sir—I never did! The wine wasn’t hocussed, sir. Your honour saw the cork drawn!”
At this—“Harkee, fellow!” called Sir David, striking in, “d’ye think I, a Justice of the Peace, will endure this gallows’ game in our midst?”
Mr. Tuke laughed afresh.
“Oh, fie, Mr. Breeds!” said he. “So you must own to a bin of ready-drugged?”
The landlord ducked behind the counter, and cried abjectly from that beery covert:
“Don’t shoot, sir—don’t shoot! If the stuff was headstrong, ’twas none of my contriving. There have been lither knaves compelling me of late.”
The two men exchanged a glance.
“Well,” said Mr. Tuke, “you can show your head above, and e’en draw the cork after your own fashion.”
The cumbrous creature scrambled to his feet, puffing and sweltering; and so manipulated the bottle with shaking hands.
“And whither are your guests flown?” said one of the gentlemen.
“Meanin’ Mr. Fern and his off-scourings, sir? To Botany Bay, whence they came, is my desperate hope. As cozening scoundrels, your noble honours, as ever practised on a decent innkeeper.”
“You were no party to their roguery, then?”
“Party!” (the man was fussing and feinting with his corkscrew). “Mr. Tuke, sir, I was terrified of my life while the reskels remained. The shadow of ’em lay like as a blight on my custom.”
“And you have the assurance to tell me that they coerced you?”
“So help me, sir, they did.”
“With what object?”
The man stuttered and went clammy.
“Answer, fellow!” cried Sir David.
“I protest, gentlemen, I was unacquent of their intentions.”
“What! you were compelled, and you are ignorant whereto?”
“To shut my eyes, sir—to shut my eyes, noble gentlemen. That’s the sum of my knowledge.”
“Mr. Breeds,” said Tuke, quietly, “have you ever heard tell of the Lake of Wine?”
He watched the man narrowly. He could not have sworn to any particular intelligence in those viscous eyes.
“Not to my cost,” said the landlord, with a sickly attempt at jocosity, “or I should fill my vats at it.”
“Well,” said Sir David, impatiently, “you say your company is departed. And whither?”
“To the gallows, for all it concerns me, sir.”
“And thither, ’tis presumptive, you may follow. Now I give you a note of warning—take thought of whom you house for the future.”
He looked at the man sternly. The latter had not a word to say, but much abasement to express.
On the road home: “Do you think he is in the plot?” said Sir David.
“Yes, by heavens, I do. A very door-keeper to roguery. He hath the wit to denounce guilt, but not to look innocence.”
“Then, may I ask, why the devil you named the stone to him?”
“To take him off his guard; but the rascal was cunning. Yet the pack shall know now we are not ignorant of what they hunt. Perhaps by the time they reappear—if ever—the quarry will have been run down by us, and Luvaine the centre of attraction.”
“So,” said Sir David, “we sum up our conclusions. ’Twas the notorious Mr. Cutwater,aliasTurk, that represented the syndicate that robbed Luvaine’s father of the stone.”
“One,” said Miss Angela, using her tender knuckles after the fashion of an auctioneer’s hammer.
“’Twas somewhere here—on this estate bought out of the proceeds of his robberies—that he secreted the treasure.”
“Two,” said Miss Angela.
“And here his confederates sought him out, murdered him yonder, and made fruitless search for what he had sacrificed his life to hold.”
“Three,” said Miss Angela, “and right worshipfully concluded.”
“Peace, you bantam! ’Tis but the introduction to the argument.”
“Oh! I crave your honour’s indulgence”—and she looked round merrily at Dennis, who stood respectfully to the back of her chair.
“Now we gather,” said Sir David, with importance, “that of the ancient gang, only Mr. Fern hath cheated the gallows, to return at this eleventh hour to the search; but that he hath confided his plot to two or more——”
“Lacking the greatness of the first rank of criminals,” put in Whimple impulsively—and so reddened to a fine after-glow of shame immediately he had spoken.
They all laughed; and quoth Miss Angel:
“How I love your inconsequence, Mr. Dennis. I think that sympathy with giant wickedness a very admirable foil to your humanity.”
She had taken a great interest in the servant since her mediation had procured him justice. What if hehadbeen a figure familiar to her experience for years past? Only recent circumstance had presented him in the light that could appeal to her effectively—the melancholy twilight, in fact, of romance. Now she was bethinking herself how this mystic hermit of the thickets had lived out his twenty years or so of haunted solitude that he might at the end serve her sensibilities with a little passing thrill of excitement; and she felt grateful to him and very considerate of his hectic cheeks.
“Their roses might have withered in the frost of death but for me,” she would ponder tenderly; and then her heart would take some resentment over the confident tyranny of his lord, that he had dared to sit in judgment on his intellectual superior.
“For that the poor man is,” she thought. “And the other must learn that with us women, brute strength unadorned is not the highest appeal to our favour.”
Here she dealt a little arbitrarily with justice; for the master was perhaps less a fool than the servant was an athlete. But the sentiment served her mood, and showed her the way to many small condescensions towards the poor fellow who had suffered such misjudgment.
Mr. Tuke could not but be conscious of this saucy subordination of his claims as a man of position. It entertained or aggravated him, according to his humour, to watch this variable maid playing off his servant against himself in the innocuous subtilties of coquetry. He could not be expected to take the effrontery seriously, and he was not so deeply in love but that he could see the humour of the girl’s capricious attitude towards him. “But I am called upon to be aware of it,” he thought; “and I must effect to puzzle my brain over the question of what I can have done to imperil myself in her favour.”
So he looked distressed—when he remembered to—and all the time thought none the less of Miss Royston for so representing the charming whimsies of the fascinating of her sex.
“This rascally crew,” said Sir David, “we make it our business to anticipate, if a thorough ransackin’ of the whole house will serve our purpose.”
Miss Angela jumped to her feet.
“Oh, Davy!” she cried, “have you reached it at last? And our wits running ahead of yours from the first. What a solemn conclusion, little man! Only we came to it before you opened your mouth to speak. And here sits Mr. Tuke like a Lord Justice patiently waiting the verdict he hath directed.”
“You are a very knowin’ magpie,” said her brother, with a wag of his round head, “but you ain’t as clever as you’d take the credit for. I’ve given you the steps to a conclusion, that’s all; and now I’ll warrant you’ll go flingin’ off the last into space.”
“Brava!” cried the lady, clapping her hands. “All that is obvious goes for nothin’, as the philosopher would say: for, like all philosophers, he is a little shaky in his finalities. And now for the profound deduction.”
“You impident baggage!” exclaimed the lord of “Chatters.” He had been quite in his element, taking judicial charge of the affair, drawing inferences and suggesting methods; and this irrepressible sister of his would do her worst to make him appear ridiculous.
“Tuke,” he said, turning to that silent and amused gentleman, “when you marry, marry a fool that knows herself to be one.”
“Indeed,” said the other, “that is easy; for any one that took me must needs answer to that description. Never hold me conceited after that, Miss Royston.”
Now, Heaven knows what Angela here chose to read between the lines; but she responded most icily:
“I doubt I shall take much interest in the matter, sir; though speaking generally, there seems to me no conceit like exaggerated humility.”
She sat herself down again, her lips set forbiddingly. Sir David grinned, mentally scoring a little spiteful victory, and Mr. Tuke looked very much bewildered and abashed.
Indeed, this sprightly lady suffered from a very common infirmity of poor humanity—an incapacity for graciously accepting such knocks as she dealt to others. One might unconsciously check her flow of spirits with the veriest straw of chaff, and only discover the enormity haphazard. Sometimes her sensitive nature would build up a grievance from a single word, so carelessly spoken and soon forgotten of the offender that, when he would come to view the complicated fabric of resentment that had sprung therefrom, he could only marvel at the astounding pregnancy of his speech.
“My sister having pronounced,” said Sir David—with a point of his little rude tongue in the direction of that incensed lady—“I come to the upshot of the apostleates—or whatever they are called.”
“And that is?” murmured Mr. Tuke, quite shyly.
“Why, that it ain’t no good looking for the stone where it’s been looked for before.”
Tuke stole a glance at Miss Royston, humbly and dumbly inviting her to endorse or quash this opinion. She was rigidly silent.
“Well?” he asked, not in the least knowing what he was inquiring about.
“Why, I’ve said it,” exclaimed the other. “We needn’t grub under the floors, when, by your own account, the boards have been had up already.”
“By Whimple’s account,” said Tuke. “But, you’re right. The rogues would have searched thoroughly where they did search.”
“Then, where to look?”
“I propose we each take two or three rooms to a share; investigate as we will, and meet and compare notes at dinner-time.”
“Capital. What d’ye say, Angel?”
“Oh! you can leave me out of the question.”
“What! you ain’t goin’ to take part in the fun?”
“I have contributed my mite to it, by serving as butt to the witticisms of two ingenious gentlemen.”
“Miss Royston!” exclaimed Tuke aghast.
“Oh, sir!” responded the lady frigidly, “’twould argue a certain community of interests that hardly exists, did I permit myself the familiarity of an informal intrusion upon your privacy. But I can be quite happy here, if you will vouchsafe me the society of Mr. Whimple, who will take no advantage, I am sure, of my condescension, and who will not judge frankness to be an invitation to impertinence.”
She capped this with quite an enigmatical little smile.
“Or, if you desire his services for yourself,” she said, “I can order out my horse and return to ‘Chatters.’”
Sir David was softly chuckling, preliminary to a sad explosion of laughter. Tuke saw it, and hastily put in a word.
“I beg you will not disappoint me of your promised company to dinner. You are very welcome to what you ask; and your brother and I will hunt in company.”
He bowed, drew the little man from the room and to the far end of the passage without. There the latter suddenly detained him, his swollen face falling to an expression of great gravity.
“Lookee here,” he said, “I am in the dark—I am in the dark, Tuke. Will you take it friendly if I ask you to enlighten me. Are ye vexed wi’ the wench’s whimsies?”
“I am distressed to have offended her.”
“That won’t serve. I don’t want to force your hand, and Angel hath the wit to play her own game. But, d’you seek my countenance? There’s the rub.”
The other broke into a smile.
“Well,” said he, “I won’t pretend to misconstrue you. I’m most sincere in desiring Miss Royston’s condescension.”
“Then,” said Sir David, “here’s a lovers’ quarrel toward; and ‘A swan can’t hatch without a crack of thunder’ is an old saw.”
His countenance contracted portentous.
“Not that I may not have a word to say by and by,” quoth he; “for I am her guardian despite her independent jointure, and by the token am determined to prudence. But, at the moment, to inquire would be premature and unjustified.”
“Well, I shall hope to satisfy you,” said Mr. Tuke, with a twinkle—“and so to our goose-hunt, by grace of your permission.”
Sofar as two men could explore minutely the interior of a house so eccentrically designed—on a plan that seemed indeed to affect an absence of all design—as “Delsrop,” Mr. Tuke and his guest did explore during the whole of that winter morning. They measured walls and doors; they tapped for vaults, secret panels, or intermural recesses. They went down into the “Priest’s Hole,” and convinced themselves that no hiding-place had been contrived anywhere in that well of dank and solid masonry. They looked up chimneys; stamped on flags in hope of answering reverberations; prodded at ceilings hither and thither with a view to the discovery of some cunningly concealed hollow wherein it was possible the thing they sought might lie with all its crimson lustre quenched in dusk and darkness.
And it was only a complication of the puzzle that “Delsrop’s” antecessor had left its rooms—with one exception—desolate and unfurnished; inasmuch as any chair or table or bureau would have offered itself a likelier depository for a treasure so self-contained. What could be done with bare walls and floors and ceilings but punch and measure them? This the searchers did, with all the thoroughness they could contrive, and with a proportionate absence of result. They even extended their investigations to the ruined outhouses, and to the external case of the main building itself—obviously a desperate resource. For here, long ages’ growth of matted creepers bespoke a confidence of increase that for generations had never known restraint. Dense ivy—interwoven with leafless tendons of honeysuckle—that showed lace-work of muscular adolescence through every gap in its foliage; fibrous vines, that had never been schooled to culture, and that hung out annual clusters of unfulfilled berries—a very tradition of rusticgaucheriewith the gentlemen starlings; winter jasmine that, when the world is wrapped in chilling reserve, protrudes a host of little red tongues in mockery of such self-importance—these, and others, contributed to such a thickset of arborescence as it were idle to attempt to penetrate.
The room—that one furnished chamber—they left to the last. It was their moral refuge—their forlorn hope. There, at least, was visible evidence of the material side of the long-dead highwayman. Therein had he donned his guilty finery; or doffed it and confided the secrets of his cancerous conscience to the fine lawn of his pillow. And therein—unless a nice acumen should have led him to avoid that spot for his treasure’s hiding most patently inviting to common intelligences—was it presumable the stone was concealed.
At length the two bent their steps to this inner temple of their expectations. They were weary and a little depressed, and they sat themselves down in a fan of weak sunlight that spread through the broad window.
Sir David looked about him with some listless curiosity—at the great posted bed; at the massive carved wardrobe of sombre oak; at the quaint old brass-framed mirror on the dressing-table.
“Was this all as it stands when you came?” he said, his inquisitiveness getting the better of his languor.
“Precisely as it stands.”
“Then it belonged to Cutwater?”
“I presume so.”
“By cock!” said the other, dreamily introspective, “’tis cursed strange to think that here the man prinked and made his toilet and slept his sleep like any decent citizen. He was known by his blue coat and filigree lace, I’ve heard tell; and what bloody secrets may he not have locked into that wardrobe, and what dumb witnesses to his villainy? For he would take life, by all accounts, and was a terror in his day. And was there nothin’, Tuke—no trace——”
“Not a rag in all the room. If any had been, it had been cleared out before I came.”
“Well, he had his vanities; for all that his reputation, as I knew it, was rascal miserly. And he shows a pretty taste in bed and wardrobe. But there ain’t one consistent miser in all the history of niggards.”
“I seem to have heard of one or two.”
“Who, sir? tell me.”
“Well, for a few—‘Plum’ Turner, ‘Vulture’ Hopkins, Elwes, Jones, Betty Bolaine——”
“Oh! I cry you mercy, as the books say. These were the best of their kind; yet not one of ’em but would give in charity occasionally. And each would have its vanity, if you came to look. Mrs. Bolaine boasted her coach; and even Jones must have a new brim to his hat. No, sir. Two orders of misers there be—your Joneses and Dancers for one; and of the other every third man in the tale of humanity.”
“Tut-tut!”
“Oh! I mean it—the host of those who give a half-heart to gathering, but a whole one against dissipating. Now, did you ever hear of a miser who killed himself to save expense?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Nor I. Yet that should be the right moral of parsimony.”
“No, no, my friend. Possession is the disease.”
“Then how better to minister to it than by realizing one’s property, hoisting the metal into a sack, tying oneself thereto, and tilting all into the deep sea?”
“There would be the hire of the boat; but never mind. You give thought to things, I see.”
“Did you ever suppose I didn’t? I give it now to yonder wardrobe. ’Tis there, I’ll wager, the jewel is.”
“We’ll look—we’ll look; though I’ve used it for months unwitting.”
He rose, with a laugh and a stretch, as he spoke. A cloud had blurred the sun, and the room had fallen to melancholy shadow.
Perhaps it was on this account that, as he flung open one of the heavy doors of the cupboard, something within—an apparition—a momentary trick of the fancy—brought a startled oath from his lips.
A hanging wardrobe was revealed, with an empty shelf set above it; and back in the gloom of this shelf, a foul and withered face seemed to grin upon him from the darkness.
He thought it was Darda’s hideous relic, and for an instant his heart jumped before the shocking revelation. Then the illusion passed, and he saw that what had discomfited him was nothing more terrifying than a cuff or bracelet of mouldered fur.
“What’s the matter?” said Sir David, rising.
Tuke passed his hand across his forehead, and was surprised to find a little dampness thereon.
“Nothing,” he said, with a rather uncertain laugh. “What a thing, Blythewood, if the highwayman’s ghost should be whipping us on to the chase?”
“Ah! if only he’ll put us on the right scent, then.”
The little man had come up behind his friend, and was looking down, his eyes intent upon something.
“Lord!” he said suddenly, “I’ve found a hidin’-place.”
The other stared.
“The devil you have!” said he. “You’ve touched nothing. ’Tis like ‘Sit down when you see the rabbit’s tail.’”
He glanced nervously, once or twice as he spoke, into the recess above his head.
“Well, I’ll lay odds,” said Sir David, “that I’ll show you somethin’ in that cupboard you never guessed at before.”
The wardrobe—or the half of it exposed—was filled with coats, small-clothes, and other articles of a gentleman’s attire. But these hung high, and a space intervened between the skirts of them and the floor of the interior. Into this space the visitor plunged his head, and, dropping on his knees, ran his fingers in a hurried, nervous way along the ornamental jambs and the beading of the door-sill. Satisfied, apparently, he nipped this last and gave it a vigorous jerk and pull. There was a click—a snap; and the floor of the half-cupboard shot up, an inch open, like the lid of a box.
Sir David fell back on his knees, trembling all over with excitement.
“What did I tell you?” he cried. “I’d seen another like it, and guessed the secret. ’Tis your business to look within. Zounds, Tuke, make haste!”
His flurry would brook no delay, though the other was bending above him quite white with agitation; so it happened they both put down their hands together and tore open the flap.
The little man uttered almost a shriek, as he pounced upon a shagreen case lying upon the top of a folded coat that was deposited within the false-bottom revealed.
He staggered to his feet—thrust his treasure into Tuke’s hands.
“Take it!” he cried, absolutely dancing. “It’s found, by God!”
With the exclamation his face fell. The other had snapped open the box—a jeweller’s case, by every sign—and—it was empty. There was the depression in the green velvet for stone, trinket, what-not; but no stone was there, or anything but vacancy.
They turned, tapped, felt the casket all over; finally, they looked at one another dismayed.
“The stable,” groaned Tuke, “but the steed is gone.”
He dashed down the useless shell, and with one impulse they both fell on their knees before the exposed recess.
“Look!” whispered Sir David, in an awe-struck tone—“hiscoat—Cutwater’s—the same he robbed and murdered in!”
It would seem to be as he said. The historical garment—neatly folded and laid away—was of blue silk, cut in a bygone fashion, and its edges were richly crusted with filigree of tarnished silver lace. Tuke seized it out, and dangled it up to view.
“’Twould be a treasure in itself to some,” he said. “I wonder will the spirit of the bloody cutpurse resent having its own pockets picked?”
He was conscious of the least little thrill and tendency to an upward glance at the shelf as he plunged his hand into the bagging of the full skirts. Nothing was in them but a torn laced handkerchief—a mere little limp cobweb thing such as ladies use. The two men looked at one another with lowered, compassionate eyes.
“He was spawn of the devil,” muttered Sir David. “Throw him his master’s livery again.”
The coat was returned to the recess. The latter was empty of aught else; as was its double, which they found similarly sunk in the other half of the wardrobe.
Their jubilance was changed to depression. The search, they felt, had yielded all it was like to. That the case had once held the famous gem they felt convinced; and equally of course the cunning scoundrel would never have committed its contents to so simply contrived a hiding-place.
They were no nearer discovery than they had been any time that morning. As a matter of form they would closely examine every other article of furniture in the room; but they knew the result would benil—as, indeed, it proved to be.
They came down to dinner, tired and famished, and a little morose. Angela received them with a charming smile.
“We meet you with empty hands,” said her host. “I hope you are not devoured withennui?”
“Oh!” she cried sprightlily—“if I am devoured, it is not with ennui. I am meat for its master.”
“And who is that?”
“Can you ask, sir! Why, Love, to be sure. I am fallen in love with Mr. Dennis. He hath entertained me since your going; and purely, believe me. Never was a figure more melancholy and romantic.”
“I rejoice you have found amusement. Our morning has been fruitless.”
“What—the stone? That does not concern me. I have discovered a rarer gem.”
Itis a keen experience of wayfarers that a north-easterly, unlike a south-easterly wind, seldom drops at evenfall; and therefore should it be a leading principle in the ethics of all wise innkeepers to leave a blind or two up when the rasping demon is abroad at sundown. For what an acute accent on numbness is that flash from a ruddy window! What an invitation in it and a suggestion of the purple bead on a glass of mulled wine! A moment before, life had blown chill and astringent—a hateful, brassy, and unprofitable affair, whose every vile sensation seemed concentrated in the tips of the ears. Now its interests have gleefully enlarged. There grows and blooms an image of a richly-bought experience of a sanded tap-room; of schools of sleek glasses on shelves, their glossy depths, in the red stillness of the fire-glow, slumberous with ruby, as if a memory of the good warm stuff they had known yet coloured all their dreams; of sturdy kegs, each with an amber drop tremulous on the nozzle of its tap, and its sides pregnant with jollity; of bowls of sugar; of pimpled lemons; of the comfortable purr of a kettle on the hob; of the essence of all of these rising in a fragrant steam that shall moisten the very drought of the heart and send it singing on its way.
Betty Pollack, the daughter and granddaughter of innkeepers, had the right comfortable instinct in this respect; and when the cry of the wind came under the door-sill like a wolf’s howl, she knew the demon flew from the north-east, and would order her plans accordingly.
Then, at fall of dark, from the unblinded tap-window of the “First Inn,” the zealous lamp-glow would flood the road and wash the trunks of the trees on the opposite side; till any one passing into that lighthouse radiance—wherein the whipped leaves were whirled like flakes of umber foam—would be as morally certain to gravitate towards the tavern-door as if he were come within the charmed circle about a witch’s lair.
And a very alluring witch was Betty—wholesome as white bread, and tempered with fragrance like the warm stroking bouquet of delectable claret. In winter she was still like the garden scabious, which of all flowers smells most of honey, and whose blossoms are little beds of love for troubadour bees.
It was ten o’clock of a wintry night, and Betty sang in her bar. She lifted up her sweet voice because she was alone; for the icy wind wailed without, and Hodge had filled up betimes and stumped off to his trundle-bed, and custom was scant. Grandfather was snoring in his blankets this half-hour; Jim hard by nodded against his lanthorn in the kitchen, and Betty thought of shutting up and seeking slumber of her own warm pillow.
She moved to and fro, putting little sprigs of Christmas in glasses, bottles, and up in odd places of the bar. For Yule was but a week to come, and Betty was staunch to tradition.
She sang as she moved (adapting them to an air of her own contriving) some words by a Mr. Wordsworth, who was then nothing popular in men’s mouths. But a travelling tinker (perhaps Peter Bell) had left the book with her as a tribute to her prettiness, and Betty knowing nothing of schools appreciated the gift.
“Sometimes he’ll hide in the cave of a rock,Then whistle as shrill as the buzzard cock,”
“Sometimes he’ll hide in the cave of a rock,Then whistle as shrill as the buzzard cock,”
“Sometimes he’ll hide in the cave of a rock,
Then whistle as shrill as the buzzard cock,”
she warbled of the wind; and a blade of it flashed in cuttingly on the note, for just then somebody pushed open the tap-door and entered.
Her song died in her throat. It went up like the requiem of the phœnix, in a flame of fire that reddened her cheeks, and then left them white as the ashes of rose leaves.
“Mr. Tuke,” she whispered.
He came in with a dark look on his face, that seemed stiff, moreover, with the onset of furious blasts; but the teeth showed in a smile as he walked up to the counter and held out his hand to the girl.
“Are you alone, Betty?”
“Yes,” she murmured, almost inaudibly.
He clasped the soft palm in his, and would not let it go.
“And you are decorating,” he said. “How snug and warm it looks, and I am chilled to the bone.”
Her face was gathering its pinks again.
“Won’t your honour come and toast at the parlour-fire?” she said timidly. “’Tis raw and cold where you stand.”
“I know it, my dear. The wind was a file in my teeth as I walked from ‘Delsrop.’”
“Walked! Your honour has walked?”
“And why not, Betty? That is a rare febrifuge—a night-tramp in a north-easter.”
She looked up at him strangely, as she undid the hasp of the half-door of the bar and held the panel open. He paused on the threshold.
“You are alone, you say?”
“All but for Jim, who nods in the kitchen. I was moving to lock up when your honour came.”
“Do so now, and send the lad to bed. I want you to myself, Betty.”
He did not wait for an answer; but walked past the girl and into the little warm room beyond her. And here he stood looking down upon the red glow of the fire.
He was conscious of a considerable pause, and then of an uncertain step moving away from the counter. A fierce and reckless devil was riding him, and all his senses were acute to answer to the bit.
Presently he heard a shutter going gently into place, and then the step again, and a soft voice—almost with an entreating anguish in it, as if it would fain have its order discarded.
“Jim, you can go to bed.”
There followed a dragging sound and a heavy shuffling tread, that receded and died out.
He waited once more—interminably it seemed.
At length he made up his mind and strode out into the tap.
The girl was leaning silently against the counter, her breath coming fast, her cheeks the colour of ladysmocks.
Without a word he led her into the little room and swung to the door. He put her before him and, taking her face between his hands, looked into her frightened eyes.
“Do I terrify you, you little brown starling? I am overcome myself, half-silly with anger and contempt, and most of all, I think, with injured vanity.”
She gazed up at him from the depths of entreating eyes, and he saw the slow tears gathering in them.
“Betty, Betty!” he murmured.
“You are a gentleman, and I am alone,” was all she answered.
He was silent a minute. He held her still, softly caressing the hair on her forehead.
“Why, I should be angered if any one called me otherwise,” he said. “And that, maybe, would end in a bullet; and so to prove my claim to the title before the court of final appeal up there. And what could I say?—that Betty trusted me, and that I abused her trust.”
“You will not—no, never.”
“But I am in a very cruel and selfish mood, sweetheart; and I know that you love me—I know it, Betty.”
She forced his hands apart, and stepped back.
“Yes,” she said bravely, “I do; I can’t help it. I would follow you across the world if you called me. But you will not.”
“Not across the world; but this room. Come!”
She went up to him at once; allowed herself to be taken into his arms—to have her lips passionately kissed. Then she drew back once more with bowed head.
“Now,” she said low, “I am yours; and I love you purely, and I am sweet and good. Yes, I am; for how else could I school the love in my heart, and it near breaking? And you love me because I am. But what should I be afterwards—oh, what, what?”
“Betty, I am unhappy.”
She threw herself into grandfather’s old elbow-chair, and buried her face in her hands.
“No, no!” she cried piteously. “You won’t be so cruel!”
He went and seated himself by her on the arm of the chair.
“Shall I tell you what hath driven me to you, Betty?”
“You have quarrelled withher,” came the answer in a muffled voice, out of woman’s intuition.
“No, my dear. I am not justified in assuming the right to quarrel. She hath given me none. But she maddens me with her whimsies till the man in me rises up and refuses to be any longer the slave of her caprices.”
“What is she doing?”
“She trifles with my suit. ’Twas an honourable one that would seek to found a union on esteem and confidence. What can she know of these when she plays off my own servant against me in the regard of both?”
“She will make none the worse wife for standing off and on a little before.”
“That is not like you, Betty.”
“Is it not? But I wear my shameful heart on my sleeve. And what of the servant?”
“A decent, low-born fellow. I hold him nothing to blame. He walks like a cat on the ice till ’tis comical to see him.”
He laughed slightly. The little warmth of merriment awoke new tenderness in him. He put his arm about the girl’s shoulders as she lay huddled close by.
“I take you into my confidence, dear; and you will not abuse me that I speak slightingly, out of my soreness, of a rival. Yet she is little that. She is a beautiful and refined lady, of whom I desired a favour that ’twere presumption for such as I to ask. So I withdraw my plan to wed delicately and live highly, and bow my admiration and retire. And then my heart gives a free leap, and I fly for love to the nest of my pretty brown bird.”
The girl sat up, and put the hair from her wet eyes.
“The bird would die on the morrow,” she said. “Oh! you must go back and try once more.”
“What! you would bid me to another’s arms?”
“I would bid you do the part of the brave and honourable gentleman my silly fancy went out to.”
“And, if I succeeded?”
“I should know what was mine. I could be happy and blithe and contented looking forward.”
“And would you die a maid for my sake?”
She clasped her hands and put them up so against his breast. The tears were running down her cheeks.
“Yes,” she murmured, half-choking, “I will promise that—my love—my love that is so far above and beyond me.”
He jumped to his feet.
“Get you gone!” he cried, almost roughly. “Go! while my heart is running over with pity. I will sit out the night by the fire here, and fight down my devil alone! Not another word, or kiss, or look! and—and, Betty, turn the key as you go and lock me in.”
Reasonis fatal to romance, and Miss Royston was coming to it. She had, indeed, a very practical side to her character, which side was all of the world and eminently fancy-free. “Kiss-in-the-ring” in a fairy circle is a delightful pastime for the heyday of youth, but the time must come when the gravity of the problem as to to whom one shall throw the final handkerchief, must intrude itself through the merriest helter-skelter of the game. Then, as a matter of necessity, must follow the inevitable formulæ of the pretty cold-shoulder to ineligiblepartis; of little sisterly regrets on behalf of swains who take their dismissal rebelliously; of wee sops to passionate Cerberuses in the shape of Christmas cards depicting hands clasped above the motto “For auld lang syne”; of the citing of Job-comforter maxims felt by the recipient to be totally inapt to the tragedy of the situation. And so the jade plumes herself on her acquirement of the reasonable view, and makes an easy virtue of spoiling faith—which is but a synonym for romance—for the sake of five hundred a year.
No doubt this is as it should be; for that very faith, or romance, would be a sorry sole equipment for the nether side of youth. But it is also a matter for regret that reason, when come to, should so commonly refuse credit to any evidence but that of its senses, and should contemn in others that same spirit of ideality which coloured all the early processes of its own evolution.
Now Miss Angela would not condescend to this abrupt change of front; for, for one thing, she was a zealous student of moral sensation, and, for another, she was conscious of maturing past her first bloom. She desired to keep her rose-coloured spectacles, only the rims must be of gold. In short, she was feeling that, were the picturesqueness of life her object, she must seek to change her outlook while her charms remained sufficiently inviting to procure her a new prosperous coign of vantage. She had played with romance. Now, for the time being, it must be subordinated to questions of business.
Foremost in this connection presented itself the figure of her inscrutable neighbour of “Delsrop.” He, for a period, had slept without a rival in the pupils of her pale eyes. He had satisfied her most delicate sensibilities—for a period.
Gradually, however, was effected that change in her point of view. She came to question in herself, not the personality of the interesting stranger so much as his eligibility. And here she had to acknowledge herself at sea, and to own that melancholy and mystery were best applied to matrimony when justified by substantial dividends.
Moreover, there was the matter of position. The case of her almost-namesake, Mrs. Kauffmann, was not so ancient to men’s memories as that she could afford to discount its significance as legendary. Indeed, she had a mental picture of herself as a little prim-set maid of five or so, walking, her hand in her father’s, through a suite of magnificent rooms, the walls of which, all gorgeously upholstered, were hung with canvases in such quantity as to spoil, she thought, the pretty effect of the hangings; and she remembered how her father—a lord of Plympton Manor in Devonshire, where was once a school-master with a famous son—had stopped and presented his hand to a little dapper gentleman—who wore a plum-coloured coat, and who had a scar on his lip and very squeezed-up eyes—and a courteous bow to a pale and melancholy lady who stood by the little gentleman’s side. And the lady had smiled upon the baby-girl and had asked her name; and when told it the smile had vanished, and she had said in a queer un-English voice, “Gott bewahre. Rechristen the mädchen if you wish her happiness.” And at that the two men had looked flushed and awkward, as men are wont to look over some suppressed meaning that invites impossible sympathy.
Well, Miss Angela—or Angelica, as you will—was to learn afterwards that she had had the youthful honour to be present at the inaugural exhibition of the Royal Academy, whose then acquirement of its fine new rooms in Somerset House was an earnest of his Majesty the King’s paternal support and munificence. And she was to learn that the little spruce gentleman had been no other than that notable President of an august body whose chief claim to her interest lay in the fact that he was Plympton-born; but who came to be known to her later experience as an artist who was said to ask as much as forty pounds for a head, and a hundred guineas for a full-length portrait—as if the more valuable virtues of a man were exhibited in his legs. And the lady, she was informed, had been Mrs. Kauffmann, since become Signora Zucchi, whom some people thought a greater artist even than the President; for she gave no preference to either head or legs, but painted both in such a way that any one or other of them might have done duty for either sex—which was a very noble and impartial view to take of the unities of art.
Now, it was not this poor Angelica’s management of pigments that was the present subject of Miss Royston’s thoughts. It was that melancholy story of how Sir Joshua’sprotégéehad, at the outset of her hopeful career, been drawn into matrimony with a picturesque rogue of a valet, who had it in him to play the part of Uther to a noble lady.
Assuredly, the mistress of “Chatters” had no desire to repeat history in such a respect, for all the veneer of romance that overlay it; or to risk, without astute inquiry, a union with one whose personality was wrapt in so impenetrable a fog of mystery.
What was it not possible the man might be; or what limits were to put on the ingenuity of resourceful vagabonds? Count Horn’s fellow had hoodwinked society no less than the trustful girl it had made a pet of. And whence had Mr. Tuke issued, and what was his claim to that haunted estate that had come to be considered in the neighbourhood a sort of no-man’s-land? On these points he had never condescended to throw light. Still, if his right-ownership of “Delsrop” must be taken on trust, no such condition applied to the question of his origin. Here conjecture must needs incline to suspicion, seeing that his immediate predecessor had been, by his own showing, a common thief and coach-robber.
Therefore was she resolved to temper fascination with prudence; to whip her captive to the end of his tether, and, pending discoveries, to no more than lightly hold him in hand.
In furtherance of this policy it was that she drove her unproclaimed suitor to the nether side of reason, and, by some over-accent of coquetry, almost lost herself the indulgence of a very pretty pastime.
She was pondering, one morning, with some rueful apprehensiveness, this possibility of her having gone too far, when her heart was reassured by the sound of a footstep that was familiar to her, coming up the gravel outside.
Then she smiled to herself, with a little composed preening of neck-ribbons; for, after all, the incense of courtship was grateful to her nostrils—and her brother was not at home.
He—that same suitor—came in like a man set on a serious purpose; and secretly her heart moved with admiration of, but no submission to, his masterfulness.
He walked straight up to her, to where she had risen from her seat by the fire, and answered her graceful greeting with little more than a bow.
“Madam,” he said, “I must crave your permission to speak, though I may imperil my prospects through precipitancy.”
She smiled, her pulses drumming thickly.
“A formidable overture,” she said—and for the life of her could get no further.
“I do not wish it to be,” said the gentleman. “If any misconception of my position makes me appear to assume a manner of truculency, I do myself an injustice, believe me.”
Her lips moved, but no word came from them.
“I am aware,” he went on, “that the apparent invidiousness of my position amongst you here may stand, and rightly, as an insuperable barrier to any addresses I may presume to submit to your consideration.”
Her lips opened again; but she only inclined her head.
“It is so, then?” he answered to the gesture; “and it only remains for me to express my most earnest regret at having failed hitherto to realize the true conditions of a suit, which I now need not hesitate to affirm I once dared to hope a prosperous termination to; and to gratefully thank you for permitting me to justify my dismissal in your eyes, without putting you to the awkwardness of an explanation. Madam, I am your humble, obedient servant.”
He bowed low. Positively, the man seemed on the point of withdrawing—and with a doubtful air of relief, too. Miss Royston found her voice suddenly.
“Stay, Mr. Tuke!—Oh, sir! your hurried assumption seems to put me in the worst light of churlishness.”
“Surely, surely,” said he, reluctantly, “I never suggested such a thing?”
“Indirectly, indeed, you do. You hastily cancel an—an invitation, while I am yet making up my mind as to the form of answer.”
“Ah, madam! I see. You would claim the privilege of rejection.”
“That is unkind.”
“No, no. You are entitled to it. I was wrong to overlook the fact that the point of view of the world must be considered.”
She flushed up angrily.
“I thank you, sir. You mean, of course, that I wish to secure myself from the imputation that I angled for what was cunning to elude me? I stand high in your opinion, indeed. But you force me to the avowal that I am under no necessity to deprecate the criticisms of my neighbours.”
“You could choose of the noblest in the land, and bring to any more honour than you received. If you have elected to misconstrue me of late, and to indirectly enlighten me as to your sense of my presumption, it was quite within your province, as a lady of high position, to do so.”
“Ah! I feel the sting behind your words of honey. Mr. Tuke”—her voice fell caressing as that of a remonstrant sister—“I will not pretend to misinterpret your attitude towards me. May I be simply frank with you? There is a proverb about flogging a willing horse. I own I have done that of late—that I have certified myself a consistent member of my sex. Is not that candour itself? Well, would you know what hath inspired me? ’Twas recalling the fate of that unhappy Mrs. Kauffmann.”
He laughed slightly.
“It understand the inference. My tongue is tied; but I can assure you I have never engaged in any service but my own.”
She did not answer; but her expression had gathered some coldness of reserve. His was enigmatical, as he continued:
“Am I justified in assuming that, satisfied on this point, you would at least offer no obstacle to my most respectful suit?”
“That is taking me at a disadvantage,” she said, with a winning smile. “No woman lends herself to a bargain where she hath to give credit.”
He bowed again. He could not but be conscious that this atmosphere of rigid politeness seemed ludicrously out of place in an avowal of so particular a kind; and that his declaration and its reception sounded rather in the nature of a passage of arms. He knew he had come, of set purpose, to seek in legitimate attachment a foil to passion. He was not so sure his heart joined in the quest, or that he had not privately courted the dismissal he professed to deprecate.
Perhaps Miss Royston entertained a like doubt. Though it would not have affected her attitude, she would have preferred, and had indeed looked to, more ardent means to a similar end. For what, otherwise, had she practised those late arts of coquetry? She had pictured her suitor, according to her judgment of him, storming the bastions of her pride; warm, palpitating, entreating—a demi-god revealing himself in a cloud of passion. And here he was addressing her with no more emotion than he might have shown in asking her interest to get an old woman into a hospital.
She was disappointed in him, and immediately inclined to suspicions. Had she—perish the humiliating thought!—a rival? And then supposing, after she had successfully weaned his regard for her, he should turn out to be a lord of Burleigh?
Well, she must fight to be consistent—though her breast was hot with indignation. But she could have boxed his ears, as he said, in the tone of a man condemned by his doctor to arrowroot and barley-water—“I must live on hope.”
Mr. Tuke, as a result of his grudging sop to respectability, had brought about nothing more definite than some unprofitable temporizing. No doubt this served him well right, and was a lesson to him to be more particular for the future in his dealings with his own conscience. For that same usurer will think nothing of charging a hundred per cent. on the least little matter of “accommodation.”
To choose the lesser of two advantages is thought a virtue by some; but then to be held kicking one’s heels between them both becomes a grievous injustice. This hardship our friend thought himself to suffer, and was very morose and discontented in consequence.
Does any one think meanly of this gentleman that he could fly for comfort of a legitimate suit gone awry to a humbler breast than it was his temptation to use and bruise? I can only offer the defence that pure-hearted Betty thought none the less of him for doing so, and that to no sweeter Mentor could any foundering soul submit its ethological perplexities. For the question of “taste”—lethimdecide who is the best authority on the right cut of a coat. But passion, I believe, is not grounded on any conventional knowledge of what is fitting.
Now, for some weeks, the master of “Delsrop” led a very solitary and rather crabbed life. Debarred, by the simplest honour, from going whither his heart would have conducted him, he yet resented the necessity of a self-denial that would probably in the end prove itself futile. Miss Royston might, he had some ground for believing, favour his suit eventually, could he submit to her his sufficient credentials. Yet, though he had committed himself to a rather negative declaration; though he perceived his most honest and most reasonable course would be to set himself right in that lady’s eyes; though he felt no umbrage at her caution, which was certainly under the circumstances justifiable, he could not altogether whip himself away from the temptation to solve the problem of an explanation by—doing nothing at all.
He succeeded in at least scotching that snake. But he dared not let his thoughts run on Betty, or on the sweetness and innocence that, to the beast in man, are such lures to brutality. It is only when the blood runs aged that we can look on any extreme beauty of nature without wishing to obscure it, so unbearable to our diseased perceptions is the flawless.
At length he made up his mind to the right course. Christmas was over and done with—a somewhat dismal hermit-time to him—and early in the new year Blythewood and his sister were to journey to London. He would ride with them; would spend a few days in town, and while there, would endeavour to induce the lawyer Creel to some explanation of that enigma of his inheritance. Surely, with such an object in view as a union with a lady of a certain rank and position, he would not be refused those credentials he desired.
He was further urged to this decision by the fact that his house was now properly served, and that since that night of his furniture’s arrival, there had been no evidence but that Mr. Breeds’s unhonoured guests had withdrawn finally from the neighbourhood. Dennis he would leave in general charge, with strict orders as to the protection of the premises during his absence.
So matters were ordered; and about the second week in January the party set forth. The baronet and his sister posted; but their neighbour, to whom a saddle was the mostsans souciof conveyances, rode his own horse.
The weather was bitterly cold, with a perpetual menacing look in all the stony vault of the sky, and the journey, till near its termination, quite uneventful.
They did not start by way of Stockbridge; but, to Mr. Tuke’s relief, took cross-tracks for a number of miles, and struck the London road at Basinstoke, where they dined. He rode at their wheel, or not, as circumstance permitted, and Angela was gracious or peevish with him according to her mood.
Perhaps his own varied. After dinner his heart would sing jocundly: “She unites sense with beauty, and hath a hundred charms of wit and winsomeness. I am a fool to doubt.”
Then he would murmur: “Am I frighted by the shadow of my own past? I will carry her in the teeth of it all. None but the brave deserve the fair.”
And so presently to the reaction—the fall of enthusiasm’s temperature in the chill of some icy response when digestion needed a stimulus.
“None but the brave deserve immunity from the fair,” thought he. “These old saws want mending.”
And maybe he was right; for even an axiom will not endure for ever, but will wear out like a book-block, and come to leave a faint impression.
They slept at the “White Hart” at Hook—whither an outrider had preceded them to bespeak beds—and were to make an end of their journey by the evening of the morrow.
On that following day all went awry. The little baronet had been free with his bottle overnight, and was, for him, in a very sour and cross-grained condition. The water they had found frozen in the ewers; the soap curdled—as it will in very cold weather—in the dishes. The chimney had, and the venison had been, smoked. The waiters received vails proportionate with the mood of the party, and showed some consequent surliness in bidding it on its way.
For half the morning Mr. Tuke jogged in the rear of the chaise, cursing the ice-bound road and the ringing cold. Angela sat amongst her furs pink-eyed, like a ferret looking out of straw; and Sir David nursed his sick head, and exclaimed spasmodically over the infernal jolting; for the sludgy track—some eighteen inches deep in mud during the most of the winter—that was the Exeter road, was now petrified into furrows like those in a bed of larva.
Often a horse would slip and fall, flinging its stiffened postillion; and then there would be bitter delay, and the unbuckling of straps with blue ineffectual hands, and much breathing of oaths and stamping of deadened feet; while low in the desolate welkin the sun looked on with dim unconcerned eye, as if it were some senile monarch, conscious only of private cosiness while gazing through a frosted window on a little township of suffering.
And so on again presently, crashing and pounding, the boys towelling their cattle for mere exercise of their own numbed fingers, the cat-ice splintering in the ruts, the chaise dancing wildly in its straps.
Fortunately there was no snow; though the sky bore evidence in its appearance of such garnered stores of it as could, at a nod, sow the world with winter.
It was an hour past noon when our party drew up, in no very sweet temper, at the door of the “Catherine Wheel” at Egham, where they were to stop for dinner.
They thawed a little during the meal, and were even amiable, one with the other, after a guarded fashion. Sir David was the victim of nothing more than some physical discomfort; but his two companions suffered yet under a species of misunderstanding that circumstance only could put an end to; and in the meanwhile it was inevitable that their mutual relations should be marked by some coldness and embarrassment.
The “Regulator” coach, from Exeter to London, clattered up in the frost and stopped to change horses while they were at table. They heard the half-dead “outsides” stumping about in the bar and calling for mulled port and Nantes brandy to warm them on to the next stage; and had a glimpse, through the lattice, of the vehicle itself—chocolate in hue and traced all over with gilt lettering like a Christmas calendar; of a happy-faced young woman who sat, hugging a little boy in her lap, on the “gammon-board” of the roof; and of a kit-kat presentment of an arrogant-visaged young gentleman, with a brown silk handkerchief tied about his head, who leaned out of the drag window, to the huge discomfort of the other “insides,” and amused himself by endeavouring to scrape with a tooth-pick the paint off the bull’s head on the panel of the door.
This latter sight sent Mr. Tuke back in his chair with an involuntary start—which Miss Royston noticed.
“Do you know the gentleman?” she said, jumping to a conclusion.
“I? Yes—I recognize him, I think.”
“Oh, indeed! And who is he, may I ask?”
“’Tis Dunlone—Lord Dunlone. I have met him. We were in the way of being friends, in fact.”
He thought to himself: “The fellow goes townwards from his Cornish place. ’Tis in sort with his cursed parsimony to stage it like a provident cit.”
“I will excuse you, if you wish to go speak with him,” said Miss Angela.
“Not in the least. I should poorly requite myself for the loss of your society.”
She laughed, with a faint insolence of inflection. Only one reason, it seemed to her, could be for his refusing to act upon the acquaintanceship he claimed—that he feared to put it to the test.Wasit possible he was the nobleman’s valet? she mused, recalling that other case.
He sat on, unwitting of her meditations; but he felt a degree of relief, nevertheless, when the guard of the “Regulator”—a confident, red-faced young fellow, in a bottle-green coat and with a sprig of mistletoe in his hat—sounded his horn, disposed his reluctant passengers, swung himself up over the hind-boot, chucked the rosy young woman, to the gazer’s high approval, under the chin, and gave the signal to start; and it was without regret that he saw that straining vehicle draw away with a rumbling of wheels, and the unwelcome vision pass from his ken. For he had no mind to recall a certain phase of his life, from which he could have sworn, years of reformation bridged him.
By two o’clock they were on their way again, and, as the dusk gathered, so did their gloom and reserve seem to deepen. Indeed, the horseman felt it a positive relief when dark shut in upon them still urging onwards, for so the perils of the road were his sufficient excuse for keeping himself apart and without the influence of that depressing atmosphere.
Driving on desperately, in a struggling flurry to escape being benighted on some impassable waste, they struck the track by and by across Hounslow Heath, and put on what additional speed they durst over that open and historic ground.
A crimson spot of light that, upon their first issuing on to the flats, had seemed the low-down radiance of some far cottage-window, grew in lustre as they advanced, until it flared before them, a leaping flame. Thereupon they slackened speed somewhat, moving with caution; and the horseman dropped a hand towards his holster.
A hundred yards further, and the flame became a fire dancing redly by the roadside; and there were shadows flitting about it, and, close by, a looming mass that threw back little spars and runlets of reflection to the spouting blaze.
Clipping indecision with a jerk of his rowels, Mr. Tuke uttered a shout and rode down upon the group. There was an answering cry; and he saw a figure or two throw up its hands, dramatically entreating him to a halt. Something he noticed in time to respond, and pulled up his horse with so great a suddenness upon the icy road, that the brute sank upon its haunches and half-tumbled him out of the saddle.
He was on the ground in a moment, and, whipping the frightened animal to its feet, moved towards the fire and was made way for by those about it.
He looked down. The body of a man lay uncouthly flung beside the glow—that had been built up hastily of brushwood and dead sticks in a hopeless effort to rekindle a late-extinguished spark of life. The flame painted the waxen face and fallen jaw with a hectic mockery of vitality, and glinted on a dribbling splash in the forehead where something had crushed in through the very ring of a cherished love-lock.
A woman was down upon the grass by the figure—moaning to it, caressing it, with some piteous shame of the awful publicity of her conduct; for she would not believe in the impotence of her agony to rouse that silent shape to any responsive gesture; and, in the background of her thoughts, was some insane speculation as to how, when all was right again, she should hold her terror an apology for her emotion.
Close behind her stood a little crying boy, his fingers in his eyes; and it was moving to see how, in the youngling’s cap and in the breast of the kneeling woman, were merry knots of Christmas—earnests of a thoughtless time.
“The guard?” murmured the new-comer.
He grasped the situation with only too sure an intuition. The glooming mass in the road was nothing less than that same lusty vehicle they had seen but an hour or two before rumble away from the inn-door, its jovial horn answering to the lips of that formless thing by the fire.
“Aye,” grunted the coachman, from the covert of his preposterous neckcloth. He had come up on the moment, from the task of slowly manipulating his cut traces.
“That’s the last of Charlie,” he said, with some thickness of fury in his tone.
“No, no!” moaned up the woman. “Not the last—my God, no!”
“Don’t take on, my dear,” he said. “Charlie done his dooty like a man; and there’s not a coach vheel ’ll go over that there patch on the road but ’ll roll up a bloody account agen his murderers.”
She only sighed miserably in answer. The deep apathy of grief was in her veins like a drug.
“How many?” said Tuke.
“Six, if there was vun, sir. Six cursed ruffians to dance agen the sky and serve the crows for black pudden, so be there’s any vally in the fellowship of the road.”
He shook his pillow of an arm aloft—finely, for all the heavy oddity of his appearance.
“Aye,” he murmured, in response to a gesture—“the man’s wife and his youngster.”
At the word a woman—one from the huddled group of robbed and terrified passengers—came out into the glow, and snatching up the child, forced it whimpering into its mother’s arms. The act was well conceived. The desolate creature caught at the hope, and held it convulsively against her breast; and in a moment her burdened heart found relief.
Mr. Tuke backed silently. “No,” the coachman had growled to him—“hewanted no help.Hecould get on well enough now. There was nothing for it but to complete his crippled stage, and as quickly as possible set the law in motion.”
The chaise, with its occupants, was drawn up at a little distance from the tragic scene. As the horseman made for it, eager to reassure his friends that any cause for present alarm was passed, he was aware of a figure standing by the door and addressing those within in exceedingly tremulous tones.
“I’ve had enough of it, curse me!” it was saying. “’Twould be a sick thing to travel with that dead rascal banging on the roof; and the cursed coachman refuses to go without him. I’ve been robbed of fifty pound, by God! and I’ll take it exceeding civil of you to give me a lift over the last stages.”
“Indeed,” said Miss Angela’s clear voice—“we shall be very happy, Lord Dunlone.”