I did not, however, find Lieutenant Clutterbuck that night. He was out of reach, and likely to remain so for some while to come. He had left his lodgings at mid-day and taken his body-servant with him, and his landlady had no knowledge of his whereabouts. I thought it probable, however, that some of his friends might have that knowledge, and I thereupon hurried to those haunts where of an evening he was an habitual visitor. The "Hercules Pillars" in Piccadilly, the "Cocoa Tree" in St. James's Street, the "Spring Gardens" at Vauxhall, "Barton's" in King Street, the "Spread Eagle" in Covent Garden,--I hurried from one to the other of these places, and though I came upon many of Clutterbuck's intimates, not one of them was a whit better informed than myself. I returned to my lodging late and more disheartened than I could have believed possible in a matter wherein I had no particular concern. And, indeed, it was not so much any conjecture as to what strange tragical events might be happening about that watched and solitary house in Tresco which troubled me, or even pity for the girl maddened by her fears, or regret that I had not been able to do Clutterbuck that slight service which I purposed. But I took out the map of the Great West Road, and thought of the lad Parmiter trudging along it, doing a day's work here among the fields, begging a lift there upon a waggon and slowly working his way down into the West. I had a very clear picture of him before my eyes. The day was breaking, I remember, and I blew out the candles and looked out of the window down the street. The pavement was more silent at that hour than those country roads on which he might now be walking, or that hedge under which he might be shaking the dew from off his clothes. For there the thrush would be calling to the blackbird with an infinite bustle and noise, and the fields of corn would be whispering to the fields of wheat.
I came back again to my map, and while the light broadened, followed Parmiter from the outset of his journey, through Knightsbridge, along the Thames, between the pine-trees of Hampshire, past Whitchurch, and into the county of Devon. The road was unwound before my eyes like a tape. I saw it slant upwards to the brow of a hill, and dip into the cup of a valley; here through a boskage of green I saw a flash of silver where the river ran; there between flat green fields it lay, a broad white line geometrically straight to the gate of a city; it curved amongst the churches and houses, but never lost itself in that labyrinth, aiming with every wind and turn at that other gate, from which it leaped free at last to the hills. And always on the road I saw Dick Parmiter, drunk with fatigue, tottering and stumbling down to the West.
For awhile he occupied that road alone; but in the end I saw another traveller a long way behind--a man on horseback, who spurred out from London and rode with the speed of the wind. For a little I watched that rider, curious only to discern how far he travelled, and whether he would pass Dick Parmiter; then, as I saw him drawing nearer and nearer, devouring the miles which lay between, it came upon me slowly that he was riding not to pass but to overtake; and at once the fancy flashed across me that this was Clutterbuck. I gazed at my map upon the table as one might gaze into a magician's globe. It was no longer a map; it was the road itself imprisoned in hedges, sunlit, and chequered with the shadows of trees. I could see the horseman, I could see the dust spirting up from beneath his horse's hoofs like smoke from a gun-barrel. Only his hat was pushed down upon his brows because of the wind made by the speed of his galloping, so that I could not see his face. But it was Clutterbuck I had no doubt. Whither had he gone from his lodging? Now I was convinced that I knew. There had been no need of my night's wanderings from tavern to tavern, had I but looked at my map before. It was Clutterbuck without a doubt. At some bend of the road he would turn in his saddle to look backwards, and I should recognise his face. It was Lieutenant Clutterbuck, taking the good air into his lungs with a vengeance. He vanished into a forest, but beyond the forest the road dipped down a bank of grass and lay open to the eye. I should see him in a second race out, his body bent over his horse's neck to save him from the swinging boughs. I could have clapped my hands with sheer pleasure. I wished that my voice could have reached out to Parmiter, tramping wearily so far beyond; in my excitement, I believed that it would, and before I knew what I did, I cried out aloud:
"Parmiter! Parmiter!" and a voice behind me answered:
"You must be mad, Berkeley! What in the world has come to you?"
I sat upright in my chair. The excitement died out of me and left me chilly. I looked about me; I was in my own lodging at the corner of St James's Street, outside in the streets the world was beginning to wake, and the voice which had spoken to me and the hand which was now laid upon my shoulder were the voice and the hand of Lieutenant Clutterbuck.
"What's this?" said he, leaning over my shoulder. "It is a map."
"Yes," I answered, "it is a mere map, the map of the Great West Road;" and in my eyes it was no longer any more than a map.
Clutterbuck, who was holding it in his hand, dropped it with a movement and an exclamation of anger. Then he looked curiously at me, stepped over to the sideboard and took up a glass or two which stood there. The glasses were clean and dry. He looked at me again, his curiosity had grown into uneasiness; he walked to the opposite side of the table, and drawing up a chair seated himself face to face with me.
"I hoped you were drunk," said he. "But it seems you are as sober as a bishop. Are you daft, then? Has it come to a strait-waistcoat? I come back late from Twickenham. I stopped at the 'Hercules Pillars.' There I heard that you had rushed in two hours before in a great flurry and disorder, crying out that you must speak to me on the instant. The same story was told to me at the 'Cocoa Trees.' My landlady repeated it. I conjectured that it must needs be some little affair to be settled with sharps at six in the morning; and so that you might not say your friends neglect you, I turn from my bed, and hurry to you at three o'clock of the morning. I find that you have left your front-door unlatched for any thief that wills to make his profit of the house. I come into your room and find you bending over a map in a great excitement and crying out aloud that damned boy's name. Is he to trouble my peace until the Judgment Day? Are you daft, eh, Steve?" and he reached his hand across the table not unkindly, and laid it on my sleeve. "Are you daft?"
I was staring again at the map, and did not answer him. He shifted his hand from my sleeve and took it up and away from my eyes. He looked at it himself, and then spoke slowly, and in quite a different voice:
"It is a curious, suggestive thing, the map of a road, when all's said," he observed slowly. "I'll not deny but what it seizes one's fancies. Its simple lines and curves call up I know not what pictures of flowering hedgerows; a little black blot means a village of stone cottages, very likely overhung with ivy and climbed upon with roses." He suddenly thrust the map again under my nose, "What do you see upon the road?" said he.
"Parmiter," I answered.
"Of course," he interrupted sharply. "Well, where is Parmiter?" and I laid a finger on the map.
"Between Fenny Bridges and Exeter," said he, leaning forward. "He has made great haste."
He spoke quite seriously, not questioning my conjecture, but accepting it as a mere statement of fact.
"That is a heath?" he asked, pointing to an inch or so where the map was shaded on each side of the high-road. "Yes, a heath t'other side of Hartley Row; I know it. There should be a mail-coach there, and the horses out of the shafts, and one or two men in crape masks and a lady in a swoon, and the driver stretched in the middle of the road with a bullet through his crop."
"I do not see that," I returned. "But here, beyond Axminster----"
"Well?"
He leaned yet further forward.
"There is a forest here."
"Yes."
"I saw a man on horseback ride into it between the trees. He has not as yet emerged from it."
"Who was he? Did you know him?"
"I thought I did. But I could not see his face."
Clutterbuck watched that forest eagerly, and with a queer suspense in his attitude and even in his breathing. Every now and then he raised his eyes to mine with a question in them. Each time I shook my head, and answered:
"Not yet," and we both again stared at the map.
Then Clutterbuck whispered quickly:
"What if his horse had stumbled? What if he is lying there at the roadside beneath the tree?" He tore himself away from the contemplation of the map. "The thing's magical!" he cried. "It has bewitched you, Steve, and by the Lord it has come near to bewitching me!"
"I thought the horseman was yourself. Why don't you go?" said I, pointing to the map.
Lieutenant Clutterbuck rose impatiently from his chair.
"There must be an end of this. Once for all I will not go. There is no reason I should. There is reason why I should not. You do not know in what you are meddling. You are taken like a schoolboy by an old wife's tale of a lonely girl trapped in a net. You are too old for such follies."
"I was too old a fortnight ago," I returned, "but, by the Lord, these last days I have grown young again--so young that----"
I stopped suddenly. Not until this instant had the notion occurred to me, but it came now, it thrilled through me with a veritable shock. I leaned back in my chair and stared at Clutterbuck. He understood, for he in his turn stared at me.
"The rider!" said he breathlessly, tapping the map with his forefinger, "the man whose face you did not see!"
I nodded at him.
"What if the face were mine?" said I.
"You could never believe it."
"I believe that I have even enough youth for that," I cried, and I bent over the map, trying again to fashion from its plain black and white my picture of the great high-road, climbing and winding through a country-side rich with all the colours of the summer. But it was only a map of lines and curves, nor could I any longer discover the horseman who spurred along it--though I had now a particular reason to wish for a view of his face,--or the wood into which he disappeared.
"Well, has your cavalier galloped into the open yet?" asked Clutterbuck.
He spoke with sarcasm, but the sarcasm was forced. It was but a cloak to cover and excuse the question.
I shook my head.
"No, and he will not," said Clutterbuck.
"Is that so sure?" I asked. "What if the face were mine?"
"You are serious!" he cried. "You would go a stranger and offer your unsought aid? It would be an impertinence."
"Suppose life and death are in the balance, would they weigh impertinence?"
"It might beyourlife andyourdeath!"
And as he spoke, it seemed to me that all my last seven years rose up in their shrouds and laughed at him.
"And what then?" I cried. "Would the world shiver if I died? Would even a tavern-keeper draw down his blinds? Perhaps some drunkard in his cups would wish I lived, that he might take my measure in a drinking-bout. There's my epitaph for you! Good Lord, Clutterbuck, but I would dearly love to die a clean death! There's that boy Parmiter tramping down his road. He does a far better thing than I have ever done. You know! Why talk of it? You know the life I have lived, and since that boy flung his example in my eyes, upon my word I sicken to think of it. Twelve years ago, Clutterbuck, I came to London, a cadet with a cadet's poor portion, but what a wealth of dreams! A fortune first, if I slaved till I was forty, and then I would set free my soul and live! The fortune came, and I slaved but six years for it. The treaty of Aix and a rise of stocks, and there was my fortune. You know how I have lived since."
Clutterbuck looked at me curiously. I had never said so much to him or to any man in this strain. Nor should I have said so much now, but I was fairly shaken out of my discretion. For a little Clutterbuck sat silent and motionless. Then he said gently:
"Shall I tell you why I will not go? Yes, I will tell you," and he told me the history of that Sunday, two years ago, when Cullen Mayle sat in the stocks, or at least as much of it as had come within his knowledge. The events of that day were the beginning of all the trouble, indeed, but Lieutenant Clutterbuck never knew more of it than what concerned himself, and as I sat over against him on that July morning and listened to his story while the world awoke, I had no suspicion of what the passage of that Sunday hid, or of the extraordinary consequences which it brought about.
"It was my business," he began, "to fetch Cullen Mayle from Tresco over to St. Mary's where the stocks were set. It was an unpleasant business, and to me doubly and damnably unpleasant."
"I understand!" said I, thinking of how he had before spoken to me of Adam Mayle's adopted daughter.
"I took a file of Musquets, found the three of them at breakfast, and, with as much delicacy as I could, explained my errand. Helen alone showed any distress or consciousness of disgrace. Cullen strolled to the window, and seeing that I had placed my men securely about the house and that my boat was ready on the sand not a dozen yards away, professed himself, with an inimitable indifference, willing to gratify my wishes; while Adam, so far from manifesting any anger, broke out into a great roar of laughter.
"'Cullen, my boy,' he shouted, like a man highly pleased, 'here's a nasty stumble for your pride. To sit in the stocks of a Sunday morning, when all the girls can see you as they come from church! To sit in the stocks like a common drunkard; and you that sets up for a gentleman! Oh, Cullen, Cullen!' He wagged his head from side to side, and so brought his fist upon the table with a bang which set all the plates dancing. 'Devil damn me,' said he, 'if I don't sail to church at St. Mary's myself and see how you look in your wooden garters.' Cullen glanced carelessly towards me. 'An unseemly old man,' said he; and we left Adam still shaking like a monstrous jellyfish, and crossed back to St. Mary's from Tresco.
"Sure enough Adam kept his word. They were singing theNunc Dimittisin the church when Adam stumped up the aisle. He had brought Helen with him, and she looked as though she wished the brick floor to open and let her out of sight. But Adam kept his head erect and showed a face of an extraordinary good humour. You may be certain that the parson got the scantiest attention imaginable to his discourse. For one thing, Adam Mayle had never set foot in St. Mary's Church before, and for another, every one was agog to see how he would bear himself afterwards, when he passed on his way to the quay across the little space before the Customs House.
"There was a rush to the church door as soon as the benediction was pronounced, and it happened that I was one of the last to come out of the porch. The first thing that I saw was Adam walking a little way apart amongst the gravestones with a stranger, and the next thing, Helen talking to Dick Parmiter."
Here I interrupted Clutterbuck, for I was anxious to let no detail escape me.
"Had Dick crossed with Adam Mayle from Tresco?"
"I think not," returned Clutterbuck. "He was not in the church. I do not know, but I fancy he brought the stranger over to St. Mary's afterwards."
"And who was this stranger?"
"George Glen he called himself, and said he had been quartermaster with Adam Mayle at Whydah. He was a squat, tarry man, of Adam's age or thereabouts, and the pair of them walked through the gates and crossed the fields over to the street of Hugh Town. I made haste to join Helen," Clutterbuck continued, and explained his words with an unnecessary confusion. "I mean, I would not have it appear that she shared in the disgrace which had befallen Cullen Mayle. So I walked with her, and we followed Adam down the street to the Customs House, where it seemed every inhabitant was loitering, and where Cullen sat, with his hat cocked forward over his forehead to shield him from the sun, entirely at his ease.
"It was curious to observe the behaviour of the loiterers. Some affected not to see Cullen at all; some, but those chiefly maidens, protested that it was a great shame so fine a gentleman should be so barbarously used. The elders on the other hand answered that he had come over late to his deserts, while a few, with a ludicrous pretence of unconsciousness, bowed and smiled at him as though it was the most natural thing in the world for a man in a laced coat to take the air in the stocks of a Sunday morning.
"Into the midst of this group marched Adam Mayle, and came to a halt before his son. He had composed his face to an unexceptionable gravity, and as he prodded thoughtfully with his stick at the sole of Cullen's shoe,
"'This is the first time,' he said, 'that ever I saw a pair of silk stockings in the stocks.'
"'One lives and learns,' replied Cullen, indifferently; and the old man lifted his nose into the air and said dreamily:
"'There is a ducking-chair, is there not, at the pier head?' and so walked on to the steps where his boat was moored. He went down into it with Mr. Glen, and the two men set about hoisting the sail. I was still standing on the pier with Helen.
"'You will come too?' she said with a sort of appeal. 'I do not know what may happen when Cullen is set free and comes back, I should be very glad if you would come.'"
Lieutenant Clutterbuck broke off his story and walked uneasily once or twice across the room as though he was troubled even now with the recollection of her appeal and of how she looked when she made it.
"So I went," he continued suddenly, and with a burst of frankness. "You see, Steve, she and I were very good friends; I never saw anything but welcome in her eyes when I crossed over to Tresco, and the kindliness of her voice had a warmth, and at times a tenderness, which I hoped meant more than friendship. Indeed, I would have staked my life she was ignorant of duplicity; and with Cullen she seemed always at some pains to conceal a repugnance. Well, I was young, I suppose; I saw with the eyes of youth, which see everything out of its due proportion. I crossed to Tresco, and while we were seated at dinner, about two hours later, Cullen Mayle strolled in and took his chair. Dick Parmiter had waited for him at St. Mary's until such time as he was set free, and had brought him across the Road.
"I cannot deny but what Cullen Mayle bore himself very suitably for the greater part of the time we were at table. Adam's blatant jests were enough to set any man's teeth on edge, yet Cullen made as though he did not hear a word of them, and talked politely upon indifferent topics to us and Mr. Glen. Adam, however, was not to be silenced that way. His banter became coarse and vindictive; for one thing he had drunk a deal of liquor, and for another he was exasperated that he could not provoke his son. I forget what particular joke he roared out from the head of the table, but I saw Cullen stretch his arm out over the cloth.
"'I see what is amiss,' he said, wearily, and took away the brandy bottle from his father's elbow. He went to the window, and opening it, emptied the bottle on to the grass beneath the sill. Then he came back to his seat and said suavely to Mr. Glen: 'My father cannot get the better of his old habits; he is drunk very early on Sundays--an unregenerate old put of a fellow as ever I came across.'
"The quarrel followed close upon the heels of that sentence, and occupied the afternoon and was renewed at supper. Adam very violent and blustering; Cullen very cool and composed, and only betraying his passion by the whiteness of his face. He used no oaths; he sat staring at his father with his dark sleepy eyes, and languidly accused him of every crime in the Newgate Calendar, with a great deal of detail as to time and place, and adding any horrible detail which came into his mind. The old man was routed at the last. About the middle of supper he got up from his chair, and going up the stairs shut himself into a room which he had fitted up as a cabin, and where he was used to sit of an evening.
"We were all, as you may guess, inexpressibly relieved when Adam left the parlour, for here it seemed was the quarrel ended. We counted, however, without Cullen. He looked for a moment or two at his father's empty chair, and stood up in his turn.
"'Here's an old rogue for you,' he said in a gentle voice. 'He has no more manners than a nasty pig. I'll teach him some,' and he followed his father up the stairs and into the cabin above. What was said between them we never heard, but we gathered at the foot of the stairs in the hall and listened to their voices. The old man bellowed as though he was in pain, and shook the windows with his noise; Cullen's voice came to us only as a smooth, continuous murmur. For half an hour perhaps we stood thus in the hall--interference would have only made matters worse--and I own that this half hour was not wholly unpleasant to me. Helen, in a word, was afraid, and more than once her hand was laid upon my coat-sleeve, and, touching it, ceased to tremble. She turned to me, it seemed, in that half hour of fear; I was fool enough to think it.
"At length we heard a door opening. Cullen negligently came down the stairs; Adam rushed out after him as far as the head of the stairs, where he stopped.
"'Open the door, one of you!' he bawled. 'Kick him out, Clutterbuck, and we'll see what damned muck-heap his fine manners will lead him to.'
"The outcry brought the servants scurrying into the hall. Adam repeated his order and one of the servants threw open the door.
"'Will you fetch me my boots?' said Cullen, and sitting down in a chair he kicked off his shoes. Then he pulled on his boots deliberately, stood up and felt in his pockets. From one pocket he drew out five guineas, from a second two, from a third four. These eleven guineas he held in his open hand.
"'They belong to you, I think,' he said, softly, poising them in his palm; and before any one could move a step or indeed guess at his intention, he raised his arm and flung them with all his force to where his father stood at the head of the stairs. Two of the guineas cut the old man in the forehead, and the blood ran down his face; the rest sparkled and clattered against the panels behind his head, whence they fell on to the stairs and rolled one by one down into the hall. No one spoke; no one moved. The brutal violence of the action for the moment paralysed every one; even Adam stood shaking at the stair head with his wits wandering. One by one the guineas rolled down the staircase, leaping from step to step, rattling as they leaped; and for a long time it seemed, one whirred and sang in a corner as it span round and settled down upon the boards; and when the coin had ceased to spin, still no one moved, no one spoke. A murmur of waves breaking lazily upon the sand, a breath of air stirring a shrub in the garden, the infinitesimal trumpeting of a gnat, came through the window, bringing as it were tales of things which lived into a room of statues.
"Cullen himself was the first to break the enchantment. He took his watch from his fob and holding it by the ribbon twirled it backwards and forwards. It was a big silver watch, and as he twirled it this way and that, it caught the light, seemed to throw out little sparks of fire, and flashed with a dazzling brightness. The eyes of the company were caught by it; they watched it with a keen attention, not knowing why they watched it; they watched it as it shone and glittered in its revolutions, almost with a sense of expectation, as though something of great consequence was to happen from the twirling of that watch.
"'This, too, is yours,' said Cullen, 'but it was no doubt some dead sailorman's before you stole it;' and ceasing to twirl the watch he held it steady by the ribbon. Then he looked round the hall and saw Helen staring at the watch with a queer intentness. I remember that her hand was at that moment resting upon my sleeve, and I felt it grow more rigid. I looked at her; her face was set, her eyes fixed upon Cullen and his glittering watch. I spoke to her; she did not answer, she did not hear."
Clutterbuck interrupted his story and sat moodily lost in his recollections, and when he resumed it was with great bitterness.
"I think," he continued, "that when Cullen spoke, he spoke with no other end than to provoke his father yet more. You must know that the old man had just one tender spot in his heart. Cullen could have no other aim but to set his heel on that.
"'I will come back for you, Helen,' he said, bending his eyes upon her and making as if there was much love between them; and to everybody's surprise Helen lifted her eyes slowly from the watch until they met Cullen's, and kept them there. She did not answer him in words, there was no need she should, every line of her body expressed obedience.
"Even Cullen was puzzled by her demeanour. Boy and girl, maid and youth, they had lived side by side in the house with indifference upon his part and all the appearance of aversion upon hers. Yet here was she subdued in an instant at the prospect of his departure! It seemed that the mere thought that Cullen was henceforth an outcast tore her secret live and warm from her heart.
"Cullen was plainly puzzled, as I say, but he was not the man to miss an advantage in the gratification of his malice. He shot one triumphant look at his father and spoke again to Helen.
"'You will wait for me?'
"Her eyes never wavered from his.
"'Yes!' she answered.
"It was a humiliating moment for me as you may imagine. It must have been more humiliating for Adam. With a hand upon the rail he lumbered heavily down a couple of the stairs.
"'No!' he cried, with a dreadful oath and in a voice which was strangely moved.
"'But I say yes,' said Cullen, very quietly. The smile had gone from his face; a new excitement kindled it. He was pitting his will against his father's. I saw him suddenly draw himself erect. 'Or, better still, you shall come with me now,' he cried. He reached out his arm straight from the shoulder towards her.
"'Come! Come with me now.'
"His voice rang out dominant like the clang of a trumpet, and to the consternation of us all, Helen crossed the floor towards him. I tried to detain her. 'Helen,' I cried, 'you do not know what you are doing. He will drag you into the gutter.'
"'Lieutenant Clutterbuck,' said Cullen, 'you are very red in the face. You cannot expect she will listen to you, for you do not look well when you are red in the face.'
"I paid no heed to his gibes.
"'Helen,' I cried, again. She paid no more heed to my prayers. 'What will you do? Where will you go?' I asked.
"'We shall go to London,' answered Cullen, 'where we shall do very well, and further to the best of our means Lieutenant Clutterbuck's advancement.'
"Humiliation and grief had overset my judgment or I should not have argued at this moment with Cullen Mayle. I flung out at him hotly, and like a boy.
"'When you are doing very well in London, Cullen Mayle, Lieutenant Clutterbuck will not be so far behind you.'
"'He will indeed be close upon my heels,' returned Cullen as pleasantly as possible, 'for most likely he will be carrying my valise.'
"With that he turned again to Helen, beckoned her to follow him, and strode towards the open door. She did follow him. Cullen was already in the doorway; in another second she would have crossed the threshold. But with a surprising agility Adam Mayle jumped down the stairs, ran across the hall, and caught the girl in his arms. She did not struggle to free herself, but she strained steadily towards Cullen. The old man's arms were strong, however.
"'Shut the door,' he cried, and I sprang forward and slammed it to.
"'Lock it! Bolt it!'
"Adam stood with his arms about the girl until the heavy bar swung down across the door and dropped into its socket with a clang. Now do you understand why I will not go down to Tresco? I can give you another reason if you are not content. When I spoke to Helen two days later, and taxed her with her passion for Cullen,--would you believe it?--she was deeply pained and hurt. She would not have it said that she had so much as thought of following Cullen's fortunes. She outfaced me as though I had been telling her fairy tales, and not what my own eyes saw. No, indeed, I will not go down to Tresco! I am not the traveller who has ridden into your wood upon the Great West Road."
Lieutenant Clutterbuck took up his hat when he had finished his story,
"The girl, besides, is not worth a thought," said he.
"I am not thinking of her," said I. Of Lieutenant Clutterbuck, of myself, above all of Dick Parmiter, I was thinking, but not at all of Helen Mayle. I drew the map towards me. Clutterbuck stopped at the door, came back and again leaned over my shoulder.
"Has your traveller come out from that wood?" he asked.
"No," I answered.
"It is an allegory," said he. "The man who rides down on this business to the West will, in very truth, enter into a wood from which he will not get free."
A loud roll of drums beneath my windows, the inspiriting music of trumpets, the lively measured stamp of feet. The troops with General Amherst at their head were marching down St. James's Street on their way to embark for Canada, and the tune to which they marched sang in my head that day as I rode out of London. The beat of my horse's hoofs kept time to it, and at Brentford a girl singing in a garden of apple-trees threw me a snatch of a song to fit to it.
She sang, and I caught the words up as I rode past. The sparkle of summer was in the air, and an Indian summer, if you will, at my heart. I slept that night at Hartley Row, and the next at Down House, and the third at a little inn some miles beyond Dorchester. A brook danced at the foot of the house, and sang me to sleep with the song I had heard at Brentford, and, as I lay in bed, I could see out of my window the starlight and the quiet fields white with a frost of dew and thickets of trees very black and still; and towards sunset upon the fourth day, I suddenly reined in my horse to one side and sat stone-still. To my left, the road ran straight and level for a long way, and nowhere upon it was there a living thing; on each side stretched fields and no one moved in them, and no house was visible. That way I had come, and I had remarked upon the loneliness. To my right, the road ran forward into a thick wood, and vanished beneath a roof of overhanging boughs. It was the aspect of that wood which took my breath away, and it surprised me because it was familiar. There was a milestone which I recognised just where the first tree overhung the road; there was a white gate in the hedge some twenty paces this side of the milestone. I knew that too. Just behind where I sat there should be three tall poplars ranged in a line like sentinels, the wood's outposts; I turned, and in the field behind me, the poplars reached up against the sky. I had no doubt they would be there, yet the sight of them fairly startled me. I had seen them--yes, but never in my life had I ridden along this road before. I had seen them only on the map in my lodging at St. James's Street.
The sun dropped down behind the trees, and the earth turned grey. I sat there in the saddle with I know not what superstitious fancies upon me. I could not but remember that the traveller had ridden into the wood, and had not ridden out and down the open bank of grass upon the other side. "What if his horse has stumbled?" Clutterbuck had asked. "What if he is lying at the roadside under the trees?" I could see that picture very clearly, and at last, very clearly too, the rider's face. I looked backwards down the road with an instinctive hope that some other traveller might be riding my way in whose company I might go along. But the long level slip of white was empty. All the warmth seemed to have gone from the world with the dropping of the sun. A sad chill twilight crept over the lonely fields. A shiver caught and shook me; I gathered up the reins and rode slowly among the trees, where already it was night.
I rode at first in the centre of the highway, and found the clatter of my horse's hoofs a very companionable sound. But in a little the clatter seemed too loud, it was too clear a warning of my approach, it seemed to me in some way a provocation of danger. I drew to one side of the road where the leaves had drifted and made a carpet whereon I rode without noise. But now the silence seemed too eerie--I heard, and started at, the snapping of every twig. I strained my ears to catch the noise of creeping footfalls, and I was about to guide my horse back to the middle of the road, when I turned a corner suddenly, and saw in front of me in a space where the forest receded and let the sky through, lights gleaming in a window.
I set spurs to the horse and galloped up to the door. The house was an inn; the landlord was already at the threshold, and in a very short while I was laughing at my fears over my supper in the parlour.
"Am I your only guest to-night?" I asked.
"There is one other, sir," returned the landlord as he served me, and as he spoke I heard a footstep in the passage. The door was pushed open, and a young man politely bowed to me in the entrance.
"You have a very pretty piece of horseflesh, sir," said he, as he came into the room. "I took the liberty of looking it over a minute ago in the stables."
"It is not bad," said I. There was never a man in the world who did not relish praise of his horse, and I warmed to my new acquaintance. "We are both, it seems, sleeping here to-night, and likely enough we are travelling the same road to-morrow."
The young man shook his head.
"I could wish indeed," said he, "that we might be fellow-travellers, but though it may well be we follow the same road, we do not, alas, travel in the same way," and he showed me his boots which were thickly covered with dust. "My horse fell some half-a-dozen miles from here and snapped a leg. I must needs walk to-morrow so far as where I trust to procure another--that is to say," he continued, "if I do not have to keep my bed, for I have taken a devilish chill this evening," and drawing up his chair to the empty fireplace, he crouched over an imaginary fire and shivered.
Now since he sat in this attitude, I could not but notice his boots, and I fell to wondering what in the world he had done with his spurs. For he wore none, and since he had plainly not troubled to repair the disorder of his dress, it seemed strange that he should have gone to the pains of removing his spurs. However, I was soon diverted from this speculation by the distress into which Mr. Featherstone's cold threw him. Featherstone was his name, as he was polite enough to tell me in the intervals of coughing, and I told him mine in return. At last his malady so increased that he called for the landlord, and bidding him light a great fire in his bedroom said he must needs go to bed.
"I trust, however," he continued politely to me, "that you, Mr. Berkeley, will prove a Samaritan, and keep me company for a while. For I shall not sleep, upon my word I shall not sleep a wink," and he was so positive in his assurances that, though I was myself sufficiently tired, I thought it no more than kindness to fall in with his wishes.
Accordingly I followed him into his bedroom, where he lay in a great canopied bed, with a big fire blazing upon the hearth, and a bottle of rum with a couple of glasses upon a table at the bedside.
"It is an ague," said he, "which I caught upon the Gambia River, and from which I have ever since suffered many inconveniences;" he poured out the rum into the glasses, and wished me with great politeness all prosperity.
It was no doubt, also, because he had voyaged on the Gambia River that he suffered no inconvenience from the heat of the room. But what with the hot August night, and the blazing fire, and the closed window, I became at once so drowsy that I could hardly keep my eyes open, and I wished him good-night.
"But you will not go," said he. "We are but this moment acquainted, and to-morrow we shall wave a farewell each to the other. Let us, Mr. Berkeley, make something of the meanwhile, I beg you."
I answered him that I did not wish to appear churlish, but that I should most certainly appear so if I fell asleep while we talked, which, in spite of myself, I was very likely to do.
"But I have a bottle of salts here," said he, with a laugh, as he reached out of bed and fumbled with his coat. "I have a bottle of salts here which will infallibly persuade you from any thought of sleep," and he drew out from the pocket of his coat a pack of cards. "Well, what do you say?" he continued, as I did not move.
"It is some while since I handled a card," said I slowly.
"A game of picquet," he suggested.
"It is a good game," said I.
He flipped the edges of the cards with his thumb. I drew nearer to the bed.
"Well, one game then," said I.
"To be sure," said he, shuffling the cards.
"And the stakes must be low."
"I hate a gambler myself."
He cut the cards. I sat down on the bedside and dealt them.
"It is your elder," said I.
He looked disconsolately at his hand.
"Upon my word," said he. "Deuce take me if I know what to discard. I have no hand for picquet at all, though as luck will have it I have very good putt cards."
I glanced through my hand.
"I have better putt cards than you," said I.
"It is not likely," he returned.
"I'll make a wager of it," I cried.
"Your horse," said he, leaning up on his elbow. He spoke a trifle too eagerly, he sprang up on his elbow a trifle too quickly. I looked again through my hand, and I laid the cards down on the counterpane.
"No," said I quietly. "It is very likely you are right: I have two treys and an ace, but you may have two treys and a deuce."
"Why, this is purely magical," he exclaimed, with the most natural burst of laughter imaginable. "Two treys and a deuce! Those are indeed the cards I hold."
He fell back again in the bed, and we played our single game of picquet. He won the game. Indeed, he could not but win it, for I paid no attention whatever to the cards which I held, or to how I should draw, or--and this perhaps was my most important omission--to how Mr. Featherstone shuffled and dealt. The truth is, I had suddenly become very curious about Mr. Featherstone. I had recalled his great politeness of manner. I remarked his face, which was of an almost girlish delicacy. I reflected that here was a man in a great hurry to travel by the same road as myself, and I remembered how I had learned that trick by which he had tried to outwit me of my horse. Even as it was I had all but fallen into the trap. I should most certainly have done so had not Lieutenant Clutterbuck once explained it to me on a particular occasion. I remembered that occasion very clearly as I sat on the bed playing this game of picquet by the light of a single candle, and I wondered whether I could fit Mr. Featherstone with another name.
"I am afraid," said he, "that this is a capote," as I played my last card.
"But the loss is trifling," said I, "and I have kept my horse."
"Very true," said he, whistling softly between his teeth. "You have kept your horse," and as I wished him good-night, he added, "you will be careful to shut the door behind you, won't you?"
But before the words were out of his mouth, he was seized with so violent a paroxysm of shivering that he could barely stammer out the end of the sentence.
"These infernal fevers," said he, with a groan.
"I notice, however," I returned, "that they are intermittent," and latching the door as he again requested me, I went off to my own room.
I could not but wonder what trickery the fire was intended to help, for until the last fit of the ague had seized him, he had given no sign of any sickness since he had brought out the cards. However, there was a more important question to occupy my mind. I had little doubt that Mr. Featherstone was Cullen Mayle: I had little doubt that he was hurrying as fast as he could to the Scillies, since he had received no answer to the message which he sent with the negro. But should I tell him of the men who watched for his coming, keeping their watches as at sea? On the one side their presence meant danger to Cullen Mayle, it could hardly mean anything else; and since it meant danger he should be warned of it.
On the other hand, the watchers might have tired of their watching and given it up as profitless. Besides I was by no means sure in what light Cullen himself was to be regarded. Was his return to Tresco, a prospect to be welcomed or deplored? Did he come as a friend to that distracted girl alone in the lonely house by the sand? I could not answer these questions. I knew Cullen to be a knave, I knew that the girl cared for him, and these two items made the sum of my knowledge. I turned over in my bed and fell asleep, thinking that my course might be clear to me in the morning.
And in the morning it was clear. I woke up with a mind made up. I had a horse; Cullen travelled on foot; since he had come so far on foot, it was not likely that he had the money to purchase a horse, for the story of the stumble and the broken leg I entirely disbelieved, and with the best of reasons. I had travelled myself along that road yesterday, and I had passed no disabled horse upon the way. I had therefore the advantage of Cullen. I would journey on without saying a word to him of my destination. I would on arriving take council with Dick Parmiter and Helen Mayle and seek to fathom the trouble. I should still have time to cross back to the mainland and hinder Cullen from attempting the passage.
Thus I planned to do, but the plan was never put to the test of action. For while I was still dressing, a loud hubbub and confusion filled the house. I opened my door. The noise came from the direction of Cullen's room. I hastily slipped on my coat and ran down the passage. I could hear Cullen's voice very loud above the rest, a woman or two protesting with a shrill indignation and the landlord trying to make all smooth, though what the bother was about I could not distinguish.
It seemed that the whole household was gathered in the room, though Mr. Featherstone still lay abed. The moment that I appeared in the doorway,
"Ah! here's a witness," he cried. "Mr. Berkeley, you were the last to leave me last night. You closed the door behind you? I was particular to ask you to close the door?"
"I remember that very well," said I, "for I was wondering how in the world you could put up with the door closed and a blazing fire."
"There!" cried Featherstone turning to the landlord. "You hear? Mr. Berkeley is a gentleman beyond reproach. He shut the door behind him, and this morning I find it wide open and my breeches gone. There is a thief, sir, in your inn, and we travellers must go on our way without breeches. It is the most inconsiderate theft that ever I heard of."
"As for the breeches, sir," began the landlord.
"I don't care a button for them," cried Featherstone. "But there was money in the breeches' pockets. Fifteen guineas in gold, and a couple of bills on Mr. Nossiter, the banker at Exeter."
"The bills can be stopped," said the landlord. "We are but eighteen miles from Exeter."
"But how am I to travel those miles; do you expect me to walk there in my shirt tails. No, I stay here in bed until my breeches are found, and, burn me, if I don't eat up everything in the house," and immediately he began to roar out for food. "I will have chops at once, and there's a great sirloin of beef, and bring me a tankard of small ale."
Then he turned again to me, and said pathetically,
"It is not the breeches I mind, though to be sure I shall cut a ridiculous figure on the highroad; no, nor the money, though I have not a stiver left. But I woke up this morning in the sweetest good-humour, and here am I in a violent passion at nine o'clock in the morning, and my whole day spoilt. It is so discouraging," and he lay back upon the pillow as though he would have wept.
The landlord offered him his Sunday breeches. They were of red cloth, and a belted earl might wear them without shame.
"But not without discomfort," grumbled Mr. Featherstone, contemplating the landlord who was of a large figure. "They will hang about me in swathes like a petticoat."
"And as for the fifteen guineas," said I, "my purse is to that amount at your disposal."
"That is a very gentlemanly offer, Mr. Berkeley," said he, "from one stranger to another. But I have a horror of borrowing. I cannot accept your munificence. No, I will walk in my host's red cloth breeches as far as Rockbere, which to be sure is no more than twelve miles, quite penniless, but when I reach my friends, upon my word, I will make such a noise about this inn as will close its doors, strike me dead and stiff, if don't."
His threat had its effect. The landlord, after the usual protestations that such an incident had never occurred before, that he had searched the house even to the servants' boxes, and that he could make neither head nor tail of the business, wound up his harangue with an offer of five guineas.
"It is all I have in the house, sir," said he, "and of course I shall charge you neither for food nor lodging."
"Of course not," said Mr. Featherstone indignantly. "Well, I must make the best of it, but oh! I woke up with so happy a disposition towards the world;" and dismissing the women he got up and dressed. The landlord fetched the five guineas and his red cloth breeches, which Featherstone drew on.
"Was ever a man so vilely travestied?" he said. "Sure, I shall be taken for a Hollander. That is hard for a person of some elegance," and he tied his cravat and went grumbling from the room.
"This is a great misfortune, sir, for me," said my host. "I have lived honest all my days. There is no one in the house who would steal; on that I would stake my life. I can make nothing of it."
"Mr. Featherstone is quite recovered from his ague," said I slowly. I crossed over to the empty fireplace heaped with the white ashes of the logs which had blazed there the night before.
"The fire no doubt did him some benefit."
"That is precisely what I was thinking," said I, and I knelt down on the hearth-rug and poked amongst the ashes with the shovel. Suddenly, the landlord uttered an exclamation and threw up the window. I heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs upon the road. I got up from my knees and rushed to the window. As I leaned out Mr. Featherstone rode underneath and he rode my horse.
"Stop!" I shouted out.
"Mr. Berkeley," he cried, airily waving his hand as he rode by, "you may hold very good putt cards, but you haven't kept your horse."
"You damned thief!" I yelled, and he turned in his saddle and put out his tongue. It is, if you think of it, a form of repartee to which there is no reply. In any case I doubt if I could have made any reply which would have reached his ears. For he had set the horse to a gallop and was far down the road.
I went back to the hearth where the landlord joined me. We both knelt down and raked away the ashes.
"What's that?" said I, pointing to something blackened and scorched. The landlord picked it up.
"It is a piece of corduroy."
"And here's a bone button," said I. "The ague was a sham, the fire a device to rob you. He came here without a penny piece and burnt his breeches last night. He has robbed you, he has robbed me, and he will reach the Scilly Islands first. How far is it to Rockbere?"
"Twelve miles."
"I must walk those twelve miles?"
"Yes."
"Will I get a horse there?"
"It is doubtful."
"He has a day's start then at the least."
So after all, though the horse did not stumble, nor the rider lie quiet by the roadside, he did not ride out of the forest at a gallop, and down the green bank into the open space beyond.