CHAPTER XIX
AN UNWILLING ALLY
Under the smoothness of Sir George's words, under the subtle mockery ofhis manner, throbbed a volcano of passion and vengeance. But this wasfor the lawyer only, even as he alone saw the moonlight gleam faintly onthe pistol barrel that lurked behind his companion's thigh. For Mr.Dunborough, it would be hard to imagine a man more completely taken bysurprise. He swore one great oath, for he saw, at least, that themeeting boded him 110 good; then he sat motionless in his saddle, hisleft hand on the pommel, his right held stiffly by his side. The moon,which of the two hung a little at Sir George's back, shone only on thelower part of Dunborough's face, and by leaving his eyes in the shadowof his hat, gave the others to conjecture what he would do next. It isprobable that Sir George, whose hand and pistol were ready, wasindifferent; perhaps would have hailed with satisfaction an excuse forvengeance. But Mr. Fishwick, the pacific witness of this strangemeeting, awaited the issue with staring eyes, his heart in his mouth;and was mightily relieved when the silence, which the heavy breathing ofMr. Dunborough's horse did but intensify, was broken on the last comer'sside, by nothing worse than a constrained laugh.
'Travel together?' he said, with an awkward assumption of jauntiness,'that depends on the road we are going.'
'Oh, we are going the same road,' Sir George answered, in the mockingtone he had used before.
'You are very clever,' Mr. Dunborough retorted, striving to hide hisuneasiness; 'but if you know that, sir, you have the advantage of me.'
'I have,' said Sir George, and laughed rudely.
Dunborough stared, finding in the other's manner fresh cause formisgiving. At last, 'As you please,' he said contemptuously. 'I am forCalne. The road is public. You may travel by it.'
'We are not going to Calne,' said Sir George.
Mr. Dunborough swore. 'You are d----d impertinent!' he said, reiningback his horse, 'and may go to the devil your own way. For me, I amgoing to Calne.'
'No,' said Sir George, 'you are not going to Calne. She has not goneCalne way.'
Mr. Dunborough drew in his breath quickly. Hitherto he had beenuncertain what the other knew, and how far the meeting was accidental;now, forgetful what his words implied and anxious only to say somethingthat might cover his embarrassment, 'Oh,' he said, 'you are--you are insearch of her?'
'Yes,' said Sir George mockingly. 'We are in search of her. And we wantto know where she is.'
'Where she is?'
'Yes, where she is. That is it; where she is. You were to meet her here,you know. You are late and she has gone. But you will know whither.'
Mr. Dunborough stared; then in a tempest of wrath and chagrin, 'D----nyou!' he cried furiously. 'As you know so much, you can find outthe rest!'
'I could,' said Sir George slowly. 'But I prefer that you should helpme. And you will.'
'Will what?'
'Will help me, sir,' Sir George answered quickly, 'to find the lady weare seeking.'
'I'll be hanged if I will,' Dunborough cried, raging and furious.
'You'll be hanged if you won't,' Sir George said in a changed tone; andhe laughed contemptuously. 'Hanged by the neck until you are dead, Mr.Dunborough--if money can bring it about. You fool,' he continued, with asudden flash of the ferocity that had from the first underlain hissarcasm, 'we have got enough from your own lips to hang you, and if morebe wanted, your people will peach on you. You have put your neck intothe halter, and there is only one way, if one, in which you can take itout. Think, man; think before you speak again,' he continued savagely,'for my patience is nearly at an end, and I would sooner see you hangthan not. And look you, leave your reins alone, for if you try to turn,by G--d, I'll shoot you like the dog you are!'
Whether he thought the advice good or bad, Mr. Dunborough took it; andthere was a long silence. In the distance the hoof-beats of theservant's horse, approaching from the direction of Chippenham, broke thestillness of the moonlit country; but round the three men who satmotionless in their saddles, glaring at one another and awaiting theword for action, was a kind of barrier, a breathlessness born ofexpectation. At length Dunborough spoke.
'What do you want?' he said in a low tone, his voice confessing hisdefeat. 'If she is not here, I do not know where she is.'
'That is for you,' Sir George answered with a grim coolness thatastonished Mr. Fishwick. 'It is not I who will hang if aught happento her.'
Again there was silence. Then in a voice choked with rage Mr. Dunboroughcried, 'But if I do not know?'
'The worse for you,' said Sir George. He was sorely tempted to put themuzzle of a pistol to the other's head and risk all. But he fancied thathe knew his man, and that in this way only could he be effectuallycowed; and he restrained himself.
'She should be here--that is all I know. She should have been here,' Mr.Dunborough continued sulkily, 'at eight.'
'Why here?'
'The fools would not take her through Chippenham without me. Now youknow.'
'It is ten, now.'
'Well, curse you,' the younger man answered, flaring up again, 'could Ihelp it if my horse fell? Do you think I should be sitting here to berough-ridden by you if it were not for this?' He raised his right arm,or rather his shoulder, with a stiff movement; they saw that the arm wasbound to his side. 'But for that she would be in Bristol by now,' hecontinued disdainfully, 'and you might whistle for her. But, Lord, hereis a pother about a college-wench!'
'College-wench, sir?' the lawyer cried scarcely controlling hisindignation. 'She is Sir George Soane's cousin. I'd have you know that!'
'And my promised wife,' Sir George said, with grim-ness.
Dunborough cried out in his astonishment. 'It is a lie!' he said.
'As you please,' Sir George answered.
At that, a chill such as he had never known gripped Mr. Dunborough'sheart. He had thought himself in an unpleasant fix before; and that toescape scot free he must eat humble pie with a bad grace. But on this asecret terror, such as sometimes takes possession of a bold man whofinds himself helpless and in peril seized on him. Given arms and thechance to use them, he would have led the forlornest of hopes, charged abattery, or fired a magazine. But the species of danger in which he nowfound himself--with a gallows and a silk rope in prospect, his fate tobe determined by the very scoundrels he had hired--shook even hisobstinacy. He looked about him; Sir George's servant had come up and waswaiting a little apart.
Mr. Dunborough found his lips dry, his throat husky. 'What do you want?'he muttered, his voice changed. 'I have told you all I know. Likelyenough they have taken her back to get themselves out of the scrape.'
'They have not,' said the lawyer. 'We have come that way, and must havemet them.'
'They may be in Chippenham?'
'They are not. We have inquired.'
'Then they must have taken this road. Curse you, don't you see that Icannot get out of my saddle to look?' he continued ferociously.
'They have gone this way. Have you any devil's shop--any house of calldown the road?' Sir George asked, signing to the servant to draw nearer.
'Not I.'
'Then we must track them. If they dared not face Chippenham, they willnot venture through Devizes. It is possible that they are making forBristol by cross-roads. There is a bridge over the Avon near LaycockAbbey, somewhere on our right, and a road that way throughPewsey Forest.'
'That will be it,' cried Mr. Dunborough, slapping his thigh. 'That istheir game, depend upon it.'
Sir George did not answer him, but nodded to the servant. 'Go on withthe light,' he said. 'Try every turning for wheels, but lose no time.This gentleman will accompany us, but I will wait on him.'
The man obeyed quickly, the lawyer going with him. The other twobrought up the rear, and in that order they started, riding in silence.For a mile or more the servant held the road at a steady trot; thensigning to those behind him to halt, he pulled up at the mouth of aby-road leading westwards from the highway. He moved the light once ortwice across the g
round, and cried that the wheels had gone that way;then got briskly to his saddle and swung along the lane at a trot, theothers following in single file, Sir George last.
So far they had maintained a fair pace. But the party had not proceededa quarter of a mile along the lane before the trot became a walk. Cloudshad come over the face of the moon; the night had grown dark. The riderswere no longer on the open downs, but in a narrow by-road, runningacross wastes and through thick coppices, the ground sloping sharply tothe Avon. In one place the track was so closely shadowed by trees as tobe as dark as a pit. In another it ran, unfenced, across a heath studdedwith water-pools, whence the startled moor-fowl squattered up unseen.Everywhere they stumbled: once a horse fell. Over such ground,founderous and scored knee-deep with ruts, it was plain that no wheeledcarriage could move at speed; and the pursuers had this to cheer them.But the darkness of the night, the dreary glimpses of wood and water,which met the eye when the moon for a moment emerged, the solitude ofthis forest tract, the muffled tread of the horses' feet, the verymoaning of the wind among the trees, suggested ideas and misgivingswhich Sir George strove in vain to suppress. Why had the scoundrels gonethis way? Were they really bound for Bristol? Or for some den ofvillainy, some thieves' house in the old forest?
At times these fears stung him out of all patience, and he cried to theman with the light to go faster, faster! Again, the whole seemedunreal, and the shadowy woods and gleaming water-pools, the stumblinghorses, the fear, the danger, grew to be the creatures of a disorderedfancy. It was an immense joy to him when, at the end of an hour, thelawyer cried, 'The road! the road!' and one by one the riders emergedwith grunts of relief on a sound causeway. To make sure that the pursuedhad nowhere evaded them, the tracks of the chaise-wheels were sought andfound, and forward the four went again. Presently they plunged through abrook, and this passed, were on Laycock bridge before they knew it, andacross the Avon, and mounting the slope on the other side byLaycock Abbey.
There were houses abutting on the road here, black overhanging massesagainst a grey sky, and the riders looked, wavered, and drew rein.Before any spoke, however, an unseen shutter creaked open, and a voicefrom the darkness cried, 'Hallo!'
Sir George found speech to answer. 'Yes,' he said, 'what is it?' Thelawyer was out of breath, and clinging to the mane in sheer weariness.
'Be you after a chaise driving to the devil?'
'Yes, yes,' Sir George answered eagerly. 'Has it passed, my man?'
'Ay, sure, Corsham way, for Bath most like, I knew 'twould be followed.Is't a murder, gentlemen?'
'Yes,' Sir George cried hurriedly, 'and worse! How far ahead are they?'
'About half an hour, no more, and whipping and spurring as if the oldone was after them. My old woman's sick, and the apothecary from--'
'Is it straight on?'
'Ay, to be sure, straight on--and the apothecary from Corsham, as I wassaying, he said, said he, as soon as he saw her--'
But his listeners were away again; the old man's words were lost in thescramble and clatter of the horses' shoes as they sprang forward. In amoment the stillness and the dark shapes of the houses were exchangedfor the open country, the rush of wind in the riders' faces, and thepounding of hoofs on the hard road. For a brief while the sky clearedand the moon shone out, and they rode as easily as in the day. At thepace at which they were moving Sir George calculated that they must comeup with the fugitives in an hour or less; but the reckoning was nosooner made than the horses, jaded by the heavy ground through whichthey had struggled, began to flag and droop their heads; the pace grewless and less; and though Sir George whipped and spurred, Corsham Cornerwas reached, and Pickwick Village on the Bath road, and still they sawno chaise ahead.
It was past midnight, and it seemed to some that they had been riding aneternity; yet even these roused at sight of the great western highway.The night coaches had long gone eastwards, and the road, so busy by day,stretched before them dim, shadowy, and empty, as solitary in thedarkness as the remotest lane. But the knowledge that Bath lay at theend of it--and no more than nine miles away--and that there they couldprocure aid, fresh horses and willing helpers, put new life even intothe most weary. Even Mr. Fishwick, now groaning with fatigue and nowcrying 'Oh dear! oh dear!' as he bumped, in a way that at another timemust have drawn laughter from a stone, took heart of grace; while SirGeorge settled down to a dogged jog that had something ferocious in itsdetermination. If he could not trot, he would amble; if he could notamble, he would walk; if his horse could not walk, he would go on hisfeet. He still kept eye and ear bent forward, but in effect he had givenup hope of overtaking the quarry before it reached Bath; and he wastaken by surprise when the servant, who rode first and had eased hishorse to a walk at the foot of Haslebury Hill, drew rein and cried tothe others to listen.
For a moment the heavy breathing of the four horses covered all othersounds. Then in the darkness and the distance, on the summit of the risebefore them, a wheel creaked as it grated over a stone. A few secondsand the sound was repeated; then all was silent. The chaise had passedover the crest and was descending the other side.
Oblivious of everything except that Julia was within his reach,forgetful even of Dunborough by whose side he had ridden all night--insilence but with many a look askance--Sir George drove his horseforward, scrambled and trotted desperately up the hill, and, gaining thesummit a score of yards in front of his companions, crossed the brow anddrew rein to listen. He had not been mistaken. He could hear the wheelscreaking, and the wheelers stumbling and slipping in the darkness belowhim; and with a cry he launched his horse down the descent.
Whether the people with the chaise heard the cry or not, they appearedto take the alarm at that moment. He heard a whip crack, the carriagebound forward, the horses break into a reckless canter. But if theyrecked little he recked less; already he was plunging down the hillafter them, his beast almost pitching on its head with every stride. Thehuntsman knows, however, that many stumbles go to a fall. The bottom wasgained in safety by both, and across the flat they went, the chaisebounding and rattling behind the scared horses. Now Sir George had aglimpse of the black mass through the gloom, now it seemed to be gainingon him, now it was gone, and now again he drew up to it and the dimoutline bulked bigger and plainer, and bigger and plainer, until he wasclose upon it, and the cracking whips and the shouts of the postboysrose above the din of hoofs and wheels. The carriage was swayingperilously, but Sir George saw that the ground was rising, and that upthe hill he must win; and, taking his horse by the head, he lifted it onby sheer strength until his stirrup was abreast of the hind wheels. Amoment, and he made out the bobbing figure of the leading postboy, and,drawing his pistol, cried to him to stop.
The answer was a blinding flash of light and a shot. Sir George's horseswerved to the right, and plunging headlong into the ditch, flung itsrider six paces over its head.
The servant and Mr. Dunborough were no more than forty yards behind himwhen he fell; in five seconds the man had sprung from his saddle, lethis horse go, and was at his master's side. There were trees there, andthe darkness in the shadow, where Sir George lay across the roots of oneof them, was intense. The man could not see his face, nor how he lay,nor if he was injured; and calling and getting no answer, he took frightand cried to Mr. Dunborough to get help.
But Mr. Dunborough had ridden straight on without pausing or drawingrein, and the man, finding himself deserted, wrung his hands in terror.He had only Mr. Fishwick to look to for help, and he was some waybehind. Trembling, the servant knelt and groped for his master's face;to his joy, before he had found it, Sir George gasped, moved, and satup; and, muttering an incoherent word or two, in a minute had recoveredhimself sufficiently to rise with help. He had fallen clear of the horseon the edge of the ditch, and the shock had taken his breath; otherwisehe was rather shaken than hurt.
As soon as his wits and wind came back to him, 'Why--why have you notfollowed?' he gasped.
''Twill be all right, sir. All right
, sir,' the servant answered,thinking only of him.
'But after them, man, after them. Where is Fishwick?'
'Coming, sir, he is coming,' the man answered, to soothe him; andremained where he was. Sir George was so shaken that he could not yetstand alone, and the servant did not know what to think. 'Are you sureyou are not hurt, sir?' he continued anxiously.
'No, no! And Mr. Dunborough? Is he behind?'
'He rode on after them, sir.'
'Rode on after them?'
'Yes, sir, he did not stop.'
'He has gone on--after them?' Sir George cried.
'But--' and with that it flashed on him, and on the servant, and on Mr.Fishwick, who had just jogged up and dismounted, what had happened. Thecarriage and Julia--Julia still in the hands of her captors--were gone.And with them was gone Mr. Dunborough! Gone far out of hearing; for asthe three stood together in the blackness of the trees, unable to seeone another's faces, the night was silent round them. The rattle ofwheels, the hoof-beats of horses had died away in the distance.