CHAPTER XXIV
MY LORD BROCTON PILES UP HIS ACCOUNT
On the tenth day of my captivity, hope glimmered for the first time. Whena man has been penned up in a dull room for ten days, withhalf-a-hundred-weight of rusty iron shackling his wrists and ankles, withpoor food, and little of it at that, to eat, he can extract comfort out ofa trifle.
In my case the trifle was a smile, her first smile in ten days. So farshe had been as sulky as she was shapeless, bringing me my poor mealseither without saying a word or, at best, snapping me up and saying that Igot far better treatment than a rebel deserved.
She never told me her name, and I never learned it from any other source,so 'she' she must remain for me and my tale. She was perhaps thirty,perhaps five feet high, the shape of a black pudding, with stony, ratherthan ugly, features, and cruel, cat-like eyes. I hated her handsomely tillshe smiled at me.
She was, I suppose, my jailer's daughter, or servant, or something of thesort. I never knew, and my ignorance does not matter. She brought me myfood, spake or spake not, according to the degree of vileness in herprevailing humour, and went off, leaving me to my thoughts and my painfulshamblings round my prison-chamber.
My ignorance was limitless. I was a prisoner, and my prison was a room ina sizable farm-house with thick stone walls. Where the house was I had noidea other than that it could not be far from the place where I was taken,which, again, could not be far from the town of Penrith. There was onewindow in my cell, the sill of which was as high from the ground as mychin when standing upright. But I never stood upright, being jammed into across made of good, solid iron, foul with rust, and having bracelets atthe tips for my ankles and wrists. It kept me a foot short of my fullstretch. I could get my eye to the edge of the window and no farther, andthen I saw much sky and a little desolate moorland running up into agauntly-wooded hill country.
I spent my waking hours thinking of Margaret and the others dreaming ofher. Now was my chance to learn to do without her altogether. It would notbe for long. I was in the Duke's clutches, and he would not let me go tillmy head rolled off my shoulders. Had I been free and with her, we shouldhave been farther apart than before--by the width of Donald's grave. Buthere, parted for ever, with the block or the gallows just ahead of me,there was no bar to my lonely love. Time and time again she was so near tome, so vividly present to my imagination, that I stretched out my arms tograsp her. The shackles clanked, and I cursed myself for a fool, but Inever cured myself of the habit.
Because this is the dreariest time of my life, I have plumped right intothe middle of it to get it over. And, indeed, there is little worth thetelling between the top of Shap and her smile. I was in jail because I wasno soldier. That, apparently, should go without saying, and if I had cometo grief over some piece of important soldier-craft, no one would havebeen surprised and I should not have been to blame. It galls me, however,to have to confess that I was very properly caught, jailed, and ironed fornot knowing what a dragoon was. A man ought to know that after beingcaptain of a troop of the best for a fortnight, but I didn't. Being allfor logic, the least useful thing in life, I had arrived at the conclusionthat a soldier on horseback is a horse-soldier. So he is, except when he'sa dragoon, as I found to my cost. If the bold Turnus or Mr.Pink-of-Propriety Aeneas had hit upon the dragoon idea, I should haveknown all about it, because it would have been in Virgil. Even the Masterhas his deficiencies.
My Lord George Murray elected to fight at Clifton, a defendable placebetween Shap and Penrith. Just south of the bridge the road ran off themoor into the outskirts of the village, with a stone wall on one side anda high edge on the other. The enclosures on either side were packed withclansmen, and our wings stretched beyond on to the moor, here dissectedinto poor fields by straggling hedges.
The Colonel, the happiest man in England that day, had posted me acrossthe road, right out on the moor, ready to gallop back at once with news ofthe enemy's approach. It was now quite dark, except when the moon rodefree of the dense blotches of clouds that filled the sky. In one suchglimpse of light, I caught sight of several bodies of horse on the moor tothe east of the road. The regiment nearest to me wheeled to the left, andtrotted obliquely across the road. Its direction made its purpose clear.It was feeling its way across our front to our flank on the west of thevillage. I rode back at once to report.
"Good lad!" said the Colonel, offering me his snuff-box. "It's just whatwe want 'em to do. Go where there's a bellyful for you! Fine soldieringthat! The fool duke ought to pound us out into the open with his guns.Hope you'll enjoy your first fight, Oliver! It's a glorious game. Pity ofit is the counters are so costly. Good luck, my dear lad!"
I went back to my men whom I had left in the covered way between the walland the hedge. It being clear that the exact whereabouts of the regiment Ihad particularly observed was of great consequence, I rode out again witha couple of men, at the request of one of the chiefs, to see if I couldmake out what was happening. There was no trace of it. It should by nowhave been visible on my right, the moon being out again, but there was nota single trace of it. I could see the line of one hedge and beyond thatanother. The other regiments had not advanced and this one had disappeared.
Perplexed, I halted my men, pulled the sorrel's head round and canteredslowly towards the nearer hedge. Then I learned that dragoons arehorse-soldiers who fight on foot, behind hedges for choice. Half a dozencarbines rang out, the sorrel rolled over, and though I escaped thebullets and jumped clear of my horse, I was pounced on by a body of menand pulled ignobly through the hedge. I did everything doable, but theyswarmed over me like ants, bore me down by weight of numbers, and sat onme.
"It's him right enough," I heard one of them say. "Fetch the sergeant!There's a bit of fat in this, lads!"
A minute later, I was hauled on to my feet. A seared face, with adab-of-putty nose on it, leered delightedly into mine.
"Got you, by G--!" he said.
I had been captured by Brocton's dragoons. Now we should come to points.
Without another word to me, and after a savage injunction to the men tosee I did not escape on peril of their lives, he went off and fetched hislordship. They came running back together as if the greatest eventimaginable had happened.
"Ha! Master Wheatman," cried my lord very happily, "this is indeed asight for sore eyes."
"To be sure," said I, "your lordship's were pretty bad the last time Isaw them."
He made no retort, being indeed too excited to notice pin-pricks, butordered the sergeant to take me to the rear under a strong guard. "Makesure of him!" he cried, and added in a lower tone, as I moved off underthe combined pull and push of my captors, "Make sure of it." He then wentoff to his own place in the line.
The sergeant did not come with us, and I had been tugged nearly to thesecond hedge before he overtook us. To my astonishment he was carrying mysaddle on his head, where, in the dim light, it looked like a giganticbonnet. He swore at the men for loitering, and on we went to the secondhedge. We struck it at a point where there was neither gate nor gap, butthe dragoons bashed it down with their carbines and trampled it down withtheir boots, and so made a way.
Two of the men were through, and I was being hauled through, when therewas a spattering of shots from behind. Over the noise a stentorian voicecalled out "Claymores!" It was the Highland warcry, and, withreverberating yells, the clansmen poured out of the nearer enclosure toattack the dragoons lining the hedge.
The sergeant drew his sword, and, as we raced on again, struck viciouslywith the flat of it at his men to make them run faster. A queer figure hecut in the moonlight as he raced along, swearing and slashing, with theskirts of the saddle flapping against his lean ribs. At last we got out ona poor road lined with trees and turned south along it. There was urgentneed for him to haste now, for Brocton's dragoons had been cut out oftheir cover and were being pushed back to the hedge we had just left. Thesergeant halted a moment to take stock of the situation, and then wehurried on again. Every tim
e he struck a man for lazy running, the man inhis turn paid me with punch or kick. After a mile or so, the avenue madean abrupt turn to the east and brought us out on the main road in the rearof the Duke's army.
The moon showed us a little cottage, standing off from the road in a poorplot of ground. The sergeant led the way up to it, turned the cottager andhis family out of it into a shed, and set two men without as sentries. Hethen made the others strip me to the skin and examined every shred ofclothing, ripping out the linings and even cutting my boots to pieces.Finding nothing, he flung me the rags to put on again, and then cut thesaddle to pieces and searched that. I knew now why William had so nearlylost his vail and Donald had been obliged to steal me another saddle. Thesergeant wanted, the letter and papers I had taken from him at the "Ringof Bells." He was so keen that he omitted to pouch any of my belongings,and I retained my money, Donald's watch, and the priceless strip ofbloodstained linen. My tuck and pistols were naturally taken from me on mycapture.
"Any luck?" I asked quizzingly, when he at last gave over the search.
Too furious or too cautious to reply, he brutally kicked a dragoon whomhe caught smiling.
After a miserable drag of some two hours, a fresh dragoon came with amessage, whereon the sergeant conducted me to the presence of the Duke,who was quartered in a large house in the village. The Lord Brocton, theLord Mark Kerr, and other officers were with him, and also several ladieswho would have been more at home in Vauxhall. For a minute or two I wasunheeded, and the sergeant could hardly keep himself sufficiently stiffand awkward. His Grace was in the sourest of humours for, as the talkshowed, he had been beaten. The claymores had taken the conceit out of himfinely. He finished the subject with a string of oaths and then made anunprintable inquiry of Brocton concerning me. The ladies titteredprofusely, and the most powdery one vowed that His Grace was a great wag.In further proof of this he snatched a feather near a yard long out of herpompom, and fanned himself with it while he examined me.
This ducal waggishness gave me time to observe that the sergeant'suneasiness was icy coldness in comparison with his lordship's. He wasuncertain of speech; his face was the colour of pea-soup; he lookedanxiously, almost affrightedly, at me. He grew plainly more comfortable asthe Duke failed to get any information out of me beyond the fact that theweather was cold. Finally, when the sergeant was ordered to keep me at hisperil till such time as I could be lodged in Carlisle jail, Broctongreedily tossed off a bumper of wine and laughed aloud at some vulgarsally from a lady in a green paduasoy. On leaving I bowed to the Duke. Hewas a vigorous, able man with the manners and morals of a bull.
Brocton followed the sergeant out. There was a consultation between themof which I heard nothing, but the result was that the sergeant picked up aman as guide who was waiting at the front door, obviously for the purpose,and took me through and beyond the village to a house on the roadside. Theplace was of fair size, built of rough slabs of stone, and evidently afarm-house. The owner was a lumpish, ungainly fellow, astonishinglybow-legged. He had a little yapping dog, which jumped backwards andforwards between his knees like a trick-dog through a hoop.
Preparations had been made for my coming, "by his lordship," as thefarmer blabbed out. I was taken upstairs to a back room, ironed, in theway I have described, by the parish constable, who had been prayed in aidfor the job, and locked in in the dark. I heard a sentry posted withoutthe door and another beneath the window. It was some consolation, and Ineeded all I could get, to know I was so prized. There was a rough bed inthe room. I tumbled on it, wondered for a few minutes what Margaret wouldbe thinking of it all, and then went to sleep.
Next morning I made her acquaintance to this extent that she brought me ajug of thin ale, a lump of horse-bread and a slab of cheese. Her looksfroze my affability, but she does not become important till she smiled,and I need say no more about her at present.
I saw no other person till nightfall of the third day, when the dooropened and the little dog hopped through his accustomed gap into the room,and was followed by his master carrying a lighted tallow candle in a rustyiron candlestick. This imported something unusual, as I was not allowed alight, and it turned out to be a visit from my Lord Brocton. He orderedthe sentry to follow the farmer downstairs, and examined the doorcarefully to see if it was closed thoroughly. I sat on the edge of the bedand hummed a brisk air with a fine pretence of indifference.
He sat down on the one chair there was, placed his hat on the table, andsaid, "I am sorry to see you in this place and condition, Mr. Wheatman."
"Thank you," said I.
"Of course you know there's only one end of it."
"Yes," I replied, and hummed a stave of "Lillibullero."
He leaned forward and said impressively, "The gibbet, Mr. Wheatman!"
"Draughty places!" said I, smiling, as I thought of Nance Lousely. "I canfeel the wind whistling through my bones."
"You are pleased to be facetious, sir. It does credit, I must say, toyour nerves."
"You are pleased to be sympathetic, my lord," I riposted, "whereby you dono credit to my common sense."
He took short breaths and then reflected a minute or two, during which Iclinked a soft tattoo with my iron wristlets, and eyed him joyously. Hewas there--a free lordling, I was here--a chained rebel, but I had him set.
"I have a proposal to make to you, Mr. Wheatman," he said at length.
"I am indeed honoured, but be careful, my lord! It's not in the leastlikely, I fear, to be a proposal which you would like the sentry beneaththe window to overhear."
"You are plain and blunt," he said, leaning forward and speaking in a lowtone, "and I will be the same. Return me all the papers you took from mysergeant at the 'Ring of Bells,' and I will see that you escape and getclear of the country."
"The different personal ends for which you are anxious to turn traitorseem innumerable, my lord!"
He met the taunt as if it had been a flip with a straw, and only said,"Is it a bargain?"
"It is not," I replied emphatically.
If his life rather than his lands had depended on the recovery of theletter he could not have been more eager. For a long time he pleaded andwrestled with me; arguing, bullying, imploring, threatening, turn and turnabout, but to no result. I would not go back on my casual word to MasterFreake. The letter was important to him, and he would save Margaret andthe Colonel, and me too, when the inevitable hour of need should come atlast. Money was power, and lands were more than money. Acres meant votes,and with votes at your command you had ministers at your beck. I was sureof Master Freake. Why bother about my lord Brocton?
At last he played his last card. "You shall have the Upper Hanyards backagain, Master Wheatman," he quavered.
The rascal earl, his father, had juggled more than a thousand acres ofthe Hanyards away from my father by some musty process of law and a venalbench. The reference angered me, and I cried loudly, "You shall not haveit back at any price!"
He looked at the window, and paled as he thought of the sentinel earswithout. Then he went off, vomiting curses.
That day week, she brought me a shepherd's pie for dinner, very well madetoo, and a mug of ale not wholly unworthy of the name. She put them down,looked at me in a measure womanly, and smiled. It was a root of promiseand fruit would follow. Any change would be welcome. I was ragged, dirty,galled, cramped, and bearded with a red stubble. She called me 'Carrots'in derision.
I was right. At evening she brought me up a dish of tea, and when Ilifted it off the table to take a drink of it, there was beneath it apaper folded letter-fashion.
I steadied myself, drank my tea with only moderate haste, and thencautiously palmed my treasure and walked to the window. Standing with myback to the door, so that the sentry, who was given to popping his head into have a look at me, could not catch me unawares, I opened the paper. Itwas a letter. It was written by a woman. The woman was Margaret.
"You will be taken to-morrow to Carlisle. On the way friends will rescueyou and bri
ng you to me. Fear nothing, say nothing, and all will be well.Till to-morrow, dear Oliver. Destroy this. MARG. W."
It went hard against the grain to destroy this precious missive. I hid inthe corner, and kissed it ravenously a hundred times. How straight andtrue the pen had ploughed its way across the paper! It was just suchwriting as I had expected of her, the resolute escription of her sweet,resolute self. Nor was the problem of destroying it easy to solve, since Ihad no fire, and there was no sure hiding-place accessible to my manacledhands. I mastered the difficulty heroically by eating the letter with mybread and butter.
It was even harder to pretend to be dull and sluggish with such a whirlof happy thoughts in my mind. I was her "dear Oliver," dear enough to makeher risk her own life in saving mine. That she would plan wisely andexecute swiftly, there was no shadow of doubt. This time tomorrow weshould be together again.
The night dragged through at last, and the first glimmer of dawn found mealert and hopeful. She brought my usual breakfast at the usual time, andsmiled again, but put her finger on her lips to warn me to be silent andcareful.
She went downstairs, and left to myself again, I grew furious to thinkthat Margaret would see me so, a regular wild man of the woods--_quantummutatus ab illo Hectare_. But my ravings ceased at the sound ofpreparations without. My room was at the back of the house, but I heardthe noise of wheels, and hoof-beats, and the harsh swearing of thesergeant. By and by he came noisily upstairs, burst into my room, andcurtly ordered me downstairs.
Blithely I followed him. Try how I would I could not hide my joy, and,seeing that he noted it, I said in explanation, "Anything for a change,sergeant!"
"You'll wish yourself back here soon enough, blast ye!" he growled."We'll stretch your neck for you till your eyes drop out, you swine!"
"You dear, good, Christian soul!" I simpered.
For answer, he kicked me savagely, and then bundled me downstairs, out ofthe house, and into the road. Here a two-horsed coach was in waiting, withtwo dragoons and a corporal in front and two more behind. One of the rearmen was holding a horse, and to my annoyance the sergeant got into thecoach after me, bawled out a command, and off our party started.
I stumbled into a corner and sat huddled up, straining my eyes ahead tocatch what was to come. Margaret's information was clearly correct. Wetook the road north, passed through Penrith without a halt, and out again,still on the turnpike, proof that Carlisle was to be our destination. Thecity was obviously now in the Duke's power.
Mile after mile we covered apace, and at every curve and cross-road Ipeered ahead and around with my heart in my mouth. One point in my favourwas the desolate nature of the country, exactly fitted for such astratagem as was in hand. On the right the gloomy sky was blotted out byjagged masses of gloomier hills. On the left the country varied betweenflat and upland, but was hardly less uninviting.
"Where d'ye think y're going?" asked the sergeant, joggling me with hisspurred heel to make me look at him.
"No idea," said I.
"Blast ye. I wish y'had," he growled viciously, and I turned away to smile.
We passed through a village littered with the Duke's baggage wagons andpretty full of soldiery. This chilled my spirit somewhat, for it looked asif we were about to run into the rear of the Royal army. Outside thevillage, however, we again had the road to ourselves, and a mile fartheron dropped to a walk to climb a long slant of road.
Whenever the road curved my way I had seen the corporal and his two menriding from fifty to a hundred yards ahead of us. Not very far up theslope we came on a farmstead lying flush on the roadside. In the yard weresome thirty head of shaggy black cattle, of the northern kind seldom seenin our parts and therefore attractive to a farmer's eye. A farm-handleaning over the gate had some noisy gossip with the dragoons as theypassed, and bawled his news to a group of men sitting at meat under ahovel. It was a poor enough place to support so many men, for thefarm-wife, who came to her kitchen door to see what the clatter was about,was of no better seeming than a yokel's wife with us. My eyes were on hercuriously when the man on the gate skipped off and flung it open rightacross the muzzles of our horses.
In the tick of a clock the whole scene changed. The men under the hovelrushed out, fell on the cattle, thrashed them mercilessly with greatbattoons, yelled at them like maniacs, and drove them in a shoving,bellowing, maddened mass into the road, which here had a stone wall on theside opposite the farm. When the torrent was fairly going, two of thesupposed yokels snatched up carbines, climbed on to the hovel, and openedfire on the dragoons in our rear.
The master hand of the Colonel was in this beyond a doubt. With a loudcurse, the sergeant, who was on the side away from the farm, opened thedoor and was for leaping out. He bethought himself and half turned, onehand on the door and one foot on the step, to look an evil inquiry at me.That half-turn was his undoing. Part of the living, struggling torrent ofcattle was shoved round our way and came sweeping by. One beast brushedthe door open even as he glared at me and tumbled him outwards. As hetwisted in his fall another drove her sharp horns clean into him, andshook and twirled him off again like a terrier playing with a rat. Therearguard turned tail and fled. The vanguard had simply been swept off thescene, and I saw them spurring up the slope with the cattle surging afterthem. The plan had been thought out to a nicety and had worked toperfection. I was free, free for Margaret. I sat down again dizzied andhappy.
My rescuers took no notice of me but ran down the road in a body andstood round the sergeant. After some excited talk they carried him back,called on me to aid, and rammed him into the coach, where he lay huddledon the seat in front of me. Without so much as a word to me, the commanderpulled our driver off the box, ordered a man up in his place, climbedafter him, and said briefly, "Go like the devil!"
The carriage turned up a rough lane which ran eastward out of the highroad opposite the farm, leaving most of my rescuers standing uncertain ina group. The driver cut his horses savagely with his whip, and we went ata hard gallop. The jolting tumbled me about in the coach, and I had hardwork, shackled as I was, to keep the sergeant on the seat. He was stillalive, though so hideously injured that death could only be a question ofminutes. Where we were going and why they were carrying him along with us,were questions it was useless to bother about. Margaret would explaineverything when we met. I could make little of the men who had rescued me.They were clearly not farm-hands, for they were well armed, the guns I hadseen looked to me to be military carbines, and they had carried throughtheir business briskly and intelligently.
I heard the men on the box talking, but their speech was only about theroad and the speed. The country got rougher and wilder; the distant hillswere losing their clear-cut, rolling outlines, and becoming neighbours andobstacles. The horses were thrashed unmercifully, but at times even thewell-plied whip could get no more than a crawl out of them.
The sergeant's end was at hand. He rallied, as men commonly do beforethey put foot in the black river, and looked at me unrecognizingly. Heclosed his eyes again, and began to writhe and mutter strange words.Suddenly he cried plainly, "Curse the swine! Another wedge, ye damnedchicken-heart!" He looked at me again, and this time made out who I was,and cursed loathsomely in his disappointment.
"D'ye know where y're going?" he ended, leering wickedly.
"No," said I.
"Blast ye! I wish ye did!" He gurgled this almost jocosely, as if it werea pet bit of humour.
"Do you know where you are going?" I asked solemnly.
"To hell," he cried, and, after a spout of blood that spattered me as Ileaned over him, went.
The carriage stopped and, before I could rise to see why, the door wasopened and some one without said politely, "This is indeed a pleasure,Master Wheatman!"
It was my lord Brocton.
* * * * *
It would be foolish to pretend that I was not bitten to the bone, and Ican only hope that I did not give outward expression to a tithe of thechagrin
and dismay that possessed me. Being commanded to do so, I got outof the coach without a word and looked around.
The rough road along which we had been travelling ran on through a slitin the hills. Where we stood a bridle-path parted from it at a sharp angleand made its way over the lower skirts of the hill country. It was adesolate, dreary spot where, as I suspected, the king's writ ran not andwhere, therefore, a man might be done to death with all conveniency.Master Freake would be useless to me now, and my chiefest enemy had me athis will.
There was no delay. A long cloak was put over me, so disposed as to hidemy fetters, and I was lifted on a spare horse led by one of thenew-comers. The skill with which the affair had been planned was shown bythe fact that this horse, to accommodate my shackled legs, had beensaddled as for a lady.
"You know exactly what to do?" asked his lordship of the men on the coach.
"Yes, my lord," said one of them, "but what about--" He finished thesentence by a jerk of his thumb towards the dead sergeant.
"Leave him there! Egad, Master Wheatman, is not that a touch of the realartist?"
"The key of these things is in his breeches' pocket," said I, speakingfor the first time, and waggling my fetters as I did so.
"Get it out, Tomlins!"
The man who had asked the question climbed down and obeyed the order withthe callousness of a dog nosing a dead rabbit. Then our parties separated.The coach continued along the main road, if so it may be called, and wetook to the track. I looked curiously after the coach, wondering where itwas bound, and with what object.
"More art," said his lordship. "A coach is a seeable, trackable thing,and it will throw everybody off the scent. I'm glad the ruffian's dead. Hewas overmuch wise in my affairs."
As we rode on into the interminable wastes, he rallied me gleefully, butsoon tired of my moroseness.
"His arrival will make an affecting picture," he said mockingly to hismen. He was feverishly excited, and must boast to some one. "No pliantdamsel to rush into his longing arms! He is to be embraced though, mymasters, if need be."
What this obscure threat might portend, I could not see, but it chimed inwith the delirious cruelty of the dead sergeant. Threats for the futuremattered not, the present being so unendurable. A man in Brocton'sposition must be hard put to it to turn traitor in this strange fashion.He had "rescued" me with his own men, and, lord or no lord, he would hangfor it were it once known to a lover of the gibbet like the Duke's Graceof Cumberland. What on earth was the letter about? Master Freake haddefinitely said lands, and therefore lands it must be, though nothing lessthan the whole Ridgeley estates could be in question. The thousand andmore acres of the Upper Hanyards, sweet meadows stretching a mile alongthe river and a snatch of the chase at its wildest and loveliest, theprize that had fallen to the rascal earl in the great lawsuit, had beenpromised me as readily as a pinch of snuff. I gloated over the revenge Iwas winning for my race, a race rooted in those darling Hanyards a centurybefore the Ridgeleys were heard of, for the first earl, the grandfather ofthe old rogue, started as an obscure pimp to Charles the Second, and wasenriched and ennobled for his assiduity.
But no familiary pride could cheer me for long. The dead landscape aroundchilled me. The chiefest misery was to remember the hope with which I hadstarted that morning. Margaret was the fancied end of my journey, and thereal end was this! I had to bite my lips till I felt the trickle of bloodin the stubble on my chin to keep back unmanly revilings.
At last we came out on what was by comparison a made road, and now hislordship grew plainly anxious and haggard. We rode madly along it, sothat, riding shackled and woman-fashion, I had hard work to keep my seat.Brocton's head was incessantly on the turn to see if we were observed, buthis luck was absolute. We saw no one on the road, and, after a hardstretch, we turned up a gully to our left and were once more buried amongthe hills.
After much turning and twisting we came in sight of a small house of greystone which, from its appearance and situation, I judged to be somegentleman's shooting lodge. We cut across the valley, on one slope ofwhich it stood, and I caught a glimpse of cottage roofs beyond it. Weworked round to the rear of the house, and, in a favouring clump of trees,his lordship called a halt. The horses were tethered, and I was lifteddown, and the rings round my ankles were unlocked. The men took one each,and carried their carbines in their free hands. Brocton drew his rapier,and said, "Forward! Make a sound, show the slightest sign of resistance,and I run you through."
There was no sense in disobeying, and I accommodated myself to hisdesign, which was clearly to get into the house unobserved from without.In this he was successful, or at any rate I saw no one during our crawlfrom one point of vantage to another up to the back entrance. Now hislordship skipped gaily from behind me and opened the door. He steppedsoftly in, and I was pushed after him by his dragoons.
"'Friends will rescue you and bring you to me,'" he quoted, jeering me."There's no Margaret for you, Farmer Wheatman. I shall have her yet!"Then, beast as he was, while the men kept me back, nearly tearing my armsout of their sockets, he stuck the point of his rapier over my heart andbabbled half-delirious beastliness.
We were in a big, bare kitchen, the other door of which was closed. Therewas no sign of anyone about, and Brocton, still with his sword ready forme, bawled out, "Where are you, you old hag?"
The door opened at once. Brocton dropped his sword in his fright and Iclapped my foot on it. The two men fled like rabbits. Familiar as thepicture is to my mind, it is hard to find words to fit this crowningmoment of my adventures.
Margaret walked into the room.
For a second she was minded to rush at me, but thought better of it, andwalked up to his lordship. She towered over his limp, cringing figure, andsaid coldly, "You are too poor a cur to be struck by a woman or I wouldstrike you."
She was not alone. Master Freake was now wringing my shackled handsdelightedly, and a little, deft man, whom I knew on sight to be DotGibson, was searching his unresisting lordship's pockets for the key ofthe irons. A minute later he banged them on the floor and said, "And howdo you find yourself, sir?"
There's no more to be said about Brocton. He was as good as dead for theremainder of the business, and no one heeded him any more than if he hadbeen a loathsome insect that a man's foot had trodden on. And what killedhim was the presence of a third man, a perfect stranger to me. He was anold-looking rather than an old man, with rheumy eyes that looked throughnarrow slits, and a big unshapely nose; the skin of his face was brown andcrinkled like a dried-up bladder; his whole appearance as a man was meanand paltry. What distinction he had was given him by gorgeous clothing andthe attendance of a pompous ass in a flaming livery. Yet Brocton dared notlook at him again, as he shuffled forward on his man's arm to speak toMaster Freake.
"Mr. Freake," he piped, laying an imploring hand on the merchant's arm,"you will not be too hard on my foolish son?"
It was the old rascal Earl of Ridgeley. I had not seen him since thetrial, when I was but a lad. In the meantime vice had eaten out of himsuch manliness as had ever been in him. Rascaldom was still stamped onhim, but he was now in a state of abject terror. He and his son wereindeed, as Jane puts it to this day, two to a pair.
"Your lordships will be pleased to wait on me in the room yonder," saidMaster Freake, in his grave, decisive way, "and I will tell you my will onthe matter."
He bowed ironically towards the door. Their unlordly lordships went offtogether, and he followed and closed the door behind him. Dot sensiblyhustled off the lackey, and so we were alone together.
As ever, I had my full reward. She turned to me, took my hands in hers,and whispered, "My splendid Oliver!"
"What, madam?" said I, laughing lest I should do otherwise and mostunbecomingly. "In a red beard?"
"You look like a Cossack!" she declared, laughing in her turn.
So, in the way we had, we kept ourselves at arm's length from each otherand dropped at once into our old footing.
Then, bit b
y bit, and unwillingly, and mainly in answers to my questions,she told a tale that made my heart bound within me. This is the mereskeleton of it, for I have no skill to give body and soul to such devotion.
The Colonel brought the news of my capture by Brocton, pieced togetherfrom the stories of my men, who got back unhurt, and of one of Brocton'sdragoons who was luckily taken prisoner in order to be questioned.Margaret had immediately started on horseback for London, with one Englishservant in attendance, going by Appleby to evade the Duke's army, andacross the mountains to Darlington. There she had travelled flying postdown the great north road, getting to London in five days thirteen hoursafter her start from Penrith.
Master Freake had started back with her within five hours of her arrival.They travelled post through Leicester and Derby, and then on over groundthat was familiar. No wonder I had thought her near, since she had passedwithin fifty paces of me as I shambled about dreaming of her. Part of thefive hours' delay in London was taken up by a visit paid by Master Freaketo the Earl of Ridgeley. He had gone forth stern and resolute. What hadhappened she did not know, but as they sped north the Earl sped north amile behind them, as if they were dragging him along by his heart-strings.At Carlisle, now in the hands of the Duke, they drew blank, for Broctonwas unaccountably absent from military duty. Fortunately Margaret, fromthe window of her room, saw the sergeant ride by. Dot was sent on histrack and learned that Brocton was here, the house being a hunting-lodgebelonging to a crony of his who was an officer in the Cumberland militia.They had ridden out that morning to see him, at which point her talelinked up with mine and ended.
"I am greatly indebted to you, Margaret," said I, very lamely, slippingout her name at unawares.
"Nonsense!" she cried. "May I not do as much as your pet ghostie did foryou without being a miracle? Do not you dare, sir, to offer me apinnerfull of guineas!"
She looked at me with a merry twinkle in her eyes, and I feel sure I knewwhat she was thinking of. But Nance Lousely was a simple country maiden,such as I was born and bred amongst, and at that time I had no vile redstubble, rough as a horse-comb, on my chin.
We were interrupted by the lackey, who came with Mr. Dot Gibson'srespects to his honour, and would his honour like the refreshment of ashave and a bath as both were at his service? Like master, like man. Thisresplendent person was for the nonce humility's self. I went with him andwas made clean and comfortable, and my rags trimmed a little.
This was preliminary to being summoned by Master Freake to a discussionwith their lordships, with whom was Margaret, aloof and icy.
"At the 'Ring o' Bells,'" began Master Freake, addressing me, "you tookfrom my lord Brocton's sergeant, now dead, a bundle of papers?"
"Yes, sir."
"Among them a letter addressed simply, 'To His Royal Highness'?"
"That is so, sir."
"You gave that letter to me, unopened, in the presence of MistressWaynflete?"
"I did," said I, and Margaret nodded agreement.
"Several attempts have been made to recover the letter from you?"
"At least three such attempts were made by the late sergeant, and two bymy lord Brocton," I replied.
"Their lordships' urgent need of recovering the letter is thus proven,and the Court will attach due weight to the facts," said Master Freake.Brocton turned white as a sheet, and the old rogue shook as a dead leafshakes on its twig before the wind strips it off. There was in them noneof the family pride which keeps the great families agoing.
"I opened the letter. I mastered its contents. I still have it,"continued Master Freake, every sentence, like the crash of asledge-hammer, making these craven bystanders shake at the knees. "It isdeposited, sealed up again, with a sure friend, who has instructions,unless I claim it in person on or before the last day of this year, todeliver it in person to the King. At present no one knows its contentsexcept my lord Brocton who wrote it, and I who read it."
"Thank God!" ejaculated the rascal old earl fervently.
"Egad," thought I to myself. "It's the Ridgeley estates no less."
"We will call it, for the purposes of our discussion," said Master Freakesoothingly, "a letter about certain lands."
"Yes! Yes! Certainly! A letter about lands! So it was!" cried the Earleagerly, and Brocton began to look less like a coward on the scaffold.
"Would you prefer any other designation or description, my lords?"inquired Master Freake.
"I'm quite satisfied, my good Master Freake," babbled the Earl.
"What lands?" I burst out, unable to hold in my curiosity any longer.
"The lands known as the Upper Hanyards in the county of Staffordshire,"replied Master Freake.
"Well I'm ----," cried I, in amazement, but pulling up in time, andMargaret's blue eyes were as wide open as mine.
"You are, Master Oliver Wheatman," said Master Freake, "the future,rightful owner of the ancient estate of your family in all its formeramplitude; and all arrearages of rents and incomings as from thethirteenth of April, one thousand seven hundred and thirty-two, withcompound interest at the rate of ten per cent per annum, together with acompensation for disturbance and vexation caused to you and yours,provisionally fixed in the sum of two thousand pounds. The Earl ofRidgeley, smitten to the heart by the remembrance of his roguery andknavery, has agreed to make this full restitution. Am I right, my lord?"
"Absolutely, Master Freake, if you please," whined the rascal old earl."My God, I'm a ruined man!"
"Well, my lord," said Master Freake, "if you lose your lands and moneys,and I will not bate an acre or a guinea of the full tale, you and your sonwill at least retain what, as I see, you both value more highly. Therestitution is to be made by you to me personally, so that we can avoidquibbles about Oliver's legal position, he being a rebel confessed, andthe day after he is inlawed I will in my turn convey the property in bothkinds to him. When the restitution has been fully and legally made,without speck or flaw in title, and passed as such by my lawyers, theletter will be returned to you sealed as now, and of course I shall berigidly silent on the matter. Your lordships," he ended coldly, "may startfor London at once to see to the matter."
The old earl started for the door eagerly, calling down on his son direand foul curses. Brocton looked poisonously at me before following, and Iknew I had not done with him yet.
"I've got you your lands, Oliver, but there has been no time to get youpardoned. The King was at Windsor; every moment was precious; and therewas no use, in the temper of the town, in dealing with underlings. It willnot do to run any risk of your being retaken, for Cumberland lovesblood-letting, and is no friend of mine. We shall take you to a littlefishing village on the Solway and get you a cast over to Dublin, whithermy good ship, 'Merchant of London,' Jonadab Kilroot, Master, outward boundfor the Americas, will pick you up. When we all meet again in London, in afew months, you will be pardoned. Margaret and I must now follow herfather. The Stuart cause is smashed to pieces."
* * * * *
Late that night I stood with Margaret on the end of a jetty in a littlefishing village on the Cumberland coast. Master Freake was giving finalinstructions to the owner of a herring-buss that was creaking noisilyagainst the side of the jetty under the swell of the tide. Dot was busilyhanding to one of her crew of two certain packages for my use.
We stood together, and she had linked her arm in mine. We who had been soclose together for a month were now to have an ocean put between us. Notthat that mattered to me, already separated from her by something widerthan the Atlantic, a lonely unnamed grave away there in Staffordshire.
Suddenly she called to Dot, and he, as knowing just what she wanted,brought her a box. She loosed her arm from mine and took it from him, andwhen I would in turn have relieved her of it, she gently refused.
"Oliver," she said, in quiet, firm tones, "you met me when I was in gravedanger and immediately, like the gallant gentleman you are, left motherand home to do me service."
"It was the priv
ilege of my life, madam," I said earnestly.
"You have sweetened your service by so regarding it, giving greatly whenyou gave. And, sir, that service put me in your debt. You see that?"
"It is like you to say so. What of it?"
"The time came when you were in danger, and I, in my turn, left my fatherand rode hard to save you. I am not boasting, you understand, sir. I ammerely stating a fact. I rendered service for service, like for like, didI not, sir?"
"You did, madam, and did it splendidly," said I.
"Then, sir, when we meet again," she said, and she was now speaking veryclearly and sweetly, looking me full in the eyes, potent in all her beautyand queenliness, "when we meet again, we meet on level terms."
"Are you ready, lad?" called Master Freake.
"Coming, sir!" I cried, almost glad at heart of the escape.
"One moment, Oliver!" said Margaret. "So anxious to be rid of me? Nay, Ijest of course! I've a little present for you here, Oliver. It will, Ihope, make you think of me at times."
"It will not," I replied, smiling. "It will make me think oftener of you,that's all."
She handed me the box, and we walked up to the boat.
The half-moon was bright in an unclouded sky, and it showed me tears onMargaret's cheeks, as I bent to clasp and kiss her hand. Then I saidgood-bye to Master Freake and Dot, and was helped into the boat.
So we parted, and I set my face toward the New World. For ten wearymonths there is nothing to be said that belongs of right and necessity tomy story.
Except this: The first thing I did when I was alone in my cabin on thegood ship, the "Merchant of London," was to open Margaret's box. Itcontained a full supply of books wherefrom to learn "the only language onecan love in," and on the fly-leaf of a sumptuous "Dante" she had written,"From Margaret to Oliver."