It was in the kitchen of the inn at Framlingham that Mr. Mitchelbourne
came across the man who was afraid, and during the Christmas week
of the year 1681. Lewis Mitchelbourne was young in those days, and
esteemed as a gentleman of refinement and sensibility, with a queer
taste for escapades, pardonable by reason of his youth. It was his
pride to bear his part in the graceful tactics of a minuet, while a
saddled horse waited for him at the door. He delighted to vanish of a
sudden from the lighted circle of his friends into the byways where
none knew him, or held him of account, not that it was all vanity with
Mitchelbourne though no doubt the knowledge that his associates
in London Town were speculating upon his whereabouts tickled him
pleasurably through many a solitary day. But he was possessed both of
courage and resource, qualities for which he found too infrequent an
exercise in his ordinary life; and so he felt it good to be free for
awhile, not from the restraints but from the safeguards, with
which his social circumstances surrounded him. He had his spice of
philosophy too, and discovered that these sharp contrasts,--luxury and
hardship, treading hard upon each other and the new strange people
with whom he fell in, kept fresh his zest of life.
Thus it happened that at a time when families were gathering cheerily
each about a single fireside, Mr. Mitchelbourne was riding alone
through the muddy and desolate lanes of Suffolk. The winter was not
seasonable; men were not tempted out of doors. There was neither
briskness nor sunlight in the air, and there was no snow upon the
ground. It was a December of dripping branches, and mists and steady
pouring rains, with a raw sluggish cold, which crept into one's
marrow.
The man who was afraid, a large, corpulent man, of a loose and heavy
build, with a flaccid face and bright little inexpressive eyes like a
bird's, sat on a bench within the glow of the fire.
"You travel far to-night?" he asked nervously, shuffling his feet.
"To-night!" exclaimed Mitchelbourne as he stood with his legs apart
taking the comfortable warmth into his bones. "No further than from
this fire to my bed," and he listened with enjoyment to the rain
which cracked upon the window like a shower of gravel flung by some
mischievous urchin. He was not suffered to listen long, for the
corpulent man began again.
"I am an observer, sir. I pride myself upon it, but I have so much
humility as to wish to put my observations to the test of fact. Now,
from your carriage, I should judge you to serve His Majesty."
"A civilian may be straight. There is no law against it," returned
Mitchelbourne, and he perceived that the ambiguity of his reply threw
his questioner into a great alarm. He was at once interested. Here,
it seemed, was one of those encounters which were the spice of his
journeyings.
"You will pardon me," continued the stranger with a great assumption
of heartiness, "but I am curious, sir, curious as Socrates, though
I thank God I am no heathen. Here is Christmas, when a sensible
gentleman, as upon my word I take you to be, sits to his table and
drinks more than is good for him in honour of the season. Yet here are
you upon the roads to Suffolk which have nothing to recommend them. I
wonder at it, sir."
"You may do that," replied Mitchelbourne, "though to be sure, there
are two of us in the like case."
"Oh, as for me," said his companion shrugging his shoulders, "I am on
my way to be married. My name is Lance," and he blurted it out with
a suddenness as though to catch Mitchelbourne off his guard.
Mitchelbourne bowed politely.
"And my name is Mitchelbourne, and I travel for my pleasure, though my
pleasure is mere gipsying, and has nothing to do with marriage. I
take comfort from thinking that I have no friend from one rim of
this country to the other, and that my closest intimates have not an
inkling of my whereabouts."
Mr. Lance received the explanation with undisguised suspicion, and at
supper, which the two men took together, he would be forever laying
traps. Now he slipped some outlandish name or oath unexpectedly into
his talk, and watched with a forward bend of his body to mark whether
the word struck home; or again he mentioned some person with whom
Mitchelbourne was quite unfamiliar. At length, however, he seemed
satisfied, and drawing up his chair to the fire, he showed himself at
once in his true character, a loud and gusty boaster.
"An exchange of sentiments, Mr. Mitchelbourne, with a chance
acquaintance over a pipe and a glass--upon my word I think you are in
the right of it, and there's no pleasanter way of passing an evening.
I could tell you stories, sir; I served the King in his wars, but I
scorn a braggart, and all these glories are over. I am now a man of
peace, and, as I told you, on my way to be married. Am I wise? I do
not know, but I sometimes think it preposterous that a man who
has been here and there about the world, and could, if he were so
meanly-minded, tell a tale or so of success in gallantry, should
hamper himself with connubial fetters. But a man must settle, to
be sure, and since the lady is young, and not wanting in looks or
breeding or station, as I am told--"
"As you are told?" interrupted Mitchelbourne.
"Yes, for I have never seen her. No, not so much as her miniature.
Nor have I seen her mother either, or any of the family, except the
father, from whom I carry letters to introduce me. She lives in a
house called 'The Porch' some miles from here. There is another house
hard by to it, I understand, which has long stood empty and I have a
mind to buy it. I bring a fortune, the lady a standing in the county."
"And what has the lady to say to it?" asked Mitchelbourne.
"The lady!" replied Lance with a stare. "Nothing but what is dutiful,
I'll be bound. The father is under obligations to me." He stopped
suddenly, and Mitchelbourne, looking up, saw that his mouth had
fallen. He sat with his eyes starting from his head and a face grey as
lead, an image of panic pitiful to behold. Mitchelbourne spoke but got
no answer. It seemed Lance could not answer--he was so arrested by a
paralysis of terror. He sat staring straight in front of him, and it
seemed at the mantelpiece which was just on a level with his eyes. The
mantelpiece, however, had nothing to distinguish it from a score of
others. Its counterpart might be found to this day in the parlour of
any inn. A couple of china figures disfigured it, to be sure, but
Mitchelbourne could not bring himself to believe that even their
barbaric crudity had power to produce so visible a discomposure. He
inclined to the notion that his companion was struck by a physical
disease, perhaps some recrudescence of a malady contracted in those
foreign lands of which he vaguely spoke.
"Sir, you are ill," said Mitchelbourne. "I will have a doctor, if
there is one hereabouts to be found, brought to your relief." He
sprang up as he spoke, and that action of his roused Lance out of his
paralysis. "Have a care," he cried almost in a shriek, "Do not move!
For pity, sir, do not move," and he in his turn rose from his chair.
He rose trembling, and swept the dust off a corner of the mantelpiece
into the palm of his hand. Then he held his palm to the lamp.
"Have you seen the like of this before?" he asked in a low shaking
voice.
Mitchelbourne looked over Lance's shoulder. The dust was in reality a
very fine grain of a greenish tinge.
"Never!" said Mitchelbourne.
"No, nor I," said Lance, with a sudden cunning look at his companion,
and opening his fingers, as he let the grain run between them. But he
could not remove as easily from Mitchelbourne's memories that picture
he had shown him of a shaking and a shaken man. Mitchelbourne went to
bed divided in his feelings between pity for the lady Lance was to
marry, and curiosity as to Lance's apprehensions. He lay awake for
a long time speculating upon that mysterious green seed which could
produce so extraordinary a panic, and in the morning his curiosity
predominated. Since, therefore, he had no particular destination he
was easily persuaded to ride to Saxmundham with Mr. Lance, who, for
his part, was most earnest for a companion. On the journey Lance gave
further evidence of his fears. He had a trick of looking backwards
whenever they came to a corner of the road--an habitual trick, it
seemed, acquired by a continued condition of fear. When they stopped
at midday to eat at an ordinary, he inspected the guests through the
chink at the hinges of the door before he would enter the room; and
this, too, he did as though it had long been natural to him. He kept
a bridle in his mouth, however; that little pile of grain upon
the mantelshelf had somehow warned him into reticence, so that
Mitchelbourne, had he not been addicted to his tobacco, would
have learnt no more of the business and would have escaped the
extraordinary peril which he was subsequently called upon to face.
But he _was_ addicted to his tobacco, and no sooner had he finished
his supper that night at Saxmundham than he called for a pipe. The
maidservant fetched a handful from a cupboard and spread them upon the
table, and amongst them was one plainly of Barbary manufacture. It had
a straight wooden stem painted with hieroglyphics in red and green
and a small reddish bowl of baked earth. Nine men out of ten would no
doubt have overlooked it, but Mitchelbourne was the tenth man. His
fancies were quick to kindle, and taking up the pipe he said in a
musing voice:
"Now, how in the world comes a Barbary pipe to travel so far over seas
and herd in the end with common clays in a little Suffolk village?"
He heard behind him the grating of a chair violently pushed back. The
pipe seemingly made its appeal to Mr. Lance also.
"Has it been smoked?" he asked in a grave low voice.
"The inside of the bowl is stained," said Mitchelbourne.
Mitchelbourne had been inclined to believe that he had seen last
evening the extremity of fear expressed in a man's face: he had now to
admit that he had been wrong. Mr. Lance's terror was a Circe to him
and sunk him into something grotesque and inhuman; he ran once or
twice in a little tripping, silly run backwards and forwards like an
animal trapped and out of its wits; and his face had the look of a
man suffering from a nausea; so that Mitchelbourne, seeing him, was
ashamed and hurt for their common nature.
"I must go," said Lance babbling his words. "I cannot stay. I must
go."
"To-night?" exclaimed Mitchelbourne. "Six yards from the door you will
be soaked!"
"Then there will be the fewer men abroad. I cannot sleep here! No,
though it rained pistols and bullets I must go." He went into
the passage, and calling his host secretly asked for his score.
Mitchelbourne made a further effort to detain him.
"Make an inquiry of the landlord first. It may be a mere shadow that
frightens you."
"Not a word, not a question," Lance implored. The mere suggestion
increased a panic which seemed incapable of increase. "And for the
shadow, why, that's true. The pipe's the shadow, and the shadow
frightens me. A shadow! Yes! A shadow is a horrible, threatning thing!
Show me a shadow cast by nothing and I am with you. But you might as
easily hold that this Barbary pipe floated hither across the seas of
its own will. No! 'Ware shadows, I say." And so he continued harping
on the word, till the landlord fetched in the bill.
The landlord had his dissuasions too, but they availed not a jot more
than Mr. Mitchelbourne's.
"The road is as black as a pauper's coffin," said he, "and damnable
with ruts."
"So much the better," said Lance.
"There is no house where you can sleep nearer than Glemham, and no man
would sleep there could he kennel elsewhere."
"So much the better," said Lance. "Besides, I am expected to-morrow
evening at 'The Porch' and Glemham is on the way." He paid his bill,
slipped over to the stables and lent a hand to the saddling of his
horse. Mitchelbourne, though for once in his life he regretted the
precipitancy with which he welcomed strangers, was still sufficiently
provoked to see the business to its end. His imagination was seized by
the thought of this fat and vulgar person fleeing in terror through
English lanes from a Barbary Moor. He had now a conjecture in his mind
as to the nature of that greenish seed. He accordingly rode out with
Lance toward Glemham.
It was a night of extraordinary blackness; you could not distinguish
a hedge until the twigs stung across your face; the road was narrow,
great tree-trunks with bulging roots lined it, at times it was very
steep--and, besides and beyond every other discomfort, there was the
rain. It fell pitilessly straight over the face of the country with a
continuous roar as though the earth was a hollow drum. Both travellers
were drenched to the skin before they were free of Saxmundham, and one
of them, when after midnight they stumbled into the poor tumble-down
parody of a tavern at Glemham, was in an extreme exhaustion. It was no
more than an ague, said Lance, from which he periodically suffered,
but the two men slept in the same bare room, and towards morning
Mitchelbourne was awakened from a deep slumber by an unfamiliar voice
talking at an incredible speed through the darkness in an uncouth
tongue. He started up upon his elbow; the voice came from Lance's bed.
He struck a light. Lance was in a high fever, which increased as the
morning grew.
Now, whether he had the sickness latent within him when he came from
Barbary, or whether his anxieties and corpulent habit made him an
easy victim to disease, neither the doctor nor any one else could
determine. But at twelve o'clock that day Lance was seized with an
attack of cholera and by three in the afternoon he was dead. The
suddenness of the catastrophe shocked Mr. Mitchelbourne inexpressibly.
He stood gazing at the still features of the man whom fear had, during
these last days, so grievously tormented, and was solemnly aware of
the vanity of those fears. He could not pretend to any great esteem
for his companion, but he made many suitable reflections upon the
shears of the Fates and the tenacity of life, in which melancholy
occupation he was interrupted by the doctor, who pointed out the
necessity of immediate burial. Seven o'clock the next morning was the
hour agreed upon, and Mitchelbourne at once searched in Lance's
coat pockets for the letters which he carried. There were only two,
superscribed respectively to Mrs. Ufford at "The Porch" near Glemham,
and to her daughter Brasilia. At "The Porch" Mitchelbourne remembered
Lance was expected this very evening, and he thought it right at once
to ride thither with his gloomy news.
Having, therefore, sprinkled the letters plentifully with vinegar and
taken such rough precautions as were possible to remove the taint of
infection from the letters, he started about four o'clock. The evening
was most melancholy. For, though no rain any longer fell, there was a
continual pattering of drops from the trees and a ghostly creaking of
branches in a light and almost imperceptible wind. The day, too, was
falling, the grey overhang of cloud was changing to black, except for
one wide space in the west, where a pale spectral light shone without
radiance; and the last of that was fading when he pulled up at a
parting of the roads and inquired of a man who chanced to be standing
there his way to "The Porch." He was directed to ride down the road
upon his left hand until he came to the second house, which he could
not mistake, for there was a dyke or moat about the garden wall. He
passed the first house a mile further on, and perhaps half a mile
beyond that he came to the dyke and the high garden wall, and saw the
gables of the second house loom up behind it black against the sky. A
wooden bridge spanned the dyke and led to a wide gate. Mitchelbourne
stopped his horse at the bridge. The gate stood open and he looked
down an avenue of trees into a square of which three sides were made
by the high garden wall, and the fourth and innermost by the house.
Thus the whole length of the house fronted him, and it struck him as
very singular that neither in the lower nor the upper windows was
there anywhere a spark of light, nor was there any sound but the
tossing of the branches and the wail of the wind among the chimneys.
Not even a dog barked or rattled a chain, and from no chimney breathed
a wisp of smoke. The house in the gloom of that melancholy evening had
a singular eerie and tenantless look; and oppressive silence reigned
there; and Mitchelbourne was unaccountably conscious of a growing
aversion to it, as to something inimical and sinister.
He had crossed the mouth of a lane, he remembered, just at the first
corner of the wall. The lane ran backwards from the road, parallel
with the side wall of the garden. Mitchelbourne had a strong desire
to ride down that lane and inspect the back of the house before he
crossed the bridge into the garden. He was restrained for a moment by
the thought that such a proceeding must savour of cowardice. But only
for a moment. There had been no doubting the genuine nature of Lance's
fears and those fears were very close to Mr. Mitchelbourne now. They
were feeling like cold fingers about his heart. He was almost in the
icy grip of them.
He turned and rode down the lane until he came to the end of the wall.
A meadow stretched behind the house. Mitchelbourne unfastened the
catch of a gate with his riding whip and entered it. He found himself
upon the edge of a pool, which on the opposite side wetted the house
wall. About the pool some elder trees and elms grew and overhung, and
their boughs tapped like fingers upon the window-panes. Mitchelbourne
was assured that the house was inhabited, since from one of the
windows a strong yellow light blazed, and whenever a sharper gust blew
the branches aside, swept across the face of the pool like a flaw of
wind.
The lighted window was in the lowest storey, and Mitchelbourne, from
the back of his horse, could see into the room. He was mystified
beyond expression by what he saw. A deal table, three wooden chairs,
some ragged curtains drawn back from the window, and a single lamp
made up the furniture. The boards of the floor were bare and unswept;
the paint peeled in strips from the panels of the walls; the
discoloured ceiling was hung with cobwebs; the room in a word matched
the outward aspect of the house in its look of long disuse. Yet it had
occupants. Three men were seated at the table in the scarlet coats and
boots of the King's officers. Their faces, though it was winter-time,
were brown with the sun, and thin and drawn as with long privation and
anxiety. They had little to say to one another, it seemed. Each man
sat stiffly in a sort of suspense and expectation, with now and then a
restless movement or a curt word as curtly answered.
Mitchelbourne rode back again, crossed the bridge, fastened his horse
to a tree in the garden, and walked down the avenue to the door. As he
mounted the steps, he perceived with something of a shock, that the
door was wide open and that the void of the hall yawned black before
him. It was a fresh surprise, but in this night of surprises, one more
or less, he assured himself, was of little account. He stepped into
the hall and walked forwards feeling with his hands in front of him.
As he advanced, he saw a thin line of yellow upon the floor ahead of
him. The line of yellow was a line of light, and it came, no doubt,
from underneath a door, and the door, no doubt, was that behind which
the three men waited. Mitchelbourne stopped. After all, he reflected,
the three men were English officers wearing His Majesty's uniform,
and, moreover, wearing it stained with their country's service. He
walked forward and tapped upon the door. At once the light within the
room was extinguished.
It needed just that swift and silent obliteration of the slip of light
upon the floor to make Mitchelbourne afraid. He had been upon the
brink of fear ever since he had seen that lonely and disquieting
house; he was now caught in the full stream. He turned back. Through
the open doorway, he saw the avenue of leafless trees tossing against
a leaden sky. He took a step or two and then came suddenly to a halt.
For all around him in the darkness he seemed to hear voices breathing
and soft footsteps. He realised that his fear had overstepped his
reason; he forced himself to remember the contempt he had felt for
Lance's manifestations of terror; and swinging round again he flung
open the door and entered the room.
"Good evening, gentlemen," said he airily, and he got no answer
whatsoever. In front of him was the grey panel of dim twilight where
the window stood. The rest was black night and an absolute silence. A
map of the room was quite clear in his recollections. The three men
were seated he knew at the table on his right hand. The faint light
from the window did not reach them, and they made no noise. Yet they
were there. Why had they not answered him, he asked himself. He could
not even hear them breathing, though he strained his ears. He could
only hear his heart drumming at his breast, the blood pulsing in his
temples. Why did they hold their breath? He crossed the room, not
knowing what he did, bereft of his wits. He had a confused, ridiculous
picture of himself wearing the flaccid, panic stricken face of Mr.
Lance, like an ass' head, not holding the wand of Titania. He reached
the window and stood in its embrasure, and there one definite,
practical thought crept into his mind. He was visible to these men who
were invisible to him. The thought suggested a precaution, and with
the trembling haste of a man afraid, he tore at the curtains and
dragged them till they met across the window so that even the faint
grey glimmer of the night no longer had entrance. The next moment
he heard the door behind him latch and a key turn in the lock. He
crouched beneath the window and did not stand up again until a light
was struck, and the lamp relit.
The lighting of the lamp restored Mr. Mitchelbourne, if not to the
full measure of his confidence, at all events to an appreciation that
the chief warrant for his trepidation was removed. What he had with
some appearance of reason feared was a sudden attack in the dark. With
the lamp lit, he could surely stand in no danger of any violence at
the hands of three King's officers whom he had never come across in
all his life. He took, therefore, an easy look at them. One, the
youngest, now leaned against the door, a youth of a frank, honest
face, unremarkable but for a firm set of the jaws. A youth of no great
intellect, thought Mitchelbourne, but tenacious, a youth marked out
for a subordinate command, and never likely for all his sterling
qualities to kindle a woman to a world-forgetting passion, or to tread
with her the fiery heights where life throbs at its fullest. Mr.
Mitchelbourne began to feel quite sorry for this young officer of the
limited capacities, and he was still in the sympathetic mood when one
of the two men at the table spoke to him. Mitchelbourne turned at
once. The officers were sitting with a certain air of the theatre in
their attitudes, one a little dark man and the other a stiff, light
complexioned fellow with a bony, barren face, unmistakably a stupid
man and the oldest of the three. It was he who was speaking, and he
spoke with a sort of aggravated courtesy like a man of no breeding
counterfeiting a gentleman upon the stage.
"You will pardon us for receiving you with so little ceremony. But
while we expected you, you on the other hand were not expecting us,
and we feared that you might hesitate to come in if the lamp was
burning when you opened the door."
Mitchelbourne was now entirely at his ease. He perceived that there
was some mistake and made haste to put it right.
"On the contrary," said he, "for I knew very well you were here.
Indeed, I knocked at the door to make a necessary inquiry. You did not
extinguish the lamp so quickly but that I saw the light beneath the
door, and besides I watched you some five minutes through the window
from the opposite bank of the pool at the back of the house."
The officers were plainly disconcerted by the affability of Mr.
Mitchelbourne's reply. They had evidently expected to carry off a
triumph, not to be taken up in an argument. They had planned a stroke
of the theatre, final and convincing, and behold the dialogue went on!
There was a riposte to their thrust.
The spokesman made some gruff noises in his throat. Then his face
cleared.
"These are dialectics," he said superbly with a wave of the hand.
"Good," said the little dark fellow at his elbow, "very good!"
The youth at the door nodded superciliously towards Mitchelbourne.
"True, these are dialectics," said he with a smack of the lips upon
the word. It was a good cunning scholarly word, and the man who could
produce it so aptly worthy of admiration.
"You make a further error, gentlemen," continued Mitchelbourne, "you
no doubt are expecting some one, but you were most certainly not
expecting me. For I am here by the purest mistake, having been
misdirected on the way." Here the three men smiled to each other, and
their spokesman retorted with a chuckle.
"Misdirected, indeed you were. We took precautions that you should be.
A servant of mine stationed at the parting of the roads. But we are
forgetting our manners," he added rising from his chair. "You should
know our names. The gentleman at the door is Cornet Lashley, this
is Captain Bassett and I am Major Chantrell. We are all three of
Trevelyan's regiment."
"And my name," said Mitchelbourne, not to be outdone in politeness,
"is Lewis Mitchelbourne, a gentleman of the County of Middlesex."
At this each of the officers was seized with a fit of laughter;
but before Mitchelbourne had time to resent their behavior, Major
Chantrell said indulgently:
"Well, well, we shall not quarrel about names. At all events we all
four are lately come from Tangier."
"Oh, from Tangier," cried Mitchelbourne. The riddle was becoming
clear. That extraordinary siege when a handful of English red-coats
unpaid and ill-fed fought a breached and broken town against countless
hordes for the honour of their King during twenty years, had not yet
become the property of the historian. It was still an actual war
in 1681. Mitchelbourne understood whence came the sunburn on his
antagonists' faces, whence the stains and the worn seams of their
clothes. He advanced to the table and spoke with a greater respect
than he had used.
"Did one of you," he asked, "leave a Moorish pipe behind you at an inn
of Saxmundham?"
"Ah," said the Major with a reproachful glance at Captain Bassett. The
Captain answered with some discomfort:
"Yes. I made that mistake. But what does it matter? You are here none
the less."
"You have with you some of the Moorish tobacco?" continued
Mitchelbourne.
Captain Bassett fetched out of his pocket a little canvas bag, and
handed it to Mitchelbourne, who untied the string about the neck, and
poured some of the contents into the palm of his hand. The tobacco was
a fine, greenish seed.
"I thought as much," said Mitchelbourne, "you expected Mr. Lance
to-night. It is Mr. Lance whom you thought to misdirect to this
solitary house. Indeed Mr. Lance spoke of such a place in this
neighbourhood, and had a mind to buy it."
Captain Bassett suddenly raised his hand to his mouth, not so quickly,
however, but Mitchelbourne saw the grim, amused smile upon his lips.
"It is Mr. Lance for whom you now mistake me," he said abruptly.
The young man at the door uttered a short, contemptuous laugh, Major
Chantrell only smiled.
"I am aware," said he, "that we meet for the first time to-night, but
you presume upon that fact too far. What have you to say to this?" And
dragging a big and battered pistol from his pocket, he tossed it upon
the table, and folded his arms in the best transpontine manner.
"And to this?" said Captain Bassett. He laid a worn leather powder
flask beside the pistol, and tapped upon the table triumphantly.
Mr. Mitchelbourne recognised clearly that villainy was somehow
checkmated by these proceedings and virtue restored, but how he could
not for the life of him determine. He took up the pistol.
"It appears to have seen some honourable service," said he. This
casual remark had a most startling effect upon his auditors. It was
the spark to the gun-powder of their passions. Their affectations
vanished in a trice.
"Service, yes, but honourable! Use that lie again, Mr. Lance, and I
will ram the butt of it down your throat!" cried Major Chantrell. He
leaned forward over the table in a blaze of fury. Yet his face did no
more than match the faces of his comrades.
Mitchelbourne began to understand. These simple soldier-men had
endeavoured to conduct their proceedings with great dignity and a
judicial calmness; they had mapped out for themselves certain parts
which they were to play as upon a stage; they were to be three stern
imposing figures of justice; and so they had become simply absurd and
ridiculous. Now, however, that passion had the upper hand of them,
Mitchelbourne saw at once that he stood in deadly peril. These were
men.
"Understand me, Mr. Lance," and the Major's voice rang out firm, the
voice of a man accustomed to obedience. "Three years ago I was in
command of Devil's Drop, a little makeshift fort upon the sands
outside Tangier. In front the Moors lay about us in a semicircle. Sir,
the diameter was the line of the sea at our backs. We could not retire
six yards without wetting our feet, not twenty without drowning. One
night the Moors pushed their trenches up to our palisades; in the dusk
of the morning I ordered a sortie. Nine officers went out with me and
three came back, we three. Of the six we left behind, five fell, by my
orders, to be sure, for I led them out; but, by the living God, you
killed them. There's the pistol that shot my best friend down, an
English pistol. There's the powder flask which charged the pistol, an
English flask filled with English powder. And who sold the pistol and
the powder to the Moors, England's enemies? You, an Englishman. But
you have come to the end of your lane to-night. Turn and turn as you
will you have come to the end of it."
The truth was out now, and Mitchelbourne was chilled with
apprehension. Here were three men very desperately set upon what they
considered a mere act of justice. How was he to dissuade them? By
argument? They would not listen to it. By proofs? He had none to offer
them. By excuses? Of all unsupported excuses which can match for
futility the excuse of mistaken identity? It springs immediate to the
criminal's lips. Its mere utterance is almost a conviction.
"You persist in error, Major Chantrell," he nevertheless began.
"Show him the proof, Bassett," Chantrell interrupted with a shrug of
the shoulders, and Captain Bassett drew from his pocket a folded sheet
of paper.
"Nine officers went out," continued Chantrell, "five were killed,
three are here. The ninth was taken a prisoner into Barbary. The Moors
brought him down to their port of Marmora to interpret. At Marmora
your ship unloaded its stores of powder and guns. God knows how often
it had unloaded the like cargo during these twenty years--often enough
it seems, to give you a fancy for figuring as a gentleman in the
county. But the one occasion of its unloading is enough. Our brother
officer was your interpreter with the Moors, Mr. Lance. You may very
likely know that, but this you do not know, Mr. Lance. He escaped, he
crept into Tangier with this, your bill of lading in his hand," and
Bassett tossed the sheet of paper towards Mitchelbourne. It fell upon
the floor before him but he did not trouble to pick it up.
"Is it Lance's death that you require?" he asked.
"Yes! yes! yes!" came from each mouth.
"Then already you have your wish. I do not question one word of your
charges against Lance. I have reason to believe them true. But I am
not Lance. Lance lies at this moment dead at Great Glemham. He died
this afternoon of cholera. Here are his letters," and he laid the
letters on the table. "I rode in with them at once. You do not believe
me, but you can put my words to the test. Let one of you ride to Great
Glemham and satisfy himself. He will be back before morning."
The three officers listened so far with impassive faces, or barely
listened, for they were as indifferent to the words as to the passion
with which they were spoken.
"We have had enough of the gentleman's ingenuities, I think," said
Chantrell, and he made a movement towards his companions.
"One moment," exclaimed Mitchelbourne. "Answer me a question! These
letters are to the address of Mrs. Ufford at a house called 'The
Porch.' It is near to here?"
"It is the first house you passed," answered the Major and, as he
noticed a momentary satisfaction flicker upon his victim's face, he
added, "But you will not do well to expect help from 'The Porch'--at
all events in time to be of much service to you. You hardly appreciate
that we have been at some pains to come up with you. We are not
likely again to find so many circumstances agreeing to favour us, a
dismantled house, yourself travelling alone and off your guard in a
country with which you are unfamiliar and where none know you, and
just outside the window a convenient pool. Besides--besides," he broke
out passionately, "There are the little mounds about Tangier, under
which my friends lie," and he covered his face with his hands. "My
friends," he cried in a hoarse and broken voice, "my soldier-men!
Come, let's make an end. Bassett, the rope is in the corner. There's a
noose to it. The beam across the window will serve;" and Bassett rose
to obey.
But Mitchelbourne gave them no time. His fears had altogether vanished
before his indignation at the stupidity of these officers. He was
boiling with anger at the thought that he must lose his life in this
futile ignominious way for the crime of another man, who was not even
his friend, and who besides was already dead. There was just one
chance to escape, it seemed to him. And even as Bassett stooped to
lift the coil of rope in the corner he took it.
"So that's the way of it," he cried stepping forward. "I am to be hung
up to a beam till I kick to death, am I? I am to be buried decently in
that stagnant pool, am I? And you are to be miles away before sunrise,
and no one the wiser! No, Major Chantrell, I am not come to the end of
my lane," and before either of the three could guess what he was at,
he had snatched up the pistol from the table and dashed the lamp into
a thousand fragments.
The flame shot up blue and high, and then came darkness.
Mitchelbourne jumped lightly back from his position to the centre of
the room. The men he had to deal with were men who would follow their
instincts. They would feel along the walls; of so much he could be
certain. He heard the coil of rope drop down in a corner to his left;
so that he knew where Captain Bassett was. He heard a chair upset in
front of him, and a man staggered against his chest. Mitchelbourne had
the pistol still in his hand and struck hard, and the man dropped with
a crash. The fall followed so closely upon the upsetting of the chair
that it seemed part of the same movement and accident. It seemed so
clearly part, that a voice spoke on Mitchelbourne's left, just where
the empty hearth would be.
"Get up! Be quick!"
The voice was Major Chantrell's and Mitchelbourne had a throb of hope.
For since it was not the Major who had fallen nor Captain Bassett, it
must be Lashley. And Lashley had been guarding the door, of which the
key still remained in the lock. If only he could reach the door and
turn the key! He heard Chantrell moving stealthily along the wall upon
his left hand and he suffered a moment's agony; for in the darkness he
could not surely tell which way the Major moved. For if he moved to
the window, if he had the sense to move to the window and tear aside
those drawn curtains, the grey twilight would show the shadowy moving
figures. Mitchelbourne's chance would be gone. And then something
totally unexpected and unhoped for occurred. The god of the machine
was in a freakish mood that evening. He had a mind for pranks and
absurdities. Mitchelbourne was strung to so high a pitch that the
ridiculous aspect of the occurrence came home to him before all else,
and he could barely keep himself from laughing aloud. For he heard two
men grappling and struggling silently together. Captain Bassett and
Major Chantrell had each other by the throat, and neither of them
had the wit to speak. They reserved their strength for the struggle.
Mitchelbourne stepped on tiptoe to the door, felt for the key, grasped
it without so much as a click, and then suddenly turned it, flung open
the door and sprang out. He sprang against a fourth man--the servant,
no doubt, who had misdirected him--and both tumbled on to the floor.
Mitchelbourne, however, tumbled on top. He was again upon his feet
while Major Chantrell was explaining matters to Captain Bassett;
he was flying down the avenue of trees before the explanation was
finished. He did not stop to untie his horse; he ran, conscious that
there was only one place of safety for him--the interior of Mrs.
Ufford's house. He ran along the road till he felt that his heart was
cracking within him, expecting every moment that a hand would be laid
upon his shoulder, or that, a pistol shot would ring out upon the
night. He reached the house, and knocked loudly at the door. He was
admitted, breathless, by a man, who said to him at once, with the
smile and familiarity of an old servant:
"You are expected, Mr. Lance."
Mitchelbourne plumped down upon a chair and burst into uncontrollable
laughter. He gave up all attempt for that night to establish his
identity. The fates were too heavily against him. Besides he was now
quite hysterical.
The manservant threw open a door.
"I will tell my mistress you have come, sir," said he.
"No, it would never do," cried Mitchelbourne. "You see I died at three
o'clock this afternoon. I have merely come to leave my letters of
presentation. So much I think a proper etiquette may allow. But it
would never do for me to be paying visits upon ladies so soon after
an affair of so deplorable a gravity. Besides I have to be buried
at seven in the morning, and if I chanced not to be back in time, I
should certainly acquire a reputation for levity, which since I am
unknown in the county, I am unwilling to incur," and, leaving the
butler stupefied in the hall, he ran out into the road. He heard no
sound of pursuit.