"Forward!" she said, as if giving a word of command.
Somehow, I felt as if I must go. Her Ladyship was right: it was too
late to draw back. So Ephraim and I set forth on our dangerous errand.
I cannot undertake to say how we went, or where. It all comes back to
me as if I had walked it in a dream: and I felt as if I were dreaming
all the while. At last, as we went along, carrying the basket, Ephraim
suddenly set it down with, "Hallo! what's that?" I knew then that we
must be close to the prison, and that he was about to leave me.
"I say, I must see after that. You go on, Bet!" cried Ephraim; and he
was off in a minute--in what direction I could not even see.
"Gemini!" cried I, catching up the word I had heard from Mrs Cropland's
Betty. "Joel! I say, Joel! You bad fellow, can't you come back? How
am I to lift this great thing, I should like to know?"
A dark shadow close to the wall moved a little.
"Come now, can't one of you lads help a poor maid?" said I. "It's a
shame of Joel to leave me in the lurch like this. Come, give us a
hand!"
I was trembling like an aspen leaf. Suppose the wrong man offered to
help me! What could I do then?
"Want a hand, my pretty maid?" said a voice which certainly was not
Colonel Keith's. "I'm your man! Give us hold!"
Oh, what was I to do! This horrid man would carry the basket, and how
could I explain to the warder? How could I know which warder was the
right one?
"Now then, hold hard, mate!" said a second voice, which I greeted with
delight. "Just you let this here young woman be. How do, Betty? Why,
wherever's Joel? He's no call to let the likes o' you carry things o'
thisn's."
What had the Colonel done with his Scots accent? I did not hear a trace
of it.
"Oh, Will Clowes, is that you?" said I, giving a little toss of my head,
which I thought would be in character. "Well, I don't know whether I
shall let you carry it."
The next minute I felt how wrong I was to say so.
"Yes, you will," said Colonel Keith, and took the basket out of my
hands. I should never have known him, dressed in corduroy, and with a
rake over his shoulder. He shouted something, and the great prison door
opened slowly, and a warder put his head out.
"Who goes there?"
"Washing for Cartwright's ward."
"Ay, all right. Come within. Cartwright!" shouted the porter.
We went in, and stood waiting a moment just inside the door, till a
warder appeared, who desired Colonel Keith to "bring that 'ere basket
up, now."
"You can wait a bit, Betty," said the Colonel, turning to me. "Don't be
afraid, my girl. Nobody 'll touch you, and Will 'll soon be back."
They say it is unlucky to watch people out of sight. I hope it is not
true. True or untrue, I watched him. Yes, Will Clowes might be back
soon; but would Duncan Keith ever return any more?
And then a feeling came, as if a tide of fear swept over me,--Was it
right of Flora to ask him to make that promise? I have wondered vaguely
many a time: but in that minute, with all my senses sharpened, I seemed
to see what a blunder it was. Is it ever right to ask people for such
unconditional pledges to a distinct course of action, when we cannot
know what is going to happen? To what agony--nay, even to what
wrong-doing--may we pledge them without knowing it! It seems to me that
influence is a very awful thing, for it reaches so much farther than you
can see. May it not be said sometimes of us all, "They know not what
they do"? And then to think that when we come out of that Valley of the
Shadow into the clear light of the Judgment Bar, all our unknown sins
may burst upon us like a great army, more than we can count or imagine--
it is terrible!
O my God, save me from unknown sins! O Christ, be my Help and Advocate
when I come to know them!
How I lived through the next quarter of an hour I can never say to
anybody. I sat upon a settle near the door of the prison, praying--how
earnestly!--for both of those in danger, but more especially for Colonel
Keith. At last I saw a man coming towards me with the empty basket, in
which he had inserted his head, like a bonnet, so that it rather veiled
his face. I remembered then that I was to "make as much noise as I
could," and quarrel with my supposed lover.
"Well, you are a proper young man!" said I, standing up. "How long do
you mean to keep me waiting, I should like to know? You think I've
nothing in the world to do, don't you, now? And Missis 'll say nought
to me, will she, for coming home late? Just you give me that basket--
men be such dolts!"
"Come, my girl,"--in a deprecating tone--said a voice, which I
recognised as that of Angus. I hoped nobody else would.
"I'm not your girl, and I'll not come unless I've a mind, neither!"
cried I, loudly, trying to put in practice her Ladyship's advice to be
as vulgar as I could. "I'm not a-going to have fellows dangling at my
heels as keeps me a-waiting--"
"Come, young woman, you just clear out," said the warder Cartwright.
"My word, lad, but she's a spitfire! You be wise, and think better of
it. Now then, be off, both of you!"
And he laid his hand on my shoulder, as if to push me through the door,
which I pretended to resent very angrily, and Angus flung down the
basket and began to strip up his sleeves, as if he meant to fight the
warder.
"Now, we can't do with that kind of thing here!" cried another man,
coming forward, whom I took to be somewhat above the rest. "Be off at
once--you must not offer to fight the King's warders. Turn them out,
Cartwright, and shut the door on them."
Angus caught up the basket and dashed through the door, and I followed,
making all the noise I could, and scolding everybody. We had only just
got outside the gate when Ephraim came running up, and snatched the
basket from Angus. There was a few minutes' pretended struggle between
them, and then Ephraim chased Angus into a side-street, and came back to
me, whom he began to scold emphatically for encouraging such idle
ne'er-do-wells as that rascal Clowes. I tried to give him as good as he
brought; and so we went on, jangling as we walked, until nearly within
sight of Mr Raymond's door. Then, declaring that I would not speak to
him if he could not behave better, and that I was not going to walk in
his leading-strings, I marched on with my head held very high, and
Ephraim trudged after me, looking as sulky as he knew how. We rapped on
the back-door, and Mr Raymond's servant let us in. In the parlour we
found Mr Raymond and her Ladyship.
"I am thankful to see you safe back!" cried the former; and his manner
suggested to me the idea that he had not felt at all sure of doing so.
"Is all well accomplished?"
"Angus Drummond is out, and Keith is in," replied Ephraim. "As to the
rest, we must leave it for time to reveal. I am frightfully tired of
quarrelling; I never did so much in my life before."
"Has Miss Courtenay done her part well?" asked her Ladyship.
"Too well, if anything," said Ephraim. "I was sadly afraid of a slip
once. If that fellow had insisted on carrying in the basket, Cary, we
should have had a complete smash of the whole thing."
"Why, did you see that?" said I.
"Of course I did," he answered. "I was never many yards from you. I
lay hidden in a doorway, close to. Cary, you make a deplorably good
scold! I never guessed you would do that part of the business so well."
"I am glad to hear it, for I found it the hardest part," said I.
Her Ladyship came up and helped me to change my dress.
"The Cause owes something to you to-night, Miss Courtenay," said she.
"At least, if Colonel Keith can escape."
"And if not, Madam?"
"If not, my dear, we shall but have done our duty. Good-night. Will
you accept a little reminder of this evening--and of Lady Inverness?"
I looked up in astonishment. Was this beautiful woman, with her tinge
of sadness in face and voice, the woman who had so long stood first at
the Court of Montefiascone--the Mistress of the Robes to Queen
Clementina, and as some said, of the heart of King James?
My Lady Inverness drew from her finger a small ring of chased gold. "It
will fit you, I think, my dear. You are a brave maid, and I like you.
Farewell."
I am not at all sure that my Aunt Kezia would have allowed me to accept
it. Some, even among the Tories, thought my Lady Inverness a wicked
woman; others reckoned her an injured and a slandered one. I gave her
what Father calls "the benefit of the doubt," thanked her, and accepted
the ring. I do not know whether I did right or wrong.
To run down-stairs, say good-bye to Mr Raymond,--by the way, would Mr
Raymond have allowed my Lady to enter his house, if he had believed the
tales against her?--and hasten back with Ephraim to Bloomsbury Square,
took but few minutes. Lucette let us in; I think she had been watching.
"The good Lord has watched over Mademoiselle," said she, as she took my
cloak from me.
Ephraim had gone back to the drawing-room, and I followed. I glanced at
the French clock on the mantelpiece, where a gold Cupid in a robe of
blue enamel was mowing down an array of hearts with a scythe, and saw
that we had been away a little over an hour. Could that be all? How
strange it seemed! People were chattering, and flirting fans, and
playing cards, as if nothing at all had happened. Miss Newton was
sitting where I had left her, talking to Mr Robert Page. Grandmamma
sat in her chair, just as usual. Nobody seemed to have missed us,
except Hatty, who said with a smile,--"I had lost you, Cary, for the
last half-hour."
"Yes," said I, "something detained me out of the room."
I only exchanged one other sentence in the course of the evening with
Ephraim:
"You will let me know how things go on? I shall be very anxious."
"Of course. Yes, I will take care of that."
And then the company broke up, and I helped Hatty to bed, and prayed
from my heart for Colonel Keith and Angus, and did not fall asleep till
I had heard Saint Olave's clock strike two. When I woke, I had been
making jumballs in the drawing-room with somebody who was both my Lady
Inverness and my Aunt Kezia, and who told me that Colonel Keith had been
appointed Governor of the American plantations, and that he would have
to be dressed in corduroy.
When I arose in the morning, I could--and willingly would--have thought
the whole a dream. But there on my finger, a solid contradiction, was
my Lady Inverness's ring.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
For four days I heard nothing more. On the Friday, my Uncle Charles
told us that rumours were abroad of the escape of a prisoner, and he
hoped it might be Angus. My Aunt Dorothea wanted to hear all the
particulars. I sat and listened, looking as grave as I could.
"Why, it seems they must have bribed some fellow to carry in a basket of
foul clothes, and then to change clothes with the prisoner, and so let
him get out. There appears to have been a girl in it as well--a girl
and a man. I suppose they were both bribed, very likely. Anyhow, the
prisoner is set free, I only hope it is young Drummond, Cary."