"STARS AND GARTERS."
The inmates of the King's Arms had been in bed and asleep full four
hours, and profound silence reigned throughout its precincts, when, a
few moments after the gatehouse clock had chimed one, a loud rattling
on the panes of Mistress Sheppard's bedchamber window roused her from
uneasy dreams.
"Cuther! what a night!" ejaculated she, sitting up and listening to
the sound as it fell again with increased violence. "There's hail
for you! Big as pebble stones, be sure."
A third shower made it clear beyond all question that pebble-stones
they were; and rising in haste, she opened a pane of the lattice and
looked out.
"Is that you, Mistress Sheppard?" said a muffled voice immediately
beneath, as the billowy outlines of her nightcap broke dazzling white
amid the surrounding darkness upon the vision of the speaker.
"And is that you, Master Lee?" sharply replied the mistress of the
hostelry, as her nocturnal visitor, turning the light of the dark
lantern he carried full upon the casement, revealed at the same time
his own form and features. "What do you want?" she went on in
dudgeon, "coming here at this time o' night, bringin' honest folks'
hearts into their mouths, and disturbin' their rest?"
"Yes, yes," hastily assented Lee; "'tis very late, I grant you--"
"Early, I suppose you mean," fumed Mistress Sheppard, clutching the
pane, to snap it to again. "And let me tell you--"
"Oh, yes! whatever you please, if--"
"Please! There's little o' pleasin' in bein' waked up at this hour."
"No, no. Quite true. But listen, just listen."
"I'll do no such a thing. What do you want, Master Lee?"
"A horse."
"I'll see Sheppard has his horsewhip in nice trim for you next you
come this way," irately retorted she; "an' be you ten times master o'
Nether Hall."
[Sidenote: Stars and garters.]
"Nay; for that he need be at no trouble," laughed Lee, hitting a
swish in the air with a short riding-whip he carried in his other
hand. "I've got my own with me, as luck had it. And if not, 'twould
have mattered little enough, for 'tis rarely Stars and Garters needs
whip nor spur either."
"Stars and Garters!" gasped Mistress Sheppard.
"Ay, 'tis her I'll take, with your good leave," calmly returned
Lawrence.
Now Stars and Garters was the name distinguishing the pride of the
King's Arms, and of her mistress's heart, a beautiful black mare,
marked with a white star on her left breast, and a curious ring of
white hair below the left knee, whose match for docility and
fleetness of foot was not to be met with in all the country side; and
the audacity of Lee's proposition took Mistress Sheppard's breath
away. "Stars and Garters!" ironically ejaculated she, when at last
she recovered it. "What next, cuther?"
"A brace of pistols," began Lee.
"Ah! Thieves!" she shrieked. "Murder!--"
"Hold your silly tongue, woman," peremptorily interrupted Lee. "What
do you take me for? Don't you know Lawrence Lee yet?"
"I'm none so sure that I do," replied she, recovering all her wonted
presence of mind. "And I have liked not your ways of late, young
man, and so I tell you."
"I doubt they have scarce pleased me better than they have yourself,"
said Lee, with a frank and yet humbled look in his upturned face,
which somehow went straight to the good woman's heart.
[Sidenote: Mistress Sheppard hesitates.]
"If I know toadstools from mushrooms, he means honestly," she went on
to herself, showing, however, no signs of capitulating, and sternly
pursing her lips. "They would ill become your father's son," she
said aloud, "and make sore places in his heart, as a certain prodigal
son's we wot of, did."
"And he resolved, did he not, to try and mend his ways. So come,
Mistress Sheppard, quick with the stable-door key; there's a good
soul; and Stars and Garters for England and the King."
"The king?!" and curl papers all forgotten, Mistress Sheppard's head
craned eagerly down from the casement.
"Ay, he's in danger," nodded Lee, catching up, as he spoke, a rusty
crowbar lying in the grass; "and there's not a moment to be lost, I
tell you. Shall I break open the stable door and help myself?"
[Sidenote: A good start.]
"No, no, one instant," she replied, glancing at the slumbering
Sheppard, "one instant and I'll be down."
She was better than her word; and in a few seconds, attired in
strange garments to protect her from the chilly night-air, she was
standing beside Lee, assisting him to prepare Stars and Garters for
her journey, before the good mare had well got her wits together.
As, however, she felt Mistress Sheppard's own plump hands tightening
the saddle-girths round her sleek body, she roused up, and uttered a
loud neigh of pleasure.
"Pretty dear!" murmured Mistress Sheppard. "Hark how eager she is to
be upon the road, bless her! 'Tis more, I'll warrant, than some
Christians'd care about; bein wakened up out o' their beauty sleep.
Sheppard, now, he'd been as growly as a bear with a sore head. Now,
then, up with you, Master Lee. Here's your pistols," she added,
thrusting a pair into the holsters. "You can tell me the tale when
you come back. There's some o't won't be so mighty fresh to me, I'm
thinkin'. So off with you, and good luck be your servant."
With a hurried wave of the hand Lee clattered out of the stable, and
clearing the low garden fence by a bound, horse and rider started
"thorough bush, thorough brier," across the fields, till they
attained the high-road, winding on by the low open country to the
fenny Cambridgeshire wastes, old England's least beautiful part, so
lovers of nature say.
[Sidenote: The King's highway.]
For another class of folks, however, it possessed in those days
immense attraction; inasmuch as it formed the highway from London to
the town of Newmarket, which Charles the Second had made the most
important and fashionable horse-racing place in the kingdom. He was
accustomed to visit it some five or six times in the year;
establishing his quarters at an old mansion situated in the middle of
the High Street, which he had purchased from its owner, the Earl of
Ormond, and had caused to be altered and enlarged, to accommodate
himself and his retinue. Thither, as may be imagined, like wasps
after honey, swarmed all sorts and conditions of men, and of women
too; from my lord and my lady in their velvet gowns, to the ragged
and jagged beggar, and worse than these, the footpads, and "gentlemen
of the road," as it was the fashion to call these thieves on
horseback, who infested the great highways all over the country.
It need hardly be said that this one and particular half hundred
miles of road, stretching between London and Newmarket, was very
carefully attended to by these gentry; and Lee, as he cantered on,
did not forget to keep one hand near the holsters.
Nothing, however, occurred to vary the monotony of his way, beyond
encountering now and again some solitary pedestrian, probably as
honest and sober as himself, and here and there some few yards from
the road, a group of wayfarers bound for Newmarket, encamped upon the
stunted turf round the smouldering embers of their hastily kindled
fire. Towards three o'clock he reached the large wayside hostelry at
Chesterford called the Blue Bear, where travellers from London always
stopped to change horses.
Here, before the big wooden horse-trough in front of the main door,
Lee slackened his rein; and while Stars and Garters gratefully drank
in the cool clear water, he called for a jack of ale for his own
refreshment. The drawer was, however, so slow in getting his drowsy
wits together, that when at last he did hand up the jack; he found
that he was holding it in empty space, and his customer had
disappeared.
[Sidenote: In a mighty hurry.]
"He wor in a mighty hurry," grumbled the man, as he stood listening
for a few moments to the fast dying sounds of the horse's feet, and
then stooped down to grope by the light of the lantern swinging to
the sign-post, after the coin which Lee had flung down in discharge
of the reckoning for the refreshment he had not stayed to enjoy.
"Well, he must be a woundly wittol be sure, or his business is such a
rare pressing one, that he can spare to pass by this;" and he gazed
affectionately into the ale's clear amber deeps, "as if 'twere no
more'n a cup o' fleet milk. Didn't the king's own self say, but
t'other day, last time he comed by, and drinked his nippet o't, that
naught o' the stuff in his Whitehall cellars don't hold a rushlight
to't? Maaster'd be monsus put about, ef he comed to know of its
being scorned so. Naa, Naa," he went on, putting the jack to his
lips. "I shudn't dare let him knaw as my fine young gen'leman didn't
drink so much as his neckum out o't;" and the charitable creature, to
conceal the traveller's shortcoming, took a draught, so long and
deep, that it absorbed two-thirds of the liquor, "there goes
Sinkum--and," he said, drawing a long breath of satisfaction, and
again contemplating the interior of the jug, "an' seein' as him as
doan't knaa how to finish a job when he's begun't, but a poor sort o'
creetur, why," and tipping up the jack, he emptied the remainder of
its contents down his throat, "there goes Swankum after 'em." And
having thus vindicated the honour of the house, he turned in to renew
his interrupted slumbers.
[Sidenote: The day dawns.]
The rain had long ceased; the air smelt warm and fragrant, as, soon
after daybreak, Lawrence Lee came in sight of the roof-tops of
Newmarket showing sharp and dark against the clear gray sky, just
rose-tinted with the hues of the rising sun, whose rays were gilding
the smooth turfy down, till it gleamed like richest velvet. Very
soft and pleasant it must have felt to the weary feet of Stars and
Garters; though indeed as she alighted from the flinty road on to the
elastic grass of the course, she carried herself so bravely, that
none of the critical eyes she was now encountering could have guessed
she had been an hour out of her stall. Who knows but that she was
conscious that her laurels were at stake; for already, though it was
barely six o'clock, the course was dotted with knots of gentlemen and
trainers, and a host of hangers-on and loungers engaged in keen
discussion of the pros and cons of their ventures, or watching the
jockeys as they breathed their magnificent barbs and racers in a
morning gallop.
[Sidenote: The horseman.]
"Who be he, I wunner?" enviously growled a mounted jockey as Lee
dashed past. "Happen you caught sight of his colours, my lord?"
"Black," laughingly replied the gentleman thus addressed, a handsome
man richly attired in a becoming morning suit. "By my faith, black
as the very mischief's self, for aught I could see besides. Black as
Old Nick and his nag. Eh, Master Alworth, was it not so?"
"Nay," replied the somewhat elderly, grizzled, beperiwigged gentleman
to whom the other had appealed, as he leaned with one hand on his
silver-knobbed ebony stick, and shaded his eyes with the other, to
gaze after the strange horse and his rider. "Black to a certainty.
But in my poor judgment the animal was such a Pegasus of grace and
vigour, and his rider's countenance looked such a goodly one, that if
ever our patron George of England wore a suit of sables."
"And bestrode a black charger?" gaily interrupted the other.
"Even so," bowed the elder man, with a twinkle in his kindly brown
eyes; "why, I should have guessed him to be our champion saint in the
flesh."
"Hastening to deliver his country from the evil-doers," said the
nobleman.
"'Twould be a miracle indeed if he could do that," soberly answered
Mr. Alworth, "or he a Quixote of Quixotes to dream of it."
"More like he is come to match his Rosinante's paces with our
Fleetfoot's here," rattled on the other, as he toyed with the nose of
the beautiful racer against whose shoulder he was leaning. "By the
way," he went on, addressing the jockey in charge of it, "which day
is settled for the match with Woodcock?"
"Monday se'nnight, my lord," answered the man.
"Does the king stay so long?" asked Alworth, looking up in some
surprise.
[Sidenote: "Pleasure!"]
"Long!" groaningly echoed the younger gentleman. "'Tis all too short
for us poor Cambridgeshire squires, let me tell you, Master Alworth.
When the court's back again in London, we may as soon be the cabbages
in our own kitchen-gardens, for any pleasure there is in life."
[Sidenote: A moralist.]
"Pleasure!" groaningly echoed Master Alworth, as he turned and faced
slowly about towards the town. "Pleasure! Pleasure! 'Tis the
watchword always, and a melancholy one it has grown to be in my ears,
since it no longer pairs off with duty; as though one should surfeit
always on honey, and eat no bread, and poor England is sickening
sorely of it Pray heaven she be not finding any plague of quack
doctors to try their remedies on her;" and with a sigh Mr. Alworth
pursued his way.