FOREWARNED
It is needless to follow Madame de Montmirail and her new retainer
through the different stages of their journey to the north. By dint of
liberal pay, with some nautical eloquence on the part of Smoke-Jack, who,
being a man of few words, spoke those few to the purpose, they overtook
the ‘Flying Post’ coach by noon of the second day at a town some fifteen
miles south of Hamilton Hill. Calculating to arrive before nightfall,
they here transferred themselves and their luggage to that lumbering
conveyance; and if the Marquise wished to avoid notice, such a measure
was prudent enough. In the masked lady closely wrapped up and silent, who
sat preoccupied inside, no one could suspect the brilliant and sumptuous
Frenchwoman, the beauty of two consecutive Courts. Nor, so long as he
kept his mouth shut, did Smoke-Jack’s seafaring character show through
his shore-going disguise, consisting of jack-boots, three-cornered hat,
scratch-wig, and long grey duffle greatcoat, in which he might have
passed for a Quaker, but that the butt-end of a pistol peeped out of its
side-pockets on each side.
Their fellow-passengers found their curiosity completely baffled by the
haughty taciturnity of the one and the surly answers of the other. Even
the ascent of Otterdale Scaur failed to elicit anything, although the
rest of the freight alighted to walk up that steep and dangerous incline.
In vain the ponderous coach creaked, and strained, and laboured; in vain
driver flogged and guard expostulated; the lady inside was asleep, and
must not be disturbed. Smoke-Jack, on the roof, swore that he had paid
his passage, and would stick to the ship while a plank held. It was
impossible to make anything satisfactory out of this strangely-assorted
couple, and the task was abandoned in despair long before the weary
stretch of road had been traversed that led northward over the brown
moorland past the door of the “Hamilton Arms.”
The lady was tired—the lady would alight. Though their places were taken
for several miles further, she and her domestic would remain here. It was
impossible she could proceed. Were these rooms vacant?
Rooms vacant! Mrs. Dodge, in a pair of enormous earrings, with the gold
cross glittering on her bosom, lifted her fat hands in protestation.
Theoretically, she never had a corner to spare in which she could stow
away a mouse; practically, she so contrived that no wealthy-looking
traveller ran a risk by “going further—of faring worse.” On the present
occasion “she was very full,” she said. “Never was such markets; never
was such a press of customers, calling here and calling there, and not
to be served but with the best! Nevertheless, madam should have a room
in five minutes! Alice, lay a fire in the Cedars. The room was warm and
comfortable, but the look-out (into the stable-yard) hardly so airy as
she could wish. Madam would excuse that—madam—” Here Mrs. Dodge, who was
no fool, pulled herself short up. “She begged pardon. Her ladyship, she
hoped, would find no complaints to make. She hoped her ladyship would be
satisfied!”
Her ladyship simply motioned towards the staircase, up which Alice had
run a moment before with a red-hot poker in her hand, and, preceded by
Mrs. Dodge, retired to the apartment provided for her, while a roar of
laughter, in a tone that seemed not entirely strange, reached her ears
from the bar, into which her new retainer had just dragged her luggage
from off the coach.
Now the Marquise, though never before in England, was not yet ignorant of
the general economy prevailing at the “Hamilton Arms,” or the position of
its different apartments. She had still continued her correspondence with
Malletort, or rather she had suffered him to write to her, as formerly,
when he chose.
His very last letter contained, amongst political gossip and
protestations of friendship, a ludicrous description of his present
lodgings, in which the very room she now occupied, opening through
folding-doors into his own, was deplored as one of his many annoyances.
Even had she not known his step, therefore, she would have no difficulty
in deciding that it was the Abbé himself whom she now heard pacing the
floor of the adjoining apartment, separated only by a thin deal door,
painted to look like cedar-wood.
She was not given to hesitation. Trying the lock, she found it
unfastened, and, taking off her travelling mask, opened the door
noiselessly, to stand like a vision in the entrance, probably the very
last person he expected to see.
Malletort was a difficult man to surprise. At least he never betrayed any
astonishment. With perfectly cool politeness he handed a chair, as if he
had been awaiting her for an hour.
“Sit down, madame,” said he, “I entreat you. The roads in this weather
are execrable for travelling. You must have had a long and fatiguing
journey.”
She could not repress a laugh.
“It seems, then, that you expected me,” she answered, accepting the
proffered seat. “Perhaps you know why I have come.”
“Without presumption,” he replied, “I may be permitted to guess. Your
charming daughter lives within half a league of this spot. You think of
her day by day. You look on her picture at your château, which, by the
way, is not too amusing a residence. You pine to embrace her. You fly
on the wings of maternal love and tired post-horses. You arrive in due
course, like a parcel. In short, here you are. Ah! what it is to have a
mother’s heart!”
She appreciated and admired his coolness. The man had a certain
diplomatic kind of courage about him, and was worth saving, after
all. How must he have suffered, too, this poor Abbé, in his gloomy
hiding-place, with the insufferable cooking that she could smell even
here!
“Abbé,” she resumed, “I am serious, though you make me laugh. Listen. I
did _not_ come here to see my daughter, though I hope to embrace her
this very night. More, I came to see _you_—to warn you that the sooner
you leave this place the better. I know you too well to suppose you
have not secured your retreat. Sound the _alerte_, my brave Abbé, and
strike your tents without delay. Your plot has failed—the whole thing has
exploded—and I have travelled night and day to save a kinsman, and, I
believe, as far as his nature permits, a friend! There is nothing more to
be said on the subject.”
Malletort was moved, but he would not show it any more than he would
acknowledge this intelligence came upon him like a thunderclap. He
fidgeted with some papers to hide his face for a moment, but looked up
directly afterwards calm and clear as ever.
“I know—I know,” said he. “I was prepared for this—though, perhaps, not
quite so soon. I might have been prepared too, for my cousin’s kindness
and self-devotion. She has always been the noblest and bravest of women.
Madame, you have by this as by many previous benefits, won my eternal
gratitude. We shall be uninterrupted here, and cannot be overheard.
Detail to me the information that has reached you in the exact words
used. I wish to see if it tallies with mine.”
The Marquise related her interview with young Chateau-Guerrand, adding
several corroborative facts she had learned in the capital, none of which
were of much importance apart, though, when taken together, they afforded
strong evidence that the British Government was alive to the machinations
of the Abbé and his confederates.
“It is an utter rout,” concluded the Marquise, contemptuously; “and there
is no honour, as far as I can see, to save. Best turn bridle out of the
press, Abbé, like a defeated king in the old romances, put spurs to your
horse, and never look over your shoulder on the field you have deserted!”
“Not quite so bad as that, madame,” replied he. “’Tis but a leak sprung
as yet, and we may, perhaps, make shift to get safe into port after all.
In the meantime, I need scarcely remain in such absolute concealment any
longer. It must be known in London that I am here. Once more, madame,
accept my heartfelt thanks. When you see her this evening, commend me
humbly to your beautiful daughter and to her husband, my old friend, the
Captain of Musketeers.”
So speaking, the Abbé held open the door of communication and bowed the
Marquise into the adjoining room, where food and wine were served with
all the ceremonious grace of the old Court. His brow was never smoother,
his smile never more assured; but as soon as he found himself alone, he
sat down at the writing-table and buried his face in his hands.
“So fair a scheme!” he muttered. “So deep! So well-arranged! And to fail
at last like this! But what tools I have had to work with! What tools!
What tools!”
Meantime two honest voices in the bar were pealing louder and louder
in joyous interchange of questions, congratulations, and entreaties to
drink. The shouts of laughter that had reached the Marquise at the top of
the stairs came from no less powerful lungs than those of Slap-Jack, who
had stolen down from the hill as usual for the hindrance of Alice in her
household duties. He was leaning over her chair, probably to assist her
in mending the house linen, when his occupation was interrupted by the
arrival of a tall, dried-up looking personage dressed in a long duffle
coat, who entered the sanctum with a valise and other luggage in his
hands. Something in the ship-shape accuracy with which he disposed of
these roused Slap-Jack’s professional attention, and when the stranger
turning round pushed his hat off his forehead, and shut one eye to have a
good look, recognition on both sides was instantaneous and complete.
“Why, Alice, it’s Smoke-Jack!” exclaimed her sweetheart, while volumes
would have failed to express more of delight and astonishment than the
new-comer conveyed in the simple ejaculation, “Well! Blow me!”
A bowl of punch was ordered, and pipes were lit forthwith, Alice filling
her lover’s coquettishly, and applying a match to it with her own pretty
fingers. Smoke-Jack looked on approving, and winked several times in
succession. Mentally he was scanning the damsel with a critical eye,
her bows, her run, her figure-head, her tackle, and the trim of her
generally. When the punch came he filled three glasses to the brim, and
observed with great solemnity—
“My sarvice to you, shipmate, and your consort. The sooner you two gets
spliced the better. No offence, young woman. If I’d ever come across
such a craft as yourn, mate, I’d have been spliced myself. But these
here doesn’t swim to windward in shoals like black fish, and I was never
a chap to take and leap overboard promiscuous after a blessed mermyed
’a-cause she hailed me off a reef. That’s why I’m a driftin’ to leeward
this day. I’ll take it as a favour, young woman, if you’ll sip from my
glass!”
This was the longest speech Slap-Jack ever remembered from his shipmate,
and was valued accordingly. It was obvious that Smoke-Jack, contrary to
his usual principles, which were anti-matrimonial, looked on his old
friend’s projected alliance with the utmost favour. The three found
themselves extremely pleasant company. Alice, indeed, moved in and out
on her household duties, rendered the more engrossing that her aunt was
occupied in the kitchen, but the two seamen stuck to the leeside of their
bowl of punch till it was emptied, and never ceased smoking the whole
time. They had so much to talk about, so many old stories to recall,
questions to ask, and details to furnish on their own different fortunes
since they met, to say nothing of the toasts that accompanied each
separate glass.
They drank ‘The Bashful Maid’ twice, and Alice three times, in the course
of their merry-making. Now it came to pass that during their conversation
the name of Captain Bold was mentioned by Slap-Jack, as an individual
whose head it would give him extreme gratification to punch on some
fitting occasion; and that his friend showed some special interest in the
subject appeared by the cock of his eye and the removal of his pipe from
between his lips.
“Bold!” repeated Smoke-Jack, as if taxing his memory. “Captain Bold you
calls him. Not a real skipper, but only a soger captain, belike?”
“Not even good enough for a soger to my thinking,” answered the other,
in a tone of disgust. “Look ye here, brother, I’ve heard some of the old
hands say, though, mind ye, I doesn’t go along with them, that sogers is
like onions, never looks so well as when you hangs them up in a string.
But this here captain’s not even good enough for hanging, though he’ll
come to the yard-arm at last, or I’m mistaken.”
Again Smoke-Jack pondered, and took a pull at his punch.
“A flaxen-haired chap,” inquired he, “with a red nose and a pair of
cunning eyes? As thirsty as a sand-bank, and hails ye in a voice like the
boatswain’s whistle?”
“That’s about the trim, all but the hair,” answered his friend. “To be
sure, he may have hoisted a wig. This beggar’s got the gift of the gab,
though, and pays ye out a yarn as long as the maintop bowline.”
“It _must_ be the same,” said Smoke-Jack, and proceeded to relate his
grievances, which were as follows:—
Paid off from a cruise, and finding he was pretty well to do in the
world, Smoke-Jack had resolved to amuse himself in London, by studying
life in a more enlarged phase than was afforded at his usual haunts near
the river-side. For this purpose he had dressed himself in a grave suit,
which made him look like some retired merchant captain, and in that
character frequented the more respectable ordinaries about the Savoy and
such civilised parts of the town. Here he made casual acquaintances,
chiefly of sedate exterior, especially affecting those who assumed a wise
port and talked heavy nonsense in the guise of philosophy.
Not many weeks ago he had met a person at one of these dinner-tables
with whose conversation he was much delighted. Flaxen-haired, dark-eyed,
red-nosed, with a high voice, and of _quasi_-military appearance, but
seeming to be well versed in a spurious kind of science, and full
of such grave saws and aphorisms as made a deep impression on a man
like Smoke-Jack, reflective, uneducated, and craving for intellectual
excitement. That he could not understand half the captain said did
but add to the charm of that worthy’s discourse, and for two days the
pair were inseparable. On the third they concluded a dry argument on
fluids with the appropriate termination of a debauch, and the landsman
drugged the sailor’s liquor, so as to rob him of his purse, containing
twenty-five broad pieces, with the utmost facility, whilst he slept.
Waking and finding his companion and his money gone, while the score was
left unpaid, Smoke-Jack remembered to have seen the captain stroke the
neck of a bay mare held by a boy at the door of the tavern they entered,
though he denied all knowledge of the animal. After this the sailor never
expected to set eyes on his scientific friend again.
The mention of the bay mare proved beyond a doubt that the two shipmates
owed a grudge to the same individual. They laid their heads together to
pay it off accordingly, and called Alice, who was nowise unwilling, into
council.
Her feminine aversion to violence dissuaded them from their first
intention of avenging their grievances by the strong hand.
“It’s far better that such boasters as the captain should be frightened
than hurt,” observed gentle Alice. “If I’d my way, he should be well
scared once for all, like a naughty child, and then perhaps he’d never
come here any more.”
Smoke-Jack listened as if spell-bound to hear a woman speak so wisely;
but her sweetheart objected—
“It’s not so easy to frighten a man, Alice. I don’t quite see my bearings
how to set about it.”
“He’s not like _you_, dear,” answered Alice, with a loving smile, and
showing some insight into the nature of true courage. “It would be easy
enough to scare _him_, for I’ve heard him say many a time he feared
neither man nor devil, and if Satan himself was to come across him, he’d
turn him round and catch him by the tail.”
“I should like to see them grapple-to!” exclaimed both seamen
simultaneously.
“Well,” answered Alice, in her quiet voice, “old Robin skinned our black
bullock only yesterday. Hide, and horns, and tail are all together in
the corner of the cow-house now. I’m sure I quite shuddered when I went
by. It’s an ugly sight enough, and I’m very much mistaken if it wouldn’t
frighten a braver man than Captain Bold!”