A SUBSTITUTE
We left Sir George watching in the cold, under a clump of yews, for the
chance of seeing his wife’s shadow cross one of the lighted windows in
the gallery. He remained there far longer than he supposed. So many
thoughts were passing through his mind, so many misgivings for the
future, so many memories of the past, that he was conscious neither of
bodily discomfort nor lapse of time, the chill night-wind nor the waning
evening. At length he roused himself from his abstraction with a smile of
self-contempt, and, wrapping his cloak around him, would have departed
at once, but that his attention was arrested by a muffled figure passing
swiftly and stealthily into the garden through the very door he had been
watching so long. A thrill of delight shot through him at the possibility
of its being Cerise, followed by one of anger and suspicion, as he
thought she might, in sheer despair at her lover’s absence, be preparing
to follow Florian in his flight. But the figure walked straight to his
hiding-place, and long before it reached him, even in the doubtful light,
he recognised the firm step and graceful bearing of the Marquise.
How did she know he was there? How long could she have been watching him?
He felt provoked, humiliated; but all such angry feelings dissolved at
the sound of her sweet voice, so like her daughter’s, while she asked him
softly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world that he should
be waiting outside within twenty paces of his own house—
“George, what is it? You are disturbed; you are anxious. Can I help you?
George, I would do anything in the world for you. Are you not dear to me
as my own child, _almost_?”
He tried to laugh it off, but his mirth was forced and hollow.
“I have so many preparations to make. There are so many trifles to be
thought of, even in leaving a place like this, that really, madame, I was
only waiting here for a while to remember if I had forgotten anything.”
She laid her hand on his arm, as she had laid it long ago at the masked
ball, and perhaps the gesture brought back that time to both.
“Even if you can blind Cerise,” she said, “you cannot deceive me. And
Cerise, poor child, is crying her eyes out by herself; miserable, utterly
miserable, as if you had gone away from her for ever. But it is no
question now of my daughter; it is a question of yourself, George. _You_
are unhappy, I tell you. I saw it as soon as I came here. And I have been
watching ever since you left the house, till it should be quite dark,
to come and speak to you before you go, and ask for the confidence that
Heaven only knows how fully I, of all people, deserve.”
There was a world of suppressed feeling in her voice while she spoke
the last sentence, but he marked it not. He was thinking of Cerise.
“Miserable,” said her mother, “utterly miserable, as if he had gone away
from her for ever.” Then it was for Florian she was grieving, of course.
Bah! he had known it all through. Of what use was it thus to add proof to
proof—to pile disgrace upon disgrace? It irritated him, and he answered
abruptly—
“You must excuse me, madame; this is no time for explanations, even were
any necessary, and I have already loitered here too long.”
She placed herself directly in his path, standing with her hands clasped,
as was her habit when moved by any unusual agitation.
“If you had gone away at once,” said she, “I was prepared to follow you.
I have watched you from the moment you crossed the threshold. Am I blind?
Am I a young inexperienced girl, who has never felt, never suffered, to
be imposed on by a haughty bearing and a forced smile? Bah! Do people
stand for an hour in the snow reflecting if they have forgotten their
luggage? You men think women have no perception, no mind, no heart. You
are going, George, and I shall never set eyes on you again—never, never;
for I could not bear to see you miserable, and I alone of all the world
must not endeavour to console you. Therefore I do not fear to speak
frankly now. Listen; something has come between you and Cerise. Do not
interrupt me. I know it. I feel it. Do not ask me why. It is not your
hand that should add one stripe to my punishment. George, my poor girl
is breaking her heart for your sake; and you, you the man of all others
qualified to make a woman happy, and to be happy with her yourself, are
destroying your home with your own hands. Look at me, George. I have seen
the world, as you know. My lot has been brilliant, fortunate, envied by
all; and yet—and yet—I have never had the chance that you so recklessly
throw away. No, no; though I may have dreamed of it, I never so deceived
myself as to fancy for a moment it was mine! Cerise loves you, George,
loves the very ground you walk on, and you are leaving her in anger.”
“I wish I could believe it,” he muttered, in a hoarse, choking voice; for
he was thinking of the pale, dark-eyed priest bending over the rose-trees
with his wife.
“Do you think I can be deceived?” broke out the Marquise, seizing his
hand with both her own, and then flinging it off in a burst of sorrowful
reproach. “Wilful! heartless! cruel! Go, then, if go you must, and so
farewell for ever. But remember, I warned you. I, who know by bitter
experience, the madness, the shame, the agony of an impossible love!”
She turned from him and fled into the house, muttering, as she crossed
its threshold, “The poor pelican! how it must hurt when she digs her beak
into her bosom, and feeds her young with her own heart’s blood!”
Sir George Hamilton stood looking after her for a moment; then he shook
his head, drew his cloak tighter round him, and strode resolutely across
the park to the “Hamilton Arms.”
Thus it fell out that when he arrived there, he found the hostelry,
lately so full of guests, occupied only by Florian and the two seamen;
the first depressed, silent, preoccupied; the others obviously swelling
with importance, and bursting to communicate some great intelligence at
once.
It was fortunate that the former commander of ‘The Bashful Maid,’
retained enough of his old habits to comprehend the tale Slap-Jack had to
tell, garnished as it was with professional phrases and queer sea-going
metaphors that no landsman could have followed out. From his faithful
retainer the baronet learned all the particulars of the Jacobite meeting,
and the conspiracy so carefully organised against the throne, discovered
by no less futile a contingency than the freak of a barmaid to frighten a
highwayman. Sir George believed it his duty now to warn the Government at
once. Yet even while reflecting on the importance of his information, and
the noble reward it might obtain, he was pondering how he could escape
the delay of an hour in London, and longing for the moment when he should
find himself face to face with Florian on the coast of France.
It was characteristic of the man that he gave little thought to the
attack meditated upon his own person, simply examining his arms as usual,
and desiring Slap-Jack, who had come unprovided, to borrow a brace of
pistols wherever he could get them, while he bestowed on Smoke-Jack, who
piteously entreated leave to “join the expedition,” a careless permission
“to take his share in the spree if he liked.”
So these four men waited in the warm inn-parlour for the roll of the
lumbering coach that was to bear them, so each well knew, into a struggle
for life and death.
When their vehicle arrived at last, they found themselves its only
passengers. The burly coachman descending from his seat to refresh,
cursed the cold weather heartily, and in the same breath tendered a
gruff salutation to Sir George. The guard, whose face was redder, whose
shoulders were broader, and whose voice was huskier even than the
coachman’s, endorsed his companion’s remarks, and followed suit in his
greetings to the baronet, observing, at the same time, that he should
“take a glass of brandy neat, to drive the cold out of his stomach.”
This stimulant was accordingly administered by Alice, and paid for by Sir
George, who had not lived at Hamilton Hill without learning the etiquette
of coach travelling as practised on the north road. While he placed some
silver on the counter, it did not escape him that both functionaries had
been drinking freely, possibly to console them for the lack of company,
while Slap-Jack, grinning in delight, whispered to his mate—
“If you an’ me was to go for to take _our_ spell at the wheel,
half-slewed, like them chaps, my eyes, wot a twistin’ _we_ should get
to-morrow mornin’ afore eight bells!”
With so light a freight there was less delay in changing horses than
usual. Scarcely a quarter of an hour had elapsed since its arrival ere
four moderate-looking animals were harnessed to the coach. The luggage
was hoisted on, old Robin rewarded, Mrs. Dodge paid, Alice kissed with
much energy by her sweetheart, and Sir George, with Florian, invited
to take their places on the front seat behind the driver; then the
two seamen clambered up beside the guard, the whip cracked, the hoofs
clattered, the whole machine creaked and jingled, while Smoke-Jack,
removing the pipe from his mouth with a certain gravity, expressed his
devout hope that “old brandy-face would keep her well up in the wind and
steer small!”
It was a cold night, and a cheerless, though light as day, for the moon
had risen and the ground was white with snow. Sir George, wrapped in his
cloak, with his hand on the butt of a pistol, after some vague remarks
about the weather, which Florian appeared not to hear, relapsed into the
silence of one who prepares all his energies for an approaching crisis.
The Jesuit seemed unconscious of his companion’s existence. Pale as
death, even to the lips, his face set, his teeth clenched, his eyes fixed
on the horizon before him, as his mental sight projected itself into the
unknown future he had this night resolved to penetrate, there pervaded
the whole bearing of the man that unearthly air of abstraction peculiar
to those who are doomed, whose trial is over, whose sentence is recorded,
for whom henceforth there can be neither hope nor fear.
Sir George meditated on a thousand possible contingencies. Already his
mind had overleaped the immediate affairs of the night, the coming
skirmish, and its possible disaster. These were but every-day matters,
familiar to his old habits, and scarce worth thinking of. But there was
one scene beyond which his imagination could not be forced; it seemed, as
it were, to limit his future in its bounds, and afterwards there would be
no aim, no purpose, no relish in life. It represented a spit of sand on
the coast of Picardy, and a man with shirt-sleeves rolled up, grasping a
bloody rapier in his hand, who was smiling bitterly down on a dead face
white and rigid at his feet.
Florian, too, sitting by his side, had his own vision. This, also, was of
blood, but blood freely offered in atonement to friendship, and expiation
for love.
The night was still, and the moonlight tempered by a misty sky that
denoted there would be more snow before morning. The coachman dozed over
his wheelers. The guard, overcome with brandy, laid his head on a hamper,
and went fast asleep. The two seamen, silently consoling themselves with
tobacco, shut an eye apiece, and screwed their faces into the expression
of inscrutable sagacity affected by their class when they expect bad
weather of any kind. The horses, taking counsel together, as such beasts
do, jogged on at the slowest possible pace that could not be stigmatised
for a walk, and the heavy machine lumbered wearily up the gradual ascent,
which half a mile further on, where the hill became steeper and the road
worse, was known as Borrodaile Rise.
Now the Abbé, in command of his little troop, had intended to conceal
them behind a clump of thorns that diversified the plain surface of the
moor, almost on the summit of this acclivity, and so pounce out upon his
prey at the moment it was most hampered by the difficulties of its path;
but, like other good generals, he suffered his plans to be modified by
circumstances, and would change them, if advisable, at the very moment of
execution.
On the right of the road, if road that could be called, which was but a
soft and deeply-rutted track through the heather, stood the four walls of
a roofless building, uninhabited within the memory of man, about twenty
paces from a deep holding slough, through which the coach must pass;
this post, with the concurrence of Bold and his confederates, the Abbé
seized at once. It offered them some shelter against the storms of sleet
that drove at intervals across the moor, while it afforded a covert from
which, though mounted, they could reconnoitre unseen, for two miles in
every direction, and rush out at a moment’s notice on their unsuspecting
prey.
So, behind those grey, weather-stained walls, the little party sat their
horses, erect and vigilant, reins shortened, firearms primed, swords
loosened in the sheath, like a picket of light-cavalry when the alarm has
sounded, and its outposts have been driven in.
The advancing coach made but little noise as it crept slowly onward
through the snow, nevertheless a muttered oath from Blood Humphrey, and
the scowl on Black George’s brow, announced its arrival ere it came
in sight. By the time it could emerge from a certain hollow at fifty
yards’ distance, and gain the slough, through which it moved heavily and
wearily, like a hearse, its huge black mass brought out against the dead
white of the misty, moonlit sky, afforded as fair a target for close
shooting as a marksman need desire.
Captain Bold had been trembling all over but a few minutes back, now
he was firm as a rock, but it cost him a desperate effort thus to man
himself, and even while he cocked the pistol in his right hand, gathering
his mare at the same time, for a dash to the front, he wished, from the
bottom of his heart, he had undertaken any job but this.
“Steady, my friend!” whispered the Abbé. “In ten more paces the whole
machine must come to a halt. At the instant it stops, cover your man, and
level low!”
Then Malletort placed himself behind the others in readiness for any
emergency that should arrive.
The slough reached nearly to the axles, the wheels scarce moved, the
horses laboured—failed—stopped; the coachman, waking with a jerk, swore
lustily as he nearly fell from his seat; the guard jumped up and shook
himself; Florian’s eyes flashed, and a strange, wild smile played over
his wan face, while Slap-Jack protested angrily, that “the lubber was
aground, d’ye see? and however could he expect the poor thing would
answer her helm, when she hadn’t got no steerage-way!”
Even while he spoke, a horseman, rising, as it seemed, from the earth,
dashed out before the leaders, followed by three more, who, in the hurry
and confusion of the moment, looked like a dozen at least.
“Stand and deliver!” exclaimed the foremost, in the customary language of
“the road”; but, without waiting to see if this formidable command would
be obeyed, he pulled his bay mare together, till she stood motionless
like a statue, covered the larger of the two figures behind the coachman,
as it rose from its seat, and—fired!
Bold’s hand and eye had never served him better than in this, his last
crime; but he was anticipated, foiled by a quicker eye, a readier hand
than his own. With the very flash of the pistol, even ere the smoke that
curled above their heads had melted into air, a heavy body, falling
across Sir George’s knees, knocked him back into his seat, and Florian,
shot through the lungs, lay gasping out his life in jets of blood with
every breath he drew.
It was instinct, rather than inhumanity, that caused the old Musketeer
to take steady aim at the assassin over the very body of his preserver.
Ever coolest in extremity of danger, Sir George was, perhaps, surer of
his mark than he would have been shooting for a wager in the galleries of
Marly or Versailles. Ere a man could have counted ten, his finger pressed
the trigger, and Bolt, shot clean through the heart, fell from the saddle
in a heap, nor, after one quiver of the muscles, did he ever move again.
The bay mare, snorting wildly, would not leave her master, but snuffed
wistfully and tenderly round that tumbled wisp of tawdry clothes, from
which a crimson stain was soaking slowly into the snow.
Then Sir George turned to Florian, and rested the dying, drooping form
against his own broad breast. Where was the spit of sand, the lonely
duel, now?—the pitiless arm, the bloody rapier, and all the hideous
vision of revenge? Gone—vanished—as if it had never been; and, in its
stead, a tried, beloved comrade, pale, sinking, prostrate, bleeding
helplessly to death.
“Courage, Florian!” whispered Sir George, tenderly. “Lean on me while I
stanch the blood. You will pull through yet. We will have you back at the
Hill in an hour. D― it, man! Lady Hamilton shall nurse you herself till
you get well!”
A gleam came over the dying face, like a ray of sunlight gilding the
close of a bleak winter’s day.
“I have never been false,” he murmured, “never false really in my heart.
I swore to save you, George, life for life, and I have kept my oath. I
shall not live to see Lady Hamilton again, but—but—you will tell her that
it was _my_ body which―”
He turned fainter now, and lay half-propped against the seat he had
lately occupied, holding Sir George’s hand, and effectually preventing
the baronet from taking any further part in the fray.
It is not to be supposed that the two seamen in the back of the coach had
been idle witnesses of a tumult which so exactly coincided with their
notions of what they termed “a spree.” Protected from the fire of the
horsemen by a pile of luggage on its roof, or, as Slap-Jack called it, by
the deck-cargo, they had made an excellent defence, and better practice
than might have been looked for with a brace of borrowed pistols, apt to
hang fire and throw high. The guard, too, after a careful and protracted
aim, discharged his blunderbuss, with a loud explosion; and the result
of their joint efforts was, that the highwaymen, as the last-named
functionary believed them, were beaten off. Blood Humphrey’s horse was
shot through the flank, though the poor brute made shift to carry his
rider swiftly away. Black George had his ankle-bone broken, but managed
to gallop across the moor after his comrade, writhing in pain, and with
his boot full of blood. Bold lay dead on the ground. There was but one of
the assailants left—a well-armed man in a cassock, who had kept somewhat
in the background; and _his_ horse, too, was badly wounded behind its
girths.
Sir George was occupied with Florian, but the others sprang down to take
the last of their foes captive; ere they could reach him, however, he had
leaped into the bay mare’s saddle, and was urging her over the heather at
a pace that promised soon to place him in safety, for the bay mare was
the fastest galloper in Yorkshire, and her rider knew it was a race for
life and death.
“By heavens, it is Malletort!” exclaimed Sir George, looking up from
his charge, at sound of the flying hoofs, to observe something in the
fugitive’s seat and figure that identified him with the Abbé, and
gazing after him so intently, that he did not mark the expression of
satisfaction on Florian’s pain-stricken face when he learned the other
had escaped. “I never thought he could ride so well,” muttered the
baronet, while he watched the good bay mare speeding steadily over the
open, and saw the Frenchman put her straight at a high stone wall, beyond
which he knew, by his own experience, there was a considerable drop into
a ravine. The mare jumped it like a deer, and after a time rose the
opposite slope at a swifter pace than ever. Sir George could only make
her out very indistinctly now, yet something in the headlong manner of
her career caused him to fancy she was going without a rider.
He had more important matters to occupy him. It had begun to snow
heavily, and Florian was growing weaker every minute. With a dying man
for their freight; with the absence of other passengers; above all, with
the prospect of increased difficulty in progression at every yard they
advanced, for the sky had darkened, and the flakes fell thicker, guard
and driver were easily persuaded to turn their horses’ heads, and make
the best of their way back to Hamilton Hill.
It was but a few miles distant, and Sir George, hoping against hope,
tried to persuade himself that if he could only get Florian under his own
roof alive, he might be saved.
They were good nurses, that tried campaigner and his two rough, hardy
seamen. Tenderly, like women, they stanched the welling life-blood,
supported the nerveless, drooping figure, and wiped the froth from
the dry, white lips that could no longer speak, but yet made shift to
smile. Tenderly, too, they whispered soothing words, in soft, hushed
voices, looking blankly in each other’s faces for the hope their hearts
denied; and thus slowly, sadly, solemnly, the dark procession laboured
back, taking the road they had lately travelled, passed the well-known
hostelry, and so wearily climbed the long ascent to the grim, looming
towers of Hamilton Hill.
Not a word was spoken. Scarce a sound betrayed their progress. The air
was hushed—the flakes fell softly, heavily—the earth lay wrapped in a
winding-sheet of snow—and Florian was dead before they reached the house!