not be read in the dim weather. But beneath it, new-painted, was an
open eye. He checked his horse, and turned to the door, for he knew
with utter certainty that he had reached his destination.
He dropped from the saddle, and since there was no stable-lad in sight,
he tied the reins to a ring in the wall. Then he pushed open the door
and descended a step into the inn kitchen. A man was busy about the
hearth, a grizzled elderly fellow in leathern small-clothes. In front
of the fire a fine coat hung drying on two chairs, and a pair of sodden
boots steamed beside the log basket.
The inn-keeper looked up, and something in the quiet eyes and
weather-worn face awoke in Alastair a recollection. He had not seen the
face before, but he had seen its like.
"You have a guest?" he said.
The man did not answer, and Alastair knew that no word or deed of his
would compel an answer, if the man were unwilling.
"You have the sign," he said. "I, too, am of the Spoonbills. I seek
Master Midwinter."
The inn-keeper straightened himself. "He shall be found," he said.
"What message do I carry?"
"Say that he to whom he promised help on Otmoor now claims it. And
stay, there are two weary cattle outside. Have them fed and stabled."
The man turned to go, but Alastair checked him.
"You have a guest?" he asked.
"He is now upstairs at food," was the answer given readily. "He feeds
in his shirt, for he is all mucked and moiled with the roads."
"I have business with him, I and my friend. Let us be alone till Master
Midwinter comes."
The man stood aside to let Johnson stumble in. Then the door was shut,
and to Alastair's ear there was the turning of a key.
Johnson's great figure seemed broken with weariness. He staggered
across the uneven stone floor, and rolled into a grandfather's chair
which stood to the left of the fire. Then he caught sight of the coat
drying in the glow and recognised it. Into his face, grey with fatigue,
came a sudden panic. "It is his," he cried. "He is here." He lifted his
head and seemed to listen like a stag at pause. Then he flung himself
from the chair, and rushed on Alastair, who was staring abstractedly at
the blaze. "You will not harm him," he cried. "You will not break my
lady's heart. Sooner, sir, I will choke you with my own hands."
His voice was the scream of an animal in pain, his skin was livid, his
eyes were hot coals. Alastair, taken by surprise, was all but swung off
his feet by the fury of the assault. One great arm was round his waist,
one hand was clutching his throat. The two staggered back, upsetting
the chair before the fire; the hand at the throat was shaken off, and
in a second they were at wrestling-grips in the centre of the floor.
Both men were weary, and one was lately recovered of a sickness. This
latter, too, was the lighter, and for a moment Alastair found himself
helpless in a grip which crushed in his sides and stopped his breath.
But Johnson's passion was like the spouting of a volcano and soon died
down. The fiery vigour went out of his clutch, but it remained a
compelling thing, holding the young man a close prisoner.
The noise of the scuffle had alarmed the gentleman above. The stairs
ran up in a steep flight direct from the kitchen, and as Alastair
looked from below his antagonist's elbow, he saw a white face peer
beneath the low roof of the stairway, and a little further down
three-quarters of the length of a sword blade. He was exerting the
power of his younger arms against the dead strength of Johnson, but all
the while his eyes were held by this new apparition. It was something
clad only in shirt and breeches and rough borrowed stockings, but the
face was unmistakable and the haggard eyes.
The apparition descended another step, and now Alastair saw the hand
which grasped the sword. Fear was in the man's face, and then a deeper
terror, for he had recognised one of the combatants. There was
perplexity there, too, for he was puzzled at the sight, and after that
a spasm of hope. He hesitated for a second till he grasped the
situation. Then he shouted something which may have been an
encouragement to Johnson, and leaped the remaining steps on to the
kitchen floor.
Johnson had not seen him, for his head was turned the other way and his
sight and hearing were dimmed by his fury. The man in underclothes
danced round the wrestlers, babbling strangely. "Hold him!" he cried.
"Hold him, and I'll finish him!" His blade was shortened for a thrust,
but the movement of the wrestlers frustrated him. He made a pass, but
it only grazed the collar of Alastair's coat.
Then he found a better chance, and again his arm was shortened. A hot
quiver went through Alastair's shoulder, for a rapier had pinked the
flesh and had cut into the flapping pouch of Johnson's coat.
It may have been Alastair's cry, or the fierce shout of the man in
underclothes, but Johnson awoke suddenly to what was happening. He saw
a white face with fiery eyes, he saw the rapier drawn back for a new
thrust with blood on its point. . . . With a shudder he loosened his
grip and let Alastair go free.
"I have done murder," he cried, and staggered across the floor till he
fell against the dresser. His hands were at his eyes and he was shaken
with a passion of sobbing.
The two remaining faced each other, one in his stocking-soles, dancing
like a crazy thing in the glow of the wood-fire, triumph in his small
eyes. Alastair, dazed and shaken, was striving to draw his blade,
which, owing to the struggle, had become entangled in the skirts of his
riding-coat. The other, awaking to the new position of affairs, pressed
on him wildly till he gave ground. . . . And then he halted, for a
blade had crossed his.
Both men had light travelling-swords, which in a well-matched duello
should have met with the tinkle of thin ice in a glass. But now there
was the jar and whine of metal harshly used, for the one lunged
recklessly, and the other stood on a grim defensive, parrying with a
straight arm a point as disorderly as wildfire. Sir John Norreys had
the skill in fence of an ordinary English squire, learned from an
Oxford _maître d'escrime_ and polished by a lesson or two in Covent
Garden--an art no better than ignorance when faced with one perfected
by Gérard and d'Aubigny, and tested in twenty affairs against the best
blades of France.
Alastair's wound was a mere scratch, and at this clearing of issues his
wits had recovered and his strength returned. As he fought, his eyes
did not leave the other's face. He saw its chalky pallor, where the
freckles showed like the scars of smallpox, the sharp arrogant nose,
the weak mouth with the mean lines around it, the quick, hard eyes now
beginning to waver from their first fury. The man meant to kill him,
and as he realised this, the atmosphere of the duello fled, and it was
again the old combat _à outrance_ of his clan--his left hand reached
instinctively for the auxiliary dagger which should have hung at his
belt. And then he laughed, for whatever his enemy's purposes, success
was not likely to follow them.
The scene had to Alastair the spectral unreality of a dream. The
kitchen was hushed save for the fall of ashes on the hearth, the
strained sobbing of Johnson, and the rasp of the blades. The face of
Sir John Norreys was a mirror in which he read his own predominance.
The eyes lost their heat, the pupils contracted till they were two
shining beads in the dead white of the skin, the wild lunging grew
wilder, the breath came in short gasps. But the face was a mirror, too,
in which he read something of the future. If his resolution to spare
the man had not been already taken, it must now have become
irrevocable. This was a child, a stripling, who confronted him, a mere
amateur of vice, a thing which to slay would have been no better than
common murder. Pity for the man, even a strange kindness stole into
Alastair's soul. He wondered how he could ever have hated anything so
crude and weak.
He smiled again, and at that smile all the terrors of death crowded
into the other's face. He seemed to nerve himself for a last effort,
steadied the fury of his lunges and aimed a more skilful thrust in
tierce. Alastair had a mind to end the farce. His parry beat up the
other's blade, and by an easy device of the schools he twitched the
sword from his hand so that it clattered at Johnson's feet.
Sir John Norreys stood stock-still for an instant, his mouth working
like a child about to weep. Then some share of manhood returned to him.
He drew himself straight, swallowed what may have been a sob, and let
his arms drop by his side.
"I am at your mercy," he stammered. "What do you purpose with me?"
Alastair returned his sword to its sheath. "I purpose to save your
life," he said, "and if God be merciful, your soul."
He stripped off his riding-coat. "Take this," he said. "It is wintry
weather, and may serve till your own garments are dry. It is ill
talking unclad, Sir John, and we have much to say to each other."
Johnson had risen, and his face was heavy with an emotion which might
have been sorrow or joy. He stood with arm upraised like a priest
blessing his flock. "Now to Angels and Archangels and all the Company
of Heaven," he cried, and then he stopped, for the door opened softly
and closed again.
It was Midwinter that entered. His shoulders filled the doorway, and
his eyes constrained all three to a tense silence. He walked to the
fireplace, picking up Norreys's sword, which he bent into a half hoop
against the jamb of the chimney. As his quiet gaze fell on the company
it seemed to exercise a peaceful mastery which made the weapon in his
hand a mere trinket.
"You have summoned me, Captain Maclean," he said. "I am here to make
good my promise. Show me how I can serve you."
"We are constituted a court of honour," said Alastair. "We seek your
counsel."
He turned to Norreys.
"You are not two months married, Sir John. How many years have you to
your age?"
The man answered like an automaton. "I am in my twenty-third," he said.
He was looking alternately to his antagonist and to Midwinter, still
with the bewilderment of a dull child.
"Since when have you meddled in politics?"
"Since scarce two years."
"You were drawn to the Prince's side--by what? Was it family tradition?"
"No, damme, my father was a Hanover man when he lived. I turned
Jacobite to please Claudie. There was no welcome at Chastlecote unless
a man wore the white rose."
"And how came you into your recent business?"
"'Twas Kyd's doing. . . . No, curse it, I won't shelter behind
another, for I did it of my own free will. But 'twas Kyd showed me a
way of improving my fortunes, for he knew I cared not a straw who had
the governing of the land."
"And you were happy in the service?"
The baronet's face had lost its childishness, and had grown sullen.
"I was content." Then he broke out. "Rot him, I was not content--not of
late. I thought the Prince and his adventure was but a Scotch
craziness. But now, with him in the heart of England I have been
devilish anxious."
"For your own safety? Or was there perhaps another reason?"
Sir John's pale face flushed. "Let that be. Put it that I feared for my
neck and my estate."
Alastair turned smiling to the others. "I begin to detect the rudiments
of honesty . . . I am going to unriddle your thoughts, Sir John. You
were beginning to wonder how your wife would regard your courses. Had
the Prince shipwrecked beyond the Border, she would never have known of
them, and the Rising would have been between you only a sad pleasing
memory. But now she must learn the truth, and you are afraid. Why? She
is a lady of fortune, but you did not marry her for her fortune."
"My God, no," he cried. "I loved her most damnably, and I ever shall."
"And she loves you?"
The flush grew deeper. "She is but a child. She has scarcely seen
another man. I think she loves me."
"So you have betrayed the Prince's cause, because it did not touch you
deep and you favoured it only because of a lady's eyes. But the Prince
looks like succeeding, Sir John. He is now south of Derby on the road
to London, and his enemies do not abide him. What do you purpose in
that event? Have you the purchase at his Court to get your misdoings
overlooked?"
"I trusted to Kyd."
"Vain trust. Last night, after you left us so hastily, Kyd was stripped
to the bare bone."
"Was he sent to the Prince?" the man asked sharply.
"No. We preferred to administer our own justice, as we will do with
you. But he is gone into a long exile."
"Is he dead? . . . You promised me my life."
"He lives, as you shall live. Sir John, I will be frank with you. You
are a youth whom vanity and greed have brought deep into the mire. I
would get you out of it--not for your own sake, but for that of a lady
whom you love, I think, and who most assuredly loves you. Your
besetting sin is avarice. Well, let it be exercised upon your estates
and not upon the fortunes of better men. I have a notion that you may
grow with good luck into a very decent sort of man--not much of a
fellow at heart, perhaps, but reputable and reputed--at any rate enough
to satisfy the love-blinded eyes of your lady. Do you assent?"
The baronet reddened again at the contemptuous kindliness of Alastair's
words.
"I have no choice," he said gruffly.
"Then it is the sentence of this court that you retire to your estates
and live there without moving outside your park pale."
"Alone?"
"Alone. Your wife has gone into Wiltshire with her Grace of
Queensberry. You will stay at Weston till she returns to you, and that
date depends upon the posture of affairs in the country. You will give
me your oath to meddle no more in politics. And for the safety of your
person and the due observance of your promise you will be given an
escort on your journey south."
"Will you send Highlanders into Oxfordshire?" was the astonished
question.
Midwinter answered. "Nay, young sir, you will have the bodyguard of Old
England."
Sir John stared at Midwinter and saw something in that face which made
him avert his gaze. He suddenly shivered, and a different look came
into his eyes. "You have been merciful to me, sirs," he said, "merciful
beyond my deserts. I owe you more than I can repay."
"You owe it to your wife, sir," Alastair broke in. "Cherish her dearly
and let that be your atonement. . . . If you will take my advice, you
will snatch a little sleep, for you have been moss-trooping for a round
of the clock."
As the baronet's bare shanks disappeared up the stairway Alastair
turned wearily to the others. A haze seemed to cloud his eyes, and the
crackle of logs on the hearth sounded in his ears like the noise of the
sea.
"You were right," he told Johnson. "There's the makings of a sober
husband in that man. No hero, but she may be trusted to gild her idol.
I think she will be happy."
"You have behaved as a good Christian should." Mr Johnson was still
shaking as if from the ague. "Had I been in your case, I do not think I
would have shown so just a mind."
"Call it philosophy, which makes a man know what it is not in his power
to gain," Alastair laughed. "I think I have learned the trick of it
from you."
He swayed and caught Midwinter's shoulder. "Forgive me, old friend. I
have been riding for forty hours, and have fought and argued in
between, and before that I rose off a sick-bed. . . . But I must on
to Derby. Get a fresh horse, my brave one."
Midwinter drew him to an arm-chair, and seemed to fumble with his hands
for a second or two at his brow. When Johnson looked again Alastair was
asleep, while the other dressed roughly the hole in his shoulder made
by Sir John's sword.
"_Festina lente_, Mr Johnson. I can provide fresh beasts, but not fresh
legs for the riders. The pair of you will sleep for five hours and then
sup, for Derby is a far cry and an ill road, and if you start as you
are you will founder in the first slough."
_XVIII_ _In which Three Gentlemen Confess their Nakedness_
Fresh horses were found, and at four in the morning, four hours before
daylight in that murky weather, Alastair and Johnson left the inn. At
the first cross-roads Midwinter joined them.
"Set your mind at ease about Sir John," he said. "He will travel
securely to the Cherwell side, and none but the Spoonbills will know of
his journey. I think you have read him right, sir, and that he is a
prosy fellow who by accident has slipped into roguery and will return
gladly to his natural rut. But in case you are mistaken, he will be
overlooked by my people, for we are strong in that countryside. Be
advised, sir, and ride gently, for you have no bodily strength to
spare, and your master will not welcome a sick man."
"Do you ride to Derby with us?" Alastair asked.
"I have business on that road and will convey you thus far," was the
answer.
It was a morning when the whole earth and sky seemed suffused in
moisture. Fog strung its beads on their clothes, every hedgerow tree
dripped clammily, the roads were knee-deep in mud, floodwater lay in
leaden streaks in the hollows of flat fields, each sluggish brook was a
torrent, and at intervals the air would distil into a drenching shower.
Alastair's body was still weary, but his heart was lightened. He had
finished now with dalliance and was back at his old trade; and for the
moment the memory of Claudia made only a warm background to the hopes
of a soldier. Little daggers of doubt stabbed his thoughts--he had
sacrificed another day and night in his chase of Sir John, and the
Prince had now been at Derby the better part of forty hours without
that report which he had promised. But surely, he consoled himself, so
slight a delay could matter nothing; an army which had marched
triumphant to the heart of England, and had already caused the souls of
its enemies to faint, could not falter when the goal was within sight.
But the anxiety hung like a _malaise_ about the fringes of his temper
and caused him now and then to spur his horse fifty yards beyond his
companion.
The road they travelled ran to Derby from the south-west, and its deep
ruts showed the heavy traffic it had lately borne. By it coaches,
waggons and every variety of pack and riding horse had carried the
timid folks of Derbyshire into sanctuaries beyond the track of the
Highland army. To-day the traffic had shrunk to an occasional horseman
or a farmer's wife with panniers, and a jovial huntsman in red who,
from his greeting, seemed thus early to have been powdering his wig.
Already the country was settling down, thought Alastair, as folk
learned of the Prince's clemency and good-will. . . . The army would
not delay at Derby, but was probably now on the move southward. It
would go by Loughborough and Leicester, but cavalry patrols might show
themselves on the flank to the west. At any moment some of Elcho's or
Pitsligo's horse, perhaps young Tinnis himself, might canter out of the
mist.
He cried to Midwinter, asking whether it would not be better to assume
that the Prince had left the town, and to turn more southward so as to
cut in on his march.
"Derby is the wiser goal," Midwinter answered. "It is unlikely that His
Highness himself will have gone, for he will travel with the
rear-guard. In three hours you will see All Saints' spire."
At eight they halted for food at a considerable village. It was Friday,
and while the other two attacked a cold sirloin, Alastair broke his
fast on a crust, resisting the landlord's offer of carp or eels from
the Trent on the ground that they would take too long to dress. Then to
pass the time while the others finished their meal he wandered into the
street, and stopped by the church door. The place was open, and he
entered to find a service proceeding and a thin man in a black gown
holding forth to an audience of women. No Jacobite this parson, for his
text was from the 18th chapter of Second Chronicles. "Wilt thou go up
with me to Ramoth-Gilead?" and the sermon figured the Prince as Ahab of
Israel and Ramoth-Gilead as that (unspecified) spot where he was to
meet his fate.
"A bold man the preacher," thought Alastair, as he slipped out, "to
croak like a raven against a triumphing cause." But it appeared there
were other bold men in the place. He stopped opposite a tavern, from
which came the sound of drunken mirth, and puzzled at its cause, when
the day's work should be beginning. Then he reflected that with war in
the next parish men's minds must be unsettled and their first
disposition to stray towards ale-houses. Doubtless these honest fellows
were celebrating the deliverance of England.
But the words, thickly uttered, which disentangled themselves from the
tavern were other than he had expected:
"George is magnanimous,
Subjects unanimous,
Peace to us bring."
ran the ditty, and the chorus called on God to save the usurper. He
stood halted in a perplexity which was half anger, for he had a notion
to give these louts the flat of his sword for their treason. Then
someone started an air he knew too well:
"O Brother Sawney, hear you the news?
Twang 'em, we'll bang 'em and
Hang 'em up all.
An army's just coming without any shoes,
Twang 'em, we'll bang 'em, and
Hang 'em up all."
It was that accursed air "Lilibulero" which had drummed His Highness's
grandfather out of England. Surely the ale-house company must be a
patrol of Kingston's or Richmond's, that had got perilously becalmed
thus far north. He walked to the window and cast a glance inside. No,
they were heavy red-faced yokels, the men-folk of the village. He had a
second of consternation at the immensity of the task of changing this
leaden England.
As they advanced the roads were better peopled, market folk for the
most part returning from Derby, and now and then parties of young men
who cried news to women who hung at the corners where farm tracks
debouched from the highway. In all these folk there was an air of
expectancy and tension natural in a land on the confines of war. The
three travellers bettered their pace. "In an hour," Midwinter told
them, "we reach the Ashbourne road and so descend on Derby from the
north." As the minutes passed, Alastair's excitement grew till he had
hard work to conform his speed to that of his companions. He longed to
hasten on--not from anxiety, for that had left him, but from a passion
to see his Prince again, to be with comrades-in-arms, to share in the
triumph of these days of marvel. Somewhere in Derby His Highness would
now be kneeling at mass; he longed to be at his side in that sacrament
of dedication.
Then as they topped a ridge in a sudden clearing of the weather a noble
spire rose some miles ahead, and around it in the flat of a wide valley
hung the low wisps of smoke which betokened human dwellings. It did not
need Midwinter's cry of "All Saints" to tell Alastair that he was
looking at the place which held his master and the hope of the Cause.
By tacit consent the three men spurred their beasts, and rode into a
village, the long street of which ran north and south. "'Tis the high
road from Ashbourne to Derby," said Midwinter. "To the right, sirs,
unless you are for Manchester and Scotland."
But there was that about the village which made each pull on his bridle
rein. It was as still as a churchyard. Every house door was closed, and
at the little windows could be seen white faces and timid eyes. The inn
door had been smashed and the panes in its front windows, and a cask in
the middle of the street still trickled beer from its spigot. It might
have been the night after a fair, but instead it was broad daylight,
and the after-taste was less of revelry than of panic.
The three men slowly and silently moved down the street, and the heart
of one of them was the prey of a leaping terror. Scared eyes, like
those of rabbits in a snare, were watching them from the windows. In
the inn-yard there was no sign of a soul, except the village idiot who
was playing ninepins with bottles. Midwinter hammered on a back door,
but there was no answer. But as they turned again towards the street
they were aware of a mottled face that watched them from a side window.
Apparently the face was satisfied with their appearance, for the window
was slightly opened and a voice cried "Hist!" Alastair turned and saw a
troubled fat countenance framed in the sash of a pantry casement.
"Be the salvages gone, gen'lemen?" the voice asked. "The murderin'
heathen has blooded my best cow to make their beastly porridge."
"We have but now arrived," said Alastair. "We are for Derby. Pray, sir,
what pestilence has stricken this place?"