THE KING'S LAST SERVICE.
“Is he up there?” asked a voice in the darkness.
“Not likely. A cat couldn't scramble up that woodwork,” answered a
second.
“Send a shot, and try,” suggested a third.
There he lay, stretched motionless on the flat roof of the veranda. He
heard the words as the thronging mob surged, and trampled, and swore,
and quarreled, beneath him, in the blackness of the gloom; balked of
their prey, and savage for some amends. There was a moment's pause--a
hurried, eager consultation; then he heard the well-known sound of a
charge being rammed down, and the sharp drawing out of a ramrod; there
was a flash, a report, a line of light flamed a second in his sight; a
ball hissed past him with a loud, singing rush, and bedded itself in the
timber, a few inches above his uncovered hair. A dead silence followed;
then the muttering of many voices broke out afresh.
“He's not there, at any rate,” said one, who seemed the chief; “he
couldn't have kept as still as that with a shot so near him. He's made
for the open country and the forest, I'll take my oath.”
Then the trending of many feet trampled their way out from beneath the
loggia; their voices and their rapid steps grew fainter and fainter as
they hurried away through the night. For a while, at least, he was safe.
For some moments he lay prostrated there; the rushing of the blood on
his brain, the beating of his heart, the panting of his breath, the
quivering of his limbs after the intense muscular effort he had gone
through, mastered him and flung him down there, beaten and powerless.
He felt the foam on his lips and he thought with every instant that the
surcharged veins would burst; hands of steel seemed to crush in upon his
chest, knotted cords to tighten in excruciating pain about his loins; he
breathed in short, convulsive gasps; his eyes were blind, and his head
swam. A dreaming fancy that this was death vaguely came on him, and he
was glad it should be so.
His eyelids closed unconsciously, weighed down as by the weight of lead;
he saw the starry skies above him no more, and the distant noise of the
pursuit waxed duller and duller on his ear; then he lost all sense and
memory--he ceased even to feel the night air on his face. How long he
lay there he never knew; when consciousness returned to him all was
still; the moon was shining down clear as the day, the west wind was
blowing softly among his hair. He staggered to his feet and leaned
against the timber of the upper wall; the shelving, impenetrable
darkness sloped below; above were the glories of a summer sky at
midnight, around him the hills and woods were bathed in the silver
light; he looked, and he remembered all.
He had escaped his captors; but for how long? While yet there were some
hours of the night left, he must find some surer refuge, or fall into
their hands again. Yet it was strange that in this moment his own
misery and his own peril were less upon him than a longing to see once
more--and for the last time--the woman for whose sake he suffered this.
Their love had had the lightness and the languor of their world, and had
had but little depth in it; yet, in that hour of his supreme sacrifice
to her, he loved her as he had not loved in his life.
Recklessness had always been latent in him, with all his serenity and
impassiveness; a reckless resolve entered him now--reckless to madness.
Lightly and cautiously, though his sinews still ached, and his nerves
still throbbed with the past strain, he let himself fall, hand over
hand, as men go down a rope, along the woodwork to the ground. Once
touching earth, off he glided, swiftly and noiselessly, keeping in the
shadow of the walls all the length of the streets he took, and shunning
every place where any sort of tumult could suggest the neighborhood of
those who were out and hunting him down. As it chanced, they had taken
to the open country; he passed on unquestioned, and wound his way to the
Kursaal. He remembered that to-night there was a masked ball, at which
all the princely and titled world of Baden were present; to which he
would himself have gone after the Russian dinner; by the look of the
stars he saw that it must be midnight or past; the ball would be now at
its height.
The dare-devil wildness and the cool quietude that were so intimately
and intricately mingled in his nature could alone have prompted and
projected such a thought and such an action as suggested themselves
to him now; in the moment of his direst extremity, of his utter
hopelessness, of his most imminent peril, he went--to take a last look
at his mistress! Baden, for aught he knew, might be but one vast network
to mesh in and to capture him; yet he ran the risk with the dauntless
temerity that had ever lain underneath the indifferentism and the
indolence of his habits.
Keeping always in the shadow, and moving slowly, so as to attract no
notice from those he passed, he made his way deliberately, straight
toward the blaze of light where all the gayety of the town was centered;
he reckoned, and rightly, as it proved, that the rumor of his story,
the noise of his pursuit, would not have penetrated here as yet; his
own world would be still in ignorance. A moment, that was all he
wanted, just to look upon a woman's beauty; he went forward daringly and
tranquilly to the venture. If any had told him that a vein of romance
was in him, he would have stared and thought them madmen; yet something
almost as wild was in his instinct now. He had lost so much to keep her
honor from attainder; he wished to meet the gaze of her fair eyes once
more before he went out to exile.
In one of the string of waiting carriages he saw a loose domino lying
on the seat; he knew the liveries and the footmen, and he signed them to
open the door. “Tell Count Carl I have borrowed these,” he said to the
servant, as he sprang into the vehicle, slipped the scarlet-and-black
domino on, took the mask, and left the carriage. The man touched his hat
and said nothing; he knew Cecil well, as an intimate friend of his
young Austrian master. In that masquerade guise he was safe; for the few
minutes, at least, which were all he dared take.
He went on, mingled among the glittering throng, and pierced his way
to the ballroom, the Venetian mask covering his features; many spoke to
him, by the scarlet-and-black colors they took him for the Austrian; he
answered none, and treaded his way among the blaze of hues, the joyous
echoes of the music, the flutter of the silk and satin dominoes, the
mischievous challenge of whispers. His eyes sought only one; he soon saw
her, in the white and silver mask-dress, with the spray of carmine-hued
eastern flowers, by which he had been told, days ago, to recognize her.
A crowd of dominoes were about her, some masked, some not. Her eyes
glanced through the envious disguise, and her lips were laughing. He
approached her with all his old tact in the art d'arborer le cotillon;
not hurriedly, so as to attract notice, but carefully, so as to glide
into a place near her.
“You promised me this waltz,” he said very gently in her ear. “I have
come in time for it.”
She recognized him by his voice, and turned from a French prince to
rebuke him for his truancy, with gay raillery and much anger.
“Forgive me, and let me have this one waltz--please do!” She glanced at
him a moment, and let him lead her out.
“No one has my step as you have it, Bertie,” she murmured, as they
glided into the measure of the dance.
She thought his glance fell sadly on her as he smiled.
“No?--but others will soon learn it.”
Yet he had never treaded more deftly the maze of the waltzers, never
trodden more softly, more swiftly, or with more science, the polished
floor. The waltz was perfect; she did not know it was also a farewell.
The delicate perfume of her floating dress, the gleam of the scarlet
flower-spray, the flash of the diamonds studding her domino, the
fragrance of her lips as they breathed so near his own; they haunted him
many a long year afterward.
His voice was very calm, his smile was very gentle, his step, as he
swung easily through the intricacies of the circle, was none the less
smooth and sure for the race that had so late strained his sinews to
bursting; the woman he loved saw no change in him; but as the waltz drew
to its end, she felt his heart beat louder and quicker on her own; she
felt his hand hold her own more closely, she felt his head drooped over
her till his lips almost touched her brow;--it was his last embrace;
no other could be given here, in the multitude of these courtly
crowds. Then, with a few low-murmured words that thrilled her in their
utterance, and echoed in her memory for years to come, he resigned
her to the Austrian Grand Duke who was her next claimant, and left her
silently--forever.
Less heroism has often proclaimed itself, with blatant trumpet to the
world--a martyrdom.
He looked back once as he passed from the ballroom--back to the sea
of colors, to the glitter of light, to the moving hues, amid which
the sound of the laughing, intoxicating music seemed to float; to the
glisten of the jewels and the gold and the silver--to the scene, in a
word, of the life that would be his no more. He looked back in a long,
lingering look, such as a man may give the gladness of the earth before
the gates of a prison close on him; then he went out once more into the
night, threw the domino and the mask back again into the carriage, and
took his way, alone.
He passed along till he had gained the shadow of a by-street, by a sheer
unconscious instinct; then he paused, and looked round him--what could
he do? He wondered vaguely if he were not dreaming; the air seemed to
reel about him, and the earth to rock; the very force of control he
had sustained made the reaction stronger; he began to feel blind and
stupefied. How could he escape? The railway station would be guarded
by those on the watch for him; he had but a few pounds in his pocket,
hastily slipped in as he had won them, “money-down,” at ecarte that day;
all avenues of escape were closed to him, and he knew that his limbs
would refuse to carry him with any kind of speed farther. He had only
the short, precious hours remaining of the night in which to make
good his flight--and flight he must take to save those for whom he had
elected to sacrifice his life. Yet how? and where?
A hurried, noiseless footfall came after him; Rake's voice came
breathless on his ear, while the man's hand went up in the unforgotten
soldier's salute--
“Sir! no words. Follow me, and I'll save you.”
The one well-known voice was to him like water in a desert land; he
would have trusted the speaker's fidelity with his life. He asked
nothing, said nothing, but followed rapidly and in silence; turning and
doubling down a score of crooked passages, and burrowing at the last
like a mole in a still, deserted place on the outskirts of the
town, where some close-set trees grew at the back of stables and
out-buildings.
In a streak of the white moonlight stood two hunters, saddled; one was
Forest King. With a cry, Cecil threw his arms round the animal's neck;
he had no thought then except that he and the horse must part.
“Into saddle, sir! quick as your life!” whispered Rake. “We'll be far
away from this d----d den by morning.”
Cecil looked at him like a man in stupor--his arm still over the gray's
neck.
“He can have no stay in him! He was dead-beat on the course.”
“I know he was, sir; but he ain't now; he was pisined; but I've a trick
with a 'oss that'll set that sort o' thing--if it ain't gone too far,
that is to say--right in a brace of shakes. I doctored him; he's hisself
agen; he'll take you till he drops.”
The King thrust his noble head closer in his master's bosom, and made a
little murmuring noise, as though he said, “Try me!”
“God bless you, Rake!” Cecil said huskily. “But I cannot take him, he
will starve with me. And--how did you know of this?”
“Begging your pardon, your honor, he'll eat chopped furze with you
better than he'll eat oats and hay along of a new master,” retorted Rake
rapidly, tightening the girths. “I don't know nothing, sir, save that I
heard you was in a strait; I don't want to know nothing; but I sees them
cursed cads a-runnin' of you to earth, and thinks I to myself, 'Come
what will, the King will be the ticket for him.' So I ran to your room
unbeknown, packed a little valise, and got out the passports; then
back again to the stables, and saddled him like lightning, and got 'em
off--nobody knowing but Bill there. I seed you go by into the Kursaal,
and laid in wait for you, sir. I made bold to bring Mother o' Pearl for
myself.”
And Rake stopped, breathless and hoarse with passion and grief that he
would not utter. He had heard more than he said.
“For yourself?” echoed Cecil. “What do you mean? My good fellow, I am
ruined. I shall be beggared from to-night--utterly. I cannot even help
you or keep you; but Lord Rockingham will do both for my sake.”
The ci-devant soldier struck his heel into the earth with a fiery oath.
“Sir, there ain't time for no words. Where you goes I go. I'll follow
you while there's a drop o' blood in me. You was good to me when I was
a poor devil that everyone scouted; you shall have me with you to the
last, if I die for it. There!”
Cecil's voice shook as he answered. The fidelity touched him as
adversity could not do.
“Rake, you are a noble fellow. I would take you, were it possible;
but--in an hour I may be in a felon's prison. If I escape that, I shall
lead a life of such wretchedness as--”
“That's not nothing to me, sir.”
“But it is much to me,” answered Cecil. “As things have turned--life
is over with me, Rake. What my own fate may be I have not the faintest
notion--but let it be what it will, it must be a bitter one. I will not
drag another into it.”
“If you send me away, I'll shoot myself through the head, sir; that's
all.”
“You will do nothing of the kind. Go to Lord Rockingham, and ask him
from me to take you into his service. You cannot have a kinder master.”
“I don't say nothing agen the Marquis, sir,” said Rake doggedly; “he's
a right-on generous gentleman, but he aren't you. Let me go with you, if
it's just to rub the King down. Lord, sir! you don't know what straits
I've lived in--what a lot of things I can turn my hand to--what a one
I am to fit myself into any rat-hole, and make it spicy. Why, sir, I'm
that born scamp, I am--I'm a deal happier on the cross and getting my
bread just anyhow, than I am when I'm in clover like you've kept me.”
Rake's eyes looked up wistfully and eager as a dog's when he prays to
be let out of kennel to follow the gun; his voice was husky and agitated
with a strong excitement. Cecil stood a moment, irresolute, touched and
pained at the man's spaniel-like affection--yet not yielding to it.
“I thank you from my heart, Rake,” he said at length, “but it must not
be. I tell you my future life will be beggary--”
“You'll want me anyways, sir,” retorted Rake, ashamed of the choking in
his throat. “I ask your pardon for interrupting, but every second's that
precious like. Besides, sir, I've got to cut and run for my own sake.
I've laid Willon's head open, down there in the loose box; and when he's
come to himself a pretty hue and cry he'll raise after me. He painted
the King, that's what he did; and I told him so, and I give it to
him--one--two--amazing! Get into saddle, sir, for the Lord's sake! And
here, Bill--you run back, shut the door, and don't let nobody know the
'osses are out till the morning. Then look like a muff as you are, and
say nothing!”
The stable-boy stared, nodded assent, and sloped off. Rake threw himself
across the brown mare.
“Now, sir! a steeple-chase for our lives! We'll be leagues away by the
day-dawn, and I've got their feed in the saddle-bags, so that they'll
bait in the forests. Off, sir, for God's sake, or the blackguards will
be down on you again!”
As he spoke the clamor and tread of men of the town racing to the chase
were wafted to them on the night wind, drawing nearer and nearer; Rake
drew the reins tight in his hand in fury.
“There they come--the d----d beaks! For the love of mercy, sir, don't
check now. Ten seconds more and they'll be on you; off, off!--or by the
Lord Harry, sir, you'll make a murderer of me, and I'll kill the first
man that lays his hand on you!”
The blaze of bitter blood was in the ex-Dragoon's fiery face as the moon
shone on it, and he drew out one of his holster pistols, and swung round
in his saddle, facing the narrow entrance of the lane; ready to shoot
down the first of the pursuit whose shadow should darken the broad
stream of white light that fell through the archway.
Cecil looked at him, and paused no more; but vaulted into the old
familiar seat, and Forest King bore him away through the starry night,
with the brown mare racing her best by his side. Away--through the
sleeping shadows, through the broad beams of the moon, through the
odorous scent of the crowded pines, through the soft breaking gray
of the dawn; away--to mountain solitudes and forest silence, and the
shelter of lonely untracked ravines, and the woodland lairs they must
share with wolf and boar; away--to flee with the flight of the hunted
fox, to race with the wakeful dread of the deer; away--to what fate, who
could tell?
Far and fast they rode through the night, never drawing rein. The horses
laid well to their work; their youth and their mettle were roused, and
they needed no touch of spur, but neck-and-neck dashed down through the
sullen gray of the dawn and the breaking flush of the first sunrise.
On the hard, parched earth, on the dew-laden moss, on the stretches of
wayside sward, on the dry white dust of the ducal roads, their hoofs
thundered, unfollowed, unechoed; the challenge of no pursuit stayed
them, and they obeyed the call that was made on their strength with good
and gallant willingness. Far and fast they rode, happily knowing
the country well; now through the darkness of night, now through the
glimmering daybreak. Tall walls of fir-crowned rocks passed by their
eyes, all fused and dim; gray piles of monastic buildings, with the dull
chimes tolling the hour, flashed on their sight to be lost in a moment;
corn-lands yellowing for the sickle, fields with the sheaves set-up,
orchards ruddy with fruit, and black barn-roofs lost in leafy nests;
villages lying among their hills like German toys caught in the hollow
of a guarding hand; masses of forests stretching wide, somber and silent
and dark as a tomb; the shine of water's silvery line where it flowed
in a rocky channel--they passed them all in the soft gray of the waning
night, in the white veil of the fragrant mists, in the stillness of
sleep and of peace. Passed them, racing for more than life, flying with
the speed of the wind.
“I failed him to-day through my foes and his,” Forest King thought, as
he laid his length out in his mighty stride. “But I love him well; I
will save him to-night.” And save him the brave brute did. The grass
was so sweet and so short, he longed to stop for a mouthful; the brooks
looked so clear, he longed to pause for a drink; renewed force and
reviving youth filled his loyal veins with their fire; he could have
thrown himself down on that mossy turf, and had a roll in its thyme and
its lichens for sheer joy that his strength had come back. But he would
yield to none of these longings; he held on for his master's sake, and
tried to think, as he ran, that this was only a piece of play--only a
steeple-chase, for a silver vase and a lady's smile, such as he and his
rider had so often run for, and so often won, in those glad hours of the
crisp winter noons of English Shires far away. He turned his eyes on the
brown mare's, and she turned hers on his; they were good friends in the
stables at home, and they understood one another now. “If I were what
I was yesterday, she wouldn't run even with me,” thought the King; but
they were doing good work together, and he was too true a knight and
too true a gentleman to be jealous of Mother o' Pearl, so they raced
neck-and-neck through the dawn; with the noisy clatter of water-mill
wheels, or the distant sound of a woodman's ax, or the tolling bell of
a convent clock, the only sound on the air save the beat of the flying
hoofs.
Away they went, mile on mile, league on league, till the stars faded
out in the blaze of the sun, and the tall pines rose out of the gloom.
Either his pursuers were baffled and distanced, or no hue and cry was
yet after him; nothing arrested them as they swept on, and the silent
land lay in the stillness of morning ere toil and activity awakened. It
was strangely still, strangely lonely, and the echo of the gallop seemed
to beat on the stirless, breathless solitude. As the light broke and
grew clearer and clearer, Cecil's face in it was white as death as he
galloped through the mists, a hunted man, on whose head a price was set;
but it was quite calm still, and very resolute--there was no “harking
back” in it.
They had raced nigh twenty English miles by the time the chimes of a
village were striking six o'clock; it was the only group of dwellings
they had ventured near in their flight; the leaded lattices were thrust
open with a hasty clang, and women's heads looked out as the iron tramp
of the hunters' feet struck fire from the stones. A few cries were
raised; one burgher called them to know their errand; they answered
nothing, but traversed the street with lightning speed, gone from sight
almost ere they were seen. A league farther on was a wooded bottom, all
dark and silent, with a brook murmuring through it under the leafy shade
of lilies and the tangle of water-plants; there Cecil checked the King
and threw himself out of saddle.
“He is not quite himself yet,” he murmured, as he loosened the girths
and held back the delicate head from the perilous cold of the water to
which the horse stretched so eagerly; he thought more of Forest King
than he thought, even in that hour, of himself. He did all that was
needed with his own hands; fed him with the corn from the saddle-bags,
cooled him gently, led him to drink a cautious draught from the bubbling
little stream, then let him graze and rest under the shade of the
aromatic pines and the deep bronze leaves of the copper beeches; it
was almost dark, so heavy and thickly laced were the branches, and
exquisitely tranquil in the heart of the hilly country, in the peace of
the early day, with the rushing of the forest brook the sole sound that
was heard, and the everlasting sighing of the pine-boughs overhead.
Cecil leaned a while silently against one of the great gnarled trunks,
and Rake affected to busy himself with the mare; in his heart was a
tumult of rage, a volcano of curiosity, a pent-up storm of anxious
amaze, but he would have let Mother o' Pearl brain him with a kick of
her iron plates rather than press a single look that should seem like
doubt, or seem like insult in adversity to his fallen master.
Cecil's eyes, drooped and brooding, gazed a long half-hour down in
silence into the brook bubbling at his feet; then he lifted his head and
spoke--with a certain formality and command in his voice, as though he
gave an order on parade.
“Rake, listen, and do precisely what I bid you; neither more nor less.
The horses cannot accompany me, nor you either; I must go henceforth
where they would starve, and you would do worse. I do not take the King
into suffering, nor you into temptation.”
Rake, who at the tone had fallen unconsciously in to the attitude of
“attention,” giving the salute with his old military instinct, opened
his lips to speak in eager protestation; Cecil put up his hand.
“I have decided; nothing you can say will alter me. We are near a
by-station now; if I find none there to prevent me, I shall get away by
the first train; to hide in these woods is out of the question. You
will return by easy stages to Baden, and take the horses at once to Lord
Rockingham. They are his now. Tell him my last wish was that he should
take you into his service; and he will be a better master to you than I
have ever been. As for the King”--his lips quivered, and his voice shook
a little, despite himself--“he will be safe with him. I shall go into
some foreign service--Austrian, Russian, Mexican, whichever be open
to me. I would not risk such a horse as mine to be sold, ill-treated,
tossed from owner to owner, sent in his old age to a knacker's yard, or
killed in a skirmish by a cannon-shot. Take both him and the mare back,
and go back yourself. Believe me, I thank you from my heart for your
noble offer of fidelity, but accept it I never shall.”
A dead pause came after his words; Rake stood mute; a curious
look--half-dogged, half-wounded, but very resolute--had come on his
face. Cecil thought him pained, and spoke with an infinite gentleness:
“My good fellow, do not regret it, or fancy I have no gratitude to you.
I feel your loyalty deeply, and I know all you would willingly suffer
for me; but it must not be. The mere offer of what you would do had been
quite testimony enough of your truth and your worth. It is impossible
for me to tell you what has so suddenly changed my fortunes; it is
sufficient that for the future I shall be, if I live, what you were--a
private soldier in an army that needs a sword. But let my fate be what
it will, I go to it alone. Spare me more speech, and simply obey my last
command.”
Quiet as the words were, there was a resolve in them not to be disputed;
an authority not to be rebelled against. Rake stared, and looked at
him blankly; in this man who spoke to him with so subdued but so
irresistible a power of command, he could scarcely recognize the gay,
indolent, indulgent, pococurante Guardsman, whose most serious anxiety
had been the set of a lace tie, the fashion of his hunting dress, or the
choice of the gold arabesques for his smoking-slippers.
Rake was silent a moment; then his hand touched his cap again.
“Very well, sir,” and without opposition or entreaty, he turned to
resaddle the mare.
Our natures are oddly inconsistent. Cecil would not have taken the man
in to exile, and danger, and temptation, and away from comfort and an
honest life, for any consideration; yet it gave him something of a
pang that Rake was so soon dissuaded from following him, and so easily
convinced of the folly of his fidelity. But he had dealt himself a far
deadlier one when he had resolved to part forever from the King. He
loved the horse better than he loved anything--fed from his hand in
foalhood, reared, broken, and trained under his own eye and his own
care, he had had a truer welcome from those loving, lustrous eyes than
all his mistresses ever gave him. He had had so many victories, so many
hunting-runs, so many pleasant days of winter and of autumn, with Forest
King for his comrade and companion! He could better bear to sever from
all other things than from the stable-monarch, whose brave heart never
failed him, and whose honest love was always his.
He stretched his hand out with his accustomed signal; the King lifted
his head where he grazed, and came to him with the murmuring noise of
pleasure he always gave at his master's caress, and pressed his
forehead against Cecil's breast, and took such tender heed, such earnest
solicitude, not to harm him with a touch of the mighty fore hoofs, as
those only who care for and know horses well will understand in its
relation.
Cecil threw his arm over his neck, and leaned his own head down on it,
so that his face was hidden. He stood motionless so many moments, and
the King never stirred, but only pressed closer and closer against
his bosom as though he knew that this was his eternal farewell to his
master. But little light came there, the boughs grew so thickly; and it
was still and solitary as a desert in the gloom of the meeting trees.
There have been many idols--idols of gold, idols of clay--less pure,
less true than the brave and loyal-hearted beast from whom he parted
now.
He stood motionless a while longer, and where his face was hidden, the
gray silken mane of the horse was wet with great, slow tears that forced
themselves through his closed eyes; then he laid his lips on the King's
forehead, as he might have touched the brow of the woman he loved; and
with a backward gesture of his hand to his servant, plunged down into
the deep slope of netted boughs and scarce penetrable leafage, that
swung back into their places, and shrouded him from sight with their
thick, unbroken screen.
“He's forgot me right and away in the King,” murmured Rake, as he led
Forest King away slowly and sorrowfully, while the hunter pulled and
fretted to force his way to his master. “Well, it's only natural like.
I've cause to care for him, and plenty on it; but he ain't no sort of
reason to think about me.”
That was the way the philosopher took his wound.
Alone, Cecil flung himself full-length down on the turf beneath the
beech woods; his arms thrown forward, his face buried in the grass, all
gay with late summer forest blossoms; for the first time the whole might
of the rain that had fallen on him was understood by him; for the first
time it beat him down beneath it, as the overstrained tension of nerve
and of self-restraint had their inevitable reaction. He knew what this
thing was which he had done--he had given up his whole future.
Though he had spoken lightly to his servant of his intention to enter
a foreign army, he knew himself how few the chances were that he could
ever do so. It was possible that Rockingham might so exert his influence
that he would be left unpursued, but unless this chanced so (and Baroni
had seemed resolute to forego no part of his demands), the search for
him would be in the hands of the law, and the wiles of secret police and
of detectives' resources spread too far and finely over the world for
him to have a hope of ultimate escape.
If he sought France, the Extradition Treaty would deliver him up;
Russia--Austria--Prussia were of equal danger; he would be identified,
and given up to trial. Into the Italian service he knew many a scoundrel
was received unquestioned; and he might try the Western world; though he
had no means to pay the passage, he might work it; he was a good sailor.
Yachts had been twice sunk under him, by steamers, in the Solent and the
Spezzia, and his own schooner had once been fired at by mistake for a
blockade runner, when he had brought to, and given them a broadside from
his two shotted guns before he would signal them their error.
As these things swept, disordered and aimless, through his mind, he
wondered if a nightmare were upon him; he, the darling of Belgravia, the
Guards' champion, the lover of Lady Guenevere, to be here outlawed
and friendless; wearily racking his brains to solve whether he had
seamanship enough to be taken before the mast, or could stand before
the tambour-major of a French regiment, with a chance to serve the same
flag!
For a while he lay like a drunken man, heavy and motionless, his brow
resting on his arm, his face buried in the grass; he had parted more
easily with the woman he loved than he had parted with Forest King. The
chimes of some far-off monastery, or castle-campanile, swung lazily in
the morning stillness; the sound revived him, and recalled to him how
little time there was if he would seek the flight that had begun on
impulse and was continued in a firm, unshrinking resolve; he must go on,
and on, and on; he must burrow like a fox, hide like a beaten cur; he
must put leagues between him and all who had ever known him; he must
sink his very name, and identity, and existence, under some impenetrable
obscurity, or the burden he had taken up for others' sake would be
uselessly borne. There must be action of some sort or other, instant and
unerring.
“It don't matter,” he thought, with the old idle indifference, oddly
becoming in that extreme moment the very height of stoic philosophy,
without any thought or effort to be such; “I was going to the bad of my
own accord; I must have cut and run for the debts, if not for this; it
would have been the same thing, anyway, so it's just as well to do it
for them. Life's over, and I'm a fool that I don't shoot myself.”
But there was too imperious a spirit in the Royallieu blood to let him
give in to disaster and do this. He rose slowly, staggering a little,
and feeling blinded and dazzled with the blaze of the morning sun as
he went out of the beech wood. There were the marks of the hoofs on the
damp, dewy turf; his lips trembled a little as he saw them--he would
never rid the horse again!
Some two miles, more or less, lay between him and the railway. He was
not certain of his way, and he felt a sickening exhaustion on him;
he had been without food since his breakfast before the race. A
gamekeeper's hut stood near the entrance of the wood; he had much
recklessness in him, and no caution. He entered through the half-open
door, and asked the keeper, who was eating his sausage and drinking his
lager, for a meal.
“I'll give you one if you'll bring me down that hen-harrier,” growled
the man in south German; pointing to the bird that was sailing far off,
a mere speck in the sunny sky.
Cecil took the rifle held out to him, and without seeming even to pause
to take aim, fired. The bird dropped like a stone through the air into
the distant woods. There was no tremor in his wrist, no uncertainty in
his measure. The keeper stared; the shot was one he had thought beyond
any man's range, and he set food and drink before his guest with a
crestfallen surprise, oddly mingled with veneration.
“You might have let me buy my breakfast, without making me do murder,”
said Bertie quietly, as he tried to eat. The meal was coarse--he could
scarcely touch it; but he drank the beer down thirstily, and took a
crust of bread. He slipped his ring, a great sapphire graven with his
crest, off his finger, and held it out to the man.
“That is worth fifty double-Fredericks. Will you take it in exchange for
your rifle and some powder and ball?”
The German stared again, open-mouthed, and clinched the bargain eagerly.
He did not know anything about gems, but the splendor of this dazzled
his eye, while he had guns more than enough, and could get many others
at his lord's cost. Cecil fastened a shot-belt round him, took a
powder-flask and cartridge-case, and with a few words of thanks, went on
his way.
Now that he held the rifle in his hand, he felt ready for the work
that was before him; if hunted to bay, at any rate he could now have a
struggle for his liberty. The keeper stood bewildered, gazing blankly
after him down the vista of pines.
“Hein! Hein!” he growled, as he looked at the sapphire
sparkling in his broad, brown palm; “I never saw such a
with-lavishness-wasteful-and-with-courteous-speech-laconic gentleman! I
wish I had not let him have the gun; he will take his own life, belikes;
ach, Gott! He will take his own life!”
But Cecil had not bought it for that end--though he had called himself
a fool for not sending a bullet through his brain, to quench in eternal
darkness this ruined and wretched life that alone remained to him. He
walked on through the still summer dawn, with the width of the country
stretching sun-steeped around him. The sleeplessness, the excitement,
the misery, the wild running of the past night had left him strengthless
and racked with pain, but he knew that he must press onward or be
caught, sooner or later, like netted game in the poacher's silken
mesh. Where to go, what to do, he knew no more than if he were a child;
everything had always been ready to his hand; the only thought required
of him had been how to amuse himself and avoid being bored; now thrown
alone on a mighty calamity, and brought face to face with the severity
and emergency of exertion, he was like a pleasure-boat beaten under
high billows, and driven far out to sea by the madness of a raging
nor'wester. He had no conception what to do; he had but one resolve--to
keep his secret; if, to do it, he killed himself with the rifle his
sapphire ring had bought.
Carelessly daring always, he sauntered now into the station for which he
had made, without a sign on him that could attract observation; he
wore still the violet velvet Spanish-like dress, the hessians, and the
broad-leafed felt hat with an eagle's feather fastened in it, that he
had worn at the races; and with the gun in his hand there was nothing
to distinguish him from any tourist “milor,” except that in one hand he
carried his own valise. He cast a rapid glance around; no warrant
for his apprehension, no announcement of his personal appearance had
preceded him here; he was safe--safe in that; safer still in the fact
that the train rushed in so immediately on his arrival there, that the
few people about had no time to notice or speculate upon him. The coupe
was empty, by a happy chance; he took it, throwing his money down with
no heed that when the little he had left was once expended he would be
penniless, and the train whirled on with him, plunging into the heart of
forest and mountain, and the black gloom of tunnels, and the golden seas
of corn-harvest. He was alone; and he leaned his head on his hands, and
thought, and thought, and thought, till the rocking, and the rushing,
and the whirl, and the noise of the steam on his ear and the giddy
gyrations of his brain in the exhaustion of overstrung exertion,
conquered thought. With the beating of the engine seeming to throb like
the great swinging of a pendulum through his mind, and the whirling
of the country passing by him like a confused phantasmagoria, his eyes
closed, his aching limbs stretched themselves out to rest, a heavy
dreamless sleep fell on him, the sleep of intense bodily fatigue, and he
knew no more.
Gendarmes awoke him to see his visa. He showed it them by sheer
mechanical instinct, and slept again in that dead weight of slumber the
moment he was alone. When he had taken his ticket, and they had asked
him to where it should be, he had answered to their amaze, “to the
farthest place it goes,” and he was borne on now unwitting where it
went; through the rich champaign and the barren plains; through the
reddening vintage and over the dreary plateaux; through antique cities,
and across broad, flowing rivers; through the cave of riven rocks,
and above nestling, leafy valleys; on and on, on and on, while he knew
nothing, as the opium-like sleep of intense weariness held him in it
stupor.
He awoke at last with a start; it was evening; the stilly twilight was
settling over all the land, and the train was still rushing onward,
fleet as the wind. His eyes, as they opened dreamily, fell on a face
half obscured in the gleaming; he leaned forward, bewildered and
doubting his senses.
“Rake!”
Rake gave the salute hurriedly and in embarrassment.
“It's I, sir!--yes, sir.”
Cecil thought himself dreaming still.
“You! You had my orders?”
“Yes, sir, I had your orders,” murmured the ex-soldier, more confused
than he had ever been in the whole course of his audacious life, “and
they was the first I ever disobeyed--they was. You see, sir, they was
just what I couldn't swallow nohow--that's the real, right-down fact!
Send me to the devil, Mr. Cecil, for you, and I'll go at the first
bidding, but leave you just when things are on the cross for you, damn
me if I will!--beggin' your pardon, sir!”
And Rake, growing fiery and eloquent, dashed his cap down on the floor
of the coupe with an emphatic declaration of resistance. Cecil looked
at him in silence; he was not certain still whether this were not a
fantastic folly he was dreaming.
“Damn me if I will, Mr. Cecil! You won't keep me--very well; but you
can't prevent me follerin' of you, and foller you I will; and so there's
no more to be said about it, sir; but just to let me have my own lark,
as one may say. You said you'd go to the station, I went there; you
took your ticket, I took my ticket. I've been travelling behind you till
about two hours ago, then I looked at you; you was asleep sir. 'I don't
think my master's quite well,' says I to Guard; 'I'd like to get in
there along of him.' 'Get in with you, then,' says he (only we was
jabbering that willainous tongue o' theirs), for he sees the name on my
traps is the same as that on your traps--and in I get. Now, Mr.
Cecil, let me say one word for all, and don't think I'm a insolent,
ne'er-do-well for having been and gone and disobeyed you; but you
was good to me when I was sore in want of it; you was even good to my
dog--rest his soul, the poor beast! There never were a braver!--and
stick to you I will till you kick me away like a cur. The truth is, it's
only being near of you, sir, that keeps me straight; if I was to leave
you I should become a bad 'un again, right and away. Don't send me from
you, sir, as you took mercy on me once!”
Rake's voice shook a little toward the close of his harangue, and in
the shadows of evening light, as the train plunged through the gathering
gloom, his ruddy, bright, bronzed face looked very pale and wistful.
Cecil stretched out his hand to him in silence that spoke better than
words.
Rank hung his head.
“No, sir; you're a gentleman, and I've been an awful scamp! It's enough
honor for me that you would do it. When I'm more worth it, perhaps--but
that won't never be.”
“You are worth it now, my gallant fellow.” His voice was very low; the
man's loyalty touched him keenly. “It was only for yourself, Rake, that
I ever wished you to leave me.”
“God bless you, sir!” said Rake passionately; “them words are better
nor ten tosses of brandy! You see, sir, I'm so spry and happy in a wild
life, I am, and if so be as you go to them American parts as you spoke
on, why I know 'em just as well as I know Newmarket Heath, every bit!
They're terrible rips in them parts; kill you as soon as look at you; it
makes things uncommon larky out there, uncommon spicy. You aren't never
sure but what there's a bowie knife a-waiting for you.”
With which view of the delights of Western life, Rake, “feeling like
a fool,” as he thought himself, for which reason he had diverged into
Argentine memories, applied himself to the touching and examining of the
rifle with that tenderness which only gunnery love and lore produce.
Cecil sat silent a while, his head drooped down on his hands, while the
evening deepened to night. At last he looked up.
“The King? Where is he?”
Rake flushed shamefacedly under his tanned skin.
“Beggin' your pardon, sir; behind you.”
“Behind me?”
“Yes, sir; him and the brown mare. I couldn't do nothing else with 'em
you see, sir, so I shipped him along with us; they don't care for the
train a bit, bless their hearts! And I've got a sharp boy a-minding
of 'em. You can easily send 'em on to England from Paris if you're
determined to part with 'em; but you know the King always was fond of
drums and trumpets and that like. You remember, sir, when he as a colt
we broke him into it and taught him a bit of maneuvering; 'cause, till
you find what pace he had in him, you'd thought of making a charger of
him. He loves the noise of soldiering--he do; and if he thought you was
going away without him, he'd break his heart, Mr. Cecil, sir. It was all
I could do to keep him from follerin' of you this morning; he sawed my
arms off almost.”
With which, Rake, conscious that he had been guilty of unpardonable
disobedience and outrageous interference, hung his head over the gun; a
little anxious and a good deal ashamed.
Cecil smiled a little, despite himself.
“Rake, you will do for no service, I am afraid; you are terribly
insubordinate!”
He had not the heart to say more; the man's fidelity was too true to be
returned with rebuke; and stronger than all surprise and annoyance was a
strange mingling of pain and pleasure in him to think that the horse he
loved so well was still so near him, the comrade of his adversity as he
had been the companion of his happiest hours.
“These things will keep him a few days,” he thought, as he looked at his
hunting-watch, and the priceless pearl in each of his wristband-studs.
He would have pawned every atom he had about him to have had the King
with him a week longer.
The night fell, the stars came out, the storm-rack of a coming tempest
drifted over the sky, the train rushed onward through the thickening
darkness, through the spectral country--it was like his life, rushing
headlong down into impenetrable gloom. The best, the uttermost, that he
could look for was a soldier's grave, far away under some foreign soil.
A few evenings later the Countess Guenevere stood alone in her own
boudoir in her Baden suite; she was going to dine with an Archduchess of
Russia, and the splendid jewels of her House glittered through the black
shower of her laces, and crowned her beautiful glossy hair, her delicate
imperial head. In her hands was a letter--oddly written in pencil on a
leaf torn out of a betting book, but without a tremor or a change in
the writing itself. And as she stood a shiver shook her frame; in the
solitude of her lighted and luxurious chamber her cheek grew pale, her
eyes grew dim.
“To refute the charge,” ran the last words of what was at best but a
fragment, “I must have broken my promise to you, and have compromised
your name. Keeping silence myself, but letting the trial take place,
law-inquiries so execrable and so minute, would soon have traced through
others that I was with you that evening. To clear myself I must have
attainted your name with public slander, and drawn the horrible ordeal
on you before the world. Let me be thought guilty. It matters little.
Henceforth I shall be dead to all who know me, and my ruin would have
exiled me without this. Do not let an hour of grief for me mar your
peace, my dearest; think of me with no pain, Beatrice; only with some
memory of our past love. I have not strength yet to say--forget me; and
yet,--if it be for your happiness,--blot out from your remembrance all
thought of what we have been to one another; all thought of me and of my
life, save to remember now and then that I was dear to you.”
The words grew indistinct before her sight, they touched the heart of
the world-worn coquette, of the victorious sovereign, to the core;
she trembled greatly as she read them. For--in her hands was his fate.
Though no hint of this was breathed in his farewell letter, she knew
that with a word she could clear him, free him, and call him back from
exile and shame, give him once more honor and guiltlessness in the sight
of the world. With a word she could do this; his life was in the balance
that she held as utterly as though it were now hers to sign, or to
destroy, his death-warrant. It rested with her to speak and to say he
had no guilt.
But to do this she must sacrifice herself. She stood mute, irresolute,
a shudder running through her till her diamonds shook in the light; the
heavy tears stole slowly down, one by one, and fell upon the blurred
and blackened paper; her heart ached with an exceeding bitterness.
Then shudderingly still, and as though there were a coward crime in the
action, her hand unclosed and let the letter fall into the spirit flame
of a silver lamp, burning by; the words that were upon it merited a
better fate, a fonder cherishing, but--they would have compromised her.
She let them fall, and burn, and wither. With them she gave up his life
to its burden of shame, to its fate of exile.
She would hear his crime condemned, and her lips would not open; she
would hear his name aspersed, and her voice would not be raised; she
would know that he dwelt in misery, or died under foreign suns
unhonored and unmourned, while tongues around her would babble of his
disgrace--and she would keep her peace.
She loved him--yes; but she loved better the dignity in which the world
held her, and the diamonds from which the law would divorce her if their
love were known.
She sacrificed him for her reputation and her jewels; the choice was
thoroughly a woman's.