_In the which Sir Percy steals a coach and
four and the living contents thereof and
makes off therewith at breakneck
speed for life and death._
At this very moment, two horsemen, sorry mounted enough, especially the
master, are rounding the turn of the woodland path and about to emerge
upon the open next the heath. He who rides the lame roan has his eyes
bent upon the ground, a thousand sad and conflicting thoughts crowding
his brain, as ’tis impossible even to urge his hurt steed, and a
jog-trot is all that can be got out of her ever again. Garratt Lane had
sent him away only with his own again.
“Sir Percy, with submission, Sir,” exclaims Grigson, “this be Farnham
Heath, Sir, and, ’pon my life, Sir!” jumping from his saddle and darting
to the grassy side of the way, “a rapier, Sir Percy!” picking it up and
dragging with it the straggling bed-cord and its appending bundle.
Percy leaped to the ground and seized the weapon.
“Grigson!” cried he, “there’s been foul work hereabouts. This is the
sword of a gentleman I know, or my name’s not Percy de Bohun! He is a
scurvy fellow, and my enemy, but if he has fallen among thieves, by the
heaven above us! I’ll rescue him, even if ’tis to punish him later
according to my own will. Take the rapier.”
As he hands it back to his man, the bed-cord from the Queen and
Artichoke, being a full century old, gives entirely away and My Lady
Peggy’s duds, long tail of dark hair, pins, needles, whatever else
beside, fall, scatter, topsy-turvy to the ground, and at the very same
moment Percy sees before him, as in a nest among the sedges and ferns of
the marshy brookland, the wig that Her Ladyship had flung off, and a
scrap of tumbled paper addressed to himself, flapping, spiked on a
thistle-top near it! Thunderstruck, he is about to read it, when
Grigson, who has gone on afoot a few steps, starts back, and, reckless
of all things, seizes his master’s arm and drags him to the turn of the
road.
“Sir Percy! Hist! For the love of God, Sir, look!”
Thrusting the bit of paper into his waistcoat, Percy gasps and gazes. He
beholds Sir Robin and his man lifting a limp and slender form,
ill-defined, ’tis true, in its swathe of camlet cloak, into the coach;
he beholds a head of dark short hair, a face of ashen pallor, and, in
two seconds more, before he can rush back and leap into his saddle,
motioning Grigson to do the same, the coach containing Sir Robin and his
prize is dashing as fast as whip, spur, sixteen thoroughbred legs, and a
backing-up of wholesome terror can urge it, over the bleak and gruesome
waste of Farnham Heath!
“’Slife! Grigson, man,” cries Percy, digging steel into the poor roan’s
flanks till they spurt blood in a stream. “We must overtake ’em, unhorse
’em, spill out the wretch inside; I’ll into the coach then to protect
the lady, you mount the leader and gallop us over the heath for your
life!”
“Trust me, Sir Percy,” answers Grigson from a length behind his master.
“God grant, Sir, that the roan drop not out of the race and leave us but
one saddle betwixt you and me, Sir.”
“Poor beast,” says Percy, pricking her hard and striking her shoulder
with the flat of his rapier. “She’ll die, and in a good cause if she
gain me the goal.”
And all the while they’re speaking, flash and crack go the whips of Sir
Robin’s postilions, and Sir Robin’s splendid beasts cover the ground
with a swing and a will that keeps the coach rocking, but yet awakens
not Lady Peggy, whose dark cropped head reposes on the crooked shoulder
of Sir Robin, while her white eyelids remain sealed and no quiver of
returning consciousness thrills about her drawn and bloodless lips.
“Gad!” exclaims Percy, as he beholds the vehicle swinging and spinning
farther and farther from him, and as Grigson’s black now is up nose and
nose with his own expiring mare. “Gad, girl,” bending his lips to the
roan’s laid-back ear, “go on! help me to save her! to reach her; go on,
I say, in God’s name!”
As if the faithful creature comprehended her master’s entreaty, with
that not uncommon last flash of superhuman strength that inheres in man
and beast alike, the roan raised her fine head in the air, pricked her
ears, stretched out her neck, gathered herself up with a twitch of her
nerves that thrilled to her rider’s heart, and off! as in her best days,
when she could distance the fleetest mount in the county; off, with the
whirl and whirr of those coach-wheels beckoning to her; off, with that
pair of straining eyes, those parted lips, blessing her as she began to
gain on Sir Robin,—began to? nay, ’twas all a matter of beginning and
ending in a breath. Before the postilions, amid their own clatter and
calling, had caught hint of the pursuit, the roan was up with the
windows out of which the apprehensive little Baronet was peering; his
scream of terror:
“Highwaymen! Faster! On! lads, on! A hundred pounds if we outrun ’em!
On!” was their first advertisement of danger.
But while the two were drawing their hangers from their belts, Sir
Percy, with a swerving dash, pulled the roan on her hind legs directly
in front of the galloping leaders. ’Twas but an interposition of
Providence (coupled with very excellent cool-headed horsemanship) that
he was not then and there dispatched into the hereafter.
The leaders plunged, grinding the wheelers with their hind hoofs; the
wheelers fell back of a heap, smashing in the fine front glass and
cutting Sir Robin across the lip, but not so much as waking his burden
from her deathlike sleep.
“Down with ye!” cries Sir Percy, a pistol in each hand, as Grigson rides
up with another brace to reinforce his master, putting a hand as well to
the quieting of the coach horses.
“Aye, aye, Sir! but spare our lives and we’ll do your bidding!” cry Sir
Robin’s lackeys, leaping to the ground.
“We’ve not a groat betwixt us, Your Honor, on our life!”
“I want no groats, nor guineas either!” says Percy, now leaving his man
to cover the steeds and the postilions, while he jumps off the roan’s
back and springs to the side of the coach.
To wrest the door from the feeble clutch of the shrieking little
gentleman from Kent; to open it; seize him, stopping his frantic and
craven cries with a thrust of a pocket napkin in his mouth; to haul him
out and send him spinning over the turf with his gold and silver
scattering from purse and pockets, is, with Sir Percy, the work of a
very few seconds.
“Mercy! Mercy! Mr. Highwayman!” whimpers the Baronet, cringing on his
knees, as Grigson lifts himself up on the off leader’s back and Percy
props the swooning figure within the coach.
“’Slife, Sir, whoever you are! Raise your eyes! I am Sir Percy de Bohun,
at your service any time three hours hence.”
Sir Robin glances up, his crooked little legs now bowing more into an
arc than before, as he hears the dread name of his rival.
Clapping hand to hilt, however, he stands up.
“Sir,” says he, pushed into a valiance he has no smallest sympathy with,
solely from fear that Lady Peggy may have open ears by this time. “Sir,
that Lady is my affianced. I command you, quit her and leave us to
pursue our journey in peace. D’ye hear, Sir?” Sir Robin brandishes his
weapon, now reinforced by the approach of his servants. “I’ll stick you
where you stand, Sir!” shouts McTart, prancing a bit nearer and actually
touching Percy’s shoulder with the point of his weapon,—be it remembered
de Bohun’s back was toward him as he leaned into the coach arranging the
cushions.
“Will you!” says Sir Percy, coolly turning and seizing the little man’s
blade and administering therewith to its owner a smart box on his
out-flapping ears. “Had I time to waste,” adds Percy, now jumping into
the coach, “I’d leave your carcass here. Put up your pistol, Sir,” says
he, aiming his own straight at Sir Robin’s now un-wigged pate, “or, damn
you! you’ll be cold inside a second. On with you, Grigson,” calls master
to man. “Life and death are in this matter. If the four beasts, and you,
too, drop at the finish, get us to Kennaston faster than the wind
travels.”
Even while he speaks, he watches the still white face so near him with
his finger on his trigger, Sir Robin discreetly backing away and rending
the air with noisy and impotent curses; then a plunge, a long,
resounding call from Grigson; the two lackeys agog at finding themselves
alive, Sir Robin’s coach starts on as if the very devil himself were in
its wake.
Percy does not draw Peggy to him; he lays her back among the pillows; he
bathes her head and lips and hands with liquor from his flask; he holds
the slender fingers in his palm, as, amid awful terror lest his Lady
die, he is racked with consternation and wonder at the present outcome,
and in his distraught mind endeavors to patch and piece out the strange
network of the mystery now beginning to solve itself before his eyes.
As he prays God to spare her, if not for him, for some better man, a
shrill, weird sound smites his ear.
Percy throws back his head and listens; ’tis the long roan neighing for
the last time back on Farnham Heath, where Sir Robin, picking up his
money, dejectedly shivering like an aspen (since he would rake hell with
a nail to secure a ha’penny, and fairly weeps at the six-pences he can’t
recover), presently and ruefully, one of his men behind him, pillion
fashion, t’other running at his side, turns back to Tooting on top of
Grigson’s black, his fox teeth chattering in his wide mouth as he
congratulates himself on his second and miraculous escape from the
famous Sir Percy de Bohun.
’Twas, in sooth, for this latter a bitterly sad hour which was spent in
covering the distance between the heath and the Castle. Revived a bit,
no doubt by the fumes of the liquor, Her Ladyship’s lids quivered,
contracted, and finally opened, but it was with a distraught and
unrecognizing stare that she surveyed her companion.
“’S death!” cries she aloud, her feeble right hand seeking her
sword-side, “I tell ye, Chock, your mistress is now full-fledged a man!
Hist, girl, an you love me, keep it close. Sir Percy’s wed to Lady
Diana! Aye!” Peggy laughs with such a heart-break in her voice and such
tears in her winkers as causes Percy a pang of cruelest misery.
“Tut, tut, Chock! What’s his marriage to me? Fetch the pack, Mr.
Brummell; aye, I’m at your service, loo, crimp, or whist! I, Sir Robin
McTart, ’ll lay you a thousand to nothing! Zounds! Sir, fetch coffee to
stain my face with! and where, oh, where’s my precious bundle with my
woman’s duds in’t, my patch-box that I burned, and the long tail of my
hair I cut off when you, Chock, bought me the counterfeit of Sir Robin’s
own wig at the perruquier’s in Lark Lane. Aye! So!—No! No! No!” and now
a shiver and a lower tone, as Lady Peggy, with her wide wild eyes,
shrank back in the far corner of the jolting coach.
“My Lady Mother,—I command you, Chock, tell her not of my escapades; and
when Percy comes home with his bride, swear him, as will I, I was off
pleasuring in Kent at my godmother’s. Mother! Mother!” cries she,
piteously now, as Percy’s arms enfold her, and a thousand fond words
jostle each other on his lips.
Then she sinks into the stupor again, and remains so until the great
coach rolls through the park and up to the entrance of her home; until
Percy, with few words, lays her in the stout arms of the faithful
Chockey and sees her mother bending above her; her father distract in
his night-rail and cap; cook wailing, being from Kerry and prompt at any
sort of hubbub; Bickers’ toothless mouth agape with groans; sees his
Lady carried up, limp, little hands down-hanging, to her chamber out of
his sight.
Sir Percy leaves Peggy’s bundle, which he had gathered up as best he
could and slung about his shoulders, on the table in the hall. The
little scrap of paper he carries away with him and reads when he reaches
home that night; ’tis Her Ladyship’s note to him, written on the
fly-leaf of the prayer-book of the young Curate of Brook-Armsleigh
Village. As he scans it, presses it to his lips, sits until dawn,
remembering many things since he parted from his Lady long ago in the
parlor at Kennaston, the most of the mystery is unraveled by light of
the scrawl; and the delirium of his joy at knowing himself to have been
in her heart almost equals the mad anxiety that consumes him now as to
her life and well-being.
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