[Illustration:
PATRICIA
at the
INN
by
J. C. SNAITH
_Author of
Broke of Covenden_
_Illustrated by_
H·B·MATTHEWS]
COPYRIGHT, 1906
BY
B. W. DODGE AND COMPANY
New York
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Charles Stuart, of song and legend, subsequently the “Merry Monarch,”
King Charles Second, is perhaps the most romantic figure in English
history. Much has been said of him; little good, much evil; but at
all events whatever his shortcomings and capitulations to the flesh,
it cannot but be conceded that he is the focussing point for all the
speculation and cogitation of the romanticist. He gave to history a
chapter of sovereignty replete with debauchery and misrule. But there
was occasional worthy reading between the lines; reading that conveyed
friendship, faith, and loyalty.
The incidents of the following narrative, “Patricia at the Inn,”
purport to deal with Charles Stuart’s adventures immediately subsequent
to the historical battle of Worcester. It will be remembered that
following the execution of the ill-fated Charles the First, the
Prince of Wales was crowned by the Scottish people at Scone, January
1, 1651. Oliver Cromwell was not to be declared Lord Protector of
the Commonwealth until almost two years later, but already he had
stamped his inexorable will upon the nation. Prince Charlie backed by
twenty thousand men marched upon Stirling, determined to enforce the
sovereignty of the Stuart dynasty and by right of blood and sword to
teach this upstart man of the people that sovereigns were born, not
made, and that the memory of the “martyred king” should be vindicated
in the person of the surviving Stuart. However, the redoubtable
Cromwell wasted no time on vow-making, but with his usual energy
placed himself in the rear of the Royalist army and cut it off from
communication with Scotland. Prince Charlie was thus compelled to
continue his march on England. He got as far as Worcester, where the
mayor and certain unclassibles crowned him King Charles the Second.
But on the same day Cromwell appeared for the coronation festivities
and a memorable battle ensued, lasting five hours. The Scots were
decisively routed. Prince Charlie escaped, and after experiencing many
vicissitudes and amazing adventures, extending over a period of some
six weeks, finally succeeded in being smuggled aboard a waiting vessel
and so won safely away to Normandy.
It was this period of outlawry, during which a price was set on the
royal head of Charles Stuart and he was being hunted like a dangerous
criminal, that Mr. Snaith has employed as the basic theme on which to
graft a romance. In the main the narrative offers a striking instance
of the predominant trait of the Stuart character--the sovereignty of
the flesh to the exclusion of all else, even personal safety.
W. B. M. FERGUSON.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE MAN OUT OF THE NIGHT 1
II. THE QUEST OF THE KING 12
III. THE STRANGE VISITORS THAT CAME TO THE “SEA ROVER” 27
IV. WILL JACKSON 41
V. SHOWS THE INCONVENIENCES THAT MAY SOMETIMES ATTEND AN
ACTIVE MIND 65
VI. THE NIGHT: THE SEA: THE ROCKS 80
VII. THE WOMAN 94
VIII. THE KING’S FACE 110
IX. THE MAN IN BED 128
X. LE ROI S’AMUSE 149
XI. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COWARDICE 164
XII. THE MARINER 175
XIII. THE SOLDIERS 197
XIV. THE DIVINITY THAT DOTH HEDGE A KING 212
XV. “WAY THERE FOR THE KING’S SERVITOR!” 227
XVI. THE DEPARTING GUESTS 232
XVII. THE LANDLORD 245
[Illustration: PATRICIA at the INN
CHAPTER I
_The man out of the night_]
It had been remarked that the weather was extreme for the time of year.
The little inn, huddling on the desolate bridle-path that ran in front
of the open sea, was wrapped in a cloud of fog; the night was as hollow
as a crypt; of a temper to warp the spirit; and so silent, that when a
wild fowl cried as it shivered by the tide, a hundred echoes woke in
the high rocks rising behind the tavern.
The house was on a wild and lonely coast. It stood on the road to
nowhere, high hills and seas about it; and as not one traveller a month
came to it from the landward, it was frankly for the service of that
strange, furtive company of adventurers who came in the night from
France and Holland when the winds were friendly.
All the bitter evening had the landlord kept the chimney-side. Flanked
on the one hand by a fire of red faggots, hissing with blue flame; on
the other by a stiff glass of hot rum-and-water, the old man sat, the
image of bodily contentment.
He was not a prepossessing fellow. His face had all the cunning of his
years. He had a pair of hard, colourless, averted eyes, divided by a
hill of flesh, whose blue-veined prominence said where his profits went
to; a close-kept mouth; and over and above it all a fixed expression of
calculated greed, of sustained, unwavering rapacity. It was not a good
countenance to look upon. But to-night it was as near benignity as it
could ever be. For while he sat with the warm fire and the generous
waters inflaming his ruddy jowl, his mind and person were never so
composed. It made him purr internally, like the cat nestling in the
cinders, to compare his own fortunate condition with that of those
frozen men upon the sea. While he reproduced, and even enhanced, in his
imagination the discomforts and the perils they endured, he thanked
the god of his physical well-being for the happy chance that had saved
him from being a mariner. He called upon the serving-maid to brew a
stronger posset for her master’s constitution.
“Cold as the bowels o’ the ground,” he groaned in his fleshly
happiness. “And b’aint it sing’lar how the frost crawls round me. Ugh,
it’s in my toes now, and now it’s in my blood; and, Lord, I feels a
little iceberg a-creepin’ down my spine! Zakes! if it were not for a
drop o’ stingo I might be very poorly.”
He hugged his toasting limbs, and drew his stool yet closer to the
blaze.
“Keep them dogs hot,” said the landlord, when the girl came with the
fresh concoction. “Keep the faggots crackling. The night’s a stinger,
isn’t she? Lord! I wouldn’t like to be upon the sea.”
He fell to tracing weird shapes in the fire, and presently to dreams of
pleasant things. Suddenly he started from his doze, and called out to
his son:
“Joseph, d’ye hear me? Put them shutters up, and drop the bolt across.
There’ll be no comp’ny, so ye and Cicely can both get bed’ards. ’Tis a
night to freeze a dog.”
But even as the landlord spoke, his judgment was shown to be for once
at fault. For as his son opened the door and let in a few gusts of
frost and sea-fog, a man was found upon the threshold. He was the first
of all the unexpected visitors who came to the “Sea Rover” that wintry
evening; he made the first among those strange incidents that were so
soon to invade the peace of the landlord’s life.
The man from the night pushed Joseph aside, and lumbered into the
shadows of the room. He proved to be a seafaring man, in a dogskin
cap, with a pair of large earrings in his ears. Like the landlord, his
visage bore no superficial graces. The rime glistened on every inch
of him; and his tawny face, tanned by the winds and the seas, showed
fiercely from out of it. There was only one eye to his countenance,
but that shone on the landlord like a beacon; there was an oath on his
lips; and he came to the fire and put his hands to the blaze, with
an air of mastery that startled the drowsy host even more than his
appearance. This was hardly a friendly smuggler here in the ordinary
course of trade.
While the mariner melted the rime on his jerkin and thawed his frozen
limbs, Master Gamaliel Hooker shook up his wits and asked what his
pleasure was.
“A go o’ rum,” said the mariner, gruffly.
He drew up a settle opposite the landlord’s stool and flung himself
on to it. Then it was, in the full light of the candles, that the
weather-beaten ugliness of the man was revealed. Violence had closed
his right eye forever; a scar ran from his temple to his under-jaw;
and in contradistinction to the greed, the subtlety, and the cunning
of the host, there was a brutal insolence about the fellow that had
a whimsicality in it too, as is sometimes to be observed in those
indomitable characters who, conscious of their qualities, presume upon
them. Master Hooker, distrustful by nature as he was, had already
discovered this sinister audacity, and while that in itself was enough
to unsettle the peace of his mind, it was the fact that a naked knife
was gleaming under his visitor’s jerkin that most contributed to his
discomposure.
For a time the landlord and the mariner sat watching one another. On
the one side was a contemptuous carelessness; on the other a measure
of suspicion amounting to hatred. But the landlord deemed it wiser to
conceal his emotions under an appearance of friendliness. He proffered
a pipe of tobacco to the mariner.
“You’re almighty kind, mate,” said the sailor, accepting a clay pipe
from the mantelpiece and pressing in the contents of Gamaliel’s box.
It was the beginning of conversation. The landlord was eager to
discover the particular business that had carried his visitor to the
“Sea Rover,” of all the places in the world, at that hour and on such a
night. Had he a cargo for disposal; was he waiting for his ship; was he
running from the law; or had he come to cut the throats of himself, his
son, and Cicely, and afterwards to despoil the inn? Certainly a more
ill-favoured pirate he never saw.
The sailor, rather silent at first and ill-disposed to communicate his
designs, gradually thawed into talk under the benign influences of
hospitality. He even went to the length of revealing the business that
had carried him so strangely there.
“You don’t happen, mate,” says he, with a leer,--“you don’t happen to
’a’ seen a young man wandering about this here coast, do you?”
“What kind of a young man might he be like?” says the landlord.
He had seen no young man whatever. He would certainly have remarked the
smallest detail of his appearance, had he done so; for the first of all
Gamaliel Hooker’s characteristics was his inveterate curiosity. It was
this which led him to push a topic that otherwise would have had no
interest for him.
“Well, mate,” says the mariner, “he ain’t very easy to describe, d’ye
see. I’ve got to set eyes on him myself yet.”
“A seafaring man?” said the landlord.
“Not he,” said the mariner.
“Gentle or simple?” said the landlord.
The sailor hesitated an instant, while he gazed keenly at the host. He
seemed to be calculating how far he could safely take Gamaliel Hooker
into his affairs.
“Gentle enough,” he said, reluctantly. “But he’d come unattended, I
daresay; and he mought be drest like the commonalty.”
“A soldier?” asked the landlord, with a flash of inspiration.
“Never you mind,” said the other, roughly.
“But how can I tell you whether I’ve seen him or not,” said the
cunning Gamaliel, “unless I know the kind o’ young man he is?”
“Well, a soldier then,” said the unwilling mariner.
“No, I’ve not seen no proscribed Cavalier,” said the landlord.
The mariner sprang up with an oath.
“Who said ye had!” he cried. “Did I say ye had, you rum-peddling
lubber?”
“No; but you asked me,” said the cunning old rogue of a landlord.
“I am damned if I did!” said the angry mariner.
“Well, you didn’t then,” said the landlord, with a soft smile, “but I
thought you did.”
The sailor turned his ugly face full on the landlord’s. He looked him
over steadily and fiercely. He then put down his pipe, spread out the
palm of one hand, and tapped upon it with two fingers of the other to
lend an emphasis to what he was about to say. And he chose his words
with a most particular and deliberate care.
“Now look you here, mate,” said he, “I know the sort you are. I’ve not
followed the sea and run cargoes on this coast for twenty year without
getting a wind as to the repitation of Gamaliel Hooker. I know the
kind o’ man you are, my hearty. But I’m just going to sing a word in
your ear. I’m a plain-dealing man, I am: rough, you’ll say, almighty
rough; but I’m a man o’ my word, and you can lay to that. Now, if a
young man comes to your lousy, rat-ridden old hulk of a tavern, and
asks for Diggory Fargus, you just have the goodness to tell him he’ll
find me showing a light from the boat, at twelve o’clock at midnight,
a short sea-mile up the shore at Pyler’s Cove. You just tell him that.
And if he should come, you are to keep him snug, d’ye see, here in this
house till nightfall. He must not be seen by a living soul. Do this, my
hearty, and you may have such a reward one day as will go beyond your
dreams. But you just play me false, mate; you just send the young man
to the wrong place, or set it abroad that he’s at your tavern, and as
surely as Diggory Fargus hath followed the sea for twenty years, he
will twist your head off your body with these two hands.”
To the deliberation of the seaman’s words was added a fierceness of
countenance that made the landlord quail. Gamaliel grew terrified. He
was fascinated by that unpleasant face. When Diggory Fargus pointed
his threat by expanding his great gnarled brown paws, sweat sprang out
of the landlord’s hair. When his eyes fell on the knife that gleamed
at the seaman’s waist, he was held in the paralysis of fear. And, in
the height of his sufferings, the mariner bestowed a kind of dramatic
poignance upon them, by laughing aloud at poor Gamaliel’s fat, pale
face; by striding to the door, flinging it wide, and disappearing into
the wintry darkness.
[Illustration:
CHAPTER
II
_The quest of the
King_]
It was not easy for the landlord to recover of his terror. Your rogue
is a nervous creature. How often does he anticipate his doom! When the
wind sighs through the branches, he hears the creakings of the gallows
tree. Long after his visitor’s departure, Gamaliel felt two strong
hands upon his throat. Why he should have been so conscious of them it
is not easy to know. He had certainly done nothing as yet to provoke
the wrath of Diggory Fargus. He had not so much as encountered the
mysterious youth, let alone betray him. Perchance the innkeeper had no
command of his own integrity. He may have distrusted himself. Perchance
he had that grim insight into his own character that could foresee
his instincts leading him into a course of action that he knew to be
fraught with peril. A man who all his life long had first sought his
own pecuniary advantage in any circumstance that might arise, did well
to fear that his rapacity in any given case might get the better of his
judgment.
As Gamaliel Hooker sat cossetting himself beside the fire, this
mysterious young man of the mariner’s dwelt much in his mind. A
proscribed cavalier, he would stake his leg. Diggory Fargus lay with
his boat in the Cove, waiting to take him out of England over the sea.
As likely as not this fugitive was a person of consideration and great
place, such was the mariner’s solicitude for his well-being. If that
were the case, Parliament would know how to reward him who stayed his
flight. Doubtless a specific reward was already upon his head. If
Fortune directed him to the “Sea Rover,” Master Hooker shrewdly foresaw
that he might have to choose between his greed and his personal safety.
But there was a phrase also of the sailor’s that he would do well not
to forget. He had hinted at a recompense that might exceed the dreams
of his avarice. Plainly this fugitive was a person to be welcomed.
With one hand clasping the liquor-cup, the landlord presently fell into
a doze. Even in this state of semi-consciousness, the unknown young man
still ran much in his mind. Once the sleeper started up and thought
he heard his knock upon the door. It was but a coal that had fallen
on the hearth. He looked into the fire and saw his picture there. A
very handsome, proud young man, with curls on his shoulders and great
diamonds glistening on his hands. But farther back in the bright
embers was the face of the ugly sailor glowering behind it, with his
earrings, his knife, and his strong two hands.
Suddenly the landlord jumped up from his stool with a little cry. He
ran to the window and pressed his ear against the drawn shutters.
The silence of the wintry night had been invaded by strange sounds.
At first they were so remote that their nature was hardly to be
distinguished. But presently they grew plain. Horses!
Hoofs were on the frosty road. The music of iron upon adamant rang
nearer at every clock-tick. They were coming to the inn. What could it
mean? Gamaliel was not expecting visitors to-night. Yet stay, he was!
Was there not this young man of the sailor’s? Again Gamaliel put his
ear to the shutter, to withdraw it suddenly, however, with a spasm of
fear.
It was not one horse alone on the road; rather a company. He had heard
the rattle of sword and breast-piece; besides, the regulated manner
of approach told the nervous landlord that the law had come to his
inn at last. For years he had expected it. But now it was at his
threshold, God knew he was in no case to greet it. Could it be that his
misdemeanours, stealthy and hidden as they were, had been uncovered,
and that now he was to be called on to pay the penalty!
For a minute the landlord faltered. He surrendered his mind to fear.
Again the sweat burst out of him; it glistened on his white cheeks; he
could not restrain the convulsive twitch of his old, irresolute hands.
It was for only a minute, however. Gamaliel’s mind recurred to the
fugitive of the mariner’s, and once more he became himself. Of course,
these on-coming soldiers were seeking that mysterious youth. What a
fool he was to be frightened so easily!
In the comfort of this thought Master Gamaliel wiped the sweat from
his face, drained his glass, and made ready to receive his unwelcome
visitors grandly. He opened his portals, even before they knocked upon
them; and, standing in the full light of the fire and the candles as it
met the darkness and the sea-fog, he inquired their pleasure with a
bow and his hand on his heart.
Through the driving mists of the night, steaming horses, and cold,
rime-coated men clad in morions and corselets of steel, were visible.
The foremost of these soldiers sprang from his steed briskly and strode
past the landlord into the warm kitchen of the inn. He was a nimble,
ruddy little fellow, with a human look to his countenance, and, for all
the cold night, a cheerful way with him.
“Landlord,” said he, clapping his wet form to the face of the fire,
“you see us highly in need of your kindness. Brew us your hottest
posset in your biggest bowl, and waste no time upon it. We have come
far, but we have further to go by many a weary mile, unless our fortune
is kinder than it promises.”
“Yes, yes, Captain, to be sure,” said the landlord; “you shall drink of
the best of my poor hostelry, and that right speedily.”
Master Hooker, his fears allayed by the frank good humour of the
soldier’s demeanour, became the pattern of a host. He called his
son and his serving-maid to procure the liquor and boil the pot; and
he himself fussed so much about the details of the brew, that in
a surprisingly few minutes the soldier and his nine cold men were
entertained. The little man, under the benignant influences of the
warmth and liquor, became disposed for intercourse. With his back to
the fire, he communicated things that the landlord wanted mightily to
hear.
A battle had been fought by Worcester City between the arms of Oliver,
Protector, and Charles Stuart, King of Scots. The Lord, it seemed, had
vouchsafed “a crowning mercy” unto the former ones, to such a degree,
forsooth, that those of the latter had been beaten incontinently from
the field. And Charles Stuart was even now being hunted mile by mile
over the West Country; that almost every hour he was likely to be
ta’en; and that whosoever had that good fortune would have a goodly
recompense, so considerable a price there was upon his head.
“A considerable price is on his head!” cried the landlord, scalding
his mouth in his excitement, “and he is in these parts even now!”
“True i’ faith,” said the soldier, “or I’d be snug in Hounslow Camp. We
hold an information that he lies in hiding on this shore, and on some
night such as this he will try to make the coast of France. But it will
be a darkish evening when he goes, I fancy, there being so many of us
prick-ears along this beach, d’ye see.”
“Well, I reckon, friend,” Gamaliel said with deep emotion, “that if
Charles Stuart, king or no king, comes to the ‘Sea Rover,’ you can lay
to it he will not go off again so freely as he came. A considerable
reward, I think ye said, sir?”
“And while your mind’s upon it,” said the soldier, “look to the
proscribed. There’ll be lords and cavaliers, as well as kings, awaiting
a wind for France. We shall tarry on this shore until we hold the
Stuart; so if lace shirts and velvet breeches come your way, just you
keep them, Master, and send us word along the coast. I’ll answer for
it that you shan’t be a loser by it.”
Gamaliel Hooker might be said to drink these phrases, so agreeable were
they to his receptive ears. He had a particular talent for the devious
and the underhand. And the prospect of turning an unexpected penny, and
at the same time winning the approbation of the law, tickled his mind
so tenderly, that he could not repress a beam of pleasure that crept
out of his crafty eyes.
“Drain the bowl, good soldier; I will brew again!” he cried.
The soldier drained the bowl. Cheek by jowl, they sat together beside
the blaze. Outside the awaiting troopers stamped their feet, beat their
arms, and damned the cold with a Scriptural directness. But the host
was thoughtful to the last degree. He caused his son to bear hot meal
and water to the rime-clad horses, while the servant-maid took mulled
sack and spiced October to their riders. And when at last they went
forth again to scour the bitter night for a hunted solitary, mine host
stood bareheaded by his door waving a candle to them until they passed
from sight into the blackness of the rocks. Thereon the good Gamaliel,
mirror of hospitality, soul of ancient cheer, closed his portals with
a crash, slipped bolt and chain across, and returned to his wassail.
For a whole minute he puckered his wits with some tough arithmetic, and
then said to his son:
“I reckon, Joseph, I’m nineteen shillings and fivepence out on this
visit up to now. But I’m not complaining; for I rather think, my son,
since things are as they are, we shall have that money back before the
week’s spent, with maybe a few groats emolument over and above.”
The landlord chuckled at the thought, and began to build his castles.
Soon his son and the servant-maid went to their repose; but Gamaliel
sat for long enough about the fire, staring into its ever-changing
caverns and abysses--now sipping his liquor, now lost in meditation,
now revolving choice schemes in his mind. Indeed, so happy was he in
these circumstances, that it seemed better far to pass the night
before the cheerful hearth in the society of his cups than with
ice-cold sheets about him, and rats scuttling behind the wainscot of
his chamber.
Thus he sat for many an hour, thinking and dozing and dreaming. He was
wonderfully at peace to-night with the world and his own soul. True, he
occasionally saw the sinister eye of the mariner gleaming out of the
bars; once, too, he saw his knife flash through the shadows when the
candles had waned into gloom. But even these chimeras had not the power
to quell the ineffable satisfaction that was gradually invading the
old man’s heart. A vista of delightful possibilities had been revealed
by recent history; there was money to be made. Should good fortune
preside over his affairs, he had a chance to earn more in a week by
dabbling in political matters than he would in a lifetime by regular,
straightforward trade.
“Not so straightforward neither,” he confided to his cup. “Oh, ye’re
a cunning one, Gamaliel, my son! Now, Master Charles Stuart, King o’
Scotland, please to knock upon my door. I am sure your Highness will
be more than welcome. There’s a cheerful hearth awaiting for you--ay,
and a tun o’ liquor for your royal lips. I am sure, my liege, the good
Gamaliel will entertain you as befits a prince. And, oh, Lord! to
think the price o’ your blessed Majesty would buy that poor old man
an annuity for the remainder of his days. And, prithee, bring your
followers also, my liege--all in their nice new velvet breeches and
point-lace frilly-dillies. Gamaliel shall find a lodgment for them too,
good your Majesty, an he beds his own humble carcase with the cows.”
And so he dozed again. He dreamt that the King had come at last, and
was knocking at his door. He dreamt that the King was entering--a
most courtly, handsome gentleman, all graciousness and dignity; a
wonderful white feather in his hat, secured by a clasp of solid silver;
his sword-hilt wrought in gold and precious stones. It was all most
singularly real. How, although only a simple country innkeeper, he
had some little breeding, and strove to show it to the King; how he
received him on one knee, and did not speak a word until his Majesty
had spoken, as he heard they did at courts; and how the King said,
“Rise, my honest fellow--’tis not your congees that I need, but your
hospitality,” with just that smiling dignity that comes by nature to
a prince. What a gracious gentleman he was! Had he not the modest
self-effacement of good breeding, but withal the air and habit of
command? Did it not make his old blood thrill to hear his gentle, noble
tones? It was a dream; he knew it was indeed a dream, yet it was all
very real and dazzling and grand.
And then the good Gamaliel dreamt that a heavy bag of gold was jingling
in his hands. It was the fee the soldiers had paid him for the just
delivery of the person of this splendid prince. Ugh! and then there
was the sailor. He saw again the visage of that grim mariner, with the
fierce eye, the earrings, the knife, the scar--the whole concentrated
ugliness. And then there came the most vivid dream of all. The
sailor’s lips parted in a hiss of malevolence, the knife flashed from
his belt, and the old man felt it buried in his flesh. The knife seemed
to burn him like a fire, so that he awoke with half a curse and half a
scream.
Master Gamaliel did not marvel that his vision had such a terrible
reality. A live faggot had fallen from the fire and lay smouldering on
his foot. He shook it off with an oath of pain. But even in the act, a
diversion came to startle him out of his sufferings.
There came a sound in the night. He lifted his ears like a startled
fox. His nerves were in a plague of a twitter. For a man so old, he was
in a ridiculous taking. Once more he clapt his head to the shutter.
Yes; no; yes--horses again!
Could it be that the King was coming? Could he actually be coming in
his own person, in the dead of the night, to the “Sea Rover”? Was the
landlord awake, or was it a figment of his dreams?
Yes, horses undoubtedly, and the dead of night indeed. Was it not the
season at which the King was most likely to arrive? Ay, and the place.
After all, why should not the King, in his present circumstances,
come to his inn? Nothing could be more natural, more expected. A
presentiment, every second growing into a conviction, possessed the
landlord. It seemed to send his heart beating against his brain.
[Illustration:
CHAPTER
III
_The strange Visitors that
came to the Sea Rover_]
He continued keenly to listen. The horses appeared to be approaching
but slowly. They seemed to be two. The King and one of his many
faithful followers, perchance, wearied to death and very cold. It was
a pity the fire had fallen so low on the hearth. It was unfortunate,
too, that the landlord should have so short an intimation of the
royal coming. But he must contrive to give Charles Stuart some sort of
a reception, because all the world over a king is still a king; and
whatever one’s politics, should royalty honour one’s roof-tree, it is
impossible to assert them. Therefore he called up the stairs in his
greatest voice:
“Joseph, come down at once. Cicely, my wench, do you come too. The King
is arriving!”
Soon the travellers were heard hard by the window, under the sign. The
landlord, excited as he was, yet hung back a little from opening the
door. He would let them knock, just as though they were common persons;
he would pretend that he did not know one was the King.
It seemed an intolerable time ere a demand was made for their
admittance. At last came the expected knock, but, strangely enough, a
very gentle one. There was nothing regal in it. It had no authority, no
command; it was modest to the point of timidity. If it were not the
King after all! Had he not better make sure!
“Who be ye?” Gamaliel demanded, with his mouth to the door. “Who be ye?
What d’ye want?”
If it really was the King, he was not supposed to be aware of the
fact; and much as his pulse might leap at addressing a prince in this
audacious manner, he loved to do it none the less.
The door was tried and shaken ever so lightly.
“Who be ye? What d’ye want?” the landlord repeated.
“Oh, open the door, I pray you,” a soft voice implored him from the
night.
The landlord recoiled with an oath. It was the voice of a woman. His
disappointment was bitter; a woman when he had looked for a prince!
Again he put his questions, this time angrily. What could a woman want
at his inn on that inaccessible, inhospitable shore at that hour of the
night? He met with the same reply, but this time there seemed a deeper
fervour in it.
Gamaliel was so angry at his disillusion, that his first thought was to
refuse admittance to these travellers. But then in a flash there came a
second thought. They were refugees, of course. How foolish of him not
to have surmised that. They might not be royal personages, yet might
they not have their value too?
The next moment he had unbarred the door. Sure enough, a woman was on
the threshold. She was masked and cloaked like one who had journeyed
far: the white rime was heavy on her garments and her hair; and she
looked more dead than alive with the piercing cold. Her hands shook
visibly as one held her horse’s rein, and the other gathered up her
riding-coat.
“I give you welcome, madam,” said the landlord, making his best leg.
He smirked and bowed as humbly as he could. He was not ill pleased by
the appearance of the woman. It was sad indeed, but there was that in
her bearing that plainly said she was a person of condition.
“I beseech you to succour us,” she said, with great entreaty. “My
husband is stricken sore, and so spent with traveling that he must die
to-night out in the cold if you do not help us.”
“God forbid!” said the landlord, piously. He liked the sweetness and
the candour of her bearing. His curiosity was stimulated by it too. She
thanked him with a grave simplicity, and went forth to her companion.
The landlord followed with his assistance. He could dimly discern by
the candle-light coming through the open door a second horse, sorely
distressed by an infinite journeying. There was little to be seen of
its rider beyond a shrunk, cloaked figure, huddling low to the saddle.
“My poor lad,” said the woman, staggering to his side, “there is a roof
and a fire for you at last.”
She gave him her shoulder. The rider swayed towards it, and leaned
so heavily upon her that Gamaliel, bustling forward with his aid,
marvelled that he did not bear her to the ground.
“Don’t let ’em touch me,” the rider said in a whisper of querulous
anguish. “Tell ’em to keep off.”
Amid a few groans and a few curses, the unhappy traveller was half led,
half borne within on the shoulder of his wife.
“Oh, the poor gentleman!” exclaimed the servant-maid, setting the
best chair near the fire and placing a soft pillow upon it. She then
ran to procure an armful of fresh logs, while Joseph took the horses
to the stable. The stricken man was put by the hearth, and his wife,
distressed and fatigued as she was, tended him with an unremitting
diligence. She took off his hat, wet cloak and gloves, and then knelt
down before him to chafe his cold hands with her own even colder, and
talked to him as she did so in little soothing affectionate phrases, as
a mother might to a child.
Meantime the landlord was busy indeed. He hobbled about the kitchen
with his gout as though the hour was three at noon instead of three
of the night--now for a cup, now for a spoon, now for a stoup of the
hissing liquor, steaming and vapouring in the bowl. Mine host had
brewed a posset, strong, hot, searching, fit for a prince! Ha! and who
knew that royal lips were not about to imbibe it. The thought was ever
present in Master Hooker’s heart. Be very sure his eye was never an
instant from his guests.
The lady, it is true, still wore her vizard, thereby balking his
curiosity in the main particular; in her tender solicitude for her
lord, she had forgot to doff her dripping cloak; she was bedraggled,
weary, unkempt, chilled to the blood; but were she presently to be
revealed a princess, the shrewd Gamaliel would be able to say without
impropriety that from the first he had guessed so much. He knew high
breeding when he saw it; he flattered himself that naught could conceal
it from him. He had not seen a feature, a jewel; she had hardly given
him three words; his knowledge of her attire was confined to a hood,
a riding-cloak, and a mask; but there it was, the hallmark, the
indescribable strange grace that misfortune could not tarnish, nor
distresses hide.
As for the man, her husband with the querulous eyes and the countenance
twisted with pain, there was not a button of his coat that the landlord
had not already by heart. A most handsome fellow, in the very heyday
of his youth. Yet he looked so pale and worn, that it seemed as if
the first puff of wind might extinguish the life of him, as it would
a candle-flame. He had a singular delicacy of feature, designed for
sweetness and urbanity. But his face was robbed of something of its
peculiar beauty by an expression of peevish arrogance, aggravated
perhaps by his imminent condition, but probably sufficient at any time
to mar a countenance wonderfully fair. A high spirit seemed to preside
behind it, a chafing, impatient, overleaping spirit, that hated being
harnessed to a maimed body. And below the resentful anguish of the
young man’s face was a permanent look of weariness and disillusion that
one might expect to see in that of a person who had drunk the cup of
life to the very dregs until his lips revolted from its bitterness. Yet
the landlord, whose scrutiny missed not a detail, could see that he
was of the quality of his veiled companion. He was one accustomed to
the service and the homage of his fellows; one who would not be slow
to exact it, either. Still his exquisite fair curls clustering round
his neck, and his blue eyes, if their insolence, their anger, and their
pain could be forgotten, lent him the appearance of an angel--a soiled,
ruffled, complaining angel, who, finding itself on earth, wished to be
elsewhere.
His condition was certainly dire. He could hardly speak; and as he lay
back on his pillow, sobbing for breath after each effort to do so, his
impatient rage would have been ludicrous had it not been a thing to
pity. The woman continued to chafe his hands till a little warmth crept
in them, then rose from her knees to procure and arrange more cushions
for him. Presently, the landlord came with the steaming tankard. The
lady took one sip of it carefully, to assure herself that it was not
too hot for the lips of her companion. She held it for him while he
applied his mouth. He withdrew it instantly, with a splutter.
“God scald you, landlord!” he said, in a hoarse, weak voice, “you have
burnt my mouth.”
“There--there, mine own,” said the lady, caressing his curls. “Drink
freely. It will not hurt you, indeed; nay, it will give you ease.”
Having settled the sufferer in some degree of comfort, she asked the
landlord to lead her to the stable.
“No, no, Patsy woman,” said the stricken man, “you must not leave me.
You will not leave me, will you, Patsy?”
He entreated her like a child.
“I will not be five minutes away,” she answered, soothingly. “But I
cannot neglect the poor, good horses, can I, mine own? You would have
them lie in comfort and warmth, even as you do.”
“Prithee, stay you here, madam,” said the honest serving-girl. “And
take off your wet cloak, and come about the fire. I will look to the
horses.”
“No, child,” said the lady; “I must look to them myself. They have
played a noble part this night.”
Despite the entreaties of the sufferer, whose demands for his wife not
to leave him rose almost to a wail, she insisted on going out to see
that Joseph had succoured the distressed creatures according to their
deserts.
When she returned, Cicely, the serving-maid, grew truly imperative.
“I’m a-going to take them wet clothes off you, madam, by your leave,”
she said. “You will surely get your death. Why, even now you look fit
almost for the grave.”
The lady regarded the honest girl with a wan smile.
“Child, you are very good,” she said.
With her aid she discarded all her travelling attire except the mask.
“May I untie it for you, madam?” said the girl.
The lady hesitated.
“N-no,” she said. “Not to-night, I think.”
The landlord pricked his ears up. Gazing at her, he observed that at
last the blood had come to her pale cheeks. His own pulse quickened,
too. And he smiled to note how her attempt at secrecy galled her. Even
with a strip of black velvet across her eyes, her face was as easy to
read as a printed page. She was a simple creature, whose instincts
betrayed her.
Very soon the stricken man was conveyed to the chamber that had been
set for his reception. It had little to recommend it, to be sure, yet
it was the best and most spacious the “Sea Rover” could boast. It had
not been used for years; and when a fire was kindled in the unwilling
chimney, a colony of sheltering birds were grievously perturbed.
However, Cicely the serving-maid was a bustling soul with a warm and
capacious heart, into which the poor guests had been already admitted.
She had aired the sheets by the kitchen fire, dusted the apartment,
and adjusted the bed and its furniture, all by the time the unhappy
gentleman was got up the stairs.
The landlord came at the tail of the procession. He wore a sagacious
gravity. He said:
“If I can give ye a finger of assistance, madam, I shall be more than
happy.”
“My husband can only suffer me about him,” said the lady. “But you are
very kind.”
“And what might be his malady, if I may be so bold, ma’am?” the
landlord asked.
“’Tis an incurable disease,” the lady said.
“And what might they call it, ma’am,” said the soft Gamaliel. His voice
had the most persuasive humility.
Again the telltale blush showed beneath the mask.
“I--I do not know,” the woman faltered.
The landlord was much too astute to pursue the theme. He apologised
for the poverty of the chamber, but it was the best he could place
at their disposal. It was a lonesome inn, they must know, not in the
least designed for the honour of gentry. But he would not have them
conclude for the world--Master Gamaliel coughed in a most deprecatory
manner--that, country person as he might be, he was ignorant of what
was the due of people of quality. Assuring them of his humble duty and
of his desire to promote their comfort in every way, he hoped they
had blankets enough, and if they had not, would they kindly inform
Cicely the serving-maid? Thereon he gave them “Good-night,” and hobbled
downstairs, so deep in his thoughts that he collided with a warming-pan
filled with hot brands that was being carried upstairs by the assiduous
Cicely. The landlord gave a howl of pain as it shrivelled the back of
his hand.
“Should mind where ye be goin’ then,” said the servant-maid, with grim
satisfaction.
“You clumsy jade!” roared her master; “you insolent baggage!”
Cicely tossed her head, and passed up the stairs well satisfied.
“Wish it had been his eyes, the slimy old twöad,” she muttered under
her breath piously.
[Illustration:
CHAPTER
IV
_Will Jackson_]
The landlord sat long over his matutinal collops and ale. No
philosopher could have desired nicer food for meditation than the
incidents of the night. The thoughts they induced were subtle, yet
peculiar. Could it be that the young man with “the incurable disease”
was the King! He himself did not know his Majesty other than by
repute. He was said to be young and handsome. He was said to be on the
coast of Dorset; and last night he was expected at the “Sea Rover”
by persons of knowledge and experience. Could this querulous young
gentleman be the King, after all? He was building that theory up
piece by piece in his mind. He could see no argument against it other
than the fact that he had a woman for a travelling companion. True,
she might be a fugitive, even as he. That she was a person of a rare
condition he did not doubt. It would not surprise him to discover that
she was a princess of the royal house.
Still, whatever the nature of his suspicions, he must hasten to confirm
them. The bird might slip through his fingers else. The simplest and
the surest way was to send for the soldiers. Thereby he would guard
against risk. But Gamaliel never was a friend of simplicity. Besides,
his guests might prove not to be royalty at all. They might be merely a
pair of proscribed aristocrats. In that case, he would lose two wealthy
patrons on the first day of their sojourn; a thing not in the least
consonant with his ideas. In the case of the King, that would be all
well and good. There would be a fine reward for his pains. But in the
matter of a cavalier, there was no such great solatium. They were not
rated so high; indeed, they might be said to be as common as dirt. No;
in a bald phrase, as between a man and his conscience, he proposed in
the case of a mere cavalier seeking refuge under his roof, to bleed
him, to wring him dry, and then to propitiate the law at the eleventh
hour by depositing the fellow, and the few rags left to cover him, into
the hands of the Lord Protector.
Was there not an intelligent discretion in a scheme of this kind? But
he must be wary indeed. It might prove a dangerous game. Once more that
menacing sailor put a thrill of fear in his heart; he was sure that
the young man upstairs was he whom Diggory Fargus sought. But, be that
as it may, there was one piece of information he must acquire at all
costs: Was this young man Charles Stuart?
He had yet to view his visitors by the light of day. He conceived the
idea of bearing food to them with his own hands, particularly as now it
was nine o’clock of the morning, and they had evinced no disposition
to procure it for themselves. When the meat was ready, he took it
upstairs and tapped upon the chamber door. But if Master Hooker had
hoped to gain admission there, his disappointment must have proved
extreme; for at his knock the door was opened, and the lady met him on
the threshold. She stood unmasked at last, her eyes now shining in the
morning light. There was a finger on her lip.
“Hush, sir!” she whispered. “I prithee do not speak, and do not enter.
My husband sleeps, and he is in such case that I fear he may never wake
again.”
Her voice was wild and low with sorrow.
Speaking thus, she took the tray of meat from the landlord’s hand, and
she acted with such a quickness that the door was shut upon him ere he
could reply. He heard the key turn in the lock. So far he was foiled.
Plainly they had something to conceal, and just as plainly they did
not trust Gamaliel. Yet the old man went downstairs with positive
knowledge on a point that was not the least important. He had seen the
lady’s face. Her mask was off, and he had fed his cunning eyes on her
every feature. He was not by any means a young man, and he whimsically
thanked his stars that his blood was cool and sober.
What a creature! A woman formed for tenderness and passion. He had seen
them younger and more lyrical, handsomer, more brilliant, more prodigal
of smiles; for there was the matron in her shape, and he should take
her age for thirty-five. But she had the sort of face that Correggio
painted: large, steadfast eyes, gazing on the world and occasionally
mocking at it gently, as one who has sipped the cup of the poison of
experience, and who has had the native strength to accept the bitter
draught without being defiled--nay, rather fortified. A fair and
gracious lady, then, with a face sensitive and pure, grave with the
loveliness of knowledge; no milk-hearted nymph nor dimpled Hebe, but a
Helen at the zenith of her womanhood, who “moves a goddess and looks a
queen”; true child of her sex withal, one who could be an angel to her
friends and a devil to her enemies.
“Ha, I’ve seen her!” said Master Hooker to his son. “She’s a picter,
she is, Joseph, and belongs to the nobility. On that I’ll take my
Biblical! Wonderful fair hands she ’ave, white as surf; and harkee,
Joseph, diamonds a-shining on ’em.”
The landlord communicated this final phrase with his mouth close to
Joseph’s ear.
“And I’m thinking,” he continued, “that even if they don’t happen to be
royalty, they may requite us. Ye can lay to it, they’ve got some blunt
about ’em, somewhere. Now, Joseph, I’m going to find out who they are.”
“And if they are proscribed?” said Joseph, breathlessly.
The landlord put his hand against his mouth and said, with an eager
secrecy:
“If they are proscribed, I shall first suck ’em dry like an egg, d’ye
see, and then I shall break ’em like the empty shell.”
The son shuddered. He had no opinion in these things one way or
another, but his was not the rapacity that could grind its heel into
the face of a dying man.
All that day the landlord’s doubts were unresolved. He was not once
allowed within the chamber. Despite his frequent approaches with food
and questions as pretexts for the satisfaction of his curiosity, the
entrance was ever sedulously kept. True, he would be greeted at once
by the lady’s courteous appearance, but every time her form would
intervene between him and the interior of the room; and there would
always be her chin and mouth shot out in a long-drawn “Hush!” and
worlds of entreaty in her eyes.
The evening found the landlord no nearer to the truth. He was growing
desperate. It was imperative that he should know something of his
guests.
Three times that day had he asked the lady for her name and that of her
companion, and three times had he been put off by the tender tact that
only a woman has. Again he sat before the fire with the hot liquor,
and the candles, and the hissing logs about him, with the door and
shutters fast against the wintry night. He sat coiled in thought. There
were little knots of it upon his brow; it crouched and ruminated in his
eyes; it crept round his wizened lips; his very hands were clenched
upon it.
He had weighed every pro and con in his cunning heart. If it were the
King who lay upstairs, it would be to his advantage to deliver him up
to his enemies at once. He could afford to do so, for there was a great
reward. Besides, as was known to all the world, delays were dangerous,
especially in the case of kings. Assuming that they honoured your
abode, were they not here to-day and gone to-morrow? And should their
coming be by night, in stealth, was not their going likely to be also
of that manner? Assuming this mysterious young man to be the King, this
“incurable disease” of his was doubtless a blind, intended to mask his
real intentions. Any morning might find him flown. Yes; if this young
man really was the King, he must deliver him up immediately.
If he were not the King, however? If, as was very likely, instead
of Charles Stuart, he proved to be only some fugitive cavalier from
Worcester fight, he could not afford to denounce him at present. There
was no such great solatium in regard to a cavalier. He must first bleed
him to his very last fourpenny ere he allowed him out of his custody.
The whole scheme was finely matured in his mind; would that he could be
at peace in regard to the stranger’s identity! He would then know which
course to follow.
He was still excogitating the hard matter, and forever twisting and
turning it over, when, even as the night before, a stranger knocked on
the door, and obtruded himself within the inn kitchen.
This time the visitor was humble enough. He was a tall, loose,
shambling fellow, so discoloured by dirt and an outdoor life that he
was as brown as a berry. His hat was low over his eyes; he wore a
stained and torn pair of breeches, made of leather, and a jerkin of
the same character. He had the appearance of a hedger and ditcher, or a
woodman beset by adversity. The first words he uttered confirmed this
impression.
“Are you wanting a serving-man or a drawer, good master?” he said,
seating himself on a stool opposite the landlord.