looked an idle vagabond enough. Yet his swarthy countenance was not
altogether destitute of a certain intelligence. He had a pair of keen,
observing, humorous eyes to his face; there was a certain impudence and
audacity about them which was sufficient to redeem their owner from the
commonplace. The landlord, himself no mean observer, and a penetrating
judge of his fellows, was rather interested by him. It was not usual to
find a man of this type who merited looking at twice.
“And even if I do, sirrah?” asked Gamaliel, taking up his visitor’s
question, after scrutinising him from head to heel.
“Well, master, if you do,” said the fellow, readily, “you would be
acting a charity by giving a poor man a chance to serve you.”
“I do not doubt it,” said the landlord. “But if your looks be a true
credential, I may live to rue the day. Upon my life, I never saw a
countenance I like so little. If my eyes do not deceive me, I take ye
to be a rogue of the first magnitude; a villain that I should fear to
turn my back upon.”
The fellow laughed. Perchance it was well he did so. For in his laugh
there was something frank and human. His lowering face grew vastly more
engaging; and the landlord set the candour of it to his favour.
“Ah! master,” he said, “you are very hard upon a poor wight who knows
not where to turn for a meal in these troublous times. I pray you, have
a little pity for one who hath been accustomed to fill his belly, and
to sleep in comfort and security.”
“In a bridewell, I do not doubt,” said the grim Gamaliel.
“Nay, master, there you wrong me,” said the vagrant. “Few have
followed a more reputable course than I.”
The landlord looked at him piercingly. After all, his mind might be a
little better than his appearance. His speech was hardly so rustic as
one would expect.
“What hath been your station in life?” asked Gamaliel. “And what hath
brought you to this pass?”
“It is but a few weeks since I was serving-man to my Lord Wilmot,” said
the other, hesitatingly.
“Why did you quit his service?” the landlord demanded.
“’Twas a stroke of evil fortune, master. My lord was too good a friend
to poor King Charles Stuart. He is now fleeing o’er hill and dale for
his life, with devil a serving-man to attend him.”
The landlord listened greedily. In a flash a very bright idea
illuminated his mind.
“Have you ever seen this Charles Stuart?” he demanded, almost
breathlessly.
“Have I!” laughed Lord Wilmot’s servitor. “Why, master, I am more
familiar with King Charles than I am with my own mother. He and my lord
were hand in glove together. Many’s the time I have filled the King’s
cup, and listened to his voice. There never was so jovial and kind a
gentleman. Why, master, he hath even spoken to me by my name.”
The landlord could hardly conceal his great excitement.
“Then, of course, sirrah,” said he, “you would recognise this Charles
Stuart at once if you saw him?”
“Why, master,” said the fellow, “I know him as well as I know the nose
on my face.”
That was enough for the landlord. He engaged him at once in the dual
capacity of drawer and ostler. And so excited was the good Gamaliel,
that he forgot or overrode the accumulated instincts of a lifetime.
He did not even attempt to beat him down a farthing in the matter of
wages. For was it not a truly providential thing, that on that of all
nights, in that of all seasons, a man should walk into his kitchen who
would be able so readily to resolve his difficulties? He might have
searched the breadth of Dorset, and yet have not discovered a person
capable of giving an opinion on the identity of Charles Stuart. Fortune
was on his side indeed.
No sooner had the details of his employment been agreed upon, and this
somewhat uncouth-looking serving-man had passed into the hands of a new
master, than the landlord in a moment of unwonted generosity bade his
son fetch the fellow half a pint of small ale.
“Now sit ye here, my lad,” said Gamaliel, “and let me hear about this
Charles Stuart. But I think we might get on better if first I had your
name.”
“My name is William Jackson,” said the serving-man, “but they call me
Will for short.”
“Will Jackson, is it?” said the landlord. “Humph! I think as little of
the name as I do of the bearer. But for the present we will let that
pass. Now tell me of this Charles Stuart. What kind of a person might
you call him?”
“Oh, master, a grand man indeed!” said Will Jackson, with a fine air of
enthusiasm. “A rare noble gentleman.”
“Humph!” said Gamaliel, “I have my doubts about it--the Popish dog! But
what doth he look like?”
“A wonderful handsome fellow, master,” the earnest William said. “Every
woman that he looks upon just languishes for love of him, they say.”
“Can you recall his features at all?” the landlord asked. “Is he a
black man or a light man? A tall man or a small man? Come, trim your
memory.”
“Well, do you know, master,” said Will Jackson, with a sly laugh,--“do
you know, master, they do say that his gracious Majesty is most
remarkable like me. I’ve heard say that we’re as like as two peas,
master, and that we might be brothers, as it were.”
“Confound the rogue!” cried the landlord, laughing, in spite of
himself, at the fellow’s impudence. “A pretty sort of likeness you’d
be, I reckon, to discover a king by! I suppose, you ragged, dirty
scoundrel, that some wench hath caressed your self-esteem with this
fair parallel to coax an extra groat or two. A mighty fine king you’d
make, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, master, if you please, more than one wench hath told me so,”
said Will Jackson.
His master shook his fist at him, and threatened to cuff his ear. But
the fellow in his own mind seemed so certain that he bore a striking
resemblance to the King, that he appeared quite unable to divine the
source of Gamaliel’s mirth. For the landlord fell to laughing until
he nearly wept over the perplexed gravity of his drawer. Whatever
the intolerable impudence of the assumption, Will Jackson certainly
appeared not to regard it in the light of a jest. To him it seemed
rather a circumstance from which he extracted a highly legitimate pride.
Even as the landlord talked with his servitor he made up his mind
that he would lose no time in making the utmost possible use of Will
Jackson’s special knowledge. He must see the young man with the
incurable disease at once. But how could it be contrived? That matter
was not so easy. It seemed hopeless to gain access to a domain guarded
by so fair a Cerberus. After much hard thinking, Master Gamaliel
had recourse to a stratagem--an extreme one, it is true, but highly
necessary in this present pass.
Rising from his comfortable posture by the fire with a reluctance that
made the act heroic, the landlord went forth to the stable, and bade
Will Jackson follow him. He procured a ladder there. He had it borne
without, and, under cover of the darkness, reared it with caution
against the sill of the window of his guests. Drawn shutters guarded
the window; but, as Gamaliel was well aware, they lacked some two
inches of the top of the casement. A thread of candle-light shone
through the chink. The work of a spy was therefore not likely to be
difficult.
Ordering Will Jackson to hold his peace and also at the same time to
hold the ladder, the eager old landlord, infirm as he was, first
climbed to the top himself to discover how the land lay. No night-thief
could have been more astutely skilful. It is true he scaled the ladder
in a gingerly manner, but never a sound did he make. Planting his feet
firmly on the highest rung but one, he cocked his cunning eyes over the
top of the shutter, and was rewarded by a clear view of the chamber,
and the unhappy persons there immured.
It was a piece of good fortune that the bed was facing the window.
The landlord was the better able to regard its occupant. He was half
prepared to discover that the young man was the victim of no malady
whatsoever. He would not be surprised to find him quite hale and
hearty. Nay, so little faith had he in this young man’s condition,
that should he prove to have left the chamber secretly already, and
gone away in stealth, he was not likely to be astounded. It so befell,
however, that the landlord had no grounds for his suspicions. For there
confronting him the sufferer lay. By the mellow light of the candles
he saw him prone in the bed, as ghastly as death. He was wide awake,
but lay with glazed eyes and a face convulsed with agony. The woman was
binding a cloth steeped in water about his forehead.
In spite of the night’s bitterness, the landlord had so intense an
interest in that which was passing before his eyes, that he betrayed
no desire to leave his perch for the present. Looking down upon these
unconscious persons from his high situation, he felt fairly secure from
discovery. And was it not exhilarating to see without being seen! He
must contrive to hear too. A chance phrase might reveal their identity.
Thus, notwithstanding that poor Will Jackson was shivering in the cold
below, the landlord took his jackknife from his pocket and began to
whittle away a piece of the wooden window frame. Already rotten with
decay, it yielded readily to the silent deftness that was brought to
bear upon it.
There was soon a hole big enough for Gamaliel’s ear. At once he could
detect the gasps and low groans of the man in the bed. And he heard
the woman say, in her soft low tones that thrilled to the heart like
music:
“We can delay no longer, mine own; it must be done. Canst thou not
trust me?”
The man clung to her outstretched hand, and drew his head away from
her, like a child that is shy, farther back into the pillows. His
pale lips were seen to move, but any words they framed the landlord
could not hear. Thereafter for a time he lay with closed eyes, pallid
and helpless, whilst the woman knelt down by his side and buried her
beautiful head in the coverlet of the bed.
Presently she rose as one quickened by a sudden resolution. Tears she
had not, but her eyes were filled with an anguish deeper even than
the man’s. She crossed the room to where a broad settle stood with
a tumbled heap of clothing upon it. The landlord observed, with a
desperate dismay, that two cocked pistols lay there, whilst beside
them was a case of embroidered leather. The lady opened this, and drew
therefrom a dagger with a delicate point.
Concealing this in her hand, perchance that the man might not see it,
she approached the bed again. The landlord felt his limbs totter and
begin to fail him, whilst his straining eyes seemed inclined to start
from his head. What, in the name of the fiend, was the woman about to
do?
The man in the bed turned his eyes up to her; they had the look of a
wounded animal.
“Can it not stay?” he said, and his hoarse tone penetrated to the
listener’s ears. “It can make no difference now; the game is played.”
A sudden rush of tears appeared in the eyes of the woman; but the
masterful quivering of her lips said clearly that she refused to admit
them to be there.
“Another day of this,” she said, “and all is over. Our only chance is
to take it out before another hour goes by.”
“Ay, and if you cut it out,” the sufferer gasped, “I am done with if
ever man was.”
“Nay, child; I will not have you say that,” she said, caressing his
face with her unoccupied hand. The sweet imperious sorrow of her tone
touched even the listener at the window, who, after all, was not a man
of stone.
Again the sufferer turned his face up to the woman and regarded her
with the same dumb, dog-like look. She averted her gaze suddenly, as
though she had not the fortitude to look at him.
“Canst thou not trust me?” she said again. “I will be, oh! so gentle.
And we dare not have a surgeon--dare we, child? Indeed, we dare not
tarry. Thou art in a fever even now, and every hour it rises. It must
be done now, mine own, or thou wilt not see to-morrow.”
She spoke so wistfully that she might be beseeching her obdurate lord
to gratify some feminine whim. He continued to regard her sickly and
faintly, till at last a wan laugh crept upon his lips. It was the
herald to the last desperate flicker of his courage--the courage that
enables a man to look the mob in the eyes as he lays his neck on
the block deliberately, delicately, and proudly. A fuller tone came
into his hoarse, querulous voice. There was no longer complaint and
petulance. The pettiness had gone out of it; it was almost a companion
for the woman’s own.
“As you will,” he said, and he came as near to achieving a careless
laugh as a man in his extreme condition ever could. “In with the knife,
then, butcher. Thou art aching to carve me up, I can see. Well, well;
it were better that you had your way, for I suppose you’ll give me
no peace till you’ve done it. But plague take you! You’re tenacious
devils, you women. Your damnable iteration would wear away stone. You
know the place, and it’s embedded in the thick of my back, I think.
Now, mind you cut deep enough. Oh, but I say, good Mistress Surgeon,
prithee, where be thy basin?”
By the time the victim had mentioned these among other details
of the torture he was about to undergo, the eavesdropper on the
ladder had seen and heard rather more than enough for his personal
comfort. Therefore, he quitted his station on the top rung but one,
and descended to the ground as speedily as he could, lest he should
involuntarily become the horrified witness of the knife at its work.
When he came down to Will Jackson, he was shaking as one with the ague.
“I shall not want ye to go up to-night, my lad,” he stuttered;
“to-morrow will do. Now, take away the ladder. You careless varlet, did
I not tell you to make no sound?”
The clumsy fellow had had the misfortune to hit the top of the ladder
against the nose of “The Sea Rover,” scowling in crude colours from
the signboard of the inn. He appeared, not inappropriately it must be
confessed, the most ill-favoured pirate that ever twirled a sword.
[Illustration:
CHAPTER
V
_Shows the inconveniences
that may sometimes attend
an active mind_]
The landlord went indoors to his accustomed fireside chair. He was
chilled to the blood; every infirmity that lurked in the gross bulk of
him was up in arms against his late impudence; and worse, his nerves
seemed all tattered and torn in his brain. He had been privileged to
see and hear a little too much. Ha! they were already at it, curse
them! The moans of the poor wretch upstairs were penetrating to his
ears. Or were they the moans of the sea, sounds he had heard every
night these forty years? Now and then he thought he heard a muffled,
desperate cry. After all, it might be only the wild fowl on the rocks.
How he wished he could rid his imagination of the scene that was being
enacted. Would that he had not struggled up the ladder at all! Lord!
were they never going to have done? It was enough to make a man revolt
against his clay.
At this acute moment, however, Cicely appeared with her master’s
nightly potation. It soothed his qualms somewhat. Pah! he had got
the nerves of a girl. It was merely a little blood-letting; quite an
everyday matter.
Curse the fellow, there were his cries again! What must it be like to
have a bullet dug, inch by inch, by a dagger out of one’s own back!
Ugh! what a morbid old fool he was; why must he forever keep thinking
of it, and receiving the steel in his own pampered flesh? Might it not
be there in earnest if he ever went up a ladder again!
After all, however, when he came to think of the thing in its true
relation, he was by no means sorry he had been there. He had acquired
knowledge of some value. The “incurable disease” was neither more nor
less than a bullet wound in the body. Now, why should the woman lie
about it and conceal it from the world if the man, her husband, had
come by it honestly? Had he been on the side of the just, in other
words on that of the party in power, more explicitly, my Lord Cromwell
and his Parliament, that wound would have been an honourable scar. They
were plainly Royalists; persons of mark, no doubt, for were there not a
thousand and one subtle but unmistakable evidences of their condition?
And, just as plainly, were they not fleeing the country? Otherwise they
would not come at dead of night to the “Sea Rover.”
He was afraid he must dismiss the theory of this young man being the
King from his mind. It was almost certain that had Charles Stuart
been wounded to death, the fact would have been known over the length
and breadth of the land. For him to have escaped so far in that dire
condition would have been impossible.
Again, there was evidence in their familiar talk, despite something of
a disparity in years, the woman being clearly older than her companion,
that they were man and wife. In any case, the woman’s mode of address,
tender and solicitous as it was, was hardly the one she would employ,
even if she were a princess of the blood, to the King’s majesty. No;
he was afraid he must look elsewhere for the King. Yet he had no need
to be cast down upon the matter. These two persons were not to be
despised. Their appearance suggested money and jewels. And they seemed
to be delivered, bound hand and foot as it were, into his hands.
Gamaliel hugged himself at that thought. They should be made to pay a
price for that cold in his head. They should not aggravate his gout and
his rheumatism, and set his nerves in a twitter, for nothing. He smiled
malevolently as he sipped his hot cup, and spread his hands out to the
fire.
Perchance the poor devil was dying, though. Certainly no human spirit
could ever be tottering nearer to the brink than that of the man
upstairs. The idea awoke never a spark of pity in the landlord. He
simply regarded the near prospect of his death as another factor in the
case. If he were not the King, he was not sure that he did prefer him
to die. There would be only a woman to deal with them. In the phrase of
that malignant sailor, Diggory Fargus, he would trust himself to tear
the heart out of a woman with his own two hands. But why at every twist
and turn did that uncomfortable mariner obtrude himself? He cursed
himself for having called him to mind. If, however, the young man was
the King--in spite of everything the landlord still clung tenaciously
to that hope,--it would not be to his interest for his Majesty to
perish. He must be delivered up alive, if possible.
During the rest of that evening, Gamaliel was too shaken to spy again
on his guests, or to connive at others doing so. For he was still
determined that his new drawer, whom he had engaged for that particular
purpose, should go up the ladder also, and finally settle this hard
problem as to whether Charles Stuart was actually at his inn or not.
It was not until the following evening that he summoned the courage
to make a fresh attempt to set his mind at rest. During the day he
could not venture to do so, for the publicity of light was too great.
In the meantime he had not an idea of what had happened upstairs. He
was still denied the chamber as sedulously as ever. He had tapped on
the chamber door during the morning; the pale-eyed lady had appeared,
more beautiful and more beset with anguish than before. She had taken
a bowl of milk and a loaf of bread from the landlord’s hands, but
beyond a word of thanks and a prayer that he should not again disturb
the sleeper, he had nothing of her conversation. It was on his lips
to inquire of the young man’s condition; but ere he could frame the
question the door was swiftly yet silently closed upon him, and for
that day his chance had passed. As time wore on, a conviction grew up
in his mind that the man was dead. The silence upstairs was so extreme;
besides, an intangible sense of foreboding seemed to invade and
presently possess, not only the atmosphere of the dismal old inn, but
the minds of those dwelling in it.
Cicely went about in tears. The tender-hearted wench was sure something
terrible had happened to the poor young gentleman. Her master swore at
her, but he could not relieve his own mind of her fears. Joseph, his
son, was also afraid: it was true that he and the serving-maid were
singularly often in sympathy, more often than Gamaliel cared about. He
would have got rid of her long ago, were she not such an industrious,
capable girl. Then, again, a shadow seemed to hang over the mind, or
what there was of it, of his new drawer. He had hardly spoken a word,
and every task he was set to, whether it was cutting faggots or washing
the floor, he performed in a perfunctory and absent manner. Indeed,
the first day he spent in the service of his new master was not to the
satisfaction of the landlord. A more idle, more incapable fellow, he
vowed he had never beheld. He would take the first chance of getting
rid of him when he had served his turn. Twice during the day he had had
to kick him up from the straw in the stable, where he had discovered
him fast asleep.
At last, when the darkness had come again, the landlord once more
resolved to allay his doubts. His nausea of the night before was merged
in his overmastering curiosity. Summoning Will Jackson, he again had
recourse to the ladder; and being at the mercy of his passions, he
again had the temerity first to ascend himself.
No sooner, however, were his feet on the ladder, than a latent sense
of horror was quickened within him. The bitter winter evening biting
his ears, the moans of the sea, the gloom, the insecurity of hanging
by one’s icy fingers in mid-air, all came upon him as a special
reminiscence, and reproduced his pangs of the night before. And no
sooner had he cocked his eyes over the shutter than they were greeted
by a face as pallid as the sheets in which it lay. The man was asleep.
Many evidences of pain had vanished from his countenance; indeed, his
slumber looked as natural as it was profound. Then it began to dawn on
the landlord that this was the peace of death. The sweat broke out on
the watcher’s face. Why, in the fiend’s name, had he ventured up that
ladder a second time, when there was a loathsome, ugly corpse at the
top to greet him!
So if this was the King, the King was dead. Poor young man! he had died
under the knife, perchance. But why had he been so unthoughtful as to
die at the “Sea Rover”? There would, doubtless, be no end of a business
presently. Yet, more probably, it was not the King at all; in that
case there would only be a woman to deal with, for fugitives must be
made to pay for the privilege of perishing in that respectable house.
Just, however, as Master Gamaliel’s thoughts had travelled back to
their customary sphere, and were beginning to revolve in their natural
orbit--namely and to wit, the personal interests of Gamaliel Hooker--a
phenomenon occurred to the corpse. It raised its arms and stretched
itself.
The landlord bit his lips with anger. What a zany he was, to be sure;
he had come to his dotage. To think that he should have mistaken a
sleeping man for a corpse! It did not occur to him, cunning as he
was, that it calls for as full-blooded a creature to be an eminent
scoundrel, as it does for one to be distinguished in the more civil
sciences. He could not shake off that sinister incident of the night
before; he was a bag of nerves; he could hear skeletons creaking in
the wind. With the best will in the world, there was hardly enough
blood and pulse about him for this business. He had a thought too much
imagination. He made but a poor second-rate sort of rascal, after all.
All this time, though the lady was in the chamber, she had been so
still that the landlord had not noticed her. Turning his attention
to her now, the eavesdropper saw that she was standing hard by the
bed. She was no longer regarding the sleeper, however. Her head was
bent over something she held in her hand; and her tears were falling
fast and thick. In the very frenzy of her companion’s sufferings she
had restrained them; but now, when she had procured him some little
surcease, her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere, and her infinite
compassion extended to another.