king I choose, mine own. The other is but the prince in the fairybook;
the delicious unreality that obtrudes in the dreams of girls in the
middle of the night. You are the true prince of flesh and blood; he,
the vague shadow without an entity.”
The husband and wife were drawn together in a caress of reconciliation,
when footsteps were heard upon the stairs. They were followed by the
entrance of the King.
Now that their hearts were at peace one towards another, Charles’s
friends were able to attend to the terrible situation in which all
three found themselves. They both observed with something of a shock
that, although the King knew his life to hang on a mere thread, he
seemed wholly indifferent to his fate. It would have been superb had it
not been too grievous to contemplate.
“I have been talking with our landlord,” he said, “and I must say I
like him no better now I am his master instead of his servant. There
never was a countenance of such a concentrated villainy, I think. I
never saw such greedy, shifty little eyes as that man hath. I have
been talking to him for half an hour, but never once have I got him to
look me in the face. I am sure Judas Iscariot was a man of scruples by
comparison.”
“Sire,” said the woman, “your only hope lies in immediate flight. You
must go at once from here, Sire. That man, the landlord, is hungry to
betray you, and probably hath already done so. Oh, flee at once, Sire!”
“I know not where to go,” said the King.
“Anywhere, anywhere away from this hateful house, Sire,” said the lady.
“But you must go at once. Tarry an hour, and all may be lost.”
The King sat down in a chair, wearily. He yawned, and covered his eyes
with his hands.
“I think not to-day, madam,” he said, in a voice whose diffidence
hurt her like a blow,--“not to-day, I think. I have not the energy.
Besides, how tired I am of it all, how utterly weary! The game is not
worth the candle. My friends urge me to flee this way and that; they
conceal me in ditches, up trees, behind secret panels, and in priests’
holes, day after day. They bring me food in the dark; paint my face;
clap various disguises about me, each more hideous than the one before.
They turn me about from pillar to post; head me, cut me off, send me
back again; confound me with all manner of conflicting counsels. And
for what? That I may still fall into the hands of my enemies. I am not
now a yard nearer my freedom than I was when I rode from the field of
Worcester. I am wearied to death by the whole business; I am tired; I
yawn. I will take a day’s rest, the first for many a wretched month;
I will take it in your society, madam, and see if I have a better
inclination to continue this struggle of one unhappy man against
overwhelming circumstance to-morrow.”
“There will be no to-morrow, Sire,” said the lady. “Tarry here in this
accursed place till then, and you will be surely ta’en.”
Her voice had the fullest conviction in it. It was no leap in the dark,
no idle prophecy. Too well did she know the man downstairs with whom
she had had to deal.
The King shook his head and smiled bitterly. There was no banishing
the melancholy indifference from his voice. He was bored by the whole
affair, and he was such a wilful fellow, that he would not stir a
finger to save his own life if he had not the inclination. He was tired
and depressed and sick of heart. At this moment it suited him better
to be the prey of melancholy and to give rein to his sad fancies. He
preferred to utilise those misfortunes which made him so irresistible
in the eyes of all, particularly those of women.
It might have been that the extreme beauty of this compassionate lady
was working upon him to his own undoing. For certainly, now that the
wilful young King found himself in her presence, the desire uppermost
in his mind was to stay in it. His life hung on a thread, and with
it the hopes of thousands of his countrymen and the destinies of
nations; but because a beautiful woman had pitied him, for the nonce
he preferred to sit still and bask in her tears. To-morrow the mercury
might rise. He might then find the energy to save his neck, or to
attempt to do so; but to-day his inclination was far otherwise. He was
disposed to give the rein to his adorable melancholy; and to wrap his
cold spirit warmly in a woman’s sorrow.
The woman, cut to the heart by the young man’s wanton disregard of
his sacred duty, had, with the instinct that often is with those that
possess a singular potency, divined one factor of it. Her heart stood
still. The horror of the thought almost overcame her. That she, in her
own person, should be the unconscious and unwilling means of her King’s
destruction! Unhappy, wayward youth, that his blood should be upon her
head! The thought was impossible to endure.
“Sire,” she said wildly, “thou canst not have considered of all thy
dalliance means. The last person a king can think of is himself. His
responsibilities are more than personal. Sire, you must indeed go.
Consider the destiny of your race, consider your friends.”
The young King’s eyes sparkled at the noble passion of her countenance.
He had never seen a face so glorious. However, it did but confirm the
satisfaction he took from his present case. He was more than content.
To-morrow would be soon enough to begin his irksome toils again.
He loved to hear the throbbing tones of the woman; he loved to gaze
upon her face. The passionate tenderness that suffused her was like a
great and aged wine, that lulled his blood and warmed it, and made it
sweeter in the veins. Languid and indifferent as he was, sparks were
kindled in his eyes, and they were there for all to see. The woman saw
them. She shuddered, even as the prayer was on her lips. They seemed to
stop the beatings of her heart.
The husband saw the King’s eyes, too. The old hatred and jealous rage
were smouldering in him still. It would not call for much to fan them
into flame. His hands were clenched once more on the coverlet, a red
spot burned dully in the centre of his dead white cheeks. Involuntarily
he added a prayer of his own to that of his wife.
“Go, Sire, go!” he cried; “go now, else thou wilt be surely ta’en.”
The husband’s tones, however, had the passion without the magnetic
quality of the wife’s. They grated on the King’s ear. He looked up a
little startled at the man in the bed, and then he smiled.
“The solicitude of our friends,” he said, “grows more and
more remarkable. Never was a monarch encompassed by so much
disinterestedness.”
The sneer was so slight as to be hardly perceptible, but poor Farnham
felt ready to slay him for it. That young man, however, by his
ill-timed interposition, had retarded rather than advanced the end he
wished to attain. The King settled himself more snugly upon his chair.
He even requested the permission of the lady to put his weary legs
upon the settle standing beside the bed. He asked her to allow him to
have recourse to tobacco. A spice of mischief had now been added to his
inclination. He was more firmly resolved than ever that on this day he
would take his ease in his inn, in congenial society. Let to-morrow
come when it might; let the consequences be what they may.
The unhappy lady read the King’s doom in his demeanour. Everything was
lost. Only too well did she know that the man downstairs would eagerly
utilise each second the King tarried at his inn for his own profit.
Despair seized her. There was nothing to be done in the face of his
appalling indifference and his wilfulness. She knew, as surely as he
set his legs on the settle and rested his back against her husband’s
bed with something of a subtle, humorous mockery, that his fate was
sealed. Her foreboding heart told her that, for the King, to-morrow
would never dawn. God! he would be taken like a rat in a trap. He would
be taken there, in her husband’s chamber.
And who had caused him to be taken there? Who had been the unwilling
agent of his tarrying? The thought was too terrible to bear. She
clasped her hands to her bosom, where lay the King’s image in
miniature. Again the tears trembled in the woman’s eyes. The King
remarked them and took them to himself.
[Illustration:
CHAPTER
XI
_The Psychology
of cowardice_]
Since that first strange hour of the King’s revelation, Gamaliel Hooker
had sat in his chimney-side, except for the few brief minutes in which
he had done his Majesty’s behests. Very naturally, in the first shock
of the King’s appearance his wits had deserted him. An event of such
magnitude had never happened in his life before.
It was not likely to happen in it again.
Presently, with the King upstairs out of the way, and his generous
potations to strengthen him and to calm his nerves, the landlord’s
wits strayed back slowly, one at a time. To think that the King should
come in the guise of a serving-man, and that he should be such a blind
fool as not to recognise him when he came! And ye gods, to think what
sacrilegious hands he had laid upon the royal person! To think how
roughly, not to say angrily, he had addressed him! Gamaliel never came
so near being a sensitive man, as in the first horrified five minutes
of his returning faculties.
These were the secondary thoughts which occupied his mind at first. But
soon there were others. As he sat sipping his liquor and ruminating
over the events of the morning, he felt them dimly to be shaping
themselves. They were gradually coming forward. And they would have to
be grappled with and considered on their merits. The landlord stiffened
the fibres of his brain for the task.
One fact came uppermost. It would assert itself; it refused to be
blinked. Now that the King was indeed here in his inn, the utmost must
be made of him. For was there not to a poor man a fortune in the royal
person? To some people it might seem distasteful to sell the King; yea,
even to him, Gamaliel Hooker, when he thought of it in cold blood, it
did not seem a pleasant thing. It would have its compensations, though.
If, however, the King was to be taken in his house, he must act at
once. He would be hardly likely to tarry. And yet he might. As Will
Jackson, he had already stayed two days. He was probably waiting for
his friends. Still, it would be by no means safe to count upon his
remaining. There was yet one drawback to sending for the soldiers. When
they came they would most certainly take away the wounded cavalier as
well as the King. And Gamaliel had not yet had time to deprive him
and his wife of their money and jewels. That was indeed a fly in the
ointment. In a sense, it considerably lessened the price upon the head
of the King.
Still, it would be folly to risk losing the King’s price for the sake
of a sum paltry by comparison. He would dearly like to grasp every
penny. It was his nature; but in attempting to do so, he must not throw
away the substance for the shadow. With a sudden access of resolution
he called for his son.
“Joseph,” he said, in his lowest tone, “do you saddle the tit this
minute. I want you to ride right away to Woolden Magna, and ask for
Captain Culpeper at Master Parkin’s farm. You know it well. ’Tis on
the top of Woolden Hill, overlooking the sea. And when you see Captain
Culpeper, you are to whisper in his private ear: ‘The King, Charles
Stuart, is at the “Sea Rover”; do you come at once.’”
Joseph looked a little bewildered.
“The King!” he said, excitedly.
“Hush, hush, thou fool!” said the nervous Gamaliel. “If we are
overheard, we are undone.”
Turning round in his anxiety, he became aware that although Cicely the
serving-maid was ostensibly cleaning the warming-pan, she was really
listening with all her ears.
“My wench,” said her master, sharply, “do you go into the cellar and
broach that small barrel of October. I told ye to do so yesterday.”
When Cicely had disappeared to do his bidding, Gamaliel continued his
instructions.
“Now, Joseph,” he said, in the same eager whisper as before, “you
understand. You will do all this quickly and secretly, and your
father’s fortune is made. But, Joseph, I think instead o’ saying to
Captain Culpeper, ‘The King is at the “Sea Rover,”’ you had better say:
‘My father, Master Gamaliel Hooker, hath sent me to tell you that the
King is at the “Sea Rover.”’ The Captain must understand that I sent
ye, Joseph. But perhaps it would be better that I writ this information
down on a piece of paper, and signed my name to it. Nobody can then
take the credit of it from me.”
With this cunning end in view, he caused Joseph to procure him the
materials for writing. He thereupon committed the message to paper
with much anxious care and many laborious twistings of the mouth.
At last it was written and sanded, signed and sealed, and delivered
into Joseph’s hand. Five minutes afterwards Joseph’s nag stood at the
door, and Joseph himself was superintending Cicely whilst she put up
for him a hunch of bread and cheese to bear with him for his dinner.
Then it was that the landlord suddenly rose from his chair, and began
anxiously to hobble about the kitchen. Just as Joseph had put the bread
and cheese in his pocket, and was going out of the door, the landlord
stayed him.
“Joseph,” he said, hoarsely, “give me back again the paper I have writ,
and go and unsaddle the tit. We will let this matter bide a bit; I must
think upon it.”
He had his fourth glass of hot rum-and-water to aid him to do so. He
meditated upon the grave matter until his head was ready to split. He
was taken with a vacillation that he had never experienced before.
His natural instincts were all for betraying the King. There lay his
pecuniary advantage, and even his personal safety. Should it become
known that he had harboured the man, knowing him to be the King, he was
as good as dead. A hundred times he arrived at that plain, inevitable
conclusion; yet a hundred times, at the very moment he was about to
act, his resolution weakened, and then appeared to snap. Some strange
tremor would arise in the remotest recesses of his brain.
The landlord did not know what name to put to it. Conscience it was
not. He knew himself too intimately ever to bring such an accusation
against the power of his understanding. Pity it was not. Fear it was
not. It might be superstition, yet he hardly thought so. It was the
oddest thing in life, and not the least disconcerting. It was his plain
duty to himself to sell the King, and yet a vague scruple he was unable
to define had the power to restrain him.
He reasoned with himself; he fought with himself. It was too monstrous
that a chance which could never occur again could be allowed to slip
by. Long ago had he made up his mind what to do in the case of the
King’s coming to his inn. And here was the King upstairs; and here was
he going over the well-trodden ground again, reviewing all his settled
conclusions, when every minute was of the first importance. Any moment
the King might turn his back on the “Sea Rover” forever. Yes, he would
cast out the qualm that was debasing his mind. It was sapping all its
vigorous faculties. But try as he might, he could not do so. It was
ingrained in the very marrow of his brain.
Minute by minute his chances were ticking away. Had he only had the
strength of purpose to permit Joseph to start on his errand, he would
have been halfway there by now! The malady that was besetting him
had never come upon him before. It was the most singular he had ever
experienced, or even heard of. It had already caused him to act in a
manner for him unparalleled. To keep Joseph back for no cause whatever
was, the poor landlord considered, the act of a madman. It was so
entirely opposed to reason; never before had he been blind to its
dictates.
He called for his fifth glass of hot rum-and-water. By God! if he could
not do it sober, he would do it drunk! To think that he was throwing
away a fortune without the least reason for doing so! Again he got up
and began to hobble unsteadily about the kitchen floor. He began to
pant, to gasp; the sweat poured out of him, although the weather was
still bitterly cold. Was he the master of his own mind, or was he not?
That was what the whole thing amounted to. Had he lived to be sixty ere
he put that question for the first time? But he would answer it.
Yes; he would answer it. He tossed off the sixth glass. The tremor was
not quite so distinct in his brain. He felt a little stronger. He must
stiffen every nerve of his resolution. Never mind the sweat shining on
his forehead, his agitated breast, or his trembling flabby hands. He
was slowly getting his teeth upon the bit; he was getting some control
over this strange insanity.
The seventh glass, and he triumphed. It was a hard-won struggle; none
harder. But at last, as the shadows of the wintry evening came stealing
down the rocks, and Cicely lit the first candle, the struggle came to
an end. Each individual nerve in Gamaliel’s body rioted within him; he
was as unsubstantial as pulp; but at last his resolution was running
clear and strong. The little flickering tremor that had a thousand
times routed it and put it to shame was now dead. Hot rum-and-water had
ultimately done its business. The crisis was past. He was master of
himself after all.
In a voice so hoarse it resembled the croak of a raven, he summoned his
son a second time.
“Joseph,” he said, “I want you to go now. Go speedily. Time presses;
the business is very urgent. And when you come to Captain Culpeper,
tell him to make all haste. It is now a little after four o’clock; at a
little after eight he and his men should be at the door. Be a good lad
now. Do not tarry an instant, and your old father’s fortune is made,
likewise your own.”
Joseph listened to the low, excited utterance of the landlord in a
purely mechanical manner. He was neither uplifted nor depressed; he
was neither surprised nor disappointed. He took the sealed paper once
more in his hands, and stepped out without a word into the sea-broken
silence of the wintry evening. A little afterwards his horse was out of
the stable, and he rode away.
The landlord still hobbled up and down the inn kitchen, until he heard
the hoofs of the horse die away in the distance. He then sat down in
his chair by the fireside for the first time for more than an hour. His
head fell onto his chest. He was utterly worn out and overcome.
[Illustration:
CHAPTER
XII
_The Mariner_]
Joseph once away on his errand, the landlord felt easier. He had no
longer to fear his own irresolution. Things must take their course.
Therefore, he sat down and waited through the weary hours, with a
conviction steadily arising in his mind that after all he was playing
a fine, a manly, not to say a noble, part. It calls for no little
courage to sell one’s king for a few pieces of money. Gamaliel, now he
came to look back upon this transaction, or at least the inception of
it, felt something perilously like pleasure glow within him. He did not
glory in his deed as yet; but the fact that it had cost him so many
pains to achieve, invested himself in his own mind with some attributes
of the heroic.
Therefore he sat down to wait through the weary hours, very well
content with himself. With other things he was hardly so. He was
mortally afraid that the rare prize upstairs might quit his roof ere
the soldiers came. Or his friends might intervene; or a thousand and
one things, at present unforeseen, might happen. In any case the
landlord was wholly a man of peace. Nothing did he desire less than
there should be a scene of bloodshed on his kitchen floor. God forbid!
The thought turned him cold. He had a constitutional aversion to
blood. Not only did it make such a mess, but it also had a habit of
lingering in the mind for many days to come. Besides, like many men of
brains, endowed with a great activity of imagination and intelligence,
he clearly felt himself to be at a disadvantage in the presence of
violence. He had no skill in the use of arms; he preferred to work
with subtler weapons; and when he saw them flying about, he was apt to
anticipate their consequences more keenly than another. He was not a
coward; his great action of that evening, which would change the course
of history, was a sufficient refutation of any charge of that sort; but
in the matter of actual violence, that ignoble argument of inferior
wits, he was not seen at his best.
He hoped to God that to-night there would be no blood spilt at his
inn. His poor nerves still ticked in his head as loudly as the spider
running up the wall. He was, indeed, very overwrought. He felt that
it would be more than his body and soul could endure, should there
be a scene of violence this evening in his house. He revolted from
the thought. He did hope the young King would have the good sense to
acquiesce passively in his fate when it confronted him. He knew that
there were two cases of pistols upstairs at least, not to speak of
daggers. Probably the presence of a lady would restrain him.
Still, after all, kings were not in the habit of fighting, except
on the field of battle. They were much too high up in the world for
that. If the King’s numerous friends, who certainly were not a farther
distance from the royal person than his safety rendered desirable,
would only keep off till to-morrow, all would be well. If they turned
up when the soldiers came, the distracted landlord was sure he should
run out of the house and hide himself, even if he lost the King’s price
thereby. To-night he felt very old and weak and overborne.
The time seemed interminable. It was as though the hands of the
ruthlessly slow old clock in the corner would never go round. Five
struck, and then six, without engendering much excitement in the
landlord’s heart. The tardy passing of the minutes between six and
seven, however, occasioned the first flutter in his spirit. It was
tentative mainly; the time for the furious beatings of his blood and
the palsy of his limbs was not yet at hand.
At about twenty minutes to seven the first incident of that strange
night occurred. The kitchen door was suddenly flung open, with never a
“With your leave” or a “By your leave,” and a tall man entered. He was
attired in a great hat, whose wide flapping brims were tied down over
his ears and under his chin, doubtless that it might not fall a prey to
the rude sea-wind; whilst a heavy cloak of a sanguine colour covered
him from his neck to the calves of his legs, and left but a pair of
extremely muddy riding-boots to be seen below. His voice was loud and
high, and singularly penetrating. He addressed the landlord without the
preface of any ceremony.
“Landlord,” he said, “you have lately taken a new servant-man into your
service, I believe, who goes by the name of Jackson. I wish to see him.”
The landlord was full of tremors, but rum-and-water made him bold. This
was doubtless a friend of the King, come to take his Majesty away into
a safer seclusion.
“The man Jackson is no longer in my service, sir,” said the landlord,
shortly. Even as he uttered this, he thought it rather happy, it had
the merit of being perfectly true.
“When did he quit it?” asked the tall man, striving to conceal his
excitement.
“This morning,” said the landlord.
“Did he go alone?”
“To the best of my belief, yes,” said the landlord, firmly.
“How odd!” said the other. “Did he give a reason for his departure, and
did he say whither he was going?”
“He was dismissed my service, sir,” said the landlord, with the
inspiration of his rum-and-water. “His ways were not my ways, d’ye
see, and he had to go. Not only was he the worst serving-man I have
ever had, but I had occasion to doubt his truthfulness, not to say his
honesty.”
“Ah! yes, yes, to be sure!” said the visitor, with a remarkable
admixture of laughter and amazement. “How very odd, how very odd;
’od’s fish, how very odd! But, after all, you were his master.”
“I was, the more is the pity,” said the landlord.
All this time he was fervently hoping that his unwelcome visitor would
go, lest anything should happen to detain him. Whoever he was, he
was determined that the King should not see him if he could help it.
Charles was at present perfectly settled and quiet upstairs, and he
seemed likely to remain so for some time to come if nothing occurred
to disturb him. If possible, he must see nobody ere he saw Captain
Culpeper and his men.
The strange visitor, still repeating “How odd; ’od’s fish, how very
odd!” in various inflections of tone, was preparing to take his
departure, when the particular thing occurred that the landlord so
desired to avert. The stairs began to creak, and the King’s long legs
were observed to be coming down them.