might listen intensely, but the hope usurped the place of the deed; the
soldiers did not come. He had forgotten to tell Cicely to prepare the
King’s supper. Bah! he would want no supper. There was only twenty-five
minutes, though. If those thrice-cursed soldiers did not come soon, he
would be calling for it. Yea, and half an hour afterwards they would be
too late. Diggory Fargus and his men were due at half-past nine. And
when my Lord Farnham and his lady left his doors, the King would also
go.
In the mood of that particular moment these thoughts were bitter. A
moment before and a moment afterwards the landlord had half a hope that
his message might miscarry, and that the soldiers would not come at
all. It would be the loss of a fortune, it was true. But so extreme was
the nausea of his weakness, that he felt unable to bear the brunt of
all that must ensue.
The cries, the struggles, the prayers, the recriminations, the despair,
and possibly the blood, would they not be more than his manhood could
endure! But at this instant he was fearful lest the delay should be the
means of two prizes of great worth slipping out of his fingers. The
King would escape, and the cavalier and his wife would go unchallenged.
A fortune would be lost to him, and all because in the first place he
had wavered. Had he but been the man that all his life he had thought
himself, Joseph would never have been recalled, and the business would
have been over an hour ago.
Ten minutes to nine. Would the soldiers never come! The landlord was
resigning himself to his despair. He must tell Cicely to prepare the
King’s supper. Never was a weak man so well punished for his dalliance.
They would not be here in time; the King would escape.
As the chances of that contingency increased, and it looked more and
more probable that the landlord would not after all have to pass
through the most terrible ordeal of his life, greed, his ruling
passion, reasserted itself. He became the prey of the bitterest
disappointment.
At five minutes to nine he was lamenting the loss of a fortune. Alas,
they would be too late! He sat down in his fireside chair with a heavy
sense of personal misfortune. He had sweated blood over this bitter
business; and yet nothing had come of it. He had frightened the life
out of himself; he had stripped his craven heart naked before the
fierce eyes of his understanding; there were no longer unsuspected
secrets existing between his brain and his spirit; and there was not to
be a penny-piece to compensate him. He had lost a fortune. He had not
taken the tide at the flood. The hesitation of his weakness had been
fatal.
Three minutes to nine. There came sounds in the night suddenly. The
landlord sprang up from his chair, and ran to the keyhole of the
kitchen door. Horses!
Oh, God! they were coming, after all. His first thought was, not that
they were coming in time to earn a fortune for him, but that they were
actually coming, after all; and that the moment of his agony was at
hand. The wretched man clapped his hands to his ears; he could not
bear to hear the sounds of their arrival. He fell half fainting into
his chair. He covered his eyes; he buried his head in the cushions;
his lips moved in a wild, inarticulate prayer. But he could not efface
the things that were happening. The horsemen were pulling up under the
sign.
[Illustration:
CHAPTER
XIV
_The Divinity that
doth hedge a King_]
“Our landlord was right,” said the King.
Only too well could the people upstairs hear the sounds from the night
that were frightening the landlord out of his wits.
“Mother of Jesu, be our guide!” cried the poor lady. A crucifix was in
her hand. “Sire, whither canst thou flee?”
“It is too late for that, I fear, my dearest lady,” said the King.
“What we have anticipated for so many days hath come to pass.”
“No, Sire!” said the woman, wildly. “At all costs, you must get away.
Flee, Sire; flee anywhere! They must not, they shall not find you here!”
“They are already arrived,” said the King, still in the complete
possession of his composure. “They have ridden very fast; they are
dismounting beneath the window even now. Do you not hear their harsh,
loud voices? One can even catch the words they utter.”
All listened with wildly-beating hearts.
“See! that is the chamber,” they heard the loudest voice of all
exclaim, “with the light coming through the shutters. Now, do you watch
back and front; spread out all round the house. D’ye hear me? Do you
watch that window; ay, and do you watch the roof, too.”
The speaker was plainly the leader, and just as plainly was labouring
under a great excitement. The King smiled his charming, melancholy
smile.
“I would have you dry your tears, dear lady,” he said. “I think we can
all suffer this event with fortitude. It is hardly so terrible as it
seems.”
“Sire,” cried the woman, “you must not, you shall not be ta’en!”
“One man, and another one disabled and bedridden, cannot avail against
a multitude,” said the King. “Besides, violence should never be
resorted to in a lady’s presence, madam.”
The woman gazed distraught this way and that about the chamber. Again
and yet again she cried out that the King should not be taken. The King
laughed.
“There are but two places in which to hide, as I can see,” said he;
“and I do not think either of them would afford us much protection. One
is up the chimney; the other, under the bed.”
Already the clank of arms filled the kitchen below. Boots and spurs
rang on the stairs. They were coming up.
“They shall not enter!” cried the woman, with an almost childish
impotence.
She ran to the door and turned the key in the lock. The King rose from
his chair, still laughing. The act of the unhappy lady was that of a
child. What could a frail piece of wood avail against a company of
armed men? The door was tried and shaken.
“Open!” said a stern, excited voice.
“Oh, my King, my King!” the woman cried in her despair. “They must not,
they shall not take you!”
She set her back against the door. The next instant the first shivering
blow fell upon it from without. The lock started; the hinges groaned.
A second blow and the door was open, and the woman was driven hard
against the bed. But as the foremost man entered the chamber she turned
upon him, and made as if to thrust him back. Neither he nor those
behind him heeded her, however. They pressed inexorably forward into
the room.
The King stood awaiting them with an absolute indifference, as though
he were hardly conscious of their presence, let alone their errand.
He did not speak and he did not move. Indeed, so unconcerned did he
appear, that his features seemed to relapse into those of Will Jackson.
They grew utterly blank and destitute of emotion; and this, in unison
with his dirty, stained countenance and mean dress and appearance,
caused the first of the soldiers to enter the room, Captain Culpeper,
hardly to regard him at all.
He turned to the man in the bed. The face of Lord Farnham, worn with
illness as it was, and racked with pain, betrayed the strong excitement
under which he was labouring. His dress and the manner in which he lay
were far more calculated to attract attention to him than the King,
whose garb and impassivity were wonderful foils to his true condition.
For a moment Captain Culpeper, who apparently was not at all familiar
with the King’s appearance, looked at Lord Farnham a little doubtfully,
and in that moment Lady Farnham’s strange resolve was born.
As a cat notes the movements of a mouse, had the unhappy lady noted
those of the King’s enemies. Of so vastly different a nature was
she to the helpless landlord downstairs in the kitchen, that in lieu
of his paralysis at the approach of the terrible crisis she had a
preternatural keenness in all her faculties. Her mind was perfectly
clear, whatever the stress under which it was labouring. Her wits
were roused to a desperate acuteness. Her whole being was possessed
and dominated by one awful thought. The King’s life was at stake; the
King’s life must be saved.
The soldiers did not move an inch but what the lady saw them. An
instant of indecision and she was prepared to act upon it.
Captain Culpeper looked doubtfully a moment at Lord Farnham lying in
the bed. The next, and the woman had flung herself passionately forward
and buried her head beside him among his pillows.
“Oh, my King, my King!” she cried, putting her arms about her husband’s
neck. “It were better you had died rather than this. It is indeed the
end!”
The soldiers stood off respectfully. The grief of the woman was so
piteous, that it pierced even their rude souls. Lady Farnham continued
to weep convulsively upon her husband’s neck, calling him by the King’s
name, and pouring forth the cries of her despair. Captain Culpeper, who
had never seen Charles, and had only the vaguest ideas of what he was
like, did not suspect that the real King stood, in a servant’s livery,
behind him. The woman’s actions in those tragic circumstances were so
in keeping with them, and to the unpractised eyes of the soldiers the
man in the bed was the only person in the room who could in the least
fulfil their ideas of what a monarch was like, that the deception, once
it was set up, was not difficult to maintain.
Charles, with an alertness of mind that seldom forsook him, grasped the
scheme as soon as the woman’s first words were uttered. He prepared to
do his part when the chance arose. If he could only get through the
throng of soldiers filling the room, the stairs, the kitchen below,
and the inn entrance, without exciting a breath of suspicion, all was
not yet lost. As he stood hemmed in at present, the feat appeared
impossible. But fortune had already taken a strange turn: he was as yet
unrecognised; he must maintain the demeanour of the carefully trained,
impassive servitor. Therefore, while the lady bewailed his fate and
clasped her husband in her arms, and the abashed soldiers stood off
a little to permit her to do so, he neither spoke a word nor moved a
limb, but kept well behind the Captain with respectful solicitude of
bearing.
Lord Farnham, who was not so nimble of wit as his wife and Charles, was
at first quite bewildered by the woman’s behaviour. Then, in a flash
it came into his heart that it was to save the King. She was prepared
to sacrifice the lives of them both that that of the monarch might be
spared. The thought was no sooner in his mind than it changed his blood
into fire. As the arms of his wife clung closer about his neck, he grew
possessed with only one aspect of what was required of him. She was
calling on him to save the life of the King at the cost of his own.
He was called on to give his own life for that of the one man in the
world he feared and hated most. In that first brief instant of time,
Charles Stuart was not the King to him, but the man who had dared to
come so boldly between him and the woman he adored. It was asking too
much of flesh and blood.
Lord Farnham’s hatred of the King was so fierce, so active, so intense,
that in despite of his wife’s example, he strove to open his lips to
denounce him--to denounce him who had set poison into his soul simply
to while away an idle moment. But even as he was wrenched in the grip
of his desperate jealousy, he saw the King’s face.
It was regarding him with the same stoical calm as when he had raised
his pistol an hour or two before to fire upon it. The same look of
slightly amused indifference he thought he saw lurking in the eyes,
and creeping round the lips. The King had looked into his heart, and,
shrugging his shoulders at the drunken demon he encountered there, had
bidden him to do his worst.
Again the King’s face had been too much for his mad purposes. Before
his lips could form the words of betrayal, the resolve died stillborn
in his heart. With the King gazing upon him, it was useless to attempt
to utter them. He must lie there passively, and acquiesce in the
deceit that had for its object the sparing of the King’s life and the
sacrifice of his own.
Nay, he must do more than acquiesce in it. He must assist it; he must
promote it by every means in his power. For was not this hateful man
his King? Was he not the representative of all that three generations
of his family had recklessly spent their possessions and their blood
upon? Was he not the symbol--he, the dirty-faced man in the mean
clothes--upon which the gold, the tears, and the very lives of hundreds
of the noblest and proudest in the land had been lavished? And yet he,
a mere youth, was prepared to forego the first duty taught him by his
father, the father who had yielded up his life that he might teach it
with the better authority, that of fidelity to the King, simply because
his Majesty, overcome by the beauty of his wife, had gloried in the
fact.
He was perfectly sane now. The fever of his insanity had lasted less
than a minute. The man was his King; and where his sacred Majesty was
concerned, no man had a right to think of himself. As suddenly as he
had given way to his furious hate, he now became intoxicated by the
King’s divinity. As long as a breath remained faithful to his body, so
must he remain faithful to his sovereign. He must thank his God upon
his knees, humbly, that it was given to him to render even the smallest
service to his King.
He must aid his wife in her strange, mad, heroic efforts. The spirit to
conceive, to act, and to accomplish thrilled through his weak frame.
His lips grew articulate; his voice took a new tone, one wholly strange
to himself and even to those who were familiar with it.
“Madam,” he said, “be calm, I pray you. We must bow to the inevitable.”
Very gently he unclasped the arms of his wife from about his neck. He
then turned to the eagerly-listening soldiers with a grave, sad smile,
which yet had a delicate courtesy in it that insensibly disarmed them
with its charm.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I pray you be a little patient with us. We are
even now but recovering from a memorial we bore upon our person of the
melancholy Third. Be a little patient, I pray you, gentlemen, and we
will hope to rise from our couch when we have recovered of ourselves a
little, and greet you more formally.”
Captain Culpeper bowed humbly. Few men can look upon a King unmoved;
and a monarch in his last extremity may receive even the consideration
of his enemies.
“I beg you, Sire,” said the soldier, in a broken voice, “that you will
not submit your person to the least inconvenience. We find you so weak
and stricken, Sire, that we earnestly pray that to-night you will not
attempt to discompose yourself on our account.”
“You are more than kind, sir,” said the man in the bed; “a courteous
enemy, indeed. But we will rise and endeavour to extend a little
courtesy unto you and these gentlemen, as is your merit.”
The words were excellently spoken. They had a dignified grace, and,
above all, by some strange trick that the occasion had invoked, the
incomparable melancholy that might be expected to proceed from the lips
of the unfortunate King. The illusion was perfect. There was no longer
any need for the soldiers to look about in uncertainty for the King,
now that the man in the bed had spoken. His tones were unmistakable.
Charles, however, was no nearer escape than he was before. He was still
hemmed in, in the middle of the chamber, by the press of soldiery.
Some pretext must be found upon which he would be allowed to go
thence. But the least excitement of their suspicions must be avoided,
or he would be inevitably detained. And every moment that he loitered
now was fraught with the highest danger. Their great fear was the
landlord. They had reason to think him faithful, but not too liberally
endowed with wit. Should he appear in the chamber entirely ignorant
of the deceit that was being practised, he was quite likely to commit
some gross blunder by which the King would be discovered. And, too,
there was always the fear that some soldier, better informed than his
companions, might recognise the King in spite of his disguise and the
trick his friends were practising for his benefit.
Some means of exit must be provided for him at once, lest one of these
untoward things should happen. It was again the woman’s indomitable wit
that provided the stratagem. She rose from the couch as if endeavouring
to be calm at the express command of the King. The efforts she made to
control her emotion were visible to all.
“Sire,” she said to the man in the bed, “although you have signified
your intention of rising from your couch of sickness, I fear your
Majesty will not be able to do so until you have drunk of that
cordial the apothecary of Charmouth gave you. It is in your Majesty’s
saddlebag, is it not, hanging in the stable?”
Lord Farnham saw at once the significance of this. He had the wit to
grasp in which direction the ruse was leading.
“It is well thought on, madam,” he said. “And, indeed, now you speak
of it, I shall be hard put to, to rise without it. It were well if you
sent Jackson to procure it for us.”
The servitor still stood calm and impassive.
“Jackson,” said Lady Farnham, “you remember where we left his Majesty’s
cordial. It is lying in one of the saddlebags in the stable.”
Jackson bowed gravely in assent, without uttering a word, the model of
a well-trained serving-man.
“Sir,” said the lady, addressing Captain Culpeper, “will you allow this
man to get the cordial for the King? I am afraid his Majesty will find
it very needful.”
“Yes, indeed, madam,” said the soldier, eagerly. “Sergeant, tell them
to make way there for the King’s servitor. Also those on the stairs;
and do you see that they do so.”
“I thank you, sir,” said the man in the bed, with his courteous smile.
[Illustration:
CHAPTER
XV
“_Way there for the
King’s servitor_”]
The King obediently began to move with stolid precision towards the
chamber door. First one soldier stood back to let him pass; and then
another; and then another. He walked through the door of the crowded
chamber. With the same grave, steady, mechanical gait he reached the
stairs.
“Way there,” said the officious Sergeant, behind him, “for the King’s
servitor!”
With keen looks of curiosity, the men besieging the rickety old stairs
found a passage for him somehow, through which he contrived to squeeze
the royal person. His clothes and his body pressed against their
pistols and their breast-pieces; their breaths saluted his face; but
step by step he came down into the kitchen.
“Way there for the King’s servitor!” said the Sergeant again.
The kitchen was hardly so thronged as the stairs. There was one man in
it, however, who might undo all. From his chair in the chimney corner
peered the landlord’s astonished face.
“Way there for the King’s servitor!”
The landlord was huddled in his chair, as pale as death. His face was
drawn and hideous; his eyes were half closed, and the eyeballs had
shrunk to such a degree that they seemed to be buried in his head. But
when the King came down the stairs, and the great voice of the Sergeant
heralded his approach, Gamaliel wrenched his eyes open and sat up
in his chair. He was startled and unstrung. The whole thing was too
vivid for a dream, and yet it was impossible. These soldiers had come
expressly to fetch the King; and here was the King walking unmolested
out of their hands.
It was surely the King. There was his long, shambling form, his loose
limbs, his breeches and jerkin of leather, his impassive countenance.
Yes, it was the King looking at him, the landlord. Sure, there was a
half-amused gleam come upon the King’s face suddenly; and, see, he had
set a finger to his lips. He was demanding silence of him.
The old man knew, as he sat in his chair, that the King was escaping,
and that his own fortune was slipping away. He was perfectly conscious
of these two overmastering facts; he sat in the full possession of his
faculties. He had only to speak the word and the prize he had sweated
blood to secure was his. The word must be spoken.
“Way there for the King’s servitor!”
The King, ever with his slow, regulated, mechanical tread, was passing
through the men standing inside and outside the kitchen door.
The landlord opened his swollen lips, but his tongue had not the power
to move. The veins rose in his forehead into great distended knots; he
struggled frantically. The moment of a lifetime was passing; the King
was escaping, and Gamaliel Hooker knew it. One word--oh, God! only just
one little word, and the King would not go!
The man’s breath croaked and sobbed in his throat convulsively; but
nothing human was heard from his lips. The King had passed out of the
door; the officious Sergeant had escorted him through the last of his
men, and, having done so, was returning with his head in the air, in
a truly martial and self-satisfied manner. The landlord turned his
bloodshot eyes upon him; his fingers clutched the air; the veins in
his forehead continued to rise, until it seemed that they must break
through the bloodless skin of his forehead; his voice came at last in
an indistinct croak.
The landlord’s extraordinary appearance drew the attention of the
Sergeant.
“Why, man,” he said, “what ails thee?”
The landlord made a gurgle at the back of his throat.
“Speak! what is it?” said the Sergeant.
“The King,” said the landlord, forming a word at last.
“Yes, the King; what of him?” said the Sergeant. “He is lying on his
bed upstairs.”
“No, no, no!” said the landlord. “No, no, no!”
“Why, fool, what is the matter?” said the Sergeant, losing his patience.
“The King is----!”
The landlord fell back in his chair unconscious.
[Illustration:
CHAPTER
XVI
_The departing
Guests_]
The Sergeant unloosed the landlord’s coat and ordered one of his men to
procure water and dash it in his face. But Gamaliel had gone too far
to be brought round easily, and the time spent in restoring him to his
senses was the King’s deliverance.
Presently the landlord opened his eyes and looked about him. The
reaction brought with it a full measure of consciousness, and with it
a command of his faculties. He could think; and, now it was too late,
the power of speech was again vouchsafed to him.
“The King went out at that door!” he cried. “The King is escaped! That
was the King you conducted to the door.”
“What do you mean?” demanded the astonished Sergeant. “Speak, clown and
fool that you are! I tell you the King is upstairs.”
The landlord had now the power to unbosom his soul; and there was
such a singular fervour of conviction in his words, that the soldier,
vividly impressed by them, and bewildered by them too, made all haste
up the stairs to Captain Culpeper, who, as he supposed, was still
attending on the King.
The thoroughly alarmed and uneasy Sergeant came to him at the side of
the bed, and recited the landlord’s story.
“What is this you say, Sergeant Williams?” said the Captain.
His heart sank with an overmastering foreboding that the landlord
had spoken the truth. He had not known the King when he entered the
chamber, never having set eyes upon his Majesty before; and none of his
men knew him either--they had only hearsay to guide them. Could it be
that he was the victim of a trick. He turned furiously upon the man in
the bed and the woman beside him.
“My God!” he said, “you have duped me; you have deceived me. The King’s
servitor was the King. You have been playing a part.”
The man and the woman looked at him defiantly. Every instant they could
maintain their rôles was of the utmost advantage to the fugitive; and
in any case their own lives were forfeit.
“What do you mean?” said young Lord Farnham, striving to enact the
comedy to the bitter end.
“We have been tricked!” cried the Captain.
The truth had burst upon Captain Culpeper with stunning force. He saw
it all. He became as one beside himself. He stamped, he raved, he
swore. They had allowed the prize actually to slip away when their
hands were upon it.
The King must be pursued. They must pursue him hot-foot. Up hill and
down dale, over the rocks, into the very jaws of the sea they must hunt
the royal fugitive. He had but ten minutes start of them, and he was on
foot.
No, he was not on foot. It seemed that he had taken a horse from the
stable and had ridden away. Those who saw him do so believed that he
had the Captain’s permission, as he was said to be on some errand of
his Majesty lying upstairs.
The Captain gnashed his teeth. He drove his men out of the room before
him like a flock of sheep. There was not a precious instant to lose.
They must get to horse. Dark as it was, they must scour every yard of
the surrounding country. There never was such a noise and a rattle as,
with that, these soldiers fled down the stairs and forth of the kitchen
door.