One dark November afternoon in the year 1712 a horseman, riding
westwards from Cobham village, in Surrey, pulled up at the junction of
the road with the Kingston and Guildford highway, and dismounted in
order that he might read the terms of a proclamation pasted upon the
signpost there.
“Whereas,” ran the advertisement, “Bernard Macartney, Captain in her
Majesty’s forces, stands charged with the wilful murder of James
Douglas, Duke of Hamilton, in Hyde Park on the 15th of this present
month, a reward of _two hundred pounds_ is hereby offered to any
person or persons who shall discover and apprehend, or cause to be
discovered or apprehended, the said Captain Bernard Macartney, to be
paid by the Lords Commissioners of her Majesty’s Treasury upon his
being apprehended and lodged in any one of her Majesty’s gaols.”
The traveller rose from his perusal with a grin.
“And so they bell the cat,” said he. “Now, if _I_ were this
Macartney--I say _if_ I were--methinks I should feign to be one of my
own pursuers lusting to gain the reward. There’s no disguise for some
men like honesty, nor, in certain cases, no self-help like
self-sacrifice.”
He remounted and pushed leisurely on his way, cutting across the
high-road, and taking the track for Byfleet, which ran herefrom over
Cobham Heath, a lonely and near treeless waste. Naturally, as he rode,
his mind was busy over the event which had produced the
proclamation--the recent fatal duel, that is to say, between the Lords
Hamilton and Mohun. The sensation the affair had caused was due as
much to the reputed foul play which had characterised it as to the
exalted rank of its principals and its tragic termination. The
meeting--ostensibly the result of a dispute concerning some family
property--had taken place at seven in the morning near the Ring in
Hyde Park--that fashionable “dusty mill-horse drive” which lay off
Tyburn Lane, about mid-way between the Tyburn and Hyde Park Gate
turnpikes--and there were six concerned in it, three of a side. The
provocation, given and accepted, had been, it was rumoured rightly or
wrongly, a mere blind to a premeditated murder. His Grace of
Hamilton--then on the eve of his departure for Paris as the Queen’s
Ambassador, and the holder of a watching brief, as it were, on behalf
of St. Germains--was notoriously obnoxious to Marlborough and the
Whigs, and the quarrel, the whisper went, had been thrust upon him at
the hands of a creature of the Duke’s, a discredited brute and
libertine, whose challenge, under the circumstances, he might very
well have ignored. But his Grace had an invincible spirit, and the
desire, perhaps, to rid the world of an intolerable ruffian; and so
the meeting had occurred. At its outset, without any feint of
punctilio, the two had rushed at one another more like hyenas than
men, a world of long-smothered exasperation, no doubt, nerving their
hands; and, amidst the rain of stabs and blows that followed, Mohun
had been the first to fall. And while he had lain on the ground,
gasping out his life, the other, also sorely wounded, leaning above
him, Macartney, it was said, had run up behind and, giving the Duke
his death-blow, had escaped with his surviving companion in iniquity.
The Duke had been helped towards the Cake-house--that little, pretty
rustic lodge, with its green trees and pond, whither fashion was used
to resort for its syllabubs and “pigeon-pie puff”--but had died on the
grass before he could reach it. And so the matter had ended for all
but the absconding seconds.
“And those,” thought the traveller, “can spell out proclamations, no
doubt, with the best of their pursuers. I put my money on Macartney.”
He was a spare, small-boned man, with a delicate, invalidish face and
an expression on it of impudent temerity. His voice cracked when he
raised it, and he was prone to spasms of laughter which hurt his
chest. His hat, his heavy surtout, his great jack-boots seemed all too
large for him, like a preposterous shell to a very little tortoise;
but he rode with spirit, making small account of his trappings and the
lonely road and sinister weather. In fact, as with many sickly
constitutions, his elasticity and muscular strength were, relatively,
abnormal.
The heath, desolation manifest, rolled on before him in brown,
wind-shivered billows; the sky was like a slab of grey stone, roofing
a dead world. There was a wolfish snarl in the air, a threat of coming
snow.
Suddenly, without a note of warning, a burst and ring of hoofs sounded
in the road close behind him. Wheeling on the instant, he observed a
stranger, the noise of whose approach had evidently fallen deadened on
the spongy turf-side by which he had ridden.
“How now!” demanded the traveller, in his quick little voice: “what
the devil do you, springing upon me like this?”
“Pardon, pardon,” cried the stranger. He rode up, breathing as if
winded. “I am a timid man, sir, and the prospect looked wicked, and,
seeing you going before, I ventured to push on to crave your company.
This place hath a dreary notorious reputation, I am told, and I am
very nervous.”
His jovial face, twinkling, for all the cold, with perspiration,
seemed to belie his assertion. It was broad, and flat of surface, with
the features in low relief; and its mouth was so wide that, when
distended in a smile, all above appeared detachable, like the lid of a
comic tobacco-jar. By the tokens of his greasy jasey, with the little
soiled round hat on top, and the clerical cut of his coat, he might
have been a damaged parson, who had taken the wrong turning and missed
his way to paradise.
The other conned him speculatively.
“What made you ride on the grass?” said he.
“Why, I feared to alarm ye,” answered the newcomer, “and so miss the
chance of a way-fellow.”
“Gad-so!” exclaimed the traveller. “And whither, by your leave, may
your road lead you over this same wicked heath?”
“Sir,” said the stranger, “if the question is scarce pertinent, the
candour of my cloth responds. I am riding to seek preferment of the
Queen’s own Majesty at Windsor. Is the confidence to be reciprocal?”
“I am escaping from my creditors,” said the small man. “Shall I turn
out my pockets, that you may witness to their emptiness?”
The stranger endeavoured to look grave.
“This suspicion,” he said, “is unworthy.”
“Of whom?”
“Of us both, sir. You make me fear I have misplaced my confidence.”
“In the richness of the bone you proposed to pick? Very possibly you
have.”
They were slowly pacing their horses all this time side by side. The
road was utterly deserted, the prospect of the dreariest. A straggle
of withered thorns, running darkly up the slope of a low hill to the
left, alone broke the almost treeless desolation.
“Ride on, sir, ride on,” said the stranger in an offended voice.
“Better my own fearful company than a comrade so mistrustful.”
He pulled on his rein and fell back. The other did the same.
“Great God!” cried the stranger. “Who’s this?”
Almost without a sound, it seemed, a horseman had broken from the
shelter of the thorns, and drawn up in the middle of the track,
barring their way. In the same instant, the clerical gentleman, who
had fallen again behind, whipped a pistol from his skirt-pocket and
shot his companion’s horse dead. The bullet entered behind the
shoulder, and the beast, doubling up its forelegs, pitched and
collapsed. Its rider, flung over its head, gathered his wits with
agility, and sat up to encounter the vision of a couple of rascal
faces looking down upon him.
“Do me the justice to attest,” he said to the pseudo-parson, “that I
never for a moment believed in you.”
The other beamed over him, his pistol still smoking in his hand.
“And be damned to your scepticism!” said he. “For may I never launch
soul on its flight again if I am not what I look, a broken
hedge-parson.”
“Enough of that, Tom,” said the second rogue, a most butchering,
determined-looking scoundrel. “His Honour’s swollen head calls for
some blood-letting. Stand away while I give him t’other barrel.”
“What! are you going to murder me?” cried the victim.
“Aye, we are that,” answered the ruffian. “A dead man’s easier
stripped than a live one, and makes less complaint after.”
“I’ll give you a hundred reasons for sparing me?”
“Hold, Jemmy!” said the parson. “The pick of a hundred will do. What
reason of reasons, Mr. Bankrupt?”
“Why, the money in my pocket, which, if it’s more than a beggarly five
guineas, may I eat my words.”
“That you shall, and well peppered, I warrant you.”
“I’ll give you my bond for fifty, to be paid on personal
presentation.”
“‘A bird in the hand,’ mister. Is that your best?”
“You’d never murder a man for five guineas?” cried the traveller, his
voice cracking.
“Five guineas!” echoed the parson with an oath: “five testers; five
groats; five copper farthings--what life is worth more? Give him the
lead, Jemmy.”
“Hold! I’m Captain Macartney!”
“Captain----! Phew--w--w!”
A moment’s intense silence followed. The two amazed ruffians looked at
one another with eyes into which a gleeful cupidity was slowly born.
“Captain!” Their gaze was transferred to the sitting figure. Jemmy
lowered his pistol. The parson was all one ineffable smile.
“It fits, by God!” said he. “Why did it never occur to me? Two hundred
pound, Jemmy, my boy! There’s Sir Townley Shore handy. We must risk
it. Up with him before you. You’ve given us the best reason the last,
Captain, my love. And you prefer the gallows to a bullet? Well, that’s
just a matter of taste.”
They bound his arms behind him, and Jemmy set him before him on the
big Flanders mare that he rode; and so they carried their prize,
choosing the obscure ways in preference, to the house of Sir Townley
Shore, the great county magistrate and magnate of Stoke d’Abernon,
which lay a couple of miles the other side of Cobham.
There was a fine excitement in the Court when it was known that the
notorious Captain was apprehended. Sir Townley, who was just come in
and sitting down to his dinner, ordered in his staff, with a stout
ranger or two for extra support, and sent for the prisoner and his
guard. But the moment he clapped eyes on the former: “Why, Jack,”
cried he in astonishment, “what the plague do you in this company?”
The two rogues, at that cry, stiffened aghast; but their captive
advanced with a grin.
“I’ll tell you, Townley,” said he. “I’d not left you and the White
Lion Inn a quarter of an hour, when, going on my way, these two
gentlemen shot my horse, and, falling upon me, would have murdered me
too had I not thought of the expedient of calling myself Macartney;
whereby I not only incited them, hoping for the reward, to carry me
into a place of safety, but I have the pleasure of presenting you with
a couple of very complete gallows-birds for your trussing.”
He turned on the paralysed ex-cleric with a little gasp of laughter.
“You have come the right road for preferment, parson,” said he. “You
are going to be exalted like Haman.”