THE NIGHT-WATCH.
It was an easy thing enough, as Walter Grange had said, to make
acquaintance with Carew of Crompton, and possible even to become his
bosom friend at a short notice, for his friendships, all made in wine,
at play, or in the hunting-field, were soon cemented; but then, if the
introduction was effected in an unpropitious time or manner, it was like
enough to end in affront or downright insult. A gulf might be fixed just
where you wanted a causeway, and of this--though he had feigned to
inquire about it so innocently of the honest park-keeper--Richard Yorke
was well aware. He had, as has been hinted, come down to Crompton with
the express view of throwing himself in the way of its eccentric master,
and to do so opportunely, and he was content to bide his time. Thus,
though the autumn had far advanced, and the time had come for men of his
craft to hasten from the dropping, dripping woods, no longer fair, to
hive at home their sweet memorials of the summer time, Richard remained
at Crompton, not willingly, indeed, nor even patiently, but with that
sort of dogged resolve which is engendered, even in a restless spirit,
by long watching. He had stopped so long that he would not now give up
his watch; the fortress, indeed, showed no more sign of breach than when
he first sat down before it; but still he would not raise the siege.
This persistency excited no surprise in his house companion; Walter
Grange was no gossip, nor curious about other men's affairs; it was
easy, even for him, to see that his tenant had a proud stomach, and he
had set down his talk about desiring an introduction to Carew as merely
another phrase for wishing for a good chance of disposing of his wares
to best advantage in that market to which so many of such various
callings thronged. He did not think, as he had honestly confessed, that
there was much chance of the Squire becoming a patron of the fine arts,
but he wished the young fellow luck, and was glad, for more than one
reason, that he staid on.
It was at least three months after his young lodger's arrival that
Walter burst into his sitting-room one afternoon, without his usual
knock at the door, with the great news that he had just had word, by a
safe hand, that a gang of poachers would be in the Home Park that very
night, and that all the staff of keepers would be out in waiting for
them.
"You know," said he, quite indignant that the young man did not show his
enthusiasm, "you told me I was to be sure and let you know, Mr. Yorke;
but, of course, you needn't make one of us unless you like."
"Oh yes, I'll come," laughed the young fellow--"that is, provided it is
fine. I can't fight in the rain, even for the game laws."
"It'll be a lovely night, Sir, with just enough of moonlight to know
friends from foes," went on the keeper, rubbing his hands, and
unconsciously moistening them in his excitement. "I knew you'd come. I
said to myself: 'Mr. Yorke'll never turn tail;' and we shall be really
glad of your help, for the fact is we are short-handed. Napes is down
with the rheumatics, and two of our men are away from home, and there
ain't time to send to the out-beaters. So we shall be only
nine--including yourself--in all. Let's see," continued the old man,
counting on his fingers: "there'll be Bill Nokes, and Robert Sloane,
and--"
"Spare me the roll-call, Grange," interrupted the painter; "and tell me
where I am to be, and when, and I'll be there."
"Very good, Sir," said the keeper, musing. "I'll put you at the Squire's
oak--the one as you drawed so nicely--that'll be at the Decoy down
yonder, and close to home. You have only to use this whistle, and you'll
get help enough if you chance to be set upon; there will be a fight, no
doubt. They must be a daring lot to poach the near park, within sound of
the house: they ain't a done that these ten year; for the last time they
brought Squire and his bull-dogs out, which was a lesson to one or two
of 'em. However, he's for town, they say, to-day."
"All right, Grange; we must do without him, then," returned the young
man, cheerfully. "What time am I to be on guard?"
"You should be there at ten at latest, Sir. There'll be plenty of us
within whistle-call, you understand. But nobody will come aneist you as
has any business there; so whoever you see you must go in at."
Yorke nodded, smiling, and doubling his white fists, hit out
scientifically with his right.
"You're one after the Squire's own heart," exclaimed the keeper,
admiringly; "and I do wish you could foregather with him. What a reach
of arm you've got, and what a play of muscle! The fist is the weapon for
a poacher--that is, I mean _agin_ him--if you only know how to use it. I
can depend on the Decoy being guarded by ten, Sir, can I? for I must be
off to the head-keeper's with the rest."
"Yes, you can."
"Then, good-by, Sir, for the present."
"Now what a poor fool is that!" soliloquized the young painter,
contemptuously, as the door closed upon his late companion. "To think
that I should risk my life against a poacher's on even terms! Of course,
if they suffice, I shall only treat him to my knuckles; but if not--if
he be a giant, or there be more than one of them--then here is a better
ally than mere bone and sinew." Yorke took out of a drawer a
life-preserver, made of lead and whalebone, struck with it once, to test
its weight and elasticity, then slipped it into his shooting-jacket
pocket. "That will enlarge their organs of locality," said he, grimly;
"they will not forget the Decoy Pond in a hurry whose heads knock
against this."
He made a better supper than was usual with him that night; filled his
pocket-flask with brandy, and his pouch with tobacco; and then making
sure that the whistle Grange had given him, and which he had hung round
his neck, was within easy reach of his fingers, sallied out, well
wrapped up as to his throat, and with his hands in his pockets. If
Richard Yorke was doomed not to have life made easy for him, he made it
as easy as he could. He never omitted a precaution, unless it gave him
trouble to take it out of proportion to the advantage it conferred; he
was never imprudent, unless the passion of the moment was too strong for
him; but sometimes, unfortunately, his mere whims were in their
intensity passions, and his passions, while they lasted, fits of
madness. He was a landscape-painter, partly because he had some taste
that way, but chiefly because he hated regular work of any sort. He had
no real love for his art, and not the least touch of poetic feeling. He
knew an oak from a beech-tree, and the sort of touch that should be used
in delineating the foliage of each; a yellow primrose was to him a
yellow primrose, and he could mix the colors deftly enough which made up
its hue. His education had been by no means neglected, but it had been
of a strange sort; every thing he had learned was, as it were, for
immediate use, and of a superficial but attractive character. The
advocates of a classical curriculum would have shaken their heads at
what Richard Yorke did know, almost as severely as at his lack of
knowledge. He had read a good deal of all kinds of literature, including
much garbage; he could play a little on the piano, and speak French
with an excellent accent. In a word, he had learned every thing that had
pleased him, as well as a little Latin and some mathematics, which had
not. He knew English history far better than most young Englishmen; but
the sight of tomb or ruin had never made his heart pulse faster with an
evoked idea by a single beat. Historical associations had no charm for
him. This mighty oak, for example, under the shadow of which he now
stands sentry, and which he had transferred so deftly to his portfolio,
has no longer any interest for him. He has "done it," and its use and
pleasure are therefore departed in his eyes. He knows quite well that
though it is called the Squire's, in token, probably, of some wholesale
slaughter of wild-ducks effected by Carew from its convenient cover,
that this tree is hundreds of years old--the oldest in all the chase. He
has read the "Talking Oak," for indeed he can quote Tennyson by the
yard, and in dulcet voice; and it would have been natural enough, one
would think, in such a time and place, that some thoughts of what this
venerable monarch of the forest must have witnessed would perforce come
into his mind. The same moonlight that now shines down between its
knotted naked branches must have doubtless lit on many a pair of lovers,
for it was ever a favorite place for tryst in by-gone years. The young
monk, perhaps, may here (when Crompton was an abbey) have given double
absolution, to himself and to the girl who confessed to him her love.
Roundhead maiden and Cavalier gallant must many a time have forgotten
their political differences beneath this oak, as yet a tree not sacred
to royalty; nay, perhaps even those of. York and Lancaster may here have
been compounded for, in one red rose of a blush. Bluff Harry had haply
hunted beneath its once wide-spreading arms, and certainly the martyr
king had done so, with a score of generations of men of all sorts, dead
and gone, God alone knows whither. Though no more the bugle sounded, nor
the twanging bow was heard, there was surely an echo of their far-away
music in the young painter's ear! No, there was none.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter,
was a line Richard Yorke had read, perhaps, but certainly had not
understood. He heard the bare branch creak and sway above his head as
the wind slowly took it; he heard the night-jar croak, as it flew by on
silent wing; and now and then he heard, or thought he heard, the sound
of the voices of his fellow-watchers a great way off, which was his only
touch of fancy. They were all silent, and in close hiding.
It is not to be supposed, however, that his mind was fixed upon the
matter in which he was engaged, so that other subjects were thereby
excluded from it. The repression of night-poaching was not a matter that
interested him either in principle or practice. He would just as soon
that the keeper had not reminded him of his offer to share his
watch--the whim that had once seized him to do so had died away; but
having once promised his company, he was not one to break his word. So
here he was.
The young man's thoughts were busy, then, neither with the past nor the
present, but with the future--that is, _his own_ future. The path of
life did not lie straight before Richard Yorke, as it does before most
men of his age, and in fact it came, so to speak, abruptly to a
termination exactly where he stood.
In such a case, the choice of the wayfarer becomes boundless, and is
only limited by the horizon and circumstances. As matters were, he had
scarcely enough to live on--not nearly enough to do so as his tastes and
habits suggested; and yet, by one bold stroke, with luck to back it, he
might, not "one day" (_that_ would have had small charm for him), but at
once, and for his life-long, be rich and prosperous. He could not be
said to have expectations, but his position was not without certain
contingencies, the extreme brilliancy of which might almost atone for
their vagueness. It was from a dream of future greatness, or what seemed
to him as such, wherein he saw himself wealthy and powerful, surrounded
with luxury and with the ministers of every pleasure, that he was
suddenly and sharply awakened by a trifling incident--the snapping of a
dead twig in the copse hard by. In an instant the glittering gossamer of
thought was swept aside, and the young fellow was all ear and eye. The
wind had dropped for some time, and the silence was intense; that solemn
hush seemed to pervade the forest which some poet has attributed to the
cessation of spiritual life, as though the haunters of the glade were
_waiting_ for the resumption of their occupations until the interloping
mortal should pass by. Nothing stirred, or, if so, it was motion without
sound, as when the full-feathered owl slid softly through the midnight
air above him. Not a dead leaf fell; and where the leaves had fallen
there they lay. How was it, then, that a twig broke? The deer were
couched; the pheasants sat at roost, their heads beneath that splendid
coverlet, their wing; and though there were creeping things which even
midnight did not woo to rest in that vast wilderness, Yorke had imbibed
enough of forest lore to know that the noise which he had heard was
produced by none of these. A rat in the water-rushes, or a stoat pushing
through the undergrowth, would have announced itself in a different
fashion. Again the sound was heard, and this time it was no longer the
crackling of a twig, but the breaking of a branch; then cautious
footsteps fell upon the frosty leaves, and, with a light leap on the
bank that fringed the copse, the poacher stood in the open.
That such he was, Yorke had no doubt whatever; the moonlight streamed
full upon him, and showed him to be none of the Crompton keepers,
unless, indeed, he was disguised. For an instant, it passed across his
mind that this might be Walter Grange himself--he was about the same
height and build--come to play a trick upon him to test his courage, for
the man's face was blackened like a burglar's; but this idea was
dismissed as soon as entertained. The keeper, he reflected, thought far
too seriously of the night's doings to make jest of them, and besides,
he could never have sprung upon the bank as yonder fellow did, his
limbs, though sturdy, being stiff with age and occasional rheumatism.
The intruder seemed quite alone, and it was probable, while his
confederates paid attention to the pheasants in the Home Park, that he
was bent upon making a private raid upon the sleeping water-fowl. He
had no gun, however, nor, as far as Yorke could make out, any other
weapon; and as soon as he had got near enough to the pond to admit of
it the watcher sprang out from beneath the shadow of the oak, and
placed himself between the stranger and the copse from which he
had emerged. Yorke was the taller by full six inches, and believing
himself to be more than a match for his antagonist, had not so
much as laid finger on his concealed weapon; but if he had now
any thought of doing so, it was too late; for, with a cry
of eager rage, the man turned at once, and sprang at him like a tiger.
It needed all his skill and coolness to parry the fierce blows which
fell upon him like hail, and which he had scarcely time to return. Yorke
was an adept at boxing, and in the chance encounters into which a
somewhat dissipated and reckless youth had led him, he had been an easy
victor; but it now took all he knew to "keep himself." An instant's
carelessness, or the absence of a hand in search of that which he would
now have gladly seized, and his guard, would have been broken through,
and himself placed at his foe's mercy. Nothing but his long reach
preserved him from those sledge-hammer blows, which seemed as though
each must break the arm they fell upon. As for using his whistle, the
opportunity, of course, was not afforded him; and, moreover, he had no
breath to spare for such a purpose. Breath, however, was also a
desideratum with the poacher, and the more so inasmuch as he accompanied
every blow--as Brian de Bois-Guilbert was wont to hammer home his
mace-strokes with "Ha! Beauseant, Beauseant!"--with some amazing oath.
It is recorded of an American gentleman, much given to blasphemy, that
he could entertain "an intelligent companion" for half a day with the
mere force and ingenuity of his expletives; and this singular talent
seemed to be shared by Richard Yorke's antagonist. That one of the most
accomplished roughs of the Midlands had fallen to the young painter's
lot in that night's _mêlée_, he could not for a moment doubt; but this
reflection did not go far to soothe him. He did not care for fighting
for its own sake, while his pride revolted against thus being kept at
bay by a brutal clown. If he could but get the chance, he made up his
mind to end this matter once for all, and at last the opportunity seemed
to be afforded. The poacher suddenly stepped back to the very margin of
the pond, a long oval piece of water, and not very deep, and quick as
thought, Yorke drew his deadly weapon. But at the same moment there was
a sound of racing feet, and down the drive there came two men at
headlong speed. Yorke did not doubt that they were poachers; but his
blood was up, and he was armed--he felt like an iron-clad against whom
three wooden ships were about to pit themselves. "Where I hit now I make
a hole," he muttered, savagely, and stood firm; nor did he even put his
lips to the whistle that hung round his neck.
[Illustration: "THE MAN TURNED AT ONCE, AND SPRANG AT HIM LIKE A
TIGER."]
But as the men came nearer, in the foremost he recognized Walter Grange,
and at the same moment saw his late antagonist plunge wildly into the
ice-cold pond, and begin to wade and swim across it.
"Cuss him! I durst not do it," gasped Walter, just too late, and
mindful, even in his passionate disappointment, of rheumatic pains.
"Dash after him, Bob, while Mr. Yorke and I run round."
But Bob had had the rheumatism too, or had seen the unpleasant effects
of it in others, and shook his shaggy head.
A mocking laugh burst from the poacher, already nearing the opposite
bank.
"Dang him! If I'd got a gun, I'd shoot him. Run, man!" cried Walter,
excitedly--"run, man, run! He can never get along in his wet clothes."
And off the two men started in hot pursuit.
Yorke watched them toiling round the pond, while the poacher landed,
shook himself like any water-dog, and leisurely trotted off.
"It was lucky for him," murmured he, as he replaced his weapon in his
pocket, "that the help came on _my_ side;" then lit his pipe, and
leisurely walked home.
Three hours later returned the keeper (for whose arrival he had been
sitting up), with twinkling eye and a look of triumph.
"Well, you caught the beggar, did you, Grange?"
"Oh yes, we caught him fast enough," responded the other, grinning; "we
caught the whole lot of them. And who d'ye think they were? Why, it was
the whole party from the house, as had come out to play at poachers! Who
ever heard of such a game? Some on 'em got it hot, I reckon, in the new
spinney yonder. But _that_ was no matter. We've all had our skins full
of rum punch, and a sov. apiece, because Squire says we proved ourselves
good watch-dogs. And here," continued the old man, exultingly, "are a
couple of sovs. for yourself. 'Give them to that tall young fellow,'
says Squire, 'as you posted by the Decoy Pond, for he knows how to use
his fists.' Why, that 'ere chap as you had the tussle with was Carew
hisself!"
A deadly paleness overspread the young man's cheeks.
"Was that Carew?" he said.
"Yes, indeed, it was; though none of us know'd it. You needn't look so
skeared. He ain't annoyed with you; he's pleased, bless 'ee, and here's
the proof of it."
"You may keep the guineas, Grange," said Yorke, gravely; "only keep my
secret too. If he thinks I was a night-watcher, let him continue in that
belief."
"Why, it's the best introduction to Carew as you could have!" insisted
the astonished keeper. "You have only to go up to the great house
to-morrow, and say: 'Here's the man as proved your match last night,'
and--"
"You must allow me to be the best judge of my own affairs," interrupted
the young fellow, haughtily; "so you will be so good as to say nothing
more about the matter."
"Just as you please, Sir; and I am sure you are very kind," answered the
keeper, slipping the coins into his pocket. "Squire hisself could not be
more liberal, that's certain. You are tired, I see; and I wish you
good-night, Sir, or rather good-morning."
"Good-night, Grange."
"Now, that's what I call pride," said Walter, grimly, as he closed the
door upon his lodger; "and I am sure I hope, for his sake, it may never
have a fall."
When Richard Yorke was thus left to himself he did a curious thing; he
took out the life-preserver from its receptacle, and having made up the
fire, placed it in the centre of the burning mass, so that in the
morning there was nothing left of it save a dull lump of lead.