IN SEARCH OF A LODGING.
It was not the chaise of timorous-hearted Mr. Tew, but of hot-tempered
Sir Humphrey Button, which the young highwayman had so valorously
bidden to halt.
At the last moment Mr. Tew had been accosted by an old friend whom he
had not seen for a number of years, and had been easily persuaded to
put off his departure for another hour in order to talk over bygone
days, and discuss a jorum or two of punch with him.
Our young friend was not long in coming to himself, and mightily
surprised and discomposed he was at finding his waist firmly
encircled by a sinewy arm, and to dimly discern a pair of eyes gazing
intently into his own--his head was reclining on the stranger's
shoulder--through the orifices of a crape mask. He was bareheaded, and
his own mask had come unfastened and had fallen off. For a moment or
two he felt dazed, and could not make out what had happened to him.
Then in a flash he recalled everything. With a quick, resentful
movement he drew himself away from the stranger's clasp, and set his
back as stiff as a ramrod. For all that, his cheek was aflame with
blushes, but the kindly night hid them.
"Thank you very much," he said in freezing accents, "but I am all
right now. I was never taken like it before, and trust I never shall
be again. It was too ridiculous."
"Let us hope that you were more startled than hurt," said the other.
"For all that, it was a close shave."
With that he swung himself off his horse, and, going a yard or two
down the road, he picked up the youngster's hat and mask.
"There's a bullet-hole through the brim," he remarked, as he handed
him his property. "Yes, a very close shave indeed." Then, as he
proceeded to remount his horse, he added with a mellow laugh, "If an
old professor may venture an opinion, you are a prentice hand at this
sort of business."
"Yes, indeed. This is my first adventure of the kind, and I am quite
sure it will be my last. If you are under the impression," he
continued, with a touch of hauteur which seemed to become him
naturally, "that the object of my adventure to-night was merely the
replenishing of my pockets by the emptying of those of somebody else,
you were never more mistaken. My intent was not money or jewels, but
to obtain possession of a will--of a most iniquitous will--the
destruction of which would have the effect of righting a great wrong.
Unhappily, my attempt has failed, and the wrong will never be righted.
I mistook my man. The traveller in the chaise was not the person I was
expecting. _He_ has doubtless made up his mind to stay the night at
Appleford."
"A very wise resolve on his part, considering how unsafe the King's
highway is for honest folk after dark," retorted the elder man, with
his careless laugh. "But tell me this, young sir. Even if you had
succeeded in getting possession of the will and destroying it, what
would there have been to hinder the testator from having a fresh one
drawn up in precisely similar terms?"
"Merely the fact that he is given up by the doctors, and that, in the
event of the first will having been destroyed, he would not have lived
to have a second one drawn up and signed. At any moment he may breathe
his last. Possibly he is dead already."
"Your heroic attempt to right a great wrong is of a nature to appeal
to every generous heart. Such being the case, it will not, perhaps, be
deemed presumptuous on my part to suggest that where you have failed
it is just possible that I might succeed. Should you, therefore, be
pleased to accept of my services, I beg to assure you that they are
yours to command." Here he removed his hat and swept the youngster a
low bow.
The other hesitated for a few moments, as hardly knowing in what terms
to reply, but when he did speak it was with no lack of decision. "From
the bottom of my heart I thank you, sir, for your offer, which I
assure you I appreciate at its full value; but, for certain reasons
which I am not at liberty to explain, it is quite out of the question
that I should avail myself of it."
"In that case, there is nothing more to be said. Will it be deemed an
impertinence on my part if I ask in what direction you are now bound?"
Neither of them had noticed a huge black cloud which had been
gradually creeping up the sky, and which at this moment burst in a
deluge of rain. As by mutual consent, the two men who had so strangely
come together pricked up their horses and sought such shelter as the
plantation afforded from the downpour.
Then said the younger man in reply to the other's question: "What I am
anxious to do is to find my way into the Whinbarrow road, after which
I shall manage well enough."
"Do you know the way to it from here?"
"No more than a dead man."
"It's an awkward road to hit on after dark, and you might flounder
about till daybreak without finding it. In five minutes from now what
little moonlight there's left will be swallowed up by this confounded
rain-cloud, after which it will be as dark as the nethermost pit. On
such a night for you, a stranger, to attempt to find the Whinbarrow
road would be the sheerest madness."
"What, then, do you recommend me to do?"
"I will tell you. Not more than three miles from here stands a lonely
house among the moors, Rockmount by name. Its owner, a solitary, is a
man well advanced in years--a scholar and a bookworm. But although
leading such a secluded life, his door is open day and night to any
one who--like yourself--has lost his way, or who craves the shelter of
his roof on any account whatever. To Rockmount you must now hie you
and put Mr. Ellerslie's hospitality to the proof: that you will not do
so in vain I am well assured. I know the way and will gladly guide you
there. Come, let us lose no more time. This cursed rain shows no signs
of leaving off."
"But if this part of the country is so well known to you," urged the
other, "why not direct me the way I want to go, instead of pressing
me--and at this hour of the night--to intrude on the hospitality of a
stranger?"
"There are two, if not more, very sufficient reasons why I am unable
to oblige you in this matter," responded the other dryly. "In the
first place, I could not direct you, as you call it, into the
Whinbarrow road. On such a night as this no directions would avail
you; I should have to lead you there, and plant the nose of your mare
straight up the road before leaving you. In the second place, my way
lies in an opposite direction. Matters of moment need my presence
elsewhere, and before the first cock begins to crow I must be a score
miles from here."
As if to bar any further discussion in the matter, he took hold of the
bridle of the other's horse and, leading the way out of the
plantation, started off at an easy canter up the road in the direction
taken by the chaise. The younger man offered no opposition to the
proceeding.
He seemed little more than a boy, and the night's adventures had
fluttered his nerves. To go wandering about in the pitch-dark,
hunting for a road that was wholly strange to him--not one of the
great highways, which he could hardly have missed, but a narrow
cross-country turnpike which had nothing to distinguish it from
half-a-dozen other roads--was more than he was prepared to do. He felt
like one in a half-dream; all that had happened during the last hour
had an air of unreality; he was himself, and yet not himself.
To-night's business seemed to separate him by a huge gap both from
yesterday and to-morrow. His will was in a state of partial
suspension; he allowed himself to be led blindly forward, he neither
knew nor greatly cared whither.
Before long they turned sharply to the left up a rutted and stony
cart-track, which apparently led right into the heart of the moors.
Here they could only go slowly, trusting in a great measure to the
instinct and surefootedness of their horses. The highwayman still kept
hold of the other's bridle. The rain had in some measure abated, and a
rift in the clouds low down in the east was slowly broadening.
Not a word had passed between them since they left the plantation. But
now, as if the silence had become irksome to him, the man with the
crape mask burst into song. His voice was a full, clear baritone:
"Oh, kiss me, Childe Lovel," she breathes in his ear;
"Night's shadows flee fast, the moon's drown'd in the mere."
He turns his head slowly. "Christ! what is't I see?
A demon rides with me!" shrieks Ellen O'Lee.
When he had come to the end of the verse, he drew forth his snuff-box,
tapped it, opened it, and with a little bow proffered it to his
companion.
The moon had come out again, dim and watery, by this time, and they
were now enabled to see each other so far as outlines and movements
were concerned, although the more minute points of each other's
appearance were still to some extent conjectural.
"_Bien oblige, monsieur_," replied the younger man, "but snuff-taking
is an acquirement--I ought, perhaps, to say an accomplishment--to
which as yet I cannot lay claim, and, in so far, my education may be
said to be incomplete."
"'Tis a necessary part of a gentleman's curriculum--a pinch of Rappee
or good Kendal Brown serves at once to soothe the nerves, disperse
the vapors, and enliven the brain. But you are young yet, my dear
sir--_oh, les beaux jours de la jeunesse!_--and, with luck, have many
years before you for the cultivation of a habit which, unlike other
habits I could name, the older you grow the more quiet satisfaction
you derive from the practice of it. Amid the straits and
disappointments of life, when his fortunes are at their lowest, and
his fair-weather friends have fallen one by one away, many a man draws
his truest consolation from his snuff-box."
"You speak like one grown old both in years and experience," said the
other laughingly. He was recovering his _sang-froid_, and, the failure
of his enterprise notwithstanding, was beginning to enjoy the
adventure for the adventure's sake.
The highwayman gave vent to an audible sigh. "Experience keeps a dear
school," he said, "and 'tis only fools who fail to learn at it."
And so for a time they rode on in silence. Then said the younger man,
"You seem to know your way hereabouts pretty well."
"The home of my youth was no great distance away, and, as a lad, I
wandered over these moors and fells till I grew to know them, as one
might say, by heart."
"Have we much farther to go, may I ask?"
"Another ten minutes will bring us to our destination." With that he
proceeded to remove his mask and stuff it into one of his pockets.
For a little while they jogged along side by side without speaking.
The tract of country they were traversing was wild and desolate in the
extreme. On every side stretched the bare swelling moorland--bare save
for the short sparse grass and the many-hued mosses which grew in its
hollows and more sheltered places, but left naked its huge ribs and
bosses of granite, which showed through the surface in every
direction, and seemed to crave the decent burial which only some great
cataclysm of nature could give them. Here and there at wide intervals
a narrow track-way unwound itself like a dusky ribbon till it was lost
in the distance. These rude by-roads had been in use for more
centuries than history or tradition knew of, and served to connect one
outlying hamlet with another. Over them from time to time paced great
droves of cattle and sheep on their way to one or other of the
frequent fairs which in those days, far more than now, brought the
country-side together and formed one of the most distinctive features
of English rural life.
"Here we are at last," said the highwayman, as an indefinite mass of
black buildings loomed vaguely before them--for the rain was over and
gone, and the moon was again shining in a clear sky--which presently,
as they drew nearer, took on the shape of a long, low, two-storied
house, with a high-pitched roof and twisted chimneys, and having a
group of detached outbuildings in the rear.
As they reined in their horses a few yards from the low wall, which
enclosed a space of rank and untended shrubbery, the younger horseman
saw, not without a sense of misgiving, that the whole front of the
house was in darkness. Not the faintest glimmer of light was anywhere
visible.
"And do you mean to tell me," he asked in a low voice, for a
sense of night and darkness was upon him, "that this desolate and
out-of-the-world spot is any one's home?"
"It is the home of Mr. Cope-Ellerslie, as I have already remarked."
"How far away is Mr. Ellerslie's nearest neighbor?"
"Four good miles, as the crow flies. But he is a recluse and a
student, and the loneliness of Rockmount was probably his main
inducement for becoming its tenant."
"In any case, we are too late to-night to claim his hospitality. There
is not a light anywhere visible."
"You mean that there's none to be seen from where we are standing,"
retorted the highwayman dryly. "But that's no proof Mr. Ellerslie's
abed. He's a genuine nightbird, and often does not go to roost before
daybreak, so busy is he over his studies of one kind or another."
At another time the younger man might have wondered how his
law-breaking companion had acquired such an intimate knowledge of the
habits of the recluse of Rockmount, but just then he had other things
to think about.
"Follow me," said the highwayman, and with that he walked his horse
round a corner of the house, to where a large bow window, invisible
before, bulged out from the main building.
"That is the window of Mr. Ellerslie's study," he resumed. "You can
see by the light shining through the circular openings at the top of
the shutters that he is still at work."
"That may be," rejoined the other, "but doubtless all his household
are asleep long ago, and rather than disturb Mr. Ellerslie himself at
such an hour I would----"
"What a fastidious young cock-o'-wax you are!" broke in the elder man.
"Do you think I would have brought you here if there had been nobody
but Mr. E. to the fore? As I happen to know, his old manservant never
on any account goes to bed before his master. Him we shall find as
wide awake as an owl at midnight. Follow me."
He led the way back to where a ramshackle, loosely-hung gate, merely
on latch, gave admittance to a gravelled path which led up to a small
carriage-sweep in front of the house, on reaching which, at the
instance of the highwayman, they both dismounted. Then going up to the
door, he lifted the massive knocker and struck three resounding blows
with it slowly one after the other; after which, going back to his
companion, he said, "Here, young sir, we must part."
"But not, I trust, before you have told me to whom I am indebted for
the very great service you have rendered me to-night."
A bitter laugh broke from the other. "My real name," he said, "is that
of a broken and ruined man, whom the world already has well-nigh
forgotten. That by which I am customarily known nowadays is--Captain
Nightshade, at your service."
The younger man showed no trace of surprise. "I suspected as much from
the first," he said. "In this part of the country only one _gentleman_
of the road does us the honor of taking toll of us. The rest are
scum--mere vulgar ruffians, ripe for the gallows-tree."
"Sir, you flatter me"--with a grave inclination of the head. "May I,
in my turn, if it be not deemed an impertinence, ask to whom I am
indebted for an hour of the pleasantest companionship it has been my
good fortune to enjoy for many a long day?"
"_My_ name? Hum! I must consider. By the way, you remarked a little
while ago, and very truly, that, as far as your profession was
concerned, I was a prentice hand. Suppose, then, that you call me Jack
Prentice. 'Twill serve as well as another."
"Mr. Jack Prentice let it be, with all my heart. 'Tis a name I shall
not forget. Ah! here comes somebody in answer to my summons." And,
indeed, there was a noise as of the undoing of the bolts and bars of
the massive door, which, a few seconds later, was opened wide,
disclosing a gray-haired serving-man in a faded livery, who stood
there staring into the darkness, shielding with one hand a lighted
candle which he carried in the other.
Captain Nightshade strode up to the door, and in his easy, off-hand
way said, "You are one of Mr. Ellerslie's servants, I presume?"
"I be," answered the old man laconically.
"Then be good enough to present my compliments to your master, the
compliments of a neighbor--hem!--and tell him there's a young
gentleman at the door who has been belated on the moors and craves the
hospitality of Rockmount for the remainder of the night."
Mr. Jack Prentice had followed close on the captain's heels, and, as
the candlelight shone full on the latter's face, he had now, for the
first time, an opportunity of seeing what the noted highwayman was
like. What he saw was a long, lean, brown face, the face of an ascetic
it might almost have been termed, had it not been contradicted by a
pair of black, penetrating eyes of extraordinary brilliancy, and by a
mobile, changeable mouth which rarely wore the same expression for
three minutes at a time. His rounded, massive chin seemed a little out
of keeping with the rest of his features, as though it belonged of
right to another type of face. His high nose, thin and curved, with
its fine nostrils, lent him an air of breeding and distinction. In
figure he was tall and sinewy. His black hair, tied into a queue not
more than half the size of his companion's, showed no trace of powder.
His prevailing expression might be said to be one of almost defiant
recklessness mingled with a sort of cynical good-humor. It was as
though into an originally noble nature a drop of subtle poison had
been distilled, which had served to muddy and discolor it, so that it
no longer reflected things in their true proportions, without having
been able to more than partially corrupt it.
The old man-servant's lips worked as though he were mumbling over the
message with which he had been charged, then with a curt nod he turned
away, and, putting down his candlestick on a side table, was presently
lost to view in the gloom of the corridor beyond the entrance-hall.
If Captain Nightshade had any consciousness of the brief but keen
scrutiny to which he had been subjected, he failed to betray it. While
they were awaiting the man's return, he slowly paced the gravelled
sweep, singing in a low voice a snatch of a ditty the last line of
which had something to do with "ruby wine and laughing eyes."
Then the serving-man came back.
"The master bids yo welcome," he said. "There's supper, bed, and
breakfast at yore sarvice. He's busy just now, but mayhap he'll find
time to see yo for a few minutes by an' by."
"I felt assured you would not claim the hospitality of Rockmount in
vain," said Captain Nightshade. "And now, my dear Mr. Prentice, I must
wish you a very goodnight, coupled with the hope that sound sleep and
pleasant dreams will be yours. I have a presentiment that we have not
seen the last of each other, and my presentiments generally come
true."
He would have turned away, but the other held out his hand. "I am your
debtor for much this night," he said. "You say you have a presentiment
that we shall meet again. When that time comes I may, perhaps, be able
to repay you. At present 'tis out of my power to do so."
Their hands met for a moment and parted, and each bowed ceremoniously
to the other. Then Captain Nightshade climbed lightly into his saddle,
waved his hand, gave rein to his horse and disappeared in the
darkness. The same instant a second servant appeared from somewhere,
and, taking charge of Mr. Prentice's horse, led it away towards the
rear of the house.
Then, with such a throb of the heart as one experiences on stepping
across the threshold of the unknown, doubtful of what one may find on
the other side, our young gentleman stepped across the threshold of
Rockmount and heard the bolts and bars of the great door shot one by
one behind him.