MR. ELLERSLIE OF ROCKMOUNT.
Having resumed possession of his candlestick, the old serving-man,
whose face wore a sour and suspicious look, beckoned Mr. Jack, and,
leading the way, presently threw open a door at the end of a corridor,
and ushered him into a spacious panelled room, in the grate of which a
cosy fire was burning.
"Supper's bein' got ready, sir, and will be served in the course of a
few minutes," said the man, and with that he lighted a couple of wax
candles on the centre table and two more over the chimney-piece. Then
he stirred up the fire to a blaze and hobbled out of the room without
a word more.
Mr. Jack's first action was to relieve himself of his sodden cloak,
which he laid over the back of a chair. That done, he spread his
chilled fingers to the blaze, and proceeded to take stock of his
surroundings.
This was soon done, for the room held nothing calculated to arrest his
attention or excite his curiosity. It was sparsely furnished, and its
few chairs and tables, together with the bureau in one corner,
although of choice workmanship, were all venerable with age. Carpet
and hearthrug alike were faded and in places worn threadbare. Of
pictures or ornaments of any kind, except for a small malachite vase
on the chimney-piece, the room was wholly destitute. Judging from
appearances, it seemed clear that the master of Rockmount was not a
wealthy man.
Scarcely had Mr. Jack concluded his survey before the door was opened,
and in came a middle-aged woman, carrying a supper-tray, which she
proceeded to deposit on a centre table, and then wheeled the latter
nearer the fire. The tray proved to contain a cold fowl, some slices
of ham, butter, cheese, bread, and a bottle of claret. To our young
friend, ravenously hungry and chilled to the marrow, it seemed a
supper fit for the gods.
"Will you please to ring, sir, when you are ready for your coffee?"
said the woman. And then he was left alone.
Not till half an hour had gone by did he ring the bell, by which time
his spirits had gone up several degrees. Intensely chagrined though he
was by his failure to secure that for which he had risked so much,
there was a relish about his adventure which he appreciated to the
full, which appealed at once to his imagination and to the
unconventional side of a character which had often vainly beat itself
against the restrictions and restraints by which it was environed. He
felt that to-night was a night to have lived for. It would dwell
freshly in his memory to the last day of his life. For the space of
one hour and a half he had been hand-and-glove with Captain
Nightshade, the most redoubtable highwayman in all the North Country;
and if some people might think that was nothing to be proud of, it was
at any rate something to remember. Whether he was proud of it or no,
he was conscious of a secret sense of elation, into the origin of
which he had no wish to inquire. He only knew that he would not have
foregone the night's experiences for a great deal.
But the night was not yet over, although there seemed to be some
danger of his forgetting that fact, so busy were his thoughts with the
events of the last couple of hours. However, the bringing in of his
coffee served to break up his reverie, and he began to wonder whether
he was destined to see his unknown host. He was not left long in
doubt.
"Mr. Ellerslie, sir, will do himself the pleasure of waiting upon you
in the course of a few minutes," said the woman.
Together with the coffee she had brought in a case of spirits, with
the needful concomitants for the manufacture of grog, without a
tumbler or two of which, by way of nightcap, our great-grandfathers
rarely thought of wending their way bedward.
While the woman cleared the table Mr. Jack went back to his chair near
the fire. The blaze, as he bent towards it in musing mood, resting an
elbow on either knee, lighted up a face that was very pleasant to look
upon. In shape it was a rather long oval, the cheeks as smooth and
rounded as those of a girl of twenty, with that pure healthy tint in
them which nothing but plenty of exposure to sun and wind can impart;
indeed, if you had looked closely, you would have seen that here and
there they were slightly freckled. Add to this a nose of the Grecian
type, long and straight, and a short upper lip with a marked cleft in
it. His hair, which was brushed straight back from his forehead, so as
to help in the formation of his queue, was of the color of filberts
when at their ripest, with here and there a gleam of dead gold in it.
His large eyes were of the deepest shade of hazel, heavily lashed, and
with a wonderful velvety softness in them, which, when he was at all
excited, would glow and kindle with a sort of inner flame, or, if his
temper were roused--which it easily was--would flash with scornful
lightnings, while the line between his brows deepened to a veritable
furrow. For, truth to tell, Mr. Jack Prentice was of a quick and
somewhat fiery disposition; a little too ready, perhaps, to take
offence; with an intense hatred for every kind of injustice, and a
fine scorn, for the little meannesses and subterfuges of everyday
life, the practice of which with many of us is so habitual and
matter-of-course that we no longer recognize them for what they really
are.
But if Master Jack was a little too ready, so to speak, to clap his
hand on the hilt of his rapier, he never bore any after-malice. His
temper would flare out and be done with it with the suddenness of a
summer storm, which has come and gone and given you a taste of its
quality almost before you know what has happened.
But we shall know more of "Jack," generous, loyal, and true-hearted,
before we have done with him.
The door opened and Mr. Cope-Ellerslie came in. His guest stood up and
turned to receive him.
The master of Rockmount was a tall, thin, elderly man, apparently
about sixty years old, with a pronounced stoop of the shoulders. His
outer garment was a dark, heavy robe or gaberdine, which wrapped him
from throat to ankle. His long, grizzled hair, parted down the middle,
fell on either side over his ears, and rested on the collar of his
robe; the crown of his head was covered with a small velvet skull cap.
He wore a short Vandyck beard and moustache, which, like his prominent
eyebrows, were thickly flecked with gray. For the rest, his face, when
seen from a little distance, looked like nothing so much as a mask
carved out of ivory with the yellow tint of age upon it; but when, a
little later, Jack was enabled to view it close at hand, it was seen
to be marked and lined with thousands of extremely fine and minute
creases and wrinkles, as it might be the face of a man centuries old.
But there was nothing old about the eyes, which were very bright and
of a singularly penetrative quality.
Jack started involuntarily when his own traversed them. Of whose eyes
did they remind him? When and where had he seen that look before? Was
it in some dream which he had forgotten till they supplied the missing
link? If so, all else had escaped him.
Hardly, however, had he time to ask himself these questions before his
host, advancing with a grave inclination of the head, said: "Welcome
to Rockmount, young gentleman. I am happy to be in a position to
extend to you the hospitality of my humble roof. You are neither the
first nor the second who, having lost his bearings in this remote
district, has found shelter here. You were fortunate in there being no
fog to-night; at such times to be lost on the moors is not merely
unpleasant, but dangerous. I am sorry my people were not prepared to
put before you fare of a more _recherché_ kind, but we are very
isolated here, as you may imagine, and so few are my visitors that it
would be folly to prepare for people who might never come. For my own
part, I may add that I am no Sybarite."
There was a peculiarly hollow ring about Mr. Ellerslie's voice, as
though it reached one from out of the depths of a cavern; and yet it
seemed to his guest as if there was a note of half-familiarity in it,
as if he had heard it somewhere before--it might be long ago. But
that, of course, was absurd.
While speaking, Mr. Ellerslie had advanced to the fire, and, motioning
his guest to resume his seat, had himself taken possession of a chair
on the opposite side of the hearth.
Then Master Jack made haste to express his gratitude for the
hospitality so generously extended to him.
"Very prettily turned, young gentleman," said Mr. Ellerslie, with a
nod of approval when he had come to an end. "You have good choice of
words, and express yourself without any trace of that affectation
which nowadays mars the speech of so many of our so-called bucks and
young men of _ton_."
The blush of ingenuous youth mantled in Jack's cheeks for a moment or
two. He could not help noticing--and in after-days it was a point
which often recurred to him--that his host never smiled, that no
flitting shade of expression ever changed the mask-like, bloodless
features. They remained wholly unmoved in their set, waxen pallor.
"And now," resumed Mr. Ellerslie, "will there be any impropriety in my
asking my guest to favor me with his name? But if, for any reason
whatever, he would prefer to remain incognito, he has merely to
intimate as much and his reticence will be duly respected."
Mr. Jack was prepared for the question, and he answered it without
hesitation. "If, Mr. Ellerslie, we should ever meet in after-days, as
I sincerely trust we may, and you should accost me by the name of
Frank Nevill, you will find me answer to it."
"It is a name I promise not to forget. You seem to have got _my_ name
quite pat, Mr. Nevill."
Mr. Nevill, or Mr. Prentice, or whatever his real name was, laughed a
little uneasily. "It was from the--er--gentleman who acted as my
guide and brought me here that I learnt it."
"How you learnt it, my dear sir, is a matter of no moment, so long as
you know it. But I am forgetting that the grog is waiting to be mixed.
You will join me over a tumbler, of course?"
But this his guest politely but firmly declined doing. Mr. Ellerslie
was careful not to press him farther than good breeding sanctioned,
which, however, did not hinder him from mixing a stiff and steaming
tumbler for himself. Having tasted it and apparently found it to his
liking, he went back to his seat by the fire.
"You were good enough just now, Mr. Nevill, to express a hope that you
and I might some day meet again. Such a meeting, although not beyond
the bounds of possibility--as, indeed, in this world, what is?--hardly
comes within the range of likelihood. You are just on the point of
stepping into the arena--the struggle, the turmoil, the dust, the
elation of victory or, it may be, the bitterness of defeat, lie
still before you; while for me it is all over. I have come out of the
fight with reversed arms, I have left the sweating crowd and its
plaudits--plaudits never showered upon me!--behind me forever. Here,
in this rude hermitage--somewhat bleak, of a truth, in winter time--I
hope to pass the remainder of my days, as Mr. Pope so aptly expresses,
it, 'the world forgetting, by the world forgot.' Therefore, my dear
Mr. Nevill, the chances are that after to-night you and I are hardly
likely to meet again. To you belong the golden possibilities of the
future, to me nothing but memories."
He stirred his grog, took a good pull at it, and then went on with his
monologue:--
"Rockmount has now been my home for a couple of years, and I have no
desire to leave it. Here I live in the utmost seclusion with my books
and a few scientific instruments. An act of the blackest treachery
drove me from the world, a ruined man, bankrupt in hope, in
friendship, in means, with not one illusion left of all those with
which----but I weary you with my egotistic maunderings. Besides, the
hour is late--I cannot expect you to be such a night-owl as I am--and
doubtless you are hungering for your bed."
Nevill protested, a little mendaciously, that he was not at all tired.
Tired he was, but not sleepy. He would willingly have sat out the rest
of the night with his singular host.
Presently Mr. Ellerslie, having finished the remainder of his grog,
said, "By the way, towards which point of the compass are you desirous
of bending your steps in the morning?"
"If I could only find my way to the Whinbarrow road, I should know
where I was."
"One of my fellows shall go with you and not leave you till he has put
you into it. You have but to name your own hour for breakfast, and
Mrs. Dobson will have it ready for you."
He rose, as intimating that the moment for retiring had come. A light
was burning in the entrance-hall, and two bed-candles had been placed
in readiness, one of which Mr. Ellerslie proceeded to light.
At the foot of the stairs he held out his hand. It was a long, lean,
sinewy hand, Nevill could not help noticing, and not at all like that
of a man on whom age had in other respects set its unmistakable seal.
"I am one of those mortals who have an uncomfortable habit of turning
night into day," remarked the elder man as he clasped his guest's
fingers. "I usually sit up till dawn is in the sky, and, as a
consequence, I sleep till late in the forenoon. As you tell me that
you want to be on your way at an early hour, I had better, perhaps,
say both goodnight and goodbye here and now----Ah, a mouse!"
Frank Nevill gave a backward spring, and a little frightened cry
escaped his lips. Next moment the blood rushed to his face, and he
felt as if he could have bitten his tongue out for betraying him as it
had.
But Mr. Ellerslie seemed to have noticed nothing. "We have not many
such vermin, I am happy to say," he resumed after a momentary pause.
"But these old country houses are seldom altogether free of them."
And so presently they parted.
Mrs. Dobson was awaiting Nevill at the head of the stairs. "Your room,
sir, is the third door on the left down the corridor," she said. "At
what hour would you be pleased to like breakfast?"
"Will eight o'clock be too early?"
"No hour you may name will be either too early or too late, sir."
"Then eight o'clock let it be."
Thereupon the woman curtsied, wished him a respectful goodnight, and
left him.
As soon as he found himself in the room indicated, and with the door
not merely shut but locked, he sat down with an air of weariness,
almost of despondency. Body and brain were alike tired out, yet never
had he felt more wakeful than at that moment. Even had he been in the
habit of trying to analyze his emotions, which he certainly was not,
the effort to do so would have puzzled him just then. The bitter
consciousness that he had failed in the endeavor for which he had
risked so much was always with him, lurking, as it were, in the
background of his brain. He felt it like a dull, persistent ache which
never quite let go its hold of him, whatever other subject might be
occupying the forefront of his thoughts. And then, there were all the
other events of the day just ended, which----
He started to his feet. "I shall have to-morrow and a hundred
to-morrows in which I shall have nothing to do but think, and think,
and think. If I begin the process to-night I shall not sleep a wink."
As yet he had given neither a thought nor a glance to the room, but he
now began to look about him with a little natural curiosity.
It was a somewhat gloomy chamber, the walls having been originally
painted a dull chocolate color, which had not improved with the
passage of time. In one corner was a large four-poster bed, with
furniture of dark moreen. The dressing-table of black oak was
crowded with an assortment of toilet requirements and appurtenances,
silver-mounted and of most elegant workmanship.
Then his wandering glances were arrested by something--a garment of
snowy whiteness--which had been laid over the back of a chair. Mr.
Nevill, crossing to it, took it up gingerly and opened it. It proved
to be a fine lawn _chemise de nuit_, frilled and trimmed with
beautiful lace--a garment such as a duchess might have worn, but
certainly never intended to be worn by one of the opposite sex.
Our young friend dropped it as if it were a red-hot cinder, and,
sinking into the nearest chair, covered his face with his hands. From
head to foot he felt as if he were one huge blush.