SULTAN
The lie of the land was as follows: To get to the "Ring of Bells," Master
Freake would have to ride over the hill to the main road at Weston, thence
some six miles north-west to Stone, thence another six or seven miles
south-west to the inn. Mistress Waynflete and I had a stiff walk of about
nine miles in front of us. For the first three miles our way ran east by
north, and then bent almost due east to the ale-house. Our difficulty
would come at the bending point, for there we should have to cross the
main road from Stafford along which the troops would be filtering north to
get into touch with the Prince and his Highlanders. If the Duke had heard
of the supposed intention of the Jacobites to turn off for Wales, he
would, I imagined, send a scouting party through Eccleshall to look out
for them, and we should, for the second time in our journey, be on
dangerous ground in the neighbourhood of that village. The "Ring of
Bells," however, lay north of that village, off his obvious line of march
in that direction, so that we stood a good chance of passing unchecked to
our goal, provided that we got across the main road north in safety.
Fortunately, at the place where I intended to cross, it climbed over a
fairly steep hill, and we could, if need were, lie and watch the road till
it was safe to venture out.
It was ticklish work at the best and any break in our run of luck might
ruin us. How ticklish was vividly brought home to me within a few minutes
of our getting safe under cover in the cottage. I had, of course, brought
back the birding-piece and, after once more helping in the blissful task
of getting Mistress Waynflete into the domino, bungling as usual over
arranging the hood because my fingers lost control of themselves at the
touch of her hair, I sat down to reload it, intending to carry it with me.
I had settled matters with the absent gaffer, Doley, by putting one of my
guineas conspicuously on the table, and was just finishing my task when
Mistress Waynflete, who had stepped to the rear window and was looking
back on the scene of my recent exploit, suddenly called out, "Oliver! Come
here!"
My heart leaped within me at that 'Oliver.' True, it was the familiarity
of one born to command, one who had last night icily desired my services
in the morning, and, womanlike, knew that she could queen it over me as
she listed, but still, and this was the main thing, it was familiar and
friendly, and seemed to lift me a shade nearer to her.
"What is it, madam?" I asked respectfully, and ran toward her, but not so
swiftly that I had not time to see the blue eyes fixed hard on mine. For
answer, she turned and pointed down the hill, and there I saw the patch of
brown road covered with wagons and soldiers. In five minutes they would
come across the dead body of the Major.
"Good," said I indifferently, "they save me a guinea," and I put the coin
back in my pocket. The soldiers didn't matter, but that look in her eyes
did.
"Isn't that rather mean?" For some reason she spoke quite snappily. The
soldiers clearly didn't matter to her, and something else did.
"Which of the soldiers provided our breakfast, madam? We might as well
leave a note asking them to pick us up at the 'Ring of Bells.' And, madam,
you can trust me to make Dick Doley content enough some day."
She smiled, with her characteristic touch of chagrin. I liked her best
so, for she never looked daintier. "With a bit of luck, Master Wheatman,"
she said whimsically, "there will surely come a time when you'll be wrong
and I right. Then, sir, look out for crowing. I've never been so unlucky
with a man in my life. But you'll slip some day!"
"Surely, madam," I said, and smiled, "and then I'll abide your gloating.
Now, pray you, let us be off. We've hardly a minute to spare."
Without losing another second we started on our long walk. It was now
about ten of the clock. The sun was shining cheerily, with power enough to
melt the white rime off every blackened twig it lit upon, and it was still
so cold that sharp walking was a keen delight.
"Eight miles and more of it, Mistress Waynflete. I hope you can stand the
pace and the distance."
"I'm a soldier's daughter, not an alderman's," she replied curtly.
The vicar was right. "Oliver," he said to me one day, "what is the
difference between the Hebrew Bible and a woman?"
"Sir," said I, gaping with astonishment, "I know not, but of a truth it
seems considerable."
"It is, Oliver," replied the sweet old scholar. "Man can understand the
one in a dozen years, if he try, but the other not in a lifetime, strive
he as earnestly as he may."
This fragment of my dear friend's talk came back to me now as we walked
in silence side by side. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her sweet
face set in earnest thinking, her rich lips compressed, her speaking eyes
fixed resolutely ahead. Not having to trouble about finding the road, and
there being no sign of anyone, either enemy or neutral, stirring on the
countryside, I let her go on thinking, and set myself the pleasant but
impossible task of accounting to myself for her mood. I went over all we
had said and done together that day, and at last, after perhaps half an
hour of unbroken silence, fell back on what seemed the only possible
explanation. She was thinking of her father. But why that suspicion of
asperity on her face? Was this explanation correct?
The vicar was right. She suddenly slipped her hand round my arm, looking
at me with laughing lips and dancing eyes, and said, "Isn't it splendid to
be alive on a day like this?"
"Yes, indeed it is," I replied, "but from your looks and your long
silence, I should hardly have judged that you were thinking so."
"You have been taking stock of me, sir!"
"Certainly I have been wondering why you were so silent, and looked
so ... grave."
"Be honest and fear not, Master Wheatman. You were not going to say
'grave.'"
"At the expense of many whippings from old Bloggs, I learned to be
precise in the use of words."
"I know, hence you were not going to say 'grave.'"
"You will allow me to choose my own words, madam."
"Certainly, so long as you choose the right ones."
She unhooked her hand, and we walked a minute or two without another
word, she frowning, and I fuming. Then she said wistfully, "Why did you
think I was cross?"
"I feared I had offended you," said I hastily and innocently.
She laughed long and merrily. "Old Bloggs taught you the silly rigmarole
you men call logic, but he didn't teach you woman's logic, that's plain.
Don't you see what I've made you do, Master Wheatman?"
"Not yet, Mistress Waynflete."
"Poof, slow-coach! I've made you admit that you were going to say 'cross'
but altered it, too late, to 'grave.'"
"You outrun me with your nimble and practised wit," said I, smiling.
"And when did you offend me, think you?"
"I answered you rather roughly when you took me up about the guinea."
"Oh, then? Not at all. You snibbed me, but I richly deserved it."
Another silence.
"Well?" she said. "Go on! I say I richly deserved it. Go on!"
"Go on where?" I asked testily. "You're not expecting me to say you
didn't, are you?"
"No, I'm not," she said, "but it was good practice trying to make you."
So saying, she slipped her hand under my arm again, and we stepped it out
together.
The current of her thoughts now ran and glittered in the opposite
direction. She made me for the moment her intimate, lifting up the veil
over her past life, and giving me peeps and vistas of her wanderings and
experiences. She jested and gibed. She sang little snatches of song in
some foreign tongue. "You're sure you don't understand Italian?" she
demanded, stopping short half-way through a bar, and quizzing me with her
eyes, now blue as sapphires in the bright sunshine.
"Not a word of it," said I.
"A grave disadvantage," she said airily. "It's the only language one can
love in." And off she struck again.
Now she sang something soothing and sad, with a wistful lilt in it that
died into a low wail. It needed no Italian to be understood, for it was
written in the language of human experience. A woman's heart throbbed in
the lilt and broke in the wail.
This sweet interval of intimacy verging on friendship was ended by our
close approach to the main road. We had been travelling, heedless of roads
and tracks, across a champaign country, and the slope up to the top of
Yarlet Bank now lay before us. I led the way, skulking behind such poor
cover as the gaunt hedgerows provided, and, when only a hundred paces from
the top, I asked her to crouch down, awaiting my signal to advance, while
I crept forward on my hands and knees to the edge of the road which here
climbed the brow of the hill through a deep cutting, along either margin
of which ran a straggling hedge.
To my relief, the road down the hill, both to right and left, was
completely deserted. I joyfully waved my arm to Mistress Waynflete, who
was soon by my side, looking down the road. To the right we could see for
nearly a mile. On the left our view was cut short by a bend, and I walked
a score of yards in that direction and shinned up a stout sapling. Our
luck was absolute. Not a soldier, not a living soul, was in sight.
"We might have had to skulk here for hours, waiting for an opportunity to
cross unseen," said I, on rejoining her, "but our gods above are
victorious, and we share their victory. So now for the 'Ring of Bells.'
There's a gate at the bottom of the hill. Come along, Mistress Waynflete!"
She followed me down the hedge-side. I turned once or twice to look at
her, carefully pretending that it was only to see how she was getting on.
The last time I thus stole another memory of her splendid presence we were
only a few paces from the gate, and when my reluctant eyes turned again to
their rightful work, they looked straight into a pair of fishy eyes set in
a face as blank and ugly as a bladder of lard.
Face and eyes belonged to a big, sleek, sly man, perched on the top bar
of the gate. He had a notebook in his hand in which he had been entering
some jottings. He suspended his writing to examine us, picking his nasty,
yellow teeth meanwhile with the point of his pencil. His horse was hitched
to the post on the Stoneward side of the gate, where the stile was. He was
well enough dressed, and, as far as I could see, unarmed.
It was a most exasperating thing to have pitched into him, whoever and
whatever he was, and indeed I much disliked the look of him, and would
gladly have knocked him on the head. True, travellers were not rare on
this road, since it was part of the great highway from London to Chester,
and the little thoroughfare town of Stone, some three miles ahead, had a
noted posthouse. However, I kept, or tried to keep, my feelings out of my
face and voice, and accosted him cheerily.
"Good day, friend! What may be the price of fat beeves in Stafford market
to-day?"
"Dearer than men's heads will be at the town gates after the next
assizes," he replied, stroking his notebook and grinning evilly.
"You'll never light on a Scotsman, dead or alive, that's worth as much as
a Staffordshire heifer," said I, leading the way past him to the stile,
over which I handed Mistress Margaret into the road.
"They won't all be Scotsmen, my friend," he replied, still stroking his
notebook.
"No?" said I, eager at heart to knock him off his perch.
"Nor men," he added, leering at Margaret.
"Come along, Sal," said I to her laughingly, "before the good gentleman
jots you down a Jacobite."
So we left him, and when, fifty paces down the road, I looked back at
him, he was jotting in his notebook again.
"I think he knows something about us," said I.
"Very likely," she replied calmly. "I've seen him once before in London,
talking to Major Tixall. Who could forget a face like that?"
"He's uglier than the big-mouthed dragoon."
"The dragoon was at any rate a soldier."
"And the worst of soldiers has, no doubt, some savour of grace in him."
"Quite so," she retorted. "His calling makes it necessary."
"And, so reasoning, you would say, I suppose, that the best of farmers
was to seek in the higher reaches of manliness."
"Have I not told you, Master Oliver, that between man's logic and woman's
logic there's a great gulf fixed?"
"Minds are minds," said I.
"And hearts are hearts," replied she, and so shut me up to my thinking
again.
We turned into a cart-track on our left leading in the direction of
Eccleshall. As we turned I saw that Bladder-face had mounted his horse and
was coming on toward Stone. There was no doubt that we should be pursued
from that quarter before long, and I grew heavy with anxiety as I saw how
hardly we were being pressed. The encounter had not, however, disturbed
Mistress Waynflete. On the contrary, she became gayer than ever, so gay
that, fool-like, I got quite vexed at it, for it was clear that something
had relieved her anxiety, and I knew it was nothing that I had done. I
worried over it, and at last hit on the explanation. She was rejoicing in
the help of the new partner.
"What do you make of Master Freake?" said I boorishly, cutting short a
lightsome trill, more Italian maybe.
"Make of what?" said she lightly.
"Master Freake."
"Forgive me, Master Wheatman," she replied, "but I didn't take you as
quickly as I ought to have done. I like the look of him. How pretty, pluck
them for me."
I stopped to gather the spray of brilliant vermilion berries she fancied,
saying meanwhile, "I wonder what he is? Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor,
or what?"
She seemed much more concerned with her berries, which she praised
rapturously, and placed carefully in the bosom of her riding-dress before
replying.
"He's no doubt a grave and prosperous citizen of London. I've seen many
such, and he looks sworn brother to worthy Alderman Heathcoat. Moreover,
he talks merchantlike."
It seemed pretty certain that she had hit the right nail on the head. Her
explanation fitted his account of the large sums he was carrying and his
stay with and hold over Jack's father. True, Staffordshire seemed the
wrong place for such a man. Both he and his money would have been far
safer in Change Alley. If her explanation was acute and probable, her
manner of making it had convinced me that my explanation of her gaiety was
wrong. Of him she certainly had not been thinking. Then there was only one
thing left to account for it. What makes a maid as merry as a grig? Didn't
our Kate sing all morning when Jack was coming in the afternoon?
It was no concern of mine, and as a man sometimes makes his right hand
play his left hand at chess, so I now made stern Oliver lecture paltering
Wheatman, but without doing him much good. Naturally all this made me a
poor companion on the road, and for a long time Mistress Waynflete bore
with me patiently. Then she turned from her tra-la-la-ing to waken me up,
roundly declaring that I was bored with her company; and I had no defence,
ridiculous as the charge was.
"I've sung every song I know, and sung them my best, too, and you've
never once praised me. You'll have to learn, you know, Master Oliver, to
smile at a lady even when you really want to smack her. What do you do?
You just write on your face as plainly as this"--and here her dainty
finger toured her face, ending up where the tear of milk had
trembled--"S-M-A-C-K." I roared aloud, she did it so frankly and mirthfully. What
a treasury of moods she was! She had stepped across our house-place like a
queen, she had fronted that devil, Brocton, like a goddess, and now she
was larking like a schoolmaid.
Long as the way was, we seemed to me to be getting over the ground too
rapidly. Mistress Waynflete did not tire, and did full credit to her
father's soldiership. We circled round the red-tiled roofs of Eccleshall,
and at length took shelter in the pines that ringed the great pool. Across
the mere lay the road, and on the far side of the road from us was the
"Ring of Bells," standing well back, with a little green in front, in the
centre of which a huge post carried a board bearing the rudely painted
sign of the ale-house.
I scouted ahead, dodging from tree to tree along the edge of the mere, in
order to keep out of view of anyone moving on the road. Over against the
ale-house I crept still more warily through the wood to the edge of the
road. There was no one moving in or about the ramshackle little place, but
there was one unexpected thing in sight which gave me pause. Hitched by
the reins to a staple in the signpost was the finest horse I had ever set
eyes on, a slender, sinewy stallion, champing on his bit and pawing
nervously on the stone-hard ground.
Here was the shadow of a new trouble, though, indeed, there was nothing
to be surprised at, seeing that the countryside far and near was buzzing
with enemy activities. A rat in a barn might as justly complain of being
tickled by straws as I of jostling into difficulties. The horse without
betokened a rider within, and probably some one in the Duke's horse. I
beckoned Mistress Waynflete, and by signs indicated that extreme caution
was necessary. During the moments I was awaiting her I examined the
birding-piece to make sure it was in order. Caution, however, she flung to
the winds, for the moment she set eyes on the horse she joyously shouted
'Sultan' and made a wild, happy dash to cross the road.
I stopped her sternly, and in a brief whisper asked, "Who's Sultan?"
"Father's horse."
"We do not know for sure that your father is in the inn because his horse
is outside, and by your leave, madam, we'll make sure first. Keep right
behind yon thick tree, and await my return."
She looked calmly at me, but even before she could glide off, there came
from the ale-house an appalling volley of oaths and curses. It was a man's
voice, yelling in agonized blasphemy, and a woman's shrill treble floated
on the surface of the stream of virulence.
I caught Mistress Waynflete's wrist and steadied her. "Not your father,
apparently?" I said in a cool voice, though my head was whirling a bit
under the strain. "Here," I went on, fetching a fistful out of my pocket,
"are some guineas. Follow me, unhitch the horse, and if I shout to you to
be off, mount him from yon horse-trough, and away like lightning. That's
the road to Eccleshall, along which Master Freake is bound to come."
I thrust the guineas into her hand, gripped my weapon, slipped out of the
pines and across the road, circled the horse, and made to peep round the
jamb of the open door into the guest-room of the ale-house. As I did so,
the man yelled, "God damn, I'm on fire!" and the woman shrieked back,
"Burn, you foul devil, burn, and be damned!"
This was enough, and I burst in on a spectacle, strange, serious, on the
point of becoming terrible, and yet almost laughable. In the middle of the
room, a stout, shock-headed, red-elbowed woman stood, a pikel in her
strong outstretched hands. The sergeant of dragoons, with his back to a
roaring fire, was pinned against the hearthstead by the pitchfork, the
tines of which were stuck in the oak lintel of the chimney-piece, so that
a ring of steel encircled his throat like the neckhole of a pillory, and
held him there helpless and roasting. When I first caught sight of him he
was making a frenzied attempt to wrench the prongs out, but, finding it
hopeless, drew his tuck, and lashed out at the woman. She calmly shifted
out of reach along the handle of the fork. He then hacked fiercely but
without much effect on the wooden handle, and finally, in his despair and
agony, poised the tuck and cast it at her javelin-fashion. The woman,
cooler than he in both senses of the term, dodged it easily. How she had
contrived to pin him in such a helpless manner, I could not imagine. The
motive was obvious. A little girl lay writhing and sobbing on the floor
amid the fragments of a broken mug and a scattering of copper and silver
coins.
"You've got him safe enough, mother," said I, "and it's no good cooking
him since you can't eat him."
"Be yow another stinking robber, like this'n?" she demanded. The epithet
was as apt as it was vigorous, for the stink of singeing cloth made me
sniff. "If y'be," she went on, "I'll shove' im in the fire and set about
yow."
"Not a bit of it, mother. I've come to help you, but shift him along a
bit out of the heat, and then we'll settle what to do with him." To him I
added, "Understand, sergeant, any attempt to fight or fly, and your neck
will be wrung like a cockerel's." Then laying down my gun I pulled out the
tines and shifted him along the lintel till he was out of danger. The
woman, whose fierce determination never faltered, jammed the pikel in
again and kept him trapped.
I went to the door and saw Mistress Waynflete standing by Sultan's head,
and the proud beauty arching his neck in his joy at finding his mistress
near him. I beckoned her.
"An old acquaintance, in a fix. Come in!" said I, and introduced her to
the strange scene. "The sergeant, madam," I went on, "and he has been
plucked like a brand from the burning." She took in the scene, judged what
had happened, and then gathered up the child, who had ceased crying out of
curiosity, and mothered the little one so sweetly that the red-elbowed
woman cried out hearty thanks.
In brief the story, as collected later from the mother and child, was
that the sergeant had ridden up and asked for a meal. After he had had
some bread and cheese and ale, he had taken advantage of the alewife's
absence to ask the child where mother kept her money, and, receiving no
answer, had twisted the poor little one's arm until in her terror and
agony she had told him of the secret hole in the chimney where the money
was kept in a coarse brown mug. The child's cry had brought the mother
running back with the pikel, snatched up on the way, and she, taking him
at unawares with the mug in his hand, had darted at him and luckily caught
him round the neck, and pinned him against the fireplace as I had found
him. Let him go she dared not, for she was alone except for the child, and
but for my arrival he would have roasted right enough till he was
helpless. As it was the skirts of his coat were smouldering, and he had
only just escaped serious injury. In fact, although smarting sore, he was
so little damaged that after tearing away the burnt tails, he collected
himself and tried to bam me.
"Master Wheatman," he began, "I call upon you in the King's name to aid
and assist me. This woman's tale is all a lie. The mug was on the
chimney-top for anyone to see, and I only took it down to examine it,
being struck with its appearance."
"Also in the King's name, Master Sergeant," was my reply, "I propose to
have you handed over to the nearest justice as a rogue and vagabond."
"And you shall explain why you are here with your--" I should have
strangled him if his foul tongue had wagged one word of insult, and he saw
it in my eyes. He stopped, and his face showed that he had discovered the
secret.
"The sergeant recognizes you again, Molly," said I lightly.
"Bammed and beaten by a damned yokel?" he burst out. "Ten thousand
devils! Where were my eyes yesterday?" In his anger he began to strain at
his steel cravat.
"Virgil for ever! The first town we come to I'll buy me a Latin grammar,"
said Margaret to me, with a low ripple of laughter.
"How'd on, fool," said the alewife to the sergeant. "Yow wunna be wuth
hangin' if y' carry on a this'n."
"If you don't loose me, you old bitch," he shouted, "I'll see you hanged!
Loose me, for your neck's sake! These people are Jacobites!"
"Gom, I dunna know what that be, but I wish Stafford-sheer was full on
'em. 'Tinna any good chokin' y'rsen, I shanna let go."
This method of keeping him, however, rendered the alewife useless, so I
took her place, and bade her fetch the longest and toughest rope she'd
got. She brought me a beauty and with it I trussed the sergeant, tying him
securely into a heavy, clumsy chair, and leaving him as helpless as a fowl
ready for roasting. Then a thought struck me and I went through his
pockets. His very stillness made me careful in my search, but I found only
some old bills for fodder and other military papers, and a heavily sealed
letter addressed "To HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS." I was not quite Jacobite enough
to make me willing to steal a dispatch addressed to the Royal Duke, and I
should have thrust it and the oddments of paper back again but for the
rattle of hoofs outside. It was probably Master Freake, and I was
particularly anxious that the sergeant should not see him, so I rushed out
with all the papers in my hand to forestall him.
Hurrying outside I saw Master Freake hitching his horse to the signpost,
and Mistress Waynflete already talking to him eagerly. When I got up he
delivered his news briefly and to the point, and bad news it was.
He had learned in Stone that the Colonel had again been taken on ahead
towards Newcastle in charge of a troop of Brocton's dragoons under the
command of Captain Rigby, "last night's table companion of the dead
Major," he explained.
"Whatever for?" asked Mistress Waynflete.
Master Freake said nothing, but his eyes were troubled, and I knew there
was something he would fain conceal.
"Whatever for?" she repeated. "Could you learn of no reason?"
"I was told," he answered slowly, "that Colonel Waynflete's knowledge and
assistance would be invaluable to the royal troops."
"Told that my father had turned traitor! Is that what you mean, sir?"
Scorn too great for anger covered her face, veiling its sweetness as with
a fiery cloud.
"That is the plain English of what I was told, I must admit." Here was
the grave, businesslike nature of the man, plainly posing awkward
questions that had to be answered.
"It's a wicked lie!" she burst out. She turned her face proudly to look
into mine, and I saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
"Naturally, madam," said I.
"My father's honour is mine, Master Wheatman, and I am your debtor for
another splendid courtesy."
"I argue from the flower to the tree. Man's logic, and therefore
necessarily imperfect, you would say, but for once I stick to it." I spoke
lightly and reminiscently, so as to chase the gloom from her mind, and she
was immediately herself again.
Master Freake continued his story, which went from bad to worse. As I had
expected, Bladderface had ridden into Stone, and the result of his
communication to Captain Rigby had been that orders were issued for our
pursuit, and Master Freake had left the town not very far in advance of
the squad of horse sent on our track. He had thus been unable to procure
horses for us, but at Eccleshall he had managed to obtain a pillion for
Margaret's use behind him.
This was awkward indeed, for though Master Freake had ridden hard, the
pursuit could not be very far behind, and if, as was almost certain, the
dragoons turned up at the "Ring of Bells," the sergeant would be set free,
and be after us like a mad bull. There was, however, a margin of time
available, and therefore I put this problem out of my mind, and attended
only to the urgent one of the Colonel's position.
To me there was only one explanation possible. This continual shifting of
the Colonel, ever under the charge of those rascally dragoons, commanded
now by a man whose familiarity with Tixall was an evil augury, meant one
thing only. Soon, perhaps within an hour or two, there would be fighting,
and under cover of that a stab in the back or a bullet in the head would
clear the Colonel out of Brocton's path for ever.
"Take these papers, Master Freake," said I. "Mistress Waynflete will tell
you what has happened here, and you can give them back to their owner if
you choose. But do not, I beg you, on any account let the rascal inside
see or hear you."
I raced indoors, seized the sergeant's tuck and took his baldrick from
him, heedless of his vile threats. I left him there, choking with
foulness, unhitched Sultan, sprang into the saddle, and cantered up to my
friends.
"Now, Mistress Margaret," I said, "describe your father so that I shall
know him when I see him."
She sketched his portrait in broad, clear outlines, and I fixed the
description point by point in my memory.
"That's the road to Newcastle," said I, pointing along the edge of the
mere, "and it's fairly straight and good. Follow me there as quickly as
you can, and inquire for me at the 'Rising Sun.' I'll have news of the
Colonel, if not the Colonel himself, when we meet again."
I bowed to Margaret, dug my heels into Sultan, and was off like a flash.