I CONTINUE MY NIGHT ADVENTURES.
IF the prisoner were retaken in a week, the Earl, my papa, would have
a pardon! This was indeed a grim fiat to take to bed and sleep upon.
What was this rebel to me that I should be so concerned for him? Why
should he not perish at Tyburn for his deeds, as had been the fate of
more considerable men? He was but a baker’s son. I had only exchanged
a glance and a few broken sentences with him in all my life, yet never
once did I close my eyes that night but I saw him in the cart and the
topsman preparing to fulfil his gruesome offices. More than once had
curiosity prompted me to sit at a window with my friends, as was the
fashion, and watch these malefactors hang. A kick at space, and all was
over! But this handsome youth, with the fiery look, a baker’s son, who
had committed crimes against the State--must he, a child, be strung up
in ignominy? Brooding on this horrid matter through this interminable
night, I grew so feverish and restless that sleep was banished utterly.
At last I could endure my bed no more. I rose and covered up my
nightrail with a cloak, relit the lamp, and read the timepiece. It
wanted twenty minutes to three at present.
“Faugh!” I pondered, “these lonely speculations are so unendurable that
I will fetch Emblem to bear me company the remainder of the night.”
But everything outside seemed muffled in such silence as with the hush
of snow, that ere I started for her chamber I drew the blinds up of my
own and looked out into the park.
Snow indeed! Quite a fall of it, though it now had ceased. The moon
was shining on the breadths of white; every tree stood up weird and
spectral, and such a perishing cold presided over all that the whole
of Nature seemed to be succumbing to the blight of it. The lamp I held
against the pane struck out for a quarter of a mile across the meadows
and revealed the gaunt, white woods of Cleeby sleeping in the cold
paleness of moon and snow. The night appeared to hold its breath in awe
at the wonderful fair picture the white earth presented. And very soon
I did also, but for a different reason.
To my left hand a hedge that stood a distance off was plainly to be
seen. Suddenly a figure emerged stealthily from under it. ’Twas that of
a man, who after looking cautiously about him began in a crouching and
furtive fashion to approach the house.
He came creeping slowly through the snow, and at every yard he made it
seemed as much as ever he could do to drag one leg behind the other.
Once he stopped to listen and observe, and apparently heard sounds
that did disquiet him, for he speedily resumed his motion, and at a
more rapid pace than formerly. His form grew sharper and clearer as he
came, and soon the moonlight fell on it so distinctly that I presently
recoiled from the window with a thrill of very horror. It was the
fugitive!
I think I was more frightened than surprised. During the weary vigil of
that night this wanderer had held such entire dominion of my thoughts
that after my brain had been fretted into a fever on his account, it
seemed one of the most natural consequences to step from my bed and
discover the cause of my distraction coming towards me through the
night.
I quite supposed that his enemies had managed to turn him from the
north, and that finding himself without money or any resources for
escape, he had returned to Cleeby to implore the aid of the only friend
he had in the cruel country of his foes. Yet his movements were so
mysterious that I was by no means certain that this was so. Instead of
coming underneath the window in which the blinds were up and a lamp
was burning, that he should have known was mine (my figure must have
been presented to him as clearly as by day), he renounced the front of
the house entirely and turned into a path that led to the stables and
kitchen offices on the servants’ side.
To try and find a motive for his action I pulled up the casement softly
and thrust my head forth into the stinging air. Certain sounds at once
disturbed the almost tragic hush, and assailed my ears so horridly
that I hastily withdrew them and shut the window down. The poor lad’s
pursuers were shouting and holloaing from a distant meadow. In half an
hour at most they must run the wretch to earth, for they were horsed,
and he was not; besides, his painful gait told how nearly he was beaten.
They say that the deeds of women are the fruit of sentiment, and after
this strange night I, for one, will not dispute with the doctors on
that theory. There was no particular reason why I should give a second
thought to the fate of this hunted rebel, this baker’s son, this
proletariat. Nay, the sooner he was retaken the better for myself and
my papa. Yet at three of the clock that snowy morning I did not review
his end with such a cold, complacent heart. His affairs seemed very
much my own. Once when I had played the friend to him his brave eyes
had delighted and inspired me. No, I would not sit down tamely and let
him perish. Why should I--I whose spirit was adventurous?
Therefore, my determination taken, I wisely put the lamp out, that its
brightness might not attract attention from those enemies scouring the
fields, then proceeded silently but swiftly to get into my clothes.
Never was I drest less carefully, but haste meant the salvation of a
friend. Warmly shod and clad, I descended the stairs with expeditious
quietude, groped to the left at the bottom of the staircase, through
dark doors and the ghostly silence of moonlit and deserted passages,
until I reached the kitchen part. Soon I found an outer door, unlocked
it, slipped the bolt, and stepped into the night. The slight, soft
breathing of a frost wind came upon my face, and a few straggling white
flakes rode at intervals upon it, but only a film of snow was on the
yard, of no more consistency than thistledown, but the sharp air was
wonderfully keen.
However, ’twas precious little heed I paid the elements. The shoutings
of the soldiers from the meadows was even distincter than before, and
by that I knew the men were moving in the direction of the rebel and
the house, and that if I hoped to put the lad in some safety not an
instant must be lost. First, though, I had to find him.
I peered particularly on all sides for the fugitive, but failed to
discover a solitary trace, and yet there was such a lustre in the
hour’s bright conditions that the yard was nearly as luminous as day.
Sure I was, however, that he must be close at hand, and accordingly was
mighty energetic in my quest. And I had taken twenty steps or less when
my eyes lit on a stable with an open door. Immediately I walked towards
it, and as I did so, remembered that this was the very prison in which
the lad had been previously held. This time there was not a bayonet
and a sentry to repulse one, else a strategy had been called for; but,
walking boldly in, I was rewarded for my labours. The prisoner was
lying in the straw in the very posture of the night before. No sooner
was my shadow thrown across his eyes than he rose to his feet with
every evidence of pain, and, casting the pistol I had lately given him
upon the ground, said:
“All right, I am taken; I submit without resistance.”
“On the contrary, my friend,” I answered angrily, being bitterly
disappointed of his character, “you are not taken, other than extremely
with your cowardice. You do not care for fighting at close quarters, I
observe. Bah!” and I turned my back upon him.
“My benefactress!” he cried, in a strangely altered tone, “my
benefactress! What do you here at this place, and at this hour?”
“What did I here before?” I said in scorn. “And why, sir, may I ask,
are you not footing it to Scotland, as I ordered you, instead of
returning in your tracks? I suppose it is, my gallant, that rather
than help yourself, you would choose to throw yourself upon the mercy
of a friend, heedless of what degree she is incriminated so long as
she can contrive to shield your valuable person. So you submit without
resistance, do you?”
He was very white and weary, and his breast was heaving yet with the
urgence of his flight, but it pleased me to discover that my speeches
stung.
“As you will, madam,” he answered, with a head upthrown, but also with
a quietude that had a fire underneath, “as you will; but you are a
woman and my benefactress, and I bend the knee before you.”
“Not even that,” says I. “Do you suppose I will take a coward for my
servant?”
“Madam,” says he, “say no more of this, for perhaps you would regret it
at another time; and, madam, do you know that you are the last person
in the world that I would have regret anything whatever? You have been
so much my friend.”
“Thank you,” says I, bitingly; “but, Mr. Coward, you infer that when I
act in the capacity of your friend I enjoy a privilege. Let me assure
you I am deeply honoured by it.”
“Oh,” says he, “how good of you to think so!”
This was staggering simplicity, for I judged him to be too young to be
ironical.
“But hark!” says he, “I hear the soldiers shouting and approaching.
I must beg you, madam, to leave me to my fate; but do not think too
hardly of my cowardice.”
“Then I will not leave you to your fate,” says I. “’Tis not in my
nature, however I may despise your character, having once befriended
you to desert you at the last. I came forth in this wintry night
especially to save you, and that is what I’ll do.”
“No, no, madam,” he replied, “I will not have you further prejudice
yourself with his Majesty for the sake of me.”
Now I could only accept this answer as something of an outlet for his
wounded feelings, seeing that he must be back in his present spot
expressly to implore my further aid.
“Mr. Coward,” says I, “I think you will, and readily, when you reflect
that certain death awaits you, should you spurn my offices.”
“I think not,” says he, with a stoutness that astonished me.
“You think not!” cries I, “why, what in wonder’s name hath brought
you back to the very spot you started from, if ’tis not to beseech my
farther aid?”
“Madam,” he said, “had you refrained from my defamation I would not
have told you this. But I will, to clear my name, for I could not bear
to walk the scaffold with such a stigma on it.”
“Bravo!” says I; “boy, you use the grand manner like an orator. What
was the school in which you learnt your rhetoric?”
“’Tis the very one in which you learnt your gentleness,” says he.
Being at a loss to answer him I made haste to turn the theme by warning
him of his foes’ approach and his great danger.
“The sooner they are come,” he said, “the better I’ll be suited. But if
you must know why I am here to-night, ’tis you that brought me, madam.”
I put my finger up and said: “Pray be careful, Mr. Coward, or I shall
not believe you.”
“When my enemies four times foiled me,” he said, “in my attempts to
make the north, and feeling that I had neither friends nor money in
the south, that there every man would be my enemy, I knew that sooner
or later I must be caught. It then occurred to me that your kindness,
madam, towards a rebel had probably exposed you to a severe penalty
from a Government that respects not any person. Wherefore, I thought,
should I deliver up my body in the very prison that I had lately
broken, without any prejudice to my foes or to myself, the matter might
be simplified, and as no one had been incommoded, your pardon would
perhaps be made the easier.”
I knew this for the truth, as the simple and deep sincerity of his
words cast me in a miserable rage at my own impulsiveness. This speech
had taught me that his behaviour, instead of being craven, verged
perilously near the fine. And of course in the height of the mortified
anger that I indulged against myself, the moon must choose that moment
to throw her rays about the lad’s white face, that made it even sterner
and stronger than before.
“And,” says I, “had it not been for thoughts of me, what had you done
when you found your plight extreme?”
“A bullet would have done my business,” he answered, with an eager,
almost joyful, promptness, that showed how welcome to him was that
prospect of escape. “Anything is kinder than Tyburn in the cart, madam.
I would have you believe that even I have my niceties, and they draw
the line at the ignominy of the mob.”
I chewed my lips in silence for a time, and you may be sure should have
been very willing to forget the epithet I had so unsparingly clapped
upon his conduct.
“My lad,” says I, “confound you! Why couldn’t you contrive to let me
know, you unreasonable being, that a deed like this was in your mind?
You wretched men are all alike, so monstrously unreasonable! How should
I know that when you threw your pistol down you were trying to play the
gentleman? I say, confound you! But here, here’s my hand. Kiss it, and
we’ll say no more about it.”
The lad went gallantly upon one knee in the straw, like a very
well-bred person, and did as he was bidden, with something of a relish
too.
“Mr. Baker’s Son,” says I, “I confess that I should be glad to see you
rather more diffident at the audacity of this; and a little more humbly
rejoiceful in your fortune. For, my lad, you are the first of your
tribe and species to be thus honoured. And you will be the last, I’m
thinking.”
“I am none so sure of that,” says he, with a marvellous equanimity,
“for that depends upon my tribe and species. If they ever should desire
to kiss your hand, I reckon that they’ll do so.”
“Don’t be saucy, sir,” says I, and put an imperious warning in my tone.
“Humph!” says he, “I’ll admit it is a nice, clean, white one, and not
so very fat. But when all is claimed, ’tis but a mortal woman’s.”
“Come, sir,” I says, “this is not the time for talk. Not an instant
must we lose if you are to escape the soldiers.”
“But, madam, I do not intend to escape them,” he replied.
This startled and annoyed me, and promptly did I show him my
displeasure.
“Nay, madam,” he said, “you have risked too much on my account already.
I repeat, it was to lessen your culpability that I am come back to
prison. Therefore, can you suppose that I will allow you to farther
incriminate yourself?”
“Bah!” says I, “you had not these scruples formerly.”
“No,” says he, “and it is my shame. I was unthoughtful.”
“And do you suppose,” says I, “that if so much as my little finger were
endangered in your service, that I would risk it?”
“You would,” says he, “for your high temper is writ upon your face. If
my shoe required buckling, and she who buckled it did so at the peril
of her neck, you would attempt the deed if you had the inclination. Ha!
madam, I think I can read your wilfulness.”
For the moment I was baffled, as I had to admit that he read it very
well.
“The danger,” I rejoined, “is quite nothing, I am certain. My papa, the
Earl, hath a great interest with the Government. He can turn it round
his little finger.”
“Can he so?” says he. “Then let him procure my pardon, for I would not
willingly risk again the safety of his daughter.”
“He would not procure your pardon,” I replied, “for the good reason
that he abhors all rebels and their work. Yet he is strong enough to
protect his daughter if the need arose.”
This was flat lying, I believe, but when one is hard pressed one is
rather summary with truth.
The lad was immovable as rock, though. His conduct threw me in a pet
of downright anger and alarm. Having made my mind up long ago to save
him if I could, and having planned it all so perfectly, ’twas not my
disposition to let his foolish scruples interfere.
“My lad,” says I, flashing out at him, “any more of these absurdities
and you will put me in a thorough rage. Come, we must not lose an
instant now. Why do you view your life so lightly?”
“I only view it lightly where your safety is concerned, dear lady,” he
replied, with a spice of the proper gallantry.
“It would require a person of a higher calibre than yours to affect it
any way, either with the world or with the Government,” I answered,
harshly. “My Lady Barbara Gossiter is able to take care of herself,
I’ll hazard.”
“My Lady Barbara Gossiter!” he echoed, “whew! this is interesting. Now
madam, do you know that I took you for a great lady at a glance! But
I’ll confess that I thought you scarcely such a personage.”
I should have liked this confession better had there been more of
embarrassment about it. But this baker’s son was as greatly at his
ease as ever. I laughed and said: “Sir, you should reserve your
judgment of my qualities until you see them underneath the candelabra
instead of underneath the moon. But I think you will admit, sir, that I
am one who should be strong enough to shield herself against the State
if necessary.”
“Madam,” says he, and his proposal staggered me, “I will put my life in
your hands once more on this condition: that you swear solemnly upon
oath that you shall run no danger in my affair.”
Was anything more delightfully or more boyishly _naïve_? I fear that I
should have betrayed some laughter had he not worn a face of gravity,
that said my word would have been unaccepted had I given him reason to
suppose I was not equally as serious as he.
“Swear,” says I, “of course I’ll swear. There is not the remotest peril
in the case.” I think it was a miracle that choked my mirth back.
“Very well,” says he, with a boon-conferring air, “I will remit myself
entirely to your hands.”
“’Tis very good of you to do so,” says I, remarkably relieved, yet even
more amused. “And now then follow me, sir, and I will take you into
safety.”
But alas! we had tarried over long. Escape was now cut off. I had no
sooner stepped outside the stable than I fled back in such a haste
of fear that I nearly fell into the arms of the fugitive, who was
obediently following. For the soldiers had arrived at last, and I
could see them leading their weary horses across the yard in the very
direction of this block of stables that we occupied.
“Up, up,” I whispered my companion, “into the manger, force the
hay-trap and mount into the loft! Up, I say! Can’t you hear their feet
upon the yard?”
“After you,” says he, “I would not have these men see you for the
world.”
“Oh, what madness, boy!” I cried; “don’t you hear them coming? Another
moment and you are ta’en. ’Tis you, not me, they’re seeking.”
“Madam, after you,” says he.
“Then I won’t,” says I; “I will not be badgered by anybody.”
’Twas then that this delightful youth acted in a way that I could never
sufficiently admire. He drew up his form and looked upon me with all
the majesty of six husbands made in one, and pointed with his finger to
the trap. “Madam,” says he, in a terribly stern voice, “you will go up
first, for I’m infernal certain I won’t!”
At another season I must have dallied to enjoy the situation; but,
knowing that the life of so remarkable a boy depended wholly on my
obedience, I went up willy nilly.
With his assistance, I had soon scrambled into the manger, and had been
pushed most comically upwards through the trap; whilst he came on my
heels with a cat’s agility, the pistol in his teeth. On the instant we
composed ourselves in security in the straw, and in such a posture
that we could enjoy a full view of the trap, peer down there through,
and observe the movements of our enemies should they enter the lower
chamber.
As it proved, we were not a second too early in our hiding. A
clattering of hoofs announced that the horses had come to the
stable door; and it was to our dire misfortune that their riders
here dismounted and held a council, whose import was the reverse of
comforting. Leaving their animals outside, they sought the protection
of the stable against the bitter air, and without restraint discussed
their future courses. From our vantage in the upper chamber we looked
down and listened with all ears through the trap; and, as they had
evidently not the least knowledge of our presence there, we felt quite
a keen enjoyment in the situation, which was terribly dashed, however,
by the resolution they arrived at.
“You men,” says one, with the authority proper to a corporal--Corporal
Flickers was his title, as later I learned to my sorrow--“you men, this
fox is a knowin’ varmint. Why did he come back here? I puts it to you.
Why did he come back here?”
“’Cause o’ me lady,” was suggested by one of his companions.
“Eggsac’ly,” says the Corporal. “George, you’re knowin’, you are, you
take my word for that. ’Cause o’ me lady. And if I was to have a free
hand wi’ my lady, what is it I’d do to her?”
“Screw her blazin’ neck,” suggested the same authority.
“Eggsac’ly,” says the Corporal; “screw her blazin neck. George, you’re
knowin’, you are. Oh the air’stocracy! They never was no good to
England, and durn me if they don’t get wuss. Never did no honest labour
in their naturals. Lives high; drinks deep--ow! it turns me pink to
mention ’em. It does, George Marshal; it does, John Pensioner; fair
congests my liver. And fer brazing plucky impidence their wimmen is the
wust. This here ladyship in perticular, a sweet piece, isn’t she? Never
does a stitch o’ honest labour, but sucks pep’mint to find a thirst,
and bibs canary wine to quench it. And it’s you and me, George, you and
me, John, as pervides this purple hussy wi’ canary wine and pep’mint.
Us I say, honest tillers o’ the land, honest toilers o’ the sea, as
is the prop o’ this stupendjous air’stocracy. It’s we, I say, what
finds ’em in canary wine and pep’mint. Poor we, the mob, the scum, the
three-damned we what’s not agoing to hevving when we dies. But who’s
this ladyship as she should let a prisoner out in the middle o’ the
night, and sends six humble men but honest a-scourin’ half Yorkshire
for him. As Joseph Flickers allus was polite he’ll not tell you what
her name is, but do you know what Joe’d do if he had a daughter who
grew up to be a ladyship like her?”
“Drown her,” Mr. George modestly suggested.
“George,” says the Corporal, in a tone of admiration, “you are smart,
my boy, downright smart, that’s what you are! Drown her’s what I’d do,
with her best dress and Sunday bonnet on. I should take her so, by the
back of her commode, gently but firmly, George, and lead her to the
Ouse. And then I should say, ‘Ladyship, I allows you five minutes fer
your prayers, for they never was more needed; because, ladyship, I’m
a-going to drown you, like I would a ordinary cat what strays upon the
tiles at night, and says there what she shouldn’t say. Ow, you besom
wi’ your small feet and your mincing langwidge, you should smell hell
if Joseph Flickers was your pa!”
Now I have sat long and often in a playhouse, but Sir John Vanbrugh,
Mr. William Congreve, and all those other celebrated gentlemen of mirth
have yet to give me an entertainment I enjoyed half so much as this.
There was something so utterly delightful in the idea of Corporal
Joseph Flickers being my papa, and his conception of a parent’s duties
in that case, that I had perforce to stuff my cloak into my mouth to
prevent my laughter disturbing my denouncers.
Next moment, though, there was scanty cause for mirth. The Corporal,
having delivered this tremendous speech with a raucous eloquence, gave
it as his opinion that the prisoner had already been let into the house
with my connivance, and that I had put him in hiding there. They were
unanimous in this, and came to the conclusion that he would abide some
hours there at least, as he had been so sternly chased that he could
not crawl another mile. This was true enough, as their quarry took
occasion to whisper as they said so. It was considered inadvisable to
challenge the house just then; the majority of its inmates being abed,
the night not yet lifted, and therefore favouring concealment, and,
above all, they were full of weariness themselves, and their horses
beaten. Accordingly they determined to put them up, and also to allow
their own weariness a few hours of much needed ease.
“Even us, the mob, the scum, can’t go on for ever; what do you say,
John Pensioner?” the Corporal remarked.
“Truest word you’ve spoke this moon, Joe,” John Pensioner asserted,
with a yawn for testimony.
“Where’ll we sleep, though, Corp’ral?” inquires my friend, Mr. George.
“There’s a hayloft top o’ this,” the Corporal replied; “pretty snug wi’
straw and fodder. Roomy, too; bed six like blazes. And warm, warm as
that ’ere hussy of a ladyship will be in the other life, when the devil
gives her pep’mint but no canary wine.”
“The very spot!” by general acclamation.
I could have cried out in my rage. This meant simply that we must be
taken like a brace of pheasants in a snare. With the soldiers already
established underneath there did not appear the remotest possibility of
escape.
“The game’s up, madam,” the poor prisoner whispered to me, while I
whispered curtly back again that I’d be better suited if he’d hold his
tongue.
“But you, my dear lady, you?” says he, heedless of my sharp reply,
“’twill never do for you to be discovered with me thus. Nay, you shall
not. Rat me, but I have a plan! They are still underneath this trap,
you see, assembled in a talk. I’ll drop down in their midst, scuffle
with ’em, and while we are thus engaged, you can get from here into the
yard, and slip back to the house unseen, and so leave them none the
wiser.”
“Very pretty,” says I, “but how am I to get from here into the yard? It
means a ten-feet drop upon weak ankles, for the ladder, you observe, is
no longer there.”
“Confound it!” says he. “I’d forgot the ladder. Of course it is not
there. What a fool I am! But ’oons! here’s a means to overcome it,
madam. We’ll drop a truss of straw down, and that will break your fall
if you leap upon it carefully.”
“I’m to run away, then, while you, my lad, are to be delivered up to
death?”
“Perhaps,” he dubiously said; “but then I am the least to be
considered.”
“Then I intend to do nothing of the sort,” says I. “’Tis like man’s
vanity to cast himself for the part of hero. But I think I can strut
through that part just as handsomely as you.”
“You have your reputation, madam, to consider,” he reminded me. “They
surely must not find you here.”
“A fig for reputation and her dowager proprieties. Am I not a law unto
myself?”
This was a simulated flippancy, however, for we were in a grievous
situation now. But the desperation of it spurred me, and very soon I
found a plan by which the fugitive might after all go free. It called
for a pretty daring act, and much kind fortune in its execution.
Adventure nothing, nothing win, is however the device by which I
am only too prone to order my behaviour. For even granting that
your effort fails, the excitement it engenders is something of a
compensation.
Briefly, my stratagem was this. I would exchange cloaks with the rebel,
muffling my form up thoroughly in his military article, and don his
three-cornered hat in lieu of the hood I wore. Thus arrayed, ’twas
not too much to think that when his enemies caught a view of me in
the uncertain moonlight, and expecting to see the prisoner there and
at that season, they would mistake me for him. In an undertone that
admitted of no parley I caused the prisoner to effect this alteration
in his attire, and having done so speedily, I gave him further of my
plan.
“My lad,” says I, “let us drop that truss of straw down, as you said,
but we must take care that none of them see us do so. I am then to fall
upon it, and having done so safely, shall contrive to advertise them
of the fact. And when they run forth to seize me I shall flee hot foot
across the park. They will, of course, pursue. Then, sir, will be your
time. While we are having our diversion in the grass, the path will be
open for your flight into the house. You will find one of the kitchen
bolts unslipped, and on my return I shall expect to then discover you
awaiting further orders.”
“’Tis a sweet invention, madam,” he replied, “but how shall you fare
when they catch you and your identity is known?”
“The chances are,” I answered stoutly, “that they will not catch me. A
thick wood infringes on the path a quarter of a mile away. If I once
reach that, and I think I can, for these men are dogweary and I shall
have a start of them, I’ll wager that I am not ta’en. For I could
traverse every inch of that wood in the darkest night.”
The rebel was exceedingly loth to let me do this. But the more I
pondered the idea, the more I became enamoured of it; small the danger,
the exertion not excessive, the prospect of success considerable, the
promise of diversion great. There was all to win and nought to lose, I
told him. Besides, in the end I did not condescend to argue, but simply
set my foot down and led him to understand that when Bab Gossiter had
made her mind up no mortal man could say her nay.
Therefore he submitted, with a degree of reluctancy, of course; yet
none the less did he obey me to the letter. First we peered down
through the trap to see what our enemies were at. They were succouring
their horses. This being a three-stall stable only, three of their
steeds had to be elsewhere furnished. The Corporal, John Pensioner, and
another soldier, had led their animals into the one we occupied, whilst
the others had taken theirs to the one adjoining. Choosing a moment
when all the men were in the stables the prisoner dropped a truss of
straw down gently ten feet to the stones. Then we listened painfully to
learn if this movement had been discerned by those within. Seemingly
they were all unconscious of it, for they went on uninterruptedly in
the bedding of their horses. Therefore the moment was still propitious,
and I ventured my descent. Quickly I stepped to the edge of the loft,
got through the wide bars that enclosed the provender, dropped upon my
knees, tightly grasped my companion’s outstretched hands, swayed an
instant above the space that intervened between me and the straw, was
lowered several inches nearer to the ground by virtue of the rebel’s
offices, then renounced my grasp of him and leapt lightly on to the
cushion that awaited me beneath. The shock of the fall was of the
slightest, and left me ready for an immediate flight. This was truly
fortunate, as it was evident that my descent had been duly noted by the
Corporal and his men. Hearing a commotion in the stable and various
astonished cries, I began to run at once, and was, perhaps, the best
part of a hundred yards away ere they came fuming and shouting from the
stables and were at last alive to my retreat.
“The horses, men, the horses!” bawled the Corporal, never doubting
that it was the prisoner in full flight.
To lead forth their weary beasts, to saddle them, and to coax them to
pursuit meant such a loss of time that I was far out in the middle of
the park ere they had started on their way. I headed straight for the
gaunt, shadowy line of woods that looked the veritable haunt of ghosts
and the supernatural with their deep, dark masses of tree and foliage
bathed in the eerieness of snow and moonlight. It always was my pride
that, though a woman of the mode, I could, when in the country, run
both easily and lightly, being blessed with the nimblest feet and a
stride which, if not an athlete’s, had at least a spring and quickness
in it not to be despised.
Further, it was easy running across the soft thin carpet of the snow,
whilst the flakes had ceased to fall, and the bitter wind was dead.
I was soon aware, however, that it was to be the sternest race. Once
mounted and away, the hunters decreased the wide distance that was
between us mighty soon. And presently I knew that my long start would
prove not a yard too much to enable me to reach the woods. In a little
while, being in no state for such violent and prolonged exertion, my
chest became restricted and my breath grew dreadfully distressed.
And every moment my pursuers drew more near. Therefore, despite my
discomforts, I set my teeth and trotted on as determinedly as ever;
and I would have you to believe that I felt a fierce delight in doing
so, for after long months of a suppressed and artificial course of
life, this strange race in the snow seemed a return to very nature.
Sure, this tense, exhilarating agony of hope and fear and hot-breathing
energy were worth a hundred triumphs in the drawing-room!
Yard by yard the horses ran me down. But I had fixed my eyes upon those
weird trees ahead, that assumed shapes more palpable and familiar as
I ran; and though I could hear the perpetual shoutings and hoof-thuds
of my enemies, I never once looked back, but trotted valiantly on with
a mind for nothing but the woods. There was no time then to enjoy the
quaintness of the matter, or to laugh at my ridiculous employ. However,
that lack hath been made up later. Soon I was so near the trees that I
could plainly see the ditch I had to cross, and the very gap the hither
side it in the fence that I proposed to scramble through. The proximity
of safety lent me strength, and for a few yards my failing pace was
perceptibly improved.
Here I had a horrid fright. My feet were almost on those dim,
mysterious woods, the snow upon them pure, the moon upon them eerie,
and such a mighty silence in the trees that if a squirrel cracked a
beech twig the report of it rang among them like a gun, when a pistol
barked out loud and brutally, and a bullet whistled by my ear and
pattered ominously in the ditch. ’Twas a very cruel, peremptory means,
I thought, and my heart stood still with terror. Not my feet, forsooth,
for fear was a sharp spur to their flagging ardour. I durst not look
behind, but the shot informed me that, despite the perilous nearness
of my pursuers, they saw that I must be the first within the wood,
where horses could not follow, and among that continent of branch
and herbage they knew that their search must prove most difficult.
Evidently they meant to stay my entrance, cost what it may.
Another shot yelped out at me, another, and then another. One touched
my hat, I think, but that was all. Verily the devil was wonderfully
kind this morning.
And strange as you may think it, I felt pretty callous to these
bullets. Nay, I was not afraid of anything. My spirit had thrown for
once the fetters of convention off. It was itself for one brief hour.
It was part of the earth and the trees, the snow and the moonlight;
free as air and primitive as nature. ’Twas running unimpeded under
God’s moon, without any of our eighteenth-century fopperies of brocades
and powders on it.
I scrambled through the ditch and out again, brushed through the
hedge-gap at the cost of cloak rents and a briar in my hand, and found
myself within the thicket. I plunged into the deepest I could find,
but as I did so a new volley rattled above my head among the trees,
and the splinters from a shattered bough missed my face by inches and
fell across the path. Knowing the ground so thoroughly I could take a
great advantage of it, and sure every bit of it was needed, for the
soldiers were desperately close. There was so thick a roof of branches
to this wood that the moon could hardly penetrate, and not the snow at
all. Thus the question of footprints had not to be encountered, and the
deep gloom that slumbered everywhere also lent me aid. Once under the
protection of the trees I checked my pace, for in this sanctuary it
would be easy to dodge a whole battalion.