“I bade you wait at Paris for my return,” I said, and I reined in my horse. He followed my example, but with so evident a disappointment that I forgave him his disobedience on the instant
“You left no word, sir, as to the date of your return, or where I should look for you,” he explained, readily enough.
“Besides,” I added, with a laugh, “I ride to Bar-le-Duc, is it not so?” and I allowed him to continue with me, bethinking me at the same time that I might inform myself the sooner concerning Blackladies and the politics of the county. Upon these points he gave me information, which inclined me in his favour. The northern counties, as far south as Derbyshire, were so much tinder. It needed but a spark to set them ablaze from one coast to the other. I was ready to listen to as much talk of that kind as he could pour into my ears, and indeed he did not stint me of it; so that, liking his story, I began in a short while to like the man who told it, and to hold myself lucky that I was possessed of a steward whose wishes so jumped with his service.
He had been born on the estate, he told me, some thirty years since, and had been reared there, though, thanks to the kindness of his late master, my uncle, he had received a better schooling than his father before him. He spoke, indeed, very correctly for a servant, but with a broadish accent and a clipping of his the’s, as the natives of that district are used to do. But for my part I never got the tang of it, and so make no effort to reproduce it here. He was called Leonard Ashlock.
In his company I journeyed, then, the fifty-eight leagues to Bar-le-Duc, where I seemed all at once to have come into my own country without the trouble of crossing over seas. For as I rode through the narrow streets, it was the English tongue that I heard spoken on every side, though more often with a Scotch or an Irish accent. But the one whom I came to seek I did not find. The Chevalier, they told me, had gone to Commercy. So to Commercy we travelled eastwards after him for another eight leagues or so, and arrived there towards the close of the afternoon on the next day.
We rode straight to the Toison D’or, the chief inn of the town, and while I was dismounting in the courtyard, I noticed a carriage, which was ranged, all dirtied and muddy, against an angle of the wall. I stepped over and examined it. There was a crest upon the panels.
I turned to the ostler.
“When did the carriage come?”
“This morning.”
“And monsieur? “
“He is within, I think.”
I ran up the steps into the house and fell plump against a girl who was carrying some glasses and a jug upon a tray. She gave a little scream; the tray struck me on the chest; there was jingle of broken glass, and a jugful of claret was streaming down my breeches and soaking about my knees.
“Monsieur is in?” I asked.
“Stupid!” she said, with a stamp of the foot.
“Monsieur is in?” I asked again.
“Booby,” says she, and caught me a swinging box on the ears.
“I beg your pardon,” said I, and I ran up the stairs. A footman stood beside the door on the landing, and I knew the man.
“Ah,” said I, “he is here.”
The footman advanced a step towards me.
“My lord is busy.”
“He will see me.”
“I have the strictest orders, sir.”
I pushed past the fellow and hammered at the door. It was thrown open from the inside, and Lord Bolingbroke stood anxiously in the door.
“Good morning,” said I, airily. “It is a roundabout journey, this of yours to Dauphiné;” and while he stared and frowned at me I stepped past him into the room. In the window opposite there stood a man with his back towards me—a man of a slender and graceful figure, plainly dressed in a suit of black velvet He turned hastily as I stumbled across the threshold, and in a twinkling I knew what I had done. There was no mistaking the long, melancholic features, the gentle aspect of long-suffering. His race was figured in the mould of his lineaments, and the sad history of his race was written in his eyes,
I dropped upon my knees.
“Your Majesty,” I stammered out; and again, “your Majesty.”
He took a step eagerly towards me. I felt the claret trickling down my legs.
“You bring pressing news,” he exclaimed; and then he checked himself and his voice dropped to despondency. “But it will be bad news. Not a doubt of that! ’Tis always bad news that comes in such hurry; “and he turned to Bolingbroke with the saddest laugh. “Bad news, my lord, I’ll warrant.”
“Nay, your Majesty,” I answered, “I bring no news at all; “and I glanced helplessly at Bolingbroke, who, having closed the door, now stood on one side, midway between King James and myself. How I envied him his easy bearing! And envying him thus I became the more confused.
“It is a kinsman of mine,” he said, in some perplexity—“Mr. Lawrence Clavering, and a devoted servant of your Majesty.”
“A kinsman of yours,” said the King, affably. “That makes him doubly welcome.”
And then the most ridiculous thing occurred, though I perceived nothing of its humour at the time. For of a sudden the King gave a start
“He is wounded, my lord,” he cries. “He shall have my surgeon to attend to him. Tell Edgar; he is below. Bid him hurry!” and he came a little nearer towards me, as though with his own hands he would help me to rise. “You were hurt on your journey hither. How long—how long must blood be the price of loyalty to me and mine?”
The poignant sadness of his voice redoubled my confusion.
“Quick!” cried the King. “The poor lad will swoon.” And, indeed, I was very near to swooning, but it was from sheer humiliation. I glanced about me, wishing the floor would open. But it was the door that opened, and Lord Bolingbroke opened it I jumped to my feet to stop him.
“Your Majesty,” I exclaimed, “it is no wound I would to my soul that it were!”
“No wound!” said the King, drawing back and bending his brows at me in a frown.
“What is it, then, Lawrence?” asked Bolingbroke as he closed the door.
I looked down at my white buckskin breeches, with the red patches spreading over them. “It is,” said I, “a jugful of claret.” No one spoke for a little, and I noticed the King’s face grew yet sterner and more cold. He was, in fact, like so many men of a reserved disposition, very sensitive to the least hint of ridicule upon all occasions, and particularly so when he had been betrayed into the expression of any feeling.
“Your Majesty,” I faltered out ruefully, “the Rector of the Jesuit College in Paris warned me before I set out, of the dangers which spring from overmuch zeal, and this is the second proof of his wisdom that I have had to-day. For now I have offended your Majesty by stumbling impertinently into your presence; and before, the maid boxed my ears in the passage for upsetting her claret.”
The speech was lucky enough to win my pardon. For Bolingbroke began to laugh, and in a moment or two the King’s face relaxed, and he joined in with him.
“But we have yet to know,” said he, “the reason of your haste.”
I explained how that, having come into an inheritance, I had ridden off to Bar-le-Duc, to put it at his disposal, and from Bar-le-Duc to Commercy; and how, on the sight of Lord Bolingbroke’s carriage in the courtyard, I had rushed into his presence, without a thought that he might be closeted with the King. I noticed that at the mention of Blackladies the King and Bolingbroke exchanged a glance. But neither interrupted me in my explanation.
“You give me, at all events, a proof of your devotion to your kinsman,” said the King; “and I am fain to take that as a guarantee that you are no less devoted to myself.”
“Nay,” interposed Lord Bolingbroke; “your Majesty credits me with what belongs to yourself. For I doubt if Lawrence would have shown such eagerness for my company had he found me in the Dauphiné instead of in Lorraine.”
The King nodded abstractedly, and sat him down at the table, which was littered over with papers, and finally seized upon a couple of letters, which he read through, comparing them one with the other.
“You can give me, then, information concerning Cumberland,” he said, changing to a tone sharp and precise; and he proceeded to put to me a question or two concerning the numbers of his adherents and the strength of their adhesion.
“Your Majesty,” I replied, “my news is all hearsay. For this inheritance has come to me unexpected and unsought. The last year I have lived in Paris.”
He drummed with his fingers upon the table, like one disappointed.
“You know nothing, then, of the county?”
“I have never so much as set foot in it I was born in Shropshire.”
“Then, your Majesty,” Lord Bolingbroke interrupted, “neither is he known there. There is an advantage in that which counterbalances his lack of information.”
The King raised his eyes to my face, and looked at me doubtfully, with a pinching of the lips.
“He is young for the business,” he said, “and one may perhaps think”—he smiled as he added the word—“precipitate.”
My hopes, which had risen with a bound at the hint that some special service might be required of me, sank like a pebble in a pool. I cudgelled my brains for some excuse, my recollections for some achievement, however slight, which might outweigh my indiscretion. But I had not a single deed to my name: and what excuse could acquit me of a hot-headed thoughtlessness? I remained perforce silent and abashed; and it was in every way fortunate that I did, for my Lord Bolingbroke tactfully put forward the one argument that could serve my turn. Said he quite simply—
“His grandfather fell at Naseby, his father in the siege of Deny, and with those two lives, twice were the fortunes of the family lost.”
The King rose from his table and came over to me. He laid a hand upon my shoulder.
“And so your father died for mine,” he said, and there was something new, something more personal in the kindliness of his accent, as though my father’s death raised me from a unit in the aggregate of his servants into the station of a friend; “and your grandfather for my grandfather.”
“Your Majesty sees that it is a privilege which I inherit,” I replied. From the tail of my eye I saw my kinsman smiling appreciation of the reply.
“Lawrence has the makings of a courtier, your Majesty,” said he, with a laugh.
“Nay,” I interrupted hotly, “this is honest truth. Let the King prove me!”
It was the King who laughed now, and he patted my shoulder with a quite paternal air, though, in truth, he was not so many years older than myself.
“Well,” he said, “why not? He is a hawk of the right nest. Why not? “and he turned him again to Bolingbroke. “As you say, he is not known in Cumberland, and there is, besides, a very natural reason for his presence in the county.” He stood looking me over for a second, and then went back abruptly to his papers on the table. “But I would you could give me reliable news as to those parts.”
“News I can give your Majesty,” I answered, “though whether it is reliable or not I cannot take it upon oath to say. But the man who passed it to me was the steward of Blackladies, and he spoke in that spirit wherein I would have all men speak.” And I told him all that Ashlock had recounted to me.
“Oh,” said the King, when I had ended, and he made the suggestion eagerly to Bolingbroke. “Perhaps it were best, then, that I should land upon the coast of Cumberland in England. What say you? “
I saw Bolingbroke’s eyebrows lift ever so slightly.
“I thought,” he answered, with the merest touch of irony in his tone, “that your Majesty had determined some half an hour since to land at Montrose? “
“I know,” said the King, with something of petulance; “but these later advices may prove our best guide.”
“But are they true? “said Bolingbroke, spreading out his hands.
“They tally with the report of Mr. Rookley,” said the King.
I started at the mention of the name, and the King remarked the movement. He looked towards me, then again at the letter in his hand, which was written in a round and clumsy character. I caught sight of a word in that letter, and I remembered it afterwards, because it chanced to be misspelt
“Oh,” said he, “Mr. Jervas Rookley signs himself of Blackladies? I fancied that the name was familiar to me, when first you uttered it.”
I repeated all that Ashlock had related to me concerning the man, and how I was to hold his estate in trust for him until the King came to his throne.
“We will see to it,” said he, “that Mr. Clavering shall not be the loser.”
I felt the blood rush into my face.
“It was with no thought of that kind that I spoke,” I declared earnestly. “I pray your Majesty to believe me.”
But Lord Bolingbroke broke in upon my protestations.
“This steward is with you at Commercy? Then, if it please your Majesty, I would advise that we see the man here, and question him closely face to face. For Mr. Jervas Rookley——” And he filled the gap of words with a shrug of significance.
“You distrust him?” asked the King; “yet it appears his loyalty has cost him an estate.”
“It is that perplexes me; for I know these country gentlemen,” and his voice sharpened to the bitterest sneer. “At night, over their cups, they are all for King James; then they consult their pillows, and in the sober morning they are all for King George. Oh, I know them! A sore head makes a world of difference in their politics.”
The words seemed to me hot and quick, with all the memories of his defeated labours during those last six years of Queen Anne’s reign, and I fancied the King himself was inclined to discount their value on that account
“Yet,” he urged, “these letters speak in no uncertain terms.”
“They speak only of a disposition towards your Majesty,” rejoined his minister. “It is a very tender, delicate, and unsatisfactory thing, a disposition. What we would have is their resolve. Are they resolved to drive on with vigour, if matters tend to a revolution? Will they support the revolution with advantage, if it spins out to a war? It is on these points your Majesty needs to be informed; and it is on these points they keep so discreet a silence. We ask them for their plan, as Marshall Berwick asked them time out of mind, and we get the same answer that he received. How many troops will his most Christian Majesty land? How many stands of arms? how many thousand crowns? Not one word of a definite design; not one word of a precise statement of their resources.”
He walked about the room as he spoke, with every mark of discouragement in his gestures and expression, while the King listened to him in an uneasy impatience, as though he was rather irritated than impressed by Bolingbroke’s doubts.
“Very well,” said the King, tapping his foot on the floor, “we will examine Mr. Clavering’s steward;” and he bade me go and fetch Ashlock into the room. But search as I might, nowhere could I find a trace of him. He had stayed no more than five minutes in the house, the people of the inn informed me. I hurried to the stables, thinking perchance to find him there. I questioned the ostlers, the drawers, even the wench who had boxed my ears. No one had knowledge of his whereabouts, and since it would be an idle business to go hunting for him through the unfamiliar streets of Commercy, I left a sharp word that he should come up the moment he returned, and so got me back chapfallen to Lord Bolingbroke’s apartment
The King’s secretary, Mr. Edgar, was now in the room, gathering together the papers which overspread the table.
“It is no great matter,” said the King, when I explained how that I had failed in my search, “for I doubt me that I could have heard him out. Besides, Mr. Clavering, I have had some talk concerning you with your kinsman here, and since your inheritance and your journey hither fit so aptly with our needs, it were a pity to miss the occasion.”
“Your Majesty,” I cried, and I felt my heart swell and leap within me, and my head spin with exultation. Here was the very thing of which I had dreamed hopelessly so often during those weary months at Paris, letting my fancies dally with it as with some bright and charming fairy tale, and, lo! it had come true. It had come true! The words made a silent music at my heart, and animated all my blood. It had come true! and then, of a sudden, there shot through me, chilling me to the centre, the rector’s warning, and the forebodings that had flowed from it. Did this mission, which the King assigned to me, harbinger the hour of trial? Should I fail when it came? I set my teeth and clenched the nails into the palms of my hands. My whole body cried No! No! but underneath I seemed to hear a voice, very low, very persistent, speaking with full knowledge, and it said Yes! Yes!
“Then this will be your charge,” continued the King, recalling me to myself. “You will journey with all speed to London, and bear with you a letter in my hand to the Duke of Ormond, at Richmond,” and he paused upon the words. “It must pass from your hand into the Duke’s. You will then go north to your estate, and collect knowledge for our use as to what help we may expect from Cumberland, and, so far as you can gather, from the counties adjoining. Lord Bolingbroke will inform you more of the particulars. Your errand, of course, you will keep secret—locked up from all—from our supporters, no less than from our opponents. It would be of detriment to us if they came to think that we distrusted them. Nor do we—it is their judgment, not their loyalty, about which we wish to be assured. We think, therefore, that it would be prudent in you to make no parade of your convictions. Hear both sides like one that holds the balance evenly. For, if you take one side openly, you will hear from our friends just what we hear so far away as Bar-le-Duc; and so God speed you!” and he held out his hand to me, and I kissed it. Then Mr. Edgar opened the door, and the King walked to it. He was already across the threshold, when he stopped and turned back, pulling a silver medal from his fob.
“This,” said he, “is the fac-simile of that medal which the Duchess of Gordon presented to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, seven years back,” and he gave it into my hand. “It may serve to keep me in your heart and memories. Moreover, a day may come when it will be necessary for you to convince our friends in the North, on whose side you stand; and this will help you to the end. For there is no other copy.”
I knelt down and kissed the medal reverently. On the one side was struck the head of King James—very true and life-like—with the words “cujus est;” on the other a picture of the British Islands, with this motto inscribed beneath it, “Reddite.”
“It is a text,” I said, and indistinctly enough, for that simple word “Reddite,” so charged was it with a sad and pitiful significance, brought the tears welling to my throat “It is a text I would have every man in England preach from.”
“You will act on it,” said the King; and I flattered myself with the thought that I noted something of a veritable tenderness in his accent “You will act on it; that is better;” and so he went out of the room.
Lord Bolingbroke closed the door, flung himself into a chair, and yawned prodigiously.
“Lawrence,” he said, “I am very thirsty.”
A bottle of Rhenish wine was standing on a sideboard at one end of the room. He went over and opened it, and filled two glasses.
“Let us drink,” said he, and handed one to me “Let us drink to ourselves,” and he raised the glass to his lips.
“Nay,” I cried, “to the King first”
“Very well, to the King first, if you will, and to ourselves next. What matters the toast, so long as we drink it?” and he drained his glass to the bottom. I followed his example.
“Now to ourselves,” said he; and he filled them again. “It is a good fashion,” he continued, in a musing tone, “that of drinking to the King. For so one drinks double, and never a word can be said against it” I noticed, however, that he drank triple and quadruple before he had come to an end. Then he looked at my breeches and laughed.
“And so the wench boxed your ears,” he said, and, becoming quite serious, he took me by the arm. “Lawrence, let’s drink to her! “
“I should reel in my saddle if I did,” said I, drawing back.
“Then don’t sit in it!” he replied. “Let’s drink to her several times, and then we’ll go to bed.”
“I trust to go to bed a good twenty miles from Commercy.”
He shook his head at me.
“Lawrence, it is plain that you are new to the service of kings.”
“You have a letter for me,” said I.
“To the Duke of Ormond,” and he looked at me in surprise. “You mean to start to-night?”
“Yes.”
“Very well,” and he sat himself down to the table, transformed in a second to a cool man of business. “The letter is in the chevalier’s hand”—he drew it from his pocket as he spoke—“and there are many ships in the Channel. You had best charter a boat at Dunkirk, the smaller the better, and set sail at night-fall, so that you may strike the Downs before sunrise.” Thereupon he proceeded to instruct me as to the precise details concerning which I was to inform myself in Cumberland—such as the number of troops they could put into the field, and how competent they were to face well-drilled and disciplined squadrons, their weapons, the least assistance from France they would hazard the rising upon, and such-like matters. Then he rose and prepared to accompany me downstairs. I was still holding the medal in my hand, and now and again fingering it, as a man will what he holds most precious. “And, Lawrence,” he said, “I would hide the medal, even from yourself, if that be possible. You may find it a very dangerous gift before you have done.”
He spoke with so solemn a warning as even then did something to sober my enthusiasm.
“It was a wise word that the Chevalier spoke when he bade you beware how you sided openly with the Jacks.”
“Oh! “said I, as the thought struck me. “It was you, then, that prompted that advice—and for my sake.”
“Not altogether.”
“But in the main, for my sake.”
“Lawrence,” said he, leaning across the table, with his eyes fixed upon my face and his voice lowered to a whisper, “I misdoubt me, but this is a fool’s business we’re embarked upon. You heard the Chevalier. He has no fixed design,” and he brought his hand down upon the table with a dunch. “One day he will land at Montrose, the next in Devonshire, the next in Cumberland, and, God knows, but the most likely place of all is the Tower steps.”
“No!” I cried. “I’ll not believe that He has you to help him now.”
Bolingbroke smiled, but shook his head.
“He has six other ministers besides myself, with Fanny Oglethorpe and Olive Trant at the head, and all of them have more power than I. He will concert a plan with me, and the hour after give a contrary order behind my back. It was the same when Berwick had the disposing of his affairs. No, Lawrence, I would have you be prudent, very prudent.”
He came down the stairs with me and stood in the courtyard repeating ever the same advice, the while I mounted my horse. Of my steward I still could see no sign, and, leaving another direction that he should follow with all speed, I rode off towards the village of Isoncour, where Ashlock caught me up some two hours after I came there. I rated him pretty soundly, being much contraried by the melancholy forebodings of Lord Bolingbroke.
Ashlock made his excuses, however, very submissively, saying that he had dined at an ordinary in the town, and thereafter, being much fatigued with the hurry of our travelling, had fallen fast asleep. And I, bethinking me that, in spite of his gloomy forecast, Lord Bolingbroke would none the less serve the King with unremitting vigour, began to take heart again, and so pardoned Leonard Ashlock.
We came then to Dunkirk in the space of four days, and I was much put to it how I should get safely over into England with the King’s letter. For the English warships were ever on the watch for the King’s emissaries, and one of them, a sloop, was riding not so far out in full view of Dunkirk. In this difficulty Ashlock was of the greatest service to me, discovering qualities which I should never have suspicioned in him. For, espying a little pinnace drawn up on the beach, he said:
“The two of us could sail that across, sir.”
‘’No doubt,” said I, “if one of us could steer a course and the other handle the sails.”
“I can do the first, sir, by myself, and the second with your help,” he replied.
I went down the sands to the boat, and discovering to whom it belonged from a bystander, sought the owner out and forthwith bought it at his own price. For thus we need confide our business to no one, but waiting quietly till nightfall, we might slip past the big ship under cover of the dark. And this we did, launching the boat and bending the sails by the light of a lantern, which we kept as nearly as we could ever turned towards the land. The moon was in its fourth quarter and not yet risen when we started, so that the night, though not so black as we could wish, was still dark enough for our purpose. We had besides the lights from the port-holes of the warship to guide us, which gleamed pure and bright across the water like a triple row of candles upon an altar. We ran cautiously, therefore, for some distance to the west close under the shadow of the coast, and then fetching a wide compass about the ship, set our course straight for England. It was a light boat we were in, rigged with a lug-sail and a jib, and we slipped along under a fine reaching wind that heeled us over till the thwart was but an inch from the froth of the water.
“If only the wind hold!” said Ashlock, with a glance at the sail, and there was a lively ring of exultation in his voice. And, indeed, it was an inspiriting business this flight of ours across the Channel, or at all events this part of it I lay forward in the bows with a great coat atop of me, and my face upturned to the spacious skies, which were strewn with a gold-dust of stars and jewelled with the planets. The wind blew out of the night sharp and clean, the waves bubbled and tinkled against the planks as the prow split them into a white fire, and we sped across that broad floor of the sea as if licensed to an illimitable course. Now and again the lights of a ship would rise to the right or left, glimmer for a little like an ocean will-o’-the-wisp and vanish; now and again we would drive past a little fleet of fishingsmacks lying to for the night with never so much as a candle alight amongst them all, and only the stars, as it were, entangled amongst their bare poles and rigging; and, after a little, the moon rose.
I thought of my crib in the Rue St. Antoine and the months of confinement there as of something intolerable. The wide freedom of the sea became an image of the life I was entering upon. I felt the brine like a leaven in my blood. And then of a sudden the sail flapped above me like the wing of a great bat, the strenuous motion of the pinnace ceased, and we were floating idly upon an even keel.
I looked towards Ashlock; he sat motionless in the stern with the tiller in his hand and the moonlight white upon his face. Then he took a turn about the tiller with a rope, glanced along the boat with his body bent as though he was looking forward beneath the sail, and came lightly stepping across the benches towards the bows. I lay still and watched him in a lazy contentment Midway betwixt bow and stern he stopped and busied himself with tightening a stay; then again he crouched down and looked forwards, but this time it seemed to me that he was not looking out beyond the bowsprit, but rather into the bows to the spot where I lay huddled under my coat in the shadow of the thwart I could see his face quite plainly, and it appeared to me to have changed, in some way to have narrowed. It may have been a fancy, it may have been the moonlight upon his face, but his eyes seemed to glisten at me from out a countenance suddenly made trivial by cunning.
After a second he crept forward again, and I noticed how lightly—how very lightly he stepped. Would he stop at the mast, I asked myself? Was his business the tightening of a sheet even as he had tightened the stay? He stooped beneath the sail and still crept forward, running his hand along the top of the gunwale as he came; and it broke upon me as something new that he and I were alone in mid-channel, cabined within the planks of a little boat, he the servant,—but whose servant?—I not so much the master as the master’s substitute and tripper-up.
I felt for my sword, but I remembered that I had loosed it from my belt when we had put to sea. From the spot where I lay I could see the scabbard shining by the tiller. At all events, Ashlock had not brought it with him. I watched him without a movement as he approached, but underneath the coat, every nerve and muscle in my body was braced to the tightness of a cord.
He bent over me, holding his breath, it seemed; his hands came forward hovering above my chest, but they held no weapon; his face sank out of the moonlight, dropped beneath the gunwale lower and lower down upon mine. Meanwhile I watched him, looking straight into his eyes. His face was but a few inches from mine when he drew back with a little quivering cry—it was, indeed, more of a startled indrawing of the breath than a cry—and crouched on his hams by my side. Still I did not move, and again his face came forward over mine, very slowly, very cautiously, and down to where I lay in the dark, with my eyes open watching his. I could endure the suspense no longer.
“What is it, Ashlock?” I asked quietly, and in asking the question that moment, made a very great mistake, the importance whereof I did not discover until long afterwards.
Ashlock sprang back as though I had struck him in the face, I raised myself on one elbow and thrust the other outside the covering.
“I could not tell, sir, whether you waked or slept,” he said; and I thought his voice trembled a little.
“I was awake, Ashlock. What is it? “
“The wind has shifted, sir,” and now he answered confidently enough, “and blows dead in our teeth. We must needs tack if we are to reach the coast by daybreak.”
“Well?”
“I cannot do it, sir, without your help. It needs two to tack if you sail with a lug-sail.”
And that I found to be true. For the sail being what is called a square-sail with a gaff along the top of it, each time the pinnace went about it was necessary to lower it, and hoist it again on the other side of the mast The which it fell to me to do, while Ashlock guided the tiller. So that I knew there was good reason for his waking me. However, I had little time for speculation upon the matter one way or another, since we sailed into a mist shortly afterwards, and were on the stretch, both eyes and ears, lest we should be run down by some vessel, or ever we could see it.
I was much exercised, too, what with the stars being hid, and our constant going about, whether Ashlock would be able to keep the boat in a course towards England. I need not, however, have troubled my head upon that score, for it was as though he had some sixth sense which found its occasion upon the sea, and when the day broke and the mist rolled down and massed itself upon the water, we were within five miles of the white cliffs with Dover Castle upon our starboard bow. The mist, I should say, was at that time about chin high, for standing up in the boat we looked across a grey driving floor, above which the smaller vessels only showed their masts.
“Shall I run her into the harbour?” asked Ashlock, and he turned the boat’s head towards land.
“No!” I cried vehemently. For now that we were come within sight of England the letter that I carried began to burn in my pocket, and I felt the surest conviction that if we disembarked at Dover, we should be surrounded, catechised, and finally searched, upon the ground of a tell-tale face, which face would assuredly be mine. “No!” I said; “let us take advantage of the mist, and creep along the coast till we find some inlet where we can beach the boat.”
This we did, and running now with a freer sail, we came in little more than an hour to a cove some four or five miles to the north-east of Dover, the cliffs breaking off very sharp at each side with a line of thin rocks jutting out at the south corner, and the walls of the cove steep all round and thickly wooded as low as we could see. Towards this cove we pointed, intending to run in there and abandon the boat But when we were within half a mile of land the sun blazed out in the sky and the fog shredded like so much gauze burnt up in a fire. It was a fortunate thing for us that we had come no nearer to the shore. For there, low down on the beach, and but a yard or two from the water’s edge, on a tiny strip of level ground, were four little cottages with the British ensign afloat. Ashlock rapped out an oath and thrust the tiller across to its further limit, meaning to go about and run back out of sight of the cove.
“The sail, sir!” he cried in great excitement “Oh! damn it, sir, the sail!”
I sprang to the mast, loosed the sheets, lowered the sail, and of course must needs in my hurry get the spar entangled amongst the stays a foot above the thwart. Ashlock rose in a passion, and leaving the tiller to shift for itself, came leaping towards me.
“There, there, sir,” he sneered, “leave it to me!” and losing at once his air of deference, he was for wresting rather than taking the spar out of my hands. “Did ever man see? “he exclaimed. “O Lord, did ever man see——”
“Such a fool-master and such a clever servant,” said I, finishing the sentence for him. But the words were hardly out of my mouth when I let go of the spar. He staggered back, holding the one end of it in his hands, the other caught me a crack in the joint at the knees, and the next moment I was sprawling on my back at the bottom of the boat. I heard Ashlock mutter, “Lord send us less pride and a ha’porth of common sense,” the while he busied himself with getting the sail into position, and then he turned to me.
“You’ll find, sir, the Preventive men will make little difference between master and servant when they discover the pretty letter you are carrying.”
“The Preventive men!” I cried, scrambling to my feet.
“Ay, sir, the Preventive men,” said he with a glance at the beach.
Now Ashlock was standing with his back to me bowsprit, whereas I faced him, and looking across his shoulder, I saw a sheer face of white cliff, topped with a thatch of grass, glide, as it were, behind him. I turned me about The boat was swinging round with the tide now that it had neither sail nor a hand at the rudder to direct it. Before, it had been pointing for the beach midway in the cove; now it was heading for the rocks at the south corner of the bay; and each moment it moved faster, as I could judge from the increasing noise of the ripple at the bows. I jumped across the benches to the rudder.
“Hoist the sail! “I said in a low, quick command.
Ashlock looked from me to the rocks.
“The tide is running round the corner like a millrace,” said he, doubtfully, and he made a movement as though he would take my place.
“Hoist the sail!” said I, and he obeyed, and again prepared to come astern.
“No, stay where you are,” I ordered sharply. He looked at me sharply, shrugged his shoulders, and sat him down by the mast. I brought the boat’s head up until the wind against which we had been tacking was directly astern of us, and the tiller kicked in my hand as we drove through the water. We were now within the line of rocks, and I saw Ashlock give a start as he noticed the point I was making.
“You must round the corner of the reef, sir,” he cried.
“We have no time for that. The tide runs in shore. There’s a gap in the reef; we’ll make for the gap.”
The gap was, in fact, in a bee-line with the tip of the bowsprit. I had wind and tide to quicken my speed, and I felt the boat leap and pulse beneath me like a live thing. Ashlock looked at me in surprise, and then gave a little pleased laugh, as though my action chimed in with his nature.
Doubtless the plan was foolhardy enough; but the day was clear, and we were within full sight of the cottages upon the beach. More, our boat was the only boat in this secluded bay. I thought, indeed, only of the latter point, and not at all of the narrowness of the passage, and maybe it was that very oblivion which kept my hand steady. So engrossed was I, in truth, in my one idea, that I could not forbear from glancing backwards now and then in a mortal dread, lest I should see the sun flash upon the disc of a perspective glass or mark a boat splash out through the surf into the sea. Upon one such occasion I heard Ashlock rise to his feet with a muttered “God save us!” and a second later we grazed past a tooth of chalky rock some half a foot below the surface.
“Sit down!” I cried sharply, for the fellow obscured my vision. He dropped into his seat; I bent forward, peering out beneath the sail. We were within twenty yards of the gap in the reef, and the water converging on it from right and left, foamless and oily like a rapid in the Severn. The boat gave a great spring, and then slid with a swift, easy motion like a sledge. I heard the waves burst over the rocks and patter back upon the sea; I felt the spray whipping my forehead; and then the cliffs fell away from my eyes and closed up behind my back. Ashlock lowered the sail and dropped the kedge from the bows. We were floating in still water, just round the point and close in to shore under the shadow of an overhanging cliff.
“Now, Ashlock!” said I, “you can come astern.”
He came reluctantly, and in his coming began to babble an apology for the disrespect he had shown me. I cut him short at the outset of it.
“I am not concerned with your insolence,” I said. “It is too small a thing. I am willing to believe, moreover, that you were hurried into it through devotion to a higher master than myself. I have forgotten it. But how came you to think that I carried a letter?”
“Your hand, sir,” he replied readily, “was ever at your pocket on the road if we galloped—on the sea if we passed a ship.”
It was truth that he said—every word of it—and it caused me no small humiliation. For here was I entrusted with a mission of some consequence, and I had betrayed a portion of my business at the outset.
“There is another thing,” I continued sharply. “How comes it that you, Cumberland-born and Cumberland-bred, have so much knowledge of the sea? “
I looked at him steadily as I spoke, and I saw his face change, but not to any expression of suspicion or alarm. Rather it softened in a manner that surprised me; a look, tender and almost dreamy, came into his eyes, a regretful smile flickered on his lips. It was as though the soul and spirit of a poet peeped out at you from a busy, practical countenance.
“I should have been a sailor,” he said, in a low, musing voice. “All my life I have longed for that one thing. The very wind in the branches for me does no more than copy the moan of the surf. But my parents would not have it so, and I live inland, restless, unsatisfied, like a man kept out of his own.” He checked himself hastily, and continued in a flurry, for no reason which I could comprehend, “Still, I made such use as I could of the opportunities that presented. At Whitehaven and at Workington I learnt the handling of a boat.”
“But,” I interrupted him, “this is not the first time you have sailed from Dunkirk to England.”
“No, sir,” he answered, and his face hardened at my questioning. It was as though a lid had been slammed down upon an open box. “I have crossed more than once with young Mr. Rookley.”
“That will do,” I said; and he drew a breath of relief.
The explanation, I assured myself, was feasible enough, but—but—I could not get from before my eyes the vision of him creeping stealthily from the tiller to the bows. As he lay sleeping just where I had lain—for all that day we remained hidden within the cliffs—I saw him continually stoop beneath the sail; I saw his face sink out of the moonlight down and down to mine, and his hands hover above my breast And with that a light flashed in on me. He knew of the letter I was carrying! He knew of the pocket I carried it in! I sat staring at him dumfounded. Was this the link? Was he playing me false?
“If I had only closed my eyes!” I cried, and in my perturbation I cried the words aloud.
Ashlock woke up with a start.
“What is it, sir? “he asked, in a whisper. “The Preventive men? “and the eagerness of his voice gave the lie to my suspicion. Yes, I reasoned, he had shown an anxiety equal with my own to escape from their clutches, was showing it now, and his anxiety was due to this very knowledge that I had the letter in my possession. I relapsed into perplexity, and in a little my fears took another and engrossing shape. Doubtless it was Ashlock’s startled whisper set my thpughts particularly that way, and from minute to minute I lay expecting the Preventive men to row round the point and discover us. There was no possible escape for us if they did. The more I searched and searched the cliffs, the more clearly I saw how impossible they were to scale. It would, I think, have made the strain and tension of this waiting more tolerable had I been able to reach some point whence I could command a view of the bay, though it would have served no other end. But that too was denied to me. I lay the livelong day the impatient hanger-on of chance. No sound came to me but the ceaseless lapping of the waves beneath me, the ceaseless screaming of the gulls above my head, in a single monotonous note, sharp and clean like the noise that a large pebble makes hopping over ice. To add to my discomfort, we had no water in the boat, nothing, indeed, but a few hard biscuits, which served to choke us. And the sun was pitiless all day in a shadowless sky. The very colour of the sky seemed to have faded so that it curved over our heads, rather grey than blue, hot and hard—a cap of steel.
However, the day wore to sunset in the end, and the Preventive men had not come. We set sail as soon as it was dark, and coasting along, landed shortly after two in the morning, at a spot in the Downs a few miles from Deal. Thence, after setting our pinnace adrift, we made what haste we could to London.
Ah me! that ride through the night to London! I remember it as if I had ridden along that road yesterday. It was so long since I had been in England. I remember the homely little inn at which we roused a grumbling landlord and hired our horses. His very grumbles were music to my ears. I laughed at them, I remember, with such enjoyment that we had much ado to persuade him to part with the horses at all, and it was because of his grumbles that I paid him double what he asked. I remember, too, the hedgerows a-glimmer with wild-roses as with so many pale stars. To ride ever between hedgerows! It seemed the ultimate of happiness. And the larks in the early morning—never since have I heard larks sing so sweetly as they sang that morning over the Kentish meadows. We passed a little whitewashed church, I remember, with its mossy gravestones nestling in deep grass about its walls. Well, well, this is Avignon, and my old bones, I take it, will sleep just as easily under Avignon soil.