“But we will wait here till nightfall,” he said; and nothing loth I turned over on my back and fell to resolving, so well as I could, the perplexities in which I was coiled. I now saw very clearly that Rookley’s plot had not, as I had imagined, been aimed against myself, but rather against Anthony Herbert; and my new knowledge that my worthy cousin was a Government spy gave me some light to conjecture of a cause. For I reflected that Herbert had come suddenly to Keswick at the very time when rebellion was a-brewing in these parts; that he had made Lord Derwentwater’s acquaintance and had painted his lady’s portrait; that upon my coming to Blackladies, Lord Derwentwater had put me into relations with the man; and that I too had commissioned a portrait of him. Now Lord Derwentwater was suspected of favouring the Stuart claims, and certainly Rookley knew that I not merely favoured them but was working to further them. It would be, then, a natural suspicion for Rookley to draw that we were all three implicated in the same business, and that Herbert was merely using his skill as a concealment of his genuine purpose. Moreover, I thought of a sudden, there was that medal in Mr. Herbert’s apartment. True, I had seen him lock it up. But he must bring it out again to copy it, and he was not of that orderliness which would ensure his replacing it. What if Rookley had seen the medal in Herbert’s lodging? Joined to his suspicions, that one certain fact would change those suspicions to convictions. Rookley would believe, and would have reason to believe, that Herbert was a Jacobite agent. Granted that presumption, and Rookley’s conduct became clear. He was marking time with King George and stepping forward with King James. He would lay Herbert by the heels in the one interest and leave me untouched in the other, so long as it was doubtful which way the wind was setting. I found an additional reason to credit this hypothesis in this, that it was plainly Rookley’s intention to bring about Herbert’s arrest secretly, or at all events without my knowledge.
“I had thought to find you in the garden,” Herbert had said; the words came back to me in a flash. I sprang to my feet in some excitement. Tash in a flurry asked me what it was I saw; but I moved away without answering him, certain that I had a hold upon the key of the plot, fearful lest I should lose it.
“I had thought to find you in the garden”—and the soldiers were in the garden. Moreover, there was but one man who could have led Mr. Herbert to believe that he would find us in the garden Jervas Rookley. And Jervas Rookley had every reason in the world to feel assured that neither Mrs. Herbert nor myself would be discovered there.
I had no longer a shadow of doubt. Anthony Herbert had been beguiled to Blackladies that his arrest might be brought about with secrecy. Only Jervas Rookley had made one mistake: he had presumed in his victim the same cunning and concealment of which he was master himself. Mr. Herbert had defeated the secrecy of the plan by his outburst in his lodging; but for that outburst, the arrest would have been effected with all the secrecy which Rookley desired.
From that point in my speculations I went forward to a resolve. I knew Herbert to be in no way concerned with our plans and hopes. Indeed, I doubted whether he cared a straw which King occupied the throne, so long as he could continue in the exercise of his art. But, on the other hand, there was the medal in his possession, and I distrusted the impartiality of justice in a matter where passions were so inflamed. My resolve, then, was no more than this: that if by any means a man could, I would secure Mr. Herbert’s enlargement, if only as an act of reparation, and if it cost me my life. But to tell the truth, my life at this moment had not the least savour of sweetness, and to let it go seemed the easiest thing in the world.
The question, however, which weighed on me was how I should accomplish his enlargement; for I did not know and had no means of knowing whither he had been taken. They might have carried him to London, there to be examined. Suppose that was true and I went down into the valley and gave myself up? Why, I had not sufficient trust in the authorities to be certain that Herbert would get the benefit of my evidence. I could prove that the medal belonged to me; but should I be allowed to tender that proof on Herbert’s behalf? I might lie in prison the while he was brought to his trial. No, before I gave myself up I must know whither Anthony Herbert had been taken. And as far as I could tell, there was but one man who could give me the information. Could I force it from Jervas Rookley? I asked myself, and even in the asking laughed. For here was the darkness coming up out of the sea and wrapping the mountains about, and here was I hiding in the midst of them, a hunted outlaw. Tash called to me that it was time for us to set out, and we started down the hillside into Gillerthwaite, he leading as before, I as before following him, but no longer in the daze and stupor of yesternight. Rather, on the contrary, I walked with eyes needlessly alert and with feet over-timorous and careful. For if I got no other profit from my reflections, I had drawn from them this one conviction, and I was sensible of it as of a sheer necessity: I must be ready, I thought—since I knew so little, I must be ready to seize any occasion of Mr. Herbert’s enlargement, at the instant of its discovery. So that as we scrambled down the slope with the mist gathering around us, I came to fear a slip with an extraordinary apprehension; where the grass steepened, I straightway imagined a fatal precipice; and when a stone slid beneath my heel, I felt all the blood drain from my heart and leave me shaking in a panic. The night in consequence had completely fallen by the time we came to a pony-track in the bed of the valley. I remember that I asked carelessly whither it led from Ennerdale, and Tash told me that it passed into the valley called Newlands, which runs parallel with Derwentwater, and is only separated from the lake by that line of hills along which we had walked during the night.
“Then,” said I carelessly, “it is a path by which one may travel to Keswick.”
“Ay,” he replied; and for the moment I thought no more of the matter.
Before we had come to the head of Ennerdale Water, the moon was up and shining fitfully through a wrack of clouds. The valley, however, was clear of mist, so that I was able to distinguish the house of Applegarth, while I was as yet at some distance from its doors. It was a long, plain building, which promised comfort within by its very lack of ornamentation without, built in a single story and painted a white colour. But it seemed to me, even in that uncertain light, to bear the marks of neglect and decay. There was a little garden in front of the house separated from the lake-shores by an unkempt hedge, and planted only with a few fuchsia bushes; the walls of the house were here and there discoloured, and once or twice as I passed up the garden-path I stepped upon a broken tile.
A woman-servant opened the door and I asked for Mr. Curwen. She looked me over for a second.
“And what may be your business with Mr. Curwen?”
“That I can hardly tell you,” said I with a laugh.
“Ah, but you must,” said she. She was a woman of some bulk, and she stood with her arms akimbo, filling the doorway. “Is it his last few guineas you might be wanting?” she asked with a slow sarcasm.
“Why, goodwife,” I answered impatiently, “do you look for gentlemen of the road in Ennerdale?”
“Goodwife!” she said with a toss of the head. “Goodwife to a ninny-hammer!” and she looked me over again. Indeed, I doubt not but we cut sufficiently disreputable figures. “Not I! And you’ll just tell me your business. There are others besides gentlemen of the road who put their fingers into pockets which don’t belong to them.”
“Hold your noise, Mary Tyson! “said Tash, behind my shoulder. “Do you know me?”
“Oh,” said she with a start, “it’s William Tash from——”
“That’ll do,” he broke in; “no need to speak names. Show the gentleman to Mr. Curwen.”
Mary Tyson stood aside from the door. I stepped into the hall.
“You’ll find him in the room,” she said with a curt nod towards a door facing me.
I crossed to it and rapped on the panels, but got no answer whatsoever. It is true I could hear a voice within, but the voice seemed to be declaiming a speech. I rapped again.
“Oh, the dainty knuckles!” cried Mary; and pushing roughly past me she banged upon the door with a great fist like a ham and threw it open without further ceremony. The voice ceased from its declamation. I entered the room. It was very dark, being panelled all about with book-cases and the ceiling very low. A single lamp glimmered on a table in the centre of the carpet. An old gentleman rose from before a great folio spread out upon the table.
“What is it, Mary?” he asked in a tone of gentle annoyance. “You interrupt me.”
“A visitor, he says,” replied Mary, “though——”
The hostility of her eyes and a great heave of her shoulders filled up the gap.
“A visitor!” said the old gentleman, his voice changing on the instant to an eager politeness. “A visitor is always welcome at Applegarth at whatever hour he comes.”
I heard not so much a sigh as a snort behind me, and the door was slammed. The old gentleman advanced a few steps towards me and then came to a sudden stop. I was neither hurt nor surprised at his evident disappointment and perplexity, for Mary’s behaviour had shown me pretty clearly what sort of a picture I made.
“It is not a visitor, Mr. Curwen,” said I, “but a fugitive;” and I handed to him Lord Derwentwater’s letter.
“Indeed?” said he, all his suavity rekindling. “A fugitive!” and he spoke as though to be a fugitive was a very fine and enviable thing. “You will take a chair, Mr.——”
“Clavering,” I added.
“Of Blackladies?” he inquired
“Of Blackladies,” said I.
“You are very welcome, Mr. Clavering,” said he, and he broke open the seal and read the letter through, with many interruptions of “Shield us!” and “To be sure!” and with many a glance over his spectacles at me. He was a tall man, though his shoulders stooped as if he spent many an evening over his folio, and I should say of sixty years and more. He wore his own white hair, which was very long and fine, making a silver frame to as beautiful a face, except one, as it has ever been my lot to see. The features, it may be, were over-delicately chiselled, the cheeks too bloodless, the eyes too large, if you looked for a man of dominating activity. It was the face of a dreamer, no doubt, but there would be nothing ignoble in the dreams.
“You are yet more welcome, Mr. Clavering,” said he as he folded up the letter; “shelter indeed you shall have, and such comfort as we can add thereto, for so long as you will be pleased to stay with us. Nay,” said he, checking me, “I know what you would say, but we are solitary people here and the debt will be with us.”
“That can hardly be,” said I, “since I bring danger to you by my presence.”
“Some while ago,” he replied, “I would not have denied it, though I should have welcomed you no less. But since my fortunes have declined and I have grown into years, I have taken little part in politics and keep much within my doors. They will not come here, I think, to look for you. It is a consolation for my poverty,” said he with the simplest dignity, “that I can therefore offer you a safer harbourage. But indeed it is with you that the times have gone hard. We are not so solitary but that now and again a scrap of news will float to us, and we have heard of you. You were much at one time in Paris?” And his voice of a sudden took on a pleasant eagerness.
“Yes,” I replied, “though I saw little of the town.”
“Ah,” said he with a nod of the head, “to gain and lose Blackladies in so short a space it is a hard case, Mr. Clavering.”
In the hurry and stress of these last two days I had given no thought to what the loss Blackladies meant, but the meaning rushed in upon me winged with his words.
“Ay,” I answered, and my voice trembled as I spoke, so that the old man came over to me and laid a hand upon my shoulder, “for it is the King who loses it, and through my folly, for I might have known.”
I felt his hand patting me with a helpless consolation. “So we all say, after the event It is a hard thing to bear, but philosophy will help us. You must study philosophy while you are here, Mr. Clavering. I have books”—and he glanced round the room and then came to an abrupt pause—“I have books,” he repeated in a lame fashion, “which you may find profit in studying;” and as he spoke, the music of a song quivered up from the next room like a bird on the wing. I understood that “we,” which had much perplexed me in his talk; I remembered where and when I had heard of Applegarth before. You may talk, if you will, of Cuzzoni and Faustina and the rest of the Italian women who have filled Heidegger’s pockets; doubtless they made more noise, but not one of them, I’ll be sworn, had a tenth of the sweetness and purity of the voice which sang this song. Give to a lark a human soul and then maybe you will hear it. For it was more than a voice that sang; it was as though the wings of a soul beat and throbbed in the singer’s throat. I lack words to describe the effect it wrought on me. All the shame I had been sensible of during the long hours since that pistol rang out in the garden of Blackladies, came back to me massed within the compass of a second, and on that shame, more and ever more. I know that I buried my face in my hands to hide the anguish of my spirit from Mr. Curwen; and sitting there with my fingers pressed upon my eyes I listened. The words came clearly to my ears through the doorway behind my chair; the voice carried my thoughts back to Paris, was the crystal wherein I saw pitilessly plain all the dreams I had fashioned of what I would do, had I but liberty and the power to do it; then carried me again to England, and showed me the miserable contrast between those airy dreams and the solid truth. I saw myself now riding to Lorraine; now lingering in Mr. Herbert’s apartment And the words of that song pointed my remorse—how bitterly! Even now, after this interval of thirty-five years, the humiliation and pain I endured return to me with so poignant a force that I can hardly bring myself to write of them. I could not indeed at all, but for this faded yellow sheet of paper which I take up in my hands. It was given to me upon an occasion notable within my memory, and the words of this very song are inscribed upon it, blurred and well-nigh indecipherable, but I do not need the writing to help me to remember them. The song was called “The Honest Lover,” and I set it down here since here it was that I first heard it
|
“Would any doubting maid discover
“His is a heart that never played
“And if he quake to meet her eyes, |
This was the song to which I listened as I sat—the dishonest outlaw in the dark library of Applegarth.
“It is my daughter Dorothy,” said Mr. Curwen, with a smile. “In talking of our youngest martyr I had forgotten her;” and he took a step towards the door. But at his first movement the youngest martyr—Heaven save the mark!—had risen from his chair with a foolish abruptness.
“Nay, Mr. Curwen,” he cried in disorder; and then he stopped, for the truth is, he shrank in very shame from standing face to face with the singer of that song.
“But,” and I seized the first excuse, “I have this long while been wandering on the fells, and am in no way fitted for the company of ladies. Your servant even would have no truck with me, and I think you too were taken aback.” I looked down at my garments as I spoke.
“My servant,” he began, and he looked towards the other door through which I had entered with a timorous air, as though he would fain see whether or no she was listening on the far side of it, “Mary Tyson,” he said, lowering his voice, “is a strange and unaccountable person. A good servant, but——” and very wisely he tapped his forehead. “For myself,” he continued, his voice softening with a great wistfulness, “it was something very different from the stains of your journey that gave me pause. Lord Derwentwater may have told you that I had once a son. He was much of your height and figure, and the room is dim, and old men are fanciful.”
I bowed my head, for whenever he made mention of his misfortunes, he spoke with so brave and simple a dignity that any word of sympathy became the merest impertinence. For a moment he stood looking down at me and revolving some question in his mind.
“Yes,” said he, and more to himself than to me, “I will speak to her and give her the order. Why should I not?” He walked slowly halfway to the bell and stopped, “Yes,” he repeated, “I will speak to her; “and with a word of excuse to me and a certain bracing of the shoulders, he went out of the room.
I had no doubt that it was with Mary Tyson that he wished to speak. I remained, half-hoping, half-afraid that the chords of the spinet would wake to the touch again, and the voice again ring out, sprinkling its melody through the room like so much perfume from a philtre. But there was no recurrence of the music. I walked idly to the table, and my eyes fell upon that great tome in which Mr. Curwen had been so absorbed at the moment of my interruption. In wonderment I bent more closely over it. I had expected to see some laborious monument of philosophy gemmed with unintelligible terms. Unintelligible terms there were, in truth, but not of the philosopher’s kind. They were curious old terms of chivalry.
I remembered how Mr. Curwen had hesitated over the mention of his books, and I took the lamp from the table, and glanced about the book-shelves. The books were all of a-piece with that great folio on the table—romaunts, and histories of crusades, and suchlike matters.
I wondered whether “Don Quixote de la Mancha” had found a place amongst them, and with an impertinent smile I began to glance along the letterings in search of it, but very soon I stopped, and stood staring at a couple of volumes which faced me, and bore upon their backs the title of the “Morte D’Arthur.”
I set the lamp again upon the table. The old man was right, I thought sadly. There was in that room philosophy which it would indeed profit me to study.
Mr. Curwen returned, rubbing his long, delicate hands one against the other in a flush of triumph.
“I have given orders,” he said, and with a gentle accent of conscious pride he repeated the phrase—“I have given orders, Mr. Clavering. You will sleep in my boy’s room, and since you are, as I say, very like to him in size——” But his voice trembled, and he turned away and lifted the lamp from the table.
“I will show yon the room,” he said.
I followed him into the hall, up the staircase, and down a long passage to the very end of the house,
A door stood open. Mr. Curwen led me through it. The room was warmly furnished, and hung with curtains of a dark green, while a newly-lit fire was crackling in the hearth. A couple of candles were burning on the mantelpiece, and Mary Tyson was arranging the bed. She took no notice of me whatever as I entered, being busy with the bed, as I thought.
“You can go, Mary,” said Mr. Curwen, with a timid friendliness plainly intended to appease, Mary sniffed for an answer, and as she turned to go I saw that she had been crying.
“She was Harry’s nurse, poor woman,” explained Mr. Curwen. “You must forgive her, Mr. Clavering.” And then, “He died at Malplaquet.”
He crossed over to the bed, and stood looking down at it silently in a very fixed attitude. Then he took up from it a white silk stocking. I approached him, and saw that a suit of white satin was neatly folded upon the white counterpane.
“It is a fortunate thing,” he said, with a smile all the more sad for its effort at cheerfulness, “that you and he are alike;” and he drew the stocking slowly through his fingers. “He died at Malplaquet, and Marlborough—the Marlborough of Malplaquet—spoke to him as he died.” His voice broke on the words, and laying the stocking down, he turned towards a japan toilette with a “Even a father has no right to ask for more than that.” But Harry’s shoe-buckles were laid upon the chintz-coverlid, and he took them in his hands one after the other, repeating, “He died at Malplaquet. I have given you this room,” he said, “for a reason. See! These two windows point down the valley, and are set high above the ground. But this”—and he crossed over to a smaller window set in the wall near the fireplace—“this looks on to the hillside, and since the ground rises against the house, a man may drop from it and come to no harm. To the left are the stables, or what serves us for stables. We lock no doors at Applegarth, Mr. Clavering, fearing no robbers. You will find a horse in the stables, should there be need for you to flee.”
It was some while after Mr. Curwen had left me, before I could make up my mind to don these clothes. I might be like to what Harry Curwen was in size and figure, but there the likeness ended, and the sharpest contrast in the world set in. I unfolded the suit, and spread it out upon the bed. The coat was of white velvet, the waistcoat and breeches of white satin, and all richly laced with an embroidery of silver. A fragrant scent of lavender, which breathed from the dress, coupled with its freshness as of a suit worn but once or twice and so laid aside, lent an added sadness to the thought of young Harry Curwen. I imagined him stripping off these fine clothes in a fumbling excitement one night, in this very room, kicking from his feet those lacquered shoes—these with their soles and red-heels upturned now to the fire for the guest who was so like him! I imagined him pulling on his boots, and riding off from Applegarth with, I know not what, martial visions In his eyes, and hardly a glance, maybe, for the old man and the sister standing in the light of the porch, to join his troop and perish on the plains of Flanders. Well, he had died at Malplaquet, and the great Marlborough—not the huckstering timeserver whom we knew—the Marlborough of Malplaquet had spoken to him as he lay a-dying, and no father had a right to look for more than that. I picked up the stockings, and drew them through my fingers as the father had done.
At that, however, I bethought me that the father and his daughter were awaiting me downstairs, and so dressed in a hurry, and combing out my peruke to such neatness as I could, I got me down into the hall
Supper was already laid out in the dining-room, and Mr. Curwen waiting. In a little I heard a light step upon the stair and the rustle of a dress. Instinctively I turned my face towards the window-curtains, my back to the door. I heard the door open, but I did not hear it shut again.
“Mr. Clavering,” said the old man.
I was forced to turn. His daughter stood in the doorway, her lips parted, her eyes startled.
“Mr. Clavering—my daughter Dorothy.”
I bowed to her. She drew in her breath, then advanced to me frankly, and held out her hand.
“My father told me you were like,” she said, “but since your back was turned, I almost thought I saw him.”
I took the hand by the finger-tips.
“He was very dear to you?”
“Very.”
“Miss Curwen,” said I, gravely, “I would, with all my heart, that you had seen him, and that I had died in his place at Malplaquet”
Her face clouded for an instant, and she drew her hand quickly away, taking my speech, no doubt, for nothing more than an awkward and ill-timed compliment. But compliment it was not, being, indeed, the truth and summary of my recent thoughts quickened into speech against my will. She was of a slender figure, with a rosebud face, delicate as her father’s. Her hair was drawn simply back from a broad, white forehead, and in colour was nut-brown, gleaming where it took the light as though powdered with gold-dust. She was dressed in the simplest gown of white, set off here and there with a warm ribbon. But I took little note of her dress, beyond remarking that no other could so well become her. From the pure oval of her face, her eyes big and grey looked out at me, each like a quiet pool with a lanthorn lighted somewhere in its depths, and she seemed to me her voice incarnate. She was unlike to her father in the proportion of her height, for she was not tall—and like to him again in a certain wilfulness which the set of her lips betokened, and again unlike in the masterful firmness of her rounded chin; so that she could put off and on, with the quickest change of humours, the gravity of a woman and the sunny petulance of a child.
“It is our homely fashion,” said Mr. Curwen, “to wait upon ourselves.” And we sat down to the table.
It was a fashion, however, which the guest, much to his discomfort, was not that night allowed to follow. For father and daughter alike joined to show him courtesy. The daughter would have waited on me, even as Lady Derwentwater had done, and began, like her, to fill my glass. But this time I could not permit it.
“Madam,” I cried hoarsely, “you must not. Your kindness hurts me.”
“Hurts you?” she asked, and from her tone I knew it was she who was hurt.
“You do not know. If you did, your kindness would turn to the bitterest contempt.”
1 spoke without thought and barely with knowledge of what I said, but in a passion of self-reproach.
“Mr. Clavering,” she replied very gently, “you are overwrought, and I do not wonder. Else would you know that it must honour any woman to serve any man who has so served his King.”
I dropped my head into my hands. My very soul rose against this praise.
“If I had served my King,” I exclaimed in a despairing remorse, “I should have been in France this many a week back.”
“France!” repeated Mr. Curwen, suddenly looking up. “You take the delay too much to heart. For it need be nothing more than a delay, and a brief one besides.” He spoke with some significance in his tone. “Lord Derwentwater mentioned in his letter that he would discover a means to set you across in France, but perhaps”—and his voice became almost sly—“perhaps we may find a more expeditious way.” He checked himself abruptly, like one that has said too much, and shot a timid glance towards his daughter. I noticed that her face grew a trifle grave, but she did not explain or comment on his words, and Mr. Curwen diverted his talk to indifferent topics. I fear me that I must have proved the dullest auditor, for I gave little heed to what he said, my thoughts being occupied in a quite other fashion. For since his daughter sat over against me at the table, since each time that I lifted my eyes, they must needs encounter hers; since each time that she spoke, the mere sound of her voice was as a stern rebuke; I fell from depth to depth of shame and humiliation. I was sheltering there under the same roof with her, to all seeming an honourable refugee, in very truth an impostor, and bound, moreover, to continue in his imposition. The very clothes which I was wearing forced the truth upon me. I had, indeed, but one thought wherewith to comfort me, and though the comfort was of the coldest, I yet clung to it as my only solace. The thought was this: that I had already determined, at whatsoever cost to me, whether of liberty or life, to repair, so far as a man could, the consequence of my misdoing. It was not that I took any credit from the resolve—I was not, thank God, so far fallen as that—but what comforted me was that I had come to the resolve up there on the hillside between Brandreth and Grey Knotts before I had descended into Ennerdale, before I had set foot within Applegarth; before, in a word, I had heard Dorothy Curwen sing or looked into her eyes. I did not explain to myself the comfort which the thought gave me; I was merely sensible of it. “It was before,” I said to myself; and over and over again I gladly repeated the thought
However, a word which Mr. Curwen spoke, finally aroused my attention, for he made mention of the garden of Blackladies. I suppose that I must by some movement have shown my distaste for the subject, and—
“You do not admire it,” he said.
“It is very quaint and ingenious, no doubt,” I replied, “but the ingenuity seems misplaced there.”
Miss Curwen nodded.
“It is like a fine French ribbon on a homespuit gown,** said she.
I remembered on the instant something which Lord Derwentwater had said to me concerning Dorothy Curwen.
“You know Blackladies?” I inquired, and perhaps with some anxiety.
“Very well,” said she, with a smile of amusement
“So I thought,” said I.
“Yes,” she continued, “my father was very familiar with Sir John Rookley;” and her eyes rested quietly upon mine.
“A hard man, people said, Mr. Clavering,” interrupted Mr. Curwen, “but a just man and to my liking. If he was hard, God knows he had enough in Jervas to make him so.”
I glanced at the daughter. She was regarding the beams which roofed the room, with supreme unconsciousness, but the very moment that I looked at her she dropped her eyes to the level of mine.
“You lack something, Mr. Clavering,” said she with great politeness.
“Indeed!” said my host, rising from his chair in the excess of his hospitality.
“Indeed, sir, no; I beg of you!” I replied in confusion. And Dorothy Curwen laughed.
“A strange man was Jervas Rookley,” continued Mr. Curwen, and there could be no doubt whatever about the sincerity of his unconsciousness. “He came warped from his cradle. But you will have heard of him, I doubt not, more than we know, though at one time he honoured us not infrequently with his company. But that was before I knew of his transgression in the matter of the wad-mines.”
“Oh,” said I, “I thought that that was not generally known.”
“Nor is it,” replied Mr. Curwen. “I had the story from Sir John’s lips. He was a very just man, and since Jervas came to visit me frequently, he thought that I ought to know.”
Again my eyes went to the daughter’s face. But this time she was already looking at me.
“I am sure, Mr. Clavering, that you need something,” said she very anxiously.
“Indeed, no!” I replied in confusion.
And she smiled with the pleasantest air of contentment in the world.
Mr. Curwen did not on this occasion rise to satisfy my imaginary needs, but remained absorbed in thought.
“I suppose,” he said dreamily, “that Jervas Rookley was a fairy’s changeling.”
I started at the words; they were not spoken in jest. I looked at him; he was seriously revolving the question in his mind.
“What do you think?” he asked of me.
His daughter bent forwards across the table with something of appeal in her eyes.
“The theory,” said I, “would most easily explain him;” and the appeal in her eyes changed to gratitude.
This was not the only strange remark he made to me that night, for he accompanied me up to my bedroom and closed the door carefully behind him.
“By this time you should have been in France?” he asked, lowering his voice.
“Yes,” said I, doubtfully. For since his Most Christian Majesty was at death’s door, and all thought of a rising abandoned for the moment, there was no longer any call for me to hurry to Lorraine with the information I had gathered; while, on the other hand, there was the greatest need that I should remain in England, since once out of England I was powerless even to attempt anything towards Anthony Herbert’s liberation.
“I spoke at supper,” he continued in a yet more secret voice, “of a more expeditious way than Lord Derwentwater’s.” He glanced around him and came nearer to me. “It was no idle boast,” he said with a little chuckle, “but I have a ship,” and he nodded in a sort of childish guilefulness. “I have a ship.” He went tip-toeing to the door as though already he had stayed too long. “Snug’s the word,” he whispered with a finger on his lip; and in the sweetest tone of encouragement, again, “I have a ship.” And so he went gently from the room and descended the stairs.
His manner no less than his words somewhat bewildered me. I thought it, in truth, a very unlikely thing that he should possess a ship, seeing that he had made no concealment of his poverty, and that if indeed he did, his ship would be a very unlikely thing for a man to put to sea in. But in this I made a great mistake, since his ship not merely existed, but had a very considerable share in the issue from those misfortunes which were so soon to befall us. At the time, however, I was not greatly troubled with the matter one way or the other, for while Mr. Curwen had been speaking, I had been standing at the open window. The slope of the hillside was in front of me, a corner of the stable-roof was just visible to my left; but most clearly of all I saw as in a vision the picture of a woman seated in a lonely lodging at Keswick with a crumpled paper spread before her, whereon was scribbled one single line: “He is not dead.” I shall not be particular to account for the reason why that vision should now of a sudden stand fixed within my sight, though I could give a very definite opinion concerning it I will only state that it was there, so vivid and distinct that I could read the paper she so sadly fingered; and reading it, the one line written thereon called on me for a supplement and explanation.
I opened the door and hurried quietly along the passage. I heard Mr. Curwen’s step in the hall below, and holding my candle in my hand leaned over the balusters.
“Mr. Curwen,” I said in a breathless whisper, “yon told me of a horse which stood ready in your stables, should my safety call for it”
“Yes,” said he looking up at me.
“There is the greatest need in the world that I should make use of your kindness this night. It is a need that imperils my safety, but my honour is concerned, or rather, that poor remnant of my honour which I have left to me. When I fled from Blackladies, there remained something to be done and to be done by me, and it remains undone. Some small part of the omission I may haply repair to-night.”
He answered me, as I knew he would, with the strangeness gone from his manner and replaced with a kindly gravity. He was the truest of gentlemen, with all a gentleman’s simple code of faith.
“Mr. Clavering,” he said, “so long as you are my guest I am the trustee of your safety. But there are things of greater value than a man’s safety, of which you have mentioned one. I shall look to seeing you in the morning.”
He asked no questions; that word “honour “was enough for him; it stamped my purpose in his eyes with a holy seal. He came up the stairs towards me and shook me by the hand, and so passed on to his own chamber.
|
1. The song is written by Harold Child, Esq., to whom the author is indebted for it. [back]
|