"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 grat.i.tude.
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 Derwent.w.a.ter"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 pa.s.sage. I heard Mr.
Curwen"s step in the hall below, and holding my candle in my hand leaned over the bal.u.s.ters.
"Mr. Curwen," I said in a breathless whisper, "you 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 pa.s.sed on to his own chamber.
CHAPTER XII.
I RETURN TO KESWICK.
I went back to my own room, changed my dress, and carrying my boots in one hand and my candle in the other, went softly down the stairs. By the clock in the hall I could see that it was five minutes after ten o"clock. I drew on my boots in the porch, saddled the horse by the candle-light, led it past the house along a strip of gra.s.s, and when I thought the sound of its hoofs would be no longer heard, I mounted and rode up the pathway. The sky was cloudy but the valleys clear of mist I could have wished for no better night for my purpose except in one respect: I mean that now and again a silver brilliancy would be diffused through the air, making the night vaguely luminous. And looking up I would see a patch of cloud very thin and very bright, and behind that cloud I knew the moon was sailing. I chose that road of which Tash had spoken. Towards the head of Gillerthwaite the track turned northwards over a pa.s.s they call the Scarf Gap, and thence westwards again past b.u.t.termere lake to b.u.t.termere village. At the point where the hill descends steeply from the lake, I dismounted. I could see the scattered village beneath me. It slept without a sound, nor was there a light to be seen in any window. But none the less I dreaded to ride through it; its very quietude frightened me. I feared the lively echoes which the beat of my horse"s shoes would send ringing about the silent cottages. I descended, therefore, on foot, leading my horse cautiously by the bridle, and in a little I came to a gateway upon the right which gave on to a field. I crossed the field and several others which adjoined it, and finally came out again upon the track beyond the village, where it climbs upwards to b.u.t.termere Hause. From the farther side of the Hause I had a clear road of six miles down Newlands valley to Portinscale, and I spurred my horse to a gallop. Once or twice the clouds rifted and the moon shone out full, so that I rode in a tremor of alarm, twisting every shadow that fell across my path from rock or tree into the shadow of a sentinel. But the clouds closed up again and canopied me in a gracious obscurity as I drew near to Keswick.
I tied up my horse in a thicket of trees half a mile from the town, and slunk from house to house in the shadow. Never before or since have I known such fear as I knew that night in Keswick, so urgent had the necessity that I must keep free, become with me during these last hours since I had climbed from Brandreth down to Applegarth. If the wind drove the leaves of the trees fluttering up the roadway, I cowered against the wall and trembled. If a dog barked from a farmhouse in the distance, I stood with my heart fainting in my breast, listening--listening for the rhythmic tread of soldiers; and when I saw on the opposite side of the street, some yards above me, a light glimmering in a window, I stopped altogether, in two minds whether or no to turn back. I looked irresolutely up and down the street It was so dark, so still; only that one steady light burned in a window. The melancholy voice of a watchman, a couple of streets away, chanted out, "Half-past twelve, and a dull, cloudy morning." The phrase was repeated and repeated in a dwindling tone. I waited until it had died away, and afterwards. But the light burned wakeful, persistent, a little heart of fire in a body of darkness. I felt that I dared not pa.s.s it. Some one watched beside that lamp, with eyes fixed on the yellow path it traced across the road. My fears fed upon themselves and swelled into a panic. I turned and took a step or two down the hill, and it was precisely that movement which brought me to my senses and revealed to me the cowardice of the action. For if I dared not pa.s.s that lamp, still less dared I return to Applegarth with the night"s work undone. I retraced my steps very slowly until I came opposite to the window, and then, so great was the revulsion of my feeling that I reeled back against the wall, my heart jerking, my whole strength gone from me. For there at the window, beside the lamp, her face buried in her hands, was the woman I had come to seek. I might have known, I thought! For who else should be watching at this lone hour in Keswick if not this woman? I might have guessed from the position of the house in the street. It was a beacon which I had seen, this glimmering lamp, and I had taken it for no more than a wrecker"s light.
I looked about me. The street was deserted from end to end I crossed it, and picking up a pebble flung it lightly at the window. The pebble cracked against the pane--how loudly, to my impatient ears! Mrs.
Herbert raised her head from her hands. I sent a second pebble to follow the first. She opened the sash, but so noisily I thought!
"Who is it?" she asked.
"Hush!" said I.
She leaned forward over the side of the window and peered into the darkness.
"You!" she whispered in a tone of wonderment, and again with a shiver of repulsion; "you!"
"Let me in!" said I.
She made a movement as if to close the window.
"You close the window on your hopes," I said. "Let me in!"
"You bring news of--of Anthony?" she asked, with a catch in her voice.
"The smallest budget," said I, "but a promise of more;" and as she, undecided, still leaned on the sill, "If I am captured here to-night, there will be no news at all."
"Captured?" she began, and breaking off hurriedly came down the stairs and opened the door.
I followed her up into the room and drew the curtains across the window. She stood by the table in the full light of the lamp, her eyelids red, her eyes l.u.s.treless, her face worn; the very gloss seemed to have faded off her hair.
"How you have suffered!" I said, and again faltered the words, "How you have suffered!"
"And you?" she asked with a glance towards me, and nodded her head as though answering the question. "I said that payment would be made,"
she remarked simply. "It is beginning."
"My servant brought a note to you?"
"Yes. Was it true? I did not believe that it was true." She spoke in a dull voice. "He came yesterday night after the soldiers had been here."