My a.s.surance and her comfortable belief in it made us both brighter, and we stepped out merrily. She gave me an entertaining account of Vienna, where she had spent some months, and which was then the great outpost of Christendom against the Turk. When this talk had brought us on to the field of Hopton Heath, I gave her the best account I could of the battle there in the Civil War time, and of the slaying of the Marquis of Northampton. And this led me on to my pride of ancestry, and I told her of Captain Smite-and-spare-not Wheatman, a tower of strength to the Parliament in these parts, who fought here and later on Naseby Field itself. Many tales I told of him that had been handed down from one generation of us to another, and how so greatly was he taken with his incomparable lord-general that he had named his first-born son Oliver, and ever since there had been an Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards. Then I told how one of these later Olivers, which one a matter of no consequence, had written verses and put them into the mouth of the doughty Smite-and-spare-not, sitting his horse, stark and strong, at the head of his men on Naseby Field, and gazing with grim, grey eyes on the opening movements of the fight. And, nothing loth, I trolled them out roundly across the meadows, till the peewits screamed and a distant dog began to bay:
"Princelet and king, and mitre and ring, Earl and baron and squire, Oliver worries "em, harries and flurries "em, With siege and slaughter and fire.
With the arm of the Flesh and the sword of the Spirit, Push of pike and the Word, Smiting and praying, and praising and slaying, Oliver fights for the Lord.
With the sword He brought the work is wrought, We finish here to-day.
When yon rags and remnants of Babylon Are blown and battered away.
Hurrah for the groans of "em, soon shall the bones of "em, _Steady!_ h.e.l.l-rakers at large, Rot under the sod. _Pa.s.s the word: "G.o.d_ _Is our strength?"_ There goes Oliver. _Charge!_"
When I had done she applauded so that my face burned until I was discommoded and fell into her trap.
"I wish you"d written them, Master Wheatman."
"Well, I did," said I grumpily, not liking to be bereft of any little glory in her eyes.
"What, you?" Her eyebrows arched and her lips curled. "You, oh, never.
"Smiting and praying"? "The arm of the Flesh and the sword of the Spirit."" She mouthed the words deliciously.
"But, doubtless, when you see my Lord Brocton again, you"ll put in the Word and the praying." Here her sweet voice trailed off into a dainty snuffle: ""My dear lord, since out of the mouths of babes and sucklings proceedeth wisdom, hearken, I pray you, unto me, Oliver Wheatman, to wit of the Hanyards, and amend ye your ways lest I hit you over your c.o.c.ks...o...b..again, and very much harder than before. Repent ye, my lord, for the hour is at hand, and if you don"t, I"ll thump you into one of our Kate"s blackberry jellies." And here endeth the goodly discourse of that saintly rib-roaster, Master Hit-him-first-and-then-pray-for-him Wheatman of the Hanyards."
It was simply glorious to be so tormented by this witch with the dancing blue eyes.
"For this scandalous contempt of the Muses," said I soberly, "I shall punish you by frizzling your share of the ham to a cinder."
During my schoolboy days I had roamed the countryside till I knew it as an open book, and this minute knowledge was our salvation now. The immediate need was food, and food obtained without price and without our being observed by anyone. At seven o"clock on a hard winter morning in open country, this seemed to require a miracle. As a matter of fact, it was as easy as sh.e.l.ling peas.
Since crossing the heath we had been travelling nearer to one of the main roads, that leading out of the east gate to the town, and now we got our first glimpse of it lying like a broad, brown ribbon half-way down the slope of a very steep hill. In the upper half, this hill was pretty well wooded and the road cut clean through the wood, but between us and the wood there lay the level crest of the hill, cut by hedges into several fields, and crossed by a rough cart-track leading past a roomy, one-storied cottage, grey-walled and brown-thatched, and on through the wood into the main road. The cottage, with its outbuildings, made a little farmstead, and here lived d.i.c.k Doley and his wife Sal, who did a little farming, but mainly lived by huckstering. Today was market-day at Stafford, and unless they had broken the routine of half a lifetime, they would now be packing their little cart with marketables and soon be off for the town. They had neither chick nor child, lad-servant nor la.s.sie, and they would leave the cottage empty and at our disposal. At this time of the day I could, of course, have trusted both, but they were very human bodies of a sort to rejoice the business side of the heart of Joe Braggs, and it was best not to give them the chance of blabbing later in the day when, for a moral certainty, they would both be market fresh. Besides, it was unfair to thrust myself on the kindness of anyone. I had more than once wondered what had happened to poor little Marry-me-quick.
I scrambled through the hedge and peeped down the road. I was right. d.i.c.k and his wife were busy loading up. So we waited behind the hedge till they had cleared off, and indeed did not move till I saw them and their cart pa.s.s along the road at the foot of the hill.
Time has not blurred the memory of a single detail of our stay in this welcome house of refuge, but the telling of what was moving and charming to me would, I fear, bore others. There was a ham, two indeed, and flitches beside, in the rack hanging from the ceiling, and there were eggs--three, to be precise--in the larder, to which, by equal good luck considering the time of the year, I added two more by a raid into the hen-house. It was all natural and simple enough, but Mistress Waynflete hailed their production almost as amazedly as if I had indeed drawn them out of my hat. But how I fetched and carried, chopped wood and drew water, swept the floor and laid the table, fried ham and boiled eggs, doing all these things with music in my heart and a noisy song on my lips--is everything to me and nothing to my tale.
Mistress Waynflete had disappeared into one of the three or four rooms of which the house consisted, to make herself presentable, as she absurdly put it. When the table was laid and the ham cooked, I halloed the news to her, and rushed off to the shed to attend to my outward appearance. I did want it, being indeed not far short of filthy.
Perhaps I hurried unexpectedly. At any rate, on returning I found Mistress Waynflete bending over something on the hearth. Straightening herself hastily, and with a pretty confusion, at my approach, she cried, "Oh, Master Oliver, the ham was burning, and you threatened my share of it, you know!"
I could not reply. Down to her hips her rich amber hair flowed like a bridal veil, and from amid a wealth of snowy lace, fluttering on the orbed glory of perfect womanhood, her neck rose smooth and stately as a shaft of alabaster. Her cheeks crimsoned with maiden shamefastness, but the blue eyes met mine without a hint of maiden fear, and for that thanks as well as reverence filled my heart as I bowed to her. Maidenlike, she drew her golden veil more closely over her bosom, and tripped back to finish her toilet, leaving me amated and abashed by the vision I had beheld. I think it was from that moment that my joy in my work began to be mingled with the despair of my love. Certainly it was a chastened Oliver Wheatman who placed a chair for her when she came in again for breakfast, and helped her to the good things a kindly fortune had provided.
It is my belief that each of us was secretly amused at the steady zeal with which the other attacked the meal. We wrangled over the odd egg, each insisting on the other having it, she because I was strong, and needed it, I because I was strong and could do without it, and finally adopted the usual compromise. We had more than gone round the clock with barely a mouthful, and we ate as those who know not where the next meal"s meat is to come from. Frankly, I, at any rate, gave myself a fair margin before the pinch should come again, and Mistress Waynflete averred that she had never in her life before eaten so much or so toothsomely.
Our meal over, I stacked the fire with fresh logs, asked and obtained permission to smoke a pipe, and made my sweet mistress cosy in the chimney-corner. Then we began to take stock of our position.
"There"s no good to come of hurrying," said I. "Here we are both snug and safe, and your night"s rest was but short. Let us see where we stand."
I did not really believe that any amount of talking would help much, but repose would do her good, and I had a big idea running in and out of my mind. Our first difficulty, food and rest, had been overcome, and I was bent on mastering the next. No amount of discussion gave us any key to the one great mystery. When Brocton had captured Colonel Waynflete at Milford, the obvious thing to do with him was to send him prisoner to the Duke at Lichfield. Though the Colonel carried no papers which made his purpose clear, Brocton knew well what the object of his journey was, and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act put the Colonel in his power. Or, he might have carried him before a justice of the peace, his friend Master Dobson for choice, and had him committed to the town jail. The course actually taken, that of sending him ahead, under guard, in the very van of the royal army, was to us utterly inexplicable. His mad l.u.s.t for Mistress Margaret explained the separation of father and daughter. The thought did occur to me, though I took great care not to hint at it, that he intended to make away with the Colonel, and looked to finding tools among his blackguardly dragoons and an opportunity when in actual conflict with the Highlanders. I hesitated, however, to believe that Brocton was such a villain as to commit an unnecessary murder. The plan he had adopted had, anyhow, this advantage to us that, when we did come into touch with the prisoner, our chances of a.s.sisting him were far greater than if he were in jail in Stafford or Lichfield.
Whatever my lord"s motives were, it was clear that he was not acting in the plain, straight-dealing manner to be expected of one in his position.
There were other signs of crookedness, slight but not without weight. I could understand his joy on finding me at Marry-me-quick"s. It meant that I was a rebel, and as a loyal man, who had gone to expenses to prove his loyalty, he might easily get the Hanyards as a reward, and thus round off the family property in our neighbourhood. His reference to a "solatium"
puzzled me, but it did not seem anything of consequence. What had I but the Hanyards to solace him with? A more important puzzle had been his behaviour at Master Dobson"s. To find me on the royal side, as he then supposed, and to hear my reason for it, had clean dazed him. Then there was the look, a signal-look beyond a doubt, which I had surprised him giving his bully, Major Pimple-face, and which was followed by the latter"s attempt to embroil the stranger from London in a row.
"It is useless, Master Wheatman, to speculate further on what Lord Brocton is doing," said my mistress at last. "He has his ends. I am one of them. Another is, no doubt, to fill his pockets, somehow or other. It was common talk in town that he was head over ears in debt."
While we had talked and had rested, I had not been idle. d.i.c.k Doley"s roomy kitchen had two windows, one overlooking the cart-track, and another the slope of the hill. The hill was so made and the house so placed that from this second window we could see the strip of road at the bottom of the hill where it curved on to the level again. I had kept a sharp look out on that bit, but had seen no one pa.s.s along it either way as yet.
In one corner of the room d.i.c.k kept an ancient fowling-piece, more of a tool of husbandry than a weapon, since his only use for it was to scare birds. It was a heavy, unhandy thing, with a bra.s.s barrel down which I could have dropped a sizable duck egg, and round its thick-rimmed nozzle some one had rudely graven, "Happy is he that escapeth me." I fetched it out of its corner, and cleaned and oiled it. I now loaded it, for powder-horn and shot-bag hung near it on the wall, putting in a handful of the biggest sort of shot, swan-shot as I should call them. During this task, Mistress Waynflete watched me narrowly, but made no reference to it.
"Now," said I, "our main requisite is the stuff, the ready, the rhino, the swag--call it what you will. How do you fancy me as a knight of the road? The first copper-faced farmer I come across shall surely stand and deliver. Here"s an argument he cannot resist."
At last my scrutiny of the road was rewarded. A solitary horseman came in sight from the direction of the town.
"Mistress Waynflete," said I, picking up the fowling-piece, "there"s a traveller yonder coming from Stafford. It will be well if I go and ask him a few questions."
She almost leaped at me, red anger flashing in her eyes but her face white as milk. "Sir," she said, "you shall not turn thief for me. I will not have it."
"Pray, madam," replied I huffily, "expound the moral difference between stealing ham and stealing guineas. I"m all for morality."
"I cannot, Master Wheatman, but you must not, shall not go." She caught hold of my sleeve. "Say you won"t! If you are found out it means--"
"I shall not be found out. You may take that for sure. Think you that I cannot pluck yon chough without being pinched? It"s no more robbery than our eating d.i.c.k"s ham and eggs. We are soldiers in enemy"s country, and we plunder by right of the known rules of war. As a concession to your prejudices in favour of the jog-trot morality of peace, I will e"en ask him whether he be for James or George, and borrow or command his guineas in accordance with his reply. Loose my sleeve, madam!"
I loosened the grip of her fingers, and led her back to her chair. "You overrate my danger, sweet mistress, and under rate our need. Without money, we might as well lie under the nearest hedge and leave Jack Frost to settle matters his way, and a cold, nasty way it would be. Your guinea is a good fighter, and we need his help. It must be done, and, never fear, I"ll carry it through safely."
So I left her, white hands grappling the arms of her chair, and white face turned away from me.
CHAPTER IX
MY CAREER AS A HIGHWAYMAN
I left the cottage from the rear and struck slantwise across the fields to reach the shelter of the trees and undergrowth that covered the slope down to the road. I ran hard so as to shake irresolution out of my mind, for I found myself half wishing that Mistress Waynflete had pleaded with me at first instead of trying to thrust me out of my plan. After all the highwayman"s was hardly my calling in life. So I ran hard, saying to myself that it must be done, and the sooner it was over the better. Then I laughed. With my rusty old birding-piece I was as ill-equipped for highwaymanship as I was for farming with my Georgics. "Stand and deliver,"
quoth I to myself, "or I"ll double your weight with swan-shot." Were the unknown horseman a resolute man armed with a hair-trigger, I was as good as done for.
Arrived in the shelter of the wood, I began picking my way through the thick undergrowth towards the road. Fallen branchlets snapped beneath my heedless feet and the sounds rang in my ears like pistol-shots. A saucy robin c.o.c.ked his care-free eye on me from the top of a crab-tree, and I could have envied him as I stumbled by. It was perhaps fourscore yards through, and half-way I stopped to listen. Yes, there came to my ear the slow trot-ot-ot of hoofs on the hard road. I went on again until, through the leafless tangle, I began to get glimpses of the highway. My fate was dragging me on. In a month"s time my shrivelling carcase might be swinging in chains on the top of Wes"on Bank, an ensample to evil-doers. The thought made me shiver, and I jerked out a broken prayer that my intended victim might turn out some fat, unarmed farmer, as easy a prey as an over-fed gander. Then I cursed myself for a fool. No man can mortgage past piety for present sin. Who was I that I should be allowed to steal on good security?
Trot-ot-ot. Trot-ot-ot. He was within easy shot now, and I stopped to make sure of my rickety old weapon. A dragoon"s musket would not have needed such constant care. "Life turns on trifles," said Mistress Waynflete.
In lifting my eyes from the priming to move on again, something in the line of vision made me start. On my left, less than a dozen paces from me, there lay on the ground, on a clean patch beneath a conspicuously-forked hawthorn, a man"s jacket and plumed hat.
A lion playing with a lamb would not have given me pause more abruptly. I stole silently up to them. They were fine but somewhat faded garments, modish and even foppish, and, so far as I could distinguish any peculiarity, military in appearance, and evidently belonged to a person of some quality. Nor had they been flung there in haste, for the coat was neatly folded and the hat disposed carefully on top of it. How long had they been there? I picked up the hat, and there was still the gloss of recent sweat on its inside brim.
This, however, was no time for idle problems, a very urgent one being on hand. Forward I crept to the side of the road, and, lying flat down on the ground, pushed the stock of my gun on to the short gra.s.s, and peeped cautiously to my right down the hill. I was about thirty or forty yards from a bend in the road, and had intended to be much less, but my discovery and my confused, half-conscious thinking about it, had deflected me a little from my course.
Trot-ot-ot. He would be in sight in a few seconds. Trot-ot-ot, plainer than ever, and there he was. The moment that he was in full view I made an astonishing discovery, and saw an astonishing sight.
The discovery was that the solitary horseman, walking his powerful grey with a slack rein, and lost in thought, was Master Freake.
The sight was the rush of three men from their lurking-places in the brushwood. Two of them were soldiers, and Brocton"s dragoons at that, a sample of the town-sweepings Jack had complained of. One seized the reins, the other held a carbine point-blank at the horseman"s head.