The Yeoman Adventurer
awkward thing for Sir James that I was here, a circumstantial piece of
evidence against him. I looked straight into Weir's eyes as he came
forward, ungainly and uncertainly, smiling half his dirty teeth bare, and
mopping his yellowy face with a dirty handkerchief. To my astonishment he
made not a single sign of recognition. I was his trump card, and he left
me unplayed.
"Sir James is a known Jacobite, my lord!" he quavered.
"Quite right, Mr. Weir, and if you propose to keep me out of bed these
cold nights calling on known Jacobites, stap my vitals, Mr. Weir, if I
don't have you flung into a pond with a brick tied round your sweaty neck
like an unwanted pup. Anything else?"
"This is a Jacobite plot, my lord. There's scheming and plotting against
our gracious lord the King agoing on here, my lord."
"I'll e'en have a closer look at 'em. Plots are damned interesting
things, stap me if they a'nt, and I'm glad to see one. Here's a likely
young fellow," striding up and examining me. "His is a plot in a meat-pie,
it seems. There was one in a meal-tub once, I remember, so the meat-pie
does look mighty suspicious, Mr. Weir. We're getting on. And here's a
plotter toasting his toes. Not an intelligent member of the cabal. Stap
me, if he a'nt asleep! I must circumambulate and have a quiz at him."
He walked gaily in his play-acting way round Master Freake's chair on to
the hearth and then turned and took a peep at him. As soon as he had done
so he gave a great shout, and then, recovering himself, burst into a roar
of laughter. He clapped his hands on his knees and fairly swayed with
merriment. Master Freake looked at him with a sedate half-smile, and said,
"How d'ye do, my lord?"
"Very well, thankee!" cried his lordship gaily, too gaily. "Damme! It's
the funniest thing that's happened since Noah came out of the Ark. Come
here, spy! Mean to tell me this is a Jacobite?"
As the spy crept near, Master Freake stood up, wheeled round on him
smartly, and said, "How d'ye do, Turnditch?"
"Stap me!" cried his lordship. "His name's Weir!"
"He will know me better if I call him Turnditch," said Master Freake icily.
He spoke unmistakable truth. I could see the shadow of the gallows fall
across the man's face. What stiffening there was in him oozed out, and he
stood there wriggling in an agony of apprehension, like a worm in a
chicken's beak. Master Freake knew him to the bottom of his muddy soul. My
Lord Tiverton was a man of another mould, but he too was in the hands of
his master. Plain John Freake, citizen of London, had taken a hand in this
game of fate, and had thrown double six.
This noble room had seen the agonizings and rejoicings of a dozen
generations of the sons of men, but nothing to surpass this scene in
living interest. They come back to me now--the line of blue-and-white
troopers, still with levelled carbines; the stolid Welshman, as
indifferent as Snowdon; the dapper nobleman, still polished and lightsome,
no longer play-acting but rather vaguely anxious; the high-minded troubled
Jacobite, fear for his wife and babe gnawing at his heart; the spy, Weir
or Turnditch, with the noose he had made for another drawn round his own
neck; Master John Freake, the quiet, Quakerlike merchant, whose power was
rooted deep in those far haunts of the world's trade, so that we were here
shadowed and protected by the uttermost branches thereof. Last of all I
remember myself, with my heart thrumming good-morrow to Margaret.
"Come now, Houndsditch, or Turndish, or whatever it is," said his
lordship. "Precisely what have you to say?"
The poor devil had nothing to say. He was aflame to be off and out of
Master Freake's eyesight. He choked up something about mistakes, and zeal,
and forgiveness.
"That's enough! Out you go, the whole damn lot of you!" cried my lord.
These not being familiar military words of command, the men stuck there
like skittles. "Ground arms, or whatever it is!" he continued. "About
turn! Quick march!"
Their sergeant took charge of them and they filed out. Sir James followed
them and became their host, routing out servants to wait on them.
As soon as the door was closed on Sir James, his lordship hastened to
Master Freake's side, and entered into low and earnest conversation with
him. I walked across to the folios, hoping to find amongst them an
_editio princeps_ of Virgil, but was recalled by a loud "Oliver" from
Master Freake.
"Oliver," he said, when I reached his chair, "I should like you to know
the most noble the Marquess of Tiverton!"
I bowed, and his lordship bowed in reply, and said light and pleasant
things about our meeting. Then, vowing he was monstrous hungry, he tackled
the venison pasty, summoning me to sit opposite him.
"Gadso! I am sharp-set," he said, and indeed he ate with the zeal of a
plough-lad. He pushed me over his snuff-box, which nearly made me sneeze
before I took the snuff.
"It really is a masterpiece," he said, in a pause between pasty and pie.
"I shall never hear the last of it at the 'Cocoa Tree' and White's. Stap
me, I shan't want to! It's too good. The tale will keep my memory green
when that old mummy, Newcastle, is dust at last."
"What tale?" said I.
"D'ye know why, a month ago, I badgered Newcastle into getting me a
company in the Blues?"
"Not the faintest idea!"
He leaned across the table and, from under cover of me, nodded towards
Master Freake, now talking with the Welsh-man. "To get out of his way!" he
whispered.
I looked incredulous, whereupon his lordship tapped his pocket
significantly.
"He's a damned good fellow. He gave me another six months without a
murmur. Wish I'd known! There'd have been no campaigning for me. I prefer
the Mall!"
So he said now, yet he was as steady as a wall and as bold as a lion at
Culloden. He came of a great stock, and greatness was natural to him. The
play-acting and gaming was only the fringe that Society had tacked on to
him. It lessoned me finely to see him when Sir James came back into the
room. Tiverton knew the position by instinct.
"Sir James," he said, "I crave a word with you."
"At your service, my lord."
"I will be frank," continued his lordship. "I ask no questions. I make no
inferences. I simply point out that the spy fell to pieces because he
found Mr. Freake here."
"I observed so much, my lord!"
"I don't know why," said the Marquess dubiously.
"I could hang him at the next assizes," interrupted Master Freake.
"I see. He doesn't want to be hanged, of course. No one does. It's a
perfectly natural feeling. So he crumpled up at the prospect."
"Yes, my lord," said Sir James.
"I allowed him to crumple up, and I took full advantage of the fact. You
saw so much?"
"I did."
"Now, Sir James, you, as a Blount, that is, as a man bearing an honoured
name, are under the strictest obligation to me to see that I can say, if
my conduct is challenged, that I saw nothing here because there was
nothing to see. I have put myself absolutely in your power, Sir James.
Whoever else joins the Prince, you must not, or you take my head along
with you."
It was well and truly said, and there was no posing about it. Sir James
Blount's problem was settled. He taught me something too, for all he did
was to put out his hand.
"There's an end of Tundish!" said Tiverton, grasping it firmly. "And it's
the best end too, for the Highland army hasn't a snowball's chance in
hell."
He turned at once to banter me on my indifference to art, seeing that I
had sniffed at a miniature by one of the most famous artists at the French
Court. I let him rattle on, for my eye was on Sir James, who was rolling
something in his hands. A moment later the Prince's letter went up in a
tongue of flame and burnt along with it the Jacobitism of the Blounts.
A knock at the door interrupted his lordship's valuation of art and
artists of the French school, and his sergeant entered to say that his men
were in the saddle.
"Campaigning be damned!" said his captain wearily.
"Beg pardon, my lord," added the sergeant, "but Mr. What's-his-name has
cut off."
"Good riddance. He's gone back to his crony at the 'Black Swan.'"
"Yes, my lord. T'other's a sergeant in my Lord Brocton's dragoons."
"Ah, I saw they were hob-and-nob together. A fellow with a ditch in his
face you could lay a finger in!"
Fortunately for me, the Marquess was busy with a last glass of wine. Here
was ill news with a vengeance. I had got out of the smoke into the smother.
"My lord," said Master Freake, "there is a man of mine, one Dot Gibson,
at the 'Black Swan,' and I shall be greatly beholden to you if you will
let your sergeant carry him a note of instructions from me."
"Stap me! I'll take it myself," cried his lordship heartily.
Master Freake went to a table to write the note. I knew now who it was
that had given me the warning. My lord pocketed the note and we all crept
quietly down to the main door to see him off. The guards made a gallant
show in the brilliant moonlight, and Master Freake, taking my arm, dragged
me out to watch them canter across the stretch of meadow, and drop out of
sight down the hill.
"Sleep in peace, Oliver," he said. "Dot Gibson will give us early news of
the movements of the enemy."
Then we strolled back, talking of the Colonel and Margaret.
CHAPTER XIX
WHAT CAME OF FOPPERY
It was eight by the clock next morning before I set about my third
commission. To begin with, the bed pulled, and small wonder, since I had
not slept in a bed since leaving home. Then I took my fill of the books,
finding among them no less a prize than the _editio princeps_ of
Virgil, printed at Rome in 1469, which it was hard to let go. Next there
was Baby Blount to be waited upon, and his mother, a pretty, appealing
lady, with the glory of motherhood about her like a fairy garment. Part of
the ceremonial was the putting of Master Blount into my arms, which was
done very gingerly, with abundant cautions and precautions against my
crushing or dropping him. He had a skin like white satin and a silvery
down on his charming little head. Altogether I thought him a most
desirable possession for a man to have, and wished he was mine,
particularly when, to his father's outspoken chagrin, instead of puling he
stared steadily at me with big blue eyes and smiled.
"Precious ikkle ducksy-wucksy," said his mother.
"Ugly ikkle monkey-wonkey," cried his father. "Why the deuce can't he
smile at me?"
"Try him!" said I, handing him over to Sir James, glad to be free of the
responsibility.
Baby Blount looked at his father and smiled again, and it was a
revelation to me of the deepest and finest feelings of a man's heart to
see how ravished Sir James was with this first smile of his baby boy's.
"It's you that's changed, James, not our little darling," said his wife.
"He'll always smile at a face as happy as yours is this morning."
I lingered through these delightful moments over an old book and a new
baby with an easy conscience, for Master Freake had brought me news which
made my third task much easier. I had not told him what I had in hand to
do, thinking it unfair to force the knowledge on him, but he must have
made a good guess at it, for he came to tell me that the latest news from
Stone was that the Duke was moving south again at top speed, with the
intention of getting between the Prince and London if he could. He told me
further that Charles had joined Murray at Ashbourne in the small hours,
and that their reunited forces had started out for Derby. In all these
important matters he was, as is obvious enough now, fully and exactly
informed, and I expressed my admiration of his thoroughness.
"Business, my dear Oliver, nothing but business. Some great man of old