The Yeoman Adventurer
"You know exactly what to do?" asked his lordship of the men on the coach.
"Yes, my lord," said one of them, "but what about--" He finished the
sentence by a jerk of his thumb towards the dead sergeant.
"Leave him there! Egad, Master Wheatman, is not that a touch of the real
artist?"
"The key of these things is in his breeches' pocket," said I, speaking
for the first time, and waggling my fetters as I did so.
"Get it out, Tomlins!"
The man who had asked the question climbed down and obeyed the order with
the callousness of a dog nosing a dead rabbit. Then our parties separated.
The coach continued along the main road, if so it may be called, and we
took to the track. I looked curiously after the coach, wondering where it
was bound, and with what object.
"More art," said his lordship. "A coach is a seeable, trackable thing,
and it will throw everybody off the scent. I'm glad the ruffian's dead. He
was overmuch wise in my affairs."
As we rode on into the interminable wastes, he rallied me gleefully, but
soon tired of my moroseness.
"His arrival will make an affecting picture," he said mockingly to his
men. He was feverishly excited, and must boast to some one. "No pliant
damsel to rush into his longing arms! He is to be embraced though, my
masters, if need be."
What this obscure threat might portend, I could not see, but it chimed in
with the delirious cruelty of the dead sergeant. Threats for the future
mattered not, the present being so unendurable. A man in Brocton's
position must be hard put to it to turn traitor in this strange fashion.
He had "rescued" me with his own men, and, lord or no lord, he would hang
for it were it once known to a lover of the gibbet like the Duke's Grace
of Cumberland. What on earth was the letter about? Master Freake had
definitely said lands, and therefore lands it must be, though nothing less
than the whole Ridgeley estates could be in question. The thousand and
more acres of the Upper Hanyards, sweet meadows stretching a mile along
the river and a snatch of the chase at its wildest and loveliest, the
prize that had fallen to the rascal earl in the great lawsuit, had been
promised me as readily as a pinch of snuff. I gloated over the revenge I
was winning for my race, a race rooted in those darling Hanyards a century
before the Ridgeleys were heard of, for the first earl, the grandfather of
the old rogue, started as an obscure pimp to Charles the Second, and was
enriched and ennobled for his assiduity.
But no familiary pride could cheer me for long. The dead landscape around
chilled me. The chiefest misery was to remember the hope with which I had
started that morning. Margaret was the fancied end of my journey, and the
real end was this! I had to bite my lips till I felt the trickle of blood
in the stubble on my chin to keep back unmanly revilings.
At last we came out on what was by comparison a made road, and now his
lordship grew plainly anxious and haggard. We rode madly along it, so
that, riding shackled and woman-fashion, I had hard work to keep my seat.
Brocton's head was incessantly on the turn to see if we were observed, but
his luck was absolute. We saw no one on the road, and, after a hard
stretch, we turned up a gully to our left and were once more buried among
the hills.
After much turning and twisting we came in sight of a small house of grey
stone which, from its appearance and situation, I judged to be some
gentleman's shooting lodge. We cut across the valley, on one slope of
which it stood, and I caught a glimpse of cottage roofs beyond it. We
worked round to the rear of the house, and, in a favouring clump of trees,
his lordship called a halt. The horses were tethered, and I was lifted
down, and the rings round my ankles were unlocked. The men took one each,
and carried their carbines in their free hands. Brocton drew his rapier,
and said, "Forward! Make a sound, show the slightest sign of resistance,
and I run you through."
There was no sense in disobeying, and I accommodated myself to his
design, which was clearly to get into the house unobserved from without.
In this he was successful, or at any rate I saw no one during our crawl
from one point of vantage to another up to the back entrance. Now his
lordship skipped gaily from behind me and opened the door. He stepped
softly in, and I was pushed after him by his dragoons.
"'Friends will rescue you and bring you to me,'" he quoted, jeering me.
"There's no Margaret for you, Farmer Wheatman. I shall have her yet!"
Then, beast as he was, while the men kept me back, nearly tearing my arms
out of their sockets, he stuck the point of his rapier over my heart and
babbled half-delirious beastliness.
We were in a big, bare kitchen, the other door of which was closed. There
was no sign of anyone about, and Brocton, still with his sword ready for
me, bawled out, "Where are you, you old hag?"
The door opened at once. Brocton dropped his sword in his fright and I
clapped my foot on it. The two men fled like rabbits. Familiar as the
picture is to my mind, it is hard to find words to fit this crowning
moment of my adventures.
Margaret walked into the room.
For a second she was minded to rush at me, but thought better of it, and
walked up to his lordship. She towered over his limp, cringing figure, and
said coldly, "You are too poor a cur to be struck by a woman or I would
strike you."
She was not alone. Master Freake was now wringing my shackled hands
delightedly, and a little, deft man, whom I knew on sight to be Dot
Gibson, was searching his unresisting lordship's pockets for the key of
the irons. A minute later he banged them on the floor and said, "And how
do you find yourself, sir?"
There's no more to be said about Brocton. He was as good as dead for the
remainder of the business, and no one heeded him any more than if he had
been a loathsome insect that a man's foot had trodden on. And what killed
him was the presence of a third man, a perfect stranger to me. He was an
old-looking rather than an old man, with rheumy eyes that looked through
narrow slits, and a big unshapely nose; the skin of his face was brown and
crinkled like a dried-up bladder; his whole appearance as a man was mean
and paltry. What distinction he had was given him by gorgeous clothing and
the attendance of a pompous ass in a flaming livery. Yet Brocton dared not
look at him again, as he shuffled forward on his man's arm to speak to
Master Freake.
"Mr. Freake," he piped, laying an imploring hand on the merchant's arm,
"you will not be too hard on my foolish son?"
It was the old rascal Earl of Ridgeley. I had not seen him since the
trial, when I was but a lad. In the meantime vice had eaten out of him
such manliness as had ever been in him. Rascaldom was still stamped on
him, but he was now in a state of abject terror. He and his son were
indeed, as Jane puts it to this day, two to a pair.
"Your lordships will be pleased to wait on me in the room yonder," said
Master Freake, in his grave, decisive way, "and I will tell you my will on
the matter."
He bowed ironically towards the door. Their unlordly lordships went off
together, and he followed and closed the door behind him. Dot sensibly
hustled off the lackey, and so we were alone together.
As ever, I had my full reward. She turned to me, took my hands in hers,
and whispered, "My splendid Oliver!"
"What, madam?" said I, laughing lest I should do otherwise and most
unbecomingly. "In a red beard?"
"You look like a Cossack!" she declared, laughing in her turn.
So, in the way we had, we kept ourselves at arm's length from each other
and dropped at once into our old footing.
Then, bit by bit, and unwillingly, and mainly in answers to my questions,
she told a tale that made my heart bound within me. This is the mere
skeleton of it, for I have no skill to give body and soul to such devotion.
The Colonel brought the news of my capture by Brocton, pieced together
from the stories of my men, who got back unhurt, and of one of Brocton's
dragoons who was luckily taken prisoner in order to be questioned.
Margaret had immediately started on horseback for London, with one English
servant in attendance, going by Appleby to evade the Duke's army, and
across the mountains to Darlington. There she had travelled flying post
down the great north road, getting to London in five days thirteen hours
after her start from Penrith.
Master Freake had started back with her within five hours of her arrival.
They travelled post through Leicester and Derby, and then on over ground
that was familiar. No wonder I had thought her near, since she had passed
within fifty paces of me as I shambled about dreaming of her. Part of the
five hours' delay in London was taken up by a visit paid by Master Freake
to the Earl of Ridgeley. He had gone forth stern and resolute. What had
happened she did not know, but as they sped north the Earl sped north a
mile behind them, as if they were dragging him along by his heart-strings.
At Carlisle, now in the hands of the Duke, they drew blank, for Brocton
was unaccountably absent from military duty. Fortunately Margaret, from
the window of her room, saw the sergeant ride by. Dot was sent on his
track and learned that Brocton was here, the house being a hunting-lodge
belonging to a crony of his who was an officer in the Cumberland militia.
They had ridden out that morning to see him, at which point her tale
linked up with mine and ended.
"I am greatly indebted to you, Margaret," said I, very lamely, slipping
out her name at unawares.
"Nonsense!" she cried. "May I not do as much as your pet ghostie did for
you without being a miracle? Do not you dare, sir, to offer me a
pinnerfull of guineas!"
She looked at me with a merry twinkle in her eyes, and I feel sure I knew
what she was thinking of. But Nance Lousely was a simple country maiden,
such as I was born and bred amongst, and at that time I had no vile red
stubble, rough as a horse-comb, on my chin.
We were interrupted by the lackey, who came with Mr. Dot Gibson's
respects to his honour, and would his honour like the refreshment of a
shave and a bath as both were at his service? Like master, like man. This
resplendent person was for the nonce humility's self. I went with him and
was made clean and comfortable, and my rags trimmed a little.
This was preliminary to being summoned by Master Freake to a discussion
with their lordships, with whom was Margaret, aloof and icy.
"At the 'Ring o' Bells,'" began Master Freake, addressing me, "you took
from my lord Brocton's sergeant, now dead, a bundle of papers?"
"Yes, sir."
"Among them a letter addressed simply, 'To His Royal Highness'?"
"That is so, sir."
"You gave that letter to me, unopened, in the presence of Mistress
Waynflete?"
"I did," said I, and Margaret nodded agreement.
"Several attempts have been made to recover the letter from you?"
"At least three such attempts were made by the late sergeant, and two by
my lord Brocton," I replied.
"Their lordships' urgent need of recovering the letter is thus proven,
and the Court will attach due weight to the facts," said Master Freake.
Brocton turned white as a sheet, and the old rogue shook as a dead leaf
shakes on its twig before the wind strips it off. There was in them none
of the family pride which keeps the great families agoing.
"I opened the letter. I mastered its contents. I still have it,"
continued Master Freake, every sentence, like the crash of a
sledge-hammer, making these craven bystanders shake at the knees. "It is
deposited, sealed up again, with a sure friend, who has instructions,
unless I claim it in person on or before the last day of this year, to
deliver it in person to the King. At present no one knows its contents