CHAPTER XXXVI.

INTO CAPTIVITY.

Toward eleven o'clock that night Mrs. Rosewarne became somewhat anxious about her girls, and asked her husband to go and meet them, or to fetch them away if they were still at Mr. Trewhella's house.

"Can't they look after themselves?" said George Rosewarne. "I'll be bound Mabyn can, any way. Let her alone to come back when she pleases."

Then his wife began to fret, and as this made him uncomfortable, he said he would walk up the road and meet them. He had no intention of doing so, of course, but it was a good excuse for getting away from a fidgety wife. He went outside into the clear starlight, and lounged down to the small bridge beside the mill, contentedly smoking his pipe.

There he encountered a farmer who was riding home a cob he had bought that day at Launceston, and the farmer and he began to have a chat about horses suggested by that circumstance. Oddly enough, their random talk came round to young Trelyon.

"Your thoroughbreds won't do for this county," George Rosewarne was saying, "to go flying a stone wall and breaking your neck. No, sir. I'll tell you what sort of hunter I should like to have for these parts. I'd have him half-bred, short in the leg, short in the pastern, short in the back, a good sloping shoulder, broad in the chest and the forehead, long in the belly, and just the least bit over fifteen hands--eh, Mr. Thoms? I don't think beauty's of much consequence when your neck's in question. Let him be as angular and ragged in the hips as you like, so long's his ribs are well up to the hip-bone. Have you seen that black horse that young Trelyon rides?"

"'Tis a noble beast, sir--a noble beast," the farmer said; and he would probably have gone on to state what ideal animal had been constructed by his lavish imagination had not a man come running up at this moment, breathless and almost speechless.

"Rosewarne," stammered Mr. Roscorla, "a--a word with you! I want to say--"

The farmer, seeing he was in the way, called out a careless good-night and rode on.

"Well, what's the matter?" said George Rosewarne a little snappishly: he did not like being worried by excitable people.

"Your daughters!" gasped Mr. Roscorla. "They've both run away--both of them--this minute--with Trelyon! You'll have to ride after them. They're straight away along the high-road."

"Both of them? The infernal young fools!" said Rosewarne. "Why the devil didn't you stop them yourself?"

"How could I?" Roscorla said, amazed that the father took the flight of his daughters with apparent equanimity. "You must make haste, Mr. Rosewarne, or you'll never catch them."

"I've a good mind to let 'em go," said he sulkily as he walked over to the stables of the inn. "The notion of a man having to set out on this wild-goose chase at this time o' night! Run away, have they? and what in all the world have they run away for?"

It occurred to him, however, that the sooner he got a horse saddled and set out, the less distance he would have to go in pursuit; and that consideration quickened his movements.

"What's it all about?" said he to Roscorla, who had followed him into the stable.

"I suppose they mean a runaway match," said Mr. Roscorla, helping to saddle George Rosewarne's cob, a famous trotter.

"It's that young devil's limb, Mabyn, I'll be bound," said the father. "I wish to Heaven somebody would marry her!--I don't care who. She's always up to some confounded mischief."

"No, no, no," Roscorla said: "it's Wenna he means to marry."

"Why, you were to have married Wenna?"

"Yes, but--"

"Then why didn't you? So she's run away, has she?" George Rosewarne grinned: he saw how the matter lay.

"This is Mabyn's work, I know," said he as he put his foot in the stirrup and sprang into the saddle. "You'd better go home, Roscorla. Don't you say a word to anybody. You don't want the girl made a fool of all through the place."

So George Rosewarne set out to bring back his daughters; not galloping, as an anxious parent might, but going ahead with a long, steady-going trot, which he knew would soon tell on Mrs. Trelyon's over-fed and under-exercised horses.

"If they mean Plymouth," he was thinking, "as is most likely from their taking the high-road, he'll give it them gently at first. And so that young man wants to marry our Wenna? 'Twould be a fine match for her; and yet she's worth all the money he's got--she's worth it every farthing. I'd give him the other one cheap enough."

Pounding along a dark road, with the consciousness that the farther you go the farther you've got to get back, and that the distance still to be done is an indeterminate quantity, is agreeable to no one, but it was especially vexatious to George Rosewarne, who liked to take things quietly, and could not understand what all the fuss was about. Why should he be sent on this mad chase at midnight? If anybody wanted to marry either of the girls, why didn't he do so and say no more about it? Rosewarne had been merely impatient and annoyed when he set out, but the longer he rode, and the more he communed with himself, the deeper grew his sense of the personal injury that had been done him by this act of folly.

It was a very lonely ride indeed. There was not a human being abroad at that hour. When he passed a few cottages from time to time the windows were dark. Then they had just been putting down a lot of loose stones at several parts of the road, which caused Mr. Rosewarne to swear. "I'll bet a sovereign," said he to himself, "that old Job kept them a quarter of an hour before he opened Paddock's Gate. I believe the old fool goes to bed. Well, they've waked him up for me, any way."

There was some consolation in this surmise, which was well founded. When Rosewarne reached the toll-bar there was at least a light in the small house. He struck on the door with the handle of his riding-whip, and called out, "Hi, hi! Job! Come out, you old fool!"

An old man with very bandy legs came hobbling out of the toll-house, and went to open the gate, talking and muttering to himself: "Ay, ay! so yü be agwoin' after the young uns, Maister Rosewarne? Ay, ay! yü'll go up many a lane and by many a fuzzy 'ill, and acrass a bridge or two, afore yü come up wi' 'en, Maister Rosewarne."

"Look sharp, Job!" said Rosewarne. "Carriage been through here lately?"

"Ay, ay, Maister Rosewarne! 'tis a good half hour agone."

"A half hour, you idiot!" said Rosewarne, now in a thoroughly bad temper. "You've been asleep and dreaming. Here, take your confounded money!"

So he rode on again, not believing, of course, old Job's malicious fabrication, but being rendered all the same a little uncomfortable by it. Fortunately, the cob had not been out before that day.

More deep lanes, more high, open, windy spaces, more silent cottages, more rough stones, and always the measured fall of the cob's feet and the continued shining and throbbing of the stars overhead. At last, far away ahead, on the top of a high incline, he caught sight of a solitary point of ruddy fire, which presently disappeared. That, he concluded, was the carriage he was pursuing going round a corner, and showing only the one lamp as it turned into the lane. They were not so far in front of him as he had supposed.

But how to overtake them? So soon as they heard the sound of his horse would they dash onward at all risks, and have a race for it all through the night? In that case George Rosewarne inwardly resolved that they might go to Plymouth, or into the deep sea beyond, before he would injure his favorite cob.

On the other hand, he could not bring them to a standstill by threatening to shoot at his own daughters, even if he had had anything with him that would look like a pistol. Should he have to rely, then, on the moral terrors of a parent's authority? George Rosewarne was inclined to laugh when he thought of his overawing in this fashion the high spirit of his younger daughter.

By slow and sure degrees he gained on the fugitives, and as he could now catch some sound of the rattling of the carriage-wheels, they must also hear his horse's footfall. Were they trying to get away from him? On the contrary, the carriage stopped altogether.

That was Harry Trelyon's decision. For some time back he had been listening attentively. At length he said, "Don't you hear some one riding back there?"

"Yes, I do," said Wenna, beginning to tremble.

"I suppose it is Mr. Roscorla coming after us," the young man said coolly. "Now I think it would be a shame to drag the old gentleman halfway down to Plymouth. He must have had a good spell already. Shall I stop and persuade him to go back home to bed?"

"Oh no," said Mabyn, who was all for getting on at any risk.

"Oh no," Wenna said, fearing the result of an encounter between the two men.

"I must stop," Trelyon said. "It's such precious hard lines on him. I shall easily persuade him that he would be better at home."

So he pulled up the horses, and quietly waited by the roadside for a few minutes. The unknown rider drew nearer and more near.

"That isn't Roscorla's pony," said Trelyon listening. "That's more like your father's cob."

"My father!" said Wenna in a low voice.

"My darling, you needn't be afraid, whoever it is," Trelyon said.

"Certainly not," added Mabyn, who was far more uncomfortable than she chose to appear. "Who can prevent us going on? They don't lock you up in convents now-a-days. If it is Mr. Roscorla, you just let me talk to him."

Their doubt on that head was soon set at rest. White Charley, with his long swinging trot, soon brought George Rosewarne up to the side of the phaeton, and the girls, long ere he had arrived, had recognized in the gloom the tall figure of their father. Even Mabyn was a trifle nervous.

But George Rosewarne--perhaps because he was a little pacified by their having stopped--did not rage and fume as a father is expected to do whose daughter has run away from him. As soon as he had pulled up his horse he called out in a petulant tone, "Well! what the devil is all this about?"

"I'll tell you, sir," said Trelyon, quite respectfully and quite firmly: "I wished to marry your daughter Wenna--"

"And why couldn't you do that in Eglosilyan, instead of making a fool of everybody all round?" Rosewarne said, still talking in an angry and vexed way, as of one who had been personally injured.

"Oh, dada," Mabyn cried, "you don't know how it happened; but they couldn't have got married there. There's that horrid old wretch, Mr. Roscorla--and Wenna was quite a slave to him and afraid of him--and the only way was to carry her away from him; and so--"

"Hold your tongue, Mabyn," her father said. "You'd drive a windmill with your talk."

"But what she says is true enough," Trelyon said. "Roscorla has a claim on her: this was my only chance, and I took it. Now look here, Mr. Rosewarne: you've a right to be angry and all that--perhaps you are--but what good will it do you to see Wenna left to marry Roscorla?"

"What good will it do me?" said George Rosewarne pettishly. "I don't care which of you she marries."

"Then you'll let us go on, dada?" Mabyn cried. "Will you come with us? Oh, do come with us! We're only going to Plymouth."

Even the angry father could not withstand the absurdity of this appeal. He burst into a roar of ill-tempered laughter. "I like that!" he cried. "Asking a man to help his daughter to run away from his own house! It's my impression, my young mistress, that you're at the bottom of all this nonsense. Come, come! enough of it, Trelyon: be a sensible fellow, and turn your horses round. Why, the notion of going to Plymouth at this time o' night!"

Trelyon looked to his companion. She put her hand on his arm, and said, in a trembling whisper, "Oh yes: pray let us go back."

"You know what you are going to, then?" said he coldly.

She trembled still more.

"Come, come," said her father: "you mustn't stop here all night. You may thank me for preventing your becoming the talk of the whole country."

"I shouldn't have minded that much," Mabyn said ruefully, and very like to cry indeed, as the horses set out upon their journey back to Eglosilyan.

It was not a pleasant journey for any of them--least of all for Wenna Rosewarne, who, having been bewildered by one wild glimpse of liberty, felt with terror and infinite sadness and despair the old manacles closing round her life again. And what although the neighbors might remain in ignorance of what she had done? She herself knew, and that was enough.

"You think no one will know?" Mabyn called out spitefully to her father. "Do you think old Job at the gate has lost either his tongue or his nasty temper?"

"Leave Job to me," the father replied.

When they got to Paddock's Gate the old man had again to be roused, and he came out grumbling.

"Well, you discontented old sinner!" Rosewarne called to him, "don't you like having to earn a living?"

"A fine livin' to wait on folks that don't knaw their own mind, and keep comin' and goin' along the road o' nights like a weaver's shuttle. Hm!"

"Well, Job, you sha'n't suffer for it this time," Rosewarne said. "I've won my bet. If you made fifty pounds by riding a few miles out, what would you give the gatekeeper?"

Even that suggestion failed to inveigle Job into a better humor.

"Here's a sovereign for you, Job. Now go to bed. Good-night!"

How long the distance seemed to be ere they saw the lights of Eglosilyan again! There were only one or two small points of red fire, indeed, where the inn stood. The rest of the village was buried in darkness.

"Oh, what will mother say?" Wenna said in a low voice to her sister.

"She will be very sorry we did not get away altogether," Mabyn answered. "And of course it was Mr. Roscorla who spoiled it. Nobody knew anything about it but himself. He must have run on to the inn and told some one. Wasn't it mean, Wenna? Couldn't he see that he wasn't wanted?"

"Are you talking of Mr. Roscorla?" Trelyon said: George Rosewarne was a bit ahead at this moment. "I wish to goodness I had gagged him and slung him below the phaeton. I knew he would be coming down there: I expected him every moment. Why were you so late, Mabyn?"

"Oh, you needn't blame me, Mr. Trelyon," said Mabyn, rather hurt. "You know I did everything I could for you."

"I know you did, Mabyn: I wish it had turned out better."

What was this, then, that Wenna heard as she sat there bewildered, apprehensive and sad-hearted? Had her own sister joined in this league to carry her off? It was not merely the audacity of young Trelyon that had led to their meeting. But she was altogether too frightened and wretched to be angry.

As they got down into Eglosilyan and turned the sharp corner over the bridge they did not notice the figure of a man who had been concealing himself in the darkness of a shed belonging to a slate-yard. So soon as they passed he went some little way after them until, from the bridge, he could see them stop at the door of the inn. Was it Mrs. Rosewarne who came out of the glare, and with something like a cry of delight caught her daughter in her arms? He watched the figures go inside and the phaeton drive away up the hill; then, in the perfect silence of the night, he turned and slowly made toward Basset Cottage.