Part 14

Lady Peggy’s blade had struck the woodwork as she made her way stealthily down in the darkness; while Sir Robin shook, she gained the lower end of the hall but, not being acquainted with its ways and turnings, above all, having forgot the two broad steps that cut the straight road to the entrance in two, Her Ladyship, with much clanking of her weapon on the brick flooring, fell sprawling; her bundle shooting off into the unseen, she up on hands and knees, hither, yon, seeking it; Sir Robin beating on his wainscot such a tattoo as was fit to wake the dead, shrieking, from the safe shelter of the muffling pillows where he huddled:

“Murder! Thieves! Ho there! Landlord! Tom! James! Ho there, I say! Help! Help!”

Sir Percy, out of his four-post up-stairs in a flash, tinder struck, door flung open; in night-rail and cap, with rapier drawn, hanger uplifted, and—

“’Sdeath! What the devil is the matter!” cries he at top of lung. “Speak or I’ll fire!” and down the stair he plunges to Sir Robin’s very sill.

This one, having successfully summoned those more doughty than himself to cope with the supposed danger, now recognizing Sir Percy’s voice, shivers and sweats as he cowers and pulls the counterpane over his head, grasping his purse in his sharp little fingers; wisely never undoing of his door.

“Speak or I’ll fire,” repeats Sir Percy, whose candle has been blown out by the draught. He takes a few steps down the hallway where he hears the curious scratching noise Her Ladyship is making as she distractedly feels around for the bundle.

At last she grasps it and creeps up unwittingly to Sir Percy’s very side; _de facto_ her arm grazes his as she now raises herself to a standing posture, exactly as her lover, no answer being vouchsafed him, pulls his trigger and the ball goes a-whizzing through Sir Robin’s door panel and finds lodgement in the chimney bricks.

Peggy, her customary composure being much the worse for hunger and the general excitement, jumps when the shot pops, and thus inadvertently now palpably touches Percy’s elbow. He turns upon her and seizes her wrists in a grip of steel; she, as tightly hugging the bundle under her armpit, utters no sound, but wriggles and twists to such a purpose that she is about to get free when her opponent renews his endeavors with an oath.

“Speak!” says he, “or I’ll brain you!” making to hold Peg’s two hands prisoner in one of his, the while he may seize his rapier and put a finish to the matter.

She does not speak, but to the scene jump now the heavy cumbrous country-folk, rattled out of their deep slumber by Sir Percy’s ball and no less by the piercing and prolonged shrieks of Sir Robin, each Colin Clout and Dowsabel of ’em, armed with whatever they could catch; yet, luckily for Her Ladyship, no one of them with sense enough to fetch a candle.

“A light! a light! you damnable idiots!” cried Sir Percy, while Her Ladyship makes a final twist to free herself, fruitless as before. She feels her ebbing strength at its last pinch and feels, too, the bundle loosening in her hold.

Then, as landlord stumbles to his tinder-box, amid an uproar from all the travelers, especially the new made bride and her spouse, Peggy finds herself let go, nay, almost thrust aside as her captor ejaculates testily:

“Zounds! girl, why did you not proclaim your sex, and not leave me to find it out by a long wisp of woman’s hair between my fingers? Lights! Lights! I say! and we’ll get the fellow yet! He must be in the house, for no one’s left it.”

Sir Percy has been for the moment meshed in his Lady’s long tresses, which, in the skirmish, have broke leash of the bundle and dangle out yard’s length.

For an instant she stands on the landing at bay. To unbolt the big door and make an open dash for freedom would mean certain death; to turn up therefrom and regain her chamber was her sole chance, and this must be done before a light could be struck.

She wheeled around and rushed up the hall, up the stairs among the clustering folk, nudging she knew not whom, skipped along the narrow rear passage, and into her room before candle flames revealed to the amazed company that neither bolt, bar, or latch had been disturbed, nor anything in the house taken!

Even while they rummaged in the bar-room till, counted the forks and spoons—pewter though they were, Her Ladyship, tying the luckless bundle about her waist with a hastily cut bed-cord, cautiously opened the casement, crawled out on the trellis, which unsteadied a bit beneath her weight but did not break; clambered in and out the vines to the edge, and then, lightly, thanks to her twin’s training, swung herself to the ground clear, crept across the yard, leaped the stone wall, with a bound and over; flew the width of the meadow; struck the lane, up to the high road; by the moon, took a southerly course which she knew made for Kennaston, and paused not much for breath until she had left a matter of five miles betwixt her and the Queen and Artichoke.

It was coming three o’clock by this, and, all the little night winds hushed, all the earth and trees and grasses, flowers, shrubs and weeds expectant, vibrant of the nearing dawn, whose pink and beauteous herald now looked over the hill-tops at the east, and put the lingering stars to shame, and woke the little birds, and bade every drop of dew flash on cup and blade; and all the things that breathe to grow and pulsate; to thrill through all their veins with joy that still another day was born.

Her Ladyship too was glad, for, brave as she had been through all the brief ordeal of her manhood, this last adventure had broken her spirit a bit, and hunger and fatigue had sadly weakened her flesh. As the lark mounted, singing to the now risen sun, she struck in a bit from the road and began an endeavor to calculate how far she might be from Kennaston village, or from any place familiar to her. But it was vain to speculate. Peggy, in all her cross-country rides, could not place the spot in which she now found herself.

Food was what she needed most and she came out into the open, shading her eyes with her hand and looking everywhere about for a curl of smoke that might guide her to a cottage. But no friendly film greeted her, and her hand fell listless at her side.

Hark! The tinkle of a bell, the soft lowing of a cow; not far off either. She ran a piece up the road and presently descried the herd huddling at the pasture bars waiting for their milking, yet no maid nor man in sight, no milking-stool nor pail nor cup, only the soft inviting lowing of the kine. Her bundle still tied about her waist, Her Ladyship let down the top bars, edged through, off with her once splendid but now much tarnished hat, set it under the nearest cow, knelt, and presently had the cock full of as fine foaming milk as one might wish to see. She rose and drank thankfully, rubbing the cow’s nose in gratitude; then; amid the concerted cries of the herd, she made off, a little refreshed, still keeping her southerly course; still haphazarding her way, for no house came in sight.

After a matter of a dozen miles, and now reaching the edge of a woods, with the tower of a Castle just sticking up out of the horizon for her only beacon, Peggy halted and, the refreshment of the milk having been by this exhausted, the tears forced their way to her eyes and even ploughed two small furrows the length of her cheeks, cupping in the dimple of her chin, and splashing at last, on her much rumpled Mechlin lace cravat.

“Bah!” cried she. “I weep only because I am hungry. I am not afraid. Odzooks! She that has had the hemp about her neck to be strung up for a highwayman must not fear to encounter one of her own ilk,” and Her Ladyship essays to laugh as she plunges into the wood.

It proves a harmless, peaceful, if somewhat devious neighborhood, where an occasional rabbit scurries over the dry leaves of last autumn’s falling, and where a large company of rooks are holding a caucus, but ’tis interminable; and Peggy’s legs are not of steel, it seems, but of that lusty flesh and blood and bone which, when made to do duty fasting, now these twenty hours, begin to give out. Her head, too, spins, the knot of her cravat seems to choke her as she loosens it; the weight of the bundle appears like twenty stone at the least about her waist, and she cuts the bed-cord and lets it drop, just for a few moments’ ease, she tells herself, as, at last, the other side of the forest is gained and she beholds a wide stretch of downs and naught but the elusive tower of the distant Castle, appearing farther away even than at first.

What common can this be?

Once again she shades her blood-shot eyes and stares up at the sky. In crossing the woods, she must have struck mistakenly to the west. The sun is nearing the set, and Peggy now knows she has come to Farnham Heath where, report has it, some of the boldest cut-throats in the country rule the roost.

Shall she start to cross it? Kennaston Village lies only ten miles on t’other side of it. That will-o’-the-wisp tower? that castle yonder? yes ’tis home! and she such a dullard as not to have mistrusted it before!

She will push on. Why not? What has she, forsooth, to tempt any thief, unless he took her for ransom.

Well, let him, since Percy de Bohun at this very moment, in all liklihood, kneels at the feet of Lady Diana; if highwaymen want to bear her off, why should she complain? And just then the tinkle of the little brook at the wayside beckons in Her Ladyship’s ear, the Castle tower appears to he dancing up and down against the sky; the two stark trees, yonder on the heath, are surely turning somersaults; the bundle drags all forgotten at her heels, and presently lies in the tall grasses which she threaded on her way to the brook. Her head swam, ten thousand blunderbusses seemed to be firing off inside of it; she pulled off her wig and threw it far from her; she unbuttoned her coat and waistcoat, and drew her cloak in a twist about her; she staggered, caught at an elder; it swayed with her to the water, as she fell swooning with her thirsty lips just in touch of the sparkling bubbles; her wan face shining in the glint of sunshine, the whole round world and all the men and women in it quite forgot, even her sword, unbuckled with the bed-cord, now lay glinting its jewels in the sedges half a dozen rods away.

A pair of robins eyed her from the bushes, a bee swerved and swung above her mouth; the minnows darted next her cheek, but My Lady did not wake for any or all of these. She lay there motionless until the sun had gone down and all the sweet scents and drowsy sounds and whirrs and flutters of twilight had come up; until a fine coach with four horses and two postilions came prancing and pawing at a great rate of speed out of the wood to the heath. Until a little weazened fine gentleman, who had dozed in his bed until long past noon for fear of encountering a certain other gentleman, had risen leisurely, dined with relish, set out from the Queen and Artichoke only after being assured that the other gentleman had gone off on a ruined horse back to Garratt Lane in the hopes of obtaining a suitable mount, which same was not to be had short of the ten mile return; until the little gentleman, then, thrusting his face out of his coach window as the vehicle came to a sudden standstill, spoke:

“Is this the heath?” he asks with blinking eyes and a shiver.

“Yes, Sir Robin, Farnham Heath, Sir!” answers one of the postilions.

“Your pleasure, Sir Robin?” asks the second man respectfully, quieting his horses.

“Well,” returns the little Baronet, “if you think can gallop across faster than those devils could overtake us, I say, proceed. If not—” he glances back over his shoulder.

To tell the truth, the gentleman from Kent considered himself as betwixt two very impending fires, and, ’tis safe to say, he dreaded Sir Percy de Bohun’s possibility at his back as much, if not more, than he did the robbers in front of him.

“We’re in the best condition, Sir,” returned the man, “and fifty minutes ought to take us out of all chances of danger.”

“Unless,” replies the master, again casting an apprehensive eye to the rear, “they might close in on us from behind.”

“No fear, Sir,” cries the lackey, “our pistols are loaded and cocked; with your own rapier, pistols and the blunderbuss, Sir Robin, we should—”

“What’s that?” exclaims the second man, eyes bulging, as with the handle of his whip he points to the fallen figure by the brookside.

“Zounds!” cries the first, rising in his seat to peer.

“’Sdeath! Damnation!” squeaks Sir Robin, pulling down the coach-sash. “On with ye, you devils! On, I say!” thumping impatiently on the pane with his signet ring.

“No fear, Sir, no fear, Sir Robin!” exclaims the second man, jumping to the ground and inspecting Her Ladyship. “It’s only a corp.”

“Are you sure?” opening the door cautiously. “Sure?”

“Aye, Sir Robin, a quality corp, Sir. Mayhap shot down by them vagabones out of the heath. Had I best see if there’s any life left in the young gentleman, Sir?”

Sir Robin descends from his coach, a pistol in one hand, a drawn rapier in the other.

“Keep an eye on the lookout, James,” he whispers to the postilion who remains in his seat, and the Baronet minces in and out of the tall grasses, shaking the dew daintily from his sprawling feet, until he gains the spot, where his man kneels above the prostrate form.

“Ugh!” says he, turning aside his head in a species of disgust, “I never could abide the sight of the dead.”

’Twas the very first time in his life he’d ever had a chance to behold such!

“He ain’t quite cold yet, Sir Robin,” says the postilion. “There’s a flicker to his eye-lids, Sir, look!”

The Baronet looks; out of his hands tumble rapier and pistol.

“’Slife!” he cries, down on his knees, feeling at Her Ladyship’s pulse, pulling his flask from his pocket and trying vainly to pour the liquor between the firmly shut lips.

As he tries, the little gentleman’s wits work nimbly, which they could do on occasions, and, not stopping even to wonder at his discovery, only to accept instantly as a fact that his Lady had been struck down while pursuing him, he is so overjoyed at the beauty, sentiment, and opportuneness of the adventure, as to be scarce able to restrain his elation, even in the face of a serious swoon.

“Into the coach at once, James,” he says, raising Her Ladyship’s head himself, “your gentlest endeavors and a guinea apiece to you,” nodding to the other, as between them they carry the limp form to the coach, “if you bring me to Kennaston Castle before curfew.”

“Never fear, Sir Robin; if the young gentleman only holds out for a single hour, I swear, Sir, in the teeth of all the highwaymen in the kingdom, we’ll have you there.”

“Tut, tut,” says Sir Robin, smiling, no longer restraining an expression of his happiness and triumph, as he makes ready the rugs and cushions within to receive the burden James, for the moment, bears alone.

“’Tis no young gentleman, you rogues, ’tis My Lady Peggy Burgoyne, my bride that is to be. Wait a moment, Thomas, while I spread this shawl; and James, look you sharp behind us, for there’s a gentleman in pursuit of this Lady would kill me on sight if he can.”

XVIII

_In the which Sir Percy steals a coach and four and the living contents thereof and makes off therewith at breakneck speed for life and death._

At this very moment, two horsemen, sorry mounted enough, especially the master, are rounding the turn of the woodland path and about to emerge upon the open next the heath. He who rides the lame roan has his eyes bent upon the ground, a thousand sad and conflicting thoughts crowding his brain, as ’tis impossible even to urge his hurt steed, and a jog-trot is all that can be got out of her ever again. Garratt Lane had sent him away only with his own again.

“Sir Percy, with submission, Sir,” exclaims Grigson, “this be Farnham Heath, Sir, and, ’pon my life, Sir!” jumping from his saddle and darting to the grassy side of the way, “a rapier, Sir Percy!” picking it up and dragging with it the straggling bed-cord and its appending bundle.

Percy leaped to the ground and seized the weapon.

“Grigson!” cried he, “there’s been foul work hereabouts. This is the sword of a gentleman I know, or my name’s not Percy de Bohun! He is a scurvy fellow, and my enemy, but if he has fallen among thieves, by the heaven above us! I’ll rescue him, even if ’tis to punish him later according to my own will. Take the rapier.”

As he hands it back to his man, the bed-cord from the Queen and Artichoke, being a full century old, gives entirely away and My Lady Peggy’s duds, long tail of dark hair, pins, needles, whatever else beside, fall, scatter, topsy-turvy to the ground, and at the very same moment Percy sees before him, as in a nest among the sedges and ferns of the marshy brookland, the wig that Her Ladyship had flung off, and a scrap of tumbled paper addressed to himself, flapping, spiked on a thistle-top near it! Thunderstruck, he is about to read it, when Grigson, who has gone on afoot a few steps, starts back, and, reckless of all things, seizes his master’s arm and drags him to the turn of the road.

“Sir Percy! Hist! For the love of God, Sir, look!”

Thrusting the bit of paper into his waistcoat, Percy gasps and gazes. He beholds Sir Robin and his man lifting a limp and slender form, ill-defined, ’tis true, in its swathe of camlet cloak, into the coach; he beholds a head of dark short hair, a face of ashen pallor, and, in two seconds more, before he can rush back and leap into his saddle, motioning Grigson to do the same, the coach containing Sir Robin and his prize is dashing as fast as whip, spur, sixteen thoroughbred legs, and a backing-up of wholesome terror can urge it, over the bleak and gruesome waste of Farnham Heath!

“’Slife! Grigson, man,” cries Percy, digging steel into the poor roan’s flanks till they spurt blood in a stream. “We must overtake ’em, unhorse ’em, spill out the wretch inside; I’ll into the coach then to protect the lady, you mount the leader and gallop us over the heath for your life!”

“Trust me, Sir Percy,” answers Grigson from a length behind his master. “God grant, Sir, that the roan drop not out of the race and leave us but one saddle betwixt you and me, Sir.”

“Poor beast,” says Percy, pricking her hard and striking her shoulder with the flat of his rapier. “She’ll die, and in a good cause if she gain me the goal.”

And all the while they’re speaking, flash and crack go the whips of Sir Robin’s postilions, and Sir Robin’s splendid beasts cover the ground with a swing and a will that keeps the coach rocking, but yet awakens not Lady Peggy, whose dark cropped head reposes on the crooked shoulder of Sir Robin, while her white eyelids remain sealed and no quiver of returning consciousness thrills about her drawn and bloodless lips.

“Gad!” exclaims Percy, as he beholds the vehicle swinging and spinning farther and farther from him, and as Grigson’s black now is up nose and nose with his own expiring mare. “Gad, girl,” bending his lips to the roan’s laid-back ear, “go on! help me to save her! to reach her; go on, I say, in God’s name!”

As if the faithful creature comprehended her master’s entreaty, with that not uncommon last flash of superhuman strength that inheres in man and beast alike, the roan raised her fine head in the air, pricked her ears, stretched out her neck, gathered herself up with a twitch of her nerves that thrilled to her rider’s heart, and off! as in her best days, when she could distance the fleetest mount in the county; off, with the whirl and whirr of those coach-wheels beckoning to her; off, with that pair of straining eyes, those parted lips, blessing her as she began to gain on Sir Robin,—began to? nay, ’twas all a matter of beginning and ending in a breath. Before the postilions, amid their own clatter and calling, had caught hint of the pursuit, the roan was up with the windows out of which the apprehensive little Baronet was peering; his scream of terror:

“Highwaymen! Faster! On! lads, on! A hundred pounds if we outrun ’em! On!” was their first advertisement of danger.

But while the two were drawing their hangers from their belts, Sir Percy, with a swerving dash, pulled the roan on her hind legs directly in front of the galloping leaders. ’Twas but an interposition of Providence (coupled with very excellent cool-headed horsemanship) that he was not then and there dispatched into the hereafter.

The leaders plunged, grinding the wheelers with their hind hoofs; the wheelers fell back of a heap, smashing in the fine front glass and cutting Sir Robin across the lip, but not so much as waking his burden from her deathlike sleep.

“Down with ye!” cries Sir Percy, a pistol in each hand, as Grigson rides up with another brace to reinforce his master, putting a hand as well to the quieting of the coach horses.

“Aye, aye, Sir! but spare our lives and we’ll do your bidding!” cry Sir Robin’s lackeys, leaping to the ground.

“We’ve not a groat betwixt us, Your Honor, on our life!”

“I want no groats, nor guineas either!” says Percy, now leaving his man to cover the steeds and the postilions, while he jumps off the roan’s back and springs to the side of the coach.

To wrest the door from the feeble clutch of the shrieking little gentleman from Kent; to open it; seize him, stopping his frantic and craven cries with a thrust of a pocket napkin in his mouth; to haul him out and send him spinning over the turf with his gold and silver scattering from purse and pockets, is, with Sir Percy, the work of a very few seconds.

“Mercy! Mercy! Mr. Highwayman!” whimpers the Baronet, cringing on his knees, as Grigson lifts himself up on the off leader’s back and Percy props the swooning figure within the coach.

“’Slife, Sir, whoever you are! Raise your eyes! I am Sir Percy de Bohun, at your service any time three hours hence.”

Sir Robin glances up, his crooked little legs now bowing more into an arc than before, as he hears the dread name of his rival.

Clapping hand to hilt, however, he stands up.

“Sir,” says he, pushed into a valiance he has no smallest sympathy with, solely from fear that Lady Peggy may have open ears by this time. “Sir, that Lady is my affianced. I command you, quit her and leave us to pursue our journey in peace. D’ye hear, Sir?” Sir Robin brandishes his weapon, now reinforced by the approach of his servants. “I’ll stick you where you stand, Sir!” shouts McTart, prancing a bit nearer and actually touching Percy’s shoulder with the point of his weapon,—be it remembered de Bohun’s back was toward him as he leaned into the coach arranging the cushions.

“Will you!” says Sir Percy, coolly turning and seizing the little man’s blade and administering therewith to its owner a smart box on his out-flapping ears. “Had I time to waste,” adds Percy, now jumping into the coach, “I’d leave your carcass here. Put up your pistol, Sir,” says he, aiming his own straight at Sir Robin’s now un-wigged pate, “or, damn you! you’ll be cold inside a second. On with you, Grigson,” calls master to man. “Life and death are in this matter. If the four beasts, and you, too, drop at the finish, get us to Kennaston faster than the wind travels.”

Even while he speaks, he watches the still white face so near him with his finger on his trigger, Sir Robin discreetly backing away and rending the air with noisy and impotent curses; then a plunge, a long, resounding call from Grigson; the two lackeys agog at finding themselves alive, Sir Robin’s coach starts on as if the very devil himself were in its wake.