Part 10

“Jackson,” said Lady Farnham, “you remember where we left his Majesty’s cordial. It is lying in one of the saddlebags in the stable.”

Jackson bowed gravely in assent, without uttering a word, the model of a well-trained serving-man.

“Sir,” said the lady, addressing Captain Culpeper, “will you allow this man to get the cordial for the King? I am afraid his Majesty will find it very needful.”

“Yes, indeed, madam,” said the soldier, eagerly. “Sergeant, tell them to make way there for the King’s servitor. Also those on the stairs; and do you see that they do so.”

“I thank you, sir,” said the man in the bed, with his courteous smile.

The King obediently began to move with stolid precision towards the chamber door. First one soldier stood back to let him pass; and then another; and then another. He walked through the door of the crowded chamber. With the same grave, steady, mechanical gait he reached the stairs.

“Way there,” said the officious Sergeant, behind him, “for the King’s servitor!”

With keen looks of curiosity, the men besieging the rickety old stairs found a passage for him somehow, through which he contrived to squeeze the royal person. His clothes and his body pressed against their pistols and their breast-pieces; their breaths saluted his face; but step by step he came down into the kitchen.

“Way there for the King’s servitor!” said the Sergeant again.

The kitchen was hardly so thronged as the stairs. There was one man in it, however, who might undo all. From his chair in the chimney corner peered the landlord’s astonished face.

“Way there for the King’s servitor!”

The landlord was huddled in his chair, as pale as death. His face was drawn and hideous; his eyes were half closed, and the eyeballs had shrunk to such a degree that they seemed to be buried in his head. But when the King came down the stairs, and the great voice of the Sergeant heralded his approach, Gamaliel wrenched his eyes open and sat up in his chair. He was startled and unstrung. The whole thing was too vivid for a dream, and yet it was impossible. These soldiers had come expressly to fetch the King; and here was the King walking unmolested out of their hands.

It was surely the King. There was his long, shambling form, his loose limbs, his breeches and jerkin of leather, his impassive countenance. Yes, it was the King looking at him, the landlord. Sure, there was a half-amused gleam come upon the King’s face suddenly; and, see, he had set a finger to his lips. He was demanding silence of him.

The old man knew, as he sat in his chair, that the King was escaping, and that his own fortune was slipping away. He was perfectly conscious of these two overmastering facts; he sat in the full possession of his faculties. He had only to speak the word and the prize he had sweated blood to secure was his. The word must be spoken.

“Way there for the King’s servitor!”

The King, ever with his slow, regulated, mechanical tread, was passing through the men standing inside and outside the kitchen door.

The landlord opened his swollen lips, but his tongue had not the power to move. The veins rose in his forehead into great distended knots; he struggled frantically. The moment of a lifetime was passing; the King was escaping, and Gamaliel Hooker knew it. One word--oh, God! only just one little word, and the King would not go!

The man’s breath croaked and sobbed in his throat convulsively; but nothing human was heard from his lips. The King had passed out of the door; the officious Sergeant had escorted him through the last of his men, and, having done so, was returning with his head in the air, in a truly martial and self-satisfied manner. The landlord turned his bloodshot eyes upon him; his fingers clutched the air; the veins in his forehead continued to rise, until it seemed that they must break through the bloodless skin of his forehead; his voice came at last in an indistinct croak.

The landlord’s extraordinary appearance drew the attention of the Sergeant.

“Why, man,” he said, “what ails thee?”

The landlord made a gurgle at the back of his throat.

“Speak! what is it?” said the Sergeant.

“The King,” said the landlord, forming a word at last.

“Yes, the King; what of him?” said the Sergeant. “He is lying on his bed upstairs.”

“No, no, no!” said the landlord. “No, no, no!”

“Why, fool, what is the matter?” said the Sergeant, losing his patience.

“The King is----!”

The landlord fell back in his chair unconscious.

The Sergeant unloosed the landlord’s coat and ordered one of his men to procure water and dash it in his face. But Gamaliel had gone too far to be brought round easily, and the time spent in restoring him to his senses was the King’s deliverance.

Presently the landlord opened his eyes and looked about him. The reaction brought with it a full measure of consciousness, and with it a command of his faculties. He could think; and, now it was too late, the power of speech was again vouchsafed to him.

“The King went out at that door!” he cried. “The King is escaped! That was the King you conducted to the door.”

“What do you mean?” demanded the astonished Sergeant. “Speak, clown and fool that you are! I tell you the King is upstairs.”

The landlord had now the power to unbosom his soul; and there was such a singular fervour of conviction in his words, that the soldier, vividly impressed by them, and bewildered by them too, made all haste up the stairs to Captain Culpeper, who, as he supposed, was still attending on the King.

The thoroughly alarmed and uneasy Sergeant came to him at the side of the bed, and recited the landlord’s story.

“What is this you say, Sergeant Williams?” said the Captain.

His heart sank with an overmastering foreboding that the landlord had spoken the truth. He had not known the King when he entered the chamber, never having set eyes upon his Majesty before; and none of his men knew him either--they had only hearsay to guide them. Could it be that he was the victim of a trick. He turned furiously upon the man in the bed and the woman beside him.

“My God!” he said, “you have duped me; you have deceived me. The King’s servitor was the King. You have been playing a part.”

The man and the woman looked at him defiantly. Every instant they could maintain their rôles was of the utmost advantage to the fugitive; and in any case their own lives were forfeit.

“What do you mean?” said young Lord Farnham, striving to enact the comedy to the bitter end.

“We have been tricked!” cried the Captain.

The truth had burst upon Captain Culpeper with stunning force. He saw it all. He became as one beside himself. He stamped, he raved, he swore. They had allowed the prize actually to slip away when their hands were upon it.

The King must be pursued. They must pursue him hot-foot. Up hill and down dale, over the rocks, into the very jaws of the sea they must hunt the royal fugitive. He had but ten minutes start of them, and he was on foot.

No, he was not on foot. It seemed that he had taken a horse from the stable and had ridden away. Those who saw him do so believed that he had the Captain’s permission, as he was said to be on some errand of his Majesty lying upstairs.

The Captain gnashed his teeth. He drove his men out of the room before him like a flock of sheep. There was not a precious instant to lose. They must get to horse. Dark as it was, they must scour every yard of the surrounding country. There never was such a noise and a rattle as, with that, these soldiers fled down the stairs and forth of the kitchen door.

“To horse, to horse; the King is escaped!” was the cry that rang out to the rocks by the side of the sea. Horses stamped under the signboard of the “Sea Rover”; boots, spurs, and stirrups struck one against the other; bridles shook; hoarse commands were given; the cavalcade moved fiercely and swiftly away.

Now that the crisis was past, the landlord was sufficiently master of himself to watch them go from his door. After this fiasco it was highly necessary, he argued, that he should do all he could to win their favour and their confidence. Captain Culpeper, despite the rage and excitement under which he was labouring, called out as he sprang to the saddle:

“Landlord, I charge you to detain the man and the woman upstairs against my return, on the peril of your life. I hold you already responsible for the King’s escape. Do you watch over these two persons, therefore, yet more jealously. I cannot spare any of my men to look after them, but you have your son and that strapping servant-girl. We will fetch them as soon as maybe, and lodge them in greater security.”

While the last of these words were being uttered, Captain Culpeper and his troops were riding away. Stunned by their import, the landlord went within and closed the door. It was as though he had heard the sentence of his own death, for he knew it was wholly out of his power to detain the man and the woman upstairs should Diggory Fargus only prove true to his appointment. The sailor had promised to come, in the company of three of his friends, at half-past nine, to bear away the lady and her stricken husband.

If they came, what an irony it was to suppose that he, his son Joseph, and Cicely, the serving-maid, could possibly prevail against the redoubtable mariner and three of his pirates or his smugglers!

As a preliminary measure, the landlord locked the door. Not only did he lock it, but he bolted it at the top and at the bottom, and ran the chain across. Then he looked at the clock. Ten minutes to ten. Diggory Fargus had promised to come at half-past nine. Probably he had purposely held off when he saw that the soldiers were at the inn. He even might have had so tender a regard for his own skin as to go back again. God grant that that were so! He even might not have meant to come at all. The landlord prayed with all his soul that Diggory Fargus and his men might not appear. The loss of the King was effaced for the time being from his mind by this new matter.

The security of his own person was involved in it, and the immunity of that sacred thing was of even greater moment to Gamaliel than the loss of a King’s ransom. All his life he had had a holy dread of violence. God in heaven be merciful to him a sinner, and keep away that ruthless sailor!

The landlord looked at the clock again. Five minutes to ten. Diggory Fargus was already twenty-five minutes behind his time. But there was hardly any comfort in the thought. Hours must elapse ere Captain Culpeper could come to his aid, unless by a miracle the King were retaken immediately. A little bitterly the landlord reflected that miracles did not happen to him. Was not his life stern, terrible, inexorable matter of fact? At least, it seemed so then.

The landlord fell once again to his principal occupation of that tragic day. He began to hobble up and down the kitchen, with ever and anon an anxious eye for the clock.

There might be hours of this form of torture. If there were, Gamaliel felt that surely he must go out of his mind. It was a suspense to which there would be no end. There was no limit to the hour at which Captain Culpeper might return to claim the two persons left in his custody. It might be an hour, or it might be twelve; it might be a day, a week, or a month. But be that as it may, his instructions were perfectly clear. He must detain those two guilty persons at his inn, by force, if necessary, or he would forfeit his life.

The first stroke of ten had barely struck, when the landlord caught a sound that froze the blood in his veins. The noise of persons on foot coming down the bridle-path rose above the distant roar of the sea. He heard rough voices. The kitchen door was tried; a lusty smack was delivered upon it.

“Open the door, mate!” cried the great voice of Diggory Fargus.

The landlord did not stir. He leant against the wall for support; he had not the strength of a mouse.

“Open the door, mate, d’ye hear me?” demanded Diggory Fargus.

A terrific blow shook the lusty oak. Still the landlord leant sickly against the wall.

The lady appeared at the head of the stairs, cloaked, masked, and gloved for a journey. Hearing that her deliverers were at hand, she ran down the stairs, and, not heeding the helpless landlord, thrust back the bolts, the chain, and the lock of the kitchen door.

The mariner and three companions as rude and ill-favoured as himself stepped out of the night.

“We’re behind our time, ma’am,” said Diggory Fargus; “but, d’ye see, at half-past nine we had to tack and go about, for the place was full of soldiers. We supposed they had come to take ye, but we thought it our dooty to return and satisfy ourselves.”

“God requite you, sailor,” said the woman, fervently. “My husband is still upstairs. But let us make all haste, for at any moment his enemies may return upon him.”

Even as the woman spoke, the pale figure of a man tottered down the stairs. Clinging tightly to the rail, he put one weak limb before the other and reached the kitchen before they had observed him. He too was fully accomplished for the journey.

“Oh, mine own,” said the woman, tenderly, “what a foolish valour! ’Tis ever the same headstrong, wilful, heedless fellow. Did I not order you to stay upstairs until we fetched you? Thou art much too weak to use thine own legs as yet, lad.”

“Peace, Patsy woman,” said the young man. “If I can walk into this accursed place, I can walk out of it. I am hale and strong by comparison with what I was when I came here with the bullet in my side. Landlord, give me a cup of wine, and I shall be fit to encounter the perils of the sea. Deuce take me! what hath happened to the landlord?”

As pale as linen, his eyes staring and his knees knocking, the landlord still clung in silence to the wall. Diggory Fargus looked at him grimly. Lying in concealment close at hand when the soldiers rode away, he had overheard the injunctions of Captain Culpeper.

“The Cap’n left particular orders,” said the mariner to the lady, “that this ’ere son of a rum puncheon was to hold you and your mate, ma’am, against his return, by force, if necessary. And as it goes agen his principles to use violence o’ any sort, he’s asking of himself, d’ye see, whether ye would take it amiss if he invited you to tarry.”

The woman looked at the landlord. None had had a fairer opportunity of judging his character than she during her sojourn in that place. Her eyes shone through her mask; the stern lines fell about her mouth; and then she turned away from him with the same tremor of disgust as one turns away from a venomous reptile. Even to her compassion there was a limit.

“Come, my own,” she said. “It is folly in us to lose a precious moment. I wonder what hath happened to the poor King. God be with him, poor lad, this night!”

“He should make good his escape,” said Lord Farnham. “He hath a horse and a full ten minutes start of his foes.”

Leaning on the arm of his wife he passed slowly out of the door, into the night and his freedom. The landlord still leant against the wall: not a word did he speak; not a finger did he lift to stay the departing guests.

Diggory Fargus tarried behind an instant to speak a word in the landlord’s ear.

“Mate,” said he, thrusting his one eye into the quivering face of the landlord, “I said, if ye played me false I would twist your head off your body with these two hands. But I shall leave it to others, d’ye see. I shall kind o’ leave it to my deppities. They’ll make a cleaner job of it than me. They’ll do it more formal and more lawyerlike. Besides, I have hardly the time to do it now. But let me tell ye, mate, as one man to another, that when next I am around this coast, I shall make a call at this old grog shop, and if I find that them there soldiers has not done their dooty by you, ye can lay to it as Diggory Fargus is a christened man he’ll keep his word. A pleasant evenin’ to you, mate.”

The sailor spat vehemently upon the kitchen floor, and lurched out into the darkness in the wake of his companions.

Gamaliel closed the door upon the last of his visitors. Gradually their slow footsteps receded into the roar of the sea. He listened, and fancied he could hear them long after he had ceased to do so. Insensibly his mind lingered on their sound, for when they should die away he knew that his life was at an end.

As one who has suffered the tortures and paroxysms of a disease may lose his agonies as soon as it develops mortal symptoms, so the landlord, possessed with the knowledge that his own life was the price he must pay for his weakness, sat down in his chair by the fire with a clear mind. There was no longer any need for him to torment himself. He foresaw the issue as plainly as the man in the cart when he looks upon the scaffold.

He had lost all. Events had been too great for his second-rate character. They had called for a strong man--a man of courage, of indomitable spirit and tenacity of purpose--to grapple with them. For such a one there had been a fortune. The landlord, self-deceived because all his life he had never been put to the test, had attempted to bend them to his own purposes. But they had proved too great and unwieldy; he had not had the physical strength to overcome them. Instead they had overcome him.

The landlord did not give himself up to despair. He was too far gone for that. He was bitterly afraid of death. A death by violence would still have the power to revolt him; but the thing uppermost in his mind was his humiliation. It was so fierce and overpowering, that it became an anodyne to lull and allay all the passions of his soul. It took the sting out of death itself. He had been tried and found wanting. At the age of sixty the supreme moment of a laborious and fairly successful life had come. He had failed; let him perish.

“Finis” was about to be written to his history. He had no longer to fear that awful suspense which had the power to overthrow the firmest intelligence. As plainly as he could hear the roar of the sea, he saw his doom. He sat still and thought upon it, almost calmly. Right at the very last he had emerged from the furnace, and had come out strong.

He would bare his neck, and they should do their worst. He would welcome it. He had no desire to live now; he had ceased to be swayed by his animal passions. All his life, when he could escape a moment from his greed and his sensuality, he had been a philosopher. He had warmed both hands at the fire of his own egotism. He had flattered himself that he had known his own strength and his own weakness. He knew nothing of the sort. Just as in one direction he had overestimated his resolution, he was now to prove that he had underestimated it in another.

A day ago he would probably have writhed on the ground in a fit had he been confronted by a death by violence. By now, however, he had got beyond all that. There were things a man occasionally had to submit to, which made such a thing almost a luxury. He had spent that day upon the rack. The sharp rending asunder of his body and his soul would be a merciful release. His eyeballs would no longer start from their sockets; his limbs would no longer crack; nor would his blood burst through the walls of his arteries. His shuddering frame would be at peace.

The clock struck twelve. The landlord clenched his hands as he sat in his chair; a smile crept stealthily upon the dead white of his cheeks. It was the last touch of irony that he, Gamaliel Hooker, should be sitting there so calmly looking a death by violence full in the face. To think that his old pampered flesh, cossetted and cushioned for sixty winters, should accept it without a murmur! The wind is tempered to the shorn lamb: Nature has her marvellous compensations; she takes the grossness from the animal spirit, that it may be insensible to the throes of death.

About one o’clock of the wintry morning the landlord rose from his chair, and had recourse to paper, a pen, and ink. He solemnly made his will. For the keeper of a sea tavern on a lonely coast, the home of the pirate and the smuggler, he had done excellently well in trade. He had added thrift to a natural aptitude. His money had not all been come by honestly, as the world interpreted that word. But that did not irk the landlord. All his life he had never pretended to a conscience. To him it was the hallmark of a superficial mind. And now in his last extremity he would not pretend to one. It was to be the great triumph of his life, that in his last hour he should prove to be stronger than he had ever judged himself to be. He would yield up his life calmly, without a snuffle, a whine, or a prayer.

About two o’clock he had signed his name with controlled fingers to this document. He sanded it carefully and put it by. He had hardly done so, when he jumped up suddenly from his chair. An old stab returned upon him; he felt a twinge of the old agony. After all, there was a chance of life. Suppose the pursuing soldiers retook the King! They would be then in a mood to overlook all, and they might permit him to live! The landlord cursed himself for the thought. God! was he going to be tortured again before he was allowed to perish? No, it was only the last twinge of an expiring nerve. The pain passed almost in an instant. He need not be afraid.

Towards three, the old man grew very cold. He had forgotten to replenish the fire. It had gone out hours ago, leaving the ashes grey. He was getting tired; the soldiers were a long time coming; he would try to go to sleep. Soon a pleasant lassitude stole upon his weariness. He had never been so exquisitely tired in his life before. It had been a heavy day; he had taken a lot out of himself; he deserved a rest. He fell asleep.

A little after four o’clock he awoke suddenly out of a dreamless slumber, as one startled. He lifted up his ears and listened. Horses! He rubbed his eyes in bewilderment. Why should he be sleeping there, and why should these signs invade the middle of the night? Ah yes, to be sure, he remembered! The soldiers were coming back.

His first thought was, had they caught the King? He banished it instantly. He had got past all that before he went to sleep. He would not go back, otherwise the last twenty-four hours had been lived in vain. He listened calmly for their near approach, but he still kept his chair by the side of the dead embers. There was no need for him to rise to let them in, as he remembered that he had not considered it necessary to secure the door before he went to sleep. What a transcendent thing it was to have a heart utterly without bodily fear! It was rather hard, though, that he should only be allowed to experience that pleasure for so short a period in his long life. However, it was very excellent even to have known it at all. He could hardly be said to have lived in vain.

The landlord, still in his chair by the dead fire, watched the kitchen door. He saw it open. He saw Captain Culpeper appear, stiff and cold with riding, and very morose. His men, stiff and cold and morose too, crowded in behind him. The landlord neither moved nor spoke; he seemed wholly indifferent to their entrance.

“The King is escaped!” said Captain Culpeper, eyeing him savagely.

“I knew it,” said the landlord, a little wearily. He closed his eyes; almost a smile came upon his white lips.

“Oh, you knew it!” said Captain Culpeper, with a grim satisfaction. “You knew it, did you! And how did you know it, fool and poltroon as you are?”

“Poltroon I am,” said the landlord, “a thousand times a poltroon; but I am no fool. I knew it because I knew it.”

“Bah!” said the soldier, “I have not the patience to talk with you. But I trust the man and the woman are still upstairs in their chamber.”