Part 3

He had weighed every pro and con in his cunning heart. If it were the King who lay upstairs, it would be to his advantage to deliver him up to his enemies at once. He could afford to do so, for there was a great reward. Besides, as was known to all the world, delays were dangerous, especially in the case of kings. Assuming that they honoured your abode, were they not here to-day and gone to-morrow? And should their coming be by night, in stealth, was not their going likely to be also of that manner? Assuming this mysterious young man to be the King, this “incurable disease” of his was doubtless a blind, intended to mask his real intentions. Any morning might find him flown. Yes; if this young man really was the King, he must deliver him up immediately.

If he were not the King, however? If, as was very likely, instead of Charles Stuart, he proved to be only some fugitive cavalier from Worcester fight, he could not afford to denounce him at present. There was no such great solatium in regard to a cavalier. He must first bleed him to his very last fourpenny ere he allowed him out of his custody. The whole scheme was finely matured in his mind; would that he could be at peace in regard to the stranger’s identity! He would then know which course to follow.

He was still excogitating the hard matter, and forever twisting and turning it over, when, even as the night before, a stranger knocked on the door, and obtruded himself within the inn kitchen.

This time the visitor was humble enough. He was a tall, loose, shambling fellow, so discoloured by dirt and an outdoor life that he was as brown as a berry. His hat was low over his eyes; he wore a stained and torn pair of breeches, made of leather, and a jerkin of the same character. He had the appearance of a hedger and ditcher, or a woodman beset by adversity. The first words he uttered confirmed this impression.

“Are you wanting a serving-man or a drawer, good master?” he said, seating himself on a stool opposite the landlord.

The worthy Gamaliel regarded him keenly and suspiciously. The fellow looked an idle vagabond enough. Yet his swarthy countenance was not altogether destitute of a certain intelligence. He had a pair of keen, observing, humorous eyes to his face; there was a certain impudence and audacity about them which was sufficient to redeem their owner from the commonplace. The landlord, himself no mean observer, and a penetrating judge of his fellows, was rather interested by him. It was not usual to find a man of this type who merited looking at twice.

“And even if I do, sirrah?” asked Gamaliel, taking up his visitor’s question, after scrutinising him from head to heel.

“Well, master, if you do,” said the fellow, readily, “you would be acting a charity by giving a poor man a chance to serve you.”

“I do not doubt it,” said the landlord. “But if your looks be a true credential, I may live to rue the day. Upon my life, I never saw a countenance I like so little. If my eyes do not deceive me, I take ye to be a rogue of the first magnitude; a villain that I should fear to turn my back upon.”

The fellow laughed. Perchance it was well he did so. For in his laugh there was something frank and human. His lowering face grew vastly more engaging; and the landlord set the candour of it to his favour.

“Ah! master,” he said, “you are very hard upon a poor wight who knows not where to turn for a meal in these troublous times. I pray you, have a little pity for one who hath been accustomed to fill his belly, and to sleep in comfort and security.”

“In a bridewell, I do not doubt,” said the grim Gamaliel.

“Nay, master, there you wrong me,” said the vagrant. “Few have followed a more reputable course than I.”

The landlord looked at him piercingly. After all, his mind might be a little better than his appearance. His speech was hardly so rustic as one would expect.

“What hath been your station in life?” asked Gamaliel. “And what hath brought you to this pass?”

“It is but a few weeks since I was serving-man to my Lord Wilmot,” said the other, hesitatingly.

“Why did you quit his service?” the landlord demanded.

“’Twas a stroke of evil fortune, master. My lord was too good a friend to poor King Charles Stuart. He is now fleeing o’er hill and dale for his life, with devil a serving-man to attend him.”

The landlord listened greedily. In a flash a very bright idea illuminated his mind.

“Have you ever seen this Charles Stuart?” he demanded, almost breathlessly.

“Have I!” laughed Lord Wilmot’s servitor. “Why, master, I am more familiar with King Charles than I am with my own mother. He and my lord were hand in glove together. Many’s the time I have filled the King’s cup, and listened to his voice. There never was so jovial and kind a gentleman. Why, master, he hath even spoken to me by my name.”

The landlord could hardly conceal his great excitement.

“Then, of course, sirrah,” said he, “you would recognise this Charles Stuart at once if you saw him?”

“Why, master,” said the fellow, “I know him as well as I know the nose on my face.”

That was enough for the landlord. He engaged him at once in the dual capacity of drawer and ostler. And so excited was the good Gamaliel, that he forgot or overrode the accumulated instincts of a lifetime. He did not even attempt to beat him down a farthing in the matter of wages. For was it not a truly providential thing, that on that of all nights, in that of all seasons, a man should walk into his kitchen who would be able so readily to resolve his difficulties? He might have searched the breadth of Dorset, and yet have not discovered a person capable of giving an opinion on the identity of Charles Stuart. Fortune was on his side indeed.

No sooner had the details of his employment been agreed upon, and this somewhat uncouth-looking serving-man had passed into the hands of a new master, than the landlord in a moment of unwonted generosity bade his son fetch the fellow half a pint of small ale.

“Now sit ye here, my lad,” said Gamaliel, “and let me hear about this Charles Stuart. But I think we might get on better if first I had your name.”

“My name is William Jackson,” said the serving-man, “but they call me Will for short.”

“Will Jackson, is it?” said the landlord. “Humph! I think as little of the name as I do of the bearer. But for the present we will let that pass. Now tell me of this Charles Stuart. What kind of a person might you call him?”

“Oh, master, a grand man indeed!” said Will Jackson, with a fine air of enthusiasm. “A rare noble gentleman.”

“Humph!” said Gamaliel, “I have my doubts about it--the Popish dog! But what doth he look like?”

“A wonderful handsome fellow, master,” the earnest William said. “Every woman that he looks upon just languishes for love of him, they say.”

“Can you recall his features at all?” the landlord asked. “Is he a black man or a light man? A tall man or a small man? Come, trim your memory.”

“Well, do you know, master,” said Will Jackson, with a sly laugh,--“do you know, master, they do say that his gracious Majesty is most remarkable like me. I’ve heard say that we’re as like as two peas, master, and that we might be brothers, as it were.”

“Confound the rogue!” cried the landlord, laughing, in spite of himself, at the fellow’s impudence. “A pretty sort of likeness you’d be, I reckon, to discover a king by! I suppose, you ragged, dirty scoundrel, that some wench hath caressed your self-esteem with this fair parallel to coax an extra groat or two. A mighty fine king you’d make, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, master, if you please, more than one wench hath told me so,” said Will Jackson.

His master shook his fist at him, and threatened to cuff his ear. But the fellow in his own mind seemed so certain that he bore a striking resemblance to the King, that he appeared quite unable to divine the source of Gamaliel’s mirth. For the landlord fell to laughing until he nearly wept over the perplexed gravity of his drawer. Whatever the intolerable impudence of the assumption, Will Jackson certainly appeared not to regard it in the light of a jest. To him it seemed rather a circumstance from which he extracted a highly legitimate pride.

Even as the landlord talked with his servitor he made up his mind that he would lose no time in making the utmost possible use of Will Jackson’s special knowledge. He must see the young man with the incurable disease at once. But how could it be contrived? That matter was not so easy. It seemed hopeless to gain access to a domain guarded by so fair a Cerberus. After much hard thinking, Master Gamaliel had recourse to a stratagem--an extreme one, it is true, but highly necessary in this present pass.

Rising from his comfortable posture by the fire with a reluctance that made the act heroic, the landlord went forth to the stable, and bade Will Jackson follow him. He procured a ladder there. He had it borne without, and, under cover of the darkness, reared it with caution against the sill of the window of his guests. Drawn shutters guarded the window; but, as Gamaliel was well aware, they lacked some two inches of the top of the casement. A thread of candle-light shone through the chink. The work of a spy was therefore not likely to be difficult.

Ordering Will Jackson to hold his peace and also at the same time to hold the ladder, the eager old landlord, infirm as he was, first climbed to the top himself to discover how the land lay. No night-thief could have been more astutely skilful. It is true he scaled the ladder in a gingerly manner, but never a sound did he make. Planting his feet firmly on the highest rung but one, he cocked his cunning eyes over the top of the shutter, and was rewarded by a clear view of the chamber, and the unhappy persons there immured.

It was a piece of good fortune that the bed was facing the window. The landlord was the better able to regard its occupant. He was half prepared to discover that the young man was the victim of no malady whatsoever. He would not be surprised to find him quite hale and hearty. Nay, so little faith had he in this young man’s condition, that should he prove to have left the chamber secretly already, and gone away in stealth, he was not likely to be astounded. It so befell, however, that the landlord had no grounds for his suspicions. For there confronting him the sufferer lay. By the mellow light of the candles he saw him prone in the bed, as ghastly as death. He was wide awake, but lay with glazed eyes and a face convulsed with agony. The woman was binding a cloth steeped in water about his forehead.

In spite of the night’s bitterness, the landlord had so intense an interest in that which was passing before his eyes, that he betrayed no desire to leave his perch for the present. Looking down upon these unconscious persons from his high situation, he felt fairly secure from discovery. And was it not exhilarating to see without being seen! He must contrive to hear too. A chance phrase might reveal their identity.

Thus, notwithstanding that poor Will Jackson was shivering in the cold below, the landlord took his jackknife from his pocket and began to whittle away a piece of the wooden window frame. Already rotten with decay, it yielded readily to the silent deftness that was brought to bear upon it.

There was soon a hole big enough for Gamaliel’s ear. At once he could detect the gasps and low groans of the man in the bed. And he heard the woman say, in her soft low tones that thrilled to the heart like music:

“We can delay no longer, mine own; it must be done. Canst thou not trust me?”

The man clung to her outstretched hand, and drew his head away from her, like a child that is shy, farther back into the pillows. His pale lips were seen to move, but any words they framed the landlord could not hear. Thereafter for a time he lay with closed eyes, pallid and helpless, whilst the woman knelt down by his side and buried her beautiful head in the coverlet of the bed.

Presently she rose as one quickened by a sudden resolution. Tears she had not, but her eyes were filled with an anguish deeper even than the man’s. She crossed the room to where a broad settle stood with a tumbled heap of clothing upon it. The landlord observed, with a desperate dismay, that two cocked pistols lay there, whilst beside them was a case of embroidered leather. The lady opened this, and drew therefrom a dagger with a delicate point.

Concealing this in her hand, perchance that the man might not see it, she approached the bed again. The landlord felt his limbs totter and begin to fail him, whilst his straining eyes seemed inclined to start from his head. What, in the name of the fiend, was the woman about to do?

The man in the bed turned his eyes up to her; they had the look of a wounded animal.

“Can it not stay?” he said, and his hoarse tone penetrated to the listener’s ears. “It can make no difference now; the game is played.”

A sudden rush of tears appeared in the eyes of the woman; but the masterful quivering of her lips said clearly that she refused to admit them to be there.

“Another day of this,” she said, “and all is over. Our only chance is to take it out before another hour goes by.”

“Ay, and if you cut it out,” the sufferer gasped, “I am done with if ever man was.”

“Nay, child; I will not have you say that,” she said, caressing his face with her unoccupied hand. The sweet imperious sorrow of her tone touched even the listener at the window, who, after all, was not a man of stone.

Again the sufferer turned his face up to the woman and regarded her with the same dumb, dog-like look. She averted her gaze suddenly, as though she had not the fortitude to look at him.

“Canst thou not trust me?” she said again. “I will be, oh! so gentle. And we dare not have a surgeon--dare we, child? Indeed, we dare not tarry. Thou art in a fever even now, and every hour it rises. It must be done now, mine own, or thou wilt not see to-morrow.”

She spoke so wistfully that she might be beseeching her obdurate lord to gratify some feminine whim. He continued to regard her sickly and faintly, till at last a wan laugh crept upon his lips. It was the herald to the last desperate flicker of his courage--the courage that enables a man to look the mob in the eyes as he lays his neck on the block deliberately, delicately, and proudly. A fuller tone came into his hoarse, querulous voice. There was no longer complaint and petulance. The pettiness had gone out of it; it was almost a companion for the woman’s own.

“As you will,” he said, and he came as near to achieving a careless laugh as a man in his extreme condition ever could. “In with the knife, then, butcher. Thou art aching to carve me up, I can see. Well, well; it were better that you had your way, for I suppose you’ll give me no peace till you’ve done it. But plague take you! You’re tenacious devils, you women. Your damnable iteration would wear away stone. You know the place, and it’s embedded in the thick of my back, I think. Now, mind you cut deep enough. Oh, but I say, good Mistress Surgeon, prithee, where be thy basin?”

By the time the victim had mentioned these among other details of the torture he was about to undergo, the eavesdropper on the ladder had seen and heard rather more than enough for his personal comfort. Therefore, he quitted his station on the top rung but one, and descended to the ground as speedily as he could, lest he should involuntarily become the horrified witness of the knife at its work. When he came down to Will Jackson, he was shaking as one with the ague.

“I shall not want ye to go up to-night, my lad,” he stuttered; “to-morrow will do. Now, take away the ladder. You careless varlet, did I not tell you to make no sound?”

The clumsy fellow had had the misfortune to hit the top of the ladder against the nose of “The Sea Rover,” scowling in crude colours from the signboard of the inn. He appeared, not inappropriately it must be confessed, the most ill-favoured pirate that ever twirled a sword.

The landlord went indoors to his accustomed fireside chair. He was chilled to the blood; every infirmity that lurked in the gross bulk of him was up in arms against his late impudence; and worse, his nerves seemed all tattered and torn in his brain. He had been privileged to see and hear a little too much. Ha! they were already at it, curse them! The moans of the poor wretch upstairs were penetrating to his ears. Or were they the moans of the sea, sounds he had heard every night these forty years? Now and then he thought he heard a muffled, desperate cry. After all, it might be only the wild fowl on the rocks. How he wished he could rid his imagination of the scene that was being enacted. Would that he had not struggled up the ladder at all! Lord! were they never going to have done? It was enough to make a man revolt against his clay.

At this acute moment, however, Cicely appeared with her master’s nightly potation. It soothed his qualms somewhat. Pah! he had got the nerves of a girl. It was merely a little blood-letting; quite an everyday matter.

Curse the fellow, there were his cries again! What must it be like to have a bullet dug, inch by inch, by a dagger out of one’s own back! Ugh! what a morbid old fool he was; why must he forever keep thinking of it, and receiving the steel in his own pampered flesh? Might it not be there in earnest if he ever went up a ladder again!

After all, however, when he came to think of the thing in its true relation, he was by no means sorry he had been there. He had acquired knowledge of some value. The “incurable disease” was neither more nor less than a bullet wound in the body. Now, why should the woman lie about it and conceal it from the world if the man, her husband, had come by it honestly? Had he been on the side of the just, in other words on that of the party in power, more explicitly, my Lord Cromwell and his Parliament, that wound would have been an honourable scar. They were plainly Royalists; persons of mark, no doubt, for were there not a thousand and one subtle but unmistakable evidences of their condition? And, just as plainly, were they not fleeing the country? Otherwise they would not come at dead of night to the “Sea Rover.”

He was afraid he must dismiss the theory of this young man being the King from his mind. It was almost certain that had Charles Stuart been wounded to death, the fact would have been known over the length and breadth of the land. For him to have escaped so far in that dire condition would have been impossible.

Again, there was evidence in their familiar talk, despite something of a disparity in years, the woman being clearly older than her companion, that they were man and wife. In any case, the woman’s mode of address, tender and solicitous as it was, was hardly the one she would employ, even if she were a princess of the blood, to the King’s majesty. No; he was afraid he must look elsewhere for the King. Yet he had no need to be cast down upon the matter. These two persons were not to be despised. Their appearance suggested money and jewels. And they seemed to be delivered, bound hand and foot as it were, into his hands. Gamaliel hugged himself at that thought. They should be made to pay a price for that cold in his head. They should not aggravate his gout and his rheumatism, and set his nerves in a twitter, for nothing. He smiled malevolently as he sipped his hot cup, and spread his hands out to the fire.

Perchance the poor devil was dying, though. Certainly no human spirit could ever be tottering nearer to the brink than that of the man upstairs. The idea awoke never a spark of pity in the landlord. He simply regarded the near prospect of his death as another factor in the case. If he were not the King, he was not sure that he did prefer him to die. There would be only a woman to deal with them. In the phrase of that malignant sailor, Diggory Fargus, he would trust himself to tear the heart out of a woman with his own two hands. But why at every twist and turn did that uncomfortable mariner obtrude himself? He cursed himself for having called him to mind. If, however, the young man was the King--in spite of everything the landlord still clung tenaciously to that hope,--it would not be to his interest for his Majesty to perish. He must be delivered up alive, if possible.

During the rest of that evening, Gamaliel was too shaken to spy again on his guests, or to connive at others doing so. For he was still determined that his new drawer, whom he had engaged for that particular purpose, should go up the ladder also, and finally settle this hard problem as to whether Charles Stuart was actually at his inn or not.

It was not until the following evening that he summoned the courage to make a fresh attempt to set his mind at rest. During the day he could not venture to do so, for the publicity of light was too great. In the meantime he had not an idea of what had happened upstairs. He was still denied the chamber as sedulously as ever. He had tapped on the chamber door during the morning; the pale-eyed lady had appeared, more beautiful and more beset with anguish than before. She had taken a bowl of milk and a loaf of bread from the landlord’s hands, but beyond a word of thanks and a prayer that he should not again disturb the sleeper, he had nothing of her conversation. It was on his lips to inquire of the young man’s condition; but ere he could frame the question the door was swiftly yet silently closed upon him, and for that day his chance had passed. As time wore on, a conviction grew up in his mind that the man was dead. The silence upstairs was so extreme; besides, an intangible sense of foreboding seemed to invade and presently possess, not only the atmosphere of the dismal old inn, but the minds of those dwelling in it.

Cicely went about in tears. The tender-hearted wench was sure something terrible had happened to the poor young gentleman. Her master swore at her, but he could not relieve his own mind of her fears. Joseph, his son, was also afraid: it was true that he and the serving-maid were singularly often in sympathy, more often than Gamaliel cared about. He would have got rid of her long ago, were she not such an industrious, capable girl. Then, again, a shadow seemed to hang over the mind, or what there was of it, of his new drawer. He had hardly spoken a word, and every task he was set to, whether it was cutting faggots or washing the floor, he performed in a perfunctory and absent manner. Indeed, the first day he spent in the service of his new master was not to the satisfaction of the landlord. A more idle, more incapable fellow, he vowed he had never beheld. He would take the first chance of getting rid of him when he had served his turn. Twice during the day he had had to kick him up from the straw in the stable, where he had discovered him fast asleep.

At last, when the darkness had come again, the landlord once more resolved to allay his doubts. His nausea of the night before was merged in his overmastering curiosity. Summoning Will Jackson, he again had recourse to the ladder; and being at the mercy of his passions, he again had the temerity first to ascend himself.