Part 5

“Madam,” said the landlord harshly, “I choose to discuss it now. But first, before I do so, I must have your name. Your companion and yourself have been two days immured in my best taffety chamber fronting the sea, yet up to this very hour have I been denied what is the first essential to us innkeepers. But, madam, I must have it now.”

The woman looked at his cold face falteringly. Then she withdrew her eyes and took a further refuge in her silence.

“Madam, I demand it,” said Gamaliel, sternly. “The times are greatly perilous, and what assurances have I that you are not a pair of malignants, a pair of proscribed Royalists, a pair of Charles Stuart’s friends and my Lord Cromwell’s enemies?”

The woman trembled. When the hunted doe takes to the water, it has the look and manner that the pale woman had then. The landlord wrote every inflection of her demeanour down in his heart. His two little eyes, now contracted with their cunning so that they looked like two glass beads in his head, pierced her like steel. In spite of herself she shuddered. She closed her own eyes that she might not see them.

“Madam, I swear I will not be put off,” said the landlord. “I demand your name and the name of your companion.”

The woman’s lips were frozen. Twice she struggled to speak, and twice no words issued from them. The landlord had chosen his moment craftily. The unexpectedness of his appearance at that hour, and the shaken state she was in already, thanks to her adventures in the night, left her at a hopeless disadvantage. She might have the desire to dissemble, but she certainly had not the power. She was bound hand and foot at his mercy.

“I would prefer to withhold our names for the present,” she said at last, in a hoarse whisper.

“That you shall not do, madam,” said the landlord. “I must have your names here, now, this instant.”

“I cannot give them,” said the woman, simply.

Again the landlord enclosed her with his cold eyes. They fascinated her, they pinned her helpless, they changed her blood into stone; they were the eyes with which the snake holds the fragile bird. The same bale and venom crept into them as he gazed upon the frightened creature, and as she cowered and shrank away, a smile and a sneer crept together round his mouth slowly. The moment to strike the victim was at hand.

“So you cannot give them, madam,” he said, with a suave mockery. “So you cannot give them. I do not know, madam, that I am surprised. I should have been more surprised had you been able to do so. In the very hour of your coming, I formed my own opinion of you. I am not altogether a blind man, madam,--I am not. And when in that first hour of your coming, madam, in a most unholy and exceptional season that is not very usual for simple honest travellers to employ, you had recourse to a lie----”

For an instant the woman’s chin went up imperiously, and a spark kindled in her eyes.

“I repeat, madam,” said the suave landlord, “in the very first hour of your coming you had recourse to a lie. You said your husband suffered from an incurable disease. More correctly, you should have said a bullet wound obtained a few weeks ago at the battle of Worcester.”

It was a shot in the dark, but it found its mark. The woman fell back against the stairs with a face the colour of snow.

“No, madam,” the landlord went on, “I can confess to no surprise at the course you have taken. It is hardly to be supposed that the wife of a proscribed cavalier, who hath come a fugitive to a lonely inn on the seacoast, in the hope of slipping over to France on a dark night, should be willing to publish his name to all and sundry. But it is a fortunate circumstance that old Gamaliel Hooker hath a few wits in his head, otherwise a notable traitor to his country might have escaped his deserts, and there would be one malignant more than there should be in the world.”

The landlord had trimmed his cruel words, and, uttered them slowly. Each one sank like a sharp-pointed knife into the very flesh of the woman. She shrank away from him, torn, bleeding, trembling.

“Happily,” said the landlord in the same clear-cut, long-drawn, formal tone, “Gamaliel Hooker is not a man to shirk his plain and manifest duty. A few hours prior to your appearance a band of soldiers called here, and told me where I might find them should any malignants appear. I will send an information to them the first thing in the morning. And now I give you good-night, madam; I think after our nocturnal wanderings we shall both welcome a return to bed.”

The landlord made to go upstairs. He would reserve the question of what she was doing in the dead of night, and her highly singular conduct towards his serving-man, until the morrow. He must not exhaust all his weapons at once; he would save a few with which to amuse himself at his leisure. But he had enjoyed using these vastly. He would teach her to take him trapesing in the dead of the night through the winter gale!

However, as the landlord made to retire the woman sprang forward with an appeal. She clung to his coat with her frozen hands.

“Have mercy, I beseech you!” was her cry.

The landlord laughed in her face.

“It is a matter for the Lord Protector,” he said. “But I have yet to hear that he is a merciful man.”

“You will not deliver up my poor husband,” she cried,--“you will not be so cruel!”

“Mother of God!” said the landlord. “I will do my duty.”

For the second time that night the woman fell upon her knees. She flung herself at the landlord’s feet. There never was grosser clay in the world than his. He neither pitied nor spared her. Nay, he prolonged the agony of her self-abasement to the last bitter moment. He drew out the frenzy of her abandonment to its last wild prayer. He derived an intimate pleasure from the picture of the creature at his feet, casting herself upon his mercy. It was the rarest nectar to his self-esteem; he sipped it to the dregs and smacked his lips upon it. He waited as one melting in spite of himself, and then dashed her hopes to the earth by adopting the same precise, formal voice he had used before:

“Madam, I am determined to do my duty.”

“I beseech you; I implore you!” cried the unhappy woman. “Will you have no mercy for the sufferings of a wife?”

The landlord turned from her coldly.

“Will you have no pity for the agonies of a mother?” she cried. “Will you not spare the father of the babe I bear?”

In the mad frenzy of her fear she suddenly rose to her feet, with all the blood quivering and sparkling now in her cheeks. The landlord admitted to himself, even as he tortured her, that there never was so perfectly noble, so perfectly magnificent a creature as this wretched lady. But when she flung back her cloak to lend the prayer of her motherhood an additional emphasis, he laughed in her face.

It was more than the woman could endure; the last appeal of her sex had been despised. The shame and the agony overcame her; she sank senseless to the kitchen floor.

The landlord, by a deft use of cordials and cold water, brought her to her senses very soon.

“Mercy, mercy!” she moaned as her eyes came open.

The landlord, deeming that the comedy had gone far enough for that night at least, thought it time he appeared in his true character. He exchanged the formal tone he had used when he spoke of doing his duty, for one more natural to him.

“You shall purchase a day’s respite, madam,” he said, in a brisk voice of business, “on one condition.”

The woman’s heart leapt in her side.

“Take that ring of sapphires off your finger, madam, and place it in my hand. On that condition, I will undertake not to lodge an information against your husband during the next twenty-four hours.”

The woman plucked off the ring eagerly, and, giving it to the landlord, thanked him with eyes that shone far more bravely than the jewels that she gave away. In the security of the short respite she had purchased, she went upstairs to the chamber of her stricken lord. It was almost less than nothing; yet, after all, there was one day more left to her in which she might struggle wildly for her husband’s safety.

The landlord had no desire to return to his couch. He was too excited by the strange events of the night, and too eager to meditate upon what manner they affected him, and the nature of the mystery he had been confronted with, to have any hope of going to sleep. Therefore he rekindled the fire, brewed himself a posset, charged his long pipe with tobacco, and sat down to reflection. He was hugely pleased with his own conduct of the last half-hour. The woman was entirely at his mercy. He would be able to wring her jewels and money from her with ridiculous ease; whilst at the eleventh hour, when all their portable possessions had become his own, he would still be able to save his reputation by giving them over to Cromwell’s men. He gazed tenderly on the bright jewel in his hand. He amused himself by computing the value of the stones within it, and figuring out in his mind what he stood to gain. These were brave times indeed! Why, he had already earned more during that last half-hour than in a year of quiet, jog-trot trading. And this was, doubtless, nothing to the wealth they had upstairs. He only hoped the soldiers would not return and discover their owners, ere he could take them for himself. But Master Gamaliel was not without a certain confidence in his own acquisitiveness; he shrewdly suspected that in any case they were doomed to lodge in his custody. Oh, if the King would only come his way as well!

He then turned his attention to the strange events of the night. He was morally sure that the woman had gone forth to discover Diggory Fargus’s boat or that of some other mariner, and that her meeting with Will Jackson, the serving-man, was, as far as she was concerned, an accidental one. But what could account for her extraordinary behaviour on his appearance? Why had she adopted so wrought and passionate an attitude towards him? Most probably for the same reason that she had adopted it a little later towards himself: she feared him. Him, too, she had been beseeching. Of course she had been begging him not to betray her; but why should she be at such pains to implore a fellow like that not to do so? The landlord recalled the incident of Will Jackson going up the ladder. It was then he first knew that she and her husband were at the inn. Gamaliel recalled how his serving-man had rushed pellmell to the ground as though he had seen a ghost, whilst the woman above pierced the night with her wild cry. What could be the significance of that recognition?

The landlord built a theory. This Will Jackson had probably been lately in their employment; and the woman knowing him to be so well acquainted with their circumstances, and that he was doubtless a rogue to boot, she felt her husband to be undone. Again, the serving-man’s surprise would not be unnatural. It would be a rather dramatic thing to go up that ladder, and for him to discover his former patrons thus. Assuming that to be the case, it was not unlikely that the woman, utterly desperate as she was, ventured into the night to find Will Jackson and to propitiate him with her prayers. Yet, after all, she was not likely to find him by the side of the sea.

The landlord was unable to settle this last point definitely in his mind; but the remainder of the theory he thought very excellent. However, be that as it may, he would take the first opportunity of having Will Jackson’s version of the affair. Here a new thought assailed the landlord. Last night, when the fellow fled down the ladder, had he not positively asserted and reiterated that he had never seen the persons upstairs before? He had lied--he had lied foully. Not only had he seen them, but he was intimately acquainted with the woman at least. But he would have the truth out of the fellow. Could it be that some more guilty secret than he suspected lay between them? Was some deep mystery involved? The landlord nestled nearer to the embers, and went over all the ground again. Why should a serving-man and a woman of condition be so intimate and familiar one with the other? She was a lady--a woman of quality, he was sure--yet with his own eyes he had seen her on her knees to the fellow; and she had kissed his hands.

When a few slow hours had passed, and the household of the “Sea Rover” were astir, the landlord lost no time in despatching his son to the stable to summon Will Jackson to his presence.

The serving-man soon afterwards shambled into the kitchen, wearing a particularly sleepy and unkempt look. He pulled his forelock to Gamaliel gravely; yawned, and rubbed his weary eyes on the sleeve of his jerkin. The landlord regarded him keenly. It seemed almost impossible that this rustic clod and the beautiful woman upstairs should have anything in common. But what of her behaviour on the rock during the night? Could it merely have been fright at his appearance? Hardly that: besides, his own behaviour had been very incongruous, considering what a bucolic clown of a fellow he was during the daytime. Yet was he such a clown after all? Had not the landlord first remarked about him that he appeared to have wits rather above his station? However, he would see.

“My lad,” said Gamaliel, sternly, “what did you during the night?”

“Slept,” said the fellow, laconically.

“Did you not walk abroad?” said the landlord.

“Nay, not I,” said the fellow. “Too tired I was; I lay down in my straw and slept like a hog.”

“You are lying to me,” said the landlord, raising his voice. “You walked out on to the top of one of those rocks by the seashore, and there you met the woman in the chamber upstairs. You met her there in the middle of the night; you talked to her; and she fell on her knees before you, and she kissed your hands. I know all, you lying villain! Now, sirrah, confess the reason of it all, or take the consequences.”

The serving-man twitched not a muscle. He regarded his master with a stolidity amounting almost to the bovine, and he blankly professed his ignorance of the charge. The landlord grew furious.

“Do you give the lie to my ears and eyes?” he cried.

The serving-man merely replied by a look of profound indifference. To the angry and astonished landlord, it seemed to amount almost to contempt. Will Jackson appeared to consider that his denial was enough. He neither entered into the merits of the matter, nor took the trouble to soften the force of his affirmation.

Gamaliel had never been so nonplussed in his life. He had proof positive that his serving-man had been out in the night, and that he was intimately acquainted with the woman upstairs. Yet here he audaciously denied all knowledge of her.

“By God, sirrah!” cried the landlord, “I will see to it that you hang before a week is out, as an aider and abettor of proscribed Royalists fleeing the country, if you persist in this most abominable falsehood.”

The serving-man shrugged his shoulders. He still seemed to have a perfect indifference to the landlord’s threats. And, indeed, Master Gamaliel fumed and browbeat in vain. It was precious little satisfaction he got out of the lumpish Will Jackson.

He breakfasted upon the matter. Coming to review it afterwards, he did but grow more firm in his conviction that the woman and his drawer had something more to conceal than he had at first suspected. At last he decided to confront them face to face. First, he sent up his son with a message to the lady’s chamber. Would she step down immediately to his father, as he desired to speak with her on a matter of the first importance? Her fear of the landlord was now so great, that she lost not an instant in complying with his demand.

Will Jackson was already submitting to another interrogatory from his master, when she came whitely and wearily down the stairs. The cunning landlord had contrived that their meeting should be in his presence. They should have no chance to pre-arrange an ignorance of one another. He now observed their demeanour with a devilish intentness, and he could swear he saw a sudden swift flush dart across the woman’s face and a hunted, hungry look of fear spring in her eyes the moment her gaze alighted on Will Jackson.

As for that clod-like servitor, he was just as imperturbable as ever. Not by the relaxing of a muscle did he betray that he had encountered the woman before. The landlord admitted to himself that such a studied stolidity was remarkable. The fellow made respectfully to withdraw on the woman’s appearance.

“Not so,” said his master, roughly. “I would have you stay here, sirrah. You shall be condemned out of the mouth of your accomplice.”

He then turned, bully as he was, even more roughly on the woman.

“Madam,” he said, “I have sent for you to demand an explanation of your last night’s conduct. In the middle of the night you crept out of my house, climbed upon a rock in front of the open sea, and while there you encountered this serving-man of mine, Will Jackson. Madam, I demand to know what passed between you; also when and where you met my serving-man before.”

“How can madam say that,” the serving-man promptly answered for her, before she had a chance to reply on her own part, “when I have told you over and over again, good master, that I was never out last night at all; and, if you must know, the only time she hath seen me before this morning was when you sent me up the ladder to spy upon her. Then it was she happened to raise her eyes to the window, and accidentally caught mine looking at her.”

“Silence, you insolent scoundrel!” roared the landlord. “How dare you presume to put words in the mouth of this lady! You impertinent dog! Come, madam, I await your explanation of this odd circumstance.”

The woman stood silent, with her head bent upon the ground. The landlord was obliged to admit that the exceeding promptness of his clod of a servant had done a great deal towards outwitting him. She had had her cue from this impudent rogue. It was too plain that she was striving to summon up the courage to utilise it.

“Come, madam,” cried the landlord; “I would not have you attempt to dissemble. You are not of the pattern of a dissembler, as witness your somewhat melancholy performance in that role in the small hours of this morning. Be frank, madam. I prithee do not exhaust my patience. Your respite of twenty-four hours may suffer a curtailment else.”

This threat was not without its effect. The landlord grimly noted how the fear sprang to her eyes. He noted, too, that as she raised them they rested a moment wildly on Will Jackson’s face. His countenance, however, the landlord saw with a new amazement, was absolutely empty and passive. The fellow was either a clown of no capacity at all, or a man of an infinite wit, resource, and intelligence.

“Madam, I demand an answer,” said the landlord.

“I have never seen this--this--this man ere now,” the woman faltered.

“You are lying, madam!” the landlord cried in his brutal manner; “and, my God! if you lie to me I will rescind my promise, and your husband shall be delivered within the hour into the hands of his enemies. And this fellow, Will Jackson, shall be given up also, as an aider and abettor of dangerous Royalists.”

The woman grew white to the lips.

“No, no; not that!” she moaned. “Not that! You will not be so cruel--so unmerciful.”

“Madam, I will not be trifled with,” said the landlord. “If you do not speak the truth to me, all three of you shall be given up.”

“Oh, sir,” she said, trembling like a reed in the wind, “it is indeed the truth. I beg you to believe me.”

“I never saw a worse hand at a lie,” said the landlord, with a sneer. “But, ’fore God! you shall pay for it. Joseph, do you come here instantly.”

The landlord summoned his son. That rather dismal youth obeyed his father’s call with a resentful alacrity.

“Madam,” said the landlord, “I give you one minute by this watch of mine in which to make your decision. Confess the truth, and the twenty-four hours’ respite holds good. Persevere in this monstrous falsehood, and you shall pay for it in your husband’s blood. I have never yet seen the man, let alone the woman, who could trifle with Gamaliel Hooker. And, sirrah, do you heed this also. As I’m a live man, you shall swing in a gibbet for this!”

The old man ended in a gust of fury that carried him away. He then said to his son:

“I fear me, Joseph, that you must go saddle your horse in a minute. I shall be wanting you to take a message to a certain place I wot of.”

The landlord pulled forth his watch and began to count the seconds dramatically. The woman seemed petrified to stone.

“I ask you for the last time, madam, what you know of this fellow,” said the implacable landlord. “Refuse to tell me, and it is your unhappy husband, not yourself, who pays the price.”

None knew more perfectly than the landlord how to torture her. Again he had the wretched creature on her knees before him; and again he had the privilege of laughing in her face.

“Rise, madam,” said Will Jackson.

The landlord turned towards him and gazed at him in blank astonishment. It was not so much the drawer’s words, audacious as they were, that had this electrical effect on Gamaliel Hooker. It was the manner of their utterance. They were spoken in a full, calm voice, quiet and self-contained, and one that sounded mighty odd from the mouth of a servant. For, above all, it had a tone that even a bold man would have found it hard to disobey.

“Rise, madam,” said the serving-man, and, bending forward towards her, he assisted her to do so.

She trembled so violently when she got upon her feet that she could hardly stand. But she kept her face averted from the audacious servitor in a singularly painful way. She seemed afraid to look at him.

“We will have done with play-acting, if you please,” said the drawer, addressing his master, but, strangely enough, in the same authoritative voice. “After all, is it not a little vulgar, and a little cowardly?”

The astonished landlord spluttered out a string of oaths. But he was almost inarticulate with anger and bewilderment. A frank sparkle of amusement showed at the same time in Will Jackson’s eyes. The transformation of his voice was extending to his face; nay, to his person and his bearing too. Where a minute ago there had been stolid inanimation and indifference, were intelligence and vivacity. Where there had been lumpishness and awkwardness of gait, were graciousness and breeding. The fellow still wore his coarse rustic clothes, his face was still bedaubed with dirt, but he was no longer the same person. The landlord was slowly beginning to recognise the fact.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

It seemed that his transformed serving-man was on the point of telling him, when the poor lady, who seemed just now to be acting in a kind of delirium, stayed him suddenly by placing her two hands on the leathern sleeve of his jerkin.

“No, no, no!” she cried; “it must not be. Whatever the cost, it must not be.”

“Think of your husband’s life, madam,” said the triumphant landlord.

Neither the man nor the woman paid heed to him now, however. There seemed some far graver matter between them.

“At all costs,” the landlord heard the woman say to his serving-man in a hoarse whisper, “I implore you to be wise, to be discreet. It is not for yourself alone I beseech you; think, oh! think of all that it means.”

Her voice, too, was changing. While she spoke, it lost something of its wildness. It still throbbed with its passion, but above it was a yearning tenderness, a maternal solicitude that dominated it completely.

“Nay,” said Will Jackson, with his strange, cool smile again creeping out of his eyes. “What’s the odds? I am weary to death of this farce; it is become intolerable. And, after all, we are in the hands of God, are we not? There is but our destiny to trust to.”