Part 7

Again the King adopted his favourite trick of clapping his hands to his ribs, and shouting his laughter.

“Too absurd, too absurd!” he said. “I protest, Farnham, you make me laugh. You can’t do it, hey? You can’t shoot your King. My dear Farnham, do you really hold that to be so remarkable? Confess, now, did you ever seriously for a moment think you could?”

“I did, Sire, and tried,” said Lord Farnham.

“What a pity you did not recognise your limitations sooner, Farnham,” said the King. “Think of the pother you would have spared yourself.”

“True, Sire,” said Farnham.

“That you should ever have thought that you could have slain your sovereign, my dear Farnham, is the most whimsical thing I ever heard in my life.”

“Not altogether, Sire,” said the young man significantly. “Your Majesty may recall instances of regicide.”

“You should have spared us that, Farnham,” said the King reproachfully. An almost human emotion seemed for once to be in his eyes. They were full of pain.

“I crave your forgiveness, Sire,” said the man in the bed. “I was a little carried away.”

“As you say,” said Charles, “there have been instances of regicide. But it is only the canaille who are guilty of that crime. I do not think gentlemen are addicted to it.”

The young man sank back in his pillows. Observing both him and his wife to be grievously overwrought by what had passed, the King withdrew from the chamber to talk to the landlord below. He promised to return soon.

When the door had closed upon him, and his steps had died away on the stairs, the unhappy young man whispered to the woman:

“My God, I fear I was stark mad!”

“Canst thou forgive me?” said the wife. “I, too, was mad. I did not know what I did, or where I was. I did but know he was the King, the most unfortunate King in all the world. I did but know he was hunted for his life, like some poor wild animal. And when I saw his face, and his eyes shone on me, I think I could have fallen dead in the agony of seeing him. Yes, mine own, I, too, was mad.”

“Curse him!” said the husband. “I would have slain him had I had the power. But when I looked into his face, even with the weapon in my hands, all the little strength within my body suddenly ran out of it. I could not slay him; he was the King.”

“Yes, the King,” said the wife, thrillingly. “Always the King--the most unfortunate King in all the world.”

“There is something about him,” said the husband, wildly; “whether it be his face, his name, his virtues, his vices, his father’s fate, or his own lamentable history, I know not, but there is something about him that even his bitterest enemies are unable to withstand. I was by his rein in Worcester fight, and twice I saw the blow levelled that was to deprive him forever of his kingdom, and twice it did not fall. I can see the look in the eyes of one grim Roundhead even now, as he stood with his pike poised within a foot of the King’s neck. And when, striking, he saw it to be the King, he stayed his weapon in mid-air and directed it upon another. I know not what quality it be within him.”

“It is because the name he bears,” the woman said, “is the noblest and the most ill-fated name that ever a king did bear.”

“Curse him!” said the husband. “I learnt to hate him before to-day.”

A demon was in the young man’s heart. It was probably the fact that his own life could ill-support a scrutiny which lent a poignance to his jealousy; and is it not he the least without taint who is the readiest to cast the stone? The consciousness embittering his spirit that he was in no sense worthy of the woman who watched over him so tenderly, caused him almost fiercely to resent the intrusion of another within her thoughts. He feared the security of his own position there. There is no form of this disease so acute as that which springs from the sufferer’s knowledge of his own inferiority. The King was nobler, handsomer, more alluring to the eyes of a woman than he. His misfortunes and his station made him dreadful in the eyes of a jealous man. He hated the King, not so much for what he had done, as for what he had it in his power to do. It seemed to the young man in the depths of his remorse that Charles had it in his power to bereave him of the only thing in life he cared for.

“Patsy woman,” he said, miserably, “I begged you to let me perish of that inflammation the other night. Oh, why did you not! It would have been better for us all. You know I am not worthy of you; you know I never can be worthy of you, weak fool as I am. It would have been more merciful to let me perish. I should not then have been condemned to lie here helpless in my bed and watch another steal away your love from me. He is a King, I know; but I cannot bear it.”

The woman returned to the bedside and replaced her hand tenderly within his own.

“Foolish child,” she said,--“foolish, jealous child! And yet mine is the blame. I should have ordered my susceptibilities better. He was our King, helpless and without a friend, driven from pillar to post, with never a place of security in which to soothe his weariness. It was the glamour of his unhappiness that overcame me. But, mine own, are you not my king also?”

“You cannot have two,” said the young man. “I would have you choose between us.”

“Then, since you will have it so,” said the woman eagerly, “you are the king I choose, mine own. The other is but the prince in the fairybook; the delicious unreality that obtrudes in the dreams of girls in the middle of the night. You are the true prince of flesh and blood; he, the vague shadow without an entity.”

The husband and wife were drawn together in a caress of reconciliation, when footsteps were heard upon the stairs. They were followed by the entrance of the King.

Now that their hearts were at peace one towards another, Charles’s friends were able to attend to the terrible situation in which all three found themselves. They both observed with something of a shock that, although the King knew his life to hang on a mere thread, he seemed wholly indifferent to his fate. It would have been superb had it not been too grievous to contemplate.

“I have been talking with our landlord,” he said, “and I must say I like him no better now I am his master instead of his servant. There never was a countenance of such a concentrated villainy, I think. I never saw such greedy, shifty little eyes as that man hath. I have been talking to him for half an hour, but never once have I got him to look me in the face. I am sure Judas Iscariot was a man of scruples by comparison.”

“Sire,” said the woman, “your only hope lies in immediate flight. You must go at once from here, Sire. That man, the landlord, is hungry to betray you, and probably hath already done so. Oh, flee at once, Sire!”

“I know not where to go,” said the King.

“Anywhere, anywhere away from this hateful house, Sire,” said the lady. “But you must go at once. Tarry an hour, and all may be lost.”

The King sat down in a chair, wearily. He yawned, and covered his eyes with his hands.

“I think not to-day, madam,” he said, in a voice whose diffidence hurt her like a blow,--“not to-day, I think. I have not the energy. Besides, how tired I am of it all, how utterly weary! The game is not worth the candle. My friends urge me to flee this way and that; they conceal me in ditches, up trees, behind secret panels, and in priests’ holes, day after day. They bring me food in the dark; paint my face; clap various disguises about me, each more hideous than the one before. They turn me about from pillar to post; head me, cut me off, send me back again; confound me with all manner of conflicting counsels. And for what? That I may still fall into the hands of my enemies. I am not now a yard nearer my freedom than I was when I rode from the field of Worcester. I am wearied to death by the whole business; I am tired; I yawn. I will take a day’s rest, the first for many a wretched month; I will take it in your society, madam, and see if I have a better inclination to continue this struggle of one unhappy man against overwhelming circumstance to-morrow.”

“There will be no to-morrow, Sire,” said the lady. “Tarry here in this accursed place till then, and you will be surely ta’en.”

Her voice had the fullest conviction in it. It was no leap in the dark, no idle prophecy. Too well did she know the man downstairs with whom she had had to deal.

The King shook his head and smiled bitterly. There was no banishing the melancholy indifference from his voice. He was bored by the whole affair, and he was such a wilful fellow, that he would not stir a finger to save his own life if he had not the inclination. He was tired and depressed and sick of heart. At this moment it suited him better to be the prey of melancholy and to give rein to his sad fancies. He preferred to utilise those misfortunes which made him so irresistible in the eyes of all, particularly those of women.

It might have been that the extreme beauty of this compassionate lady was working upon him to his own undoing. For certainly, now that the wilful young King found himself in her presence, the desire uppermost in his mind was to stay in it. His life hung on a thread, and with it the hopes of thousands of his countrymen and the destinies of nations; but because a beautiful woman had pitied him, for the nonce he preferred to sit still and bask in her tears. To-morrow the mercury might rise. He might then find the energy to save his neck, or to attempt to do so; but to-day his inclination was far otherwise. He was disposed to give the rein to his adorable melancholy; and to wrap his cold spirit warmly in a woman’s sorrow.

The woman, cut to the heart by the young man’s wanton disregard of his sacred duty, had, with the instinct that often is with those that possess a singular potency, divined one factor of it. Her heart stood still. The horror of the thought almost overcame her. That she, in her own person, should be the unconscious and unwilling means of her King’s destruction! Unhappy, wayward youth, that his blood should be upon her head! The thought was impossible to endure.

“Sire,” she said wildly, “thou canst not have considered of all thy dalliance means. The last person a king can think of is himself. His responsibilities are more than personal. Sire, you must indeed go. Consider the destiny of your race, consider your friends.”

The young King’s eyes sparkled at the noble passion of her countenance. He had never seen a face so glorious. However, it did but confirm the satisfaction he took from his present case. He was more than content. To-morrow would be soon enough to begin his irksome toils again.

He loved to hear the throbbing tones of the woman; he loved to gaze upon her face. The passionate tenderness that suffused her was like a great and aged wine, that lulled his blood and warmed it, and made it sweeter in the veins. Languid and indifferent as he was, sparks were kindled in his eyes, and they were there for all to see. The woman saw them. She shuddered, even as the prayer was on her lips. They seemed to stop the beatings of her heart.

The husband saw the King’s eyes, too. The old hatred and jealous rage were smouldering in him still. It would not call for much to fan them into flame. His hands were clenched once more on the coverlet, a red spot burned dully in the centre of his dead white cheeks. Involuntarily he added a prayer of his own to that of his wife.

“Go, Sire, go!” he cried; “go now, else thou wilt be surely ta’en.”

The husband’s tones, however, had the passion without the magnetic quality of the wife’s. They grated on the King’s ear. He looked up a little startled at the man in the bed, and then he smiled.

“The solicitude of our friends,” he said, “grows more and more remarkable. Never was a monarch encompassed by so much disinterestedness.”

The sneer was so slight as to be hardly perceptible, but poor Farnham felt ready to slay him for it. That young man, however, by his ill-timed interposition, had retarded rather than advanced the end he wished to attain. The King settled himself more snugly upon his chair. He even requested the permission of the lady to put his weary legs upon the settle standing beside the bed. He asked her to allow him to have recourse to tobacco. A spice of mischief had now been added to his inclination. He was more firmly resolved than ever that on this day he would take his ease in his inn, in congenial society. Let to-morrow come when it might; let the consequences be what they may.

The unhappy lady read the King’s doom in his demeanour. Everything was lost. Only too well did she know that the man downstairs would eagerly utilise each second the King tarried at his inn for his own profit. Despair seized her. There was nothing to be done in the face of his appalling indifference and his wilfulness. She knew, as surely as he set his legs on the settle and rested his back against her husband’s bed with something of a subtle, humorous mockery, that his fate was sealed. Her foreboding heart told her that, for the King, to-morrow would never dawn. God! he would be taken like a rat in a trap. He would be taken there, in her husband’s chamber.

And who had caused him to be taken there? Who had been the unwilling agent of his tarrying? The thought was too terrible to bear. She clasped her hands to her bosom, where lay the King’s image in miniature. Again the tears trembled in the woman’s eyes. The King remarked them and took them to himself.

Since that first strange hour of the King’s revelation, Gamaliel Hooker had sat in his chimney-side, except for the few brief minutes in which he had done his Majesty’s behests. Very naturally, in the first shock of the King’s appearance his wits had deserted him. An event of such magnitude had never happened in his life before.

It was not likely to happen in it again.

Presently, with the King upstairs out of the way, and his generous potations to strengthen him and to calm his nerves, the landlord’s wits strayed back slowly, one at a time. To think that the King should come in the guise of a serving-man, and that he should be such a blind fool as not to recognise him when he came! And ye gods, to think what sacrilegious hands he had laid upon the royal person! To think how roughly, not to say angrily, he had addressed him! Gamaliel never came so near being a sensitive man, as in the first horrified five minutes of his returning faculties.

These were the secondary thoughts which occupied his mind at first. But soon there were others. As he sat sipping his liquor and ruminating over the events of the morning, he felt them dimly to be shaping themselves. They were gradually coming forward. And they would have to be grappled with and considered on their merits. The landlord stiffened the fibres of his brain for the task.

One fact came uppermost. It would assert itself; it refused to be blinked. Now that the King was indeed here in his inn, the utmost must be made of him. For was there not to a poor man a fortune in the royal person? To some people it might seem distasteful to sell the King; yea, even to him, Gamaliel Hooker, when he thought of it in cold blood, it did not seem a pleasant thing. It would have its compensations, though.

If, however, the King was to be taken in his house, he must act at once. He would be hardly likely to tarry. And yet he might. As Will Jackson, he had already stayed two days. He was probably waiting for his friends. Still, it would be by no means safe to count upon his remaining. There was yet one drawback to sending for the soldiers. When they came they would most certainly take away the wounded cavalier as well as the King. And Gamaliel had not yet had time to deprive him and his wife of their money and jewels. That was indeed a fly in the ointment. In a sense, it considerably lessened the price upon the head of the King.

Still, it would be folly to risk losing the King’s price for the sake of a sum paltry by comparison. He would dearly like to grasp every penny. It was his nature; but in attempting to do so, he must not throw away the substance for the shadow. With a sudden access of resolution he called for his son.

“Joseph,” he said, in his lowest tone, “do you saddle the tit this minute. I want you to ride right away to Woolden Magna, and ask for Captain Culpeper at Master Parkin’s farm. You know it well. ’Tis on the top of Woolden Hill, overlooking the sea. And when you see Captain Culpeper, you are to whisper in his private ear: ‘The King, Charles Stuart, is at the “Sea Rover”; do you come at once.’”

Joseph looked a little bewildered.

“The King!” he said, excitedly.

“Hush, hush, thou fool!” said the nervous Gamaliel. “If we are overheard, we are undone.”

Turning round in his anxiety, he became aware that although Cicely the serving-maid was ostensibly cleaning the warming-pan, she was really listening with all her ears.

“My wench,” said her master, sharply, “do you go into the cellar and broach that small barrel of October. I told ye to do so yesterday.”

When Cicely had disappeared to do his bidding, Gamaliel continued his instructions.

“Now, Joseph,” he said, in the same eager whisper as before, “you understand. You will do all this quickly and secretly, and your father’s fortune is made. But, Joseph, I think instead o’ saying to Captain Culpeper, ‘The King is at the “Sea Rover,”’ you had better say: ‘My father, Master Gamaliel Hooker, hath sent me to tell you that the King is at the “Sea Rover.”’ The Captain must understand that I sent ye, Joseph. But perhaps it would be better that I writ this information down on a piece of paper, and signed my name to it. Nobody can then take the credit of it from me.”

With this cunning end in view, he caused Joseph to procure him the materials for writing. He thereupon committed the message to paper with much anxious care and many laborious twistings of the mouth. At last it was written and sanded, signed and sealed, and delivered into Joseph’s hand. Five minutes afterwards Joseph’s nag stood at the door, and Joseph himself was superintending Cicely whilst she put up for him a hunch of bread and cheese to bear with him for his dinner. Then it was that the landlord suddenly rose from his chair, and began anxiously to hobble about the kitchen. Just as Joseph had put the bread and cheese in his pocket, and was going out of the door, the landlord stayed him.

“Joseph,” he said, hoarsely, “give me back again the paper I have writ, and go and unsaddle the tit. We will let this matter bide a bit; I must think upon it.”

He had his fourth glass of hot rum-and-water to aid him to do so. He meditated upon the grave matter until his head was ready to split. He was taken with a vacillation that he had never experienced before. His natural instincts were all for betraying the King. There lay his pecuniary advantage, and even his personal safety. Should it become known that he had harboured the man, knowing him to be the King, he was as good as dead. A hundred times he arrived at that plain, inevitable conclusion; yet a hundred times, at the very moment he was about to act, his resolution weakened, and then appeared to snap. Some strange tremor would arise in the remotest recesses of his brain.

The landlord did not know what name to put to it. Conscience it was not. He knew himself too intimately ever to bring such an accusation against the power of his understanding. Pity it was not. Fear it was not. It might be superstition, yet he hardly thought so. It was the oddest thing in life, and not the least disconcerting. It was his plain duty to himself to sell the King, and yet a vague scruple he was unable to define had the power to restrain him.

He reasoned with himself; he fought with himself. It was too monstrous that a chance which could never occur again could be allowed to slip by. Long ago had he made up his mind what to do in the case of the King’s coming to his inn. And here was the King upstairs; and here was he going over the well-trodden ground again, reviewing all his settled conclusions, when every minute was of the first importance. Any moment the King might turn his back on the “Sea Rover” forever. Yes, he would cast out the qualm that was debasing his mind. It was sapping all its vigorous faculties. But try as he might, he could not do so. It was ingrained in the very marrow of his brain.

Minute by minute his chances were ticking away. Had he only had the strength of purpose to permit Joseph to start on his errand, he would have been halfway there by now! The malady that was besetting him had never come upon him before. It was the most singular he had ever experienced, or even heard of. It had already caused him to act in a manner for him unparalleled. To keep Joseph back for no cause whatever was, the poor landlord considered, the act of a madman. It was so entirely opposed to reason; never before had he been blind to its dictates.

He called for his fifth glass of hot rum-and-water. By God! if he could not do it sober, he would do it drunk! To think that he was throwing away a fortune without the least reason for doing so! Again he got up and began to hobble unsteadily about the kitchen floor. He began to pant, to gasp; the sweat poured out of him, although the weather was still bitterly cold. Was he the master of his own mind, or was he not? That was what the whole thing amounted to. Had he lived to be sixty ere he put that question for the first time? But he would answer it.

Yes; he would answer it. He tossed off the sixth glass. The tremor was not quite so distinct in his brain. He felt a little stronger. He must stiffen every nerve of his resolution. Never mind the sweat shining on his forehead, his agitated breast, or his trembling flabby hands. He was slowly getting his teeth upon the bit; he was getting some control over this strange insanity.

The seventh glass, and he triumphed. It was a hard-won struggle; none harder. But at last, as the shadows of the wintry evening came stealing down the rocks, and Cicely lit the first candle, the struggle came to an end. Each individual nerve in Gamaliel’s body rioted within him; he was as unsubstantial as pulp; but at last his resolution was running clear and strong. The little flickering tremor that had a thousand times routed it and put it to shame was now dead. Hot rum-and-water had ultimately done its business. The crisis was past. He was master of himself after all.

In a voice so hoarse it resembled the croak of a raven, he summoned his son a second time.

“Joseph,” he said, “I want you to go now. Go speedily. Time presses; the business is very urgent. And when you come to Captain Culpeper, tell him to make all haste. It is now a little after four o’clock; at a little after eight he and his men should be at the door. Be a good lad now. Do not tarry an instant, and your old father’s fortune is made, likewise your own.”

Joseph listened to the low, excited utterance of the landlord in a purely mechanical manner. He was neither uplifted nor depressed; he was neither surprised nor disappointed. He took the sealed paper once more in his hands, and stepped out without a word into the sea-broken silence of the wintry evening. A little afterwards his horse was out of the stable, and he rode away.

The landlord still hobbled up and down the inn kitchen, until he heard the hoofs of the horse die away in the distance. He then sat down in his chair by the fireside for the first time for more than an hour. His head fell onto his chest. He was utterly worn out and overcome.