Here was what I had dreamed of. Here was the dearest wish of my heart gratified. I was twenty-three, and I had three-and-twenty's darling equipment--a magnificent horse, a pair of unerring pistols, a fine rapier, a pocket full of guineas, the memory of a woman's grace and beauty, and a tough job in hand. The only material thing I really wanted was a new hat, for yester morning's milk and subsequent bashings and bruisings had ruined my old one. I had not bothered about it as long as it had bobbed alongside the grey woollen hood of Margaret's domino, but, cheek by jowl with her new hat, it had become an offence, and must be remedied.
The black shadow flitted in and out of my mind. I was clean and clear of all blood-guiltiness. I had struck for Margaret as he would have struck for Kate. Fate had been too strong for us, but whatever penance life should lay upon me should be paid to the uttermost farthing. I had this comfort that, could Jack ride up to me now, there would be no change in him. There would be for me the old hearty hand-grip and the boyish, affectionate smile, just as when he had run in to me on the town-hall steps.
I had been commissioned by the Prince to do three things: first, to deliver a dispatch to my Lord George Murray, wherever I should find him, which would probably be at Ashbourne, twelve miles ahead along a good road; second, to carry a letter to Sir James Blount at his house called Ellerton Grange, somewhere near Uttoxeter; third, to make a wide circuit west and south of Derby, picking up all the information I could as to the feeling of the populace and the disposition of the enemy's forces, and to report on this to the Prince in person at Derby at six o'clock the following night. On this third commission the Prince and Colonel Waynflete had laid great stress. An independent and trustworthy report was, it appeared, of the utmost importance.
Finally, as a dependent commission arising out of the first of the duties imposed on me by the Prince, I bore a letter to my Lord Ogilvie from her ladyship. She had summoned me willy-nilly to her room privily.
"Tell Davie yonder that I'm very well and very, very guid," she said, as she handed me the letter.
"With infinite pleasure, my lady," I replied.
"It will be true, ye ken," she asserted, as if there was a corner for dubiety in her own mind regarding the matter.
"Solemnly and obviously true, my lady," I agreed.
"Oh, thou incomparable Oliver, I wish you were a lass," she said, lifting her merry, girlish face level with mine, and putting a hand on each of my shoulders.
"Why, my lady?" I said, straightening at her touch.
"Then you could give Davie this as well!" which said, she pecked lightly at me with her sweet lips and kissed me.
It had flustered me greatly, but she only laughed ringingly and delightsomely as I backed out of the room. And when, door-knob in hand, I made my last bow, she had wagged her finger at me for emphasis and said, "Dinna forget to tell Davie I'm very guid."
Good she was, as beaten gold, and she kept her spirits up to this high pitch to the very end. You can read in Mr. Volunteer Ray's history of the whole affair of the 'Forty-five' how, after Culloden, she was taken prisoner while dressing for the ball which was to crown the expected victory.
I smiled a young man's smile as I thought of it. Experience was writing some items on the credit side of my new account with life. I had met a winsome lady of title and she had kissed me. Margaret, behind my back and to a third party, had called me an "incomparable" something. What, I knew not,--"servant" probably, but I cared not what.
Mile after mile passed without incident of any kind until, at a second's notice, I rode into a ring of muskets which closed round me out of vacancy as if by magic. It was the outermost picket of the army at Ashbourne. I gave the parole, "Henry and Newcastle," and demanded a guide to my Lord George Murray's quarters. There came a Gaelic grunt out of the gloom; men and muskets disappeared, with the exception of a single clansman, who seized Sultan's bridle and led me into the town.
The General was quartered at the "Swan with Two Necks," a very respectable hostelry, where my first care was to have a cloth thrown over Sultan, and to order for him a bucket of warm small beer with three or four handfuls of oatmeal stirred into it. While this was adoing, and I was awaiting a summons to his lordship's presence, I took a nip of brandy in the public room of the inn, and over it amused myself by reading a crude fly-sheet nailed on the wall, offering a reward of fifty guineas to anyone giving information leading to the arrest of one Samuel Nixon, commonly called 'Swift Nicks,' a notorious highwayman, six feet high, of very genteel appearance, well-spoken, but a cruel, bloody ruffian with it all. The Highlander interrupted my reading by beckoning me to follow him. Upstairs we went, and he ushered me into a room where were two gentlemen seated on opposite sides of a table on which were a small map and two large glasses containing a yellowish liquid.
The younger of them was of much the same general appearance as Maclachlan, though by the look of him a simpler and sweeter man. The other, a middle-aged, domineering man with a powerful face, looked angrily at me as I handed him my dispatch.
He read it impatiently, threw it down beside the map, and said, "They're coming on to-night, Davie." Then, curtly to me, "Your name, sir?"
"Wheatman of the Hanyards."
"Hanyards? Humph! Are you an Irishman?"
"No, my lord. Not even a Scotchman!"
He glared at me, but his companion laughed, and said, "That's one under your short ribs, Geordie!"
"Damn the Irish!" cried Murray. "They're the ruination of the whole business, Davie, and ye know it."
"Of course they are," he replied, "but that's no reason for telling it to an English loon who thinks less of a Scotchman than he does of a pickelt herring."
"That may be, my lord," said I to him, "but I think so well of one Scottish lady that I'm proud to be her humble courier." And I handed him his letter.
"Man! man!" he said ecstatically, as he ripped it open, "ye're welcome as sunshine in December. It's from Ishbel. God bless her pretty face!"
He read the letter eagerly and then thrust it into his bosom.
"I am, further," I went on, "entrusted with a message from her ladyship."
"God bless her! Out with it, man, out with it!"
"I was to inform you that she was very, very good," said I, soberly as a judge passing sentence.
"What do you think of that, Geordie Murray? Very, very guid! Eh, man, isn't she a monkey? God bless her!"
"I'll send the whole lot of 'em packing off back to Edinburgh," said Murray. "Women are a nuisance on a campaign. Your Ishbel, be hanged to her, wants a carriage all her own and another for her fineries."
"Ye ken a lot about soldiering, Geordie," retorted Ogilvie, "no man more, but ye ken less about soldiers than a lad of ten. At Gladsmuir I said to MacIntosh, 'Let's get the damn thing over, Sandy, and be back to breakfast wi' the leddies!' And we did."
"You did so," acknowledged Murray. "Now, Davie, take our courier out and feed him. I thank you, sir! You have ridden speedily. Your pace is faster than your tongue."
"My lord," said I, "although I am doing his Royal Highness such poor service as lies in me, I am not yet duly acting under his commission and authority."
"What of it?" he asked.
"Hence I am not an officer under your command, my lord!"
"Excellent logic! And the therefore, my beef-eating friend, is....?"
"That I would as lief knock your head off as look at you!"
"When you are an officer," cried he, "by gad, sir, I'll teach ye the manners of an officer. Till then, my birkie," rising and holding out his hand, "guid luck to ye!"
We shook hands heartily and so parted.
"He's a grand man is Geordie Murray," said Ogilvie, as he led me to another room across the landing. "Just a wee bit birsy, maybe, but these damned Irish have got his kail through the reek. They're o'ermuch on his spirits of late."
All his other talk was of his lady, though he looked well enough after me, and I made a good meal of the better half of a cold chicken, a cottage loaf, and a tankard of poor ale. Ashbourne is noted, say the wise in such matters, for the best malt and the poorest ale in England.
I am overmuch English, as is often the case with us who live in the very heart of England. The famous Mr. Johnson is a shire-fellow of mine, and very proud I am of it, and reckon it among the greatest events of my life that he has bullyragged me soundly for differing from him, and being right, about a line of Virgil he had misquoted in my hearing. Like Mr. Johnson, I love men and loathe dancing-masters, and these Scotsmen were men indeed, my Lord Ogilvie, as I came to know later, one of the choicest. He was a spare-built man, in years thirty or thereabouts, with a face all lines and angles, and dotted with pock-marks. For a lord, his purse was very bare of guineas, and nature had made up for it by giving him a belly full of pride. For him, the Highland line had been the boundary of the known world, so that his mind was a chequer-work of curious ignorance and knowledge.
From the first I liked him for his joy in his dainty lady. She was the daughter of a cadet of a distant branch of the famous Bobbing John's family, and had spent nearly all her life in France till, on a chance visit to Scotland, she had been snapped up by Ogilvie. They were a strangely matched pair, she from the gay salons of Paris, he from the misty mountains of the north; but mutual love had assorted them to admiration, for the heart of each was sound as a bell.
Between bites I answered questions as to how she had looked, what she'd said, done, and so forth.
"Was she wearing her brown riding-coat with the pretty wee shoulder capes?" he asked.
"No," said I, becoming more interested.
"Or her creamy dress with the gold flowers all over it?"
"No," said I again, smiling at my discoveries.
"She's keeping 'em for London," he explained. "Gosh, man! She will look divine in 'em."
"She won't," said I, clipping away at the sweet bits still hanging on the carcass of my chicken.
"It'll take your logic all its time to keep six inches o' cauld steel out of your brisket," he said very fiercely.
"Never had better chicken in my life," said I, watching him out of one eye--quite enough for any Scotsman.
"Damn the chicken!" he roared. "Why won't she?"
"Because she's given 'em away," I explained in my airiest tones.
"The blue blazes of hell!" gasped his lordship. "Given 'em away, and they cost me twenty pounds English! Given 'em away!" he whined, utterly lost for words, "given 'em away! The callack's clean dawpit. Twenty pounds good English money!"
"Nothing like enough!" said I. "You'll be sorry it wasn't two hundred."
Two hundred pounds English was, however, something too stupendous for his mind to grasp, and the gibe had no effect on him. While I finished my ale he chuntered away in his own Gaelic.
"I'll mak' it up in London," he said at length, "but it'll be the deil's own job."
"It will indeed," I agreed, and drained my tankard dry.
A look at my watch told me it was time to set about my second commission. Sultan was brought from the stable, fit as a fiddle and eager to be going. I examined my pistols, ran the tuck up and down in its scabbard, leaped on Sultan, and asked for the Uttoxeter road.
My Lord Ogilvie parted from me on the fairest terms, bringing me with his own hands a great stirrup-cup, or "dock-an-torus," as he called it.
"Man," said he, "I'm right glad to be acquent wi' ye. I was thinking I'd gang all the way to London without coming across a man worth fighting, much less friending, but I was in the wrang of it. Here's to ye!"
"My lord," said I, "you match your sweet lady. Both of you have been wondrous kind to a hard-hit man."
We gripped hands, saluted, and parted.
It was all but pitch-dark, and the moon was not due to rise for more than an hour, but the sky was clear and the stars were out in masses for company and guidance. Ellerton Grange was near Uttoxeter, and Uttoxeter was a sizeable townlet just inside my own county, and some fifteen miles from Ashbourne. The road was the usual cross-road, all of it bad and most of it vile. I left the going to Sultan, who did the best he could, like the gallant and experienced creature he was. There was nothing for me to do except to keep a good look out and the north star just behind my right hand.
My mind was busy going over all the memories of the last three days. I tried hard, but in vain, to skip the black part, the thought of which made me flinch as if the branding-iron was white-hot against my cheek. Mentally I saw double--Jack's red blood with one eye and Margaret's amber hair with the other. As I rode I fought memory with memory, mingling gall and honey, now mumbling broken prayers and now singing snatches of country love-songs, and so got on as best I could. In the journey of life a man pays for what he calls for. Life had given me what I wanted, and the price thereof had been death.
Not only was the night dark but the countryside was empty. I rode past dim outlines of houses and through vague, dreamlike villages without seeing a soul or hearing a sound. Once I saw a light ahead by the roadside, but out it went as the rattle of Sultan's hoofs told of my coming. It was no wonder, for these poor folk were living between two armies and wanted neither, friend nor foe. For them it was only a choice between the upper and the nether millstone. At last I came to a wayside ale-house where lights were showing. I rode up, dismounted, ran the reins over the catch of the shutter, and went in.
In the low, untidy room I found a man and a woman, bent over a miserable fire, with their backs to a table whereon were set out mug and platter and other things useful for a meal. They rose to greet me, and their faces told me that they were expecting some one and supposed that I was he. When they saw their mistake, the woman stepped smartly in front of the man and said, "Lord, sir, how you frighted us! What can I get for your worship?"
"A mug of good mulled ale," said I. "Give me good mulled ale and a little information, and you shall have a crown for your pains."
I spoke pleasantly, having no need, as a mere passer-by, to do otherwise, but if I had been obliged to have dealings with them, I should have begun by distrusting them outright. The man was of the common sort of ale-house keeper, ugly, beery, and stupid, and old enough to be the father of his wife, as I call her on account of the wedding ring on her finger. She was, for the place and post, a complete surprise, being a jaunty, townish, garish woman, dressed in decayed finery. He would have slit my throat for a groat, she for a grudge. They looked that sort.
The woman went into another room, beyond the little bar where the drinkables were stored, to get the spices for the mulling, and the man shuffled grumpily after her. Hanging on the wall behind the bar was a fly-sheet, the very same I had read in the "Swan with Two Necks" at Ashbourne.
"Swift Nicks" was a much-wanted gentleman, and evidently a tobie-man with a wide range of activities. Out of mere vacancy of mind I walked near to read the fly-sheet again, and, by a curious chance, among the drone of words from the other room, the only one my quick ear could pick out distinctly was "Nicks."
This made me wary, and when the woman came out and busied herself at the fire, and called me to see what a prime mull she was brewing, I stood over her, to all intent watching the process but ready for anything. And not without need, for her dirty husband crept softly out after her, thinking to catch me unawares. I flashed at him like a jack at a minnow, wrenched a wretched old blunderbuss out of his hands, and with the butt of it knocked him sprawling back into the other room.
The prime muller merely cackled with false laughter and went on with her mulling. I fetched him in by the scruff of the neck, stood him up against the bar, and said, "I think you're in for the soundest thrashing you've ever had in your life."
"Sarves yer right, sawney," said the woman. "Plase let him off, sir. He thought yow was Swift Nicks."
"Yow bitch!" he growled. "Yow set me on!"
"Yow'm a ligger!" she retorted. "I towd yow the gen'leman was nowt like Swift Nicks."
"How do you know that?" I asked.
"By the print," was the quick reply. "It tells yow all about him."
I fetched the fly-sheet down, held it out to her, and said sharply, "Read it to me!"
I thought this would clean beat her, but she said, simply enough, "I canna rade it mysen, but I've heard it read lots o' times."
"Have you heard it read?" I asked the man.
"Lots o' times," he echoed surlily, and I saw the woman's fingers twitch as if she longed to furrow his ugly face with her nails.
"Then why didn't you know?"
I spoke to him but turned sharp on the woman, and saw hell in her face. She was almost too quick for me, and answered fawningly, "The thought o' the money made a fool on 'im, sir. Plase let him off. I've mulled th' ale prime for her honour."
This was true and I enjoyed it greatly. I sent the man out to rub Sultan down while she prepared for him under my eyes a warm drench of ale and meal.
"Be y'r honour going far?" she asked.
"That depends how far it is to Ellerton Grange. Do you know it?"
"Oh aye, y'r honour. Sir James Blount lives there. It's three miles out'n Tutcheter on the Burton road."
"Is it a straight road to Uttoxeter?"
"Half a mile on yow'll come to a fork. Tek the road on the right and just ride after y'r nose. Fetch the drench, Bob!"
She carried it off well, but I felt there was a deep strain of roguery in her. Still, willing to part on a lighter note, I gave her the crown, saying, "You deserve a better trade."
"It's none so bad," she said.
"And a better husband."
"Oddones! D'ye think...."
She stopped abruptly, plainly caught out for the first time.
A minute later I was off again. At the fork Sultan made for the left, and I had to pull him sharply to the right. The road got steadily worse, but Orion was clear in view ahead of me, dropping down behind Uttoxeter, and I pushed on. If a man is to turn back because of a bad road, he'll not travel far in the Shires. Soon, however, there was no road at all, and I was plump in open country. Sultan stopped and sniffed, and then turned his head round as if to tell me, what I already felt was the truth, that I had been an ass for not leaving it to him.
"So ho! Sultan!" said I, patting his warm neck. "I deserve all you say, my beauty! I've put you in for a nice job."
The right road must lie somewhere to my left. I turned him that way and he walked on suspicious and sniffing. Fortunately the moon had risen, and the Jezebel's lie would only cost me a trifling delay. She would have lied with a purpose, and I puzzled myself in trying to reason it out. In a few minutes we came to the side of a spinney with a low wall of rough stones cutting it off from the field. I was intently looking ahead, when on a sudden Sultan swerved so powerfully that I rocked in the saddle. I wouldn't have touched him with the spur, short of utter necessity, for a fistful of guineas, and I soothed him, and then turned to look for what had upset him.
To be candid I swerved myself. Most of us in these days are pleased to laugh at superstitions, provided we are in good company round a roaring fire. I was here alone in a lonely field, at nine of the clock on a winter night, and there, flittering and gliding through the spinney was a something in white. Virgil believed in ghosts, and so did Joe Braggs, and I, by oft reading the one and listening to the other, had preserved an open mind. Apparently Sultan had his doubts, for he shivered and whinnied.
I pulled his head round away from the ghost, drew out a pistol, and watched the unchancy thing's movements. It was evidently meant for me, for it made a slight turn and came straight towards me. Then my man's logic, as Margaret twittingly called it, came to my aid. Gloomy as it was, I saw the outlines of some steps by which the low wall could be crossed, and ghosts, both my authorities being in agreement on this, were independent of such purely human contrivances. So, waiting till the ghost was climbing down on my side, I said sternly, "Stop, or I fire!" Whereon it heaved a great sob and tumbled full length to the ground.
I jumped down, slipped the reins over Sultan's head, and pulled him up to the spot. The ghost was a well-grown girl, dressed in nothing but a white night-gown, for I could see her bare feet beyond the hem of it.
"Don't be afraid, dear," said I soothingly, for she was dumb and half dead with fright. "What can I do for you? Say it, and it's done. Come now, be brave!"
She sat up, leaning on her right hand, and turned her pallid, quivering face up to mine.
"Robbers, sir!" she gasped. "They're murdering father and mother. For God's sake, sir, go and stop them."
"Of course," I replied cheerfully, slipping off my jacket. "Come on, my brave lass!"
I helped the lass to her feet, put her into my jacket, jumped into the saddle, and lifted her astride behind me.
"Clip me tight! Which way?"
"Round the spinney first, sir!"
Off we went, and this time I touched Sultan with the spur and he flew along. Round the spinney; slantways across a field; up and over a gate, the girl clinging to me like a leech; down a lane; up and over another gate; and then the girl's shaking right arm was thrust over my shoulder.
"There's th' ouse! 0', God, if we anna in time!"
"How many are there?"
"Two, sir."
I pulled Sultan up at the farmyard gate, helped her down, and jumped after her. Hitching the horse, we started across the yard.
Luckily the low-down moon was on the far side of the house, and we could run softly up in the pitch dark. As I write I feel that brave girl's hard grip of my hand as we raced on. At a half-open door we halted; she loosed hold of me, and I tiptoed on alone. From within I heard the crash of one pot and then another on the brick floor of the kitchen, as the villain, searching for hidden money, smashed them to the ground. Bitten to the vitals by his want of success, he yelled, "I'll burn the sow's eye out! That'll open her mouth."
With wrath flaming in my heart I stepped into the doorway leading to the kitchen. My eyes lit on a poor woman bound hard and fast in a chair, and a masked beast, his big white teeth showing through lips thrust wide apart in a grin of hellish rage, approaching a red-hot poker towards her face. I shot him, and he tumbled into a squirming heap. The other villain raced for dear life through the open front door. My second bullet got him on the very threshold, for he yelped and sprang into the air like a stricken buck, but he held on. I e'en let him go, not daring to leave the unkilled scoundrel on the floor, for he had a regular battery of pistols in his belt. The girl was already untying her mother, and her father, bound and gagged in his chair in the ingle-nook, could bide a while. So I plucked the pistols out, there were six of them, and rattled them down on the table. The man was bleeding like a stuck pig, and his purpling face and heaving throat showed that he was choking. As I destined him for the gallows, I picked him up, flung him face down on the table, and thumped him violently in the back, whereupon he coughed up a tooth. My bullet had stripped out all his grinning front teeth clean and clear, just as our Kate's dainty thumb strips the row of peas out of a peascod. Once the tooth was up he was not greatly hurt, and, holding one of his own pistols to his head, I bade him unstrap the farmer. As soon as the latter was free, I ordered him to strap the robber to a kitchen chair, which he did very thoroughly. The instant this job was done, he leaped to fondle and hearten his wife. She kissed him back and, without a word, feebly pointed to me, whereupon he turned and thanked me.
"Thank your brave daughter," said I, and then he jumped at her and hugged her in his big arms, blubbing out, "My bonny, bonny Nance!"
At my wish he lit a lantern, and we went out and stabled Sultan. We went back through the kitchen to make a search of the front of the house. A pretty sight awaited me within doors. The good wife was sipping at a cup of parsnip wine, and the girl was again wearing nothing but her nightdress. With crimson face and downcast eyes, she stood there holding my coat out.
"Hallo, ghostie!" said I, smiling at her. "You want to frighten me again, do you?"
Too confused to say a word, she lackeyed me into my coat and then ran upstairs. To cut short her mother's tearful thanks, I led the way to the door, and we started our examination.
Some two yards from the door-sill the feeble rays of the lantern were reflected from something on the ground. To my great satisfaction it was fair booty to me, nothing less than my closest need, a rare good hat made of the finest beaver. The band was buckled with gold, and there was a taking and surely very fashionable cock to the brim. I sent my old one spinning into the blackness and clapped my new treasure on my head. Now I could walk side by side with Margaret and not be ashamed, at any rate not of my hat.
"The rogue jerked it off when I winged him," said I.
"Gom! He did jump, that's sartin," said the farmer, whose name, I ought to say, I had learned was Job Lousely.
It was quite a step down to the road, and we made no further discovery till we got to the gate. Here it was his turn to be lucky, for there was an excellent nag hitched to a rail. It was on Job's ground and he gave it a home in his stable.
"It'll mak up for the crockery," he said, with great delight.
Back in the kitchen we found Nance fully dressed and busy laying a meal on the table. She was so taken aback when I declared I was not hungry and couldn't stay if I had been, that, to save her distress, I had a bite and a sup of ale, while Job fetched Sultan round to the door. She was a sweet, comely maiden, and it did my heart good to see her put a horn of ale to the bleeding lips of the robber. He drank ravenously, like a dog after a hard run. He was where he deserved to be, with his feet in the short, straight path to the gallows, and I pitied him not. Nance did, and it's good for the world that women are made that way.
"How far is it to Ellerton Grange?" I asked Job, who came in to tell me Sultan was ready.
"A matter of six miles, sir. Three from here to Tutcheter, and three more on to the Grange."
"How funny, father," interposed Nance. "This is the second time tonight a gentleman has asked the road to Ellerton Grange."
It would hardly have struck Job as funny if it had been the twenty-second, but Nance was quick and shrewd.
"Ho! Ho!" said I. "Tell me about it, little woman!"
"I was wishing my Jim good night at the gate, just before father came home, when a man riding by pulled up and asked the road to Ellerton Grange."
"Did you make him out, Nance?" I asked.
"Not much of him, sir, but the moon shone on his face when he took his hat off to wipe his forehead, and it looked for all the world like an addled duck-egg."
"Well put, Nance," said I, laughing. "First time I saw that face I thought it was like a bladder of lard."
"You know him, sir?"
"I think I do, Nance, and I must be after him."
Out of the robber's string of pistols I selected a pair for myself. They were lawful prize, and equal in quality to those Master Freake had given me, so that the rascal had probably stolen them. I saw that all the others were loaded, and advised Job to watch him all night and to lift him, chair and all, into a cart the next morning and drive him off to the nearest Justice.
Job and his wife renewed their thanks when I was in the saddle. Nance insisted on coming to open the gate, and on the way there she gave me full and careful directions as to the way to Tutcheter and thence to the Grange.
She swung the gate open and let me through. Then she came to my sword side and held up her face to be kissed.
"Good-bye, ghostie!"
"Good-bye, sir! God bless you!"
Kissing and blessing were reward enough for my service, and I rode on lighter at heart for them.
