The time had not been wasted. I had had a stirring experience and got a hint of dangers and uncertainties ahead. Moreover, and on this I plumed myself most, I had acquired a handsome hat. It was a trifle roomy, but a wisp of paper tucked within the inside rim would remedy that defect. The moon was getting higher and brighter, and I pulled my new treasure off again and again to admire it. It had belonged to a rascal with an excellent taste in hats. I was very content with it, and looked forward eagerly to catching the glint in Margaret's eyes when she saw it. After all it behoved me to look well in her presence, and I regretted that the rogue had not shed his coat and breeches as well. No doubt they were equally modish and becoming, and would have set me up finely, though all the tailors in London town couldn't make me a match for Maclachlan. A man has to be born to fine clothes, like a bird to fine feathers, before he looks well in them. The thought made me rueful. I jammed my hat on fiercely, and slapped Sultan into a longer stride.
The man ahead of me was, out of question, the Government spy, Weir. It was now a full day and more since I had crammed my Virgil into his maw, and he had had time to get into these parts. Thirty years before there had been much feeling for the honest party hereabouts, and among the gentry along the border of the shires there would be some in whose hearts the old flame still flickered. Indeed, my own errand proved so much, and a noser-out like Weir would be well employed in rooting up fragments of gossip over the bottle and memories of beery confidences at market ordinaries--sunken straws which showed the back-washes of opinion beneath the placid surface flow of our rural life. I dug my fingers into my thigh and imagined I was wringing the rascal's greasy neck, and the feeling did me good.
I began to ride past scattered houses and then between rows of cottages. Sultan was tiring a little, but, being an experienced horse, pricked up at the sight and cantered down the dead main street of the town. The shadows of the houses on my left ended in an irregular line on the cobbled causeway on my right. Near the town end I came on an exception to the black-and-white stillness of the houses--an inn on my right ablaze with light and full of noise. A merry liquorish company it held, some quarrelling, some rowdily disputatious, and a few stentors trying to drown the rest by roaring a tipsy catch. I pulled Sultan towards the verge of the shadows to see if I could make anything out, and he, supposing, no doubt, that I was guiding him towards bait and stable, made a half-turn towards the portico that ran on pillars along the face of the inn. I checked him at once, but, in that trice of time, a man leaped from behind a pillar, laid one hand on the pommel of my saddle, and raised the other in warning. He was a little man, and in his eagerness he stood on tiptoe and whispered, "Ride on, Master Wheatman! One second may cost you dear!"
Even as he spoke, some movement within startled him, and he leaped back into the shadow before I could question him.
I urged Sultan onward, and once out of footfall of the inn, pricked him into a gallop. Out of the town he fled, past the end of the Stafford road, along which two hours of Sultan's best would bring me to the Hanyards and mother and Kate, and I kept him at it for a full two miles before I gave him a breather and settled down to think out what it meant.
I did not know the man from Adam, but he had me and my name quite pat. He was obviously a friend, for his bearing and his warning alike bespoke his goodwill towards me. He must be waiting there for some purpose, and he must have seen me somewhere and learned enough about me to know from what source danger to me was certain to come. In this case it was plain that the danger was within the inn. The carousers might be, nay, almost certainly were, soldiers, though there had been none in the town when Job Lousely had left it less than two hours ago. The news of my escapade might well have leaked into Stafford by now; I was very well known in the town, and the stranger might be some Stafford chap benighted at Uttoxeter after his business at the market. As I say, I did not know the man, but he might very well know me; he was, perhaps, some old schoolfellow, grown out of recollection by moonlight, and still willing to serve an old butty. This seemed the likeliest solution of the difficulty, and it made me very sad. The news about Jack would be whispered round by now, and I could never walk the old streets again without seeing nods and shudders everywhere. See him? That's him! Killed his best friend! Wheatman of the Hanyards! Never held his head up since! And hadn't ought to! The chatter of the townsfolk crept into my ears between the hoof-beats, and made me sick and dizzy.
It would not have happened but for the bladder-faced scoundrel ahead of me, now creeping around like a loathsome insect to sting a man of ancient name and fame, and I was eager to be at him again. Sultan, without more urging, had made the furlongs fly in gallant style, and it was time to be looking out for my landmarks. Nance had made me letter-perfect in them. Here, on the right, was the woodward's cottage where the road began to run downhill into a bottom dark with ancient elms: there, on my left, in an open space among the boles, the moon showed up a worn, grey column which marked the spot where, in the wild days of the Roses, a Parker Putwell had slain a Blount in unfair fight for a light of love not worth the blood of a rabbit. Nance had very earnestly told me the old, sad tale, to impress the spot on my mind, for the long lane up to Ellerton Grange began in the shadows just beyond the monument, and wound away up the slope to the right. The road carried us up where the moon-light fell on meadows that were almost lawns, and across them to a maze of buildings. A minute later, I leaped off Sultan and hammered away at the studded oaken door of Ellerton Grange.
No man came to my summons, and I sent a second volley of rat-tats echoing through the house before I heard a shuffling of feet within and a drawing of big bolts. The door crept open for a foot or so, and an old man's head, with a lantern trembling over it, appeared in the gap.
"Who's there?" he quavered.
"Wheatman of the Hanyards," I answered; "but my name is nothing to the purpose and my business is. I must see Sir James Blount."
"He's abed," said he, "hours ago!"
"Then fetch him out!"
The old man pushed his lantern close to my face and straightened himself to take a fair look at me. He had sunken cheeks and toothless gums, and hairless eyes with raw, red lids, and out of all question was some ancient, rusty serving-man, tottery and slow, but quick-minded enough, and of a dog-like faithfulness to the hand that fed him.
"Young and masterly," he muttered, "and o'er young to be so o'er masterly. But I mind the day when I would 'a' raddled his bones with my quarterstaff."
"I won't naysay it, grandad," I answered, seeking to humour him. "In your time you've been a two-inch taller lad than I am. Not so big o' the chest, though, grandad."
"Who're you grandadding? I was big enough o' the chest when I could neck meat and drink enough to fill me out. Now!"
As he spoke he gripped a handful of the waistcoat that hung loosely about him, and added, "Once it was a fair fit, my master. It's cold and late for my old bones to be creaking about, but Trusty's the dog for the tail-end of the hunt, and a Blount's a Blount and mun be served."
"Fetch him out!" I repeated. "I've ridden hard and far to serve him."
The ancient took another look at me and said to himself in a loud whisper, after the manner of old and favoured serving-men, "A farmering body all but his hat, and none o' your ride-by-nights."
"Fetch him out!" said I again, not for want of fresh words to say to the candid old dodderer but to keep him to the point.
"Oh-aye," said he, and shuffled off.
He left me fuming, for his last mutteration, as he shook his lantern to stir the flame up a bit, was, "Knows a true man when he sees one. More used to a carving-knife than a sword, I'll be bound. What did he say? Wheatman o' sommat! Reg'lar farmering name!"
I kicked the door wide open and watched the lantern bobbing along the hall. The light made pale shimmerings on complete suits of mail hanging so life-like on the high, bare, stone walls, that it seemed for all the world as if the knights had been crucified there and, little by little, age after age, had dropped to dust, leaving their warrior panoplies behind--empty shells on the shore of time from which the life had dripped and rotted. The old man toiled up the grand staircase at the far end of the hall and turned to the right along a gallery. The friendly light disappeared, leaving me darkling and alone. Sultan sniffed his way to the door, pushed in his head and neck, and rubbed his nose against my breast in all friendliness. I flung my arms round his neck and caressed him, and in those anxious minutes in the doorway of Ellerton Grange he was comrade and sweetheart to me, and comforted my spirit greatly.
Footsteps and a voice within made me turn my head. A man came at a run down the stairs and along the hall. After him the old serving-man hastened, lantern in hand, as best he could.
"Sir James Blount?" said I.
"The same," said he curtly and confusedly.
"I bring you a letter from a very exalted person, Sir James," I explained.
He took it from me much as he would have taken a bowl of poison. "The light! The light! You slow old fool! The light!" he said, jerking the words out as if his soul was in distress, and the ancient, barely half-way down the hall, quickened his poor pace up to his master. He, tearing the lantern out of the feeble hands, and rattling it down on a table, ripped open the letter and devoured its contents.
The light of the lantern revealed the face of a man still young, but at least a half-score years my elder. He had a thin-lipped, sensitive mouth, a great arched nose, and quick, eager eyes. His mind was running like a mill-race, and his fine face twitched and wreathed and wrinkled under the stress of the flow. Another thing plain enough was that the old man had lied when he said his master was abed, for he was fully and carefully dressed and his wig had not in it a single displaced or unravelled curl. This was no half-awakened dreamer, but a man with the issues of his life at stake.
He crushed the letter in his hand and paced up and down the hall, muttering to himself. I turned and rubbed Sultan's nose to keep him quiet and happy. The old servant took charge of the lantern again, and followed his master up and down with his eyes.
"A year ago, yes! A year ago, yes!" I heard Sir James say. He quickened his steps and the words came in jerks, mere nouns with verbs too big with meaning for him to utter them. "A word! A dream! A dead faith! Yes, father! The devil! Sweetheart!"
There is a great line in the Aeneid which I had tried in vain a hundred times to translate. Three days agone I would have tilted at it once more with all the untutored zeal of a verbalist. I should never need to try again. There are some lines in the Master that life alone can translate. Sunt lachrymae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.
After a turn or two in silence, Sir James broke off his pacing and came to me.
"Sir," he said, "you will know enough to excuse my inattention to a guest. I must make it up if I can. Give me the lantern and wait for us here, Inskip. Come with me, sir, and stable your horse. Gad so, sir," holding up the lantern, "you ride the noblest animal I have ever seen. Woa, ho, my beauty! All my men are abed, so we must do it ourselves, but, by Heaven, it will be a pleasure, Master--what may I call you, sir?"
"Just the plain name of my fathers--Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards."
"A good strong name, sir, though my fathers liked it not."
"And you, Sir James?"
"Frankly, it is a name which to me has ceased to be a symbol. A good fellow can call himself 'Oliver' without setting my teeth on edge. I had a grand foxhound once, and called him 'Noll,' just because he was grand. My dear old father consulted a London doctor as to the state of my mind. It made him anxious, you see! The great man said, gruffly enough, that I was as sane as a jackdaw. Thereupon my dear dad, one of the best men that ever lived, had the dog shot!"
He laughed, reminiscently rather than merrily, and was to my mind bent on getting a grip on himself again. We made Sultan comfortable for the night, and then Sir James courteously said it was high time to be attending to me. He made no further indirect reference to the situation, until, as he was leading me along the hall, he stopped opposite a great dim picture, hanging between two sets of mail, and held the lantern high over his head to give me a view of it. With a strange mixture of resentment and pathos, he said, "A man's ancestors are sometimes a damned nuisance, sir!"
"They are indeed!" I replied. "There's one of mine shaking his fist at me over the battlements of the New Jerusalem."
He laughed heartily, and, with Inskip trailing patiently behind us, led me upstairs, and through the gallery into a long corridor, lit by lanterns fixed in sconces on the walls. We stopped opposite a door, and he was about to lead me in when another door farther along the corridor opened and a lady came out. She was all in white with dark hair hanging loose about her shoulders, and there was a something in her arms.
Down went the lantern with a bang, and Sir James flew like a hunted buck along the corridor. He whipped his arms around the lady and kissed her passionately, and then flung on his knees and held out his arms. She put the something in white into them and there was a little puling cry.
"Married a year come Christmas," whispered old Inskip, "and the babby's five weeks old to-morrow."
A serving-woman bustled out of another room, and the lady and child were affectionately driven off to bed under her escort. Sir James came slowly back.
"My wife and son, Mr. Wheatman," he said. "You must meet them to-morrow. The young rascal cries out whenever I desecrate him with my touch. It would have served him right to have christened him 'Oliver.'"
I laughed heartily, for he was fighting himself again by gibing at me. He sent off the old man to scour the pantry for a supper for me, and then pushed open the door and led me into the room.
For size and dignity, it was a room to take away the breath of a poor yeoman. It seemed to me a Sabbath day's journey to the great blazing hearth, where two men were sitting; the high white ceiling was moulded into a wondrous design, with great carved pendants hanging from it like icicles from the eaves of the Hanyards. Many bookcases ran half-way up the walls round the greater part of the room, filled with stores of books such as my heart had never dreamed of, great leather-bound folios by platoons, and quartos by regiments. If I could get permission I would steal an hour or two from sleep to eye them over, and as we walked towards the hearth I got behind my host in my slowness and had to step up smartly to get level with him to make my bow of introduction. I gasped with the shock as I stepped into the arms of Master John Freake.
"My dear lad," he cried, "what luck! What luck! How are you? How are they?"
He made me sit down beside him, for here as elsewhere he was easily the most important man present, though his bearing was ever quiet and modest. He spoke of me to Sir James in warm and kindly phrases, and it soon became manifest that his good word was a passport into my host's confidence and regard. The three gentlemen filled their glasses and toasted me with grave courtesy, and I easily slid out of the uneasy mood into which Inskip's candour and my unaccustomed surroundings had driven me.
The third man present was a Welsh baronet, Sir Griffith Williams, a far-away cousin and close friend of Sir Watkin Wynne, whose name I remembered to have heard on the Colonel's lips at Leek. Sir Griffith was a brisk, apple-cheeked man of forty or thereabouts, very fluent of speech in somewhat uncertain English, with fewer ideas in his head than there are pips in a codlin, but what there were of them singularly clear and precise. He reminded me of Joe Braggs, who could only whistle three tunes, but whistled them like a lark.
Inskip brought me a rare dish of venison-pie and various other good things, and laid out the table for me. I left Master Freake's side to eat my supper and listen to their talk.
They made various false starts, followed by dead silences. It was clean useless for Sir James to talk about his baby. Sir Griffith had had a long family and so had exhausted the topic years ago, whilst Master Freake, a bachelor, knew nothing about it. There had been a great flood in the Welshman's valley in the autumn and he harangued upon it in style, and not without gleams of native poetry, but Sir James had never seen a flood and Master Freake had never been to Wales, so the flood soon dried up.
There was a silence for some minutes, busy minutes for me with an apple tart that was sublime with some cream to it, and I was settling down to the sweet content of the well-fed when Sir James broke out.
"Mr. Wheatman has brought me an invitation, hardly to be distinguished from a command, to meet His Royal Highness at the Poles' place tomorrow."
The eager Welshman bounced on to his feet, raised his glass and said, "To the Prince, God bless him." Sir James had to follow his example, though he was in no mood for it, and it would have looked ill had I not joined in, and moreover the wine was excellent.
"You will excuse me, gentlemen," said Master Freake. "I am not clear which Royal Highness is referred to, and besides I have no politics."
"God bless him," bubbled the Welshman. "I shall join him when he has crossed the Trent."
Again there was silence for a space.
"So the question is put, and I must give my answer," said Sir James, breaking the stillness. "I must put my hand to the plough or draw back. I must keep my word or break it. Can I be loyal to my father's creed and also to my child's interests? I've got to be both if I can. If I can't be both, which is to have the go-by? Fate has put me in a cleft stick, Master Wheatman. On his death-bed my father handed on to me his place in the old faith. He was a devoted adherent of the exiled House, the close friend and associate of Honest Shippen, and even more intimately concerned than he in the underground network of intrigue and preparation which was constantly being woven, ruined, and re-woven up to his death ten years ago. He left me poor and encumbered with debt, for he had been prodigal in his sacrifices for the cause. It is a wonder that he died in his bed rather than on the block, but he was as wary as he was zealous. For nine years I lived here the life of a hermit, alone with my debts and my books. Then I met a young girl"--his voice broke badly--"who became to me the all-in-all of my life. By good fortune I also met Master Freake, who took my affairs in hand for me and has helped me wisely and generously."
"For ten per cent, Oliver," interrupted Master Freake.
"Nonsense! Wisely and generously, I repeat," said Sir James warmly.
"For ten per cent on good security, I repeat," answered Master Freake gravely.
"Damn your ten per cent!"
"Looks like it, and the security into the bargain!" said Master Freake very quickly.
"Swounds! that's just it!" said Sir James. He rose and paced backwards and forwards between me and the hearth. "A year ago, sir,"--he addressed me in particular--"I should have shouted with joy at the summons to take the place among the adherents of the cause which my father would have held had he lived, and which it was his heart's wish on his death-bed that I should take for him. The cause and the creed are nothing to me as such, for I place no value on either. Your talk about the right divine of old Mr. Melancholy, mumming and mimicking away there at Rome, makes me smile. He's an old fool, that's the long and short of it. But a Blount's a Blount after all. I owe something to my ancestors. My word to my father ought not to be an empty breath. Yet here I am, with all the interests of life pulling one way--wait till you've a boy five weeks old by a wife you'd be cut in little pieces for, and you'll know, sir,--and a dead father and a dead creed pulling the other. I knew what was coming, and I've talked about it and thought about it till my head's like a bee-hive. Now, sir, give me your advice!"
"I have joined the standard of your Prince," I said.
"Damme, sir, you mock me. That's not advice. That's torture."
"I have turned my back on the creed of my life and on every sound instinct in me," I continued.
He stopped his walk and looked intently at me.
"I have ancestors whose memory I cherish, and I have torn up their work as if it were a scrap of paper covered with a child's meaningless scribble."
Sir James stepped up to the table, his fine face alive with emotion.
"For what?" he asked.
I rose and looked straight into his eyes.
"For a woman," I whispered, very low but very proudly.
Our hands met across the table in a hard grip.
"You have done well, sir!" he said. "I asked you to give me advice. You have set me an example."
He sat down again, and looked hopefully at the fire and then moodily at Master Freake.
"There is this unfortunate difference between Mr. Wheatman's case and mine. I have, and he has not, given my plain word to a father."
"I admit that is a striking difference," said Master Freake. "I am no Jesuit, however, and cannot decide cases of conscience. I deal with business problems only, which are all cut and dry, legal and formal. When I make a promise in the way of business I always keep it precisely and punctually, for the penalty of failure to do so is a business man's death--bankruptcy."
"There's such a thing as moral bankruptcy," said Sir James gloomily.
"Very likely," replied Master Freake.
"This is all nothing whatefer but words, words, words," said the Welshman. "And words, my goot sirs, are indeed no goot whatefer. Sir James's head is wrapped up in a mist of words, words, words, and indeed he cannot see anything whatefer. I am not a man of words, and what you call 'em--broblems."
"Very good," said I.
"Indeed it is goot," said he. "To hell with your words and your broblems. They are of no use whatefer, whatefer. Our good friend, Sir James, is up to his neck in broblems like a man in a bog, and he cannot move. Now I have not your broblems. To hell with your broblems. My Cousin Wynne is full of 'em, and he's still gaping up at the cloud on Snowdon, while I'm here, ready. I say plain: if the Prince cross south of the Trent I will join him."
"Why the Trent?" said I.
"It is my mark. It is my way of knowing what I will do. It is all so simple. Indeed I am a simple man, not a broblem in my brain, none whatefer, I tell you plain. It is as this--so. If the Prince cross the Trent, say I to myself, well and goot. He do his share. It is time for me to do mine. It is better indeed, I tell you plain, to have it settled by a simple thing like the Trent than to have it all muddled up by your broblems. I can sing you off my ancestors by dozens, right back to the standard-bearer of the great Llewellyn, but they're all dead, and indeed I'm not going to poke about among their bones to find out what to do. I look at your pretty river, and I wait."
Sir James had looked at him during this harangue with unconcealed impatience.
"I sent a letter to Chartley of Chartley Towers," he said, "one of us, and a strong one by all accounts. At any rate, my father always reckoned him as such. So I asked him guardedly what he thought, and his reply was, 'The chestnut is on the hob. I am waiting to see whether it jumps into the fire or into the fender.' I cannot decide by appealing to rivers or nuts. There's much more in it than that."
Fate snatched the problem out of his hands. Without a tap, without a word, the door of the room was flung open, and a dozen troopers filed swiftly and silently in, and covered us with their carbines. An officer, sword in hand, pushed through a gap in their line and stepped half a dozen paces towards us. He saluted us ceremoniously with his sword and said, "In the King's name!" Behind the line a man in citizen clothes hovered uncertainly, and dim as the light was I made him out only too plainly. It was the Government spy, Weir. My goose was cooked. I had played for life's highest stake, and thrown amb's ace. It was good-bye to Margaret.
The Welshman stuck to his chair, stolid as his native hills. Master Freake, whose back was to the new-comers, made a swift half turn, and then he, too, settled down again as indifferently as if the interruption had only been old Inskip with the bedward candles. Blount leaped to his feet, livid with rage, and strode up to the officer.
"My Lord Tiverton, what does this intrusion mean?" he demanded.
"It means," was the composed reply, "that if any one of you makes the slightest attempt to resist, he will be shot out of hand. Close up, lads, and cover your men!"
The order was obeyed briskly and exactly. The three on the left of the line attended to me, and I sat there, toying with a wine-glass for appearance sake, though the three brown barrels levelled straight and steady at my head made my heart rattle like a stone in a can. These were none of Brocton's untrained grey-coats, but precise, disciplined veterans in blue tunics and mitre-shaped hats, white breeches and high boots, belted, buttoned, and bepouched. It was almost a compliment to be shot by such tall fellows.
Seeing we were all harmless, the officer dropped his military preciseness as if it were an ill-fitting garment. He was the daintiest, handsomest wisp of a man I had ever set eyes on, and looked for all the world like an exquisite figure in Dresden china come to life. He could not have had much soldiering--the air and aroma of the London salon still hung closely around him--and he was so very self-possessed that he was play-acting half his time, doing everything with a grace and relish that were highly diverting. It took all my pride in my new hat out of me to see this desirable little picture of a man.
"I assure you, my dear Sir James," he said, "that it's a damned annoying thing to me to have to act so unhandsomely. Stap me! I shouldn't like it myself, but law's law and duty's duty, and so on, you know the old tale, and I'm obleeged to do it."
He opened his snuff-box and offered it to Sir James, who brusquely waved it aside, saying, "Your explanation, if you please, my lord!"
"Damme, don't be peevish! Smoke the Venus in the lid? Isn't she a sparkler? Wish I'd lived in the times when ladies lay about on seashores like it! I hate these damned crinolines. Saw Somerset in 'em in the Pantiles. Could have pushed her over and trundled her like a barrel."
"My lord," reiterated Blount, "I await your explanation."
"Boot's on the other leg," he chirped. "A'nt I pouched you all cleverly, stap me, seeing the ink on my commission's hardly dry? Didn't think it was in me!"
"I will take the authority of your commission as sufficient, my lord, the times being what they are. But will you be good enough to tell me why you come?"
"Gadso! Certainly! There's a dirty rascal in pewter buttons behind there--come here, sir, and let Sir James see your ugly face!--who says you're a disloyal person, a traitor, and so forth. I don't believe him. I wouldn't crack a flea on his unsupported testimony, but he's in the know of things, and showed me a commission from Mr. Secretary, calling on His Majesty's liege subjects, etc., you know the run of it, and I was bound to look into it. Charges are charges, stap me if they a'nt. Don't come too near, pig's eyes! Out with your tale!"
His lordship plainly disliked the whole business, and it was a very awkward thing for Sir James that I was here, a circumstantial piece of evidence against him. I looked straight into Weir's eyes as he came forward, ungainly and uncertainly, smiling half his dirty teeth bare, and mopping his yellowy face with a dirty handkerchief. To my astonishment he made not a single sign of recognition. I was his trump card, and he left me unplayed.
"Sir James is a known Jacobite, my lord!" he quavered.
"Quite right, Mr. Weir, and if you propose to keep me out of bed these cold nights calling on known Jacobites, stap my vitals, Mr. Weir, if I don't have you flung into a pond with a brick tied round your sweaty neck like an unwanted pup. Anything else?"
"This is a Jacobite plot, my lord. There's scheming and plotting against our gracious lord the King agoing on here, my lord."
"I'll e'en have a closer look at 'em. Plots are damned interesting things, stap me if they a'nt, and I'm glad to see one. Here's a likely young fellow," striding up and examining me. "His is a plot in a meat-pie, it seems. There was one in a meal-tub once, I remember, so the meat-pie does look mighty suspicious, Mr. Weir. We're getting on. And here's a plotter toasting his toes. Not an intelligent member of the cabal. Stap me, if he a'nt asleep! I must circumambulate and have a quiz at him."
He walked gaily in his play-acting way round Master Freake's chair on to the hearth and then turned and took a peep at him. As soon as he had done so he gave a great shout, and then, recovering himself, burst into a roar of laughter. He clapped his hands on his knees and fairly swayed with merriment. Master Freake looked at him with a sedate half-smile, and said, "How d'ye do, my lord?"
"Very well, thankee!" cried his lordship gaily, too gaily. "Damme! It's the funniest thing that's happened since Noah came out of the Ark. Come here, spy! Mean to tell me this is a Jacobite?"
As the spy crept near, Master Freake stood up, wheeled round on him smartly, and said, "How d'ye do, Turnditch?"
"Stap me!" cried his lordship. "His name's Weir!"
"He will know me better if I call him Turnditch," said Master Freake icily.
He spoke unmistakable truth. I could see the shadow of the gallows fall across the man's face. What stiffening there was in him oozed out, and he stood there wriggling in an agony of apprehension, like a worm in a chicken's beak. Master Freake knew him to the bottom of his muddy soul. My Lord Tiverton was a man of another mould, but he too was in the hands of his master. Plain John Freake, citizen of London, had taken a hand in this game of fate, and had thrown double six.
This noble room had seen the agonizings and rejoicings of a dozen generations of the sons of men, but nothing to surpass this scene in living interest. They come back to me now--the line of blue-and-white troopers, still with levelled carbines; the stolid Welshman, as indifferent as Snowdon; the dapper nobleman, still polished and lightsome, no longer play-acting but rather vaguely anxious; the high-minded troubled Jacobite, fear for his wife and babe gnawing at his heart; the spy, Weir or Turnditch, with the noose he had made for another drawn round his own neck; Master John Freake, the quiet, Quakerlike merchant, whose power was rooted deep in those far haunts of the world's trade, so that we were here shadowed and protected by the uttermost branches thereof. Last of all I remember myself, with my heart thrumming good-morrow to Margaret.
"Come now, Houndsditch, or Turndish, or whatever it is," said his lordship. "Precisely what have you to say?"
The poor devil had nothing to say. He was aflame to be off and out of Master Freake's eyesight. He choked up something about mistakes, and zeal, and forgiveness.
"That's enough! Out you go, the whole damn lot of you!" cried my lord. These not being familiar military words of command, the men stuck there like skittles. "Ground arms, or whatever it is!" he continued. "About turn! Quick march!"
Their sergeant took charge of them and they filed out. Sir James followed them and became their host, routing out servants to wait on them.
As soon as the door was closed on Sir James, his lordship hastened to Master Freake's side, and entered into low and earnest conversation with him. I walked across to the folios, hoping to find amongst them an editio princeps of Virgil, but was recalled by a loud "Oliver" from Master Freake.
"Oliver," he said, when I reached his chair, "I should like you to know the most noble the Marquess of Tiverton!"
I bowed, and his lordship bowed in reply, and said light and pleasant things about our meeting. Then, vowing he was monstrous hungry, he tackled the venison pasty, summoning me to sit opposite him.
"Gadso! I am sharp-set," he said, and indeed he ate with the zeal of a plough-lad. He pushed me over his snuff-box, which nearly made me sneeze before I took the snuff.
"It really is a masterpiece," he said, in a pause between pasty and pie. "I shall never hear the last of it at the 'Cocoa Tree' and White's. Stap me, I shan't want to! It's too good. The tale will keep my memory green when that old mummy, Newcastle, is dust at last."
"What tale?" said I.
"D'ye know why, a month ago, I badgered Newcastle into getting me a company in the Blues?"
"Not the faintest idea!"
He leaned across the table and, from under cover of me, nodded towards Master Freake, now talking with the Welsh-man. "To get out of his way!" he whispered.
I looked incredulous, whereupon his lordship tapped his pocket significantly.
"He's a damned good fellow. He gave me another six months without a murmur. Wish I'd known! There'd have been no campaigning for me. I prefer the Mall!"
So he said now, yet he was as steady as a wall and as bold as a lion at Culloden. He came of a great stock, and greatness was natural to him. The play-acting and gaming was only the fringe that Society had tacked on to him. It lessoned me finely to see him when Sir James came back into the room. Tiverton knew the position by instinct.
"Sir James," he said, "I crave a word with you."
"At your service, my lord."
"I will be frank," continued his lordship. "I ask no questions. I make no inferences. I simply point out that the spy fell to pieces because he found Mr. Freake here."
"I observed so much, my lord!"
"I don't know why," said the Marquess dubiously.
"I could hang him at the next assizes," interrupted Master Freake.
"I see. He doesn't want to be hanged, of course. No one does. It's a perfectly natural feeling. So he crumpled up at the prospect."
"Yes, my lord," said Sir James.
"I allowed him to crumple up, and I took full advantage of the fact. You saw so much?"
"I did."
"Now, Sir James, you, as a Blount, that is, as a man bearing an honoured name, are under the strictest obligation to me to see that I can say, if my conduct is challenged, that I saw nothing here because there was nothing to see. I have put myself absolutely in your power, Sir James. Whoever else joins the Prince, you must not, or you take my head along with you."
It was well and truly said, and there was no posing about it. Sir James Blount's problem was settled. He taught me something too, for all he did was to put out his hand.
"There's an end of Tundish!" said Tiverton, grasping it firmly. "And it's the best end too, for the Highland army hasn't a snowball's chance in hell."
He turned at once to banter me on my indifference to art, seeing that I had sniffed at a miniature by one of the most famous artists at the French Court. I let him rattle on, for my eye was on Sir James, who was rolling something in his hands. A moment later the Prince's letter went up in a tongue of flame and burnt along with it the Jacobitism of the Blounts.
A knock at the door interrupted his lordship's valuation of art and artists of the French school, and his sergeant entered to say that his men were in the saddle.
"Campaigning be damned!" said his captain wearily.
"Beg pardon, my lord," added the sergeant, "but Mr. What's-his-name has cut off."
"Good riddance. He's gone back to his crony at the 'Black Swan.'"
"Yes, my lord. T'other's a sergeant in my Lord Brocton's dragoons."
"Ah, I saw they were hob-and-nob together. A fellow with a ditch in his face you could lay a finger in!"
Fortunately for me, the Marquess was busy with a last glass of wine. Here was ill news with a vengeance. I had got out of the smoke into the smother.
"My lord," said Master Freake, "there is a man of mine, one Dot Gibson, at the 'Black Swan,' and I shall be greatly beholden to you if you will let your sergeant carry him a note of instructions from me."
"Stap me! I'll take it myself," cried his lordship heartily.
Master Freake went to a table to write the note. I knew now who it was that had given me the warning. My lord pocketed the note and we all crept quietly down to the main door to see him off. The guards made a gallant show in the brilliant moonlight, and Master Freake, taking my arm, dragged me out to watch them canter across the stretch of meadow, and drop out of sight down the hill.
"Sleep in peace, Oliver," he said. "Dot Gibson will give us early news of the movements of the enemy."
Then we strolled back, talking of the Colonel and Margaret.
