Part 11 (2/2)
puzzled me, but it did not seem anything of consequence. What had I but the Hanyards to solace him with? A more important puzzle had been his behaviour at Master Dobson's. To find me on the royal side, as he then supposed, and to hear my reason for it, had clean dazed him. Then there was the look, a signal-look beyond a doubt, which I had surprised him giving his bully, Major Pimple-face, and which was followed by the latter's attempt to embroil the stranger from London in a row.
”It is useless, Master Wheatman, to speculate further on what Lord Brocton is doing,” said my mistress at last. ”He has his ends. I am one of them. Another is, no doubt, to fill his pockets, somehow or other. It was common talk in town that he was head over ears in debt.”
While we had talked and had rested, I had not been idle. d.i.c.k Doley's roomy kitchen had two windows, one overlooking the cart-track, and another the slope of the hill. The hill was so made and the house so placed that from this second window we could see the strip of road at the bottom of the hill where it curved on to the level again. I had kept a sharp look out on that bit, but had seen no one pa.s.s along it either way as yet.
In one corner of the room d.i.c.k kept an ancient fowling-piece, more of a tool of husbandry than a weapon, since his only use for it was to scare birds. It was a heavy, unhandy thing, with a bra.s.s barrel down which I could have dropped a sizable duck egg, and round its thick-rimmed nozzle some one had rudely graven, ”Happy is he that escapeth me.” I fetched it out of its corner, and cleaned and oiled it. I now loaded it, for powder-horn and shot-bag hung near it on the wall, putting in a handful of the biggest sort of shot, swan-shot as I should call them. During this task, Mistress Waynflete watched me narrowly, but made no reference to it.
”Now,” said I, ”our main requisite is the stuff, the ready, the rhino, the swag--call it what you will. How do you fancy me as a knight of the road? The first copper-faced farmer I come across shall surely stand and deliver. Here's an argument he cannot resist.”
At last my scrutiny of the road was rewarded. A solitary horseman came in sight from the direction of the town.
”Mistress Waynflete,” said I, picking up the fowling-piece, ”there's a traveller yonder coming from Stafford. It will be well if I go and ask him a few questions.”
She almost leaped at me, red anger flas.h.i.+ng in her eyes but her face white as milk. ”Sir,” she said, ”you shall not turn thief for me. I will not have it.”
”Pray, madam,” replied I huffily, ”expound the moral difference between stealing ham and stealing guineas. I'm all for morality.”
”I cannot, Master Wheatman, but you must not, shall not go.” She caught hold of my sleeve. ”Say you won't! If you are found out it means--”
”I shall not be found out. You may take that for sure. Think you that I cannot pluck yon chough without being pinched? It's no more robbery than our eating d.i.c.k's ham and eggs. We are soldiers in enemy's country, and we plunder by right of the known rules of war. As a concession to your prejudices in favour of the jog-trot morality of peace, I will e'en ask him whether he be for James or George, and borrow or command his guineas in accordance with his reply. Loose my sleeve, madam!”
I loosened the grip of her fingers, and led her back to her chair. ”You overrate my danger, sweet mistress, and under rate our need. Without money, we might as well lie under the nearest hedge and leave Jack Frost to settle matters his way, and a cold, nasty way it would be. Your guinea is a good fighter, and we need his help. It must be done, and, never fear, I'll carry it through safely.”
So I left her, white hands grappling the arms of her chair, and white face turned away from me.
CHAPTER IX
MY CAREER AS A HIGHWAYMAN
I left the cottage from the rear and struck slantwise across the fields to reach the shelter of the trees and undergrowth that covered the slope down to the road. I ran hard so as to shake irresolution out of my mind, for I found myself half wis.h.i.+ng that Mistress Waynflete had pleaded with me at first instead of trying to thrust me out of my plan. After all the highwayman's was hardly my calling in life. So I ran hard, saying to myself that it must be done, and the sooner it was over the better. Then I laughed. With my rusty old birding-piece I was as ill-equipped for highwaymans.h.i.+p as I was for farming with my Georgics. ”Stand and deliver,”
quoth I to myself, ”or I'll double your weight with swan-shot.” Were the unknown horseman a resolute man armed with a hair-trigger, I was as good as done for.
Arrived in the shelter of the wood, I began picking my way through the thick undergrowth towards the road. Fallen branchlets snapped beneath my heedless feet and the sounds rang in my ears like pistol-shots. A saucy robin c.o.c.ked his care-free eye on me from the top of a crab-tree, and I could have envied him as I stumbled by. It was perhaps fourscore yards through, and half-way I stopped to listen. Yes, there came to my ear the slow trot-ot-ot of hoofs on the hard road. I went on again until, through the leafless tangle, I began to get glimpses of the highway. My fate was dragging me on. In a month's time my shrivelling carcase might be swinging in chains on the top of Wes'on Bank, an ensample to evil-doers. The thought made me s.h.i.+ver, and I jerked out a broken prayer that my intended victim might turn out some fat, unarmed farmer, as easy a prey as an over-fed gander. Then I cursed myself for a fool. No man can mortgage past piety for present sin. Who was I that I should be allowed to steal on good security?
Trot-ot-ot. Trot-ot-ot. He was within easy shot now, and I stopped to make sure of my rickety old weapon. A dragoon's musket would not have needed such constant care. ”Life turns on trifles,” said Mistress Waynflete.
In lifting my eyes from the priming to move on again, something in the line of vision made me start. On my left, less than a dozen paces from me, there lay on the ground, on a clean patch beneath a conspicuously-forked hawthorn, a man's jacket and plumed hat.
A lion playing with a lamb would not have given me pause more abruptly. I stole silently up to them. They were fine but somewhat faded garments, modish and even foppish, and, so far as I could distinguish any peculiarity, military in appearance, and evidently belonged to a person of some quality. Nor had they been flung there in haste, for the coat was neatly folded and the hat disposed carefully on top of it. How long had they been there? I picked up the hat, and there was still the gloss of recent sweat on its inside brim.
This, however, was no time for idle problems, a very urgent one being on hand. Forward I crept to the side of the road, and, lying flat down on the ground, pushed the stock of my gun on to the short gra.s.s, and peeped cautiously to my right down the hill. I was about thirty or forty yards from a bend in the road, and had intended to be much less, but my discovery and my confused, half-conscious thinking about it, had deflected me a little from my course.
Trot-ot-ot. He would be in sight in a few seconds. Trot-ot-ot, plainer than ever, and there he was. The moment that he was in full view I made an astonis.h.i.+ng discovery, and saw an astonis.h.i.+ng sight.
The discovery was that the solitary horseman, walking his powerful grey with a slack rein, and lost in thought, was Master Freake.
The sight was the rush of three men from their lurking-places in the brushwood. Two of them were soldiers, and Brocton's dragoons at that, a sample of the town-sweepings Jack had complained of. One seized the reins, the other held a carbine point-blank at the horseman's head.
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