Part 43 (1/2)
Clifford disconcerted the pug; and crossing the threshold, cried in aloud tone, ”Janseen!”
”Here!” answered a gruff voice; and Clifford, pa.s.sing on, came to a small parlour adjoining the tap. There, seated by a round oak table, he found mine host,--a red, fierce, weather-beaten, but bloated-looking personage, like d.i.c.k Hatteraick in a dropsy.
”How now, Captain!” cried he, in a gutteral accent, and interlarding his discourse with certain Dutch graces, which with our reader's leave we will omit, as being unable to spell them; ”how now!--not gone yet!”
”No! I start for the coast to-morrow; business keeps me to-day. I came to ask if Mellon may be fully depended on?”
”Ay, honest to the back-bone.”
”And you are sure that in spite of my late delays he will not have left the village?”
”Sure! What else can I be? Don't I know Jack Mellon these twenty years!
He would lie like a log in a calm for ten months together, without moving a hair's-breadth, if he was under orders.”
”And his vessel is swift and well manned, in case of an officer's chase?”
”The 'Black Molly' swift? Ask your grandmother. The 'Black Molly' would outstrip a shark.”
”Then good-by, Janseen; there is something to keep your pipe alight. We shall not meet within the three seas again, I think. England is as much too hot for me as Holland for you!”
”You are a capital fellow!” cried mine host, shaking Clifford by the hand; ”and when the lads come to know their loss, they will know they have lost the bravest and truest gill that ever took to the toby; so good-by, and be d---d to you!”
With this valedictory benediction mine host released Clifford; and the robber hastened to his appointment at the Three Feathers.
He found all prepared. He hastily put on his disguise; and his follower led out his horse,--a n.o.ble animal of the grand Irish breed, of remarkable strength and bone, and save only that it was somewhat sharp in the quarters (a fault which they who look for speed as well as grace will easily forgive), of most unequalled beauty in its symmetry and proportions.
Well did the courser know, and proudly did it render obeisance to, its master; snorting impatiently and rearing from the hand of the attendant robber, the sagacious animal freed itself of the rein, and as it tossed its long mane in the breeze of the fresh air, came trotting to the place where Clifford stood.
”So ho, Robin! so ho! What, thou chafest that I have left thy fellow behind at the Red Cave! Him we may never see more. But while I have life, I will not leave thee, Robin!” With these words the robber fondly stroked the s.h.i.+ning neck of his favourite steed; and as the animal returned the caress by rubbing its head against the hands and the athletic breast of its master, Clifford felt at his heart somewhat of that old racy stir of the blood which had been once to him the chief charm of his criminal profession, and which in the late change of his feelings he had almost forgotten.
”Well, Robin, well,” he renewed, as he kissed the face of his steed,--”well, we will have some days like our old ones yet; thou shalt say, Ha! ha! to the trumpet, and bear thy master along on more glorious enterprises than he has yet thanked thee for sharing. Thou wilt now be my only familiar, my only friend, Robin; we two shall be strangers in a foreign land. But thou wilt make thyself welcome easier than thy lord, Robin; and thou wilt forget the old days and thine old comrades and thine old loves, when--Ha!” and Clifford turned abruptly to his attendant, who addressed him; ”It is late, you say. True! Look you, it will be unwise for us both to quit London together. You know the sixth milestone; join me there, and we can proceed in company!”
Not unwilling to linger for a parting cup, the comrade a.s.sented to the prudence of the plan proposed; and after one or two additional words of caution and advice, Clifford mounted and rode from the yard of the inn. As he pa.s.sed through the tall wooden gates into the street, the imperfect gleam of the wintry sun falling over himself and his steed, it was scarcely possible, even in spite of his disguise and rude garb, to conceive a more gallant and striking specimen of the lawless and daring tribe to which he belonged; the height, strength, beauty, and exquisite grooming visible in the steed; the sparkling eye, the bold profile, the sinewy chest, the graceful limbs, and the careless and practised horsemans.h.i.+p of the rider.
Looking after his chief with a long and an admiring gaze, the robber said to the hostler of the inn, an aged and withered man, who had seen nine generations of highwaymen rise and vanish,--
”There, Joe, when did you ever look on a hero like that? The bravest heart, the frankest hand, the best judge of a horse, and the handsomest man that ever did honour to Hounslow!”
”For all that,” returned the hostler, shaking his palsied head, and turning back to the tap-room,--”for all that, master, his time be up.
Mark my whids, Captain Lovett will not be over the year,--no, nor mayhap the month!”
”Why, you old rascal, what makes you so wise? You will not peach, I suppose!”
”I peach! Devil a bit! But there never was the gemman of the road, great or small, knowing or stupid, as outlived his seventh year. And this will be the captain's seventh, come the 21st of next month; but he be a fine chap, and I'll go to his hanging!”
”Fis.h.!.+” said the robber, peevishly,--he himself was verging towards the end of his sixth year,--”pis.h.!.+”
”Mind, I tells it you, master; and somehow or other I thinks--and I has experience in these things--by the fey, of his eye and the drop of his lip, that the captain's time will be up to-day!”
[Fey--A word difficult to translate; but the closest interpretation of which is, perhaps, ”the ill omen.”]
Here the robber lost all patience, and pus.h.i.+ng the h.o.a.ry boder of evil against the wall, he turned on his heel, and sought some more agreeable companion to share his stirrup-cup.