CHAPTER V RISKS

At last the tall gentleman turned to his friends. Everell saw Georgiana disappear into the coach with the older ladies; saw the two gentlemen spring into the chaise, after casting doles to the yard servants; saw the two maids established upon outside seats, the valets mounted, the postilion up before the chaise, the coachman gather his reins and whip; saw the procession move off, with Caleb at the head to show the way, the coach next, the chaise following, and the trim London lackey riding behind all the rest. Everell followed as far as to the door, where still stood Roughwood. The coach had already turned down the High Street.

“She’s gone,” said he. “But not far—only to Foxwell Court.”

“Pray, where and what is Foxwell Court?” asked Roughwood, leading him by the arm into the parlour.

“I know not, but ’tis easily learned.”

“No doubt, but we shall do better to restrain our curiosity. I trust we shall have nothing more to excite it—or to tempt you to mingle unnecessarily in miscellaneous crowds from inn kitchens.”

“My dear Will,” cried Everell, “my going among that crowd was a stroke of heaven-sent luck. I received a most valuable warning—and from her, too! Think of it, those sweet lips, those heavenly eyes, that—”

“Warning? What do you mean?”

Everell told him.

“H’m!” said Roughwood. “That explains her maid’s conduct. Somebody had described you to the maid—somebody now up-stairs.”

“Yes, and the maid no sooner tells her of it than she takes the first opportunity to put us on our guard, at the risk even of her good name. What divine compassion! What—”

“And the somebody up-stairs? No doubt your acquaintance of yesterday. Why, he may chance upon us at any moment, and give the alarm. And, if he has mentioned you to the maid, why not to a whole kitchenful of people? ’Tis high time indeed we were out of this place. How slow they are with the horses! We should be in another county by sunset.”

“Ay, dear Will, you should—and must.”

“I should? We should. Here are the horses at last. Come.” Roughwood seized the cloak-bags.

“Nay, Will, I—I will follow a little later,” said Everell, taking his own piece of luggage.

“Later? Are you mad?—Come, come, no nonsense, Charles. You will go with me, of course.”

“From this inn, certainly. But from this neighbourhood not for a—day or two. I mention it now, so that the boy need hear no discussion between us. I will ride with you a mile or so, then take my own way afoot. The boy, of course, must keep his horses together.—I will follow you, I say: I can find your man Budge. Let his house be our rendezvous,—I can find it from your description,—and of course I will appear thereabouts only at night. Instruct him to be on the watch for me. If he can sail before I arrive, make good your own escape, and bid him expect me on his return. That is all, I think; and now to horse.”

“But, my dear lad,—my dear, dear lad,—what folly is this? Hear reason; you must be guided by me. You know not what you would risk—”

“No more than I’ve risked before now, and for no such cause, either. ’Tis settled, Will, I intend to stay hereabouts till I’ve seen that young lady again. Come, the boy is waiting with the horses. ’Tis you now that delays our going.”

“Charles, listen to me!—Rash! foolish! mad!”

“No.—I said you should hear when I saw the right face, Will. I declare I’ve seen it—and must see it again, whatever be the cost or the consequence.”

In another minute they were on horseback, moving down the High Street. The coach and chaise had started in the same direction, but were now out of sight. Everell hoped to come nearly up to them, that he might see where they left the highroad. But even after he had cleared the town and beheld a straight stretch of road far ahead, he found no sign of the vehicles in which he was interested. He inferred that they must have turned off through one of the streets of the town, which was indeed the case.

Meanwhile, Roughwood, full of sadness and misgiving, had kept up his usual vigilance so far as to watch their guide for possible signs of having heard any such talk at the inn as had enabled the maid Prudence to identify Everell. But the boy did not regard either of the gentlemen at all suspiciously; he showed no curiosity or interest, and Roughwood was assured that, if Everell’s enemy had spoken of them at the inn, this lad had not been a listener. Such, as the reader knows, was the case, for Mr. Filson had thus far confided his story to nobody in the house but Prudence, and she had excluded herself from the conversation of the kitchen under a sense of affront, until summoned by her mistress. Georgiana, upon hearing the cause of her alarm at the sight of the young stranger, had put the girl under the strictest commands of secrecy, and had kept her in attendance afterward, quietly returning to Foxwell and his friends as they were making ready to depart.

While he still rode with his friend, Everell allowed no mention of his resolve or of Foxwell Court to escape him, for he knew that the guide, whom Roughwood would dismiss at the end of that stage, would be returning with the horses, and might be interrogated by their enemy, who by that time would probably have learned of their short stay at the inn. On the other hand, Everell devoted some conversation to the purpose of deceiving the boy as to his reasons and intentions in leaving his friend and his saddle as he was about to do. Observing a house among some trees upon a hill, he pointed it out to Roughwood as the residence of a friend whom he meant to surprise with a brief visit. Having spoken to this effect, as if the matter had been previously understood between them, he added that, in order to make the surprise complete, he would approach the house on foot among the trees, and would therefore take leave of Roughwood, for the time, in the road. He could depend upon the gentleman he was about to visit to furnish him with conveyance to the next town, whence he would follow Roughwood by post-horse. This much having been said in the guide’s hearing, Everell pulled up his horse, and, Roughwood doing likewise, the two fugitives held a whispered conference upon the details of their next reunion.

To the last, Roughwood tried, by voice and look, to dissuade his comrade from this rash and sudden deviation from their original plans, but vainly. They made a redivision of their money, for each in his heart felt that some time must elapse ere they should—if ever—be fellow travellers again. Then Everell slid from his horse, slung his cloak-bag over his shoulder, gave a quick pressure of his friend’s hand, and a whispered “God speed you, dear lad!” in exchange for a silent and protesting farewell in the other’s clouding eyes; and stood alone in the highway. He waited till the horses disappeared with a last wave of Roughwood’s hand, around a turning: he then faced directly about, and set off with long and rapid strides.

His pace very soon brought him back to the town he had so recently left. Instead of going as far as to their former inn, he sought out one of humbler appearance, near the beginning of the street. Here he left his cloak-bag, for already in his brief walk he had experienced the stares of wonder naturally drawn by a gentleman who carried at the same time a sword at his side and a cloak-bag at his shoulder. He went into a barber’s shop, where, as he had used his razor that morning, and very little sign of beard had become visible in the meantime, his order for shaving created in the barber’s mind an impression that he must be an extremely luxurious gentleman in spite of his threadbare clothes,—probably a lord in misfortune. Everell easily set the barber talking about all the estates in the neighbourhood, and thus, without seeming to have more design in regard to Foxwell Court than to a dozen other places, elicited the information that that house was eight miles away on the road to Burndale.

Returning to the inn where he had left his bag, he told the landlord he was bound for Burndale, and had made up his mind to accomplish part of the journey that afternoon, in order to arrive there betimes the next day. He bargained for a horse and guide to take him seven or eight miles on the way, and leave him at some place where he could pass the night and obtain conveyance on to Burndale in the morning. In this way, without mentioning Foxwell Court, he contrived that he should be set down in its vicinity and yet have it supposed that his destination was far beyond.

He had so far trusted to luck and his quickness of sight to avoid confrontation with the enemy who, as he could not doubt, was close enough at hand. But he breathed a sigh of relief when he at last rode out of the town in the direction of Burndale: he believed that, whatever inquiries might be made upon the discovery that he had passed through the town, his traces were sufficiently confused, one set leading southward after his friend, and the other leading to Burndale, a good distance beyond Foxwell Court. So he rode forward with his new guide, in as great security of mind as he had enjoyed in months.

The road lay at first between fields, and here and there great trees stretched their boughs shelteringly over it. Sometimes green banks rose on one hand or both, and at a certain place a stream joined the road and went singing along in its company for half a mile. Then the way emerged upon an open common, which undulated on one side in rounded waves of heather till the purple mass met the gray sky, and on the other side to the border of a wood. But presently Everell was again in cultivated country, with stone farm-buildings set now and then upon lawny slopes among the fields.

One great house, of which the chimneys rose in the midst of trees, and which was to be approached by a driveway of some hundreds of yards from a gate and lodge at the roadside, held Everell’s attention for a moment. The guide volunteered the information that this was Thornby Hall. Everell repeated the name carelessly, looked a second time, and thought no more of it. Had he been able to foresee the future, he would have given the place a longer inspection.

Two or three miles more brought them to a village. The guide said that here was the only public-house of entertainment in the near neighbourhood, and that if he went farther he was in danger of getting benighted on his return. Nothing could have suited Everell’s own plan better than this clear hint. He dissembled his content, however, and put on a frown of disappointment as he gazed at the mere ale-house—a low and longish building whose unevenness of line betokened its antiquity—before which the boy had drawn up. Everell feigned a reluctant yielding to necessity; dismounted peevishly, and showed a petulant resignation in asking the rustic-looking landlord who appeared at the door if a decent room was to be had for the night.

The landlord, a drowsy little old man, who was too dull, too humble-minded, or too philosophical to resent any doubt of the excellence of his house, replied that the best room was at his honour’s service. Whereupon Everell, for the hearing of his guide, inquired urgently about the possibility of getting a horse in the morning to carry him to Burndale. Being assured on this point, also, Everell dismissed the guide, and had his single piece of baggage taken into his room, which proved to be not merely the best room, but the only room, properly so-called, in addition to the long apartment which served as kitchen, bar, living-room of the family, and general clubroom of the village; the chambers up-stairs being mere lofts under the roof.

Everell ordered a supper of bacon and eggs, which were cooked by the landlord’s fat, middle-aged daughter, and served by the old man himself. Turning quite reconciled to his accommodations as soon as his guide had left the scene, Everell drew the host into conversation, and, as the old fellow proved to be an amiable and honest soul, even in the matter of his charges, the traveller was shortly in possession of as many facts, legends, and reports concerning the gentry of this and adjacent parishes as his host had accumulated in years. All this information went through Everell’s mind as through a sieve, with the exception of the circumstance that the old red-brick place, with the ivy and the gables, crowning the slope at the right, with a park behind it, which old red-brick place his honour would have seen had he ridden a little farther on, and would see when he rode that way in the morning, was Foxwell Court. This piece of news did not come out till Everell had finished his meal, and he might have learned a vast deal about the Foxwells, for the old man’s face brightened as if at the opening of a fresh and copious subject; but the young gentleman, with his usual precipitancy, rose and declared his intention of stretching his legs. Though he had cautiously refrained from being the first to mention Foxwell Court, he no sooner knew where it was, and how near, than he felt himself drawn as by enchantment in its direction.

As he stepped out upon the green space before the inn, a post-chaise came rattling by at a round speed. It was empty, and Everell recognized it as the one which had accompanied the coach from the inn yard that day: it was now returning from Foxwell Court, as it ought to have been doing sooner. The postilion, no doubt, had wasted time in the sociability of the servants’ hall, and was now making his horses fly to avoid belatement. He stared a moment at Everell, and was gone. Thinking nothing of this meeting, so brief and casual, Everell walked rapidly off toward Foxwell Court.

The sun had come out toward evening, and now shone bright on the weathercock and spire of the parish church that stood embowered some distance from the road, on Everett’s left, as he proceeded. A short walk brought him to the end of the village street of low gray cottages in their small gardens. Thence a little bridge bore him across a stream that came murmuring down through a large field from the wooded land Northward. Looking ahead on that side of the road, he perceived the curved gables of an old house of time-dulled brick partly clad in ivy. It stood rather proudly at the top of a broad slope and against a background of woods or park, its upper windows ablaze with the sunlight. The lower part of the building was hidden by the walls of a forecourt and by a dilapidated-looking gate-house which dominated them. At the near end of the mansion appeared a shapeless remnant of broken tower and wing, ruinous and abandoned: from these ruins a wall extended to the verge of a slight precipice and, there turning at a right angle, ran back to the wood. Over the top of this wall were visible the signs of a neglected garden or orchard.

The further, or Western, end of the house was flanked by trees and greenery, but the slope of rich green turf which descended in one long and gentle swell from the forecourt to the road was clear lawn. This great convex space of green was separated from the adjacent fields, and from the road, by a rude hedge of briar. Everell, having gazed a few moments from the bridge, walked on along the road, intending, if possible, to describe the circuit of the house at a respectful distance before attempting any near approach. He came to the barred opening in the hedge through which the private road led from the highway to the gate-house of the forecourt, but he let only his eyes travel up the curving way. As the hedge grew on lower ground beyond the roadside ditch, Everell had the house in full sight while he was passing. He came at length to where the hedge turned for its ascent, and here he found that a narrow lane ran between it and the field adjoining.

He was speedily over the barred gate that shut this lane from the road. Ascending toward the park behind the house, he frequently lost sight of the latter by reason of the height of the hedge, which was, moreover, accompanied on that side by a line of oaks. As it came to the level of the forecourt, the hedge was interrupted by a gate. Looking across the bars of this, Everell could see not only the house but, nearer to him, stables and other outbuildings skilfully concealed by shrubbery and trees. His observation from the gateway being rewarded by nothing to the purpose, and that he might make the most use of the remaining light, Everell went on through the lane toward the park, to which he now saw it gave access. Passing the trees which prevented his view of the Western end of the house, he came abreast of a terrace which lay between the North front and the park, and which he could see across the hedge when he stood on tiptoe. A few more steps, and a vault over a five-barred gate, took him into the park itself, from the shades of which—for it was not kept clear of small growth, and offered plentiful covert of bush and bracken and other brush—he gazed upon the house as he turned and strolled Eastward.

The balustrade of the terrace was broken here and there; and the mansion itself, where the ivy allowed its surface to be seen, was weather-worn and unrepaired. Yet, by virtue of its design and situation, the house had a magnificence. This, however, did not much affect Everell at the time, sensitive though he was to such impressions. What concerned him was, that he saw no face at any window, nor heard any voice from any part of the mansion except below stairs.

To complete the circuit of the place, in quest of any discovery to aid his purpose, he walked on till he came to a deep, thick-wooded glen that cut into the park from the grounds about the ruined Eastern end of the house. Through this ran the stream which, subsequently traversing the great field between the house and the village, crossed under the bridge. Everell turned along the crest of the glen-side, and thus in a few steps emerged, through a gate in the stone wall, upon the wild garden or orchard, of which he had seen signs from the road. It was a neglected place, evidently not now resorted to. Steps descended to it from the terrace, yet it was not so much lower but that Everell could glance along the terrace and the North front of the house. He leaned against a vacant stone pedestal to rest and consider.

The sun had set, and, far beyond the length of the terrace, the undulating fields and moorland, and the distant darkening mountains, was a sky of red and gold. But Everell had eyes for nothing but the old mansion, which was to him a case holding the loveliest jewel he had ever beheld. As the dusk came on, light appeared at some of the lower windows; a few notes of laughter and other vocal sounds gave evidence of life. But nobody came forth. Everell dared not hope to catch a glimpse of the admired one that evening. He was at last sensible that night had fallen. All the colour had gone out of the West, and stars had appeared.

He would have moved, to warm himself by walking, but that two of the upper windows began to glow. Were they her windows? He watched with a beating heart, stilling even the sound of his breath. But several minutes passed without any manifestation even of a shadow momentarily darkening the panes. The light vanished. No doubt she had gone to bed, fatigued with the journey of the day. Certainly they must be her windows, for the others of the party were less likely to retire so early. Everell heaved a sigh, and threw a kiss at the windows. Of a sudden he was uncomfortably chilly: he bestirred himself, wished he had thought of bringing his cloak, and started off, as much upon a feeling that he could better meditate a course of procedure while walking as upon the impulse to set his blood in motion. But so far was he from any desire of going back to his inn that, without much conscious choice in the matter, he took a quite different direction, and followed the top of the glen-side into the park.

He had been moving at a rapid pace for several minutes before he gave any heed to his whereabouts. He had been guided safely among bush, bracken, and the great trunks of the trees by that unconscious observation for which in those days there was no better name than instinct. He now saw—for in many places the trees were not too close together for the admission of some light from stars and sky—that he had penetrated a good distance into the park, and had left the course of the glen. As he stood gazing into the gloom, wondering how accurately he could retrace his steps, he heard the loud crack of a gun, fired seemingly about two furlongs away.

“Poachers,” said he, after a moment’s thought.

He stepped forward to the edge of an open place, which sloped down gradually to a stream—doubtless the same that threaded the glen, or a tributary. Beyond this water the corresponding ascent was clear of trees for perhaps a hundred yards. Down that side of the glade a dark figure was approaching so swiftly, and in such manner else, that Everell knew it as that of a man running for his life. There is a difference so pronounced as to be plain even in twilight and afar between the attitude of a man who runs in pursuit, and that of a man who runs from pursuit; and again, in either case, between that of one who runs in accordance with, and that of one who runs in opposition to, the law.

Having no desire to interfere with a rogue who had just fired at, or been fired at by, somebody’s gamekeeper, or at best had taken a forbidden shot at somebody’s game, Everell concealed himself among some bracken of a man’s height. He waited a few minutes, hoping to be informed by his ears when the man should have passed. But he heard neither footfall nor panting, nor any noise of pursuit.

Supposing that the fellow had changed his course at the stream, Everell stepped out from the bracken. He was just in time to confront a broad figure striding toward him. Ere Everell thought of self-defence, the newcomer uttered an ejaculation, and sprang aside with something upraised in the air. The next thing that Everell knew—for one rarely feels a knock-down blow on the head from such an instrument as the butt-end of a gun—he was lying among the bracken from which he had recently come forth.