Lawrence Clavering Part 21

"Ah, no, James," she returned, "it would be ill-usage in any case to dismiss so easily a friend so hard put to it, and the worst usage in the world towards Mr. Clavering. For look, what the boy most needs is a bed."

"And what if he were taken in it! That would be worse usage still.

Anna, we cannot risk his life for the sake of our manners."

I seconded him in his advice, for though I was dropping with fatigue, and Lady Derwent.w.a.ter's words called up I know not what sweet visions of lavender sheets, I knew that at any moment the sheriff's messenger might come rapping at the doors. Lady Derwent.w.a.ter accordingly said no more, but betook herself to filling my gla.s.s and heaping up my plate with an air of such maternal tenderness as pierced me to the heart. If she only knew, I thought--if she only knew what manner of man she tended on! And again I was very near to blurting out my story.

"There is one thing," said I, "which I do not understand. For if Rookley meant my ruin, why should he wait so long to accomplish it? He had the means to hand, the day that I set foot in England."

Lord Derwent.w.a.ter stopped suddenly in his walk.

"You received my letter yesterday?"

"A letter?" said I. "No! What time of the day was it sent?"

"In the afternoon."

I remembered that I had seemed to hear the hoofs of a horse upon the drive when I was in the parlour. Lord Derwent.w.a.ter slipped out of the room. In a little he came back with a scared face.

"The letter was handed to your steward," he said. "The man I sent was a new servant, else he would have known who the steward was."

"But what was in the letter?"

"It was a message from Harry St John, enclosed in a letter which came to me. It said the French King was dying, and no help was to be expected from the Regent, who would follow him. It said the rising was to be deferred."

"Then I understand!" I exclaimed, starting to my feet "I had promised Rookley to restore the estate when the King came to his own. So long as there was a chance of that, he would let me go free. But when that chance failed, he might buy back Blackladies by selling me."

"Ay," said Derwent.w.a.ter, "that is Jervas Rookley from top to toe. He would have one foot marking time with King George, and the other stepping forward with King James."

And again he paced musingly about the room whilst I betook myself to my supper. At last--

"I know," he said; and then turning to me, "I was thinking whither I should send you. There is old Ralph Curwen. You will be safe with him at Applegarth."

It seemed to me that I had heard the name before, but on what occasion I could not at the moment remember.

"He lives in Ennerdale," continued he; "an honest Jack, but he is old, and since his son died, has known little company beyond his books. You will be safe with him."

"Ay, but will he be safe with me?" I objected.

"No doubt of that He has taken no part in these quarrels of ours for many a day, and they will not look for you in Ennerdale."

He sat down and wrote a letter.

"I will send you thither," he said, "with a servant I can trust, and as soon as may be we'll get you out of England;" and he rose, he crossed over to a table, and unlocking a drawer took out a little diary.

"Let me see!" he said. "To-day is St. Bartholomew's Day. It may be that I can send you across to France. Why, what ails you?"

"It is nothing," I replied hastily.

It was, indeed, the mere mention of the date which made me sway like a man falling and grasp at the table. To-day was St Bartholomew's Day.

Then yesterday was the Eve, the Eve of St. Bartholomew. My thoughts went back to the preacher I had heard in Paris and to the picture of the dead man speaking, who had seemed in my imagination to thunder out at me, "The Eve of St. Bartholomew."

Lord Derwent.w.a.ter went from the room to give his orders, and ten minutes later I was being rowed across the lake towards Silver Hill and watching two heads at the lighted window diminish into specks.

There was but the one man in the boat besides myself--Lord Derwent.w.a.ter's servant Tash. Accordingly, on disembarking in a little wood on the west sh.o.r.es of Derwent.w.a.ter, we drew the boat on to dry ground, and striking up the hillside walked southwards along the slopes of Catbells and Maiden Moor. But for my part I took little note of our direction. My head nodded on my shoulders, my feet stumbled behind my guide's in a mechanic progression. Had he led me back into Keswick town I should have followed him. I walked in a daze of weariness, sensible of but two things in the world: one that the fresh smell of the gra.s.s and parsley-fern was every way as sweet as lavender to lie in; the other that I must still walk on, since there was something to be done that I and I alone could do.

In the morning we moved yet higher up the slopes, and so walking ever southwards past Dale Head Tarn and Honister, came to a lofty ridge between Grey Knotts and Brandreth about nine o'clock of the morning.

There my guide called a halt, and pulling my hat over my eyes I plumped down on the gra.s.s and slept without more ado.

CHAPTER XI.

APPLEGARTH.

When I fell asleep the sun was just climbing above the shoulder of Skiddaw; when I waked again, it was down very close above the Isle of Man, so that I could see the surf flash in a line of gold as it broke against the rocks. Tash had brought with him some cheese and a loaf of bread; and being hard set with my long fast, I spent no great while over grace, but fell to and moistened the food with the sweetest water that ever I drank, fetching it from a little stream which bubbled by through the gra.s.s a few yards away. Tash pointed me out a valley which cleft the mountains westwards a little to our left and made a right angle with the ridge on which we lay. At the end of the valley I saw the corner of a lake. The valley, he told me, was called Gillerthwaite and the lake Ennerdale Water. Mr. Curwen's house was built upon the banks of the Water, but was invisible to us, since it lay in a kind of bay to the north behind some projecting cliffs of a reddish stone.

"But we will wait here till nightfall," he said; and nothing loth I turned over on my back and fell to resolving, so well as I could, the perplexities in which I was coiled. I now saw very clearly that Rookley's plot had not, as I had imagined, been aimed against myself, but rather against Anthony Herbert; and my new knowledge that my worthy cousin was a Government spy gave me some light to conjecture of a cause. For I reflected that Herbert had come suddenly to Keswick at the very time when rebellion was a-brewing in these parts; that he had made Lord Derwent.w.a.ter's acquaintance and had painted his lady's portrait; that upon my coming to Blackladies, Lord Derwent.w.a.ter had put me into relations with the man; and that I too had commissioned a portrait of him. Now Lord Derwent.w.a.ter was suspected of favouring the Stuart claims, and certainly Rookley knew that I not merely favoured them but was working to further them. It would be, then, a natural suspicion for Rookley to draw that we were all three implicated in the same business, and that Herbert was merely using his skill as a concealment of his genuine purpose. Moreover, I thought of a sudden, there was that medal in Mr. Herbert's apartment. True, I had seen him lock it up. But he must bring it out again to copy it, and he was not of that orderliness which would ensure his replacing it. What if Rookley had seen the medal in Herbert's lodging? Joined to his suspicions, that one certain fact would change those suspicions to convictions. Rookley would believe, and would have reason to believe, that Herbert was a Jacobite agent. Granted that presumption, and Rookley's conduct became clear. He was marking time with King George and stepping forward with King James. He would lay Herbert by the heels in the one interest and leave me untouched in the other, so long as it was doubtful which way the wind was setting. I found an additional reason to credit this hypothesis in this, that it was plainly Rookley's intention to bring about Herbert's arrest secretly, or at all events without my knowledge.

"I had thought to find you in the garden," Herbert had said; the words came back to me in a flash. I sprang to my feet in some excitement.

Tash in a flurry asked me what it was I saw; but I moved away without answering him, certain that I had a hold upon the key of the plot, fearful lest I should lose it.

"I had thought to find you in the garden"--and the soldiers were in the garden. Moreover, there was but one man who could have led Mr.

Herbert to believe that he would find us in the garden--Jervas Rookley. And Jervas Rookley had every reason in the world to feel a.s.sured that neither Mrs. Herbert nor myself would be discovered there.

I had no longer a shadow of doubt. Anthony Herbert had been beguiled to Blackladies that his arrest might be brought about with secrecy.

Only Jervas Rookley had made one mistake: he had presumed in his victim the same cunning and concealment of which he was master himself. Mr. Herbert had defeated the secrecy of the plan by his outburst in his lodging; but for that outburst, the arrest would have been effected with all the secrecy which Rookley desired.

From that point in my speculations I went forward to a resolve. I knew Herbert to be in no way concerned with our plans and hopes. Indeed, I doubted whether he cared a straw which King occupied the throne, so long as he could continue in the exercise of his art. But, on the other hand, there was the medal in his possession, and I distrusted the impartiality of justice in a matter where pa.s.sions were so inflamed. My resolve, then, was no more than this: that if by any means a man could, I would secure Mr. Herbert's enlargement, if only as an act of reparation, and if it cost me my life. But to tell the truth, my life at this moment had not the least savour of sweetness, and to let it go seemed the easiest thing in the world.

The question, however, which weighed on me was how I should accomplish his enlargement; for I did not know and had no means of knowing whither he had been taken. They might have carried him to London, there to be examined. Suppose that was true and I went down into the valley and gave myself up? Why, I had not sufficient trust in the authorities to be certain that Herbert would get the benefit of my evidence. I could prove that the medal belonged to me; but should I be allowed to tender that proof on Herbert's behalf? I might lie in prison the while he was brought to his trial. No, before I gave myself up I must know whither Anthony Herbert had been taken. And as far as I could tell, there was but one man who could give me the information.

Could I force it from Jervas Rookley? I asked myself, and even in the asking laughed. For here was the darkness coming up out of the sea and wrapping the mountains about, and here was I hiding in the midst of them, a hunted outlaw. Tash called to me that it was time for us to set out, and we started down the hillside into Gillerthwaite, he leading as before, I as before following him, but no longer in the daze and stupor of yesternight. Rather, on the contrary, I walked with eyes needlessly alert and with feet over-timorous and careful. For if I got no other profit from my reflections, I had drawn from them this one conviction, and I was sensible of it as of a sheer necessity: I must be ready, I thought--since I knew so little, I must be ready to seize any occasion of Mr. Herbert's enlargement, at the instant of its discovery. So that as we scrambled down the slope with the mist gathering around us, I came to fear a slip with an extraordinary apprehension; where the gra.s.s steepened, I straightway imagined a fatal precipice; and when a stone slid beneath my heel, I felt all the blood drain from my heart and leave me shaking in a panic. The night in consequence had completely fallen by the time we came to a pony-track in the bed of the valley. I remember that I asked carelessly whither it led from Ennerdale, and Tash told me that it pa.s.sed into the valley called Newlands, which runs parallel with Derwent.w.a.ter, and is only separated from the lake by that line of hills along which we had walked during the night.

"Then," said I carelessly, "it is a path by which one may travel to Keswick."

"Ay," he replied; and for the moment I thought no more of the matter.

Before we had come to the head of Ennerdale Water, the moon was up and s.h.i.+ning fitfully through a wrack of clouds. The valley, however, was clear of mist, so that I was able to distinguish the house of Applegarth, while I was as yet at some distance from its doors. It was a long, plain building, which promised comfort within by its very lack of ornamentation without, built in a single story and painted a white colour. But it seemed to me, even in that uncertain light, to bear the marks of neglect and decay. There was a little garden in front of the house separated from the lake-sh.o.r.es by an unkempt hedge, and planted only with a few fuchsia bushes; the walls of the house were here and there discoloured, and once or twice as I pa.s.sed up the garden-path I stepped upon a broken tile.

A woman-servant opened the door and I asked for Mr. Curwen. She looked me over for a second.

"And what may be your business with Mr. Curwen?"

"That I can hardly tell you," said I with a laugh.

"Ah, but you must," said she. She was a woman of some bulk, and she stood with her arms akimbo, filling the doorway. "Is it his last few guineas you might be wanting?" she asked with a slow sarcasm.