The King's Highway Part 2

In the meanwhile, the four seamen, who were at the oars, laboured away incessantly, but with very slow and difficult efforts. Every moment the wind rose higher and higher, and the sun's lower limb touched the waters, while they were yet two miles from the French brig.

A part of the large red disk of the descending orb was seen between the sea and the edge of the clouds that hung upon the verge of the sky, pouring forth from the horizon to the very sh.o.r.e a long line of blood-red light, which, resting upon the boiling waters of the ocean, seemed as if the setting star could indeed "the mult.i.tudinous sea incarnadine, making the green one red."

That red light, however, showed far more clearly than before how the waters were already agitated; for the waves might be seen distinctly, even to the spot in the horizon where they seemed to struggle with the sun, heaving up their gigantic heads till they appeared to overwhelm him before he naturally set.

The arguments of the fisherman apparently effected that thing which is so seldom effected in this world; namely, to convince the person to whom they were addressed. I say SELDOM, for there have been instances known, in remote times, of people being convinced. They puzzled him, however, and embarra.s.sed him very much, and he remained for full five minutes in deep and anxious thought.

His reverie, however, was brought to an end suddenly, by a few words which the fisherman whispered to him. His countenance brightened; a rapid and brief conversation followed in a low tone, which ended in his abruptly holding out his hand to the good man at the helm, saying, "I trust to your honour."

"Upon my soul and honour," replied the fisherman, grasping his proffered hand.

The matter now seemed settled,--no farther words pa.s.sed between the master of the boat and his pa.s.senger; but the seaman gave a rapid glance to the sky, to the long spit of land called the Battery Point, and to the southward, whence the wind was blowing so sharply.

"We can do it," he muttered to himself, "we can do it;" and he then gave immediate orders for changing the boat's course, and putting out all sail. His companions seemed as much surprised by his change of purpose, as he had been with the alteration of his pa.s.senger's determination. His orders were nevertheless obeyed promptly, the head of the boat was turned away from the wind, the canvas caught the gale, and away she went like lightning, heeling till the little yard almost touched the water.

Her course, however, was not bent back exactly to the same spot from which she started, and it now became evident that it was the fisherman's intention to round the Battery Point.

Lennard Sherbrooke was not at all aware of the dangerous reef that lay so near their course; but it soon became evident to him that there was some great peril, which required much skill and care to avoid; and, as night fell, the anxiety of the seamen evidently became greater. The wind by this time was blowing quite a hurricane, and the rus.h.i.+ng roaring sound of the gale and the ocean was quite deafening. But about half an hour after sunset that peculiar angry roar, which is only heard in the neighbourhood of breakers, was distinguished to leeward; and looking in that direction, Sherbrooke perceived one long white line of foam and surf, rising like an island in the midst of dark and struggling waters.

Not a word was said: it seemed as if scarcely a breath was drawn. In a few minutes the sound of the breakers became less distinct; a slight motion was perceivable in the arm of the man who held the tiller, and in about ten minutes the effect of the neighbouring headlands was found in smoother water and a lighter gale, as the boat glided calmly and steadily on, into a small bay, not many hundred miles from Baltimore.

The rest of their voyage, till they reached the sh.o.r.e again, was safe and easy: the master of the boat and his men seemed to know every creek, cove, and inlet, as well as their own dwelling places; and, directing their coa.r.s.e to a little but deep stream, they ran in between two other boats, and were soon safely moored.

The boy, by Sherbrooke's direction, had lain himself down in the bottom of the boat, wrapped up in a large cloak; and there, with the happy privilege of childhood, he had fallen sound asleep, nor woke till danger and anxiety were pa.s.sed, and the little vessel safe at the sh.o.r.e.

Accommodation was easily found in a neighbouring village, and, on the following day, one, and only one, of the boat's crew went over to the spot from which they had set out on the preceding evening. He returned with another man, both loaded with provisions. There was much coming and going between the village and the boat during the day. By eventide the storm had sobbed itself away; the sea was calm again, the sky soft and clear; and beneath the bright eyes of the watchful stars, the boat once more took its way across the broad bosom of the ocean, with its course laid directly towards the English sh.o.r.e.

CHAPTER IV.

Those were days of pack-saddles and pillions--days certainly not without their state and display; but yet days in which persons were not valued according to the precise mode of their dress or equipage, when hearts were not appraised by the hat or gloves, nor the mind estimated by the carriages or horses.

Man was considered far more abstractedly then than at present; and although ill.u.s.trious ancestors, great possessions, and hereditary claims upon consideration, were allowed more weight than they now possess, yet the minor circ.u.mstances of each individual,--the things that filled his pocket, the dishes upon his table, the name of his tailor, or the club that he belonged to,--were seldom, if ever, allowed to affect the appreciation of his general character.

However that might be, it was an age, as we have said, of pack-saddles and pillions; and no one, at any distance from the capital itself, would have been the least ashamed to be seen with a lady or child mounted behind him on the same horse, while he jogged easily onward on his destined way.

It was thus that, about a quarter of an hour before nightfall, a, tall powerful man was seen riding along through one of the north-western counties of England, with a boy of about eight years of age mounted on a pillion behind him, and steadying himself on the horse by an affectionate embrace cast round the waist of his elder companion.

Lennard Sherbrooke--for the reader has already divined that this was no other than the personage introduced to him in our first chapter--Lennard Sherbrooke, then, was still heavily armed, but in other respects had undergone a considerable change. The richly laced coat had given place to a plain dark one of greenish brown; the large riding boots remained; and the hat, though it kept its border of feathers, was divested of every other ornament. There were pistols at the saddle-bow, which indeed were very necessary in those days to every one who performed the perilous and laborious duty of wandering along the King's Highway; and in every other respect the appearance of Lennard Sherbrooke was well calculated neither to attract cupidity nor invite attack.

About ten minutes after the period at which we have again introduced him to our readers, the traveller and his young companion stopped at the door of an old-fas.h.i.+oned inn, or rather at the porch thereof; for the door itself, with a retiring modesty, stood at some distance back, while an impudent little portico with carved oak pillars, of quaint but not inelegant design, stood forth into the road, with steps leading down from it to the sill of the sunk doorway. An ostler ran out to take the horse, and helped the boy down tenderly and carefully. Sherbrooke himself then dismounted, looked at his beast from head to foot, and then ordering the ostler to give him some hay and water, he took the boy by the hand and entered the house.

The ostler looked at the beast, which was tired, and then at the sky, over which the first shades of evening were beginning to creep, thinking as he did so that the stranger might quite as well put up his beast for the night. In the meantime, however, Sherbrooke had given the boy into the charge of the hostess, had bidden her prepare some supper for him, and had intimated that he himself was going a little farther, but would soon return to sleep at her hospitable dwelling. He ordered to be brought in and given into her charge also a small portmanteau,--smaller than that which he had taken with him into the boat,--and when all this was done, he kissed the boy's forehead tenderly, and left him, mounting once more his weary beast, and plodding slowly along upon his way.

It was a very sweet evening: the sun, half way down behind one of the distant hills, seemed, like man's curiosity, to overlook unheeded all the bright and beautiful things close to him, and to gaze with his eyes of light full upon the objects further from him, through which the wayfarer was bending his way. The line of undulating hills, the ma.s.ses of a long line of woodland, some deep valleys and dells, a small village with its church and tower on an eminence, were all in deep blue shadow; while, in the foreground, every bank and slope was glittering in yellow suns.h.i.+ne, and a small river, that wound along through the flatter part of the ground, seemed turned into gold by the great and glorious alchymist, as he sunk to his rest.

The heart of the traveller who wandered there alone was ill, very ill at ease. Happily for himself, as he was now circ.u.mstanced, the character of Sherbrooke was a gay and buoyant one, not easily depressed, bearing the load lightly; but still he could not but feel the difficulties, the dangers, and the distresses of a situation, which, though shared in by very many at that moment, was rather aggravated by such being the case, and had but small alleviation even from hope.

In the first place, he had seen the cause to which he had attached himself utterly ruined by the base irresolution of a weak monarch, who had lost his crown by his tyranny, and who had failed to regain it by his courage. In the next place, for his devotion to that cause, he was a banished and an outlawed man, with his life at the mercy of any one who chose to take it. In the next he was well nigh penniless, with the life of another, dear, most dear to his heart, depending entirely upon his exertions.

The heart of the traveller, then, was ill, very ill at ease, but yet the calm of that evening's suns.h.i.+ne had a sweet and tranquillizing effect.

There is a mirror--there is certainly a moral mirror in our hearts, which reflects the images of the things around us; and every change that comes over nature's face is mingled sweetly, though too often unnoticed, with the thoughts and feelings called forth by other things. The effect of that calm evening upon Lennard Sherbrooke was not to produce the wild, bright, visionary dreams and expectations which seem the peculiar offspring of the glowing morning, or of the bright and risen day; but it was the counterpart, the image, the reflection of that evening scene itself to which it gave rise in his heart. He felt tranquillized, he felt more resolute, more capable of enduring. Grief and anxiety subsided into melancholy and resolution, and the sweet influence of the hour had also an effect beyond: it made him pause upon the memories of his past life, upon many a scene of idle profligacy, revel, and riot,--of talents cast away and opportunity neglected,--of fortune spent and bright hopes blasted,--and of all the great advantages which he had once possessed utterly lost and gone, with the exception of a kind and generous heart: a jewel, indeed, but one which in this world, alas! can but too seldom be turned to the advantage of the possessor.

On these things he pondered, and a sweet and enn.o.bling regret came upon him that it should be so--a regret which might have gone on to sincere repentance, to firm amendment, to the retrieval of fortunes, to an utter change of destiny, had the circ.u.mstances of the times, or any friendly voice and helping hand, led his mind on upon that path wherein it had already taken the first step, and had opened out before him a way of retrieval, instead of forcing him onward down the hill of destruction.

But, alas! those were not times when the opportunity of doing better was likely to be allowed to him; nor were circ.u.mstances destined to change his course. His destiny, like that of many Jacobites of the day, was but to be from ruin to ruin; and let it be remembered, that the character and history of Lennard Sherbrooke are not ideal, but are copied faithfully from a true but sad history of a life in those times.

All natural affections sweeten and purify the human heart. Like everything else given us immediately from G.o.d, their natural tendency is to wage war against all that is evil within us; and every single thought of amendment and improvement, every regret for the past, every better hope for the future, was connected with the thought of the beautiful boy he had left behind at the inn; and elevated by his love for a being in the bright purity of youth, he thought of him and his situation again and again; and often as he did so, the intensity of his own feelings made him murmur forth half audible words all relating to the boy, or to the person he was then about to seek, for the purpose of interesting him in the poor youth's fate.

"I will tell him all and everything," he said, thus murmuring to himself as he went on: "he may drive me forth if he will; but surely, surely, he will protect and do something for the boy. What, though there have been faults committed and wrong done, he cannot be so hard-hearted as to let the poor child starve, or be brought up as I can alone bring him up."

Such was still the conclusion to which he seemed to come; and at length when the sun had completely gone down, and at the distance of about three miles from the inn, he paused before a large pair of wooden gates, consisting of two rows of square bars of painted wood placed close together, with a thick heavy rail at the top and bottom, while two wooden obelisks, with their steeple-shaped summits, formed the gate posts. Opening the gates, as one well familiar with the lock, he now entered the smaller road which led from them through the fields towards a wood upon the top of the hill. At first the way was uninteresting enough, and the faint remains of twilight only served to show some square fields within their hedge-rows cut in the most prim and undeviating lines around. The wayfarer rode on, through that part of the scene, with his eyes bent down in deep thought; but when he came to the wood; and, following the path--which, now kept with high neatness and propriety, wound in and out amongst the trees, and then sweeping gently round the shoulder of the hill, exposed a beautiful deer park--he had before his eyes a fine Elizabethan house, rising grey upon a little eminence at the distance of some four or five hundred yards,--it seemed that some old remembrance, some agitating vision of the days gone by, came over the horseman's mind. He pulled in his rein, clasped his hands together, and gazed around with a look of sad and painful recognition.

At the end of a minute or two, however, he recovered himself, rode on to the front of the house we have mentioned, and dismounting from his horse, pulled the bell-rope which action was instantly followed by a long peal heard from within.

"It sounds cold and empty," said the wayfarer to himself, "like my reception, and perhaps my hopes."

No answer was made for some time; and though the sounds had been loud enough, as the traveller's ears bore witness, yet they required to be repeated before any one came to ask his pleasure.

"This is very strange!" he said, as he applied his hand to the bell-rope again. "He must have grown miserly, as they say, indeed. Why I remember a dozen servants crowding into this porch at the first sound of a horse's feet."

A short time after, some steps were heard within; bolts and bars were carefully withdrawn, and an old man in a white jacket, with a lantern in his hand, opened the heavy oaken door, and gazed upon the stranger.

"Where is the Earl of Byerdale?" demanded the horseman, in apparent surprise. "Is he not at home?"

The old man gazed at him for a moment from head to foot, without replying, and then answered slowly and somewhat bitterly, "Yes, he is at home--at his long home, from which he'll never move again! Why, he has been dead and buried this fortnight."

"Indeed!" cried the traveller, putting his hand to his head, with an air of surprise, and what we may call dismay; "indeed! and who has discharged the servants and shut up the house?"

"Those who have a right to do it," replied the old man, sharply; "for my lord was not such a fool as to leave his property to be spent, and his place mismanaged, by two scape-graces whom he knew well enough."

As he spoke, without farther ceremony he shut the door in the stranger's face, and then returned to his own abode in the back part of the house, chuckling as he went, and murmuring to himself, "I think I have paid him now for throwing me into the horsepond, for just telling a little bit of a lie about Ellen, the laundry maid. He thought I had forgotten him! Ha!

ha! ha!"

The traveller stood confounded; but he made no observation, he uttered no word, he seemed too much accustomed to meet the announcement of fresh misfortune to suffer it to drive him from the strong-hold of silence.

Sweeter or gentler feelings might have done it: he might have been tempted to speak aloud in calm meditation and thought, either gloomy or joyful; but his heart, when wrung and broken by the last hard grasp of fate, like the wolf at his death, was dumb.

He remained for full two minutes, however, beneath the porch, motionless and silent; then springing on his horse's back, he urged him somewhat rapidly up the slope. Ere he had reached the top, either from remembering that the beast was weary, or from some change in his own feelings, he slackened his pace, and gave himself up to meditation again. The first agony of the blow that he had received was now over, and once again he not only reasoned with himself calmly, but expressed some of his conclusions in a murmur.

"What!" he said, "a peer without a penny! the name attainted, too, and all lands and property declared forfeit! No, no! it will never do! Years may bring better times!--Who knows? the attainder may be reversed; new fortunes may be gained or made! The right dies not, though it may slumber; exists, though it be not enforced. A peer without a penny! no, no!--far better a beggar with half a crown!"

Thus saying he rode on, pa.s.sed through the wood we have mentioned,--the dull meadows, and the wooden gates; and entering the high road, was proceeding towards the inn, when an event occurred which effected a considerable change in his plans and purposes.

It was by this time one of those dark nights, the most propitious that can be imagined for such little adventures as rendered at one time the place called Gad's Hill famous alike in story and in song. It wasn't that the night was cloudy, for, to say sooth, it was a fine night, and manifold small stars were twinkling in the sky; but the moon, the sweet moon, was at that time in her infancy, a babe of not two days old, so that the light she afforded to her wandering companions through the fields of s.p.a.ce was of course not likely to be much. The stars twinkled, as we have said, but they gave no light to the road; and on either side there were sundry brakes, and lanes, and hedges, and groups of trees which were sufficiently shady and lat.i.tant in the mid-day, and which certainly were impervious to any ray of light then above the horizon.

The mind of Lennard Sherbrooke, however, was far too busy about other things to think of dangers on the King's Highway. His purse was certainly well armoured against robbery; and the defence was on the inside and not on the out; so that--had he thought on the matter at all, which he did not do--he might very probably have thought, in his light recklessness, he wished he might meet with a highwayman, in order to try whether he could not rob better than be robbed.

However, as I have said, he thought not of the subject at all. His own situation, and that of the boy Wilton, occupied him entirely; and it was not till the noise of a horse's feet coming rapidly behind him sounded close at his shoulder, that he turned to see by whom he had been overtaken.

All that Sherbrooke could perceive was, that it was a man mounted on a remarkably fine horse, riding with ease and grace, and bearing altogether the appearance of a gentleman.

"Pray, sir," said the stranger, "can you tell me how far I am from the inn called the Buck's Horns, and whether this is the direct road thither?"