“The soldiers are after me,” I gasped out.
“Ah! Jervas Rookley!” cried Lord Derwentwater, with a bang of his fist upon the table, the while his wife got me some brandy from a sideboard. “But I warned you, Lawrence! I warned you, when I caught sight of him in Keswick.”
“I know,” I answered. “But you did not warn me he was a traitor. All this while Jervas Rookley has been my steward at Blackladies.”
“Your steward! “exclaimed Lord Derwentwater; “and you did not know.”
“Nay,” I replied, “it was not so much that. But I would not know. I pledged my word to him.” With that I drank off the brandy.
“Oh, if you had only told me this!” he cried.
“I could not,” I answered “I had but conjectures, and they were not enough to warrant me. There was but one fact in all the business which was clearly known to me: I had pledged my word to him.”
“Nay,” said Lady Derwentwater, and she laid a pitying hand upon my shoulder, “he was right, since he had given his word;” and I—why, I groaned aloud and let my face fall forward on my arms. “Ah, poor boy!” she exclaimed. “All this day he has been out upon the hills, and here we stand plaguing him with questions, when we should be ransacking the pantry. We deserve to be whipped.”
She cautiously slipped out of the room.
But it was not any bodily want that troubled me so much as the unmerited kindliness of her tone and gesture. It wrought on me, indeed, with such a melting compulsion that had she remained within the room, I verily believe I should have blurted out that other story, with a “Withold your pity until it is deserved.”
Lord Derwentwater locked the door behind his wife and began to walk about the room.
“Lawrence,” said he, “I am in some way to blame for this. But I did not know the fellow was masquerading at Blackladies as your steward. He was disinherited, you know. But do you know why?”
“Because he was a Jacobite,” I replied.
“Because he was a spy,” cried Lord Derwentwater. “A spy—do you understand?—paid by the Government to worm himself into the Jacobite councils. I know, for his father told me, and told me on his death-bed. Sir John was a Whig, you know, but an honest one and a gentleman, and the shock the knowledge caused him, caused his death.”
“A spy!” I exclaimed. “And I might have known! I might have known it at Commercy.”
“At Commercy?” said he with a start
“I might have known it in mid-channel. It was the letter his hands were searching for;” and noticing Lord Derwentwater’s perplexity, I related to him the whole story of Rookley’s coming to Paris, the promise I made to him there, the journey to Lorraine.
“You had speech with the King!” he exclaimed, “and Jervas Rookley knew. You carried a letter——”
“In the King’s hand, to the Duke of Ormond.”
“And Jervas Rookley knew!”
“Ay, for he tried to steal it,” and a great silence fell upon us both. We looked into each other’s eyes; I know I held my breath. With a swift, stealthy movement, more significant to me than even the silence was, he unlocked the door again and peered into the passage.
“We were speaking over-loud, Lawrence,” he said, in a hushed whisper.
He was on the point of locking the door again, when Lady Derwentwater returned, bearing a loaded tray.
“It is a bad case you are in,” said Lord Derwentwater. “You had best fall to. It must not be known you were here to-night. I would gladly hide you.”
“Nay,” said I, “I have brought you near enough to danger as it is.”
He waved the remark aside.
“There is no sense in such talk between friends. But Lord’s Island is no safe place for you. I am suspected; you are known for my friend. Here will they come first to search for you.”
“But to-morrow,” interrupted his wife, “not tonight”
“It were best he leave to-night,” replied Lord Derwentwater.
“Ah, no, James,” she returned, “it would be illusage 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 Derwentwater’s words called up I know not what sweet visions of lavender sheets, I knew that at any moment the sheriffs messenger might come rapping at the doors. Lady Derwentwater accordingly said no more, but betook herself to filling my glass 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 Derwentwater 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 Derwentwater 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 Derwentwater, “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 Derwentwater 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 Derwentwater’s servant Tash. Accordingly, on disembarking in a little wood on the west shores of Derwentwater, 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 grass 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 grass and slept without more ado.