For the next three days I hid amongst the hills betwixt Borrowdale and Applegarth. I was now fallen upon the last days of September, and the weather very shrewd with black drenching storms of rain which would sweep up the valleys with extraordinary suddenness, impenetrable as a screen, blotting out the world. The wind, too, blew from the north, bitter and cold, moaning up and down the faces of cliffs, whistling through the grasses, with a sound inimitably desolate, and twisting to a very whirlpool in the gaps between the mountain-peaks. To make my case the harder, I had come away in that haste, and oblivion of all but the necessity of my departure, that I had made little provision in my dress to defend me against the lashing of the wind and rain. I had picked up a hat and a long cloak, it is true, but for the rest, I wore no stouter covering than that suit of white which Mary Tyson had laid out for me so reluctantly. It was an unfit garb for my present life, and one that was to prove a considerable danger to me. But it was the cold discomfort of it which vexed me now. I had occasion enough to reflect on the folly of my precipitation, as I lay crouched in some draughty cave of boulders, watching the livelong day the clouds lower and lift, the battalions of the rain trample across the fells, and seeking to warm myself with the thought of that army in Scotland marching to the English borders. At nightfall I would creep down into Borrowdale, procure food from one of my old tenants who was well-disposed to me, and so get me back again to some jutting corner whence I could look down Gillerthwaite to Applegarth. But I looked in vain for the lights of the house. On the night of my departure, I saw them, but never afterwards, even when the air was of the clearest, so that I knew not what to think, and was almost persuaded to return to the house, that I might ascertain the cause of their disappearance.
So for four days and nights, whilst an old thought shaped to a resolve. For in the pocket of my coat, I had carried away not merely the button I had discovered in the garden at Blackladies that never left my person—but the letter Tash had brought to me from Lord Derwentwater. I had been interrupted in the reading of it by Mr. Curwen’s return, and so crammed it into my pocket with some part of it unread. However, I gave very careful heed to it now.
“My own affairs,” it ran on, “have come to so desperate a pass that I dare not poke my nose into the matter of Herbert’s disappearance; I live, indeed, myself, in hourly expectation of arrest. Your servant came again to me from Blackladies the other day, and told me a watch was no longer kept upon the house.”
And since I had no knowledge that England was stirring in support of the rebellion, I determined to hazard an interview with my cousin, and so late on the fifth night climbed into the garden of Blackladies and let myself into the house as I had once seen Jervas Rookley do. I stood for a little in the parlour, feeling the darkness throb heavily about me with all the memories of that fatal night which had compassed my undoing.
Then I crossed towards the hall, but, my cloak flapping and dragging noisily at a chair as I passed, I loosed it from my shoulders and left it there. No lamp was burning in the hall, and since the curtains were drawn close over the lower windows, only the faintest of twilights penetrating through the upper panes made a doubtful glimmering beneath the roof; so that one seemed to be standing in a deep well.
The dining-room lay to my right on the further side of the hall. I made towards it, and of a sudden came sharply to a halt, my heart fairly quivering within me. For it seemed to me that the figure of a man had suddenly sprung out of the darkness and was advancing to me, but so close that the next step would bring our heads knocking against each other. And he had made no sound. As I stopped, the figure stopped. For a moment I stood watching it, holding my breath, then I clapped my hand to my sword, and the next moment I could have laughed at my alarm. For the figure copied my gesture. It was, moreover, dressed in clothes of a white colour from top to toe, and it was for that reason I saw its movements so distinctly. But I was likewise dressed in white. The one difference, in fact, between us which I noted was a certain black sheen in which it stood framed. I reached out a hand; it slid upon the polished surface of a great mirror.
The dining-room, I knew, opened at the side of this mirror, and I groped cautiously for the handle of the door, but before I found it my hand knocked against the key. With equal caution I opened the door to the width of an inch or so. A steady light shone upon the side of the wall, and through the opening there came the sound of a man snoring. I put my head into the room; and there to my inexpressible relief was Jervas Rookley. He was dressed in a suit of black satin, stretched to his full length upon a chair in front of a blazing fire, his head thrown back, his periwig on the floor, his cravat loosened, his shoes unbuckled off his feet
I closed the door behind me; then opened it again and pocketed the key against which my hand had struck. The truth is that now that I was come into the man’s presence, which I had before considered the most difficult part of the business, I now, on the contrary, saw very clearly that it was the easiest I had not merely to come into his presence; I had to win out of it afterwards; and moreover I had somehow or other to twist from him the information about Mr. Herbert’s whereabouts, for which I had adventured the visit.
I stepped on tiptoe across the carpet and seated myself in a chair facing him at the corner of the fireplace. Then I sought to arrange and order the questions I should put to him. But in truth I found the task well-nigh beyond my powers. It was all very well to tell myself that I was here on behalf of my remnant honour to secure the enlargement of Mr. Herbert. But the man was face to face with me; the firelight played upon his honest face and outstretched limbs; and I felt hatred spring up in me and kindle through my veins like fire. Up till now, so engrossed had I been by the turmoil of my own more personal troubles, I had given little serious thought to Jervas Rookley: I had taken his treachery almost callously as an accepted thing, and the depths of my indignation had only been stirred against myself. Now, however, every piece of trickery he had used on me crowded in upon my recollections. I might cry out within myself, “Anthony Herbert! Anthony Herbert!” Anthony Herbert was none the less pushed to the backward of my mind. That honest face was upturned to the light, and my thoughts swarmed about it I scanned it most carefully. It was more than common flushed and swollen, for which I was at no loss to account, since a bottle of French brandy stood on a little table at his elbow, three parts empty, and a carafe of water three parts full. I reached over for the bottle, and rinsing out his glass, helped myself, bethinking me that after my exposure of the three last days, its invigoration might prove of use to me.
But as I sat there and drank the brandy and watched Jervas Rookley’s face, my fingers ever strayed to the hilt of my sword; I moved the weapon gently backwards and forwards so as to satisfy my ears with the pleasant jingle of the hanger; I half drew the blade from the sheath and rubbed my thumb along the edge until the blood came; and then I sat looking at the blood, and from the blood to Jervas Rookley, until at last an overmastering desire grew hot about my heart. It was no longer the edge or the point of the sword which I desired to employ. I wanted to smash in that broad, honest face with the big pommel, and I feared the moment of his awakening lest I should yield to the temptation.
Fortunately, his first movement was one that diverted my thoughts. For as he opened his eyes he stretched out his hands to the brandy bottle. It was near to my elbow, however, on the mantelpiece, and I refilled my own glass. It was, I think, the sound of the liquor tinkling into the glass more than the words I spoke to him which made Rookley open his eyes. He blinked at me for a moment.
“You?” said he, but blankly with the stupor of his sleep still heavy upon him.
“Yes!” said I, drinking the brandy.
He followed the glass to my lips and woke to the possession of some part of his senses.
“I had expected you before,” says he, and sits clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth and swallowing, as though his throat was parched.
“So I believe,” I returned. “You had even gone so far as to prepare for me a fitting welcome.”
He was by this time wide awake. He picked up his peruke, clapped it on his head, and stood up in his stocking feet
“Your servants, sir,” says he with inimitable assurance, “will always honour their master with a fitting welcome, so long as I am steward, on whatever misfortunes he may have declined.”
“I meant,” said I, “a welcome not so much fitting my mastership as that honesty of yours, Mr. Rookley, which my Lord Derwentwater tells me is all on the outside.”
I bent forward, keeping my eyes upon his face. But not a muscle jerked in it.
“Ah!” said he, in an indifferent voice. “Did Lord Derwentwater tell you that? Well, I had never a great respect for his discernment;” and he stood looking into the fire. Then he glanced at me and uttered a quiet little laugh.
“So you knew,” said he, easily, “I had it in my mind, but I could not be certain.”
“I have known it——” I cried, exasperated out of all control by his cool audacity; and with a wave of the hand he interrupted me.
“You will excuse me,” he said politely; and then, “There is no longer any reason why I should stand, is there?” and he resumed his seat and slipped his feet into his shoes. “Now,” said he, “if you will pass the bottle.”
“No,” I roared in a fury.
“Well, well,” he returned, “since there seems some doubt which of us is host and which guest, I will not press the request. You were saying that you have known it——?”
“Since one evening when you showed me a private entrance into Blackladies,” I cried; and bending forward to press upon him the knowledge that he had thereby foiled himself, I added in some triumph, “I have great reason to thank you for that, Mr. Jervas Rookley.”
He leaned forward too, so that our heads were close together.
“And for more than that,” said he. “Believe me, dear Mr. Clavering, that is by no means all you have to thank me for;” and he very affectionately patted my knee.
“And that is very true,” says I, as I drew my knee away. “For I have to thank you for the fourth part of a bottle of brandy, but I cannot just bring to mind any other occasion of gratitude.”
“Oh, gratitude!” says he, with a reproachful shake of the hand. “Fie, Mr. Clavering! Between gentleman and cousins the word stinks—it positively stinks. Whatever little service I have done for you, calls for no such big-sounding name.”
His voice, his looks, his gestures were such as a man notes only in a friend, and a friend that is perplexed by some unaccountable suspicion.
“But you spoke of honesty,” he continued, throwing a knee across the other and spreading out his hands. “It is very true I played a trick on you in coming to Paris as your servant. But it is a trick which my betters had used before me. Your Duke of Ormond got him into France with the help of a lackey’s livery. And your redoubtable Mar——”
At that name I started.
“It is indeed so,” he said earnestly. “The Earl of Mar, I have it on the best authority, worked his passage as a collier into Scotland.”
It was not, however, that I was concerned at all as to how the Earl of Mar had escaped unremarked from London. But it suddenly occurred to me, as an explanation of Rookley’s friendly demeanour, that the insurrection might be sweeping southwards on a higher tide of success than I had been disposed to credit. If that was the case, Mr. Jervas Rookley would of a certainty be anxious still to keep friends with me.
“So you see, Mr. Clavering,” he went on, “I have all the precedents that a man could need to justify me.”
“Well,” said I, “it is not the trick itself which troubles me so much as your design in executing it.”
“Design?” says he, taking me up in a tone of wonderment “You are very suspicious, Mr. Clavering. But I do not wonder at it, knowing in what school you were brought up;” and rising from his chair he took a pipe from the mantel-shelf and commenced to fill it with tobacco, “The suspicion, however, is unjust” He bent down and plucked a splinter of burning wood out of the fire. “You do not smoke, I believe, but most like you do now, and at all events you will have grown used to the smell.”
I started forward and stared at him. He lighted his pipe with great deliberation.
“Yes,” said he nodding his head at me, “the suspicion is unjust” He tossed the splinter into the fire and sat down again.
“And how is little Dorothy Curwen?” he asked, with a lazy, contemptuous smile.
I sprang out of my seat, stung by the contempt rather than the surprise his words were like to arouse in me. And this, I think, he perceived, for he laughed to himself. Whereupon I felt my face flush; and that too he noted, and laughed again.
“Then you knew,” I exclaimed, recovering myself—“you knew where I was sheltered! “
“A gentleman riding down Gillerthwaite at three o’clock of the morning is a sufficiently rare a sight to attract attention. I believe that, luckily, the shepherd who saw you only gossiped to a tenant of Blackladies.”
I remembered the flock of sheep which I had seen scared up the hillside across the valley. But it was on my return from Keswick that I had been remarked—no later than a day after Rookley had striven to encompass my arrest
“The news,” said I, very slowly, “came to you in a roundabout fashion, and took, I suppose, some time in the coming. I infer, therefore, that it came to your ears after the Earl of Mar had risen in Scotland.”
I was leaning upon the mantel-piece, looking down into his face, on which the fire shone with a full light; and just for a moment his face changed, the slightest thing in the world, but enough to assure me that my conjecture was right.
“There are inferences, my good cousin,” he said sharply, “which it is not over-prudent for a man so delicately circumstanced as yourself to draw.”
There was a note of disappointment in his tone, as though he would fain have hoodwinked me still into the belief that he stood my friend. And it suddenly occurred to me that there was a new danger in this knowledge of his—a danger which threatened not so much me as the people who had sheltered me. I resumed accordingly in a more amicable tone:
“It was not, however, of my whereabouts that I came hither to speak to you, but of the whereabouts of Mr. Herbert.”
“Mr. Herbert?” says he, playing surprise. “What should I know of Mr. Herbert? Now, if I was to ask you the whereabouts of Mrs. Herbert, there would be some sense in the question, eh?” and he chuckled cunningly and poked a forefinger into my ribs. I struck the hand aside.
“What, indeed, should you know of Mr. Herbert,” I cried—“you that plotted his arrest!”
“Arrest?” he interrupted, yet more dumfounded. “Plot?”
“That is the word,” said I—“plot! a simple word enough, though with a damned dirty underhand meaning.”
“Ah,” be returned, with a sneer, “you take that interest in the husband, it appears, which I imagined you to have reserved for his wife. But as for plots and arrests—why, I know no more of what you mean than does the Khan of Crim Tartary.”
“Then,” said I, “will you tell me why you paid a visit to Mr. Herbert the night before he was arrested? And why you told him that if he came to Blackladies on the afternoon of the next day he would find Mrs. Herbert and myself in the garden?”
It was something of a chance shot, for I had no more than suspicion to warrant me, but it sped straight to its mark. Rookley started back in his chair, huddling his body together. Then he drew himself erect, with a certain defiance.
“But zounds, man!” he exclaimed, like one exasperated with perplexity, “what maggot’s in your brains? Why should I send Herbert—devil take the fellow!—to find you in the garden when I knew you would not be there?”
“And I can answer that question with another,” said I. “Who were in the garden at the time Mr. Herbert was to discover us?”
“The gardeners, I suppose,” said he, thrusting his wig aside to scratch his head.
“It is a queer kind of gardener that wears buttons of this sort,” said I; and I pulled the button from my pocket, and held it before his eyes in the palm of my hand.
He bent forward, examined the button, and again looked at me inquiringly.
“I picked it up,” I explained, “on a little plot of trampled grass in the Wilderness on the next morning.”
Rookley burst into a laugh and slapped his thighs.
“Lord! Mr. Clavering,” he cried, and rising from his chair he walked briskly about the room, “your button is something too small to carry so weighty an accusation.”
“Nay,” I answered, smiling in my turn, “the button, though small, is metal solid enough. It depends upon how closely it is sewn to the cloth of my argument. It is true that I picked up the button on the morning that the soldiers came for me, but I was in the house on the afternoon before, and I saw——”
Jervas Rookley stopped in his walk, and his laughter ceased with the sound of his steps.
“You were in the house?” His mouth so worked that he pronounced the words awry. “You were in the house?”
“In the little parlour which gives on to the terrace.”
Had I possessed any doubt before as to his complicity, the doubt would have vanished now. He reeled for a moment as if he had been struck, and the blood mottled in his cheeks.
“The house-door may be left open for one man, but two men may enter it,” said I.
“You saw?” He took a step round the table and leaned across the corner of it. “What did you see?”
I took up a lighted candle from the table.
“I will show you,” said I, and walked to the door.
He followed me, at first with uncertain steps. The steps grew firm behind my back.
They seemed to me significant of a growing purpose—so in the hall I stopped.
“We are good cousins, you and I,” said I, holding the candle so that the dame lighted his face.
“Without a doubt,” says he, readily. “You begin to see that you have mistaken me.”
“I was thinking rather,” said I, “that being good cousins, we might walk arm-in-arm.”
“I should count it an honour,” said he, with a bow.
“And it will certainly be a relief to me,” said I. And accordingly I took his arm.
We crossed the hall into the parlour. The window stood open, as I had left it, with the curtains half drawn. Rookley busily pushed them back while I set the candle down. The sky had cleared during the last half hour, and the moon, which was in its fourth quarter, hung like a globe above the garden.
“I met Mr. Herbert in the hall,” said I, “just outside this room. We had some talk—of a kind you can imagine. He went down the steps with his sword drawn. There he dropped his cloak, there he slashed at the bushes. Between those two trees he passed out of sight. I stepped out into the terrace to follow him, but before I had reached the flight of steps, I heard a pistol crack and saw a little cloud of smoke hang above the bushes there. I found the button the next morning at the very spot, and near the button, the pistol. It was Mr. Herbert’s pistol. That,” said I, “is my part of the story. But perhaps if we go back to the warmer room you will give me your part. For I take it that you were not in the house, else you would have heard my voice, but rather in the garden. You made a great mistake in not looking towards the terrace, my cousin.” And again I took his arm, and we walked back.
I was, indeed, rather anxious to discover the whereabouts of Rookley during that afternoon, since so far I had been able to keep Mrs. Herbert’s name entirely out of the narrative. If Jervas Rookley had been in the garden during the afternoon, and had only returned to the house in time to intercept Lord Derwentwater’s letter concerning the French King’s health, and had thereupon ridden off to apply for a warrant against me, why, there was just a chance that I might save Mrs. Herbert from figuring in the business at all.
Rookley said nothing until we were got back into the dining-room, but walked thoughtfully, his arm in mine. I noticed that he was carrying in his left hand the cord by which the curtains in the little parlour were fastened. He stood swinging it to and fro mechanically.
“Your suspicions,” said he, “discompose me. They discompose me very much. I gave you credit for more generosity;” and lifting up the brandy bottle, he held it with trembling hands betwixt himself and the candle.
“I am afraid that it is empty,” said I.
“If you will pardon me,” said he, “I will even fetch another.”
He laid the cord upon the table, advanced to the door and opened it wide. I saw him slide his hand across the lock.
“The key is in my pocket,” I said.
He looked at me with a sorrowful shake of the head.
“Your suspicions discompose me very much,” and he came back for a candle. I noticed too that he carelessly picked up the cord again.
“I think,” said I, “that I will help you to fetch that bottle;” and I went with him into the hall.
There was something new in the man’s bearing which began to alarm me. He still used the same tone of aggrieved affection, but with an indefinable difference which was none the less very apparent to me. His effort seemed no longer to aim at misleading me, but rather to sustain the pretence that he was aiming to mislead me. It seemed to me that since he had become aware of what I knew concerning his treachery he had devised some new plan, and kept his old tone to hinder me from suspecting it I noticed, too, a certain deliberateness in the indifference of his walk, a certain intention in the discomposure.
In the hall he stopped, and setting down the candle upon a cabinet, turned to face me.
“Why did you come with me?” he asked gently.
“I did not know but what you might call your servants, and, as you put it, I am delicately circumstanced.”
He raised his hands in a gesture of pity.
“See what suspicion leads a man to! My servants hold you in so much respect that if I harboured designs against your safety, to call my servants would be to ruin me.”
I was inclined to believe that what he said was in a measure true, for I remembered the interview which I had had with Ashlock in the steward’s office, and the subseauent consideration which had been shown me.
Then, “Look!”I cried of a sudden, pointing my arm. Right in front of me on that vacant space of the wall amongst the pictures hung the portrait of Jervas Rookley.
Rookley started ever so little and then stood eyeing me keenly, the while he swung round and round in a little circle the tassel of the curtain cord.
“You prate to me of suspicions,” I cried, “there’s the proof of their justice. This estate of Biackladies I held on one condition—that you should receive no benefit from it. We jogged side by side, you and I, cousins with hearts cousinly mated in the same endeavour! You still profess it! Then explain to me: how comes it the Whigs leave you alone, you stripped of your inheritance because of the very principles which outlawed me? Explain that, and I’ll still believe you. Prove that you live here without the Government’s connivance, I’ll forget the rest of my suspicions. I’ll count you my loyal friend. Only show me this: how comes it that I make my bed upon the bracken, and you lord it at Biackladies? Your presence the common talk, your picture staring from the walls?” and in my rage I plucked my sword from the sheath, and slashed his portrait across the face, lengthwise and breadthwise, in a cross.
The tassel stopped swinging. His shoulders hunched ever so little, his head came forward, the eyes shone out bright like beads, and his face tightened to that expression of foxy cunning I had noted before in mid Channel between Dover and Dunkirk.
“It is a gallant swordsman,” he said, with a sneer, “and a prudent too.”
“He looks to the original,” I cried, “to give him the occasion of imprudence;” and I faced him.
“There is a better way,” said he, with the quietest laugh, and he sprang back suddenly to the cabinet on which the candle stood. “We will make a present of a Michaelmas goose to King George.”
I saw his hand for an instant poised above the flame, red with the light of it; I saw his figure black from head to foot, and at his elbow another figure white from head to foot, the reflection of myself in the mirror by his side; and then his palm squashed down upon the wick.
The hall fell to darkness just as I made the first step towards him. I halted on the instant. He could see me, I could not see him! He had thrown off the mask; he had proclaimed himself my enemy, and he knew where I had been sheltered. It was that thought which slipped into my mind as the darkness cloaked about me, and made me curse the folly of my intrusion here. I had hazarded not merely myself, but Dorothy and her father. He could see me, I could not see him, and the outcome of this adventure struck at Dorothy.
I stepped backwards as lightly as I could, until the edge of a picture-frame rubbed against my shoulder-blades, and so stood gripping my swordhilt, straining my ears. Across the hall I seemed to hear Rookley breathing, but it was the only sound I heard. There was no shuffle of a foot; he had not moved.
Above me the twilight glimmered beneath the roof; about me the chamber was black as the inside of a nailed coffin. If I could only reach the windows and tear the curtains back! But half the length of the hall intercepted me, and to reach them I must needs take my back from the wall. That I dared not do, and I stood listening helplessly to the sound of Rookley’s breathing. In that pitch-dark hall it seemed to shift from quarter to quarter. At one moment I could have sworn I heard his breath, soft as a sigh, a foot’s length from me; I could almost have sworn I felt it on my neck; and in a panic I whirled my sword from side to side, but it touched nothing within the half circle of its reach. My fears indeed so grew upon me, that I was in two minds whether or no to shout and bring the servants about me. It would at all events end the suspense. But I dared not do it. Jervas Rookley distrusted them. But how much more cause had I! I could not risk the safety of Applegarth upon their doubtful loyalty. And then a sharp sound broke in upon the silence. It set my heart fluttering and fainting within me by reason of its abruptness, so that for a moment I was dazed and could not come at the reason of it. It was a clattering sound, and, so far as I could gather, it came from the spot where I had last seen Jervas Rookley standing. It was like—nay, it was the sound of a shoe dropped upon the boards. I know not why, but the sound steadied, though it appalled me. It spoke of a doubled danger and cried for a doubled vigilance. Rookley could not only see my white figure; he could move to it noiselessly, for he was slipping off his shoes. I listened for the creak of a board, for the light padding sound of stockinged feet, for the rustle of his coat; and while I listened, I moved my sword gently in front of me, but my sword touched nothing and my ears heard nothing. Yet he must be coming—stealthily stepping across the hall—I felt him coming. But from what quarter would he come? During those seconds of waiting the question became a torture.
And then a momentary hope shot through me. When he put the candle out his sword was in the scabbard. He had not drawn it, since I had listened so strenuously that I must have heard. However carefully he drew it, a chain would clink; or if not that, the scabbard might knock against his leg; or if not that, there would be a little whirr, a sort of whisper as the blade slid upwards out of the sheath.
There was still a chance, then. At that point of the darkness from which the sound should come I would strike—strike the moment I heard it, with all my strength, down towards the floor. I tightened my fingers about my sword-hilt and waited. But it was a very different noise which struck upon my hearing, a noise that a man may make in the dragging of a heavy sack. I drew myself up close to the wall, setting my feet together, pressing my heels against the panels. The sound filled me with such terror as I think never before or since I have known the like of. For I could not explain it to myself. I only knew that it was dangerous. It seemed to me to come from somewhere about midway of the room, and I held my breath that I might judge the better on its repetition. After a moment it was repeated, but nearer, and by its proximity it sounded so much the more dangerous. I sprang towards it. A sobbing cry leapt from my lips, and I lunged at a venture into the darkness. But again my sword touched nothing, and with the force of that unresisted thrust I stumbled forward for a step or two. My cry changed into a veritable scream. I felt the fingers of a hand gently steal about each of my ankles and then tighten on them like iron fetters. I understood; halfway across the room Rookley had lowered himself full-length upon the floor and was crawling towards me. I raised my sword to strike, but even as I raised it he jerked my feet from beneath me, and I fell face forwards with a crash right across his body. My sword flew out of my hand and went rolling and clattering into the darkness. My forehead struck against the boards, and for a moment I lay half stunned. It was only for a moment, but when that moment had passed, Jervas Rookley was upon me, above me, his arms twined about mine and drawing them behind me, his knees pressed with all his might into the small of my back.
“We will truss the goose before we send it to King George,” said he.