Lawrence Clavering Part 27

"Yes," said she, "but your looks warranted her. The ship was to be fitted out to help the Catalans. It lies at Whitehaven now. He was there but a few days ago."

"He spoke of it to me," said I, "with some hint that he might put me across to France."

"But you will not go?" she said, turning to me quickly. "Any day the country may rise and every arm will be needed--I mean every young arm."

I shook my head.

"The French King is dying, maybe is dead, and without his help will the country rise? Besides, so long as I stay here, I endanger you."

I spoke reluctantly enough, for though I had no intention whatever to seek a refuge in France, I felt that if once Mr. Curwen definitely promised to send me thither, I could not remain at Applegarth at however small a risk to him and his. I must needs accept the offer and--betake me again to the hillside, in which case there was little probability that I should be able to effect anything towards Anthony Herbert's enlargement before I was captured myself.

"There is no danger to us," she said. "For, some while since, we persuaded my father to take no active share in the plans. There will be no danger," and she stopped for a second, "if you will put out your candle when next you leave it in the stables."

"My candle?" I stammered, taken aback by her words. "I left it burning?"

"Last night," said she.

"I beg your pardon."

"There is very great reason that you should," she said with a laugh.

"For I must needs hurry on my clothes and put it out. As I said, you are very imprudent, Mr. Clavering;" and with that she tripped down to the house, leaving me not so much concerned with what she had hinted about her father, as with my own immediate need to secure the knowledge I was after quickly, and avert by my departure the smallest risk from Applegarth.

I was on that account the more relieved when, late upon the third night afterwards, Tash knocked at the door, and brought me a letter from Lord Derwent.w.a.ter. I opened it eagerly, and read it through. It told me much which is common knowledge now, as that the Earl of Mar had summoned his friends in Scotland to meet him at Aboyne on the 27th, upon the pretext of a great hunting-party; that the mug-house riots in London were daily increasing in number and violence; but that with the French King, so near to his dissolution, and the precautions of the English Government in bringing over Dutch troops, and thronging the Channel with its ships, Lord Bolingbroke was all for delay. "But G.o.d knows," he added, "whether delay is any possible, and I fear for the event. We have many of the n.o.bles on our side--but the body of our countrymen? It will be like a game of chess in which one side plays without p.a.w.ns. We have Bishops and Knights and Castles, but no p.a.w.ns."

There was more of the same kind, and I glanced through it hurriedly, until I came to that of which I was more particularly in search.

"The sheriff came with his posse to Lord's Island in the morning, so that it was well you left during the night. He is still after you. I pa.s.sed his messenger yesterday near Braithwaite, so it behoves you to be wary. I do not think, however, he has winded you as yet, and as soon as I can discover an occasion I will have you sent over the water. But being myself under the cloud of their suspicions, I have to step very deliberately. Your cousin, Jervas Rookley, lives openly under his own name at Blackladies, and receives visits from the Whig attorney; and since he can only be staying there with the sufferance of the Government, you may be certain what I told you is true. By the way, Mr. Anthony Herbert, the painter, disappeared on the same day or thereabouts that you did. It is rumoured that he has been arrested, but nothing certain is known. But if the rumour is true I greatly fear that he owes his arrest to his acquaintanceship with you and myself. I suspect Mr. Rookley's finger in the pie. Since he was playing false with the Government concerning you, he would most likely be anxious to give them an earnest of loyalty in some other matter. But I do not know."

So far I read and clapped the letter down with a bang. For here was the fellow to my own suspicion.

I sat down and finished the letter. There was but another line to it.

"I got my information about Rookley from an oldish man who came secretly here from Blackladies. He seemed in some doubt as to which of yourself or your cousin he should call master, but he was very insistent that I should let you know of his coming. I had, indeed, some difficulty in comprehending him, for now he wished me to style him 'Aron' to you and now 'Ashlock.' Altogether I thought it wiser to give him no news as to your whereabouts. This, however, is certain, from what he said to me--there is a watch set about Blackladies on the chance that you might return."

This last sentence troubled me exceedingly. For it had been growing in my mind that there was but one person who could tell me fully what I needed to know, and that person Mr. Jervas Rookley; and a vague purpose was gradually taking shape within me that I would once more make use of Mr. Curwen's stables, and riding one night round by Newlands valley and Keswick, seek to take Mr. Rookley by surprise, and wrest the truth from him. That project the letter seemed to strike dead. Accordingly I took the occasion to write to Lord Derwent.w.a.ter, and implored him, if by any means he could, to inform himself more particularly of Anthony Herbert's arrest, and whither he had been taken. "For upon these two points," said I, "hangs not my safety, but my soul's salvation;" and so hurried Tash off before the poor man was halfway through his supper, and waited impatiently for an answer.

Now, during this period of waiting, since each time that I found myself alone with Mr. Curwen, his talk would wander back inquisitively to the French Court, discovering there a l.u.s.tre which no doubt it had, and a chivalry which it no less certainly lacked, I began of a set purpose to avoid him; and avoiding him, was thrown the more into the company of Miss Dorothy. Moreover, the frankness with which she had hinted to me the weakness of her father, brought about a closer intimacy between us as of friend and friend rather than as of hostess and guest. It was as though Mary Tyson and she were continually building up out of their love a fence around the father, and she had joined me in the work.

Many a time, when I was on the hillside behind the house I would be startled by the sight of a horse and the flash of a red-coat upon the horse's back, only to find my heart drumming yet the faster when I perceived that it was Miss Dorothy Curwen in her red cramoisie riding-habit. Maybe I would be standing no great distance from the house, and she would see me and come up the gra.s.s while I went down towards her, her hair straying about her ears and forehead in the sweetest disorder, and her cheeks wind-whipped to the rosiest pink. On the wet days, which were by no means infrequent, she would sit at her spinet and sing such old songs as that I had listened to on the first night of my coming. If the evenings were fine, we would sometimes row out upon Ennerdale water, in a crazy battered boat, so that I was more often baling out the leakage in a tin pannikin than pulling at the oars. And on afternoons, when the sunlight fell through the leaves like great spots of a gold rain we would climb up to the orchard, and I would spread an old cloak for her upon the gra.s.s, and we would sit amongst the crabbed trunks of trees. But at all times--in the dusk, when she sang and the rain whipped the panes; at night, when we rowed across the moonlit lake as across a silver mirror, in the hush of a world asleep--at all times a feverish impatience would seize on me for an answer to my letter, and a shadow would darken across our talk, so that thereafter I sat mum and glooming and heard little that was said to me. It was not, indeed, the shadow of the gallows, but rather of the fear lest while I lingered here at Applegarth, chance might thwart me of the gallows. For the girl's presence was to me as a perpetual accusation.

Upon one such occasion, when we were together in the orchard, she looked at me once or twice curiously.

"For one so imprudent," said she, a trifle petulantly, "you are extraordinary solemn."

"There are creatures," said I, with a weariful shake of the head, "who are by nature solemn."

"True," says she, placidly, "but even they hoot at night;" and she looked across the valley with extreme unconsciousness. But I noticed that her mouth dimpled at the corners as if she was very pleased.

"I know," said I, remorsefully, "that I make the dullest of companions."

She nodded her head in cordial agreement

"Perhaps you cannot help it," says she, with great sympathy.

"The truth is," I exclaimed sharply, "I have overmuch to make me solemn."

"No doubt," and the sympathy deepened in her voice, "and I am sure every one must pity you. There was a king once who never smiled again.

I am sure every one pitied him too."

"He only lost a son," I replied foolishly, meaning thereby that honour was a thing of more worth.

"And you an estate," says she. "It is indeed very true," and she clasped her hands and shook her head.

"Madam," I returned with some dignity, "you put words into my mouth that I had no thought of using. It was not of a mere estate that I was speaking."

"No?" says she reflectively. "Could it be a heart, then? Dear! dear!

this is very tragical."

"No," I said very quickly; and on the instant fell to stammering "No, no."

"The word gains little force from repet.i.tion. In fact, I have heard that two noes make a yes."

"Madam," said I stiffly, getting to my feet, "you persist in misunderstanding me;" and I moved a step or two apart from her.

"I do not know," she said demurely, "that you use any great effort to prevent the mistake."

That I felt to be true. I wondered for a moment whether she had not a right to know, and I turned back to her. She was sitting with her head c.o.c.ked on one side and glancing whimsically towards me from the tail of her eye. The glance became, on the instant, the blankest of uninterested looks. I plumped down again on the gra.s.s.

"That evening," I began, "when I left the candle burning in the stables, I rode into Keswick. There was something I should have done before I came hither," and I stumbled over the words.

She took me up immediately with a haughty indifference, and her chin very high in the air.

"Nay, I have no desire to pry into your secrets--not the least in the world."

"Oh," said I, "I fancied you were curious."

"Curious?" she exclaimed, with a flash of her eyes. "Curious, indeed!

And why should I be curious about your concerns, if you please?" And she spoke the word again with a laugh of scorn, "Curious!"

Said I, "The word gains no force from repet.i.tion."

Dorothy Curwen gasped with indignation.

"A very witty and polite rejoinder, upon my word," she said slowly, and began to repeat that remark too, but broke off at the second word.

For a little we were silent. Then she plucked a reed of gra.s.s and bit it pensively.

"No!" she said indifferently, "since my father has lived quietly at Applegarth, I have lost my interest in politics."