Lawrence Clavering Part 6

"I trust to go to bed a good twenty miles from Commercy."

He shook his head at me.

"Lawrence, it is plain that you are new to the service of kings."

"You have a letter for me," said I.

"To the Duke of Ormond," and he looked at me in surprise. "You mean to start to-night?"

"Yes."

"Very well," and he sat himself down to the table, transformed in a second to a cool man of business. "The letter is in the chevalier's hand"--he drew it from his pocket as he spoke--"and there are many ships in the Channel. You had best charter a boat at Dunkirk, the smaller the better, and set sail at night-fall, so that you may strike the Downs before sunrise." Thereupon he proceeded to instruct me as to the precise details concerning which I was to inform myself in c.u.mberland--such as the number of troops they could put into the field, and how competent they were to face well-drilled and disciplined squadrons, their weapons, the least a.s.sistance from France they would hazard the rising upon, and such-like matters. Then he rose and prepared to accompany me downstairs. I was still holding the medal in my hand, and now and again fingering it, as a man will what he holds most precious. "And, Lawrence," he said, "I would hide the medal, even from yourself, if that be possible. You may find it a very dangerous gift before you have done."

He spoke with so solemn a warning as even then did something to sober my enthusiasm.

"It was a wise word that the Chevalier spoke when he bade you beware how you sided openly with the Jacks."

"Oh!" said I, as the thought struck me. "It was you, then, that prompted that advice--and for my sake."

"Not altogether."

"But in the main, for my sake."

"Lawrence," said he, leaning across the table, with his eyes fixed upon my face and his voice lowered to a whisper, "I mis...o...b.. me, but this is a fool's business we're embarked upon. You heard the Chevalier. He has no fixed design," and he brought his hand down upon the table with a dunch. "One day he will land at Montrose, the next in Devonshire, the next in c.u.mberland, and, G.o.d knows, but the most likely place of all is the Tower steps."

"No!" I cried. "I'll not believe that. He has you to help him now."

Bolingbroke smiled, but shook his head.

"He has six other ministers besides myself, with f.a.n.n.y Oglethorpe and Olive Trant at the head, and all of them have more power than I. He will concert a plan with me, and the hour after give a contrary order behind my back. It was the same when Berwick had the disposing of his affairs. No, Lawrence, I would have you be prudent, very prudent."

He came down the stairs with me and stood in the courtyard repeating ever the same advice, the while I mounted my horse. Of my steward I still could see no sign, and, leaving another direction that he should follow with all speed, I rode off towards the village of Isoncour, where Ashlock caught me up some two hours after I came there. I rated him pretty soundly, being much contraried by the melancholy forebodings of Lord Bolingbroke.

Ashlock made his excuses, however, very submissively, saying that he had dined at an ordinary in the town, and thereafter, being much fatigued with the hurry of our travelling, had fallen fast asleep. And I, bethinking me that, in spite of his gloomy forecast, Lord Bolingbroke would none the less serve the King with unremitting vigour, began to take heart again, and so pardoned Leonard Ashlock.

We came then to Dunkirk in the s.p.a.ce of four days, and I was much put to it how I should get safely over into England with the King's letter. For the English warships were ever on the watch for the King's emissaries, and one of them, a sloop, was riding not so far out in full view of Dunkirk. In this difficulty Ashlock was of the greatest service to me, discovering qualities which I should never have suspicioned in him. For, espying a little pinnace drawn up on the beach, he said:

"The two of us could sail that across, sir."

"No doubt," said I, "if one of us could steer a course and the other handle the sails."

"I can do the first, sir, by myself, and the second with your help,"

he replied.

I went down the sands to the boat, and discovering to whom it belonged from a bystander, sought the owner out and forthwith bought it at his own price. For thus we need confide our business to no one, but waiting quietly till nightfall, we might slip past the big ship under cover of the dark. And this we did, launching the boat and bending the sails by the light of a lantern, which we kept as nearly as we could ever turned towards the land. The moon was in its fourth quarter and not yet risen when we started, so that the night, though not so black as we could wish, was still dark enough for our purpose. We had besides the lights from the port-holes of the warship to guide us, which gleamed pure and bright across the water like a triple row of candles upon an altar. We ran cautiously, therefore, for some distance to the west close under the shadow of the coast, and then fetching a wide compa.s.s about the ship, set our course straight for England. It was a light boat we were in, rigged with a lug-sail and a jib, and we slipped along under a fine reaching wind that heeled us over till the thwart was but an inch from the froth of the water.

"If only the wind hold!" said Ashlock, with a glance at the sail, and there was a lively ring of exultation in his voice. And, indeed, it was an inspiriting business this flight of ours across the Channel, or at all events this part of it I lay forward in the bows with a great coat atop of me, and my face upturned to the s.p.a.cious skies, which were strewn with a gold-dust of stars and jewelled with the planets.

The wind blew out of the night sharp and clean, the waves bubbled and tinkled against the planks as the prow split them into a white fire, and we sped across that broad floor of the sea as if licensed to an illimitable course. Now and again the lights of a ship would rise to the right or left, glimmer for a little like an ocean will-o'-the-wisp and vanish; now and again we would drive past a little fleet of fishing-smacks lying to for the night with never so much as a candle alight amongst them all, and only the stars, as it were, entangled amongst their bare poles and rigging; and, after a little, the moon rose.

I thought of my crib in the Rue St Antoine and the months of confinement there as of something intolerable. The wide freedom of the sea became an image of the life I was entering upon. I felt the brine like a leaven in my blood. And then of a sudden the sail flapped above me like the wing of a great bat, the strenuous motion of the pinnace ceased, and we were floating idly upon an even keel.

I looked towards Ashlock; he sat motionless in the stern with the tiller in his hand and the moonlight white upon his face. Then he took a turn about the tiller with a rope, glanced along the boat with his body bent as though he was looking forward beneath the sail, and came lightly stepping across the benches towards the bows. I lay still and watched him in a lazy contentment. Midway betwixt bow and stern he stopped and busied himself with tightening a stay; then again he crouched down and looked forwards, but this time it seemed to me that he was not looking out beyond the bowsprit, but rather into the bows to the spot where I lay huddled under my coat in the shadow of the thwart I could see his face quite plainly, and it appeared to me to have changed, in some way to have narrowed. It may have been a fancy, it may have been the moonlight upon his face, but his eyes seemed to glisten at me from out a countenance suddenly made trivial by cunning.

After a second he crept forward again, and I noticed how lightly--how very lightly he stepped. Would he stop at the mast, I asked myself?

Was his business the tightening of a sheet even as he had tightened the stay? He stooped beneath the sail and still crept forward, running his hand along the top of the gunwale as he came; and it broke upon me as something new that he and I were alone in mid-channel, cabined within the planks of a little boat, he the servant,--but whose servant?--I not so much the master as the master's subst.i.tute and tripper-up.

I felt for my sword, but I remembered that I had loosed it from my belt when we had put to sea. From the spot where I lay I could see the scabbard shining by the tiller. At all events, Ashlock had not brought it with him. I watched him without a movement as he approached, but underneath the coat, every nerve and muscle in my body was braced to the tightness of a cord.

He bent over me, holding his breath, it seemed; his hands came forward hovering above my chest, but they held no weapon; his face sank out of the moonlight, dropped beneath the gunwale lower and lower down upon mine. Meanwhile I watched him, looking straight into his eyes. His face was but a few inches from mine when he drew back with a little quivering cry--it was, indeed, more of a startled in-drawing of the breath than a cry--and crouched on his hams by my side. Still I did not move, and again his face came forward over mine, very slowly, very cautiously, and down to where I lay in the dark, with my eyes open watching his. I could endure the suspense no longer.

"What is it, Ashlock?" I asked quietly, and in asking the question that moment, made a very great mistake, the importance whereof I did not discover until long afterwards.

Ashlock sprang back as though I had struck him in the face, I raised myself on one elbow and thrust the other outside the covering.

"I could not tell, sir, whether you waked or slept," he said; and I thought his voice trembled a little.

"I was awake, Ashlock. What is it?"

"The wind has shifted, sir," and now he answered confidently enough, "and blows dead in our teeth. We must needs tack if we are to reach the coast by daybreak."

"Well?"

"I cannot do it, sir, without your help. It needs two to tack if you sail with a lug-sail."

And that I found to be true. For the sail being what is called a square-sail with a gaff along the top of it, each time the pinnace went about it was necessary to lower it, and hoist it again on the other side of the mast. The which it fell to me to do, while Ashlock guided the tiller. So that I knew there was good reason for his waking me. However, I had little time for speculation upon the matter one way or another, since we sailed into a mist shortly afterwards, and were on the stretch, both eyes and ears, lest we should be run down by some vessel, or ever we could see it.

I was much exercised, too, what with the stars being hid, and our constant going about, whether Ashlock would be able to keep the boat in a course towards England. I need not, however, have troubled my head upon that score, for it was as though he had some sixth sense which found its occasion upon the sea, and when the day broke and the mist rolled down and ma.s.sed itself upon the water, we were within five miles of the white cliffs with Dover Castle upon our starboard bow.

The mist, I should say, was at that time about chin high, for standing up in the boat we looked across a grey driving floor, above which the smaller vessels only showed their masts.

"Shall I run her into the harbour?" asked Ashlock, and he turned the boat's head towards land.

"No!" I cried vehemently. For now that we were come within sight of England the letter that I carried began to burn in my pocket, and I felt the surest conviction that if we disembarked at Dover, we should be surrounded, catechised, and finally searched, upon the ground of a tell-tale face, which face would a.s.suredly be mine. "No!" I said; "let us take advantage of the mist, and creep along the coast till we find some inlet where we can beach the boat."

This we did, and running now with a freer sail, we came in little more than an hour to a cove some four or five miles to the north-east of Dover, the cliffs breaking off very sharp at each side with a line of thin rocks jutting out at the south corner, and the walls of the cove steep all round and thickly wooded as low as we could see. Towards this cove we pointed, intending to run in there and abandon the boat But when we were within half a mile of land the sun blazed out in the sky and the fog shredded like so much gauze burnt up in a fire. It was a fortunate thing for us that we had come no nearer to the sh.o.r.e. For there, low down on the beach, and but a yard or two from the water's edge, on a tiny strip of level ground, were four little cottages with the British ensign afloat. Ashlock rapped out an oath and thrust the tiller across to its further limit, meaning to go about and run back out of sight of the cove.

"The sail, sir!" he cried in great excitement, "Oh! d.a.m.n it, sir, the sail!"

I sprang to the mast, loosed the sheets, lowered the sail, and of course must needs in my hurry get the spar entangled amongst the stays a foot above the thwart. Ashlock rose in a pa.s.sion, and leaving the tiller to shift for itself, came leaping towards me.

"There, there, sir," he sneered, "leave it to me!" and losing at once his air of deference, he was for wresting rather than taking the spar out of my hands. "Did ever man see?" he exclaimed. "O Lord, did ever man see----"

"Such a fool-master and such a clever servant," said I, finishing the sentence for him. But the words were hardly out of my mouth when I let go of the spar. He staggered back, holding the one end of it in his hands, the other caught me a crack in the joint at the knees, and the next moment I was sprawling on my back at the bottom of the boat. I heard Ashlock mutter, "Lord send us less pride and a ha'porth of common sense," the while he busied himself with getting the sail into position, and then he turned to me.

"You'll find, sir, the Preventive men will make little difference between master and servant when they discover the pretty letter you are carrying."

"The Preventive men!" I cried, scrambling to my feet.

"Ay, sir, the Preventive men," said he with a glance at the beach.