Pelham Part 42

In complaisance to Tyrrell, I endeavoured to accelerate my steed. The roads were rough and stony, and I had scarcely got the tired animal into a sharper trot, before--whether or no by some wrench among the deep ruts and flinty causeway--he fell suddenly lame. The impetuosity of Tyrrell broke out in oaths, and we both dismounted to examine the cause of my horse's hurt, in the hope that it might only be the intrusion of some pebble between the shoe and the hoof. While we were yet investigating the cause of our misfortune, two men on horseback overtook us. Tyrrell looked up. "By Heaven," said he, in a low tone, "it's that dog Dawson, and his worthy coadjutor, Tom Thornton."

"What's the matter, gentlemen?" cried the bluff voice of the latter.

"Can I be of any a.s.sistance?" and without waiting our reply, he dismounted, and came up to us. He had no sooner felt the horse's leg, than he a.s.sured us it was a most severe strain, and that the utmost I could effect would be to walk the brute gently home.

As Tyrrell broke out into impatient violence at this speech, the sharper looked up at him with an expression of countenance I by no means liked; but in a very civil, and even respectful tone, said, "If you want, Sir John, to reach Chester Park sooner than Mr. Pelham can possibly do, suppose you ride on with us, I will put you in the direct road before I quit you." (Good breeding, thought I, to propose leaving me to find my own way through this labyrinth of ruts and stones!) However, Tyrrell, who was in a vile humour, in no very courteous manner, refused the offer, and added that he should continue with me as long as he could, and did not doubt that when he left me he should be able to find his own way. Thornton pressed the invitation still closer, and even offered, sotto voce, to send Dawson on before, should the baronet object to his company.

"Pray, Sir," said Tyrrell, "leave me alone, and busy yourself about your own affairs." After so tart a reply, Thornton thought it useless to say more; he remounted, and with a silent and swaggering nod of familiarity, soon rode away with his companion.

"I am sorry," said I, as we were slowly proceeding, "that you rejected Thornton's offer."

"Why, to say truth," answered Tyrrell, "I have so very bad an opinion of him, that I was almost afraid to trust myself in his company on so dreary a road. I have nearly (and he knows it), to the amount of two thousand pounds about me; for I was very fortunate in my betting-book today."

"I know nothing about racing regulations," said I; "but I thought one never paid sums of that amount upon the ground?"

"Ah!" answered Tyrrell, "but I won this sum, which is L1,800., of a country squire from Norfolk, who said he did not know when he should see me again, and insisted on paying me on the spot: 'faith I was not nice in the matter. Thornton was standing by at the time, and I did not half like the turn of his eye when he saw me put it up. Do you know, too,"

continued Tyrrell, after a pause, "that I have had a d--d fellow dodging me all day, and yesterday too; wherever I go, I am sure to see him. He seems constantly, though distantly, to follow me; and what is worse, he wraps himself up so well, and keeps at so cautious a distance, that I can never catch a glimpse of his face."

I know not why, but at that moment the recollection of the m.u.f.fled figure I had seen upon the course, flashed upon me.

"Does he wear a long horseman's cloak?" said I.

"He does," answered Tyrrell, in surprise: "have you observed him?"

"I saw such a person on the race ground," replied I; "but only for an instant!"

Farther conversation was suspended by a few heavy drops which fell upon us; the cloud had pa.s.sed over the moon, and was hastening rapidly and loweringly over our heads. Tyrrell was neither of an age, a frame, nor a temper, to be so indifferent to a hearty wetting as myself.

"G.o.d!" he cried, "you must put on that beast of your's--I can't get wet, for all the horses in the world."

I was not much pleased with the dictatorial tone of this remark. "It is impossible," said I, "especially as the horse is not my own, and seems considerably lamer than at first; but let me not detain you."

"Well!" cried Tyrrell, in a raised and angry voice, which pleased me still less than his former remark; "but how am I to find my way, if I leave you?"

"Keep straight on," said I, "for a mile farther, then a sign-post will direct you to the left; after a short time, you will have a steep hill to descend, at the bottom of which is a large pool, and a singularly shaped tree; then keep straight on, till you pa.s.s a house belonging to Mr. Dawson--"

"Come, come, Pelham, make haste!" exclaimed Tyrrell, impatiently, as the rain began now to descend fast and heavy.

"When you have pa.s.sed that house," I resumed coolly, rather enjoying his petulance, "you must bear to the right for six miles, and you will be at Chester Park in less than an hour."

Tyrrell made no reply, but put spurs to his horse. The pattering rain and the angry heavens soon drowned the last echoes of the receding hoofclang.

For myself, I looked in vain for a tree; not even a shrub was to be found; the fields lay bare on either side, with no other part.i.tion but a dead hedge, and a deep d.y.k.e. "Patientia fit melius," thought I, as Horace said, and Vincent would say; and in order to divert my thoughts from my situation, I turned them towards my diplomatic success with Lord Chester. Presently, for I think scarcely five minutes had elapsed since Tyrrell's departure, a horseman pa.s.sed me at a sharp pace; the moon was hid by the dense cloud, and the night, though not wholly dark, was dim and obscured, so that I could only catch the outline of the flitting figure. A thrill of fear crept over me, when I saw that it was enveloped in a horseman's cloak. I soon rallied--"There are more cloaks in the world than one," said I to myself; "besides, even if it be Tyrrell's dodger, as he calls him, the baronet is better mounted than any highwayman since the days of Du Val; and is, moreover, strong enough and cunning enough to take admirable care of himself." With this reflection I dismissed the occurrence from my thoughts, and once more returned to self-congratulations upon my own incomparable genius. "I shall now,"

I thought, "have well earned my seat in parliament; Dawton will indisputably be, if not the prime, the princ.i.p.al minister in rank and influence. He cannot fail to promote me for his own sake, as well as mine; and when I have once fairly got my legs in St. Stephen's, I shall soon have my hands in office: 'power,' says some one, 'is a snake that when it once finds a hole into which it can introduce its head, soon manages to wriggle in the rest of its body.'" With such meditations I endeavoured to beguile the time and cheat myself into forgetfulness of the lameness of my horse, and the dripping wetness of his rider. At last the storm began sullenly to subside: one impetuous torrent, ten-fold more violent than those that had preceded it, was followed by a momentary stillness, which was again broken by a short relapse of a less formidable severity, and the moment it ceased, the beautiful moon broke out, the cloud rolled heavily away, and the sky shone forth, as fair and smiling as Lady--at a ball, after she has been beating her husband at home.

But at that instant, or perhaps a second before the storm ceased, I thought I heard the sound of a human cry. I paused, and my heart stood still--I could have heard a gnat hum: the sound was not repeated; my ear caught nothing but the plashing of the rain drops from the dead hedges, and the murmur of the swollen d.y.k.es, as the waters pent within them rolled hurriedly on. By and by, an owl came suddenly from behind me, and screamed as it flapped across my path; that, too, went rapidly away: and with a smile, at what I deemed my own fancy, I renewed my journey.

I soon came to the precipitous descent I have before mentioned; I dismounted, for safety, from my drooping and jaded horse, and led him down the hill. At a distance beyond I saw something dark moving on the gra.s.s which bordered the road; as I advanced, it started forth from the shadow, and fled rapidly before me, in the moonshine--it was a riderless horse. A chilling foreboding seized me: I looked round for some weapon, such as the hedge might afford; and finding a strong stick of tolerable weight and thickness, I proceeded more cautiously, but more fearlessly than before. As I wound down the hill, the moonlight fell full upon the remarkable and lonely tree I had observed in the morning. Bare, wan, and giant-like, as it rose amidst the surrounding waste, it borrowed even a more startling and ghostly appearance from the cold and lifeless moonbeams which fell around and upon it like a shroud. The retreating animal I had driven before me, paused by this tree. I hastened my steps, as if by an involuntary impulse, as well as the enfeebled animal I was leading would allow me, and discovered a horseman galloping across the waste at full speed. The ground over which he pa.s.sed was steeped in the moonshine, and I saw the long and disguising cloak, in which he was developed, as clearly as by the light of day. I paused: and as I was following him with my looks, my eye fell upon some obscure object by the left side of the pool. I threw my horse's rein over the hedge, and firmly grasping my stick, hastened to the spot. As I approached the object, I perceived that it was a human figure; it was lying still and motionless; the limbs were half immersed in the water--the face was turned upwards--the side and throat were wet with a deep red stain--it was of blood; the thin, dark hairs of the head, were clotted together over a frightful and disfiguring contusion. I bent over the face in a shuddering and freezing silence. It was the countenance of Sir John Tyrrell!

CHAPTER LXV.

Marry, he was dead--And the right valiant Barlquo walked too late, Whom, you may say, if it please you, Fleance killed, For Fleance fled!

--Macbeth.

It is a fearful thing, even to the hardiest nerves, to find ourselves suddenly alone with the dead. How much more so, if we have, but a breathing interval before, moved and conversed with the warm and living likeness of the motionless clay before us!

And this was the man from whom I had parted in coldness--almost in anger--at a word--a breath! I took up the heavy hand--it fell from my grasp, and as it did so, I thought a change pa.s.sed over the livid countenance. I was deceived; it was but a light cloud flitting over the moon;--it rolled away, and the placid and guiltless light shone over that scene of dread and blood, making more wild and chilling the eternal contrast of earth and heaven--man and his Maker--pa.s.sion and immutability--dust and immortality.

But that was not a moment for reflection--a thousand thoughts hurried upon me, and departed as swift and confusedly as they came. My mind seemed a jarring and benighted chaos of the faculties which were its elements; and I had stood several minutes over the corpse before, by a vigorous effort, I shook off the stupor that possessed me, and began to think of the course that it now behoved me to pursue.

The house I had noted in the morning was, I knew, within a few minutes'

walk of the spot; but it belonged to Dawson, upon whom the first weight of my suspicions rested. I called to mind the disreputable character of that man, and the still more daring and hardened one of his companion Thornton. I remembered the reluctance of the deceased to accompany them, and the well-grounded reason he a.s.signed; and my suspicions amounting to certainty, I resolved rather to proceed to Chester Park, and there give the alarm, than to run the unnecessary risk of interrupting the murderers in the very lair of their retreat. And yet, thought I, as I turned slowly away, how, if they were the villains, is the appearance and flight of the disguised horseman to be accounted for?

Then flashed upon my recollection all that Tyrrell had said of the dogged pursuit of that mysterious person, and the circ.u.mstance of his having pa.s.sed me upon the road so immediately after Tyrrell had quitted me. These reflections (a.s.sociated with a name I did not dare breathe even to myself, although I could not suppress a suspicion which accounted at once for the pursuit, and even for the deed,) made me waver in, and almost renounce my former condemnation of Thornton and his friend: and by the time I reached the white gate and dwarfish avenue which led to Dawson's house, I resolved, at all events, to halt at the solitary mansion, and mark the effect my information would cause.

A momentary fear for my own safety came across me, but was as instantly dismissed;--for even supposing the friends were guilty, still it would be no object to them to extend their remorseless villany to me; and I knew that I could sufficiently command my own thoughts to prevent any suspicion I might form, from mounting to my countenance, or discovering itself in my manner.

There was a light in the upper story; it burned still and motionless.

How holy seemed the tranquillity of life, to the forced and fearful silence of the death scene I had just witnessed! I rung twice at the door--no one came to answer my summons, but the light in the upper window moved hurriedly to and fro.

"They are coming," said I to myself. No such thing--the cas.e.m.e.nt above was opened--I looked up, and discovered, to my infinite comfort and delight, a blunderbuss protruded eight inches out of the window in a direct line with my head; I receded close to the wall with no common precipitation.

"Get away, you rascal," said a gruff, but trembling voice, "or I'll blow your brains out."

"My good Sir," I replied, still keeping my situation, "I come on urgent business, either to Mr. Thornton or Mr. Dawson; and you had better, therefore, if the delay is not very inconvenient, defer the honour you offer me, till I have delivered my message."

"Master, and 'Squire Thornton are not returned from Newmarket, and we cannot let any one in till they come home," replied the voice, in a tone somewhat mollified by my rational remonstrance; and while I was deliberating what rejoinder to make, a rough, red head, like Liston's, in a farce, poked itself cautiously out under cover of the blunderbuss, and seemed to reconnoitre my horse and myself. Presently another head, but attired in the more civilized gear of a cap and flowers, peeped over the first person's left shoulder; the view appeared to rea.s.sure them.

"Sir," said the female, "my husband and Mr. Thornton are not returned; and we have been so much alarmed of late, by an attack on the house, that I cannot admit any one till their return."

"Madam," I replied, reverently doffing my hat, "I do not like to alarm you by mentioning the information I should have given to Mr. Dawson; only oblige me by telling them, on their return, to look beside the pool on the common; they will then do as best pleases them."

Upon this speech, which certainly was of no agreeable tendency, the blunderbuss palpitated so violently, that I thought it highly imprudent to tarry any longer in so immediate a vicinity; accordingly, I made the best of my way out of the avenue, and once more resumed my road to Chester Park.

I arrived there at length; the gentlemen were still in the dining-room.

I sent out for Lord Chester, and communicated the scene I had witnessed, and the cause of my delay.

"What, Brown Bob lamed?" said he, "and Tyrrell--poor--poor fellow, how shocking! we must send instantly. Here, John! Tom! Wilson!" and his lordship shouted and rung the bell in an indescribable agitation.

The under butler appeared, and Lord Chester began--"My head groom--Sir John Tyrrell is murdered--violent sprain in off leg--send lights with Mr. Pelham--poor gentleman--an express instantly to Dr. Physicon--Mr.

Pelham will tell you all--Brown Bob--his throat cut from ear to ear--what shall be done?" and with this coherent and explanatory harangue, the marquis sunk down in his chair in a sort of hysteria.

The under butler looked at him in suspicious bewilderment. "Come," said I, "I will explain what his lordship means:" and, taking the man out of the room, I gave him, in brief, the necessary particulars. I ordered a fresh horse for myself, and four hors.e.m.e.n to accompany me. While these were preparing, the news was rapidly spreading, and I was soon surrounded by the whole house. Many of the men wished to accompany me; and Lord Chester, who had at last recovered from his stupor, insisted upon heading the search. We set off, to the number of fourteen, and soon arrived at Dawson's house: the light in the upper room was still burning. We rang, and after a brief pause, Thornton himself opened the door to us. He looked pale and agitated.

"How shocking!" he said directly--"we are only just returned from the spot."

"Accompany us, Mr. Thornton," said I, sternly; and fixing my eye upon him--