Rookwood Part 65

"The road takes a turn here, don't it?" asked d.i.c.k--"sweeps round to the right by the plantations in the hollow?"

"Ay, ay, captain," answered Ralph; "it's plain you knows the ground."

"What lies behind yon shed?"

"A stiff fence, captain--a reg'lar rasper. Beyond that a hill-side steep as a house, no oss as was ever shoed can go down it."

"Indeed!" laughed d.i.c.k.

A loud halloo from Major Mowbray, who seemed advancing upon the wings of the wind, told d.i.c.k that he was discovered. The major was a superb horseman, and took the lead of his party. Striking his spurs deeply into his horse, and giving him bridle enough, the major seemed to shoot forward like a sh.e.l.l through the air. The Burleigh Arms retired some hundred yards from the road, the s.p.a.ce in front being occupied by a neat garden, with low, clipped edges. No tall timber intervened between d.i.c.k and his pursuers, so that the motions of both parties were visible to each other. d.i.c.k saw in an instant that if he now started he should come into collision with the major exactly at the angle of the road, and he was by no means desirous of hazarding such a rencontre. He looked wistfully back at the double fence.

"Come into the stable. Quick, captain, quick!" exclaimed Ralph.

"The stable!" echoed d.i.c.k, hesitating.

"Ay, the stable; it's your only chance. Don't you see he's turning the corner, and they are all coming? Quick, sir, quick!"

d.i.c.k, lowering his head, rode into the tenement, the door of which was unceremoniously slapped in the major's face, and bolted on the other side.

"Villain!" cried Major Mowbray, thundering at the door, "come forth! You are now fairly trapped at last--caught like the woodc.o.c.k in your own springe. We have you. Open the door, I say, and save us the trouble of forcing it. You cannot escape us. We will burn the building down but we will have you."

"What dun you want, measter?" cried Ralph, from the lintel, whence he reconnoitered the major, and kept the door fast. "You're clean mista'en.

There be none here."

"We'll soon see that," said Paterson, who had now arrived; and, leaping from his horse, the chief constable took a short run to give himself impetus, and with his foot burst open the door. This being accomplished, in dashed the major and Paterson, but the stable was vacant. A door was open at the back; they rushed to it. The sharply sloping sides of a hill slipped abruptly downwards, within a yard of the door. It was a perilous descent to the horseman, yet the print of a horse's heels were visible in the dislodged turf and scattered soil.

"Confusion!" cried the major, "he has escaped us."

"He is yonder," said Paterson, pointing out Turpin moving swiftly through the steaming meadow. "See, he makes again for the road--he clears the fence. A regular throw he has given us, by the Lord!"

"n.o.bly done, by Heaven!" cried the major. "With all his faults, I honor the fellow's courage and admire his prowess. He's already ridden to-night as I believe never man rode before. I would not have ventured to slide down that wall, for it's nothing else, with the enemy at my heels. What say you, gentlemen, have you had enough? Shall we let him go, or----?"

"As far as chase goes, I don't care if we bring the matter to a conclusion," said t.i.tus. "I don't think, as it is, that I shall have a sate to sit on this week to come. I've lost leather most confoundedly."

"What says Mr. Coates?" asked Paterson. "I look to him."

"Then mount, and off," cried Coates. "Public duty requires that we should take him."

"And private pique," returned the major. "No matter! The end is the same. Justice shall be satisfied. To your steeds, my merry men all.

Hark, and away."

Once more upon the move, t.i.tus forgot his distress, and addressed himself to the attorney, by whose side he rode.

"What place is that we're coming to?" asked he, pointing to a cl.u.s.ter of moonlit spires belonging to a town they were rapidly approaching.

"Stamford," replied Coates.

"Stamford!" exclaimed t.i.tus; "by the powers! then we've ridden a matter of ninety miles. Why, the great deeds of Redmond O'Hanlon were nothing to this! I'll remember it to my dying day, and with reason," added he, uneasily shifting his position on the saddle.

_CHAPTER IX_

_EXCITEMENT_

How fled what moonshine faintly showed!

How fled what darkness hid!

How fled the earth beneath their feet, The heaven above their head.

_William and Helen._

d.i.c.k Turpin, meanwhile, held bravely on his course. Bess was neither strained by her gliding pa.s.sage down the slippery hill-side nor shaken by _larking_ the fence in the meadow. As d.i.c.k said, "It took a devilish deal to take it out of her." On regaining the high road she resumed her old pace, and once more they were distancing Time's swift chariot in its whirling pa.s.sage o'er the earth. Stamford, and the tongue of Lincoln's fenny shire, upon which it is situated, were pa.s.sed almost in a breath. Rutland is won and pa.s.sed, and Lincolnshire once more entered.

The road now verged within a bowshot of that sporting Athens--Corinth, perhaps, we should say--Melton Mowbray. Melton was then unknown to fame, but, as if inspired by that _furor venaticus_ which now inspires all who come within twenty miles of this Charybdis of the chase, Bess here _let out_ in a style with which it would have puzzled the best Leicestershire squire's best prad to have kept pace. The spirit she imbibed through the pores of her skin, and the juices of the meat she had champed, seemed to have communicated preternatural excitement to her. Her pace was absolutely terrific. Her eyeb.a.l.l.s were dilated, and glowed like flaming carbuncles; while her widely-distended nostril seemed, in the cold moonshine, to snort forth smoke, as from a hidden fire. Fain would Turpin have controlled her; but, without bringing into play all his tremendous nerve, no check could be given her headlong course, and for once, and the only time in her submissive career, Bess resolved to have her own way--and she had it. Like a sensible fellow, d.i.c.k conceded the point. There was something even of conjugal philosophy in his self-communion upon the occasion. "E'en let her take her own way and be hanged to her, for an obstinate, self-willed jade as she is," said he: "now her back is up there'll be no stopping her, I'm sure: she rattles away like a woman's tongue, and when that once begins, we all know what chance the curb has. Best to let her have it out, or rather to lend her a lift. 'Twill be over the sooner. Tantivy, la.s.s! tantivy! I know which of us will tire first."

We have before said that the vehement excitement of continued swift riding produces a paroxysm in the sensorium amounting to delirium.

d.i.c.k's blood was again on fire. He was first giddy, as after a deep draught of kindling spirit; this pa.s.sed off, but the spirit was still in his veins--the _estro_ was working in his brain. All his ardor, his eagerness, his fury, returned. He rode like one insane, and his courser partook of his frenzy. She bounded; she leaped; she tore up the ground beneath her; while d.i.c.k gave vent to his exultation in one wild, prolonged halloo. More than half his race is run. He has triumphed over every difficulty. He will have no further occasion to halt. Bess carries her forage along with her. The course is straightforward--success seems certain--the goal already reached--the path of glory won. Another wild halloo, to which the echoing woods reply, and away!

Away! away! thou matchless steed! yet brace fast thy sinews--hold, hold thy breath, for, alas! the goal is not yet attained!

But forward! forward, on they go, High snorts the straining steed, Thick pants the rider's laboring breath, As headlong on they speed!

_CHAPTER X_

_THE GIBBET_

See there, see there, what yonder swings And creaks 'mid whistling rain, Gibbet and steel--the accursed wheel-- A murderer in his chain.

_William and Helen._

As the eddying currents sweep over its plains in howling, bleak December, the horse and her rider pa.s.sed over what remained of Lincolnshire. Grantham is gone, and they are now more slowly looking up the ascent of Gonerby Hill, a path well known to Turpin; where often, in bygone nights, many a purse had changed its owner. With that feeling of independence and exhilaration which every one feels, we believe, on having climbed the hill-side, Turpin turned to gaze around. There was triumph in his eye. But the triumph was checked as his glance fell upon a gibbet near him to the right, on the round point of hill which is a landmark to the wide vale of Belvoir. Pressed as he was for time, d.i.c.k immediately struck out of the road, and approached the spot where it stood. Two scarecrow objects, covered with rags and rusty links of chains, depended from the tree. A night crow screaming around the carcases added to the hideous effect of the scene. Nothing but the living highwayman and his skeleton brethren was visible upon the solitary spot. Around him was the lonesome waste of hill, o'erlooking the moonlit valley: beneath his feet, a patch of bare and lightning-blasted sod: above, the wan, declining moon and skies, flaked with ghostly clouds; before him, the bleached bodies of the murderers, for such they were.

"Will this be my lot, I marvel?" said d.i.c.k, looking upwards, with an involuntary shudder.

"Ay, marry will it," rejoined a crouching figure, suddenly springing from beside a tuft of briars that skirted the blasted ground.

d.i.c.k started in his saddle, while Bess reared and plunged at the sight of this unexpected apparition.

"What, ho! thou devil's dam, Barbara, is it thou?" exclaimed d.i.c.k, rea.s.sured upon discovering it was the gipsy queen, and no spectre whom he beheld. "Stand still, Bess--stand, la.s.s. What dost thou here, mother of darkness? Art gathering mandrakes for thy poisonous messes, or pilfering flesh from the dead? Meddle not with their bones, or I will drive thee hence. What dost thou here, I say, old dam of the gibbet?"

"I came to die here," replied Barbara, in a feeble tone; and, throwing back her hood, she displayed features well-nigh as ghastly as those of the skeletons above her.

"Indeed," replied d.i.c.k. "You've made choice of a pleasant spot, it must be owned. But you'll not die yet?"