The Caxtons: A Family Picture Part 55

"Can you guess why I was a miser?" said Roland, calmly.

"A miser? Anything but that! Only prudent,--military men often are so."

"I was a miser," repeated the Captain, with emphasis. "I began the habit first when my son was but a child. I thought him high-spirited, and with a taste for extravagance. 'Well,' said I to myself, 'I will save for him; boys will be boys.' Then, afterwards, when he was no more a child (at least he began to have the vices of a man), I said to myself, 'Patience! he may reform still; if not, I will save money, that I may have power over his self-interest, since I have none over his heart. I will bribe him into honor!' And then--and then--G.o.d saw that I was very proud, and I was punished. Tell them to drive faster,--faster; why, this is a snail's pace!"

All that night, all the next day, till towards the evening, we pursued our journey, without pause or other food than a crust of bread and a gla.s.s of wine. But we now picked up the ground we had lost, and gained upon the carriage. The night had closed in when we arrived at the stage at which the route to Lord N--'s branched from the direct north road.

And here, making our usual inquiry, my worst suspicions were confirmed.

The carriage we pursued had changed horses an hour before, but had not taken the way to Lord N--'s, continuing the direct road into Scotland.

The people of the inn had not seen the lady in the carriage, for it was already dark; but the man-servant (whose livery they described) had ordered the horses.

The last hope that, in spite of appearances, no treachery had been designed, here vanished. The Captain at first seemed more dismayed than myself, but he recovered more quickly. "We will continue the journey on horseback," he said; and hurried to the stables. All objections vanished at the sight of his gold. In five minutes we were in the saddle, with a postilion, also mounted, to accompany us. We did the next stage in little more than two thirds of the time which we should have occupied in our former mode of travel,--indeed I found it hard to keep pace with Roland. We remounted; we were only twenty-five minutes behind the carriage,--we felt confident that we should overtake it before it could reach the next town. The moon was up: we could see far before us; we rode at full speed. Milestone after milestone glided by; the carriage was not visible. We arrived at the post-town or rather village; it contained but one posting-house. We were long in knocking up the hostlers: no carriage had arrived just before us; no carriage had pa.s.sed the place since noon.

What mystery was this?

"Back, back, boy!" said Roland, with a soldier's quick wit, and spurring his jaded horse from the yard. "They will have taken a cross-road or by-lane. We shall track them by the hoofs of the horses or the print of the wheels."

Our postilion grumbled, and pointed to the panting sides of our horses.

For answer, Roland opened his hand--full of gold. Away we went back through the dull, sleeping village, back into the broad moonlit thoroughfare. We came to a cross-road to the right, but the track we pursued still led us straight on. We had measured back nearly half the way to the post-town at which we had last changed, when lo! there emerged from a by-lane two postilions and their horses!

At that sight our companion, shouting loud, pushed on before us and hailed his fellows. A few words gave us the information we sought. A wheel had come off the carriage just by the turn of the road, and the young lady and her servants had taken refuge in a small inn not many yards down the lane. The man-servant had dismissed the post-boys after they had baited their horses, saying they were to come again in the morning and bring a blacksmith to repair the wheel.

"How came the wheel off?" asked Roland, sternly.

"Why, sir, the linch-pin was all rotted away, I suppose, and came out."

"Did the servant get off the d.i.c.key after you set out, and before the accident happened?"

"Why, yes. He said the wheels were catching fire, that they had not the patent axles, and he had forgot to have them oiled."

"And he looked at the wheels, and shortly afterwards the linch-pin came out? Eh?"

"Anan, sir!" said the post-boy, staring; "why, and indeed so it was!"

"Come on, Pisistratus, we are in time; but pray G.o.d, pray G.o.d that--"

The Captain dashed his spurs into the horse's sides, and the rest of his words were lost to me.

A few yards back from the causeway, a broad patch of green before it, stood the inn,--a sullen, old-fashioned building of cold gray stone, looking livid in the moonlight, with black firs at one side throwing over half of it a dismal shadow. So solitary,--not a house, not a but near it! If they who kept the inn were such that villany might reckon on their connivance, and innocence despair of their aid, there was no neighborhood to alarm, no refuge at hand. The spot was well chosen.

The doors of the inn were closed; there was a light in the room below: but the outside shutters were drawn over the windows on the first floor.

My uncle paused a moment, and said to the postilion,--

"Do you know the back way to the premises?"

"No, sir; I does n't often come by this way, and they be new folks that have taken the house,--and I hear it don't prosper over much."

"Knock at the door; we will stand a little aside while you do so. If any one ask what you want, merely say you would speak to the servant,--that you have found a purse. Here, hold up mine."

Roland and I had dismounted, and my uncle drew me close to the wall by the door, observing that my impatience ill submitted to what seemed to me idle preliminaries.

"Hist!" whispered he. "If there be anything to conceal within, they will not answer the door till some one has reconnoitred; were they to see us, they would refuse to open. But seeing only the post-boy, whom they will suppose at first to be one of those who brought the carriage, they will have no suspicion. Be ready to rush in the moment the door is unbarred."

My uncle's veteran experience did not deceive him. There was a long silence before any reply was made to the post-boy's summons; the light pa.s.sed to and fro rapidly across the window, as if persons were moving within. Roland made sign to the post-boy to knock again. He did so twice, thrice; and at last, from an attic window in the roof, a head obtruded and a voice cried, "Who are you? What do you want?"

"I'm the post-boy at the Red Lion; I want to see the servant with the brown carriage: I have found this purse!"

"Oh! that's all; wait a bit."

The head disappeared. We crept along under the projecting eaves of the house; we heard the bar lifted from the door, the door itself cautiously opened: one spring, and I stood within, and set my back to the door to admit Roland.

"Ho, help! thieves! help!" cried a loud voice, and I felt a hand grip at my throat. I struck at random in the dark, and with effect, for my blow was followed by a groan and a curse.

Roland, meanwhile, had detected a ray through the c.h.i.n.ks of a door in the hall, and, guided by it, found his way into the room at the window of which we had seen the light pa.s.s and go, while without. As he threw the door open, I bounded after him and saw, in a kind of parlor, two females,--the one a stranger, no doubt the hostess; the other the treacherous abigail. Their faces evinced their terror.

"Woman," I said, seizing the last, "where is Miss Trevanion?" Instead of replying, the woman set up a loud shriek. Another light now gleamed from the staircase which immediately faced the door, and I heard a voice, that I recognized as Peac.o.c.k's, cry out, "Who's there?--What's the matter?"

I made a rush at the stairs. A burly form (that of the landlord, who had recovered from my blow) obstructed my way for a moment, to measure its length on the floor at the next. I was at the top of the stairs; Peac.o.c.k recognized me, recoiled, and extinguished the light. Oaths, cries, and shrieks now resounded through the dark. Amidst them all I suddenly heard a voice exclaim, "Here, here! help!" It was the voice of f.a.n.n.y. I made my way to the right, whence the voice came, and received a violent blow.

Fortunately it fell on the arm which I extended, as men do who feel their way through the dark. It was not the right arm, and I seized and closed on my a.s.sailant. Roland now came up, a candle in his hand; and at that sight my antagonist, who was no other than Peac.o.c.k, slipped from me and made a rush at the stairs. But the Captain caught him with his grasp of iron. Fearing nothing for Roland in a contest with any single foe, and all my thoughts bent on the rescue of her whose voice again broke on my ear, I had already (before the light of the candle which Roland held went out in the struggle between himself and Peac.o.c.k) caught sight of a door at the end of the pa.s.sage, and thrown myself against it: it was locked, but it shook and groaned to my pressure.

"Hold back, whoever you are," cried a voice from the room within, far different from that wail of distress which had guided my steps. "Hold back at the peril of your life!"

The voice, the threat, redoubled my strength: the door flew from its fastenings. I stood in the room. I saw f.a.n.n.y at my feet, clasping my hands; then raising herself, she hung on my shoulder and murmured "Saved!" Opposite to me, his face deformed by pa.s.sion, his eyes literally blazing with savage fire, his nostrils distended, his lips apart, stood the man I have called Francis Vivian.

"f.a.n.n.y--Miss Trevanion--what outrage, what villany is this? You have not met this man at your free choice,--oh, speak!" Vivian sprang forward.

"Question no one but me. Unhand that lady,--she is my betrothed; shall be my wife."

"No, no, no,--don't believe him," cried f.a.n.n.y; "I have been betrayed by my own servants,--brought here, I know not how! I heard my father was ill; I was on my way to him that man met me here and dared to--"

"Miss Trevanion--yes, I dared to say I loved you!"

"Protect me from him! You will protect me from him?"

"No, madam!" said a voice behind me, in a deep tone; "it is I who claim the right to protect you from that man; it is I who now draw around you the arm of one sacred, even to him; it is I who, from this spot, launch upon his head--a father's curse. Violator of the hearth, baffled ravisher, go thy way to the doom which thou hast chosen for thyself! G.o.d will be merciful to me yet, and give me a grave before thy course find its close in the hulks or at the gallows!"

A sickness came over me, a terror froze my veins; I reeled back, and leaned for support against the wall. Roland had pa.s.sed his arm round f.a.n.n.y, and she, frail and trembling, clung to his broad breast, looking fearfully up to his face. And never in that face, ploughed by deep emotions and dark with unutterable sorrows, had I seen an expression so grand in its wrath, so sublime in its despair. Following the direction of his eye, stern and fixed as the look of one who prophesies a destiny and denounces a doom, I shivered as I gazed upon the son. His whole frame seemed collapsed and shrinking, as if already withered by the curse; a ghastly whiteness overspread the cheek, usually glowing with the dark bloom of Oriental youth; the knees knocked together; and at last, with a faint exclamation of pain, like the cry of one who receives a death-blow, he bowed his face over his clasped hands, and so remained--still, but cowering.

Instinctively I advanced, and placed myself between the father and the son, murmuring, "Spare him; see, his own heart crushes him down."

Then stealing towards the son, I whispered, "Go, go; the crime was not committed, the curse can be recalled." But my words touched a wrong chord in that dark and rebellious nature. The young man withdrew his hands hastily from his face and reared his front in pa.s.sionate defiance.

Waving me aside, he cried, "Away! I acknowledge no authority over my actions and my fate; I allow no mediator between this lady and myself!

Sir," he continued, gazing gloomily on his father,--"sir, you forget our compact. Our ties were severed, your power over me annulled; I resigned the name you bear: to you I was, and am still, as the dead. I deny your right to step between me and the object dearer to me than life.

"Oh!"--and here he stretched forth his hands towards f.a.n.n.y--"Oh, Miss Trevanion, do not refuse me one prayer, however you condemn me. Let me see you alone but for one moment; let me but prove to you that, guilty as I may have been, it was not from the base motives you will hear imputed to me,--that it was not the heiress I sought to decoy, it was the woman I sought to win; oh, hear me--"

"No, no," murmured f.a.n.n.y, clinging closer to Roland, "do not leave me. If, as it seems, he is your son, I forgive him; but let him go,--I shudder at his very voice!"

"Would you have me indeed, annihilate the memory of the bond between us?" said Roland, in a hollow voice; "would you have me see in you only the vile thief, the lawless felon,--deliver you up to justice, or strike you to my feet? Let the memory still save you, and begone!"

Again I caught hold of the guilty son, and again he broke from my grasp.