The King's Highway Part 21

"But why not prevent them?" cried Wilton, "why not give up such traitors and villains to justice at once?" "Why not?" replied Green; "because there are men amongst them who have fought side by side with me in the day of battle; because there are some foolish when others are wicked; because that there are many who abhor their acts as much as I do, but who would be implicated in the consequences of their crimes. These are all strong reasons, Wilton, powerful, mighty reasons, and I find now, alas I--I find now, most bitterly--that he who seeks even the best ends, in dark and tortuous ways, is sure, sooner or later, to involve himself in circ.u.mstances where he can neither act nor refuse to act, neither speak nor be silent, without a crime, a danger and a punishment. In that situation I have placed myself; and I tell you that even now, since I have entered this room, I have determined to call upon my own head those dangers, if not that fate, which the mistake I have committed well deserves. I will frustrate these men's designs. They shall not commit the act they purpose. But yet I will betray no man; I will give no man up to death. They shall not wring it from me; but they shall be sufficiently warned. Now, however, let us leave all this, and only inquire how this girl can be saved from their hands. You, Wilton, must be the person to rescue her, for I feel sure that your fate and hers are bound up together. I feel sure, too," he added with a faint smile, "that she would rather it were your hand saved her than that of any one else. I have seen you together more than once, remember. But how it is to be done is the question. My time must be given to other things, for from tidings I have received not a moment is to be lost. They have taken such means that I find there are only two whom I can trust out of very many who were with me near London. I have no time to send either into Dorsetshire or Suss.e.x, and the people there may have been tampered with also. Besides, as we cannot call in the power of the law upon our side, it would need a number to effect our purpose."

"But I will call in the power of the law," replied Wilton. "I have a Messenger with the Secretary of State's warrant at my command; and wherever this place may be, I can in a moment raise such a force in the neighbourhood as will enable me to rescue her, and capture those who have committed so daring an outrage.

"Ay, but that is what must not be, Wilton," replied Green. "There is not one of those men whom you would capture whose head would be worth ten days' purchase, were he within the walls of Newgate or the Tower.

No, no! to that I cannot consent. Her freedom must be effected somehow, but their liberty not lost. I must think over it this night.

Where can I find you to-morrow morning early?"

"At my own lodgings," replied Wilton, "not four streets off."

"No, no!" answered Green; "I never enter London in the day. I might risk much by doing so, and must not do it except in case of great need."

"Then let it be at Beaufort House," replied Wilton: "I sleep there to-night. But why should we not settle and determine the whole at once? Tell me but where is this place to which they have taken Lady Laura, and I will undertake to rescue her."

"You alone, Wilton?" said Green.

"Aided by none but the Messenger," replied Wilton: "armed with the force of the law, I fear not whom I encounter."

"Armed with the force of love!" answered Green, after looking at him for a moment with eyes in which affection and admiration were equally evident. "You want not the spirit of your race; and it will carry you through. If you will promise me to take none but the Messenger with you, you shall have some one to guide you to the house, and to aid you on my part. I need not tell you what you have to do. Demand the young lady's liberty simply and straightforwardly; say to all those who oppose you, that the task of investigating what have been the causes, and who the perpetrators of the outrage committed, must fall upon the Duke; that you have no authority to meddle with that part of the business. Say this, I repeat, and I doubt not that you will be fully successful. They dare not--I am sure they dare not--resist you, if you do not attempt to arrest any of their own number."

"I promise you most faithfully," replied Wilton, "to act as you have said. I will go with the Messenger and the person you send only. But where am I to meet this person? When, and how, and where, am I to find the house?"

"You would find it with difficulty," replied Green; "for it lies far off from the high road, not many miles from Rochester; and the lanes and woods about it are not arranged for the purpose of making it easily discovered. You must not, therefore, attempt to find your way alone. However, set out early to-morrow with strong fresh horses, and ride on till you come to the village of High Halstow. Should you reach that place before nightfall, remain there till it turns dusk.

As it begins to become grey, ride out again, taking the way towards Cowley Castle. As you go along that road, you will find some one to show you the way. He will ask you what colour you are of. Answer him 'Brown,' but that 'Green' will do as well. I would be there myself if I could; but that, I fear, cannot be. Let me hear of you and of your success, however--though I will not doubt your success; and now, are you going back to Beaufort House? If so, I will bear you company on the way."

Wilton replied in the affirmative, and they accordingly left the house of the Earl of Sunbury. Wilton, however, had to procure his horse; and Green also was delayed, for a moment, by the same piece of business. When all was prepared, he seemed to hesitate and pause before he mounted; and while he yet remained speaking, with his foot in the stirrup, a boy ran up, saying, "I have just been down, sir, and seen him go in."

Green gave him a note which he had held in his hand during the whole conversation at Lord Sunbury's, saying, "Take him that note! Tell the servant to deliver it immediately. If Lord Sherbrooke asks who sent it, tell him it was the gentleman who wrote it, and who hopes to meet him at the appointed place." The boy ran off with the note as fast as he could go, and Wilton and his companion turned their horses' heads towards Chelsea.

What he had heard certainly did surprise Wilton a good deal; and he did not scruple to say, "You seem acquainted with every one, I think, and to have an acquaintance with many of whom I did not know you had the slightest knowledge."

"It is so," answered Green, in a grave and thoughtful tone, "and yet nothing wonderful. It is with a man like me as with nature," he added with a smile, "we both work secretly. Things seem extraordinary, strange, almost miraculous, when beheld only in their results, but when looked at near, they are found to be brought about by the simplest of all possible means. You, having lived but little in the world, and not being one half my age, yet know thousands of people in the highest ranks of life that I do not know, though I have mingled with that rank ten times as much as you have done: and I know many whom you would think the last to hold acquaintance with me in these changed times. You could go into any thronged a.s.sembly, a theatre, a ball-room, a house of parliament, and point me out, by hundreds, people with whose persons I am utterly unacquainted, and these would be the greatest men of the day.

"But I could lay my finger upon this wily statesman, or that great warrior, or the other stern philosopher, and could tell you secrets of those men's bosoms which would astonish you to hear, and make them shrink into the ground;--and yet there would be no magic in all this."

Wilton did not answer him in the same moralizing strain, but strove to obtain some farther information in regard to his proceedings proposed for the following day. But neither upon that, nor upon the subject of the note to Lord Sherbrooke, would Green speak another word, till, on arriving at the gates of Beaufort House, he said--

"Remember High Halstow."

CHAPTER XXI.

It was night, and the large a.s.sembly of persons who had thronged the palace at Kensington during the day had taken their departure.

Silence had returned after the noise and bustle of the sunshine had subsided; scarcely a sound was heard throughout the whole building, except the porter snoring in the hall. The King himself had taken his frugal supper, and was sitting alone in his cabinet with merely a page at the door; his courtiers were scattered in their different apartments; and his immediate attendants were waiting in the distant chambers where he slept, for the hour of his retiring to rest.

Such had been the state of things for some little time, when the great bell rang, and the porter started up to open the door. A gentleman on horseback appeared without, accompanied by two others, apparently servants; and the princ.i.p.al personage demanded, in a tone of authority, "Is the Earl of Portland in the palace?"

The porter, though not well pleased to be roused, replied, with every sort of deference to the air and manner of the visitor, saying that the Earl was in the palace, but he believed was unwell.

"I am afraid I must disturb him," said the stranger. "My business is of too much importance to his lordship to wait till to-morrow morning."

The porter then gave the speaker another look: the dress, the demeanour, the horses, the attendants, were all such as commanded respect, although he did not recollect the stranger's face. "Well, sir," he said, "if you will come in, I will have his lordship informed."

The stranger nodded his head, and turning to his followers, bade them take away the horses. "I will walk back," he said, and then following the porter, entered the palace. The janitor led him onward through some large folding doors to a room where two or three servants were sitting, into whose hands he delivered him, bidding one of them conduct him to the page in waiting. This was speedily done; and the page, on being informed of the stranger's desire, again examined him somewhat curiously, and asked his name.

"That matters not," replied the stranger. "Tell him merely that it is a gentleman to whom he rendered great service many years ago, and who has now important intelligence to give him."

"I fear, sir," replied the page, "that my Lord Portland would not like to be disturbed without some clearer information than that."

"Do as you are ordered, sir," replied the gentleman, in a tone of stern authority, which seemed not a little to surprise his hearer.

"Tell Lord Portland it is a gentleman whose life he saved at the battle of the Boyne."

The page retired with the air of one who would fain have been sullen if he had dared; and the stranger remained standing with his hand upon the table in the middle of the room, the doors closed round him on all sides, and no one apparently near.

His first thought was one not often indulged in that place, though by no means an unnatural one. It was a thought, for merely expressing which, not less than twelve people were once committed to a severe and lengthened imprisonment by a king of France. "How easy would it now be," the stranger said mentally, "to kill a king, were one so minded! Now, G.o.d forbid," he added, "that even the attempt of such an act should ever stain our loyalty to our legitimate sovereign!

Those Romans, those splendid but most barbarous of barbarians, were certainly the greatest cheats of their own understandings that ever lived. There was scarcely a crime, a vice, or a folly upon earth, that they did not hug to their hearts, when they had once gilded it with a glorious name."

As he thus paused, moralizing, he laid down his hat upon the table, and brushing back his grey hair from his brow, pressed his hand upon his forehead as if his head ached, and then dropping it again, mused for several minutes with his eyes fixed upon the floor. He was only roused from this deep fit of thought by the door opening suddenly. A gentleman rather below the middle height, with strong marked features, and a keen but steadfast eye, entered the room with a paper in his hand. His eyes were fixed upon the ground as he came in, and he walked with a firm but somewhat heavy step, as if his limbs did not move very easily, though he was by no means a man far advanced in life.

The stranger gazed at him for a moment with a look of inquiry, and then advanced immediately towards him, bowing with a stately air, and saying, "My Lord of Portland, since I last saw you, you are somewhat changed, but perhaps not so much as I am, and therefore I may have to recall myself to your remembrance; especially as those who confer a benefit in a moment of haste and tumult, are more likely to forget the person they obliged, than that person to forget his benefactor."

He spoke in French, as it was generally known that Lord Portland was unwilling to speak English, though he understood it.

The other heard him out in perfect silence, and without the slightest change of countenance; but looked him in the face attentively, as if endeavouring to recollect his features.

"I have seen you somewhere before," he said at length, "but where I really do not know. It must have been a long time ago. Pray what do you want?"

"It is a long time ago, my lord," replied the visitor, "and the place where we met is far distant. It was upon the banks of the Boyne, just when the battle was over."

"Oh, I think I remember now," replied the other: "did I not come up just as one of our people had got his knee upon your throat, and was going to fire his pistol into your head, because you would ask no quarter, while another was wrenching your broken sword out of your hand?"

"You did," answered the stranger, "you did: you saved my life; and when I jumped up and got to a horse, you would not let them fire after me. It was not to be forgotten, my lord; but--"

At that moment the door was again thrown open, and the page re-entered the room, speaking in a somewhat harsh and authoritative tone as he came in, so as to cut across what the stranger was about to say, with "My Lord of Portland--;" but the gentleman who had entered just before waved his hand, saying, in a stern voice, "Leave the room! and wait without."

The man obeyed immediately, and the other turning to the visitor, added, "I am at this moment not very well, and extremely busy--even pressed for a moment, so that I must leave you just now. If you will sit down and write what you wish, it shall have favourable attention, or if you would rather say it, and explain it more fully by word of mouth, I will send an intimate friend of mine to you to whom you can tell what you think proper. I will hear what it is, and give every attention to it; but at this moment it is impossible for me to remain. These papers in my hand require instant reply, and I was seeking for some one to answer them when I came here."

"What I have to say," answered the stranger, "requires also instant attention; that is to say, it must be told to your lordship before to-morrow morning, and I will therefore, if you will permit me, remain here till you are ready to hear. When once told to you, the burden of it will be off my shoulders."

"I could have wished to have gone to bed," replied the other, with a faint smile, "without any farther burden upon mine. But if it so please you to wait, do it; but I fear I shall be long."

The visitor, however, signified his acquiescence by bowing his head; and the other left him without saying anything more.

"Somewhat of the insolence of office!" he said to himself, as his acquaintance quitted the room: "however, I must not forget the obligation;" and seating himself, he fell into deep thought, which seemed of a painful kind; for the muscles of his face moved with the emotions of his mind, and one or two half-uttered words escaped him.

At length, he seemed weary of his own thoughts, and turning round as if to look for some occupation for his thoughts, he said, "It matters not!"

There were no books in the room, nor any pictures; there was nothing that could attract the eye or amuse the mind, except the beautiful forms of some of the gilded panel-frames, and the spots of the carpet beneath his feet. The visitor began to grow weary, and to think that Lord Portland was very long in returning.