The Yeoman Adventurer Part 35

"Who're you grandadding? I was big enough o' the chest when I could neck meat and drink enough to fill me out. Now!"

As he spoke he gripped a handful of the waistcoat that hung loosely about him, and added, "Once it was a fair fit, my master. It's cold and late for my old bones to be creaking about, but Trusty's the dog for the tail-end of the hunt, and a Blount's a Blount and mun be served."

"Fetch him out!" I repeated. "I've ridden hard and far to serve him."

The ancient took another look at me and said to himself in a loud whisper, after the manner of old and favoured serving-men, "A farmering body all but his hat, and none o' your ride-by-nights."

"Fetch him out!" said I again, not for want of fresh words to say to the candid old dodderer but to keep him to the point.

"Oh-aye," said he, and shuffled off.

He left me fuming, for his last mutteration, as he shook his lantern to stir the flame up a bit, was, "Knows a true man when he sees one. More used to a carving-knife than a sword, I'll be bound. What did he say?

Wheatman o' sommat! Reg'lar farmering name!"

I kicked the door wide open and watched the lantern bobbing along the hall. The light made pale shimmerings on complete suits of mail hanging so life-like on the high, bare, stone walls, that it seemed for all the world as if the knights had been crucified there and, little by little, age after age, had dropped to dust, leaving their warrior panoplies behind--empty sh.e.l.ls on the sh.o.r.e of time from which the life had dripped and rotted. The old man toiled up the grand staircase at the far end of the hall and turned to the right along a gallery. The friendly light disappeared, leaving me darkling and alone. Sultan sniffed his way to the door, pushed in his head and neck, and rubbed his nose against my breast in all friendliness. I flung my arms round his neck and caressed him, and in those anxious minutes in the doorway of Ellerton Grange he was comrade and sweetheart to me, and comforted my spirit greatly.

Footsteps and a voice within made me turn my head. A man came at a run down the stairs and along the hall. After him the old serving-man hastened, lantern in hand, as best he could.

"Sir James Blount?" said I.

"The same," said he curtly and confusedly.

"I bring you a letter from a very exalted person, Sir James," I explained.

He took it from me much as he would have taken a bowl of poison. "The light! The light! You slow old fool! The light!" he said, jerking the words out as if his soul was in distress, and the ancient, barely half-way down the hall, quickened his poor pace up to his master. He, tearing the lantern out of the feeble hands, and rattling it down on a table, ripped open the letter and devoured its contents.

The light of the lantern revealed the face of a man still young, but at least a half-score years my elder. He had a thin-lipped, sensitive mouth, a great arched nose, and quick, eager eyes. His mind was running like a mill-race, and his fine face twitched and wreathed and wrinkled under the stress of the flow. Another thing plain enough was that the old man had lied when he said his master was abed, for he was fully and carefully dressed and his wig had not in it a single displaced or unravelled curl.

This was no half-awakened dreamer, but a man with the issues of his life at stake.

He crushed the letter in his hand and paced up and down the hall, muttering to himself. I turned and rubbed Sultan's nose to keep him quiet and happy. The old servant took charge of the lantern again, and followed his master up and down with his eyes.

"A year ago, yes! A year ago, yes!" I heard Sir James say. He quickened his steps and the words came in jerks, mere nouns with verbs too big with meaning for him to utter them. "A word! A dream! A dead faith! Yes, father! The devil! Sweetheart!"

There is a great line in the Aeneid which I had tried in vain a hundred times to translate. Three days agone I would have tilted at it once more with all the untutored zeal of a verbalist. I should never need to try again. There are some lines in the Master that life alone can translate.

_Sunt lachrymae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt._

After a turn or two in silence, Sir James broke off his pacing and came to me.

"Sir," he said, "you will know enough to excuse my inattention to a guest. I must make it up if I can. Give me the lantern and wait for us here, Inskip. Come with me, sir, and stable your horse. Gad so, sir,"

holding up the lantern, "you ride the n.o.blest animal I have ever seen.

Woa, ho, my beauty! All my men are abed, so we must do it ourselves, but, by Heaven, it will be a pleasure, Master--what may I call you, sir?"

"Just the plain name of my fathers--Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards."

"A good strong name, sir, though my fathers liked it not."

"And you, Sir James?"

"Frankly, it is a name which to me has ceased to be a symbol. A good fellow can call himself 'Oliver' without setting my teeth on edge. I had a grand foxhound once, and called him 'Noll,' just because he was grand. My dear old father consulted a London doctor as to the state of my mind. It made him anxious, you see! The great man said, gruffly enough, that I was as sane as a jackdaw. Thereupon my dear dad, one of the best men that ever lived, had the dog shot!"

He laughed, reminiscently rather than merrily, and was to my mind bent on getting a grip on himself again. We made Sultan comfortable for the night, and then Sir James courteously said it was high time to be attending to me. He made no further indirect reference to the situation, until, as he was leading me along the hall, he stopped opposite a great dim picture, hanging between two sets of mail, and held the lantern high over his head to give me a view of it. With a strange mixture of resentment and pathos, he said, "A man's ancestors are sometimes a d.a.m.ned nuisance, sir!"

"They are indeed!" I replied. "There's one of mine shaking his fist at me over the battlements of the New Jerusalem."

He laughed heartily, and, with Inskip trailing patiently behind us, led me upstairs, and through the gallery into a long corridor, lit by lanterns fixed in sconces on the walls. We stopped opposite a door, and he was about to lead me in when another door farther along the corridor opened and a lady came out. She was all in white with dark hair hanging loose about her shoulders, and there was a something in her arms.

Down went the lantern with a bang, and Sir James flew like a hunted buck along the corridor. He whipped his arms around the lady and kissed her pa.s.sionately, and then flung on his knees and held out his arms. She put the something in white into them and there was a little puling cry.

"Married a year come Christmas," whispered old Inskip, "and the babby's five weeks old to-morrow."

A serving-woman bustled out of another room, and the lady and child were affectionately driven off to bed under her escort. Sir James came slowly back.

"My wife and son, Mr. Wheatman," he said. "You must meet them to-morrow.

The young rascal cries out whenever I desecrate him with my touch. It would have served him right to have christened him 'Oliver.'"

I laughed heartily, for he was fighting himself again by gibing at me. He sent off the old man to scour the pantry for a supper for me, and then pushed open the door and led me into the room.

For size and dignity, it was a room to take away the breath of a poor yeoman. It seemed to me a Sabbath day's journey to the great blazing hearth, where two men were sitting; the high white ceiling was moulded into a wondrous design, with great carved pendants hanging from it like icicles from the eaves of the Hanyards. Many bookcases ran half-way up the walls round the greater part of the room, filled with stores of books such as my heart had never dreamed of, great leather-bound folios by platoons, and quartos by regiments. If I could get permission I would steal an hour or two from sleep to eye them over, and as we walked towards the hearth I got behind my host in my slowness and had to step up smartly to get level with him to make my bow of introduction. I gasped with the shock as I stepped into the arms of Master John Freake.

"My dear lad," he cried, "what luck! What luck! How are you? How are they?"

He made me sit down beside him, for here as elsewhere he was easily the most important man present, though his bearing was ever quiet and modest.

He spoke of me to Sir James in warm and kindly phrases, and it soon became manifest that his good word was a pa.s.sport into my host's confidence and regard. The three gentlemen filled their gla.s.ses and toasted me with grave courtesy, and I easily slid out of the uneasy mood into which Inskip's candour and my unaccustomed surroundings had driven me.

The third man present was a Welsh baronet, Sir Griffith Williams, a far-away cousin and close friend of Sir Watkin Wynne, whose name I remembered to have heard on the Colonel's lips at Leek. Sir Griffith was a brisk, apple-cheeked man of forty or thereabouts, very fluent of speech in somewhat uncertain English, with fewer ideas in his head than there are pips in a codlin, but what there were of them singularly clear and precise. He reminded me of Joe Braggs, who could only whistle three tunes, but whistled them like a lark.

Inskip brought me a rare dish of venison-pie and various other good things, and laid out the table for me. I left Master Freake's side to eat my supper and listen to their talk.

They made various false starts, followed by dead silences. It was clean useless for Sir James to talk about his baby. Sir Griffith had had a long family and so had exhausted the topic years ago, whilst Master Freake, a bachelor, knew nothing about it. There had been a great flood in the Welshman's valley in the autumn and he harangued upon it in style, and not without gleams of native poetry, but Sir James had never seen a flood and Master Freake had never been to Wales, so the flood soon dried up.

There was a silence for some minutes, busy minutes for me with an apple tart that was sublime with some cream to it, and I was settling down to the sweet content of the well-fed when Sir James broke out.

"Mr. Wheatman has brought me an invitation, hardly to be distinguished from a command, to meet His Royal Highness at the Poles' place tomorrow."

The eager Welshman bounced on to his feet, raised his gla.s.s and said, "To the Prince, G.o.d bless him." Sir James had to follow his example, though he was in no mood for it, and it would have looked ill had I not joined in, and moreover the wine was excellent.

"You will excuse me, gentlemen," said Master Freake. "I am not clear which Royal Highness is referred to, and besides I have no politics."

"G.o.d bless him," bubbled the Welshman. "I shall join him when he has crossed the Trent."

Again there was silence for a s.p.a.ce.

"So the question is put, and I must give my answer," said Sir James, breaking the stillness. "I must put my hand to the plough or draw back. I must keep my word or break it. Can I be loyal to my father's creed and also to my child's interests? I've got to be both if I can. If I can't be both, which is to have the go-by? Fate has put me in a cleft stick, Master Wheatman. On his death-bed my father handed on to me his place in the old faith. He was a devoted adherent of the exiled House, the close friend and a.s.sociate of Honest Shippen, and even more intimately concerned than he in the underground network of intrigue and preparation which was constantly being woven, ruined, and re-woven up to his death ten years ago. He left me poor and enc.u.mbered with debt, for he had been prodigal in his sacrifices for the cause. It is a wonder that he died in his bed rather than on the block, but he was as wary as he was zealous. For nine years I lived here the life of a hermit, alone with my debts and my books. Then I met a young girl"--his voice broke badly--"who became to me the all-in-all of my life. By good fortune I also met Master Freake, who took my affairs in hand for me and has helped me wisely and generously."

"For ten per cent, Oliver," interrupted Master Freake.

"Nonsense! Wisely and generously, I repeat," said Sir James warmly.