The Yeoman Adventurer Part 37

"He will know me better if I call him Turnditch," said Master Freake icily.

He spoke unmistakable truth. I could see the shadow of the gallows fall across the man's face. What stiffening there was in him oozed out, and he stood there wriggling in an agony of apprehension, like a worm in a chicken's beak. Master Freake knew him to the bottom of his muddy soul. My Lord Tiverton was a man of another mould, but he too was in the hands of his master. Plain John Freake, citizen of London, had taken a hand in this game of fate, and had thrown double six.

This n.o.ble room had seen the agonizings and rejoicings of a dozen generations of the sons of men, but nothing to surpa.s.s this scene in living interest. They come back to me now--the line of blue-and-white troopers, still with levelled carbines; the stolid Welshman, as indifferent as Snowdon; the dapper n.o.bleman, still polished and lightsome, no longer play-acting but rather vaguely anxious; the high-minded troubled Jacobite, fear for his wife and babe gnawing at his heart; the spy, Weir or Turnditch, with the noose he had made for another drawn round his own neck; Master John Freake, the quiet, Quakerlike merchant, whose power was rooted deep in those far haunts of the world's trade, so that we were here shadowed and protected by the uttermost branches thereof. Last of all I remember myself, with my heart thrumming good-morrow to Margaret.

"Come now, Houndsditch, or Turndish, or whatever it is," said his lordship. "Precisely what have you to say?"

The poor devil had nothing to say. He was aflame to be off and out of Master Freake's eyesight. He choked up something about mistakes, and zeal, and forgiveness.

"That's enough! Out you go, the whole d.a.m.n lot of you!" cried my lord.

These not being familiar military words of command, the men stuck there like skittles. "Ground arms, or whatever it is!" he continued. "About turn! Quick march!"

Their sergeant took charge of them and they filed out. Sir James followed them and became their host, routing out servants to wait on them.

As soon as the door was closed on Sir James, his lordship hastened to Master Freake's side, and entered into low and earnest conversation with him. I walked across to the folios, hoping to find amongst them an _editio princeps_ of Virgil, but was recalled by a loud "Oliver" from Master Freake.

"Oliver," he said, when I reached his chair, "I should like you to know the most n.o.ble the Marquess of Tiverton!"

I bowed, and his lordship bowed in reply, and said light and pleasant things about our meeting. Then, vowing he was monstrous hungry, he tackled the venison pasty, summoning me to sit opposite him.

"Gadso! I am sharp-set," he said, and indeed he ate with the zeal of a plough-lad. He pushed me over his snuff-box, which nearly made me sneeze before I took the snuff.

"It really is a masterpiece," he said, in a pause between pasty and pie.

"I shall never hear the last of it at the 'Cocoa Tree' and White's. Stap me, I shan't want to! It's too good. The tale will keep my memory green when that old mummy, Newcastle, is dust at last."

"What tale?" said I.

"D'ye know why, a month ago, I badgered Newcastle into getting me a company in the Blues?"

"Not the faintest idea!"

He leaned across the table and, from under cover of me, nodded towards Master Freake, now talking with the Welsh-man. "To get out of his way!" he whispered.

I looked incredulous, whereupon his lordship tapped his pocket significantly.

"He's a d.a.m.ned good fellow. He gave me another six months without a murmur. Wish I'd known! There'd have been no campaigning for me. I prefer the Mall!"

So he said now, yet he was as steady as a wall and as bold as a lion at Culloden. He came of a great stock, and greatness was natural to him. The play-acting and gaming was only the fringe that Society had tacked on to him. It lessoned me finely to see him when Sir James came back into the room. Tiverton knew the position by instinct.

"Sir James," he said, "I crave a word with you."

"At your service, my lord."

"I will be frank," continued his lordship. "I ask no questions. I make no inferences. I simply point out that the spy fell to pieces because he found Mr. Freake here."

"I observed so much, my lord!"

"I don't know why," said the Marquess dubiously.

"I could hang him at the next a.s.sizes," interrupted Master Freake.

"I see. He doesn't want to be hanged, of course. No one does. It's a perfectly natural feeling. So he crumpled up at the prospect."

"Yes, my lord," said Sir James.

"I allowed him to crumple up, and I took full advantage of the fact. You saw so much?"

"I did."

"Now, Sir James, you, as a Blount, that is, as a man bearing an honoured name, are under the strictest obligation to me to see that I can say, if my conduct is challenged, that I saw nothing here because there was nothing to see. I have put myself absolutely in your power, Sir James.

Whoever else joins the Prince, you must not, or you take my head along with you."

It was well and truly said, and there was no posing about it. Sir James Blount's problem was settled. He taught me something too, for all he did was to put out his hand.

"There's an end of Tundish!" said Tiverton, grasping it firmly. "And it's the best end too, for the Highland army hasn't a s...o...b..ll's chance in h.e.l.l."

He turned at once to banter me on my indifference to art, seeing that I had sniffed at a miniature by one of the most famous artists at the French Court. I let him rattle on, for my eye was on Sir James, who was rolling something in his hands. A moment later the Prince's letter went up in a tongue of flame and burnt along with it the Jacobitism of the Blounts.

A knock at the door interrupted his lordship's valuation of art and artists of the French school, and his sergeant entered to say that his men were in the saddle.

"Campaigning be d.a.m.ned!" said his captain wearily.

"Beg pardon, my lord," added the sergeant, "but Mr. What's-his-name has cut off."

"Good riddance. He's gone back to his crony at the 'Black Swan.'"

"Yes, my lord. T'other's a sergeant in my Lord Brocton's dragoons."

"Ah, I saw they were hob-and-n.o.b together. A fellow with a ditch in his face you could lay a finger in!"

Fortunately for me, the Marquess was busy with a last gla.s.s of wine. Here was ill news with a vengeance. I had got out of the smoke into the smother.

"My lord," said Master Freake, "there is a man of mine, one Dot Gibson, at the 'Black Swan,' and I shall be greatly beholden to you if you will let your sergeant carry him a note of instructions from me."

"Stap me! I'll take it myself," cried his lordship heartily.

Master Freake went to a table to write the note. I knew now who it was that had given me the warning. My lord pocketed the note and we all crept quietly down to the main door to see him off. The guards made a gallant show in the brilliant moonlight, and Master Freake, taking my arm, dragged me out to watch them canter across the stretch of meadow, and drop out of sight down the hill.

"Sleep in peace, Oliver," he said. "Dot Gibson will give us early news of the movements of the enemy."

Then we strolled back, talking of the Colonel and Margaret.

CHAPTER XIX

WHAT CAME OF FOPPERY