Under Two Flags Part 22

"You'll want me anyways, sir," retorted Rake, ashamed of the choking in his throat. "I ask your pardon for interrupting, but every second's that precious like. Besides, sir, I've got to cut and run for my own sake.

I've laid Willon's head open, down there in the loose box; and when he's come to himself a pretty hue and cry he'll raise after me. He painted the King, that's what he did; and I told him so, and I give it to him--one--two--amazing! Get into saddle, sir, for the Lord's sake! And here, Bill--you run back, shut the door, and don't let n.o.body know the 'osses are out till the morning. Then look like a m.u.f.f as you are, and say nothing!"

The stable-boy stared, nodded a.s.sent, and sloped off. Rake threw himself across the brown mare.

"Now, sir! a steeple-chase for our lives! We'll be leagues away by the day-dawn, and I've got their feed in the saddle-bags, so that they'll bait in the forests. Off, sir, for G.o.d's sake, or the blackguards will be down on you again!"

As he spoke the clamor and tread of men of the town racing to the chase were wafted to them on the night wind, drawing nearer and nearer; Rake drew the reins tight in his hand in fury.

"There they come--the d----d beaks! For the love of mercy, sir, don't check now. Ten seconds more and they'll be on you; off, off!--or by the Lord Harry, sir, you'll make a murderer of me, and I'll kill the first man that lays his hand on you!"

The blaze of bitter blood was in the ex-Dragoon's fiery face as the moon shone on it, and he drew out one of his holster pistols, and swung round in his saddle, facing the narrow entrance of the lane; ready to shoot down the first of the pursuit whose shadow should darken the broad stream of white light that fell through the archway.

Cecil looked at him, and paused no more; but vaulted into the old familiar seat, and Forest King bore him away through the starry night, with the brown mare racing her best by his side. Away--through the sleeping shadows, through the broad beams of the moon, through the odorous scent of the crowded pines, through the soft breaking gray of the dawn; away--to mountain solitudes and forest silence, and the shelter of lonely untracked ravines, and the woodland lairs they must share with wolf and boar; away--to flee with the flight of the hunted fox, to race with the wakeful dread of the deer; away--to what fate, who could tell?

Far and fast they rode through the night, never drawing rein. The horses laid well to their work; their youth and their mettle were roused, and they needed no touch of spur, but neck-and-neck dashed down through the sullen gray of the dawn and the breaking flush of the first sunrise.

On the hard, parched earth, on the dew-laden moss, on the stretches of wayside sward, on the dry white dust of the ducal roads, their hoofs thundered, unfollowed, unechoed; the challenge of no pursuit stayed them, and they obeyed the call that was made on their strength with good and gallant willingness. Far and fast they rode, happily knowing the country well; now through the darkness of night, now through the glimmering daybreak. Tall walls of fir-crowned rocks pa.s.sed by their eyes, all fused and dim; gray piles of monastic buildings, with the dull chimes tolling the hour, flashed on their sight to be lost in a moment; corn-lands yellowing for the sickle, fields with the sheaves set-up, orchards ruddy with fruit, and black barn-roofs lost in leafy nests; villages lying among their hills like German toys caught in the hollow of a guarding hand; ma.s.ses of forests stretching wide, somber and silent and dark as a tomb; the shine of water's silvery line where it flowed in a rocky channel--they pa.s.sed them all in the soft gray of the waning night, in the white veil of the fragrant mists, in the stillness of sleep and of peace. Pa.s.sed them, racing for more than life, flying with the speed of the wind.

"I failed him to-day through my foes and his," Forest King thought, as he laid his length out in his mighty stride. "But I love him well; I will save him to-night." And save him the brave brute did. The gra.s.s was so sweet and so short, he longed to stop for a mouthful; the brooks looked so clear, he longed to pause for a drink; renewed force and reviving youth filled his loyal veins with their fire; he could have thrown himself down on that mossy turf, and had a roll in its thyme and its lichens for sheer joy that his strength had come back. But he would yield to none of these longings; he held on for his master's sake, and tried to think, as he ran, that this was only a piece of play--only a steeple-chase, for a silver vase and a lady's smile, such as he and his rider had so often run for, and so often won, in those glad hours of the crisp winter noons of English Shires far away. He turned his eyes on the brown mare's, and she turned hers on his; they were good friends in the stables at home, and they understood one another now. "If I were what I was yesterday, she wouldn't run even with me," thought the King; but they were doing good work together, and he was too true a knight and too true a gentleman to be jealous of Mother o' Pearl, so they raced neck-and-neck through the dawn; with the noisy clatter of water-mill wheels, or the distant sound of a woodman's ax, or the tolling bell of a convent clock, the only sound on the air save the beat of the flying hoofs.

Away they went, mile on mile, league on league, till the stars faded out in the blaze of the sun, and the tall pines rose out of the gloom.

Either his pursuers were baffled and distanced, or no hue and cry was yet after him; nothing arrested them as they swept on, and the silent land lay in the stillness of morning ere toil and activity awakened. It was strangely still, strangely lonely, and the echo of the gallop seemed to beat on the stirless, breathless solitude. As the light broke and grew clearer and clearer, Cecil's face in it was white as death as he galloped through the mists, a hunted man, on whose head a price was set; but it was quite calm still, and very resolute--there was no "harking back" in it.

They had raced nigh twenty English miles by the time the chimes of a village were striking six o'clock; it was the only group of dwellings they had ventured near in their flight; the leaded lattices were thrust open with a hasty clang, and women's heads looked out as the iron tramp of the hunters' feet struck fire from the stones. A few cries were raised; one burgher called them to know their errand; they answered nothing, but traversed the street with lightning speed, gone from sight almost ere they were seen. A league farther on was a wooded bottom, all dark and silent, with a brook murmuring through it under the leafy shade of lilies and the tangle of water-plants; there Cecil checked the King and threw himself out of saddle.

"He is not quite himself yet," he murmured, as he loosened the girths and held back the delicate head from the perilous cold of the water to which the horse stretched so eagerly; he thought more of Forest King than he thought, even in that hour, of himself. He did all that was needed with his own hands; fed him with the corn from the saddle-bags, cooled him gently, led him to drink a cautious draught from the bubbling little stream, then let him graze and rest under the shade of the aromatic pines and the deep bronze leaves of the copper beeches; it was almost dark, so heavy and thickly laced were the branches, and exquisitely tranquil in the heart of the hilly country, in the peace of the early day, with the rushing of the forest brook the sole sound that was heard, and the everlasting sighing of the pine-boughs overhead.

Cecil leaned a while silently against one of the great gnarled trunks, and Rake affected to busy himself with the mare; in his heart was a tumult of rage, a volcano of curiosity, a pent-up storm of anxious amaze, but he would have let Mother o' Pearl brain him with a kick of her iron plates rather than press a single look that should seem like doubt, or seem like insult in adversity to his fallen master.

Cecil's eyes, drooped and brooding, gazed a long half-hour down in silence into the brook bubbling at his feet; then he lifted his head and spoke--with a certain formality and command in his voice, as though he gave an order on parade.

"Rake, listen, and do precisely what I bid you; neither more nor less.

The horses cannot accompany me, nor you either; I must go henceforth where they would starve, and you would do worse. I do not take the King into suffering, nor you into temptation."

Rake, who at the tone had fallen unconsciously in to the att.i.tude of "attention," giving the salute with his old military instinct, opened his lips to speak in eager protestation; Cecil put up his hand.

"I have decided; nothing you can say will alter me. We are near a by-station now; if I find none there to prevent me, I shall get away by the first train; to hide in these woods is out of the question. You will return by easy stages to Baden, and take the horses at once to Lord Rockingham. They are his now. Tell him my last wish was that he should take you into his service; and he will be a better master to you than I have ever been. As for the King"--his lips quivered, and his voice shook a little, despite himself--"he will be safe with him. I shall go into some foreign service--Austrian, Russian, Mexican, whichever be open to me. I would not risk such a horse as mine to be sold, ill-treated, tossed from owner to owner, sent in his old age to a knacker's yard, or killed in a skirmish by a cannon-shot. Take both him and the mare back, and go back yourself. Believe me, I thank you from my heart for your n.o.ble offer of fidelity, but accept it I never shall."

A dead pause came after his words; Rake stood mute; a curious look--half-dogged, half-wounded, but very resolute--had come on his face. Cecil thought him pained, and spoke with an infinite gentleness:

"My good fellow, do not regret it, or fancy I have no grat.i.tude to you.

I feel your loyalty deeply, and I know all you would willingly suffer for me; but it must not be. The mere offer of what you would do had been quite testimony enough of your truth and your worth. It is impossible for me to tell you what has so suddenly changed my fortunes; it is sufficient that for the future I shall be, if I live, what you were--a private soldier in an army that needs a sword. But let my fate be what it will, I go to it alone. Spare me more speech, and simply obey my last command."

Quiet as the words were, there was a resolve in them not to be disputed; an authority not to be rebelled against. Rake stared, and looked at him blankly; in this man who spoke to him with so subdued but so irresistible a power of command, he could scarcely recognize the gay, indolent, indulgent, pococurante Guardsman, whose most serious anxiety had been the set of a lace tie, the fashion of his hunting dress, or the choice of the gold arabesques for his smoking-slippers.

Rake was silent a moment; then his hand touched his cap again.

"Very well, sir," and without opposition or entreaty, he turned to resaddle the mare.

Our natures are oddly inconsistent. Cecil would not have taken the man in to exile, and danger, and temptation, and away from comfort and an honest life, for any consideration; yet it gave him something of a pang that Rake was so soon dissuaded from following him, and so easily convinced of the folly of his fidelity. But he had dealt himself a far deadlier one when he had resolved to part forever from the King. He loved the horse better than he loved anything--fed from his hand in foalhood, reared, broken, and trained under his own eye and his own care, he had had a truer welcome from those loving, l.u.s.trous eyes than all his mistresses ever gave him. He had had so many victories, so many hunting-runs, so many pleasant days of winter and of autumn, with Forest King for his comrade and companion! He could better bear to sever from all other things than from the stable-monarch, whose brave heart never failed him, and whose honest love was always his.

He stretched his hand out with his accustomed signal; the King lifted his head where he grazed, and came to him with the murmuring noise of pleasure he always gave at his master's caress, and pressed his forehead against Cecil's breast, and took such tender heed, such earnest solicitude, not to harm him with a touch of the mighty fore hoofs, as those only who care for and know horses well will understand in its relation.

Cecil threw his arm over his neck, and leaned his own head down on it, so that his face was hidden. He stood motionless so many moments, and the King never stirred, but only pressed closer and closer against his bosom as though he knew that this was his eternal farewell to his master. But little light came there, the boughs grew so thickly; and it was still and solitary as a desert in the gloom of the meeting trees.

There have been many idols--idols of gold, idols of clay--less pure, less true than the brave and loyal-hearted beast from whom he parted now.

He stood motionless a while longer, and where his face was hidden, the gray silken mane of the horse was wet with great, slow tears that forced themselves through his closed eyes; then he laid his lips on the King's forehead, as he might have touched the brow of the woman he loved; and with a backward gesture of his hand to his servant, plunged down into the deep slope of netted boughs and scarce penetrable leaf.a.ge, that swung back into their places, and shrouded him from sight with their thick, unbroken screen.

"He's forgot me right and away in the King," murmured Rake, as he led Forest King away slowly and sorrowfully, while the hunter pulled and fretted to force his way to his master. "Well, it's only natural like.

I've cause to care for him, and plenty on it; but he ain't no sort of reason to think about me."

That was the way the philosopher took his wound.

Alone, Cecil flung himself full-length down on the turf beneath the beech woods; his arms thrown forward, his face buried in the gra.s.s, all gay with late summer forest blossoms; for the first time the whole might of the rain that had fallen on his was understood by him; for the first time it beat him down beneath it, as the overstrained tension of nerve and of self-restraint had their inevitable reaction. He knew what this thing was which he had done--he had given up his whole future.

Though he had spoken lightly to his servant of his intention to enter a foreign army, he knew himself how few the chances were that he could ever do so. It was possible that Rockingham might so exert his influence that he would be left unpursued, but unless this chanced so (and Baroni had seemed resolute to forego no part of his demands), the search for him would be in the hands of the law, and the wiles of secret police and of detectives' resources spread too far and finely over the world for him to have a hope of ultimate escape.

If he sought France, the Extradition Treaty would deliver him up; Russia--Austria--Prussia were of equal danger; he would be identified, and given up to trial. Into the Italian service he knew many a scoundrel was received unquestioned; and he might try the Western world; though he had no means to pay the pa.s.sage, he might work it; he was a good sailor.

Yachts had been twice sunk under him, by steamers, in the Solent and the Spezzia, and his own schooner had once been fired at by mistake for a blockade runner, when he had brought to, and given them a broadside from his two shotted guns before he would signal them their error.

As these things swept, disordered and aimless, through his mind, he wondered if a nightmare were upon him; he, the darling of Belgravia, the Guards' champion, the lover of Lady Guenevere, to be here outlawed and friendless; wearily racking his brains to solve whether he had seamanship enough to be taken before the mast, or could stand before the tambour-major of a French regiment, with a chance to serve the same flag!

For a while he lay like a drunken man, heavy and motionless, his brow resting on his arm, his face buried in the gra.s.s; he had parted more easily with the woman he loved than he had parted with Forest King. The chimes of some far-off monastery, or castle-campanile, swung lazily in the morning stillness; the sound revived him, and recalled to him how little time there was if he would seek the flight that had begun on impulse and was continued in a firm, unshrinking resolve; he must go on, and on, and on; he must burrow like a fox, hide like a beaten cur; he must put leagues between him and all who had ever known him; he must sink his very name, and ident.i.ty, and existence, under some impenetrable obscurity, or the burden he had taken up for others' sake would be uselessly borne. There must be action of some sort or other, instant and unerring.

"It don't matter," he thought, with the old idle indifference, oddly becoming in that extreme moment the very height of stoic philosophy, without any thought or effort to be such; "I was going to the bad of my own accord; I must have cut and run for the debts, if not for this; it would have been the same thing, anyway, so it's just as well to do it for them. Life's over, and I'm a fool that I don't shoot myself."

But there was too imperious a spirit in the Royallieu blood to let him give in to disaster and do this. He rose slowly, staggering a little, and feeling blinded and dazzled with the blaze of the morning sun as he went out of the beech wood. There were the marks of the hoofs on the damp, dewy turf; his lips trembled a little as he saw them--he would never rid the horse again!

Some two miles, more or less, lay between him and the railway. He was not certain of his way, and he felt a sickening exhaustion on him; he had been without food since his breakfast before the race. A gamekeeper's hut stood near the entrance of the wood; he had much recklessness in him, and no caution. He entered through the half-open door, and asked the keeper, who was eating his sausage and drinking his lager, for a meal.

"I'll give you one if you'll bring me down that hen-harrier," growled the man in south German; pointing to the bird that was sailing far off, a mere speck in the sunny sky.

Cecil took the rifle held out to him, and without seeming even to pause to take aim, fired. The bird dropped like a stone through the air into the distant woods. There was no tremor in his wrist, no uncertainty in his measure. The keeper stared; the shot was one he had thought beyond any man's range, and he set food and drink before his guest with a crestfallen surprise, oddly mingled with veneration.

"You might have let me buy my breakfast, without making me do murder,"

said Bertie quietly, as he tried to eat. The meal was coa.r.s.e--he could scarcely touch it; but he drank the beer down thirstily, and took a crust of bread. He slipped his ring, a great sapphire graven with his crest, off his finger, and held it out to the man.

"That is worth fifty double-Fredericks. Will you take it in exchange for your rifle and some powder and ball?"

The German stared again, open-mouthed, and clinched the bargain eagerly.

He did not know anything about gems, but the splendor of this dazzled his eye, while he had guns more than enough, and could get many others at his lord's cost. Cecil fastened a shot-belt round him, took a powder-flask and cartridge-case, and with a few words of thanks, went on his way.

Now that he held the rifle in his hand, he felt ready for the work that was before him; if hunted to bay, at any rate he could now have a struggle for his liberty. The keeper stood bewildered, gazing blankly after him down the vista of pines.

"Hein! Hein!" he growled, as he looked at the sapphire sparkling in his broad, brown palm; "I never saw such a with-lavishness-wasteful-and-with-courteous-speech-laconic gentleman! I wish I had not let him have the gun; he will take his own life, belikes; ach, Gott! He will take his own life!"

But Cecil had not bought it for that end--though he had called himself a fool for not sending a bullet through his brain, to quench in eternal darkness this ruined and wretched life that alone remained to him. He walked on through the still summer dawn, with the width of the country stretching sun-steeped around him. The sleeplessness, the excitement, the misery, the wild running of the past night had left him strengthless and racked with pain, but he knew that he must press onward or be caught, sooner or later, like netted game in the poacher's silken mesh. Where to go, what to do, he knew no more than if he were a child; everything had always been ready to his hand; the only thought required of him had been how to amuse himself and avoid being bored; now thrown alone on a mighty calamity, and brought face to face with the severity and emergency of exertion, he was like a pleasure-boat beaten under high billows, and driven far out to sea by the madness of a raging nor'wester. He had no conception what to do; he had but one resolve--to keep his secret; if, to do it, he killed himself with the rifle his sapphire ring had bought.