He took up the package of credentials. These must be looked through. Something must be found for a man who recognised dignity, authority and intellect so readily The Secretary became conscious of a growing affection for Captain Gaynor, a desire to exert himself to serve the fellow such as was very rare with him.
But matters of State impended. He smote a bell. The usher appeared, and the mask of frigid gravity once more descended upon the lofty features of Mr Second Secretary Templeton.
Chapter 4. FATE’S AGENTS
So excellent an impression did Captain Gaynor leave of himself upon the Second Secretary that there reached him later that day an invitation to dine with Mr Templeton on the morrow, which was Wednesday.
He went, and used the occasion well, not only to advance himself further in the favour of the statesman, but also to make a conquest of Mr Templeton’s lady, a plump, frivolous woman who none the less governed the Second Secretary with a tyranny that was absolute. Captain Gaynor departed with the conviction that Mr Templeton’s subjection to her rule was the school in which he learnt the art of subjecting others.
There was little in that visit that calls for chronicling, unless it be that having expressed himself like the most thorough-paced Whig, and cursed the turbulence of the Jacobites who would disturb a realm in which there was peace and prosperity, the Captain ventured to congratulate Mr Templeton upon the vigilance of the Government and to marvel at the thoroughness of that same vigilance, as evidenced by the circumstance that not a particle of the information he had, himself, been able to bring straight from Rome — including the fact that the notorious agent, Captain Jenkyn, was on his way to England — but was already known to the omniscient Second Secretary.
Captain Gaynor’s aim was to draw from Mr Templeton some hint which should enable him to place his finger upon the leakage that obviously existed. But it failed, and he dared not insist; nor did he consider it worth while, concluding that it was very possible that Mr Templeton did not possess the information which he craved.
He deemed it well, however, to set Pauncefort upon his guard, and with this intent he called upon him on the following afternoon. His lordship received Captain Gaynor’s news with obvious consternation.
“How do you know this?” he cried, and his voice shook with a sudden panic that surprised the Captain.
Captain Gaynor enlightened him. Then: “You see,” he said in conclusion, “there is reason to fear a traitor from within. For how else could this knowledge have reached the Government?
“Are you sure that it had?” questioned the scowling Pauncefort. “May it not have been yourself who supplied the information, and Templeton’s assertion that it was already known a mere pretence to give himself importance — to efface his obligation to you?”
Captain Gaynor smiled his amused tolerance of such a suggestion. “I did not begin to be a plotter yesterday, my lord,” said he.
But his lordship adhered to his point. “Yet it was a folly on your part to have said what you did to him — rank folly.”
“I think not, my lord,” was the suave answer. “I aimed at testing the extent of the Government’s information, and I hold that I succeeded but too well.”
“Have it so, then,” said Pauncefort. “For myself, I am content to hold to the other opinion. I’ faith, I should not sleep o’ nights did I not. Gad! For a moment you turned my stomach with your talk of traitors.”
“None the less,” said the Captain soberly, “I warn you to be circumspect. We meet, then, at ‘The World’s End,’ at Chelsea, this day se’nnight, when the work to do shall be planned. ‘Twill be safer thus than at your house or another’s.”
“Meanwhile,” said his lordship, “you are for Priory Close?”
“I am on my way thither. I but stayed to give you this information. I shall see you there, no doubt?”
My lord checked the answer he was obviously upon the point of making. He flushed and hesitated a moment. Then, recovering from his confusion, and attempting to gloze it over —
“I think not,” he answered slowly. “My affairs here require attention. There is much to do if I am to set this tangle to rights.”
“I rejoice,” said the Captain, “to infer that it is amenable to endeavour.”
“Indeed, yes — thanks to the trick that Fortune played you here two nights ago. To that I owe it that a way has been opened for me.”
“I am glad,” said Gaynor pleasantly. “It would seem, then, that your affairs were scarce as desperate as you feared. I am heartily glad, sir.”
His tone was so amiable and sincere that none might have guessed that he, himself, had been the loser in the transaction. Thereupon, he took his leave of Pauncefort. But as he was departing, his lordship stayed him. The nobleman’s face was troubled.
“At Priory Close you will meet Miss Hollinstone,” said he. “Commend me to her and to Sir John. And — touching the lady, and the game we played here, you will remember that — that—” He fumbled vainly for the expression that might inoffensively convey his meaning.
The soldier stiffened. “That I lost, you would say, my lord, and that you, therefore, continue in the claim which every man has upon his betrothed.”
“You put it — bluntly,” his lordship deprecated.
“It is a blunt matter. But you may quiet your alarms.” The Captain all but sneered. “They do little honour to the lady and still less to myself.”
Their farewells, thereafter, were repeated with some restraint, and Captain Gaynor took his departure.
He had engaged himself a valet, a shrewd-faced little fellow named Fisher, recommended to him by the landlord of the “George” as a person of so much fidelity and honesty that the Captain had despatched him ahead by the stage to Chertsey with his baggage. The Captain himself rode forth alone and came, an hour or so after taking leave of Pauncefort, to the dreary spaces of Hownslow Heath.
In the distance ahead of him, a solitary horseman moved slowly along the sky-line. Captain Gaynor would have observed him perhaps more closely could he have known that this horseman was one of Fate’s agents to himself. For had not that horseman been present there in that lonely tract of country, the Captain’s career would have run a vastly different course from that which gives occasion to this chronicle.
A signpost threw a lengthening shadow athwart the ribbon of road that wound through the parched spaces of the heath. The sun was no more than a glowing disc upon the horizon. A black silhouette against it, the horseman passed and dipped out of sight.
Captain Gaynor rode on, his thoughts anywhere but upon that fateful figure. He gained the summit of the rise and dipped in his turn, steadying his horse, for the road was rough and deeply ploughed with ruts of clay that were baked into stony ridges. There was no sign now of the other horseman, no sign of living thing in all that lonely place. But suddenly from the screen of a clump of cedars that spread funereally a hundred yards ahead, the rider reappeared. His back was towards the Captain. He never so much as turned his head, seeming entirely unconscious of the other’s rapid approach. Such indeed was his unconsciousness that Captain Gaynor, as he drew nigh, was moved to scrutinise him. He was a heavy fellow, mounted upon a clumsy piebald horse. From under a round hat wisps of black hair floated raggedly in the breeze. He wore a long black riding-coat and dirty buckskins; and that was all that the Captain could perceive until presently he drew alongside and observed in addition a wolfish, lantern-jawed face above a dirty neck-cloth and a still dirtier green satin waistcoat with ragged and tarnished gold lace.
He was as unprepossessing a ruffian as could be met with in the length and breadth of England, and nowhere could that meeting have been less welcome than on the lonely stretch of Hownslow Heath.
“’Tis a fine evening, your honour,” said he in an accent that proclaimed an Irish origin.
“A fine evening it is,” replied the Captain, coldly courteous. He rode steadily amain, and must have sped past the other but that the fellow touched up his piebald an
d kept level.
“’Tis a mightily lonesome place, this Heath,” said he, as if explaining his action, “and if there’s a thing in all the world I hate ’tis lonesomeness.”
“It is a distaste which I do not share,” said the Captain curtly.
“D’ye not?” cried the other. “Now if there’s a living man knows a hint when he hears it, ’tis myself, bedad. So I’ll not be troublin’ you farther with a company that’s unwelcome. But there’s a word or two I’d be speakin’ to you first. Will ye draw rein awhile? Hold, I say! Hold or I’ll be blowin’ your head inside out!”
Captain Gaynor reined in sharply. The ruffian had levelled a heavy pistol with a long, polished barrel — the only polished thing about him — on which the last rays of the vanishing sun threw a blood-red gleam.
“What d’ye want with me?” quoth the soldier sharply.
The ruffian grinned. “Why, now, there’s a plain question, and here’s a plain answer for you — faith, ’tis a trifle I’m wanting: just your purse and that jewel at your throat and your watch if so be ye have one.”
Captain Gaynor seemed to be measuring the other with his eyes as one who considers resistance. The wolfish face continued to grin, and there was a confident gleam in the hungry, bloodshot eyes. Here was no bungler; but a practised, self-confident knight of the toby, who would have no more qualms about holding up a soldier than a dowager, and still less about shooting either if expediency advised it.
Gaynor’s wry smile appeared at last. “Faith,” said he, “ye have the advantage of me, I think.”
“I’m thinkin’ the same, and I’m glad ye’re reasonable; for I’d be mortal sorry to shed the blood of such a broth of a boy over a paltry matter of a handful of guineas and a jewel or two. ‘Live and let live’ is my motto, your honour.”
The Captain produced his purse. It was of black silk and bulky, and through the straining meshes of the knitting there appeared a yellow gleam.
The tobyman brought his nag a pace nearer. With pistol levelled and eyes that never left the Captain’s face, he held out his left hand to receive the purse. But it seemed that Gaynor relinquished it too soon; just as the ruffian’s fingers touched it, in fact; so that it dropped and fell between them with a resounding chink.
The tobyman’s eyes were instinctively lowered to follow its fall — a deplorable error this in one so practised in his trade. An instant later the pistol was dashed from his hand by a blow that almost shattered his knuckles. Before he could attempt to defend himself, before he could properly realise what was befalling him, that blow was followed by a second, this time upon his head, so shrewdly delivered that he reeled in his saddle.
Captain Gaynor was standing in his stirrups, which gave him the advantage of being above the thief. He grasped his heavily mounted riding-crop like a cudgel, and like a cudgel he used it with a dexterity and rapidity such as the other had never encountered in all his adventurous career. Before he had recovered from that dazing blow across the crown a shower of others had fallen upon his body, and lifted a cloud of dust from his coat. Bewildered by the suddenness and thoroughness of the onslaught, he was beyond all thought of defence or retaliation.
As arrant a coward without his pistol as he was valiant with it, he realised that he had grasped a scorpion. He stayed for no more. He gathered up his reins and ploughed the piebald’s flanks with his spurs. The maddened horse half reared, then flung forward as from a catapult and broke into a gallop. But Captain Gaynor was not yet content. He started in pursuit, brandishing that formidable crop.
The tobyman, flying with terror in his soul, was rendered desperate. There remained him yet another pistol. He plucked it forth with his half-shattered hand, swung round in the saddle and blazed at his pursuer.
His aim was wild and his pistol-hand in no case to serve him accurately. None the less the shot did all that was necessary to arrest pursuit. The charge, at fairly close range, entered the breast of Captain Gaynor’s mare. The poor beast screamed and reared and collapsed in a heap from which the soldier was no more than in time to leap clear.
He stood in the road, cursing the highwayman and his own folly in having given chase. Thus a moment. Then, his wounded horse demanding his attention, he drew one of his pistols from its holster and made an end of the beast’s agony. That done, he walked back to the spot where the encounter had taken place, and recovered the purse which in his zeal to punish he had all but forgotten. Then, slowly, he retraced his steps to his fallen horse, and considered his position. He was still a good nine miles from his destination, and dusk must overtake him before long.
He stood pondering there when his ears caught a distant clank and rattle, accompanied by the pounding of hoofs. The sounds drew rapidly nearer along the road by which he had come; soon a chaise appeared upon the ridge behind him, and came down the incline swaying and jolting alarmingly over that execrable road.
The Captain stood now awaiting it, the object of suspicious glances from the coachman, and from the footman who hung by a strap behind the approaching vehicle. As it came up with him, he raised his hand, and the chaise was brought gradually to a standstill, for the fallen horse announced plainly enough that here was a traveller in distress.
From the window, thrusting aside the leather curtain, a wondrously coiffed head protruded. A feminine voice, high pitched and querulous, assailed the Captains ears.
“What now, Gilbert? Why do we stay?” Then the lady’s glance fell upon Captain Gaynor, and with a little scream of fear the wondrous head vanished hurriedly into the carriage.
Smiling, the Captain advanced, hat in hand, to the door of the chaise.
“Pray do not be alarmed,” he said. “I am a suppliant not an assailant.”
“’Tis is a gentleman what’s ‘ad ‘is ‘oss killed,” announced the well-nourished Gilbert from the box.
Another head appeared, and the Captain found himself confronted by a young face that was extremely good to look upon — a delicate little face under an elaborate arrangement of golden curls; the eyes that met his own so frankly were very blue and invested with a look of innocence; the little chin was sharply pointed, and the mouth was very small and delicately arched. It was such a face as Greuze loved to paint, the pretty advertisement of a trivial little soul.
The Captain bowed gravely. “Ma’am,” said he, “I have met with a mischance. My horse has been shot under me.”
Alarmed concern flickered into the blue eyes. “Shot!” she cried, in a slender treble. “La, sir!”
Over her shoulders reappeared the face of the elder lady. “Shot, did ye say?” she cried. “Lard a’ mercy! Who shot it, sir?”
“A rogue of a tobyman, ma’am.”
“A tobyman!” The voice shrilled on the word. “Ye hear! What have I ever said, and ye would never heed me. But ’tis the last time that ever I’ll cross the Heath. Lard, now! ’Tis a miracle we are not murdered — a miracle!”
“I have some distance to go, ma’am,” said the Captain, “and I should be most profoundly obliged if you would permit me to sit with your coachman as far as the next post-house, where I can repair my loss.”
The younger lady was first thrust aside, then entirely eclipsed by the elder, whose presence came once more to fill the window. She surveyed the suppliant with an air of grim suspicion.
“How far d’ye travel, sir?” she questioned him. “To Chertsey, ma’am,” he replied.
Upon that she seemed to eye him more attentively. A voice murmured behind her in the coach. She turned a moment.
“It is possible, Damaris,” he heard her say. “He has the air of it.”
Damaris! The name hummed through his brain.
“May I ask, sir,” came his questioner again, “whom we shall have the honour of assisting?”
“My name, ma’am, is Gaynor — Captain Harry Gaynor, your obedient servant to command.”
“Why, ’tis so, then!” she cried, and smiled — a comely, well-featured woman. “La, now! ’Tis the oddest
of encounters. You are for Priory Close.”
The Captain confessed, and added the assumption which had flashed into his mind. “You will be Lady Kynaston. ’Tis an odd chance, indeed.”
“James, you lout,” she called to the gaping footman, who had swung himself down from his perch, “the door.”
The lackey sprang to let down the steps. Her ladyship alighted, leaning upon his shoulder. She proved now to be of a good height and presence, and to carry herself well. And not only was she comely in herself, as I have said, but most fully appreciative of comeliness in the other sex. She dropped the Captain a half-curtsy, and met him now with the most engaging of smiles.
“We count ourselves fortunate to be of service to you, sir,” said she, and proceeded to present him to her companions. This presentation she performed, as she did all things, in a superficial manner. “These,” she said, half turning from him and with a wave of the hand towards the occupants of the chaise, “are Miss Hollinstone, my niece, and my daughter, Evelyn. She is my only child, sir, a matter which sorely vexes Sir John, for he would dearly have loved a son. ’Tis a thousand pities that heaven should not have gratified his wishes,” she ran on, garrulous and inconsequent. “But then, on the other hand, the rearing of sons in these disordered days is so grave a responsibility that sometimes I think perhaps heaven knows best.”
The Captain had scarce heard a word of it. His eyes were upon the two ladies who remained in the coach — the golden-headed child with whom already he had spoken, whom he assumed to be Damaris Hollinstone, and another, who was taller and dark, and of a very different type of beauty. He surveyed them both, it is true, and made his bow to them. But it was upon the supposed Miss Hollinstone that his eyes rested with the more profound interest, and certain odd stirrings, which were entirely consequent upon the strange game he had played three nights ago with my Lord Pauncefort.
Perceiving at last that the girl was growing conscious of his scrutiny, the Captain turned to Lady Kynaston with polite inquiries touching Sir John. She replied at long length with a catalogue of Sir John’s real and fancied ailments, the conclusion to be drawn from which seemed to be that her husband was in excellent health and looking forward with pleasure to his visitor’s arrival.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 252