Why had I not remained in the stable and waited under a pile of straw for daylight? There was plenty of straw there. But here, where my recklessness had driven me, was only a prickly hedge, and the growing light would not save but ruin me with its hideous revelation of my position — caught between two fires! In the east there was already a sombre glow; the western skies, responding with long, red streaks, betokened the approach of dawn, while the horizonal stars waxed paler every moment.
Suddenly I heard a shrill whistle blown from the road, near by. At the sound I dropped (almost involuntarily) flat on my face, then, peering through a minute gap in the hedge, what was my horror to find I had run full into the nest of them.
I recognized O’Donnell by my unhappy Jeremiah, and the treacherous landlord, Hoag, on account of his monstrous girth, though all faces were masked with black cloth. Their followers were distributed on both sides of the road, every man leaning forward in his saddle, listening intently.
“Hark!” said the landlord.
From the distance came the faint cry of a postilion urging his leaders; and then, carried on the wintry air, a few bars of a lively Christmas song blown on the post-horn.
“Aha!” shouted O’Donnell, exultantly. “Take yer places, me knights of the road!”
“Don’t put me too much in the thick of it, cap’n,” whispered Hoag, plucking at the other’s arm. “I’m a well-known man and easy recognized.”
“Stay back a bit, then,” replied O’Donnell. “But ye must bear a good hand in the noise.”
“Trust me for that,” answered Hoag, wheeling his horse about. “I’ll do more than any ten men alive!”
He rode over and reined in so close to the spot where I lay that I scarce dared breathe, for I could hear plainly his own asthmatic wheezing. My uneasiness was thus augmented at every turn; the man was actually almost over my head; indeed, I could have touched his stirrup by passing my hand through the hedge without moving the rest of my body. He had an old, bell-mouthed blunderbuss across his saddle, and flourished a long cutlass, wearing no sheath that I could discover.
O’Donnell, with two others, rode slowly forward about thirty paces; three more followed them at a slight distance.
Then I realized that the chaise had drawn much nearer; and, though it was still unseen, we could hear it coming on at a clipping gait. As the sounds which heralded its approach fell clearer on the ear, mine heart seemed like to burst, so great was the flopping of it.
We could hear the postilion carolling, and urging his horses between snatches of song.
We could hear the creak of the heavy wheels over the snow, the rattle of harness, the clinking of chains; we heard the rapid, muffled hoof-beats of the four; and now, with tossing heads, and the snow flying from their heels, they swept round a turn in the road and were upon us.
There rang out on the frosty air a shout: “Stand and deliver!”
To my horror, the villain O’Donnell fairly hurtled my poor Jeremiah and himself against the leaders; and his immediate followers pursued the same tactics, instantaneously launching their assault. The chaise stopped with a shock; the leaders reared; one boy was flung off; the plunging four were swung into the hedge, while the brigands of the reserve wheeled into line across the road.
The second postilion, knocked from his horse in mid-act to draw a pistol, was immediately bound to a tree; but there came a shot from the interior of the vehicle; a woman’s scream was also heard in that quarter, together with an expression of outraged astonishment and indignation couched in a vocabulary which caused me to shudder for old Mr. Gray’s future.
What followed was such a confusion and passed so quickly as to beggar ail description. Suffice it to say that the ruffians who had assailed the chaise forthwith let out such a bawling and raised such an uproar and din as no mortal ever heard before. They discharged their pistols in the air, and hammered the sides of the carriage with hangers and cutlasses, keeping up a most horrid clamor and tumult the while.
In all my agony of mind I found time to puzzle at such lunatic conduct on the part of highwaymen. It passed my comprehension.
By far the most successful at this earsplitting was that scoundrel landlord Hoag, so near whom it was my misfortune to have made my hiding-place. He began to discharge his piece as fast as he could load, letting it off in every direction under the sun, now in the air overhead, now in the hedge within a yard of my body, so that (having no cognizance that it was not charged with ball) I gave up all for lost; and at the same time he set up a heathenish bellowing and howling and hideous, screaming and squealing, the like never heard outside a mad-house.
The others, completely beside themselves with envy of his prowess, put forth their utmost powers to outdo him, and then, indeed, such pandemonium reigned there on the road, that cold Christmas morning, as would have convinced a passer-by he witnessed an orgy of Hades.
Suddenly, from down the way, we heard a great cry:
“A rescue! A rescue!”
A single horseman came galloping up the road, the snow flying out in a cloud behind him and the reins flung over his horse’s neck. He flourished a long rapier in one hand, a pistol in the other, his hat was blown off, and his cloak flapped like a black wing with the speed of his coming.
“Hold, curs!” he thundered. “Turn, dogs, and meet your doom!”
Then, discharging his pistol, he flew into the dark mass of combatants about the chaise. It was William Fentriss!
CHAPTER XIII. THE DOUBLE VILLAIN
WITH THE ADVENT of William the up-roar redoubled.
A more furious clashing of steel and sound of buffeting, combined with grewsome shrieking and heart-rending groans, was not heard at Blenheim when the French and English horse met by the tens of thousands. Up and down the road, across and over, all round the chaise, the combat raged, with the horrible and prodigious noises ever increasing, while inside the vehicle old Mr. Gray never once ceased from his frightful profanity throughout the engagement.
A thousand cries pierced the ear:
“Ha! have at you, then!”
“Back, Sir Lionel, back!” and the like. “So, caitiff!”
“No quarter l.”
“Dog, we shall meet again!” But over all the fearsome hullabaloo, rose a voice I knew for O’Donnell’s in spite of his attempt to disguise it:
“Fly! fly, me boys! This fiend is invincible! Away, or we are all dead men! Back to the cave to count our losses!”
“Fly! fly!” cried the others, and, “Don’t forget the wounded!” and, “Back to the cabe!”— “Escape! escape!”
They wheeled about with a great clatter and screams of fear. The rascally Hoag let off his blunderbuss for a last time, almost directly over my head, so that my nightcap was burned full of holes from sparks and my face so diabolically blackened with the discharge that my nearest relatives might not have known me, and whole days elapsed before I rid myself of the traces. In addition to this outrage, the scoundrel had so infuriated his horse by the inhuman disturbance he raised that when he endeavored to turn and join his fellow-conspirators in their flight, the maddened beast reared up on his posterior limbs, then plunged, and the huge bulk of the innkeeper crashed down through the hedge and landed with extraordinary force at my feet. At the same time, with the sound of a smothered laugh and of galloping hoof-beats through the snow, the other ruffians made off down the road and were gone.
William was setting the postilions at liberty (for both boys had been trussed up) when I heard a sound most unlike those which had so horridly assailed us. It was the light and mellow voice of Sylvia, and it shook, not with fear, but with the vibrant thrill of sweeter agitations.
She had sprung from the chaise and was standing by the steps, both hands outstretched toward Fentriss.
“Will!” she cried. “Will!”
He turned to her, and started.
“You!” he said. “Ah, how I have waited!”
This brought me to my feet instantly.
�
�Oh, double villain!” I shouted. “Oh, unconscionable reprobate!”
They did not hear me, nor in that gray light take note of me.
I pressed hard into the hedge to break through, regardless of being stuck by the thorns, beginning to shout again, but I had not half the word “unconscionable” out of my mouth when I was clasped about the middle and flung to earth beneath the weight of the landlord, I on my face, the ponderous miscreant on my back.
“Hush!” he whispered, angrily. “All’s safe if we lay by, now. What on earth were you doing?”
“Help!” I shouted, but he clapped his hand over my mouth and held me down, though I strove frantically to rise.
“Hold your tongue!” he whispered. “What do you mean? It’s me, it’s Hoag; there’s nothing to fear. Would you spoil the fun now, when we’ve carried all out so nobly, and the young man so liberal to you lads? Why didn’t you ride ahead? Were you thrown, too? It’s Bates, isn’t it?”
He took his hand from my mouth, and I attempted to raise another shout, but he buried my face in the snow so suddenly by a shove of his hand on the top of my head that only a brief gurgle was allowed to issue from me.
“Ha!” exclaimed the landlord. “’Tis the punch, is it? Then I’ll hold you fast till they’re gone, as a warning not to take such advantage of a free bowl next time!” And he plunged me deeper into the snow.
Next, that all should be secure, he skewed about, raised himself up quickly, and, before I had time to squirm from under, came down upon me, sitting, mostly upon my head — an attitude as comfortable for himself as it was painful and disrespectful to me.
Only my anger prevented me from swooning through the miseries of my situation, knowing that my perfidious rival was receiving the homage due a hero, while I, powerless to prevent, must lie, not ten yards away, choking with the snow and rage, under that monstrosity, Hoag!
“In, in with you, my boy!” I heard Mr. Gray cry, heartily. “You must ride with Sylvia. I never knew such heroism!”
“But my horse,” said William.
I’ll take your horse,” answered the trusting dotard. “Not a word — not a word! Heavens! Heavens! but who ever saw such swordsmanship! Now, lads, halloo, then! On! on!”
The postilions called, “Ay, ay! Very good, sir!” They spoke to the horses, and I underwent the agony of hearing the cavalcade move forward.
“There!” said Hoag. “You’d have made a fine mess of it, wouldn’t you! You ought to be whacked for risking a betrayal of the gentleman; and if you’re forgiven, it’ll be for the day’s sake, and because of the royal Christmas Eve at Hoag’s.”
A prodigious chuckling shook its way through all the puffy flanges of his person. “Ha, ha! Of all the wild nights I ever spent! But the fun of it! Ha, ha! Oh, law — me! Hark! So, then, they’re gone,” he continued, as the noise of the chaise grew fainter in the distance. “There! You may get up, Bates.”
He slowly removed himself from me, but did not rise; instead, he merely rolled over to the hedge in a burst of laughter.
“Bates!” he cried. “Bates! if you was only sober, and intelligent when sober, the fun of this night would be the death of you, as it’s like to be of me! That mad rogue, that young Fentriss! Who but one like him, and that ripping, tearing, rearing old O’Donnell — who but such as them could ha’ thought out and performed such a plan! And old Gray! Did you hear him in the chaise? Did you hear — Oh, ho, ho, ho! Oh, law — me! Ha, ha, ha, ha!”
I brought his roaring to a sudden end.
The cutlass he had carried during the engagement had spun over the hedge ahead of him when he fell, and no sooner did he release me than I made myself its master. This done, I came and stood over him, my indignation too great for utterance. I looked down at the shaking, shouting mass of flesh with no more fear of it than of a kitten, for now, at last, I understood the heinous plottings of the night. No, it was not fear moved in my bosom, but an overwhelming, a righteous, and an all-devouring wrath. As the first measure of justice, the huge calf of the landlord’s leg striking my eye temptingly, without hesitation I lowered the point of the cutlass, and, although his hilarious floppings-about made the feat somewhat difficult to perform, caused its point to penetrate the flesh; whereat he left off laughing with a surprising shriek, and sat up against the hedge abruptly, rubbing his leg and staring at me with a countenance of the utmost ruefulness and consternation.
“Villain!” I cried, and threatened him with my sword again.
“It ain’t Bates!” he whispered, huskily. “It ain’t Bates!”
“Villain!”
“Who is it?” he asked, appealingly. “Tell me who it is.”
“Rascal, you know me well enough,” cried I.
“No, no,” he answered, with a frightened look. “Is it a nigger?” The light was growing stronger; he could see me plainly, but still gazed upon me from head to foot with a bewildered and wondering air.
“Who is it?” he repeated.
“You thought me abed, but I have been a witness to the whole villany.”
“Abed — abed!” he rejoined, vacantly. “But I never saw you before.”
I menaced him again with the weapon.
“No more of this! And now, sin-laden and over-zealous sergeant of Diabolus,” I thundered, “only one thing can save you from the gallows you have richly merited: that is my intervention, contingent upon your public confession, as I direct; nor, if you refuse, shall you know mercy or mitigation!”
His eyes protruded from their sockets and his hands went up over his head as high as his fat arms could lift them.
“Lord deliver us!” he gasped. “Tis Mr. Sudgeberry!”
CHAPTER XIV. THERE CAME ONE SHRIEKING “JUSTICE!”
THE DAY WAS coming on broad and clear as the landlord and I went down the road toward the inn, he walking a pace in front, under compulsion of the cutlass, and limping somewhat, partly from soreness and partly because he grew more and more loath to proceed, while ever and anon he turned a look of pleading over his shoulder.
“But, Mr. Sudgeberry,” quoth he, “it was only after—”
Whereupon I would cut him off sharply and threaten him in flank with the cutlass. Thus I drove him on, and I did not forget to improve the time by delivering a severe discourse to him upon the end of the wicked, pointing out the evils of punch-drinking with loose companions, and the pitfalls that besiege the unwary who listen to the counsels of the dissolute.
At first he had been prone to uncontrollable gusts of laughter every time his eye fell upon me, or whenever I sneezed. (The latter affliction frequently convulsed my person, for my souse in the brook had given me a violent cold in the head, the which likewise engendered a difficulty of enunciation, so pronounced that I was forced to render all sounds of M and N as though they were B and D — a circumstance I mention out of a fear that some might fail to comprehend the total of what was inflicted upon me that night, but not here to be transcribed lest the potency of my utterances be lost in confusion.) Long before I finished, the land- lord had grown sober and plaintive near to the point of tears.
“Oh, that punch!” he exclaimed, shaking his head ruefully. “’Twas it led me into this business. Never again will I touch a drop of punch! Ah, but surely you don’t mean—”
“I don’t mean!” I cried, hastening him on with a whack from the flat of the cutlass. “I don’t mean! You will see! Meanwhile, you are going straightway with me to Mr. Gray and his daughter, or I hale you before the nearest magistrate on a charge of attempted robbery by force and arms on the king’s highway!”
He was red by habit; now he became sickly yellow, and remained so. “Law! law! ’Twas but a hodgepodge of a jest. What harm in the world was in it, Mr. Sudgeberry? Now, why disgrace Mr. Fentriss, and belike ruin me and my house, for this little—”
“Confession or the gallows!” I answered, with so inexorable a mien that he looked even sicklier than before; and there was — nothing like laughter in the man; he could only groan out
useless explanations and protests, saying, over and over, “But we thought you sound asleep, safe abed, sir,” as if that completely excused his execrable conduct.
I continued to threaten him with both the weapon in my hand and the terrors of the law until, as we approached the inn, his great body seemed too much weight for his knees, and he was but a heap of flesh and sorrow.
“Confession is your only salvation!” I exclaimed, repeatedly. “Otherwise you climb the gallows steps. Hasten! We follow them to Mr. Gray’s, instantly.”
“Ah, now if you’d but listen!” he expostulated. “Mr. Fentriss is your friend; this will destroy him if you proceed with it. You can’t mean to do him such an ill turn!”
“Not another word. We stop only for horses, and ride straight after them.”
“There’s no need, if you’re set on this cruelty,” he answered, hanging his head like the shamed man he was. “They are at the tavern. Mr. Fentriss promised beforehand he would persuade them to stop there for breakfast and recuperation. But surely you won’t punish us so hard for a jest which we did not mean should include you or be of hurt to anybody; and for my part I was only talked into it after—”
I bade him be silent, and sternly drove him on, my choler mounting higher and higher, not lessened by imaginings of that archhypocrite, William, reinstated with the Grays by this false rescue. I saw him, the deceiver and traitor, receiving the adulation due a hero, and ensconced in shadowy corners with Miss Sylvia during the holidays, while I was left to perform the unmerited task of renewing my conversations for the benefit of the aged father alone. No! A thousand times no! William Fentriss was in my power; and how well he deserved to be humbled and exposed for all time!
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 42