Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  “The sail, sir!” he cried in great excitement, “Oh! damn it, sir, the sail!”

  I sprang to the mast, loosed the sheets, lowered the sail, and of course must needs in my hurry get the spar entangled amongst the stays a foot above the thwart. Ashlock rose in a passion, and leaving the tiller to shift for itself, came leaping towards me.

  “There, there, sir,” he sneered, “leave it to me!” and losing at once his air of deference, he was for wresting rather than taking the spar out of my hands. “Did ever man see?” he exclaimed. “O Lord, did ever man see — —”

  “Such a fool-master and such a clever servant,” said I, finishing the sentence for him. But the words were hardly out of my mouth when I let go of the spar. He staggered back, holding the one end of it in his hands, the other caught me a crack in the joint at the knees, and the next moment I was sprawling on my back at the bottom of the boat. I heard Ashlock mutter, “Lord send us less pride and a ha’porth of common sense,” the while he busied himself with getting the sail into position, and then he turned to me.

  “You’ll find, sir, the Preventive men will make little difference between master and servant when they discover the pretty letter you are carrying.”

  “The Preventive men!” I cried, scrambling to my feet.

  “Ay, sir, the Preventive men,” said he with a glance at the beach.

  Now Ashlock was standing with his back to me bowsprit, whereas I faced him, and looking across his shoulder, I saw a sheer face of white cliff, topped with a thatch of grass, glide, as it were, behind him. I turned me about. The boat was swinging round with the tide now that it had neither sail nor a hand at the rudder to direct it. Before, it had been pointing for the beach midway in the cove; now it was heading for the rocks at the south corner of the bay; and each moment it moved faster, as I could judge from the increasing noise of the ripple at the bows. I jumped across the benches to the rudder.

  “Hoist the sail!” I said in a low, quick command.

  Ashlock looked from me to the rocks.

  “The tide is running round the corner like a mill-race,” said he, doubtfully, and he made a movement as though he would take my place.

  “Hoist the sail!” said I, and he obeyed, and again prepared to come astern.

  “No, stay where you are,” I ordered sharply. He looked at me sharply, shrugged his shoulders, and sat him down by the mast. I brought the boat’s head up until the wind against which we had been tacking was directly astern of us, and the tiller kicked in my hand as we drove through the water. We were now within the line of rocks, and I saw Ashlock give a start as he noticed the point I was making.

  “You must round the corner of the reef, sir,” he cried.

  “We have no time for that. The tide runs in shore. There’s a gap in the reef; we’ll make for the gap.”

  The gap was, in fact, in a bee-line with the tip of the bowsprit. I had wind and tide to quicken my speed, and I felt the boat leap and pulse beneath me like a live thing. Ashlock looked at me in surprise, and then gave a little pleased laugh, as though my action chimed in with his nature.

  Doubtless the plan was foolhardy enough; but the day was clear, and we were within full sight of the cottages upon the beach. More, our boat was the only boat in this secluded bay. I thought, indeed, only of the latter point, and not at all of the narrowness of the passage, and maybe it was that very oblivion which kept my hand steady. So engrossed was I, in truth, in my one idea, that I could not forbear from glancing backwards now and then in a mortal dread, lest I should see the sun flash upon the disc of a perspective glass or mark a boat splash out through the surf into the sea. Upon one such occasion I heard Ashlock rise to his feet with a muttered “God save us!” and a second later we grazed past a tooth of chalky rock some half a foot below the surface.

  “Sit down!” I cried sharply, for the fellow obscured my vision. He dropped into his seat; I bent forward, peering out beneath the sail. We were within twenty yards of the gap in the reef, and the water converging on it from right and left, foamless and oily like a rapid in the Severn. The boat gave a great spring, and then slid with a swift, easy motion like a sledge. I heard the waves burst over the rocks and patter back upon the sea; I felt the spray whipping my forehead; and then the cliffs fell away from my eyes and closed up behind my back. Ashlock lowered the sail and dropped the kedge from the bows. We were floating in still water, just round the point and close in to shore under the shadow of an overhanging cliff.

  “Now, Ashlock!” said I, “you can come astern.”

  He came reluctantly, and in his coming began to babble an apology for the disrespect he had shown me. I cut him short at the outset of it.

  “I am not concerned with your insolence,” I said. “It is too small a thing. I am willing to believe, moreover, that you were hurried into it through devotion to a higher master than myself. I have forgotten it. But how came you to think that I carried a letter?”

  “Your hand, sir,” he replied readily, “was ever at your pocket on the road if we galloped — on the sea if we passed a ship.”

  It was truth that he said — every word of it — and it caused me no small humiliation. For here was I entrusted with a mission of some consequence, and I had betrayed a portion of my business at the outset.

  “There is another thing,” I continued sharply. “How comes it that you, Cumberland-born and Cumberland-bred, have so much knowledge of the sea?”

  I looked at him steadily as I spoke, and I saw his face change, but not to any expression of suspicion or alarm. Rather it softened in a manner that surprised me; a look, tender and almost dreamy, came into his eyes, a regretful smile flickered on his lips. It was as though the soul and spirit of a poet peeped out at you from a busy, practical countenance.

  “I should have been a sailor,” he said, in a low, musing voice. “All my life I have longed for that one thing. The very wind in the branches for me does no more than copy the moan of the surf. But my parents would not have it so, and I live inland, restless, unsatisfied, like a man kept out of his own.” He checked himself hastily, and continued in a flurry, for no reason which I could comprehend, “Still, I made such use as I could of the opportunities that presented. At Whitehaven and at Workington I learnt the handling of a boat.”

  “But,” I interrupted him, “this is not the first time you have sailed from Dunkirk to England.”

  “No, sir,” he answered, and his face hardened at my questioning. It was as though a lid had been slammed down upon an open box. “I have crossed more than once with young Mr. Rookley.”

  “That will do,” I said; and he drew a breath of relief.

  The explanation, I assured myself, was feasible enough, but — but — I could not get from before my eyes the vision of him creeping stealthily from the tiller to the bows. As he lay sleeping just where I had lain — for all that day we remained hidden within the cliffs — I saw him continually stoop beneath the sail; I saw his face sink out of the moonlight down and down to mine, and his hands hover above my breast. And with that a light flashed in on me. He knew of the letter I was carrying! He knew of the pocket I carried it in! I sat staring at him dumfounded. Was this the link? Was he playing me false?

  “If I had only closed my eyes!” I cried, and in my perturbation I cried the words aloud.

  Ashlock woke up with a start.

  “What is it, sir?” he asked, in a whisper. “The Preventive men?” and the eagerness of his voice gave the lie to my suspicion. Yes, I reasoned, he had shown an anxiety equal with my own to escape from their clutches, was showing it now, and his anxiety was due to this very knowledge that I had the letter in my possession. I relapsed into perplexity, and in a little my fears took another and engrossing shape. Doubtless it was Ashlock’s startled whisper set my thoughts particularly that way, and from minute to minute I lay expecting the Preventive men to row round the point and discover us. There was no possible escape for us if they did. The more I searched and searched the cliffs, the more
clearly I saw how impossible they were to scale. It would, I think, have made the strain and tension of this waiting more tolerable had I been able to reach some point whence I could command a view of the bay, though it would have served no other end. But that too was denied to me. I lay the livelong day the impatient hanger-on of chance. No sound came to me but the ceaseless lapping of the waves beneath me, the ceaseless screaming of the gulls above my head, in a single monotonous note, sharp and clean like the noise that a large pebble makes hopping over ice. To add to my discomfort, we had no water in the boat, nothing, indeed, but a few hard biscuits, which served to choke us. And the sun was pitiless all day in a shadowless sky. The very colour of the sky seemed to have faded so that it curved over our heads, rather grey than blue, hot and hard — a cap of steel.

  However, the day wore to sunset in the end, and the Preventive men had not come. We set sail as soon as it was dark, and coasting along, landed shortly after two in the morning, at a spot in the Downs a few miles from Deal. Thence, after setting our pinnace adrift, we made what haste we could to London.

  Ah me! that ride through the night to London! I remember it as if I had ridden along that road yesterday. It was so long since I had been in England. I remember the homely little inn at which we roused a grumbling landlord and hired our horses. His very grumbles were music to my ears. I laughed at them, I remember, with such enjoyment that we had much ado to persuade him to part with the horses at all, and it was because of his grumbles that I paid him double what he asked. I remember, too, the hedgerows a-glimmer with wild-roses as with so many pale stars. To ride ever between hedgerows! It seemed the ultimate of happiness. And the larks in the early morning — never since have I heard larks sing so sweetly as they sang that morning over the Kentish meadows. We passed a little whitewashed church, I remember, with its mossy gravestones nestling in deep grass about its walls. Well, well, this is Avignon, and my old bones, I take it, will sleep just as easily under Avignon soil.

  CHAPTER V.

  BLACKLADIES.

  I WASTED NO long time in London, you may be sure, but leaving Ashlock at the Hercules’ Pillars in Piccadilly, went down with my letter to Richmond. On my return I supplied myself with a wardrobe better suited to my present state and set out for the north.

  The mansion of Blackladies lies off Borrowdale upon the flank of Green Comb. I got my first view of it from the top of Coldbarrow Fell; for on coming to Grasmere, Ashlock had informed me of a bridle-path leading by Harrop Tarn and Watendlath, which would greatly shorten the journey, and since my impatience had grown hotter with every mile we had traversed, I despatched my baggage by the roundabout high-road through Keswick, and myself took horse in company with Ashlock.

  It was noonday when we came to the ridge of the fell, and the valley lay beneath us shimmering in a blue haze, very lonely and very quiet. Now and again the thin sharp cry of a pee-wit came to our ears. Now and again our voices waked a sleepy echo. A little hamlet of white cottages — Stonethwaite they called it — was clustered within view, and towards the centre of Borrowdale, but so small was it and so still that it seemed not so much a living village as a group of huts upon some remote island which a captain, putting in by chance for water, may discover, long since built by castaways long since perished.

  “Look, sir!” cried Ashlock, pointing downwards with his whip. “That is your house of Blackladies.”

  It lay in the hollow at my feet, fronting Langstrath and endwise to me; so that I only saw the face of it obliquely, and got no very clear idea of that beyond that it was pierced with an infinity of windows, for a score of mimic suns were ablaze in the panes. It was a long house with many irregular gables, built in three stories, of grey stone, though this I could hardly make sure of at the time, for the purple bloom of a wisteria draped the walls close and clambered about the roof. What attracted my eyes, however, far more than the house, was the garden, of which I had the plainest view, since it was built up from the slope at the east end of Blackladies, and not so much on account of its beauty as because of the laborious care which had been bestowed upon it. It was laid out in the artificial fashion of half a century ago, with terraces and stone staircases, and the lawns cut into quincunces and etoiles, and I know not what geometrical figures. The box-trees, too, were fashioned into the likeness of animals; here and there were statues. I could see the spray of a fountain sparkling in the sun, and on the level below the first terrace, a great white grotto and an embroidered parterre like a fine lady’s petticoat. Nature sprawls naked hereabouts; only at this one point had it been trimmed and dressed, and that with so quaint an extravagance as to make me conjecture whether I had not been suddenly translated within sight of some fairy pleasaunce of the Arabian Nights.

  I sat in my saddle, gazing at the house silently, and bethinking me of what service it might prove in the enterprise on which I was embarked.

  “It is a handsome property, sir,” said Ashlock, from just behind my elbow, and he spoke in a tone of anxious inquiry, as though he would fain discover what effect the glimpse of it had wrought in me.

  “With a handsome rent-roll to match?” I asked no less eagerly, as I looked downwards.

  A shadow fell sharply along the neck of my horse. I turned and saw Ashlock’s face stretched forward, and peering into mine with startled eyes.

  “A very handsome rent-roll, sir,” he replied; “so handsome that a plain man finds it difficult to understand how the heir could sacrifice it for any cause.” He dropped the words very slowly one after the other.

  I understood the fellow’s suspicion, and I swung my horse round with a jerk, so as to look him squarely between the eyes. He drew himself straight on the instant, and it seemed to me that his hand tightened insolently upon his whip.

  “Ashlock!” I exclaimed, “before we go down to Blackladies, I will say a word to you. In Paris you showed me a way by which I could hold this estate fairly and honourably.”

  “It was at your own wish, sir, that I spoke,” he interrupted hurriedly, “and because I saw that you meant to refuse it.”

  “Yes, yes,” I went on. “But I thanked you then for the readiness of your wits, and there was an end of your concern in the matter. I hold Blackladies in trust for this cousin of mine, Mr. Jervas Rookley. I have said so, and I need no mentor at my elbow to remind me of a pledge I gave to myself. Least of all will I permit my servant” — and in my heat I threw an ungenerous scorn into the term— “to take that office on himself. If he does, his first word sends him packing.”

  The man bent his head so that I could no longer see his face, and replied with all the confidence gone from his voice and manner.

  “I came to Paris with no thought but of serving you as faithfully as I endeavoured to serve Sir John before you. But it was your reluctance that put the thought of Mr. Jervas into my head; and once it was there, it stayed and grew; for I loved Mr. Jervas, sir. It was Mr. Jervas I served in my heart, and not Sir John.”

  The fellow spoke with such evident contrition, and a devotion so seemingly sincere, that I felt reproved for the severity I had used, and I began to admire what sort of man my cousin must be who could leave so clear an image of himself in the hearts of his dependents. I was for saying something of the sort, when a movement which Ashlock made arrested me. It was an insignificant movement — just the reaching out of his hand to the snaffle of his bridle — but it woke all my distrust of him; for I noted the quick play of his long, sinuous fingers, and I recalled his stealthy advance from the tiller of the pinnace to the bows, and the hovering of his hands above my chest.

  “Get down from your horse!” I cried suddenly.

  He looked in surprise at me, as well he might. I repeated the order; he obeyed it.

  “Are you Catholic or Protestant?” I asked.

  Ashlock’s surprise increased.

  “Catholic, sir,” he answered.

  “Good! Now, understand this. Of the journey to Bar-le-Duc, of the passage from Dunkirk, you must never speak, you
must never think. So much hangs on your silence and mine as you can have no notion of. You came to Paris, and from Paris I returned with you. That is all you know. Of the rest, whisper so much as a hint to the deafest yokel in the valley, and it will go very ill with you.”

  “I promise,” he answered.

  “But I need more than a promise; I need an oath. You are Catholic, you say, so there’s better chance of your keeping it. Down on your knees here, and swear to me that not a word, whatever you know, whatever you believe, shall escape your lips.”

  Ashlock started back, looking about him, as though he would find some diversion or excuse. But the blue, sunlit sky was above us, the brown fells about us, and never a living soul beside us two.

  “Come!” said I, insisting. “Swear it! Swear it by the Cross; swear it by the Holy Virgin.”

  “I swear,” he began, holding up his hand.

  “Nay,” I broke in upon him. “On your knees! on your knees!”

  Again he looked about him, and then to my face. But I kept my eyes stubbornly upon him. I would have him swear that oath, and I gathered all my strength into the resolution, that I might compel him; for I felt, in some strange way, that we were pitted in a contest for the mastery of Blackladies, and I was minded to settle that contest before I set foot across its door. I looked upon this oath that he would swear before me on his knees chiefly as an emblem of his submission. I might be to him a vicarious master; still, his master I would be, not having that confidence in him that I could allow him to harbour doubts upon the score.