My first thought, however, when the boatman admitted us into his cottage, was for Mr. Curwen. It was now some hours since he had waded through the ford, and what with his wet limbs and the weary tramp across the fields, I was afraid lest he might fall into some dangerous fever. I was the more inclined to credit this fear from a perception that he was more troubled and downcast than I had seen him even after our submission and defeat. Accordingly, I asked the boatman to lend him some woollen stockings and other dry garments, which the man very readily did, and set before us thereafter a meal.
Mr. Curwen, however, eat little or nothing, but sat shaking his head, as though the world had crumbled about his ears. I made an effort therefore to rally him into the recovery of his good spirits, though with the heaviest heart. “All was not lost,” I said, “for here were we with whole skins, in a secure retreat, while, on the other hand, the Earl of Mar might be winning who knows what victories in Scotland.”
“It is not of the King,” he replied regretfully, “nor of myself that I was thinking. It was of my daughter. I fear me, Mr. Clavering, I have given too much thought to a cause in which I was of the smallest use, and too little to Dorothy, with whom my duty lay.”
He spoke in a breaking voice and with a gleam of tears in his lack-lustre eyes.
“Mr. Curwen,” said I, changing my note on the instant, “on the Sunday afternoon at the barricade I bethought me with all humility of the path which I must take through this tangle of our misfortunes; I saw very clearly that there were three duties enjoined on me. The first was, to help you to security, if by any means I could. Nay,” I said, as he raised a hand in deprecation, “it was a promise I made to your daughter, and, believe me, it is one of the few comforts left to me in what remains of life that I see some prospect of carrying that promise to a successful issue. The second duty was, to bring your daughter Dorothy,” and it was my voice now which broke upon the word, “safely to you. That I have promised to myself, but I hold it no less sacred than the first.”
He reached out a hand to me across the table.
“And the third?” he asked timidly.
“It is the payment of a debt,” I replied— “a debt incurred by me to be repaid by me, and I put it last, not because it is of less incumbency than the other two, but because it ends my life, and with my life such poor service as I can do my friends.”
“It ends your life!” he exclaimed.
“So I do hope,” I replied, and since I meant the words, I can but trust there was no boastfulness in the expression, “for it is my life alone that can now set the tally straight God knows, my trouble lies not in the payment, but in the means of payment. For there are matters which I do not know, and it may be that I shall waste my life.”
This I said, thinking of my ignorance as to where Mr. Herbert lay imprisoned. I had a plan in my head, it is true, which offered me some chance of accomplishing this duty, but it only offered me a chance. Mrs. Herbert had promised me that she would remain in the lodging at Keswick, and during the interval since I had last set eyes on her, she might well have received news of her husband’s whereabouts. But would she keep the promise — she had every reason in the world to distrust me — would she keep the promise I had so urgently besought of her?
“Mr. Clavering,” said my friend, “I told you just now I was afeared I had thought too much of the King and too little of my Dorothy, but these words of yours put even that better thought to the blush. You have been at my elbow all the last days protecting me; you have brought about my escape; you are planning how to save my daughter; and all this while you have seen — you, young in the sap of your strength — you have seen the limits of your life near to you, as that barrier by the church was near to us at Preston. And not a word of it have you spoken, while we have bemoaned ourselves and made no secret of our misery. Not a word have you spoken, not a hint has your face betrayed.”
“Mr. Curwen, I beg of you,” I replied quickly, for the praise jarred on me, as well it might. “A man does not speak what it shames him even to think of. But to my plan.”
I drew from my pocket a sheet of paper and a pencil, with which I had provided myself before I quitted the apothecary’s shop.
“Your sloop the Swallow should be lying now off the mouth of the Esk by Ravenglass.”
Mr. Curwen started at my abrupt remark. Was it merely that, amidst the turmoil and hurry of the last weeks, he had clean forgotten his design to set me over into France? Or was it that he had countermanded his order since that night when I had fled from Applegarth?
“It should be cruising thereabouts to pick me up,” I said, feeling my heart drumming against my breast. I did not dare to put the question in its naked directness. “It should have reached Ravenglass by now.” Mr. Curwen sat staring at me. “The ship — the ship I mean! Oh, answer me!” I cried. “Answer me!”
“Yes!” he said slowly. “The Swallow should be now at Ravenglass. That is true.” He seemed to be assuring himself of the fact and speculating on its import.
“You sent no message to prevent it sailing, after I left you?”
“None!” said he.
I drew a breath of relief.
“But we are now at the fifteenth of November. How long did you bid the captain wait?”
Mr. Curwen seemed of a sudden to grasp my design, though, as he showed me in a moment, he had got no more than an inkling of it.
“Until you hailed him,” he replied, rising from his chair in some excitement “He was to wait for you. That was the top and bottom of his orders. There was no time fixed for your coming.”
“Then,” said I, in an excitement not a whit less than his, “the Swallow will be waiting now up the coast?”
In the little room we could hear the surf booming upon the sand. I flung open the window. The sound swelled of a sudden, as though the music of a spinet should magically deepen to an organ-harmony.
“Your Swallow,” I exclaimed, “lifts and falls upon the very waves which we hear breaking on the sands.”
Mr. Curwen stepped over to my side. The sandhills stretched before us, white under the moon, and with a whisper from the grasses which crowned them. I found a cheering comfort in their very desolation. Beyond the sandhills, the sea leaped and called, tossing to and fro a hundred jewelled arms. I felt my heart leaping with the waves, answering their call, and the fresh brine went stinging through my veins.
“Northwards,” I cried, reaching out an arm, “round the point there, up the coast, beyond Morcambe Bay the Swallow waits for us. It is no great distance, Mr. Curwen. God save Lord Bolingbroke, who betrayed the Catalans!” I heard my voice ring with an exultation I had not known for many a day. I strained my eyes northwards along the sea. It seemed to my heated fancies, that the barrier of the shores fell back. My vision leaped over cape and bay, and where the Esk poured into the sea by Muncaster Fell I seemed to see the Swallow, its black mast tapering across the moon; I seemed to hear the grinding of its cable as it strained against the anchor.
Then very quickly Mr. Curwen spoke at my side.
“There is my daughter. In this great hope of ours, are we not forgetting her?”
“Nay,” I replied, “it is of your daughter I am thinking. You trust your captain, you say? You trust your captain will be waiting now? If so, he will be waiting a fortnight’s time; he waits until I come.” I drew Mr. Curwen back to the table.
“Look you, Mr. Curwen, I marched with Mr. Forster from the outset of the rising. We crossed from the Cheviots into England on the 1st of November; we proclaimed King James in Preston Market-square upon the 10th. Nine days enclosed our march, and we marched in force. There were other necessities beyond that of speed to order our advance. There was food to be requisitioned, towns to be chosen for a camp wherein our troops could quarter. At Penrith, at Appleby, we drew up for battle. All this meant delay. Some of us rode, no doubt, but our pace was the pace of those who walked. And, mark, nine days enclosed our march. A man alone and free to choose his path wou
ld shear two days from that nine, maybe three. I cannot choose my path, there will be hindrances. I must travel for the chief part by night. But I have not so far to go. Grant me nine days, then! It is the sixteenth — nay, the seventeenth. On the twenty-sixth I should be knocking at the door of Applegarth.”
“Nay,” said he, “you will be captured. You have risked enough for us, more than enough. Mr. Clavering, I cannot permit that you should go.”
“Yet,” said I, with a smile, “you will find that easier than to prevent me. You told me of a safe route between Applegarth and Ravenglass,” I continued. “How long will it take a woman to traverse it?”
“I called it safe,” he answered doubtfully, making dots upon the paper with the point of his pencil, “because it stretched along the watersheds. But that was in September. Now it may be there will be snow.”
The winter indeed had fallen early that year. Yes, the snow might be deep on the hills. I had a picture before my eyes of Dorothy struggling through it.
“Then we will add another day,” I answered, and strove to make the answer light. “Given that other day, how long shall we take from Applegarth to Ravenglass?”
“Three days,” said he, “or thereabouts.”
“Nine days and three, twelve together. Your daughter, Mr. Curwen, shall be on board the Swallow by the twenty-ninth. Meanwhile I think you can lie safely here with Ashlock. From Ravenglass the sloop shall sail directly here, and, taking you up, make straight for France. So sketch me here the way from Applegarth!”
Mr. Curwen drew a rough outline on the paper while I bent over him.
“You will mount to the top of Gillerthwaite,” he said, “then bear to the right betwixt Great Gable and the pillar. Descend the grass into Mosedale. Here is Wastdale Church; strike westwards thence to the great gap between Scafell and the Screes. This is Burnmoor — five miles of it, and there is no water; after you pass Burnmoor tarn until you have come down to Eskdale. Cross Eskdale towards the sea. The long ridge here is Muncaster Fell. Keep along the slope of it, and God send you see the Swallow!”
He gave me the paper. I folded it carefully and thrust it into my pocket. Then I took up my hat and held out my hand to him. He took it, and still clasping it came to the door with me, and out into the open.
“Mr. Clavering,” he said, “when you first came to Applegarth I told you that I had lost a son. Tonight I seem to have found another, and it would be a great joy to me if, when the Swallow puts in here, I could see that second son upon its deck.”
I stood for a moment looking at him, his words so tempted me! The difficulties of the adventure which lay before me became trivial in my eyes as the crossing of a muddy road. My fancy, bridging all between, jumped to the moment when the Swallow should loose its sails with Dorothy on board. I saw myself in imagination standing by her side, watching the Cumberland Hills lessen and dwindle, the while we streamed down the coast towards the sandbanks here.
“Then you shall see me,” I longed to cry. But the thought of another woman weeping by a lonely lamp in Keswick crept into my heart, and thereafter the thought of a man lying somewhere kennelled in a prison.
CHAPTER XIX.
APPLEGARTH AGAIN.
I TRAVELLED ALONG the beach until I reached the southern cape of Morecambe Bay, and only now and again swerved inland when I espied ahead of me the smoke and houses of a village. This I did more for safety’s sake than for any comfort or celerity in the act of walking. Indeed, the sand, which, being loose and dry, slipped and yielded with every step I took, did, I think, double the labour and tedium of my journey. But on the other hand, the country by the sea-coast was flat, so that I could distinguish the figures of people and the direction of their walk at a long distance — a doubtful advantage, you may say, and one that cut both ways. And so it would have been but for the grassy sand-hills which embossed the wide stretch of shore. It was an easy thing to drop into the grass at the first sight of a stranger and crawl down into the hollows betwixt the hillocks; and had such an one pursued me, he would have had the most unprofitable game of hide-and-seek that ever a man engaged in. I had other reasons besides for keeping near the sea. For since I travelled chiefly by night and in the late and early quarters of the day, I had need of a resting-place when the day was full. Now so long as I kept to the coast I had ever one ready to my hand amongst these lonely and desolate sandhills, where I was easily able to scoop out a bed, and so lie snug from the wind. For another thing, I had thus the noise of the sea continually in my ears. I did not know in truth what great store I set on that, until a little short of Lancaster I turned my back on it. The sea sang to me by day and by night, lulling me like a cradle-song when I lay cushioned among the sand-hills, inspiriting as the drums of an army when I walked through the night. It was not merely that it told me of the Swallow swinging upon its tides, and of the great hopes I drew therefrom, but it spoke too with voices of its own, and whether the voices whispered or turbulently laughed, it was always the same perplexing mystery they hinted of. They seemed to signify a message they could not articulate, and it came upon me sometimes, as I sat tired by the shore, that I would fain sit there and listen until I had plucked out the kernel of its meaning. I used to fancy that once a man could penetrate to that and hold it surely, there would be little more he needed to know, but he would carry it with him, as a magic crystal wherein he could see strangely illuminated and made plain, the eternal mysteries which girded him about.
From Morecambe Bay I turned inland towards the borders of Yorkshire, and passing to the east of Kirby Lonsdale, that I might avoid the line of Forster’s march, curved round again towards Grasmere. Here I began to redouble my precautions, seeing that I was come into a country where my face and recent history might be known. For since I had left the coast I had voyaged in no great fear of detection, taking a lift in a carrier’s cart when one chanced to pass my way, and now and again hiring a horse for a stage. The apothecary at Preston, in addition to his other benefactions, had provided me with an inconspicuous suit of clothes, and as I had money in my pockets wherewith to pay my way, I was able to press on unremarked, or at least counted no more than a merchant’s clerk travelling upon his master’s business.
From Grasmere, I mounted by the old path across Cold Barrow Fell, which had first led me to Blackladies, and keeping along the ridge crept down into Keswick late upon the seventh day. There was no light in Mrs. Herbert’s lodging as I slipped down the street, and for a second I was seized with a recurrence of my fear that she had left the town. It was only for a second, however. For that conviction which I had first tasted when I rode down Gillerthwaite in the early morning, had been growing stronger and stronger within me, more especially of late. I was possessed by some instinctive foreknowledge that the occasion for which I looked would come; that somehow, somewhere I should be enabled to bring forward my testimony to the clearing of Mr. Herbert from the imputation of disloyalty. It was a thought that more and more I repeated to myself, and each time with a stouter confidence. It may be that these more immediate tasks to which I had set my hand — I mean the rescue of Mr. Curwen and his daughter from the consequence of participation in the rebellion — hindered me from looking very closely into the difficulties of the third and last. It may be, too, that this conviction was in some queer way the particular message which the sea had for me — that I had received the message unconsciously while pondering what it might be. I do not know; I only know that when I repeated it to myself, it sounded like nothing so much as the booming of waves upon a beach.
I slept that night under a familiar boulder on the hillside above Applegarth, and in the early morning I came down to the house, and without much ceremony roused the household. Mary Tyson poked her head out of a window.
“Miss Dorothy?” I cried
“She is asleep.”
“Wake her up and let me in!”
So I was in time. Mary Tyson came down and opened the door; and in a little, as I waited in the hall, I heard Dorothy’s f
ootsteps on the stairs.
“You have escaped!” she cried; “and my father — you bring bad news of him?”
“No; I thank God for it, I bring good news.”
And the blood came into her cheeks with a rush.
I told her briefly how we had escaped from Preston. She listened to the story with shining eyes.
“And all this you have done for — for us?” she said with a singular note of pride in her voice.
“It is little,” I replied, “even if what’s left to do crowns it successfully. But if in that we go astray, why, it is less than nothing.” Thereupon I told her of the plan which I had formed with regard to the Swallow, and of the journey which she and I must take. She listened to me now, however, with an occupied air, and interrupted me before I had come to a close.
“It is you who have done this?” she repeated in the same tone which she had used before.
“I did but keep my promise. It was made to you,” I answered simply.
“I am your debtor for all my life.”
“No,” I cried. “It is the other way about.”
“I do not feel the debt,” she said very softly, and then raising a face all rosy: “Ah, but I let you stand here!” she exclaimed. “You shall tell me more of your plan while we breakfast, for I am not sure that I gave a careful ear to it;” and taking me by the arm she led me towards the dining-room. “You have come from Preston in all this haste. My poor child!” She spoke in a quite natural tone of pity, and I doubt not but what my appearance gave a reasonable complexion to her pity. It was the motherliness, however, which tickled me.
“What is it you laugh at?” she asked suddenly, her voice changing at once to an imperious dignity.
“I was thinking,” said I, “that your head, Miss Curwen, only reaches to my chin.”
“If God made me a dwarf,” said she, with a freezing stateliness, “it is very courteous of you to reproach me with it — the most delicate courtesy, upon my word.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 238