*CHAPTER IV.*
*ON THE ROAD.*
With the first streak of midsummer dawn Grey Dumaresq was in thepaddock, looking well to the condition of his horse, and grooming thesoft, satin coat lovingly with his own hands.
"We must be up and away, my beauty, ere the sun be high. This is noplace for either you or me, albeit every foot of ground is mine own, andit will go hard if I let that weasel-faced scoundrel filch it altogetherfrom me. I know him now in his true colours. Heaven send the day maycome when I shall repay with interest that which I owe him."
The horse tossed his head and neighed as though in response; and perhapsDicon heard the sound from where he slept, for almost at once he was athis master's side; and old Jock came cautiously out by the doorwayleading towards the house, and looked relieved and gratified to see theyoung master abroad.
"Eh, but I have been sore troubled with bad dreams this night," he said,as he shambled up. "Yon house is full of such, I take it. How sleptyou, my master? and how fare you this morn? It is good to see youlooking so spruce and sound. Bad luck to the dreams that drove sleepfrom my pillow at last."
"I had my dreams too, Jock, and I have not slept since," answered Grey,with a significant glance at the old man. "Tell me, good fellow, whatknow you of the panelled guest-chamber, with the row of windows lookingsouth over the park? Ha! why look you so, man? What know you of thechamber?"
"Did he put you there, my master? Then Peter lied to me, thefalse-tongued knave. If I had known that! No wonder the dreams werebad that came to me. The haunted room! Tush! it is not ghosts thathurt, but men who come and go at will and leave no trace behind."
"I thought so," spoke Grey composedly. "Then there is a secret way ofentrance into that room?"
"Ay, behind the bed. I do not know the trick, but I have heard of it.Men have been done to death in that room ere this, and none the wiserfor it. Oh if I had but known!"
Grey's eyes were fixed full upon the pallid face of the old man. He putthe next question gravely and almost sternly.
"Tell me truly, my friend. Think you that this kinsman of mine wouldplot to do me hurt? He made profession of friendship."
"He made the same to Sir Hugh," answered Jock in a trembling voice, "andfor long the master believed in him. But methinks he never would havedied as he did, had he not come to live here with Mr. Barty atHartsbourne."
Grey started and changed colour, clinching his hand,
"You think that this kinsman of ours compassed his death?"
Jock looked over his shoulder as though fearful of listening ears. Hedrew a step nearer; and Dicon, with fallen jaw and staring eyes, came upclose to listen.
"How can I tell? I was seldom in the house. I work in the garden, andbecause I am a cheap servant, asking no money, but making a pittance bywhat I can sell, Mr. Barty has kept me here where he found me. But whenthe old master came, he often sent for me. Before he became too ill, hesometimes crawled to my little cottage yonder for a bit of chat. He toldme the doctors and leeches told him he had but to rest and live simplyin the country for a few years to be a sound man again. But for allthat he dwindled and dwindled away, and was gone in two months."
"Did no leech attend him here?" asked Grey breathlessly.
"Not till the very last, when they sent me to Edgeware to fetch one whocould do naught. Mr. Barty professed to know many cures, and the masterbelieved in him. He eased his pain, but he sank into anever-increasing, ever-mastering drowsiness, and he shrank away to skinand bone. It went to my heart to see him. Many's the time when I havewondered whether it would have ended so if he had not taken Mr. Barty'ssimples and draughts."
"Was he poisoned, then?" asked Grey, between his shut teeth.
Jock looked nervously over his shoulder; the word seemed to frightenhim. He shook his old head from side to side.
"Nay, nay, how can I tell--a poor old ignorant man like me? But he usedto say that you would likely never come home again (travellers met sucha deal of peril, he would say), and then his eyes would gleam andglisten, for there was but the old master's life and yours betwixt himand the title and all."
Grey ground his teeth, and his eyes flashed. Somehow he did not doubtfor a moment that foul play had been used to compass his father's death.Had he not escaped assassination himself that night only by the skin ofhis teeth?
"Could any man living throw light upon this matter?" he asked. "Theleech from Edgeware, or any other?"
"I misdoubt me if any could, save wall-eyed Peter, Mr. Barty's man; andI trow his master makes it worth while for him to hold his tongue andknow nothing."
"Gold will sometimes unloose a miscreant's tongue."
"Ay, ay, maybe; but Mr. Barty's purse is longer than yours, Sir Grey,and his mind is crookeder and his ways more artful. Don't you go for toanger him yet: hurt might come to you an you did. Get you gone from theplace, and that right soon; for the sooner you leave Hartsbourne behindyou, the safer it will be for you."
"Yes, my master; let us indeed be gone," pleaded Dicon earnestly. "Thisis a God-forsaken hole, not fit for you to dwell in. Take the store ofgold pieces, and let us begone, for I trow that harm will come to you ifyou linger longer here."
It took little to persuade Grey to be off and away. Old Jock providedthem with a meal, and they could break their fast at the old inn atEdgeware, through which they would pass. He had no desire to go throughthe farce of a farewell to his kinsman. He only desired to shake offthe dust of his feet against him; and ere the chimes of the church rangout the hour of six, Grey was turning on the crest of a ridge of risingground, to look his last for the nonce upon the old home he had dreamedof so many a time, and round which so many loving thoughts centred.
"Let kind Fortune but smile upon me, Dicon, and show me the way toaffluence and fame, and I will yet be lord and master there, and themanor of Hartsbourne shall be one of the fairest in the land!"
"Why, so you shall, Sir Grey, and that right speedily!" cried honestDick, who had an unbounded admiration for his young master, and animmense confidence in his luck, albeit no special good fortune hadbefallen him since he had taken service with him.
Dick had led a seafaring life during his earlier years, and Grey hadpicked him up in a shipwrecked, ragged, and starving condition on thecoast of Spain some two years previously. In those days ship-wreckedsailors often had a hard time of it, even though the terrors of thegalleys or the Inquisition did not loom quite so perilously before themas had been the case a century before. To find himself taken into theservice of a young English gentleman of quality, and to be the companionof his travels, had been a piece of luck that Dick thanked Providencefor every day of his life. He had been one of four servants at theoutset; but as Grey's resources diminished, or his roving life took himinto perils for which some men had little stomach, he gradually lost hisretinue, till, for the past year, Dick alone had followed him, and thetwo had become friends and comrades, as well as master and servant. Nowat their first halting-place, where they paused to let the horsesbreathe after a steady half-hour's gallop, Grey opened the wallet at hisside, which he had filled with gold pieces from the casket (the rest hehad sewn carefully into his clothes for safety), and counted out acertain number, which he shook in his fist as he spoke.
"Dicon, I am going to London to try my luck there. But, as I haveofttimes heard, fortunes are as easily lost there as won, wherefore itmay be that I shall become a beggar instead of growing in wealth andgreatness."
"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Dick in passionate protest.
"Well, Heaven watches over the undeserving as well as the virtuous, sothere is e'en hope for me," answered Grey with his winning smile. "Butlook ye here, Dicon. You have been a faithful rogue, and have served mewell, and I hope we may company together many a long day yet. Butinasmuch as there are uncertainties in life, and we are going forth intoa new world, where perchance I may sink rather than swim, I desire togive you s
ix months' wage in advance, whilst I have my pockets linedwith gold, so that should any untoward chance befall me, as it hasbefallen better men than myself, I shall not have to turn you adriftunrewarded, nor will you, if you can be a wise varlet, and husband yourresources, be thrown on the world without some means of support."
Dick seemed about to protest, but either the look on his master's faceor some idea which had entered his own head held him silent. He tookthe coins without counting them, and producing a greasy leathern pouch,such as sailors often carry with them, he dropped the gold pieces intoit one by one, tied it up, and fastened it safely in an inner pocket.
"That pouch stuck by me when I lost everything else in the world, andwell-nigh my own life," said the fellow with a grin. "My mother didgive it me when I first went to sea, and she told me as a wise witchwoman had given it her. She thought 'twas the caul of a child; and likeenough it be, for salt water never hurts it, and I was the only onesaved of all the crew that went down off the Spanish coast. I'd soonerpart with the gold pieces than with the pouch that holds them."
They both rode on with thoughtful faces after this brief interlude.Grey was turning over a dozen different schemes in his mind; but allwere vague and chimerical. Now and again he looked at an amethyst ringupon his finger, and it came over him that the shortest cut to fortunemight be to present himself as a suppliant for favour at the feet of thegreat Duchess of Marlborough, who was said to rule the Queen with a rodof iron, and whose known devotion to her husband would be certain toraise high in her favour any person who had rendered him so timely aservice as that which Grey had been able to offer on the day ofRamillies.
But then, again, it seemed to Grey that to claim reward for that chanceservice, which had cost him nothing, was little better than playing thebeggar or the sycophant. There was in his nature a strong strain ofchivalrous romance--of love of adventure for its own sake, withoutthought of reward or favour. That encounter with the great Duke, theinterview which had followed, the consciousness that he had done hiscountry a notable service that day--all these things were very sweet tohim, forming an episode pleasant to look back upon. If he now presentedhimself on the strength of it as a petitioner for place or favour, atonce the whole thing would be vulgarized--he would be lowered in his ownestimation, sinking to the level of one of the crowd of greedyflatterers and place-hunters who thronged the antechambers of the richand great, and fawned upon them for the crumbs of patronage which theywere able to dispense as the price of this homage.
Grey had seen this sort of thing at foreign courts, and his soul hadsickened at it. Doubtless, in this great world of London it was thesame. As a baronet, a young man of parts, with an attractive person,and, at present, a well-filled purse, he might not improbably please thefancy of the Duchess, and obtain some post in her household or about theCourt that would give him a chance at least to rise. But the more hethought of this the less he liked the idea, and at last he flung it fromhim in scorn.
"I would sooner live in Grub Street, and drive a quill!" he said halfaloud. "I could praise a hero with my pen, but I cannot fawn andflatter with my lips. And methinks I am not fit for the life of aplace-man: I have been too long mine own master. Surely there are waysby which a man may rise in the world without abasing himself in his ownesteem first. I will go to London, and look about me with open eyes.There are the world of politics, the world of art and literature, andthe theatre of war, if other spheres should fail. Surely there must bea place for me somewhere; but I will not choose the latter if I can helpit. I fear not death on mine own account; but I desire to live, and togrow rich, that I may square matters with yonder villain, and avengeupon him my father's untimely death!"
For that his father had been in some sort done to death by his falsekinsman, Grey did not now doubt, though whether he would be able tobring that crime home to him later, he could not at present surmise.Much might be possible to a man with friends in high places; but thesewould have to be found and won ere any step could be taken.
Grey often felt within himself the stirrings of ambition. He had shownpromise of something akin to genius in his Oxford days, and there hadnot been lacking those among his companions and tutors who had declaredthat he could win fame and fortune through academic laurels. But Greyhad then turned a deaf ear to such propositions. He desired to traveland see the world, and he had done this with much zest. But the musewithin had not been altogether silent, and he had many times coveredsheets of paper with flowing stanzas or stately sonnets, which borewitness to the fire that burned within. His pencil, too, was notwithout cunning; and his study of the treasures of many an art gallery,many a foreign church, had given him knowledge and culture beyond whatthe average gallant of the day could boast. The double strand in hisnature was very marked--a reckless love of adventure, and a delicateappreciation of the beautiful. Often he longed after the days of theearly troubadours, when the two walked hand in hand. He pondered thesematters in his busy brain as he rode onward in the sunny brightness ofthe June morning, and found it in his heart to wish that he was not thuspossessed by such conflicting passions. He felt he would have had abetter chance of success had his bent in any one direction been moredecided.
They pulled up at the quaint old inn at Edgeware, and rode into thecourtyard, where lackeys and hostlers were making merry together, andwhere some handsome horses were being groomed down, prior to being putinto the cumbersome but very handsome coach that stood beneath theprotecting galleries which ran round the court. The lackeys wore alivery of snuff-coloured cloth, with a quantity of gold lace about it.The panels of the coach were snuff-coloured, and there was much heavygilding about it, which was being polished with great zeal by theservants of the inn. It was plainly the equipage of some person ofquality, and had evidently put up there for the night, but was likely tobe wanted shortly for the road again.
Grey dismounted, and leaving Dick in charge of the horses, made his wayin through the low-browed entrance, along a sanded passage, and so tothe public room, the door of which stood open. As a boy he had knownthis house, and it still seemed familiar to him, though it had changedhands since he had been there last, and his face was not known to minehost.
"Your pardon, sir," spoke this functionary, bustling forward on hisentrance, "but this room is bespoke for my Lord Sandford. If you arewanting a meal, it shall be quickly served elsewhere--"
But at that moment a rollicking voice from the foot of the adjacentstaircase broke in upon the excuses of the host.
"Gadzooks, man, but it shall be nothing of the sort. Set a cover forthe gentleman at my table. Gosh! is a man so enamoured of his owncompany that he must needs drive all the world away?--Come in, sir, comein, and take pot-luck with me.--Landlord, see you give us of your best,or I'll spit you on your own jack! I've a great thirst on me, mind you;and let the dishes be done to a turn.--Take a seat in the window, sir;the air blows fresh and pleasant, but it will be infernally hot erenoon. I must be off and away in good time. In London streets you canfind shade; but these country roads--hang them all!--get likeWhat's-his-name's fiery furnace seven times heated if they don't chanceto run through forest land!"
The speaker was a young man of perhaps seven-and-twenty, though recklessdissipation had traced lines in his face which should not so early havebeen there. He was dressed according to the most extravagant fashion ofthe day, with an immense curled wig, that hung half-way down his back; acoat of velvet, richly laced, the sleeves so short that the spotlesslawn and ruffles of the shirt showed half-way up the forearm; awonderful embroidered vest, knee breeches of satin equally gorgeous, andsilk stockings elaborately gartered below the knee with bands of goldlace. He carried a fashionably cocked hat beneath his arm, with agold-headed cane; and a small muff was suspended from his neck by goldchains. The muff held a golden snuff-box, with a picture on the lidwhich modesty would refuse to describe; and the young spark took snuffand interlarded his talk with the fashionable oaths of the day as amatter of course.
He looked curiously at Grey when they had taken their seats; for thetraveller, though dressed with exceeding simplicity, and wearing his ownhair in loose, natural curls, just framing his face and touching hisshoulders, was so evidently a man of culture and of gentle blood thatthe dandy was both impressed and perplexed by him. For high-bred lookand instinctive nobility of bearing Lord Sandford could not hold acandle to Grey Dumaresq.
"I saw you ride into the yard just now. Fine horse that of yours,sir--very fine horse! If he's ever for sale, mind you let me know ofhim. Lord Sandford--your very humble servant--always to be heard of atWill's Coffee House or the Mohawk Club. Seem to remember your face; butdash me if I can give it a name. Awful memory for names I have--knowtoo many fellows, I suppose. Not that there are so many like you,either; but hang me, I must have met you somewhere before."
Grey had caught the fleeting memory, and answered at once,--
"We were at Oxford together, my lord. Not at the same college, though;but we have met, doubtless. My name is Grey Dumaresq--"
"Why, to be sure. Gad! but that's strange! Thought I wasn't wrong abouta face! I heard you spout forth a poem once. Lord, it was fine, thoughI didn't understand one word in ten! Latin or Greek--rabbit me if Iknow which! And I knew your father, too; met him in London now andagain. He's not been seen anywhere these eight or nine months."
"My father died last Christmas," spoke Grey gravely. "I did not know itmyself, being abroad." And led on by Lord Sandford's questions, which,if not very delicately put, showed a real interest in the subject, Greygave him a bare outline of his own life since quitting Oxford, and ofthe position in which he now found himself.
"Oddsfish, man--as our merry monarch of happy memory used to say--butyours is a curious tale. The ladies will rave over the romance ofit--coupled with that face of yours. Oh, never say die, man! You've theworld before you. What more do you ask than such a face, such a story,and a few hundred pounds in your pocket? Why, with decent luck, thosehundreds ought to make thousands in a very short time. You trustyourself to me, my young friend. I know my London. I know the ropes.I will show you how fortunes are made in a night; and you shall be thepet of the ladies and the envy of the beaux before another month haspassed. We will find you an heiress for a wife, and--heigh,presto!--the thing is done."
Grey started, and made a gesture as of repulsion, whereat Lord Sandfordroared with laughter; and there was something so heartwhole andinfectious in his laugh that Grey found himself joining in almostwithout knowing it. The man had a strong personality, that was not tobe doubted, and at this moment Grey felt himself singularly lonely,singularly perplexed about his own immediate future. He did not knowLondon. He had scarcely set foot within its precincts, save on theoccasion when he went to bid his father farewell, and when it seemed tohim that he stepped into Pandemonium itself. Since then he had visitedmany foreign capitals, and had accustomed himself to the life there tosome extent; but only to the life of a traveller--an onlooker. Now hefelt that something more lay before him--that it was as a citizen and aunit in the great hive that he must go. And how to steer his barkthrough the shoals and quicksands of the new life, he had very smallidea. To win fame and fortune was his wish; but how were these goodthings to be achieved? Never had it entered his head to look uponmarriage as a way of gaining either.
"Zounds, man, don't look like that! Better men than you or I have notbeen shamed to thank their wives for their promotion. But there aremore ways of killing a cat than hanging. We'll look about and see. Youput yourself in my hands, and I'll show you the ropes. No, no; nothanks. I want some diversion myself. Poor Tom Gregory, my booncompanion, made a fool of himself over the wine the other night, and gotspitted like a cockchafer by Captain Dashwood. I've felt bad eversince. I tried what a trip into the country would do for me. But dashit all, I can't stand the dreariness of it. I am on my way back to townas fast as may be. And you shall come with me. Nay, I'll take nodenial. A man must have something to do with his time, or he'll getinto a pretty peck of mischief. I've taken a liking to you; and Ialways get my own way, because I won't listen to objections."
So an hour later, when the coach rumbled out from under the archway ofthe old inn, Grey Dumaresq sat within by Lord Sandford's side, and Dick,with a puzzled but satisfied face, led his master's horse behind.
Fallen Fortunes Page 4