Chapter IV: Part 4

“Then, since you will have it so,” said the woman eagerly, “you are the king I choose, mine own. The other is but the prince in the fairybook; the delicious unreality that obtrudes in the dreams of girls in the middle of the night. You are the true prince of flesh and blood; he, the vague shadow without an entity.”

The husband and wife were drawn together in a caress of reconciliation, when footsteps were heard upon the stairs. They were followed by the entrance of the King.

Now that their hearts were at peace one towards another, Charles’s friends were able to attend to the terrible situation in which all three found themselves. They both observed with something of a shock that, although the King knew his life to hang on a mere thread, he seemed wholly indifferent to his fate. It would have been superb had it not been too grievous to contemplate.

“I have been talking with our landlord,” he said, “and I must say I like him no better now I am his master instead of his servant. There never was a countenance of such a concentrated villainy, I think. I never saw such greedy, shifty little eyes as that man hath. I have been talking to him for half an hour, but never once have I got him to look me in the face. I am sure Judas Iscariot was a man of scruples by comparison.”

“Sire,” said the woman, “your only hope lies in immediate flight. You must go at once from here, Sire. That man, the landlord, is hungry to betray you, and probably hath already done so. Oh, flee at once, Sire!”

“I know not where to go,” said the King.

“Anywhere, anywhere away from this hateful house, Sire,” said the lady. “But you must go at once. Tarry an hour, and all may be lost.”

The King sat down in a chair, wearily. He yawned, and covered his eyes with his hands.

“I think not to-day, madam,” he said, in a voice whose diffidence hurt her like a blow,--“not to-day, I think. I have not the energy. Besides, how tired I am of it all, how utterly weary! The game is not worth the candle. My friends urge me to flee this way and that; they conceal me in ditches, up trees, behind secret panels, and in priests’ holes, day after day. They bring me food in the dark; paint my face; clap various disguises about me, each more hideous than the one before. They turn me about from pillar to post; head me, cut me off, send me back again; confound me with all manner of conflicting counsels. And for what? That I may still fall into the hands of my enemies. I am not now a yard nearer my freedom than I was when I rode from the field of Worcester. I am wearied to death by the whole business; I am tired; I yawn. I will take a day’s rest, the first for many a wretched month; I will take it in your society, madam, and see if I have a better inclination to continue this struggle of one unhappy man against overwhelming circumstance to-morrow.”

“There will be no to-morrow, Sire,” said the lady. “Tarry here in this accursed place till then, and you will be surely ta’en.”

Her voice had the fullest conviction in it. It was no leap in the dark, no idle prophecy. Too well did she know the man downstairs with whom she had had to deal.

The King shook his head and smiled bitterly. There was no banishing the melancholy indifference from his voice. He was bored by the whole affair, and he was such a wilful fellow, that he would not stir a finger to save his own life if he had not the inclination. He was tired and depressed and sick of heart. At this moment it suited him better to be the prey of melancholy and to give rein to his sad fancies. He preferred to utilise those misfortunes which made him so irresistible in the eyes of all, particularly those of women.

It might have been that the extreme beauty of this compassionate lady was working upon him to his own undoing. For certainly, now that the wilful young King found himself in her presence, the desire uppermost in his mind was to stay in it. His life hung on a thread, and with it the hopes of thousands of his countrymen and the destinies of nations; but because a beautiful woman had pitied him, for the nonce he preferred to sit still and bask in her tears. To-morrow the mercury might rise. He might then find the energy to save his neck, or to attempt to do so; but to-day his inclination was far otherwise. He was disposed to give the rein to his adorable melancholy; and to wrap his cold spirit warmly in a woman’s sorrow.

The woman, cut to the heart by the young man’s wanton disregard of his sacred duty, had, with the instinct that often is with those that possess a singular potency, divined one factor of it. Her heart stood still. The horror of the thought almost overcame her. That she, in her own person, should be the unconscious and unwilling means of her King’s destruction! Unhappy, wayward youth, that his blood should be upon her head! The thought was impossible to endure.

“Sire,” she said wildly, “thou canst not have considered of all thy dalliance means. The last person a king can think of is himself. His responsibilities are more than personal. Sire, you must indeed go. Consider the destiny of your race, consider your friends.”

The young King’s eyes sparkled at the noble passion of her countenance. He had never seen a face so glorious. However, it did but confirm the satisfaction he took from his present case. He was more than content. To-morrow would be soon enough to begin his irksome toils again.

He loved to hear the throbbing tones of the woman; he loved to gaze upon her face. The passionate tenderness that suffused her was like a great and aged wine, that lulled his blood and warmed it, and made it sweeter in the veins. Languid and indifferent as he was, sparks were kindled in his eyes, and they were there for all to see. The woman saw them. She shuddered, even as the prayer was on her lips. They seemed to stop the beatings of her heart.

The husband saw the King’s eyes, too. The old hatred and jealous rage were smouldering in him still. It would not call for much to fan them into flame. His hands were clenched once more on the coverlet, a red spot burned dully in the centre of his dead white cheeks. Involuntarily he added a prayer of his own to that of his wife.

“Go, Sire, go!” he cried; “go now, else thou wilt be surely ta’en.”

The husband’s tones, however, had the passion without the magnetic quality of the wife’s. They grated on the King’s ear. He looked up a little startled at the man in the bed, and then he smiled.

“The solicitude of our friends,” he said, “grows more and more remarkable. Never was a monarch encompassed by so much disinterestedness.”

The sneer was so slight as to be hardly perceptible, but poor Farnham felt ready to slay him for it. That young man, however, by his ill-timed interposition, had retarded rather than advanced the end he wished to attain. The King settled himself more snugly upon his chair. He even requested the permission of the lady to put his weary legs upon the settle standing beside the bed. He asked her to allow him to have recourse to tobacco. A spice of mischief had now been added to his inclination. He was more firmly resolved than ever that on this day he would take his ease in his inn, in congenial society. Let to-morrow come when it might; let the consequences be what they may.

The unhappy lady read the King’s doom in his demeanour. Everything was lost. Only too well did she know that the man downstairs would eagerly utilise each second the King tarried at his inn for his own profit. Despair seized her. There was nothing to be done in the face of his appalling indifference and his wilfulness. She knew, as surely as he set his legs on the settle and rested his back against her husband’s bed with something of a subtle, humorous mockery, that his fate was sealed. Her foreboding heart told her that, for the King, to-morrow would never dawn. God! he would be taken like a rat in a trap. He would be taken there, in her husband’s chamber.

And who had caused him to be taken there? Who had been the unwilling agent of his tarrying? The thought was too terrible to bear. She clasped her hands to her bosom, where lay the King’s image in miniature. Again the tears trembled in the woman’s eyes. The King remarked them and took them to himself.

CHAPTER
XI

_The Psychology
of cowardice_]

Since that first strange hour of the King’s revelation, Gamaliel Hooker had sat in his chimney-side, except for the few brief minutes in which he had done his Majesty’s behests. Very naturally, in the first shock of the King’s appearance his wits had deserted him. An event of such magnitude had never happened in his life before.

It was not likely to happen in it again.

Presently, with the King upstairs out of the way, and his generous potations to strengthen him and to calm his nerves, the landlord’s wits strayed back slowly, one at a time. To think that the King should come in the guise of a serving-man, and that he should be such a blind fool as not to recognise him when he came! And ye gods, to think what sacrilegious hands he had laid upon the royal person! To think how roughly, not to say angrily, he had addressed him! Gamaliel never came so near being a sensitive man, as in the first horrified five minutes of his returning faculties.

These were the secondary thoughts which occupied his mind at first. But soon there were others. As he sat sipping his liquor and ruminating over the events of the morning, he felt them dimly to be shaping themselves. They were gradually coming forward. And they would have to be grappled with and considered on their merits. The landlord stiffened the fibres of his brain for the task.

One fact came uppermost. It would assert itself; it refused to be blinked. Now that the King was indeed here in his inn, the utmost must be made of him. For was there not to a poor man a fortune in the royal person? To some people it might seem distasteful to sell the King; yea, even to him, Gamaliel Hooker, when he thought of it in cold blood, it did not seem a pleasant thing. It would have its compensations, though.

If, however, the King was to be taken in his house, he must act at once. He would be hardly likely to tarry. And yet he might. As Will Jackson, he had already stayed two days. He was probably waiting for his friends. Still, it would be by no means safe to count upon his remaining. There was yet one drawback to sending for the soldiers. When they came they would most certainly take away the wounded cavalier as well as the King. And Gamaliel had not yet had time to deprive him and his wife of their money and jewels. That was indeed a fly in the ointment. In a sense, it considerably lessened the price upon the head of the King.

Still, it would be folly to risk losing the King’s price for the sake of a sum paltry by comparison. He would dearly like to grasp every penny. It was his nature; but in attempting to do so, he must not throw away the substance for the shadow. With a sudden access of resolution he called for his son.

“Joseph,” he said, in his lowest tone, “do you saddle the tit this minute. I want you to ride right away to Woolden Magna, and ask for Captain Culpeper at Master Parkin’s farm. You know it well. ’Tis on the top of Woolden Hill, overlooking the sea. And when you see Captain Culpeper, you are to whisper in his private ear: ‘The King, Charles Stuart, is at the “Sea Rover”; do you come at once.’”

Joseph looked a little bewildered.

“The King!” he said, excitedly.

“Hush, hush, thou fool!” said the nervous Gamaliel. “If we are overheard, we are undone.”

Turning round in his anxiety, he became aware that although Cicely the serving-maid was ostensibly cleaning the warming-pan, she was really listening with all her ears.

“My wench,” said her master, sharply, “do you go into the cellar and broach that small barrel of October. I told ye to do so yesterday.”

When Cicely had disappeared to do his bidding, Gamaliel continued his instructions.

“Now, Joseph,” he said, in the same eager whisper as before, “you understand. You will do all this quickly and secretly, and your father’s fortune is made. But, Joseph, I think instead o’ saying to Captain Culpeper, ‘The King is at the “Sea Rover,”’ you had better say: ‘My father, Master Gamaliel Hooker, hath sent me to tell you that the King is at the “Sea Rover.”’ The Captain must understand that I sent ye, Joseph. But perhaps it would be better that I writ this information down on a piece of paper, and signed my name to it. Nobody can then take the credit of it from me.”

With this cunning end in view, he caused Joseph to procure him the materials for writing. He thereupon committed the message to paper with much anxious care and many laborious twistings of the mouth. At last it was written and sanded, signed and sealed, and delivered into Joseph’s hand. Five minutes afterwards Joseph’s nag stood at the door, and Joseph himself was superintending Cicely whilst she put up for him a hunch of bread and cheese to bear with him for his dinner. Then it was that the landlord suddenly rose from his chair, and began anxiously to hobble about the kitchen. Just as Joseph had put the bread and cheese in his pocket, and was going out of the door, the landlord stayed him.

“Joseph,” he said, hoarsely, “give me back again the paper I have writ, and go and unsaddle the tit. We will let this matter bide a bit; I must think upon it.”

He had his fourth glass of hot rum-and-water to aid him to do so. He meditated upon the grave matter until his head was ready to split. He was taken with a vacillation that he had never experienced before. His natural instincts were all for betraying the King. There lay his pecuniary advantage, and even his personal safety. Should it become known that he had harboured the man, knowing him to be the King, he was as good as dead. A hundred times he arrived at that plain, inevitable conclusion; yet a hundred times, at the very moment he was about to act, his resolution weakened, and then appeared to snap. Some strange tremor would arise in the remotest recesses of his brain.

The landlord did not know what name to put to it. Conscience it was not. He knew himself too intimately ever to bring such an accusation against the power of his understanding. Pity it was not. Fear it was not. It might be superstition, yet he hardly thought so. It was the oddest thing in life, and not the least disconcerting. It was his plain duty to himself to sell the King, and yet a vague scruple he was unable to define had the power to restrain him.

He reasoned with himself; he fought with himself. It was too monstrous that a chance which could never occur again could be allowed to slip by. Long ago had he made up his mind what to do in the case of the King’s coming to his inn. And here was the King upstairs; and here was he going over the well-trodden ground again, reviewing all his settled conclusions, when every minute was of the first importance. Any moment the King might turn his back on the “Sea Rover” forever. Yes, he would cast out the qualm that was debasing his mind. It was sapping all its vigorous faculties. But try as he might, he could not do so. It was ingrained in the very marrow of his brain.

Minute by minute his chances were ticking away. Had he only had the strength of purpose to permit Joseph to start on his errand, he would have been halfway there by now! The malady that was besetting him had never come upon him before. It was the most singular he had ever experienced, or even heard of. It had already caused him to act in a manner for him unparalleled. To keep Joseph back for no cause whatever was, the poor landlord considered, the act of a madman. It was so entirely opposed to reason; never before had he been blind to its dictates.

He called for his fifth glass of hot rum-and-water. By God! if he could not do it sober, he would do it drunk! To think that he was throwing away a fortune without the least reason for doing so! Again he got up and began to hobble unsteadily about the kitchen floor. He began to pant, to gasp; the sweat poured out of him, although the weather was still bitterly cold. Was he the master of his own mind, or was he not? That was what the whole thing amounted to. Had he lived to be sixty ere he put that question for the first time? But he would answer it.

Yes; he would answer it. He tossed off the sixth glass. The tremor was not quite so distinct in his brain. He felt a little stronger. He must stiffen every nerve of his resolution. Never mind the sweat shining on his forehead, his agitated breast, or his trembling flabby hands. He was slowly getting his teeth upon the bit; he was getting some control over this strange insanity.

The seventh glass, and he triumphed. It was a hard-won struggle; none harder. But at last, as the shadows of the wintry evening came stealing down the rocks, and Cicely lit the first candle, the struggle came to an end. Each individual nerve in Gamaliel’s body rioted within him; he was as unsubstantial as pulp; but at last his resolution was running clear and strong. The little flickering tremor that had a thousand times routed it and put it to shame was now dead. Hot rum-and-water had ultimately done its business. The crisis was past. He was master of himself after all.

In a voice so hoarse it resembled the croak of a raven, he summoned his son a second time.

“Joseph,” he said, “I want you to go now. Go speedily. Time presses; the business is very urgent. And when you come to Captain Culpeper, tell him to make all haste. It is now a little after four o’clock; at a little after eight he and his men should be at the door. Be a good lad now. Do not tarry an instant, and your old father’s fortune is made, likewise your own.”

Joseph listened to the low, excited utterance of the landlord in a purely mechanical manner. He was neither uplifted nor depressed; he was neither surprised nor disappointed. He took the sealed paper once more in his hands, and stepped out without a word into the sea-broken silence of the wintry evening. A little afterwards his horse was out of the stable, and he rode away.

The landlord still hobbled up and down the inn kitchen, until he heard the hoofs of the horse die away in the distance. He then sat down in his chair by the fireside for the first time for more than an hour. His head fell onto his chest. He was utterly worn out and overcome.

CHAPTER
XII

_The Mariner_]

Joseph once away on his errand, the landlord felt easier. He had no longer to fear his own irresolution. Things must take their course. Therefore, he sat down and waited through the weary hours, with a conviction steadily arising in his mind that after all he was playing a fine, a manly, not to say a noble, part. It calls for no little courage to sell one’s king for a few pieces of money. Gamaliel, now he came to look back upon this transaction, or at least the inception of it, felt something perilously like pleasure glow within him. He did not glory in his deed as yet; but the fact that it had cost him so many pains to achieve, invested himself in his own mind with some attributes of the heroic.

Therefore he sat down to wait through the weary hours, very well content with himself. With other things he was hardly so. He was mortally afraid that the rare prize upstairs might quit his roof ere the soldiers came. Or his friends might intervene; or a thousand and one things, at present unforeseen, might happen. In any case the landlord was wholly a man of peace. Nothing did he desire less than there should be a scene of bloodshed on his kitchen floor. God forbid! The thought turned him cold. He had a constitutional aversion to blood. Not only did it make such a mess, but it also had a habit of lingering in the mind for many days to come. Besides, like many men of brains, endowed with a great activity of imagination and intelligence, he clearly felt himself to be at a disadvantage in the presence of violence. He had no skill in the use of arms; he preferred to work with subtler weapons; and when he saw them flying about, he was apt to anticipate their consequences more keenly than another. He was not a coward; his great action of that evening, which would change the course of history, was a sufficient refutation of any charge of that sort; but in the matter of actual violence, that ignoble argument of inferior wits, he was not seen at his best.

He hoped to God that to-night there would be no blood spilt at his inn. His poor nerves still ticked in his head as loudly as the spider running up the wall. He was, indeed, very overwrought. He felt that it would be more than his body and soul could endure, should there be a scene of violence this evening in his house. He revolted from the thought. He did hope the young King would have the good sense to acquiesce passively in his fate when it confronted him. He knew that there were two cases of pistols upstairs at least, not to speak of daggers. Probably the presence of a lady would restrain him.

Still, after all, kings were not in the habit of fighting, except on the field of battle. They were much too high up in the world for that. If the King’s numerous friends, who certainly were not a farther distance from the royal person than his safety rendered desirable, would only keep off till to-morrow, all would be well. If they turned up when the soldiers came, the distracted landlord was sure he should run out of the house and hide himself, even if he lost the King’s price thereby. To-night he felt very old and weak and overborne.

The time seemed interminable. It was as though the hands of the ruthlessly slow old clock in the corner would never go round. Five struck, and then six, without engendering much excitement in the landlord’s heart. The tardy passing of the minutes between six and seven, however, occasioned the first flutter in his spirit. It was tentative mainly; the time for the furious beatings of his blood and the palsy of his limbs was not yet at hand.

At about twenty minutes to seven the first incident of that strange night occurred. The kitchen door was suddenly flung open, with never a “With your leave” or a “By your leave,” and a tall man entered. He was attired in a great hat, whose wide flapping brims were tied down over his ears and under his chin, doubtless that it might not fall a prey to the rude sea-wind; whilst a heavy cloak of a sanguine colour covered him from his neck to the calves of his legs, and left but a pair of extremely muddy riding-boots to be seen below. His voice was loud and high, and singularly penetrating. He addressed the landlord without the preface of any ceremony.

“Landlord,” he said, “you have lately taken a new servant-man into your service, I believe, who goes by the name of Jackson. I wish to see him.”

The landlord was full of tremors, but rum-and-water made him bold. This was doubtless a friend of the King, come to take his Majesty away into a safer seclusion.

“The man Jackson is no longer in my service, sir,” said the landlord, shortly. Even as he uttered this, he thought it rather happy, it had the merit of being perfectly true.

“When did he quit it?” asked the tall man, striving to conceal his excitement.

“This morning,” said the landlord.

“Did he go alone?”

“To the best of my belief, yes,” said the landlord, firmly.

“How odd!” said the other. “Did he give a reason for his departure, and did he say whither he was going?”

“He was dismissed my service, sir,” said the landlord, with the inspiration of his rum-and-water. “His ways were not my ways, d’ye see, and he had to go. Not only was he the worst serving-man I have ever had, but I had occasion to doubt his truthfulness, not to say his honesty.”

“Ah! yes, yes, to be sure!” said the visitor, with a remarkable admixture of laughter and amazement. “How very odd, how very odd; ’od’s fish, how very odd! But, after all, you were his master.”

“I was, the more is the pity,” said the landlord.

All this time he was fervently hoping that his unwelcome visitor would go, lest anything should happen to detain him. Whoever he was, he was determined that the King should not see him if he could help it. Charles was at present perfectly settled and quiet upstairs, and he seemed likely to remain so for some time to come if nothing occurred to disturb him. If possible, he must see nobody ere he saw Captain Culpeper and his men.

The strange visitor, still repeating “How odd; ’od’s fish, how very odd!” in various inflections of tone, was preparing to take his departure, when the particular thing occurred that the landlord so desired to avert. The stairs began to creak, and the King’s long legs were observed to be coming down them.

“My dear Colonel,” said the King, heartily, “I thought I could not be mistaken in your voice. It penetrated upstairs to my chamber, and I judged by the sound of it that our landlord was putting you off. I was half expecting you to-night.”

The visitor greeted the King in the curious manner that the singular circumstances demanded. While he contrived to throw a vast amount of respect into his demeanour, he shot a number of questioning glances from the King’s face to that of the landlord. Plainly he was wishing to be advised of how much Gamaliel actually knew concerning the King’s identity.

“The murder is out,” said the King, laughing. “There are no longer any secrets between Boniface and ourselves.”

“Then, Sire,” said the Colonel, “permit me to say that I think mine host to be a very honest fellow. Landlord, you did well to conceal the whereabouts of the King from one who was a total stranger to you. You exercised a rare discretion, landlord, and I am sure his Majesty will not be in the least likely to forget it.”

“By my faith! yes,” said the King, heartily; and then added frankly: “After all, I believe I have done less than justice to our Boniface.”

The landlord bowed low. His ears tingled to hear his praises sung. He felt it to be a somewhat ironical world, however. The sweat burst out of the roots of his hair; he knew what Judas Iscariot felt like, of old, when he sat at the Last Supper.

“Sire,” said the visitor, “all the arrangements are made and the coast is clear. I am assured that there are no Roundheads nearer than Woolden Magna, a hamlet some fifteen miles along the coast. To-night, therefore, under the cover of the darkness, you will be able to push on to Titcomb Place, the house of Mr. John Pocock. You will there be able to lie in a better security. You will be able to wash your face, Sire, and adopt a raiment less out of keeping with your condition.”

“My present one is by no means out of keeping with my condition, Colonel,” said the King, with a sudden bitterness. “The condition of a dog is that of a gentleman by comparison.”

The Colonel sighed; his grizzled face was full of distress.

“A little patience, Sire,” he said gently. “In a few short days you will no longer have need to fear your enemies. I would recommend, Sire, that you come with me now to Titcomb Place. It is but three miles along the rocks, and we must go on foot. I have brought no horses, as the way is devious. Mr. Pocock hath everything in readiness for your reception, and I am sure, Sire, you will lie in perfect comfort and security for one night at least.”

The landlord hung upon the King’s reply. After all, was he to be balked by the King’s going ere the soldiers could reach him?

“My dear Colonel,” said the King, with his customary diffidence, “not to-night, I think. I am in no mood to leave my quarters here. I am perfectly snug and content; and as you say, our Boniface hath already given an earnest of his honesty. Besides, we have had more than enough of the night air of late. This evening we propose to give ourselves a holiday. Despite our attire and the walnut juice that discolours our countenance, we have a warm and snug chamber at our disposal upstairs, and the society is most amiable. My poor young Lord Farnham lies there of a bullet wound, a memorial of the melancholy Third, and his adorable Countess is there to nurse him.”

“Ah, Sire!” said the Colonel, wagging a playful finger at the King. “Further argument of mine is superfluous, I fear. Mr. Pocock cannot hope to compete with my Lady Farnham. And, after all, Sire, I do not think it matters greatly where you lie this evening. The enemy do not seem to be very active in this neighbourhood. Landlord, you have no reason to fear their appearance to-night, I trow?”

“I do not think, sir, that they are at all likely to inconvenience his Majesty to-night,” said the landlord.

His voice was prompt, hard and dry. He hoped God would forgive him. But, after all, he was a poor man; he was not a personal friend of the King’s; and he had never pretended to a particular interest in the species.

“Very well, Sire, we will leave it at that,” said the Colonel. “I will return here early to-morrow morning, and, if all is well, I will then conduct you to Titcomb Place.”

“Excellent, my good Colonel,” said the King, accompanying the most faithful friend of his wanderings, Colonel Francis Wyndham, to the kitchen door. He waved a frank adieu to him as he departed into the night. The King then returned upstairs.

The landlord breathed again. Having seen the end of that matter, he looked at the clock. It was now five minutes past seven. Say one hour more, if all went well. One short hour, and the agony of his suspense would be at an end. Nay, not that; rather it would be coming to its heat and violence. The full force of it would be when the men he had sent for were face to face with the persons upstairs.

He could hardly endure that thought. The nearer the time approached, the more certain the landlord became that it was going to be a terrible business. On his life he was not a coward, but another evening of this kind and he felt he must inevitably become one. Before God, he was not a coward, but the manner in which his wild heart beat up into his throat was enough to choke him.

He could not sit still. He rose from his chair and went hobbling up and down the kitchen as before. All his physical infirmities had gone out of him. They had been replaced by those of his mind. He said again he was no coward; but he was certain that in his present shaken state anything might happen to him. If those soldiers began to whirl their pikes or discharge their pieces, or the woman began to scream, or particularly if he saw so much as a drop of blood, he must run forth out of the house, and hide his eyes and his ears until all was over. It was a pity that soldiers were concerned in the business at all. They were so ruthless; their wicked profession left them absolutely destitute of a sense of delicacy. He had always had a rooted aversion to soldiers.

It was now twenty minutes past seven. The wretched clock in the corner seemed to stand still. His heart ticked out the minutes, but the clock in the corner seemed to refuse to record them. Its inaction mocked him. Still, after all, he was not sure he was not relieved to find the hour was not later. He was not fit to grapple with the worst. A respite was not unwelcome.

At this moment there came a knock on the kitchen door. The landlord inwardly cursed his visitor, whoever he might be. This was not a night for visitors. There had been one already; a pretty undesirable one, too. True, he had proved more than a match for him; with this one he must prove the same. Still, it was a little unreasonable for anyone short of Captain Culpeper, who, to be sure, would not have stayed to knock, to obtrude himself at such a crisis in his life--nay, at such a crisis in the destiny of nations.

Filled with the unction of his previous success, the landlord hobbled boldly to the door and opened it. The apparition waiting upon the threshold seemed to have stepped bodily out of one of Gamaliel’s wildest nightmares. It was the elderly mariner in the dogskin cap. There he stood, with the earrings in his ears; the same malignant, humorous leer in his face. The scar across it shone white in the brightness of the kitchen fire; the naked knife at his waist was shining too. And, above all, his two great brown paws looked more knotted and gnarled than ever.

“A pleasant evenin’ to you, mate,” said Diggory Fargus.

“Same to you,” said the landlord, awkwardly.

With no better invitation, the sailor lurched into the kitchen, assumed a seat by the fire, as on the previous occasion of his coming, and asked for a go of rum. The landlord ordered the serving-maid to bring it to him. The sailor tasted it deliberately when it was given to him, warmed his hands, and then cocked his one ugly eye across at the landlord. In spite of himself Gamaliel shivered. His awe of this rude mariner was in the last degree absurd; but there it was. His native delicacy was doubtless too great for him to be entirely at his ease in the society of these rude characters.

“I am here, mate, about that young man I mentioned to ye the other evenin’,” said the mariner. “Have ye seen him yet?”

In an instant the landlord, afraid as he was of this fellow, arrived at the conclusion that his presence in that house was not at all required. The sooner he was quit of him the better. The young man he sought might very possibly be upstairs; he might prove to be either my Lord Farnham or the King; but things were very well as they were. This Diggory Fargus could not improve them; he might very possibly undo them though.

“I have seen no young man,” said Gamaliel shortly. “And I don’t much want to see one. This is a peaceable and honest inn.”

“I never said it weren’t,” said the mariner. “But have you had any comp’ny, mate, these three days?”

“None to speak of,” said the landlord.

“Have you got any now?” asked the mariner.

“I have not,” said the landlord.

“Then, mate,” said the mariner, spitting freely amongst the logs on the hearth, “you’re a liar.”

That was so trite a fact to Gamaliel, that he did not attempt to contradict it. He was not a little disconcerted by it, however.

“Now I’ll tell ye, mate, how I know ye’re a liar,” said the sailor, with a slow anger that made him far more formidable than an outburst would have done. “The candles are comin’ through the chinks in the shutters of that front chamber over the sign. Perhaps ye’ll tell me that that don’t mean comp’ny; but in any case Diggory Fargus is a-going up to look with his own blessed deadlight, and ye can lay to that, mate.”

Without condescending to parley further with the landlord, who had plainly none of his confidence, Diggory Fargus got up from the fire and lurched to the stairs.

“What are you about, man?” said the landlord excitedly. “It is no place for you, up there! There are lords and ladies up there.”

“I knew you were a liar,” said the grimly satisfied mariner. “Lords and ladies, is they? Well, like as not, that’s just who I’ve come to see. What moight be their names, mate?”

The landlord, seeing that it was hopeless to throw more dust in the shrewd sailor’s eye, submitted with the best grace he could summon.

“Well, there’s my Lord Farnham for one,” he said.

“My Lord Farnham, is there?” said the sailor. “Well, mate, I calls that sing’lar, seein’ as how my Lord Farnham is the very young man I’m wantin’.”

“I will conduct you to him, then,” said the landlord.

He had lost the game; but he spoke as cheerfully and obligingly as he could, for he was keenly desirous to propitiate this ugly devil of a mariner. Besides, one sailor more or less did not matter much at this stage. The time was growing very short. The hoofs of the soldiers’ horses would soon be heard on the road. Diggory Fargus or ten Diggory Farguses would then be of no avail.

The landlord put his best leg foremost, and led the sailor up the rickety stairs to the chamber where the King sat in the society of the Earl of Farnham and his Countess. He knocked a little timidly upon the door.

“Enter,” said the frank voice of the King.

“If it please your Majesty and your lordship and your ladyship,” said the landlord, putting his nose on his belly again, deeming that etiquette demanded it of him, “there is here a sailor-man to see my lord.”

“Let us have a look at him,” said the King, scenting some little diversion.

“Which be my Lord Farnham, mate?” said the mariner, addressing the King bluffly. He was a plain man himself, and the landlord’s elaborate flummeries rather increased the directness of his manners.

“The pale gentleman lying in his bed,” said the King.

“Are you the master of the little vessel that Colonel Phelips promised to engage for my lord?” asked Lady Farnham.

“Ay, ay, ma’am,” said the mariner. “She’ve been lying three days past in Pyler’s Cove, a short sea-mile up the beach. When I was here a day or so agone, ye hadn’t touched this port. I should ha’ come last night again, but we couldn’t ha’ put to sea in sich a gale as that.”

“I was expecting you anxiously,” said Lady Farnham. “Indeed, so anxious did I become, that in the middle of the night I went forth to seek you, but saw you not.”

“I daresay I was under hatches then,” said the sailor. “But to-night at ten o’clock the wind and tide should be fair enough. We can get off then.”

A great hope suddenly beaconed in the woman’s face.

“Oh! if you can, good sailor,” she exclaimed, impulsively, “I shall never be able to requite you.”

Even as she spoke, however, there came a thought that dashed it to the earth. There was her husband. He was too weak to move.

“My lord is stricken,” she said. “He cannot walk a step. What is to be done, good sailor?”

The mariner scratched his head.

“Don’t ye fret about that, ma’am,” he said. “Diggory Fargus hath run too many cargoes in precarious plazen to be beat by a thing like that. I’ll bring three o’ my mates along wi’ a litter, at half-past nine o’ the clock. We should be able to bear the gentleman easy if we takes our time.”

“It is well thought on,” said the King.

“At half-past nine of the clock then, good sailor,” said the lady, fervently. “And may God requite you for your services. We will be in readiness.”

Diggory Fargus pulled his forelock and went downstairs in the company of the nervous landlord.

“Oh, Sire,” said the poor lady--the tears were come into her eyes,--“it is indeed a providence that the sailor is here at such a time. Wilt thou not come with us, too? Something clearly told me that if you spent this night, Sire, under this roof, you would be ta’en.”

“Madam, you are more than kind,” said the King, complaisantly. “We will consider it. Although we think we must not disappoint our other friends. They, too, have a boat chartered for us somewhere. But we shall see. On the one hand is our duty; on the other, our inclination.”

There was no misreading the lustre in the King’s face.

CHAPTER
XIII

_The Soldiers_]

When the landlord had carefully and thankfully seen the sailor out of his house, he looked at the clock as one hardly daring to do so. It was still twenty minutes past seven. The landlord recoiled from it with a shock. He was in that state of tension which rejects the simple and natural. He was either dreaming a wild dream, or he was face to face with the supernatural. In his present extreme condition, both seemed possible.

All at once it then occurred to Gamaliel that the clock had stopped. Whatever had come upon him? Of course it was Friday evening, and for the first time in forty years the hour for winding it up had gone by unheeded. Almost savagely, so moved by a contemptuous anger was the landlord against himself, he took the key in his feverish hands, and strove to wind it up and set it again in motion. His attempts were pitiful. The key refused to obey his faltering hand, and wandered all over the face of the clock. The palsy of terror was already communicated to his limbs.

The clock was wound at last. He set the pendulum again in motion, and it recommenced sonorously to tick. Even then, however, the landlord was no nearer the end of his suspense. He did not know how long the clock had stopped, and in all the house it was the only thing he had to tell the time by. Could anything have been more distracting or inopportune than his forgetfulness?

By hook or by crook he must obtain the time. To be ignorant of it at that hour was more than flesh and blood could endure. He would go upstairs and ask the King.

In the greatest trepidation of body and spirit, he climbed the stairs. When he got to the top he stood irresolutely, with his knuckles poised against the chamber door. He felt that, even supposing the power was vouchsafed him to knock upon the panels, he would still be unable to address the King. His mouth was like a lime pit; his tongue stuck in it, no longer susceptible of control.

He was physically incapable of addressing the King. He would try to ask Lady Farnham. He knocked fiercely upon the door, for to do so with the deliberation of cold blood was impossible. He was bidden to enter.

The landlord did not know how he got into the chamber. He was certainly not conscious that it was by the agency of his feet. But suddenly he found himself staring wide-mouthed at his guests, with never a word to give them. They plainly expected one, yet his tongue stuck in his mouth; he was unable to utter a syllable.

“Hath our Boniface seen a ghost?” said the King’s voice. “I declare he hath the pallor and inanimation of death without the peace of it. Speak, good fellow. What ails thee?”

The landlord quivered from head to foot, but speak he could not. The King’s voice was the last straw. He tottered back against the wall.

“Oh, what doth ail the poor man?” said the compassionate lady. “Look how his eyes stare, and see how the sweat pours from him! And he can scarce stand upon his legs. I am sure it is some grievous malady. Can it be poison, thinkest thou?”

“Speak, good landlord,” said the King. “What doth ail thee?”

The King’s voice was utterly too much for the landlord. His struggles to speak ended in his shaking a few harsh sobs out of his dry throat. He then began to whimper like a child.

His three auditors stared at him with looks of genuine pity and alarm.

“I declare,” said the King, “I never saw anybody so overcome before. Something must be done for the poor fellow. I think we had better summon his son.”

The mention of his son’s name acted on the landlord in much the same manner as a spark upon a keg of gunpowder. The process of cause and effect was far too swift to be at all related in the unhappy Gamaliel’s subsequent consciousness; but almost before he recalled upon what errand his son had gone, his tongue was released, and words flowed from it in a torrent.

“The soldiers! the soldiers!” he cried. “The soldiers are coming, your Majesty!”

The landlord knew so little of what he was saying, that he was half stunned to find his three auditors looking at him so wildly.

“What is this you say, landlord?” said the King.

In the circumstances, the King’s voice struck with such a peculiar languor upon Gamaliel’s ear, that it acted like a sedative upon his nerves. There never was a better illustration of the force of example upon a weak mind. Had the King and his companions ranted and raved, and called for their cloaks and their horses, the landlord would inevitably have fallen upon his knees and craved forgiveness of them. Yet, startled as they were, since they still retained the composure of good breeding, and the young King, probably with some little bravado, heightened his natural diffidence because his own safety was involved, the landlord was acted upon powerfully by their demeanour. Their composure did much to soothe his agitation.

In any case, had they but known it, he was entirely at their mercy; to be swayed by them, at that instant, backwards and forwards like a reed in the wind. They chose to go backwards; involuntarily the landlord, with no longer the least control over his faculties, went backwards too.

“What is this you say, landlord?” asked the calm voice of the King.

“I--I think the soldiers are coming, your Majesty,” said the trembling landlord.

“You think they are coming,” said the King. “Why should you think they are coming, landlord?”

There was the least tinge of amusement now added to the languor of the King’s tone. He pushed the traditional demeanour of a monarch, which had been in his family for generations, a point too far. Unconsciously, he was sealing his own fate by the unnatural tranquillity of his bearing. Slowly but surely his example was inciting the irresolute landlord to a better possession of himself.

“I--I thought I heard the sound of horses upon the road a minute since, as I sat by my kitchen fire,” said the landlord.

The frenzy was past. Gamaliel Hooker was beginning to speak again in his natural person. He was gradually becoming once more the master of his own mind.

Lady Farnham ran to the window. She pressed her ear upon it. Not a sound fell within the chamber; but all breathed heavily in an agony of listening. There was only the never-ceasing voice of the breakers, beating against the wind and rocks.

“I only hear the roar of the sea,” said the lady, a minute afterwards.

“Plainly you were mistaken, landlord,” said the King, impassively. “But the great distress your fancies put you in was highly commendable to you. Your fears are groundless; but the new proofs they have furnished of your fidelity and good feeling towards us shall certainly not be forgotten. Landlord, we thank you.”

The landlord bent his white face. He had so much recovered himself, that as he backed out of the King’s presence he was able to say:

“What hour do you desire your supper, Sire?”

The King took out his watch and glanced at it.

“It is now ten minutes after eight of the clock,” he said to Lady Farnham. “Your friends are coming for my lord at half-past nine. I think it will be well, dear lady, if we all sup here together in this chamber at nine o’clock. We shall require a good meal, methinks; for many arduous passages may be before us all.”

“At nine o’clock then, Sire,” said the landlord, “it shall be laid in this chamber for three persons.”

The landlord closed the door and got himself below. His first action was to regulate the clock. Ten minutes past eight: the hour was at hand. The landlord stood in the middle of the kitchen listening; there was still only the sound of the sea. Then he heard the cry of a wild bird in the wintry night. But still the noise of horses came not.

Now that the frenzy of his madness was past, the landlord, in the reaction of it, felt that he had better control of himself. It was probably because his senses were numbed a little; the paralysis that had fallen upon them that morning when the King had first revealed his presence was coming upon them again. He was conscious of the same strange stupor creeping through his veins; but this time it was horrible. There was the nausea of the impending to embitter it. The sensation it induced was not unlike that favourite form of nightmare of falling slowly down into space from some dizzy incredible height. He seemed to have been cut adrift from all that bound him to existence; he was being precipitated slowly, feet foremost, into the black gulf of the infinite yawning beneath him.

How slowly! The clock in the corner said twenty minutes past eight. The soldiers were already overdue; the landlord mechanically cursed them for not coming promptly. They could not know what tortures he had passed through during the last two hours, else they would never prolong them and draw them out. If they did not arrive soon to put him out of his misery, he was sure that another frenzy would come upon him. How sick, how weak, how impotent he felt now that he could dimly recall the recent scene before the King! There are times when a thing that has happened many a year ago--some small _faux pas_ or other--will recur to the mind with a dim sense of bashful shame. At first the landlord was afflicted in about the same degree; but as the minutes passed, it grew vastly stronger and more vivid, until in the end it became a whirling vertigo of self-disgust. The landlord loathed himself.

A coward, when he knows he is a coward, and would be otherwise, is not far removed from the most unfortunate man in the world. The landlord had lived sixty years before he had discovered how ignoble were the parts that composed the fabric of his character. For the first time they were confronted by a set of circumstances that would have taxed the resolution of the strongest mind to the utmost. The landlord had awakened--for he was a man cursed with a considerable degree of intelligence--to the fact that the materials out of which his mind was made were miserably inadequate to the present occasion. Something beyond self-love, greed, cunning, and an implacable egotism were demanded of him who aspired to act the leading part in the drama about to be played. He had sold his King, it was true; but his critical spirit told him how terribly he had bungled the tragic business.