Chapter I: Part 1

PATRICIA
at the
INN

by
J. C. SNAITH

_Author of
Broke of Covenden_

_Illustrated by_
H·B·MATTHEWS]

COPYRIGHT, 1906
BY
B. W. DODGE AND COMPANY
New York

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Charles Stuart, of song and legend, subsequently the “Merry Monarch,” King Charles Second, is perhaps the most romantic figure in English history. Much has been said of him; little good, much evil; but at all events whatever his shortcomings and capitulations to the flesh, it cannot but be conceded that he is the focussing point for all the speculation and cogitation of the romanticist. He gave to history a chapter of sovereignty replete with debauchery and misrule. But there was occasional worthy reading between the lines; reading that conveyed friendship, faith, and loyalty.

The incidents of the following narrative, “Patricia at the Inn,” purport to deal with Charles Stuart’s adventures immediately subsequent to the historical battle of Worcester. It will be remembered that following the execution of the ill-fated Charles the First, the Prince of Wales was crowned by the Scottish people at Scone, January 1, 1651. Oliver Cromwell was not to be declared Lord Protector of the Commonwealth until almost two years later, but already he had stamped his inexorable will upon the nation. Prince Charlie backed by twenty thousand men marched upon Stirling, determined to enforce the sovereignty of the Stuart dynasty and by right of blood and sword to teach this upstart man of the people that sovereigns were born, not made, and that the memory of the “martyred king” should be vindicated in the person of the surviving Stuart. However, the redoubtable Cromwell wasted no time on vow-making, but with his usual energy placed himself in the rear of the Royalist army and cut it off from communication with Scotland. Prince Charlie was thus compelled to continue his march on England. He got as far as Worcester, where the mayor and certain unclassibles crowned him King Charles the Second. But on the same day Cromwell appeared for the coronation festivities and a memorable battle ensued, lasting five hours. The Scots were decisively routed. Prince Charlie escaped, and after experiencing many vicissitudes and amazing adventures, extending over a period of some six weeks, finally succeeded in being smuggled aboard a waiting vessel and so won safely away to Normandy.

It was this period of outlawry, during which a price was set on the royal head of Charles Stuart and he was being hunted like a dangerous criminal, that Mr. Snaith has employed as the basic theme on which to graft a romance. In the main the narrative offers a striking instance of the predominant trait of the Stuart character--the sovereignty of the flesh to the exclusion of all else, even personal safety.

W. B. M. FERGUSON.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE MAN OUT OF THE NIGHT 1

II. THE QUEST OF THE KING 12

III. THE STRANGE VISITORS THAT CAME TO THE “SEA ROVER” 27

IV. WILL JACKSON 41

V. SHOWS THE INCONVENIENCES THAT MAY SOMETIMES ATTEND AN
ACTIVE MIND 65

VI. THE NIGHT: THE SEA: THE ROCKS 80

VII. THE WOMAN 94

VIII. THE KING’S FACE 110

IX. THE MAN IN BED 128

X. LE ROI S’AMUSE 149

XI. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COWARDICE 164

XII. THE MARINER 175

XIII. THE SOLDIERS 197

XIV. THE DIVINITY THAT DOTH HEDGE A KING 212

XV. “WAY THERE FOR THE KING’S SERVITOR!” 227

XVI. THE DEPARTING GUESTS 232

XVII. THE LANDLORD 245

CHAPTER I
_The man out of the night_]

It had been remarked that the weather was extreme for the time of year. The little inn, huddling on the desolate bridle-path that ran in front of the open sea, was wrapped in a cloud of fog; the night was as hollow as a crypt; of a temper to warp the spirit; and so silent, that when a wild fowl cried as it shivered by the tide, a hundred echoes woke in the high rocks rising behind the tavern.

The house was on a wild and lonely coast. It stood on the road to nowhere, high hills and seas about it; and as not one traveller a month came to it from the landward, it was frankly for the service of that strange, furtive company of adventurers who came in the night from France and Holland when the winds were friendly.

All the bitter evening had the landlord kept the chimney-side. Flanked on the one hand by a fire of red faggots, hissing with blue flame; on the other by a stiff glass of hot rum-and-water, the old man sat, the image of bodily contentment.

He was not a prepossessing fellow. His face had all the cunning of his years. He had a pair of hard, colourless, averted eyes, divided by a hill of flesh, whose blue-veined prominence said where his profits went to; a close-kept mouth; and over and above it all a fixed expression of calculated greed, of sustained, unwavering rapacity. It was not a good countenance to look upon. But to-night it was as near benignity as it could ever be. For while he sat with the warm fire and the generous waters inflaming his ruddy jowl, his mind and person were never so composed. It made him purr internally, like the cat nestling in the cinders, to compare his own fortunate condition with that of those frozen men upon the sea. While he reproduced, and even enhanced, in his imagination the discomforts and the perils they endured, he thanked the god of his physical well-being for the happy chance that had saved him from being a mariner. He called upon the serving-maid to brew a stronger posset for her master’s constitution.

“Cold as the bowels o’ the ground,” he groaned in his fleshly happiness. “And b’aint it sing’lar how the frost crawls round me. Ugh, it’s in my toes now, and now it’s in my blood; and, Lord, I feels a little iceberg a-creepin’ down my spine! Zakes! if it were not for a drop o’ stingo I might be very poorly.”

He hugged his toasting limbs, and drew his stool yet closer to the blaze.

“Keep them dogs hot,” said the landlord, when the girl came with the fresh concoction. “Keep the faggots crackling. The night’s a stinger, isn’t she? Lord! I wouldn’t like to be upon the sea.”

He fell to tracing weird shapes in the fire, and presently to dreams of pleasant things. Suddenly he started from his doze, and called out to his son:

“Joseph, d’ye hear me? Put them shutters up, and drop the bolt across. There’ll be no comp’ny, so ye and Cicely can both get bed’ards. ’Tis a night to freeze a dog.”

But even as the landlord spoke, his judgment was shown to be for once at fault. For as his son opened the door and let in a few gusts of frost and sea-fog, a man was found upon the threshold. He was the first of all the unexpected visitors who came to the “Sea Rover” that wintry evening; he made the first among those strange incidents that were so soon to invade the peace of the landlord’s life.

The man from the night pushed Joseph aside, and lumbered into the shadows of the room. He proved to be a seafaring man, in a dogskin cap, with a pair of large earrings in his ears. Like the landlord, his visage bore no superficial graces. The rime glistened on every inch of him; and his tawny face, tanned by the winds and the seas, showed fiercely from out of it. There was only one eye to his countenance, but that shone on the landlord like a beacon; there was an oath on his lips; and he came to the fire and put his hands to the blaze, with an air of mastery that startled the drowsy host even more than his appearance. This was hardly a friendly smuggler here in the ordinary course of trade.

While the mariner melted the rime on his jerkin and thawed his frozen limbs, Master Gamaliel Hooker shook up his wits and asked what his pleasure was.

“A go o’ rum,” said the mariner, gruffly.

He drew up a settle opposite the landlord’s stool and flung himself on to it. Then it was, in the full light of the candles, that the weather-beaten ugliness of the man was revealed. Violence had closed his right eye forever; a scar ran from his temple to his under-jaw; and in contradistinction to the greed, the subtlety, and the cunning of the host, there was a brutal insolence about the fellow that had a whimsicality in it too, as is sometimes to be observed in those indomitable characters who, conscious of their qualities, presume upon them. Master Hooker, distrustful by nature as he was, had already discovered this sinister audacity, and while that in itself was enough to unsettle the peace of his mind, it was the fact that a naked knife was gleaming under his visitor’s jerkin that most contributed to his discomposure.

For a time the landlord and the mariner sat watching one another. On the one side was a contemptuous carelessness; on the other a measure of suspicion amounting to hatred. But the landlord deemed it wiser to conceal his emotions under an appearance of friendliness. He proffered a pipe of tobacco to the mariner.

“You’re almighty kind, mate,” said the sailor, accepting a clay pipe from the mantelpiece and pressing in the contents of Gamaliel’s box.

It was the beginning of conversation. The landlord was eager to discover the particular business that had carried his visitor to the “Sea Rover,” of all the places in the world, at that hour and on such a night. Had he a cargo for disposal; was he waiting for his ship; was he running from the law; or had he come to cut the throats of himself, his son, and Cicely, and afterwards to despoil the inn? Certainly a more ill-favoured pirate he never saw.

The sailor, rather silent at first and ill-disposed to communicate his designs, gradually thawed into talk under the benign influences of hospitality. He even went to the length of revealing the business that had carried him so strangely there.

“You don’t happen, mate,” says he, with a leer,--“you don’t happen to ’a’ seen a young man wandering about this here coast, do you?”

“What kind of a young man might he be like?” says the landlord.

He had seen no young man whatever. He would certainly have remarked the smallest detail of his appearance, had he done so; for the first of all Gamaliel Hooker’s characteristics was his inveterate curiosity. It was this which led him to push a topic that otherwise would have had no interest for him.

“Well, mate,” says the mariner, “he ain’t very easy to describe, d’ye see. I’ve got to set eyes on him myself yet.”

“A seafaring man?” said the landlord.

“Not he,” said the mariner.

“Gentle or simple?” said the landlord.

The sailor hesitated an instant, while he gazed keenly at the host. He seemed to be calculating how far he could safely take Gamaliel Hooker into his affairs.

“Gentle enough,” he said, reluctantly. “But he’d come unattended, I daresay; and he mought be drest like the commonalty.”

“A soldier?” asked the landlord, with a flash of inspiration.

“Never you mind,” said the other, roughly.

“But how can I tell you whether I’ve seen him or not,” said the cunning Gamaliel, “unless I know the kind o’ young man he is?”

“Well, a soldier then,” said the unwilling mariner.

“No, I’ve not seen no proscribed Cavalier,” said the landlord.

The mariner sprang up with an oath.

“Who said ye had!” he cried. “Did I say ye had, you rum-peddling lubber?”

“No; but you asked me,” said the cunning old rogue of a landlord.

“I am damned if I did!” said the angry mariner.

“Well, you didn’t then,” said the landlord, with a soft smile, “but I thought you did.”

The sailor turned his ugly face full on the landlord’s. He looked him over steadily and fiercely. He then put down his pipe, spread out the palm of one hand, and tapped upon it with two fingers of the other to lend an emphasis to what he was about to say. And he chose his words with a most particular and deliberate care.

“Now look you here, mate,” said he, “I know the sort you are. I’ve not followed the sea and run cargoes on this coast for twenty year without getting a wind as to the repitation of Gamaliel Hooker. I know the kind o’ man you are, my hearty. But I’m just going to sing a word in your ear. I’m a plain-dealing man, I am: rough, you’ll say, almighty rough; but I’m a man o’ my word, and you can lay to that. Now, if a young man comes to your lousy, rat-ridden old hulk of a tavern, and asks for Diggory Fargus, you just have the goodness to tell him he’ll find me showing a light from the boat, at twelve o’clock at midnight, a short sea-mile up the shore at Pyler’s Cove. You just tell him that. And if he should come, you are to keep him snug, d’ye see, here in this house till nightfall. He must not be seen by a living soul. Do this, my hearty, and you may have such a reward one day as will go beyond your dreams. But you just play me false, mate; you just send the young man to the wrong place, or set it abroad that he’s at your tavern, and as surely as Diggory Fargus hath followed the sea for twenty years, he will twist your head off your body with these two hands.”

To the deliberation of the seaman’s words was added a fierceness of countenance that made the landlord quail. Gamaliel grew terrified. He was fascinated by that unpleasant face. When Diggory Fargus pointed his threat by expanding his great gnarled brown paws, sweat sprang out of the landlord’s hair. When his eyes fell on the knife that gleamed at the seaman’s waist, he was held in the paralysis of fear. And, in the height of his sufferings, the mariner bestowed a kind of dramatic poignance upon them, by laughing aloud at poor Gamaliel’s fat, pale face; by striding to the door, flinging it wide, and disappearing into the wintry darkness.

CHAPTER
II

_The quest of the
King_]

It was not easy for the landlord to recover of his terror. Your rogue is a nervous creature. How often does he anticipate his doom! When the wind sighs through the branches, he hears the creakings of the gallows tree. Long after his visitor’s departure, Gamaliel felt two strong hands upon his throat. Why he should have been so conscious of them it is not easy to know. He had certainly done nothing as yet to provoke the wrath of Diggory Fargus. He had not so much as encountered the mysterious youth, let alone betray him. Perchance the innkeeper had no command of his own integrity. He may have distrusted himself. Perchance he had that grim insight into his own character that could foresee his instincts leading him into a course of action that he knew to be fraught with peril. A man who all his life long had first sought his own pecuniary advantage in any circumstance that might arise, did well to fear that his rapacity in any given case might get the better of his judgment.

As Gamaliel Hooker sat cossetting himself beside the fire, this mysterious young man of the mariner’s dwelt much in his mind. A proscribed cavalier, he would stake his leg. Diggory Fargus lay with his boat in the Cove, waiting to take him out of England over the sea. As likely as not this fugitive was a person of consideration and great place, such was the mariner’s solicitude for his well-being. If that were the case, Parliament would know how to reward him who stayed his flight. Doubtless a specific reward was already upon his head. If Fortune directed him to the “Sea Rover,” Master Hooker shrewdly foresaw that he might have to choose between his greed and his personal safety. But there was a phrase also of the sailor’s that he would do well not to forget. He had hinted at a recompense that might exceed the dreams of his avarice. Plainly this fugitive was a person to be welcomed.

With one hand clasping the liquor-cup, the landlord presently fell into a doze. Even in this state of semi-consciousness, the unknown young man still ran much in his mind. Once the sleeper started up and thought he heard his knock upon the door. It was but a coal that had fallen on the hearth. He looked into the fire and saw his picture there. A very handsome, proud young man, with curls on his shoulders and great diamonds glistening on his hands. But farther back in the bright embers was the face of the ugly sailor glowering behind it, with his earrings, his knife, and his strong two hands.

Suddenly the landlord jumped up from his stool with a little cry. He ran to the window and pressed his ear against the drawn shutters. The silence of the wintry night had been invaded by strange sounds. At first they were so remote that their nature was hardly to be distinguished. But presently they grew plain. Horses!

Hoofs were on the frosty road. The music of iron upon adamant rang nearer at every clock-tick. They were coming to the inn. What could it mean? Gamaliel was not expecting visitors to-night. Yet stay, he was! Was there not this young man of the sailor’s? Again Gamaliel put his ear to the shutter, to withdraw it suddenly, however, with a spasm of fear.

It was not one horse alone on the road; rather a company. He had heard the rattle of sword and breast-piece; besides, the regulated manner of approach told the nervous landlord that the law had come to his inn at last. For years he had expected it. But now it was at his threshold, God knew he was in no case to greet it. Could it be that his misdemeanours, stealthy and hidden as they were, had been uncovered, and that now he was to be called on to pay the penalty!

For a minute the landlord faltered. He surrendered his mind to fear. Again the sweat burst out of him; it glistened on his white cheeks; he could not restrain the convulsive twitch of his old, irresolute hands. It was for only a minute, however. Gamaliel’s mind recurred to the fugitive of the mariner’s, and once more he became himself. Of course, these on-coming soldiers were seeking that mysterious youth. What a fool he was to be frightened so easily!

In the comfort of this thought Master Gamaliel wiped the sweat from his face, drained his glass, and made ready to receive his unwelcome visitors grandly. He opened his portals, even before they knocked upon them; and, standing in the full light of the fire and the candles as it met the darkness and the sea-fog, he inquired their pleasure with a bow and his hand on his heart.

Through the driving mists of the night, steaming horses, and cold, rime-coated men clad in morions and corselets of steel, were visible. The foremost of these soldiers sprang from his steed briskly and strode past the landlord into the warm kitchen of the inn. He was a nimble, ruddy little fellow, with a human look to his countenance, and, for all the cold night, a cheerful way with him.

“Landlord,” said he, clapping his wet form to the face of the fire, “you see us highly in need of your kindness. Brew us your hottest posset in your biggest bowl, and waste no time upon it. We have come far, but we have further to go by many a weary mile, unless our fortune is kinder than it promises.”

“Yes, yes, Captain, to be sure,” said the landlord; “you shall drink of the best of my poor hostelry, and that right speedily.”

Master Hooker, his fears allayed by the frank good humour of the soldier’s demeanour, became the pattern of a host. He called his son and his serving-maid to procure the liquor and boil the pot; and he himself fussed so much about the details of the brew, that in a surprisingly few minutes the soldier and his nine cold men were entertained. The little man, under the benignant influences of the warmth and liquor, became disposed for intercourse. With his back to the fire, he communicated things that the landlord wanted mightily to hear.

A battle had been fought by Worcester City between the arms of Oliver, Protector, and Charles Stuart, King of Scots. The Lord, it seemed, had vouchsafed “a crowning mercy” unto the former ones, to such a degree, forsooth, that those of the latter had been beaten incontinently from the field. And Charles Stuart was even now being hunted mile by mile over the West Country; that almost every hour he was likely to be ta’en; and that whosoever had that good fortune would have a goodly recompense, so considerable a price there was upon his head.

“A considerable price is on his head!” cried the landlord, scalding his mouth in his excitement, “and he is in these parts even now!”

“True i’ faith,” said the soldier, “or I’d be snug in Hounslow Camp. We hold an information that he lies in hiding on this shore, and on some night such as this he will try to make the coast of France. But it will be a darkish evening when he goes, I fancy, there being so many of us prick-ears along this beach, d’ye see.”

“Well, I reckon, friend,” Gamaliel said with deep emotion, “that if Charles Stuart, king or no king, comes to the ‘Sea Rover,’ you can lay to it he will not go off again so freely as he came. A considerable reward, I think ye said, sir?”

“And while your mind’s upon it,” said the soldier, “look to the proscribed. There’ll be lords and cavaliers, as well as kings, awaiting a wind for France. We shall tarry on this shore until we hold the Stuart; so if lace shirts and velvet breeches come your way, just you keep them, Master, and send us word along the coast. I’ll answer for it that you shan’t be a loser by it.”

Gamaliel Hooker might be said to drink these phrases, so agreeable were they to his receptive ears. He had a particular talent for the devious and the underhand. And the prospect of turning an unexpected penny, and at the same time winning the approbation of the law, tickled his mind so tenderly, that he could not repress a beam of pleasure that crept out of his crafty eyes.

“Drain the bowl, good soldier; I will brew again!” he cried.

The soldier drained the bowl. Cheek by jowl, they sat together beside the blaze. Outside the awaiting troopers stamped their feet, beat their arms, and damned the cold with a Scriptural directness. But the host was thoughtful to the last degree. He caused his son to bear hot meal and water to the rime-clad horses, while the servant-maid took mulled sack and spiced October to their riders. And when at last they went forth again to scour the bitter night for a hunted solitary, mine host stood bareheaded by his door waving a candle to them until they passed from sight into the blackness of the rocks. Thereon the good Gamaliel, mirror of hospitality, soul of ancient cheer, closed his portals with a crash, slipped bolt and chain across, and returned to his wassail. For a whole minute he puckered his wits with some tough arithmetic, and then said to his son:

“I reckon, Joseph, I’m nineteen shillings and fivepence out on this visit up to now. But I’m not complaining; for I rather think, my son, since things are as they are, we shall have that money back before the week’s spent, with maybe a few groats emolument over and above.”

The landlord chuckled at the thought, and began to build his castles. Soon his son and the servant-maid went to their repose; but Gamaliel sat for long enough about the fire, staring into its ever-changing caverns and abysses--now sipping his liquor, now lost in meditation, now revolving choice schemes in his mind. Indeed, so happy was he in these circumstances, that it seemed better far to pass the night before the cheerful hearth in the society of his cups than with ice-cold sheets about him, and rats scuttling behind the wainscot of his chamber.

Thus he sat for many an hour, thinking and dozing and dreaming. He was wonderfully at peace to-night with the world and his own soul. True, he occasionally saw the sinister eye of the mariner gleaming out of the bars; once, too, he saw his knife flash through the shadows when the candles had waned into gloom. But even these chimeras had not the power to quell the ineffable satisfaction that was gradually invading the old man’s heart. A vista of delightful possibilities had been revealed by recent history; there was money to be made. Should good fortune preside over his affairs, he had a chance to earn more in a week by dabbling in political matters than he would in a lifetime by regular, straightforward trade.

“Not so straightforward neither,” he confided to his cup. “Oh, ye’re a cunning one, Gamaliel, my son! Now, Master Charles Stuart, King o’ Scotland, please to knock upon my door. I am sure your Highness will be more than welcome. There’s a cheerful hearth awaiting for you--ay, and a tun o’ liquor for your royal lips. I am sure, my liege, the good Gamaliel will entertain you as befits a prince. And, oh, Lord! to think the price o’ your blessed Majesty would buy that poor old man an annuity for the remainder of his days. And, prithee, bring your followers also, my liege--all in their nice new velvet breeches and point-lace frilly-dillies. Gamaliel shall find a lodgment for them too, good your Majesty, an he beds his own humble carcase with the cows.”

And so he dozed again. He dreamt that the King had come at last, and was knocking at his door. He dreamt that the King was entering--a most courtly, handsome gentleman, all graciousness and dignity; a wonderful white feather in his hat, secured by a clasp of solid silver; his sword-hilt wrought in gold and precious stones. It was all most singularly real. How, although only a simple country innkeeper, he had some little breeding, and strove to show it to the King; how he received him on one knee, and did not speak a word until his Majesty had spoken, as he heard they did at courts; and how the King said, “Rise, my honest fellow--’tis not your congees that I need, but your hospitality,” with just that smiling dignity that comes by nature to a prince. What a gracious gentleman he was! Had he not the modest self-effacement of good breeding, but withal the air and habit of command? Did it not make his old blood thrill to hear his gentle, noble tones? It was a dream; he knew it was indeed a dream, yet it was all very real and dazzling and grand.

And then the good Gamaliel dreamt that a heavy bag of gold was jingling in his hands. It was the fee the soldiers had paid him for the just delivery of the person of this splendid prince. Ugh! and then there was the sailor. He saw again the visage of that grim mariner, with the fierce eye, the earrings, the knife, the scar--the whole concentrated ugliness. And then there came the most vivid dream of all. The sailor’s lips parted in a hiss of malevolence, the knife flashed from his belt, and the old man felt it buried in his flesh. The knife seemed to burn him like a fire, so that he awoke with half a curse and half a scream.

Master Gamaliel did not marvel that his vision had such a terrible reality. A live faggot had fallen from the fire and lay smouldering on his foot. He shook it off with an oath of pain. But even in the act, a diversion came to startle him out of his sufferings.

There came a sound in the night. He lifted his ears like a startled fox. His nerves were in a plague of a twitter. For a man so old, he was in a ridiculous taking. Once more he clapt his head to the shutter. Yes; no; yes--horses again!

Could it be that the King was coming? Could he actually be coming in his own person, in the dead of the night, to the “Sea Rover”? Was the landlord awake, or was it a figment of his dreams?

Yes, horses undoubtedly, and the dead of night indeed. Was it not the season at which the King was most likely to arrive? Ay, and the place. After all, why should not the King, in his present circumstances, come to his inn? Nothing could be more natural, more expected. A presentiment, every second growing into a conviction, possessed the landlord. It seemed to send his heart beating against his brain.

CHAPTER
III

_The strange Visitors that
came to the Sea Rover_]

He continued keenly to listen. The horses appeared to be approaching but slowly. They seemed to be two. The King and one of his many faithful followers, perchance, wearied to death and very cold. It was a pity the fire had fallen so low on the hearth. It was unfortunate, too, that the landlord should have so short an intimation of the royal coming. But he must contrive to give Charles Stuart some sort of a reception, because all the world over a king is still a king; and whatever one’s politics, should royalty honour one’s roof-tree, it is impossible to assert them. Therefore he called up the stairs in his greatest voice:

“Joseph, come down at once. Cicely, my wench, do you come too. The King is arriving!”

Soon the travellers were heard hard by the window, under the sign. The landlord, excited as he was, yet hung back a little from opening the door. He would let them knock, just as though they were common persons; he would pretend that he did not know one was the King.

It seemed an intolerable time ere a demand was made for their admittance. At last came the expected knock, but, strangely enough, a very gentle one. There was nothing regal in it. It had no authority, no command; it was modest to the point of timidity. If it were not the King after all! Had he not better make sure!

“Who be ye?” Gamaliel demanded, with his mouth to the door. “Who be ye? What d’ye want?”

If it really was the King, he was not supposed to be aware of the fact; and much as his pulse might leap at addressing a prince in this audacious manner, he loved to do it none the less.

The door was tried and shaken ever so lightly.

“Who be ye? What d’ye want?” the landlord repeated.

“Oh, open the door, I pray you,” a soft voice implored him from the night.

The landlord recoiled with an oath. It was the voice of a woman. His disappointment was bitter; a woman when he had looked for a prince!

Again he put his questions, this time angrily. What could a woman want at his inn on that inaccessible, inhospitable shore at that hour of the night? He met with the same reply, but this time there seemed a deeper fervour in it.

Gamaliel was so angry at his disillusion, that his first thought was to refuse admittance to these travellers. But then in a flash there came a second thought. They were refugees, of course. How foolish of him not to have surmised that. They might not be royal personages, yet might they not have their value too?

The next moment he had unbarred the door. Sure enough, a woman was on the threshold. She was masked and cloaked like one who had journeyed far: the white rime was heavy on her garments and her hair; and she looked more dead than alive with the piercing cold. Her hands shook visibly as one held her horse’s rein, and the other gathered up her riding-coat.

“I give you welcome, madam,” said the landlord, making his best leg.

He smirked and bowed as humbly as he could. He was not ill pleased by the appearance of the woman. It was sad indeed, but there was that in her bearing that plainly said she was a person of condition.

“I beseech you to succour us,” she said, with great entreaty. “My husband is stricken sore, and so spent with traveling that he must die to-night out in the cold if you do not help us.”

“God forbid!” said the landlord, piously. He liked the sweetness and the candour of her bearing. His curiosity was stimulated by it too. She thanked him with a grave simplicity, and went forth to her companion. The landlord followed with his assistance. He could dimly discern by the candle-light coming through the open door a second horse, sorely distressed by an infinite journeying. There was little to be seen of its rider beyond a shrunk, cloaked figure, huddling low to the saddle.

“My poor lad,” said the woman, staggering to his side, “there is a roof and a fire for you at last.”

She gave him her shoulder. The rider swayed towards it, and leaned so heavily upon her that Gamaliel, bustling forward with his aid, marvelled that he did not bear her to the ground.

“Don’t let ’em touch me,” the rider said in a whisper of querulous anguish. “Tell ’em to keep off.”

Amid a few groans and a few curses, the unhappy traveller was half led, half borne within on the shoulder of his wife.

“Oh, the poor gentleman!” exclaimed the servant-maid, setting the best chair near the fire and placing a soft pillow upon it. She then ran to procure an armful of fresh logs, while Joseph took the horses to the stable. The stricken man was put by the hearth, and his wife, distressed and fatigued as she was, tended him with an unremitting diligence. She took off his hat, wet cloak and gloves, and then knelt down before him to chafe his cold hands with her own even colder, and talked to him as she did so in little soothing affectionate phrases, as a mother might to a child.

Meantime the landlord was busy indeed. He hobbled about the kitchen with his gout as though the hour was three at noon instead of three of the night--now for a cup, now for a spoon, now for a stoup of the hissing liquor, steaming and vapouring in the bowl. Mine host had brewed a posset, strong, hot, searching, fit for a prince! Ha! and who knew that royal lips were not about to imbibe it. The thought was ever present in Master Hooker’s heart. Be very sure his eye was never an instant from his guests.

The lady, it is true, still wore her vizard, thereby balking his curiosity in the main particular; in her tender solicitude for her lord, she had forgot to doff her dripping cloak; she was bedraggled, weary, unkempt, chilled to the blood; but were she presently to be revealed a princess, the shrewd Gamaliel would be able to say without impropriety that from the first he had guessed so much. He knew high breeding when he saw it; he flattered himself that naught could conceal it from him. He had not seen a feature, a jewel; she had hardly given him three words; his knowledge of her attire was confined to a hood, a riding-cloak, and a mask; but there it was, the hallmark, the indescribable strange grace that misfortune could not tarnish, nor distresses hide.

As for the man, her husband with the querulous eyes and the countenance twisted with pain, there was not a button of his coat that the landlord had not already by heart. A most handsome fellow, in the very heyday of his youth. Yet he looked so pale and worn, that it seemed as if the first puff of wind might extinguish the life of him, as it would a candle-flame. He had a singular delicacy of feature, designed for sweetness and urbanity. But his face was robbed of something of its peculiar beauty by an expression of peevish arrogance, aggravated perhaps by his imminent condition, but probably sufficient at any time to mar a countenance wonderfully fair. A high spirit seemed to preside behind it, a chafing, impatient, overleaping spirit, that hated being harnessed to a maimed body. And below the resentful anguish of the young man’s face was a permanent look of weariness and disillusion that one might expect to see in that of a person who had drunk the cup of life to the very dregs until his lips revolted from its bitterness. Yet the landlord, whose scrutiny missed not a detail, could see that he was of the quality of his veiled companion. He was one accustomed to the service and the homage of his fellows; one who would not be slow to exact it, either. Still his exquisite fair curls clustering round his neck, and his blue eyes, if their insolence, their anger, and their pain could be forgotten, lent him the appearance of an angel--a soiled, ruffled, complaining angel, who, finding itself on earth, wished to be elsewhere.

His condition was certainly dire. He could hardly speak; and as he lay back on his pillow, sobbing for breath after each effort to do so, his impatient rage would have been ludicrous had it not been a thing to pity. The woman continued to chafe his hands till a little warmth crept in them, then rose from her knees to procure and arrange more cushions for him. Presently, the landlord came with the steaming tankard. The lady took one sip of it carefully, to assure herself that it was not too hot for the lips of her companion. She held it for him while he applied his mouth. He withdrew it instantly, with a splutter.

“God scald you, landlord!” he said, in a hoarse, weak voice, “you have burnt my mouth.”

“There--there, mine own,” said the lady, caressing his curls. “Drink freely. It will not hurt you, indeed; nay, it will give you ease.”

Having settled the sufferer in some degree of comfort, she asked the landlord to lead her to the stable.

“No, no, Patsy woman,” said the stricken man, “you must not leave me. You will not leave me, will you, Patsy?”

He entreated her like a child.

“I will not be five minutes away,” she answered, soothingly. “But I cannot neglect the poor, good horses, can I, mine own? You would have them lie in comfort and warmth, even as you do.”

“Prithee, stay you here, madam,” said the honest serving-girl. “And take off your wet cloak, and come about the fire. I will look to the horses.”

“No, child,” said the lady; “I must look to them myself. They have played a noble part this night.”

Despite the entreaties of the sufferer, whose demands for his wife not to leave him rose almost to a wail, she insisted on going out to see that Joseph had succoured the distressed creatures according to their deserts.

When she returned, Cicely, the serving-maid, grew truly imperative.

“I’m a-going to take them wet clothes off you, madam, by your leave,” she said. “You will surely get your death. Why, even now you look fit almost for the grave.”

The lady regarded the honest girl with a wan smile.

“Child, you are very good,” she said.

With her aid she discarded all her travelling attire except the mask.

“May I untie it for you, madam?” said the girl.

The lady hesitated.

“N-no,” she said. “Not to-night, I think.”

The landlord pricked his ears up. Gazing at her, he observed that at last the blood had come to her pale cheeks. His own pulse quickened, too. And he smiled to note how her attempt at secrecy galled her. Even with a strip of black velvet across her eyes, her face was as easy to read as a printed page. She was a simple creature, whose instincts betrayed her.

Very soon the stricken man was conveyed to the chamber that had been set for his reception. It had little to recommend it, to be sure, yet it was the best and most spacious the “Sea Rover” could boast. It had not been used for years; and when a fire was kindled in the unwilling chimney, a colony of sheltering birds were grievously perturbed.

However, Cicely the serving-maid was a bustling soul with a warm and capacious heart, into which the poor guests had been already admitted. She had aired the sheets by the kitchen fire, dusted the apartment, and adjusted the bed and its furniture, all by the time the unhappy gentleman was got up the stairs.

The landlord came at the tail of the procession. He wore a sagacious gravity. He said:

“If I can give ye a finger of assistance, madam, I shall be more than happy.”

“My husband can only suffer me about him,” said the lady. “But you are very kind.”

“And what might be his malady, if I may be so bold, ma’am?” the landlord asked.

“’Tis an incurable disease,” the lady said.

“And what might they call it, ma’am,” said the soft Gamaliel. His voice had the most persuasive humility.

Again the telltale blush showed beneath the mask.

“I--I do not know,” the woman faltered.

The landlord was much too astute to pursue the theme. He apologised for the poverty of the chamber, but it was the best he could place at their disposal. It was a lonesome inn, they must know, not in the least designed for the honour of gentry. But he would not have them conclude for the world--Master Gamaliel coughed in a most deprecatory manner--that, country person as he might be, he was ignorant of what was the due of people of quality. Assuring them of his humble duty and of his desire to promote their comfort in every way, he hoped they had blankets enough, and if they had not, would they kindly inform Cicely the serving-maid? Thereon he gave them “Good-night,” and hobbled downstairs, so deep in his thoughts that he collided with a warming-pan filled with hot brands that was being carried upstairs by the assiduous Cicely. The landlord gave a howl of pain as it shrivelled the back of his hand.

“Should mind where ye be goin’ then,” said the servant-maid, with grim satisfaction.

“You clumsy jade!” roared her master; “you insolent baggage!”

Cicely tossed her head, and passed up the stairs well satisfied.

“Wish it had been his eyes, the slimy old twöad,” she muttered under her breath piously.

CHAPTER
IV

_Will Jackson_]

The landlord sat long over his matutinal collops and ale. No philosopher could have desired nicer food for meditation than the incidents of the night. The thoughts they induced were subtle, yet peculiar. Could it be that the young man with “the incurable disease” was the King! He himself did not know his Majesty other than by repute. He was said to be young and handsome. He was said to be on the coast of Dorset; and last night he was expected at the “Sea Rover” by persons of knowledge and experience. Could this querulous young gentleman be the King, after all? He was building that theory up piece by piece in his mind. He could see no argument against it other than the fact that he had a woman for a travelling companion. True, she might be a fugitive, even as he. That she was a person of a rare condition he did not doubt. It would not surprise him to discover that she was a princess of the royal house.

Still, whatever the nature of his suspicions, he must hasten to confirm them. The bird might slip through his fingers else. The simplest and the surest way was to send for the soldiers. Thereby he would guard against risk. But Gamaliel never was a friend of simplicity. Besides, his guests might prove not to be royalty at all. They might be merely a pair of proscribed aristocrats. In that case, he would lose two wealthy patrons on the first day of their sojourn; a thing not in the least consonant with his ideas. In the case of the King, that would be all well and good. There would be a fine reward for his pains. But in the matter of a cavalier, there was no such great solatium. They were not rated so high; indeed, they might be said to be as common as dirt. No; in a bald phrase, as between a man and his conscience, he proposed in the case of a mere cavalier seeking refuge under his roof, to bleed him, to wring him dry, and then to propitiate the law at the eleventh hour by depositing the fellow, and the few rags left to cover him, into the hands of the Lord Protector.

Was there not an intelligent discretion in a scheme of this kind? But he must be wary indeed. It might prove a dangerous game. Once more that menacing sailor put a thrill of fear in his heart; he was sure that the young man upstairs was he whom Diggory Fargus sought. But, be that as it may, there was one piece of information he must acquire at all costs: Was this young man Charles Stuart?

He had yet to view his visitors by the light of day. He conceived the idea of bearing food to them with his own hands, particularly as now it was nine o’clock of the morning, and they had evinced no disposition to procure it for themselves. When the meat was ready, he took it upstairs and tapped upon the chamber door. But if Master Hooker had hoped to gain admission there, his disappointment must have proved extreme; for at his knock the door was opened, and the lady met him on the threshold. She stood unmasked at last, her eyes now shining in the morning light. There was a finger on her lip.

“Hush, sir!” she whispered. “I prithee do not speak, and do not enter. My husband sleeps, and he is in such case that I fear he may never wake again.”

Her voice was wild and low with sorrow.

Speaking thus, she took the tray of meat from the landlord’s hand, and she acted with such a quickness that the door was shut upon him ere he could reply. He heard the key turn in the lock. So far he was foiled. Plainly they had something to conceal, and just as plainly they did not trust Gamaliel. Yet the old man went downstairs with positive knowledge on a point that was not the least important. He had seen the lady’s face. Her mask was off, and he had fed his cunning eyes on her every feature. He was not by any means a young man, and he whimsically thanked his stars that his blood was cool and sober.

What a creature! A woman formed for tenderness and passion. He had seen them younger and more lyrical, handsomer, more brilliant, more prodigal of smiles; for there was the matron in her shape, and he should take her age for thirty-five. But she had the sort of face that Correggio painted: large, steadfast eyes, gazing on the world and occasionally mocking at it gently, as one who has sipped the cup of the poison of experience, and who has had the native strength to accept the bitter draught without being defiled--nay, rather fortified. A fair and gracious lady, then, with a face sensitive and pure, grave with the loveliness of knowledge; no milk-hearted nymph nor dimpled Hebe, but a Helen at the zenith of her womanhood, who “moves a goddess and looks a queen”; true child of her sex withal, one who could be an angel to her friends and a devil to her enemies.

“Ha, I’ve seen her!” said Master Hooker to his son. “She’s a picter, she is, Joseph, and belongs to the nobility. On that I’ll take my Biblical! Wonderful fair hands she ’ave, white as surf; and harkee, Joseph, diamonds a-shining on ’em.”

The landlord communicated this final phrase with his mouth close to Joseph’s ear.

“And I’m thinking,” he continued, “that even if they don’t happen to be royalty, they may requite us. Ye can lay to it, they’ve got some blunt about ’em, somewhere. Now, Joseph, I’m going to find out who they are.”

“And if they are proscribed?” said Joseph, breathlessly.

The landlord put his hand against his mouth and said, with an eager secrecy:

“If they are proscribed, I shall first suck ’em dry like an egg, d’ye see, and then I shall break ’em like the empty shell.”

The son shuddered. He had no opinion in these things one way or another, but his was not the rapacity that could grind its heel into the face of a dying man.

All that day the landlord’s doubts were unresolved. He was not once allowed within the chamber. Despite his frequent approaches with food and questions as pretexts for the satisfaction of his curiosity, the entrance was ever sedulously kept. True, he would be greeted at once by the lady’s courteous appearance, but every time her form would intervene between him and the interior of the room; and there would always be her chin and mouth shot out in a long-drawn “Hush!” and worlds of entreaty in her eyes.

The evening found the landlord no nearer to the truth. He was growing desperate. It was imperative that he should know something of his guests.

Three times that day had he asked the lady for her name and that of her companion, and three times had he been put off by the tender tact that only a woman has. Again he sat before the fire with the hot liquor, and the candles, and the hissing logs about him, with the door and shutters fast against the wintry night. He sat coiled in thought. There were little knots of it upon his brow; it crouched and ruminated in his eyes; it crept round his wizened lips; his very hands were clenched upon it.

He had weighed every pro and con in his cunning heart. If it were the King who lay upstairs, it would be to his advantage to deliver him up to his enemies at once. He could afford to do so, for there was a great reward. Besides, as was known to all the world, delays were dangerous, especially in the case of kings. Assuming that they honoured your abode, were they not here to-day and gone to-morrow? And should their coming be by night, in stealth, was not their going likely to be also of that manner? Assuming this mysterious young man to be the King, this “incurable disease” of his was doubtless a blind, intended to mask his real intentions. Any morning might find him flown. Yes; if this young man really was the King, he must deliver him up immediately.

If he were not the King, however? If, as was very likely, instead of Charles Stuart, he proved to be only some fugitive cavalier from Worcester fight, he could not afford to denounce him at present. There was no such great solatium in regard to a cavalier. He must first bleed him to his very last fourpenny ere he allowed him out of his custody. The whole scheme was finely matured in his mind; would that he could be at peace in regard to the stranger’s identity! He would then know which course to follow.

He was still excogitating the hard matter, and forever twisting and turning it over, when, even as the night before, a stranger knocked on the door, and obtruded himself within the inn kitchen.

This time the visitor was humble enough. He was a tall, loose, shambling fellow, so discoloured by dirt and an outdoor life that he was as brown as a berry. His hat was low over his eyes; he wore a stained and torn pair of breeches, made of leather, and a jerkin of the same character. He had the appearance of a hedger and ditcher, or a woodman beset by adversity. The first words he uttered confirmed this impression.

“Are you wanting a serving-man or a drawer, good master?” he said, seating himself on a stool opposite the landlord.

The worthy Gamaliel regarded him keenly and suspiciously. The fellow looked an idle vagabond enough. Yet his swarthy countenance was not altogether destitute of a certain intelligence. He had a pair of keen, observing, humorous eyes to his face; there was a certain impudence and audacity about them which was sufficient to redeem their owner from the commonplace. The landlord, himself no mean observer, and a penetrating judge of his fellows, was rather interested by him. It was not usual to find a man of this type who merited looking at twice.