Midwinter (Buchan)/Chapter 17

night was growing colder, and the moon in her first quarter was sinking among heavy woolpack clouds. The Spainneach's whisper had been enough for Alastair, who in his sojourn at the Sleeping Deer had made himself familiar with the neighbourhood, after the fashion of a campaigner who may soon have to fight in it. The road led them past the silent hostelry, and then left the vale and struck over a succession of low ridges to another, where a parallel stream of the hills broadened as it neared the lowlands. The men did not spare their horses, and, as the hooves clattered on the bare ribs of rock which crossed the track sparks like wildfire flew behind them.

Alastair's mood was as dark as the weather. The sight of Claudia, babbling of her lover, had for a moment converted him to Johnson's view. In a fine impulse of quixotry he had ridden from Brightwell, his purpose vague towards Sir John Norreys but determined in the service of the lady. If her love was pledged irrevocably to a knave and fool, then be it his business to keep the said knave from greater folly, and see that disillusion did not shatter a gentle heart. For a little he felt the glow of self-conscious worth, and the pleasant melancholy which is born of approving self-pity.

It did not last long. Visions of Claudia, dim-eyed, stammering, all russet and snow, returned to ravish his fancy, and the picture of a certain sharp-nosed gentleman to exacerbate his temper. Before God he could not surrender such a darling, he would be no party to flinging such a pearl before swine! His heart grew hot when he thought of Sir John, the mean visage and hedgehog soul. To condone his infamy would be to sin against Heaven—to foster his lady's blind fondness the task of a pander. Let the truth be told and the devil be shamed, for a wounded heart was better than a slow decay.

Presently his mind had swung round to a new resolution. He would go straight to Derby to the Prince, which was his direct soldierly duty. He knew the road; the next left-hand turning would lead him there before morning. He was already weeks, months late; he dared not tarry another hour, for he alone knew the truth about the West, and that truth might determine the Prince's strategy. True, His Highness was at Derby now, and the Rubicon had been doubtless crossed, but in so great a matter no precaution could be omitted. At that very moment Lochiel, with his letter in his hand, might be looking in vain for the man who had named Derby as the trysting-place. … He would sweep southward with the Army to conquest, and then in their hour of triumph would root Sir John from his traitor's kennel. The man must fight on his challenge, and he had no doubt as to the issue of that fight.

But would he? Would he not disappear overseas, taking with him his wife under some false story? If she were deceived in one matter, she might be deceived in others. … No, by Heaven, there was no way of it but the one. The fox must be found before he reached his earth, and brought to account at a sword's point. Stone dead had no fellow.

The cross-roads lay before them where was the turning to Derby.

"There lies the Prince," said Alastair, his head over his left shoulder. "My duty is to ride forthwith thither. I could breakfast in the camp."

Johnson, though lacking a riding-coat, had grown warm with the exercise, and both he and his mount were blowing.

"You would not falter in your most honourable resolve?" he puffed.

Alastair clapped spurs to his beast. "No," he said, "I am resolved before all things to find Sir John Norreys. But when I find him I will kill him."

He heard a gasp which was more than Mr. Johnson's chronic shortness of breath. As he cantered forward the slower and heavier beast of his companion was forced alongside of him, and a hand clutched his arm.

"I beseech you, sir," said a tragic voice, "I pray you, in God's name, to turn aside to Derby."

"I will first meet Sir John," was the reply and the hand was shaken off.

"But he will be safe at your hands?"

"That is as God may direct," said Alastair.

His resolution being now fixed, his spirits rose. He let thoughts of Claudia flush his mind with their sweet radiance. He pictured her as he had last seen her—the light from the candles making her slim white neck below the rosy nightcap take on the bloom of a peach, and the leaping flames of the hearth chequering the shadow of the bed-curtain. He saw her dim eyes, heard her melting voice, felt the warm vigour of her body as she cowered beside him in the dark of the Flambury galleries. Too young for wife, too old for child, but the ripe age for comrade—and such a comrade, for there was a boy's gallantry in her eyes and something of a child's confident fearlessness. He did not hear the groans of Mr. Johnson pounding dismally behind him, or the shuddering cry of owls from the woods. The world was a quiet place to him where a soft voice was speaking, the thick darkness was all aglow with happy pictures. The man's soul was enraptured by his dreams. He found himself suddenly laughing to think how new and strange was this mood of his. Hitherto he had kept women at arms' length, and set his heart on policy and war, till he had earned the repute of one to be trusted and courted, but one already at thirty middle-aged. Lord! but there had been a melting of icebergs! And like a stab came the thought of yet another molten iceberg—Sir John—of the sharp nose and the high coat collar! Alastair cried out like a man in pain.

They rode into Milford half an hour after midnight. There was no light in any house, and the inn was a black wall. But the door of the yard was open, and a hostler, ascending to his bed in the hayloft, accepted a shilling for his news. A man had ridden through Milford that night. He had not seen him, but he had heard the clatter as he was bedding the post horses that had come in late from Marlock. How long ago? Not more than an hour, maybe less, and the fellow checked his memory with a string of minute proofs.

Alastair swung his horse's head back to the road. "Courage, my friend," he cried. "We are gaining on him. We shall overtake him before morning."

Again Johnson caught his arm. "Bethink you, sir," he stammered. "You ride on an errand of murder."

"Nay," was the answer, "of love."

But the next miles were over roads like ploughlands, and the rain blew up from the south-west and set the teeth chattering of the cloakless Mr. Johnson. The night was very dark and the road seemed to pass no villages, for not a light appeared in the wastes of wet ling and fern and plashing woods. The track could be discerned well enough, for it was the only possible route through the rugged land, and happily for the riders there were no crossways. No other traveller met them or was overtaken—which, thought Alastair, was natural, for with the Prince at Derby the flight of the timid would be to the south, and not north or west into the enemy's country.

Long before dawn he was far beyond the countryside of which he had any knowledge. He had been given Ernshawbank by the Spainneach as the second point to make for, and had assumed that there, if not before, he would fall in with Sir John. Yet when he came to a village about cockcrow, and learned from a sleepy carter that it was Ernshawbank, he did not find his quarry. But at the inn he had news of him. A man answering his description had knocked up the landlord two hours before, drunk a gill of brandy, eaten a crust, and bought for a guinea the said landlord's cocked grey beaver, new a month ago at Leek Fair. Two hours! The man was gaining on him! It appeared that he had ridden the path for lower Dovedale, as if he were making for Staffordshire and Trentside.

The two breakfasted at an ale house below Thorp Cloud, when a grey December morning was breaking over the leafless vale and the swollen waters of Dove. Their man had been seen, riding hard, with a face blue from cold and wet, and his fine clothes pitifully draggled with the rain. He had crossed the river, and was therefore bound for Staffordshire, and not Nottinghamshire, as Alastair had at first guessed. A minute's reflection convinced him of the reason. Sir John was specially concerned with cutting off the help coming to the Prince from the West, and therefore went to join those, like the Duke of Kingston, who were on that flank, rather than the army which lay between Derby and London. The reflection gave him acute uneasiness. Nottinghamshire was distant, so there was a chance to overtake the fugitive on the way. But, as it now was, any hour might see the man in sanctuary. The next village might hold a patrol of the Duke's. … He cut short the meal, which Mr. Johnson had scarcely tasted, and the two were again on their weary beasts pounding up the steep lanes towards Ershalton and my lord Shrewsbury's great house.

The mist cleared, a wintry sun shone, and the sky was mottled with patches of watery blue. Mr. Johnson's teeth began to chatter so violently that Alastair swung round and regarded him.

"You will without doubt catch an ague, sir," he said, and at the next presentable inn he insisted on his toasting his small-clothes before the kitchen fire, drinking a jorum of hot rum, and borrowing a coat of the landlord's till his own was dry. For suddenly the panic of hurry was gone out of Alastair, and he saw this business as something predestined and ultimate. Fate was moving the pieces, and her iron fingers did not fumble. If it was written that he and Sir John should meet, then stronger powers than he would set the stage. He was amazed at his own calm.

The rum made his companion drowsy, and as they continued on the road he ceased to groan, and at the next halting-place did not stare at him with plaintive hang-dog eyes. As for Alastair he found that his mind had changed again and that all his resolution was fluid.

His hatred of the pursued was ebbing, indeed had almost vanished, for with the sense of fatality which was growing upon him he saw the man as no better than a pawn; a thing as impersonal as sticks and stones. All the actors of the piece—Kyd, Norreys, the Spoonbills, Edom, the sullen Johnson, grew in his picture small and stiff like marionettes, and Claudia alone had the warmth of life. Once more she filled the stage of his memory, but it was not the russet and pearl of her and her witching eyes that held him now, but a tragic muse who appealed from the brink of chasms. She implored his pity on all she loved, on the casket where she had hid her heart.

With a start he recognized that this casket was no other than Sir John Norreys.

He might shatter it and rescue the heart, but how would the precious thing fare in the shattering? Her eyes rose before him with their infinite surrender. Was Johnson right and was she of the race of women that give once in life and then utterly and for ever? If so, his errand was not to succour, but to slay. His sword would not cut the bonds of youth and innocence, it would pierce their heart.

He forced his mind to reconstruct the three occasions when she had faced him—not for his delectation, but to satisfy a new-born anxiety. He saw her at Flambury, a girl afire with zeal and daring, sexless as a child, and yet always in her sweet stumbling phrases harping on her dear Sir John. He saw her in the Brown Room at the Sleeping Deer, a tender muse of memories, but imperious towards dishonour, one whose slim grace might be brittle but would not bend. Last he saw her set up in the great bed at Brightwell, one arm round the neck of Duchess Kitty, the other stretched towards him in that woman's appeal which had held him from Derby and the path of duty.

There is that in hard riding and hard weather which refines a man's spirit, purging it of its grosser humours. The passion of the small hours had gone utterly from Alastair, and instead his soul was filled with a tempestuous affection, not of a lover but of a kinsman and protector. The child must at all costs be sheltered from sorrow, and if she pined for her toy it must be found for her, its cracks mended and its paint refurbished. His mood was now the same as Johnson's, his resolution the same. He felt an odd pleasure in this access of tenderness, but he was conscious, too, that the pleasure was like a thin drift of flowers over dark mires of longing and sorrow. For his world had been tumbled down, and all the castles he had built. He had always been homeless, but now he was a thousandfold more an outlaw, for the one thing on earth he desired was behind him and not before him, and he was fleeing from hope.

In the afternoon the rain descended again and the road passed over a wide heath, which had been blackened by some autumn fire so that the shores of its leaden pools were like charcoal, and skeleton coverts shook their charred branches in the wind. The scene was a desolation, but he viewed it with calm eyes, for a strange peace was creeping into his soul. He turned in the saddle, and saw six yards behind him Johnson jogging wearily along, his heavy shoulders bowed and his eyes fixed dully on his horse's neck. The man must be near the limits of his strength, he thought. … Once again he had one of his sudden premonitions. Sir John Norreys was close at hand, for he had not yet stopped for a meal and he had now been on the road for twelve hours. The conviction grew upon him, and made him urge his tired beast to a better pace. Somewhere just in front was the meeting-place where the ordeal was appointed which should decree the fate of two souls. …

The drizzle changed into half a gale, and scouring blasts shut out the landscape. There came a moment's clearing, and lo! before him lay a bare space in the heath, where another road entered from the west to join the highway. At their meeting, set in a grove of hornbeams, stood an inn.

It was a small place, ancient, long and low, and the signboard could not be read in the dim weather. But beneath it, new-painted, was an open eye. He checked his horse, and turned to the door, for he knew with utter certainty that he had reached his destination.

He dropped from the saddle, and since there was no stable-lad in sight, he tied the reins to a ring in the wall. Then he pushed open the door and descended a step into the inn kitchen. A man was busy about the hearth, a grizzled elderly fellow in leathern small-clothes. In front of the fire a fine coat hung drying on two chairs, and a pair of sodden boots steamed beside the log basket.

The inn-keeper looked up, and something in the quiet eyes and weather-worn face awoke in Alastair a recollection. He had not seen the face before, but he had seen its like.

"You have a guest?" he said.

The man did not answer, and Alastair knew that no word or deed of his would compel an answer, if the man were unwilling.

"You have the sign," he said. "I, too, am of the Spoonbills. I seek Master Midwinter."

The inn-keeper straightened himself. "He shall be found," he said. "What message do I carry?"

"Say that he to whom he promised help on Otmoor now claims it. And stay, there are two weary cattle outside. Have them fed and stabled."

The man turned to go, but Alastair checked him.

"You have a guest?" he asked.

"He is now upstairs at food," was the answer given readily. "He feeds in his shirt, for he is all mucked and moiled with the roads."

"I have business with him, I and my friend. Let us be alone till Master Midwinter comes."

The man stood aside to let Johnson stumble in. Then the door was shut, and to Alastair's ear there was the turning of a key.

Johnson's great figure seemed broken with weariness. He staggered across the uneven stone floor, and rolled into a grandfather's chair which stood to the left of the fire. Then he caught sight of the coat drying in the glow and recognized it. Into his face, grey with fatigue, came a sudden panic. "It is his," he cried. "He is here." He lifted his head and seemed to listen like a stag at pause. Then he flung himself from the chair, and rushed on Alastair, who was staring abstractedly at the blaze. "You will not harm him," he cried. "You will not break my lady's heart. Sooner, sir, I will choke you with my own hands."

His voice was the scream of an animal in pain, his skin was livid, his eyes were hot coals. Alastair, taken by surprise, was all but swung off his feet by the fury of the assault. One great arm was round his waist, one hand was clutching his throat. The two staggered back, upsetting the chair before the fire; the hand at the throat was shaken off, and in a second they were at wrestling-grips in the centre of the floor.

Both men were weary, and one was lately recovered of a sickness. This latter, too, was the lighter, and for a moment Alastair found himself helpless in a grip which crushed in his sides and stopped his breath. But Johnson's passion was like the spouting of a volcano and soon died down. The fiery vigour went out of his clutch, but it remained a compelling thing, holding the young man a close prisoner.

The noise of the scuffle had alarmed the gentleman above. The stairs ran up in a steep flight direct from the kitchen, and as Alastair looked from below his antagonist's elbow, he saw a white face peer beneath the low roof of the stairway, and a little further down three-quarters of the length of a sword blade. He was exerting the power of his younger arms against the dead strength of Johnson, but all the while his eyes were held by this new apparition. It was something clad only in shirt and breeches and rough borrowed stockings, but the face was unmistakable and the haggard eyes.

The apparition descended another step, and now Alastair saw the hand which grasped the sword. Fear was in the man's face, and then a deeper terror, for he had recognized one of the combatants. There was perplexity there, too, for he was puzzled at the sight, and after that a spasm of hope. He hesitated for a second till he grasped the situation. Then he shouted something which may have been an encouragement to Johnson, and leaped the remaining steps on to the kitchen floor.

Johnson had not seen him, for his head was turned the other way and his sight and hearing were dimmed by his fury. The man in underclothes danced round the wrestlers, babbling strangely. "Hold him!" he cried. "Hold him, and I'll finish him!" His blade was shortened for a thrust, but the movement of the wrestlers frustrated him. He made a pass, but it only grazed the collar of Alastair's coat.

Then he found a better chance, and again his arm was shortened. A hot quiver went through Alastair's shoulder, for a rapier had pinked the flesh and had cut into the flapping pouch of Johnson's coat.

It may have been Alastair's cry, or the fierce shout of the man in underclothes, but Johnson awoke suddenly to what was happening. He saw a white face with fiery eyes, he saw the rapier drawn back for a new thrust with blood on its point. … With a shudder he loosened his grip and let Alastair go free.

"I have done murder," he cried, and staggered across the floor till he fell against the dresser. His hands were at his eyes and he was shaken with a passion of sobbing.

The two remaining faced each other, one in his stocking-soles, dancing like a crazy thing in the glow of the wood-fire, triumph in his small eyes. Alastair, dazed and shaken, was striving to draw his blade, which, owing to the struggle, had become entangled in the skirts of his riding-coat. The other, awaking to the new position of affairs, pressed on him wildly till he gave ground. … And then he halted, for a blade had crossed his.

Both men had light travelling-swords, which in a well-matched duello should have met with the tinkle of thin ice in a glass. But now there was the jar and whine of metal harshly used, for the one lunged recklessly, and the other stood on a grim defensive, parrying with a straight arm a point as disorderly as wildfire. Sir John Norreys had the skill in fence of an ordinary English squire, learned from an Oxford maître d'escrime and polished by a lesson or two in Covent Garden—an art no better than ignorance when faced with one perfected by Gérard and d'Aubigny, and tested in twenty affairs against the best blades of France.

Alastair's wound was a mere scratch, and at this clearing of issues his wits had recovered and his strength returned. As he fought, his eyes did not leave the other's face. He saw its chalky pallor, where the freckles showed like the scars of smallpox, the sharp arrogant nose, the weak mouth with the mean lines around it, the quick, hard eyes now beginning to waver from their first fury. The man meant to kill him, and as he realized this, the atmosphere of the duello fled, and it was again the old combat à outrance of his clan—his left hand reached instinctively for the auxiliary dagger which should have hung at his belt. And then he laughed, for whatever his enemy's purposes, success was not likely to follow them.

The scene had to Alastair the spectral unreality of a dream. The kitchen was hushed save for the fall of ashes on the hearth, the strained sobbing of Johnson, and the rasp of the blades. The face of Sir John Norreys was a mirror in which he read his own predominance. The eyes lost their heat, the pupils contracted till they were two shining beads in the dead white of the skin, the wild lunging grew wilder, the breath came in short gasps. But the face was a mirror, too, in which he read something of the future. If his resolution to spare the man had not been already taken, it must now have become irrevocable. This was a child, a stripling, who confronted him, a mere amateur of vice, a thing which to slay would have been no better than common murder. Pity for the man, even a strange kindness stole into Alastair's soul. He wondered how he could ever have hated anything so crude and weak.

He smiled again, and at that smile all the terrors of death crowded into the other's face. He seemed to nerve himself for a last effort, steadied the fury of his lunges and aimed a more skilful thrust in tierce. Alastair had a mind to end the farce. His parry beat up the other's blade, and by an easy device of the schools he twitched the sword from his hand so that it clattered at Johnson's feet.

Sir John Norreys stood stock-still for an instant, his mouth working like a child about to weep. Then some share of manhood returned to him. He drew himself straight, swallowed what may have been a sob, and let his arms drop by his side.

"I am at your mercy," he stammered. "What do you purpose with me?"

Alastair returned his sword to its sheath. "I purpose to save your life," he said, "and if God be merciful, your soul."

He stripped off his riding-coat. "Take this," he said. "It is wintry weather, and may serve till your own garments are dry. It is ill talking unclad, Sir John, and we have much to say to each other."

Johnson had risen, and his face was heavy with an emotion which might have been sorrow or joy. He stood with arm upraised like a priest blessing his flock. "Now to Angels and Archangels and all the Company of Heaven," he cried, and then he stopped, for the door opened softly and closed again.

It was Midwinter that entered. His shoulders filled the doorway, and his eyes constrained all three to a tense silence. He walked to the fireplace, picking up Norreys's sword, which he bent into a half hoop against the jamb of the chimney. As his quiet gaze fell on the company it seemed to exercise a peaceful mastery which made the weapon in his hand a mere trinket.

"You have summoned me, Captain Maclean," he said. "I am here to make good my promise. Show me how I can serve you."

"We are constituted a court of honour," said Alastair. "We seek your counsel."

He turned to Norreys.

"You are not two months married, Sir John. How many years have you to your age?"

The man answered like an automaton. "I am in my twenty-third," he said. He was looking alternately to his antagonist and to Midwinter, still with the bewilderment of a dull child.

"Since when have you meddled in politics?"

"Since scarce two years."

"You were drawn to the Prince's side—by what? Was it family tradition?"

"No, damme, my father was a Hanover man when he lived. I turned Jacobite to please Claudie. There was no welcome at Chastlecote unless a man wore the white rose."

"And how came you into your recent business?"

"'Twas Kyd's doing. … No, curse it, I won't shelter behind another, for I did it of my own free will. But 'twas Kyd showed me a way of improving my fortunes, for he knew I cared not a straw who had the governing of the land."

"And you were happy in the service?"

The baronet's face had lost its childishness, and had grown sullen.

"I was content." Then he broke out. "Rot him, I was not content—not of late. I thought the Prince and his adventure was but a Scotch craziness. But now, with him in the heart of England I have been devilish anxious."

"For your own safety? Or was there perhaps another reason?"

Sir John's pale face flushed. "Let that be. Put it that I feared for my neck and my estate."

Alastair turned smiling to the others. "I begin to detect the rudiments of honesty … I am going to unriddle your thoughts, Sir John. You were beginning to wonder how your wife would regard your courses. Had the Prince shipwrecked beyond the Border, she would never have known of them, and the Rising would have been between you only a sad pleasing memory. But now she must learn the truth, and you are afraid. Why? She is a lady of fortune, but you did not marry her for her fortune."

"My God, no," he cried. "I loved her most damnably, and I ever shall."

"And she loves you?"

The flush grew deeper. "She is but a child. She has scarcely seen another man. I think she loves me."

"So you have betrayed the Prince's cause, because it did not touch you deep and you favoured it only because of a lady's eyes. But the Prince looks like succeeding, Sir John. He is now south of Derby on the road to London, and his enemies do not abide him. What do you purpose in that event? Have you the purchase at his Court to get your misdoings overlooked?"

"I trusted to Kyd."

"Vain trust. Last night, after you left us so hastily, Kyd was stripped to the bare bone."

"Was he sent to the Prince?" the man asked sharply.

"No. We preferred to administer our own justice, as we will do with you. But he is gone into a long exile."

"Is he dead? … You promised me my life."

"He lives, as you shall live. Sir John, I will be frank with you. You are a youth whom vanity and greed have brought deep into the mire. I would get you out of it—not for your own sake, but for that of a lady whom you love, I think, and who most assuredly loves you. Your besetting sin is avarice. Well, let it be exercised upon your estates and not upon the fortunes of better men. I have a notion that you may grow with good luck into a very decent sort of man—not much of a fellow at heart, perhaps, but reputable and reputed—at any rate enough to satisfy the love-blinded eyes of your lady. Do you assent?"

The baronet reddened again at the contemptuous kindliness of Alastair's words.

"I have no choice," he said gruffly.

"Then it is the sentence of this court that you retire to your estates and live there without moving outside your park pale."

"Alone?"

"Alone. Your wife has gone into Wiltshire with her Grace of Queensberry. You will stay at Weston till she returns to you, and that date depends upon the posture of affairs in the country. You will give me your oath to meddle no more in politics. And for the safety of your person and the due observance of your promise you will be given an escort on your journey south."

"Will you send Highlanders into Oxfordshire?" was the astonished question.

Midwinter answered. "Nay, young sir, you will have the bodyguard of Old England."

Sir John stared at Midwinter and saw something in that face which made him avert his gaze. He suddenly shivered, and a different look came into his eyes. "You have been merciful to me, sirs," he said, "merciful beyond my deserts. I owe you more than I can repay."

"You owe it to your wife, sir," Alastair broke in. "Cherish her dearly and let that be your atonement. … If you will take my advice, you will snatch a little sleep, for you have been moss-trooping for a round of the clock."

As the baronet's bare shanks disappeared up the stairway Alastair turned wearily to the others. A haze seemed to cloud his eyes, and the crackle of logs on the hearth sounded in his ears like the noise of the sea.

"You were right," he told Johnson. "There's the makings of a sober husband in that man. No hero, but she may be trusted to gild her idol. I think she will be happy."

"You have behaved as a good Christian should." Mr. Johnson was still shaking as if from the ague. "Had I been in your case, I do not think I would have shown so just a mind."

"Call it philosophy, which makes a man know what it is not in his power to gain," Alastair laughed. "I think I have learned the trick of it from you."

He swayed and caught Midwinter's shoulder. "Forgive me, old friend. I have been riding for forty hours, and have fought and argued in between, and before that I rose off a sick-bed. … But I must on to Derby. Get a fresh horse, my brave one."

Midwinter drew him to an arm-chair, and seemed to fumble with his hands for a second or two at his brow. When Johnson looked again Alastair was asleep, while the other dressed roughly the hole in his shoulder made by Sir John's sword.

"Festina lente, Mr. Johnson. I can provide fresh beasts, but not fresh legs for the riders. The pair of you will sleep for five hours and then sup, for Derby is a far cry and an ill road, and if you start as you are you will founder in the first slough."