‘Robert!’ she called, raising her voice, and instantly the servant reappeared. ‘You will re-conduct this gentleman, and lend him a horse to ride to Bristol. Give you good-night, sir.’
With distorted features, Geoffrey Swayne turned to fling out of the room. But she called him back. ‘You’ve forgotten something,’ said she, and she pointed to the notes upon the table. A moment he looked at her almost furtively, a suggestion of crouching in his attitude, something akin to that of a hound that had been whipped. Then he took the notes and thrust them into his pocket.
In silence he went out of the room, and so out of her life.
THE BARGAIN
Mr Hawkesby stirred in his great chair and, half awake, opened his eyes to blink at the fiery reflection of the evening sun, which glared at him from the glass of his tall, well-furnished bookcase. Incuriously he looked round to see what had disturbed his slumbers, then he leapt wideawake to his feet, so violently that a little shower of powder rained from his carefully dressed hair to settle upon the neck and shoulders of his velvet coat.
Leaning against the solid mahogany table, midway between the open window and the chair in which Mr Hawkesby had rested, stood a man, a stranger, in a suit of homespun the worse for wear, ragged stockings, and a pair of silver-buckled shoes all spattered with mud and dirt. Hawkesby’s face paled, for nature had not made him overvaliant. His first thought was that he had to do with a thief — and a thief who knew what he was about, for in the handsome, inlaid secretaire yonder reposed a bag containing three hundred guineas — rents collected that morning by Mr Hawkesby’s bailiff.
The stranger raised a hand in a mild gesture of supplication.
‘I beg that you’ll not be alarmed,’ said he, his manner that of a gentleman. ‘I’m no robber. You’ll be Mr Hawkesby?’
‘I am,’ answered the man of the house, his voice sharp. ‘How came you here?’
The stranger waved a white, slender hand, a hand at odd variance with his clothes, in the direction of the open window and the blossom-laden trees of the orchard beyond. ‘That way,’ he said.
‘Oh, that way?’ Mr Hawkesby mimicked him; for, seeing him so tame, his own courage was returning fast. ‘And what may you be wanting with me, my man?’
The other left his position by the table, and took a step towards the young squire. Mr Hawkesby retreated towards the bell-rope.
‘Keep your distance, my man,’ said he, his tone less arrogant.
‘Don’t ring, Mr Hawkesby!’ cried the other in a tone of such sudden alarm that Hawkesby paused, his fingers on the rope. ‘I’ve come to ye for shelter. ’Tis a hunted man I am this day.’
‘You’re glib enough with my name,’ said Hawkesby. ‘What may yours be?’
‘Look me in the face, sor, an’ ye’ll never need to ask,’ answered the other with a smile that was between sorrow and jauntiness. Hawkesby looked as he was bidden, and he saw that the man wore his own hair, black as coal and tied in a queue, from which a few escaping strands had matted themselves about his brow. It was a fine, distinguished countenance, but Hawkesby was not aware that his eyes had ever encountered it before. He said so, and a whimsical smile lifted the corners of the intruder’s close-lipped mouth.
‘Black hair, black eyes,’ he recited, ‘arched eyebrows, hooked nose, thin lips, sallow complexion, a mole on the right of the chin, and a scar over the right temple’ — he pushed back his matted hair, and showed a milk-white line— ‘stands five foot ten, and is of a slender shape. Have ye read that description nowhere of late, Mr Hawkesby?’
Hawkesby fell back a pace.
‘Egad!’ he exclaimed, and then again, ‘Egad!’
‘Just so,’ said the Irishman, with a shrug.
‘Then you’re — —’
‘Miles O’Neill, your most obedient, Mr Hawkesby,’ said the Irishman, making a leg.
In a quiver of apprehension, not of the man but of the things that might result from the man’s presence, Hawkesby now approached his visitor.
‘In Heaven’s name, why are you here, Mr O’Neil?’ quoth he, and his face was pale, his blue eyes wide with horror.
‘I lay at Appleby last night — at Mr Robertson’s,’ said the fugitive. ‘He tould me that should I need shelter farther south, I’d find it at your hands. I was for rachin’ Lancashire, and I’d niver have throubled ye, but that from Orton hither I have been followed.’
‘Followed?’ cried Hawkesby in alarm. ‘Followed hither? And by whom?’
‘By a dhirty rogue who caught a glimpse of me as I was lavin’ Orton. Shure, an’ he dodged me footsteps ivery moile of the foive. Half a moile from here I led him through a confusion of lanes, and lost him. Glory be to God! There’s a thousand guineas on my head, but the earning of them’ll not be his, the dhirty shpy.’
‘How knew you this to be my house? How knew you me?’
‘More by luck than controivance, faith! I was hidin’ in the orchard there, and seein’ a window convaniently open, I bethought me that beloike I’d find closer hiding-room within doors. By your coat-of-arms over the fireplace yonder I saw that I’d found luck for the first toime since I joined the Prince’s banner.’
Hawkesby looked at him out of eyes that did not exactly beam with welcome. He had contrived to keep the Tories in ignorance of his connection with the Cause, for all that it might be a matter of common knowledge in the ranks of Charlie Stuart’s followers. His had been but a half-hearted devotion, for he was by no means a man of rash impulse. His head governed his heart always; it governed it now, and he misliked the risk he might be running in harbouring this notorious rebel.
Still, the man before him looked in sore need of aid. His face was pale, and there were black lines beneath his eyes that lent them a haggard look. In what sorry condition were his garments we have already seen. Yet he bore himself with a certain jauntiness; when he spoke of being hunted he did so with a devil-may-care manner that should have earned him sympathy from a stone image. Hawkesby was not altogether insensible to this, and he felt, too, that he would be for ever shamed did he turn this fugitive out of doors without more ado. So, however reluctant he may have been at heart, outwardly at least he made a decent show of befriending O’Neill. He invited him to rest in the great easy-chair, whilst he went in quest of food and wine.
‘For, I take it, you’ll welcome refreshment, Mr O’Neill,’ said he.
‘It’s little enough of it I’ve had since the shlaughter at Culloden,’ laughed the Irishman as he dropped into the great chair and stretched his dusty legs luxuriously.
Hawkesby fetched him some cold pigeon-pie, a loaf, and a flask of French wine, and, setting the things before him on a small table, he bade his visitor fall to. O’Neill did so with a will, and when he had eaten he turned a scornful eye upon the slender, lily-shaped glass his host had set before him.
‘Have ye no such thing as a bumper, now, about the house, Mr Hawkesby?’ quoth he. ‘There’s a health I’d be after dhrinkin’ with all me heart.’
Hawkesby rose with a shrug of impatience to fetch the thing his guest craved. O’Neill filled it to the brim, and emptied it twice in brisk succession — thereby exhausting the flask. He drank first to Mr Hawkesby’s long life, and next to the Duke of Cumberland’s short shrift. Hawkesby fetched more wine — a brace of flasks this time. The rebel’s eyes sparkled at sight of them.
‘’Tis a power of dust gets in your throat a-walkin’,’ said he. ‘Aye, an’ the weather’s hot an’ all. Here’s long loife to ye agin, Mr Hawkesby.’ And again was a bumper poured down that amazing gullet. ‘Ye’re not drinkin’ yerself,’ he expostulated, making himself mightily at home.
‘If you’ll pardon me,’ said the other stiffly, ‘it is not my habit of an afternoon.’
‘By me sowl, ye should acquire it, thin,’ was the laughing answer, and O’Neill emptied the second flagon into his tall glass. ‘Ye’re missin’ a power of loife!’
Hawkesby sat himself on the arm of a chair, and craved news of
the Prince.
‘Where left you his Highness?’ quoth he. ‘Is he still in the heather, know you, or has he contrived to ship for France?’
But the question did no more than suggest a fresh toast to the rebel. He raised his glass to the light, and eyed the blood-red colour of the wine with a fond glance.
‘Here’s a health to his Hoighness, where’er he may be!’ He drained his bumper. ‘/Super naculum!/’, he laughed, as he turned it up, and made a bead on his thumbnail.
‘You’ve a fine thirst, sir,’ said Hawkesby a trifle tartly.
‘An’ it’s yourself would have the same, bedad, if ye’d run with the Scots from Culloden. But it’s an iligant wine,’ he added politely as a further reason.
‘The battle should never have been delivered as it was,’ said Hawkesby, who, like many another, could criticize what he could never have had a hand in doing. ‘The Prince should have fallen back behind Nairn Water.’
‘Maybe,’ quoth the Irishman pensively. ‘But ye’ll allow it’s an ill thing to fall back on water or behind it.’ And he reached for the wine, to add point to his meaning. ‘I’ll give ye the sow’s tail to Geordie!’ said he, and with that the flagon was emptied.
Hawkesby affected not to notice that again the wine was done, lest hospitality should force him to fetch more. A gallon of good French claret should be, he thought, enough for any man; and Hawkesby was careful by nature to the point of stinginess. Once more he sought to draw his guest into talking of the Cause, and he did so with moderate success for a little while. But presently O’Neill sank back in his chair and fetched a sigh.
‘Shure, talkin’s dhry work,’ said he, and he held a flask to the light to make certain it was empty.
The hint was over-broad to be ignored. Hawkesby fetched another brace of bottles from his cellar, swearing to himself, however, that they should be the last. He was beginning to dislike his guest exceedingly. There were more toasts when he returned. If O’Neill had been half the fighter that he was the drinker, surely the side he fought for should have been victorious at Culloden. He pledged all manner of men and all manner of events; it was ‘long loife’ to this, and ‘bad cess’ to that, until his last bumper stood before him and he appeared at a loss for a subject. Indeed, there was by then an ominous flush to his cheek and a sparkle in his eye that had not been there when first he had clambered into Mr Hawkesby’s room.
Hawkesby began mightily to fear for him now — and more for himself. Here was a plight! The man was a rebel with a thousand guineas on his head; he had been recognized and followed from Orton to this neighbourhood. What if he were to become too drunk to move, and so were to be found in Mr Hawkesby’s house? He began to expostulate with his guest. He spoke of caution, and as politely as he could he suggested to O’Neill that there was danger for him in drinking as he was doing. He went so far even as to seek to remove the last bumper. But O’Neill’s hands shot out at that sign of danger, and his fingers encircled the glass in a resolute clutch.
‘Bedad!’ he hiccoughed. ‘The man was hanged that left his dhrink behind him.’
‘I’m thinking, sir, that should the same fate overtake you it will not be from the same cause,’ was Hawkesby’s irritable answer. But the Irishman was not to be offended. He emptied his glass, and got unsteadily to his feet. His wits were surely all soaked in wine by now, for he waved his hand in the air and broke suddenly into song.
It’s Geordie he came up to town,
Wi’ a bunch o’ turnips in his crown;
Aha, quo’ she, I’ll pull them down,
And turn my tail to Geordie!
‘For Heaven’s sake, sir!’ gasped Hawkesby, in very real affright; ‘You’ll have the house about my ears. Silence, man, if you value your life at a farthing! Are you not afraid?’
‘Afraid?’ roared O’Neill; and it almost seemed for a moment that he was offended. Then he laughed aloud and long, and for an answer broke into another Jacobite ditty ——
O that’s the thing that ne’er can be,
For the man’s unborn that’ll daunton me!
O set me once ——
Abruptly his song ceased. His mouth remained opened — nay, fell wider — and his eyes stared with a sudden look of horror past his host at the window to which Hawkesby had his back. With a premonition of what was afoot, Hawkesby swung round, then stood, his face livid, scarce breathing in his affright.
Leaning on the sill of the open window was a man of swarthy complexion, whose face was rendered villainous now by the leering grin with which he surveyed the room’s occupants.
A three-cornered hat was set rakishly upon his loose, untidy hair, and he wore a scarlet riding-coat of velvet, very soiled and frayed, with tarnished gold lace and dirty, torn ruffles. Seeing himself observed, he waited for no invitation to enter, but set his hands upon the sill and vaulted lightly into the room. He was a tall, powerfully built man, and he flourished a long, gleaming pistol.
‘Mr Hawkesby, your servant, sir,’ he leered, with an ironical bow. ‘Mr O’Neill, your very humble servant.’ And coolly stepping aside he locked the door.
Hawkesby looked askance at O’Neill. The Irishman’s knees had been loosened, either from drink or from fright, and he had sunk limply to a chair, where he sat staring foolishly at the intruder.
‘Bedad!’ he muttered at last in a thick voice. ‘Ye’re as persevering as a shpider. I t’ought I’d losht ye, me friend.’ And as he spoke his hand went fumbling towards the breast of his coat. The bully’s weapon came level with his brows.
‘I’ll trouble you to put that pistol on the table,’ said he, with a snarl; and O’Neill sheepishly relinquished the weapon he was slyly drawing.
Hawkesby stepped to the bell. His was the courage of despair. He braced himself, and —
‘What do you want, my man?’ he demanded, with pretended firmness.
‘Just your friend, O’Neill, yonder,’ said the fellow, with a grin. ‘He’s worth a thousand guineas to me.’ Hawkesby laid a hand on the bell-rope. ‘Oh, ring away, Mr Hawkesby; ring away!’ the ruffian airily encouraged him. ‘Fetch in your servants; fetch in the whole town to see how you shelter and befriend a rebel.’
Hawkesby’s hand fell back to his side. The affair looked ugly. He turned to O’Neill to see how the rebel took matters, hoping in his heart that the fellow would surrender before more harm was done. But O’Neill made no shift to move. Instead, he was settling himself more comfortably in his chair. He eyed the spy with a from-head-to-foot glance of contempt.
‘An’ who the dickens may you be, me man?’ quoth he.
‘I’m a loyal subject of King George’s.’
‘Bedad, ye look it, sor,’ answered O’Neill, as bold as brass; ‘ye look it; and ye look, too — if one may judge by externals — as if there moight be a price on your own dhirty head.’
Hawkesby, watching the bully, saw the shot strike home. The fellow’s eyes dropped uneasily, he shuffled where he stood, and there was a pause before he answered, still truculent, but with half the assurance gone out of him:
‘You’ll be leaving my affairs alone, and you’ll be treating me respectfully. The constable’ll be none too inquisitive if I hand over to him the notorious Mr O’Neill.’
‘Maybe; but Mr O’Neill’ll be after arousin’ the constable’s inquisitiveness,’ said the rebel, with an ugly look. It was plain he saw the weak spot in his opponent’s hide. Hawkesby was thinking briskly. An idea had come to him — an inspiration. He had accounted himself lost, for the sheriff would want to know where O’Neill had been captured, and the bully, not a doubt of it, would inform him. He was cursing the hospitality he had extended to this drunken fugitive; he had begrudged it when he saw how dear it was like to cost him in wine; how much more, then, did miserly Mr Hawkesby not begrudge it now that he saw how dear it was like to cost him in good gold guineas? — for clearly this fellow must be bought off. His voice, cold and precise, cut into the momentary silence.
‘It is quite cl
ear,’ said he to the spy, ‘that you are in no condition yourself to approach the constable. You’ll need to go before the sheriff, and there’ll be awkward questions asked.’
‘I’m no fool,’ snapped the spy, ‘and you’ll not make me one. They’ll welcome me very cordially when I take them Mr O’Neill. They’ll not ask many questions — saving, perhaps, as to whereabouts I came upon him. Why, if they had a grievance against me — which I’m not saying that they have — this day’s work should earn me a pardon.’
‘That’s as it may be,’ sneered O’Neill.
‘Just so; but you’ll not alter it with talking.’
‘I might alter it with something else,’ interpolated Hawkesby, in a tone that drew the brisk attention of the others. ‘Listen to me, now. If you yield up Mr O’Neill, and even if no questions are asked concerning yourself, the Government’s a mighty slow paymaster. You may wait a long time for your thousand guineas.’
‘True,’ the man confessed.
‘Will you strike a bargain with me, now? What’ll you take, money down?’
The fellow looked up, licking his lips — it was a lick of anticipation.
‘You speak me very fair,’ said he, his head on one side, his glance shifting from one to the other of the men. ‘I’ll take five hundred guineas for my bargain.’
‘Don’t listen to the thafe!’ said O’Neill contemptuously.
‘You shall have a hundred,’ was Hawkesby’s answer.
The man laughed scornfully. ‘You’re jesting,’ said he. ‘Come, now; say four hundred, and Mr O’Neill may go his ways for me.’
‘One hundred,’ repeated Hawkesby doggedly. It was in all conscience money enough to pay for having entertained O’Neill. More he would not give, betide what might. But neither would the other abate further. Seeing Hawkesby resolute:
‘Come, Mr O’Neill,’ said he at last, his pistol raised to enjoin obedience, ‘we had best be moving.’
‘Aye,’ said O’Neill gloomily, ‘I’m thinkin’ we had. I’m much obliged to you, sor — —’ he began, turning to Hawkesby. But Hawkesby broke in excitedly:
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 521
