CHAPTER XVI
A RENCONTRE ON THE HEATH
Master Mittachip, on his lean nag, with his clerk, Master Duffy, on thepillion behind him, was on his way to Brassington.
Sir Humphrey Challoner had not returned to the Moorhen after his visitto the forge until the sun was very low down in the west. He had biddenthe attorney to await him at the inn, and Master Mittachip had not daredto disobey.
Yet the delay meant the crossing of the Heath along the bridle path toBrassington, well after the shadows of evening had lent the lonely Mooran air of awesome desolation. There were the footpads, and the pixies,the human and fairy midnight marauders, who all found the steepdeclivities, the clumps of gorse and bracken, the hollows and the pits,safe resting-places by day, but who were wont to emerge from their lairafter dark for the terror and better undoing of the unfortunate, belatedtraveller.
Then there was Beau Brocade!
Master Duffy too was very timid, and clung with trembling arms to themeagre figure of the attorney.
"Nay! Master Duffy!" quoth Mittachip, with affected firmness, "why doyou pry about so? Are you afraid?"
"Nay! nay! Master Mittachip," replied the clerk, whose teeth werechattering audibly, "I am ... n ... n ... not af ... f ... f ... fraid."
"Tush, man, you have me near you," rejoined Mittachip, boldly. "See! Iam armed! Look at my pistols!"
And he leant back in the saddle, so as to give Master Duffy a good viewof a pair of huge pistols that protruded ostentatiously from his belt.
Yet all around the air was still, the solitary Heath was at peace, eventhe breezy nor'-wester, that had blustered throughout the day, seemed tohave lain down to rest.
Far out eastwards, the moon, behind a fast dispersing bank of clouds,was casting a silver radiance that was not yet a light, but only aherald of the glittering radiance to come.
The Moor was silent and at peace: only at times there came the sound ofa gentle flutter, a moorhen perhaps within its nest, or a belated lizardseeking its home.
Whenever these slight sounds occurred, Master Mittachip's hands thatheld the reins trembled visibly, and his clerk clung more closely tohim.
"What was that?" said the attorney in an awed whisper, as his frightenedears caught a more distinct noise.
"W ... w ... why don't you draw your p ... p ... pistols, MasterMittachip?" murmured Duffy, in mad alarm.
The noise was hushed again, but to the overwrought nerves of the two menin terror, there came the certain, awful perception that someone was onthe Heath besides themselves, someone not far off, whom the mist hidfrom their view, but who knew that they were travelling along the bridlepath, who could see and perhaps hear them.
"Truth to tell, Master Duffy," whispered the attorney, whose teeth toohad begun to chatter. "Truth to tell, it's no use my drawing them ...they ... they are not loaded."
Master Duffy nearly fell off the pillion in his fright.
"What?"
"There's neither powder nor shot in them," continued Master Mittachip,ruefully.
"Th ... th ... then we are lost!" was Master Duffy's ejaculation of woe.
"Eh?--what?" quoth Mittachip, "but your pistols are charged."
And his pointed elbow sought behind it for the handles of two formidableweapons, which were stuck in Master Duffy's belt.
"N ... n ... nay!" whispered the clerk, who now was blue with terror."I dared not carry the weapons loaded.... I trusted to your valour,Master Mittachip, to protect us."
"What was that?"
Again that noise! this time a good deal nearer, and it seemed to MasterMittachip's affrighted eyes as if he saw something moving on the bridlepath before him. But he would not show too many signs of fear beforehis own clerk.
"Tush, man!" he said with as much boldness as he could command. "'Tisonly a lizard in the grass mayhap. We'll ride on quite boldly. Wecan't be far from Brassington now, and no footpads would dare to attacktwo lusty fellows on horseback, with pistols showing in their belts! ...Lord!" he added with a shudder, "how lonely this place appears!"
"And that rascal, Beau Brocade, haunts this Heath every night, I'mtold," murmured Master Duffy, who felt more dead than alive.
"Sh! sh! sh! speak not of the devil, Master Duffy, lest he appear!..."
"Hark!!!"
The two men now clung trembling to one another; not ten paces from themthere came the sound of a horse's snorting, then suddenly a voice rangout clearly through the mist-laden air,--
"Hello! who goes there!"
"The Lord have mercy upon us!" whispered Mittachip.
"It must be Beau Brocade himself," echoed the clerk.
The next moment a horse and rider came into view. Master Mittachip andhis clerk were too terrified even to look. The former had jerked thereins and brought his lean nag to a standstill, and both men now satwith eyes closed, teeth chattering, their very faces distorted withfear.
Beau Brocade had reined his horse quite close to them, and was peeringthrough his black mask at the two terror-stricken faces. Evidently theyamused him vastly, for he burst out laughing.
"Odd's my life! here's a pretty pair of scarecrows! ... Well! I seeyou can stand, so now let's see what you've got to deliver!"
At this Master Mittachip contrived to open his eyes for a second; butthe black mask, and the heavily cloaked figure looked so ghostlike, soawful in the mist, that he promptly closed them again, and murmured witha shudder.--
"Mercy, oh, noble sir! We ... we are poor men!..."
"Poor-spirited men, you mean?" quoth Beau Brocade, giving the tremblingfigure a quick, vigorous shake. "Now then! off that nag of yours!Quick's the word!"
But even before this word of command Master Mittachip, dragging hisclerk after him, had tumbled, quaking, off his horse. They now stoodclinging to each other, a miserable bundle of frightened humanity.
"Come!" said Beau Brocade, looking down with some amusement at thespectacle. "I'm not going to hurt you--I never shoot at snipe! Butyou'll have to turn out your pockets and sharp too, an you want toresume your journey to-night."
He had seized Master Duffy by the collar. The clerk was an alltoo-ready prey for any highwayman, and stooping from his saddle, BeauBrocade had quickly extracted a leather bag from the pocket of his coat.
"Oho! guineas, as I live!"
"Kind sir," began Duffy, tremblingly.
"Now, listen to me, both of you," said Beau Brocade, trying to hide hisenjoyment of the scene under an air of great sternness. "I know who youare. I know what work you've been doing this afternoon. Extortingrents barely due from a few wretched people, for your employers ashard-hearted as yourselves."
"Kind sir..."
"Silence! or I shoot! Besides, 'twere no use to tell me lies. Thepeople about here know me. They call me Beau Brocade. I know them andtheir troubles. I happened to hear, for instance, that you extractedtwo guineas from the Widow Coggins, threatening her with a process fordilapidations unless she gave you hush money."
"'Twas not our fault, kind sir..."
"Then there was Mistress Haddakin, from whom you extracted fiftyshillings for a new gate, which you don't intend to put up for her: andthis, although she has only just buried her husband, and had a baby sickat home. You put on finer airs with the poor people than you do withme, eh?"
"'Tis not our money, sir," protested Master Mittachip, humbly.
"Some of it goes into your own pockets. Hush money, blood money, I callit. That's what I want from you, and then a bit over for the poor boxon behalf of your employers."
He weighed the leather bag which he had taken out of Master Duffy'spocket.
"This'll do for the poor box. Now I want the five pounds you extortedfrom Widow Coggins and Mistress Haddakin. The poor women'll be glad ofit on the morrow."
"I haven't a penny more than that bagful, sir," protested MasterMittachip. "My employers took all the money from me. 'Twere theirrents I was collecting
. I swear it, sir, kind sir! on my word ofhonour! And I am an honest man!"
"Come here!"
And Beau Brocade reined his horse back a few paces.
"Come here!" he repeated.
Mittachip was too frightened to disobey. He came forward, limping veryperceptibly.
"Why do you walk like that?" asked Beau Brocade.
"I'm a feeble old man and rheumatic," whined Mittachip, despondently.
"Then 'twere better to ease the load out of your boot, friend. Sit downhere and take it off."
And he pointed to a piece of boulder projecting through the shallowearth.
But this Master Mittachip seemed very loth to do.
"Kind sir..." he protested again.
"Sit down and take off the right boot!" repeated Beau Brocade moreperemptorily, and with a gay laugh and mock threatening gesture hepointed the muzzle of his pistol at the terror-stricken attorney.
There was naught to do but to obey: and quickly too. Master Mittachipcursed the rascally highwayman under his breath, and even consigned himto eternal damnation, before he finally handed him up his boot.
Beau Brocade turned it over, shook it, and a bag of jingling guineasfell at Jack o' Lantern's feet.
"Give me that bag!"
"Sir! kind sir!" moaned Master Mittachip, as he obediently handed up thebag of gold to his merciless assailant. "Have pity! I am a ruined man!'Tis Sir Humphrey Challoner's money. I've been collecting it for him... and he's a hard man!"
"Oh!" said Beau Brocade, "'tis Sir Humphrey Challoner's money, is it?Nay! you old scarecrow, but 'tis his Honour himself sent me on the Heathto-night. Oho!" he added, whilst his merry, boyish laugh went echoingthrough the evening air, "methinks Sir Humphrey will enjoy the joke. Doyou tell him, friend--an you see him in the morn--that you've met BeauBrocade and that he'll do his Honour's bidding."
He counted some of the money out of the bag and put it in his pocket:the remainder he handed back to the astonished lawyer.
"There!" he said with sudden earnestness, "I'll only make restitution tothe poor whom you have robbed. You may thank your stars that an angelcame down from heaven to-day and cast eyes of tender pity upon me, sothat I care not to rob you, save for those in dire want. You may mountthat nag of yours now, and continue your journey to Brassington. Noturning aside, remember, and answer me when I challenge yourgood-night."
Master Mittachip and his clerk had no call to be told twice. Theymounted with as much agility as their trembling limbs would allow.Truly they considered themselves lucky in having saved some money out ofthe clutches of the rogue, and did not care to speculate on the cause oftheir good fortune.
A few minutes later their lean horse was once more on its way, bearingits double burden. At first they had both looked back, attracted--nowthat their terror was gone--by the sight of that tall, youthful figureon the beautiful thoroughbred standing there on the crest of the hilland gradually growing more and more dim in the fast-gathering mist.
The bridle path at this point dips very suddenly and a sharp declivityleads thence, straight on to Brassington.
Beau Brocade's sharp eyes, accustomed to the gloom, watched horse andriders until the mist enveloped them and hid them from his view. Thenhe called loudly,--
"Good-night!"
And faintly echoing came the quaking reply,--
"Good-night!"
After that there was silence again. The outlaw was alone upon the Heathonce more, the Heath which had been his home for so long.
For him it had no cruelty and held no terror: the tall gorse and brackenoft sheltered him from the rain! Wrapped in his greatcoat, he had oftwatched the tiny lizards darting to and fro in the grass, or listened tothe melancholy cry of moorhen or heron. The tiny rough branches of theheather had been a warm carpet on which he had slept on lazy afternoons.
The outlaw found a friend in great and lonely Nature, and when he wasaweary he laid his head on her motherly breast, and like a child foundrest.
Beau Brocade: A Romance Page 16
