The tenderness with which he spoke cut me like a knife.
"Nay," said I, "if there were a choice to be made, you would not be right in choosing me."
I had barely ended the sentence before a cry rang out from the garden. It came, however, faintly to our ears.
"Quick!" I said. "They have come upon our tracks in the grass. Quick! That note must reach Keswick to-day, and your hand must deliver it."
With that we parted. I mounted the hillside until I came to a large boulder, and threw myself on the ground beneath its shelter. In a fever of impatience I watched Ashlock descend along the wall, and yet the moment he had turned the corner and was clean out of my sight, I wished him back again. I was, in truth, sunk to such a depth of shame and self-contempt as made this old servant's goodwill an extraordinary consolation. For now that I had had time to grow used to the knowledge that Anthony Herbert was not dead, I began to see more clearly the wickedness of my preceding conduct.
It was, then, with a very lonely feeling that I climbed to the ridge of Green Comb. Beneath me I could see Blackladies and its garden much as on that morning when I first rode thither over Coldbarrow Fell. But I saw it with very different eyes. Then, proud of my entrusted mission, I had looked upon it as an instrument of loyalty, a prop, however fragile, of the cause I served and my father had served before me. Now it was to me a monument of failure. Here I had failed through and through. I had proved false to Mr. Herbert; I had been juggled like the merest fool in my service to the King. I had but to turn, and over against me I could see the very spot where I had forced Jervas Rookley to make his vow of concealment upon his knees, and a little lower down the winding path, where I had come to my knees and Jervas Rookley had sat his horse over me. Well, I had kept faith with him, at all events, and how had he kept faith with me? The red-coats sprinkled in the garden below gave me the answer. Yes, I had kept faith with him. It seemed to me a wonderful and astonishing thing, so deep was my humiliation, but it was true. I had kept faith with him, and I hugged the thought to my very breast. In the wreck of my hopes and pride, it stood erect as you may see a single column standing amidst a pile of ruins; and perhaps, I thought, since that one column stands, if he could but bring perseverance to the work, a man might in time rebuild the whole.
To effect anything of this sort, however, I must needs first of all escape, and to that end I kept all the day along the hilltops, and at the fall of the dark came down Bleaberry Fell, to the great wood that fringes Derwentwater over against Rampsholme Island. About a mile to the east of the wood was a fisherman's cottage with which I was sufficiently familiar, since the fisherman had ferried me over often enough to Lord's Island, and many another visitor to my Lord Derwentwater besides, who came in a great hurry when the night was fallen dark. To this cottage I crept, and tapping at the window-pane presently the man came out and joined me.
He asked no questions, being well practised in the habit of secrecy, but put me across to the steps and so pushed off again without a word. I thought it best not to openly knock at the door, but crept round to a room wherein I knew Lord Derwentwater was used to sit of an evening. To my inexpressible relief I saw that the windows were lighted. I knocked on the pane; the sash was thrown up.
"Who is it?" asked Lord Derwentwater.
I set my hand on the sill and climbed into the room.