“I want you here, my worthy friend,” said the constable, putting his head into the room, and touching Lanty's shoulder. The horsedealer looked confused, and for a second seemed undetermined how to act; but suddenly recovering his composure, he smiled significantly at Mark, wished him a good night, and departed.
CHAPTER XXXIV. THE DAYBREAK ON THE STRAND
It was with an impatience almost amounting to madness that Mark O'Donoghue awaited the dawn of day; long before that hour had arrived he had made every preparation for joining his friend. A horse stood ready saddled awaiting him in the stable, and his pistols—the weapons Talbot knew so well how to handle—were carefully packed in the heavy holsters. The time settled for the meeting was seven o'clock, but he was certain that Talbot would be near the place before that hour, if not already there. The scene which followed Talbot's escape also stimulated his anxiety to meet with him; not that any, even the faintest suspicion of his friend's honour ever crossed Mark's mind, but he wished to warn him of the dangers that were gathering around him, for were he arrested on a suspicion, who was to say what material evidence might not arise against him in his real character of a French spy. Mark's was not a character long to brood over doubtful circumstances, and seek an explanation for difficulties which only assumed the guise of suspicions. Too prone always to be led by first impressions of every body and every thing, he hated and avoided whatever should disturb the opinions he thus hastily formed. When matters too complicated and knotty for his immediate comprehension crossed him, he turned from them without an effort, and rather satisfied himself that it was a point of honour to “go on believing,” than harbour a doubt even where the circumstances were calculated to suggest it. This frame of mind saved him from all uneasiness on the score of Talbot's honour; he had often heard how many disguises and masks his friend had worn in the events of his wild and dangerous career, and if he felt how incapable he himself would have been to play so many different parts, the same reason prevented his questioning the necessity of such subterfuges. That Harry Talbot had personated any or all of the persons mentioned by the constable, he little doubted, and therefore he regarded their warrant after him as only another evidence of his skill and cleverness, but that his character were in the least involved, was a supposition that never once occurred to him. Amid all his anxieties of that weary night, not one arose from this cause; no secret distrust of his friend lurked in any corner of his heart; his fear was solely for Talbot's safety, and for what he probably ranked as highly—the certainty of his keeping his appointment with Frederick Travers; and what a world of conflicting feelings were here! At one moment a sense of savage, unrelenting hatred to the man who had grossly insulted himself, at the next a dreadful thrill of agony that this same Travers might be the object of his cousin's love, and that on his fate, her whole happiness in life depended. Had the meeting been between himself and Travers—had the time come round to settle that old score of insult that lay between them, he thought that such feelings as these would have been merged in the gratified sense of vengeance, but now, how should he look on, and see him fall by another's pistol?—how see another expose his life in the place he felt to be his own? He could not forgive Talbot for this, and every painful thought the whole event suggested, embittered him against his friend as the cause of his suffering. And yet, was it possible for him ever himself to have challenged Travers? Did not the discovery of Kate's secret, as he called it to her, on the road below the cliff, at once and for ever, prevent such a catastrophe? Such were some of the harassing reflections which distracted Mark's mind, and to which his own wayward temper and natural excitability gave additional poignancy; while jealousy, a passion that fed and ministered to his hate, lived through every sentiment and tinctured every thought. Such had been his waking and sleeping thoughts for many a day-thoughts which, though lurking, like a slow poison, within him, had never become so palpable to his mind before; his very patriotism, the attachment he thought he felt to his native country, his ardent desire for liberty, his aspirations for national greatness, all sprung from this one sentiment of hate to the Saxon, and jealousy of the man who was his rival. Frederick Travers was the embodiment of all those feelings he himself believed were enlisted in the cause of his country.
As these reflections crowded on him, they suggested new sources of suffering, and in the bewildered frame of mind to which he was now reduced, there seemed no possible issue to his difficulties. Mark was not, however, one of those who chalk out their line in life in moments of quiet reflection, and then pursue the career they have fixed upon. His course was rather to throw passion and impulse into the same scale with circumstances, and take his chance of the result. He had little power of anticipation, nor was his a mind that could calmly array facts before it, and draw the inferences from them. No, he met the dangers of life, as he would have done those of battle, with a heart undaunted, and a spirit resolved never to turn back. The sullen courage of his nature, if it did not suggest hope, at least supplied resolution—and how many go through life with no other star to guide them!
At last the grey dawn of breaking day appeared above the house-tops, and the low distant sounds that prelude the movement of life in great cities, stirred faintly without.
“Thank heaven, the night is over at last,” was Mark's exclamation, as he gazed upon the leaden streak of cloud that told of morning.
All his preparations for departure were made, so that he had only to descend to the stable, and mount his horse. The animal, he was told, had formerly belonged to Talbot, and nothing save the especial favour of Billy Crossley could have procured him so admirable a mount.
“He has never left the stable, sir,” said Billy, as he held the stirrup himself—“he has never left the stable for ten days, but he has wind enough to carry you two and twenty miles within the hour, if you were put to it.”
“And if I were, Billy,” said Mark, for a sudden thought just flashed across him—“if I were, and if I should not bring him back to you, his price is——