But here the captain sprang to the door, at which his mare was standing ready, leaped to the saddle, and rode off at a gallop, cursing his tongue the while, which, in his exasperation, he had suffered to get so entirely the better of his discretion.
It was high time; Slap-Jack, infuriated at the allusion to his lady, had broken from the gentle grasp of Alice, and in another moment would have been upon him. He even followed the mare for a few paces and shook his fist at the retreating figure fleeting away over the moor like the wind; then he returned to his sweetheart, and drowned his wrath in a flagon of sound ale drawn by her sympathising hands.
He soon ceased to think of his opponent’s threats, for when the excitement of action was over, the seaman bore no malice and nursed no apprehensions; but Alice, who, like many silent, quiet women, was of a shrewd and reflective turn of mind, pondered them deeply in her heart. She seemed to see the shadow of some great danger threatening her lover and the family whose bread he ate.
CHAPTER LI
SIR MARMADUKE
A woman’s wits are usually quick to detect intrigue, and are sharpened all the more keenly when she suspects danger to the one she loves.
The threats Captain Bold had been so indiscreet as to utter afforded an explanation of much that had hitherto puzzled Alice in the habits and demeanour of her aunt’s guests. It seemed clear enough now, that the shrewd, dark-clothed gentleman upstairs, and his friend from the Hill, were involved in a treasonable plot, of which her abhorred suitor with the bay mare was a paid instrument. From the hints dropped by the last, it looked that some signal vengeance was contemplated against Sir George Hamilton, and worse still, against her own beloved Slap-Jack. Alice was not the girl to sit still with folded hands and bemoan herself in such a predicament. Her first impulse was at once to follow Sir George home and warn him of all she knew, all she suspected; but reflecting how little there was of the former, and how much of the latter; remembering, moreover, that one chief conspirator was his fast friend, and then in his company, she hesitated to oppose her own bare word against the latter’s influence, and resolved to strike boldly across the moor till she saw the chimneys of Brentwood, and tell her tale to Sir Marmaduke Umpleby, a justice of the peace, therefore, in all probability, a loyal subject of King George.
It was a long walk for a girl accustomed to the needlework and dish-scouring of an indoor life, but Alice’s legs had been stretched and her lungs exercised on the south-country downs, till she could trip over a Yorkshire moor as lightly and as gracefully, if not so swiftly, as a hind. Leaving word, then, for her aunt, that she should not be back till after dark, she put on her best shoe-buckles, her lace pinners, her smartest hat, and tucking her red stuff gown through its pocket-holes, started boldly on her mission in the teeth of an east wind.
Brentwood was a snug-looking long grey house, lying low amongst tall trees in a little green nook of the moor, sheltered by brown swelling undulations that rose all round. A straight road, rough in some places, swampy in others, and execrable in all, led up to the door, between two dilapidated stone walls coped with turf. There was no pretence of porch or other abutment, as in newer residences, nor were there curves round clumps of plantation, sweeps to coast flower-beds, nor any such compromise from a direct line in the approach to the house. The inmates of Brentwood might see their visitors for a perspective of half a mile from the front windows, and at these windows would take up their position from dawn till dark.
Dame Umpleby and her five daughters were at their usual station when Alice appeared in sight. These young ladies, of whom the eldest seemed barely fifteen, were being educated under their mother’s eye, that is to say, they were writing out recipes, mending house-linen, reading the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and working samplers, according to their several ages. They had a spinet also, somewhat out of repair, on which the elder girls occasionally practised, but father would not stand this infliction within ear-shot, and father was now enjoying his after-dinner slumbers in their common sitting-room.