The Yeoman Adventurer

by George W. Gough

I could not reply. Down to her hips her rich amber hair flowed like a bridal veil, and from amid a wealth of snowy lace, fluttering on the orbed glory of perfect womanhood, her neck rose smooth and stately as a shaft of alabaster. Her cheeks crimsoned with maiden shamefastness, but the blue eyes met mine without a hint of maiden fear, and for that thanks as well as reverence filled my heart as I bowed to her. Maidenlike, she drew her golden veil more closely over her bosom, and tripped back to finish her toilet, leaving me amated and abashed by the vision I had beheld. I think it was from that moment that my joy in my work began to be mingled with the despair of my love. Certainly it was a chastened Oliver Wheatman who placed a chair for her when she came in again for breakfast, and helped her to the good things a kindly fortune had provided.

It is my belief that each of us was secretly amused at the steady zeal with which the other attacked the meal. We wrangled over the odd egg, each insisting on the other having it, she because I was strong, and needed it, I because I was strong and could do without it, and finally adopted the usual compromise. We had more than gone round the clock with barely a mouthful, and we ate as those who know not where the next meal's meat is to come from. Frankly, I, at any rate, gave myself a fair margin before the pinch should come again, and Mistress Waynflete averred that she had never in her life before eaten so much or so toothsomely.

Our meal over, I stacked the fire with fresh logs, asked and obtained permission to smoke a pipe, and made my sweet mistress cosy in the chimney-corner. Then we began to take stock of our position.

"There's no good to come of hurrying," said I. "Here we are both snug and safe, and your night's rest was but short. Let us see where we stand."

I did not really believe that any amount of talking would help much, but repose would do her good, and I had a big idea running in and out of my mind. Our first difficulty, food and rest, had been overcome, and I was bent on mastering the next. No amount of discussion gave us any key to the one great mystery. When Brocton had captured Colonel Waynflete at Milford, the obvious thing to do with him was to send him prisoner to the Duke at Lichfield. Though the Colonel carried no papers which made his purpose clear, Brocton knew well what the object of his journey was, and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act put the Colonel in his power. Or, he might have carried him before a justice of the peace, his friend Master Dobson for choice, and had him committed to the town jail. The course actually taken, that of sending him ahead, under guard, in the very van of the royal army, was to us utterly inexplicable. His mad lust for Mistress Margaret explained the separation of father and daughter. The thought did occur to me, though I took great care not to hint at it, that he intended to make away with the Colonel, and looked to finding tools among his blackguardly dragoons and an opportunity when in actual conflict with the Highlanders. I hesitated, however, to believe that Brocton was such a villain as to commit an unnecessary murder. The plan he had adopted had, anyhow, this advantage to us that, when we did come into touch with the prisoner, our chances of assisting him were far greater than if he were in jail in Stafford or Lichfield.

Whatever my lord's motives were, it was clear that he was not acting in the plain, straight-dealing manner to be expected of one in his position. There were other signs of crookedness, slight but not without weight. I could understand his joy on finding me at Marry-me-quick's. It meant that I was a rebel, and as a loyal man, who had gone to expenses to prove his loyalty, he might easily get the Hanyards as a reward, and thus round off the family property in our neighbourhood. His reference to a "solatium" puzzled me, but it did not seem anything of consequence. What had I but the Hanyards to solace him with? A more important puzzle had been his behaviour at Master Dobson's. To find me on the royal side, as he then supposed, and to hear my reason for it, had clean dazed him. Then there was the look, a signal-look beyond a doubt, which I had surprised him giving his bully, Major Pimple-face, and which was followed by the latter's attempt to embroil the stranger from London in a row.

"It is useless, Master Wheatman, to speculate further on what Lord Brocton is doing," said my mistress at last. "He has his ends. I am one of them. Another is, no doubt, to fill his pockets, somehow or other. It was common talk in town that he was head over ears in debt."

While we had talked and had rested, I had not been idle. Dick Doley's roomy kitchen had two windows, one overlooking the cart-track, and another the slope of the hill. The hill was so made and the house so placed that from this second window we could see the strip of road at the bottom of the hill where it curved on to the level again. I had kept a sharp look out on that bit, but had seen no one pass along it either way as yet.

In one corner of the room Dick kept an ancient fowling-piece, more of a tool of husbandry than a weapon, since his only use for it was to scare birds. It was a heavy, unhandy thing, with a brass barrel down which I could have dropped a sizable duck egg, and round its thick-rimmed nozzle some one had rudely graven, "Happy is he that escapeth me." I fetched it out of its corner, and cleaned and oiled it. I now loaded it, for powder-horn and shot-bag hung near it on the wall, putting in a handful of the biggest sort of shot, swan-shot as I should call them. During this task, Mistress Waynflete watched me narrowly, but made no reference to it.

"Now," said I, "our main requisite is the stuff, the ready, the rhino, the swag--call it what you will. How do you fancy me as a knight of the road? The first copper-faced farmer I come across shall surely stand and deliver. Here's an argument he cannot resist."