“Madam does me great honour,” says the silken villain, “but all I know of last night is that the prisoner escaped. I do not know who enabled him to do so, and I do not greatly care. But ’twas a member or members of his lordship’s household, and the entire responsibility rests with that gentleman.”
As the Captain desired to continue with his writing, I thought it the more graceful to withdraw. This I did, and shut myself up in privacy, for my mind was filled with grave considerations. In a day and a few hours over, my existence had become a terribly complicated matter. There was the prisoner. My life had long been waiting for a man to step into it. A man last night had done so, and I wished that he had not. For in spite of myself, all my thoughts were just now centred in his fortunes. Would he escape? And if he were retaken? That second question sent a new idea into my head, and straight I went and consulted the Captain on it.
“If,” says I, “the prisoner is brought back by your men, sir, you will not need to report the matter of his escape to the Government?”
He looked at me quickly with a keen twinkle in his eye that appeared to spring from pleasure, and then answered, glib as possible:
“That event will indeed supply an abrogation of this unpleasing duty. But he must be retaken within a week. Understand that, my Lady Barbara. If he is not in my hands within that period there is nothing for it but to dispatch these papers to the King.”
My question seemed so exactly to his mind that he could hardly restrain a chuckle. But I soon provided a bitter antidote to his satisfaction.
“Captain,” says I, “I hate you. I would rather have one hand cut off than that poor prisoner lad should be brought back and hanged at Tyburn in his shame. And I would sooner the other hand should perish too than that the Earl, my father, should be committed in his age in dishonour to a gaol. Captain, I repeat, I hate you!”
I meant every word of what I said, and my voice made no disguise of its sincerity. And at last I had found a tender place in the Captain’s armour. My words left him livid as his wig. At once I saw why he was affected so. The Captain was in love, and the object of his passion had just told him in the frankest terms how much she was prepared to sacrifice for the sake of another man. I will admit that my handling of the Captain was not too tender. But let us grant full deserts, even to the devil. I had hit the Captain pretty hard, but beyond a slight betrayal of its immediate shock, the blow was accepted beautifully. Without a word he went on writing, and in despite of the cruel situation he had put me in, and the hatred that I bore towards him, he forced me to admire his nature in its silken strength. And for that night at least I could not rid my brain of the picture that he made, as he sat writing his dispatches in the library with the lamp and firelight playing on his livid face and his increasing labours. I began to fear that a second man had come into my life.
CHAPTER VI.
I CONTINUE MY NIGHT ADVENTURES.
If the prisoner were retaken in a week, the Earl, my papa, would have a pardon! This was indeed a grim fiat to take to bed and sleep upon. What was this rebel to me that I should be so concerned for him? Why should he not perish at Tyburn for his deeds, as had been the fate of more considerable men? He was but a baker’s son. I had only exchanged a glance and a few broken sentences with him in all my life, yet never once did I close my eyes that night but I saw him in the cart and the topsman preparing to fulfil his gruesome offices. More than once had curiosity prompted me to sit at a window with my friends, as was the fashion, and watch these malefactors hang. A kick at space, and all was over! But this handsome youth, with the fiery look, a baker’s son, who had committed crimes against the State—must he, a child, be strung up in ignominy? Brooding on this horrid matter through this interminable night, I grew so feverish and restless that sleep was banished utterly. At last I could endure my bed no more. I rose and covered up my nightrail with a cloak, relit the lamp, and read the timepiece. It wanted twenty minutes to three at present.