Lady Barbarity: A Romance

by J. C. Snaith

The rebel was exceedingly loth to let me do this. But the more I pondered the idea, the more I became enamoured of it; small the danger, the exertion not excessive, the prospect of success considerable, the promise of diversion great. There was all to win and nought to lose, I told him. Besides, in the end I did not condescend to argue, but simply set my foot down and led him to understand that when Bab Gossiter had made her mind up no mortal man could say her nay.

Therefore he submitted, with a degree of reluctancy, of course; yet none the less did he obey me to the letter. First we peered down through the trap to see what our enemies were at. They were succouring their horses. This being a three-stall stable only, three of their steeds had to be elsewhere furnished. The Corporal, John Pensioner, and another soldier, had led their animals into the one we occupied, whilst the others had taken theirs to the one adjoining. Choosing a moment when all the men were in the stables the prisoner dropped a truss of straw down gently ten feet to the stones. Then we listened painfully to learn if this movement had been discerned by those within. Seemingly they were all unconscious of it, for they went on uninterruptedly in the bedding of their horses. Therefore the moment was still propitious, and I ventured my descent. Quickly I stepped to the edge of the loft, got through the wide bars that enclosed the provender, dropped upon my knees, tightly grasped my companion’s outstretched hands, swayed an instant above the space that intervened between me and the straw, was lowered several inches nearer to the ground by virtue of the rebel’s offices, then renounced my grasp of him and leapt lightly on to the cushion that awaited me beneath. The shock of the fall was of the slightest, and left me ready for an immediate flight. This was truly fortunate, as it was evident that my descent had been duly noted by the Corporal and his men. Hearing a commotion in the stable and various astonished cries, I began to run at once, and was, perhaps, the best part of a hundred yards away ere they came fuming and shouting from the stables and were at last alive to my retreat.

“The horses, men, the horses!” bawled the Corporal, never doubting that it was the prisoner in full flight.

To lead forth their weary beasts, to saddle them, and to coax them to pursuit meant such a loss of time that I was far out in the middle of the park ere they had started on their way. I headed straight for the gaunt, shadowy line of woods that looked the veritable haunt of ghosts and the supernatural with their deep, dark masses of tree and foliage bathed in the eerieness of snow and moonlight. It always was my pride that, though a woman of the mode, I could, when in the country, run both easily and lightly, being blessed with the nimblest feet and a stride which, if not an athlete’s, had at least a spring and quickness in it not to be despised.

Further, it was easy running across the soft thin carpet of the snow, whilst the flakes had ceased to fall, and the bitter wind was dead. I was soon aware, however, that it was to be the sternest race. Once mounted and away, the hunters decreased the wide distance that was between us mighty soon. And presently I knew that my long start would prove not a yard too much to enable me to reach the woods. In a little while, being in no state for such violent and prolonged exertion, my chest became restricted and my breath grew dreadfully distressed. And every moment my pursuers drew more near. Therefore, despite my discomforts, I set my teeth and trotted on as determinedly as ever; and I would have you to believe that I felt a fierce delight in doing so, for after long months of a suppressed and artificial course of life, this strange race in the snow seemed a return to very nature. Sure, this tense, exhilarating agony of hope and fear and hot-breathing energy were worth a hundred triumphs in the drawing-room!

Yard by yard the horses ran me down. But I had fixed my eyes upon those weird trees ahead, that assumed shapes more palpable and familiar as I ran; and though I could hear the perpetual shoutings and hoof-thuds of my enemies, I never once looked back, but trotted valiantly on with a mind for nothing but the woods. There was no time then to enjoy the quaintness of the matter, or to laugh at my ridiculous employ. However, that lack hath been made up later. Soon I was so near the trees that I could plainly see the ditch I had to cross, and the very gap the hither side it in the fence that I proposed to scramble through. The proximity of safety lent me strength, and for a few yards my failing pace was perceptibly improved.

Here I had a horrid fright. My feet were almost on those dim, mysterious woods, the snow upon them pure, the moon upon them eerie, and such a mighty silence in the trees that if a squirrel cracked a beech twig the report of it rang among them like a gun, when a pistol barked out loud and brutally, and a bullet whistled by my ear and pattered ominously in the ditch. ’Twas a very cruel, peremptory means, I thought, and my heart stood still with terror. Not my feet, forsooth, for fear was a sharp spur to their flagging ardour. I durst not look behind, but the shot informed me that, despite the perilous nearness of my pursuers, they saw that I must be the first within the wood, where horses could not follow, and among that continent of branch and herbage they knew that their search must prove most difficult. Evidently they meant to stay my entrance, cost what it may.

Another shot yelped out at me, another, and then another. One touched my hat, I think, but that was all. Verily the devil was wonderfully kind this morning.

And strange as you may think it, I felt pretty callous to these bullets. Nay, I was not afraid of anything. My spirit had thrown for once the fetters of convention off. It was itself for one brief hour. It was part of the earth and the trees, the snow and the moonlight; free as air and primitive as nature. ’Twas running unimpeded under God’s moon, without any of our eighteenth-century fopperies of brocades and powders on it.

I scrambled through the ditch and out again, brushed through the hedge-gap at the cost of cloak rents and a briar in my hand, and found myself within the thicket. I plunged into the deepest I could find, but as I did so a new volley rattled above my head among the trees, and the splinters from a shattered bough missed my face by inches and fell across the path. Knowing the ground so thoroughly I could take a great advantage of it, and sure every bit of it was needed, for the soldiers were desperately close. There was so thick a roof of branches to this wood that the moon could hardly penetrate, and not the snow at all. Thus the question of footprints had not to be encountered, and the deep gloom that slumbered everywhere also lent me aid. Once under the protection of the trees I checked my pace, for in this sanctuary it would be easy to dodge a whole battalion.