Ten minutes to nine. Would the soldiers never come! The landlord was resigning himself to his despair. He must tell Cicely to prepare the King’s supper. Never was a weak man so well punished for his dalliance. They would not be here in time; the King would escape.
As the chances of that contingency increased, and it looked more and more probable that the landlord would not after all have to pass through the most terrible ordeal of his life, greed, his ruling passion, reasserted itself. He became the prey of the bitterest disappointment.
At five minutes to nine he was lamenting the loss of a fortune. Alas, they would be too late! He sat down in his fireside chair with a heavy sense of personal misfortune. He had sweated blood over this bitter business; and yet nothing had come of it. He had frightened the life out of himself; he had stripped his craven heart naked before the fierce eyes of his understanding; there were no longer unsuspected secrets existing between his brain and his spirit; and there was not to be a penny-piece to compensate him. He had lost a fortune. He had not taken the tide at the flood. The hesitation of his weakness had been fatal.
Three minutes to nine. There came sounds in the night suddenly. The landlord sprang up from his chair, and ran to the keyhole of the kitchen door. Horses!
Oh, God! they were coming, after all. His first thought was, not that they were coming in time to earn a fortune for him, but that they were actually coming, after all; and that the moment of his agony was at hand. The wretched man clapped his hands to his ears; he could not bear to hear the sounds of their arrival. He fell half fainting into his chair. He covered his eyes; he buried his head in the cushions; his lips moved in a wild, inarticulate prayer. But he could not efface the things that were happening. The horsemen were pulling up under the sign.
CHAPTER XIV
The Divinity that doth hedge a King
“OUR landlord was right,” said the King.
Only too well could the people upstairs hear the sounds from the night that were frightening the landlord out of his wits.
“Mother of Jesu, be our guide!” cried the poor lady. A crucifix was in her hand. “Sire, whither canst thou flee?”