“No more than I’ve risked before now, and for no such cause, either. ’Tis settled, Will, I intend to stay hereabouts till I’ve seen that young lady again. Come, the boy is waiting with the horses. ’Tis you now that delays our going.”
“Charles, listen to me!—Rash! foolish! mad!”
“No.—I said you should hear when I saw the right face, Will. I declare I’ve seen it—and must see it again, whatever be the cost or the consequence.”
In another minute they were on horseback, moving down the High Street. The coach and chaise had started in the same direction, but were now out of sight. Everell hoped to come nearly up to them, that he might see where they left the highroad. But even after he had cleared the town and beheld a straight stretch of road far ahead, he found no sign of the vehicles in which he was interested. He inferred that they must have turned off through one of the streets of the town, which was indeed the case.
Meanwhile, Roughwood, full of sadness and misgiving, had kept up his usual vigilance so far as to watch their guide for possible signs of having heard any such talk at the inn as had enabled the maid Prudence to identify Everell. But the boy did not regard either of the gentlemen at all suspiciously; he showed no curiosity or interest, and Roughwood was assured that, if Everell’s enemy had spoken of them at the inn, this lad had not been a listener. Such, as the reader knows, was the case, for Mr. Filson had thus far confided his story to nobody in the house but Prudence, and she had excluded herself from the conversation of the kitchen under a sense of affront, until summoned by her mistress. Georgiana, upon hearing the cause of her alarm at the sight of the young stranger, had put the girl under the strictest commands of secrecy, and had kept her in attendance afterward, quietly returning to Foxwell and his friends as they were making ready to depart.
While he still rode with his friend, Everell allowed no mention of his resolve or of Foxwell Court to escape him, for he knew that the guide, whom Roughwood would dismiss at the end of that stage, would be returning with the horses, and might be interrogated by their enemy, who by that time would probably have learned of their short stay at the inn. On the other hand, Everell devoted some conversation to the purpose of deceiving the boy as to his reasons and intentions in leaving his friend and his saddle as he was about to do. Observing a house among some trees upon a hill, he pointed it out to Roughwood as the residence of a friend whom he meant to surprise with a brief visit. Having spoken to this effect, as if the matter had been previously understood between them, he added that, in order to make the surprise complete, he would approach the house on foot among the trees, and would therefore take leave of Roughwood, for the time, in the road. He could depend upon the gentleman he was about to visit to furnish him with conveyance to the next town, whence he would follow Roughwood by post-horse. This much having been said in the guide’s hearing, Everell pulled up his horse, and, Roughwood doing likewise, the two fugitives held a whispered conference upon the details of their next reunion.
To the last, Roughwood tried, by voice and look, to dissuade his comrade from this rash and sudden deviation from their original plans, but vainly. They made a redivision of their money, for each in his heart felt that some time must elapse ere they should—if ever—be fellow travellers again. Then Everell slid from his horse, slung his cloak-bag over his shoulder, gave a quick pressure of his friend’s hand, and a whispered “God speed you, dear lad!” in exchange for a silent and protesting farewell in the other’s clouding eyes; and stood alone in the highway. He waited till the horses disappeared with a last wave of Roughwood’s hand, around a turning: he then faced directly about, and set off with long and rapid strides.
His pace very soon brought him back to the town he had so recently left. Instead of going as far as to their former inn, he sought out one of humbler appearance, near the beginning of the street. Here he left his cloak-bag, for already in his brief walk he had experienced the stares of wonder naturally drawn by a gentleman who carried at the same time a sword at his side and a cloak-bag at his shoulder. He went into a barber’s shop, where, as he had used his razor that morning, and very little sign of beard had become visible in the meantime, his order for shaving created in the barber’s mind an impression that he must be an extremely luxurious gentleman in spite of his threadbare clothes,—probably a lord in misfortune. Everell easily set the barber talking about all the estates in the neighbourhood, and thus, without seeming to have more design in regard to Foxwell Court than to a dozen other places, elicited the information that that house was eight miles away on the road to Burndale.
Returning to the inn where he had left his bag, he told the landlord he was bound for Burndale, and had made up his mind to accomplish part of the journey that afternoon, in order to arrive there betimes the next day. He bargained for a horse and guide to take him seven or eight miles on the way, and leave him at some place where he could pass the night and obtain conveyance on to Burndale in the morning. In this way, without mentioning Foxwell Court, he contrived that he should be set down in its vicinity and yet have it supposed that his destination was far beyond.
He had so far trusted to luck and his quickness of sight to avoid confrontation with the enemy who, as he could not doubt, was close enough at hand. But he breathed a sigh of relief when he at last rode out of the town in the direction of Burndale: he believed that, whatever inquiries might be made upon the discovery that he had passed through the town, his traces were sufficiently confused, one set leading southward after his friend, and the other leading to Burndale, a good distance beyond Foxwell Court. So he rode forward with his new guide, in as great security of mind as he had enjoyed in months.