LADY BARBARITY

A ROMANCE

BY
J. C. SNAITH

AUTHOR OF MISTRESS DOROTHY MARVIN
AND FIERCEHEART, THE SOLDIER

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899

Copyright, 1898, 1899,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

All rights reserved.

CONTENTS.

LADY BARBARITY.

CHAPTER I.
DEPLORES THE SCARCITY OF MEN.

To deny that I am an absurdly handsome being would be an affectation. Besides, if I did deny it, my face and shape are always present to reprove me. Some women I know—we call each other friends—who happen to possess an eyebrow, an elbow, an impertinence, a simper, or any other thing that is observable, I have seen to cast their eyes down at the compliment, and try to look so modest too, that one could tell quite easily that this missish diffidence was a piece of art since it sat so consciously upon ’em, it could not possibly be nature. But furnished as I am with a whole artillery of charms, sure they need no adventitious blushes for their advertisement; indeed, they are so greatly and variously sung that it is quite a common thing for the poets to make an ode or sonnet of ’em every night, and a ballad every morning. The late poor little Mr. Pope was so occupied at times in comparing my eyes to Jupiter, or the evening star that I was fain to correct him for ’t, on the pretext that the heavenly bodies might not like it, they being such exalted things, whilst my Lady Barbarity was but a humble creature in a petticoat. Therefore if you would know the graces of my person I must refer you to the poets of the age; but if you would seek the graces of my mind, in this book you shall discover them, for I could not make it wittier if I tried. I have heard the young beaux speak of certain women of their acquaintancy as being as justly celebrated for their wit as for their beauty, but have yet to hear the old ones say this, since they know that wit and beauty is as rare a combination as is loveliness and modesty. This book will tell you, then, that my wit is in proportion to my modesty.

I returned from town with a hundred triumphs, but my heart intact. The whirl of fashion had palled upon me for a season. I was weary of the fume I had created in St. James’s and the Mall, and I retired to my northern home in the late January of ’46. Sweet High Cleeby, cradle of my joyous girlhood, home of romance and these strange events I now relate, let me mention you with reverence and love. Yet our ancestral seat is a cold and sombre place enough, wrapped in ivy and gray ghostliness. The manor is folded in on every side by a shivering gloom of woods, and in winter you can hear them cry in company with those uneasy souls that make our casements rattle. ’Tis dreary as November with its weed-grown moat; its cawing rooks; its quaint gables of Elizabeth; and its sixteenth-century countenance, crumbling and grim. Besides, it occupies a most solitary spot on the bare bosom of the moors, many a mile from human habitation, a forsaken house indeed where in the winter time rude blasts and the wind-beaten birds are its customary visitors. But the brisk north gales that fling the leaves about it, and scream among the chimneys late at night, had no sooner whipped my cheeks than my blood suddenly woke up and I began to rejoice in my return. The morning after my arrival, when I carried crumbs to the lawn in the hope of an early robin, a frost-breath stung my lips, and at the first bite of it, sure methinks I am tasting life at last. Ten months had I been regaled in town with the cream of everything that is; but it seemed that I must resort to my dear despised old Cleeby for those keen airs that keep the pulses vigorous. London is fine comedy, but in ten months the incomparable Mr. Congreve loses his savour, even for a sinner. Ombre was indeed a lively game; the play adorable; Vauxhall entertaining; wholesale conquest most appetising to feed one’s vanity upon, while to be the toast of the year was what not even the psalm-book of my dearest Prue would venture to disdain. To be courted, flattered, and applauded by every waistcoat west of Temple Bar, beginning with the K——g’s, was to become a mark for envy, and yet to stand superior to it in oneself. But now I was tiring of playing “Lady Barbarity” to coats and wigs, and silver-buckled shoes. This is the name the beaux had dubbed me, “Because” said they, “you are so cruel.”

It is true that I wore a claw. And if I occasionally used it, well, my endurance was abominably tried, and I will confess that mine is not the most patient temper in the world. The truth is that I was very bitter, having sought ten months in London for a Man, when the pink of England was assembled there, and had had to come away without having found so rare a creature. I had encountered princes, but the powder in their wigs, and buckles of their shoes were the most imposing parts of their individuality. I had looked on lesser gentlemen, but the correct manner in which they made a leg was the only test you might put upon their characters. I congratulate myself, however, that I made some little havoc with these suits of clothes. Therefore, Barbara became Barbarity, and I sustained this parody as fully as I could. They said I was born without a heart. Having gaily tried to prove to them how sound this theory was, I purchased the choicest string of pearls and the most delicate box of bonbons money could obtain, and returned to dear High Cleeby, January 22d, 1746, with my aunt, the dowager, in a yellow-coloured chaise.

The following morning I went to pay my devoir to my lord, who took his chocolate at eleven o’clock in his private chamber. Now I have always said that the Earl, my papa, was the very pattern of his age. He was polished to that degree that he seemed a mirror to reflect the graces of his person and his mind. Lord knows! in all his life ’twas little enough he said, and perhaps still less he did. There is not a deed of his that is important; nor hath he left a solitary phrase or sentiment in which his memory may be embalmed. ’Twas ill-bred, he used to say, for a man to endeavour to outshine his fellows, and to step out of the throng that is his equal in manners and in birth. And indeed he did not try; but, in spite of that, I am sure he was one of the most considerable persons of his time by virtue of the very things he did not do, and the speeches that he did not utter. It was his privilege, or his art perhaps, to win the reputation of a high intelligence, not because he had one, but because it was a point with him to keenly appreciate its exercise in those who were so liberally furnished. I found him this morning seated at the fire, sipping his chocolate from a low table at his side, and one foot was tucked up on a stool and bandaged for the gout as usual. On my entrance, though, and despite his complicated posture, he rose at once, and bowing as deeply as though I were the Queen, implored me to confer the honour of my person on his chair, and limped across the rug to procure another for himself. When we were seated and the Earl fixed his glasses on, for he was very near-sighted at this time, he quizzed me for at least a quarter of a minute, ere he said:

“Why, Bab, I think you are getting very handsome.”

I admitted that I was.

“And do you know that I have heard such a tale of you from town, my pretty lady? You have turned the heads of all the men, I understand.”

“Men!” said I, “suits of clothes, papa, and periwigs!”

“Well, well,” says he, in his tender tone, and bowing, “let us deal gently with their lapses. ’Tis a sufficient punishment for any man, I’m sure, to be stricken with your poor opinion. But listen, child, for I have something serious to say.”

Listen I did, you can be certain, for though I had known my papa, the Earl, for a considerable time, ’twas the first occasion that I had heard him mention serious matters. And as I pondered on the nature of the surprise he had in store, my eyes fell upon an open book, beside his tray of chocolate. It was a Bible. This caused me to look the more keenly at the Earl, and I saw that in ten months ten years had been laid upon his countenance. Even his powder could not hide its seams and wrinkles now. Crow’s feet had gathered underneath his eyes, and his padded shoulders were taken with a droop that left his stately coat in creases.

“If I exercise great care,” says he, with a bland deliberation, “old Paradise assures me that I yet have time to set my temporal affairs in order. And you, my dearest Bab, being chief part of ’em, I thought it well to mention this immediately to you. As for my spiritual affairs, old Paradise is positive that my soul is of so peculiar a colour that he recommends it to be scrubbed without delay. Thus I am taking the proper steps, you see.”

He laid his hand upon the Bible.

“’Tis no secret, my dearest Bab,” he said, “that Robert John, fifth Earl, your papa, never was an anchorite. He hath ta’en his fill of pleasure. He hath played his hazard, and with a zest both late and early; but now the candles sink, you see, and I believe they’ve called the carriage.” Again he laid his hand upon the Bible.

’Twas a very solemn moment, and his lordship’s words had plunged me in the deepest grief, but when he laid his hand upon that Testament a second time, it was as much as I could do to wear a decent gravity. For he was a very old barbarian.

“You see, child,” he continued, “that many years ago I took a professional opinion on this point. The Reverend Joseph Tooley, chaplain to the late lord, your grandpapa (I never felt the need for one myself), was always confident that there was hope for a sinner who repented. He used to say that he considered this saving clause a very capital idea on the part of the Almighty, as it permitted a certain degree of license in our generous youth. In fact, I can safely say that in my case it has been a decided boon, for my blood appears to be of a quality that will not cool as readily as another’s; indeed, it hath retained its youthful ardours to quite a middle age. Highly inconvenient for Robert John, fifth Earl, I can assure you, child, but for this most admirable foresight on the part of heaven.” The faint smile that went curling round the condemned man’s mouth was delicious to perceive. “For my idea has ever been to run my course and then repent. Well, I have now run my course, therefore let us see about repentance. I am about to moderate my port, and resign the pleasures of the table. My best stories I shall refrain from telling, and confine myself to those that would regale a bishop’s lady. But I want you, my charming Bab, to be very affectionate and kind towards your poor old papa; be filial, my love—extremely filial, for I will dispense—I’ve sworn to do it—with the lavish favours your angelic sex have always been so eager to bestow upon me. Yes, for my soul’s sake I must forbid ’em. But lord, what a fortitude I shall require!” This ancient heathen lifted up his eyes and sighed most killingly. “I am reading two chapters of the Bible daily, and I have also engaged a private chaplain, who starts his duties here on Monday week. But I think I’d better tell your ladyship”—with a wicked twinkle—“that he is fifty if he’s a day, and with no personal graces to recommend him. I was very careful on those points. For a young and comely parson where there’s daughters means invariably mésalliance, and I prefer to risk a permanent derangement in my soul than a mésalliance in my family.”

“You appear, my lord,” says I, flashing at him, “to entertain a singularly high opinion of my pride, to say nothing of my sense.”

“Tut, my dear person, tut!” says his lordship, wagging a yellow finger at me. “I’ve made a lifetime’s study of you dear creatures, and I know. You can no more resist an unctuous and insidious boy in bands and cassock than your tender old papa can resist a pair of eyes. Oh, I’ve seen it, child, seen it in a dozen cases—damn fine women too! And their deterioration has been tragical. Faith, a parson where there’s women is a most demoralising thing in nature.”

“’Pon my soul, my lord,” says I, in my courtliest manner, and adroitly misreading the opinion he expressed, “your own case is quite sufficient to destroy that theory, for you, my lord, are not the least ecclesiastical.”

“Faith, that’s true,” says he, and the old dog positively blushed with pleasure; “but had it been necessary for me to earn a livelihood I should certainly have gone into the Church. And while we are on matters theological I might say that I do believe that these strict practices will cheat Monsieur le Diable of my soul, as was my hope from the beginning.”

At this my lord could say no more. He burst into such a peal of laughter at his lifelong agility in this affair that the tears stepped from his eyes and turned the powder on his cheeks to paste.

Now I ever had allowed that the Earl, my papa, was the greatest man of my acquaintance. But it was not until this hour that I gauged the whole force and tenacity of his character. That a man should accept the sentence of his death so calmly, and thereupon prepare so properly to utilise his few remaining days in correcting the errors of his life, showed the depth of wisdom that was in his spirit. For he whose worldly business had been diplomacy now placed its particular genius at the service of his soul, that he might strike a bargain, as it were, between Heaven and the Prince of Darkness as to its eternal dwelling place.

“Howbeit this is simply of myself,” says he, when recovered of his mirth, “and it is of you, child, that I desire to speak. Before I go I must see you reasonably wed; beauty and high blood should be broken in and harnessed early, else it is prone to flick its heels and run away. Now, Bab, you have all the kingdom at your feet, they tell me. ’Tis a propitious hour; seize it, therefore, and make yourself a duchess with a hundred thousand pound. And farther, you have ever been my constant care, my pretty Bab, and I shall not be content unless I leave you at your ease.”

This consideration touched me.

“My lord,” says I, “I thank you for these tender thoughts. I fear I must die a spinster, though. For I will not wed a clothes-pole, I will not wed a snuff-box. A Man is as scarce, I vow, as the Philosopher’s Stone. So you must picture me, papa, an old maid of vinegar aspect, whose life is compounded of the nursing of cats and the brewing of caudles. Conceive your brilliant Bab, the handsomest wretch in the realm, who hath all the kingdom kissing her satin shoe, reduced to this in her later years! For I’ll warrant me there is not a Man in London.”

“Why, what is this?” cries out my lord, his eyebrows rising in surprise. “Is there not the Duke of——, with his town and country houses? Is he not a Privy Councillor? Hath he not the Garter? Hath he not a rent-roll, and would he not make a duchess of you any day you please?”

“My lord,” I answered, sadly, “I am unhappily cursed with a keen nose for a fool.”

He looked at me and smiled.

“He is a duke, my dear. But madam is a woman, therefore let me not attempt to understand her. But there is the Earl of H——, and the Hon. A——, and Mr. W——; indeed, every bachelor of station, lands, and pedigree in town.”

“Of which I am bitterly aware,” I sighed. “But I require a man, my lord, not a name and a suit of clothes.”

The delightful old barbarian did not apprehend my meaning, I am sure, but the secret of his reputation lay in the fact that he never let the world know that there was a subject in earth or heaven that he did not understand. When a topic travelled beyond the dominion of his mind, he preserved a melancholy silence, and contrived to appear as though the thing was too trivial to occupy his thoughts. But he changed the conversation at the earliest opportunity. The word “love” was to him the most mysterious monosyllable in the world. Wherefore he proceeded to speak about my bills, and said, in his charming way, that he did not mind how much they did amount to if I exhibited a mastery in the art of spending with grace and elegance.

“Now I see there is a yellow chaise,” said he, “and a yellow chaise I consider a trifle bourgeois, although my taste is perhaps a thought severe. A purple chaise, or vermilion even, hath a certain reticence and dignity, but yellow is enough to startle all the town.”

“True, papa,” says I with animation, “and I chose it for that purpose. I adore display; I must be looked at twice; I must perish, I suppose, if the fops did not quiz me in the most monstrous manner every time I took the Mall. When I die, let it be done to slow music, and I mean to have a funeral at the Abbey if I can. Why, do you know, sir, that the first country town I entered in this wondrous chaise, a tale was got about that the Empress of All the Russias had arrived? ’Twas a moment in my life I can assure you when I danced lightly from that vehicle, and threw smiles to the mob that kept the entrance to the inn. Pomp and circumstance are the blood of me. Dress me in ermine that I may become a show, and provoke huzzahs in every city! And if I must have a man, my lord, let him be a person of character and ideas to cheer me when I’m weary.” I ended in a peal of mirth.

“Hum! character and ideas.” My lord scratched his chin with a face of comical perplexity. “Would not position and a reasonable pin-money be still more apposite to your case, my dearest person? And anyway,” says he, “may I be in my grave ere my daughter Bab marries anywise beneath her. Character and ideas!”

“Amen to that, my lord!” cries I, with a deal of fervour.

Thereupon I left the Earl to his light reflection and his piety. My heart was heavy with the knowledge of his approaching end; but there was still a period in which I might enjoy the inimitable charm of his society. Passing from his chamber, I encountered my aunt upon the stairs. The briskness of her step, and the animation of her face, alike surprised me, as the dowager usually required nothing short of a cow, a mouse, or a suspicion of unorthodoxy to arouse her.

“Do not delay me, Barbara,” she said, brushing past me. “I must see the Earl immediately.”

I did not venture to impede her with my curiosity, for my aunt is a dreadful engine when once she is set in motion.

Coming to the foot of the stairs, however, I chanced to stray into the reception parlour to find a comfit box I had mislaid.

“My dear Lady Barbara!” a great voice hailed me, as soon as my face had appeared within the door.

Raising my eyes I saw that I was in the presence of a town acquaintance, Captain Grantley. A look assured me that he was here, not in the social capacity of a friend, but in pursuance of his military duties, inasmuch that he wore the red coat of his regiment, and was furnished with a full accoutrement. Greetings exchanged, he said: “Lady Barbara, I am here to interview the Earl on a matter of some gravity. Nothing less, in fact, than that the Marshal at Newcastle is transmitting one of the prisoners lately ta’en, and a very dangerous and important rebel, to Newgate, and as the straightest way is across your moors, I am come here to gain the Earl’s permission to billet eight men and horses on him for this evening.”

“I have no doubt he will grant it readily,” says I, “for are we not aware, my dear Captain, that my papa, the Earl, is the most hopeless Hanoverian in the world?”

“Yet permit me to say, madam,” says the Captain, “that a lady of your sense and penetration I should judge to be quite as hopelessly correct as is her father.”

’Twas a soldier’s way of turning compliments, you will observe, and of so coarse and ill-contrived a nature that I could not resist a reprimand.

“’Tis the most palpable mistake, sir,” I replied; “for utterly as Captain Grantley and my father are in the right, I, sir, am as utterly in error. For, Captain, I would have you know that I am a very rebel, and have shed many a tear for Charlie.”

I smartly beat the carpet with my boot, and gave my head its most indignant altitude. This exhibition of sentiment was but the fruit of my natural contrariety however, as I certainly never had shed a tear for Charlie, and was not likely to. Indeed, I had not a care for politics whatever, and for my life could not have said whether Sir Robert Walpole was a Tory or a Whig. But it amused me mightily to see the deep dismay that overtook the Captain, while he tried to gauge the magnitude of the error of which I had attainted him so falsely. And observing how tenderly my rebuke was felt, I was led to recall some town matters in connection with this gentleman. And considering all things appertaining to the Captain’s case, it was not remarkable that I should arrive at the conclusion that though it might be true enough that he was ostensibly arranging for the billets of men and horses for the night, he had also made this business the occasion of a visit to Barbara Gossiter, to whom he had been upon his knees in a London drawing-room.

CHAPTER II.
THE REBEL APPEARS.

We continued to talk with aimless propriety, until the Captain fetched suddenly so huge a sigh out of the recesses of his waistcoat that it called for an heroic repression of myself to wear a proper gravity of countenance.

“Sir, you are not unwell, I hope,” says I, with perturbation.

He saw at once the chance provided for him, and laying his hand profoundly on his heart, was on the point, I do not doubt, of making one more declaration of his undying passion, when the entrance of my aunt curtailed the scene abruptly, and robbed me of the entertainment I had planned.

My aunt conducted the Captain to the Earl, and an hour later that officer went forth to his commander with the permission of my father to lodge the soldiers at Cleeby for a night. It was in the evening at seven o’clock that the prisoner was brought. I did not witness his arrival, as I happened to be dressing at that time, yet none the less I felt an interest in it, for, to say the least, a real live rebel savours of adventures, and those are what the tame life of woman seldom can provide. The Captain having installed his men in the servants’ part, was good enough to come and sup with us, and was able in a measure to enliven the tedium of that meal. The gentlemen talked politics, of course, and I was able to gather from their words that the Pretender Charles was already in full retreat, and that his army was like to be presently scattered on the earth.

“He’ll be flying for his precious life, sir, over hill and moor with our redcoats on his heels,” the Captain says, with an enthusiasm that made his face sparkle in the candle light. And I thought this ardour so well adorned him that he appeared to a prettier advantage as a soldier than as a man of fashion.

Somehow I could not dismiss a certain interest that their military conversation had aroused. Besides, the present circumstances had a novelty, as to-night we were actually involved in the stress of war.

“A rebel must be a very dangerous person, I should fear,” I said; “even the sound of rebel hath a spice of daring and the devil in it.”

“Highly dangerous,” says the Captain.

“Captain, do you know,” I said, seized with a desire, “that as I have never seen a rebel I should dearly like to have a peep at one of these desperate creatures. ’Twould be an experience, you know; besides, when a fresh species of wild animal is caught, all the town is attracted to its cage.”

“Madam, I would not deny you anything,” the Captain bowed, “but you have only to look into the mirror to behold a rebel of the deepest dye.”

“But not a dangerous one,” I smiled.

“Ah, dear lady,” says the Captain, with one hand straying to his heart, “’tis only for us men to say how dangerous you are.”

“Grantley,” says the Earl, my papa—and I wish this generation could have seen how elegant he was, even in his age—“if every rebel was as dangerous a one as madam is, there would be a change of dynasty mighty soon.”

Afterwards we had piquet together, but wearying of the game, I reminded the Captain of my wish. Without more ado he put me in a hood and cloak, the night being dark and keen, and threatening to snow, and took me to the prisoner on his arm. We bore a lantern with us, otherwise nothing had been visible, for the moon had not appeared yet. The poor rebel we found reposing on straw in one of the stables, but with even less of comfort than is allowed to horses. One of the troopers had mounted guard outside the door, his bayonet fixed, and himself leaning on the panel. He saluted us, and looked as cordial as his rank allowed; but his strict figure, with grim night and naked steel about it, sent a shiver through my wraps. You read of war in histories, and think it adventurous and fine, but when cold bayonet looks upon you from the dark, and you know that it is there to hold some defenceless person to his doom, the reality is nothing like so happy as the dream.

The Captain set back the wooden shutter, and held the light up high enough for me to peer within. There the rebel was, with gyves upon his wrists; whilst a rope was passed through the manger-ring, and also through his manacles. Thus he was secured strictly in his prison, but his fetters had length enough to permit him to stretch his miserable body on the straw that was mercifully provided. He had availed himself of this, and now lay in a huddle in it, fast asleep. At the first glance I took him to be precisely what he was, a young and handsome lad, moulded slightly with an almost girlish tenderness of figure, his countenance of a most smooth and fair complexion, without a hair upon it, while to read the kind expression of his mien, he was, I’m sure, as gentle as a cherubim.

When the Captain laid the keen light fully on him, he was smiling gently in his sleep, and, I doubt not, he was dreaming of his mother or his lady.

“Why, Captain!” I exclaimed, with an indignant heat that made my companion laugh, “call you this a dangerous rebel? Why, this is but a child, and a pretty child withal. ’Tis monstrous, Captain, to thus maltreat a boy. And surely, sir, you may release the poor lad of these horrid manacles?”

My voice thus incautiously employed aroused the sleeper so immediately that I believe he almost caught the import of my speech. At least, he suddenly shook his chains and turned his head to face the thread of lantern-light. Our eyes encountered, and such a power of honest beauty prevailed in his that my brain thrilled with joy and pity for their loveliness, and here, for the first time in my all-conquering career, my own gaze quailed and drooped before another’s. Its owner was but a dirty, chained, and tattered rebel, whose throat rose bare above his ragged shirt, and whose mop of hair seemed never to have known a law for the best part of its years; a vagabond, in fact, of no refinement or propriety, yet when his bright, brave eyes leapt into mine like flame, the sympathetic tears gushed from me, and I was fain to turn away. The Captain divined my agitation, perhaps because my shoulders shook, or perchance he saw my cheeks a-glistening, for he let the lantern down and led me to the house in a most respectful silence. Yet every step we traversed in the darkness, the star-like look of that unhappy lad was making havoc of my heart.

When we were returned to the brightness of the candles, and I had thrown aside my cloak and hood and had recommenced the game, I turned towards the Captain to enquire:

“Captain, I suppose there will be many years of prison for that poor lad?”

“Dear me, no!” the Captain said; “he is to be interrogated at the Tower, which will merely take a day or two, and then it’s Tyburn Tree.”

“What, they mean to hang him?” says I, in horror.

“Yes, to hang him,” says the Captain.

“But he’s so young,” I said, “and he looks so harmless and so innocent. They will never hang him, Captain, surely.”

“I think they will,” the Captain said; “and wherefore should they not? He is a very arrant rebel; he has conducted the business of the Prince in a most intrepid manner, and he further holds a deal of knowledge that the Government have determined to wring from him if they can.”

“Ah me!” I sighed, “it is a very cruel thing.”

For here his lovely glance returned upon me, and it made me sad to think of it and his bitter doom. And, at least, this lad, even in ignominious tatters and captivity, contrived to appear both handsome and impressive, which is a point beyond all the fops of London, despite their silks and laces and their eternal artifice.

“Anyway,” I said, “this rebel interests me, Captain. Come, tell me all about him now. Has he a birth, sir?”

“Not he,” the Captain said; “merely the son of a Glasgow baker, or some person of that character.”

The Captain, who had, of course, been born, said this with a half triumphant air, as though this was a coup-de-grâce, and had, therefore, killed the matter. And I will confess that here was a shock to the web of romance I was weaving about this charming, melancholy lad. Even I, that had a more romantic temper than the silliest miss at an academy, felt bound to draw the line at the sons of bakers.

“But at least, Captain,” I persisted with, I suppose, the tenacity of my sex, “you can recall some purple thread in his disposition or behaviour that shall consort with the poetic colour in which my mind hath painted him? He must be brave, I’m sure? Or virtuous? Or wise? But bravery for choice, Captain, for a deed of courage or a noble enterprise speaks to the spirit of us women like a song. Come, Captain, tell me, he is brave?”

“He is a baker’s son, my Lady Barbara.”

“I heard once of a chimney sweeper who embraced death in preference to dishonour,” was my rejoinder. “Must I command you, Captain?”

“The whim of madam is the law of every man that breathes,” says the soldier, with a not discreditable agility. “And as for the courage of your rebel, the worst I can say of it is this: he hath been told to choose between death and the betrayal of his friends. He hath chosen death.”

“Bravo!” was the applause I gave the boy; “and now that you have proved this pretty lad to be worthy of a thought, I should like his name.”

“He is called Anthony Dare,” the Captain said.

“A good name, a brave name, and far too good to perish at Tyburn in the cart,” says I, whilst I am sure my eyes were warmly sparkling.

The Captain and his lordship laughed at this fervour in my face, and were good enough to toast the dazzling light that was come into it.

Now in the matter of this rebel certain odd passages befell, and I am about to retail the inception of them to you. One thing is certain in reviewing these very strange affairs from the distance years have given them. It is that in 1746, in the full meridian of my beauty and renown, my lively spirit was in such excess that ’twas out of all proportion to my wisdom. A creature whose life is a succession of huzzahs hath never a reverend head nor one capable of appreciating consequences. Therefore you are not to betray surprise when you are told that I had no sooner bade my aunt and the gentlemen good evening, towards eleven of the clock, than I gave the rein to mischief, and set about to have a little sport. Every step I ascended to my chamber my mind was on that condemned rebel in the stable with the gyves upon his wrists. I felt myself utterly unable to dismiss the look he had given me, and yet was inclined to be piqued about it too. For you must understand that his eyes had infringed a right possessed by those of Barbara Gossiter alone. But the more I thought about this lad the less I could endure the idea of what his doom must be. Might not an effort be put forth on his behalf? To make one might be to extend the life of a fellow creature, and also to colour the dull hues of mine own with a brisk adventure, for, lord, what a weary existence is a woman’s! In the act of turning the lamp up in my bedroom I came to a decision, and half a minute afterwards, when my maid, Mrs. Polly Emblem, appeared to unrobe me and to dress my hair, she found me dancing round the chamber in pure cheerfulness of heart, and rippling with laughter also, to consider how I proposed to cheat and to befool half a score right worthy persons, amongst whom were Captain Grantley and the Earl, my father.

“Let me kiss you, my Emblem of lightness and dispatch,” I cried to the mistress of the robes; “for to-night I am as joyous as a blackbird in a cherry tree that hath no business to be there. I am going to be in mischief, Emblem,” and to relieve my merry feelings I went dancing round the room again.

Happily or unhappily, sure I know not which, this maid of mine was not one of those staid and well-trained owls whose years are great allies to their virtue, whom so many of my friends affect. One of these would perhaps have managed to restrain me from so hazardous a deed. Still, I’m not too positive of that, for I have an idea that when my Lady Barbarity was giddy with her triumphs and good blood few considerations could have held her from an act which she at all desired to perform. Certainly Mrs. Polly Emblem was not the person to impose restraints upon her mistress in the most devious employ, being herself the liveliest soubrette you would discover this side of the Channel, with a laugh that was made of levity, and who was as ripe for an adventure as the best.

The first thing I did was to post Emblem on the landing, that she might bring me word as soon as the candles were out below, and the gentlemen retired. Meanwhile I made some preparation. I stirred the waning fire up, and then went in stealth to an adjoining room and procured from a cupboard there a kettleful of water, some coffee, and a pot wherein to brew it. The water had just begun to hiss upon the blaze when Emblem reappeared with the information that the lights were out at last, and that the gentlemen had ascended to their chambers. I bade her brew a good decoction, while I rummaged several of the drawers in my wardrobe to discover a few articles highly imperative to my scheme. To begin with I took forth a potion in a packet, a powerful sedative that was warranted to send anything to sleep; the others consisted of a vizard, a hooded cloak, and last, if you please, a pistol, balls, and powder. These latter articles I know do not usually repose in a lady’s chamber, but then my tastes always were of the quaintest character, and often formerly, when my life had been so tame that its weariness grew almost unendurable, I have taken a ridiculous delight in cleaning and priming this dread weapon with my own hands, and speculating on its power with a foolish but a fearful joy. Verily idleness is full of strange devices.

“Now, Emblem,” says I, when the coffee was prepared, “let me see you put this powder in the pot, and as you always were an absent-minded sort of wench, ’twere best that you forgot that you had done so.”

“Very good, my lady,” Emblem says, with a wonderfully sagacious look. And immediately she had poured the contents of the packet in the coffee. I took up the pot and said, with an air of notable severity:

“Of course, this coffee is as pure as possible, and could not be doctored any way? I think that is so, Emblem?”

“Oh! lord yes, ma’am; it is indeed,” cries Emblem the immaculate.

“Well,” says I, “so soon as we can be positive that the gentlemen are abed, and at their ease in slumber’s lap, the fun shall get afoot.”

We sat down by the hearth for the thereabouts of half an hour, that they might have ample time to attain this Elysian state. Later I wrapped the admirable Emblem up the very model of a plotter, and despatched her to the sentry on guard at the stable door, with the compliments of her mistress and a pot of coffee, to keep the cold out.

“For I’m sure, poor man,” I piously observed, “it must be perishing out there in a frosty, wintry night of this sort.”

“It must, indeed, my lady,” Emblem says, with the gravity of a church; “and had I not better wait while he drinks it, ma’am, and bring the empty pot back? And had I not better put my carpet slippers on, and steal out carefully and without committing the faintest sound when I unbolt the kitchen door?”

“Emblem,” cries I, dealing her a light box on the ears, “to-night I will discard this darling of a gown I’m wearing. To-morrow it is yours.”

Faith, my Emblem ever was a treasure, if only because she was not subject ever to any bother in her soul. But when she had gone upon her errand to the soldier at the stable door, and I was left alone with my designs, for the first time meditation came, and a most unwelcome feeling of uneasiness crept on me. There was a certain danger in the thing I was determined to attempt; but then, I argued, the pleasure that any sport affords must primarily spring from the risks involved in its pursuit. That is unless one is a Puritan. Her greatest enemy has never accused my Lady Barbarity of that, however. Yet my mind still ran upon that grim guardian of the tight-kept rebel, and again I saw the night about him, and his fixed bayonet glaring at me through the gloom. Then for the second time that evening did I convince myself that adventure in the fairy-books and Mr. Daniel Defoe is one thing, but that at twelve o’clock of a winter’s night their cold and black reality is quite another. But here the imps of mirth woke up and tickled me, till again I fell a-rippling with glee. They proudly showed me half-a-score right worthy men nonplussed and mocked by the wit of woman. ’Twould make a pretty story for the town; and my faith! that was a true presentiment. But the long chapter that was in the end excited to my dear friends of St. James’s I would a’ paid a thousand pounds to have remained untold. But just now the mirth of the affair was too irresistible, and I laughed all cowardice to scorn. Besides, I remembered the wondrous gaze of poor Mr. Anthony Dare, that sweetly handsome youth, that desperate rebel, that chained and tattered captive, whose fate was to be a dreadful death upon the Tree. I remembered him, and although pity is the name that I resolutely refuse to have writ down as the motive for this merry plot, as all the world knows that I never had a heart in which to kindle it; but remembering that lad, I say, straight had I done with indecision, for I sprang up smartly, with a rude word for the King. And I make bold to declare that she who pulled the blinds aside an instant later to gaze into the night was the most determined rebel that ever grinned through hemp.

CHAPTER III.
THE REBEL DISAPPEARS.

I saw at once that the moon was come, but for my enterprise’s sake I wished it absent. Here she was, however, framed in cloud, with a star or two about her, and a very tell-tale eye. The roof of the woods freezing across the park was a mass of dusky silver that her beams had thrown, and so bold and sharp her glow was on every twig that slept that individual things stood forth and stared at me, and seemed endowed with the hue of noon in the middle of the night. And I am sure the hour was laid for an adventure, and crying for a deed. The light of the moon was made of pale romance, and bade the princess bare her casement, and the minstrel on the sward to sing. This was the disposition of my thoughts as I looked out of the window, and I was so captive to their poetry that a soft touch upon my shoulder startled me as greatly as a blow. I glanced round quickly and found Emblem at my side.

“He hath drained it to the dregs, my lady,” says she, brandishing the coffee-pot.

“Faith! you startled me,” says I. “Emblem, your foot is lighter than a cat’s.”

“’Tis almighty cold under the moon, ma’am,” says the maid, “and you would be well advised, I think, to put a stouter garment on.”

“Ha! sly minx,” says I, “you fear that my employment will be the enemy of soft, white satin, and that it may take a soil or two.”

I followed her advice, however, and got into a winter dress, and sent her meanwhile to seek a file in the region of the kitchen. This was a tool I had forgot, but highly necessary, you will believe, when a pair of stout handcuffs are to be encountered. I dressed and cloaked myself with care, and pulled two pairs of stockings on, for slippers on a frosty night are the tenderest protection. I had just perched the vizard on my nose when Emblem brought the file. I picked the pistol up, set it at her head, and made her deliver up that file with a degree of instancy which hath not been excelled by the famous Jerry Jones, of Bagshot. Thereupon I loaded that dark weapon, pocketed its adjuncts, and, leaving the faithful Emblem white and trembling with the excitement of the hour, set out upon a deed whose inception was so simple, yet whose complex development was destined to commit a great havoc in the lives of several, and to change entirely the current of my own.

Had I foreseen these ultimate occurrences, I should not have set out at one o’clock of winter moonlight in the spirit of an urchin on a holiday. Should I have set out at all? Faith! I cannot say, for the more beautiful a woman is the less restraint hath reason on her. But this I’m sure of: had my Lady Barbarity only known the strange form the business of that night was to take for herself and others, she had certainly said her prayers before she embarked upon it.

Two clocks were telling the hour together in the hall when I rode down the broad backs of the bannisters and attained the mat below without a sound, this seeming the quietest and most expeditious way of overcoming the obstinacy of stairs, who creak at no time no louder than at one o’clock at night—that is, unless it is at two. I glided across the tiles and entered the servants’ part without so much as waking up a beetle, such is the virtue that resides in dainty slippers, wedded to dainty toes. Emblem had left one of the scullery doors unbarred, and through this I stole forth to the stable. The air was still as any spectre, and I observed its sacred calm so implicitly that a fox actually stalked across the yard, not twenty paces off, with his nose upon the ground, inquiring for poultry.

I was much too wise to take the stable from the front, but by dodging round divers of the kitchen offices, I was able to outflank it, and could peep upon the sentry by the door under cover of a friendly wall. Every beam of moonlight seemed gathered on that bayonet. When that naked steel looked at me thus, and seemed to say “Come on if you dare!” the spirit of my mischief was pretty badly dashed, and began to seek a pretext to retire. There was Emblem, though, and who shall endure the secret laughter of her maid? But while I paused, a gentle snore crept out into the frost and soon was mingling with my ears. The coffee had performed. In an instant what a lion I became! How promptly I stepped up to the sentry’s side and took that bayonet from him, for I could not be myself so long as that blade menaced me. I ran across the yard and cast it in an ashpit—’twas the utmost indignity I could bestow upon that weapon—and counted the feat a triumph for wit over insolence and power. Mr. Sentry had been drugged so heavily and thoroughly that he was now sleeping more deeply than the earth, as I doubt whether even morning would have waked him. The posture of his body, though, was most unfriendly to the scheme I had prepared. His head was jammed in the top corner against one door post, whilst his heels resided in the bottom corner of the other. The misfortune was that his ribs were in such a situation that they covered up the keyhole. Now unless I could obtain a fair access to that, my labours were in vain. But when engaged on a dangerous escapade, ’tis a sterile mind that lacks for an expedient. Therefore I gave back a yard or two into the stable’s shadow, and looking up, saw precisely what I had hoped to find. Our stables I had remembered were of two storeys, the second chamber being an open hayloft, which was only covered by the roof, the sides being composed of rails alone, and set wide enough apart for persons of an ordinary stature to squeeze through with ease. How to reach it was the problem, as the floor of it was suspended ten feet from the ground. It did not remain a problem long, for I stole to a disused coach house a little distance off, and groped among the odds and ends there collected for a ladder. The brightness of the moon permitted me to find without the least ado a short one, exactly corresponding to my needs. I bore it to the prison, laid it against the coping stone of the second storey, and hopped thereon as lightly as a robin hops on rime. I was soon at the top and through the bars, and battling with the armies of hay and straw assembled on the other side, that strove with might to thrust out all intruders. This one was rather more than they could manage though. Having made my footing good inside the loft, I began to search for one of those trap-doors that are employed to push the fodder through into the mangers underneath. This involved a deal of patient exploration, for it was very little light that penetrated this encumbered place. But I was now so eager and so confident that I was fit for deeds of every character, and I do not doubt at all that had my task been to find a lost needle amongst this endless mass of provender, I should have discovered it in less than half an hour. Thus coming at last in the course of my search to a spot well cleared of straw, one of my slippers trod upon an iron ring, and, much as I regretted the pain that act involved, I rejoiced the more, since I had stumbled on the trap. Getting my fingers to this ring, I tugged the door up, and then prepared to scramble through the hole into the manger. I calculated that the distance I had to make was a comparatively short one. However, I was compelled to be cautious in the matter of the hayrack, as should I become involved in cages of that sort, I must experience many a stubborn obstacle in getting out again. I should like the reader to conceive at this point, if he is able, of Lady Barbara Gossiter, the reigning Toast, whose imperious charms had played the deuce with every embroidered waistcoat in the town; I say I want you to conceive, dear Mr. Reader, if you have imagination equal to the task, this exquisite young person scrambling through trap-doors into mangers in the middle of the night! Yes, it staggers you, and you say it is impossible. I quite agree with that, and confess that when I started on this mischief, or this deed of mercy, call it what you will (for I certainly will not pretend to be better than I am), I had not included feats like these in my adventure. Now I had not, unfortunately, the faintest claim to be called an acrobat, but when the hounds have got scent, and the whole field is in full cry, one does not tarry for the widest and greenest pond, or the quickest set of fences. Therefore clinging tightly to the trap, I lowered myself with insidious care, inch by inch, into the manger. ’Twas not possible to perform an act of this sort without committing some little noise. Thus the poor lad pinioned to the manger heard the creaks of my descent.

“What the devil!” he exclaimed, starting up as I could tell by the brisk rustling of his straw.

“No, child, not the devil,” I says, “a person handsomer by far. But hush! lad, hush! I am here to save your neck.”

He strangled a natural cry at this injunction, though an emotion of surprise caused him to strain unconsciously against his bonds. The rattle of the manger ring to which the unhappy creature was secured cut me keenly to the quick. They prate of the cruelty of us women, but I wish some of these men would consider their own gifts in this direction, ere they tax us for our drawing-room barbarities. Now Captain Grantley, in his haste to take me from the window on the occasion of my visit earlier in the night, had forgotten to reshutter it, and his omission was now a friend we could not well have done without. It let a lively flood of moonlight in, which had the cunning to show me not only my precise locality, but how one was affected to the other, the work that was before me, and the fairest means by which it could be done.

At first the poor prisoner dare not accept the testimony of his eyes, nor could he trust his ears.

“I—I cannot understand,” he said.

“Men never can,” I whispered. “But if we are silent, speedy, and ingenious I think I can save you from Tyburn, sir.”

For these words he invoked God’s blessing on me, which was quite a new experience, as the invocations of his sex are much the other way in my case. Then he tried to pierce my vizard with his eyes, and then rose with slow pain to his feet and pushed his handcuffed wrists towards me, for he had seen me take forth the file. I attacked at once the stout chains by which they were clinched together, and in which the cord was looped. ’Twas no light employ, let me assure you. The file rasped without surcease on the steel for the best part of an hour, and I put such an energy in the task that long before I had bitten through the gyve my fingers ached most bitterly, and I could feel the sweat shining in my face. Whoever it was that had put those fetters on, ’twas plain he was no tyro in the art. But that winter night, had my business been to reduce a castle with my single hand I could have razed it to the earth, I think. Therefore, at last I overcame the stubborn bonds, and in something less than a minute afterwards the desperate rebel had all his members free. I am not sure but what a bond was forged about his heart though. For in the stern assaults I had directed on his chains the spring that held my vizard fell away, the patch of velvet dropped into the straw, and lo! at the lifting of my eyes, I stood unmasked before him. And perhaps I was not sorry for it, since—the charming fellow!—no sooner did he discover that his hands were out of durance than he uttered a low cry of pleasure and of gratitude, and when he regarded his deliverer his eyes became so bright that they must have been sensible of joy. But I was determined that in this present instance, no matter how much beyond the common, my native power should yet assert itself. Wherefore I drew myself to my fullest inches, tipped up my chin and throat a little to let him see what snow and dimples are, and what a provocation poets sometimes undergo. Then I met those fine eyes of his fully with mine own. On this occasion ’twas his that did recoil. Nor was this at all remarkable, since Mr. Horace Walpole had informed me but a week before, for the fifteenth time, that if these my orbs should confront the sun at any time, the sun would be diminished and put out. Thus the rebel’s own high look yielded reluctantly to mine, and I judged by the twitching of his mouth that ’twas as much as he could do to suppress his wonder and his thankfulness. But he did in lieu of that a thing that was even yet more graceful.

Without a word he fell on his knees before the feet of his releaser, and when I deigned to give my hand to him that he might touch it with his lips, as I thought his delicious silence not unworthy of reward, my every finger thrilled beneath the one burning tear that issued from his fine, brave eyes and plashed upon them softly.

“Madam,” he said then, with his voice all passion-broken and shaking so that it must have given him an agony to speak, “a word can never thank you. May I thank you some time otherwise?”

The moonlight was much our friend in this strange passage, here amongst the straw of a cold, gloomy, and unclean stable at an unheard-of hour of night. Pouring through the window it wrapped our figures in a sweet vague hue that was as beautiful as it was subdued. It had a mellow holiness about it too, I thought.

We lost scarce a minute, though, in matters of this character. There was much to do if the rebel’s escape was to be effected and him to be hence a mile or two ere his flight was known. Wherefore I commanded him to leave his knees at once, and made him do so brisker than perhaps otherwise he might have done by saying that his attitude was extremely laughable. Next minute I had committed the loaded pistol to his care, and had informed him that as the door of the ground storey was locked and a sleeping sentry was huddled against it, egress was cut off utterly thereby. I proposed, however, that we should get out along the route by which I had arrived—namely, by climbing up into the manger, scrambling through the trap into the loft, and descending thence by the ladder I had left.

I was the first to make the trial, as I should naturally require the most assistance in ascending to the second storey, and preferred to be pushed up by the heels from underneath than to be hauled up by the arms from overhead. ’Twas here that I was glad that the sun was not about yet, since I do not doubt that in my attempt to overcome that ugly trap, I was guilty of showing off a trifle more of petticoat and stocking than consists with the gentility of Saint James’s Park. Still, I was willing to pay a reasonable price for these present delightful issues. Alas! I did not know that I was only at the threshold of this affair, and that those that lay ahead were to hold more of terror than enchantment.

We soon managed to swing ourselves from the manger to the loft, and when we got amongst the straw I fell to further instructing my companion. It was of the first importance that he should have a horse, and I proposed to present him with Rebecca, a blood mare of my own, who was stabled near at hand. However, as we were to discover all too soon, we had reckoned without our host considerably.

Being the better acquainted with our bearings, I went ahead and led the way through the hay and straw, and in the sequel ’twas quite as well that I was foremost. For I was just come to the place where the ladder rested, with Mr. Anthony pressing on my heels, when:

“Down, sir, into the straw!” I whispered, and smartly as that command was breathed, I was but just in time.

A stream of light rising slowly higher from the ladder was the cause of this alarm. The next thing that I saw was a lantern swinging from the topmost rung, and immediately behind it the face of Captain Grantley outlined dimly in the gloom. His eyes were fixed steadily on mine, yet the keen though quiet smile of greeting with which he met my look, and it must have been a guilty one, appeared to me a miracle of breeding and propriety.

I had to admire this soldier. Not the quivering of a muscle, not the quaking of a tone informed me of the depth of his astonishment. As for me, after the first paralysis of bewilderment I met his gaze with the large, wide look of innocence. I understand that I have a genius for dissembling. But lord! ’twas needed now. I had gone so far in the affair that I could not now withdraw. Besides, I had not the inclination. The lad was handsome, never a doubt of that. He might be the son of a baker, nevertheless he promised to make an extremely proper man. Thus I felt my heart grow small with fear, while we continued to survey each other with an ingenious and smiling care. As for my poor terrified companion, I could tell by the soft rustling of straw behind me that he was disposing his body as far beyond the ken of that lantern and the pair of eyes that were the background to it as his situation would permit.

At first the imperturbability of the Captain’s mien put me in some hope that he had not as yet suspected the presence of his prisoner. But he contrived to alarm as greatly as he reassured, since he pitched his voice in the very key of drawling languor that only the fops of Kensington routs and drawing-rooms employ.

“Lord! my Lady Barbara, a magnificent evening, don’t you think?” says he.

“Do you suppose I would be out of my bed enjoying it unless it was, my dearest Captain?” says I, with a countenance of the most simple girlishness in the world.

The trembling prisoner burrowed the deeper in the straw.

Now it would have been a perfect piece of comedy, had not that poor lad been breathing so hard and quick behind me. His life was suspended on a hair, and this he knew, and I knew also. Otherwise I should have enjoyed the acting of this play in a fashion that my jaded appetite seldom enjoys anything. Therefore I continued to regard the Captain with a gravely whimsical look; but if he twitched an eyelid, altered the position of a finger, or shifted the altitude an inch at which the lantern hung, I began to speculate upon the fact, and wrote it in my heart. We played a game of cat and mouse, and for once the Captain was the cat. Conceive me the grey and frightened little mouse, trying to dodge the deathly paw that any instant might descend and mutilate it.

“Captain,” says I, “are you also interested deeply in the study of astronomy?”

“Astronomy!” cries he, “why astronomy?”

He was a wonderfully clever cat, but trembling little mousie had got him, by her cunning ways, a trifle off his guard you see.

“Why, my dearest man,” says I, putting a world of surprise into my tone lest the moonlight should not properly reflect the amount that was inserted in my face, “do you suppose for an instant now that a woman wholly in possession of her wits would quit a warm bed at three o’clock of a winter’s night to gaze at a full moon from a hay loft if a question of the heavenly bodies had not summoned her. Do you think for a moment, sir, that I am here without a reason? Or rank somnambulism you may consider it?”

You would have laughed at the amount of indignant heat, as though I were hurt most tenderly, that I contrived to instil into my accents.

“Oh dear no, dear Lady Barbara!” says the horrid creature as silkily as possible; “that you are here without a reason I do not for a moment think. You misjudge me there, dear lady.”

Captain Grantley was become the devil! I fairly raked his smiling face with the fierceness of my eyes, but when they were driven from it by the simplicity of his look, it was smiling still, yet inscrutable as the night in which we stood. His language was so ordered that it might mean everything; on the contrary it might mean nothing. This was the distracting part. The man spoke in such an honest, unpremeditated fashion that who should suspect that he knew anything at all? But why was he here? And why could at least two interpretations be put upon every word he uttered? These the ruminations of a guilty mind!

Hereabouts an idea regaled me. If I could but coax the Captain up into the loft, it would leave the ladder free. The prisoner then might make a dash for liberty, and if he had an athlete’s body and sound wind and limbs to serve him in his flight, all was not yet lost, and he had still a chance of life.

“Captain,” says I, taking a bearing cautiously, “is the supposition right that a matter of the heavenly bodies hath also brought you into the night at this unpropitious season?”

“Well, scarcely,” says the Captain. “’Tis my duty, madam.”

That word in its solemnity made me start. And it was spoken in a voice so pregnant and so deep that it frightened the trembling prisoner too. The violence of his emotion caused him to stir uneasily, and make the straw crack.

“Dear me!” I cried, “did you hear that mouse?” And I gathered my skirts up in my horror, and huddled my ankles one against the other in the extremity of fear.

“A mouse?” the Captain says; “must have been a very big one, dear lady. Say a rat now; liker a rat, I’m thinking.”

“Oh no,” I shivered, “’twas a mouse, I’m positive. I felt his little tail against my shoe. I have no fear of rats—but a mouse, it is a frightful creature.”

“That shoe must be highly sensitive, dear lady,” says the Captain, with a laugh and holding down the light. “Ah! I see that shoe is a carpet slipper. A carpet slipper on a frosty night. How odd!”

I repeat, the Captain was become the devil.

“Odd? They are indeed,” says I. “That careless maid of mine actually crammed my feet in her haste into two rights instead of left and right. But a carpet slipper is a very elastic article, you know.”

“Very,” says the Captain, “and very secret also.”

“I should think it is,” says I, with an air of simple candour. “I would not use one else. You see my papa, the Earl, objects to these moonlight trips of mine. I thus use carpet slippers that he shall not hear me pass his door or walk across the hall. And I must implore you, sir, not to betray me in this matter.”

Here I set such a wistful, pleading gaze upon the Captain that it nearly knocked him backwards from the ladder.

“My dearest lady!” and he laid his hand upon his heart.

Meanwhile I had not forgotten my design.

“I daresay,” says I, “you would like to have one glimpse, sir, of Luna and her satellites. I have an apparatus with me. See, here’s my telescope. A little darling of a creature, is it not?”

Twisting half round to where the prisoner was, I began to fumble in my pocket for it. Of course I must bend my head to do so.

“When he leaves the ladder,” says I to the lad, in the softest whisper ever used, “leap out and down it like the wind; then it’s neck and heels to Scotland!”

Thereupon I took the file forth from my cloak, and so disposed my hands about it that in the insufficient light it became a very creditable telescope. I fitted the point into my eye, and jutted forth the handle with great nicety.

“Venus is in trine,” says I, with this strange telescope trained upon the stars.

“And how is Mars to-night?” says the Captain, with a gallant interest.

“Mars is out of season, sir,” says I. “He is at no advantage. But Saturn and some others are wonderfully bright. Come up and gaze, sir. ’Twill interest you rarely, I am certain, and I have here the finest little instrument that was ever fashioned by the artifice of Italy; besides, the situation of my observatory is most admirably good.”

But the very watchful cat upon the ladder betrayed no disposition to come up and hunt minutely for the mouse.

“If you will lend me the telescope,” says he, “I think I shall find my present station equally excellent for the purposes of observation.”

When he uttered the phrases “for the purposes of observation,” he looked as simple as a child. But I had a desire to strike him from the ladder all the same. Not by a single word had he let me know as yet whether design or accident had brought him of all places to this particular ladder at this particular hour. Long as I had fenced he was as inscrutable as his solitaire. I was not wiser in one instance than when I had begun. Yet I was entitled to a guess, and alas! it was a gloomy one.

“Captain Grantley,” says I, with a foot-tap of petulance, “I have invited you to my observatory.”

“In the middle of the night,” says he. It was so deftly couched that for my life I was not certain whether it was intended for a stinging insult or a very neat evasion. But though forced to admire a hit so delicate and so palpable, I was extremely angry, too, for circumstances had left me entirely to his tender mercies. Yet the rebel, having heard his speech, jumped at once to the opinion that it was rather an insinuation than a subterfuge, and being a boy and therefore hot with his heroics, was mighty impetuous for what he considered the honour of his champion. And although the act would certainly have involved his life, he was quite prepared to retaliate upon the Captain’s person, that I might be avenged.

Happily I divined his intention just in time. I caught the cracking of the straw, gave back a step and screamed a little, drew my petticoats together, and set one heel as heavily as I could on the uprising rebel’s breast.

“The mouse!” I cried; “there it is again. Did you not hear it, sir? Oh, I am in such horrid fear! Captain, do come up and catch it for me by the tail!”

Now my mind was so involved in the escape of this staunch and honest lad, that you will see it was quite heedless as to the degree these requests might implicate myself. In the end, however, the Captain himself proved sufficiently a gentleman to redeem me from this unlucky situation. Grantley, the town-bred fop, had just pierced me keenly with his wit; but next moment Grantley, officer of the King, and defender of his country, came bravely to my aid.

“My Lady Barbara,” says he, mildly, but abating somewhat the mincing accents of the exquisite, “I think this mummery hath gone on long enough. ’Tis a very dangerous game for us both to play; and, madam, I think the more especially for you, since the more beautiful a woman is, the more perturbed the world is for her reputation. And, my dear lady, you really should consider the limitations of us poor susceptibles; we are very frail sometimes, you know. But let us have an end to the acting of this play.”

“Play!” says I, with sweet surprise; “sir, to what do you refer?”

I gazed at him with perfect innocence, but I thought I heard sounds of hard, deep breathing issue from the straw behind me.

“My Lady Barbara,” the Captain said, and setting the lantern a point the nearer to my face to mark the effect of his words upon it, “your conduct in this matter, I will confess, hath been exceeding creditable to your heart. But in the name of the King I summon one Anthony Dare, lying there behind you, to stand forth from that straw.”

Now there was not a word in this demand beyond what I should have anticipated from the first; but my adversary had fenced and toyed with me so long, that he had almost weaned my mind from thinking that he knew of my attempt and the poor prisoner’s situation. And in the very breath of this avowal he let me see that he had ordered his tactics with so complete a skill that the prisoner’s doom was sealed. Before the final word was uttered a cocked pistol was pointed at the straw. The lad concealed amongst it, feeling that all was over, made an attempt to rise. Perhaps his idea was to throw himself upon his wary foe, but that, I saw, was certain death. He would have been shot down like a dog. Thus by the renewed pressure of my heel upon his breast, I was able to still restrain him. Indeed, I was already ploughing up my wits to find another plan. It is a part of my character never to surrender until I am compelled. Till my adversary wins, I have not lost, and the nearer he be to victory, the greater the danger that besets him.

“Captain,” says I, with a meek, sad smile, “I have played my game, and I have lost it. Victory sits with you. Let me compliment you on your superior skill, sir, and crave your leave to now withdraw.”

I said this as humbly as you please. I hung my head, and the limp dejection of my form betrayed how utterly I was beaten. Every spark of spirit was gone out of me, apparently. The Captain was not ungenerous, and seeing me so badly gravelled and that I took thus sincerely my reverses, was kind enough to say:

“My Lady Barbara, you have played a bold and skilful game, and I tender you my compliments upon it.”

My cunning gentleman I could see had been taken off his guard a little by my lowliness of bearing. He did not discern that ’twas in my mind, despite the fact that both the prisoner and myself were utterly at the mercy of his pistol, to attempt quite the boldest stroke of all.

It was now that I withdrew my slipper from the prisoner’s breast and walked up in the most natural way one could imagine to within a foot of where the Captain stood upon the ladder, smiling with something of the air of Alexander. I took my steps with such discretion and feigned a simple negligence so well that he suspected nothing. My Lady Barbara being my Lady Barbara, he had of course nothing to suspect.

“I wish to descend if you will allow me, sir,” says I, “for I cannot bear to stand by and see my unhappy friend retaken.”

He was preparing to accommodate me in this perfectly humane request when, tightening my fingers on the file, I struck the butt of his pistol with all my strength, and straight the weapon dropped from his hand and clattered ten feet to the stones below. The prisoner at my back was marvellously quick. In almost the same instant as the pistol tinkled on the yard the lad was up. He flew at the astonished Captain like a cat, and struck him full and neat just underneath the jaw. ’Twas a murderous blow, and the horrid thud it made quite turned my stomach over. But it was not a time for niceties. The Captain tumbled backwards down the ladder, neck and heels; his lantern was shattered to a thousand atoms; and in two seconds he, the pistol, broken glass, and much good benzoline were in a heap upon the stones. The prisoner waited for no courtesies. He did not even give his foe the chance of a recovery; for, disdaining to use the ladder, he jumped to the ground in such a calculated way that he descended with his hands and knees upon the Captain’s prostrate person.

Now it was evident that much more than this was required to provide the Captain’s quietus, for so soon as the prisoner fell upon his body he clasped him by the waist and clung to him with the tenacity of a leech. For a full minute they fought and wrestled on the ground and felt for one another’s throats. But the Captain underneath found the arguments of the man on the top too forcible. Thus by the time that I was down the ladder the rebel had managed to extricate himself, and was running away as hard as he was able.

And here it was that Fortune treated him so cruelly. The hours he had passed in prison with limbs cramped up and bound had told too sure a tale. He was unable to move beyond half the pace a healthy and clean-limbed youth should be able to employ. And the Captain was a person of the truest mettle. Despite the several shocks he had undergone and the bruises he had suffered, he was up without a moment’s pause and running the rebel down with rare agility. In his haste, though, there was a highly necessary article that he had failed to regard. That was the pistol lying on the ground beside him. And it will prove to you that I was still playing the prisoner’s game with all my wits when I say that I pounced on it and threw it up into the hay loft, where it could be no use to anybody. Then I sped after the pair of runners to see what the outcome was to be. They were racing through a gate that led into the park, which slept in a pale, cold silence beneath the peaceful moon.

I had not run a hundred yards when, alas! the issue grew too plain. Yard by yard the Captain bore down upon his foe. It was only a matter of minutes ere he once more had him at his mercy. But observing their movements eagerly as I went a thrill of horror trembled through my heart, for I clearly saw the fugitive clap his hand into his coat, and even as he ran, withdraw something from it secretly. He concealed it with his hand. But in a flash it was in my mind that this was the loaded pistol I had given him. And the Captain was unarmed.

If you give rein enough to mischief it may lead you into many and strange things. But I think it should always draw the line at murder. Much as I would have paid for the prisoner’s escape, ’twas more than I could endure to witness a stark and naked murder. Mind, I did not enter into the merits of the case at all. I would have the lad escape at every cost, but none the less, murder must be prevented. And now I saw that the holder of the pistol was tailing off in his speed so palpably that he must soon be overtaken. There was a reason for his tardiness, however. He was waiting till his pursuer should come within a yard or two; then he would whip round and discharge the pistol straight into his body.

This idea, together with the thought that I had armed him for the deed, was more than I could suffer. A wretched sickness overtook me. But it made me the more determined to save the Captain if I could. Therefore, I knit my teeth upon the weak cries of my terror and ran, and ran, and ran till I came within hailing distance of them, for both had now much slackened in their running. Happily the Captain had at last observed the weapon of his enemy and had interpreted his bloody motive. Thus, while the one awaited the coming of his foe, the other warily approached, but with no abatement of his courage: whilst I, profiting by these manœuvres, was soon at the place where they had disposed themselves for their battle.

CHAPTER IV.
OF AN ODD PASSAGE IN THE MEADOW.

“For the love of God, my lad, don’t fire!” I cried to the rebel at the pitch of the little voice that yet was left me.

They had now halted, and stood confronting one another very close in the dewy grass of the open meadow, while the moon wrapped them in her creepy light. For, perhaps, while one might count thirty they stood apart with as little motion as the ghostly trees, in a tense and straining silence. Again I cried:

“Oh, hold your fire, my lad!” more instantly than ever. And as I thus implored him, I made a great effort to overtake and get between them. But the matter was now gone utterly beyond any control of mine. They gave me no more heed than I had been a tuft of grass. And whether ’twas that the sound of me behind him spurred the Captain to a fury, or that he risked his life from calculation, sure, I can never say, for, as I came up, without a word the Captain sprang and the prisoner shot together. At the fierce crack of the pistol the Captain fell from his full height upon the turf, and I recoiled from the report and felt all at once the wet grass tickling my face; whereon a sudden darkness filled my eyes, and I lost the sense of where I was. For some little time I must have been insensible. But soon the blackness that pressed upon my eyelids lifted somewhat, and the buzzing in my ears abated. ’Twas then that I found myself sitting in a most quaint fashion on the grass, though the manner of my falling on that wet sward was a point more than my knowledge. A comic figure I must have cut, and I believe my earliest feeling was one of deep relief that there was but one spectator of my plight—he the Captain, who to tell the truth was in no prettier case. I was at first disposed to attribute my preposterous state to the wrought condition of my nerves, and had half arrived at the conclusion that even this pretext was insufficient for so extreme a situation, when I grew dimly conscious that a sort of fiery pain was throbbing in one shoulder. It was then I knew that I was hit. Meantime poor Captain Grantley was striving hard to rise. Twice he tried and twice he failed and fell back on the grass. The second time he groaned an oath, for his eyes had fallen on the swift figure of the prisoner fading in the dew.

“Dammy, Jimmy!” says he to himself, struggling for the third time to regain his feet and failing. “It’s no go, my lad. You are taken somewhere.”

Thereupon he sat up in the grass and began to whistle with grave bravado an odd strain from the “Beggar’s Opera.” Then my merry gentleman turned and looked at me. I also was sitting up in the grass, perhaps a dozen yards away, and was in almost an identical posture to himself, except that mine was a matter of the nerves and shoulder. But if you could have found a more comic pair upon the surface of the earth than we made just then, I should be glad to learn their whereabouts, for to behold them would well repay a pilgrimage.

“Why, bless my soul, my Lady Barbara!” he cries in a tone of deep concern, “do not tell me that you are taken too!”

“I fear I am,” says I, with a great desire to swoon, for my shoulder was as hot and wet as possible.

“But not grievously, I hope,” says he.

“Sure I do not know,” I answered weakly. And sure I didn’t! For I felt so utterly foreign at this moment to my usual confident and lively self that I was not certain whether I was really caught at all, or whether I was about to die. The Captain, however, was not to be satisfied with this. With the aid of two hands and one knee he crawled towards me, dragging his shattered member through the grass, as stiffly as a pole, so that it seemed to trail after the remainder of his body in the manner of a wounded snake. When he reached my side, though I think I was very nearly dying for a little sympathy, he compelled me to extend all that I was expending on myself to him. The moonlight, beating fully on his face, showed it livid and drawn with pain.

“Why, my dear man,” says I, “what have you dragged yourself here to do?” For seeing him in this extremity, I forgot all about my shoulder, which really seemed to have had no more than one stroke from a whip laid on it.

“To succour you,” says he, “if you will permit me?”

“Then I won’t,” says I, “for ’tis you that’s wanting aid.”

“Psha!” says he; “a mere scratch, my dearest lady.”

Now that was not the truth, for the man was in such agony that he could scarcely speak. Yet I thought his courage admirable. Here it was I made an attempt to rise on my own account, and with far better success than he. But so soon as I stood up, my head reeled and swayed and nearly brought me to the grass again.

I think it must have been the presence of the Captain that saved me from fainting on the spot. But having once fought down that supreme desire, my strength unaccountably returned, and I determined to set forth straightway to the house to procure assistance for the Captain, who was still sitting on the turf as helpless as a baby.

“I beg of you,” says he, observing me to be already fit for travel, “to instruct one of your people to call my men at once.”

“By my faith, no,” says I, “that poor lad must have as much start of you and your men as possible. Captain, you forget that I am a rebel.”

“Under your pardon I do not,” says he, whilst a groan rose to his lips. “And would that I might dissemble it, for this may prove a very awkward business.”

’Twas a smothered threat of course, but I smiled at it demurely.

However, my present plan to assist the prisoner’s escape was unluckily doomed to a frustration. A sentry had been dispatched from the house to relieve the one on guard at the stable door. Finding him asleep and the prisoner gone, he had repaired to his comrades, and then to the Captain’s room with a report of the occurrence. That bird was also flown. Thereupon the whole house was put in a commotion, somewhere on the stroke of four of the wintry morning, and the soldiers issued forth in a body to seek high and low the rebel and their officer. Three of them were now bearing down upon us in the meadow. In a word they were advised of their commander’s accident and the necessity for haste. Therefore summoning their fellows they promptly unhinged one of the hurdles of the park and bore the Captain on it to his chamber. And as soon as they had done this, they got to horse, and galloped hotly in pursuit of the fleeing rebel, who had something less than two hours start upon them.

“We shall see him brought back before the day is out!” said the Captain, confidently; “for he hath never a friend nor a horse hereby, nor a penny to procure them.”

Meantime I was in a panic of alarm on my own account. To a woman of the mode a pair of unblemished shoulders are highly requisite when she repairs to Vauxhall, the playhouse, or the King’s levee. No sooner did the fear oppress me that one of them was permanently mutilated than I discarded my vapidity and went like the wind from the meadow to my chamber to resolve the matter to the test. I cannot possibly convey to you the distresses of hope and fear I suffered on that journey. I never felt my wound at all now, and was hardly conscious of my weariness. Thus in a surprising little time I was running up the staircase to my chamber. Emblem was toasting her toes at the hearth, and was very properly asleep and dreaming of white satin. My vigorous entrance woke her, though.

“Come, wench, bestir yourself!” cries I, in my fever of alarm, “and find me the lowest-necked evening bodice I have got. Now, out with it at once and dress me in it, or, ’pon my soul! you shall not have that satin gown I promised you.”

At the mention of the gown she flew to a wardrobe and produced the necessary article with a palpitating suddenness; whilst I threw off my cloak and ordered Mrs. Polly to remove the present bloodied bodice that I wore, heedless of wounds and other mortal things of that sort.

“Blood! oh, it’s blood, my lady!” cries Mrs. Polly Emblem; and her frightened face was mottled white and red, the very pattern of my linen, with the gory spots upon it. “Oh, you are hurt, my lady! You are dreadfully hurt, I’m certain!”

“Never you mind that,” says I with a very Spartan air; “but just put me in that bodice, and tell me, for your life, whether ’twill conceal this wound or whether ’twill not. For if it doth expose the scar,” I announced in a manner highly tragical, while the tears gathered in my eyes, “the reign of my Lady Barbarity is over.”

“Even if it does,” says Emblem, “we may powder and enamel it, my lady.”

“Psha!” cries I, “there is all the difference in the world betwixt a scar and a bad complexion. Art can never obliterate a scar.” And here I began to bite my handkerchief in pieces, being no longer able to contain myself.

The ensuing minute was one of the most awful of my life. It seemed as though Emblem—trembling wretch!—would never get that bodice on; but, to do her justice in this affair, and to act kindly towards her character, I must admit that she betrayed a very proper instinct in this matter. That is to say, she was as desperately seized as ever was her mistress with the fear that my peerless shoulders were torn in such a fashion that a low dress would be inadequate to hide their mutilation.

Happily, the pistol-ball had simply run along the skin and had slit it open for an inch or two, quite low down in the shoulder-blade—a mere scratch, in fact, that let out very little blood. Thus we managed to get one garment off and the other on, both easily and painlessly. Then ’twas that Emblem clapped her hands, and gave a cry of joy.

“It covers it, your la’ship, by a full two inches,” she exclaimed.

“You are sure of that?” cries I, in a tremor of excitement. “There must be no mistake about it, now. Bring me a mirror here that I may see it for myself.”

This she did, and, though the disturbed wound was smarting horribly, I paid no attention to it until I was assured that its position was even as Mrs. Polly Emblem said. To describe the relief that my mind immediately experienced would be impossible.

“Lord, that’s lovely!” cries I, and fervently kissed the cheek of Mrs. Polly to express my gratitude to good old Lady Fortune, who, I am sure, kind soul! must in her time have been a woman of the mode! But then it was that the stress of the night returned; all my weaknesses concertedly attacked me, and the pangs of my wound (though the wound was but the faintest scratch) were so aggravated by them that it appeared as if my flesh were being nipped by a hundred red-hot pincers. I sobbed out:

“Quick with a cordial, Emblem, for I feel that I must swoon!”

And faith! no sooner had I said this than I swooned in deadly earnest. I was restored in good time, though, and, having had my shoulder bathed and a plaster put upon it, I was got to bed, and slept profoundly till some time after two o’clock of the afternoon.

When I opened my eyes I saw that the room was darkened, and that anxious Mrs. Polly, Doctor Paradise (physician-in-ordinary to all the county families about), and no less a person than my Aunt, the dowager, were sitting in a row beside the bed, and looking at me solemnly.

“Good evening to you, doctor,” says I, feeling perfectly restored by so sound a slumber, “or is it afternoon? or is it morning? But I daresay you propose to make a case of this.”

“Well, madam,” says the twinkling, old, and snuffy rogue, “you are suffering from shock, and a contused and lacerated shoulder. Therefore I prescribe rest and quiet, and would recommend that you keep your bed for at least a week.”

“Then I must be pretty bad,” says I.

“True, true, dear Lady Barbara,” says he, insinuatingly, “although, if I may presume to say so, I think ‘pretty bad’ is an expression scarce adequate to your condition.”

“Eh, what?” says I.

“Of course, my dear lady,” he explained, with wicked emphasis, “it is the condition of your corporal body that I refer to.” And the sly old villain smiled and bowed in a very disconcerting manner.

Now it does you not a tittle of service anyway to chop dialectics with your doctor. He knows everything about your way of life; your past, your future, and your present state, and he can pepper you with phrases that seem as harmless as the alphabet, if you look at them from the point of view of a physician. Yet if the world chooses to place its own construction on them, it would not feel tempted to mistake one for an archangel. In short, your doctor is not the person you should lead into a discourse in the presence of your Aunt.

“Then I must keep my bed for at least a week?” says I.

“I should strongly advise it,” says old Paradise.

“Indeed you would, sir,” says I, sweetly; “then, Emblem, fetch me my spotted taffety. For I propose to instantly get up.”

And to the indignation of my Aunt, the dowager, who regarded the whole tribe of doctors as religiously as the Brahmins do their sacred bull, I suddenly renounced the sheets, sat on the margin of the bed, and bade Emblem draw my stockings on. In my experience this hath proved the exactest mode of routing the whole infernal faculty. Do not argue with them, for their whole art consists in contriving new and elegant diseases for persons of an uncompromising health. Therefore at this moment my Aunt, with a shake of her wintry curls at me, invited the doctor to a dish of tea downstairs, and a game of cribbage afterwards. Thus before my second stocking was drawn on they had departed, but had left behind volumes of horrid prophecies of blood poisoning, high fever, and five-and-twenty other things.

“Now lock the door, my Emblem,” says I, cheerfully, “and tell me every bit of news.”

“If I were you, my lady,” Emblem says, “I would get back to bed this instant and grow very ill indeed. For Captain Grantley is drawing a complaint up in this matter, and thinks that upon the strength of it the Government will feel compelled to arrest you for high treason and send you to the Tower.

“High what?” cries I, “send me to the where? Why, upon my soul! did any man ever speak such nonsense in his natural! As though the Government would do anything of the kind. ’Twas but a piece of mischief. I meant no harm. I’m certain I never wished to hurt the Captain, who, by the way, is much cleverer and braver than I had supposed. ’Twas but a piece of fun, I say. And if the poor lad did escape, well, he was a very pretty lad, and I am certainly not sorry. Arrest me! Send me to the Tower! Pah! the Government will do nothing of the kind. Why, Emblem, what is it that I’ve done.”

“Sure I don’t know, my lady,” says the faithful creature, beginning to whimper like a child; “you have done nothing very wicked as I can see. Of course he was a prisoner, but then there is lots of other prisoners, and plenty as big as he, and bigger if it comes to that.”

“Why, of course there is, you silly goose,” says I.

“And you never meant that the Captain should be hurt, my lady?”

“I would not have hurt him for the world,” says I. “Now, dry your eyes, my girl. The Government hath no more of a case against me than it hath against the Pope of Rome. And even if it had, it is too well bred to dare to prefer it against Bab Gossiter; besides, it is not as though there was any malice in the thing. And as you say, a prisoner more or a prisoner less doth matter not a little bit.”

“But,” says the foolish Emblem, weeping more than ever, “my lord is very much concerned at the Captain’s disposition. Why, my lady, I heard him say not an hour ago that there is nothing to be done, and that the consequences must be faced.”

“Consequences!” laughed I. “That comes of being a politician. Oh, these statesmen and prime ministers, with their grave faces. Why, if a chairman so much as puts his foot on a poodle dog in Mincing Lane, they talk of it in whispers and discuss its bearing on what they call the ‘situation.’ Or if a washerwoman presents her husband with a pair of healthy twins at Charing there’s a meeting of the Council to see whether that fact hath altered the aspect of affairs. And it’s the nation this, and the nation that; and they talk as mysterious as Jesuits with their interminable Whigs and their pestilential Tories whom nobody understands and nobody cares a farthing for. Send me to the Tower! A set of politicians, no handsomer than clergymen and nothing like so humorous. La! Emblem, I would like to see ’em do it!”

I was both angry and amused at this idea, and got into my clothes as quickly as I could, for I was now on fire to go and see the Earl. The notion was really too absurd.

“How is the Captain now?” I inquired, while I dressed.

“His knee is shattered dreadfully,” the maid replied, “and he will not be able to leave this house for many weeks.”

“That is good news,” said I, complacently. “He will be able to amuse me during these long winter evenings. But tell me, Emblem, is that poor prisoner lad reta’en? The Captain swore that his soldiers would retake him in an hour or two.”

“They have not returned yet,” Emblem answered.

“Excellent!” cried I; “that’s made my shoulder better.”

And I fell to dancing up and down the chamber in the effervescence of my mood.

CHAPTER V.
I MIX IN THE HIGH POLITICAL

I was very mystified by the manner of my papa. When I tripped into his presence, I was met with that wonderful sweet politeness that was so much in the marrow of the man that at his decease a tale was put about in town that his death was delayed ten minutes by the elaborate courtesies with which he introduced himself to the Old Gentleman’s attention.

Having paid me a compliment or two and discovered the good condition of my shoulder, he congratulated me on that fact, and then took a chair with such comical solemnity that I burst into laughing at the picture that he made.

“Mr. J. P.,” says I, “that’s excellent. Mr. Custos Rutulorum, my devoir to you! And I am sure your worship hath only to strike that attitude at the Petty Sessions to reform every poacher in the shire.”

I rose and swept three curtseys at him, but he sat more serious than ever.

“Bab,” says he, “there hath been an accident; and, my dear child, I would have given much to have prevented it.”

There was a depth and brevity about these words that startled me out of my lightheartedness. I had never guessed that this old barbarian kept such a chord locked up in his heart. In five-and-twenty years I had not touched it till this instant, and why or how I had done so now I did not know.

Meantime I sat in silent fascination at the fine and sorrowful power that had come into his voice, and hearkened with all my ears to everything he had to say.

“Bab,” says he, with a gentle smile that was intended to conceal his unaccustomed gravity, “man is a whimsical animal, I am aware. But there is one thing in him that even a woman must deal with mercifully. You have perhaps not heard of what he calls his honour. The omission is not yours, my pretty lady; your angelic sex rises superior to honour and little flippancies of that kind. But your papa suffers from his sex, and is, therefore, tainted with their foolish heresies. He hath also what he calls his honour; and a certain young person whom I will not blame, but who, I may say, is as greatly celebrated for her beauty as her wit, hath quite unconsciously put her foot upon it. And that spot is so tender that she must forgive the victim if he groans.”

He smiled a charming, melancholy smile, and made me think of those noble velvet gentlemen by Vandyck upon the walls of our state chambers, whom I would stand and look at hours together and make love with all my heart to when I was a little girl. To watch him smile and to hear him speaking like a most tender music, none could have discerned what his emotion was, unless one had the experience of a lifetime to bear upon his ways. And for myself, ’twas only the misgivings of my heart that told me he was in great pain.

“What is it that I’ve done, my lord?” cries I, feeling that he must have been furnished with a very highly coloured picture of my deeds.

“I gave my word to the King,” he answered me, “that I would succour his soldiers here at Cleeby for a night, and take the prisoner that they held into my keeping faithfully. Instead of that I send my maid to drug the sentry; I go out in a pair of carpet slippers in the middle of the night; I set a ladder up against the hayloft; I climb up there, and, by means of dropping through a trap into a manger, I get into the prisoner’s cell and let the prisoner out; I furnish that prisoner with a pistol; I disarm an officer of the King, and cause him to be shot severely in the knee, and enable the prisoner to escape. It is in this manner that I redeem my promise to the Government of His Majesty the King.”

“You, my lord!” cries I, aghast, and doubting whether he had the proper enjoyment of his mind. “Pray shatter those delusions! I, my lord—I, your daughter Bab, did that, and I can show you the wound upon my shoulder that I got.” And here I chanced to sneeze, and turned it into evidence.

“And that, my lord,” says I, “is the mortal cold I’ve caught from those carpet slippers. I put them on for fear of waking you, sir.”

“Bab,” says he, in a wooing voice, “was it you who made that promise to the King?”

“Certainly not,” says I, in triumph, “for do you suppose that I would have thus amused myself had I done so? I told the Captain I was a rebel from the first.”

“Then that confirms all that I have said,” says he, “and I have informed the Captain that you count for nothing in this matter, and ’twas I who let the prisoner out.”

“Which, under your pardon, you never did,” says I, misunderstanding him. “I took the risks and I’ll have the glory. ’Twill be published in the Courier that that audacious wretch Bab Gossiter let out a dangerous rebel in the middle of the night, at her father’s country seat, by outwitting nimbly a well-known officer of His Majesty. They will put me in a ballad, and sell ’em two a penny in the Strand. Sylvanus Urban will have a full and particular account of me in the Gentleman’s Magazine, and for a whole nine days I shall be as variously known as Joan of Arc or wicked Mrs. Molly Cutpurse.”

“But ’twill be said,” says he, “that Mrs. Rumour hath lied as usual, and that she hath been quite put out of countenance by the fact that the Earl of Longacre, her peerless ladyship’s papa, hath confessed in his own person to this treason; that he hath stood his trial upon it at Old Bailey; hath been found guilty, and therefore stands committed to the Tower.”

“Papa,” says I, severely, “you are become profane. Do not jest with such sacred names as ‘High Treason,’ ‘Old Bailey,’ and the ‘Tower.’”

“Bab,” says he, “a woman’s head is far too pretty to understand these ugly matters. But ’tis enough that ’twas I that let that prisoner out in the middle of the night; ’tis my name that Captain Grantley has done me the special favour of inserting in his dispatches to the Minister of War, and it will be my body that will be committed in dishonour to the Tower. And now, my pretty Bab, suppose we wash our hands of these dirty politics, and solace ourselves with a little game of backgammon and a dish of tea?”

There was only one person in the world that this delightful mirror of the graces could not deceive with his urbanity. She chanced to be his daughter Bab. That young person’s eyes could penetrate his embroidered vest and look into his heart, or any substitute that he wore for that important organ. His countenance I never saw more easy and serene, and was good enough to cheat the devil with, but behind that mask his every nerve was quivering with an agony of shame. His sensibility to politics astonished me. This worldly man, this polished heathen, this ancient fop, this hard-bit roué, who feared not God nor anybody; this scandalous Court chronicle of sixty years of Stuartry to be laid prone and bleeding by a frolic of his daughter Bab’s. ’Twas impossible, you’ll say, and that is what I also said, but there it was.

“Oh, these politics!” cries I, in a passion. “A pestilence upon ’em! Confound these politics! And what in the world is there to make so wry a face about, my lord? The matter might be serious. Do I not repeat, sir, that the thing was but a piece of mischief? Call it fun, my lord, bravado, diablerie, what you will, but I want you to understand that ’twas a piece of mischief.”

“’Tis perfectly correct,” says he; “an infernal piece of mischief.”

“Then might I ask, my lord, what there is to make a song about? True, the rebel is escaped, but I’m not sorry in the least for that; indeed, betwixt ourselves, I am somewhat glad of it. He is a very handsome lad, and will make a prettier man than any that I’ve seen. But what is there to make a ballad of, I ask? Is he the only rebel in the world then? There are thousands of rebels up and down the earth, and I’m sure not a man jack of ’em’s so handsome as that lad. Why,” laughs I, “he hath an eye that is a rival to my own. No, ’twould not be truthful of me to say that I am sorry for it. As for the bullet that traversed Captain Grantley’s knee, I do indeed regret that very deeply, but I ask you, my lord, is his the first knee that hath had a bullet through it? And is it going to be the last? Why, at that same instant a portion of the same discharge hit my shoulder, too, so he is not the only sufferer. Pah! ’twas only a piece of mischief, and my maid Emblem will tell you quite the same, and she should know, for she put my cloak on and saw me down the stairs. Why, if it comes to argument, my lord, the King, nor you, nor politics, nor precious Captain Grantley hath a leg to stand on, and ’tis argument they say that is the only thing that is considered in a court of justice. Come, tell me is it not so, Mr. Custos Rutulorum?”

“Faith, that is so!” laughed his lordship, heartily, and he hath been on four occasions High Sheriff of the County; “and if they shall find a lawyer who may prevail against this argument of yours, my delightful criminal, it will have to be a woman, a second Portia let us say, for the man hath not been fashioned yet who could possibly chop logic with you; nay, if it comes to that,” and my papa stood up and bowed to the bright buckles of his shoes in the most flattering fashion, “the combined genius of our sex could never hope to overcome in argument the dialectics of you fair, unfathomable, amazing ladies.”

Yet despite his smiling speeches the hard-wrought look still sat in his eyes. Then I grew Tower-haunted. Could it be possible that my frolic had so greatly shocked old, indignant, sober-sided Politics? But if any proof were needed to the Earl’s assertion that my night’s work was criminal, it was at my elbow. On the table I saw a sheet of the official blue with a brief statement of the prisoner’s escape upon it. It was a rather garbled version, for the name of me, prime agent and offender, was not allowed to once appear; nor were the inconvenient details set down at any length, but in the sum it said that the whole of the responsibility rested with my papa, the Earl, and he had affixed the peculiar scrawl that was his signature upon this preposterous indictment. The familiar way in which this was irresolutely writ, in his trembling, old, and gouty hand, affected me most strangely. There seemed a sort of nobility about the behaviour of this old barbarian; and a strain of the hero in a man delights me more than anything, and generally fills me with a sort of emulation.

“This means the Tower!” says I, brandishing the paper.

“It does,” my lord says, inclined to be amused at my impetuosity.

“Then, sir,” says I, “I will be mentioned in it fully as is my due. I did the deed, and I will take the recompense. If its reward is to be the Tower, I will claim it as my own. Therefore erase your name from this document, my lord, and insert the name of her who hath duly earned her place there.”

“Nay, Bab, not so,” says he. “I gave the soldiers of the King my hospitality, and now they must give me his.”

“Which they never shall,” cries I, with my cheeks a-flaming. “I will go and see the Captain and insist upon his keeping to the truth. Oh, these politics! ’Tis well said that there is no such thing as rectitude in politics. But in the meantime I will draw the teeth out of this wicked document to prevent it committing harm.”

And under the nose of its custodian I screwed the paper into a ball, and planted it calmly in the blaze. Having watched it thoroughly consumed, I swept from the room to beard the Captain, and left “laughter holding both his sides” in the person of his lordship, who quoted Horace at me or some other, whom I have not sufficient Latin to locate or to determine. ’Twas about the Sun-God Apollo and his tender sentiments towards some deity with a cheek of fire.

I found my worshipful friend the Captain in occupation of the library. He was dressed rakishly in lavender and in a peruke that flourishes most in Chelsey and such-like Southern places. His shattered knee was strapped upon a board, and though his face was pinched with pain, it was anything but woeful when he gazed up from the writing-table at which he sat, and beheld me glide into the room.

He was monstrous busy with a full-feathered quill upon a page of foolscap, the twin to the one to which my papa had signed his name, and that had been so considerately burned.

I asked him of his hurt, and he questioned me of mine. Both, it seemed, were recovering excellently well. Then says I with that simplicity which is perhaps the most insidious weapon of all that I possess:

“My dear Captain, I have just seen a paper identical to the one you are now engaged upon, in the room of my papa. I call it very thoughtful of you to suppress my name in the manner that you do. Am I to suppose?” I inquired, with an eagerness that he noticed with a gleam of pleasure, “that you have treated my part in last night’s affair as kindly in this document that you are now preparing?”

“Look, my dear lady, for yourself!” cries he, happy in his own adroitness. “I will wager that you shall not find your name once mentioned in it.”

My gentleman handed five close-writ sheets of foolscap to me to examine for myself. I scanned every page, and saw that it was even as he said, and that the case, a black one in all conscience from the point of view of politics, and quite enough to hang even a peer of the realm upon, was made out entirely to the prejudice of his poor old lordship.