Читать книгу Wanton Mally - Booth Tarkington - Страница 6

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de Grammont employed a figure of speech well warranted by the event. The famous Mrs. Jinny Wilmot did not indeed prostrate her fine person before him; but she was as grateful as if she had made that gesture. Somewhat dulled in enthusiasm for the riot she called pleasure, in the Chevalier de Champvallon she perceived something new—at least a new stimulant to continue the riot. Here was a new companion rioter for her and also a new audience she could hope to astonish, though that proved a little difficult. M. de Champvallon’s disposition was of an incomparable sang-froid, one that almost dazzled her; she determined to shatter his calm at all costs. He declined to be surprised by anything, and she was accustomed to surprise everybody; this was her great vanity and she lived for it. Within a week she was furious because of his continued calm; she suspected that she had fallen in love with him and felt that her suffering might become intolerable if she did not succeed in astonishing him.

The field of her operations in her assault upon the Chevalier de Champvallon’s placidity was a city blithe to show the sign of a mad world—a London wherein sober gentlemen, for some were often sober, might tremble to be out alone at night; a rowdy London unlighted, of breakneck, dirty streets where dangerously ranged, all “flown with insolence and wine”, such cockerel bands as the Tityre Tus and Harry Killigrew’s Ballers; a drunken London that saw baronets strip themselves in public and run howling to fight with the Watch; a masterless London where thieves sang in their own coffee-houses and robbers fought duels over the spoils of easy violence; a licentious London where in daytime roisterers seized upon masked women in the streets and willy-nilly made them caper. Nay, it was the London where the mighty heretic-baiter, Bishop Bourne, hero of lawful citizens for his hatred of the Quakers, was struck down at last twilight in his chair as he came to his own very door from a vesper sermon he had preached against that perilsome sect. The profanation was done by three mounted rogues with blackened faces, and, what seemed most horrid to the Bishop’s defenders, one of the three was discerned to be a woman, riding like a man.

The Bishop was shot through his upper body by one of his own frightened servants, no great marksman; but the confusion was lively, the dusk misty and the rogues rode straight against the chair, setting up a rackety flailing of it with swords and a shrill shouting of “Your purse or your life, rascal Bishop!” No one except the poor marksman himself knew who had exploded a pistol, and he did not tell. Instead, he ran to fiery Colonel Bourne, the Bishop’s brother, with the dreadful news that the robbers had done this sacrilegious murder, and the Colonel was not long in being after them with a squad of horse. The two highwaymen and the highwaywoman had the Bishop’s purse just as he was shot, and they rode off, laughing like three jackanapeses.

But here at last was a thing that stirred some sense of legality in London, and even in King Charles. He took an oath to hang those three, and, whether the Bishop lived or died, there was wrath not only in the town but over half of England.

A London where such things might be was precisely the spot to M. de Champvallon’s taste, more than ever since he was a student of it under the tutelage of the lady M. de Grammont had recommended to him. On that account, it at first appears to be strange that upon a foggy morning, not a month after his call upon his fellow exile, he should have found himself riding thoughtfully a tired horse in a wilderness of moorland a long way from London. Moreover, to say that he found himself is to hint less than the truth; himself was all that he could find. It is true he had at times a suspicion that he was near the sea—or, at least, one of the seas that gird the great island—for there came fitfully to his ears a sound like that of heavy waters boisterous among rocks, and once or twice, overhead, he thought he heard a plaintive conversation of sea-fowl that flew invisibly through the fog.

True, too, he knew the name of the moor, for Mrs. Jinny Wilmot had told him it was called Wanton Mally, when at dawn she had set him on the almost imperceptible path by which he was meant to cross it. But one may know that he is on a planet called by some the Earth, and yet have no knowledge of what position he occupies in space; thus the Chevalier knew he was in the midst of something called Wanton Mally, yet was unaware of its location and so found the name itself of slight avail. Under other circumstances—that is to say, if he had not been again a fugitive with a king urging the pursuit of him—he might have been interested in this name of Wanton Mally. For it was an ancient one suitable to a student’s investigation and a point at issue among the learned in philology, inciting quarrels in their debates upon it. There was a half-lost road across the moor; this zig-zag semblance was also named Wanton Mally and called “the Mally”, supplying added confusion to both the traveller and the debater, for the so-called road, as well as its name, bore faint suggestions of a debauched and conscienceless sort of mall. Only flatterers could have accepted such suggestions for the truth, or fallen in with the local habit of speaking of two other vague tracks across the waste as paths; and it was one of these that M. de Champvallon had wholly lost within ten minutes after Mrs. Jinny, still sooty about the eyes in spite of a brookside washing, had set him upon it.

Proud to be philosophic, he lacked the habit of blaming and only wondered that he had not lost himself sooner. It was no fault of his indeed that he was lost; the moor could easily have done that to him without the fog. Wanton Mally was an unending wasteland of fen, strewn rock, staggered ravine and dismal copse; and if the Chevalier had known that badgers inhabited certain parts of it, as they did, he would have pitied them. The last village he had seen in his flight from London with Mrs. Jinny and her fellow-harebrain, Rafe Chedlowe, was Littlefield, and there, after resisting a desperate temptation to eat and rest at a tavern, the three had the belated wisdom to separate and take the three different ways across Wanton Mally. For these three ways, the two paths and the road of Wanton Mally, entered the moor almost together near Littlefield; then diverged and met again five miles from Mally Surfeit, which stands beyond the farther border of the waste.

This Mally Surfeit, beyond the moor, was no more than a sparse hamlet of stone and thatch about a little church and a big brick barn of a manor house where dwelt Mr. Brunnage, the great man of those parts. This is not to say that Mr. Brunnage was a great man; but where there is nothing a little something seems great, and Mr. Brunnage was a little something. Not to underrate him, he was even a magistrate; he believed in the Church of England, the kingship, mutton and the iron hand upon all poachers, non-conformists, papists and vagrants.

When he would be comfortable at home he relaxed from his spurred heavy boots and his flowing curled periwig, which was subject to nits; but when he rode forth to any distance he had boots, spurs, periwig and no doubt some nits upon him, and added an old Cavalier’s corselet to his other gear. Thus, riding in the fog, this same morning, while M. de Champvallon wandered upon the moor, he clinked dauntingly when button or buckle touched his front, or scabbard swung against stirrup or spur; there were pistols in his holsters, and he smelt of old metal, of damp old cloth, of greased leather and strong ale. Behind him rode two heavy minions of his from the stone and thatch village, themselves mostly stone and thatch but armed like their master and smelling much like him, though not so much, for now it was past March, and, as the first of April had been a day hot beyond its season, they had swum in the tide-water that reaches by Mally Surfeit.

Mr. Brunnage and his two fellows rode slowly but not because they were doubtful of the way; they knew the moor in any fog and their dull gait was to help them listen. They had come to a low hillock straddled by this road of Wanton Mally, when the leader drew rein and the three sat their saddles in silence to hear the more keenly. They could see little except themselves, their steeds and the rough ground close about them; but somewhere, off to the left, all three heard a horse shake himself and then a delicate and peculiarly reserved coughing, a man’s. Mr. Brunnage turned in his saddle and made two gestures, whereupon his two servants rode quietly to the left but separating as if they followed two sides of a triangle, the apex of which was Mr. Brunnage. He remained some moments, motionless; then, walking his horse, rode down the middle of this imagined triangle and had gone about forty yards when he saw, straight before him, movements of a faint pinkish color in the grey vapor, hints of a tinted silhouette. Within the moment he came face to face with a wan young gentleman riding a muddy-legged bay horse and dressed principally in wet rose velvet as if he had come (through rain) from a gavotte at Whitehall. He did not even wear boots; his fawn shoes had gilt heels.

“Stand, you!” Mr. Brunnage said roughly, and, at the sound of his voice, his two men emerged into visibility, turning in, one upon each of the stranger’s flanks. “What’s your name and purpose?”

M. de Champvallon removed his broad hat plumed with fawn-colored ostrich feathers that made a little shower with this motion. “My purpose?” he said in a faintly protesting voice, and with so slight a foreign accent that his boast to M. de Grammont was somewhat warranted. The Chevalier de Champvallon (M. de Grammont would have agreed) spoke English as well as a Frenchman need speak anything but French; nevertheless, the accent was perceptible. “My purpose? Firs’ to salute you, sir, and nex’ to ask you tell me in the name of ’eaven ’ow can one dispatch oneself out of this Vanton Mallee?”

“Body and bones!” Mr. Brunnage cried fiercely. “What’s this? A Dutchman?”

“I do not seem to be,” the young man answered. “But I ’ave no certainties remaining in my soul.”

“I’ll have certainties from you!” Mr. Brunnage promised him sternly. “I asked for your name. Speak out!”

“I still think I am the Chevalier de Champvallon.”

“Shove-along! Shove-along! What’s that?”

“Me,” M. de Champvallon returned mildly. “I think it is the way you speak my name.”

“Looky!” the frowning Brunnage said, and shook a forefinger at the young Frenchman. “I be out to catch rogues; I’ll not dally with you. Who are you, what are you and wha’ d’you do here? I have a stone cell at Mally Surfeit for them as won’t answer such questions!”

“But I do answer,” M. de Champvallon said politely. “Willingly! I ’ave tell you I am the Chevalier de Champvallon and what I do now is to drip all over this Vanton Mallee because I wish to be somewhere else and cannot because it seem’ there is nothing else anywhere. I think to myself, ‘Surely there is somewhere else but this Vanton Mallee lef’ in the worl’!’ Sir, will you tell me ’ow I can discover it?”

“I’ll tell you how you can discover my cell at Mally Surfeit if you don’t—”

“A moment!” the young man said urbanely. “I comprehend. You are per’aps an officer in charge of the good be’avior of people who lose themself in this—”

“I’ll prove to you who I be,” Mr. Brunnage said, “if you do not—”

“But I do! Sir, do you know Monsieur de Grammont?”

“Musseer de Grammont?” Mr. Brunnage, surprised by this mention of King Charles’s favored French intimate, modified his tone; yet still spoke gruffly. “What have you to do with Musseer de Grammont?”

“Ah, too much! If it was not for that great comedian, Monsieur de Grammont, I should not be in this Vanton Mallee.”

“You tell me you be a friend of his?”

“Can one be a frien’ of a man who will do a such thing to ’im? But yes, I am the mos’ loyal in this worl’; I forgive ’im and remain ’is frien’. I will make myself plain to you. Since we begin to talk my ’ead grow more clear. Now I become certain I am not Dutch; I am French like Monsieur de Grammont and of the court of the King of France. I was in London to see my frien’, Monsieur de Grammont, and ’e advise’ me ’ow to improve myself. I travel. I travel to study the be’avior and custom’ of your great English people. I did wish to go everywhere; but that was a mistake because it mus’ be true that this Vanton Mallee is a part of everywhere, and for that reason I should not ’ave wish’ to go everywhere. No people live ’ere; the English are intelligent. I cannot study them where they are not; that is why I ask you to ’elp me to find where they are.”

“So!” Mr. Brunnage was contemptuous of all this foreign fol-de-rol of speech; but he was less severe. This Musseer Shove-along might indeed be what he laid claim to be, a friend of the magnificent Musseer de Grammont who joked every night with King Charles. By nature and long habit, Mr. Brunnage was of a brow-beating bent, truculent and given to smelling out rascalities even where there were none; but it is wisdom to make a friend of a friend of a friend of a king. The lost young gentleman’s dampened garb was recognizably an exquisite courtier’s;—to be sure, it was grotesque for travel and mad upon Wanton Mally. But he was foreign, so much so as to be a Frenchman, and where was ever a Frenchman who did anything that a creature with reason could explain? Moreover, Mr. Brunnage had not come forth to lay hold of a single horseman; he sought a group of three suspected of being far worse than French. He began to speak mildly. “Well, you may be what you say; if so, I’ll deal no harder with you than set you on your way. But have you any means to prove it?”

M. de Champvallon drew off his embroidered left gauntlet and showed a white hand and an emerald seal-ring. “I am sure you ’ave knowledge of the device’ borne by the noble ’ouses of other kingdoms as well as your own,” he said. “You recognize this of de Champvallon?”

Mr. Brunnage looked at the ring; it was splendid, awed him a little and completed a persuasion that he dealt with a personage of peculiar eminence. He was satisfied and even deferential. “No need, no need,” he said. “I know satin from sacking when I see it. I hadn’t no real suspicion of you and was rough spoken only in duty, which a man o’ your parts would easy know how to understand.”

“Ah, a thousan’ time’!” M. de Champvallon said graciously, and brought forth an enamelled gold boxlet of scented snuff. “May I offer you?”

“Thanky, thanky,” the Squire said, availing himself liberally of a rare opportunity. He powdered his nose and upper lip, sniffing powerfully; the Chevalier, with increasing graciousness, partook delicately, and the completed ceremony seemed to tincture the thick air with a mutual respect and something like good-fellowship. “Noble stuff, sir!” Mr. Brunnage said. “Though the truth is I ha’n’t no fine coffee-house manners and be more for my pipe than this nose-tickling. Yet, oicks! I can nose-tickle, too, if I be a-mind. Well, sir, getting on with my duty, would you permit me to ask you a question for the law’s information?”

“A question? A thousan’!”

“Well, then, have you fell in with three riders, two men and a woman, last night or to-day, or have you seen such a three on the moor or out of it?”

“Two men and a woman?” The young man seemed to search his memory. “Two men and a woman. No; in all this place I ’ave seen nobody. Not a soul.”

“Did you come by Littlefield?”

“I cannot say. Is it a city? Stop! I know—it is where I should ’ave res’ las’ night and not come into this place.”

“So! Then you’ve been on the moor all night. Well, you wouldn’t have seen ’em unless it was this morning, for they were not at Littlefield until half an hour before full daylight. It may be the better for you that you had no sight of ’em, Musseer Shove-along.”

“Éh? Some bad people?”

“ ‘Bad’!” Mr. Brunnage repeated, and his nostrils rose, expanding. “If it’s hanging for ’em instead of the stake—the stake and slow burning—then I say England’s daft! There’s more in what they did than London knows. More behind it than plain sacrilegious murder and robbery. More behind it, sir, more behind it!”

“You say?” M. de Champvallon inquired, seeming to listen with patient interest; but his foreign pronunciation became more evident. “Somesing you say some bad people did do?”

“Looky!” Mr. Brunnage cried. “I’ll take ’em! I’ll have ’em by nightfall, and what Brunnage promises Brunnage does!”

M. de Champvallon bowed gravely and repeated the name with a little difficulty. “Bron-age? That is you, sir?”

“Me, sir? Yes, sir!” Mr. Brunnage returned with emphasis. “Brunnage. Keep that name in your memory, Musseer Shove-along, and add to it that I sit at Mally Surfeit as a Justice. Brunnage, Musseer Shove-along, Brunnage!” Mr. Brunnage had his natural reasons for desiring the friend of a king’s favorite to remember the name, and, for these same reasons, he became expansive. “I’ll tell you this thing, Musseer Shove-along. Looky how ’twas. Night afore last, these two he-rogues and their she-rogue murdered the properest churchman in England, my lord Bishop Bourne, hard by his own doorstep in London-town. Robbed and murdered him, sir! Col’nel Bourne rode after ’em and was close; but there was this same fog over all the country and it’s like they was cunning and lay hid in a wood through the daylight yesterday. He came into Littlefield betimes this morning and they had been there, because the tavern-keeper looked from a window, saw ’em stop and then go on. So Col’nel Bourne sends a fisherman to me in his boat, and the man rows up Wanton Water to find me at my house in Mally Surfeit and tell me what’s afoot. Other men went out from Littlefield to rouse all the country behind the moor; but Bourne was sure the three fiends are on Wanton Mally. Two men and a woman on a black horse, a white horse and a bay horse, and keeping together—the woman on the white horse and riding shameless like a man—and all three with blackened faces and wearing black cloaks.”

“Strange,” M. de Champvallon said reflectively. “A strange appearance.”

Mr. Brunnage laughed shrewdly. “But all the easier to be catched! Col’nel Bourne’s beating ’em up from Littlefield; but I be the man that’ll take ’em by candle-lighting for a thousand pound! They still had their faces blacked when they came into Littlefield, and good reason, too, that they would not be known where I swear one o’ the three would be known. I’ll wash that riddle off his face for him with my own hands, Musseer Shove-along, and show a skin folk here have hateful knowledge of! Bourne’s fisherman did not tell me half when I began to smell that skin and what else was behind this foulness. Plotting, Musseer Shove-along, deep plotting and murder done against church and king by the infidel.”

“Who? You say the infidel?”

“Why, looky now! There’s a roguey knave been living on this very Wanton Mally these last three year, one that’s known to hate all laws and observances of God and man, one that’s forsworn church and king and joined himself to desperate villains, male and female, of the same mind that are a curse upon a hundred parts of England and shall be stamped on! Now hark to me, Musseer Shove-along; this fellow, Colpoys, rode to London ten days ago and’s not home, for I rode straight from Mally Surfeit to his house, and he’s looked for there by candle-lighting this night. What’s it mean?”

“I cannot tell.”

“Why, he was in London when the Bishop was murdered; there’s men there and women, too, of his own kind that’d help him do it, and where would he come and bring them when he’d done it? Why, straight here as he could ride, to lie run to ground in his own earth. But I be the earth-stopper that’ll stop him! What’s more, I be the one man of substance and authority in England that can bear the right witness against him. Hark to me now: What was it the Bishop preached against within the hour of their horridness?”

M. de Champvallon was wholly unaware. “I cannot tell you.”

“Why, the very pestilents this fellow, Colpoys, has joined!” the Justice cried. “I’ve all points of the matter, sir; they make a case that damns him. He’s a Quaker, the Bishop preached against Quakers, Colpoys was there, now he’s riding here upon the spot where it’s known the murderers ride. I’ll find him with a he and she Quaker with him, and what more’s needed?”

“Quecka,” the French gentleman murmured, finding the word not of his vocabulary. “It mean’ a wicked fellow?”

“Vipers beyond thinking!” Mr. Brunnage assured him, with passion. “What’s those who hate the law and the church, set themselves to destroy both, swear openly they despise the King, and murder bishops?”

“That poor Bishopp,” M. de Champvallon said, and seemed to become reflective. “Éh, but it is a great misfortune!”

“One that’ll be suffered for, sir; rest your soul on that!”

“I belief,” the young man said, “I should be upon my way. If you will show me—”

“Be easy; I’ll not keep you.” Mr. Brunnage gave him a narrow glance and went to the point of the conversation. “They say all goes by favor at court, and great service to the crown has little reward unless there’s some there to press for it. When I take these rogues it may be Col’nel Bourne or another as’ll get praise and more for it unless the truth find means to reach the King. Now I’ll put you on your way so that you’ll not lose it, whereby you may think I do you a small service, Musseer Shove-along.”

“Ah, a great one—to save me from this desolation—”

“Well, since you take it as a kindness from me, I’ll thanky to remember the name o’ Brunnage when next you see your friend Musseer de Grammont. He could mention it to the King without trouble to himself—a word of what I’ve been telling you, how it’s me that’ll both catch and convict these profaners and murderers, a hint of my diligence and duty in this matter, if you take me? Maybe a word, too, of how I succored Musseer de Grammont’s friend out of a distress—”

“A word? A thousan’ in your praise will be too little, Misterr Bron-age. But if you please—”

“Never fear! What town had you a mind to come at this night?”

“Town? I do not care. My desire is for an inn with a fire and a dish one can eat. I do not care where it is; I only wish to arrive to it.”

“No hard matter,” Mr. Brunnage said, set his horse in motion, turned him about, and, within the minute, showed M. de Champvallon the road of Wanton Mally. “There. There’s the Mally. You can follow that well enough. It’ll take you out o’ the moor and at its end you’ll find yourself upon a King’s Highway not to be mistook. Ride thither a little briskly and you’ll not be stopped. I had three fellows with me earlier; but, when I found Colpoys abroad, I went beyond his house, then sent one back to bring men from Mally Surfeit to watch the joining of the road and the Highway. By noon they’ll be there and all the edges of the moor’ll be watched by them of Mally Surfeit, Littlefield and other parts; but, going easily, you’ll be on the Highway in good time and go unquestioned. Do you turn right on the Highway and go seven mile to the Stag’s Horn at Kennelton, lie there to-night and you’ll not be sorry. They’ll put you on the road for London in the morning and I’ll trust you not to forget the service Brunnage did you, when you see your friend.”

“Never! I shall tell ’im—”

“Well,” Mr. Brunnage said, “I’ll say farewell to you, though you may see me again. It might be I’d come up with you on this very road and bring three trussed fiends in my charge.” He turned with his men to move farther down the Mally; but, at a thought, drew rein. “Ah, there’s another thing you might remember to speak a word on o’ Brunnage—how you saw me ride off with only two at my back to catch ’em, and they known to be very desperate rogues.”

“I will tell ’im,” M. de Champvallon said gravely. “I promise Monsieur de Grammont shall ’ave the pleasure to ’ear everysing that ’as pass’ between you and me, Misterr Bron-age.”

“Two men and a woman on a black horse, a white horse and a bay horse—all with blackened faces and wearing black cloaks.”