Читать книгу The Robber, A Tale - G. P. R. James - Страница 8

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We must now return for a short space of time to the spot beneath the park wall where we left one of the assailants of Alice Herbert stunned by a blow from the cudgel of John Graves. He lay there for some minutes perfectly motionless and perfectly alone. At length, however, the sound of a horse's feet, cantering lightly along the road was heard, and a goodly gentleman, dressed in a fair suit of black, and mounted on a dun fat-backed mare, made his appearance in the lane, and approached rapidly towards the spot where the discomfited wayfarer lay.

The good round face of the new comer was turned up towards the sky, calculating whether there was light enough left to admit of his reaching Uppington in safety, or whether he had not better pause, and sleep at the little neighbouring town; and the first thing that called his attention to the object in his path was his dun mare, who had never before shied at any object on earth, recoiling from the body of the robber so violently as to throw forward the good round stomach of the rider upon her neck and shoulders with a sonorous ejaculation of the breath.

"Ugh! Gad's my life! who have we here?" exclaimed Master Nicholas, the clerk of the collector at Uppington, whose saddle-bags were in truth the tempting object which had brought forth the gentlemen of the road, when they had been unseasonably diverted from their purpose by the appearance of Alice Herbert--"Gad's my life, who have we here?" and, dismounting from his mare, with charitable intent, he bent down over the stranger.

There were two or three particulars in the sight that now presented itself which made the heart of the collector's clerk beat rather more rapidly than was ordinary. In the first place the stranger had in his hand a drawn sword, in the next place a discharged pistol might be seen lying within a foot of his nose, the sand was stained with blood hard by, and in the countenance of the prostrate man, the collector's clerk, who was a great physiognomist, discovered at once all the lines and features of a robber. The good feelings of the Samaritan vanished from his bosom as soon as he had made this discovery, and, stealthily creeping away, as if afraid of waking a sleeping lion, the gentleman in black regained his mare's back, made her take a circuit round the little green, and, riding on as hard as he could to the country town we have described in the commencement of this book, sent out a posse of people to take charge of the body of the stunned or defunct robber.

Before this detachment reached the spot, however, the personage it sought was gone. Shortly after the clerk had passed, he had began to recover, and speedily regained his legs, looking about him with some degree of wonder and amazement at the situation in which he found himself. Whilst busy in recalling all that had passed, the sound of some one singing met his ear, and, in another minute the head and shoulders of John Graves appeared above the park paling. The half-witted man saw that the robber was upon his feet again, and without any hesitation, he proceed to clamber over the fence, and approach his former antagonist.

"I have come to apprehend thee!" cried the madman, laying his hand boldly upon the collar of the robber's vest. Strange to say, the freebooter not only suffered him so to take hold of him, but very probably might have even gone with him like a lamb to the slaughter, so much was he overpowered by surprise, and so little did he imagine that such an act would be performed without some power to support it, had not two or three horsemen at that moment come galloping down the lane as hard as they could ride. A single glance showed the captive of John Graves that there was an infinite accession of strength on his side. He accordingly twisted himself out of his mad antagonist's grasp in a moment, and prepared to lay violent hands upon him in return. Silly John, however, seemed by this time entirely to have forgotten his purpose of arresting the robber; and looking round him as the others came up, with an air of wonder, indeed, but not of alarm, he muttered, "More foxes! more foxes!"

The worthies by whom he was surrounded, in the meantime held a sharp consultation, of which he seemed to be the object; but at length one of them exclaimed, "Come along, come along! Bring him with you, and do what you like with him afterwards. If you stay disputing here, you will have the whole country upon you."

After a moment's hesitation, the plan proposed was adopted, and two of the robbers, seizing upon John Graves, dragged him along between them, at a much quicker rate of progression than was at all agreeable to him. After the first ten or twelve steps he resisted strenuously, and showed a disposition to be vociferous, which instantly produced the application of a pistol to his head, with a threat of death if he did not keep silence. He was quite sufficiently sane to fear the fate that menaced him; and the sight of the pistol had an immediate effect both upon his tongue and his feet, which now moved rapidly onward. The paths pursued by his captors were as tortuous as might well be, and the lane which had been the scene of their exploits was quitted almost immediately. For nearly an hour they hastened on as fast as they could drag the half-witted man along; but at length, much to his relief, the whole party stopped before a small lonely house on the edge of a wide common. There was a tall pole, with a garland at the top, planted before the door; and a bush hung above the lintel, giving notice to all whom it may concern that entertainment for man, at least, was to be found within. The sound of the strangers' arrival, in a moment drew out the landlord of the place, who seemed not at all surprised to see the company which visited his house at that late hour; and his own pale-brown countenance bore, in its hawk-like features, an expression very harmonious with the calling of his guests.

"Quick! take the horses up to the pits," he said, speaking to the boy of all work, who appeared round the corner; and shading the candle which he carried in his hand from the wind. "Why, Master Hardie, who have you got there? By my life, it is Silly John! What, in the devil's name, did you bring him here for?"

"Why, Master Guilford," replied one of the men, but not he to whom he spoke, "here's Hardy and Wiley have got themselves into a pretty mess. They would go out against the Captain's orders to try a bit of business on a private account, and they have got more than they bargained for, I take it. Here is Hardie with a cut in his neck, which has made him bleed like an old sow pig; and Wiley was left for dead by a blow of this same fellow's cudgel whom we have got here. Hardie came up for us two upon the downs, or else it is likely Wiley would have been in the pepper-pot at Uppington by this time; for we caught his horse half a mile up the green lane."

This conversation had taken place while the party was alighting; but no sooner was that operation concluded than the landlord pressed them to come in quickly, and Silly John was hurried by them into a large room behind, with a long deal table, and several settles and benches, for its sole furniture, if we except a polished sconce over the chimney, from which a single candle shed its dim and flickering rays. Underneath the light, with his two arms leaning on the table, and his head resting again upon them, the curls of the fair hair falling over the sleeves of his coat, and his face hidden entirely, sat the boy Jocelyn, whom we have before mentioned; and the gang of plunderers had been in the room several minutes before he was aware of their presence, so sound was the slumber in which he was buried.

"Hark ye, Master Doveton!" said the landlord, as soon as the door was shut, and addressing the man who had given him an account of his companions' adventure; "hark ye! I think it a very silly thing of you to bring this fellow up here."

"Why, we did not know what else to do with him, Guilford," answered the other. "Wiley wanted to shoot him as soon as he heard that it was his cudgel which had beaten about his head so foully."

"You shall do no harm to him in my house, Master Doveton," replied the other; "the man is a poor innocent, whom I have known this many a year, and I won't have him hurt."

"Thank you, Master Guilford, thank you!" exclaimed the poor fellow, as he heard this interposition in his favour. "These foxes have almost twisted my thumbs off. Do not let them hurt me, Master Guilford, and I'll give you the crooked sixpence out of my tobacco-box."

"You see, Guilford," replied Doveton, while one or two others crowded round to hear the consultation, "the thing is we risk this fellow betraying us. He has seen all our faces, and could, I dare say, swear to us any where."

"What signifies his swearing?" demanded the landlord; "he is as mad as a March hare; nobody will believe his swearing."

"Ay, but he may give such information as will lead them to ferret us out," replied another of the gang; "now we do not want to hurt the man, but he must be got out of the way somehow."

"He sha'n't be got out of the way by foul means, howsoever, Master Doveton," replied the landlord, whose new character of protector was pleasant to him. "Come: nonsense! make him sit down and drink with you, and he'll forget all about it. He'll sing you as good a song as any man in the country; and, if he promises not to tell anything he has seen, you may be quite sure of him."

"Truth--truth, Master Guilford," cried the object of their discourse. "If my godfathers and godmothers at my baptism had known what they were about they would have called me Truth. Why not Truth as well as Ruth? I had a sister they called Ruth, though she never found out a Boaz, poor girl! but died without being a widow--how could she, when she was never married? If I had been married to Margaret Johnson myself, I should not have gone mad, you know; but I always tell truth. Did anybody ever hear me tell a lie in my life?"

So he rambled on, while the friendly landlord busied himself in hastily setting out the table in the midst for the coming entertainment of his worthy guests; and, at the same time, lent a sharp ear to the consultation which they held together concerning the madman. That consultation was not of a nature to satisfy him entirely; for, though it seemed that the party were willing to follow his counsel so far as keeping poor Silly John to drink with them, a word or two was spoken of its being easy to do what they liked with him when he was drunk, which did not at all please Master Guilford.

As he went round and round the table, however, setting down a cup here, and a platter there, he gave the boy Jocelyn a sharp knock on the elbow, which roused him from his sleep; and, the next time he passed, the landlord whispered a word in his ear. The boy took no particular notice at the moment, but rubbed his eyes, yawned, spoke for a moment to Doveton and the rest, and then disappeared from the room.

Large joints of roast meat soon graced the board; and the hall assumed very much the appearance of the palace of Ulysses, in the days of the suitors; except that, in all probability, it was a little more cleanly, and that the beef was not killed at the end of the table. Silly John was made to sit down between the two men, Hardcastle and Wiley, who were certainly not his greatest friends; but they, nevertheless, loaded his platter with food, which he devoured with a wonderful appetite, and filled his cup with ale from a tankard called a black jack, which circulated freely till supper was over.

The gentlemen into whose society he was thrown, however, were not of a class to rest satisfied with even the best old humming ale; and while one body of them demanded the implements and materials for making punch, another called for a pitcher of Burgundy, which, notwithstanding the size, character, and appearance of the house, was produced as a matter of course. John Graves had his ladleful from the bowl, and his glassful from the pitcher; and Doveton, who was beginning to get merry, and eke good-humoured in his cups, insisted upon having one of the songs the landlord had so much vaunted. The madman required no pressing; the very name of music was enough for him; and with a full sonorous voice, and memory which failed not in the slightest particular, he began an old song, one of the many in praise of punch.

"Now I will sing you a song in return, Master John," cried the rough-featured fellow called Hardcastle, who had been one of the assailants of Alice Herbert.

"Why, Hardie, thou canst never sing to-night," replied Doveton. "Thou canst never sing to-night, with the slit in the weasand thou hast gotten there. It will let all the wind out, and thy song will be like the song of a broken bellows or bursten bagpipe."

"Never you mind that, Doveton," replied the other; "my song shall be sung, if the devil and you stood at the door together; a pretty pair of you!" and he accordingly proceeded to pour forth, in a voice of goodly power, but very inferior in melody to that of the madman, a song well suited to the taste of his auditors:--