Читать книгу Nutbrown Roger and I, A Romance of the Highway - J. H. Yoxall - Страница 13

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And yet I had not been shot after all; the bullets had whizzed past us harmlessly. When I fingered my forehead I felt in vain for blood or a wound; I only found a lumpy bruise.

The blow which had stunned me was a blow from the brown mare’s skull as she suddenly rose at the hedge. She threw her head back, I held mine low; and the two came sharply into contact. When the stun of it had passed away I found myself still on the highwayman’s saddle, upheld in his strong right arm.

Twice that day then, by kind fortune or ill aim, I had escaped the perils of powder and shot. And there I was, delivered into a highwayman’s keeping, on the back of a highwayman’s Bess! Was ever boy so fortunate before! thought I.

But mixed up with a boy’s pride in romantic adventures and narrow escapes was some anxiety as to how these strange experiences of mine were to end. What was to happen to me next? Here was I in the power of a noted highwayman; how would he treat me? Would he be cruel, or false, or kind?

Instinctively I turned my head to scan my companion. He met my glance with a smile.

“Better now, my boy?” he said. “Not shot at all, you see. Remember in future to keep your head up at a jump.”

“But are you shot, sir?” I asked.

“Oh no. I think the bullet to hit me is not yet cast.”

“But where are the runners and the doctor?”

“A couple of miles away. Was the old gentleman a doctor? So much the better; we may have left him work to do.”

“Did you shoot the runners, then?” I asked, with a shiver of horror all down my spine.

“Oh no, no need for that. The first man bungled at the hedge, and was thrown, his mate stopped to pick him up, I presume, and the doctor would wait to mend the broken bones, if there are any.”

“Then you don’t think they are coming after us?”

“No fear of that, boy; and if they come they will never find us here.”

It was true, I thought, as I looked around me. The bonny brown mare was stepping daintily through the mazes of a dense little wood. Close and high the underbush grew around us, and all, save the moon-silvered tops of the elms, was dark and impenetrable to the eye. Forty Bow Street runners might have hunted for us there in vain.

“Never fear, boy,” laughed the highwayman. “I don’t know what they were after you for, but you may snap your fingers at them now.”

“I won’t fear, sir,” I said. “I trust myself to you.”

The highwayman held me in a tighter grasp. “That is well, my boy,” said he. “Trust to me; I’ll care for you. I need a companion, and you must let me be your friend.”

“A highwayman my friend!” thought I.

“What would my great-grandfather the haughty squire have said to that?”

Presently we came into a narrow winding lane, and rode between high red banks half covered with holly, gorse, and briar. And at the end of the lane we came into view of a wide expanse of watered meadowland, like a common intersected with brooks. Here and there the green level of it was broken by huge grassy mounds like giant graves.

“Why,” I exclaimed, “these must be the Abbey meadows!”

“Hush!” muttered my companion; “not a word now.” And silently we struck out from the wood towards the half-ruined, half-forgotten little Abbey Chapel.

Ancient was that tiny edifice, the sole standing remnant of a mighty abbey which once adorned those pleasant watered meads. Chancel and cloister, nave and transept, chapter-house and refectory, all the glories of the stately monastery, were passed away. Carven stone and marble pavement lay buried under the grassy mounds around us. Time and warfare had ruined the fine old Cistercian priory and had laid it low. All that was left of it above ground was its gatehouse, and for generations the gatehouse had been known by the name of the Abbey Chapel. Long it had served as a place of worship; but since the church was built at Redwych the chapel had fallen into disuse, neglect, and decay.

Towards this relic of past glories the brown mare was carrying us gently. It stood in a little graveyard surrounded with hedges of holly and privet. The good mare lifted the loose gate aside with her teeth and entered the enclosure. Dismounting, we passed into the chapel and the brown mare followed us, her nose under her master’s arm.

With flint and steel the highwayman struck a spark into his pocket tinder-box, blew the spark into a tiny flame, and lit a rush-light in a shaded lanthorn. The gleam of the candle showed me a place of rotting pews, dilapidated windows, decaying plaster, and cobwebbed beams. Upon the cracked old lettered gravestones that formed the uneven floor two boxes lay, and a mattress.

“To bed, Brown Bess!” said her master; and at once the beautiful creature stretched herself on the straw that was strewn in a corner.

“Now for supper,” said my companion. From a carved oak pew that served as cupboard he took out food and drink. We ate, and fed the good Bess with corn and oatmeal-water. Then my highwayman lit a cigar, threw himself on a mattress, and smiled at me as I sat opposite to him on a box.

“Now let us talk,” he said. “Call me Roger; what shall I call you? I suppose you have run away from school?”

I told him my name and where I came from. “From Beolea!” he cried. “Then you must know Beolea Grange? That is well, vastly well. You can help me, Harry, for ’tis Beolea Grange that brings me here.”

Then I told him all my story, and why I was a runaway; how my father, Harry Solway, had been harshly treated by his grandfather, the old squire; how he had run away to sea; how he had married my poor mother at Barcelona; how he was drowned off Pernambuco; how my mother, with scarce a word of English in her head, had brought me to Beolea, a child of nine years old; how she had died as she reached the rectory; and how my grand-uncle Anthony had hated and ill-used me ever since.

Roger had pityingly listened to my story until I came to my uncle’s question in Latin and my reply; and then he laughed out loud and long.

“Custard!” he cried. “Vastly good, Harry; vastly good! Accusative plural of custos! Why, you’ve seen ’em; you’ve seen ’em to-night, and run from ’em too. Custos, custodes; custodes, the guardians, the constables, the Bow Street runners—don’t you see?”

Custodes! Of course it was. “But this is strange,” thought I. “A highwayman know Latin! What manner of highwayman is this?”

I stared at him as he lay there in the candlelight. There was nothing of the vulgar robber about him, I thought; if ever a man bore the stamp of gentlehood and breeding, it was he.

He smiled. “You wonder to find me so learned,” he said. “I’m not the sort of man you expected in a highwayman, I suppose? Ah, Harry, there are strange ups and downs in life! Come, you shall know all about me.

“But not to-night, not to-night,” he went on. “ ’Tis ten o’clock and after. Dare you share the mattress and rugs with the Nutbrown Highwayman? Ah, that is right, my boy; believe me, I’m not so brown as I’m painted.”