Patricia at the inn

THE landlord went indoors to his accustomed fireside chair. He was chilled to the blood; every infirmity that lurked in the gross bulk of him was up in arms against his late impudence; and worse, his nerves seemed all tattered and torn in his brain. He had been privileged to see and hear a little too much. Ha! they were already at it, curse them! The moans of the poor wretch upstairs were penetrating to his ears. Or were they the moans of the sea, sounds he had heard every night these forty years? Now and then he thought he heard a muffled, desperate cry. After all, it might be only the wild fowl on the rocks. How he wished he could rid his imagination of the scene that was being enacted. Would that he had not struggled up the ladder at all! Lord! were they never going to have done? It was enough to make a man revolt against his clay.

At this acute moment, however, Cicely appeared with her master’s nightly potation. It soothed his qualms somewhat. Pah! he had got the nerves of a girl. It was merely a little blood-letting; quite an everyday matter.

Curse the fellow, there were his cries again! What must it be like to have a bullet dug, inch by inch, by a dagger out of one’s own back! Ugh! what a morbid old fool he was; why must he forever keep thinking of it, and receiving the steel in his own pampered flesh? Might it not be there in earnest if he ever went up a ladder again!

After all, however, when he came to think of the thing in its true relation, he was by no means sorry he had been there. He had acquired knowledge of some value. The “incurable disease” was neither more nor less than a bullet wound in the body. Now, why should the woman lie about it and conceal it from the world if the man, her husband, had come by it honestly? Had he been on the side of the just, in other words on that of the party in power, more explicitly, my Lord Cromwell and his Parliament, that wound would have been an honourable scar. They were plainly Royalists; persons of mark, no doubt, for were there not a thousand and one subtle but unmistakable evidences of their condition? And, just as plainly, were they not fleeing the country? Otherwise they would not come at dead of night to the “Sea Rover.”

He was afraid he must dismiss the theory of this young man being the King from his mind. It was almost certain that had Charles Stuart been wounded to death, the fact would have been known over the length and breadth of the land. For him to have escaped so far in that dire condition would have been impossible.

Again, there was evidence in their familiar talk, despite something of a disparity in years, the woman being clearly older than her companion, that they were man and wife. In any case, the woman’s mode of address, tender and solicitous as it was, was hardly the one she would employ, even if she were a princess of the blood, to the King’s majesty. No; he was afraid he must look elsewhere for the King. Yet he had no need to be cast down upon the matter. These two persons were not to be despised. Their appearance suggested money and jewels. And they seemed to be delivered, bound hand and foot as it were, into his hands. Gamaliel hugged himself at that thought. They should be made to pay a price for that cold in his head. They should not aggravate his gout and his rheumatism, and set his nerves in a twitter, for nothing. He smiled malevolently as he sipped his hot cup, and spread his hands out to the fire.

Perchance the poor devil was dying, though. Certainly no human spirit could ever be tottering nearer to the brink than that of the man upstairs. The idea awoke never a spark of pity in the landlord. He simply regarded the near prospect of his death as another factor in the case. If he were not the King, he was not sure that he did prefer him to die. There would be only a woman to deal with them. In the phrase of that malignant sailor, Diggory Fargus, he would trust himself to tear the heart out of a woman with his own two hands. But why at every twist and turn did that uncomfortable mariner obtrude himself? He cursed himself for having called him to mind. If, however, the young man was the King—in spite of everything the landlord still clung tenaciously to that hope,—it would not be to his interest for his Majesty to perish. He must be delivered up alive, if possible.

During the rest of that evening, Gamaliel was too shaken to spy again on his guests, or to connive at others doing so. For he was still determined that his new drawer, whom he had engaged for that particular purpose, should go up the ladder also, and finally settle this hard problem as to whether Charles Stuart was actually at his inn or not.

It was not until the following evening that he summoned the courage to make a fresh attempt to set his mind at rest. During the day he could not venture to do so, for the publicity of light was too great. In the meantime he had not an idea of what had happened upstairs. He was still denied the chamber as sedulously as ever. He had tapped on the chamber door during the morning; the pale-eyed lady had appeared, more beautiful and more beset with anguish than before. She had taken a bowl of milk and a loaf of bread from the landlord’s hands, but beyond a word of thanks and a prayer that he should not again disturb the sleeper, he had nothing of her conversation. It was on his lips to inquire of the young man’s condition; but ere he could frame the question the door was swiftly yet silently closed upon him, and for that day his chance had passed. As time wore on, a conviction grew up in his mind that the man was dead. The silence upstairs was so extreme; besides, an intangible sense of foreboding seemed to invade and presently possess, not only the atmosphere of the dismal old inn, but the minds of those dwelling in it.

Cicely went about in tears. The tender-hearted wench was sure something terrible had happened to the poor young gentleman. Her master swore at her, but he could not relieve his own mind of her fears. Joseph, his son, was also afraid: it was true that he and the serving-maid were singularly often in sympathy, more often than Gamaliel cared about. He would have got rid of her long ago, were she not such an industrious, capable girl. Then, again, a shadow seemed to hang over the mind, or what there was of it, of his new drawer. He had hardly spoken a word, and every task he was set to, whether it was cutting faggots or washing the floor, he performed in a perfunctory and absent manner. Indeed, the first day he spent in the service of his new master was not to the satisfaction of the landlord. A more idle, more incapable fellow, he vowed he had never beheld. He would take the first chance of getting rid of him when he had served his turn. Twice during the day he had had to kick him up from the straw in the stable, where he had discovered him fast asleep.

At last, when the darkness had come again, the landlord once more resolved to allay his doubts. His nausea of the night before was merged in his overmastering curiosity. Summoning Will Jackson, he again had recourse to the ladder; and being at the mercy of his passions, he again had the temerity first to ascend himself.

No sooner, however, were his feet on the ladder, than a latent sense of horror was quickened within him. The bitter winter evening biting his ears, the moans of the sea, the gloom, the insecurity of hanging by one’s icy fingers in mid-air, all came upon him as a special reminiscence, and reproduced his pangs of the night before. And no sooner had he cocked his eyes over the shutter than they were greeted by a face as pallid as the sheets in which it lay. The man was asleep. Many evidences of pain had vanished from his countenance; indeed, his slumber looked as natural as it was profound. Then it began to dawn on the landlord that this was the peace of death. The sweat broke out on the watcher’s face. Why, in the fiend’s name, had he ventured up that ladder a second time, when there was a loathsome, ugly corpse at the top to greet him!

So if this was the King, the King was dead. Poor young man! he had died under the knife, perchance. But why had he been so unthoughtful as to die at the “Sea Rover”? There would, doubtless, be no end of a business presently. Yet, more probably, it was not the King at all; in that case there would only be a woman to deal with, for fugitives must be made to pay for the privilege of perishing in that respectable house. Just, however, as Master Gamaliel’s thoughts had travelled back to their customary sphere, and were beginning to revolve in their natural orbit—namely and to wit, the personal interests of Gamaliel Hooker—a phenomenon occurred to the corpse. It raised its arms and stretched itself.

The landlord bit his lips with anger. What a zany he was, to be sure; he had come to his dotage. To think that he should have mistaken a sleeping man for a corpse! It did not occur to him, cunning as he was, that it calls for as full-blooded a creature to be an eminent scoundrel, as it does for one to be distinguished in the more civil sciences. He could not shake off that sinister incident of the night before; he was a bag of nerves; he could hear skeletons creaking in the wind. With the best will in the world, there was hardly enough blood and pulse about him for this business. He had a thought too much imagination. He made but a poor second-rate sort of rascal, after all.

All this time, though the lady was in the chamber, she had been so still that the landlord had not noticed her. Turning his attention to her now, the eavesdropper saw that she was standing hard by the bed. She was no longer regarding the sleeper, however. Her head was bent over something she held in her hand; and her tears were falling fast and thick. In the very frenzy of her companion’s sufferings she had restrained them; but now, when she had procured him some little surcease, her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere, and her infinite compassion extended to another.

Craning to the window and alternately pressing his ears and his eyes to the wood, Gamaliel was able to discover the object of her pity. The thing in her hand was an open locket. It was suspended by a chain of fine gold round her neck, and was worn apparently in the recesses of her bosom. The landlord was presently able to discern that it was a portrait in miniature. Yet it was far too small and delicately wrought for its outlines to be distinguished at that distance. Gamaliel had not to speculate long on its subject, however. For on a sudden impulse the lady pressed it to her lips with a passionate gesture, crying aloud in her throbbing tones:

“Oh, my King! oh, my King! our Lady be with thee forever and alway!”

She sank to her knees in an attitude of prayer.

The landlord, deeming that there was nothing further to gain by remaining longer in his precarious and grievously exposed situation, crept down from his perch, and sent up the shivering Will Jackson in his stead. It would require but a glance for the fellow to discover whether the man in the bed was or was not Charles Stuart.

Now, whether it was that Will Jackson had not the address of his master in the delicate art of seeing without being seen, or whether the fellow had had the audacity to advise wantonly those within the chamber of his presence, the landlord was in no case to tell; but certain it is Master Hooker heard a strange, wild cry arise from the room: and the next instant the serving-man came pellmell down the ladder, very much after the manner of one who has confronted a ghost.

The landlord hurriedly bore away the ladder and went indoors with his man, lest the lady above should fling back the shutters and discover in what manner she had been spied upon. For it was plain that Jackson had had the folly to let her see his face at the window. Having abused his servant in the roundest terms for his incaution, the landlord proceeded to question him as to what he had seen.

“Was it the King?” was the breathless question.

“Oh, no, master!” the fellow assured him.

So much for the slender hope the landlord had been secretly cherishing! He could not confess to any surprise, for many circumstances pointed against it. And as there was no sort of hesitation about the fellow, Gamaliel had no temptation to doubt him. Yet if it were not Charles Stuart, Jackson’s demeanour at the window clearly showed that he and the persons in the chamber were well acquainted.

“Then if it was not Charles Stuart,” the landlord demanded, “who was it, sirrah?”

“I do not know,” said Will Jackson.

“You are lying to me,” said the landlord, furiously; “and if you lie to me, you rogue, I will break your head—or no, I will not; I will send for those soldiers that were here two nights agone, and I will deliver you up to them as a malignant who was concerned in Worcester fight. Now, who are they? D’ye hear me? Who are they, I say?”

“I do not know, master,” Will Jackson repeated doggedly.

“I say ye do know, sir!” the landlord cried. “And ye shall speak the truth, d’ye hear me! Why should you come down the ladder in that plight if ye had never seen these persons before?”

The fellow stood silent. The landlord repeated the question and heightened the threat. But it was of no avail. The drawer abided by his denial, simply and tenaciously. His master fell into a violent rage. He shook him by the collar, he kicked him, he beat him with his fists; but all he could get out of him was the same unwavering, stolid answer.

And at last, Gamaliel’s anger having spent itself somewhat and his disappointment having grown a little less keen, he grew to believe the unfortunate Jackson. There was that in his humble, thick-witted rusticity that in itself killed suspicion. After all, it was not unlikely that the nervousness begotten by his strange employment, and his horror at being discovered in it, was the true cause of his wild appearance and behaviour.

As the landlord sat that evening, as usual, by his cheerful fire, examining the knowledge he had lately gained, and weighing it in his mind for what it was worth, he felt that he had no cause to be dissatisfied. The man and the woman upstairs in his best taffety chamber fronting the sea were certainly Royalists. And one of them, and he the man, was stricken and helpless; and were there not diamonds on the fair hands of them both?