Beau Brocade - Baroness Emmuska Orczy (polar express read aloud TXT) 📗

you mean? I was but jesting.”

“But I was not, Sir Humphrey. I was thinking of Beau Brocade.”

“The highwayman?”

“Why not? He lives by robbery and hates all the quality, whom he plunders whene’er he has a chance. Your Honour has had experience, only last night… eh?”

“Well? What of it? Curse you, man, for a dotard! Why don’t you explain?”

“‘Tis simple enough, your Honour. You give him the news that her ladyship’s coach will cross the Heath to-night, tell him of her money and her jewels, offer him a hundred guineas more for the packet of letters…. He! he! he! He’ll do the rest, never fear!”

Master Mittachip rubbed his bony hands together, his colourless eyes were twinkling, his thin lips quivering with excitement, dreams of that freehold bit of property became tangible once more.

Sir Humphrey looked at him quitely for a moment or two: the little man’s excitement was contagious and his Honour had a great deal at stake: a beautiful woman whom he loved and her large fortune to boot. But reason and common-sense—not chivalry—were still fighting their battle against his daring spirit of adventure.

“Tush, man!” he said after awhile, with the calmness of intense excitement, “you talk arrant nonsense when you say I’m to give a highwayman news of her ladyship’s coach and offer him money for the letters. Where am I to find him? How speak with him?”

Mittachip chuckled inwardly. His Honour then was not averse to the plan. Already he was prepared to discuss the means of carrying it out.

“‘Tis a lawyer’s business to ferret out what goes on around him, Sir Humphrey. You can send any news you please to Beau Brocade within an hour from now.”

“How?”

“John Stich, the blacksmith over at the crossroads, is his ally and his friend. Most folk think ‘tis he always gives news to the fogue whene’er a coach happen to cross the Moor. But that’s as it may be. If your Honour will call at the forge just before sunset, you’ll mayhap see a chestnut horse tethered there and there’ll be a stranger talking to John Stich; a stranger young and well-looking. He’s oft to be seen at the forge. The folk about here never ask who the stranger is, for all have heard of the chivalrous highwayman who robs the rich and gives to the poor. He! he! he! Do you call at the forge, Sir Humphrey, you can arrange this little matter there…Your news and offer of money will get to Beau Brocade, never fear.”

Sir Humphrey was silent. All the boisterous jollity had gone out of his face, leaving only a dark scowl behind, which made the ruddy face look almost evil in its ugliness. Mittachip viewed him with ill-concealed satisfaction. The plan had indeed found favour with his Honour; it was quick, daring, sure: the fortune of a lifetime upon one throw. Sir Humphrey, even before the attorney had finished speaking, had resolved to take the risk. He himself was safe in any case, nothing could connect his name with that of the notorious highwayman who had cut his purse but the night before.

“I’d not have her hurt,” was the first comment he made after a few minutes’ silent cogitation.

“Hurt?” rejoined Mittachip. “Why should she be hurt? Beau Brocade would not hurt a pretty woman. He’ll get the letters from her, I’ll stake my oath on that.”

“Aye! and blackmail me after that to the end of my days. My good name would be at the mercy of so damned a rascal.”

“What matter, Sir Humphrey, once Lady Patience is your wife and her fortune in your pocket? Everything is fair in love, so I’ve been told.”

Sir Humphrey ceased to argue. Chivalry and honour had long been on the losing side.

“Moreover, Sir Humphrey,” added the crafty attorney, slily, “once you have the letters, you can denounce the rogue yourself, and get him hanged safely out of your way.”

“He’d denounce me.”

“And who’d believe the rascal’s word against your Honour’s flat denial? Not Squire West, for sure, before whom he’d be tried, and your Honour can have him kept in prison until after your marriage with Lady Patience.”

It seemed as if even reason would range herself on the side of this daring plan. There seemed practically no risks as far as Sir Humphrey himself was concerned, and every chance of success, an that rascal Beau Brocade would but consent.

“He would,” asserted Mittachip, “an your Honour told him that the coach, the money, and the letters belonged to Lady Rounce, and the young lady travelling in the coach but a niece of her ladyship. Lady Rounce is a hard woman who takes no excuse from a debtor. He! he! he! she has the worst reputation in the two counties, save your Honour!”

The lawyer chuckled at this little joke, but Sir Humphrey was too absorbed to note the impertinence. He was pacing up and down the narrow room in a last agony of indecision.

Mittachip evidently was satisfied with his day’s work. The two hundred guineas he looked upon as a certainty already. After a while, noting the look of stern determination upon his Honour’s face, he turned the conversation to matters of business. He had been collecting some rents for Sir Humphrey and also for Squire West and Lady Rounce, and would have to return to Wirksworth to bank the money.

Since Sir Humphrey Challoner was occupying the only available bedroom at the Moorhen, there would be no room for Master Mittachip and Master Duffy, his clerk. He hoped to reach Brassington by the bridle path before the footpads were astir, thence at dawn on to Wirksworth.

He had shot his poisonous arrow and did not stop to ascertain how far it had gone home. He bade farewell to his employer, with all the deference which many years of intercourse with the quality had taught him, and never mentioned Beau Brocade, Lady Patience or John Stich’s forge again. But when he had bowed and scraped himself out of his Honour’s presence, and was sitting once more beside Master Duffy in the bar-parlour, there was a world of satisfaction in his pale, watery eyes.

Chapter X

A Stranger at the Forge

In the meanwhile Lady Patience, with Betty by her side, had been walking towards the forge as rapidly as the state of the road permitted.

A sudden turn of the path brought her within sight of the cross-ways and of the old gallows, on which a fragment of rain-spattered rag still fluttered ghostlike in the wind.

But here, within a few yards of her goal, she stopped suddenly, with eyes dilated, and hands pressed convulsively to her heart, in an agony of terror. Walking quickly on the road from Wirksworth towards Stitch’s cottage were some half-dozen red-coated figures, the foremost man amongst them wearing three stripes upon his sleeve.

Soldiers with a sergeant at the forge! What could it mean but awful peril for the fugitive?

Her halt had been but momentary, the next instant she was flying down the pathway closely followed by Betty, and had reached the shed just as the soldiers were skirting the cottage towards it.

She glanced within, and gave a quick sigh of relief: there was no sign of her brother, and John was busy at this anvil.

Already the smith had caught sight of her.

“Hush!” he whispered reassuringly, “have no fear, my lady. I’ve had soldiers here before.”

“But they’ll recognise me, perhaps… or guess…”

“No, no! my lady! Do you pretend to be a waiting wench. They are men from Derby mostly, and not like to know your face.”

There was not a moment to be lost. Patience realised this, together with the certainty that her own coolness and presence of mind might prove the one chance of safety for her brother.

“Halt!” came in loud accents from the sergeant outside.

“The lock, Master Stich,” said Patience, loudly and carelessly, as the sergeant stepped into the doorway, “is it ready? Her ladyship’s coach is following me from Aldwark, and will be at the cross-roads anon.”

“Quite ready, mistress,” replied the smith, casting a rapid glance at the soldier, who stood in the entrance with hand to hat in military salute.

The latter took a rapid survey of the interior of the forge, then said politely—

“Your pardon, ladies!”

“Well, and what is it now, Sergeant?” queried John, with affected impatience.

“I have heard that there’s a stranger at your forge, smith,” replied the soldier. “My corporal came down from Aldwark early this afternoon and told me about him. I’d like just to have a talk with him.”

“One moment, Sergeant,” said John, interposing his burly figure between Patience and the prying eyes of the young soldier.

“I think you’ll find the lock quite secure now, mistress,” he said, trying, good, honest fellow that he was, to put as much meaning into the careless sentences as he dared. She mutely thanked him with her eyes, took the padlock from his hands, and gave him over some money for his pains, the while her heart was nearly bursting with the agony of suspense.

“No stranger, Sergeant,” rejoined the smith, once more turning with well-assumed indifference to the soldier, “only my nephew out o’ Nottingham. Your corporal was a Derby man, and knew the lad’s mother, my sister Hannah!”

“Quite so, quite so, smith,” quoth the Sergeant, pleasantly; “then you won’t mind my searching your forge and cottage just for form’s sake.”

Even then Patience did not betray herself either by a look or a quiver of the voice.

“Lud! how tiresome be those soldiers,” she said with an affected pout. “I’d hoped to wait here in peace, friend smith, until the arrival of her ladyship’s coach.”

“Nay, mistress, you need not be disturbed,” said the smith, jovially, “the Sergeant is but jesting, eh, friend?” he added, turning to the soldier. “There! I give you my word, Master Sergeant, that there is naught here for you to find.”

“I’ve my orders, smith,” said the Sergeant, more curtly.

“Nay, friend,” interposed Lady Patience, “surely you overstep your orders. John Stich is honest and loyal, you do him indignity by such unjust suspicions.”

“Your pardon, ma’am, but I know my duty. There’s no suspicion against the smith, but there are many rebels in hiding about here, and I’ve strict orders to be on the lookout for one in particular, Philip Gascoyne, Earl of Stretton, who is known to be in these parts.”

John Stich interrupted him with a loud guffaw.

“Lud, man!” he said, “there’s no room for a noble lord in a wayside smithy; you waste your time.”

“My orders say I’ve the right to search,” quoth the Sergeant, firmly, “and search I’m going to.”

Then he turned to his squad, who were standing at attention outside.

“Follow me, men,” he said, as he stepped forward into the forge.

Fortunately the remote corners of the shed were dark, and Patience still had her hood and cloak wrapped closely round her, or her deathlike pallor, the wild, terrified look in her eyes, would at this moment have betrayed her in spite of herself.

But honest John was standing in the way of the Sergeant.

“Look’ee here, Sergeant,” he said quietly, “I’m a man of few words, but I’m a free-born Englishman, and my home is my castle. It’s an insult to a free and loyal citizen for soldiers to search his home, as if he were a felon. I say you shall not enter, so you take yourself off, before you come by a broken head.”

“Smith, you’re a fool,” commented the Sergeant, with a shrug of the shoulders, “and do yourself