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

shelter at the Packhorse, under the guise of one of Lady Patience’s serving-men, at any rate until another nightfall, when a fresh refuge could be found for him, according as the events would shape themselves within the next few hours.

Therefore, as soon as the shadows of the evening began to creep over Brassing Moor, Stich set out for the cross-roads. He walked at a brisk pace along the narrow footpath which led up to his forge, his honest heart heavy at thought of his friend, all alone out there on the Heath.

The weird echo of the man-hunt did not reach this western boundary of the Moor, but even in its stillness the vast immensity looked hard and cruel in the gloom: the outlines of gorse bush and blackthorn seemed akin to gaunt, Cassandra-like spectres foreshadowing some awful disaster.

Within the forge Philip too had waited in an agony of suspense, whilst twice the glorious sunset had clothed the Tors with gold.

Driven by hunger and cold out of the hiding-place on the Moor which Bathurst had found for him, he had returned to the smithy the first night, only to find John Stich gone and no trace of his newly-found friend. His sister, he knew, must have started for London, but he was without any news as to what had happened in the forge, and ignorant of the gallant fight made therein by the notorious highwayman.

The hour was late then, and Philip was loth to disturb old Mistress Stich, John’s mother, who kept house for him at the cottage. Moreover, he had the firm belief in his heart that neither Bathurst nor Stich would have deserted him, had they thought that he was in imminent danger.

Tired out with the excitement of the day, and with a certain amount of hope renewed in his buoyant young heart, he curled himself up in a corner of the shed and forgot all his troubles in a sound sleep.

The next morning found him under the care of old Mistress Stich at the cottage. She had had no news of John, who had wandered out, so she said, about two hours after sunset, possibly to find the Captain; but she thrilled the young man’s ears with the account of the daring fight in the forge.

“Nay! but they’ll never get our Captain!” said the worthy dame, with a break in her gentle old voice, “and if the whole country-side was after him they’d never get him. Leastways so says my John.”

“God grant he may speak truly,” replied the young man, fervently; “‘tis shame enough on me that a brave man should risk his life for me, whilst I have to stand idly behind a cupboard door.”

The absence of definite news weighed heavily upon his spirits, and as the day wore on and neither John Stich nor Bathurst reappeared, his hopes very quickly began to give way to anxiety and then to despair. Philip always had a touch of morbid self-analysis in his nature: unlike Jack Bathurst, he was ever ready to bend the neck before untoward fate, heaping self-accusation on self-reproach, and thus allowing his spirit to bow to circumstance, rather than to attempt to defy it.

And throughout the whole of this day he sat, moody and silent, with the ever-recurring thought hammering in his brain,—

“I ought not to have allowed a stranger to risk his life for me. I should have given myself up. ‘Twas unworthy a soldier and a gentleman.”

By the time the shadows had lengthened on the Moor, and Jack o’ Lantern covered with sweat had arrived riderless at the forge, Philip was formulating wild plans of going to Wirksworth and there surrendering himself to teh local magistrate. He worked himself up into a fever of heroic self-sacrifice, and had just resolved only to wait until dawn to carry out his purpose, when John Stich appeared in the doorway of his smithy.

One look in the honest fellow’s face told the young Earl of Stretton that most things in his world were amiss just now. A few eager questions, and as briefly as possible Stich told him exactly how matters stood: the letters stolen by Sir Humphrey Challoner, Bathurst’s determination to re-capture them and the organised hunt proceeding this very night against him.

“Her ladyship and I both think, my lord, that this place is not safe for you just now,” added John, finally, “and she begs you to come toer at Brassington as soon as you can. The road is safe enough,” added the smith, with a heavy sigh, “no one’d notice us—they are all after the Captain, and God knows but perhaps they’ve got him by now.”

Philip could say nothing, for his miserable self-reproachment had broken his spirit of obstinacy. His boyish heart was overflowing with sympathy for the kindly smith. How gladly now would he have given his own life to save that of his gallant rescuer!

Obediently he prepared to accede to his sister’s wishes. He knew what agony she must have endured when the letters were filched from her; he guessed that she would wish to have him near her, and in any case he wanted to be on the spot, hoping that yet he could offer his own life in exchange for the one which was being so nobly risked for him.

Quite quietly, therefore, and without a murmur, he prepared to accompany Stich back to Brassington. At the Packhorse a serving-man’s suit could easily be found for him, and he would be safe enough there, for a little while at least.

John Stich, having tended Jack o’ Lantern with loving care, took a hasty farewell of his mother. While his friend’s fate and that of his young lord hung in the balance he was not like to get back quietly to his work.

“The Captain may come back here for shelter mayhap,” he said, with a catch in his throat, as he kissed the old dame “good-bye”; “you’ll tend to him, mother?”

“Aye! you may be sure o’ that, John,” replied Mistress Stich, fervently.

“He’ll need a rest mayhap, and some nice warm water; he’s such a dandy, mother, you know.”

“Aye! aye!”

“And you might lay out his best clothes for him; he may need ‘em mayhap.”

“Aye! I’ve got ‘em laid in lavendar for him. That nice sky-blue coat, think you, John?”

“Aye, and the fine ‘broidered waistcoat, and the black silk bow for his hair, and the lace ruffles for his wrists, and …”

Stich broke down, a great lump had risen in his throat. Would the foppish young dandy, the handsome, light-hearted gallant, ever gladden the eyes of honest John again?

Chapter XXXI

“We’ve gotten Beau Brocade!”

The presence of Philip at the inn had done much to cheer Patience in her weary waiting. He and John Stich had reached the Packhorse some time before cockcrow, and the landlord had been only too ready to do anything in reason to further the safety of the fugitive, so long as his own interests were not imperilled thereby.

This meant that he would give Philip a serving-man’s suit and afford him shelter in the inn, for as long as the authorities did not suspect him of harbouring a rebel; beyond that he would not go.

Lady Patience had paid him lavishly for this help and his subsequent silence. It was understood that the fugitive would only make a brief halt at Brassington: some more secluded shelter would have to be found for him on the morrow.

For the moment, of course, the thoughts of every one in the village would be centred in the capture of Beau Brocade. The highwayman had many friends and adherents in the village, people whom his careless and open-handed generosity had often saved from penury. To a man almost, the village folk hoped to see him come out victorious from the awful and unequal struggle which was going on the Heath. So strong was this feeling that the beadle, who was known to entertain revengeful thoughts against the man who had played him so impudent a trick the day before, did not dare to show his rubicund face in the bar-parlour of either inn on that memorable night.

No one had gone to bed. The men waited about, consuming tankards of small ale, whilst discussing the possibility of their hero’s capture. The women sat at home with streaming eyes, plaintively wondering who would help them in future in their distress, if Beau Brocade ceased to haunt the Heath.

Patience herself did not close an eye. Her hand clinging to that of Philip, she sat throughout the long, weary night watching and waiting, dreading the awful dawn, with the terrible news it would bring.

And it was when the first rosy light shed its delicate hue over the tiny old-world village, that the sweet-scented morning air was suddenly filled with the hoarse triumphal cry,—

“We have gotten Beau Brocade!”

“Hip! hip! hip! hurray!”

Wearied and dazed with the fatigue of her long vigil, Patience had sunk into a torpor when those shouts, rapidly drawing nearer to the village, roused her from this state of semi-consciousness.

She hardly knew what she had hoped during these past anxious hours: now that the awful certainty had come, it seemed to stun her with the unexpectedness of the blow.

“We’ve gotten Beau Brocade!”

The village folk turned out in melancholy groups from the parlour of the inn; they too had entertained vague hopes that their hero would emerge unscathed from the perils which encompassed him; to them too the news of his capture came as that of a sad, irretrievable catastrophe. They congregated in small, excited numbers on the village green, their stolid heads shaking sadly at sight of the squad of soldiers, who were bringing in a swathed-up bundle of humanity, smothered about the head in a scarlet coat, and with hands and legs securely strapped down with a couple of military belts. Only the fine brown cloth coat, the beautifully-embroidered waistcoat and silver-mounted pistols proclaimed that miserable, helpless bundle to be the gallant Beau Brocade.

The soldiers themselves were in a wild state of glee; they had carried their prisoner in triumph all the way from the Heath, and had never ceased shouting until they had deposited him on the green. Owing to the unusual hour, and to the absence of his Honour, Squire West, the pinioned highwayman was to be locked up in the pound until noon.

In the small parlour of the Packhorse Patience had sat rigid as a statue, while those shouts of triumph seemed to strike her heart as with a hammer. Her fist pressed against her burning mouth, she was making desperate efforts to smother the scream of agony which would have rent her throat.

But with one bound John Stich was soon out of the Packhorse, where he, too, with aching heart and mind devoured with anxiety, had watched and waited through the night.

It did not take him long to reach the green, and using his stalwart elbows to some purpose, he quickly made a way for himself through the small crowd and was presently looking down on the huddled figure which lay helpless on the ground.

There was the Captain’s fine brown coat sure enough, with its ample, silk-lined, full skirts, and rich, cut-steel buttons; there was the long, richly-embroidered waistcoat; the lace cuffs at the wrists, and the handsome sword-belt, through which the finely-chased silver handle of the pistol still protruded. But John Stich had need but to cast one glance at the hands, and another at the feet encased in rough countryman’s boots, to realise with a sudden, wild exultation of his honest heart that in some way or other his Captain had succeeded in once more playing a trick on his pursuers, and that the