A Changed Man and Other Tales: Ch. 10: The Duke's Reappearance

Ch. 10: The Duke's Reappearance

A FAMILY TRADITION

According to the kinsman who told me the story, Christopher Swetman's
house, on the outskirts of King's-Hintock village, was in those days
larger and better kept than when, many years later, it was sold to the
lord of the manor adjoining; after having been in the Swetman family, as
one may say, since the Conquest.

Some people would have it to be that the thing happened at the house
opposite, belonging to one Childs, with whose family the Swetmans
afterwards intermarried. But that it was at the original homestead of
the Swetmans can be shown in various ways; chiefly by the unbroken
traditions of the family, and indirectly by the evidence of the walls
themselves, which are the only ones thereabout with windows mullioned in
the Elizabethan manner, and plainly of a date anterior to the event;
while those of the other house might well have been erected fifty or
eighty years later, and probably were; since the choice of Swetman's
house by the fugitive was doubtless dictated by no other circumstance
than its then suitable loneliness.

It was a cloudy July morning just before dawn, the hour of two having
been struck by Swetman's one-handed clock on the stairs, that is still
preserved in the family. Christopher heard the strokes from his chamber,
immediately at the top of the staircase, and overlooking the front of the
house. He did not wonder that he was sleepless. The rumours and
excitements which had latterly stirred the neighbourhood, to the effect
that the rightful King of England had landed from Holland, at a port only
eighteen miles to the south-west of Swetman's house, were enough to make
wakeful and anxious even a contented yeoman like him. Some of the
villagers, intoxicated by the news, had thrown down their scythes, and
rushed to the ranks of the invader. Christopher Swetman had weighed both
sides of the question, and had remained at home.

Now as he lay thinking of these and other things he fancied that he could
hear the footfall of a man on the road leading up to his house--a byway,
which led scarce anywhere else; and therefore a tread was at any time
more apt to startle the inmates of the homestead than if it had stood in
a thoroughfare. The footfall came opposite the gate, and stopped there.
One minute, two minutes passed, and the pedestrian did not proceed.
Christopher Swetman got out of bed, and opened the casement. 'Hoi! who's
there?' cries he.

'A friend,' came from the darkness.

'And what mid ye want at this time o' night?' says Swetman.

'Shelter. I've lost my way.'

'What's thy name?'

There came no answer.

'Be ye one of King Monmouth's men?'

'He that asks no questions will hear no lies from me. I am a stranger;
and I am spent, and hungered. Can you let me lie with you to-night?'

Swetman was generous to people in trouble, and his house was roomy. 'Wait
a bit,' he said, 'and I'll come down and have a look at thee, anyhow.'

He struck a light, put on his clothes, and descended, taking his horn-
lantern from a nail in the passage, and lighting it before opening the
door. The rays fell on the form of a tall, dark man in cavalry
accoutrements and wearing a sword. He was pale with fatigue and covered
with mud, though the weather was dry.

'Prithee take no heed of my appearance,' said the stranger. 'But let me
in.'

That his visitor was in sore distress admitted of no doubt, and the
yeoman's natural humanity assisted the other's sad importunity and gentle
voice. Swetman took him in, not without a suspicion that this man
represented in some way Monmouth's cause, to which he was not unfriendly
in his secret heart. At his earnest request the new-comer was given a
suit of the yeoman's old clothes in exchange for his own, which, with his
sword, were hidden in a closet in Swetman's chamber; food was then put
before him and a lodging provided for him in a room at the back.

Here he slept till quite late in the morning, which was Sunday, the sixth
of July, and when he came down in the garments that he had borrowed he
met the household with a melancholy smile. Besides Swetman himself,
there were only his two daughters, Grace and Leonard (the latter was,
oddly enough, a woman's name here), and both had been enjoined to
secrecy. They asked no questions and received no information; though the
stranger regarded their fair countenances with an interest almost too
deep. Having partaken of their usual breakfast of ham and cider he
professed weariness and retired to the chamber whence he had come.

In a couple of hours or thereabout he came down again, the two young
women having now gone off to morning service. Seeing Christopher
bustling about the house without assistance, he asked if he could do
anything to aid his host.

As he seemed anxious to hide all differences and appear as one of
themselves, Swetman set him to get vegetables from the garden and fetch
water from Buttock's Spring in the dip near the house (though the spring
was not called by that name till years after, by the way).

'And what can I do next?' says the stranger when these services had been
performed.

His meekness and docility struck Christopher much, and won upon him.
'Since you be minded to,' says the latter, 'you can take down the dishes
and spread the table for dinner. Take a pewter plate for thyself, but
the trenchers will do for we.'

But the other would not, and took a trencher likewise, in doing which he
spoke of the two girls and remarked how comely they were.

This quietude was put an end to by a stir out of doors, which was
sufficient to draw Swetman's attention to it, and he went out. Farm
hands who had gone off and joined the Duke on his arrival had begun to
come in with news that a midnight battle had been fought on the moors to
the north, the Duke's men, who had attacked, being entirely worsted; the
Duke himself, with one or two lords and other friends, had fled, no one
knew whither.

'There has been a battle,' says Swetman, on coming indoors after these
tidings, and looking earnestly at the stranger.

'May the victory be to the rightful in the end, whatever the issue now,'
says the other, with a sorrowful sigh.

'Dost really know nothing about it?' said Christopher. 'I could have
sworn you was one from that very battle!'

'I was here before three o' the clock this morning; and these men have
only arrived now.'

'True,' said the yeoman. 'But still, I think--'

'Do not press your question,' the stranger urged. 'I am in a strait, and
can refuse a helper nothing; such inquiry is, therefore, unfair.'

'True again,' said Swetman, and held his tongue.

The daughters of the house returned from church, where the service had
been hurried by reason of the excitement. To their father's questioning
if they had spoken of him who sojourned there they replied that they had
said never a word; which, indeed, was true, as events proved.

He bade them serve the dinner; and, as the visitor had withdrawn since
the news of the battle, prepared to take a platter to him upstairs. But
he preferred to come down and dine with the family.

During the afternoon more fugitives passed through the village, but
Christopher Swetman, his visitor, and his family kept indoors. In the
evening, however, Swetman came out from his gate, and, harkening in
silence to these tidings and more, wondered what might be in store for
him for his last night's work.

He returned homeward by a path across the mead that skirted his own
orchard. Passing here, he heard the voice of his daughter Leonard
expostulating inside the hedge, her words being: 'Don't ye, sir; don't! I
prithee let me go!'

'Why, sweetheart?'

'Because I've a-promised another!'

Peeping through, as he could not help doing, he saw the girl struggling
in the arms of the stranger, who was attempting to kiss her; but finding
her resistance to be genuine, and her distress unfeigned, he reluctantly
let her go.

Swetman's face grew dark, for his girls were more to him than himself. He
hastened on, meditating moodily all the way. He entered the gate, and
made straight for the orchard. When he reached it his daughter had
disappeared, but the stranger was still standing there.

'Sir!' said the yeoman, his anger having in no wise abated, 'I've seen
what has happened! I have taken 'ee into my house, at some jeopardy to
myself; and, whoever you be, the least I expected of 'ee was to treat the
maidens with a seemly respect. You have not done it, and I no longer
trust you. I am the more watchful over them in that they are motherless;
and I must ask 'ee to go after dark this night!'

The stranger seemed dazed at discovering what his impulse had brought
down upon his head, and his pale face grew paler. He did not reply for a
time. When he did speak his soft voice was thick with feeling.

'Sir,' says he, 'I own that I am in the wrong, if you take the matter
gravely. We do not what we would but what we must. Though I have not
injured your daughter as a woman, I have been treacherous to her as a
hostess and friend in need. I'll go, as you say; I can do no less. I
shall doubtless find a refuge elsewhere.'

They walked towards the house in silence, where Swetman insisted that his
guest should have supper before departing. By the time this was eaten it
was dusk and the stranger announced that he was ready.

They went upstairs to where the garments and sword lay hidden, till the
departing one said that on further thought he would ask another favour:
that he should be allowed to retain the clothes he wore, and that his
host would keep the others and the sword till he, the speaker, should
come or send for them.

'As you will,' said Swetman. 'The gain is on my side; for those clouts
were but kept to dress a scarecrow next fall.'

'They suit my case,' said the stranger sadly. 'However much they may
misfit me, they do not misfit my sorry fortune now!'

'Nay, then,' said Christopher relenting, 'I was too hasty. Sh'lt bide!'

But the other would not, saying that it was better that things should
take their course. Notwithstanding that Swetman importuned him, he only
added, 'If I never come again, do with my belongings as you list. In the
pocket you will find a gold snuff-box, and in the snuff-box fifty gold
pieces.'

'But keep 'em for thy use, man!' said the yeoman.

'No,' says the parting guest; 'they are foreign pieces and would harm me
if I were taken. Do as I bid thee. Put away these things again and take
especial charge of the sword. It belonged to my father's father and I
value it much. But something more common becomes me now.'

Saying which, he took, as he went downstairs, one of the ash sticks used
by Swetman himself for walking with. The yeoman lighted him out to the
garden hatch, where he disappeared through Clammers Gate by the road that
crosses King's-Hintock Park to Evershead.

Christopher returned to the upstairs chamber, and sat down on his bed
reflecting. Then he examined the things left behind, and surely enough
in one of the pockets the gold snuff-box was revealed, containing the
fifty gold pieces as stated by the fugitive. The yeoman next looked at
the sword which its owner had stated to have belonged to his grandfather.
It was two-edged, so that he almost feared to handle it. On the blade
was inscribed the words 'ANDREA FERARA,' and among the many fine chasings
were a rose and crown, the plume of the Prince of Wales, and two
portraits; portraits of a man and a woman, the man's having the face of
the first King Charles, and the woman's, apparently, that of his Queen.

Swetman, much awed and surprised, returned the articles to the closet,
and went downstairs pondering. Of his surmise he said nothing to his
daughters, merely declaring to them that the gentleman was gone; and
never revealing that he had been an eye-witness of the unpleasant scene
in the orchard that was the immediate cause of the departure.

Nothing occurred in Hintock during the week that followed, beyond the
fitful arrival of more decided tidings concerning the utter defeat of the
Duke's army and his own disappearance at an early stage of the battle.
Then it was told that Monmouth was taken, not in his own clothes but in
the disguise of a countryman. He had been sent to London, and was
confined in the Tower.

The possibility that his guest had been no other than the Duke made
Swetman unspeakably sorry now; his heart smote him at the thought that,
acting so harshly for such a small breach of good faith, he might have
been the means of forwarding the unhappy fugitive's capture. On the
girls coming up to him he said, 'Get away with ye, wenches: I fear you
have been the ruin of an unfortunate man!'

On the Tuesday night following, when the yeoman was sleeping as usual in
his chamber, he was, he said, conscious of the entry of some one. Opening
his eyes, he beheld by the light of the moon, which shone upon the front
of his house, the figure of a man who seemed to be the stranger moving
from the door towards the closet. He was dressed somewhat differently
now, but the face was quite that of his late guest in its tragical
pensiveness, as was also the tallness of his figure. He neared the
closet; and, feeling his visitor to be within his rights, Christopher
refrained from stirring. The personage turned his large haggard eyes
upon the bed where Swetman lay, and then withdrew from their hiding the
articles that belonged to him, again giving a hard gaze at Christopher as
he went noiselessly out of the chamber with his properties on his arm.
His retreat down the stairs was just audible, and also his departure by
the side door, through which entrance or exit was easy to those who knew
the place.

Nothing further happened, and towards morning Swetman slept. To avoid
all risk he said not a word to the girls of the visit of the night, and
certainly not to any one outside the house; for it was dangerous at that
time to avow anything.

Among the killed in opposing the recent rising had been a younger brother
of the lord of the manor, who lived at King's-Hintock Court hard by.
Seeing the latter ride past in mourning clothes next day, Swetman
ventured to condole with him.

'He'd no business there!' answered the other. His words and manner
showed the bitterness that was mingled with his regret. 'But say no more
of him. You know what has happened since, I suppose?'

'I know that they say Monmouth is taken, Sir Thomas, but I can't think it
true,' answered Swetman.

'O zounds! 'tis true enough,' cried the knight, 'and that's not all. The
Duke was executed on Tower Hill two days ago.'

'D'ye say it verily?' says Swetman.

'And a very hard death he had, worse luck for 'n,' said Sir Thomas.
'Well, 'tis over for him and over for my brother. But not for the rest.
There'll be searchings and siftings down here anon; and happy is the man
who has had nothing to do with this matter!'

Now Swetman had hardly heard the latter words, so much was he confounded
by the strangeness of the tidings that the Duke had come to his death on
the previous Tuesday. For it had been only the night before this present
day of Friday that he had seen his former guest, whom he had ceased to
doubt could be other than the Duke, come into his chamber and fetch away
his accoutrements as he had promised.

'It couldn't have been a vision,' said Christopher to himself when the
knight had ridden on. 'But I'll go straight and see if the things be in
the closet still; and thus I shall surely learn if 'twere a vision or
no.'

To the closet he went, which he had not looked into since the stranger's
departure. And searching behind the articles placed to conceal the
things hidden, he found that, as he had never doubted, they were gone.

When the rumour spread abroad in the West that the man beheaded in the
Tower was not indeed the Duke, but one of his officers taken after the
battle, and that the Duke had been assisted to escape out of the country,
Swetman found in it an explanation of what so deeply mystified him. That
his visitor might have been a friend of the Duke's, whom the Duke had
asked to fetch the things in a last request, Swetman would never admit.
His belief in the rumour that Monmouth lived, like that of thousands of
others, continued to the end of his days.

* * * * *

Such, briefly, concluded my kinsman, is the tradition which has been
handed down in Christopher Swetman's family for the last two hundred
years.

Back to chapter list of: A Changed Man and Other Tales