The Castle Inn: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

A KNIGHT-ERRANT

About a hundred and thirty years ago, when the third George, whom our
grandfathers knew in his blind dotage, was a young and sturdy
bridegroom; when old Q., whom 1810 found peering from his balcony in
Piccadilly, deaf, toothless, and a skeleton, was that gay and lively
spark, the Earl of March; when _bore_ and _boreish_ were words of _haut
ton_, unknown to the vulgar, and the price of a borough was 5,000_l_.;
when gibbets still served for sign-posts, and railways were not and
highwaymen were--to be more exact, in the early spring of the year 1767,
a travelling chariot-and-four drew up about five in the evening before
the inn at Wheatley Bridge, a short stage from Oxford on the Oxford
road. A gig and a couple of post-chaises, attended by the customary
group of stablemen, topers, and gossips already stood before the house,
but these were quickly deserted in favour of the more important
equipage. The drawers in their aprons trooped out, but the landlord,
foreseeing a rich harvest, was first at the door of the carriage, and
opened it with a bow such as is rarely seen in these days.

'Will your lordship please to alight?' he said.

'No, rascal!' cried one of those within. 'Shut the door!'

'You wish fresh horses, my lord?' the obsequious host replied. 'Of
course. They shall be--'

'We wish nothing,' was the brisk answer. 'D'ye hear? Shut the door, and
go to the devil!'

Puzzled, but obedient, the landlord fell back on the servants, who had
descended from their seat in front and were beating their hands one on
another, for the March evening was chill. 'What is up, gentlemen?'
he said.

'Nothing. But we will put something down, by your leave,' they answered.

'Won't they do the same?' He cocked his thumb in the direction of the
carriage.

'No. You have such an infernal bad road, the dice roll,' was the answer.
'They will finish their game in quiet. That is all. Lord, how your folks
stare! Have they never seen a lord before?'

'Who is it?' the landlord asked eagerly. 'I thought I knew his Grace's
face.'

Before the servant could answer or satisfy his inquisitiveness, the door
of the carriage was opened in haste, and the landlord sprang to offer
his shoulder. A tall young man whose shaped riding-coat failed to hide
that which his jewelled hands and small French hat would alone have
betrayed--that he was dressed in the height of fashion--stepped down. A
room and a bottle of your best claret,' he said. 'And bring me ink and
a pen.'

'Immediately, my lord. This way, my lord. Your lordship will perhaps
honour me by dining here?'

'Lord, no! Do you think I want to be poisoned?' was the frank answer.
And looking about him with languid curiosity, the young peer, followed
by a companion, lounged into the house.

The third traveller--for three there were--by a gesture directed the
servant to close the carriage door, and, keeping his seat, gazed
sleepily through the window. The loitering crowd, standing at a
respectful distance, returned his glances with interest, until an empty
post-chaise, approaching from the direction of Oxford, rattled up
noisily and split the group asunder. As the steaming horses stopped
within a few paces of the chariot, the gentleman seated in the latter
saw one of the ostlers go up to the post-chaise and heard him say, 'Soon
back, Jimmie?'

'Ay, and I ha' been stopped too,' the postboy answered as he dropped his
reins.

'No!' in a tone of surprise. 'Was it Black Jack?'

'Not he. 'Twas a woman!'

A murmur of astonishment greeted the answer. The postboy grinned, and
sitting easily in his pad prepared to enjoy the situation. 'Ay, a
woman!' he said. 'And a rare pair of eyes to that. What do you think she
wanted, lads?'

'The stuff, of course.'

'Not she. Wanted one of them I took'--and he jerked his elbow
contemptuously in the direction whence he had come--'to fight a duel for
her. One of they! Said, was he Mr. Berkeley, and would he risk his life
for a woman.'

The head ostler stared. 'Lord! and who was it he was to fight?' he asked
at last.

'She did not say. Her spark maybe, that has jilted her.'

'And would they, Jimmie?'

'They? Shoo! They were Methodists,' the postboy answered contemptuously,
'Scratch wigs and snuff-colour. If she had not been next door to a Bess
of Bedlam and in a main tantrum, she would have seen that. But "Are you
Mr. Berkeley?" she says, all on fire like. And "Will you fight for a
woman?" And when they shrieked out, banged the door on them. But I tell
you she was a pretty piece as you'd wish to see. If she had asked me, I
would not have said no to her.' And he grinned.

The gentleman in the chariot opened a window. 'Where did she stop you,
my man?' he asked idly.

'Half a mile this side of Oxford, your worship,' the postboy answered,
knuckling his forehead. 'Seemed to me, sir, she was a play actress. She
had that sort of way with her.'

The gentleman nodded and closed the window. The night had so far set in
that they had brought out lights; as he sat back, one of these, hung in
the carriage, shone on his features and betrayed that he was smiling. In
this mood his face lost the air of affected refinement--which was then
the mode, and went perfectly with a wig and ruffles--and appeared in its
true cast, plain and strong, yet not uncomely. His features lacked the
insipid regularity which, where all shaved, passed for masculine beauty;
the nose ended largely, the cheek-bones were high, and the chin
projected. But from the risk and even the edge of ugliness it was saved
by a pair of grey eyes, keen, humorous, and kindly, and a smile that
showed the eyes at their best. Of late those eyes had been known to
express weariness and satiety; the man was tiring of the round of costly
follies and aimless amusements in which he passed his life. But at
twenty-six pepper is still hot in the mouth, and Sir George Soane
continued to drink, game, and fribble, though the first pungent flavour
of those delights had vanished, and the things themselves began to
pall upon him.

When he had sat thus ten minutes, smiling at intervals, a stir about the
door announced that his companions were returning. The landlord preceded
them, and was rewarded for his pains with half a guinea; the crowd with
a shower of small silver. The postillions cracked their whips, the
horses started forward, and amid a shrill hurrah my lord's carriage
rolled away from the door.

'Now, who casts?' the peer cried briskly, arranging himself in his
seat. 'George, I'll set you. The old stakes?'

'No, I am done for to-night,' Sir George answered yawning without
disguise.

'What! crabbed, dear lad?'

'Ay, set Berkeley, my lord. He's a better match for you.'

'And be robbed by the first highwayman we meet? No, no! I told you, if I
was to go down to this damp hole of mine--fancy living a hundred miles
from White's! I should die if I could not game every day--you were to
play with me, and Berkeley was to ensure my purse.'

'He would as soon take it,' Sir George answered languidly, gazing
through the glass.

'Sooner, by--!' cried the third traveller, a saturnine, dark-faced man
of thirty-four or more, who sat with his back to the horses, and toyed
with a pistol that lay on the seat beside him. 'I'm content if your
lordship is.'

'Then have at you! Call the main, Colonel. You may be the devil among
the highwaymen--that was Selwyn's joke, was it not?--but I'll see the
colour of your money.'

'Beware of him. He _doved_ March,' Sir George said indifferently.

'He won't strip me,' cried the young lord. 'Five is the main. Five to
four he throws crabs! Will you take, George?'

Soane did not answer, and the two, absorbed in the rattle of the dice
and the turns of their beloved hazard, presently forgot him; his
lordship being the deepest player in London and as fit a successor to
the luckless Lord Mountford as one drop of water to another. Thus left
to himself, and as effectually screened from remark as if he sat alone,
Sir George devoted himself to an eager scrutiny of the night, looking
first through one window and then through the other; in which he
persevered though darkness had fallen so completely that only the hedges
showed in the lamplight, gliding giddily by in endless walls of white.
On a sudden he dropped the glass with an exclamation, and thrust out
his head.

'Pull up!' he cried. 'I want to descend.'

The young lord uttered a peevish exclamation. 'What is to do?' he
continued, glancing round; then, instantly returning to the dice, 'if it
is my purse they want, say Berkeley is here. That will scare them. What
are you doing, George?'

'Wait a minute,' was the answer; and in a twinkling Soane was out, and
was ordering the servant, who had climbed down, to close the door. This
effected, he strode back along the road to a spot where a figure,
cloaked, and hooded, was just visible, lurking on the fringe of the
lamplight. As he approached it, he raised his hat with an exaggeration
of politeness.

'Madam,' he said, 'you asked for me, I believe?'

The woman--for a woman it was, though he could see no more of her than a
pale face, staring set and Gorgon-like from under the hood--did not
answer at once. Then, 'Who are you?' she said.

'Colonel Berkeley,' he answered with assurance, and again saluted her.

'Who killed the highwayman at Hounslow last Christmas?' she cried.

'The same, madam.'

'And shot Farnham Joe at Roehampton?'

'Yes, madam. And much at your service.'

'We shall see,' she answered, her voice savagely dubious. 'At least you
are a gentleman and can use a pistol? But are you willing to risk
something for justice' sake?'

'And the sake of your _beaux yeux_, madam?' he answered, a laugh in his
voice. 'Yes.'

'You mean it?'

'Prove me,' he answered.

His tone was light; but the woman, who seemed to labour under strong
emotion, either failed to notice this or was content to put up with it.
'Then send on your carriage,' she said.

His jaw fell at that, and had there been light by which to see him he
would have looked foolish. At last, 'Are we to walk?' he said.

'Those are the lights of Oxford,' she answered. 'We shall be there in
ten minutes.'

'Oh, very well,' he said, 'A moment, if you please.'

She waited while he went to the carriage and told the astonished
servants to leave his baggage at the Mitre; this understood, he put in
his head and announced to his host that he would come on next day. 'Your
lordship must excuse me to-night,' he said.

'What is up?' my lord asked, without raising his eyes or turning his
head. He had taken the box and thrown nicks three times running, at five
guineas the cast; and was in the seventh heaven. 'Ha! five is the main.
Now you are in it, Colonel. What did you say, George? Not coming!
What is it?'

'An adventure.'

'What! a petticoat?'

'Yes,' Sir George answered, smirking.

'Well, you find 'em in odd places. Take care of yourself. But shut the
door, that is a good fellow. There is a d----d draught.'

Sir George complied, and, nodding to the servants, walked back to the
woman. As he reached her the carriage with its lights whirled away, and
left them in darkness.

Soane wondered if he were not a fool for his pains, and advanced a step
nearer to conviction when the woman with an impatient 'Come!' started
along the road; moving at a smart pace in the direction which the
chariot had taken, and betraying so little shyness or timidity as to
seem unconscious of his company. The neighbourhood of Oxford is low and
flat, and except where a few lights marked the outskirts of the city a
wall of darkness shut them in, permitting nothing to be seen that lay
more than a few paces away. A grey drift of clouds, luminous in
comparison with the gloom about them, moved slowly overhead, and out of
the night the raving of a farm-dog or the creaking of a dry bough came
to the ear with melancholy effect.

The fine gentleman of that day had no taste for the wild, the rugged, or
the lonely. He lived too near the times when those words spelled danger.
He found at Almack's his most romantic scene, at Ranelagh his _terra
incognita_, in the gardens of Versailles his ideal of the charming and
picturesque. Sir George, no exception to the rule, shivered as he looked
round. He began to experience a revulsion of spirits; and to consider
that, for a gentleman who owned Lord Chatham for a patron, and was even
now on his roundabout way to join that minister--for a gentleman whose
fortune, though crippled and impaired, was still tolerable, and who,
where it had suffered, might look with confidence to see it made good at
the public expense--or to what end patrons or ministers?--he began to
reflect, I say, that for such an one to exchange a peer's coach and good
company for a night trudge at a woman's heels was a folly, better
befitting a boy at school than a man of his years. Not that he had ever
been so wild as to contemplate anything serious; or from the first had
entertained the most remote intention of brawling in an unknown cause.
That was an extravagance beyond him; and he doubted if the girl really
had it in her mind. The only adventure he had proposed, when he left
the carriage, was one of gallantry; it was the only adventure then in
vogue. And for that, now the time was come, and the _incognita_ and he
were as much alone as the most ardent lover could wish, he felt
singularly disinclined.

True, the outline of her cloak, and the indications of a slender,
well-formed shape which it permitted to escape, satisfied him that the
postboy had not deceived him; but that his companion was both young and
handsome. And with this and his bargain it was to be supposed he would
be content. But the pure matter-of-factness of the girl's manner, her
silence, and her uncompromising attitude, as she walked by his side,
cooled whatever ardour her beauty and the reflection that he had
jockeyed Berkeley were calculated to arouse; and it was with an effort
that he presently lessened the distance between them.

'Et vera incessu patuit dea!' he said, speaking in the tone between jest
and earnest which he had used before. '"And all the goddess in her step
appears." Which means that you have the prettiest walk in the world, my
dear--but whither are you taking me?'

She went steadily on, not deigning an answer.

'But--my charmer, let us parley,' he remonstrated, striving to maintain
a light tone. 'In a minute we shall be in the town and--'

'I thought that we understood one another,' she answered curtly, still
continuing to walk, and to look straight before her; in which position
her hood, hid her face. 'I am taking you where I want you.'

'Oh, very well,' he said, shrugging his shoulders. But under his breath
he muttered, 'By heaven, I believe that the pretty fool really
thinks--that I am going to fight for her!'

To a man who had supped at White's the night before, and knew his age to
be the _�ge des philosophes_, it seemed the wildest fancy in the world.
And his distaste grew. But to break off and leave her--at any rate until
he had put it beyond question that she had no underthought--to break off
and leave her after placing himself in a situation so humiliating, was
too much for the pride of a Macaroni. The lines of her head and figure
too, half guessed and half revealed, and wholly light and graceful, had
caught his fancy and created a desire to subjugate her. Reluctantly,
therefore, he continued to walk beside her, over Magdalen Bridge, and
thence by a path which, skirting the city, ran across the low wooded
meadows at the back of Merton.

A little to the right the squat tower of the college loomed against the
lighter rack of clouds, and rising amid the dark lines of trees that
beautify that part of the outskirts, formed a _coup d'oeil_ sufficiently
impressive. Here and there, in such of the chamber windows as looked
over the meadows, lights twinkled cheerfully; emboldened by which, yet
avoiding their scope, pairs of lovers of the commoner class sneaked to
and fro under the trees. Whether the presence of these recalled early
memories which Sir George's fastidiousness found unpalatable, or he felt
his fashion, smirched by the vulgarity of this Venus-walk, his
impatience grew; and was not far from bursting forth when his guide
turned sharply into an alley behind the cathedral, and, after threading
a lane of mean houses, entered a small court.

The place, though poor and narrow, was not squalid. Sir George could see
so much by the light which shone from a window and fell on a group of
five or six persons, who stood about the nearest door and talked in low,
excited voices. He had a good view of one man's face, and read in it
gloom and anger. Then the group made way for the girl, eyeing her, as he
thought, with pity and a sort of deference; and cursing the folly that
had brought him into such a place and situation, wondering what on
earth it all meant or in what it would end, he followed her into
the house.

She opened a door on the right-hand side of the narrow passage, and led
the way into a long, low room. For a moment he saw no more than two
lights on a distant table, and kneeling at a chair beside them a woman
with grey dishevelled hair, who seemed to be praying, her face hidden.
Then his gaze, sinking instinctively, fell on a low bed between him and
the woman; and there rested on a white sheet, and on the solemn
outlines--so certain in their rigidity, so unmistakable by human
eyes--of a body laid out for burial.

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