Beau Brocade by Baroness Emmuska Orczy (free ebooks romance novels .txt) 📕

He had become very red, had honest John, and his rough manner seemed completely to have deserted him. In fact, not to put too fine a point upon it, the worthy smith looked distinctly shy and sheepish.

She looked up at him and laughed a pleased, coquettish little laugh, the laugh of a woman who has oft been told that she is pretty, and has not got tired of the hearing. John Stich, moreover, was so big and burly, folks called him hard and rough, and it vastly entertained the young damsel to see him standing there before her, as awkward and uncomfortable as Jock Miggs himself.

“Am I not to step inside, Master Stich?” she asked.

“Yes, yes, Mistress Betty,” murmured John, who seemed to have lost himself in admiration of a pair of tiny buckled shoes muddy to the ankles—such ankles!—which showed to great advantage beneath Betty’s short green kirtle.

An angry, impatient movement behind him, however, quickly recalled his scattered senses.

“Did her ladyship receive a letter, mistress?” he asked eagerly.

“Oh, yes! a stranger brought it,” replied Betty, with a pout, for she preferred John’s mute appreciation of her small person to his interest in other matters. However, the demon of mischief no doubt whispered something in her ear for the further undoing of the worthy smith, for she put on an arch, mysterious little air, turned up her brown eyes, sighed with affection, and murmured ecstatically,—

“Oh! such a stranger! the fine eyes of him, Master Stich! and such an air, and oh!” added little madam with unction, “such clothes!”

But though no doubt all these fine airs and graces wrought deadly havoc in poor John’s heart, he concealed it well enough under a show of eager impatience.

“Yes! yes! the stranger,” he said, casting a furtive glance behind him, “he gave you a letter for my lady?”

“La! but you needn’t be in such a hurry, Master Stich!” retorted Mistress Betty, adding with all the artifice of which she was capable, “the stranger wasn’t.”

But this was too much for John. There had been such a wealth of meaning in Betty’s brown eyes.

“Oh! he wasn’t, wasn’t he?” he asked with a jealous frown, “and pray what had he to say to you? There was no message except the letter.”

But the demon of mischief was satisfied and Betty was disposed to be kind, even if slightly mysterious.

“Oh, never mind!” she rejoined archly, “he gave me the letter which I gave to my lady. That was early this morning.”

“Well?... and?”

But matters were progressing too slowly at any rate for one feverish, anxious heart. Philip had tried to hold himself in check, though he was literally hanging on pretty Mistress Betty’s lips. Now he could contain himself no longer. Lady Patience had had his letter. The mysterious highwayman had not failed his trust, and the news Betty had brought meant life or death to him.

Throwing prudence to the winds, he pushed John Stich aside, and seizing the young girl by the writs, he asked excitedly, –

“Yes? this morning, Betty?... then… then… what did her ladyship do?”

Betty was frightened, and like a child was ready to drown her fright in tears. She had not recognized my lord in those dirty clothes.

“Don’t you know me, Betty?” asked Philip, a little more quietly.

Betty cast a timid glance at the two men before her, and smiled through the coming tears.

“Of course, my lord…I…” she murmured shyly.

“‘Tis my nephew out o’ Nottingham, mistress,” said John sternly, “try and remember that: and now tell us what did her ladyship do?”

“She had the horses put to, not an hour after the stranger had been. Thomas is driving and Timothy is our only other escort. But we’ve not drawn rein since we left the Hall!”

“Yes! yes!” came from the two pairs of eager lips.

“And my lady stopped the coach about two hundred yards from here,” continued Betty with great volubility, “and she told me to run on here, to see that the coast was clear. She knew I could find my way, and she wouldn’t trust Timothy as she trusts me,” added the young girl with a pretty touch of pride.

“But where is she, Betty? where is she?”

Betty pointed to the clump of first, which stood in ghostly sentinel on the crest of the hill, just where the road turns sharply to the east.

“Just beyond those trees, my lord, and she made Timothy watch until I came round the bend and in sight of the forge. But la! the mud on the roads! ‘tis fit to drown you.”

But already John Stich was outside, beckoning to Mistress Betty.

“Come, mistress, quick!” he said excitedly, “her ladyship must be nigh crazy with impatience. By your leave, my lord, I’ll help Mistress Betty on her way, and I’ll keep this place in sight. I’ll go no further…”

“Yes, yes,” rejoined Philip, feverishly, “go, go, fly if you can! I’ll be safe! I’ll not show myself. God give you both wings, for I’ll not live now till I see my sister.”

Eager, boyish, full of wild gaiety, he seemed to have thrown off his morbid anxiety as he would a mantle. He even laughed whole-heartedly as he watched Betty, with many airs and graces, “Luds!” and “I vows!” making great pretence at being unable to walk in the mud, and leaning heavily on honest Stich’s arm.

He watched them as they picked their way up the so-called road, a perfect quagmire after the heavy September rains.

The air seemed so different now, the Heath smelt good, there was vigour and life in the keen nor’-wester; how green the bracken looked, and how harmoniously it seemed to blend with the purple shoots of the bramble laden with ripening fruit! how delicate the more tender green of the gorse, and there that vivid patch of mauve, the first glimpse of opening heather! the heavy clouds too were rolling away; the September sun was going to have his own way after all and spread his kingdom of blue and gold over the distant Derbyshire hills.

Hope had come like the divine magician to chase away all that was grey and sad and dreary, and Hope had met Youth and shaken him by the hand: they are such friends, such inseparable companions, these two!

What mattered it that some few yards away the old gallows, like some eerie witch, still spread its gaunt arm over that fluttering bit of parchment: the Proclamation of His Majesty’s Parliament? What though it spoke of death, of treachery, of bills of attainder, of Tower Hill?

Did not the good nor’-wester from the Moor flutter round it, and in wanton frolic attack it now with madcap fury and a shrill whistle, and now with a long-drawn-out sigh. The parchment resisted with vigour, it bore the onslaught of the wind twice, thrice, and once again. But the nor’-wester was not to be outdone, and again it renewed the attack, took the parchment by the corner, pulled and twisted at it, until at last with one terrific blast it tore the Royal Proclamation off the old gallows, and sent it whirling in a mad gallop across the Moor, far, very far away on to Derby, to London, to the place where all winds go.

Chapter V

“There’s None Like Her, None!”

There was something more than ordinary affection between Philip, Earl of Stretton, and his sister, Lady Patience Gascoyne. Those who knew them in the days of their happiness said they seemed more like lovers than brother and sister, so tender, so true was their clinging devotion to one another.

But those who knew them both intimately said that they were more like mother and son together; though Philip was only a year or two younger than Patience, she had all a mother’s fondness, a mother’s indulgence and sweet pity for him, he, all a son’s deference, a son’s trust in her.

Even now, as he instinctively felt her dear presence nigh, hope took a more firm, more lasting hold upon him. He knew that she would act wisely and prudently for him. For the first time for many days and weeks he felt safe, less morbidly afraid of treachery, more ready to fight adverse fate.

The heavy coach came lumbering along the quaggy road, the old coachman’s “Whoa! whoa! there! there!” as he tried to encourage his horses in the heavy task of pulling the cumbersome vehicle through the morass, sounded like sweetest music in Philip’s ear.

He did not dare go to meet them, but he watched the coach as it drew nearer and nearer, very slowly, the horses going step by step urged on by the coachman and by Timothy, who rode close at their heads, spurring them with the whip and kind words, the wheels creaking as they slowly turned on their mud-laden axles.

Thus Patience had travelled since dawn, ever since the stranger had brought her the letter which told her that her brother had succeeded in reaching this secluded corner of Derbyshire, and was now in hiding with faithful John Stich, waiting for her guidance and help to establish his innocence.

Leaning back against the cushions of the coach, she had sat with eyes closed and hands tightly clutched. Anxious, wearied, at times hopeful, she had borne the terrible fatigue of this lumbering journey from Stretton Hall, along the unmade roads of Brassing Moor, with all the fortitude the Gascoynes had always shown for any cause they had at heart.

At the cross-roads Thomas, the driver, brought his horses to a standstill. Already, as the coach had passed some fifty yards from the forge, Patience had leaned out of the window trying to get a glimpse of the dear face which she knew would be on the look-out for her.

John Stich had escorted Betty as far as the bend in the road, and within sight of Timothy waiting some hundred yards further on, then he had retraced his steps, and was now back at the cross-roads ready to help Lady Patience to alight.

“Let the coach wait here,” she said to the driver, “we may sleep at Wirksworth to-night.”

“Ah! My good Stich,” she added, grasping the smith’s hand eagerly, “my brother, how is he?”

“All the better since he knows your ladyship has come,” replied Stich.

A few moments later brother and sister were locked in each other’s arms.

“My sweet sister! My dear, dear Patience!” was all Philip could say at first.

But she placed one hand on his shoulder and with a gentle motherly gesture brushed with the other the unruly curls from the white, moist forehead. He looked haggard and careworn, although his eyes now gleamed with feverish hope, and hers, in spite of herself, began to fill with tears.

“Dear, dear one,” she murmured, trying to look cheerful, to push back the tears. All would be well now that she could get to him, that they could talk things over, that she could do something for him and with him, instead of sitting – weary and inactive – alone at Stretton Hall, without news, a prey to devouring anxiety.

“That awful Proclamation,” he said at last – “you have heard of it?”

“Aye!” she replied sadly, “even before you did, I think. Sir Humphrey Challoner sent a courier across to tell me of it.”

“And my name amongst those attainted by Act of Parliament!”

She nodded, her lips were quivering, and she would not break down, now that he needed all her courage as well as his own.

“But I am innocent, dear,” he said, taking both her tiny hands in his own, and looking firmly, steadfastly into her face. “You believe