WHAT with packing, signing papers, and partaking of an excellent cold supper in the lawyer's room, it was past two in the morning before we were ready for the road.Romaine himself let us out of a window in a part of the house known to Rowley: it appears it served as a kind of postern to the servants' hall, by which (when they were in the mind for a clandestine evening) they would come regularly in and out; and I remember very well the vinegar aspect of the lawyer on the receipt of this piece of information - how he pursed his lips, jutted his eyebrows, and kept repeating, 'This must be seen to, indeed! this shall be barred to-morrow in the morning!' In this preoccupation, I believe he took leave of me without observing it; our things were handed out; we heard the window shut behind us; and became instantly lost in a horrid intricacy of blackness and the shadow of woods.
A little wet snow kept sleepily falling, pausing, and falling again; it seemed perpetually beginning to snow and perpetually leaving off; and the darkness was intense.Time and again we walked into trees; time and again found ourselves adrift among garden borders or stuck like a ram in the thicket.Rowley had possessed himself of the matches, and he was neither to be terrified nor softened.'No, I will not, Mr.Anne, sir,' he would reply.'You know he tell me to wait till we were over the 'ill.
It's only a little way now.Why, and I thought you was a soldier, too!' I was at least a very glad soldier when my valet consented at last to kindle a thieves' match.From this, we easily lit the lantern; and thenceforward, through a labyrinth of woodland paths, were conducted by its uneasy glimmer.Both booted and great-
coated, with tall hats much of a shape, and laden with booty in the form of a despatch-box, a case of pistols, and two plump valises, I thought we had very much the look of a pair of brothers returning from the sack of Amersham Place.
We issued at last upon a country by-road where we might walk abreast and without precaution.It was nine miles to Aylesbury, our immediate destination; by a watch, which formed part of my new outfit, it should be about half-past three in the morning; and as we did not choose to arrive before daylight, time could not be said to press.I gave the order to march at ease.
'Now, Rowley,' said I, 'so far so good.You have come, in the most obliging manner in the world, to carry these valises.The question is, what next? What are we to do at Aylesbury? or, more particularly, what are you? Thence, I go on a journey.Are you to accompany me?'
He gave a little chuckle.'That's all settled already, Mr.Anne, sir,' he replied.'Why, I've got my things here in the valise - a half a dozen shirts and what not; I'm all ready, sir: just you lead on: YOU'LL see.'
'The devil you have!' said I.'You made pretty sure of your welcome.'
'If you please, sir,' said Rowley.
He looked up at me, in the light of the lantern, with a boyish shyness and triumph that awoke my conscience.I could never let this innocent involve himself in the perils and difficulties that beset my course, without some hint of warning, which it was a matter of extreme delicacy to make plain enough and not too plain.
'No, no,' said I; 'you may think you have made a choice, but it was blindfold, and you must make it over again.The Count's service is a good one; what are you leaving it for? Are you not throwing away the substance for the shadow? No, do not answer me yet.You imagine that I am a prosperous nobleman, just declared my uncle's heir, on the threshold of the best of good fortune, and, from the point of view of a judicious servant, a jewel of a master to serve and stick to? Well, my boy, I am nothing of the kind, nothing of the kind.'
As I said the words, I came to a full stop and held up the lantern to his face.He stood before me, brilliantly illuminated on the background of impenetrable night and falling snow, stricken to stone between his double burden like an ass between two panniers, and gaping at me like a blunderbuss.I had never seen a face so predestined to be astonished, or so susceptible of rendering the emotion of surprise; and it tempted me as an open piano tempts the musician.
'Nothing of the sort, Rowley,' I continued, in a churchyard voice.
'These are appearances, petty appearances.I am in peril, homeless, hunted.I count scarce any one in England who is not my enemy.From this hour I drop my name, my title; I become nameless;
my name is proscribed.My liberty, my life, hang by a hair.The destiny which you will accept, if you go forth with me, is to be tracked by spies, to hide yourself under a false name, to follow the desperate pretences and perhaps share the fate of a murderer with a price upon his head.'
His face had been hitherto beyond expectation, passing from one depth to another of tragic astonishment, and really worth paying to see; but at this it suddenly cleared.'Oh, I ain't afraid!' he said; and then, choking into laughter, 'why, I see it from the first!'
I could have beaten him.But I had so grossly overshot the mark that I suppose it took me two good miles of road and half an hour of elocution to persuade him I had been in earnest.In the course of which I became so interested in demonstrating my present danger that I forgot all about my future safety, and not only told him the story of Goguelat, but threw in the business of the drovers as well, and ended by blurting out that I was a soldier of Napoleon's and a prisoner of war.
This was far from my views when I began; and it is a common complaint of me that I have a long tongue.I believe it is a fault beloved by fortune.Which of you considerate fellows would have done a thing at once so foolhardy and so wise as to make a confidant of a boy in his teens, and positively smelling of the nursery? And when had I cause to repent it? There is none so apt as a boy to be the adviser of any man in difficulties such as mine.
