The Toll-Gate (16 page)

"Where did he go to?"

"I dunno! It was dark, and he woke me up—'least, he didn't, 'cos there was a waggon, or something, went through the gate, and that woke me. And me dad said as I was to sit by the fire in here till he come back, and to keep me chaffer close, 'cos he was going out."

"How long was he gone, Benny?"

"A goodish while. All night, I dessay," replied Ben vaguely. "Nobody comed through the gate, and I went to sleep, and when me dad come in the fire was gone out."

Chirk let him go. He glanced up at John, slightly frowning. "Queer start!" he remarked.

"Which way did that wagon go, Ben?" asked John.

After a moment's reflection, Ben said that he thought it was going Sheffield-way. He added that they didn't often get them along the road after dark; and then, feeling that the subject was exhausted, begged for a sugar-lump to give to the mare. John nodded permission, and he sped forth once more, leaving the two men to look at one another.

"It is a queer start," said Chirk, rubbing his chin. "Danged if I know what to make of it!"

"What had the waggon to do with it? What was on it?"

"It don't make a ha'porth o' difference if there was a cageful o' wild beasts on it, I don't see what call Ned had to go along with it!" said Chirk. "If a party o' mill-kens have been and slummed Chatsworth, and loaded the swag on to that there waggon, they might grease Ned in the fist to keep his mummer shut, but they wouldn't want him to go along with them!" He pulled out a large silver watch, and consulted it. "Time I was brushing, Soldier! I don't take the mare up to Kellands, so if you'll let her bide in the shed till I come back, I'll be obliged to you."

The Captain nodded. "She'll be safe enough. Think it over, Chirk!—and give my message to Rose!"

CHAPTER VIII.

IT was some two hours later when Chirk came back to the toll-house, and he found the Captain alone, Ben having been sent, protesting, to bed an hour before. The very faintest clink of spurred heels was all that warned John of the highwayman's return; he caught the sound, and looked up from his task of applying blacking to his top-boots, just as the door opened, and Chirk once more stood before him. In answer to the questioning lift of an eyebrow, he nodded, and, setting the boot down, lounged over to the cupboard, from which he produced a couple of bottles. Whatever suspicions had still lurked in Chirk's mind, at parting, seemed to have been laid to rest. He cast off his coat, without taking the precaution of removing his pistol from its pocket, and, leaving it over the back of a chair beside the door, walked to the fire, and stirred the smouldering logs with one foot. "Where's the bantling?" he asked.

"Asleep," John replied, lacing two glasses of port with gin. "He wanted to wait for you to come back, but I packed him off—as soon as he'd shown me your Mollie." He handed one of the glasses to his guest. "A neatish little mare: strong in work, I should think."

Chirk nodded. "Ay. Takes her fences flying and standing. Clever, too. She's the right stamp for a man of my trade. She wouldn't do for a man of your size. What do you ride, Soldier?"

"Seventeen stone," John said, with a grimace.

"Ah! You'll need to keep your prancers high in the flesh, I don't doubt." He lifted his glass. "Here's your good health! It ain't often I get given flesh-and-blood: it's to be hoped I don't get flustered." He drank, smacked his lips, and said approvingly: "A rum bub! Rose said as I was to tell you she'd be along in the morning to fetch your shirt. Proper set-about she was, when I told her I'd made your acquaintance: combed my hair with a joint-stool, pretty well!" He smiled reminiscently, looking down into the fire, one arm laid along the mantelshelf. Then he sighed, and turned his head. "Seems I'll have to put a bullet into that Coate, Soldier. Rose is mortal set on getting rid of him."

"She's not more set on it than I am, but if you go about the business with your barking-iron I'll break your neck!" promised John genially. "As good take a bear by the tooth!"

"The old gager—the Squire—saw him tonight," said Chirk. "Sent for him to go to his room, which has put them all in a quirk, for fear it might send him off in a convulsion. It hadn't—not while I was there, anyways." He drained his glass, and set it down. "I'll pike off now, Soldier, but you'll be seeing me again. Maybe there's one or two kens where I might get news of Ned." A wry smile twisted his mouth. "I'm to take my orders from you, unless I'm wishful to raise a breeze up at Kellands. So help me bob, I don't know why I don't haul my wind before that climber mort of mine's turned me into a regular nose!"

John smiled, and held out his hand. "We shall do!" he said.

"You may do! I'm more likely to be nippered!" retorted Chirk; but he gripped John's hand, adding: "No help for it! Fall back, fall edge, I've pledged my word to Rose I'll stand buff. Women."

Upon this bitterly enunciated dissyllable he was gone, as noiselessly as he had come.

The Captain's first visitor, the following morning, was Rose, who stepped briskly into the toll-house soon after nine o'clock, cast a critical eye over Mrs. Skeffling's handiwork, wrested from her clutches the torn shirt, and sallied forth into the garden in search of Captain Staple. She found him chopping wood. He greeted her with his disarming smile, and a cheerful good-morning. He then listened with becoming meekness to a comprehensive scold, which, although apparently aimed at the unsuitability of his occupation and his attire, was, as he perfectly understood, a punishment for having dared to discover the trend of her maidenly affections.

"But chopping wood is capital exercise!" he said.

"Capital exercise indeed! I'm sure I don't know what the world's coming to! And I'll thank you, Mr. Jack, not to go sending messages to me that you'll stable Mr. Chirk's mare to please me! I never did! I declare I was never so mortified! I should be a deal better pleased if Mr. Chirk would take himself off, and not come bothering me any more, for I'm a respectable woman, and keep company with a highwayman I will not!"

"No, I do think he must abandon that way of life," agreed John.

"It's nothing to me what he does!" said Rose.

"Poor Chirk!"

Her face puckered. She whisked out her handkerchief and rather fiercely blew her nose. "It's no manner of use, Mr. Jack!" she said, in a muffled tone. "You ought to know better than to encourage him! I can't and I won't marry a man who might be carried off to gaol any moment!"

"Certainly not: you would never know a day's peace! Besides, it's not at all the thing. But he doesn't expect you to marry him under such circumstances as that, does he?"

She sat down on the chopping-block, and wiped her eyes. "No, he says he'll settle down, and live honest, farming. But talking pays no toll, sir, and where is the money to come from to buy a cottage, let alone a farm?"

The Captain refrained from telling her that Mr. Chirk proposed to found his career as an honest farmer on the theft of some traveller's strong-box, and merely said: "Would you marry him, if he were not a highwayman?"

She nodded, and disappeared into the handkerchief again. "To think, after all these years, and the offers I've had, I should take and fall in love with a common vagabond!" she said, into its folds. "Enough to make my poor mother turn in her grave! For I was brought up respectable, Mr. Jack!"

"So was I, and devilish dull I found it! But Chirk's a good fellow: I like him. He's head over ears in love with you, too."

A convulsive sniff greeted this. "Well, if he wants to please me, he'll stop holding people up, and so I've told him. Let him find Brean, like you want him to, and see if he can't get rid of that Coate out of our house! But I'll never marry any man while Miss Nell needs me—and need me she will, poor lamb, when the master goes! And that day's not far distant."

"I hope she won't need you."

This brought her head up. She looked very hard at him for a minute; and then got briskly to her feet, and shook out her skirts. "I hope she won't, Mr. Jack—and that's the truth!" She saw his hand held out, and clasped it warmly. "I have that torn shirt in my basket, and Mrs. Skeffling's ironing your other one," she said, reverting to her usual manner. "You won't find she's starched the points as they should be, but she's done her best, and I hope, sir, it'll be a lesson to you not to go jauntering about the country with only two shirts to your name!"

With these valedictory words, she took her departure; and John returned to his task of chopping wood. He was called from it by a shout of "Gate!" and went through the house to answer it, picking up the book of tickets on the way. A phaeton was drawn up on the Sheffield side of the gate; and holding the reins was Henry Stornaway, wearing a drab coat whose numerous shoulder-capes falsely proclaimed his ability to drive to an inch. A pair of showy, half-bred chestnuts, which the Captain mentally wrote down as bonesetters, were harnessed to the vehicle; and Mr. Stornaway was unable to produce any coin of less value than five shillings to pay for his sixpenny toll. He said, as John pulled a handful of coins out of his pocket: "Hallo! Don't know you, do I? Where's the other fellow?"

"Away, sir," replied John, handing him his change.

"Away? Ay! But where's he gone to?"

"Couldn't say, sir," said John, holding up the ticket.

"Nonsense! If you're taking his place, of course you know where he is! Come on, now: no humbug!" Several travellers had asked John what had become of Brean, but none had evinced more than a cursory interest in his whereabouts. He had not previously encountered Henry Stornaway, but he began to have a suspicion of his identity, and did his best to school his features to an expression of stolid stupidity. To every question put to him he returned evasive answers, and noted, with interest, Mr. Stornaway's patent dissatisfaction with these. For some unexplained reason, Brean's disappearance had discomposed this would-be blood of the Fancy. Abandoning the lofty tone, he descended to cajolery; said, with a wink, that he and Brean were old acquaintances; and invited John, with one hand significantly jingling coins in his pocket, to tell him where Brean might be found.

"I don't know, sir. He went off sudden-like," John answered. "Leaving me to mind the pike," he added. "I ain't seen him since, nor heard of him."

The pale eyes stared down into his; it struck him that there was less colour than ever in cheeks naturally sallow. "When did he leave his post? You know that, at all events!''

"Now, when would it have been?" pondered John, the very picture of bucolic stupidity. "Was it Friday night, or Saturday night?"

"Come, come, he didn't go off in the night!"

"Oh, yes, sir! 'Deed he did! After dark it was," John asseverated truthfully. He glanced at the chestnuts, reacting to an unquiet hand on the reins; "Horses on the fret, sir!" he suggested.

"Damn the horses! Who are you? How do you come to be here?"

"Name of Staple, sir: cousin of Ned Brean's!"

"Oh! Well, it's no concern of mine!" Henry said, and drove on, calling over his shoulder: "I'm only bound for the village, and shall be back in a few minutes! See you don't keep me waiting!"

John shut the gate, looking thoughtfully after him. He found that Ben was at his elbow, and glanced down at him. "Who was that, Ben?"

"That rasher o' wind?" said Ben disparagingly. "That was Mr. Stornaway, that was. He's a slow-top. Drives a couple of puffers."

John nodded, as though this confirmed his suspicion; and, leaving Ben to look after the gate, went off across the field which lay behind the toll-house to the barn where Beau was stabled.

He was engaged in grooming the big bay when a shadow darkened the doorway, and he glanced over his shoulder, and saw Nell Stornaway standing on the threshold. He put the brush down quickly, and moved to meet her, saying involuntarily: "You! I dared not hope I should see you today!"

Her colour was a little heightened, but she replied in a rallying tone: "No, indeed! I don't wonder at it, and am only surprised you can look me in the face after such treachery!"

He was standing immediately before her, smiling down at her, a fair young giant, in stained buckskins and a coarse shirt, open at the neck, and with the sleeves rolled up to show his powerful forearms. "What treachery?" he asked.

"Dissembler! Did you not betray to Rose that I had divulged her story?"

"No, only to Chirk!"

"I shall not allow you to excuse yourself on that head! Such a scold as I have had! You deserve I should lay an information against you with the trustees of the tolls!"

"Oh, no! For I have had a scold too, you know! Only Rose forgave me!"

"You made up to her quite scandalously, I daresay! Ah, is this your Beau?" She moved towards the horse as she spoke, looking him over with an appraising eye. "Oh, you are a very fine fellow: complete to a shade!" she said, patting the arched neck. "Yes, I have some sugar in my pocket, but who told you so, sir? There, then!"

She looked round at John. "Did you call him Beau for his good points, or for his Roman nose? My brother told me that the Beau was the name given to the Duke of Wellington, in the Peninsula."

"For his nose, of course. Do you like him?"

"Very much. I should think he can go well upon wind?"

"Yes, and best pace for thirty minutes—with me up!"