Beau Brocade, Baroness Emmuska Orczy [great book club books TXT] 📗

Without use of stirrup or rein, Jack, like the true child of the wild Moor that he was, flung himself upon the beautiful creature’s back.

Thus Patience saw him for one brief second, framed in the doorway of the forge, the last rays of the setting sun forming a background of crimson and gold for his slim, upright figure, and the brown curls on his head.

It was but a moment’s vision, but one she would carry enshrined in her memory through all the years to come. His eyes, large, glowing, magnetic, met hers in a flash, and hers, bright with unshed tears, met his in quick response.

“Soldiers!” he shouted, as he rode away, “an you think I am a rebel lord, then after me, quick! whilst I ride towards the sunset.”

Part II: The Heath

Chapter XV

The Outlaw

Beau Brocade drew rein on the spur of the hill. He had galloped all the way from the forge, out towards the sunset, then on, ever on, over gorse and bracken, on red sandy soil and soft carpet of ling, on, still on!

Overhead, on the blue-green dome of the evening sky, a giant comet, made up of myriads of tiny, rose-tipped clouds, formed a fairy way, ever diminishing, ever more radiant, pointing westwards to the setting sun, where orange and crimson and blue melted in one glorious mist of gold.

Out far away, the distant Tors glowed in the evening light, like great barriers to some mystic elusive land beyond.

Jack o’ Lantern had responded to his master’s mood. The reins falling loosely on his neck, needing neither guide nor spur, save the excitement of his own mad career, he had continued his wild gallop on the Heath, until a sudden jerk of the reins brought him to a standstill on the very edge of a steep declivity, with quivering flanks and sensitive nerves all a-tremble, even as the last ruddy glow died out in the western sky.

One by one the myriads or rose-tipped clouds now put on their grey cloaks of evening. From the rain-soaked ground and dripping branches of bramble or fern, a blue mist was rising upwards, blending deep shadows and tender lights in one hazy monotone.

Gradually every sound died out upon the Heath, only from afar came intermittently the mournful booming of a solitary bittern, astray from its nest, or now and then the sudden quaking of a tuft of grass, a tremor amidst the young fronds of the bracken, there, where a melancholy toad was seeking shelter for the night.

Awesome, silent, majestic, the great Moor was at peace. The passions, the strife, the turmoil of mankind seemed far, very far away: further than that twinkling star which peeped down, shy and solitary, from across the rolling billows of boundless universe.

Beau Brocade stretched out both arms, and sighed in an agony of longing. Fire was in his veins, a burning thirst in his heart, for something he dared not define.

How empty seemed his life! how wrecked! how hopelessly wasted!

Yet he loved the Moor, the peace, the solitude: he loved the sunset on the Heath and every sound of animal life in this lonesomeee vastness.

But to-night! ...

One smile from a woman’s lips, a glow of pride in her eyes, just one cluster of snow-white roses at her breast, and all the glories of Nature in her most lavish mood seemed tame, empty, oh! unutterably poor.

Nay! he would have bartered his very soul at this moment to undo the past few years. To be once more Jack Bathurst of His Majesty’s regiment of Guards, before one evening’s mistake ruined the whole of his life. A quarrel over a game of cards, a sudden blind, unreasoning rage, a blow against his superior officer, and this same Jack Bathurst, the dandy about town, the gallant, enthusiastic, promising young soldier, was degraded from his military rank and thrown, resourceless, disgraced, banished, upon a merciless world, that has neither pity nor pardon for failures or mistakes.

But, quite unlike the young Earl of Stretton, Jack Bathurst indulged in no morbid self-condemnation. Fate and he had thrown the dice, and he had lost. But there was too much of the untamed devil in him, too much spirit of wild adventure, to allow him to stoop to the thousand and one expedients, the shifts, the humiliations which the world holds in store for the broken-down gentleman.

Moneyless, friendless, with his career irretrievably ruined, he yet scorned the life of the outcast or the pariah, of that wretched fragment of humanity that hangs on the fringe of society, envying the pleasures it can no longer share, haunting the gambling booths or noisy brothels of the towns, grateful for a nod, a handshake, from some other fragment less miserable than itself.

No! a thousand times no!

Jack Bathurst looked the future that was before him squarely in the face, then chose the life of the outlaw with a price upon his head. Aye! and forced that life to yield to him its full measure of delights: the rough, stormy nights on the Moor! the wild gallops over gorse and bramble, with the keen nor’-wester lashing his face and whipping up his blood, and with a posse of soldiers at his heels! the devil-may-care, mad, merry existence of the outlaw, who cuts a purse by night, and carries his life on his saddle-bow!

That he chose and more! for he chose the love of the poor for miles around! the blessings spoken by suffering and patient lips upon the name of the highwayman, of Beau Brocade, who took from the rich at risk of his life in order to give to the needy.

And now at even, on Brassing Moor, when a lonely shepherd caught sight of a chestnut horse bearing a slim, masked figure on its back, or heard in the distance a young voice, fresh as a skylark, singing some half-sad, half-lively ditty, he would turn his weary eyes in simple faith upwards to the stars and murmur gently,—

“God bless Beau Brocade!”

Perhaps He had!

The stars knew, but they did not tell!

Chapter XVI

A Rencontre on the Heath

Master Mittachip, on his lean nag, with his clerk, Master Duffy, on the pillion behind him, was on his way to Brassington.

Sir Humphrey Challoner had not returned to the Moorhen after his visit to the forge until the sun was very low down in the west. He had bidden the attorney to await him at the inn, and Master Mittachip had not dared to disobey.

Yet the delay meant the crossing of the Heath along the bridle path to Brassington, well after the shadows of evening had lent the lonely Moor an air of awesome desolation. There were the footpads, and the pixies, the human and fairy midnight marauders, who all found the steep declivities, the clumps of gorse and bracken, the hollows and the pits, safe resting-places by day, but who were wont to emerge from their lair after dark for the terror and better undoing of the unfortunate, belated traveller.

Then there was Beau Brocade!

Master Duffy too was very timid, and clung with trembling arms to the meagre figure of the attorney.

“Nay! Master Duffy!” quoth Mittachip, with affected firmness, “why do you pry about so? Are you afraid?”

“Nay! nay! Master Mittachip,” replied the clerk, whose teeth were chattering audibly, “I am … n… n … not af … f … f … fraid.”

“Tush, man, you have me near you,” rejoined Mittachip, boldly. “See! I am armed! Look at my pistols!”

And he leant back in the saddle, so as to give Master Duffy a good view of a pair of huge pistols that protruded ostentatiously from his belt.

Yet all around the air was still, the solitary Heath was at peace, even the breezy nor’-wester, that had blustered throughout the day, seemed to have lain down to rest.

Far out eastwards, the moon, behind a fast dispersing bank of clouds, was casting a silver radiance that was not yet a light, but only a herald of the glittering radiance to come.

The Moor was silent and at peace: only at times there came the sound of a gentle flutter, a moorhen perhaps within its nest, or a belated lizard seeking its home.

Whenever these slight sounds occurred, Master Mittachip’s hands that held the reins trembled visibly, and his clerk clung more closely to him.

“What was that?” said the attorney in an awed whisper, as his frightened ears caught a more distinct noise.

“W… .w … why don’t you draw your p … p … pistols, Master Mittachip?” murmured Duffy, in mad alarm.

The noise was hushed again, but to the overwrought nerves of the two men in terror, there came the certain, awful perception that some one was on the Heath besides themselves, some one not far off, whom the mist hid from their view, but who knew that they were travelling along the bridle path, who could see and perhaps hear them.

“Truth to tell, Master Duffy,” whispered the attorney, whose teeth too had begun to chatter, “Truth to tell, it’s no use my drawing them… they… they are not loaded.”

Master Duffy nearly fell off the pillion in his fright.

“What?”

“There’s neither powder nor shot in them,” continued Master Mittachip, ruefully.

“Th… the … then we are lost!” was Master Duffy’s ejaculation of woe.

“Eh?—what?” quoth Mittachip, “but your pistols are charged.”

And his pointed elbow sought behind it for the handles of two formidable weapons, which were stuck in Master Duffy’s belt.

“N… n… nay!” whispered the clerk, who now was blue with terror. “I dqared not carry the weapons loaded… I trusted to your valour, Master Mittachip, to protect us.”

“What was that?”

Again that noise! This time a good deal nearer, and it seemed to Master Mittachip’s affrighted eyes as if he saw something moving on the bridle path before him. But he would not show too many signs of fear before his own clerk.

“Tush, man!” he said with as much boldness as he could command. “‘Tis only a lizard in the grass mayhap. We’ll ride on quite boldly. We can’t be far from Brassington now, and no footpads would dare to attack two lusty fellows on horseback, with pistols showing in their belts!... Lord!” he added with a shudder, “how lonely this place appears!”

“And that rascal, Beau Brocade, haunts this Heath every night, I’m told,” murmured Master Duffy, who felt more dead than alive.

“Sh! sh! sh! speak not of the devil, Master Duffy, lest he appear!...”

“Hark!!!”

The two men now clung trembling to one another; not ten paces from them there came the sound of a horse’s snorting, then suddenly a voice rang out clearly through the mist-laden air,—

“Hello! who goes there?”

“The Lord have mercy up on!” whispered Mittachip.

“It must be Beau Brocade himself,” echoed the clerk.

The next moment a horse and rider came into view. Master Mittachip and his clerk were too terrified even to look. The former had jerked the reins and brought his lean nag to a standstill, and both men now sat with eyes closed, teeth chattering, their very faces distorted with fear.

Beau Brocade had reined his horse quite close to them, and was peering through his black mask at the two terror-stricken faces. Evidently they amused him vastly, for he burst out laughing.

“Odd’s my life! here’s a pretty pair of scarecrows!... Well! I see you can stand, so now let’s see what you’ve got to deliver!”

At this Master Mittachip contrived to open his eyes for a second; but the black mask, and the heavily cloaked figure looked so ghostlike, so awful in the mist, that he promptly closed them again, and murmured with a shudder,—

“Mercy,