Books: The King's Highway

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The stranger was silent and looked abstracted; but at length he
answered, somewhat listlessly, "Really, my good woman, one does not know
what side to be of. It is raining very hard to-night, unless those are
the boughs of the trees tapping against your window."

"Those are the large drops of rain," replied the woman, "dashed against
the glass by the south-west wind. It will be an awful night; and I think
of the ship."

"I will let you hear of the boy," rejoined the stranger in an
indifferent tone, "as soon as I hear of him myself;" and taking up his
hat from the table, he seemed about to depart, when a peculiar
expression upon the woman's countenance made him pause, and, at the same
time, brought to his mind that he had not even asked her name.

"I thought your honour had forgotten," she replied, when he asked her
the question at length. "They call me Betty Harper; but Mrs. Harper will
find me in this place, if you put that upon your letter: and now that we
are asking such sort of questions, your honour wouldn't be offended,
surely, if I were to ask you your name too?"

"Certainly not, my good lady," he replied; "I am called Harry
Sherbrooke, Esquire, very much at your service.--Heavens, how it blows
and rains!"

"Perhaps it is nothing but a wind-shower" replied the woman; "if your
honour would like to wait until it has ridden by."

"Why, I shall get drenched most assuredly if I go," he answered, "and
that before I reach the inn; but I will look out and see, my good lady."

He accordingly proceeded into the little passage, and opened the door,
followed by his companion. They were instantly saluted, however, by a
blast of wind that almost knocked the strong man himself down, and made
the woman reel against the wall of the passage.

Everything beyond--though the cottage, situated upon a height, looked
down the slope of the hill, over the cliffs, to the open sea--was as
dark as the cloud which fell upon Egypt: a darkness that could be felt!
and not the slightest vestige of star or moon, or lingering ray of
sunshine, marked to the eye the distinction between heaven, earth, and
sea.

Sherbrooke drew back, as the wind cut him, and the rain dashed in his
face; but at that very moment something like a faint flash was seen,
apparently at a great distance, and gleaming through the heavy rain. The
woman instantly caught her companion's wrist tight in her grasp,
exclaiming, "Hark!"--and in a few seconds after, in a momentary lull of
the wind, was heard the low booming roar of a distant cannon.

"It is a signal of distress!" cried the woman. "Oh! the ship, the ship!
The wind is dead upon the shore, and the long reef, out by the Battery
Point, has seen many a vessel wrecked between night and morning."

While she spoke, the signal of distress was seen and heard again.

"I will go down and send people out to see what can be done," said the
stranger, and walked away without waiting for reply. He turned his steps
towards the inn, muttering as he went, "There's one, at least, on board
the ship that won't be drowned, if there's truth in an old proverb! so
if the vessel be wrecked to-night, I had better order breakfast for my
cousin to-morrow morning--for he is sure to swim ashore." It was a
night, however, on which no hope of reaching land could cheer the
wrecked seamen. The tide was approaching the full; the wind was blowing
a perfect hurricane; the surf upon a high rocky beach, no boat could
have lived in for a minute; and the strongest swimmer--even if it had
been within the scope of human power and skill to struggle on for any
time with those tremendous waves--must infallibly have been dashed to
pieces on the rocks that lined the shore. The minute guns were
distinctly heard from that town, and several other villages in the
neighbourhood. Many people went to the tops of the cliffs, and some down
to the sea-shore, where the waves did not reach the bases of the rocks.
One gentleman, living in the neighbourhood, sent out servants and
tenantry with links and torches, but no one ever could clearly
distinguish the ship; and could only perceive that she must be in the
direction of a dangerous rocky shoal called the Long Reef, at about two
miles' distance from the shore.

The next morning, however, her fate was more clearly ascertained; not
that a vestige of her was to be seen out at sea, but the whole shore for
two or three miles was covered with pieces of wreck. The stern-post of a
small, French-built vessel, and also a boat considerably damaged in the
bow, and turned keel upwards, came on shore as Harry Sherbrooke and his
servant were themselves examining the scene. The boat bore, painted in
white letters, "La Coureuse de Dunkerque."

"That is enough for our purpose, I should suppose," said the master,
pointing to the letters with a cane he had in his hand, and addressing
his servant--"I must be gone, Harrison, but you remain behind, and do as
I bade you."

"Wait a moment, yet, sir," replied the man: "you see they are bringing
up a body from between those two rocks,--it seems about his size and
make, too;" and approaching the spot to which he pointed, they found
some of the country people carrying up the body of a French officer,
which afterwards proved to be that of the commander of the brig, which
had been seen during the preceding day. After examining the papers which
were taken from the pockets of the dead man, one of which seemed to be a
list of all the persons on board his vessel, Sherbrooke turned away,
merely saying to his servant, "Take care and secure that paper, and
bring it after me to Dublin as fast as possible."

The man bowed his head, and his master walked slowly
and quietly away.

CHAPTER III

Now whatever might be the effect of all that passed, as recorded in the
last chapter, upon the mind of Harry Sherbrooke, it is not in the
slightest degree our intention to induce the reader to believe that the
two personages, the officer and the little boy, whom we saw embark for
the brig which was wrecked, were amongst the persons who perished upon
that occasion. True it is that every person the ship contained found a
watery grave, between sunset and sunrise on the night in question. But
to explain how the whole took place, we must follow the track of the
voyagers in the boat.

As soon as they were seated, Lennard Sherbrooke threw his arms
affectionately round the boy, drew him a little closer to his bosom, and
kissed his broad fair forehead; while the boy, on his part, with his
hand leaning on the officer's knee, and his shoulder resting confiding
on his bosom, looked up in his face with eyes of earnest and deep
affection. In such mute conference they remained for some five or ten
minutes; while the hardy sailors pulled away at the oars, their course
towards the vessel lying right in the wind's eye. After a minute or two
more, Lennard Sherbrooke turned round, and gazed back towards the shore,
where he could now plainly perceive his cousin beginning to climb the
little path up the cliff. After watching him for a moment with a look of
calculating thought, he turned towards the boy again, and saw that there
were tears in his eyes, which sight caused him to bend down, saying, in
a low voice, "You are not frightened, my dear boy?"

"Oh no, no!" replied the boy--"I am only sorry to go away to a strange
place."

Lennard Sherbrooke turned his eyes once more towards the shore, but the
form of his cousin had now totally disappeared. He then remained musing
for a minute or two, while the fishermen laboured away, making no very
great progress against the wind. At the distance of about a mile or a
mile and a half from the shore, Lennard Sherbrooke turned round towards
the man who was steering, and made some remarks upon the excellence of
the boat. The man, proud of his little vessel, boasted her capabilities,
and declared that she was as sea-worthy as any frigate in the navy.

"I should like to see her tried," said Sherbrooke. "I should not wonder
if she were well tried to-night," replied the man.

For a moment or two the officer made no rejoinder; but then approaching
the steersman nearer still, he said, in a low voice, "Come, my man, I
have something to tell you. We must alter our course very soon; I am not
going to yon Frenchman at all."

"Why, then, where the devil are you going to?" demanded the fisherman;
and he proceeded, in tones and in language which none but an Irishman
must presume to deal with, to express his astonishment, that after
having been hired by the other gentleman to carry the person who spoke
to him and the boy to the French brig of war, where berths had been
secured for them, he should be told that they were not going there at
all.

The stranger suffered him to expend all his astonishment without moving
a muscle, and then replied, with perfect calmness, "My good friend, you
are a Catholic, I have been told, and a good subject to King James--"

"God bless him!" interrupted the man, heartily; but Sherbrooke
proceeded, saying, "In these days one may well be doubtful of one's own
relations; and I have a fancy, my man, that unless I prevent any one
from knowing my course, and where I am, I may be betrayed where I go,
and betrayed if I stay. Now what I want you to do is this, to take me
over to the coast of England, instead of to yonder French brig."

The man's astonishment was very great; but he seemed to enter into the
motives of his companion with all the quick perception of an Irishman.
There were innumerable difficulties, however, which he did not fail to
start; and he asserted manfully, that it was utterly impossible for them
to proceed upon such a voyage at once. In the first place, they had no
provisions; in the next place, there was the wife and children, who
would not know what was become of them; in the third place, it was
coming on to blow hard right upon the coast. So that he proved there
was, in fact, not only danger and difficulty, but absolute
impossibility, opposed to the plan which the gentleman wished to follow.

In the meanwhile, the four seamen, who were at the oars, laboured away
incessantly, but with very slow and difficult efforts. Every moment the
wind rose higher and higher, and the sun's lower limb touched the
waters, while they were yet two miles from the French brig.

A part of the large red disk of the descending orb was seen between the
sea and the edge of the clouds that hung upon the verge of the sky,
pouring forth from the horizon to the very shore a long line of
blood-red light, which, resting upon the boiling waters of the ocean,
seemed as if the setting star could indeed "the multitudinous sea
incarnadine, making the green one red."

That red light, however, showed far more clearly than before how the
waters were already agitated; for the waves might be seen distinctly,
even to the spot in the horizon where they seemed to struggle with the
sun, heaving up their gigantic heads till they appeared to overwhelm him
before he naturally set.

The arguments of the fisherman apparently effected that thing which is
so seldom effected in this world; namely, to convince the person to whom
they were addressed. I say SELDOM, for there have been instances known,
in remote times, of people being convinced. They puzzled him, however,
and embarrassed him very much, and he remained for full five minutes in
deep and anxious thought.

His reverie, however, was brought to an end suddenly, by a few words
which the fisherman whispered to him. His countenance brightened; a
rapid and brief conversation followed in a low tone, which ended in his
abruptly holding out his hand to the good man at the helm, saying, "I
trust to your honour."

"Upon my soul and honour," replied the fisherman, grasping his proffered
hand.

The matter now seemed settled,--no farther words passed between the
master of the boat and his passenger; but the seaman gave a rapid glance
to the sky, to the long spit of land called the Battery Point, and to
the southward, whence the wind was blowing so sharply.

"We can do it," he muttered to himself, "we can do it;" and he then gave
immediate orders for changing the boat's course, and putting out all
sail. His companions seemed as much surprised by his change of purpose,
as he had been with the alteration of his passenger's determination. His
orders were nevertheless obeyed promptly, the head of the boat was
turned away from the wind, the canvas caught the gale, and away she went
like lightning, heeling till the little yard almost touched the water.
Her course, however, was not bent back exactly to the same spot from
which she started, and it now became evident that it was the fisherman's
intention to round the Battery Point.

Lennard Sherbrooke was not at all aware of the dangerous reef that lay
so near their course; but it soon became evident to him that there was
some great peril, which required much skill and care to avoid; and, as
night fell, the anxiety of the seamen evidently became greater. The wind
by this time was blowing quite a hurricane, and the rushing roaring
sound of the gale and the ocean was quite deafening. But about half an
hour after sunset that peculiar angry roar, which is only heard in the
neighbourhood of breakers, was distinguished to leeward; and looking in
that direction, Sherbrooke perceived one long white line of foam and
surf, rising like an island in the midst of dark and struggling waters.

Not a word was said: it seemed as if scarcely a breath was drawn. In a
few minutes the sound of the breakers became less distinct; a slight
motion was perceivable in the arm of the man who held the tiller, and in
about ten minutes the effect of the neighbouring headlands was found in
smoother water and a lighter gale, as the boat glided calmly and
steadily on, into a small bay, not many hundred miles from Baltimore.
The rest of their voyage, till they reached the shore again, was safe
and easy: the master of the boat and his men seemed to know every creek,
cove, and inlet, as well as their own dwelling places; and, directing
their coarse to a little but deep stream, they ran in between two other
boats, and were soon safely moored.

The boy, by Sherbrooke's direction, had lain himself down in the bottom
of the boat, wrapped up in a large cloak; and there, with the happy
privilege of childhood, he had fallen sound asleep, nor woke till danger
and anxiety were passed, and the little vessel safe at the shore.
Accommodation was easily found in a neighbouring village, and, on the
following day, one, and only one, of the boat's crew went over to the
spot from which they had set out on the preceding evening. He returned
with another man, both loaded with provisions. There was much coming and
going between the village and the boat during the day. By eventide the
storm had sobbed itself away; the sea was calm again, the sky soft and
clear; and beneath the bright eyes of the watchful stars, the boat once
more took its way across the broad bosom of the ocean, with its course
laid directly towards the English shore.

CHAPTER IV.

Those were days of pack-saddles and pillions--days certainly not without
their state and display; but yet days in which persons were not valued
according to the precise mode of their dress or equipage, when hearts
were not appraised by the hat or gloves, nor the mind estimated by the
carriages or horses.

Man was considered far more abstractedly then than at present; and
although illustrious ancestors, great possessions, and hereditary claims
upon consideration, were allowed more weight than they now possess, yet
the minor circumstances of each individual,--the things that filled his
pocket, the dishes upon his table, the name of his tailor, or the club
that he belonged to,--were seldom, if ever, allowed to affect the
appreciation of his general character.

However that might be, it was an age, as we have said, of pack-saddles
and pillions; and no one, at any distance from the capital itself, would
have been the least ashamed to be seen with a lady or child mounted
behind him on the same horse, while he jogged easily onward on his
destined way.

It was thus that, about a quarter of an hour before nightfall, a, tall
powerful man was seen riding along through one of the north-western
counties of England, with a boy of about eight years of age mounted on a
pillion behind him, and steadying himself on the horse by an
affectionate embrace cast round the waist of his elder companion.

Lennard Sherbrooke--for the reader has already divined that this was no
other than the personage introduced to him in our first chapter--Lennard
Sherbrooke, then, was still heavily armed, but in other respects had
undergone a considerable change. The richly laced coat had given place
to a plain dark one of greenish brown; the large riding boots remained;
and the hat, though it kept its border of feathers, was divested of
every other ornament. There were pistols at the saddle-bow, which indeed
were very necessary in those days to every one who performed the
perilous and laborious duty of wandering along the King's Highway; and
in every other respect the appearance of Lennard Sherbrooke was well
calculated neither to attract cupidity nor invite attack.

About ten minutes after the period at which we have again introduced him
to our readers, the traveller and his young companion stopped at the
door of an old-fashioned inn, or rather at the porch thereof; for the
door itself, with a retiring modesty, stood at some distance back, while
an impudent little portico with carved oak pillars, of quaint but not
inelegant design, stood forth into the road, with steps leading down
from it to the sill of the sunk doorway. An ostler ran out to take the
horse, and helped the boy down tenderly and carefully. Sherbrooke
himself then dismounted, looked at his beast from head to foot, and then
ordering the ostler to give him some hay and water, he took the boy by
the hand and entered the house.

The ostler looked at the beast, which was tired, and then at the sky,
over which the first shades of evening were beginning to creep, thinking
as he did so that the stranger might quite as well put up his beast for
the night. In the meantime, however, Sherbrooke had given the boy into
the charge of the hostess, had bidden her prepare some supper for him,
and had intimated that he himself was going a little farther, but would
soon return to sleep at her hospitable dwelling. He ordered to be
brought in and given into her charge also a small portmanteau,--smaller
than that which he had taken with him into the boat,--and when all this
was done, he kissed the boy's forehead tenderly, and left him, mounting
once more his weary beast, and plodding slowly along upon his way.

It was a very sweet evening: the sun, half way down behind one of the
distant hills, seemed, like man's curiosity, to overlook unheeded all
the bright and beautiful things close to him, and to gaze with his eyes
of light full upon the objects further from him, through which the
wayfarer was bending his way. The line of undulating hills, the masses
of a long line of woodland, some deep valleys and dells, a small village
with its church and tower on an eminence, were all in deep blue shadow;
while, in the foreground, every bank and slope was glittering in yellow
sunshine, and a small river, that wound along through the flatter part
of the ground, seemed turned into gold by the great and glorious
alchymist, as he sunk to his rest.

The heart of the traveller who wandered there alone was ill, very ill at
ease. Happily for himself, as he was now circumstanced, the character of
Sherbrooke was a gay and buoyant one, not easily depressed, bearing the
load lightly; but still he could not but feel the difficulties, the
dangers, and the distresses of a situation, which, though shared in by
very many at that moment, was rather aggravated by such being the case,
and had but small alleviation even from hope.

In the first place, he had seen the cause to which he had attached
himself utterly ruined by the base irresolution of a weak monarch, who
had lost his crown by his tyranny, and who had failed to regain it by
his courage. In the next place, for his devotion to that cause, he was a
banished and an outlawed man, with his life at the mercy of any one who
chose to take it. In the next he was well nigh penniless, with the life
of another, dear, most dear to his heart, depending entirely upon his
exertions.

The heart of the traveller, then, was ill, very ill at ease, but yet the
calm of that evening's sunshine had a sweet and tranquillizing effect.
There is a mirror--there is certainly a moral mirror in our hearts,
which reflects the images of the things around us; and every change that
comes over nature's face is mingled sweetly, though too often unnoticed,
with the thoughts and feelings called forth by other things. The effect
of that calm evening upon Lennard Sherbrooke was not to produce the
wild, bright, visionary dreams and expectations which seem the peculiar
offspring of the glowing morning, or of the bright and risen day; but it
was the counterpart, the image, the reflection of that evening scene
itself to which it gave rise in his heart. He felt tranquillized, he
felt more resolute, more capable of enduring. Grief and anxiety subsided
into melancholy and resolution, and the sweet influence of the hour had
also an effect beyond: it made him pause upon the memories of his past
life, upon many a scene of idle profligacy, revel, and riot,--of talents
cast away and opportunity neglected,--of fortune spent and bright hopes
blasted,--and of all the great advantages which he had once possessed
utterly lost and gone, with the exception of a kind and generous heart:
a jewel, indeed, but one which in this world, alas! can but too seldom
be turned to the advantage of the possessor.

On these things he pondered, and a sweet and ennobling regret came upon
him that it should be so--a regret which might have gone on to sincere
repentance, to firm amendment, to the retrieval of fortunes, to an utter
change of destiny, had the circumstances of the times, or any friendly
voice and helping hand, led his mind on upon that path wherein it had
already taken the first step, and had opened out before him a way of
retrieval, instead of forcing him onward down the hill of destruction.
But, alas! those were not times when the opportunity of doing better was
likely to be allowed to him; nor were circumstances destined to change
his course. His destiny, like that of many Jacobites of the day, was but
to be from ruin to ruin; and let it be remembered, that the character
and history of Lennard Sherbrooke are not ideal, but are copied
faithfully from a true but sad history of a life in those times.

All natural affections sweeten and purify the human heart. Like
everything else given us immediately from God, their natural tendency is
to wage war against all that is evil within us; and every single thought
of amendment and improvement, every regret for the past, every better
hope for the future, was connected with the thought of the beautiful boy
he had left behind at the inn; and elevated by his love for a being in
the bright purity of youth, he thought of him and his situation again
and again; and often as he did so, the intensity of his own feelings
made him murmur forth half audible words all relating to the boy, or to
the person he was then about to seek, for the purpose of interesting him
in the poor youth's fate.

"I will tell him all and everything," he said, thus murmuring to himself
as he went on: "he may drive me forth if he will; but surely, surely, he
will protect and do something for the boy. What, though there have been
faults committed and wrong done, he cannot be so hard-hearted as to let
the poor child starve, or be brought up as I can alone bring him up."

Such was still the conclusion to which he seemed to come; and at length
when the sun had completely gone down, and at the distance of about
three miles from the inn, he paused before a large pair of wooden gates,
consisting of two rows of square bars of painted wood placed close
together, with a thick heavy rail at the top and bottom, while two
wooden obelisks, with their steeple-shaped summits, formed the gate
posts. Opening the gates, as one well familiar with the lock, he now
entered the smaller road which led from them through the fields towards
a wood upon the top of the hill. At first the way was uninteresting
enough, and the faint remains of twilight only served to show some
square fields within their hedge-rows cut in the most prim and
undeviating lines around. The wayfarer rode on, through that part of the
scene, with his eyes bent down in deep thought; but when he came to the
wood; and, following the path--which, now kept with high neatness and
propriety, wound in and out amongst the trees, and then sweeping gently
round the shoulder of the hill, exposed a beautiful deer park--he had
before his eyes a fine Elizabethan house, rising grey upon a little
eminence at the distance of some four or five hundred yards,--it seemed
that some old remembrance, some agitating vision of the days gone by,
came over the horseman's mind. He pulled in his rein, clasped his hands
together, and gazed around with a look of sad and painful recognition.
At the end of a minute or two, however, he recovered himself, rode on to
the front of the house we have mentioned, and dismounting from his
horse, pulled the bell-rope which action was instantly followed by a
long peal heard from within.

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