His Dreadful Errand

by E. R. Punshon

HIS DREADFUL ERRAND

 

By E. R. Punshon

 

Illustrated by A. R. Holroyd

 

“A MOST pestilent and avowed Whig,” cried old Sir Maurice de Bracy, his ruddy cheeks pale at the news, “I know not how he dare venture his vile carcase about here, where all of us be honest.”

Indeed, the news that young Roger Rodet, a major in the Foot Guards, and welt known as an active supporter of the Hanoverian Government, had suddenly appeared and taken up his quarters in this quiet and remote village had sent a flutter of apprehension and dismay through all the neighbourhood, where, as old Sir Maurice had just said, everyone was “honest” in the sense of being an adherent of the dethroned Stuarts. Even at this time, when their cause seemed finally lost, and adherents were falling away on every side, this one little district remained fervently devoted to the exiled royal family. And as none was more ardently Jacobite than old Sir Maurice, so none was more disturbed at the news of young Major Rodet's arrival.

“If report speak true,” observed Mistress Dorothy, Sir Maurice's fair young daughter, looking up from her needlework, “this Major Rodet is not one to care over much where he goes.”

“Pray, young mistress, what dost thou know of Roger Rodet?” demanded Sir Maurice angrily, glad of a chance to give some vent to his fear an@ disturbance of mind. “My father would have soundly chastised any maid that even knew such a fellow's name.”

“That would have shown small justice on my grandsire's part,” retorted the young lady, undismayed, “had he himself presented the said fellow to the said maid of his, as my father presented Major Rodet to me.”

“Eh, what do you say?” exclaimed Sir Maurice. “When did I that?”

“At Bath, no longer gone than last summer, when we went thither to take the waters,” returned Dorothy composedly.

“But then I knew not he was a Whig,” retorted Sir Maurice, “and so soon as I heard how high in Court favour he was, I gave thee very different orders, madame.”

“Yes,” agreed the maid, rising, “and made me show discourtesy to one who had shown none to me”; and so, having secured the last word, she left the room.

But, in truth, the news of Major Rodet's appearance in the village had disturbed fair Dorothy scarcely less than her father, though for very different reasons, and she suddenly remembered that old Grammer Dickon was ill of an ague, and had been promised a visit. If old Grammer Dickon lived in the village and knew all that was going on there—well, after all, that was merely coincidence, and none of Dorothy's making. Although she had certain tender memories of the handsome, blue-eyed young officer she had met at Bath, Dorothy was also well enough informed of how deeply her father was involved in the ceaseless and futile intrigues of the Jacobites to share, to some extent, his fears at the open appearance, so near them, of one so high in the confidence of the Government as Major Rodet was reported to be.

The girl's thoughts went back to the gay assembly rooms at Bath; how kind he had been, how eagerly courteous. She had even found it hard to believe he was a Whig at all, for she had been taught to believe that all Whigs were rogues. Besides, he had not been in the least like the country squires she was accustomed to meet. He could, for example, discuss with her the merits of Mr. Pope's translation of Homer, then recently published, and he had even been at the little house in Twickenham, where the crippled poet reigned as king. Mistress Dorothy awoke from her meditation with a violent start as she saw standing before her, bowing profoundly, Major Rodet himself, blue-eyed and smiling, and yet with a touch of agitation in his manner that the girl at once discerned.

“Lord!” she exclaimed, in genuine surprise, “Major Rodet!”

“Madame, your most humble servant,” he protested, with a yet deeper bow.

“How vastly you startled me,” she said. “Who would have thought to see you, Major Rodet, in this quiet spot, so far from the great world?”

“Perhaps it is the better for being so far removed from the great world,” he answered. “But, indeed, I will not deny I have a special reason for having ridden here.”

She gave him a quick glance, as she remembered her father's expressed fear that this particular Whig might have some hidden and sinister purpose of his own for coming hither. It crossed her mind that possibly he meant to convey to her some hint of a hidden danger he did not wish to warn her of too openly.

“Pray, sir, what reason?” she asked bluntly.

“Nay,” he answered, “you shall know in time—but not yet. Only this I will confess, that I, who have served in the Low Countries, and seen some hot work there, have headed forlorn hope with more confidence and a lighter heart than I started on this enterprise—which, yet, I must needs attempt or become a lost man.”

Dorothy went pale. What else could he mean save that he had been sent to arrest her father? Surely only such an enterprise could weigh on him more heavily than the heading of a forlorn hope; yet, of course, he would have to undertake it if so ordered, or become a ruined man.

In her distress, Dorothy turned quickly, meaning to hurry back to the Hall to alarm her father. Asking permission Dorothy dared not reuse, Major Rodet walked with her, passing the somewhat affected and high-flown compliments of the period, to which poor Dorothy was too agitated to reply. Even when they reached a small side gate admitting into the grounds, the Major still lingered, and Dorothy understood that he was hoping to accompany her to the Hall itself. But that she had no mind for, and yet was fearful of offending one in whose hands such power lay. At last, as if despairing of so great a favour as permission to accompany her further, he bade her farewell, and in doing so, asked for a flower from those growing in profusion near this little side entrance.

His manner, during these last few minutes, had somewhat reassured Dorothy, and this request further composed her; for she could not think a man with a warrant in his pocket for the arrest of the father would pay so many compliments to the daughter. And yet the young man's manner was certainly strange.

“Why surely, sir,” she said, in answer to his request, and then an idea flashed into her mind, and moving a step or two, she plucked a white rose—emblem of the Jacobite cause—that grew on a bush near by, and handed it to him.

To her this was a kind of test. If he accepted it and wore it, she would take it as proof that he was here on no Government business; if he rejected it, she would understand that her father's fears were only too well founded.

He held out his hand, and took the flower with a low bow.

“I shall wear it next my heart,” he said, and slipped it within his embroidered waistcoat.

“You have a pretty wit, sir,” she said, flushing with embarrassment and vexation, “yet I should esteem the compliment more highly if you wore my flower more openly.”

“An' that I would,” he answered, “meant it no more than allegiance to my lady; as it is, I wear it where my heart knows the favour it is. Yet, if I dare crave the honour, and the bliss of a flower of another hue—?”

“Nay, sir,” she answered, dropping him a low curtsey, “I give no double gifts.”

She returned to the Hall, somewhat relieved by her encounter and interview, but on reporting it to her father she was dismayed to learn that he took a gloomy view of the situation.

“An errand that you shall know in time, say you?” he stammered, pale as death; “what should that mean but my arrest? An errand he must accomplish with reluctance, yet must attempt or become a ruined man? I know that smooth, fair talk. Not a tipstaff but is full of such phrases. I fear me I am lost—that letter I subscribed has surely reached the knowledge of the Government.”

He had but recently signed some letter whose terms might easily be construed as treason, and seeing her father's fear, Dorothy began again to share his alarms.

“He said it was his purpose to wait on you to-day,” she explained. “I see not how there can be instant peril, else he would not come alone, staying thus openly at the inn. Should he come to-morrow we must discover what this secret errand of his may be, for it is possible it hath no concern with us.”

“I dare not so hope,” replied Sir Maurice. “I am a lost man,” he groaned.

But Dorothy heartened her father as best she could, and when Major Rodet appeared at the Hall on the following day, he received a courteous though constrained welcome that highly delighted him, for the young man had feared he might gain no admittance there at all.

And of the opening thus offered Major Rodet took advantage to the full, till hardly a day passed without his presence at the Hall. He made no further reference to the mysterious errand of which he had spoken to Dorothy, and gave no sign of making the move they dreaded, but expected. Indeed, he made himself so agreeable to the girl as well as to her father that in spite of the fears they entertained of his ultimate purpose, they grew to welcome his appearance as a relief to the monotony of their uneventful country life.

“And, indeed,” Sir Maurice confessed to Dorothy, “he is a most civil, well-instructed young man; nor is he so lacking in respect and reverence for his elders as most young folk are in these modern days. Moreover, he playeth an excellent game of backgammon, though it is per- chance more by fortune than skill I generally come off the victor.”

Things seemed going so smoothly that Dorothy almost lost her fears, and she became shyly sub-conscious of another possible explanation of Major Rodet's presence and protracted stay, which explanation she would sooner have died than admitted the possibility of—even to herself.

And then came the climax. One afternoon, coming in to her father, Dorothy found him almost palsied with fear.

“It is over!” he said-dismally. “He hath told me as plainly as possible that to-morrow he must arrest me, unless I escape. Child, we must fly, we must fly!”

“Oh, father!” Dorothy gasped, growing white, “what is it he hath said? Sure, he can mean no harm to us; it must be some other he alludes to.”

“Hold thy tongue, Doll!” Sir Maurice bade her roughly, “and set to work, unless thou hast a mind to see me on Tower Hill. Some other, indeed! Where else hath he been save here? Who else hath he watched save me? No, 'tis plain he hath been sent to watch and guard me till they gathered sufficient evidence to proceed. Yes, Doll, ride to-night. Perchance we may find a packet sailing for France—only there shall we be safe. I protest the young man hath an affection for me, and spoke but to warn me. 'To-morrow, Sir Maurice,' quoth'a, 'thou shalt know my errand here—more dreadful to me heading a forlorn hope on a beleaguered town.' Once let me be safe out of this, and I'll meddle-no more with Whig and Tory. They shall be one to me.”

That night they slept at an inn twenty miles from the sea, and Dorothy lay awake in her strange bed-chamber and listened to the clatter of some belated arrival, and wept nearly all the night through—and told herself her tears were for her father's peril. Yet, when now and then she dozed, it was not of him or of the danger threatening him she dreamed, but of a tall, blue-eyed young officer with a kind smile and strong, protecting arms.

Late as it was when they retired, she rose early and descended to the inn's great parlour, which the better class guests shared in common, the poorer eating, and sometimes sleeping, in the kitchen.

She had but entered the room when her eyes fell on a figure familiar to her, a figure that sprang up at her entrance.

“Major Rodet,” she cried in terror; “have you followed us already?”

“Fair Mistress Dorothy,” he said, “I could no longer endure the uncertainty of my fate, and have come hither to, learn it from your——”

“Your fate!” she stammered.

“My fate,” he answered, “I was never coward before, but these last days, I swear, have been dreadful to me, swinging between hope and fear Dorothy, I have little hope—for I know how great a thing I ask—but I do love thee well.”

She made no answer, but a delicious warmth stole into her heart. Then a kind of dizziness seized her, and she put out a hand to support herself, resting it on the fine old carved oak dresser. Encouraged by her silence, the Major took her other hand; then the door opened and Sir Maurice stood on the threshold, amazed, indeed, and questioning, and yet no longer afraid, since his daughter's downcast; blushing face, and Major Rodet's half-defiant, half-nervous attitude, told plainly as words there was no danger such as he had feared.

“Sir, I crave your pardon,” the Major said quickly, “I am aware I have shown ill-manners in thus following you, but I could endure no further delay, and the news of your unexpected departure plunged me into such despair that I was forced to follow and learn my fate.”

“You told me,” interrupted Sir Maurice, “about an errand, rather than perform which you would have headed a forlorn hope.”

“And so in truth I would,” returned the young man, “for then I risk only my life, but in this—how much more;” he said, and he bent and kissed Dorothy's hand. “I know,” he continued, “I have the ill-fortune to differ from you in politics——”

“Nay,” said Sir Maurice in a great hurry, “I care not a rush for that. Whig or Tory, 'tis all one with me.”

Major Rodet looked surprised, but intensely relieved.

“Then may I hope——?” he asked, almost trembling with eagerness; “may I dare——?”

“Let's get home at once,” said Sir Maurice, “where we may discuss other things. As for hoping, thou must e'en ask Dorothy about that.”

“But your journey?” asked the Major, hesitating, and still doubtful of this sudden transition from despair to the heights of hope; for never had he dared to suppose his suit would receive such friendly reception from so staunch a Tory as Sir Maurice was reputed to be.

“Oh, the journey!” muttered Sir Maurice, for a moment looking embarrassed, “I think, perchance, we may abandon the journey—eh, Doll; what sayest thou?”

And Dorothy thought so too. And thus it came about that one more step was taken in the long path that brought together Whig and Jacobite in enthusiastic devotion to the established throne of Britain.