Had Sir Tristram been less preoccupied he might have found something to wonder at in his cousin’s sudden docility. As it was, he was much too busy unravelling the intricacies of Sylvester’s affairs with Mr Pickering to pay any heed to Eustacie’s change of front. If he thought about it at all he supposed merely that she had recovered from a fit of tantrums, and was heartily glad of it. He had half expected her to raise objections to his plan to convey her to Bath on the day after her grandfather’s burial, but when he broached the matter to her she listened to him with folded hands and downcast eyes, and answered never a word. A man more learned in female wiles might have found this circumstance suspicious; Sir Tristram was only grateful. He himself would be returning to Lavenham Court, but he told Eustacie that he did not expect to be obliged to remain for more than a week or two, after which time he would join the household in Bath, and set forward the marriage arrangements. Eustacie curtseyed politely.
She did not attend Sylvester’s funeral, which took place on the third day after his death, but busied herself instead with choosing from her wardrobe the garments she considered most suited to her new calling, and directing Lucy how to bestow them in the two bandboxes. Lucy, too devoted to her glamorous young mistress to think of betraying her, but very much alarmed at the idea of all the dangers she might encounter on her solitary journey, sniffed dolefully as she folded caracos and fichus and said that she would almost prefer to accompany Miss, braving the terror of the Headless Horseman, than be left behind to face Sir Tristram’s wrath. Eustacie, feeling that to take her maid with her would be to destroy at a blow all the romance of the adventure, told her to pretend the most complete ignorance of the affair, and promised that she would send for her to London at the first opportunity.
The forlorn sight of snowflakes drifting down from a leaden sky affected Lucy with a sense of even deeper foreboding, but only inspired her mistress to say she would wear her fur-lined cloak after all, and the beaver hat with the crimson plume.
Her actual escape from the Court was accomplished without the least difficulty, the servants having gone to bed, and Sir Tristram being shut up in the library with Beau Lavenham, who had come over from the Dower House to dine with his cousins. Eustacie had excused herself from their company soon after dinner, and gone up to her bedchamber. At eleven o’clock, looking quite enchanting in her riding-dress and crimson cloak and wide-brimmed beaver, with its red feather curling over to mingle with her dark, silky curls, she tiptoed down the back stairs, holding up her skirts in one hand and in the other grasping her whip and gloves. Behind her tottered the shrinking Lucy, carrying the two bandboxes and a lantern.
Halfway down the stairs Eustacie stopped. “I ought to have a pistol!”
“Good gracious sakes alive, miss!” whispered Lucy. “Whatever would you do with one of them nasty, dangerous things?”
“But, of course, I must have a pistol!” said Eustacie. “And I know where there is a pistol, too!” She turned, ignoring her abigail’s tearful protests, and ran lightly up the stairs again, and disappeared in the direction of the Long Gallery.
When she returned she was flushed and rather out of breath and carried in her right hand a peculiarly deadly-looking duelling pistol with a ten-inch barrel and silver sights. Lucy nearly dropped the bandboxes when she saw it, and implored her mistress in an agitated whisper to put it down.
“It is my cousin Ludovic’s,” said Eustacie triumphantly. “There were two of them in a case in the bedchamber that was his. How fortunate that I should have remembered! I saw them—oh, a long time ago!—when they put the new curtains in that room. Do you think it is loaded?”
“Oh, mercy, miss, I hope not!”
“I must be careful,” decided Eustacie, handling the weapon somewhat gingerly. “I think it has a hair-trigger, but I do not properly understand guns. Hurry, now!”
The snow had stopped falling some time before, but a light covering of it lay upon the ground, and there was a sharp, frosty nip in the air. The two females, one of them in high fettle and the other shivering with mingled cold and fright, trod softly down the drive that led from the house to the stables. No light showed in the coachman’s cottage, nor in the grooms’ quarters, and no one appeared to offer the least hindrance to Eustacie’s escape. She unlocked the door of the harness-room, pulled Lucy in after her, and setting the lantern down on the table, selected a bridle from the wall, and pointed out her saddle to the abigail. The next thing was to unlock the stable door, and to saddle and bridle Rufus, who seemed sleepy but not displeased to see his mistress. Lucy, dreading the consequences of this exploit, had begun to weep softly, but was told in a fierce whisper to saddle Rufus and to stop being a fool. She was an obedient girl, so she gulped down her tears, and heaved the saddle up on to Rufus’s back. The girths having been pulled tight, the headstall removed and the bridle put on, it only remained to attach the two bandboxes to the saddle. This called for a further search in the harness-room for a pair of suitable straps, and by the time these had been found and the bandboxes suspended from them, Eustacie had decided that the only possible way to carry a pistol was in a holster. A lady’s saddle not being equipped with this necessary adjunct, one had to be removed from a saddle of Sylvester’s, and buckled rather precariously on to the strap that held one of the bandboxes. It seemed to be far too large a holster for the slender pistol that was pushed into it, but that could not be helped. Eustacie remarked that it was fortunate there was snow upon the ground, since it would muffle the sound of Rufus’s hooves on the cobblestones, and led him out to the mounting-block. Once safely in the saddle, she reminded Lucy to lock all the doors again and to replace the keys, gave her her hand to kiss, and set off, not by way of the avenue leading to the closed lodge gates, but across the park to a farm track with an unguarded gate at the end of it which could be opened without dismounting.
This feat presently accomplished, Eustacie urged Rufus to a trot, and set off down the lane towards the rough road that ran north through Warninglid to join the turnpike road from London to Brighton at Hand Cross.
She knew the way well, but to one wholly unaccustomed to being abroad after nightfall, the countryside looked oddly unfamiliar in the moonlight. Everything was very silent, and the trees, grown suddenly to preposterous heights, cast black, distorted shadows that might, to those of nervous disposition, seem almost to hold a menace. Eustacie was glad to think that she was a de Vauban, and therefore afraid of nothing, and wondered why a stillness unbroken by so much as the crackle of a twig should, instead of convincing her that she was alone, have the quite opposite effect of making her imagine hidden dangers behind every bush or thicket. She was enjoying herself hugely, of course—that went without saying—but perhaps she would not be entirely sorry to reach Hand Cross and the protection of the mail coach. Moreover, the bandboxes bobbed up and down in a tiresome way, and one of them showed signs of working loose from its strap. She tried to rectify this, but only succeeded in making things worse.
The lane presently met the road to Hand Cross, and here the country began to be more thickly wooded, and consequently darker, for there were a good many pines and hollies which had not shed their foliage and so obscured the moonlight. It was very cold, and the carpet of snow made it sometimes difficult to keep to the road. Once Rufus stumbled almost into the ditch, and once some creature (only a fox, Eustacie assured herself) slipped across the road ahead of her. It began to seem a very long way to Hand Cross. A thorn bush beside the road cast a shadow that was unpleasantly like that of a misshapen man. Eustacie’s heart gave a sickening bump, and all at once she remembered the Headless Horseman and for one dreadful moment felt positive that he was close behind her. Every horrid story she had heard of St Leonard’s Forest now came unbidden to her mind, and she discovered that she could even recall with painful accuracy the details of A Discourse relating a strange and monstrous Serpent (or Dragon) lately discovered and yet living, which she had found in a musty old volume in Sylvester’s library.
Past Warninglid the country grew more open, but although it was a relief to get away from the trees Eustacie knew, because Sylvester had told her, that the Forest had once covered all this tract of ground, and she was therefore unable to place any reliance on the Headless Horseman keeping to the existing bounds. She began to imagine moving forms in the hedges, and when, about a mile beyond the Slaugham turning, her horse suddenly put forward his ears at a flutter of white seen fleetingly in the gloom of a thicket and shied violently across the road, she gave a sob of pure fright, and was nearly unseated. She pulled Rufus up, but his plunge had done all that was necessary to set the troublesome bandbox free. It slipped from the strap and went rolling away over the snow, and came to rest finally quite close to the thicket at the side of the road.
Eustacie, patting Rufus’s neck with a hand which, though meant to convey reassurance, was actually trembling more than he was, looked after her property with dismay. She did not feel that she could abandon it (which she would have liked to have done), for in spite of being afraid of nothing, she was extremely loth to dismount and pick it up. She sat still for a few minutes, intently staring at the thicket. Rufus stared, too, with his head up and his ears forward. Nothing seemed to be stirring, however, and Eustacie, telling herself that the Headless Horseman was only a legend, and that the monstrous Serpent (or Dragon) had flourished nearly two hundred years ago and must surely be dead by now, gritted her teeth, and dismounted. She was disgusted to find that her knees were shaking, so to give herself more courage she pulled the duelling pistol out of the holster and grasped it firmly in her right hand.
Rufus, though suspicious of the thicket, allowed her to lead him up to the bandbox. She had just stooped to pick it up when the shrill neigh of a pony not five yards distant startled her almost out of her wits. She gave a scream of terror, saw something move in the shadow, and the next minute was struggling dementedly in the hold of a man who had seemed to pounce upon her from nowhere. She could not scream again because a hand was clamped over her mouth, and when she pulled the trigger of her pistol nothing happened. A sinewy arm was round her; she was half lifted, half dragged into the cover of the thicket; and heard a rough voice behind her growl: “Hit her over the head, blast the wench!”
Her terrified eyes, piercing the gloom, saw the dim outline of a face above her. Her captor said: “I’ll be damned if I do!” in the unmistakable accents of a gentleman, and bent over her, and added softly: “I’m sorry, but you mustn’t screech. If I take my hand away, will you be quiet—quite quiet?”
She nodded. At the first sound of his voice, which was oddly attractive, a large measure of her fright had left her. Now, as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she saw that he was quite a young man, and, judging from the outline of his profile against the moonlit sky, a very personable young man.
The voice of the man behind her spoke again. “Adone do! She’ll be the ruin o’ we! Let me shut her mouth for her!”
Eustacie made a strangled sound in her throat and tried to bring her hands up to clutch at the young man’s arm. The barrel of her pistol, which she was still clutching, gleamed in the moonlight, and caught the attention of her captor, who said under his breath: “If you let that pistol off I’ll murder you! Ned, take the gun away from her!”
A heavy hand wrenched it out of her grasp; the rough voice said: “It ain’t loaded. If you won’t do more, tie her up with a gag in her mouth!”
“No, no, she’s much too pretty,” said the young man, taking the pistol and slipping it into the pocket of his frieze coat “You won’t squeak, will you, darling?”
As well as she could Eustacie shook her head. The hand left her mouth and patted her cheek. “Good girl! Don’t be frightened: I swear I won’t hurt you!”
Eustacie, who had been almost suffocated, gasped thankfully: “I thought you were the Headless Horseman!”
“You thought I was what?”
“The Headless Horseman.”
He laughed. “Well, I’m not.”
“No. I can see you are not. But why did you seize me like that? What are you doing here?”
“If it comes to that, what are you doing here?”
“I am going to London,” replied Eustacie.
“Oh!” said the young man, rather doubtfully. “It’s no concern of mine, of course, but it’s a plaguey queer time to be going to London, isn’t it?”
“No, because I am going to catch the night mail at Hand Cross. You must instantly let me go, or I shall be too late.”
The other man, who had been listening in scowling silence, muttered: “She’ll have the pack of them down on us!”
“Be damned to you, don’t croak so!” said the young man. “Tether that nag of hers!”
“If you let her go—”
“I’m not going to let her go. You keep a look-out for Abel, and stop spoiling sport!”
“But certainly you are going to let me go!” interposed Eustacie in an urgent undertone. “I must go!”
The young man said apologetically: “The devil’s in it that I can’t let you go. I would if I could, but to tell you the truth—”
“There’s no call to do that!” growled his companion. “Dang me, master, if I don’t think you’re unaccountable crazed!”
Eustacie, who had had time by now to take stock of her surroundings, discovered that the darker shadows a little way off were not shadows at all, but ponies. There seemed to be about a dozen of them, and as she peered at them she was gradually able to descry what they were carrying. She had been living in Sussex for two years, and she was perfectly familiar with the appearance of a keg of brandy. She exclaimed: “You are smugglers, then!”
“Free traders, my dear, free traders!” replied the young man cheerfully. “At least, I am. Ned here is only what we call a land smuggler. You need not heed him.”
Eustacie was so intrigued that for the moment she forgot all about the mail coach. She had heard a great deal about smugglers, but although she knew that they were in general a desperate, cut-throat set of outlaws, she was so accustomed to her grandfather and most of his neighbours having dealings with them that she did not think their illicit trade in the least shocking. She said: “Well, you need not be afraid of me, I assure you. I do not at all mind that you are smug—free traders.”
“Are you French?” asked the young man.
“Yes. But tell me, why are you hiding here?”
“Excisemen,” he replied. “They’re on the watch. You know, the more I think of it the more it seems a very odd thing to me that you should be riding about by yourself in the middle of the night.”
“I have told you: I am going to London.”
“Well, it still seems very odd to me.”
“Yes, but, you see, I am running away,” explained Eustacie. “That is why I have to catch the night mail. I am going to London to be a governess.”
She had the impression that he was laughing, but he said quite gravely: “You’ll never do for a governess. You don’t look like one. Besides, you’re not old enough.”
“Yes, I am, and I shall look just like a governess.”
“You can’t know anything about governesses if that’s what you think.”
“Well, I don’t, but I thought it would be a very good thing to become.”
“I dare say you know best, but to my mind you’re making a mistake. From all I’ve heard, they have a devilish poor time of it.”
“I wish I could be a smuggler,” said Eustacie wistfully. “I think I should like that.”
“You wouldn’t do for a smuggler,” he replied, shaking his head. “We don’t encourage females in the trade. It’s too dangerous.”
“Well, I do not think it is fair that just because one is a female one should never be allowed to have any adventures!”
“You seem to me to be having a deal of adventure,” he pointed out. “I might easily have choked the life out of you—in fact, I may still if you don’t behave yourself. You’re in a mighty tight corner.”
“Yes, I know I am having an adventure now,” agreed Eustacie, “and, of course, I am enjoying it, but I should like to continue having adventures, which is a thing not at all easy to arrange.”
“No, I suppose it’s not,” said the free trader thoughtfully.
“You see, if I were a man I could be a highwayman, or a smuggler like you. I expect you have had many, many adventures.”
“I have,” said the young man rather ruefully. “So many that I’m devilish tired of ’em.”
“But I have had only this one small adventure, and I am not yet tired. That is why I am going to London.”
“If you take my advice,” said the young man, “you’ll give up this notion of being a governess. Try something else!”
“Well, perhaps I will be a milliner,” said Eustacie. “When I get to London I shall consider carefully what is best for me to do.”
“Yes, but you aren’t going to London tonight,” he said.
“I am going tonight! You do not understand! If I do not go tonight I shall be found, and then I shall have to go to Bath to play backgammon, and be married to a person without sensibility!”
He seemed to be much struck by this, and said seriously: “No, that would be too bad. We must think of something. You’ll have to stay with me, at least till Abel reports all clear, of course, but there’s bound to be a London coach through Hand Cross in the morning.”
“And I tell you that in the morning it will be too late!” said Eustacie crossly. “I find that you are quite abominable! You spoil everything, and, what is more, I think you are excessively impertinent, because you have taken my horse away and stolen my pistol!”
“No, I haven’t,” he replied. “I’ve only had your horse tethered so that he can’t stray. As for your pistol, you can have that back now if you wish,” he added, diving his hand into his pocket and pulling out the weapon. “Though what in the world you want with an unloaded duelling pistol—”
He stopped suddenly, feeling the balance of the gun, and stepped into the moonlight to examine it more closely. Eustacie saw that he was very tall and fair, dressed in a common frieze coat and breeches, with a coloured handkerchief round his neck, and his pale gold hair loosely tied back from his face. He looked up from the pistol in his hand, and said sharply: “How did you come by this?”
“Well, it is not precisely my own,” said Eustacie. “It—”
“I know that. Who gave it to you?”
“Nobody gave it to me!”
“Do you mean you stole it?”
“Of course I did not steal it! I have just borrowed it because I thought it would be a good thing to take a pistol with me. Du vrai, it belongs to my cousin Ludovic, but I feel very certain that he would not mind lending it to me, because he is of all my family the most romantic.”
The free trader came back to her side in two quick strides. “Who the devil are you?” he demanded.
“I do not see what concern it is—”
He put his hands on her shoulders and shook her. “Never mind that! Who are you?”
“I am Eustacie de Vauban,” she answered, with dignity.
“Eustacie de Vauban ... Oh yes, I have it! But how do you come to be in England?”
“Well, my grandpapa thought that they would send me to the guillotine if I stayed in France, so he fetched me away. But if I had known that he would make me marry my cousin Tristram, who is not amusing, I should have preferred infinitely to have gone to the guillotine.”
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “Is he at the Court? If you’re running way from him I’ll do what I can to help you!”
“Do you know him, then?” asked Eustacie, surprised.
“Do I know him! I’m your romantic cousin Ludovic!”
She gave a small shriek, which had the effect of making him clap his hand over her mouth again. “Fiend seize you, don’t make that noise! Do you want to bring the Excisemen down on me?”
She pulled his hand down and stood clasping it between both her own. “No, no, I promise I will be entirely quiet! I am so enchanted to meet you! I thought I never should, because Tristram said you could not set foot in England any more.”
“ I dare say he did,” replied Ludovic. “But here I am for all that. You’ve only to breathe one word and I shall have Bow Street Runners as well as Excisemen on my trail.”
She said fiercely: “I shall not breathe any word at all, and I think you are quite insulting to say that!”
He put his other hand over hers. “Did they tell you why I can’t set foot in England?”
“Yes, but I do not care. Did you kill that person whose name I have forgotten?”
“No, I did not.”
“ Bon! Then we must at once discover who did do it,” said Eustacie briskly. “I see now that this is a much better adventure than I thought.”
“Do you believe me, then?” he asked.
“But certainly I believe you!”
He laughed, and pulling her to him, kissed her cheek. “Well, save for Basil, you’re the only person who does.”
“Yes,” said Eustacie. “But me, I do not like Basil.”
He was about to answer her when Ned Bundy loomed up through the darkness and twitched his sleeve. “Abel,” he said laconically.
Eustacie heard the crunch of a pony’s hooves on the snow and the next moment saw the pony, with a short, thick-set man sitting astride the pack-saddle. Ludovic took her hand and led her up to the newcomer. “Well?” he said.
“There’s a dunnamany Excisemen out. We’ll have to make back to Cowfold—if we can,” said Mr Bundy, dismounting. He became aware of Eustacie, and favoured her with a long dispassionate look. “Where did that dentical wench come from?” he inquired.
“She’s my cousin. Can’t we win through to Hand Cross?”
Mr Bundy accepted Eustacie’s identity without comment and apparently without interest. “We’m not likely to win to Cowfold,” he replied. “They’re on to us.”
At this gloomy pronouncement his brother Ned, pulling him a little apart, broke into urgent, low-voiced speech. Ludovic strode over to join in the discussion, and returned in a few minutes to Eustacie’s side, saying briskly: “Well, I’m sorry for it, but I can’t let you go to London tonight. You’ll have to come with us.”
“Oh, I would much rather come with you,” Eustacie assured him. “Where are we going?”
“South,” he replied briefly. “Those damned riding-officers must have got wind of this convoy. There may be some rough work done before the night’s out, I warn you. Come along!”
He seized her by the wrist again and strode off with her to where her horse had been tethered, and without ceremony tossed her up into the saddle. Eustacie, seeing the two Bundys busy with the laden ponies, said emulatively: “Can I help to lead them, please?”
“No. Keep quiet.”
“But what can I do?”
“Nothing.”
Ned Bundy said something under his breath.
“I dare say, but I’m not going to have a cousin of mine hit over the head,” said Ludovic. “Ready, Abel?”
A grunt answered him; the train began to move southward, Abel at its head. Ludovic mounted a rough pony and brought up the rear, still holding Eustacie’s bridle. She took instant exception to this, and after a short but pungent argument he let her go free, much against the advice of Ned Bundy, who was ranging alongside the convoy, whipping up the stragglers.
Eustacie interrupted Mr Bundy’s muttered suggestions for the disposal of her person by announcing calmly that she was quite tired of him, a remark which surprised that ferocious gentleman so much that he could think of nothing to say, and retired towards the head of the train. “Why does he want to hit me on the head?” asked Eustacie, looking critically after him. “He seems to me entirely stupid.”
“Well, he don’t hold with women being mixed up in these affairs,” explained Ludovic. “You’re devilish in the way, you know.”
“But you do not mind having me with you, do you?” asked Eustacie anxiously.
“Lord, no, I like it!” replied Ludovic light-heartedly. “Only you won’t care for it if there’s any shooting done.”
“Yes, I shall,” said Eustacie. “In fact, I wish very much that you will load my pistol for me and give it back to me, because if there is to be shooting I should like to shoot, too.”
“It’s not your pistol,” retorted Ludovic. “It’s mine, and let me tell you that I don’t lend my duelling pistols to anyone. Where is the other?”
“I left it in the case. I think you should be glad to lend it to me.”
“Well, I’m not. Where did you get this notion I was romantic?”
“But you have had a very romantic life; of course, I knew you were romantic!”
“I’ve had a damned uncomfortable life. Tell me more about this marriage of yours. Why must you marry Tristram if you don’t want to? Is it Sylvester’s doing?”
“Yes, he made for me a mariage de convenance, but he is dead now, and I am going to arrange my own affairs.”
“What! is Sylvester dead?” exclaimed Ludovic.
“Yes, since three days. So now it is you who are Lord Lavenham.”
“Much good will that do me!” said Ludovic. “Where’s Basil?”
“He is at the Dower House, of course, and Tristram is at the Court.”
“I must try to see Basil. Something will have to be done about the succession. I can’t wear Sylvester’s shoes.”
“Well, I do not want him to wear them, and I think it would be better if you did not see him,” said Eustacie.
“Oh, there’s no harm in the Beau!” He broke off suddenly as the convoy halted, and grasped Rufus’s bridle above the bit, pulling him to a standstill. “Quiet, now!” He sat still, intently listening. Eustacie, straining her ears, caught faintly the sound of horses’ hooves in the distance. “Stay where you are!” ordered Ludovic, and went forward to the head of the train.
Eustacie, though she would have liked to have taken part in the council which was being held between the three men, thought it as well to obey. Her Cousin Ludovic seemed to be of an autocratic disposition, reminding her strongly of his grandfather.
He came back to her side after a short colloquy with the Bundys and said in his quick, authoritative way: “We shall have to try and lead these damned Excisemen off the trail. I don’t know what the devil to do with you, so you’d better come with me. After all, you wanted an adventure, and I can’t let you jaunt about the countryside alone at this hour of night.”
That a solitary journey to London might conceivably be attended by fewer dangers than a night spent hand-in-glove with a party of smugglers apparently did not occur to him. He dismounted from his pony, adding: “Besides, I want your horse.”
“Am I to ride the pony, then?” asked Eustacie, willing but dubious.
“No, I’m going to take you up before me,” he replied. “I can look after you better that way. Moreover the pony couldn’t keep up.” He gave the animal into the elder Bundy’s care as he spoke, and said: “Good luck to you, Abel. Don’t trouble your head on my account!”
“You’d best be careful,” said Mr Bundy gloomily. “You never had no sense and never will have.”
Ludovic had got up behind Eustacie by this time, and settled her in the crook of his arm. “It beats me how you can ride with a saddle like this,” he remarked, wheeling Rufus about. “And what in thunder is this thing?”
“It is a bandbox, of course!”
“Well, it’s devilishly in the way,” said Ludovic. “Do you mind if I cut it loose?”
“No, certainly I do not mind. I, too, am quite tired of it,” replied Eustacie blithely. “Besides, I have already lost the other one.”
The bandbox was soon got rid of. Eustacie watched it bounce to the ground, and remarked with a giggle that if Tristram found it he would be sure to think she had been murdered.
Ludovic had urged Rufus to a canter. He seemed to Eustacie to be heading straight in the direction of the pursuing Excisemen. She pointed this out to him, and he replied: “Of course I am. I told you I was going to lead them off the trail. If I can get them to chase me Abel will have time to reach a hiding-place he knows of. We’ll lead them into the Forest.”
“And when we have done that what shall we do?”
“Oh, give ’em the slip!” said Ludovic carelessly. “I shall have to think what’s to be done with you after that, but there’s no time to waste on that now.” He reined in as he spoke, and Eustacie saw that they had retraced their steps almost to the thicket where she had first encountered the train. She could hear movement somewhere near at hand, and the faint sound of voices. Ludovic rode softly forward, off the road into the shelter of the trees. “I thought as much,” he said. “They’re searching the thicket. Mustn’t give ’em time to find the pony tracks. Now keep quiet, and hold on to that pommel.”
His gyrations after that were bewildering, but apparently purposeful. It seemed to Eustacie, dutifully grasping the pommel, that they were circling round the thicket to the north. She could now hear plainly the sound of trampling hooves and snapping twigs.
“We must give the poor devils something to think about,” said Ludovic in her ear. “Don’t screech now!”
It was as well that he uttered this warning, for the immediate explosion of his pistol made Eustacie jump nearly out of her skin. She managed by the exercise of heroic self-control not to scream, but when a shot almost at once answered Ludovic’s she could not forbear a gasp of fright.
“I thought that would tickle them up,” said Ludovic. “Now fork!”
He wheeled the snorting, trembling Rufus, and let him have his head. Rufus plunged forward, crashing through the undergrowth with the maximum amount of noise and alarm; a shout sounded somewhere in the rear; another shot was fired; and Eustacie had the satisfaction of knowing that she was now fairly embroiled with His Majesty’s Excise Office. She removed one hand from the pommel and took a firm grasp of Ludovic’s coat, which seemed to her to afford a safer hold. He glanced down at her, smiling. “Frightened?”
“No!”
“Well, we’re going to have a trifle of a gallop now, so cling tight!”
They came out from the cover of the trees as he spoke on to a tract of more open ground. The moon was momentarily obscured by a drifting cloud, but there was light enough for the flying horse to be seen by its pursuers. Two shots cracked almost simultaneously, and Eustacie felt the arm that cradled her give a queer jerk, and heard her cousin catch his breath sharply. “Winged, by Gad!” he said. “Now, who’d have thought an Exciseman could shoot as straight as that?”
“Are you hurt?” Eustacie cried.
“Devil a bit!” was the cheerful response. He looked fleetingly back over his shoulder. “Four of ’em, I think. Riding hard, too. You can always trust an Exciseman to follow his nose ... That’s better.”
They were under cover again, and he let Rufus slacken his pace to a trot, bending him easily this way and that through the outskirts of the Forest. Eustacie, after a very little of this erratic progress, began to feel quite lost, but it was evident that her cousin knew the Forest like the palm of his hand, for they steadily penetrated farther into its darkness. Behind them the pursuit sounded as though it were in difficulties, but they had not yet outstripped it, and once Ludovic reined in altogether to give it time to come nearer, and, since it showed signs of abandoning the chase, fired his second pistol invitingly. This had the required effect; the Forest reverberated with shots, and they moved forward again, heading northward.
It was fully half an hour later before they finally lost the Excisemen, and Ludovic was swaying in the saddle.
“You are hurt!” Eustacie said, alarmed.
“Oh no, only a scratch!” he murmured. “Anyway, we’ve led them in such circles they’ll be hunting one another till daylight.”
Eustacie put her hands over his, and pulled Rufus up. “Where are you hurt?” she demanded.
“Left shoulder. I think we’d better take the risk and make Hand Cross.”
“Yes, but first I will bind up your shoulder. Are you bleeding very much?”
“Like a pig,” said Ludovic.
She slid to the ground, stiff and somewhat bruised, and said imperatively: “Get down! If you bleed like a pig you will die, and I do not at all want you to die.”
He laughed, but dismounted, and found himself steadied by two small but capable hands. He reeled and sank on his knees, saying: “Damme, I must be worse hit than I knew! You’d best take the horse and leave me.”
“I shall not leave you,” replied Eustacie, busily ripping the flounce off her petticoat. “I shall take you to Hand Cross.”
Receiving no answer, she looked closely at him and found to her dismay that he had fainted. For a moment she was at a loss to know what to do, but when she touched him and brought her hand away wet with blood, she decided that the most urgent need was to bind up his wound, and promptly set about the task of extricating him from his coat. It was by no means easy, but she accomplished it at last, and managed as well as she could for the lack of light to twist the strips of her petticoat round his shoulder. He regained consciousness while she was straining her bandage as tight as possible, and lay for a moment blinking at her.
“What in—oh, I remember!” he said faintly. “Give me some brandy. Flask in my coat.”
She tied a firm knot, found the brandy, and, raising his head, held the flask to his lips. He recovered sufficiently to struggle up and to put on his coat again. “You know, you’d be wasted on Tristram,” he told her. “Help me into the saddle, and we’ll make Hand Cross yet.”
“Yes, but this time it is I who will take the reins,” said Eustacie.
“Just as you say, my dear,” he replied meekly.
“And you will put your arms round me and not fall off.”
“Don’t worry, I shan’t fall off.”
Eustacie, finding a conveniently fallen tree trunk, led her weary horse to it, and by using it as a mounting-block contrived to get into the saddle. She then rode back to Ludovic, and adjured him to mount behind her. He managed to do this, but the effort very nearly brought on another swooning fit. He had recourse to the brandy again, which cleared his head sufficiently to enable him to say: “Follow this track; it’ll bring us out on to the pike road, north of Hand Cross. If you can wake old Nye at the Red Lion he’ll take me in.”
“What shall I do if I see an Exciseman?” inquired Eustacie.
“Say your prayers,” he replied irrepressibly.
No Exciseman, however, was encountered on the track that led through the Forest, and by the time they came out on to the turnpike road, a mile from Hand Cross, Eustacie was far too anxious about her cousin to have much thought to spare for a questing Excise-officer. Ludovic seemed to stay in the saddle more by instinct than by any conscious effort. Eustacie dared not urge Rufus even to a trot. She had drawn Ludovic’s sound arm round her waist, and held it there, clasping his slack hand. It seemed an interminable way to Hand Cross, but at last the lonely inn came into sight, a dark huddle against the sky. It was by now long after midnight, and no light shone behind the shuttered windows. Eustacie pulled Rufus up before the door and let go of Ludovic’s hand. It fell nervelessly to his side; she realized that he must have swooned again; he was certainly sagging against her very heavily; she hoped he would not fall out of the saddle when she dismounted. She slid down, and was relieved to find that he only fell forward across Rufus’s neck. The next moment she had grasped the bellpull and sent an agitated peal ringing through the silent inn.
It was answered so speedily that Eustacie, who had heard rumours that Joseph Nye, of the Red Lion, knew more about the free traders that he would admit, instantly suspected that he had been waiting up for the very convoy she had met. He opened the door in person, fully dressed, and holding a lantern, and looking a good deal startled. When he saw Eustacie he stared as though he could not believe his eyes, and gasped: “Miss! Why, Miss! ”
Eustacie grasped his arm urgently. “Please help me at once! I have brought my cousin Ludovic, and he said you would take him in, but he is wounded, and I think dying!” With which, because she had been through a great deal of excitement and was quite worn out by it, she burst into tears.