The Broad Highway by Jeffery Farnol (ebook reader with highlight function TXT) 📖

Richard, I know more about it than most. You see, I am Peter Smith.” Sir Richard fell back from me, and I saw the candle swaying in his grasp.

“You?” he whispered, “you? Oh, Peter!—oh, my boy!”

“But I am innocent—innocent—you believe me—you who were my earliest friend—my good, kind friend—you believe me?” and I stretched out my hands appealingly, but, as I did so, the light fell gleaming upon my shameful wristlets; and, even as we gazed into each other’s eyes, mute and breathless, came the sound of steps and hushed voices. Sir Richard sprang forward, and, catching me in a powerful hand, half led, half dragged me behind a tall leather screen beside the hearth, and thrusting me into a chair, turned and hurried to meet the intruders.

They were three, as I soon discovered by their voices, one of which I thought I recognized.

“It’s a devilish shame!” the first was saying; “not a soul here for the funeral but our four selves—I say it’s a shame—a burning shame!”

“That, sir, depends entirely on the point of view,” answered the second, a somewhat aggressive voice, and this it was I seemed to recognize.

“Point of view, sir? Where, I should like to know, are all those smiling nonentities—those fawning sycophants who were once so proud of his patronage, who openly modelled themselves upon him, whose highest ambition was to be called a friend of the famous ‘Buck’ Vibart where are they now?”

“Doing the same by the present favorite, as is the nature of their kind,” responded the third; “poor Maurice is already forgotten.”

“The Prince,” said the harsh voice, “the Prince would never have forgiven him for crossing him in the affair of the Lady Sophia Sefton; the day he ran off with her he was as surely dead—in a social sense—as he is now in every sense.”

Here the mist settled down upon my brain once more, and I heard nothing but a confused murmur of voices, and it seemed to me that I was back on the road again, hemmed in by those gibbering phantoms that spoke so much, and yet said but one word: “Murder.”

“Quick—a candle here—a candle—bring a light—” There came a glare before my smarting eyes, and I struggled up to my feet.

“Why—I have seen this fellow’s face somewhere—ah!—yes, at an inn—a hang-dog rogue—I threatened to pull his nose, I remember, and—by Heaven He has been roughly handled, too! Gentlemen, I’ll lay my life the murderer is found—though how he should come here of all places—extraordinary. Sir Richard—you and I, as magistrates—duty—” But the mist was very thick, and the voices grew confused again; only I knew that hands were upon me, that I was led into another room, where were lights that glittered upon the silver, the decanters and glasses of a supper table.

“Yes,” I was saying, slowly and heavily; “yes, I am Peter Smith —a blacksmith—who escaped from his gaolers on the Tonbridge Road—but I am innocent—before God—I am innocent. And now—do with me as you will—for I am—very weary—”

Sir Richard’s arm was about me, and his voice sounded in my ears, but as though a great way off:

“Sirs,” said he, “this is my friend—Sir Peter Vibart.” There was a moment’s pause, then—a chair fell with a crash, and there rose a confusion of excited voices which grew suddenly silent, for the door had opened, and on the threshold stood a woman, tall and proud and richly dressed, from the little dusty boot that peeped beneath her habit to the wide-sweeping hat-brim that shaded the high beauty of her face. And I would have gone to her but that my strength failed me.

“Charmian!”

She started, and, turning, uttered a cry, and ran to me.

“Charmian,” said I; “oh, Charmian!” And so, with her tender arms about me, and her kisses on my lips, the mist settled down upon me, thicker and darker than ever.

CHAPTER XLVII

IN WHICH THIS HISTORY IS ENDED

A bright room, luxuriously appointed; a great wide bed with carved posts and embroidered canopy; between the curtained windows, a tall oak press with grotesque heads carved thereon, heads that leered and gaped and scowled at me. But the bed and the room and the oak press were all familiar, and the grotesque heads had leered and gaped and frowned at me before, and haunted my boyish dreams many and many a night.

And now I lay between sleeping and waking, staring dreamily at all these things, till roused by a voice near by, and starting up, broad awake, beheld Sir Richard.

“Deuce take you, Peter!” he exclaimed; “I say—the devil fly away with you, my boy!—curse me!—a nice pickle you’ve made of yourself, with your infernal Revolutionary notions—your digging and blacksmithing, your walking-tours—”

“Where is she, Sir Richard?” I broke in; “pray, where is she?”

“She?” he returned, scratching his chin with the corner of a letter he held; “she?”

“She whom I saw last night—”

“You were asleep last night, and the night before.”

“Asleep?—then how long have I been here?”

“Three days, Peter.”

“And where is she—surely I have not dreamed it all—where is Charmian?”

“She went away—this morning.”

“Gone!—where to?”

“Gad, Peter!—how should I know?” But, seeing the distress in my face, he smiled, and tendered me the letter. “She left this ‘For Peter, when he awoke’—and I’ve been waiting for Peter to wake all the morning.”

Hastily I broke the seal, and, unfolding the paper with tremulous hands read:

“DEAREST, NOBLEST, AND MOST DISBELIEVING OF PETERS, —Oh, did you think you could hide your hateful suspicion from me—from me who know you so well? I felt it in your kiss, in the touch of your strong hand, I saw it in your eyes. Even when I told you the truth, and begged you to believe me, even then, deep down in your heart you thought it was my hand that had killed Sir Maurice, and God only knows the despair that filled me as I turned and left you.

“And so, Peter—perhaps to punish you a little, perhaps because I cannot bear the noisy world just yet, perhaps because I fear you a little—I have run away. But I remember also how, believing me guilty, you loved me still, and gave yourself up, to shield me, and, dying of hunger and fatigue—came to find me. And so, Peter, I have not run so very far, nor hidden myself so very close, and if you understand me as you should your search need not be so very long. And dear, dear Peter, there is just one other thing, which I hoped that you would guess, which any other would have guessed, but which, being a philosopher, you never did guess. Oh, Peter—I was once, very long ago it seems, Sophia Charmian Sefton, but I am now, and always was, Your Humble Person,

“CHARMIAN.”

The letter fell from my fingers, and I remained staring before me so long that Sir Richard came and laid his hand on my shoulder.

“Oh, boy!” said he, very tenderly; “she has told me all the story, and I think, Peter, I think it is given to very few men to win the love of such a woman as this.”

“God knows it!” said I.

“And to have married one so very noble and high in all things —you should be very proud, Peter.”

“I am,” said I; “oh, I am, sir.”

“Even, Peter—even though she be a—virago, this Lady Sophia—or a termagant—”

“I was a great fool in those days,” said I, hanging my head, “and very young!”

“It was only six months ago, Peter.”

“But I am years older today, sir.”

“And the husband of the most glorious woman—the most—oh, curse me, Peter, if you deserve such a goddess!”

“And—she worked for me!” said I; “cooked and served and mended my clothes—where are they?” I cried, and sprang out of bed.

“What the deuce—“began Sir Richard.

“My clothes,” said I, looking vainly about; “my clothes—pray, Sir Richard, where are they?”

“Burnt, Peter.”

“Burnt?”

“Every blood-stained rag!” he nodded; “her orders.”

“But—what am I to do?”

Sir Richard laughed, and, crossing to the press, opened the door.

“Here are all the things you left behind you when you set out to—dig, and—egad!—make your fortune. I couldn’t let ‘em go with all the rest—so I—er—had ‘em brought here, to—er—to keep them for you—ready for the time when you should grow tired of digging, and come back to me, and—er—oh, dammit!—you understand—and Grainger’s waiting to see you in the library —been there hours—so dress yourself. In Heaven’s name, dress yourself!” he cried, and hurried from the room.

It was with a certain satisfaction that I once more donned buckskin and spurred boots, and noticed moreover how tight my coat was become across the shoulders; yet I dressed hastily, for my mind was already on the road, galloping to Charmian.

In the library I found Sir Richard, and Mr. Grainger, who greeted me with his precise little bow.

“I have to congratulate you, Sir Peter,” he began, “not only on your distinguished marriage, and accession to fortune, but upon the fact that the—ah—unpleasantness connecting a certain Peter Smith with your unfortunate cousin’s late decease has been entirely removed by means of the murderer’s written confession, placed in my hands some days ago by the Lady Sophia.”

“A written confession—and she brought it to you?”

“Galloped all the way from Tonbridge, by Gad!” nodded Sir Richard.

“It seems,” pursued Mr. Grainger, “that the—ah man, John Strickland, by name, lodged with a certain preacher, to whom, in Lady Vibart’s presence, he confessed his crime, and willingly wrote out a deposition to that effect. It also appears that the man, sick though he was, wandered from the Preacher’s cottage, and was eventually found upon the road, and now lies in Maidstone gaol, in a dying condition.”

Chancing, presently, to look from the window, I beheld a groom who led a horse up and down before the door; and the groom was Adam, and the horse—

I opened the window, and, leaning out, called a name. At the sound of my voice the man smiled and touched his hat, and the mare ceased her pawing and chafing, and turned upon me a pair of great, soft eyes, and snuffed the air, and whinnied. So I leapt out of the window, and down the steps, and thus it was that I met “Wings.”

“She be in the pink o’ condition, sir,” said Adam proudly; “Sir Richard bought ‘er—”

“For a song!” added the baronet, who, with Mr. Grainger, had followed to bid me good-by. “I really got her remarkably cheap,” he explained, thrusting his fists deep into his pockets, and frowning down my thanks. But, when I had swung myself into the saddle, he came and laid his hand upon my knee.

“You are going to—find her, Peter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you know—where to look?”

“I think so—”

“Because, if you don’t—I might—”

“I shall go to a certain cottage,” said I tentatively.

“Then you’d better go, boy—the mare’s all excitement—good-by, Peter—and cutting up my gravel most damnably—good-by!” So saying, he reached up and gripped my hand very hard, and stared at me also very hard, though the tears stood in his eyes. “I always felt very fatherly towards you, Peter—and—you won’t forget the lonely old man—come and see me now and then both of you, for it does get damnably lonely here sometimes, and