CHAPTER XXIII. FREE
For the first hour or two, as no one would be about so early, I
thought it safe to use the road. I put my best foot foremost,
going up the great steep combe, with Chard at my back.
The road was one of the loneliest I have ever trodden. It went
winding up among barren-looking combes which seemed little better
than waste land. There were few houses, so few that sometimes, on
a bit of rising ground, when the road lifted clear of the hedges,
one had to look about to see any dwelling of men. There was
little cultivation, either. It was nearly all waste, or scanty
pasture. A few cows cropped by the wayside near the lonely
cottages. A few sheep wandered among the ferns. It was a very
desolate land to lie within so few miles of England's richest
valleys. I walked through it hurriedly, for I wished to get far
from my prison before my escape was discovered. No one was there
to see me; the lie of the valley below gave me my direction,
roughly, but closely enough. After about an hour of steady,
fairly good walking, I pulled up by a little tiny brook for
breakfast. I ate quickly, then hurried on, for I dared not waste
time. I turned out of the narrow cart-tracks into what seemed to
be a highroad.
I dipped down a hollow, past a pond where geese were feeding,
then turned to a stiff steep hill, which never seemed to end for
miles. The country grew lonelier at every step; there were no
houses there; only a few rabbits tamely playing in the outskirts
of the coverts. A jay screamed in the clump of trees at the
hill-top; it seemed the proper kind of voice for a waste like
that. Still further on, I sat down to rest at the brink of the
great descent, which led, as I guessed, as I could almost see, to
the plain where Taunton lay, waiting for the Duke's army to
garrison her. There were thick woods to my right at this point,
making cover so dense that no hounds would have tried to break
through it, no matter how strong a scent might lead them. It was
here, as I sat for a few minutes to rest, that a strange thing
happened.
I was sitting at the moment with my back to the wood, looking
over the desolate country towards a tiny cottage far off on the
side of the combe. A big dog-fox came out of the cover from
behind me, so quietly that I did not hear him. He trotted past me
in the road; I do not think that he saw me till he was just
opposite. Then he stopped to examine me, as though he had never
seen such a thing before. He was puzzled by me, but he soon
decided that I was not worth bothering about, for he made no
stay. He padded slowly on towards Chard, evidently well-pleased
with himself. Suddenly he stopped dead, with one pad lifted, a
living image of alert tension. He was alarmed by something coming
along the road by which I had come. He turned his head slightly,
as though to make sure with his best ear. Then with a single
beautiful lollopping bound he was over the hedge to safety, going
in that exquisite curving rhythm of movement which the fox has
above all English animals. For a second, I wondered what it was
that had startled him. Then, with a quickness of wit which would
have done credit to an older mind, I realized that there was
danger coming on the road towards me, danger of men or of dogs,
since nothing else in this country frightens a fox. It flashed in
upon me that I must get out of sight at once; before that danger
hove in view of me. I gave a quick rush over the fence into the
tangle, through which I drove my way till I was snug in an open
space under some yew trees, surrounded on all sides by brambles.
I shinned up one of the great yew trees, till I could command a
sight of the road, while lying hidden myself in the profuse
darkness of the foliage. Here I drew out my pistol, ready for
what might come. I suppose I had not been in my hiding-place for
more than thirty seconds, when over the brow of the hill came Sir
Travers Carew, at a full gallop, cheering on a couple of hounds,
who were hot on my scent. Aurelia rode after him, on her famous
chestnut mare. Behind her galloped two men, whom I had not seen
before. In an instant, they were swooped down to the place where
the dog-fox had passed. The hounds gave tongue when they smelt
the rank scent of their proper game; they were unused to
boy-hunting. They did not hesitate an instant, but swung off as
wild as puppies over the hedge, after the fox. The horsemen
paused for a second, surprised at the sudden sharp turn; but they
followed the hounds' lead, popping over the fence most nimbly,
not waiting to look for my tracks in the banks of the hedge. They
streamed away after the fox, to whom I wished strong legs. I knew
that with two young hounds they would never catch him, but I
hoped that he would give them a good run before the sun killed
the scent. I looked at the sun, now gloriously bright over all
the world, putting a bluish glitter on to the shaking oak leaves
of the wood. How came it that they had discovered my flight so
soon since it could not be more than six o'clock, if as much? I
wondered if it had been the old carter, who had never really seen
me. It might have been the old carter; but doubtless he drummed
for a good while on the door of the stable before anybody heard
him. Or it might have been one of the garden sentries. One of the
sentries might well have peeped in at the window of my room to
make sure that I was up to no pranks. He could have seen from the
window that my bed was empty. If he had noticed that, he could
have unlocked my door to make sure, after which it would not have
taken more than a few minutes to start after me. I learned
afterwards that the sentry had alarmed the house at a little
before five o'clock. The carter, being only half-awake when he
came after me, suspected nothing till the other farm-hands came
for the horses, at about six o'clock, when, the key being gone,
he had to break the lock, vowing that the rattens had took his
key from him in the night. My disappearance puzzled everybody,
because I had hidden my tracks so carefully that no one noticed
at first how the chimney bars had been loosened. No one in that
house knew of the secret room, so that the general impression was
that I had either squeezed myself through the window, or blown
myself out through the keyhole by art-magic. The hounds had been
laid along the road to Chard, with the result that they had hit
my trail after a few minutes of casting about.
Now that they were after me, I did not know what to do. I dared
not go on towards Taunton; for who knew how soon the squire would
find his error, by viewing the fox? He was too old a huntsman not
to cast back to where he had left the road, as soon as he learned
that his hounds had changed foxes. I concluded that I had better
stay where I was, throughout that day, carefully hidden in the
yew-tree. In the evening I might venture further if the coast
seemed clear. It was easy to make such a resolution; but not so
easy to keep to it; for fifteen hours is a long time for a boy to
wait. I stayed quiet for some hours, but I heard no more of my
hunters. I learned later that they had gone from me, in a wide
circuit, to cut round upon the Taunton roads, so as to intercept
me, or to cause me to be intercepted in case I passed by those
ways. The hounds gave up after chasing the fox for three miles.
The old squire thought that they stopped because the sun had
destroyed the scent. With a little help from an animal I had
beaten Aurelia once more. When I grew weary of sitting up in the
yew tree, clambered down, intending to push on through the wood
until I came to the end of it. It was mighty thick cover to push
through for the first half mile; then I came to a cart-track,
made by wood-cutters, which I followed till it took me out of the
wood into a wild kind of sheep-pasture. It was now fully nine in
the evening, but the country was so desolate it might have been
undiscovered land. I might have been its first settler, newly
come there from the seas. It taught me something of the terrors
of war that day's wandering towards Taunton. I realized all the
men of these parts had wandered away after the Duke, for the sake
of the excitement, after living lonely up there in the wilds.
Their wives had followed the army also. The while population
(scanty as it was) had moved off to look for something more
stirring than had hitherto come to them. I wandered on slowly,
taking my time, getting my direction fairly clear from the
glimpses which I sometimes caught of the line of the highway. At
a little after noon I ate the last of my victuals near a spring.
I rested after my dinner, then pushed on again, till I had won to
a little spinney only four miles from Taunton, where my legs
began to fail under me.
I crept into the spinney, wondering if it contained some good
shelter in which I could sleep for the night. I found a sort of
dry, high pitched bank, with the grass all worn off it, which I
thought would serve my turn, if the rain held off. As for supper,
I determined to shoot a rabbit with my pistol. For drink, there
was a plenty of small brooks within half a mile of the little
enclosure. After I had chosen my camp, I was not very satisfied
with it. The cover near by was none too thick. So I moved off to
another part where the bushes grew more closely together. As I
was walking leisurely along, I smelt a smell of something
cooking, I heard voices, I heard something clink, as though two
tin cups were being jangled. Before I could draw back, a man
thrust through the undergrowth, challenging me with a pistol. Two
other men followed him, talking in low, angry tones. They came
all round me with very murderous looks. They were the filthiest
looking scarecrows ever seen out of a wheat-field.
"Why," said one of them, lowering his pistol, "it be the Duke's
young man, as we seed at Lyme." They became more friendly at
that; but still they seemed uneasy, not very sure of my
intentions.
"Where is the Duke?" I asked after a long awkward pause. "Is he
at Taunton?" They looked from one to the other with strange looks
which I did not understand.
"The Duke be at Bridgewater," said one of them in a curious tone.
"What be you doing away from the Duke?"
"Why," I said, "I was taken prisoner. I escaped this morning."
"Yes?" they said with some show of eagerness. "Be there many
soldiers hereaway, after us?"
"No. Not many," I said. "Are you coming from the Duke?"
"Yes," said one of them, "we left en at Bridgewater. We have been
having enough of fighting for the crown. We been marching in mud
up to our knees. We been fighting behind hedges. We been
retreating for the last week. So now us be going home, if us can
get there. Glad if we never sees a fight again."
"Well," I said, "I must get to the Duke if I can. How far is it
to Bridgewater?"
"Matter of fifteen mile," they said, after a short debate.
"You'll never get there tonight. Nor perhaps tomorrow, since we
hear the soldiers be a coming."
"I'll get some of the way tonight," I said; but my heart sank at
the thought; for I was tired out.
"No, young master," said one of the men kindly, "you stop with us
for tonight. Come to supper with us. Us 'ave rabbits on the
fire." Their fortnight of war had given them a touch of that
comradeship which camp-life always gives. They took me with them
to their camp-fire, where they fed me on a wonderful mess of
rabbits boiled with herbs. The men had bread. One of them had
cider. Our feast there was most pleasant; or would have been, had
not the talk of these deserters been so melancholy. They were
flying to their homes like hunted animals, after a fortnight of
misery which had altered their faces forever. They had been in
battle; they had retreated through mud; they had seen all the
ill-fortune of war. They did all that they could to keep me from
my purpose; but I had made up my mind to rejoin my master; I was
not to be moved. Before settling down to sleep for the night I
helped the men to set wires for rabbits, an art which I had not
understood till then, but highly useful to a lad so fated to
adventurous living as myself. We slept in various parts of the
spinney, wherever there was good shelter; but we were all so full
of jangling nerves that our sleep was most uneasy. We woke very
early, visited our wires, then breakfasted heartily on the
night's take. The men insisted on giving me a day's provision to
take with me, which I took, though grudgingly, for they had none
too much for themselves, poor fellows. Just before we parted I
wrote a note to Sir Travers, on a leaf of my pocketbook. "Dear
Sir Travers," I wrote, "These men are well-known to me as honest
subjects. They have had great troubles on their road. I hope that
you will help them to get home. Please remember me very kindly to
your niece." After folding this very neatly I gave the precious
piece of impudence to one of the men. "There," I said, "if you
are stopped, insist on being carried before Sir Travers. He knows
me. I am sure that he will help you as far as he can." For this
the men thanked me humbly. I learned, too, that it was of service
to them. It saved them all from arrest later in the same day.
Having bidden my hosts farewell, I wandered on, keeping pretty
well in cover. I saw a patrol of the King's dragoons in one of
the roads near which I walked. The nets were fast closing in on
my master: there were soldiers coming upon him from every quarter
save the west, which was blocked too, as it happened, by ships of
war in the Channel. This particular patrol of dragoons caught
sight of me. I saw a soldier looking over a gate at me; but as I
was only a boy, seemingly out for birdsnests, he did not
challenge me, so that by noon I was safe in Taunton. I have no
clear memory of Taunton, except that it was full of people,
mostly women. There were little crowds in the streets, little
crowds of women, surrounding muddy, tired men who had come in
from the Duke. People were going about in a hurried, aimless way
which showed that they were scared. Many houses were shut up.
Many men were working on the city walls, trying to make the place
defensible. If ever a town had the fear of death upon it that
town was Taunton, then. As far as I could make out it was not the
actual war that it feared; though that it feared pretty strongly,
as the looks on the women's faces showed. It feared that the
Duke's army would come back to camp there, to eat them all up,
every penny, every blade of corn, like an army of locusts.
Sometimes, while I was there, men galloped in with news,
generally false, like most warmews, but eagerly sought for by
those who even now saw their husbands shot dead in ranks by the
fierce red-coats under their drunken Dutch general. Sometimes the
news was that the army was pressing in to cut off the Duke from
Taunton; that the dragoons were shooting people on the road; that
they were going to root out the whole population without mercy.
At another time news came that Monmouth was marching in to music,
determined to hold Taunton till the town was a heap of cinders.
Then one, bloody with his spurred horse's gore, cried aloud that
the King was dead, shot in the heart by one of his brother's
servants. Then another came calling all to prayer. All this
uproar caused a hurrying from one crowd to another. Here a man
preached fervently to a crowd of enthusiasts. Here men ran from a
prayer-meeting to crowd about a messenger. Bells jangled from the
churches; the noise of the picks never ceased in the trenches;
the taverns were full; the streets swarmed; the public places
were now thronged, now suddenly empty. Here came the aldermen in
their robes, scared faces among the scarlet, followed by a mob
praying for news, asking in frenzy for something certain, however
terrible. There several in a body clamoured at a citizen's door
in the like fever of doubt. There was enough agony of mind in
Taunton that day to furnish out any company of tragedians. We
English, an emotional people by nature, are best when the blow
has fallen. We bear neither doubt nor rapture wisely. Our
strength is shown in troublous times in which other people give
way to despair.
