Parson Goffin came cantering up to Rush Heath House, his face radiant, his nag's coat shining with sweat. The parson's face glowed, and he was in magnificent good humour. Bumpers of exultation, and of far stronger drink, had been tossed down the throats of many Sussex worthies that morning. The powder on his coat and waistcoat showed that Mr. Goffin had been taking snuff with feverish exhilaration.
He pulled up in front of the house, waving his hat, and shouting.
"Hallo, there, Squire—Jeremy—three cheers for old England."
Squire Kit was asleep, but Jeremy came out like a boy out of school.
"Hallo, hallo, what news?"
"Villeneuve has been caught and plucked. Hoorah, sir, hoorah, no damned French fleet in the Channel."
"By George, Goffin!"
"The news had just come into Rye. I was in Hastings early, but, good Lord, one never hears anything but old women's gossip in Hastings! Calder fell in with Villeneuve off Ferrol. He had fifteen ships to twenty, but he went in and hammered at him. No great victory, sir, but he has kept Villeneuve from Brest and from the Channel."
Jeremy snapped his fingers.
"Sing old Rose, and burn the bellows! Good, by George—for England."
"Villeneuve got away into Ferrol, but he's there, sir, and not off Boulogne. And some of them are cursing Calder for not doing better. Why, damn 'em, he has stopped the Frenchman's rush. It's all up with him for a dash on the Straits of Dover. And I'll wager that Nelson is not very far from the coast of Spain."
He blew, perspired, and exulted.
"A drink, Jeremy, my man, my pulpit for a drink. Here's to old England!"
"Pots will have a busy day. Hi, Jack, Sue, Marjorie, here—all of you—run, now, fill up the brown jugs. The French have had one on the nose, and are stopping to think it over! Run, you beggars, kisses all round for the wenches. Toss the brown ale down and be merry."
Jeremy took the news and a jug of ale to Squire Christopher.
"Villeneuve has been headed out of the Channel, sir."
"Murder my soul, Jerry, news—that's news. Let all the apothecaries go to blazes. Give me a drink, man; the jug will do. Here's to the roast beef. We'll soon have lad Jasper home, eh?"
Jeremy kept a stolid face.
"Count on that, Kit; we'll soon have the lad home."
But he went down to join Goffin, with a grim mouth and thoughtful eyes.
"This is good for the country, Goffin, but over yonder it may mean something dangerous. And here is Kit calling out for the lad——"
Goffin emptied his mug for the third time.
"The game is up for the scoundrel. He knows it by now."
"Yes. He hears things quickly enough, but you don't know this sort of man, Goffin. You have never come across the breed. I have. A bit of Irish and a bit of French, and a kind of pleasant cynical villainy thrown in. He is the stage rogue off the stage—to the last insolent cock of the rapier. Yet he's no mere actor man in a black doublet and a plumed hat. He'd pistol you before you could say pat, if it were worth his while to do it."
"The linen sounds too dirty, Jeremy! He will make off across the water."
"Yes, and take the girl with him. And perhaps stick a knife into Jasper before he goes."
"Poof, sir, you make the man a monster. I'll not believe it. Your adventures in Spain——"
Jeremy smiled a rather hard smile.
"Good sir, tell me, I have seen the savage, and the passionate side of life—I have. Blood and steel! Good Lord, Goffin; these things are real; they aren't bits of wood and cups of cheap wine. Men lust, and stab, and shoot. They do; I assure you. I suppose it has been so peaceful over the water——"
Goffin grunted.
"Well, what are we wasting precious time for, sir?"
"Ask the impossible monster! I am not going to waste time. I am going to get our men together and draw a leaguer about De Rothan's place. We shall use craft if we can. It will be safer for the girl and for Jasper."
Jeremy was in the saddle before the day was half an hour older. He knew that the news of Villeneuve's defeat would be serious news to De Rothan, and that it would go far toward making him a desperate man. The climax that he had schemed and waited for had vanished. There might still be a vague chance of Villeneuve sailing out of Ferrol and trying to fight his way into the Channel, but Jeremy, unlike the scaremongers, was well content with things as they were. Villeneuve had not shown himself to be the man for a great enterprise. The haunting and inexorable genius of Nelson dogged him, casting a premonition of disaster over the Frenchman's mind.
Jeremy rode out to gather in Jasper's friends. He called up John Steyning, of Catsfield, and young Parsloe, of the "Black Horse," and told each of them to bring two or three sturdy men. The meeting-place was to be the "Queen's Head" Inn at Sedlescombe. They were to gather there unostentatiously, as though it were a matter of chance. Jeremy himself rode on to Hastings. He had an old friend quartered there as surgeon to the troops, Surgeon Stott, a one-eyed, bronze-headed vulture of a man, fierce of beak and skinny of neck, and with language enough to satisfy Satan. But Stott was a shrewd and steady surgeon with a quick hand and a cool head. He could keep his mouth shut, and bring down a partridge with a pistol-bullet.
Stott was an oddity, and Jeremy found him in a little back room of one of the Hastings inns, brewing a bowl of punch. He was tasting the stuff, with the ladle under his hooked nose, when Jeremy entered.
"What, Jeremy—you devil!"
"Punch at this time of day! Empty it out of the window, sir. I am taking you out on an adventure."
"A fight, eh? I'm game. Instruments or pistols, or both? By George, sir, I feel in a mood to cut off ten legs in as many minutes."
Jeremy sat down and told him the whole tale.
"So it is not a matter of leg-cutting, Stott."
"No, a quick shot with a pistol, and no pomposity, eh! Shoot the rogue first, and explain afterward."
"We've got to be careful, Stott. He is as touchy on the trigger as you are. Have you got a horse of your own?"
"Yes.”
"Then come along. We can talk on the road."
By four o'clock Jeremy's party had gathered at the Sedlescombe inn. Jeremy's opinion of the landlord proved sage and astute. The man did not even look inquisitive. He had a private room at the gentlemen's service, and never blinked an eyelid when seven or eight sturdy yokels who were strangers in the village came scraping their hobnails in his brick-paved parlour. Parson Goffin turned up with pistols in his coat-tail pockets, and ready to drink and hobnob with Steyning, young Parsloe, Jeremy, and Surgeon Stott. Tom Stook and David Barfoot with three or four steady men were lying in the woods and ditches about the Brick House, keeping watch.
Jeremy and his friends played bowls on the "Queen's Head" green, and dined together in the private room, the landlord waiting on them in person. Over their long pipes Jeremy elaborated his plan of campaign. They were to surround De Rothan's house that night on the chance that Nance Durrell might be able to set the spell working within. This scheme failing them, Jeremy proposed that they should break into De Rothan's stables, make off with his horse-flesh, and see whether some such argument could not bring him to reason.
Jeremy had pictured De Rothan as a desperate man, and if there is anything in the saying that a man's temper can give him a black face, then De Rothan was in some such desperate temper. He had ridden out very early in the direction of Guestling and the sea, and Tom Stook, lying in a dry ditch and peering through the hedge-bottom, saw him return. His horse shied where the grass lane turned in from the by-road, and something ominous about the incident seemed to set a spark to De Rothan's black anger. He beat the horse about the head with his fist, and then sawed at the bit till the beast's mouth bled.
Stook was no lamb, but De Rothan's savagery angered him.
"You tarrifyin' devil! Someone may be giving you a bloody mouth before long."
The first person whom De Rothan spoke with at the Brick House was the man Gaston. François had taken Gaston's place for an hour, and the elder man was stretching his legs in the garden. He knew the various expressions of De Rothan's face as well as a shepherd knows the face of the sky. There was thunder about, and the horizon looked ominous.
De Rothan's horse was still quivering with fright. Gaston took the bridle, and waited stolidly for orders.
"Thunder, don't stare at me, man, like that! This morning I have heard the name of a coward. Villeneuve has wrecked us, if he has been careful of his fleet."
"Villeneuve, monsieur!"
"The heart of a chicken! That the Emperor should have trusted such a man! I heard the news at Rye. Maybe you have heard bells ringing. One night more here, and then for France."
Gaston was about to lead the horse round to the stable, but De Rothan stopped him.
"No, no, I know these yokels are on the watch. If they were to break into the stable and snap up our horses we should be badly placed. The hall can serve as a stable to-night. Have a few staples knocked into the wainscoting and bring all the beasts in. Men and horses all under one roof."
Gaston nodded.
"What of the young man, monsieur?"
"We will use him till the last moment, and he will be useful, even then. Come here, Gaston. Some things must be spoken quietly."
They stood close together, Gaston intent and swarthy, stolidly ready to follow the adventure through. Once or twice he blinked his eyes at De Rothan as though astonished.
"Madame goes with us, monsieur?"
"I have said as much."
"And the young man, monsieur! Are we to leave him chained up like an ox in a stall?"
"Growing soft at heart, Gaston? I have no pity for people who get in my way. Besides, the trick will keep his good friends busy, and we shall have to snatch our time. I agreed with Martin this very morning. It will be high water at midnight to-morrow. He will run close in at Pett Level and take us off."
"Then I will see to the horses, monsieur."
"Yes, now, at once. Then we will dine. I will go and warn Miss Durrell and her father."
Nance was sitting at her window when she heard De Rothan's footsteps in the gallery. The sound stirred the secret purpose of her suspense. All day she had been thinking over Jeremy's plan, and it seemed so impossible, so much like a trick out of an old play.
De Rothan knocked at her door.
"Nance, we dine in an hour."
"Yes."
"I will be here at your door to give you an arm."
She heard him go on to her father's room and knock. Their voices sounded harsh and quarrelsome. For comfort she gazed out toward the oak wood on the slope of the hill where Jeremy's watchers were hidden. She was almost angry with Jeremy for putting such a weapon into her hands. What chance had she to use it, and why did they thrust the responsibility upon a woman?
She heard De Rothan repass her door. He was humming that song that the royalists had sung so gallantly and so fatefully at Versailles: "O, Richard, O mon roi, si l'univers t'abandon——"
A feeling of helplessness possessed her. She rested her forehead on her crossed wrists and tried to think of something she could do.