A Hero of Romance Part 32

"I remember Jacky Sheppard, and d.i.c.ky Turpin, and Tommy King; they were all highwaymen in my young days."

"I suppose you were a highwayman's wife?"

"So I was; and they hung him the week after we were married. I went and saw him hung, and I've never seen a better hanging since. No, that I haven't. Times is changed since then."

"But you ain't changed. I wonder you don't marry again, a wild young thing like you."

"I ain't a marrying sort--not now I ain't. I've had ten of them, and that's quite enough for me."

"Lor', no! What is ten?"

"Ten's quite enough for one young woman, and when you've been two hundred and ninety times in prison a woman don't feel much like marrying again. It takes it out of her, it do."

Bertie had ended his meal. The warmth and the food had given the finis.h.i.+ng touch to his previous fatigue; his head was already nodding on his breast. He heard the old woman talking as in a dream. Ten husbands! two hundred and ninety times in jail! Were they part of his nightmare, the things which he heard her say?

"Hollo, Ikey, you're blinking! Now then, mother, where are you going to put my pal? Can't you find a place where he can be alone?"

Had Bertie been sufficiently wide awake he would have seen the speaker wink at the old woman.

"There's only the captain's room."

The woman's suggestion seemed to startle Freddy, and to set him thinking.

"The captain's room? Where is the captain?"

"How am I to know where he is or where he ain't? He don't tell me none of his goings on, none of you don't. He says to me he'd be four or five days away. That's all I know about it. Times is changed!"

"Got the key?"

"Of course I've got the key."

"Then hand it over."

The old woman produced a key from a voluminous pocket in her dress.

"Now, Freddy, none of your tricks? He's on the square?"

She pointed the key at Bertie, to show the allusion was to him. The young thief took the key away from her.

"He's as square as you! Come along, Ikey! Mother, you stop there till I come back. I want to have a little talk to you."

Taking up one of the candlesticks, the lad led the way out of the room. Bertie staggered, rather than walked, after him.

The house seemed to be very old-fas.h.i.+oned and very large. There were a curious number of staircases, and pa.s.sages, and turns and twists, and ins and outs, and ups and downs. As Bertie followed his companion's lead it all seemed to him as though it were part of his dream; as though the house was built in the fas.h.i.+on of a maze, and he were bidden to find his way about it blindfold.

At last he found himself in a room, the door of which he was vaguely conscious his companion had unlocked. Although very far from being luxurious, it was better furnished than the one they had left. There was a piece of carpet on the floor; there were two or three substantial-looking chairs, a horsehair couch, an arm-chair, a table, a chest of drawers with a looking-gla.s.s on top, and in the corner an old-fas.h.i.+oned four-poster bed with the curtains drawn all round. The closely-drawn dirty dimity curtains made one wonder if it was occupied already, but Freddy showed that it was not by going to it and drawing the curtains aside.

"There's a bed for you, my bonny boy! The Queen ain't got a better bed than that in Buckingham Palace; and if you have got a marquis for a pa, you ain't seen a better one, I know you ain't. That's the captain's bed, that is, and if he was to know I'd made you free of it he'd have a word to say. But as he's gone to see his grandma, and perhaps won't be back for ever so long, we needn't take no count of what he says."

Tired as he was, Bertie was not by any means so prepossessed by the appearance of the bed as his companion seemed to be. It seemed to him just a trifle dirty, and more than a trifle the worse for wear. The beds at Mecklemburg House were even better, while the beds at home were things of beauty and joys for ever compared to this. But still it was a bed, and a bed is a bed; and especially was a bed a bed to him just then.

Freddy waited while he undressed. He even watched him get between the sheets, and drew the curtains when he was there. Then he went and left Bertie to sleep in peace in the captain's room.

And he slept in peace. Just such a dreamless slumber as he had enjoyed in the Kingston "doss-house," and it lasted at least as long. This young gentleman had over-calculated his strength, and had not supposed he would have been so quickly wearied on his journey to the Land of Golden Dreams.

When he awoke it was some minutes before he collected his thoughts sufficiently to understand his whereabouts. The rapidly-occurring incidents of the last day or two had bewildered a brain which was never very bright at best. Putting out his hand, he parted the curtains which hung about him like so many shrouds, and looked out.

The room was filled with daylight; that is to say, as much filled as it probably ever was. The only window was a small one, and at such a height from the ground that Bertie would have needed to stand upon a chair to reach it even.

Had he desired to imitate his escape from his Kingston hosts he would have found very much more difficulty in climbing from the window of the captain's room. But what interested him more than the peculiar position of the window was something which he saw on the chair beside his bed.

This something was some bread and cheese, a couple of saveloys, and some stout in a jug. On the bread was a little sc.r.a.p of paper. He took it up, and found that on it was written,--

"Sleep it out, old pal!"

This was short, and to the point. It was written on bad paper in worse writing; but what it meant was, probably, that Freddy, entering with refreshments, had found Bertie wrapt in slumber, and being unwilling to disturb him had left him there to sleep it out. Bertie ate and drank, and lying back again upon the captain's bed prepared to act upon the hint. And he did. He woke once or twice in the course of the day, but each time it was only for a minute or two, and each time he turned round and went to sleep again.

But at last he woke for good--or ill, as it turned out, for he woke to be the victim of a series of adventures which were to nearly cost him his life, and which were to show him, better than anything else possibly could have done, that he had been like the silly little child who plays with fire and burns itself with the element it does not understand. He was a young gentleman who required a considerable amount of teaching before he would consent to write himself down an a.s.s; but he was to get much more than the requisite amount of teaching now.

Exactly the same thing happened as at Kingston. He awoke to hear the sound of voices in the room; and now, as then, the speakers were carrying on a conversation without having the slightest idea that they were being overheard.

At first he could not distinguish the words which were being spoken.

He only knew that there was some one speaking. At first he took it for granted that the speakers were the lad who had brought him to the house and the old woman he had nicknamed "Mother." But the delusion only lasted for a moment; he quickly perceived that the voices were voices he had never heard before, and that the speakers were two men.

He perceived, too, that the day had apparently gone--he had slept it all away--and that the room was lighted by a lamp.

So unconscious were the speakers of there being a listener that they made no attempt to lower their voices; and one in particular spoke with a strain of intense pa.s.sion in his tones. His were the words which were the first which Bertie heard.

"Fifty thousand pounds! Fifty thousand pounds! Ha, ha, ha!"

The speaker repeated the words over and over again, bursting into a peal of laughter at the end. Another voice replied--a colder and more measured one. The new speaker spoke with a strong nasal accent. Bertie was not wise enough to know that by his speech he betrayed himself to be that new thing in nationalities, a German American.

"Steady, my friend; fifty thousand pounds in jewels are not fifty thousand pounds in cash, especially when the jewels are such as these."

The other went on unheeding.

"Talk about punting on the Stock Exchange! There are precious few punters on the Stock Exchange who pick up fifty thousand pounds and walk off with it at a single coup."

"And, also, there are very few punters on the Stock Exchange who would run the risk of getting penal servitude for life for doing it."

"Yes, there's that to be considered."

"As you say, there's that to be considered."

"Do you think they'd make it penal servitude for life?"

"I think it extremely probable, with your past history and mine."

"Suppose it came to penal servitude for life, what then?"