CHAPTER VI.

As there are certain hollow blasts of winds and secret swellings of seas before a tempest, so are there in states.

Ille etiam cæcos instare tumultus Sæpe monet, fraudesque et operta tumescere bella.

LORD BACON.

The head-quarters of the —— Dragoons were, as we have seen, at Calbury; two or three troops being stationed in the surrounding villages. An order now arrived from the Horse Guards, directing that one troop should be sent to Fisherton, a town about forty miles distant, near the sea-coast, and that a second should be placed in some situation, as nearly as possible midway between Fisherton and Calbury, in order to preserve a ready communication between these two extreme points.

To delegate to another a duty incumbent on himself was not consistent with Warenne’s character. He immediately sent forward his servant with horses, and on the following morning himself started at an early hour, to ascertain the best mode of carrying into effect the instructions which he had received. His intentions were to examine the _locale_ of Fisherton, and, as far as he could, to discover the disposition and pursuits of the surrounding population, so that if any disturbance should arise there, he might be competent to act with decision.

He found Fisherton a large straggling town, with some appearance of wealth, arising from its communication with the seaport of D——, by means of the river Swale, irregularly built, though nearly divided into four equal quarters by the London and coast roads, which crossed each other about its centre. As he entered by the former of these roads, the place presented on either side an imposing row of goodly houses; he could perceive, however, that this fair show was limited to the principal streets. On looking down the smaller streets, or rather passages (for they were passable only by pedestrians) which branched off from the highway, he could distinguish nothing beyond the ordinary cottages of labourers and mechanics. On the banks of the river might be seen warehouses and cranes, and other signs of trade, but nowhere else: the rest of the town bore an ambiguous character, and it was difficult to determine whether its prosperity depended on commerce or agriculture.

Warenne rode into the yard of the principal inn, which occupied one of the angles caused by the junction of the roads, and had large gates opening into each of them, intending to establish himself there for the night. Having put up his horses, he quickly sought an opportunity of conversing with the landlord, in the hope of extracting from him some information relative to the state of society in the immediate environs of Fisherton.

The communications of the worthy Boniface were any thing but satisfactory. He assured Warenne that the labourers in the neighbourhood, for ten miles round, were a bad set at the best of times; many of them professional smugglers—all of them occasionally engaged in running goods; and that, at the moment in which he was speaking, they were in a state of great discontent and irritation from the distress incidental to the existing depression of wages.

“I’m sure, I hope,” said mine host, sufficiently animated by the theme to draw one hand out of his breeches-pocket, and extend it in an emphatic manner, “that they won’t break out, for if they do, it will be an awful business. The exciseman what lodges at my house, tells me that they are afraid of nothing, and care for nothing; and then they have such means of letting one another know when any thing is a-foot. Lord bless you, sir, if there’s a smuggling vessel makes a signal off the coast at dusk, by twelve at night there are a thousand people collected near the shore to run the goods, and they laugh at the Preventive Service.”

Warenne was inclined to suspect, that the account given by his landlord of the numbers and desperation of the people engaged in these lawless pursuits might be exaggerated. There was, however, evidently enough of truth in the report to make him wish to send another troop to Fisherton. But his orders were positive; and the officer appointed to the chief command of the district was one from whom he could not expect to obtain an alteration of them. He was a man well known in the army for his wrong-headed obstinacy, and pertinacious regard to the minutiæ of military discipline. It was also said of him, that having been in India during the time of the Peninsular war, and therefore without opportunity of distinguishing himself in any European campaign, he had a mean jealousy of those who had served in Portugal and Spain, and was disposed to treat them with captiousness, when they had the misfortune to be employed under him. Warenne determined, nevertheless, to write to General Mapleton a respectful request to be permitted to increase the force at Fisherton.

He had been walking round the town, and was entering the inn-yard by the London gateway, when almost at the same moment a gentleman, on a remarkably neat well-bred cob, rode in from the coast road. As they encountered each other, the new visiter, who was a fresh-coloured fair man, of about his own age, dressed in sporting costume, looked at him earnestly. The countenance was familiar to him, but he could not recollect where he had seen it. He was in the act of having recourse to the landlord, for the purpose of ascertaining its owner, when the gentleman himself, having more quickly obtained his master’s address from Warenne’s servant, came up to him, and claimed his acquaintance.

“Warenne; how are you? You forget me, I dare say, for it is a long time since we last met; but I remembered you the moment I saw you, though I could not give you a name without the assistance of John there. Do you not recollect Jack Nicholas, at Dame Twyford’s, just over Barn’s Pool Bridge, at Eton?”

Warenne immediately recalled to mind a heavy, good-natured boy of that name, who resisted every attempt made by his tutor to instil into his brain any classical lore, but who was an expert fisherman, and not a bad foot-ball player.

Nicholas continued, “What are you doing in this place? You had much better come over and dine with us. My father lives little more than five miles from the town, and will give you a hearty welcome. Do come, we can give you a bed. Well, certainly, I never thought of meeting you to-day. How lucky it was I rode over to take a look at the fish-market! I have got the nicest brill, too.”

Warenne replied that he really should have been happy to accept his invitation, but that his horses were tired with their day’s work, and that he was obliged to leave Fisherton at a very early hour on the following morning.

“Oh! I can arrange all these matters,” said Nicholas. “You shall have the landlord’s own nag, and a very clever one it is, I can tell you—few better. And if you must be off so early to-morrow, you can return here to-night; though if you would stay all night with us we should like it better, and I would ride over with you in the morning. I shall most probably come here, for to-morrow is the day when our magistrates hold their weekly sessions; and if I have nothing else to do, I usually attend to hear the news. That’s a good fellow; you will come, I see. I’ll call for you in ten minutes, as soon as I have seen that our cart takes the brill.”

Warenne, having obtained a loan of the landlord’s horse, was ready to join Nicholas on his return from the fish-market. They quitted the town by the coast road, which for rather more than a mile proceeded in a south-easterly direction. It then bent more to the southward, when they quitted it, and proceeded along a narrow lane, with high hedges on each side, keeping the same course as the portion of the road over which they had already travelled. There was not here much opportunity for observation; and Warenne, willingly diverting his thoughts from the disagreeable lucubrations to which his landlord’s discourse had given rise, entered unreservedly into conversation with his old schoolfellow. He answered Nicholas’s questions concerning his different campaigns, and in return sought to extract from him the history of his past and present life.

“You went,” said he, “to Oxford, if I recollect rightly, after you left Eton?”

“Yes, I did,” answered Nicholas, “and I liked it much; it just suited me. I hardly ever attended a lecture; and I kept three very clever hunters in full work—but it was too happy a state to last. The old Dean of Christchurch, when I had been there little more than a year, gave me a hint which I might not misinterpret, that I had better see the world; and my father made me travel through Scotland and Ireland, which was all the world Buonaparte would let a man see in those days, unless he turned soldier and went to Spain. This was dull work, though every now and then I got some good fishing, and once or twice some capital grouse-shooting; so I returned home as quickly as I could, and have been living with my father here at the Plashetts (for that’s the name of our place) ever since. I have four as nice hunters as you ever saw, and get plenty of shooting and trout-fishing, without going a yard off his manors; so I make it out pretty well. If it happens any day that I neither hunt, fish, nor shoot, I trot over to Fisherton to see what fish there is in the market.”

Warenne smiled at the complacency with which Nicholas reviewed his useless life. “Are you not a magistrate?” inquired he.

“No,” replied his friend, “they wished to make me one, but I have refused myself to every application on the subject. There is no fun in being interrupted at all hours of the day by a pack of greasy fellows, making complaints against each other for assaults in their drunken squabbles overnight; nor in being condemned to sit from eleven o’clock to six one day in every week, to hear the idle blackguards of the neighbouring parishes abuse their overseers. No, thank you, said I, I am not going to be one of your ‘glorious unpaid,’ with the press firing into me for every little mistake I might make, and never giving me credit for the sacrifice of my time and comfort; I know better.”

By this time the character of the road had undergone some change. The hedges had disappeared, and instead of the narrow trough, if I may so term it, in which they had been travelling, wherein their view was limited to the hot sun and clear sky above them, they had now, on either side, a broad strip of waste land, beyond which to the north lay a large extent of wild low brushwood; while to the south there were some newly inclosed fields. Presently all signs of arable cultivation ceased, and they came out on a wide common. Just at this point the road bent rather more to the southward, and the line of brushwood going off from it nearly at right angles and then sweeping round to the east, till it joined some large trees, formed a sort of boundary to the waste.

“Mark this corner of the brushwood,” said Nicholas, “that you may not miss your way as you return to-night; for we now leave the road, and cross the common to those trees where the brushwood closes in again. The Plashetts lie very nearly due east of Fisherton, and the carriage road is a mile round. From those trees there is an avenue leading directly to the house.”

Warenne took due note of the bearings of the ground, and they proceeded. When they had passed over a considerable portion of the common, the turf, which hitherto had been soft and swampy, became firm; and Warenne, whose powers of observation had been called into play by Nicholas’s late caution, remarked that it bore signs of having been much trodden.

“Have you had a fair here, or races?” asked he of Nicholas.

“No,” was the reply; “the sheep, I believe, keep unmolested possession of the common from year’s end to year’s end. But why do you inquire?”

Warenne simply answered that the grass appeared trampled, and turned the conversation. They soon reached the Plashetts; and Nicholas, the elder, greeted his son’s friend with a hearty welcome. He was a cheerful, light-hearted old gentleman, and the evening passed pleasantly, if not gaily.

About ten o’clock Warenne remounted his horse, and at a gentle pace began to retrace his road to Fisherton. The moon was just rising, but it was a cloudy night, and a sharp south-wester blew directly in his face. As he entered the avenue he could not help recalling to mind the state of the grass on the firmer part of the common; his reflections upon it caused him some anxiety. He had never, he thought, seen ground so trodden, but on places where soldiers were drilled and exercised. Could it be that there was truth in the report which he had heard, that the labourers held nightly meetings for the purpose of training themselves to the use of arms? As the idea presented itself, he hugged the trees to the southward more closely, so as to envelope himself completely in their shade. Presently he fancied that he heard in the wind the sounds of steps and voices. He stopped, and listened with attention, and soon became certain of the fact; they seemed however to proceed from persons at some distance. He advanced slowly, trusting to the wind to drown the noise of his horse’s hoofs. Again he stopped,—the sounds reached him more plainly. Using now still greater caution, he pushed forward towards the edge of the common, and he there beheld the realisation of his worst fears.

By the light of the moon, which fell fully and clearly on the open space, he saw a considerable body of men, marching backwards and forwards, dividing and subdividing themselves, then reuniting again; in a word, going through a regular system of drill, though not perhaps with military exactness. He watched them for some time, endeavouring to ascertain their number, &c. &c. till he conceived it likely that they would soon disperse.

It then became a question with him, how he himself should proceed. He was unwilling to return to the Plashetts, and alarm its inmates by acquainting them with the true reason of his return. He could not cross the common, for in that case he should have to pass through the very centre of the persons collected; he dared not to await the breaking up of their assemblage, lest some of the men should come upon him in their way to their cottages, which of course lay scattered about in every direction. He did not hesitate long; he remembered that a few hundred yards back he had passed three or four large single trees, which stood out on the broad glade between the two lines of elms which formed the avenue, making, as it were, a gate to the pass. To that point he quickly retraced his steps, and seizing a moment when the moon was obscured, crossed to the opposite side of the avenue; then forcing his horse into the brushwood, he made his way through it in the direction of the lane he had travelled in the morning, and continued his course, carefully avoiding too near an approach to the exterior of the wood which was lighted up by the moon, until he reached the hedge which separated it from the road. There, thinking himself safe, or at all events at too great a distance from the men at exercise to be discovered, he dragged his horse through the fence, and, remounting him, galloped as quickly as he could to Fisherton.