RAWDON'S RAID.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 13, Issue 1030, 13 March 1869, Page 4

RAWDON'S RAID.

(from "London Society " for January.) (ConcVndedfroinowUst)

CHAPTER IV.

TintEE a.m. The Boodles' ball began to manifest symptoms of dissolution. Paterfamilias, with a ten or fifteen-mile drive before him through cross-country roads where the snow was up to his horses' withers in places, began to growl and look at his ttatch ; Materfamilias, supped and sleepy, began to cluck impatiently to gather her brood round her out of the melee. The circle was getting freer, and the pace too. • The band of the "County Crushers," rather , wild and uncertain in its tempo, had just commenced attacking the last valse, number nineteen. Rawdon and Dick Jocelyn were standing near the doorway. Marsden had wait moment stalked out between them. They could bear him asking about Lady Hope's carriage in the hall ; my lady was going. "Ain't much time to lose, Don," Dick said in the other's ear; "my lady'll carry her off directly. Better go and get your valse, hadn't you ? She's looking for you, you know." Hilda was looking for him, as, pale with some unusual excitement, she stood beside my lady,, with her trembling little hand clinging secretly to. Helen's. The three were at the tipper end of the room, where Marsden had left them to order up the ark ; and couldn't see Don in the doorway. "Time : enough," the latter replied, coolly, toi Dick's suggestion ; " I'm waiting for — ah J here it is-— a despatch 'from Fyle." A servant gave him an envelope, sealed, and with r his name-scrawled upon it in pencil. "Boy's just brpught this for you from Ashbridge, sir." George explained : " you . were to have it immediate, he said." "All right.".. D^oo tore open the missive, glanced at — the' single line in Fyle's writing it contained, .and passed it to Dick. "Baggage .and us is here," wrote Mr. Fyle ;u" line clear, — Mail expected at four."; •-■■•- --" Admirable !" Dick ejaculated grinning. " ' Us ' means Fanchon and himself, I suppose. But you must look sharp, old man. It's three now." "I know. But Lucia will do the five miles in less than twenty minutes ; and I don't want to have to wait at Ashbridge, you understand. Now, look here — you have, the sleigh all ready at the half-hour. At five-arid- twenty past, just show yourself here in this doorway. I shall be waltzing her, and looking out for you. When I see you I'll stop, and get her out of the room in the general scrimmage without being noticed. Then on with those sealskin swad-dling-clothes ; into the. sleigh; and— -fouette cocher ! We ought to be half-way to Calais before an j one but you and Miss Carew's the wiser. Understand?" "All right!" Dick nodded. "But, I say, Don, she won't hang back at the last moment, eh? It's now or never for you, you knbw. You won't get a chance like this again. And women are queer cattle." "I don't think she will," Rawdon said, looking up the room towards her. " She might under other circumstances, perhaps ; but hot now. Marsden has managed matters too well, for that. The pompous bully would drive a woman to anything. He was hectoring her about coming here tonight before we started, just as if she didn't hate him already ! The man's been playing my game all through: my last move will checkmate him. It's time to play it. You've ten minutes to see to the sleigh ; and I to dance number nineteen. Go along, old boy!' . . "Now tread me a measure, quoth young Lochinvar," hummed Dick, as he turned to go. ".Wonder whether he's ever heard of that song, old — : — : ? Ah ! beg your pardon, Marsden," he ejaculated, with unwonted civility, as he ran against the Croesus, returning from his hunt for Lady Hope's carriage. "Hope I didn't hurt you? All right, Don !" And the Guardsman moved off to fulfil his part in the plot, chuckling at intervals over old Jeff's approaching discomfiture. Rawdon, went straight towards Hilda. Marsden followed. "Well, dear," Helen whispered in her cousin's ear rather anxiously, " will you ?'? A pressure . of. % hancljghe. clung to.-ssm. all the other's answer. Then Helen. felt her start nervously, and saw. her. turn pale, and flush^fevaKsbly. She had caught sight of Dojarfnaking; his'way round the outside of ttie circle to where they three were still standing. Miss Carew's own pulse quickened sharply. The decisive moment was all but come. , '■ :) ■ ■. ' " Where can Mr. Marsden be ?" snapped Lady Hope,* Querulously. ."What a time he, is, seeing about the carriage! Ah I theri. he is, at last.", „ , . : Tnere he was, close behind Rawdon ; whom Lady Hope overlooked till she heard him speaking itq-Hilda.vyf !?- -*? "Number nmei^'eb," -Don ; was saying; "our valse you kiiow, 'Sliss Jocelyn." Poor .cbild J . . -How- muoh- those quiefr, commonplace wprds meant to her! The crisis had arrived. If she took his arm now she gave: consent to that plan for saving her he had proposed. If she refused it — what was left to her? : "You had better let me take you to the cloak room, I think," rasped Marsden's saw of a voice, wonderfully dproposy" the carriage will be ready directly, X believe," it added, as the speaker turned to my lady. " Then we; had better go," Lady Hope assented. ■' "Will you take Hilda ?" This was' pointedly &p Rawdon, who showed no signs of giving way. Marsden advanced a little. It was with his most insufferable air of proprietorship that he thought fit to say-^ " Excuse me, Major Daringham. Now, Hilda, come 1" And he put his arm out stiffly for her to take. As Don. had said, the man couldn't help playing his opponent's game. That tele-d~ tete r in the drawing-room at Dane Court just now, even, hadn't taught him better than to take this tone to the girl a second time that night. /He fancied, perhaps,. that with my lady toijack him, she must submit to him this time, and give him a pleasant triumph over-the'mah he hated. So his tone and manner towards her were simply unbearable. If she ever, had hesitated, hesitation was past now. If he ever could have kept her, he had lost: her jlnihat, moment. .. ( She lifted h6rneft^Vher Yes met Don's"; and Don readier decision plainly in them. A light came suddenly into his; but it

was in his usual impassible fashion that he struck in, sure of winning now. "Afraid I cau't forego my engagement, and lose number nineteen, if Miss Jocelyn decides for me," he said. ''I don't think the carriage can get up for ten minutes or so you know, Lady Hope," he added, blandly ; " an.d so — — "**" -• "Excuse me," Marsden v said, with his severest, iciest hauteur ; "but Miss Jocelyn really cannot " Hilda put her hand on Rawdon's arm at the " cannot." "I decide for number nineteen, at all events," she answered, just in the way she had answered him before the ball. The child's blue eyes looked at him again in that defiant way that had so angered him then. Marsden bit his thin lips, at looked at my lady. My lady looked fairly astonished for once. " Really, Hilda " she was beginning in her " punishment" tone. Hilda shook her head. "I have promised, mamma. It is too late." Then a quick whisper in Helen's ear : "Good-bye, darling Nell!" And before the others could speak again Rawdon had carried Her off. "My own Hilda now ?" he said to her when his arms were round her in that last valse. "You will trust yourself to me, darling?" "Oh! Don, take me away!" she answered, passionately. "Take me away from him. Anywhere with you !" He made no reply, in words ; and she had no more to tell him after that. Round and round they swept ; past my lady's angry eyes, and Marsden's scowling face, again and again. Each time they went by the doorway, Rawdon looked for Dick Jocelyn's signal that all was ready for the raid. At last, Dick appeared. "Now for it!" muttered Don. He checked his partner, and brought her up close to where Jocelyn was waiting. It was a trying moment; fortunately it was but a moment. All passed so quickly that poor trembling little Hilda had no time to break down. Rawdon got her through the little crowd ' near the door without notice. Then she was in the hall, and Dick was wrapping the furs about her. " Good-bye, my pet !" he said to her, rather touched at the sight of her white, wistful face: "Good-bye, Mignonne! Take care of her, Don !" Then she was going down the steps into the icy air, holding Don's arm. Out of the ruck of carriages, the sleigh and Lucia were waiting. Then Don, muffled in his pelisse, was lifting her into her seat ; then Lucia I (without her silver grelots this time) was whirling her swiftly down the frozen drive ; and Daringham of " Ours" had fairly carried off old Marsden's fiancee. Dick, on the steps, turned to his own nmn, who, suspecting nothing, was watching Rawdon's raid, mechanically. " You'd better get my sleigh up, Tom," |he remarked ; "we shall all be starting directly. Well ! It's done," he soliloquized, as the man went off on his errand ; " I'm devilish glad of it. She'll be now happy with Don ; and old Jeff will be " • " Richard !" my lady's voice said sharply behind him, as he crossed the hall. " Where's Hilda ?" There stood my lady and Marsden ; Helen, looking about her anxiously, a little in the rear. " Miss Jocelyn passed through the hall this moment," Marsden added. "You must have seen her ; and — and — Major Daringham." The last words seemed to choke him. "Yes," Dick nodded; "I saw 'em all right." "Where are they, then?" Lady Hope snapped. " I can't find Hilda in the cloakroom. They say she's not been there. Where can they be ?" Dick faced the two, stroking his moustache calmly, but with an odd twinkle in his eyes.

CHAPTER V.

" Gone !" The same word from all three, but in very different keys. "Really " began Marsden with a portentous severity that hugely amused Dick. The plutocrat didn't understand. My lady, with the clairvoyance of a woman of the world, and out of certain half- formed suspicions of her own, understood everything in a moment. She glanced round her first to see that.no one was within hearing ; then she said in savage staccato to her nephew— r " I'll never forgive you for this, sir, as long as I live." " Dear me, chere tante! What have I done?" returned the guileless youth, not quite certain whether, as he expressed it, "my lady was fly to all the little game yet." She wasted no time on him. Her hand grasped Marsden's arm with an energy that startled that emotionless man. Emotionless, though, no longer; for her words startled him even more. " Don't you see ?" my lady was whispering impatiently. " She's gone — with him. 'They've eloped ! Now listen !" — for he i stared at her as though Bhe had suddenly gone mad. He really thought she had. What ! His promised wife dare so far forget what was due to Mm as to elope ! "Listen !" Lady Hope repeated, actually shaking him in her impatience. " This must be prevented. They must be overtaken, stopped ! At any risk ; at once ! You must do it." "I ?" Jeffrey Marsden gasped. " You. Who else is there? Richard is in the plot. In another hour it may be too late. Quick, man ! quick !" He was beginning, electrified by this languid woman's fierce, unwonted energy, to understand now. He had been robbed; and by the man he hated most. For the second or third time that, night the snowwater in his veins ran almost warm. She saw his face change. " Will you go ? To save her — to defeat him, remember ! There may be time yet." " Yes ! " he muttered between his blanched, lean lips ; "you're right. There may be time yet ; arid if I overtake him ! I'll go ! But, how—where ? " She had thought of everything, this clever Lady Hope, omniscient almost in her self-interest. " The other sledge !" she answered ; " it's ready down there; by this time; Did'nt you hear him order it ? Follow the track. They have gone to Ashbridge, lam nearly sure. There is no train yet; you must {

■prevent this! But don't waste time! You have your coat and hat ! Quick !" "Never fear!" he returned; and the blanched lips were actually guilty of an oath; "I'll do it!" He flung his coat about him and hurried through the inner glass doors out on to the steps. Dick, explaining matters to Helen sotto voce, had kept an eye on him all the time. " Let me see about the carriage, Aunt Hope !" he observed. " Poor dear old Jeff will catch his death of cold if you trot him about on a night like this." He moved away in pursuit ; though rather wondering what Jeff could possibly do, you know, after all. Lady Hope caught him just as he was pushing open the doors that Marsden had just swung back. Through them he saw the latter rush down the steps, and leap (actually leap 1) into his (Jocelyn's) sleigh, in readiness, as my lady had foreseen, below ; saw the horse plunge and spring forward under the . whip ; saw his man get knocked backwards and loose his hold on the reins, and Jeffrey Marsden drive furiously off and disappear. "Oh! by Jove! you know " Dick began. Lady Hope stopped him. " Silence, sir 1" she said ; "do you want all the world to know this ? I sent him to stop them. And he will." " Will he ?" thought Dick ; " he'll probably break his own neck in the first five minutes, that's all !" Then the thought of Jeffrey Marsden driving a sleigh about the country in the dead of night, and coming to frightful grief against a gate-post or in a side-drift, caused Ensign and Lieutenant Richard Jocelyn to laugh aloud. "Take us to the carriage, sir!" his relative said majestically ; " whatever happens, we had better not stay here." They were all back again at Dane Court when they heard what had happened. Swiftly and smoothly, flinging up a little shower of snow spray and leaving a straight track behind it that did credit to Don's steering ; faster and faster, as Lucia warmed to her work, between the high snow walls on either hand, the sleigh that carried La Mignonne and her Lochinvar whirled along ! the white solitary road that led straight to the Ashbridge station, four or five miles off. Muffled in her furs, and with the great-buffalo-robe over all, Hilda lay back, only answering her lover's attempts to reassure her by a little sob now and then. The ex- ! citement of the last hour or two had been a little too much for the child. "But it's all right now, darling !" Rawdon said presently, taking a pull at the mare as he topped the one long hill that lay between Boodle Park and Ashbridge — "it's all right, now. We shall be at the D'Arbleys by dinner-time, comfortably. I've telegraphed to her to meet us at the Nord terminus. She's about the only relation I've got left ; and, as she's fond of me, she'll simply worship you, you know ! We've managed beautifully, haven't we? Got away"and no on 6 that matters the wiser ! Jove ! though, I should like to sec the City man's face to-morrow— or rather this morning, when he discovers Eh ? what's that? He checked Lucia a moment and turned his head to listen. The ringing of grelots behind, plain enough. Round a slight bend came something dark against the snowy roadway at a furious rate after them. Another sleigh. "Dick perhaps!" Don muttered; "but no, he wouldn't come after us. Besides, he wouldn't yaw about so frightfully. That fellow's never driven a sleigh before, I should say !" " Ob, Don J" Hilda suggested, nervously ; "suppose it should be ?" " Marsden. ? By Jove, it is ! My lady's found us out and sent him, I suppose, to bring us back dead or alive ! What a joke, isn't it?" Mignonne didn't seem to see it in that light at all. " For heaven's sake, Don, don't let him overtake us ! I couldn't bear to see him again," she said. "No chance of his overtaking us, Mignonne !" Don laughed. "Is there Lucia ?" The mare tossed her head, and sprang away like an arrow, as the reins dropped on her back again. A hoarse cry came from the pursuing sledge. It was so close behind them now that they could see its | occupant gesticulating vehemently ; could hear him calling to them to stop — Marsden's voice, they both said. " He'll break his neck directly 1" Rawdon observed with a grim sort of smile ; " and we must leave him to it, I'm afraid !" He looked at his watch as he spoke. " Yes ; we've no time to waste. Allons !" The mare laid herself out fairly now. The speed at which they tore along almost took Hilda's breath away. They left the other sleigh as if it had been standing still. They were on the high ground now. Straight before them, yonder, where the lights were twinkling, lay the Ashbridge station; right and left the snowmantled country could be seen for miles. Rawdon's eye ran along a thread-like dark track he knew where to look for — the line of rails down which the Paris mail was coming. " She ought to be in sight, if they told Fyle the truth !" he muttered ; " awkward if she's been blocked anywhere, now we've got this fellow behind us !" Again his eye ran along the line of the embankment. It stood out well against the white background : nothing visible on it. All this time Lucia's speed never slackened : they were close on the station now. Where was the Mail ? He caught sight of something at last. A red light: a gleam of other lights, dull through frosty window panes. Then the shriek of a whistle reached them. It was the Dover Mail running into Ashbridge. Other eyes beside Don's had caught sight of it. Again that cry to them to stop came from the other sleigh behind. Don laughed. " Rather a sell for him, you know ! He'll come up in time to see us start!" he remarked. So it seemed, for they were passing through the gate of the station yard almost as he spoke. It was a tall, heavy gate, usually held open by a catch, but on this occasion by a man muffled up to the eyes — > Mr. Fyle. " All right, sir !" that individual reported, as Don pulled up a moment. "The Frenchwoman is here with the baggage and the tickets ; Mail's signalled. You're just in time, sir." Don leaned forward and said a brief word in the man's ear. Mr. Fyle grinned.

" I'll take care, sir," he returned. The sleigh moved on up the little incline to the station entrance. Mr. Fyle hurried the next moment up after it. Mademoiselle Fapchon rushed out to meet her mistress. The Dover Mail ran alongside the platform. Just at that moment the pursuing sleigh reached the gate of the yard. The pursuer shouted for some one to open it in vain. With an oath, he leaped out and fumbled with frostbitten fingers at the latch. In vain, too ; the latch was immoveable ; Mr. Fyle perhaps best knew why. The pursuer saw the train run in, heard the doors slam as its passengers took their seats, heard the whistle sound for its departure. And this infernal gate wouldn't open ! At last the undignified notion of climbing over struck him. He put it into immediate practice, slightly incommoded by the severelystrapped evening nether garments. It was a sight to see the tall, gaunt figure a cheval upon a gate-bar ! Just as it got there the train began to move slowly off. " I'll telegraph though !" the figure muttered aloud with a vicious expletive, and preparing to descend on the other side. Not carefully enough, unfortunately. His foot slipped and turned awkwardly on the middle bar, and Jeffrey Marsden, Esq., came heavily & the ground with a badlysprained ankle, Where Mr. Fyle presently found him. The Paris Mail reached its destination without mishap, and Don and his Mignonne got to the Avenue de l'lmperatrice in capital time for dinner, as he bad prophesied. Two days afterwar Js my lady — she had managed to survive her disappointmentread her daughter's marriage in the Times. So did Marsden, in bed with incipient rheumatic fever, and a sprained ankle. So did Dick Jocelyn and Helen, lingering over their tete-a-tete breakfast in the Oak Parlour at Dane Court. It was in that very room, by-the-by, that, in the snow-time last year, I heard from those same two people the story of Rawdon's Raid !