This feat presently accomplished, Eustacie urged Rufus to a trot, and set off down the lane towards the rough road that ran north through Warninglid to join the turnpike road from London to Brighton at Hand Cross.
She knew the way well, but to one wholly unaccustomed to being abroad after nightfall, the countryside looked oddly unfamiliar in the moonlight. Everything was very silent, and the trees, grown suddenly to preposterous heights, cast black distorted shadows that might, to those of nervous disposition, seem almost to hold a menace. Eustacie was glad to think that she was a de Vauban, and therefore afraid of nothing, and wondered why a stillness unbroken by so much as the crackle of a twig should, instead of convincing her that she was alone, have the quite opposite effect of making her imagine hidden dangers behind every bush or thicket. She was enjoying herself hugely, of course – that went without saying – but perhaps she would not be entirely sorry to reach Hand Cross and the protection of the mail-coach. Moreover, the bandboxes bobbed up and down in a tiresome way, and one of them showed signs of working loose from its strap. She tried to rectify this, but only succeeded in making things worse.
The lane presently met the road to Hand Cross, and here the country began to be more thickly wooded, and consequently darker, for there were a good many pines and hollies which had not shed their foliage and so obscured the moonlight. It was very cold, and the carpet of snow made it sometimes difficult to keep to the road. Once Rufus stumbled almost into the ditch, and once some creature (only a fox, Eustacie assured herself ) slipped across the road ahead of her. It began to seem a very long way to Hand Cross. A thorn-bush beside the road cast a shadow that was unpleasantly like that of a misshapen man. Eustacie’s heart gave a sickening bump, and all at once she remembered the Headless Horseman, and for one dreadful moment felt positive that he was close behind her. Every horrid story she had heard of St Leonard’s Forest now came unbidden to her mind, and she discovered that she could even recall with painful accuracy the details of A Discourse relating a strange and monstrous Serpent (or Dragon) lately discovered and yet living, which she had found in a musty old volume in Sylvester’s library.
Past Warninglid the country grew more open, but although it was a relief to get away from the trees Eustacie knew, because Sylvester had told her, that the Forest had once covered all this tract of ground, and she was therefore unable to place any reliance on the Headless Horseman keeping to the existing bounds. She began to imagine moving forms in the hedges, and when, about a mile beyond the Slaugham turning, her horse suddenly put forward his ears at a flutter of white seen fleetingly in the gloom of a thicket and shied violently across the road, she gave a sob of pure fright, and was nearly unseated. She pulled Rufus up, but his plunge had done all that was necessary to set the troublesome bandbox free. It slipped from the strap and went rolling away over the snow, and came to rest finally quite close to the thicket at the side of the road.
Eustacie, patting Rufus’s neck with a hand which, though meant to convey reassurance, was actually trembling more than he was, looked after her property with dismay. She did not feel that she could abandon it (which she would have liked to have done), for in spite of being afraid of nothing, she was extremely loth to dismount and pick it up. She sat still for a few minutes, intently staring at the thicket. Rufus stared, too, with his head up and his ears forward. Nothing seemed to be stirring, however, and Eustacie, telling herself that the Headless Horseman was only a legend, and that the monstrous Serpent (or Dragon) had flourished nearly two hundred years ago and must surely be dead by now, gritted her teeth, and dismounted. She was disgusted to find that her knees were shaking, so to give herself more courage she pulled the duelling pistol out of the holster and grasped it firmly in her right hand.
Rufus, though suspicious of the thicket, allowed her to lead him up to the bandbox. She had just stooped to pick it up when the shrill neigh of a pony not five yards distant startled her almost out of her wits. She gave a scream of terror, saw something move in the shadow, and the next minute was struggling dementedly in the hold of a man who had seemed to pounce upon her from nowhere. She could not scream again because a hand was clamped over her mouth, and when she pulled the trigger of her pistol nothing happened. A sinewy arm was round her; she was half lifted, half dragged into the cover of the thicket; and heard a rough voice behind her growl: ‘Hit her over the head, blast the wench!’
Her terrified eyes, piercing the gloom, saw the dim outline of a face above her. Her captor said: ‘I’ll be damned if I do!’ in the unmistakable accents of a gentleman, and bent over her, and added softly: ‘I’m sorry, but you mustn’t screech. If I take my hand away, will you be quiet – quite quiet?’
She nodded. At the first sound of his voice, which was oddly attractive, a large measure of her fright had left her. Now, as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she saw that he was quite a young man, and, judging from the outline of his profile against the moonlit sky, a very personable young man.
The voice of the man behind her spoke again. ‘Adone do! She’ll be the ruin o’ we! Let me shut her mouth for her!’
Eustacie made a strangled sound in her throat and tried to bring her hands up to clutch at the young man’s arm. The barrel of her pistol, which she was till clutching, gleamed in the moonlight, and caught the attention of her captor, who said under his breath: ‘If you let that pistol off I’ll murder you! Ned, take the gun away from her!’
A heavy hand wrenched it out of her grasp; the rough voice said: ‘It ain’t loaded. If you won’t do more, tie her up with a gag in her mouth!’
‘No, no, she’s much too pretty,’ said the young man, taking the pistol and slipping it into the pocket of his frieze coat. ‘You won’t squeak, will you, darling?’
As well as she could Eustacie shook her head. The hand left her mouth and patted her cheek. ‘Good girl! Don’t be frightened: I swear I won’t hurt you!’
Eustacie, who had been almost suffocated, gasped t
hankfully: ‘I thought you were the Headless Horseman!’
‘You thought I was what?’
‘The Headless Horseman.’
He laughed. ‘Well, I’m not.’
‘No, I can see you are not. But why did you seize me like that? What are you doing here?’
‘If it comes to that, what are you doing here?’
‘I am going to London,’ replied Eustacie.
‘Oh!’ said the young man, rather doubtfully. ‘It’s no concern of mine, of course, but it’s a plaguey queer time to be going to London, isn’t it?’
‘No, because I am going to catch the night mail at Hand Cross. You must instantly let me go, or I shall be too late.’
The other man, who had been listening in scowling silence, muttered: ‘She’ll have the pack of them down on us!’
‘Be damned to you, don’t croak so!’ said the young man. ‘Tether that nag of hers!’
‘If you let her go –’
‘I’m not going to let her go. You keep a look-out for Abel, and stop spoiling sport!’
‘But certainly you are going to let me go!’ interposed Eustacie in an urgent undertone. ‘I must go!’
The young man said apologetically: ‘The devil’s in it that I can’t let you go. I would if I could, but to tell you the truth –’
‘There’s no call to do that!’ growled his companion. ‘Dang me, master, if I don’t think you’re unaccountable crazed!’