How pleasant it was to be back in the civilisation of England: how thin and poor the colonies seemed after such an evening as this. He walked, fairly steadily, back home as the evening sun was sinking and the lamplighters made their quiet progress round the close.
Yet something was wrong. Was it the wine, or the company; was it something said at dinner? He shook his head slowly. No. It was something else.
He continued his walk. Far ahead, over the close wall, a long bank of pale cloud was catching the orange glow of the setting sun. On his right, the cathedral soared, so quiet and stately. The whole world seemed at peace.
But still, something was wrong. He paused, this time, to consider. It was something deep in his mind, important, increasingly urgent. He frowned. Was it just that he had had too much to drink?
The whole dinner and the conversation swelled up before him in his mind. There had been fish and gossip; boiled chicken and the constitution; game, pigeon, asparagus, and the strange picture of the miz-maze; lobster and enclosures; fruit tarts and religion; and finally port and the clergyman’s philosophy. The images, tastes and rich scents of the meal, accompanied by the echoes of their conversation, of deep and laughing voices, went through his mind. He frowned. Which course, which of the subjects had so disturbed him?
No, it was none of these.
With a sad smile of recognition, he realised what it was that was troubling him. And then he murmured:
“My God, then, what shall I do? I’m too old to make another journey.”
The realisation had only grown more definite in his mind the next morning when he called upon Forest.
He was led, this time, straight to a small library upstairs. It was a gem of a room, done up in the pseudo-gothic fashion some architects favoured, with heavy plaster bosses in the ceiling and gothic arches also done in plaster, which formed handsome recesses for the shelves of leather-bound books. On the table were several recent issues of the
Gentleman’s Magazine
.
Sir Joshua rose and gravely motioned him to a leather chair.
“Would you care, Captain Shockley, to act as my agent? You would be in charge, of course, of all my estates.”
He had guessed such an offer might come. His father, when pressed, had admitted it to him that morning. His own successor, it seemed, had been a failure and he had himself written to Sir Joshua to suggest he consider his son.
“I dare say they tested you pretty well last night,” Jonathan laughed. “You can be sure he’d already made every enquiry about your military record.”
It was a staggering opportunity: an excellent salary and the opportunity to manage estates that spread over three counties.
“You could live at Sarum if you pleased,” Jonathan said. “You’d be set up for life.”
He asked for a short time to consider it and Forest, though a little surprised, readily agreed.
“I have to depart for London on business in a few days, Captain Shockley. Let me know upon my return.”
He promised he would.
But what he could hardly admit to himself, and certainly not to his father, was that he did not want it.
There was no one to discuss the problem with. Forest had offered him the chance he needed. Why, with this new position and the money from his commission, he could even afford to marry. If he turned it down, was there any man in Sarum who would not think him a fool?
So it was perhaps natural that the only person he did discuss it with should be a woman, the very next day, when he happened to meet Mary Mason on the footpath to Harnham Mill.
“The devil of it is,” he confessed to her as she walked silently by his side, “I’m not at home in Sarum any more.”
“Tell me why, Captain Shockley,” she asked.
How could he explain? How could he tell her about the long miserable years in the tropics when he had so longed to be back at home; of the years in Ireland when he had thought that a house back in the close was all that a man could desire; of the year spent in captivity in America, of his long conversations with the men who had captured him; of the Hillier boy and the impression he had made upon him? How could he explain how he had come back, with wonder and joy, to his home and suddenly found that in some strange way, while he had been absent, the civilised world had grown old? The dinner at Forest’s was the culmination of a process that had been in gestation for two months.
“It’s me that’s changed,” he concluded, after trying to put a few of these thoughts into words. “I suppose I’ve seen freer men in a new land, and when I come back I find our old society, civilised though it is, too full of restrictions, too fond of order. It’s as though I couldn’t breathe.” He paused, puzzled by his own thought. “It’s not that I want to reform England, Miss Mason. I’m not a political fellow. But I want,” he searched for words, “a wider horizon, larger freedoms.”
“And how would you like to live?”
“Oh,” yes, he knew the answer to that well enough, “if I were young, if I had my life again – do not say this to others, I pray – but I’d go and live in the new colonies, in America.”
It had taken longer than he himself realised, but the captive Hillier boy had finally converted him.
Mary Mason looked very thoughtful, but made no comment, letting him talk, and pour his heart out. Only at the end of the path as they came into Salisbury did she turn to him and say quietly:
“I cannot advise you, Captain Shockley, except to tell you that you must follow your heart.”
Then she left him.
His heart. He smiled ruefully as he watched her go. “Why then, Miss Mason,” he thought to himself, “I think perhaps I’d take Forest’s cursed offer and marry you.”
For the first time in his life, he could not make up his mind.
In June 1779, French and Spanish ships, over sixty in number, appeared off Plymouth, where, unknown to the enemy, the ammunition did not even fit the defenders’ guns.
Sir Joshua Forest was detained in London.
And Captain Adam Shockley, thinking that the local militia might be called out, let it be known that he was ready for service if needed.
But in Sarum, a still more exciting event now took place.
Its author was Eli Mason.
It was in the second week of June that Eli, having received certain confidences from members of his family, and having perused items in the newspaper concerning the most recent exploits of a certain gentleman, hit upon his extraordinary plan. He told no one in the family what he meant to do, but he needed one accomplice.
Accordingly, he called upon Captain Shockley. When Adam heard what he wanted, he burst out laughing and declared:
“If you want my help, you shall have it. Are you prepared to take the risk?”
He was indeed.
“I have all my savings,” Eli declared. “They’ll be at your service.”
One fine morning a week later the Salisbury-to-Bath stagecoach rolled out of the city.
Adam Shockley had been as good as his word to Eli, and although it had been known for several days that he was going to Bristol to make an important transaction, no one had any inkling of what it was he intended to buy. He had only one companion from Salisbury, an elderly lady. His luggage included a large and heavy portmanteau that was stowed in the basket behind.
The portmanteau, well padlocked, contained Eli Mason’s savings, and as Adam sat quietly in the coach with his fellow passenger, he could not help thinking of the trust Eli had placed in him and hoping for the game little fellow’s sake that the business would not miscarry.
The journey was delightful – along the Fisherton turnpike to Wilton; a brief pause there, then along the line of the Wylie river before turning up on to the high ground.
Soon they were up there, rolling over the broad ridges; there was a glimpse of the top of the spire, then it vanished. What a noble country it was, nothing but sheep, the great sweep of the high ground, and the open sky that seemed to touch it: that familiar, bare and timeless landscape. Wherever he was in the world, he knew his thoughts would always return to the high ground above Sarum.
For an hour the coach made its solitary way across the great windswept tract.
It was several miles outside the town of Warminster that the disaster occurred. It took even Adam Shockley completely by surprise.
He had waited behind a tiny clump of trees, and stepped out, a single figure on horseback, so quietly and quickly that neither the coachman, his guard, who carried a blunderbuss which, in his confusion he fired the wrong way, nor the passengers had any time to react. He was well-dressed, rode a fine bay horse, and wore a mask over his face. One of his two double-barrelled pistols was levelled calmly and precisely between Adam Shockley’s eyes as he threw open the door and politely said:
“Your valuables, please.”
The elderly lady produced two rings and gold to the value of ten pounds. The highwayman seemed satisfied with this. Shockley had almost nothing to give him except a gold watch and some small coins. He parted from the watch reluctantly, wondering if this would satisfy the rogue.
It did not.
“Luggage,” he called peremptorily to the coachman.
The portmanteau.
If only he had had a gun, it seemed to Adam that, though the highwayman was still covering him with his pistol, he might still have had a chance. But, like a perfect fool, he had come unarmed. Why had the idiot of a guard panicked?
The coachman and the guard, both shaking a little, were manhandling the large portmanteau out of the basket. They placed it on the ground.
Eli’s savings.
“Yours?” the highwayman asked.
Adam nodded.
“Key.”
If he could just distract him.
He shook his head.
“The key’s at my brother’s house in Bristol.”
The highwayman looked at him. “He must guess it’s a lie,” thought Adam, “but perhaps he will search me, and then . . .”
The highwayman wasted no time. In two strides he was by the portmanteau. With one shot from his pistol he blew off the padlock and raised the lid.
Even he gasped, as he saw that it was full of gold coins.
“No!” Shockley bellowed and started out of the coach. The highwayman swung both pistols towards him, there was a crash of spilling coins.
Caught completely off guard, the highwayman looked down in astonishment to see, squatting in the portmanteau from which he had pushed off the shallow tray of coins, the diminutive figure of Eli Mason, cheerfully holding two small pistols, both of which pointed straight at his midriff.
“Your guns, please,” said Shockley calmly.
And as the highwayman reluctantly threw them down, Adam grinned at his little friend.
“You were right, Mr Mason, it worked.”
The reward of five hundred pounds was handed over promptly to Shockley and Eli Mason by Sir Joshua Forest on his return two weeks later.
“Best five hundred pounds I ever spent,” he assured them. “Not only have you caught my highwayman, but you’ve given me a story to dine out on for years.”
Shockley did not keep his share.
“Your plan, your risk. I only gave the word,” he said, and finally only accepted fifty pounds to keep the little fellow happy.
As for his business with Forest, it was agreed he would call upon him two days later. “Though why you still haven’t made up your mind,” Jonathan said crossly, “I cannot imagine.”
The highwayman turned out to be a young man named Stephen Field, who came from Warminster. No one at Sarum knew anything about him; he was held at Fisherton gaol. That his grandfather, who had worked at an inn at Bath, had been born the son of Susan Mason and George Forest he did not even know himself. It made little difference since he was due to hang.
When Eli Mason returned home with his reward, he carried out the rest of his plans, and this part he had not confided to Adam.
He went straight to his sister’s room, dumped the bag of gold in front of her, and stated proudly:
“That’s your dowry for when you marry, from your brother Eli.” And before she could protest, he added firmly: “Better marry Captain Shockley, sister, if I was you.”
The next day, in the early evening, when Mr Jonathan Shockley was out at the house of Mr Harris for his regular game of whist, and the two young Shockleys were away at Wilton, Adam Shockley alone in the house was surprised to receive a caller.
Miss Mary Mason requested to see him on private business.
Wondering what she could want, he ushered her into the little parlour on the first floor.
She came straight to the point.
“I wish to know about land in America, Captain Shockley. I understand that it is at a much lower price than land here.”