IN WHICH CAPTAIN JERMAIN'S MEMORY IS USEFUL.
Andrew entered the dining-parlor timorously. He made his way thither
by the little passage into which opened the outer kitchen containing
the Highland prisoner and his guards. It was shut. The servants, who
questioned him eagerly as to Lord Armitage's security, told him that
to knock at the door was only to have one of the guards come to it and
slam it in his face. They would allow nobody within but themselves.
His father sat at the head of the long table, only half of which was
laid. The three cavaliers had begun hungrily on meats, bread, and
potables.
"Come and sit down here, my lad," called out Captain Jermain kindly,
well-disposed to pay some attention to his host's attractive son; "you
are a fine, tall fellow. I dare say you will be carrying the king's
colors yourself one of these days--eh?"
Andrew seated himself between the captain and Gilbert. A glance
passed between father and boy as he did so. Boyd read in it a quick
reassurance upon the state of mind of Lord Armitage above-stairs.
A man who better liked plain-dealing than Gilbert Boyd of Windlestrae
it would be hard to light upon. To seem to be what he was not stifled
him. Nevertheless, his feeling of sacred duty to the fugitive, to whom
he had sworn protection by every lawful means, induced him to waive
scruples and to preside at this supper with a remarkable simulation of
calmness and of desire to make the three soldiers at ease in the
Manor. As far as possible, he diverted the talk from politics, where
he must and would betray himself rather than lie! "I have been rumored
a Whig so long to no good," he thought, resignedly, "that I may as
well let the error keep alive on such a night as this, when it can
save a life. Humph."
Presently he said aloud: "Help yourselves freely, gentlemen. I am
sorry, by the way, that the Manor can offer you no better liquors than
our own ales and usquebaugh."
"Oh, no apologies, no apologies," replied Captain Jermain. "This is
the very lap of luxury for us. I trust that when these troubled times
end--and his ragged Princeship with his bare-legged support are
hanged--many a hospitable Whig like yourself will call upon us in
London, or anywhere else, and be repaid for your trouble in kind. To
your health, Mr. Boyd!"
"Be entirely at ease, sir, as to trouble," Gilbert answered, raising
his ale-glass; "there is always room and to spare in this old nook."
Andrew nerved himself in the instant of silence ensuing: "Was the
prisoner that you captured--was he--a person of consequence, sir?" he
faltered.
Roxley, the elder of the two other troopers (and who, Gilbert soon
decided, was a special favorite with the young captain and a man of
some petty rank), exclaimed, with a sneering oath: "Consequence? I
should scarce think so!" Jermain, however, bent his eyes pleasantly on
the embarrassed boy, and replied: "Faith, no, my young warrior! A
tattered and villainous hind, lurking about, whom we sighted slipping
into a copse two or three miles above the crossroads."
Our hero longed to put the captive upstairs in possession of even this
slight portion of what he desired to know. But Boyd took up the cue
intuitively.
"Did you run him down?"
"Ay. By some awkwardness the villain tripped; and though he wrestled
with Roxley like a tiger, and won sundry thumps and cuts for his
pains, we managed to master him. He is all bone and muscle, I verily
believe."
"Simply a wandering spy, Captain, depend upon it!" affirmed Dawkin.
"Whatever he was busy about," he continued, to Andrew's father,
"he refused to speak a syllable of, in spite of all our little
measures--ha, ha, Captain! But we will see what the guard-room at
Neith can do for him to-morrow. Here's to his obstinacy after Danforth
gets hold of him!"
"His straps must be looked to sharply before we go to bed," suggested
Roxley.
"Yes," added the captain, drinking; "'tis a pity that Tracey and
Saville must lose their sleep to-night on his account."
Boyd shuddered at the mention of those "little measures," and
the persuasions of the Neith guard-room. The Spanish boots, the
whip-corded eyeballs, the thumb-screw, and brimstone-sliver were
meant. God help the poor wretch who became Danforth's victim! Clearly
nothing more was to be discovered as to the prisoner from his captors.
Andrew determined to slip back to the outer kitchen, and thence up to
Lord Armitage with just so much intelligence as he had come by. But he
would do well to wait until the exactly right excuse should offer for
his leaving the room. The troopers pushed back their chairs and
refilled their glasses of whiskey-and-water. Good cheer began to tell
on their tongues. Jermain rose, stretched himself, and stared about the
room in great good-humor. He noticed a small hanging-shelf with half a
dozen books on it, and thereupon turned amiably to Andrew.
"So you go to school up in this forsaken region of the kingdom, do
you, Andrew? You remind me not a little of a fair young cousin of
mine, Eustace Jermain, down in Warwickshire. He is now a scholar, too,
prosing away at some Oxford college."
"I have always been at school when there was any school to go to, sir.
But my father has taught me for the most part, and once or twice I had
a tutor, by good luck."
"And I, too, by ill-luck!" The young man laughed, sauntering up to the
shelf and glancing over the titles. "What a life I led them! Ah! 'The
Pilgrim's Progress,' 'The Call to Truth,' 'Common Prayer,' 'An History
of Rome,' 'Virgil's Æneid--' So you know Latin here, friend Boyd? I
used to know it myself. How begins old Virgil?--
"'Ar--arma v_o_rumque can_i_,'
it goes, don't it?" He opened the volume idly. In so doing his eye
fell upon the title-page.
He read the name written there with an exclamation of surprise. Then
holding the Virgil he came back to his chair, puzzling over the
fly-leaf. Next he smote his hand upon the board with an impetuous, "By
the sword of Claver'se! 'Jonas Lockett, His Book.' Can it be the man?
What Jonas, except our long-legged Jonas, wrote that cramped fist?
Tell me, friend Boyd, was Jonas Lockett, an Edinboro' pedagogue, ever
in _your_ house, here, a certain winter?"
"One of my son's instructors, years ago, was so named," replied Boyd,
cautiously. He did not like to give these interlopers the least
significant bit of information upon his family or its history.
"Was he from Edinboro'? Tell me of him. Well, well, well--Jonas
Lockett! Ha!"
"There is little to tell, sir. I understood that he was from
Edinboro'. His health suffered there and he travelled into
Perthshire and Inverness to recruit it. He was poor and somehow came
to me for help. Andrew's ignorance enabled me to give it him. But he
only stayed with us a season. I have scarce thought of him since. Did
you know him also?"
"Know him! Truly I did. I recollect that he came from Scotland
directly before he entered my father's employ. A tall, lean,
quick-spoken fellow, with a sly eye and many odd stories at his
tongue's end."
"The same, I dare say," Boyd assented, indifferently; "an odd
coincidence. But the world is a narrow place, Captain."
Andrew glanced uneasily from one face to the other. Was even this
trivial discovery likely to breed the seed of any fresh danger? Danger
lurked in every turn of thought or speech.
Jermain continued turning over the leaves of the Virgil absently.
"Upon my honor!" he suddenly cried, throwing down the book; "of what
have I been thinking? This, too, must be the very old Scotch house
that Lockett told me all about one evening at the Parsonage! I
declare--I have heard of you and it before this night, friend Boyd. I
remembered it not until now."
"Ah!" came Gilbert's dry monosyllable. Boyd's whole being was at once
wholly on the alert. Andrew thought it best not to make for that outer
door quite yet.
"Nor is that all," continued the young officer, draining his glass. "I
dare wager that through Lockett's describing his life here that
winter, besides his being a famous hand to poke and pry about and
meddle with other people's concerns, I know a rare little secret of
you and your Manor House, friend Boyd."
"Captain Jermain! How--what?--I do not understand you, sir!" exclaimed
Gilbert, growing pale and turning sharply upon the young soldier.
Andrew grasped the arm of his chair so tightly that his knuckles
were white. Peril, relentless peril--could it be possible?--and from
so remote a chance! Dawkin and Roxley looked around from their
discussion, surprised at the excited turn the talk behind them had
taken.
"What's all this in the wind now?" asked Dawkin.
"Nothing, except that I am in possession of a family mystery of friend
Boyd's here," returned Jermain gayly, "or I think I am. Forgive me,
Boyd, but the jest is too good! Let me explain. You must know that
Lockett slept sometimes in a room in your old house called--what the
mischief was it called?--the Green--the Red--no, the Purple Chamber!
That's it, the Purple Chamber; and opening out of this Purple Chamber
is a secret room, to be got at by a spring-panel in the wall; a most
curious old place altogether--and, by the by, perhaps just the sort of
strong room that Tracey and Saville have been wishing for to shut that
slippery rascal into to-night. Ha! ha! ha! Boyd, I'm sorry for you,
for you see that I did know this little family secret after all, did
I not? Oh, man, don't look so tragic over it. See his face, Roxley!
By all that is hospitable to mad wags like ourselves here, you shall
make amends for your soberness by taking us all upstairs and helping
us to find out this wonderful hole. Up, Roxley! Up, Dawkin!" continued
the domineering young trooper, already excited by the usquebaugh and
full of a boyish delight at having someone to tease who was quite in his
power; "you, too, my blue-eyed Andrew! Your father must pilot us
upstairs at once, or he is no honest host. Huzzah!"
"Huzzah! huzzah!" chimed in Roxley and Dawkin. Jermain seized the
candles, and, laughing boisterously, forced one of them into the
terrified Boyd's hand. Roxley caught hold of the master's arm. Boyd
stood between them, the color of the wall, rigid, his eyes conveying
to Andrew a despairing signal. Through the crack of the door were
peering Mistress Annan and some women-servants, with blanched cheeks.
Ruin had stalked in a few seconds into their midst.
Terrible was the temptation to Gilbert Boyd as he was held there in
the half-sportive, half-brutal grasp of the dragoons. Yet might one
bold falsehood save everything! How easy to cry out, "That wing of my
house was burnt to the ground years ago!" or to declare that the
Mouse's Nest itself had been opened up and its secrecy destroyed--one
of a half-dozen other excuses, proffered with the dignity of a man in
his own house might avert the calamity precipitating. Hospitality--the
saving of a guest's life--did not these cry out for a lie?
But he did not utter it. Not he, Gilbert Boyd, of Windlestrae. It was
not because with the thought of falsehood he remembered that those
beside him would probably exact proof. It was because too keenly upon
his conscience pressed the acted-out departures from strict truth of
which this bitter evening had already made him guilty. These must be
none worse henceforth. He would obey his God; and God would sustain
him and his. Nevertheless he was mortal man enough to protest, as he
wrested his wrist from the familiar grasp of the leering Dawkin and
stood commandingly before the trio: "Gentlemen--Captain Jermain--you
have forgotten yourselves! It--it is impossible! The room--the room is
all in unreadiness. Mistress Annan hath charge of it--I cannot take
you into it to-night. Let me go, I beg, Captain! You carry your wild
humors too far."
"Oh, no, Boyd, not a step too far," retorted Roxley, "provided you
carry us upstairs with you."
"But--but--I assure you, gentlemen, the--the Nest is wholly unfit for
the purposes of a prison. Listen to me, Captain Jermain, I pray. Only
be reasonable, Mr. Roxley! It is not in repair; and we have under
our roof another, a much securer place of the sort, if you insist on
one----"
"Hardly, Mr. Boyd, I dare wager," interrupted Captain Jermain,
laughing afresh at what he counted Gilbert's absurd annoyance over
the "family secret."
"A strong, well-barred room in the East Wing, overhead, that was
fitted up for a gaol, and hath been so employed before now. I will
send and have it made ready to show you, gentlemen. Release my arm,
Captain, I insist! I will _not_ consent."
Jermain, Dawkin, and Roxley seemed the more amused at his annoyance.
It was plain that only forcible resistance would check their folly,
and forcible resistance was not to be, for an instant, considered.
Had Lord Armitage been listening? Ought not he to be within the
Mouse's Nest--out of earshot? He must be warned and extricated. Andrew
responded to that intense look from his father's eyes by a quick step
toward the hall-door, frantic to dash headlong up the dark stairs and
transmit an alarm through the panel in the Purple Chamber. Ah, by his
own pledge he had made more certain the doom of his friend! By his own
pledge!
But the captain interrupted him by a single stride. "Hold there,
friend Andrew, my bonny Highland chiel! No dodging upward to warn any
pretty faces that have shut themselves into this same old room. They
shall be gallantly surprised by a serenade before their portal.
Here!" continued Jermain, snatching a candle from the elder Boyd,
and bestowing it in Andrew's unwilling grasp; "you shall head the
exploring party! Huzzah!"
With one arm about Boyd's neck, and holding Andrew between Roxley and
himself, Jermain set the unsteady procession on the march from the
dining-parlor and out into the hall, the three shouting boisterously:
"Above-stairs, all of us! Huzzah!" and singing, like the caricature
of a death-hymn, as they approached the first step, that roystering
refrain:
"King George, God bless him forever!
And down with the _White Cockades!_"