Sir Michael carried with him the one candle he had brought into my
chamber, so we stood in the dark as if turned to stone by the sound
of the sergeant's voice without, most horribly dreading that he would
again enter, and all our work be undone. How long this lasted I do
not know, but at last we heard him and my father walk together down
the gallery to the stairhead, conversing in subdued tones. Sir
Michael told him, as I did afterwards learn, that I had been mightily
frightened and disturbed, and was now at his desire composing myself
again to sleep. And the man replied that, as far as my chamber was
concerned, he was satisfied, since he had discovered complete
warranty of the tale I had told in the hat he then held in his hand,
having found it where I had said it should lie. He added that he
well knew the stigma of cruelty lying upon his regiment, yet he, for
one, was vastly sorry that matters had so fallen as to discompose a
young gentlewoman that was, he believed, the most beautiful and
kind-hearted in the kingdom. And I have often thought of it as a
thing passing strange that the first tribute I received in my life to
the charms of my person did proceed from a man to whom I had most
shamelessly lied, he being one of a company famed in all the world
for wickedness and cruelty. And I have prayed to God that what good
there was in this man might not be utterly cast away.
So, while we two, Ned and I, sat almost silent above-stairs in the
dark, striving to smother the sound of the passion of tears that had
seized upon me, my father descended the stair with the sergeant,
thinking soon to be rid of him and his men; but was speedily
disappointed in finding that the man had no intention to abandon his
search, although he showed his altered temper in putting himself at
my father's orders, whether to continue at once his visitation of the
house from garret to cellar, or to set strict guard upon all its
approaches till morning, then to complete his survey in the better
light.
"For," said he, throwing poor Ned's damaged hat upon the table of the
great hall where they stood, "though we do know the rascal was
without, and that your worship does not willingly harbor him, we have
no testimony that he did not get in after he had lost his hat. Some
soft-hearted kitchen-maid might well----"
"'T is enough said, sergeant," interrupted Sir Michael, resolving to
put a good face upon his choice of the lesser evil; "I commend the
acuteness of your judgment. It is indeed as much for my honor as
yours that suspicion of harboring this fellow should be removed from
my house as well as from myself and my daughter. Do you set at once
a sufficient guard without to watch every door and window, and while
you call into the hall here all that are not needed for that duty, I
will rouse some of the fellows that sleep above, and see that you
have good food and drink in place of the sleep you must lose. And I
doubt not," he added, turning at the door, "such of you as remember
Tangier will find my old Burgundy, that has been much praised by good
judges, a better substitute for the wines of Spain and Portugal than
our west-country ale."
Whereupon the sergeant, pleased with prospect of good cheer, went out
to make disposition of his men, while my father again mounted the
stairs, turning swiftly in his mind the subterfuge by which he
purposed getting Ned Royston safely from the house. And indeed I
think he did devise a scheme as cunning as any of those happy strokes
of adroitness and dexterity for which in the old wars he was justly
famous.
The soldiers being now below, and the few servants first roused sent
to fetch food for the sergeant and his men, my father found the
stairs and galleries deserted. Pausing at my door, he gently opened
it, and hearing the sound of my half-stifled weeping he bid me not
check it, saying that it fell well with his scheme.
"Do but as I bid you, my children," said he, "and in less than an
hour the poor lad shall be on the road to Bridport; and with Skewbald
Meg between his legs 't is pity of the horse and man that would catch
him. I can give you no light, for the sentry that is below the
window, but you, my little Phil, must make shift to cut away from him
those unfashionable curls; and it is little matter for the dark,
since the more raggedly you play the barber the better for him; also
pull off his great boots, with the gay coat and the waistcoat, and
when I return with the real Betty to take his place in the bed,
where, I vow, I think she will sleep better than he, I will so clothe
him and so raddle his face that his mother would not know him again;
and if you must speak in the doing all this, let it be little and in
the veriest of whispers." And at this my dear and most wise old
father left us, saying aloud, as he shut the door, and with intent to
be heard if any were spying upon him: "Get thee to sleep, child.
There is no further cause of fear. None shall harm thee."
Silent as mice midway between cat and cheese we fell to doing all
that he had bidden us. I was bitterly sorry for the curls, and for
the cruel fashion in which my small shears did lop them, but said no
word till all was done. And then we sat waiting in the dark, and Ned
found my hand and held it, and whispered after a while that he had
not yet seen my face; that he doubted it was greatly altered, even as
he perceived my body was increased in stature. And he asked me had I
grown beautiful as he was used to predict, and I could only answer
that I did not think I was fully so foul to look upon as I had been.
And he was about getting hot in reply, and even raising his voice a
little to vow that I was never that, nor thought he meant I was, and
he had for the moment quite forgot to _mistress_ me, as hitherto
since I had dragged him headlong through my window, when the door
again opened to admit my father, dragging by the arm poor
sleep-dazed, blanket-wrapped Betty, who was, I do suppose, from the
brief glimpse I caught of her figure as my father did set his candle
on the floor without the door, a strange and admirable spectacle. In
the darkened room she was mightily amazed, and we must needs thrust
her into the bed almost by force, and had well-nigh to gag her mouth
before we might check the wheezy thunder that she honored with the
delicate title of whispering. Indeed, all this part of our night's
adventure had been vastly comical and mirth-provoking had not a life,
tenderly dear alike to father and daughter, hung upon our secrecy and
despatch. Now Sir Michael had brought with him along with Betty the
cast-off clothes of one of the grooms that slept in the garret. And
there, still in darkness, we contrived among us to habit Ned in
them--foul old broken shoes, a mile too large, which I stuffed with
such rags as would keep him from walking out of them; rough woollen
stockings, none too clean; his own leathern breeches, which he said
were much worn and covered with the dust of all his ride from Oxford,
my father did let pass; but the fine long-cloth shirt he would in no
manner concede, making him take in its place a filthy clout it was
well we could not see as we pulled it over his shorn head. "For,"
said my father, "there is nothing will so play the traitor to a
gentleman disguised as his own linen. The very fabric will still
tell tales when the fairness of it has disappeared under the dirt of
long use." And then all was done; Ned did take me for a little
moment in his arms, when Sir Michael bade him to thrust a hand up the
chimney to befoul it with soot, with which, he said, he would have
him bedaub face and neck when they had again such light that it might
be done in measure and fitness.
"Good-by, Mistress Phil," said he, and "Good-by, dear Ned," said I.
My father here slipping quietly out to spy up and down the gallery,
and holding the door to behind him, in that last moment I seized
Ned's hand, not knowing it was the sooty one, and whispered in his
ear: "Why will you be ever throwing _mistress_ at me, dear? Am I not
your old friend Phil?" And he: "I did but think, Phil, that so
unceremoniously visiting your chamber at night-time, which you know
is a thing I never purposed, did call for terms of address more
formal than our usage of childhood." Which before I could answer,
Sir Michael, satisfied that he was not observed, had him swiftly out
in the gallery, my door was closed for the last time that night, and
I fell weeping on the bed as if the sun should never shine again.
I slept none of that night, and much of it I wept. But, rising in
the sheer idleness of fatigue, when the dawn was well advanced, and
chancing to see my face in the mirror, I perceived that I had most
plentifully streaked and smeared a tear-wet countenance with the
blackness of the soot that had passed in our last moment together
from Ned's fingers to mine. Now my eyes and cheeks presented
doubtless a spectacle that had moved another to laughter. But from
the eyes that alone beheld the figure of ridicule that I was, the
thought of how I became so besmirched brought fresh tears, plentiful
enough, in all conscience, to have washed it clean of all the grime
that face ever carried. But I washed hands and face, and so back to
bed, where, worn out, and by this tolerably secure of Ned's evasion,
I fell asleep, nor awoke until I was roused somewhat past eight
o'clock of the morning.
Meantime to the tale of that same evasion which was, as I supposed,
well accomplished. To tell it briefly, my father bade him play the
clown as best he could, and, after his face had been cunningly
smeared with that same soot, had led him by the back stair to the
kitchen; whence, after Sir Michael had joined the soldiers eating and
drinking in the great hall, he was sent by the cook, who was in the
secret, to bear a dish of some dainty to the company. This, as
before arranged, he let fall with a great clatter, bringing Sir
Michael down upon him in pretence of anger; who did there, with many
a curse on his clumsiness, so cuff him about head and ears, that it
set all the redcoats laughing. "Silly varlet!" quoth Sir Michael,
"is the cook underhanded that such as you must be fetched from garden
and stable to spoil our meat? I warrant men are hanged for less in
these days."
To this the seeming yokel blubbered in reply that he did but wish a
sight of the soldier gentlemen at meat, which he said in that broad
and slurring speech of our country that he could ever from his
childhood put on with exact faithfulness to nature. And just here
one of the strangers' horses, neighing wearily without, where he was
tied to a tree, "Get out," said my father, "and see to those horses.
Put them in the stable, and, if there be not room for all, turn some
of your own cattle to graze in the park." And as he was going out
slowly dragging one loose shoe after the other, one of the soldiers
flung a bone at him, and threatened to flog the coat off his back,
and the skin to follow it, if he did not rub down and well feed and
water each of their borrowed nags.
So to this task he went, with a hundred pounds in gold of my father's
in his one pocket that was sound. And five horses he did groom and
feed and lodge in that stable, turning three of Sir Michael's out of
their places into the park. But one of these, that is, Skewbald Meg,
a mare of great hardness of limb and lasting power of wind, though a
mean and ewe-necked thing to the eye, he tied, when out of hearing of
the sentry on that side of the house, to a tree that stood handy for
the direction he must take. He then returned to the stable, and
there contrived an appearance of business about the nags, while he
concealed upon him a bridle, with which about his waist he at last,
having left his lantern burning within, loitered down to Meg in the
hollow, where in a trice she was bridled and mounted by as good a
horseman and as ill-looking as ever bestrid her lean and mottled
ribs. And how he fared in that ride of near upon twenty-five miles
to Lyme, and how he was taken safely out of the country by sea, you
shall hear when I am come to the letter that came to me out of
Holland.
And here this episode of my life may be counted at an end. For my
father, having pressed upon his guests both bottle and tankard, until
each man made a pillow where his head did strike in falling, and
having sent out copious flagons until the sentries lacked little of
being in the same case, did in the leisure thus obtained so drill and
instruct every waking soul in the house that it was a sure matter
that all, in case of need, would have the same story to tell: as,
that Sir Michael had no horses but what might now be seen upon the
place; that any who thought he had a skewbald mare was vastly
mistook; that the scullion that was so roundly cuffed and rated was a
half-witted thing from the stable that had now run off in terror of
the beating promised him the night before by one of the sergeant's
men; and so forth. All that night, as I have said, my father came
not near me, thinking there had been enough and to spare already done
in that part of the house, and not wishing to arouse any suspicion
that might, in the sergeant's muddled head, survive the fumes of the
wine. But between eight and nine of the clock Sir Michael knocked
loudly at my door, asking, so that all might hear if they would, how
I did, had I slept, and so forth. Then in a little voice he bade me
tell Betty to keep her bed, to remember she was yet very sick, and
that I should hide Ned's boots, sword, and clothes betwixt the
mattresses, where Betty's huge person should keep them safe. All
this, said he, merely as safeguard against another visit to my room.
And very shortly thereafter arose a great cursing below, and a
swearing of many horrible oaths by the sergeant, with low grumbling
accompaniment of his men, as they rose from many a twisted posture of
swinish slumber. When with sousing, brushing, and breakfasting they
were again brought to some semblance of men, the futile search after
him that was by this well out of their reach was begun. Nor did it
cease till close on noon. Now, as the sergeant and his file of men
passed along the gallery, when there was left no further corner into
which they might thrust nose, eyes, or sword-point seeking for hidden
softness of human flesh, some spirit of bravado did seize upon me,
and I flung open the door of my chamber, where all morning I had kept
pretence of nursing poor Betty, sick only of an ill temper to be kept
a lig-a-bed against her will; and I called to the sergeant that he
had not searched here by daylight, and that all was at his service,
even poor Betty, being now awake; and he came to the door, and stood
upon the threshold, looking in upon us while Betty sat up in the bed
and glared upon him, fear and anger struggling for mastery in her
broad countenance, and rendering it grotesquely terrible. Now I was
clothed this time in fit manner, with gown and hair fresh and neat,
and, spite of my sorrow at losing Ned and the terrors of the night
just passed, I had a sense of triumph in my growing certainty of his
escape that I think I scarce tried to keep from appearing in my
countenance. For a moment he regarded me doubtfully, and then there
sprang into his eye a light as of days when he had been other than he
now seemed, and I thought he would have spoken gaily and kindly.
But, my father coming to the door, the sergeant checked his words,
and, his eye lighting upon Betty, a dark cloud of suspicion passed
over his face. This was succeeded by a look of resignation truly
humorous and comical, as he thanked me for the help I had already
given him, which was indeed, he said, more than he had deserved,
apologized for the disturbance he had caused, and so bowed himself
out. He straightway marched his detachment into Drayton, and, having
failed by violent means to avenge the death of his ensign, he now had
recourse to the law, summoning to him the coroner, and insisting upon
a speedy inquest, in hope to discover--the few witnesses of the deed
being put upon oath--the name of whom, if taken _flagrante delicto_,
he would have hanged before it could be told.
To a wiser head than mine I must leave to be decided the point in
casuistry, whether it was to the honor or rather to the shame of our
village folk that among them could not be found two to give a similar
account of Ned's appearance, nor one that knew his name or had ever
set eyes upon him before; and this in spite of their oaths and their
long and kindly knowledge of him. It may be they did all grievously
sin in thus shielding him; for me, I can only say that, having myself
done much the same the night before, in intent at least, I am glad
they did what they did; and that I have always held those three men
and two women in a most tender regard who did esteem the danger to
his dear body of more account than the risk to their own souls.
While this inquest was holding, and before its verdict of
manslaughter by a person unknown had been delivered, there rode into
the village with a small body of dragoons no less a person than
Colonel Kirke himself, to whom our sergeant had sent a messenger
immediately upon the death of his officer. He came roaring and
ruffling into the room at the little inn where the coroner sat, and
't is a hard thing to say what might not have happened to many
innocent persons had he not there met with my father. Sir Michael's
knowledge of men, and, perhaps, some secret information of Kirke's
character, taught him the true manner in which this hero, more deadly
with the rope than with the sword, must be handled. I need here say
no more of the matter, but that Colonel Kirke did that afternoon
march to Taunton, with all his Lambs and dragoons, the body of the
dead ensign, and a sum of two hundred pounds of my dear father's
savings as ransom for the village.
Of Colonel Percy Kirke it was truly said that only one thing did he
love better than blood.