Men who have eaten sufficiently and drunk heavily are not anxious to
admit into their company any one who has not dined, and whose last glass
of wine was drunk the day before. The gentlemen in the public room of
the Massereene Arms were not, most of them, drunk when Maurice St. Clair
came among them, but they were gay. Their hearts, to use a Scripture
phrase, were made glad with wine. They were in the mood in which men
crack jokes and laugh loud at jokes which would not pass muster before
dinner. They were ready to sing out of time and tune or to applaud
the songs of others without criticising them. But they were, with the
exception of one or two, men of feeble capacity, sober enough to be
conscious of the fact that they were liable to make fools of themselves,
and to resent the intrusion of a cool-headed stranger.
They stared angrily at Maurice St. Clair. They said in audible tones
things which showed him plainly that his presence was most unwelcome,
but Maurice remained unabashed. He crossed the room and sat down on the
window seat--the same seat from which Neal had watched the piper and the
dancers a week or two before. He beckoned to the harassed and wearied
girl who waited on the party.
“Get me,” he said, “something to eat--anything. I do not mind what it
is, and bring a cup of milk. Then send my groom to me.”
“The gentleman,” said a young squire, who had certainly crossed the
undefined line which separates sobriety from drunkenness, “is going to
drink milk. Now, what I want to know is this--has any gentleman a right
to drink milk on an evening like this, after the glorious victory which
we have won?”
“It’s damned little you had to do with winning it,” said an officer who
sat beside him. “You can drink, but----”
“The man that says I can’t drink lies,” said the other. “No offence
to you, Captain; no offence meant or taken. I give you a toast, and
I propose that the milky gentleman in the window--the milk-and-water
gentleman--drinks it along with us. Here’s success to the loyalists
and a long rope and short shrift to the rebelly croppies. Now, Mr.
Milk-and-Water----”
Maurice rose to his feet.
“I understand, gentlemen, that this is a public room in which any
traveller may be supplied with what he calls for. I have no wish to push
myself into your company. I trust that you will allow me to enjoy my own
unmolested.”
The intoxicated proposer of the toast laid his hand on his sword,
blustered out an oath or two, and was pulled down again into his
seat. There was good feeling enough left among the better class of
his companions to understand that a stranger should be treated with
civility. There was sense enough among the rest to recognise that
Maurice was not the kind of man whom it would be safe to bully. The girl
returned and informed Maurice that his groom was in the kitchen, but
refused to attend him.
Maurice rose and sought the man himself. The reason of the refusal was
sufficiently obvious. The kitchen was full of troopers who had advanced
much further on the way to absolute drunkenness than their officers.
James, Lord Dunseveric’s groom, was decidedly the most drunken of the
party, but Maurice wanted the man, and was prepared to take some trouble
to reduce him to a condition of serviceableness again. He grasped him
by the collar of the coat, and pushed him through the back door into the
yard. A delighted stable boy worked the pump handle while Maurice held
the groom under the stream of cold water. The cure was ineffective.
Maurice walked him up and down the yard for half an hour, and then put
him under the pump again. The man remained obstinately drunk. Maurice
flung him down in a corner of a stable and left him.
He returned to the room where the feasters sat, and looked in. The
company had advanced rapidly since he had seen them last. The squire who
had proposed the toast was under the table. Several others were lying
back helplessly in their chairs. Those who could talk were talking
loud and all together. The amount of liquor still to be consumed was
considerable. Maurice smiled. These officers and gentlemen were little
likely to interfere with anything he chose to do at midnight. He went
out of doors and sat on the stone bench in front of the inn.
He had no plan in his head for the rescue of Neal Ward, only he was
quite determined to accomplish it somehow before morning. He did not
even know where his friend was imprisoned, or how he was guarded. His
father had spoken of a cellar somewhere in the inn. He supposed that foe
would sooner or later be able to find it, overpower the sentry, and set
Neal free. In the meanwhile, he had nothing to do but wait.
He felt a touch on his shoulder, and looked round to see the girl, the
inn servant, standing beside him.
“You’re the gentleman,” she whispered, “that was speaking till the young
man here the morn--the young man that I give the basket to, that is a
friend o’ Jemmy Hope’s?”
Maurice recollected the incident very well.
“He’s here the now,” whispered the girl again. “He’s down in the wine
cellar, and the door’s locked on him, and there’s a man with a gun
forninst the door, and, the Lord save us, it’s goin’ to hang him they
are.”
“Will you show me where the cellar is?” said Maurice.
“Ay, will I no? I’ll be checked sore by the master, but I’ll show you, I
will.”
The girl led him down a long passage, which was nearly dark, opened a
door, and showed him a flight of stone steps.
“There’s three doors,” she said. “It’s the one at the end forninst you
that’s the cellar door. Are ye going down? It’s venturesome ye are.
Whisht, then, and go canny, and dinna go ayont the bottom of the steps.”
Maurice went cautiously. When he reached the bottom of the steps he saw
before him a long passage, stone-flagged, low-roofed, narrow. From an
iron hook at the far end hung a lamp. Beyond it stood a sentry, one of
Captain Twinely’s yeomen. The man was awake and alert. There was no sign
of drunkenness about him. He was well armed. The light from the lamp was
dim and feeble at Maurice’s end of the passage, but it shone brightly
enough for a space in front of the sentry. Maurice saw that it would
be impossible to approach the man unseen, impossible to steal on him or
rush at him without having a shot fired which would startle every one in
the inn. He crept up the stairs again. The girl was waiting for him.
“Is the door of the cellar locked?” he asked.
“Ay, it is, I fetched the last bottles of wine out mysel’, and I saw
them put the man in--sore draggled he was, and looking like a body in a
dwam. The master locked the door himsef, and the captain took the keys
off with him. But there’s no harm in that. There’s another key that the
mistress used to have afore she died, the creature. It’s in a drawer in
the master’s room, but it’s easy got at.”
“Get it for me,” said Maurice.
He looked into the public room again. The revel was far advanced now.
It was nearly midnight, and only three or four of the most seasoned
drinkers survived. Even they, as Maurice saw, were in no position to
assert themselves, or to understand anything that was going on. A
few minutes later even these veterans felt that they had had enough.
Supporting each other, reeling against tables and chairs, they staggered
upstairs to their beds. The greater part of the merry company lay on
the floor in attitudes which were neither dignified nor comfortable,
and snored. The rest of the inn was silent. From outside came the steady
tramp of the soldiers who patrolled the town, and from far off their
challenges to the sentries on watch at the ends of the streets.
The girl came back to Maurice with the key in her hand.
“I got it,” she said. “The master’s cocked up sleepin’ by the kitchen
fire. There was a man in his bed, or maybe twa, but I didna wake them.”
“Come back to me in half an hour,” said Maurice, “I may want your help.
And listen, my lass, if you stand by me to-night I’ll see you safe
afterwards. You shan’t want for a handful of silver or a bran new gown.”
“I want none of your siller nor your gowns,” said the girl. “I’ll lend
ye a han’ because you’re a friend of the lad that’s the friend of Jemmy
Hope.”
At about half-past twelve the sentry who stood in front of Neal’s cellar
heard some one descend the stairs into the passage with shuffling steps.
A slatternly girl with shoes so down at the heel that they clattered
on the stone flags every time she lifted her feet, approached him. She
rubbed her eyes and yawned like one lately wakened out of sleep. She
carried a lantern in her hand.
“What do you want here?” said the man.
“The master sent me, sir, with another lamp. He was afeard the yin ye
had would be out again the morn. There isna that much oil in it.”
“Your master’s civil,” said the man. “I’ve no fancy for standing sentry
here in the dark. He’s a civil man, and I’ll speak a good word for him
to-morrow to the captain. I hope you’re a civil wench like the man you
serve.”
“Ay, amn’t I after fetchin’ the lamp till ye?”
“And a kiss along with it,” said the soldier. “Come now, you needn’t be
coy, there’s none to see you.”
He put his arms round her waist and pulled her towards him.
“Mind now, mind, will ye, have you neither sense nor shame? Ye’ll have
the lamp spilt and the house in a blaze this minute.”
She escaped from him, and, standing on tip-toe, reached the lamp which
hung from the roof and put it on the ground. The soldier caught her
again, and this time succeeded in kissing her.
“Ye may hang the fresh lamp up yourself,” said the girl. “I willna lay a
finger on it for ye now.”
Rubbing her mouth with her hand, as if to wipe away the kiss forced on
her, she shambled down the passage, taking the first lamp with her. The
sentry heard her shuffle up the stairs again, making a great deal of
noise with her clattering shoes. Then he hung the fresh lamp on his hook
and stood back again against the door of the cellar.
It was very dull work standing all night in the passage, but he was
determined to keep awake. Neal Ward had slipped through the fingers of
Captain Twinely’s men twice. There was not much chance of his escaping
this time, but the sentry, for the honour of his corps, and for the sake
of the personal ill-will that every member of it bore to the prisoner,
was not going to run the smallest risk. Earlier in the night he had
amused himself by shouting insults of various kinds through the door
of the cellar. Later on he had given the prisoner a vivid and realistic
description of the way in which men are hanged, but Neal had made no
sign of hearing a word that was said to him, so the occupation grew
uninteresting. Now he whistled a few of his favourite airs, speculating
on the amount of the fifty pounds reward offered for Neal’s capture
which would fall to his share, and estimating his chances of taking
some of the other United Irishmen for whom the Government had offered
substantial sums. Then he began to count the flagstones on the floor of
the passage. He had done this once or twice before, and had been able to
distinguish as many as twenty-five, which brought him more than half way
to the staircase, before the light failed him. This time he could
only count twenty. Beyond that the floor lay dimly visible, but it was
impossible to distinguish one stone from another.
“Damn it,” He growled, “this isn’t near as good a lamp as the first.”
He counted again, and only reached a total of eighteen slabs of stone.
He glanced down the passage, and found that he could not see the end of
it. He looked at the lamp. It was burning very low. It occurred to him
as an unpleasant possibility that the girl had taken away the wrong
lamp--had taken the one with the oil in it and left him the empty one.
He reassured himself. This lamp was a different shape from that which
hung in the passage when he first took his post as sentry. He made up
his mind that its wick must require to be turned up. Perhaps it had been
badly trimmed. The girl who brought it was evidently sleepy; she would
be very likely to forget to trim it. He stepped forward to where the
lamp hung. He paused, startled by a slight noise at the far end of the
passage. He listened, but heard nothing more. It was necessary to lift
the lamp off the hook before he could trim the wick. He laid his musket
on the ground and reached up to it. As he did so he heard swift steps,
steps of heavy feet, on the flagged passage. They were quite close to
him. He looked round and caught a glimpse of Maurice St. Clair in the
act of springing on him. He was grappled by strong arms and flung to the
ground before he could do anything to defend himself. Maurice, kneeling
on him, put the point of a knife to his throat.
“If you speak one word or utter the slightest sound I cut your throat at
once.”
The unfortunate soldier lay still. Maurice, the knife still pricking the
man’s throat, crept slowly off him and knelt on the floor. With his left
hand he unclasped the soldier’s belt.
“Now,” he said, “turn over on your face, and put your hands behind you.”
The man obeyed, and felt the sharp point of the knife slip slowly round
his neck until it rested behind his ear.
“‘Remember,” said Maurice, “one good cut downwards now and you are a
dead man. Put your hands together.”
He pulled the leather belt clear with his left hand, then, dropping the
knife, he knelt on the man’s back and gripped his wrists.
In a moment he had them securely strapped together with the leather
belt. Then he stuffed a cloth into the soldier’s mouth and bound it
there with a stout cord tied tight round his head. Another cord--Maurice
had come well supplied with what he was likely to want--was made fast
round the man’s legs. Then Maurice stood up and surveyed his handiwork.
He laughed softly, well satisfied. The lamp flickered and went out.
“It’s a good job for you,” said Maurice, “that the light lasted as long
as it did. I couldn’t have gagged and tied you in the dark. I should
have been obliged to kill you.”
He felt along the wall until he came to the cellar door and found the
keyhole. After much fumbling he got the key in, turned it, and pushed
open the door.
“Neal,” he called. “Neal, are you there?”
“Yes. Who is that? Is it you, Maurice? It’s like your voice.”
Stumbling forward through the pitch dark, Neal gripped Maurice at last.
Hand in hand they went cautiously along the passage and up the stairs.
“Come in here,” said Maurice. “There’s a light here, and I want to
see if it’s really you. Oh! you needn’t be afraid. There are plenty of
soldiers, but they won’t hurt you. They’re all dead drunk. Now, Neal,
there’s lots to eat and drink. Sit down and make the best of your time.
You’ll want a square meal. I’ll just take a light and go down to that
fellow in the passage. I’ve got a few fathom of good, stout rope--I’m
not sure that it isn’t the bit that they meant to hang you with in the
morning--and I’ll fix him up so that he’ll neither stir nor speak till
some one lets him loose.”
In a quarter of an hour Maurice returned.
“The next thing, Neal, is to get you out of this town. It’s full of
soldiers, and there are sentries at every turn, but I’ve got the word
for the night, and I think we’ll be able to manage.”
He walked round the room peering carefully at the drunken men who lay on
the floor.
“‘Here’s a fellow that’s about your size, Neal. He seems to be a captain
of some sort, a yeomanry captain by the look of him. I’m hanged if it
isn’t our friend Twinely again. We’ll take the liberty of borrowing
his uniform for you. There’ll be a poetic justice about that, and he’ll
sleep all the better for having these tight things off him.”
He knelt down and stripped Captain Twinely.
“Now then, quick, Neal. Don’t waste time. Daylight will be on us before
we know where we are. Take your own things with you in a bundle. Change
again somewhere when you get out of the town, you’ll be safer travelling
in your own clothes. Take some food with you. Here, I’ll make up a
parcel while you dress. I’ll stick in a bottle of wine. Now you’re
right. Walk boldly past the sentries. If you’re challenged curse the man
that challenges you. The word for the night is ‘Clavering.’ Travel by
night as much as you can. Keep off the main roads. Strike straight for
home. It’ll be a queer thing if you can’t lie safe round Dunseveric for
a few days till we get you out of the country.”