Lord Dunseveric and Maurice breakfasted together at eight o’clock on the
morning of Neal’s escape. They sat in the room where Lord O’Neill lay,
and had a table spread for them beside the window. It was impossible
to eat a meal in any comfort elsewhere in the inn. Indeed, but for
the special exertions of the master and his maid it would have been
difficult to get food at all. Maurice was triumphant and excited. Since
Neal had not been brought back it was reasonable to suppose that he had
made good his escape out of the town, and there was every hope that he
would get safe to the coast. Once there he had friends enough to feed
him, and hiding-places known to few, and almost inaccessible to soldiers
or yeomen.
Lord Dunseveric asked no questions about Maurice’s doings in the night.
He felt perfectly confident that Neal had got off somehow. The details
of the business he would hear later on. For the present he preferred to
know nothing about them.
An officer entered the room and handed a letter to Lord Dunseveric.
It was a request, in civil language enough, that he would meet General
Clavering in the public room of the inn at nine o’clock, and that
Maurice would accompany his father.
General Clavering sat at the head of the table when Lord Dunseveric and
Maurice entered. Three or four of the senior officers of the regular
troops sat with him. Captain Twinely, in a suit of clothes he had
borrowed from the master of the inn, and one of his men, stood near the
fireplace. The room had been cleared of the drunken sleepers, but a good
deal of the _débris_ of their revel--empty bottles, broken glasses, and
little pools of spilt wine--were still visible on the floor.
“I have to announce to you, Lord Dunseveric,” said the general, “that
the prisoner who was confined in the inn cellar last night, Neal Ward,
has escaped.”
Lord Dunseveric bowed, and smiled slightly. His eye lighted on Captain
Twinely, and his smile broadened. The landlord’s suit fitted the captain
extremely ill.
“Indeed,” he said, “Captain Twinely seems to be unfortunate with regard
to this particular prisoner. This is, let me see, the third time that
Neal Ward has--ah!--evaded his vigilance.”
“The sentry who guarded the door of the cellar,” said General
Clavering, “was attacked, overpowered, bound, and gagged.”
“By the prisoner?”
“No, my lord, by some one who assisted the prisoner to escape, who,
after dealing with the sentry as I have described, unlocked the door of
the cellar with a key, the duplicate of that which Captain Twinely had
in his pocket. This man and the prisoner subsequently stripped Captain
Twinely of his uniform, and, as I learn from my sentries, Neal Ward
passed through our lines in the disguise of a captain of yeomanry.”
“You surprise me,” said Lord Dunseveric, “a daring stratagem; a
laughable scheme, too. I trust you took no cold, Captain. I confess that
I should have liked to have seen you in your shirt tails this morning.
You were, I presume,” he stirred a little heap of broken glass with his
foot as he spoke, “_vino gravatus_ when they relieved you of your tunic.
But what has all this to do with me?”
“Merely this,” said General Clavering, “that your son is accused of
having effected the prisoner’s escape.”
Lord Dunseveric looked at Maurice, looked him quietly up and down, as if
he saw him then for the first time.
“I can believe,” he said, “that my son might overpower the sentry. He
is, as you see, a young man of considerable personal strength, but
I should be surprised to learn that he dressed the prisoner in the
captain’s uniform. I may be misjudging my son, but I have hitherto
regarded him as somewhat deficient in humour. You must admit, General
Clavering, that only a man with a feeling for the ridiculous would have
thought of----”
“It will be better for you to hear what the sentry has to say, my lord,
and I beg of you to regard the matter seriously. I assure you it will
not bear joking on. The rescue of a prisoner is a grave offence. Captain
Twinely, kindly order your man to tell his story.”
“Since I am not a prisoner at the bar,” said Lord Dunseveric, “I shall,
with your permission, sit down. As to the seriousness of the business
in hand, I confess that for the moment the thought of the worthy Twinely
waking this morning not only with a splitting headache but without
a pair of breeches on him keeps the humorous side of the situation
prominent in my mind.”
The sentry told his story. To Maurice’s great relief, he omitted all
mention of the girl who had supplied the lamp which so conveniently
burnt low, but he had recognised Maurice and was prepared to swear to
his identity.
“No doubt,” said General Clavering, “you will wish to cross-question
this man, my lord.”
Lord Dunseveric yawned.
“I think that quite unnecessary,” he said, “a much simpler way of
arriving at the truth of the story will be to ask my son whether
he rescued the prisoner or not. Maurice, did you bind and gag this
excellent trooper?”
“Yes.”
“Did you subsequently release Neal Ward from the cellar?”
“Yes.”
“Now, Maurice, be careful about your answer to my next question. Did you
take the clothes off Captain Twinely?”
“Yes.”
“And was that part of the scheme entirely your own? Did the idea
originate with you or with the prisoner whom you helped to escape?”
“It was my idea.”
“I apologise to you, Maurice. I did you an injustice. You have a certain
sense of humour. It is not perhaps of the most refined kind, still you
have, no doubt, provided a joke which will appeal to the officers’ mess
in Belfast, Dublin, and elsewhere; which will be told after dinner in
most houses in the county for many a year to come. And now, General
Clavering, I presume there is no more to be said. I wish you good
morning.”
“Stop a minute,” said General Clavering, “you cannot seriously suppose
that your son, simply because he is your son, is to be allowed to
interfere with the course of justice?”
“Of justice?” asked Lord Dunseveric in a tone of mild surprise.
“With His Majesty’s officers in the execution of their duty--that is,
to release prisoners whom I have condemned--I, the general in command
charged with the suppression of an infamous rebellion. Your son, my
lord, will have to abide the consequences of his acts.”
“Maurice,” said Lord Dunseveric, “it is evident that you are going to
be hanged. General Clavering is going to hang you. It is really
providential that you didn’t steal his breeches. He would probably have
flogged you first and hanged you afterwards if you had.”
“Damn your infernal insolence,” broke out General Clavering furiously,
“You think that because you happen to be a lord and own a few dirty
acres of land that you can sit there grinning like an ape and insulting
me. I’ll teach you, my lord, I’ll teach you. By God, I’ll teach you and
every other cursed Irishman to speak civil to an English officer. You
shall know your masters, by the Almighty, before I’ve done with you.”
Lord Dunseveric rose to his feet. He fixed his eyes on General
Clavering, and spoke slowly and deliberately.
“I ride at once to Dublin,” he said. “I shall lay an account of your
doings and the doings of your troops before His Majesty’s representative
there. I shall then cross to England, approach my Sovereign and yours,
General Clavering. I shall see that justice is done between you and the
people you have outraged and harried. As to my son, I have work for him
to do. I shall make myself responsible for his appearance before a court
of justice when he is summoned. In the meanwhile, I neither recognise
you as my master nor your will as my law. I appeal to the constitutional
liberties of this kingdom of Ireland and to the right of every citizen
to a fair trial before a jury of his fellow-countrymen. You shall not
arrest, try, or condemn my son otherwise than as the law allows.”
General Clavering grew purple in the face. He stuttered, cursed, laid
his hand on his sword, and took a step forward. Lord Dunseveric, his
hands behind his back, a sneer of contempt on his face, looked straight
at the furious man in front of him.
“Do you propose,” he said, “to stab me and then hang my son?”
This was precisely what General Clavering would have liked to do, but he
dared not. He turned instead on Captain Twinely.
“Let me tell you, sir, that you’re a damned idiot, an incompetent
officer, a besotted fool, and your men are a lot of cowardly loons.
You had this infernal young rebel safe and you let him go. You not only
allowed him to walk off, but you actually provided him with a suit of
clothes to go in. You’re the cause of all the trouble. Get your troop
to horse. Scour the country for him. Don’t leave a house that you don’t
search, nor a bed that you don’t run your sword through. Don’t leave a
dung-heap without raking it, or a haystack that you don’t scatter. Get
that man back for me, wherever he hides himself, or, by God, I’ll have
you shot for neglect of duty in time of war, and your damned yeomen
buried alive in the same grave with you.”
The general was still bent on teaching the Irish to know their masters
and making good his boast of reducing them to the tameness of “gelt
cats.” With Captain Twinely, at least, he seemed likely to succeed.
“I can imagine, Maurice,” said Lord Dun-severic, when they were alone
together again, “that Captain Twinely and his men have at last got a job
to suit them. Sticking swords through old wives feather beds is safer
work than sticking them through rebels. Scattering haystacks will be
pleasanter than scattering pikemen. Raking dung heaps will, I suppose,
be an entirely congenial occupation.”
His tone changed, He spoke rapidly and seriously.
“You will ride with me as far as Belfast. From there you must find some
means of communicating with the captain of that Yankee brig of which you
told me. If necessary, go yourself to Glasgow and find the man. Pay him
what he asks and arrange that he lies off Dunseveric and picks up Neal.
You must then go home and see to it yourself that Neal gets safe on
board. It may not be easy, for the yeomen will be after him; but it has
got to be done. I go to Dublin as I said. I shall have some trouble
in settling this business of yours. It really was an audacious
proceeding--your rescue of the prisoner. It will take me all my time
to get it hushed up. Besides, I must use my influence to prevent bad
becoming worse in this unfortunate country of ours. By the way, did you
make any arrangement for the return of Captain Twinely’s uniform when
Neal had finished with it?”
“No, I never thought of that.”
“You ought to have thought of it. Poor Captain Twinely looks very odd in
the inn-keeper’s clothes, which do not fit him in the least.”