"O haste to aid, ere aid be vain."
_Scott_.
Though Johnnie's journey was over, his troubles were not at an end.
When he came to the first houses, the way seemed still to lengthen out
before him, and everything appeared to be still asleep, though the
daylight was coming in as brightly as a foggy morning allowed. Nor did
he know his way; he had only driven to a timber-yard once with his
cousin, and dined with him at a little public-house close by, and had no
more than a dim recollection of shops, which looked quite different now,
with all their shutters up. Only a milk-cart, coming in with full tins,
seemed to give a sign that people would want their breakfast some time
or other; and next appeared a very black sweep with his cart, and two
miserable little bare-footed boys running beside it, as black as the
silhouette over Mrs Thorpe's chimney.
Half-past five struck, and charwomen began to come out of side alleys,
baker's shops to take down their shutters. Johnnie ventured to ask one
of the apprentice boys doing so the way to the Royal George Hotel.
"D'ye want to bespeak the best apartments?" was all the answer he got,
as the lad stopped his whistling and looked superciliously at Johnnie's
battered, dusty working dress, and old straw hat.
He found he should only be laughed at and walked on, renewing his
question when he saw a good-natured-looking woman in a black bonnet and
stout canvas apron, apparently going out for a day's washing.
"Is it the Royal or the King George Tavern as you mean, my son?" she
asked him.
"Oh! the Royal--the one where the gentlemen goes," said Johnnie. "I've
got a message for one of 'em."
"Bless you, my lad, they won't never let you in at this time of
morning," said the woman.
"It's very particular," returned John. "I came off at night to tell
him."
She looked at him curiously. "And what might it be, young man! Some
one taken very bad, no doubt."
"No--not that," said John, and she looked so kind, he could not help
telling. "But he have got a machine, and Jack Swing is coming, and if
he don't come home to see to the poor ladies--"
"Bless me, and who may it be?"
"Captain Carbonel--out at Uphill."
"Never heard tell of the place."
"It's out beyond Poppleby."
"My! And you've comed all that way to-night?"
"The ladies are very good. He's a right good gentleman. All one to the
poor as to the rich."
"I say! You are a good young man, to be sure! I'd go with you and get
to the speech of Lavinia Bull, the chambermaid, what I know right well;
but if I'm not at Mrs Hurd's by six o'clock, she'll be flying at me
like a wild cat. Mercy on me, there it goes six! Well, if that fine
dandy, Boots, as is puffed up like a peacock, won't heed you, ask for
Lavinia Bull, and say Mrs Callendar sent you, and he will call her fast
enough."
John thanked her and was going off at once, but she called out, "Bless
the boy, he's off without even hearing where to go! Just opposite the
City Cross, as they calls it."
It was not much like a cross to Johnnie's mind, being a sort of tower,
all arches and pinnacles and mouldered statues, getting smaller up to
the spiring top; but he knew it, and saw the hotel opposite with all its
blinds down, nothing like astir yet, except that some one was about
under the great open doorway leading into a yard, half entrance, to the
hotel.
He could see a man brushing a shoe, and went up with "Please, sir--" But
he was met by, "Get off you young vagabond, we want none of your sort
here."
"Please, sir, I have a message for Miss Bull;" he hesitated.
"She ain't down. Get off, I say. We don't have no idle lads here."
"It's very particular--from Mrs Callendar."
"Old witch! Have she been burning any one's shirt fronts. I say, Jem,
you see if Lavinia is in the kitchen, and tell her old Callendar has
been burning holes in her stockings or collars, and has sent a young
scarecrow to tell her."
John opened his mouth to say it was no such thing; but the under
shoeblack, who was a sort of slave to Boots, made an ugly face at him,
and was gone, turning coach wheels across the yard. In another minute
Lavinia, a nice brisk looking young woman, had come up with, "Well,
young man, what has Mrs Callendar been after now?"
"Please, ma'am, nothing; but she said as how I was to ask for you. It's
for Captain Carbonel, ma'am, a message from Uphill--that's his home."
"Captain Carbonel--that's Number Seven," she said, consulting a slate
that hung near the bar. "He was to be called at eight o'clock. Won't
that do?"
"Oh no, no, ma'am," implored John, thinking that the captain was taking
his rest away from home. "It's very particular, and I have come all
night with it."
"You have got to call Number Five for the High Flier at half-past six,"
she said, turning to Boots. "Could not you take up word at the same
time?"
"Catch me running errands for a jackanapes like that," said Boots, with
a contemptuous shrug, turning away, and brushing at his shoe.
"Never mind him," said good-natured Lavinia. "What shall I say, young
man?"
"Oh, thank you, miss. Say that John Hewlett have brought him a message
from Uphill."
"Jack Owlet! Oh my! Hoo! hoo!" exclaimed the blacking boy, as soon as
Lavinia had disappeared up the stairs, dancing about with his hands on
his hips. "Look here, Tom,"--to a boy with a pail, who had just come
in--"here be an Owlet's just flown in out of the mud. Hoo! hoo! Where
did you get that 'ere patch on your back."
"Where you never got none," responded the other boy. "Mother stitched
it for him."
"Ay, sitting under a hedge, with her pot hung up on three sticks and a
hedgepig in it," added the younger Boots. "Come, own up, young gipsy!
Yer come to get a tanner out of Number Seven with your tales."
"I'm no gipsy," growled John; "but--"
"Come, come," called out Boots, "none of your row. And you, you
impudent tramp, don't ye be larking about here, making the lads idle.
Get out of the yard with ye, or I call the master to you."
The landlord might probably have been far more civil; but poor Johnnie
did not know this, and could only move off to the entrance of the court,
so that when Lavinia in another moment appeared and asked where he was,
Boots answered--
"How should I tell? He was up to mischief with the boys, and I bade him
be off."
"Well, Number Seven is ever so much put about, and he said he would be
down in a jiffy! So there!"
Lavinia held up her skirts, and began in her white stockings to pick her
way across the yard, while Boots sneered, and began brushing his shoe,
and whistling as if quite undisturbed; and in another moment Captain
Carbonel did appear, coming down the stairs very fast, all unshaven, and
with a few clothes hastily thrown on, and quite ran after Lavinia,
passing her as she pointed out beyond the entrance, where John was
disconsolately leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets,
feeling how utterly weary and hungry he was, and with uneasy thoughts
about his father coming over him.
"Oh, there you are, John Hewlett! What is it? No one ill?" exclaimed
the captain.
"No, sir; but,"--coming nearer and lowering his voice--"Jack Swing,
sir."
"Jack Swing! We had notice of him out at Delafield."
John shook his head, and looked down.
"What! Do you know anything, my boy? Here, come in--tell me!"
"Please, sir, they've laid it out to come to Greenhow this very day as
is, to break the machine and get the guns and money."
The captain started, as well he might; but still demanded, "How do you
know?"
John held his head down, most unwilling to answer.
"Look here, my lad, you've done well coming to warn me; but I must be
certain of your news before acting on it. We were to ride off to
Delafield to-day, and I must know if this is only a rumour."
"Aunt heard them," said John, between his teeth. "She heard them
planning it for to-morrow--that's to-day--and she laid it on me to let
you know to save the ladies from being fraught."
"Your aunt heard it?"
"Through the window in the back garden. They planned to get all the
chaps at Downhill and all, and go at the machine."
"The villains! Who did? No, I'll not ask that, my lad," said the
captain, knowing only too well who it must have been; "you have acted
nobly, and I am for ever obliged to you. Come in, and have some
breakfast, while I dress and report this, and see what is to be done.
You are sure there is time?"
"They was to go about at dinner-time to get the folks," John squeezed
out of his mouth, much against his will.
"Then there's time. Thank you with all my heart, John! I'll see you
again. Here,"--to a barmaid who had appeared on the scene--"give this
young man a hearty good breakfast and a cup of ale--will you?--and I'll
be down again presently. Stay till I come, Hewlett, and I'll see you
again, and how you are to get home! Why, it is twenty miles! Were you
walking all night?"
"Only I went to sleep a bit of the time when I was trying to make out
the milestone; I don't rightly know how long it was," said John, so much
ashamed of his nap that the captain laughed, and said--
"Never mind, Johnnie, you are here in the very nick of time; eat your
breakfast, and I'll see you again."
The good-natured barmaid let John have a wash at the pump with a bit of
yellow soap and the round towel, and he was able to eat his breakfast
with a will--a corner of cold pie and a glass of strong ale, such a
breakfast as he had never seen, though it was only the leavings of
yesterday's luncheon. Everybody was too busy just then to pay him any
attention, and he had time to hear all the noises and bells seem to run
into one dull sound, and to be nodding in his chair before he was called
by a waiter, with--"Ha, youngster, there, look alive! the gentlemen
wants you."
Now that sleep had once begun upon him, assisted by the ale, John looked
some degrees less alive, though far more respectable than on his first
arrival. He was ushered into the coffee-room, where three or four
gentlemen sat at one table, all in blue and silver, with the captain,
and as he pulled his forelock and bobbed his head, the elder of them--a
dignified looking man with grey hair and whiskers and a silver-laced
uniform, said--"So, my lad, you are come to warn Captain Carbonel of an
intended attack on his property?"
"Yes, sir," John mumbled, looking more and more of a lout, for he had
thought the captain would just go home alone to defend his wife and his
machine, and was dismayed at finding the matter taken up in this way,
dreading lest he should have brought every one into trouble and be
viewed as an informer.
"What evidence have you of such intentions?"
John looked into his hat and shuffled on his foot, and Captain Carbonel,
who knew that Sir Harry Hartman, the old gentleman, was persuaded that
Delafield was the place to protect, was in an agony lest John should be
too awkward and too anxious to shield his family to convince him. He
ventured to translate the words into "How do you know?"
His voice somehow made John feel that he must speak, and he said, "Aunt
heard it."
"What's that? Who is aunt?" said Sir Harry, in a tone as if deciding
that it was gossip; but this put John rather more on his mettle, and he
said, "My aunt, Judith Grey, sir."
"How did she hear?"
"Through the window. She heard them laying it out."
"She is bedridden," put in the captain; "but a clever, sensible woman."
"Whom did she hear or see?"
"She couldn't see nobody, sir. It was a strange voice," John was trying
to save the truth.
"Oh! and what did she hear?"
"They was planning to go round the place and call up the men--that's
to-day," said John.
"Are you sure it was to-day? Did she tell you she heard it?"
"Yes, sir. And," John bethought him, "there was a great row going on at
the `Fox and Hounds,' and when I came past Poppleby, a whole lot of them
come out singing `Down with the machines.'"
"That's more like it, if it was not a mere drunken uproar," said Sir
Harry.
"I suppose you did not know any of the voices?" said one of the other
gentlemen.
John could hold his tongue this time. "And you came all this way by
night, twenty miles and odd, to warn Captain Carbonel, on your aunt's
information?" said Sir Harry, thoughtfully. "Are you sure that she
could hear distinctly?"
"One can hear in her room talk in our garden as well as if it was in the
room," replied John.
"Well! you are a good lad, well intentioned," said Sir Harry. "Here's
half-a-crown to pay your journey back. We will consider what is to be
done."
John had rather not have taken the half-crown, but he did not know how
to say so, so he pulled his forelock and accepted it.
Captain Carbonel came out of the coffee-room with him, and called to the
hostler to let him lie down and rest for a couple of hours, when the Red
Rover would change horses there, and then call him, and pay for his
journey back to Poppleby.
So John lay down on clean straw and slept, too much tired out to put
thoughts together, and unaware of the discussion among the gentlemen.
For Sir Harry Hartman was persuaded that it was Delafield that needed
protection, and was inclined to make little of John Hewlett's warning,
thinking that it rested on the authority of a sick nervous woman, and
that there was no distinct evidence but that of the young man who would
not speak out, and only went by hearsay.
Captain Carbonel, who was, of course, in an agony to get home and defend
his property, but was firmly bound by his notions of discipline, argued
that the lad was the son of the most disaffected man in the parish, and
that his silence was testimony to the likelihood that his father was
consulting with the ringleader. The invalid woman he knew to be
sensible and prudent, and most unlikely either to mistake what she
heard, or to send her nephew on such a night journey without urgent
cause, and he asked permission to go himself, if the troop were wanted
elsewhere, to defend his home. Finally, just as the debate was warming
between the officers, a farmer came in from Delafield, and assured them
that all was quiet there. So the horses were brought out, and there was
much jingling of equipments, and Johnnie awoke with a start of dismay.
He had never thought of such doings. He had only thought of Captain
Carbonel's riding home, never of bringing down what seemed to him a
whole army on his father.