AWAY! AWAY!
A couple of weeks passed away thus, when one morning we were awakened
early by a clamour in the street. All Pembroke was in an uproar. All
that I could distinguish of the cries was one exclamation, “The French!”
Had they broken out, and were they going to sack the place? The panic
reminded me of our feelings at Fishguard in the spring, but seemed more
strange to me now, for in the interim I had become comparatively intimate
with the foreigners, and had lost my fear of them. I jumped out of bed,
dragged on a garment or two, and flung open my little lattice window.
“Where are the French?” I yelled.
“Away, away!” came the answer. “Clean gone.”
The idea occurred to me that if they had gone away clean they must have
been in a very different state to their usual condition; however, my
reflections were disturbed by the sudden appearance of my Aunt Jane; she
burst in head foremost.
“Where’s Eleanor?” she gasped.
“Where are the French?” I answered lightly, “Away, away!”
“Are ye cursëd, boy, or only dull?” {223} queried my angry relative.
“What d’ye mean?”
“Nothing,” I answered; “only I know no more about Nell than I do about
the French. Isn’t she in the shop?”
“In the shop! My patience—she isn’t in the house, nor hasn’t been for
hours. Her bed is cold; I doubt she never got into un, only
topsy-turvied un a bit.”
“Nellie really gone!” I was beginning to grasp the situation. “Oh, Aunt
Jane; she must have gone with Jack.”
“Who’s Jack, name o’ fortune? I heard tell of a Billy and a Tommy, but
norra Jack.”
“Oh, this wasn’t a Pembroke Jack, but Mounseer Jacques Roux, Esq., an
engineer.”
“A Mounseer!” Words failed my venerable relative; she sat down and went
off into hysterics, which brought Aunt Rebecca to the rescue, and in the
confusion I sidled down the stairs and escaped.
I made my way through the crowd to the Golden Prison, and here a light
dawned, and many things became clear to me. A crowd of people were
standing at what appeared to me to be a hole in the ground, about sixty
yards from the wall of the prison. I edged myself through the lookers-on
till I had reached the hole; it was one end of a subterranean passage,
the other end of which doubtless emerged—but a sick qualm came over me,
and to make matters worse at this moment I espied—and was seen by—Roche
the turnkey. He was looking very small, but assumed an air of bluster
when he perceived me.
“Arrest that young chap there,” he ordered his assistants. “He was a
helping o’ they sneaking scoundrels; I see un.”
In another moment the two men had me in tow, and being also propelled by
the crowd in a few minutes, I found myself inside the Golden Prison. I
did not find the place at all entertaining this time. However, there
were some magistrates there, and one of them, a Dr. Mansell, ordered the
men to loose their hold while he questioned me.
I told all I knew, and at the end was relieved, but mortified to hear him
say, “There is no occasion to detain him, the boy evidently knew nothing
about it. He was a young ass, but he is not the first of us who has been
befooled by a woman.”
At this there was a general guffaw in which I tried to join, but I felt
as small as Roche the turnkey. It appeared that all those pails and
bundles had been full of earth, stones, and mortar, which the men had
scraped out in making the tunnel. I went into the little inner room, and
there in the floor, just behind where Pierre Lebrun used to sit,
surrounded with bundles of straw, blocks of wood, etc., was the other end
of the subterranean passage. They had absolutely scratched through the
thick wall of the prison, and then grubbed like moles through sixty yards
of earth, with no other implement than the bones of horses’ legs.
I did not care for the remarks of the bystanders, and I got out of that
gaol as quickly as I could, but not before Dr. Mansell had asked me
another question or two.
“I hear Frances Martin has absconded,” he said. “Can you tell me
anything about Eleanor? She lives with your aunts, I think.”
“She is not to be found, sir,” I answered. “She is off with Jack, no
doubt.”
“Jack?”
“Mounseer Jacques Roux, the engineer.”
“Ah, the fellow who managed the tunnelling. Why do you pitch upon him?”
“I didn’t—she did, because he used to kiss her.”
“Kiss! By George, didn’t that rouse your suspicions?” cried the doctor.
“No, sir, they said it was the French way of shaking hands.”
“Go along, softy!” cried the crowd, and I went. But as I went I heard
the stentorian voice of Dr. Mansell proclaim—
“Five hundred guineas reward for the recovery of those two young women,
dead or alive!”
In a few hours handbills to this effect were posted all over the place,
and, as soon as practicable, in every town in the kingdom; by which the
names of Frances Martin and Eleanor Martin must have become well known.
Whenever I saw one of these placards it seemed to me as if I had had
something to do with a great crime, and that part of the five hundred
guineas would perhaps be given for my body some day—dead or alive.
I walked down to the shore to a little port on the outside of the town,
the very place to which I had been on the previous Sunday with Nell. I
remembered, with another qualm, the interest which she had taken in the
shipping, and how she had even begged me to ask some questions of the
sailors, who, as usual, lounged about where they could smell tar. She
said it was awkward for a girl to talk to these rough fellows, but that
it was a pleasant variety for a young man. So, of course, I asked all
the questions she desired about incoming sloops. I, thinking these
questions referred to some sailor sweetheart, took no account of the
matter at all. As we looked and talked we perceived a sloop in the
offing coming in. The men said she would be in shortly, and that she was
bringing culm for the use of Lord Cawdor’s household.
Nellie seemed very pleased and happy as she watched the sloop coming
rapidly nearer, a brisk breeze from the south filling her sails and
urging her onwards. The only boat actually in the harbour was Lord
Cawdor’s yacht.
His lordship’s yacht was now nowhere to be seen; the sloop was still
there, for owing to the breeze and the sailors’ hurry to get ashore on
Sunday, they had run her aground, and there she was hard and fast, but
not in the same state as on Sunday. A hundred Frenchmen had made their
escape, creeping through their tunnel and jumping out at the other end
like so many jack-in-the-boxes. Some of the fugitives made at once for
the yacht, some for the sloop, which, to their great disappointment, they
found aground. They boarded it, lashed the sailors’ hands and feet
(these men now recounted the story, each man to a listening crowd, which
we must hope was a slight solace for their sufferings)—they took compass,
water casks, and every scrap of food and clothing they could find; then
conveyed them aboard the yacht which they launched, and off they were.
The tied-up sailors had seen nothing of any women, but between darkness
and surprise it was a wonder they had noted as much as they had.
This was all that we could gather at the time; it was only enough to make
us very uncomfortable about the fate of the two rash girls. My position
was not made more comfortable by the constant reproaches of my two old
aunts, who seemed to think me in some way responsible for Nell’s
escapade. Altogether I was not sorry that it was decided to send me back
at once to St. David’s; school was better than scorn. But the very night
before I left Pembroke, my uncomfortable feelings were doomed to be
deepened. The stern of the yacht was washed ashore with other timbers,
on one of which his lordship’s name was inscribed. There could be little
doubt of the fate of those on board. The weather had been rough and
foggy, and these French soldiers were probably little skilled in
navigation. So I departed to St. David’s with a heavy heart.
Some weeks passed in the usual course of classics and mathematics rammed
in by main force, when one day there came a letter to me in Aunt Jane’s
handwriting. I was surprised, for my aunts were not given to
composition; but on opening the envelope I found Aunt Jane had
written—nothing. She had merely enclosed, oh, greater surprise, a
foreign letter. I had never had, and never expected to have, a foreign
correspondent. What language would he write in—a quick hope flashed
through me that it might not be Latin, any other I would give up quietly.
I opened the letter and perceived it was in English. It ran as follows:—
“DEAR MASTR DANL,—I hope as this finds you well as it leaves me at
present. You was main good to we, so I pens this line to say as I am
no longer Eleanor Martin but Madam Roux. [Oh joy! I didn’t care
what her name was as long as she wasn’t drowned.] Yes, me and Jack
have married, only he likes it writ Jacques which is a mort of
trouble. Howsomever we gets along lovely so likewise do Frances and
her young man Peter which were a commisser and she is now Madam
Lebrun. We did a main lot for they lads—which they was grateful.
Praps you’d like to hear that after we got safe away in his ludship’s
yat, after you’d kindly helpd we to burrow out o jail, we come in for
three days fog. Short commons there was till we overtook a brig,
gave out as we was shiprackt and was took aboord, Fan and me dressed
as lads. That night we was too many for the crew of the brig, as
nocked under and us made them steer for France, so here we be. The
brig had corn aboord, so we wasnt clemmed. We let the yat go.
Hoping to see you soon, I remains,
“Your humbel servant to command,
“NELLIE.”
Her ending wish was granted some years after, when peace was settled
between England and France. Nellie and her husband, the engineer, came
back to Wales and settled for a time in Merthyr, where they opened a
large inn, he following his profession in the mines, both he and his wife
roasting me unmercifully when I went to stay with them (a full-fledged
curate), on the assistance I had once rendered to the French prisoners in
a mining operation; but I hope all will understand that this assistance
was unintentional on my part, and that I greatly condemn the unpatriotic
conduct of the sisters.
* * * * *
The Gresham Press.
UNWIN BROTHERS,
CHILWORTH AND LONDON.
NOTES.
{14} Laws, “Little England beyond Wales.”
{18} These letters are given in the narrative.
{26} “Biographie de Lazare Hoche,” par Emile de Bonnechose. Hachette,
Paris.
{36} Laws, “Little England beyond Wales.” Mason, Tenby.
{51} Cawl—leek broth.
{52} Cwrw da—good ale.
{80} “Taws pia hi,” a Welsh proverb.
{115} Dear Davy.
{129} A fact.
{154} Now in the possession of Mr. Brett, the well-known
artist.—EDITOR’S NOTE.
{209} _Crut_, probably a contraction of _creature_.
{223} _Dull_, stupid.