The Yeoman Adventurer
He was getting no nearer to the object of his visit, and, perhaps
thinking it would be well to humour me, he fetched a horn and tried our
Hanyards ale. This gave me a chance of taking stock of him.
He was a thin, wiry man of middle height and middle age. Such a face I
had never seen. The first sight of it made me suck in my breath as if I
had touched the edge of a razor. The bridge half of his nose had gone, or
he had never had it, and the lower half was stuck like a dab of putty
midway between mouth and eyebrows. His little, beady eyes were set in
large, shallow sockets, giving him an owl-like appearance. A mouth
originally large enough, and thickly lipped like a negro's, had been
extended, as it seemed, to his left ear by a savage sword slash which had
healed very badly. He had an air of mean, perky intelligence, as of one of
low rank and no breeding who had for many years been accustomed to cringe
to the great and domineer over smaller fry than himself. Some sort of
military rank he had, judging by his stained and frayed but once gaudy
jacket. He carried a tuck of unusual length, stretching along his left
side from heel to armpit, and a couple of pistols were stuck in his belt.
He put down the horn, smacked his lips, and began:
"Master Wheatman, I am searching for a Jacobite spy--a woman. We took her
father up at the 'Barley Mow,' and I learned from a man of yours that the
daughter was at his mother's ale-house down the road. She is not there,
and left to walk to meet her father, she said. She has certainly not done
that, and I have called to see if she is hiding here or hereabouts."
"By gad, we'll nab her if she is," said I heartily. "She's not been
through that gate in the last half-hour, for it takes me that to drink yon
jug dry, and I started with it full. But I'll ask the maids. Mother and
our Kate are at the parson's yonder, gaping at you chaps. I dare say you
saw them."
"No," said he doubtingly.
One of the men stepped out of the porch, saluted, and, being bidden to
speak, informed his officer that he had seen Lord Brocton and Mr. Cornet
Dobson talking to two ladies.
"That'd be they," I said, and going with unsteady steps to the door, I
vigorously shouted, "Jin, Moll, Jin, Moll, come here! They're in the
dairy," I added by way of explanation.
The crucial moment came. Jane and 'Moll' scurried across the yard like
rabbits, but stopped at the porch door with well-simulated surprise at the
sight of the dragoons.
"Gom, I thawt 'e'd set the house a-fire," said Jane thankfully,
addressing the company at large, and she bravely bustled through and
shrilled at me, "At it again, when your mother's out; y'd better get off
to bed afore she comes in. She'll drunk yer."
Jane's acting was so much better than mine that I nearly lost my head at
being thus crudely accused before 'Moll,' but she went on remorselessly,
addressing the dragoon, "Dunna upset him for God's sake, Master Squaddy.
'E'm a hell-hound when 'e'm gotten a sup of beer in'im."
"Don't trouble, my good girl. I'm used to his sort. Leave him to me and
answer my questions. The truth or the jail, my girl."
"Yow," sniffed Jane, "he'd snap yow in two like a carrot. Bed's best
place for 'im. He's as wet as thatch with his silly jacking."
"Jane," said I, "never mind me. I'm neither dry enough nor drunk enough
to go to bed yet. Captain here wants to ask you and Moll some questions.
Stop clacking at me like a hen at a weasel and listen to him."
Jane went through the ordeal easily, appealing to 'Moll' for verification
at every turn, and so cleverly that the latter appeared to be as much
under examination as herself. Moreover, Jane stood square in the
firelight, but so as to keep 'Moll' shouldered behind the chimney in
comparative gloom. They'd been churning all afternoon, the butter was
there to be seen, stacks of it; nobody had been in or near the yard; the
gate had never clicked once, and nobody could open it without being heard
in the dairy. She overwhelmed the dragoon with her demonstrations of the
impossibility of anybody coming up the yard without her or 'Moll' knowing
it.
"That's all right, Jane," said I, at length. "But she could easily have
got into the house or into the stables without you or Moll seeing her.
Let's all have a look for her. Unless she's small enough to creep into a
rat-hole, we'll soon find her."
Sergeant Radford--to give him his name and rank, which I learned later
from Jack Dobson--agreed to this, and in my joy at knowing that the ordeal
was over, I was on the point of forgetting that I was drunk till I caught
the clear eyes of madam fixed in warning on me. Jane acted as leader to
the two dragoons in overhauling the barns and stabling, while 'Moll,' the
sergeant, and I searched the house as closely as if we were looking for a
lost guinea. Of course our efforts were futile, slow as we were so as not
to outpace my drunken footsteps, and careful as we were so as to satisfy
the keen eyes of the sergeant, who was very evidently on no new job so far
as he was concerned. 'Moll' too seemed jealous of Jane's laurels, and went
thoroughly into the business. She and the serjeant peeped together under
beds and into closets, and she laughed brazenly at certain not very
obscure hints of his as to the great services I should render to the
search-party if I kept my eye on the house-place. She even said, "Master
Noll, don't 'e think as 'ow th' ale be gettin' flat downstairs? It wunna
be wuth drinkin' if y'ain't sharp."
The result was, that in about half an hour a thoroughly satisfied and
rather tired assembly filled the house-place, for the two scouts rode up
to the porch with the news that they, too, had found no trace of the
fugitive. With the sergeant's leave I sent the five dragoons into the
kitchen with the two maids to have a jug of ale apiece, while he stayed
with me in the house-place, to crack a bottle of wine.
I hoped, but in vain, that he would tell me news of the stranger's
father, but he was too wary for that, and I did not dare to ask him. He
made close inquiries as to the lie of the land hereabouts, and I pointed
out that there was a field-path leading plainly to the village from the
other side of the bridge and coming out at an obscure stile at the back of
the "Barley Mow." The spy might have taken that and become alarmed. She
could then avoid the village by another plain path, and so get ahead of
the troops on the Stafford road.
"But what for? Who's to help her there, Master Wheatman?"
"Ask me another, Captain," said I. "But a wise woman would know where to
find friends, and Stafford's full of papishes, burn 'em!"
"Ah!"
"There's Bulbrook and Pippin Pat and Ducky Bellows; there's old
sack-face, the parson there, as good as a papist, very near. You keep your
eyes on those big houses in the East Gate. As for me, look at that back
and breast and good broad-sword there. Damn me if I don't rub 'em up and
come and have a ding with 'em at these rebels. On Naseby Field they were,
Captain, long before your time and mine, but they did good work against
these same bloody Stuarts. Crack t'other bottle, there's a good fellow.
I'm dry with talking and wet with fishing, and it'll do me good."
I pressed him to stay and 'have a good set to,' but he refused, and after
drinking enough to keep me dizzy for a week, he nipped out and ordered his
men to horse. I walked to the gate with him. He thanked me for my help and
good cheer, and said it was quite clear that the spy was nowhere in or
near the Hanyards. I renewed my greetings to Cornet Dobson and even sent
my respects to his lordship. Off they rode, and it was with a thankful
heart that, remembering my happy condition in time, I stumbled back up the
yard to the house-place, where madam and beaming Jane were awaiting me.
CHAPTER III
MISTRESS MARGARET WAYNFLETE
Jane had taken the lady back to the house-place and was hovering around
her, with little of the grace of a maid-of-honour to be sure, but with a
heartiness and zeal that more than atoned for any lack of style. From
mother's withdrawing-room I fetched our chief household god, a small
ancient silver goblet, and, filling it with wine, offered it to the
stranger with what I supposed, no doubt wrongly, to be a modish bow. She
drank a little, and then, at my urging, a little more.
"Madam," I said, "I think you do not need to be 'Molly Brown' any longer.
Yon dragooner is quite certain that you are not here, and we can safely
take advantage of his opinion. As for you, Jane, you've done splendidly,
and I heartily thank you." I re-filled the goblet and handed it to Jane,
saying, "Drink, Jane, to madam's good luck."
The honest girl blushed with joy at my words, and as for drinking wine
out of the famous silver goblet of the Hanyards--such a distinction, as she
conceived it, was reward enough for anything.
"Thanks are payment all too poor for what you have done, sir," said
madam, "and any words of mine would make them poorer still. But, sir, I do
thank you most heartily. And you, too, Jane, have done me splendid
service. You are as brave and clever as you are bonny and pretty."
"Madam," said I, bowing low, "you are too kind to my services, which
have, indeed, been rather crudely performed."
"Not so," she replied, "but with shrewd, ready wit and certain judgment.
I cannot imagine myself in a tighter corner than at the bridge, and your
device had the effective simplicity of genius. Your plan here was, to be
sure, commonplace, but it, too, required caution and good acting, and you
and Jane supplied both. It was nicer than popping me into some musty
priest's hole, though I expect this ancient building has one."
I looked at the wall as half expecting the sword of Captain
Smite-and-spare-not Wheatman to rattle to the ground under this awful
insinuation.
"The only use our family has found for priests, madam," I said, "has
been, I fear, to hunt them like vermin. As a Wheatman of the Hanyards, I'm
afraid I'm a degenerate."
"You'll not even be that much longer if I keep you from getting into some
dry clothes. And, if Jane is willing, I will make myself myself. I would
fain be on."
With a sweet smile and a gracious curtsy, she followed the ready Jane
upstairs.
I removed all traces of what had taken place, and carried my precious
jack into the pantry, where I hung him in safety. He should be set up by
Master Whatcot of Stafford as a trophy and memento in honour of this great
day. I then hurried off to my room to attend to my own appearance, and
indeed I needed it, for I was caked with mud up to my knees and soaking
wet up to my waist. For the first time in my life I was grieved to the
bone at the inadequacy of my wardrobe, and even when I had donned my
Sunday best my appearance was undoubtedly villainous from the London point
of view. I feathered myself as finely as my resources permitted, but it
was a homely, uncouth yeoman that raced downstairs and awaited her coming.
I drew the curtains, lit the candles, kicked the fire into a blaze, and
built it up with fresh logs.
It would be impossible for me to set down the hubbub of thoughts and
ideas that filled my mind. I had been plunged into a new world, and
floundered about in it pretty hopelessly, I can tell you. The days of
knight-errantry had come over again, and chance, mightier even than King
Arthur, had commanded me to serve a sweet lady in distress. But I had had
no training, no preliminary squireship, in which I could learn how things
were done by watching brave and accomplished knights do them. I had lived
among the parts of speech, not among the facts of life. I could hit a bird
on the wing, snare a rabbit, ride like a saddle, angle for jack and trout,
strike like a sledge-hammer, swim like a fish--and that was all. I knew,