I threw the jack across my shoulder and we started for the Hanyards. Madam offered no explanations, and I made no inquiries. It was obvious to me that the dragoons had gone on to the little hedge ale-house, a good, long mile away, where the road from the village struck into a roundabout road to Stafford. Here, in the "Bull and Mouth," Mother Braggs ruled by day and Master Joe by night, and here beyond a doubt the stranger lady had tarried while her father had gone on with the horses to the nearest smithy at Milford.
There was ample time to get to the Hanyards, but still, for safety's sake, we kept behind hedges as far as possible. She walked ahead, and I followed behind, water oozing out of my boots and breeches at every step, and the jack's tail flopping against my legs. Never had I gone home from fishing with such prizes. What pleased me most was her silence. It matched the trust in her eyes. Except for brief instructions as to the direction, no word passed until we gained the Hanyards from the rear, and I led her into the house-place unobserved by anyone.
"There is little time to talk," I began. "The dragoons are certain to come here, as this is the only house between the inn and the village. Your father is, you fear, a prisoner, and indeed it seems the only explanation of his absence. I do not ask why. I gather that there is no purpose to be served by your sharing his fate."
"Free, I may be able to help him. A prisoner, I should...." She stopped, hesitating.
"My Lord Brocton?" said I interrogatively. For the second time her face burned, and I saw in it shame and distress and fear. My lord was piling up a second account with me, and for humbling this proud beauty he should one day pay the price in full.
But it was time to act. I ran to the porch and roared out, "Jane! Jane! Where are you? Come here quick!"
Jane came running in from the kitchen. She stopped dead with surprise when she saw my companion, and could not even cackle on about the jack.
"Now, Jane, do exactly what I say. Take this lady upstairs and dress her as nearly like yourself as you can. It's good you are much of a height. Pack her own clothes carefully out of sight. Off, quick!"
They disappeared upstairs, and I watched the yard gate with eager eyes. No dragoons appeared, and in a short time madam and Jane were back in the house-place. Jane had done her work well. The great lady was now a fine country serving-wench, her shapeliness obscured in a homespun gown that fitted only where it touched, her feet in huge, rough boots, her yellow hair plastered back off her forehead and bunched into one of Jane's 'granny caps,' and indeed totally hidden by the large flap thereof, which in Jane's case served the purpose of "keepin' the draf out'n 'er neck-hole" when she was at work in the dairy. For my share of disguising, I now rubbed together some ruddle and dry soil, and the mixture gave a necessary touch of coarseness to her hands. Altogether she was changed out of recognition, even if, which was not the case, any of her pursuers had seen her previously.
"Jane," said I, "her name is Molly Brown. She has served here two years. Her mother lives at Colwich. Have you both got that?"
"Molly Brown--two years--mother at Colwich," said madam with a smile, and Jane repeated it after her.
"Now, Molly," said I, with an answering smile, "Jane will start you churning. It's an easy job. You just turn a handle till the butter comes. Do not flatter yourself that you'll get any butter, but I'll forgive you that. And, having learned from Jane how to pretend to do it, you need not churn in earnest till the dragoons ride into the yard. Listen to Jane, and you, Jane, for the next ten minutes, teach the lady how to talk Staffordshire fashion."
"Rate y'are, Master Noll," said Jane, who was plainly bursting with the importance of her task.
"First lesson, madam," said I. "'Rate y'are,' not 'Right you are!' It was not Mr. Pope's manner of speech, but it will suit your circumstances better. Off to the dairy, and leave the dragoons to me!"
"Rate y'are, Master Noll," said madam, and, our anxieties notwithstanding, we both joined in Jane's rattle of laughter.
They went off to the dairy, and I began my own preparations. I displayed the great jack in full view on the table, forestalling Kate's housewifely objections by disposing him on an old coat of mine, so that he should not mess the table. In the house-place he looked much finer and longer than in the open air, and I gloated over him as he lay there. I longed to change my clothes, not so much for comfort's sake as to cut a better figure in her eyes; but I dared not run the risk of not being at hand when the dragoons arrived. I drew a quart jug of ale, threw most of it away, got down a horn drinking-cup, drank a little, spilled some down my clothes, slopped some on the table, made up the fire, and sat down to wait. It was now about half-past three, the straw-coloured sun was perching on the hill-tops, and darkness would soon be drawing on apace.
For perhaps a quarter of an hour I sat there, living over again the precious minutes under the bridge, when the clatter of hoofs awakened me to the realities of the situation. Peeping cautiously past the edge of the blind, I saw the dragoons--there were six of them--ride up to the gate. Sharp orders rang out, and three of the men dismounted, including him who had given the orders, and came up the yard. One stayed at the gate to mind the horses, and the other two trotted off on the scout round the fields near the farm.
I slipped back to my chair, and let my chin drop on my chest, as if I were dozing in drink.
Some one said at the porch door, "In the King's name!" I took no notice, and they crowded, jingling and noisy, into the porch. Again sharp commands were given; the two men grounded their arms with a clang on the stone floor of the porch, and waited there. The man in command stepped forward into the firelight and said crisply, "In the King's name!"
It was idle to pretend any longer. I raised my head and blinked drunkenly at him. Then I filled the horn, sang thickly and with beery gusto, "Here's a health unto His Majesty," and said, "Fill up and drink, whoever you are, and shut the door. It's damned cold."
He had little, red, ferrety eyes, and they looked fiercely at me--fiercely but not suspiciously, I thought. He waved my hospitality aside, and said, "You are Oliver Wheatman?"
"Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards, Esquire, at His Majesty's service to command," I replied with great gravity, and filled another horn of ale. I might pretend to be drunk, but I could not, unfortunately, pretend to drink, and it was strongish ale. He made a motion to stop me--welcome proof that he believed me tipsy in fact--and said, "Master Wheatman, the less drunken you are, the better you will answer my questions."
"Sir," said I, draining off the horn, "I can drink and talk with any man living, and, drunk or sober, I only answer the questions of my friends. So get a horn off the dresser--I'm a bit tired--fill up, and tell me what you want. D'you happen to be of my Lord Brocton's regiment?"
"I am."
"Then you'll be as drunk as me before you've finished with the Hanyards. Our ale goes to the head most damnably quick, let me tell you. You tell my dear old butty, the worshipful Master Jack Dobson, that I've caught a jack half as thick and more than half as long as himself. Here it be. Fetch a horn, I tell you, and drink to me and the two jacks--Jack Dobson and this jack beauty here."
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.
