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The Dew of Their Youth, a novel by S. R. Crockett |
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Part 1 - Chapter 11. Agnes Anne's Experiences As A Spy |
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_ PART I CHAPTER XI. AGNES ANNE'S EXPERIENCES AS A SPY "Well, at first I did not think much about anything" (said Agnes Anne), "except keeping quiet and doing what Duncan did not believe I could do. But I knew the wood. It was not so dark as one would think, and once out of the echo of the house walls I could hear far better. I leaned against a larch, holding on to the trunk and counting the sticky rosettes on its trailers to keep me from thinking while I listened. Twice I thought I had made out exactly from which direction the sound came, and twice I found I was mistaken. But the third time I followed the ditch under the sunk fence till I came to the mound which is shaped like a green hat at the end next the house. The thudding came from there--I was sure of it. When I could hear men talking, I was (and I am not saying it to put Duncan in the wrong) more glad than afraid. "The bottom of the ditch was full of all sorts of underbrush--hazel and birch roots mostly--growing pretty close as I found when once I got there, but rustling horribly while I was getting settled. However, there was nothing for it, if I wanted to find out anything, but to go on. So on I went. I was close to the mound now, and could hear the voices. "'Quiet there a moment!' said some one, 'I'll swear I heard a noise in the ditch!' "And as I crouched something like a blade of a sword or maybe a pike came high above me stabbing this way and that. Twigs and leaves pattered down, but I was safe behind the stump of a fallen tree. Presently the steel thing I had seen glinting struck the dead and sodden wood of the tree-trunk, and snapped with a sharp tang like a fiddle-string--a hayfork it may have been, or one of the long thin swords such as are hung up in the hall. "But another and deeper voice--like that of a man somewhat out of breath, said gruffly, 'Better get the job done! 'Tis only a fox or a rabbit--what else would be out here at this hour?' "And then, with the noise of spitting on the hands, the sound of the heavy tool began again. It had a ring in it like steel on stone. I think they had been chopping something with a pickaxe and had got through. For now the clink was quite different, though that again might be because I was nearer. "'Have you found the passage? Surely it is long in showing?' "That was the first voice again, the better educated one, I take it. He spoke like a gentleman, like the General or even the Doctor himself, though there was much rudeness in the voice of the other when he answered him. "'D'ye think I am breaking my back over this stone-door for fun?' growled the man in panting gasps. 'If I imagined you were any hand at a tool, you should have a chance at this one quick enough!' "'Steady, Dick!' said the first, always in his pleasant tone, 'it can't be far away at the farthest now!' "'Hang it, it may not be there at all. Did you ever hear of a mouldy old castle but had its tale about a secret passage? And did anybody ever see one? Better make the woman speak, I tell you!' "'Well,' argued the first suavely, 'it may come to that, of course. But let us give this a good trial first. To it, Dick--to it!' "'Aye, "To it, Dick--to it!" And your own arm up to the elbow in your blessed pocket,' he grunted, and I could hear him set to work again with an angry snarl. 'If this doesn't fetch it--well--there's always the woman!' "'Aye--but it will do it this time,' said the man with the soft voice. 'I hear by the clink of the crow that you are nearly through. My uncle used often to tell me about this. The big green mound is the ice-house of Marnhoul. It was his father that made it, and the passage also to connect with the cellar. See where it drains sideways into that ditch. That is what makes the green stuff grow so rank about there!' "Between the noise of the heavy crowbar and the dispute, I ventured to edge a bit closer, so that at last I could make out the two men, and beyond them something that looked like a figure of a woman lying under a cloak. But all was under the dimness of the stars and the twinkling dew, so that I could see nothing clearly. "But what I had heard was enough, for in the middle of the worker's gasping and cursing there came a sudden crash and a jingle. "'She's through--I told you so. Uncle Edward was right!' cried the first and taller man, while the other only stared at the sudden disappearance of his tool, and stood looking blankly at his own empty hands. "'What's to be done now?' said the tall man. "'Lever it up with the nose of the pick!' growled the short thick man; 'here, you--hang on to that!' "And then I knew that the sooner Duncan and 'King George' were down in the cellar of Marnhoul House, the better it would be for our lives." * * * * * When Agnes Anne finished we sat a moment agape. But very evidently there was no time to be lost. They would be among us before we knew it, if once they got down into the passage. We tried to find out from Irma where the cellar was, but she was sunk in terrible thoughts, and for a long while she could say nothing but "Lalor Maitland--it is Lalor Maitland, come to kill my poor Louis!" And indeed it was difficult to get her aroused sufficiently to help us. Left to herself I do not doubt that she would have gone up-stairs and fled with the child in her arms in the hope of hiding him in the wood. At last we got it out of her that the keys of the cellar were in the great cupboard behind the door. She directed us to a double flight of broad stairs. Irma had only looked into the cellar when she first came, and had found it rifled, the barrels dry and gaping, full of dust, dry-rot and the smell of decay. But she too had heard her father tell of the passage to the ice-house, and how he and his brothers had used it for their escapades when the house was locked up and the keys taken to their father's room. We went down--I leading with "King George" under my arm and the two girls following. But on the stairway a sudden terror leaped upon Irma. While we were all down in the cellar, might not Lalor and his companion enter by the front door, or by some unguarded window. So she turned and ran back to the little boy's room to defend him with an old pistol I had found on the wall and loaded for her with powder and ball. Then Agnes Anne and I made our way into the cellar. We had taken with us the lantern, which we had hitherto kept covered, lest by the moving of the light about the house we might be suspected of being on our guard. Hastily I made the tour of the great cellar. The back of the place was full of the debris of ancient barrels, some intact, some with gaping sides, many held together with no more than a single hoop. But packed together in one corner and occupying a place about one third of the whole area of the floor was something very different. Tarpaulined, fastened together by ropes, and guarded from damp by planks laid below them, were some hundreds of kegs and packages--all, so far as I could see, marked with curious signs, and in some cases the names of places. One I remember, "Sallet Ooil--Apuglia," gave me a sense of such distance and strangeness, that for a moment I seemed to be travelling in strange countries and seeing curious sights, rather than going down to risk my life in Miss Irma's quarrel with men I had never seen. It was very evident that there could be but one place where the passage Irma had spoken of (on her father's information) could debouch upon the great cellar of Marnhoul. In the angle behind the mass of kegs was an open space of some yards square, so clean that it looked as if it had been recently swept. Beyond this again and quite in the corner, there was a step or two downwards, as if it were into the bowels of the earth. This was stopped with a door of stone accurately arranged and fitted with uncommon skill. And I could see at a glance that it was probably one of the same kind that the men whom Agnes Anne had seen were engaged in bursting by stroke of crow. I understood more than that. For there was all the winter in Eden Valley scarce any other subject of talk than the Free Trade (which is to say, plainly, smuggling), and concerning the various "ventures" or boats and crews attached to some famous leader engaged in it. There was, in fact, no particular moral wrong attaching to the business in Eden Valley or along the Solway shore high and low--rather a sort of piety, since the common folk remembered that the excise had first been instituted by that perjured persecutor of the Church, Charles II. Even the Doctor, though he denounced the practice from the pulpit in befitting words, did so chiefly on the ground that the attractions of Free Trade, its dangers even, carried so many promising young men forth of the parish, and a goodly proportion of them to return no more. But for all that, I never heard that he refused to partake of the anker of Guernsey which his lady found by chance in the milk-house among the creaming-pans, or by the tombstones of his predecessors in the "Ministers' Corner" of the kirkyard. I looked at the means of defence, and hidden among the packages at the back I found two good muskets and one or two very worn ones--yet all bearing the marks of recent attention. So, since the smuggled casks formed a kind of breastwork right round the steps--up from the passage that was blocked by the stone door--it came into my head that I could there set up a kind of battery and run from one to the other of them, firing--that is, if the worst came to the worst and the passage were forced. So, having plenty of powder and shot and the wrappings of the lace packages making excellent wads, I set about loading all the muskets. I knew that Agnes Anne would be afraid of what I was doing, having had a horror of firearms ever since, as a child, she had seen Florrie, our old dun cow, shot dead by Boyd Connoway to be our "mart" of the year, and salted down for the winter's food in the big beef barrel. Agnes Anne would never be induced to eat a bit of Florrie, though indeed she was very good and sweet, because forsooth she had been used to milk her and give her handfuls of fresh grass. Since then she had never forgiven Boyd Connoway, and had never been able to look upon a gun with any complaisance. Yet when I told her to stand back and keep away from the powder horn and the lantern (for it is none of the easiest to charge strange pieces in a dark cellar) she said that she would stand by "King George" while I was at hand--yes, and fire him off, too, if need were. Only I must show her how to pull the trigger, and also adjust the muzzle so as to bear on the steps by which the villains would come up! This I relate to show how (for the time being) Agnes Anne was worked upon. For, as all have seen, she was naturally of a very timorsome and quavering disposition. At any rate I did get the muskets, all five of them, loaded, and set in position with their noses cocked over the squared bulwarks of Mechlin and Vallenceens, of Strasburg yarn, and Italian silver-gilt wire. And I can tell you they looked imposing in the light of the lantern, though I was more than a little doubtful about some of them going off without blowing themselves up. But it was no time to cavil about small matters like that, and I said nothing about this to Agnes Anne, who, for her part, continued to glance along the barrel of "King George" at the stone door with the fixity of my father viewing a star through his large brass spy-glass. Only Agnes Anne, being unable to keep one eye shut and the other open, had to hold the lid of the unoccupied organ hard down with her left hand, as if it too were about to bounce out on us like the two men she had seen in the ice-house mound by the edge of the sunk fence. We waited a good while with the light of the lamp smothered--all, that is, but barely sufficient to give air to the flame. And I tell you our hearts were gigotting rarely. Even Agnes Anne had taken a sudden liking to "King George," and would not let him go as I proposed to her, now that all the other muskets were loaded and ready. "You would do better service with the lantern," I told her, "you could hold it up to let us see them better." But she answered that the lantern could take care of itself. She was going to do some of the real fighting, and so I should not scorn her any more. But I knew very well that it was only a kind of hysteria and would all go off at the dangerous moment. Down she would go on the floor like a bundle of wet rags! However, to encourage Agnes Anne (as one must do to a girl), I said that she was not to fire till she saw the white of their eyes. I remembered that my father, in speaking of some battle or other, told how the general had given his men that order, so that they might not miss. I thought it very fine. But Agnes Anne said promptly that she would not wait for the white of anybody's eyes. She would fire and run for it as soon as she saw their ugly heads coming up out of the ground. This shows how little you can do with a girl, even if she have occasional fits of bravery. And I do not deny that Agnes Anne had, though not naturally brave like myself and Miss Irma. It was anywhere between five minutes and a century before we heard the first stroke of the crow behind the barricade. It sounded dull and painful, as if inside of one's head. At first we heard no talking such as Agnes Anne had described at the entrance of the ice-house. Also, as they had been a good while on the way; I believe that they had found other difficulties which they had not counted upon in traversing the passage. But they were very near now, for presently, after perhaps twenty strokes we could hear the striker sending out his breath with a "Har" of effort each time he drove his crow home. It was very dark in the cellar, for we had covered the lamp more carefully and almost ceased to breathe. But we saw through certain chinks that our assailants had a light of some sort with them. We could discern a faint glimmering all round the upper portion of the stone, and stray rays also pierced at various places elsewhere. The long line of light at the top suddenly split and seemed to break open in the middle. There came a fierce "Hech" from the assailant, and the point of his crowbar showed, slid, and was as sharply recovered. Next moment it came again. "Lever it!" cried the gruff voice, "if you have the backbone of a windlestraw, lever!" And after a short, hard-breathing struggle, the stone door fell inwards, the aperture was filled with intense light, dazzling, as it appeared to us--and in the midst we saw two fierce and set faces peering into the dark of the cellar. _ |
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