CHAPTER XIVTHE WHITE FREE TRADERS
But the country was by no means so craven as Lalor supposed. There were bold hearts and ready saddles still in Galloway. The signal from the top of the beacon tower of Marnhoul was seen and understood in half-a-dozen parishes.
Not that the young fellows who saw the flame connected it with the two children who had taken refuge in the old place of the Maitlands. In fact, most knew nothing about their existence. But their alacrity was connected with quite another matter—the great cargo of dutiable and undutied goods stored away in the cellars of Marnhoul!
There was stirring, therefore, in remote farms, rattling on doors, hurried scrambling up and down stable ladders. Young men on the outskirts of villages might have been seen stealing through gardens, stumbling among cabbage-stocks and gooseberry bushes as they made their way by the uncertain flicker of our far-away beacon to the place of rendezvous.
Herds rising early to “look the hill” gave one glance at the red dance of the flames over the tree-tops of Marnhoul great wood, and anon ran to waken their masters.
For in that country every farmer—aye, and most of the lairds, including a majority of the Justices of the Peace—had a share in the “venture.” Sometimes the value of the cargo brought in by a single run would be from fifty to seventy thousand pounds. All this great amount of goods had to be scattered and concealed locally, before it was carried to Glasgow andEdinburgh over the wildest and most unfrequented tracks.
The officers of the revenue, few and ill-supported, could do little. Most of them, indeed, accepted the quiet greasing of the palm, and called off their men to some distant place during the night of a big run. But even when on the spot and under arms, a cavalcade of a couple of hundred men could laugh at half-a-dozen preventives, and pass by defiantly waving their hands and clinking the chains which held the kegs upon their horses. The bolder cried out invitations to come and drink, and the good-will of the leaders of the Land Free Traders was even pushed so far that, if a Surveyor of Customs showed himself pleasantly amenable, a dozen or more small kegs of second-rate Hollands would be tipped before his eyes into a convenient bog, so that, if it pleased him, he could pose before his superiors as having effected an important capture.
The report which he was wont to edit on these occasions will often compare with the higher fiction—as followeth:—
“Supervisor Henry Baskett, in charge of the Lower Solway district, reports as follows under date June 30th: Found a strong body of smugglers marching between the wild mountains called Ben Tuthor and Blew Hills. They were of the number of three hundred, all well mounted and armed, desperate men, evidently not of this district, but, from their talk and accoutrement, from the Upper Ward of Lanerickshire. Followed them carefully to note their dispositions and discover a favourable place for attack. I had only four men with me, whereof one a boy, being all the force under my command. Nevertheless, at a placecalled the Corse of Slakes I advanced boldly and summoned them, in the King’s name and at the peril of their lives, to surrender.“Whereat they turned their guns upon us, each man standing behind his horse and having his face hidden in a napkin lest he should be known. But we four and the boy advanced firmly and with such resolution that the band of three hundred law-breakers broke up incontinent, and taking to flight this way and that through the heather, left us under the necessity of pursuing. We pursued that band which promised the best taking, and I am glad to intimate to your Excellencies, His Majesty’s Commissioners, that we were successful in putting the said Free Traders to flight, and capturing twenty-five casks best Hollands, six loads of Vallenceen, etc., etc., as per schedule appended to be accounted for by me as your lordship’s commissioners shall direct. In the hope that this will be noted to our credit on the table of advancement (and in this connect I may mention the names of the three men, Thomas Coke, Edward Loval, Timothy Pierce, and the boy Joseph McDougal, whom I recommend as having done their duty in the face of peril), I have the honour to sign myself,“My Lords and Hon. Commissioners of H. M. Excise,”Your obedient, humble servant,“Henry Baskett(Supervisor).”
“Supervisor Henry Baskett, in charge of the Lower Solway district, reports as follows under date June 30th: Found a strong body of smugglers marching between the wild mountains called Ben Tuthor and Blew Hills. They were of the number of three hundred, all well mounted and armed, desperate men, evidently not of this district, but, from their talk and accoutrement, from the Upper Ward of Lanerickshire. Followed them carefully to note their dispositions and discover a favourable place for attack. I had only four men with me, whereof one a boy, being all the force under my command. Nevertheless, at a placecalled the Corse of Slakes I advanced boldly and summoned them, in the King’s name and at the peril of their lives, to surrender.
“Whereat they turned their guns upon us, each man standing behind his horse and having his face hidden in a napkin lest he should be known. But we four and the boy advanced firmly and with such resolution that the band of three hundred law-breakers broke up incontinent, and taking to flight this way and that through the heather, left us under the necessity of pursuing. We pursued that band which promised the best taking, and I am glad to intimate to your Excellencies, His Majesty’s Commissioners, that we were successful in putting the said Free Traders to flight, and capturing twenty-five casks best Hollands, six loads of Vallenceen, etc., etc., as per schedule appended to be accounted for by me as your lordship’s commissioners shall direct. In the hope that this will be noted to our credit on the table of advancement (and in this connect I may mention the names of the three men, Thomas Coke, Edward Loval, Timothy Pierce, and the boy Joseph McDougal, whom I recommend as having done their duty in the face of peril), I have the honour to sign myself,
“My Lords and Hon. Commissioners of H. M. Excise,”Your obedient, humble servant,“Henry Baskett(Supervisor).”
The other view of this transaction I find more concisely expressed in a memorandum written in an old note-book belonging to my Uncle Tom.
“Baskett held out for forty best French, but we fobbed him off with twenty-five low-grade Rotterdam—the casks being leaky, and some packs of goods too long left at Rathan Cave, which is at the back of theisle, and counted scarce worth the carrying farther. The night fine and business most successful—thanks to an ever-watchful Providence.”
The reader of these family memoirs will perhaps agree with me that, if any one could do without an ever-watchful Providence troubling itself about him, that man was my Uncle Tom.
While, therefore, we in the House of Marnhoul were in the wildest alarm—at least Agnes Anne was—forces which could not possibly be withstood were mustering to hasten to our assistance. The tarry jackets of theGolden Hindwould doubtless have rushed the front door with a hurrah, as readily as they would have boarded a prize, but Lalor Maitland ordered them to bring wood and other inflammable material. At least, so I judge, for presently I could see them running to and fro about the edges of the wood. They had now learned the knack of keeping in shelter most of the way. But I did not feel really afraid till I saw some of them with kegs of liquor making towards the porch. There they stove them in, and proceeded to empty the contents on the dry branches and fuel they had collected. The matter was now beginning to look really serious. To make things worse, they were evidently digging out the bottom of our cellar-stair barricade, and if they succeeded in that they would turn our position and take us in the rear.
So I sent down Agnes Anne (she not being good for much else) to the cellar to see how things were looking there, bidding her to be careful of the lantern, and to bring back as many of the five muskets as she could carry, so that I might keep the fellows in check above.
Agnes Anne came flying back with the worst kind of news. A great flame of fire was springing up out of the well of the staircase into which we had tumbledthe barrels and boxes. It threatened, she said, to blow us sky-high, if there were any barrels of powder among the goods left by the smugglers.
At any rate, the flame was rapidly spreading to the other packages which had formed our breastwork of defence, and was now like to become our ruin.
For, once fairly caught, the spirit would flame high as the rigging of Marnhoul, and we should all be burnt alive, which was most likely what Lolar Maitland meant by his parting threatening.
“And it is more than likely,” Agnes Anne added, “that some of the barrels burst as we threw them down the stairs, and so, with the liquor flowing among their feet, the assailants got the idea of thus burning us out.”
At all events something had to be done, and that instantly. So I had perforce to leave Agnes Anne in charge of “King George” again, cautioning her not to pull the trigger till she should see the rascals actually bending to set fire to the pile underneath the porch of the front door. I also told her not to be frightened, and she promised not to.
Then I went down to the cellar. The heat there was terrible, and I do not wonder that Agnes Anne came running back to me. A pillar of blue flame was rising straight up against the arched roof of the cellar. I could hear the cries of the men working below in the passage.
“Hook it away—give her air—she will burn ever the brisker and smoke the land-lubbers out!”
Some few of the boxes in the front tier were already on fire, and still more were smouldering, but the straightness of the vent up which the flame was coming, together with the closeness and stillness of the vault, made the flame mount straight up as in achimney. I therefore divined rather than saw what remained for me to do. I leaped over and began, at the risk of a severe scorching, to throw back all the boxes and packages which were in danger. It was lucky for me that the smugglers had piled them pretty high, and so by drawing one or two from near the foundation, I was fortunate enough to overset the most part of it in the outward direction.
But the fierceness of the flame was beginning to tell upon the building-stone of Marnhoul, which was of a friable nature—at least that with which the vault was arched.
Luckily some old tools had been left in the corner, and it struck me that if I could dig up enough of the earthen floor or topple over the mound of earth which had been piled up at the making of the underground passage, the fire must go out for lack of air; or, better still, would be turned in the faces of those who were digging away the barrels and boxes from the bottom of the stair-well.
This, after many attempts and some very painful burns, I succeeded in doing. The first shovelfuls did not seem to produce much effect. So I set to work on the large heap of hardened earth in the corner, and was lucky enough to be able to tumble it bodily upon the top of the column of fire. Then suddenly the terrible column of blue flame went out, just as does a Christmas pudding when it is blown upon. And for the same reason. Both were made of the flames of the French spirit called cognac, or brandy.
Then I did not mind about my burns, I can assure you. But almost gleefully I went on heaping mould and dirt upon the boxes in the well of the staircase, stamping down the earth at the top till it was almost like the hard-beaten floor of the cellar itself. Ileft not a crevice for the least small flame to come up through.
Then I bethought me of what might be going on above, and the flush of my triumph cooled quickly. For I thought that there was only Agnes Anne, and who knows what weakness she may not have committed. She would never have thought, for instance, of such a thing as covering in the flame with earth to put it out. To tell the truth, I did think very masterfully of myself at that moment, and perhaps with some cause, for not one in a thousand would have had the “engine” to do as I had done.
When I got to the top of the stairs, I heard cries from without, which had been smothered by the deepness of the dungeon in which I had been labouring to put out the fire. For a moment I thought that by the failure of Agnes Anne to fire off “King George” at the proper moment, the door had been forced and we utterly lost. Which seemed the harder to be borne, that I had just saved all our lives in a way so original and happy.
But I was wrong. The shouting came not from the wicked crew of the privateersman, but from the shouting of a vast number of people, most of them mounted on farm and country horses, with some of finer limb and better blood, managed by young fellows having the air of laird’s sons or others of some position. None of these had his face bare. But in place of the black highwayman masks of the followers of Galligaskins, these wore only a strip of white kerchief across the face, though, as I could see, more for the form of the thing than from any real apprehension of danger.
Indeed, in the very forefront of the cavalcade I saw our own two cart horses, Dapple and Dimple, and the lighter mare Bess, which my grandfather used forriding to and fro upon his milling business. I had not the least doubt that my three uncles were bestriding them, though I never knew that there were any arms about the house except the old fowling-piece belonging to grandfather, with which on moonlight nights he killed the hares that came to nibble the plants in his cabbage garden.
Soon the sailors and their abettors were fleeing in every direction. But, what took me very much by surprise, there was no firing or cutting down, though there was a good deal of smiting with the flat of the sword. And at the entrance of the ice-mound I saw a great many very scurvy fellows come trickling out, all burned and scorched, to run the gauntlet of a row of men on foot, who drubbed them soundly with cudgels before letting them go.
Seeing this, I opened the window and shouted with all my might.
“Apprehend them! They are villains and thieves. They have broken into this house and tried to kill us all, besides setting fire to the cellar and everything in it!”
The men without, both those on foot and those on horseback, had been calm till they heard this, and then, lo! each cavalier dismounted and all came running to the door, calling on us to open instantly.
“Not to you any more than to the others!” I cried. For, indeed, I saw not any good reason. It appeared to me, since there was no real fighting, that the two parties must be in alliance, or, at least, have an understanding between them.
But Agnes Anne called out, “Nonsense, I see Uncle Aleck and Uncle Ebenezer. I am going to open the door to them, whatever you say!”
So all in a minute the house of Marnhoul, long sodesolate and silent, wherein such deeds of valour and strategy had recently been wrought, grew populous with a multitude all eager to win down to the cellar. But Agnes Anne brought up my three uncles (and another who was with them) and bade them watch carefully over the safety of Louis and Miss Irma. (For so I must again call her now that she had, as it were, come to her own again.)
As for me they carried me down with them, to tell all about the attempt to burn the goods in the cellar. And angry men they were when they saw so many webs of fine cloth, so many bolts of Flanders lace, so many kegs of rare brandy damaged and as good as lost. But when they understood that, but for my address and quickness, all would have been lost to them, they made me many compliments. Also an old man with a silver-hilted sword, who carried himself like some great gentleman, bade me tell him myname, and wrote it down in his note-book, saying that I was of too good a head and quick a hand to waste on a dominie.
And, indeed, I was of that mind (or something very much like it) myself. An old haunted house like Marnhoul to defend, a young maid of high family to rescue (and adopt you as her brother for a reward) did somehow take the edge off teaching the Rule of Three and explaining theDe Bello Gallicoto imps who cannot understand, and would not if they could.
CHAPTER XVMY GRANDMOTHER SPEAKS HER MIND
“There is no use talking” (said my grandmother, as she always did when she was going to do a great deal of it), “no, listen to me, there is no use talking! These two young things need a home, and ifwedon’t give it to them, who will? Stay longer in that great gaol of a house, worse than any barn, they shall not—exposed day and night to a traffic of sea rascals, thieves and murderers,they shall not——”
“What I want to know is who is to keep them, and what the safer they will be here?”
It was the voice of my Aunt Jen which interrupted. None else would have dared—save mayhap my grandfather, who, however, only smiled and was silent.
“Ne’er you mind that, Janet,” cried her mother, “what goes out of our basket and store will never be missed. And father says the same, be sure of that!”
My grandfather did say the same, if to smile quietly and approvingly is to speak. At any rate, in a matter which did not concern him deeply, he knew a wiser way than to contradict Mistress Mary Lyon. She was quite capable of keeping him awake two-thirds of the night arguing it out, without the faintest hope of altering the final result.
“The poor things,” mourned my grandmother, “they shall come here and welcome—that is, till better be. Of course, they might be more grandly lodgedby the rich and the great—gentlefolk in their own station. But, first of all, they do not offer, and if they did, they are mostly without experience. To bring up children, trust an old hen who has clucked over a brood of her own!”
“Safer, too, here,” approved my grandfather, nodding his head; “the tarry breeches will think twice before paying Heathknowes a visit—with the lads about and the gate shut, and maybe the old dog not quite toothless yet!”
This, indeed, was the very heart of the matter. Irma and Sir Louis would be far safer at the house of one William Lyon, guarded by his stout sons, by his influence over the wildest spirits of the community, in a house garrisoned by a horde of sleepless sheep-dogs, set in a defensible square of office-houses, barns, byres, stables, granaries, cart-sheds, peat-sheds and the rest.
“And when the great arrive to call,” said Aunt Jen, with sour insight, “you, mother, will stop the churning just when the butter is coming to put on your black lace cap and apron. You will receive the lady of the manse, and Mrs. General Johnstone, and——”
“And if I do, Jen,” cried her mother, “what is that to you?”
“Because I have enough to do as it is,” snapped Jen, “without your butter-making when you are playing the lady down the house!”
Grandmother’s black eyes crackled fire. She turned threateningly to her daughter.
“By my saul, Lady Lyon,” she cried, “there is a stick in yon corner that ye ken, and if you are insolent to your mother I will thrash you yet—woman-grown as ye are. Ye take upon yourself to say that which none of your brothers dare set their tongue to!”
And indeed there is little doubt but that Mary Lyon would have kept her word. So far as speech was concerned, my Aunt Jen was silenced. But she was a creature faithful to her prejudices, and could express by her silence and air of injured rectitude more than one less gifted could have put into a parliamentary oration.
Her very heels on the stone floor of the wide kitchen at Heathknowes, where all the business of the house was transacted, fell with little raps of defiance, curt and dry. Her nose in the air told of contempt louder than any words. She laid down the porridge spurtle like a queen abdicating her sceptre. She tabled the plates like so many protests, signed and witnessed. She swept about the house with the glacial chill which an iceberg spreads about it in temperate seas. Her displeasure made winter of our content—of all, that is, except Mary Lyon’s. She at least went about her tasks with her usual humming alacrity, turning work over her shoulder as easy as apple-peeling.
Being naturally lazy myself (except as to the reading of books), I took a great pleasure in watching grandmother. Aunt Jen would order you to get some work if she saw you doing nothing—malingering, she called it—yes, and find it for you too, that is, if Mary Lyon were not in the house to tell her to mind her own business.
But you might lie round among grandmother’s feet for days, and, except for a stray cuff in passing if she actually walked into you—a cuff given in the purest spirit of love and good-will, and merely as a warning of the worse thing that might happen to you if you made her spill the dinner “sowens”—you might spend your days in reading anything from theArabian Nightsin Uncle Eben’s old tattered edition to themightyJosephus, all complete with plans and plates—over which on Sundays my grandfather was wont to compose himself augustly to sleep.
Well, Miss Irma and Sir Louis came to my grandmother’s house at Heathknowes. Yes, this is the correct version. The house of Heathknowes was Mary Lyon’s. The mill in the wood, the farm, the hill pastures—these might be my grandfather’s, also the horses and wagons generally, but his power—his “say” over anything, stopped at the threshold of the house, of the byre of cows, at the step of the rumbling little light cart in which he was privileged to drive my grandmother to church and market. In these places and relations he became, instead of the unquestioned master, only as one of ourselves, except that he was neither cuffed nor threatened with “the stick in the corner.” All the same, this immunity did not do him much good, for many a sound tongue-lashing did he receive for his sins and shortcomings—indeed, far more so than all the rest of us. For with us, my grandmother had a short and easy way.
“I have not time to be arguing with the likes of you!” she would cry. And upon the word a sound cuff removed us out of her path, and before we had stopped tingling Mary Lyon had plunged into the next object in hand, satisfied that she had successfully wrestled with at least one problem. But with grandfather it was different. He had to be convinced—if possible, convicted—in any case overborne.
To accomplish this Mary Lyon would put forth all her powers, in spite of her husband’s smiles—or perhaps a good deal because of them. Upon her excellent authority, he was stated to be the most irritating man betwixt the Brigend of Dumfries and the Braes of Glenap.
“Oh, man, say what you have to say,” she would cry, when reduced to extremities by the obvious unfairness of his silent mode of controversy, “but don’t sit there girning like a self-satisfied monkey!”
“Mother!” exclaimed Aunt Jen, horrified. For she cherished a secret tenderness for my grandfather, perhaps because their natures were so different, “How can you speak so to our father?”
“Wait till you get a man of your ain, Janet,” my grandmother would retort, “then you will have new light as to how it is permitted for a woman to speak.”
With this retort Aunt Jen was well acquainted, and had to be thankful that it was carried no further, as it often was in the case of any criticisms as to the management of children. In this case Aunt Jen was usually invited not to meddle, on the forcible plea that what a score of old maids knew about rearing a family could be put into a nutshell without risk of overcrowding.
The room at Heathknowes that was got ready for the children was the one off the parlour—“down-the-house,” as it was called. Here was a little bed for Miss Irma, her washstand, a chest of drawers, a brush and comb which Aunt Jen had “found,” producing them from under her apron with an exceedingly guilty air, while continuing to brush the floor with an air of protest against the whole proceeding.
From the school-house my father sent a hanging bookcase—at least the thing was done upon my suggestion. Agnes Anne carried it and Uncle Ebie nailed it up. At any rate, it was got into place among us. The cot of the child Louis had been arranged in the parlour itself, but at the first glance Miss Irma turned pale, and I saw it would not do.
“I have always been accustomed to have him withme,” she said; “it is very kind of you to give us such nice rooms—but—would you mind letting him sleep where I can see him?”
It was Aunt Jen who did the moving without a word, and that, too, with the severe lines of disapproval very nearly completely ruled off her face. It was, in fact, better that they should be together. For while the parlour looked by two small-paned windows across the wide courtyard, the single casement of the little bedroom opened on the orchard corner which my grandfather had planted in the first years of his taking possession.
The house of Heathknowes was of the usual type of large Galloway farm—a place with some history, the house ancient and roomy, the office houses built massively in a square, as much for defence as for convenience. You entered by a heavy gate and you closed it carefully after you. From without the walls of the quadrangle frowned upon you unbroken from their eminence, massy and threatening as a fortress. The walls were loopholed for musketry, and, in places, still bore marks of the long slots through which the archers had shot their bolts and clothyard shafts in the days before powder and ball.
Except the single gate, you could go round and round without finding any place by which an enemy might enter. The outside appearance was certainly grim, unpromising, inhospitable, and so it seemed to Miss Irma and Sir Louis as they drove up the loaning from the ford.
But within, everything was different. What a smiling welcome they received, my grandfather standing with his hat off, my grandmother with the tears in her motherly vehement eyes, gathering the two wanderers defiantly to her breast as if daring all the world tocome on. Behind a little (but not much) was Aunt Jen, asserting her position and rights in the house. She did not seem to see Miss Irma, but to make up, she never took her eyes off the little boy for a moment.
Then my uncles were ranged awkwardly, their hands lonesome for the grip of the plough, the driving reins, or the water-lever at the mill in the woods.
Uncle Rob, our dandy, had changed his coat and put on a new neckcloth, an act which, as all who know a Scots farm town will understand, cost him a multitude of flouts, jeers and upcasting from his peers.
I was also there, not indeed to welcome them, but because I had accompanied the party from the house of Marnhoul. The White Free Traders had established a post there to watch over one of their best “hidie-holes,” even though they had removed all their goods in expectation of the visit of a troop of horse under Captain Sinclair, known to have been ordered up from Dumfries to aid the excise supervisor, as soon as that zealous officer was sure that, the steed being stolen, it was time to lock the stable door.
But when the dragoons came, there was little for them to do. Ned Henderson, the General Surveyor of the Customs and head of the district in all matters of excise, was far too careful a man to allow more to appear than was “good for the country.” He knew that there was hardly a laird, and not a single farmer or man of substance who had not his finger in the pie. Indeed, after the crushing national disaster of Darien, this was the direction which speculation naturally took in Scotland for more than a hundred years.
In due time, then, the dragoons arrived, greatly to the interest of all the serving lasses—and some others. There was, of course, a vast deal of riding about, cantering along by-ways, calling upon this or thatinnocent to account for his presence at the back of a dyke or behind a whin-bush—which he usually did in the most natural and convincing manner possible.
The woods were searched—the covers drawn. Many birds were disturbed, but of the crew of theGolden Hind, or the land smugglers by whose arrival the capture and burning of Marnhoul had been prevented, no trace was found. Even Kate of the Shore’s present address was known to but few, and to these quite privately. There was no doubt of her faithfulness. That had been proven, but she knew too much. There were questions which, even unanswered, might raise others.
Several young men, of good family and connections, thought it prudent to visit friends at a distance, and at least one was never seen in the country more.
One of his Majesty’s frigates had been sent for to watch the Solway ports, much to the disgust of her officers. For not only had they been expected at the Portsmouth summer station by numerous pretty ladies, but the navigation between Barnhourie and the Back Shore of Leswalt was as full of danger as it was entirely without glory. If they were unlucky, they might be cashiered for losing the ship. If lucky, the revenue men would claim the captured cargo. If they secured the malefactors they would sow desolation in a score of respectable families, with the daughters of which they had danced at Kirkcudbright a week ago.
In Galloway, though a considerable amount of recklessness mingled with the traffic, and there were occasional roughnesses on the high seas and about the ports and anchorages of Holland and the Isle of Man, there was never any of the cruelty associated with smuggling along the south coast of England. The smugglers of Sussex killed the informer Chater withblows of their whips. A yet darker tragedy enacted farther west, brought half-a-dozen to a well-deserved scaffold. But, save for the losses in fair fight occasioned by the intemperate zeal of some new broom of a supervisor anxious for distinction, the history of Galloway smuggling had, up to that time, never been stained with serious crime.
Meantime the two Maitlands, Sir Louis and Miss Irma, were safely housed within the defenced place of Heathknowes, guarded by William Lyon and his three stout sons, and mothered by all the hidden tenderness of my grandmother’s big, imperious, volcanic heart.
Only my Aunt Jen watched jealously with a half-satisfied air and took counsel with herself as to what the end of these things might be.
CHAPTER XVICASTLE CONNOWAY
Meanwhile Boyd Connoway was in straits. Torn between two emotions, he was pleased for once to have found a means of earning his living and that of his family—especially the latter. For his own living was like that of the crows, “got round the country somewhere!” But with the lightest and most kindly heart in the world, Boyd Connoway found himself in trouble owing to the very means of opulence which had brought content to his house.
On going home on the night after the great attack on Marnhoul, weary of directing affairs, misleading the dragoons, whispering specious theories into the ear of the commanding officer and his aides, he had been met at the outer gate of his cabin by a fact that overturned all his notions of domestic economy. Ephraim, precious Ephraim, the Connoway family pig, had been turned out of doors and was now grunting disconsolately, thrusting a ringed nose through the bars of Paradise. Now Boyd knew that his wife set great store by Ephraim. Indeed, he had frequently been compared, to his disadvantage, with Ephraim and his predecessors in the narrow way of pigs. Ephraim was of service. What would the “poor childer,” what would Bridget herself do without Ephraim? Bridget was not quite sure whether she kept Ephraim or whether Ephraim kept her. At any rate it was not to Boyd Connoway that she and her offspring were anyways indebted for care and sustenance.
“The craitur,” said Bridget affectionately, “he pays the very rint!”
But here, outside the family domain, was Ephraim, the beloved of his wife’s heart, actually turned out upon a cold and unfeeling world, and with carefully spaced grunts of bewilderment expressing his discontent. If such were Ephraim’s fate, how would the matter go with him? Boyd Connoway saw a prospect of finding a husband and the father of a family turned from his own door, and obliged to return and take up his quarters with this earlier exile.
The Connoway family residence was a small and almost valueless leasehold from the estate of General Johnstone. The house had always been tumbledown, and the tenancy of Bridget and her brood had not improved it externally. The lease was evidently a repairing one. For holes in the thatch roof were stopped with heather, or mended with broad slabs of turf held down with stones and laboriously strengthened with wattle—a marvel of a roof. It is certain that Boyd’s efforts were never continuous. He tired of everything in an hour, or sooner—unless somebody, preferably a woman, was watching him and paying him compliments on his dexterity.
The cottage had originally consisted of the usual “but-and-ben”—that is to say, in well regulated houses (which this one was not) of a kitchen—and a room that was not the kitchen. The family beds occupied one corner of the kitchen, that of Bridget and her husband in the middle (including accommodation for the latest baby), while on either side and at the foot, shakedowns were laid out “for the childer,” slightly raised from the earthen floor on rude trestles, with a board laid across to receive the bedding. There was nothing at either side to provide against theoccupants rolling over, but, as the distance from the ground did not average more than four inches, the young Connoways did not run much danger of accident on that account.
Disputes were, however, naturally somewhat frequent. Jerry or Phil would describe himself as “lying on so many taturs”—Mary or Kitty declare that her bedfellow was “pullin’ every scrap off of her, that she was!”
To quell these domestic brawls Bridget Connoway kept at the head of the middle bed a long peeled willow, which was known as the “Thin One.” The Thin One settled all night disputes in the most evenhanded way. For Bridget did not get out of bed to discriminate. She simply laid on the spot from which the disturbance proceeded till that disturbance ceased. Then the Thin One returned to his corner while innocent and guilty mingled their tears and resolved to conduct hostilities more silently in future.
In the daytime, however, the “Thick One” held sway, which was the work-hardened palm of Mistress Bridget Connoway’s hand. She was ambidextrous in correction—“one was as good as t’other,” as Jerry remarked, after he had done rubbing himself and comparing damages with his brother Phil, who had got the left. “There’s not a fardin’ to pick between us!” was the verdict as the boys started out to find their father, stretched on his favourite sunny mound within sight of the Haunted House of Marnhoul—now more haunted than ever.
But on this occasion Boyd Connoway was on his return, when he met the exiled Ephraim. His meditations on his own probable fate have led the historian into a sketch of the Connoway establishment, which, indeed, had to come in somewhere.
For once Boyd wasted no time. With his wife waiting for him it was well to know the worst and get it over. He opened the door quickly, and intruding his hat on the end of his walking stick, awaited results. It was only for a moment, of course, but Boyd Connoway felt satisfied. His Bridget was not waiting for him behind the door with the potato-beetle as she did on days of great irritation. His heart rose—his courage returned. Was he not a free man, a house-holder? Had he not taken a distinguished part in a gallant action? Bridget must understand this. Bridget should understand this. Boyd Connoway would be respected in his own house!
Nevertheless he entered hastily, sidling like a dog which expects a kick. He avoided the dusky places instinctively—the door of the “ben” room was shut, so Bridget could not be lying in wait there. Was it in the little closet behind the kitchen that the danger lurked? The children were in bed, save the two youngest, all quiet, all watching with the large, dreamy blue (Connoway) eyes, or the small, very bright ones (Bridget’s) what his fate would be.
He glanced quaintly, with an interrogative lift of his eyebrows, at the bed to the left. Jerry of the twinkling sloe-eyes answered with a quick upturn of the thumb in the direction of the spare chamber.
Boyd Connoway frowned portentously at his eldest son. The youth shook his head. The sign was well understood, especially when helped out with a grin, broad as all County Donegal ’twixt Killibegs and Innishowen Light.
The “Misthress” was in a good temper. Reassured, on his own account, but inwardly no little alarmed for his wife’s health in these unusual circumstances, Boyd began to take off his boots with theidea of gliding safely into bed and pretending to be asleep before the wind had time to change.
But Jerry’s mouth was very evidently forming some words, which were meant to inform his father as to particulars. These, though unintelligible individually, being taken together and punctuated with jerks in the direction of the shut door of “doon-the-hoose,” constituted a warning which Boyd Connoway could not afford to neglect.
He went forward to the left hand bed, cocked his ear in the direction of the closed door, and then rapidly lowered it almost against his son’s lips.
“She’s gotten a hurt man down there,” said Jerry, “she has been runnin’ wi’ white clouts and bandages a’ the forenight. And I’m thinkin’ he’s no very wise, either—for he keeps cryin’ that the deils are comin’ to tak’ him!”
“What like of a man?” said Boyd Connoway.
But Jerry’s quick ear caught a stirring in the room with the closed door. He shook his head and motioned his father to get away from the side of his low truckle bed.
When his wife entered, Boyd Connoway, with a sober and innocent face, was untying his boot by the side of the fire. Bridget entered with a saucepan in her hand, which, before she deigned to take any notice of her husband, she pushed upon the red ashes in the grate.
From the “ben” room, of which the door was now open, Boyd could hear the low moaning of a man in pain. He had tended too many sick people not to know the delirium of fever, the pitiful lapses of sense, then again the vague and troubled pour of words, and at the sound he started to his feet. He was not good for much in the way of providing for a family.He did a great many foolish, yet more useless things, but there was one thing which he understood better than Bridget—how to nurse the sick.
He disengaged his boot and stood in his stocking feet.
“What is it?” he said, in an undertone to Bridget.
“No business of yours!” she answered, with a sudden hissing vehemence.
“I can dothatbetter than you!” he answered, for once sure of his ground.
His wife darted at him a look of concentrated scorn.
“Get to bed!” she commanded him, declining to argue with such as he—and but for the twinkling eyes of Jerry, which looked sympathy, Boyd would have preferred to have joined the exiled Ephraim under the dark pent among the coom of the peat-house.
He looked to Jerry, but Jerry was sound asleep. So was Phil. So were all the others.
“Very well, däärlin’!” said Boyd Connoway to himself as his wife left the room. “But, sorrow am I for the man down there that she will not let me nurse. She’s a woman among a thousand, is Bridget Connoway. But the craitur will be after makin’ the poor man eat his poultices, and use his beef tay for outward application only!”
CHAPTER XVIITHE MAN “DOON-THE-HOOSE”
But Bridget Connoway, instant and authoritative as she was, could not prevent her down-trodden husband from thinking. Who was the mysterious wounded man “down-the-house”? One of the White Smugglers? Hardly. Boyd had been in the thick of that business and knew that no one had been hurt except Barnboard Tam, whose horse had run away with him and brushed him off, a red-haired Absalom in homespuns, against the branches in Marnhoul Great Wood.
One of the crew of theGolden Hind, American-owned privateersman with French letters of marque? Possibly one of the desperate gang they had landed called the Black Smugglers, scum of the Low Dutch ports, come to draw an ill report upon the good and wholesome fame of Galloway Free Trade.
In either case, Boyd Connoway little liked the prospect, and instead of going to bed, he remained swinging his legs before the fire in a musing attitude, listening to the moaning noises that came from the chamber he was forbidden to enter. He was resolved to have it out with his wife.
He had not long to wait. Bridget appeared in the doorway, a bundle of dark-stained cloths between her palms. She halted in astonishment at the sight which met her eyes. At first it seemed to her that she was dreaming, or that her voice must have betrayed her. She gave her husband the benefit of the doubt.
“I thought I tould ye, Boyd Connoway,” she saidin a voice dangerously low and caressing, “to be getting off to your bed and not disturbin’ the childer’!”
“Who is the man that had need of suchlike?” demanded Boyd Connoway, suddenly regaining his lost heritage as the head of a house, “speak woman, who are ye harbouring there?”
Bridget stood still. The mere unexpectedness of the demand rendered her silent. The autocrat of all the Russias treated as though he were one of his own ministers of state could not have been more dumbfounded.
With a sudden comprehension of the crisis Bridget broke for the poker, but Boyd had gone too far now to recoil. He caught at the little three-legged stool on which he was wont to take his humble frugal meals. It was exactly what he needed. He had no idea of assaulting Bridget. He recognized all her admirable qualities, which filled in the shortcomings of his shiftlessness with admirable exactitude. He meant to act strictly on the defensive, a system of warfare that was familiar to him. For though he had never before risen up in open revolt, he had never counted mere self-preservation as an insult to his wife.
“Whack!” down came the poker in the lusty hand of Bridget Connoway. “Crack!” the targe in the lifted arm of Boyd countered it. At arm’s-length he held it. The next attack was cut number two of the manual for the broad-sword. Skilfully with his shield Boyd Connoway turned it to the side, so that, gliding from the polished oak of the well-worn seat, the head of the poker caught his wife on the knee, and she dropped her weapon with a cry of pain. Jerry and the other children, in the seventh heaven of delight at the parental duel, were sitting up in theirlittle night-shirts (which for simplicity’s sake were identical with their day-shirts); their eyes, black and blue, sparkled unanimous, and they made bets in low tones from one bed to another.
“Two to one on Daddy!”
“Jerry, ye ass, I’ll bet ye them three white chuckies[1]he’ll lose!”
“Hould your tongue, Connie—mother’ll win, sure. The Thick ’Un will get him!”
Such combats were a regular interest for them, and one, in quiet times, quite sympathized in by their father, who would guide the combat so that they might have a better view.
“Troth, and why shouldn’t they, poor darlints? Sure an’ it’s little enough amusement they have!”
He had even been known to protract an already lost battle to lengthen out the delectation of his offspring. The Cæsars gave to their people “Bread and the circus!” But they did not usually enter the arena themselves—save in the case of the incomparable bowman of Rome, and then only when he knew that no one dared stand against him. But Boyd Connoway fought many a losing fight that his small citizens might wriggle with delight on their truckles. “The Christians to the lions!” Yes, that was noble. But then they had no choice, while Boyd Connoway, a willing martyr, fought his lioness with a three-legged stool.
This time, however, the just quarrel armed the three-legged, while cut number two of Forbes’s Manual fell, not on Boyd Connoway’s head, for which it was intended, but on Bridget’s knee-cap. Boyd of the tender heart (though stubborn stool), was instantlyupon his knees, his buckler flung to the ground and rubbing with all his might, with murmurings of, “Does it hurt now, darlint?—Not bääd, sure?—Say it is better now thin, darlint!”
Boyd was as conscience-stricken as if he had personally wielded the poker. But the mind of Bridget was quite otherwise framed. With one hand she seized his abundant curly hair, now with a strand or two of early grey among the straw-colour of it, and while she pulled handfuls of it out by the roots (so Boyd declared afterwards), she boxed his ears heartily with the other. Which, indeed, is witnessed to by the whole goggle-eyed populace in the truckle bed.
“Didn’t I tell ye, Jerry, ye cuckoo,” whispered Connie, “she’d beat him? He’s gettin’ the Thick ’Un, just as I told ye!”
“But it’s noways fair rules,” retorted Jerry; “father he flung down his weepon for to rub her knee when she hurt it herself wid the poker!”
Jerry had lost his bet, as indeed he usually did, but for all that he remained a consistent supporter of the losing side. Daily he acknowledged in his body the power of the arm of flesh, but the vagrant butterfly humour of the male parent with the dreamy blue eyes touched him where he lived—perhaps because his, like his mother’s, were sloe-black.
Nevertheless, in spite of mishandling and a scandalous disregard of the rules of the noble art of self-defence (not yet elaborated, but only roughly understood as “Fair play to all”), Boyd Connoway carried his point.
He saw the occupant of the bed “doon-the-hoose.”
He was a slim man with clean-cut features, very pale about the gills and waxen as to the nose. He lay on the bed, his head ghastly in its white bandagesrocking from side to side and a stream of curses, thin and small of voice as a hill-brook in drought, but continuous as a mill-lade, issuing from between his clenched teeth.
These adjurations were in many tongues, and their low-toned variety indicated the swearing of an educated man.
Boyd understood at once that he had to do with no vulgar Tarry-Breeks, no sweepings of a couple of hemispheres, but with “a gentleman born.” And in Donegal, though they may rebel against their servitude and meet them foot by foot on the field or at the polling-booths, they know a gentleman when they see one, and never in their wildest moods deny his birthright.
Boyd, therefore, took just one glance, and then turning to his wife uttered his sentiment in three words of approval. “I’m wid ye!” he said.
Had it been Galligaskins or any seaman of theGolden Hind, Boyd would have had him out of the house in spite of his wife and all the wholesome domestic terror she had so long been establishing.
But a Donegal man is from the north after all, and does not easily take to the informer’s trade. Besides, this was a gentleman born.
Yet he had better have given hospitality to Galligaskins and the whole crew of pirates who manned theGolden Hindthan to this slender, clear-skinned creature who lay raving and smiling in the bedroom of Boyd Connoway’s cabin.