The Carbonels Part 19

Get out of the yard with ye, or I call the master to you."

The landlord might probably have been far more civil; but poor Johnnie did not know this, and could only move off to the entrance of the court, so that when Lavinia in another moment appeared and asked where he was, Boots answered--

"How should I tell? He was up to mischief with the boys, and I bade him be off."

"Well, Number Seven is ever so much put about, and he said he would be down in a jiffy! So there!"

Lavinia held up her skirts, and began in her white stockings to pick her way across the yard, while Boots sneered, and began brus.h.i.+ng his shoe, and whistling as if quite undisturbed; and in another moment Captain Carbonel did appear, coming down the stairs very fast, all unshaven, and with a few clothes hastily thrown on, and quite ran after Lavinia, pa.s.sing her as she pointed out beyond the entrance, where John was disconsolately leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, feeling how utterly weary and hungry he was, and with uneasy thoughts about his father coming over him.

"Oh, there you are, John Hewlett! What is it? No one ill?" exclaimed the captain.

"No, sir; but,"--coming nearer and lowering his voice--"Jack Swing, sir."

"Jack Swing! We had notice of him out at Delafield."

John shook his head, and looked down.

"What! Do you know anything, my boy? Here, come in--tell me!"

"Please, sir, they've laid it out to come to Greenhow this very day as is, to break the machine and get the guns and money."

The captain started, as well he might; but still demanded, "How do you know?"

John held his head down, most unwilling to answer.

"Look here, my lad, you've done well coming to warn me; but I must be certain of your news before acting on it. We were to ride off to Delafield to-day, and I must know if this is only a rumour."

"Aunt heard them," said John, between his teeth. "She heard them planning it for to-morrow--that's to-day--and she laid it on me to let you know to save the ladies from being fraught."

"Your aunt heard it?"

"Through the window in the back garden. They planned to get all the chaps at Downhill and all, and go at the machine."

"The villains! Who did? No, I'll not ask that, my lad," said the captain, knowing only too well who it must have been; "you have acted n.o.bly, and I am for ever obliged to you. Come in, and have some breakfast, while I dress and report this, and see what is to be done.

You are sure there is time?"

"They was to go about at dinner-time to get the folks," John squeezed out of his mouth, much against his will.

"Then there's time. Thank you with all my heart, John! I'll see you again. Here,"--to a barmaid who had appeared on the scene--"give this young man a hearty good breakfast and a cup of ale--will you?--and I'll be down again presently. Stay till I come, Hewlett, and I'll see you again, and how you are to get home! Why, it is twenty miles! Were you walking all night?"

"Only I went to sleep a bit of the time when I was trying to make out the milestone; I don't rightly know how long it was," said John, so much ashamed of his nap that the captain laughed, and said--

"Never mind, Johnnie, you are here in the very nick of time; eat your breakfast, and I'll see you again."

The good-natured barmaid let John have a wash at the pump with a bit of yellow soap and the round towel, and he was able to eat his breakfast with a will--a corner of cold pie and a gla.s.s of strong ale, such a breakfast as he had never seen, though it was only the leavings of yesterday's luncheon. Everybody was too busy just then to pay him any attention, and he had time to hear all the noises and bells seem to run into one dull sound, and to be nodding in his chair before he was called by a waiter, with--"Ha, youngster, there, look alive! the gentlemen wants you."

Now that sleep had once begun upon him, a.s.sisted by the ale, John looked some degrees less alive, though far more respectable than on his first arrival. He was ushered into the coffee-room, where three or four gentlemen sat at one table, all in blue and silver, with the captain, and as he pulled his forelock and bobbed his head, the elder of them--a dignified looking man with grey hair and whiskers and a silver-laced uniform, said--"So, my lad, you are come to warn Captain Carbonel of an intended attack on his property?"

"Yes, sir," John mumbled, looking more and more of a lout, for he had thought the captain would just go home alone to defend his wife and his machine, and was dismayed at finding the matter taken up in this way, dreading lest he should have brought every one into trouble and be viewed as an informer.

"What evidence have you of such intentions?"

John looked into his hat and shuffled on his foot, and Captain Carbonel, who knew that Sir Harry Hartman, the old gentleman, was persuaded that Delafield was the place to protect, was in an agony lest John should be too awkward and too anxious to s.h.i.+eld his family to convince him. He ventured to translate the words into "How do you know?"

His voice somehow made John feel that he must speak, and he said, "Aunt heard it."

"What's that? Who is aunt?" said Sir Harry, in a tone as if deciding that it was gossip; but this put John rather more on his mettle, and he said, "My aunt, Judith Grey, sir."

"How did she hear?"

"Through the window. She heard them laying it out."

"She is bedridden," put in the captain; "but a clever, sensible woman."

"Whom did she hear or see?"

"She couldn't see n.o.body, sir. It was a strange voice," John was trying to save the truth.

"Oh! and what did she hear?"

"They was planning to go round the place and call up the men--that's to-day," said John.

"Are you sure it was to-day? Did she tell you she heard it?"

"Yes, sir. And," John bethought him, "there was a great row going on at the 'Fox and Hounds,' and when I came past Poppleby, a whole lot of them come out singing 'Down with the machines.'"

"That's more like it, if it was not a mere drunken uproar," said Sir Harry.

"I suppose you did not know any of the voices?" said one of the other gentlemen.

John could hold his tongue this time. "And you came all this way by night, twenty miles and odd, to warn Captain Carbonel, on your aunt's information?" said Sir Harry, thoughtfully. "Are you sure that she could hear distinctly?"

"One can hear in her room talk in our garden as well as if it was in the room," replied John.

"Well! you are a good lad, well intentioned," said Sir Harry. "Here's half-a-crown to pay your journey back. We will consider what is to be done."

John had rather not have taken the half-crown, but he did not know how to say so, so he pulled his forelock and accepted it.

Captain Carbonel came out of the coffee-room with him, and called to the hostler to let him lie down and rest for a couple of hours, when the Red Rover would change horses there, and then call him, and pay for his journey back to Poppleby.

So John lay down on clean straw and slept, too much tired out to put thoughts together, and unaware of the discussion among the gentlemen.

For Sir Harry Hartman was persuaded that it was Delafield that needed protection, and was inclined to make little of John Hewlett's warning, thinking that it rested on the authority of a sick nervous woman, and that there was no distinct evidence but that of the young man who would not speak out, and only went by hearsay.

Captain Carbonel, who was, of course, in an agony to get home and defend his property, but was firmly bound by his notions of discipline, argued that the lad was the son of the most disaffected man in the parish, and that his silence was testimony to the likelihood that his father was consulting with the ringleader. The invalid woman he knew to be sensible and prudent, and most unlikely either to mistake what she heard, or to send her nephew on such a night journey without urgent cause, and he asked permission to go himself, if the troop were wanted elsewhere, to defend his home. Finally, just as the debate was warming between the officers, a farmer came in from Delafield, and a.s.sured them that all was quiet there. So the horses were brought out, and there was much jingling of equipments, and Johnnie awoke with a start of dismay.

He had never thought of such doings. He had only thought of Captain Carbonel's riding home, never of bringing down what seemed to him a whole army on his father.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.