CHAPTER III.
THE REBEL DISAPPEARS.
I saw at once that the moon was come, but for my enterprise’s sake I wished it absent. Here she was, however, framed in cloud, with a star or two about her, and a very tell-tale eye. The roof of the woods freezing across the park was a mass of dusky silver that her beams had thrown, and so bold and sharp her glow was on every twig that slept that individual things stood forth and stared at me, and seemed endowed with the hue of noon in the middle of the night. And I am sure the hour was laid for an adventure, and crying for a deed. The light of the moon was made of pale romance, and bade the princess bare her casement, and the minstrel on the sward to sing. This was the disposition of my thoughts as I looked out of the window, and I was so captive to their poetry that a soft touch upon my shoulder startled me as greatly as a blow. I glanced round quickly and found Emblem at my side.
“He hath drained it to the dregs, my lady,” says she, brandishing the coffee-pot.
“Faith! you startled me,” says I. “Emblem, your foot is lighter than a cat’s.”
“’Tis almighty cold under the moon, ma’am,” says the maid, “and you would be well advised, I think, to put a stouter garment on.”
“Ha! sly minx,” says I, “you fear that my employment will be the enemy of soft, white satin, and that it may take a soil or two.”
I followed her advice, however, and got into a winter dress, and sent her meanwhile to seek a file in the region of the kitchen. This was a tool I had forgot, but highly necessary, you will believe, when a pair of stout handcuffs are to be encountered. I dressed and cloaked myself with care, and pulled two pairs of stockings on, for slippers on a frosty night are the tenderest protection. I had just perched the vizard on my nose when Emblem brought the file. I picked the pistol up, set it at her head, and made her deliver up that file with a degree of instancy which hath not been excelled by the famous Jerry Jones, of Bagshot. Thereupon I loaded that dark weapon, pocketed its adjuncts, and, leaving the faithful Emblem white and trembling with the excitement of the hour, set out upon a deed whose inception was so simple, yet whose complex development was destined to commit a great havoc in the lives of several, and to change entirely the current of my own.
Had I foreseen these ultimate occurrences, I should not have set out at one o’clock of winter moonlight in the spirit of an urchin on a holiday. Should I have set out at all? Faith! I cannot say, for the more beautiful a woman is the less restraint hath reason on her. But this I’m sure of: had my Lady Barbarity only known the strange form the business of that night was to take for herself and others, she had certainly said her prayers before she embarked upon it.
Two clocks were telling the hour together in the hall when I rode down the broad backs of the bannisters and attained the mat below without a sound, this seeming the quietest and most expeditious way of overcoming the obstinacy of stairs, who creak at no time no louder than at one o’clock at night—that is, unless it is at two. I glided across the tiles and entered the servants’ part without so much as waking up a beetle, such is the virtue that resides in dainty slippers, wedded to dainty toes. Emblem had left one of the scullery doors unbarred, and through this I stole forth to the stable. The air was still as any spectre, and I observed its sacred calm so implicitly that a fox actually stalked across the yard, not twenty paces off, with his nose upon the ground, inquiring for poultry.
I was much too wise to take the stable from the front, but by dodging round divers of the kitchen offices, I was able to outflank it, and could peep upon the sentry by the door under cover of a friendly wall. Every beam of moonlight seemed gathered on that bayonet. When that naked steel looked at me thus, and seemed to say “Come on if you dare!” the spirit of my mischief was pretty badly dashed, and began to seek a pretext to retire. There was Emblem, though, and who shall endure the secret laughter of her maid? But while I paused, a gentle snore crept out into the frost and soon was mingling with my ears. The coffee had performed. In an instant what a lion I became! How promptly I stepped up to the sentry’s side and took that bayonet from him, for I could not be myself so long as that blade menaced me. I ran across the yard and cast it in an ashpit—’twas the utmost indignity I could bestow upon that weapon—and counted the feat a triumph for wit over insolence and power. Mr. Sentry had been drugged so heavily and thoroughly that he was now sleeping more deeply than the earth, as I doubt whether even morning would have waked him. The posture of his body, though, was most unfriendly to the scheme I had prepared. His head was jammed in the top corner against one door post, whilst his heels resided in the bottom corner of the other. The misfortune was that his ribs were in such a situation that they covered up the keyhole. Now unless I could obtain a fair access to that, my labours were in vain. But when engaged on a dangerous escapade, ’tis a sterile mind that lacks for an expedient. Therefore I gave back a yard or two into the stable’s shadow, and looking up, saw precisely what I had hoped to find. Our stables I had remembered were of two storeys, the second chamber being an open hayloft, which was only covered by the roof, the sides being composed of rails alone, and set wide enough apart for persons of an ordinary stature to squeeze through with ease. How to reach it was the problem, as the floor of it was suspended ten feet from the ground. It did not remain a problem long, for I stole to a disused coach house a little distance off, and groped among the odds and ends there collected for a ladder. The brightness of the moon permitted me to find without the least ado a short one, exactly corresponding to my needs. I bore it to the prison, laid it against the coping stone of the second storey, and hopped thereon as lightly as a robin hops on rime. I was soon at the top and through the bars, and battling with the armies of hay and straw assembled on the other side, that strove with might to thrust out all intruders. This one was rather more than they could manage though. Having made my footing good inside the loft, I began to search for one of those trap-doors that are employed to push the fodder through into the mangers underneath. This involved a deal of patient exploration, for it was very little light that penetrated this encumbered place. But I was now so eager and so confident that I was fit for deeds of every character, and I do not doubt at all that had my task been to find a lost needle amongst this endless mass of provender, I should have discovered it in less than half an hour. Thus coming at last in the course of my search to a spot well cleared of straw, one of my slippers trod upon an iron ring, and, much as I regretted the pain that act involved, I rejoiced the more, since I had stumbled on the trap. Getting my fingers to this ring, I tugged the door up, and then prepared to scramble through the hole into the manger. I calculated that the distance I had to make was a comparatively short one. However, I was compelled to be cautious in the matter of the hayrack, as should I become involved in cages of that sort, I must experience many a stubborn obstacle in getting out again. I should like the reader to conceive at this point, if he is able, of Lady Barbara Gossiter, the reigning Toast, whose imperious charms had played the deuce with every embroidered waistcoat in the town; I say I want you to conceive, dear Mr. Reader, if you have imagination equal to the task, this exquisite young person scrambling through trap-doors into mangers in the middle of the night! Yes, it staggers you, and you say it is impossible. I quite agree with that, and confess that when I started on this mischief, or this deed of mercy, call it what you will (for I certainly will not pretend to be better than I am), I had not included feats like these in my adventure. Now I had not, unfortunately, the faintest claim to be called an acrobat, but when the hounds have got scent, and the whole field is in full cry, one does not tarry for the widest and greenest pond, or the quickest set of fences. Therefore clinging tightly to the trap, I lowered myself with insidious care, inch by inch, into the manger. ’Twas not possible to perform an act of this sort without committing some little noise. Thus the poor lad pinioned to the manger heard the creaks of my descent.