“Yet you’ll be staying,” the young man insisted quietly. “I’m giving you his orders, not mine. What’s it to me whether you go or stay?”
“I’m damned, if I’ll wait!” Roger asserted.
“You’re damned, if you go,” sneered Martin, his eyes flashing up suddenly like two wicked green gems. “Get him the drink, Mother Mag, and he’ll be staying—not risking his neck by going.”
I saw the red blood rush to Roger’s face. I heard him growl and mutter to himself; he straddled still across the hearth. Laughing hoarsely then he cried out, “Ay, the drink, Mother Mag—the drink,” and turning his back on Martin, kicked savagely at the fire.
While I sat blinking at them, and wondering whether it should be my Uncle Charles expected at the house, and what bearing his arrival should have upon my fortunes, the hag, taking a key from the jingling ring at her side, unlocked the press; and out of its recess drew a bloated bottle of violet-coloured glass; hugging this to her, she set out four thick, blue goblets, and poured into them some dark spirit or cordial, pausing ere she filled the fourth to point her skinny fingers at me, and then peer at Martin, as if to gather from him whether I was to drink with them.
He replied curtly, “Ay, pour him a dram,—half a glass—Mother Mag; he looks about to croak,” and sneered at me.
Roger, swinging round from the fire, took up his glass and tossed off the contents; snatching the bottle then from Mother Mag he filled up a glass which he handed to me, growling, “Drink it down, lad! it’ll put heart into you.” The woman, with a shrill cry, leaped like a cat upon him, seeking to snatch the bottle from him; holding it above her reach and fending her off from me, he refilled and drained his glass, and set the bottle down once more. She clutched it to her, set in the stopper, and poked it away in the cupboard, all the while chattering to herself and mouthing like some gibbering ape. Taking her own glass then, with so palsied a hand that she surely spilt half the contents, she hobbled to the hearth and crouched down by it, alternately licking her fingers and sipping her grog,—her green eyes glinting at Roger and me.
I tasted the liquor in the glass, and finding it a spirit that burnt my very lips, I did not drink it, but handed the glass back to Roger, who, muttering “Your health, young master,” drained it for me. Martin sat drinking slowly; Roger, as warming from the stuff, began to stamp impatiently to and fro over the stone floor. Pausing at last by Martin, he demanded, thickly, “What hour’s he like to be here? How long am I to wait in this stinkin’ den?”—at which Mother Mag cackled sardonically, choked and spat, lying back against the chimney-piece red-eyed and gasping.
“He did not say what hour,” Martin answered, indifferently. “How should he know what hour the coach would come, or we be here? Sit down by the fire, man. Get your pipe; there’s tobacco in the jar on the shelf.”
“Am I to be kept here all night, when by break o’ day I should be about my business?”