The Carbonels

“Captain Carbonel—that’s Number Seven,” she said, consulting a slate that hung near the bar. “He was to be called at eight o’clock. Won’t that do?”

“Oh no, no, ma’am,” implored John, thinking that the captain was taking his rest away from home. “It’s very particular, and I have come all night with it.”

“You have got to call Number Five for the High Flier at half-past six,” she said, turning to Boots. “Could not you take up word at the same time?”

“Catch me running errands for a jackanapes like that,” said Boots, with a contemptuous shrug, turning away, and brushing at his shoe.

“Never mind him,” said good-natured Lavinia. “What shall I say, young man?”

“Oh, thank you, miss. Say that John Hewlett have brought him a message from Uphill.”

“Jack Owlet! Oh my! Hoo! hoo!” exclaimed the blacking boy, as soon as Lavinia had disappeared up the stairs, dancing about with his hands on his hips. “Look here, Tom,”—to a boy with a pail, who had just come in—“here be an Owlet’s just flown in out of the mud. Hoo! hoo! Where did you get that ’ere patch on your back.”

“Where you never got none,” responded the other boy. “Mother stitched it for him.”

“Ay, sitting under a hedge, with her pot hung up on three sticks and a hedgepig in it,” added the younger Boots. “Come, own up, young gipsy! Yer come to get a tanner out of Number Seven with your tales.”

“I’m no gipsy,” growled John; “but—”

“Come, come,” called out Boots, “none of your row. And you, you impudent tramp, don’t ye be larking about here, making the lads idle. 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 brushing 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, passing 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 nobly, 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 glass 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, assisted 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 shield 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 nobody, 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.