 | XIII. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
13. XIII.
What are the plotters without the Manor-House
doing?
All, except Jierck Dewitt, are standing at
ease, and waiting for their commander's signal.
Old Sam Galsworthy has his hand on the muzzle
of the runt pony, and at the faintest symptom
of a whinny in reply to Volante's whinnies in
the stable, Sam plugs the pony's nostrils with
his thumbs and holds his jaws together with
iron hand. Ike Van Wart leans on his gun,
and looks dull. Hendrecus Canady stands to
his gun, and looks sharp. Sergeant Lincoln-Brothertoft
keeps himself in a maze, — for to
think would be to doubt of success, and to
doubt is to fail.
This of course is the moment when Jierck
Dewitt should be “stiff as the Lord Chancellor,”
limber as the Lord Chief Acrobate, steady
as a steeple, and silent as a sexton.
But Jierck is at present a tipsy man, in happy-go-lucky
mood. He begins to grow impatient
waiting in the cold and shamming sober. A
more amusing than stand and handle a chilly
trigger.
“I 'm going to take a turn about the house
to see all 's safe, Orderly,” whispered he to
Lincoln-Brothertoft. “I leave you in charge of
the party. Keep a sharp look-out. I will be
back in half a jiff.”
Jierck stole off into the darkness.
Recollections of former exploits hereabouts
had revived in his muddled brain.
“Hair-oil 's all gone,” he thought. “Now
if I could only get into the cellar of the old
house, I should have my choice of liquors, just
as I did ten years ago, when Lady Brothertoft
had me caught and licked for breaking in.
By Congress, it 's worth a try! The cellar
window-bars used to be loose enough. It
won't do any harm to give 'em a pull all round.
If one gives, I can tumble in, get a drink to
keep my spirits up, and be back long before
the Major calls.”
His fancy was hardly so coherent as this, but
he obeyed it. He crept about the house and
fumbled at the bars of the nearest window.
The windows opened on a level with the ground.
“No go,” said he; “try another!” He did,
and another.
At the third window the solder was loose
with his knife and worked the bar about. It
still resisted, and he admonished it in a drunken
whisper, “I 'm ashamed of you, you dum bit
of rusty iron, keepin' a patriot away from Tory
property. Give in now, like a good feller, before
I git mad and do something rash.”
At this the bar joined the patriots, and gave
in. It came away in Jierck's hand. He laid
the cold iron on the frosty grass. He could
now take out the stone into which the bar had
been set. He did so. That released the foot
of the next bar. He bent this aside. There
was room for him to squeeze through.
He carefully backed into the cellar.
It was drunkard's luck. A sober man would
not have tried it. Moral: do not be too sober
in your head or your heart, if you would pluck
success among the nettles.
Jierck took a step forward in the Cimmerian
darkness of the cellar. He fell plump into
a heap of that rubbish which Voltaire's flaring
dip revealed to us in the morning.
“This noise won't do,” he thought. “One
tumble will pass for rats. Another may bring
Lady B. down stairs. I should n't like to see
her standing here with a candle in one hand
and a knife in the other. She 'd stick me,
like pork. No; I must strike a light. A flash
will do, to show me the way.”
He unplugged his powder-horn with his teeth
and poured a charge on the stone floor.
“Old Brindle did n't know how many redcoats
that horn of his was to be the means of
boring through,” thought Jierck. “Powder 's
an istooshn.”
In the dark his flint and steel tinkled together.
A spark flew. Fizz. Fiat lux! The powder
flashed.
Cimmerian corners, barrels of curly shavings
and rags out of curl, casks gone to hoops and
staves, shattered furniture, all the rubbishy
properties of a cellar scene, “started into light
and made the lighter start.” Light gave them
a knowing look and was out again. The scenery
scuffled back into darkness.
Jierck afterward found that he had marked
every object in that black hole, as they flung
forward at the flash. He had marked the scene,
and it was to haunt him always. At present,
he was thinking of nothing but the wine-room.
His fireworks had shown him the way clear
to it. He saw also that the door was ajar, as
Voltaire had left it in the morning.
He moved forward now without stumble or
tumble. He felt his way into the wine-room.
He touched the rough dusty backs of a battery
of recumbent bottles. He grasped one by the
he knocked off the yellow-sealed muzzle.
“Fire away!” said he, presenting the weapon
at his lips.
Gurgle.
He stopped to take breath. He felt like a
boy again. The wine tasted as it did ten years
ago, when he first stole into the cellar, and
was punished for it.
“She can't have me whaled this time,” he
muttered. “Here goes again! What stuff it
is!”
Gurgle a second time, and the cellar seems
to listen.
But while that amber stream was flowing
between the white stalactites in Jierck's upper
jaw, and the white stalagmites in his lower, and
rippling against that pink stalactite his palate,
before it leaped farther down the grotto, —
suddenly: —
A scream above, a rush, a shot, a scuffle.
For an instant Jierck was paralyzed. He
stood listening. The bottle, for which he had
deserted his post, slipped through his alarmed
fingers and crashed on the floor. The sound
half recalled him to himself.
He turned and sprang for that dim parallelogram
of lighter darkness, — the window where
he had entered.
Awkwardly, drunkenly, trembling with haste
and shame, he clambered up upon the sill and
began to back out between the bars. His coat
caught against the bent iron.
As he stopped to disengage it, he peered
suspiciously back into the cellar.
A little spot of red glow in the midst of
the blackness caught his eye.
“Aha!” he thought, “my powder lighted
something tindery in that heap of rubbish. It
will soon eat what it 's got, and go out on the
stone floor. And if it don't go out, let it burn!
Blast the old house! it 's a nest of Tories. Blast
it! the mistress had me thrashed like a dog.
Blast the house! my wife was spoilt here, and
that spoilt me. Blast it! let it burn, and show
us the way out of the country!”
Jierck tore his coat from the bar, backed
out, picked up his gun and skulked tipsily off
to join his party.
| XIII. Edwin Brothertoft | |