Chapter 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 thought strikes him. He can do something 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 and a bar shaky. Jierck dug at the solder 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 shouldn’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 didn’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 neck. With a skilful blow against the shelf, 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.