“Sit,” whisper’d the girl, “and make no noise, while I brew a rack-punch for the men-folk in the parlor.” She jerked her thumb toward the buttery hatch, where I had already caught the murmur of voices.
I took up a chair softly, and set it down between the hatch and the fireplace, so that while warming my knees I could catch any word spoken more than ordinary loud on the other side of the wall. The chambermaid stirr’d the fire briskly, and moved about singing as she fetch’d down bottles and glasses from the dresser—
“Lament ye maids an’ darters
For constant Sarah Ann,
Who hang’d hersel’ in her garters
All for the love o’ man,
All for the—”
She was pausing, bottle in hand, to take the high note: but hush’d suddenly at the sound of the voices singing in the room upstairs—
“Vivre en tout cas
C’est le grand soulas
Des honnêtes gens!”
“That’s the foreigners,” said the chambermaid, and went on with her ditty—
“All for the love of a souljer
Who christening name was Jan.”
A volley of oaths sounded through the buttery hatch.
“—And that’s the true-born Englishmen, as you may tell by their speech. ’Tis pretty company the master keeps, these days.”
She was continuing her song, when I held up a finger for silence. In fact, through the hatch my ear had caught a sentence that set me listening for more with a still heart.
“D⸺n the Captain,” the landlord’s gruff voice was saying; “I warn’d ’n agen this fancy business when sober, cool-handed work was toward.”
“Settle’s way from his cradle,” growl’d another; “and times enough I’ve told ’n: ‘Cap’n,’ says I, ‘there’s no sense o’ proportions about ye.’ A master mind, sirs, but ’a’ll be hang’d for a hen-roost, so sure as my name’s Bill Widdicomb.”
“Ugly words—what a creeping influence has that same mention o’ hanging!” piped a thinner voice.
“Hold thy complaints, Old Mortification,” put in a speaker that I recogniz’d for Black Dick; “sure the pretty maid upstairs is tender game. Hark how they sing!”
And indeed the threatened folk upstairs were singing their catch very choicely, with a girl’s clear voice to lead them—
“Comment dit papa—
Margoton, ma mie?”
“Heathen language, to be sure,” said the thin voice again, as the chorus ceased: “thinks I to mysel’ ‘they be but Papisters,’ an’ my doubting mind is mightily reconcil’d to manslaughter.”
“I don’t like beginning ’ithout the Cap’n,” observed Black Dick: “though I doubt something has miscarried. Else, how did that young spark ride in upon the mare?”
“An’ that’s what thy question should ha’ been, Dick, with a pistol to his skull.”
“He’ll keep till the morrow.”
“We’ll give Settle half-an-hour more,” said the landlord: “Mary!” he push’d open the hatch, so that I had barely time to duck my head out of view, “fetch in the punch, girl. How did’st leave the young man i’ the loft?’
“Asleep, or nearly,” answer’d Mary—
“Who hang’d hersel’ in her garters,
All for the love o’ man—”
“—Anon, anon, master: wait only till I get the kettle on the boil.”
The hatch was slipp’d to again. I stood up and made a step toward the girl.
“How many are they?” I ask’d, jerking a finger in the direction of the parlor.
“A dozen all but one.”
“Where is the foreign guests’ room?”
“Left hand, on the first landing.”
“The staircase?”
“Just outside the door.”
“Then sing—go on singing for your life.”
“But—”
“Sing!”
“Dear heart, they’ll murder thee! Oh! for pity’s sake, let go my wrist—
“ ‘Lament, ye maids an’ darters—’ ”
I stole to the door and peep’d out. A lantern hung in the passage, and showed the staircase directly in front of me. I stay’d for a moment to pull off my boots, and, holding them in my left hand, crept up the stairs. In the kitchen, the girl was singing and clattering the glasses together. Behind the door, at the head of the stairs, I heard voices talking. I slipp’d on my boots again and tapp’d on the panel.
“Come in!”
Let me try to describe that on which my eyes rested as I push’d the door wide. ’Twas a long room, wainscoted half up the wall in some dark wood, and in daytime lit by one window only, which now was hung with red curtains. By the fireplace, where a brisk wood fire was crackling, lean’d the young gentlewoman I had met at Hungerford, who, as she now turn’d her eyes upon me, ceas’d fingering the guitar or mandoline that she held against her waist, and raised her pretty head not without curiosity.
But ’twas on the table in the centre of the chamber that my gaze settled; and on two men beside it, of whom I must speak more particularly.
The elder, who sat in a high-back’d chair, was a little, frail, deform’d gentleman of about fifty, dress’d very richly in dark velvet and furs, and wore on his head a velvet skullcap, round which his white hair stuck up like a ferret’s. But the oddest thing about him was a complexion that any maid of sixteen would give her ears for—of a pink and white so transparent that it seem’d a soft light must be glowing beneath his skin. On either cheek bone this delicate coloring centred in a deeper flush. This is as much as I need say about his appearance, except that his eyes were very bright and sharp, and his chin stuck out like a vicious mule’s.
The table before him was cover’d with bottles and flasks, in the middle of which stood a silver lamp burning, and over it a silver saucepan that sent up a rare fragrance
