The Dew of Their Youth, Samuel Rutherford Crockett [fox in socks read aloud .txt] 📗

head, and with a lamentable voice opened out to the head of the firm what had befallen their Mr. Poole, how he had come with pistols in his bag, and gotten trodden on by Rob, my reckless uncle, so that he was now lying, safe but disabled, in the small wall cabinet of Heathknowes.
I was expecting nothing less than a cry for the peace officers, and to be marched off between a file of soldiers--or, at any rate, the constables of the town guard.
But instead the little man put on a pair of great glasses with rims of black horn, and looked at my grandfather quizzically and a trifle sternly to see if he were daring to jest. But presently, seeing the transparent honesty of the man (as who would not?), he broke out into a snort of laughter, snatched open a door at his elbow, and cried out at the top of his voice (which, to tell the truth, was no better than a screech), "Dick Poole--ho there, big Dick Poole!--I want you, Dickie!"
I could see nothing from the next room but a haze of tobacco smoke, which presently entering, set the old man in the dressing-gown a-coughing.
"Send away thy rascals, Dick," he wheezed, "and shut that door, Dickie. That cursed reek of yours would kill a hog of the stye. Hither with you, good Dick!"
And after a clinking of glasses and the trampling of great boots on the stairs, an immense man came in. His face was a riot of health. His eyes shone blue and kindly under a huge fleece of curly black hair. There was red in his cheeks, and his lips were full and scarlet. His hand and arm were those of a prizefighter. He came in smiling, bringing with him such an odour of strong waters and pipe tobacco that, between laughing and coughing, I thought the old fellow would have choked. Indeed, I made a step forward to pat the back of his dressing-gown of flannel, and if Mary Lyon had been there, I am sure nothing would have stopped her from doing it.
Even when he had a little recovered, he still stood hiccoughing with the tears in his eyes, and calling out with curious squirms of inward laughter, "Dick, lad, this will never do. Thou art under watch and ward down at the pirn-mill of Marnhoul! And it was a wench that did it. Often have I warned thee, Dick! Two pistols thou hadst in a black bag. Dick--for shame, Dick--for shame, thus to fright a decent woman! And her son, Rob (I think you said was the name of him), did trample the very life out of you--which served you well and right, Dickie! Oh, Dickie, for shame!"
The big man stood looking from one to the other of us, with a kind of comical despair, when, hearing through the open door between the old gentleman's room and his own, the sounds of a noisy irruption and the clinking of glasses beginning again, he went back, and with a torrent of rough words drove the roysterers forth, shutting and locking the door after them.
Then he came strolling back, leaned his arm on the mantelpiece, and bade my grandfather tell him all about it. I can see him yet, this huge ruddy man, spreading himself by the fireplace, taking up most of the room with his person, while he of the flannel dressing-gown wandered about _tee-heeing_ with laughter--and, round one side or the other, or between the legs of the Colossus, making an occasional feeble poke at the fire.
It was curious also to see how my grandfather's serene simplicity of manner and speech compelled belief. I am sure that at first the big man Dick had nothing in his mind but turning us out into the street as he had done the roysterers. But as William Lyon went on, his bright eye grew more thoughtful, and when my grandfather handed him the slip with the name of Mr. Wringham Pollixfen Poole upon it, he absolutely broke into a hurricane of laughter, which, however, sounded to me not a little forced and hollow--though he slapped his leg so loud and hard that the little man in the dressing-gown stopped open-mouthed and dropped his poker on the floor.
"It seems to me," he cried shrilly, "that if you hit yourself like that, Dick Poole, you will split your buckskin breeches, which appear to be new."
But the big man took not the least notice. He only stared at the scrap of paper, and then started to laugh again.
"Oh, don't do that!" cried his partner. "You will blow my windows out, and you know how I hate a draught!"
And indeed they were rattling in their frames. Then the huge Dick went forward and took my grandfather by the hand.
"You are sure you have got him?" he inquired; "remember, he is slippery as an eel."
"My wife is looking after him--my three sons also," said William Lyon, "and I think it likely that the stamp he got from Rob will keep him decently quiet for a day at least. You see," he added apologetically, "he drave the knife into the thick of the poor lad's leg!"
"Wringham?" cried the big man, "why, I did not think he had so muckle spunk!"
"Is he close freend of yours?" my grandfather inquired a little anxiously. For he did not wish to land himself in a blood-feud with the kin of a lawyer.
"Friend of mine!" cried the big man, "no, by no means a friend--but, as it may chance, some sort of kin. However that may be, if you have indeed got Pollixfen safe, you have done the best day's work that ever you did for yourself and for King George, God bless him!"
"Say you so?" said my grandfather. "Indeed, I rejoice me to hear it. I have ever been a loyal subject. And as to the Maitland bairns--you see no harm in their making their home with my goodwife, where the lads can take care of them--in the unsettled state of the country!"
The senior partner at last got in a poke at the fire, for which he had been long waiting his chance.
"And you, Master Lyon, that are such a good kingsman," he kekkled, "do you never hear the blythe Free Traders go clinking by, or find an anker of cognac nested in your yard among the winter-kail?"
"Mr. Smart," said the big man, "this is a market day, but I shall need to ride and see if this is well founded. You will put on your coat decently and take my work. Abraham has already as much as he can do. Be short with them--they will not come wanting to drink with you as they do with me! If what this good Cameronian says be true at this moment, as I have no doubt it was when he left Marnhoul, the sooner I, Richard Poole, am on the spot the better."
So he bade us haste and get our beast out of the yard. As for him he was booted and spurred and buckskinned already. He had nothing to do but mount and ride.
All this had passed so quickly that I had hardly time to think on the strangeness of it. _Our_ Mr. Poole, he to whom my uncle Rob had given such a stamp, was not the partner in the ancient firm of Smart, Poole and Smart of the Plainstones. Of these I had seen two, and heard the busy important voice of the third in another room as we descended the stairs. They were all men very different from the viper whom my grandmother had caught as in a bag. Even Mr. Smart was a gentleman. For if he had a flannel dressing-gown on, one could see the sparkle of his paste buckles at knee and instep, and his hose were of the best black silk, as good as Doctor Gillespie's on Sacrament Sabbath when he was going up to preach his action sermon. But our Mr. Wringham Pollixfen Poole--I would not have wiped my foot on him--though, indeed, Uncle Rob had made no bones about that matter.


CHAPTER XXI
WHILE WE SAT BY THE FIRE
Through the deep solitude of Tereggles Long Wood, past lonely lochs on which little clattering ripples were blowing, into a west that was all barred gold and red islands of fire, we rode. Or rather grandfather and I went steadily but slowly on our pony, while beside us, sometimes galloping a bit, anon trotting, came big Mr. Richard Poole on his black horse. Sometimes he would ride off up a loaning to some farm-town where he had a job to be seen to, or rap with the butt of his loaded whip at the door of some roadside inn--the Four Mile house or Crocketford, where he would call for a tankard and drain it off, as it were, with one toss of the head.
It was easy to be seen that, for some reason of his own, he did not wish to get to Heathknowes before us. Yet, after he had asked my grandfather as to the children, and some details of the attack on the house of Marnhoul (which he treated as merely an affair between two rival bands of smugglers) he was pretty silent. And as we got nearer home, he grew altogether absorbed in his thoughts.
But I could not help watching him. He looked so fine on his prancing black, with the sunset glow mellowing his ruddy health, and his curious habit of constantly making the thong of his horsewhip whistle through the air or smack against his leg.
I had met as big men and clever men, but one so active, so healthy, so beautiful I had never before seen. And every time that a buxom wife or a well-looking maid brought him his ale to the door of the change-house, he would set a forefinger underneath her chin and pat her cheek, asking banteringly after the children or when the wedding was coming off. And though they did not know him or he them, no one took his words or acts amiss. Such was the way he had with him.
And about this time I began to solace myself greatly with the thought of the meeting there would be between these two--the false Poole and the true.
At last we came in the twilight to the Haunted House of Marnhoul, and Mr. Richard made his horse rear almost as high as the unicorn does in the sign above the King's Arms door, so suddenly did he swing him round to the gate. He halted the beast with his head against the very bar and looked up the avenue. The grass in the glade was again covered with dew, for the sky was clear and it was growing colder every minute. It shone almost like silver, and beyond was the house standing like a dim dark-grey patch between us and the forest.
"This gate has been mended," he remarked, tapping the new wooden post that had come down from the mill a day or two before.
"I saw to that myself, sir," said my grandfather. "I also painted it."
"Ha, well done--improving the property for your young guests!" said Mr. Richard, and then quite suddenly he turned moodily away. All at once he looked at my grandfather again. "You had better know," he said, "that the girl will have no money. So she ought to be taught dairymaking. I am partial to dairymaids myself! If she favours the Maitlands, she ought to make a pretty one."
My grandfather said nothing, for he did not like this sort of talk, and was utterly careless whether Miss Irma were penniless or the greatest heiress in the country.
Then the long whitewashed rectangle of the Heathknowes office-houses loomed above