The Dew of Their Youth - Samuel Rutherford Crockett (chromebook ebook reader TXT) 📗

whispered Connoway, grinning.
"--that a dangerous band of smugglers or burglars is in possession of the mansion of Marnhoul, and we must take them to a man!"
These words brought about a marked hesitation in the rear ranks, a wavering, and a tendency to slip away through the breach of the broken gate into the road.
"Halt there," cried Constable Black, holding the staff of office high. "I call upon you, every man, to assist his Majesty's officers. You are special constables, as soon as I get time to swear you in. Praise be, here's good Maister Kettle! He's a Justice of the Peace. He will hold you to it now and be my witness if ye refuse lawful aid. Now, forward! Quick march!"
And this formidable armed band took its way along the overgrown gravel avenue up to the front of the great house of Marnhoul. We boys (and Greensleeves close to my elbow) played along the flanks like skirmishers. All our spiritual fears were abated. At the name of the law, and specially after the display of the silver-crowned staff, we entered joyously into the game. If it had only been the arm of flesh we had to encounter, we were noways afraid--though it was a sad downcome from the solemn awe of coming to grips with the prince of darkness and his emissaries.
"You that have pistols that will go off, round with you to guard the back doors!" cried Constable John Black. "It's there the thieves have taken up their abode. The smoke is coming from the kitchen lum. I see it well. The rest, not so well armed, bide here with me under the protection of the law!"
And with that Constable Black, commonly called Jocky, elevated once more his staff in the air, and marched boldly to the fatal door. He went up the steps by which the Grey Lady was wont to descend to the clear moonlight to take her airing in the wood. A little behind went Connoway, in the same manner holding a "bourtree" pop-gun which he had just been fashioning for some lucky callant of his acquaintance.
Almost for the first time in his life Boyd Connoway had all the humour to himself. Nobody laughed at his imitation of Officer Jocky's pompous ways. They would do it afterwards in the safety of their own dwellings and about the winter fire. But not now--by no means now.
Even though supported by the majestic power of the law, the crowd kept respectfully edging behind wall and trees. Their eyes were directed warily upwards to the long array of windows from which (legend recounted) the Maitlands of Marnhoul had once during the troubles of the Covenant successfully defended themselves against the forces of the Crown.
Now be it understood once for all, the inhabitants of Eden Valley were peaceful and loyal citizens, except perhaps in what concerned the excise laws and the ancient and wholesome practice of running cargoes of dutiable goods without troubling his Majesty's excise officers about the matter. But they did not wish to support the law at the peril of their lives.
An irregular crackle of shots, the smashing of window glass in the back of the mansion, with two or three hurrahs, put some courage into them. On the whole it seemed less dangerous to get close in under the great vaulted porch. There, at least, they could not be reached by shot from the windows, while out in the open or under the uncertain shelter of tree boles, who knew what might happen? So there was soon a compact phalanx about the man in authority.
Constable Black, being filled with authority direct from the Lord-Lieutenant of the County, certainly had the instinct of magnifying his office. He raised his arm and knocked three times on the bleached and blistered panels of the great front door.
"Open, I command you! In the name of the law!" he shouted.
After the knocking there befell a pause, as it might be of twenty breaths--though nobody seemed to draw any. Such a silence of listening have I never heard. Yes, we heard it, and the new burst of firing from the rear of the house, the cheers of the excited assailants hardly seemed to break it, so deeply was our attention fixed on that great weather-beaten door of the Haunted House of Marnhoul.
Again Jocky, his face lint-white, and his voice coming and going jerkily, cried aloud the great name of the law. Again there was silence, deeper and longer than before.
At last from far within came a pattering as of little feet, quick and light. We heard the bolts withdrawn one by one, and as the wards of the lock rasped and whined, men got ready their weapons. The door swung back and against the intense darkness of the wide hall, with the light of evening on their faces, stood a girl in a black dress and crimson sash, holding by the hand a little boy of five, with blue eyes and tight yellow curls.
Both were smiling, and before them all that tumultuary array fell away as from something supernatural. The words "In the name of----" were choked on the lips of the constable. He even dropped his silver-headed staff, and turned about as if to flee. As for us we watched with dazzled eyes the marvels that had so suddenly altered the ideas of all men as to the Haunted House of Marnhoul.
But for a space no one moved, no one spoke. Only the tall young girl and the little child stood there, like children of high degree receiving homage on the threshold of their own ancestral mansion, facing the lifted bonnets and the pikes lowered as if in salutation.


CHAPTER III
MISS IRMA GIVES AN AUDIENCE
"My name is Irma Maitland, and this is my brother Louis!" Such were the famous words with which, in response to law and order in the person of Constable Jacky Black, the tall smiling girl in the doorway of the Haunted House of Marnhoul saluted her "rescuers."
"And how came you to be occupying this house?" demanded Mr. Josiah Kettle, father of Joseph the inventive. He was quite unaware of the ghastly terrors with which his son had peopled the Great House, but as the largest farmer on the estate he felt it to be his duty to protect vested rights.
"In the same way that you enter your house," said the girl; "we came in with a key, and have been living here ever since!"
"Are you not feared?" piped a voice from the crowd. It was afterwards found that it was Kettle junior who had spoken.
"Afraid!" answered the girl scornfully, holding her head higher than ever; "do you think that a few foolish people firing at our windows could make us afraid? Can they, Louis?" And as she spoke she looked fondly down at her little brother.
He drew nearer to his sister, looking up at her with a winning confidence, and said in as manly a voice as he could compass, "Certainly not, Irma! But--tell them not to do it any more!"
"You hear what my brother says," said the girl haughtily. "Let there be no more of this!"
"But--in right of law and order, I must know more about this!" cried Constable Jacky, lifting up his staff again. Somehow, however, the magic had gone from his words. Every one now knew that his thunder had a hollow sound.
"Ah, you are the _gendarme_--the official--the officer!" said the tall girl, with a more pronounced foreign accent than before, making him a little bow; "please go and tell your superiors that we are here because the place belongs to us--at least to my brother, and that I am staying to take care of him."
"But how did you come?" persisted the man in authority.
The tall girl looked over his head. Her glance, clear, cool, penetrating, scanned face after face, and then she said, as it were, regretfully, "There are no gentlefolk among you?"
There was the slightest shade of inquiry about words which might have seemed rude as a mere affirmation. Then she appeared to answer for herself, still with the same tinge of sadness faintly colouring her pride. "For this reason I cannot tell you how we came to be here."
Mr. Josiah Kettle felt called upon to assert himself.
"I have reason to believe," he said pompously, "that I am as good as any on the estate in the way of being a gentleman--me and my son Joseph. I am a Justice of the Peace, under warrant of the Crown, and so one day will my son Joseph--Jo, you rascal, come off that paling!"
But just then Jo Kettle had other fish to fry. From the bad eminence of the garden palisade he was devouring the new-comer with his eyes. As for me, I had shaken the hand of the lately adored Greensleeves from my arm.
The girl's glance stayed for an instant and no more upon the round and rosy countenance of Mr. Josiah Kettle, Justice of the Peace. She smiled upon him indulgently, but shook her head.
"I am sorry," she said, with gentle condescension, "that I cannot tell anything more to you. You are one of the people who broke our windows!"
Then Josiah Kettle unfortunately blustered.
"If you will not, young madam," he cried, "I can soon send them to you who will make you answer."
The young lady calmly took out of her pocket a dainty pair of ivory writing tablets, such as only the minister of the parish used in all Eden Valley, and he only because he had married a great London lady for his wife.
"I shall be glad of the name and address of the persons to whom you refer!" said Miss Irma (for so from that moment I began to call her in my heart).
"The factors and agents for this estate," Josiah Kettle enunciated grandly. The writing tablets were shut up with a snap of disappointment.
"Oh, Messrs. Smart, Poole & Smart," she said. "Why, I have known them ever since I was as high as little Louis."
Then she smiled indulgently upon Mr. Kettle, with something so easily grand and yet so sweet that I think the hearts of all went out to her.
"I suppose," she said, "that really you thought you were doing right in coming here and firing off guns without permission. It must be an astonishing thing for you to see this house of the Maitlands inhabited after so long. I do not blame your curiosity, but I fear I must ask you to send a competent man to repair our windows. For that we hold you responsible, Mr. Officer, and you, Mr. Justice of the Peace--you and your son Jo! Don't we, Louis?"
"I will see to that myself!" a voice, the same that had spoken before, came from the crowd. Miss Irma searched the circle without, however, coming to a conclusion. I do think that her glance lingered longer on my face than on any of the others, perhaps because Gerty Greensleeves was leaning on my shoulder and whispering in my ear. (What a nuisance girls are, sometimes!) So the glance passed on, with something in it at once calm and simple and high.
"If any of the gentlefolk of our station will call upon us," she went on, "we will tell _them_ how we came to be here--the clergyman of the parish--or----" here she hesitated for the first time, "or his wife."
Instinctively she seemed to feel the difficulty. "Though we are not of their faith!" she added, smiling once more as with the air of serene condescension she had shown all through.
Then she nodded, and swept a curtsey with an undulating grace which I thought to be adorable, in spite of the suspicion of irony in it.
"Good-bye, good people,"