The MS. in a Red Box Part 18

"Why should you be at so much trouble in disposing of me? Why not kill me here?"

"Well inquired," said Boswell. "If my advice had been taken, you would have been buried under these stones."

"I am indebted to you for your kindness," I remarked.

"You may come to think so," answered Boswell. "My patron wants a fuller vengeance than your death would be."

"Vengeance!" I exclaimed.

"He has much to say (in his cups, I grant) of how you stole the affection of a brother, and bred quarrel between him and his father, and alienated friends from him. If the half be true, it is no wonder he should hate you."

I sat speechless with astonishment awhile, for I was too young to know what lies men can tell, deluding even themselves into a sort of belief in their truth.

"What I say," continued Boswell, as if to himself, "is that revenge is costly, and death pays all."

"But, how would my removal to a distant country satisfy Sheffield, if he burns for vengeance?" I asked.

"I did not say that it would. The offer is mine," he answered.

"Oh, you would play false with your patron, pretending you had carried me off to the hopeless slavery of which you speak, but setting me at liberty, when we were far enough away? Is that your scheme? And what do you stand to gain thereby?"

"Your bond for five hundred pounds."

"Which, as you doubtless know, would be worth precisely nothing."

"If I am willing to take the risk, that is my concern. Look you, Mr.

Vavasour, I will be open with you. I have no spite against you, nor any great liking for this business, being in it solely for the money to be made by it--and money I must have. If you agree to my terms, Lord Sheffield is rid of you for six or nine months, or, it may be, a year.

I keep faith with him so far that he has value for his money. But you return safe and sound, which is value for yours. Nay, hear me out. If you refuse my offer, Frank Vavasour will be dead and buried and mourned awhile by his friends; and even if you should contrive to return to England, n.o.body--not even your nearest relative--will believe that you are he."

"Bah! Would you persuade me you are Satan himself, to work such wonders? And, if you are, I make no compact with the devil."

I spoke more boldly than my inward feeling warranted, for I began to fear the man. He took no offence, as it seemed, but answered--

"Sleep on it. Night is a good counsellor."

A moment later, he asked if I desired more wine, and took up the bottle.

"You have not emptied this yet, I see."

He placed bottle and cup near me, made fast the door opening on the corridor, and joined his comrades in the next chamber, whom his presence appeared to check, for their talk and laughter became subdued.

I drank the remainder of my wine, and began to pace the length of the room, endeavouring to fathom Boswell's designs; but could make nothing of his strange threats, inclining to think his mysterious language was mere gipsy rodomontade. In a short time I grew sleepy--extremely so--and threw myself on the couch, the absence of my bonds enabling me to stretch at my ease, and soon fell asleep.

CHAPTER XV

In my sleep I dreamed of what happened when I was seized and carried off. Again I was running up the slope, again I backed against the tree, again I fell through the yielding bark, again my captors bound me and thrust me into the cart.

And I awoke to find myself more tightly bound than before. My arms were held to my sides by a sack, and my legs were fastened to a pole.

My head was firmly clamped, I knew not how. I could move my lips and my eyes; otherwise I was like a man of wood. A lamp stood on a projection of the wall, so that its light shone full on my face, and Boswell was stooping over me with a knife in his hand. My cheek was wet, and a smarting there told me the moisture was blood. What could the man be cutting my face for, I wondered, being dazed and not yet out of my dream. Before I had quite come to myself, he had made two slits in my nose, and pressed it to one side. At this I yelled, not so much for pain as from a kind of fright, and with that I regained my senses pretty well.

"What's your devilish game now?" I asked with difficulty, for blood was running into my mouth.

Boswell gave me no answer, but went on with his operation. He laid down his knife, released my head, pulled out of his pocket a narrow strip of cloth, and bound it tightly over my nose, crushing it cruelly.

I could not speak now, being near suffocation by the stoppage of my nose with the bandage and of my mouth with blood. When he had taken a good, long look at his surgery, Boswell filled and lighted his pipe, and sat down to full enjoyment of his tobacco. While he sat puffing smoke through his nostrils, I recovered my wits a little, perceiving that I had been overcome by some drug, mixed with the wine I had taken, but what was the intent of the villain in gashing my face I could not surmise. My first thought was that the design might be to make me hideous in Anna's sight.

As I lay, dizzily pondering, Boswell finished his pipe and laid it down to resume his work. He pa.s.sed a cord several times round my body just above and below my elbows, knotting it securely. Then he slit the sack, and tore open my shirt, laying bare my breast, and taking up a needle and a small pot from the table, he began p.r.i.c.king my chest, dipping the point of the needle often into the pot. The p.r.i.c.king was worse to bear than the slashing with the knife, but I made no outcry, knowing the uselessness of it. So I lay silently shivering under the dab, dab of the needle for what seemed to me a fearfully long time, while he worked some kind of pattern on my breast. At length it came to an end, and when Boswell had examined his handiwork, adding a touch here and there, he laid down his implements, refilled his pipe, refreshed himself from a bottle, and sat down with the air of one well pleased with his achievement.

I thought it plain that this business with knife and needle was intended to give me a deceiving resemblance to some other man, in all likelihood a boatman or sailor, for such fellows had a custom of wearing figures and letters imprinted on breast or arm. The man into whose likeness I was to be changed had, I supposed, a broken nose and a scar on his cheek. But I could not see how this marking and mutilation would avail much, so long as I had the use of my tongue. Still, Boswell must have considered this. He must have thought how easy it would be for me to declare who I was, and to give proof of my ident.i.ty.

Must he not be prepared for such a certain event? There came to my mind stories I had heard of the disappearance of persons who stood between others and a great inheritance, and of the abduction of persons who might be inconvenient witnesses against men of rank and power.

Some of these stories ran on to the discovery of such persons in after years, rendered blind or mute, or reduced to idiocy, by the art and craft of gipsies. I had smiled at these fireside tales of the peasantry, but as I lay helplessly bound on this ninth day of my imprisonment within a few miles of home, smarting and aching under wounds inflicted by gipsy tools, I became more credulous. Boswell might deprive me of sight or speech or strength by a knife-thrust, or even the p.r.i.c.k of a needle. How I had laughed at the warnings of Bess!

But the event had more than justified them. Well, come what might, there was only one course for me, to play the man and trust in G.o.d, as I vowed to do to the end.

There is no need to linger over the details of the next few days.

Boswell attended closely on me for a week, treating my wounds with salve, and compelling me to drink a quant.i.ty of some abominable decoction. He eased my bonds from time to time, but took good heed to prevent my having freedom to use my arms, while I watched closely for any opportunity.

On the sixteenth day of my captivity, Sheffield's negro appeared on the scene, evidently bringing disquieting news for my jailer. He carried a hamper into the adjoining chamber, and there the two conversed in a lingo which I did not understand, but from the tone of their voices I judged that they were hurried, and in perturbation of mind. Now one and now the other went out, and once I heard a great crash overhead.

Finally, the negro brought in an iron ball of fifty or sixty pounds'

weight, attached by bar and chain to a ring, which Boswell locked on my right ankle, otherwise releasing me entirely. The pair kept their eyes on me, and their weapons handy, when this had been done, but I was not so foolhardy as to attack them. In truth, a great hope had come to me that they meant to leave me alone awhile, and I waited to see whether they would deprive me of the means of deliverance. After a good deal of gibberish had pa.s.sed between them, and the Moor had done various errands at Boswell's command, both went out together, locking and barring the door in the corridor, and then the outer door behind them.

I picked up the ball, which I could carry in the crook of my arm, lighted a lamp which had been left on the table, and made a tour of inspection, rejoicing to be able to move about, my limbs being stiff and feeble by long constraint. As I had imagined, the negro had brought a store of food. I found bread, salt-beef, tongue, a couple of pasties, several bottles of burgundy, a jar of aqua vitae, but no water.

But I had no great concern about meat or drink. It was more to my purpose that there were eight moderate-sized f.a.ggots of sticks, a pile of turves, and a dozen largish logs. These would suffice. I shouted for joy to find a small hatchet, but was disappointed in searching for oil: the jar was empty. My survey taken, I made up the fire, and put my iron ball at the back of it, so that the links of the chain connecting ball and bar might get the full benefit of the heat, and as soon as one grew red, I prised it open with the head of the hatchet.

Fire had freed me from a weight, and provided me with a missile, which, if well thrown, would disable an enemy. I had no means of ridding myself of the bar, much though it would be in my way in my next effort, which was to explore the chimney. I removed the fire from the hearth, and had it well blazing in the middle of the floor, before attempting the chimney, for on fire I must now chiefly depend for my liberation.

My climbing brought down such a quant.i.ty of soot as almost smothered and choked me, and I found the flue so narrow a little way up, as to forbid all hope of escape in that direction to a man of my width and stature. So I restored the fire to the hearth, and began my second enterprise. I heaped turves and sticks against the door of the corridor on the side on which it was hinged, and set fire to the pile.

The flames soon licked the door, but they did no more than blacken it, for it was hard and solid, and moreover, as I have said, protected by bands of iron. It was like to be a slower business than I had expected, and time being precious, I cast about for means to hasten the process. There was a small poker on the hearth in my dungeon, which I made red-hot, and tried to bore holes with it in the upper part of the door, but the poker was thin, and the door was stout and thick. The bar, which dragged at my ankle, would have been more serviceable, but I could not manage to break any of the links which held it to the shackle. In the intervals of reheating my little poker, I chopped at the door with the hatchet, and when my hands grew very sore, varied my employment by hurling the ball against the place where I had chopped and bored.

How long I spent over the work I cannot reckon, but I had used more than half of my stock of fuel when the fire really took hold. When I saw the door begin to burn I turned away, lest in my impatience I should be tempted to meddle, and so hinder the business. I forced myself to eat a few mouthfuls of food and to drink a little wine before I returned. What was my joy to see that the lower hinge-iron had slightly parted from the woodwork! I threw myself against the door with all my strength. It yielded a little, and, at the fourth or fifth rush, it gave completely, and I had cleared the first barrier.

I made haste to heap all the remaining fuel against the outer door, emptying over the pile the contents of the jar of aqua vitae. The roaring blaze bit the wood almost at once, clean contrary to my expectation; but I suppose it was weather-worn and perhaps worm-eaten.

At all events, it was opened in less than half the time required for the other. For a few moments my eyes were blinded by the sudden light, but they quickly recovered, and I stood outside my prison, drinking in the pure, sweet air, and looking at green earth and blue sky with such delight as can be understood only by those who have lacked the sight of them as long as I had done--and regained it on a cloudless September morning. I had never known how beautiful are all the things which G.o.d has made. Even the wilderness of arched and twisted brambles that grew about the place was charming to my sight, and I admired with a strange tenderness the tomt.i.ts which were flocking and fluttering about the bushes in search of the ripest fruit. From that day forward I have never looked at a caged bird without the desire to set it free. For a while I stood looking about me in a kind of ecstasy, but soon remembered I must be moving, if I would keep my new-found liberty. I judged it safest, on the whole, to keep to the main road, pa.s.sing through Epworth, where I might be relieved of my fetter, and gather information. I met few people, a little gang of labourers, a boy on horseback, a pedlar carrying his pack, but no one greeted me, and all stood still to look when they had gone some distance past me. When I came to the Bull, I walked into the smithy--Johnson, who kept the inn, being a blacksmith--and asked him to remove the bar and chain. He and his man retained their hammers, and simply stared.

"Come, don't stand staring, my man, but off with this thing, quick," I said impatiently.

"And who are you?" asked he. "My Lord Dirt, from Dunghill Hall?"

"'Tis a poor lunatic 'scaped from Bedlam," growled the other.

Now I remembered my wry nose and scarred face, which I had for the time forgotten; and I remembered also that a head and face which had not been touched with water for more than a night, and had been lately poked up a chimney, and grilled over burning f.a.ggots, would certainly have no prepossessing appearance; nor would my coa.r.s.e clothing, rent and smirched and stained with blood and other liquids, give me the air of a gentleman, whose commands should have instant attention.

Doubtless the remembrance of these things caused me a momentary hesitation, but I answered--

"I am Frank Vavasour."

"Be'st a thundering liar!" gasped Johnson.

"'Tis a poor lunatic," said his man. "Else he wouldn't give hisself the name of a dead man."

"Dead! What do you mean, fellow?" I asked.