Vassall Morton Part 32

Max had always detested the life of a garrison, and especially of a prison garrison, and the change proved very agreeable to him. Though brave as the bravest, he had not much energy or forecast, and commonly let his affairs take care of themselves. He lived on from day to day, neither abandoning his plan of desertion, nor acting upon it; until, after more than two years, he was remanded to Ehrenberg, where his old disgust returned in greater force than ever. In this state of his mind, the duty of visitor was a.s.signed to him, thus bringing him in contact with Morton, reviving his half-forgotten feeling, and, at the same time, promising him an opportunity to carry his former scheme into effect.

To this time, Morton had borne his troubles with as much philosophy as could reasonably have been expected; but now that something like a tangible hope began to open on him, the excitement became intense. He waited the daily visits of the soldier with a painful eagerness and suspense. At the stated hours, Max always came; and, at each return, some whispered word of friendship greeted the prisoner's ear.

Two days after the first paper, he thrust in another; and Morton read as follows:--

"We must wait; but our time will come; perhaps in ten days; perhaps in a week. I shall watch for a chance. Only be patient."

Five long and anxious days succeeded; when, on the forenoon of the sixth, Max thrust in a third paper; and Morton, with a beating heart, read,--

"When the jailer comes this afternoon, make him talk with you, and keep him with his back to the door. _I shall come._ Be cool and steady. I shall tell you what to do."

Illness and long confinement had wrought upon Morton's system in a manner which made it doubly difficult to preserve the coolness which the emergency demanded; but he summoned his utmost resolution to meet this crisis of his fate.

The jailer was nowise addicted to conversation; and how to engage him in it, was a problem of some difficulty. There was only one topic on which Morton had ever seen him at all animated. This was the battle of Wagram, in which, in his youth, he had taken part, and where he had received a sabre cut, which had left a ghastly blue scar across his cheek. In dilating on this momentous pa.s.sage of his life, the old German would sometimes be roused into a great excitement; and Morton had often amused himself with trying to comprehend the jargon which he poured out, in thick gobbling tones, about cannonading and charging, sabres and bombsh.e.l.ls, pointing continually at his scar, and laboring to impress his hearer with the conviction, immovably fixed in his own mind, that he, Jacob, was one of the chief heroes of the day.

At his usual hour, about the middle of the afternoon, Jacob appeared.

As he came in, he closed the outer door, which secured itself by a latch. This latch could be moved back from within or without, by a species of key in the jailer's keeping, Max also, as visitor, having a duplicate. The jailer alone had the key of the inner door; but this, during his stay in the cell, he never thought it necessary to close.

Jacob went through his ordinary routine, breathing deeply, meanwhile, and talking unconsciously to himself, after his usual manner.

"Do you know, Jacob," said Morton, seating himself on a stool in the farther corner, "I was dreaming the other night of you and the battle of Wagram."

"Eh!" grunted the jailer.

"What you have been telling me about it is a lie. You were never in that battle at all."

"Eh!"

"You were frightened, and ran off before the fighting began."

"Run! I run off!" growled Jacob, the idea slowly penetrating his brain.

Morton nodded a.s.sent.

The jailer turned and stared at him for a moment with open eyes and mouth. Then, as his wrath slowly mounted, he began to pour forth a flood of denial, mixed with invective against his a.s.sailant, appealing to his scar as proof positive of his valor.

"A sabre never made that scar," said Morton, as the other paused in his eloquence.

Jacob stared at him, speechless.

"You got it in a drunken row."

At this Jacob's rage seemed to choke his utterance; and Morton thought he would attack him bodily, as he stood before him, shaking his fists, and stamping on the pavement.

This pantomime was brought to a sudden close by a pair of strong hands clinched around Jacob's neck from behind, with the gripe of a vice.

"Shut the door," whispered Max.

On entering, he had left it ajar. Morton hastened to close it. The corporal meanwhile laid Jacob flat on the floor of the cell.

"Take my bayonet, and run it through him if he makes a sound."

Morton drew the bayonet from its sheath at the belt of Max, and kneeling on the jailer's breast, pressed the point of the weapon against his throat. Max then loosed his grasp, and gagged him effectually with a piece of wood and a cord which he had brought for the purpose. Jacob lay, during the whole, quite motionless, glaring upward with gla.s.sy, bloodshot eyes, stupefied with fright and astonishment.

"You must put on his clothes," said Max.

They accordingly took off the jailer's outer garments, which Morton subst.i.tuted for his own, drawing the deep-visored cap over his eyes.

Max, at the same time, bound the jailer, hand and foot, with strings of leather, which he took from his pocket.

"Look out into the gallery," he said, unclosing the door, "and see if there's any body in the way."

Morton, in his jailer's dress, went out, and, looking back, reported that the coast was clear. Max followed, and closed the door. The helpless Jacob remained a prisoner, till some other functionary of the castle should come to his relief.

They pa.s.sed along the gallery, down one flight of steps, and up another, meeting no one but a soldier, to whom Max gave a careless nod of recognition. There were several private outlets to the castle, but each was guarded by a sentinel; and it was chiefly his preparation against this difficulty that had caused Max's delay.

Among his acquaintance was an old soldier, called Peter,--a Prussian by birth. He had learned to read and write, and being inordinately vain of his superior acquirements, looked upon himself as the most learned of men. When off duty, he was commonly to be found in a corner of the barrack, poring over a greasy little book, which he always carried in his pocket. As his temper was exceedingly sour and disagreeable, he was no favorite; indeed, he was the general b.u.t.t of his brother soldiers, who delighted to exasperate his crusty mood.

Max, however, with a view to the furtherance of his scheme, had of late courted his good graces, flattering him on his learning, often asking him to drink, and otherwise cajoling him. Finding that, on this day, Peter's turn had come to stand guard at a certain postern of the prison, he had contrived to drug him with a strong dose of opium, mixed with a dram of bitters. Max, who was a singular compound of simplicity and finesse, the former the result of nature, the latter of circ.u.mstance, plumed himself greatly on this exploit.

As they approached the narrow door in question, Max stooped and took off his shoes, motioning Morton to do the same. At a few paces farther on, they saw the sentinel, walking to and fro on his post, with no very military gait.

Max, who was wonderfully cool and composed, pressed Morton's arm.

"_Voila, monsieur_,"--he was now and hereafter very respectful in his manner towards the man he was saving,--"_voila_; look at the old b.o.o.by; how he reels and staggers about--ah! do you see?"

Peter had stopped in his walk, and was leaning against the wall, nodding his head with a look indescribably sleepy and silly. Meanwhile his musket was slowly slipping down between his arm and his side, in spite of one or two efforts to clutch it. At last the b.u.t.t struck on the pavement. The sound roused the sentinel from his torpor. He shook himself, and began his walk again; but in a few moments stopped, leaned his shoulder against the wall, on the farther side of the door, let his musket this time rest fairly on the floor, and began nodding and b.u.t.ting his head, in a most ludicrous manner, into an angle of the wall.

Max again pressed Morton's arm, and gliding on tiptoe past the drugged sentinel, they went out at the door without alarming him. They were now in an obscure and narrow precinct of the castle, flanked on one side by a high wall of ancient masonry, and on the other by the rear of various outbuildings. The place did no great credit to the neatness of the garrison, being littered with a variety of refuse; but no living thing was visible; none, that is, but a gray cat sneaking along under the wall of a shed, with a newly-killed rat dangling from her mouth.

They next pa.s.sed into a wider area, overlooked on the left by the rear of the princ.i.p.al range of barracks.

"Hallo, Max, where are you going?" cried a voice.

Max looked up, and saw a brother corporal leaning out at one of the barrack windows, with a fatigue cap on one side of his head, and a German pipe between his moustached lips.

"To the village."

"Who gave you leave?"

"The lieutenant."

"It's good company you are in. What are you going to do below?"

"Get me a pipe. Mine is broke. What is a man fit for without his pipe?"

The other at the window replied by a joke, not very refined, levelled at Max and his companion. Max retorted only by a ludicrous gesture of derision, which drew a horse laugh from a soldier at another window, under cover of which they pa.s.sed out of the area, and reached a pathway leading down the height.

A natural gully, or shallow ravine, twisted and zigzagged down the side of the rock. In wet weather, it became a little watercourse, conducting all the rain that fell on the western roofs of the castle down to the filthy and picturesque hamlet of Ehrenberg, with its dirty population of five hundred Wallack and Croat peasants, and a horde of dirtier gypsies, nested in the outskirts. In dry weather, the gully served as a pathway, which the soldiers often used in their descents to the village.