I questioned him no further. We rode through the park (the sentries taking my password), and came to the guardroom of the Castle, where, as we dismounted, the general's quartermaster lounged out and called for a couple of men to take our horses. Then, learning that my companion brought a message from Lord Crawford, he made no delay but led us straight to the general's room.
Though the clock in the corner had gone midnight, the general sat in a litter of papers with a lamp at his elbow and his legs stretched out to a bright sea-coal fire. With him was closeted Colonel Pottley, of the London train-bands, and by the look of the papers around them they had been checking the lists (as two days later there was heavy court-martialling among the newly arrived drafts and cashiering of officers that had misbehaved in Middlesex).
'You come from the Earl of Crawford?' asked the general, not rising from his chair, but holding out a hand for the letter.
The messenger presented it, with a good soldierly salute; and so stood, pulling at his moustachios and looking fierce. 'Your name?'
'Sergeant Orlando Rich, of the Earl's Loyal Troop.' The general broke the seal, ran his eye over the paper, and let out a short laugh.
'His lordship sends me his loving compliment and prays me to spare him a runlet of sack or of malvoisy, for that his own wine is drunk out and the ale at Alton does not agree with his stomach.'
'Nor with any man's,' corroborated Sergeant Rich.
'He promises to send me a fat ox in exchange, and—' the General glanced to the foot of the scrawl, turned the paper over, and found it blank save for the name and direction—'and that, it seems, is all. No talk of prisoners. . . . Truly an urgent message to send post at midnight!'
'If you had seen his lordship's condition—' murmured Sergeant Rich.
'His lordship shall have a full hogshead; but not by you;' the General shot a shrewd glance at the man and bade me step outside and summon the quartermaster who waited in the corridor. 'Quartermaster,' said he, 'convey this visitor of ours to the kitchens. Give him what meat and wine he demands. Let him depart when he will and carry as much as he will—under his skin. Meantime order out three of the pack-nags, and tell the cellarer to fetch up six firkins of the sack sent down to me last Thursday by Mr Trenchard. Have them slung, a pair to each horse, and well secured— for the roads are slippery. And you, Master Fleming—'
I saluted; flushing, perhaps, a little with pleasure that he remembered my name.
'Do you mount guard to-night? Then we must find you a substitute. What say you to convoying this wine, with a trumpet, to my Lord Crawford? You may choose half a dozen of your troop to ride with you. The road to Alton cannot easily be missed; and, if it could— why, these night sallies are the best of training for a young soldier. I doubt, Master Fleming, that since this morning, when I promoted you cornet, you have heard talk that glanced upon your rawness, hey? Well, here is a chance for you to learn. For my part I call no man a finished campaigner until he can smell his way through a strange country in the dark. You fancy the errand? Then go, and prosper: and be sure my Lord Crawford will treat you kindly, when he has once tasted my wine.'
CHAPTER II.
The stroke of one in the morning, sounding after us from Farnham clock through the fine frosted air, overtook us well upon the road. I had made speed, and so had the quartermaster and cellarer. As for Sergeant Orlando Rich, if he had not achieved speed he had at least made haste. Before I started my pack-horses from the guardroom door the cellarer came to me and reported him drunk as a fly; and stepping into the great kitchen for a slice of pasty, to fortify me against the night's work, I saw my hero laid out and snoring, with his shoulder-blades flat on the paved floor. So I left him to sleep it off.
A fellow of the general's own guard helped me lead my horses to the door of the Bear, and there I tumbled out my substitute, and six passably good troopers I had chosen to take with me. They were Carey, our youngest sergeant, and as good-natured a fellow as I knew; Randles, who stood well for advancement to the post my own promotion had left vacant; and four other privates—Shackell, Wyld, Masters, and Small Owens (as we called him), a Welshman from the Vale of Cardigan. To prime them for the ride I called up the landlord and dosed them each with a glass of hot Hollands water; and forth we set, in good trim and spirits.
For two miles after passing our picket we ambled along at ease. The moon was low in the south-west, but as yet gave us plenty of light; and the wind—from the quarter directly opposite—though bitter and searching, blew behind our right shoulders and helped us cheerfully along. Our troubles began in a dip of the road on this side of the hamlet of Froyl, where an autumn freshet, flooding the highway, had been caught by the frost and fixed in a rippled floor of ice. We had seen duly to the roughing of our own chargers; and even they were forced at this passage to feel their steps mincingly; but the pack-horses, for whom I had only the quartermaster's assurance, had been handled (if indeed at all) by the inexpertest of smiths. The poor beasts sprawled and slithered this way and that, and in the end, as if by consent, came to a pitiful halt, their knees shaking under them. So they appeared willing to wait and tremble until morning: but on my order Randles, Owen, and Masters, dismounting, led them and their own horses, foot by foot, on to sure ground.
For a mile beyond, and some way past Froyl, was safe going if we avoided the ruts. But here the moon failed us; and when Carey lit a lantern to help, it showed us that the carriers had no stomach left in them. One, though the froth froze on him, was sweating like a resty colt. The other two, if we slacked hold on their halter-ropes, would lurch together, halt, and slue neck to neck like a couple of timid dowagers hesitating upon a question of delicacy.
It was here that there came into my head the ill-starred thought of leading them off the road and through the fields close alongside of it on our left hand. The road itself I knew pretty well, and that it bore gradually to the left, all the way to Alton. Carey, whom I consulted, agreed that we could find it again at any time we chose. So, and without more ado, we opened the next gate we came to and herded the beasts through.
The first two fields, being stubble, served us well; and the next, a pasture, was even better. Beyond this we had some trouble to find a gate, but at length Masters hit on one a little way out of our course, and it led to a wide plowland, freshly turned but hard-frozen, in the furrows of which our horses boggled a good deal. We pushed across it, holding our line in a long slant back towards the loom of the tall hedge that (as we agreed) marked the course of the highway. On the far side of the plow this hedge ran down hill towards us and more sharply than I had reckoned: yet before regaining it we had to cross another pasture. I was the surer that this must be the road because of a light that shone straight ahead of us, which I took to be the direction of Holibourne village. I should mention, too, that on our left all the way the ground descended in an easy slope, but the frost had bound the little river running below and held it silent.
Sure enough on the far side of the pasture we came to a gate, and Shackell, who was leading, announced that the high-road lay beyond. But a minute later he called to us that this could not be: it was too narrow, a mere lane in fact; and with that, as we pressed up to the gate, the mischief happened.
The cause of it was a poor starved jackass, that had been sheltering himself under the lee of the hedge, and now, as we all but trampled him, heaved himself out of the shadow with a bray of terror. The sound, bursting upon us at close quarters, was as a stone hurled into a pool. Round went our horses' rumps, and up went heels and hoofs. I heard Little Owens cry aloud that his nose was broken. 'Catch hold of the pack-beasts!' I shouted, as they shied back upon us, and two were caught and held fast—I know not by whom. The third, the resty one, springing backwards past me, almost on his haunches, jerked his halter wide of my clutch, and in a moment was galloping full flight down the slope.
With a call to the others to stand steady and wait for me, I wheeled my mare about and rode off in chase, to round him up. The almost total darkness made this hunting mighty unpleasant; but I knew that, bating the chance of being flung by a mole-hill, I had my gentleman safe enough. For, to begin with, he must soon find the pace irksome, with two firkin casks jolting against his ribs; and at the foot of the descent the river would surely head him off. To be sure it was frozen hard and he might have crossed it dry-footed, but the alders on the bank frighted him back, and presently I had him penned in an angle between hedge and stream. Here, as I slowed up and advanced to coax him, from out of the darkness behind him there broke suddenly a shouting and pounding of hoofs, and close in front of me (but hidden by the hedge) a troop of horsemen clattered down from the farther slope and up the lane where my comrades were gathered.
If for a moment I doubted what it all might mean, a couple of pistol-shots, followed by a loose volley that mixt itself with oaths and yells, all too quickly put this out of doubt. My men were being charged, without question or challenge, by a troop of the enemy, while separated by a quarter of a mile of darkness and stiff rising ground from me, who alone carried their credentials. Little need to say in what hurry I wheeled my mare about to the slope, struck spur, dragged my trumpet loose on its sling and blew, as best I could, the call that both armies accepted for note of parley. Belike (let me do the villains this credit), with the jolt and heave of the mare's shoulders knocking the breath out of me, I sounded it ill, or in the noise and scuffle they heard confusedly and missed heeding. The firing continued, at any rate, and before I gained the gate the fight had swept up the lane.
I swung out upon the hard stones and dashed after it. But the enemy, by this, had my fellows on the run, and were driving them at stretch gallop. To worsen my plight, as I pursued I caught sound of hoofs pounding behind and, as it seemed, overtaking me; supposed that a horseman was riding me down; and, reining the mare back fiercely, slued about to meet his onset. It proved to be the poor pack-horse I had left in the valley! He must have galloped like a racer; but now he came to a halt, and thrust his poor bewildered face towards me through the darkness. Commending him to the devil, I wheeled about once more and struck spur; and as I galloped, he galloped anew behind.
This diversion had cost me a good fifty yards. I knew well enough that the lane sooner or later must lead out into the high-road, and made sure that if my fellows gained it first they would head back for Farnham. (What would befall me I left to Providence!) But some two or three of the enemy must have raced ahead and cut off that retreat; for when I came to it the way to the right lay open indeed, but the whole welter was pounding down the road to the left, straight for Alton. Again I followed, and in less than two hundred yards was pressing close upon three or four of the rearmost riders. This seemed to me good opportunity for another call on my trumpet, and I blew, without easing my speed. On the sound of it, one of the dark figures in front swung round in saddle and fired, I saw the flash and the light of it on his gorget and morion: and with that, the bullet glancing against my mare's shoulder, she swerved wildly, leapt high, and came down with forelegs planted, pitching me neck-and-crop out of saddle upon the frozen road.
CHAPTER III.
Doubtless the fall stunned me; but doubtless also not for more than a few seconds. For I awoke to the drum of distant hoofs, and before it died clean away I had recovered sense enough to take its bearing in the direction of Farnham. Strangely enough, towards Alton all was quiet. Sitting up, with both hands pressing my head, for just a moment I recognised the gallop for my own mare's. Another beat time with it. I asked myself, why another? She would be heading for home—wounded, perhaps—scared certainly. But why with a companion? . . . Then, suddenly, I remembered the poor pack-beast; and as I remembered him, all my faculties grew clouded.
Or so, at least, I must suppose; for of the sudden silence on the Alton road I thought not at all. What next engaged me was a feeling of surprise that, of my two hands pressed on my temples, the right was cold, but the left, though it met the wind, unaccountably warm— the wrist below it even deliciously, or so it felt until rubbing my palms together I found them sticky, with blood.
The blood, I next discovered, was welling from a cut on my left temple. Putting up my fingers, I felt the fresh flow running over a crust of it frozen on my cheek; and wondered how I might stanch it. I misdoubted my strength to find the lane again and creep down to the river; and the river, moreover, would be frozen. For a certainty I should freeze to death where I lay, and even more surely on the road back to Farnham I must faint and drop and, dropping, be frozen. With that, I remembered the light we had seen shining ahead of us as we crossed the fields; and staggered along in search of it, after first groping for my morion, which had rolled into the hedge some paces away.
For a while, confused in my bearings, I sought on the wrong hand; but by-and-by caught the twinkle of it through a gate to the left, and studied it, leaning my arms on the bar. The house whence it shone could not be any part of Holibourne village, but must stand somewhere on high rising ground across the valley. I might reckon to reach it by turning back and taking the lane in which we had been surprised: but this meant fetching a long circuit. I was weakening with loss of blood, and—it coming into my mind that the river below would be hard—I resolved to steer a straight line and risk obstacles.
As it turned out, there were none, or none to throw me back. At the stream-side, holding by an elder-bough, I tested the ice with my weight, proved it firm, crossed without so much as cracking it, and breasted a bare grassy slope, too little to be called a down, where a few naked hawthorns chafed and creaked in the wind. Above it was an embankment rounded like a bastion, up the left side of which I crept—or, you might almost say, crawled—and, reaching the top, found myself close under the front of a dwelling-house.
It was coated with whitewash, the glimmer of which showed me the queer shape of the building even in the darkness. It consisted of two stories, both round as pepper-pots. Above the first ran a narrow circular thatch, serving as a mat (so to say) for the second and smaller pepper-pot. I could not discern how this upper story was roofed, but the roof had a hole in it, from which poured a stray ray of light. Light shone too, but through a blind, from a small window close under the eaves. The lower story showed none at all.
I rapped on the door. There came no response, though I waited and listened for a full minute. I rapped again and shouted; and was about to challenge for the third time, when the threshold showed a chink of light. Muffled footsteps came down the passage, and with much creaking the bolts were undrawn.
'Who knocks?' demanded a man's voice, somewhat shrill and querulous.
'Cannot a poor scholar rest in peace, and at this time o' night?'
'In the name of Charity!' I urged.
He flung the door open and stood with a hand-lamp held high, surveying me: a little old man, thin as a rat, in skullcap, furred gown, and list slippers. The lamp shone down on his silvered hair and on a pair of spectacles he had pushed up to the edge of his cap; and showed me a face mildly meditative from the brow down to the chin, which by contrast was extremely resolute.
'More soldiers!' he observed testily. 'The plague take it that they and the meteors must choose the same night to drop from heaven! How many of you, this time?'
I answered that I was alone, and would have added a word on my plight; but this, beneath the lamp-light, he could not miss perceiving, for my face and the left shoulder of my buff coat were a mask of blood.
'H'm!'—he cut me short. 'It may sound to you unfeeling: but if Heaven persists in sending me soldiers I had rather physic than feed them:' and with that he stood aside as inviting me to enter. Be sure I obeyed him gladly, and, stepping inside, rested my hand for a moment against the jamb of a door that stood open to the right. The ray of his lamp, as he held it near to examine me, gave me a glimpse of the room within—of a table with cloth awry, of overturned flagons lying as they had spilt their wine-stains, of chairs and furniture pushed this way and that.
'So your predecessors have left me,' said the old gentleman, catching the direction of my gaze and nodding. 'Whether or no they have left me enough for the morning's breakfast is a matter my servant must discover when he comes over from Holibourne at daylight.'
'They were Malignants, sir, as I guess: the Earl of Crawford's men.'
'Devil a groat care I what you call them, or they call themselves! I study the heavens and take no heed of your sublunary divisions. But they have eaten and drunk me out of house and home; at that hour, too, when the most meteors were predicted: and what is worse they invaded my garret in their clumsy jack-boots, and have thrown my Orchestra Coeli out of gear. I was mending it when you knocked. By the way,' he added more kindly, 'I can go on mending it while you wash your wound, which will appear less horrid when cleansed of all this blood. I have a fire upstairs, and hot water. Come.'
He closed the outer door and, taking me gently by the elbow, half-supported me up the stairway, which was little better than a ladder, and led direct to the strangest room I have ever set eyes on.
It was circular—in diameter perhaps twelve feet—with a high conical roof. The roof had an inner lining of wood, and through a hole in it—where a panel had been slid back—a large optic-glass, raised on a pivot-stand, thrust its nose out into the night. Close within the door stood an oaken press, and beside it, on a tripod, a brazier filled with charcoal and glowing. A truckle-bed, a chair, and two benches made up the rest of the furniture: and of the benches one was crowded with all manner of tools—files by the score, pliers, small hammers, besides lenses, compasses, rules, and a heap of brass filings; the other, for two-thirds of its length, was a litter of books and papers. But the end nearest to the working-bench had been cleared, and here stood a mighty curious intricate mechanism of wheels and brass wire and little brass balls, with fine brass chains depending through holes in the board. My host flung a tender look at it across his shoulder as he stepped to the press to fetch basin and towel.
'The oaf has dislocated the pin of the fly-wheel,' he grunted. 'Praise Heaven, he never guessed that it worked on a diamond, or slight chance had my poor toy with his loutish fingers stuck in it!'
He filled the basin with water from a copper ewer that rested close to the brazier on a file of folios, and set it to heat. 'I doubt I must give up the meteors to-night,' he continued, and went back to his machine, with which, I could see, his fingers were itching to be busy.
I asked, 'Is that, sir, an invention of yours?'
'Ay, soldier,' he answered; 'mine solely; the child of my brain's begetting.' His hands hovered over the delicate points and wires. 'And to be murdered thus by a great thumb-fingered dragoneer!' With a lens and a delicate needle, he began to peer and prise in it; and anon, fixing the lens in his eye, reached out for his hand-lamp.
'To what use have you designed it, sir?' I asked, after a while spent in watching him.
'To no use at all, soldier,' he answered, more tartly. 'The water is warm, and you can bathe your hurt and afterwards I will plaster it.' While I laved my temple with the edge of the towel, between the dip of the water I heard his voice in broken sentences: 'To no use at all. . . . Would a man ask the sun to what use it danced? . . . or the moon and planets? . . .'
I looked up, dabbing my wound gently. His voice had risen and stretched itself on a high, monotonous pitch. He was declaiming verse.
'Who doth not see the measures of the Moon?
Which thirteen times she dances every year,
And ends her Pavane thirteen times as soon
As doth—
Hey? Do you know the lines, soldier?' He stepped forward and peered close at my head while I shook it. 'Tush! a cut, a trifle! Go on bathing. . . . The lines, sir, were writ by Sir John Davies, the first of English poets.'
'Indeed, sir,' said I. 'Now at the Inner Temple, before mixing myself in these troubles, I used to read much poetry and dispute on it with other young men. We had our several laureates; but believe me-and despise if you will—although we had heard tell of Sir John Davies, I doubt if one in six of us had read a line of him.'
'Ay, indeed,' he caught me up, 'I have scarce read a line of any other. Having discovered him I had no need. For allow me to observe—although I know nothing about it—that in poetry the Subject is nine points of excellence; and, Sir John Davies having hit on the most exalted subject tractable by the Muse, it follows that he must be the most exalted poet. Let me tell you—if it will shorten argument—that in general, and in all walks of life, I hate the second-best.'
'I have heard, sir,' said I, 'that this masterpiece was a poem on
Dancing. But you must be thinking of another.'
'Not at all, young man,' my host replied, poring anew into his toy. '"Orchestra" is the name of it; the subject, Dancing. But what dancing!—the sun, the moon, the stars—Eh? Halleluia, but it goes again!'
Sure enough, bending over the basin, I heard a buzz of wheels, and looked up to see the whole machine springing like a score of whipping-tops gone mad, the brass balls swinging and rotating so fast that the eye lost them in little twinkling circles and ellipses, the wheels whirring and filling the room with their hum.
My astronomer had dived under the bench. I saw for the moment little more than his posterior and the soles of his list slippers.
'You'll pardon me,' I heard him grunt, and the speed of the machinery slackened as he attached a couple of leaden weights to the dependent chains. He backed, crawled out, and stood erect; adjusted his spectacles, and stood beaming upon his invention.
'But what is the signification, sir?' I asked, rising from my chair and stepping close.
'Ah! You improve, soldier. It hath signification, not use: and it signifies the motion of the heavens. See—this larger ball is the sun; and here, on their several rods, the planets—all swinging in their courses. By a pointer on this dial-plate—observe me now—I reduce the space of a day to one, two, three minutes, as I chose, retarding or accelerating, but always in just proportion. 'Tis set for these December days; you will remark the sun's ambit—how it lies south of the zenith, and how far short it rises and falls from the equinoctial points. But wait awhile, and in a few minutes—that is to say, days—you shall see him start to widen his circuit. Here now is Saturn, with his rim: and here Venus—mark how delicately she lifts, following the motion of her lord—`
'Just with the Sun her dainty feet doth move—'
'And this is Dancing—Orchestra Coeli—the Dancing of the Firmament.'
'Wonderful!' I cried.
'You shall say so presently! So far you have only seen: now hear!'
He drew out a small brass pin from the foot of the mechanism, and at once it began to hum, on three or four notes such as children make with a comb and a scrap of paper.
The notes lifted and fell, and the little balls—each in his separate circle—wheeled and spun, twinkling in time with them, until my head, too, began to swim.
'It will run for an hour now,' my host assured me. 'Indeed, with one to watch and draw up the weights at due intervals, it will run for ever.'
'It dizzies me,' said I.
'Your head is light, belike, with the loss of blood. Sit you back in the chair, and I will try now what may be done with ointment and plaster.'
He forced me to seat myself and, fetching a small medicine-box from the press, began to operate. His fingers were extraordinarily quick and thin, and so delicate of touch that I felt no pain, or very little: but though I lay with my head far back and saw the machine no longer, it had set my brain spinning, and the pressure of his hands appeared to be urging it round and round, while his voice (for he talked without intermission) mingled and interwove itself with the drone of the music from the table. He was reciting verses; from his favourite poem, no doubt. But though the sound of them ran in my ears like a brook, I can remember one couplet only,—
'And all in sundry measures do delight,
Yet altogether keep no measure right. . . .'
I dare say that, yielding to the giddiness, I swooned: and yet I can remember no interval. The circles seemed to have hold of me, to be drawing me down, and yet down; until, like a diver half-bursting for breath, I found strength, sprang upwards, and reached the surface with a cry.
The cry rang in my ears yet. But had it come, after all, from my own lips? I gripped the arms of the chair in a kind of terror, and leaned forward, staring at my host, who had fallen back a pace, and stood between me and the lamp.
'Pardon me, sir,' I found voice to say after a pause 'I must have fallen into a doze, I think. My head—' I put a hand up to it and discovered that it was bandaged. He did not answer me, but appeared to be listening. 'My head—' I repeated, and again stopped short— this time at sound of a cry.
It came from the night without: and at once I knew it to be a repetition of the sound that had aroused me. Nor was it, in fact, a cry, though it rose like a cry against the wind: rather, a confused uproar of voices, continuous, drawing nearer and nearer.
Then, as I stared at my host and he at me, the noise became articulate as drunken singing—'Tow, row, row! Tow, row, row! . . . Crop-headed Puritans, tow, row, row. . . . Boot and saddle, and tow, row, row!—and, nearing so, broke into chorus,—
'Waller and Hazelrigg, Stapleton, Scroop—
Way! Make way for His Majesty's troop!
Crop-headed Puritans durstn't deny
His Majesty's gentlemen riding by,
With boot and saddle and tow-row-row!'
'Good Lord!' muttered my host, casting out his two hands in despair.
'More soldiers!'
But by this time I had my hand on the door. 'Guide me down the stairs,' I commanded; 'down to the door! And, before you open it, quench the light!'
By the time we reached the door the voices were close at hand, coming down the lane: and by each note of them I grew more clearly convinced. 'Sir,' I asked in a whisper, 'does this lane lead off from the road on the near side of Alton?
For a moment it seemed that he did not hear me. 'Pray Heaven I dowsed the light in time!' he chattered. 'Three visits in one night is more than my sins deserve. . . . Yes; the lane enters a half-mile this side of Alton, and returns back—'
'Well enough I know where it returns back' said I. 'Man, did you bewitch them?—as, a while ago, you bewitched me?'
'Eh?'
I felt that he was peering at me in the dark.
'Something has bewitched them,' I persisted. 'Either the wine or that devil's toy of yours has hold of them; or the both, belike. These are the same men, and have travelled full circle, listen to them!—'tis the music of the spheres, sir.'
'I believe you are right,' said my host, with a chuckle.
'O, Copernicus!'
I drew the door open gently and looked aloft. The night, before so starry, was now clouded over. The troopers—I could hear their horses' hoofs above the whoops and yells of their chorusing—were winding downhill by a sunken way within ten yards of me. A gravel path lay between me and the hedge overlooking it. This I saw by the faint upcast rays of the lanterns they had lit for guidance. I tip-toed across to the hedge, and, peering over, was relieved of my last doubt: for at the tail of the procession and under charge of one drunken trooper for whipper-in, rode all my poor comrades with arms triced behind them and ankles lamentably looped under their horses' bellies.
Even as they passed a thought came into my head: and the face of the whipper-in—seen dimly in the shadow of a lantern he joggled at his saddle-bow—decided me. I slipped off my sash, looped it loosely in my hand, and so, without waiting to say farewell to my host, slid down the bank into the lane.
Though I shot over the frozen bank a deal faster than ever I intended and dropped on the roadway with a thud, the trooper, bawling his chorus, did not turn in his saddle. I tip-toed after him, between a walk and a run, and still he did not turn. Not till I was level with his stirrup did he guess that I was on him; and even so he could scarcely roar out a curse before I had my sash flung over him and with a jerk fetched him clean out of his saddle. As he pitched sideways, the lantern fell with a clatter and rolled into the hedge.
'What the devil's up with you, back there!' At the noise, I heard two or three of the midmost troopers rein up.
'Right! All right!' I called forward to them, catching the horse's bridle and at the same time stooping over the poor fool—to gag him, if need were. He lay as he had fallen. I hope I have not his death to my account, and for certain no corpse lay in the road when I passed along it a few hours later.
'Right!' I called sturdily, deepening my voice to imitate that of my victim as nearly as I could match it—
'Crop-headed Puritans, tow-row-row!'
Still shouting the chorus, I mastered the reluctant horse, swung myself into saddle, and edged up towards my comrades.
'Carey! Shackell!' I called softly, overtaking them.
At the sound of my voice, they came near to letting out a cry that had spoilt all. Masters, indeed, started a yell: but Small Owens (whose bands I had fortunately cut the first) reached out a hand and clapped it over his mouth.
'How many be they?' I asked as we rode.
'Twenty-two,' answered Randles, chafing his wrists, 'and all drunk as lords.'
'If we had arms,' said Carey, 'we might drive the whole lot.'
'But since you have not,' said I, 'we must pitch our attempt lower. In three minutes we shall reach the high-road; and then strike spurs all to the right for Farnham!'
But our luck proved better than we hoped. For as we drew near the exit of the lane, I heard a voice challenge. The chorus, which had lasted us all the way, ceased on a sudden, and was taken up by a pistol-shot. At once I guessed that here must be help, and, feeling for my trumpet, found it and blew the call. Naked of weapons as my comrades were, we charged down on the rear, broke it, and flung it upon the darkness, where by this time we could hear the voice of Wilkins, our sergeant-major, bellowing above the tumult.
Within five minutes this double charge settled all. The pack-horses were ours again, with twenty-one inebriate prisoners. My mare, galloping home with the third pack-horse at her heels, had alarmed the picket, and Wilkins, with twenty men, had turned out to scour the Alton road.
So, while we secured our drunkards to the last man, I had leisure to bless my fortune.
CHAPTER IV.
By this time dawn had begun to grow in the sky behind us. I handed over the prisoners to Wilkins and Carey, and gave Wyld and Masters leave to return with them to Farnham: 'for,' said I, 'they seem the weariest, and Shackell and Small Owens will serve well enough for escort by daylight.'
Wilkins stared. 'You are not telling me,' said he, that you intend going forward with that silly wine, and you in such plight!'
'There's my orders, to begin with,' said I; 'and—bless the man!—you don't suppose, after this night's work, I mean to miss the fun of it, now that the luck is turned and is running. As for the wine, Lord Crawford will get but three firkins for his hogshead; but if his rascals choose to play highwaymen upon a peaceful convoy, that is his look-out. And as for my plight, I shall present myself with these bandages and ask him what manner of troops he commands, that do violence upon a trumpet honourably sent to him and on his own petition.'
And this (to shorten my tale) I did. With Shackell and Small Owens I herded my two pack-horses along the road to Alton, and arrived at the earl's outposts without mishap and within half an hour past daybreak. There I sounded my trumpet, and was led without ado to his lordship's headquarters.
I found him seated with his secretary and with a grave, handsome man, Colonel John Bolle, that commanded his regiment of infantry, and was killed next day defending Alton Church (I have heard), in the very pulpit. This Colonel Bolle bowed to me very courteously, but the earl (as one could tell at first sight) was sulky: belike by deprivation of his favourite drink. Or perhaps the ale he took in lieu of it—he had a tankard at his elbow—had soured on his stomach.
'Hey?' he began, frowning, as he broke the seal of my letter. 'Are all General Waller's troopers in this condition? Or does he think it manners to send me a trumpeter in such trim?'
'My lord,' said I, 'your wine and my poor self have come by a roundabout road, and on the way have been tapped of a trifle.'
'By whom, sir?'
'By certain of your men, my lord.'
'I'll hang 'em for it, then.'
'I thank you, my lord; but for that you must treat with General Waller.' And I told him the tale, or so much of it as I thought was good for him.
At the close he eyed me awhile angrily, with his brows drawn down.
'You are an impudent knave, sir, to stand and tell me this to my face. Look ye here, Bolle'—he swung round upon the colonel, who had put forth a hand as though to arrest this unseemly abuse. 'How do I know that this dog has not tampered with the wine? By God!' he broke out as a servant entered with a stoup of it, 'I'll not drink it—I'll not drink a drop of it—until this fellow has first tasted it, here, in our presence.'
I believe that I went white: but 'twas with rage. 'Give me a glass of it,' I answered; and, as the servant filled and handed to me, 'The wine, my lord, came on your own petition and at your own risk, as I must remind you. Nevertheless, I will drink—to your long life, and better manners.' I drank, set down the glass, and asked, after a pause, 'May I go, my lord?'
'You may go to the devil!'
I hesitated. 'There was, as I remember, some little mention of an ox—'
'You may tell your master to come and fetch it,' he growled.
Well, my master did fetch it, and with speed. That same night he assembled five thousand men without beat of drum in the park at Farnham, and at seven o'clock we marched off towards Basing. On the way to Crondall, we of the horse halted for an hour to let the foot regiments catch up with us, and all together headed down upon Alton. In this way, at nine in the morning, we came down upon the west of the town, while the earl kept watch on the roads to the eastwards; and charged at once.
I say that the earl kept watch; but in truth he had put this duty upon his captains, while he still fuddled himself with our general's sack. He and his horse never gave fight, but galloped before us on the road to Winchester; along which, after close on an hour's chase, our trumpets recalled us as our infantry forced the doors of Alton Church, and cut up Colonel Bolle's regiment that still resisted there. The Earl of Crawford left a good half of his wine behind, and two days later our general, who had sent for me, showed me this letter—
'To Sir W. Waller.
'Sir,—I hope your gaining of Alton cost you dear. It was your lot to drink of your own sack, which I never intended to have left for you. I pray you favour me so much as to send me your own chirurgeon, and upon my honour I will send you a person suitable to his exchange.—Sir, your servant,
'Crawford.'
From this happy success it was my fortune, that same afternoon, to lead our troop back to Farnham. Coming on the way to the entrance of a lane on our right, I avoided the high-road for the by-path. It twisted downhill to the river, crossed it, and by-and-by in a dip of the farther slope, brought me in sight of a round cottage of two stories. No smoke arose from it, though the twilight was drawing in upon a frost that searched our bones as we rode. No inhabitant showed a face. But I waved a hand in passing, and I am mistaken if a hand did not respond from the upper story—by drawing a shutter close.
RED VELVET.
[August, 1644. The Story is told by Ralph Medhope, Captain of the Twenty-second (or Gray-coat) Troop of Horse in the Parliament Army, then serving in Cornwall.]
We were eight men in the picket. My cornet, Ned Penkevill, rode beside me; our trumpeter, Israel Hutson, a pace or two behind; with five troopers following. I could tell you their names, but there is no need, for I alone of the eight come into the story. The rest rode to their death that night, and met it in the dawn, like men.
We rode northward and inland along the downs high over the left bank of the Fowey River; with good turf and heather underfoot, and with the moon behind our right shoulders. She was the harvest moon, now in her last quarter, and from her altitude I guessed it, by west country time, to be well past four of the morning or within an hour of daybreak. But because she hung bright up here, we pricked forward warily, using every pit and hollow. We had left our breast-pieces, back-pieces, and gorgets behind us, with Penkevill's standard, for the main troop to carry; and rode in plain gray jerkins—bareheaded too, since on mounting the rise above the valley-fog we had done off our morions (for fear of the moonlight) and hidden them in a furze-brake, where belike next summer the heather-bees found and made hives of them.
Fog, rolling up from the sea—seven or eight miles away—filled all the valley below us: and this fog was the reason of our riding. For the valley formed the neck of a trap in which the King held our general with two thousand five hundred horse, six thousand infantry, and I know not how many guns. His own artillery lined the heights under which we rode—that is, to left or east of the river; he had pushed across a couple of batteries to the opposite hills, and between them easily commanded the valley. It was just the ease of it that made him careless and gave us our chance. He had withdrawn the better part of his horse to the coast, to make a display against our scattered base; and our general, aware of this, was even meditating an assault on the heights when the sudden fog changed his plans and he resolved to march his horse, under cover of it, straight through the trap. The risk, to be sure, was nearly desperate; since, for aught he knew, the King was marching back his troops under the same cover, and to be caught in that narrow valley (which was plashy, moreover, and in places flooded) would mean the total loss of his cavalry. Yet he had spoken cheerfully when I took leave of him and rode off with my seven men—our business being to watch along the enemy's lines for any movement, to sound a warning if necessary, and, if surprised or caught, so to behave as to lead suspicion away from the movement of the main body.
The enemy kept loose watch up here. We could see his camp-fires dotted on the ridge between us and the dark woods of Boconnock, where the owls hooted; but either we were lucky or his outposts had been carelessly set. Clearly no alarm had reached these encampments. But Heaven knew what might be happening, or preparing to happen, in the valley. There at any moment the report of a single musket might tell us that all was lost.
Penkevill—a good lad—insisted that all was well. Our men had been due to start at two o'clock, and all delay allowed for, by this time they should be past the gut of the valley, where an opposing force would certainly choose to post itself.
My answer to this was that, even allowing it, we must wait for the sound of fighting at Respryn Bridge, farther up the vale, or at one of the two fords a little below it. For there, and there only, could our men cross the river, as they must to hit off any line of escape through Liscard and into Devon. The bridge we knew to be held by a guard, and almost to a certainty the fords, though swollen by recent rains, would be watched also. It was a part of the plan to surprise and force these crossings, and no question but that—unless their guard had been strengthened—they could be forced. But as certainly the guard, however weak, would make at least some show of fight; so certainly, indeed, that the sound of firing here was to announce success and be our signal to rejoin the main body.
Now from this bridge of Respryn a highway climbs from the valley and runs due east across the downs; that is to say, straight athwart the track we were holding; and our orders were on no account to cross this highway, but to halt at some little distance on the near side of it, place ourselves in cover, and so await the signal. For the enemy held it—we could spy a couple of their camp-fires on the rise where it crosses Five Barrow Hill, with a third somewhat nearer, by the cross lanes called Grey Mare—and it would assuredly be patrolled. If in attempting to cross it we fell foul of the patrol, the alarm might draw their troops down towards the bridge; and again, if we crossed it without mishap, we should be no better placed and might easily overshoot our mark, for somewhere alongside this road our general would direct his retreat, over the heather and short turf that stretched for miles ahead and for a mile or more on either hand—fair open country and for cavalry the best in the world.
Accordingly we found cover in a belt of fir-trees overlooking the valley, and for a while possessed our souls in patience. We were early, having come without mishap or challenge, and to expect a like speed of two thousand five hundred men—riding in thick fog through water-meadows, with ditches to be crossed and gates to be found and passed—was in the last degree unreasonable. Nevertheless, dawn could not be far off, and as the minutes dragged by, my spirits sank and my thoughts ran on a score of possible disasters.
By-and-by the sky began to pale. We heard a small troop of horsemen coming down the road at a walk—a patrol perhaps, or perhaps they were riding down to relieve the guard by the bridge. We listened and made out their number to be twenty or thereabouts. The wind had shifted—another good reason for keeping on our side of the road—and blew from them to us; but our horses were well trained. The troop drew level with our hiding; we could hear the jingling of their bits, and with that came our signal. A couple of pistol shots rang out; they made every man of us start in his saddle, and they were followed by a volley.
In my surprise I had dug spur and pushed out beyond our clump of firs, almost before it struck me that the sound came not from the valley but from ahead of us, across the road and some way up the slope. My first motion had been to charge the troopers in the roadway, to drive them (or at least to check them) from helping at the bridge; and I had done more wisely by holding to it, even upon second thought, for they had wheeled towards the sound and so gave their backs to us. While they stood thus we might have charged through them, and all had been well.
As it was, they offered us this chance for a moment only; and then, striking spur, scrambled up the bank on the far side of the road and headed across the turf at a gallop. We looked, and slowly we understood. For half a mile away, up the rise of the downs, a broad dark shadow was moving; and we had scarcely discerned it before, in the pale of the dawn, small points of light wavered and broke upon morions, gorgets, cuirasses. That moving shadow was our own main body, climbing the hill at a gentle trot.
A few picketers hung on their rear. It was these, of course, that had given the alarm: and by-and-by the trumpets taking it up on Five Barrow Hill, a body of four hundred horse came over the rise at a gallop and bore down obliquely on the mass—very confidently at first: but at closer quarters it lost heart and started off to harass the right flank of the solid mass, that paid it little attention and held on its way without swerving.
Before this we had put our horses in motion, to overtake the patrol (as I will call it) and break through to join our comrades. But here it was that our delay proved fatal. For turning at the sound of our gallop, and belike judging us to be the advance-guard of a second large body of horse, the leader of the patrol wheeled his men about, halted them for a moment, and so charged them straight down upon us. In numbers they were more than two to one, with the advantage of the slope, and albeit we fought fiercely for a minute, they broke us and drove us back headlong on the road. Nor did they stop here, but, having us on the run, headed us right down the road to the bridge.
Here, at the bridge-head, finding it unguarded, I managed to wheel about and beat off a couple of pursuers: and Israel Hutson and one of the troopers joining me, we three blocked the passage and could not be dislodged. For the bridge was extremely narrow; so narrow, indeed, that in either parapet the builders had provided an embrasure here and there, for the foot-traveller to step aside if he should meet a passing wagon.
The cavaliers, confronted by this remnant of us, and still perhaps believing that we counted on support, drew off some thirty yards, and were plainly in two minds whether to attack us again or to drop the business and ride back towards the trumpet-calls now sounding confusedly along the crest of the downs; when, to their and our worse dismay, was heard a pounding of hoofs on the road behind us, and over the bridge at our backs came riding a rabble of mounted men with a woman at their head—a woman dressed all in scarlet with a black flapping hat and a scarlet feather. What manner of woman she was I had no time to guess. But she rode with uplifted arm, grasping a pistol and waving the others forward; and her followers—who in no way resembled soldiers—poured after her, shouting, clearly bent on our destruction.
I had managed to recharge my two pistols; and now, thrusting one into my belt and grasping the other, with my sword dangling handy on a wrist-knot, I dismounted and slipped into the nearest embrasure, there to sell my life as dearly as might be. As I did so I heard, above the pounding of hoofs, five or six shots fired, and saw Hutson fling up his arms in the act of dismounting, fall his length across the roadway, and lie still under the feet of my own terrified horse. The trooper made a plunge forward as if to hurl himself through the patrol; and they, no doubt, disposed of him. I never saw him again.
For me, I faced upon the new assailants, as the spitting of bullets on the parapet directed me, and found little time to wonder what manner of people these were who so plainly intended to murder me. Some rode on cart-horses; one or two flourished pitchforks; and if ever a man had a sense of taking his leave of life in a nightmare it was I during that next minute. It seemed that a dozen were on me. I cannot remember letting off my second pistol; but for some time, with my back to the angle of the embrasure, I held my own with almost astonishing ease, and might have held it for many minutes—my opponents being more savage than skilful—had not one of them barbarously hurled his pitchfork at me as a man throws a spear. One point of it pierced and stuck in the upper muscles of my left arm; the other pricked pretty sharply upon a rib; and the pain of this double stroke forced me to drop my sword and make a snatch at the accursed missile, to pluck it out. 'Twas the work of two seconds at most, and then with a jerk upon the wrist-knot I had the sword-hilt again in my grip; but it let three stout ruffians in upon me to finish me. And this they were setting about with a will when, as I beat up a stroke that threatened to cleave my skull, I heard a voice calling on them to hold, and the lady in scarlet forced her horse between us. As the brute's shoulder pressed me back into the angle of my embrasure she held out her pistol at arm's length, her finger on the trigger, and pointed it at close quarters full on my face.
'You are my prisoner.'
I stared up and along the pistol barrel and met her eyes. They looked down on me disdainfully, with no mercy in them, but (it seemed to me) a certain curiosity. A slight frown puckered her brows. She had spoken in a cold, level voice, and if her colour was pale, her manner and bearing showed no trace of agitation.
'Would seem,' said I, 'there is no choice. I submit, madam—to your pleasure, but not to the rabble you lead.'
At this her eyebrows lifted a little. 'A gentleman?' I heard her say, but rather to herself than to me.
'To the extent,' I answered, 'of having a distaste for pitchforks.'
She made no reply to this, but turned about on her men who were murmuring and calling to one another to cut my throat. 'I think you heard me say that this officer is my prisoner. The man who forgets it I will have flogged and afterwards shot. And now stand back, if you please.'
I had made a motion to hand her my sword, but she signed to me to keep it, and rode off towards the patrol, leaving the crowd to stare at me. Being unsure how far her authority prevailed with them, I stuck to my embrasure, and kept an eye lifting for danger, while I wiped, as carelessly as might be, the sweat from my forehead—for the work had been hot while it lasted. I had laid out a couple of these yokels in good earnest, and while their comrades dragged them away, and, propping them against the parapet opposite, called for water to bathe their wounds, I became unpleasantly sensible of my own hurts. The stab in my upper arm, though it bled little, kept burning as though the pitchfork had been dipped in poison; and from the less painful scratch on the ribs I was losing blood; I could feel it welling under my shirt, and running warm down the hollow of my groin. Loss of blood, they say, will often clarify a man's eyesight and quicken his other faculties; or it may be that, as the morning sun ate up what remained of the fog, all around me—the bridge and the persons upon it, the trees up the valley, the river tumbling between—on a sudden grew distinct to the view. At any rate, in my memory, as out of a blurred print, springs the apparition of my lady as she came riding back from her parley with the patrol, with the sunlight on her flaming feather and habit of red velvet, and her horse's shadow moving clear-cut along the granite parapet. Nay, it seemed that her voice, too, had a sharper edge as she spoke to me.
'I have explained to the captain, yonder, that you are my prisoner. Which is your horse?—the dark bay, I think.' For they had captured mine as well as poor Hutson's, and a servant held the pair by the bridge-end.
'It is, madam.'
She motioned to the man to lead him forward. 'Now mount,' she said; 'and follow me, if you please. You may keep your sword.'
Mounting, to a man in my plight, was no such easy matter; but she had walked forward to give some directions about the wounded men, and did not perceive the pain it cost me. Yet (I told myself) she must have seen me take my wound; and her indifference angered me. Having mounted and found my stirrups, I shut my teeth hard.
'Are you ready?' she asked, glancing back over her shoulder.
'At your service, madam.'
Without another word or look she started at a brisk trot, which I forced my horse to copy, though it gave me the most discomfort of any she could have chosen; and at my heels rode three of her servants on great clattering cart-horses. The highway beyond the bridge rose with a gentle slope, much obscured by trees. Between them, a short distance up the hill, I caught sight of a lodge-gate, with a park and a fair avenue beyond it; but of these I had no more than a glimpse, for almost at once my lady led us off to the right and along a rutted cart-track, black with the mould of rotted leaves, that wound up the valley bottom and close alongside of the river. The sun was high enough by this to pierce through the foliage of elms and alders overhanging the stream and dapple the scarlet habit ahead of me with pretty spots and patterns of shadow; but not yet high enough to reach the low-lying summer-leases (as they would be called in my county) by which the river curved. And here were cattle, yet half-awake, heaving themselves out of their lairs to stretch themselves and begin to browse. The war had not touched this part of the valley; and but for a shot or two fired now and again on the distant hidden hills, we might have deemed it a hundred miles removed. Nay, we had ridden scarcely six furlongs before we came to an old man angling. His back was towards us, and he did not turn to spare us so much as a look.
The cart-track, though here and there it descended close to the brink and crossed a plashet left by the late floods, held the most of its course partly level, and some twenty feet above the river. So we rode for a mile, and came in sight of a second bridge, newer and more massive than the first, for it carried one of the main highways of the county. Here also at the confluence of two streams the valley widened, and as we emerged on the highway out of the gloom my eyes rested on a broad grassy park sloping up from the bridge, and crowned with terraces and a noble house.
The entrance to this park lay but a gunshot up the road on our left; and, coming to it, my lady drew rein.
'Your name?' she asked.
'Medhope.'
'It is singular that I should have found a gentleman,' said she, in a musing, half-doubtful voice, as I leaned from my saddle, stifling the pain, and unhasped the gate for her.
Said I dryly, 'The Parliament army, madam, includes a few of us. I know not why you should press this point: and 'faith you took me without waiting for credentials; but if it please you I am even a poor knight of the shire.'
'My husband is fortunate,' said she; and put her horse to the trot again.
While yet I pondered what she might mean by this—for she said it without the ghost of a smile—we reached the house and rode into a great empty back-court, where nevertheless was the main entrance—an arched doorway with a broad flight of steps. Here she slipped from her saddle, commanded me to alight, and gave my horse over to our escort, to lead him to stable. Signing to me, she led the way up the steps, and I followed, half-dizzy with loss of blood. The great door stood open. We passed into a cool hall, paved with lozenges of polished granite, white and black; and through this, with a turn to the left, down a long corridor similarly paved and hung with tapestries. To the right of this corridor were many doors, of which she led me past five or six, and then pausing at one for me to overtake her, pushed it open.
The room within was of goodly size, and flooded with the morning sunshine that poured through three long windows. In the midst of it stood a table laid for breakfast, and at the head of the table, backed by a sideboard loaded with cold meats, sat a man plying knife and fork, and with a flagon handy beside him—a heavy, broad-shouldered man, with a copper-red complexion, and black hair that grew extraordinarily low upon his forehead. This and a short, heavy jaw gave him a morose, sullen look. I guessed his age at something near thirty.
The sight of us standing in the doorway appeared to annoy him. He scowled for a moment at my lady, and dropped his eyes, while (as it seemed to me) a rush of angry blood suffused his face and gave it a purplish tint; but anon lifted and fixed them on me with a stare that as plainly as words demanded my business. My lady also turned to me.
'This,' she said, 'is my husband, Sir Luke Glynn.' She faced about on him. 'I have brought you here Captain Medhope, an officer of the rebel army, to take what repayment you are ready to give. He is, I may warn you, a good swordsman.'
Whatever she meant by this, she said it coldly, and as coldly kept her eyes on him awaiting his answer. Still avoiding them he continued to stare at me, and presently, pushing aside his tankard, leaned back in his chair with a rough laugh.
'My good Kate,' said he brutally, 'I took you at least for a sportswoman?' Still leaning back he pointed towards me. 'Your friend is hurt, wherever you found him. Better ring for Pascoe and put him to bed.'
'Hurt?' she echoed, and turned to me, where I stood swaying, with a hand on the table's edge, and a face (I dare say) as white as the diapered cloth. Her eyes rested on me at first increduously, then with dismay.
'It is not serious,' I stammered. 'If some one will set a chair for me—no, not there—clear of the rug. My boots are full of blood, I think.'
With this I must have fallen in a faint, straight into her arms, and the faint must have lasted a few minutes. For when my senses came back some one had removed my jack-boots and stockings, and a hand had opened my shirt wide at the breast and found the wound. The hand was Lady Glynn's; and on the other side of me stood her husband with a goblet of wine, some of which he had managed to coax down my throat.
The wine doubtless had revived me, yet not so that I noted all this at once or distinctly. For the while I lay back with closed eyes, and heard—as it were in a dream—my host and hostess talking together.
'A scratch, as you see,' said Lady Glynn. 'There is no need to send for a surgeon—who belike would only take blood from him: and he has lost enough already. A few hours' rest—if, when I have bathed the wound, you and Pascoe will carry him upstairs—'
'You are considerate, truly,' he answered. 'No doubt, having hired your bully, you wish to make the best of him. But—I put it to you— in asking me to nurse him you overshoot my Christian virtue.'
'I think not,' she corrected him in a cool, level voice. 'That is, if you will consider him for what he is, the messenger of your honour. For the rest, he happens to be no bully but a gentleman— though I confess,' she added, 'this comes to you by purest luck: I had no time to pick or choose. Lastly, I have not hired him; but—'
'But what?' he asked, as she came to a deliberate pause.
'But, if you force me to it, I may try.'
What she meant by this, I, lying between them with closed eyes, could not guess: but I suppose that, meeting her look, he understood.
'You?' he said at length, hoarsely. 'You?' he repeated, and broke
out with a furious oath. 'No, by—, Kate, you can't mean it!
You can't—it's not like you . . . there, take your hand from him, or
I'll slit his throat, there, as he lies!'
But her hand, though it trembled, rested still on my breast, above the wound. 'If you lay hand on him, I go straight to the King; and if you hurt me, I have provided that a letter reaches the King. You are trapped every way, husband; and—and let us have no violence, please, for here comes Pascoe at last with the hot water.'
It had cost me some self-command to keep my eyes closed during this talk. I opened them as a gray-headed servant came bustling in with a steaming pan. For just a second they encountered Lady Glynn's. Perhaps some irregular pulse of the heart—she had not withdrawn her hand—or some catch in my breathing warned her in the act of turning. She gazed down on me as if to ask how much I had heard: but almost on the instant motioned to the old man to come close.
'Have you a sponge?' she asked.
'It is in the pan, my lady.'
She took it, rinsed it twice or thrice to make sure the water was not too hot, and fell to bathing my wound. Her hand was exquisitely light; the sense of the warm water delicious; and again I closed my eyes. But in this exchange of glances my previous image of her had somehow faded or been transformed, and with a suddenness that to this day I cannot account for. To be sure I had formed it in haste and amid the distractions of a pretty sharp combat. On the way to the house she had kept well ahead—and drawn rein but to converse with me for less than half a minute. Only once—as she came riding back across the bridge from her parley with the patrol—had I taken stock (as you might say) of her looks; and, even so, my eyes had been occupied with her scarlet habit and feather, her bearing, her seat in the saddle, and the tone in which she spoke her commands, rather than with her actual features. That these were handsome I had certainly noted: but that I had noted them more particularly at the time I only discovered now, and by contrast.
Here, too, I should say that my age was forty-five and a trifle over; and that all my life I have been (as my comrades have often assured me) strangely insensible to the charms of women and indifferent to their good looks; and I tell this not because I am proud of it—for Heaven knows I am not—but that the reader may put no misconstruction, even a passing one, upon the rest of my story. I never for a moment stood in danger of loving Lady Glynn, as she never for a moment stood in danger of liking me. But I pitied her; and by virtue of this pity I was able to do for an hour or two what I had never done before and have never since tried or wished or cared to do again—to see clearly into a woman's mind.
But this came later. For the present, lying there while she sponged my wound, I saw only that she was a great deal younger than I had deemed; and not only young but in distress; and not only distressed but in some sort helpless. In short, here was a woman so unlike the termagant who had charged across the bridge that I could hardly reconcile the two or believe them to be one.
The sponging over, the old man Pascoe handed her a bandage and, at a sign from her, lifted my shoulders a little while she passed it under my back. To do this her two arms must needs go around my body under the shirt: and I fancy that the sight drove her husband wellnigh past control: for he growled like a dog and I heard a splash of wine fall on the floor from the goblet he was still holding.
He obeyed, however, and gave me his arm—albeit sulkily—when commanded to help me upstairs: and although 'twas done on an impulse and with no thought of mischief, I did not improve his temper by pausing in the doorway and casting a look back at his lady. She was kneeling by the pan, rinsing out the sponge; and with her back towards us. She did not turn, and so my look went unrewarded; yet— though this must have been merest fancy—her attitude strengthened my certainty that she was in distress and in need of help.
In the great tapestried bedroom to which the two men conveyed me Sir Luke's demeanour changed, and in a fashion at first puzzling. Having laid me on the bed and taken my assurance that I rested easily, he sent Pascoe off for a cup of wine and a manchet of bread, and, while these were being fetched, hung aimlessly about the room, now walking to and fro with his hands in his pockets, and anon halting to stare out of window. By-and-by Pascoe brought the tray, set it on a small table beside the bed, and retired. Sir Luke made as if to follow him, but paused at the door, shut it, and, coming back, stood gloomily frowning at me across the bed's foot.
'Where did my wife pick you up?' he asked.
'On the bridge,' I answered, 'where a mob—as I take it, of your retainers—were having at me with pitchforks as a prelude to cutting my throat.'
'Was this your first meeting?'
I opened my eyes upon him, with a lift of the brows. 'Yes,' said I quietly, as though marvelling why he asked it. I think he had the grace to feel abashed. At any rate he lowered his eyes; nor though he lifted them presently did he seem able to fix them upon mine.
'You were some sort of rearguard, I suppose? They tell me the main body of your horse rode clean through and escaped. Do you happen to know what became of Chester?'
'Chester?' I echoed.
'He commanded our post at the bridge, as I understand. . . . When I say "ours" 'tis from habit merely. In the early part of the campaign I led a troop, but withdrew from His Majesty's service more than a month ago, not being able to stomach Dick Grenville. You know Dick Grenville?'
'By repute.'
'But not Chester? . . . Chester was at one time his led-captain: but they have quarrelled since, and it looks as if—'
He did not finish the sentence, but left me to guess what remained.
'You mean,' said I, 'it looks as if Chester sold the pass? Well, if he did, I know nothing about it, or about him. This is the first I have heard of him. But speaking at a venture, I should say that either his neck's in a halter or he has changed sides and is riding off with our troops.'
Sir Luke nodded, but said nothing; and after a while strode to the window. When he spoke again it was with his back turned to me.
'I wonder,' he said, 'my fellows didn't kill you out of hand.'
'They were making a plaguy near bid for it,' I answered; 'but Lady
Glynn interposed.'
'And that's the strange part of the business. All rebels, as a rule, are poison to her. . . . As for me, you understand, a man on campaign picks up a sort of feeling for the enemy. He gets to see that all the right's not on one side, nor all the wrong on t'other. I dare say, now, that your experience is much the same?' I did not answer this and after a pause he went on, still staring out of window, 'I believed in the Lord's Anointed, for my part: but allowing, for argument's sake, the right's on that side, there's enough villainy and self-seeking mixed up with it to poison an honest man. . . . I shouldn't wonder now that there's something to be said even for Chester.'
'That hardly seems possible,' said I, wondering what his drift might be.
'I don't know. Wait till you've heard his side of the case. . . . But to go back to our subject—you see I don't bear you any malice: I am out of this quarrel, and—saving my lady's obstinacy—I don't see—I really don't see why I should billet myself with His Majesty's prisoners. What's more, I have an estate in the east of the county, a little this side of Plymouth. They quartered a troop of your fellows upon it last year, and the place, I hear, is a wilderness. . . . If I could get to it, or to Plymouth—well, one good turn deserves another, eh?—that is, if you're fit to travel?'
I think that at this point he faced around and eyed me for the first time. But I made show that I had dropped asleep. I heard him swear under his breath, and half a minute later he left the room.
He had been offering me escape. But why? I turned his words over, and the more I turned them the less I liked them. He had given me a suspicious number of openings to prove that the right lay with my party. It seemed to me that, on half a hint, this man meant to desert. Yes, and his wife—I recalled her words—held him in some trap. And yet, recalling her face, I could not shake off the fancy that she, rather than he, stood in need of help.
Pondering all this, still with my eyes closed, I dropped asleep in good earnest.
I awoke from a sleep of many hours, to see old Pascoe standing at the bed's foot. No doubt his entrance had disturbed me.
He carried my boots in one hand, a can of hot water in the other, my stockings and a clean shirt across his arm; and he announced that the hour was four o'clock, and at half-past four Sir Luke and his lady would be dining. If I felt myself sufficiently recovered, they desired the pleasure of my company.
I sat upright on the bed. My head yet swam, but sleep had refreshed me, and a pull at the wine—which had stood all this while untasted— set me on pretty good terms with myself. I bade the old man carry my compliments to his lady and tell her that I will thankfully do her pleasure. 'But first,' said I, 'you must stand by and see me into a clean shirt.'