The Master of Appleby Part 44

He dropped into a chair, and I could see the sweat standing in great beads on his wrinkled forehead.

"D' ye--d' ye mean to kill us both?" he gasped.

"Not if I can help it. But some better understanding is needful, and we will have it here and now, once for all. Will you ring, or shall I?"

He made no move to reach the bell-cord, and I rang for him. A grinning black boy came to the door, and seeing that Mr. Gilbert Stair was beyond giving the order, I gave it myself.

"Find Master Pengarvin and send him here quickly. Tell him Mr. Stair wants him."

There was a short interval of waiting and then the lawyer came. Being but a little wisp of a man, all malignance and no courage, he would have fled when he saw me. But I caught him by the collar and sent him scurrying around the table to keep his master company.

"Now, then; how much or how little have you two blabbed of the doings at Appleby Hundred some weeks since?" I demanded. "Speak out, and quickly."

'Twas the lawyer who obeyed, and now he was the trapped rat to snap blindly in despair.

"You will hang higher than Haman when the dragoons find you," he gritted out.

"On your information?"

"On mine and Mr. Stair's."

"Ye lie!" shrieked the miser. "I tell't ye to keep hands off, ye bletherin' little deevil, ye!"

"Never mind," said I; "what's done is done. But it must be undone, and that swiftly and thoroughly. Lie out of it to Colonel Tarleton and the others as you will; Captain John Stuart and the baronet are not here to contradict you, and you are the only witnesses. Knock together some story that will hold water and lose no time about it. Do you understand?"

Seeing he was not to be put to the wall and spitted on the spot, the lawyer recovered himself.

"'Tis not the criminal at the bar who dictates terms, Captain Ireton,"

he said, with his hateful smirk. "You are under sentence of death, and that by a court lawful enough in war time."

"You refuse?" I said.

He shrugged.

"Speaking for myself, I shall leave no stone unturned to bring you to book, Captain,--when it suits my purpose."

I was loath to go to extremities with either of them; but my bridge of gla.s.s must be defended at all hazards.

"You would best reconsider, Mr. Pengarvin. At this present moment I am of my Lord Cornwallis's military family and I have his confidence. A word from me will put you both in arrest as persons whose loyalty in times past has been somewhat more than blown upon."

"Bah!" said the pettifogger. "Bl.u.s.ter is a good dog, but Holdfast is the better. You can prove nothing, as you well know. Moreover, with your own neck in a noose you dare not mess and meddle with other men's affairs."

"Dare not, you say? I'll tell you what I may dare, Master Attorney. If you are not disposed to meet me half way in this matter, I shall go to my Lord, tell him how I have been cheated out of my estate, declare the marriage with Mistress Margery, and see that you get your just deserts.

And you may rest a.s.sured that this soldier-earl will right me, come what may."

'Twas a bold stroke, the boldest of any I had made that morning; but I was wholly unprepared for its effect upon the lawyer. His rage was like that of some venomous little animal, a thing to make an onlooker shudder and draw back.

"Never!" he hissed; "never, I say! I'll kill her first--I'll--" He choked in the very exuberance of his malignance, and his face was like the face of a man in a fit.

'Twas then that I saw the pointing of his villainy and knew what Margery had meant when she said that for reasons of his own he was holding my betrayal in abeyance. He was Falconnet's successor and my rival. This little reptile aspired to be the master of my father's acres and the husband of my dear lady! And his holding off from denouncing me at once was also explained. Taking it for granted that the wife would bargain for the husband's life, he had made a whip of his leniency to flog Margery into subjection.

My determination was taken upon the instant. There was no safety for Margery whilst this plotting pettifogger was at large, and I stepped to the door and called the sentry. The Darmstadter came back and I pointed to the lawyer. Then, indeed, the furious little madman found his tongue and shrilled out his defiance.

"Curse you!" he yelled. "I'll be quits with you for this, Master Spy!

'Tis your hearing now, but mine will come, and you shall hang like a dog! I'll follow you to the ends of the earth--I'll--"

I made a sign and the soldier brought his musket into play and p.r.i.c.ked his prisoner with the bayonet in token that time pressed. So we were rid of the lawyer in bodily presence, though I could hear his snarlings and spittings as the big Darmstadter ran him out at the bayonet's point.

During this tilt between his factor and me, Mr. Gilbert Stair had stood apart, watchful but trembling. When we were alone I said:

"Now, Mr. Stair, I shall trouble you to billet me somewhere in your house, as a member of my Lord's family. Lead on, if you please, and I'll follow."

He went before me without a word, out of the little den and up the broad stair, doddering like a man grown ten years older in a breath, and catching at the bal.u.s.trade to steady himself as we ascended. The room he gave me was at an angle in one of the crookings of the corridor, and pointing me to the door he went pottering away, still without a word or a look behind him.

The door was on the latch, but it gave reluctantly, letting me in suddenly when I set my shoulder to it. There was a quick little cry, half of anger, half of affright, from within. I drew back hastily, with a muttered curse upon the old man's spite, and in the act my spur caught the door and slammed it shut behind me.

For reasons known only to Omniscience and to himself, Gilbert Stair had shown me to my lady's chamber; she was standing, with her bodice off, before the oval mirror on the high dressing case.

x.x.xVI

HOW I RODE POST ON THE KING'S BUSINESS

If a look might be a leven-stroke to do a man to death, I warrant you my lady's flas.h.i.+ng eyes would have crisped me to a cinder where I stood fumbling with one hand behind me for the latch of the slammed door.

Scorn, indignation, outraged maiden modesty, all these thrust at me like air-drawn daggers; and it needed not her, "Fie, for shame, Captain Ireton!--and you would call yourself a gentleman!" to set me afire with prinklings of abashment.

What could I say or do? The accursed door-latch would not find itself to let me fly; and as for excusings, I could not tell her that her own father had thrust me thus upon her. Yet, had she let me be, I hope I should have had the wit to find the door fastening and the grace to run away; in truth, I had the latch in hand when she lashed out at me again, and my tingling shame began to give place to that master-devil of pa.s.sion which is never more than half whipped into subjection in the best of us.

"How are you better than the man you warned me of?" she cried. And then, in a tempest of grief: "Oh! you would not leave me the respect I bore you; you must even rob me of that to fling it down and trample it under foot!"

Figure to yourselves, my dears, that I was wholly blameless in this unhappy breaking and entering, and so, mayhap, you may find excuse for me. For now, though I could have gone, I would not. Her glorious beauty, heightened beyond compare by the pa.s.sionate outburst, held me spellbound. And at my ear the master-devil whispered: She is your wedded wife; yours for better or worse, till death part you. Who has a better right to look upon her thus?

So it was that the love-madness came upon me again, and that thin veneering wherewith the Christian centuries have so painfully overlaid the natural man in us was cracked and riven, and the barbarian which lies but skin-deep underneath bestirred himself and winked and blinked himself awake in giant might, as did the primal man when he rose up to look about him for his mate.

Before I knew what I would do, I was beside her, and honor, or what may stand therefor betwixt a man and his friend, was flung away. But when I would have crushed her sweetness in my arms she went upon her knees to me.... Ah, G.o.d! she knelt to me as she had knelt to that other would-be ravisher and begged me for mine own honor's sake to bethink me of what I would do.

"Oh, Monsieur John! be merciful as you are strong!" she pleaded. "Think what it will mean to you, and how you will loathe me and yourself as well when this madness is overpast! Oh, go; go quickly, lest I, too, forget--"

And so it was that I found sudden strength to turn and leave her kneeling there; turned to grope blindly for the door with all the pains of h.e.l.l aflame within me.

For now I had put honor under foot; now I knew that I had truly earned her scorn and loathing. I could no longer plead that I was the puppet of fate flung against my will between this maiden and my dear lad. I was the wilful offender; false to my love, false to my friend, a recreant to every oath wherewith I had bound myself to be true and loyal to these two.

With such a flaming sword to drive me forth, I stumbled from the room, thinking only how I should quickest rid me of myself. Hastening to my garret sleeping-place I buckled on my sword, found my shako, and went straight to my Lord's bed-chamber. My rap at the door went unanswered, and a broad-shouldered young fellow in a lieutenant's uniform, lounging on a settle in the clock landing of the stair, told me Lord Cornwallis was gone out.

I was face to face with this young lieutenant before I recognized him; being so bent upon haste I should have pa.s.sed him on the landing without a second glance had he not risen to grip me by the shoulders.