The Master of Appleby Part 9

It was plain that others watched as well as I, for at their coming a sheen of light burst from the opened door below, at which there were sword-clankings as of armed men dismounting, and then a few low-voiced words of welcome. Followed quickly the closing of the door and silence; and when my eyes grew once again accustomed to the gloom, I saw below the horses standing head to head, and in the midst a man to hold them.

"So!" I thought; "but three in all, and one of them a servant. 'Twill be a scantly guested wedding." And then I raged within again to think of how my love should be thus dishonored in a corner when she should have the world to clap its hands and praise her beauty.

At that, and while I looked, the lawn was banded farther on by two broad beams of light; and then I knew my time was come.

Feeling my way across the darkened chamber I softly tried the door-latch. It yielded at the touch, but not the door. I pulled and braced myself and pulled again. 'Twas but a waste of strength. The door was fast with that contrivance wherewith my father used to bar me in what time I was a boy and would go racc.o.o.ning with our negro hunters. My enemy was no fool. He had been shrewd enough to lock me in against the chance of interruption.

I wish you might conceive the helpless horror grappling with me there behind that fastened door; but this, indeed, you may not, having felt it not. For one dazed moment I was sick as death with fear and frenzy and I know not what besides, and all the blackness of the night swam sudden red before my eyes. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the madness left me cool and sane, as if the fit had been the travail-pain of some new birth of soul. And after that, as I remember, I knew not rage nor haste nor weakness--knew no other thing save this; that I had set myself a task to do and I would do it.

My window was in shape like half a cell of honeycomb, and close beside it on the outer wall there grew an ancient ivy-vine which more than once had held my weight when I was younger and would evade my father's vigilance.

I swung the cas.e.m.e.nt noiselessly and clambered out, with hand and foot in proper hold as if those youthful flittings of my boyhood days had been but yesternight. A breathless minute later I was down and afoot on solid ground; and then a thing chanced which I would had not. The man whom I had called a servant turned and saw me.

"Halt! Who goes there?" he cried.

"A friend," said I, between my wis.h.i.+ngs for a weapon. For this servant of my prefigurings proved to be a trooper, booted, spurred and armed.

"By G.o.d, I think you lie," he said; and after that he said no more, for he was down among the horses' hoofs and I upon him, kneeling hard to scant his breath for shoutings.

It grieves me now through all these years to think that I did kneel too hard upon this man. He was no enemy of mine, and did but do--or seek to do--his duty. But he would fight or die, and I must fight or die; and so it ended as such strivings will, with some grim crackling of ribs--and when I rose he rose not with me.

With all the fierce excitement of the struggle yet upon me, I stayed to knot the bridle reins upon his arm to make it plain that he had fallen at his post. That done, I took his sword as surer for my purpose than a pistol; and hugging the deepest shadow of the wall, approached the nearer window. It was open wide, for the night was sultry warm, and from within there came the clink of gla.s.s and now a toast and now a trooper's oath.

I drew myself by inches to the cas.e.m.e.nt, which was high, finding some foothold in the wall; and when I looked within I saw no wedding guests, no priest, no altar; only this: a table in the midst with bottles on it, and round it five men lounging at their ease and drinking to the king.

Of these five two, the baronet and the lawyer, were known to me, and I have made them known to you. A third I guessed for Gilbert Stair. The other two were strangers.

VII

IN WHICH MY LADY HATH NO PART

Seeing that I had taken a man's life for this, the chance of looking in upon a drinking bout, you will not wonder that I went aghast and would have fled for very shame had not a sudden weakness seized me. But in the midst I heard a mention of my name and so had leave, I thought, to stay and listen.

It was one of the late-comers who gave me this leave; a man well on in years, grizzled and weather-beaten; a seasoned soldier by his look and garb. Though his frayed shoulder-knot was only that of a captain of foot,'twas plain enough he ranked his comrade, and the knight as well.

"You say you've bagged this Captain Ireton? Who may he be? Surely not old Roger's son?"

"The same," said the baronet, shortly, and would be filling his gla.s.s again. He could always drink more and feel it less than any sot I ever knew.

"But how the devil came he here? The last I knew of him--'twas some half-score years ago, though, come to think--he was a lieutenant in the Royal Scots."

Mine enemy nodded. "So he was. But afterward he cut the service and levanted to the Continent."

The questioner fell into a muse; then he laughed and clapped his leg.

"Ecod! I do remember now. There was a d.a.m.ned good mess-room joke about him. When he was in the Blues they used to say his solemn face would stop a merry-making. Well, after he had been in Austria a while they told this on him; that his field-marshal had him listed for a majority, and so he was presented to the empress. But when Maria Theresa saw him she shrieked and cried out, '_Il est le pere aux tetes rondes, lui-meme!

Le portez-vous dehors!_' So he got but a captaincy after all; ha! ha!

ha!"

Now this was but a mess-room gibe, as he had said, cut out of unmarred cloth, at that. Our Austrian Maria ever had a better word than "roundhead" for her soldiers. But yet it stung, and stung the more because I had and have the Ireton face, and that is unbeloved of women, and glum and curst and solemn even when the man behind it would be kindly. So when they laughed and chuckled at this jest, I lingered on and listened with the better grace.

"What brought him over-seas, Sir Francis?" 'Twas not the grizzled jester who asked, but the younger officer, his comrade.

Falconnet smiled as one who knows a thing and will not tell, and turned to Gilbert Stair.

"What was it, think you, Mr. Stair?" he said, pa.s.sing the question on.

At this they all looked to the master of Appleby Hundred, and I looked, too. He was not the man I should have hit upon in any throng as the reaver of my father's estate; still less the man who might be Margery's father. He had the face of all the Stairs of Ballantrae without its simple Scottish ruggedness; a sort of weasel face it was, with pale-gray eyes that had a trick of s.h.i.+fty dodging, and deep-furrowed about the mouth and chin with lines that spoke of indecision. It was not of him that Margery got her firm round chin, or her steadfast eyes that knew not how to quail, nor aught of anything she owed a father save only her paternity, you'd say. And when he spoke the thin falsetto voice matched the weak chin to a hair.

"I? Damme, Sir Francis, I know not why he came--how should I know?" he quavered. "Appleby Hundred is mine--mine, I tell you! His t.i.tle was well hanged on a tree with his d.a.m.ned rebel father!"

A laugh uproarious from the three soldiers greeted his petulant outburst; after which the baronet enlightened the others.

"As you know, Captain John, Appleby Hundred once belonged to the rebel Roger Ireton, and Mr. Stair here holds but a confiscator's t.i.tle. 'Tis likely the son heard of the war and thought he stood some chance to come into his own again."

"Oh, aye; sure enough," quoth the elder officer, tilting his bottle afresh. And then: "Of course he promptly 'listed with the rebels when he came? Trust Roger Ireton's son for that."

My baronet wagged his head a.s.sentingly to this; then clinched the lie in words.

"Of course; we have his commission. He is on De Kalb's staff, 'detached for special duty.'"

"A spy!" roared the jester. "And yet you haven't hanged him?"

Sir Francis shrugged like any Frenchman. "All in good time, my dear Captain. There were reasons why I did not care to knot the rope myself.

Besides, we had a little disagreement years agone across the water; 'twas about a woman--oh, she was no mistress of his, I do a.s.sure you!"--this to quench my jester's laugh incredulous. "He was keen upon me for satisfaction in this old quarrel, and I gave it him, thinking he'd hang the easier for a little blooding first."

Here the factor-lawyer cut in anxiously. "But you will hang him, Sir Francis? You've promised that, you know."

I did not hate my enemy the more because he turned a shoulder to this little bloodhound and quite ignored the interruption.

"So we fought it out one morning in Mr. Stair's wood-field, and he had what he came for. Not to give him a chance to escape, we brought him here, and as soon as he is fit to ride I'll send him to the colonel.

Tarleton will give him a short shrift, I promise you, and then"--this to the master of Appleby Hundred--"then your t.i.tle will be well quieted, Mr. Stair."

At this the weather-beaten captain roared again and smote the table till the bottles reeled.

"I say, Sir Frank, that's good--d.a.m.ned good! So you have him crimped here in his own house, stuffing him like a penned capon before you wring his neck. Ah! ha! ha! But 'tis to be hoped you have his legs well tied.

If he be any son of my old mad-bull Roger Ireton, you'll hardly hang him peacefully like a trussed fowl before the fire."

The baronet smiled and said: "I'll be your warrant for his safety! We've had him well guarded from the first, and to-night he is behind a barred door with Mr. Stair's overseer standing sentry before it. But as for that, he's barely out of bed from my pin-p.r.i.c.k."

Having thus disposed of me, they let me be and came to the graver business of the moment, with a toast to lay the dust before it. It was Falconnet who gave the toast.

"Here's to our bully redskins and their king--How do you call him, Captain Stuart? Ocon--Ocona--"

"Oconostota is the Chelakee of it, though on the border they know him better as 'Old Hop.' Fill up, gentlemen, fill up; 'tis a dry business, this. Allow me, Mr. Stair; and you, Mr.--er--ah--Pengarden. This same old heathen is the king's friend now, but, gentlemen all, I do a.s.sure you he's the very devil himself in a copper-colored skin. 'Twas he who ambushed us in '60, and but for Attakullakulla--"