Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 22

Then Pepe, fumbling at an inner pocket, spoke swiftly what wisdom was in him.

"Dicco must get gaiters, rough trousers, and a hat. La senorita must change the Dutchwoman's skirt for whatever this old dame can furnish.

When I leave you, feed her always, a little at a time. Talk, make love, make laugh."

"And if the strength fail altogether?" asked d.i.c.k, for a moment humble before this wizened wisdom.

"Better the spur and the whip than the wolves should eat the mare,"

answered Pepe. And he drew a little box from his pocket. "It is the leaves," he said. "They are not evil like the drugs of shops and cities.

If she flag and is without strength by the way, let her chew a little, whilst you fill her mind with other thoughts. Then will she endure till Dicco wins."

d.i.c.k turned to Mrs. Brundage, and, to her relief, spoke at last in English.

"Madam," he said, "the Marquis and his myrmidons must be hoodwinked.

Talking of hoods and winking suggests a sun-bonnet----"

"Silly, old-fashioned things!" said the woman. "But mebbe I have one that I wore whilst Brundage was courtin'."

"And a plain blouse?" d.i.c.k continued. "And perhaps a darker skirt----"

"And hair in a plait down her back," cried the woman, greeting with a chuckle her first game of make-believe for many a long year; "your n.o.bleman might pa.s.s his daughter twenty times like that, an' never would 'e know 'er."

CHAPTER XVI.

"THE GOAT IN BOOTS."

It was almost noon of Sat.u.r.day, June the twenty-first, when a party of three halted in the shade of a few stunted hawthorns by the side of the sandy, half-made road which leads from Margetstowe village to the turnpike, which, branching from the main London Road fifteen miles to the south-west, runs north-eastward through Ecclesthorpe-on-the-Moor to the sea at the mouth of the great estuary.

From this tree-clump could be seen, facing the junction of the sandy road with the metalled, the front and the swinging signboard of "The Goat in Boots." And here, that its two more ordinary-looking members might shed the oddity which they owed to the company of the third, the party was to separate.

For in Amaryllis, sleep, d.i.c.k's care and Mrs. Brundage's wardrobe had worked transformation. From the dust and mud on the thick little shoes, up over five visible inches of coa.r.s.e grey stocking to clumsy amplitude of washed-out, pink-striped cotton skirt, and thence by severity of blue-linen blouse to the face lurking in the pale lavender of the quilted sun-bonnet, the eye met nothing which was not proper to the country-girl, dressed a little older, when the tail of hair swung to her body's movement, than her sixteen years required.

If the face was not so ruddy as a moorland girl's should be, and if the mark of the "s.m.u.tty finger" beneath each eye suggested, out of Ireland, ill health--well, sickness and recovery are not restricted to the town, and the bright eyes, when the lids would lift, gave promise of returning health.

d.i.c.k matched her well.

With the cut cheek decently washed, the face shaved with Tom Brundage's worst razor, and a patch of flour congealing the blood of his wound, he looked very different from the ruffian who had disturbed, so short a while since, the lunch of the Brundage chickens. For his brown boots, brushed to the semblance of a shine, brown gaiters of the army cut, green cord riding-breeches which had delighted the heart of Tom Brundage until petrol prevailed over horseflesh and drove him into black; a striped waistcoat, of the old-fashioned waspish, horsey favour, partly b.u.t.toned over a grey army shirt and loosely covered by his own Norfolk jacket, with a knotted bandanna in place of collar, made of him an odd, but wholly credible nondescript of the lower sporting world.

Men on the roads of that joyous Sat.u.r.day might have asked was it whippets, horses, or the ring which best explained this lank, keen-eyed, humorous-lipped, uneven-gaited fellow; but none would have suspected a masquerade in the figure offered to their eyes with an a.s.surance so entirely devoid of self-consciousness.

Yet to Amaryllis it was perhaps the raffish green imitation-velours Homburg hat which did most to alter d.i.c.k Bellamy's aspect; so that she would wait for a glance of his eyes to a.s.sure herself that this was indeed her wonderful friend and champion, and no new man nor changed spirit.

But Pepe, its one honest and unpretentious person, had made the whole trio bizarre and incredible.

For though, on one word from d.i.c.k, Amaryllis had given her credence and trust to the Lizard, she yet felt that he suited so ill with any English surroundings that his incongruity would show up any boggled st.i.tch in their two disguises. So, while she nibbled the biscuit which d.i.c.k had taken from the paper in his pocket and ordered her to eat, and listened to the unintelligible valedictory advice which Pepe was ladling out in Spanish, she was longing to be alone with the gentleman who looked so impossible, and free from the company of the man who the very p.r.i.c.king of her thumbs told her was a criminal, in spite of the modest bearing and the uplifted gaze at his idol.

Did she also adore her Limping d.i.c.k, as Pepe his Cojeante? Was the one worship antagonistic to the other? Why then--but Amaryllis, like many another woman, was so good a logician that she knew when to halt on the road to an awkward conclusion.

Pepe at last swept off his hat in profound obeisance to "la senorita roja," took d.i.c.k's hand with reverence and his generous wad of notes without shame, and hurried back on his road to "The Myrtles."

She looked at d.i.c.k's face as his eyes followed the Lizard, and read in it an expression so strange and so mixed, that she turned again to take her own last sight of the man she was glad to be rid of.

Pepe had vanished utterly.

"Yes," said d.i.c.k, following her thought, and responsive even to the terms of her recent reflection, "he never would fit an English landscape till it swallowed him."

"'Amigo de grillos'?" said the girl. "Why do you call him that? _Amigo_ must be _friend_. But _grillos_?"

"Irons--fetters," said d.i.c.k; and taking her by the arm, started in the direction of "The Goat in Boots," walking with a curiously swaggering gait which went far to mask his limp. "Amigos de grillos--fetter-pals.

We were chained together for six months."

"In--in prison? Oh, d.i.c.k!" she cried, "I knew he was horrid."

"And me?"

"I know you aren't," she replied.

"I'm afraid he is, from your point of view," he replied. "But Pepe el Lagarto has one streak which interests me."

"Tell me," said Amaryllis.

And as they walked slowly towards the inn, he told her of Pepe and his coca-leaves; of the Peruvian Indians' use of them to resist hunger and fatigue; and of how the little man had given his all, which he could not replace, to help la senorita roja over the roughness of her way.

"I had to keep a little in a bit of paper to satisfy him," said d.i.c.k.

"Then he's kind to women, at least," said Amaryllis.

"When I met him, he was in for five years--murdering his wife."

"Why?"

"Found her in company he wasn't fond of," said d.i.c.k, "so he threw her out of window."

"And the--company?"

"Pepe slit its throat."

Amaryllis shuddered.

"No," resumed d.i.c.k, "you won't find any pretty Idylls of the King gadgets about Pepe. He gave you all his coca-leaves because he regarded you as El Cojeante's woman--that's all."

"Do you?" asked Amaryllis, and her colour for the first time matched her head-gear.

"For to-day--of course," he answered. "You're my daughter--and don't you forget it."

Amaryllis, if the word may be used of a sound so pleasant, giggled.