Corporal Sam and Other Stories Part 10

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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.surance 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 d.i.c.k Grenville. You know d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.s? 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.'

He did more. The stab in my upper arm had bled a little, and the shirt-sleeve could not be pulled from it without pain. He drew a pair of scissors from his side-pocket and cut the linen away from around the wound: and then, having noted my weakness, helped me to wash and dress, drew on stockings and boots for me, nor left me until he had buckled on my sword-belt, and then only with an excuse that he must change his coat before waiting at table. Sir Luke and Lady Glynn (he a.s.sured me) would be by this time awaiting me in the dining-room.

Sure enough I found them there, my lady standing by the midmost window and gazing down upon the park, Sir Luke by the fireplace with an arm resting on the high mantel-ledge and one muddied boot jabbing at the logs of a new-made fire till the flame roared up the chimney.

I wondered what madness could command so huge a blaze in the month of August (albeit 'twas the last of the month), until he turned and I saw that he had been drinking heavily.

It seemed that Lady Glynn had not heard me enter, for as I paused, a little within the doorway, she leaned forward without turning and pushed open a lattice of the window. I supposed that she did this to abate the heat of the fire in the room. But no; she was leaning and listening to the sound of guns far in the west. The sound--I had heard it in my sleep and again at intervals while dressing--broke heavily on the mist that damped the panes and drifted through the opening with a breeze that set the curls waving about her neck and puffed out the silken shawl she had drawn around her naked shoulders.

Sir Luke looked up, and was the first to catch sight of me.

'Hear the guns?' he said. 'Your foot hasn't the luck of your horse.

The King caught 'em, drove 'em back over Lest.i.thiel Bridge, and has been keeping 'em on the run all day, pressing 'em t'wards the coast.'

'Is that the report?' I asked.

'That's my report,' he answered; 'and'--thrusting forward one bemired boot--'you may count on it. I've been following and watching the fun.'

By this time Lady Glynn had turned and came past her husband to greet me, without throwing him a look.

'You are the better for your rest?' she asked. 'At least I see that, though wounded, you have contrived to pay me the compliment of wearing fresh linen and a clean pair of boots.'

This was awkward, and--what was worse--she said it awkwardly, with a sprightliness, gracious yet affected, that did not become her at all.

She meant, of course, to annoy her husband, and his face showed that she had succeeded. He turned away to the fire with a sulky frown, while she stood smiling, holding out a hand to me.

I touched it respectfully, and let it drop. 'The credit,' said I, 'belongs all to your servant Pascoe.'

'And here he is,' she took me up gaily, as Pascoe appeared in the doorway. 'Is dinner ready?'

'To be served at once, my lady.'

'Then will you lead me to my seat, Captain Medhope? Yours is beside me, on the right; yes, close there. My husband, at his end, can enjoy the fire.'

We took our seats. I was hungry, and the dinner good. I ate of everything, but can only recall an excellent grill of salmon and a roast haunch of venison: the reason being that Lady Glynn kept me in continued talk. Poor lady!--I had almost said, poor child!--for her desperate artlessness became the more apparent to me the more she persisted. Even I, who, as the reader has been told, have the smallest skill in the ways of women, could see that here was one, of high breeding but untutored, playing at a game at once above and beneath her; almost as far above her achieving as it lay beneath her true contempt. She knew that women can inveigle men; but in the practice of it I am very sure that her dairymaid could have given her lessons.

But what am I saying? Her poor coquetries did not deceive me, but she never meant them to deceive me. They accomplished, after all, just that for which she intended them. They deceived and maddened her half-drunken lout of a husband. Her dress, too, was something shameless. She wore above her scarlet skirt (which I verily believe was the same she had ridden in) a bodice of the same bright colour, low as a maid-of-honour's, that displayed her young neck and bust.

About her neck she had fastened a string of garnets. She had loaded her fingers with old-fashioned rings, of which the very dullness made me wince to see them employed in this sorry service. And I guessed that before my entrance this unusual finery had provoked her husband to fury.

A length of table lay between us and him. He sat silent, regarding us under lowered brows, eating little, draining gla.s.s after gla.s.s.

Angry though he was, her voice seemed to lay a spell on him.

She talked of a thousand things, but especially of the Parliament campaign, plying me with question after question--of our numbers, our discipline, our hardships during the past three weeks, of our general's plan of escape, and, in particular, of the part I had borne in it. And when I answered she listened with smiles, as though King and Parliament lay balanced in her affections. And this was the termagant that a few hours ago had ridden us down and trampled across poor Hutson's body!