Corporal Sam and Other Stories Part 11

All this I took at its true value, answering her with steady politeness, telling myself that as her purpose was to goad her husband, so no word of mine should give him an excuse for an outbreak. It takes two to make a quarrel, they say. But when three are mixed up in it (and one a woman), the third cannot always count on remaining pa.s.sive.

I had managed to tide over the meal with fair success. We had reached the dessert, and Pascoe (whose presence may have laid some restraint upon his master) had withdrawn. A dish of pears lay before Lady Glynn, and she asked me to peel one for her. I know not if this simple request laid the last straw on Sir Luke's endurance, but he filled his gla.s.s again and said with brutal insolence,--

'You are fortunate, Captain Medhope, in exciting my wife's interest.

I a.s.sure you that until your gallantry bewitched her, she had been used to speak of all rebels as cowards in grain.'

'I hope, Sir Luke,' said I, 'you, with experience of us, have tried to teach her better.'

'In faith, no,' he replied yet more brutally, backing his sneer with a laugh. 'I saw no reason for that.'

'And yet,' said I deliberately, peeling my pear, 'you told me to-day that something might be said even for such a man as your friend Chester.'

He jumped up with an oath. Yet I believe he might even now have restrained himself had not his wife--and with a face as pale as a ghost's--laid a hand on my arm.

'I had forgotten your wound,' she said, ignoring her husband.

'You handle the knife awkwardly. Let me cut the fruit and we will share.'

With a turn of the hand Sir Luke hurled back his chair, and it fell with a crash.

'By G.o.d, Kate! if you have hired this man, he shall murder first and do his love-making afterwards. Nay, but I'll stop that, too.

Look first to yourself, madame!'

He had whipped out his sword and was actually running upon her before I could get mine clear. But I was in time to beat down his point and then--for he was slow-witted and three-parts drunk--with a trick of wrist that luckily required little strength, I disarmed him.

His sword struck the farther edge of the table, smashed a decanter of wine and dropped to the floor.

We were standing now, all three; Lady Glynn a little behind my elbow.

'Are you going to kill him?' she asked, and he heard.

For a moment he stared at her stupidly, then at the stream of wine running across the table, then back at her--and, so staring, flung up both hands and plunged forward. His brow, as he fell like an ox, thudded against the chair from which, a moment since, she had arisen.

I caught up a candle. But she was before me and had dropped on her knees beside him. In his fall he had rolled over on his side, and for a moment I supposed her to be busy loosening his collar.

But no--as I held the candle close she was feeling in his pockets, and in the light of it she held up a bunch of keys.

'I am glad you did not kill him,' she said simply, rising from her knees. 'There was no need.'

'No need?' I repeated stupidly, swaying with weakness.

'You shall see.'

She slipped by me and from the room. I bent and loosened Sir Luke's collar, and essayed to lift him, but had to relinquish the effort and drop into a chair, where I sat staring at the fallen wreck. While I stared, still dizzy, I heard the voice of old Pascoe behind me.

'We can manage it, sir--I think--between us.' He stepped past me, and together we lifted his master and staggered with him to a couch, where he lay, breathing hard.

Pascoe motioned me back to my chair, where I sat and panted.

While I sat, she came back. I did not hear her approach, but only her voice whispering to me to come: and I followed her forth from the room and out into the corridor, and along the corridor to the porch as a man walking in his sleep.

There was a lantern by the porch, and in the light of it my horse stood, saddled and ready.

'You will take the road up the valley,' she said, 'and cross by the second bridge. The road beyond that bears due east and is unguarded.'

'But what is this?' I asked, as I put a hand to the pommel of the saddle and felt something hard and heavy slung there beside it.

'It is the price of the pa.s.s, or half of it. There is another bag on the off side, and between them they hold, I believe, six hundred pounds.'

'That was his price?'

'That was the price. And now go: take it back to your general.'

'You must help me to mount,' said I.

She helped me to mount.

'The second bridge, you will remember,' said she, as I found my stirrups.

'I will remember. Is that all?'

'That is all: though, if you wish it, I will thank you and say that you have behaved well.'

'I did not wish it,' said I, 'though now you have said it, I am glad.

You hate me, I understand.'

'And I thank you for understanding. Yes, you have behaved well.'

'Good-night, then, and G.o.d bless you!'

I shook rein and jogged out of the courtyard into the mirk and mist.

I never saw her again.

Not till years later did I learn that she, too, had left her husband's roof that night and after (it cannot be doubted) many adventures of which no history has reached me, joined the Court in its exile at the Hague; where, as I am told, she died.

Her husband recovered and lived to accomplish his end by drink.

There were whispers against him, but no certain proof that he had ever acted as intermediary in selling the pa.s.s. His defenders could always urge his notorious poverty. Before his death he had parted with more than two-thirds of his estate. There was no child to inherit the remainder.

To the end he a.s.serted that his wife had run from him unfaithfully, and was pitied for it. So I hear, at least, and do not care; as I am sure she would not have cared. She had saved his honour, with my poor help, and having saved it, was quit of us both.

I pray the foreign earth may rest lightly on her.

THE JEW ON THE MOOR.

[The scene is the kitchen of a small farm-house above the Walkham River, on the western edge of Dartmoor. The walls, originally of rough granite, have had their asperities smoothed down by many layers of whitewash. The floor is of lime-ash, nicely sanded. From the ceiling--formed of rude, unplaned beams and the planching of the bedroom above--depends a rack crowded with hams and sides of bacon, all wrapped in newspapers. In the window a dozen geraniums are blooming, and beyond them the eye rests on the slope of Sharpitor and the distant ridge of Sheepstor. The fireplace, which faces the window, is deep and capacious, and floored with granite slabs.

On these burns a fire of glowing peat, and over the fire hangs a crock of milk in process of scalding. In the ingle behind it sits the relator of this story, drying his knees after a Dartmoor shower.

From his seat he can look up the wide chimney and see, beyond the smoke, the sky, and that it is blue again and shining. But he listens to the farmer's middle-aged sister, who stands at the table by the window, and rolls out a pie-crust as she talks. (The farmer is a widower, and she keeps house for him.) She talks of a small picture--a silhouette executed in black and gold--that adorns the wall-s.p.a.ce between the dresser and the tall clock, and directly above the side-table piled with the small library of the house.