Corporal Sam and Other Stories Part 4

The sergeant paid no heed to the sneer. He was beginning to think.

'How long has this been going on?' he asked.

'Only since daylight. There was a child up yonder, last night; but it stands to reason a child can't be doing this. He never misses, I tell you. Oh, you had luck, just now!'

'I wonder,' said Sergeant Wilkes, musing. 'I'll try it again, anyway.' And while the rifleman gasped he stepped out boldly into the road.

He knew that his guess might, likely enough, be wrong: that, even were it right, the next two seconds might see him a dead man.

Yet he was bound to satisfy himself. With his eyes on the sinister window--it stood half open and faced straight down the narrow street--he knelt by the corpse, found its ammunition pouch, unbuckled the strap and drew out a handful of cartridges. Then he straightened himself steadily--but his heart was beating hard--and as steadily walked back and rejoined the rifleman in the pa.s.sage.

'You have a nerve,' said the rifleman, his voice shaking a little.

'Looks like he don't fire on redcoats; but you have a nerve all the same.'

'Or else he may be gone,' suggested the sergeant, and on the instant corrected himself; 'but I warn you not to reckon upon that. Is there a window facing on him anywhere, round the bend of the street?'

'I dunno.'

The rifleman peered forth, turning his head sideways for a cautious reconnoitre. 'Maybe he _has_ gone, after all--'

It was but his head he exposed beyond the angle of the doorway; and yet, on the instant a report cracked out sharply, and he pitched forward into the causeway. His own rifle clattered on the stones beside him, and where he fell he lay, like a stone.

Sergeant Wilkes turned with a set jaw and mounted the stairs of the deserted house behind him. They led him up to the roof, and there he dropped on his belly and crawled. Across three roofs he crawled, and lay down behind a bal.u.s.trade overlooking the transverse roadway.

Between the pillars of the bal.u.s.trade he looked right across the roadway and into the half-open window of the cottage. The room within was dark save for the glimmer of a mirror on the back wall.

'Kill him I must,' growled the sergeant through his teeth, 'though I wait the day for it.'

And he waited there, crouching for an hour--for two hours.

He was shifting his cramped att.i.tude a little--a very little--for about the twentieth time, when a smur of colour showed on the mirror, and the next instant pa.s.sed into a dark shadow. It may be that the marksman within the cottage had spied yet another rifleman in the street. But the sergeant had noted the reflection in the gla.s.s, that it was red. Two shots rang out together. But the sergeant, after peering through the parapet, stood upright, walked back across the roofs, and regained the stairway.

The street was empty. From one of the doorways a voice called to him to come back. But he walked on, up the street and across the roadway to a green-painted wicket. It opened upon a garden, and across the garden he came to a flight of steps with an open door above. Through this, too, he pa.s.sed and stared into a small room. On the far side of it, in an armchair, sat Corporal Sam, leaning back, with a hand to his breast; and facing him, with a face full of innocent wonder, stood a child--a small, grave, curly-headed child.

CHAPTER VIII.

'I'm glad you done it quick,' said Corporal Sam.

His voice was weak, yet he managed to get out the words firmly, leaning back in the wooden armchair, with one hand on his left breast, spread and covering the lower ribs.

The sergeant did not answer at once. Between the spread fingers he saw a thin stream welling, darker than the scarlet tunic which it discoloured. For perhaps three seconds he watched it. To him the time seemed as many minutes, and all the while he was aware of the rifle-barrel warm in his grasp.

'Because,' Corporal Sam pursued with a smile that wavered a little, half wistfully seeking his eyes, 'you'd 'a had to do it, anyway-- wouldn't you? And any other way it--might--'a been hard.'

'Lad, what _made_ you?'

It was all Sergeant Wilkes could say, and he said it, wondering at the sound of his own voice. The child, who, seeing that the two were friends and not, after all, disposed to murder one another, had wandered to the head of the stairs to look down into the sunlit garden shining below, seemed to guess that something was amiss after all, and, wandering back, stood at a little distance, finger to lip.

'I don't know,' the corporal answered, like a man with difficulty trying to collect his thoughts. 'Leastways, not to explain to you.

It must 'a been comin' on for some time.'

'But _what_, lad--_what?_'

'Ah--"what?" says you. That's the trouble, and I can't never make you _see_--yes, make you _see_--the h.e.l.l of it. It began with thinkin'--just with thinkin'--_that first night you led me home from the breach_. And the things I saw and heard; and then, when I came here, only meanin' to save _him_--'

He broke off and nodded at the child, who catching his eye, nodded back smiling.

He and the corporal had evidently made great friends.

But the corporal's gaze, wavering past him, had fixed itself on a trestle bed in the corner.

'There was a woman,' he said. 'She was stone cold; but the child told me--until I stopped his mouth, and made a guess at the rest.

I took her down and buried her in the garden. And with that it came over me that the whole of it--the whole business--was wrong, and that to put myself right I must kill, and keep on killing. Of course I knew what the end would be. But I never looked for such luck as _your_ coming. . . . I was ashamed, first along, catching sight o'

you--not--not ashamed, only I didn't want you to see. But when you took cover an' waited--though I wouldn't 'a hurt you for worlds--why then I knew how the end would be.'

'Lad,' said the sergeant, watching him as he panted, 'I don't understand you, except that you're desperate wrong. But I saw you-- saw you by the lookin'-gla.s.s, behind there; and 'tis right you should know.'

'O' course you saw me. . . . I'm not blamin', am I? You had to do it, and I had to take it. That was the easiest way. I couldn' do no other, an' you couldn' do no other, that bein' your duty. An' the child, there--'

Sergeant Wilkes turned for a moment to the child, who met his gaze, round-eyed; then to his friend again.

But the corporal's head had dropped forward on his chest.

The sergeant touched his shoulder, to make sure; then, with one look behind him, but ignoring the child, reeled out of the room and down the stairs, as in a dream. In the sunny garden the fresh air revived him and he paused to stare at a rose-bush, rampant, covered with white blossoms against which the bees were humming. Their hum ran in his head so that he failed to notice that the sound of musketry had died down. An hour before it had been death to walk, as he did, under the convent wall and out into the street leading to the lesser breach. The convent had, in fact, surrendered, and its defenders were even now withdrawing up the hill to the citadel. He found the lesser breach and climbed down it to the sh.o.r.e of the Urumea, beside the deserted ford across which the Portuguese had waded on the morning of the second a.s.sault. Beyond it shone the sandhills, hiding our batteries.

He sat down on the bank and pulled off boots and socks, preparing to wade; but turned at a slight sound.

The child had followed him and stood half-way down the ruins of the breach, wistful, uncertain.

In a rage, as one threatens off an importunate dog, Sergeant Wilkes waved an arm. The child turned and slunk away, back into San Sebastian.

THE COPERNICAN CONVOY.

[The story is told by Will Fleming, of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-law, and sometime Cornet of the 32nd Troop of Horse in the Parliament Army, then (December, 1643) quartered at Farnham, on the Hants border.]

CHAPTER I.

I dare say that, since the world began and men learned to fight, was never an army moderately prosperous and yet fuller of grumblers than was ours during the latter weeks of November and the first fortnight of December, 1643. In part the blame lay upon our general, Sir William Waller, and his fondness for night attacks and beating up of quarters. He rested neither himself nor his men, but spent them without caring, and drove not a few to desert in mere fatigue.

This was his way, and it differed from the way of my Lord Ess.e.x, who rather spilled his strength by lethargy and grieved over it.

'Twas notorious these two generals loved not one another: and 'tis not for me, who never served under Ess.e.x, to take sides. But I will say this for General Waller--that he spared himself as little as any common soldier; never forgot the face of a good servant; and in general fed his men well and hated arrears of pay like the devil.