Merry-Garden and Other Stories Part 4

What had he seen? His bride--his chosen Sophia--disappearing into an arbour with a young man! And her youthful companions--pupils of an establishment he had chosen with such care--making merry with a group of uniformed officers--of soldiers--well known to be the most profligate of men!

Oh, monstrous!

But what was to be done? Could he stalk into the midst of the party and raise a scene? The young men might laugh at him. . . . Even supposing he put them to rout, what next was he to do? He would find himself with those abandoned girls left on his hands. A pleasant tea-party, that!

And Miss St. Maur might not be arriving for another hour. Could he spend all that time in lecturing them? Could he even trust himself to speak to Sophia? Dr. Clatworthy, still with his hands to his head, staggered down the steps and forth from the garden.

He had done with Sophia for ever! His first demand of a woman worthy to be his wife was that she should never have looked upon another man to make eyes at him, and he had distinctly seen (Oh, monstrous, monstrous, to be sure!). . . . He would go straight home and write Miss St. Maur a letter the like of which that lady had never received in her life.

With these terrible thoughts working in his head, the poor man had crossed a couple of fields on his way home when he looked up and saw Miss St. Maur herself coming towards him along the footpath over the knap of the hill.

"Dr. Clatworthy!" cried Miss St. Maur.

"Ma'am," said Dr. Clatworthy.

"Why--why, wherever have you left dear Sophia and the rest of my charges?"

"At Merry-Garden, ma'am--and in various summer-houses, ma'am--and making free, ma'am, with a vicious soldiery!"

"But it is impossible!" cried Miss St. Maur when he had told his tale of horror. "I refuse to believe it. Indeed, sir, I can only think you have taken leave of your senses!"

"Come and see for yourself, ma'am," said the doctor, cold as ice to look at, but with an inside like a furnace.

He was forced almost to a run to keep pace with Miss St. Maur: but at the steps leading up to the garden he made her promise him to go quiet, and the pair tiptoed up and through the verandah and peered around the laylock-bush.

"There!" cried Miss St. Maur, turning to him and pointing up the path with her parasol.

To and fro along the path a party of young ladies was strolling disconsolate. They walked in pairs, to be sure: and the hum of their voices reached to the laylock-bush as they bent and discussed the flowers in Aunt Barbree's border. Not a uniform, not a man, was in sight.

"There!" said Miss St. Maur. "There, sir! What did I tell you?"

VII.

The cause of it all was Nandy. Nandy had found a nice out-of-the-way corner of the foresh.o.r.e, with a patch of mud above the water's edge, and, after a good roll in it (it was a trifle smellier than the baths at Hi-jeen Villa, but nothing amiss), had waded out into the tide for a thorough wash. He was standing in water up to his armpits and rinsing the mud out of his hair, when, happening to glance sh.o.r.ewards, he caught a glimpse of scarlet, and rubbed his eyes to see a red-coated soldier standing on the beach and overhauling his clothes, which he had left there in a heap.

"Hi!" sang out Nandy. "You leave those clothes alone: they're mine!"

The soldier put up a hand and seemed to be beckoning, cautious-like.

Nandy waded nearer. "Looky-here, lobster--none of your tricks!" he said.

"They-there clothes belong to me."

"I ain't goin' to be a lobster, as you put it, much longer," said the soldier. "I'm a-goin' to cast my sh.e.l.l." And with that he begins to unb.u.t.ton his tunic. "If you try to interfere, young man, I'll wring your neck; and if you cry out, I carry a pistol upon me--" and sure enough he pulled a pistol from his pocket and laid it on the stones between his feet. "I'm a desperate man," he said.

"Hullo!" said Nandy, beginning to understand. "Desertin', eh?"

The soldier nodded as he flung the tunic down on the beach--and Nandy took note of the figures 32 in bra.s.s on the collar. "It's all along of a woman," said he.

"Ah!" said Nandy, sympathetic. "There's lots of us in the world taken that way."

"Looky-here," said the soldier, "if you try any sauce with me, you'll be sorry for it; and, what's more, you won't get this pretty suit o' scarlet clothes I was minded to leave you for a present."

"Thank you," said Nandy.

"They won't fit so badly if you turn up the bottoms o' the pantaloons: and you can't look worse than you do in a state o' nature."

"All right," said Nandy; "only make haste about it; for 'tis cold standin'

here in the water."

To tell the truth a rare notion had crept into his head. This scarlet uniform--for scarlet it was, with white and yellow facings--had come as a G.o.dsend. He would walk home in it, and if it didn't frighten twenty shillings out of Aunt Barbree he must have lost the knack of lying.

"You can't be in more of a hurry than I am," answered the soldier, stripping to the very buff--for everything he wore, down to his shirt, carried the regimental mark. The only part of Nandy's wardrobe he spared were the boots, which wouldn't fit him at all.

"So long!" said the soldier, having lit his pipe: and with that he gave a shake to settle himself down in Nandy's clothes, picked up his pistol and scrambled up through the bushes. In thirty seconds he was over the cliff and out of sight, and Nandy left to stare at his new uniform.

He picked up the articles gingerly and slipped them on, one by one.

There was a coa.r.s.e flannel shirt with a leather stock, a pair of woollen socks, black pantaloons with a line of red piping, spatterdashes, a tunic such as I've described--with pipe-clayed belt and crossbelt--and last of all a great j.a.panned shako mounted with a bra.s.s plate and chin-strap and a scarlet-and-white c.o.c.kade like a shaving-brush. When his toilet was finished, Nandy stepped down to the edge of the tide to take a look at his own reflection. It seemed to him that he cut a fine figure; but somehow he couldn't fetch up stomach to wear that rory-tory shako, but took his way towards Merry-Garden carrying it a-dangle by the chin-strap.

However, by the time he reached the gate he had begun to feel more accustomed to his grandeur, and likewise that in for a penny was in for a pound: so, clapping the blessed thing tight on his head and pulling down the strap, he marched up the steps with a bold face.

The verandah was empty, and he strode along it and past the laylock-bush where--scarce ten minutes before--Dr. Clatworthy had received such a desperate shock. A little way beyond it was a path leading round to the back door, and Nandy was making for this when his ears caught the sound of laughing and the jingling of teacups from the line of arbours, and he spied Susannah coming towards the house with a teapot in one hand and an empty cream-dish in the other. For the moment she didn't recognise him.

"Attention! Stand at ease!" said Nandy, drawing himself up to the salute.

"The Lord deliver us!" screamed Susannah, dropping teapot and cream-dish together: and at the sound of it a dozen gentlemen in regimentals came rushing out from their arbours. Before Nandy knew whether he stood on his heels or his head one of these gentlemen had gripped him by the collar, and was requiring him to say instanter what the devil he meant by it.

"Why, damme," shouted someone, "if 'tisn't the uniform of the Thirty-second! Here! Shilston! Appleshaw!"

"What's wrong?"

"The fellow belongs to yours."

"The deuce he does! Slew him round and show his face."

"Oh, Nandy, Nandy!"--this was Miss Sophia's voice--"Have you really been and gone and enlisted!"

"No, miss, I ha'n't,"--by this time Nandy was blubbering for very fright.

He tore himself loose and fell at Miss Sophia's feet. "But I was takin' a bath, miss--for my skin's sake, as advised by you--and a sojer came and took my clothes by main force,"--here Nandy sobbed aloud--"I--I think, miss, he must ha' meant to desert!"

"Hey!" One of the officers took him again by the collar. "What's that you're saying? A deserter . . . left you these clothes and bolted? . . .

Oh, stop your whining and answer! When? Where?"

Nandy checked his tears--but not his sobs--and pointed. "Down by the foresh.o.r.e, sir . . . not a quarter of an hour since . . . he took the way up the Lynher, towards St. Germans . . ."

"Here, Appleshaw, this is serious! Trehane, Drury--you'll help us?

A man of ours, deserted. . . . You'll excuse us, ladies--we'll bring the fellow back to you if we catch him. Show us the way, youngster--down by the creek, did you say? Tallyho, boys! One and all! Yoicks forra'd!

Go-one away!"--and, dragging Nandy with them, the pack pelted out of the garden.