The Master of Appleby Part 4

"The baronet's sword is a good inch longer than yours in the blade, and is somewhat heavier. Tybee has brought a pair of French short-swords which he offers. Will you change your terms?"

"No; I am content to fight with my own weapon."

Jennifer nodded. "So I told him." And then: "There was no surgeon to be had in town, Dr. Carew having gone with the Minute Men to join Mr.

Rutherford. Tybee says 'tis scarce in accordance with the later rulings to fight without one."

"To the devil with their hairsplittings!" said I. "Let us have done with them and be at it."

Falconnet was removing his coat, and I stripped mine. The seconds chose the ground where the turf was short and firm, and yet yielding enough to give good footing. We faced each other, my antagonist baring an arm which, despite the bejeweled hand, was to the full as big-muscled as my own. My glance went from his weapon, a rather heavy German blade, straight and slender-pointed, to his face. He was smiling as one who strives to make the outer man a mask to cover all emotion, and the plasters on his cheek drew the smile into a grimace that was all but devilish.

The seconds fell back, but when Jennifer would have given the signal I stopped him.

"One moment, if you please. Sir Francis Falconnet, you know me?"

The thin-lidded eyes were veiled for an instant, and then he lied smoothly.

"Your pardon, Captain Ireton; I have not that honor."

"'Tis a small matter, but you do lie this morning as basely as you lied to Richard Coverdale nine years agone," said I; and then I signed Jennifer to give the word.

"Attention, gentlemen! On guard!"

My enemy's sword leaped to meet mine, and at the same instant I heard another click of steel betokening that the seconds had fallen to in a bit of by-play between themselves, as was then the fashion. After that I heard nothing for a time save the sibilant whisperings of the Ferara and the German long-sword, and saw nothing save the fierce eyes glaring at me out of the midst of the plaster-marred smile.

Recreant though he was, I must do my adversary the justice to say that he was a skilful master of fence, agile as a French dancer, and withal well-breathed and persevering. Twice, nay, thrice, before I found my advantage he had p.r.i.c.ked me lightly with that extra inch of slender point. But when I had fairly felt his wrist I knew that his heavier weapon would shortly prove his undoing; knew that the quick parry and lightning-like thrust would presently lag a little, and then I should have him.

Something of this prophecy of triumph he must have read in my eyes, for on the instant he was up and at me like a madman, and I had my work well cut out to hold him at the blade's length. I was so holding him; was, in my turn, beginning to press him slowly, when there came a drumming of hoofbeats on the soft turf, and then a woman's cry.

I looked aside, and to my dying day I shall swear that my antagonist did likewise. What I saw was Mistress Margery Stair riding down upon us at a hand-gallop, and I lowered my point, as any gentleman would.

In the very act--'twas while Jennifer was clutching at her bridle rein to stay her from riding fair between us--I felt the hot-wire p.r.i.c.k of the steel in my shoulder and knew that my enemy had run me through as I stood.

Of what befell afterward I have but dim memories. There were more hoof-tramplings, and then I felt the dewy turf under my hands and soft fingers tremblingly busy at my neckerchief. Then I saw swimmingly, as through a veil of mist, a woman's face just above my own, and it was full of horror; and I heard my enemy say: "'Twas most unfortunate and I do heartily regret it, Mr. Jennifer. I saw not why he had lowered his point. Can I say more?"

How Richard Jennifer made answer to this lie I know not; nor do I know aught else, save by hear-say, of any further happening in that gra.s.sy glade beneath my father's oaks. For the big German blade was a shrewd blood-letter, and I fell asleep what time my lady was trying to stanch with her kerchief the ebbing tide of life.

IV

WHICH MAY BE Pa.s.sED OVER LIGHTLY

When I came back to some clearer sensing of things, I found myself abed in a room which was strange and yet strangely familiar. Barring a great oaken clothes-press in one corner, a raree-show of curious china on the shelves where the books should have been, and the face of an armored soldier staring down at me from its frame over the chimney piece, where I should have looked to see my mother's portrait, the room was a counterpart of my old bedchamber at Appleby Hundred. There was even a faint odor of lavender in the bed-linen; and the sense of smell, which hath ever a better memory than any other, carried me swiftly back to my boyhood, and to the remembrance that my mother had always kept a spray or two of that sweet herb in her linen closet.

At the bedside there was a claw-footed table, which also had the look of an old friend; and on it a dainty porringer, filled with cuttings of fragrant sweetbriar. This was some womanly conceit, I said to myself; and then I laughed, though the laugh set a pair of wolf's jaws at work on my shoulder. For you must know that I had lived the full half of King David's span of three-score and ten years, and more, and what womanly softness had fallen to my lot had been well got and paid for.

I closed my eyes the better to remember what had befallen, and when I opened them again was fain to wonder if the moment of back-reaching stood not for some longer time. In the deep bay of the window was a great chair of Indian wickerwork, and I could have sworn it had but now been empty. Yet when I looked again a woman sat in it.

Now of a truth I had seen this woman's face but twice; and once it wore a smile of teasing mockery and once was full of terror; but I thought I should live long and suffer much before the winsome challenging beauty of it would let me be as I had been before I had looked upon it.

She knew not that I was awake and slaking the thirst of my eyes upon the sweetness of her, and so I saw her then as few ever saw her, I think, with the womanly barriers of defense all down. 'Tis a hard test, and one that makes a blank at rest of many a face beautiful enough in action; but though this lady's face was to the full as changeful as any April sky, it was never less than triumphantly beautiful.

I had said her eyes were blue, but now they were deep wells reflecting the soft gray of the clouded sky beyond the window-panes. I had made sure that her lips lent themselves most readily to mocking smiles scornful of any wit less trenchant than her own; but now these mocking lips were pensive, and with the rounded cheek and chin gave her the look of a sweet child wanting to be kissed. I had said her hair was bright in the sunlight, and so, indeed, it was; but lacking the sun it still held the dull l.u.s.ter of burnished copper in its ma.s.ses, and her simple, care-free dressing of it at a time when _les grandes dames_ were frizzing and powdering and adding art to art to mar the woman's crown of glory, gave her yet more the look of a child.

Lastly, I had called her small, and certainly her figure was girlish beside those grenadier dames of Maria Theresa's court to whom my old field-marshal had once presented me. But when she rose and went to stand in the window-bay I marked this; that not any d.u.c.h.ess or margravine of them all had a more queenly bearing, or, with all their stays and furbelows, could match her supple grace and lissom figure.

What with the blood-lettings and the wound fever, coupled with the subtle witchery of her presence thus in my sick room, it is little to be wondered at that a curious madness came over me, or that I forgot for the moment the loyalty due to my dear lad. Could I have stood before her and, reading but half consent in the deep-welled eyes, have clipt her in my arms and laid my lips to hers, I would have run to pay the price, in earth or heaven or h.e.l.l, I thought, deeming the fierce joy of it well worth any penalty.

At this I should have stirred, I suppose, for she came quickly and stood beside me.

"You have slept long and well, Captain Ireton," she said; and in all the thrilling joy of her nearer presence I found s.p.a.ce to mark that her voice had in it that sweet quality of sympathy which is all womanly.

"They say I am good only to fetch and carry--may I fetch you anything?"

I fear the madness of the moment must still have been upon me, for I said: "Since you are here yourself, dear lady, I need naught else."

At a flash I had my whipping in a low dipped curtsy and a mocking smile like that she had flung to Falconnet.

"_Merci! mon Capitaine_," she said; and for all my wincings under the sharp lash of her sarcasm I was moved to wonder how she had the French of it. And then she added: "Is it the custom for Her Apostolic Majesty's officers to come out of a death-swound only to pay pretty compliments?"

"'Twas no compliment," I denied; and, indeed, I meant it. Then I asked where I was, and to whom indebted, though I had long since guessed the answer to both questions.

In a trice the mocking mood was gone and she became my lady hostess, steeped to her finger-tips in gracious dignity.

"You are at Appleby Hundred, sir. 'Twas here they fetched you because there was no other house so near, and you were sorely hurt. Richard Jennifer and my black boy made a litter of the saddle-cloths, and with Sir Francis and Mr. Tybee to help--"

I think she must have seen that this thrust was sharper than that of the German long-sword, for she stopped in mid-sentence and looked away from me. And, surely, I thought it was the very irony of fate that I should thus be brought half dead to the house that was my father's, with my enemy and his second to share the burden of me.

"But your father?" I queried, when the silence had grown over-long.

"My father is away at Queensborough, so you must e'en trust yourself to my tender mercies, Captain Ireton. Are you strong enough to have your wound dressed?"

She asked, but waited for no answer of mine. Summoning a black boy to hold the basin of water, she fell to upon the wound-dressing with as little ado as if she had been a surgeon's apprentice on a battle-field, and I a bloodless ancient too old to thrill at the touch of a woman's hands.

"Dear heart! 'tis a monstrous ugly hurt," she declared, replacing the wrappings with deft fingers. "How came you to go about picking a quarrel with Sir Francis?"

"'Twas not of my seeking," I returned, and then I could have cursed my foolish tongue.

"Is that generous, Captain Ireton? We hear something of the talk of the town, and that says--"

"That says I struck him without sufficient cause. I am content to let it stand so."

"Nay, but you should not be content. Is there not strife enough in this unhappy land without these causeless bickerings?"

Here was my lady turned preacher all in a breath and I with no words to answer her. But I could not let it go thus.

"I knew Sir Francis Falconnet in England," said I, hoping by this to turn her safe aside.