The Master of Appleby Part 68

"'Tis a monstrous doleful alternative, _n'est-ce pas_? And I must not let you talk of doleful things; indeed, I must not let you talk at all--'tis Doctor Carew's order."

So saying, she smoothed the counterpane and straightened my pillows; and after giving me a great spoonful of some cordial that first set a pleasant glow alight in me and afterward made me drowsy, she took post again in the hollow of the big chair and was so sitting when I fell asleep.

This day's awakening was the first of many so nearly of a piece that I lost the count of them; and sleep, deep and dreamless for the better part, stole away the hours till the memory of that inch-by-inch return to health and strength is itself like the memory of the vaguest of dreams.

By times when I awoke it was the bluff Doctor Carew bending over me to dress my wound; at other times it was Margery come to tempt me with a bowl of broth or some other kickshaw from the kitchen. Now and again I awoke to find Scipio or old Anthony standing watch at my bedside; and once--but that was after I was up and in my clothes and able to sit and drowse in the great chair--I opened my eyes to find that my company was the master of the house.

He was sitting as I had seen him sit once before, behind a lighted candle at the little table with a parchment spread out under his bony hands. He was mumbling over the written words of it when I looked, but at my stirring he gave over and sat back in his chair to cross his thin legs and match his long fingers by the ends, and wink and blink at me as though he had but now discovered that he was not alone.

"I give ye good even, Captain Ireton," he said, finally, rasping the greeting out at me as it had been a curse. "I hope ye've slept well."

I said I had, and thanked him, once for the wish, and again for his coming to see me. I know not how it was, but if there had been rancor in my former thoughts of him 'twas something abated now.

"Ye've had a nearhand escape this time, sir," he said, after a longish pause.

"One more or less of a good many since we were last met together in this room, Mr. Stair," I would say.

He muttered something to himself about the devil taking precious good care of his own; and I laughed.

"That is as it may be; but my being here this second time a pensioner on your bounty is by no good will of mine, I do a.s.sure you, sir."

He sat nodding at me as if I had said a thing to be most heartily agreed to. But his spoken word belied the nods.

"The ways of Providence are inscrutable--something inscrutable, Captain Ireton. I make no doubt ye are sufficiently thankfu' for all your mercies."

"Why, as to that, there may be two ways of looking at it. As a soldier, I may justly repine at a fate which ties me here when I should be in the field."

"Well said, sir; brawly said; 'tis the part of a good soldier to be ay wanting to be in the thick o' the fighting. But now that ye're a man of substance, Captain Ireton, ye will be owing other debts to our country than the one ye can pay with a hantle o' steel."

"'Our country,' did you say, Mr. Stair?" I asked, feigning a surprise which no one knowing him could feel in very truth.

"And what for no? 'Tis the birthland of some--yourself, for example, and the leal land of adoption for others--your humble servant, to wit. I've taken the solemn oath of allegiance to the Congress, I'd have ye to know."

At this I must needs laugh outright.

"Have you taken it one more time than you have forsworn it, Mr. Stair?"

"Laugh and ye will," he said, quite placably; "ye shall never laugh the peetriotism out o' me. 'Tis little enough an old man can do, but the precious cause o' liberty will never have to ask that little twice, Captain Ireton."

Since he would ever be on the winning side, this foreshadowed good tidings, indeed. So I would ask him straight what news there was.

"Have they not told ye? 'Tis braw news," he chuckled. "Whilst ye were on your back, General Greene led Lord Cornwallis a fine dance all across the prov--the state, I mean, crooking his finger at him and saying, 'Come on, ye led-captain of a tyrant king, and when I'm ready I'll turn and rend ye.' And by the same token, that is juist what he did the other day at Guilford Court House."

"A victory?" I would ask.

"Well, not precisely that, maybe; they're calling it a drawn battle. But I'm thinking 'tis Lord Cornwallis that's drawn. He's off to Wilmington, they say, and I'm fain to hope we've seen the last o' him and his reaving redcoats in these parts."

His words set me in a muse. I could never make out what he would be at, telling me all this. But he had an object, well-defined, and presently it showed its head.

"Ye're the laird o' the manor, now, Captain Ireton, with none to gainsay ye," he went on. "So I've come to give ye an account o' my stewardship.

I made no doubt, all along, ye'd come back to your own when ye'd had your fling wi' the Old Worldies, and so I've kept tab o' the poor bit land for ye."

"Oh, you have?" said I, being so far out-brazened as to be incapable of saying more.

"I have that--every plack and bawbee. 'Tis ten years come Michaelmas since I took over the charge o' Appleby Hundred, and I'm ready to account to ye for every season's crop--when ye'll pay down the bit steward's fee."

"Truly," said I; "you are an honest man, Mr. Stair." Then, to humor him to the top of his bent: "Haphazarding a guess, now; would this accounting leave a balance in my favor, or in yours?"

He gave me a look like that of a costermonger weighing and measuring the gullibility of his customer.

"Oh, aye; I'm no saying there mightn't be a bit siller coming to me; a few hundred pounds, more or less--sterling, man, sterling; not Scots,"

he added hastily. And then, as if it were best to leave this nail as it was driven, he changed the subject abruptly. "I've brought ye that last will and testament ye signed," handing me the parchment. "No doubt you'll let it stand; but when the bairns come, ye'll want to be adding a codicil or two."

Leaving the matter of the estate, I thought it high time to cut to the marrow of the bigger bone. So I said: "Let us be frank with each other in this, Mr. Stair. How much has your daughter told you of the matter between us?"

"She's a jade!" he rasped, lapsing for a moment into his real self. But he recovered his self-control instantly. "Ye'd no expect a romantic bit la.s.sie wi' French blood in her veins to be confidencing wi' her old dried-up wisp of a father, now, would ye? She's no tell't me everything, I daresay."

"Then I will tell you the plain truth of it," I said. "This marriage was never anything more than the form we all agreed it should be at the time; a makeshift to serve a purpose. If you think I would hold your daughter to it--"

"Hut, tut, man! what will ye be havering about! Ye'll never cast the poor bit la.s.sie off that way! Ye canna, if ye would; her Church will have a word to say to that."

For all his aping the manner of the ignored father, I shrewdly suspected that he knew more about the ins and outs of our affair than he owned to.

Nevertheless, I was forced to meet him on his own ground.

"There is no 'casting off' about it, Mr. Stair; and as to the Church, there is good ground for an appeal to Rome. The marriage as it stands is little more than a formal betrothal, as you well know, sound enough legally to make Mistress Margery my heir-at-law, mayhap, but still lacking everything of--"

He could not wait to let me finish.

"Lacking, d'ye say?" he rapped out, wrathfully. "And whose fault is that, ye cold-blooded stick? Tell me this; did I no bundle ye neck and heels into your own wife's bed-room? And how do you thank me? I'm to suppose ye quarrel wi' her like the dour-faced imp o' Sawtan that ye are, and presently ye come raging out, swearing most shamefully at a man old enough to be your father!"

'Twas far enough in the retrospect now so that I could smile at it. Yet I would not suffer him to bl.u.s.ter me aside.

"It was an ill thing for you to do, none the less, Mr. Stair; the more as you must have known that Mistress Margery's faith was plighted to Richard Jennifer long before all this came to pa.s.s."

"Did I know it?" he shrilled. "That lang-legged jackanapes of a d.i.c.kie Jennifer? Light o' love jade that she is, she never cared the snap of a finger for him."

"You are talking far enough beside the mark now," I retorted. "Your daughter loves Richard Jennifer well and truly; and with this entanglement brushed aside she will marry him when he comes back from the wars."

"She will, ye say? And what will become o' the braw acres of Appleby that gait, I'd like to know? But ye're daft, man; clean daft. Didn't I speir her giving him his quittance once for all that night when he rode away after they had pitten ye to bed? She tell't him flat she loved another man."

"Another man?" I echoed. "I--explain yourself, if you please, Mr. Stair.

What other man--"

He was at the door by this, and he broke out upon me in such a blast of cursing as I hope never to hear from the lips of such an old man again.

"Ye cold-blooded, crusty devil!" he quavered, when all his breath was spent upon the bigger malisons. "Has it never come intil your thick numbskull that the poor fule la.s.sie is sick wi' love for ye, ye dour-faced loon?"

And with that he let himself out and slammed the door behind him, and I heard him go pottering down the corridor, still cursing me by all the choice phrases he could lay tongue to.