The Mississippi Bubble Part 23

In a moment Law was master of himself. "Give it to me, Madam, if you please," he said, quietly, and took the knife from fingers which loosened under his grasp. There was no further word spoken. He tossed the knife into a crack of the bunk beyond him. He lay with his right arm doubled under his head, looking up steadily into the low ceiling, upon which the fire made ragged ma.s.ses of shadows. His left arm, round, full and muscular, lay across the figure of the woman whom he had forced down upon the couch beside him. He could feel her bosom rise and pant in sheer sobs of anger. Once he felt the writhing of the body beneath his arm, but he simply tightened his grasp and spoke no word.

It was not far from morning. In time the gray dawn came creeping in at the window, until at length the c.h.i.n.ks between the logs in the little square-cut window and the ill-fitting door were flooded with a sea of sunlight. As this light grew stronger, Law slowly turned and looked at the face beside him. Out of the tangle of dark hair there blazed still two eyes, eyes which looked steadily up at the ceiling, refusing to turn either to the right or to the left. He calmly pulled closer to him, so that it might not stain the garments of the woman beside him, the blood-soaked shirt whose looseness and lack of definition had perhaps saved him from a fatal blow. He paid no attention to his wound, which he knew was nothing serious. So he lay and looked at Mary Connynge, and finally removed his arm.

"Get up," said he, simply, and the woman obeyed him.

"The fire, Madam, if you please, and breakfast."

These had been the duties of the Indian woman, but Mary Connynge obeyed.

"Madam," said Law, calmly, after the morning meal was at last finished in silence, "I shall be very glad to have your company for a few moments, if you please."

Mary Connynge rose and followed him into the open air, her eyes still fixed upon the dark-crusted stain which had spread upon his tunic. They walked in silence to a point beyond the cabin.

"You would call her Catharine!" burst out Mary Connynge. "Oh! I heard you in your very sleep. You believe every lying word Sir Arthur tells you. You believe--"

John Law looked at her with the simple and direct gaze which the tamer of the wild beast employs when he goes among them, the look of a man not afraid of any living thing.

"Madam," said he, at length, calmly and evenly, as before, "what I have said, sleeping or waking, will not matter. You have tried to kill me.

You did not succeed. You will never try again. Now, Madam, I give you the privilege of kneeling here on the ground before me, and asking of me, not my pardon, but the pardon of the woman you have foully stabbed, even as you have me."

The figure before him straightened up, the blazing yellow eyes sought his once, twice, thrice, behind them all the fury of a savage soul. It was of no avail. The cool blue eyes looked straight into her heart. The tall figure stood before her, unyielding. She sought to raise her eyes once more, failed, and so would have sunk down as he had said, actually on her knees before him.

John Law extended a hand and stopped her. "There," said he. "It will suffice. I can not demean you. There is the child."

"You called her Catharine!" broke out the woman once more in her ungovernable rage. "You would name my child--"

"Madam, get up!" said John Law, sharply and sternly. "Get up on your feet and look me in the face. The child shall be called for her who should have been its mother. Let those forgive who can. That you have ruined my life for me is but perhaps a fair exchange; yet you shall say no word against that woman whose life we have both of us despoiled."

CHAPTER X

BY THE HILT OF THE SWORD

Law pa.s.sed on out at the gate of the stockade and down to the bivouac, where Pembroke and his men had spent the night.

"Now, Sir Arthur," said he to the latter, when he had found him, "come.

I am ready to talk with you. Let us go apart."

Pembroke joined him, and the two walked slowly away toward the encircling wood which swept back of the stockade. Law turned upon him at length squarely.

"Sir Arthur," said he, "I think you would tell me something concerned with the Lady Catharine Knollys. Do you bring any message from her?"

The face of Pembroke flamed scarlet with sudden wrath. "Message!" said he. "Message from Lady Catharine Knollys to you? By G.o.d! sir, her only message could be her hope that she might never hear your name again."

"You have still your temper, Sir Arthur, and you speak harsh enough."

"Harsh or not," rejoined Pembroke, "I scarce can endure her name upon your lips. You, who scouted her, who left her, who took up with the lewdest woman in all Great Britain, as it now appears--you who would consort with this creature--"

"In this matter," said John Law, simply, "you are not my prisoner, and I beg you to speak frankly. It shall be man and man between us."

"How you could have stooped to such baseness is what mortal man can never understand," resumed Sir Arthur, bitterly. "Good G.o.d! to abandon a woman like that so heartlessly--"

"Sir Arthur," said John Law, his voice trembling, "I do myself the very great pleasure of telling you that you lie!"

For a moment the two stood silent, facing each other, the face of each stony, gone gray with the emotions back of it.

"There is light," said Pembroke, "and abundant s.p.a.ce."

They turned and paced back farther toward the open forest glade. Yet now and again their steps faltered and half paused, and neither man cared to go forward or to return. Pembroke's face, stern as it had been, again took on the imprint of a growing hesitation.

"Mr. Law," said he, "there is something in your att.i.tude which I admit puzzles me. I ask you in all honor, I ask you on the hilt of that sword which I know you will never disgrace, why did you thus flout the Lady Catharine Knollys? Why did you scorn her and take up with this woman yonder in her stead?"

"Sir Arthur," said John Law, with trembling lips, "I must be very low indeed in reputation, since you can ask me question such as this."

"But you must answer!" cried Sir Arthur, "and you must swear!"

"If you would have my answer and my oath, then I give you both. I did not do what you suggest, nor can I conceive how any man should think me guilty of it. I loved Lady Catharine Knollys with all my heart. 'Twas my chief bitterness, keener than even the thought of the gallows itself, that she forsook me in my trouble. Then, bitter as any man would be, I persuaded myself that I cared naught. Then came this other woman. Then I--well, I was a man and a fool--a fool, Sir Arthur, a most miserable fool! Every moment of my life since first I saw her, I have loved the Lady Catharine; and, G.o.d help me, I do now!"

Sir Arthur struck his hand upon the hilt of his sword. "You were more lucky than myself, as I know," said he, and from his lips broke half a groan.

"Good G.o.d!" broke out Law. "Let us not talk of it. I give you my word of honor, there has been no happiness to this. But come! We waste time. Let us cross swords!"

"Wait. Let me explain, since we are in the way of it. You must know that 'twas within the plans of Montague that Lady Catharine Knollys should be the agent of your freedom. I was pledged to the Lady Catharine to a.s.sist her, though, as you may perhaps see, sir," and Pembroke gulped in his throat as he spoke, "'twas difficult enough, this part that was a.s.signed to me. It was I, Mr. Law, who drove the coach to the gate, the coach which brought the Lady Catharine. 'Twas she who opened the door of Newgate jail for you. My G.o.d! sir, how could you walk past that woman, coming there as she did, with such a purpose!"

At hearing these words, the tall figure of the man opposed to him drooped and sank, as though under some fearful blow. He staggered to a near-by support and sank weakly to a seat, his head falling between his hands, his whole face convulsed.

"Ah!" said he, "you did right to cross seas in search of me! G.o.d hath indeed found me out and given me my punishment. Yet I ask G.o.d to bear me witness that I knew not the truth. Come, Sir Arthur! Come, I beseech you! Let us fall to!"

"I shall be no man's executioner for his sentence on himself. I could not fight you now." His eye fell by chance upon the blotch in Law's bloodstained tunic. "And here," he said; "see! You are already wounded."

"'Twas but one woman's way of showing her regard," said Law. "'Twas Mary Connynge stabbed me."

"But why?"

"Nay, I am glad of it; since it proves the truth of all you say, even as it proves me to be the most unworthy man in all the world. Oh, what had it meant to me to know a real love! G.o.d! How could I have been so blind?"

"'Tis the ancient puzzle."

"Yes!" cried Law. "And let us make an end of puzzles! Your quarrel, sir, I admit is just. Let us go on."

"And again I tell you, Mr. Law," replied Sir Arthur, "that I will not fight you."

"Then, sir," said Law, dropping his own sword upon the gra.s.s and extending his hand with a broken smile, "'tis I who am your prisoner!"