Читать книгу Sweet Mace: A Sussex Legend of the Iron Times - Fenn George Manville - Страница 6

Sir Mark’s wound was of such a nature that, being a young and healthy man, it would soon have healed up; but his imprudence in leaving the house, and his immersion, gave matters so unfavourable a turn that next morning he was unable to leave his bed, and, on a messenger arriving from the Moat with Sir Thomas Beckley’s inquiries how it was Sir Mark had not returned, he was sent back with the news of the young man’s accident, nothing being mentioned about the sword-wound. The result was that Gil, in the course of the morning, when he happened to be strolling in that direction, met Sir Thomas and his daughter on their way to Roehurst, followed by a servant laden with a basket.

Mistress Anne’s face turned white, then rosy red, as she saw Gil approach, and as her eyes met his they were full of reproach and angry resentment, which rapidly gave place to a girlish, half-playful manner as soon as Sir Thomas mentioned the cause of his visit.

“A perilous accident has befallen my guest, Captain Carr,” said the baronet, pompously – “Sir Mark Leslie, a Scottish gentleman, a special messenger from his Majesty, who has come here on important business. He was nearly drowned last even, and is now ill abed. We have brought him some simples and medicaments of Dame Beckley’s own preparation, and we hope soon to have him back.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mistress Anne, with a sigh, and a meaning look at Gil.

“He makes you a pleasant companion, Mistress Anne,” said Gil, quietly.

“Oh, yes,” she cried; “he is delightful – so much Court news – such polish; it is indeed a pleasure to meet a true gentleman down here.”

“Which I am not, then,” thought Gil.

“Will nothing move him to jealousy?” said Anne Beckley to herself; and with her eyes flashing angrily, she laid her hand on her father’s arm, and after a polite salutation they passed on.

“Poor girl!” said Gil to himself. “I am not a vain man, but if she be not ogling, and cap-setting, and trying to draw me on at her apron-string, I am an ass. Why,” he continued, turning to gaze after the little party just as Mistress Anne turned her own head quickly to look after him, and, seeing that he was doing the same, snatched herself away as if in dudgeon – “one would think that she was trying to draw me on by her looks, and seeking to make me jealous of this gay lad from town. Poor lass! it is labour in vain; and she would not cause me a pang if she married him to-morrow. What’s that?”

“That” was a slight rustling noise amongst the trees, followed by a “clink-clink-clink” of flint against steel; and striding out of the path and going in the direction of the sound Gil came upon Wat Kilby, seated in a mossy nook, blowing at a spark in some tinder and holding his little pipe ready in his hand.

“Hollo, Wat!” cried Gil.

The gaunt old fellow went on blowing without paying the slightest heed to the summons, then applied a rough match dipped in brimstone, whose end, on application to the glowing spark in the tinder, first melted, and then began to burn with a fluttering blue flame. This was soon communicated to the splint of wood, and the flame was then carefully held in a scarlet cap taken from Wat’s grizzly half-bald head for shelter from the soft summer breeze, while he held the bowl of his little pipe to it and solemnly puffed it alight, after which he rose from his knees, took up a sitting position with his back against an old beech, gazed up in the speaker’s face and replied —

“Hollo, skipper!”

“I wanted to see you Wat,” said Gil. “Look here, old lad, how came you to be hanging about the house last night when you gave the signal?”

“Hah!” ejaculated Wat, exhaling a thin puff of fine blue smoke and gazing straight before him through the sun-pleached foliage of the forest.

“Do you hear me?” cried Gil, impatiently, as he stamped his heavy foot upon the moss.

“Hah!” ejaculated Wat again. “I was there on the watch.”

“Yes, yes; and what did you see?”

“Mas’ Cobbe come out soon after you had gone across the little bridge and pook it out of the way.”

“Yes, yes; go on.”

“Then I give you the signal two or three times before I could make you hear, and just then I heard another step and hid away, and ’fore I had time to do more – in he went. You know.”

“Yes; but look here, Wat, how came you to be there?”

“I was there to save my skipper from being pooked,” growled Wat, slowly and between puffs of his pipe. “It was as if I had been sent on purpose.”

“It’s a lie,” cried Gil, angrily. “Wat, you are an old trickster and a cheat. How dare you try to deceive me?”

“There,” said Wat, quietly addressing a beech pollard before him; “that’s gratitude for watching over and saving him from being pooked.”

“Of course you saved me from danger, just as any brave man would try to save another, and more especially one of a crew, his skipper. There is no merit attached to that. Now look here, Wat, confess, for I am sure I know.”

“I don’t know about no confessing,” growled Wat; “you’re a skipper, not a priest. S’pose I asked you what you were doing there? If the captain sets such an example, what can you ’spect of the crew?”

Gil twisted his moustache angrily, and then turned sharply on his follower.

“You were not watching me?”

“I arn’t going to tell no lies. No.”

“You as good as say, then, that you were on the same errand as I?”

“I arn’t going to sail round no headlands when there’s a port right in front. I arn’t ashamed. Yes, I were.”

“Look here, Wat Kilby,” said Gil, after taking a step or two up and down in front of the old fellow, who calmly leaned back and gazed straight before him – “look here, Wat Kilby, you have been like a second father to me.”

“Hah!” And then a puff of smoke.

“And I would not willingly hurt your feelings.”

“Hah!”

“But I hold in great respect the people who dwell in yon house, and I will not have them in anywise annoyed.”

“Then I wouldn’t go coming the Spanish Don, under their windows o’ nights,” growled Wat.

“Silence, sir,” cried Gil.

As he spoke, the young man’s face flushed with shame and mortification at being twitted with his amorous passages, but there was a look of command and an imperious tone in his voice that told of one accustomed to be obeyed, and the great lank muscular man, tanned and hardened by a life of exposure, shuffled uneasily in his seat and let his little pipe go out.

“If it had been another man, Wat,” continued Gil, “I should have given him a week in irons for daring to go near the place.”

“What! after his skipper set an example?” growled Wat.

“Silence, sir,” roared Gil, catching the old fellow by the shoulder. “Bah!” he continued, calming down, “Why do you anger me, Wat?” and he loosed his hold.

“Oh, haul away, young ’un,” growled Wat, with a grim smile, “you don’t hurt me. I like to see what a sturdy young lion you’ve grown. That’s your father, every inch of him, as did that. Hah! he was a one.”

“Let him rest, Wat,” cried Gil impatiently. “My father would never have looked over an act of folly or disobedience. Neither will I.”

“You never ordered me not to go,” growled Wat.

“Then I do now, sir! Look here. What does it mean? Are you not ashamed of yourself, carrying on these gallantries? There was that Carib woman out at Essequibo.”

“Hah!” with a smokeless exhalation.

“And the flat-nosed Malayan in the Eastern Seas.”

“Hah!”

“And that Chinese, yellow, moon-faced woman.”

“Hah!”

“And the black girl on the Guinea Coast.”

“Hah!”

“And that Portingallo wench, and the Spanish lass with the dark eyes, and that great Greek, and a score beside.”

“Hah! Yes, skipper,” said Wat calmly, “I’ve got an ugly shell, but the core inside is very soft.”

“Soft? Yes.”

“But you’re going back a many years, skipper.”

“I need,” cried Gil angrily. “A man of your age, too! Why, Wat, you’re sixty, if you are a day!”

“Sixty-four,” growled Wat quietly, as he took out his flint and steel and screwed up his grim weather-beaten face.

“Then it’s a disgrace to you!”

“Disgrace? What’s being sixty-four got to do with it?”

“Why you’re an old man, sir!”

“Old man? Not I, captain. I’m as young as ever I was, and as fond of a pretty girl. I’m not old; and, if I was, I get fonder of ’em every year I live.”

“It is disgraceful, sir!” cried Gil, angrily. “You ought to be thinking of your coffin instead of pretty girls.”

That touched Wat home, and he sprang to his feet with the activity of a boy.

“No, I oughtn’t, skipper,” he cried, excitedly. “And, look here, don’t you say that there terrifying word to me again – I hate it. When it’s all over, if you don’t have me dropped overboard, just as I am, at sea, or even here at home in the little river, I’ll come back and haunt you. Coffin, indeed! Talk about such trade as that! Just as if I hadn’t sailed round the world like a man.”

He reseated himself, and began once more to use his flint and steel, but this time viciously.

“Once for all then, Wat, I will not have this sort of thing here. A man of your years hanging about after that great ugly dairy wench.”

“Who did?” cried Wat sharply. “Nay, captain, never.”

“Have I been mistaken, then?” cried Gil, eagerly. “Stop, though – you don’t mean to say that you have been casting your ancient eyes on Janet?”

“Why not?” cried Wat, leaping up once more. “She’s as pretty a creature as ever I set my ancient eyes, as you call ’em, on.”

“Why, man, she’s eighteen, and you are sixty-four.”

“All the better,” cried Wat. “Janet it is, and I’m going to wed her.”

“Does she know it?”

“Not quite, captain, not yet. Look ye here, skipper, my poor old mother had a plum grow on a tree by the cottage wall, and when I was a boy I meant to have that plum. Did I go and pick it right off and eat it there and then? Nay, I set my eyes on that plum while it was young and green, and saw it grow day by day rounder and redder, and covered with soft down and riper purple, and more rich and plump, and at last, when I picked that plum, I had a hundred times more ’joyment than if I’d plucked it when I saw it first. That’s what I’m doing with little Janet, and that’s what Master Peasegood calls a parabole.”

Gil felt that he might just as well argue with a rock as with his rugged old follower, so he changed the subject.

“When will the Golden Fleece be fit for sea again?”

“It’ll be a month before they’ve got in the new keel, captain, and then she’s got to be well overhauled.”

“It will be two months, then, before we can load up?”

“Ay, all that,” was the reply. “Go on getting in the meal and bacon. Have it ready for placing in store. We must have everything ready there for putting on board.”

“Ay, ay, skipper.”

“Keep the men from going near. Let there be no hanging about the valley on any pretence. See to that with those two last lads.”

“Ay,” growled Wat. “The others can be trusted, of course.”

Gil nodded, and walked away, while Wat went on striking a light.

“He’s half afraid I should get in his way,” growled the old fellow, “but he needn’t be. Much better be afraid of some one finding out the store. There’s a new man come to live here, and a new cottage built. The place is getting too thick with people, and if we don’t mind we shall be found out. Who’s yonder?” he continued, shading his eyes, and gazing through the wood. “Churr and Mother Goodhugh. An’ if we’re ever found out, that Churr’s the man who will do it. And if – if – if – he – does – the captain – will – hang – him – at – th’ yard-arm – sure – as – he’s – a – sinful – soul – hah!”

There was a puff in lighting the pipe between each of these last words, ending with an expiration, after which Wat Kilby leaned back on the moss, half-closed his eyes, and lay watching the couple he had named as they stood talking in the wood.