Читать книгу Clash of Arms - John Bloundelle-Burton - Страница 1

"If," said the sick man, a little complainingly, perhaps a little peevishly, "he comes not soon, he is as like as not to see me in my coffin. Yet," he added a moment later, "he was ever used to keep his word. With all his faults he always did that. Prided himself on it, indeed, almost as much as on the broils and fights and troubles he was always in."

"If," said the other person in the room, "he said he would come, he will come. Andrew Vause ever kept his promise."

"What did he tell the messenger who found him when he rode to London? – in a tavern, be sure! Tell me again the message he sent."

"That he would come the instant he had seen the King-which it was most urgent he should do. That His Majesty had promised him an interview for to-day, and that the moment it was over he would take horse and ride here. Also he sent you this," and the old woman drew from a pouch at her girdle a bit of paper, and, adjusting her glasses, began to read what was written on it-though as she did so she could not resist a smile.

"Why do you laugh, Bridget?" the sick man queried, still peevishly. "Surely, knowing how near I am to death, Andrew has made no jest on me. We have not met for five years-it is quite that, come Christmas, since he has been roaming and fighting about the world-he could not do that."

"Nay, what he sends comes with a good heart, be sure. Yet I cannot help but laugh in spite of-of-," she was going to say the nearness to death in which the invalid stood, but changed it to "your poor health." "I cannot help but laugh. 'Tis a new-fangled recipe for lambswool, which he says you should drink frequently. Also, he writes that he fears you do not take sufficient creature comforts. Alas!" she exclaimed, her face clouding a little as she saw the look of annoyance on the other's, "he cannot surely guess how ill you are. Otherwise, he would scarce talk of lambswool-a draught, doubtless, he himself partakes of far too often."

"'Tis Andrew-that tells all! Andrew-the scapegrace, the ne'er-do-well, the joker and giber. Heavens! when was he ever serious, when did he ever apply himself to aught but ruffling and fighting and brawling! Yet-yet-"

"Yet, now you would see him! Long to see him! Philip Vause, you love your brother better than you think-leastways, better than you say."

"Nay, nay. I do not say I do not love him. Heavens! we all loved him. And who could help but love him, after all! Yet I would he had been more serious, would he were more serious now, as he scarce seems to have become, judging by his-his-paper about lambswool. Could he send me naught but that?"

"Remember he is not like you. You have ever been a scholar and a thinker-he a soldier and in many lands. He cannot be so sober as those who bend only over books all day, whose companions are books alone-"

"Hark!" the other interrupted. "Hark! Do you hear anything? The hoofs of a horse clattering along the road-it may be he, Bridget. Look to the window. See."

The old woman did as she was bid-going to the casement and gazing along a broad, dusty road, bordered by limes almost flowering in the warm May air, which led from the Downs above to the old house in which the Vauses had lived longer than even the parish records told of; and there, in the soft light of the fast-gathering twilight, she espied a horseman riding at a good pace; a man who, she could see very well, sat his horse easily, and seemed to extract a considerable speed from it without any effort of spur or rein.

"Ay," she said, "'tis a horseman sure enough-you have good ears, Master Philip, ailing though you be; better ears in truth than I have eyes, for they are dimmed somewhat with age; I cannot see if 'tis Andrew. Yet," she went on, as the rider drew nearer and came more into her view, while man and horse were suffused by the cherry glow of the setting sun, "'tis his form and figure, too; large, broad, and brawny. And, heaven preserve us! what a great, fierce sword clanks against his horse's ribs with every stride it takes, and what a beard upon his upper lip he has!"

"'Tis very certain," the invalid interrupted from the couch on which he lay, "that 'tis Andrew. Here, Bridget, help me up, let me see him."

"It is he," the old woman said; "lie there, Master Philip, no need to rise. He will be here ere many moments have passed. Ha!" she exclaimed, thrusting open the lattice in her excitement, "he sees me, waves his hand-he has not forgotten the old nurse-I will go down and greet him, then bring him to you": while, excited and nervous, she unceremoniously quitted Philip Vause and ran down the broad polished staircase as fast as her old legs would carry her to where the hall door stood open to the evening air, and thus reached the stoop as the horseman drew up in front of it.

"So, Bridget," he said, leaping from his horse and flinging the reins to a serving-man who came from out the shrubbery hard by the house, "so, Bridget, 'tis you in very truth, and not a day older than when I went away, I do protest," and he stooped down over her and kissed her grey hair where it waved across her old and wrinkled forehead. And, pleased with his greeting, the woman smiled and cooed round the great man standing above her, and muttered:

"Why, Master Andrew, you are bigger than ever since you went away. What a man! What a man you are now! So great and stalwart-alas! that your poor brother Philip was as you."

Indeed, he at whom she gazed well merited the praise she lavished on his size and thews and sinews. Full six English feet in height stood Andrew Vause, and broad and deep in chest was he, with great muscular arms that looked as though it might be ill for any caught in their grip. And, though doubtless unconsciously so to their wearer, his garments themselves lent something to his powerful appearance. On his body he wore a brown buckskin tunic-good for riding in, or, perhaps, even for turning aside a rapier or dagger thrust-a tunic ornamented at the opening with quilted leather of the same kind, and fringed in the same manner below; his lower limbs were encased in stout hose, or, at least, so much of them as could be seen betwixt the ending of his jacket and the tops of his great riding boots of brown untanned leather that reached almost to his thighs. And the sword old Bridget had spoken of was there, its hilt reposing against one of those thighs, while its long length ran behind him. A wicked-looking, fighting rapier this, with its great pas d'âne and enormous quillons; a rapier that looked as though, once out of its sheath, mischief was meant and to be dreaded from it. For the rest, his handsome face was bronzed to copper hue, his brown moustache-Bridget's "beard on the upper lip" – hung down below his under jaw, his thick brown hair fell to his shoulders, and above it flapped a loose sombrero hat ornamented with a single black feather.

A vastly different-looking man this from the sickly elder brother above!

"Ay, Philip!" he said in answer to her mention of his brother's name, as he strode into the tiled hall, making it ring with the jangle of his brass spurs upon his heels. "Poor Philip! So he is sick-the messenger found me at the Duck in Westminster! – 'sick unto death,' he wrote. Bridget, is this true, and if true what ails him? He was not strong-nor like to be, since he pored ever over those accursed books! – yet books need not kill a man. What ails him, Bridget?" he repeated.

"He is not well-seems to have no life nor strength in him. And-and you know, you have heard, even in those foreign lands to which he wrote you letters-he had a grievous sorrow fall upon him. Oh! he was treacherously served!"

"Ay, ay. And so he did write. Yet, fore gad! a man dies not for love of woman-not though she jilts him cruelly. Odd's faith! no woman ever jilted me-nor spoilt my rest o' nights. Yet," and he lowered his voice a little, and seemed graver as he asked, "who was she? He never told me that-seemed, indeed, in his letters to carefully refrain from writing her name."

"Let him tell you," the old woman said; "best hear it all from him."

"But will he tell? Philip was ever somewhat too silent and secret-I doubt me much if he will tell. Will hint at wrongs done-at cruel treatments-be vague, but say no more."

"I think he will tell you," she replied. "He has longed so to see you since he knew you had returned from France. And, Andrew," the old woman said, laying her hand on the sleeve of the great stalwart soldier whom, as a lad, she had dandled on her knee, "I think he cherishes hopes of revenge on her; above all, on him who did the greater wrong."

"Revenge! Why! what can he do? Unable to leave his chamber, a poor scholar who knows neither passado nor cunning fence of any kind," and the fingers of his left hand played lovingly with the hilt of his sword as he spoke, "nor has ever wandered fifty miles from this old Surrey home of ours-poor Philip! what can he do?"

But as he asked the question, there clattered down the oak staircase the high-heeled shoes worn by a waiting-maid, the wearer whereof said-though not before she had cast a glance of approval over the great sunburned man who stood before her-that her master desired to know if his brother meant not to come and see him now he had come home?

"Ay, sweetheart," that brother said, looking down on the comely girl, and winning her heart at once by that debonair manner which never failed in its effect "Ay, sweetheart, I come at once. Shall we go together, Bridget?"

"Nay," she said, "go in alone to him. There needs no witness of your meeting, and he has much to say. And, Andrew, you asked but now how he might compass revenge for the wrong done him. Can you not guess what he may hope to do-how it may come about?"

"In truth, I cannot," he answered, while his eye still glanced at the shapely waiting-maid now vanishing through a doorway to the back portion of the house, "in truth, I cannot. No thinker I, as you may remember, Bridget; 'twas ever Philip who did that for both of us. And, had he not so thought, the Puritan justices of our boyhood would have clapped me into jail often enough, and been glad of the chance to punish my old cavalier father through me. No, if he means to get vengeance he must make it clear. I will go and see him now."

He strode towards the wide staircase as he spoke, and mounted it, clattering still as he went; looking round the old hall, though, while he did so, and thinking-wanderer as he had been-that, after all, it was good to be under the old roof once more.

"Well enough and pleasant," he muttered to himself, "the life of camps and noise of brawls and battles and the sweet clash of steel 'gainst steel-yet good, too, to come home, now and again."

And, because he was not all a bravo nor free lance who lived only for such fortune as came at the sword's point, his thoughts went back to his childhood's day, when he used to come leaping down those stairs three steps at a time, or swung by his gentle mother's side, his hand in hers; also, he recalled her soft looks and words, and found himself remembering the little simple prayers she had taught him to say.

But by now he was at the head of the stairs, which made but one turn from the hall to the corridor above, and at that head was the door of the chief room of the old house, the room in which he knew his elder brother lay. Then he knocked gently, and, hearing Philip's eager tones of welcome, went in to him, bearing about him, as it seemed to the poor invalid, an atmosphere of health and strength, and a suggestion of fresh air and the wind that comes sweeping across salt seas and breezy downs and moorlands.

"And now!" Philip exclaimed, sitting up on his couch and holding out his two thin, white hands to the swart soldier, who came in and seized them in his own strong grasp, "now, Andrew, you have come back to me."

It seemed to Philip, lying there, that the voice of that younger brother was not as strong and powerful as he remembered it to have been once-seemed not, indeed, to be the fierce tones that the soldier of fortune should possess-as, stooping down on one knee so as better to bring his face on a level with his brother's, Andrew said very gently:

"Philip! Philip! how is it that I find you thus? Oh, Philip!" and he turned his face away for some reason as he spoke, "I did not know, never guessed, you were as worn and sick as this."

Then the other understood why the bronzed face had been turned from him, and why the strong masterful voice had been so gentle when he spoke. For, as Andrew turned back that face, the dark eyes were full and running over with tears that coursed each other down the brown cheeks, and a sob broke from his lips.

"Nay, nay," Philip said, laying his hand on the long locks of the other and stroking them. "Nay, Andrew, do not weep-I cannot bear that. You are so strong and big, you must not weep, and-and-tears are not for a soldier. Andrew, do not weep for me."

But the brawler and ruffler made no answer, only, bending his head still lower to his brother's shoulder, he let it lie there. And again he muttered:

"I did not understand. I did not know."