Читать книгу The Lady of Loyalty House - Justin H. McCarthy - Страница 13

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In the great hall at Harby a motley fellowship were assembled. If a stranger from a strange land, wafted thither on some winged Arabian carpet or flying horse of ebony, could have beheld the place and the company, he would have been hard put to it to find any reasonable explanation of what his eyes witnessed. In the middle of the hall some five singular figures stood on line: two tall, powerful lads with foolish faces, flagrant farm-hands; an old, bowed man with the snow of many winters on his hair; an impish lad who might have welcomed fourteen springs; and, finally, a rubicund, buxom woman with very red cheeks, very blue eyes, very brown hair, whose person suggested the kitchen a league off. Each of these persons handled a pike, carrying it at an angle different from that of the others, and each of them gazed with painfully attentive stare at the oaken table near the hearth upon which Hercules Halfman sat learnedly expounding the mysteries of the pike drill, while Thoroughgood stood between him and the awkward squad to illustrate in his own person and with the pike he carried the teachings of the instructor.

“Order your pikes,” Halfman commanded. “Advance your pikes. Shoulder your pikes.” Then, as these orders were obeyed deftly enough by Thoroughgood and with bewildering variety by the others, he continued, “Trail your pikes,” and then broke sharply off to expostulate with one of the farm-hands.

“Now, Timothy Garlinge, call you that trailing of a pike. Why, Gammer Satchell carries herself more soldierly.”

Timothy Garlinge grinned loutishly at this rebuke, but the fat dame whom Halfman’s flourish indicated seemed to dilate with satisfaction.

“It were shame,” she chuckled, “if a handy lass could not better a lobbish lad.”

The impish lad grinned derision.

“Ay,” he commented; “but an old fool’s best at her spits and griddles.”

A most unmilitary titter rippled along the rank but broke upon the rock of Mrs. Satchell’s anger. It might have seemed to many that it were impossible for the dame’s cheeks to be any redder, but Mistress Satchell’s visage showed that nature could still work miracles. With face a rich crimson from chin to forehead, she made to hurl herself upon the leering, fleering mannikin, but was caught in the unbreakable restraint of neighbor Clupp’s clasp.

“You limb, I’ll griddle you!” Mistress Satchell gasped, panting in the embracing arms. Halfman played the peace-maker with a sour smile.

“There, there, goody,” he expostulated; “youth will have its yelp.”

He turned with something of a yawn to Thoroughgood.

“Why a devil did you press gossip cook into the service?”

Thoroughgood shook his head protestingly.

“Nay, the virago volunteered,” he explained, with a look that seemed to supplement speech in the suggestion that it were best to let Mistress Satchell have her own way. This was evidently Mistress Satchell’s own view of the matter.

“Truly,” she exclaimed, “if my lady, being no more than a woman, is man enough to garrison her house against the Roundheads, she cannot deny me, that am no less than a woman, the right to handle a pike.”

Halfman, eying the dame’s assertive rotundities, thought that he would be indeed a quarrelsome fellow who should deny her evident femininity.

“You are a lovely logician,” he approved. “Enough.”

Then resuming his sententious tone of military command, he took up the task where he had left it off.

“Trail your pikes.”

The order was this time obeyed by the company with something approaching resemblance to the action of Thoroughgood, and Halfman went on.

“Cheek your pikes.”

Out of the confused cluttering of weapons which ensued, Timothy Garlinge emerged tremulous.

“Please, sir,” he gurgled, “I’ve forgotten how to cheek my pike.”

Halfman mastered exasperation bravely, as, taking a pike from the hands of Thoroughgood, he strove to illuminate rusticity.

“Use your pike thus, noddy,” he lessoned, good-naturedly, wielding the weapon with the skill of a practised pikeman. But the illustration was as much lost upon Garlinge as the original command, and in his attempt to imitate it he whirled his arm so recklessly that his companions scattered in dismay, and Halfman himself was fain to move a step or two backward to avoid the yokel’s meaningless sweeps.

“Have a care,” he cried. “If you work so wild you will damage your company.”

Mrs. Satchell, taking her post in the now restored line, shook her red fist at the delinquent.

“He had best not damage me,” she thundered, “or I’ll damage him to some purpose.”

“Silence in the ranks!” Halfman commanded, sharply. “Charge your pikes,” he ordered.

This order was obeyed indifferently and tamely enough by all save the egregious Mrs. Satchell, who delivered so lusty a thrust with her weapon that Halfman was obliged to skip back briskly to avoid bringing his breast acquainted with her steel.

“Nay, woman, warily!” he shouted, half laughing, half angry. “Play your play more tamely. I am no rascally Roundhead.”

Mrs. Satchell grounded her weapon and wiped the sweat from her shining forehead with the back of her red hand. There was a deadly earnest in her eyes, a deadly earnest in her speech.

“I cry you mercy,” she panted. “But I am a whole-hearted woman, and when you bid me charge I am all for charging.”

Halfman did his best to muffle amusement in a reproving frown. “Limit your zeal discreetly,” he urged, and was again the drill sergeant.

“Shoulder your pikes.”

The weapons followed the words with some show of decorum.

“Comport your pikes.”

Again the evolution was carried out with some degree of accuracy.

“Port your pikes.”

Here all followed the word of command fairly well with the exception of Garlinge’s fellow-rustic, who simply strove to repeat the order already executed. Halfman turned upon him sharply.

“Now, Clupp,” he cried, “will you never learn the difference between port and comport?”

Clupp, the fellow addressed, bashful at finding himself the object of attention, swayed backward and forward with his pikestaff for a pivot, laughing vacantly.

“No, sir,” he gaped, stupidly. Master Halfman’s lip wrinkled menacingly, and he reached his hand to his staff that lay upon the table.

“Indeed!” he said. “Then I must ask Master Crabtree Cudgel to lesson you.”

He advanced threateningly towards the terrified fellow, but long before he could reach him Dame Satchell had interposed her generous bulk between officer and private, not, however, as was soon shown, from any desire to intercede for the culprit.

“Leave him to me, sir,” she entreated, vehemently. “If you love me, leave him to me.”

And, indeed, her angry eyes shone warranty that the offender would fare badly at her hands. Halfman waved her aside with a gesture of impatience.

“Mistress Satchell,” he protested, “you are a valiant woman, but a rampant amazon.”

Dame Satchell’s cheeks glowed a deeper crimson, and her variable anger raged from Clupp to Halfman.

“Call me no names,” she squalled, “though you do call yourself captain, or I’ll call you the son of a—”

However Mistress Satchell intended to finish her objurgation it was not given to the company to learn, for Halfman tripped up her speech with a nimble interruption.

“The son of a pike, so please you,” he suggested, with a smile that softened the virago’s heart. “There, we have toiled enough to-day and it tests our tempers. Dismiss.”

This command he addressed to the whole of his amazing company; to Dame Satchell he gave a congee with a more than Spanish flourish: “To your pots and pans, valorous.”

Dame Satchell, mollified by his compliment, shrugged her fat shoulders. “ ’Tis little enough I have to put in them,” she grumbled. “Roast or boiled, boiled, fried, or larded, all’s one, all’s none. We’ll be mumbling shoe-leather soon.”

She sighed heavily at the thought, and moved slowly towards the door at the end of the hall beneath the gallery. Halfman, unheeding her, had turned to the table and was intently poring over the large map that lay there together with a loaded pistol. Thoroughgood gave orders to the men.

“Garlinge and Clupp, go scour the pikes. Tom Cropper, find something to keep you out of mischief. As for you, Gaffer Shard, you may rest awhile.”

The old man shook his frosty head vigorously. “Nay, nay,” he piped, “I need no rest. My old bones are loyal and cannot tire in a good cause. God save the King.”

He gave a shrill cheer which was echoed loudly by men and boy, and so cheering they tramped out of the hall in the trail of Mother Satchell, Garlinge staggering under the load of pikes which the lad had officiously foisted on to his shoulder, Clupp laughing vacantly after his manner, and steadfast old Shard waving his red cap and chirping his shrill huzzas.