Читать книгу The Carolinian - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 14

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SIR ANDREW roused himself at that summons. He reached out a hand to arm himself with the riding-whip that lay across the board.

Mr. Latimer midway between the Baronet and the equerry, although arrested by the latter's words and clear purpose, did not appear to suffer any distress.

'You think to detain me by force?' he asked, and smiled.

The Captain found himself admiring the young man's composure. And he was something of an arbiter in matters of deportment. He belonged to an age in which artificiality, the suppression of emotion, the histrionic affectation of nonchalance in all circumstances, was accepted as the outward mark of the man of quality. In England, where between Westminster and Oxford he had spent some six years, Mr. Latimer had readily acquired this art of genteel conduct, which, for the rest, sat easily enough upon a spirit that was naturally calm, detached, and critical.

'You must see, Mr. Latimer, that in the circumstances we cannot possibly suffer you to depart.'

'Not only do I see it. I foresaw it. It was part of the risk I took.'

'Lay hold of him, Robert,' cried Sir Andrew. He sprang forward as he spoke, and Captain Mandeville did the like from Latimer's other side.

To avoid them, Latimer backed swiftly to the sideboard, and at the same time lugged from the pocket of his bottle-green riding-coat a heavy, ugly-looking pistol.

'Not so fast, gentlemen!' he begged them, displaying that intimidating weapon.

It brought them up sharply in their advance, and Myrtle cried out at the same moment.

'You didn't understand me, I think,' said Latimer. 'I told you that I foresaw something of this kind. Præmonitus, præmunitus.' And he wagged the pistol. 'It is the motto of my house. As Sir Andrew can tell you, I come of a singularly prudent family, Captain Mandeville. And now that you realize you are at a disadvantage, perhaps you will permit me to depart without doing violence to the proprieties.'

'My God, you graceless blackguard!' Sir Andrew railed at him. 'D'ye dare threaten me? D'ye dare draw a pistol on me? On me?'

'Nay, Sir Andrew. It is you who threaten. I do no more than protect myself. Self-preservation is the first law of nature.'

Thus his cursed irony, which he could not repress, dug wider than ever the breach between himself and the man he loved, the man who because his erstwhile affection for Harry was now turned to gall, would, he knew, show him no mercy.

Sir Andrew measured him with eyes of unspeakable hate, the hate born of anger that is baffled and mocked.

'Let the dog go, Robert,' he growled.

Mandeville had no intention of doing anything of the kind. He would risk being shot rather than lose the services of Featherstone. But because he preferred—self-preservation being the first law of nature with him, too—that Latimer should first empty his pistol into somebody else, he made a pretence of acquiescence.

He bowed a little, shrugged, and stepped aside.

'You win the trick, Mr. Latimer,' he said lightly. 'But it is only the first in the game.'

'Observe, though, that I've trumped the knave,' Mr. Latimer smiled back at him. He pocketed his pistol again, but took the precaution of keeping his hand on the butt. As if perceiving this, and if as ostentatiously to show him that his way to the door was clear, Captain Mandeville turned aside and crossed the room to the mantelpiece at the other end.

Latimer paused a moment looking at Sir Andrew, and his eyes clouded with regret. He appeared on the point of speaking, and then, as if realizing that here words must be wasted, he bowed again and walked to the door. Even as his fingers closed upon its crystal knob, Captain Mandeville's seized the bell-rope by which he had gone to stand. Once, twice, thrice, he tore at it, sounding in the servants' quarters a tocsin of alarm that must bring every lackey in the place at the double to intercept Latimer before he could leave the house.

But out of the corner of his eye, Mr. Latimer caught the violent pumping action of Mandeville's raised arm. He paused, his hand upon the knob.

'I ought to shoot you for that,' he told the Captain. 'But it isn't necessary.' He locked the door, withdrew the key, and crossed the room again, under their wondering eyes. 'I shall have to follow the example of King Charles, and leave by the window.' He unfastened the long glass door that gave egress to the lawn.

'It's an omen,' Carey raged at him. 'You go to the same fate.'

'But in a better cause,' said Latimer, as he pulled the wing of the door.

'I warn you, sir,' Carey flung after him, as he was stepping out, 'that, if any harm comes to Featherstone, I'll see you hanged for it. I will so, by God! though it cost me life and fortune. You graceless, treacherous hound!'

Mr. Latimer was gone. Mandeville sprang to the window, and stepped out, to see him racing across the lawn to the gravelled drive, where his negro groom was waiting with the horses. At the same moment came clattering steps across the hall outside, alarmed beatings on the door, and alarmed, plaintive, liquid accents of the black servants calling to their master.

Sir Andrew bade them cease and begone, with a roughness such as he rarely employed towards those who served him. They departed, chattering and wondering. To increase their wonder, Mr. Latimer from beyond the porch, already mounted, was calling Remus. He tossed the abstracted key to the old butler, then wheeled his horse about and rode off with his groom.

He was halfway down the avenue, before there surged out of the pain seething in his mind under the mask of nonchalance he had worn the recollection of another matter with which he had hoped to deal whilst here at Fairgrove. And it was not until he had reached the gates that he conquered the anger that was driving him headlong away despite that recollection.

It had been his hope to make a very different impression, to earn some consideration in return for the service he went to do at some risk to himself. And he had also hoped from this to be given an opportunity to explain himself to Myrtle, to reason her into a gentler frame of mind, and to persuade her that because he loved his country was no sufficient reason why she should refuse to marry him.

It was Mandeville's presence at Fairgrove which had made shipwreck of his hopes, sweeping the interview into a course so different from all that he desired.

He drew rein, undetermined. He could not depart thus, leaving the situation between Myrtle and himself a hundredfold worse than before he came.

He paused, considering. From the distance came a plaintive chant, the singing of the negro slaves in the rice-fields by the river, and the sound inspired him. He would write a note to her, begging her to come to him out here. A friendly slave—and he was well known to them all—should be his messenger.

He flung down from his horse, gave his reins to the groom, and ordered him to ride on for a half-mile or so, and there await him. Then he left the avenue, and plunged away through the live-oaks and the tangle of vines in the direction of the chanting voices. But progress through the undergrowth of that leafy wilderness became more difficult the farther he penetrated. And at last he was forced to pause, and, in pausing, reconsidered. Better for his purpose than a plantation slave would be one of the house servants; and, if he waited, some one of these would surely pass along the avenue before very long. They were all his friends, and any one of them would do his errand secretly.

So he retraced in part his steps until the flat stump of an oak that had been felled offered him a seat at a point whence he could, himself unseen, command a view of the avenue, dappled with sunshine and shadow. He sat down, and from an inner pocket he produced a notebook and a pencil, and hurriedly scrawled a brief but very earnest appeal to Myrtle. He tore out the leaf, folded it, and settled down to wait until chance should send him the messenger he needed.

And meanwhile up there at the house Sir Andrew was still storming, and Mandeville and Myrtle between them were engaged in soothing him, a task which brought them into a close alliance very pleasant and consoling to the Captain. He felt that he had not conducted himself very well that morning. At first he had practised a praiseworthy restraint in the face of many difficulties and temptations. He had held aloof from all contention, refraining from the obvious quips and sneers at Mr. Latimer's expense to which the young apostle of liberty rendered himself vulnerable. A less subtle man would never have missed those opportunities of displaying his own wit and consequence. But Mandeville knew too much of human nature. He had perceived that under Myrtle's indignation with Harry lay a real and deep if momentarily numbed affection for him. And he knew that avowedly to range himself on the side of Latimer's enemies, to harass and vex him with manifestations of hostility, might only serve to arouse that affection of Myrtle's into activity and provoke her indignation against himself. Therefore, even at the cost of having his courage put in question, Mandeville had clung to the rôle of the unwilling and pained witness of a painful scene, until the circumstances had cruelly forced him to become an actor. The bad impression he feared thereby to have created he was now anxious to efface. And it was a relief to him to find Myrtle, in her ready understanding of the necessities, unresentful of the part he had played.

He was not the man to cry over spilled milk of however precious a quality. Latimer had got away, and therefore the utility of Featherstone as a spy was at an end. It still remained to save his life. But his life, shorn of its usefulness to Mandeville, was not a matter of much interest to the Captain. He was infinitely more concerned to set himself right with Myrtle by assuming the rôle of tolerant, broad-minded peacemaker. When Sir Andrew, apoplectic with anger, reminded himself that he should have said this, and answered that, Mandeville's calm voice, laden with compassion for the object of the Baronet's invective, acted as a timely sedative.

'Mr. Latimer, sir, is to be compassionated. A young man of such parts, of such agreeable qualities, to have been led away into such error!' He sighed his infinite regret.

And he had his reward, when presently he took his departure, furiously urged by Carey to lose no time in getting to Charles Town and placing Featherstone for safety aboard the Tamar. Myrtle came with him, not merely to the steps. She would walk with him to the gates. So, Captain Mandeville must go also to the gates on foot, leading his horse. And because of the impulse to express the increase of friendliness, almost the tenderness, which his selflessness and his alliance with her in that troubled hour had inspired, she thrust a hand through his left arm as she stepped along beside him. The Captain was conscious of a slight quickening of his pulses. But, ever master of himself, he conceived that here his attitude should be one of affectionate elder-brotherliness.

'My dear child, I protest, my heart bleeds for you.' He sighed. 'And I am angry with myself. To desire so intensely to lift something of this burden from your shoulders, and to be powerless! It exasperates me.'

'But you have done so much already, Robert. You have been so good, so gentle, so patient, so generous!' She leaned a little more heavily and looked up into his face, almost fondly, so great and natural was the kindliness he inspired in her.

'Generous? If only I could think so. My every impulse is to give, and give—and, my dear, I am empty-handed.'

'Oh, it is like you to forget. Didn't you persuade Lord William not to arrest Harry? Was that nothing?'

'Nothing at all. I would have saved him, yes. Not for himself, because I did not even know him. But for you, because he...because he has, or had, the inestimable blessing of your regard. I conceived that, unless I did so, you might suffer; and so, even at the cost of duty, I...Oh, but what am I saying? For, after all, I have failed. I have betrayed a trust to no purpose.'

'I shall never forget what you have done. Never.'

'Then I have not altogether failed. It is a sufficient reward for me.'

'But there is Harry. What—oh, what—are we to do?'

His face grew overcast. 'What can one do? One cannot argue with a passion. I had hoped that when he saw whither he was going, into what danger he was thrusting himself, he would have paused. But I might have known that, if the thought of offending you could not act as a curb upon his conduct, personal danger would hardly have counted. At least, that is how it would be with me. And we are often misled in judging others by ourselves. Oh, it is all most damnable. If I could have detained him now, on the pretext of saving Featherstone, we could have put Mr. Latimer under lock and key until these troubles are over, as over they soon will be once the troops arrive.'

'Was that your intention?'

'What else? What other way was there of saving him from his own rashness? Perhaps...if you were to see him...'

'I? See him?' She looked up at her companion, her little face stern, her eyes almost flashing. And Captain Mandeville, who had made the suggestion by way of testing her, was now given a glimpse of the sturdy spirit that governed this frail body. He could not guess that much of it was begotten of resentment because Harry had almost ignored her presence throughout the interview. Later, when reviewing it more calmly, she would see that the occasion had been denied him. But at present there was only resentment. And this she expressed. 'I do not think that I want to see him ever again. It is finished. Finished. Did you think I have no pride? What do you think of me, I wonder!' She halted him, and was confronting him, almost imperious.

'Does it matter what I think?' There was a gentle wistfulness in his tone.

'Should I ask if it did not?'

They were, although they knew it not, in full view of Harry Latimer where he sat on the oak-stump, observing them with frowning eyes. And, unfortunately, they were out of earshot. So that whilst he saw all, yet he heard nothing.

And what he saw was Mandeville turn to her, and, with the bridle over his arm, take both her hands in his, looking down at her with a face that was all tenderness. What he was left to guess were the Captain's words:

'And I, I dare not answer you,' the Captain said in tones that were an answer in themselves. 'I dare not. And yet I am not a coward, although God knows I feared you might have thought so once this morning.'

'Thought so? I? Robert, I thought you wonderful in your patience. Only a brave man could have borne himself as you did.'

'My dear, you fill me with pride. And as for what I think of you...' He paused, he raised the hands he held, and stooped to kiss them, first one and then the other, and then, because he felt a loosening of the grip of those hands which had been firm in his own, because he grew conscious of a shrinking on her part from that which she feared instinctively that he was about to say, he checked himself upon the brink. No man knew better than Mandeville the conquering power of patience. Indeed, in that knowledge lay all his strength. His tone grew light, robbing his words of all solemnity.

'Why, if I were to say that I think you adorable, you would laugh at me, I know.' And himself he smiled, looking into her face which had grown very pale. 'So, since you insist, I'll say you are the sweetest cousin ever a man discovered in the colonies. And I'll add that in Robert Mandeville you have a steadfast friend.'

'A friend! A friend! Ah, yes!' Her grip of his hands tightened again, before finally releasing them, the colour came racing back to her cheeks. 'I knew that I was not mistaken in you. How rarely can a woman find a friend, a true friend to depend upon in her need. Lovers she may have if she will. But a friend! Oh, God bless you, Robert!'

And, as they moved on he, safe now in that elder-brotherly position to which he had retreated, went so far as to put an arm about her shoulder, hugging her momentarily.

'Count on me always, my dear Myrtle. In any trouble arising out of all this, command my help. You promise?'

'Why, gladly,' she answered, looking up at him, and smiling.

And, that was the last that Latimer's scowling eyes saw of them, the soldier's scarlet sleeve with its gold-laced cuff about her shoulders, her little face upturned to his.

Mr. Latimer realized that he had been too long away from Charles Town, and he conceived that all the cynical utterances of misogynists with which he was acquainted fell lamentably short of truth. Slowly he tore up the little note he had written. And when presently Myrtle returned alone, Mr. Latimer resentfully neglected the opportunity afforded him. He waited until she had passed, then went in quest of his horse and his groom, and rode straight back to Charles Town.