CHAPTER XIV

"WAR HAS ITS RISKS"

I slept unsoundly and in snatches. Margaret was in the room beneath me,

"dreaming in Italian," thought I, in unhappy imitation of her dainty gibe

at her father. A problem was on my mind, and that was ever with me an

enemy to sleep. I meant being the best of soldiers, and this that worried

me was a military problem. To be short, I could not help asking myself,

"Were the dragoons from the south intended as a reinforcement to the horse

from the north?" And somehow I could not think they were. As the top-dog

spirit in me put it: "It was like sending Jack to reinforce me. _Quod

est absurdum_."

Time the Explainer permits me to be frank. There was this other side to

my problem that I could not bring myself to be sure the Colonel's escape

had come merely by happy chance. He was no party to contriving it, of that

I never doubted, but it did look like a contrivance. We had been at the

"Rising Sun" for six hours or more. Stone, the nearest head-quarters of

Cumberland's forces, was only nine miles south of it, yet no attempt had

been made to follow the fugitive. No, thought I again, that's wrong. Weir

was sent on his track and actually found him. But this was as useless, so

it seemed, as sending twenty dragoons, hundreds being available, to

reinforce a thousand stout horse. There was no proportion between the ends

proposed and the means adopted.

If the handful of dragoons were not a reinforcement, it was a pursuit of

us, and this posed another problem. Why had the pursuit been allowed to

flag all the afternoon and evening, to be taken up again far on in the

night? What fresh fact, if any, had determined it? I could think of none,

nor, on reflection, was one wanted, since both Master Freake and Jack had

last night witnessed to the worn-out state of Brocton's horses.

Consequently his dragoons would have been sent after the Colonel earlier

had they been fit. Their coming, when fit, proved their anxiety to retake

him. Therefore he was not allowed to escape, and the conclusion of my

argument hit its major premise clean in the teeth.

"Oliver, my boy," said I to myself, "say a bit of Virgil and go to sleep.

These matters are beyond you."

I picked on a passage and started mumbling it to myself. It was a lucky

hit, for when I had in solemn whispers rolled off the great lines in the

sixth Aeneid which foretell the work and glory of Rome, I thought of my

Lord Ridgeley, thiever by cunning process of law of most of my ancient

patrimony, and his blackguard son, my Lord Brocton, lustfully hunting the

proud, gracious woman beneath, and I said grandiosely to myself, "Rome's

destiny is thine too, Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards, and these betitled

scullions are the proud ones you shall war down."

The notion was so soothing that I fell asleep again.

I have leaped over uninteresting but by no means unimportant events. We

were staying the night at a wayside hostel, called the "Red Bull,"

situated at the point where a cross-road cut the main road. We were still

in Staffordshire, a matter on which Margaret had laughingly placed the

utmost importance, though an urchin, standing by the rude signpost, could

have flung a pebble into Cheshire. Houseroom was of the narrowest, and I

was tucked away in the attics, in a room I had to crawl about in

two-double, walking upright being out of the question. It was the grown-up

daughter's room, and she had been bundled out to make place for me, a fact

I did not learn till it was beyond need of remedy. The lass had a good

pleasant woman to mother, but her father, the host, was an

ill-conditioned, surly runt, whose only good point was a still tongue.

Margaret was in the room below, and her father next to her along a narrow

gangway. From my attic I got down to this gangway by means of a staircase

hardly to be told from a ladder. The gangway, just past the Colonel's

door, became a little landing whence three or four steps led down to a

larger landing, from which one could mount up to the other and

corresponding half of the house or descend to the entrance hall with which

the various rooms of the ground floor connected.

I awoke again in a dim dull dawn. Tired of these bouts of wakefulness I

got off the bed--for I was lying full-dressed even to my boots--and crept

softly to the window. I would keep watch and ward for Margaret, as a true

knight oweth to do. Then, if my obscure misgivings were unfounded, I

should at any rate have done my duty.

There had been a slight fall of snow, enough to cover the ground and

bring everything up into sharp relief. My window was a dormant-window, its

sill being about four feet from the eaves. I flung it open, careful not to

make a sound, pushed out head and shoulders, and took stock.

I dipped my fingers in the snow and found there was near an inch of it.

The "Red Bull" stood back from the road, and on each side of the inn

proper, outhouses and stables jutted out to the wayside. Drawn up under a

hovel on the left was a huge wagon piled with sacks, probably of barley

bound for Leek, a town renowned for its ale.

Without was silence and stillness, as of the grave, and it was nipping

cold, but my mind was happily busy, having so many delicious moments to

live over again. If by some unhappy chance I never saw her again and lived

to be a hundred, I should never tire of my memories. She had as many

facets as Mr. Pitt's diamond, as many tones as the great organ in

Lichfield Cathedral. To know her had enriched my life and opened my mind.

What Propertius had said of his Cynthia, I repeated to myself of my

Margaret, _Ingenium nobis ipsa puella est_. 'My' Margaret! Well, it

did her no harm for me to think it, and, after all, the sly, silly

babblings of my under-self could be shouted down by the stern voice of

common sense.

Here, under the stress of a new force, my thoughts flew off at a tangent,

and I said to myself, "Bravo, Romeo! You shall find me a rare Juliet."

I had, indeed, much ado to keep from laughing aloud, as my situation was

delicious, not to say delicate. For, on a sudden, noiselessly as the beat

of a bat's wing, two feet of ladder had shot up above the eaves, and even

now an ardent lover was hasting aloft, dreaming of lispings and kissings

to come. I mustn't frighten him too soon or too much or he'd drop off, but

as soon as he was fairly on the slope he should sip the sweetness of lips

of steel. So I crept back, got a pistol, and stood to the left of the

window.

I waited till his body darkened the room and then took a furtive look at

him. It was no village lover climbing up at peep of dawn to greet his

lass. It was one of Brocton's dragoons, one of the five who had been at

the Hanyards.

In a twink I shot him. Without a word, he slithered down the tiles,

leaving a mush of blood-red snow. His right leg slipped aslant between two

rungs of the ladder, and his body, checked in its fall, swung round and

dangled over the eaves.

In the room was a large oaken clothes chest. I dragged it to the light,

tilted it on end, and jammed it into the gable of the window, which,

luckily, it fitted completely, and so blocked any further attack from the

roof. Snatching up my weapons, I tumbled down the ladder, only to hear the

heavy tramping of feet upstairs. Standing by Margaret's door, I waited

until the head and shoulders of the first man came in sight. He carried a

lantern, and its yellow rays lit up for me the ugly face of the sergeant

of dragoons. I fired my second pistol at him, crashing the lantern to

pieces. Down he went, whether hit or not I did not know. In the darkness I

heard the rush of a second man who came on so fearlessly and fast that he

was far into the passage before I met him with a fierce thrust of my

rapier. I thrilled with the zeal of old Smite-and-spare-not as, for the

first time, I felt the point of my rapier in a man's body, and drove it

home with a yell. Down he went too, with a gurgle of blood in his throat,

and Margaret, coming out of her room, stumbled over his body as she raced

after me along the passage.

The Colonel was at the stair-head before me, but there was, for the

moment, no work for him. The enemy had tumbled noisily downstairs into the

hall, and were collecting their scattered wits after their first rout. To

my regret, the raucous cursings of the sergeant showed that he had not

been killed and apparently not even hit.

"God damn ye!" he yelled. "Ten of you driven back like sheep by a raw

youth. I'll settle with ye for it. Think I picked ye out of the stews and

stink-holes of London to stand this? There isn't one of ye with the guts

of a louse. I'll take the skin off the ribs of you for this, damn ye, and

most of your pimp's flesh along with it!"

"What sort of guts was it brought yow tumblin' down so quick?" put in the

surly voice of the landlord. "Yow cudna 'a come any faster if yer blasted

yed 'ad been blown to bits instead of my lantern."

Some of the men laughed at this, whereon the sergeant blasphemed enough

to make a devil from hell shiver. He cowed the dragoons, but the innkeeper

only growled, "A three-bob lantern blown to bits! Fork out three bob!"

"I'll have him if I have to blow the house to bits!" vociferated the

sergeant.

"Fork out three bob!" repeated the host.

Not a word had passed between us on the stair-head, and now, at the sound

of preparations for a fresh assault, the Colonel took each of us by the

arm and led us into his room.

"The stair-head cannot be held against fire from the opposite landing,"

he whispered.

When inside, he locked the door, and I helped him pile the bed on end

behind it, heaping all the other furniture against the bed-frame to hold

the mattress and bedding up against the door. Margaret, at a brief word of

command, had meanwhile kept watch through the window.

"That's a fair defence," he said contentedly. "What are these devils?"

"Brocton's dragoons," said I. "I've settled two of them, one on the roof

and one in the passage."

"Good lad! Ten of 'em would be long odds in the open; here we ought to

have the laugh of them. Load your pistols! Damme, it's a bit chilly.

Fortunately there's some warm work ahead."

He stamped up and down the room, swishing his arms round his body, and

stopping every now and again to make some trifling change in our hurriedly

contrived barricade. Margaret stood by quietly at the window, and when I

had reloaded my pistols, I joined her there.

The ladder had been shifted and now lay along in the snow. There, too,

lay the body of the dragoon I had shot, crumpled up in his death-agony. A

brood of owls were clucking and cluttering about under the hovel, and

there, too, leaning against the rear wheel of the wain, were a lumpish

wagoner and our surly host. The one was stolidly smoking, the other was

holding the battered lantern out at arm's length, and I could, as it were,

see him growling to the lout at his side, "'Ew's to fork out for this'n?"

A girl went towards them from the house, circling, with averted head, far

round the dead dragoon, bearing them from the kitchen a smoking jug of ale.

"In England," said Margaret, "snow adds the charm of peace and purity to

the countryside. There's never, I should think, enough of it to give the

sense of utter desolation and deadness that it gives one in Russia."

"It's so uncertain with us," was my reply. "I've known a whole winter

without a snowflake, and I've walked knee-deep in it in May."

The Colonel stopped his marching and swishing and came to the window.

"Don't bother, Madge," said he. "We'll pull through. Hallo, I didn't see

yon wagon last night."

He took out his snuff-box and, hearing the noise of the enemy in the

corridor, walked with it in his hand across to the door. He tapped his box

with accustomed preciseness, but I, a step behind, having lingered for a

last look into Margaret's eyes, heard him mutter, "Damn the wagon!"

"Ho, there within, in the King's name," shouted the sergeant.

"Ho, there without, in the devil's name," mimicked the Colonel.

"I want speech with Colonel Waynflete," shouted the sergeant.

"Then, seeing that Colonel Waynflete cannot at the moment give himself

the pleasure of slitting your ruffian's throat, you may speak on," was the

reply.

"You and your daughter may proceed on your way unharmed if you surrender.

It's only Wheatman the farmer, now with you, that I want."

He could be heard all over the room to the last syllable, and Margaret

quickly left her place at the window and came towards us, but the Colonel

in a stern whisper ordered her back. "How dare you leave your post! Watch

that wagon!" She crimsoned and returned.

"If Master Freake were here, Oliver, I think he would remark that there

was no market for colonels to-day," said her father to me with a wry

smile. He gave the lid of his snuff-box a final tap, opened it, and held

it out to me. In the sense of the term known to fashionable London, he was

not a good-looking man, but as he stood there, waiting gravely while I

took my pinch, he had the irresistible charm of the highest manliness.

"Do you agree, Colonel?" bawled the sergeant.

"I do not," he shouted, and took his snuff with great relish.

"By God," and now the sergeant roared like a wounded bull, "I'll have you

all in ten minutes." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "Here, I say, you

Wheatman, do you agree?"

"Certainly," said I, "I'll come at once." And I should have gone, there

and then, but for the Colonel, who, as I laid a hand on the nearest piece

of our barricade, promptly said, "I've only one way with deserters," and

levelled a pistol at my head.

"For Margaret's sake, sir," I pleaded in low tones. "Let me go!" She had

flown like a bird across to us, and so heard me.

"I had hoped you thought better of me, Master Wheatman," she said coldly,

and went back to her watching.

The sergeant heard, or at least understood, what had been said in the

room. We heard him say, "You know your job. Fifty guineas for Wheatman,

dead or alive. Any man who touches the girl will be flogged bare to the

bones." Then we heard him walk off along the corridor.

The dragoons without made no attempt on the door, and we joined Margaret

at the window. Hardly had we got there when half a dozen dragoons dashed

out of the porch and ran for the road. The Colonel flung the window open

and emptied both his pistols at them, but they zigzagged like hares and

the shots appeared to be thrown away. In the road they halted, formed a

line in open order, and levelled their carbines at the window. All three

of us moved aside, the Colonel tugging Margaret with him to the right

while I hopped to the left.

"Take it easy, Oliver," he said very good-humouredly. "Until they think

of the wagon we're safe enough on this side. These walls would almost

stand up to a carronade."

With a clash the first bullet came through the window and knocked a huge

splinter off a bedpost. There were six shots without, and six bullets

spattered in a small area opposite.

"That's quite good shooting," said the Colonel. "Much better than I

expected from such poor stuff."

I told him what Jack had said about the mixed quality of Brocton's

dragoons. These good shots, I explained, were picked men off the Ridgeley

estates, probably gamekeepers and bailiffs.

"Very like," he said. "They're used to shooting but not to fighting.

Rabbits are more in their line."

There was no stir in the passage, and I wondered what the job was these

men had in hand. The fusillade at the window was kept up unceasingly,

generally in single shots, sometimes in twos and threes. The barricade

took on a ragged appearance. I occupied my mind in thoughts of Margaret.

She was in the corner, beyond her father.

The bullets had by now nearly cleared the window of glass, fragments of

which covered the floor of the room. Through the cracking and spluttering

we at last heard the noise of a wagon moving. The Colonel and I leaped up

and peered round the edge of the window. It was being pulled by two

horses, and was shifted till it was exactly opposite the window, and to my

surprise some twelve feet distant. The sacks made a firm platform level

with the window-sill. Flush with the window it would have made an

admirable means of attack, but why the space between?

While the wagon was being put in position, there was a cessation of

firing. We saw the six dragoons from the road climbing on to the wagon,

while as many again joined them from the inn. The Colonel said, "Now's our

chance!" and fired carefully. One man, who was poised on the rear wheel,

fell into the road and hopped round to the back of the wagon holding his

right foot in his hand; another, already mounted, sprawled full length on

the sacks.

"That's the way," he said, with much satisfaction, and stepped aside to

reload. "See if you can improve on it."

By this, under orders from the sergeant, two or three dragoons were

creeping under the wagon to fire from behind the wheels. I dropped a man

standing at the horses' heads and then, in the nick of time and on second

thoughts, made sure of the mare and hit her in the neck. She squealed,

kicked, and plunged, and the other horse sharing her fears, they began to

drag the wagon off. The sergeant and two or three men leaped at them and

managed to quiet them, and then took them out of the traces to save

further trouble of the sort. The Colonel, meanwhile, having reloaded,

brought down another dragoon with one shot, and ripped open a sack with

another. It was barley.

For perhaps a minute the window had been as safe as her corner, and

Margaret had been quietly watching the scene. Now, with seven or eight men

lying on the top of the sacks, with a stout row of them piled in front as

a bulwark, it was time for us to run to cover again. This time, of her own

accord, she came my side, and nestled beyond me in the nook between the

wall and my body.

The men in the passage still made no sign.

"Slids, Oliver," said the Colonel, "I can't see this ugly devil's game

yet, but, whatever it is, you came near to spoiling it. Damme, it was a

good idea to pepper the horse. Curse me! Where were my fifty years of

soldiering that I couldn't think of it?"

"I suppose it comes from my being--"

The sweetest and whitest fingers in the world closed my mouth, and

Margaret, thinking that I was on the verge of backsliding, whispered in my

ear, "The readiest-witted gentleman in England."

I tingled with the joy of her touch, and turned to her so that I might go

on into the coming fight with her last shade of emotion burnt into my

memory. A stream of lead poured through the window, but the spluttering of

bullets on the walls of the room had no more effect on me than the

pattering of hailstones.

"May I finish my sentence, madam?"

"Not as you intended, sir."

"I can't go back on old Bloggs' teaching, madam."

She pouted and frowned, both at once, and the Colonel bawled through the

noise of the fusillade, "Being what?"

"Fond of Virgil," roared I back again.

Margaret laughed. Could a nightingale laugh, it would laugh as Margaret

laughed then.

Before the music of it died away the sergeant showed his hand, and death

at its grizzliest grinned through the window. A great mass of damp,

smouldering straw, lifted on pikels, was thrust into the window-frame,

filling it completely, and thick wreaths of dense, foul smoke eddied into

the room, while through the straw the rain of bullets poured on, smashing

and splintering on walls and ceiling, door and barricade.

The Colonel slashed and poked at the straw with his rapier. Telling

Margaret to crouch on the floor, I crawled on my belly and fetched the

bed-staff, which stood in its accustomed corner of the chimney-piece. It

made a much more serviceable tool for the job, and I flung it across to

the Colonel, who seized it and worked it like a blackamoor till he was

almost the colour of one, and had, to judge by his voice and demeanour,

got almost beyond his German in his rage. Asking for Margaret's

handkerchief, I tied it loosely round her mouth, my heart near to bursting

as I looked into her calm and patient face. Then I lay down flat and

wormed out into the room and, after a hard struggle, wrenched off one of

the rods which carried the rings of the bed-curtains. I remember that, as

I lay there, writhing and struggling, I counted the bullets, eleven of

them, as they spattered about me. However, I got back to Margaret's side

untouched, and poked and thrust and slashed to make a hole near her face

between straw and window-frame.

Our efforts were practically useless. The straw was cunningly fed from

below, and the pall of smoke was now so heavy and dense that the fringe of

it was settling down on Margaret's tower of yellow hair, and as I watched

the rate at which it was falling, I knew the end was coming. The Colonel

had worked with the energy of despair to tear down the vile enemy that was

killing us by inches, and now suddenly collapsed and fell like a log to

the floor. Margaret would have crawled to him, but I kept her by main

force against the wall while I wriggled out of my coat.

"We have one chance left, Margaret," said I. "Your father is only

overcome by the smoke--see, there's no sign of a wound about him--and his

fall is a godsend. Give me your other handkerchief and lie down flat, face

to the floor and close to the window, and listen for my next instructions."

She did so without a word. I wrapped my coat loosely about her head, and

before I could close it in the smoke cloud was settling down on her, even

as she lay. I was nearly done for, but she was safe for a few minutes.

Lying full length on the floor, under the window, I tied her handkerchief

to the end of the curtain-rod, thrust it through the straw, and waved it

about as vigorously as I could.

The sergeant's voice rang out. The firing ceased. The foul masses of

straw were removed. Then the scoundrel came forward and leered up at me.

"Do your terms hold good?" I shouted.

"Yes," he said.

"Colonel Waynflete and his daughter will be left at liberty to go their

way, if I surrender?"

"Yes," he said.

"Then in one minute I'll be with you," said I. Stepping inside the room,

I first of all pulled the Colonel to the window, tore loose the clothes

round his neck, and laid his head on the window-sill, in the good sweet

air. Then crawling to Margaret, I unwrapped the jacket, and said briefly,

"Force some of Kate's cordial down your father's throat. Goodbye!"

I returned to the window, clambered out, hung at arm's length, and

dropped to the ground. Striding up to the sergeant, I said carelessly,

"Your turn this time, sergeant. To-day to thee, to-morrow to me--it's

neater in the Latin but you wouldn't understand it--and all Brocton's

dragoons shan't save your ugly neck."

"Where the hell's your coat?" he demand fiercely.

A cool question, indeed, after trying to suffocate me, but it was never

answered. The air was on a sudden filled with the weirdest row I had ever

heard. It was as if all the ghosts in Hades had suddenly piped up at their

shrillest and ghostliest. This was followed by a splutter of musketry, and

this again by loud yells. Looking round I saw a swarm of strange figures

sweep into the yard, half women as to their dress, for they wore little

petticoats that barely reached their knees, but matchless fighting men as

to their behaviour. On they came, with the pace of hounds, the courage of

bucks, and the force of the tide.

It was the Highlanders.

The sergeant fled into and through the inn and, with the men from the

corridor, got clean away. Not a man else escaped. Half the dragoons on the

wagon were picked off like crows on a branch. The rest, and those in or

about the yard, got their lives and nothing else barring their breeches,

and that not for comeliness' sake but because they were useless. Every man

jack of them, in less than five minutes, looked like a half-plucked

cockerel, and their captors were wrangling like jackdaws about the plunder.

I glanced at the window. To my relief, the Colonel was already sitting

up, pumping the sweet air into his befouled lungs, and Margaret smiled

joyously and waved her hand to me. I was waving victoriously back to her

when my attention was forcibly diverted by two Highlanders, who collared

me, intent on reducing me to a state of nature plus my breeches. There was

no time to explain, neither would they have understood my explanation. One

of them, a son of Anak for height and bulk, already had his hands to my

pockets. Him I hit, as hard-won experience had taught me, and he fell all

of a heap. His fellow was struck with amazement at seeing such a great

beef of a man put out of action so easily, and stood gaping over him for a

while. Recovering himself, he snatched a long knife out of his sock and

made for me murderously, but I had meantime fished out a guinea and now

held it out to him. He took it with the eager curiosity of a child, looked

at it wonderingly, made out what it was, and then ran leaping and frisking

up and down the yard, holding it high over his head, and shouting, "Ta

ginny, ta ginny, ta bonny, gowd ginny!"

I was saved further trouble by the approach of one of the officers, or,

to speak with later knowledge, chiefs, of these wild warriors. He informed

me in excellent English that he had heard the firing, seen my parleying at

the window and my subsequent surrender, and desired to know the meaning of

it all.

"The gentleman at the window," I explained, "is Colonel Waynflete,

travelling to join Prince Charles. The lady is his daughter, and I am

their servant, by name Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards. These King's men,

belonging to my Lord Brocton's regiment of dragoons, attacked us; we

refused to surrender, and the rascally sergeant in command smoked us out.

I pray you, sir, to run the wagon up to the window that I may hand them

down, since the door is heavily barricaded."

It was done immediately, and he and I ran up to the window together.

"You young dog," said the Colonel. "You surrendered after all."

"In strict accordance, sir, with military usage, I used my discretion as

commander of the party."

"Slids!" His grey eyes had the old laugh lurking in them already.

"Commander of the party?"

"There were only Mistress Margaret and I left," said I.

"And the peppermint cordial," put in Margaret.

So in sheer wantonness of joy we sought relief in bantering one another.

Then I introduced the chieftain, who had stood there silent and graceful,

a fine figure of a man, finely and naturally posed, and mutual compliments

and thanks passed between us. Yet in that first minute, with Margaret and

the Colonel perched on the sill, and the Highlander and I standing on the

sacks of barley, I saw another thing happen, for the big things of life

come into it with the swiftness of light and the inevitability of death. A

chieftain proudly climbed the wagon; a bond-servant humbly handed Margaret

down. As was fair and courteous, and suitable to my real position, I let

him do it, and aided the Colonel, who was as yet somewhat shaky. After

seeing him safe down, I rushed up again and recovered our weapons and my

coat. Down once more, I was getting into my coat when Margaret, who was

talking to the Highlander, looked at me and said quietly, "Pray, Master

Wheatman, fetch me the domino from my room!"

She said it simply and mistress-like, and of course I shot off to do her

bidding. I supposed, as I went, that it was the white snow all around that

had brought out the blue in her eyes so vividly.

In the inn I found the host, the lantern still dangling from his finger,

notwithstanding his greater woe, and his pleasant, placid wife weeping

bitterly. Of the original twenty guineas of the Major's, I now had only

four left, and these I thrust into her hand as I passed, and told her to

be comforted.

From my shooting the dragoon on the roof to my running upstairs for the

domino was in all not more than twenty minutes. I skipped over the man who

had fallen to my maiden sword. He was lying between the door of the

Colonel's room and that of Margaret's, and opposite one of the doors on

the other side of the passage. Darting into Margaret's room, I recovered

the domino.

I was only a moment, but in that moment some one opened the door in the

passage against which the man lay and so brought him into the light, and I

could not help taking a look at him.

My heart stopped with the horror of it; my whole being fell to pieces at

the agony of it. I remember running from it as from the gates of hell. I

remember reeling on the stairs. I remember a headlong fall. I remember no

more.

It was Jack.