The Yeoman Adventurer
incessantly on the way upstairs, and clacked as boldly as ever as he
ushered us into the room, where the Colonel was awaiting us alone.
"'Ere 'e is, y'r lordship," he said gustily. "'Ere's the nobby gentleman
as didna steal yer 'oss. But yow'd best keep yer eye on 'im, on my say so.
He'll pinch sommat o' yow'n yet afore 'e's done."
The Colonel, who was toasting his toes at a roaring fire, rose as I
followed Margaret towards him. He made me a precise and formal bow, which
I imitated farmer fashion. "This is Master Oliver Wheatman of the
Hanyards, father," said Margaret, in so low a tone that the host,
lingering, hand on door-knob, nearly a dozen paces behind us, could not
have heard her.
"Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir," he said, repeating his bow.
"The honour is mine, sir," I replied, repeating mine, and wondering the
while if I ever should learn to bend like a willow instead of a jointed
doll.
"Nay, I protest, sir." This suavely to me; then, stepping sharply towards
the host, he stormed, "Damn ye, man, get on the landlord's side of the
door, or I'll rout it down around your lazy ears. Slids! I've shot an
innkepeer for less in the Rhineland."
"Them 'ere furriners--" began the host, but the Colonel swamped him with
something of which I could make out nothing except that it was a fairly
successful attempt to talk and sneeze at the same time. It finished off
the host, who retired, beaten with his own weapon. The victor, waiting
till the door was closed, tiptoed up to it and listened carefully.
"A rather interesting feature about dad," whispered Margaret with
mischief in her eyes, "is that when he's angry he curses in French, and
when he's mad he execrates in German."
"Neatly rounding off his daughter's accomplishments," said I.
"And how, sir?"
"Who gibes in English and loves in Italian."
She stabbed me with her eyes, and said, "Your services give you no
privileges, sir."
"I know that, madam, but my yokelship does."
I spoke lightly, keeping the bitterness of my heart out of my voice,
though it had surged up into my speech. I may have been mistaken, misled
by the flickering fire-light, but the anger seemed to melt out of her eyes.
The return of the Colonel ended our cut-and-thrust.
"Soldiering," he said, "is nine-tenths caution and one-tenth devilment.
Yon glavering idiot has long ears to match his long tongue. And now, sir,
let me greet you as I should."
He seized my hand, shook it warmly, and continued, "A father's thanks,
Master Wheatman, for your kindness to my Margaret. Anon she shall tell me
the whole story, but I know already that you are a gallant gentleman whom
I shall have the honour of turning into a fine soldier, and neither angel,
man, nor devil could make you fairer requital."
Praise and promise were far beyond any desert or hope of mine, but I said
boldly, "I am no gentleman, but just a plain, few-acred yeoman, who has
tried to serve your daughter--"
"Tried?" he snorted. "Tried, indeed! I've been soldiering man and boy
these forty odd years, and, slids, I've never known better work." He ran
me up and down with his eyes and, turning to Margaret, continued, "By the
beard of the prophet, Madge, Master Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards is a
vast improvement on the Baron."
Margaret blushed daintily and hastily covered his mouth with her fingers.
"You dare, dad, and I won't kiss you good night."
"Damme," he said, freeing himself and grinning at me with delight.
"This is rank mutiny. Prithee note, Master Wheatman, the
prepare-to-receive-cavalry look in her eye! The last time I lost her was
at Hanover, and she rejoined me, if you please, at Dresden."
"Magdeburg, you libellous old father," said Margaret, pouting.
"So it was," he said heartily, conceding the point. "Escorted by, or
escorting, I was never clear which, a fat German baron nearly five feet
high, who begged me to horsewhip her into marrying him."
"You shot him?" said I, so very energetically that Margaret's pout turned
into a smile.
"Dear me, no," he said, pretending to yawn. "I left him to Madge, poor
fellow! I hope you've given her every satisfaction, Master Wheatman."
"That he hasn't," said Margaret briskly. "He's spent far too much time
putting me in what he considers my proper place."
"My friend," said he to me gravely, "you're in for a dog's life."
"You're right about the life, dad, but wrong about the dog. Good-bye till
supper, you nasty ripper-up of your daughter's character!"
So saying, she kissed him on each cheek, smiled at me, and left us.
"I'd like to sluice the jail feeling off myself," said I to the Colonel.
"Right," he replied, looking at his watch. "You've just half an hour. I
find England irksomely restful and law-abiding after the Continent, but
I'm glad of it for once. I should be damnably vexed if I'd hanged you, and
Madge wouldn't have liked it either."
He had a grave voice, like a judge's, and a quick, pert eye, like a
jackdaw's. Outwardly he was as unlike Margaret as the haft of a pike is
unlike a lily, but I already saw her spirit in him.
"Sir," said I, "when I am fortified by a good supper, I will venture to
indicate my preferences on the subject."
He took out his snuff-box, tapped it carefully, opened it, and held it
out to me.
"You have begun well, sir. I hear you are a great scholar, Latin and all
that, quite pat. Damme, sir, those ancients understood things. They knew
how to honour the gods, for they made soldiers of 'em and set 'em fighting
in the clouds. There's divinity for you! You've got twenty-eight minutes."
I laughed and left him.
The room in which my introduction to the Colonel had taken place was
immediately over the archway. Its window opened on to a balcony which,
supported on thick oak balks, stood over the causeway of the street; its
door was in a passage leading from one wing of the house to the other, and
in the passage were three leaded lattice-windows of greenish glass,
plentifully sprinkled with blobs and nodes, giving on the long inn-yard.
The room was thus admirably situated for people in our precarious
position, having a look-out back and front, and a way of escape right and
left.
The cherry-cheeked lass who had thrown me the kiss was tripping past the
door as I opened it. She told me that she had been attending on ''er
ladyship,' and willingly led me to a bedroom and brought me thither the
things I needed for my sluicing, among them a passable razor and a
huckaback fit to fetch the hide off a horse.
"Give me now the kiss you threw me," said I, as she was turning to leave.
"Nay, sir," she said. "You're not in trouble now, and dunna need it."
"Lassie," said I, "that's a right womanly reply, and here's something to
buy a ribbon with that shall be worthy of you." And I gave her one of the
dead Major's guineas.
"Thank yer, sir," she said. "And besides there's no need for you to be
kissing the likes of me."
"You're a sweetly pretty lassie," said I.
"Y' dunna want to be gawpin' around after pennies when there's guineas to
be picked up," she replied, with a toss of her head. "Struth, I wish at
times I wasna quite so pretty. There's some men, bless you, I know one
myself, such fools that they think a pretty wench doesna want kissin'.
But, sartin sure, there's never been the like of 'er ladyship in Newcastle
in my time. I'll 'ave a ribbon on Sunday as near the colour and shine of
'er ladyship's hair as money can buy, and Sail'll wish 'er'd never been
born. I'll Sim 'er."
With this terrible threat she flounced out of the room, and I laughed and
wondered who and what 'Sim' was. A decent fellow and a good tradesman, I
hoped, and wished him pluck and luck.
While I was tidying myself up, my mind was busy with the strange tangle
things were got into. The mysterious Master Freake, after turning the
Mayor into his pliant tool, had apparently disappeared. The Colonel had
not breathed a word of explanation, and seemed to feel so secure that he
was dawdling in the town as if no enemy were at hand. Of the state of
affairs in the town itself I knew nothing. The one clear thing was that I
had got my neck right into the noose, and Brocton could, and would, pull
tight at the first opportunity. What did all this matter? What did any
untoward event or result matter? I was going to be a soldier, and, after
the fashion of love-lorn Cherry-Cheeks, I said to myself, "I'll Jack him!"
I was going to be near Margaret, and, so rejoicing, bethought me of the
hapless Roman's "_Infelix, properas ultima nosse mala._" And what did
that matter either? I rubbed myself the colour of a love-apple, humming
the while old-time ditties long since driven out of my head by the Latin
rubbish. Jack was right. Of course it was rubbish. "Latin be damned," said
I gleefully. "Nothing counts but life and love."
There was more than a pinch of swagger in me as I made my way back to the
passage overlooking the yard. Arrived there, I cautiously opened the
nearest lattice and peered out. The inn-yard was dark and silent, and I
was on the point of closing the window when I heard the clatter of hoofs
on the stone-paving under the archway. A moment later a man on foot came
in sight, and was followed into the yard by two men on horseback, one of
them in charge of a led horse.
At once all was bustle. Ostlers ran up with lanterns, and the host came
forward, candle in hand and a multitude of words on his tongue, to order
things aright.
The man afoot was Master Freake, and it was clear that the riders were
men of his, for I heard him ask them if they were quite clear as to their
instructions, and both answered respectfully that they were. I could see
they wore swords and that their horses were splendid, powerful animals,
not much inferior to Sultan himself. Who and what was this man--"plain
John Freake," as he called himself,--who carried large sums of money,
domineered over self-important burgesses and mayors, who was served by
such well-appointed horsemen, whom Master Dobson, a parliament man,
feared, and my Lord Brocton had thought it worth while to attempt to put
out of the way?
It was a riddle I could not read, but as I stood there, peering round the
half-open lattice at the scene below, I was happier than ever I had been
in my life. "Poor old Jack," said I to myself, "sweating and swearing over
your riff-raff dragooners, and here am I, who envied you yester-morn, on
the top rung of life."
"We shall get it if we're late," said Mistress Margaret playfully in my
ear. "Not because dad worries whether he eats or not, but because he's so
strong on mil-it-ary dis-cip-line." I write the words so, as a poor, paper
imitation of the mincing gait she could put into her speech, which was
ever one of her delightfulnesses. "You'd have been the better," she went
on, "for a bringing-up on a troop-sergeant's switch. See what it's done
for me!"
So she challenged me to admire her, and indeed I think that the witch was
verily bent on casting a spell over me. No words can paint her as she
stood in the dim-lit passage, the infinite sum of womanhood, peerless in
every grace and gift; not now the tense, proud Margaret of the quick
rebuke and the shattering sarcasm, but the mirthful, trustful, grateful
companion of our boy-and-girl escapade.
"I think you're right, madam," said I. "Bloggs, dear old chap, flogged
the meaning of Virgil into me, but I wish he had flogged in some of the
meaning of life along with it. I feel as helpless as Saul would have felt
with David's sling and stones."
"Are you as one fighting a Goliath?"
"I am," said I, not able now to speak lightly, and not daring to look at
her. Could any enterprise be more hopeless than the one my heart, against
all the strivings of sense and reason, was beginning to set me? Through