Buch lesen: «Clash of Arms»

CHAPTER I
THE BRAVO

"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."

CHAPTER II
THE WRONG THAT WAS DONE

"Tell me all, Philip," Andrew Vause said to his brother some two or three evenings later, as he sat in the sick man's room, "tell me all. I must know what has brought you to this." While, as he spoke, there came a frown upon his face that did not pass off for a while-not, indeed, until he had taken two deep draughts from a tankard that stood by his side, and which old Bridget ever brought in and placed near to his hand when he went to spend an hour or so with Philip.

Full of excitement as this man's life had been for years-since the soldier of fortune had fought at Candia, and at Choczim with Sobieski, and taken part in many other frays, to say nothing of countless skirmishes-he was now as gentle a companion as Philip could have desired. Nay, sometimes, old Bridget would almost grow jealous as she observed how softly he could turn and smooth a pillow, or sit patiently by his brother listening to many of the querulous complaints usual to some invalids, or, to while away the dreary hours of that poor invalid, would tell him of courts and camps and strange doings in other lands. So jealous, indeed, did the old woman grow-or think she had grown-that she would forbid Andrew the sick room except at stated hours, and, pretending that it was not good for him to pass his days there, bid him go off and ride upon the downs, or attend the hawking parties of a neighbouring squire, or take a rod and catch a dish of trout in the stream.

And Andrew would obey the old nurse, who had brought him and his brother up from boyhood and domineered over them, as meekly as though he had never roared orders to squadrons and troops in the face of hordes of Turks and Imperialists, or taken the word of command from Condé and Turenne; and would wander idly forth until the hours came round when he might go and sit by Philip's side.

Yet he found those hours pass slowly and leaden-footedly along, being unable to take much pleasure from the simple country amusements he was surrounded by. His horse was his chief companion, and, since he saw always to its food and litter and its careful grooming, found him some occupation, while he had made friends with two old half-bred watchdogs who roamed about the place, and, at last, attached themselves so to him that they ever attended at his heels when he went on foot.

One day, too, he nearly frightened the sexton of the village church to death by suddenly bursting through the half-open door and tramping down the aisle to a large yawning pew beneath the pulpit, and entering therein.

"Good sir," the old man quavered, looking almost in fear and trembling at the swarthy cavalier before him, "this is the pew of the Vause family from the Grange hard by; none enter it-"

"Ay, 'tis, James," the intruder answered the astonished old man. "Wherefore I am here." Then he thrust his hands through his thick matted hair and put it aside from his brow, and went on: "Because I, too, am a Vause. Hast forgotten me, James?"

"Lord sakes!" the old man piped through his toothless gums, while he regarded the brown face and noticed the scar that ran adown his cheek, "'tis Master Andrew. And so it is. I mind me I did hear that you were back from foreign lands." Then, because some cheery, pleasant memory rose to his mind, his wrinkled old face broke into a smile, and he put out a gnarled hand and placed it on the buckskin sleeve of the adventurer, and said, "You take me back a twenty year and more, Master Andrew, and I recall how, when I looked not, or was a-digging of some grave, you pelted me with mine own windfalls. And how brave you look, and great and strong. Hast none of thy great strength to spare for Master Philip?"

"I would I had," said Andrew, "in very truth I do. He is sore pressed." Then he took the old hand in his own and shook it-leaving in it a shining new silver crown-and said:

"Leave me here awhile, James. It comes not oft that I can sit beneath my mother's monument-may never come again. Leave me awhile."

The windows of the church were open this bright May day, and through them he heard the dronings of the bees, the bleat of growing lambs and all the sweet country sounds, as he gazed above upon the quaint monument which his brother had had put up to their parents, Philip and Alice Vause. And back to his memory there came again his boyish days, his own turbulent youth and the gentle boyhood of his brother, and how the latter had ever interceded 'twixt him and their father-a stern, disappointed cavalier-saving him many a welting from the paternal cane. And again he thought of the mother he had loved so dear, recalled how she, too, had protected him from many a chastisement, and, as he did so, bent his head forward to the pew rail and said some kind of prayer. Perhaps he prayed for Philip's life to be spared, perhaps-

Yet the days passed very slowly with him; he grew sick and weary of the trout stream and old Squire Giles's hawkings, and the village greens to which he would wander and take a part in quarter-staff with the yokels, or, stripping off his jacket, would, with their simple foils, show them some passes which set them gaping wide with wonder and musing on where Master Andrew had learnt such tricks of fence.

Sick and weary, yet he knew he must not go away. Not yet, at least. Philip grew weaker day by day; the warm end of May and the coming of the leafy June brought no access of strength, but rather greater lassitude. And Andrew, though used to seeing sudden death only-death dealt out by shot and fire and ball, death swift and instantaneous-knew that, when the great summer heats had come, Philip would be no more. The village chirurgeon had told him this, had said that the end drew very near; the lungs were growing weaker day by day, the heart-beats becoming more feeble. Yet he needed no telling-he could see for himself.

But still he did not know who it was who had treated his loved brother so cruelly-and the time was slipping by! Then, at last, on this night, when he said, "tell me all, Philip. I must know what has brought you to this pass," the other seemed disposed to begin his story; perhaps because he, too, knew the hour was near at hand when there would be no more opportunity for the telling thereof. It was so warm that the lattice was open, and Philip, lying on the couch, was opposite to his brother sitting by the open window and inhaling the perfume of the swift-flowering woodbine, and watching the laburnum branches as the soft south wind beat them gently against the casement.

Then suddenly, as though nerved all at once to confide in him he loved, the sick man began:

"I was in London when I met her first: attending the Court, seeking to get from the restored King some recognition of our father's services to his father and his cause. Enough of that-you understand the reward of the Cavalier and the Cavalier's children! A well-bred bow, acquired in courts and cities such as you have seen and know, a winning smile, a gracious greeting, and a blessing-from his lips! a promise-never fulfilled."

"Put not your trust in princes," muttered Andrew, who had not forgotten the regularity with which his mother had taken him to the village church in days gone by.

"Ay; in him least of all. But you know him, you saw him a while ago; perhaps he gave you a promise too-if so, believe it not. Unless it be for his own purpose it will not be fulfilled."

Andrew shrugged his shoulders, and the other went on.

"She was there, fresh come from Dorsetshire, attached to the Duchess of York. Andrew," and he raised himself a little on his elbow as he spoke, "even now, sometimes, by day and night, as I think of it, it seems impossible she could have been so false to me. For, that falsehood should lurk behind her pure innocent eyes, be hidden under her gentle manner, appears incredible. Yet-yet-she was as false as hell."

Andrew shifted his seat a little, crossed the other leg, and said, "Go on."

"Not much to tell. I loved her; she said that she loved me. So-we were engaged to be married. She came here on a visit-she and a friend of hers-and I was very frank with her; told her this must be her home, that our life would be easy, but not luxurious, and she answered, 'It was enough. She cared nothing for Courts, and was only in the suite of the Duchess at her father's desire.'" He paused a moment, then he repeated, "We were engaged to be married."

"Humph!" said Andrew.

"Engaged to be married-the day was fixed. Then-then-oh! Andrew, I never heard from her nor saw her again."

"What had befallen?" asked his brother, gazing, as it seemed, almost listlessly out at the laburnum branches swaying against the diamond panes. "What?"

"Treachery of the deepest, blackest kind. I could have borne very well that she should not love me, but that she should treat me thus-flout and despise me, leave me without a word of regret-that I cannot bear. It has broken my heart."

"Did it do that?" and Andrew's voice was low-thick-as he asked the question.

"Ay, it did. I learnt afterwards from the friend who came with her here, also from her father-who cursed her name as I stood before him in his Dorsetshire home, to which I had gone to seek for her-that for some time, some weeks, she had been much with a Frenchman, a man who had come over with the woman now made Duchess of Portsmouth; that soon 'twas thought they were lovers. And then, one day, they were gone-to France."

"Her name?" asked Andrew, briefly.

"Marion Wyatt."

"And his-this Frenchman's?"

"De Bois-Vallée. He was termed the Vicomte de Bois-Vallée. They said of him that he was a discarded lover of the Frenchwoman, who threw him over when she learned that she was to be the favourite of a King-also that he had fought many duels and was so good a swordsman that he might have been a maître d'armes."

"So, so!" muttered Andrew, nodding his head gently. Then he muttered inwardly, "Perhaps some day we will see for this. Make trial of the Vicomte's skill." Aloud he said:

"You knew that they had gone to France? For sure you knew it?"

"Beyond all doubt. De Bois-Vallée was a bully, it seems, cared for none, vaunted himself as a Frenchman. There was a scene 'twixt him and the woman, De Kéroualle-it was overheard and brought to me-they say even that Charles broke in on him-was insulted, too. And he told the Frenchwoman that, though an Englishman had deprived him of her, he was yet about to be revenged, he would not return to France alone. Tit for tat was fair play-an Englishwoman should replace her. And they say, too, that the King and the Duchess laughed at him, the former telling him he was very welcome, so that he left De Kéroualle behind."

"He kept his word?"

"Ay, he kept his word. The night he left for France she was missing. She had gone out to walk in the garden that gave on the Mall; she came back no more. And he had been seen, this Vicomte, up and down the Mall for some time ere night fell, a coach waiting for him. Seen peering over into the garden, and with some of his countrymen near at hand-ready, no doubt, to interfere if any came to prevent her going with him."

"Has he married her, think you?"

"Heaven knows! Yet almost I think it must be so. She jilted me, but, but-'tis hard to believe she was a wicked, wanton woman. She would not have gone with him unless they were married-or, at least, were soon to be married."

"And this was-when?"

"Three years ago, soon after the Frenchwoman came first to England, brought over in the suite of the Duchess of Orleans."

"'Tis pity you never told me all," said Andrew, "specially since I might have made my way to Paris after Candia!"

"Andrew, I was ashamed, ashamed that even you should know it. And-and-what could you have done?"

"What!" exclaimed his brother. "What! Well! tested the skill of this maître d'armes-perhaps avenged you."

"It might have made a widow of her, left her alone and defenceless in a strange land."

"Possibly!" Andrew replied to this, with the careless shrug of the shoulders which he had learnt unconsciously in his foreign travel. "Possibly!" And again he spoke inwardly to himself, saying, "As I shall do yet-if he has married her."

There was silence after this for some time as they sat in the now gathering darkness, a silence only interrupted by Bridget bringing in the lamps. But when she had left them alone once more, after telling Andrew he was sitting too long with his brother, who by now should be abed, and that she would be back to assist him to it, the former spoke again.

"Bridget hinted a word," he said, "when first I came here, made suggestion that you yourself nourished hopes of punishing this man-this Vicomte de Bois-Vallée," and he pronounced the name clearly, as though to make sure he had learnt it aright-"would have done so had your health been stronger, and you more fit to cope with him."

"I-I would have done so then," poor Philip said, "had I been able to discover he had wronged her as well as me. I was mad, furious, at first. Poor swordsman as I am, I would have tried to find him out; have hurled myself against him; have, even though he had run me through and through, striven to kill him."

"So, so!" said Andrew, "you would have done that had you kept well and strong?"

"God help me! I fear I should."