he had in mind to parry; but the man was as full of tricks as the French King Louis and with incredible swiftness he sent a straight thrust in high tierce—a thrust which sharply stung my ribs only, since I had flung myself aside in time to save my vitals.
After that came the end. He caught me full and fair in the side of the neck. A moist stifling filled my throat and the turf whirled up to meet the sky. I knew nothing but a mad surge of rage that he had cut me to pieces and I had never touched him once. As I went down I flung myself forward at him wildly. It is to be supposed that he was off guard for the moment, supposing me a man already dead. My blade slipped along his, lurched farther forward, at last struck something soft and ripped down. A hundred crimson points zigzagged before my eyes, and I dropped down into unconsciousness in a heap.
Chapter V
The Hue and Cry
Languidly I came back to a world that faded and grew clear again most puzzlingly, that danced and jerked to and fro in oddly irresponsible fashion. At first too deadly weary to explain the situation to myself, I presently made out that I was in a coach which lurched prodigiously and filled me with sharp pains. Fronting me was the apparently lifeless body of a man propped in the corner with the head against the cushions, the white face grinning horridly at me. ’Twas the face of Volney. I stirred to get it out of my line of vision, and a soft, firm hand restrained me gently.
“You are not to be stirring,” a sweet voice said. Then to herself its owner added, ever so softly and so happily, “Thaing do Dhia (Thank God.) He iss alive—he iss alive!”
I pointed feebly a leaden finger at the white face over against me with the shine of the moon on it.
“Dead?”
“No. He hass just fainted. You are not to talk!”
“And Donald Roy——?”
The imperious little hand slipped down to cover my mouth, and Kenneth Montagu kissed it where it lay. For a minute she did not lift the hand, what time I lay in a dream of warm happiness. A chuckle from the opposite seat aroused me. The eyes in the colourless face had opened, and Volney sat looking at us with an ironic smile.
“I must have fallen asleep—and before a lady. A thousand apologies! And for awaking so inopportunely, ten thousand more!”
He changed his position that he might look the easier at her, a half-humorous admiration in his eyes. “Sweet, you beggar my vocabulary. As the goddess of healing you are divine.”
The flush of alarmed maiden modesty flooded her cheek.
“You are to lie still, else the wound will break out again,” she said sharply.
“Faith, it has broken out,” he feebly laughed, pretending to misunderstand. Then, “Oh, you mean the sword cut. ’Twould never open after it has been dressed by so fair a leech.”
The girl looked studiously out of the coach window and made no answer. Now, weak as I was—in pain and near to death, my head on her lap with her dear hand to cool my fevered brow—yet was I fool enough to grow insanely jealous that she had used her kerchief to bind his wound. His pale, handsome face was so winning and his eyes so beautiful that they thrust me through the heart as his sword had been unable to do.
He looked at me with an odd sort of friendliness, the respect one man has for another who has faced death without flinching.
“Egad, Montagu, had either of us driven but a finger’s breadth to left we had made sure work and saved the doctors a vast deal of pother. I doubt ’twill be all to do over again one day. Where did you learn that mad lunge of yours? I vow ’tis none of Angelo’s teaching. No defense would avail against such a fortuitous stroke. Methought I had you speeding to kingdom come, and Lard! you skewered me bravely. ’Slife, ’tis an uncertain world, this! Here we ride back together to the inn and no man can say which of us has more than he can carry.”
All this with his easy dare-devil smile, though his voice was faint from weakness. An odd compound of virtues and vices this man! I learnt afterwards that he had insisted on my wounds being dressed before he would let them touch him, though he was bleeding greatly.
But I had no mind for badinage, and I turned my face from him sullenly. Silence fell till we jolted into the courtyard of “The Jolly Soldier,” where Creagh, Macdonald, and Hamish Gorm, having dismounted from their horses, waited to carry us into the house. We were got to bed at once, and our wounds looked to more carefully. By an odd chance Volney and I were put in the same room, the inn being full, and the Macdonald nursed us both, Creagh being for the most part absent in London on business connected with the rising.
Lying there day after day, the baronet and I came in time to an odd liking for each other, discussing our affairs frankly with certain reservations. Once he commented on the strangeness of it.
“A singular creature is man, Montagu! Here are we two as friendly as—as brothers I had almost said, but most brothers hate each other with good cause. At all events here we lie with nothing but good-will; we are too weak to get at each other’s throats and so perforce must endure each the other’s presence, and from mere sufferance come to a mutual—shall I say esteem? A while since we were for slaying; naught but cold steel would let out our heat; and now—I swear I have for you a vast liking. Will it last, think you?”
“Till we are on our feet again. No longer,” I answered.
“I suppose you are right,” he replied, with the first touch of despondency I had ever heard in his voice. “The devil of it is that when I want a thing I never rest till I get it, and after I have won it I don’t care any more for it.”
“I’m an obstinate man myself,” I said.
“Yes, I know. And when I say I’ll do a thing and you say I sha’n’t nothing on earth can keep us from the small sword.”
“Did you never spare a victim—never draw back before the evil was done?” I asked curiously.
“Many a time, but never when the incentive to the chase was so great as now. ’Tis the overcoming of obstacles I cannot resist. In this case—to pass by the acknowledged charms of the lady—I find two powerful reasons for continuing: her proud coyness and your defense of her. Be sure I shall not fail.”
“I think you will,” I answered quietly.
Out of doubt the man had a subtle fascination for me, even though I hated his principles in the same breath. When he turned the batteries of his fine winning eyes and sparkling smile on me I was under impulse to capitulate unconditionally; ’twas at remembrance of Aileen that my jaws set like a vice again.
But as the days passed I observed a gradual change in Volney’s attitude toward the Highland lass. Macdonald had found a temporary home for her at the house of a kind-hearted widow woman who lived in the neighbourhood, and so long as we were in danger the girl and her grey-haired friend came often to offer their services in nursing. Aileen treated the baronet with such shy gentle womanliness, her girlish pity struggling through the Highland pride, forgetting in the suffering man the dastard who had wronged her, that he was moved not a little from his cynical ironic gayety. She was in a peculiar relation toward us, one lacking the sanction of society and yet quite natural. I had fought for her, and her warm heart forbade her to go her way and leave me to live or die as chance might will. As she would move about the room ministering to our wants, wrapped in her sweet purity and grace, more than once I caught on his face a pain of wistfulness that told me of another man beneath the polished heartless Macaroni. For the moment I knew he repented him of his attempted wrong, though I could not know that a day of manly reparation would come to blot out his sin against her.
As we grew better Aileen’s visits became shorter and less frequent, so that our only temptation to linger over our illness was removed. One day Sir Robert limped slowly across the floor on the arm of Creagh while I watched him