The Lady of Loyalty House: A Novel. McCarthy Justin Huntly

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СКАЧАТЬ to those immediately concerned, and to Harby village, all open mouths and open eyes, the business was a very Iliad. There was a great deal of powder burned and but little blood shed. The little Parliament party soon learned that there was no taking the place by a rush or a ruse, that it was discretion to keep due distance and invest. For the besieged, on the other hand, there was no chance of a sortie, their numbers being so few and their provisions were sorely scarce. If no one could for the moment get into Harby, neither could any one get out of Harby.

      So day succeeded day, and Halfman found them all enchanted days. He was inevitably much in the company of the lady, and he played the part of an honest gentleman ably. He made the most of his odd scholarship, of that part of his knowledge of the world best likely to commend him to the favor of a gentlewoman; his buccaneering enterprises veiled themselves under the vague phrase of foreign service. He had been in tight places a thousand times; he weighed them as trifles against a chance to win money and the living toys that money can buy. But it was new to him to hold a fort under the command of a woman, and the woman herself was the newest, strangest thing he had ever known. Ever the lover of his abandoned art, he conceived shrewdly enough the character that would not displease Brilliana and played it very consistently: the soldier of fortune true, but one that had tincture of letters and would be a scholar if he could. So the siege hours were also hours of such companionship as he had never experienced, ever desired; he ripened in the sunshine of a girl’s kindliness, and he deliberately tied, as it were, the foul pages of his book of memory together with the pink ribbon of a girl’s garter. He would have been content for the siege to last forever. But the siege did not last forever.

      V

      A MONSTROUS REGIMENT

      In the great hall at Harby a motley fellowship were assembled. If a stranger from a strange land, wafted thither on some winged Arabian carpet or flying horse of ebony, could have beheld the place and the company, he would have been hard put to it to find any reasonable explanation of what his eyes witnessed. In the middle of the hall some five singular figures stood on line: two tall, powerful lads with foolish faces, flagrant farm-hands; an old, bowed man with the snow of many winters on his hair; an impish lad who might have welcomed fourteen springs; and, finally, a rubicund, buxom woman with very red cheeks, very blue eyes, very brown hair, whose person suggested the kitchen a league off. Each of these persons handled a pike, carrying it at an angle different from that of the others, and each of them gazed with painfully attentive stare at the oaken table near the hearth upon which Hercules Halfman sat learnedly expounding the mysteries of the pike drill, while Thoroughgood stood between him and the awkward squad to illustrate in his own person and with the pike he carried the teachings of the instructor.

      “Order your pikes,” Halfman commanded. “Advance your pikes. Shoulder your pikes.” Then, as these orders were obeyed deftly enough by Thoroughgood and with bewildering variety by the others, he continued, “Trail your pikes,” and then broke sharply off to expostulate with one of the farm-hands.

      “Now, Timothy Garlinge, call you that trailing of a pike. Why, Gammer Satchell carries herself more soldierly.”

      Timothy Garlinge grinned loutishly at this rebuke, but the fat dame whom Halfman’s flourish indicated seemed to dilate with satisfaction.

      “It were shame,” she chuckled, “if a handy lass could not better a lobbish lad.”

      The impish lad grinned derision.

      “Ay,” he commented; “but an old fool’s best at her spits and griddles.”

      A most unmilitary titter rippled along the rank but broke upon the rock of Mrs. Satchell’s anger. It might have seemed to many that it were impossible for the dame’s cheeks to be any redder, but Mistress Satchell’s visage showed that nature could still work miracles. With face a rich crimson from chin to forehead, she made to hurl herself upon the leering, fleering mannikin, but was caught in the unbreakable restraint of neighbor Clupp’s clasp.

      “You limb, I’ll griddle you!” Mistress Satchell gasped, panting in the embracing arms. Halfman played the peace-maker with a sour smile.

      “There, there, goody,” he expostulated; “youth will have its yelp.”

      He turned with something of a yawn to Thoroughgood.

      “Why a devil did you press gossip cook into the service?”

      Thoroughgood shook his head protestingly.

      “Nay, the virago volunteered,” he explained, with a look that seemed to supplement speech in the suggestion that it were best to let Mistress Satchell have her own way. This was evidently Mistress Satchell’s own view of the matter.

      “Truly,” she exclaimed, “if my lady, being no more than a woman, is man enough to garrison her house against the Roundheads, she cannot deny me, that am no less than a woman, the right to handle a pike.”

      Halfman, eying the dame’s assertive rotundities, thought that he would be indeed a quarrelsome fellow who should deny her evident femininity.

      “You are a lovely logician,” he approved. “Enough.”

      Then resuming his sententious tone of military command, he took up the task where he had left it off.

      “Trail your pikes.”

      The order was this time obeyed by the company with something approaching resemblance to the action of Thoroughgood, and Halfman went on.

      “Cheek your pikes.”

      Out of the confused cluttering of weapons which ensued, Timothy Garlinge emerged tremulous.

      “Please, sir,” he gurgled, “I’ve forgotten how to cheek my pike.”

      Halfman mastered exasperation bravely, as, taking a pike from the hands of Thoroughgood, he strove to illuminate rusticity.

      “Use your pike thus, noddy,” he lessoned, good-naturedly, wielding the weapon with the skill of a practised pikeman. But the illustration was as much lost upon Garlinge as the original command, and in his attempt to imitate it he whirled his arm so recklessly that his companions scattered in dismay, and Halfman himself was fain to move a step or two backward to avoid the yokel’s meaningless sweeps.

      “Have a care,” he cried. “If you work so wild you will damage your company.”

      Mrs. Satchell, taking her post in the now restored line, shook her red fist at the delinquent.

      “He had best not damage me,” she thundered, “or I’ll damage him to some purpose.”

      “Silence in the ranks!” Halfman commanded, sharply. “Charge your pikes,” he ordered.

      This order was obeyed indifferently and tamely enough by all save the egregious Mrs. Satchell, who delivered so lusty a thrust with her weapon that Halfman was obliged to skip back briskly to avoid bringing his breast acquainted with her steel.

      “Nay, woman, warily!” he shouted, half laughing, half angry. “Play your play more tamely. I am no rascally Roundhead.”

      Mrs. Satchell grounded her weapon and wiped the sweat from her shining forehead with the back of her red hand. There was a deadly earnest in her eyes, a deadly earnest in her speech.

      “I cry you mercy,” she panted. “But I am a whole-hearted woman, and when you bid me charge I am all for charging.”

      Halfman did his best to muffle amusement СКАЧАТЬ