The King's General

  Richard came once more and knelt beside my bed.

  "I understand," he said, "what you have tried so hard to tell me. There can never be, between us, what there was once. Is that it?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "I knew that all along, but it would make no difference," he said.

  "It would," I said, "after a little while."

  Peter had a young voice, clear and gay, and his song was happy. I thought how Alice would be looking at him over her lute.

  "I shall always love you," said Richard, "and you will love me too. We cannot lose each other now, not since I have found you again. May I come and see you often, that we may be together?"

  "Whenever you wish," I answered.

  There came a burst of clapping from the gallery, and the voices of the officers and the rest of the company asking for more. Alice struck up a lively jiggling air upon her lute--a soldier's drinking song, much whistled at the moment by our men--and they one and all chimed in upon the chorus, with the troopers in the courtyard making echo to the song.

  "Do you have as much pain now as when you were first hurt?" he said.

  "Sometimes," I answered, "when the air is damp. Matty calls me her weatherglass."

  "Can nothing be done for it?"

  "She rubs my legs and my back with lotion that the doctors gave her. But it is of little use. You see, the bones were all smashed and twisted, and they cannot knit together."

  "Will you show me, Honor?"

  "It is not a pretty sight, Richard."

  "I have seen worse in battle."

  I pulled aside my blanket and let him look upon the crumpled limbs that he had once known whole and clean. He was thus the only person in the world to see me so, except Matty and the doctors. I put my hands over my eyes, for I did not care to see his face.

  "There is no need for that," he said. "Whatever you suffer, you shall share with me, from this day forward." He bent then, and kissed my ugly twisted legs, and after a moment covered me again with the blanket. "Will you promise," he said, "never to send me from you again?"

  "I promise," I said.

  "Farewell, then, sweetheart, and sleep sound this night."

  He stood for a moment, his figure carved clear against the beam of light from the windows opposite, and then turned and went away down the passage. Presently I heard them all come out into the courtyard and mount their horses; there was the sound of leave-taking and laughter, Richard's voice high above the others telling John Rashleigh he would come again. Suddenly clipped and curt, he called an order to his men, and they went riding through the archway beneath the gatehouse where I lay, and I heard the sound of the hoofbeats echo across the park.

  11

  That Richard Grenvile should become suddenly, within a few hours, part of my life again was a mental shock that for a day or two threw me out of balance. The first excitement over and the stimulation of his presence that evening fading away, reaction swung me to a low ebb. It was all too late. No good could come of it. Memory of what had been, nostalgia of the past coupled with sentiment, had stirred us both to passion for a moment; but reason came with daylight. There could never be a life for us together, only the doubtful pleasure of brief meetings which the hazards of war might at any time render quite impracticable. What then? For me a lifetime of lying on my back, waiting for a chance encounter, for a message, for a word of greeting; and for him, after a space, a nagging irritation that I existed in the background of his life, that he had not visited me for three months and must make some effort to do so, that I expected some message from him which he found difficult to send--in short, a friendship that would become as wearisome to him as it would be painful to me.

  Although his physical presence, his ways, his tenderness--however momentary--had been enough to engender in me once again all the old love and yearning in my heart, cold criticism told me he had altered for the worse.

  Faults that I had caught glimpses of in youth were now increased tenfold. His pride, his arrogance, his contempt for anyone's opinion but his own--these were more glaring than they had ever been. His knowledge of military matters was great, that I well believed, but I doubted if he would ever work in harmony with the other leaders, and his quick temper was such that he would have every Royalist leader by the ears, and in the end give offence to His Majesty himself.

  The callous attitude to prisoners--dumped within Lydford Castle and hanged without trial--showed me that streak of cruelty I had always known was in his nature; and his contemptuous dismissal of his little son, who must, I felt sure, be baffled and bewildered at the sudden change in his existence, betrayed a deliberate want of understanding that was almost vile. That suffering and bitterness had turned him hard, I granted. Mine was the fault, perhaps; mine was the blame.

  But the hardness had bitten into his nature now, and it was too late to alter it. Richard Grenvile at forty-four was what Fate, and circumstance, and his own will, had made him.

  So I judged him without mercy, in those first days after our encounter, and was within half a mind of writing to him once again, putting an end to all further meetings. Then I remembered how he had knelt beside my bed, and I had shared with him my terrible disfigurement, and he, more tender than any father, more understanding than any brother, had kissed me and bade me sleep.

  If he had this gentleness and intuition with me, a woman, how was it that he showed to others, even to his son, a character at once so proud and cruel, so deliberately disdainful?

  I felt torn between two courses, lying there on my bed in the gatehouse. One was to see him no more, never, at any time. Leave him to carve his own future, as I had done before. And the other was to ignore the great probability of my own personal suffering, spurn my own weak body that would be tortured incessantly by his physical presence, and give to him wholeheartedly and without any reservation all the small wisdom I had learned, all the love, all the understanding that might yet bring him some measure of peace.

  This second course seemed to me more positive than the first, for if I renounced him now, as I had done before, it would be through cowardice, a sneaking fear of being hurt in more intolerable a fashion, if it were possible, than I had been fifteen years ago.

  Strange how all arguments in solitude, sorted, sifted, and thrashed in the quietude of one's own chamber, shrivel to nothing when the subject of them is close once more instead of separated by distance. And so it was with Richard, for when he rode to Menabilly on his return from Grampound to Plymouth, and, coming out onto the causeway to seek me, found me in my chair looking out towards the Gribben, and kissed my hand with all the old fire, and love, and ardor--haranguing me straightforth upon the gross inefficiency of every Cornishman he had so far encountered except those under his immediate command--I knew that we were bound together for all time, and I could not send him from me. His faults were my faults, his arrogance my burden, and he stood there, Richard Grenvile, what my tragedy had made him.

  "I cannot stay long," he said to me. "I have word from Saltash that those damned rebels have made a sortie in my absence, effected a landing at Cawsand, and taken the fort at Inceworth. The sentries were asleep, of course, and if the enemy haven't shot them, I will. I'll have my army purged before I'm finished."

  "And no one left to fight for you, Richard," I said.

  "I'd sooner have hired mercenaries from Germany or France than own these soft-bellied fools," he answered. And he was gone in a flash, leaving me half-happy, half-bewildered, with an ache in my heart that I knew now was to be forever part of my existence.

  That evening my brother-in-law, Jonathan Rashleigh, returned to Menabilly, having been some little while in Exeter on the King's affairs. He had come by way of Fowey, having spent, so he informed us, the last few days at his town house there on the quay, where he had found much business to transact, and some loss among his shipping, for the Parliament had at this time command of the sea and seized every vessel they could find, and it was hard for any unarmed merchant ship to run the
gauntlet.

  Some feeling of constraint came upon the place at his return, of which even I, secure in my gatehouse, could not but be aware.

  The servants were more prompt about their business, but less willing. The grandchildren, who had run about the passages in his absence, were closeted in their quarters with the doors well shut. The voices in the gallery were more subdued. It was indeed obvious that the master had returned. Alice, and John, and Joan found their way more often to the gatehouse, as if it had become in some way a sanctuary. John looked harassed and preoccupied, and Joan whispered to me in confidence that his father found fault with his running of the estate and said he had no head for figures.

  I could see that Joan was burning to inquire about my friendship with Richard Grenvile, which they must have thought strangely sudden, and I saw Alice look at me, though she said nothing, with a new warm glance of understanding. "I knew him well long ago, when I was eighteen," I told them, but to plunge back into the whole history was not my wish. I think Mary had given them a hint or two, in private. She herself said little of the visit, beyond remarking he had grown much stouter, a true sisterly remark, and then she showed me the letter he had left for Jonathan, which ended with these words:

  "I here conclude, praying you to present once more my best respects to your good wife, being truly glad she is yours, for a more likely good wife was in former time hardly to be found, and I wish my fortune had been as good--but patience is a virtue, and so I am your ready servant and kinsman, Richard Grenvile."

  Patience is a virtue. I saw Mary glance at me as I read the lines.

  "You do not intend, Honor," she said in a low voice, "to take up with him again?"

  "In what way, Mary?"

  "Why, wed with him, to be blunt. This letter is somewhat significant."

  "Rest easy, sister. I shall never marry Richard Grenvile or any man."

  "I should not be comfortable, nor Jonathan either, if Sir Richard should come here and give an impression of intimacy. He may be a fine soldier, but his reputation is anything but that."

  "I know, Mary."

  "Jo writes from Radford that they say hard things of him in Devon."

  "I can well believe it."

  "I know it is not my business, but it would sadden me much, it would greatly grieve us all, if--if you bound yourself to him in some way."

  "Being a cripple, Mary, makes one strangely free of bonds."

  She looked at me doubtfully, and then said no more, but I think the bitterness was lost on her.

  Presently Jonathan himself came up to pay his respects to me. He hoped I was comfortable, that I had everything I needed, and did not find the place too noisy after the quiet of Lanrest.

  "And you sleep well, I trust, and are not disturbed at all?"

  His manner, when he asked this, was somewhat odd, a trifle evasive, which was strange for him, who was so self-possessed a person.

  "I am not a heavy sleeper," I told him. "A creaking board or a hooting owl is enough to waken me."

  "I rather feared so," he said abruptly. "It was foolish of Mary to put you in this room, facing as it does a court on either side. You would have been better in the south front, next to our own apartments. Would you prefer this?"

  "Indeed, no. I am very happy here."

  I noticed that he stared hard at the picture on the door, hiding the crack, and once or twice seemed as if he would ask a question, but could not bring himself to the point; then, after chat upon no subject in particular, he took his leave of me.

  That night, between twelve and one, since I was wakeful, I sat up in bed to drink a glass of water. I did not light my candle, for the glass was within my reach. But as I replaced it on the table I became aware of a cold draft of air blowing beneath the door of the empty room. That same chill draft I had noticed once before. I waited, motionless, for the sound of footsteps, but none came. And then, faint and hesitating, came a little scratching sound upon the panel of the door where I had hung the picture. Someone, then, was in the empty room, clad in his stockinged feet, with his hands upon the door.

  The sound continued for five minutes, certainly not longer, and then ceased as suddenly as it had started, and once again the telltale draft of air was cut in a trice, and all was as before. A horrid suspicion formed then in my mind, which in the morning became certainty. When I was dressed, and in my chair and Matty busy in the dressing room, I wheeled myself to the door and lifted the picture from the nail. It was as I thought. The crack had been filled in. I knew then that my presence in the gatehouse had been a blunder on the part of my sister, and that I caused annoyance to that unknown visitor who prowled by night in the adjoining chamber.

  The secret was Jonathan Rashleigh's, and not mine to know. Suspecting my prying eyes, he had given orders for my peephole to be covered. I pondered then upon the possibility, which had entered my head earlier, that Jonathan's elder brother had not died of the smallpox some twenty years before, but was still alive--in some horrid state of preservation, blind and dumb--living in animal fashion in a lair beneath the buttress, and that the only persons to know of this were my brother-in-law and his steward Langdon, and some stranger--a keeper possibly--clad in a crimson cloak.

  If it were indeed so, and my sister Mary and her stepchildren were in ignorance of the fact, while I, a stranger, had stumbled upon it, then I knew I must make some excuse and return home to Lanrest, for to live day by day with a secret of this kind upon my conscience was something I could not do. It was too sinister, too horrible.

  I wondered if I should confide my fears to Richard, when he next came, or whether, in his ruthless fashion, he would immediately give orders to his men to break open the room and force the buttress, so bringing ruin perhaps to my brother-in-law and host.

  Fortunately, the problem was solved for me in a very different way, which I will now disclose. It will be remembered that on the day of Richard's first visit my godchild Joan had mischievously borrowed the key of the summerhouse, belonging to the steward, and allowed me to explore the interior. The flurry and excitement of receiving visitors had put all thoughts of the key from her little scatterbrained head, and it was not until two days after my brother-in-law's return that she remembered the key's existence.

  She came to me with it in her hand, in great perturbation, for, she said, John was already so much out of favor with his father for some neglect on the estate that she was loath now to tell him of her theft of the key, for fear it should bring him into greater trouble. As for herself, she had not the courage to take the key back to Langdon's house and confess the foolery. What was she then to do?

  "You mean," I said, "what am I to do? For you wish to absolve yourself of all responsibility, isn't that so?"

  "You are so clever, Honor," she pleaded, "and I so ignorant. Let me leave the key with you, and so forget it. Baby Mary has a cough, and poor John a touch of his ague. I really have so much on my mind."

  "Very well, then," I answered, "we will see what can be done."

  I had some idea of taking Matty into my confidence, and weaving a tale by which Matty would visit Mrs. Langdon and say she had found the key thrown down on a path in the warren, which would be plausible enough, and while I turned this over in my mind I dangled the key between my fingers. It was of medium size, not larger, in fact, than the one in my own door. I compared the two, and found them very similar. A sudden thought then struck me, and, wheeling my chair into the passage I listened for a moment, to discover who stirred about the house. It was a little before nine o'clock, with the servants all at their dinner and the rest of the household either talking in the gallery or already retired to their rooms for the night. The moment seemed well chosen for a very daring gamble, which might, or might not, prove nothing to me. I turned down the passage and halted outside the door of the locked chamber. I listened again, but no one stirred. Then very stealthily I pushed the key into the rusty lock. It fitted. It turned. And the door creaked open. I was so carried away for a moment by the
success of my own scheme that I was nonplussed. I sat in my chair, uncertain what to do. But that there was a link between this chamber and the summerhouse now seemed definite, for the key turned both locks.

  The chance to examine the room might never come again, and, for all my fear, I was devoured with horrid curiosity. I edged my chair within the room, and kindling my candle--for it was of course in darkness, with the windows barred--I looked about me. The chamber was simple enough. Two windows, one to the north and the other to the west, both with iron bars across them. A bed in the far corner, a few pieces of heavy furniture, and the table and chair I had already seen from the crack. The walls were hung about with a heavy arras, rather old, and worn in many parts. It was indeed a disappointing room, with little that seemed strange in its appointments. It had the faded musty smell that always clings about disused apartments. I laid the candle on the table, and wheeled myself to the corner that gave upon the buttress. This too had an arras hanging from the ceilings, which I lifted--and found nothing but bare stone behind it. I ran my hands over the surface, but could find no join. The wall seemed smooth to my touch. But it was murky, and I could not see, so I returned to the table to fetch my candle, first listening at the door to make certain that the servants were still at supper. It was while I waited there, with an eye to the passage that turned at right angles, running beneath the belfry, that I felt a sudden breath of cold air on the back of my head.

  I looked swiftly over my shoulder, and noticed that the arras on the wall beside the buttress was blowing to and fro, as though a cavity had opened, letting through a blast of air, and even as I watched, I saw, to my great horror, a hand appear from behind a slit in the arras and lift it to one side. There was no time to wheel my chair into the passage, no time even to reach my hand out to the table and blow the candle. Someone came into the room with a crimson cloak about his shoulders, and stood for a moment, with the arras pushed aside and a great black hole in the wall behind him. He considered me a moment, and then spoke. "Close the door gently, Honor," he said, "and leave the candle. Since you are here it is best that we should have an explanation, and no further mischief."