Part 23 (1/2)

Without was silence and stillness, as of the grave, and it was nipping cold, but my mind was happily busy, having so many delicious moments to live over again. If by some unhappy chance I never saw her again and lived to be a hundred, I should never tire of my memories. She had as many facets as Mr. Pitt's diamond, as many tones as the great organ in Lichfield Cathedral. To know her had enriched my life and opened my mind.

What Propertius had said of his Cynthia, I repeated to myself of my Margaret, _Ingenium n.o.bis ipsa puella est_. 'My' Margaret! Well, it did her no harm for me to think it, and, after all, the sly, silly babblings of my under-self could be shouted down by the stern voice of common sense.

Here, under the stress of a new force, my thoughts flew off at a tangent, and I said to myself, ”Bravo, Romeo! You shall find me a rare Juliet.”

I had, indeed, much ado to keep from laughing aloud, as my situation was delicious, not to say delicate. For, on a sudden, noiselessly as the beat of a bat's wing, two feet of ladder had shot up above the eaves, and even now an ardent lover was hasting aloft, dreaming of lispings and kissings to come. I mustn't frighten him too soon or too much or he'd drop off, but as soon as he was fairly on the slope he should sip the sweetness of lips of steel. So I crept back, got a pistol, and stood to the left of the window.

I waited till his body darkened the room and then took a furtive look at him. It was no village lover climbing up at peep of dawn to greet his la.s.s. It was one of Brocton's dragoons, one of the five who had been at the Hanyards.

In a twink I shot him. Without a word, he slithered down the tiles, leaving a mush of blood-red snow. His right leg slipped aslant between two rungs of the ladder, and his body, checked in its fall, swung round and dangled over the eaves.

In the room was a large oaken clothes chest. I dragged it to the light, tilted it on end, and jammed it into the gable of the window, which, luckily, it fitted completely, and so blocked any further attack from the roof. s.n.a.t.c.hing up my weapons, I tumbled down the ladder, only to hear the heavy tramping of feet upstairs. Standing by Margaret's door, I waited until the head and shoulders of the first man came in sight. He carried a lantern, and its yellow rays lit up for me the ugly face of the sergeant of dragoons. I fired my second pistol at him, cras.h.i.+ng the lantern to pieces. Down he went, whether hit or not I did not know. In the darkness I heard the rush of a second man who came on so fearlessly and fast that he was far into the pa.s.sage before I met him with a fierce thrust of my rapier. I thrilled with the zeal of old Smite-and-spare-not as, for the first time, I felt the point of my rapier in a man's body, and drove it home with a yell. Down he went too, with a gurgle of blood in his throat, and Margaret, coming out of her room, stumbled over his body as she raced after me along the pa.s.sage.

The Colonel was at the stair-head before me, but there was, for the moment, no work for him. The enemy had tumbled noisily downstairs into the hall, and were collecting their scattered wits after their first rout. To my regret, the raucous cursings of the sergeant showed that he had not been killed and apparently not even hit.

”G.o.d d.a.m.n ye!” he yelled. ”Ten of you driven back like sheep by a raw youth. I'll settle with ye for it. Think I picked ye out of the stews and stink-holes of London to stand this? There isn't one of ye with the guts of a louse. I'll take the skin off the ribs of you for this, d.a.m.n ye, and most of your pimp's flesh along with it!”

”What sort of guts was it brought yow tumblin' down so quick?” put in the surly voice of the landlord. ”Yow cudna 'a come any faster if yer blasted yed 'ad been blown to bits instead of my lantern.”

Some of the men laughed at this, whereon the sergeant blasphemed enough to make a devil from h.e.l.l s.h.i.+ver. He cowed the dragoons, but the innkeeper only growled, ”A three-bob lantern blown to bits! Fork out three bob!”

”I'll have him if I have to blow the house to bits!” vociferated the sergeant.

”Fork out three bob!” repeated the host.

Not a word had pa.s.sed between us on the stair-head, and now, at the sound of preparations for a fresh a.s.sault, the Colonel took each of us by the arm and led us into his room.

”The stair-head cannot be held against fire from the opposite landing,”

he whispered.

When inside, he locked the door, and I helped him pile the bed on end behind it, heaping all the other furniture against the bed-frame to hold the mattress and bedding up against the door. Margaret, at a brief word of command, had meanwhile kept watch through the window.

”That's a fair defence,” he said contentedly. ”What are these devils?”

”Brocton's dragoons,” said I. ”I've settled two of them, one on the roof and one in the pa.s.sage.”

”Good lad! Ten of 'em would be long odds in the open; here we ought to have the laugh of them. Load your pistols! Damme, it's a bit chilly.

Fortunately there's some warm work ahead.”

He stamped up and down the room, swis.h.i.+ng his arms round his body, and stopping every now and again to make some trifling change in our hurriedly contrived barricade. Margaret stood by quietly at the window, and when I had reloaded my pistols, I joined her there.

The ladder had been s.h.i.+fted and now lay along in the snow. There, too, lay the body of the dragoon I had shot, crumpled up in his death-agony. A brood of owls were clucking and cluttering about under the hovel, and there, too, leaning against the rear wheel of the wain, were a lumpish wagoner and our surly host. The one was stolidly smoking, the other was holding the battered lantern out at arm's length, and I could, as it were, see him growling to the lout at his side, ”'Ew's to fork out for this'n?”

A girl went towards them from the house, circling, with averted head, far round the dead dragoon, bearing them from the kitchen a smoking jug of ale.

”In England,” said Margaret, ”snow adds the charm of peace and purity to the countryside. There's never, I should think, enough of it to give the sense of utter desolation and deadness that it gives one in Russia.”

”It's so uncertain with us,” was my reply. ”I've known a whole winter without a snowflake, and I've walked knee-deep in it in May.”

The Colonel stopped his marching and swis.h.i.+ng and came to the window.

”Don't bother, Madge,” said he. ”We'll pull through. Hallo, I didn't see yon wagon last night.”