When London Burned : a Story of Restoration Times and the Great Fire by G. A. Henty (chrysanthemum read aloud txt) 📗

"You may think yourself lucky that you are only disabled, you villain!" Cyril said, taking a step towards him with his sword menacingly raised. "Begone, sir, before my patience is exhausted, or, by heaven! it will be your dead body that the chairmen will have to carry away."

"Disabled or not," John Wilkes exclaimed, "I will have a say in the matter;" and, with a blow with his cudgel, he stretched Harvey on the ground, and belaboured him furiously until Cyril dragged him away by force. Harvey rose slowly to his feet.

"Take yourself off, sir," Cyril said. "One of your brave companions has long ago bolted; the other is disarmed, and has his head broken. You may thank your stars that you have escaped with nothing worse than a sword-thrust through your shoulder, and a sound drubbing. Hanging would be a fit punishment for knaves like you. I warn you, if you ever address or in any way molest this lady again, you won't get off so easily."

Then he turned and offered his arm to Nellie, who was leaning against the wall in a half-fainting state. Not a word was spoken until they emerged from the lane.

"No one knows of this but ourselves, Mistress Nellie, and you will never hear of it from us. Glad indeed I am that I have saved you from the misery and ruin that must have resulted from your listening to that plausible scoundrel. Go quietly upstairs. We will wait here till we are sure that you have gone safely into your room; then we will follow. I doubt not that you are angry with me now, but in time you will feel that you have been saved from a great danger."

The door was not locked. He lifted the latch silently, and held the door open for her to pass in. Then he closed it again, and turned to the two men who followed them.

"This has been a good night's work, John."

"That has it. I don't think that young spark will be coming after City maidens again. Well, it has been a narrow escape for her. It would have broken the Captain's heart if she had gone in that way. What strange things women are! I have always thought Mistress Nellie as sensible a girl as one would want to see. Given a little over-much, perhaps, to thinking of the fashion of her dress, but that was natural enough, seeing how pretty she is and how much she is made of; and yet she is led, by a few soft speeches from a man she knows nothing of, to run away from home, and leave father, and mother, and all. Well, Matthew, lad, we sha'n't want any more watching. You have done a big service to the master, though he will never know it. I know I can trust you to keep a stopper on your jaws. Don't you let a soul know of this—not even your wife."

"You trust me, mate," the man replied. "My wife is a good soul, but her tongue runs nineteen to the dozen, and you might as well shout a thing out at Paul's Cross as drop it into her ear. I think my back will be well enough for me to come to work again to-morrow," he added, with a laugh.

"All right, mate. I shall be glad to have you again, for the chap who has been in your place is a landsman, and he don't know a marling-spike from an anchor. Good-night, mate."

"Well, Master Cyril," he went on, as the sailor walked away, "I don't think there ever was such a good wind as that which blew you here. First of all you saved Captain Dave's fortune, and now you save his daughter. I look on Captain Dave as being pretty nigh the same as myself, seeing as I have been with him man and boy for over thirty years, and I feel what you have done for him just as if you had done it for me. I am only a rough sailor-man, and I don't know how to put it in words, but I feel just full up with a cargo of thankfulness."

"That is all right," Cyril said, holding out his hand, which John Wilkes shook with a heartiness that was almost painful. "Captain Dave offered me a home when I was alone without a friend in London, and I am glad indeed that I have been able to render him service in return. I myself have done little enough, though I do not say that the consequences have not been important. It has been just taking a little trouble and keeping a few watches—a thing not worth talking about one way or the other. I hope this will do Mistress Nellie good. She is a nice girl, but too fond of admiration, and inclined to think that she is meant for higher things than to marry a London citizen. I think to-night's work will cure her of that. This fellow evidently made himself out to her to be a nobleman of the Court. Now she sees that he is neither a nobleman nor a gentleman, but a ruffian who took advantage of her vanity and inexperience, and that she would have done better to have jumped down the well in the yard than to have put herself in his power. Now we can go up to bed. There is no more probability of our waking the Captain than there has been on other nights; but mind, if we should do so, you stick to the story we agreed on, that you thought there was someone by the gate in the lane again, and so called me to go down with you to investigate, not thinking it worth while to rouse up the Captain on what might be a false alarm."

Everything remained perfectly quiet as they made their way upstairs to their rooms as silently as possible.

"Where is Nellie?" Captain Dave asked, when they assembled at breakfast.

"She is not well," his wife replied, "I went to her room just now and found that she was still a-bed. She said that she had a bad headache, and I fear that she is going to have a fever, for her face is pale and her eyes red and swollen, just as if she had been well-nigh crying them out of her head; her hands are hot and her pulse fast. Directly I have had breakfast I shall make her some camomile tea, and if that does not do her good I shall send for the doctor."

"Do so, wife, without delay. Why, the girl has never ailed a day for years! What can have come to her?"

"She says it is only a bad headache—that all she wants is to be left alone."

"Yes, yes; that is all very well, but if she does not get better soon she must be seen to. They say that there were several cases last week of that plague that has been doing so much harm in foreign parts, and if that is so it behoves us to be very careful, and see that any illness is attended to without delay."

"I don't think that there is any cause for alarm," his wife said quietly. "The child has got a headache and is a little feverish, but there is no occasion whatever for thinking that it is anything more. There is nothing unusual in a girl having a headache, but Nellie has had such good health that if she had a prick in the finger you would think it was serious."

"By the way, John," Captain Dave said suddenly, "did you hear any noise in the lane last night? Your room is at the back of the house, and you were more likely to have heard it than I was.