The Wild Geese - Stanley John Weyman (best english books to read txt) 📗

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Boisterous cries of "Hallo, sobersides!" and "Cock, cock, cock!" greeted the Colonel, as, partly of his own accord and partly urged by unceremonious hands, he crossed the threshold, and shot forward into the room.

The scene presented by the apartment matched the flushed faces and the wandering eyes which the windows had framed. The long table was strewn with flasks and glasses and half-peeled fruit, the floor with empty bottles. A corner of the table had been cleared for a main at hazard; but to make up for this the sideboard was a wilderness of broken meats and piled-up dishes, and an overturned card-table beside one of the windows had strewn the floor with cards. Here, there, everywhere on chairs, on hooks, were cast sword-belts, neckcloths, neglected wigs.

A peaceful citizen of that day had as soon found himself in a bear-pit; and even the Colonel's face grew a trifle longer as hands, not too gentle, conducted him towards the end of the table. "Gentlemen, gentlemen," he began, "I have been in many companies, as I said before, and----"

"A speech! Old Gravity's speech!" roared a middle-aged, bold-eyed man, who had suggested the sally from the windows, and from the first had set the younger spirits an example of recklessness. "Hear to him!" He filled a glass of wine and waved it perilously near the Colonel's nose. "Old Gravity's speech! Give it tongue!" he cried. "The flure's your own, and we're listening."

Colonel John eyed him with a slight contraction of the features. But the announcement, if ill-meant, availed to procure silence. The more sober had resumed their seats. He raised his head and spoke.

"Gentlemen," he said--and it was strange to note the effect of his look as his eyes fell first on one and then on another, fraught with a dignity which insensibly wrought on them. "Gentlemen, I have been in many companies, and I have found it true, all the world over, that what a man brings he finds. I have the honour to speak to you as a soldier to soldiers----"

"English or Irish?" asked a tall sallow man--sharply, but in a new tone.

"Irish!"

"Oh, be jabers!" from the man with the wineglass.

But the Colonel's eye and manner had had their effect, and "Let him speak!" the sallow man said. "And you, Payton, have done with your fooling, will you?"

"Well, hear to him!"

"I have been in many camps and many companies, gentlemen," the Colonel resumed, "and those of many nations. But wherever I have been I have found that if a man brought courtesy with him, he met with courtesy at the hands of others. And if he brought no offence, he received none. I am a stranger here, for I have been out of my own country for a score of years. On my return you welcome me," he smiled, "a little boisterously perhaps, but I am sure, gentlemen, with a good intent. And as I have fared elsewhere I am sure I shall fare at your hands."

"Well, sure," from the background, "and haven't we made you welcome?"

"Almost too freely," the Colonel replied, smiling good-humouredly. "A peaceable man who had not lived as long as I have might have found himself at a loss in face of so strenuous a welcome. Corks, perhaps, are more in place in bottles----"

"And a dale more in place out of them!" from the background.

"But if you will permit me to explain my errand, I will say no more of that. My name, gentlemen, is Sullivan, Colonel John Sullivan of Skull, formerly of the Swedish service, and much at your service. I shall be still more obliged if any of you will be kind enough to inform me who is the purchaser----"

Payton interrupted him rudely. "Oh, d--n! We have had enough of this!" he cried. "Sink all purchasers, I say!" And with a drunken crow he thrust his neighbour against the speaker, causing both to reel. How it happened no one saw--whether Payton himself staggered in the act, or flung the wine wantonly; but somehow the contents of his glass flew over the Colonel's face and neckcloth.

Half a dozen men rose from their seats. "Shame!" an indignant voice cried.

Among those who had risen was the sallow man. "Payton," he said sharply, "what did you do that for?"

"Because I chose, if you like!" the stout man answered. "What is it to you? I am ready to give him satisfaction when he likes, and where he likes, and no heel-taps! And what more can he want? Do you hear, sir?" he continued in a bullying tone. "Sword or pistols, before breakfast or after dinner, drunk or sober, Jack Payton's your man. D--n me, it shall never be said in my time that the --th suffered a crop-eared Irishman to preach to them in their own mess-room! You can send your friend to me when you please. He'll find me!"

The Colonel was wiping the wine from his chin and neckcloth. He had turned strangely pale at the moment of the insult. More than one of those who watched him curiously--and of such were all in the room, Payton excepted--and who noted the slow preciseness of his movements and the care with which he cleansed himself, albeit his hand shook, expected some extraordinary action.

But no one looked for anything so abnormal or so astonishing as the course he took when he spoke. Nothing in his bearing had prepared them for it; nor anything in his conduct which, so far, had been that of a man of the world not too much at a loss even in the unfavourable circumstances in which he was placed--circumstances which would have unnerved many a one.

"I do not fight," he said. "Your challenge is cheap, sir, as your insult."

Payton stared. He had never been more astonished in his life. "Good L--d!" he cried. "You do not fight? Heaven and earth! and you a soldier!"

"I do not fight."

"After that, man! Not--after----" He did not finish the sentence, but laughed with uplifted chin, as at some great joke.

"No," Colonel John said between his teeth.

And then no one spoke. A something in Colonel John's tone and manner, a something in the repression of his voice, sobered the spectators, and turned that which might have seemed an ignominy, a surrender, into a tragedy. And a tragedy in which they all had their share. For the insult had been so wanton, so gross, so brutal, that there was not one of the witnesses who had not felt shame, not one whose sympathy had not been for a moment with the victim, and who did not experience a pang on his account as he stood, mild and passive, before them.

Payton alone was moved only by contempt. "Lord above us, man!" he cried, finding his voice again. Are you a Quaker? If so, why the devil do you call yourself a soldier?"

"I am no Quaker," Colonel John answered, "but I do not fight duels."

"Why?"

"If I killed you," the Colonel replied, eyeing him steadily, "would it dry my neckcloth or clean my face?"

"No!" Payton retorted with a sneer, "but it would clean your honour!" He had felt the reprehension in the air, he had been conscious for a few seconds that he had not the room with him; but the perception made him only the more arrogant now that he felt his feet again. "It would prove, man, that, unlike the beasts that perish, you valued something more than your life!"

"I do."

"What?" Payton asked with careless disdain.

"Among other things, my duty." Payton laughed brutally. "Why, by the powers, you _are_ a preacher!" he retorted. "Hang your duty, sir, and you for a craven! Give me acts, not words! It's a man's duty to defend his honour, and you talk of your neckcloth! There's for a new neckcloth!" He pulled out a half-crown and flung it, with an insulting gesture, upon the table. "Show us your back, and for the future give gentlemen of honour--a wide berth! You are no mate for them!"

The act and the words were too strong for the stomachs of the more generous among his hearers. A murmur, an undoubted murmur rose--for if Payton was feared he was not loved; and the sallow-faced man, whose name was Marsh, spoke out. "Easy, Payton," he said. "The gentleman----"

"The gentleman, eh?"

"Did not come here of his own accord, and you've said enough, and done enough! For my part----"

"I didn't ask for your interference!" the other cried insolently.

"Well, anyway----"

"And I don't want it! And I won't have it; do you hear, Marsh?" Payton repeated menacingly. "You know me, and I know you."

"I know that you are a better fencer and a better shot than I am," Marsh replied, shrugging his shoulders, "and I daresay than any of us. We are apt to believe it, anyway. But----"

"I would advise you to let that be enough," Payton sneered.

It was then that the Colonel, who had stood silent during the altercation of which he was the subject, spoke--and in a tone somewhat altered. "I am much obliged to you, sir," he said, addressing the sallow-faced man, "but I will cause no further trouble. I crave leave to say one word only, which may come home to some among you. We are all, at times, at the mercy of mean persons. Yes, sir, of mean persons," the Colonel repeated, raising his voice and speaking in a tone so determined--he seemed another man--that Payton, in the act of seizing a decanter to hurl at him, hesitated. "For any but a mean person," Colonel John continued, drawing himself up to his full height, "finding that he had insulted one who could not meet him on even terms--one who could not resent the insult in the manner intended--would have deemed it all one as if he had insulted a one-armed man, or a blind man, and would have set himself right by an apology."

At that word Payton found his voice. "Hang your apology!" he cried furiously.

"By an apology," the Colonel repeated, fixing him with eyes of unmeasured contempt, "which would have lowered him no more than an apology to a woman or a child. Not doing so, his act dishonours himself only, and those who sit with him. And one day, unless I mistake not, his own blood, and the blood of others, will rest upon his head."

With that word the speaker turned slowly, walked with an even pace to the door, and opened it, none gainsaying him. On the threshold he paused and looked back. Something, possibly some chord of superstition in his breast which his adversary's last words had touched, held Payton silent: and silent the Colonel's raised finger found him.

"I believe," Colonel John said, gazing solemnly at him, "that we shall meet again." And he went out.

Payton turned to the table, and, with an unsteady hand, filled a glass. He read disapprobation in the eyes about him, but he had shaken the momentary chill from his own spirits, and he stared them down. "Sink the old Square-Toes!" he cried. "He got what he deserved! Who'll throw a main with me?"

"Thirty guineas against your new mare, if you like?"

"No, confound you," Payton retorted angrily. "Didn't I say she wasn't for sale?"


CHAPTER VI

THE MAITRE D'ARMES

Beyond doubt Colonel John had got himself off the scene with a certain amount of dignity. But with all that he had done