He called out: “Come on, men. Don’t stop to fire.” He continued to run forward.
He saw Cooper, sitting coolly enough, lift a rifle to his shoulder, and fire twice. Other figures were showing beside him. He turned, waving an arm, and shouting to those behind. Then he spurred forward. He meant to get his force clear, if he could, by the speed of their horses’ legs.
Very nearly he did it. Of the fourteen men that were still with him, nine got through without a shot being fired to stay them. With these men he rode back into his own farmyard as the evening was falling. They had dropped much of their plunder. They had brought Nance Weston. He had ridden out with eighteen men the day before—besides the jockey. He came back with nine. Two more men rode in the next morning. Joe came also, on foot. A weary man.
Martin’s troop, finding nothing but a fallen gate to stay them, had run into the road whilst the rearmost five were still breasting the hill. One of these fell at the first shot. The others rode back down the hill. At the foot, Jack’s party blocked them. Two of them had women on their horses’ cruppers. This held back the men’s fire, and seeing this, there was an attempt to ride through them. At this one man succeeded. Another was shot down in the attempt.
The shrill voice of Goodwin’s Tilly saved the life of her captor, whom she persuaded to yield, and who was afterwards useful in betraying the secrets of the band. Whether Goodwin had any cause for satisfaction in this development is less than doubtful. But that is another story.
Betsy Parkin, a foolish woman who had been slow to believe the danger, and too late in attempted flight, had slipped down from her captor’s horse with unexpected agility as he had halted at the first uncertainty. She hid in the ditch, being a prudent woman, till the firing ceased. Her captor, relieved of her retarding weight, had leapt his horse over the hedge, or forced it through it, and was first seen making off at as good a pace as the heavy soil of a field of un-hoed mangels permitted. He was followed by half a score of bullets, which caused him some palpitation (for he had a weak heart), but did no further damage. He was the other man who got home in the morning. Martin marshalled men that were tired, but triumphant. It had not been the decisive stroke for which he had hoped and planned, but it was sufficient, and a bloodless victory.
They collected the recovered booty. They put the women on the captured horses. They marched back well content with the leader that Fate had sent them. They saw nothing of Joe, who had very prudently left the road when he found that the appointed rendezvous was deserted.
CHAPTER XLIV
As the little force, tired but hilarious, straggled down the hill, Martin realised that victory had brought no respite from the responsibilities which he had undertaken so readily.
He knew that a sound military policy would have dictated an immediate pursuit of the fleeing Cooper. But he judged this to be impossible. A word to Tom confirmed this opinion. The men were divided between a desire to seek their scattered homes, and a wish to recover the booty which they had left on the earlier road. Both desires were natural enough. They had not the cohesion of a military force.
His own wish, no less than theirs, was to escape to his private interests—his recovered family. But he was the first among them—and he was the servant of all.
When they came to the junction of the road at the hilltop he inquired for any man that could ride to take the news of victory to the waiting camp, and to order that the cart and packhorses should be brought forward. It was only four miles away, and the cart could be sent back for a further load if that should be necessary.
There was difficulty about finding a man who could ride. One was pushed forward at last, who was alleged to have become expert by illicit exercise of pit-ponies. His seat in the saddle suggested that he had not transgressed very frequently, or to any personal advantage.
Martin saw that there were matters that must not be left to chance to determine. There were the horses, and some other things, which must be auctioned in the previous manner. There might easily be disputes, arising from the promiscuous way in which the men had abandoned their possessions at the last call to action. If he would have freedom for himself, he must delegate the authority which he had taken. He called the men together, and appointed a later hour for these divisions. With these, Jack Tolley would deal, as his own deputy. He thanked them for the way in which they had marched and fought. He told them that they were free to go their own ways, till they should hear of his further plans.
They cheered him with a good will. There was a note of life in the sound, as of a new spirit in the community.
Martin turned to Tom. He assumed that it was he who would lead him to Helen. But Tom excused himself. He had no wish to be present at such a meeting. Discretion and inclination were at one on this point. He remembered that Claire had gone ahead. The situation was ambiguous enough. He would have time for explanations, and for Helen to realise it. He had not lost hope.
He suggested that a guide could easily be found who would show the way to the lodge. He said that he was anxious to see some of the men who had not been with them—men on whom he could rely to support Martin’s authority, if they should be informed of it in the right way. If he might, he would follow at a later hour.
Martin was well content. He had no wish that there should be onlookers at his first meeting with Helen. He found a ready guide in Davy, who was still relating his experiences to a changing audience. What Martin heard from him increased his haste. Davy told him of the dead man on the road to the lodge; of the hoof-marks, and the broken paling; of a rush of flight and chase which had passed with clangour of flying hooves along the gaping street; of how Claire had ridden back with a child in her arms, and a captured horse at her bridle. In the last three months Davy had seen several things happen. Momentous things. But not after this kind. It had been better than a circus of his childish memory. Better than the Tipton cinema, whose glories were forever departed.
So far, good. Certainly Claire had justified her offer to go to Helen’s protection. The rescued child stood out as a clear fact from the narrative. All else might be well. But might she not have ridden to avenge, as well as to rescue? Might he not be going to a reunion in which death was a partner?
“Davy,” he said, “can you ride?”
Davy’s moon-face was blank with denial.
“Well, you soon will.”
The group of lounging listeners stared at the voice of curt authority with which Martin commandeered the best of the horses, which were being unloaded beside them, and at the alacrity with which his wishes were followed.
Betsy, getting down with more deliberation than she had shown on the hillside, and answering some rough chaff concerning the absent Parkin with an unbroken good-humour, found herself bustled to the ground with unexpected celerity.
Davy, in another minute, was hoisted to a precarious eminence, where he must clutch at Martin’s belt and await disaster, as he pitched and swayed upon his bruised and jolted way.
So they came to the lodge gates after a short and hurried ride, which was long to both, though from different causes. Lock and padlock yielded to the keys which Tom had provided.
Within the gate they came to a brown gelding, loosely tethered, and to a chestnut mare that grazed freely beside it.
Martin fastened his own horse.
“You can go now, Davy,” he said. The door of the lodge was closed, and it was by an effort of will that he stepped toward it.
CHAPTER XLV
Claire had hesitated as to the route by which she should return to the lodge. She had an uncertain recollection of having asked Helen to wait for her in the lane, but she might not have done so. It was almost certain that she would have followed Claire as far as the main road, and that she would have the child that Joe had thrown down. The child might be hurt. In any case it would be natural to carry her home.
Then Claire had the two horses. She did not wish to abandon them. Though she had leapt down into the lane she knew that she could not reve
rse the process. If she should take the horses that way there she must leave them. And there was the child in her arms.
For every reason it seemed best to go straight to the lodge. There she could leave Joan. There she could leave the horses. If Helen were not returned she could cross the park on foot and pass the stile without difficulty. Little time would be lost, and she would be sure to meet or find her.
So she did. She handed Joan to Mary Wittels, who showed little surprise or emotion. She set out over the park and found it a much longer way than she had supposed.
She climbed the steps and came down almost on the body of Bryan. The man lay with staring eyes and distorted face. He had not died easily. He was not good to look on. It was not a pleasant sight for the woman who killed him. Her thoughts warred discordantly. He had deserved his fate. Would there be any hope of peace or decent living while such men continued? Who made her his judge? Was there man or woman left alive whose hands were as red as hers had become in four short days of violence? How long would she walk immune, should these feuds continue? She thought of herself lying tomorrow as he lay today. “He who liveth by the sword....” It was just enough....
But she had saved those that she set out to rescue. She had been loyal to Martin. Martin, whose child might be in her own body. Then she must shoot quickly indeed. It was not for herself, but for her child also.
Had she done rightly so to risk her life, when her child’s might be at stake also? She saw that she had had no choice. Had she declined she would have been as a mother who tempts her son to cowardice or dishonour to secure his safety. For while a woman carries a son in her body it is not his life only, but his character, his honour which is in her keeping.
Had she done otherwise, how could she have expected to have a son worth having? She only thought of a son.
With such thoughts she went down the lane. Like the park, it was longer than she had thought it. Toward the bottom she came on Bryan’s horse, but she could not catch it. It had the distrustful mood of one that had been unfortunate in its rider. It moved on before her, almost colliding with Helen as she appeared at the end of the lane, with Mary in her arms.
Claire called to her before they met. “She is safe at home.” Helen did not ask whom she might mean. She said: “Has he come?”
“No,” Claire answered, “but he may be here any moment. He has taken the men to cut them off somewhere if he can as they retire. I didn’t understand more than that.”
“The men? Then Tom’s back?”
“Yes. It was Tom who told him that you were here.”
They were both silent for a time. Helen wished to ask many things, but they were for Martin to answer. It was on him that her mind was fixed. And she was half afraid of Claire. Fear and a depth of gratitude contended with a doubting wonder.
Claire had much to say also, but she was in no haste to begin. She wondered how much Helen understood of what she had said already.
As to that, Helen understood well enough—at least, verbally. How much it implied was a larger question.
It was Helen who made the first move—perhaps naturally, having the most to learn. Besides, she was as incapable of a moral cowardice as Claire would have been of a physical weakness of a kindred kind. When her question came it was of a very deep simplicity.
“Why did you come?”
Claire did not answer at once. Instead, she said: “Shall I take the child?”
She held out her hands.
It was a natural question, for Helen had carried it for a long time. She looked less fit for such a burden than, in fact, she was.
She hesitated for a moment, and then accepted. But Mary clung to her mother. Her eyes watched Claire incessantly. She was not frightened. But her arms held to her mother.
They went on as they were.
Then Claire said: “I came to find you. We were afraid there might be danger. Martin could not come at once. They had chosen him for their leader. He wanted to stop them if they should have carried anyone off.”
This was vague to Helen. She knew even less than Claire of Cooper’s gang, or of the politics of the new life. “Did he ask you to come?”
“No,” said Claire, not clear as to what the question might intend, but keeping to the fact, as her way was, “I offered when I saw that he could not. We did not think that there was any real danger, but I thought he would be glad for me to come. And I wanted to talk to you. Of course, he had told me about you. But he had believed you were dead.”
“He could not help thinking that,” Helen answered quickly. She would imply no blame to Martin, even by silence.
“Don’t you think I had better tell it from the beginning?” Claire said.
“If you like,” was the answer, in a tone which was polite but had become distant. It implied that it was a matter of no importance—or, at least, of no importance to Helen. That was how Helen felt, or tried to. What Martin might have done while he believed her dead was a matter between themselves. She would not discuss him with Claire. She needed no apology from her. Martin knew now that she was alive, and, naturally, it would be the end of any intervening episode. If there were any difficulty Martin would know how to deal with it. He always did. Why had the woman come to her? Well, as to that, she had come to save her from danger. She had saved her—and the children. Helen remembered the position from which she had been rescued. It was not a pleasant thought. It was the affront to her dignity that she resented. It had been an ignominious posture.
But Helen would be just, even to her worst enemy, though she might not love him. She did not know to what fate she might have been carried, or her children, but she knew that Claire had ridden swiftly to her rescue when she learnt her peril—ridden alone to face two men at the risk of her own life. But even for this she thanked Martin rather than Claire. Even though he could not come himself he had known how to protect her. He had known whom to send. Martin would do the right thing. He always did.
If this woman of the reckless leap, of the quick shot, of the murderous eyes (for that vision persisted) had been useful to Martin as she had been useful to her, if she had given him pleasure when his own wife was absent, she would be grateful—grateful and friendly—but Claire was outside the intimacy of their lives, and that she must understand.
Claire understood the rebuff very well, but she was not easily snubbed—grey eyes, frank and straight, looked into blue ones that did not fall, though the colour deepened beneath them, and the tone was gentler than the words in which she answered.
“It is not if I like at all. It is because you must know. He thought you dead. He pledged himself to me, ‘for always and always’.” There was a tone of reminiscence as she quoted, a note of Martin’s voice which Helen knew, and for the first time this thing was real to her, though she would not admit that it could menace. “Then we heard that you were alive. I shall not try to hold him from you. I could not if I would. I know that, now I have seen you. But it must be clear between us. I am not second. I may bear his child, and that child is as yours. It shall have no second place. My honour is your honour, and Martin’s. I may give up all besides, but not that.”
Helen said: “Were you married?” This question arose from her seclusion of the past three months, but she was no fool and had regretted it before she heard the note of scorn in the answer.
“Married! I have just told you that I may bear his child.”
Helen made some amend in the friendlier tone in which she asked a question that went deeper. “Did you love him?”
Claire paused for her answer. She knew that she had taken the peril of death to seek a man to her liking and to avoid those from whom she shrank. She was seeking the best she could, and after that first repulsion she had taken the first that came. It was bald fact, and she did not shirk it.
She answered with the disarming candour which was the strongest weapon of her mind that had little of subtlety.
“He was the man that I chose. If it had not been he I might have chosen another
. So might you.”
Helen’s emotions were deep and shy. They did not open readily to a passing caller. They could always be approached most easily by way of intellectual stimuli. She acknowledged the directness of the thrust with a new respect for her antagonist—and perhaps a new liking.
Before she had framed her reply Claire continued. “It is not only that I chose him. He chose me. You cannot alter that. He thought you were dead, or it would not have been. I know that. He is of that kind. So am I. If you were not living I could not give him what you will, but I could give him—different things.”
Helen was not quick to speak even now. She could not think or speak with this straight-thrusting simplicity. Her mind was too complex. But she had her own intellectual candour, and it admitted touché a second time.
She knew Martin with the clarity of a long companionship, of a love which was as passionate as her nature allowed, of a loyalty which would not have faltered at a far worse pass than was now confronting her, of an intellectual intimacy that Claire might never have equalled, and she saw with this clarity that Claire’s words were true. There was a side on which Claire might content him as she never could, even though she might agonise to do it, even though Martin’s loyalty, which she did not doubt, might never own it, even to the secrecy of his own mind.
With this thought there came also a fuller realisation of the generosity of her rival. She might be secure in her mind that she could hold her own against a hundred Claires. But Claire had not known this. She had not known—and she had come to give.
All the fineness of her nature was in the simplicity of her answer. “I am sorry; tell me.”
Hearing it, Claire knew that all that mattered had been told already, but it was just that which was needed to make it easy to tell the rest.
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