Fenton’s laced band seemed to grow tighter round his throat. He did not look up, but made aimless marks with the pen. May 10th had been the first day of his new life in old London. But Giles, in a new kind of passion, spoke quietly.
“Since then,” he demanded, “has any heard the old, ‘Curse thee, what good art thou?’ or ‘Rot th’ soul, be off!’—with a bottle flung at the head to follow? Or floggings with the whip, even the cat-of-nine-tails, for the lightest offence? Or maniac ravings in the stables, and one near murder?
“Since then,” pursued Giles, “have you brought the lowest of bawds from Whetstone Park to this house? And bidden them carouse, drunken and naked, singing songs in your own withdrawing room facing the street? Whilst you sat back, with a bottle in either hand, and sang with them?”
Fenton’s hand went up in protest, though still he did not raise his eyes.
“No more!” he said, thinking what Sir Nick must have been like. “Forebear; I command it!”
“As pleaseth you, sir.”
Giles lifted his shoulders. Both were silent for a moment.
“Yet still I ask,” Giles burst out, “what of those same servants now? They have all they desire, and more. In this house flogging is abolished. The stablemen have but to request; you grant, at the small severity of a bath. Some saw you pluck the secret from poisoned sack posset as though you had eyes could look through brick walls; they saw the slut Kitty conveyed not to the gallows, but set free with a couple of guineas in her hand. Sir, they would die for you! And have I no gratitude?”
“For the last time, leave off!”
Still Fenton did not look. He was wondering, from that curious glance of Giles at mention of May 10th, how much Giles knew or guessed. And, above all, Lydia! No; Lydia could not have guessed.
“Why, then,” said Giles, “I alter my discourse. But, sir, one thing must be altered!”
He stabbed a bony forefinger at the five names Fenton had written on the edge of the parchment.
“Sir Nick, you well know me for near a fine swordsman. My dagger play, in old time, hath been considered even better. Why is my name not there? Why is it not sixth among those to defend this house?”
“Giles, Giles, you are not … not youthful. I observed it when we were first at practice. This business may be long.”
Giles drew himself up.
“Sir, you cannot prevent it,” he said quietly. “This night, God willing, I stand at your side.”
Something stung at the back of Fenton’s eyes, and he put up a hand to shield them. Though nearly all of the old Professor Fenton had gone, enough remained to feel heavily embarrassed, to look in any direction save at Giles.
“Well, well!” he growled, and quickly wrote Giles’s name at the end of the list. “There is little now to be done. Pray go belowstairs; acquaint Big Tom, Whip, Job, and Harry with our scheme. Let the weapons stand ready as I have chosen them.”
All Giles’s briskness had returned.
“Shall I order the shutters to be put up, sir?”
“No! Never! That will warn them we expect them, if indeed they come. Every man to his bed, until roused. Let Harry stand watch; all lights gone by ten of the clock. And—and no word of this to my lady.”
“Sir, that is understood.”
“As for the mastiffs …”
“Now, come sir! They are poisoned; of no use to us.”
“Am I not sensible of that?” demanded Fenton, throwing down his pen and leaping up. “But have them brought up to the withdrawing room … ay, carrot-pate, I said withdrawing room … where they may be in comfort, and Mr. Milligrew as well!”
Always, when Lydia’s image came before his mind, the old Sir Nick maddened him.
“Have not others, called human beings but far beneath our mastiffs for sense and decency, used that room to be ‘comfortable’? A truce to your impertinence; I’ll hear no more of it; go!”
And Giles ran.
Fenton fired the pen at the desk, and then went upstairs to wash for supper.
Without doubt, he decided, this notion of a night attack was madness: inspired only by thick heat, a storm that would not break, and a sense as of lice crawling along open nerves. But it was a possibility. As for Lydia …
When he ate with Lydia, in the shining cavern of silver with the portraits, he tried to be too merry and laugh too much. Lydia, though she dutifully laughed with him, kept her blue eyes fixed steadily on his face, searching for his mood.
“Nick,” she said, “is it danger? Are those your thoughts?”
“In all honesty, no.” He smiled at her, pressing her hand against the table. “At least, I swear there is no danger attending you.”
“But I know that,” protested Lydia, in genuine surprise. “Are you not here?”
Again Fenton lowered his head, his hands out to cut straight portions from a vile omelette prepared for her.
“Lydia, dear,” he said, “this I beg: be not deceived by these fine names they give me. I am the poorest and merely most lucky man who ever tried to stand on his guard in three positions at once. Never hold me high! Think only …”
But Lydia did not hear him.
“You would ask me some question!” she said suddenly, and drew in her breath. “Dear heart, what is it?”
Her instinct was near the uncanny; again the arrow went dead to the target. He was wondering how much she knew, or how much she had been hurt, by the former Sir Nick. But he laughed, and swore, by any oath she liked, there was no question.
“Well, then!” said Lydia, relieved but still doubtful. She glanced over her shoulder, as though to make sure none could hear. “Promise you’ll not jest or make sport of me?”
“Have I ever done so?”
“For days,” said Lydia in a low voice, “I have had a fancy. I think that I am going to die, and soon.”
Fenton’s knife dropped clattering on the table.
“Lydia! Never say that!”
“’Tis but a fancy,” answered Lydia, her eyes seeming to grope their way. “I do not wish to die, now that you and I have found each other.” She turned to him. “Tell me this is folly!”
He told her. He told her at length, as in different fashion he had told her before, and presently he saw reassurance, even laughter, return to her.
“Foh, I am a simpleton!” said Lydia, tossing her head. “’Tis gone; and I’ll forget it.”
But Fenton could not forget.
That night they went to bed before ten o’clock, in Lydia’s room as always. Still the sky was a hollow of thick heat; outside the windows, each leaf stood as still as though limned there.
Before going to bed he made certain preparations with old clothes and weapons, setting them ready. Since neither he nor Lydia troubled their heads about night habit, he could be dressed in a few seconds. Lydia watched him, but did not speak.
Both were soon asleep, though he fretted and fumed. One thing he could never do, with cajoleries or mirth or plain cursing; and that was to persuade Lydia to open a window at night. She swore, sometimes on her knees, that it would kill them. The uneasiness pressed down. Once, as he felt himself falling into a doze, he thought he saw a distant flash of lightning. …
Then his blackened dreams grew distorted; not quite nightmares, yet menaces he could neither see nor touch, but always hear.
One scene, briefly, went blurred and twisted through his mind. He heard, amid much noise, the thudding chest notes of a railway engine. The guard’s whistle blew. He was at a carriage door, leaning out, in some kind of soup-plate helmet. As he moved along, a solemn-faced, pretty girl about fifteen years old, with black hair and grey eyes, was handing him a bunch of flowers and a silver-wrapped ounce of tobacco.
Blurred, the face swept behind, as others milled about him. “Major Fenton?” “Yes?” “Telegram, sir.” He could recall his fin
gers opening out the rough whitish paper of the telegram and the unsteady words, “Fear shall miss you in crowd at station had flowers tobacco but if miss you all good wishes your friend Mary Grenville.”
And, inexplicably wound through all this, there was a great noise of voices singing to music. It was a cheerful song, roared out with mighty cheerfulness; yet underneath every word ran a strain of heartbreak. So faint, so far away, he could barely hear the words.
“Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile …!”
The train still rumbled on. Somehow the sky was pitch-black. His eyes strained close to the luminous hands and numbers of a wrist watch. His feet were near the top of a muddy stepladder, or some kind of ladder. In his right hand, held partly upwards, was a … no, not a revolver, but some pistol-like arrangement he must fire upwards. Some distance ahead, artillery opened with a bursting crash, and the sky went white. …
“Nick!” Lydia’s voice clove through his dreams, shocking him awake.
Instantly he knew he was in the outward semblance of Sir Nick Fenton, and where he was. That noise had been a long peal of thunder. Since the bed curtains had not been drawn close, every window of Lydia’s chamber had gone white with lightning.
He himself was half-sitting up, Lydia pressing his head to her breast, holding her arms tightly round him.
“Dear heart,” she whispered, not quite steadily, “you did have such horrid dreams, and did speak in your sleep.”
“Oh?” said Fenton, his breathing grown more quiet. “What did I say?”
“Nay, I am not sure.” Lydia tried to laugh. “’Twas English; yes, to be sure; but so quaint and strange there was but one part I could make out, where you seemed to speak to a parcel of men.”
“What did I say?” he insisted.
Lydia’s own quaint pronunciation stood out vividly against a background of what should have been ancient curtains and dead dust.
“‘We must pass the machine guns and the wire! But if you will look at this map …’”
Fenton laughed inside himself. That was the time when lowly Major Fenton planned each move of the British and French break-through which nearly smashed Jerry in ’16, and for which General Fathead-Fathead-What’s-his-name got the credit. Fenton hated it. It was lost, gone, forgotten!
“Sweet heart,” Lydia added quietly, “that was not the true reason I woke you.”
“Well?”
“I think there are many men before this house, and they cry out.”
Lydia’s body was warm and damp. He kissed her once, and in the next second was on his feet on the floor, groping for clothes.
“Strike a light!” he said harshly.
He did not trouble with underlinen. He found old velvet breeches, and thrust his feet into them. Scratch, scratch went the point of the tinderbox; the grease-ignited flame went up, the taper kindled blue, then into a glow.
Fenton stamped into a pair of high, heavy riding boots. From them he had detached his usual light spurs; now he wore heavy spurs with large, sharpened rowels. He buckled on his sword belt, but he did not wear the customary belt or his beloved Clemens Hornn sword.
The two chains held a new scabbard with a blade somewhat longer and heavier, double-edged, with a ring-hilt. Ready to hand was a main-gauche, or left-hand dagger—from long ago, when his forebears had fought with sword and dagger—which tapered two feet to its point, with a fine, curved shell-steel guard over the hand.
This he thrust into his belt. Finally, in breeches pocket rested snugly a round, very heavy steel length of seven inches: the axle of a giant coach, for blows with the right hand.
“Why don’t they call?” he demanded. “Where the devil is Giles?”
Before he could complete the sentence, there was a quick knock at the door. Lydia, drawing up the sheet, shrank back. Giles stood in the doorway, neat and prim, except with a bared sword in his right hand and another main-gauche dagger stuck into his belt.
But, more than this, Giles wore the old Cavalier helmet: not much changed, except for sharper line, in this present day of 1675. It was open-faced, with steel flaps over the ears; the flaps could be left undone or buckled under the chin.
“It is prepared,” said Giles. “Sir, where is your helmet?”
And now the blood ran smoothly but hotly through Fenton’s veins.
“D’ye think I’d wear a helmet to fight that scum?” he snarled. “Dignify the swine with military dress against them?”
“Sir, you have commanded the rest of us to wear helmets. In full melee, any stray cudgel may strike you down.” From behind his back Giles took another helmet and held it out. “I feared this,” he said.
“Giles,” said Lydia, “give me the helmet.”
Giles hurried forward and handed it to her. With one hand holding the sheet, Lydia stretched out her other arm and held the helmet towards Fenton.
“Wear it,” she said. “For if you die, then must I die too. And not by hand of any rioter, but by my own.”
There was a bursting crash of glass as a heavy stone struck the front window of the upstairs passage.
“No Popery!” bellowed a dozen voices, seeming far away. “Death to Popery!”
Without hesitation Fenton put on the helmet. The inside of its skull piece was heavily padded, with leather crossings to hold it firmly. To protect the back of the neck there were lines of linked steel tapering to a point: the lobster-tail. Fenton buckled the chin strap. Then, not troubling with shirt, he pulled on an old loose velvet coat.
“Now!” he said.
Hurrying out into the passage, he raced towards the front for a view of the attackers from the broken window.
“Sir, I count their numbers as—”
“A moment’s peace, Giles!”
Fenton could see them fairly well. Towards the rear, they had for light a lanthorn stuck on a pole and a linkman’s torch curling up yellow flame. They were spread out thickly and raggedly in front of the house in straight lines. On the other side of Pall Mall, which was tolerably wide for such a lane, there were houses or high-sloping banks.
In the front line, which had come no closer than within six feet of the lime trees with their broad opening, Fenton counted eight swords. Many swords were raised in the centre; but they were useless for close fighting. There were bristles of heavy cudgels, innumerable stones. But the weight of the cudgels, Fenton rejoiced to see, was not in the front line or on their right flank.
“No popery!”
“Hang the warlock!”
“Let him stand out! Wizard, Papist for his mistress, son of a Papist whore!”
As they saw two figures at that window, their shouts volleyed out again. Their hatred was a physical wave; it could almost be smelt. But, like most mobs, they hesitated and snarled. They would not yet come closer than six feet of the opening in the lime trees.
Fenton, his brain swiftly sorting out each detail, had put all into place.
“Downstairs!” he said. And, as they hurried down, “Where’s the rain? I hear none.”
“Sir, no drop is fallen! If we stay ten minutes more, we shall fight in a great store of rain on a road like hasty pudding!”
Beginning with what seemed like splintering echoes, a great crash of thunder exploded above the house; every window stood out ghostly white.
But downstairs there was no light, save for the glimmer of one taper in Fenton’s study. As he opened the door, four helmets turned slowly round, with the eyes beneath them seeming changed and evil.
Every man carried the rounded, murderous coach axle in his pocket. Big Tom, whose helmet had an old-style nose guard, carried a length of wood not as long or heavy as a fire log, though it seemed so. His immense fingers went round it entirely, and a cudgel was stuck in his belt. He would swing the somewhat dwarfed log, parallel to the ground, like a
bat.
Whip, the heavy-shouldered coachman, carried a log much like it; there was an anticipatory grin on his blue-chinned face. Job, the groom, had once been a juggler at a travelling fair; he carried two very heavy cudgels, being able to hit with lightning speed from either hand, crosshand, or both together.
The third swordsman, including Fenton and Giles, was young Harry. All four helmets had an ugly shine, despite dark spots or rust stains, as Fenton came in to give them last orders.
“I will be short,” he said. “But hear this! They attack us. We are protected. D’ye know what’ll happen to them? They’ll hang, every man jack of them! Fear not to kill them!
“There’s but one way to deal with what I call mob. They hang back at first, if they have no leader; you hear them out there? When I give the signal, do you instantly strike! You are not come to parley. You are not come for gentle pushes. You are come to crush and destroy and kill! Is that plain?”
A low growl went through the group, and the candle flame was reflected in their eyes.
“Good; enough!” said Fenton, and flung a pile of books off the desk, amid dust and thuds, so that he could speak to them more closely above the table. “We make sure our design is set. First! I go out alone, and spit in their faces.”
Young Harry, with sword and dagger, cried out at this.
“Sir, for God’s sake! We are six men; they are more than sixty! Can we fight six against sixty?”
“Ay, and two against two hundred!” snarled Fenton, and whirled on him. “If you have no stomach for it, then go back and sleep amid the women!”
And now, from under those old helmets about Fenton, rose an almost animal snarl. Giles, standing quietly with motionless sword, might well have thought the old Sir Nick returned.
But Giles would have been wrong. Fenton was whipping these men, according to his plan, into the savagery of fighting animals.
“Stay, where was I? Let the lily-livered bitch’s son sleep where he please!”
“Sir, I will stand!”
“Then hark to me! Thus! I go out alone. The house is dark. I set open the front door. Now the three who carry log bats and cudgels … we’ll call them woodmen; ’tis nothing accurate; no matter! Tom, Whip, Job! Move now to my left!”
The Devil in Velvet Page 24
