Arthur Quiller-Couch

“ They floundered on together. The tower, not fifty yards away, jetted fire from every loophole; but its marksmen were aiming into the darkness, having been caught in a hurry and before they could throw down flares. As the sergeant rushed to get close under the wall of it, a bullet sent his shako whizzing; but still he ran on, and came bareheaded to the foot of the breach.
It ran down to the foreshore, a broadening scree of rubble, ruined masonry, broken beams of timber—some of them smouldering; and over the top of it shone the blaze of the town. ”

“ But while the gig swayed and rocked, and while the wind sung past his ears, Doctor Unonius thrust a foot out, and steadying it against the hard bag, enjoyed some crowded moments of glorious life. After all these sedentary years adventure had swooped on him out of the night and was wafting him along in a sort of ecstasy. If the hand were, after all, a woman's, he could never forgive himself. ”

“ Doctor Unonius went to the window, drew the curtains, unbarred a shutter, and stared out into the night. A newly risen moon hung low in the south-east, just above the coping of the courtlage wall, but the wall with its shrubs and clumps of ivy, massed in blackest shadow, excluded all view of the terrestrial world. The sound, whatever it had been, was not repeated.
Doctor Unonius stood for half a minute or so and gazed out with his forehead pressed to the pane. Then he closed the shutter again, let fall the curtain, and with a slight shiver went back to the fireplace. ”

“ The house was untouched by fire as yet, though another to the left of it blazed furiously. It clung, as it were a swallow's nest, to the face of the cliff. A garden wall ran under the front; and, parallel with the wall, a road pretty constantly swept by musketry fire from the convent. At the head of the street Corporal Sam stumbled against a rifleman who, sheltered from bullets at the angle of the crossing, stood calmly watching the conflagration. ”

“ Five or six times he interrupted his patter to pluck a cracker or a bon-bon out of my beard, and toss it down to his audience. The children gasped at first, and stared at the magic spoil on the floor. By-and-by one adventurous little girl crept forward, and picked up a cracker, and her cry of delight as she discovered that it was real, gave the signal for a general scramble. Mr Felix continued his patter without seeming to heed it: but his hand went up faster and faster to my beard and wig, and soon the crackers were falling in showers. ”

“ No light showed anywhere—as why should the widow Tresize or her maid Tryphena be awake at such an hour? The doctor would have required sharp eyes indeed to note, as he drew rein, that the blind of an upper window at the south-east corner had been drawn aside an inch or so out of the perpendicular. Had he detected this, indeed, it would have meant no more than that the widow, awakened from her slumbers by the sound of wheels, had arisen to satisfy the curiosity natural to women. ”

“ CHAPTER III. 'I don't understand ye, lad,' said Sergeant Wilkes.
'Fast enough you'd understand, if you'd but look me in the face,' answered Corporal Sam, digging his heel into the sand.
The two men lay supine on a cushion of coarse grass; the sergeant smoking and staring up at the sky, the corporal, with his sound hand clasping his wounded one behind his head, his gaze fixed gloomily between his knees and across the dunes, on the still unrepaired breach in San Sebastian. ”

“ The British leapt after it, breaking through the traverse and swarming up to the curtain's summit. Almost at the same moment the Thirteenth and Twenty-fourth Portuguese, who had crossed the river by a lower ford, hurled themselves over the lesser breach to the right; and as the swollen heavens burst in a storm of rain and thunder, from this point and that the besiegers, as over the lip of a dam, swept down into the streets.
'Treat men like dogs, and they'll behave like dogs,' grumbled
Sergeant Wilkes, as he followed to prevent what mischief he might. ”

“ The hand he had just gripped was no woman's at all, but the hand of a man.
He stole another glance at his companion. She, or he, was leaning forward in a huddled attitude to meet the wind which now, as they rounded an edge of the down, blew crosswise athwart the gig and a little ahead. Nothing of face could be seen, only—and this dimly by the starshine—the hand that grasped the shawl. But it was enough; a man's hand, the doctor could almost swear. ”

“ By its mere beauty, indeed, any one might be excused for falling in love with Kirris-vean. It lies, almost within the actual shadow of Sir Felix's great house, at the foot of a steep wooded coombe, and fronts with diminutive beach and pier the blue waters of our neighbouring bay. The cottages are whitewashed and garlanded with jasmine, solanum, the monthly rose. Fuchsias bloom in their front gardens; cabbages and runner beans climb the hillside in orderly rows at their backs. ”

“ One of them set his tray down on a table, stepped neatly ahead as Mr Felix reached the lowest stair, and opened a door for us on the right. I found myself at a stand on the threshold, blinking at a blaze of light, and staring up a perspective of waxed floor at a miniature stage which filled the far end of the room. Light, as every one knows, travels farther than sound: were it not so, I should say that almost ahead of the blaze there broke on us a din of voices—of happy children's voices. ”

“ The sea-wall, for almost half its length, formed but a fausse braye for the hornwork towering formidably behind it. Only where it covered the town, in the space between citadel and hornwork, this wall became a simple rampart; stout indeed and solid and twenty-seven feet high, with two flanking towers for enfilading fire, besides a demi-bastion at the Mount Orgullo end, yet offering the weak spot in the defences. ”

“ On the thought of this, as Dapple drew the gig through the gateway, Doctor Unonius edged up close to the step. . . . It might be all very well for Odysseus to squat on the ground when attacked by the hounds of Eumaeus, but Odysseus had not the resource (perhaps better) of springing into a gig.
Idle precaution! The widow Tresize's dogs were peradventure caught napping. At all events, neither one nor the other uttered a sound. Doctor Unonius, wrenching a lamp from its socket, walked boldly forward at Dapple's bit and, coming to the back entrance by the midden-yard, knocked boldly. ”

“ What on earth should a man be doing in woman's clothes, on this road and at this hour? The road led no whither but to Polpeor and the coast, and passed on its way no human habitation but Landeweddy Farm and a couple of cottages half a mile beyond it, close under the dip of the hill. . . .
'You are shivering,' said Doctor Unonius, after a pause. ”

“ It don't look to me the sort of house to hold five pounds' worth, all told—let be that, to force it, a man must cross half the fire from the convent, and in full view. Five pounds be damned! Five pounds isn't so scarce in these times that a man need go there to fetch it for his widow.'
The corporal was turning away. For three days San Sebastian had been a hell, between the flames of which he had seen things that sickened his soul. ”

“ The night was warm and windless, with a waning moon in the east, and as yet no tremble of the dawn below it. Around the foot of the dovecote the turf lay in blackest shadow; but a moon-ray overtopping the low ridge of Mr Garraway's back premises (Mr Pinsent's next-door neighbour on the left) , illuminated the eastern side of the barrel, the projecting platform on which it rested, and a yard or more of the mast, from its summit down—or, to be accurate, it shed a pale radiance on a youthful figure, clinging there by its legs, and upon a hand and arm reaching over the platform to rob the roost. ”

“ Sergeant Wilkes, not catching the meaning of this, turned about slowly. The speaker was a tall young corporal, Sam Vicary by name and by birth a Somerset lad—a curly haired, broad-shouldered fellow with a simple engaging smile. He had come out with one of the later drafts, and nobody knew the cause of his enlisting, but it was supposed to be some poaching trouble at home. At all events, the recruiting sergeant had picked up a bargain in him, for, let alone his stature—and the Royals as a regiment prided themselves on their inches—he was easily the best marksman in B Company. ”

“ The suburb here lay deserted. He halted, and listened to a footfall that died away into the darkness on his right. He felt at home again—here, wrapped around by the ghostly centuries as by the folds of a mantle, and warm within the folds.
Strange to say, the chill came on him as he passed under the arch of Westgate, and into view of the busy High Street, the lit shops, the passers-by jostling upon the pavements, the running newsboys, the hawkers with their barrows, the soldiers strolling five abreast down the middle of the roadway. Here was the whole city coming and going. ”

“ To those who knew him in life there is a gentle irony in the thought that while, during life, his scientific attainments earned him nothing but neglect, their recognition grows now proportionately as the man himself, his face and habit, the spruce black suit he wore, and the thousand small acts of kindness he did, fade out of memory. 'Your late eminent fellow-parishioner, now these forty years with God,'—so the Bishop of the Diocese spoke the other day before unveiling a stained-glass window to that memory in Polpeor Church. ”

“ Mr Lupus.
'Good-morning, Lupus!' The mayor nodded to him. 'We were just saying that you bring up the boys of this town shamefully. Yes, sir, shamefully.'
'No, indeed, your Worship,' protested Mr Lupus, looking up with a timid smile, as he drew off his spectacles and polished them. 'Your Worship is pleasant with me. I do assure you, gentlemen, that my boys are very good boys, and give me scarcely any trouble.'
'That's because you sit at school in your daydreams, and don't take note of the mischief that goes on around you. A set of anointed young scoundrels, Mr Lupus!'
'You don't mean it, sir. ”

“ Sergeant Wilkes, on whose recommendation he had been given his corporal's stripe, the day after Vittoria, looked on him as the hopefullest of his youngsters.
'Feels like?' echoed the sergeant, following the young man's gaze and observing that it rested on the great breach. 'Oh! 'tis the assault you mean? Well, it feels pretty much like any other part of the business, only your blood's up, and you don't have to keep yourself warm, waiting for the guns to tire. ”

“ You never had a child of your own, Mr Pinsent—and more's the pity for the child—but with one of your own you'd know what it feels like!'
Mr Pinsent felt in his trouser-pocket, drew forth two half-crowns, and pressed them into Mrs Halloran's dirty palm. With a sob and a blessing she escaped. He heard her run sobbing down the passage to the front door. Then he turned upon Mike.
The boy had sidled round with his back against the wall, and stood there with his left elbow up and his fists half clenched. For the space of half a minute the mayor eyed him, and he eyed the mayor. ”

“ Sir Felix himself called on me and confirmed it.
A trio of young footmen (it appeared) had arrived in Kirris-vean to spend a holiday on board-wages—their several employers having gone northward for the grouse, to incommodious shooting-boxes where a few servants sufficed. Finding themselves at a loose end (to use their own phrase for it) these three young men had hit on the wild—the happy—the almost delirious idea of a Regatta; and taking their courage in their hands had sought an interview with Sir Felix, to entreat his patronage for the scheme. ”

“ To worsen my plight, as I pursued I caught sound of hoofs pounding behind and, as it seemed, overtaking me; supposed that a horseman was riding me down; and, reining the mare back fiercely, slued about to meet his onset. It proved to be the poor pack-horse I had left in the valley! He must have galloped like a racer; but now he came to a halt, and thrust his poor bewildered face towards me through the darkness. ”

“ For the rest, he was a hale, cheerful, even jovial gentleman, now well past fifty; clear of eye, sound of wind and limb, standing six feet two in his stockings; fearing no man, on good terms with all, but liking his neighbours best, and no more eccentric than a country squire has the right, if not even the obligation to be. Unless it were in the saddle, you could scarcely see him to better advantage than at this ceremony of brandy-mixing—for a ceremony it was; no pushing of a decanter, but a slow solemn ladling by the host himself from an ample bowl. Moreover, the Penalune brandy was famous. ”

“ For the lads, sir, are young lads, though willing enough; and young lads need to be nursed, however willing. As between you and me, sir'—here he appealed to Captain Archimbeau—'B Company is the steadiest in the battalion. But if the major takes away its captain, and upon top of him its senior sergeant—well, beggin' your pardon, a compliment's a compliment, but it may be bought too dear.'
'Wilkes is right,' said the major, after a pause. ”

“ Without delay I fetched my roan mare from the stable, mounted, and rode out beyond the West Gate to a point where the little River Wey runs close alongside the high-road. There I found the trumpet in converse with our picket, and took stock of him by aid of the sergeant's lantern. He was a blackavised, burly fellow, with heavy side-locks, a pimpled face, and about the nose a touch of blue that, methought, did not come of the frosty air. He sat very high in saddle, upon a large-jointed bay, and wore a stained coat that covered his regimentals and reached almost to his rowels. ”

“ So Roger Olver, huntsman and handy-man to Sir John Penalune of Penalune, squire of Polpeor, hitched his horse's bridle on the staple by the doctor's front door—it would be hard to compute how many farmers, husbands, riding down at dead of night with news of wives in labour, had tethered their horses to that well-worn staple—and was conducted by Jenifer to the doctor's study.
'Ah! Good morning, Roger!'
'Mornin', y'r honour. Sir John bade me ride down an' ask 'ee—'
'To be sure—to be sure. As it happens, no man could have come at a happier moment. ”

“ He flung the door open and stood with a hand-lamp held high, surveying me: a little old man, thin as a rat, in skullcap, furred gown, and list slippers. The lamp shone down on his silvered hair and on a pair of spectacles he had pushed up to the edge of his cap; and showed me a face mildly meditative from the brow down to the chin, which by contrast was extremely resolute.
'More soldiers!' he observed testily. 'The plague take it that they and the meteors must choose the same night to drop from heaven! ”