Rafael Sabatini

“ The agony of this strong man, the broken pleading of one whom he had ever known arrogant and strong had no power to touch his mean, selfish mind, consumed as it was by the contemplation of his undoing—magnified a hundredfold—which this man had wrought.
“You have ruined my life,” was all he said.
“I will rebuild it, Jocelyn,” cried Galliard eagerly. “I have friends in France—friends high in power who lack neither the means nor the will to aid me. You are a soldier, Jocelyn.”
“As much a soldier as I'm a saint,” sneered Hogan to himself. ”

“ It was Colonel Pride himself, who having pushed his way forward, now beheld the bleeding body of the youth Crispin had slain. “Take him alive!” roared the old man. Then his voice changing to one of exquisite agony—“My son, my boy,” he moaned.
At a glance Crispin caught the situation; but the old Puritan's grief left him unmoved.
“You must have me alive?” he laughed grimly. “Gadslife, but the honour is like to cost you dear. Well, sirs? Who will be next to court the distinction of dying by the sword of a gentleman?” ”

“ Kenneth, looking on, could not repress a shudder. He had known Crispin for a tempestuous man quickly moved to wrath, and he had oftentimes seen anger make terrible his face and glance. But never had he seen aught in him to rival this present frenzy; it rendered satanical the baleful glance of his eyes and the awful smile of hate and mockery with which he gazed at last upon the helpless quarry that he had waited eighteen years to bring to earth. “I would,” said Crispin, in a harsh, deliberate voice, “that you had a score of lives, Master Joseph. As it is I have done what I could. ”

“ Galliard was a man of quick action, swift to think, and as swift to execute the thought. To thrust Kenneth into a corner, to extinguish the light, and to fling himself upon the bed was all the work of an instant.
The key grated in the lock, and Crispin answered it with a resounding snore. The door opened, and on the threshold stood the Roundhead trooper, holding aloft a lanthorn whose rays were flashed back by his polished cuirass. He beheld Crispin on the bed with closed eyes and open mouth, and he heard his reassuring and melodious snore. ”

“ For justice he came, and armed with retribution; the flame of a hate unspeakable burning in his heart, and demanding the lives—no less—of those that had destroyed him and his. Yet was he forced to sit a mendicant almost at that board whose head was his by every right; forced to sit and curb his mood, giving no outward sign of the volcano that boiled and raged within his soul as his eye fell upon the florid, smiling face and portly, well-fed frame of Gregory Ashburn. For the time was not yet. He must wait; wait until Joseph's return, so that he might spend his vengeance upon both together. ”

“ We were becoming the sweetest friends, when, like an incarnate fiend, that loutish clown, her lover, sweeps down upon us, and, with more jealousy than wit, struck me—struck me, Harry Hogan! Soul of my body, think of it, Cris!” And he grew red with anger at the recollection. “I took him by the collar of his mean smock and flung him into the kennel—the fittest bed he ever lay in. Had he remained there it had been well for him; but the fool, accounting himself affronted, came up to demand satisfaction. I gave it him, and plague on it—he's dead!”
“An ugly tale,” was Crispin's sour comment. ”

“ You forget, Sir Crispin.”
“'Slife, I had indeed forgotten. For the moment I had gone back twenty years, and to-morrow was none so near.” He laughed softly, as though his lapse of memory amused him. Then he resumed:
“I was the only son, Kenneth, of the noblest gentleman that ever lived—the heir to an ancient, honoured name, and to a castle as proud and lands as fair and broad as any in England.
“They lie who say that from the dawn we may foretell the day. Never was there a brighter dawn than that of my life; never a day so wasted; never an evening so dark. ”

“ In a room of the first floor of the Auberge du Soleil, at Calais, the host inquired of Crispin if he were milord Galliard. At that question Crispin caught his breath in apprehension, and felt himself turn pale. What it portended, he guessed; and it stifled the hope that had been rising in him since his arrival, and because he had not found his son awaiting him either on the jetty or at the inn. He dared ask no questions, fearing that the reply would quench that hope, which rose despite himself, and begotten of a desire of which he was hardly conscious. ”

“ Fortune had favoured the youth at first, but as the stakes grew her favours to him diminished, and at the moment that Cynthia rode out of the inn-yard, Mr. Harry Foster flung his last gold piece with an oath upon the table.
“Rat me,” he groaned, “there's the end of a hundred.”
He toyed sorrowfully with the red ribbon in his black hair, and Crispin, seeing that no fresh stake was forthcoming, made shift to rise. But the coxcomb detained him.
“Tarry, sir,” he cried, “I've not yet done. 'Slife, we'll make a night of it.” ”

“ Up this at that moment, with the least suspicion of a swagger in his gait, Sir Crispin Galliard was approaching leisurely; he wore a claret-coloured doublet edged with silver lace, and a grey hat decked with a drooping red feather—which garments, together with the rest of his apparel, he had drawn from the wardrobe of Gregory Ashburn. His advent afforded Kenneth the retort he needed. Pointing him out to Cynthia:
“Would you rather,” he cried hotly, “have me such a man as that?”
“And, pray, why not?” she taunted him. “Leastways, you would then be a man.” ”

“ But of no feat of his had she been told that could rival that of his escape from Worcester; and when, that same evening, Kenneth related it, as they supped, her low-lidded eyes grew very wide, and as they fell on Crispin, admiration had taken now the place of interest.
Romance swayed as great a portion of her heart as it does of most women's. She loved the poets and their songs of great deeds; and here was one who, in the light of that which they related of him, was like an incarnation of some hero out of a romancer's ballad. ”

“ By contrasting him now with Crispin she had grown to despise him. His weakness, his pusillanimity, his meannesses of soul, stood out in sharp relief by contrast with the masterful strength and the high spirit of Sir Crispin.
So easily may our ideals change that the very graces of face and form that a while ago had pleased her in Kenneth, seemed now effeminate attributes, well-attuned to a vacillating, purposeless mind. Far greater beauty did her eyes behold in this grimfaced soldier of fortune; the man as firm of purpose as he was upright of carriage; gloomy, proud, and reckless ”

“ The laughter died down as Kenneth's insult penetrated their befuddled minds. An instant's lull there was, like the lull in nature that precedes a clap of thunder. Then, as with one accord, a dozen of them bore down upon him.
It was a vile thing they did, perhaps; but then they had drunk deep, and Kenneth Stewart counted no friend amongst them. In an instant they had him, kicking and biting, on the floor; his doublet was torn rudely open, and from his breast Tyler plucked the letter whose existence had led to this shameless scene. ”

“ Galliard had ruined him with these Ashburns. He could never now hope to win the hand of Cynthia, to achieve which he had been willing to turn both fool and knave—aye, had turned both. There was naught left him but to return him to the paltry Scottish estate of his fathers, there to meet the sneers of those who no doubt had heard that he was gone South to marry a great English heiress.
That at such a season he could think of this but serves to prove the shallow nature of his feelings. A love was his that had gain and vanity for its foundation—in fact, it was no love at all. ”

“ Without a word, and still holding the crumpled letter in his clenched hand, he set his elbows on the table, and, pressing his temples to his palms, he sat there dumb. Within him a very volcano raged, and its fires were fed with loathing—loathing for this man whom he had ever hated, yet never as he hated him now, knowing him to be his father. It seemed as if to all the wrongs which Crispin had done him during the months of their acquaintanceship he had now added a fresh and culminating wrong by discovering this parentage. ”

“ Charles Stuart or Oliver Cromwell, 'tis all one to me. What care I whether King or Commonwealth prevail? Shall Harry Hogan be the better or the richer under one than under the other? Oddslife, Cris, I have trailed a pike or handled a sword in well-nigh every army in Europe. I know more of the great art of war than all the King's generals rolled into one. Think you, then, I can rest content with a miserable company of horse when plunder is forbidden, and even our beggarly pay doubtful? ”

“ Throughout the night they went rumbling on their way at a pace whose sluggishness elicited many an oath from Crispin as he rode a few yards in the rear, ever watchful of the possibility of pursuit. But there was none, nor none need he have feared, since whilst he rode through the cold night, Gregory Ashburn slept as peacefully as a man may with the fever and an evil conscience, and imagined his dutiful daughter safely abed. ”

“ Gregory shrugged his shoulders and laughed cynically, replying that it was the way of young men to be fools, and that through folly lay the road to wisdom.
“Be that as it may,” she answered him with spirit, “this folly transcends all bounds. Master Stewart may return to his Scottish heather; at Castle Marleigh he is wasting time.”
“Cynthia!” he cried.
“Father,” she pleaded, “why be angry? You would not have me marry against the inclinations of my heart? You would not have me wedded to a man whom I despise?” ”

“ And so I determined to let my vengeance wait until the war were ended and the Parliament destroyed. In a hundred engagements did I distinguish myself by my recklessness even as at other seasons I distinguished myself by my debaucheries.
“Ah, Kenneth, you have been hard upon me for my vices, for my abuses of the cup, and all the rest. But can you be hard upon me still, knowing what I had suffered, and what a weight of misery I bore with me? I, whose life was wrecked beyond salvation; who only lived that I might slit the throats of those that had so irreparably wronged me. ”

“ His life had been indeed one protracted course of wrong-doing, and many had suffered by Gregory's evil ways—many a man and many a woman. But as the stars pale and fade when the sun mounts the sky, so too were the lesser wrongs that marked his earthly pilgrimage of sin rendered pale or blotted into insignificance by the greater wrong he had done Ronald Marleigh—a wrong which was not ended yet, but whose completion Joseph was even then working to effect. ”

“ Crispin looked, and there, like a gash in the blackness of the heavens, he beheld a streak of grey.
“Quick, Sir Crispin; there is no time to lose. The minister said he would return at daybreak.”
“Let him come,” answered Galliard grimly, as he moved towards the casement.
He gripped the lower bar with his lean, sinewy hands, and setting his knee against the masonry beneath it, he exerted the whole of his huge strength—that awful strength acquired during those years of toil as a galley-slave, which even his debaucheries had not undermined. ”

“ Crispin yawned noisily when he was gone, and stretched himself. Then pointing to the pallet:
“Come, lad, 'tis your turn,” said he.
Kenneth shivered. “I could not sleep,” he cried. “I could not.”
“As you will.” And shrugging his shoulders, Crispin sat down on the edge of the bed.
“For cold comforters commend me to these cropeared cuckolds,” he grumbled. “They are all thought for a man's soul, but for his body they care nothing. Here am I who for the last ten hours have had neither meat nor drink. ”

“ To-night, as Crispin eyed the youth, and remembered that at dawn he was to die in his company, he realized that he had used him ill, that his behaviour towards him had been that of the dissolute ruffler he was become, rather than of the gentleman he had once accounted himself.
“Kenneth,” he said at length, and his voice bore so unusually mild a ring that the lad looked up in surprise. “I have heard tell that it is no uncommon thing for men upon the threshold of eternity to seek to repair some of the evil they may have done in life.” ”

“ Think you a gentleman is a Jack Presbyter, or a droning member of your kirk committee, strutting it like a crow in the gutter? Gadswounds, boy, when I was your age, and George Villiers lived—”
“Oh, have done!” broke in the youth impetuously. “Suffer me to leave you, Sir Crispin, to your bottle, your croaking, and your memories.”
“Aye, go your ways, sir; you'd be sorry company for a dead man—the sorriest ever my evil star led me into. The door is yonder, and should you chance to break your saintly neck on the stairs, it is like to be well for both of us.” ”

“ He lay back in his chair, his long, spare legs outstretched, his spurs jingling to the lilt of his ditty whose burden ran:
On the lip so red of the wench that's sped His passionate kiss burns, still-O! For 'tis April time, and of love and wine Youth's way is to take its fill-O! Down, down, derry-do! So his cup he drains and he shakes his reins, And rides his rake-helly way-O! She was sweet to woo and most comely, too, But that was all yesterday-O! Down, down, derry-do!
The lad started forward with something akin to a shiver. ”

“ But in a moment he had scorned the craven argument of flight, and determined that come what might he would face his son, and lay the truth before him, leaving him to judge how strong fate had been. As he lay feverish and fretful in the vessel's cabin, he came well-nigh to hating Kenneth; he remembered him only as a poor, mean creature, now a bigot, now a fop, now a psalm-monger, now a roysterer, but ever a hypocrite, ever a coward, and never such a man as he could have taken pride in presenting as his offspring. ”

“ He might have known that one who had acquired Sir Crispin's fame was no ordinary man, but one accustomed to face great odds and master them. He might call for help.
He marvelled as the thought occurred to him that the clatter of their blades had not drawn his servants from their quarters. Fencing still, he raised his voice:
“Ho, there! John, Stephen!”
“Spare your breath,” growled the knight. “I dare swear you'll have need of it. None will hear you, call as you will. ”