The Mayor of Troy Part 39

"But it is ravis.h.i.+ng--quite ravis.h.i.+ng!" declared one of the ladies.

"A duck of a place!" cried the other, inspecting the bust. "And see, Sophronia, what a duck of a man! And you say he was only a linen-draper?" She turned to Sir Felix.

"But all the Cornish are gentlemen--didn't Queen Elizabeth or somebody say something of the sort?" chimed in the first.

"And the place kept as neat as a pin, I protest!"

"Gentlemen in their own conceit, I fear," Sir Felix answered.

"But this fellow was, on the whole, a very decent fellow. Success, or what pa.s.ses for it in a small country town, never turned his head.

He had a foible, I'm told, on the strength of a likeness (you'll be amused) to the Prince Regent. But, so far as I observed, he knew how to conduct himself towards his--er--superiors. I had quite a respect for him. Yes, begad, quite a respect."

"I think, sir," said the Major, controlling his voice, "since you ask me to select a pa.s.sage, this may interest the ladies:

"'But perhaps the most remarkable trait in the subject of our memoir was his invariable magnanimity, which alone persuaded all who met him that they had to deal with no ordinary man.

It is related of him that once in childhood, having been pecked in the leg by a gander, he was found weeping rather at the aggressive insolence of the fowl (with which he had good-naturedly endeavoured to make friends) than at the trivial hurt received by his own boyish calves.'"

The ladies laughed, and Sir Felix joined in uproariously.

"How deliciously quaint!" exclaimed the one her friend had addressed as Sophronia. "What rural detail!"

"The very word. Quaint--devilish quaint!" Sir Felix agreed.

"We _are_ devilish quaint in these parts."

The Major turned a page:

"'So far as inquiry lifts the curtain over the closing scene, it was marked by a similar calm forgetfulness of self in the higher interests of his Sovereign, his Country, the British Race.

If enemies he had, he forgave them. Attending only to his country's call for volunteers to defend her sh.o.r.es, he followed it in the least conspicuous manner, and fell; leaving at once an example and a reproach to those who, living at home in ease, enjoyed the protection of spirits better conscious of the destinies and duties of Englishmen.'"

"Gad, and so he did!" Sir Felix exclaimed. "I remember thinking something of the sort at the time and doubling my subscription."

He yawned. "Shall we go, ladies?" he asked. "I a.s.sure you there is no time to be lost if you wish to see the menagerie."

But when the ladies were in the pa.s.sage, the Major half-closed the door, shutting Sir Felix off.

"May I have just one word with you, sir? I will not detain you more than a moment."

"Eh?" said Sir Felix, and pulled out a s.h.i.+lling. "Is that what you're after? Well, I'm glad you had the delicacy to let the ladies pa.s.s out first. They think us an unsophisticated folk."

The Major waved the coin aside. He planted himself on his wooden leg, with his back to the door, and faced the baronet.

"I just want to tell you," he said quietly, "that the whole of what I read was a lie."

"Naturally, my good fellow. One allows for that in those memoirs."

"The man, except in parable, was never bitten by a gander in his life," persisted the Major. "Nor did he enlist and fall--if he fell--through any magnanimous motive. He just left Troy on finding himself betrayed by a neighbour--a dirty, little, mean-spirited, pompous gander of a neighbour--and whatever example he may have unwittingly--yes, and unwillingly--set, the lesson does not appear to have been learnt--at least, until this moment. But," concluded the Major, throwing wide the door, "we keep the ladies waiting, Sir Felix."

Sir Felix, ordinarily the most irascible of men, gasped once and pa.s.sed out, cowed, beaten, utterly and hopelessly bewildered.

The Major stood by the door with chest inflated as it had not been inflated for ten years and more.

Perhaps this inflation of the chest, reviving old recollections, prompted him to do what next he did. Otherwise I confess I cannot account for it. He stepped back from the door and looked around the room, emitting a long breath. Outside the window the dusk was already descending on the street. Within a gla.s.s-fronted cupboard in the corner, hung his old uniform, sword, epaulettes and c.o.c.ked hat; above the mantelpiece a looking-gla.s.s.

He stepped to the cupboard, opened it, and took down the time-rotten regimentals. Slowly, very slowly, he divested himself of his clothes, and, piece by piece, indued himself in the old finery.

At the breeches he paused; then drew them on hastily over his wooden leg, and left them unb.u.t.toned at the knees while he thrust his arms into coat and waistcoat. Prison fare had reduced his waist, and the garments hung limply about him. But the breeches were worst.

Around his wooden leg the b.u.t.tons would not meet at all. And what to do with the gaiter?

Methodically he unstrapped the leg and regarded it. Heavens! how for these three years past he had hated it! He looked up. From the far side of the room the bust watched him, still with its fatuous smile.

He rose in a sudden access of pa.s.sion, gripping the leg, taking aim.

. . . A slight noise in the pa.s.sage arrested him, and, leaning against the door-jamb, he peered out. It was the woman with the evening's milk, and she had set down the jug in the pa.s.sage.

He closed the door, swayed a moment, and with a spring off his sound leg, leapt on the still grinning bust and smote at it, cras.h.i.+ng it into pieces.

Mrs. Tiddy, the milkwoman, ran home declaring that, in the act of delivering the usual two pennyworth at the hospital, she had seen the ghost of the Major himself, in full regimentals, in the act of a.s.saulting his own statue; which, sure enough, was found next morning scattered all over the floor.

The crash of it recalled the Major to his senses. He stared down on the fragments at his feet. He had burnt his boats now.

As methodically as he had indued them he divested himself of his regimentals, and so, having slipped into his old clothes again and strapped on his leg, stumped resolutely forth into the street.

Cai Tamblyn, like every other Trojan, kept a boat of his own; and on the eve of departing he had placed her at the Major's disposal.

She lay moored by a frape off a semi-public quay door, approached from the Fore Street by a narrow alley known as Cherry's (or Charity's) Court.

The Major stumped down to the waterside in the fast gathering dusk and hauled in the boat. Luckily the tide was high, and reached within four feet of the sill of the doorway; luckily, I say, because few contrivances in this world are less compatible than a ladder and a wooden leg. The tide being high, however, he managed to scramble down and on board without much difficulty; unmoored, s.h.i.+pped a paddle in the sculling-notch over the boat's stern, and very quietly worked her up and alongsh.o.r.e, in the shadow of the waterside houses.

Arrived at the quay-ladder leading up to Dr. Hansombody's garden-- once, alas! his own--and to the terrace consecrated by memories of the green-sealed Madeira, he checked the boat's way and looked up for a moment, listening. Hearing no sound, he slipped the painter around a rung, made fast with a hitch, and cautiously, very cautiously, pulled himself up the ladder, bringing his eyes level with the sill of the open door.

Heaven be praised! the little garden was empty. A moment later he had heaved himself on to the sill and was crawling along the terrace.

At the end of the terrace, in a dark corner by the wall, grew a stunted fig-tree, its roots set among the flagstones, its boughs overhanging the tide; and by the roots, between the bole of the trees and the wall, one of the flagstones had a notch in its edge, a notch in old days cunningly concealed, the trick of it known only to the Major.

He drew out a small marlingspike which he carried in a sheath at his hip, and, bending over the flagstone, felt for the notch; found it, inserted the point, and began to prise, glancing, as he worked, over his shoulder at the windows of the house. A lamp shone in one.

. . . So much the better. If the room had an inmate, the lamp would make it harder for him or her to see what went on in the dim garden.

Ten years. . . . Could his h.o.a.rd have lain all that time undisturbed?

He had hidden it in the old days of the invasion-scare, as many a citizen had made secret deposit against emergencies. Banks were novelties in those days. Who knew what might happen to a bank, if Boney landed?

But ten years . . . a long time . . . and yet to all appearances the stone had not been tampered with. He levered it up and thrust it aside.

No! There the bags lay amid the earth! Two bags, and a hundred guineas in each! He clutched and felt their full round sides. Yes, yes, they were full, as he had left them!

WHO-OOs.h.!.+

Heavens! What was _that_?

The Major gripped his bags and was preparing to run; but, an instant later, cowered low, and backed into the fig-tree's shadow as the whole sky leapt into flame and shook with a terrific detonation.

The Regatta fireworks had begun.

Across the little garden a window went up.