Books: In Kedar\'s Tents
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Henry Seton Merriman >> In Kedar\'s Tents
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17 Transcribed from the 1909 Smith, Elder and Co. edition by Les
Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
IN KEDAR'S TENTS
by Henry Seton Merriman.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. ONE SOWETH.
II. ANOTHER REAPETH.
III. LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA.
IV. LE PREMIER PAS.
V. CONTRABAND.
VI. AT RONDA.
VII. IN A MOORISH GARDEN.
VIII. THE LOVE LETTER.
IX. A WAR OF WIT.
X. THE CITY OF DISCONTENT.
XI. A TANGLED WEB.
XII. ON THE TOLEDO ROAD.
XIII. A WISE IGNORAMUS.
XIV. A WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE.
XV. AN ULTIMATUM.
XVI. IN HONOUR.
XVII. IN MADRID.
XVIII. IN TOLEDO.
XIX. CONCEPCION TAKES THE ROAD.
XX. ON THE TALAVERA ROAD.
XXI. A CROSS-EXAMINATION.
XXII. REPARATION.
XXIII. LARRALDE'S PRICE.
XXIV. PRIESTCRAFT.
XXV. SWORDCRAFT.
XXVI. WOMANCRAFT.
XXVII. A NIGHT JOURNEY.
XXVIII. THE CITY OF STRIFE.
XXIX. MIDNIGHT AND DAWN.
XXX. THE DAWN OF PEACE.
CHAPTER I. ONE SOWETH.
'If it be a duty to respect other men's claims, so also is it a duty
to maintain our own.'
It is in the staging of her comedies that fate shows herself
superior to mere human invention. While we, with careful regard to
scenery, place our conventional puppets on the stage and bid them
play their old old parts in a manner as ancient, she rings up the
curtain and starts a tragedy on a scene that has obviously been set
by the carpenter for a farce. She deals out the parts with a fine
inconsistency, and the jolly-faced little man is cast to play Romeo,
while the poetic youth with lantern jaw and an impaired digestion
finds no Juliet to match his love.
Fate, with that playfulness which some take too seriously or quite
amiss, set her queer stage as long ago as 1838 for the comedy of
certain lives, and rang up the curtain one dark evening on no fitter
scene than the high road from Gateshead to Durham. It was raining
hard, and a fresh breeze from the south-east swept a salt rime from
the North Sea across a tract of land as bare and bleak as the waters
of that grim ocean. A hard, cold land this, where the iron that has
filled men's purses has also entered their souls.
There had been a great meeting at Chester-le-Street of those who
were at this time beginning to be known as Chartists, and, the Act
having been lately passed that torchlight meetings were illegal,
this assembly had gathered by the light of a waning moon long since
hidden by the clouds. Amid the storm of wind and rain, orators had
expounded views as wild as the night itself, to which the hard-
visaged sons of Northumbria had listened with grunts of approval or
muttered words of discontent. A dangerous game to play--this
stirring up of the people's heart, and one that may at any moment
turn to the deepest earnest.
Few thought at this time that the movement awakening in the working
centres of the North and Midlands was destined to spread with the
strange rapidity of popular passion--to spread and live for a
decade. Few of the Chartists expected to see the fulfilment of half
of their desires. Yet, to-day, a moiety of the People's Charter has
been granted. These voices crying in the night demanded an extended
suffrage, vote by ballot, and freedom for rich and poor alike to sit
in Parliament. Within the scope of one reign these demands have
been granted.
The meeting at Chester-le-Street was no different from a hundred
others held in England at the same time. It was illegal, and yet
the authorities dared not to pronounce it so. It might prove
dangerous to those taking part in it. Lawyers said that the leaders
laid themselves open to the charge of high treason. In this
assembly as in others there were wirepullers--men playing their own
game, and from the safety of the rear pushing on those in front.
With one of these we have to do. With his mistake Fate raised the
curtain, and on the horizon of several lives arose a cloud no bigger
than a man's hand.
Geoffrey Horner lived before his time, insomuch as he was a
gentleman-Radical. He was clever, and the world heeded not. He was
brilliant, well educated, capable of great achievements, and the
world refused to be astonished. Here were the makings of a
malcontent. A well-born Radical is one whom the world has refused
to accept at his own valuation. A wise man is ready to strike a
bargain with Fate. The wisest are those who ask much and then take
half. It is the coward who asks too little, and the fool who
imagines that he will receive without demanding.
Horner had thrown in his lot with the Chartists in that spirit of
pique which makes a man marry the wrong woman because the right one
will have none of him. At the Chester-le-Street meeting he had
declared himself an upholder of moral persuasion, while in his heart
he pandered to those who knew only of physical force and placed
their reliance thereon. He had come from Durham with a contingent
of malcontents, and was now returning thither on foot in company
with the local leaders. These were intelligent mechanics seeking
clumsily and blindly enough what they knew to be the good of their
fellows. At their heels tramped the rank and file of the great
movement. The assembly was a subtle foreshadowing of things to
come--of Newport and the march of twenty thousand men, of violence
and bloodshed, of strife between brethren, and of justice nonplussed
and hesitating.
The toil-worn miners were mostly silent, their dimly enlightened
intellects uneasily stirred by the words they had lately heard--
their stubborn hearts full of a great hope with a minute misgiving
at the back of it. With this dangerous material Geoffrey Horner
proposed to play his game.
Suddenly a voice was raised.
'Mates,' it cried, at the cross-roads, 'let's go and smash
Pleydell's windows!'
And a muttered acquiescence to the proposal swept through the moving
mass like a sullen breeze through reeds.
The desire for action rustled among these men of few words and
mighty arms.
Horner hurriedly consulted his colleagues. Was it wise to attempt
to exert an authority which was merely nominal? The principles of
Chartism were at this time to keep within the limits of the law, and
yet to hint, when such a course was safe, that stronger measures lay
behind mere words. Their fatal habit was to strike softly.
In peace and war, at home and abroad, there is but one humane and
safe rule: Hesitate to strike--strike hard.
Sir John Pleydell was a member of that Parliament which had treated
the Charter with contempt. He was one of those who had voted with
the majority against the measures it embodied.
In addition to these damnatory facts, he was a local Tory of some
renown--an ambitious man, the neighbours said, who wished to leave
his son a peerage.
To the minds of the rabble this magnate represented the tyranny
against which their protest was raised. Geoffrey Horner looked on
him as a political opponent and a dangerous member of the winning
party. The blow was easy to strike. Horner hesitated--at the cross
roads of other lives than his own--and held his tongue.
The suggestion of the unknown humorist in the crowd commended itself
to the more energetic of the party, who immediately turned towards
the by-road leading to Dene Hall. The others--the minority--
followed as minorities do, because they distrusted themselves. Some
one struck up a song with words lately published in the 'Northern
Liberator' and set to a well-known local air.
The shooting party assembled at Dene Hall was still at the dinner
table when the malcontents entered the park, and the talk of coverts
and guns ceased suddenly at the sound of their rough voices. Sir
John Pleydell, an alert man still, despite his grey hair and drawn,
careworn face, looked up sharply. He had been sitting silently
fingering the stem of his wineglass--a habit of his when the ladies
quitted the room--and, although he had shot as well as, perhaps
better than, any present, had taken but little part in the
conversation. He had, in fact, only half listened, and when a rare
smile passed across his grey face it invariably owed its existence
to some sally made by his son, Alfred Pleydell, gay, light-hearted,
debonnaire, at the far end of the table. When Sir John's thoughtful
eyes rested on his motherless son, a dull and suppressed light
gleamed momentarily beneath his heavy lids. Superficial observers
said that John Pleydell was an ambitious man; 'not for himself,'
added the few who saw deeper.
When his quick mind now took in the import of the sound that broke
the outer silence of the night, Sir John's glance sought his son's
face. In moments of alarm the glance flies to where the heart is.
'What is that?' asked Alfred Pleydell, standing up.
'The Chartists,' said Sir John.
Alfred looked round. He was a soldier, though the ink had hardly
dried upon the parchment that made him one--the only soldier in the
room.
'We are eleven here,' he said, 'and two men downstairs--some of you
fellows have your valets too--say fifteen in all. We cannot stand
this, you know. '
As he spoke the first volley of stones crashed through the windows,
and the broken glass rattled to the floor behind the shutters. The
cries of the ladies in the drawing-room could be heard, and all the
men sprang to their feet. With blazing eyes Alfred Pleydell ran to
the door, but his father was there before him.
'Not you,' said the elder man, quiet but a little paler than usual;
'I will go and speak to them. They will not dare to touch me. They
are probably running away by this time. '
'Then we'll run after 'em,' answered Alfred with a fine spirit, and
something in his attitude, in the ring of his voice, awoke that
demon of combativeness which lies dormant in men of the Anglo-Saxon
race.
'Come on, you fellows!' cried the boy with a queer glad laugh, and
without knowing that he did it Sir John stood aside, his heart warm
with a sudden pride, his blood stirred by something that had not
moved it these thirty years. The guests crowded out of the room--
old men who should have known better--laughing as they threw aside
their dinner napkins. What a strange thing is man, peaceful through
long years, and at a moment's notice a mere fighting devil.
'Come on, we'll teach them to break windows!' repeated Alfred
Pleydell, running to the stick rack. The rain rattled on the
skylight of the square hall, and the wind roared down the open
chimney. Among the men hastily arming themselves with heavy sticks
and cramming caps upon their heads were some who had tasted of
rheumatism, but they never thought of an overcoat.
'We'll know each other by our shirt fronts,' said a quiet man who
was standing on a chair in order to reach an Indian club suspended
on the wall.
Alfred was at the door leading through to the servants' quarters,
and his summons brought several men from the pantry and kitchens.
'Come on!' he cried, 'take anything you can find--stick or poker--
yes, and those old guns, use 'em like a club, hit very hard and very
often. We'll charge the devils--there's nothing like a charge--come
on!'
And he was already out of the door with a dozen at his heels.
The change from the lighted rooms to the outer darkness made them
pause a moment, during which time the defenders had leisure to group
themselves around Alfred Pleydell. A hoarse shout, which indeed
drowned Geoffrey Horner's voice, showed where the assailants stood.
Horner had found his tongue after the first volley of stones. It
was the policy of the Chartist leaders and wirepullers to suggest
rather than demonstrate physical force. Enough had been done to
call attention to the Chester-le-Street meeting, and give it the
desired prominence in the eyes of the nation.
'Get back, go to your homes!' he was shouting, with upraised arms,
when the hoarse cry of his adherents and the flood of light from the
opened door made him turn hastily. In a moment he saw the meaning
of this development, but it was too late.
With a cheer, Alfred Pleydell, little more than a boy, led the
charge, and seeing Horner in front, ran at him with upraised stick.
Horner half warded the blow, which came whistling down his own stick
and paralysed his thumb. He returned the stroke with a sudden fury,
striking Pleydell full on the head. Then, because he had a young
wife and child at home, he pushed his way through the struggling
crowd, and ran away in the darkness. As he ran he could hear his
late adherents dispersing in all directions, like sheep before a
dog. He heard a voice calling:
'Alfred! Alfred!'
And Horner, who an hour--nay, ten minutes--earlier had had no
thought of violence, ran his fastest along the road by which he had
lately come. His heart was as water within his breast, and his
staring eyes played their part mechanically. He did not fall, but
he noted nothing, and had no knowledge whither he was running.
Alfred Pleydell lay quite still on the lawn in front of his father's
house.
CHAPTER II. ANOTHER REAPETH.
'Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt.'
During the course of a harum-scarum youth in the city of Dublin
certain persons had been known to predict that Mr. Frederick
Conyngham had a future before him. Mostly pleasant-spoken Irish
persons these, who had the racial habit of saying that which is
likely to be welcome. Many of them added, 'the young divil,' under
their breath, in a pious hope of thereby cleansing their souls from
guilt.
'I suppose I'm idle, and what is worse, I know I'm a fool,' said
Conyngham himself to his tutor when that gentleman, with a
toleration which was undeserved, took him severely to task before
sending him up for the Bar examination. The tutor said nothing, but
he suspected that this, his wildest pupil, was no fool. Truth to
tell, Frederick Conyngham had devoted little thought to the matter
of which he spoke, namely, himself, and was perhaps none the worse
for that. A young man who thinks too often usually falls into the
error of also thinking too much, of himself.
The examination was, however, safely passed, and in due course
Frederick was called to the Irish Bar, where a Queen's Counsel, with
an accent like rich wine, told him that he was now a gintleman, and
entitled so to call himself.
All these events were left behind, and Conyngham, sitting alone in
his rooms in Norfolk Street, Strand, three days after the breaking
of Sir John Pleydell's windows, was engaged in realising that the
predicted future was still in every sense before him, and in nowise
nearer than it had been in his mother's lifetime.
This realisation of an unpleasant fact appeared in no way to disturb
his equanimity, for, as he knocked his pipe against the bars of the
fire, he murmured a popular air in a careless voice. The firelight
showed his face to be pleasant enough in a way that left the land of
his birth undoubted. Blue eyes, quick and kind; a square chin,
closely curling hair, and square shoulders bespoke an Irishman.
Something, however, in the cut of his lips--something close and
firm--suggested an admixture of Anglo-Saxon blood. The man looked
as if he might have had an English mother. It was perhaps this
formation of the mouth that had led those pleasant-spoken persons to
name to his relatives their conviction that Conyngham had a future
before him. The best liars are those who base their fancy upon
fact. They knew that the ordinary thoroughbred Irishman has usually
a cheerful enough life before him, but not that which is vaguely
called a future. Fred Conyngham looked like a man who could hold to
his purpose, but at this moment he also had the unfortunate
appearance of not possessing one to hold to.
He knocked the ashes from his pipe, and held the hot briar bowl
against the ear of a sleeping fox terrier, which animal growled,
without moving, in a manner that suggested its possession of a sense
of humour and a full comprehension of the harmless practical joke.
A moment later the dog sat up and listened with an interest that
gradually increased until the door opened and Geoffrey Horner came
into the room.
'Faith, it's Horner!' said Conyngham. 'Where are you from?'
'The North.'
'Ah--sit down. What have you been doing up there--tub-thumping?'
Horner came forward and sat down in the chair indicated. He looked
five years older than when he had last been there. Conyngham
glanced at his friend, who was staring into the fire.
'Edith all right?' he asked carelessly.
'Yes.'
'And--the little chap?'
'Yes.'
Conyngham glanced at his companion again. Horner's eyes had the
hard look that comes from hopelessness; his lips were dry and white.
He wore the air of one whose stake in the game of life was heavy,
who played that game nervously. For this was an ambitious man with
wife and child whom he loved. Conyngham's attitude towards Fate was
in strong contrast. He held his head up and faced the world without
encumbrance, without a settled ambition, without any sense of
responsibility at all. The sharp-eyed dog on the hearthrug looked
from one to the other. A moment before, the atmosphere of the room
had been one of ease and comfortable assurance--an atmosphere that
some men, without any warrant or the justification of personal
success or distinction, seem to carry with them through life. Since
Horner had crossed the threshold the ceaseless hum of the streets
seemed to be nearer, the sound of it louder in the room; the
restlessness of that great strife stirred the air. The fox terrier
laid himself on the hearthrug again, but instead of sleeping watched
his two human companions.
Conyngham filled his pipe. He turned to the table where the
matchbox stood at his elbow, took it up, rattled it, and laid it
down. He pressed the tobacco hard with his thumb, and, turning to
Horner, said sharply:
'What is it?'
'I don't know yet; ruin, I think.'
'Nonsense, man!' said Conyngham cheerily. 'There is no such thing
in this world. At least, the jolliest fellows I know are bankrupts,
or no better. Look at me: never a brief; literary contributions
returned with thanks; balance at the bank, seventeen pounds ten
shillings; balance in hand, none; debts, the Lord only knows! Look
at me! I'm happy enough.'
'Yes, you're a lonely devil.'
Conyngham looked at his friend with inquiry in his gay eyes.
'Ah! perhaps so. I live alone, if that is what you mean. But as
for being lonely--no, hang it! I have plenty of friends, especially
at dividend time.'
'You have nobody depending on you,' said Horner with the
irritability of sorrow.
'Because nobody is such a fool. On the other hand, I have nobody to
care a twopenny curse what becomes of me. Same thing, you see, in
the end. Come, man, cheer up. Tell me what is wrong. Seventeen
pounds ten shillings is not exactly wealth, but if you want it you
know it is there, eh?'
'I do not want it, thanks,' replied the other. 'Seventeen hundred
would be no good to me. '
He paused, biting his under lip and staring with hard eyes into the
fire.
'Read that,' he said at length, and handed Conyngham a cutting from
a daily newspaper.
The younger man read, without apparent interest, an account of the
Chester-le-Street meeting, and the subsequent attack on Sir John
Pleydell's house.
'Yes,' he commented, 'the usual thing. Brave words followed by a
cowardly deed. What in the name of fortune you were doing in that
galere you yourself know best. If these are politics, Horner, I say
drop them. Politics are a stick, clean enough at the top, but
you've got hold of the wrong end. Young Pleydell was hurt, I see--
"seriously, it is feared."'
'Yes,' said Horner significantly; and his companion, after a quick
look of surprise, read the slip of paper carefully a second time.
Then he looked up and met Horner's eyes.
'Gad!' he exclaimed in a whisper.
Horner said nothing. The dog moved restlessly, and for a moment the
whole world--that sleepless world of the streets--seemed to hold its
breath.
'And if he dies,' said Conyngham at length.
'Exactly so,' answered the other with a laugh--of scaffold mirth.
Conyngham turned in his chair and sat with his elbows on his knees,
his face resting on his closed fists, staring at the worn old
hearthrug. Thus they remained for some minutes.
'What are you thinking about?' asked Horner at length.
'Nothing--got nothing to think with. You know that, Geoffrey. Wish
I had--never wanted it as I do at this moment. I'm no good, you
know that. You must go to some one with brains--some clever devil.'
As he spoke he turned and took up the paper again, reading the
paragraph slowly and carefully. Horner looked at him with a
breathless hunger in his eyes. At some moments it is a crime to
think, for we never know but that thought may be transmitted without
so much as a whisper.
'"The miners were accompanied by a gentleman from London,"'
Conyngham read aloud, '"a barrister, it is supposed, whose speech
was a feature of the Chester le-Street meeting. This gentleman's
name is quite unknown, nor has his whereabouts yet been discovered.
His sudden disappearance lends likelihood to the report that this
unknown agitator actually struck the blow which injured Mr. Alfred
Pleydell. Every exertion is being put forth by the authorities to
trace the man who is possibly a felon and certainly a coward."'
Conyngham laid aside the paper and again looked at Horner, who did
not meet his glance nor ask now of what he was thinking. Horner,
indeed, had his own thoughts, perhaps of the fireside--modest
enough, but happy as love and health could make it--upon which his
own ambition had brought down the ruins of a hundred castles in the
air--thoughts he scarce could face, no doubt, and yet had no power
to drive away, of the young wife whose world was that same fireside;
of the child, perhaps, whose coming had opened for a time the door
of Paradise.
Conyngham broke in upon these meditations with a laugh.
'I have it!' he cried. 'It's as simple as the alphabet. This paper
says it was a barrister--a man from London--a malcontent, a felon, a
coward. Dammy, Geoff--that's me!'
He leapt to his feet. 'Get out of the way, Tim!' he cried to the
dog, pushing the animal aside and standing on the hearthrug.
'Listen to this,' he went on. 'This thing, like the others, will
blow over. It will be forgotten in a week. Another meeting will be
held--say in South Wales, more windows will be broken, another young
man's head cracked, and Chester-le-Street (God-forsaken place, never
heard of it!) will be forgotten.'
Horner sat looking with hollow eyes at the young Irishman, his lips
twitching, his fingers interlocked--there is nothing makes so
complete a coward of a man as a woman's love. Conyngham laughed as
the notion unfolded itself in his mind. He might, as he himself had
said, be of no great brain power, but he was at all events a man and
a brave one. He stood a full six foot, and looked down at his
companion, who sat whitefaced and shrinking.
'It is quite easy,' he said, 'for me to disappear in such a manner
as to arouse suspicion. I have nothing to keep me here; my briefs--
well, the Solicitor-General can have 'em! I have no ties--nothing
to keep me in any part of the world. When young Pleydell is on his
feet again, and a few more windows have been broken, and nine days
have elapsed, the wonder will give place to another, and I can
return to my--practice.'
'I couldn't let you do it.'
'Oh yes, you could,' said Conyngham with the quickness of his race
to spy out his neighbour's vulnerable point. 'For the sake of Edith
and the little devil.'
Horner sat silent, and after a moment Conyngham went on.
'All we want to do is to divert suspicion from you now--to put them
on a false scent, for they must have one of some sort. When they
find that they cannot catch me they will forget all about it.'
Horner shuffled in his seat. This was nothing but detection of the
thoughts that had passed through his own mind.
'It is easily enough done,' went on the Irishman. 'A paragraph here
and there in some of the newspapers; a few incriminating papers left
in these rooms, which are certain to be searched. I have a bad
name--an Irish dog goes about the world with a rope round his neck.
If I am caught it will not be for some time, and then I can get out
of it somehow--an alibi or something. I'll get a brief at all
events. By that time the scent will be lost, and it will be all
right. Come, Geoff, cheer up! A man of your sort ought not to be
thrown by a mischance like this.'
He stood with his legs apart, his hands thrust deep into his
pockets, a gay laugh on his lips, and much discernment in his eyes.
'Oh, d---n Edith!' he added after a pause, seeing that his efforts
met with no response. 'D---n that child! You used to have some
pluck, Horner.' Horner shook his head and made no answer, but his
very silence was a point gained. He no longer protested nor raised
any objection to his companion's hare-brained scheme. The thing was
feasible, and he knew it.
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