“Perfectly, my dear Captain,” said Mrs. Whyllie. “That little maxim of yours is most admirable, I declare, and we shall put it to most instant practice.” Thereupon the old lady got up from her chair and pointed a pistol at the captain’s head. “And it’s most fortunate, I vow, that your tasselled cane is reposing safely in the hall.”
“What does this mean, Madam?” spluttered the captain. “Are you joking?”
“My dear niece,” said the old lady, “this admirable captain really asks us if we are joking.” The captain turned his terrified eyes to Imogene only to discover that she also held a pistol at his head.
“What is the cause of this terrible behaviour?” he stammered.
“You are going to pay your debts, my dear Captain,” said the old lady. “To pay your debts in full. You have owed me apologies for a long time which you have taken no pains to tender to me. You made me a laughingstock in public—well, I am now going to return the compliment, and heaven shield you from the scorn of your brother officers, the anger of your superiors, and the scathing and greedy wits of the neighbourhood. I say, heaven shield, for I shan’t. Antony, my dear, get the paper out of the drawer in the desk there.”
Old Mr. Whyllie moved behind the captain and went to the desk. The captain moved toward Mrs. Whyllie.
“Stay where you are!” she ordered. “If you move again I shall fire.”
“A likely tale!” he spluttered. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“I can easily contradict you on that score,” quickly remarked the old lady, and she pulled the trigger. The captain fell back upon the sofa, his pale face blackened with powder, his eyes blinded with smoke, and a sharp, pricking sensation in his left shoulder.
“My God!” he cried. “You’ve hit me.”
“And shall do so again if you give me any more trouble,” said the old lady, “and,” she added, “next time I may aim to kill,” and she took up another pistol from the mantelpiece. “You see, sir, we were quite prepared for you.”
Then the lawyer set a table before him with pen and ink and requested him to sign a certain paper that he had already drawn up. This paper was addressed to the petty officer in charge of the press gang, and commanded that the young man of the name of Denis Cobtree should be driven immediately in a hired coach to the house of Antony Whyllie, attorney-at-law, Watchbell Street, who would give them further commands. To this paper Captain Tuffton signed his name. Indeed, he could do nothing else; and a servant was sent off to the castle to deliver it.
In half an hour or so the noise of a coach was heard rattling over the cobblestones, and Antony Whyllie left the room to see if Denis was safe. In the meantime the captain had signed another paper declaring Denis free to return over the Sussex border into Kent, and this paper having been shown to the petty officer and a guinea piece having been put into his dirty hand by the lawyer himself, the seadog saluted respectfully and swung off down Watchbell Street whistling a tune. The lawyer explained the situation hurriedly to Denis and then went in to take Imogene’s place as guard over the wretched soldier. But the captain was suffering acute spasms in his left shoulder, and this being his first experience of bullet wounds, he was nearly unconscious at the horror of it. So Mrs. Whyllie was able for a moment to lower the pistol in order to kiss Imogene, and having recommended her to Denis’s care, bade them urge the coach quickly out of Rye and into Kent.
“Shall I change my clothes first or send them back to you?” asked Imogene.
“Neither, my love,” answered the old lady, again levelling the pistol at Captain Tuffton’s head; “for when we have packed this ridiculous soldier back to his place in an hour or so, I am going to see to it that Mr. Whyllie draws up all legal forms for adopting you as our daughter—that is, providing of course you raise no objection—but I shall do myself the honour of calling upon Sir Antony Cobtree himself within the week,” saying which she dismissed the young people to the coach, and when the driver had received a handsome fee from the lawyer and been promised a further one if he made good pace for Dymchurch, he touched up the horses, and with great rattling clattered the cumbersome coach through the great gate of Rye and so out on the smooth high road, where the long whip cracked and the wheels began to spin. But for a whole hour the wretched captain stayed a prisoner in the white house until he beseeched the old lady to let him go home and have the surgeon dress his wound. So at last she consented, and another coach having been hired, he was lifted into it and in a few moments reached his rooms, where the most criticising valet in the world pulled from his shoulder a steel pin. With the exception of this deep pin prick, there was no mark of a wound, as indeed why should there have been? for Mrs. Whyllie had fired only a blank charge, and the old lawyer, according to careful instructions, had got behind the captain and dug in the pin at the crucial moment.
And while the valet administered brandy as a restorative, a boy and a girl sat hand in hand in a great old coach which swayed and jolted as they dashed along the Romney Road toward Dymchurch. Useless, indeed, to follow that coach from Rye, for the necks of the four horses were stretched in tensioned gallop, the harness pulling near
