Rose Noble looked at me and lifted his lids.
“An illness,” he said softly. “Some people might say ‘an attack.’ It changed him … unbelievably. … And the jerky leg came on about the same time. You see, when he wouldn’t answer, somebody happened to touch his sciatic nerve.”
With a bursting head, I flung myself back on the turf. …
I can never describe the agony of that hour.
I knew that Mansel would come, and I knew he would come before dark. He would never wait for ten hours before starting to my relief: and Carson had to be saved from walking clean into a trap. He had not rope enough to go by the cliff—the spur was his only way. And so he would come … by daylight … up to the wood … If he came, he was doomed. He could be seen approaching for two hundred yards or more, and no cunning would ever avail him against an ambuscade. There was no scope for cunning. The wood was dense, while, except for four or five trees, the spur was bare. I had no hope for him, and, if I had, Rose Noble’s air would have killed it, for he, the soul of prudence, was awaiting his enemy’s coming with his hands, so to speak, in his pockets and his sword in the rack.
Of what was to follow his wounding, I tried not to think.
Whoever was with him would be taken, alive or dead: and Carson would walk into the shambles soon after the sun had set. With me for spokesman, those that were left in the castle would be apprised of the truth, and no doubt, at dawn the next day Adèle and Hanbury and I would be pleading with prayers and fortunes for the life of a broken man. And so the play would finish—in a welter of blood and tears. Redress was not to be thought of: the chances of vengeance would not be worth taking up. Then The Law would step in, pick over the ghastly business, madden us all with its ritual, ask unanswerable questions and believe what it chose. A hideous publicity would follow: the names of Adèle and Mansel would be in everyone’s mouth: reporters would cluster round Poganec: charabancs would be run to The Castle of Gath. …
In this affliction of spirit I again and again forgot my bodily distress. This was as well, for the gag choked me and had broken the sides of my mouth, my wrists seemed to be on fire, the pain in my head was raging, and I might have been covered with blankets, so fast was I streaming with sweat. At times I made sure I was sickening for some disease, but I think that it was the tightness as well of my clothing as my bonds which joined with the heat of the day, not only made me so hot, but caused my blood to rebel against such usage.
Bunch drained his bottle of wine and lay down to sleep. Before he did so, he took a scarf from his pocket and bound my feet, and so put out the spark of hope I had cherished that, when the moment came, I could hurl myself into the bushes and betray his danger to Mansel by means of the noise I made.
Rose Noble was speaking.
“I guess you’ll remember today. It’ll spoil the greenwood for you for the rest of your life. When you see the sun on the leaves and you hear the birds piping around, I guess you’ll remember today, and, when you remember, I reckon you’ll wish it was raining and that the boughs were bare.
“May be it’ll learn you something that they don’t teach at Oxford or the schools for pretty, young boys. Stick to your ⸻ last. Live an’ let live. If somebody pulls your nose, go to the police. Keep your ⸻ tadpoles, an’ watch ’em turn into frogs, but leave the deep-sea fishing to them that know. …
“When Mansel climbed into that strongbox, he cut his throat. He gave me this wood for the taking—just the kind of damfool error a squirt like Mansel would make. The poor trash couldn’t see that, if ever it got to a dogfight, the ⸻ that had this thicket was bound to win.”
If the fellow’s words enraged me, I think that they angered him.
He knew as well as did I that we could not have taken the castle and held the wood as well and that Mansel had had to stake all upon freeing Adèle: he knew that Mansel had taken trick after trick, though the game was not of his choosing and every card was marked—that Mansel could still win the odd … and the game and the rubber and all … if he would but sit still in the castle and let Carson and me take our chance. He had sought to belittle the man who in fourteen days had achieved what Rose Noble himself had believed three impossible feats, first of all finding a needle out of a bottle of hay, then seizing a very bastille and, finally, plucking his lady out of the lion’s mouth. He had sought to diminish Mansel, and he had failed, because the facts were against him and he had no sort of material with which to build his case. This poverty made him wroth, and, could he have called back his words, I think he would. But since he could not, he started to curse and swear, reviling Mansel in filthy and blasphemous terms and working himself into a very passion, because, I fancy, he knew that with every execration he was, so to speak, but further exposing his sores.
Throughout this exhibition, Bunch was pretending slumber, and Punter never moved, whilst I, of course, lay as I was, for, now that my feet were bound, I could not stir.
At last the storm blew itself out, and, after a decent silence, Rose Noble turned to the future and left
