Kitabı oku: «Men of Iron», sayfa 15

CONCLUSION

But Myles was not dead. Those who had seen his face when the umbril of the helmet was raised, and then saw him fall as he tottered across the lists, had at first thought so. But his faintness was more from loss of blood and the sudden unstringing of nerve and sense from the intense furious strain of the last few moments of battle than from the vital nature of the wound. Indeed, after Myles had been carried out of the lists and laid upon the ground in the shade between the barriers, Master Thomas, the Prince’s barber-surgeon, having examined the wounds, declared that he might be even carried on a covered litter to Scotland Yard without serious danger. The Prince was extremely desirous of having him under his care, and so the venture was tried. Myles was carried to Scotland Yard, and perhaps was none the worse therefore. The Prince, the Earl of Mackworth, and two or three others stood silently watching as the worthy shaver and leecher, assisted by his apprentice and Gascoyne, washed and bathed the great gaping wound in the side, and bound it with linen bandages. Myles lay with closed eyelids, still, pallid, weak as a little child. Presently he opened his eyes and turned them, dull and languid, to the Prince.

“What hath happed my father, my Lord?” said he, in a faint, whispering voice.

“Thou hath saved his life and honor, Myles,” the Prince answered. “He is here now, and thy mother hath been sent for, and cometh anon with the priest who was with them this morn.”

Myles dropped his eyelids again; his lips moved, but he made no sound, and then two bright tears trickled across his white cheek.

“He maketh a woman of me,” the Prince muttered through his teeth, and then, swinging on his heel, he stood for a long time looking out of the window into the garden beneath.

“May I see my father?” said Myles, presently, without opening his eyes.

The Prince turned around and looked inquiringly at the surgeon.

The good man shook his head. “Not to-day,” said he; “haply to-morrow he may see him and his mother. The bleeding is but new stanched, and such matters as seeing his father and mother may make the heart to swell, and so maybe the wound burst afresh and he die. An he would hope to live, he must rest quiet until to-morrow day.”

But though Myles’s wound was not mortal, it was very serious. The fever which followed lingered longer than common – perhaps because of the hot weather – and the days stretched to weeks, and the weeks to months, and still he lay there, nursed by his mother and Gascoyne and Prior Edward, and now and again by Sir James Lee.

One day, a little before the good priest returned to Saint Mary’s Priory, as he sat by Myles’s bedside, his hands folded, and his sight turned inward, the young man suddenly said, “Tell me, holy father, is it always wrong for man to slay man?”

The good priest sat silent for so long a time that Myles began to think he had not heard the question. But by-and-by he answered, almost with a sigh, “It is a hard question, my son, but I must in truth say, meseems it is not always wrong.”

“Sir,” said Myles, “I have been in battle when men were slain, but never did I think thereon as I have upon this matter. Did I sin in so slaying my father’s enemy?”

“Nay,” said Prior Edward, quietly, “thou didst not sin. It was for others thou didst fight, my son, and for others it is pardonable to do battle. Had it been thine own quarrel, it might haply have been more hard to have answered thee.”

Who can gainsay, even in these days of light, the truth of this that the good priest said to the sick lad so far away in the past?

One day the Earl of Mackworth came to visit Myles. At that time the young knight was mending, and was sitting propped up with pillows, and was wrapped in Sir James Lee’s cloak, for the day was chilly. After a little time of talk, a pause of silence fell.

“My Lord,” said Myles, suddenly, “dost thou remember one part of a matter we spoke of when I first came from France?”

The Earl made no pretence of ignorance. “I remember,” said he, quietly, looking straight into the young man’s thin white face.

“And have I yet won the right to ask for the Lady Alice de Mowbray to wife?” said Myles, the red rising faintly to his cheeks.

“Thou hast won it,” said the Earl, with a smile.

Myles’s eyes shone and his lips trembled with the pang of sudden joy and triumph, for he was still very weak. “My Lord,” said he, presently “belike thou camest here to see me for this very matter?”

The Earl smiled again without answering, and Myles knew that he had guessed aright. He reached out one of his weak, pallid hands from beneath the cloak. The Earl of Mackworth took it with a firm pressure, then instantly quitting it again, rose, as if ashamed of his emotion, stamped his feet, as though in pretence of being chilled, and then crossed the room to where the fire crackled brightly in the great stone fireplace.

Little else remains to be told; only a few loose strands to tie, and the story is complete.

Though Lord Falworth was saved from death at the block, though his honor was cleansed from stain, he was yet as poor and needy as ever. The King, in spite of all the pressure brought to bear upon him, refused to restore the estates of Falworth and Easterbridge – the latter of which had again reverted to the crown upon the death of the Earl of Alban without issue – upon the grounds that they had been forfeited not because of the attaint of treason, but because of Lord Falworth having refused to respond to the citation of the courts. So the business dragged along for month after month, until in January the King died suddenly in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster. Then matters went smoothly enough, and Falworth and Mackworth swam upon the flood-tide of fortune.

So Myles was married, for how else should the story end? And one day he brought his beautiful young wife home to Falworth Castle, which his father had given him for his own, and at the gateway of which he was met by Sir James Lee and by the newly-knighted Sir Francis Gascoyne.

One day, soon after this home-coming, as he stood with her at an open window into which came blowing the pleasant May-time breeze, he suddenly said, “What didst thou think of me when I first fell almost into thy lap, like an apple from heaven?”

“I thought thou wert a great, good-hearted boy, as I think thou art now,” said she, twisting his strong, sinewy fingers in and out.

“If thou thoughtst me so then, what a very fool I must have looked to thee when I so clumsily besought thee for thy favor for my jousting at Devlen. Did I not so?”

“Thou didst look to me the most noble, handsome young knight that did ever live; thou didst look to me Sir Galahad, as they did call thee, withouten taint or stain.”

Myles did not even smile in answer, but looked at his wife with such a look that she blushed a rosy red. Then, laughing, she slipped from his hold, and before he could catch her again was gone.

I am glad that he was to be rich and happy and honored and beloved after all his hard and noble fighting.