Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  “Because if a man won’t drown who’s born to hang, neither will a man hang who’s born to drown, eh? ’Tis the best reason I can think of, faith! And, faith! it’s reason enough.” Still understanding little or nothing, the Captain stared at the doctor.

  “I — I don’t understand even now,” he said weakly. “How came I here?”

  “Eh? Ah, that is another matter, and well may it exercise you. It was this wise.” The doctor took snuff in prodigious quantities, then snapped and pocketed his box, and sat upon the edge of the bed facing his patient. “It was this wise. When you had hanged for the term of twenty minutes — as by law prescribed — you were cut down by a couple of rascals who know where to obtain a guinea or two for the fruit of the leafless tree, as they humorously term it. And here let me say that ye were mighty fortunate in that ye gave no thought to your own burial and that no friends of yours saw to the reparation of that omission. He, he!” he laughed on a thin high note. “But for that — faith! — ye’ld not be sitting there drinking Burgundy. Ye’ld have been snug under a tombstone by now, eh!

  “Well, then,” he pursued, “these rascals brought you hither in a cart, and never was there living man who looked more dead. Ye deceived even myself, when I had you lying stark upon my table, for you’ll understand that I had bought you to dissect you, and I never so much as suspected how I’d been swindled — that ye were not a corpse at all — until I had run my scalpel across your breast; you’ll feel the sting of the scratch belike. It was not a cut; ’twas no more than skin-deep, to mark the line I was to follow. But behold! this line I had drawn turned suddenly bright crimson. If I say that I was amazed, I say nothing. I ran my finger along it and withdrew it moist with blood.

  “There could be no doubt then that ye were not dead, eh? But whether you had travelled too far into the dark valley ever to be dragged back again to the world of the living was what I could not say I held a mirror to your lips, and found it filmed with moisture after a moment. I set my finger to your pulse, but could discover no movement in it. So I opened a vein in your leg to stimulate the heart by setting the blood a-flowing; and within ten minutes you had opened your eyes and were endeavouring to sit up.

  “Since then I’ve done little more than leave you to the vis medicatrix naturae. For Nature, sir, has endowed you very richly; so richly that I could almost regret the loss of the two guineas I gave those rascals for your anatomy — for ye’ve defrauded me, sir, in a most heartless fashion, eh!”

  The Captain smiled feebly at the jest. But it was something that he was able to smile at all, now that he had the full account of this most extraordinary adventure.

  “But you repay me richly in another way,” the anatomist pursued.

  “I can assure you, sir, you shall not be out of pocket in any way,” said the Captain.

  “Pish! Tut, tut!” The professor waved one of his great bony hands contemptuously.

  “Tell me,” said the Captain presently, “is it not a very extraordinary thing to have happened?”

  “Extraordinary? Godso! Ye’re not supposing that it happens every week, eh?”

  “Have you ever known such another case?”

  “As to that, why yes — though never in my own experience. Did ye never hear of John Smith the housebreaker — a few years ago — who was reprieved after he had been turned off and hanged for a quarter of an hour? When the reprieve arrived it scarce seemed worth while to make haste to cut him down, he looked so dead. Yet to all the world’s amazement the rogue revived to return to his house-breaking trade. Then there was the case of Anne Green at Oxford, over fifty years ago. She was hanged for over half an hour, and like yourself fell into the hands of an anatomist — a Dr Petty — who revived her. And there have been others. Still, the event is rare enough — so rare that a man should be thankful when it serves him, eh!”

  The Captain lay back among his pillows and abandoned himself freely to his amazement, and to the thoughts and speculations born of his astounding situation.

  As the doctor had said, “Nemo bis punitur pro eodem delicto”; and so from the law of England he had nothing more to fear, even should his identity be discovered. But he did not think that it need be.

  Very soon his thoughts turned to Damaris, and it was with a sudden fearful doubt that he asked himself what result his revival would have there. How had she received his letter? There was, he thought, but one way in which she could receive it. Yet his being alive again, or alive still, must alter everything and might modify her feelings if they were — as he thought they must be — of forgiveness. The doubt was most cruelly tormenting. He turned suddenly to the doctor.

  “How soon,” he inquired, “shall I be in case to depart?”

  “Tut!” clucked the professor. “Here’s a great haste, now! Why, if you are quiet and obedient to me, perhaps in a week or a little longer you will sufficiently have regained your strength. You’re healthy, amazing healthy. But I’ve half drained your veins, ye’ll remember, and ye’ll need wait until they are replenished, eh.”

  “A week!” he groaned.

  “Tut! ’Tis but a little while. Be thankful ye’re not dead and buried. And if ye’ve any friends with whom you’ld wish me to communicate —

  “No,” said the Captain. “My friends can wait. It will be better.” Then, shifting the subject: “Sir,” he said, “there is a debt between us that it would tax my wit and my resources to liquidate.”

  “It need not. Tut! No. What else could I have done? Carved you up, as it was? Faith! every doctor is not a murderer, whatever the vulgar may say Besides, ye’re a more interesting experiment alive. Tell me now, d’ye not actually remember hanging?”

  “I do not,” said the Captain.

  The anatomist nodded. “Ay, ay; ’twas just so with John Smith when he revived. Tell me what you remember.”

  Readily the Captain complied, relating those dream sensations that had been his, and suppressing no more than the name of the lady who had awaited him in the garden and in whose embrace he had seemed to choke.

  “A warning that,” snapped Dr Blizzard, “a warning of the perils that may lie in a woman’s arms. Still, men will run the risk. Tut! the pity of it!”

  But the anatomist treasured those details of the Captain’s perilous passage through the gates of doom, and he incorporated them in that memoir he prepared of the curious resurrection of Captain Jenkyn, a memoir which — as I have said — has supplied me with most of these particulars.

  Chapter 17. PAUNCEFORT THE SOWER

  On the Monday of the following week — four days after the execution of Captain Gaynor — came my Lord Pauncefort to Priory Close for the first time since that encounter in the garden in which his lordship had all but lost his life.

  Of that encounter, too, Sir John was informed by now, and of the intervention of the gardeners, which had saved Lord Pauncefort — an intervention which Sir John deplored as profoundly as any of the events of the past week. Indeed, but for that intervention Harry Gaynor might still have been among the living, and the world would have been the sweeter for being purged of a villain.

  It was again in the library that the interview took place between Sir John and his unwelcome visitor. The baronet’s first impulse had been to deny himself to his lordship. But he had thought better of it, and had repaired to that lofty, book-lined chamber where his visitor awaited him. Yet his greeting had been sufficiently uncompromising.

  “Do you not think, sir,” he said, “that you have wrought evil enough here already and that so you might have spared us this intrusion upon the grief you have occasioned?”

  His lordship, hat under arm, and leaning lightly upon his amethyst-headed cane, had looked the very picture of injured innocence.

  “Sir John,” he protested quietly, “assuredly you speak under a grievous misapprehension.”

  “Is it a misapprehension that you delivered Captain Gaynor to his death?”

  “A gross one,” cried his lordship instantly “Though I can
see upon what grounds you base it. I am the more glad I came since I may now dispel your error. You have supposed, I see, that Harry Gaynor’s arrest was the result of his unfortunate quarrel with me here. That is not so, sir. The warrant had been out some days already, and he must have been taken when he was. And the real fact is I came to warn him.”

  “To warn him that you had betrayed him?” Sir John’s blue eyes were hard and cold as they played over his lordship’s handsome, swarthy face, which flushed now under that regard.

  “You use harsh words, sir, and untrue.”

  “In that you lie, my lord,” answered the baronet. “Do you hear me — you lie!”

  His lordship stiffened. He drew himself up very rigid, and Sir John watched him with eyes that gleamed almost wickedly:

  “Were you twenty years younger, Sir John, I should ask you to prove your words upon my body. But you are an old man,” he added, in tones that became a very insult of tolerance, his tall figure relaxing its menacing rigidity, “and so I must even bear with you and attempt to prove to you in more peaceful ways the ineffable injustice of your words.”

  “Spare me more of this,” flashed Sir John impatiently. “You may disregard my insult on the score of my years, and I may lack the means to force you to regard it — for you would swallow a blow even as you swallow all else —

  “Sir John!” the other cried, suddenly roused. “Do not urge me too far or I may forget the years that lie between us.”

  “There is not the need. There are younger swords in plenty to call a reckoning with you. What of O’Neill and Leigh, your sometime friend, Harewood, Clinton, Brownrigg, and Mr Dyke, who is said to play the deadliest sword in England? Have you bethought you what will happen when presently these and the others you have betrayed into gaol are restored to liberty? — as restored they must be for lack of satisfactory grounds upon which to impeach them. Do you think they will be slow to avenge upon you the base treachery you performed in selling them? Or do you perhaps consider them in ignorance or doubt of their betrayer?”

  Ever since his encounter with Gaynor, Pauncefort had been plagued by the thought of this; for Gaynor had made it more than plain that his lordship’s treachery was revealed, and it was odds that what Gaynor knew was known to all the plotters. And yet it was possible that it might not be; and, Gaynor being dead, his lordship had clung to that possibility. As for Sir John, he was aware of the source of the baronet’s suspicions; he knew that they sprang from the veiled threat he had uttered at their last meeting.

  Slowly now he shook his head under its heavy black periwig. His large eyes looked almost sorrowful.

  “How sadly are you mistaken,” said he. “As for those you name, I cannot think they would so misjudge me. But if any should, he will find me ready for him — ready to satisfy him in any manner he desires. Meanwhile, however, Sir John, there is the business upon which I am come.”

  “Ah, true!” snapped the baronet. “I detain you, no doubt. Pray state this business. Thus shall I be the sooner rid of you.”

  “I bring you a warning,” said his lordship.

  “Such a warning, I make no doubt, as that which you bore Harry Gaynor,” was the stinging answer.

  Lord Pauncefort considered him with those sorrowful eyes of his. “Even so,” he said quite simply. Then he sighed. “Indeed, I think that I had better go my ways, leaving you to the fate that hangs over you, since you have naught but insults for me. And yet, sir, I will beg you to consider — since there is no other way of convincing you of my good faith — that I can stand to gain little or nothing by my warning to you, and,” he added with slow emphasis, “that I might gain a deal by your impeachment.”

  “You mistake,” said Sir John, “I am in no danger of being impeached.”

  “It is you who mistake, Sir John; for you are in danger, in grave danger, not only of impeachment but of conviction. Against those others whom you have named I gladly admit that the Government can take no proceedings and will be forced to let them go for lack of evidence, and also because such is the Government’s policy. But you, sir, are in far different case.”

  “I am,” Sir John agreed, “because against me there is not even the shadow of an accusation to be produced.”

  “Ah! You build on that” said his lordship sadly, and again he shook his handsome head and sighed. “There is something you’ve forgot. You have forgot that you harboured here one Harry Gaynor, the notorious Jacobite agent and spy — I use the Government’s terms — who has been convicted and hanged.”

  It was quite true. If Sir John had not overlooked the fact itself, at least he had overlooked the consequences it must have for himself did the Government elect to move against him. It was a matter to which he had never given thought, and finding it thrust upon his notice thus abruptly by Lord Pauncefort, he perceived his danger as clearly as one may perceive a chasm that has opened in one’s path.

  He stood with hands clasped behind him, his tall, portly figure somewhat bowed and his face suddenly troubled, all the fine arrogance gone out of him. For there were not only the consequences to himself to consider, there were the consequences to his wife and child — the consideration of which had made him cautious to the point of lukewarmness in his support of that Cause in which at heart he believed. Were he convicted of treason — as it was very clear now he might be — part of his punishment would be a fine that must leave Lady Kynaston and Evelyn all but destitute.

  A deep silence ensued. Sir John stood pondering with bowed head. When at last he raised it, and his troubled glance once more rested upon his visitor, Lord Pauncefort observed that his countenance was ashen. But if there was no longer any arrogance in his bearing, it was still in his tone and his uncompromising words.

  “And it is of this that you are come to warn me?” he asked.

  “Indeed, I would that were all,” replied his lordship. “I am come to tell you that my Lord Carteret has at present under consideration the issuing of a warrant for your arrest upon that charge.”

  Sir John smiled bitterly “Your information would serve, at least, to resolve any doubt that might linger in my mind concerning your own connection with the Government.”

  A shadow crossed his lordship’s face, but he remained quite unmoved.

  “You persist in your opinion of me. It is so deepseated that all things must serve to confirm it. But you are mistook, Sir John. My information springs from my personal relations with the Secretary of State, relations which have permitted me aforetime to serve my friends, and which have permitted those — such as you, sir — who are not my friends, to misconstrue my aims. I will add, sir, that in your own case this warrant would already have been issued but for the exertions which I have used with his lordship. I have played upon his friendship for me by drawing his notice to the fact that I must, myself, suffer by your arrest since I am hoping for the honour of becoming related to you by marriage before long.”

  “Ah!” said Sir John dryly. “I thought we should come to that in the end!”

  Pauncefort frowned. “The disinterestedness of my motives must be so apparent, even to a mind prejudiced against me, that I marvel you still remain in doubt, sir. You conceive, I fear, that I am come to bargain with you. You expect me to say: ‘Sanction my wedding with your ward and niece, and my influence with my Lord Carteret shall be employed, to obtain the suppression of this warrant.’ That is what you expect of me, is it not?”

  “Some such proposal, I admit,” answered the baronet, “though I am sure you will cloak it in more specious terms.”

  His lordship stroked his cleft chin thoughtfully, and his eyes narrowed as they surveyed Sir John.

  “Let me,” he said very gently, “let me beg you to observe, Sir John, that to serve such aims as you impute to me, I need in this matter but to stand aside and suffer the warrant to be executed. Nay, more: Were I first and last the self-seeker you account me and do not scruple to pronounce me, I should be employing such influence as I have with the Secretary of State t
o urge the warrant’s instant execution. For reflect, I beg, that upon your inevitable conviction of treason must follow your outlawry. The powers conferred upon you by the will of the late Mr Hollinstone will be determined; you will no longer have any voice at law in any matter whatsoever, and for sanction to my union with your ward may be dispensed with, for it is a thing you will have power neither to confer nor to withhold. That, Sir John, is a reflection which may lead you to judge me in a spirit of some justice.”

  But Sir John did not seem at all disposed to do so, notwithstanding that he perceived the irrefragable fact to which his lordship drew his attention.

  “I see,” he said slowly. “I see! What you have to propose then is that subject to my giving my sanction you will so exercise your influence with my Lord Carteret as to achieve the suppression of the warrant, eh? And thus—”

  “Not so,” Pauncefort interrupted, loud and imperiously. “I make no bargain. I have nothing to propose. I merely desire to indicate that by serving me you will best serve yourself. In any event my efforts can never be addressed to any end but that of saving you from your impending fate — and this, notwithstanding the insults you have heaped upon me now. But those efforts, which would be almost certain of success if exerted by one who is become your relative, are almost equally certain of failure coming from one who is no more than your friend.”

  The impudence of it struck Sir John speechless for a moment. He found in it matter for laughter almost, despite the overwhelming peril at which his heart was sickening.

  “My friend?” he said, and his lip curled ominously. “Too great an honour.” And he bowed ironically. “And there is one trifle that has escaped your attention, too, in this. You have forgot to consider Miss Hollinstone herself and her inclinations.”

  His lordship was on the point of answering that those inclinations might easily be swayed when she knew of Sir John’s peril. But from that false step he saved himself betimes. He was none of your clumsy, superficial intriguers, but one who went to work skilfully in the depths. He contained himself and bowed, his face wearing an expression of concern and sorrow.