The King's General

by Daphne Du Maurier

  "My brother Bevil," said Richard, "was a man who loved his family and his home. He was not bred to war. He desired, in his brief life, nothing so much as to rear his children with his wife's care, and live at peace among his neighbors. When war came he knew what it would mean, and did not turn his back upon it. Wrangling he detested, bloodshed he abhorred, but because he bore the name of Grenvile, he knew, in 1642, where his duty lay. He wrote a letter at that time to our friend and neighbor, John Trelawney, who has this day been arrested, as you know, and because I believe that letter to be the finest thing my brother ever penned I asked Trelawney for a copy of it. I have it with me now. Shall I read it to you?"

  We did not answer. He felt in his pocket slowly for a paper, and, holding it before the window, read aloud.

  "I cannot contain myself within my doors when the King of England's standard waves in the field upon so just occasion, the cause being such as must make all those that die in it little inferior to martyrs. And for mine own part I desire to acquire an honest name or an honorable grave. I never loved life or ease so much as to shun such an occasion, which if I should, I were unworthy of the profession I have held, or to succeed those ancestors of mine who have so many of them, in several ages, sacrificed their lives for their country."

  Richard folded the letter again, and put it once more into his pocket. "My brother Bevil died at Lansdowne," he said, "leading his men to battle, and his young son, Jack, a lad of but fifteen, straightway mounted his father's horse and charged the enemy. That youngster who has just left us, Bunny, ran from his tutor last autumn, playing truant, that he might place himself at my disposal, and hold a sword for this cause we all hold dear. I have no brief for myself. I am a soldier. My faults are many, and my virtues few. But no quarrel, no dispute, no petty act of vengeance has ever turned me, or will turn me now, from loyalty to my country and my King. In the long and often bloody history of the Grenviles, not one of them, until this day, has proved a traitor."

  His voice had sunk now, deadly quiet. The pigeons had flown from the lawns. The bees had hummed their way below the thistle park.

  "One day," said Richard, "we may hope that His Majesty will be restored to his throne, or if not he, then the Prince of Wales instead. In that proud day, should any of us live to see it, the name of Grenvile will be held in honor, not only here in Cornwall, but in all England too. I am judge enough of character, for all my other failings, to know that my nephew Jack will prove himself as great a man of peace as he has been a youth of war, nor will young Bunny ever lag behind. They can tell their sons, in the years to come, 'We Grenviles fought to bring about the restoration of our King' and their names will rank in that great book at Stowe my father read to us, beside that of my grandfather Richard, who fought in the Revenge." He paused a moment, then spoke lower still.

  "I care not," he said, "if my name be written in that book in smaller characters. 'He was a soldier,' they may say. 'The King's General in the West.' Let that be my epitaph. But there will be no other Richard in that book at Stowe. For the King's General died without a son." A long silence followed his last words. He went on standing at the window, and I sat still in my chair, my hands folded on my lap. Soon now it would come, I thought, the outburst, the angry, frightened words; or the torrent of wild weeping. For eighteen years the storm had been pent up, and the full tide of emotion could not wait longer now. This is our fault, I whispered to myself, not his. Had Richard been more forgiving, had I been less proud; had our hearts been filled with love and not hatred, had we been blessed with greater understanding... Too late. Full twenty years too late. And now the little scapegoat of our sins went bleeding to his doom...

  But the cry I waited for was never uttered. Nor did the tears fall. Instead, he came out from his corner, and stood alone an instant in the center of the room. The fear was gone now from the dark eyes, and the slim hands did not tremble. He looked older than he had done hitherto, older and wiser. As though, while his father had been speaking, a whole span of years had passed him by.

  Yet when he spoke, his voice was a boy's voice, young and simple. "What must I do?" he said. "Will you do it for me, or must I kill myself?"

  It was Gartred who moved first. Gartred, my lifelong foe and enemy. She rose from her couch, pulling the veil about her face, and came up to my chair. She put her hands upon it, and, still with no word spoken, she wheeled me from the room. We went out into the garden, under the sun, our backs turned to the house, and we said no words to one another, for there were none to say. But neither she nor I, nor any man or woman alive or dead, will ever know what was said, there in the long gallery at Menabilly, by Richard Grenvile to his only son.

  That evening the insurrection broke out in the west. There had been no way to warn the Royalists of Helston and Penzance that the leaders in the east had been arrested, and the prospective rising was now doomed to failure. They struck, at the appointed hour, as had been planned, and found themselves faced, not with the startled troops they had expected, but the strong forces, fully prepared and armed, that came riding posthaste into Cornwall for the purpose. No French fleet beyond the Scillies came coasting to Land's End and the Lizard. There was no landing of twenty thousand men upon the beaches beneath Dodman and the Nare. And the leaders who should have come riding to the west were shackled, wrist to wrist, in the garrison at Plymouth. No Trelawney, no Arundell, no Trevanion, no Bassett. What was to have been the torch to light all England was no more than a sudden quivering flame, spurting to nothing, spluttering for a single moment in the damp Cornish air. A few shops looted at Penzance... a smattering of houses pillaged at Mullion... a wild unruly charge upon Goonhilly Down, with no man knowing whither he rode, or wherefore he was fighting... and then the last hopeless, desperate stand at Mawgan Creek, with the Parliamentary troops driving the ill-led Royalists to destruction, down over the rocks and stones to the deep Helford River.

  The rebellion of '48. The last time men shall ever fight, please God, upon our Cornish soil... It lasted but a week, but for those who died and suffered it lasted for eternity. The battles were west of Truro, so we, at Menabilly, smelt no powder. But every road and every lane was guarded, and not even the servants ventured out of doors. That first evening a company of soldiers, under the command of Colonel Robert Bennett, our old neighbor near to Looe, rode to Menabilly, and made a perfunctory search throughout the house. He found no one present but myself and Gartred. He little knew that, had he come ten minutes earlier, he would have found the greatest prize of all.

  I can see Richard now, his arms folded, seated in the dining chamber with the empty chairs about him, deaf to all my pleading. "When they come," he said, "they shall take me, as I am. Mine is the blame. I am the man for whom my friends now suffer. Very well, then. Let them do their worst upon me, and by surrendering my person I may yet save Cornwall from destruction."

  Gartred, with all her old cool composure back again, shrugged her shoulders in disdain. "Is it not a little late now in the day to play the martyr?" she suggested. "What good will your surrender do at this juncture? You flatter yourself, poor Richard, if you think the mere holding of a Grenvile will spare the rest from imprisonment and death. I hate these last-minute gestures, these sublime salutes. Show yourself a man, and escape, the pair of you, as Bunny did." She did not look towards Dick. Nor did I. But he sat there, silent as ever, at his father's side.

  "We shall make fine figures on the scaffold, Dick and I," said Richard. "My neck is somewhat thicker, I know, than his, and may need two blows from the axe instead of one."

  "You may not have the pleasure, or the parade, of a martyr's execution," said Gartred, yawning, "but instead a knotted rope in a dank dungeon. Not the usual finish for a Grenvile."

  "It would be better," said Richard quietly, "if these two Grenviles did die in obscurity."

  There was a pause, and then Dick spoke, for the first time since that unforgettable moment in the gallery.

  "How do we stand," he said jerkily, "with the
Rashleighs? If my father and I are found here by the enemy, will it be possible to prove to them that the Rashleighs are innocent in the matter?"

  I seized upon his words for all the world like a drowning woman. "You have not thought of that," I said to Richard. "You have not considered for one moment what will become of them. Who will ever believe that Jonathan Rashleigh, and John too, were not party also to your plan? Their absence from Menabilly is no proof. They will be dragged into the matter, and my sister Mary also. Poor Alice at Trethurfe, Joan at Mothercombe, a legion of young children. They will all of them, from Jonathan in London to the baby on Joan's knee, suffer imprisonment, and maybe death into the bargain, if you are taken here."

  It was at this moment that a servant came into the room, much agitated, his hands clasped before him. "I think it best to tell you," he said, "that a lad has come running across the park to say the troopers are gathered at the top of Polmear Hill. Some have gone down towards Polkerris. The rest are making for Tregaminion and the park gates."

  "Thank you," said Richard, bowing. "I am much obliged to you for your discretion." The servant left the room, hoping, I dare say, to feign sickness in his quarters when the troopers came.

  Richard rose slowly to his feet and looked at me.

  "So you fear for your Rashleighs?" he said. "And because of them you have no wish to throw me to the wolves? Very well, then. For this once I will prove accommodating. Where is the famous hiding place that four years ago proved so beneficial to us all?"

  I saw Dick flinch and look away from me towards his father. "Dick knows," I answered. "Would you condescend to share it with him?"

  "A hunted rat," said Richard, "has no choice. He must take the companion that is thrust upon him."

  Whether the place was rank with cobwebs, mold, and mildew, I neither knew nor cared. At least it would give concealment while the troopers came. And no one, not even Gartred, knew the secret.

  "Do you remember," I said to Dick, "where the passage led? I warn you, no one has been there for four years."

  He nodded, deathly pale. And I wondered what bug of fear had seized him now, when but an hour ago he had offered himself, like a little lamb, for slaughter.

  "Go then," I said, "and take your father. Now, this instant, while there is still time."

  He came then to me, his newfound courage wavering, looking so like the little boy who loved me once that my heart went out to him. "The rope," he said, "the rope upon the hinge. What if it has frayed now with disuse, and the hinge rusted?"

  "It will not matter," I said, "you will not need to use it now. I shall not be waiting for you in the chamber overhead."

  He stared at me, lost for a moment, dull, uncomprehending, and I verily believe that for one brief second he thought himself a child again. Then Richard broke the spell with his hard, clear voice.

  "Well?" he said. "If it must be done, this is the moment. There is no other method of escape."

  Dick went on staring at me, and there came into his eyes a strange new look I had not seen before. Why did he stare at me thus? Or was it not me he stared at but some other, some ghost of a dead past that tapped him on the shoulder?

  "Yes," he said slowly. "If it must be done, this is the moment..." He turned to his father, opening first the door of the dining room. "Will you follow me, sir?" he said to Richard.

  Richard paused a moment on the threshold. He looked first at Gartred, then back at me again. "When the hounds are in full cry," he said, "and the coverts guarded, the red fox goes to earth."

  He smiled, holding my eyes for a single second, and was gone after Dick onto the causeway... Gartred watched them disappear, then shrugged her shoulder. "I thought," she said, "the hiding place was in the house. Near your old apartment in the gatehouse."

  "Did you?" I said.

  "I wasted hours, four years ago, searching in the passages, tiptoeing outside your door," she said.

  There was a mirror hanging on the wall beside the window. She went to it, and stared, pulling her veil aside. The deep crimson gash ran from her eyebrow to her chin, jagged, irregular, and the smooth contour of her face was gone forever. I watched her eyes, and she saw me watching them through the misty glass of the little mirror.

  "I could have stopped you," she said, "from falling with your horse to the ravine. You knew that, didn't you?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "You called to me, asking for the way, and I did not answer you."

  "You did not," I said.

  "It has taken a long time to call it quits," she said to me. She came away then from the mirror, and, taking from her sack the little pack of cards I well remembered, sat down by the table, close to my wheeled chair. She dealt the cards face downwards on the table. "We will play patience, you and I, until the troopers come," said Gartred Grenvile.

  35

  I doubt, if Colonel Bennett had searched all Cornwall, whether he could have found a quieter couple when he came than the two women playing cards in the dining hall at Menabilly. One with a great scar upon her face, and silver hair; the other a hopeless cripple. Yes, there had been guests with us until today, we admitted it. Mr. Rashleigh's son-in-law, Sir Peter Courtney, and my own brother, Robin Harris. No, we knew nothing of their movements. They came and went as they pleased. Mr. Trelawney had called once, we understood, but we had not seen him. Why was I left alone at Menabilly by the Rashleighs? From necessity and not from choice. Perhaps you have forgotten, Colonel Bennett, that my home at Lanrest was burned down four years ago--by your orders, someone told me once. A strange action for a neighbor. And why was Mrs. Denys from Orley Court near Bideford a guest of mine at the present season? Well, she was once my sister-in-law, and we had long been friends... Yes, it was true my name had been connected with Sir Richard Grenvile in the past. There are gossips in the West Country as well as at Whitehall... No, Mrs. Denys had never been very friendly with her brother. No, we had no knowledge of his movements. We believed him to be in Naples. Yes, search the house, from the cellars to the attics, search the grounds. Here are the keys. Do what you will. We have no power to stop you. Menabilly is no property of ours. We are merely guests in the absence of Mr. Rashleigh...

  "Well, you appear to speak the truth, Mistress Harris," he said to me on the conclusion of his visit (he had called me "Honor" once, when we were neighbors near to Looe), "but the fact that your brother and Sir Peter Courtney are implicated in the rising which is now breaking out at Helston and Penzance renders this house suspect. I shall leave a guard behind me, and I rather think, when Sir Hardress Waller comes into the district, he will make a more thorough search of the premises than I have had time to do today. Meanwhile..." He broke off abruptly, his eyes drifting, as if in curiosity, back to Gartred.

  "Pardon my indelicacy, madam," he said, "but that cut is recent?"

  "An accident," said Gartred, shrugging, "a clumsy movement and some broken glass."

  "Surely... not self-inflicted?"

  "What else would you suggest?"

  "It has more the appearance of a sword-cut, forgive my rudeness. Were you a man, I would say you had fought a duel, and received the hurt from an opponent."

  "I am not a man, Colonel Bennett. If you doubt me, why not come upstairs, to my chamber, and let me prove it to you?" Robert Bennett was a Puritan. He stepped back a pace, coloring to his ears. "I thank you, madam," he said stiffly. "My eyes are sufficient evidence."

  "If promotion came by gallantry," said Gartred, "you would still be in the ranks. I can think of no other officer in Cornwall, or in Devon either, who would decline to walk upstairs with Gartred Denys." She made as though to deal the cards again, but Colonel Bennett made a motion of his hands.

  "I am sorry," he said shortly, "but whether you are Mrs. Denys or Mrs. Harris these days does not greatly matter. What does matter is that your maiden name was Grenvile."

  "And so?" said Gartred, shuffling her cards.

  "And so I must ask you to come with me, and accept an escort down to Truro. T
here you will be held, pending an investigation, and when the roads are quieter you will have leave to depart to Orley Court."

  Gartred dropped her cards into her sack, and rose slowly to her feet. "As you will," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "You have some conveyance, I presume? I have no dress for riding?"

  "You will have every comfort, madam."

  He turned then to me. "You are permitted to remain here until I receive further orders from Sir Hardress Waller. These may be forthcoming in the morning. But I must ask you to be in readiness to move upon the instant, should the order come. You understand?

  "Very good, then. I will leave a guard before the house, with instructions to shoot on sight should his suspicions be in any way aroused. Good evening. You are ready, Mrs. Denys?"

  "Yes, I am ready." Gartred turned to me and touched me lightly on the shoulder. "I am sorry," she said, "to cut my visit short. Remember me to the Rashleighs when you see them. And tell Jonathan what I said about the gardens. If he wishes to plant flowering shrubs, he must first rid himself of foxes..."

  "Not so easy," I answered. "They are hard to catch. Especially when they go underground."

  "Smoke them out," she said. "It is the only way. Do it by night; they leave less scent behind them. Good-bye, Honor."

  "Good-bye, Gartred." She went, throwing her veil back from her face to show the vivid scar, and I have not seen her from that day to this.

  I heard the troopers ride away from the courtyard and out across the park. Before the two entrance doors stood sentries, with muskets at their sides. And a sentry stood also at the outer gate, and by the steps leading to the causeway. I sat watching them, then pulled the bell rope by the hearth for Matty.

  "Ask them," I said, "if Colonel Bennett left permission for me to take exercise in my chair within the grounds."

  She was back in a moment, with the message that I feared.

  "He is sorry," she answered, "but Colonel Bennett gave strict orders that you were not to leave the house."