Captain Brassbound's Conversion Part 9

Lady Cicely sits down at the tiny table, and begins st.i.tching at a sling bandage for Marzo's arm. Bra.s.sbound walks up and down on her right, muttering to himself so ominously that Sir Howard quietly gets out of his way by crossing to the other side and sitting down on the second saddle seat.

SIR HOWARD. Are you yet able to attend to me for a moment, Captain Bra.s.sbound?

BRa.s.sBOUND (still walking about). What do you want?

SIR HOWARD. Well, I am afraid I want a little privacy, and, if you will allow me to say so, a little civility. I am greatly obliged to you for bringing us safely off to-day when we were attacked. So far, you have carried out your contract. But since we have been your guests here, your tone and that of the worst of your men has changed--intentionally changed, I think.

BRa.s.sBOUND (stopping abruptly and flinging the announcement at him). You are not my guest: you are my prisoner.

SIR HOWARD. Prisoner!

Lady Cicely, after a single glance up, continues st.i.tching, apparently quite unconcerned.

BRa.s.sBOUND. I warned you. You should have taken my warning.

SIR HOWARD (immediately taking the tone of cold disgust for moral delinquency). Am I to understand, then, that you are a brigand? Is this a matter of ransom?

BRa.s.sBOUND (with unaccountable intensity). All the wealth of England shall not ransom you.

SIR HOWARD. Then what do you expect to gain by this?

BRa.s.sBOUND. Justice on a thief and a murderer.

Lady Cicely lays down her work and looks up anxiously.

SIR HOWARD (deeply outraged, rising with venerable dignity). Sir: do you apply those terms to me?

BRa.s.sBOUND. I do. (He turns to Lady Cicely, and adds, pointing contemptuously to Sir Howard) Look at him. You would not take this virtuously indignant gentleman for the uncle of a brigand, would you?

Sir Howard starts. The shock is too much for him: he sits down again, looking very old; and his hands tremble; but his eyes and mouth are intrepid, resolute, and angry.

LADY CICELY. Uncle! What do you mean?

BRa.s.sBOUND. Has he never told you about my mother? this fellow who puts on ermine and scarlet and calls himself Justice.

SIR HOWARD (almost voiceless). You are the son of that woman!

BRa.s.sBOUND (fiercely). "That woman!" (He makes a movement as if to rush at Sir Howard.)

LADY CICELY (rising quickly and putting her hand on his arm). Take care.

You mustn't strike an old man.

BRa.s.sBOUND (raging). He did not spare my mother--"that woman," he calls her--because of her s.e.x. I will not spare him because of his age.

(Lowering his tone to one of sullen vindictiveness) But I am not going to strike him. (Lady Cicely releases him, and sits down, much perplexed.

Bra.s.sbound continues, with an evil glance at Sir Howard) I shall do no more than justice.

SIR HOWARD (recovering his voice and vigor). Justice! I think you mean vengeance, disguised as justice by your pa.s.sions.

BRa.s.sBOUND. To many and many a poor wretch in the dock YOU have brought vengeance in that disguise--the vengeance of society, disguised as justice by ITS pa.s.sions. Now the justice you have outraged meets you disguised as vengeance. How do you like it?

SIR HOWARD. I shall meet it, I trust, as becomes an innocent man and an upright judge. What do you charge against me?

BRa.s.sBOUND. I charge you with the death of my mother and the theft of my inheritance.

SIR HOWARD. As to your inheritance, sir, it was yours whenever you came forward to claim it. Three minutes ago I did not know of your existence.

I affirm that most solemnly. I never knew--never dreamt--that my brother Miles left a son. As to your mother, her case was a hard one--perhaps the hardest that has come within even my experience. I mentioned it, as such, to Mr. Rankin, the missionary, the evening we met you. As to her death, you know--you MUST know--that she died in her native country, years after our last meeting. Perhaps you were too young to know that she could hardly have expected to live long.

BRa.s.sBOUND. You mean that she drank.

SIR HOWARD. I did not say so. I do not think she was always accountable for what she did.

BRa.s.sBOUND. Yes: she was mad too; and whether drink drove her to madness or madness drove her to drink matters little. The question is, who drove her to both?

SIR HOWARD. I presume the dishonest agent who seized her estate did. I repeat, it was a hard case--a frightful injustice. But it could not be remedied.

BRa.s.sBOUND. You told her so. When she would not take that false answer you drove her from your doors. When she exposed you in the street and threatened to take with her own hands the redress the law denied her, you had her imprisoned, and forced her to write you an apology and leave the country to regain her liberty and save herself from a lunatic asylum. And when she was gone, and dead, and forgotten, you found for yourself the remedy you could not find for her. You recovered the estate easily enough then, robber and rascal that you are. Did he tell the missionary that, Lady Cicely, eh?

LADY CICELY (sympathetically). Poor woman! (To Sir Howard) Couldn't you have helped her, Howard?

SIR HOWARD. No. This man may be ignorant enough to suppose that when I was a struggling barrister I could do everything I did when I was Attorney General. You know better. There is some excuse for his mother.

She was an uneducated Brazilian, knowing nothing of English society, and driven mad by injustice.

BRa.s.sBOUND. Your defence--

SIR HOWARD (interrupting him determinedly). I do not defend myself. I call on you to obey the law.

BRa.s.sBOUND. I intend to do so. The law of the Atlas Mountains is administered by the Sheikh Sidi el a.s.sif. He will be here within an hour. He is a judge like yourself. You can talk law to him. He will give you both the law and the prophets.

SIR HOWARD. Does he know what the power of England is?

BRa.s.sBOUND. He knows that the Mahdi killed my master Gordon, and that the Mahdi died in his bed and went to paradise.

SIR HOWARD. Then he knows also that England's vengeance was on the Mahdi's track.

BRa.s.sBOUND. Ay, on the track of the railway from the Cape to Cairo. Who are you, that a nation should go to war for you? If you are missing, what will your newspapers say? A foolhardy tourist. What will your learned friends at the bar say? That it was time for you to make room for younger and better men. YOU a national hero! You had better find a goldfield in the Atlas Mountains. Then all the governments of Europe will rush to your rescue. Until then, take care of yourself; for you are going to see at last the hypocrisy in the sanctimonious speech of the judge who is sentencing you, instead of the despair in the white face of the wretch you are recommending to the mercy of your G.o.d.

SIR HOWARD (deeply and personally offended by this slight to his profession, and for the first time throwing away his a.s.sumed dignity and rising to approach Bra.s.sbound with his fists clenched; so that Lady Cicely lifts one eye from her work to a.s.sure herself that the table is between them). I have no more to say to you, sir. I am not afraid of you, nor of any bandit with whom you may be in league. As to your property, it is ready for you as soon as you come to your senses and claim it as your father's heir. Commit a crime, and you will become an outlaw, and not only lose the property, but shut the doors of civilization against yourself for ever.

BRa.s.sBOUND. I will not sell my mother's revenge for ten properties.

LADY CICELY (placidly). Besides, really, Howard, as the property now costs 150 pounds a year to keep up instead of bringing in anything, I am afraid it would not be of much use to him. (Bra.s.sbound stands amazed at this revelation.)

SIR HOWARD (taken aback). I must say, Cicely, I think you might have chosen a more suitable moment to mention that fact.

BRa.s.sBOUND (with disgust). Agh! Trickster! Lawyer! Even the price you offer for your life is to be paid in false coin. (Calling) Hallo there!

Johnson! Redbrook! Some of you there! (To Sir Howard) You ask for a little privacy: you shall have it. I will not endure the company of such a fellow--

SIR HOWARD (very angry, and full of the crustiest pluck). You insult me, sir. You are a rascal. You are a rascal.