"Harm?" McBean cried. "Is it harm? You that begat him for the heir to your damned infamy? You that soured him with your husk of a soul and your cold cunning? You that made a dirt-heap of his life to suit your muddling need? You—"
But Colonel Boyce swayed in his seat and fell sideways fainting.
A moment McBean surveyed him as if he thought this too a trick. Then, "Ventrebleu" says he, "here's Providence takes a hand," and he whistled, and it is not to be denied that he looked covetously at the cabinet which held Colonel Boyce's papers. "The poor old devil," he said with a shrug. "He grows old, in fact. I suppose there's more blood in his shirt now than his damned body," and he knelt down and began to feel about the wound.
He was at that when a woman announced the surgeon. "Mr. Rolfe? Never more welcome. Here's old Colonel Boyce with a hole in his shoulder, and young Mr. Boyce with two holes through and through. A street brawl. Pray go up, sir, the lad's in bad case."
"Faith, it's Captain McBean," says Rolfe, a brisk, big man, as they shook hands. "What have you to do with Noll Boyce?"
"A friend of the family," says McBean. "Away with you to the lad;" and he knelt again and ministered to the unconscious Colonel. "A friend of the family, old gentleman," says he with a grin.
CHAPTER XXIX
ALISON KNEELS
So all this while Alison lacked an answer to her letter. She fretted at the delay, she grew angry soon, but it does not appear that she allowed herself any new pique against Harry. She was angry with circumstance, with herself, and something much more than angry with Mr. Waverton. It was detestable of Geoffrey to dare spy and plot against Harry, intolerable in him to suppose that she would favour the villainy. But she had been a fool and worse to give him any chance of insulting her so. And yet she might have hoped that her letter—sure, she had been humble enough in it—that her letter would bring Harry back in a hurry. It was maddening that some trick of circumstance should have kept it from him or him from her. For she had no notion that he would read the letter and toss it aside or delay to come. There was nothing petty about Mr. Harry, no spite. Nothing of the woman in him, thank God.
What had happened that he gave her no answer? For certain the letter had gone safely to the tavern. She could be sure of her servant. Harry was living at the tavern. The people there gave assurance of that. It was strange that he made no sign. The servant, indeed, had waited for an answer late into the night and seen nothing of him. Perhaps he had discovered Geoffrey's spies and gone into hiding. It would be like Geoffrey to devise some mighty cunning villainy and so manage it that it was futile. Perhaps Harry really was at some secret politics, captured again by his father and sent off to France, or too deep in some matter of danger to show himself. Perhaps—perhaps a thousand things, so that she made no doubt of Harry. He would not deny her when she came seeking him.