“Egad, Montagu, had either of us driven but a finger’s breadth to left we had made sure work and saved the doctors a vast deal of pother. I doubt ’twill be all to do over again one day. Where did you learn that mad lunge of yours? I vow ’tis none of Angelo’s teaching. No defense would avail against such a fortuitous stroke. Methought I had you speeding to kingdom come, and Lard! you skewered me bravely. ’Slife, ’tis an uncertain world, this! Here we ride back together to the inn and no man can say which of us has more than he can carry.”
All this with his easy dare-devil smile, though his voice was faint from weakness. An odd compound of virtues and vices this man! I learnt afterwards that he had insisted on my wounds being dressed before he would let them touch him, though he was bleeding greatly.
But I had no mind for badinage, and I turned my face from him sullenly. Silence fell till we jolted into the courtyard of “The Jolly Soldier,” where Creagh, Macdonald, and Hamish Gorm, having dismounted from their horses, waited to carry us into the house. We were got to bed at once, and our wounds looked to more carefully. By an odd chance Volney and I were put in the same room, the inn being full, and the Macdonald nursed us both, Creagh being for the most part absent in London on business connected with the rising.
Lying there day after day, the baronet and I came in time to an odd liking for each other, discussing our affairs frankly with certain reservations. Once he commented on the strangeness of it.
“A singular creature is man, Montagu! Here are we two as friendly as—as brothers I had almost said, but most brothers hate each other with good cause. At all events here we lie with nothing but good-will; we are too weak to get at each other’s throats and so perforce must endure each the other’s presence, and from mere sufferance come to a mutual—shall I say esteem? A while since we were for slaying; naught but cold steel would let out our heat; and now—I swear I have for you a vast liking. Will it last, think you?”
“Till we are on our feet again. No longer,” I answered.
“I suppose you are right,” he replied, with the first touch of despondency I had ever heard in his voice. “The devil of it is that when I want a thing I never rest till I get it, and after I have won it I don’t care any more for it.”
“I’m an obstinate man myself,” I said.
“Yes, I know. And when I say I’ll do a thing and you say I sha’n’t nothing on earth can keep us from the small sword.”
“Did you never spare a victim—never draw back before the evil was done?” I asked curiously.