Micah Clarke Chapter 5 - Of the Man With the Drooping Lids

Arthur Conan Doyle (0:17)

CHAPTER V. Of the Man with the Drooping Lids.

My mother and my father were sitting in their high-backed chairs on either side of the empty fireplace, when we arrived, he smoking, his evening pipe of ornoco, and she working at her embroidery. The moment that I opened the door, the man whom I had brought stepped briskly in, and bowing to the old people, began to make glib excuses for the lateness of his visit, and to explain the manner in which we had picked him up. I could not help smiling at the utter amazement expressed upon my mother's face as she gazed at him, for the loss of his jack-boots exposed a pair of interminable spindle shanks which were in ludicrous contrast to the baggy, low-country knee-britches which surmounted them. His tunic was made of coarse, sad-colored cursy stuff with flat new gilded brass buttons, beneath which was a whitish Calamanca vest edged with silver. Round the neck of his coat was a broad white collar after the Dutch fashion, out of which his long, scraggly throat shot upwards with his round head and bristle of hair balanced upon the top of it, like the turnip on a stick at which we used to throw at the fairs. In this guise he stood blinking and winking in the glare of light, and pattering out his excuses with his many bows and scrapes, as Sir Peter Whitling in the play. I was in the act of following him into the room when Reuben plucked at my sleeve to detain me. Day I won't come in with you, Micah, said he. There's mischief likely to come of all this. My father may grumble over his beer jugs, but he's a churchman, and a tantivi for all that. I'd best keep out of it. You're right, I answered. There is no need for you to meddle in the business. Be mum, as to all you have heard. Mum is a mouse, said he, and pressing my hand turned away into the darkness. When I returned to the sitting-room, I found that my mother had hurried into the kitchen, where the crackling of sticks showed that she was busy in building a fire. Decimus Saxon was seated at the edge of the iron-bound oak-chest, at the side of my father, and was watching him keenly with his little twinkling eyes, while the old man was fixing his horned glasses and breaking the seals of the packet, which his strange visitor had just handed to him. I saw that when my father looked at the signature at the end of the long, closely written letter, he gave a whiff of surprise, and sat motionless for a moment or so, staring at it. Then he turned to the commencement, and read it very carefully through, after which he turned it over and read it again. Clearly, it brought no unwelcome news, for his eyes sparkled with joy, when he looked up from his reading, and more than once he laughed aloud. Finally, he asked the man, Saxon, how it came into his possession, and whether he was aware of the contents. Why, as to that, said the messenger, it was handed to me by no less a person than Dickey Rumboldt himself, and in the presence of others, whom it's not for me to name. As to the contents, your own sense will tell you that I would scarce risk my neck by burying a message without I knew what the message was. I am no chicken at the trade, sir. Cartels, pronunciamientos, challenges, flags of truce and proposals, for Waffen still stands, as the douchers call it. They've all gone through my hands, and never one gone astray. Indeed, quoth my father, you are yourself one of the faithful. I trust that I am one of those who are on the narrow and thorny tracks, said he, speaking through his nose, as was the habit of the extreme sectories. A track upon which no prelate can guide us, said my father. Where man is not, and the Lord is all, rejoined Saxon. Good, good, cried my father. Micah, you shall take this worthy man to my room, and see that he hath dry linen and my second-best suit of eutrich velvet. It may serve until his own are dried. My boots, too, may perchance be useful, my riding ones of untanned leather. A hat with silver braiding hangs above them in the cupboard. See that he lacks for nothing which the house can furnish. Supper will be ready when he hath changed his attire. I beg that you will go at once, good Master Saxon, lest you take a chill. There is but one thing we have omitted, said our visitor solemnly rising up from his chair and clasping his long nervous hands together. Let us delay no longer to send up a word of praise to the Almighty for his manifold blessings, and for the mercy wherewith he plopped me and my letters out of the deep, even as Jonah was saved from the violence of the wicked ones who hurled him overboard and had maybe fired falconets at him. Though we are not so informed in Holy Writ, let us pray, my friends. Then in a high-tone, chanting voice, he offered up a long prayer of thanksgiving, winding up with a petition for grace and enlightenment for the house and all its inmates. Having concluded by a sonorous amen, he at last suffered himself to be led upstairs, while my mother, who had slipped in and listened with much edification to his words, hurried away to prepare him a bumper of green euskabao with ten drops of Daffy's elixir therein, which was her sovereign recipe against the effects of a soaking. There was no effect in life from a christening to a marriage, but had some appropriate food or drink in my mother's vocabulary, and no ailment for which she had not some pleasant cure in her well-stocked cupboards. Master Decimus Saxon, in my father's black Utrecht velvet and untanned riding boots, looked a very different man, to the bedraggled castaway who had crawled like a conger eel into our fishing boat. It seemed as if he had cast off his manner with his raiment, for he behaved to my mother during supper with an air of demure gallantry which sat upon him better than the pert and flippant carriage which he had shown towards us in the boat. Truth to say, if he was now more reserved, there was a very good reason for it, for he played such havoc amongst the eatables that there was little time for talk. At last, after passing from the round of cold beef to a capon pasty, and topping up with a two-pound perch, washed down by a great jug of ale, he smiled upon us all, and told us that his fleshly necessities were satisfied for the nonce. It is my rule, he remarked, to obey the wise precept which advises a man to rise from table feeling that he could yet eat as much as he has partaken of. I gather from your word, sir, that you have yourself seen hard service, my father remarked, when the board had been cleared and my mother had retired for the night. I am an old fighting man, our visitor answered, screwing his pipe together, a lean old dog of the whole fast breed. This body of mine bears the mark of many a cut and slash received, for the most part, in the service of the Protestant faith. Though some few were caught for the sake of Christendom in general when warring against the Turk, there is blood of mine, sir, spotted all over the map of Europe. Some of it, I confess, was spilled in no public cause, but for the protection of mine own honor, in the private duello or home gang, as it was called among the nations of the North. It is necessary that a Cavalero of Fortune, being for the greater part a stranger in a strange land, should be somewhat nice in matters of the sort, as it were, as the representative of his country, whose good name should be more dear to him than his own. Your weapon on such occasion was, I suppose, the sword? My father asked, shifting uneasily in his seat, as he would do when his old instincts were waking up, broadsword, rapier, Toledo, spontoon, battle, axe, pike or half-pike, Morganstern and halberd. I speak with all due modesty, but with back-sword, sword and dagger, sword and buckler, single falcian, case of falcians, or any other such exercise, I will hold mine own against any man that ever wore neat slather, save only my elder brother Quartus. By my faith, said my father, with his eyes shining, were I twenty years younger, I should have at you. My back-sword play hath been thought well of by stout men of war. God forgive me that my heart should still turn to such fanaties.