Ensign Knightley | Page 2

death, promotion was of the quickest. He sat there at the table, a lieutenant; a boy of twenty-four faced him, and the boy was a captain and his superior.
It was to the Lieutenant, however, that Wyley resumed his discourse.
"The length of time lost is proportionate to the severity of the concussion. It may be only an hour; I have known it to be a day." He leaned back in his chair and smiled. "A strange question that for a man to ask himself--What did he do during those hours?--a question to appal him."
Scrope chose a card from his hand and played it. Without looking up from the table, he asked: "To appal him? Why?"
"Because the question would be not so much what did he do, as what may he not have done. A man rides through life insecurely seated on his passions. Within a few hours the most honest man may commit a damnable crime, a damnable dishonour."
Scrope looked quietly at the Surgeon to read the intention of his words. Then: "I suppose so," he said carelessly. "But do you think that question would press?"
"Why not?" asked Wyley.
Scrope shrugged his shoulders. "I should need an example before I believed you."
The example was at the door. The corporal of the guard at the Catherine Port knocked and was admitted. He told his story to Major Shackleton, and as he told it the two officers lounged back into the room from the balcony, and the other who was dozing against the wall brought the legs of his chair with a bang to the floor and woke up.
It appeared that a sentry at the stockade outside the Catherine Port had suddenly noticed a flutter of white on the ground a few yards from the stockade. He watched this white object, and it moved. He challenged it, and was answered by a whispered prayer for admission in the English tongue and in an English voice. The sentry demanded the password, and received as a reply, "Inchiquin. It is the last password I have knowledge of. Let me in! Let me in!"
The sentry called the corporal, the corporal admitted the fugitive and brought him to the Main-Guard. He was now in the guard-room below.
"You did well," said the Major. "The man has come from the Moorish lines, and may have news which will profit us in the morning. Let him up!" and as the corporal retired, "'Inchiquin,'" he repeated thoughtfully: "I cannot call to mind that password."
Now Wyley had noticed that when the corporal first mentioned the word, Scrope, who was looking over his cards, had dropped one on the table as though his hand shook, had raised his head sharply, and with his head his eyebrows, and had stared for a second fixedly at the wall in front of him. So he said to Scrope:
"You can remember."
"Yes, I remember the password," Scrope replied simply. "I have cause to. 'Inchiquin' and 'Teviot'--those were password and countersign on the night which ruined me--the night of January 6th two years ago."
There was an awkward pause, an interchange of glances. Then Major Shackleton broke the silence, though to no great effect.
"H'm--ah--yes," he said. "Well, well," he added, and laying an arm upon Scrope's sleeve. "A good fellow, Scrope."
Scrope made no response whatever, but of a sudden Captain Tessin banged his fist upon the table.
"January 6th two years ago. Why," and he leaned forward across the table towards Scrope, "Knightley fell in the sortie that morning, and his body was never recovered. The corporal said this fugitive was an Englishman. What if--"
Major Shackleton shook his head and interrupted.
"Knightley fell by my side. I saw the blow; it must have broken his skull."
There was a sound of footsteps in the passage, the door was opened and the fugitive appeared in the doorway. All eyes turned to him instantly, and turned from him again with looks of disappointment. Wyley remarked, however, that Scrope, who had barely glanced at the man, rose from his chair. He did not move from the table; only he stood where before he had sat.
The new-comer was tall; a beard plastered with mud, as if to disguise its colour, straggled over his burned and wasted cheeks, but here and there a wisp of yellow hair flecked with grey curled from his hood, a pair of blue eyes shone with excitement from hollow sockets, and he wore the violet-and-white robes of a Moorish soldier.
It was his dress at which Major Shackleton looked.
"One of our renegade deserters tired of his new friends," he said with some contempt.
"Renegades do not wear chains," replied the man in the doorway, lifting from beneath his long sleeves his manacled hands. He spoke in a weak, hoarse voice, and with a rusty accent; he rested a hand against the jamb of the door as