Then Captain Cavendish also addressed me. "You need have no fear,
however you came by the hurt, my lad," he said, and I verily believe
he thought I had somehow caught the hurt while poaching on his
preserves. I stood before them quite still, with my knees stiff
enough now, and I think the colour came back in my face by reason of
the resistance of my spirit.
"Harry, how got you that wound on your shoulder? Answer me, sir,"
said Colonel Chelmsford, his voice gathering wrath anew. But I
remained silent. I do not, to this day, know why, except that to
tell of any service rendered has always seemed to me to attaint the
honour of the teller, and how much more when it was a service toward
that little maid! So I kept my silence.
Then my stepfather's face blazed high, and his mouth straightened
and widened, and his grasp tightened on a riding-whip which he
carried, for he had left his horse grazing a few yards away. "How
came you by it, sir?" he demanded, and his voice was thick. Then,
when I would not reply, he raised the whip, and swung it over my
shoulders, but I caught it with my sound arm ere it fell, and at the
same time the little maid, Mary Cavendish, set up a piteous wail of
fear in her nurse's arms.
"I pray you, sir, do not frighten her," I said, "but wait till she
be gone." And then I waved the black woman to carry her away, and
with my lame arm. When she had fled with the child's soft wail
floating back, I turned to my stepfather, Col. John Chelmsford, and
he, holding fiercely to the whip which I relinquished, still eyed me
with doubt.
"Harry, why will you not tell?" he said, but I shook my head,
waiting for him to strike, for I was but a boy, and it had been so
before, and perhaps more justly.
"Let the lad go, Chelmsford," cried Captain Cavendish. "I'll warrant
he has done no harm." But my stepfather would not heed him.
"Answer me, Harry," said he. Then, when I would not, down came the
riding-whip, but only thrice, and not hard. "Now go you home," said
my stepfather, "and show your mother the hurt, however you came by
it, and have her put some of the cooling lotion on a linen cloth to
it." Then he and Captain Cavendish went their ways, and I went
toward home, creeping through the gap in the May hedge. But I did
not go far, having no mind to show my hurt, though I knew well that
my mother, being a woman and soft toward all wounds, would make much
of it, and maybe of me on its account. But I was not of a mind to
purchase affection by complaints of bodily ills, so I lay down under
the hedge in the soft grass, keeping my bruised shoulder uppermost,
and remained there thinking of the little maid, till finally the
pain easing somewhat, I fell asleep, and was presently awakened by a
soft touch on my sore shoulder, which caused me to wince and start
up with wide eyes, and there was Catherine Cavendish.