Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 4 (1923-04).djvu/81

A Series of Vivid Articles
Written by SEABURY QUINN.

Two dirty, unkempt urchins fought and struggled in the gutterway of Henley. The elder, a ragamuffin lad of thirteen or so, bore his antagonist to the kidney stone pavement, pressed his knee upon the other's chest and leaned forward, intent upon gouging the little fellow's eyes with thumb and forefinger. It was a trick he had learned from the bullies of the waterfront; a trick no decent English lad would stoop to—but this little alley rat was not a decent English lad.

"Help, help!" screamed the smaller boy, fighting desperately to keep the sharp, unelean nails of his enemy from his eyes.

There was a clatter of flying, iron-ringed hoofs against the paving flints, a shout of command to the older boy, and a tall, auburn-haired girl, slim and straight as a youth, flung herself from her pony, laying hor riding crop mercilessly across the unfair fighter's shoulders.

Surprised by the sudden rear attack, the boy loosed his grip on his opponent's face and turned furiously to defend himself. He might as well have attempted to beat back the north wind. Right cut, left cut, back and forth, the girl swung her whip with the speed and skill that mark the practiced fencer and the strength that tells of healthy young muscles grown strong and supple through systematic exercise.

"Thou churl, thou mean, base varlet, thou Frenchman!" she cried, still plying her whip. "Dost fight with teeth and nails, like a yowling gib-cat? Thou'rt not fit to breathe the air of England!" She cut him again across his writhing shoulders.

Hopelessly worsted in the combat, the boy drew off a safe distance and made the oldest gestures of insult the world knows—that of the thumbed nose. "Yah, garn, tomboy!" he mocked from his zone of safety beyond the cut of her whip.

"Tomboy, tomboy, live like a man and die like a man.

"Ye'll die on the gallows, Mary Blandy, and all yer father's money can't save ye from it. Tomboy, tomboy, gallows-bird tomboy!"

The girl made a threatening gesture, and he took refuge in flight, but his raucous taunt of "Tomboy, tomboy, gallows-bird tomboy!" could be heard long after the patter of his broken-soled brogans no longer sounded in her ears.

She tossed a copper for comfort to the lad she had rescued, remounted her pony and rode slowly toward her father's house.

Mary Blandy was the only child of Francis Blandy, a prominent solicitor of the town of Henley, on the Thames; and because her father had wished a son and been disappointed with a daughter, he had done the next best thing and had Mary educated more like a young squire than a young noblewoman.

At fourteen she could ride, fence and shoot as well as most boys several years her senior, and better than some, and her proficiency in the classics was a source of wonderment and no little shame among parents with sons in the neighborhood. Many of these, piqued by the girl's extraordinary ability, contented themselves with saying such training and efficiency were unladylike, unfeminine and entirely disgusting. So, at an early age, Mary Blandy suffered unpopularity among the parents of her boy acquaintances.

In a few years unpopularity was increased a hundred per cent., for Mary, the young woman, proved herself as apt at all feminine accomplishments as Mary, the girl, had excelled in boyish pastimes.

Her father's house became a rendezvous for the eligible young men of the vicinity, and many a "womanly woman" sat beside her lonesome fireside while young professional men and officers from the nearby garrison made the rafters of the Blandy withdrawing room ring with their song and laughter.

Of all the gay young Redcoats who came to court Lawyer Blandy's daughter, the most favored was Captain William Henry Cranstoun, an infantry officer, brother to Lord Mark Ker, of Scotland, and possessor of a yearly income of £1,500—a very respectable fortune in those days.

Other suitors gradually drifted away, and in the course of time the captain's proposal of marriage was duly made, discussed by the Blandy family, and accepted.

Happy in the possession of her gold-laced lover, Mary Blandy went about her preparations for marriage, choosing silks and taffetas for gowns with the nice discrimination that marked all her dealings, embroidering silk stockings for wear at the grand court levees she would attend when her precious sweetheart should at last be promoted and ordered for duty at London town, and between whiles dreaming the long, long, open-eyed dreams every girl dreams during her engagement.

Then, one day, came a letter for Lawyer Blandy from "the North"—Scotland. It was signed by a young woman claiming to be Captain Cranstoun's wife, and, what was more, the mother of his son.

Mr. Blandy called his daughter to him, showed her the letter, and told her she must have nothing more to do with the captain.

Shocked as she was, Mary still held faith in her lover, believing the best of him, as all good women do of the men they love, declaring there was either some mistake or that the captain would be able to make a satisfactory explanation.

This he was given an opportunity to do that very night, and when confronted with the documentary evidence of his perfidy, coolly denied any attachment