VIII
Set a thief to catch a thief, and a woman to unravel the character of a woman. Such was the aphorism my Lord Gore had bestowed in confidence upon Hortense when he had bequeathed Anne Purcell’s daughter to the Italian’s cleverness. If there were anything beneath that sullen and lethargic surface, Hortense would discover it, and perhaps resurrect the girl’s instinct to laugh and live.
Few guests met in the painted salon that summer evening: three girls of Barbara’s age, an elderly knight with sharp, humorous eyes, a sentimental widow, and Hortense. The windows were open toward the park, where dull, rain-ladened clouds shut out the stars. A few shaded candles in sconces along the walls made a glimmering twilight in the room, and in one corner a little brazen lamp burned perfumed oil, so that the air was richly scented.
A girl stood singing beside the harpsichord when Anne Purcell and her daughter entered the salon. Hortense herself was accompanying the song, while those who listened were like figures in a picture, each with a shadowy individuality of its own. There was an atmosphere of opulence and sensitive refinement about the scene. The breeze of youth had been banished and the salon made sacred to musing maturity.
Hortense excelled in the art of welcoming a friend. Even the flowing lines of her figure could put forth an intoxicating graciousness that fascinated women as well as men. She suggested infinite sympathy, yet infinite shrewdness. Strangers might have mistrusted her if she had shown only the one or the other.
My Lady Anne looked commonplace beside Hortense. Her smile had a crude affectation of good-will that did not completely conceal latent distrust and jealousy. The Englishwoman was there with a purpose, and a purpose is often one of the most difficult things on earth to smother. It was in the daughter that Hortense discovered a vacant unapproachableness, a callous apathy that piqued her interest. The girl was not gauche, despite her silence. It was as though her individuality refused to mingle with the individuality of others.
Hortense disposed of my lady by setting her to chat with the grim old gentleman in the big periwig, whose interest in life gravitated between the latest piece of learned gossip he might pick up at the meetings of the Royal Society and the lighter, more glittering gossip of Whitehall. My lady could at least satisfy him in the lighter vein. The three girls were given a pack of cards and a table in a corner; the sentimental widow—some new book. Hortense herself drew Barbara aside toward one of the windows, as though she was the one person whom she chose to actively amuse.
The prelude between them resembled a game of chess in which one player made tentative moves to which the other blankly refused to respond. A series of challenges provoked nothing but monosyllabic answers. Hortense had no difficulty, as a rule, in persuading even dull or frightened people to talk. There were the many mundane topics to be invoked when necessary: clothes, music, books, men, amusements—and other women.
“Mère de Dieu!” she confessed to herself, at last, “the child is impenetrable. There is a magic spring in every mortal. I have not touched it—here—as yet.”
She studied Barbara with the easy air of the woman of the world who does not betray the glance behind the eyes.
“And who is your great friend—in England, cara mia? We women must always have a confidential mirror, though it does not always tell us the truth. When I was quite young I used to write down all my thoughts and adventures in a book. Some of us make friends with our own souls—in our diaries.”
Barbara looked at her as though all the Italian’s subtle suggestiveness beat on nothing more intelligent than the blank surface of a wall.
“Do you keep a diary, madam?”
Hortense laughed.
“Oh, life is my diary, and then—I write on the faces of those I meet.”
“Do you—how?”
“You must guess my meaning.”
“I can never guess anything.”
“How dull! Have you travelled much—with your mother?”
“My mother?”
“Yes. Is she not charming? so young—and Junelike! She should promise you a long youth.”
“I do not care whether she does or not.”
“Then you have not learned to envy her?”
“What have I to envy?”
Hortense paused, with a momentary gleam of impatience in her eyes.
“Has the child any enthusiasm? Let us try her on another surface. Do you remember your father, cara mia?”
Barbara’s eyes met the Mancini’s with a sudden intense stare.
“My father?”
“He was a great scholar, was he not?”
“Yes.”
“Books become such friends to us! Did he teach you—at all?”
“Oh, sometimes. He was very patient. How dark the sky looks!”
Hortense smiled. She had a suspicion that she was no longer fumbling in the dark. She had touched the girl beneath her apathy and her reserve.
“Have you your father’s books—still?”
“They are in the library—covered with dust.”
“Why do you not keep the dust away by reading them. You could fancy yourself talking with him when you turned the pages he had turned.”
“Could I?”
Hortense became silent suddenly, her face turned with an expression of sadness toward the night.
“Of course. It is in our memories that we live again. The past may become a kind of religion to us.”
She did not look at the girl, but her brilliant and sensitive consciousness waited for impressions. Barbara remained motionless, with stolid, morose face.
“What clever things you think of!” she said, abruptly. “But the books are nearly all in Latin. I wish I had not eaten so much supper. It always makes me sleepy and stupid.”
Hortense turned with a sharpness that contradicted her soft and sympathetic attitude.
“Perhaps you would like some wine?”
“No, I thank you, madam. Mother made me drink half a jugful before we came. She said that it might make me talk.”
Hortense gave her one searching stare.
“Either you are very clever or very dull,” she said to herself. “I must try other methods, for I want to see you show yourself. Then—we may understand.”
It was possible that the Mancini knew that her salon would not maintain its air of Platonic tranquillity throughout the whole evening. She who queened it for the moment above a galaxy of queens could not be left long uncourted by the courtiers of her King. She was the Spirit of Wit and the Pyre of Passion for that year at least; a fire about which the moths might flutter; a Partisan of Princes; a shrewd, roguish, laughter-loving woman. She was never unwilling that a fashionable rout should storm and take possession of her house, for they came to entertain her with their nonsense and to flatter her pride by attending at her court.
A flare of links across the park, and the sound of laughter warned Hortense of a possible invasion. The torches flowed in the direction of her house, with a confusion of voices that betrayed the spirit of the invaders. Barbara, who sat watching the stream of fire, saw the link-boys running on ahead, with the glare of their torches flashing over the grass and upon the trunks of the trees, while behind these fire-flies came a stream of gentlemen in bright-colored cloaks, arguing and laughing, some of them flourishing their swords like sticks.
Hortense appealed to her guests.
“Alas! my friends, here come the court innocents with all manner of nonsense in their noddles. Shall we stand a siege?”
“You will never keep fools out of heaven, madam,” said the Fellow of the Royal Society, with a cynical sniff; “have them in, and let us moralize on the wasted energies of youth.”
“And you—my vestals?”
The girls at the card-table betrayed no immoderate shyness.
“And my Lady Purcell?”
“Should a woman be afraid of a boy’s tongue? We can clip it with our wit.”
“They are in the court-yard already, the mad children! Let us see what power music may have over them.” And she sat down at the harpsichord and began to play with great unction a dolorous chant that was familiar to serious singers of psalms.
Comus and his crew came in right merrily with a superfluity of ironical obeisances and vivid color-contrasts in their clothes. The party was headed by a figure in a black silk gown, with huge lawn ruffles at the wrists, a white periwig, and a big lace bib. Barbara recognized my Lord Gore among the gentlemen, and in the background she caught a glimpse of the brown and imperturbable face of John Gore, his son.
Hortense still fingered out her psalm as though ignoring the irruption of the world, the flesh, and the devil into her house. The three girls at the card-table sat with eyes cast down and hands folded demurely in prim laps. The grim old gentleman reclined in his chair, and stared at the intruders with the inimitable assurance of a Diogenes. Barbara remained by the window in isolation, while her mother and the widow were smiling and whispering together in a corner.
The gentry of Whitehall appreciated the satirical humor of their welcome. Hortense was laughing at them with that dolorous canticle of hers.
“Now, Thomas, where is your wit?”
“Prick the bishop’s calves, he has gone to sleep.”
They laughed and applauded as the figure in the silk gown moved forward into the room. Mr. Thomas Temple could play a variety of parts. His mimicry excelled in burlesquing the episcopate.
“My children, let peace be upon this house.” And he gave them a pompous blessing with upraised hands.
Hortense rose from the harpsichord with the assumed fire of a fanatic.
“Children of Belial!”
“Lady, pardon me, they are already qualifying as saints.”
“What sayest thou, Antichrist, thou Red Man of Rome? Woe, woe unto this city when its priests wax fat in purple and fine linen!”
The bishop extended reproving hands.
“Woman, blaspheme not! We are here to save all souls with the kiss of peace. My children, come hither. Have you been baptized?”
The three girls tittered. Hortense stood forward, flinging out one arm with a passionate gesture of scorn.
“Behold the book of the beast. Behold the Serpent without a surplice! And you—ye children of iniquity—make way for Thomas with the wine!”
There was a shout of laughter as my lord the bishop, picking up his skirts, cut a delighted caper.
“Alas, she has bewitched me! St. Sack, where art thou—oh, strengthener of my soul?”
A footman bearing a tray with flasks and glasses moved stolidly through the crowd. The mock churchman extended a protecting arm.
“Bless you, my son. Blessed are all vintners and tavern-keepers! And you, madam” (he turned to her with a stately obeisance), “our Lord the King of his nobleness hath sent us to unbind your eyes—and to lead you into the paths of light. We will baptize those innocents yonder into the one true church, even the church of Sack—and Sashes. Let all the heathen rejoice for the souls we shall save this day from the pit of prudery. No woman can be saved unless she be kissed. Amen.”
IX
For a girl to maintain her dignity in some such assemblage as that at the house of Hortense, she needed a glib tongue, an easy temper, and no prejudices with regard to the inviolate sanctity of her lips or cheek. The gentlemen of fashion had renounced the central superstition of Chivalry, while retaining some of its outward pageantry and splendor. Cynics and worldlings, they had no real reverence for woman, no belief in her honor, and little consideration for her name. She was merely a thing to be coveted, to be maligned, or to be made, perhaps, the butt of the bitterest and most unmanly ridicule. How mean and utterly contemptible those splendid gentlemen of the court could be, Anne Hyde had learned in the days before she became a duchess. So many noble fellows conspiring to swear away a woman’s honor, and fabricating unclean lies about her, in the belief they would please a prince.
Barbara remained isolated by the window, studying the scene with an expression of sulky scorn. It was her first glimpse of the gadflies of the court; their methods of attack and of torture were to her things unknown. Many of the men had prematurely aged features, harsh skins, and unhealthy eyes. Some two or three were palpably the worse for wine. And despite their rich clothes and the beauty of mere surface refinement, they brought an atmosphere of unwholesome insolence into the Italian’s salon—an insolence that made such true aristocrats as John Evelyn despair of the courts of kings.
The Mancini had drawn the mock bishop aside, and they were talking together with ironical little smiles and gestures. Barbara met Hortense’s eyes across the room. The man in the silk cassock glanced also in the same direction, and Barbara had the sudden sense of being under discussion.
The majority of the men were drinking wine at a side table, talking loudly and without an atom of restraint, as though they were in a tavern and not in the salon of a great lady. My Lord Gore and his son were the centre of a little group; the brown face of the sea-captain contrasting with the whiter skins of the idlers about town. He was glancing about the room, as though tired of being penned up in a corner by a party of fops with whom he had no sympathy. More than once his eyes met those of Barbara Purcell. They appeared to be the only two people in the room who chafed instinctively at their surroundings.
A loud voice at the door of the salon, strident and harsh, overtopped the babbling of the crowd. Heads were turned in the direction; periwigs bowed; slim swords cocked under velvet coat-tails. The commotion hinted at the entry of some great captain in the campaign of pleasure. The knot of many-colored figures fell apart, and a big man in black and silver stalked forward to salute Hortense.
It was Philip of Pembroke, the most outrageous and hot-headed aristocrat in the kingdom, a man whose own friends treated him as they would have treated an open powder-mine, and whose very friendship was often the prelude to a quarrel. Few people had the nerve to sit near him at table, for an argument was his great joy, and his method of debate was so fierce and fanatical that his arguments very frequently took the form of wine bottles and dishes, or any forcible persuader that came to hand. He would quarrel with any one, anywhere, on any topic, and appeared to cherish the conviction that the whole world had conspired to contradict him. Lean, ominous, with a fierce, intent, brown face, his sharp, snapping jowl made him appear more like a mad fanatic than a sane and stately English peer. The marvel was that a man with such a face should waste even his madness on irresponsible brawls and outrages. It was like some fierce Egyptian monk playing insane tricks in Christian Alexandria.
He saluted Hortense with his usual air of restless-eyed and explosive abruptness. She had assumed her utmost graciousness, her full feminine fascination. My lord stared at her for a moment in his queer, distrustful way, and then turned to the figure in the silk cassock.
“Well, you dull dog, how are we to be amused to-night?”
Tom Temple adopted a tone of the blandest deference.
“We have founded a mission, my lord, for the conversion of unkissed females.”
“Damnation, boy, there are none!”
“My Lord of Pembroke is a great authority.”
“Am I? Who told you that? I should like to talk with him a minute. Where are your converts, eh? By my soul, I don’t see many!”
The bishop made an unctuous gesture with his open hands.
“There are an innocent few, my lord.”
“Three pinafores and two aprons! Who’s that there—old Purcell’s widow? She is as plump as a fat hen! And the one there by the window, who’s she?”
Tom Temple appealed to Hortense.
“Anne Purcell’s daughter.”
“A sour, scratch-your-face looking wench! Zounds, Tom, begin your mission there! Go and kiss her, or I’ll knock your head against the wall.”
He laughed, as though hugely tickled, while the majority of the men, who had been listening, exchanged glances, and divided their curiosity between the girl by the window, my Lord Pembroke, and Bishop Tom.
Hortense had drawn aside, and was bending over Anne Purcell. There may have been a motive in the move. Possibly she did not wish to countenance the joke, and yet desired to profit by the information she might gain thereby.
The bishop looked embarrassed.
“If you will lend me your countenance, my lord—”
“Go and kiss her.”
“On my conscience, sir, but—”
He was drifting perilously near an argument, and the mad peer’s eyes began to sparkle. The crowd settled itself to enjoy the drama.
“Why, my lord bishop is a heretic!”
“The recusant, the Fifth Monarchy maniac! Pull his bibs off!”
Tom Temple found himself in the midst of a dilemma. On the one hand was this silent, swarthy-face girl who looked as unapproachable as a Minerva; on the other, my Lord of Pembroke, ready to explode at the slightest opposition.
“I accept your mandate, my lord.”
“Forward, then, sainted sir; I am the church militant to support the conversion.”
Tom Temple plucked up his impertinence, and approached Barbara with an air of grim solemnity. All eyes were turned in her direction. She found herself the cynosure of this mocking, sneering, mischief-loving crowd.
“My daughter, I am authorized by his Majesty, Pope of Whitehall, and by my Lord Cardinal Pembroke, here, to initiate you into the one true church. Are you, my daughter, in a fit and ready state to be converted?”
Barbara looked the young man straight in the face and said nothing.
“Have you no answer for me, my child?”
My Lord of Pembroke gave him a push from behind.
“To it, Tom, or I’ll convert her myself!”
“My Lord Cardinal, I am ready to abdicate in your favor.”
“Sophist! Kiss her, and have done.”
Tom Temple looked at Barbara and found his expiring impudence unequal to the task. A breeze of cynical laughter swept the room. The three girls had left the card-table, and were standing huddled together, giggling and glancing from Barbara to the gentlemen. Hortense and Anne Purcell had drawn aside toward the harpsichord, while the sentimental widow seemed scared.
“The church militant must intervene!”
My Lord of Pembroke jostled the mock churchman aside and faced Barbara. She had risen and was standing at her full height, an angry color flooding into her face. The peer and the lady looked each other in the eyes.
The man’s cynical yet malicious stare humiliated her, despite her wrath and her defiance. Her glance travelled over the faces that seemed to fill the room. Nowhere did she find a glimmer of pity or resentment. She was just a silly, prudish girl to them; a sulky child to be teased; a thing that piqued their cynical curiosity.
My Lord of Pembroke made her a curt bow.
“You will permit me to receive you into the bosom of our church,” he said.
She flashed a fierce stare at him, and then drew back close to the window. It was then that her eyes met the eyes of some one in the room, some one who had been standing in the background, and who was watching her with intense earnestness. She recognized John Gore. A rush of appeal and of chivalrous sympathy seemed to leap from face to face.
My Lord of Pembroke advanced a step. There was something satanic about his eyes.
“Come, little simpleton.”
He stretched out an arm, and caught her wrist roughly. But she twisted it free.
“Gently, my wild filly; we must break you to harness. Come—now—”
He was shouldered aside abruptly with a vigor that set the whole room gaping at the thunderclap that would follow. A shortish, sturdy man with a brown, imperturbable face had established himself calmly between my lord and Barbara Purcell.
“It seems, my lord, that, since you are all Christians, I am the only heathen in the room.”
The retort came instantly with a sweep of the peer’s arm. John Gore was ready for it, and put the blow aside. Half a dozen gentlemen rushed in and made a human barrier between the pair.
My Lord of Pembroke struggled like a knot of fire half smothered by damp fuel.
“Hold off, fools! Let go my arm, Howard, or by God, I’ll run my sword through you!”
They tried to pacify him, but his violent temper blazed through their words. He looked madman enough as he spat his fury over the shoulders of those who held him back. But for the inevitable steel, the scene might have been ridiculous.
“Will you fight?”
“I am at your service, my lord.”
“Come then, draw! Clear the room. Howard, you are my second.”
Hortense’s voice intervened with imperious feeling.
“Gentlemen, not in my house.”
Stephen Gore had pushed through and stood beside his son.
“Take me, Jack; keep cool, boy; the fool’s mad.”
“In the park, then.”
“Lud! but it’s raining—torrents,” said some one, peering through the window.
“Rain! Who the devil cares for rain? Tell my boys to light their links. Get me my cloak, Howard. Are you ready, sir?”
“Ready, my lord,” said John Gore. “We can use the swords we have. That is my privilege, I believe.”
X
Barbara Purcell stood alone by the window, her eyes fixed upon the torches that were spitting and flaring in the rain. The salon had been emptied of its wits and gallants, as though the men had been whirled away into the darkness by the very energy of my Lord Pembroke’s wrath. The women were left alone with the cynical old aristocrat who dabbled in science, and who had not moved from his chair during the brawl. Hortense, who had dreaded bloodshed in her house and the scandal that might follow, was watching from another window, with the three girls and the widow gathered round her. My Lady Purcell appeared to be the most vexed and troubled of them all. She moved restlessly about the room; sat down in a chair beside the cynic; spoke a few words to him, and seemed repelled by the flippancy of his retort; rose again; walked to and fro for a minute, and then, as though driven thither by some spasm of suspense, joined Hortense and the rest at the window.
The Mancini heard my lady’s deep breathing, and, turning to make room for her, was startled by the scared expression of her face. But, being discreet, she ignored her guest’s uneasiness.
“These men, they must be forever quarrelling! As for that mad, irresponsible lord, I am always in dread of murder when he enters my house.”
Anne Purcell leaned against the window-jamb.
“And they must drag in others, too. I suppose Howard and Stephen Gore will be at each other’s throats.”
Hortense eyed her curiously.
“I think they have too much wisdom to cross swords over a lunatic. Who is the little brown man with the broad shoulders and the cool face?”
“John Gore, my lord’s son.”
“Jack Gore; a good name for a gallant swashbuckler. The fellow pleased me; he has a backbone and a keen eye. It was like a scene out of a stage-play. And there is the distressed damsel, your daughter, watching to see her champion do his devoir.”
Anne Purcell glanced at Barbara and gave a shrug of the shoulders.
“If the fool had only had some sense!”
“If—yes—if!”
“The stubborn brat! To shut her eyes to a mere piece of play!”
Hortense looked thoughtful.
“Pardon me, but the girl is no fool; that is my belief. It was no sulky, stupid child that dared my Lord Pembroke to bully her.”
“No?”
“No. But a woman with pride, and a depth of courage in her that could make her dangerous in a quarrel. My Lady Purcell, I could swear that your daughter is cleverer than you imagine.”
Hortense saw the plump woman’s face harden.
“Perhaps,” she retorted, brusquely; “for myself, I have always thought her a little mad.”
As for Barbara, she had no memory for Hortense and the rest. The dim, rain-smirched park, with its pool of stormy light, absorbed all the life in her for the moment. She had seen the torches go tossing out from the gate with a trail of shadowy figures following. The link-boys had headed for a great tree where there would be some shelter from the rain. The torches made a wavering yellow circle about the four chief figures; the rest of the gentlemen gathered in the deeper shadows under the tree. The drifting rain blurred and distorted the details as bad glass distorts the landscape to one at watch behind a window. Yet the four figures with the smoke and flare of the torches seemed vividly distinct to her, two of them stripped of cloaks and coats, so that their white shirts showed up like patches of snow on a distant mountain-side.
Engrossed as she was, she heard one of the watchers at the other window give a sharp cry of relief.
“At last—see—they have begun! My Lord Gore and Howard stand aside.”
It was her mother’s voice, and the words seemed to set some subtle surmise moving in the daughter’s brain. She remained motionless, her eyes on the circle of torches and the faint flicker of steel that was discernible as the two swords crossed.
She heard a short, dry laugh, and turned to find the Fellow of the Royal Society standing at her elbow. He was watching the scene under the tree with eyes that had lost none of their youthful sharpness.
“There is no need for anxiety,” he said, with a friendly glance at Barbara.
They stood side by side in silence for a minute. Then the cynic nodded in the direction of the park.
“That mad jackass stood no chance against Stephen Gore’s son. Just as I thought. That—will keep the fool quiet for a time, at least.”
There was a sudden swaying of the torches, and the circle of figures swept in upon my Lord Pembroke and John Gore as the sea sweeps in on a sinking ship. Nothing was discernible for the moment but the torch-flare and the knot of eager, crowding men. Then the circle parted abruptly, and they could see two friends throwing his coat and cloak over my Lord Pembroke’s shoulders. He was leaning against his second, his sword-arm hanging at his side.
The torches swayed forward and moved in a blot of light from under the tree. John Gore, with his sword set in the grass, was struggling into his coat, his eyes watching the violent fool whom he had wounded in the shoulder. Stephen Gore, distinguishable by his stateliness and his bulk, threw a cloak over his son’s shoulders. The torches moved away, the figures scattered, and the whole scene seemed to melt into nothingness behind the falling rain.
The cynic and Miss Barbara still maintained their silent fellowship at the window, as though they approached to each other by showing an uncompromising front toward the world. Her companion seemed to hint that they had a common interest in the proceedings, when he pointed out to her that a couple of torches were moving back toward the house.
“Here come the gentlemen who will assure us. Had I had the guiding of that young man’s sword, I should have pricked that wind-bag for good and all.”
He continued to talk, as though addressing no one in particular, but only enumerating his own thoughts.
“But then—of course—it would be deucedly inconvenient. It is much wiser to let fashionable fools alone; if you kill them, there will be trouble; if you wing them only, there will still be trouble. It is probable that we shall hear within a month or so that my Lord Gore’s son has been bludgeoned some dark night.”
Barbara glanced at him with a sharp challenge in her eyes.
“Pardon me, it is a very usual method of procedure among gentlemen of fashion. If you have an enemy who is too strong for you, or a man you are afraid to fight, you hire a couple of bullies to ambuscade him—and crack his skull. Both your honor and your spite are thereby greatly relieved.”
The torches were close to the gate of the court-yard, though the watchers at the window could but dimly distinguish the faces of those who were returning.
“I hope to Heaven he is not hurt!”
“Stay there, children! you must not meddle in these men’s affairs.”
Hortense and my Lady Anne had moved by mutual impulse toward the door. The girls, who had wished to follow them, remained talking in undertones near the harpsichord. But Barbara was bound by no such casual regulations. She left the cynic by the window, and followed her mother and Hortense.
From the salon the staircase of the great house ran with broad shallow steps into the hall. The beautiful balustrade was of carved oak, the corner pillars topped with griffins holding gilded shields. French tapestries covered the walls, and from the central boss of the ceiling a great brass lantern hung by a chain.
Hortense paused at the stair’s head, with Anne Purcell at her side. The rain rattled against the windows, with the light of the torches casting wavering shadows over the glass. A servant stood holding the door of the hall open, with the torches making a turmoil of smoke and flame. Barbara, as she came from the salon, was struck by the eager poise of her mother’s figure as she leaned forward slightly over the balustrade.
My Lord Gore and his son came in out of the night with their cloaks aglisten, and rain dropping from their beavers. The vision that greeted them was the vision of two women waiting at the stair’s head in their rich dresses, the light from the lantern throwing their figures into high relief. Hortense, in autumn gold, tall and opulent, crowned by her crown of splendid hair, seemed a figure divine enough to top that great oak stairway with its sweep of shadows. Anne Purcell, leaning forward with one hand on a carved pillar, symbolized watchfulness and secret suspense. While in the background the Spanish swarthiness of her daughter’s face added that mystery and solemn strangeness to the picture that life conveys in its moment of pathos or of passion.
My Lord Gore made straight for the stairway, hat in hand.
“Soyez tranquille, mesdames; a mere pin-prick in the shoulder.”
Hortense glanced past him with interest at the bronzed and imperturbable face of his son.
“Whose was the wound? Not—?”
“No, no, my Jackanapes had the madman at his mercy. May we men of blood ascend? Assuredly the name of Gore seems suited to the occasion!”
He turned his head and smiled over his shoulder at his son.
“Come up, my Jack the Giant-killer! Where is our little mistress, our inspirer of heroics?”
Anne Purcell bent toward him—as though swayed by her woman’s instinct.
“The little fool shall stay at home in future—”
“Psst—beware—!”
My lord gave a forced laugh, and looked upward over my lady’s shoulder. He had caught sight of Barbara standing in the doorway of the salon.
“Behold the inflamer of the peaceful citizens of Westminster! Mistress Barbara, my child, see what an obstinate mouth will do!”
Anne Purcell and Hortense had both turned toward the salon. My Lord Stephen was at the stair’s head, his son a little below him, with the light from the lantern falling full upon his face. But the girl standing in the doorway of the salon seemed the significant and compelling figure of the moment. She was staring at John Gore with a bleak intentness that ignored the three who waited for her to make way.
“Barbara!”
Her mother seized her arm and pushed her—almost roughly—into the salon.
“Where are your wits, girl? Don’t gape like that! On my honor, I think you are mad.”
She suffered her mother’s hectoring with an apathy that betrayed neither resentment nor understanding. Her eyes held John Gore’s for the moment. Then she turned and walked back to the window as though she had no more interest in the affair.
Yet—she had seen on the cloak that John Gore was wearing three short chains of gold, each with a knot of pearls for a button. They were spaced out irregularly, those three strands of gold, as though one had been lost—perhaps torn off in a struggle and never been replaced.
XI
My lord paused abruptly with the wine-decanter in his hand, his eyes fixed in a vacant stare on his son, who was drawing a high-backed chair forward to the table. The rumble of the wheels of the coach that had brought them home from Hortense Mancini’s could be heard dying away along St. James’s.
“Wine, Jack? They should have got Pembroke comfortably to bed by now. The man will be about again in a month—ready to quarrel with his best friend. What made you meddle in the game? A little mockery might do Nan Purcell’s girl some good.”
John Gore was unfastening the curbs of his black cloak. His father watched him, his brows knitted into a sudden frown of uneasiness—the frown of a man surprised by a spasm of pain at the heart.
“You all seemed so ready to make a fool of the child.”
“Tut—tut, sir, you ought to have come by more shrewd sense than to make a pother over such a piece of fun. Where the devil, may I ask, did you get that cloak?”
John Gore glanced down at the garment as though my lord’s tone of contempt might have made the thing shrivel on his shoulders.
“The cloak? You should know it, since it came out of your own wardrobe!”
“Mine! I deny the imputation.”
He laughed with a cynical twist of the mouth, and regarded his son slyly over the rim of his wineglass.
“Well, it came out of your room, sir!”
“Come, come, Jack!”
“My boy Sparkin fished it out of a chest when he was advising me on frills and fashions. The sobriety of the garment suited my inclinations.”
Stephen Gore’s eyes gleamed for the moment with a flash of fierce impatience.
“The meddlesome ape! You must pardon me being tickled by the irony of facts. Since Captain Jack Gore listens to a cook-boy’s opinions on costumes, I am mum.”
The son seemed amused and piqued in turn by his father’s inquisitive and fanatical prejudices. He swung the cloak from his shoulders and held it up with one hand.
“What have you to quarrel with, sir? The refinements of fashion are too deep for me. I shall be landed in Newgate for wearing the wrong kind of buckle on my shoes before the week is out.”
My lord appeared in earnest.
“Pshaw! Quarrel with? Why, the thing is about ten years out of date. Unpardonable! Give it up, Jack; I’ll not countenance you in such a pudding-cloth.”
John Gore broke into a hearty, seafaring laugh.
“Sancta Maria! is the offence so flagrant?”
“You might as well go to the King’s levee with a dirty face, sir. Don’t guffaw; I’m in earnest. Richards has orders to get rid of all the husks.”
The sea-captain fingered the gold tags.
“Being a prodigal, I will put up with such husks as these. I suppose I may be preferred before Tom Richards?”
My lord took the cloak from him casually, as though he had not noticed the gold chains with their knots of pearls.
“Hallo! these are worth saving, after all. I’ll keep them myself, Jack. Give a thing, and take it back again. That is philosophy of a sort, according to Hobbs.”
He laughed, pulled out a silver-handled clasp-knife from a pocket, and cut the gold curbs away from the cloth.
“For what we have saved, let us be thankful. It is not always wise to lend other people either your opinions or your wardrobe, much less your purse.”
John Gore had picked up the cloak again.
“Three, are there? There must have been four once. Look at the tear, there—in the cloth. Curious; I should not have noticed it before.”
My lord took the cloak from him and examined it with a careless air, making use of one corner to hide a yawn.
“The mark of the beast, Jack. Tom Richards’ fingers have been at work here, or I know nothing of human nature. Well, the fellow must have his pickings. If one worries about a small man’s petty pilferings one ought not to have the insolence to be a courtier. We are all sooted by the same chimney. Another glass of wine, Jack? No? Well, let’s to bed.”
They parted with a hand-shake and a light word or two upon the stairs, words that hid in either case the deeper impulses beneath. In my lord’s heart there was something of scorn, something of dismay, and the fierce uneasiness of a man who loves to look only upon the more flattering features of his soul. There seemed nothing in the incident to shake his confidence, and yet it had shaken him as a light wind sways a mighty elm that is rotten at the roots. A cloak, so much mere cloth, which he had hidden away and forgotten! Yet the thing had brought back visions of an autumn night, of betrayal and of anger, of passionate reproaches and of swift violence in the dark. What though he solaced himself with the oath that death had judged between the fortunes of two swords? The sin of treachery had been his. The blood-guilt remained, and no sophistry and no well-wishing to himself could wipe the stain away.
For the son, the happenings of the night had a richer aftermath. He was no self-conscious, strutting righter of wrongs; no chivalrous adventure-hunter launching his lance at the world’s throat. My Lord Pembroke might have kissed most women with impunity as far as John Gore was concerned; for though they might have protested, he knew, as a man of the world, that not one in twenty would have been worth the interference. Any chivalrous fool who had pushed in to a rescue would have merely flattered a coquette with the offer of blood where the other man had only offered kisses.
But that tall girl with the Spanish face had given the scene a different meaning. The uncompromising sincerity of her pride had turned a piece of fantastic fooling into insolence and dishonor. The call of solitary soul to soul is ever something of a riddle, and yet to the man there must be that one woman whose hair has the darkness of night, whose eyes are mysterious, whose face has an alluring sadness near to pain. Out of one thread of pathos or of passion may be woven that scarlet robe that covers the dim white body of Romance. A trick of the voice, a poise of the head, and the sleeper wakes in the world of color and desire. The streaking of the night sky by a falling star is not more swift and strange than that flash of divine wonder across the consciousness of a woman or a man.
The memory of her standing by the window, tall, defiant, aloof, with those cynical fools mocking her, burned with great vividness in John Gore’s brain. He remembered the moment when her eyes had wandered round the room to remain fixed on his. He thrilled still, strong man that he was, at that appeal the girl had given him, as though some instinct had warned her that his manhood was a nobler thing than to suffer her pride to be humbled before them all. Fighting against wild seas and the primeval perils of strange lands had given John Gore the cool and unflurried courage that is steady rather than impetuous. And yet that one glance from the girl’s eyes had drawn an instant and impulsive answer from him, as though all that she held sacred had been trusted to his hands.
And then—her history, this morose, brooding grief that my lord had hinted at! The very shadow of sadness that haunted her added a mystery, an alluring strangeness that beckoned the soul. She was not like other women. What more subtle deification! For strong natures are untaken save by strong contrasts and by keen impressions. The song of the nightingale may have no meaning for the falcon. Nor could the chattering lutes of “court beauties” call to a man who had stood where Cortez stood, gazing from Darien on the ocean limitless toward the burning west.
John Gore stood awhile at the open window of his room, as he had often stood at the rail of his quarter-deck on a southern night. The great silence of the sea seemed once more with him, and the far unutterable splendor of the moon. Then, as by contrast, his thoughts were caught by his father’s furious convictions as to the importance of the proper droop of a feather or the color of a coat. Who remembered such things when the storm-wind was shrieking, like the ghosts of the sea’s dead, through a great ship’s tackle? Yet, after all, it was only the fanaticism of another circle, another world. Your scientific zealot will cut a caper over the discovery of some new bug. It was a mere question of environment, and Father Adam may have strutted vaingloriously in some new-fangled smock of leaves.
Not for John Gore alone had it been a night of impressions. They had proved keen, pitiless, and pathetic so far as Barbara Purcell was concerned. She was alone in her room, and at her open window, the human counterpart of John Gore. In her lap lay a little strand of gold, while the moonlight touched the bleak pallor of her face, making the night, like her heart, a contrast of mysterious light and shadow.
With Barbara her impressions were like elemental fire and ice, vivid, distinct, at war with one another. They stood opposed within her mind, hurting her heart by their very enmity. Gratitude and hatred unable to be reconciled; the harsh notes of revenge and the voices of heaven clashing together in the galleries of the brain. She had seen and she had recognized, yet the gross incongruity of it all made her falter for a meaning. The incidents of the night passed and repassed rhythmically before her. The uprising of his manhood in her service; her mother’s strained dismay; the scene at the stair’s head; the glimpse of the three gold curbs upon the cloak. Where were the beginnings and the endings in this tangled skein for her? Had she not looked for exultation in this moment when at last it should come into her life? And now that the truth seemed close to her very heart, she found the near future blurred by a dimness of doubt, of incredulity, even—of dread.