CHAPTER IV.
The stir of the general rising of the kingdom against the king had not disturbed these places yet beyond what might be borne with. Everybody liked to talk, and everybody else was ready to put in a word or two; broken heads, however, were as yet the only issue. So that when there came great news of a real battle fought, and lost by Englishmen against Englishmen, the indignation of all the country ran against both parties.
Baron de Wichehalse had been thinking, after his crop of hay was in,—for such a faithful hay they have that it will not go from root to rick by less than two months of worrying,—from time to time, and even in the middle of his haycocks, this good lord had not been able to perceive his proper course. Arguments there were thatsounded quite as if a baby must be perfectly convinced by them; and then there would be quite a different line of reason taken by someone who knew all about it and despised the opposite. So that many of a less decided way of thinking every day embraced whatever had been last confuted.
This most manly view of matters and desire to give fair play was scorned, of course, by the fairer (and unfairer) half of men. Frida counted all as traitors who opposed their liege the king.
“Go forth, my lord; go forth and fight,” she cried to Viscount Auberley, when the doubtful combat of Edgehill was firing new pugnacity; “if I were a man, think you that I would let them do so?”
“Alas, fair mistress! it will take a many men to help it. But since you bid me thus away—hi, Dixon! get my trunks packed!” And then, of course, her blushing roses faded to a lily white; and then, of course, it was his duty to support her slender form; neither were those dulcet murmurs absentwhich forever must be present when the female kind begin to have the best of it.
So they went on once or twice, and would have gone on fifty times if fortune had allowed them thus to hang on one another. All the world was fair around them; and themselves, as fair as any, vouched the whole world to attest their everlasting constancy.
But one soft November evening, when the trees were full of drops, and gentle mists were creeping up the channels of the moorlands, and snipes (come home from foreign parts) were cheeping at their borings, and every weary man was gladdened by the glance of a bright wood fire, and smell of what was over it, there happened to come, on a jaded horse, a man, all hat, and cape, and boots, and mud, and sweat, and grumbling. All the people saw at once that it was quite impossible to make at all too much of him, because he must be full of news, which (after victuals) is the greatest need of human nature. So hehad his own way as to everything he ordered; and, having ridden into much experience of women, kept himself as warm as could be, without any jealousy.
This stern man bore urgent order for the Viscount Auberley to join the king at once at Oxford, and bring with him all his gathering. Having gathered no men yet, but spent the time in plucking roses and the wild myrtles of Devonshire love, the young lord was for once a little taken aback at this order. Moreover, though he had been grumbling, half a dozen times a day—to make himself more precious—about the place, and the people, and the way they cooked his meals, he really meant it less and less as he came to know the neighbourhood. These are things which nobody can understand without seeing them.
“I grieve, my lord,” said the worthy baron, “that you must leave us in this hot haste.” On the whole, however, this excellent man was partly glad to be quit of him.
“And I am deeply indebted to your lordship for the grievance; but it must be so.Que voulez-vous?You talk the French,mon baron?”
“With a Frenchman, my lord; but not when I have the honour to speak with an Englishman.”
“Ah, there! Foreign again! My lord, you will never speak English.”
De Wichehalse could never be quite sure, though his race had been long in this country, whether he or they could speak born English as it ought to be.
“Perhaps you will find,” he said at last, with grief as well as courtesy, “many who speak one language striving to silence one another.”
“He fights best who fights the longest. You will come with us, my lord?”
“Not a foot, not half an inch,” the baron answered sturdily. “I’ve a-laboured hard to zee my best, and ’a can’t zee head nor tail to it.”
Thus he spoke in imitation of what hisleading tenant said, smiling brightly at himself, but sadly at his subject.
“Even so!” the young man answered; “I will forth and pay my duty. The rusty weathercock, my lord, is often too late for the oiling.”
With this conceit he left De Wichehalse, and, while his grooms were making ready, sauntered down the zigzag path, which, through rocks and stubbed oaks, made toward the rugged headland known, far up and down the Channel, by the name of Duty Point. Near the end of this walk there lurked a soft and silent bower, made by Nature, and with all of Nature’s art secluded. The ledge that wound along the rock-front widened, and the rock fell back and left a little cove, retiring into moss and ferny shade. Here the maid was well accustomed every day to sit and think, gazing down at the calm, gray sea, and filled with rich content and deep capacity of dreaming.
Here she was, at the present moment,resting in her pure love-dream, believing all the world as good, and true, and kind as her own young self. Round her all was calm and lovely; and the soft brown hand of autumn, with the sun’s approval, tempered every mellow mood of leaves.
Aubyn Auberley was not of a sentimental cast of mind. He liked the poets of the day, whenever he deigned to read them; nor was he at all above accepting the dedication of a book. But it was not the fashion now—as had been in the noble time of Watson, Raleigh, and Shakspere—for men to look around and love the greater things they grow among.
Frida was surprised to see her dainty lord so early. She came here in the morning always, when it did not rain too hard, to let her mind have pasture on the landscape of sweet memory. And even sweeter hope was always fluttering in the distance, on the sea, or clouds, or flitting vapour of the morning. Even so she now was looking at the mounting glory of the sun above thesea-clouds, the sun that lay along the land, and made the distance roll away.
“Hard and bitter is my task,” the gallant lord began with her, “to say farewell to all I love. But so it ever must be.”
Frida looked at his riding-dress, and cold fear seized her suddenly, and then warm hope that he might only be riding after the bustards.
“My lord,” she said, “will you never grant me that one little prayer of mine—to spare poor birds, and make those cruel gaze-hounds run down one another?”
“I shall never see the gaze-hounds more,” he answered petulantly; “my time for sport is over. I must set forth for the war to-day.”
“To-day!” she cried; and then tried to say a little more for pride’s sake; “to go to the war to-day, my lord!”
“Alas! it is too true. Either I must go, or be a traitor and a dastard.”
Her soft blue eyes lay full on his, and tears that had not time to flow began tospread a hazy veil between her and the one she loved.
He saw it, and he saw the rise and sinking of her wounded heart, and how the words she tried to utter fell away and died within her for the want of courage; and light and hard, and mainly selfish as his nature was, the strength, and depth, and truth of love came nigh to scare him for the moment even of his vanities.
“Frida!” he said, with her hand in his, and bending one knee on the moss; “only tell me that I must stay; then stay I will; the rest of the world may scorn if you approve me.”
This, of course, sounded very well and pleased her, as it was meant to do; still, it did not satisfy her—so exacting are young maidens, and so keen is the ear of love.
“Aubyn, you are good and true. How very good and true you are! But even by your dear voice now I know what you are thinking.”
Lord Auberley, by this time, was as well within himself again as he generally found himself; so that he began to balance chances very knowingly. If the king should win the warfare and be paramount again, this bright star of the court must rise to something infinitely higher than a Devonshire squire’s child. A fine young widow of a duke, of the royal blood of France itself, was not far from being quite determined to accept him, if she only could be certain how these things would end themselves. Many other ladies were determined quite as bravely to wait the course of events, and let him have them, if convenient. On the other hand, if the kingdom should succeed in keeping the king in order—which was the utmost then intended—Aubyn Auberley might be only too glad to fall back upon Frida.
Thinking it wiser, upon the whole, to make sure of this little lamb, with nobler game in prospect, Lord Auberley heaved asdeep a sigh as the size of his chest could compass. After which he spoke as follows, in a most delicious tone:
“Sweetest, and my only hope, the one star of my wanderings; although you send me forth to battle, where my arm is needed, give me one dear pledge that ever you will live and die my own.”
This was just what Frida wanted, having trust (as our free-traders, by vast amplitude of vision, have in reciprocity) that if a man gets the best of a woman he is sure to give it back. Therefore these two sealed and delivered certain treaties (all unwritten, but forever engraven upon the best and tenderest feelings of the lofty human nature) that nothing less than death, or even greater, should divide them.
Is there one, among the many who survive such process, unable to imagine or remember how they parted? The fierce and even desperate anguish, nursed and made the most of; the pride and self-control that keep such things for comfortafterward; the falling of the heart that feels itself the true thing after all. Let it be so, since it must be; and no sympathy can heal it, since in every case it never, never, was so bad before!