When they had all gone and the hall was quiet, Thoroughgood came slowly down with a puzzled frown on his honest, weather-beaten face to where Halfman humped over his map.
“Where’s the good of drilling clowns and cooks?” he asked, surlily. He talked like one thoroughly weary, but his mood of weariness seemed to melt before the sunshine of Halfman’s smile as he lifted his head from the map.
“Where’s the harm?” he countered. “’Twas my lady’s idea to keep their spirits up, and, by God! it was a good thought. She knows how it heartens folk to play a great part in a great business: keeps them from feeling the fingers of famine in their inwards, keeps them from whining, repining, declining, what you will. But I own I did not count on the presence of Gammer Cook in the by-play.”
“I could not see why she should be kept out of the mummery,” Thoroughgood responded, “if she had a mind for the masking.”
“Perhaps you are right,” Halfman answered, meditatively. “My lady’s example would make a Hippolyta of any housemaid of them all.”
“I do not know what it would make of them,” Thoroughgood answered; “but I know this, that it matters very little now.”
Halfman swung round on his seat and stared at him curiously.
“Why?” he asked.
“Now that this truce is called,” Thoroughgood answered, “that the Roundhead captain may have speech with my lady.”
“Why, what then?” questioned Halfman, with his eyes so fixed on Thoroughgood’s that Thoroughgood, dogged as he was, averted his gaze.
“Naught’s left but surrender,” he grunted, between his teeth. The words came thickly, but Halfman heard them clearly. He raised his right hand for a moment as if he had a thought to strike his companion, but then, changing his temper, he let it fall idly upon his knee as he surveyed Thoroughgood with a look that half disdained, half pitied.
“My lady will never surrender,” he said, quietly, with the quiet of a man who enunciates a mathematical axiom. “You know that well enough.”
Thoroughgood shrugged plaintive, protesting shoulders.
“We’ve stood this siege for many days,” he muttered. “Food is running out; powder is running out. Even the Lady Brilliana cannot work miracles.”
Halfman rose to his feet. His eyes were shining and he pressed his clinched hands to his breast like a man in adoration.
“The Lady Brilliana can work miracles, does work miracles daily. Is it no miracle that she has held this castle all these hours and days against this rebel leaguer? Is it no miracle that she has poured the spirit of chivalry into scullions and farm-hands and cook-wenches so that not a Jack or Jill of them but would lose bright life blithely for her and the King and God? Is it not a miracle that she has transmuted, by a change more amazing than anything Master Ovid hath recorded in his Metamorphoses, a villanous old land-devil and sea-devil like myself into a passionate partisan? But what of me? God bless her! She is my lady-angel, and her will is my will to the end of the chapter.”
He dropped in his chair again as if exhausted by the vehemence of his words and the emotion which prompted them. Thoroughgood contemplated him sourly.
“You prate like a play-actor,” he snarled. Halfman’s whole being flashed into activity again. He was no more a sentimentalist but now a roaring ranter.
“Because I was a play-actor once,” he shouted, “when I was a sweet-and-twenty youngling.”
Thoroughgood eyed Halfman with a sudden air of distrust.
“You never told me you were a play-actor,” he growled. “You spoke only of soldiering.”
Halfman laughed flagrantly in his face.
“Godamercy, man, there has been scant time to tell you my life’s story. We have had other cats to whip. Yes, I was a play-actor once, and played for great poets, for men whose names have never tickled your ears. But the owl-public would have none of me, and, owllike, hooted me off the boards. But I’ve had my revenge of them. I’ve played a devil’s part on the devil’s stage for thirty red years. Nune Plaudite.”
The Latin tag dropped dead at the porches of John Thoroughgood’s ears, but those ears pricked at part of Halfman’s declamation.
“What kind of parts?” he asked, drawing a little nearer to the soldier of fortune, whose experiences fascinated his inexperience.
Halfman shrugged his shoulders and favored honest Thoroughgood with a bantering, quizzical smile.
“All kinds of parts,” he answered. “How does the old puzzle run? Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, ploughboy, gentleman, thief. I think I have played all those parts, and others, too. Fling beggar and pirate into the dish. But I tell you this, honest John, I have never played a part so dear to me as that of captain to this divine commander. I thank my extravagant stars that steered me home to serve her.”
“You cannot sing her praises too sweetly for my ears,” Thoroughgood answered. “But there is an end to all things, and it looks to me as if we were mighty near to an end of the siege of Harby. Why else should there be a truce called that the Roundhead captain may have speech with my lady.”
“Honest John Thoroughgood,” Halfman answered, with great composure, “you are not so wise as you think. This Roundhead captain has sent us hither the most passionate pleadings to be admitted to parley. Why deny him? It will advantage him no jot, but it is possible we may learn from the leakage of his lips something at least of what is going on in the world.”
“What is there to learn?” asked Thoroughgood. Halfman shook his head reprovingly.
“Why, for my part, I should like to learn why in all this great gap of time nothing has been done to help one side or the other. If the gentry of Harby have made no effort to relieve us, neither, on the other hand, has our leaguer been augmented by any reinforcements. If my lady has been surprised that Sir Blaise Mickleton has made no show of coming to her succor, I, for my part, am woundily surprised that the Cropheads of Cambridge have sent no further levies for our undoing.”
“Why, for that matter—” Thoroughgood began, and then suddenly broke off. “Here comes my lady,” he said, turning and standing in an attitude of respectful attention.
Halfman had known of her coming before his companion spoke. The Lady Brilliana had come out on to the gallery from the door near the head of the stairway, and Halfman was conscious of her presence before he lifted his eyes and looked at her. She was not habited now, as on the day when he first beheld her, in her riding-robe of green, but in a simple house-gown chosen for the ease and freedom it allowed to a great lady who had suddenly found that she had much to do. The color of the stuff, a crimson,as being a royal, loyal color, well became her fine skin and her dark curls and her bright, imperious eyes. She was followed by her serving-woman, Tiffany, a merry girl that Thoroughgood adored, and one that would in days gone over have been likely to tickle the easy whimsies of Halfman. Now he had no eyes, no thoughts, save for her mistress, the lass unparalleled.
Brilliana was speaking to Tiffany even as she entered the gallery.
“Strip more lint, Tiffany,” she ordered; “and bid Andrew be brisk with the charcoal.”
Her voice was as buoyant as the song of a free bird, and her step on the stair as light as if there were no such thing in the world as a leaguer. Tiffany crossed the gallery and disappeared through the opposite door. Brilliana, as she descended the stair, diverted her speech to Thoroughgood.
“John Thoroughgood, I saw from the lattice our envoys bringing the Parliament man down the elm walk. To them at once. They must not unhood their hawk till he come to our presence.”
When Thoroughgood had left the hall and Brilliana came to the floor, Halfman questioned her, very respectfully, but still with the air of one who has earned the friendly right to put questions.
“Why do you see this black-jack?” he asked. Brilliana smiled at him as radiantly as if the holding of a house against armed enemies was the properest, pleasantest business imaginable.
“With the littlest good-will in the world, I promise you,” she answered. “But, you know, he so plagued for the parley that it was easier to try him than deny him. Besides, good friend and captain, I learn from what I read in Master Froissart’s Chronicles that it were neither customary nor courteous to deny conference to a supplicating enemy.”
Halfman adored her for her courage, for her calm assumption of success.
“How if he but come to spy out our strategies?”he asked. “The leanness of our larder? Our empty bandoliers?”
Brilliana beamed back at him with her bewildering confidence.
“I have thought of that, too,” she admitted. “But he shall not find us at our wit’s-end. Seek Simon Butler, friend captain. Though our cellars are near empty he will make shift to find you some full flagons. Bring hither a bunch of your subalterns, the rosiest, the most jovial, if any still carry such colors and boast such spirit; let them gather in the banqueting-hall, where, with such wit as French wine can give, let them sing as if they were merry and well fed. Our sanctimonious spy-out-the-nakedness-of-the-land must think we are well victualled, he must think we are well mannered.”
Halfman made her a sweeping reverence which was not without its play-actor’s grace, though its honesty might have pardoned a greater awkwardness.
“We are well womaned, lady,” he asseverated, “with you for our leader. By sea and by land I have served some great captains, but never one greater than you for constancy and manly valor.”
Brilliana’s bright face took a swift look of gravity and she gave a little sigh.
“The King’s cause,” she said, soberly, “might turn a child into a champion.”
The steady loyalty that made her words at once a psalm and a battle-cry bade Halfman’s pulses tingle. Who could be found unfaithful where this fair maid was so faithful? Yet he remembered their isolation and the memory made him speak.
“I marvel that none of your neighbors have tried to lend us a hand?”
“How could they?” Brilliana asked, astonished. “The brave are with the King at Shrewsbury; the stay-at-homes are not fighters.”
“Hum,” commented Halfman. “What of Master Paul Hungerford?”
Brilliana shrugged her shoulders.
“A miserly daw, who would not risk a crown to save the crown.”
Halfman questioned again.
“What of Master Peter Rainham?”
Brilliana shrugged again.
“A dull, sullen skinflint waiting on event.”
Halfman’s inventory was not complete.
“You have yet a third neighbor,” he said, “and, as I heard, a prodigal in protestation. What of Sir Blaise Mickleton?”
Brilliana’s lips twitched with a derisive smile.
“Sir Blaise, honest gentleman, loves good cheer and good ease. I think he would not quit the board if Armageddon were towards. He will be for eating, he will be for drinking, he will be for sleeping, and in the mean time God’s chosen gentlemen have learned the value of living so long as to grant them a death for their King.”
Her voice had risen to a cry of defiance, but now it dropped again to its former note of bantering irony.
“What a wonderful world it is which can hold at once such men as my cousin Randolph or you or Rufus Quaryll and these hangbacks who shame Harby. These three are professed my very good suitors, but they have made no move to our help. Well, let them hang for a tray of knaves. We need them not. We know that the King’s cause must triumph and so we are wise to be blithe.”
Halfman’s head was swinging with pleasure. She had counted him in so glibly with the chosen ones, with the servants of God and the King. He was very sure now that his watch-word had always been “God and the King.”
“The King’s cause must triumph,” he echoed, his face shining with loyal confidence.
“How we shall all smile a year hence,” Brillianaanswered, “to think that such pitiful rebels vexed us. But for the moment there is one of these same rebels to be faced—and to be fooled. About our plan, good captain.”
Halfman saluted her more enthusiastically than he had ever saluted male commander.
“My general,” he vowed, “he shall think these walls hold an army of wassaillers.”
He turned on his heel and marched briskly out of the hall. Brilliana looked after him, with the bright smile on her face, till the door of the banqueting-hall closed behind him; then the smile slowly faded from her face.
“I would my spirits were as blithe as my speech,” she thought, as she went to the table and bent over it, looking at the open map which Halfman had been studying.
“What is going on in England, the King’s England, little England, that should not be big enough to have any room for traitors?”
She put her finger on the spot where Harby figured on the sheet.
“Here,” she mused, “we have been sundered from the world for all these days by this Roundhead leaguer, hearing no outside news but the ring of rebel shots and the sound of rebel voices. What has happened? What is happening? When we began the King was at Shrewsbury and theParliament ruled London. What has come to the Parliament since? What has come to the King? Well, Loyalty House will carry the King’s flag so long as one stone tops another. We will live as long as we can for his Majesty, and then die for him gamely.”
A sound of heavy steps disturbed her meditations. She stood up from her map, blinked down the tears that tried to rise, and turned to face new fortune.
“Here is our enemy,” she said to herself, and she forced back the confident color to her cheeks, the confident light to her eyes. The door from the park opened, and John Thoroughgood entered the room, holding by the hand a man in the staid habit of a Puritan soldier, whose eyes were muffled by a folded scarf of silk. Blindfolded though he was, the Puritan followed his guide with a steady and resolute step.
“Halt!” cried Thoroughgood. The stranger stood quietly as if on parade, while Thoroughgood saluted his mistress.
“Unhood your hawk,” Brilliana ordered. Thoroughgood, obedient, unpicked the knot of the handkerchief, revealing his companion’s face. Brilliana observed with a hostile curiosity a tallish, well-set, comely man of aboutthirty years of age, whose smooth, well-featured face asserted high breeding and a gravity which deepened into melancholy in the dark expressive eyes and lightened into lines of humor about the fine, firm mouth. For a moment, with the removal of the muffle, he seemed dazzled by the change from dark to light; then, as command of his vision returned, he observed Brilliana and made her a courteous salutation which she returned coldly. She made a gesture of dismissal to Thoroughgood, who went out, and the Lady of Loyalty was left alone with her enemy.
There was a moment’s silence as the pair faced each other, the man quietly discreet, the woman openly scornful. She was under the same roof with a rebel in arms, and the thought sickened her. She broke the silence.
“You petitioned to see me.” With the sound of her voice she found new vehemence, new indignation. “Do your rebels offer unconditional surrender?”
The circumstances of the astonishing question brought for the moment a slight smile to the grave face of the Parliament man.
“It was scarcely with that thought,” he answered, “that I sought for a parley.”
Though the man’s smile had been short-lived, Brilliana had seen it and loathed him for it.Though the man’s manner was suave, it seemed to wear the suavity of success and she loathed him for that, too.
“We waste time,” she cried, impatiently, “with any other business than your swift submission.”
Then as she saw him make an amiably protesting gesture she raged at him with a rising voice.
“Oh, if you knew how hard it is for me to stand in the same room with a renegade traitor you would, if such as you remember courtesy, be brief in your errand.”
The man showed no consciousness of the insult in her words and in her manner save than by a courteous inclination of the head and a few words of quiet speech.
“Much may be pardoned to so brave a lady.”
Brilliana struck her hand angrily upon the table once and again.
“For God’s sake do not praise me!” she almost screamed, “or I shall hate myself. Your errand, your errand, your errand!”
The enemy was provokingly imperturbable.
“You have a high spirit,” he said, “that must compel admiration from all. That is why I would persuade you to wisdom. I came hitherfrom Cambridge by order of Colonel Cromwell.”
Brilliana’s lips tightened at the sound of the name which the envoy pronounced with so much reverence.
“The rebel member for Cambridge,” she sneered—“the mutinous brewer. Are you a vassal of the man of beer?”
There was a quiet note of protest in the reply of the envoy.
“Colonel Cromwell is not a brewer, though he would be no worse a man if he were. I am honored in his friendship, in his service. He is a great man and a great Englishman.”
“And what,” Brilliana asked, “has this great man to do with Harby that he sends you here?”
“He sends me here,” the Puritan answered, “to haul down your flag.”
“That you shall never do,” Brilliana answered, steadily, “while there is a living soul in Harby.”
The Puritan protested with appealing hands.
“You are in the last straits for lack of food, for lack of fuel, for lack of powder.”
Brilliana made a passionate gesture of denial.
“You are as ignorant as insolent,” she asserted. “Loyalty House lacks neither provisions nor munitions of war.”
There was a kind of respectful pity in the stranger’s face as he watched the wild, bright girl and hearkened to the vain, brave words.
“Nay, now—” he began, out of the consciousness of his own truer knowledge, but what he would have said was furiously interrupted by a volume of strange sounds from the adjoining banqueting-hall. There was a rattle and clink as of many pewter mugs banged lustily upon an oaken table; there was a shrill explosion of laughter, the work of many merry voices; there was the grinding noise of heavy chairs pushed back across the floor for the greater ease of their occupants; there was a tapping as of pipe-bowls on the board, and then over all the mingled din rose a voice, which Brilliana knew for the voice of Halfman, ringing out a resonant appeal.
“The King’s health, friends, to begin with.”
All the noises that had died down to allow Halfman a hearing began again with fresh vigor. It was obvious to the most unsophisticated listener that here was the fag end of a feast and the moment for the genial giving of toasts. Many voices swelled a loyal chorus of “The King, the King!” and had the great doors of the banqueting-hall been no other than bright glass it would have been scarce easier for the man and woman in the great hall to realizewhat was happening, the revellers rising to their feet, the drinking-vessels lifted high in air with loyal vociferations, and then the silence, eloquent of tilted mugs and the running of welcome liquor down the channels of thirsty throats. This silence was broken by some one calling for a song, to which call he who had proposed the King’s health answered instantly and with evident satisfaction. His rich if somewhat rough voice came booming through the partitions, carolling a ballad to which the Puritan listened with a perfectly unmoved countenance, while the Lady Brilliana’s eager face expressed every signal of the liveliest delight.
This was the song that came across the threshold:
“What creature’s this with his short hairs,His little band and huge long ears,That this new faith hath founded?The Puritans were never such,The saints themselves had ne’er so much,Oh, such a knave’s a Roundhead.”
“What creature’s this with his short hairs,His little band and huge long ears,That this new faith hath founded?The Puritans were never such,The saints themselves had ne’er so much,Oh, such a knave’s a Roundhead.”
A yell of pleasure followed this verse, and a tuneless chorus thundered the refrain, “Oh, such a knave’s a Roundhead,” with the most evident relish for the sentiments of the song. Brilliana looked with some impatience at theunruffled face of her adversary, and when the immediate clamor dwindled she addressed him, sarcastically:
“These revellers,” she said, “would not seem to be at the last extremity. But their festival must not deafen our conference.”
She advanced to the door of the banqueting-room and struck against it with her hand. On the instant silence she opened the door a little way and spoke through softly, as if gently chiding those within.
“Be merry more gently, friends. Sure, I cannot hear the gentleman speak. Though,” she added, reflectively, as she closed the door and returned again to the table she had quitted—“though God knows he talks big enough.”
The Puritan clapped his palms together as if in applause, an action that somewhat amazed her in him, while a kindly humor kindled in his eyes.
“Bravely staged, bravely played,” he admitted, while he shook his head. “But it will not serve your turn, for it may not deceive me. I had a message this morning from my Lord Essex. There has been hot fighting; Heaven has given us the victory; the King’s cause is wellnigh lost at the first push.”
Brilliana felt her heart drumming against herstays, but she turned a defiant face on the news-monger.
“I do not believe you,” she answered. “The King’s cause will always win.”
The soldier took no notice of her denial; he felt too sure of his fact to hold other than pity for the leaguered lady. He quietly added:
“My Lord Essex advises me further that reinforcements are marching to me well equipped with artillery against which even these gallant walls are worthless. Be warned, be wise. You cannot hope to hold out longer. For pity’s sake, yield to the Parliament.”
Brilliana waved his pleas away with a dainty, impatient flourish.
“You chatter republican vainly. I have store of powder. I will blow this old hall heaven high when I can no longer hold it for the King.”
Her visitor looked at her sadly, made as if to speak, paused, and then appeared to force himself to reluctant utterance.
“Lady,” he said, slowly, “though we be opponents, we share the same blood. Let a kinsman entreat you to reason.”
If the civil-spoken stranger had struck her in the face with his glove Brilliana could not have been more astonished or angered. She moveda little nearer to him, interrogation in her shining eyes and on her angry cheeks.
“Are you mad?” she gasped. “How could such a thing as you be my kinsman?”
She had taunted him again and again during their brief interview and he had shown no sign of displeasure. He showed no sign of displeasure now, answering her with simple dignity.
“Very simply. A lady of your race, your grandsire’s sister, married a poor gentleman of my name and was my father’s mother.”
Brilliana drew back a little as if she had indeed received a blow. Involuntarily, she put up her hand to her eyes as if to shut out the sight of this importunate fellow.
“I have heard something of that tale,” she whispered, “but dimly, for we in Harby do not care to speak of it. When my grandsire’s sister shamed her family by wedding with a Puritan her people blotted her from their memory. You will not find her picture on the walls of Harby.”
“The loss is Harby’s,” the soldier answered, “for I believe she was as fair as she was good. She married an honest gentleman named Cloud, whose honesty compelled him to profess the faith he believed in. My name is Evander Cloud.”
He waited for a moment as if he expected her to speak, but she uttered no word, only faced him rigidly with hatred in her gaze.
Seeing her silent, he resumed:
“It was this sad kinship pushed me to a parley wherein, perhaps, I have something strained my strict duty. But the voice of our common blood cried out in me to urge you to reason. You have done all that woman, all that man could do. Yield now, while I can still offer you terms, and your garrison shall march out with all the honors of war, drums beating, matches burning, colors flying.”
He was very earnest in his appeal, and Brilliana heard him to the end in silence, with her clinched hands pressed against her bosom. Then she turned fiercely upon him and her voice was bitter.
“Sir,” she cried, “if I hated you before for a detested rebel, think how I hate you now, if you be, even in so base a way, my kinsman.”
She turned away from him, lifting her clasped hands as if in supplication.
“Oh, Heaven, to think that a disloyal, hypocritical, canting Puritan could brag to my face that he carries one drop of our loyal blood in his false heart.”
She turned to him again with new fury.
“You are doubly a traitor now, and if you are wise you will keep out of my power, for my heart aches with its hate of you. Go! Five minutes left of your truce gives you just time to return to your rebels. If you overlinger in our lines but one minute you are no longer an envoy: you are an enemy and a spy and shall swing for it.”
She reached out her hand to strike the bell upon the table, while Evander Cloud, still impassive, paid a salutation to his unwilling hostess and made a motion to depart. But on the instant both were chilled into immobility by an amazing interruption. Brilliana’s hand never touched the bell; Evander’s hand never found the handle of the door. For between the beginning and the end of their action came a sudden rattle of musketry, distant but deafening, followed on the instant by a whirlwind of furious cries and noise.
The man and the woman glared at each other, each in swift suspicion of treason. The Lady of Harby was the quickest to act upon impulse. She snatched up the pistol that lay upon the table and levelled it with a steady hand at Evander.
“Do you use your trust to betray us?” she shrilled. “It shall not save you.”
Even a less-experienced soldier could have seen from the sure way in which Brilliana handled her weapon that his life was in real peril, but he paid no more heed to her menace than if she was threatening him with her glove or her fan.
“Fighting outside!” he cried. Turning to the woman he asked, with a fierceness that contrasted with his previous calm, “Who is the traitor here?”
His sword was naked in his hand as he spoke and he made a rush for the door. But before he could reach it it was flung open in his faceand Halfman rushed in, waving his drawn sword, and followed by Thoroughgood carrying a gun and Garlinge and Clupp armed with pikes.
Inevitably bewildered by the sudden turn in the tide of events, Evander Cloud gave ground for a moment before the onrush, while Halfman, staggering like a drunken man, reeled forward towards Brilliana, shrieking:
“There is fighting in the rebel lines. Help has come at last.”
Whatever joy the tidings gave to Brilliana, she wasted no words from the needs of the moment. Pointing to Evander where he stood, irresolute in surprise, she commanded, “Secure that man!”
Evander’s resolution returned to him with the sound of her voice, but he was one against too many. While he tried to engage the blade of Halfman, a swinging blow from the pike of Garlinge knocked his weapon out of his hand, and in another moment he was gripped in the grasp of the two young country giants, while Thoroughgood covered him with his musketoon.
“This is treachery,” he gasped; but no one paid any attention to his protest. Halfman, convinced that the Puritan was a sure prisoner, swaggered up to Brilliana with all the arrogance of a stage herald.
“Dear lord,” he shouted, “dear lady, a company of Cavaliers are galloping up the avenue, a-shouting like devils for the King.”
He was flushed and drunk with exhilaration; he could speak no more; the timely episode tickled his tired brain like wine; he caught at the table for support and muttered inarticulately. Thoroughgood, who had secured Evander’s fallen sword, interpolated a word of explanation.
“It is Sir Rufus, my lady—Sir Rufus and his friends.”
The interruption had been so sudden, the things that had chanced had passed so swiftly, that Brilliana still stood as she had stood when she gave the command to secure Evander. But now all her being seemed alive with a new life.
“I hear them; I hear them!” she cried, exultantly. And, indeed, the sounds came very clearly now of fierce young voices shouting for the King.
“The King! The King!” Brilliana cried, in an ecstasy, and as the loyal syllables died on her lips there came a trampling of near feet, and then through the yawning doorway rushed a covey of young gentlemen waving their drawn swords and yelling their cry, “The King! The King!” As they flooded into the room, brightfoam on the wave of victorious loyalty, Brilliana knew them all. Sir Rufus Quaryll, her neighbor and hot lover; the Lord Fawley, who had vainly wooed her for wife; Sir John Radlett, who had the sense to love her and the sense to hold his tongue; Captain Bardon, the bold and bluff; and young Lord Richard Ingrow, with the delicate, girlish face that masked the amazing rake. She seemed to see them as in some golden dream, seemed to hear a-down the vistas of dreams the echoes of their gallant cries of “God save the King!” Then as the new-comers knelt before her she knew that all was true.
“God bless you, gentlemen!” she cried, from a full heart. “You are very well come.”
Rufus Quaryll, neighbor and wooer, was the first to speak, looking up at her with rapture in his eyes of reddish brown.
“Imperial lady, the siege of Harby is raised.”
Brilliana flung out her hands to him, and as he caught and kissed them she raised him to his feet.
“Your news is music,” she said, and her voice was as blithe as a song.
“We are heralds of victory,” Rufus said, as he stood and looked into her eyes.
My Lord Fawley rose from his knees with a whoop.
“We have pelted the rebels from Edgehill,” he shouted. Sir John Radlett caught him up. “We banged them finely,” he trumpeted. Young Ingrow, with a flush on his fine cheeks, sang out a shrill “Hurrah for Prince Rupert!” and bluff Bardon rubbed his hands as he chuckled, “He brushed them into dust.”
All the Cavaliers spoke rapidly and eagerly, flinging their phrases each on top of the other. Rufus summed up all in a single splendid sentence.
“The road lies plain to London.”
“Heaven be praised,” Brilliana ejaculated, and then, wonder treading on the heels of thankfulness, she questioned, “How came you here so timely?”
My Lord Fawley broke into a boisterous laugh which seemed to rattle among the rafters.
“Oh, Lord, the best jest in the world,” he bellowed. Bardon clapped a hand on lad Ingrow’s shoulder.
“Our Ingrow writes a clerky hand,” he asserted. Ingrow, stabbing at Bardon’s stout ribs with slender fingers, riposted:
“And our Bardon has a merry invention.”
Brilliana looked commands and entreaties at the row of jolly, laughing faces.
“Do not play the sphinx with me,” shepleaded. Rufus immediately made himself interpreter of the mirth.
“Why, between us we forged a letter from my lord high damnable traitor Essex to your enemy here, advising him of reinforcements, assuring him of the King’s defeat.”
“Yes,” chirruped the Lord Fawley, “and the gull-gaby swallowed the bait.”
“When we rode up but now,” Radlett interposed, “his rascals received us with open arms.”
Rufus smiled sardonically as he completed the story of the entrapment.
“They took us for Essex men because of our orange-tawny scarves, but they found out when too late that we were right-tight Cavalier lads and no crop-eared curmudgeons. Why, we were in the thick of them with sword and pistol before they had stayed from snuffling their psalms of welcome.”
Brilliana held out her hand again for her cousin’s hand and clasped it manfully.
“How rich is the ring of victory in your loyal voice,” she sighed. “My last public news was of the King’s stay at Shrewsbury. Then these curmudgeons raced hot-foot from Cambridge to pull down my flag. But ‘This is Loyalty House,’ says I, and ‘Go to the devil,’ says I—forgive me, sirs, if I raged unmaidenly—and Islammed the door in their sour faces. Then came such a tintamar, rebels firing on us, we firing on rebels, and so in such noise and thunder we have been eclipsed out of the world these weary days.”
“Never were such days better lived through since the world began,” said Rufus. “You do well to call this Loyalty House which has held out so well against the King’s enemies.”
Brilliana now turned to where Halfman stood apart, his hands resting on the hilt of his sword, and the shadow of a frown on his forehead as he eyed the babbling gallants.
“That Loyalty House should hold out so long as it could was from the first my purpose,” she said. “But that it was able to hold out so long as it did was greatly due to the courage and the counsels of this brave gentleman.”
As she spoke she pointed to Halfman, whose dark face flushed with pleasure as he gave back the stares of the astonished Cavaliers who up to now had left him unnoticed.
“Gentles,” she went on, “this is Captain Halfman, who warned me of my danger, who helped me in my peril with his soldier’s knowledge and his soldier’s sword, and who was of my own mind rather to die than to surrender Harby.”
Halfman strode forward with a studied grace.He felt like Faulconbridge; he felt like Harry at Agincourt; he felt like Coriolanus; he felt exceedingly happy.
“Gallants,” he said, with a magnificent salutation, “to have served this lady makes a man know how it had seemed to serve Alexander or Cæsar. Wherefore, a soldier of good-fortune salutes you.”
Rufus, who had watched him with something of a sullen eye from the moment of Brilliana’s introduction, now answered him with a clearer countenance.
“We greet you, sir,” he said, gravely, “with great gratitude and great envy, for, indeed, there is none among us who would not have given his life to be lieutenant to this lady.” He accorded the beaming Halfman a military salute, and then, turning to Brilliana, continued:
“Bright Brilliana, your servants and swains yearned to ride to your help when we heard of your peril, but we could not leave the King in the beginning of his enterprise. He gave us glad leave after the victory. ‘Tell the brave lady,’ he said, ‘she shall be our viceroy in Oxfordshire.’”
Brilliana’s cheeks blazed with pleasure. “Oh, the dear man,” she cried, with clasped hands of rapture. But there was more to come.
“I think,” continued Rufus, “it is more than likely that his Majesty will visit Harby—I should say Loyalty House—ere he rides to London.”
Brilliana thrilled with pride—with pleasure. The air about her seemed to swoon with music, to be sweet as roses, to be spangled with golden motes.
“I rejoice,” she answered, in a voice unsteady with happiness—such might have been the voice of Semele at the coming of her god—“I rejoice that Loyalty House boasts a roof to shelter his Majesty. For I was minded to blow the place to pieces rather than yield it to this gentleman who would so speciously persuade me to surrender.”
As she spoke she glanced disdainfully in the direction of Evander Cloud, who now for the first time since the irruption of the Cavaliers became in any sense an object of public interest. None of the new-comers had paid any heed to the sombre-habited prisoner; Halfman had forgotten his captive in his jealous study of the men who had raised the siege; Thoroughgood, with the Puritan’s sword resting idly on his left arm, was as absorbed in the converse of Sir Rufus and his comrades as were his subordinates Garlinge and Clupp, who, though they gripped their prisoner tightly, were as indifferent to hisexistence as if he had been the turbaned dummy of a quintain. But now on the instant every glance was turned on Evander, and Sir Rufus, eying him with much disfavor, asked of Brilliana, “Who is your prisoner?”
Evander made a step forward unrestrained by his guards, and answered for himself composedly.
“I am Captain Cloud, of the parliamentary army, snared under a flag of truce.”
He was so well restrained in his speech and carriage, so quiet a contrast to the heated gentlemen who glared at him, that to an uninformed observer he might very well have seemed the judge rather than the one on trial. Rufus snapped at him like an angry dog.
“Well, you tub-thumper, you see that the gentlemen of England are more than a match for pestilent pennyweight rebels.”
Evander surveyed his truculent opponent with a tranquil contempt which had its effect in increasing the irritation of the Cavalier.
“You play the valiant braggart to a captive,” he commented, quietly. Then he turned to Brilliana as one who had no further desire for treaty with a fellow of this kind.
“Let me remind you, lady, that I came here under a flag of truce.”
Brilliana had forgotten Evander in the exhilaration of her relief. But now that he had come into her mind again, so with his image had flooded in again all the prejudices he provoked, the scorn, the hatred.
“That plea cannot release you,” she answered, hotly. “Your time was up, your sword was drawn; I am very sure you would have joined your men.”
Evander, whose arms were now released from bondage by Garlinge and Clupp, made a gesture of absolute acquiescence.
“I am very sure I should have joined my men,” he answered, calmly. Brilliana rounded on him triumphant.
“Then you are a prisoner of war, fairly taken. Let me have no more words.”
As indifferent to her words as to the angry carriage of the Cavaliers, Evander stepped tranquilly back to his place between his warders.
“I have no more words to waste,” he said, with a scorn in his voice that stung Brilliana’s cheeks to crimson. She turned hurriedly to the little knot of Cavaliers, who chafed at having to witness what they held to be the presumption of a Puritan in daring to bandy words with a lady of quality.
“Gallants,” she said, “this merry meetingcalls for its baptism of wine.” As she spoke she struck upon the bell, shrewdly confident that her wishes would be met. “Wine,” she added, “the more precious that it is wellnigh the last in our cellars.”
As the Cavaliers came about her applauding with word and look, the doors of the banqueting-room parted and Mrs. Satchell entered, full of pomp and apple-red with pleasure, followed by Shard bearing a tray of glasses, and by pretty, dimpling Tiffany bearing a goodly flagon of wine and observing with demure approbation the covey of King’s gentlemen.
Mistress Satchell swam like a gall on towards the Cavaliers, her great, red, spoon-shaped face damp with satisfaction. Playing at heroine behind bombarded walls was all very well, but greeting of timely gentry who had set heroines free was infinitely better.
“Heaven bless you, merry gentlemen,” she chirruped. “Here is a cup of comfort for you.”
“Heaven bless you, merry matron,” Bardon answered, as soberly as he could, for indeed the sight of Mistress Satchell in her Sunday best and in her most coming-on humor was not of a nature to strengthen sobriety. Lord Fawley gasped as the virago swaggered towards his companions, and young Ingrow popped hishandkerchief into his mouth and bit at it while he stared with eyes of nursery wonder at the dame. Radlett winked as if dazzled by the whimsical apparition, and Sir Rufus, familiar with Mrs. Satchell and her vagaries, was the only member of his party who kept his countenance unchanged on her entrance.
Brilliana was sympathetically swift to explain her astonishing handwoman.
“Gentles,” she said, “this is Mistress Satchell, who queens it in times of peace over my kitchen, but who has proved herself my very valiant adjutant during the siege.”
The dame bridled with pride.
“I can handle a pike, my lords, I promise ye,” she asserted; and then, turning to Halfman for confirmation, “Can I not, Master Halfman?”
Halfman slapped his thigh approvingly and answered to the Cavalier with grave voice and smiling eyes.
“Never was pike so handled before, I promise ye.”
The tone of his voice mimicked Mrs. Satchell’s manner even as the words of it aped her matter, but the dame was too pleased with herself and the world to heed what it was that set the gentlemen laughing.
“So, so,” Radlett hummed approval. “Mrs. Satchell, will you ride with me to the King?”
Mrs. Satchell dipped him a swimming reverence, but she shook her head decisively.
“Your honor means well, but I cannot leave my lady. The Roundheads might come again.”
The Lord Fawley had by this seen his glass filled by Tiffany and was staring boldly into her pretty face, much to the exasperation of honest Thoroughgood, chafing in the background.
“Do you handle a pike, prettikins?” Fawley asked. Prettikins dropped him a courtesy and shook her curls.
“No, my lord,” she whispered, “I am not very soldierly.”
It was now Ingrow’s turn to have his glass filled and to stare admiration at the pretty serving-woman.
“If you have a mind to enlist,” he said, temptingly, “you shall be ensign in my troop and we’ll carry your kirtle for a flag.”
Whether Mrs. Satchell considered that Tiffany was like to be embarrassed by the attentions of the gentry, or whether she considered that those attentions diverted too much notice from herself as the heroine of the servants’ hall, she certainly came to the rescue, edging her bulk between the girl and Ingrow.
“She is too green for your grace,” she insisted. “You need a fine woman like me for your flag-bearer.”
Even Ingrow’s readiness found him something at a loss for an answer. He looked as if he feared lest dame Satchell might take him in an embrace. Brilliana, now that all the glasses were charged, decided that the company had tasted enough of Mrs. Satchell’s humors.
“I thank you, Mistress Satchell,” she said, quietly, and Mrs. Satchell, rightly reading in the tones of her mistress’s voice permission to retire, withdrew in good order, beaming and bobbing to all the gentlemen and followed by Shard and Tiffany, who, with lids demurely lowered, avoided recognition of the admiring glances of Fawley and Ingrow.
Brilliana turned to her company and lifted her glass.
“Drink, gentles,” she summoned. “Drink ‘The King!’”
All the Cavaliers shouted the loyal toast so that the words “The King!” seemed to ring in every nook of the great hall; then every Cavalier drained his glass.
“Ah,” sighed Lord Fawley, as he set down his empty vessel, “I could drink the King’s health forever.”
“I swear it would sweeten sour ale,” Bardon declared.
Young Ingrow took him up. “When it floats on such noble tipple I am a god-swilling nectar.” Halfman slapped his chest.
“Come, lads!” he cried; “when Cavaliers drink the King’s health they should sing the King’s song,” and in another moment his mellow voice was setting his friends a sturdy example. “Gallants of England,” he warbled: