It did not remain solitary long. Unawares, the steps of Halfman and Evander had been dogged ever since they crossed the moat and set out on their pilgrimage through the gardens. Crouching behind hedges, lingering in coppices, peeping through thickets, two persistent trackers had pursued the unconscious quarry. Scarcely had the shadows of Evander and his companion vanished from the grasses of the pleasaunce than the pursuers emerged from the shelter of a yew screen and ran into the open, staring after the departing pair. Yet these pursuers were no stealthy enemies, but merely creatures spurred by an irresistible curiosity. One was stout and red faced and inclined to breathe hard after the fatigues of the chase. The other was slim and smooth, with ripe cheeks and bright eyes, lodgings for the insolence of youth. In a word, the hunters were Mistress Satchell and pretty Tiffany, who had found their Puritan prisoner and visitor a being of considerable interest.
Mistress Satchell turned a damp, shining face and a questioning eye upon Tiffany.
“Is not he a dashing lad for a Puritan?” she gasped, patting her ample chest with both hands as if to fondle her newly recovered breath. Tiffany, who was bearing her mistress’s lute, shrugged and pouted.
“I see little to like in him,” she snapped. This was not at all true, but she was not going to admit as much to Mistress Satchell, or, for that matter, to herself. Mistress Satchell snorted fiercely, like an offended war-horse.
“Because he has not clipped you round the waist, pinched you in the cheek, kissed you on the lips—such liberties as our rufflers use. But he is a man for my money.”
She spoke with vehemence. Pretty Tiffany made a dainty grimace as she answered:
“I think I am pleasing enough to behold, yet he gave me no more than a glance when he gave me good-day.”
Mistress Satchell’s ample bulk swayed with indignation.
“He is a lad of taste, I tell you. Why should he waste his gaze on such small goods when there was nobler ware anigh? He smiled all over his face when he greeted me.”
Tiffany was sorely tempted to smile all overher face as she listened, but Mistress Satchell’s temper was short and her arm long, so she kept her countenance as she answered, shortly:
“He is little.”
This Mistress Satchell swiftly countered with the affirmation:
“He is great.”
Tiffany thrust again.
“He is naught.”
Again Dame Satchell parried.
“He is much,” she screamed, and her face was poppy-red with passion, but Tiffany, retreating warily and persistent to tease, was about to start some fresh disclaimer of the Puritan’s merits when she caught sight through a yew arch vista of a gown of gold and gray, and her tongue faltered.
“Our lady,” she whispered to Mistress Satchell, who had barely time to compose her ruffled countenance when Brilliana came through the yew arch and paused on the edge of the pleasaunce surveying the belligerents with an amused smile.
“What are you two brawling about?” she asked, as she moved slowly towards the marble seat. Tiffany thrust in the first word.
“Goody Satchell will vex me with praise of the Parliament man.”
By this time Brilliana had seated herself, observing her vehement shes with amusement. She turned a face of assumed gravity upon the elder.
“So, so, Mistress Satchell, have you turned Roundhead all of a sudden?”
Mrs. Satchell shook her head at Brilliana and her fist at Tiffany.
“Tiffany is a minx, but I am an honest woman; and as I am an honest woman, there are honest qualities in this honest Puritan.”
Brilliana knew as much herself and fretted at the knowledge. It cut against the grain of her heart to admit that a rebel could have any redemption by gifts. But she still questioned Mistress Satchell smoothly, thinking the while of a man intrenched behind a table, one man against six.
“What are these marvels?” she asked.
Mistress Satchell was voluble of collected encomiums.
“Why, Thomas Coachman swears he is a master of horse-manage, and he has taught Luke Gardener a new method of grafting roses, and Simon Warrener swears he knows as much of hawking as any man in Oxford or Warwick.”
She paused, out of breath. Brilliana, leaningforward with an air of infinite gravity, commented:
“It were more to your point, surely, if the gentleman had skill in cook-craft.”
Mistress Satchell was not to be outdone; she clapped her hands together noisily and shrilled her triumph.
“There, too, he meets you. After breakfast this morning, when I asked him how he fared, he overpraised my table, and he gave me a recipe for grilling capons in the Spanish manner—well, you shall know, if you do but live long enough.”
The ruddy dame nodded significantly as she closed thus cryptically her tables of praises. Brilliana uplifted her hands in a pretty air of wonder.
“The phœnix,” she sighed, “the paragon, the nonpareil of the buttery.” Instantly her smiling face grew grave.
“Well, it is not for us to praise him or blame him while he is on our hands. See that you give him good meals, Mistress Satchell.”
Dame Satchell stared at her mistress in some amazement.
“Will he not dine in hall, my lady?”
Brilliana frowned now in good earnest.
“Lordamercy! do you think I would sit atmeat with a rebel? Have I not set him a room apart, to spare myself the sight of him? Serve him in his own rooms, but look you serve him well.”
Dame Satchell wagged her head with an air of the deepest significance.
“I warrant you,” she muttered, “he commended my soused cucumbers.”
And so nodding and chuckling she moved like a great galleon over the green, and soon was out of sight. The moment her broad back was well turned, Tiffany permitted herself to utter the protests which had been boiling within her.
“To listen to Dame Satchell, one would think that no man had ever seen a horse or known one dish from another before this.”
Brilliana gave her handmaid a glance of something near akin to displeasure.
“I think you all talk and think too much of the gentleman. I see little to praise in him save a certain coolness in peril. Let us have no more of him. We must use him well, but he will soon be gone, and a good riddance. Is my lute tuned, Tiffany?”
Tiffany answered “Ay,” and her lady took up the lute and picked at a tune, yawning. The world seemed to have grown very tediousall of a sudden, and it did not seem so pleasant as she deemed it would prove to sit again in the yew circle and sing. She began a song or two, to leave each unfinished with a yawn, and, because yawning is contagious, Tiffany yawned too, discreetly behind her fingers. It was while Tiffany looked away to conceal a vaster yawn than its fellows, too vast for masking with finger-tips, that she saw a soldierly figure coming across the garden towards the pleasaunce.
“My lady,” she cried, turning to Brilliana, “here comes Captain Halfman. Let us ask him his mind as to the Parliament man.”
Brilliana’s face brightened. Here was company, and good company. She had believed him too busy to be seen so soon, for she had bade him see about raising a troop of volunteers in the village, and she turned round readily to greet her companion of the siege.
Through the yew portal Halfman came, gravity reigning in his eyes and slaking their wild fire. He saluted Brilliana with the deep reverence he always showed to his fair general. Brilliana turned to her adjutant eagerly:
“Master Halfman, Master Halfman,” she cried, “how do you measure our rebel?”
Halfman’s gravity lightened amazingly at the thought of his prisoner.
“I take him,” he answered, emphatically, “for as proper a fellow as ever I met in all my vagabond days. Barring his primness he would have proved a gallant”—he was going to say “pirate,” but paused in time and said “seaman.” “God pardon him for a Puritan,” he went on, “for he has in him the making of a rare Cavalier.”
Brilliana turned to Tiffany, whose cheeks were very red.
“Hang your head, child,” she cried; “for you are outvoted in a parliament of praise. Beat a retreat, maid Tiffany.”
The crimson Tiffany fled from the pleasaunce.
“Where is your prisoner?” Brilliana asked.
“I have envoyed him over park and garden,” Halfman answered, “and brought him to port in the library.”
“Alas! I pity him,” sighed Brilliana; “it holds few books of divinity. But come, recruiting-sergeant, what of our volunteers?”
“So pleases you, my lady,” Halfman said, “our troop is swelling fast, and the sooner we clap them into colored coats the better.”
Brilliana’s curls danced in denial.
“Alas! friend, I have sad news for you. Of cloth for coats I can indeed command a great plenty”—she paused doubtfully.
“Why this is glad news, not sad news,” Halfman said. “So may you serve it out with all despatch.”
Brilliana dropped her hands to her sides and her lids over her eyes, a pretty picture of despair; but, “Alas! ’tis all white,” she confessed—“wool white, snow white, ermine white. You must needs have patience, good recruiting-sergeant, till I can have it dyed the royal red.”
Halfman pushed patience from him with outspread palms.
“Shall the King lack hands for lack of madder?” he questioned, with humorous indignation. “Not so, I pray you; let us cut our coats from your white cloth. I promise you we will dye it ourselves red enough in the blood of the enemy.” Brilliana sprang to her feet rejoicing.
“Bravely said; so shall it be bravely done. I will give orders at once for the cutting and sewing. I will back our white coats against Master Hampden’s green coats, or Essex’s swarm in orange-tawny. Have you conveyed my message to my two miserly neighbors?”
“I sent Clupp to Master Hungerford,” Halfman answered, “and Garlinge to Master Rainham, bidding them to your presence peremptory. But I warn you, my lady, from all I hear, thatif you hope to raise coin for the King’s cause from either of the skinflints you will be sadly at a loss.”
“At least I must try,” Brilliana declared. “Am I not the King’s viceroy in Oxfordshire, and are not the two money-bags my proclaimed adorers? It will go hard with me but I compel them to swell the King’s exchequer.”
“You have done marvels,” Halfman admitted. “Can you work miracles? With all due reverence, I doubt. But we shall soon see, for here comes Tiffany tiptoe through the trees. I’ll wager it is to herald one of the vultures.”
As he spoke, Tiffany tripped in pink and grinning.
“My lady,” said she, “Master Paul Hungerford has ridden in and seeks audience.”
Brilliana clapped her hands.
“Go, bring him in, Tiffany; and, Tiffany child, if Master Peter Rainham comes, as I shrewdly expect, keep him apart, on your life, till I know of his coming.”
Tiffany vanished. Brilliana turned to Halfman.
“Stay with me, captain, and aid me to trap these badgers.”
Halfman smiled delight. “I will help youextempore,” he promised. “I will eke out my part with impromptus.”
He stood a little apart, grim mirth in his eyes, as Tiffany ushered into the circle a lean, shabby country-gentleman, whose habit would have shamed a scarecrow. Tiffany disappeared and the new-comer made Brilliana an awkward bow. “Sweet lady, you sent for me and I come, love, quickly.”
Brilliana had much ado to keep from laughing in the face of the uncouth genuflector, but she kept a grave face and uttered grave complaint.
“Master Hungerford! Master Hungerford! They tell me sad tales of you. Though you are as wealthy as wealthy you will not mend the King’s exchequer.”
Master Paul gave vent to such a wail as a dog makes when one treads unaware upon his tail, and clapped his hands about piteously.
“I wealthy! Forgive you, lady, for listening to such tales. I am not so graced. I am little bigger than a beggar.”
Brilliana wagged her curls.
“Why, now, Master Hungerford, you have a great estate.”
Master Hungerford’s whine rose higher, and he paddled at the air as if he sought to come to some surface and breathe free.
“Great land, lady—great land, if you will, butlittle cash. My land holds every penny I get together. Why, ’tis well known in the country that I buy land for a thousand pound every year, wherefore I can never boast more than a guinea in ready money.”
Brilliana frowned on the floundering squire.
“This is a sad business, Master Hungerford, for the King is in need and will oblige hereafter those that oblige him now. His Majesty has made me a kind of viceroy here in Oxford. I begin to think that you incline to the Parliament, Master Paul. If I thought that, I would hold you a traitor and make perquisitions at your place.”
Master Hungerford groaned dismally:
“Lordamercy!” he moaned. “I am the loyalest knight in England. Nay, now, if you talk of perquisitions there is my neighbor Peter Rainham. I know him for a skinflint who will deny the King. Yet I know of a chest of his that is stuffed with gold pieces. Were he a true man he would shift his treasure into the King’s sack, as I would if I had such a store.”
A fantastic possibility danced into Brilliana’s brain. She glanced to where Halfman stood moodily ruminating on the method he would employ to loosen Master Hungerford’s purse-strings if he had him at his mercy in a takentown. Brilliana could not read his thoughts, which was as well, but she gave him a glance which stirred him to alertness as she resumed her interrogatory of her niggardly neighbor.
“Why, then, Master Hungerford, if he be as you say, he is little better, if better at all, than a Parliament man, and, therefore, our common enemy.”
Master Paul rubbed his lean hands in delight.
“It is indeed as you say,” he affirmed, with a sour smile that sat very vilely on his yellow face. Brilliana leaned forward, and, governing his shifty eyes, spoke very impressively.
“Now meseems you might win great credit in the King’s eyes, at no cost to yourself, if you were to lay hands on this treasure in the King’s name.”
Master Paul’s alarm asserted itself in a shriek.
“Lordamercy, lady, what of the law of the land? Would you have me turn footpad, house-breaker?”
His jaws shook, his joints twitched, he was abject in alarm. Springing to her feet, Brilliana spoke impatiently.
“A Parliament man is outside the King’s law; his goods are forfeit, and to confiscate them as legal as loyal. I thought you might chooseto serve the King and please me.” This last was said with an accent of disdain which made the unhappy squire shiver. “I was in error, so no more words of it. Good-day to you.”
And my Lady Brilliana made Master Paul a courtesy so contemptuous and a gesture of dismissal so decisive that Master Hungerford’s terror deepened. If the King’s cause were to go well, if the lady indeed had favor with his Majesty, to offend her would be verily a piece of mortal folly. He came nigh to falling on his knees as he pleaded.
“Nay, nay, never so hot, now; I am your suitor, in faith, I am your very good servant. I would serve your will in this if I could but march with the law.”
Brilliana jumped at his concession. She saw Tiffany in the distance crossing the garden towards her and guessed that she came to announce the arrival of the other miser; so she was eager to clinch the business with Master Hungerford.
“Why, so you ever shall, with the King’s law. What more easy? I represent the King in this district; this fellow is a suspected rebel; I give you leave to search his house for arms.”
Master Paul pricked his ears. “Ah, so, for arms, you say?”
Tiffany paused in the archway and jerked her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the house. Brilliana shrugged her shoulders, impatient of Master Paul’s denseness.
“If you find gold in your search for steel, so much the better. Come, come, this is your happy time, for I am told Master Rainham is abroad.”
She gave a glance for confirmation at Halfman, who lounged forward.
“That he is,” he asserted, briskly. “He has gone a-marketing.”
“Then to it at once!” Brilliana cried, eying the waverer encouragingly. “Take such of my people as you will. You will find some at the stables yonder,” and as she spoke she pointed in the direction opposite to the house. “Master Rainham’s miserliness keeps but a small retinue. You will meet with no resistance. Go forth, my knight.”
Master Paul almost skipped with delight and he cracked his fingers vigorously. He seemed even less pleasing merry than terrified.
“You call me your knight.” He turned and took Halfman to witness. “She calls me her knight. I’ll do it. I’ll do it,” he voiced, exultingly.
Brilliana, with strenuous self-restraint, seemed to applaud his antics.
“Bravely said, Chivalry!” she cried. “Let it be done, and well done, ere dusk.”
Master Paul quavered before her in an ecstasy of delighted obedience.
“I fly, enchantress—I fly!” he chirruped. Then, as he turned to go, another thought struck him, and he entreated, grotesquely languishing, “Prithee, your hand to kiss first.”
Brilliana denied him affably.
“By-and-by, maybe, as the prize of your triumph. Farewell.”
After sundry strange scrapings, Master Hungerford took his departure in the direction of the stables. As soon as his back was turned, Brilliana questioned her maid.
“Well, Tiffany, is it Master Rainham?”
“Ay, my lady,” Tiffany answered, demurely. She knew there was some manner of mystification forward and yearned for the key to it. “He chafes in the music-chamber.”
“Send him here top-speed,” Brilliana commanded. With a whisk of flying skirts Tiffany scuttered back to the house, and Brilliana turned to Halfman, the laughter in her eyes seeking and finding the laughter in his.
“Well,” she said, “our angling prospers blithely. We have tickled one fish. Now for the other chub.”
Halfman, who had been swaying with silent merriment ever since the departure of Master Paul, suddenly grew steady again and looked warnings.
“He asks for another kind of angling, as I gather,” he suggested. Brilliana looked daintily wise.
“As I bait the hook I believe I will land him. It will be rare if I can make Paul rob Peter while Peter plunders Paul. How dare they be so close-fisted while the King’s flag is flying and England’s honor in peril!”
If she said this with any idea of palliating the possible lawlessness of her action in the eyes of her companion, she wasted her words. Halfman had not been so happy since his return to England, not even in the briskest days of the siege, as he was now in the staging of this lawless comedy. The old pirate jigged in him at this fair maid’s strategy.
“By St. Nicholas,” he swore, “they should be bled white for a brace of knaves! This, I take it, is your other honor-bankrupt atomy.”
It was indeed Master Peter Rainham whom Tiffany now brought into the presence of her mistress, and left there standing and staring. Master Peter, eyed and appraised by the searching scrutiny of Halfman, resolved himself into a thick-set, boorish fellow, whose flying forehead, little, angry eyes, and assertive, yellow teeth made him, to Halfman’s mind, resemble nothing in the world so much as a boar’s head on an ale-house sign. Yet the fellow stood his ground sturdily enough, and stared at Brilliana with no sense of distress at his dirty homespun or his dirty hands.
“You sent for me?” he challenged. “Have you changed your mood? I am ever of the same mind, and will wed when you will.”
The wolf look leaped into Halfman’s eyes, and the loutish squire’s life was, all unawares, in the greatest peril it had ever fringed. But Brilliana, intent only on her purposes, beamed on her blunt suitor as if he had scattered flowers at her feet.
“You are a wonderful wooer,” she protested. “But whatever admiration of your person I may, without unbecoming effrontery, confess, I would have you to know, plain and square, from this moment, that I will hearken to none but a King’s man.”
The boor’s little eyes glinted and the boor’s rusty fingers rasped at his stubble chin as he answered emphatically:
“Then I am a King’s man, root and branch.”
But his face showed less loyal confidence at Brilliana’s next words.
“Then you must know his Majesty is in straits for ready money. Will you, who are reputed rich, come to his aid with a round sum?”
Master Peter showed his teeth in a snarl and flung up his hands.
“Reputed rich! Oh, what a bitter thing is a bad reputation. I am Job-poor; both ends will not meet, I tell you. If I had for lending-money a guinea in one pocket, why, I should lend it to the other pocket.”
“Why do you woo me if you be so poor?” Brilliana asked, with a fine show of heat, and Halfman nodded his head as much as to say, “Ay, ay, answer me that, if you can.”
Master Peter strove to answer, lamely enough.
“Poor in pennies, lady, poorer in shillings, poorest in guineas. I may own half the country-side and have no coin to clink against the other.”
Brilliana scoffed at his protest.
“Why, ’tis not so long ago Master Paul Hungerford told me you were a very Crœsus.”
Master Peter clinched and unclinched his horny hands as if he were coming to grips with his traducer.
“Master Hungerford told you that? I would I had my hands knotted about his lying throat. He that is as rich as a Jew, that has a treasure of gold plate in his sideboard that would keep the King in arms and men for a month of Sundays, he so to slander my poverty.”
Brilliana heaved a sympathetic sigh.
“I fear he is but a bad man. Do you think he cherishes the King’s cause?”
Master Peter flamed with virtuous indignation.
“He, the black heart! Never think it. He is a rank Parliament scoundrel and worships Mr. Pym.”
“Is it so?” cried Brilliana. “A rebel, a renegade. Why, now, Master Rainham, I see a pretty piece of loyal work for you.”
Master Peter glowered at her suspiciously.
“Anything for you, anything for the King; except give what I have none of—money.”
“In the King’s name,” said Brilliana, heroically, “go forth and ransack this rebellious gentleman’s house for arms.”
Master Peter snorted sceptically.
“Arms! I think he hath none but an old rusty fire-lock and a breast and back that have seen better days.”
Brilliana beamed on him, a yielding sphinx.
“But then, supposing you should pick up some plate on the way, some gold plate by chance—”
Master Peter rubbed his grimy hands.
“Why, it were fine,” he admitted, gleefully; then added, with cunning, “Are you sure he is a Roundhead?”
“I am very sure he is your enemy,” Brilliana answered, sharply, “for he makes you his daily jape.”
The ugly boar-head looked uglier as it growled:
“Does he, the dog! I’d jape him if I gad my two hands upon him.”
“Why,” Brilliana asserted, now in the full tide of make-believe, “if you are a King’s man, he will be of the other side, he hates you so. I cannot think how you have earned his hatred, unless, indeed—” and she broke off suddenlyand looked aside. Halfman would have given a shilling for a lonely place to laugh his fill in.
“Well, madam, well?” Master Rainham questioned, eagerly.
Brilliana faltered her answer.
“—unless he believes you stand higher in the graces of a certain lady than he can ever hope to stand.”
Master Rainham’s smile gave Halfman the feel of goose-flesh. Brilliana’s face was, happily, averted.
“Madam, assure me ’tis so,” grunted boar’s-head.
“I must not say much,” Brilliana protested, “no more than this, that in this enterprise, if you but achieve it, you will win great credit with the King at no cost to yourself, you spoil a rival, and—but this is very private—you will give great pleasure to that same nameless lady.”
Master Peter shouted, “Why, then, all’s well. I will pick him as clean as a whistle.” Again caution overcrowded cheer. “But I must pick my time, look you.”
On this, Brilliana became emphatic.
“No time like the present. It is to my certain knowledge that Master Paul is away fromhome to-day.” Again she looked to Halfman for support, and again Halfman yielded it blithely.
“Ay, he has gone hawking,” he declared; “he will not be home this great while.”
Halfman’s confirmation decided Master Peter.
“Why, I go at once. When the cat’s away—! I will be back within the hour.”
“Then,” said Brilliana, “pray you go to the house and gather in my name from the servants’ hall such men as you may need for your enterprise. Use despatch, for indeed I long for your return.”
Master Peter paid her what he believed to be a courtly bow.
“That same nameless lady shall praise me,” he chuckled, and, turning, made for the house with all speed. When they were alone, Brilliana and Halfman looked at each other with the mirth of children who have successfully raided an orchard.
“I have netted them,” Brilliana said. “If it do but happen pat, we shall have served the King and punished two cozening faint-hearts. For the best of it is that neither can complain. Each is neck-high in the mire of lies, each has plundered the other, and must be dumb for shame of his knavery.”
“It will be brave to spy their faces,” Halfman commented, “when they smell out the snare.”
“Look to it,” Brilliana suggested, “that they be kept apart when they come here. The jest must not spoil. How these old hawks will fly at each other when we unhood them.”
“Trust me, lady,” said Halfman. “I have been a play-actor and know how to stage a pair of gabies to the show.”
He saluted her and made to depart. She had learned to like his company through the long days of siege, and this dull day of quiet she felt lonely. Moreover, she was grateful to him for having helped her so well in her plot against the niggards.
“Come again when you have taken order for this,” she said. “There is still much to do, much to think for.”
The man saluted anew, intoxicated with pleasure. He knew that she liked his company, and whatever was well in him burgeoned at the knowledge. His play-actor passion had bettered him, if it had not accomplished the impossible and transmuted the pirate of body into the pure of soul. It would not be true to say that he never thought lewdly of her; hewould have thought lewdly of an angel or a vestal maid; that was ingrain in the composition of the man; but he thought well of her as he had never thought well of women before since he first scorched his stripling’s fingers, and he would have killed twenty men to keep her from hearing a foul word. Sometimes when he talked with her, ever in his chastened part of the rough old soldier, he laughed in his sleeve at the difference between part and true man. The nut-hook humor of it was that both were realities, or, perhaps, that neither were realities.
As he quitted the pleasaunce he countered Mistress Tiffany, and saw at a distance, standing by the laurels, a foppish, many-colored, portly personage negligently twirling a long staff. Halfman guessed the name, grinned, and went on his business. Tiffany burst wellnigh breathless into her lady’s presence.
“My lady,” she gasped, “here is Sir Blaise Mickleton, who entreats the honor to speak with you.”
Brilliana’s face darkened for a moment, for she bore no kindness just then to the laggard in war. Then her face cleared again.
“Admit him,” she said. “He will divert me for want of a better.”
Back ran Tiffany to where the visitor lingered, bade him enter the pleasaunce, where he would find her mistress, and having delivered her errand, ran again to the house, leaving him to his adventure.
Sir Blaise Mickleton was, in his own eyes and in the eyes of the village girls of Harby, a vastly fine gentleman. If they had ever heard of the sun-god, Phœbus Apollo would have presented himself to their rusticity in some such guise as the personality of the local knight. Sir Blaise had been to London—once—had kissed the King’s hand at Whitehall, and had ever since striven vehemently to be more Londonish than the Londoner. He talked with what he thought to be the town’s drawl; he walked, as he believed, with the town walk over the grasses of his grounds and on the Harby high-roads. He plagued the village tailor with strange devices for coats and cloaks; many-colored as a Joseph, he strutted through bucolic surroundings as if he carried the top-knot of the mode in the Mall; he glittered in ribbons and trinkets, floundered rather than swam in a sea of essences, yet scarcely succeeded in amending, with all this false foppishness, the somethingbumpkin that was at the root of his nature. He was of a lusty natural with the sanguine disposition, and held himself as much above the most of his neighbors as he knew himself to be below the house of Harby. He was no double-face, friendly with both sides; he was rather for peeping from behind the parted doors of the temple of peace upon a warring world without, and making fast friends with the victor. He had very little doubt that the victor would be the King, but just enough doubt to permit his surrender to a distemper that kept him to his bed till Edgehill proved the amazing remedy.
Sir Blaise peacocked over the lawn, delicate as Agag. He murdered the morning air with odors, his raiment outglowed the rainbow; one hand dandled his staff, the other caressed his mustaches. He strove to smile adoration on Brilliana, but mistrust marred his ogle, and a shiver of fear betrayed his simper of confidence. Brilliana watched him gravely with never a word or a sign, and her silence intensified his discomfiture by the square of the distance he had yet to traverse.
“Coxcomb,” she thought, and “coward,” she thought, and “cur,” she thought.
He could not read her thought, but he could read her tightened lips and her hostile eyes, andhe wished himself again in bed at Mickleton. But it was too late to retreat, and he advanced in bad order under the silent fire of her disdain till he paused at what he deemed to be the proper place for ceremonious salutation. He uncovered, describing so magnificent a sweep of extended hat that its plumes brushed the grasses at her feet. He bowed so low that his pink face disappeared from view in the forward fall of his lovelocks. When the rising inflection shook these back and the pink face again confronted her, he seemed to have recovered some measure of assertion.
“Lady,” he said, sighingly, “I kiss your mellifluous fingers and believe myself in Elysium.”
The languishing glance that accompanied these languishing syllables had no immediate effect upon the lady to whom they were addressed. Still Brilliana looked fixedly at her visitor, and still Sir Blaise found little ease under her steady gaze. He blinked uncomfortably; his fingers twitched; he tried to moisten his dry lips. At length, out of what seemed a wellnigh ageless silence, the lady spoke, and her words were an arraignment.
“Why did you not come to Harby when Harby needed help?”
Sir Blaise felt weak in the knees, weak in theback, weak in the wits; he would have given much for a seat, more for a sup of brandy. But he had to speak, and did so after such gasping and stammering as spoiled his false bravado.
“I came to speak of that,” he protested, forcing a jauntiness that he was far from feeling. “I feared you might misunderstand—”
“Indeed,” interrupted Brilliana, “I think there is no misunderstanding.”
Sir Blaise made an appealing gesture.
“Hear me out,” he pleaded. “Hear me and pity me. The news of his Majesty’s quarrel with his Parliament threw me into such a distemper as hath kept me to my bed these three weeks. My people held all news from me for my life’s sake. It was but this morning I was judged sound enough to hear of all that has passed. How otherwise should I not have flown to your succor? I could wish your siege had lasted a while longer to give me the glory of delivering you.”
The sternness faded from Brilliana’s gaze. She was not really angry with this overcareful gentleman; she would only have been grieved had he proved the man to serve her well. He was no more for such enterprises than your lap-dog for bull-baiting. Ridiculous in his finery, pitiful in his subterfuge, he was only a thing tosmile at, to trifle with. So she smiled, and, rising, swept him a splendid reverence.
“I am your gallantry’s very grateful servant,” she whispered, having much ado to keep from laughing in his face. The fatuous are easily pacified.
“I hope you do not doubt my valor?” he asked, with some show of reassurance.
“Indeed I have no doubt,” Brilliana answered, with another courtesy. The speech might have two meanings. Sir Blaise, unwilling to split hairs, took it as balsam, and hurriedly turned the conversation.
“Well! well!” he hummed. “You seem nothing the worse for your business.”
“I am something the better,” she said, softly. Perhaps Sir Blaise did not hear her.
“Is it true,” he asked, “that you harbor a Crop-ear in this house?”
“Indeed,” Brilliana confirmed, “I hold him as hostage for the life of Cousin Randolph. You know that he is a prisoner?”
“I heard that news with the rest of the budget,” Sir Blaise answered. “And what kind of a creature is your captive? Does he deafen you with psalms, does he plague you with exhortations?”
Brilliana laughed merrily.
“No, no; ’tis a most wonderful wild-fowl. My people swear he is mettled in all gentle arts, from the manage of horses to the casting of a falcon.”
Sir Blaise shook his staff in protest of indignation.
“Is it possible that such a rascal usurps the privileges of gentlefolk?”
“He carries himself like a gentleman,” Brilliana answered. “More’s the pity that he should be false to his king and his kind.”
Sir Blaise smiled condescendingly.
“Believe me, dear lady, you are misled. A woman may be deceived by an exterior. Doubtless he has picked up his gentility in the servants’ hall of some great house, and seeks to curry your favor by airing it.”
“He has persuaded those that are shrewd judges of men to praise him.”
Again Sir Blaise laughed his fat laugh.
“Ha, ha! Shrewd judges of men. I will take no man’s judgment but my own of this rascal. Had I word with him you should soon see me set him down.”
Brilliana’s glance wandering from the pied pomposity who strutted before her, saw a sharp contrast through the yew-tree arch. A man in sober habit was moving slowly over the grass inthe direction of the pleasaunce, moving slowly, for he was carrying an open book and his eyes were fixed upon its pages. Truly the sombre Puritan made a better figure than her swaggering neighbor. She looked up at Sir Blaise with a pretty maliciousness in her smile.
“You can have your will even now,” she said, “for I spy my prisoner coming here—and reading, too.”
Sir Blaise swung round upon his heels and stared in the direction indicated by Brilliana. He saw Evander, black against the sunlit trees, the sunlit grasses, and he smiled derisively. He was very confident that there was no courage as there could be no wit in any Puritan. These things were the privileges of Cavaliers.
“His brains are buried in his book,” he sneered. “If a stone came in his way now he would stumble over it, he’s so deep in his sour studies. ’Tis some ponderous piece of divinity, I’ll wager, levelled against kings.”
He thought he was speaking low to his companion, but his was not a voice of musical softness, and its tones jarred the quiet air. Evander caught the sound of it, lifted his head, and, looking before him over his book, saw in the yew haven Brilliana seated and a gaudy-coated gentleman standing by her side. He was immediatelyfor turning and hastening in another direction, but Brilliana, for all she hated him, would not now have it so. Perhaps she had been piqued by Sir Blaise’s too confident assumption of superiority to the judgment of her people; perhaps she thought it might divert her to see Puritan and Cavalier face each other before her in the shadowed circle of yews. Whatever her reason, she raised her hand and raised her voice to stay Evander’s purpose.
“Sir, sir!” she cried. “Mr. Cloud, by your leave, I would have you come hither. Do not turn aside.”
Thus summoned, Evander walked with slightly quickened pace to the place where Brilliana sat and saluted her with formal courtesy.
“I cry your pardon,” he declared. “I would not intrude on your quiet, but I read and walked unconscious that there was company among the yews.”
Brilliana answered him with the dignity of a gracious and benevolent queen.
“Do not withdraw, sir; you have the liberty of Loyalty House, and I would not have you avoid any part of its gardens.”
Evander bowed. Sir Blaise broke into a horse-laugh which grated more on Brilliana’s ears than on Evander’s. Brilliana was at heartrather angry that for once Puritan should show better than Cavalier.
“You are a vastly happy jack to be used so gently,” he bellowed. “Some would have stuck such a hostage in a garret and done well enough.”
Evander still kept his eyes fixed on the lady of the house and seemed to have no ears for the jeering Cavalier. With a lift of the hand that indicated and saluted the prospect, he said, smoothly, “You have a very gracious garden, lady.”
Mirth shone discreetly in Brilliana’s eyes as she gave the Puritan a bow for his praise. The Cavalier, a viola da gamba of anger, pegged his string of bluster tighter.
“Did not the fellow hear me?” he cried, and this time his noise won him a moment of attention. Evander gave him a glance, and then, returning to Brilliana, said, with a manner of amused contempt, “You have a very ungracious gardener.”
Sir Blaise’s pink face purpled; Sir Blaise’s hand swung to the hilt of his sword. Evander seemed to have forgotten his existence and to await quietly any further favor of speech from Brilliana. My Lady Mischief, much diverted, judged it time to intervene.
“Lordamercy!” she cried, as she rose from her seat and moved a little way towards Sir Blaise. “Let me bring you acquainted.”
The Cavalier caught her hand and stayed her before she could speak his name.
“Wait, wait,” he whispered. “Watch me roast him.”
He swung away from her and swaggered towards Evander. “Tell me, solemn sir,” he questioned, “have you heard of one Sir Blaise Mickleton?”
“I have heard of him,” Evander answered. His tranquil indifference to Sir Blaise’s bearing, to Sir Blaise’s splendor of apparel, pricked the knight like a sting. He tried to change the sum of his irritation into the small money of wit.
“You have never heard that he snuffled through his nose, turned up his eyes, mewed psalms and canticles, and dubbed himself by some such name as Fight-the-Good-Fight-of-Faith, yea, verily?”
Sir Blaise talked with the drawling whine which he assumed to be the familiar intonation of all Puritan speech. Like many another humorless fellow, he prided himself upon a gift of mimicry signally denied to him. Even Brilliana’s detestation of the Puritan party couldnot compel her to admire her neighbor’s performance. Evander’s face showed no sign of recognition of Sir Blaise’s impertinence as he answered:
“No, truly, but I have heard some talk of a swaggering braggart, prodigal in valiant promise, but very huckster in a pitiful performance; in a word, a clown whose attempt to ape the courtier has never veiled the clod.”
Brilliana found it hard to restrain her laughter as she watched the varying shades of fury float over Sir Blaise’s broad face at each successive clause of Evander’s disdainful indictment. Yet she was sadly vexed to think that her side commanded so poor a champion. Sir Blaise tried to speak, gasped out a furious “Sir!” then his passion choked him, and he gobbled, inarticulate and grotesque. Evander went composedly on:
“He is rated a King’s man, and would serve his master well if much tippling of healths and clearing of trenchers were yeoman service in a time of war. But his sword sleeps in its sheath.”
“Now, by St. George—” Sir Blaise yelled, raising his clinched fists. Brilliana feared at one moment that he would strike her prisoner in the face; feared in the next that he would fallat her feet dead of an apoplexy. She sailed between the antagonists and addressed Evander.
“Serious sir, will it dash you to learn that you are speaking to Sir Blaise Mickleton?”
Evander’s countenance showed no sign either of surprise or of dismay. Sir Blaise, still turkey-red, managed to gulp down his choler sufficiently to utter some syllables.
“I am that knight,” he gasped; then, turning to Brilliana, he whispered behind his hand, “Mark now how this bear will climb down.”
Brilliana, watching Evander, was not confident of apologies. Her prisoner made a slight inclination of the head towards Sir Blaise in acknowledgment of the fact of Brilliana’s presentation, and said, very calmly:
“Why, then, sir, such a jury as your world has empanelled have misread you, for if they summed your flaws aptly in their report of you, they clapped this rider on their staggering verdict, that Sir Blaise Mickleton did, at his worst, do his best to play the gentleman.”
Smiles of satisfaction rippled over Sir Blaise’s face. He did not follow the drift of Evander’s fluency but took it for compliment.
“Handsomely apologized, i’ faith,” he beamed to Brilliana. Brilliana laughed in his face.
“Why, poor man, he flouts you worse than ever,” she whispered.
Sir Blaise knitted puzzled brows while Evander, having made the effective pause, continued, suavely:
“In the which judgment they erred, for he does not merit so creditable a praise. Sure they can never have seen him who couple in any way the name of Sir Blaise Mickleton with the title of gentleman.”
Even Sir Blaise’s dulness could not misinterpret Evander’s meaning, and rage resumed its sway.
“You crow! You kite!” he fumed. His wrath could find no more words, but he made a stride towards Evander, menacing. Brilliana stepped dexterously between the two. As she told Tiffany later, she felt as if she were gliding between fire and ice.
“One side of me was frozen, and the other done to a crisp.” She lifted her hand commandingly.
“We will have no bickering here,” she protested. Evander paid her a salutation, and, moving a little aside, resumed his book. He would not retire while Sir Blaise was in presence, but he guessed that the lady wished for speech with her friend. Sir Blaise did not findher words consolatory, though she affected consolation.
“The bear licks with a rough tongue,” she whispered. Sir Blaise slapped his palms together.
“You shall see me ring him, you shall see me bait him, if you will but leave us.”
“How shall I see if I leave?” Brilliana asked, provokingly. “But ’tis no matter.”
As she spoke she thought of Halfman, and a merry scheme danced in her head.
“Gentles, I must leave you,” she cried, with a pretty little reverence that included both men. Then in a moment she had slipped out of the pleasaunce and was running down the avenue. In the house she found Halfman. “Quick!” she cried, breathlessly. “Sir Blaise and Mr. Cloud are wrangling yonder like dogs over a bone.”
“Do you wish me to keep the peace between them?” Halfman questioned. Brilliana did not exactly know what she wished. She was fretted at the poor show a King’s man had made before a Puritan; if Sir Blaise could do something to humble the Puritan it might not be wholly amiss. So much Halfman gathered from her jerky scraps of sentences; also, that on no account must the disputants be permitted to come to swords. Halfman nodded, caught up a staff,and ran full tilt to the pleasaunce. The moment his back was turned Brilliana, instead of remaining in the house, came out again, doubled on her course, and dodging among the hedges found herself peeping unseen upon the enclosure she had just quitted and the brawl at its height.
When Brilliana quitted them the two men had regarded each other steadily for a few seconds in silence. Then Sir Blaise spoke.
“You made merry with me just now in ease and safety, a lady being by.”
Evander shrugged his shoulders.
“Had no lady been by I should have been more merry and less tender.”
Sir Blaise scowled.
“I am ill to provoke, my master. Those quarrels end sadly that are quarrels picked with me.”
Again Evander shrugged his shoulders.
“I pick no quarrel, sir. You asked me very straightly what I knew of Sir Blaise Mickleton, and very straightly I tended you my knowledge. It is not my fault, but rather your misfortune, that you happen to be Sir Blaise Mickleton.”
Sir Blaise dropped his hand to his sword-hilt.
“You Puritan jack,” he shouted, “will you try sharper conclusions?”
In a moment and involuntarily Evander’s hand sought his own weapon. It was in that moment that Halfman burst into the pleasaunce.
“Why, what’s the matter here?” he cited, wielding his staff as if it had been the scimitar of the Moor. “Hold, for your lives! For Christian shame put by this barbarous brawl.”
The disputants greeted their interrupter differently. Evander paid Halfman’s memory the tribute of an appreciative smile. Sir Blaise turned to him as to a sympathizer and backer.
“This Puritan dog has insulted me,” he cried.
Halfman nodded sagaciously. “And you would let a little of his malapert blood for him. But it may not be.”
He addressed Evander. “You are a prisoner on parole, wearing your sword by a lady’s favor, and may not use it here.”
“You are in the right,” Evander answered, “and I ask your lady’s pardon if for a moment I forgot where I am and why.”
“Yah, yah, fox,” grinned Sir Blaise, who believed that his enemy was glad to be out of the quarrel. But Halfman, who knew better, smiled.
“There are other ways,” he suggested, pleasantly, “by which two gentlemen may void theirspleen without drawing their toasting-irons. Why should we not mimic sword-play with a pair of honest cudgels?”
Blaise slapped his thigh approvingly, for he was good at rustic sports. Halfman turned his dark face upon Evander.
“Has my suggestion the fortune to meet with your approval?” he asked. Evander nodded. “Then let Sir Blaise handle his own staff, and you, camerado, take mine—’tis of a length with your enemy’s—and set to.”
Halfman watched Evander narrowly while he spoke. Skill with the rapier did not necessarily imply skill with the cudgel. He bore Evander no grudge for overcoming him at fence, but if Sir Blaise proved the better man with the batoon, there would be a kind of compensation in it. He had heard that Sir Blaise was apt at country-sports and now Sir Blaise vaunted his knowledge.
“Let me tell you to your trembling,” he crowed, “that I am the best cudgel-player in these parts. I will drub you, I will trounce you, I will tan your hide.”
“That will be as it shall be,” Evander answered. He had taken the staff that Halfman had proffered, and after weighing it in his hand and carefully examining its texture had set itup against the seat, while he prepared to strip off his jerkin. Halfman assisted Sir Blaise to extricate himself from his beribboned doublet, and the two men faced each other in their shirts, Evander’s linen fine and plain, like all about him, Sir Blaise’s linen fine and ostentatious, like all about him, and reeking of ambergris. Evander was not a small man, but his body seemed very slender by contrast with the well-nourished bulk of the country-gentleman, and many a one would have held that the match was strangely unequal. But Halfman did not think so, seeing how deliberately Evander entered upon the enterprise, and even Sir Blaise’s self-conceit was troubled by his antagonist’s alacrity in accepting the challenge.
“If you tender me your grief for your insolence,” he suggested, with truculent condescension, “you will save yourself a basting.”
Evander laughed outright, the blithest laugh that Halfman had yet heard pass from his Puritan lips.
“I must deny you, pomposity,” he answered, gayly. “It were pity to postpone a pleasure.”
“You are in the right,” commented Halfman. “Come, sirs, enough words; let us to deeds. Begin.”
The sticks swung in the air and met with acrack, each man’s hand pressing his cudgel hard against the other’s, each man’s foot firm and springing, each man’s eyes seeking to read in the other’s the secret of his assault. Suddenly Blaise made a feint at Evander’s leg and then swashed for his head.
“Have a care for your crown,” he shouted, confident in his stroke; but Evander met the blow instantly and wood only rattled on wood.
“I have cared for it,” he said, quietly, as he came on guard again, making no attempt to return Sir Blaise’s attack. Sir Blaise reversed his tactics, feinted at Evander’s head, and swept a furious semicircle at Evander’s legs.
“Save your shins, then,” he cried, and grunted with rage as he again encountered Evander’s swiftly revolving staff and heard Evander answer, mockingly:
“I have saved them.”
Inarticulate fury goaded him. “I will play with you no longer!” he growled, and made a rush for Evander, raining blow upon blow as quickly as he could deliver them, and hoping to break down Evander’s guard. But Evander, giving ground a little before his antagonist’s onslaught, met the attacks with a mill-wheel revolution of his weapon which kept him scatheless, and then suddenly his cudgel shot out,came with a sullen crack on Sir Blaise’s skull, and the tussle was over. Sir Blaise was lying his length on the grass, very still, and there was blood upon his ruddy hair.
Brilliana in hiding gave a little gasp when she saw her neighbor fall; she could not tell whether to laugh or cry at the defeat of the Cavalier. She saw Halfman bend over the fallen man and lift his head upon his knee. She saw Evander advance and look down upon his adversary.
“I hope you are not hurt,” Evander said, solicitously.
Halfman glanced up at the victor. “No harm’s done,” he said. “He was stunned for the moment; he is coming round.”
And in confirmation of his words Sir Blaise opened his eyes, and then with difficulty sat up and stared ruefully at Evander.
“Gogs!” he said, first rubbing his head and then looking at his reddened palm. “Gogs! That was a swinging snip. I am as dizzy as a winged pigeon.”
“Let me help you to rise,” Evander said, courteously. Blaise shook his aching head.
“I am none too fluttered to find my feet,” he asserted, ignoring the fact that his rising from the ground to an erect posture was entirely due to the combined efforts of Halfman and Evander,one on each side, and then, when he did get to his feet, he was only able to retain the perpendicular by leaning heavily upon Halfman as a steady prop. From under his bandaged forehead his pale-blue eyes regarded Evander with no trace of enmity.
“Your hand, Puritan—your hand!” he cried. “’Tis just that we clasp hands after a scuffle.”
Puritan and Cavalier clasped hands in a hearty grip. “I am at your service,” Evander said, gravely. “Shall we continue?” Sir Blaise shook his head again.
“I have had my bellyful,” he grunted. “There was breakfast, dinner, supper in your stroke. I must to the house to find vinegar and brown paper to patch my poll.”
“Can I aid you?” Evander offered. “I have some slight skill in surgery.”
“Leave him to me,” Halfman interposed. “I have botched as many heads as I have broken.”
Sir Blaise, leaning heavily on Halfman’s arm, replied to Evander’s offer in his own way.
“I will not have you mend ill what you have marred well. Come, crutch, let us be jogging. We will meet again another time, my fighting Puritan.”
Evander made him a bow. “At your pleasure,”he replied, and stood till Sir Blaise, leaning on Halfman, had hobbled out of the pleasaunce and limped out of sight. Then he drew on his jerkin again with a smile and a sigh.
“Truly,” he thought, “for a man who has but three days to live, I cannot be said to be wasting much idle time.” With that he took up again the book he had laid down and was soon deep in its study.