"Uncle," Matthiette cried, as she started to her feet, "such a marriage is a crime! I love Raoul!"
"Undoubtedly," purred Sieur Raymond, "you love the lad unboundedly, madly, distractedly! Now we come to the root of the matter." He sank back in his chair and smiled. "Young people," said he, "be seated, and hearken to the words of wisdom. Love is a divine insanity, in which the sufferer fancies the world mad. And the world is made up of madmen who condemn and punish one another."
"But," Matthiette dissented, "ours is no ordinary case!"
"Surely not," Sieur Raymond readily agreed; "for there was never an ordinary case in all the history of the universe. Oh, but I, too, have known this madness; I, too, have perceived how infinitely my own skirmishes with the blind bow-god differed in every respect from all that has been or will ever be. It is an infallible sign of this frenzy. Surely, I have said, the world will not willingly forget the vision of Chloris in her wedding garments, or the wonder of her last clinging kiss. Or, say Phyllis comes to-morrow: will an uninventive sun dare to rise in the old, hackneyed fashion on such a day of days? Perish the thought! There will probably be six suns, and, I dare say, a meteor or two."
"I perceive, sir," Raoul said here, "that after all you have not forgotten the young Raymond of whom I spoke."
"That was a long while ago," snapped Sieur Raymond. "I know a deal more of the world nowadays; and a level-headed world would be somewhat surprised at such occurrences, and suggest that for the future Phyllis remain at home. For whether you—or I—or any one—be in love or no is to our fellow creatures an affair of astonishingly trivial import. Not since Noé that great admiral, repeopled the world by begetting three sons upon Dame Noria has there been a love-business worthy of consideration; nor, if you come to that, not since sagacious Solomon went a-wenching has a wise man wasted his wisdom on a lover. So love one another, my children, by all means: but do you, Matthiette, make ready to depart into Normandy as a true and faithful wife to Monsieur de Puysange; and do you, Raoul de Prison, remain at Arnaye, and attend to my falcons more carefully than you have done of late,—or, by the cross of Saint Lo! I will clap the wench in a convent and hang the lad as high as Haman!"
Whereon Sieur Raymond smiled pleasantly, and drained his wine-cup as one considering the discussion ended.
Raoul sat silent for a moment. Then he rose. "Monsieur d'Arnaye, you know me to be a gentleman of unblemished descent, and as such entitled to a hearing. I forbid you before all-seeing Heaven to wed your niece to a man she does not love! And I have the honor to request of you her hand in marriage."
"Which offer I decline," said Sieur Raymond, grinning placidly,—"with every imaginable civility. Niece," he continued, "here is a gentleman who offers you a heartful of love, six months of insanity, and forty years of boredom in a leaky, wind-swept château. He has dreamed dreams concerning you: allow me to present to you the reality."
With some ceremony Sieur Raymond now grasped Matthiette's hand and led her mirror-ward. "Permit me to present the wife of Monsieur de Puysange. Could he have made a worthier choice? Ah, happy lord, that shall so soon embrace such perfect loveliness! For, frankly, my niece, is not that golden hair of a shade that will set off a coronet extraordinarily well? Are those wondrous eyes not fashioned to surfeit themselves upon the homage and respect accorded the wife of a great lord? Ouais, the thing is indisputable: and, therefore, I must differ from Monsieur de Frison here, who would condemn this perfection to bloom and bud unnoticed in a paltry country town."
There was an interval, during which Matthiette gazed sadly into the mirror. "And Arnaye—?" said she.
"Undoubtedly," said Sieur Raymond,—"Arnaye must perish unless Puysange prove her friend. Therefore, my niece conquers her natural aversion to a young and wealthy husband, and a life of comfort and flattery and gayety; relinquishes you, Raoul; and, like a feminine Mettius Curtius, sacrifices herself to her country's welfare. Pierre may sleep undisturbed; and the pigs will have a new sty. My faith, it is quite affecting! And so," Sieur Raymond summed it up, "you two young fools may bid adieu, once for all, while I contemplate this tapestry." He strolled to the end of the room and turned his back. "Admirable!" said he; "really now, that leopard is astonishingly lifelike!"
Raoul came toward Matthiette. "Dear love," said he, "you have chosen wisely, and I bow to your decision. Farewell, Matthiette,—O indomitable heart! O brave perfect woman that I have loved! Now at the last of all, I praise you for your charity to me, Love's mendicant,—ah, believe me, Matthiette, that atones for aught which follows now. Come what may, I shall always remember that once in old days you loved me, and, remembering this, I shall always thank God with a contented heart." He bowed over her unresponsive hand. "Matthiette," he whispered, "be happy! For I desire that very heartily, and I beseech of our Sovereign Lady—not caring to hide at all how my voice shakes, nor how the loveliness of you, seen now for the last time, is making blind my eyes—that you may never know unhappiness. You have chosen wisely, Matthiette; yet, ah, my dear, do not forget me utterly, but keep always a little place in your heart for your boy lover!"
Sieur Raymond concluded his inspection of the tapestry, and turned with a premonitory cough. "Thus ends the comedy," said he, shrugging, "with much fine, harmless talking about 'always,' while the world triumphs. Invariably the world triumphs, my children. Eheu, we are as God made us, we men and women that cumber His stately earth!" He drew his arm through Raoul's. "Farewell, niece," said Sieur Raymond, smiling; "I rejoice that you are cured of your malady. Now in respect to gerfalcons—" said he. The arras fell behind them.
3.Obdurate Love
Matthiette sat brooding in her room, as the night wore on. She was pitifully frightened, numb. There was in the room, she dimly noted, a heavy silence that sobs had no power to shatter. Dimly, too, she seemed aware of a multitude of wide, incurious eyes which watched her from every corner, where panels snapped at times with sharp echoes. The night was well-nigh done when she arose.
"After all," she said, wearily, "it is my manifest duty." Matthiette crept to the mirror and studied it.
"Madame de Puysange," said she, without any intonation; then threw her arms above her head, with a hard gesture of despair. "I love him!" she cried, in a frightened voice.
Matthiette went to a great chest and fumbled among its contents. She drew out a dagger in a leather case, and unsheathed it. The light shone evilly scintillant upon the blade. She laughed, and hid it in the bosom of her gown, and fastened a cloak about her with impatient fingers. Then Matthiette crept down the winding stair that led to the gardens, and unlocked the door at the foot of it.
A sudden rush of night swept toward her, big with the secrecy of dawn. The sky, washed clean of stars, sprawled above,—a leaden, monotonous blank. Many trees whispered thickly over the chaos of earth; to the left, in an increasing dove-colored luminousness, a field of growing maize bristled like the chin of an unshaven Titan.
Matthiette entered an expectant world. Once in the tree-chequered gardens, it was as though she crept through the aisles of an unlit cathedral already garnished for its sacred pageant. Matthiette heard the querulous birds call sleepily above; the margin of night was thick with their petulant complaints; behind her was the monstrous shadow of the Chateau d'Arnaye, and past that was a sullen red, the red of contused flesh, to herald dawn. Infinity waited a-tiptoe, tense for the coming miracle, and against this vast repression, her grief dwindled into irrelevancy: the leaves whispered comfort; each tree-bole hid chuckling fauns. Matthiette laughed. Content had flooded the universe all through and through now that yonder, unseen as yet, the scarlet-faced sun was toiling up the rim of the world, and matters, it somehow seemed, could not turn out so very ill, in the end.
Matthiette came to a hut, from whose open window a faded golden glow spread out into obscurity like a tawdry fan. From without she peered into the hut and saw Raoul. A lamp flickered upon the table. His shadow twitched and wavered about the plastered walls,—a portentous mass of head upon a hemisphere of shoulders,—as Raoul bent over a chest, sorting the contents, singing softly to himself, while Matthiette leaned upon the sill without, and the gardens of Arnaye took form and stirred in the heart of a chill, steady, sapphire-like radiance.
Sang Raoul:
_"Lord, I have worshipped thee ever,—Through all these yearsI have served thee, forsaking neverLight Love that veersAs a child between laughter and tears.Hast thou no more to afford,—Naught save laughter and tears,—Love, my lord?
"I have borne thy heaviest burden,Nor served thee amiss:Now thou hast given a guerdon;Lo, it was this—A sigh, a shudder, a kiss.Hast thou no more to accord!I would have more than this,Love, my lord.
"I am wearied of love that is pastimeAnd gifts that it brings;I entreat of thee, lord, at this last time
"Inèffable things.Nay, have proud long-dead kingsStricken no subtler chord,Whereof the memory clings,Love, my lord?
"But for a little we live;Show me thine innermost hoard!Hast thou no more to give,Love, my lord?"_
4.Raymond Psychopompos
Matthiette went to the hut's door: her hands fell irresolutely upon the rough surface of it and lay still for a moment. Then with the noise of a hoarse groan the door swung inward, and the light guttered in a swirl of keen morning air, casting convulsive shadows upon her lifted countenance, and was extinguished. She held out her arms in a gesture that was half maternal. "Raoul!" she murmured.
He turned. A sudden bird plunged through the twilight without, with a glad cry that pierced like a knife through the stillness which had fallen in the little room. Raoul de Frison faced her, with clenched hands, silent. For that instant she saw him transfigured.
But his silence frightened her. There came a piteous catch in her voice."Fair friend, have you not bidden me—be happy?"
He sighed. "Mademoiselle," he said, dully, "I may not avail myself of your tenderness of heart; that you have come to comfort me in my sorrow is a deed at which, I think, God's holy Angels must rejoice: but I cannot avail myself of it."
"Raoul, Raoul," she said, "do you think that I have come in—pity!"
"Matthiette," he returned, "your uncle spoke the truth. I have dreamed dreams concerning you,—dreams of a foolish, golden-hearted girl, who would yield—yield gladly—all that the world may give, to be one flesh and soul with me. But I have wakened, dear, to the braver reality,—that valorous woman, strong enough to conquer even her own heart that her people may be freed from their peril."
"Blind! blind!" she cried.
Raoul smiled down upon her. "Mademoiselle," said he, "I do not doubt that you love me."
She went wearily toward the window. "I am not very wise," Matthiette said, looking out upon the gardens, "and it appears that God has given me an exceedingly tangled matter to unravel. Yet if I decide it wrongly I think the Eternal Father will understand it is because I am not very wise."
Matthiette for a moment was silent. Then with averted face she spoke again. "My uncle commands me, with many astute saws and pithy sayings, to wed Monsieur de Puysange. I have not skill to combat him. Many times he has proven it my duty, but he is quick in argument and proves what he will; and I do not think it is my duty. It appears to me a matter wherein man's wisdom is at variance with God's will as manifested to us through the holy Evangelists. Assuredly, if I do not wed Monsieur de Puysange there may be war here in our Arnaye, and God has forbidden war; but I may not insure peace in Arnaye without prostituting my body to a man I do not love, and that, too, God has forbidden. I speak somewhat grossly for a maid, but you love me, I think, and will understand. And I, also, love you, Monsieur de Frison. Yet—ah, I am pitiably weak! Love tugs at my heart-strings, bidding me cling to you, and forget these other matters; but I cannot do that, either. I desire very heartily the comfort and splendor and adulation which you cannot give me. I am pitiably weak, Raoul! I cannot come to you with an undivided heart,—but my heart, such as it is, I have given you, and to-day I deliver my honor into your hands and my life's happiness, to preserve or to destroy. Mother of Christ, grant that I have chosen rightly, for I have chosen now, past retreat! I have chosen you, Raoul, and that love which you elect to give me, and of which I must endeavor to be worthy."
Matthiette turned from the window. Now, her bright audacity gone, her ardors chilled, you saw how like a grave, straightforward boy she was, how illimitably tender, how inefficient. "It may be that I have decided wrongly in this tangled matter," she said now. "And yet I think that God, Who loves us infinitely, cannot be greatly vexed at anything His children do for love of one another."
He came toward her. "I bid you go," he said. "Matthiette, it is my duty to bid you go, and it is your duty to obey."
She smiled wistfully through unshed tears. "Man's wisdom!" said Matthiette. "I think that it is not my duty. And so I disobey you, dear,—this once, and no more hereafter."
"And yet last night—" Raoul began.
"Last night," said she, "I thought that I was strong. I know now it was my vanity that was strong,—vanity and pride and fear, Raoul, that for a little mastered me. But in the dawn all things seem very trivial, saving love alone."
They looked out into the dew-washed gardens. The daylight was fullgrown, and already the clear-cut forms of men were passing beneath the swaying branches. In the distance a trumpet snarled.
"Dear love," said Raoul, "do you not understand that you have brought about my death? For Monsieur de Puysange is at the gates of Arnaye; and either he or Sieur Raymond will have me hanged ere noon."
"I do not know," she said, in a tired voice. "I think that Monsieur de Puysange has some cause to thank me; and my uncle loves me, and his heart, for all his gruffness, is very tender. And—see, Raoul!" She drew the dagger from her bosom. "I shall not survive you a long while, O man of all the world!"
Perplexed joy flushed through his countenance. "You will do this—for me?" he cried, with a sort of sob. "Matthiette, Matthiette, you shame me!"
"But I love you," said Matthiette. "How could it be possible, then, for me to live after you were dead?"
He bent to her. They kissed.
Hand in hand they went forth into the daylight. The kindly, familiar place seemed in Matthiette's eyes oppressed and transformed by the austerity of dawn. It was a clear Sunday morning, at the hightide of summer, and she found the world unutterably Sabbatical; only by a vigorous effort could memory connect it with the normal life of yesterday. The cool edges of the woods, vibrant now with multitudinous shrill pipings, the purple shadows shrinking eastward on the dimpling lawns, the intricate and broken traceries of the dial (where they had met so often), the blurred windings of their path, above which brooded the peaked roofs and gables and slender clerestories of Arnaye, the broad river yonder lapsing through deserted sunlit fields,—these things lay before them scarce heeded, stript of all perspective, flat as an open scroll. To them all this was alien. She and Raoul were quite apart from these matters, quite alone, despite the men of Arnaye, hurrying toward the courtyard, who stared at them curiously, but said nothing. A brisk wind was abroad in the tree-tops, scattering stray leaves, already dead, over the lush grass. Tenderly Raoul brushed a little golden sycamore leaf from the lovelier gold of Matthiette's hair.
"I do not know how long I have to live," he said. "Nobody knows that. ButI wish that I might live a great while to serve you worthily."
She answered: "Neither in life nor death shall we be parted now. That only matters, my husband."
They came into the crowded court-yard just as the drawbridge fell. A troop of horse clattered into Arnaye, and the leader, a young man of frank countenance, dismounted and looked about him inquiringly. Then he came toward them.
"Monseigneur," said he, "you see that we ride early in honor of your nuptials."
Behind them some one chuckled. "Love one another, young people," saidSieur Raymond; "but do you, Matthiette, make ready to depart intoNormandy as a true and faithful wife to Monsieur de Puysange."
She stared into Raoul's laughing face; there was a kind of anguish in her swift comprehension. Quickly the two men who loved her glanced at each other, half in shame.
But the Sieur d'Arnaye was not lightly dashed. "Oh, la, la, la!" chuckled the Sieur d'Arnaye, "she would never have given you a second thought, monsieur le vicomte, had I not labelled you forbidden fruit. As it is, my last conspiracy, while a little ruthless, I grant you, turns out admirably. Jack has his Jill, and all ends merrily, like an old song. I will begin on those pig-sties the first thing to-morrow morning."
* * * * *
"Therefore, like as May month flowereth and flourisheth in many gardens, so in likewise let every man of worship flourish his heart in this world; first unto God, and next unto the joy of them that he promiseth his faith unto."
_The quondam Raoul de Prison stood high in the graces of the Lady Regent of France, Anne de Beaujeu, who was, indeed, tolerably notorious for her partiality to well-built young men. Courtiers whispered more than there is any need here to rehearse. In any event, when in 1485 the daughter of Louis XI fitted out an expedition to press the Earl of Richmond's claim to the English crown, de Puysange sailed from Havre as commander of the French fleet. He fought at Bosworth, not discreditably; and a year afterward, when England had for the most part accepted Henry VII, Matthiette rejoined her husband.
They never subsequently quitted England. During the long civil wars, de Puysange was known as a shrewd captain and a judicious counsellor to the King, who rewarded his services as liberally as Tudorian parsimony would permit. After the death of Henry VII, however, the vicomte took little part in public affairs, spending most of his time at Tiverton Manor, in Devon, where, surrounded by their numerous progeny, he and Matthiette grew old together in peace and concord.
Indeed, the vicomte so ordered all his cool love-affairs that, having taken a wife as a matter of expediency, he continued as a matter of expediency to make her a fair husband, as husbands go. It also seemed to him, they relate, a matter of expediency to ignore the interpretation given by scandalous persons to the paternal friendship extended to Madame de Puysange by a high prince of the Church, during the last five years of the great Cardinal Morton's life, for the connection was useful.
The following is from a manuscript of doubtful authenticity still to be seen at Allonby Shaw. It purports to contain the autobiography of Will Sommers, the vicomte's jester, afterward court-fool to Henry VIII._
The Episode Called The Castle of Content
1.I Glimpse the Castle
"And so, dearie," she ended, "you may seize the revenues of Allonby with unwashed hands."
I said, "Why have you done this?" I was half-frightened by the sudden whirl of Dame Fortune's wheel.
"Dear cousin in motley," grinned the beldame, "'twas for hatred of TomAllonby and all his accursed race that I have kept the secret thus long.Now comes a braver revenge: and I settle my score with the black spawn ofAllonby—euh, how entirely!—by setting you at their head."
"Nay, I elect for a more flattering reason. I begin to suspect you, cousin, of some human compunction."
"Well, Willie, well, I never hated you as much as I had reason to," she grumbled, and began to cough very lamentably. "So at the last I must make a marquis of you—ugh! Will you jest for them in counsel, Willie, and lead your henchman to battle with a bawdy song—ugh, ugh!"
Her voice crackled like burning timber, and sputtered in groans that would have been fanged curses had breath not failed her: for my aunt Elinor possessed a nimble tongue, whetted, as rumor had it, by the attendance of divers Sabbats, and the chaunting of such songs as honest men may not hear and live, however highly the succubi and warlocks and were-cats, and Satan's courtiers generally, commend them.
I squinted down at one green leg, scratched the crimson fellow to it with my bauble, and could not deny that, even so, the witch was dealing handsomely with me to-night.
'Twas a strange tale which my Aunt Elinor had ended, speaking swiftly lest the worms grow impatient and Charon weigh anchor ere she had done: and the proofs of the tale's verity, set forth in a fair clerkly handwriting, rustled in my hand,—scratches of a long-rotted pen that transferred me to the right side of the blanket, and transformed the motley of a fool into the ermine of a peer.
All Devon knew I was son to Tom Allonby, who had been Marquis of Falmouth at his uncle's death, had not Tom Allonby, upon the very eve of that event, broken his neck in a fox-hunt; but Dan Gabriel, come post-haste from Heaven had with difficulty convinced the village idiot that Holy Church had smiled upon Tom's union with a tanner's daughter, and that their son was lord of Allonby Shaw. I doubted it, even as I read the proof. Yet it was true,—true that I had precedence even of the great Monsieur de Puysange, who had kept me to make him mirth on a shifty diet, first coins, then curses, these ten years past,—true that my father, rogue in all else, had yet dealt equitably with my mother ere he died,—true that my aunt, less honorably used by him, had shared their secret with the priest who married them, maliciously preserving it till this, when her words fell before me as anciently Jove's shower before the Argive Danaë, coruscant and awful, pregnant with undreamed-of chances which stirred as yet blindly in Time's womb.
A sick anger woke in me, remembering the burden of ignoble years this hag had suffered me to bear; yet my so young gentility bade me avoid reproach of the dying peasant woman, who, when all was said, had been but ill-used by our house. Death hath a strange potency: commanding as he doth, unquestioned and unchidden, the emperor to have done with slaying, the poet to rise from his unfinished rhyme, the tender and gracious lady to cease from nice denying words (mixed though they be with pitiful sighs that break their sequence like an amorous ditty heard through the strains of a martial stave), and all men, gentle or base, to follow Death's gaunt standard into unmapped realms, something of majesty enshrines the paltriest knave on whom the weight of Death's chill finger hath fallen. I doubt not that Cain's children wept about his deathbed, and that the centurions spake in whispers as they lowered Iscariot from the elder-tree: and in like manner the reproaches which stirred in my brain had no power to move my lips. The frail carnal tenement, swept and cleansed of all mortality, was garnished for Death's coming; and I could not sorrow at his advent here: but I perforce must pity rather than revile the prey which Age and Poverty, those ravenous forerunning hounds of Death yet harried, at the door of the tomb.
Running over these considerations in my mind, I said, "I forgive you."
"You posturing lack-wit!" she returned, and her sunk jaws quivered angrily. "D'ye play the condescending gentleman already! Dearie, your master did not take the news so calmly."
"You have told him?"
I had risen, for the wried, and yet sly, malice of my aunt's face was rather that of Bellona, who, as clerks avow, ever bore carnage and dissension in her train, than that of a mortal, mutton-fed woman. Elinor Sommers hated me—having God knows how just a cause—for the reason that I was my father's son; and yet, for this same reason as I think, there was in all our intercourse an odd, harsh, grudging sort of tenderness.
She laughed now,—flat and shrill, like the laughter of the damned heard in Hell between the roaring of flames. "Were it not common kindness to tell him, since this old sleek fellow's fine daughter is to wed the cuckoo that hath your nest? Yes, Willie, yes, your master hath known since morning."
"And Adeliza?" I asked, in a voice that tricked me.
"Heh, my Lady-High-and-Mighty hath, I think, heard nothing as yet. She will be hearing of new suitors soon enough, though, for her father, Monsieur Fine-Words, that silky, grinning thief, is very keen in a money-chase,—keen as a terrier on a rat-track, may Satan twist his neck! Pshutt, dearie! here is a smiling knave who means to have the estate of Allonby as it stands; what live-stock may go therewith, whether crack-brained or not, is all one to him. He will not balk at a drachm or two of wit in his son-in-law. You have but to whistle,—but to whistle, Willie, and she'll come!"
I said, "Eh, woman, and have you no heart?"
"I gave it to your father for a few lying speeches," she answered, "and Tom Allonby taught me the worth of all such commerce." There was a smile upon her lips, sister to that which Clytemnestra may have flaunted in welcome of that old Emperor Agamemnon, come in gory opulence from the sack of Troy Town. "I gave it—" Her voice rose here to a despairing wail. "Ah, go, before I lay my curse upon you, son of Thomas Allonby! But do you kiss me first, for you have just his lying mouth. So, that is better! And now go, my lord marquis; it is not fitting that death should intrude into your lordship's presence. Go, fool, and let me die in peace!"
I no longer cast a cautious eye toward the whip (ah, familiar unkindly whip!) that still hung beside the door of the hut; but, I confess, my aunt's looks were none too delectable, and ancient custom rendered her wrath yet terrible. If the farmers thereabouts were to be trusted, I knew Old Legion's bailiff would shortly be at hand, to distrain upon a soul escheat and forfeited to Dis by many years of cruel witchcrafts, close wiles, and nameless sorceries; and I could never abide unpared nails, even though they be red-hot. Therefore, I relinquished her to the village gossips, who waited without, and I tucked my bauble under my arm.
"Dear aunt," said I, "farewell!"
"Good-bye, Willie!" said she; "I shall often laugh in Hell to think of the crack-brained marquis that I made on earth. It was my will to make a beggar of Tom's son, but at the last I play the fool and cannot do it. But do you play the fool, too, dearie, and"—she chuckled here—"and have your posture and your fine long words, whatever happens."
"'Tis my vocation," I answered, briefly; and so went forth into the night.
2.At the Ladder's Foot
I came to Tiverton Manor through a darkness black as the lining of Baalzebub's oldest cloak. The storm had passed, but clouds yet hung heavy as feather-beds between mankind and the stars; as I crossed the bridge the swollen Exe was but dimly visible, though it roared beneath me, and shook the frail timbers hungrily. The bridge had long been unsafe: Monsieur de Puysange had planned one stronger and less hazardous than the former edifice, of which the arches yet remained, and this was now in the making, as divers piles of unhewn lumber and stone attested: meanwhile, the roadway was a makeshift of half-rotten wood that even in this abating wind shook villainously. I stood for a moment and heard the waters lapping and splashing and laughing, as though they would hold it rare and desirable mirth to swallow and spew forth a powerful marquis, and grind his body among the battered timber and tree-boles and dead sheep swept from the hills, and at last vomit him into the sea, that a corpse, wide-eyed and livid, might bob up and down the beach, in quest of a quiet grave where the name of Allonby was scarcely known. The imagination was so vivid that it frightened me as I picked my way cat-footed through the dark.
The folk of Tiverton Manor were knotting on their nightcaps, by this; but there was a light in the Lady Adeliza's window, faint as a sick glowworm. I rolled in the seeded grass and chuckled, as I thought of what a day or two might bring about, and I murmured to myself an old cradle-song of Devon which she loved and often sang; and was, ere I knew it, carolling aloud, for pure wantonness and joy that Monsieur de Puysange was not likely to have me whipped, now, however blatantly I might elect to discourse.
Sang I:
_"Through the mist of years does it gleam as yet—That fair and free extentOf moonlit turret and parapet,Which castled, once, Content?
"Ei ho! Ei ho! the Castle of Content,With drowsy music drowning merrimentWhere Dreams and Visions held high carnival,And frolicking frail Loves made light of all,—Ei ho! the vanished Castle of Content!"_
As I ended, the casement was pushed open, and the Lady Adeliza came upon the balcony, the light streaming from behind her in such fashion as made her appear an angel peering out of Heaven at our mortal antics. Indeed, there was always something more than human in her loveliness, though, to be frank, it savored less of chilling paradisial perfection than of a vision of some great-eyed queen of faery, such as those whose feet glide unwetted over our fen-waters when they roam o' nights in search of unwary travellers. Lady Adeliza was a fair beauty; that is, her eyes were of the color of opals, and her complexion as the first rose of spring, blushing at her haste to snare men's hearts with beauty; and her loosened hair rippled in such a burst of splendor that I have seen a pale brilliancy, like that of amber, reflected by her bared shoulders where the bright waves fell heavily against the tender flesh, and ivory vied with gold in beauty. She was somewhat proud, they said; and to others she may have been, but to me, never. Her voice was a low, sweet song, her look that of the chaste Roman, beneficent Saint Dorothy, as she is pictured in our Chapel here at Tiverton. Proud, they called her! to me her condescensions were so manifold that I cannot set them down: indeed, in all she spoke and did there was an extreme kindliness that made a courteous word from her of more worth than a purse from another.
She said, "Is it you, Will Sommers?"
"Madonna," I answered, "with whom else should the owls confer? It is a venerable saying that extremes meet. And here you may behold it exemplified, as in the conference of an epicure and an ostrich: though, for this once, Wisdom makes bold to sit above Folly."
"Did you carol, then, to the owls of Tiverton?" she queried.
"Hand upon heart," said I, "my grim gossips care less for my melody than for the squeaking of a mouse; and I sang rather for joy that at last I may enter into the Castle of Content."
The Lady Adeliza replied, "But nobody enters there alone."
"Madonna," said I, "your apprehension is nimble. I am in hope that a woman's hand may lower the drawbridge."
She said only "You—!" Then she desisted, incredulous laughter breaking the soft flow of speech.
"Now, by Paul and Peter, those eminent apostles! the prophet Jeremy never spake more veraciously in Edom! The fool sighs for a fair woman,—what else should he do, being a fool? Ah, madonna, as in very remote times that notable jester, Love, popped out of Night's wind-egg, and by his sorcery fashioned from the primeval tangle the pleasant earth that sleeps about us,—even thus, may he not frame the disorder of a fool's brain into the semblance of a lover's? Believe me, the change is not so great as you might think. Yet if you will, laugh at me, madonna, for I love a woman far above me,—a woman who knows not of my love, or, at most, considers it but as the homage which grateful peasants accord the all-nurturing sun; so that, now chance hath woven me a ladder whereby to mount to her, I scarcely dare to set my foot upon the bottom rung."
"A ladder?" she said, oddly: "and are you talking of a rope ladder?"
"I would describe it, rather," said I, "as a golden ladder."
There came a silence. About us the wind wailed among the gaunt, deserted choir of the trees, and in the distance an owl hooted sardonically.
The Lady Adeliza said: "Be bold. Be bold, and know that a woman loves once and forever, whether she will or no. Love is not sold in the shops, and the grave merchants that trade in the ultimate seas, and send forth argosies even to jewelled Ind, to fetch home rich pearls, and strange outlandish dyes, and spiceries, and the raiment of imperious queens of the old time, have bought and sold no love, for all their traffic. It is above gold. I know"—here her voice faltered somewhat—"I know of a woman whose birth is very near the throne, and whose beauty, such as it is, hath been commended, who loved a man the politic world would have none of, for he was not rich nor famous, nor even very wise. And the world bade her relinquish him; but within the chambers of her heart his voice rang more loudly than that of the world, and for his least word said she would leave all and go with him whither he would. And—she waits only for the speaking of that word."
"Be bold?" said I.
"Ay," she returned; "that is the moral of my tale. Make me a song of it to-night, dear Will,—and tomorrow, perhaps, you may learn how this woman, too, entered into the Castle of Content."
"Madonna—!" I cried.
"It is late," said she, "and I must go."
"To-morrow—?" I said. My heart was racing now.
"Ay, to-morrow,—the morrow that by this draws very near. Farewell!" She was gone, casting one swift glance backward, even as the ancient Parthians are fabled to have shot their arrows as they fled; and, if the airier missile, also, left a wound, I, for one, would not willingly have quitted her invulnerate.
3.Night, and a Stormed Castle
I went forth into the woods that stand thick about Tiverton Manor, where I lay flat on my back among the fallen leaves, dreaming many dreams to myself,—dreams that were frolic songs of happiness, to which the papers in my jerkin rustled a reassuring chorus.
I have heard that night is own sister to death; now, as the ultimate torn cloud passed seaward, and the new-washed harvest-moon broke forth in a red glory, and stars clustered about her like a swarm of golden bees, I thought this night was rather the parent of a new life. But, indeed, there is a solemnity in night beyond all jesting: for night knits up the tangled yarn of our day's doings into a pattern either good or ill; it renews the vigor of the living, and with the lapsing of the tide it draws the dying toward night's impenetrable depths, gently; and it honors the secrecy of lovers as zealously as that of rogues. In the morning our bodies rise to their allotted work; but our wits have had their season in the night, or of kissing, or of junketing, or of high resolve; and the greater part of such noble deeds as day witnesses have been planned in the solitude of night. It is the sage counsellor, the potent physician that heals and comforts the sorrows of all the world: and night proved such to me, as I pondered on the proud race of Allonby, and knew that in the general record of time my name must soon be set as a sonorous word significant, as the cat might jump, for much good or for large evil.
And Adeliza loved me, and had bidden me be bold! I may not write of what my thoughts were as I considered that stupendous miracle.
But even the lark that daily soars into the naked presence of the sun must seek his woven nest among the grass at twilight; and so, with many yawns, I rose after an hour of dreams to look for sleep. Tiverton Manor was a formless blot on the mild radiance of the heavens, but I must needs pause for a while, gazing up at the Lady Adeliza's window, like a hen drinking water, and thinking of divers matters.
It was then that something rustled among the leaves, and, turning, I stared into the countenance of Stephen Allonby, until to-day Marquis of Falmouth, a slim, comely youth, and son to my father's younger brother.
"Fool," said he, "you walk late."
"Faith!" said I, "instinct warned me that a fool might find fit company here,—dear cousin." He frowned at the word, for he was never prone to admit the relationship, being in disposition somewhat precise.
"Eh?" said he; then paused for a while. "I have more kinsmen than I knew of," he resumed, at length, "and to-day spawns them thick as herrings. Your greeting falls strangely pat with that of a brother of yours, alleged to be begot in lawful matrimony, who hath appeared to claim the title and estates, and hath even imposed upon the credulity of Monsieur de Puysange."
I said, "And who is this new kinsman?" though his speaking had brought my heart into my mouth. "I have many brethren, if report speak truly as to how little my poor father slept at night."
"I do not know," said he. "The vicomte had not told me more than half the tale when I called him a double-faced old rogue. Thereafter we parted—well, rather hastily!"
I was moved with a sort of pity, since it was plainer than a pike-staff that Monsieur de Puysange had bundled this penniless young fellow out of Tiverton, with scant courtesy and a scantier explanation. Still, the wording of this sympathy was a ticklish business. I waved my hand upward. "The match, then, is broken off, between you and the Lady Adeliza?"
"Ay!" my cousin said, grimly.
Again I was nonplussed. Since their betrothal was an affair of rank conveniency, my Cousin Stephen should, in reason, grieve at this miscarriage temperately, and yet if by some awkward chance he, too, adored the delicate comeliness asleep above us, equity conceded his taste to be unfortunate rather than remarkable. Inwardly I resolved to bestow upon my Cousin Stephen a competence, and to pick out for him somewhere a wife better suited to his station. Meanwhile a silence fell.
He cleared his throat; swore softly to himself; took a brief turn on the grass; and approached me, purse in hand. "It is time you were abed," said my cousin.
I assented to this. "And since one may sleep anywhere," I reasoned, "why not here?" Thereupon, for I was somewhat puzzled at his bearing, I lay down upon the gravel and snored.
"Fool," he said. I opened one eye. "I have business here"—I opened the other—"with the Lady Adeliza." He tossed me a coin as I sprang to my feet.
"Sir—!" I cried out.
"Ho, she expects me."
"In that case—" said I.
"The difficulty is to give a signal."
"'Tis as easy as lying," I reassured him; and thereupon I began to sing.
Sang I:
_"Such toll we took of his niggling hoursThat the troops of Time were sentTo seise the treasures and fell the towersOf the Castle of Content.
"Ei ho! Ei ho! the Castle of Content,With flaming tower and tumbling battlementWhere Time hath conquered, and the firelight streamsAbove sore-wounded Loves and dying Dreams,—Ei ho! the vanished Castle of Content!"_
And I had scarcely ended when the casement opened.
"Stephen!" said the Lady Adeliza.
"Dear love!" said he.
"Humph!" said I.
Here a rope-ladder unrolled from the balcony and hit me upon the head.
"Regard the orchard for a moment," the Lady Adeliza said, with the wonderfullest little laugh.
My cousin indignantly protested, "I have company,—a burr that sticks to me."
"A fool," I explained,—"to keep him in countenance."
"It was ever the part of folly," said she, laughing yet again, "to be swayed by a woman; and it is the part of wisdom to be discreet. In any event, there must be no spectators."
So we two Allonbys held each a strand of the ladder and stared at the ripening apples, black globes among the wind-vext silver of the leaves. In a moment the Lady Adeliza stood between us. Her hand rested upon mine as she leapt to the ground,—the tiniest velvet-soft ounce-weight that ever set a man's blood a-tingle.
"I did not know—" said she.
"Faith, madonna!" said I, "no more did I till this. I deduce but now that the Marquis of Falmouth is the person you discoursed of an hour since, with whom you hope to enter the Castle of Content."
"Ah, Will! dear Will, do not think lightly of me," she said. "My father—"
"Is as all of them have been since Father Adam's dotage," I ended; "and therefore is keeping fools and honest horses from their rest."
My cousin said, angrily, "You have been spying!"
"Because I know that there are horses yonder?" said I. "And fools here—and everywhere? Surely, there needs no argent-bearded Merlin come yawning out of Brocheliaunde to inform us of that."
He said, "You will be secret?"
"In comparison," I answered, "the grave is garrulous, and a death's-head a chattering magpie; yet I think that your maid, madonna,—"
"Beatris is sworn to silence."
"Which signifies she is already on her way to Monsieur de Puysange. She was coerced; she discovered it too late; and a sufficiency of tears and pious protestations will attest her innocence. It is all one." I winked an eye very sagely.
"Your jesting is tedious," my cousin said. "Come, Adeliza!"
Blaise, my lord marquis' French servant, held three horses in the shadow, so close that it was incredible I had not heard their trampling. Now the lovers mounted and were off like thistledown ere Blaise put foot to stirrup.
"Blaise," said I.
"Ohé!" said he, pausing.
"—if, upon this pleasurable occasion, I were to borrow your horse—"
"Impossible!"
"If I were to take it by force—" I exhibited my coin.
"Eh?"
"—no one could blame you."
"And yet perhaps—"
"The deduction is illogical," said I. And pushing him aside, I mounted and set out into the night after my cousin and the Lady Adeliza.
4.All Ends in a Puff of Smoke
They rode leisurely enough along the winding highway that lay in the moonlight like a white ribbon in a pedlar's box; and staying as I did some hundred yards behind, they thought me no other than Blaise, being, indeed, too much engrossed with each other to regard the outer world very strictly. So we rode a matter of three miles in the whispering, moonlit woods, they prattling and laughing as though there were no such monster in all the universe as a thrifty-minded father, and I brooding upon many things beside my marquisate, and keeping an ear cocked backward for possible pursuit.
In any ordinary falling out of affairs they would ride unhindered to Teignmouth, and thence to Allonby Shaw; they counted fully upon doing this; but I, knowing Beatris, who was waiting-maid to the Lady Adeliza, and consequently in the plot, to be the devil's own vixen, despite an innocent face and a wheedling tongue, was less certain.
I shall not easily forget that riding away from the old vicomte's preparations to make a match of it between Adeliza and me. About us the woods sighed and whispered, dappled by the moonlight with unstable chequerings of blue and silver. Tightly he clung to my crupper, that swart tireless horseman, Care; but ahead rode Love, anterior to all things and yet eternally young, in quest of the Castle of Content. The horses' hoofs beat against the pebbles as if in chorus to the Devon cradle-song that rang idly in my brain. 'Twas little to me—now—whether the quest were won or lost; yet, as I watched the Lady Adeliza's white cloak tossing and fluttering in the wind, my blood pulsed more strongly than it is wont to do, and was stirred by the keen odors of the night and by many memories of her gracious kindliness and by a desire to serve somewhat toward the attainment of her happiness. Thus it was that my teeth clenched, and a dog howled in the distance, and the world seemed very old and very incurious of our mortal woes and joys.
Then that befell which I had looked for, and I heard the clatter of horses' hoofs behind us, and knew that Monsieur de Puysange and his men were at hand to rescue the Lady Adeliza from my fine-looking young cousin, to put her into the bed of a rich fool. So I essayed a gallop.
"Spur!" I cried;—"in the name of Saint Cupid!"
With a little gasp, she bent forward over her horse's mane, urging him onward with every nerve and muscle of her tender body. I could not keep my gaze from her as we swept through the night. Picture Europa in her traverse, bull-borne, through the summer sea, the depths giving up their misshapen deities, and the blind sea-snakes writhing about her in hideous homage, while she, a little frightened, thinks resolutely of Crete beyond these unaccustomed horrors and of the god desirous of her contentation; and there, to an eyelash, you have Adeliza as I saw her.
But steadily our pursuers gained on us: and as we paused to pick our way over the frail bridge that spanned the Exe, their clamor was very near.
"Take care!" I cried,—but too late, for my horse swerved under me as I spoke, and my lord marquis' steed caught foot in a pile of lumber and fell heavily. He was up in a moment, unhurt, but the horse was lamed.
"You!" cried my Cousin Stephen. "Oh, but what fiend sends me this burr again!"
I said: "My fellow-madmen, it is all one if I have a taste for night-riding and the shedding of noble blood. Alack, though, that I have left my brave bauble at Tiverton! Had I that here, I might do such deeds! I might show such prowess upon the person of Monsieur de Puysange as your Nine Worthies would quake to hear of! For I have the honor to inform you, my doves, that we are captured."
Indeed, we were in train to be, for even the two sound horses were well-nigh foundered: Blaise, the idle rogue, had not troubled to provide fresh steeds, so easy had the flitting seemed; and it was conspicuous that we would be overtaken in half an hour.
"So it seems," said Stephen Allonby. "Well! one can die but once." Thus speaking, he drew his sword with an air which might have been envied by Captain Leonidas at Thermopylae.
"Together, my heart!" she cried.
"Madonna," said I, dismounting as I spoke, "pray you consider! With neither of you, is there any question of death; 'tis but that Monsieur de Puysange desires you to make a suitable match. It is not yet too late; his heart is kindly so long as he gets his will and profit everywhere, and he bears no malice toward my lord marquis. Yield, then, to your father's wishes, since there is no choice."
She stared at me, as thanks for this sensible advice. "And you—is it you that would enter into the Castle of Content?" she cried, with a scorn that lashed.
I said: "Madonna, bethink you, you know naught of this man your father desires you to wed. Is it not possible that he, too, may love—or may learn to love you, on provocation? You are very fair, madonna. Yours is a beauty that may draw a man to Heaven or unclose the gates of Hell, at will; indeed, even I, in my poor dreams, have seen your face as bright and glorious as is the lighted space above the altar when Christ's blood and body are shared among His worshippers. Men certainly will never cease to love you. Will he—your husband that may be—prove less susceptible, we will say, than I? Ah, but, madonna, let us unrein imagination! Suppose, were it possible, that he—even now—yearns to enter into the Castle of Content, and that your hand, your hand alone, may draw the bolt for him,—that the thought of you is to him as a flame before which honor and faith shrivel as shed feathers, and that he has loved you these many years, unknown to you, long, long before the Marquis of Falmouth came into your life with his fair face and smooth sayings. Suppose, were it possible, that he now stood before you, every pulse and fibre of him racked with an intolerable ecstasy of loving you, his heart one vast hunger for you, Adeliza, and his voice shaking as my voice shakes, and his hands trembling as my hands tremble,—ah, see how they tremble, madonna, the poor foolish hands! Suppose, were it possible,—"
"Fool! O treacherous fool!" my cousin cried, in a fine rage.
She rested her finger-tips upon his arm. "Hush!" she bade him; then turned to me an uncertain countenance that was half pity, half wonder. "Dear Will," said she, "if you have ever known aught of love, do you not understand how I love Stephen here?"
But she did not any longer speak as a lord's daughter speaks to the fool that makes mirth for his betters.
"In that case," said I,—and my voice played tricks,—"in that case, may I request that you assist me in gathering such brushwood as we may find hereabout?"
They both stared at me now. "My lord," I said, "the Exe is high, the bridge is of wood, and I have flint and steel in my pocket. The ford is five miles above and quite impassable. Do you understand me, my lord?"
He clapped his hands. "Oh, excellent!" he cried.
Then, each having caught my drift, we heaped up a pile of broken boughs and twigs and brushwood on the bridge, all three gathering it together. And I wondered if the moon, that is co-partner in the antics of most rogues and lovers, had often beheld a sight more reasonless than the foregathering of a marquis, a peer's daughter, and a fool at dead of night to make fagots.
When we had done I handed him the flint and steel. "My lord," said I, "the honor is yours."
"Udsfoot!" he murmured, in a moment, swearing and striking futile sparks, "but the late rain has so wet the wood that it will not kindle."
I said, "Assuredly, in such matters a fool is indispensable." I heaped before him the papers that made an honest woman of my mother and a marquis of me, and seizing the flint, I cast a spark among them that set them crackling cheerily. Oh, I knew well enough that patience would coax a flame from those twigs without my paper's aid, but to be patient does not afford the posturing which youth loves. So it was a comfort to wreck all magnificently: and I knew that, too, as we three drew back upon the western bank and watched the writhing twigs splutter and snap and burn.
The bridge caught apace and in five minutes afforded passage to nothing short of the ardent equipage of the prophet Elias. Five minutes later the bridge did not exist: only the stone arches towered above the roaring waters that glistened in the light of the fire, which had, by this, reached the other side of the river, to find quick employment in the woods of Tiverton. Our pursuers rode through a glare which was that of Hell's kitchen on baking-day, and so reached the Exe only to curse vainly and to shriek idle imprecations at us, who were as immune from their anger as though the severing river had been Pyriphlegethon.
"My lord," I presently suggested, "it may be that your priest expects you?"
"Indeed," said he, laughing, "it is possible. Let us go." Thereupon they mounted the two sound horses. "Most useful burr," said he, "do you follow on foot to Teignmouth; and there—"
"Sir," I replied, "my home is at Tiverton."
He wheeled about. "Do you not fear—?"
"The whip?" said I. "Ah, my lord, I have been whipped ere this. It is not the greatest ill in life to be whipped."
He began to protest.
"But, indeed, I am resolved," said I. "Farewell!"
He tossed me his purse. "As you will," he retorted, shortly. "We thank you for your aid; and if I am still master of Allonby—"
"No fear of that!" I said. "Farewell, good cousin marquis! I cannot weep at your going, since it brings you happiness. And we have it on excellent authority that the laughter of fools is as the crackling of thorns under a pot. Accordingly, I bid you God-speed in a discreet silence."
I stood fumbling my cousin's gold as he went forward into the night; but she did not follow.
"I am sorry—" she began. She paused and the lithe fingers fretted with her horse's mane.
I said: "Madonna, earlier in this crowded night, you told me of love's nature: must my halting commentary prove the glose upon your text? Look, then, to be edified while the fool is delivered of his folly. For upon the maternal side, love was born of the ocean, madonna, and the ocean is but salt water, and salt water is but tears; and thus may love claim love's authentic kin with sorrow. Ay, certainly, madonna, Fate hath ordained for her diversion that through sorrow alone we lovers may attain to the true Castle of Content."
There was a long silence, and the wind wailed among the falling, tattered leaves. "Had I but known—" said Adeliza, very sadly.
I said: "Madonna, go forward and God speed you! Yonder your lover waits for you, and the world is exceedingly fair; here is only a fool. As for this new Marquis of Falmouth, let him trouble you no longer. 'Tis an Eastern superstition that we lackbrains are endowed with peculiar gifts of prophecy: and as such, I predict, very confidently, madonna, that you will see and hear no more of him in this life."
I caught my breath. In the moonlight she seemed God's master-work. Her eyes were big with half-comprehended sorrow, and a slender hand stole timorously toward me. I laughed, seeing how she strove to pity my great sorrow and could not, by reason of her great happiness. I laughed and was content. "As surely as God reigns in Heaven," I cried aloud, "I am content, and this moment is well purchased with a marquisate!"
Indeed, I was vastly uplift and vastly pleased with my own nobleness, just then, and that condition is always a comfort.
More alertly she regarded me; and in her eyes I saw the anxiety and the wonder merge now into illimitable pity. "That, too!" she said, smiling sadly. "That, too, O son of Thomas Allonby!" And her mothering arms were clasped about me, and her lips clung and were one with my lips for a moment, and her tears were wet upon my cheek. She seemed to shield me, making of her breast my sanctuary.
"My dear, my dear, I am not worthy!" said Adeliza, with a tenderness I cannot tell you of; and presently she, too, was gone.
I mounted the lamed horse, who limped slowly up the river bank; very slowly we came out from the glare of the crackling fire into the cool darkness of the autumn woods; very slowly, for the horse was lamed and wearied, and patience is a discreet virtue when one journeys toward curses and the lash of a dog-whip: and I thought of many quips and jests whereby to soothe the anger of Monsieur de Puysange, and I sang to myself as I rode through the woods, a nobleman no longer, a tired Jack-pudding whose tongue must save his hide.
Sang I:
_"The towers are fallen; no laughter ringsThrough the rafters, charred and rent;The ruin is wrought of all goodly thingsIn the Castle of Content.
"Ei ho! Ei ho! the Castle of Content,Rased in the Land of Youth, where mirth was meant!Nay, all is ashes 'there; and all in vainHand-shadowed eyes turn backward, to regainDisastrous memories of that dear domain,—Ei ho! the vanished Castle of Content!"_
* * * * *
"'O welladay!' said Beichan then,'That I so soon have married thee!For it can be none but Susie Pie,That sailed the sea for love of me.'"
_How Will Sommers encountered the Marchioness of Falmouth in the Cardinal's house at Whitehall, and how in Windsor Forest that noble lady died with the fool's arms about her, does not concern us here. That is matter for another tale.
You are not, though, to imagine any scandal. Barring an affair with Sir Henry Rochford, and another with Lord Norreys, and the brief interval in 1525 when the King was enamored of her, there is no record that the marchioness ever wavered from the choice her heart had made, or had any especial reason to regret it.
So she lived and died, more virtuously and happily than most, and found the marquis a fair husband, as husbands go; and bore him three sons and a daughter.
But when the ninth Marquis of Falmouth died long after his wife, in the November of 1557, he was survived by only one of these sons, a junior Stephen, born in 1530, who at his father's demise succeeded to the title. The oldest son, Thomas, born 1531, had been killed in Wyatt's Rebellion in 1554; the second, George, born 1526, with a marked look of the King, was, in February, 1556, stabbed in a disreputable tavern brawl.
Now we have to do with the tenth Marquis of Falmouth's suit for the hand of Lady Ursula Heleigh, the Earl of Brudenel's co-heiress. You are to imagine yourself at Longaville Court, in Sussex, at a time when Anne Bullen's daughter was very recently become Queen of England._
The Episode Called In Ursula's Garden
1. Love, and Love's Mimic
Her three lovers had praised her with many canzonets and sonnets on that May morning as they sat in the rose-garden at Longaville, and the sun-steeped leaves made a tempered aromatic shade about them. Afterward they had drawn grass-blades to decide who should accompany the Lady Ursula to the summer pavilion, that she might fetch her viol and sing them a song of love, and in the sylvan lottery chance had favored the Earl of Pevensey.
Left to themselves, the Marquis of Falmouth and Master Richard Mervale regarded each the other, irresolutely, like strange curs uncertain whether to fraternize or to fly at one another's throat. Then Master Mervale lay down in the young grass, stretched himself, twirled his thin black mustachios, and chuckled in luxurious content.
"Decidedly," said he, "your lordship is past master in the art of wooing; no university in the world would refuse you a degree."
The marquis frowned. He was a great bluff man, with wheat-colored hair, and was somewhat slow-witted. After a little he found the quizzical, boyish face that mocked him irresistible, and he laughed, and unbent from the dignified reserve which he had for a while maintained portentously.
"Master Mervale," said the marquis, "I will be frank with you, for you appear a lad of good intelligence, as lads run, and barring a trifle of affectation and a certain squeamishness in speech. When I would go exploring into a woman's heart, I must pay my way in the land's current coinage of compliments and high-pitched protestations. Yes, yes, such sixpenny phrases suffice the seasoned traveler, who does not ostentatiously display his gems while traveling. Now, in courtship, Master Mervale, one traverses ground more dubious than the Indies, and the truth, Master Mervale, is a jewel of great price."
Master Mervale raised his eyebrows. "The truth?" he queried, gently. "Now how, I wonder, did your lordship happen to think of that remote abstraction." For beyond doubt, Lord Falmouth's wooing had been that morning of a rather florid sort.
However, "It would surely be indelicate," the marquis suggested, "to allow even truth to appear quite unclothed in the presence of a lady?" He smiled and took a short turn on the grass. "Look you, Master Mervale," said he, narrowing his pale-blue eyes to slits, "I have, somehow, a disposition to confidence come upon me. Frankly, my passion for the Lady Ursula burns more mildly than that which Antony bore the Egyptian; it is less a fire to consume kingdoms than a candle wherewith to light a contented home; and quite frankly, I mean to have her. The estates lie convenient, the families are of equal rank, her father is agreed, and she has a sufficiency of beauty; there are, in short, no obstacles to our union save you and my lord of Pevensey, and these, I confess, I do not fear. I can wait, Master Mervale. Oh, I am patient, Master Mervale, but, I own, I cannot brook denial. It is I, or no one. By Saint Gregory! I wear steel at my side, Master Mervale, that will serve for other purposes save that of opening oysters!" So he blustered in the spring sunlight, and frowned darkly when Master Mervale appeared the more amused than impressed.
"Your patience shames Job the Patriarch," said Master Mervale, "yet, it seems to me, my lord, you do not consider one thing. I grant you that Pevensey and I are your equals neither in estate nor reputation; still, setting modesty aside, is it not possible the Lady Ursula may come, in time, to love one of us?"
"Setting common sense aside," said the marquis, stiffly, "it is possible she may be smitten with the smallpox. Let us hope, however, that she may escape both of these misfortunes."
The younger man refrained from speech for a while. Presently, "You liken love to a plague," he said, "yet I have heard there was once a cousin of the Lady Ursula's—a Mistress Katherine Beaufort—"
"Swounds!" Lord Falmouth had wheeled about, scowled, and then tapped sharply upon the palm of one hand with the nail-bitten fingers of the other. "Ay," said he, more slowly, "there was such a person."
"She loved you?" Master Mervale suggested.
"God help me!" replied the marquis; "we loved each other! I know not how you came by your information, nor do I ask. Yet, it is ill to open an old wound. I loved her; let that suffice." With a set face, he turned away for a moment and gazed toward the high parapets of Longaville, half-hidden by pale foliage and very white against the rain-washed sky; then groaned, and glared angrily into the lad's upturned countenance. "You talk of love," said the marquis; "a love compounded equally of youthful imagination, a liking for fantastic phrases and a disposition for caterwauling i' the moonlight. Ah, lad, lad!—if you but knew! That is not love; to love is to go mad like a star-struck moth, and afterward to strive in vain to forget, and to eat one's heart out in the loneliness, and to hunger—hunger—" The marquis spread his big hands helplessly, and then, with a quick, impatient gesture, swept back the mass of wheat-colored hair that fell about his face. "Ah, Master Mervale," he sighed, "I was right after all,—it is the cruelest plague in the world, and that same smallpox leaves less troubling scars."
"Yet," Master Mervale said, with courteous interest, "you did not marry?"
"Marry!" His lordship snarled toward the sun and laughed. "Look you, Master Mervale, I know not how far y'are acquainted with the business. It was in Cornwall yonder years since; I was but a lad, and she a wench,—Oh, such a wench, with tender blue eyes, and a faint, sweet voice that could deny me nothing! God does not fashion her like every day,—Dieu qui la fist de ses deux mains, saith the Frenchman." The marquis paced the grass, gnawing his lip and debating with himself. "Marry? Her family was good, but their deserts outranked their fortunes; their crest was not the topmost feather in Fortune's cap, you understand; somewhat sunken i' the world, Master Mervale, somewhat sunken. And I? My father—God rest his bones!—was a cold, hard man, and my two elder brothers—Holy Virgin, pray for them!—loved me none too well. I was the cadet then: Heaven helps them that help themselves, says my father, and I ha'n't a penny for you. My way was yet to make in the world; to saddle myself with a dowerless wench—even a wench whose least 'Good-morning' set a man's heart hammering at his ribs—would have been folly, Master Mervale. Utter, improvident, shiftless, bedlamite folly, lad!"
"H'm!" Master Mervale cleared his throat, twirled his mustachios, and smiled at some unspoken thought. "We pay for our follies in this world, my lord, but I sometimes think that we pay even more dearly for our wisdom."
"Ah, lad, lad!" the marquis cried, in a gust of anger; "I dare say, as your smirking hints, it was a coward's act not to snap fingers at fate and fathers and dare all! Well! I did not dare. We parted—in what lamentable fashion is now of little import—and I set forth to seek my fortune. Ho, it was a brave world then, Master Mervale, for all the tears that were scarce dried on my cheeks! A world wherein the heavens were as blue as a certain woman's eyes,—a world wherein a likely lad might see far countries, waggle a good sword in Babylon and Tripolis and other ultimate kingdoms, beard the Mussulman in his mosque, and at last fetch home—though he might never love her, you understand—a soldan's daughter for his wife,—
With more gay gold about her middle Than would buy half Northumberlee."
His voice died away. He sighed and shrugged. "Eh, well!" said the marquis; "I fought in Flanders somewhat—in Spain—what matter where? Then, at last, sickened in Amsterdam, three years ago, where a messenger comes to haul me out of bed as future Marquis of Falmouth. One brother slain in a duel, Master Mervale; one killed in Wyatt's Rebellion; my father dying, and—Heaven rest his soul!—not over-eager to meet his Maker. There you have it, Master Mervale,—a right pleasant jest of Fortune's perpetration,—I a marquis, my own master, fit mate for any woman in the kingdom, and Kate—my Kate who was past human praising!—vanished."
"Vanished?" The lad echoed the word, with wide eyes.
"Vanished in the night, and no sign nor rumor of her since! Gone to seek me abroad, no doubt, poor wench! Dead, dead, beyond question, Master Mervale!" The marquis swallowed, and rubbed his lips with the back of his hand. "Ah, well!" said he; "it is an old sorrow!"
The male animal shaken by strong emotion is to his brothers an embarrassing rather than a pathetic sight. Master Mervale, lowering his eyes discreetly, rooted up several tufts of grass before he spoke. Then, "My lord, you have known of love," said he, very slowly; "does there survive no kindliness for aspiring lovers in you who have been one of us? My lord of Pevensey, I think, loves the Lady Ursula, at least, as much as you ever loved this Mistress Katherine; of my own adoration I do not speak, save to say that I have sworn never to marry any other woman. Her father favors you, for you are a match in a thousand; but you do not love her. It matters little to you, my lord, whom she may wed; to us it signifies a life's happiness. Will not the memory of that Cornish lass—the memory of moonlit nights, and of those sweet, vain aspirations and foiled day-dreams that in boyhood waked your blood even to such brave folly as now possesses us,—will not the memory of these things soften you, my lord?"