It was about an hour later. Sir Marmaduke's guests had departed, Dame Harrison in her rickety coach, Mistress Pyncheon in her chaise, whilst Squire Boatfield was riding his well-known ancient cob.
Everyone had drunk sack-posset, had eaten turkey pasties, and enjoyed the luscious fruit: the men had striven to be agreeable to the heiress, the old ladies to be encouraging to their protégés. Sir Marmaduke had tried to be equally amiable to all, whilst favoring none. He was an unpopular man in East Kent and he knew it, doing nothing to counterbalance the unpleasing impression caused invariably by his surly manner, and his sarcastic, often violent, temper.
Mistress Amelia Editha de Chavasse was now alone with her brother-in-law in the great bare hall of the Court, Lady Sue having retired to her room under pretext of the vapors, and young Lambert been finally dismissed from work for the day.
"You are passing kind to the youth, Marmaduke," said Mistress de Chavasse meditatively when the young man's darkly-clad figure had disappeared up the stairs.
She was sitting in a high-backed chair, her head resting against the carved woodwork. The folds of her simple gown hung primly round her well-shaped figure. Undoubtedly she was still a very good-looking woman, though past the hey-day of her youth and beauty. The half-light caused by the depth of the window embrasure, and the smallness of the glass panes through which the summer sun hardly succeeded in gaining admittance, added a certain softness to her chiseled features, and to the usually hard expression of her large dark eyes.
She was gazing out of the tall window, wherein the several broken panes were roughly patched with scraps of paper, out into the garden and the distance beyond, where the sea could be always guessed at, even when not seen. Sir Marmaduke had his back to the light: he was sitting astride a low chair, his high-booted foot tapping the ground impatiently, his fingers drumming a devil's tattoo against the back of the chair.
"Lambert would starve if I did not provide for him," he said with a sneer. "Adam, his brother, could do naught for him: he is poor as a church-mouse, poorer even than I—but nathless," he added with a violent oath, "it strikes everyone as madness that I should keep a secretary when I scarce can pay the wages of a serving maid."
"'Twere better you paid your servants' wages, Marmaduke," she retorted harshly, "they were insolent to me just now. Why do you not pay the girl's arrears to-day?"
"Why do I not climb up to the moon, my dear Editha, and bring down a few stars with me in my descent," he replied with a shrug of his broad shoulders. "I have come to my last shilling."
"The Earl of Northallerton cannot live for ever."
"He hath vowed, I believe, that he would do it, if only to spite me. And by the time that he come to die this accursed Commonwealth will have abolished all titles and confiscated every estate."
"Hush, Marmaduke," she said, casting a quick, furtive look all round her, "there may be spies about."
"Nay, I care not," he rejoined roughly, jumping to his feet and kicking the chair aside so that it struck with a loud crash against the flagged floor. "'Tis but little good a man gets for cleaving loyally to the Commonwealth. The sequestrated estates of the Royalists would have been distributed among the adherents of republicanism, and not held to bolster up a military dictatorship. Bah!" he continued, allowing his temper to overmaster him, speaking in harsh tones and with many a violent oath, "it had been wiser to embrace the Royal cause. The Lord Protector is sick, so 'tis said. His son Richard hath no backbone, and the present tyranny is worse than the last. I cannot collect my rents; I have been given neither reward nor compensation for the help I gave in '46. So much for their boasted gratitude and their many promises! My Lord Protector feasts the Dutch ambassadors with music and with wine, my Lords Ireton and Fairfax and Hutchinson and the accursed lot of canting Puritans flaunt it in silks and satins, whilst I go about in a ragged doublet and with holes in my shoes."
"There's Lady Sue," murmured Mistress de Chavasse soothingly.
"Pshaw! the guardianship of a girl who comes of age in three months!"
"You can get another by that time."
"Not I. I am not a sycophant hanging round White Hall! 'Twas sheer good luck and no merit of mine that got me the guardianship of Sue. Lord Middlesborough, her kinsman, wanted it; the Courts would have given her to him, but old Noll thought him too much of a 'gentleman,' whilst I—an out-at-elbows country squire, was more to my Lord Protector's liking. 'Tis the only thing he ever did for me."
There was intense bitterness and a harsh vein of sarcasm running through Sir Marmaduke's talk. It was the speech of a disappointed man, who had hoped, and striven, and fought once; had raised longing hands towards brilliant things and sighed after glory, or riches, or fame, but whose restless spirit had since been tamed, crushed under the heavy weight of unsatisfied ambition.
Poverty—grinding, unceasing, uninteresting poverty, had been Sir Marmaduke's relentless tormentor ever since he had reached man's estate. His father, Sir Jeremy de Chavasse, had been poor before him. The younger son of that Earl of Northallerton who cut such a brilliant figure at the Court of Queen Elizabeth, Jeremy had married Mistress Spanton of Acol Court, who had brought him a few acres of land heavily burdened with mortgage as her dowry. They were a simple-minded, unostentatious couple who pinched and scraped and starved that their two sons might keep up the appearances of gentlemen at the Court of King Charles.
But both the young men seemed to have inherited from their brilliant grandfather luxurious tastes and a love of gambling and of show—but neither his wealth nor yet his personal charm of manner. The eldest, Rowland, however, soon disappeared from the arena of life. He married when scarce twenty years of age a girl who had been a play-actress. This marriage nearly broke his doting mother's heart, and his own, too, for the matter of that, for the union was a most unhappy one. Rowland de Chavasse died very soon after, unreconciled to his father and mother, who refused to see him or his family, even on his deathbed.
Jeremy de Chavasse's few hopes now centered on his younger son, Marmaduke. In order to enable the young man to remain in London, to mix freely and to hold his own in that set into which family traditions had originally gained him admittance, the fond mother and indulgent father denied themselves the very necessities of life.
Marmaduke took everything that was given him, whilst chafing at the paucity of his allowance. Determined to cut a figure at Court, he spent two years and most of his mother's dowry in a vain attempt to capture the heart of one or the other of the rich heiresses who graced the entourage of Charles I.
But Nature who had given Marmaduke boundless ambition, had failed to bestow on him those attributes which would have helped him on towards its satisfaction. He was neither sufficiently prepossessing to please an heiress, nor sufficiently witty and brilliant to catch the royal eye or the favor of his uncle, the present Earl of Northallerton. His efforts in the direction of advantageous matrimony had earned for him at Court the nickname of "The Sparrowhawk." But even these efforts had soon to be relinquished for want of the wherewithal.
The doting mother no longer could supply him with a sufficiency of money to vie with the rich gallants at the Court, and the savings which Sir Jeremy had been patiently accumulating with a view to freeing the Acol estates from mortgage went instead to rescue young Marmaduke from a debtor's prison.
Poor Sir Jeremy did not long survive his disappointment. Marmaduke returned to Acol Court only to find his mother a broken invalid, and his father dead.
Since then it had been a perpetual struggle against poverty and debt, a bitter revolt against Fate, a burning desire to satisfy ambition which had received so serious a check.
When the great conflict broke out between King and Parliament, he threw himself into it, without zest and without conviction, embracing the cause of the malcontents with a total lack of enthusiasm, merely out of disappointment—out of hatred for the brilliant Court and circle in which he had once hoped to become a prominent figure.
He fought under Ireton, was commended as a fairly good soldier, though too rebellious to be very reliable, too self-willed to be wholly trusted.
Even in these days of brilliant reputations quickly made, he remained obscure and practically unnoticed. Advancement never came his way and whilst younger men succeeded in attracting the observant eye of old Noll, he was superseded at every turn, passed over—anon forgotten.
When my Lord Protector's entourage was formed, the Household organized, no one thought of the Sparrowhawk for any post that would have satisfied his desires. Once more he cursed his own poverty. Money—the want of it—he felt was at the root of all his disappointments. A burning desire to obtain it at any cost, even that of honor, filled his entire being, his mind, his soul, his thoughts, every nerve in his body. Money, and social prestige! To be somebody at Court or elsewhere, politically, commercially,—he cared not. To handle money and to command attention!
He became wary, less reckless, striving to obtain by diplomatic means that which he had once hoped to snatch by sheer force of personality. The Court of Chancery having instituted itself sole guardian and administrator of the revenues and fortunes of minors whose fathers had fought on the Royalist side, and were either dead or in exile, and arrogating unto itself the power to place such minors under the tutelage of persons whose loyalty to the Commonwealth was undoubted, Sir Marmaduke bethought himself of applying for one of these official guardianships which were known to be very lucrative and moreover, practically sinecures.
Fate for once favored him; a half-contemptuous desire to do something for this out-at-elbows Kentish squire who had certainly been a loyal adherent of the Commonwealth, caused my Lord Protector to favor his application. The rich daughter of the Marquis of Dover was placed under the guardianship of Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse with an allowance of £4,000 a year for her maintenance, until she came of age. A handsome fortune and stroke of good luck for a wise and prudent man:—a drop in an ocean of debts, difficulties and expensive tastes, in the case of Sir Marmaduke.
A prolonged visit to London with a view either of gaining a foothold in the new Court, or of drawing the attention of the malcontents, of Monk and his party, or even of the Royalists, to himself, resulted in further debts, in more mortgages, more bitter disappointments.
The man himself did not please. His personality was unsympathetic; Lady Sue's money which he now lavished right and left, bought neither friendship nor confidence. He joined all the secret clubs which in defiance of Cromwell's rigid laws against betting and gambling, were the resort of all the smart gentlemen in the town. Ill-luck at hazard and dice pursued him: he was a bad loser, quarrelsome and surly. His ambition had not taught him the salutary lesson of how to make friends in order to attain his desires.
His second return to the ancestral home was scarcely less disastrous than the first; a mortgage on his revenues as guardian of Lady Sue Aldmarshe just saved him this time from the pursuit of his creditors, and this mortgage he had only obtained through false statements as to his ward's age.
As he told his sister-in-law a moment ago, he was at his last gasp. He had perhaps just begun to realize that he would never succeed through the force of his own individuality. Therefore, money had become a still more imperative necessity to him. He was past forty now. Disappointed ambition and an ever rebellious spirit had left severe imprints on his face: his figure was growing heavy, his prominent lips, unadorned by a mustache, had an unpleasant downward droop, and lately he had even noticed that the hair on the top of his head was not so thick as of yore.
The situation was indeed getting desperate, since Lady Sue would be of age in three months, when all revenues for her maintenance would cease.
"Methinks her million will go to one of those young jackanapes who hang about her," sighed Mistress de Chavasse, with almost as much bitterness as Sir Marmaduke had shown.
Her fortunes were in a sense bound up with those of her brother-in-law. He had been most unaccountably kind to her of late, a kindness which his many detractors attributed either to an infatuation for his brother's widow, or to a desire to further irritate his uncle the Earl of Northallerton, who—a rigid Puritan himself—hated the play-actress and her connection with his own family.
"Can naught be done, Marmaduke?" she asked after a slight pause, during which she had watched anxiously the restless figure of her brother-in-law as he paced up and down the narrow hall.
"Can you suggest anything, my dear Editha?" he retorted roughly.
"Pshaw!" she ejaculated with some impatience, "you are not so old, but you could have made yourself agreeable to the wench."
"You think that she would have fallen in love with her middle-aged guardian?" he exclaimed with a harsh, sarcastic laugh. "That girl? . . . with her head full of romantic nonsense . . . and I . . . in ragged doublet, with a bald head, and an evil temper . . . Bah!!! . . . But," he added, with an unpleasant sneer, "'tis unselfish and disinterested on your part, my dear Editha, even to suggest it. Sue does not like you. Her being mistress here would not be conducive to your comfort."
"Nay! 'tis no use going on in this manner any longer, Marmaduke," she said dejectedly. "Pleasant times will not come my way so long as you have not a shilling to give me for a new gown, and cannot afford to keep up my house in London."
She fully expected another retort from him—brutal and unbridled as was his wont when money affairs were being discussed. He was not accustomed to curb his violence in her presence. She had been his helpmeet in many unavowable extravagances, in the days when he was still striving after a brilliant position in town. There had been certain rumors anent a gambling den, whereat Mistress de Chavasse had been the presiding spirit and which had come under the watchful eye of my Lord Protector's spies.
Now she had perforce to share her brother-in-law's poverty. At any rate he provided a roof over her head. On the advent of Lady Sue Aldmarshe into his bachelor establishment he called on his sister-in-law for the part of duenna.
At one time the fair Editha had exercised her undoubted charms over Marmaduke's violent nature, but latterly she had become a mere butt for his outbursts of rage. But now to her astonishment, and in response to her petulant reproach, his fury seemed to fall away from him. He threw his head back and broke out into uncontrolled, half-sarcastic, almost defiant laughter.
"How blind you are, my dear Editha," he said with a shrug of his broad shoulders. "Nay! an I mistake not, in that case there will be some strange surprises for you within the next three months. I pray you try and curb your impatience until then, and to bear with the insolence of a serving wench, 'Twill serve you well, mine oath on that!" he added significantly.
Then without vouchsafing further explanations of his enigmatic utterances, he turned on his heel—still laughing apparently at some pleasing thought—and walked upstairs, leaving her to meditate.
Mistress de Chavasse sat musing, in that high-backed chair, for some considerable time. Anon Sir Marmaduke once more traversed the hall, taking no heed of her as he went out into the garden. She watched his broad figure moving along the path and then crossing the rustic bridge until it disappeared among the trees of the park.
There was something about his attitude of awhile ago which puzzled her. And with puzzlement came an inexplicable fear: she had known Marmaduke in all his moods, but never in such an one as he had displayed before her just now. There had been a note almost of triumph in the laughter with which he had greeted her last reproach. The cry of the sparrowhawk when it seizes its prey.
Triumph in Sir Marmaduke filled her with dread. No one knew better than she did the hopeless condition of his financial status. Debt—prison perhaps—was waiting for him at every turn. Yet he seemed triumphant! She knew him to have reached those confines of irritability and rebellion against poverty which would cause him to shrink from nothing for the sake of gaining money. Yet he seemed triumphant!
Instinctively she shuddered as she thought of Sue. She had no cause to like the girl, yet would she not wish to see her come to harm.
She did not dare avow even to herself the conviction which she had, that if Sir Marmaduke could gain anything by the young girl's death, he would not hesitate to . . . Nay! she would not even frame that thought. Marmaduke had been kind to her; she could but hope that temptation such as that, would never come his way.
Hymn-of-Praise Busy broke in on her meditations. His nasal tones—which had a singular knack of irritating her as a rule—struck quite pleasingly on her ear, as a welcome interruption to the conflict of her thoughts.
"Master Skyffington, ma'am," he said in his usual drawly voice, "he is on his way to Dover, and desired his respects, an you wish to see him."
"Yes! yes! I'll see Master Skyffington," she said with alacrity, rising from her chair, "go apprise Sir Marmaduke, and ask Master Skyffington to come within."
She was all agitation now, eager, excited, and herself went forward to meet the quaint, little wizened figure which appeared in the doorway.
Master Skyffington, attorney-at-law, was small and thin—looked doubly so, in fact, in the black clothes which he wore. His eyes were blue and watery, his manner peculiarly diffident. He seemed to present a perpetual apology to the world for his own existence therein.
Even now as Mistress de Chavasse seemed really overjoyed to see him, he backed his meager person out of the doorway as she approached, whereupon she—impatiently—clutched his arm and dragged him forward into the hall.
"Sit down there, master," she said, speaking with obvious agitation, and almost pushing the poor little man off his feet whilst dragging him to a chair. "Sir Marmaduke will see you anon, but 'twas a kind thought to come and bring me news."
"Hem! . . . hem! . . ." stammered Master Skyffington, "I . . . that is . . . hem . . . I left Canterbury this morning and was on my way to Dover . . . hem . . . this lies on my way, ma'am . . . and . . ."
"Yes! yes!" she said impatiently, "but you have some news, of course?"
"News! . . . news!" he muttered apologetically, and clutching at his collar, which seemed to be choking him, "what news—er—I pray you, ma'am?"
"That clew?" she insisted.
"It was very slight," he stammered.
"And it led to naught?"
"Alas!"
Her eagerness vanished. She sank back into her chair and moaned.
"My last hope!" she said dully.
"Nay! nay!" rejoined Master Skyffington quite cheerfully, his courage seemingly having risen with her despair. "We must not be despondent. The noble Earl of Northallerton hath interested himself of late in the search and . . ."
But she shrugged her shoulders, whilst a short, bitter laugh escaped her lips:
"At last?" she said with biting sarcasm. "After twelve years!"
"Nay! but remember, ma'am, that his lordship now is very ill . . . and nigh on seventy years old. . . . Failing your late husband, Master Rowland—whom the Lord hath in His keeping—your eldest son is . . . hem . . . that is . . . by law, ma'am, . . . and with all respect due to Sir Marmaduke . . . your eldest son is heir to the Earldom."
"And though his lordship hates me, he still prefers that my son should succeed to his title, rather than Sir Marmaduke whom he abhors."
But that suggestion was altogether too much for poor Master Skyffington's sense of what was due to so noble a family, and to its exalted head.
"That is . . . er . . ." he muttered in supreme discomfort, swallowing great gulps which rose to his throat at this rash and disrespectful speech from the ex-actress. "Family feuds . . . hem . . . er . . . very distressing of a truth . . . and . . . that is . . ."
"I fear me his lordship will be disappointed," she rejoined, quite heedless of the little attorney's perturbation, "and that under these circumstances Sir Marmaduke will surely succeed."
"I was about to remark," he rejoined, "that now, with my lord's help—his wealth and influence . . . now, that is, . . . that he has interested himself in the matter . . . hem . . . we might make fresh inquiries . . . that is . . . er . . ."
"It will be useless, master. I have done all that is humanly possible. I loved my boys dearly—and it was because of my love for them that I placed them under my mother's care. . . . I loved them, you understand, but I was living in a gay world in London . . . my husband was dead . . . I could do naught for their comfort. . . . I thought it would be best for them . . ."
It was her turn now to speak humbly, almost apologetically, whilst her eyes sought those of the simple little attorney, trying to read approval in his glance, or at any rate an absence of reproof. He was shaking his head, sighing with visible embarrassment the while. In his innermost soul, he could find no excuse for the frivolous mother, anxious to avoid the responsibilities which the Lord Himself had put upon her: anxious to be rid of her children in order that she might pursue with greater freedom and ease that life of enjoyment and thoughtlessness which she craved.
"My mother was a strange woman," continued Mistress de Chavasse earnestly and placing her small white hand on the black sleeve of the attorney, "she cared little enough for me, and not at all for London and for society. She did not understand the many duties that devolve on a woman of fashion. . . . And I was that in those days! . . . twenty years ago!"
"Ah! Truly! truly!" sighed Master Skyffington.
"Mayhap she acted according to her own lights. . . . After some years she became a convert to that strange new faith . . . of the people who call themselves 'Friends' . . . who salute no one with the hat, and who talk so strangely, saying: 'thee' and 'thou' even when addressing their betters. One George Fox had a great hold on her. He was quite a youth then, but she thought him a saint. 'Tis he, methinks, poisoned her mind against me, and caused her to curse me on her deathbed."
She gave a little shudder—of superstition, perhaps. The maternal curse—she felt—was mayhap bearing fruit after all. Master Skyffington's watery eyes expressed gentle sympathy. His calling had taught him many of the hidden secrets of human nature and of Life: he guessed that the time—if not already here—was nigh at hand, when this unfortunate woman would realize the emptiness of her life, and would begin to reap the bitter harvest of the barren seeds which she had sown.
"Aye! I lay it all at the door of these 'Friends' who turned a mother's heart against her own daughter," continued Mistress de Chavasse vehemently. "She never told me that she was sick, sent me neither letter nor message; only after her death a curt note came to me, writ in her hand, entrusted to one of her own co-worshipers, a canting, mouthing creature, who grinned whilst I read the heartless message. My mother had sent her grandchildren away, so she told me in the letter, when she felt that the Lord was calling her to Him. She had placed my boys—my boys, master!—in the care of a trusted 'friend' who would bring them up in the fear of God, away from the influence of their mother. My boys, master, remember! . . . they were to be brought up in ignorance of their name—of the very existence of their mother. The 'friend,' doubtless a fellow Quaker—had agreed to this on my mother's deathbed."
"Hm! 'tis passing strange, and passing sad," said the attorney, with real sympathy now, for there was a pathetic note of acute sorrow in Mistress de Chavasse's voice, "but at the time . . . hem . . . and with money and influence . . . hem . . . much might have been done."
"Ah! believe me, master, I did what I could. I was in London then. . . . I flew to Canterbury where my mother lived. . . . I found her dead . . . and the boys gone . . . none of the neighbors could tell me whither. . . . All they knew was that a woman had been living with my mother of late and had gone away, taking the boys with her. . . . My boys, master, and no one could tell me whither they had gone! I spent what money I had, and Sir Marmaduke nobly bore his share in the cost of a ceaseless search, as the Earl of Northallerton would do nothing then to help me."
"Passing strange . . . passing sad," murmured Master Skyffington, shaking his head, "but methinks I recollect . . . hem . . . some six years ago . . . a quest which led to a clew . . . er . . . that is . . . two young gentlemen . . ."
"Impostors, master," she rejoined, "aye! I have heard of many such since then. At first I used to believe their stories . . ."
"At first?" he ejaculated in amazement, "but surely . . . hem . . . the faces . . . your own sons, ma'am . . ."
"Ah! the faces!" she said, whilst a blush of embarrassment, even of shame, now suffused her pale cheeks. "I mean . . . you understand . . . I . . . I had not seen my boys since they were babes in arms . . . they were ten years old when they were taken away . . . but . . . but it is nigh on twenty-two years since I have set eyes on their faces. I would not know them, if they passed me by."
Tears choked her voice. Shame had added its bitter sting to the agony of her sorrow. Of a truth it was a terrible epilogue of misery, following on a life-story of frivolity and of heartlessness which Mistress de Chavasse had almost unconsciously related to the poor ignorant country attorney. Desirous at all costs of retaining her freedom, she had parted from her children with a light heart, glad enough that their grandmother was willing to relieve her of all responsibility. Time slipped by whilst she enjoyed herself, danced and flirted, gambled and played her part in that world of sport and Fashion wherein a mother's heart was an unnecessary commodity. Ten years are a long while in the life of an old woman who lives in a remote country town, and sees Death approaching with slow yet certain stride; but that same decade is but as a fleeting hour to the woman who is young and who lives for the moment.
The boys had been forgotten long ere they disappeared! Forgotten? perhaps not!—but their memory put away in a hidden cell of the mind where other inconvenient thoughts were stored: only to be released and gazed upon when other more agreeable ones had ceased to fill the brain.
She felt humbled before this simple-minded man, whom she knew she had shocked by the recital of her callousness. With innate gentleness of disposition he tried to hide his feelings and to set aside the subject for the moment.
"Sir Marmaduke was very disinterested, when he aided you in the quest," he said meekly, glad to be able to praise one whom he felt it his duty to respect, "for under present circumstances . . . hem! . . ."
"I will raise no difficulties in Sir Marmaduke's way," she rejoined, "there is no doubt in my mind that my boys are dead, else I had had news of them ere this."
He looked at her keenly—as keenly as he dared with his mild, blue eyes. It was hard to keep in sympathy with her. Her moods seemed to change as she spoke of her boys and then of Sir Marmaduke. Her last remark seemed to argue that her callousness with regard to her sons had not entirely yielded to softer emotions yet.
"In case of my Lord Northallerton's death," she continued lightly, "I shall not put in a claim on behalf of any son of mine."
"Whereupon—hem Sir Marmaduke as next-of-kin, would have the enjoyment of the revenues—and mayhap would have influence enough then to make good his claim to the title before the House of Lords . . ."
He checked himself: looked furtively round and added:
"Provided it please God and my Lord Protector that the House of Lords come back to Westminster by that time."
"I thank you, master," said Mistress de Chavasse, rising from her chair, intimating that this interview was now over, "you have told me all that I wish to know. Let me assure you, that I will not prove ungrateful. Your services will be amply repaid by whomever succeeds to the title and revenues of Northallerton. Did you wish to see Sir Marmaduke?"
"I thank you, mistress, not to-day," replied Master Skyffington somewhat dryly. The lady's promises had not roused his enthusiasm. He would have preferred to see more definite reward for his labors, for he had worked faithfully and was substantially out of pocket in this quest after the two missing young men.
But he was imbued with that deep respect for the family he had served all his life, which no conflict between privilege and people would ever eradicate, and though Mistress de Chavasse's origin was of the humblest, she was nevertheless herself now within the magic circle into which Master Skyffington never gazed save with the deepest reverence.
He thought it quite natural that she should dismiss him with a curt and condescending nod, and when she had swept majestically out of the room, he made his way humbly across the hall, then by the garden door out towards the tumble-down barn where he had tethered his old mare.
Master Courage helped him to mount, and he rode away in the direction of the Dover Road, his head bent, his thoughts dwelling in puzzlement and wonder on the strange doings of those whom he still reverently called his betters.
Her head full of romantic nonsense! Well! perhaps that was the true keynote of Sue's character; perhaps, too, it was that same romantic temperament which gave such peculiar charm to her personality. It was not mere beauty—of which she had a plentiful share—nor yet altogether her wealth which attracted so many courtiers to her feet. Men who knew her in those days at Acol and subsequently at Court said that Lady Sue was magnetic.
She compelled attention, she commanded admiration, through that very romanticism of hers which caused her eyes to glow at the recital of valor, or sorrow, or talent, which caused her to see beauty of thought and mind and character there where it lay most deeply hidden, there—sometimes—where it scarce existed.
The dark figure of her guardian's secretary had attracted her attention from the moment when she first saw him moving silently about the house and park: the first words she spoke to him were words of sympathy. His life-story—brief and simple as it had been—had interested her. He seemed so different from these young and old country squires who frequented Acol Court. He neither wooed nor flattered her, yet seemed to find great joy in her company. His voice at times was harsh, his manner abrupt and even rebellious, but at others it fell to infinite gentleness when he talked to her of Nature and the stars, both of which he had studied deeply.
He never spoke of religion. That subject which was on everybody's tongue, together with the free use of the most sacred names, he rigorously avoided, also politics, and my Lord Protector's government, his dictatorship and ever-growing tyranny: but he knew the name of every flower that grew in meadow or woodland, the note of every bird as it trilled its song.
There is no doubt that but for the advent of that mysterious personality into Acol village, the deep friendship which had grown in Sue's heart for Richard Lambert would have warmed into a more passionate attachment.
But she was too young to reflect, too impulsive to analyze her feelings. The mystery which surrounded the foreigner who lodged at the Quakeress's cottage had made strong appeal to her idealism.
His first introduction to her notice, in the woods beyond the park gate on that cold January evening, with the moon gleaming weirdly through the branches of the elms, his solitary figure leaning against a tree, had fired her imagination and set it wildly galloping after mad fantasies.
He had scarcely spoken on that first occasion, but his silence was strangely impressive. She made up her mind that he was singularly handsome, although she could not judge of that very clearly for he wore a heavy mustache, and a shade over one eye; but he was tall, above the average, and carried the elaborate habiliments which the Cavaliers still affected, with consummate grace and ease. She thought, too, that the thick perruque became him very well, and his muffled voice, when he spoke, sounded singularly sweet.
Since then she had seen him constantly. At rare intervals at first, for maidenly dignity forbade that she should seem eager to meet him. He wasignorant of whom she was—oh! of that she felt quite quite sure: she always wore a dark tippet round her shoulders, and a hood to cover her head. He seemed pleased to see her, just to hear her voice. Obviously he was lonely and in deep trouble.
Then one night—it was the first balmy evening after the winter frosts—the moon was singularly bright, and the hood had fallen back from her head, just as her face was tilted upwards and her eyes glowing with enthusiasm. Then she knew that he had learnt to love her, not through any words which he spoke, for he was silent; his face was in shadow, and he did not even touch her; therefore it was not through any of her natural senses that she guessed his love. Yet she knew it, and her young heart was overfilled with happiness.
That evening when they parted he knelt at her feet and kissed the hem of her kirtle. After which, when she was back again in her own little room at Acol Court, she cried for very joy.
They did not meet very often. Once a week at most. He had vaguely promised to tell her, some day, of his great work for the regeneration of France, which he was carrying out in loneliness and exile here in England, a work far greater and more comprehensive than that which had secured for England religious and political liberty; this work it was which made him a wanderer on the face of the earth and caused his frequent and lengthy absences from the cottage in which he lodged.
She was quite content for the moment with these vague promises: in her heart she was evolving enchanting plans for the future, when she would be his helpmate in this great and mysterious work.
In the meanwhile she was satisfied to live in the present, to console and comfort the noble exile, to lavish on him the treasures of her young and innocent love, to endow him in her imagination with all those mental and physical attributes which her romantic nature admired most.
The spring had come, clothing the weird branches of the elms with a tender garb of green, the anemones in the woods yielded to the bluebells and these to carpets of primroses and violets. The forests of Thanet echoed with songs of linnets and white-throats. She was happy and she was in love.
With the lengthened days came some petty sorrows. He was obviously worried, sometimes even impatient. Their meetings became fewer and shorter, for the evening hours were brief. She found it difficult to wander out so late across the park, unperceived, and he would never meet her by day-light.
This no doubt had caused him to fret. He loved her and desired her all his own. Yet 'twere useless of a surety to ask Sir Marmaduke's consent to her marriage with her French prince. He would never give it, and until she came of age he had absolute power over her choice of a husband.
She had explained this to him and he had sighed and murmured angry words, then pressed her with increased passion to his heart.
To-night as she walked through the park, she was conscious—for the first time perhaps—of a certain alloy mixed with her gladness. Yet she loved him—oh, yes! just, just as much as ever. The halo of romance with which she had framed in his mystic personality was in no way dimmed, but in a sense she almost feared him, for at times his muffled voice sounded singularly vehement, and his words betrayed the uncontrolled violence of his nature.
She had hoped to bring him some reassuring news anent Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse's intentions with regard to herself, but the conversation round the skittle-alley, her guardian's cruel allusions to "the foreign adventurer," had shown her how futile were such hopes.
Yet, there were only three months longer of this weary waiting. Surely he could curb his impatience until she was of age and mistress of her own hand! Surely he trusted her!
She sighed as this thought crossed her mind, and nearly fell up against a dark figure which detached itself from among the trees.
"Master Lambert!" she said, uttering a little cry of surprise, pressing her hand against her heart which was palpitating with emotion. "I had no thought of meeting you here."
"And I still less of seeing your ladyship," he rejoined coldly.
"How cross you are," she retorted with childish petulance, "what have I done that you should be so unkind?"
"Unkind?"
"Aye! I had meant to speak to you of this ere now—but you always avoid me . . . you scarce will look at me . . . and . . . and I wished to ask you if I had offended you?"
They were standing on a soft carpet of moss, overhead the gentle summer breeze stirred the great branches of the elms, causing the crisp leaves to mutter a long-drawn hush-sh-sh in the stillness of the night. From far away came the appealing call of a blackbird chased by some marauding owl, while on the ground close by, the creaking of tiny branches betrayed the quick scurrying of a squirrel. From the remote and infinite distance came the subdued roar of the sea.
The peace of the woodland, the sighing of the trees, the dark evening sky above, filled his heart with an aching longing for her.
"Offended me?" he murmured, passing his hand across his forehead, for his temples throbbed and his eyes were burning. "Nay! why should you think so?"
"You are so cold, so distant now," she said gently. "We were such good friends when first I came here. Thanet is a strange country to me. It seems weird and unkind—the woods are dark and lonely, that persistent sound of the sea fills me with a strange kind of dread. . . . My home was among the Surrey hills you know. . . . It is far from here. . . . I cannot afford to lose a friend. . . ."
She sighed, a quaint, wistful little sigh, curiously out of place, he thought, in this exquisite mouth framed only for smiles.
"I have so few real friends," she added in a whisper, so low that he thought she had not spoken, and that the elms had sighed that pathetic phrase into his ear.
"Believe me, Lady Sue, I am neither cold nor distant," he said, almost smiling now, for the situation appeared strange indeed, that this beautiful young girl, rich, courted, surrounded by an army of sycophants, should be appealing to a poor dependent for friendship. "I am only a little dazed . . . as any man would be who had been dreaming . . . and saw that dream vanish away. . . ."
"Dreaming?"
"Yes!—we all dream sometimes you know . . . and a penniless man like myself, without prospects or friends is, methinks, more prone to it than most."
"We all have dreams sometimes," she said, speaking very low, whilst her eyes sought to pierce the darkness beyond the trees. "I too . . ."
She paused abruptly, and was quite still for a moment, almost holding her breath, he thought, as if she were listening. But not a sound came to disturb the silence of the woods. Blackbird and owl had ceased their fight for life, the squirrel had gone to rest: the evening air was filled only by the great murmur of the distant sea.
"Tell me your dream," she said abruptly.
"Alas! it is too foolish! . . . too mad! . . . too impossible. . . ."
"But you said once that you would be my friend and would try to cheer my loneliness."
"So I will, with all my heart, an you will permit."
"Yet is there no friendship without confidence," she retorted. "Tell me your dream."
"What were the use? You would only laugh . . . and justly too."
"I should never laugh at that which made you sad," she said gently.
"Sad?" he rejoined with a short laugh, which had something of his usual bitterness in it. "Sad? Mayhap! Yet I hardly know. Think you that the poor peasant lad would be sad because he had dreamed that the fairy princess whom he had seen from afar in her radiance, was sweet and gracious to him one midsummer's day? It was only a dream, remember: when he woke she had vanished . . . gone out of his sight . . . hidden from him by a barrier of gold. . . . In front of this barrier stood his pride . . . which perforce would have to be trampled down and crushed ere he could reach the princess."
She did not reply, only bent her sweet head, lest he should perceive the tears which had gathered in her eyes. All round them the wood seemed to have grown darker and more dense, whilst from afar the weird voice of that distant sea murmured of infinity and of the relentlessness of Fate.
They could not see one another very clearly, yet she knew that he was gazing at her with an intensity of love and longing in his heart which caused her own to ache with sympathy; and he knew that she was crying, that there was something in that seemingly brilliant and happy young life, which caused the exquisite head to droop as if under a load of sorrow.
A broken sigh escaped her lips, or was it the sighing of the wind in the elms?
He was smitten with remorse to think that he should have helped to make her cry.
"Sue—my little, beautiful Sue," he murmured, himself astonished at his own temerity in thus daring to address her. It was her grief which had brought her down to his level: the instinct of chivalry, of protection, of friendship which had raised him up to hers.
"Will you ever forgive me?" he said, "I had no right to speak to you as I have done. . . . And yet . . ."
He paused and she repeated his last two words—gently, encouragingly.
"And yet . . . good master?"
"Yet at times, when I see the crowd of young, empty-headed fortune-seeking jackanapes, who dare to aspire to your ladyship's hand . . . I have asked myself whether perchance I had the right to remain silent, whilst they poured their farrago of nonsense into your ear. I love you, Sue!"
"No! no! good master!" she ejaculated hurriedly, while a nameless, inexplicable fear seemed suddenly to be holding her in its grip, as he uttered those few very simple words which told the old, old tale.
But those words once uttered, Richard felt that he could not now draw back. The jealously-guarded secret had escaped his lips, passion refused to be held longer in check. A torrent of emotion overmastered him. He forgot where he was, the darkness of the night, the lateness of the hour, the melancholy murmur of the wind in the trees, he forgot that she was rich and he a poor dependent, he only remembered that she was exquisitely fair and that he—poor fool!—was mad enough to worship her.
It was very dark now, for a bank of clouds hid the glory of the evening sky, and he could see only the mere outline of the woman whom he so passionately loved, the small head with the fluttering curls fanned by the wind, the graceful shoulders and arms folded primly across her bosom.
He put out his hand and found hers. Oh! the delight of raising it to his lips.
"By the heaven above us, Sue, by all my hopes of salvation I swear to you that my love is pure and selfless," he murmured tenderly, all the while that her fragrant little hand was pressed against his lips. "But for your fortune, I had come to you long ago and said to you 'Let me work for you!—My love will help me to carve a fortune for you, which it shall be my pride to place at your feet.'—Every nameless child, so 'tis said, may be a king's son . . . and I, who have no name that I can of verity call mine own—no father—no kith or kindred—I would conquer a kingdom, Sue, if you but loved me too."
His voice broke in a sob. Ashamed of his outburst he tried to hide his confusion from her, by sinking on one knee on that soft carpet of moss. From the little village of Acol beyond the wood, came the sound of the church bell striking the hour of nine. Sue was silent and absorbed, intensely sorrowful to see the grief of her friend. He was quite lost in the shadows at her feet now, but she could hear the stern efforts which he made to resume control over himself and his voice.
"Richard . . . good Richard," she said soothingly, "believe me, I am very, very sorry for this. . . . I . . . I vow I did not know. . . . I had no thought—how could I have? that you cared for me like . . . like this. . . . You believe me, good master, do you not?" she entreated. "Say that you believe me, when I say that I would not willingly have caused you such grief."
"I believe that you are the most sweet and pure woman in all the world," he murmured fervently, "and that you are as far beyond my reach as are the stars."
"Nay, nay, good master, you must not talk like that. . . . Truly, truly I am only a weak and foolish girl, and quite unworthy of your deep devotion . . . and you must try . . . indeed, indeed you must . . . to forget what happened under these trees to-night."
"Of that I pray you have no fear," he replied more calmly, as he rose and once more stood before her—a dark figure in the midst of the dark wood—immovable, almost impassive, with head bent and arms folded across his chest. "Nathless 'tis foolish for a nameless peasant even to talk of his honor, yet 'tis mine honor, Lady Sue, which will ever help me to remember that a mountain of gold and vast estates stand between me and the realization of my dream."
"No, no," she rejoined earnestly, "it is not that only. You are my friend, good Richard, and I do not wish to see you eating out your heart in vain and foolish regrets. What you . . . what you wish could never—never be. Good master, if you were rich to-morrow and I penniless, I could never be your wife."
"You mean that you could never love me?" he asked.
She was silent. A fierce wave of jealousy—mad, insane, elemental jealousy seemed suddenly to sweep over him.
"You love someone else?" he demanded brusquely.
"What right have you to ask?"
"The right of a man who would gladly die to see you happy."
He spoke harshly, almost brutally. Jealousy had killed all humility in him. Love—proud, passionate and defiant—stood up for its just claims, for its existence, its right to dominate, its desire to conquer.
But even as he thus stood before her, almost frightening her now by the violence of his speech, by the latent passion in him, which no longer would bear to be held in check, the bank of clouds which up to now had obscured the brilliance of the summer sky, finally swept away eastwards, revealing the luminous firmament and the pale crescent moon which now glimmered coldly through the branches of the trees.
A muffled sound as of someone treading cautiously the thick bed of moss, and the creaking of tiny twigs caused Richard Lambert to look up momentarily from the form of the girl whom he so dearly loved, and to peer beyond her into the weirdly illumined density of the wood.
Not twenty yards from where they were, a low wall divided the park itself from the wood beyond, which extended down to Acol village. At an angle of the wall there was an iron gate, also the tumble-down pavilion, ivy-grown and desolate, with stone steps leading up to it, through the cracks of which weeds and moss sprouted up apace.
A man had just emerged from out the thicket and was standing now to the farther side of the gate looking straight at Lambert and at Sue, who stood in the full light of the moon. A broad-brimmed hat, such as cavaliers affected, cast a dark shadow over his face.
It was a mere outline only vaguely defined against the background of trees, but in that outline Lambert had already recognized the mysterious stranger who lodged in his brother's cottage down in Acol.
The fixed intensity of the young man's gaze caused Sue to turn and to look in the same direction. She saw the stranger, who encountering two pairs of eyes fixed on him, raised his hat with a graceful flourish of the arm: then, with a short ironical laugh, went his way, and was once more lost in the gloom.
The girl instinctively made a movement as if to follow him, whilst a quickly smothered cry—half of joy and half of fear—escaped her lips. She checked the movement as well as the cry, but not before Richard Lambert had perceived both.
With the perception came the awful, overwhelming certitude.
"That adventurer!" he exclaimed involuntarily. "Oh my God!"
But she looked him full in the face, and threw back her head with a gesture of pride and of wrath.
"Master Lambert," she said haughtily, "methinks 'twere needless to remind you that—since I inadvertently revealed my most cherished secret to you—it were unworthy a man of honor to betray it to any one."
"My lady . . . Sue," he said, feeling half-dazed, bruised and crushed by the terrible moral blow, which he had just received, "I . . . I do not quite understand. Will you deign to explain?"
"There is naught to explain," she retorted coldly. "Prince Amédé d'Orléans loves me and I have plighted my troth to him."
"Nay! I entreat your ladyship," he said, feeling—knowing the while, how useless it was to make an appeal against the infatuation of a hot-headed and impulsive girl, yet speaking with the courage which ofttimes is born of despair, "I beg of you, on my knees to listen. This foreign adventurer . . ."
"Silence!" she retorted proudly, and drawing back from him, for of a truth he had sunk on his knees before her, "an you desire to be my friend, you must not breathe one word of slander against the man I love. . . ."
Then, as he said nothing, realizing, indeed, how futile would be any effort or word from him, she said, with growing enthusiasm, whilst her glowing eyes fixed themselves upon the gloom which had enveloped the mysterious apparition of her lover:
"Prince Amédé d'Orléans is the grandest, most selfless patriot this world hath ever known. For the sake of France, of tyrannized, oppressed France, which he adores, he has sacrificed everything! his position, his home, his wealth and vast estates: he is own kinsman to King Louis, yet he is exiled from his country whilst a price is set upon his head, because he cannot be mute whilst he sees tyranny and oppression grind down the people of France. He could return to Paris to-day a rich and free man, a prince among his kindred,—if he would but sacrifice that for which he fights so bravely: the liberty of France!"
"Sue! my adored lady," he entreated, "in the name of Heaven listen to me. . . . You do believe, do you not, that I am your friend? . . . I would give my life for you. . . . I swear to you that you have been deceived and tricked by this adventurer, who, preying upon your romantic imagination . . ."
"Silence, master, an you value my friendship!" she commanded. "I will not listen to another word. Nay! you should be thankful that I deal not more harshly with you—that I make allowances for your miserable jealousy. . . . Oh! why did you make me say that," she added with one of those swift changes of mood, which were so characteristic of her, and with sudden contrition, for an involuntary moan had escaped his lips. "In the name of Heaven, go—go now I entreat . . . leave me to myself . . . lest anger betray me into saying cruel things . . . I am safe—quite safe . . . I entreat you to let me return to the house alone."
Her voice sounded more and more broken as she spoke: sobs were evidently rising in her throat. He pulled himself together, feeling that it were unmanly to worry her now, when emotion was so obviously overmastering her.
"Forgive me, sweet lady," he said quite gently, as he rose from his knees. "I said more than I had any right to say. I entreat you to forgive the poor, presuming peasant who hath dared to raise his eyes to the fairy princess of his dreams. I pray you to try and forget all that hath happened to-night beneath the shadows of these elms—and only to remember one thing: that my life—my lonely, humble, unimportant life—is yours . . . to serve or help you, to worship or comfort you if need be . . . and that there could be no greater happiness for me than to give it for your sweet sake."
He bowed very low, until his hand could reach the hem of her kirtle, which he then raised to his lips. She was infinitely sorry for him; all her anger against him had vanished.
He was very reluctant to go, for this portion of the park was some distance from the house. But she had commanded and he quite understood that she wished to be alone: love such as that which he felt for his sweet lady is ever watchful, yet ever discreet. Was it not natural that she did not care to look on him after he had angered her so?
She seemed impatient too, and although her feelings towards him had softened, she repeated somewhat nervously: "I pray you go! Good master, I would be alone."
Lambert hesitated a while longer, he looked all round him as if suspicious of any marauders that might be lurking about. The hour was not very late, and had she not commanded him to go?
Nor would he seem to pry on her movements. Having once made up his mind to obey, he did so without reserve. Having kissed the hem of her kirtle he turned towards the house.
He meant to keep on the tiny footpath, which she would be bound to traverse after him, when she returned. He felt sure that something would warn him if she really needed his help.
The park and woodland were still: only the mournful hooting of an owl, the sad sighing of the wind in the old elms broke the peaceful silence of this summer's night.