“Your Majesty,” said Rockhurst, in his most stately manner, “will find with ease an apter messenger.”
“Aye,” said the King, cynically. His narrow, dark eye roamed a moment about the room, then rested reflectively upon the fair mask of Enguerrand’s face. The boy turned quickly. Charles raised a beckoning hand.
“Vidame,” said the King, “a word in the hollow of your ear!”
The two drew apart, while Rockhurst moved away to the door to await the King’s pleasure. Charles rejoined him, laughing.
“Faith, if I had such subjects as my cousin Louis, I should be well served. Yes, ’tis your French finger you want for true lightness of touch. My honest Britons are all thumbs. The pretty singer’s brother.… Her own brother, no less! ’Tis a positive little Satan!”
“Aye,” assented Rockhurst, briefly.
The two went down the corridor in silence; then Rockhurst spoke with some abruptness.
“Your Majesty,” said he, “has before this, I think, found it add to his interest in … bird-catching that he should not be the only fowler in the field.”
“How now?” said Charles, halting. The group of attendant pages halted likewise at the end of the gallery.
“I have thought,” said Rockhurst, steadily, “I, also, that I should like that linnet to sing to me.”
Charles frowned; but his favourite pursued unmoved:—
“As I have only mybeaux yeux, as we used to say abroad, to stake against your Majesty’s overwhelming attractions, I should be flattered indeed, however, were you to have me banned as a marauder.”
Touched upon the string of his humour, Charles was ever easily appeased. The very impudence of his grave constable’s proposal tickled him. It was not the first time that they had found themselves opposed in rivalry, though scarcely ever before so avowedly. On the last occasion (the King remembered this pleasantly) Rockhurst, for all hisbeaux yeux, had been notoriously displaced; and this, doubtless, was a little stroke of revenge. That was Rockhurst’s way.
“Beware of boasting, my lord Constable!” he exclaimed banteringly.
They were on the threshold of the apartment. Rockhurst made a deepcongé.
“I never boast, as your Majesty knows. But your Majesty was wont to love a fair wager.”
Charles’s smile widened. He nodded assent, and Rockhurst pursued after a moment’s reflection:—
“Will your Majesty stake the payment of all the arrears due to my yeomen’s company that the linnet’s first song will not be for me? I would wager in return their immediate settlement, out of my own estate, unless your Majesty would impose on me any other stake.”
“Admirable!” said the King. “Yet we would have a more immediate, a more personal, token of victory—if we succeed against yourbeaux yeux,” he put in with a little mockery, “and that is, in addition to the paltry coin, a view of the contents of that locket, my merry Rockhurst.”
Rockhurst hesitated, then bowed. “So be it, sire,” said he.
And hereupon Charles retired, laughing, in cynical anticipation of a good stroke of business. That ever-present question of arrears of pay was a persistent annoyance to the royal conscience.
“Little Satan”—bestowed from lips royal in terms of favour, the nickname cleaved congenially to Enguerrand—entered, into the rôle of King’s Mercury with all theverveexpected of him. But he was considerably surprised at the manner in which his embassy was received. To place the most unworthy motives invariably foremost was, he flattered himself, to display a thorough knowledge of woman. He had yet to learn the thousand sensibilities that distinguish even the frail of that elusive sex from the unscrupulous gallant.
As he paused on his announcement, fully expecting to descry in the new recipient of the royal favour at least as much gratification as he himself experienced in being singled out as confidential messenger, he was met by a sudden pouncing movement, expressive only of wrath, by a dark look, actually by a flush.
Had Jeanne de Mantes ever blushed? It mightbe a matter of doubt. But she could colour high with displeasure; and very becoming it was.
“What, sir?” she cried. “I cannot have understood aright. Is this the Vidame de Joncelles, the French gentilhomme, the servant of Madame Henriette de France—is this my compatriot, my own brother, who comes to make me such a proposition?—It is really not to credit one’s ears!…”
Brother and sister faced each other, strangely alike now in their anger: nostrils quivering over fierce, quick breaths, black eyes flashing into black eyes.
It was the Vidame who could scarce credit his ears. Here was he, the messenger of the King, come to open before one whose devouring ambition, he believed, if anything, exceeded his own, a perspective of boundless possibilities—and he was thus received! He sat before her in the small parlour allotted to her in Whitehall,—an exiguous rounded corner room overlooking the river,—his mouth opened in astonishment, deserted for the nonce by all his pert airs of assurance.
“Nay, Jeanne,” he said at length, “keep this pretty scene for his Majesty, if you will; or rather,” he amended, restored by the sound of his own glib speech, “take my advice, and hold your fits of virtueas cured and over, once for all, for they say that King Charles becomes very easilyennuyé. For, with me, whom do you expect to take in?”
Whereupon, at a tangent, Madame de Mantes flew into a new rage.
“And it is this little man who is my brother!” she cried, clasping her hands and surveying Enguerrand from head to foot, with flashing fury; “thisis the child who knelt beside me at our mother’s knee!”
She thrust out a lip of utter contempt: “Take thee in? Thou—thou little withered fruit … a stone inside, hard skin without; what art thou to me?”
“What am I to thee—Jeanne? To-day,” he cried, “the stepping-stone to thy fortune, if thou wilt only see it! Now listen to me.”
But even as he spoke, of a sudden his anger cooled before the expression of her face. What if she was in earnest, what of his fortunes then? It was no time to quarrel. He caught his sister round the waist and advanced his lips toward the smooth cheek. But a masterly slap met the endearment.
“I’ll be no stepping-stone to you, nor creature of the English King,” Jeanne announced, half laughing, half crying. “There’s better in London, Master Enguerrand.”
He looked at her with wicked eyes, his face whiter than usual against the three scarlet stripes.
“You’ve had a visit this morning before me!” he cried suddenly; then, with a diabolic flash of intuition, he recalled the long, soft looks she had cast upon Lord Rockhurst.
“A visit?” said the Frenchwoman, swinging herself upon her heel. “Why, yes, that might well be.” She had a private smile, as to the memory of something singularly pleasant.
“I warrant me that it is your purpose to visit before long that interesting pile they call the Tower of London. Have a care,ma sœur,” and his trembling lips could scarce articulate the sneer,—had he not hated that man at very first sight,—“it is there, they say, that heads are lost in England!”
“Out of my room!” she ordered.
He laughed in what was almost a convulsion of rage. To what post, to what favours, might he not have aspired, with such a beginning! Meanwhile it is always the messenger of unwelcome news who bears the blame.Malédiction!His hand on the door-latch, he sent his last shaft with deadly purport to wound:—
“O Jeanne, and I had never thought thee the woman to submit to a rival! Call to mind,matoute belle, milord’s smile as he gazed at the face in the locket.”
Madame de Mantes heard the furious laughter echo down the passage as the door closed. She stood in the middle of her little room nibbling at her finger. ’Twas true! He had smiled at the locket, and with what tenderness! Ah, that was very different from the mocking twist of the lips with which he had wittily courted her only an hour ago. How! a king was to be sacrificed to him, and the man dared to haggle over the full surrender of his heart! ’Twould be monstrous!
“Ah, there’s my Little Satan,” said the King. But his long, gloomy face relaxed into no mirth: he had had a tedious morning, and of all things Charles could least endure tedium. The lady who had been first in favour so long that her chain had become well-nigh as heavy as that of matrimony itself, had made him such a scene as his own good and faithful queen would never have permitted herself to make. And another lady, whom for some time the volatile royal fancy had pursued in vain, had shown herself more hopelessly obdurate than usual. Between chiding Palmer and elusive Stewart, Charles was as near ill-humour as his easy temperwould allow—and he was therefore, characteristically, ready for any diversion to this unwonted hue of his sky. The sight of the little Vidame’s pallid, handsome face at the end of the audience room put him in mind at once of the whim he had indulged in overnight for the lady of the guitar; a linnet that trilled, a little quail for roundness and compactness.
For anentremet, according to the new-fangled French jargon of banqueting, Madame de Mantes was certainly not a dish to be despised; and, to add spice to it, there was that presumptuous fellow’s wager. Actually a wager!—Those arrears of pay had been forced upon the royal memory altogether too often of late. So, with a gesture, Charles waved his usual circle aside; and those that formed it saw, with astonishment and the virulent spite of the courtier, the King withdraw with the unknown French boy into the embrasure of the windows overlooking the Thames.
Some bethought themselves that his Majesty had noticed the creature already on the previous night; and whispers began to circulate.
One inventive personage declared he knew (upon positive authority) that the little Vidame had come on an important secret mission of the French Kinganent the necessity of Romanising the English Church without delay. “Vidame, mark you, is an old French ecclesiastical title,” he was good enough to explain. “He holds his lands in feu from some mighty Archbishopric—formerly a Vidame was a kind of ecclesiastical marshal—does not this furnish food for reflection, my lords? But—” “Pooh,” cried an airy gallant (who had a French tilt to his moustache), “our good Dorset has ever Rome in his head. Why, man, a Vidame and his Bishop, it is well known, always hate each other cordially as ever fox and wolf; ’tis always between them, who shall have the fattest share of church booty! Nay, then, are you so simple? Have you looked at that smooth cheek, those rich curls? Why, ’tis the most piquant matter—some Fair Audacity in disguise! No more Vidame than your lordship’s self; but, believe me, some cosy little chanoinesse, sheltering her gentle lapses under the comfortable wing of Mother Church.”—“Hearken to Follett and his follies!” interposed a third, a frank-faced youth, the sap of whose English generous common-sense had not yet been withered by courtly poisons. “Nay, neither envoy nor canoness, my lords, but as tough a youth as ever I came across. I tried a fall with him, in the Cockpit,—havingheard him brag of a trick of Breton wrestling,—and by my soul, the lad is steel and bow-string; he had me on my back in a twinkling and jeered at me till, for a moment, I saw him in red! But I like the lad; he has mettle, for all his whey face. Heard you not what his Majesty calls him: his Little Satan!—Old Rowley hath some bit of devil’s work for him this morning. And that’s the nut of the mystery.”
“Well, Vidame,” said the King, as soon as they were out of earshot, “let us now arrange the hour when we are again to hear your melodious sister warble, as though she were a bird and found our dull skies as bright as those of France.”
Enguerrand’s lips trembled. His pale cheek grew paler still.
But he had by no means been prepared to reveal his diplomatic failure. His plan was to temporise, in the hope of eventual success. But his sensitive acuteness nosed a trail of bitter temper under all Charles’s urbanity; and, flustered, he hesitated a second. The King drew his great eyebrows together.
“Madame requires pressing, it seems. She is perhaps hoarse to-day.”
Enguerrand foresaw how, in another moment, bya gesture of that languid white hand, the insignificant personality of Jeanne—and with it his own equally futile existence—would be swept from Charles’s horizon. Biting his lips, he cast about, but vainly, in his own brain, for a word which would keep the King’s fickle humour at least a little longer on the same bent.
Could she but be brought to take her golden chance, Jeanne would hold her own against any adversary but relentless Time—Enguerrand knew his sister well enough to feel certain of that. So promising an opportunity, and to see it wrecked by a mood of monstrous folly!
His eye wandered desperately from the King’s face, whereon was writ coming dismissal, to the dull prospect which lay beyond the window: a leaden river under a leaden sky—merely to see the huddled, cloaked wayfarers in the boats gliding past made one shiver.
Suddenly the boy’s eyes narrowed; he drew close to the window, peered eagerly down; nay, he was not mistaken! Yonder, indeed, went Jeanne … Jeanne and her woman, and at the water stairs a boat lay in wait for them. In a flash he understood; he had been right in his surmise! Moved by an inspiration born of the very genius for intrigue, hecried eagerly, but under his breath, arresting the King’s attention even as he was moving wearily away:—
“Nay, your Majesty, my sister is not hoarse, at least to my knowledge—I found her not in her apartment, and now I perceive the reason. The lady is not hoarse … yet seems like to become so presently! How will her sweet notes sound, I wonder, after her water journey, this bitter day!”
“Odd’s fish!” said the King. “What prate is this, sir?”
Yet, curiosity drew him to approach the window in his turn. Through the Whitehall water gate, down the King’s own stairs, a figure, wrapped in a rose and grey mantle daintily held up to show little close tripping feet, a small dame was picking her way down the miry steps. Behind her a waiting woman in russet carried what appeared to be a lute case. Charles turned a look, half quizzical, half interrogative, upon the Vidame.
“And is indeed that pink-and-grey bird our fair singer of last evening?”
“Even so, sire,” said Enguerrand, bowing low to conceal the agitation of his countenance.
“Satan, my little friend,” said the King, more genially, “can you inform me whither she may bewinging her flight, from the very stairs sacred to our own passage? Not that such ordinance can be enforced upon birds.”
“I notice, your Majesty,” said Enguerrand, now turning candid eyes full upon the King, “the skiff is heading down river. I believe your Majesty’s Tower lies somewhere in that direction.”
“Ha!” said the King. His deep eye lightened for a second ominously. But as rapidly as it came, anger vanished from his countenance; and with it the last traces of his moody, weary humour. “Odd’s fish!” he ejaculated, “I had forgot! To the Tower, say you, Vidame? Nay, then, that minds me my Lord Constable and myself had a merry wager touching a singing-bird.Ma foi, he is early with the decoy and the lime twig!”
He paused. The Vidame looked at him in astonishment—a king to wager with a subject! A king—and to let himself be crossed in his pleasure and to find in the circumstance food for indulgent laughter. And the man lodged so conveniently in his Tower! Joncelle’s vindictive young soul had been all afire to see the Lord Constable consigned to one of his own cells. If the Tower of London was not Charles’s Bastille, for the disposal of inconvenient courtiers, where was the use of it? If aking made no use of his prerogatives, where was the use of royalty?—The Vidame had yet much to learn.
Pulling his full underlip between finger and thumb, Charles stared alternately out of the window at the picture of grey river, vanishing skiff, and brooding sky, and at Enguerrand’s delicate white face. Beneath the boy’s tensely still attitude it was easy to divine quiver of nerves, fierce eagerness.
“Why, now,” said the King at last, somewhat maliciously, “we are not too proud to be taught by our subject. Our Lord Constable and ourself had, as I said, a wager who should capture the linnet’s next song. My Lord Rockhurst is an old soldier: he trusts no one. We sent a messenger: we therefore stand to lose.”
The colour rushed to the Vidame’s face. He dropped his lids to hide the tears of mortification that sprang to his eyes. Had the fate of some battle, the issue of some diplomatic mission, been at stake, he might almost have felt less keenly the reproach of his failure. To be King’s Mercury, to set off so gaily, on so high a flight, and fall so quickly, so hopelessly—no situation could have been more exquisitely painful to the Vidame de Joncelles. (Poor, pious mother! could she have read, thatmoment, into the soul of her son, she might well have thought that the house she had so carefully kept swept and garnished was indeed invaded by the seven devils.)
The King’s glance, however, was not unkind. “Nay, now,” he continued, in ever more good-natured tones, “all is not lost yet. This infamous Rockhurst of ours laid too tempting a stake that I should let him carry off the prize without an effort. What say you, Little Satan? Have you a mind to see the Tower? Your great father has been pretty busy there these five hundred years. It should be of interest to his little son.”
He flung out his long, careless hand, as he spoke, toward the boy, and Enguerrand, dropping on one knee, kissed it with sudden passion. Something about that hitherto dormant part of his young anatomy, his heart, was stirred. He had felt himself dominated by that very carelessness and good nature against which but a little while ago he had inwardly railed; caught a hint of a truer royalty in this careless King than in all the pompous tyranny of his cousin of France.
Whether the inexplicable Stuart charm, which Charles, black-visaged, saturnine, cynical as he was, possessed no less than his romantically beautifulfather and his handsome, winning brother of York, had seized the more potently upon Enguerrand’s nature that had hitherto been brazened in self-conceit and self-interest against all external influence, the fact was that in that touch of his lips, the Vidame de Joncelles devoted himself to a master.
Charles stepped back into the room, called up his gentleman-in-waiting, and gave instant order for his barge. As he turned pleasantly then to receive thecongéesof the dismissed audience, a fine-looking young man strode quickly into the room, made his way up, and bowing so low that his profuse, fair ringlets fell in a cascade on either side of his cheek, presented a letter for the royal hand. Enguerrand, standing close, heard the messenger’s murmured words.
“From Miss Stewart, your Grace.”
The whole circle stepped back and grew wide while the King read. And many a look of envy was cast upon the newcomer as Charles, thrusting the sheet into his breast, turned a complacent countenance upon him.
“Vastly well, Sir Paul,” said Charles, with a little nod.
The young man visibly swelled with triumph. The Vidame’s busy brain worked at high speed:Miss Stewart? That was the great fair girl who gave the King such cold return for his notice last night.… Rumour about Court had it, as Enguerrand knew, that she was playing a high game.…
As a man might look upon one who threatened to rob him of a mistress’s smile, so Enguerrand glared at the messenger who had evidently succeeded in his task. But his own hour was not yet over. In high good humour, Charles beckoned him again to his side.
“Come,” said he, “or we shall be too late. Tide waits not for kings; and linnets will sing only when the mood takes them.”
Enguerrand, seated in the royal barge, felt his heart swell with pride. He was alone in attendance, save for the tall officer of guards, whose face, impassive and dark as bronze over the folds of the red horse cloak, looked forth with the indifference of the man under orders, upon this last whim of the master. The French boy’s blood was tingling with excitement. The raw airs, the bleak aspect of the waterway, the shadow of the towering masonry from which they were just emerging, dark with its story of royal tragedy, failed to depress a spirit otherwise susceptible to physical impressions.
His failure, after all, had become more profitable than success. He was on sudden terms of intimacy with a monarch whom he was eager to serve; and in conjunction with the Stuart himself, he was about to inflict at least discomfiture upon the man for whom at first sight he had conceived hatred.
He was still child enough, moreover, to feel a titillating sense of gratification in watching the skill and vigour of the royal watermen, the like of which was undreamed of on French rivers; in feeling that it was partly for him these stalwart backs bowed in rhythmic measure, that the oars swept the waters, green now to his closer vision; that it was, in a way, before his own passage that the craft hastily opened out to leave a wide channel, and that every head was uncovered.
Charles’s face had fallen into its habitual expression in repose, of somewhat bitter melancholy; and the journey was traversed in silence, until, just in front of the archway of London Bridge, the sweep of the tide, which had been for some time at the full, began to tell decidedly against them. The barge came almost to a standstill.
The King roused himself from his abstraction and flung a rueful smile over his shoulder at Enguerrand: “Said I not well? The tide waits not for kings.”
The watermen caught the phrase, and as if stung in their pride of office fell to at the oars with a fury which sent the sweat rolling down each weather-beaten cheek.
“Our wily friend,” proceeded Charles, “chose his hour with judgment. The bird has as easy a flight as the dove to the ark. We stand to be beaten, after all, by my Lord Constable.”
Beaten! Never, if his oarsmen died for it. The brawny arms shot out in unison; the backs bent and straightened with the rage of defiance; they shot the bridge in triumph, the contentious waters vainly swirling and lapping against the sides of the barge.
As they emerged into the gentler stream beyond, there was a moment’s pause, and every man of the crew, dashing the salt sweat from his eyes, turned involuntarily toward the royal visage. The slight smile of approbation on Charles’s lips seemed ample guerdon for the feat; indeed, as in the case of most saturnine countenances, its momentary relaxation had a rare charm. They fell upon the oars again, and presently the mighty pile of the Tower seemed to engulf them into its dark shades.
If Whitehall, stained with the blood of a king, shed a gloom about it, even while holding the mostirresponsible court in the world, what sinister shroud enveloped these walls to every imaginative mind. The stones of the dungeon, tradition said, had been first cemented in lime and blood; and enough blood had since been poured out within those gates to stain the moats forever crimson.
The water gates swung back, and the King’s barge glided in. Charles’s face bore an air of pleasant anticipation, unwonted good fortune. He was certain to be amused, whichever way events turned; certain at least of some novel sensation.
Jeanne de Mantes sat sidewise in the deep window-seat of the parlour in the constable’s Tower, her dark eyes roaming about her with a curiosity not unmixed with a kind of awe. The room, dark with ancient oak to its blackened ceiling, with its huge depth of wall, its aspect of strength, silence, antiquity, resembled no apartment that she had ever entered. True, she had never penetrated into the Bastille, and true, she was here of her own free will and free to leave at her caprice; yet a small shiver crept over her. There seemed to her something ominous, something fated, about the place. All said and done, it was a prison. What should bring hither those who lived for freedom and joy?
She glanced almost timidly at the man who stood, one elbow propped on the embrasure, gazing down at her with inscrutable yet perhaps mocking eyes. He matched his Tower, she thought, in the something dark and melancholy which, though he might smileand court, yet remained as undisturbed as the sombreness of the room by the leaping firelight or the early spring flowers on the table.
Their glances met. In the light that fell upon her from grey skies and grey wall, the texture of her face showed flawless; richly coloured, at once soft and firm, it glowed like some southern fruit out of the cold setting. Her lips were parted: forgotten, in the momentary feeling of strangeness, all the modish airs and graces of the Louvre. She looked like a child, Rockhurst thought. He smiled at her, suddenly, kindly; sat down on the window-seat beside her and took her little amber-tinted hand in his.
“This is a rude place for such a one as you,” he said; “and you look about you like some creature caught against its will. Nay, you shall but sing me a song, and take your flight again forthwith, if you so wish it.”
All the woman in her awoke, petulant, displeased. Chivalry in love, a man who could desire and yet spare—that was not at all to her French taste. She drew her hands quickly from his and tossed her head.
“How so,” she cried in her pretty foreign English. “Fortwit’ after my song? But now, at once, if you prefer! Your lordship is quick tired!”
She sprang from the seat as she spoke. But he, stretching a lazy arm, caught her by her yielding waist.
“I said, if you wish it, Mignonne. In love I am no highwayman, but a courteous dealer.”
She feigned to struggle, brushing his cheek with her curls; then gave him all the candour of her eyes and the glint of a smile from her wicked lips; upon which, suddenly, he kissed them.
“Ah! highwayman, after all!” she mocked.
He drew her close to him, laughing silently.
“Milord Constable,” said she, “if one of your soldiers down there should chance to look up, it is all over with … your reputation.”
Again he laughed, struck by the audacious humour of the soft creature within the circle of his arm.
“Madame,” said he, then, with unexpected gravity, “my soldiers have long ceased to look up. My reputation is too well established to be worth looking to.”
Piqued, she thrust him from her with a quick gesture. It is one thing to be quickly conquered; it is another to be classed among the easy conquests.
“You’re insolent, milord!” she said, with out-thrust lip.
“My pretty one,” he answered her, “anger becomesyou vastly; but as for myself, I have a preference for the dimpled smile.”
He let his arm drop from her carelessly. She stood looking down at him, fascinated, taunted, uncertain.
“Believe me,” he went on in the same tone, half condescending, half caressing, “I am much older than you; I have had experience—life becomes much pleasanter, its few good hours vastly easier of discovery, if we agree to take certain things for granted. And, as example is ever better than preaching, let us put my theory in practice. I, now, take it for granted,” as he spoke his fine teeth flashed a second in a wider smile, “that you are all virtue, yet that you harbour for my unworthy self an amiable passion which excuses, nay, commands, a gentle lapse. You on your side take it for granted that I am consumed with an ardour unknown hitherto in my existence. Come, does not that place us instantly on a delightful footing? And this being so: why, then, come back to my side.”
She palpitated between fury and the extraordinary attraction which drew her to him. Her breast heaved, her eye first lightened, then melted. She took an unwilling step, then paused. Almost a sob rose in her throat. In another moment she would haveflung herself on his breast, as he sat awaiting her with that air of amused certainty that was in itself at once part of his fascination for her and an insult to her every instinct of pride, when suddenly she perceived that his eye had become fixed and distant. The insolent wretch had already dropped her from his thoughts; she was not worth to him even that pause of expectation!
Staring through the south window, up the river toward that gloomy bridge through the arches of which she had come to him, his attention was absorbed, his glance had gained a hawk-like keenness; the lines of his face were set. Whatever he beheld without, it was something that evoked far keener interest in him than the woman who had come to his call, in preference to that of a king. This was too much!
“Adieu, milord,” she cried in a high, strained voice. But, womanlike, she must see what it was, without there, on that hideous river, that he was looking at.
The royal barge, with its standard and pennants, its flash of scarlet and the long swing of red-and-gold oars, was already masked under the shadow of the battlements; nothing but the long stretch of water, dotted with black craft, met the searching of her angry eyes.
What is it, she asked herself; his fair one, in some well-known boat? Ah! the owner perhaps of that face in the locket, which even his King was not to see? What in the name of all decent pride was Jeanne de Mantes doing here? Yet even as she moved again to leave him, with what dignity she might, the incomprehensible being turned to her again—turned with a smile so winning, a glance so warm and caressing, a voice so tender, that the young woman lost her footing on her momentary plane of dignity, and found herself floundering again between a tearful desire for surrender and that hot anger which only a real love is able to kindle.
“How now! Adieu, say you? From your lips, sweet, that is a word I hope never to hear.”
“Why should I remain, milord?” she said feebly. “You care not to keep me.”
“I care so much that I will not let you go.” He came after her quickly into the room. “Why, you foolish child, how can you escape from the Tower so long as its constable means to hold you? Do you not know, I have but to call a word, and the drawbridge is raised, the portcullis dropped over the waterway—that I have the right of imprisonment here, that there are secret places where I can hidemy wilful prisoners? Nay, sweet one, are we not well together here?—You shall sing to me!”
Stirred with an emotion which, hitherto only playing with life, she had never known before, she murmured, blushing and trembling:—
“Sing!Eh, mon Dieu, you hold to it, then?”
“Why,” he answered her, “was it not singing that you caught my heart?”
Delicately flattered, she suffered herself to be led to a cushioned seat by the deep hearth; and she was already stretching out her arms to receive the guitar, when something in his air struck her quick apprehension, something at once of eagerness for her compliance, yet of indifference toward herself. He shot restless glances toward the window, seemed to strain his ear as if for some expected signal. When his eye swept over her, it was with an impatience other than that of the fond lover. She took the instrument from his hand, and watched him with a new, critical closeness as he flung himself upon the settle opposite to her.
In a tone which ill concealed irritability, he cried to her:—
“Begin—begin, little bird!”
Here was some odd mystery. She folded her hands across the polished olive-wood.
“Heavens!” she exclaimed, and it was her turn now to mock. “What a passion for music has your lordship!”
His eye shot anger upon her, beneath contracted brow. She felt at last that she had power, and her smile widened.
“You and your song,” said he, “are inseparable. By your graciousness I hold you mine for a little while, nor will I be defrauded of any of the sweetness you can give.”
The words seemed charmingly chosen; but again the underlying, unknown purpose was perceptible. A quick inspiration came to her: here was the moment to bargain; and Enguerrand, the little impertinent one, should know of her easy triumph before this grey English day had turned to the murky English night.
“If I sing,” she said, “I must have my guerdon.”
Amusement and relief sprang together into his look:—
“Nay, then, pretty one; make your own terms. Pearls for those shell-like ears—gems for that throat—”
She shook her head till the ringlets danced.
“Speak, then,” he went on impatiently. “What jewel, what bauble?”
She bent forward with a new, adorable softness, coaxing.
“A mere trifle, indeed, milord. I but ask for that locket of yours with which you were pleased to excite the curiosity of Whitehall last night.”
“How now!” said Rockhurst. He started, and turned the lightning of his glance, the thunder-cloud of his brow, upon her, a man whom it was not good to offend, and she quailed an instant. Then her hot blood rose in jealous passion:—
“So vastly precious? Why, then, generous milord Constable, suppose I put a high price upon my song; are you so ungallant?”
“Little madame,” retorted he, drily, “since you set a price on your favour, you would be as vastly disappointed with this poor trinket as Eve with the taste of her apple. Continue to desire it,” he went on, falling back into his tone of light cynicism. “To long for anything unattainable is one of the spices of existence.”
The firelight leaped on her angry face. She sprang to her feet, dashing aside the guitar, which fell on the stone floor with sonorous wail.
“If I could flatter myself I was helping to provide milord’s tedium with such a spice,” she cried, “my immediate departure would have a double charm!”
She felt at last that she had power.
She felt at last that she had power.
She reached a trembling hand toward her cloak. He, outstretched on the settle, watched her, without moving. At this moment, grave sounds, a trumpet call, followed by dull roll of kettledrum, rose from without into the momentary silence of the room. Stone wall and vault gave back the echo. There was a hurried tramp of feet, sharp cries of command. The Frenchwoman’s hand was arrested in mid-air. She looked in startled query at her host, who was slowly gathering his long limbs together preparatory to rising. He met her glance with one that struck her excited fancy as sinister, and she gave a cry like a child:—
“Let me out of this horrible place! You have no right to keep me here!”
He caught her wrist with a grasp gentle yet relentless.
“Your password, Jeanne, shall be a song—however short, but one stave, a few notes! Your song I must have!”
He picked up the guitar, and again pressed it upon her. She put her hand to her throat with a sob, flung a piteous glance around her like a trapped thing, and struck a faltering chord. Then, in a sudden revulsion, her courage rose again.
“Pah!” she cried, “’tis out of tune!Eh, biennon!I will not sing! I am French; you have no right to hold me here!”
“By the Lord!” said Rockhurst, a gleam of genuine admiration leaping to his eye, “but I like your spirit! Be dumb, then, sweetheart. You shall pay me by and by. Nay,” he added, smiling on her bewilderment, “let thy mantle lie where it is; for, prithee, I would have thee assist me to receive his Majesty.”
“His Majesty?” she cried, in fresh amazement.
“Aye,” he laughed. “Didst not hear the royal tucket sound without? Charles in person, who always finds the world but a dull place, even under the same roof with an old friend, if there be not the flutter of a petticoat to liven it. But you have made me dally, little Madame Mischief, and even my indulgent monarch expects some pretence of ceremony.”
His hand was on the bolt of the latchet as he spoke; his last words were almost lost in the echoes of the vaulted passage.
Charles paused on the threshold, his sallow face seeming darker than usual in the grim light. His lips smiled, but there was a certain displeasure in his eye as it roamed from Jeanne’s crimsoning countenanceto the guitar on the seat. From the gloom of the passage Enguerrand’s white face shone out, composed save for the deep reproach of his glance when it met that of his sister. Rockhurst alone, bowing the King into his apartment, wore a pleasant air of unconcern.
“We verily believe our visit is inopportune,” said Charles, with sarcastic courtesy. “We have interrupted, we fear, some dulcet music, my Lord Constable?”
Rockhurst closed the heavy door behind his guests, then advanced to the King’s side.
“Nay, sire,” said he, with fine geniality, “the bird came to the lure, it is true, but no art of mine or persuasion could call forth a song.… Your Majesty, no doubt, will prove more successful.”
“Odd’s fish!” cried Charles, with one of his rare, hearty laughs. “Say you so, indeed, invincible Constable? Say you so, indeed, my merry Rockhurst? Beaten? And under such auspices—alone with your fair! But how, then, are we to put our own skill now to the test, before so many witnesses? For we would not win our wager on the royal authority, but in all equality, my good Lord Constable, even as in that merry moment we entered upon it.”
Wager? Here, then, was the word of the riddle!A wager between two irresponsible men of pleasure: who should first obtain of a woman the petty guerdon of a song! ’Twas for that she had been wooed by both—both! And she, who had been uplifted on a wave of magnanimous feeling, who had flattered herself to be giving up a king for the love of a subject! Jeanne de Mantes had grown white to the lips. She caught at the table behind her for support, yet never had her wits been clearer. To sing for neither would serve them both well. Aye, but to sing for Charles would best punish him who had deepest offended. She flung one look of fury at Rockhurst, and then turned to the King, who had let himself sink upon the settle in front of the fire:—
“May the poor object of your Majesty’s wager inquire what are the stakes that were set upon her favour?” she asked, with a deadly sweetness, taking up the guitar and beginning to tune it with little, fierce hands.
Charles, who saw himself on the point of success, answered thoughtlessly, with a schoolboy look of triumph at the constable:—
“I but bargained for a sight of the contents of that mysterious locket which was so contumaciously denied to my curiosity last night, and—” Then he hesitated, with a faint flush of confusion.
“His Majesty,” said Rockhurst, gravely, “with his usual magnanimity, opposed a large guerdon to my trifling stake.”
The King, both spared and taunted by this reminder, moved uneasily on his seat. But already the twang of the guitar in harmonious cadence brought his light humour back to amusement again. If hesitation had still lurked in Jeanne’s mind, the first mention of the locket had swept it away. Her voice rose, robbed perhaps of some of its delicate sweetness, but vibrating with unwonted fire and incisiveness. She chose a bellicose ditty, which a Frondeuse mother had sung to her baby ears. And when she paused, panting, on the last refrain, with a furious sweep across the strings, Charles broke into delighted applause. Enguerrand, flushing with triumph, caught the guitar from his sister’s hand, as with a hysterical gesture she was about to cast it on the floor.
“I have sung!” she cried loudly, with almost a viperine movement, rising from the seat on which she had crouched to play. “Milord Rockhurst has lost his wager. Let him now pay!”
Rockhurst bowed urbanely toward her, drew the locket from its hiding-place, and with a second profound obeisance, handed it, open, to the King.As he looked, the mischievous curiosity on Charles’s face changed to an expression of profound astonishment.
“Odd’s fish!” he cried.
He shot a lightning glance at Enguerrand, then at his Lord Constable, and then at the picture again. And once more his expressive countenance altered.
“Yours?” he queried.
“Yes, your Majesty,” said Rockhurst.
Charles’s eye remained pensive for a further span. But suddenly it wandered to the Frenchwoman, and the mercurial King burst into laughter.
“Odd’s my life, but look at your sweetheart, my lord! The wench is on the very coals of jealousy—a live trout in the frying-pan were in comfort compared to her. Nay, we’ll have no torture in our presence. Fain would you look at your rival, madame?”
Rockhurst made no effort to interfere, and with trembling fingers Jeanne took the trinket from the King’s hand. In her turn she gave a cry; and Charles laughed heartily at the amazement, relief, and disappointment of her air.
“Why, ’tis naught but a boy!”
“Naught but a boy, indeed,” echoed Charles, “yet, we’ll go warrant what our Lord Constableholds dearest upon earth. A likely lad! Aye, and with a strange resemblance to Little Satan there.”
“God forbid!” ejaculated Rockhurst.
And “God forbid!” echoed Enguerrand, pertly, sharp as lightning.
Charles, who had been in high good humour, flung the lad a cold look, under which he fell back abashed and crimsoning—only to glance up again with a spasm of anger and hatred at the Lord Constable, as soon as the sovereign’s head was averted.
“We knew you had an heir,” said the King; then, turning with dignity to his host, “but, my lord Rockhurst, you have let us forget it. How is it? He should be at our Court.”
Bowing deeply, Rockhurst answered in a low voice:—
“My son is brought up in the country, sire.”
“Nay, fie!” said Charles. “Is not that even what we would reproach you with? So fair a stripling should never grow a mere rustic. We’ll have him about us,” insisted the King.
Again there was that moment’s silence. Jeanne looked up from the picture at which she had been absently gazing. This son of Rockhurst interested her not at all; not had he been twice as handsomeas the fair, spirited face, with its odd resemblance of features and its odder dissimilitude of expression to her own brother. She felt humiliated to have played so foolish a part of jealousy, and more than ever baffled by the strange personality of the man she had elected to love.
Rockhurst took back the locket, gazed at it again, closed it, and replaced it on its chain.
“Will your Majesty forgive me,” said he, at length, “nor deem me ungrateful if, in spite of your condescension, I yet hold that my son is best in the country?”
“We would at least hear your reason,” said Charles, with some weariness.
“In the country, your Majesty,” replied Rockhurst, then, “my lad will continue to revere his father, to honour womanhood, to live wholesomely … and think purely.”
Charles’s swarthy cheek became suddenly impurpled under a pulse of anger.
“And at our Court can your paragon practise none of these virtues?”
Rockhurst turned his glance deliberately upon the Vidame de Joncelles, who stood behind the King, his handsome chin uptilted, his eyes insolently ready to return the constable’s gaze; then he swept alook upon Jeanne de Mantes. That look said more eloquently than words the thought that was in the father’s brain. Then, at last, he spoke:—
“Let me remind your Majesty of a phrase you made use of last night—‘And he, her brother, the Little Satan!’”
The corners of Charles’s lips twitched humorously at the recollection; his transient anger evaporated. It was the misfortune of his life that he was always most prone to see the light side of the most serious questions.
Enguerrand, with his implike quickness, caught the relaxation of the royal profile, and his own lips quivered with mirth. Upon Rockhurst’s face came an expression of disdain mingled with deep melancholy.
“Your Majesty smiles,” said he, “and so does the lad yonder. Ah, your Majesty, look at him! ’Tis a fine lad, even as my own. And you are right! there is some resemblance, a great resemblance, between them; and your Majesty, who saw me start at it last night, deemed I had seen a spectre. I saw this, sire—what a court makes of youth.”
Charles’s foot had been tapping restlessly. He moved once or twice uneasily in his chair: his merryRockhurst had not used him to such wearisome moods. Yet he loved the man.
“Nay, nay,” he explained at length; “I’d have you remember, my lord, that it is my cousin of France who is responsible for our Little Satan yonder. Nay, Rockhurst,” he went on, in his easy kindness and his sense of royal prerogative, unable to grasp the fact that any one could be in earnest in refusing the favour of his personal interest; “I’ll have the lad with my own sons. We’d keep our eye upon him, man.”
Rockhurst’s glance rested on the King’s countenance now with an unwonted tenderness.
“Alas, my beloved liege! …” he said gently.
Their gaze commingled; then the amazed displeasure in Charles’s eyes gave place to unwilling amusement, as Rockhurst went on once more in his usual indifferent tone:—
“The poor child would at least, your Majesty will admit, find it hard to practise at Court the fourth commandment.… How should he honour his father? And yet ’tis my wish that his days should be long in the land.”
“Why, then,” said the King, shortly, “there is no more to be said.”
He rose and looked a second keenly at Jeanne.Then, upon one of those generous impulses which none could carry more gracefully into effect than himself:—
“You lost your wager to me, my lord, with all the gallantry I expected of so good a cavalier. But, Odd’s fish! I do not carry away altogether a clear conscience on the subject. If you have lost in the letter, it strikes me you have won in the spirit. I will take it, if you please, that we have both won; I will indite forthwith an order on the exchequer for those greedy yeomen of yours who contrive to be always under arrears of pay.… Though, upon my life, Rockhurst, you and your fellows put me in mind of those callow birds we used to watch, in our wandering days: it boots little how big the last mouthful—ever a squawk for more!”
Rockhurst folded his lips upon the obvious retort. He took the sheet from the King’s hand with an air of profound obligation:—
“Your Majesty’s veterans will be deeply gratified.”
But already Charles was weary of the subject, weary of his present company.
“Madame,” he said, bowing toward Jeanne as he hastily got up, “we shall importune you no longer with our presence.”
The little Frenchwoman understood very well thatin these words all royal pretensions to her favour were finally abandoned, and, in her infatuation for Rockhurst, cared as little for the fact as for the furious look cast upon her afresh by Enguerrand.
“Come, Vidame,” said the King. Then he added, with a malicious gesture that pointed from Jeanne to Rockhurst, “Come, you are as much out of place in this atmosphere of virtue as ourself!”
THE PEACOCK WALK
The peacock, picking his stilted way along the lower terrace walk, conscious of his magnificence with the sunshine on his burnished breast, rejoiced at the sound of approaching steps: here, at last, was some one to see and to admire.
But in vain did Juno’s bird spread and parade, advance and retreat, and display for the newcomers the glories of his outspread tail, which defied the sun with its fifty iridescent eyes. The elder of the two young men interrupted but for a second an emphatic speech to cast an indifferent glance upon the strutting splendour; while the younger poked at it idly with the stock of his whip. Offended, and with discordant protest, the peacock flapped on to the stone lion that heraldically guarded the terrace stairs and swept over their heads the fall of his unappreciated train.
Lionel Ratcliffe, the emphatic speaker, turned to survey with sullen eyes the scene which spread away beneath the balustrade of the Peacock Walk. It was the ripest hour of an early June day. The wood-crowned slopes, dropping down from the garden, were bathed in mellow light. Farther away, rich pastures, gently swelling into knolls, melted into purple haze, until they were gathered into the distant amethystine moors. Almost as far as the eye could reach, the land and all that stood on it—timber, meadow, homestead, hamlet—belonged to Rockhurst, fit appanage to those massy castle walls that rose clear-cut against the blue air, in all the majesty of ancient power. And as he gazed, Lionel Ratcliffe’s heart grew sombre even as his glance. A keen-faced man, old-looking for his thirty years, somewhat below the middle height, with marked features, cold blue eyes and thin lips that betrayed the working of an intellect as sharp as the steel that hung by his side.
His companion was of vastly different stamp. Country bumpkin was written on the face of Edward Hare, on every seam of his oversmart suit; country wits stared from his prominent eye, were heralded by the laugh ever ready upon his mouth—a mouth, one dared swear, that had known no better taste inlife than the rim of an ale can, the hard cheek of some bouncing Dorcas.
Waking from his abstraction, Ratcliffe wheeled upon his cousin, and resumed his indictment:—
“It is even as I tell you,” quoth he. “They are both as apt as tinder: it needs but a spark now to set the glow. ’Slife, Ned, I little thought thine would be the hand to strike flint!”
“Mine, Cousin Lionel?” broke in the other, whining. “Nay, nay—”
But the first, flinging out an accusing forefinger, bore down the plaintive interruption:—
“Then why didst bring her over here to-day?—Come now, ’tis plain enough. Dost favour my suit, or young Rockhurst’s?”
“Why, you know I’ll have none but you,” bellowed Edward Hare. “Harry Rockhurst …?” he cried. “Phew!”
He snapped his fingers and blew through them, threw himself into an attitude of defiance and, so doing, stumbled into his new-fangled sword which, carry it at whatever angle he tried, seemed ever in his way. Ratcliffe steadied his kinsman, then, still holding him by the elbow, drew him toward the stone bench, overhung by climbing roses. Having jerked his companion down upon it, he let himselfsubside beside him, crossed his legs and proceeded, contemptuously, good-humoured yet incisive:—
“If I wed Mistress Harcourt, your sister, is’t not a bargain? Shalt not continue to have bed and board and bottle beneath her roof? Aye, and many more of old Harcourt’s round pieces to chirp in thy pockets at cockfight and hammer fair? And when we go to Whitehall …” He paused impressively.
Edward Hare was touched; his soft face became moved as by not distant tears.
“Good Lionel … dear coz! Odd’s babers! Do I not tell thee thou shalt have her?”
Ratcliffe resumed, casting his words into space with a sidelong watchfulness as to their effect.
“Whereas, mark, if Diana wed another, what of thee, then, my cock? ’Tis back to the bare ancestral acres with Sir Edward Hare. ’Tis farthing toss and small ale. For thou art poor, lad, damned poor! And a poor baronet—fie!”
The poor baronet made a wry face. He pushed his plumed hat off his forehead to scratch his perplexed head.
“Aye, small ale, plague on it! Farthing toss—pooh!”
“’Twill ne’er do, eh, Ned!” laughed the other.
“No, split me, ’twill ne’er serve a man like me!”
Sir Edward Hare rose, in his indignation, and promptly tripped again over his sword. Somewhat abashed, and trying the comfort of a new angle, he dropped his high tone once more for one of plaint:—
“But, Lord, coz, what can I do? Di is like the bay filly: she’ll neither lead nor drive. Ain’t I always a-singing your praises? ‘There’s the husband for you, Di,’ say I. ‘There’s the lad for me,’ say I, twenty times a day.”
Ratcliffe cursed his cousin in secret, as, rising in his turn, he clapped him affectionately on the shoulder.
“I marvel at you,” he bantered. “And will you walk your filly to the gate and expect her to take it on the standstill? Is that the way to deal with a woman? Shouldst say to her: ‘Hast noticed Cousin Lionel’s squint?… Prithee, sister, have ne’er a thing to do with Cousin Lionel: ’tis a sad bad man! Ah, there are tales, sister, terrible tales!’”
Edward gaped.
“Oh, and what will she do then?”
“Why, look into mine eyes the very next time; and, not finding the squint, perhaps find something else, something in them she never marked before.”
The young oaf nodded portentously.
“Aye,” cried he, “and then—”
“And then—Why, I see you take me. Hast sharp wits, coz!—Then will she begin to ponder on those dark deeds of mine, and wonder about Cousin Lionel, and think him a very different man after all from the kinsman who played with her and teased her all her life. But, zounds, man, such a cock of the walk as thou art need not be lectured on the art of love! Why, when we get that figure of thine to Court, what a stir will there be among the beauties!”
The poor youth made no attempt to disguise his flattered emotion.
“Ecod,” he smirked, looking down at his legs, “I’ll not say but I can hold my own among the petticoats. He, he—a word in thine ear, Lionel: Moll, you know—” he whispered into his cousin’s curls, laughing immoderately. “And little Prudence Prue, down at the Red Lion—” Here he whispered again and guffawed: “Odd’s babers, she did! But Di must not hear of it.”
With immovable gravity, the elder man submitted to these boisterous confidences; then, holding his cousin from him at arm’s length, surveyed him with an irony which must have pierced through anything less thick-skinned:—
“What a blade you are! There will be no holding you at Whitehall!”
He suddenly sighed, dropped his hands, shook his head, and assumed a tone of melancholy:—
“Heigho, but we must get thee to Court first! And these adieus will undo all. ’Slife, man, she’s ripe for love. ’Tis rebound, ’tis nature. After the cold fit, the hot one. After old Harcourt, the old husband promptly and happily demised, Harry Rockhurst the stripling, live and young!… After eighty, eighteen.…”
“Nay,” interrupted Edward, sapiently. “Harry Rockhurst is twenty.”
“Aye,” mused Lionel, “and so is our pretty Di. Lord! your worthy mother had scarce called out, ‘Oh,’ of Diana, before my Lady Rockhurst began her, ‘Ah,’ of that young whelp! Well, by this time, these babes will have plighted their troth, if the gods interfere not.” He turned on Hare, his fierce temper escaping him for an unguarded moment: “Why the foul fiend did you let her ride over here to-day?”
Ned swelled with dudgeon.
“I? How could I prevent it, pray?”
“Poor numskull, how couldst thou?” echoed the other, half aside.—“Well, well, I fear me, I amcaught in my own springe! They might have philandered all summer and naught have come of it.… But I must needs work upon Grandam Chillingburgh, persuade her to summon the naughty grandchild in all haste from a bad match—and ’tis the parting will ruin all!”
He paused, biting his lip over vexed thoughts. Then his alert ear caught the fall of distant footsteps.
“Ah!” he cried, starting, “yonder they come! Let us to the upper terrace, Ned, and watch them from above.”
Sir Edward, who had been endeavouring to hit a bumblebee with his whip, and was lost in the excitement of the sport, burst into a roar of self-applause at an unexpectedly successful stroke:—
“Saw you that? I hit him. I hit him!… A great bumblebee!”
Ratcliffe clenched his hand, exasperated. Then, recalling his self-control, shrugged his shoulders, caught his cousin by the arm, and marched him determinedly toward the upper terrace stairs.
The two whose doings were exciting so much interest in Lionel Ratcliffe’s mind, came slowly along the Peacock Walk and halted beneath thewatchers: a pair so well-matched in youth and looks as well to justify apparently the jealous kinsman’s fears.—Harry Rockhurst, stripling just hardening into manhood, keeping some of his boy graciousness in the virility of the newer stage, sunburnt, vigorous; with brown curls tossed back from a broad forehead, and brilliant hazel eyes, keen and bold of vision, as should be those of the noted follower of hounds and hawk: by his side, as tall nearly as her cavalier, Diana Harcourt, the young widow, radiant with the sun on her auburn hair!
As her lover spoke to her, she listened, not unwillingly, and her glance rested on his face with pleasure. Yet there was something well-nigh maternal in this complacence which might have bidden him pause.
“Diana,” the boy cried passionately, “you must hear me; I will speak.”
She moved a pace from him and, sitting down on the bench, drew a hanging branch of wild rose to the wild rose of her cheek.
“The last of my country flowers,” she murmured.
“Stay,” he exclaimed. “Let me pluck you a posy!”
High over their unconscious heads, Lionel Ratcliffe, peering cautiously over the balustrade, had asneer for the childish eagerness. But Diana took the flowers with a simple grace.
“Thank you, and thank you.… Nay, how sweet they are! And to think that to-morrow evening we shall be so far away. ’Tis hard to leave the garden for the town.”
(“Mark you, now,” whispered Ratcliffe overhead, nipping Hare by the arm, “and take a lesson in Dan Cupid’s ways. ’Twill be: ‘Think of me, and do not forget me!’ And a prate of hopes, and a whisper of pledges. And then the word will hop out like a hot coal, Love! and their little world will be all ablaze—And ’twill be Love … Love … Love, and everything lost if some one be not at hand to spray cold water at the right moment.”
“The garden can?” suggests the practical Ned, in a mouthing undertone.
“Hush! lad,” murmured the other, “hast yet to learn metaphor. Nay—hark! Not a breath, on thy life.”)
“I shall dream, I think, of the gardens of Rockhurst,” Diana was saying.
“The gardens?” echoed Harry. He was leaning against the wall, by the bench, looking down at her,bending close. “Gardens? Is that all you regret, Mistress Harcourt?”
“Fie,” smiled she, “I am not so ungrateful. Shall I not regret my friends, my neighbours, good Mistress Rockhurst, and yourself?”
The boy drew back and straightened himself, galled to the quick.
“My aunt—and me! Truly, I am, madam, I am proud.” He flung himself away, his shoulder turned ostentatiously on Diana. She laughed with indulgence; then sighed. And, in heart-broken fashion, Harry caught up the sigh.
(“First stage, sighs,” reflected the watcher. “’Tis most harmless.”)
Young Rockhurst’s dudgeon was not of long duration. He edged along the wall to the bench and bashfully took seat.
“So ends the year,” he said softly, “that brought me the happiness of paradise—Diana.”
“Master Rockhurst.…”
“Must it end thus?” Suddenly bold, he tried to take the fair hand idly clasping the posy.
“Take care, sir,” she cried mischievously, “there are thorns here.”
“Ah,” he breathed, “so that I might gather the roses.…”
(And above their heads, Lionel Ratcliffe: “Second stage: hand-clasps and protestations. Next will come kneeling work, and next the lips.—Wary now, for it goes rapidly!”)
“Pray you, pray you, Harry!” Diana chid, endeavouring gently to free her hand.
But the boy had slipped the leash of his ardour and was not to be hushed.
“O my sweet life, hear me, hear me!”
“I vow,” she said, half rebuking, “I never knew you in this mood!”
“Ah, I am bold,” he panted. “Must I not be bold indeed for that I dare to love you!” Saying which, he fell on both knees before her.
(“Is’t not time to stop them?” whispered Hare into Ratcliffe’s ear. “I could drop a little stone on sister Di’s head.”
“Soft,” interposed the other, with his contemptuous patience. “Let the children play a little while longer; ’twill be the finer sport to slip in ’twixt cup and lip!”)
In truth, Ratcliffe was beginning to suspect that he had overrated Harry Rockhurst’s influence. If he knew women, his fair cousin, below yonder, had given no real response. He had caught the note of indulgence which the wooer himself was too inexperienced to mark in her accents. True, there might lurk some danger even in this; yet not such as to call for indiscreet interference. He smiled sardonically as the lover’s pleading rose passionately in the air.