Читать книгу Sword Play - Charles Billings Stilson - Страница 10

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Jean did not follow the highway that led back toward Tunbridge Wells, which she had meant to do. In response to the urge of a half-formed project which Cavendish’s information had made definite, she questioned her coach-driver of the roads, and found that he knew them well.

To the surprise of her escort and the almost tearful consternation of Mistress Mary Murrie, she bade him turn northward at Arundel, with Godalming as the goal. The coming of night found the party deep in the Sussex hills.

“Save us a’! What new madness hae ye in that loon’s heid, Jean Murrie!” protested Mistress Mary, gazing fearfully into the shadows at the side of the way. “Ye’ll no be satisfied till ye get a’ our necks thrawn by the wild hill bodies!”

“Hush, now, Mary! Haven’t we six stout gillies of Raasay—to say naught of Archie MacGregor, that’s himself the match for half-score footpads?” Jean reassured her. But Mary was uncomfortable.

“Aye, I ween that he’d ootrin them a’ wi’ the lang lugs o’ him—the muckle sumph!” she replied.

Archie, riding by the coach-wheel and overhearing the calumny, thrust his face close to the window.

“Gin we meet oop wi’ ony highwaymen, Maistress Jean, juist ye loose the tongue o’ Mary Murrie till them,” he rumbled. “ ’Tis a mair fearsome weepon by far than the claymore o’ Lang Dugal’ o’ Rona. I’m fair scairt o’ it mysel’.” And MacGregor withdrew hastily to forestall the retort which followed him into the darkness.

“Dinna ye threep lees till me, ye insolent randy, ye! Gin I leeve to speer Raasay, firth again, me sax brithers wull teach ye to hae respect for decent fowk!”

Despite the gloomy forebodings of the Highland woman, the party reached the town of Petworth unmolested, though late in the evening, and put up for the night at the Bush and Bough Tavern, where their arrival was celebrated by no end of a stir and the untimely deaths of at least a dozen plump pullets.

By the light of the candles in her room that night, Jean carefully brushed the dust from the auburn trophy of which she had despoiled Cavendish. That done, she tied it with a bit of blue ribbon and sat by the open window, caressing it with her fingers. These proceedings were viewed with black suspicion by her traveling companion. Mary stood it in silence until her feelings compelled speech.

“Cast that weesp o’ red wickedness frae the weendow, an’ let your perdeetious thochts gang oot wi’ it,” she adjured.

Jean gave her a look in which mischief was mingled with a sentiment engendered by the moonlight of the night and the mystery of the thoughts which clung about the keepsake with which her fingers were toying.

“Ah, ’twas a bonny, bonny head that bore that tress, Mary,” she said dreamily. “I think I could follow it to the end of the world, and be happy every step of the way.”

“Save us, the lassie’s gane gyte!” ejaculated Mary with uplifted hands. “Fairst she maun don sword an’ breeks an’ gae ram-stammin’ i’ the den o’ the evil one, whaur the feckless callants mak’ sinfu’ waste of gude siller wi’ cairts an’ siccan; an’ noo she maun gae a-rinnin’ after the fairst gaberlunzie’s gangrel that gangs the kintra! Wull ye nae hae dune wi’ sic fuleeshness, Jean? Ma heart’s feared for ye. Fine tales o’ your gaun’s-on I’ll hae to tull your faither!”

“But you’ll not tell him, Mary dear,” returned Jean sweetly. “You know you won’t—just because you are Mary dear.”

A snort was the little woman’s only answer to this wheedling; but the lines about her lips unbent as she went bustling around the room, delving into the dark clothes-press and hunting under the bed, after the fashion of womankind the world over when they find themselves in a strange sleeping-place. Mary was loyal to her core. She might—often did—speak her mind with jarring frankness; but red-hot pincers could not have dragged from her a single whisper of threachery to her cousin and mistress—and Jean knew it.

A sudden ringing burst of laughter caused the older woman to stop short and face the girl with arms akimbo.

“An’ what’s it noo?” she inquired.

“I was but thinking of the gaming-room at the Wells—and of the expression on my Lord Marsden’s face when I won his gold-pieces from him,” replied Jean. “Roger loseth with most uncourtly grace. A little more, and methinks he would have sought a pretext to call me out for’t.”

Again Mistress Mary snorted.

“Aye; yin o’ these days ye’ll dee wi’ breeks on—an’ a rare fine scandal ’twill be,” she grumbled. For Mary had scant sympathy with this exploit in which her young mistress found so much amusement.

Tunbridge Wells was still agog with talk of the boyish cavalier whom Lord Harry March had one evening introduced in the gaming-rooms as his cousin, Lord Castledown of York, and who had disappeared overnight after a most phenomenal run of fortune at the tables.

From the window the girl looked across the Sussex meadows, all soft and wan under the light of the moon, with here and there the shadowy line of a hedge and the deeper velvet outlines of clumps of beech and pine. In the courtyard a tavern groom with a flaring torch led the Scottish gillies to their beds in the stable straw; for there was no room for them within the inn.

Presently the tall form of Archie returned alone across the yard, carrying a great armful of hay. Jean heard the narrow stairs creak under his weight as he ascended. The padding of his feet sounded in the corridor, and the hay rustled as he disposed it outside her door. A little afterward his deep breathing apprised her that the chieftain was sleeping like a faithful watchdog across her threshold.

She had removed her hat and mask. The face which she revealed was of a startling, almost elfin beauty.

Her complexion was olive, almost gipsy-like, but so clear and translucent that the ebb and flow of the hurrying blood glowed through it. Her brow was broad and low, and her cheek-bones were rather pronounced. A dimple lurked at each corner of her small, scarlet mouth, ever ready to play at hide and seek with the mischief of her tip-tilted nose, or to be banished on the occasions when she set her square chin.

Her hair was black as the night shadows under the pines, and her eyes matched it. Bright eyes they were, for all their darkness. Ofttimes a glint of impishness danced in them; sometimes they were lighted with a shrewdness that was the heritage of her blood; but at whiles they became deep and mystic as hidden cavern pools.

But it was not in these features, alluring as they were, that the charm of Jean Murrie lay. They were the playground merely of an unresting spirit that was seldom sad. So changeable was their expression that one might look upon the girl’s face half a hundred times and still not be able to say that he truly knew it, or would recognize it the next time he saw it. Jean would have been a wonderful actress.

Yet, with all her bewildering variations of mood, Jean’s nature was neither trivial nor unstable, as those who had the good fortune to be numbered among her friends had reason to know. No matter how astonishing her whims or how wild her vagaries, they had come to learn that back of them was the same Jean, leal-hearted, noble, and dependable. They swore that there was none like her. Small wonder that the young English lords swarmed about the Earl of Raasay’s daughter like bees around a woodland rose.

Mary, in a pink nightshift, with her hair in a braid, broke in upon a cloud of colorful fancies, wherein the hero had gray eyes and handled his swords like a veritable paladin.

“Are ye nae coomin’ till your bed the nicht?” asked the Scotswoman; “or wull ye set moonin’ there like a lovesick coo until the cocks croo?”

“Have I heard it told, or did I dream it, that there once was a certain Highland lassie who loved a Westmoreland lad—and would have gone to the kirk with him, too, and he with her, in spite of the growling and gully knives of all Clan Murrie?” said Jean softly.

Mary did not answer; but she came over to the window, and she too gazed out into the moonlit silence.

“Muckle a pack o’ shaggy gillies kenned o’ the ways o’ a lassie’s heart,” she murmured after a time, speaking more to herself than to Jean. “Ah, he was a braw laddie—an’ a brave. Noo he’s under the sods o’ Flanders this lang time syne, whaur he fell fechtin’ wi’ Jock Churchill, an’ it’s a’ dune wi’. Oh, Geordie, laddie, your ain Mary’s heart’s sair wi’ the greetin’ for ye!”

Jean looked up quickly and saw that her kinswoman’s cheeks were wet with tears.

“Mary! Mary! Forgive me!” she cried in quick contrition; “I didn’t mean to, dear!”

“Nocht to forgie at a’, lassie,” responded Mary, drawing the back of her hand across her eyes. “It does me gude to theenk on it yince in a while—keeps me frae gettin’ auld an’ hard as the stanes. Noo, let’s be gettin’ atween the sheets. I’m fair fordune.” And she knelt for a brief prayer and clambered into bed.

Jean followed soon after. When she had extinguished the candles and while she knelt in the darkness, the girl hid away the lock of auburn hair in that sacred repository where a maiden keps her most cherished tokens. Nor did she omit in her invocation of the Most High to beseech guidance and protection for the head from whence it had been shorn.

Weariness is the best of sleeping potions. It was late in the following forenoon when Jean and her party once more set out upon the northern road. They found the hill traveling slow, and often they were forced to inquire their way; for one Thomas Wilkin had promised something more than he could perform when he so confidently had announced himself acquainted with the roads. Once, through misunderstanding of directions, or sheer stupidity, he strayed aside a matter of miles before a farm lad set him right, for which Tom received a berating from his mistress which made his ears to tingle.

The sun was riding high on its western arc when they paused for luncheon in the shade of a spreading beech tree on the warm side of one of the foothills to the east of Hazelmere in the county of Surrey. Two hours later Wilkin leaned down from the driver’s seat and with his whip pointed ahead along the white road to where the spire of a stone church stood against the sky.

“Yonder is Godalming,” he announced triumphantly, and pulled up his horses.

“Perchance it is, Master Tom,” Jean replied rather acidly, for she was tired; “but after the chase you have led us, I am not so sure that it may not be Jerusalem or the city of the Grand Turk.”

Eastward and distant a few miles from the highway stretched a shaggy range of densely wooded hills. To the left was an expanse of gently rolling downs and fair green meadows, with an occasional grove of lofty oaks. A few hundred feet ahead of the spot where the coach had halted a small stream which stormed down from the hills purled under an old stone bridge and meandered quietly through the meadow lands, its course marked by a winding double ribbon of darker green. Bordering along the western side of the road and sloping down to the banks of the rivulet, were the orderly fields of a small estate, and still farther on a mansion of gray granite, all overrun with climbing ivy, stood in a grove of stately trees.

“Gracious Mary send that yonder be our destination!” thought Jean when she saw it. A farm yokel in soiled blue smock edged by along the roadside, staring round-eyed at the dusty coach and the bare shanks of the wild Highland riders. Jean hailed him.

“Can you tell me, my man, if in this neighborhood is the home of the Comte de Mortemart?” she asked.

“Aye, your ladyship,” the hind answered, bobbing and pulling hard at his forelock; “it be just t’other side the bridge. Wolf’s Rest, we name it hereabouts.”

Wilkin cracked his whip. Jean tossed the countryman a small piece of silver, an extravagance which caused a contraction about the lips of thrifty Mary Murrie, to whom the gift seemed out of all proportion to the service. As they passed along the road, they saw that the mansion was set in the center of a park-like close surrounded by a low wall of stone. Between the carved pillars of a tall gateway they turned into a driveway bordered by a double row of poplars of recent growth.

As the coach neared the house, a gentleman came from the garden enclosure near the south wall of the park and advanced to meet it. Then a lady came down the grassy slope from the side of the house, and the man, seeing her, crossed the drive ahead of the coach, and they stood together, waiting for it to come up.

One glance at the two assured Jean that this indeed was the place she sought. The man was in his early middle age, but lightly touched by his years, for his figure, which was a little above medium height, was straight as a young tree, and in his black hair were no threads of silver. Right well did Jean know those level gray eyes. Did not her memory carry their counterparts? Only—the thought was not without prejudice—she decided promptly that the son was handsomer than the father. That decision might have been open to argument if made known to the lady of the mansion who stood by her husband’s side, and in whose wealth of auburn hair the afternoon sun played tricks of fire—hair from which the lock which lay in Jean’s bosom might have been pilfered, it was so like.

When the coach halted, Jean stood up to alight, and Archie swung nimbly from his horse to assist her; but the master of the house was before him. With a bound he stood at the step and offered his arm with a graceful gesture.

“Permit me, mademoiselle,” he said. His voice, too, was so like his son’s that it thrilled the girl. Though both the Comte and Comtesse de Mortemart must have wondered at the cause of the visit, no hint of curiosity or surprise was visible on the face of either of them.

“I bring you news of your son,” announced Jean simply, as she faced them.

A shade of anxious inquiry passed across the beautiful features of the comtesse, and was reflected in the countenance of her husband, and then was at once effaced, though it lingered in the lady’s hazel eyes.

“Mademoiselle must come within; she is fatigued. We will hear her news when she is refreshed,” was the only comment from the comte. With a murmured excuse, he turned and gave orders concerning the housing of the party to a number of his servants who had made their appearance.

“I had not thought to stop——” Jean began; but the comtesse raised her hand.

“We cannot allow it, that mademoiselle should take the roads again this day,” she protested. “It grows late, and, mon Dieu! these English roads at night!” she shivered. “Come.” And she led the girl to the house.

And yet this same soft-voiced woman with the red hair, who, before she was the wife of Denys du Chêne, Comte de Mortemart, had been Charli Vauclain, Comte de la Mar, once had ridden far and fast both by night and by day over roads that were much more to be feared than those of Surrey and Kent, and had counted their perils as a little thing.

Though the hearts of host and hostess must have been strained with anxiety because of the lad who had not come home, courtesy was paramount. Jean and Mary were shown to a room, where they enjoyed a luxurious scrubbing away of travel grime. It was not until the end of a dinner served in the mansion hall and enlivened with rich wines of Champagne, that the comte and comtesse signified that they were ready to listen.

Jean told them then the tale of the quarrel and duel at Portsmouth. Daughter of a people that had been noted for its eloquence the girl was herself a splendid raconteur; and, besides, had a keen personal interest in the matter whereof she told. In her mouth the transaction took on epic proportions. Never had relator a more sympathetic hearing. Such things as had happened before she reached the scene of the quarrel, and which she had learned from Harry March, she described as though she had seen them, and they lost nothing by her telling.

When she told how Raymond had held the road against the rushing horsemen to shield the beggar, Comte de Mortemart nodded approvingly; but when he heard of the insults which had been pressed upon his son because of the kindly deed, Denys’s gray eyes began to smolder, and the hand which lay on the table before him closed hard, as though it were grasping the hilt of a trustworthy blade.

In their mind’s eyes the pair saw the whip of Humphrey raised above their dear lad.

“He would have dared!” gasped Charli, and in the hazel eyes leaped a flame as hot as that in the gray ones across from her.

“But he exacted payment—that I’ll warrant,” muttered the comte. Jean, who was unfolding her tale in the order of its happening nodded. Her own eyes had taken fire, and her cheeks were flushed. Quick to take note of these signs, Charli watched the girl with a new curiosity, mixed with a bit of apprehension, and exchanged a glance of understanding with Mistress Mary which Jean did not see.

At the intervention of Concino, Denys laughed shortly.

“There spoke my old sword-brother!” he exclaimed; “but why was the boy’s blade idle? Pardon, mademoiselle! Your tale moves me to forget myself.”

Followed then the duel upon the hillside. Both of the girl’s auditors fell silent and hung breathless upon her words; for in the telling of it she surpassed herself. When it was done, so vivid had been her description, that it seemed to them that they could hear the echo of the crash of the hoofs of Raymond’s horse alighting on the deck of the stranger’s ship, and see Concino vaulting high from the stone pier to join him.

“Ventre Saint Gris!” cried Denys. He sprang from his chair and paced up and down the room with shining eyes and muttering to himself. Presently he seated himself again and looked at his wife. The same thought was in the minds of both, and she voiced it.

“He will be gone to France,” she said. “He has dreamed of it so many years.”

“Oui—to France,” replied Denys. It seemed to Jean that he dwelt wistfully upon the last word. “He beginneth young,” he continued. “At his age I had not yet slain a man.”

“Nay,” Jean spoke up; “he hath not slain any one. Lord Marsden liveth, but will be laid by the heels for yet some time to come.”

“So! Think you, mademoiselle, that this Marsden will desire to go further with the matter?”

The words were spoken softly, but they had iron in them.

“That I cannot tell. Roger is a hot-livered fool, and hath a long memory. He made threat to carry the affair to his majesty’s ears, and through him to the king of France. But fear not for the outcome. My father shall intervene to see that the scheme be cut off in its bud. He hath great influence with Charles Stuart.”

“And I some little with Louis Capet,” Denys answered, and added: “I do not think that he has quite forgotten his wolf.” To his wife he said: “I must take horse tomorrow and ride to Portsmouth. Hugues Banel will be wondering at Raymond’s delay. My son was to have met an agent who fetcheth us revenue from certain lands which we hold in France,” he explained to Jean. “While I am there, I may discover more concerning the ship on which the lad and Concino sailed. But make no doubt of it, Raymond is off for France in search of adventure. Ciel! I wish that——” Denys completed his sentence with a sigh which made its meaning clear. “Ventre Saint Gris! To think that the rapiers of Philibert Chalon are once more going into France!” He sighed again.

Poor Charli looked at it otherwise. It was her only son that was gone from her, and her mother-heart was anxious. She could not conceal it.

“Take heart, madame,” said the comte, observing her woebegone face; “he will not come to harm. Concino is with him. We shall hear from them ere many days, I’ll wager. As for this itching for adventure, it is in the blood and must be satisfied—as we two well know; for he hath it from both of us.”

Charli smiled bravely, but still was anxious.

When they had gone from the hall to the parlor, and lights had been fetched to drive away the deepening shadows of the falling night, Jean pressed her host hard for a tale in return. From a few stray words which had been let fall the girl guessed that the former life of the comte in his beloved land across the Channel had not been lacking in the high spice of adventure. He was loath at first to speak; but when he finally yielded smilingly to the girl’s importunity, she was more than repaid for her efforts.

While they sat before a mighty hearth in which the embers of twin yew logs glowed cheerily, for the night had fallen chill, Denys told of the great days in France when, as an unknown lad, with that same sword which Raymond wore, he had won the friendship of a king, the title of nobility, and, what was of far greater moment to him than all else beside, the love of a woman.

Slowly the tale moved at first, for the comte was modest; but under the urging of the girl and the artful prompting of Charli, who seemed to take more pride in his exploits than he did himself, he warmed to the recital and spoke with a fire and color which rivaled the eloquence of Jean.

With bated breath and many a grasp and handclap of enthusiasm, the warm-blooded Scotch lassie heard the story of how Denys, pupil of old Philibert, the swordmaster, hunted the king’s enemies and crumbled to dust the conspiracy of the League of the Twenty, which would have set another king on the throne of France; and how in the doing of it Denys had made enemies from which even the power of the king could not shield him, so that for the peace of his lady he had exiled himself these seventeen years from France and dwelt quietly on the lands which he had purchased in Surrey.

“Oh, I know you now!” Jean cried when he ceased and sat back, somewhat shamefacedly. “My father was at the court of Louis le Grand in those days, and he has told of you. You are the Black Wolf of Picardy!”

Denys bowed acknowledgment of the title. “Yes, mademoiselle is in the Château du Loup,” he said.

On the morrow Jean fared back to Tunbridge Wells, whither the news of Roger’s mishap had preceded her, along with sundry other gossip. She had been a devotee of the pleasures of the famed resort; but a dream in her heart had staled them, and she found they had no more savor for her. One morning soon after her return she summoned MacGregor to her, and when he appeared had speech with him that was short and pointed.

“Airchie MacGregor, are ye feared to gang to France wi’ me?” she asked banteringly, but wholly in earnest. As a further inducement she added: “There micht be a chance at fechtin’.”

“God kens I’m feared o’ nocht—not even ghosties,” rumbled the Highlander; “but——” He paused and looked at her suspiciously. “Does your faither ken?” he inquired. “The anger o’ Roderick o’ Raasay be warse to face than a’ the bogies o’ the Blue Glen Morna.”

“Gin ye are feared, Airchie, I’ll gae me lanes—for I’m gangin’ ower.”

MacGregor opened his mouth for a mighty oath, remembered in time where he was, and closed it again.

“Ye’ll no be gangin’ alane, mistress,” he said.

Jean wrote two letters. One of them was destined to scandalize and afflict Mistress Mary Murrie, the other to make the Earl of Raasay at London both laugh and curse.

Two days later the girl left England on a French packet-boat from Bexhill. MacGregor and his six gillies went with her.

Jean too had cast her gauge of battle at the feet of adventure.