Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by the Web Archive
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
http://www.archive.org/details/courtshipofmorri00masouoft
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
THE COURTSHIP
OF
MORRICE BUCKLER
THE COURTSHIP
OF
MORRICE BUCKLER
A Romance
_Being a Record of the Growth of an English Gentleman
during the years 1685-1687, under strange and difficult circumstances
written some while afterwards in his own hand, and now edited by_
A. E. W. MASON
AUTHOR OF "A ROMANCE OF WASTDALE"
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO.
1896
_First Edition, February_, 1896.
_Second Edition, May_, 1896.
_Third Edition, June_, 1896.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
TELLS OF AN INTERRUPTED MESSAGE.
CHAPTER II.
I REACH LONDON, AND THERE MAKE AN ACQUAINTANCE.
CHAPTER III.
TELLS HOW I REACH BRISTOL, AND IN WHAT STRANGE GUISE I GO TO MEET MY
FRIEND.
CHAPTER IV.
SIR JULIAN HARNWOOD.
CHAPTER V.
I JOURNEY TO THE TYROL, AND HAVE SOME DISCOURSE WITH COUNT LUKSTEIN.
CHAPTER VI.
SWORDS TAKE UP THE DISCOURSE.
CHAPTER VII.
I RETURN HOME AND HEAR NEWS OF COUNTESS LUKSTEIN.
CHAPTER VIII.
I MAKE A BOW TO COUNTESS LUKSTEIN.
CHAPTER IX.
I RENEW AN ACQUAINTANCESHIP.
CHAPTER X.
DOUBTS, PERPLEXITIES, AND A COMPROMISE.
CHAPTER XI.
THE COUNTESS EXPLAINS, AND SHOWS ME A PICTURE.
CHAPTER XII.
LADY TRACY.
CHAPTER XIII.
COUNTESS LUKSTEIN IS CONVINCED.
CHAPTER XIV.
A GAME OF HIDE-AND-SEEK.
CHAPTER XV.
THE HALF-WAY HOUSE AGAIN.
CHAPTER XVI.
CONCERNING AN INVITATION AND A LOCKED DOOR.
CHAPTER XVII.
FATHER SPAUR.
CHAPTER XVIII.
AT LUKSTEIN.
CHAPTER XIX.
IN THE PAVILION. I EXPLAIN.
CHAPTER XX.
IN THE PAVILION. COUNTESS LUKSTEIN EXPLAINS.
CHAPTER XXI.
IN CAPTIVITY HOLLOW.
CHAPTER XXII.
A TALK WITH OTTO. I ESCAPE TO INNSPRUCK.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE LAST.
THE
COURTSHIP OF MORRICE BUCKLER
CHAPTER I.
TELLS OF AN INTERRUPTED MESSAGE.
It chanced that as I was shifting the volumes in my library this
morning, more from sheer fatigue of idleness than with any set
intention--for, alas! this long time since I have lost the savour of
books--a little Elzevir copy of Horace fell from the back of a shelf
between my hands. It lay in my palm, soiled and faded with the dust of
twenty years; and as I swept clean its cover and the edges of the
leaves, the look and feel of it unlocked my mind to such an inrush of
glistening memories that I seemed to be sweeping those years and the
overlay of their experience from off my consciousness. I lived again
in that brief but eventful period which laid upon the unaccustomed
shoulders of a bookish student a heavy burden of deeds, but gave him
in compensation wherewith to reckon the burden light.
The book fell open of its own accord at the Palinodia at Tyndaridem.
On the stained and fingered leaf facing the ode I could still decipher
the plan of Lukstein Castle, and as I gazed, that blurred outline
filled until it became a picture. I looked into the book as into a
magician's crystal. The great angle of the building, the level row of
windows, the red roofs of the turrets, the terrace, and the little
pinewood pavilion, all were clearly limned before my eyes, and were
overswept by changing waves of colour. I saw the Castle as on the
first occasion of my coming, hung disconsolately on a hillside in a
far-away corner of the Tyrol, a black stain upon a sloping wilderness
of snow; I saw it again under a waning moon in the stern silence of a
frosty night, as each window grew angry with a tossing glare of links;
but chiefly I saw it as when I rode thither on my last memorable
visit, sleeping peacefully above the cornfields in the droning sabbath
of a summer afternoon. I turned my eyes to the ode. The score of my
pencil was visible against the last verse:
Nunc ego mitibus
Mutare quaero tristia dum mihi
Fias recantatis amica
Opprobriis animumque reddas.
On the margin beside the first line was the date, Sept. 14, 1685, and
beneath the verse yet another date, Sept. 12, 1687. And as I looked,
it came upon me that I would set down with what clearness I might the
record of those two years, in the hope that my memories might warm and
cheer these later days of loneliness, much as the afterglow lingers
purple on yonder summit rocks when the sun has already sunk behind the
Cumberland fells. For indeed that short interspace of time shines out
in my remembrance like a thick thread of gold in a woof of homespun. I
would not, however, be understood to therefore deprecate the quiet
years of happiness which followed. The two years of which I speak in
their actual passage occasioned me more anxiety and suffering than
happiness. But they have a history of their own. They mark out a
portion of my life whereof the two dates in my Horace were the
beginning and the end, and the verse between the dates, strangely
enough, its best epitome.
It was, then, the fourteenth day of September, 1685, and the time a
few minutes past noon. Jack Larke, my fellow-student at the University
of Leyden, and myself had but just returned to our lodging in that
street of the town which they call the Pape-Graft. We were both fairly
wearied, for the weather was drowsy and hot, and one had little
stomach for the Magnificus Professor, the more particularly when he
discoursed concerning the natural philosophy of Pliny.
"'Tis all lies, every jot of it!" cried Larke. "If I wrote such
nonsense I should be whipped for a heretic. And yet I must sit there
and listen and take notes until my brain reels."
"You sit there but seldom, Jack," said I, "and never played yourself
so false as to listen; while as for the notes----!"
I took up his book which he had flung upon the table. It contained
naught but pictures of the Professor in divers humiliating attitudes,
with John Larke ever towering above him, his honest features twisted
into so heroical an expression of scorn as set me laughing till my
sides ached.
He snatched the book from my hand, and flung it into a corner.
"There!" said he. "It may go to the dust-hole and Pliny with it, to
rot in company." And the Latin volume followed the note-book.
Whereupon, with a sigh of relief, he lifted a brace of pistols from a
shelf, and began industriously to scour and polish them, though indeed
their locks and barrels shone like silver as it was. For my part, I
plumped myself down before this very ode of Horace; and so for a
while, each in his own way, we worked silently. Ever and again,
however, he would look up and towards me, and then, with an impatient
shrug, settle to his task again. At last he could contain no longer.
"Lord!" he burst out, "what a sick world it is! Here am I, fitted for
a roving life under open skies, and plucked out of God's design by the
want of a few pence."
"You may yet sit on the bench," said I, to console him.
"Ay, lad," he answered, "I might if I had sufficient roguery to supply
my lack of wits." Then he suddenly turned on me. "And here are you,"
he said, "who could journey east and west, and never sleep twice
beneath the same roof, breaking your back mewed up over a copy of
Horace!"
At that moment I was indeed stretched full-length upon a sofa, but I
had no mind to set him right. The tirade was passing old to me, and
replies were but fresh fuel to keep it flickering. However, he had not
yet done.
"I believe," he continued, "you would sooner solve a knot in Aristotle
than lead out the finest lady in Europe to dance a pavan with you."
"That is true," I replied. "I should be no less afraid of her than you
of Aristotle."
"Morrice," said he solemnly, "I do verily believe you have naught but
fish-blood in your veins."
Whereat I laughed, and he, coming over to me:
"Why, man," he cried, "had I your fortune on my back----"
"You would soon find it a ragged cloak," I interposed.
"And your sword at my side----"
"You would still lack my skill in using it."
Larke stopped short in his speech, and his face darkened. I had
touched him in the tenderest part of his pride. Proficiency in manly
exercises was the single quality on which he plumed himself, and so he
had made it his daily habit to repair to the fencing-rooms of a noted
French master, who dwelt in Noort-Eynde by the Witte Poort. Thither
also, by dint of much pertinacity, for which I had grave reason to
thank him afterwards, he had haled me for instruction in the art. Once
I got there, however, the play fascinated me. The delicate intricacy
of the movements so absorbed brain and muscle in a common service as
to produce in me an inward sense of completeness, very sweet and
strange to one of my halting diffidence. In consequence I applied
myself with considerable enthusiasm, and in the end acquired some
nimbleness with the rapier, or, to speak more truly, the foil. For as
yet my skill had never been put to the test of a serious encounter.
Now, on the previous day Larke and I had fenced together throughout
the afternoon, and fortune had sided with me in every bout; and it
was, I think, the recollection of this which rankled within him.
However, the fit soon passed--'twas not in his nature to be silent
long--and he broke out again, seating himself in a chair by the table.
"Dost never dream of adventures, Morrice?" he asked. "A life brimful
of them, and a quick death at the end?"
"I had as lief die in my bed," said I.
"To be sure, to be sure," he replied with a sneer. "Men ever wish to
die in the place they are most fond of;" and then he leant forward
upon the table and said, with a curious wonder: "Hast never a regret
that thy sword rusted in June?"
"Nay," I answered him quickly. "Monmouth was broken and captured
before we had even heard he had raised his flag. And, besides, the
King had stouter swords than mine, and yet no use for them."
But none the less I turned my face to the wall, for I felt my cheeks
blazing. My words were indeed the truth. The same packet which brought
to us the news of Monmouth's rising in the west, brought to us also
the news of his defeat at Sedgemoor. But I might easily have divined
his project some while ago. For early in the spring I had received a
visit from one Ferguson, a Scot, who, after uttering many fantastical
lies concerning the "Duke of York," as he impudently styled the King,
had warned me that such as failed to assist the true monarch out of
the funds they possessed might well find themselves sorely burdened in
the near future. At the time I had merely laughed at the menace, and
slipped it from my thoughts. Afterwards, however, the remembrance of
his visit came back to me, and with it a feeling of shame that I had
lain thus sluggishly at Leyden while this monstrous web of rebellion
was a-weaving about me in the neighbouring towns of Holland.
"'Art more of a woman than a man, Morrice, I fear me," said Jack.
I had heard some foolish talk of this kind more than once before, and
it ever angered me. I rose quickly from the couch; but Jack skipped
round the table, and jeered yet the more.
"'Wilt never win a wife by fair means, lad," says he. "The Muses are
women, and women have no liking for them. 'Must buy a wife when the
time comes."
Perceiving that his aim was but to provoke my anger, I refrained from
answering him and got me back to my ode. The day was in truth too hot
for quarrelling. Larke, however, was not so easily put off. He
returned to his chair, which was close to my couch.
"Horace!" he said gravely, wagging his head at me. "Horace! There are
wise sayings in his book."
"What know you of them?" I laughed.
"I know one," he answered. "I learnt it yesternight for thy special
delectation. It begins in this way:
"Quem si puellarum chore inseres."
He got no further in his quotation. For he tilted his chair at this
moment, and I thrusting at it with my foot, he tumbled over backwards
and sprawled on the ground, swearing at great length.
"'Wilt never win a wife by fair means for all that," he sputtered.
"Then 'tis no more than prudence in me to wed my books."
So I spake, and hot on the heels of my saying came the message which
divorced me from them for good and all. For as Larke still lay upon
the floor, a clatter of horse's hoofs came to us through the open
window. The sound stopped at our door. Larke rose hastily, and leaned
out across the sill.
"It is an Englishman," he cried. "He comes to us."
The next moment a noise of altercation filled the air. I could hear
the shrill speech of our worthy landlady, and above it a man's voice
in the English dialect, growing ever louder and louder as though the
violence of his tone would translate his meaning. I followed Larke to
the window. The quiet street was alive with peeping faces, and just
beneath us stood the reason of the brawl, a short, thick-set man,
whose face was hidden by a large flapping hat. His horse stood in the
roadway in a lather of spume. For some reason, doubtless the
excitement of his manner, our hostess would not let him pass into the
house. She stood solidly filling the doorway, and for a little it
amused us to watch the man's vehement gesticulations; so little
thought had we of the many strange events which were to follow from
his visit. In a minute, however, he turned his face towards us, and I
recognised him as Nicholas Swasfield, the body-servant of my good
friend, Sir Julian Harnwood.
"Let him up!" I cried. "Let him up!"
"Yes, woman, let him up!" repeated Larke, and turning to me: "He hath
many choice and wonderful oaths, and I fain would add them to my
store."
Thereupon the woman drew reluctantly aside, and Swasfield bounded past
her into the passage. We heard him tumble heavily up the dark
stairway, cursing the country and its natives, and then with a great
bump of his body he burst open the door and lurched into the room. At
the sight of me he brake into a glad cry:
"Sir Julian, my master," he gasped, and stopped dead.
"Well, what of him?" I asked eagerly.
But he answered never a word; he stood mopping his brows with a great
blue handkerchief, which hid his face from us. 'Tis strange how
clearly I remember that handkerchief. It was embroidered at the
corners with anchors in white cotton, and it recurred to me with a
quaint irrelevancy that the man had been a sailor in his youth.
"Well, what of him?" I asked again with some sharpness. "Speak, man!
You had words and to spare below."
"He lies in Bristol gaol," at last he said, heaving great breaths
between his words, "and none but you can serve his turn."
With that he tore at his shirt above his heart, and made a little
tripping run to the table. He clutched at its edge and swayed forward
above it, his head loosely swinging between his shoulders.
"Hurry!" he said in a thick, strangled voice.
"Assizes--twenty-first--Jeffries."
And with a sudden convulsion he straightened himself, stood for a
second on the tips of his toes, with the veins ridged on his livid
face like purple weals, and then fell in a huddled lump upon the
floor. I sprang to the stair-head and shouted for some one to run for
a doctor. Jack was already loosening the man's shirt.
"It is a fit," he said, clasping a hand to his heart.
Luckily my bedroom gave onto the parlour, and between us we carried
him within and laid him gently on my bed. His eyelids were open and
his eyes fixed, but turned inwards, so that one saw but the whites of
them, while a light froth oozed through his locked teeth.
"He will die," I cried.
A ewer of water stood by the bedside, and this I emptied over his head
and shoulders, drowning the sheets, but to no other purpose. Our
landlady fetched up a bottle of Dutch schnapps, which was the only
spirit the house contained, but his jaws were too fast closed for us
to open them. So we stood all three watching him helplessly, while
those last words of his drummed at my heart. Jeffries! I knew enough
of the bloody work he had taken in hand that summer to assure me there
would be short shrift for Julian had he meddled in Monmouth's affairs.
On the other hand, I reflected, if such indeed was my friend's case,
wherein could I prove of effectual help? "None but you can serve his
turn," the fellow had said. Could Julian have fallen under another
charge? I was the more inclined to this conjecture, for that Julian
had been always staunchly loyal to the King, and, moreover, a constant
figure at the Court.
However, 'twas all idle guess-work, and there before my eyes was
stretched the one man, who could have disclosed the truth, struck down
in the very telling of his story! I began to fear that he would die
before the surgeon came. For he breathed heavily with a horrid sound
like a dog snoring.
All at once a thought flashed into my mind. He might have brought a
letter from Julian's hand. I searched his pockets on the instant; they
held nothing but a few English coins and some metal charms, such as
the ignorant are wont to carry on their persons to preserve them from
misadventure.
While I was thus engaged, the doctor was ushered into the room, very
deliberate in manner, and magnificent in his dress. Erudition was
marked in the very cock of his wig. I sprang towards him.
"Make him speak, Mynheer!" I implored. "He hath a message to deliver,
and it cannot wait."
But he put me aside with a wave of his hand and advanced towards the
bed, pursing his lips and frowning as one sunk in a profundity of
thought.
"Can you make him speak?" I asked again with some impatience. But
again he merely waved his hand, and taking a gilt box from his pocket,
inhaled a large pinch of snuff. Then he turned to Larke, who stood
holding the bottle of schnapps.
"Tell me, young gentleman," he said severely, "what time the fit took
him, and the manner of his seizure!"
Larke informed him hastily of what had passed, and he listened with
much sage bobbing of his head. Then to our hostess:
"My assistant is below, and hath my instruments. Send him up!"
He turned to us.
"I will bleed him," he said. "For what saith the learned Hippocrates?"
Whereupon he mouthed out a rigmarole of Latin phrases, wherein I could
detect neither cohesion nor significance.
"Leave him to me, gentlemen!" he continued with a third flourish of
his wrist. "Leave him to me and Hippocrates!"
"Which we do," I replied, "with the more confidence in that
Hippocrates had so much foreknowledge of the Latin tongue."
And so we got us back to the parlour. How the minutes dragged! Through
the door I could still hear the noise of the man's breathing; and now
and again the light clink of instruments and a trickling sound as of
blood dripping into a bason. I paced impatiently about the room, while
Jack sat him down at the table and began loading his pistols.
"The twenty-first!" I exclaimed, "and this day is the fourteenth.
Seven days, Jack! I have but seven days to win from here to Bristol."
I went to the window and leaned out. Swasfield's horse was standing
quietly in the road, tethered by the bridle to a tree.
"'Canst do it, Morrice, if the wind holds fair," replied Jack. "Heaven
send a wind!" and he rose from the table and joined me. Together we
stretched out to catch the least hint of a breeze. But not a breath
came to us; not a tree shimmered, not a shadow stirred. The world
slumbered in a hot stupor. It seemed you might have felt the air
vibrate with the passage of a single bird.
Of a sudden Larke cried out:
"Art sure 'tis the fourteenth to-day?"
With that we scrambled back into the room and searched for a calendar.
"Ay, lad!" he said ruefully as he discovered it; "'tis the fourteenth,
not a doubt of it."
I flung myself dejectedly on the couch. The volume of Horace lay open
by my hand, and I took it up, and quite idly, with no thought of what
I was doing, I wrote this date and the name of the month and the date
of the year on the margin of the page.
"Lord!" exclaimed Jack, flinging up his hands. "At the books again?
Hast no boots and spurs?"
I slipped the book into my pocket, and sprang to my feet. In the heat
of my anxiety I had forgotten everything but this half-spoken message.
But, or ever I could make a step, the door of the bedroom opened and
the surgeon stepped into the room.
"Can he speak now?" I asked.
"The fit has not passed," says he.
"Then in God's name, what ails the man?" cries Larke.
"It is a visitation," says the doctor, with an upward cast of his
eyes.
"It is a canting ass of a doctor," I yelled in a fury, and I clapped
my hat on my head.
"Your boots?" cried Larke.
"I'll e'en go in my shoes," I shouted back.
I snatched up one of Jack's pistols, rammed it into my pocket, and so
clattered downstairs and into the street. I untied Swasfield's horse
and sprang on to its back.
"Morrice!"
I looked up. Jack was leaning out from the window.
"Morrice," he said whimsically, and with a very winning smile, "'art
not so much of a woman after all."
I dug my heels into the horse's flanks and so rode out at a gallop
beneath the lime-trees to Rotterdam.