Brilliana feigned a cry of horror.
"I trust you did not eat your words."
Evander shook his head.
"I am not so hungry. Have I your leave to go?"
He made as if to depart; Brilliana met his motion with a little
frown.
"Are you so eager?" she asked, in a voice in which regret and
petulance were dexterously commingled.
Evander answered her gravely. "Yesterday you said that a Puritan
presence was hateful."
Brilliana laughed blithely and her curls quivered in the sunshine.
"You must not harp on a mad maid's anger. Yesterday you were my
enemy, a thing of threats and treason. To-day all's different; to-day
you are my guest. Soon you will ride hence, and we will, if
Providence please, never meet again. But for a span of hours let us
make believe to be friend and friend, till Colonel Cromwell send my
cousin and your liberty."
Evander was tempted to quarrel with himself for being so ready to
welcome this overture. But yesterday this woman had spattered him
with insults, snared him on a strained plea, bargained away his life
for the body of a spy. Yesterday she had shuddered at the thought of
any link of kinship between them, as she might have shuddered at
kinship with a wronger of women, a killer of children, a coward. Yet
to-day, as she stood there, sunshine on her hair, sunshine in her
eyes, a fairy lady standing in that circle of solemn yews, he could
find in his heart no regret for anything that had brought him to her
presence. He would take gladly what she offered gayly, two days of
friendship with so radiant a maid--and then? He left that thought
unanswered to reply to Brilliana.
"Madam," he said, with a very ceremonious bow, "I will pretend that
we are going to be friends till the end of my life."
Brilliana clapped her hands like a child that has been promised some
coveted comfit.
"You are brave at make-believe. In the mean time let us keep each
other company a little. Surely it is dull for a man of action to be
a prisoner, and for my own part I mope sadly now that my little war
is well over."
She had seated herself as she spoke, and she motioned to Evander to
take his place by her side. When she paused he asked:
"Are you so strenuous an amazon?"
She answered him very earnestly:
"I miss the splendid music of the siege, the stir of arms, the bustle
of giving order, the alertness of expectation. I did not think a
woman's life could be tuned to so high a diapason. Just think of it!
Yesterday, and for many yesterdays, I was a leaguered lady, a
priestess of battles; I stood for the King; existence was one fierce
ecstasy. To drop from that brisk spin and whetted edge of life into
this housewife's twilight is all one with being some sea-old admiral
and drowning in a canal."
The daughters of Israel could not have thrown more sadness into their
voice, Evander thought, as they sang by the waters of Babylon. If her
face was fair in animation, it seemed still more fair in sadness.
"Has the Lady of Harby no employment," he asked, gently, "to spur the
trudging time?"
Brilliana laughed rather cheerlessly.
"Oh, mercy, yes! Can she not overwatch the gardener to see that he
planteth the right sort of herbs and flowers at the new of the moon,
at moon full, and at moon old? She can chat with Mistress Cook of
sallets and fricassees and fritters; she can count the linen; she can
preserve quinces; she can distil you aqua composita or imperial
water, or water of Bettony, against she grow old; she can be
dairy-wise, cellar-wise, laundry-wise--oh, there are a thousand
thousand things she can do if she want to do them, but the plague of
it is, since I have burned powder, these decent drudgeries no longer
divert me."
She gave a little sigh as she ended her enumeration of a housewife's
tasks, and then banished the sigh with a smile. Evander found himself
thinking that a man might count himself happy for whom this lady
should sigh so at parting and smile so in welcome. But what he said
was:
"Against your next distillation I can give you a very praisable
recipe for a cordial. It is a Swedish fancy and much favored by the
ladies of the North."
Brilliana looked him full in the face and laughed very merrily, and
he felt his cheeks redden at her gaze and her mirth.
"Was there ever such a man-marvel?" she asked. "All my people praise
you for some different accomplishment. A horseman, a gardener, the
best at fence, the best, too, with a cudgel--"
"Ah, madam," Evander interrupted, apologetically, "pray how has that
come to your ears?"
"Never mind how it came," Brilliana answered, "so that it has come
and that I owe you no ill-will for teaching a foolish gentleman a
lesson. But you can shoot, it seems, and play games, and are apt in
out-door arts and wise in out-of-doors wisdom--for all the world like
a country gentleman."
"Madam, I am, as I hope, a gentleman, and as for the country
knowledge, I have lived its life in many lands and learned something
by the way."
"And now," Brilliana bantered on, "you boast some science of the
still-room, and Mistress Satchell speaks of a Spanish manner of
grilling capons. Are you, perhaps, a herald as well as a master cook,
and do you know something of the gentle and joyous craft of the
huntsman?"
Evander took her in her humor and bandied back the ball of
qualification.
"I can prick a coat indifferently well," he responded, solemnly, "and
if such trifles delight you, I can blaze arms by the days of the week
or the ages of man or the flowers of the field, though I hold that a
true herald will never stray beyond colors."
Brilliana nodded her head with an air of profound approval. "Better
and better," she murmured. Evander went on with his catalogue of
self-compliment.
"And as for my woodcraft, I can name you all the names of a male
deer, from hind calf, year by year, through brocket and spayed, and
staggard and stag, till his sixth year, when he is truly a hart and
has his rights of brow, bay, and tray antlers. I am skilled in the
uses of falcon-gentle, gerfalcon, saker, lanner, merlin, hobby,
goshawk, sparrow-hawk, and musket--"
Brilliana interrupted him with an impetuous gesture of command, and
Evander made an end of his display.
"Enough, enough!" she cried. "I feel like Balkis when she came to sip
wisdom from Solomon's goblet. If I question you further I may find
that, like my Lord Verulam, you have taken all knowledge for your
province. This is something uncanny in a Puritan."
Evander protested.
"Why should a man deny the arts of life because he finds strength in
the faith of the Puritans?"
"I know not why," Brilliana answered, "but so it is generally
believed among us who are not Puritans."
"There are fanatic fellows with us as in all causes," Evander
admitted, "and some, it may be, who wear moroseness to gain favor.
But these are no more than the fringe of a stout cloak. I am no
exceptional Puritan, I promise you. Colonel Cromwell himself--"
Brilliana interrupted him with a frowning imperiousness.
"Let us not talk of Colonel Cromwell," she commanded.
"I wish you would let me speak of Colonel Cromwell," Evander pleaded.
"He has long been my dear friend, and--"
"Let us not talk of Colonel Cromwell," Brilliana repeated, with a
peremptory stamp of the foot. "I want to talk of you and your curious
Puritanism. I thought you were all too hypocritically devout to have
any care for the toys and colors of life."
"To be devout is not to be hypocritical," Evander urged, gently.
"And, to speak for myself, I hope I am devout, but I do not find my
faith weakened by honorable enjoyment of honorable pleasures. Yet,
indeed, what poor accomplishments I can lay claim to--and to afford
you diversion, I have somewhat exaggerated their scope and
number--are due directly to my being a Puritan--"
"You are pleased to be paradoxical," Brilliana asserted. Evander put
the suggestion aside with a head shake.
"To my being a Puritan and to my being of your kin. When I was a boy
I learned of that kinship, learned how her marriage with a Puritan
had earned for a woman of your race the scorn, indeed the hatred of
her family, or those who should most and best have loved her."
"You do not understand how strongly those who think as we think feel
on such a matter," Brilliana urged, one-half of her spirit angry that
she was speaking almost apologetically, the other half vexed that the
first half was not more angry.
"Forgive me," said Evander, "but I do understand; I understand very
well; I made it my business to understand. And, therefore, I resolved
that so far as in me lay I would show those who scorned my people and
my creed that a Puritan might compete with his enemies in all the
arts and graces they held most dear, and not come off the worst in
all encounters."
"That was a brave resolve!" Brilliana's eyes and voice applauded
him. He flushed a little as he went on.
"It was a kind of oath of Hannibal. God was gracious in the gift of a
strong will, and I stuck to my purpose. I mastered arts, acquired
tongues, forced myself to dexterity in all manly exercises. I had a
modest patrimony which allowed me to travel after I left Cambridge,
and so gain that knowledge of the world which is so dear to English
gentlemen. And always in my thoughts it was: some day I may meet some
son of the house that cast us out and show him that a Puritan might
fear God and yet ride a horse, fly a hawk, and use a sword with the
best of his enemies."
"Instead of which," said Brilliana, as he paused, "you meet a
daughter of the house and play your well-practised part to her." Her
voice was stern now and her eyes shone fiercely as she leaned forward
and continued in a low voice, "Was this the cause of your coming to
Harby?"
"No," Evander answered. "I should never have come to Harby of my own
accord. But news came to Cambridge of your flying the King's flag.
The example was dangerous; Harby was a good house for either side to
hold. Colonel Cromwell commanded me to march with the volunteers I
had raised at Cambridge to secure Harby in the name of the
Parliament."
"And you were very glad to obey," Brilliana said, bitterly, and again
Evander shook his head.
"I was very sorry to obey. But I had no choice. Colonel Cromwell was
my father's friend; he knew the story of my people; he set it upon me
as a special seal for righteousness that I should do this thing. 'Kin
shall be set against kin in this strife,' he said, 'father against
son, and brother against brother. Go forth in the name of the Lord
and pluck the banner of Baal from the wall of Harby.' And I went."
Brilliana, lifting her head, looked over the green wall of yews to
where, in the cool, gray-blue of the October sky, the royal standard
fluttered its gaudy folds in the wind. She said nothing, but her
smile spoke whole volumes of victories; the panegyrics of a thousand
triumphs gleamed in her eyes. Evander read smile and gleam rightly.
"True, I failed," he admitted. "Yet I may not say that I am sorry,
for if I had not failed I should have lost a friend."
He looked admiringly at her, but Brilliana drew herself up stiffly
and regarded him coldly.
"You may be my kinsman without being my friend," she said, with a
sourness which had the effect of making Evander laugh like a boy.
"Why, lady," he protested, "it is not ten minutes since that you
proffered me your friendship."
"Did I so?" Brilliana asked, puckering her brows as if in doubt,
though she had not the least doubt upon the matter.
"Indeed, madam," said Evander, very earnestly, "friends for a
lifetime." Brilliana snapped contradiction.
"No, no; it was you who said that. I admit the friendship for three
days."
"And I assert the friendship of a lifetime," Evander persisted. His
voice and his eyes were very merry, but there came an unconquerable
gnawing at his heart that, in spite of the fair place and the fair
face and the sweet discourse, life for him meant no more than a space
of three days. Well, then, he would live his three days bravely,
brightly. He lifted his eyes to the lady.
"Are you of Master Amiens' school?" he asked--
"'Most friendship is feigning, most love is mere folly.'"
She made no reply to his question, but its matter surprised her and
prompted her to another.
"Do you go to Master Shakespeare's school?" she asked; and even as
she spoke she leaned forward to look at the book he had laid down and
to which, till that moment, she had paid no heed. She drew it towards
her and saw what it was.
"Why, here are his plays. Can you affect him when 'tis known that the
King loves him?"
"I would the King had no worse counsellors," Evander said, gravely.
Brilliana had lifted the big book onto her lap and was turning the
pages tenderly, pausing here and there with loving murmurs.
"Had I been a man," she said, softly, "I should have turned player
for the pleasure to speak such golden words."
Evander, watching her fair, lowered face under its crown of dark
hair, thought of all that Imogen might mean, or Rosalind or Juliet,
did each of these dear ones show on the stage like this lady. He gave
the odd thought form in speech.
"It is strange," he said, almost to himself, "that a Cavalier world
is content without women players."
Brilliana lifted her face from the book, and there was a look of
astonishment and even of pain upon it.
"Oh, that is quite another matter," she said, quickly. "That could
never come to pass."
Evander's Puritanism, recalled to recollection of itself, felt
compelled to assent.
"I trust not," he said, gravely. He was looking at Brilliana with
eyes that were honestly admiring. She rose from her seat.
"I must dismiss you now," she said, "for I have much to do ere
dinner. You will dine with me, I pray."
Evander made her a not uncourtly bow.
"If I be not unwelcome," he suggested.
Brilliana shook her head very positively.
"We are pledged friends for the time, and friends love to break bread
together."
There was no countering this argument. Evander took up the folio and
made its owner another bow.
"I will attend you at the dinner-hour," he said. "This treasure I
restore to its home."
As the Parliament man moved away across the grass, his image very
dark against its green, Brilliana looked after him, nursing her chin
in her palm and her elbow on her knee. As he entered the house with
the big book under his arm she took out her pretty handkerchief, and
with much deliberation tied a small knot in one corner of it.
"Master Puritan, Master Puritan," she murmured, "I must tie a knot in
my handkerchief to remind me that you and I are enemies."