Beneath a great oak-tree, where light and shadow made a checkered round,
Mistress Damaris Sedley sat upon the earth in a gown of rose-colored
silk. Across her knee, under her clasped hands, lay a light racket, for
she had strayed this way from battledore and shuttlecock and the
sprightly company of maids of honor and gentlemen pensioners engaged
thereat. She was a fair lady, of a clear pallor, with a red mouth very
subtly charming, and dark eyes beneath level brows. Her eyes had depths
on depths: to one player of battledore and shuttlecock they were merely
large brown orbs; another might find in them worlds below worlds; a
third, going deeper, might, Actæon-like, surprise the bare soul. A
curiously wrought net of gold caught her dark hair in its meshes, and
pearls were in her ears, and around the white column of her throat
rising between the ruff's gossamer walls. She fingered the racket, idly
listening the while for a foot-fall beyond her round of trees. Hearing
it at last, and taking it for her brother's, she looked up with a proud
and tender smile.
"Fie upon thee for a laggard, Henry!" she began: "I warrant thy Captain
meets not his Dione with so slow a step!" Then, seeing who stood before
her, she left her seat between the oak roots and curtsied low. "Sir
Mortimer Ferne," she said, and rising to her full height, met his eyes
with that deeper gaze of hers.
Ferne advanced, and bending his knee to the short turf, took and kissed
her hand. "Fair and sweet lady," he said, "I made suit to your brother,
and he has given me, his friend, this happy chance. Now I make my
supplication to you, to whom I would be that, and more. All this week
have I vainly sought for speech with you alone. But now these blessed
trees hem us round; there is none to spy or listen--and here is a mossy
bank, fit throne for a faery queen. Will you hear me speak?"
The maid of honor looked at him with rose bloom upon her cheeks, and in
her eyes, although they smiled, a moisture as of half-sprung tears. "Is
it of Henry?" she asked. "Ah, sir, you have been so good to him! He is
very dear to me.... I would that I could thank you--"
As she spoke she moved with him to the green bank, sat down, and clasped
her hands about her knees. The man who on the morrow should leave behind
him court and court ways, and all fair sights such as this, leaned
against the oak and looked down upon her. When, after a little silence,
he began to speak, it was like a right courtier of the day.
"Fair Mistress Damaris," he said, "your brother is my friend, but to-day
I would speak of my friend's friend, and that is myself, and your
servant, lady. To-morrow I go from this garden of the world, this
no-other Paradise, this court where Dian reigns, but where Venus comes
as a guest, her boy in her hand. Where I go I know not, nor what thread
Clotho is spinning. Strange dangers are to be found in strange places,
and Jove and lightning are not comfortable neighbors. Ulysses took moly
in his hand when there came to meet him Circe's gentlemen pensioners,
and Gyges's ring not only saved him from peril, but brought him wealth
and great honor. What silly mariner in my ship hath not bought or begged
mithridate or a pinch of achimenius wherewith to make good his voyage?
And shall not I, who have much more at stake, procure me an
enchantment?"
The lady's fringed lids lifted in one swift upward glance. "Your valor,
sir, should prove your surest charm. But there is the new alchemist--"
"He cannot serve my need, hath not what I want. I want--" He hesitated
for a moment; then spoke on with a certain restrained impetuosity that
became him well: "There is a honey-wax which, being glazed about the
heart, holdeth within it, forever, a song so sweet that the chanting of
the sirens matters not; there is that precious stone which, as the
magnet draweth the iron, so ever constraineth Honor, bidding him mount
every breach, climb higher, higher, higher yet! there is that fragrant
leaf which oft is fed with tears, and often sighing worn, yet, so worn,
inspireth valor more heroical than that of Achilles! Such a charm I
seek, sweet lady."
Mistress Damaris Sedley, a favorite of the Countess of Pembroke, and a
court lady of some months' standing, could parley euphuism with the
best, and yet to-day it seemed to her that plain English might better
serve the turn. However:
"Good gentleman," she answered, sedately, "I think that few are the bees
that gather so dainty a wax, but if they be flown to Hymettus, then to
Hymettus might one follow them; also that precious stone may be found,
though, alack! often enough a man is so poor a lapidary that, seeing
only the covering of circumstances, he misses the true sapphire! and for
that fragrant leaf, I have heard of it in my day--"
"It is called truelove," he said.
Damaris kept to the card: "My marvel, sir, is to hear you speak as
though you had not the charm you seem to seek. One blossom of the tree
Alpina is worth all store of roses; one ruby outvalueth many pearls; he
who hath already the word of magic needeth to buy no Venus's image; and
Sir Mortimer Ferne, secure in Dione's love, saileth, methinks, in
crystal seas, with slight danger from storm and wreck."
"Secure in Dione's love!" repeated Ferne. "Ah, lady, your shaft has
gone wide. I have sailed, and sailed, and sailed--ay, and in crystal
seas--and have seen blooms fairer than the tree Alpina, and have been in
the land of emeralds and where pearls do grow, and yet have never
gathered the fragrant leaf, that leaf of true and mutual love. It should
grow with the laurel and blend with the bay--ay, and be not missing from
the cypress wreath! But as yet I have it not--as yet I have it not."
Damaris gazed upon him with brown, incredulous eyes, and when she spoke
her words came somewhat breathlessly, having quite outgone the courtly
affectation of similes run mad.
"What mean you, sir? Not the love of Astrophel for Stella is better
known than that of Cleon for Dione! And, lo! now your own lines--Master
Dyer showed them to me but the other day copied into his book of songs:
'Nor in my watery wanderings am I crossed;
Where haven's wanted, there I haven find,
Nor e'er for me is star of guidance lost--'"
Her voice breaking a little, Ferne made nearer approach to the green
bank where she rested. "Do you learn by heart my verses, lady?"
he asked.
"Ay," she answered, "I did ever love sweet poetry." Her voice thrilled,
and she gazed past him at the blue heaven showing between the oak
leaves. "If prayer with every breath availeth," she said, "no doubt your
Dione will bring your safe return."
"Of whom do I write, calling her Dione?"
She shook her head. "I know not. None of us at court knows. Master Dyer
saith--but surely that one is not worthy--" She ceased to speak, nor
knew there had been in her tone both pain and wistfulness. Presently she
laughed out, with the facile gayety that one in her position must needs
be practised in. "Ah, sir, tell me her name! Is she of the court?"