_The Episode Called In Ursula's Garden_
1. Love, and Love's Mimic
Her three lovers had praised her with many canzonets and sonnets on that
May morning as they sat in the rose-garden at Longaville, and the
sun-steeped leaves made a tempered aromatic shade about them. Afterward
they had drawn grass-blades to decide who should accompany the Lady
Ursula to the summer pavilion, that she might fetch her viol and sing
them a song of love, and in the sylvan lottery chance had favored the
Earl of Pevensey.
Left to themselves, the Marquis of Falmouth and Master Richard Mervale
regarded each the other, irresolutely, like strange curs uncertain
whether to fraternize or to fly at one another's throat. Then Master
Mervale lay down in the young grass, stretched himself, twirled his thin
black mustachios, and chuckled in luxurious content.
"Decidedly," said he, "your lordship is past master in the art of
wooing; no university in the world would refuse you a degree."
The marquis frowned. He was a great bluff man, with wheat-colored hair,
and was somewhat slow-witted. After a little he found the quizzical,
boyish face that mocked him irresistible, and he laughed, and unbent from
the dignified reserve which he had for a while maintained portentously.
"Master Mervale," said the marquis, "I will be frank with you, for you
appear a lad of good intelligence, as lads run, and barring a trifle of
affectation and a certain squeamishness in speech. When I would go
exploring into a woman's heart, I must pay my way in the land's current
coinage of compliments and high-pitched protestations. Yes, yes, such
sixpenny phrases suffice the seasoned traveler, who does not
ostentatiously display his gems while traveling. Now, in courtship,
Master Mervale, one traverses ground more dubious than the Indies, and
the truth, Master Mervale, is a jewel of great price."
Master Mervale raised his eyebrows. "The truth?" he queried, gently. "Now
how, I wonder, did your lordship happen to think of that remote
abstraction." For beyond doubt, Lord Falmouth's wooing had been that
morning of a rather florid sort.
However, "It would surely be indelicate," the marquis suggested, "to
allow even truth to appear quite unclothed in the presence of a lady?" He
smiled and took a short turn on the grass. "Look you, Master Mervale,"
said he, narrowing his pale-blue eyes to slits, "I have, somehow, a
disposition to confidence come upon me. Frankly, my passion for the Lady
Ursula burns more mildly than that which Antony bore the Egyptian; it is
less a fire to consume kingdoms than a candle wherewith to light a
contented home; and quite frankly, I mean to have her. The estates lie
convenient, the families are of equal rank, her father is agreed, and she
has a sufficiency of beauty; there are, in short, no obstacles to our
union save you and my lord of Pevensey, and these, I confess, I do not
fear. I can wait, Master Mervale. Oh, I am patient, Master Mervale, but,
I own, I cannot brook denial. It is I, or no one. By Saint Gregory! I
wear steel at my side, Master Mervale, that will serve for other purposes
save that of opening oysters!" So he blustered in the spring sunlight,
and frowned darkly when Master Mervale appeared the more amused than
impressed.
"Your patience shames Job the Patriarch," said Master Mervale, "yet, it
seems to me, my lord, you do not consider one thing. I grant you that
Pevensey and I are your equals neither in estate nor reputation; still,
setting modesty aside, is it not possible the Lady Ursula may come, in
time, to love one of us?"
"Setting common sense aside," said the marquis, stiffly, "it is possible
she may be smitten with the smallpox. Let us hope, however, that she may
escape both of these misfortunes."
The younger man refrained from speech for a while. Presently, "You liken
love to a plague," he said, "yet I have heard there was once a cousin of
the Lady Ursula's--a Mistress Katherine Beaufort--"
"Swounds!" Lord Falmouth had wheeled about, scowled, and then tapped
sharply upon the palm of one hand with the nail-bitten fingers of the
other. "Ay," said he, more slowly, "there was such a person."
"She loved you?" Master Mervale suggested.
"God help me!" replied the marquis; "we loved each other! I know not how
you came by your information, nor do I ask. Yet, it is ill to open an old
wound. I loved her; let that suffice." With a set face, he turned away
for a moment and gazed toward the high parapets of Longaville,
half-hidden by pale foliage and very white against the rain-washed sky;
then groaned, and glared angrily into the lad's upturned countenance.
"You talk of love," said the marquis; "a love compounded equally of
youthful imagination, a liking for fantastic phrases and a disposition
for caterwauling i' the moonlight. Ah, lad, lad!--if you but knew! That
is not love; to love is to go mad like a star-struck moth, and afterward
to strive in vain to forget, and to eat one's heart out in the
loneliness, and to hunger--hunger--" The marquis spread his big hands
helplessly, and then, with a quick, impatient gesture, swept back the
mass of wheat-colored hair that fell about his face. "Ah, Master
Mervale," he sighed, "I was right after all,--it is the cruelest plague
in the world, and that same smallpox leaves less troubling scars."
"Yet," Master Mervale said, with courteous interest, "you did not marry?"
"Marry!" His lordship snarled toward the sun and laughed. "Look you,
Master Mervale, I know not how far y'are acquainted with the business. It
was in Cornwall yonder years since; I was but a lad, and she a
wench,--Oh, such a wench, with tender blue eyes, and a faint, sweet voice
that could deny me nothing! God does not fashion her like every
day,--_Dieu qui la fist de ses deux mains_, saith the Frenchman." The
marquis paced the grass, gnawing his lip and debating with himself.
"Marry? Her family was good, but their deserts outranked their fortunes;
their crest was not the topmost feather in Fortune's cap, you understand;
somewhat sunken i' the world, Master Mervale, somewhat sunken. And I? My
father--God rest his bones!--was a cold, hard man, and my two elder
brothers--Holy Virgin, pray for them!--loved me none too well. I was the
cadet then: Heaven helps them that help themselves, says my father, and I
ha'n't a penny for you. My way was yet to make in the world; to saddle
myself with a dowerless wench--even a wench whose least 'Good-morning'
set a man's heart hammering at his ribs--would have been folly, Master
Mervale. Utter, improvident, shiftless, bedlamite folly, lad!"
"H'm!" Master Mervale cleared his throat, twirled his mustachios, and
smiled at some unspoken thought. "We pay for our follies in this
world, my lord, but I sometimes think that we pay even more dearly for
our wisdom."
"Ah, lad, lad!" the marquis cried, in a gust of anger; "I dare say, as
your smirking hints, it was a coward's act not to snap fingers at fate
and fathers and dare all! Well! I did not dare. We parted--in what
lamentable fashion is now of little import--and I set forth to seek my
fortune. Ho, it was a brave world then, Master Mervale, for all the tears
that were scarce dried on my cheeks! A world wherein the heavens were as
blue as a certain woman's eyes,--a world wherein a likely lad might see
far countries, waggle a good sword in Babylon and Tripolis and other
ultimate kingdoms, beard the Mussulman in his mosque, and at last fetch
home--though he might never love her, you understand--a soldan's daughter
for his wife,--
_With more gay gold about her middle
Than would buy half Northumberlee."_
His voice died away. He sighed and shrugged. "Eh, well!" said the
marquis; "I fought in Flanders somewhat--in Spain--what matter where?
Then, at last, sickened in Amsterdam, three years ago, where a messenger
comes to haul me out of bed as future Marquis of Falmouth. One brother
slain in a duel, Master Mervale; one killed in Wyatt's Rebellion; my
father dying, and--Heaven rest his soul!--not over-eager to meet his
Maker. There you have it, Master Mervale,--a right pleasant jest of
Fortune's perpetration,--I a marquis, my own master, fit mate for any
woman in the kingdom, and Kate--my Kate who was past human
praising!--vanished."
"Vanished?" The lad echoed the word, with wide eyes.
"Vanished in the night, and no sign nor rumor of her since! Gone to seek
me abroad, no doubt, poor wench! Dead, dead, beyond question, Master
Mervale!" The marquis swallowed, and rubbed his lips with the back of his
hand. "Ah, well!" said he; "it is an old sorrow!"
The male animal shaken by strong emotion is to his brothers an
embarrassing rather than a pathetic sight. Master Mervale, lowering his
eyes discreetly, rooted up several tufts of grass before he spoke. Then,
"My lord, you have known of love," said he, very slowly; "does there
survive no kindliness for aspiring lovers in you who have been one of us?
My lord of Pevensey, I think, loves the Lady Ursula, at least, as much as
you ever loved this Mistress Katherine; of my own adoration I do not
speak, save to say that I have sworn never to marry any other woman. Her
father favors you, for you are a match in a thousand; but you do not love
her. It matters little to you, my lord, whom she may wed; to us it
signifies a life's happiness. Will not the memory of that Cornish
lass--the memory of moonlit nights, and of those sweet, vain aspirations
and foiled day-dreams that in boyhood waked your blood even to such
brave folly as now possesses us,--will not the memory of these things
soften you, my lord?"
But Falmouth by this time appeared half regretful of his recent outburst,
and somewhat inclined to regard his companion as a dangerously plausible
young fellow who had very unwarrantably wormed himself into Lord
Falmouth's confidence. Falmouth's heavy jaw shut like a trap.
"By Saint Gregory!" said he; "if ever such notions soften me at all, I
pray to be in hell entirely melted! What I have told you of is past,
Master Mervale; and a wise man does not meditate unthriftily upon
spilt milk."
"You are adamant?" sighed the boy.
"The nether millstone," said the marquis, smiling grimly, "is in
comparison a pillow of down."
"Yet--yet the milk was sweet, my lord?" the boy suggested, with a faint
answering smile.
"Sweet!" The marquis' voice had a deep tremor.
"And if the choice lay between Ursula and Katherine?"
"Oh, fool!--Oh, pink-cheeked, utter ignorant fool!" the marquis groaned.
"Did I not say you knew nothing of love?"
"Heigho!" Master Mervale put aside all glum-faced discussion, with a
little yawn, and sprang to his feet. "Then we can but hope that
somewhere, somehow, Mistress Katherine yet lives and in her own good time
may reappear. And while we speak of reappearances--surely the Lady Ursula
is strangely tardy in making hers?"
The marquis' jealousy when it slumbered slept with an open ear. "Let us
join them," he said, shortly, and he started through the gardens with
quick, stiff strides.
2. _Song-guerdon_
They went westward toward the summer pavilion. Presently the marquis
blundered into the green gloom of the maze, laid out in the Italian
fashion, and was extricated only by the superior knowledge of Master
Mervale, who guided Falmouth skilfully and surely through manifold
intricacies, to open daylight.
Afterward they came to a close-shaven lawn, where the summer pavilion
stood beside the brook that widened here into an artificial pond, spread
with lily-pads and fringed with rushes. The Lady Ursula sat with the Earl
of Pevensey beneath a burgeoning maple-tree. Such rays as sifted through
into their cool retreat lay like splotches of wine upon the ground, and
there the taller grass-blades turned to needles of thin silver; one
palpitating beam, more daring than the rest, slanted straight toward the
little head of the Lady Ursula, converting her hair into a halo of misty
gold, that appeared out of place in this particular position. She seemed
a Bassarid who had somehow fallen heir to an aureole; for otherwise, to
phrase it sedately, there was about her no clamant suggestion of
saintship. At least, there is no record of any saint in the calendar who
ever looked with laughing gray-green eyes upon her lover and mocked at
the fervor and trepidation of his speech. This the Lady Ursula now did;
and, manifestly, enjoyed the doing of it.
Within the moment the Earl of Pevensey took up the viol that lay beside
them, and sang to her in the clear morning. He was sunbrowned and very
comely, and his big, black eyes were tender as he sang to her sitting
there in the shade. He himself sat at her feet in the sunlight.
Sang the Earl of Pevensey:
_"Ursula, spring wakes about us--
Wakes to mock at us and flout us
That so coldly do delay:
When the very birds are mating,
Pray you, why should we be waiting--
We that might be wed to-day!
"'Life is short,' the wise men tell us;--
Even those dusty, musty fellows
That have done with life,--and pass
Where the wraith of Aristotle
Hankers, vainly, for a bottle,
Youth and some frank Grecian lass._
"Ah, I warrant you;--and Zeno
Would not reason, now, could he know
One more chance to live and love:
For, at best, the merry May-time
Is a very fleeting play-time;--
Why, then, waste an hour thereof?
"Plato, Solon, Periander,
Seneca, Anaximander,
Pyrrho, and Parmenides!
Were one hour alone remaining
Would ye spend it in attaining
Learning, or to lips like these?
"Thus, I demonstrate by reason
Now is our predestined season
For the garnering of all bliss;
Prudence is but long-faced folly;
Cry a fig for melancholy!
Seal the bargain with a kiss"_
When he had ended, the Earl of Pevensey laughed and looked up into the
Lady Ursula's face with a long, hungry gaze; and the Lady Ursula laughed
likewise and spoke kindly to him, though the distance was too great for
the eavesdroppers to overhear. Then, after a little, the Lady Ursula bent
forward, out of the shade of the maple into the sun, so that the sunlight
fell upon her golden head and glowed in the depths of her hair, as she
kissed Pevensey, tenderly and without haste, full upon the lips.
3. _Falmouth Furens_
The Marquis of Falmouth caught Master Mervale's arm in a grip that made
the boy wince. Lord Falmouth's look was murderous, as he turned in the
shadow of a white-lilac bush and spoke carefully through sharp breaths
that shook his great body.
"There are," said he, "certain matters I must immediately discuss with my
lord of Pevensey. I desire you, Master Mervale, to fetch him to the spot
where we parted last, so that we may talk over these matters quietly and
undisturbed. For else--go, lad, and fetch him!"
For a moment the boy faced the half-shut pale eyes that were like coals
smouldering behind a veil of gray ash. Then he shrugged his shoulders,
sauntered forward, and doffed his hat to the Lady Ursula. There followed
much laughter among the three, many explanations from Master Mervale,
and yet more laughter from the lady and the earl. The marquis ground his
big, white teeth as he listened, and he appeared to disapprove of so
much mirth.
"Foh, the hyenas! the apes, the vile magpies!" the marquis observed. He
heaved a sigh of relief, as the Earl of Pevensey, raising his hands
lightly toward heaven, laughed once more, and departed into the
thicket. Lord Falmouth laughed in turn, though not very pleasantly.
Afterward he loosened his sword in the scabbard and wheeled back to seek
their rendezvous in the shadowed place where they had made sonnets to
the Lady Ursula.
For some ten minutes the marquis strode proudly through the maze,
pondering, by the look of him, on the more fatal tricks of fencing. In a
quarter of an hour he was lost in a wilderness of trim yew-hedges which
confronted him stiffly at every outlet and branched off into innumerable
gravelled alleys that led nowhither.
"Swounds!" said the marquis. He retraced his steps impatiently. He cast
his hat upon the ground in seething desperation. He turned in a different
direction, and in two minutes trod upon his discarded head-gear.
"Holy Gregory!" the marquis commented. He meditated for a moment, then
caught up his sword close to his side and plunged into the nearest
hedge. After a little he came out, with a scratched face and a scant
breath, into another alley. As the crow flies, he went through the maze
of Longaville, leaving in his rear desolation and snapped yew-twigs. He
came out of the ruin behind the white-lilac bush, where he had stood and
had heard the Earl of Pevensey sing to the Lady Ursula, and had seen
what followed.
The marquis wiped his brow. He looked out over the lawn and breathed
heavily. The Lady Ursula still sat beneath the maple, and beside her was
Master Mervale, whose arm girdled her waist. Her arm was about his neck,
and she listened as he talked eagerly with many gestures. Then they both
laughed and kissed each other.
"Oh, defend me!" groaned the marquis. Once more he wiped his brow, as he
crouched behind the white-lilac bush. "Why, the woman is a second
Messalina!" he said. "Oh, the trollop! the wanton! Oh, holy Gregory! Yet
I must be quiet--quiet as a sucking lamb, that I may strike afterward as
a roaring lion. Is this your innocence, Mistress Ursula, that cannot
endure the spoken name of a spade? Oh, splendor of God!"
Thus he raged behind the white-lilac bush while they laughed and kissed
under the maple-tree. After a space they parted. The Lady Ursula, still
laughing, lifted the branches of the rearward thicket and disappeared
in the path which the Earl of Pevensey had taken. Master Mervale,
kissing his hand and laughing yet more loudly, lounged toward the
entrance of the maze.
The jackanapes (as anybody could see), was in a mood to be pleased with
himself. Smiles eddied about the boy's face, his heels skipped,
disdaining the honest grass; and presently he broke into a glad little
song, all trills and shakes, like that of a bird ecstasizing over the
perfections of his mate.
Sang Master Mervale:
_"Listen, all lovers! the spring is here
And the world is not amiss;
As long as laughter is good to hear,
And lips are good to kiss,
As long as Youth and Spring endure,
There is never an evil past a cure
And the world is never amiss.
"O lovers all, I bid ye declare
The world is a pleasant place;--
Give thanks to God for the gift so fair,
Give thanks for His singular grace!
Give thanks for Youth and Love and Spring!
Give thanks, as gentlefolk should, and sing,
'The world is a pleasant place!'"_
In mid-skip Master Mervale here desisted, his voice trailing into
inarticulate vowels. After many angry throes, a white-lilac bush had been
delivered of the Marquis of Falmouth, who now confronted Master Mervale,
furiously moved.
4. _Love Rises from un-Cytherean Waters_
"I have heard, Master Mervale," said the marquis, gently, "that love
is blind?"
The boy stared at the white face, that had before his eyes veiled rage
with a crooked smile. So you may see the cat, tense for the fatal spring,
relax and with one paw indolently flip the mouse.
"It is an ancient fable, my lord," the boy said, smiling, and made as
though to pass.
"Indeed," said the marquis, courteously, but without yielding an inch,
"it is a very reassuring fable: for," he continued, meditatively, "were
the eyes of all lovers suddenly opened, Master Mervale, I suspect it
would prove a red hour for the world. There would be both tempers and
reputations lost, Master Mervale; there would be sword-thrusts; there
would be corpses, Master Mervale."
"Doubtless, my lord," the lad assented, striving to jest and have done;
"for all flesh is frail, and as the flesh of woman is frailer than that
of man, so is it, as I remember to have read, the more easily entrapped
by the gross snares of the devil, as was over-well proved by the
serpent's beguiling deceit of Eve at the beginning."
"Yet, Master Mervale," pursued the marquis, equably, but without smiling,
"there be lovers in the world that have eyes?"
"Doubtless, my lord," said the boy.
"There also be women in the world, Master Mervale," Lord Falmouth
suggested, with a deeper gravity, "that are but the handsome sepulchres
of iniquity,--ay, and for the major part of women, those miracles which
are their bodies, compact of white and gold and sprightly color though
they be, serve as the lovely cerements of corruption."
"Doubtless, my lord. The devil, as they say, is homelier with that sex."
"There also be swords in the world, Master Mervale?" purred the marquis.
He touched his own sword as he spoke.
"My lord--!" the boy cried, with a gasp.
"Now, swords have at least three uses, Master Mervale," Falmouth
continued. "With a sword one may pick a cork from a bottle; with a sword
one may toast cheese about the Twelfth Night fire; and with a sword one
may spit a man, Master Mervale,--ay, even an ambling, pink-faced, lisping
lad that cannot boo at a goose, Master Mervale. I have no inclination,
Master Mervale, just now, for either wine or toasted cheese."
"I do not understand you, my lord," said the boy, in a thin voice.
"Indeed, I think we understand each other perfectly," said the marquis.
"For I have been very frank with you, and I have watched you from behind
this bush."
The boy raised his hand as though to speak.
"Look you, Master Mervale," the marquis argued, "you and my lord of
Pevensey and I be brave fellows; we need a wide world to bustle in. Now,
the thought has come to me that this small planet of ours is scarcely
commodious enough for all three. There be purgatory and Heaven, and yet
another place, Master Mervale; why, then, crowd one another?"
"My lord," said the boy, dully, "I do not understand you."
"Holy Gregory!" scoffed the marquis; "surely my meaning is plain enough!
it is to kill you first, and my lord of Pevensey afterward! Y'are
phoenixes, Master Mervale, Arabian birds! Y'are too good for this world.
Longaville is not fit to be trodden under your feet; and therefore it is
my intention that you leave Longaville feet first. Draw, Master
Mervale!" cried the marquis, his light hair falling about his flushed,
handsome face as he laughed joyously, and flashed his sword in the
spring sunshine.
The boy sprang back, with an inarticulate cry; then gulped some dignity
into himself and spoke. "My lord," he said, "I admit that explanation may
seem necessary."
"You will render it, if to anybody, Master Mervale, to my heir, who will
doubtless accord it such credence as it merits. For my part, having two
duels on my hands to-day, I have no time to listen to a romance out of
the Hundred Merry Tales."
Falmouth had placed himself on guard; but Master Mervale stood with
chattering teeth and irresolute, groping hands, and made no effort to
draw. "Oh, the block! the curd-faced cheat!" cried the marquis. "Will
nothing move you?" With his left hand he struck at the boy.
Thereupon Master Mervale gasped, and turning with a great sob, ran
through the gardens. The marquis laughed discordantly; then he followed,
taking big leaps as he ran and flourishing his sword.
"Oh, the coward!" he shouted; "Oh, the milk-livered rogue! Oh, you
paltry rabbit!"
So they came to the bank of the artificial pond. Master Mervale swerved
as with an oath the marquis pounced at him. Master Mervale's foot caught
in the root of a great willow, and Master Mervale splashed into ten feet
of still water, that glistened like quicksilver in the sunlight.
"Oh, Saint Gregory!" the marquis cried, and clasped his sides in noisy
mirth; "was there no other way to cool your courage? Paddle out and be
flogged, Master Hare-heels!" he called. The boy had come to the surface
and was swimming aimlessly, parallel to the bank. "Now I have heard,"
said the marquis, as he walked beside him, "that water swells a man. Pray
Heaven, it may swell his heart a thousandfold or so, and thus hearten him
for wholesome exercise after his ducking--a friendly thrust or two, a
little judicious bloodletting to ward off the effects of the damp."
The marquis started as Master Mervale grounded on a shallow and rose,
dripping, knee-deep among the lily-pads. "Oh, splendor of God!" cried
the marquis.
Master Mervale had risen from his bath almost clean-shaven; only one
sodden half of his mustachios clung to his upper lip, and as he rubbed
the water from his eyes, this remaining half also fell away from the
boy's face.
"Oh, splendor of God!" groaned the marquis. He splashed noisily into
the water. "O Kate, Kate!" he cried, his arms about Master Mervale.
"Oh, blind, blind, blind! O heart's dearest! Oh, my dear, my dear!"
he observed.
Master Mervale slipped from his embrace and waded to dry land. "My
lord,--" he began, demurely.
"My lady wife,--" said his lordship of Falmouth, with a tremulous smile.
He paused, and passed his hand over his brow. "And yet I do not
understand," he said. "Y'are dead; y'are buried. It was a frightened boy
I struck." He spread out his strong arms. "O world! O sun! O stars!" he
cried; "she is come back to me from the grave. O little world! small
shining planet! I think that I could crush you in my hands!"
"Meanwhile," Master Mervale suggested, after an interval, "it is I that
you are crushing." He sighed,--though not very deeply,--and continued,
with a hiatus: "They would have wedded me to Lucius Rossmore, and I could
not--I could not--"
"That skinflint! that palsied goat!" the marquis growled.
"He was wealthy," said Master Mervale. Then he sighed once more. "There
seemed only you,--only you in all the world. A man might come to you in
those far-off countries: a woman might not. I fled by night, my lord, by
the aid of a waiting-woman; became a man by the aid of a tailor; and set
out to find you by the aid of such impudence as I might muster. But luck
did not travel with me. I followed you through Flanders, Italy,
Spain,--always just too late; always finding the bird flown, the nest yet
warm. Presently I heard you were become Marquis of Falmouth; then I gave
up the quest."
"I would suggest," said the marquis, "that my name is Stephen;--but why,
in the devil's name, should you give up a quest so laudable?"
"Stephen Allonby, my lord," said Master Mervale, sadly, "was not Marquis
of Falmouth; as Marquis of Falmouth, you might look to mate with any
woman short of the Queen."
"To tell you a secret," the marquis whispered, "I look to mate with one
beside whom the Queen--not to speak treason--is but a lean-faced, yellow
piece of affectation. I aim higher than royalty, heart's
dearest,--aspiring to one beside whom empresses are but common hussies."
"And Ursula?" asked Master Mervale, gently.
"Holy Gregory!" cried the marquis, "I had forgot! Poor wench, poor wench!
I must withdraw my suit warily,--firmly, of course, yet very kindlily,
you understand, so as to grieve her no more than must be. Poor
wench!--well, after all," he hopefully suggested, "there is yet
Pevensey."
"O Stephen! Stephen!" Master Mervale murmured; "Why, there was never any
other but Pevensey! For Ursula knows all,--knows there was never any
more manhood in Master Mervale's disposition than might be gummed on with
a play-actor's mustachios! Why, she is my cousin, Stephen,--my cousin and
good friend, to whom I came at once on reaching England, to find you,
favored by her father, pestering her with your suit, and the poor girl
well-nigh at her wits' end because she might not have Pevensey. So," said
Master Mervale, "we put our heads together, Stephen, as you observe."
"Indeed," my lord of Falmouth said, "it would seem that you two wenches
have, between you, concocted a very pleasant comedy."
"It was not all a comedy," sighed Master Mervale,--"not all a comedy,
Stephen, until to-day when you told Master Mervale the story of Katherine
Beaufort. For I did not know--I could not know--"
"And now?" my lord of Falmouth queried.
"H'm!" cried Master Mervale, and he tossed his head. "You are very
unreasonable in anger! you are a veritable Turk! you struck me!"
The marquis rose, bowing low to his former adversary. "Master Mervale,"
said the marquis, "I hereby tender you my unreserved apologies for the
affront I put upon you. I protest I was vastly mistaken in your
disposition and hold you as valorous a gentleman as was ever made by
barbers' tricks; and you are at liberty to bestow as many kisses and
caresses upon the Lady Ursula as you may elect, reserving, however, a
reasonable sufficiency for one that shall be nameless. Are we friends,
Master Mervale?"
Master Mervale rested his head upon Lord Falmouth's shoulder, and sighed
happily. Master Mervale laughed,--a low and gentle laugh that was vibrant
with content. But Master Mervale said nothing, because there seemed to be
between these two, who were young in the world's recaptured youth, no
longer any need of idle speaking.
* * * * *
JUNE 1, 1593
_"She was the admirablest lady that ever lived: therefore, Master Doctor,
if you will do us that favor, as to let us see that peerless dame, we
should think ourselves much beholding unto you."_
_There was a double wedding some two weeks later in the chapel at
Longaville: and each marriage appears to have been happy enough.
The tenth Marquis of Falmouth had begotten sixteen children within
seventeen years, at the end of which period his wife unluckily died in
producing a final pledge of affection. This child, a daughter, survived,
and was christened Cynthia: of her you may hear later.
Meanwhile the Earl and the Countess of Pevensey had propagated more
moderately; and Pevensey had played a larger part in public life than was
allotted to Falmouth, who did not shine at Court. Pevensey, indeed, has
his sizable niche in history: his Irish expeditions, in 1575, were once
notorious, as well as the circumstances of the earl's death in that year
at Triloch Lenoch. His more famous son, then a boy of eight, succeeded to
the title, and somewhat later, as the world knows, to the hazardous
position of chief favorite to Queen Elizabeth.
"For Pevensey has the vision of a poet,"--thus Langard quotes the lonely
old Queen,--"and to balance it, such mathematics as add two and two
correctly, where you others smirk and assure me it sums up to whatever
the Queen prefers. I have need of Pevensey: in this parched little age
all England has need of Pevensey."
That is as it may have been: at all events, it is with this Lord
Pevensey, at the height of his power, that we have now to do._