What the poet had to tell might never have been known had he not chanced
to hear me speak to the maiden one day of Turlogh Luinech O'Neill, her
father, and the Lady Cantire, her step-dame. He pricked up his ears at
the names.
"Hath Fortuna then reserved it to her mortal favourite to discover in my
mistress, my paragon of all virtue, the Lady Rose O'Neill? My
Hollander, why this churlish secrecy? why told ye not as much before?"
"Why," said I, "I supposed you knew the name of the lady you call your
mistress."
"Groundling!" said he, "a poet needeth no name but Love and Beauty. But
had I known this lady was she you say, I had relieved my mind of a
notable piece of news for her ear."
"Say on, Sir Poet," said the maiden, who had approached and heard these
last words.
"Now then, mistress mine," said he, "and thank not this voiceless
dabbler in ink for the mercy, that travelling not a week before I
reached London, I chanced into the company of a stranger, who fell
captive to my wit, and displayed so lively a tooth for the sweets of
Parnassus--to wit, my poesy--that, hearing I was about to issue the same
imprint, prayed me enrich him with a copy. The which I condescended to
promise him. Being thus established in a brotherhood of poetic kinship,
we opened our hearts one to another. And in our talk he confessed to me
that he was an Irish gentleman in the service of one Turlogh Luinech
O'Neill, a notable chieftain in the Isle of the Saints; and that he
travelled to London on an errand to no less a man than her Majesty's
Secretary of State to report to him the death and burial of one Lady
Cantire, an aged servant of her Majesty, and sometime wife to the said
Turlogh."
This was news indeed; and the maiden's face flushed with many mingled
emotions as she heard it.
"Can it be true?" said she. "Sir Poet, tell me briefly what else this
gentleman had to tell of my father?"
"Nay, mistress mine, I can remember little else; for I was thinking not
of his master, but his poetic tooth; not of his defunct mistress, but of
my living muse. Yet, stay, he told me the old man was desolate, his
sons being all established elsewhere, and his one daughter lost. By
which I take it, he spoke of thy celestial self. And strange indeed if
the loss of such a one were not as blindness itself to one who hath
looked in they resplendent face."
"Humphrey," said the maiden, turning from the poet to me, and taking
Jeannette's little hand in hers, "this news means much to me. If it be
true, I must to my father."
A cloud that sweeps over the April sun could scarce have cast the gloom
which did this little speech on us who heard it. For the maiden, lady
as she was, had become a sister to us.
Yet she was resolved; and hearing that the poet had remembered where he
might hear of this gentleman in London, to deliver to him his poem, she
begged me to go with the man of verse and find him out, and if possible
bring him to her.
Which I did with no great difficulty. For the Irishman--who seemed a
sort of steward of Turlogh's household--was still in his lodgings,
waiting an audience with the Secretary's secretary. And when he heard
who it was had sent me, he fell on his knees and thanked the saints for
vouchsafing his master this great mercy; and, never looking twice at the
poet, he came with me joyfully to the maiden.
It was all as the poet had reported. And the fellow had somewhat more
to say. Which was that when the lady Cantire, now six months ago, had
returned home to die, she had confessed to her lord her wickedness with
respect to the maiden, whom she fully believed, despite her flight, to
be in the clutches of the wicked English captain, who had vowed to move
heaven and earth to find her, and (as had been reported), had been as
good as his word. Turlogh found it hard to forgive his lady this great
wrong, and, since her death, had longed for his child as he had never
longed before. Furthermore, being now old and past fighting, he and his
old foe, Sorley Boy, had become friends, and all was quiet in the
country of the Glynns.
There was naught to be said to all this, and the maiden, though the
tears stood in her eyes as she spoke, told us she must leave us and go
home to her father.
It went hard with me then. For my duty to Ludar seemed to demand that I
should see the maiden safe to her journey's end. Yet, while a shred of
hope remained that he still lived, how dare I quit the place I was in?
Besides, my master every day had more need of my service for his secret
printing, and was indeed so restless and nervous concerning the work,
that he even grudged my walking out of an evening, or stealing an hour
now and again in the company of my sweet Jeannette.