GILES
"The King?" Dick cried, half-incredulously. "The King!" He grew
hot, then cold, as he stood there, half-expecting some awful
retribution to follow on his audacities. But then the King had not
been angry; he had not seemed displeased. "The King!" he cried again.
"The King!" echoed a voice behind him--a voice that carried him back
to the leads of Dent. "Have you no word for Giles after all these
months?"
"Giles!" Dick cried, spinning round. But there was only the
gentleman in white, whom the King had addressed as "My lord".
"Don't you know me, little Captain?" The gentleman moved to the
window, where the last glow from the evening sky was lingering still.
"See!" he said.
Dick searched the face. Yes, there were the eyes, the gray, kind
eyes of Giles; but the hair cut square across the brow, and falling
in curls on the shoulders, was not like Giles's. The long beard was
gone, too, and under the upturned moustaches was a mouth Dick did not
know. But there were the eyes, and as his own scanned more closely
the costly dress, he saw his own little dagger in its worn red
leather sheath, hanging by the courtier's rapier at his side.
"Giles!" he said softly, and flung himself into his friend's arms.
Some time later Giles said: "But, come! We have affairs, Dick. To
business, with what appetite we may!"
"Well, I'm hungry enough," said Dick simply.
There was a tap at the door, and a magnificent gentleman entered.
"Her Majesty holds you excused from supping with her, my lord," he
said, bowing. "And His Majesty requests me to add he will not expect
to see you these three days, with his farewells to you, and," said
the gentleman, almost choking over the words, as if they outraged his
sense of propriety, "his love to Sir Richard Chester of Dent."
"Convey my most profound thanks to Her Majesty, sir, for her
graciousness," said Giles calmly. "And my humble thanks to His
Majesty, also, if you please."
"And my humble thanks also," Dick stammered. "And my love, sir,
please say, all Dick Chester's love."
The gentleman visibly shuddered as he bowed.
"Dick! Dick!" Giles said, laughing, "I should never wonder if that
gentleman had a fit. What do you mean by sending messages like that,
sir? Ah, but you're fickle! First me, then my master, then the--the
Lady Dorothy is it? Then again my master. All your love, you pygmy!
Cæsar's ghost! Where do you keep it all?"
Dick laughed.
"Don't you love people, then, Giles? You do His Majesty, and--and--"
"And who, prithee?" demanded Giles.
"Why, and me, Giles dear," said Dick serenely.
"Come along," said Giles laughing again. "We've made free with His
Majesty's rooms long enough. We will go and hunt up some officer who
will take his troop over to your place to-night. 'Twould never do
for us to sleep and let John Dent steal a march on us, eh? I know my
man! As like as not he'll hear of your coming hither and do his best
to outwit us."
"But shall we not go to-night, Giles? Her Ladyship will be so
disturbed by my absence."
"Your arrival would disturb her more at this hour, surely, Dick? The
officers I send will keep her--her household safe until morning, and
one of them, when he has seen that all is well, shall ride back even
to-night and report to us."
They were going down the passage that led from the King's rooms to
the hall. In the hall the guard saluted Giles, and looked somewhat
sourly at Dick.
"Giles," said Dick, pulling his friend back as he was turning towards
the door, "there's Lionel! I have but just recalled him."
"Who and what--" began Giles.
"He brought me here," Dick hurriedly explained. "He's a man of my
Lord Newcastle's. I want to thank him now." He had dragged Giles to
the foot of the steps. "I'd never have got here but for him. Will
you come, Giles? He's up here."
"I'll thank him myself, do you leave me breath enough," said Giles
good-humouredly.
The corridor above was crowded with noblemen's and ladies' servants
and pages, some playing cards, some sitting, some standing, but all,
it seemed to Dick, talking at once. He could not see Lionel
anywhere. He would have pressed through the throng to seek him, but
that, it appeared, was not Giles's way. Drawing Dick back he said
quietly, but in a voice that stilled the tumult, and travelled down
the corridor and into the passage beyond: "Is there here a man of my
Lord Newcastle's--one Lionel?"
In the silence, Lionel, on a bench in a corner, whispered to Prince
Rupert's page: "There! Farewell, sir! I'm
dead!--dismissed!--undone!"
"Serves you right," said the page sweetly. "Don't mind my toes--a
dead man has his privileges."
"There he is," said Dick, as Lionel, looking by no means cheerful,
came out of the listening and looking crowd. Dick darted forward,
shook hands with him, and overwhelmed him with thanks. Then Giles
stretched his hand to the embarrassed youth.
"There are my thanks, too, my friend," he said. "This is Sir Richard
Chester, and we are all right glad to have him here."
"And I'm in no trouble, my lord?" Lionel gasped, turning the gold
pieces Giles had left in his palm.
"Not a breath," said Giles.
"Who'll bear the torch?" Dick asked. "What will my Lord Newcastle
say when he finds no boy at all with you, Lionel?"
"Eh?" Giles said, "what torch?"
Dick explained, and Lionel looked a little doubtful and distressed.
"Oh, say to his lordship I stole his torchbearer!" Giles said coolly.
"Say it was Sir Richard Chester, my man. He will hold you without
blame. Good-night!"
"What think you to those?" Lionel asked, as, having pushed his way
through the curious crowd, he sat down again by the page, and spread
out his gold pieces.
"Bribes," said the page, sniffing. "Who is the child?"
"The child who held Dent Castle, and disappeared from Lumley."
The page whistled.
"Oh, Lionel! a perfect gold-mine! I wish that I'd discovered and
recovered the pretty treasure."
The "pretty treasure" and Giles were by this time out in the streets
of Arncastor, which were thronged with merry people going across the
river to view from the meadows the masque in the Queen's gardens.
They stopped at a house whence came a sound of singing, where the
light from an unshuttered upper window shone out into the street. By
this light Dick, chancing to look up at Giles, saw a subtle change in
him. A minute since he had been laughing and kindly, now he was
grave, unapproachable. As they climbed the stairs a high, clear
voice was singing a song, and as Giles opened the door of the festal
chamber out rolled a rollicking chorus, with a clinking of glasses
and stamping of feet that almost deafened Dick. About twenty
gentlemen were gathered about a table, with doublets undone, belts on
the floor, sashes untied, and making clamour enough for a town.
Giles waited, surveying them, till the end of the song, and then
asked, in his well-modulated voice and a tone of ice:
"Is Captain Slingsby here?"
"My lord," cried one of the company, "a health! a health! The King!"
"God save the King!" cried another.
"God save the King, with all my heart!" said Giles, taking the glass
pushed towards him, and drinking, hat in hand.
"Confusion to his foes!" cried another voice.
"Ah!" said Giles, "I see enough and to spare amongst his friends,
gentlemen. Is Captain Slingsby here?"
"Be not too hard on us, my lord," said a young man at the end of the
table, rising and bowing. "Gentlemen, I give you my lord, his
health!"
"Your health, my lord!" they all cried together, and the glasses
clinked again.
Giles bowed gracefully, and asked in exactly the same tone as before:
"Is Captain Slingsby here?"
A tall young man, very flushed, with a handsome face and fair
love-locks, came forward unwillingly. Giles slowly looked him over
from head to foot.
"I was about to apologize, sir, for coming in the middle of supper.
I am too late. I perceive you are long past the end," he said.
The young man's face darkened.
"'Tis not for you to say if I have had enough," he observed sulkily.
"Enough?" Giles replied, with a lift of the eyebrow. "I doubt that
word would not have occurred to me, sir, to describe
the--er--quantity in question. I will not trouble you, sir.
Good-night."
But in the meantime the other gentlemen had demanded Dick's name, and
having learnt it, had drunk his health noisily. The boy, imitating
Giles, bowed when they had finished.
"We have all heard of Sir Richard Chester," said the gentleman at the
head of the table. "How is it, Sir Richard, that you are not amongst
us?"
"I live with my cousin," said simple Dick, somehow feeling an excuse
was needed for his not appearing amongst the King's friends. "She
lives alone. She cannot spare me yet."
"She?" cried another gentleman. "Is she fair, Sir Richard?"
"Is she young?" questioned a second.
"Hath she eyes like yours?" another asked eagerly.
"Ay, doth that melting orb run in the family?" enquired another.
"A health!" shouted the one at the head of the table. "Give us her
health, Sir Richard," and he pushed Dick a glass of wine.
"My cousin!" said Dick bravely, lifting the brimming glass.
"Nay, her name! Her name! Give us her name!" they cried.
Dick looked along the table at the flushed faces, the unsteady hands.
Either the thought of his cousin's name on those lips awoke a
delicacy in him, or the expression on Giles's face had warned him,
but suddenly their mirth and their manners repelled him.
"You're none of you fit to speak her name," he said, "and your
glasses have had a score of healths drunk out of them to-night."
He was unprepared for the explosion of wrath that followed. Someone
else was, though. Giles laid his hand on his shoulder, and took the
glass out of his hand.
"He is right," he said, "though he cuts us, gentlemen. We are not
fit--there is no company fit--for her name to be called in. So I
give you 'Dick's Cousin!' her health! and not another out of the
glass."
He tossed off the wine, and flung the glass over his shoulder. With
a shout the gentlemen sprang to their feet and followed his
lordship's lead. The crash of glass made Dick's ears tingle.
"And there is my purse to pay the host's bill," cried Giles.
A cheer followed them downstairs and into the street.
"When you don't want your head broken, Dick," Giles remarked, "and
yet want to express disapproval, say 'we'. It hath a pleasant sound,
and puts your hearers on your side, keeping out ill-blood."
"What now, Giles?" Dick asked, as they once again halted before a
house with lighted casements and sounds of life within.
"To find an officer sober enough for our work, Dick. Slingsby
promised me to keep clear of that set of ribald idiots, and there he
is with them again. Let's try this man, Captain Harland."
He left the boy in a parlour below, for he saw he was tired out by
this time, and in a few minutes returned.
"We'll sup here now, Dick," he said cheerfully, "and then, what say
you to spending the night over the river at your friends' of the Blue
Boar? My man shall take my things over. Three days' absence! Dick,
lad, what if her Ladyship won't take me in, even for one?"
Dick smiled sleepily.
"She will, Giles, when she sees you," he said.
After supper Giles took Dick out to see Captain Harland and his
troopers start. The sight roused him for the moment. He caught
sight of young Captain Slingsby casting wistful eyes at Giles.
"Why are you here, sir?" Giles demanded, when he saw the young
officer.
"I--I ran after you to ask pardon," Slingsby stammered. "I'm quite
sober. I--I got them to pump on my head."
He moved his neck uneasily under his damp yellow curls.
"Captain Harland is commanding for me, sir," said Giles.
"I can ride to serve you, my lord, if I may not command," said the
young man quietly, "and I will, unless you forbid me. God knows I'm
a fool!"
"Harland," Giles called to the man at the head of the troop, "you
know what I said of sending someone back to-night with news?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Be good enough to return to me yourself, and leave the command to
Slingsby."
"Very good, my lord," said the officer, smiling.
Young Slingsby leant from the saddle and wrung Giles's hand. The
troop clattered off down the narrow street, out of sight.
"Now, we'll go and find my man, and over the water to bed, Dick,"
said Giles.
"Giles," said Dick, "I like what you did for that man. He's a nice
man, too. But, I say, Giles, when you're angry you cut."
"I am rather a bad brute when I'm rubbed the wrong way, Dick. Hold
up!"
Dick stumbled.
"I'm that sleepy, Giles," he explained apologetically, "I can
scarcely walk."
"My lord," said a man, running up to them at this moment, "I followed
you from the inn."
"Oh, good!" said Giles, stopping. "I shall be away for three days.
Bring my things to the Blue Boar, over the river. Run, there's a
good lad."
The servant ran off.
"That's my man, Dick," said Giles. "We need go no farther that way."
Dick had a very vague idea of what followed after that. He thought
they were stopped on the bridge, and he heard Giles call out
"Lumley!" and someone said, laughing: "Pardon! I did not see--did
not recognize your lordship"; and Giles called "Good-night!" as they
went on again. It appeared to Dick that he was not walking, and he
wondered what Giles was doing, and why both he and the officer had
laughed when the latter said he had not recognized him. It was
curious, also, that he could see nothing but stars.
"Where am I, Giles?" he murmured, moving his limbs uneasily.
"In the arms of Morpheus, my dear fellow," said Giles. "And do not
kick him in the wind, I beg of you, or he will probably let you fall."