Christmas came, and home came Lord Lovel on his milk-white steed.
The night before the wedding the Baron brought to Ginevra a curiously
carved ivory box.
“This is thy mother’s wedding gift,” said he. “Now is the time to open
it.”
He took from his purse a small gold key. Ginevra turned the lock. The
lid flew up, and showed a heap of strung pearls, each one large as a
robin’s egg.
“They are beautiful!” exclaimed Ginevra, in delight.
“Beautiful!” echoed Geta.
“Yes,” said the Baron. “Their like is not in old England. I bought them
at Constantinople, when I was returning from Palestine.”
He lifted the long rope, and wound it round his daughter’s neck.
“They are fair, my darling,” said he, tenderly, “but thy throat is
fairer.”
Ginevra looked dreamily at the jewel-case; then, turning her eyes
inquiringly to her father’s, she suddenly asked:
“Was my mother happy?”
“Happy in that she died young,” answered the Baron, gloomily.
“Wouldst thou say that of me?” she asked, in wondering sadness.
“No, sweet child. Thou art dear to me as the blood-drops of my heart;
and had I as many lives as thou hast hairs on thy head, I would give
every one of them for thee, my precious pearl. But no more of this!
See, here is thy wedding-ring, my gift to thy mother, engraved with the
name of both--Ginevra. I had it from a Jew in Venice. He said it bore a
charm, and always brought good fortune to the wearer. And so it has; it
has brought me thee.”
Ginevra laid the jewels back on the violet velvet lining, and was soon
chatting gayly with Geta; but the Baron was restless and uneasy. When
he said good-night he strained her to his heart and kissed her again
and again, as if it were a last parting; then he doubled the guards of
the castle, walked the great hall, and made the grand rounds like one
whose anxious thoughts will not let him rest.
Ginevra’s quick eye marked the movements of the Baron, and she waited
till he rested a moment in his favorite seat by the chimney-corner,
and, seating herself on the heavy arm of the oaken chair, she said:
“Is my father troubled to-night? Tell me what the trouble is, and I may
chase it away.”
“No, no, little one,” answered the Baron, making an effort to smile,
“but--”
“But what? Go on! What, father?”
“Only this, dearest. Art thou sure of being perfectly happy?”
“Entirely sure; but I could not be if Lovel should take me from thee.”
She patted his cheek, then touched her blooming mouth to it.
“He will not come between us, child. Nothing on earth, nothing outside
of heaven, can do that. But listen, what a fearful night! How the sea
rises, like a fierce beast chained, roaring for its prey! The coast
will show wrecks to-morrow.”
“And is it that which makes thee so uneasy, so sorry?”
“No; but the raging swell, which we hear here as a weak moaning, stirs
strange thoughts and brings up strange scenes, vanished long ago. The
sea has changing voices. Now as we listen, I hear great guns booming
shot and shell, the rush of thousands of feet, the tramp of armies
fighting. I loved it when I was a young man; but it is not the same,
because I am not the same. Then it spoke to me of the future; now it
is all of the past. As I hold your dear hand”--he touched the pinky
finger-tips to his lips as he spoke--“I am hearing a text my mother
taught me (God rest her soul!): “Boast not thyself of to-morrow.”
“But you have not boasted.”
“No; we seem over-confident, and there is a happiness that makes my
soul afraid. Look out!”--he pointed to the window--“I thought I saw
something pale, a tall shape fly by the window. There! Now!”
“You might have seen a pale shape half an hour ago in the dusk, where
the sun left a little light. It is all black darkness now.” She rose,
drew aside the curtain, and knelt on the deep window-sill among the
roses. “I see nothing but dark. The wind howls like a mad thing in the
air, trying locks and bolts to get in. Sad for the poor sailors and
their wives waiting at home. Maybe they will never come back, poor
things!”
She returned to her place beside the Baron, who looked silently into
the fire; her pretty head drooped on his shoulder, and he leaned his
cheek to hers, her hand in his.
“My daughter!” he said, in a tone he never used to aught on earth but
her.
“My father!” she answered, softly as a wind-harp sounds.
“I would have my baby once more.”
He turned to the maid:
“Geta, go get your mistress ready for bed. Wrap her in my Siberian
mantle. She shall rest to-night in the arms which were her first
cradle, and I shall rock her to sleep.”
Ginevra laughed. “I can easily be a child again. I have only to go a
few steps backward,” and she disappeared with Geta.
A moment later she was robed in a snow-white mantle which muffled her
from head to foot. And, like a wintry fairy, she passed her chamber
door, where her father stood waiting. He caught her up from the floor.
“Take care of the baby feet,” he said. “These floors are never warm.
Thou art all fair, my love. We will not go below. We will sit in the
brown parlor.”
This was a small room adjoining Ginevra’s bedroom, where there was
a cumbrous chair, called Prince Rupert’s, which was shaped like a
throne. The walls were made strange with portraits--men in queer
costumes looking stiff and ghastly, women rigid as pasteboard, except
the picture of one young girl in long bodice and flowing skirt, around
her hounds and huntsmen, a hawk on her wrist, her horse at hand ready
for mounting--a lovely lady. This was Ginevra’s mother; and she loved
the portrait, and always kept a lamp of perfumed oil burning below it.
The fire was low and ashy in the big fire-place. The Baron blew a
silver whistle, and while waiting for a servant to answer the call, he
kicked together the chunks of logs, sending a train of fiery sparkles
up the chimney.
“Make haste, man!” he said, impatiently. “Heap on the wood.”
The obedient servant piled it from a box like a high, old-fashioned
bedstead, which held at least a half cord of logs.
“Quick! quick! What carelessness! This room is cold as death.”
The man went out soon as he could escape, and reported to the servants
that the Baron was in one of his tiger fits. They wondered why, when he
was so pleased over the wedding, and in their own hall they talked it
over with many wonderments.
But the lord of the castle had no dark mood, no tiger fit for Ginevra.
“Now, my darling,” said he, holding the light shape across his breast,
while he wrapped the fur round her feet, “now I have my little girl all
mine own for the last time. What shall I sing?”
“About the Norse kings, father. How they used to steal their brides and
sail away over the foaming North seas to the lands of snow and ice.”
The Baron was not much of a singer; but the deep roll of his voice
well suited the thunder of the storm without. A strange cradle-song,
to be sure, of fighting, of hunting, of blood, and of victory. An hour
passed. There was no rift in the clouds, no lull in the dismal wind.
Then the snow began to fall--the hushing snow, which seems to quiet
heaven and earth.
“It will be fair to-morrow,” said Ginevra, sleepily, rousing a little.
“That was a brave song of the pirates. Now the wind goes down.” She
opened the clear blue eyes once more and smiled, showing the pearly
little teeth. “Good-night. Do not let me tire you, father dear;” and
so, murmuring love words her nurse had taught, she went to her innocent
dreams--in all the kingdoms of sleep, the sweetest thing that breathed.
It snowed and it snowed and it snowed. Toward morning the castle was a
very castle of silence; and the noiseless world lay like a cold white
corpse in its cold white shroud.
Ginevra, lapped in downy fur, nested like a bird in her father’s
breast, and he watched the delicate, upturned face with a watch that
knew no weariness, till gray dawn broke over the earth, and the
hilltops were tipped with silver.
Many times he touched her feet to feel if they were warm. Many times
he leaned his ear to her fragrant breath and softly wound a stray curl
of her hair, in rings of gold, round his forefinger. He hummed verses
of old tunes some lost love sang in the years long gone, when he was
young; and once he whispered a prayer.
Fond, foolish old man! Why wore he the night away in such sad, sweet
watching, when there was nothing to make afraid?
[Illustration]