SWORDS
AS she passed below the room in which her uncle and his friends were,
she heard their voices, and observed that one of the windows was open.
But to this she attached no importance, unusual as the fact was at that
hour, for she had other matters to think of. And indeed the night was
not chill, though a slight breeze was stirring the leaves in the garden
as she entered it. Leaving Prudence at the foot of the steps, Georgiana
swiftly threaded the different alleys of shrubbery to make sure that no
person chanced to be in the garden, a precaution she had adopted since
the first meetings; but she did not peer under any of the bushes, or
behind those that grew close to the wall, for she had not conceived that
anybody might come into the garden to hide, or for other purpose than
his own pleasure. She went and stood in the gateway near the glen-side.
A moment later she saw the dark form of her lover approaching in the
gloom of the park, and presently his arms were around her.
“How you tried my patience, sweet!” said he, leading her slowly toward
the midst of the garden. “You are later than usual. I was beginning to
think you must have appeared already, and that my eyes were so blurred
watching the gateway they had failed to see you. Two minutes more, and I
should have left my thicket and come to assure myself.”
“Never do that, I beg! Never come into the garden till you see me in the
gateway—not even though you hear my voice. Promise me you will
not—promise, Everell.”
“I would promise you anything in the world when you ask with that voice
and those eyes—anything but to cease loving you or to leave you. But I
do believe the goddess of love has this garden in her keeping, and
reserves it wholly for us, we have been so safe from intrusion in it.”
“We have been very rash. I tremble to think how careless we were at
first, when you were wont to come in before I saw that the coast was
clear. But we are never perfectly safe here—as we found last night, when
that country fellow stared in at the gateway.”
“I doubt if the yokel really saw us. But, if so, he would find nothing
strange in your being here with your maid. If he saw me, he would
suppose I was your uncle or some visitor. But I will take all
precautions, dear, if only to make your mind easy. I wouldn’t have you
suffer the least fear, not even for the sake of that look of solicitude
in your eyes, which is certainly the tenderest, most heavenly look that
a woman or an angel can bestow. It goes to my inmost heart, and binds me
to you for ever. And yet I’d have you smile, for all that, if you’d be
happier smiling.”
“I might be happier smiling, but I think I should not be as concerned
for you then,” replied Georgiana, simply, and with a smile that had a
little sadness in it.
“Ah, my dearest!” said Everell, softly, with a sudden tremor in his
voice.
The silence that followed might have been longer but that the young man
could not forget, for more than a few seconds at a time, how brief their
interview was to be. He imagined, perhaps mistakenly, that the value of
such meetings was to be measured in speeches rather than in silences,
although he attached full worth to eloquent glances.
“When I feel how dull the hours are between these short glimpses of
heaven,” said he, “I marvel to think how tedious the years must have
been before I saw you, though I knew it not.—I never chafed at danger
till now. Sometimes when I lie in the bracken yonder, or pace the dark
bottom of the glen, I am tempted to ignore all risks, come boldly to
your house, seek the acquaintance of your uncle, and measure my
happiness by hours instead of minutes.”
“Oh, Everell!—do not think of it!”
“Nay, have no fear, sweet. Your commands are sacred with me—till you
command me to leave you, or not to love you.”
“But if I commanded you earnestly to leave?—resolutely, so that you knew
I meant it?”
“Could you have the heart to do that?”
“Would that I had! I ought to have. But would it be useless?”
“As useless as it would be cruel, sweet, I vow to you.”
“But ’tis cruel to let you stay. ’Tis a wonder your presence in the
neighbourhood isn’t known already—a wonder the poacher hasn’t betrayed
you.”
“Nay, he is true as steel. We are in the same galley—both rebels, he
against the game laws and the world’s injustice, I against the present
dynasty. You must know, we outlaws stand together.—You are again in the
mood of fearing for my safety. But see how baseless your fears have been
so far. Trust our stars, dearest: mine, at least, has ever been
fortunate.”
“My fears are always returning. Sometimes I have the most poignant
feeling of danger surrounding us, of reproach to myself that I was the
cause of interrupting your flight. I have that feeling now. Oh, Everell,
loth as I am to send you away, I feel in my soul that I ought! My heart,
which would keep you here, at the same time urges you to fly: with one
beat it calls to you, ‘Stay,’ and with the next cries, ‘Go!’ Oh, why did
you not go on with your friend?”
“Indeed, ’tis better he and I are apart, since that fellow at the inn
knew we travelled together,” replied Everell, trying to reassure her.
“If the man really meant to continue dogging us, our separation was the
best means of confusing him. Dismiss your fears, sweet. If your regard
for me were love rather than compassion,—love such as I have for
you,—the only impulse of your heart would be to keep me with you: beyond
that, you would not think, either with hope or fear. And yet your
compassion, so angelic,—nay, so womanly,—I would rather have than the
love of any other woman.”
He said this honestly; for she had never in plain terms owned to him
that she loved him, and he, in the humility of a man’s first love, saw
himself unworthy of her by as much as he adored her, and therefore did
not imagine himself capable of eliciting from her what he felt for her.
Her indulgence he ascribed to the pity of a gentle heart for one whose
situation, both as a refugee and as a lover, pleaded for him while his
courtesy and honour gave assurance that her tenderness was safe from
betrayal. If her heart desired him to stay near her, he supposed, ’twas
because it hesitated to put him to the unhappiness of leaving her. That
she might suffer on her own account in his absence, did not occur to
him: she herself was all loveliness, and where she was, there would all
loveliness be; what was he that she should find him necessary to make
the world complete? Were his presence needful to her content, she would
not limit their meetings to so few moments in a long day. Thus he
thought, or, rather, thus he felt without analyzing the feeling.
“’Tis the duty of my compassion, then,” she answered, “to drive you
away. I am more convinced of it now than ever. Such foreboding, such
misgiving!—why do I feel so? I pray Heaven ’tis not yet too late.—Hark!
what was that?”
“’Tis only the master and his guests a-laughing over their
dissipations,” said Prudence, near whom the lovers happened at the
moment to be standing. “They’ve left the window open, ma’am.”
“See how easily you are frightened without cause,” said Everell. “Come,
has not the mood run its course?”
“Blame me not that I bid you go, Everell!” she replied, as if not to be
reassured. “You may come to blame me that I ever stayed to hear you!”
“For that dear fault my heart will thank you while it moves.”
“It _was_ a fault!—I see now that it was. I was so solitary, so
rebellious against my uncle and his company, that when you came my heart
seemed to know you as a friend; and I listened to you.”
“Ay, sweet listener that you were! What effect your listening had upon
me! I had wished to return to France, which in exile I had grown up to
love. This England, though I was born in it, was to me a strange
country, but you have made it home!”
He raised both her hands to his lips, while she stood irresolute, her
eyes searching his face for the secret of his confidence, which she
would have rejoiced to think better warranted than her fears. The
silence was suddenly broken by a slight, brief noise in the greenery
near the steps.
“What’s that?” she said, quickly.
“The wind,” replied Everell; but the sudden straightening of his body,
and fixity of his attention upon the place of the sound, betrayed his
doubt.
“No,” whispered Georgiana, “’twas quite different.”
“Some animal moving among the shrubs,” said Everell. “I’ll go and see.”
With his hand upon his sword-hilt, he walked to the shrubbery growing
along the foot of the bank which rose to the terrace. “’Twas
hereabouts,” he said, and, drawing his weapon, thrust it downward into
the thick leafy mass. From the further side of the mass came the loud
hoot of an owl, followed by the noise of a man scrambling to his feet.
“Ah! come out, spy!” cried Everell, as the human character of the
intruder was certified by a sound of husky breathing.
He darted his weapon swiftly here and there through the shrubbery, and
then ran seeking the nearest opening by which he might get to the enemy.
But the enemy spared him that trouble by appearing on the hither side of
the barrier, from the very opening that Everell had sought. The strange
man had a gun raised, to wield it as a club.
Everell, recalling his experience of John Tarby’s fowling-piece,
nevertheless ran toward the fellow, hoping to dodge the blow, and
disable the man by pinking him in the arm or shoulder, after which it
might be possible to learn his purpose and come to terms. But just as
the young gentleman went to meet his approaching foe, a sharp scream
from Georgiana distracted him, so that, though he saved his head, he
caught the gun-stroke on his right shoulder, and his sword-thrust passed
wide of his adversary. He now heard other feet hastening toward him
through the garden: it was, indeed, the appearance of the two other men,
coming to the keeper’s aid upon his signal of the owl’s hoot, that had
caused Georgiana to cry out. Everell, seeing his first opponent draw
back to recover himself, turned swiftly to consider the newcomers,
placing his back to the high shrubbery. One was approaching on his
front, the other at his left. They both brandished cudgels; but, as they
saw him dart his glance upon them in turn and hold his sword ready for a
lunge in either direction, they stopped at safe distance.
“Oh, Everell, fly!” cried Georgiana, hastening to his side.
“What! and leave you to these rascals, sweet?” he answered.
“They’ll not harm me: they are servants here. Save yourself!—for _my_
sake!”
He looked at her for an instant, read in her eyes the pleading of her
heart, and said, softly, “For yours, yes!—we shall meet again.”
He then started toward the gateway leading to the park and glen. But the
gardener and the groom swallowed their fear of steel, and made bravely
to intercept him. He had confidence in his ability with the sword to
deal with two men armed with cudgels. But he knew that his ultimate
situation would be so much the worse if he killed either of these
fellows. His thought, therefore, was to elude them by mere fleetness, or
slightly to disable them. He soon abandoned the former hope, for at the
first turn he tried they were swift to head him off. So he charged
straight at the nearer, thrusting so fortunately as to prick the
fellow’s shoulder, making him lower his cudgel with a howl. Everell now
tried a similar lunge at the other cudgel-man, but the latter divined
his purpose, and saved himself by tumbling over backward. The wounded
man had instantly transferred his cudgel to his left hand, and now stood
again in Everell’s way, while the fellow with the gun had come up to
threaten him in the rear. Informed of this last danger by his hearing,
the Jacobite sprang aside to the right in time to avoid a second blow.
He turned swiftly upon the gun-wielder, whose fear of the sword made him
thereupon flee toward the gateway. Everell’s three adversaries were now
all in that part of the garden through which he had intended to escape.
“This way!” cried Georgiana, from behind him; “and by the terrace!”
Everell wheeled around and made a dash for the steps. His enemies were
prompt to recover from their surprise and rush after him, the fallen man
having speedily got on his feet again. But the clean-limbed Jacobite won
to the steps by more than striking-distance. He thought to clear them in
two bounds, then cross the terrace and gain the park.
“Eh! the deuce!” exclaimed a voice at the head of the steps, as a dark
form, backed by several others, appeared there. Everell, who had just
set his foot on the middle step, checked himself at the risk of his
balance, and leaped back. The newcomer, who had a sword in his hand,
thrust downward at Everell, at the same time calling out, “The light,
Caleb!”
A lantern, which had been concealed under the coat of its bearer, now
cast its rays over the scene from one side of the stair-top. Its help
was more to those who arrived with it than to Everell, whose eyes had
become used to the light shed by the stars alone. But he was now enabled
to make sure that his new intercepter was Mr. Foxwell himself; that
Rashleigh was at that gentleman’s side, with drawn sword; that the two
London ladies stood close behind, peering forward and yet shrinking
back, as curiosity disputed with fright; and that the man servant with
the lantern carried also a coil of rope. All this was the observation of
an instant. Even as he made it, Everell put his sword at guard, and
looked a questioning defiance.
“A sturdy ghost, as I live!” cried Foxwell, motioning the three fellows
at Everell’s back, who had come to a halt at the first intimation of
their master’s arrival, to stay their hands. “My niece, too!—the
guileless Georgiana!”
“Uncle!” she began, scarce able to speak, though her pale face and
terrified eyes were eloquent enough; “this gentleman—”
“Is my prisoner, till he gives an account of himself. Do you surrender,
sir?”
“No, sir,” replied Everell.
“Then I must reluctantly order these men to take you,” said Foxwell,
politely.
“Then their deaths be on your head,” said Everell, and turned to make
another dash for the gateway, determined this time to spare none who
barred the way. To this direction of escape he was limited by his
unwillingness to try fatal conclusions with Georgiana’s kinsman. But he
was robbed of choice in the matter; for no sooner had he taken two
strides than Foxwell, afraid of losing him, leaped down the steps, and
shouted, “Turn and defend yourself!”
[Illustration: “THE TWO GENTLEMEN MADE THEIR SWORDS RING.”]
Fearing that non-compliance might result in the indignity of being
struck on the back with the sword while in flight, Everell obeyed. Ere
he could think, his blade had crossed that of Foxwell, who a second time
bade the three underlings hold off. The two gentlemen made their swords
ring swiftly, in that part of the garden near the steps, Caleb moving
the lantern so as to keep its light upon them. Georgiana watched in
fearful silence, Prudence clinging to her and recurrently moaning, “Oh,
lor!” Rashleigh stood on the steps, ready to interfere at call. The
combatants seemed admirably matched, and each had reason to admire the
other’s fencing. But, to Everell’s relief, it presently became apparent
that the elder man’s arm was weakening. The Jacobite now indulged the
hope of disarming him. But Foxwell, too, saw that possibility. He
beckoned Rashleigh, who thereupon ran forward and struck up Everell’s
sword, while the groom and the gardener, obeying a swift command of
their master, seized the Jacobite’s elbows from behind. Everell made a
violent effort to throw them off, but in sheer strength he was no match
for them. Relinquishing the attempt, he said, quietly, to Foxwell,
“’Twas scarcely fair.”
“For that I beg your pardon,” replied Foxwell, still panting for breath.
“In a matter between us two alone as gentlemen, ’twould be dastardly.
But I had to take you at all cost. You would not surrender; though you
certainly owe me an explanation on one score, and are an object of
suspicion on another.”
“Oh, Everell!” murmured Georgiana, who had fallen to weeping, and was
heedful only of her lover’s plight and not at all of her uncle’s words.
“Everell, say you? Bring the lantern here, Caleb.” In the better light,
Foxwell scrutinized his prisoner’s face. “The scar on the cheek, too.
’Tis as I thought. But how Miss Foxwell happens to participate—well,
there will be time for explanations. Sir, if you will give me your
_parole d’honneur_, I need not inflict upon you the restraint of—” He
indicated the cords in Caleb’s possession.
“I thank you, but I prefer to retain my right of escape.”
“In that case, you will admit the necessity of the precautions I
reluctantly take.” And Foxwell set about directing the servants in
fastening the captive’s wrists behind him, and in tying his ankles so as
to limit the length of his steps. With a courteous “Allow me, sir,”
Foxwell disengaged the sword from Everell’s fingers and returned it to
its own scabbard, which Everell had retained at his side. This act of
grace the Jacobite acknowledged with a bow.
“Uncle, you will not detain this gentleman?” entreated Georgiana,
conquering her tears. “He has done you no offence. As to our meeting
here, I will tell you all; the fault is mine.”
“Not so!” said Everell, quickly. “If there be any fault in that, ’tis
mine. Sir, it was not by Miss Foxwell’s desire that I came here; it was
against her will that I spoke to her. My presence was forced upon her.”
“Well, well, you shall be heard presently. You have a more serious
charge to face than making love clandestinely to young ladies.—As for
you, Georgiana, I thought you were in your chamber, wrapped in the sleep
of innocence. I’ll never trust prudery again. I beg you will go in
immediately, miss.”
“Uncle, I will not go till you have set this gentleman free. You shall
have all my gratitude and obedience: I’ll give you no cause of
complaint. Be kind—generous—I pray—” Her voice failing her, she fell
upon her knees, and essayed to take Foxwell’s hand.
“Nay, sweet, you go too far,” said Everell, tenderly.
“Too far, indeed,” said Foxwell. “No scenes of supplication, I beg,—they
are sure to make me more severe. I advise you to go to your chamber,
miss. You had best oblige me in this, else stubbornness on your part may
awaken stubbornness on mine.”
“Go, dear, and trust all to me,” counseled Everell, who had been
regarding her with eyes in which there was no attempt to belie his love.
“Go—this is not the end.”
She looked at him a moment; then turned sorrowfully away, and went
slowly up the steps and to the house, followed by her maid, to whose
proffers of assistance she gave no more heed than if she had been
walking in a dream.
“Sir,” said Everell, with a slight huskiness of voice, “let me assure
you that I am a gentleman and a man of honour; and that I respect your
niece, and have every reason to respect her, as I would a saint.”
“No assurance is needful to convince me you are a gentleman,” replied
Foxwell. “I will lodge you in a manner as nearly befitting your quality
as security and my poor means will allow. I must be your jailer for
to-night, at least.—Caleb, go before with the lantern. To the hall
first. And slowly.—I trust you can make shift to walk, sir.”
Placing the gardener and the groom at either side of the prisoner, and
the keeper at his rear, Foxwell set the party in motion. The two
gentlemen, following close, gave their arms to the ladies upon reaching
the head of the steps, and the procession went on at the slow pace which
Everell’s ankle-cords made imperative.
“A mighty pretty fellow, whatever he may be,” said Lady Strange, _sotto
voce_.
“Georgiana is to be envied,” said Mrs. Winter. “Such are the rewards of
virtue.”
“He is vastly in love with her,” declared Lady Strange. “Did you ever
see such tender glances?”
“’Tis the kind of ghost you could find it in your heart to be haunted
by, is it not, Di?” queried Mrs. Winter.
“The keeper must have been in some doubt whether the ghost _was_ the
ghost,” put in Rashleigh, “before he decided to give the alarm.”
There had indeed been indecision on the part of the keeper, but upon
other ground than Rashleigh mentioned. As he sat with the gardener over
their extra beer later that night, the keeper explained to his comrade:
“I were in a powerful state o’ uncertainty, and that’s the truth of it.
For, in course, I knowed the young mistress and her maid as soon as ever
they come into the garden. And when this here young captain,—for I take
it, he can’t be no less, what with the air he have, and the way he
handle his sword,—so when the young captain appeared, I soon see how the
land lay. Though I couldn’t make out what they was a-sayin’, I could
tell it were a matter o’ clandestine love. Now I were to give a owl’s
hoot when the ghost appeared. Thinks I, ‘Devil a ghost this is, but yet
’tis the only ghost we’re like to behold. If I wait for a real ghost,’
thinks I, ‘we sha’n’t get to our beds this night; and yet I haven’t the
heart to spoil the young lady’s love-affair.’”
“And small blame to you, David,” said Andrew the gardener. “Your
thoughts was my thoughts, and I kep’ a-wondering to myself, ‘What will
David do? If he doesn’t hoot, we shall have to stay out here all night,
and then only get credit for going asleep and seeing nothing. And yet,
if he does hoot, there’ll be a pretty kettle o’ fish for the young
lady.’”
“Yes, Andrew, it were a great responsibility. I wished it had been left
to you to do the hootin’, for, thinks I, ‘Andrew’s a wiser man than me,
and he’d know the right thing.’”
“Maybe so, David, but not such a good hooter,” said Andrew, modestly.
“I’ll admit I did a’most make up my mind that such kind of love-affairs
comes to no good, and the master ought to know, so the best thing for
all of us would be for you to consider the stranger a ghost, and hoot.”
“No doubt, no doubt, Andrew, now that I hear you say so. But I couldn’t
muster up the heart, because I done my own love-makin’ in a clandestine
manner, in my lovin’ days, and I had a sort o’ fellow-feelin’ with these
young people, as you might say. So I couldn’t make up my mind. But I
happened to move my leg, which were powerful cramped with sittin’ long
in one position, an’ I made more noise nor I bargained for. And the
first thing I knew, the young gentleman were a-proddin’ at me through
the shrub’ry. So before I ever thought, the hoot come out, more as if
there was a owl inside o’ me which hooted of its own accord, than if it
was of my own free will.”
“It wasn’t of your own free will, man. Take my word for it, the matter
was took out o’ your hands altogether. The moving of your leg was
ordered from above, to bring about the end that was predestinated.”
“I believe it were, Andrew. At all events, once the hoot was out, the
fat was in the fire. It weren’t a bad hoot, though, were it?”
“Better nor a real owl could do, David,” said Andrew, raising his beer
to his mouth.
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