he marked on his host’s face, gazed wonderingly up at him.
Rockhurst took the glass, and dropping on one knee:—
“I pledge the future!” he murmured. “I drink to the hope of England, to
your Majesty’s happy restoration, to the triumph of his cause—_Sursum
corda!_… my beloved liege!”
FARRANT CHACE
FARRANT CHACE
I
FARRANT CHACE
Storm without; and within, melancholy humours!—Without, fine, blinding,
dry snow, driven in eddies against whatever obstacle it met: against the
walls of Sir Paul Farrant’s Manor House: against the holly and clipped
yews of his garden: against the serried ranks of firs which screened his
estate from the wild blasts that ride from the Downs up the great rise of
Hindhead. Never more wildly, never more triumphantly, did the winds ride
than on this night of the winter solstice, this Christmas Eve, the fifth
since the happy date of his Most Gracious Majesty’s Restoration.
Within, a fire of logs glowing under the huge mantelled chimney; rosy
flicker on wainscot, glitter of crystal and silver on fair white napery,
and a full-paunched bottle or two, dusty and cobwebbed; crocus flames of
candles against the rose of the hearth-light and the brown of the oak.
Cheerful enough surroundings, one would have deemed—a sort of room where
a man might hug comfort with philosophic egotism and have the greater
zest in it for the thought of the outside desolation; sip his glass to
the tune of the wind; and toast his legs in luxury as he pictured to
himself the circumstance of any poor devil who, upon such a night, still
chanced to be on the road.
Yet, as it has been said, the temper that reigned within the oak parlour
of Farrant Chace was no whit more cheerful than the weather on the moor.
Indeed, my lord Viscount Rockhurst—on his way back from France, obliged
to halt by stress of weather at the house of a fellow-traveller—looked
more particularly disqualified than usual to wear the nickname bestowed
upon him by the “merry Monarch” himself in mockery of his wild
favourite’s invariable gravity. “Merry Rockhurst”—never less merry of
aspect than to-night.
His long legs extended toward the embers, he lay rather than sat in the
straight-backed chair of honour beside the hearth. His head with its
chiselled features, worn, keen, witty, was sunken on his breast; his eyes
were fixed abstractedly upon the darting flame, his hands inertly folded.
For some ten minutes he had not uttered a word or altered his attitude,
and the silent immobility of his guest was beginning to tell heavily upon
the nerves of Sir Paul Farrant, his young host.
Sir Paul bit his lip, paced the room three or four times; then halted
before the card-table, which stood askew against the wall, as if it had
been thrust aside by an impatient hand. He took up the dice-box, dangled
it, dropped it; flipped a few of the scattered cards, his eyes ever
wandering back to his companion; a hesitating phrase, ever checked upon
his lips. Now he went to the window, pulled the curtains aside and peered
forth.
“More snow—more snow! Ugh, ’tis plaguey cold!” he cried, with exaggerated
airiness, returning to the hearth and spreading his hands to the blaze.
“The drifts are rising higher and higher,” he pursued. “No hope for the
road, ’tis not fit weather for a dog.”
The figure in the great chair stirred, a lazy voice was raised:—
“Certainly not weather for a gentleman.”
The other leaped to the symptom of restored companionship.
“As you say, my lord, very vile weather indeed. Not fit for us to travel
in, for very truth.”
Lord Rockhurst’s long eyelids flickered.
“Sir,” said he, with marked deliberation, his gaze still fixed on the
fire, “I spoke in the singular.”
Sir Paul’s hand, still stretched toward the glow, suddenly trembled. He
had a young, smooth face, transparent to emotion; it grew scarlet.
“And what might your lordship mean by that?” he asked, breathing quicker.
Lord Rockhurst shifted his person to a more erect attitude, and turned
his satiric face toward the speaker. The elder by some fifteen years, he
had none of the genial gleam in his eye, none of the something almost
fatherly with which the mature man of kindly mettle regards youth.—Lord
Rockhurst’s gaze was colder than the wind that whistled in the leaves,
bleaker than the moorland waste.
“I do not desire to qualify you,” said he.
From its uneasy flush, the young face went white.
“My lord, my lord!…”
But Rockhurst raised his hand with a commanding gesture.
“When a man enters upon a game of hazard with another, ’tis the very
essence of honour that the chances should be equal between them. Now, my
most excellent young host, had you played me with loaded dice to-night—”
The other broke out foaming at the mouth, with the acrid rage of the
helplessly insulted.
“My lord Rockhurst—! I will suffer no man, nay, not even under my own
roof, to dare such an insinuation. The dice, my lord—”
He made a frantic gesture toward the card-table. But, like the play of
water upon red iron, Rockhurst’s cool voice fell upon his heat:—
“Nay—the dice are right enough—so are the cards. We were but us two,
moreover, so you had no accomplice. These are the elements of honest
play, as I was about to expound to you—since, indeed, your father’s only
son, and a lad of your experience in court and camp, appears to require
such expounding.”
He changed his tone for one more subtly keen, as the surgeon his blade
at the delicate moment: “But another element in play, between gentlemen,
is that one player should not stake against the other sums he does not
possess.”
Farrant, wincing, ran his hands desperately through his fair locks; he
fell into an arm-chair and, still clutching his love curls, drew them
across his face. From behind this screen, after a long pause, he spoke
muffled words:—
“Your lordship seems to forget the circumstances. To help your lordship
to pass this time of tedium (since no horses that ever were foaled could
take your coach on through these snows); having the responsibility of
entertaining your lordship … since you can find little pleasure but in
the cards … and having, in these cursed twenty-four hours, lost every
stiver of money, every rood of the poor land I possess … zounds! my lord,
that I should have risked a few more throws with nought but my ruin to
back them … damnation, my lord Rockhurst, since but a turn of the dice
might have set us even again!—these are hard words, it seemeth to me!
Aye, and hard thoughts.”
Thus set forth, his own case seemed to the youth so strong that he lifted
his head again and displayed his countenance as wrathful and full of
reproach now as, a minute ago, it had been shamed.
Lord Rockhurst crossed one lean leg over the other, settled his elbows at
the most comfortable angle the carven arms of the chair would afford, and
let his brilliant hazel eye wander to the red embers and become dreamy
once more.
* * * * *
For a long while silence reigned again in the oak parlour of Farrant
Chace.
A resinous knot in the pine log exploded with miniature fierceness—a
white flame jetted out, hissing, and dropped. The fire settled itself and
the ashes slipped away, sighing. In the tense silence these small sounds
made emphasis; while without, ever and anon, the blast came rolling up
the slope from the far distance, dashed through the frantic swaying firs
with screams of triumph, to hurl itself against the sturdy walls, there
to break and part on either side and dash onward once more.
… So comes the charge of horse against the solid mass of foot with
ever-gathering speed, rider and beast together, in one frenzied impetus,
to break themselves against the serried pikes.…
* * * * *
“Your father fell beside me at Naseby,” said Rockhurst presently, as if
speaking to himself.
The incisive note had vanished from his voice. Farrant rose from the
table and came towards him, with something of the schoolboy’s mien, who
half resents his master’s anger and half hopes to see him mollified.
Rockhurst went on musingly:—
“He and I were neck and neck through Edgehill, Newbury, Marston Moor.…
Until that hour I was young, younger than you are. And in those days I
had mighty thoughts. But in my mightiest I never saw myself reaching
to his level. If I could but keep my nag’s head close to his, and go
where he led, leap where he leaped—’twas enough for me.… When he fell,
struck down by Ireton’s pikes, I thought the world grew dark.… Then I was
young, Master Paul. And now, sitting in this chair to-night”—Rockhurst
slowly straightened himself and turned his head toward Farrant—“I find
there is still something left in me of the old self that I had deemed
to be dead this many a year. Enough to be glad to-night, sir, that your
father is dead.—Paul Farrant,” went on the elder slowly, “speak: had the
luck turned as you hoped, upon what foundation would you have built your
winnings?”
The other hesitated, stammered, made a fresh abortive effort to brazen it
out.
“Nay, my lord, the world hardly knows you so squeamish. If such rigid
rules obtained at Whitehall we should be a dull lot, and many a merry
hour lost. Did your lordship say you had charged Ireton’s men? By those
tenets we might have dreamed that your place had rather been among the
precisians.…”
A subtle change swept over Rockhurst’s countenance. The air of grave
severity, the shadow of regretful tenderness, passed from him, to be
replaced by the mocking glance, the expression at once reckless and
cynical which, before the world’s eyes, characterised the man who had won
for himself—among a company of reprobates—that second if scarcely more
appropriate nickname of his, “Rakehell Rockhurst.”
“Nay, but you’re a promising lad!” said he, gibing. “And you’ll make
your way, my son, I doubt me not. Time advances, old types die out, and
manners change. The rules of honour which still shackle old fools like
myself would chafe your gallant spirits.… Yet, hark ye, without being
a precisian, Master Paul, in my day, a man—a gentleman—would no more
have staked what he did not possess, would no more have dallied with the
thought of selling a friend, than he would have forced a lady. But, sure,
what dull fellows are we of the old days by the side of such sparks, such
knights as yourself! Meanwhile,” and here a wide and uncontrolled yawn
showed teeth as white as a wolf’s, “meanwhile, excellent young man, I
have here in my pocket your signature to so much waste paper—I have it
as a memento of a series of tedious games, a reminder of the prospect of
another evening, with your company, for all delectation.—Gadzooks, sir, a
man does not invite another to his house, in a snow-storm, if there is a
tolerable inn at hand, when he, being himself green as a March lamb, has
only a housekeeper old as sin!… The Gods preserve me from the green man
and the withered woman! Add to this a cellar reduced to thin Rhenish and
claret—a cellar no sane man could get drunk on, sir, and Christmastide!”
Eye and voice became even more insolently provocative. “I have known many
a one spitted for less provocation.”
“Would your lordship find some solace in having a try for my vitals?”
cried the youthful host eagerly. His lip trembled; tears of mortification
were not far from his eyes. The fleer at his dull entertainment cut him
more keenly than the rebuke touching the honour of his play. He already
saw himself held up to the ridicule of the Court by the Rakehell’s
unsparing tongue.—Gad, his old housekeeper! his doubtful cellar! He,
who had worked so hard to achieve a position of fashion and gallantry,
who had plumed himself upon the distinction of playing the host to so
high a courtier as Viscount Rockhurst, Lord Constable of the Tower—the
King’s own close friend!… He flung his arm toward the swords that hung
fraternally on the wall, side by side, in their royal crimson baldricks.
But Rockhurst’s laugh, low-pitched, arrested all further movement.
“Nay, good Sir Paul, I pray you! However you may relish the idea of
spilling the blood of your guest, your guest cannot so far forget the
rules of gentle behaviour as to cross swords with his host. Secondly,
sir, you appear still to have to learn that a man may not fight with one
to whom he owes money. And thirdly, now: when I had slain you, think you
that your corpse would be more amusing than your live body?… Though,
truth, it could scarce be less so.”
He laughed again, through his teeth, at his own gibe.
The boy, bated to desperation, stood clenching and unclenching his hands,
fighting back the furious tears. The other, his back to the flames, stood
looking at him some time in silence. Then, into his pitiless hawk’s eye
came a gleam of humour—a slight softening of compassion, perhaps. The
mind that once yields to humour can rarely continue to entertain the
deadly earnestness of anger. Rockhurst yawned again, drew some crumpled
sheets from his pocket and flung them on the table.
“Now, look you, Sir Paul,” said he, good-naturedly, “I care not for this
mood. Devise me but something of an entertainment for this evening—an
entertainment, mind you, that shall honestly entertain me—why then, I’ll
stake again; I’ll stake these, which represent your indebtedness to me,
against your inventiveness. Shorten but a couple of hours for me, and
I’ll shorten my memory of this night’s business. Zounds, never stare so!
Do you not understand? ’Tis your wit for your honour—and the chance of a
lifetime to prove yourself a man of resource!”
For an instant Paul Farrant’s countenance became illumined; he made a
hasty step forward. Then he hesitated, and, in renewed dismay, put his
hand to his forehead. In the middle of the snow-drift, with a condemned
cellar and an ugly housekeeper, debarred from gambling, debarred from
fighting, his brain paralysed by a crushing sense of failure and folly—to
devise amusement for this fastidious, caustic nobleman, what a task!
He moved to the window, in reality more to hide his fresh mortification
than to examine the prospect of the weather. It was to find that there
was a lull in the snowfall, that the wind had rent a gap between the
brooding clouds and revealed a patch of starry sky ridden by the sickle
of a young moon. Through the swaying trees gleamed fitfully a distant
red fire, and beyond it, further down the waste, a steadier yellow light
came and went, as the wind bowed and released some plumy fir branch:
the iron-smelting forge of the Hammer Pond! The inn at Liphook! Now, he
remembered him, the smelter was a man of infinite popularity, the jester
of the countryside; one who could sing a rousing stave to the clank of
his hammer, and crack you the drollest stories over the home-brewed,
were it only strong enough. Failing him, there was the innkeeper of the
Anchor, at Liphook. Mine host had the secret of a noted posset that his
Majesty himself, halting on the Portsmouth Road, had once generously
praised. Nay, at the inn he might possibly pick up some belated
traveller, whose conversation—he bitterly thought—would prove more
acceptable than his own. At any rate, ’twas all the hope he had to cling
to. Rockhurst never spared.
“If your lordship will give me _congé_ for a short while,” he cried,
turning back to the room, “I shall endeavour to meet your wishes.… We
may not be so destitute of entertaining company at Farrant Chace as your
lordship deems.”
He seized his cloak, flung it angrily about him, goaded by the sound
of the faint laugh, and strode out. Rockhurst subsided into the chair,
laughed a little yet, then sighed and fell a-brooding again.
II
THE LADY IN THE SNOW
The lull after the squall had left a waste world, dim yet white, beneath
a cloud-strewn sky. High among the clouds the wind was still racing; and
the aspect of the heavens was perpetually changing, as masses of vapour
rose and scuttled before the blast like giant herds: rent apart, drawing
closer, scattered again. Thus the land was a-flicker with shine and
shadows, and yet lay dead under that semblance of life.
Paul Farrant, astride the old farm mare, had no thought to spare for the
new appearance of the white wilderness; scarce even a feeling for the
biting cold. His brain was all astir with vivid, angry images. His pulses
throbbed with the excitement of the gambler playing for the highest
stakes a man can win or lose.
“’Tis now your wit against your honour,” had said the Rakehell.
His honour! It had never been to Farrant the thing dearer than his own
soul, which to lose, even to his own secret knowledge, were damnation.
To know himself dishonoured meant to him merely disgrace if he could not
save himself by his wit. Yet disgrace spelt the most unendurable fate
that could overtake one in whose nature vanity played the chief part.
And if he failed to fulfil the condition so contemptuously placed upon
his worldly redemption, he knew his Rockhurst—all was over for Farrant
the aspiring; for Farrant, who was already beginning to be envied; for
Farrant, who had once sat at the King’s supper-table and had actually
been honoured by a quip from his Majesty’s own lips!…
Drooping her great head, drawing her shaggy feet from the snow with dull,
sucking sounds, the mare plodded on her way. He did not attempt to guide
her, and she took him soberly to the highroad, then turned toward the
downward slope leading to the village. On one side a black line of hedge
ran in and out like a ribbon; on the other all barrier had disappeared
under the drifting snow. Below the turn of the road was the smelter’s
forge, redly aglow in the distance; and, something like a mile further,
the village where the noted posset might even now be brewing; where
comforted travellers, stamping the snow from their boots, might be
capping each other’s tales of road hardships and perils. On the sturdy
mare, Paul Farrant had no doubt he could reach the further goal; yet he
hesitated. The plan which had driven him out into the night suddenly
appeared to him ineffable folly. A paralysing vision arose before him:
Rockhurst’s countenance at sight of Master Smelter, with the black fists,
as the proposed evening comrade!… He could see the dilation of the
nostrils, the haughty lips, barely apart upon a smile. What a tale would
not Rockhurst’s tongue make of it for royal ears!—As for the inn, were he
to find there some chance gentlefolk, how could he hope to induce them to
come forth again on such a night, when, in truth, no coach was like to
find a passage through the snow?
* * * * *
Through the great silence a distant cry pierced into his consciousness.
Heard at first vaguely, it fell in with his thought: the note, it seemed,
of his own distress. But in a moment it was repeated, higher, clearer, an
unmistakable call for help.
He was in the mood to be swayed by the first impulse, to take the toss
of fate. His was not the nature to turn out of its way to assist the
afflicted; but now he wheeled the mare round and drove her up the hill,
fiercely, as if his own deliverance, not that of some fellow-creature,
was at stake. And, in truth, who shall say that it was not?
On the edge of the road, at its abrupt twist down the hill, stood the
black bulk of a coach, horseless, crookedly embedded in the snow. It told
its own tale. As he drew nearer, a cloaked figure staggered toward him
and almost fell against his steed’s shoulder.
“Oh, do not pass; do not go by!” moaned a woman’s voice. “I am dying of
the cold!”
She lifted her face. The faint light of the rifted sky, given back
intensified by the white world, had a luminosity of its own in which
most things were strangely visible. Paul Farrant saw that the woman who
clutched at his reins was young and fair-favoured. He stared a moment in
mere astonishment. Then a thought, devilish, acute, exultant, leaped into
his brain.—There was his ransom!
“Madam,” he said, bending down over his horse’s neck and peering close
into her face, “I am fortunate in having heard you. Are you indeed alone?”
“Alone, yes,” she answered through chattering teeth; “the servants rode
away for help, God knows how long ago.… Perchance they are lost in the
snow, dead, somewhere. Indeed, with this cold, I shall soon be dead, too!”
“Nay, madam, you are saved,” said Farrant, dismounting hastily.
Trembling with excitement, he tore his cloak from his shoulders to cast
it about the slender figure that swayed as it stood; then he swung
himself into the saddle again, and, stooping, caught her hands in both of
his.
“Can you put your foot on my boot?” he asked. “Nay, then, by this mound.
So—now in my arms! (On, Bess!) You are not afraid? Courage, madam, ’tis
but a few yards to my house, to warmth and shelter!”
His arms still shook with excitement as he grasped the muffled figure and
the reins as best he might. And the mare slowly lifted her heavy hoofs
stable-ward again.
His frenzy lest his chance should escape, his evil joy over his prize,
burned like fire in his veins. And something of his blood heat seemed to
pass into the half-frozen woman. She stirred with more vitality in his
grasp, settled herself with more definite volition on the mare’s broad
shoulder, and heaved a sigh of returning energy. Suddenly she started;
and he clutched her, alarmed.
“My servants!” she said, and turned her head so that her breath fanned
his cheeks. Her dilated eyes were close to his in the snow-light.
“Madam?” He held her the tighter and urged forward.
“My servants, sir,” she repeated, a thrill of impatience running through
her quick utterance. “They will return to find me gone!”
“Why, then,” he made answer, driving his heels into their steed’s bulging
sides, “I will even send presently to the coach, and warn them of your
safety.… They will be welcome likewise.… But we must go on—yonder is my
gate—a very little while and you shall be by the fireside.”
As he turned off the road he cast a look backward down the slope and
noticed a brace of yellow lights bobbing through the misty white of
the valley: the traveller’s servants were returning with succour. Not
a minute too much had fate granted him! But are not the ready ever the
successful?
His boyish face was astir with silent laughter as he gathered the lady
into his arms upon the threshold of his own door-step.
III
THE RANSOM
Rockhurst was roused from deep reverie by the opening of the door. His
mind had been far indeed from Farrant Chace and his own unprofitable
present existence—as far away as the days of youth; days of inspiration
and hope; of delicate illusion even in sorrow; days of strife, when
loyalty was an exquisite passion, and the blood that ran in his veins
sang to shed itself for his King! Days when friendship was near and
dear as love, and love itself the golden fruit of an endless mystery.
He was of those who grasp at life with both hands. None had brought a
younger heart to his youth; no man faced his fulfilled manhood with less
illusion. He had wanted much, he had received much, he had taken much—and
all had failed him.
He raised his head and stared, almost as if he were dreaming, at the two
who entered upon his brooding solitude; two that might have come upon
him out of that long-past youth—the lad with the face of the friend he
had loved, and this vision of young womanhood, whose beauty shone like
a pearl from the dark setting of her hood. But as soon as Paul Farrant
spoke the spell was broken.
“A ransom, my lord—a ransom out of the snow!”
The twist of the speaker’s lip, the glint of his eye, gave triumphant
meaning to the words.
Rockhurst rose from his chair, the weary look returning to his face.
Here, after all, was but the degenerate son of the man whose blood had
been his own baptism to noble sorrow. And the sapling slight creature
with virginal eyes and soft lips who was leaning upon Paul Farrant’s
arm? Why—she was but his ransom!—Nay, these were no longer the days
of white-souled Falkland, or generous Hampden, days of chivalrous if
hopeless devotion to ideals: these were the days of the merry Monarch,
where none could feel a higher sweet than Pleasure, nor feel a deeper
pang than Envy.… How far away the days of Youth!