wall to the bench and bashfully took seat.
“So ends the year,” he said softly, “that brought me the happiness of
paradise—Diana.”
“Master Rockhurst.…”
“Must it end thus?” Suddenly bold, he tried to take the fair hand idly
clasping the posy.
“Take care, sir,” she cried mischievously, “there are thorns here.”
“Ah,” he breathed, “so that I might gather the roses.…”
* * * * *
(And above their heads, Lionel Ratcliffe: “Second stage: hand-clasps and
protestations. Next will come kneeling work, and next the lips.—Wary now,
for it goes rapidly!”)
* * * * *
“Pray you, pray you, Harry!” Diana chid, endeavouring gently to free her
hand.
But the boy had slipped the leash of his ardour and was not to be hushed.
“O my sweet life, hear me, hear me!”
“I vow,” she said, half rebuking, “I never knew you in this mood!”
“Ah, I am bold,” he panted. “Must I not be bold indeed for that I dare to
love you!” Saying which, he fell on both knees before her.
* * * * *
(“Is’t not time to stop them?” whispered Hare into Ratcliffe’s ear. “I
could drop a little stone on sister Di’s head.”
“Soft,” interposed the other, with his contemptuous patience. “Let the
children play a little while longer; ’twill be the finer sport to slip in
’twixt cup and lip!”)
In truth, Ratcliffe was beginning to suspect that he had overrated Harry
Rockhurst’s influence. If he knew women, his fair cousin, below yonder,
had given no real response. He had caught the note of indulgence which
the wooer himself was too inexperienced to mark in her accents. True,
there might lurk some danger even in this; yet not such as to call for
indiscreet interference. He smiled sardonically as the lover’s pleading
rose passionately in the air.
* * * * *
“Give me hope, Diana—one word. Ah, madam, give me hope!”
But Mistress Harcourt rose and disengaged herself with some decision from
the young man’s grasp.
“Stay, Master Rockhurst, how can I listen to you? In truth, dear lad,
you are over young to dream of such matters yet. Why, and what would my
Lord Rockhurst say, could he but hear? Indeed, Harry, ’tis undutiful of
you, without your noble father’s sanction—I dare swear without even his
knowledge.”
“My father!” cried the boy, as if the words had struck him. “Alack,”
he added despairingly, “this sudden departure, upon which you have
resolved, has thwarted all my plans. Yet, madam, you are wrong; my
father does know. I have writ him all my heart.”
Diana turned the pale, fresh beauty of her face full in surprise upon the
speaker.
“Aye—have you, indeed?” cried she. “And what says his lordship?”
The youth, emboldened afresh, pressed forward; but she kept him sweetly
at arm’s length, menacing him with her posy.
“He has not answered yet—could not have answered yet, madam. Natheless,
I am his only child; he loves me: there can be but one answer. Diana, if
that be all that stands between us—”
“Nay,” she teased, “and shall I tell you your father’s answer? ‘Ah,
Harry’ (will his lordship say), ‘have I kept thee secluded in the
country, that thou mightest grow strong in health and virtuous in
mind’—for these, we are told, are my Lord Rockhurst’s reasons—‘and hast
seen a young gentlewoman for the first time? Pack up, lad, pack and ride
with me to London town; and in a week will’t have forgotten her very
existence!’”
“How little you know my father … how little you know me!” exclaimed the
lover, with dignity.
“Alas, child, this is country innocence. Do I not know something of the
ways of the great world! Your education has not yet begun, all respect to
his lordship’s judgment. When he has shown you the Court, the town, the
quality—”
Harry Rockhurst interrupted her with a vexed laugh:—
“The Court, the town, the quality—why, madam, he will not even tell me of
them. ’Tis only his duty as Captain of the King’s Yeomen and Constable of
the Tower that keeps him from living here among us—the only life he deems
worthy of a true gentleman: that of the owner on his estates. London, he
says, is contamination. Therefore keepeth he me here, though it part him
and me.”
She smiled and shook her head:—
“And how shall I find favour in the eyes of this strict gentleman?” she
said, in the same fond tone of mockery. “I who am gay, and think not so
ill of the town, and have no mind for sad faces and dull clothes! I fear
me, Harry, your father is at heart a puritan!”
“My lord a puritan,” cried the boy, in fine scorn—“the King’s own
private friend in exile, the hero of Worcester’s evil day … why, Diana,
villainous Noll set a higher price on my father’s head than upon any
other in England, save his most gracious Majesty’s own—sweet Mistress
Harcourt, if that were your only fear—”
Greatly daring, he flung out his arm to encircle her. Swayed by his
artless passion, Mistress Harcourt suffered the embrace, but it was with
a kind of friendly tolerance.
A loud shout from above drove them apart.
“Cousin Di!—where can she be? Cousin Di, Master Rockhurst…!”
There was Lionel Ratcliffe, on the terrace above them, shouting into
space through the hollow of his hands; and beside him Edward Hare,
consumed with laughter.
Young Rockhurst stamped his foot; but Diana (not displeased, perhaps, at
the interruption) glanced calmly up.
“Here I am, Cousin Lionel—and here, as you can see, is Harry.”
Ratcliffe leant across the balustrade, wiping his face as though heated.
“Oh, how I have sought for you!” he called.
“So it seems,” retorted she, ironically, “with apparently never a thought
to cast a glance over the wall.”
He grinned. She was the dearer to him for her sharp wits, and for a
tongue that was even a match for his own. But what answer he would have
made was lost in a new interruption: the sound of a postboy’s horn rose
swelling through the quiet airs, and almost immediately the bell clanged
from the castle’s gate. Then came calls, shouts, and rumours. Ratcliffe
straightened himself from his leaning posture:—
“What have we here?” he cried. “Ha—Mistress Alicia!”
A stout, elderly lady appeared at the head of the terrace steps.
“Pardon me, madam, a moment,” said Harry to Diana, and ran to meet his
aunt. The lady was beckoning with great energy:—
“News, lad, news from your noble father, from my dear brother!” She
turned on the second step and raised her voice (never a soft one) in
vigorous expostulation to some hidden person: “Hither, fellow, hither,
thou laggard, and commend thee for a lazy loon!”
Stirred by these expostulations the postboy, covered with dust and sweat,
emerged upon the terrace above at a limping run. Harry bounded up the
steps to snatch a letter from his hands. He broke the seal and gave a cry
of joy:—
“These are news indeed! My father will be with us to-night, nay,
toward the fifth hour afternoon, so he writes.—Rascal, you have tarried
indeed!—In good truth, these are news!”
His joyful exclamations were lost in a deep outburst of lamentation from
Mistress Rockhurst.
“To-day!” quoth she, clapping her palms together. “Murrain take me, if
these be not the ways of men! Gilian! Basil!—get thee to the buttery,
knave!—Robin! … Robin! the flag!”
But the excellent housewife was not of those who waste their energies
upon mere speech. As hastily as her bulk would permit, she was already
hying her way back toward the castle. And the clamour of her voice was
lost behind the yew hedges. Harry bent over the parapet, calling to
Diana, who stood pensively where he had left her.
“Give me joy, madam; my father will be here instantly!”
Ratcliffe brushed past him and came down the steps toward his kinswoman.
He laid a hand upon her arm, and looking toward his host:—
“Then,” cried he, “shall we leave you to your filial transport.” He
dropped his voice, to continue maliciously, in the young widow’s ear:
“Di, what says’t thou? Shall we not ride instantly? Gad, were it but a
meeting ’twixt lover and mistress ’twere something to wait for—but this
business! ‘My worthy father.… My beloved son!’ ’Twas ever a feast of cold
veal, since the days of the prodigal—Though faith,” he laughed, “’tis the
father, here, comes from the husks to seek the calf at home!”
And while Diana gazed upon his sharp face with wonder and disfavour,
Ratcliffe hailed Rockhurst once more: “Therefore, I say, good Master
Harry, pray you bid them call up our horses.”
Young Rockhurst protested. But Diana, to Ratcliffe’s surprise and greatly
to his satisfaction, instantly backed the request:—
“Indeed, Lionel is right; our presence is out of place at this meeting.”
“Nay,” implored Harry, and ran headlong down into the Peacock Walk again
to catch her hand, “for pity’s sake … no and indeed no, madam.”
The lady disengaged herself, settled her roses, gathered her gloves and
whip from the bench and looped her riding skirts. Then she turned, and,
smiling, courtesied:—
“Indeed and indeed, yes, sir! And since farewell it must be, why, then,
farewell!”
She wafted a kiss from her roses toward him.
“Ah, no!” he implored, still endeavouring to arrest her.
“’Slife!” cried Lionel, impatiently looking up. “There rises the flag …
there flies the noble blazon! Let it be the signal for us. Come Di—go,
hurry the horses, Ned!” he shouted to Hare, who, astride on the upper
balustrade, sat gaping down at them. “Blessings upon the Rakehell,” he
muttered to himself, as Diana motioned Harry on one side with decisive
gesture.
“Nay, it is good-by,” she was saying.
The boy caught her fingers and the roses together:—
“Oh, madam, will you turn all my joy into sorrow?”
Here the gate-bell clanged again.
“My father,” cried Harry, starting toward the steps.
“Farewell,” said Diana, “and—”
“Ah, no,” cried the poor lover, distractedly, and ran back to fling
himself once more before her. “But a few minutes, dearest Diana!”
She hesitated before his distress. Lionel irritably seized her arm.
“Nay, child, you must come!” The touch, the tone were overmasterful. She
flashed a haughty look upon him.
“Must! Cousin Lionel?”
Harry, seeing his advantage, pressed it ardently.
“Delay but for five minutes! Sure, ’tis not much to ask!”
“You foolish lad!” said Diana, gently. Then, smiling into the passionate
eyes, “Yet I would not seem churl to you. And I will even wait these five
minutes in the rose garden yonder. Your arm so far, an it please you,
Lionel. But, I pray you, remember that there must be no musts from you to
me.”
She moved away with a very stately grace, Lionel, biting his lips upon a
bitter smile, walking at her side. Harry stood gazing after her as one
lost in a dream.
II
FATHERLY WISDOM
My Lord Rockhurst approached the wall of the upper terrace and looked
down upon his son. His countenance, naturally grave, and stamped now with
the pallor and fatigue of his lengthy ride, grew graver as he watched.
Beside him, his sister threw up scandalised hands. But, as she was about
to give voice to her feelings, he arrested her with a gesture, and went
slowly to the top of the stairs. There he paused and called,—
“Harry!”
The boy started, wheeled round, rushed up the steps, and dropped on one
knee before his father.
“My lord … my dear father!”
Lord Rockhurst raised him, looked a second keenly at the young face; then
laying his hand upon his shoulder, walked down with him toward the bench,
where, still without speaking, he took seat. Shaking her head at her
nephew, Mistress Rockhurst followed them at some distance.
“Oh, sir,” cried Harry, impetuously, “’tis ten months and two days since
I last beheld your countenance!”
So saying, he was about to cast himself upon his father’s breast; when,
with the faintest motion of the hand, Rockhurst restrained him.
“And yet, didst show, even now, no undue haste to greet me. ’Tis the
first time, Harry,” he proceeded in softer tones, “that thou hast failed
to welcome me before the gates.… I had looked forward to that moment.”
“And indeed, nevvy,” added Mistress Alicia, as she halted, panting,
before him, “’twas not pretty acted. ‘Where’s Harry?’ says his lordship.
And ’twas old Giles held the stirrup, which had been thy privilege,
Harry, since thou wert five years old.”
Blushes chased each other over the boy’s face. He could but stammer:—
“Oh, sir … oh, father!”
“Nay, no excuses!” bade the Lord Constable.
His son’s cheek grew a darker crimson still.
“The lady, sir,” he murmured, “the lady I wrote of—”
Mistress Rockhurst snorted with increased indignation, but Lord Rockhurst
was now smiling dreamily.
“A lady! sayst thou?… Boy Harry and his lady! Nay, then, a petticoat is
like charity and must needs cover a multitude of sins!”
“Petticoats, indeed,” ejaculated under her voice the irate dame—“The
hussy!”
Lord Rockhurst had no thought to spare for his sister’s opinions just
now. Holding Harry at arm’s length, he surveyed him with shining eyes.
“Thou art grown a goodly lad. In faith, well-nigh a man!”
He drew him into his embrace and held him close a second. Then, releasing
him, fell back with a sigh of ease upon the bench; flung off his mantle
and unbuckled his sword, both of which Harry respectfully received from
his hand.
The traveller sighed, took off his hat, and ran his fingers through his
hair with the gesture of contented weariness.
“Another drop of cordial, my lord,” cried his sister, rising, all eager
for service.
“Nay,” said he, motioning her back; “I have all the cordial I need here,
Alicia. Come close, Harry. Dost know,” proceeded the Lord Constable, as
his son knelt beside him, “dost know I have ridden two hundred miles
these days, with scarce as many minutes’ rest, to put order into thy
business? That to-morrow I must e’en be jogging back again, for his
Majesty has need of me? Thou presumptuous rogue!” He struck the lad on
the shoulder as he spoke, and seriousness underlay his tone of banter.
“Wouldst plot to make a grandsire of me already? Mark those pleading
eyes, sister.… Even so did they look up at me when he stood no higher
than my knee, and it was: ‘Father, John blacksmith has so fair a pony to
sell,’ or ‘Giles vows he will drown the red setter pup! O father, I want
it!’ Aye, child, thou hast a father, and ’tis well for thee!” His mouth
twisted with a light contempt under the upturned moustache. “A widow!” he
said.
“Aye,” put in Aunt Alicia vindictively, “and a delicate, fine lady to
boot.—Ah, nephew, did I not tell thee his lordship would set order here?
What doth Mistress Harcourt care for still-room or buttery? Could she
brew a bottle of gilly water? Nay—much less turn thee a pasty—?”
“Peace, peace, sister,” rebuked his lordship. “Harry—” he turned tender,
relentless eyes upon his son’s quivering face, “thou, who wouldst get
thee to begetting heirs already, what dost thou know of life?”
The youth rose to his feet, withdrew a pace, and looked earnestly at him.
“As much, my lord,” he answered then, “as you have allowed me to know.”
A moment the elder man seemed struck. He gazed down at his linked hands
and reflected. Then he, too, got up. It was with an air of finality:—
“Faith, aptly replied! Therefore, son—” he took the lad’s arm, “thou must
still believe my will best for thee.”
Harry caught up his father’s hand.
“Nay, my lord, God forbid I should even question the wisdom of your
dealings with me! Truly, I have never hankered after the town; and,
if I have seen you ride forth alone with a heavy heart, it has only
been because of the longing for your gracious company. But, father—”
he clasped his other hand over the gloved one he held, “she loves the
country, too, let Aunt Alicia say what she will.” He shot a flaming look
of reproach at the buxom lady. “And … and, we should be full content to
dwell here forever if we were married, sir.”
“Married!” echoed Rockhurst. He pulled his hand from his son’s clasp and
passed it caressingly over the beardless chin. “Aye, there’s a cheek for
a husband, truly!” (Mistress Alicia broke into good-humoured laughter
and struck her knees in applause.) “When thy beard is grown, we’ll talk
of such matters again.”
“Oh, my lord,” pleaded the lover. “What of my age?—since you yourself
were married when no older than I am, as our Bible leaf shows. Say
nothing, at least, till you have seen her! She is here, father, even
now, in the rosary! Alack, she has ridden hither to bid farewell, for
to-morrow she sets out for London town. And, oh, father, may I not escort
her?”
“To London!” exclaimed the father. His face grew dark with a heavy frown.
“To London! No, sir, not within fifty miles of the Babylon! How now, art
grown so bold?”
“I thought not of the town,” stammered Harry; “I thought but of the
perils of the road for her.” Then, gaining assurance, he proceeded: “Even
here there is talk of Claud Du Vall and such bold ruffians. Sir Edward,
her brother … Sir Edward, in truth, is a poor fool, my lord—And Mr.
Ratcliffe, her cousin, who rides with them, him I mightily mistrust. You
have given me your blood, father—will you blame me now because it will
not run obediently when I think of danger to my lady?”
“Nay, if thy body kept pace with thy spirit,” mocked Rockhurst, “what a
beard wouldst soon have, my callow son!” Yet, though he mocked, anger had
fled from his glance to be replaced by fatherly pride.
The tears rose to Harry’s eyes. The young can endure severity better than
irony.
“Indeed, I am a child no longer,—I am ever your dutiful son, sir,—but I
cannot give up Diana. My lord, do but see her; see her now…!”
“Now?” cried the other, surprised. Then recollecting himself: “True,
didst say she was in the garden.” His eye grew ever more indulgent. “See
her, lad,” he went on, “aye, truly. For what other purpose had I ridden
all these weary miles?”
With the youth, all was once more sunshine, where, before, there had been
but clouds.
“Ah, father, I knew your indulgence would never fail me. Nay, I will
conduct her to you, on the instant.”
He started to run, as he spoke. Rockhurst watched the figure out of
sight, then laughed low to himself and turned to his sister.
“I will conduct her to you, on the instant,” he repeated. “Aha—and
doubtless the pretty widow will come as meekly at his bidding to display
herself as ever heifer to the fair. _O rustica simplicitas!_” And
laughing, he came back to the bench and sat down.
“Indeed, my lord,” said Mistress Alicia, with as much disapproval as she
dared to show to the head of the house, “here is no matter for laughing.
’Tis an excellent thing, my lord, that you should forbid Harry from
marrying the Widow Harcourt. And truly, as you say, he’s not fit to wed
for some four or five years to come. And, of a certainty, she’s scarce
the woman to manage a household like this, brother; not such as I should
care to trust with the keys. And I think you’ll not refuse me the credit
to say, brother, that I have become them well these five years. Since,
with his Majesty’s most happy Restoration, your lordship also has come to
your own again, and placed me at the head of your house—I trust, I say, I
have become the charge.”
“Indeed, none better,” said Rockhurst, absently.
The lady glanced at him sidelong. Her comely face took an air of
indecision, almost of timidity, foreign to the massive severity of its
lines. Something she had on her mind, that yet she feared to utter. But
lack of courage could never be the failing of a Rockhurst.
“And, indeed, my lord, so long as you keep the lad mewed up here, as
if he were a girl, ’tis not to be expected that he should get rid of
such like maggots in his head. Why, the town’s the place for a gallant
young gentleman like Harry. Your only son, my lord, your heir! Think on
it. Why, Court’s the place for him, and you so rarely in his Majesty’s
favour! He’d sing another song there, I warrant you.”
Once again the father’s face grew dark.
“’Tis my bird, sister; I’ll have him sing the song I choose.”
“But surely, brother,” argued the doughty lady, scarlet in the face,
“with you to watch over him, with your example—”
“With my example!” He turned suddenly and fiercely on his sister: “No, by
the Lord, not even with such valuable aid as that, will I trust my fine
lad into that sink—that charnel-house—that pit! Ah, you think yourself so
wise, and prate of what you know not—poor innocent old country virgin. I
tell thee, woman, the taint is in the very air. Eyes, ears, nay, every
pore, are channels for the poison—”
“Brother!” ejaculated Mistress Rockhurst, huffed and startled.
But Rockhurst proceeded, his eyes fixed more as if talking to himself
than to her:—
“There, shame grows dearer than merit—vice becomes as a cloak, warm and
soft, in which a man takes comfort. At the mere thought of cold virtue,
of stern duty, of naked purity, ugh! we shiver and hug ourselves—”
His sister gave a faint, shocked cry, and flung out her hand:—
“But not you, not you, my lord! Surely these are strange words.”
“Harry shall be a man of better stuff,” the father cried. “He’s wholesome
now, body and soul, and by the Lord, I say, I’ll keep him so! How now,
Alicia, shall I not have pure-blooded, pure-hearted grandchildren, an I
have the mind?”
For some unknown reason the excellent lady took deep umbrage at this last
remark.
“Surely, surely!” she repeated, tossing her head, so that her grey curls
danced.
“So let it be, then,” bade her brother. Then, in a changed voice he
exclaimed:—
“Hush, now, here comes the country widow. Faith, the lad hath taste.”
But here he fell suddenly silent and sprang up. Mistress Rockhurst,
surveying him in some anxiety, marked the extraordinary change that came
over his countenance.
“As I am a sinful woman” (she afterward told her special gossip), “his
lordship turned whey-white. And I do assure you, madam, his eyes blazed
in his head—the like of which I have never seen before. ’Twas almost as
if he and she had known each other and had never dreamed to meet again.
And as for my fine young madam, she came along with her eyes on the
ground—nay, the most bashful thing between this and York City. But when
she looks up and sees my lord, as white as he went, she goes rosy, and,
please you, gives a kind of cry with both her hands outstretched. That
may have been artfulness. And if so, my lord met it even as I could have
wished; for he but made her a deep bow, and, says he presently, in his
very grand way, ‘It gives me pleasure, madam, to make your acquaintance.’
At which you should have seen how was taken aback the widow! ‘Make your
acquaintance’ (mark me), says he, which shows he could not have known her
before, after all.”
Harry, who had brought his lady in such pride beneath his father’s
glance, stood somewhat dashed in the silence that followed Lord
Rockhurst’s ceremonious greeting. By nature the most unsuspicious of
youths, in his simple existence he had never felt the necessity of
studying inner motives in those around him. He knew the tricks of bird
and beast, but the secrets of his fellow-creatures he guessed not at.
And so all the tokens that his aunt’s shrewd eye had noted were lost
upon him. His father had been a trifle over-ceremonious toward a fair
neighbour, let alone the mistress of his son’s heart. And she, his dear
love, had blushed and grown pale, as was but natural.
“Well, sir,” he cried at last, anxiously, “now that you have seen
Mistress Harcourt, do you not give me some reason?”
His father turned a singular glance upon him.
“Reason enough, lad,” he said, under his breath, “reason enough for any
folly!”
Diana’s clear cheek had now resumed its usual pretty tint; but as her
young lover spoke, it deepened; and at Rockhurst’s words, faded again
slightly.
“Nay, my lord,” said she, speaking for the first time—her voice was low
and troubled—“I know not what Master Harry hath been saying of me. It
is his kindness that he will think so well of me, and—nay, I must say
it, Harry—’tis his foolishness that he will not understand that he is
over-kind.”