CHAPTER XXXVI
Outside Mynheer Van Ryck's house, a month or so later, there stood a coach upon which was placed a small amount of baggage. By its side, held by a groom who had some considerable difficulty in restraining its restlessness, a bright bay mare emitted great gusts from her nostrils and pawed the stones impatiently-a mare on the corners of whose saddle-cloth were stamped a crown, the letters "A.R." and a pair of cross swords, as was also the case with the holsters and the bridle-plate.
After the fall of the Citadel, and before the French were allowed to march out on condition that they returned at once into France and separated, the whole place had been ransacked by the English troops, and amongst the horses found was one that, later, a mousquetaire said belonged to the English prisoner who should have been shot the day the Citadel fell. That prisoner, being now at liberty, was sent for by orders of General Ingoldsby, and, when the meeting between him and the animal was witnessed, there was no need for him to confirm the statement.
For La Rose, on hearing Bevill's voice, created such a stampede among the other horses and rushed at him with such endearments-testified by nearly knocking him down with her head and then by rubbing her soft, velvet muzzle all over him as she whinnied loudly-that there and then before the English victors and French captives he vowed that never would he part from her.
Now, therefore, she waited for him to come forth and mount her, so that he might ride by the coach that conveyed his wife to England.
For, a fortnight since, in one of those churches of the Reformed Faith that had sprung up in every part of the Netherlands since the days of William the Liberator, Sylvia and Bevill had been made man and wife, my lord Marlborough's chaplain having performed the ceremony. And, though there were not many present to witness the bridal, they were mostly those amongst whom Bevill's lot had been cast since first he made the attempt to assist Sylvia to escape from Liége-an attempt that again and again he told himself had resulted only in failure, yet a failure that brought so fair and welcome a success in its train as that which now he experienced.
From Van Ryck's hands he received his bride; close by them stood the Comtesse de Valorme, her face calm and tranquil, but revealing nothing of whatever might be within. Also there were present Captain Barringer and Sir George Saxby, as well as one or two officers of the Cuirassiers who had been junior to Bevill in the regiment but were now captains. Yet there was one other person present, clad as before in the blue coat and still wearing across his breast the blue ribbon of the Garter; still tranquil, too, as became a man able to read and forecast his destiny and the splendour of a near future. He who was now, in the space of a month or so, to attain the highest rank an English subject can hold; he who, two years hence, was to crush beyond all power of recovery the armies of the most superb despot Europe had ever known.
Bevill's kiss-the first kiss as her husband-on Sylvia's brow, her hand upon his arm, they left the altar, and, when the after formalities had been concluded, made their way from out the church. But ere they left it the Earl of Marlborough, taking from his breast a paper, said:
"For wedding-gifts there is no opportunity, yet one I would proffer to you. Mr. Bracton, I know the hopes with which you set out from England. It is in my power to gratify them, since I, as Captain-General, stand here for the Queen. Our late ruler removed you from the service you loved; I, in the name of our present one, restore you to it. Some years of opportunity, of promotion, you must lose of necessity; your brother officers of the Cuirassers who were your juniors will now be your seniors. Yet, take heart. You possess two things that should go far to spur you on to gallant efforts: a fair, a noble bride-and youth."
Then, without giving Bevill time to utter the thanks that, though his breast was full of them, his lips might have found difficulty in uttering, the Earl left the church, after kissing the hands of Sylvia and the Comtesse, and giving his own to Bevill.
The absence of that one whom Bevill would fain have seen present in the church, his late custodian, the gallant De Violaine, was felt regretfully by him. Yet it was not to be. As the breach was made soon after the siege began, De Violaine, rushing from the roof to where the English grenadiers were pouring through it, received a thrust from one of the officers' swords. Later, as Bevill and Sylvia passed from the salle d'armes, they saw him lying in the covered way and being ministered to by one of the regimental surgeons. This sad sight produced in the tender heart of Radegonde de Valorme a feeling, a recollection of past years and of the fortitude with which this man had borne the blighting of the one great hope that had filled his heart during those years. As she saw him stretched now upon the coarse sacking on which he had been laid; as she recognised that, from first to last, he had had no companion but his duty to cheer his lonely life, her memory flew swiftly back to earlier days-the days when he, young, elated with the promise of his career, favoured by fortune, had craved only one other thing, a woman's-her own love-and had failed to obtain his heart's desire.
Swiftly she advanced now towards him; a moment later she was kneeling by his side; still a moment later she was murmuring. "André! André! Ah! say this is not the end. Ah, no! it cannot, cannot be. You are still young-oh!" And she wept.
"He may live," the surgeon who had been told off to watch by De Violaine's side said. "If the fever from his wound abates to-night he may do so."
"I pray God," the Comtesse said, then whispered again to the wounded man, "André, I will not leave Liége until I see you restored. You shall be removed to Van Ryck's house. I alone will nurse you back to recovery."
But De Violaine, understanding her words, murmured:
"As well leave me. What matters now my life or death!"
The impatience of La Rose grew greater as still the rider whom the wayward creature had loved to carry on her back, the rider for whom she had pined and fretted during their long separation, did not come. Yet soon, though she did not know it, that impatience would be at an end. Inside the old Dutch house the last partings were being made; the two who were going forth from it, never perhaps to cross its threshold again, were bidding farewell to those left behind. Even now Bevill was standing by the couch on which De Violaine lay through the long days, while from his lips fell the last words that he supposed he would ever utter to him whose prisoner he had been, to him who had been so humane a custodian.
"I pray," he was saying now, "that your recovery may be swift and assured; I pray that between your land and mine peace may exist at last. Above all, I pray that we may never meet as opposing soldiers; that, where'er the tide of war shall roll, it shall not bring us face to face. But, as friends-ah, yes! For, Monsieur de Violaine, be my life long or short as best it pleases God, I shall ever hold dear the memory of him who, when he had me in his hand, treated me neither as spy nor foreign foe, but with a gentleness such as a noble heart alone could prompt."
"Farewell. Heaven bless you!" De Violaine said. "You should be very happy. I, too, will pray for that happiness. And, should we ever meet again it shall be as brothers, an' you will. For brothers we are in our faith and in our calling. Farewell."
And now all were parted with, excepting only one-Radegonde. Madame Van Ryck could not leave her bed, so Bevill and Sylvia had gone in to her. There remained no more than the parting with that true friend and the last handshake with Van Ryck, himself true to the core.
"Ah how can I leave you!" Sylvia sobbed, as now the two women were locked in each other's arms. "You-you whom I have always loved; you without whom I could have done nought for him. Oh! Radegonde, shall we never meet again?"
"God He knows," the other answered reverently. "I pray so. Ah, Sylvia! Sweet Sylvia."
But at last they forced themselves apart; at last Bevill stood face to face with her who, from almost the first moment they met at Louvain, had been staunch and firm to him-face to face for the last time, Sylvia standing back by the door open to the great porch. Then, ere he could find his voice, which, indeed, it seemed to him was impossible, he heard her saying even as her hand held his:
"Farewell. If ever in happy days to come for you your memory should chance to wander back to that night in Louvain when first our knowledge of each other arose; to the woman who was to play some little part in your existence-for-a time, spare her a-a-one moment's thought. Think of her as-as one-" But now her voice failed her, too, and she was silent.
Neither could Bevill speak yet, and still stood there holding her hand in his even as he observed the trembling of her lips, the tears standing in her soft blue, eyes-even as he heard the word "Bevill" murmured through those lips.
But, also, he observed something else as his troubled glance fell now upon his wife. He saw Sylvia's own lips move though no sound issued from them; he saw some suggestion, some prompting in Sylvia's own clear, grey eyes; and, seeing, grasped what they conveyed. Bending therefore to her who stood before him, he parted the hair that grew low down upon her forehead; bending still lower, he kissed her once-even as a brother might have kissed a loved sister. "Farewell, Radegonde;" he whispered, "Farewell," and saw by one swift glance at Sylvia's face that he had comprehended her meaning.
Yet never through the long life that was to be his did he know what Sylvia's womanly heart had told her, nor understand that which she understood.
* * * * * * *
Embosomed in the woods of Surrey there stands a house once white, now grey, on the face of which the lichen and the ivy picturesquely mingle. In front of it sweeps down a lawn to where a little river bubbles over the pebbles of its bed; round it are arbours and bosquets of quaint shape over which grows clematis many-hued-white, purple, flame-coloured. Round that lawn, too, grow trees that are ancient now, and that, when young, drew their existence from other lands than ours. Against the pilasters of the great porch, which gives entrance to a vast hall and supports a balcony on to which all the windows of the first floor open, trails a passion flower, old-perhaps, indeed, oft-times renewed in memory of him who planted the first one; of him who may have whispered as he did so: "'Twas by such flowers as these you were embowered, enshrined, on that night when first we met; so long as may be shall that flower grow against our home, the White House." For if from Holland, in those far-off days, some had wandered here who had ever gazed on a white house standing on the outskirts of Liége, they must have seen, and, seeing, recognised another house so like to it that its resemblance could be no fanciful one, but, in truth, a resemblance carefully studied and wrought.
In the great hall whose vast stairs at the farther end curve up on either side, many pictures hang and tell of what the originals must have been in life. Bevill, first Lord Bracton, is there, mounted on a bay horse, his uniform that of the Cuirassiers, or 4th Horse, his ribbons and orders showing that he held general's rank. On one side of this picture the painter has placed in a vertical line the words, "Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, Malplaquet," to testify that he who looks down took part in those glorious victories.
Yet if, as in truth, he does thus look down, either the limner's art, or the light cast at certain times from the great roof above, appears to make those eyes rest on one whose full-length portrait hangs by the side of his. On her! On his wife-some few years older in the picture than when first she learnt to love him and when, through rain and mire, she rushed as fast as might be to gain the help of Marlborough. A little older, yes; but not less fair and sweet. Stately as ever in her grace of matronhood; noble in her height, beautiful in feature, and with her clear, pure eyes undimmed, though in her rich brown hair some silver threads are seen. In each hand the woman holds the hand of a child.
On Lord Bracton's left there is another portrait, the picture of a woman no longer young, her almost grey hair massed above her head, but her eyes clear and bright as when first they gazed on Bevill Bracton in Louvain, while over all her features there is a look of content. By her side stands a youth still in his teens, one so like this woman that none can doubt he is her son.
Facing the entrance hangs a larger picture than all- that of a handsome man in scarlet and covered with orders and decorations; one whose tranquil features and soft lineaments bespeak calm self-reliance; confidence. On a medallion beneath this are the words: "John, first Duke of Marlborough and Marquess of Blandford, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire and Prince of Mindelheim in Suabia."
Around the house are copses and thickets, and outside them the woods, in all of which have played five or six generations of children, some of them Bractons, some of them named De Violaine. Also, in the dead and gone days that Time has powdered for ever with its dust, these children have grown up and intermarried in the old church near by, the living of which has been held perpetually for over a hundred and fifty years by De Violaines, all of whom are descended from a French refugee officer who settled here. It must be, therefore-since that refugee would never have taken any but one woman for his wife-that, at last, Radegonde de Valorme was enabled to forget the sufferings of him who died at the galleys for his religion's sake, to reconcile herself to seeing Sylvia wedded to the Englishman who came once into her life and troubled her thoughts; that she was contented to eventually make happy the gallant soldier who had loved her so long.
There is one little copse to which those children of different generations have always loved to resort, and, after playing, to sit there and talk of its associations with old days-a little copse of nut-trees and red may, in which they find the earliest white violets and where, they say, the robins always build their nests and the nightingales love to sit and sing on summer nights. Yet, as they tell their little stories to each other and weave not only fancies of the past, but, it may be, of the future as well, their eyes rest upon a great stone slab that lies along the ground embedded in grass and overgrown with moss-moss that, however, many tiny hands have often scraped and brushed away so that they might once more read the two words cut into that stone by some old graver of bygone days-the words, "La Rose."