The Lady of Loyalty House: A Novel

“Why, then, sir, such a jury as your world has empanelled have misread you, for if they summed your flaws aptly in their report of you, they clapped this rider on their staggering verdict, that Sir Blaise Mickleton did, at his worst, do his best to play the gentleman.”

Smiles of satisfaction rippled over Sir Blaise’s face. He did not follow the drift of Evander’s fluency but took it for compliment.

“Handsomely apologized, i’ faith,” he beamed to Brilliana. Brilliana laughed in his face.

“Why, poor man, he flouts you worse than ever,” she whispered.

Sir Blaise knitted puzzled brows while Evander, having made the effective pause, continued, suavely:

“In the which judgment they erred, for he does not merit so creditable a praise. Sure they can never have seen him who couple in any way the name of Sir Blaise Mickleton with the title of gentleman.”

Even Sir Blaise’s dulness could not misinterpret Evander’s meaning, and rage resumed its sway.

“You crow! You kite!” he fumed. His wrath could find no more words, but he made a stride towards Evander, menacing. Brilliana stepped dexterously between the two. As she told Tiffany later, she felt as if she were gliding between fire and ice.

“One side of me was frozen, and the other done to a crisp.” She lifted her hand commandingly.

“We will have no bickering here,” she protested. Evander paid her a salutation, and, moving a little aside, resumed his book. He would not retire while Sir Blaise was in presence, but he guessed that the lady wished for speech with her friend. Sir Blaise did not find her words consolatory, though she affected consolation.

“The bear licks with a rough tongue,” she whispered. Sir Blaise slapped his palms together.

“You shall see me ring him, you shall see me bait him, if you will but leave us.”

“How shall I see if I leave?” Brilliana asked, provokingly. “But ’tis no matter.”

As she spoke she thought of Halfman, and a merry scheme danced in her head.

“Gentles, I must leave you,” she cried, with a pretty little reverence that included both men. Then in a moment she had slipped out of the pleasaunce and was running down the avenue. In the house she found Halfman. “Quick!” she cried, breathlessly. “Sir Blaise and Mr. Cloud are wrangling yonder like dogs over a bone.”

“Do you wish me to keep the peace between them?” Halfman questioned. Brilliana did not exactly know what she wished. She was fretted at the poor show a King’s man had made before a Puritan; if Sir Blaise could do something to humble the Puritan it might not be wholly amiss. So much Halfman gathered from her jerky scraps of sentences; also, that on no account must the disputants be permitted to come to swords. Halfman nodded, caught up a staff, and ran full tilt to the pleasaunce. The moment his back was turned Brilliana, instead of remaining in the house, came out again, doubled on her course, and dodging among the hedges found herself peeping unseen upon the enclosure she had just quitted and the brawl at its height.

XX
SIR BLAISE PAYS HIS PENALTY

When Brilliana quitted them the two men had regarded each other steadily for a few seconds in silence. Then Sir Blaise spoke.

“You made merry with me just now in ease and safety, a lady being by.”

Evander shrugged his shoulders.

“Had no lady been by I should have been more merry and less tender.”

Sir Blaise scowled.

“I am ill to provoke, my master. Those quarrels end sadly that are quarrels picked with me.”

Again Evander shrugged his shoulders.

“I pick no quarrel, sir. You asked me very straightly what I knew of Sir Blaise Mickleton, and very straightly I tended you my knowledge. It is not my fault, but rather your misfortune, that you happen to be Sir Blaise Mickleton.”

Sir Blaise dropped his hand to his sword-hilt.

“You Puritan jack,” he shouted, “will you try sharper conclusions?”

In a moment and involuntarily Evander’s hand sought his own weapon. It was in that moment that Halfman burst into the pleasaunce.

“Why, what’s the matter here?” he cited, wielding his staff as if it had been the scimitar of the Moor. “Hold, for your lives! For Christian shame put by this barbarous brawl.”

The disputants greeted their interrupter differently. Evander paid Halfman’s memory the tribute of an appreciative smile. Sir Blaise turned to him as to a sympathizer and backer.

“This Puritan dog has insulted me,” he cried.

Halfman nodded sagaciously. “And you would let a little of his malapert blood for him. But it may not be.”

He addressed Evander. “You are a prisoner on parole, wearing your sword by a lady’s favor, and may not use it here.”

“You are in the right,” Evander answered, “and I ask your lady’s pardon if for a moment I forgot where I am and why.”

“Yah, yah, fox,” grinned Sir Blaise, who believed that his enemy was glad to be out of the quarrel. But Halfman, who knew better, smiled.

“There are other ways,” he suggested, pleasantly, “by which two gentlemen may void their spleen without drawing their toasting-irons. Why should we not mimic sword-play with a pair of honest cudgels?”

Blaise slapped his thigh approvingly, for he was good at rustic sports. Halfman turned his dark face upon Evander.

“Has my suggestion the fortune to meet with your approval?” he asked. Evander nodded. “Then let Sir Blaise handle his own staff, and you, camerado, take mine – ’tis of a length with your enemy’s – and set to.”

Halfman watched Evander narrowly while he spoke. Skill with the rapier did not necessarily imply skill with the cudgel. He bore Evander no grudge for overcoming him at fence, but if Sir Blaise proved the better man with the batoon, there would be a kind of compensation in it. He had heard that Sir Blaise was apt at country-sports and now Sir Blaise vaunted his knowledge.

“Let me tell you to your trembling,” he crowed, “that I am the best cudgel-player in these parts. I will drub you, I will trounce you, I will tan your hide.”

“That will be as it shall be,” Evander answered. He had taken the staff that Halfman had proffered, and after weighing it in his hand and carefully examining its texture had set it up against the seat, while he prepared to strip off his jerkin. Halfman assisted Sir Blaise to extricate himself from his beribboned doublet, and the two men faced each other in their shirts, Evander’s linen fine and plain, like all about him, Sir Blaise’s linen fine and ostentatious, like all about him, and reeking of ambergris. Evander was not a small man, but his body seemed very slender by contrast with the well-nourished bulk of the country-gentleman, and many a one would have held that the match was strangely unequal. But Halfman did not think so, seeing how deliberately Evander entered upon the enterprise, and even Sir Blaise’s self-conceit was troubled by his antagonist’s alacrity in accepting the challenge.

“If you tender me your grief for your insolence,” he suggested, with truculent condescension, “you will save yourself a basting.”

Evander laughed outright, the blithest laugh that Halfman had yet heard pass from his Puritan lips.

“I must deny you, pomposity,” he answered, gayly. “It were pity to postpone a pleasure.”

“You are in the right,” commented Halfman. “Come, sirs, enough words; let us to deeds. Begin.”

The sticks swung in the air and met with a crack, each man’s hand pressing his cudgel hard against the other’s, each man’s foot firm and springing, each man’s eyes seeking to read in the other’s the secret of his assault. Suddenly Blaise made a feint at Evander’s leg and then swashed for his head.

“Have a care for your crown,” he shouted, confident in his stroke; but Evander met the blow instantly and wood only rattled on wood.

“I have cared for it,” he said, quietly, as he came on guard again, making no attempt to return Sir Blaise’s attack. Sir Blaise reversed his tactics, feinted at Evander’s head, and swept a furious semicircle at Evander’s legs.

“Save your shins, then,” he cried, and grunted with rage as he again encountered Evander’s swiftly revolving staff and heard Evander answer, mockingly:

“I have saved them.”

Inarticulate fury goaded him. “I will play with you no longer!” he growled, and made a rush for Evander, raining blow upon blow as quickly as he could deliver them, and hoping to break down Evander’s guard. But Evander, giving ground a little before his antagonist’s onslaught, met the attacks with a mill-wheel revolution of his weapon which kept him scatheless, and then suddenly his cudgel shot out, came with a sullen crack on Sir Blaise’s skull, and the tussle was over. Sir Blaise was lying his length on the grass, very still, and there was blood upon his ruddy hair.

Brilliana in hiding gave a little gasp when she saw her neighbor fall; she could not tell whether to laugh or cry at the defeat of the Cavalier. She saw Halfman bend over the fallen man and lift his head upon his knee. She saw Evander advance and look down upon his adversary.

“I hope you are not hurt,” Evander said, solicitously.

Halfman glanced up at the victor. “No harm’s done,” he said. “He was stunned for the moment; he is coming round.”

And in confirmation of his words Sir Blaise opened his eyes, and then with difficulty sat up and stared ruefully at Evander.

“Gogs!” he said, first rubbing his head and then looking at his reddened palm. “Gogs! That was a swinging snip. I am as dizzy as a winged pigeon.”

“Let me help you to rise,” Evander said, courteously. Blaise shook his aching head.

“I am none too fluttered to find my feet,” he asserted, ignoring the fact that his rising from the ground to an erect posture was entirely due to the combined efforts of Halfman and Evander, one on each side, and then, when he did get to his feet, he was only able to retain the perpendicular by leaning heavily upon Halfman as a steady prop. From under his bandaged forehead his pale-blue eyes regarded Evander with no trace of enmity.

“Your hand, Puritan – your hand!” he cried. “’Tis just that we clasp hands after a scuffle.”

Puritan and Cavalier clasped hands in a hearty grip. “I am at your service,” Evander said, gravely. “Shall we continue?” Sir Blaise shook his head again.

“I have had my bellyful,” he grunted. “There was breakfast, dinner, supper in your stroke. I must to the house to find vinegar and brown paper to patch my poll.”

“Can I aid you?” Evander offered. “I have some slight skill in surgery.”

“Leave him to me,” Halfman interposed. “I have botched as many heads as I have broken.”

Sir Blaise, leaning heavily on Halfman’s arm, replied to Evander’s offer in his own way.

“I will not have you mend ill what you have marred well. Come, crutch, let us be jogging. We will meet again another time, my fighting Puritan.”

Evander made him a bow. “At your pleasure,” he replied, and stood till Sir Blaise, leaning on Halfman, had hobbled out of the pleasaunce and limped out of sight. Then he drew on his jerkin again with a smile and a sigh.

“Truly,” he thought, “for a man who has but three days to live, I cannot be said to be wasting much idle time.” With that he took up again the book he had laid down and was soon deep in its study.

XXI
A PUZZLING PURITAN

So deep was Evander in his book that he did not hear a lady’s footfalls on the grass. When the discomfited Sir Blaise had quitted the arena Brilliana held herself unseen and then swiftly sped back to the pleasaunce. She stood for some seconds on the threshold of a yew arch watching the reading man and wondering why it had pleased Providence to make a Puritan so personable and skilful, wondering why she of all women should take any interest either in his person or in his skill, wondering how long he would remain buried in his tiresome book unconscious of her presence. She decided that she would slip away and leave him ignorant of her coming, and having decided that, she coughed loudly, at which sound, of course, he turned round, saw her, and rose respectfully to his feet.

“I fear I trespass in your paradise,” he said, wistfully.

“My honor, no!” Brilliana cried, pretending to look about her anxiously. “But where is Sir Blaise? I hope you two did not quarrel.”

“No, no,” Evander protested; “we parted on clasped hands. Some pressing matter called him to his quarters.”

“Did you pay him apology for your equivocal wit?” Brilliana asked, demurely.

Evander answered gravely: “He professed himself satisfied.”

Brilliana feigned a cry of horror.

“I trust you did not eat your words.”

Evander shook his head.

“I am not so hungry. Have I your leave to go?”

He made as if to depart; Brilliana met his motion with a little frown.

“Are you so eager?” she asked, in a voice in which regret and petulance were dexterously commingled.

Evander answered her gravely. “Yesterday you said that a Puritan presence was hateful.”

Brilliana laughed blithely and her curls quivered in the sunshine.

“You must not harp on a mad maid’s anger. Yesterday you were my enemy, a thing of threats and treason. To-day all’s different; to-day you are my guest. Soon you will ride hence, and we will, if Providence please, never meet again. But for a span of hours let us make believe to be friend and friend, till Colonel Cromwell send my cousin and your liberty.”

Evander was tempted to quarrel with himself for being so ready to welcome this overture. But yesterday this woman had spattered him with insults, snared him on a strained plea, bargained away his life for the body of a spy. Yesterday she had shuddered at the thought of any link of kinship between them, as she might have shuddered at kinship with a wronger of women, a killer of children, a coward. Yet to-day, as she stood there, sunshine on her hair, sunshine in her eyes, a fairy lady standing in that circle of solemn yews, he could find in his heart no regret for anything that had brought him to her presence. He would take gladly what she offered gayly, two days of friendship with so radiant a maid – and then? He left that thought unanswered to reply to Brilliana.

“Madam,” he said, with a very ceremonious bow, “I will pretend that we are going to be friends till the end of my life.”

Brilliana clapped her hands like a child that has been promised some coveted comfit.

“You are brave at make-believe. In the mean time let us keep each other company a little. Surely it is dull for a man of action to be a prisoner, and for my own part I mope sadly now that my little war is well over.”

She had seated herself as she spoke, and she motioned to Evander to take his place by her side. When she paused he asked:

“Are you so strenuous an amazon?”

She answered him very earnestly:

“I miss the splendid music of the siege, the stir of arms, the bustle of giving order, the alertness of expectation. I did not think a woman’s life could be tuned to so high a diapason. Just think of it! Yesterday, and for many yesterdays, I was a leaguered lady, a priestess of battles; I stood for the King; existence was one fierce ecstasy. To drop from that brisk spin and whetted edge of life into this housewife’s twilight is all one with being some sea-old admiral and drowning in a canal.”

The daughters of Israel could not have thrown more sadness into their voice, Evander thought, as they sang by the waters of Babylon. If her face was fair in animation, it seemed still more fair in sadness.

“Has the Lady of Harby no employment,” he asked, gently, “to spur the trudging time?”

Brilliana laughed rather cheerlessly.

“Oh, mercy, yes! Can she not overwatch the gardener to see that he planteth the right sort of herbs and flowers at the new of the moon, at moon full, and at moon old? She can chat with Mistress Cook of sallets and fricassees and fritters; she can count the linen; she can preserve quinces; she can distil you aqua composita or imperial water, or water of Bettony, against she grow old; she can be dairy-wise, cellar-wise, laundry-wise – oh, there are a thousand thousand things she can do if she want to do them, but the plague of it is, since I have burned powder, these decent drudgeries no longer divert me.”

She gave a little sigh as she ended her enumeration of a housewife’s tasks, and then banished the sigh with a smile. Evander found himself thinking that a man might count himself happy for whom this lady should sigh so at parting and smile so in welcome. But what he said was:

“Against your next distillation I can give you a very praisable recipe for a cordial. It is a Swedish fancy and much favored by the ladies of the North.”

Brilliana looked him full in the face and laughed very merrily, and he felt his cheeks redden at her gaze and her mirth.

“Was there ever such a man-marvel?” she asked. “All my people praise you for some different accomplishment. A horseman, a gardener, the best at fence, the best, too, with a cudgel – ”

“Ah, madam,” Evander interrupted, apologetically, “pray how has that come to your ears?”

“Never mind how it came,” Brilliana answered, “so that it has come and that I owe you no ill-will for teaching a foolish gentleman a lesson. But you can shoot, it seems, and play games, and are apt in out-door arts and wise in out-of-doors wisdom – for all the world like a country gentleman.”

“Madam, I am, as I hope, a gentleman, and as for the country knowledge, I have lived its life in many lands and learned something by the way.”

“And now,” Brilliana bantered on, “you boast some science of the still-room, and Mistress Satchell speaks of a Spanish manner of grilling capons. Are you, perhaps, a herald as well as a master cook, and do you know something of the gentle and joyous craft of the huntsman?”

Evander took her in her humor and bandied back the ball of qualification.

“I can prick a coat indifferently well,” he responded, solemnly, “and if such trifles delight you, I can blaze arms by the days of the week or the ages of man or the flowers of the field, though I hold that a true herald will never stray beyond colors.”

Brilliana nodded her head with an air of profound approval. “Better and better,” she murmured. Evander went on with his catalogue of self-compliment.

“And as for my woodcraft, I can name you all the names of a male deer, from hind calf, year by year, through brocket and spayed, and staggard and stag, till his sixth year, when he is truly a hart and has his rights of brow, bay, and tray antlers. I am skilled in the uses of falcon-gentle, gerfalcon, saker, lanner, merlin, hobby, goshawk, sparrow-hawk, and musket – ”

Brilliana interrupted him with an impetuous gesture of command, and Evander made an end of his display.

“Enough, enough!” she cried. “I feel like Balkis when she came to sip wisdom from Solomon’s goblet. If I question you further I may find that, like my Lord Verulam, you have taken all knowledge for your province. This is something uncanny in a Puritan.”

Evander protested.

“Why should a man deny the arts of life because he finds strength in the faith of the Puritans?”

“I know not why,” Brilliana answered, “but so it is generally believed among us who are not Puritans.”

“There are fanatic fellows with us as in all causes,” Evander admitted, “and some, it may be, who wear moroseness to gain favor. But these are no more than the fringe of a stout cloak. I am no exceptional Puritan, I promise you. Colonel Cromwell himself – ”

Brilliana interrupted him with a frowning imperiousness.

“Let us not talk of Colonel Cromwell,” she commanded.

“I wish you would let me speak of Colonel Cromwell,” Evander pleaded. “He has long been my dear friend, and – ”

“Let us not talk of Colonel Cromwell,” Brilliana repeated, with a peremptory stamp of the foot. “I want to talk of you and your curious Puritanism. I thought you were all too hypocritically devout to have any care for the toys and colors of life.”

“To be devout is not to be hypocritical,” Evander urged, gently. “And, to speak for myself, I hope I am devout, but I do not find my faith weakened by honorable enjoyment of honorable pleasures. Yet, indeed, what poor accomplishments I can lay claim to – and to afford you diversion, I have somewhat exaggerated their scope and number – are due directly to my being a Puritan – ”

“You are pleased to be paradoxical,” Brilliana asserted. Evander put the suggestion aside with a head shake.

“To my being a Puritan and to my being of your kin. When I was a boy I learned of that kinship, learned how her marriage with a Puritan had earned for a woman of your race the scorn, indeed the hatred of her family, or those who should most and best have loved her.”

“You do not understand how strongly those who think as we think feel on such a matter,” Brilliana urged, one-half of her spirit angry that she was speaking almost apologetically, the other half vexed that the first half was not more angry.

“Forgive me,” said Evander, “but I do understand; I understand very well; I made it my business to understand. And, therefore, I resolved that so far as in me lay I would show those who scorned my people and my creed that a Puritan might compete with his enemies in all the arts and graces they held most dear, and not come off the worst in all encounters.”

“That was a brave resolve!” Brilliana’s eyes and voice applauded him. He flushed a little as he went on.

“It was a kind of oath of Hannibal. God was gracious in the gift of a strong will, and I stuck to my purpose. I mastered arts, acquired tongues, forced myself to dexterity in all manly exercises. I had a modest patrimony which allowed me to travel after I left Cambridge, and so gain that knowledge of the world which is so dear to English gentlemen. And always in my thoughts it was: some day I may meet some son of the house that cast us out and show him that a Puritan might fear God and yet ride a horse, fly a hawk, and use a sword with the best of his enemies.”

“Instead of which,” said Brilliana, as he paused, “you meet a daughter of the house and play your well-practised part to her.” Her voice was stern now and her eyes shone fiercely as she leaned forward and continued in a low voice, “Was this the cause of your coming to Harby?”

“No,” Evander answered. “I should never have come to Harby of my own accord. But news came to Cambridge of your flying the King’s flag. The example was dangerous; Harby was a good house for either side to hold. Colonel Cromwell commanded me to march with the volunteers I had raised at Cambridge to secure Harby in the name of the Parliament.”

“And you were very glad to obey,” Brilliana said, bitterly, and again Evander shook his head.

“I was very sorry to obey. But I had no choice. Colonel Cromwell was my father’s friend; he knew the story of my people; he set it upon me as a special seal for righteousness that I should do this thing. ‘Kin shall be set against kin in this strife,’ he said, ‘father against son, and brother against brother. Go forth in the name of the Lord and pluck the banner of Baal from the wall of Harby.’ And I went.”

Brilliana, lifting her head, looked over the green wall of yews to where, in the cool, gray-blue of the October sky, the royal standard fluttered its gaudy folds in the wind. She said nothing, but her smile spoke whole volumes of victories; the panegyrics of a thousand triumphs gleamed in her eyes. Evander read smile and gleam rightly.

“True, I failed,” he admitted. “Yet I may not say that I am sorry, for if I had not failed I should have lost a friend.”

He looked admiringly at her, but Brilliana drew herself up stiffly and regarded him coldly.

“You may be my kinsman without being my friend,” she said, with a sourness which had the effect of making Evander laugh like a boy.

“Why, lady,” he protested, “it is not ten minutes since that you proffered me your friendship.”

“Did I so?” Brilliana asked, puckering her brows as if in doubt, though she had not the least doubt upon the matter.

“Indeed, madam,” said Evander, very earnestly, “friends for a lifetime.” Brilliana snapped contradiction.

“No, no; it was you who said that. I admit the friendship for three days.”

“And I assert the friendship of a lifetime,” Evander persisted. His voice and his eyes were very merry, but there came an unconquerable gnawing at his heart that, in spite of the fair place and the fair face and the sweet discourse, life for him meant no more than a space of three days. Well, then, he would live his three days bravely, brightly. He lifted his eyes to the lady.

“Are you of Master Amiens’ school?” he asked —

“‘Most friendship is feigning, most love is mere folly.’”

She made no reply to his question, but its matter surprised her and prompted her to another.

“Do you go to Master Shakespeare’s school?” she asked; and even as she spoke she leaned forward to look at the book he had laid down and to which, till that moment, she had paid no heed. She drew it towards her and saw what it was.

“Why, here are his plays. Can you affect him when ’tis known that the King loves him?”

“I would the King had no worse counsellors,” Evander said, gravely.

Brilliana had lifted the big book onto her lap and was turning the pages tenderly, pausing here and there with loving murmurs.

“Had I been a man,” she said, softly, “I should have turned player for the pleasure to speak such golden words.”

Evander, watching her fair, lowered face under its crown of dark hair, thought of all that Imogen might mean, or Rosalind or Juliet, did each of these dear ones show on the stage like this lady. He gave the odd thought form in speech.

“It is strange,” he said, almost to himself, “that a Cavalier world is content without women players.”

Brilliana lifted her face from the book, and there was a look of astonishment and even of pain upon it.

“Oh, that is quite another matter,” she said, quickly. “That could never come to pass.”

Evander’s Puritanism, recalled to recollection of itself, felt compelled to assent.

“I trust not,” he said, gravely. He was looking at Brilliana with eyes that were honestly admiring. She rose from her seat.

“I must dismiss you now,” she said, “for I have much to do ere dinner. You will dine with me, I pray.”

Evander made her a not uncourtly bow.

“If I be not unwelcome,” he suggested.

Brilliana shook her head very positively.

“We are pledged friends for the time, and friends love to break bread together.”

There was no countering this argument. Evander took up the folio and made its owner another bow.

“I will attend you at the dinner-hour,” he said. “This treasure I restore to its home.”

As the Parliament man moved away across the grass, his image very dark against its green, Brilliana looked after him, nursing her chin in her palm and her elbow on her knee. As he entered the house with the big book under his arm she took out her pretty handkerchief, and with much deliberation tied a small knot in one corner of it.

“Master Puritan, Master Puritan,” she murmured, “I must tie a knot in my handkerchief to remind me that you and I are enemies.”