Sir John, however, came halfway to meet the quarrel. His rancour against the Pirate of Penarrow — as he had come to dub Sir Oliver — endered him almost as eager to engage as was his visitor.
They found a secluded corner of the deer-park for their business, and there Sir John — a slim, sallow gentleman of some thirty years of age — made an onslaught with sword and dagger upon Sir Oliver, full worthy of the onslaught he had made earlier with his tongue. But his impetuosity availed him less than nothing. Sir Oliver was come there with a certain purpose, and it was his way that he never failed to carry through a thing to which he set his hand.
In three minutes it was all over and Sir Oliver was carefully wiping his blade, whilst Sir John lay coughing upon the turf tended by white-faced Peter Godolphin and a scared groom who had been bidden thither to make up the necessary tale of witnesses.
Sir Oliver sheathed his weapons and resumed his coat, then came to stand over his fallen foe, considering him critically.
“I think I have silenced him for a little time only,” he said. “And I confess that I intended to do better. I hope, however, that the lesson will suffice and that he will lie no more — at least concerning me.”
“Do you mock a fallen man?” was Master Godolphin’s angry protest.
“God forbid!” said Sir Oliver soberly. “There is no mockery in my heart. There is, believe me, nothing but regret — regret that I should not have done the thing more thoroughly. I will send assistance from the house as I go. Give you good day, Master Peter.”
From Arwenack he rode round by Penryn on his homeward way. But he did not go straight home. He paused at the Gates of Godolphin Court, which stood above Trefusis Point commanding the view of Carrick Roads. He turned in under the old gateway and drew up in the courtyard. Leaping to the kidney-stones that paved it, he announced himself a visitor to Mistress Rosamund.
He found her in her bower — a light, turreted chamber on the mansion’s eastern side, with windows that looked out upon that lovely sheet of water and the wooded slopes beyond. She was sitting with a book in her lap in the deep of that tall window when he entered, preceded and announced by Sally Pentreath, who, now her tire-woman, had once been her nurse.
She rose with a little exclamation of gladness when he appeared under the lintel — scarce high enough to admit him without stooping — and stood regarding him across the room with brightened eyes and flushing cheeks.
What need is there to describe her? In the blaze of notoriety into which she was anon to be thrust by Sir Oliver Tressilian there was scarce a poet in England who did not sing the grace and loveliness of Rosamund Godolphin, and in all conscience enough of those fragments have survived. Like her brother she was tawny headed and she was divinely tall, though as yet her figure in its girlishness was almost too slender for her height.
“I had not looked for you so early....” she was beginning, when she observed that his countenance was oddly stern. “Why... what has happened?” she cried, her intuitions clamouring loudly of some mischance.
“Naught to alarm you, sweet; yet something that may vex you.” He set an arm about that lissom waist of hers above the swelling farthingale, and gently led her back to her chair, then flung himself upon the window-seat beside her. “You hold Sir John Killigrew in some affection?” he said between statement and inquiry.
“Why, yes. He was our guardian until my brother came of full age.”
Sir Oliver made a wry face. “Aye, there’s the rub. Well, I’ve all but killed him.”
She drew back into her chair, recoiling before him, and he saw horror leap to her eyes and blench her face. He made haste to explain the causes that had led to this, he told her briefly of the calumnies concerning him that Sir John had put about to vent his spite at having been thwarted in a matter of his coveted licence to build at Smithick.
“That mattered little,” he concluded. “I knew these tales concerning me were abroad, and I held them in the same contempt as I hold their utterer. But he went further, Rose: he poisoned your brother’s mind against me, and he stirred up in him the slumbering rancour that in my father’s time was want to lie between our houses. To-day Peter came to me with the clear intent to make a quarrel. He affronted me as no man has ever dared.”
She cried out at that, her already great alarm redoubled. He smiled.
“Do not suppose that I could harm him. He is your brother, and, so, sacred to me. He came to tell me that no betrothal was possible between us, forbade me ever again to visit Godolphin Court, dubbed me pirate and vampire to my face and reviled my father’s memory. I tracked the evil of all this to its source in Killigrew, and rode straight to Arwenack to dam that source of falsehood for all time. I did not accomplish quite so much as I intended. You see, I am frank, my Rose. It may be that Sir John will live; if so I hope that he may profit by this lesson. I have come straight to you,” he concluded, “that you may hear the tale from me before another comes to malign me with false stories of this happening.”
“You... you mean Peter?” she cried.
“Alas!” he sighed.
She sat very still and white, looking straight before her and not at all at Sir Oliver. At length she spoke.
“I am not skilled in reading men,” she said in a sad, small voice. “How should I be, that am but a maid who has led a cloistered life. I was told of you that you were violent and passionate, a man of bitter enmities, easily stirred to hatreds, cruel and ruthless in the persecution of them.”
“You, too, have been listening to Sir John,” he muttered, and laughed shortly.
“All this was I told,” she pursued as if he had not spoken, “and all did I refuse to believe because my heart was given to you. Yet... yet of what have you made proof to-day?”
“Of forbearance,” said he shortly.
“Forbearance?” she echoed, and her lips writhed in a smile of weary irony. “Surely you mock me!”
He set himself to explain.
“I have told you what Sir John had done. I have told you that the greater part of it — and matter all that touched my honour — I know Sir John to have done long since. Yet I suffered it in silence and contempt. Was that to show myself easily stirred to ruthlessness? What was it but forbearance? When, however, he carries his petty huckster’s rancour so far as to seek to choke for me my source of happiness in life and sends your brother to affront me, I am still so forbearing that I recognize your brother to be no more than a tool and go straight to the hand that wielded him. Because I know of your affection for Sir John I gave him such latitude as no man of honour in England would have given him.”
Then seeing that she still avoided his regard, still sat in that frozen attitude of horror at learning that the man she loved had imbrued his hands with the blood of another whom she also loved, his pleading quickened to a warmer note. He flung himself upon his knees beside her chair, and took in his great sinewy hands the slender fingers which she listlessly surrendered. “Rose,” he cried, and his deep voice quivered with intercession, “dismiss all that you have heard from out your mind. Consider only this thing that has befallen. Suppose that Lionel my brother came to you, and that, having some measure of power and authority to support him, he swore to you that you should never wed me, swore to prevent this marriage because he deemed you such a woman as could not bear my name with honour to myself; and suppose that to all this he added insult to the memory of your dead father, what answer would you return him? Speak, Rose! Be honest with thyself and me. Deem yourself in my place, and say in honesty if you can still condemn me for what I have done. Say if it differs much from what you would wish to do in such a case as I have named.”
Her eyes scanned now his upturned face, every line of which was pleading to her and calling for impartial judgment. Her face grew troubled, and then almost fierce. She set her hands upon his shoulders, and looked deep into his eyes.
“You swear to me, Noll, that all is as you have told it me — you have added naught, you have altered naug
ht to make the tale more favourable to yourself?”
“You need such oaths from me?” he asked, and she saw sorrow spread upon his countenance.
“If I did I should not love thee, Noll. But in such an hour I need your own assurance. Will you not be generous and bear with me, strengthen me to withstand anything that may be said hereafter?”
“As God’s my witness, I have told you true in all,” he answered solemnly.
She sank her head to his shoulder. She was weeping softly, overwrought by this climax to all that in silence and in secret she had suffered since he had come a-wooing her.
“Then,” she said, “I believe you acted rightly. I believe with you that no man of honour could have acted otherwise. I must believe you, Noll, for did I not, then I could believe in naught and hope for naught. You are as a fire that has seized upon the better part of me and consumed it all to ashes that you may hold it in your heart. I am content so you be true.”
“True I shall ever be, sweetheart,” he whispered fervently. “Could I be less since you are sent to make me so?”
She looked at him again, and now she was smiling wistfully through her tears.
“And you will bear with Peter?” she implored him.
“He shall have no power to anger me,” he answered. “I swear that too. Do you know that but to-day he struck me?”
“Struck you? You did not tell me that!”
“My quarrel was not with him but with the rogue that sent him. I laughed at the blow. Was he not sacred to me?”
“He is good at heart, Noll,” she pursued. “In time he will come to love you as you deserve, and you will come to know that he, too, deserves your love.”
“He deserves it now for the love he bears to you.”
“And you will think ever thus during the little while of waiting that perforce must lie before us?”
“I shall never think otherwise, sweet. Meanwhile I shall avoid him, and that no harm may come should he forbid me Godolphin Court I’ll even stay away. In less than a year you will be of full age, and none may hinder you to come and go. What is a year, with such hope as mine to still impatience?”
She stroked his face. “Art very gentle with me ever, Noll,” she murmured fondly. “I cannot credit you are ever harsh to any, as they say.”
“Heed them not,” he answered her. “I may have been something of all that, but you have purified me, Rose. What man that loved you could be aught but gentle.” He kissed her, and stood up. “I had best be going now,” he said. “I shall walk along the shore towards Trefusis Point to-morrow morning. If you should chance to be similarly disposed....”
She laughed, and rose in her turn. “I shall be there, dear Noll.”
“‘Twere best so hereafter,” he assured her, smiling, and so took his leave.
She followed him to the stair-head, and watched him as he descended with eyes that took pride in the fine upright carriage of that stalwart, masterful lover.
CHAPTER III. THE FORGE
Sir Oliver’s wisdom in being the first to bear Rosamund the story of that day’s happenings was established anon when Master Godolphin returned home. He went straight in quest of his sister; and in a frame of mind oppressed by fear and sorrow, for Sir John, by his general sense of discomfiture at the hands of Sir Oliver and by the anger begotten of all this he was harsh in manner and disposed to hector.
“Madam,” he announced abruptly, “Sir John is like to die.”
The astounding answer she returned him — that is, astounding to him — did not tend to soothe his sorely ruffled spirit.
“I know,” she said. “And I believe him to deserve no less. Who deals in calumny should be prepared for the wages of it.”
He stared at her in a long, furious silence, then exploded into oaths, and finally inveighed against her unnaturalness and pronounced her bewitched by that foul dog Tressilian.
“It is fortunate for me,” she answered him composedly, “that he was here before you to give me the truth of this affair.” Then her assumed calm and the anger with which she had met his own all fell away from her. “Oh, Peter, Peter,” she cried in anguish, “I hope that Sir John will recover. I am distraught by this event. But be just, I implore you. Sir Oliver has told me how hard-driven he had been.”
“He shall be driven harder yet, as God’s my life! If you think this deed shall go unpunished....”
She flung herself upon his breast and implored him to carry this quarrel no further. She spoke of her love for Sir Oliver and announced her firm resolve to marry him in despite of all opposition that could be made, all of which did not tend to soften her brother’s humour. Yet because of the love that ever had held these two in closest bonds he went so far in the end as to say that should Sir John recover he would not himself pursue the matter further. But if Sir John should die — as was very likely — honour compelled him to seek vengeance of a deed to which he had himself so very largely contributed.
“I read that man as if he were an open book,” the boy announced, with callow boastfulness. “He has the subtlety of Satan, yet he does not delude me. It was at me he struck through Killigrew. Because he desires you, Rosamund, he could not — as he bluntly told me — deal with me however I provoked him, not even though I went the length of striking him. He might have killed me for’t; but he knew that to do so would place a barrier ‘twixt him and you. Oh! he is calculating as all the fiends of Hell. So, to wipe out the dishonour which I did him, he shifts the blame of it upon Killigrew and goes out to kill him, which he further thinks may act as a warning to me. But if Killigrew dies....” And thus he rambled on, filling her gentle heart with anguish to see this feud increasing between the two men she loved best in all the world. If the outcome of it should be that either were to kill the other, she knew that she could never again look upon the survivor.
She took heart at last in the memory of Sir Oliver’s sworn promise that her brother’s life should be inviolate to him, betide what might. She trusted him; she depended upon his word and that rare strength of his which rendered possible to him a course that no weaker man would dare pursue. And in this reflection her pride in him increased, and she thanked God for a lover who in all things was a giant among men.
But Sir John Killigrew did not die. He hovered between this world and a better one for some seven days, at the end of which he began to recover. By October he was abroad again, gaunt and pale, reduced to half the bulk that had been his before, a mere shadow of a man.
One of his first visits was to Godolphin Court. He went to remonstrate with Rosamund upon her betrothal, and he did so at the request of her brother. But his remonstrances were strangely lacking in the force that she had looked for.
The odd fact is that in his near approach to death, and with his earthly interest dwindling, Sir John had looked matters frankly in the face, and had been driven to the conclusion — a conclusion impossible to him in normal health — that he had got no more than he deserved. He realized that he had acted unworthily, if unconscious at the time of the unworthiness of what he did; that the weapons with which he had fought Sir Oliver were not the weapons that become a Gentleman or in which there is credit to be won. He perceived that he had permitted his old enmity for the house of Tressilian, swollen by a sense of injury lately suffered in the matter of the licence to build at Smithick, to warp his judgment and to persuade him that Sir Oliver was all he had dubbed him. He realized that jealousy, too, had taken a hand in the matter. Sir Oliver’s exploits upon the seas had brought him wealth, and with this wealth he was building up once more the Tressilian sway in those parts, which Ralph Tressilian had so outrageously diminished, so that he threatened to eclipse the importance of the Killigrews of Arwenack.
Nevertheless, in the hour of reaction he did not go so far as to admit that Sir Oliver Tressilian was a fit mate for Rosamund Godolphin. She and her brother had been placed in his care by their late father, and he had nobly discharged his tutelage until such time as Peter had come to full age. His a
ffection for Rosamund was tender as that of a lover, but tempered by a feeling entirely paternal. He went very near to worshipping her, and when all was said, when he had cleared his mind of all dishonest bias, he still found overmuch to dislike in Oliver Tressilian, and the notion of his becoming Rosamund’s husband was repellent.
First of all there was that bad Tressilian blood — notoriously bad, and never more flagrantly displayed than in the case of the late Ralph Tressilian. It was impossible that Oliver should have escaped the taint of it; nor could Sir John perceive any signs that he had done so. He displayed the traditional Tressilian turbulence. He was passionate and brutal, and the pirate’s trade to which he had now set his hand was of all trades the one for which he was by nature best equipped. He was harsh and overbearing, impatient of correction and prone to trample other men’s feelings underfoot. Was this, he asked himself in all honesty, a mate for Rosamund? Could he entrust her happiness to the care of such a man? Assuredly he could not.
Therefore, being whole again, he went to remonstrate with her as he accounted it his duty and as Master Peter had besought him. Yet knowing the bias that had been his he was careful to understate rather than to overstate his reasons.
“But, Sir John,” she protested, “if every man is to be condemned for the sins of his forbears, but few could escape condemnation, and wherever shall you find me a husband deserving your approval?”
“His father....” began Sir John.
“Tell me not of his father, but of himself,” she interrupted.
He frowned impatiently — they were sitting in that bower of hers above the river.
“I was coming to ‘t,” he answered, a thought testily, for these interruptions which made him keep to the point robbed him of his best arguments. “However, suffice it that many of his father’s vicious qualities he has inherited, as we see in his ways of life; that he has not inherited others only the future can assure us.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 277
