“He is a man to be dreaded,” the Duchess continued, her eyes resting on her baby, which lay asleep on my bundle of rugs — and I guessed what fear it was had tamed her pride to flight. “His power in England is absolute. We learned that it was his purpose to arrest me, and determined to leave England. But our very household was full of spies, and though we chose a time when Clarence, our steward, whom we had long suspected of being Gardiner’s chief tool, was away, Philip, his deputy, gained a clew to our design, and watched us. We gave him the slip with difficulty, leaving our luggage, but he dogged and overtook us, and the rest you know.”
I bowed. As I gazed at her, my admiration, I know, shone in my eyes. She looked, as she stood on the deck, an exile and fugitive, so gay, so bright, so indomitable, that in herself she was at once a warranty and an omen of better times. The breeze had heightened her color and loosened here and there a tress of her auburn hair. No wonder Master Bertie looked proudly on his Duchess.
Suddenly a thing I had clean forgotten flashed into my mind, and I thrust my hand into my pocket. The action was so abrupt that it attracted their attention, and when I pulled out a packet — two packets — there were three pairs of eyes upon me. The seal dangled from one missive. “What have you there?” the Duchess asked briskly, for she was a woman, and curious. “Do you carry the deeds of your property about with you?”
“No,” I said, not unwilling to make a small sensation. “This touches your Grace.”
“Hush!” she cried, raising one imperious finger. “Transgressing already? From this time forth I am Mistress Bertram, remember. But come,” she went on, eying the packet with the seal inquisitively, “how does it touch me?”
I put it silently into her hands, and she opened it and read a few lines, her husband peeping over her shoulder. As she read her brow darkened, her eyes grew hard. Master Bertie’s face changed with hers, and they both peeped suddenly at me over the edge of the parchment, suspicion and hostility in their glances. “How came you by this, young sir?” he said slowly, after a long pause. “Have we escaped Peter to fall into the hands of Paul?”
“No, no!” I cried hurriedly. I saw that I had made a greater sensation than I had bargained for. I hastened to tell them how I had met with Gardiner’s servant at Stony Stratford, and how I had become possessed of his credentials. They laughed of course — indeed they laughed so loudly that the placid Dutchmen, standing aft with their hands in their breeches-pockets, stared open-mouthed at us, and the kindred cattle on the bank looked mildly up from the knee-deep grass.
“And what was the other packet?” the Duchess asked presently. “Is that it in your hand?”
“Yes,” I answered, holding it up with some reluctance. “It seems to be a letter addressed to Mistress Clarence.”
“Clarence!” she cried. “Clarence!” arresting the hand she was extending. “What! Here is our friend again then. What is in it? You have opened it?”
“No.”
“You have not? Then quick, open it!” she exclaimed. “This too touches us, I will bet a penny. Let us see at once what it contains. Clarence indeed! Perhaps we may have him on the hip yet, the arch-traitor!”
But I held the pocket-book back, though my cheeks reddened and I knew I must seem foolish. They made certain that this letter was a communication to some spy, probably to Clarence himself under cover of a feminine address. Perhaps it was, but it bore a woman’s name and it was sealed; and foolish though I might be, I would not betray the woman’s secret.
“No, madam,” I said confused, awkward, stammering, yet withholding it with a secret obstinacy; “pardon me if I do not obey you — if I do not let this be opened. It may be what you say,” I added with an effort; “but it may also contain an honest secret, and that a woman’s.”
“What do you say?” cried the Duchess; “here are scruples!” At that her husband smiled, and I looked in despair from him to Mistress Anne. Would she sympathize with my feelings? I found that she had turned her back on us, and was gazing over the side. “Do you really mean,” continued the Duchess, tapping her foot sharply on the deck, “that you are not going to open that, you foolish boy?”
“I do — with your Grace’s leave,” I answered.
“Or without my Grace’s leave! That is what you mean,” she retorted pettishly, a red spot in each cheek. “When people will not do what I ask, it is always, Grace! Grace! Grace! But I know them now.”
I dared not smile; and I would not look up, lest my heart should fail me and I should give her her way.
“You foolish boy!” she again said, and sniffed. Then with a toss of her head she went away, her husband following her obediently.
I feared that she was grievously offended, and I got up restlessly and went across the deck to the rail on which Mistress Anne was leaning, meaning to say something which should gain for me her sympathy, perhaps her advice. But the words died on my lips, for as I approached she turned her face abruptly toward me, and it was so white, so haggard, so drawn, that I uttered a cry of alarm. “You are ill!” I exclaimed. “Let me call the Duchess!”
She gripped my sleeve almost fiercely, “Hush!” she muttered. “Do nothing of the kind. I am not well. It is the water. But it will pass off, if you do not notice it. I hate to be noticed,” she added, with an angry shrug.
I was full of pity for her and reproached myself sorely. “What a selfish brute I have been!” I said. “You have watched by me night after night, and nursed me day after day, and I have scarcely thanked you. And now you are ill yourself. It is my fault!”
She looked at me, a wan smile on her face. “A little, perhaps,” she answered faintly. “But it is chiefly the water. I shall be better presently. About that letter — did you not come to speak to me about it?”
“Never mind it now,” I said anxiously. “Will you not lie down on the rugs awhile? Let me give you my place,” I pleaded.
“No, no!” she cried impatiently; and seeing I vexed her by my importunity, I desisted. “The letter,” she went on; “you will open it by and by?”
“No,” I said slowly, considering, to tell the truth, the strength of my resolution, “I think I shall not.”
“You will! you will!” she repeated, with a kind of scorn. “The Duchess will ask you again, and you will give it to her. Of course you will!”
Her tone was strangely querulous, and her eyes continually flashed keen, biting glances at me. But I thought only that she was ill and excited, and I fancied it was best to humor her. “Well, perhaps I shall,” I said soothingly. “Possibly. It is hard to refuse her anything. And yet I hope I may not. The girl — it may be a girl’s secret.”
“Well?” she asked, interrupting me abruptly, her voice harsh and unmusical. “What of her?” She laid her hand on her bosom as though to still some secret pain. I looked at her, anxious and wondering, but she had again averted her face. “What of her?” she repeated.
“Only that — I would not willingly hurt her!” I blurted out.
She did not answer. She stood a moment, then to my surprise she turned away without a word, and merely commanding me by a gesture of the hand not to follow, walked slowly away. I watched her cross the deck and pass through the doorway into the deck-house. She did not once turn her face, and my only fear was that she was ill; more seriously ill, perhaps, than she had acknowledged.
CHAPTER VIII.
A HOUSE OF PEACE.
As the day went on, therefore, I looked eagerly for Mistress Anne’s return, but she appeared no more, though I maintained a close watch on the cabin-door. All the afternoon, too, the Duchess kept away from me, and I feared that I had seriously offended her; so that it was with no very pleasant anticipations that, going into that part of the deck-house which served us for a common room, to see if the evening meal was set, I found only the Duchess and Master Bertie prepared to sit down to it. I suppose that something of my feeling was expressed in my face, for while I was yet half-way between door and table, my lady gave way to a peal of mer
riment.
“Come, sit down, and do not be afraid!” she cried pleasantly, her gray eyes still full of laughter. “I vow the lad thinks I shall eat him. Nay, when all is said and done, I like you the better, Sir Knight Errant, for your scruples. I see that you are determined to act up to your name. But that reminds me,” she added in a more serious vein. “We have been frank with you. You must be equally frank with us. What are we to call you, pray?”
I looked down at my plate and felt my face grow scarlet. The wound which the discovery of my father’s treachery had dealt me had begun to heal. In the action, the movement, the adventure of the last fortnight, I had well-nigh lost sight of the blot on my escutcheon, of the shame which had driven me from home. But the question, “What are we to call you?” revived the smart, and revived it with an added pang. It had been very well, in theory, to proudly discard my old name. It was painful, in practice, to be unable to answer the Duchess, “I am a Cludde of Coton, nephew to Sir Anthony, formerly esquire of the body to King Henry. I am no unworthy follower and associate even for you,” and to have instead to reply, “I have no name. I am nobody. I have all to make and win.” Yet this was my ill-fortune.
Her woman’s eye saw my trouble as I hesitated, confused and doubting what I should reply. “Come!” she said good-naturedly, trying to reassure me. “You are of gentle birth. Of that we feel sure.”
I shook my head. “Nay, I am of no birth, madam,” I answered hurriedly. “I have no name, or at any rate no name that I can be proud of. Call me — call me, if it please you, Francis Carey.”
“It is a good name,” quoth Master Bertie, pausing with his knife suspended in the air. “A right good Protestant name!”
“But I have no claim to it,” I rejoined, mere and more hurt. “I have all to make. I am a new man. Yet do not fear!” I added quickly, as I saw what I took to be a cloud of doubt cross my lady’s face. “I will follow you no less faithfully for that!”
“Well,” said the Duchess, a smile again transforming her open features, “I will answer for that, Master Carey. Deeds are better than names, and as for being a new man, what with Pagets and Cavendishes and Spencers, we have nought but new men nowadays. So, cheer up!” she continued kindly. “And we will poke no questions at you, though I doubt whether you do not possess more birth and breeding than you would have us think. And if, when we return to England, as I trust we may before we are old men and women, we can advance your cause, then let us have your secret. No one can say that Katherine Willoughby ever forgot her friend.”
“Or forgave her enemy over quickly,” quoth her husband naïvely.
She rapped his knuckles with the back of her knife for that; and under cover of this small diversion I had time to regain my composure. But the matter left me sore at heart, and more than a little homesick. And I sought leave to retire early.
“You are right!” said the Duchess, rising graciously. “To-night, after being out in the air, you will sleep soundly, and to-morrow you will be a new man,” with a faint smile. “Believe me, I am not ungrateful, Master Francis, and I will diligently seek occasion to repay both your gallant defense of the other day and your future service.” She gave me her hand to kiss, and I bent over it. “Now,” she continued, “do homage to my baby, and then I shall consider that you are really one of us, and pledged to our cause.”
I kissed the tiny fist held out to me, a soft pink thing looking like some dainty sea-shell. Master Bertie cordially grasped my hand. And so under the oil-lamp in the neat cabin of that old Dutch boat, somewhere on the Waal between Gorcum and Nimuegen, we plighted our troth to one another, and in a sense I became one of them.
I went to my berth cheered and encouraged by their kindness. But the interview, satisfactory as it was, had set up no little excitement in my brain, and it was long before I slept. When I did I had a strange dream. I dreamed that I was sitting in the hall at Coton, and that Petronilla was standing on the dais looking fixedly at me with gentle, sorrowful eyes. I wanted to go to her, but I could not move; every dreamer knows the sensation. I tried to call to her, to ask her what was the matter, and why she so looked at me. But I could utter no sound. And still she continued to fix me with the same sad, reproachful eyes, in which I read a warning, yet could not ask its meaning.
I struggled so hard that at last the spell was in a degree broken. Following the direction of her eyes I looked down at myself, and saw fastened to the breast of my doublet the knot of blue velvet which she had made for my sword-hilt, and which I had ever since carried in my bosom. More, I saw, with a singular feeling of anger and sorrow, that a hand which came over my shoulder was tugging hard at the ribbon in the attempt to remove it.
This gave me horrible concern, yet at the moment I could not move nor do anything to prevent it. At last, making a stupendous effort, I awoke, my last experience, dreaming, being of the strange hand working at my breast. My first waking idea was the same, so that I threw out my arms, and cried aloud, and sat up. “Ugh!” I exclaimed, trembling in the intensity of my relief, as I looked about and welcomed the now familiar surroundings. “It was only a dream. It was — —”
I stopped abruptly, my eyes falling on a form lurking in the doorway. I could see it only dimly by the light of a hanging lamp, which smoked and burned redly overhead. Yet I could see it. It was real, substantial — a waking figure; nevertheless, a faint touch of superstitious terror still clung to me. “Speak, please!” I asked. “Who is it?”
“It is only I,” answered a soft voice, well known to me — Mistress Anne’s. “I came in to see how you were,” she continued, advancing a little, “and whether you were sleeping. I am afraid I awoke you. But you seemed,” she added, “to be having such painful dreams that perhaps it was as well I did.”
I was fumbling in my breast while she spoke; and certainly, whether in my sleep I had undone the fastenings or had loosened them intentionally before I lay down (though I could not remember doing so), my doublet and shirt were open at the breast. The velvet knot was safe, however, in that tiny inner pocket beside the letter, and I breathed again. “I am very glad you did awake me!” I replied, looking gratefully at her. “I was having a horrible dream. But how good it was of you to think of me — and when you are not well yourself, too.”
“Oh, I am better,” she murmured, her eyes, which glistened in the light, fixed steadily on me. “Much better. Now go to sleep again, and happier dreams to you. After to-night,” she added pleasantly, “I shall no longer consider you as an invalid, nor intrude upon you.”
And she was gone before I could reiterate my thanks. The door fell to, and I was alone, full of kindly feelings toward her, and of thankfulness that my horrible vision had no foundation. “Thank Heaven!” I murmured more than once, as I lay down; “it was only a dream.”
Next day we reached Nimuegen, where we stayed a short time. Leaving that place in the afternoon, twenty-four hours’ journeying, partly by river, partly, if I remember rightly, by canal, brought us to the neighborhood of Arnheim on the Rhine. It was the 1st of March, but the opening month belied its reputation. There was a brightness, a softness in the air, and a consequent feeling as of spring which would better have befitted the middle of April. All day we remained on deck enjoying the kindliness of nature, which was especially grateful to me, in whom the sap of health was beginning to spring again; and we were still there when one of those gorgeous sunsets which are peculiar to that country began to fling its hues across our path. We turned a jutting promontory, the boat began to fall off, and the captain came up, his errand to tell us that our journey was done.
We went eagerly forward at the news, and saw in a kind of bay, formed by a lake-like expansion of the river, a little island green and low, its banks trimly set with a single row of poplars. It was perhaps a quarter of a mile every way, and a channel one-fourth as wide separated it from the nearer shore of the river; to which, however, a long narrow bridge of planks laid on trestles gave access. On the outer side of the island, facing the r
iver’s course, stood a low white house, before which a sloping green terrace, also bordered with poplars, led down to a tiny pier. Behind and around the house were meadows as trim and neat as a child’s toys, over which the eye roved with pleasure until it reached the landward side of the island, and there detected, nestling among gardens, a tiny village of half a dozen cottages. It was a scene of enchanting peace and quietude. As we slowly plowed our way up to the landing-place, I saw the rabbits stand to gaze at us, and then with a flick of their heels dart off to their holes. I marked the cattle moving homeward in a string, and heard the wild fowl rise in creek and pool with a whir of wings. I turned with a full heart to my neighbor. “Is it not lovely?” I cried with enthusiasm. “Is it not a peaceful place — a very Garden of Eden?”
I looked to see her fall into raptures such as women are commonly more prone to than men. But all women are not the same. Mistress Anne was looking, indeed, when I turned and surprised her, at the scene which had so moved me, but the expression of her face was sad and bitter and utterly melancholy. The weariness and fatigue I had often seen lurking in her eyes had invaded all her features. She looked five years older; no longer a girl, but a gray-faced, hopeless woman whom the sight of this peaceful haven rather smote to the heart than filled with anticipations of safety and repose.
It was but for a moment I saw her so. Then she dashed her hand across her eyes — though I saw no tears in them — and with a pettish exclamation turned away. “Poor girl!” I thought. “She, too, is homesick. No doubt this reminds her of some place at home, or of some person.” I thought this the more likely, as Master Bertie came from Lincolnshire, which he said had many of the features of this strange land. And it was conceivable enough that she should know Lincolnshire too, being related to his wife.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 51
