Sir Mortimer Part 10

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I BEG THE SHORTEST SHRIFT THAT YOU MAY GIVE'"]

Again he would have advanced, but the man at the door waved him back, smiled once more with his lips alone. "Ah, you all are dear to me! But do you know I prefer your hatred to your love! Give me your hatred and let me go. I am not mad nor do I lie to you.... Before the sunset, when I had borne torment through the day, I bore it no longer. They loosed me and dashed water in my face, and Luiz de Guardiola said over to me the words that I had spoken. Then he went forth and laid his snares.... And so Robert Baldry is lost, he and a hundred men besides?

And Spaniards coming down the river took the _Cygnet_ because they knew the word of the night?" A spasm distorted the masklike features, but in a moment it was gone. "I should be a madman," he said, "for once I walked before you with a high head and a proud heart. It seems that I knew not myself.... Now, John Nevil, enact Drake and send me to join Thomas Doughty!"

The Admiral answered not where he stood, covering his eyes with his hand. "But Francis Sark--" began Wynch, in a shaking voice.

"I know naught of Francis Sark," Ferne replied. "As I have said so I did. I ask no other court than this, no further mercy than my present death.... John Nevil, for the sake of all that's dead and gone forever, I pray you to keep me here no longer!"

He staggered as he spoke and put his hand to his head. "Mortimer, Mortimer. Mortimer!" cried the Admiral. "Oh, my G.o.d, let this dream pa.s.s!"

"Why, the matter needs not G.o.d," said Ferne, and laughed. "I am a traitor, am I not? Then do to me what was done to Thomas Doughty. Only hasten, for dead men wait to clutch me, and your looks do sear my very brain."

Again he reeled. With a cry Robin-a-dale sprang towards him. Arden, too, was there in time to support the sinking figure and guide it to the seat he had pushed forward. Some one held wine to the lips.... Slow moments pa.s.sed, then Sir Mortimer's eyes unclosed. The boy hung over him, and he smiled upon him, smiled with eye and lip. "Ay, ay, ay, Robin," he said, "we'll to the court! And sweep away these rhymes, for the queen of all my songs dwells there, and I shall look into her eyes--and that's better than singing, lad! Ay, I'll wear the violet, and we'll ride beneath the blossoms of the spring.... But there's a will-o'-the-wisp on the marsh out yonder, and here they call it a lost soul--the soul of the traitor Aguirre!"

"Master, master!" cried the boy.

Ferne laughed, touching the young cheek with long, supple fingers.

"Fame is a bubble, lad--let me tell thee that! But then it is rainbow-hued and mirrors the sky,--so we'll ride for the bubble, lad!

and we'll stoop from the saddle and gather up Love! And when the bubble has vanished and Love is dead there's Honor left!" He leaned forward, seeing and hearing where was neither sound nor sight. There was gayety in his face. To the men who stared upon him it was a fearful thing that he who had lost his battle should wear once more the look which they had seen a thousand times. He raised his hand.

"Do you not hear the drums beat and the trumpets blow--far away, far away? Let me whisper--there's one that comes home in triumph.... Ay, your Grace, 'twas I that took Santo Domingo in Hispaniola, and on the mainland the very rich cities of Puerto Cabello, Santa Marta, La Guayra, Cartagena, Nombre de Dios and San Juan de Ulloa. Manoa I reserve,--'tis a secret city, and all who know a secret must keep it, else.... Robin!

Robin, rid me of these babblers. She's coming!--all in white--like blown spray--but she bears no roses. Lilies, lilies!--white samite like her robe--but her eyes are turned away. Let her pa.s.s, ye fools! She's the word of the night!" He staggered to his feet, swaying forward, clutching at the empty air as at a man's throat, and again his laugh rang through the cabin. "So you twisted it from me, Spanish dog!--so I raved out my heart as to a woman? Then, Don Sathanas, we'll go home together and all the soldiery of h.e.l.l shall not unlock our embrace!" He grappled with an invisible foe--bent him backward farther and farther over the brink of the world--went down with him into unplumbed darkness....

They judged not the Captain of the _Cygnet_ for a craven and a traitor, for, day after day and day after day, he lay in the Admiral's cabin, so ill a man that the coasts of Death seemed nearer than those of England, and man's condemnation an idle thing, seeing that so soon he must face another Justiciar. So near at times to that ultimate sh.o.r.e did he drift that those who watched him saw the shadow on his face. When the shadow was deep they waited with held breath; when it somewhat lifted they sorrowed that the tide had brought him back. He was of those changelings from a fortunate land to whom Love clings when Faith has covered her head and turned away. They that in heaviness of heart loved him still grieved that he might not touch the dark sh.o.r.e. Better, far better, to lay hold of it so, to go quietly in the not unhappy fever-dream, wandering of old days, recking naught of the new. So the matter might be adjudged elsewhere, but in this world glozed and softened.

The days went on and still Fate played with him, drew him forward, plucked him back. What fancies he had; what wild excursions he made into dizzy, black, and horror-haunted regions; what aeons he lived beneath the seas that stifled; by what winds he was whirled, through s.p.a.ce, past burning orbs that neither warmed nor lighted the all-surrounding night; in what t.i.tanic maze he was lost, lost forever, he and Pain that was his brother from whom he might not part;--the sick brain made a h.e.l.l and languished in the world it had created! At other times, when the dark coasts were near and the current very swift, pale paradises opened to him where he lay for centuries, nor hot nor cold, neither waking nor sleeping, not in joy and not in sorrow. Then the stopped pendulum swung again, and the dreams came fast and faster. At times his brain turned from its mad clash with gigantic, formless, elemental things to rest in the beaten ways. They that listened heard the adventurer speak, heard the courtier and the poet and the lover, but never once the traitor. Of the fortress of Nueva Cordoba and of what had happened therein, of a Spaniard, n.o.ble but in name, of an English knight and leader who had not endured, who, where many a simple soul had stood fast to the end, had redeemed his body with his honor, the man who raved of all things else made no mention. Now with the sugared and fantastic protestation demanded by court fashion and the deep, chivalric loyalty of his type he spoke to the Queen of England, and now he was with Sidney at Penshurst, Platonist, poet, Arcadian. Now he lived over old adventures, old voyages, past battles, wrongs done and wrongs received, unremembered loves and hatreds, and now he walked with Damaris Sedley in the garden of his ancient house of Ferne.

Then at last he came to a land where he lay and watched always a small round of azure wave and sky, lay idly with no need of thought or memory, until after a lifetime of the sapphire round it occurred to him to put forth a wasted hand, touch a sun-embrowned one, and whisper, "Robin!" It was a day later, the ships nearing the Grand Canary, and land birds flying past his circlet of sky and ocean, when, after lying in silence for an hour with a faint frown upon his brow, he at last remembered, and turned his face to the wall.

VIII

In a small withdrawing-room at Whitehall an agreeable young gentleman pensioner, in love with his own voice, which was in truth mellifluous, read aloud to a knot of the Queen's ladies. The room looked upon the park, and the pale autumn sunshine flooding it made the most of rich court raiment, purple hangings, green rushes on the floor, lengths of crimson velvet designed for a notable piece of arras, and kindled into flame the jewels upon white and flying fingers embroidering upon the velvet the history of King David and the wife of Uriah.

"'It is not the color that commendeth a good painter,'" read the gentleman pensioner, "'but the good countenance; nor the cutting that valueth the diamond, but the virtue; nor the gloze of the tongue that tryeth a friend, but the faith,'"

Mistress Damaris Sedley put the needle somewhat slowly through the velvet, her fancy busy with other embroidery, not so much listening to the spoken words as pursuing in her mind a sweet and pa.s.sionate rhetoric of her own.

"'Of a stranger I can bear much,'" went on the Lydian tones, "'for I know not his manners; of an enemy more, for that all proceedeth of malice; all things of a friend if it be but to try me, nothing if it be to betray me. I am of Scipio's mind, who had rather that Hannibal should eat his heart with salt than that Laelius should grieve it with unkindness; and of the like with Laelius, who chose rather to be slain with the Spaniards than suspected of Scipio.'"

Damaris quite left her work upon Bathsheba's long gold tresses and sat with idle hands, her level gaze upon nothing short of the great highway of the sea and certain ships thereon. Where now was the ship?--off what green island, what strange, rich sh.o.r.e?

On went the gentleman pensioner. "'I can better take a blister of a nettle than a p.r.i.c.k of a rose; more willing that a raven should peck out my eyes than a dove. To die of the meat one liketh not is better than to surfeit of that he loveth; and I had rather an enemy should bury me quick than a friend belie me when I am dead.'"

The reader made pause and received his due of soft plaudits. But Damaris dreamed on, the gold thread loose between her fingers. She was the fairest there, and the gentleman was piqued because she looked not at him, but at some fine Arachne web of her own weaving.

"Sweet Mistress Damaris--" he began; and again, "Fair Mistress Damaris--" but Damaris was counting days and heard him not. A lesser beauty left her work upon King David's crown to laugh aloud, with some malice and some envy in her mirth. "Prithee, let her alone! She will dream thus even in the presence. But I have a spell will make her awaken." She leaned forward and called "_Dione_!" then with renewed laughter sank back into her seat. "Lo! you now--"

The maid of honor, who at her own name stirred not, at the name of a poet's giving had started from her dream with widened eyes and an exquisite blush. The startled face which for one moment she showed her laughing mates was of a beauty so intelligent and divine that, was it so she looked, a many King Davids had found excuse for loving one Bathsheba. Then the inner light which had so informed every feature sought again its shrine, and Mistress Damaris Sedley, who was of a nature admirably poised and a wit most ready, lifted with the latest French shrug the jest from her own shoulders to those of another: "Oh, madam! was it you who spoke? Surely I thought it was your dead starling that you taught to call you by that name--but whose neck you wrung when it called it once too often!"

Having shot her forked shaft and come off victor, she smiled so sweetly upon the gentleman pensioner that for such ample thanks he had been reading still had she not risen, laid her work aside, and with a deep and graceful courtesy to the merry group left the room. When she was gone one sighed, and another laughed, and a third breathed, "O the heavens! to love and be loved like that!"

Damaris threaded the palace ways until she reached the chamber which she shared with a laughter-loving girl from her own countryside. Closed and darkened was the little room, but the maid of honor, moving to the window, drew the hangings and let the sunshine in. From a cabinet she took a book in ma.n.u.script, then with it in her hands knelt upon the window-seat and looked out upon the Thames. She did not read what was written upon the leaves; those canzones and sonnets that were her love-letters were known to her by heart, but she liked to feel them in her hands while her gaze went down the river that had borne his ship out to sea. Where was now the ship? Like a white sea-bird her fancy followed it by day and by night, now here, now there, through storm and sunshine.

It was of the dignity of her nature that she could look steadfastly upon the vision of it in storm or in battle. There were times when she was sure that it was in danger, when her every breath was a prayer, and there were times, as on this soft autumnal day, when her spirit drowsed in a languor of content, a sweet a.s.surance of all love, all life to come. His words lay beneath her hand and in her heart; she pressed her brow against the gla.s.s, and as from a watch-tower looked out upon the earth, a fenced garden, and the sea a sure path and Time a strong ally speeding her lover's approach. For a long time she knelt thus, lapped in happy dreams; then the door opened and in came her chamber-fellow.

"Damaris!" she said, and again, "Oh, Damaris, Damaris!"

Damaris arose from the window-seat and laid her love-letters away. "In trouble again, Cecily?" she asked, and her voice was like a caress, for the girl was younger than herself. "I know thy 'Oh, Damaris, Damaris!'"

She closed the cabinet, then turning, put her arm around her fellow maid. "What is't, sweeting?"

Cecily slipped to her knees, hiding her face in the other's shimmering skirts. "Thou'rt so dear, so good, and so proud.... As soon as I might I ran hither, for every moment I feared to see thee enter! Thou wouldst have died hadst thou heard it there in the great antechamber, where they crowd and whisper and talk aloud--and some, I know, are glad.... The ships, Damaris--yesternight two of the ships came home."

She spoke incoherently, with sobbing breath, but gradually the form to which she clung had grown rigid in her embrace. "Two of the ships have come home," repeated Damaris. "Which came not home?"

"The _Cygnet_ and the _Star_."

The maid of honor, unclasping the girl's hands, glided from her reach.

"Let me go, good Cis! Why, how stifling is the day!" She put her hand to her ruff, as though to loosen it, but the hand dropped again to her side. The silken coverlet upon the bed was awry; she went to it and laid it smooth with unhurried touch. From a bowl of late flowers crimson petals had fallen upon the table; she gathered them up, and going to the cas.e.m.e.nt, gave them, one by one, to the winds outside.

"Damaris, Damaris, Damaris!" cried the frightened girl.

"Ay, I have heard him call me that," answered the other. "Sometimes Damaris, sometimes Dione. When did he die?"

"Oh, I bring no news of his death!" exclaimed Cecily. "Sir Mortimer Ferne is here--in London."

Damaris, swaying forward, caught at a heavy settle, sank to her knee, and laid her brow against the wood. Cecily, gazing down upon her, saw her cheek glow pure carnation, saw the quivering of the long eyelashes and the happy trembling of the lip. Presently the wave of color fled; she unclosed her eyes, raised her head. "But there was something, was there not, to be borne?... G.o.d forgive me, I had forgot that I have a brother!"

Cecily, whose courage was ebbing, began to deal in evasions. "Indeed I know not as to thy brother. I am not sure ... mayhap I did not hear him named.... They said so many things--all might not be true."

Damaris arose from the settle. "I will have thy meaning, Cis. 'They said so many things.'--Who are they'?"

Cecily bit her lip, and dashed away fast-starting tears. "Oh, Damaris, all who have heard--all the court--his friends and thine and his foes.

The matter's all abroad. The Queen hath letters from Sir John Nevil--he hath been sent for to the Privy Council--"

"Sir John Nevil hath been sent for?--Why not Sir Mortimer Ferne?... Is he ill? Is he wounded?"

Cecily wrung her hands. "Now I must tell thee.... It is his honor that doth suffer. There is a thing that he did.--He hath confessed, or surely there were no believing ... Damans, they call him traitor.... Ah!"

"Ay, and I'll strike thee again an thou say that again!" cried Damaris.

The younger woman shrank before the angry eyes, the disdain of the smiling lips. Abruptly Damaris moved from the frightened girl. Upon the wall, above a dressing-table, hung a Venetian mirror. The maid of honor looked at her image in the gla.s.s, then with flying fingers undid and laid aside her ruff, subst.i.tuting for it a structure of cobweb lace, between whose filmy walls were displayed her white throat and bosom.

Around her throat she clasped three rows of pearls, and also wound with pearls her dark-brown hair. Her eyes were very bright, but there was no color in her face. Delicately, skilfully, she remedied this, until with shining eyes and that false bloom upon her oval cheeks one would have sworn she was as joyous as she was fair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'DAMARIS, THEY CALL HIM TRAITOR'"]

Cecily, watching her with a beating heart, at last broke silence: "Oh, Damaris, whither are you going?"

Damaris looked over her shoulder. "After a while I will be sorry that I struck thee, Cis.... I am going to talk with men." She clasped a gold chain about her slender waist, dashed scented water upon her hands, glanced at her full and sweeping skirts of green silk shot with silver.