Sir Mortimer Part 13

"Thou seest," said Ferne.

"I see how bitterly thou art changed."

"Ay, I am changed," answered Sir Mortimer. "Your thought was kindly, and I thank you for it. Once these doors opened wide to all who knocked, but it is not so now. Ride on to the town below the hill, and take your rest in the inn! Your bedfellow may be Iscariot, but if you know him not, and as yet he knows himself but slenderly, you may sleep without dreaming. Ride on!"

"The inn is full," answered Arden, bluntly. "This week the Queen rests in her progress with your neighbor, the Earl, and the town will be crowded with mummers and players, grooms, cutpurses, quacksalvers, and c.o.c.katrices, travellers and courtiers whom the north wind hath nipped!

'Sblood, Mortimer, I had rather sleep in this grave old place!"

"With Judas who knows himself at last?" asked Ferne, coldly, without moving from his place. The door opened, and old Humphrey, shuffling across the floor to the table, placed thereon a dish of cakes and a great tankard of sack, then as he turned away cast a backward glance upon his master's face. Arden noted the look, that there was in it fear, overmastering ancient kindness, and withal a curiosity as ign.o.ble as it was keen. Suddenly, as though the fire of that knowledge had leaped to his own heart from that of his host, he knew in every fibre how intolerable was the case of the master of the house, sitting alone in this gloomy chamber, served by this frightened boy, by that old man whose gaze was ever greedy for the quiver of an eyelid, the pressing together of white lips, whose coa.r.s.e and prying hand ever strayed towards the unhealed sore. He strode to the table and laid hands upon the tankard. "The dust of the road is in my throat," he explained, and drank deep of the wine, then put the tankard down and turned to the figure yet standing in the cold light as in an atmosphere all its own.

"Mortimer Ferne," he said, "I came here as thy aforetime friend. I will not believe that it is my stirrup-cup that I have drunk."

"Ay, your stirrup-cup," answered the other, steadily. "Nowadays I see no company--my aforetime friend."

"That word was ill chosen," began Arden, hastily. "I meant not--"

"I care not what you meant," said Sir Mortimer, and sitting down at the table, shaded his eyes with his hand. "Of all my needs the least is now a friend. Go your ways to the town and be merry there, forgetting this limbo and me, who wander to and fro in its shadows." Suddenly he struck his hand with force against the table and started to his feet, pushing from him with a grating sound the heavy oaken settle. "Go!" he cried.

"The players and mummers are there. Go sit upon the stage, and in the middle of the play cry to your neighbors: 'These be no actors! Why, once I knew a man who could so mask it that he deceived himself!' There are quacksalvers who will sell you anything. Go buy some ointment for your eyes will show you the coiled serpent at the bottom of a man's heart!

Travellers!--ask them if Prester John can see the canker where the fruit seems fairest. Nipped courtiers! laugh with them at one against whom blow all the winds of h.e.l.l, blast after blast, driving his soul before them! Ballad-mongers--"

He paused, laughed, then beckoned to him Robin-a-dale. "Sirrah," he said, "Master Arden ever loved a good song. Now sing him the ballad we heard when the devil drove us to town last Wednesday."

"I--I have forgotten it, master," answered the boy, and cowered against the wall.

"You lie!" cried Ferne, and the table shook again beneath his hand. "Did I not exercise you in it until you were perfect? Sing!"

The boy opened his mouth and there came forth a heart-broken sound. His master stamped upon the floor. "Shall I not also torture where I can?

Sing, Robin, my man! Fling back your head and sing like the lark in the sky! What! am I fallen so low that my very page flouts me, kicks obedience out-of-doors?"

Robin-a-dale straightened himself and began to sing, with bravado, a fierce red in his cheeks, and his young voice high and clear:

"Now list to me, ladies, and list to me, gentles; I've a story for your ears of a false, false knight, Whom England held in honor, but he treasured Spain so dearly That he sold into her hands his comrades in fight.

"'Twas before a walled city with the palm-trees hanging over; He was Captain of the _Cygnet_, and it sank before his eyes; The Englishmen ash.o.r.e, they're taken in the pitfall, Good lack! they toil in galleys or their souls to G.o.d arise.

"He sees them in his sleep, the craven and the traitor.

The sea it keeps their bones, their b.l.o.o.d.y ghosts they pa.s.s--"

"For G.o.d's sake!" cried Arden; and the boy, s.n.a.t.c.hing with despairing haste at the interruption, ceased his singing, and in the heavy silence that followed crept nearer and nearer to his master until he touched a listless hand.

"Ay, Robin," said Ferne, absently, and laid the hand upon his head. "And the b.l.o.o.d.y ghosts they pa.s.s."

Arden spoke with emotion: "All men when their final account is made up may have sights to see that now they dream not of. Thou art both too much and too little what thou wast of old, and thou seest not fairly in these shadows. I know that Philip Sidney and John Nevil have come to Ferne House, and here am I, thy oldest comrade of them all. A sheet of paper close written with record of n.o.ble deeds becomes not worthless because of one deep blot."

Ferne, his burst of pa.s.sion past, arose and moved from table to window, from window to great chimney-piece. There was that in the quiet, almost stealthy regularity of his motions that gave subtle suggestion of days and nights spent in pacing to and fro, to and fro, this deep-windowed room.

At last he spoke, pausing by the fireless hearth: "I say not that it is so, nor that there is not One who may read the writing beneath the blot.

But from the time of Cain to the present hour if the blotted sheet be bound with the spotless the book is little esteemed."

"Cain slew his brother wilfully," said Arden.

"That also is told us," answered the other. "Jealousy constrained him, while constancy of soul was lacking unto me. I know not if it was but taken from me for a time, or if, despite all seeming, I never did possess it. I know that the dead are dead, and I know not to what ambuscade I, their leader, sent them.... I fell, not wilfully, but through lack of will. Now, an the G.o.dhead within me be not flown, I will recover myself,--but never what is past and gone, never the dead flowers, never the souls I set loose, never one hour's eternal scar!...

Enough of this. Ride on to the inn, for Ferne House keepeth guests no longer. To-morrow, an you choose, come again, and we will say farewell.

Why, old school-fellow! thou seest I am sane--no hermit or madman, as the clowns of this region would have me. But will you go?--will you go?"

"It seems that you yourself journey to the town upon occasion," said Arden. "Ride with me now, Mortimer. No country la.s.s more sweet than the air to-day!"

The other shook his head. "Business has taken me there. But now that I have sold this house I at present go no more."

"Sold this house!" echoed Arden, and with a more and more perturbed countenance began to pace the floor. "I did never think to hear of Ferne House fallen to strange hands! Your father--" He paused before a picture set in the panelled wall. "Your father loved it well."

"My father was of pure gold," said Sir Mortimer, "but I, his son, am of iron, or what baser metal there may be. Now I go forth to my kind."

"Oh! in G.o.d's name, leave Plato alone!" cried the other. "'Tis not by that pagan's advice that you divest yourself of house and land!"

"I wanted money," said Ferne, dully.

The man whom ancient friendship had brought that way stopped short in his pacing to gaze upon the figure standing in the light of the high window. For what could such an one want money? Courtier, no more forever; patron of letters, friend of wise men, no more forever; soldier and sea-king, comrade and leader of brave men never, never again,--what wanted he so much, what other was his imperative need than this old, quiet house sunk in the shadows of its age-old trees, grave with a certain solemnity, touched upon with tragedy, attuned to a sorrowful patience? For a moment the room and the man who made its core were blurred to Arden's vision. He walked to the window and stood there, twirling his mustachios, finally humming to himself the lines of a song.

"That is Sidney's," said Ferne, quietly. "I hear that he does the Queen n.o.ble service.... Well, even in the old times he was ever a length before me!"

"Why do you need money?" demanded the visitor. "What more retired--what better house than this?"

The man who leaned against the chimney-piece turned to gaze at his visitor with that which had not before showed in mien or words. It was wonder, slight and mournful, yet wonder. "Of course you also would think that," he said at last. "Even Robin thinks that the stained blade should rust in its scabbard,--that here I should await my time, training the rose-bushes in my garden, listening to the sere leaves fall, singing of other men's harvests."

The boy cried out: "I don't, I don't! You've promised to take me with you!" and flung himself down upon the pavement, with his head beside his master's knee.

"I have bought me a ship," said Ferne, "together with a crew of beggared mariners and cast soldiers. I think they be all villains and desperate folk, or they would not sail with me. Some that seemed honest have fallen away since they knew the name of their Captain.... We must begone, Robin! If we would not sail the ship ourselves we must begone--we must begone."

"Begone where?" demanded Arden, and wheeled from the window.

"To fight the Spaniard," said Ferne. "The Queen hath been my very good mistress. John Nevil and Sidney have procured me leave to go--if it so be that I go quietly. I think that I will not return--and England will forget me, but Spain may remember.... For the rest, I go to search for Robert Baldry; to seek if not to find my enemy, the foe that I held in contempt, whom in my heart I despised because he was not poet and courtier, as I was, nor knight and gentleman, as I was, nor very wise, as I was, and because all his vision was clouded and gross, while I--I might see the very flower o' the sun.... Well, he was a brave man."

"He is dead," whispered Arden. "Surely he is dead."

"Maybe," answered the other. "But I nor no man else saw him die. And we know that these Spanish tombs do sometimes open and give up the dead.

I'll throw for size-ace."

"If he lived they would have sent him to Cartagena,--to the Holy Office!" cried the other. "One ship--a scoundrel crew.... Mortimer, Mortimer, some other ordeal than that!"

Ferne raised his eyes. "I call it by no such fine name," he said. "I but know that if he yet lives, then he and what other Englishmen are left alive do cry out for deliverance, looking towards the sea, thinking, 'Where is now a friend?'" He left the table and came near to Arden.

"'Twas a kindly impulse sent you here, old comrade of mine; but now will you go? The dead and I hold Ferne House of nights. To-morrow come again and say good-by."

"I will sail with you to the Indies, Mortimer," said the visitor.

There was silence in the room; then, "No, no," answered Ferne, in a strange voice. "No, no."

Arden persisted, speaking rapidly, carrying it off with sufficient lightness. "He was just home from Ireland and stood in need of the sun.