Sir Mortimer Part 3

"When it had thus ended the day, that goodly company betook itself to rest. But Cleon tossed upon his bed, and at the dawn, when the birds began to sing, he arose, dressed himself, and went forth into the dewy gardens of that lovely place. Here he walked up and down, for his unrest would not leave him, and his heart hungered for food it had never tasted.... There was a fountain springing from a stone basin, and all around were set rose-bushes, seen dimly because of the mist. Presently, when the light was stronger, issued from the house one of those nymphs whom Astrophel's sister delighted to gather around her, and coming to the fountain, began to search about its rim for a jewel that had been lost. She moved like a mist wreath in that misty place, but Cleon saw that her eyes were dark, and her lips a scarlet flower, and that grace was in all her motions. He remembered her name, and that she was loved of Astrophel's sister, and how sweet a lady she was called. Now he watched her weaving paces in the mist, and his fancy worked.... The mist lifted, and a sudden sunshine lit her into splendor; face, form, spirit, all, all her being into fadeless splendor--into fadeless splendor, Dione!"

The maid of honor left once more her gra.s.sy throne, and turning from him, moved a step away, then with raised arms clasped her hands behind her head. Her upturned face was hidden from him, but he saw her white bosom rise and fall. He had made pause, but now he continued his story, though with a changed voice.

"And Cleon, going to her with due greeting, knelt: she thought (sweet soul!) to aid her in her search, but indeed he knelt to her, for now he knew that the G.o.ds had given him this also--to love a woman. But because the blind boy's shaft, designed to work inward ever deeper and deeper until it reached the heart's core, did now but ensanguine itself, he made no cry nor any sign of that sweet hurt. He found and gave the nymph the jewel she had lost, and broke for her the red, red roses, and while the birds did carol he led her through the morning to the entrance of the house. Up the stone stairs went she, and turned in splendor at the top. A red rose fell ... the sunlight pa.s.sed into the house."

The voice of the speaker altered, came nearer the ear of her who stood with heaving bosom, with upturned face, with hands locked tight upon the wonder of this hour.

"The rose, the rose has faded, Dione," said the ardent voice. "Look how dead it lies upon my palm! But bend and breathe upon it, and it will bloom again! Ah, that day at Penshurst! when I sought you and they told me you were gone--a brother ill and calling for you--a guardian, no friend of mine, to whose house I had not access! And then the Queen must send for me, and there was service to be done--service which got me my knighthood.... The stream between us widened. At first I thought to span it with a letter, and then I wrote it not. 'Twas all too frail a bridge to trust my hope upon. For what should have the paper said? _I am so near a stranger to thee that scarce have we spoken twice together--therefore love me! I am a man who hath done somewhat in the busy world, and shall, G.o.d willing, labor once again, but now a cloud overshadows me--therefore love me! I have no wealth or pomp of place to give thee, and I myself am of those whom G.o.d hath bound to wander--therefore love me! I chanced upon thee beside a fountain ringed with roses, gray with mist; the sun came out and I saw thee, golden in the golden light--therefore love me!_ Ah no! you would have answered--I know not what. Therefore I waited, for I have at times a strange patience, a willingness to let Fate guide me. Moreover, I ever thought to meet you, to speak with you face to face again, but it fell not so.

Was I with the court, the country claimed you; went I north or west, needs must I hear of you a lovely star within that galaxy I had left.

Thrice were we in company together--cursed spite that gave us only time for courtly greeting, courtly parting!"

The voice came nearer, came very near: "Have I said that I wrote not to you? Ay, but I did, my only dear! And as I wrote, from the court, from the camp, from my poor house of Ferne, I said: 'This will tell her how in her I reverence womankind,' and, 'These are flowers for her coronal--will she not know it among a thousand wreaths?' and, 'This, ah, this, will show her how deeply now hath worked the arrow!' and, 'Now she cannot choose but know--her soul will hear my soul cry!' And that those letters might come to your eyes, I, following the fashion, sealed them only with feigned names, altered circ.u.mstance. All who ran might read, but the heartbeat was for your ear ... Dione! Didst never guess?"

She answered in a still voice without moving: "It may be that my soul guessed.... If it did so, it was frightened and hid its guess."

"I have told you," said the man. "But, ah, what am I more to you now than on that morn at Penshurst--a stranger! I know not--even you may love another.... But no, I know that you do not. As I was then, so am I now, save that I have served the Queen again, and that cloud I spoke of is overpast. I must go forth to-morrow to seek, to find, to win, to lose--G.o.d He knoweth what! I would go as your knight avowed, your favor in my helm, your kiss like holy water on my brow. See, I kneel to you for some sign, some charm to make my voyage good!"

Very slowly the rose-clad maid of honor let fall her gaze from the evening skies to the man before her; as slowly unclasped her hands so tightly locked behind her upraised head. Her eyes were wide and filled with light, her bosom yet rose and fell quickly; in all her mien there was still wonder, grace supreme, a rich unfolding like the opening of a flower to the bliss of understanding. Trembling, her hand went down, and resting on his shoulder, gave him her accolade. She bowed herself towards him; a knot of rosy velvet, loosened from her dress, fell upon the turf beside his knee. Ferne caught up the ribbon, pressed it to his lips and thrust it in the breast of his doublet. Rising, he took her in his arms and they kissed. Her breath came pantingly.

"Oh, I envied her!" she cried. "Now I know that I envied while I blessed her--that unknown Dione!"

"My lady and my only dear!" he said. "Oh, Love is as the sun! So the sunshine bide, let come what will come!"

"I rest in the sunshine!" she said. "Oh, Love is bliss ... but anguish too! I see the white sails of your ships."

She shuddered in his arms. "All that go return not. Ah, tell me that you will come back to me!"

"That will I do," he answered, "an I am a living man. If I die, I shall but wait for thee. I see no parting of our ways."

One hour was theirs. Bread and wine, and flower and fruit, and meeting and parting it held for them. Hand in hand they sat upon the gra.s.sy bank, and eyes met eyes, but speech came not often to their lips. They looked and loved, against the winter storing each moment with sweet knowledge, honeyed a.s.surance. Brave and fair were they both, gallant lovers in a gallant time, changing love-looks in a Queen's garden, above the silver Thames. A tide of amethyst fell the sunset light; the swallows circled overhead; a sound was heard of singing voices; violet knight and rose-colored maid of honor, they came at last to say farewell. That night in the lit Palace, amid the garish crowd, they might see each other again, might touch hands, might even have slight speech together, but not as now could heart speak to heart. They rose from the green bank, and as the sun set, as the moon came out, and the singing ceased, and the world grew ashen, they said what lovers say on the brink of absence, and at the last they kissed good-by.

III

They were not far north of the Canary Islands, when the sky, which for several days had been overcast, grew very threatening, and the _Mere Honour_, the _Cygnet_, the _Marigold_, and the _Star_ made ready to meet what fury the Lord should be pleased to loose upon them. It came, a maniac unchained, and scattered the ships. Darkness accompanied it, and the sea wrinkled beneath its feet. The ships went here and went there; throughout the night they burned lights, and fired many great pieces of ordnance,--not to prevail against their enemy, but to say each to the other: "Here am I, my sister! Go not too far, come not too near!" Their voices were as whispers to the shouting of their foe; beneath the rolling thunders the sound of cannon and culverin were of less account than the grating of pebbles in a furious surge.

Day came and the storm continued, but with night the wind fell and quiet possessed the deep. The sea subsided, and just before dawn the clouds broke, showing a waning moon. Below it suddenly sprang out two lights, one above the other, and to the _Cygnet_, safe, though with her plumage sadly ruffled, came the sound of a gun twice fired.

The darkness faded, the gray light strengthened, and showed to the watchers upon the _Cygnet's_ decks the ship in distress. It was Baldry's ship, the little _Star_. She lay rolling heavily in the heavy sea, her masts gone, her boats swept away, her p.o.o.p low in the water, her beak-head high, sinking by the stern. Her lights yet burned, ghastly in the dawning; her people, a black swarm upon her forecastle, lay clinging, devouring with their eyes the _Cygnet's_ boats coming for their deliverance across the gray waste. Of the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_ nothing was to be seen.

The swarm descended into the boats, and all pushed off from the doomed ship save a single craft, less crowded than the others, which waited, its occupants gesticulating angry dismay, for the one man who had not left the _Star_. He stood erect upon her bowsprit, a dark figure outlined against the livid sky.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "IT WAS BALDRY'S SHIP, THE LITTLE _STAR_"]

The watchers upon the _Cygnet_, from Captain to least powder-boy, drew quick breath.

"Ah, sirs, he loved the _Star_ like a woman!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Thynne the master, and, "He swore terribly, but he was a mighty man!" testified the chief gunner. Robin-a-dale swung himself to and fro in an ecstasy of terror. "He rides--he rides so high!" he shrilled. "Higher than the gallows-tree! And he stands so quiet while he rides!"

Upon the p.o.o.p young Sedley, standing beside his Captain, veiled his eyes with his hand; then, ashamed of his weakness, gazed steadfastly at the lifted figure. Arden, drumming with his fingers upon the rail, looked sidewise at Sir Mortimer Ferne.

"It seems that your quarrel will have to wait some other meeting-place than England," he said. "Perhaps the laws of that _terra incognita_ to which he goes forbid the duello."

"He will not leave our company yet awhile," answered Ferne, with calmness. "As I thought--."

The dark figure had dropped from the bowsprit of the _Star_ into the waiting boat, which at once put after its fellows. Behind the deserted ship suddenly streamed out a red banner of the dawn; stark and black against the color, lonely in the path that must be trod, she awaited her end. To the seafaring men who watched her she was as human as themselves--a ship dying alone.

"All that a man hath will he give for his life," quoth Arden, somewhat grimly, for he was no lover of Baldry, and he was now ashamed of the emotion he had shown.

"To go down with her," said Ferne, slowly,--"that had been the act of a madman. And if to live is a thing less fine than would have been that madness, yet--"

He broke off, and turning from the _Star_, now very near her death, swept with his gaze the billowing ocean. "I would we might see the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_," he said, impatiently. "What is lost is lost, and Captain Baldry as well as we must stand this crippling of our enterprise. But the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_ are of more account than the _Star_."

Out of a cl.u.s.ter of mariners and landsmen rose Robin-a-dale's shrill cry: "She's going down, down, down! Oh, the white figurehead looks no more into the sea--it turns its face to the sky! Down, down, the _Star_ has gone down!"

A silence fell upon the decks of the _Cygnet_ and upon the overfreighted boats laboring towards her. Overhead mast and spar creaked and the low wind sang in the rigging, but the spirit of man was awed within him. A ship was lost, and the sea was lonely beneath the crimson dawn. Where were the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_, and was all their adventure but a mirage and a cheat? Far away was home, and far away the Indies, and the _Cygnet_ was a little feather tossed between red sky and heaving ocean.

The thought did not last. As the crowded boats drew alongside, up sprang the sun, cheering and warming, and at the Captain's command the musicians of the _Cygnet_ began to play, as at the setting of the watch, a psalm of thanksgiving. Sailors and volunteers, there had been but sixty men aboard the _Star_, and all were safe. As they clambered over the side, a cheer went up from their comrades of the _Cygnet_.

The boat that carried Baldry came last, and that adventurer was the latest to set foot upon the _Cygnet's_ deck. Her Captain met him with bared head and outstretched hand.

"We grieve with you, sir, for the loss of the _Star_," he said, gravely and courteously. "We thank G.o.d that no brave man went down with her. The _Cygnet_ gives you welcome, sir."

The man to whom he spoke ignored alike words and extended hand. A towering figure, breathing bitter anger at this spite of Fortune, he turned where he stood and gazed upon the ocean that had swallowed up his ship. Uncouth of nature, given to boasting, a foster-child of Violence and Envy, he yet had qualities which had borne him upward and onward from mean beginnings to where on yesterday he had stood, owner and Captain of the _Star_, leader of picked men, sea-dog and adventurer as famed for daredevil courage and boundless endurance as for his braggadocio vein and sullen temper. Now the _Star_ that he had loved was at the bottom of the sea; his men, a handful beside the _Cygnet's_ force, must give obedience to her officers; and he himself,--what was he more than a volunteer aboard his enemy's ship? Captain Robert Baldry, grinding his teeth, found the situation intolerable.

Sir Mortimer Ferne, biting his lip in a sudden revulsion of feeling, was of much the same opinion. But that he would follow after courtesy was as certain as that Baldry would pursue his own will and impulse. Therefore he spoke again, though scarce as cordially as before:

"We will shape our course for Teneriffe, where (I pray to G.o.d) we may find the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_. If it please Captain Baldry to then remove into the _Mere Honour_, I make no doubt that the Admiral will welcome so notable a recruit. In the mean time your men shall be cared for, and you yourself will command me, sir, in all things that concern your welfare."

Baldry shot him a look. "I am no maker of pretty speeches," he said.

"You have me in irons. Pray you, show me some dungeon and give me leave to be alone."

Young Sedley, hotly indignant, muttered something, that was echoed by the little throng of gentlemen adventurers sailing with Sir Mortimer Ferne. Arden, leaning against the mast, coolly observant of all, began to whistle,

"'Of honey and of gall in love there is store: The honey is much, but the gall is more,'"

thereby bringing upon himself one of Baldry's black glances.

"Lieutenant Sedley," ordered Ferne, sharply, "you will lodge this gentleman in the cabin next mine own, seeing that he hath all needful entertainment. Sir, I do expect your company at dinner."

He bowed, then stood at his full height, while Baldry sufficiently bethought himself to in some sort return the salute, even to give grudging, half--insolent acknowledgment of the debt he owed the _Cygnet_. At last he went below--to refuse the bread and meat, but to drink deep of the _aqua vita_ which Sedley stiffly offered; then to lock himself in his cabin, bite his nails with rage, and finally, when he had stared at the sea for a long time, to sink his head into his hands and weep a man's tears for irrevocable loss.

Of his fellow adventurers whom he left upon the p.o.o.p, only Mortimer Ferne held his tongue from blame of his insupportable temper, or refrained from stories of the _Star's_ exploits. The _Cygnet_ was under way, the wind favorable, her white and swelling canvas like clouds against a bright-blue sky, the dolphins playing about her rushing prow, where a golden lady forever kept her eyes upon the deep. In the wind, timber and cordage creaked and sang, while from waist and main-deck came a cheerful sound of men at work repairing what damage the storm had wrought. Thynne the master gave orders in his rumbling ba.s.s, then the drum beat for morning service, and, after the G.o.dly fashion of the time, there poured from the forecastle, to worship the Lord, mariners and landsmen, gunners, harquebusiers, crossbow and pike men, cabin and powder boys, cook, chirurgeon, and carpenter--all the varied force of that floating castle destined to be dashed like a battering-ram against the power of Spain. The Captain of them all, with his gentlemen and officers about him, paused a moment before moving to his accustomed place, and looked upon his ship from stem to stern, from the thronged decks to the topmost pennant flaunting the sunshine. He found it good, and the salt of life was strong in his nostrils. Inwardly he prayed for the safety of the _Mere Honour_, and the _Marigold_, but that picture of the sinking _Star_ he dismissed as far as might be from his mind. She had been but a small ship--notorious indeed for fights against great odds, for sheer bravado and hairbreadth escapes, but still a small ship, and not to be compared with the _Cygnet_. No life had been forfeited, and Captain Robert Baldry must even digest as best he might his private loss and discomfiture. If, as he walked to his place of honor, and as he stood with English gentlemen about him, with English sailors and soldiers ranged before him giving thanks for deliverance from danger, the Captain of the _Cygnet_ held too high his head; if he at that moment looked upon his life with too conscious a pride, knew too well the difference between himself, steadfast helmsman of all his being, and that untutored nature which drove another from rock to shoal, from shoal to quicksand--yet that knowledge, detestable to all the G.o.ds, dragged at his soul but for a moment. He bent his head and prayed for the missing ships, and most heartily for John Nevil, his Admiral, whom he loved; then for Damaris Sedley that she be kept in health and joyousness of mind; and lastly, believing that he but plead for the success of an English expedition against Spain and Antichrist, he prayed for gold and power, a sovereign's grat.i.tude and man's acclaim.

Three days later they came to Teneriffe, and to their great rejoicing found there the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_. The Admiral signalled a council; and Ferne, taking with him Giles Arden, Sedley, and the Captain of the sunken _Star_, went aboard the _Mere Honour_, where he was shortly joined by Baptist Manwood from the _Marigold_, with his lieutenants Wynch and Paget. In his state-cabin, when he had given his Captains welcome, the Admiral sat at table with his wine before him and heard how had fared the _Cygnet_ and the _Marigold_, then listened to Baldry's curt recital of the _Star's_ ill destinies. The story ended, he gave his meed of grave sympathy to the man whose whole estate had been that sunken ship. Baldry sat silent, fingering, as was his continual trick, the hilt of his great Andrew Ferrara. But when the Admiral, with his slow, deliberate courtesy, went on to propose that for this adventure Captain Baldry cast his lot with the _Mere Honour_, he listened, then gave unexpected check.

"I' faith, his berth upon the _Cygnet_ liked him well enough, and though he thanked the Admiral, what reason for changing it? In fine, he should not budge, unless, indeed, Sir Mortimer Ferne--" He turned himself squarely so as to face the Captain of the _Cygnet_.