The King's Men Part 16

"Painting and caulking my old boat, miss," answered the fisherman, blotting out the last letters with a long smear of paint.

"But you are painting out the name?" said Maggie, inquiringly.

"I have a new name for the craft, miss," he answered, in a hoa.r.s.e voice: "the 'Lone Star'; and I am painting out the old name, the Mary Mallow, which I gave her after my wife; but, saving your presence, miss, she desarted me these six months ago; I was too rough and common for her, I suppose."

He put his rough hand over his eyes. "It goes against my heart to paint her name out; but, as things are now, the 'Lone Star' is better."

Maggie could not help smiling at the unconscious poetry of the poor fellow and at the likeness between her lot and his.

"I am sorry for you, my man," she said, and she slipped a coin into his hand. "Put in a gilt star on the stern with this. It will be a comfort to you to have your boat smart." The man took the coin and looked at it vacantly. Maggie left him and kept on her way over the beach, past the boats and the drying nets, and the great heaps of seaweed and kelp, to the headland which jutted out into the sea beyond the village. Once there she seated herself in a deep recess of the cliff which commanded a view of the bay.

"And now I am alone, entirely alone, and I cannot be disturbed," she said to herself.

Down below her the breakers rolled in over the seaweed-covered rocks, and dashed into a deep chasm in the rocks, cleft by the attrition of ages, breaking with a dull sough upon the farthermost end of the cleft.

Maggie could see nothing from her perch but the sea, and the opposite cliff upon which Ripon House stood. A few wheeling sea-gulls, and a small fishing-boat, beating out of the harbor, were the only living objects in the view. The waves, crest over crest, hurried toward the headland, and beat into foam at her feet. Her mind was soothed by watching the torn waters, as each wave dashed out its life, in a thousand swirls and white bubbles of foam.

Suddenly she was startled from her reverie by hearing Geoffrey call her name, and she saw him on the rocks below her.

He looked more than pleased at getting so good a chance to see her alone.

"Ah, Lord Brompton," she said, coldly, looking at him, but not inviting him to come up by her. "What has brought you out here?"

"You. I was on my way to make a call upon you, and just as I reached the top of the cliff I saw you on the beach, talking with a fisherman. May I come up to you?"

Maggie glanced down at him, and saw that he was dressed with more than ordinary care; in spite of her hard feelings toward him she could not help smiling at the thought that he had been prinking all the morning to look well when he came courting.

Geoffrey saw her smile, and started to climb up to her side.

"There is not room up here for two, I am afraid," she said in a determined voice.

"I will sit on the sharpest edge of the rock," pleaded Geoffrey.

"It would make me uncomfortable to see you suffer, just as it would to see anything in pain," she added hastily. "What did it matter to her,"

she thought, "whether Lord Brompton suffered or not?"

"I would not suffer when I am near you," said Geoffrey, a little plaintively, wondering why he was treated so badly.

"If you came you would not be more entertaining than Heine, would you?"

asked Maggie, looking mockingly down into his gray eyes.

"d.a.m.n Heine," thought Geoffrey, as he lifted himself up over the rocks.

Miss Windsor huddled herself far into a corner of the niche. There was plenty of room for two there after all; yet Geoffrey seated himself in a most uncomfortable att.i.tude, with his stick over his knees, and looked earnestly at her.

"He has come after the stocks and bonds," said Maggie to herself, as she steeled her heart against his winning face and his manly simplicity of manner. She tried to say something about the sea and the view, but he looked at her earnestly, and said, in a low, hurried voice:

"Miss Windsor, I have sought you out to-day with a definite purpose. I sincerely hope that you were not displeased at seeing me. You know why I wish to see you."

Maggie turned away her head; there was a sincere ring to his voice; could it be possible that he really cared for her, loved her, Maggie Windsor? Ah, no; she remembered Mrs. Carey, and said nothing.

"Miss Windsor--Maggie," he said, "I know that I have no right to ask you to marry me, save that I love you with a single heart."

"Oh, Mr. Doubleface," she thought, "how fair you talk!" She still said nothing, but tapped the stone in front of her nervously with the end of her little boot.

"I have nothing to offer you," continued Geoffrey, "except my love and my name; I do not even know whether I even have a life to give you."

Maggie was startled by this; she did not understand it at all. Geoffrey waited for her to say something, and there was a depressing pause for a moment.

She felt that she had grown pale, and her fingers twitched convulsively at the handle of her parasol. Here was her lover saying to her all that she had dreamed he might say, saying in an earnest, trembling voice that he loved her; in a voice so different to his customary tone of banter, that she for a moment almost believed in his sincerity; yet as she averted her face and looked over the bay she could see clearly in her mind's eye the little picture which had remained in it from yesterday--her lover holding Mrs. Carey in his arms.

"Lord Brompton," she finally said, in a slow, deliberate voice, from which all pa.s.sion, even all affection was wanting, "I am sorry that you have spoken to me in this way, very sorry."

Poor Geoffrey had expected a different answer, and as he sat there looking at Maggie's pale, agitated face, he felt that there was a wall between them, where he had always found a kindly sympathy and an affectionate interest before. He had expected, perhaps, that she might not care about him enough to marry him, for he was not so young or conceited as to imagine that the priceless treasure of a woman's heart is to be lightly won at the first asking, but he had thought that his sweetheart would sympathize with him at his loss of her; with the touching pity which at such times is so akin to love and often its forerunner. Still he boldly went on with his declaration, feeling that he did not wish to leave a word unsaid of all that had swelled his heart with love and hope. If his love were all poured out and spurned, would not the chambers of his heart be swept and garnished for the future?

Yet what a desolate, haunted chamber it will be, he bitterly thought.

"I could not have told you a week ago that I loved you, Maggie," he said. "But I did, though; only I did not know it. I must have loved you since the day I first met you at the ball. You remember it, do you not?

When you first smiled at me I felt that we had always known each other; and that evening I was content. Will you make me so for all my life?" He leaned over toward her and tried to take one of her hands; she edged it away from him, and turned toward him with flashing eyes and thin, compressed lips.

"It is not possible that I shall ever care for you, Lord Brompton, in the way in which you pretend to care for me."

"Pretend to care for you!" he said, angrily. "What do you mean by that?

Why should I come to you with pretences? What should I gain by making a lying love to you?"

"Everything," she answered, coldly.

"I do not care to argue this, Miss Windsor," he said, turning his face away, pained to the heart. "I am in such a position that I may not; but I wished, while I had a chance, to tell you that I loved you. Good-by, Maggie, good-by. I do not wish to be melodramatic; but you may never see me again."

He kissed one of her hands, which lay at her side, and lifting himself from the rock, climbed down the cliff, a mist of tears before his eyes; and Maggie sat looking over the bay silent and sad, trying to reconcile the evident genuineness of Geoffrey's entreaty with what she knew of him.

Late that evening Mary Lincoln was sitting in her bedroom, in an arm-chair by the fire. Her thoughts were of Sir John Dacre.

In him she saw the hero of whom she had dreamed during her girlhood; the young prince clad in golden armor, and in quest of adventures and opportunities for self-sacrifice, who should awake her sleeping heart with a kiss.

The ordinary warm-hearted but pleasure-loving and easy-going man cannot stir the depths of a nature like Mary Lincoln's. An earnest, ardent spirit, even if it be Quixotic, so that it see before it, like a clear flame, some duty to be done, or some war to be waged, attracts to it the devotion of a strong woman's heart.

Women love adventurous, single-minded men, and will die for them, if need be, gladly and silently; but such men, intent on their object, seem oblivious to the wealth of love that might be theirs for the asking, were they not too absorbed to ask for it. And so it was with John Dacre and Mary Lincoln. He was drawn to her unconsciously by her lovely womanhood; but his great dream seemed to fill his mind, and that fulfilled, the world had nothing in store for him. He wished no rewards, no life for himself, but to see his King returned and Great Britain proud among the nations; yet he liked to sit by Mary Lincoln and ponder his cherished dream.

Of course he would not speak to her of it; he knew the danger of his project; yet she read his heart and knew that he was deep in some adventure which filled his life so that she had no part in it. Still, she saw that she attracted him, even if he did not know it, and they talked together about the glories of the past history of their country, and lived with the great men who, with brain, and sword, and pen had wrought for the honor and fame of their native land.

It was no courtship, no wooing, only a meeting, for a brief s.p.a.ce, of two human beings who had been made for each other, but whom fate separated by a rift which could not be bridged. Mary Lincoln knew this, John Dacre did not; but as he had bade her good-night just before, he felt a sadness steal over his heart, and his voice had trembled as he spoke. Even into the heart of this man of one idea, on the eve of this dangerous conspiracy, all unawares the love G.o.d had stolen with m.u.f.fled feet, so that he did not know his presence. But Mary knew.

There was a little tap at the door, and she heard Maggie Windsor's voice asking:

"May I come in?"

Mary arose quickly and unbolted the door, and Maggie Windsor entered.