The Lady of Loyalty House Part 22

"No, no," Evander protested; "we parted on clasped hands. Some pressing matter called him to his quarters."

"Did you pay him apology for your equivocal wit?" Brilliana asked, demurely.

Evander answered gravely: "He professed himself satisfied."

Brilliana feigned a cry of horror.

"I trust you did not eat your words."

Evander shook his head.

"I am not so hungry. Have I your leave to go?"

He made as if to depart; Brilliana met his motion with a little frown.

"Are you so eager?" she asked, in a voice in which regret and petulance were dexterously commingled.

Evander answered her gravely. "Yesterday you said that a Puritan presence was hateful."

Brilliana laughed blithely and her curls quivered in the sunshine.

"You must not harp on a mad maid's anger. Yesterday you were my enemy, a thing of threats and treason. To-day all's different; to-day you are my guest. Soon you will ride hence, and we will, if Providence please, never meet again. But for a span of hours let us make believe to be friend and friend, till Colonel Cromwell send my cousin and your liberty."

Evander was tempted to quarrel with himself for being so ready to welcome this overture. But yesterday this woman had spattered him with insults, snared him on a strained plea, bargained away his life for the body of a spy. Yesterday she had shuddered at the thought of any link of kinship between them, as she might have shuddered at kinship with a wronger of women, a killer of children, a coward. Yet to-day, as she stood there, sunshine on her hair, sunshine in her eyes, a fairy lady standing in that circle of solemn yews, he could find in his heart no regret for anything that had brought him to her presence. He would take gladly what she offered gayly, two days of friendship with so radiant a maid--and then? He left that thought unanswered to reply to Brilliana.

"Madam," he said, with a very ceremonious bow, "I will pretend that we are going to be friends till the end of my life."

Brilliana clapped her hands like a child that has been promised some coveted comfit.

"You are brave at make-believe. In the mean time let us keep each other company a little. Surely it is dull for a man of action to be a prisoner, and for my own part I mope sadly now that my little war is well over."

She had seated herself as she spoke, and she motioned to Evander to take his place by her side. When she paused he asked:

"Are you so strenuous an amazon?"

She answered him very earnestly:

"I miss the splendid music of the siege, the stir of arms, the bustle of giving order, the alertness of expectation. I did not think a woman's life could be tuned to so high a diapason. Just think of it!

Yesterday, and for many yesterdays, I was a leaguered lady, a priestess of battles; I stood for the King; existence was one fierce ecstasy. To drop from that brisk spin and whetted edge of life into this housewife's twilight is all one with being some sea-old admiral and drowning in a ca.n.a.l."

The daughters of Israel could not have thrown more sadness into their voice, Evander thought, as they sang by the waters of Babylon. If her face was fair in animation, it seemed still more fair in sadness.

"Has the Lady of Harby no employment," he asked, gently, "to spur the trudging time?"

Brilliana laughed rather cheerlessly.

"Oh, mercy, yes! Can she not overwatch the gardener to see that he planteth the right sort of herbs and flowers at the new of the moon, at moon full, and at moon old? She can chat with Mistress Cook of sallets and frica.s.sees and fritters; she can count the linen; she can preserve quinces; she can distil you aqua composita or imperial water, or water of Bettony, against she grow old; she can be dairy-wise, cellar-wise, laundry-wise--oh, there are a thousand thousand things she can do if she want to do them, but the plague of it is, since I have burned powder, these decent drudgeries no longer divert me."

She gave a little sigh as she ended her enumeration of a housewife's tasks, and then banished the sigh with a smile. Evander found himself thinking that a man might count himself happy for whom this lady should sigh so at parting and smile so in welcome. But what he said was:

"Against your next distillation I can give you a very praisable recipe for a cordial. It is a Swedish fancy and much favored by the ladies of the North."

Brilliana looked him full in the face and laughed very merrily, and he felt his cheeks redden at her gaze and her mirth.

"Was there ever such a man-marvel?" she asked. "All my people praise you for some different accomplishment. A horseman, a gardener, the best at fence, the best, too, with a cudgel--"

"Ah, madam," Evander interrupted, apologetically, "pray how has that come to your ears?"

"Never mind how it came," Brilliana answered, "so that it has come and that I owe you no ill-will for teaching a foolish gentleman a lesson. But you can shoot, it seems, and play games, and are apt in out-door arts and wise in out-of-doors wisdom--for all the world like a country gentleman."

"Madam, I am, as I hope, a gentleman, and as for the country knowledge, I have lived its life in many lands and learned something by the way."

"And now," Brilliana bantered on, "you boast some science of the still-room, and Mistress Satch.e.l.l speaks of a Spanish manner of grilling capons. Are you, perhaps, a herald as well as a master cook, and do you know something of the gentle and joyous craft of the huntsman?"

Evander took her in her humor and bandied back the ball of qualification.

"I can p.r.i.c.k a coat indifferently well," he responded, solemnly, "and if such trifles delight you, I can blaze arms by the days of the week or the ages of man or the flowers of the field, though I hold that a true herald will never stray beyond colors."

Brilliana nodded her head with an air of profound approval. "Better and better," she murmured. Evander went on with his catalogue of self-compliment.

"And as for my woodcraft, I can name you all the names of a male deer, from hind calf, year by year, through brocket and spayed, and staggard and stag, till his sixth year, when he is truly a hart and has his rights of brow, bay, and tray antlers. I am skilled in the uses of falcon-gentle, gerfalcon, saker, lanner, merlin, hobby, goshawk, sparrow-hawk, and musket--"

Brilliana interrupted him with an impetuous gesture of command, and Evander made an end of his display.

"Enough, enough!" she cried. "I feel like Balkis when she came to sip wisdom from Solomon's goblet. If I question you further I may find that, like my Lord Verulam, you have taken all knowledge for your province. This is something uncanny in a Puritan."

Evander protested.

"Why should a man deny the arts of life because he finds strength in the faith of the Puritans?"

"I know not why," Brilliana answered, "but so it is generally believed among us who are not Puritans."

"There are fanatic fellows with us as in all causes," Evander admitted, "and some, it may be, who wear moroseness to gain favor.

But these are no more than the fringe of a stout cloak. I am no exceptional Puritan, I promise you. Colonel Cromwell himself--"

Brilliana interrupted him with a frowning imperiousness.

"Let us not talk of Colonel Cromwell," she commanded.

"I wish you would let me speak of Colonel Cromwell," Evander pleaded.

"He has long been my dear friend, and--"

"Let us not talk of Colonel Cromwell," Brilliana repeated, with a peremptory stamp of the foot. "I want to talk of you and your curious Puritanism. I thought you were all too hypocritically devout to have any care for the toys and colors of life."

"To be devout is not to be hypocritical," Evander urged, gently.

"And, to speak for myself, I hope I am devout, but I do not find my faith weakened by honorable enjoyment of honorable pleasures. Yet, indeed, what poor accomplishments I can lay claim to--and to afford you diversion, I have somewhat exaggerated their scope and number--are due directly to my being a Puritan--"

"You are pleased to be paradoxical," Brilliana a.s.serted. Evander put the suggestion aside with a head shake.