The Maid-At-Arms Part 18

"To whom?"

"To a man, silly."

"A man!"

"With two legs, two arms, and a head, cousin."

"You ... love him?"

"No," she said, serenely. "It's only to wed and settle down some day."

"You don't love him?"

"No," she repeated, a trifle impatiently.

"And you mean to wed him?"

"Listen to the boy!" she exclaimed. "I've told him ten times that I am betrothed, which means a wedding. I am not one of those who break paroles."

"Oh ... you are now free on parole."

"Prisoner on parole," she said, lightly. "I'm to name the day o'

punishment, and I promise you it will not be soon."

"Dorothy," I said, "suppose in the mean time you fell in love?"

"I'd like to," she said, sincerely.

"But--but what would you do then?"

"Love, silly!"

"And ... marry?"

"Marry him whom I have promised."

"But you would be wretched!"

"Why? I can't fancy wedding one I love. I should be ashamed, I think.

I--if I loved I should not want the man I loved to touch me--not with gloves."

"You little fool!" I said. "You don't know what you say."

"Yes, I do!" she cried, hotly. "Once there was a captain from Boston; I adored him. And once he kissed my hand and I hated him!"

"I wish I'd been there," I muttered.

She, waving her fan to and fro, continued: "I often think of splendid men, and, dreaming in the sunshine, sometimes I adore them. But always these day-dream heroes keep their distance; and we talk and talk, and plan to do great good in the world, until I fall a-napping.... Heigho!

I'm yawning now." She covered her face with her fan and leaned back against a pillar, crossing her feet. "Tell me about London," she said.

But I knew no more than she.

"I'd be a belle there," she observed. "I'd have a train o' beaux and macaronis at my heels, I warrant you! The foppier, the more it would please me. Think, cousin--ranks of them all a-simper, ogling me through a hundred quizzing-gla.s.ses! Heigho! There's doubtless some deviltry in me, as Sir Lupus says."

She yawned again, looked up at the stars, then fell to twisting her fan with idle fingers.

"I suppose," she said, more to herself than to me, "that Sir John is now close to the table's edge, and Colonel Claus is under it.... Hark to their song, all off the key! But who cares?... so that they quarrel not.... Like those twin brawlers of Glencoe, ... brooding on feuds nigh a hundred years old.... I have no patience with a brooder, one who treasures wrongs, ... like Walter Butler." She looked up at me.

"I warned you," she said.

"It is not easy to avoid insulting him," I replied.

"I warned you of that, too. Now you've a quarrel, and a reckoning in prospect."

"The reckoning is far off," I retorted, ill-humoredly.

"Far off--yes. Further away than you know. You will never cross swords with Walter Butler."

"And why not?"

"He means to use the Iroquois."

I was silent.

"For the honor of your women, you cannot fight such a man," she added, quietly.

"I wish I had the right to protect your honor," I said, so suddenly and so bitterly that I surprised myself.

"Have you not?" she asked, gravely. "I am your kinswoman."

"Yes, yes, I know," I muttered, and fell to plucking at the lace on my wristbands.

The dawn's chill was in the air, the dawn's silence, too, and I saw the calm morning star on the horizon, watching the dark world--the dark, sad world, lying so still, so patient, under the ancient sky.

That melancholy--which is an omen, too--left me benumbed, adrift in a sort of pained contentment which alternately soothed and troubled, so that at moments I almost drowsed, and at moments I heard my heart stirring, as though in dull expectancy of beat.i.tudes undreamed of.

Dorothy, too, sat listless, pensive, and in her eyes a sombre shadow, such as falls on children's eyes at moments, leaving their elders silent.

Once in the false dawn a c.o.c.k crowed, and the shrill, far cry left the raw air emptier and the silence more profound. I looked wistfully at the maid beside me, chary of intrusion into the intimacy of her silence.

Presently her vague eyes met mine, and, as though I had spoken, she said: "What is it?"

"Only this: I am sorry you are pledged."

"Why, cousin?"

"It is unfair."

"To whom?"