The Nest of the Sparrowhawk Part 14

Added to all this there was the sense of isolation. She had lost her mother when she was a baby; her father fell at Naseby. She herself had been an only child, left helplessly stranded when the civil war dispersed her relations and friends, some into exile, others in splendid revolt within the fastnesses of their own homes, impoverished by pillage and sequestration, rebellious, surrounded by spies, watching that opportunity for retaliation which was so slow in coming.

Tossed hither and thither by Fate in spite of--or perhaps because of--her great wealth, she had found a refuge, though not a home, at Acol Court; she had been of course too young at the time to understand rightly the great conflict between the King's party and the Puritans, but had naturally embraced the cause--for which her father's life had been sacrificed--blindly, like a child of instinct, not like a woman of thought.

Her guardian and Mistress de Chava.s.se stood for that faction of Roundheads at which her father and all her relatives had sneered even while they were being conquered and oppressed by them. She disliked them both from the first; and chafed at the parsimonious habits of the house, which stood in such glaring contrast to the easy lavishness of her own luxurious home.

Fortunately for her, her guardian avoided rather than sought her company. She met him at meals and scarcely more often than that, and though she often heard his voice about the house, usually raised in anger or impatience, he was invariably silent and taciturn when she was present.

The presence of Richard Lambert, his humble devotion, his whole-hearted sympathy and the occasional moments of conversation which she had with him were the only bright moments in her dull life at the Court: and there is small doubt but that the friendship and trust which characterized her feelings towards him would soon have ripened into more pa.s.sionate love, but for the advent into her life of the mysterious hero, who by his personality, his strange, secretive ways, his talk of patriotism and liberty, at once took complete possession of her girlish imagination.

She was perhaps just too young when she met Lambert; she had not yet reached that dangerous threshold when girlhood looks from out obscure ignorance into the glaring knowledge of womanhood. She was a child when Lambert showed his love for her by a thousand little simple acts of devotion and by the mute adoration expressed in his eyes. Lambert drew her towards the threshold by his pa.s.sionate love, and held her back within the refuge of innocent girlhood by the sincerity and exaltation of his worship.

With the first word of vehement, unreasoning pa.s.sion, the mysterious prince dragged the girl over that threshold into womanhood. He gave her no time to think, no time to a.n.a.lyze her feelings; he rushed her into a torrent of ardor and of excitement in which she never could pause in order to draw breath.

To-night she had promised to marry him secretly--to surrender herself body and soul to this man whom she hardly knew, whom she had never really seen; she felt neither joy nor remorse, only a strange sense of agitation, an unnatural and morbid impatience to see the end of the next few days of suspense.

For the first time since she had come to Acol, and encountered the kindly sympathy of Richard Lambert, she felt bitterly angered against him when, having parted from the prince at the door of the pavilion, she turned, to walk back towards the house and came face to face with the young man.

A narrow path led through the trees, from the ha-ha to the gate, and Richard Lambert was apparently walking along aimlessly, in the direction of the pavilion.

"I came hoping to meet your ladyship and to escort you home. The night seems very dark," he explained simply in answer to a sudden, haughty stiffening of her young figure, which he could not help but notice.

"I was taking a stroll in the park," she rejoined coldly, "the evening is sweet and balmy but ... I have no need of escort, Master Lambert ...

I thank you.... It is late and I would wish to go indoors alone."

"It is indeed late, gracious lady," he said gently, "and the park is lonely at night ... will you not allow me to walk beside you as far as the house?"

But somehow his insistence, his very gentleness struck a jarring note, for which she herself could not have accounted. Was it the contrast between two men, which unaccountably sent a thrill of disappointment, almost of apprehension, through her heart?

She was angry with Lambert, bitterly angry because he was kind and gentle and long-suffering, whilst the other was violent, even brutal at times.

"I must repeat, master, that I have no need of your escort," she said haughtily, "I have no fear of marauders, nor yet of prowling beasts. And for the future I should be grateful to you," she added, conscious of her own cruelty, determined nevertheless to be remorselessly cruel, "if you were to cease that system which you have adopted of late--that of spying on my movements."

"Spying?"

The word had struck him in the face like a blow. And she, womanlike, with that strange, impulsive temperament of hers, was not at all sorry that she had hurt him. Yet surely he had done her no wrong, save by being so different from the other man, and by seeming to belittle that other in her sight, against her will and his own.

"I am grieved, believe me," she said coldly, "if I seem unkind ... but you must see for yourself, good master, that we cannot go on as we are doing now.... Whenever I go out, you follow me ... when I return I find you waiting for me.... I have endeavored to think kindly of your actions, but if you value my friendship, as you say you do, you will let me go my way in peace."

"Nay! I humbly beg your ladyship's gracious forgiveness," he said; "if I have transgressed, it is because I am blind to all save your ladyship's future happiness, and at times the thought of that adventurer is more than I can bear."

"You do yourself no good, Master Lambert, by talking thus to me of the man I love and honor beyond all things in this world. You are blind and see not things as they are: blind to the merits of one who is as infinitely above you as the stars. But nathless I waste my breath again.... I have no power to convince you of the grievous error which you commit. But if you cared for me, as you say you do ..."

"If I cared!" he murmured, with a pathetic emphasis on that little word "if."

"As a friend I mean," she rejoined still cold, still cruel, still womanlike in that strange, inexplicable desire to wound the man who loved her. "If you care for me as a friend, you will not throw yourself any more in the way of my happiness. Now you may escort me home, an you wish. This is the last time that I shall speak to you as a friend, in response to your petty attacks on the man whom I love. Henceforth you must chose 'twixt his friendship and my enmity!"

And without vouchsafing him another word or look, she gathered her cloak more closely about her, and walked rapidly away along the narrow path.

He followed with head bent, meditating, wondering! Wondering!

CHAPTER XIII

AN IDEA

The triumph was complete. But of a truth the game was waxing dangerous.

Lady Sue Aldmarshe had promised to marry her prince. She would keep her word, of that Sir Marmaduke was firmly convinced. But there would of necessity be two or three days delay and every hour added to the terrors, the certainty of discovery.

There was a watch-dog at Sue's heels, stern, alert, unyielding. Richard Lambert was probing the secret of the mysterious prince, with the unerring eye of the disappointed lover.

The meeting to-night had been terribly dangerous. Sir Marmaduke knew that Lambert was lurking somewhere in the park.

At present even the remotest inkling of the truth must still be far from the young man's mind. The whole scheme was so strange, so daring, so foreign to the simple ideas of the Quaker-bred lad, that its very boldness had defied suspicion. But the slightest mischance now, a meeting at the door of the pavilion, an altercation--face to face, eye to eye--and Richard Lambert would be on the alert. His hatred would not be so blind, nor yet so clumsy, as that of his brother, the blacksmith.

There is no spy so keen in all the world as a jealous lover.

This had been the prince's first meeting with Sue, since that memorable day when the secret of their clandestine love became known to Lambert.

Sir Marmaduke knew well that it had been fraught with danger; that every future meeting would wax more and more perilous still, and that the secret marriage itself, however carefully and secretively planned, would hardly escape the prying eyes of the young man.

The unmasking of Prince Amede d'Orleans before Sue had become legally his wife was a possibility which Sir Marmaduke dared not even think of, lest the very thought should drive him mad. Once she was his wife! ...

well, let her look to herself.... The marriage tie would be a binding one, he would see to that, and her fortune should be his, even though he had won her by a lie.

He had staked his very existence on the success of his scheme. Lady Sue's fortune was the one aim of his life, for it he had worked and striven, and lied: he would not even contemplate a future without it, now that his plans had brought him so near the goal.

He had one faithful ally, though not a powerful one, in Editha, who, lured by some vague promises of his, desperate too, as regarded her own future, had chosen to throw in her lot whole-heartedly with his.

He was closeted with her on the following day, in the tiny withdrawing-room which leads out of the hall at Acol Court. When he had stolen into the house in the small hours of the morning he had seen Richard Lambert leaning out of one of the windows which gave upon the park.

It seemed as if the young man must have seen him when he skirted the house, for though there was no moonlight, the summer's night was singularly clear. That Lambert had been on the watch--spying, as Sir Marmaduke said with a bitter oath of rage--was beyond a doubt.

Editha too was uneasy; she thought that Lambert had purposely avoided her the whole morning.

"I lingered in the garden for as long as I could," she said to her brother-in-law, watching with keen anxiety his restless movements to and fro in the narrow room, "I thought Lambert would keep within doors if he saw me about. He did not actually see you, Marmaduke, did he?" she queried with ever-growing disquietude.

"No. Not face to face," he replied curtly. "I contrived to avoid him in the park, and kept well within the shadows, when I saw him spying through the window.

"Curse him!" he added with savage fury, "curse him, for a meddlesome, spying cur!"

"The whole thing is becoming vastly dangerous," she sighed.

"Yet it must last for another few weeks at least...."

"I know ... and Lambert is a desperate enemy: he dogs Sue's footsteps, he will come upon you one day when you are alone, or with her ... he will provoke a quarrel...."

"I know--I know ..." he retorted impatiently, "'tis no use recapitulating the many evil contingencies that might occur.... I know that Lambert is dangerous ... d.a.m.n him! ... Would to G.o.d I could be rid of him ... somehow."