XVIII

“You are a wonderful wooer,” she protested. “But whatever admiration of your person I may, without unbecoming effrontery, confess, I would have you to know, plain and square, from this moment, that I will hearken to none but a King’s man.”

The boor’s little eyes glinted and the boor’s rusty fingers rasped at his stubble chin as he answered emphatically:

“Then I am a King’s man, root and branch.”

But his face showed less loyal confidence at Brilliana’s next words.

“Then you must know his Majesty is in straits for ready money. Will you, who are reputed rich, come to his aid with a round sum?”

Master Peter showed his teeth in a snarl and flung up his hands.

“Reputed rich! Oh, what a bitter thing is a bad reputation. I am Job-poor; both ends will not meet, I tell you. If I had for lending-money a guinea in one pocket, why, I should lend it to the other pocket.”

“Why do you woo me if you be so poor?” Brilliana asked, with a fine show of heat, and Halfman nodded his head as much as to say, “Ay, ay, answer me that, if you can.”

Master Peter strove to answer, lamely enough.

“Poor in pennies, lady, poorer in shillings, poorest in guineas. I may own half the country-side and have no coin to clink against the other.”

Brilliana scoffed at his protest.

“Why, ’tis not so long ago Master Paul Hungerford told me you were a very Crœsus.”

Master Peter clinched and unclinched his horny hands as if he were coming to grips with his traducer.

“Master Hungerford told you that? I would I had my hands knotted about his lying throat. He that is as rich as a Jew, that has a treasure of gold plate in his sideboard that would keep the King in arms and men for a month of Sundays, he so to slander my poverty.”

Brilliana heaved a sympathetic sigh.

“I fear he is but a bad man. Do you think he cherishes the King’s cause?”

Master Peter flamed with virtuous indignation.

“He, the black heart! Never think it. He is a rank Parliament scoundrel and worships Mr. Pym.”

“Is it so?” cried Brilliana. “A rebel, a renegade. Why, now, Master Rainham, I see a pretty piece of loyal work for you.”

Master Peter glowered at her suspiciously.

“Anything for you, anything for the King; except give what I have none of—money.”

“In the King’s name,” said Brilliana, heroically, “go forth and ransack this rebellious gentleman’s house for arms.”

Master Peter snorted sceptically.

“Arms! I think he hath none but an old rusty fire-lock and a breast and back that have seen better days.”

Brilliana beamed on him, a yielding sphinx.

“But then, supposing you should pick up some plate on the way, some gold plate by chance—”

Master Peter rubbed his grimy hands.

“Why, it were fine,” he admitted, gleefully; then added, with cunning, “Are you sure he is a Roundhead?”

“I am very sure he is your enemy,” Brilliana answered, sharply, “for he makes you his daily jape.”

The ugly boar-head looked uglier as it growled:

“Does he, the dog! I’d jape him if I gad my two hands upon him.”

“Why,” Brilliana asserted, now in the full tide of make-believe, “if you are a King’s man, he will be of the other side, he hates you so. I cannot think how you have earned his hatred, unless, indeed—” and she broke off suddenly and looked aside. Halfman would have given a shilling for a lonely place to laugh his fill in.

“Well, madam, well?” Master Rainham questioned, eagerly.

Brilliana faltered her answer.

“—unless he believes you stand higher in the graces of a certain lady than he can ever hope to stand.”

Master Rainham’s smile gave Halfman the feel of goose-flesh. Brilliana’s face was, happily, averted.

“Madam, assure me ’tis so,” grunted boar’s-head.

“I must not say much,” Brilliana protested, “no more than this, that in this enterprise, if you but achieve it, you will win great credit with the King at no cost to yourself, you spoil a rival, and—but this is very private—you will give great pleasure to that same nameless lady.”

Master Peter shouted, “Why, then, all’s well. I will pick him as clean as a whistle.” Again caution overcrowded cheer. “But I must pick my time, look you.”

On this, Brilliana became emphatic.

“No time like the present. It is to my certain knowledge that Master Paul is away from home to-day.” Again she looked to Halfman for support, and again Halfman yielded it blithely.

“Ay, he has gone hawking,” he declared; “he will not be home this great while.”

Halfman’s confirmation decided Master Peter.

“Why, I go at once. When the cat’s away—! I will be back within the hour.”

“Then,” said Brilliana, “pray you go to the house and gather in my name from the servants’ hall such men as you may need for your enterprise. Use despatch, for indeed I long for your return.”

Master Peter paid her what he believed to be a courtly bow.

“That same nameless lady shall praise me,” he chuckled, and, turning, made for the house with all speed. When they were alone, Brilliana and Halfman looked at each other with the mirth of children who have successfully raided an orchard.

“I have netted them,” Brilliana said. “If it do but happen pat, we shall have served the King and punished two cozening faint-hearts. For the best of it is that neither can complain. Each is neck-high in the mire of lies, each has plundered the other, and must be dumb for shame of his knavery.”

“It will be brave to spy their faces,” Halfman commented, “when they smell out the snare.”

“Look to it,” Brilliana suggested, “that they be kept apart when they come here. The jest must not spoil. How these old hawks will fly at each other when we unhood them.”

“Trust me, lady,” said Halfman. “I have been a play-actor and know how to stage a pair of gabies to the show.”

He saluted her and made to depart. She had learned to like his company through the long days of siege, and this dull day of quiet she felt lonely. Moreover, she was grateful to him for having helped her so well in her plot against the niggards.

“Come again when you have taken order for this,” she said. “There is still much to do, much to think for.”

The man saluted anew, intoxicated with pleasure. He knew that she liked his company, and whatever was well in him burgeoned at the knowledge. His play-actor passion had bettered him, if it had not accomplished the impossible and transmuted the pirate of body into the pure of soul. It would not be true to say that he never thought lewdly of her; he would have thought lewdly of an angel or a vestal maid; that was ingrain in the composition of the man; but he thought well of her as he had never thought well of women before since he first scorched his stripling’s fingers, and he would have killed twenty men to keep her from hearing a foul word. Sometimes when he talked with her, ever in his chastened part of the rough old soldier, he laughed in his sleeve at the difference between part and true man. The nut-hook humor of it was that both were realities, or, perhaps, that neither were realities.

As he quitted the pleasaunce he countered Mistress Tiffany, and saw at a distance, standing by the laurels, a foppish, many-colored, portly personage negligently twirling a long staff. Halfman guessed the name, grinned, and went on his business. Tiffany burst wellnigh breathless into her lady’s presence.

“My lady,” she gasped, “here is Sir Blaise Mickleton, who entreats the honor to speak with you.”

Brilliana’s face darkened for a moment, for she bore no kindness just then to the laggard in war. Then her face cleared again.

“Admit him,” she said. “He will divert me for want of a better.”

Back ran Tiffany to where the visitor lingered, bade him enter the pleasaunce, where he would find her mistress, and having delivered her errand, ran again to the house, leaving him to his adventure.

XIX

Sir Blaise Mickleton was, in his own eyes and in the eyes of the village girls of Harby, a vastly fine gentleman. If they had ever heard of the sun-god, Phœbus Apollo would have presented himself to their rusticity in some such guise as the personality of the local knight. Sir Blaise had been to London—once—had kissed the King’s hand at Whitehall, and had ever since striven vehemently to be more Londonish than the Londoner. He talked with what he thought to be the town’s drawl; he walked, as he believed, with the town walk over the grasses of his grounds and on the Harby high-roads. He plagued the village tailor with strange devices for coats and cloaks; many-colored as a Joseph, he strutted through bucolic surroundings as if he carried the top-knot of the mode in the Mall; he glittered in ribbons and trinkets, floundered rather than swam in a sea of essences, yet scarcely succeeded in amending, with all this false foppishness, the something bumpkin that was at the root of his nature. He was of a lusty natural with the sanguine disposition, and held himself as much above the most of his neighbors as he knew himself to be below the house of Harby. He was no double-face, friendly with both sides; he was rather for peeping from behind the parted doors of the temple of peace upon a warring world without, and making fast friends with the victor. He had very little doubt that the victor would be the King, but just enough doubt to permit his surrender to a distemper that kept him to his bed till Edgehill proved the amazing remedy.

Sir Blaise peacocked over the lawn, delicate as Agag. He murdered the morning air with odors, his raiment outglowed the rainbow; one hand dandled his staff, the other caressed his mustaches. He strove to smile adoration on Brilliana, but mistrust marred his ogle, and a shiver of fear betrayed his simper of confidence. Brilliana watched him gravely with never a word or a sign, and her silence intensified his discomfiture by the square of the distance he had yet to traverse.

“Coxcomb,” she thought, and “coward,” she thought, and “cur,” she thought.

He could not read her thought, but he could read her tightened lips and her hostile eyes, and he wished himself again in bed at Mickleton. But it was too late to retreat, and he advanced in bad order under the silent fire of her disdain till he paused at what he deemed to be the proper place for ceremonious salutation. He uncovered, describing so magnificent a sweep of extended hat that its plumes brushed the grasses at her feet. He bowed so low that his pink face disappeared from view in the forward fall of his lovelocks. When the rising inflection shook these back and the pink face again confronted her, he seemed to have recovered some measure of assertion.

“Lady,” he said, sighingly, “I kiss your mellifluous fingers and believe myself in Elysium.”

The languishing glance that accompanied these languishing syllables had no immediate effect upon the lady to whom they were addressed. Still Brilliana looked fixedly at her visitor, and still Sir Blaise found little ease under her steady gaze. He blinked uncomfortably; his fingers twitched; he tried to moisten his dry lips. At length, out of what seemed a wellnigh ageless silence, the lady spoke, and her words were an arraignment.

“Why did you not come to Harby when Harby needed help?”

Sir Blaise felt weak in the knees, weak in the back, weak in the wits; he would have given much for a seat, more for a sup of brandy. But he had to speak, and did so after such gasping and stammering as spoiled his false bravado.

“I came to speak of that,” he protested, forcing a jauntiness that he was far from feeling. “I feared you might misunderstand—”

“Indeed,” interrupted Brilliana, “I think there is no misunderstanding.”

Sir Blaise made an appealing gesture.

“Hear me out,” he pleaded. “Hear me and pity me. The news of his Majesty’s quarrel with his Parliament threw me into such a distemper as hath kept me to my bed these three weeks. My people held all news from me for my life’s sake. It was but this morning I was judged sound enough to hear of all that has passed. How otherwise should I not have flown to your succor? I could wish your siege had lasted a while longer to give me the glory of delivering you.”

The sternness faded from Brilliana’s gaze. She was not really angry with this overcareful gentleman; she would only have been grieved had he proved the man to serve her well. He was no more for such enterprises than your lap-dog for bull-baiting. Ridiculous in his finery, pitiful in his subterfuge, he was only a thing to smile at, to trifle with. So she smiled, and, rising, swept him a splendid reverence.

“I am your gallantry’s very grateful servant,” she whispered, having much ado to keep from laughing in his face. The fatuous are easily pacified.

“I hope you do not doubt my valor?” he asked, with some show of reassurance.

“Indeed I have no doubt,” Brilliana answered, with another courtesy. The speech might have two meanings. Sir Blaise, unwilling to split hairs, took it as balsam, and hurriedly turned the conversation.

“Well! well!” he hummed. “You seem nothing the worse for your business.”

“I am something the better,” she said, softly. Perhaps Sir Blaise did not hear her.

“Is it true,” he asked, “that you harbor a Crop-ear in this house?”

“Indeed,” Brilliana confirmed, “I hold him as hostage for the life of Cousin Randolph. You know that he is a prisoner?”

“I heard that news with the rest of the budget,” Sir Blaise answered. “And what kind of a creature is your captive? Does he deafen you with psalms, does he plague you with exhortations?”

Brilliana laughed merrily.

“No, no; ’tis a most wonderful wild-fowl. My people swear he is mettled in all gentle arts, from the manage of horses to the casting of a falcon.”

Sir Blaise shook his staff in protest of indignation.

“Is it possible that such a rascal usurps the privileges of gentlefolk?”

“He carries himself like a gentleman,” Brilliana answered. “More’s the pity that he should be false to his king and his kind.”

Sir Blaise smiled condescendingly.

“Believe me, dear lady, you are misled. A woman may be deceived by an exterior. Doubtless he has picked up his gentility in the servants’ hall of some great house, and seeks to curry your favor by airing it.”

“He has persuaded those that are shrewd judges of men to praise him.”

Again Sir Blaise laughed his fat laugh.

“Ha, ha! Shrewd judges of men. I will take no man’s judgment but my own of this rascal. Had I word with him you should soon see me set him down.”

Brilliana’s glance wandering from the pied pomposity who strutted before her, saw a sharp contrast through the yew-tree arch. A man in sober habit was moving slowly over the grass in the direction of the pleasaunce, moving slowly, for he was carrying an open book and his eyes were fixed upon its pages. Truly the sombre Puritan made a better figure than her swaggering neighbor. She looked up at Sir Blaise with a pretty maliciousness in her smile.

“You can have your will even now,” she said, “for I spy my prisoner coming here—and reading, too.”

Sir Blaise swung round upon his heels and stared in the direction indicated by Brilliana. He saw Evander, black against the sunlit trees, the sunlit grasses, and he smiled derisively. He was very confident that there was no courage as there could be no wit in any Puritan. These things were the privileges of Cavaliers.

“His brains are buried in his book,” he sneered. “If a stone came in his way now he would stumble over it, he’s so deep in his sour studies. ’Tis some ponderous piece of divinity, I’ll wager, levelled against kings.”

He thought he was speaking low to his companion, but his was not a voice of musical softness, and its tones jarred the quiet air. Evander caught the sound of it, lifted his head, and, looking before him over his book, saw in the yew haven Brilliana seated and a gaudy-coated gentleman standing by her side. He was immediately for turning and hastening in another direction, but Brilliana, for all she hated him, would not now have it so. Perhaps she had been piqued by Sir Blaise’s too confident assumption of superiority to the judgment of her people; perhaps she thought it might divert her to see Puritan and Cavalier face each other before her in the shadowed circle of yews. Whatever her reason, she raised her hand and raised her voice to stay Evander’s purpose.

“Sir, sir!” she cried. “Mr. Cloud, by your leave, I would have you come hither. Do not turn aside.”

Thus summoned, Evander walked with slightly quickened pace to the place where Brilliana sat and saluted her with formal courtesy.

“I cry your pardon,” he declared. “I would not intrude on your quiet, but I read and walked unconscious that there was company among the yews.”

Brilliana answered him with the dignity of a gracious and benevolent queen.

“Do not withdraw, sir; you have the liberty of Loyalty House, and I would not have you avoid any part of its gardens.”

Evander bowed. Sir Blaise broke into a horse-laugh which grated more on Brilliana’s ears than on Evander’s. Brilliana was at heart rather angry that for once Puritan should show better than Cavalier.

“You are a vastly happy jack to be used so gently,” he bellowed. “Some would have stuck such a hostage in a garret and done well enough.”

Evander still kept his eyes fixed on the lady of the house and seemed to have no ears for the jeering Cavalier. With a lift of the hand that indicated and saluted the prospect, he said, smoothly, “You have a very gracious garden, lady.”

Mirth shone discreetly in Brilliana’s eyes as she gave the Puritan a bow for his praise. The Cavalier, a viola da gamba of anger, pegged his string of bluster tighter.

“Did not the fellow hear me?” he cried, and this time his noise won him a moment of attention. Evander gave him a glance, and then, returning to Brilliana, said, with a manner of amused contempt, “You have a very ungracious gardener.”

Sir Blaise’s pink face purpled; Sir Blaise’s hand swung to the hilt of his sword. Evander seemed to have forgotten his existence and to await quietly any further favor of speech from Brilliana. My Lady Mischief, much diverted, judged it time to intervene.

“Lordamercy!” she cried, as she rose from her seat and moved a little way towards Sir Blaise. “Let me bring you acquainted.”

The Cavalier caught her hand and stayed her before she could speak his name.

“Wait, wait,” he whispered. “Watch me roast him.”

He swung away from her and swaggered towards Evander. “Tell me, solemn sir,” he questioned, “have you heard of one Sir Blaise Mickleton?”

“I have heard of him,” Evander answered. His tranquil indifference to Sir Blaise’s bearing, to Sir Blaise’s splendor of apparel, pricked the knight like a sting. He tried to change the sum of his irritation into the small money of wit.

“You have never heard that he snuffled through his nose, turned up his eyes, mewed psalms and canticles, and dubbed himself by some such name as Fight-the-Good-Fight-of-Faith, yea, verily?”

Sir Blaise talked with the drawling whine which he assumed to be the familiar intonation of all Puritan speech. Like many another humorless fellow, he prided himself upon a gift of mimicry signally denied to him. Even Brilliana’s detestation of the Puritan party could not compel her to admire her neighbor’s performance. Evander’s face showed no sign of recognition of Sir Blaise’s impertinence as he answered:

“No, truly, but I have heard some talk of a swaggering braggart, prodigal in valiant promise, but very huckster in a pitiful performance; in a word, a clown whose attempt to ape the courtier has never veiled the clod.”

Brilliana found it hard to restrain her laughter as she watched the varying shades of fury float over Sir Blaise’s broad face at each successive clause of Evander’s disdainful indictment. Yet she was sadly vexed to think that her side commanded so poor a champion. Sir Blaise tried to speak, gasped out a furious “Sir!” then his passion choked him, and he gobbled, inarticulate and grotesque. Evander went composedly on:

“He is rated a King’s man, and would serve his master well if much tippling of healths and clearing of trenchers were yeoman service in a time of war. But his sword sleeps in its sheath.”

“Now, by St. George—” Sir Blaise yelled, raising his clinched fists. Brilliana feared at one moment that he would strike her prisoner in the face; feared in the next that he would fall at her feet dead of an apoplexy. She sailed between the antagonists and addressed Evander.

“Serious sir, will it dash you to learn that you are speaking to Sir Blaise Mickleton?”

Evander’s countenance showed no sign either of surprise or of dismay. Sir Blaise, still turkey-red, managed to gulp down his choler sufficiently to utter some syllables.

“I am that knight,” he gasped; then, turning to Brilliana, he whispered behind his hand, “Mark now how this bear will climb down.”

Brilliana, watching Evander, was not confident of apologies. Her prisoner made a slight inclination of the head towards Sir Blaise in acknowledgment of the fact of Brilliana’s presentation, and said, very calmly:

“Why, then, sir, such a jury as your world has empanelled have misread you, for if they summed your flaws aptly in their report of you, they clapped this rider on their staggering verdict, that Sir Blaise Mickleton did, at his worst, do his best to play the gentleman.”

Smiles of satisfaction rippled over Sir Blaise’s face. He did not follow the drift of Evander’s fluency but took it for compliment.

“Handsomely apologized, i’ faith,” he beamed to Brilliana. Brilliana laughed in his face.

“Why, poor man, he flouts you worse than ever,” she whispered.

Sir Blaise knitted puzzled brows while Evander, having made the effective pause, continued, suavely:

“In the which judgment they erred, for he does not merit so creditable a praise. Sure they can never have seen him who couple in any way the name of Sir Blaise Mickleton with the title of gentleman.”

Even Sir Blaise’s dulness could not misinterpret Evander’s meaning, and rage resumed its sway.

“You crow! You kite!” he fumed. His wrath could find no more words, but he made a stride towards Evander, menacing. Brilliana stepped dexterously between the two. As she told Tiffany later, she felt as if she were gliding between fire and ice.

“One side of me was frozen, and the other done to a crisp.” She lifted her hand commandingly.

“We will have no bickering here,” she protested. Evander paid her a salutation, and, moving a little aside, resumed his book. He would not retire while Sir Blaise was in presence, but he guessed that the lady wished for speech with her friend. Sir Blaise did not find her words consolatory, though she affected consolation.

“The bear licks with a rough tongue,” she whispered. Sir Blaise slapped his palms together.

“You shall see me ring him, you shall see me bait him, if you will but leave us.”

“How shall I see if I leave?” Brilliana asked, provokingly. “But ’tis no matter.”

As she spoke she thought of Halfman, and a merry scheme danced in her head.

“Gentles, I must leave you,” she cried, with a pretty little reverence that included both men. Then in a moment she had slipped out of the pleasaunce and was running down the avenue. In the house she found Halfman. “Quick!” she cried, breathlessly. “Sir Blaise and Mr. Cloud are wrangling yonder like dogs over a bone.”

“Do you wish me to keep the peace between them?” Halfman questioned. Brilliana did not exactly know what she wished. She was fretted at the poor show a King’s man had made before a Puritan; if Sir Blaise could do something to humble the Puritan it might not be wholly amiss. So much Halfman gathered from her jerky scraps of sentences; also, that on no account must the disputants be permitted to come to swords. Halfman nodded, caught up a staff, and ran full tilt to the pleasaunce. The moment his back was turned Brilliana, instead of remaining in the house, came out again, doubled on her course, and dodging among the hedges found herself peeping unseen upon the enclosure she had just quitted and the brawl at its height.

XX

In a moment and involuntarily Evander’s hand sought his own weapon. It was in that moment that Halfman burst into the pleasaunce.

“Why, what’s the matter here?” he cited, wielding his staff as if it had been the scimitar of the Moor. “Hold, for your lives! For Christian shame put by this barbarous brawl.”

The disputants greeted their interrupter differently. Evander paid Halfman’s memory the tribute of an appreciative smile. Sir Blaise turned to him as to a sympathizer and backer.

“This Puritan dog has insulted me,” he cried.

Halfman nodded sagaciously. “And you would let a little of his malapert blood for him. But it may not be.”

He addressed Evander. “You are a prisoner on parole, wearing your sword by a lady’s favor, and may not use it here.”

“You are in the right,” Evander answered, “and I ask your lady’s pardon if for a moment I forgot where I am and why.”

“Yah, yah, fox,” grinned Sir Blaise, who believed that his enemy was glad to be out of the quarrel. But Halfman, who knew better, smiled.

“There are other ways,” he suggested, pleasantly, “by which two gentlemen may void their spleen without drawing their toasting-irons. Why should we not mimic sword-play with a pair of honest cudgels?”

Blaise slapped his thigh approvingly, for he was good at rustic sports. Halfman turned his dark face upon Evander.

“Has my suggestion the fortune to meet with your approval?” he asked. Evander nodded. “Then let Sir Blaise handle his own staff, and you, camerado, take mine—’tis of a length with your enemy’s—and set to.”

Halfman watched Evander narrowly while he spoke. Skill with the rapier did not necessarily imply skill with the cudgel. He bore Evander no grudge for overcoming him at fence, but if Sir Blaise proved the better man with the batoon, there would be a kind of compensation in it. He had heard that Sir Blaise was apt at country-sports and now Sir Blaise vaunted his knowledge.

“Let me tell you to your trembling,” he crowed, “that I am the best cudgel-player in these parts. I will drub you, I will trounce you, I will tan your hide.”

“That will be as it shall be,” Evander answered. He had taken the staff that Halfman had proffered, and after weighing it in his hand and carefully examining its texture had set it up against the seat, while he prepared to strip off his jerkin. Halfman assisted Sir Blaise to extricate himself from his beribboned doublet, and the two men faced each other in their shirts, Evander’s linen fine and plain, like all about him, Sir Blaise’s linen fine and ostentatious, like all about him, and reeking of ambergris. Evander was not a small man, but his body seemed very slender by contrast with the well-nourished bulk of the country-gentleman, and many a one would have held that the match was strangely unequal. But Halfman did not think so, seeing how deliberately Evander entered upon the enterprise, and even Sir Blaise’s self-conceit was troubled by his antagonist’s alacrity in accepting the challenge.

“If you tender me your grief for your insolence,” he suggested, with truculent condescension, “you will save yourself a basting.”

Evander laughed outright, the blithest laugh that Halfman had yet heard pass from his Puritan lips.

“I must deny you, pomposity,” he answered, gayly. “It were pity to postpone a pleasure.”

“You are in the right,” commented Halfman. “Come, sirs, enough words; let us to deeds. Begin.”

The sticks swung in the air and met with a crack, each man’s hand pressing his cudgel hard against the other’s, each man’s foot firm and springing, each man’s eyes seeking to read in the other’s the secret of his assault. Suddenly Blaise made a feint at Evander’s leg and then swashed for his head.

“Have a care for your crown,” he shouted, confident in his stroke; but Evander met the blow instantly and wood only rattled on wood.

“I have cared for it,” he said, quietly, as he came on guard again, making no attempt to return Sir Blaise’s attack. Sir Blaise reversed his tactics, feinted at Evander’s head, and swept a furious semicircle at Evander’s legs.

“Save your shins, then,” he cried, and grunted with rage as he again encountered Evander’s swiftly revolving staff and heard Evander answer, mockingly:

“I have saved them.”

Inarticulate fury goaded him. “I will play with you no longer!” he growled, and made a rush for Evander, raining blow upon blow as quickly as he could deliver them, and hoping to break down Evander’s guard. But Evander, giving ground a little before his antagonist’s onslaught, met the attacks with a mill-wheel revolution of his weapon which kept him scatheless, and then suddenly his cudgel shot out, came with a sullen crack on Sir Blaise’s skull, and the tussle was over. Sir Blaise was lying his length on the grass, very still, and there was blood upon his ruddy hair.

Brilliana in hiding gave a little gasp when she saw her neighbor fall; she could not tell whether to laugh or cry at the defeat of the Cavalier. She saw Halfman bend over the fallen man and lift his head upon his knee. She saw Evander advance and look down upon his adversary.

“I hope you are not hurt,” Evander said, solicitously.

Halfman glanced up at the victor. “No harm’s done,” he said. “He was stunned for the moment; he is coming round.”

And in confirmation of his words Sir Blaise opened his eyes, and then with difficulty sat up and stared ruefully at Evander.

“Gogs!” he said, first rubbing his head and then looking at his reddened palm. “Gogs! That was a swinging snip. I am as dizzy as a winged pigeon.”

“Let me help you to rise,” Evander said, courteously. Blaise shook his aching head.

“I am none too fluttered to find my feet,” he asserted, ignoring the fact that his rising from the ground to an erect posture was entirely due to the combined efforts of Halfman and Evander, one on each side, and then, when he did get to his feet, he was only able to retain the perpendicular by leaning heavily upon Halfman as a steady prop. From under his bandaged forehead his pale-blue eyes regarded Evander with no trace of enmity.

“Your hand, Puritan—your hand!” he cried. “’Tis just that we clasp hands after a scuffle.”

Puritan and Cavalier clasped hands in a hearty grip. “I am at your service,” Evander said, gravely. “Shall we continue?” Sir Blaise shook his head again.

“I have had my bellyful,” he grunted. “There was breakfast, dinner, supper in your stroke. I must to the house to find vinegar and brown paper to patch my poll.”

“Can I aid you?” Evander offered. “I have some slight skill in surgery.”

“Leave him to me,” Halfman interposed. “I have botched as many heads as I have broken.”

Sir Blaise, leaning heavily on Halfman’s arm, replied to Evander’s offer in his own way.

“I will not have you mend ill what you have marred well. Come, crutch, let us be jogging. We will meet again another time, my fighting Puritan.”

Evander made him a bow. “At your pleasure,” he replied, and stood till Sir Blaise, leaning on Halfman, had hobbled out of the pleasaunce and limped out of sight. Then he drew on his jerkin again with a smile and a sigh.

“Truly,” he thought, “for a man who has but three days to live, I cannot be said to be wasting much idle time.” With that he took up again the book he had laid down and was soon deep in its study.

XXI

“My honor, no!” Brilliana cried, pretending to look about her anxiously. “But where is Sir Blaise? I hope you two did not quarrel.”

“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 canal.”

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 fricassees 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 Satchell 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 prick 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 asserted. Evander put the suggestion aside with a head shake.

“To my being a Puritan and to my being of your kin. When I was a boy I learned of that kinship, learned how her marriage with a Puritan had earned for a woman of your race the scorn, indeed the hatred of her family, or those who should most and best have loved her.”

“You do not understand how strongly those who think as we think feel on such a matter,” Brilliana urged, one-half of her spirit angry that she was speaking almost apologetically, the other half vexed that the first half was not more angry.

“Forgive me,” said Evander, “but I do understand; I understand very well; I made it my business to understand. And, therefore, I resolved that so far as in me lay I would show those who scorned my people and my creed that a Puritan might compete with his enemies in all the arts and graces they held most dear, and not come off the worst in all encounters.”

“That was a brave resolve!” Brilliana’s eyes and voice applauded him. He flushed a little as he went on.

“It was a kind of oath of Hannibal. God was gracious in the gift of a strong will, and I stuck to my purpose. I mastered arts, acquired tongues, forced myself to dexterity in all manly exercises. I had a modest patrimony which allowed me to travel after I left Cambridge, and so gain that knowledge of the world which is so dear to English gentlemen. And always in my thoughts it was: some day I may meet some son of the house that cast us out and show him that a Puritan might fear God and yet ride a horse, fly a hawk, and use a sword with the best of his enemies.”

“Instead of which,” said Brilliana, as he paused, “you meet a daughter of the house and play your well-practised part to her.” Her voice was stern now and her eyes shone fiercely as she leaned forward and continued in a low voice, “Was this the cause of your coming to Harby?”

“No,” Evander answered. “I should never have come to Harby of my own accord. But news came to Cambridge of your flying the King’s flag. The example was dangerous; Harby was a good house for either side to hold. Colonel Cromwell commanded me to march with the volunteers I had raised at Cambridge to secure Harby in the name of the Parliament.”

“And you were very glad to obey,” Brilliana said, bitterly, and again Evander shook his head.

“I was very sorry to obey. But I had no choice. Colonel Cromwell was my father’s friend; he knew the story of my people; he set it upon me as a special seal for righteousness that I should do this thing. ‘Kin shall be set against kin in this strife,’ he said, ‘father against son, and brother against brother. Go forth in the name of the Lord and pluck the banner of Baal from the wall of Harby.’ And I went.”

Brilliana, lifting her head, looked over the green wall of yews to where, in the cool, gray-blue of the October sky, the royal standard fluttered its gaudy folds in the wind. She said nothing, but her smile spoke whole volumes of victories; the panegyrics of a thousand triumphs gleamed in her eyes. Evander read smile and gleam rightly.

“True, I failed,” he admitted. “Yet I may not say that I am sorry, for if I had not failed I should have lost a friend.”

He looked admiringly at her, but Brilliana drew herself up stiffly and regarded him coldly.

“You may be my kinsman without being my friend,” she said, with a sourness which had the effect of making Evander laugh like a boy.

“Why, lady,” he protested, “it is not ten minutes since that you proffered me your friendship.”

“Did I so?” Brilliana asked, puckering her brows as if in doubt, though she had not the least doubt upon the matter.

“Indeed, madam,” said Evander, very earnestly, “friends for a lifetime.” Brilliana snapped contradiction.

“No, no; it was you who said that. I admit the friendship for three days.”

“And I assert the friendship of a lifetime,” Evander persisted. His voice and his eyes were very merry, but there came an unconquerable gnawing at his heart that, in spite of the fair place and the fair face and the sweet discourse, life for him meant no more than a space of three days. Well, then, he would live his three days bravely, brightly. He lifted his eyes to the lady.

“Are you of Master Amiens’ school?” he asked—