"He has been back, lady," replied the man, "but did not dismount, only giving some orders to Hugh, and saying, that if Sir Philip de Morgan came, to tell him he would be here in about two hours."
"How long was that ago?" demanded Mary Grey. The man replied, "More than an hour." And with this intelligence she was forced to rest satisfied. Not long after she heard a step, and her heart beat; but, listening eagerly, she perceived that the sound gave no hope that there were two persons approaching; and with a sigh she plied the busy needle. The next instant her father came in; and, though he kissed her tenderly, with long denied affection, she could see that his face was clouded and somewhat stern.
"I have kept you late from supper, my sweet child," he said; "but I had business which took me away after my visit to the prince."
"Not pleasant business, I fear, n.o.ble father," replied Mary, hanging on his arm, "for you look sad."
Sir John Grey gazed on her for a moment or two, with a look of melancholy interest and affection. She had never seen such an expression on his countenance before, but when he had taken leave of her to quit his native land as an exile; and it seemed prophetic of misfortune. "What has happened, my dear father?" she exclaimed; "has any new misfortune befallen you?"
"No," answered Sir John Grey; "and yet I must say yes, too; for that which is sad for you, must be sad for me, Mary."
"He is dead! he is killed!" cried Mary Grey, her sunny cheek growing deadly pale; but her father hastened to relieve her on that score.
"No, Mary," he said, gravely, "he is not dead; but he is unworthy."
The blood rushed up again into her face, as if some one had accused her of a crime; but the next moment she laughed, gaily answering, "No, my father, no! Some one has deceived you. That is impossible. Richard of Woodville cannot be unworthy."
"Alas! my sweet child, "tis you deceive yourself," replied the knight; "the confidence of love speaks out before you know the facts."
"I know one fact, my father," answered Mary, "which none can contradict; and which is my answer to all that can be said. For many a long year I have known him. In youth and manhood I have watched him well: and there is not a truer heart on earth. If any one say that his courage has failed in the hour of peril, it is false, my father. If any one say that he has betrayed his friend, it is false. If any one say, that he has deceived, even by word, man or woman, high or low, it is false. If any one say, that he has forgotten his duty, broke his plighted word, wronged his king, his country, you, or me, believe it not, for it is false, my father."
"These are the words of love, my Mary," replied Sir John Grey; "but though I would fain shield that dear bosom through life from every shaft of sorrow, pain, and disappointment, yet, my sweet child, I would rather see you suffer, bitterly though it might be, than regard what I have to tell you of this youth with that light indifference which some might show. He left his native land, Mary, plighted and pledged to you; telling you he went to seek honour for your sake; and yet he brought hither with him a fair leman, to sooth his idle hours with songs and dalliance. Was this worthy, Mary? Nay, doubt it not; for I have it from three several sources; and his own conduct to myself confirms the tale."
He thought to see tears, or at least thoughtful looks; but Mary once more laughed gaily; and holding her father"s arm with her fair hand, gazed merrily in his face. "Alas!" she said, "how men are fond of mischief! and what chance can a poor defenceless woman have to escape scandal, when you powerful lords of earth so slander one another?
Forgive me, my dear father; but I needs must laugh, to think that any one here, in a foreign land, should take the pains, from pure malignity to my poor knight, to try thus sillily to trouble the peace of Mary Grey, by poisoning her parent"s mind against her lover. Poor Ella Brune! little did she think, or little did I think when I bade her go, what evil to her kind and generous benefactor might be done, by her coming with him. I have an antidote to the poison, my dear father; and thanks to that generous candour which made you condescend to tell your child all the plain truth, I can apply it. I know this girl, my father--I know the whole history. I am even art and part in the offence; or rather it is mine, not his. She is my paramour, not Richard"s;" and Mary blushed brightly, while even in her laughing eyes a dewy drop of emotion rose up and sparkled, as she defended him she loved.
"Your words are strange, dear one," said the knight; "but let me hear more. Tell me the whole, my child."
"That I will do," replied Mary. "I will tell you the whole tale after supper, and hers is a very sad one. But first, to set your mind fully at ease, let me say, that the only evil thing Richard has done in all this affair, was showing some want of courtesy to the poor girl herself; for when, after having received from him kind and generous protection in her hour of sorrow and of danger, she thought to journey to join her friends in Burgundy, under the safeguard of his little band--Richard, fearing too much what men might say, or perchance, fancying that Mary might be jealous, unkindly refused to take her; and it was I who bade her go, and promised her that, with a free heart, I would let all idle fancies pa.s.s me by as evening winds."
"Your love is very confiding, my sweet child," replied the knight.
"And it will never be wronged," said Mary, warmly. "I would not have given it, father, to one unworthy of such trust; and when the confidence ends, the love will end with it. But that will never be."
"Yet, my dear child," answered the knight, gravely, "as I told you I had, in the very first instance, an intimation of this fact from some unknown hand, and then--"
"Some idle mischief-maker," cried Mary, "who chanced to see them on the road, and in his own fancy made the evil he would ascribe to Richard."
"But then comes another, lately arrived from England," continued Sir John Grey; "a gentleman of good repute, who tells the same story with strange exactness, if it be false; and then, when questioned by me, Sir Philip de Morgan says, with a worldly laugh at young men"s follies, that he has heard something of it."
"But who was this man from England?" asked Mary, eagerly, "this gentleman of good repute?--I doubt, my father! I doubt!--Methinks I could name him at once."
"Do so, then," replied her father; "I will tell you if you are right."
"Simeon of Roydon," said his daughter; and the knight nodded his a.s.sent. "A gentleman of good repute!" cried Mary; "a false and perjured knave, my father! One who has already foully slandered poor Harry Dacre, yet, with a craven cautiousness, has kept himself free from the lance"s point; one who dare not, before Richard of Woodville"s face, say aught but, that he has heard such reports--that he vouches not for them--that he mentioned them in thoughtlessness.
Out upon the base, ungenerous hound! Why, this very man, for his shameless persecution of this poor girl, and on the bold accusation of good Sir Philip Beauchamp, my second father, is banished from England for two years, and vowed revenge on her and all of us. Had it not been for the King"s presence, I believe n.o.ble Sir Philip would have crushed him as an earwig or a wasp."
"And is it so?" exclaimed Sir John Grey. "This makes a great change, indeed, my child; for if the teller of a tale be a villain, we may well judge that his story will have some scoundrel object. Nor can I doubt," he continued, with a smile, "that this poor girl, of whom so much has been said, is not what they call her; for, though your eyes might be blinded by love, dear girl, my n.o.ble friend Sir Philip is not likely to be affected by any tender self-deceit."
Mary laughed gaily. "That he is not," she said. "Nay, love is with him, my father, but another name for folly. Did I not tell you right, that whoever has a.s.sailed the name of Richard of Woodville is a false knave?"
"I trust it may be so," replied her father; "but yet, dear Mary, we must not forget that, long ere this Sir Simeon of Roydon uttered a word, some one unknown wrote to me the self-same tale."
"It was himself, or some one like him," answered Mary Grey.
"It could not be himself," rejoined the knight; "for he was not yet in Flanders when the letter came."
"Is there but one slanderer in the world, dear father?" replied the fair girl, raising her eyes almost reproachfully to her parent"s countenance; "and should we even doubt the conduct of one whom for many a long year we have seen walk in truth and honour, because some nameless calumniator breathes a tale against him?"
"We should not," replied Sir John Grey, firmly; "yet such is the world"s justice, my child, and such is, I fear, the heart of man--ready to doubt, p.r.o.ne to suspect, and instructed by its own weakness in the weakness of others. However, you have well pleaded your lover"s cause, my Mary; and he shall have full and patient hearing to explain whatever yet remains obscure."
"Is there aught obscure?" asked Mary Grey. "To me his whole conduct seems, as it ever has been, light as day."
"Yes," answered the knight; "but yet, Mary, even while I spoke with him to-night--"
"What, is he here?" cried Mary Grey, interrupting him, and clasping her hands with eager joy; "and have you seen him--spoke with him?--How did he look, my father?--Well, but not too happy when he was away from me, I dare to say."
"Well, he certainly seemed," replied her father, with a smile; "and anything but happy, my dear child; but, as I was going to add--even while I spoke with him upon these most serious charges, a man came up and plucked him by the sleeve, beseeching him to come to Ella Brune.
His whole countenance changed at the name; and, though he had fixed to meet me within two hours, he failed in his appointment. I waited for him as long as he could decently expect, and then came hither, doubting no longer that the tale was true."
Mary paused thoughtfully, and cast down her eyes; but then a moment after she raised them again with a look of relief, as if she had settled the whole in her own mind. "I will be warrant," she said, "that some great peril has beset our poor Ella, and that he has gone to deliver her: most likely the hateful persecution of this same base man. Nothing else--nothing, I know, would have kept Richard of Woodville away from Mary Grey--if, indeed, he knew that I was here."
"Nay, I must do him justice," answered the knight; "he did not know it, Mary; and perhaps what you suppose is the case, for the man did mention something of danger, and besought him to save her. We will look upon it in as fair a light as may be, and I will send to him early in the morning to bid him come hither and explain. He will then have two advocates instead of one, my child; and I am very ready to be convinced, for I love him for his love to you."
"Can you not send to-night?" whispered Mary Grey, resting her hands upon her father"s arm.
"Nay, nay," replied the knight, smiling kindly on her. "It is late to-night, dear girl. To-morrow will do."
Does to-morrow ever do? But seldom; for the hour that is, we can only call our own. All that is to come is in the hands of that dark mysterious fate, which, ruling silent and unseen the acts and wills of men, reserves to itself, in its own dim council-chamber, each purpose unfulfilled, each resolution made and not performed; sporting with chances and with hopes, trampling into dust expectations and designs, and leaving to man but the past for his instruction, and the present for his energies. The word to-morrow should be blotted out from the catalogue. It is what never exists in the form we think to find it; and thus it was with Sir John Grey. When the morning came he wrote briefly to Richard of Woodville, requesting him to come to him, and making the tone of his epistle more kindly than his words the night before; but it was returned unopened from the Graevensteen, with the tidings that the young knight and all his band had set out on some expedition a few hours after midnight. As she heard the answer, the gay and happy eyes of Mary Grey filled with tears; and her father, gazing on her, reproached himself for having lost the moment that was theirs.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
THE RESCUE.
It was a sultry summer morning, in the midst of July, and there was a dull oppressive weight in the air, although neither mist nor cloud hung upon the lazy wings of a south wind, when an armed party rode through the deep forest of Auvillers, a part of the ancient Ardennes.
Road, properly so called, there was none; but yet the way, though somewhat difficult to find for those not accustomed to all the intricacies of the wood, was not difficult to travel; for no care had been taken to plant new trees where old ones had fallen by the stroke of Time or the axe; all had been left to nature; and thus amidst the thick copses and the tall groves of old trees, wide open s.p.a.ces and long uncovered tracts had spread here and there, over which the soft turf afforded pleasant footing for man or beast. True, the whole district was rocky and mountainous, and without a guide, the wanderer might have found it a wearisome journey in a sultry day, having to climb a high hill in one place, or wind in and out to avoid the long projecting cliffs of slaty stone in another. But for one directed by any persons well acquainted with the track, the journey was far more easy; and by choosing the proper breaks in the forest, and the long s.p.a.ces which lay midway up the hills, he might ride along for many miles, without having to ascend any mountain, or deviate very greatly from a straight course, on account either of the wood or of the rocks.
Such was the course followed by the party of which I speak, under the direction of a tall powerful man, clothed from head to heel in steel; for those were not times, nor was that a part of the country in which men of rank and station could travel in safety without being armed in proof. Waleran de St. Paul, indeed, might better have risked his life with scanty arms and few attendants, than any other n.o.ble of the day, in that district, for he was well known and generally beloved by the lesser lords around; and his redoubted name rendered it a somewhat fearful task to strive with him, even if taken unprepared; but it would still have been a hazardous experiment, for in those remote and uncultivated tracts, bordering upon several great states, and very uncertain in their attachment to any, numerous bands of wild and lawless men took refuge, and, secure from the arm of justice, lived a life of plunder and oppression, only varied by the mimic warfare of the chase. None of the great n.o.bles in the vicinity--generally engaged in the civil strifes and incessant broils of their own countries--had time to suppress them, even if they had the inclination. But it may well be doubted whether they felt at all disposed to put down, with the strong hand, the troops of roving plunderers which at that time infested the great forests that stretched along the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle; for in those very bands they frequently found a sort of depot for brave and determined followers, from which their forces might at any moment be recruited for a short s.p.a.ce of time. It is, moreover, whispered that in many instances, the more civilized and polite of the powerful barons round were accustomed to exact a certain share of the plunder from their marauding neighbours, as the price of toleration; and the inferior lords sometimes shared the peril as well as the spoil; and received as welcome guests into their strong castles the leaders of the freebooters, when any accidental reverse of fortune rendered the green wood no longer a secure abode.
Such was the state of the land through which now rode the Lord of St.
Paul, still holding the sword, if not the office of Constable of France, with Richard of Woodville by his side, and a train of about forty men-at-arms behind them; so that all peril from their somewhat covetous neighbours of the Ardennes was unthought of by either; and the beauty of the scene, the heat of the day, their approaching meeting with the young Count of Charolois, the state of France, and the probability of speedy deeds of arms, were the subjects of the conversation.
The landscapes, indeed, were most lovely as they proceeded. Beneath, upon the left, sloped down the hill side, here and there covered with green wood, here and there broken with wild and rugged rocks; but everywhere so much below them, that the eye could generally catch the shining course of the Meuse, wandering on with a thousand sinuosities, and could then roam at large over the wide and varied country on the other side, sometimes reaching distant towns and cities many leagues away, sometimes checked by a bold mountain near at hand. Above rose the hills with their woody garmenture, from which would often start out a high grey cliff of cold slaty stone, sheer up and perpendicular as a wall; or at other times would rise a conical peak, smooth at the sides, or broken into points; and, through many of the gorges that they pa.s.sed, perched upon isolated hills that seemed inaccessible, were seen the towers and walls of some stern feudal fortress, frowning down the valley, as if prognosticating woe to the traveller who ventured there alone.