Cydaria had become pensive for a moment, but she looked up now, smiling again, and said to me:
"You"ll soon have a friend in London."
Thinking of Barbara, I answered gloomily, "She"s no friend of mine."
"I did not mean whom you mean," said Cydaria, with twinkling eyes and not a whit put out. "But I also am going to London."
I smiled, for it did not seem as though she would be a powerful friend, or able to open any way for me. But she met my smile with another so full of confidence and challenge that my attention was wholly caught, and I did not heed the Vicar"s farewell as he rose and left us.
"And would you serve me," I asked, "if you had the power?"
"Nay, put the question as you think it," said she. "Would you have the power to serve me if you had the will? Is not that the doubt in your mind?"
"And if it were?"
"Then, indeed, I do not know how to answer; but strange things happen there in London, and it may be that some day even I should have some power."
"And you would use it for me?"
"Could I do less on behalf of a gentleman who has risked his mistress"s favour for my poor cheek"s sake?" And she fell to laughing again, her mirth growing greater as I turned red in the face. "You mustn"t blush when you come to town," she cried, "or they"ll make a ballad on you, and cry you in the streets for a monster."
"The oftener comes the cause, the rarer shall the effect be," said I.
"The excuse is well put," she conceded. "We should make a wit of you in town."
"What do you in town?" I asked squarely, looking her full in the eyes.
"Perhaps, sometimes," she laughed, "what I have done once--and to your good knowledge--since I came to the country."
Thus she would baffle me with jesting answers as often as I sought to find out who and what she was. Nor had I better fortune with her mother, for whom I had small liking, and who had, as it seemed, no more for me.
For she was short in her talk, and frowned to see me with her daughter.
Yet she saw me, I must confess, often with Cydaria in the next days, and I was often with Cydaria when she did not see me. For Barbara was gone, leaving me both sore and lonely, all in the mood to find comfort where I could, and to see manliness in desertion; and there was a charm about the girl that grew on me insensibly and without my will until I came to love, not her (as I believed, forgetting that Love loves not to mark his boundaries too strictly) but her merry temper, her wit and cheerfulness.
Moreover, these things were mingled and spiced with others, more attractive than all to unfledged youth, an air of the world and a knowledge of life which piqued my curiosity and sat (it seems so even to my later mind as I look back) with bewitching incongruity on the laughing child"s face and the unripe grace of girlhood. Her moods were endless, vying with one another in an ever undetermined struggle for the prize of greatest charm. For the most part she was merry, frank mirth pa.s.sing into sly raillery; now and then she would turn sad, sighing, "Heigho, that I could stay in the sweet innocent country!" Or again she would show or ape an uneasy conscience, whispering, "Ah, that I were like your Mistress Barbara!" The next moment she would be laughing and jesting and mocking, as though life were nought but a great many-coloured bubble, and she the brightest-tinted gleam on it.
Are women so constant and men so forgetful, that all sympathy must go from me and all esteem be forfeited because, being of the age of eighteen years, I vowed to live for one lady only on a Monday and was ready to die for another on the Sat.u.r.day? Look back; bow your heads, and give me your hands, to kiss or to clasp!
Let not you and I inquire What has been our past desire, On what shepherds you have smiled, Or what nymphs I have beguiled; Leave it to the planets too What we shall hereafter do; For the joys we now may prove, Take advice of present love.
Nay, I will not set my name to that in its fulness; Mr Waller is a little too free for one who has been nicknamed a Puritan to follow him to the end. Yet there is a truth in it. Deny it, if you will. You are smiling, madame, while you deny.
It was a golden summer"s evening when I, to whom the golden world was all a h.e.l.l, came by tryst to the park of Quinton Manor, there to bid Cydaria farewell. Mother and sisters had looked askance at me, the village gossiped, even the Vicar shook a kindly head. What cared I? By Heaven, why was one man a n.o.bleman and rich, while another had no money in his purse and but one change to his back? Was not love all in all, and why did Cydaria laugh at a truth so manifest? There she was under the beech tree, with her sweet face screwed up to a burlesque of grief, her little hand lying on her hard heart as though it beat for me, and her eyes the playground of a thousand quick expressions. I strode up to her, and caught her by the hand, saying no more than just her name, "Cydaria." It seemed that there was no more to say; yet she cried, laughing and reproachful, "Have you no vows for me? Must I go without my tribute?"
I loosed her hand and stood away from her. On my soul, I could not speak. I was tongue-tied, dumb as a dog.
"When you come courting in London," she said, "you must not come so empty of lover"s baggage. There ladies ask vows, and protestations, and despair, ay, and poetry, and rhapsodies, and I know not what."
"Of all these I have nothing but despair," said I.
"Then you make a sad lover," she pouted. "And I am glad to be going where lovers are less woebegone."
"You look for lovers in London?" I cried, I that had cried to Barbara--well, I have said my say on that.
"If Heaven send them," answered Cydaria.
"And you will forget me?"
"In truth, yes, unless you come yourself to remind me. I have no head for absent lovers."
"But if I come----" I began in a sudden flush of hope.
She did not (though it was her custom) answer in raillery; she plucked a leaf from the tree, and tore it with her fingers as she answered with a curious glance.
"Why, if you come, I think you"ll wish that you had not come, unless, indeed, you"ve forgotten me before you come."
"Forget you! Never while I live! May I come, Cydaria?"
"Most certainly, sir, so soon as your wardrobe and your purse allow.
Nay, don"t be huffed. Come, Simon, sweet Simon, are we not friends, and may not friends rally one another? No, and if I choose, I will put my hand through your arm. Indeed, sir, you"re the first gentleman that ever thrust it away. See, it is there now! Doesn"t it look well there, Simon--and feel well there, Simon?" She looked up into my face in coaxing apology for the hurt she had given me, and yet still with mockery of my tragic airs. "Yes, you must by all means come to London,"
she went on, patting my arm. "Is not Mistress Barbara in London? And I think--am I wrong, Simon?--that there is something for which you will want to ask her pardon."
"If I come to London, it is for you and you only that I shall come," I cried.
"No, no. You will come to love where the King loves, to know what he hides, and to drink of his cup. I, sir, cannot interfere with your great destiny"; she drew away from me, curtseyed low, and stood opposite to me, smiling.
"For you and for you only," I repeated.
"Then will the King love me?" she asked.
"G.o.d forbid," said I fervently.
"Oh, and why, pray, your "G.o.d forbid"? You"re very ready with your "G.o.d forbids." Am I then to take your love sooner than the King"s, Master Simon?"
"Mine is an honest love," said I soberly.
"Oh, I should doat on the country, if everybody didn"t talk of his honesty there! I have seen the King in London and he is a fine gentleman."
"And you have seen the Queen also, may be?"
"In truth, yes. Ah, I have shocked you, Simon? Well, I was wrong. Come, we"re in the country; we"ll be good. But when we"ve made a townsman of you, we"ll--we will be what they are in town. Moreover, in ten minutes I am going home, and it would be hard if I also left you in anger. You shall have a pleasanter memory of my going than Mistress Barbara"s gave you."
"How shall I find you when I come to town?"
"Why, if you will ask any gentleman you meet whether he chances to remember Cydaria, you will find me as soon as it is well you should."
I prayed her to tell me more; but she was resolved to tell no more.
"See, it is late. I go," said she. Then suddenly she came near to me.
"Poor Simon," she said softly. "Yet it is good for you, Simon. Some day you will be amused at this, Simon"; she spoke as though she were fifty years older than I. My answer lay not in words or arguments. I caught her in my arms and kissed her. She struggled, yet she laughed. It shot through my mind then that Barbara would neither have struggled nor laughed. But Cydaria laughed.