"Ohe!" said he, pausing.
"--if, upon this pleasurable occasion, I were to borrow your horse--"
"Impossible!"
"If I were to take it by force--" I exhibited my coin.
"Eh?"
"--no one could blame you."
"And yet perhaps--"
"The deduction is illogical," said I. And pushing him aside, I mounted and set out into the night after my cousin and the Lady Adeliza.
4. _All Ends in a Puff of Smoke_
They rode leisurely enough along the winding highway that lay in the moonlight like a white ribbon in a pedlar"s box; and staying as I did some hundred yards behind, they thought me no other than Blaise, being, indeed, too much engrossed with each other to regard the outer world very strictly. So we rode a matter of three miles in the whispering, moonlit woods, they prattling and laughing as though there were no such monster in all the universe as a thrifty-minded father, and I brooding upon many things beside my marquisate, and keeping an ear c.o.c.ked backward for possible pursuit.
In any ordinary falling out of affairs they would ride unhindered to Teignmouth, and thence to Allonby Shaw; they counted fully upon doing this; but I, knowing Beatris, who was waiting-maid to the Lady Adeliza, and consequently in the plot, to be the devil"s own vixen, despite an innocent face and a wheedling tongue, was less certain.
I shall not easily forget that riding away from the old vicomte"s preparations to make a match of it between Adeliza and me. About us the woods sighed and whispered, dappled by the moonlight with unstable chequerings of blue and silver. Tightly he clung to my crupper, that swart tireless horseman, Care; but ahead rode Love, anterior to all things and yet eternally young, in quest of the Castle of Content. The horses" hoofs beat against the pebbles as if in chorus to the Devon cradle-song that rang idly in my brain. "Twas little to me--now--whether the quest were won or lost; yet, as I watched the Lady Adeliza"s white cloak tossing and fluttering in the wind, my blood pulsed more strongly than it is wont to do, and was stirred by the keen odors of the night and by many memories of her gracious kindliness and by a desire to serve somewhat toward the attainment of her happiness. Thus it was that my teeth clenched, and a dog howled in the distance, and the world seemed very old and very incurious of our mortal woes and joys.
Then that befell which I had looked for, and I heard the clatter of horses" hoofs behind us, and knew that Monsieur de Puysange and his men were at hand to rescue the Lady Adeliza from my fine-looking young cousin, to put her into the bed of a rich fool. So I essayed a gallop.
"Spur!" I cried;--"in the name of Saint Cupid!"
With a little gasp, she bent forward over her horse"s mane, urging him onward with every nerve and muscle of her tender body. I could not keep my gaze from her as we swept through the night. Picture Europa in her traverse, bull-borne, through the summer sea, the depths giving up their misshapen deities, and the blind sea-snakes writhing about her in hideous homage, while she, a little frightened, thinks resolutely of Crete beyond these unaccustomed horrors and of the G.o.d desirous of her contentation; and there, to an eyelash, you have Adeliza as I saw her.
But steadily our pursuers gained on us: and as we paused to pick our way over the frail bridge that spanned the Exe, their clamor was very near.
"Take care!" I cried,--but too late, for my horse swerved under me as I spoke, and my lord marquis" steed caught foot in a pile of lumber and fell heavily. He was up in a moment, unhurt, but the horse was lamed.
"You!" cried my Cousin Stephen. "Oh, but what fiend sends me this burr again!"
I said: "My fellow-madmen, it is all one if I have a taste for night-riding and the shedding of n.o.ble blood. Alack, though, that I have left my brave bauble at Tiverton! Had I that here, I might do such deeds!
I might show such prowess upon the person of Monsieur de Puysange as your Nine Worthies would quake to hear of! For I have the honor to inform you, my doves, that we are captured."
Indeed, we were in train to be, for even the two sound horses were well-nigh foundered: Blaise, the idle rogue, had not troubled to provide fresh steeds, so easy had the flitting seemed; and it was conspicuous that we would be overtaken in half an hour.
"So it seems," said Stephen Allonby. "Well! one can die but once." Thus speaking, he drew his sword with an air which might have been envied by Captain Leonidas at Thermopylae.
"Together, my heart!" she cried.
"Madonna," said I, dismounting as I spoke, "pray you consider! With neither of you, is there any question of death; "tis but that Monsieur de Puysange desires you to make a suitable match. It is not yet too late; his heart is kindly so long as he gets his will and profit everywhere, and he bears no malice toward my lord marquis. Yield, then, to your father"s wishes, since there is no choice."
She stared at me, as thanks for this sensible advice. "And you--is it you that would enter into the Castle of Content?" she cried, with a scorn that lashed.
I said: "Madonna, bethink you, you know naught of this man your father desires you to wed. Is it not possible that he, too, may love--or may learn to love you, on provocation? You are very fair, madonna. Yours is a beauty that may draw a man to Heaven or unclose the gates of h.e.l.l, at will; indeed, even I, in my poor dreams, have seen your face as bright and glorious as is the lighted s.p.a.ce above the altar when Christ"s blood and body are shared among His worshippers. Men certainly will never cease to love you. Will he--your husband that may be--prove less susceptible, we will say, than I? Ah, but, madonna, let us unrein imagination!
Suppose, were it possible, that he--even now--yearns to enter into the Castle of Content, and that your hand, your hand alone, may draw the bolt for him,--that the thought of you is to him as a flame before which honor and faith shrivel as shed feathers, and that he has loved you these many years, unknown to you, long, long before the Marquis of Falmouth came into your life with his fair face and smooth sayings. Suppose, were it possible, that he now stood before you, every pulse and fibre of him racked with an intolerable ecstasy of loving you, his heart one vast hunger for you, Adeliza, and his voice shaking as my voice shakes, and his hands trembling as my hands tremble,--ah, see how they tremble, madonna, the poor foolish hands! Suppose, were it possible,--"
"Fool! O treacherous fool!" my cousin cried, in a fine rage.
She rested her finger-tips upon his arm. "Hush!" she bade him; then turned to me an uncertain countenance that was half pity, half wonder.
"Dear Will," said she, "if you have ever known aught of love, do you not understand how I love Stephen here?"
But she did not any longer speak as a lord"s daughter speaks to the fool that makes mirth for his betters.
"In that case," said I,--and my voice played tricks,--"in that case, may I request that you a.s.sist me in gathering such brushwood as we may find hereabout?"
They both stared at me now. "My lord," I said, "the Exe is high, the bridge is of wood, and I have flint and steel in my pocket. The ford is five miles above and quite impa.s.sable. Do you understand me, my lord?"
He clapped his hands. "Oh, excellent!" he cried.
Then, each having caught my drift, we heaped up a pile of broken boughs and twigs and brushwood on the bridge, all three gathering it together.
And I wondered if the moon, that is co-partner in the antics of most rogues and lovers, had often beheld a sight more reasonless than the foregathering of a marquis, a peer"s daughter, and a fool at dead of night to make f.a.gots.
When we had done I handed him the flint and steel. "My lord," said I, "the honor is yours."
"Udsfoot!" he murmured, in a moment, swearing and striking futile sparks, "but the late rain has so wet the wood that it will not kindle."
I said, "a.s.suredly, in such matters a fool is indispensable." I heaped before him the papers that made an honest woman of my mother and a marquis of me, and seizing the flint, I cast a spark among them that set them crackling cheerily. Oh, I knew well enough that patience would coax a flame from those twigs without my paper"s aid, but to be patient does not afford the posturing which youth loves. So it was a comfort to wreck all magnificently: and I knew that, too, as we three drew back upon the western bank and watched the writhing twigs splutter and snap and burn.
The bridge caught apace and in five minutes afforded pa.s.sage to nothing short of the ardent equipage of the prophet Elias. Five minutes later the bridge did not exist: only the stone arches towered above the roaring waters that glistened in the light of the fire, which had, by this, reached the other side of the river, to find quick employment in the woods of Tiverton. Our pursuers rode through a glare which was that of h.e.l.l"s kitchen on baking-day, and so reached the Exe only to curse vainly and to shriek idle imprecations at us, who were as immune from their anger as though the severing river had been Pyriphlegethon.
"My lord," I presently suggested, "it may be that your priest expects you?"
"Indeed," said he, laughing, "it is possible. Let us go." Thereupon they mounted the two sound horses. "Most useful burr," said he, "do you follow on foot to Teignmouth; and there--"
"Sir," I replied, "my home is at Tiverton."
He wheeled about. "Do you not fear--?"
"The whip?" said I. "Ah, my lord, I have been whipped ere this. It is not the greatest ill in life to be whipped."
He began to protest.
"But, indeed, I am resolved," said I. "Farewell!"
He tossed me his purse. "As you will," he retorted, shortly. "We thank you for your aid; and if I am still master of Allonby--"
"No fear of that!" I said. "Farewell, good cousin marquis! I cannot weep at your going, since it brings you happiness. And we have it on excellent authority that the laughter of fools is as the crackling of thorns under a pot. Accordingly, I bid you G.o.d-speed in a discreet silence."
I stood fumbling my cousin"s gold as he went forward into the night; but she did not follow.
"I am sorry--" she began. She paused and the lithe fingers fretted with her horse"s mane.