My lord of Pevensey, I think, loves the Lady Ursula, at least, as much as you ever loved this Mistress Katherine; of my own adoration I do not speak, save to say that I have sworn never to marry any other woman. Her father favors you, for you are a match in a thousand; but you do not love her. It matters little to you, my lord, whom she may wed; to us it signifies a life"s happiness. Will not the memory of that Cornish la.s.s--the memory of moonlit nights, and of those sweet, vain aspirations and foiled day-dreams that in boyhood waked your blood even to such brave folly as now possesses us,--will not the memory of these things soften you, my lord?"
But Falmouth by this time appeared half regretful of his recent outburst, and somewhat inclined to regard his companion as a dangerously plausible young fellow who had very unwarrantably wormed himself into Lord Falmouth"s confidence. Falmouth"s heavy jaw shut like a trap.
"By Saint Gregory!" said he; "if ever such notions soften me at all, I pray to be in h.e.l.l entirely melted! What I have told you of is past, Master Mervale; and a wise man does not meditate unthriftily upon spilt milk."
"You are adamant?" sighed the boy.
"The nether millstone," said the marquis, smiling grimly, "is in comparison a pillow of down."
"Yet--yet the milk was sweet, my lord?" the boy suggested, with a faint answering smile.
"Sweet!" The marquis" voice had a deep tremor.
"And if the choice lay between Ursula and Katherine?"
"Oh, fool!--Oh, pink-cheeked, utter ignorant fool!" the marquis groaned.
"Did I not say you knew nothing of love?"
"Heigho!" Master Mervale put aside all glum-faced discussion, with a little yawn, and sprang to his feet. "Then we can but hope that somewhere, somehow, Mistress Katherine yet lives and in her own good time may reappear. And while we speak of reappearances--surely the Lady Ursula is strangely tardy in making hers?"
The marquis" jealousy when it slumbered slept with an open ear. "Let us join them," he said, shortly, and he started through the gardens with quick, stiff strides.
2. _Song-guerdon_
They went westward toward the summer pavilion. Presently the marquis blundered into the green gloom of the maze, laid out in the Italian fashion, and was extricated only by the superior knowledge of Master Mervale, who guided Falmouth skilfully and surely through manifold intricacies, to open daylight.
Afterward they came to a close-shaven lawn, where the summer pavilion stood beside the brook that widened here into an artificial pond, spread with lily-pads and fringed with rushes. The Lady Ursula sat with the Earl of Pevensey beneath a burgeoning maple-tree. Such rays as sifted through into their cool retreat lay like splotches of wine upon the ground, and there the taller gra.s.s-blades turned to needles of thin silver; one palpitating beam, more daring than the rest, slanted straight toward the little head of the Lady Ursula, converting her hair into a halo of misty gold, that appeared out of place in this particular position. She seemed a Ba.s.sarid who had somehow fallen heir to an aureole; for otherwise, to phrase it sedately, there was about her no clamant suggestion of saintship. At least, there is no record of any saint in the calendar who ever looked with laughing gray-green eyes upon her lover and mocked at the fervor and trepidation of his speech. This the Lady Ursula now did; and, manifestly, enjoyed the doing of it.
Within the moment the Earl of Pevensey took up the viol that lay beside them, and sang to her in the clear morning. He was sunbrowned and very comely, and his big, black eyes were tender as he sang to her sitting there in the shade. He himself sat at her feet in the sunlight.
Sang the Earl of Pevensey:
_"Ursula, spring wakes about us-- Wakes to mock at us and flout us That so coldly do delay: When the very birds are mating, Pray you, why should we be waiting-- We that might be wed to-day!
""Life is short," the wise men tell us;-- Even those dusty, musty fellows That have done with life,--and pa.s.s Where the wraith of Aristotle Hankers, vainly, for a bottle, Youth and some frank Grecian la.s.s._
"Ah, I warrant you;--and Zeno Would not reason, now, could he know One more chance to live and love: For, at best, the merry May-time Is a very fleeting play-time;-- Why, then, waste an hour thereof?
"Plato, Solon, Periander, Seneca, Anaximander, Pyrrho, and Parmenides!
Were one hour alone remaining Would ye spend it in attaining Learning, or to lips like these?
"Thus, I demonstrate by reason Now is our predestined season For the garnering of all bliss; Prudence is but long-faced folly; Cry a fig for melancholy!
Seal the bargain with a kiss"_
When he had ended, the Earl of Pevensey laughed and looked up into the Lady Ursula"s face with a long, hungry gaze; and the Lady Ursula laughed likewise and spoke kindly to him, though the distance was too great for the eavesdroppers to overhear. Then, after a little, the Lady Ursula bent forward, out of the shade of the maple into the sun, so that the sunlight fell upon her golden head and glowed in the depths of her hair, as she kissed Pevensey, tenderly and without haste, full upon the lips.
3. _Falmouth Furens_
The Marquis of Falmouth caught Master Mervale"s arm in a grip that made the boy wince. Lord Falmouth"s look was murderous, as he turned in the shadow of a white-lilac bush and spoke carefully through sharp breaths that shook his great body.
"There are," said he, "certain matters I must immediately discuss with my lord of Pevensey. I desire you, Master Mervale, to fetch him to the spot where we parted last, so that we may talk over these matters quietly and undisturbed. For else--go, lad, and fetch him!"
For a moment the boy faced the half-shut pale eyes that were like coals smouldering behind a veil of gray ash. Then he shrugged his shoulders, sauntered forward, and doffed his hat to the Lady Ursula. There followed much laughter among the three, many explanations from Master Mervale, and yet more laughter from the lady and the earl. The marquis ground his big, white teeth as he listened, and he appeared to disapprove of so much mirth.
"Foh, the hyenas! the apes, the vile magpies!" the marquis observed. He heaved a sigh of relief, as the Earl of Pevensey, raising his hands lightly toward heaven, laughed once more, and departed into the thicket. Lord Falmouth laughed in turn, though not very pleasantly.
Afterward he loosened his sword in the scabbard and wheeled back to seek their rendezvous in the shadowed place where they had made sonnets to the Lady Ursula.
For some ten minutes the marquis strode proudly through the maze, pondering, by the look of him, on the more fatal tricks of fencing. In a quarter of an hour he was lost in a wilderness of trim yew-hedges which confronted him stiffly at every outlet and branched off into innumerable gravelled alleys that led nowhither.
"Swounds!" said the marquis. He retraced his steps impatiently. He cast his hat upon the ground in seething desperation. He turned in a different direction, and in two minutes trod upon his discarded head-gear.
"Holy Gregory!" the marquis commented. He meditated for a moment, then caught up his sword close to his side and plunged into the nearest hedge. After a little he came out, with a scratched face and a scant breath, into another alley. As the crow flies, he went through the maze of Longaville, leaving in his rear desolation and snapped yew-twigs. He came out of the ruin behind the white-lilac bush, where he had stood and had heard the Earl of Pevensey sing to the Lady Ursula, and had seen what followed.
The marquis wiped his brow. He looked out over the lawn and breathed heavily. The Lady Ursula still sat beneath the maple, and beside her was Master Mervale, whose arm girdled her waist. Her arm was about his neck, and she listened as he talked eagerly with many gestures. Then they both laughed and kissed each other.
"Oh, defend me!" groaned the marquis. Once more he wiped his brow, as he crouched behind the white-lilac bush. "Why, the woman is a second Messalina!" he said. "Oh, the trollop! the wanton! Oh, holy Gregory! Yet I must be quiet--quiet as a sucking lamb, that I may strike afterward as a roaring lion. Is this your innocence, Mistress Ursula, that cannot endure the spoken name of a spade? Oh, splendor of G.o.d!"
Thus he raged behind the white-lilac bush while they laughed and kissed under the maple-tree. After a s.p.a.ce they parted. The Lady Ursula, still laughing, lifted the branches of the rearward thicket and disappeared in the path which the Earl of Pevensey had taken. Master Mervale, kissing his hand and laughing yet more loudly, lounged toward the entrance of the maze.
The jackanapes (as anybody could see), was in a mood to be pleased with himself. Smiles eddied about the boy"s face, his heels skipped, disdaining the honest gra.s.s; and presently he broke into a glad little song, all trills and shakes, like that of a bird ecstasizing over the perfections of his mate.
Sang Master Mervale:
_"Listen, all lovers! the spring is here And the world is not amiss; As long as laughter is good to hear, And lips are good to kiss, As long as Youth and Spring endure, There is never an evil past a cure And the world is never amiss.
"O lovers all, I bid ye declare The world is a pleasant place;-- Give thanks to G.o.d for the gift so fair, Give thanks for His singular grace!
Give thanks for Youth and Love and Spring!
Give thanks, as gentlefolk should, and sing, "The world is a pleasant place!""_
In mid-skip Master Mervale here desisted, his voice trailing into inarticulate vowels. After many angry throes, a white-lilac bush had been delivered of the Marquis of Falmouth, who now confronted Master Mervale, furiously moved.
4. _Love Rises from un-Cytherean Waters_
"I have heard, Master Mervale," said the marquis, gently, "that love is blind?"
The boy stared at the white face, that had before his eyes veiled rage with a crooked smile. So you may see the cat, tense for the fatal spring, relax and with one paw indolently flip the mouse.
"It is an ancient fable, my lord," the boy said, smiling, and made as though to pa.s.s.
"Indeed," said the marquis, courteously, but without yielding an inch, "it is a very rea.s.suring fable: for," he continued, meditatively, "were the eyes of all lovers suddenly opened, Master Mervale, I suspect it would prove a red hour for the world. There would be both tempers and reputations lost, Master Mervale; there would be sword-thrusts; there would be corpses, Master Mervale."
"Doubtless, my lord," the lad a.s.sented, striving to jest and have done; "for all flesh is frail, and as the flesh of woman is frailer than that of man, so is it, as I remember to have read, the more easily entrapped by the gross snares of the devil, as was over-well proved by the serpent"s beguiling deceit of Eve at the beginning."
"Yet, Master Mervale," pursued the marquis, equably, but without smiling, "there be lovers in the world that have eyes?"
"Doubtless, my lord," said the boy.