""Tis as easy as lying," I rea.s.sured him; and thereupon I began to sing.
Sang I:
_"Such toll we took of his niggling hours That the troops of Time were sent To seise the treasures and fell the towers Of the Castle of Content.
"Ei ho! Ei ho! the Castle of Content, With flaming tower and tumbling battlement Where Time hath conquered, and the firelight streams Above sore-wounded Loves and dying Dreams,-- Ei ho! the vanished Castle of Content!"_
And I had scarcely ended when the cas.e.m.e.nt opened.
"Stephen!" said the Lady Adeliza.
"Dear love!" said he.
"Humph!" said I.
Here a rope-ladder unrolled from the balcony and hit me upon the head.
"Regard the orchard for a moment," the Lady Adeliza said, with the wonderfullest little laugh.
My cousin indignantly protested, "I have company,--a burr that sticks to me."
"A fool," I explained,--"to keep him in countenance."
"It was ever the part of folly," said she, laughing yet again, "to be swayed by a woman; and it is the part of wisdom to be discreet. In any event, there must be no spectators."
So we two Allonbys held each a strand of the ladder and stared at the ripening apples, black globes among the wind-vext silver of the leaves.
In a moment the Lady Adeliza stood between us. Her hand rested upon mine as she leapt to the ground,--the tiniest velvet-soft ounce-weight that ever set a man"s blood a-tingle.
"I did not know--" said she.
"Faith, madonna!" said I, "no more did I till this. I deduce but now that the Marquis of Falmouth is the person you discoursed of an hour since, with whom you hope to enter the Castle of Content."
"Ah, Will! dear Will, do not think lightly of me," she said. "My father--"
"Is as all of them have been since Father Adam"s dotage," I ended; "and therefore is keeping fools and honest horses from their rest."
My cousin said, angrily, "You have been spying!"
"Because I know that there are horses yonder?" said I. "And fools here--and everywhere? Surely, there needs no argent-bearded Merlin come yawning out of Brocheliaunde to inform us of that."
He said, "You will be secret?"
"In comparison," I answered, "the grave is garrulous, and a death"s-head a chattering magpie; yet I think that your maid, madonna,--"
"Beatris is sworn to silence."
"Which signifies she is already on her way to Monsieur de Puysange. She was coerced; she discovered it too late; and a sufficiency of tears and pious protestations will attest her innocence. It is all one." I winked an eye very sagely.
"Your jesting is tedious," my cousin said. "Come, Adeliza!"
Blaise, my lord marquis" French servant, held three horses in the shadow, so close that it was incredible I had not heard their trampling.
Now the lovers mounted and were off like thistledown ere Blaise put foot to stirrup.
"Blaise," said I.
"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.