Thus, after long and careful deliberation, Sir Gervase took his resolve. He would follow them to the Chase, and relieve Lord Garth and his daughter of this undesirable guest, whatever the subsequent consequences to himself. That done, he would go seek Sir Francis Drake, or any other leader about to put forth in quest of fresh adventure, and bring to the enterprise that fine ship of his own which Sir John Killigrew was fitting for him.
Thus you behold him come striding into the hall at Trevanion Chase, and not to be detained there by old Martin, who was the master of his lordship’s comparatively meagre household. He thrust the fowling-piece into the servant’s hands, brushed him and his remonstrances aside, and stalked into the library, where Margaret and her prisoner were closeted with the Earl.
Sufficiently vexed and perturbed was his lordship already. Here was no mere question of one of those momentary interruptions which never failed to irritate him, but a matter likely to be fruitful of all manner of disturbances and likely to keep the peace he desired for his household in hourly danger of being shattered. The dim remaining perceptions of the obligations of his station, however, had been stimulated by the link which at the very outset Don Pedro had sought to establish through his father’s acquaintance with the Earl in the distant days of Queen Mary’s reign. This had lent his lordship grace to dissemble at least some part of his dismay at the intrusion and all the inconveniences which it adumbrated.
The spare, grey-faced old recluse had looked up from under his shaggy brows with almost friendly eyes, and a faint smile moved under the narrow, square-cut beard, once auburn but now almost white.
‘Oh, yes. I remember Don Estebán de Mendoza. I remember him very well. He was your father, eh?’ The smile broadened a little. ‘I had reason to esteem him.’
He fell into abstraction pondering events that were abruptly dragged from the tomb of oblivion. He recalled that of all the Spaniards at the Court of Queen Mary, Don Estebán de Mendoza was probably the only one who did not thirst for the blood of the Princess Elizabeth. When danger to her was most threatening from the activities of Renaud, it was he who had warned the Lord Admiral, and this warning was so timely as to have been perhaps the means of preserving Her Grace’s life.
It was his recollection of this that prompted his next words. ‘The son of Don Estebán de Mendoza stands in no great peril in England. There must be a score of gentlemen ready to serve you for your father’s sake. The Queen, herself, once reminded of the past, should stand your friend, as your father once stood hers.’
‘It is possible,’ said Don Pedro, ‘that they may prefer to remember that I commanded a galleon of the Armada. Recent events must ever be more present than remote ones. And in any case, between me and those gentlemen who might befriend me lies almost the whole of England, where it is not humanly possible to-day that a Spaniard should be loved.’
It was at this point that Sir Gervase broke unbidden upon the conference in that musty library, bringing with him into it some of the vigorous freshness of the moorlands and the sea. He was a little excited and extremely vehement, both of which were conditions which his lordship detested. By virtue of the Queen’s commission which he held, he proposed to relieve Lord Garth at once of this unwelcome intruder. He announced the intention rather than offered a service, which again was not the happiest way to deal with his lordship.
His lordship administered a reproof. ‘This commission which you hold from Her Grace gives you no right to break in upon me when I am private. I excuse it because I perceive the zeal by which you are moved. But this zeal, Gervase, is misplaced and unnecessary. Don Pedro has already surrendered himself a prisoner.’
‘To Margaret! To a woman!’ cried Sir Gervase, and accounted it superfluous to do more than state the fact. Its absurdity was self-revealing. ‘Let him surrender himself to the justices at Truro, until order can be taken about him. By your leave, my lord, I will myself escort him thither now.’
‘And risk having him torn in pieces in the streets,’ said her ladyship. ‘That would be chivalrous.’
‘There would be no danger of it if he went with me. You could trust to my escort.’
‘I should prefer to trust to these walls,’ he was answered.
They made Sir Gervase more and more impatient.
‘But it is fantastic!’ he insisted. ‘Who ever heard of a woman holding a prisoner? And how is she to hold him?’
It was Don Pedro who answered, smoothly urbane. ‘It is honour, sir, that holds a prisoner who has given his parole. I am bound more securely by that than by all the chains with which your Truro gaol could load me.’
This, of course, was not easily answered without using an offensiveness difficult to justify. Gervase was still seeking grounds upon which to dispute with them, when Margaret swept all argument aside with the reminder that her bedraggled prisoner was weak and faint, wet, cold, and hungry, and that, whatever might ultimately be resolved about him, commonest humanity dictated that their immediate care should be to feed and clothe and rest him.
His lordship, who perceived thus the possibility of an early return to the study of the Phaedo and the Socratic arguments upon the immortality of the soul, seized the opportunity of putting an end to all discussion and delivering his library from its invaders.
Don Pedro was treated at Trevanion Chase with all the consideration due to an honoured guest, and this in a house famed for its hospitality despite the apparently inhospitable character of its master.
Lord Garth’s revenues were by far the greatest of any nobleman in the West of England; his personal expenditure was insignificant; and he gave little thought or care to the manner in which his considerable wealth was laid out by his steward Francis Trevanion, an impoverished cousin upon whom he had bestowed the office, and Howard Martin, the chamberlain grown old in his service. He trusted these men implicitly, not so much because they were trustworthy or because his own nature was trustful, as because by trusting them he was relieved of those economic cares and minor domestic details which he regarded as the troublesome necessary futilities of life. His wealth was more than abundant for all that his station might require of him in his household, and whilst of an intense personal frugality, he had no desire that any economy should be practised, regarding such practices, indeed, as an irritating waste of things infinitely more valuable than money.
What the Lady Margaret required for herself or considered should be provided for another, she had merely to signify either to Francis Trevanion or to Martin, according to the nature of the requirement. She was invariably obeyed without question.
By her orders now a servant was appointed to minister to the personal wants of Don Pedro; their guest was provided with fresh linen and what else he lacked for his bodily comfort, and he was afforded a spacious chamber in the southwest wing of the mansion, whence he had a fine view of the downs and the sea, that accursed sea which had played the traitor to him and his fellow countrymen.
To this chamber Don Pedro was confined for a week by a fever which attacked him on the very evening of his arrival, as a very natural result of all that lately he had undergone. This fever raged so furiously in the course of the next two days that a doctor was fetched from Truro to attend him.
Thus the fact of his presence at Trevanion Chase became bruited abroad and afforded presently matter for sensational discussion in every hamlet between Truro and Smithwick. Soon there were rumours—false rumours—of other Spaniards who had come ashore alive from that galleon, whose wreckage had supplied active and in some instances profitable occupation to the locality, and extravagant stories went up and down the countryside.
The constable came from Truro to pay Lord Garth a visit. He accounted it his duty to inquire into this affair and to suggest to his lordship that it behoved him to lay the matter before the justices.
His lordship was contemptuous of the justices, and arrogantly unable to perceive how anything that happened at Trevanion Chase could be the concern of any but himself. In some respects his outlook was almost feudal. Certainly nothing could have been more remote from his intentions than to seek the justices in this or any other matter.
He expressed himself in some such terms. He adopted a judicial tone. He admitted the presence at Trevanion Chase of a Spanish gentleman who had come ashore from the wreck. But as this coming ashore could not be regarded in the light of an invasion or as a hostile act against the peace of the realm, he was not aware of any statutory enactments under which the justices might take proceedings against Don Pedro. In any case, however, Don Pedro had formally surrendered himself to the Lady Margaret; he was virtually a prisoner at Trevanion Chase, and his lordship accepted whatever responsibility this might entail, and denied the right of anyone to demand of him an account of his actions in this or any other matter.
He was by no means certain that the right did not exist; but he thought that the surest way of saving himself trouble was to deny its existence. To clinch his arguments he presented the constable with a crown and sent him to the kitchen to get drunk.
No sooner was he rid of the constable than he was plagued by Sir John Killigrew, who came to express the unsolicited opinion that this Spanish gentleman should be sent to the Tower to join there his distinguished compatriot Don Pedro Valdez.
His lordship began to experience exasperation. If he refrained from heat, it was because manifestations of heat were foreign to his nature. But he did not mince matters in pointing out to Sir John that he considered the subject of the visit an unwarrantable intrusion, and that he was well able to take order about Don Pedro without advice or assistance from his neighbours. He condescended, however, to explain that Don Pedro’s case was rather exceptional; he deserved some consideration out of regard for his father’s attitude towards the Queen in the old days. In this, his lordship asserted confidently, there were at least a score of gentlemen still in England who would support him. Sir John withdrew defeated, to face his kinsman Gervase, who had inspired the visit, and to explain to him its failure.
‘After all, it is his own affair. The responsibility lies with him,’ said Killigrew, with an airy tolerance very different from the patriotic indignation in which he had set out. ‘One Spaniard more or less is no great matter when all is said, and there’s no mischief for the fellow’s hands here in Cornwall.’
Sir Gervase did not at all agree with him. He denounced the whole thing as outrageous. At best it was an untidy business, and the young seaman liked things shipshape and in their proper places. The proper place for Don Pedro de Mendoza y Luna in his opinion was the Tower. His hostility to the Spaniard was increased, if not indeed entirely begotten by the attitude towards himself which her ladyship had taken up concerning the fellow. He failed entirely to perceive that it was his own rather boyish self-sufficiency and almost arrogant assumption of authority which had piqued her into this attitude.
Considering himself affronted by her disregard, he allowed the days to pass without attempting to approach her. But he had news of her—of her and her prisoner—which did not at all lessen his indignation.
The neighbouring gentry accepted the fact of the Spaniard’s presence at Trevanion Chase with an equanimity that appalled him. From the Godolphins, the Tregarths, and the younger Tressilian he actually heard the man’s graces, wit, and accomplishments extolled. This when Don Pedro’s fever had abated and he was once more abroad, and being treated—as the reports showed—as an honoured guest. What Sir Gervase overlooked in permitting himself to be fretted by these reports was the fact that the aim of those fribbles was deliberately to stab him by them, and so avenge the hurt to their mean selves proceeding from the honours which had given him an ascendancy over them.
So Gervase sulked at Arwenack and gave his mind ostensibly to matters concerned with the fitting of his ship as if no Lady Margaret existed, until one morning, some twelve days after Don Pedro’s coming, a groom rode over from the Chase with a note from her ladyship in which she inquired the reason of Sir Gervase’s protracted absence and required him to come in person that very day and explain it to her. That he had registered the irrevocable resolve of sailing for the Indies without seeing her again did not prevent him from instantly obeying the summons of that note, little suspecting that it was in the interest of Don Pedro that his presence and services were required.
The fact was that with the recovery of his strength Don Pedro’s mind turned naturally enough to the recovery of his liberty and to his repatriation. He approached the matter skilfully and delicately as he did all things.
‘There is,’ he informed her ladyship, ‘a matter of some urgency to be discussed between us, which only my condition has suffered me to postpone until now.’
They had lingered at the breakfast-table when the meal was over and after his lordship and Francis Trevanion had withdrawn. The latticed windows stood open, for the weather was still warm. Don Pedro, facing them, could look out from his seat at the table upon the long stretch of smooth green lawn, brilliant as enamel in the morning sunshine, to the cluster of larches which cast a black shadow along its farther edge.
The Lady Margaret looked up quickly, her attention arrested by the unusual gravity of his tone. He answered the question of that glance.
‘It becomes necessary that as my captor your ladyship should settle the ransom that is due.’
‘The ransom?’ She frowned a little in surprise and perplexity. Then she laughed. ‘I don’t perceive the necessity.’
‘It exists, my lady, none the less, and it is for you to state the sum. And let me add that to state a light one were to pay me a poor compliment.’
Her perplexity increased. Her thoughtful eyes seemed to be pondering the table of dark oak with its strip of white napery and the crystal and silver glistening upon it. This, she thought, was to push the comedy a little far. At last she said so.
‘Though I accepted your surrender when you made it, because… because, forsooth, it seemed a pretty thing to do, yet in reality you are to account yourself no more than our guest.’
A smile flickered over the narrow, handsome face. ‘Ah, no!’ he cried. ‘Do not commit the error of assuming that I am no more than that, nor the imprudence of announcing it. You must bethink you that, if I am your guest, you are guilty of harbouring me, of affording me shelter. You are surely aware that there are heavy penalties already for harbouring Catholics, and no doubt there will be added ones for harbouring Spaniards who have been in arms against England. For your own sake as much as for mine, then, let it be quite clear that I am your prisoner, and that it is as your prisoner that I abide here. You will remember, too, that you are committed to it by what you told Sir Gervase on the morning of my surrender to you. Without that assurance from you and from his lordship, Sir Gervase would have taken me, and I do not care to think how it might have fared with me. I know that sooner than be dragged into some public place, I must have withstood arrest by him; and since he was armed on that occasion with a fowling-piece, it is more than likely he would have shot me. You will see, then, when all this is considered, that honour will not permit me to owe my life and safety to a subterfuge.’
It was, of course, a piece of sophistry; for none was more aware than himself that the very nature of his arrest was in itself a subterfuge. The argument, however, sufficed to deceive her, and she confessed to herself that it was unassailably sound.
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘All this being so, and since you insist, yourself you shall name your ransom.’
He smiled mysteriously, thoughtfully fingering the long pearl-drop in his right ear.
‘Be it so,’ he said at length. ‘Depend upon it, my lady, that I shall do myself the fullest justice. It remains now for you to lend me your aid so that I may procure this ransom.’
‘Ah, yes?’ She laughed now, thinking that here surely he must find himself completely baffled.
But he was to reveal the unfailing quality of his resource which already had found a way. He leaned forward across the board. ‘I will write a letter, and it will be for you to see that it is carried.’
‘For me?’
He explained himself. ‘From the estuary below, from Smithwick and elsewhere fishing yawls and other such craft are daily putting out to sea. It is amongst these that we must find a messenger to bear my letter. It is in this that of necessity I must depend upon your ladyship.’
‘You think I could prevail upon an English seaman to make a Spanish port at such a time as this?’
‘That were, of course, a ludicrous suggestion, and I am not being ludicrous. I am earnest. All is well between England and France, and my letter shall be addressed to one who is known to me in the port of Nantes. The rest we may leave to him. He will forward it to its ultimate destination.’
‘You have it all thought out!’ said she, eyeing him almost mistrustfully.
He rose, slim and very elegant in his Spanish clothes, which the care of the efficient Martin had restored to their pristine quiet splendour. ‘Could I suffer myself to remain indefinitely a burden upon your noble hospitality?’ he protested, his attitude one of dismay at a thought that did him wrong: but his eyes very watchful of her.
She laughed quite freely at that, and rose in her turn. On the gravel outside she had caught the approaching crunch of hooves, and knew the sound to herald the approach of groom and falconer. They were to ride that morning on the open moorland, and Don Pedro was to see for himself how hawks are trained in England.
‘A courtly dissimulation of your haste to leave us,’ she rallied him.
‘Ah, not that!’ he exclaimed with a sudden fervour. ‘It is not charitable to think so of me, who am so little master of my destinies.’
She turned her shoulder to him, and looked out of the window. ‘Here is Ned with the horses, Don Pedro.’
A slow smile lifted a little his black moustaches as he considered the back of her neat head. He thought he detected annoyance in her when she discovered how maturely he had considered his plans for removing himself. Her manner had turned frosty, and her subsequent laughing indifference had been so much feminine dissimulation to cover her self-betrayal. Thus reasoned Don Pedro and took satisfaction in this reasoning. It received a check when, as they rode that morning, she told him that, if he would write his letter, she thought she knew of a channel by which it could be set upon its journey. After her flash of resentment at his intentions, he had hardly expected such ready acquiescence in measures which were to lead to his ultimate departure.
Thus it fell out that on the morrow, when he had written his letter—couched in Latin so that it might baffle any vulgar person who might be tempted to investigate its contents—she despatched her little note to Sir Gervase.
He came at once, arriving at eleven, just as they were sitting down to dine, for they kept country hours at Trevanion Chase. At table he had leisure to observe for himself the courtly grace, the urbane charm, and ready, easy wit which had been reported to him of Don Pedro. And as if perceiving the tactical error of his earlier downrightness where the Spaniard was concerned and seeking to make amends, he employed towards him a studied courtesy which Don Pedro returned with interest.
When dinner was done, and the Earl had withdrawn in strict accordance with his inveterate habit, her ladyship desired Sir Gervase to come and admire with her the last of the year’s roses. Sir Gervase, asking nothing better, departed with her, leaving Don Pedro and Francis Trevanion alone at table.
There were certain harsh truths she was to hear from Sir Gervase by way of chastisement upon which forgiveness would follow the more sweetly. But as they paced her rose-garden, enclosed within tall and trimly cut hedges of yew to shelter the blooms from the sea gales, she adopted towards him so distracting and unusual an air of shyness that the remnants of his ill-humour were dissipated unuttered, and all the ill things he had rehearsed to tell her were forgotten.
‘Where have you tarried all these days, Gervase?’ she asked him presently, and by this question, for which once he had hoped so that he might return one of the dozen scathing answers he had prepared, flung him into some slight confusion.
‘I have had affairs,’ he excused himself. ‘The fitting of my ship has engaged me closely with Sir John. And then… I did not think that you would be needing me.’
‘Do you come only when you think you are needed?’
‘Only when I think I am welcome, which is much the same thing.’
She gasped. ‘The unkind imputation!’ she cried. ‘You are welcome, then, only when you are needed? Fie!’
His confusion increased. As usual, she was putting him in the wrong where he knew that he was right.
‘There was your Spaniard here to beguile your leisures,’ he said gruffly, angling for a contradiction.
‘A courtly person, is he not, Gervase?’
‘Oh, courtly enough!’ he growled impatiently.
‘I find him vastly diverting. There is a man who has seen the world.’
‘Why, so have I. Was I not with Drake when he sailed… ?’
‘Yes, yes. But the world I mean, the world of his knowledge, is different from yours, Gervase.’
‘The world is the world,’ said Gervase sententiously. ‘And if it comes to that, I’ve seen a deal more of it than ever has he.’
‘Of the savage world, yes, Gervase. His knowledge is of the civilized, cultured world, as his person shows. He has been to all the courts of Europe and is learned in their ways and in many other ways. He speaks all the languages of the world, and plays the lute like an angel, and sings… Shouldst hear him sing, Gervase! And he…’
But Gervase had heard enough, and interrupted her. ‘How long does he abide here, this marvel of the ages?’
‘Only a little while longer, I fear.’
‘You fear?’ Disgust ineffable rang in his voice.
‘What have I said?’ she wondered. ‘Have I angered you, Gervase?’
He snorted impatiently and strode on, planting his feet with ferocity. For all that he had sailed with Drake, seen much of the world and learnt many things, there had been few opportunities upon that voyage to study the tortuous ways of woman.
‘What are you going to do with him?’ he asked. ‘Has your father reached a resolve?’
‘It is no concern of my father’s. Don Pedro is my prisoner. I am holding him to ransom, and he shall go home so soon as the ransom comes.’
This first took him by surprise, then afforded him some slight matter for mirth.
‘If you are waiting for that, there’s no ground for your fears that he’ll soon be leaving you.’
‘You make too sure. He has writ a letter to a man in Nantes, who will proceed to Spain to obtain the ransom.’
Sir Gervase was utterly discourteous. ‘Bah!’ he sneered. ‘It would become you better to send to Truro for the constable and deliver Don Pedro up to the law of the land.’
‘And is that all you’ve learnt of the usages of chivalry in your sailings with Sir Francis Drake? I think you had better sail again and travel farther.’
‘Chivalry!’ said he. ‘Moonshine!’ Then from futile contempt he turned again to more practical considerations. ‘He has writ a letter, you say. And who’s to carry the letter?’
‘That is a difficulty, of course. He perceives it himself.’
‘Oh, he does, does he? He must, indeed, be a man of perceptions. He can actually see an object when it stands before him. There’s discernment!’ And Sir Gervase laughed, well pleased to have found this weakness in the Spaniard’s equipment.
He was less pleased when Margaret pointed out the consequence. They had come to the end of the enclosed garden, to a semi-circular stone seat that was half-recessed into the thick yew hedge. With a sigh of resignation, she seated herself.
‘He bides here for ever, then, it seems!’ She sighed again. ‘A pity! I am sorry for him, poor gentleman. To be a prisoner in a foreign land can be no enviable fate. It is like being a thrush in a cage. But there! We will ease his condition all we can, and for myself I am well content that he should remain. I like his company.’
‘Oh, you like his company? You confess to that?’
‘What woman would not? He is a man whom most women would find adorable. I was lonely until he came, with my father always at his books, and no one to bear me company but such foolish fellows as Lionel Tressilian, Peter Godolphin, or Ned Tregarth. And if you are going a-sailing again, as you say you are, I shall soon be lonely once more.’
‘Margaret!’ He was leaning over her, in his eyes all the ardour aroused by that unusual confession.
She looked up at him, and smiled with some tenderness. ‘There! I’ve said it! I didn’t mean to say so much.’
He slipped into the seat beside her and put his arm about her shoulders.
‘You understand, Gervase, don’t you, that I should desire to keep so welcome a companion as Don Pedro by me?’ His arm fell away as if it had been water. ‘I mean when you are gone, Gervase. You wouldn’t have me lonely. Not if you love me.’
‘This is to consider,’ said he.
‘What is to consider?’
He sat forward now, his elbows on his knees. ‘This letter that he has written: what exactly did he hope from it?’
‘Why, his ransom and the means to return to Spain.’
‘And he had no thought of how it might be got to Nantes?’
‘Oh, yes. He thought the skipper of some yawl or fishing boat might carry it. His difficulty lay in inducing such a skipper to do him this service. But no doubt Don Pedro’s wits will find a way. He’s very shrewd and resourceful, Gervase, and he…’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Gervase. ‘Perhaps I can save him trouble.’
‘You, Gervase? What trouble can you save him?’
He got to his feet abruptly. ‘Where is this letter?’
She considered him round-eyed. ‘Why, what now? What is the letter to you, Gervase?’
‘I’ll find a skipper to carry it to Nantes. It shall be there within a week at most. Another week or two to get his ransom here, and he may go his ways again to Spain or to the devil.’
‘Would you really do so much for him, Gervase?’ said her innocent ladyship.
Gervase smiled grimly. ‘Get me the letter. I know of a boat that sails with the tide to-night, and if the price will warrant it her skipper will even run to the Loire.’
She rose. ‘Oh, the price will warrant it. Fifty ducats for the bearer, to be delivered to him against the letter by the person to whom it is addressed.’
‘Fifty ducats! ’Sdeath! He’s a wealthy man, this Spaniard!’
‘Wealthy? His wealth is incalculable. He is a Grande of Spain. The half of the Asturias are his property and he has vast vineyards in Andalusia. He is a nephew of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, he possesses the close friendship of the King of Spain, and…’
‘To be sure, to be sure,’ said Gervase. ‘Get me this letter, and leave the rest to me.’
He could be depended upon to act zealously in the matter, for by now no one could have been more completely persuaded than Sir Gervase Crosby of the propriety of speeding so illustrious, wealthy, accomplished, highly connected, and attractive a gentleman from Trevanion Chase.
The letter was duly despatched, and in consideration of this fact Sir Gervase might well have practised patience for the little while that Don Pedro was likely to continue at Trevanion Chase. But young men in love are notoriously impatient, and matters were not eased for Gervase when he found the Lady Margaret rendered all but inaccessible to him by the claims upon her of her prisoner.
Whenever Gervase sought her now, there was no chance of being private with her for more than a moment. If she were not away, riding or hawking with the courtly Spaniard, there were ever visitors at the Chase and the Spaniard was invariably the centre of interest. Either he entertained the company with amusing narratives out of his wide experience, or else he charmed them with plaintive, passionate Andalusian songs, and he was so skilled a performer on the lute that he could wring from it an unsuspected power of melody.
That the Lady Margaret should remain indifferent to his undeniable fascination was incredible, particularly to Sir Gervase. When the witty, versatile, accomplished Don Pedro exerted himself to please, there is no doubt he could be dangerous. And it was obvious to all that he was exerting himself now. Those Cornish gallants who had paid an assiduous court to the Lady Margaret until Sir Gervase had elbowed them out of his way, looked on and smiled to see him thrust aside in his turn by another. In Don Pedro they beheld their own avenger, which in itself went far to dispose them in Don Pedro’s favour.
Lionel Tressilian made a simpering jest of it to his grim half-brother Sir Oliver. But Sir Oliver did not laugh with him.
‘God’s light!’ he cried. ‘It’s a shameful thing that a pestilential Spaniard who shelters himself behind a woman’s petticoat should be fawned upon by a pack of unlicked English whelps. He should have been handed over to the justices. Since my Lord Garth is too indolent to oppose his daughter, if I were in Gervase Crosby’s place, I’d make short work of this Don Pedro.’
Chancing on the morrow to meet Gervase in Smithwick, the elder Tressilian spoke his mind freely and bluntly as was his habit. He blamed Gervase’s weakness for accepting this comedy of Don Pedro’s surrendering his sword to a lady and for suffering himself to be thrust out of his proper place by such a man. The youth of the place were making a jest of it; and it was high time Gervase showed them that it is not only upon the seas that he could deal with Spaniards.
This supplied the drooping spirits of Gervase with the necessary spur, and coming that afternoon to Trevanion Chase he decided to take action, though not necessarily of the violent kind at which the downright, uncompromising Sir Oliver had hinted. That were neither just where the Spaniard was concerned, nor prudent towards Margaret. But it was necessary that his own position should be properly defined. Being informed by Martin that her ladyship was in the arbour with Don Pedro, he decided to make a beginning with the Earl.
The Earl, who had shifted from philosophy to history, its proper correlative, was poring over a colossal volume of Herodotus when Sir Gervase invaded his privacy.
‘My lord,’ the young man announced, ‘I am come to talk to you of Margaret.’
His lordship looked up peevishly. ‘Is it really necessary?’ he wondered. ‘I suppose you are come to tell me once again that you want to marry her. I don’t oppose it if she doesn’t. Marry her if she will have you. Go and ask her. It concerns her, not me.’
If this was a subterfuge to be rid of his intruder, it failed.
‘She will not listen to reason these days,’ Sir Gervase complained.
‘Reason? Whoever made love in terms of reason with any hope of success? I begin to understand your failure, sir.’
‘My failure is due to this damned Don Pedro.’ He smacked a peck of dust from a tome that lay under his hand upon the table. ‘Until this Spaniard was washed up here out of hell, I had every hope to be married before Christmas.’
His lordship frowned. ‘What has Don Pedro to do with this?’
‘With submission, my lord, I say you spend too much time with books.’
‘I am glad you say it with submission. But it hardly answers my question.’
‘It were well that you spared some leisure from your studies to keep an eye upon your daughter, sir. She and this Spaniard are too much alone together; much more than is befitting a lady of her station.’
The Earl smiled sourly. ‘You are endeavouring to tell me that Margaret is a fool. My answer is that you’re a fool to think so.’
But Gervase would not be put off. ‘I say that all women are fools.’
His lordship sniffed. ‘I nothing doubt that your misogyny has its roots in a wide experience.’ Seeing the blank look in the young man’s eyes, he explained himself. ‘I mean that you’ll have known many women.’
‘As many as I need to,’ quoth Gervase, non-committal.
‘Then it is high time you got yourself married. A God’s name what do you stay for?’
‘I have already told your lordship. This infernal Spaniard stops the way. Even now he sits at her feet in the arbour, thrumming his pestilent lute and languishing his Malaga love-songs.’
At last his lordship appeared really scandalized. ‘And you tarry here while this is doing? Away with you at once, and send her hither to me. I’ll make an end of this. If I have any authority over her, she shall marry you within the month. Thus at last I may have peace. Away with you!’
Sir Gervase departed on that agreeable errand, whilst his lordship returned to investigate the fortunes of Cyrus and Cambyses.
The tinkling of the lute, the rich melodious voice of the Spanish Grande guided Sir Gervase to the arbour. Unceremoniously he interrupted the song with his message.
‘Margaret, his lordship asks for you. He is in haste.’
She departed after some questions to which he returned equivocal replies.
The two men were left alone together. Don Pedro having bowed to the departing lady sat down again, and crossed his shapely legs that were cased in shimmering black silk, a quality of hose almost unknown in England, the very pair in which he had swum ashore. With the lute lying idle in his lap, he made some attempts at polite conversation. These were impolitely discouraged by the other’s monosyllabic answers. At last Don Pedro ignored him and once more gave his attention entirely to the instrument, a pretty thing out of Italy of ebony inlaid with ivory. His fingers swept the chords. Very softly he began to play a quick Sevillan dance measure.
Sir Gervase, in that state of irritation which distorts all things and magnifies the distortion, chose to perceive in this a deliberate affront, a subtle form of mockery. Perhaps the rippling character of the measure added colour to the assumption. Anger surged up in him, and, acting upon it suddenly, he dashed the lute from the thrummer’s hands.
The Spaniard’s dark eyes looked at him in blank astonishment from out of that handsome ivory-coloured face. Then, observing his aggressor’s fiery countenance, he smiled a slow, faint smile inscrutable of meaning.
‘You do not like music, eh, Sir Gervase?’ he inquired with quiet, derisive courtesy.
‘Neither music nor musicians,’ said Gervase.
The Spaniard continued unruffled, regarding him now with a faintly quickened interest.
‘I have heard that there are men like that,’ said he, implying that he now looked for the first time upon a member of that species. ‘The sentiment, or the lack of it, I can understand if I cannot admire it. But the expression of it which you have chosen I do not understand at all.’
Already Sir Gervase realized that he had done a stupid, boorish thing. His anger with himself was increased by the utter failure of his action to provoke Don Pedro out of his lightly scornful urbanity. Almost he could admire the Spaniard’s easy impassivity, and he was certainly made the more sensitive of his own loutishness by contrast. This merely served to fan his rage.
‘I should have thought it plain enough,’ he answered.
‘Of course, if this onslaught upon the Lady Margaret’s unoffending lute was merely an instance of rustic want of manners, let me assure you that it was entirely unnecessary.’
‘You talk too much,’ said Gervase. ‘I meant no harm to the lute.’
The Spaniard uncrossed at last his graceful legs, and rose with a sigh. His face wore now a look of weary melancholy. ‘Not to the lute? To me, then, eh? The harm was for me? You desire to offer me an affront? Am I to assume this?’
‘If it will not strain your capacity for assumption.’ Committed to it now, Gervase could not draw back.
‘But it does. I assure you that it does. Being unconscious of having given offence, or of ever having lacked for courtesy towards you…’
Sir Gervase broke in. ‘You are, yourself, the offence. I do not like your face. That jewel in your ear savours the fop, and offends my sense of niceness. And then your beard is odious, and, in short, you are a Spaniard, and I hate all Spaniards.’
Don Pedro sighed even as he smiled. ‘At last I understand. Indeed, sir, you appear to have a very solid grievance. I am ashamed of myself for having afforded it. Tell me, sir, what I may do to please you?’
‘You might die,’ said Gervase.
Don Pedro fingered his beard, ever suave and cool before the hot anger of the other, which his every word, with its undercurrent of contempt and mockery, was deliberately calculated to increase.
‘That is a deal to ask. Would it amuse you,’ he wondered almost plaintively, ‘to attempt to kill me?’
‘Damnably,’ said Gervase.
Don Pedro bowed. ‘In that case, I must do what I can to oblige you. If you will stay for me until I get my weapons, I will afford you the gratifying opportunity.’
With a nod and a smile, he departed briskly, leaving Gervase in a fury the half of which was directed against himself. He had behaved with an outrageous clumsiness before that impeccable master of deportment. He was ashamed of the boorish manner in which he had achieved his object with one whose bearing throughout had been an education in the manner in which these matters should be handled by men of birth. Deeds alone could now make amends for the shortcomings of his words.
He said so in a minatory tone to the Don, as presently they made their way together to a strip of lawn behind a quickset hedge where they would be entirely screened and private.
‘If you ply your sword as keenly as your tongue, Don Pedro, you should do fine things,’ he sneered.
‘Do not be alarmed,’ was the smooth answer.
‘I am not,’ snapped Sir Gervase.
‘There is not the need,’ Don Pedro assured him. ‘I shall not hurt you.’
They had rounded the hedge by now, and Sir Gervase, in the act of untrussing his points, fell roundly to swearing in answer to that kindly promise.
‘You entirely misapprehend me,’ said Don Pedro. ‘Indeed, I think there is a good deal in this that you do not apprehend. Have you considered, for instance, that if you kill me, there will be none to question your right to do so; but if I were to kill you, it is odds that these barbarous compatriots of yours would hang me in spite of my rank?’
Gervase paused in the act of peeling off his doublet. Dismay overspread his honest young face. ‘As God’s my life, I had not thought of that. Look you, Don Pedro, I have no desire to place you at such a disadvantage. This thing cannot go on.’
‘It cannot go back. It might be supposed that I pointed out the delicacy of the situation so as to avoid the issue. And that, my honour will not suffer. But, I repeat, sir, you have no cause for alarm.’
The taunting confidence angered Sir Gervase anew. ‘You’re mighty sure of yourself!’ said he.
‘Of course,’ the Don agreed. ‘Could I consent to meet you else? There is so much that you overlook in your hot haste. Consider that, being as I am a prisoner on parole, to permit myself to be killed would be lacking in honour, since to die by an act in which I have a part were tantamount to breaking prison. It follows that I must be very sure of myself or I would not consent to engage.’
This was more than Gervase could endure. The Spaniard’s dignified imperturbability he had admired. But this cold bombast disgusted him. He flung aside his doublet in a rage and sat down to pull off his boots.
‘Is so much necessary?’ quoth Don Pedro. ‘Myself I abhor damp feet.’
‘Each to his taste,’ he was curtly answered. ‘You may die dry-shod if you prefer it.’
The Spaniard said no more. He unbuckled his sword-belt, and cast it from him with the scabbard, retaining the naked rapier in his hand. He had brought sword and dagger, the usual combination of duelling weapons; but discovering that Sir Gervase, who had come unprepared for this, was armed with rapier only, Don Pedro accommodated himself to his opponent.
Lithe, graceful, and entirely composed he waited now, bending the long supple steel like a whip in his two hands, whilst his opponent completed his elaborate preparations.
At length they faced each other, and engaged.
Sir Gervase, as he had already proved upon more than one occasion, was endowed with the courage of a mastiff; but his sword play was, like his nature, downright, straightforward, and without subtleties. By sheer strength of brawn he had earned himself among seamen something of a reputation as a slashing swordsman, and he had come to conceive that he was a match for most men with the weapon. This resulted, not from self-sufficiency, but from ignorance. His education was far from complete, as Margaret frequently and unkindly reminded him. Something was to be added to it this afternoon.
The true art of fence was in its infancy. Lately born in that fair land of Italy, which has mothered all the arts, it had as yet made comparatively little progress in the rest of Europe. True, there was a skilled Italian, a Messer Saviolo, in London, who gave instruction to a few choice pupils, and similarly there were masters sprouting up in France and Spain and Holland. But in the main your gallant, and your soldier in particular, depended upon his strength to bear down an opponent’s blade and hack a way to his heart. To this he added sometimes certain questionable tricks of fighting, which were of less than no avail should he chance—as Sir Gervase chanced to-day—to be opposed to one of those few swordsmen who had made a study of this new art and mastered its principles.
You conceive the disconcerting astonishment of Sir Gervase when he found the slashing cuts, which he aimed at the lithe Don Pedro with all the weight of his brawn behind them, spending themselves upon the empty air, rendered harmless and powerless as they were met by closely played deflecting blade. It was like witchcraft to the uninitiated, as if the Spaniard’s sword were a magic rod, which at contact robbed his own, and his arm with it, of all strength. Then he grew angry, and his play became wilder. Don Pedro might have killed him twenty times without exertion. It was, indeed, this lack of exertion on the Spaniard’s part that infuriated the sturdy young seaman. Don Pedro scarcely stirred. He kept his arm shortened and used his forearm sparingly, depending chiefly upon the quick play of his wrist to be everywhere at once with the very greatest economy of time and action. Thus in a manner that to Gervase seemed increasingly uncanny, the forte of that blade was ever presented to the foible of his own, sending every cut and every thrust irresistibly yet effortlessly awry.
Gervase, already breathing heavily and beginning to perspire, broke ground so as to attack in another quarter. But he had his labour for nothing. The Spaniard merely pivoted to face him and to reëngage as before. Once Gervase made as if to hurl himself forward, so as to come to grips with his opponent: but he was checked by the Spaniard’s point, flicked upwards to the line of his throat. If he advanced he must impale himself upon it.
Baffled and winded, Sir Gervase fell back to breathe. The Spaniard made no attempt to follow and attack. He merely lowered his point, to ease his arm, whilst waiting for the other to resume.
‘You become heated, I fear,’ he said. He showed no sign of heat himself and was breathing easily. ‘That is because you use the edge too much, and therefore labour with your arm. You should learn to depend more upon the point; keep the elbow closer to the body, and let your wrist do the work.’
‘Sdeath!’ roared Gervase, in fury. ‘Do you give me lessons?’
‘But do you not begin to perceive that you need them?’ quoth the affable Don Pedro.
Sir Gervase leapt at him, and then things happened quickly. Quite how they happened he never understood. The Spaniard’s sword deflected his fierce lunge, but less widely than hitherto, and now blade ran on blade until the hilts crashed together. Then quite suddenly Don Pedro’s left hand shot out and closed upon Sir Gervase’s sword-wrist. The rest was done with the speed of thought. The Spaniard dropped his sword. His now empty right seized Gervase’s rapier by the quillons and wrenched it from his grasp before the design was so much as suspected.
Thus Sir Gervase found himself disarmed by seizure, his weapon now in his opponent’s hand. Enraged, hot, and perspiring he stood, whilst the Spaniard, smiling quietly, now bowed to him as if to signify that he had done his part and the affair was at an end.
And then, as if this measure of humiliation were not in itself sufficient, he suddenly became aware of Margaret’s presence. She was standing by the corner of the quickset hedge, wide-eyed, white-faced, her lips parted, her left hand pressed to her breast.
How long she had been there he did not know; but in any case long enough to have witnessed his discomfiture. In that bitter moment Sir Gervase accounted it no mercy that Don Pedro had not run him through the heart.
Sick and foolish, oddly pale now under his tan despite the heat in which the combat had put him, he watched her swift, angry approach.
‘What is this?’ she demanded; turning first to one and then to the other and withering each with her glance.
It was of course Don Pedro, who, never for a moment losing his composure, afforded her an answer. ‘Why, nothing. A little sword-play for the instruction of Sir Gervase. I was demonstrating for him the art of the new Italian school of fence.’
He proffered the sword to Sir Gervase, hilt foremost. ‘Enough for to-day,’ he said with his courteous smile. ‘To-morrow, perhaps, I shall show you how the estramaçon is to be met and turned aside.’
By his infernal subtlety the man invested what he said with an air which conveyed quite plainly the very thing he pretended to conceal: how generously he had spared his opponent.
Her ladyship considered him a moment in haughty dignity. ‘Pray give me leave apart with Sir Gervase,’ she commanded frostily.
The Spaniard bowed, took up his rapier from the ground and then his sword-belt, and obediently departed.
‘Gervase,’ she said peremptorily, ‘the truth! What passed between you?’
He gave her truthfully enough the details by which he knew himself to be shamed.
She listened patiently, her face white, her lip at moments trembling. When he had done and stood hang-dog before her, it was some moments before she spoke, as if she were at pains to choose her words.
‘You were bent, it seems, upon saving me the trouble of disobeying my father’s wishes?’ she said at last between question and assertion.
He was in no doubt of her meaning. But the heart was all gone out of him. He continued to contemplate the trampled turf. He perceived how fitting it was that she should refuse to marry such an oaf as himself, clumsy in all things. He had no courage left to defend himself or plead his cause.
‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Why don’t you answer me? Or have you talked yourself dumb with Don Pedro?’
‘Perhaps I have,’ he answered miserably.
‘Perhaps you have!’ she mocked him. ‘Good lack! Would it have helped you to have got yourself killed?’
In reply he set her a question which he might well have set himself, ay, and found the answer to it in her present angry agitation.
‘Since you would not have cared, why all this heat and bother?’
Excitement betrayed her. ‘Who says I would not?’ she snapped, and almost bit out her tongue when the words were sped.
They had a transfiguring effect upon the man before her. He stared at her, and fell to trembling. ‘Margaret!’ he cried in a voice that rang out. ‘Wouldst have cared, Margaret?’
She took refuge in feminine dissimulation. She shrugged. ‘Is it not plain? Do we want the justices here to know how you met your death, and a scandal about our heads that may send an echo as far as London?’
He gulped and lapsed back into his dejection. ‘Was that all you meant? Was that all?’
‘What else could you suppose I meant? Get you dressed, man. My father is asking for you.’ She began to turn away. ‘Where did you say you left my lute? If you’ve broken it I’ll not forgive you easily.’
‘Margaret!’ he called to her as she was departing.
By the quickset hedge she paused, and looked at him over her shoulder.
‘I’ve been an oaf,’ he pleaded miserably.
‘Upon that particular at least we can agree. Aught else?’
‘If you’ll forgive me…’ He broke off, and moved towards her. ‘It was all for you, Margaret. I was maddened to see this Spaniard ever in your company. I can’t endure it. We were so happy until he came…’
‘Myself, I’ve not been unhappy since.’
He swore between his teeth. ‘It’s that! It’s that!’
‘It’s what?’
‘My cursed jealousy. I love you, Margaret. I’d give my life for love of you, Margaret dear.’
‘Faith, I believe you,’ she taunted him, ‘since I found you engaged in the attempt.’ She moved away a pace or two, then paused again. ‘Get you dressed,’ she repeated, ‘and in Heaven’s name get sense,’ she added, and was gone.
But as he was gloomily trussing his points, she was back again.
‘Gervase,’ she said, very grave and demure now. ‘If my forgiveness matters, you’ll promise me that we shall have no more of this.’
‘Ay,’ he answered bitterly, ‘I promise.’
‘You swear it,’ she insisted, and for all that he swore it readily enough, he had not the wit, it seems, to fathom the reason of her concern. A little coxcombry would have helped him here. But there was no coxcombry in Sir Gervase Crosby’s composition.
Sir Gervase departed that day from Trevanion Chase in the deepest humiliation he had ever known. In another this humiliation might have turned to gall, urging him to a mean vengeance in one of the forms which the circumstances place so readily at hand. In Sir Gervase, however, it inspired only self-reproach and shame. He had behaved abominably. He had borne himself like an ill-mannered schoolboy, and Don Pedro had dealt with him precisely as his case and condition required, administering, with a magnanimity that was in itself a cruelty, a corrective birching to his soul.
That Margaret must now utterly despise him seemed inevitable; that she should be justified of her contempt was intolerable. Thus in his almost excessive humility had he interpreted her indignation. Blinded by it—for humility can be as blinding as conceit—he had never seen the fierce concern behind it.
His opponent’s case was little better than his own. It was in vain that Don Pedro defended himself by specious arguments, or paraded the magnanimity and restraint to which Sir Gervase owed it that he had come off the field without physical hurt. The Lady Margaret did not desire that Sir Gervase should owe anything to the magnanimity of any man. It was detestable to her that he should be placed in such a position, and this detestation she divided impartially between himself and the man who had placed him there. Towards Don Pedro her manner was now aloof and frosty. She allowed him to perceive that she had formed her opinion of his conduct and desired to hear no explanations, since no explanations could modify the view she took.
After supper that evening, however, he made a vigorous attempt to put himself right in her eyes. She was withdrawing with her cousin Francis in the wake of her father, when he begged her to stay a moment. In yielding it is possible that her intent was to render him yet more fully aware of her indignation.
‘I vow,’ he said, ‘that you use me cruelly in being angry with me for a matter which it was not in my power to avoid.’
‘It is not my desire to hear more of it.’
‘And now you are unjust. There is no deeper injustice than to condemn a man unheard.’
‘I do not need to hear you, sir, to know that you abused your position here, that you abused the trust I placed in you when I allowed you to retain your weapons. The facts themselves are all I need to know; and the facts, Don Pedro, have lowered you immeasurably in my esteem.’
She saw the spasm of pain ripple across the narrow, clear-cut face, and look at her out of those great liquid and undeniably beautiful dark eyes. This it may have been that, softening her a little, suffered her now to listen without interruption to his answer.
‘Than that,’ said he, ‘you could inflict upon me no crueller punishment, and it is an irony that it should fall upon me for actions in which from end to end I was guided only by the desire to retain an esteem which I prize above all else. I abused your trust you say. Will you not hear my answer?’
He was so humble, the pleading note in his voice so musical, that she gave her consent with a reluctance that was only apparent. He offered, then, his explanation. Sir Gervase had come to him with the clear intention of provoking a quarrel. He had dashed the lute from Don Pedro’s hands, he had alluded in the grossest terms to Don Pedro’s physical attributes.
These affronts he could have forgiven, but to forgive them would have justified Sir Gervase in accounting him a coward, and that he could not have forgiven because it would have hurt his honour. Therefore, to avoid the unforgivable, he had consented to meet Sir Gervase Crosby, but this only because no doubt of the issue existed in his mind and he could depend upon his resolve to use his weapons only for a defensive purpose, so as to render negative the combat. He had displayed his mastery of those weapons, not in any braggart spirit, but merely so as to place his courage above reproach when he should come to decline any further quarrels that it might be sought to put upon him.
It made up a strong case, and his manner of presenting it was impeccable in its modesty. But her ladyship was not disposed, it seemed, to clemency; for whilst she confessed herself, as perforce she must, satisfied with his arguments, the tone in which she confessed it was frosty and distant; and frosty and distant her manner continued in the days that immediately followed. She no longer showed any concern for the entertainment of her prisoner. She left him to his own devices, to seek exercise in lonely brooding walks, or to employ his wits in agricultural and forestry discussions with Francis Trevanion, whilst she rode abroad with Peter and Rosamund Godolphin, or entertained these and other visitors, to the Spaniard’s exclusion, in her own bower.
Thus for Don Pedro three dismal days passed sluggishly. She observed his dejected countenance when they met at table and was satisfied that he could suffer, the more so because as a consequence of the events Sir Gervase had not been seen at Trevanion Chase since he had departed in defeat. If she could have guessed the full extent of Don Pedro’s suffering, things might have been different. In regarding the melancholy reflected on his pale face and in his liquid eyes as a histrionic adaptation to what he conceived the requirements of the case, she did him less than justice.
Don Pedro suffered in all sincerity, and the wistfulness which she detected in his eyes when they observed her arose from his very soul.
It was inevitable, by the attraction of opposites, that this dark-complexioned typical son of the South, thrown into such close and constant association with that tall, golden girl, whose cheeks were as delicately tinted as the apple blossoms, whose eyes were so unfathomably calm, so blue and so frankly level in their glances, should have lost his heart to her. She was so different not only from the languishing, sheltered, ill-informed women of his native Spain, but from any woman that he had ever met in any other part of Europe. The liberty which she enjoyed so naturally, having known naught else from childhood, gave her at once a frankness and a strength which afforded her maidenhood a stronger bulwark than ever was supplied by a barred casement or a vigilant duenna. She was innocent without ignorance, frank without boldness, modest without simpering, and maddeningly attractive without deliberate allure. In all his life and all his travels, Don Pedro had never met a lady half so desirable or one whose permanent conquest could be a source of deeper pride. And all had been going so well and promisingly between them until that unfortunate matter with Sir Gervase Crosby whom, from despising, Don Pedro now began to hate.
Thus for three days he pined in the chill exclusion to which she doomed him. On the evening of the fourth something happened to restore him to the centre of the canvas, his proper place in any picture of which he was a part.
They were at table when a servant brought word that a gentleman—a foreign gentleman—was asking for Don Pedro. The Spaniard having craved and been granted leave withdrew to the hall where this visitor waited.
The worldly consequence of Don Pedro de Mendoza y Luna was to be inferred from the amazing celerity put forth to serve him by those who were the recipients of that letter despatched to Nantes. Their speed was so little short of miraculous that, within some eighteen days of the sailing of the yawl that had borne the letter, the bearer of the answer presented himself at Trevanion Chase.
Don Pedro, coming with swift, eager steps into the spacious grey hall, checked abruptly at sight of the man who awaited him, a squarely built fellow, in brown homespun and long sea-boots, black-bearded, and tanned like a sailor. Under his arm he bore a bulky package wrapped in sail-cloth. He bowed to the Spaniard, and announced himself in French.
‘At your service, monseigneur. I am Antoine Duclerc, out of Nantes.’
Don Pedro frowned and stiffened. His manner became haughty.
‘How is this? I had thought that Don Diego would have come in person. Am I, then, become of so little account?’
‘Don Diego has come, monseigneur. But it would hardly be prudent for him to land.’
‘He becomes prudent, eh?’ Don Pedro sneered. ‘Well, well! And who are you?’
‘I am the master of the brig that went to fetch him out of Santander. She is lying to a couple of miles from shore with Don Diego aboard, awaiting your excellency. It is arranged we take you off to-night. I have a boat in the cove under the cliff there and a half-dozen stout Asturians to man it.’
‘Asturians?’ Don Pedro seemed surprised and not displeased.
‘We shipped a Spanish crew at Santander by Don Diego’s orders.’
‘Ah!’ Don Pedro came nearer. ‘And the ransom?’
The Frenchman proffered the package from under his arm. ‘It is here, monseigneur.’
Don Pedro took it and sauntered across to the window. He broke the heavy seals and with his dagger ripped away the envelope of sail-cloth, laying bare an oblong ebony box. He raised the lid. Nestling on a cushion of purple velvet lay a string of flawless, shimmering pearls, every bead of which was nigh as large as a sparrow’s egg. He took it in his hands, setting the empty box upon the window-seat.
‘Don Diego has done well,’ he said at last. ‘Tell him so from me.’
The seaman looked his surprise. ‘But will your excellency not tell him so, yourself? The boat is waiting…’
Don Pedro interrupted him. ‘Not to-night. It leaves me no time to make my little preparations. You shall come again at dusk to-morrow when I will be ready.’
‘As your excellency pleases.’ Duclerc was uneasy. ‘But delays are dangerous, monseigneur.’
Don Pedro slowly turned, and slowly smiled. ‘All life is dangerous, my friend. And so at dusk to-morrow in the little cove where the brook joins the sea. God accompany you.’
Duclerc bowed, and departed. Alone, Don Pedro stood bemused a moment, holding that priceless string in the cup of his two hands, admiring the lustre of the pearls so chastely iridescent in the waning sunshine of that autumn evening. He smiled faintly, musingly, as he considered precisely how he should present them. At last he lightly tied together the two silken ends, and returned to the dining-room.
He found that his lordship and Francis had departed, and that Margaret was now alone, occupying the window-seat and gazing out over the parterres from which the glory of the flowers had almost entirely passed. She glanced over her shoulder as he entered; but his hands were now behind him, and she caught no glimpse of the thing he carried.
‘Is all well?’ she asked him.
‘All is very well, my lady,’ answered he, whereupon she resumed her contemplation of the sunset.
‘Your visitor is from… overseas?’ she asked.
‘From overseas,’ he replied.
He sauntered across to her, his feet rustling in the fresh rushes with which the dining-room floor was daily spread. He stood close behind her at the window, whilst she, awaiting so much as he might choose to tell her, continued to gaze outward. Very quietly he raised his hands, poised that splendid necklace for a moment, and then let it slip over her golden head.
She felt the light touch upon her hair and then quite cold upon her bare neck, and she leapt instantly to her feet, her cheeks aflame. She had conceived that what she felt was the touch of his fingers. And for all that he smiled as he stood now, bending slightly forward, he was stabbed by the swift resentment of what he saw she had imagined.
Perceiving her error and seeing the necklace hanging there upon her white skin, she laughed a little, between awkwardness and relief.
‘Sir, I vow you startled me.’ She took the pearls in her fingers to examine them, and then, realizing the magnificence of what she beheld, she fell breathless and some of the colour slowly faded from her cheeks.
‘What is this?’
‘The ransom that I have had fetched from Spain,’ he answered simply.
‘But…’ She was aghast. She knew something of the value of jewels, enough to discern that here upon her bosom lay a fortune. ‘But this, sir, is beyond all reason. It is of enormous price.’
‘I told you that if you left it to me I should set a high value upon myself.’
‘It is a prince’s ransom,’ she continued.
‘I am almost a prince,’ he deprecated.
She would have said more on the same score, but that he brushed the matter aside as trivial and of insufficient moment to engage their notice further.
‘Shall we waste words upon so slight a thing in an hour when every word of yours to me is become more precious than all the foolish pearls upon that string?’
Here was a new bold note upon which he had never yet dared to touch, a lover’s note. She stared at him blankly, taken by surprise. He swept on, explaining any ambiguities in the words he had used already. ‘The ransom is delivered, and the hour of my departure is approaching—too swiftly, alas! So that I have your leave, your consent, my release from the parole which binds me, I sail to-morrow night for Spain.’
‘So soon?’ said she.
It seemed to him, no doubt deluded by his hopes, that she spoke wistfully; the shadow which crossed her face he assumed to be of regret. These things were spurs to his desire. He was a little breathless, a little stirred out of his habitual composure.
‘ “So soon?” you say! I thank you for those words. They hold the very seed of hope. They lend me audacity to dare that in which I must otherwise have faltered.’
The ring of his voice was not to be mistaken, nor the gleam of his dark eyes, nor yet the flush that came to warm the ivory pallor of his cheeks. All her femininity vibrated to it; vibrated in alarm.
He leaned over her. ‘Margaret!’ It was the first time he had uttered her name, and he uttered it in a caressing murmur that lingered fondly over each vowel. ‘Margaret, must I go as I came? Must I go alone?’
She saw that she must deliberately misunderstand him so as to leave him a clear line of retreat from an advance in which it was not desired that he should continue. ‘You’ll have friends on board, I make no doubt,’ she answered with simulated lightness, seeking to steady the fluttering of her heart.
‘Friends?’ He was scornful. ‘It is not friends I lack, or power, or wealth. These are mine in abundance. My need is of someone to share all this, to share all that I can bestow, and I can bestow so much.’ He went headlong on before she could check him. ‘Will you waste your lovely life in this barbarous corner of a barbarous land, when I can open all the world to you, render you rich and powerful, honoured, envied, the jewel of a court, a queen of queens? Margaret!’
She shrank together a little. It was impossible to be angry unless it were with herself for a lack of circumspection which justified the presumption of his speech. And yet in the manner of it there was nothing presumptuous. It was respectful, pleading, humble. He had said no word of love. Yet every word he had uttered spoke of it with a convincing eloquence; his accents of entreaty, his very attitude of supplication were all instinct with it.
The prospect he held out was not without allurement, and it may even be that for a second the temptation to possess all that lay within his gift may have assailed her. To be powerful, rich, honoured, envied. To move in the great world, to handle destinies, perhaps. That was to drink the full rich wine of life, to exchange for the intoxicating cup of it the tasteless waters of this Cornish home.
If the temptation assailed her, it can have done so only for a moment, during that little pause of a half-dozen heartbeats. When she spoke she was calm and sane again and true to herself. She answered him quite gently.
‘Don Pedro, I will not pretend to misunderstand you. Indeed, that were impossible. I thank you for the honour you have done me. I esteem it that, my friend, believe me. But…’ She lingered a moment on the word, and raised her shoulders in a little shrug. ‘It may not be.’