The Lady of Loyalty House: A Novel
“This is at first blush a dilemma, but our wit makes all clear. Each of you, avowedly in the King’s name, did descend upon the dwelling of a disaffected rebel and make certain seizures there which have been duly sent to his Majesty. Each of you is, therefore, proved to be a loyal subject and honorable gentleman. So far you are with me, Sir Blaise?”
“Surely, surely,” the knight agreed.
“Yet, on the other hand,” continued Brilliana, “each of you accuses the other of robbing him. Now to rob is to offend against the King’s law, to be, therefore, an enemy to the King; and an enemy to the King is a Roundhead. Is not this well argued, Sir Blaise?”
“Socrates could not have bettered it,” commended Sir Blaise.
“We arrive, therefore, at the strange conclusion,” said Brilliana, judicially, “that each of you is at the same time an honest Cavalier and a dishonest Roundhead. Now, as no man living can be in the same breath Cavalier and Roundhead, it follows as plainly as B follows A that whichever one of you complains of the other is avowedly the King’s enemy and a palpable rebel.”
Master Paul scratched his head.
“I do not follow your reasoning,” he mumbled. Brilliana appealed to the justice of the peace.
“Yet it is very clear. Is it not, Sir Blaise?”
“Limpidity itself,” Sir Blaise approved, complacently. Brilliana resumed.
“One or other of you is a traitor and shall be sent to Oxford in chains, to await the King’s pleasure and his own pain. I care not which it be.”
“You have set me in such a quandary,” Master Paul protested, “my head buzzes like a hive.”
Brilliana directly questioned him.
“You, Master Hungerford, are you a King’s man?”
Master Paul was vehement in asseveration.
“I am a King’s man, hook and eye.”
“Then,” Brilliana assumed, “’tis Master Rainham must fare in chains to Oxford.”
Master Rainham, staring at her over Clupp’s paw, had such appealing terror in his eyes that Brilliana pitied him.
“’Tis your turn now,” she said. “Let him give tongue, Clupp.”
Clupp withdrew his hand and Master Rainham gurgled:
“I proclaim myself a faithful subject of the King. Let that dog trot to Oxford.”
“You matchless basilisk!” screamed Master Paul at him, and “You damnable mandrake!” retorted Master Peter. The pair would have flown at each other if they could have wriggled free. But as they could not they perforce resigned themselves to hear what Brilliana would say next.
“Why, then, it stands thus,” Brilliana summed up. “This court decides that you are both servants of the King; that you have both done the King good service, willing and yet unwilling. I think I shall have some little credit with the King, and I shall use it with his Majesty by entreating him to grant the grace of knighthood to two honest friends of mine and two honest lovers of his – Master Hungerford and Master Rainham.”
Master Paul looked at Master Peter; Master Peter looked at Master Paul. Master Paul smiled. Master Peter smiled.
“A knighthood!”
Master Peter mumbled the word lovingly. Master Paul blew a kiss towards Brilliana.
“Then I shall be indeed your knight,” he simpered.
“Are you content?” Brilliana asked, gravely, and the two squires answered in union,
“We are content.”
“Then this worshipful court adjourns sine die. Captain Halfman, see that our friends be refreshed ere they depart.”
Halfman rose, and with a “Follow me, sirs,” made for the door. Sir Blaise stooped over Brilliana’s finger-tips.
“Farewell, my lady wisdom. Solomon was not more wise nor Minos more sapient.”
“I thought you would uphold me,” Brilliana replied. “Farewell.”
Sir Blaise saluted Evander, who returned the salutation and quitted the room. Master Paul, taking leave of Brilliana, whispered,
“When I am knight, you shall be my lady.”
“When you are king, diddle-diddle, I shall be queen,” Brilliana laughed at him, making a reverence. He joined Halfman at the door and Master Peter approached Brilliana.
“When I wear my new title, I will lay it at your feet,” he promised, solemnly.
“Can you not keep it in your own hands?” Brilliana questioned. She made him a reverence, he made her his best bow and went to the door, where Master Paul waited with Halfman. Here a point of ceremony arose.
“After you, Sir Peter,” Master Paul suggested. Master Peter fondled the title.
“Sir Peter! It sounds nobly. Nay, after you, Sir Paul,” he protested. They were at this business so long that Halfman lost patience.
“Stand not on the order of your going,” he growled between his teeth, then grasping with an air of bluff good-fellowship an arm of either squire, he banged them somewhat roughly together.
“Nay, arm in arm, as neighbor knights should,” he suggested, and so jostled them out of the chamber and conducted them to the buttery, where for the next hour he diverted himself by making them very drunk indeed.
XXV
ROMEO AND JULIET
Brilliana turned to Evander.
“Well, Captain Puritan, are you displeased with me?”
Evander disclaimed such thought.
“Why should I be displeased that you, a King’s woman, serve the King?”
Brilliana was pertinacious.
“If you were a King’s man would you applaud me?”
“If I were a King’s man,” Evander confessed, “I could not choose but applaud you.”
“But being a Puritan?” Brilliana persisted.
“Why,” said Evander, “being a Puritan, I must ask you, were you just to your victims?”
Brilliana swept them away disdainfully.
“Each would have cheated the King in an hour, when, to all who think with me, to cheat the King is little better than to cheat God. But your scrupulosity need not shiver. If the King do not knight my misers I will requite them, little as they deserve it.”
Evander admired her.
“You are a brave lady.”
Brilliana gave a sigh.
“No, I am not brave at all; I am newly very timid. I am frightened of the real world now, and feel only at my ease with shadows.”
“Shall we journey into shadow-land?” Evander asked.
“By what path?” Brilliana questioned. Evander touched a brown, torn book.
“Shall we read again in Master Shakespeare’s book?”
For indeed they had read much in his pages that morning. Brilliana looked pleased.
“Yes, indeed. Let us go into my paradise.”
She looked into the garden and came back with a shiver.
“Ah, no, it is raining. It rained when the King raised his standard at Nottingham. Well, well, we can read here.”
Evander was turning the leaves.
“What shall we read? Comedy, history, tragedy?”
Brilliana was for the solemn mask.
“Let it be tragedy. I have laughed so much this morning that my mind turns to melancholy.”
Evander looked up at her with his finger on a page.
“Shall we read ‘Romeo and Juliet’?”
“I know that play by root of heart,” Brilliana said.
“Truly, so do I,” said Evander.
Brilliana was silent, pensive, a finger on her lip, considering some project. Then she said, doubtfully:
“You spoke the other day of women players, a thing that seemed to me incredible. Shall we see how it would seem here for us two? Let us while away a wet morning by playing a stage play.”
Evander’s heart leaped.
“With you for the sweet scene in the garden,” he cried.
In a moment Brilliana was busy in the setting of her scene. She pulled round a heavy, high-backed chair and leaped into it, leaning over the back and looking up as if the painted ceiling glowed with the stars of an Italian night. Then the words flowed from her, the wonderful words:
“‘O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?Deny thy father and refuse thy name:Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.’”Evander said his line a little stiffly; he was awkward, being a man.
“‘Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?’”Brilliana flowed on:
“‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy:Thou art thyself though not a Montague.What’s Montague? It is nor hand nor foot,Nor arm nor face. O be some other nameBelonging to a man.What’s in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other word would smell as sweet;So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called,Retain that dear perfection which he owes,Without that title. – Romeo, doff thy name;And for thy name which is no part of thee,Take all myself.’”Evander put heart now into his part as he moved towards her.
“‘I take thee at thy word.Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptiz’d;Henceforth I never will be Romeo.’”Brilliana affected to peer into the darkness of a green garden.
“‘What man art thou, that thus bescreened in night,So stumblest on my counsel?’”Evander answered, very earnest now:
“‘By a nameI know not how to tell thee who I am:My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,Because it is an enemy to thee:Had I it written, I would tear the word.’”Brilliana’s voice faltered as she took up the tale.
“‘My ears have not yet drunk a hundred wordsOf thy tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound.Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?’”Evander was quite near now to the chair and the fair maid perched upon it, and the words trembled on his lips.
“‘Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike.’”He put out his hands and caught hers for a moment. Then she drew them free and jumped down. She went to the open space and looked into the wet garden with a hand to her head and a hand to her heart. Evander followed her.
“Ah, me,” she said, “love was a heady god in Verona. Here in England he could not solder such hostilities.”
Evander answered her passionately.
“Here in England love is a more glorious god yet, for he can fling a Puritan soldier at the feet of a Cavalier lady.”
Brilliana still stared straight before her.
“We have drifted from the land of shadows.”
Evander spoke from his heart.
“We have drifted into reality. I love you. I cannot change my faith for that, I cannot change my flag. But believe this, remember this, that in the Parliament’s army one Puritan is as true your lover as all the Cavaliers who worship you.”
Brilliana turned and looked at him now, very steadfastly:
“You do not speak by the book.”
“No, only by my heart,” Evander answered, simply. “I tell you my soul’s truth. I love you, I shall love you to the end, whether the end come in a battle on a windy heath, or in an oblong box of a bed.”
Brilliana’s eyes were bright and kind.
“You do not know what you are saying. I do not know what you are saying. The world would have to change before I could listen with patience to words of love on the lips of a rebel.”
Evander answered her bravely.
“I know that. I did not hope; but I had to set my soul free. To the end of ends I shall cherish you, live for you, die for you: very lonely, well content.”
Brilliana turned away. The heart of Juliet within her was big almost to breaking.
“The rain ceases; I must go into the air.”
Even as she spoke, the door opened and Tiffany ran in.
“My lady!” she cried; “my lady, John Thoroughgood rides up the avenue on a foundering horse!”
Brilliana gave a great cry and went ghost-white.
“Dear God, the letter! I had forgotten the letter!”
Tiffany slipped from the room. Evander answered Brilliana’s cry very calmly.
“For the second, so had I. But, indeed, dear lady and friend, I know its terms.”
“You cannot be sure,” Brilliana whispered.
“I am sure,” Evander replied. “I know Colonel Cromwell.”
The door opened again and Thoroughgood entered, splashed with mud and carrying a letter in his hand.
“My lady,” said Thoroughgood, “I have ridden hard and long to find the rebels. I have killed two horses; I had to wait on Colonel Cromwell’s leisure; I was fired at thrice as I rode. At long last and through many perils here is the letter.”
“I thank you,” Brilliana said. “You are a faithful servant. Seek wine and food and rest.”
Thoroughgood saluted her and went out. He looked fagged to exhaustion. In the passage he found Tiffany, kissing-kind. Brilliana opened the letter and read it slowly. Then she gave a cry.
“Pray you read, lady,” Evander said, composedly. Brilliana complied in a hard, set voice.
“Madam, – The prisoner with whom you claim kinship was sentenced to be shot as a spy this morning. My loving greetings to my very dear friend, Mr. Cloud, who, if you chose enough to murder him, will, I know, meet death as a Christian soldier should.
“Oliver Cromwell.”“The wicked villain,” Brilliana cried.
“Nay, lady,” Evander argued tranquilly – he must carry himself well now – “the true captain doing his duty. It hath cost him a pang to sacrifice me; he would have sacrificed his son Henry or his son Richard in the like case.”
Brilliana clasped and unclasped her hands.
“I care nothing for his son Henry or his son Richard.”
“You care nothing for me?” Evander affirmed, slowly.
“I do care,” she said, hotly. “We have broken bread together, played games together, masked at friendship till the sport became reality.”
“Lady,” said Evander, “I thank you for the kindness you imply. Our friendship has been brief, but passing sweet. I shall die on a divine memory.”
“Why, sir,” she gasped, “you do not think I could kill you now?”
“You vowed I should die if your cousin died,” he reminded her. “I think you must keep your word. It is the fortune of war.”
“The fortune of war!” Brilliana gave a bitter laugh. “I would not have you die to save – Oh, I must not say – but fly, sir, fly! Ride hot and hard to Cambridge, where you will be safe. You shall have the best horse in my stable. You are my prisoner. I give you back your parole. Only, for God’s sake, go! My friends would kill you if they caught you here.”
Evander begged a boon.
“May I kiss your hand before I go?”
Brilliana tried to smile.
“A Cavalier would not have asked.”
“I am Puritan, ingrain,” he asserted.
“You are a dear gentleman.”
She sighed and held out her hand. As he stooped to salute it the door was dashed open and a man booted and spurred flung into the room. As he stood for a moment amazed at what he saw, Brilliana, turning, recognized Sir Rufus Quaryll. She disengaged her hand from Evander’s and moved a little towards him. Evander instinctively felt for his sword. Sir Rufus’s face was a great blaze of red.
“In the devil’s name, what does this mean?” he shouted.
Brilliana drew herself up.
“You forget yourself,” she said, haughtily. Rufus barked at her with rage.
“You have forgotten yourself; in the arms of a doomed traitor.”
“Civil words, sir!” Evander cried, moving on him. Brilliana motioned him to hold back.
“This gentleman is no traitor.”
An open letter lay at Rufus’s feet. He pounced on it and read. He was pale now, the white heat of anger.
“Gentleman! Oh, I know much, guess all. Randolph is dead there yonder, and this rogue, who should be dead and ditched here, lives. Faugh! But he dies now.”
On the word he had drawn his sword and advanced upon Evander, whose own sword was no less swiftly out. Brilliana came between the two men.
“If you kill him, you kill me,” she said.
“By God, you deserve to die!” was Rufus’s answer.
In the headiness of their brawl none of the party had noticed how the door had opened again and how a man stood at gaze in the doorway. A slender man of middle height, in travel-stained riding-habit of black; a man with a comely, melancholy face and sad eyes; a man who seemed very weary. He wore a jewelled George. For a moment the new-comer stood unheeded, then he advanced into the room. Sir Rufus heard him, turned, and cried, “The King!” Evander sent his sword back into its sheath. Brilliana knelt in reverence. This was the hero, almost the divinity, the monarch she worshipped, the sovereign she had never seen.
“Gentlemen, what is this?” the King asked. He turned to Brilliana.
“Lady, why did you not come to greet me?”
Brilliana rose.
“Your Majesty – ” she began, but Rufus interrupted her hotly.
“Forgiveness, sire. I dashed ahead to warn her of the great honor you offered, halting here from Banbury, only to find her slobbering on a Roundhead gallows-bird.”
Brilliana looked steadfastly at the King. She was very pale but not at all afraid.
“Your Majesty, this man slanders basely. This gentleman is honorable.”
“Honorable!” Rufus repeated, in derision.
“Silence, sir!” Charles commanded. “Who are you?” he asked of Evander. Evander saluted.
“Captain Evander Cloud, of the Parliamentary army.”
“How come you here?” the King inquired.
Brilliana answered for him.
“Your Majesty, he was taken prisoner treacherously, though the treachery was mine, three days ago. I offered his life in exchange for the life of Randolph Harby.”
“And Randolph Harby is dead,” said Rufus, “shot as a spy by the devilish rebel of Cambridge. See, sire – see!”
He offered the letter to Charles, but the King put it from him. His face was inscrutable as Evander urged his case.
“Your Majesty, I am no spy, and my life could not be pawned for a spy’s life.”
Charles’s sad eyes travelled to Brilliana.
“Randolph Harby was no spy,” he said. “You held this gentleman hostage for your cousin’s life?”
“I did make that offer,” Brilliana admitted. The King frowned now.
“And yet he still lives. I thought this was called Loyalty House.”
“Disloyalty House it should be called now,” Rufus taunted. Brilliana turned upon him fiercely.
“You lie! you lie! you lie!” she hurled the words at him, hating him. Charles held up his hand.
“Peace! This is not the welcome I expected here. We did not think to find rebels tendered so delicately. Sir Rufus, we give you charge of Harby and of this gentleman. We will consider his claim presently, for we would deal honestly even with our enemies.”
He looked at Evander.
“But we can give you little hope, sir. Prepare to die.”
Fretfully he addressed Rufus.
“I am very weary. I must break my fast.” He glanced coldly at Brilliana.
“Lady, we shall not need your attendance.”
Brilliana made her master a deep reverence.
“I take my leave, your Majesty.” She went close to Evander.
“Can you forgive me?” she begged. Evander looked into her wet eyes joyously.
“Read in my heart that I thank God to have known you, loved you.”
Brilliana laid a hand for a moment on his shoulder and spoke in a soft, even voice.
“You have been my enemy; you have been my friend; you are now the one man in all the world for me. Read in my heart that I thank God to have known you, that I thank God that I love you. Remember, I love you, Evander. Farewell.”
Then she saluted the King and went slowly out of the room without looking back.
XXVI
RESURRECTION
Some hours later Rufus Quaryll sat alone in the garden-room, writing. It was coming on dusk; candles had been lit, the fire was ruddy on the hearth. Rufus, as he wrote, was well content with the turn of things. He raged at Brilliana, but she should marry him all the same when the Puritan dog was dead. He had, as he believed, convinced the King at meat that the plea Evander raised was valueless, that Evander’s life was rightly forfeit. Evander was under close guard; so, indeed, was Brilliana, for he had stationed a sentry at the door of her apartments: he was determined that she should not see the King again. Now the King lay in the inner room, sleeping; when he rose it would be easy to get the order for Evander’s death. Furious in his hate, furious in his love, he would neither spare Evander nor surrender Brilliana. She should be his wife, if he had to drag her before an altar.
As he thought and wrote, the door opened and Halfman entered the room. Rufus, lifting his head, faced him with a finger on his lips while with the other he pointed to the door of the inner chamber.
“Hush!” he whispered; “the King sleeps. But all is well. He has as good as promised the Puritan shall die.”
“All is not so well as you think,” said Halfman, sardonically. “Here comes one more pleased to see you than you to see him.”
He went to the door again and ushered in a man who had waited outside, a man muffled in a cloak, and his face hidden by the way his hat was pulled over it. The man advanced slowly towards the surprised Rufus, and suddenly dropping his cloak and throwing back his hat uncovered a youthful, jovial face. Rufus gaped at him in despair and gasped a name:
“Randolph!”
Randolph Harby dropped into a chair and chuckled.
“No wonder you stare as if you faced a spectre. But I’m flesh and blood, lad.”
Rufus, trying to collect himself against this staggering blow, again raised a warning hand.
“For Heaven’s sake speak lower! The King is asleep yonder. How do you come here?”
Randolph leaned over and whispered, giggling, into Sir Rufus’s ear. Halfman watched with grim amusement. If he loved Evander little, come to think of it he loved Rufus less, all said and done; so he grinned at his discomfiture.
“A wonder,” Randolph said. “When they had the time to try me, their fools’ court-martial, thanks to that damned Cromwell, settled me for a spy and sentenced me to be shot. But the jailer where I lay had a daughter. Need I say more? We Harbys are invincible. Any way, there was no prisoner when the shooting-party came to claim me, and here I am, in time, I hope, to save the life of that poor Puritan devil.”
Sir Rufus’s wits were busy hatching mischief. He looked with aversion at the smiling, self-complacent ass whose resurrection tangled his plan. But his voice was very amiable as he asked:
“Do any in the household know of your return?”
“Devil a one,” the youth answered, cheerily, and Sir Rufus would have liked to drive a knife into him for his mirth, though his spirits rose at his answer. “I thought to take my cousin by surprise, scare her with my ghost, maybe. So I came skulking through the park and ran on this good sir, who nabbed me.” He indicated Halfman with a wave of the hand. “I explained to him, so that my joke should not spoil, and he smuggled me in here to surprise you. Where is Brilliana?”
Rufus looked at him thoughtfully.
“Are you fresh enough to ride?” he asked.
“If need be,” Randolph replied, astonished.
Rufus talked rapidly, writing a letter as he spoke.
“Then you may save your Puritan yet. We sent your hostage to Oxford for safe-keeping. News came of your death, and but now the King sent an order to have the fellow shot. But you can overtake the order, outstrip it. Here is a reprieve for the prisoner.”
Rufus folded the paper, sealed it, and handed it to the bewildered Randolph.
“Pick what horse you please, and ride for the honor of our cause.”
Randolph gasped.
“May I not see the King?”
Rufus refused him firmly.
“Impossible. His Majesty sleeps.”
“My cousin Brilliana?” Randolph asked. “What of my joke?”
Rufus spoke very solemnly.
“The one thing now is to save a man’s life. Ride hard, and God speed you.” Randolph yielded cheerfully.
“Well, well, I should be sorry the rebel dog should die wrongfully. You will justify me to the King for not attending him?”
Rufus nodded.
“I will justify you to his Majesty.”
“And not a word to Brilliana,” Randolph iterated. “I will have my joke on my return. Farewell.”
He muffled himself again and went out quickly. Rufus sat biting the end of his quill. Halfman stepped forward and made him a series of extravagant salutations, which parodied the most elaborate congees of a dancing-master. Rufus glared at him.
“What is the matter with you?” he asked, savagely. Halfman leered apishly at him.
“You are a splendid scoundrel,” he vowed. “Do not frown. I have lived with such and I speak in praise.”
Rufus struck his hands upon the table.
“I will have this Puritan devil,” he swore, “if the King do not play the granny.”
Halfman winked at him, diverted by his heat and hate.
“Say that more softly, for I think I hear him stirring.”
The two listened in silence. The curtains of the inner room were parted and Charles entered the room. He still looked haggard, ill at ease.
“Was any one here?” he asked, as the two men rose respectfully. Rufus answered, glibly:
“No, your Majesty. We spoke in whispers to respect your rest. Did your Majesty sleep well?”
“Ill, very ill,” Charles answered, drearily. “I had bad dreams and could not wake from them. Leave me, sirs.”
