The Lady of Loyalty House: A Novel

XXX

RUFUS PROPOSES

Rufus stepped stealthily out of the dusking garden into the lighted room, and moving noiselessly across the floor, laid his hand on Halfman’s shoulder. Halfman did not look round.

“Well, Sir Rufus,” he asked, as calmly as if the sudden touch had been some recognized, awaited signal.

“You are not to be taken by surprise, my good friend,” Sir Rufus said. Halfman shrugged his shoulders.

“It would need more than the clap of a man’s paw on my back to take me by surprise; and, besides, I saw you coming. There is a mirror near, good Sir Rufus, and even in yonder owl-light I could pick you out of the mist. Moreover, I thought you would come.”

“Why did you think I would come?” Sir Rufus asked, with a frown.

“Just because I thought it,” Halfman answered, indifferently. “And, you see, my thoughts were true thoughts.”

Sir Rufus came closer to him, speaking in his ear.

“I hope you hate all Roundheads,” he said. “All damned rebels.”

Halfman’s only answer was to whistle very softly the first few bars of a roaring Cavalier ballad. The grasp on Halfman’s shoulder tightened.

“There is one damned Roundhead here who vexes me,” Sir Rufus said, fiercely.

“I think his name is called Cloud,” said Halfman.

Sir Rufus swore a round oath.

“I wish he were dead,” he said.

“If wishes were coaches,” Halfman observed, sententiously, “beggars would ride.”

“He would have been dead ere this if she had not wheedled the King out of his wits. His Majesty is in a forgiving disposition to-day, and forgets his friends at the prayer of a pretty face. I wish this rebel were dead, friend.”

“He will die in time,” Halfman commented, philosophically. Sir Rufus growled.

“You are as dull as mud. It would be money in your pocket, friend Halfman, ay, money running over your pocket-holes, if this rebel were to be your quarry.”

Halfman shook his head, and a knowing smile twisted his mouth awry.

“Nay, Sir Rufus, with your favor, you must do your own killing,” he said.

“Why, so I will,” Rufus answered, angrily. “I will call up the household, lay hands on the rascal, back him to the wall, and bang a fusillade into him.”

Halfman laughed derisively.

“Call up the household!” he crowed. “Do you think they would come at your call? Do you think they would serve you against my lady? Why, they would fling you into the fish-pools if she bade them do so.”

The face of Sir Rufus showed that through all his fury he still retained sufficient command of his reason to know that what Halfman said was more than true. Halfman went leisurely on:

“You cannot employ your own men on the business, neither, for they must march to Oxford with the King. In little it comes to this: if you want a thing done, do it yourself.”

“You are in the right,” Sir Rufus agreed, gloomily. “This fellow was doomed long since. It is no more than common justice to put him out of the way. But I ride with the King.”

“You need not ride very far,” Halfman suggested. “A little way on the road you can slip aside unseen and get back here by a bridle-path. Watch at the western gate of the park. His horse will be waiting for him there to carry him to Cambridge. After his tender leave-taking he will come to his exit a clear mark on the white garden-path for a steady hand holding a pistol. So you can whistle ‘Good-night, cuckoo,’ as you haste to o’ertake the King.”

“’Tis an ingenious scheme,” Sir Rufus mused. Halfman laughed grimly.

“Oh, I am a pattern of strategy; this is but a simple ambuscado, a tame trap. You are a sure shot, I know; you cannot miss your bird. You need waste no time in making sure that he is stark. I shall be at hand to make sure, and will soon stick him in a ditch to wait for judgment.”

Sir Rufus clapped Halfman on the shoulder.

“Your wit has a most pleasant invention,” he approved. “She will soon forget this whining wry-face.”

Halfman disengaged himself from the pressure of his companion’s hand.

“It is so to be hoped,” he said, drearily; “it is so to be believed. Woman’s love-memory is a kind of quicksand that can swallow a score or so of gallant gentlemen and show no trace of their passage.”

“A curse on your poppycoddle,” Sir Rufus grumbled. “I must be stirring. I should like him to know that I killed him.”

“If I find any breath in him I will tell him,” Halfman affirmed. “Your honor over-refines your pleasant purpose. The pith is that he be killed. Remember the western gate.”

In another moment Halfman was alone, listening to the sound of spurred heels on the stairway, as Sir Rufus hastened to join the King.

“Love of woman leads us to strange issues,” he said to himself, with a wintry smile. “Cavalier, Puritan, and poor Jack here, we all love the same lady, and here be two of us clapping palms together to kill the third.”

XXXI

HALFMAN DISPOSES

Brilliana came in from the garden. Halfman heard her step and turned. She was pale with many emotions; he never had seen her more beautiful.

“The King has gone, friend,” she said; “God bless him for his clemency.”

“My heart does not sing because a Puritan lives,” Halfman answered, sourly. He stared into the fire again and saw burning towns between the dogs. Brilliana paused for a moment and then came a little closer to him.

“We have ever been friends,” she said, softly. There was a note of timidity in her voice, new to Halfman, and he turned in surprise.

“Indeed,” he said, roundly.

“We have been fellow-soldiers,” Brilliana went on, still with that curious hesitancy that sat so strangely upon her. “We have shared a siege. I have a secret to tell you.”

Halfman felt a sudden uncanny warning of danger. “A secret,” he repeated, staring at her.

Brilliana was outblushing all things red – peony, poppy, flamingo, anything.

“You have always loved me, Hobbin?” she asked, half timorously.

“I have always loved you,” he answered, slowly, with a rigid face.

“Then you will be glad of what I have to tell,” she said. “There will be no change here. For I love this gentleman even as this gentleman loves me, and we are to wed when this meddling war is ended.”

“You love him?” Halfman echoed, dully. “You wed an enemy to the King?”

Brilliana sighed.

“Love is the greatest power in all the world,” she said; “greater than kings, greater than emperors, greater than popes. But I will wed no enemy to the King. If these wars were to endure forever, then forever my dear friend and I would remain unwed and bear our single souls to heaven.”

Her voice was low and dreary; suddenly it brightened.

“But these wars will not endure forever. The King will be in London in a few days; the Parliament will be at his feet; my friend will be no more a rebel, for all rebellion will have ceased to be.”

“How if your friend be killed before the King reaches London?” Halfman asked her, hoarsely. “The wheels of war do not turn from the path of a lover.”

“If he be killed,” she said, simply, “I do not think I shall long outlive him. My heart does not veer like a vane for every breath of praise or passion. First and last, I have found my mate in the world; first and last, I will be loyal while I live. But if he die, I hope God will deal gently with me, nor suffer me to grow gray in sorrow.”

She turned away from Halfman that he might not see the tears in her eyes, and so turning did not see the tears that stood in his. She moved towards the harpsichord and dropped into the chair that served it. Her fingers fluttered over the keys and a tinkling music answered them and underlined the words she sang:

As Brilliana sat at the harpsichord playing the brave Cavalier ballad, Halfman, watching her, found his eyes dim with most unfamiliar water. Fierce memories of his life seemed to come before him sharply, vivid succeeding pictures, rich in evil. In a flash he tramped across forests, sack and battle and rapine new painted themselves upon his brain; deeds long dead and forgotten suddenly became instant agonies. He seemed like a prisoner before an invisible judge, and his startled spirit sought wildly and vainly for some good deed it might offer in plea for pity. If only he had spared that girl, that child unripe for love, who never dreamed of brutal hands. He seemed to see her in the room where he ran her down, her staring eyes; he seemed to hear her screams; he remembered how hot his blood was then, though now it ran like ice at the memory. If only he had not helped to torture the old Jew in San Juan; if only he could blot out his share in all those acts of lust and blood. And through all his horrid thoughts came the sweet voice of Brilliana singing the sweet, brave words, and he saw her curls sway as she sang, and he thought of her love for her kinsman which she had told him so simply, and he thought of his own mad love for her, which she would never know, which no one would ever understand. And then he thought of that grim sentry at the western gate whose hate was black, whose aim was fatal.

A fantastic purpose came into the man’s thought. His mind was ever like a stage with the lights lighted and the curtains drawn, upon whose boards himself played a thousand parts and played them to the top. Here was the part he had never played, the noblest, the most heroic, chiefly perhaps in this, that it was also the loneliest. The purpose had hardly pricked before he seized it, hugged it to his breast, made it incorporate with his being. Mingled with his tender pity for Brilliana there was now a splendid pity for himself, the noblest Roman of them all. But the purpose must not cool. His thoughts were all a-jumble. One of them seemed to assert to his feverish fancy that this way meant atonement; the quenching of his torch some measure of compensation for the candles he had puffed out.

Unseen he stretched his hands as if in benediction towards Brilliana, and then went noiselessly out of the room. On the stairs he met Evander descending to say farewell to his hostess, his hat in his hand and his cloak over his arm. Halfman stopped him. “She waits you in the garden-room,” he said; “I will hold your cloak and hat for you here while you make your adieus. A lover should not be cumbered.” Evander thanked him, surrendered cloak and hat, and entered the garden-room. He did not hear what Halfman said, though Halfman spoke it aloud, with all the lovers of all time for audience: “There goes the blessedest man in all the world.” Then, with Evander’s cloak about him and Evander’s hat upon his head, Halfman went out into the garden.

At the sound of Evander’s step Brilliana turned and rose to greet him.

“My dear!” she cried, her eyes luminous, her breast heaving.

“My riding-time has come,” he said, sadly. He stood apart, but she came near to him and put her hands on his shoulders.

“You found me in tears, but you must think of me as smiling – smiling for joy in my lover, smiling at the thought of his return.”

He caught her in his arms, clasped her close to him, and kissed her lips. It seemed to him as if that moment consecrated him forever. She was simply glad that the man she loved had kissed her.

“These are evil days,” he said. “Who knows when we shall meet again.”

“At least we have met,” she answered. “I shall thank God for that, morning and night. Nothing can change that, if we do not meet for months, for years, if we never meet again.”

“These wars must end soon,” Evander said, confidently. Brilliana caught at his hands.

“You will never hurt the King,” she cried. “Promise me that. You will never hurt the King.”

“I will never hurt the King,” Evander promised. “And now, dear love – ”

He could not say farewell.

There was a moment’s silence as they stood facing each other, holding hands, the woman trying to smile. The silence was suddenly, brutally broken by the loud, clear report of a shot. Brilliana stiffened with the start.

“What was that?”

“It seemed a pistol-shot in the garden,” Evander answered.

“Who should fire now?”

“I will go see,” Evander said, turning towards the open space. Brilliana restrained him.

“Oh no, dear love, my heart misgives; there may be danger.”

Evander gently released himself.

“And when are you or I afraid of danger?”

Brilliana accepted this.

“Then I go with you.”

Instantly Evander paused.

“No, no,” he said.

Brilliana repeated his words.

“Why, when are you or I afraid of danger?”

There was a noise of running feet in the garden, and then Thoroughgood sped across the moat and into the room.

“Captain Halfman has been shot,” he gasped.

“Oh, by whom?” Brilliana wailed, her eyes wide with horror.

“Is he killed?” Evander asked.

Thoroughgood answered both in a breath.

“Badly wounded. They bring him here.”

As he spoke, Garlinge and Clupp entered from the garden, bearing Halfman between them, wrapped in Evander’s mantle.

The man of gallant carriage, of swaggering alacrity, seemed to lie horribly limp in the men’s arms. Evander hurriedly made a couch of chairs and bade them lay their burden it, that he might examine the wound. Brilliana bent over him.

“Oh, my dear friend,” she sobbed.

The sound of her voice seemed to awaken Halfman. He opened his eyes.

“Lift me up,” he said, feebly, to his supporters. He looked at Brilliana. “Lady, you have been deceived. Sir Randolph escaped from his enemies. A snare was set for Captain Cloud – ” he paused.

“By whom?” cried Brilliana, the woman eager for her lover.

Something like a smile came to Halfman’s face.

“That I may not say. I was privy to the plot. But I walked into the trap myself. I fear, sir, you will find a hole in your mantle.”

“You wore my cloak?” Evander asked, in wonder. “You died for me?”

“Ah, why did you not warn?” Brilliana cried.

Halfman moved his head feebly.

“I did not want to live.”

“But you shall live,” Brilliana insisted, prayed.

Halfman laughed very faintly.

“I do not think so. I am an old soldier, and – ah!”

He gave a great gasp. Then suddenly lifted himself a little and saluted Brilliana as if on parade.

“Here, my sweet warrior,” he said, clearly. He looked fixedly at Brilliana and declaimed, “I did hear you speak, far above singing.” Then his chin dropped; his head fell back on the supporting arms. Evander touched him, turned to Brilliana.

“Alas! he’s sped.”

The only sound in the silent room was the weeping of Brilliana in Evander’s arms.

EPILOGUE

Master Marfleet in his “Diurnal” hides in his prolixities some particulars interesting to us. Thus we learn incidentally from some reflections on the wickedness of the great, that while the King reigned in Oxford – to Master Marfleet he is always the “Man of Blood” when he is not Nebuchadnezzar – Lady Brilliana Harby was in such favor at the court and with the Queen as to obtain patents of knighthood for two neighbors of hers, one Paul Hungerford and one Peter Rainham. We further learn that Brilliana accompanied the Queen – in whom Mr. Marfleet traces a remarkable likeness to Jezebel – to France in 1644, after which “flight of kites, crows, and other carrion fowl” – the words are Mr. Marfleet’s – the estate of Harby came, through the good offices of General Cromwell, into the hands of Colonel Evander Cloud, much to Mr. Marfleet’s satisfaction, a satisfaction which the school-master did not live long enough to lose.

Of Colonel Cloud’s honorable military career we find a brief but eminently satisfactory account in Corporal Blow-the-Trumpet-against-Jericho Pring’s pamphlet – now more than scarce – entitled “The Roll-Call of the Regiments of Zion.”

From a letter of Colonel Cloud’s, preserved in the Perrington Papers (Historical Manuscripts Commission, vol. XCIX., B), we learn that after Naseby the writer found among the dying the person of Sir Rufus Quaryll.

“As God may forgive me,” he writes, “I had sought for this man in encounter after encounter, with black thoughts of vengeance in my bosom. But as he lay there I felt constrained by divine impulse to forgive him, though he made me no answer but to curse horribly at me and at the fool who took my place; and so passed away, as I fear, very impenitent.”

After the surrender of the King by the Scots, and the end, as it seemed, of the civil war, Colonel Cloud, with the permission of his great chief, retired from active affairs and made his way to France, to Paris, where, in the early spring of 1647, he was married to Lady Brilliana Harby. Some of the French writers of the time make rather merry over this romantic union and the five years fidelity of squire and dame – Strephon and Chloe, as they are pleased to call them. But the laugh is rather on the wrong side of the face, for it is well known that there was bitter disappointment in the hearts and on the lips of many French gallants who had tried their best to win the beautiful English girl, and greatly resented her reservation for this solemn gentleman. One or two efforts, however, to make this resentment plain to the English soldier resulting uncomfortably, after a brisk morning’s work, in the temporary disablement of one aggressor and the repeated disarming of another, in the end the “homme à Cromwell” was left to wed in peace. Oddly enough, his best man was his old acquaintance Sir Blaise Mickleton, who, having realized his property in good time, had settled in Paris since 1644 and had almost forgotten his native tongue, which he spoke, when he did speak, with a little broken French accent, very pretty to hear. He had once tried to renew his pretensions to the hand of Brilliana, and had been so startlingly rebuffed that he never repeated the effort and was content to remain her very good friend. Evander was in England once or twice during the years 1647 and 1648, but after the death of the King, against which he vainly protested, with his famous friend he settled down in France, in the Loire country, for many happy years.

After the Restoration, Harby Hall passed by mutual arrangement into the hands of Sir Randolph Harby, who had cheerfully ruined himself in the service of his King. Through him the name still persists in Maryland, in America. Harby itself was destroyed by fire early in the eighteenth century. It was not rebuilt; the moat was filled up, and no trace of Loyalty House remains to-day. In Harby church-yard there is an ancient stone, set there by Brilliana’s order. It bears the name of Halfman, the date of his death, and after that date the words, “I did hear you speak, far above singing.”