The Lady of Loyalty House Part 17

His jaws shook, his joints twitched, he was abject in alarm.

Springing to her feet, Brilliana spoke impatiently.

"A Parliament man is outside the King's law; his goods are forfeit, and to confiscate them as legal as loyal. I thought you might choose to serve the King and please me." This last was said with an accent of disdain which made the unhappy squire s.h.i.+ver. "I was in error, so no more words of it. Good-day to you."

And my Lady Brilliana made Master Paul a courtesy so contemptuous and a gesture of dismissal so decisive that Master Hungerford's terror deepened. If the King's cause were to go well, if the lady indeed had favor with his Majesty, to offend her would be verily a piece of mortal folly. He came nigh to falling on his knees as he pleaded.

"Nay, nay, never so hot, now; I am your suitor, in faith, I am your very good servant. I would serve your will in this if I could but march with the law."

Brilliana jumped at his concession. She saw Tiffany in the distance crossing the garden towards her and guessed that she came to announce the arrival of the other miser; so she was eager to clinch the business with Master Hungerford.

"Why, so you ever shall, with the King's law. What more easy? I represent the King in this district; this fellow is a suspected rebel; I give you leave to search his house for arms."

Master Paul p.r.i.c.ked his ears. "Ah, so, for arms, you say?"

Tiffany paused in the archway and jerked her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the house. Brilliana shrugged her shoulders, impatient of Master Paul's denseness.

"If you find gold in your search for steel, so much the better. Come, come, this is your happy time, for I am told Master Rainham is abroad."

She gave a glance for confirmation at Halfman, who lounged forward.

"That he is," he a.s.serted, briskly. "He has gone a-marketing."

"Then to it at once!" Brilliana cried, eying the waverer encouragingly. "Take such of my people as you will. You will find some at the stables yonder," and as she spoke she pointed in the direction opposite to the house. "Master Rainham's miserliness keeps but a small retinue. You will meet with no resistance. Go forth, my knight."

Master Paul almost skipped with delight and he cracked his fingers vigorously. He seemed even less pleasing merry than terrified.

"You call me your knight." He turned and took Halfman to witness.

"She calls me her knight. I'll do it. I'll do it," he voiced, exultingly.

Brilliana, with strenuous self-restraint, seemed to applaud his antics.

"Bravely said, Chivalry!" she cried. "Let it be done, and well done, ere dusk."

Master Paul quavered before her in an ecstasy of delighted obedience.

"I fly, enchantress--I fly!" he chirruped. Then, as he turned to go, another thought struck him, and he entreated, grotesquely languis.h.i.+ng, "Prithee, your hand to kiss first."

Brilliana denied him affably.

"By-and-by, maybe, as the prize of your triumph. Farewell."

After sundry strange sc.r.a.pings, Master Hungerford took his departure in the direction of the stables. As soon as his back was turned, Brilliana questioned her maid.

"Well, Tiffany, is it Master Rainham?"

"Ay, my lady," Tiffany answered, demurely. She knew there was some manner of mystification forward and yearned for the key to it. "He chafes in the music-chamber."

"Send him here top-speed," Brilliana commanded. With a whisk of flying skirts Tiffany scuttered back to the house, and Brilliana turned to Halfman, the laughter in her eyes seeking and finding the laughter in his.

"Well," she said, "our angling prospers blithely. We have tickled one fish. Now for the other chub."

Halfman, who had been swaying with silent merriment ever since the departure of Master Paul, suddenly grew steady again and looked warnings.

"He asks for another kind of angling, as I gather," he suggested.

Brilliana looked daintily wise.

"As I bait the hook I believe I will land him. It will be rare if I can make Paul rob Peter while Peter plunders Paul. How dare they be so close-fisted while the King's flag is flying and England's honor in peril!"

If she said this with any idea of palliating the possible lawlessness of her action in the eyes of her companion, she wasted her words.

Halfman had not been so happy since his return to England, not even in the briskest days of the siege, as he was now in the staging of this lawless comedy. The old pirate jigged in him at this fair maid's strategy.

"By St. Nicholas," he swore, "they should be bled white for a brace of knaves! This, I take it, is your other honor-bankrupt atomy."

XVIII

SERVING THE KING

It was indeed Master Peter Rainham whom Tiffany now brought into the presence of her mistress, and left there standing and staring. Master Peter, eyed and appraised by the searching scrutiny of Halfman, resolved himself into a thick-set, boorish fellow, whose flying forehead, little, angry eyes, and a.s.sertive, yellow teeth made him, to Halfman's mind, resemble nothing in the world so much as a boar's head on an ale-house sign. Yet the fellow stood his ground st.u.r.dily enough, and stared at Brilliana with no sense of distress at his dirty homespun or his dirty hands.

"You sent for me?" he challenged. "Have you changed your mood? I am ever of the same mind, and will wed when you will."

The wolf look leaped into Halfman's eyes, and the loutish squire's life was, all unawares, in the greatest peril it had ever fringed.

But Brilliana, intent only on her purposes, beamed on her blunt suitor as if he had scattered flowers at her feet.

"You are a wonderful wooer," she protested. "But whatever admiration of your person I may, without unbecoming effrontery, confess, I would have you to know, plain and square, from this moment, that I will hearken to none but a King's man."

The boor's little eyes glinted and the boor's rusty fingers rasped at his stubble chin as he answered emphatically:

"Then I am a King's man, root and branch."

But his face showed less loyal confidence at Brilliana's next words.

"Then you must know his Majesty is in straits for ready money. Will you, who are reputed rich, come to his aid with a round sum?"

Master Peter showed his teeth in a snarl and flung up his hands.

"Reputed rich! Oh, what a bitter thing is a bad reputation. I am Job-poor; both ends will not meet, I tell you. If I had for lending-money a guinea in one pocket, why, I should lend it to the other pocket."

"Why do you woo me if you be so poor?" Brilliana asked, with a fine show of heat, and Halfman nodded his head as much as to say, "Ay, ay, answer me that, if you can."

Master Peter strove to answer, lamely enough.

"Poor in pennies, lady, poorer in s.h.i.+llings, poorest in guineas. I may own half the country-side and have no coin to clink against the other."

Brilliana scoffed at his protest.