The Lady of Loyalty House Part 4

"Why, what then?" questioned Halfman, with his eyes so fixed on Thoroughgood's that Thoroughgood, dogged as he was, averted his gaze.

"Naught's left but surrender," he grunted, between his teeth. The words came thickly, but Halfman heard them clearly. He raised his right hand for a moment as if he had a thought to strike his companion, but then, changing his temper, he let it fall idly upon his knee as he surveyed Thoroughgood with a look that half disdained, half pitied.

"My lady will never surrender," he said, quietly, with the quiet of a man who enunciates a mathematical axiom. "You know that well enough."

Thoroughgood shrugged plaintive, protesting shoulders.

"We've stood this siege for many days," he muttered. "Food is running out; powder is running out. Even the Lady Brilliana cannot work miracles."

Halfman rose to his feet. His eyes were s.h.i.+ning and he pressed his clinched hands to his breast like a man in adoration.

"The Lady Brilliana can work miracles, does work miracles daily. Is it no miracle that she has held this castle all these hours and days against this rebel leaguer? Is it no miracle that she has poured the spirit of chivalry into scullions and farm-hands and cook-wenches so that not a Jack or Jill of them but would lose bright life blithely for her and the King and G.o.d? Is it not a miracle that she has trans.m.u.ted, by a change more amazing than anything Master Ovid hath recorded in his Metamorphoses, a villanous old land-devil and sea-devil like myself into a pa.s.sionate partisan? But what of me? G.o.d bless her! She is my lady-angel, and her will is my will to the end of the chapter."

He dropped in his chair again as if exhausted by the vehemence of his words and the emotion which prompted them. Thoroughgood contemplated him sourly.

"You prate like a play-actor," he snarled. Halfman's whole being flashed into activity again. He was no more a sentimentalist but now a roaring ranter.

"Because I was a play-actor once," he shouted, "when I was a sweet-and-twenty youngling."

Thoroughgood eyed Halfman with a sudden air of distrust.

"You never told me you were a play-actor," he growled. "You spoke only of soldiering."

Halfman laughed flagrantly in his face.

"G.o.damercy, man, there has been scant time to tell you my life's story. We have had other cats to whip. Yes, I was a play-actor once, and played for great poets, for men whose names have never tickled your ears. But the owl-public would have none of me, and, owllike, hooted me off the boards. But I've had my revenge of them. I've played a devil's part on the devil's stage for thirty red years. Nune Plaudite."

The Latin tag dropped dead at the porches of John Thoroughgood's ears, but those ears p.r.i.c.ked at part of Halfman's declamation.

"What kind of parts?" he asked, drawing a little nearer to the soldier of fortune, whose experiences fascinated his inexperience.

Halfman shrugged his shoulders and favored honest Thoroughgood with a bantering, quizzical smile.

"All kinds of parts," he answered. "How does the old puzzle run?

Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, ploughboy, gentleman, thief. I think I have played all those parts, and others, too. Fling beggar and pirate into the dish. But I tell you this, honest John, I have never played a part so dear to me as that of captain to this divine commander. I thank my extravagant stars that steered me home to serve her."

"You cannot sing her praises too sweetly for my ears," Thoroughgood answered. "But there is an end to all things, and it looks to me as if we were mighty near to an end of the siege of Harby. Why else should there be a truce called that the Roundhead captain may have speech with my lady."

"Honest John Thoroughgood," Halfman answered, with great composure, "you are not so wise as you think. This Roundhead captain has sent us. .h.i.ther the most pa.s.sionate pleadings to be admitted to parley. Why deny him? It will advantage him no jot, but it is possible we may learn from the leakage of his lips something at least of what is going on in the world."

"What is there to learn?" asked Thoroughgood. Halfman shook his head reprovingly.

"Why, for my part, I should like to learn why in all this great gap of time nothing has been done to help one side or the other. If the gentry of Harby have made no effort to relieve us, neither, on the other hand, has our leaguer been augmented by any reinforcements. If my lady has been surprised that Sir Blaise Mickleton has made no show of coming to her succor, I, for my part, am woundily surprised that the Cropheads of Cambridge have sent no further levies for our undoing."

"Why, for that matter--" Thoroughgood began, and then suddenly broke off. "Here comes my lady," he said, turning and standing in an att.i.tude of respectful attention.

Halfman had known of her coming before his companion spoke. The Lady Brilliana had come out on to the gallery from the door near the head of the stairway, and Halfman was conscious of her presence before he lifted his eyes and looked at her. She was not habited now, as on the day when he first beheld her, in her riding-robe of green, but in a simple house-gown chosen for the ease and freedom it allowed to a great lady who had suddenly found that she had much to do. The color of the stuff, a crimson, as being a royal, loyal color, well became her fine skin and her dark curls and her bright, imperious eyes. She was followed by her serving-woman, Tiffany, a merry girl that Thoroughgood adored, and one that would in days gone over have been likely to tickle the easy whimsies of Halfman. Now he had no eyes, no thoughts, save for her mistress, the la.s.s unparalleled.

Brilliana was speaking to Tiffany even as she entered the gallery.

"Strip more lint, Tiffany," she ordered; "and bid Andrew be brisk with the charcoal."

Her voice was as buoyant as the song of a free bird, and her step on the stair as light as if there were no such thing in the world as a leaguer. Tiffany crossed the gallery and disappeared through the opposite door. Brilliana, as she descended the stair, diverted her speech to Thoroughgood.

"John Thoroughgood, I saw from the lattice our envoys bringing the Parliament man down the elm walk. To them at once. They must not unhood their hawk till he come to our presence."

VII

MISTRESS AND MAN

When Thoroughgood had left the hall and Brilliana came to the floor, Halfman questioned her, very respectfully, but still with the air of one who has earned the friendly right to put questions.

"Why do you see this black-jack?" he asked. Brilliana smiled at him as radiantly as if the holding of a house against armed enemies was the properest, pleasantest business imaginable.

"With the littlest good-will in the world, I promise you," she answered. "But, you know, he so plagued for the parley that it was easier to try him than deny him. Besides, good friend and captain, I learn from what I read in Master Froissart's Chronicles that it were neither customary nor courteous to deny conference to a supplicating enemy."

Halfman adored her for her courage, for her calm a.s.sumption of success.

"How if he but come to spy out our strategies?" he asked. "The leanness of our larder? Our empty bandoliers?"

Brilliana beamed back at him with her bewildering confidence.

"I have thought of that, too," she admitted. "But he shall not find us at our wit's-end. Seek Simon Butler, friend captain. Though our cellars are near empty he will make s.h.i.+ft to find you some full flagons. Bring hither a bunch of your subalterns, the rosiest, the most jovial, if any still carry such colors and boast such spirit; let them gather in the banqueting-hall, where, with such wit as French wine can give, let them sing as if they were merry and well fed. Our sanctimonious spy-out-the-nakedness-of-the-land must think we are well victualled, he must think we are well mannered."

Halfman made her a sweeping reverence which was not without its play-actor's grace, though its honesty might have pardoned a greater awkwardness.

"We are well womaned, lady," he a.s.severated, "with you for our leader. By sea and by land I have served some great captains, but never one greater than you for constancy and manly valor."

Brilliana's bright face took a swift look of gravity and she gave a little sigh.

"The King's cause," she said, soberly, "might turn a child into a champion."

The steady loyalty that made her words at once a psalm and a battle-cry bade Halfman's pulses tingle. Who could be found unfaithful where this fair maid was so faithful? Yet he remembered their isolation and the memory made him speak.

"I marvel that none of your neighbors have tried to lend us a hand?"

"How could they?" Brilliana asked, astonished. "The brave are with the King at Shrewsbury; the stay-at-homes are not fighters."

"Hum," commented Halfman. "What of Master Paul Hungerford?"

Brilliana shrugged her shoulders.

"A miserly daw, who would not risk a crown to save the crown."