The Line of Love Part 24

"There also be women in the world, Master Mervale," Lord Falmouth suggested, with a deeper gravity, "that are but the handsome sepulchres of iniquity,--ay, and for the major part of women, those miracles which are their bodies, compact of white and gold and sprightly color though they be, serve as the lovely cerements of corruption."

"Doubtless, my lord. The devil, as they say, is homelier with that s.e.x."

"There also be swords in the world, Master Mervale?" purred the marquis.

He touched his own sword as he spoke.

"My lord--!" the boy cried, with a gasp.

"Now, swords have at least three uses, Master Mervale," Falmouth continued. "With a sword one may pick a cork from a bottle; with a sword one may toast cheese about the Twelfth Night fire; and with a sword one may spit a man, Master Mervale,--ay, even an ambling, pink-faced, lisping lad that cannot boo at a goose, Master Mervale. I have no inclination, Master Mervale, just now, for either wine or toasted cheese."

"I do not understand you, my lord," said the boy, in a thin voice.

"Indeed, I think we understand each other perfectly," said the marquis.

"For I have been very frank with you, and I have watched you from behind this bush."

The boy raised his hand as though to speak.

"Look you, Master Mervale," the marquis argued, "you and my lord of Pevensey and I be brave fellows; we need a wide world to bustle in. Now, the thought has come to me that this small planet of ours is scarcely commodious enough for all three. There be purgatory and Heaven, and yet another place, Master Mervale; why, then, crowd one another?"

"My lord," said the boy, dully, "I do not understand you."

"Holy Gregory!" scoffed the marquis; "surely my meaning is plain enough!

it is to kill you first, and my lord of Pevensey afterward! Y'are phoenixes, Master Mervale, Arabian birds! Y'are too good for this world.

Longaville is not fit to be trodden under your feet; and therefore it is my intention that you leave Longaville feet first. Draw, Master Mervale!" cried the marquis, his light hair falling about his flushed, handsome face as he laughed joyously, and flashed his sword in the spring suns.h.i.+ne.

The boy sprang back, with an inarticulate cry; then gulped some dignity into himself and spoke. "My lord," he said, "I admit that explanation may seem necessary."

"You will render it, if to anybody, Master Mervale, to my heir, who will doubtless accord it such credence as it merits. For my part, having two duels on my hands to-day, I have no time to listen to a romance out of the Hundred Merry Tales."

Falmouth had placed himself on guard; but Master Mervale stood with chattering teeth and irresolute, groping hands, and made no effort to draw. "Oh, the block! the curd-faced cheat!" cried the marquis. "Will nothing move you?" With his left hand he struck at the boy.

Thereupon Master Mervale gasped, and turning with a great sob, ran through the gardens. The marquis laughed discordantly; then he followed, taking big leaps as he ran and flouris.h.i.+ng his sword.

"Oh, the coward!" he shouted; "Oh, the milk-livered rogue! Oh, you paltry rabbit!"

So they came to the bank of the artificial pond. Master Mervale swerved as with an oath the marquis pounced at him. Master Mervale's foot caught in the root of a great willow, and Master Mervale splashed into ten feet of still water, that glistened like quicksilver in the sunlight.

"Oh, Saint Gregory!" the marquis cried, and clasped his sides in noisy mirth; "was there no other way to cool your courage? Paddle out and be flogged, Master Hare-heels!" he called. The boy had come to the surface and was swimming aimlessly, parallel to the bank. "Now I have heard,"

said the marquis, as he walked beside him, "that water swells a man. Pray Heaven, it may swell his heart a thousandfold or so, and thus hearten him for wholesome exercise after his ducking--a friendly thrust or two, a little judicious bloodletting to ward off the effects of the damp."

The marquis started as Master Mervale grounded on a shallow and rose, dripping, knee-deep among the lily-pads. "Oh, splendor of G.o.d!" cried the marquis.

Master Mervale had risen from his bath almost clean-shaven; only one sodden half of his mustachios clung to his upper lip, and as he rubbed the water from his eyes, this remaining half also fell away from the boy's face.

"Oh, splendor of G.o.d!" groaned the marquis. He splashed noisily into the water. "O Kate, Kate!" he cried, his arms about Master Mervale.

"Oh, blind, blind, blind! O heart's dearest! Oh, my dear, my dear!"

he observed.

Master Mervale slipped from his embrace and waded to dry land. "My lord,--" he began, demurely.

"My lady wife,--" said his lords.h.i.+p of Falmouth, with a tremulous smile.

He paused, and pa.s.sed his hand over his brow. "And yet I do not understand," he said. "Y'are dead; y'are buried. It was a frightened boy I struck." He spread out his strong arms. "O world! O sun! O stars!" he cried; "she is come back to me from the grave. O little world! small s.h.i.+ning planet! I think that I could crush you in my hands!"

"Meanwhile," Master Mervale suggested, after an interval, "it is I that you are crus.h.i.+ng." He sighed,--though not very deeply,--and continued, with a hiatus: "They would have wedded me to Lucius Rossmore, and I could not--I could not--"

"That skinflint! that palsied goat!" the marquis growled.

"He was wealthy," said Master Mervale. Then he sighed once more. "There seemed only you,--only you in all the world. A man might come to you in those far-off countries: a woman might not. I fled by night, my lord, by the aid of a waiting-woman; became a man by the aid of a tailor; and set out to find you by the aid of such impudence as I might muster. But luck did not travel with me. I followed you through Flanders, Italy, Spain,--always just too late; always finding the bird flown, the nest yet warm. Presently I heard you were become Marquis of Falmouth; then I gave up the quest."

"I would suggest," said the marquis, "that my name is Stephen;--but why, in the devil's name, should you give up a quest so laudable?"

"Stephen Allonby, my lord," said Master Mervale, sadly, "was not Marquis of Falmouth; as Marquis of Falmouth, you might look to mate with any woman short of the Queen."

"To tell you a secret," the marquis whispered, "I look to mate with one beside whom the Queen--not to speak treason--is but a lean-faced, yellow piece of affectation. I aim higher than royalty, heart's dearest,--aspiring to one beside whom empresses are but common hussies."

"And Ursula?" asked Master Mervale, gently.

"Holy Gregory!" cried the marquis, "I had forgot! Poor wench, poor wench!

I must withdraw my suit warily,--firmly, of course, yet very kindlily, you understand, so as to grieve her no more than must be. Poor wench!--well, after all," he hopefully suggested, "there is yet Pevensey."

"O Stephen! Stephen!" Master Mervale murmured; "Why, there was never any other but Pevensey! For Ursula knows all,--knows there was never any more manhood in Master Mervale's disposition than might be gummed on with a play-actor's mustachios! Why, she is my cousin, Stephen,--my cousin and good friend, to whom I came at once on reaching England, to find you, favored by her father, pestering her with your suit, and the poor girl well-nigh at her wits' end because she might not have Pevensey. So," said Master Mervale, "we put our heads together, Stephen, as you observe."

"Indeed," my lord of Falmouth said, "it would seem that you two wenches have, between you, concocted a very pleasant comedy."

"It was not all a comedy," sighed Master Mervale,--"not all a comedy, Stephen, until to-day when you told Master Mervale the story of Katherine Beaufort. For I did not know--I could not know--"

"And now?" my lord of Falmouth queried.

"H'm!" cried Master Mervale, and he tossed his head. "You are very unreasonable in anger! you are a veritable Turk! you struck me!"

The marquis rose, bowing low to his former adversary. "Master Mervale,"

said the marquis, "I hereby tender you my unreserved apologies for the affront I put upon you. I protest I was vastly mistaken in your disposition and hold you as valorous a gentleman as was ever made by barbers' tricks; and you are at liberty to bestow as many kisses and caresses upon the Lady Ursula as you may elect, reserving, however, a reasonable sufficiency for one that shall be nameless. Are we friends, Master Mervale?"

Master Mervale rested his head upon Lord Falmouth's shoulder, and sighed happily. Master Mervale laughed,--a low and gentle laugh that was vibrant with content. But Master Mervale said nothing, because there seemed to be between these two, who were young in the world's recaptured youth, no longer any need of idle speaking.

JUNE 1, 1593

_"She was the admirablest lady that ever lived: therefore, Master Doctor, if you will do us that favor, as to let us see that peerless dame, we should think ourselves much beholding unto you."_

_There was a double wedding some two weeks later in the chapel at Longaville: and each marriage appears to have been happy enough.

The tenth Marquis of Falmouth had begotten sixteen children within seventeen years, at the end of which period his wife unluckily died in producing a final pledge of affection. This child, a daughter, survived, and was christened Cynthia: of her you may hear later.

Meanwhile the Earl and the Countess of Pevensey had propagated more moderately; and Pevensey had played a larger part in public life than was allotted to Falmouth, who did not s.h.i.+ne at Court. Pevensey, indeed, has his sizable niche in history: his Irish expeditions, in 1575, were once notorious, as well as the circ.u.mstances of the earl's death in that year at Triloch Lenoch. His more famous son, then a boy of eight, succeeded to the t.i.tle, and somewhat later, as the world knows, to the hazardous position of chief favorite to Queen Elizabeth.