The Master of Appleby Part 69

LII

WHICH BRINGS US TO THE JOURNEY'S END

I may confess to you, my dears, that Mr. Gilbert Stair's parting tirade did not move me greatly, since I would set down everything he had said to the one account--the miser's.

Yet when I came to second thoughts upon it, this account balanced but indifferently. Why should he be so eager to make me think small of Margery's love for Richard Jennifer? And why, misliking me, as I made sure he did, should he be so hot to make the shadow marriage a thing of substance? From the miser-father's point of view, Richard, with his goodly heritage of Jennifer House, was a match to be angled for; yet here was the man in whose eye house and lands loomed largest flying into rage because I sought to put his daughter in the way of marrying them.

I was pondering thoughtfully on this, giving the pinching old man credit for any and every motive save that which he had so cursingly avowed, to wit, the furthering of his daughter's happiness, when there came a tap at the door and Mistress Margery entered.

"Dear heart! Do they limit you to a single candle when my back is turned?" she said, in mock pity; and saying it, went to light the candles in the mantel sconces.

The sight of her standing a-tiptoe to touch off the candles on the chimney breast set the old lovespell at work to make my heart beat faster. What if there were a hint of truth in Gilbert Stair's wrathful protest? What if, after all, she cared less for Richard and more for me?

Do not, I pray you, my dears, think too hardly of the man who thus lays bare the secret thoughts of his heart for you. 'Twas but a pa.s.sing gust of the tempest of disloyalty, and I was not swept wholly from my moorings. Nay, when she came to sit on the ha.s.sock at my feet, as she used to do in that other halcyon-time of convalescence, I was myself again and could look upon her sweet face with eyes that saw beyond her to the camp or battle-field where my dear lad was spending himself.

For a time we sat in silence, and 'twas she who spoke first.

"My father has been with you," she said. "I hope you did not quarrel with him."

"No," I denied, salving my conscience with the remembering that it takes two to make a quarrel; and I had done none of the cursing. "He came to give me this," I added, handing her the will.

She opened the folded parchment, reading a line of it here and there softly to herself.

--"'Being of sound mind, doth bequeath and devise to his loving wife, Margery--' Ah, had you been writing it you would not have written it so, would you, Monsieur John?"

"'Tis but a form," I would say. "All wives are 'loving' in lawyers'

speech."

She smiled up at me so like an innocent and fearless child that for the moment I could figure her no otherwise. Yet her rejoinder was a woman's.

"I say you would not have written it so; is not that the truth?"

I would not let her pin me down.

"If I should write it now, it should be written in great letters, dear lady. Though it is but a form, though that which followed was but another form, you have not failed in any wifely duty, Mistress Margery."

"Not once?"

"No, not once. Three times you have done what the lovingest wife could do to save a husband's life; and I do greatly suspect there was a fourth and earlier time. Tell me, little one; was it not you who sent the Indian to Captain Forney to tell him a patriot spy was to be executed at day-dawn in the oak glade?"

She would not answer me direct.

"'Twas I who brought you to that pa.s.s," she said, speaking soft and low.

"But for my riding down upon you one other morning in that same oak glade, you would not have had Sir Francis Falconnet's sword in your shoulder. And but for that sword wound, nothing that followed would have followed."

Saying this she fell silent for a s.p.a.ce, and when she spoke again she was become by some subtle trans.m.u.tation my trusting little maid of the by-gone halcyon-time.

"Do you remember how you used to make a comrade of me in the old days, Monsieur John, telling me things my elder brother might have told me, had I had one?"

I said I remembered; that I was not likely to forget.

"Are you strong enough to stand in that elder brother's place again to-night?"

"Try me and see, dear lady."

"Not whilst you say 'dear lady,'" she pouted. "'Twas 'Margery' and 'Monsieur John' a year agone."

"Have it as you will; I will even call you 'Madge' if it pleases you better."

"No," she said; "that is d.i.c.k's name for me; and--and it is of d.i.c.k that I would speak. You love him well, do you not, Monsieur John?"

I said I could never make her, or any woman, fully understand the bond there was between us.

"Truly?" There was the merest flavor of playful sarcasm in the uptilt of the word, but it was gone when she went on.

"Being so good a friend to d.i.c.k, then, you can advise me the better.

Tell me, if you please, must I marry him--when--"

"When you are free to do it?" I finished for her. "Why should you not, my dear?"

She was pulling the threads from the lace edging of her kerchief and would not for a king's ransom let her eyes meet mine.

"You used to say--in that other time--that love should go before a marriage; did you not? Or do I remember badly?"

"You remember well. I said it then, and I say it again at this present.

But d.i.c.k loves you well and truly, sweetheart; and you--"

She looked up quickly with the little laugh that used to mind me of happy children at play.

"And I?--now you will read a woman's heart for me, Monsieur John. Tell me; do I love him as his mistress should?"

"Nay, surely," said I, gravely, for somehow her laugh jarred upon me, "surely that is for you to say. But you have said it, long since."

"Have I?" she queried, with an arch lifting of the penciled brows that came straight from her French mother. "Mayhap you overheard me say it, Monsieur Eavesdropper?"

"G.o.d help me, little one--so I did," said I.

All in a flash her laughing mood was gone and she stood before me like an accusing G.o.ddess.

"You told me once the past was like a dream to you; you must have dreamed that part of it, sir. And yet you said a little while ago that I had not failed in any wifely duty!"

"The time and circ.u.mstance were their own best excuse. Sure I am far from blaming you, my dear. But let it pa.s.s, 'tis enough that I know you love him as he loves you."

Again her mood changed in the twinkling of an eye. She sank down upon the ha.s.sock, laughing merrily.