Back Aa

Mad Barbara

<div><h1>XXIV</h1></div> There was a shadow of unrest over England that year, as though each man distrusted his neighbor, and was ready to accuse his own friend of treason and papish practices, of taking the French King’s money, or of complicity in some wild and improbable plot. There had been no rush of the mob as yet, no Protestant fury, but the discontent and the fear and the distrust were there, spread on either side by vague whisperings and all manner of monstrous rumors. Men were seen to sit cheek by jowl in the taverns, and talk of an armed landing, of a second Massacre of St. Bartholomew, when all good Protestants were to be murdered in their beds. There were tales of Jesuits swarming over the country-side like silent, night-flying moths. The Catholic lords had long been arming, so it was said, and were ready even to murder his Majesty the King, and set up the Duke of York, that morose-faced inquisitor, in his stead. John Gore, who had suspected his father of being trammelled up in some secret undertaking, had called on my Lady Purcell one gray afternoon, and was walking home alone across the park, taking a circuit so as to pass by Rosamond’s Pool. He had been often of late to the house in Pall Mall, drawn thither by instincts that he could not smother. He went to hear news, and more than once he had spoken to Anne Purcell of her daughter; but my lady had set her mouth very firmly, and made him believe that the affair was too poignant for her. He had even questioned Mrs. Jael quietly, and the woman had drawn two gold pieces from him with her emotional loquacity and the trickle of tears down her plump cheeks. My lord had advised patience, and John Gore had done his best to abide by the advice, suspecting no treachery in it, and hoping for all that God might give. Yet often he rebelled against his blindness, yearning but to know the place where they had hidden her away. The truth might have been had by bribery, but John Gore had no reason as yet to persuade him to bribe his father’s servants, nor would he have stooped to such a thing without great need. Yet the girl had vanished out of the world, and there was no horizon toward which he might turn his eyes and know that she was there, like a light beyond the hills. In his heart he kept her image bright, even as she had appeared to him those summer days, swarthy and sorrowful, with silent lips and watchful eyes. Dusk was falling as John Gore crossed the park, and there were few people strolling along the paths. He had come close to Rosamond’s Pool when he saw two figures leaning over the rail, with the collars of their cloaks turned up and their hats down over their eyes. They turned from the water as John Gore came by, and even in the dusk he recognized the taller of the two as Stephen Gore, his father. The son stopped, and saw his father give a tug to the shorter man’s cloak. “Well met, Jack; you are the man I want. This, Captain Grylls, is that son of mine who has sailed a ship farther than any of your sea-going bravoes.” My lord’s companion bowed and lifted his hat. He was pock-marked and somewhat overdressed, with a hook nose and a sharp, dry mouth. One of his shoulders appeared higher than the other, and his head set a little askew upon his neck. “The great navigator! Proud to approach you, sir; we are mere duck-pond gentry, some of us, though we may have fought the Dutch.” His nose wrinkled queerly when he smiled, and he displayed a row of teeth discolored by tobacco. John Gore judged the man to be a rogue, and a hanger-on to the skirts of patrons about the court. His eyes had a knack of seeming to look both ways, and no doubt he would have been pleased if he had been able to see behind him like a hare. “Attend to this little affair of mine, Grylls. I shall expect you some day this week.” “Yes, my lord; you know me to be as steady as a clock.” “Yet clocks need winding, Grylls.” The man laughed politely as though he saw the gilt edge of the jest, and, lifting his hat, moved away with the discretion of an underling who has learned to tell instantly when he is no longer wanted. My lord opened his cloak and set his hat at a happier angle. “Come along, Jack; I have business for you to-night.” Now John Gore carried one matter uppermost in his mind that evening. My lord seemed to read the nature of his son’s thoughts, and dashed any illusion with the candor of a friend. “No, nothing of that kind, Jack; I had news this morning. She is well in body, but she has not changed greatly yet in soul. Put it behind you, and wait for the best. After all, there are stirring things to be done in the world, and a maid should not make a man’s blood turn to milk.” John Gore walked on in silence, his father humming a tune that sounded very much like a chant. For my Lord Stephen was a papist, though the conversion had not come till his maturer years, and whether it had been a question of conscience or of statecraft none but a Jesuit could have explained. “Who was the man you were talking with by the Pool?” “Grylls? A poor, willing kind of rogue who has learned to make himself of use. Small fry, Jack, to float in shallow streams. I have deeper waters for you, sir, with all your guns and tackle.” There was a gleam of grimness in his eyes as he spoke. “The Bible sayeth, Jack, ‘Put not your trust in princes.’ A wise saying, truly; yet I have a wiser, and that, sir, is, ‘Put not your faith in the mob.’ Trust the sheep-dog, and watch the wag of his tail, rather than bump and scurry and run with the flock. Yonder lies our anchorage.” A house rose before them amid the trees, its windows dark save for one in the first story, and that dim with the shadow of drawn curtains. John Gore recognized it as the house of Hortense. They were crossing the ground where he had fought my Lord Pembroke that wet night in summer. “Is your call there, sir?” Stephen Gore glanced this way and that, and then laid a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Yes. Join with me, Jack; there are nobler prizes to be won here than you will ever take at sea.” They entered the Mazarin’s house through the little garden door, behind which some one seemed to have been waiting, for it was opened directly my lord had given five sharp knocks. The door closed behind them, and in the dim light John Gore saw the janitor was a woman. My lord walked straight ahead toward a back stairway as though he knew the intimate secrets of the house. John Gore was following him, when he felt the woman touch his arm. “Of your curtesy, sir, the lock has caught; will you turn it for me?” She spoke with a slightly foreign accent, drawing out every syllable with quaint directness. “Have you the key?” “Here it is, sir. Fie, now, I have dropped it; how very clumsy!” She began to draw her skirts this way and that in the narrow passage, peering for the thing in the dark, and even sweeping the floor with her hands. John Gore bent down to help her. And in the quest the woman’s hair brushed up against his cheek. She gave a sudden, thrilling little laugh, and took John Gore softly by the ear. “So you have come to join us, Signor Giovanni? That is very sweet of you. We need brave men.” To be held by the ear by a waiting-woman surprised the sea-captain for the moment. He took a firm but meaning hold upon the lady’s wrist. But with the other hand she put back the hood of the cloak she wore. “Ah, how good! I have played a trick upon you both. Have you never been held by the ear, Sir John, by some pretty little waiting-maid? Now do not pretend, Sir John; I shall be able to tell a different tale.” She seemed to grow taller suddenly, and to radiate splendor even in the dusk. Her voice changed also from a mincing treble to a full contralto that seemed made for song. John Gore knew that it was Hortense. “Madam,” he said, “I beg your pardon.” She laughed with mischievous charm, and drew her hand away slowly so that it brushed his cheek. “How simple of you, Sir John. And yet you can handle a sword so well. Shall we follow my lord?” “And the key?” he asked, with a glance at the floor. “Is in the lock. And the lock is turned. So you see!” She dropped the cloak that she was wearing, and as they ascended into the light he could see the splendor of her dress gleam up gradually, the color of her hair, and the compelling beauty of her face. Her eyes seemed full of sparkles of light; her lips red, soft, and mobile, as though on the brink of a smile. She paused at the head of the stairway, and stretched out an arm across the passage that led toward a room whence light and the sound of voices came. John Gore paused also, and she stood and looked into his eyes with an earnestness that made him color. “I am serious now, Sir John. We are risking our necks here; it may be no mere supper-party and a trifling loss at cards. You are young—and, then, you have been in other lands. And yet, after all, I am speaking to you as though you were a boy.” For the moment he could only look at her, for she was so very lovely and so womanly that it was not in a man’s nature not to look. “I am in the dark,” he said, at last. “Are you afraid of the dark?” “I have dared it before—for the sake of adventure.” She still stood regarding him with her great eyes, so liquid, so mysterious, and perhaps a little sad. John Gore saw her press something to her bosom, and when she took her hand away he saw that it was a little silver crucifix hung by a chain about her neck. Her lips moved as though she were repeating some Latin prayer. “Fides sanctissima, Maria beatissima, Pater-noster in cœlo.” And then she swept forward toward the room, and John Gore followed her lest she should think him afraid. The room was quite small, panelled with dark oak, and with a fire burning upon the open hearth at one end. A long table stood in the centre. About it were seated some half a score men, and at the head thereof, in a great leather-backed chair, Coleman the Jesuit, chaplain to the Duchess of York. My Lord Gore exchanged glances with Hortense. “It was you, then, most magical Dian, playing porter at the door. I wondered what had become of our friend here. Had I known—” And he laid a hand over his heart. Hortense turned her head for an instant with an audacious flash of the eyes at John Gore. “I will not betray him, but he wished to help a woman find a key that she had not dropped, gallant Sir John!” And the look she gave him would have made the greatest epicure push his plate aside and talk. Father Coleman, infamous or sainted Coleman, as men were soon to call him, sat at the head of a table that was covered, not with papers and epistles, but with dishes of fruit, wineglasses, bottles, comfits, and spiced cakes. The gentlemen about it appeared to have easy consciences and pleasant thoughts. They were debonair, familiar, talkative, very much in the grace of pleasure. The panelling of the room was fanatical and austere, yet the Duchess’s chaplain had cheerful cheeks and vivacious eyes, and bore himself with that easy-flowing worldliness that carries a clever priest into the intimate life of palaces. It might have been nothing more than a gathering of lords and gentlemen who gossiped over their wine, comparing their views, and exchanging the ordinary news of the day. There appeared to be no elaboration of secrecy, no self-conscious sense of urgent peril. They ladled out punch, or filled their wineglasses, smiling across the table at one another, and listening to little pieces of scandal with the ingenuous cheerfulness of country ladies over their dishes of tea. All of those present appeared very interested in the breeding of race-horses, and the technicalities of the sport were bandied to and fro, even Father Coleman appearing to be possessed of very pronounced views upon so unpriestly a subject. They talked much of a famed French horse named “Soleil d’Or,” and also of a Dutch stallion whose breed none of the gentry seemed to fancy. There were a great number of noted beasts in the shires whose names and points were familiar to the whole table. “Norfolk Joe,” “Northern Star,” “Jenny of Cheshire,” “Hertford Prince”—such were some of the many titles that John Gore heard passing from mouth to mouth. Being a seaman, he felt himself out of touch with the “horse gossip” of the day. That some gentleman contemplated introducing a stud of French mares into the country was news whose significance was largely lost to him. He knew very little of Italian roans and Spanish jennets, nor why “Oak Apple” should be spoken of as a sire who had not been properly watched. There was no coarseness in their gossiping, and John Gore, who sat at one corner of the table close to Father Coleman and Hortense, saw no need for either the priest or the lady to look embarrassed. The gentlemen were still intent upon the topic when the Mazarin leaned over the side rail of her chair and drew a plate of grapes toward her. She cut a small bunch, and began to eat the grapes one by one, doing it so daintily that it was good to watch her white hands and her full red mouth. She glanced now and again at the man beside her with a charming suggestion of coy interest in him that contrasted with the mischievous mood of an hour ago. “You know more of ships than of horses, Sir John?” She gave him the title as though it provided her with an excuse for mouthing two very pretty syllables where one might have sounded blunt and clumsy. John Gore looked at her with his grave eyes and smiled. “At the Nore you would have heard ships talked of in much the same fashion.” “Yes. A sea-captain must love his ship as an Arab loves his horse.” “If she can spread her wings well and swing her shot home into an enemy.” “Truly, Sir John, even I should love to go to sea, and sail away for leagues and leagues—away to those dim islands where everything is new and strange. I feel like a little ignorant girl when I think of what you men of the sea have seen.” She looked at him so delightfully, with her eyes full of wonder and interest, that a far stronger man than Ulysses might have lingered to tell her of the splendors of unsailed seas. John Gore discovered himself in Calypso land, with white hands pushing dishes of fruit toward him and proffering Spanish wine. He was telling her of the grim passage of Cape Horn, and of the savages who lived in those wild parts, when a sudden gleam from his inner consciousness swept across his mind. He remembered how he had told the same tales to that silent, sad-eyed girl whose life had had no glamour of homage in it, and whose tragic face looked out at him from a mist of madness. He grew silent quite suddenly, bringing his voyages to a clumsy and confused end, and not noticing the questioning look in Hortense’s eyes. He felt instinctively that she was nearer to him than he wished. Her beauty became a sudden glare, clashing with something more spiritual, more mysterious, and more strangely sad. He was glad when some of the gentlemen rose and began to kiss Father Coleman’s hand. They went down by the same stairway, Hortense herself lighting them with a little Italian lamp. She was very close to John Gore in the passageway. Her dress brushed against him, while the lamp she carried made her beauty seem softly brilliant amid the shadows. “Good-night, my lord; good-night, Sir John; I hope we have not frightened you very greatly?” She searched him with her great eyes, so full of intentness for the moment that he felt their power and could not look away. “You must tell me more of those wild seas, the great rivers, and the Indians, the gold and the pearls.” He bowed to her a little gauchely, but did not touch her hand, and he had a last glimpse of her standing there with the glow from the lamp upon her face as he went out into the night. My lord appeared in excellent spirits as they walked home together in the dark. His son had a silent mood upon him, and Stephen Gore found nothing in his silence to be reproved. “Pearls and gold and strange lands. That is Hortense,” he said, suddenly, as they entered the broad street; “a splendid creature, too—in heart as well as in body.” John Gore walked on with no sound save the crisp beat of his feet upon the stones. “What was the meaning of it all, sir?” he asked, at last. “Meaning, Jack?” “Yes.” “Why, just what you please, my lad. We choice spirits and good Catholics love to have our gossip, and you can find in it just as much as you wish to know. You must come with me again, and tell the lady more about the pearls and the gold and the strange lands. I tell you, John Gore, there is something for you to discover more mysterious and alluring than anything Cortés and all the Spaniards discovered in the New World over the sea.” <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.