The Great Mogul

“I would brave a hundred swords to serve you,” stammered George. Better had he remained silent. No girl likes love-making in public. Anna seemingly paid no heed to his bashful words, but her eyes sparkled with some glint of annoyance.

Roger Sainton, ever more ready to laugh than to quarrel, smoothed over the family tiff by breaking out into a diatribe on the virtues of the knight’s Brown Devon ale. Mowbray, too, seeing how the land lay, offered more attention to Mistress Eleanor Roe than to her stately cousin.

Herein he only followed his secret inclination. The girl’s shy blue eyes and laughing lips formed a combination difficult to resist, if resistance were thought of. She was dressed in simple white. Her hair, plaited in the Dutch style, was tied with a bow of blue riband, nor was her gown too long to hide the neat shoes of saffron-colored leather which adorned her pretty feet.

She wore no ornaments, and her attire was altogether less expensive than that of Anna Cave. His own experiences had given Mowbray a clear knowledge of domestic values. Judging by appearances, he thought that the house of Roe was not so well endowed with wealth as the house of Cave. He did not find the drawback amiss. He was young enough, and sufficiently romantic in disposition, to discover ample endowment in Eleanor’s piquant face and bright, if somewhat timid, wit.

Anna, who looked preoccupied, quickly upset an arrangement which threatened to leave her and Beeston to entertain each other.

It was not yet dark when the supper was ended. Anna, rising suddenly when a waiting-man produced a dust-covered flagon of Alicant, assumed an animated air.

“I see you sip your wine rather than drink it, Master Mowbray,” she cried. “Will you not join Nellie and me in the garden, and leave to these graver gentlemen the worship of Bacchus?”

“Aye,” growled George Beeston, spurred into a display of spirit, “though Venus may be coy the god of wine never refuses his smile.”

“Take an old man’s advice, George,” said Sir Thomas confidentially, “and never seek to woo a girl with a glum face.”

“Better still,” said Roger, reaching for the flagon, “wait until she woos thee. Gad, a woman plagues a man sufficiently after he is wed that his heart should ache before the knot is tied.”

“If your heart ached, Master Sainton, its size would render the ailment of much consequence,” said Eleanor.

“Mayhap ’tis like an August mushroom, which, when overgrown, hath the consistency of hide,” he answered, and his jolly laugh caused even young Beeston to smile.

“Roger and I were bred together,” said Mowbray, as he walked with the two girls into the small public garden which faced the house. “I vow he never cared for woman other than his mother.”

“Belike it is the fashion in Wensleydale,” was Anna’s comment.

“Nay, Mistress Cave, such fashion will not commend itself anywhere. Certes, I have observed that it does not prevail in London.”

This with a glance at Eleanor, but the retort told Anna that although Mowbray came from the shires his wits were not dull.

As his hostess, however, she curbed the inclination to make some one suffer vicariously for poor George Beeston.

“May I make bold to ask if you seek advancement at court?” she inquired civilly.

“Yes, if it help one at court to wish to fight for his Majesty. That is my desire. After much entreaty, my mother allowed me to travel hither, in the hope that my distant kinsman, the Earl of Beverley, might procure me the captaincy of a troop of horse. As for Roger, his mother was my mother’s foster-sister, so the worthy dame sent her son to take care of me.”

“What will the good ladies say when they hear that you had not been in London an hour ere you stormed Gondomar’s house to succor a couple of silly wenches?” put in Eleanor.

“My mother will remember that my father lamed two men who sought to stop their wedding, but Mistress Sainton will clap her hands and cry, ‘Mercy o’ me! what manner o’ fules be those Spaniards that they didna run when they set eyes on my Roger? They mun be daft!’”

His ready reproduction of the Yorkshire dialect brought a laugh to their lips; it aided Eleanor in no small degree to hide the blush which mantled her fair cheeks when Walter so aptly turned the tables on her.

But Anna, if restrained in her own behalf, thought that this young spark’s wooing of her friend should be curbed.

“There was purpose in your father’s prowess,” she said. “Sir Harry Revel told me he wished us no indignity, so, perchance, you erred in your boldness, though, indeed, I do not cavil at it.”

“Sir Harry Revel lied. When I meet the fop I shall tell him so.”

“Nay, nay. You take me too seriously. I pray you forget my banter. It would ill requite your service were careless words of mine to provoke another encounter.”

“For my part, I plead with you on behalf of the Marquis of Bath. He is but a goose, though he carries the feathers of a peacock,” added Nellie.

In their talk they passed along the north side of the garden. Here, a number of trees gave grateful shade in the daytime. A wall beyond, with foliage peeping over it, showed that another smaller enclosure, belonging to some civic dignitary, occupied one of the few open spaces remaining within the city defenses.

At this moment, though darkness had not yet fallen, the gloom cast by the trees rendered persons near at hand indistinct. Their voices must have given warning of their coming, for a tall cavalier, wrapped in a cloak, suddenly stepped from behind a broad-beamed elm.

“Anna!” he said, “and Nellie! But whom else have we here?”

The girls started, and Mowbray would have resented the newcomer’s manner had not Eleanor cried: —

“My brother!”

Anna, too, quickly intervened.

“This is Master Walter Mowbray,” she said, “and his breeding, no less than the help he rendered so freely to-day, warrants more courteous greeting from Sir Thomas Roe.”

The stranger, a young man of dignified appearance, made such amends for the abruptness of his challenge that Mowbray wondered how it happened that so elegant and polished a gentleman should have startled two ladies with a peremptory challenge.

Soon this bewilderment passed. They strolled on in company, and they had not been discoursing five minutes before he discovered that Sir Thomas Roe was favored of Anna if young Beeston was favored of her father.

A certain reluctance on their part to return to the more open part of the garden did not escape him, and, although there was no actual pairing off, he found little difficulty in addressing his conversation exclusively to the bewitching Eleanor.

In the half light of evening she was fairy-like, a living dream of beauty, a coy sprite, who laughed, and teased, and tantalized by her aloof propinquity. It was strange, too, that a youngster who could hold his own so fairly in an encounter of wits with Anna should be suddenly overtaken by one-syllable bashfulness when left alone with Eleanor. Yet, if Master Mowbray’s confusion were inexplicable, what subtle craft can dissipate the mystery of Nellie Roe’s change of manner? From being shy, she became pert. She seemed to pass with a bound from demure girlhood to delightful womanhood. When Walter strove to rally her with an apt retort she overwhelmed him with a dozen. Her eyes met his and looked him out of face. It might be that the presence of her brother gave her confidence, that the sweet gloaming of a summer’s eve enchanted her, that the day’s adventures flashed a new and wondrous picture into the undimmed mirror of her mind. Whatever the cause, Mowbray was vanquished utterly, and, being of soldierly stock, he recognized his defeat.

There came to him, in that magic garden, the first dazzling vision of love. Never before had he met a maid to whom his heart sang out the glad tidings that here was his mate. Somehow, the wondrous discovery, though it thrilled his very soul, sobered his thoughts. And then, with quick alternation of mood, he found his tongue again, and behold, Mistress Roe must fain listen, with many a sigh and sympathetic murmur, whilst he poured forth his day-dreams of founding anew the fortunes of his house.

Ah, those summer nights, when hearts are virginal: they are old as Paradise, young as yester eve!

Unhappily, true love does not always find a rose-strewn path. Absorbed though they were in their talk, and ever drawing nearer until a rounded arm touched by chance was now pressed with reassuring confidence, they could not help seeing, when they met Anna and Sir Thomas Roe in a little open space, that the lady had been crying.

Indeed, she herself made no secret of it, but bravely carried off the situation by vowing that old friends should never say “Good-by.”

“Here is your brother, Nell, come to tell us that he sails forthwith for some far-off land he calls Guiana,” she cried, striving to laugh in order to hide the nervous break in her voice. “Not content with that, he must need add that he hopes to discover the limits of that wild river of the Amazons, as if there were greater fortunes for men of intelligence in savage countries than in our own good city.”

“Can it be true that you leave us so soon?” cried Eleanor, disengaging her arm from Mowbray’s hand in quick alarm.

“It is, indeed, but a matter of hours,” he said lightly. “I did but break in on your after-supper stroll to ask your fair gossip for some token which should cheer my drooping spirits by kind remembrance when England shall have sunk below the line.”

“A most reasonable request,” put in Walter. “Had I another such keepsake from a lady whom I honor most highly I would seek the further privilege of going with you on your travels.”

“Lack-a-day! at this rate we shall lose every youth of our acquaintance,” said Anna, who found in excited speech the safest outlet for her emotions. “Yet, lest it be said that I would restrain young gentlemen of spirit who would fain wander abroad, I have here a memento of myself which Sir Thomas Roe shall carry as a talisman against all barbarians.”

She took from beneath a ruff of lace on her breast a small oval object which was fastened by a tiny gold chain around her neck. Even in the dim light they could see it was a miniature.

“It is the work of that excellent painter, Master Isaac Olliver,” she added hastily, “and, from what I know of his skill, I vow his brush was worthy of a better subject.”

“Anna, it is your own portrait!” cried Roe.