Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905

“But,” remonstrated Lindley, “wax can be molded by any hand that holds it. If the lady is wax in her father’s hands through fear, ’twould seem to me that – why, that love is hotter than fear, that love might mold as well, if not better, than fear.”

“Ay, if love had a chance to mold,” answered Ashley, with more animation, but the mask of reserve fell quickly over his features. “Enough of me and my affairs, though. How is it with you? Have you won the lady of your own heart’s desire? When last I saw you, you were lamenting, the obduracy of some fair one, if I remember right.”

“Alas and alack, no, I’ve not won her,” mourned Lindley, his Irish eyes and his Irish lips losing their laughter. “I’m in a fair way never to win her, I think. In my case, though, it’s the father that’s wax in the daughter’s hands. ’Tis a long time since he gave his consent to my wooing the maid, but the maid will not be wooed. She knows how to have her own way, and has always known it and always had it, too. She tyrannized over me when she was a lass of six and I was a lad of ten. Now she will not even meet me. When I visit at her house, she locks herself in her own chamber, and even I lose heart when it comes to wooing a maid through a wooden door. Ay, I tried it once, and only once. To my last letter, a hot, impassioned love letter, her only reply was to ask whether I still would turn white at a cock fight. The minx remembers well enough that I did turn white at a fight between two gamecocks, which she, mind you, had arranged in her father’s barnyard at that same time, when she was six and I was ten.”

“Well, I wish you luck,” answered Ashley, who had given little heed to Lindley’s words. “But to my mind such a maid would not be worth the wooing. ’Tis to be hoped that Treadway has cleared Farquhart’s addled wits as well as he has cleared his voice,” he added, after a moment’s silence.

Floating down from Lord Farquhart’s room came the last words of the song to Sylvia.

Hearts that beat with love so true!
Sylvia, sweet, I come to you!

Yet at that very instant, in young Treadway’s room, Lord Farquhart was snoring in unison with young Treadway. Lord Farquhart’s head was pillowed next to the head of young Treadway. And, stranger yet, at that very instant, too, there sprang from Lord Farquhart’s window a figure strangely resembling Lord Farquhart himself, decked out in Lord Farquhart’s riding clothes, that had been cast aside after the miry ride from London town, and tucked away in one corner of Lord Farquhart’s room were the dark riding coat and breeches of the youth who had slumbered before the hearth of The Jolly Grig.

About the figure, as it sped along the road, was a long black cloak, over its head was drawn a wide French cap, and over the face was a black mask, but on the lips, under the mask, were the words of Lord Farquhart’s song to Sylvia, the song wherein the name of Sylvia had so lately given place to Barbara.

Hearts that beat with love so true!
Barb’ra, sweet, I come to you!

IV

The exchange of confidences between the two young men lasted for a few moments more. Then Ashley, examining the fastenings of his sword belt, exclaimed:

“Assuredly the Lady Barbara must arrive soon, whatever the state of the roads may be. I will go and look to the men and horses. Doubtless the former are as mad as their masters, and, doubtless, too, they have consumed as much of Marmaduke’s heady wine.”

Lindley, left to himself, drew a letter from some place not far distant from his heart and read it.

It was written in a clerkly hand, and was, for the first part, clearly a dictation.

I regret to say, my dear Cecil, that I can give you no better word from my daughter, Judith. She declares roundly that she will have nothing to do with you, that she will not listen to your suit, and she commands me to advise you to put her out of your head for all time. I cannot, as you know, say aught against my girl.

“I should not let him if he would.”

In her duty to me she is all that I could ask, but in every other respect her madcap moods seem but to grow upon her. She spends much of her time shut up in her own room, and I have discovered quite recently that she rides much alone – through our own forests only, however. I would not for the world convey to you the idea that Judith is indiscreet. She has stripped from the trappings of her horse every sign of our name and station – or so the stable boys have reported to me. And not ten days since one of the maids ran to me in a great pother and told me that Mistress Judith was stamping about her chamber, behind locked doors, conversing at the top of her voice with herself or with the empty air. When I took her to task on the subject she explained that she was merely rehearsing to join some play actors she had seen performing on the common. Neither locks nor bars will hold her, for I have tried both. I would not dare to coerce her in any smallest degree, for I know not what might happen. So I hope you will see, my dear Cecil, that it would be indeed wise if you could take her advice and put her out of your mind. I fear that, as she says, she has given me all the love of which she is capable.

From this point the letter ran on in the same hand, but in another vein.

So far, dear coz, I’ve written according to my revered father’s words. You know I’m the only scholar in the family. The pen fits his hand but sadly, while every implement of love and war rests easily in mine. With the foils I – But, alas and alack, you care not for tales of that sort. I hear you say: “Fie, fie, Ju! Why play with a man’s toys?” To return to the subject in hand. Will you put me quite out of your mind and thoughts? Can you? If so, I pray you do so. For I love you not at all. ’Tis so absurd of you to want to marry the little red-haired termagant you used to play with. And believe me, I’m naught now save a big red-haired termagant. And I love you not one whit more than I did in the old days when I used to hate you. Perhaps ’twould be folly to say that I never will love you. I might meet you somewhere, at some odd chance, and find that you were the man for my inmost heart. And at that same meeting you might find that you loved me not at all. You think, doubtless, that I know nothing of love, and yet I do know that it lies all in the chance of meeting. If I might meet you in my mood of to-day I’d hate you, whereas to-morrow I might love you. To defend myself against my father’s charges I’ll not try. Yet why should I not ride alone? And am I alone with my beloved Star? Ay, even though it is only a black star between two starry eyes blacker than night? Why should I not have stripped my father’s name and rank from my horse’s trappings when I go abroad? Suppose I should join the play actors – and they do tempt me sorely – why should my father’s name and rank be known and defamed? And, truly, I grant you, I’m as likely to join the play actors as to enter a nunnery, the one as the other and the other as the one. Both draw me strangely, and I’m likelier to do either than to marry you. Here’s my hand and seal on that, or, rather, here’s my hand and a kiss, for a kiss is more binding than a seal. And now for the last word – will you put me out of your mind? Or will you wait for that chance meeting?

    Judith, your Cousin. Also, Judith, dutiful daughter of James Ogilvie.

Lindley’s lips had touched the paper more than once, and half a dozen sighs had crossed them, when suddenly he sprang to his feet.

A black star! Judith’s horse, then, had a black star on its forehead! And the horse with the black star that had but now strayed into the stable yard! Could that be Judith’s horse? Was Judith in danger or distress? In another instant Lindley was out through the door, calling aloud for the white horse with the black star between its eyes.

“But, my master,” gasped a stable lad, “a squire from Master Ogilvie’s led the beast away not ten minutes ago. ’Twas Mistress Ogilvie’s horse, he said, strayed from the woods where the lady had been gathering wild flowers.”

And it was then at that moment that the Lady Barbara’s mud-bespattered outriders dashed into the courtyard, crying out that their lady’s coach was but a short distance behind them.

V

The Lady Barbara’s coach was wobbling slowly along the moonlit road that led to The Jolly Grig. Fast enough it traveled, however, according to Lady Barbara’s way of thinking, in spite of the fact that, at the tavern, she would find a lover and love awaiting her; the lover, Lord Percy Farquhart, to whom she was betrothed, to whom she would, indeed, be married in a fortnight’s time, and love in the person of Harry Ashley, who had loved her long, and whom she thought she loved. Under her gauntlet Lord Percy’s betrothal ring chafed her finger. On her breast lay the red rose she wore always, for no other reason than that Ashley had asked her so to do.

Querulous to the ancient dame who traveled with her she had been from the start, and more than querulous to the two black-eyed maids whose sole apparent duties were to divine my lady’s wishes before they could be expressed in words.

“Absurd; I say it is absurd that I should be dragged up to London in all this mire,” Lady Barbara cried, in a petulant, plaintive voice. “What do I want with the latest fallals and fripperies to catch my Lord Farquhart’s fancy when he never so much as looks at me? I know full as well as he that his Mistress Sylvia in rags would be more to him than I would be if I were decked in the gayest gauds the town could offer.”

“Sylvia!” gasped her attendant dame.

“Ay, Sylvia, I said,” answered the Lady Barbara. “Don’t think that I’m deaf to London gossip, and don’t imagine that I’m the unsophisticated child my father thinks me, merely because I acquiesce in this brutal plan to marry me to a man I hate. I know how my Lord Farquhart entertains himself. Not that I’d have his love, either. I’d hate him offering love more than I hate him denying it.”

The petulant voice ran on and on, its only vehemence induced by the muddy ruts in the road. Mistress Benton, using every force to keep awake, interjected monosyllabic exclamations and questions. The two maids, exerting all their powers to fall asleep, gave little heed to their mistress’ railings.

The outriders, lured onward by an imagined maltiness in the air, had permitted an ever-increasing distance between themselves and their lady’s coach. It was certainly some several moments after they had passed a moon-shadowed corner that the lumbering coach horses stumbled, wavered and stopped short. Sleepy Drennins recovered his seat with difficulty, the sleepy coach boys sprang to the horses’ heads, Mistress Benton squawked, and the young maids squeaked with terror. Only the Lady Barbara was quite calm. But it must be remembered that the Lady Barbara would welcome delay in any form. But even she drew back in some alarm from the masked face that appeared at the coach door.

“Aaaaay! God help us!” screamed Mistress Benton. “’Tis the Black Devil himself.”

The two maids clung to each other and scurried into an anguished unconsciousness.

The mask had opened the coach door, and his face was close to the Lady Barbara’s.

“A word in your ear, sweet cousin Babs,” he whispered. “But first order your men, on pain of death, to stand each where they are.”

The Lady Barbara recognized dimly a familiar tone in the voice. She saw Lord Farquhart’s coat.

“Lord Farquhart! Percy!” The cry was faint enough in itself, but it was muffled, too, by the gauntleted hand of the highwayman.

“Only for your eyes, my cousin,” he answered. “Only for your ears.”

“What prank is this?” she demanded, haughtily, and yet she had, indeed, given her orders to her men to stand each in his place on pain of death.

“A lover’s prank, perhaps, my sweetheart,” the mask answered. “A prank to have a word alone with you. Come, step down upon my cloak and walk with me out into the moonlight. I would see by it your daffodil hair, your violet eyes, your poppy lips, your lily cheeks.”

A mocking, rippling laugh crossed the Lady Barbara’s lips. At once she gave her hand to her strange cavalier.

“I thought my eyes and ears were not mistaken,” she said. “Now I know in very truth that you are my cousin Percy, for that is the only lover-like speech that ever came from his lips to me. You believe in repetition, it seems.”

In spite of old Mistress Benton’s commands and prayers, the Lady Barbara had stepped from the coach and the stranger had slammed the door upon the gibbering dame.

“Ripening corn in a wanton breeze, I should call the hair to-night,” he said. “Bits of heaven’s own blue, the eyes; roses red and white, the cheeks, and ripe pomegranate the lips. Does that suit you better, Lady Babs?”

The Lady Barbara’s laughter rang back to Mistress Benton’s frenzied ears.

“The moonlight seems to infuse your love with warmth, my cousin.” The lady leaned with coquettish heaviness upon the arm that supported her hand.

“The icicle that holds your heart has chilled my love till now, my sweet,” the mask answered.

“But why did you stop me in this fashion?” The Lady Barbara had drawn back from the ardor in her escort’s voice. “What means this silly masquerade? What words would you speak to me here? In this fashion?”