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

“I am glad to see that you are none the worse for last night’s encounter,” he said.

Wondering why his voice rang strangely, she answered, gayly:

“Rather the better for it, I find myself, thank you.”

“You told your tale of highway robbery so well that it deceived even my ears.” Lord Farquhart spoke somewhat stiffly. “I had not realized that you were so accomplished an actor.”

“Ay, did I not tell it well?” Her agreement with him held but a faint note of interrogation.

“I failed to catch your meaning, though, if meaning there was,” he said. And now his tone was so indifferent that the Lady Barbara might have been forgiven for thinking that he cared not to understand her meaning.

“I think I expressed my meaning fairly well last night,” she answered, her indifference matching his.

“Shall we let it pass at that, then?” he asked. “At that and nothing more?” If the Lady Barbara did not care to explain her joke, why should he force her?

“Ay, let us call it a jest,” she answered, “unless the point be driven in too far. A too pointed jest is sometimes a blunt weapon, my Lord Farquhart.”

Lord Farquhart heard the words that seemed so simple. He realized, also, that the tone was not so simple, but, as he told himself, the time would come soon enough when he would have to understand the Lady Barbara’s tones and manners. He would not begin until necessity compelled him. He had quite convinced himself that the story of the robbery, and the rings and rose in his coat, were naught save some silly joke of the unsophisticated schoolgirl he supposed his cousin to be. He moved restlessly in his chair. It was hard to find a simple subject to discuss with a simple country girl.

“You received the rings in safety?” he asked, merely to fill in the silence.

“Quite,” she answered, “quite in safety, my Lord Farquhart.” She was consuming herself with a rage that even she could not wholly understand. Her intended victim’s indifference angered her beyond endurance, and yet she dared not lose the hold she had not fully gained. A jest, indeed! He chose to call the whole thing a jest! A sorry jest he’d find it, then! And yet, surely, now was not the time for her to prove her power. Tapping her foot impatiently, she added in a thin, restrained voice: “Suppose we let the rings close the incident for the moment, my cousin!”

Again Lord Farquhart questioned the tone and manner, but he answered both with a shrug. The Lady Barbara was even more tiresome than he had feared. He would have to teach her that snapping eyes and quarrelsome speech were out of place in a mariage de convenance such as they were making. Doubtless he had failed to please her in some way. How he knew not. But how could he please a lady to whom he was quite indifferent, who was quite indifferent to him, and yet a lady to whom he was to be married in less than a fortnight, a whole day less than a fortnight. Lord Farquhart sighed far more deeply than was courteous to the lady.

“If I can do aught to please you, Barbara, during your stay – ” he began, with perfunctory deference, but she interrupted him hotly.

“Barbara!” she had been fuming inwardly. And only the night before it had been “Babs” and “sweetheart” and “sweet cousin”! Her wrath rose quite beyond control and her voice broke forth impetuously.

“I beg of you not to give me your time before it is necessary, my Lord Farquhart. And – and I beg you will excuse me now. I go to-night to Mistress Barry’s ball, and I – I – would rest after last night’s fatigues.”

She flounced from the room without further leave-taking, and as she fled on to her own chamber her anger escaped its bounds.

“He talks to me of jests,” she cried, with angry vehemence. “A sorry jest he’ll find it, on my word. Aie! I hate his insolent indifference. One would think I was a simple country fool to hear him talk. He – he – when I can have him hung just when it suits my good convenience! I’ll not marry him at all! Ay, but I will, though. I’ll make it worse for him by marrying him. And then I’ll show him! Just wait, my lord, until I’m Lady Farquhart and you’ll dance to a different tune, I’m thinking. Oh, I hate him, I hate him! I suppose he goes now to his Sylvia, or – or, perchance, out onto the road again.” The Lady Barbara’s tantrum had carried her into her own room and she had slammed the door. Now she found herself stopped by the opposite wall, and suddenly her tone changed. It grew quite soft, almost tender. “I wonder if his Sylvia is fairer than I am,” she said. “I wonder if he might not come to look upon me as worthy of something more than that sidewise glance.”

As for Lord Farquhart, left alone in the boudoir, he was still indifferent and still somewhat insolent, for, as he sauntered out from the room, he muttered:

“May the devil take all women save the one you happen to be in love with! And yet she’s a pretty minx, too, if she hadn’t such a vixenish temper!”

And then he hummed the last line of his song to Sylvia.

XII

Five times had Johan, the player’s boy, met young Lindley at the edge of the Ogilvie woods. Five times he had reported nothing of any interest concerning Mistress Judith Ogilvie, or, rather, the sum of the five reports had amounted to naught. Once he said that Mistress Judith was, if anything, quieter than usual. Again he told that her maids had said that she had been in a fine rage when Master Lindley had braved her wrath by appearing at her home and demanding an interview with her. But when her father had taxed her with her rudeness in refusing to descend and speak with her cousin, she had merely shrugged her shoulders and said that Master Lindley was of too little consequence even to discuss. She had been little with the players. Johan himself had had much trouble in gaining any interviews with her. She had spent more time than usual sewing with the maids. She had spent more time with her father, giving as an excuse that she could not ride abroad because her horse was lame. But Johan averred that he had seen one of the stable lads exercising Star and there had been nothing wrong with the horse.

On the sixth night Johan, peering up at Lindley from under his black curls, asked if any inference could be gathered from aught that he had reported and Lindley was obliged to confess that he saw none. The shadows of the trees fell all about them.

“If Mistress Judith knew that I was watching her to make report to you,” hazarded the lad, “it might almost seem as though she were playing some part for your benefit, so different is all this from her former ways, but – ”

“But she does not know,” Lindley concluded the sentence.

“Nay, how could she know?” the lad asked. “If she knew she would but include me in her hatred of you. She would deny me all access to her, and that I could not bear. ’Tis all of no use, my master. Mistress Judith is quite outside of all chance of your winning her. So little have I done that I’ll gladly release you from your bargain if you’ll but give up all hope of winning her.”

“I’ve no faint heart, boy,” answered Lindley. “Your Mistress Judith will come to my call yet, you’ll see.”

“I’m not so sure I’d like to see that day, my master,” answered the lad, in a whimsical tone. “But, in all honesty, I should tell you – I mean I’m thinking – ” He hesitated.

“Well, boy, you’re thinking what?” questioned Lindley, impatiently. “Though I offered not to pay you for your thoughts.”

“No, I give you my thoughts for no pay whatsoever.” Johan’s voice was still full of a restrained mirth. “And you must remember, too, that I told you at the first that I myself was a lover of Mistress Judith Ogilvie. That, perhaps, gives me better understanding of the maid. That, perhaps, makes my thoughts of value.”

“Well, and what do you think?” demanded Lindley.

“I – I was going to say” – the boy spoke slowly – “it seems to me that – that Mistress Judith may already be in love.”

“In love!” echoed Lindley. “And with whom, pray you, might Mistress Judith be in love? Whom has she seen to fall in love with? Where has she been to fall in love? It was only last week that you told me that Mistress Judith had sworn that she would never be in love with any man – that she would never be won by any man.”

“Ay, but maids – some maids – change their minds as easily as their ribbons, my master,” quoth the boy, somewhat sententiously.

“What reason have you for your opinion that Mistress Judith may be in love?” Lindley’s question broke a short silence, and he bit his lip over the obnoxious word.

“I – why, it seems to me that her docility might prove it, might it not? I – it’s a lover’s heart that speaks to you, remember – a heart that loves mightily, a heart that yearns mightily. But is not docility on a maid’s part a sign of love? Might it not be? It seems to me that if I were a maid and I’d fallen desperately and woefully in love, I’d be all for gentleness and quiet, I’d sew with my maids and dream of love, I’d give all of my time to my father from whom love was so soon to take me. That’s what I should think a maid would do, and that is what Mistress Judith has done for a week past. And then to-day, as I hung about outside her windows, I heard her rating her maids. Mistress Judith’s voice can be quite high and shrill when she is annoyed, you may remember; and the one complete sentence that I heard was this: ‘Am I always to be buried in a country house, think ye, and what would town folk think of stitches such as those if they could see them? But see them they’ll not, for you’ll have to do some tedious ripping here, my girls, and some better stitches.’ Now” – the boy’s lips curled dolorously – “does not that sound to you as though Mistress Judith were contemplating some change in her estate, as though she had already given her heart to some town gallant?”

Lindley’s brows were black and his lips, too, were curled. But curses were the rods that twisted them.

“What devil’s work is the girl up to now?” he demanded, savagely. “She’s doubtless met some ne’er-do-well unbeknown to Master Ogilvie. I must see Mistress Judith at once, on the very instant, and have it out with her.”

“Oh, no, no!” cried Johan, the player’s boy. “You’ll but drive her on in any prank she’s bent on.”

“Then it’s Master Ogilvie I’ll see,” declared Lindley. “Where have all your eyes been that the girl could have met a lover; that she could have seen anyone with whom to fall in love? She must not fall in love with anyone save me. Do you hear, boy? I love her. I love her.”

“Ah, then it is your heart that’s engaged in this matter,” commented Johan. “I thought, perhaps – why, perhaps it was merely Mistress Judith’s defiance of her father’s wishes that led you on to wish to marry her. You – you really do love Mistress Judith, for herself? Really love her as a lover ought to love?”

“You’re over curious, my lad,” growled Lindley. “And yet ’tis my own fault, I suppose. I’ve given you my confidence.”

“But how know you that you love Mistress Judith?” persisted the boy.

“I love her – I love her because I’ve loved her always,” answered Lindley, passionately. “I loved her when I was ten, when she was six, when her golden head was no higher than my heart.”

“’Tis somewhat higher now, I think.” The boy’s words were very low. “More like her heart would match to yours. Her eyes are as high above the ground as your own. Her lips would not be raised to meet your lips.”

Lindley’s face had grown scarlet.

“Be silent, boy,” he cried. “You speak over freely of sacred things.”

The lad, backing away from under Lindley’s upraised arm, still murmured, echoing Lindley’s words: “Sacred things!” and added: “Mistress Judith’s heart! Her eyes! Her lips!”

What Lindley’s answer might have been from lips and hand the lad never knew. It was checked by a sudden onslaught from behind. Out from the low bushes that hedged the woods sprang two figures in hoods and cloaks. The foremost was tall and burly, though agile enough. The second seemed but a clumsy follower. In an instant Lindley’s sword was engaged with that of the leader. For only an instant Johan hesitated. Drawing a short sword from under his cloak, he sprang upon the second of the highwaymen. Their battle was short, for the fellow’s clumsiness made him an easy victim for the slender youth. Pinked but slightly in the arm, he gave vent to an unearthly howl and, turning away, he fled through the dark aisles of the woods, his diminishing shrieks denoting the speed and length of his flight.