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

But Johan’s victory came not a second too soon, for just at that moment Lindley’s sword dropped from his hand, the blood spurting from a deep wound in his shoulder. With a low snarl of victory, the highwayman drew back his arm to plunge his sword into his victim’s breast, but Johan, springing forward and picking Lindley’s weapon from the ground, hurled himself upon their assailant.

“Not so fast, my friend,” he cried, and in another second blades were again flashing. Lindley, who for a moment had been overwhelmed by the shock of his wound, raised a useless voice in protest. Johan’s own voice drowned every sound as he drove his antagonist now this way, now that, quite at his own will.

The moon, in its last quarter, was just rising above the trees, and the narrow glade was lighted with its weird, fantastic glow. From one side of the road to the other, the shadowy figures moved, the steel blades flashing in the glinting light, Johan’s short, sharp cries punctuating the song of the swords. Lindley could hear the ruffian’s heavy breathing as Johan forced him up the bank that edged the road. He heard his horse’s nervous whinny as the fight circled his flanks. But Lindley was so fascinated by the brilliancy of the lad’s fighting that he had no thought of the outcome of the fray until he heard a sudden sharp outcry. Then he saw Johan stagger back, but he saw at the same instant that the highwayman had fallen, doubled over in a heap, upon the ground. He saw, too, that Johan’s sword, trailing on the ground, was red with blood.

“You’re hurt, lad!” Lindley, faint from loss of blood, staggered toward the boy.

“Ay, ay, hurt desperately,” moaned Johan. His voice seemed weak and faltering.

“But how? But where? I did not see him touch you!” Lindley’s left arm encircled the lad, his right hung limp at his side.

Johan’s head sank for an instant onto Lindley’s shoulder.

“No, he did not touch me, ’tis no bodily hurt,” he moaned; “but I’ve – I’ve killed the man.”

Lindley’s support was withdrawn instantly and roughly.

“After such a fight, are you fool enough to bemoan a victory?” His words, too, were rough. “Why, man, it was a fight to the death! You’d have been killed if you had not killed. Did you think you were fighting for the fun of it? You’re squeamish as a woman.”

Johan tried to recover his voice. He tried to stand erect.

“I did it well, did I not?” An unsteady laugh rang out. “The play acting, I mean. You forget, Master Lindley, that I’m a player, that in my parts I’m more often a woman than a man. And we actors are apt to grow into the parts we oftenest counterfeit.” Suddenly he staggered and the sword clattered from his hand. But again he straightened himself. “Would I gain applause as a woman, think you?”

“If it’s play acting, have done with it,” growled Lindley, whose wound was hurting; who, in reality, was almost fainting from loss of blood. “You’ve saved my life as well as your own, Johan. But we’ll touch on that later. There’s no fear, is there, that your dead man will come to life?”

The boy for the first time raised his eyes to Lindley’s face. Even in the darkness he could see that it was ghastly white and drawn with pain. A nervous cry burst from his lips, and he stretched both arms toward Lindley.

“Da – damn your play acting, boy,” sputtered Lindley. “Nay, I mean not to be so harsh. I’ll – I’ll not forget the debt I owe you either. But you must help me to The Jolly Grig, where Marmaduke has skill enough to tend my wound until I can reach London.”

“But Master Ogilvie has skill in the care of wounds,” cried Johan. “Surely we are nearer Master Ogilvie’s than The Jolly Grig. And Mistress Judith will – ”

“Nay, I’ll not force myself on Mistress Judith in this way,” answered Lindley, petulantly.

“You are over considerate of Mistress Judith’s feelings, even for a lover,” returned the boy.

“Ah, it’s not Mistress Judith’s feelings I’m considerate of,” replied Lindley. “She’s capable of saying that I got the wound on purpose to lie in her house, on purpose to demand her care.”

Here Johan’s unsteady laugh rang out once more.

“Indeed she’s capable of that very thing, my master,” he said, and as he spoke he began to tear his long coat into strips.

“What are you doing that for?” demanded Lindley, leaning more and more heavily against his horse’s side.

“It’s a bandage and a sling for your arm,” answered the boy. “If you will persist in the ride to The Jolly Grig, your arm must be tied so that it will not bleed again.”

“’Twill be a wonder if you do not faint away like a woman when you touch the blood,” scoffed Lindley.

“’Twill be a wonder, I’m thinking myself,” answered the boy, unsteadily.

And then, the bandage made and adjusted, Johan offered his shoulder to assist the wounded man into the saddle. But Lindley, pressing heavily yet tenderly against the lad, said gently:

“I’ve been rough, Johan, but believe me, this night’s work will stand you in good stead. Hereafter your play acting may be a matter of choice, but never again of necessity.”

“Heaven grant that the necessity will never again be so great!” murmured Johan, indistinctly.

“I – I did not understand,” faltered Lindley, reaching the saddle with difficulty.

“I said – why I said,” stammered Johan, “Heaven be praised that there would be no more necessity for play acting.”

Arrived at The Jolly Grig, Master Marmaduke Bass’ perturbed face boded ill for his surgical skill.

“Hast heard the news, my master?” he cried, before he saw the condition of his guest. “Ah, Mr. Lindley, ’tis about a friend of your own, too – a friend who was with you here not a week ago.”

“I – I care not for your news, whatever it may be, whomever it may be about,” groaned Lindley, who was near the end of his endurance.

“Master Lindley’s met with highwaymen,” interrupted Johan. “Perchance ’tis the Black Devil himself. He’s wounded and has need of your skill, not of your news.”

“Met with my Lord Farquhart!” cried honest Marmaduke. “But that’s impossible. My Lord Farquhart’s been in prison these twelve hours and more, denounced by his cousin, the Lady Barbara Gordon!”

It would have been hard to say which was the whiter, Master Lindley or Johan, the player’s boy. It would have been difficult to distinguish between their startled voices.

“Lord Farquhart! In prison!”

“Ay, Lord Farquhart. The Black Devil. The Black Highwayman. Denounced at a festival at my Lord Grimsby’s by the Lady Barbara Gordon.”

XIII

The worthy Marmaduke’s gossip was indeed true, for as strange a thing as that had really happened. Lady Barbara Gordon, in open company, had announced that she knew positively that Lord Farquhart was no other than the Black Highwayman who for a twelvemonth had been terrorizing the roads round about London town. He had confessed it to her, himself, she said. She had seen him guised as the highwayman. Mr. Ashley, the Lady Barbara’s escort at the moment, had corroborated her statements, vouchsafing on his own account that he had been with the Lady Barbara when Lord Farquhart’s servants had returned her rings and a rose that had been stolen from her by the Black Highwayman only the night before.

Just a moment’s consideration of the conditions and incidents, the chances and mischances, that led up to this denouncement will show that it was not so strange a thing, after all. To take the Lady Barbara, first. Up to the time of her visit to London, Lord Farquhart had been to her something of a figurehead. She had considered him merely as a creature quite inanimate and impersonal, who was to be forced upon her by her father’s will just as she was to be forced upon him. But Lord Farquhart in the flesh was a young man of most pleasing appearance, if of most exasperating manners. When the Lady Barbara compared him with the other gallants of the society she frequented she found that he had few peers among them, and as she accepted his punctilious courtesies and attentions she began to long to see them infused with some personal warmth and interest. She saw no reason why Lord Farquhart should be the one and only gentleman of her acquaintance who discerned no charm in her. It piqued something more than her vanity to see that she alone of all the ladies whom he met could rouse in him no personal interest whatsoever. And, almost unconsciously, she exerted herself to win from him some sign of approbation.

Also, in addition to her awakened interest in Lord Farquhart – or possibly because of it – the Lady Barbara thought she saw in Mr. Ashley’s devotion some new, some curious, some quite displeasing quality. It was not that he was not as courteous as ever. It was not that he was not as attentive as ever. It was not that he did not speak his love as tenderly, as warmly, as ever. All this was quite as it had been. But in his courtesies the Lady Barbara recognized a thinly veiled – it was not contempt, of course, but there was the suggestion of the manner one would offer to a goddess who had advanced a step toward the extreme edge of her pedestal. And this Barbara resented. In his attentions he was quite solicitous, but it was a solicitude of custom – of custom to be, perhaps, as much as of custom that has been. To this Barbara objected. Already, too, his love savored of possession. Against this Barbara chafed. She would give her favors when she was ready to give them. They would be gifts, though – not things held by right.

Her resentments, her objections, her chafings, she tried to hold in check. She endeavored to show no sign of them to Ashley, with the result that in her manner to him he saw only the endeavor. So he, in turn, was piqued by the change in his lady. He was angry and annoyed, and asked himself occasionally what right the Lady Barbara had to change toward him when she and her Lord Farquhart were so absolutely in his power. All of which strained, somewhat, the relations between the Lady Barbara and Mr. Ashley.

To come to Lord Farquhart: he loved or thought he loved – he had loved or had thought he loved Sylvia – Sylvia, the light o’ love, one of the pretty creatures on whom love’s hand falls anything but lightly. To his prejudiced eyes, the Lady Barbara, cold and colorless in the gloom of Gordon’s Court, had seemed quite lacking in all charm. But when he had sauntered from her presence to that of Sylvia on the afternoon when the jest of the highway robbery had been discussed, he found that his curiosity, nay, his interest, had been aroused by the Lady Barbara. He found that his unsophisticated cousin was not altogether lacking in color and spirit, and Sylvia, for the first time, seemed somewhat over blown, somewhat over full of vulgar life and gayety. Later, that same night, when he saw the future Lady Farquhart dimpling and glowing, the central star in a galaxy of London beaux, he wondered if the Lady Barbara might not be worth the winning; he wondered if the mariage de convenance might not be transformed into the culmination of a quick, romantic courtship. To win the Lady Barbara before the Lady Barbara was his without the winning! Might not that be well worth while?

To give just a passing word to Sylvia; for it was to Sylvia that the main mischance was due. Sylvia saw that her reign was over, that she had lost all hold on Lord Farquhart, and, in her own way, which, after all, was a very definite and distinct way, poor Sylvia loved Lord Farquhart.

For six days these conditions had been changing, with all their attendant incidents and chances, and the time was ripe for a mischance. Lord Farquhart, lounging in the park, hoping to meet the Lady Barbara, even if it was only to be snubbed by the Lady Barbara, saw that young lady at the end of a long line of trees with Mr. Ashley. For Barbara had consented to walk with Mr. Ashley, partly so that she might have the freedom of open air and sunshine in which to express a belated opinion to Mr. Ashley concerning his new manner and tone, and partly in hopes that she would encounter Lord Farquhart and pique his jealousy by appearing with his rival.

“I tell you I’ll not stand it, not for an instant,” she was saying, the roses in her cheeks a deep, deep damask and the stars in her eyes beaming with unwonted radiance. “To hear you speak the world would think that we had been married a twelvemonth! That you demanded your rights like a commonplace husband, rather than that you sought my favor. I’ll warn you to change your manner, Mr. Harry Ashley, or you’ll find that you have neither rights nor favors.”

It was at this instant that the Lady Barbara caught sight of Lord Farquhart at his own end of the lime-shaded walk. Instantly her manner changed, though the damask roses still glowed and the stars still shone.

“Nay, nay, Hal” – she laid a caressing hand on his arm – “forgive my lack of manners. I’m – I’m – perchance I’m over weary. We country maids are not used to so much pleasure as you’ve given me in London.” She leaned languorously toward Ashley and he, made presumptuous by her change of tone, slipped his arm about her slender waist.

The Lady Barbara slid from his grasp with a pretty scream of amazement and shocked propriety. Then there might have followed a bit of swordplay; indeed, the Lady Barbara hoped there would – the affianced lover should have fought to defend his rights, the other should have fought for the privileges bestowed by the lady, and all the time the lady would have stood wringing her hands, moaning perchance, and praying for the discomfiture of the one or the other. But, unfortunately, none of this came to pass because, just at the critical moment, just when Lord Farquhart, watched slyly by Lady Barbara’s starry eyes, was starting forward to defend his rights, Sylvia slipped from behind a tree and flung herself with utter abandon upon Lord Farquhart.