Part 2

“_La llave del jardin_,” breathed the timid tones, in a Spanish which even his own foreign ear recognised as more Flemish than Castilian. Upon which something fell with a muffled clang at his feet: the key of the garden door.

“My soul…!” responded Rockhurst in his most ardent whisper.

His Spanish did not go very far; but he had at least that nodding acquaintance with it which residence in Flanders rendered necessary to a Cavalier. Fortunately, more was not required of him; for the house wall grew blank again with the closing window.

But fate had pointed her finger.

Stooping, he groped for the key. It was wrapped in a fine kerchief which had a fragrance of angelic water, and he sniffed with amused anticipation ere he thrust it in his breast. He was weighing the heavy key in his hand as Marcelin crept up to him again.

“If monseigneur had only deigned to inform me that it was a rendezvous…!” he thought plaintively. “Here am I very foolish, with my basket instead of good cutlass to keep watch over his _bonne fortune_!”

The honest fellow’s head was in a complete whirl. That milord should abandon the King for the sake of a lady was milord all over, it was true; nevertheless an astounding proceeding, and milord’s manner of conducting the affair confusing in the extreme. But his master’s next words brought illumination:—

“Look you now, Marcelin, did I not tell you Fortune would solve the riddle? Has she not brought us to the most opulent house of the whole row? And if it were not for the fog, her servant, would that sweet lady have mistaken me for her Spanish lover? Come, now, the garden door must lurk in this wall to the right.”

He moved on a few steps, running his hand along the brick. Marcelin followed, lost in admiration.

“Eh, by the little dog of St. Roch!” he cried, “does monseigneur intend—?”

“Certes, my friend, and to make the lady glad of the exchange,” answered the Cavalier in his quiet voice. “Ha, here is the nail-studded wood: here with your lantern.”

II

CAVALIER AND CAPITAN

Even as he spoke, bending to look for the lock, there came along the cobbles of the lane a clink of spurs that rang to the rhythm of a martial tread. And presently a rather husky voice was uplifted into that same conquering lilt—the tune of the marching Spaniards—that had come to Rockhurst’s mind a few moments before.

Lilt and step fell into sudden silence at the corner of the house. The newcomer had halted, apparently struck by the sight of the two figures, shadowed as they were through the vapours at the garden gate by the lantern light. Rockhurst’s head as he bent over the lock was lit up fantastically. The bold features, the thin, upturned mustache, quivering now with a mischievous smile, the peaked beard, black as raven’s wing, and the hat with its challenging tilt and its incredible plume, all seemed to proclaim in him one of Don John’s own rakish soldiers of fortune.

The key turned in the lock. The next instant the Capitan (the red plume sweeping over the hat-brim proclaimed his rank) sprang forward with a growl like an angry dog’s and plucked at Rockhurst’s cloak, even as the latter was pushing the door open.

“Hey, there, comrade!” he whispered, “you are caught at it—breaking into an honest burgher’s house! Out of this, sharp!”

“Breaking in, camarado? Why, not at all,” responded Rockhurst, in his own Franco-Spanish. “Merely entering where I am expected, and my servant there holds the light.—Come in, Marcelin.”

He stepped lightly through the doorway, leaving his cloak in the other’s grasp. His voice, in the undertone they both deemed prudent to adopt, yet conveyed the perfection of mockery.

“Expected? _Cuerpo de Dios!_” said the gallant, and fell back a step, blank surprise robbing him, it seemed, of all other emotion for the present.

“Even so, Señor Caballero, witness this key. (Up with the light, Marcelin, that the señor may see for himself.) Witness the token.” He brandished first the key, then the scented handkerchief, with gay gesture. “May I trouble you for my cloak? Then I shall wish you good night.”

Marcelin, grinning, stood between the two, his back against the door-post, the basket on his arm, holding up the lantern. The light fell full on the Spaniard’s visage: young and handsome enough it was, though now livid with fury. Still speechless, he seemed rooted to the spot, his black eyes starting, the wings of his nostrils distended upon his angry breath.

Rockhurst waited a second or two, then with a laugh:—

“Marcelin,” he ordered, “relieve the noble Capitan of my cloak: he will understand my impatience.”

The little valet, shifting the lantern into the basket, put out his hand obediently for the ragged garment in question. But here the newcomer, suddenly leaping into active ferocity, made a headlong rush into the garden, and had not Rockhurst by a dexterous step aside avoided the onslaught, would have seized his rival by the throat.

“Come in, Marcelin, and shut the door,” came the mocking voice from the darkness. “Let us unravel this little question of precedence in snug privacy. We shall want your lantern, my friend.”

The garden, tree-shaded and high-walled on all sides, seemed to shut in and concentrate the night’s gloom. The sound of two swords, hissing out of the scabbards even as the words were spoken, was sinister in the darkness.

Rockhurst quickly drew once more within the faint circle of light. The lantern held aloft (now in a somewhat nervous clutch, it must be said) revealed the silent laughter that rippled over his features like wild-fire, as he flung himself into an extravagantly truculent fencing attitude. The Spaniard, stamping on the sod like a bull enraged, filled the air with guttural execrations, while he swung Rockhurst’s cloak in frantic circles over his left arm. His rapier gleamed one moment aloft, then, low-aimed, shot forward like a flash.

Marcelin involuntarily shouted warning; but Rockhurst, with the coolness of the experienced fighting man, had already slipped from the stroke of death as airily as the practised dancer to the turn of the tune. On the instant he had plucked his dilapidated beaver from his head, and beating with it the menacing blade widely aside, brought down his own steel whistling upon the wrist that palely showed behind the gilt Toledo hilt.

With a muffled scream of rage and pain the Spaniard dropped his weapon, fell on one knee, feverishly shaking the cloak off his arm to nurse his helpless, bleeding hand.

Rockhurst’s skill, guided by luck, had inflicted, at the first pass, one of those disabling wounds that cause pangs singularly disproportionate to their seriousness. He sheathed his rapier with much deliberation, picked up his cloak and flung it around him as it were a royal mantle, smoothed out the feather in his hat,—not improved in any way by its buckler service,—and set it back on his head at the right jaunty cock. He was about to pass the Capitan with a taunting _buenas noches_, when some impulse of careless good nature bade him change his mind.

“Nay, I am sure,” he said, “that our fair one within will support my invitation when I bid you to sup and converse. In your own Castilian phrase: Will you not enter into this your house?—Marcelin, support the Señor Capitan; he waxes, methinks, somewhat weakly.”

And, upon a further spur of magnanimity, he himself returned the fallen sword to the defeated man’s side.

Faint chinks of light cut upon the darkness showed them where the house door stood, slightly ajar, upon the garden. And as the trio approached, the feet of the wounded man shuffling along the tiled path, the soft voice called out, in its broken Spanish:—

“Señor Ramon, is that you?—For the love of God, what has happened?”

He who was just adjured answered only by a groan; whereupon Rockhurst, stepping up to the chink and speaking in low but cheerful tones, addressed the invisible lady in French this time:—

“Dear madam, if you will but admit us, you shall have explanation. The Capitan Ramon has met with a slight misadventure, and needs but your smile, a bandage, and a tass of brandwein to restore him.”

“Ah, heavens!” answered she, and the door was flung wide open. A woman, evidently of the rich burgher class, young, and very fair of colouring, stood in the passage, a small lamp in her hand. Her face blanched as the half-fainting man was assisted across the threshold, and she caught her free hand to her lips as if to stifle a rising scream. It was evident, thought Rockhurst, that there were those in the house whom she feared to disturb.

The danger of her own situation weighing apparently upon her even more than the condition of her lover, she gathered herself quickly together; and, imploring caution by gesture, ran light-footed up the passage, beckoning as she went. She thus inducted the whole party into a panelled room, which seemed built at the most distant end from the front. It was gaily lighted by a hanging crown of candles, warmed by a stove, furnished in brown oak, with dressers and shelves upon which gleamed much pewter and brass of high polish. Upon a table covered with fair red and white napery stood revealed an unmistakable supper for two, with abundance of good things, at sight of which Rockhurst and Marcelin exchanged a deep glance of meaning.

As she closed the door upon their entrance, the young woman drew a deep breath of relief, exclaiming in her Flemish French:—

“Here we are safe!—In the passage,” she added, turning to Rockhurst, “the servants, sir, might have heard us from their quarters.”

The simple air with which she spoke, the round blue eyes she fixed upon them, the practical candour with which she excused herself for a seeming want of hospitality before attending to her groaning lover, gave Rockhurst swift insight into the nature they had to deal with. Here was a matter-of-fact young vrow, not even pretty,—at least to a fastidious English eye—for, with her little moon face and her hemp-coloured hair, she might have emerged from a canvas by Master Gerard Dow, yet with much that was agreeable about her manner, about the gentle irregularity of her features, but above all about her engaging youthfulness. Here certainly was none of your vaporous dames. She showed no undue emotion at sight of the Spaniard’s blood-dyed hands; but, as she turned to help him, was neatly careful to twitch her dress from too close proximity and to push her lace cuffs higher up her plump arms.

After examining the gash with crooning sympathy, she poured water into one of the bright pewter dishes that stood on the sideboard; then, cutting a napkin into strips with the carving-knife, addressed the Cavalier:—

“If you will kindly give him the brandwein—it is in the square glass bottle beside the pasty.”

Rockhurst started from his amused contemplation and turned to the damaged gallant. This latter, installed by Marcelin with mock solicitude in a chair near the table, sat collapsed, with his head on his breast. Rockhurst conceived a shrewd suspicion that the Capitan’s prolonged weakness was more feint than reality, an opinion apparently shared by the servant, whose face was wreathed in satiric smiles. And when the wounded man pettishly pushed aside the brandy and demanded _del vino_, the doubt became certainty.

“Wine, Marcelin,” ordered the Cavalier briefly, as one in his own house.

After having drained a rummer of Rhenish, the Capitan recovered sufficiently to roll his head toward his lady as she knelt on his right, laving the languid, bleeding hand.

“Ah, traitress!” he observed scathingly.

“Madam,” interjected Rockhurst, as the pale blue eyes were raised in wonder from their task, “your valiant friend refers, I imagine, to your having honoured me with a song, an invitation, a token, and a key. It is because of his failure to understand the right of a lady to dispose of all favours at her will that he met with the little accident to which he now owes the honour and the joy of your sweet ministration.”

“Sir…!” cried Ramon the Capitan, lifting his olive-hued countenance to fling an uncertain glare across the table. Then, no fresh argument apparently occurring to him, he repeated resentfully, “Traitress—traitress!”

“In heaven’s name,” she cried, pausing in her task, “was it not you?—How, sir, was it you?”

She turned her childish gaze from one to the other, her blond head, as she knelt, just emerging above the table. For all answer, Rockhurst drew key and kerchief from his breast and pushed them toward her.

The Spaniard drew breath for a fresh compliment. But, Marcelin putting a second glass opportunely to his hand, he plunged his mustache again into the wine.

“Ah, what a mistake!” murmured the vrow, returning placidly to her ministrations. “Alas, what a cut!—it must be tended by the surgeon, but I will draw the lips together and bandage. You can give yourself time for supper first.”

She wound the strips firmly as she spoke, though the patient spluttered in his cup, winced, and whistled. To complete the artistic effect she took the handkerchief that lay on the table and tied it neatly over all. Rockhurst was shaken with his silent laughter over the singular pair of lovers.

“Sir,” said the little hostess, rising to her feet and addressing him, then, not without dignity: “I know not whom you may be, but your presence here is the result of a misunderstanding. That you may not misunderstand further, let me inform you that I receive the Capitan Ramon at this hour only because my husband, who went off to-day to Antwerp, has forbidden him to enter his house.”

“Madam,” said Rockhurst, as he rose in his turn and bowed, concealing under an air of preternatural gravity his delight at the simple statement, “had I the honour of standing in your husband’s shoes, I should be jealous of every dog that looked at you.”

“But, sir,” she exclaimed, her gaze widening upon him, “but my husband is old and fat.”

The hard brilliancy of the Cavalier’s eye softened: here was a remark which betrayed the logic of a perfectly childish mind.

“The poor Capitan Ramon,” she went on, “has so little money and gets such poor fare. I think it but right to help him.”

“Madam,” said Rockhurst, “you have described my own case. I bless the hour when I was inspired to pass beneath the window of so tender-hearted a lady!”

“Indeed,” she said, and her creamy skin flushed to the roots of her hair, “if you will share the supper, too, I shall be glad of it.”

Again the Spaniard rolled his glare of sullen doubt. Rockhurst had not lived the life of camps for so many years without becoming familiar with every variety of your _soldado_. He was able, by this time, to read very clearly that here was but one of those ubiquitous “officers of fortune” who, behind a punctilious manner and a conquering exterior, screen anything but a chivalric soul—mercenaries who, no doubt, will fight when occasion is imperative, but who reckon upon looks as much as upon “derring-do” for the securing of this world’s comforts. The attack in the garden, under the spur of sudden fury, upon the invader of his own conquered province, had exhausted the Capitan’s pugnacity: Rockhurst saw that, in the further progress of the night’s adventure, this Ramon need no longer be taken into account.

“I should be churl, indeed,” said he to the lady, as he sat down at the table, “to decline your gracious courtesy. Nay, madam, pray take your seat; my servant will even pass the dishes. Natheless, if you will so honour me, a glass of wine from your fair hand?… I give you thanks.—Marcelin, you can feed the Señor Capitan.”

* * * * *

So the odd supper party began; the hostess unconsciously admiring; the Spaniard all a-frown; Rockhurst rattling his compliments with fascinating courtliness—his heart the while in the bare lodgings of the Quai Vert with his unprovided King; his brain intent upon turning the tide of events to the channels of his own purpose. He could see nothing thus far, but to await the moment when the Spaniard, sufficiently fuddled with wine after his blood-letting, might be conveyed back to the street by Marcelin and handed over to the next patrol. Then, thought Rockhurst, the gentle vrow would be left to the unhampered diplomacy of her uninvited guest (who felt prepared to wield it as profitably, and justify it as gallantly, as any Castilian in Bruges), and all would be plain sailing.

The astute valet seemed to have divined the scheme, and was plying the bottle sedulously upon his charge. Fate, however, upon which the wanderers had hitherto so blindly reckoned, again wielded the key.

Marcelin had hardly drawn the first sweep of the knife upon the goose’s breast when the house reverberated to the sound of distant knocking. The little dame went as white as the kerchief at her bosom; a far greater discomfiture fell upon her than she had manifested at sight of her gallant’s wound.

“Heaven’s mercy!” she gasped; “it is from the street!”

She ran to the inner door and listened in the passage; the knocking was resumed, from no patient or weakling hand, in peculiar cadence.

“It is my husband,” she said then, coming back into the room, with the calmness of despair. “It is my husband, and I am lost.”

The Spaniard rose to his feet and stood swaying, a look of dismay and helplessness upon his countenance. Instinctively she turned to Rockhurst, and pointing to the sorry figure, she cried:—

“My husband will never forgive me … no, Josse will never forgive me! He bought Ramon out when they had billeted him on us, last month. He bought him out and I was forbidden ever to speak to him again. I thought I was safe to-night … I am lost!”

The thunder of the husband’s rapping accompanied her lament with swelling rhythm.

“Oh!” she went on, “Josse told me this morning he was going to Antwerp. It was a trap!”

“A trap!” exclaimed the Cavalier gaily. “But there is a way out, madam, a way out, since there was a way in!”

“To the devil with this night’s work!” suddenly gurgled the Capitan. “To the devil, say I, with women and fools!”

His lady’s wine had not been without effect upon his wits; but he was sober enough to seize the situation and act on his rival’s hint. In three staggering steps he was at the door, and they could hear him break into a kind of groping run down the passage.

In the midst of her terror the Dutchwoman’s eye flashed with sudden scorn.

“Truly,” said Rockhurst, as if in answer, “’tis a valiant heart! Yet, madam, with him is your chief anxiety removed. Whilst you play with bolts and delay your lord with fond embrace, we, on our side, vanish by the garden whence we came. Aye, and let out the señor, for ’tis still I who have the key.—Go, dear madam; leave the rest to us.”

“Alack, alack!” she moaned, “this supper table, laid for two, will yet betray me!”

“Say you so!” exclaimed Rockhurst, his wits leaping to the humorous opportunity. “Nay, then shall the supper vanish, too! Your Flemish household still sleeps heavily; our chances are good. Madam, before you hurry to the door, you had better put some dishevelment in your attire to show you had but just descended from your bedchamber, where you were doubtless already disrobing.—Marcelin, you rogue, you have a reputation for a smart table servant; deserve it!”

Even as he spoke the hurried words, he had begun himself to toss goose and pasty into the basket and to stuff a brace of the long flagons securely in the interstices.

There was a stir overhead; the household was awaking.

“Monseigneur,” cried Marcelin, on an inspiration, “no time for niceties! If monseigneur will take one end of the cloth, I will take the other. We can carry the victualling wholesale into the garden and there advise about packing—Madam will see to the bloody basin, no doubt?”

Upon these words, with all presence of mind, the valet ransacked the dresser of everything it bore in the shape of good cheer, cakes and ham, brawn and an eel pie, and many flagons (not forgetting the square-faced bottle), and made a pile of the booty upon the table.

Obedient to his suggestion, the hostess had tripped out to fling the contents of the basin upon a flower bed. She came back in a trice, found Marcelin already loaded with the weighty, strangely bulging bag, and with fervent words of thanks held the door open for him. Rockhurst meanwhile was gaily blowing out candle after candle of the hanging crown. Ponderous footsteps descending the stairs proclaimed that the porter was at length aroused.

“One light for you, madam,” said Rockhurst; “you are just in time!” He thrust the last unextinguished taper into her hand; then, his arm round her waist, bending his height to her small stature, drew her toward the door: “Good-by,” he said, “sweet hostess. Another time choose more wisely both your hour and your cavalier.”

She turned her soft, childish face with a little sob up toward him. And with a sudden stirring of the heart, as toward a winsome child, he bent and kissed her.

“I shall never forget how you have saved me, this night!” she said, her lips upon his. At which Rockhurst kissed her again to conceal his amusement.

The sound of a bar grating reluctantly in its socket rang the urgency of parting. Yet, she clutched him.

“You said you were poor and hungry, like him … like him who fled,” she panted. “I had saved this for him: I had rather you had it.”

She thrust a small velvet bag into his hand, one second more pressed clingingly against him, and the next instant was flying light-footed away. There came a sound of a growling voice; at which Rockhurst in all celerity flung his cloak over his shoulders and withdrew, closing the outer door noiselessly behind him. Marcelin’s lantern flashed one ray of guidance: yonder the gate and the end of the adventure.

The three emerged into the street. Rockhurst paused, his silent laughter stimulated afresh at sight of Marcelin, who stood doubled in two under the burden of the great white bag, his basket with the two bottle necks protruding, horn-like, on his arm, and his lantern illumining a grin of supreme satisfaction. Then he glanced down at the purse in his hand—it lay in the hollow with a highly comforting weight—and from thence to the Spaniard, who had begun to crawl away, supporting himself against the wall.

“Señor Capitan,” he cried ironically after him, “I wish you once more, and I trust finally, a very good night!—Marcelin, I’ll take that basket: we must make good speed.”

He halted, however, yet a breathing space to gaze at the great front of the house where, from window to window, gleamed a light on its upward way, suggestive of a bed-going procession.

“This is how we live at Bruges!” he murmured to himself, dropped the purse philosophically into his pocket, thrust his right arm through the basket and, his hand pressing on his rapier hilt, the tip of the scabbard jauntily raising the cloak behind him, started off at a swing.

Marcelin followed at a gay if uneven hobble, occasionally staggering under his succulent burden.

Old Chitterley opened the door to his master.

“His Majesty sleeps,” said he, finger on lips; “I looked in but just now, to place a log on the fire: his Majesty slumbered very sound, as I heard and saw.”

Then the speaker’s eye wandered to the basket on his lordship’s arm, the contents of which were agreeably discernible, and to the improvised sack on Marcelin’s back, for which the latter’s jubilant face was warrant.

“Heaven be praised, my lord!” he exclaimed fervently, as he extended his hand to relieve his master. The tragedy of events had robbed the old servant of all sense of humour. “His Majesty shall have supper to-night; our house is not disgraced.”