Part 4

“My servants, sir,” she repeated, a thrill of impatience running through her quick utterance. “They will return to find me gone!”

“Why, then,” he made answer, driving his heels into their steed’s bulging sides, “I will even send presently to the coach, and warn them of your safety.… They will be welcome likewise.… But we must go on—yonder is my gate—a very little while and you shall be by the fireside.”

As he turned off the road he cast a look backward down the slope and noticed a brace of yellow lights bobbing through the misty white of the valley: the traveller’s servants were returning with succour. Not a minute too much had fate granted him! But are not the ready ever the successful?

His boyish face was astir with silent laughter as he gathered the lady into his arms upon the threshold of his own door-step.

III

THE RANSOM

Rockhurst was roused from deep reverie by the opening of the door. His mind had been far indeed from Farrant Chace and his own unprofitable present existence—as far away as the days of youth; days of inspiration and hope; of delicate illusion even in sorrow; days of strife, when loyalty was an exquisite passion, and the blood that ran in his veins sang to shed itself for his King! Days when friendship was near and dear as love, and love itself the golden fruit of an endless mystery. He was of those who grasp at life with both hands. None had brought a younger heart to his youth; no man faced his fulfilled manhood with less illusion. He had wanted much, he had received much, he had taken much—and all had failed him.

He raised his head and stared, almost as if he were dreaming, at the two who entered upon his brooding solitude; two that might have come upon him out of that long-past youth—the lad with the face of the friend he had loved, and this vision of young womanhood, whose beauty shone like a pearl from the dark setting of her hood. But as soon as Paul Farrant spoke the spell was broken.

“A ransom, my lord—a ransom out of the snow!”

The twist of the speaker’s lip, the glint of his eye, gave triumphant meaning to the words.

Rockhurst rose from his chair, the weary look returning to his face. Here, after all, was but the degenerate son of the man whose blood had been his own baptism to noble sorrow. And the sapling slight creature with virginal eyes and soft lips who was leaning upon Paul Farrant’s arm? Why—she was but his ransom!—Nay, these were no longer the days of white-souled Falkland, or generous Hampden, days of chivalrous if hopeless devotion to ideals: these were the days of the merry Monarch, where none could feel a higher sweet than Pleasure, nor feel a deeper pang than Envy.… How far away the days of Youth!

She was but his ransom! And the young man’s words of promise, which had seemed so empty when they were pronounced, “we may not be so destitute of entertaining company at Farrant Chace as your lordship deems,” came back to his mind, and with a new, cynical meaning. Fair company in sooth! But, how, here “out of the snow,” lured by what prospect of light amusement, what offered guerdon, he could only surmise. Possibly some traveller from the inn, ready with all the ease of these times to snatch at pleasure where it offered itself.…

A lady, by every movement of eye and limb. A lady! Bah! was it not the fashion among ladies now to be as eager of base adventure as the gallants themselves?

He stood on one side while, with an exaggerated gallantry, Farrant conducted the stranger to Rockhurst’s just vacated seat, helped her to loosen her cloak, and pressed some wine upon her from the neglected goblets on the table.

When the lady had sipped, and returned the glass into his hand, she spoke at last.

“I thank you,” she said, smiling. “But, my servants…?”

Her voice was a little faint and plaintive yet, from the numbing of the cold, but it had a grave ring in it that fell pleasantly on Rockhurst’s fastidious ear.

“Another taste, madam; we will inquire about your servants anon. The mistress must first be waited upon,” cried young Paul, all agog in ostentatious attendance, and ever flinging a restless glance of inquiry at his Rockhurst. “Fie! Your cloak is heavy with wet. Let me move these dripping folds away from you. And your feet, oh, I protest!” He was down on his knees now, his young head glinting in the glow as he bent assiduously over his new task. “Your feet—ice!”

Even as he spoke, he drew the little doeskin shoe from her foot; and, as she instinctively lifted it toward the blaze, knelt back so that Rockhurst might see the firelight play upon its delicate shape.

The warmth of the wine and of the hearth had stirred her chilled blood. A flush, like the tint of a seashell, crept into her face; into her dazed eyes appeared a light to which the blue shadows of weariness on the lids gave a singular brilliancy; she very simply stretched her other foot for the kindly office.

As Farrant rose at last, with the second shoe dangling in his hand, his exultation broke out. He drew close, and whispered:—

“Say, my lord, shall we not be right well entertained to-night?”

“We?” echoed Rockhurst, aloud.

The single contemptuous exclamation fell like the cut of a whip. He turned, and bowing to the visitor, who had turned startled eyes toward him:—

“Madam,” he said, “I heard you express some anxiety about your attendants. Our young friend is about to fulfil your request … whatever it may be.—Go,” added he, turning upon the disconcerted youth. And as Farrant hesitated he took a swift step nearer to him, and whispered in his turn, “Go—to the devil or where you will, so long as it is out of this!”

His eye commanded more insolently yet than his words. The young man fell back, flung a look of hesitation toward the crumpled notes on the table; another glance at the lady, his fair treasure-trove. Then, with a meaning smile, he bowed profoundly, so that all his shining curls fell over his face, and withdrew.

Rockhurst caught the smile and the look; and the memory of a dead face, that of his old brother in arms, the boy’s father, in its last stern serenity rose up before him. His own eyes were hard as he looked again upon the woman who had been found so promptly willing to come and relieve the tedium of his snow-bound evening.

Diana Harcourt, with the return of physical comfort about her, had begun to feel a strange uneasiness gather in her mind. Country-bred, and country-wed to an old man who had little taste for company, she had yet had some opportunities of learning the way of courts; she, for instance, had no doubt that the youth who had saved her from the snow was of gentle birth, and that this grave-looking being, with whom she now found herself alone in the strange, silent house, was a very fine gentleman indeed. Nevertheless, something singular, something not quite open, clandestine almost, in the situation began to force itself upon her. What was the relationship between these two men? The eyes of the elder, who might have been the other’s father, were cold to dislike as he had gazed upon him. And the young man’s febrile excitement came back upon her memory with an impression of distaste amounting to repulsion. What had lurked behind his smile, his furtive, appraising glance? She recalled how innocently she had allowed him to touch her feet, and, flushing hotly, she cast her mantle over them and turned her head with a little movement, at once dignified and shy, to gaze upon Rockhurst. But suspicion fell from her on the instant.—Noble-looking, grave, high-bred, old enough to be her own father, what could she have to fear?

“Sir,” she said boldly, “will you not have the kindness now to tell me where I am, and with whom?”

Rockhurst drew up a chair and sat him down, deliberately facing her. Then he crossed his fine white hands upon his knee, letting his eyes rest upon hers.

“Madam,” he said at last, “do you not hear how the wind begins again to moan outside? I warrant you, behind the thick walls of this old house the snow is whirling in great white drifts. It must be parlous cold without. Here, madam, the firelight is rosy; do you not think we are very well together? ’Tis a quaint hour, stolen from dull old Time’s grudging casket. We do not know each other—why, that has a marvellous charm of its own! Let us not dispel it. We may never meet again; and to-morrow you go back … to the white snow. And I to the fever of the town. And that, perhaps, will be well, too.”

Her eyes dilated as she listened, scarce with fear, but again with the unexplained foreboding.

“Sir,” she said, after a pause, “your words are very strange; I do not understand them.”

“My dear,” said Rockhurst, his languid lids drooping a little now over the first keenness of his gaze, which seemed to narrow his scrutiny to something cruel as a blade, “I have just said it, ’tis a dull world. Will you complain of its strangeness once in a way? Why have you covered up your pretty foot? I vow I thought of Diana in the woodland glades when I saw the arch of its instep.” And, saying this, he opened his brilliant glance once more full upon her. “Diana did I say?” he cried. “Nay, no cold goddess! Far from me the omen!… A nymph. Aurora, with the sun in her hair, and all the roses in her cheeks!”

The blood which had rushed violently to Diana Harcourt’s temples ebbed away as quickly, leaving her white as the drifts without.

These were, no doubt, but idle words of gallantry; and all her woman’s instinctive pride warned her against the shame of seeming to attach any other significance to them. Yet whether glinting between half-closed lids or widely open upon her, the man’s eyes seemed to her to have some terrible, some merciless thought in them—a thought strangely at variance with the dignity of his appearance, the gravity, almost the sadness of his countenance; horribly at variance with the grey which besprinkled the raven of his locks.

“I am not of the town, and not accustomed to fine speeches and compliments.…”

She framed the phrase in pitiful attempt to stem the panic that was gaining upon her. He still sat motionless, his hands crossed, half smiling.

“Sir,” she cried, now angrily, “are there no women in this place? Will you not, in courtesy, allow me the company of one, till my servants arrive?”

“My dear,” he answered her sarcastically, “will my company not really suffice?”

Rockhurst had had Heaven or Hades knew what vast experience of women, of the women of Second Charles’s Court, whether in exile or in Whitehall. Scarce a challenging beauty of the posy that he had not measured swords with; and, as the practised fencer will, he knew every trick of the play, every line of assault and defence, every feint and every parry. And women, being proverbially unfair fighters, pretty dears! he had a smile as well as a wary eye for the tricky pass and the treacherous thrust. Of all the feints, that of innocence in straits, of outraged modesty, was the most elementary. This divine young creature with the copper-glowing hair and the wide-dilating eyes; whose blood ran so richly and so quickly; who had come in leaning familiarly on the arm of that prince of petty rakes, Paul Farrant, come willingly, it seemed, across the snows, to his bidding; who had suffered herself to be unshod with all the unblushing ease of any Whitehall coquette—why, if it now pleased her to play the pretty Puritan, he had no objection, save that, as he knew himself, he was apt to be swiftly wearied. The spark of interest kindled by her unaccustomed kind of beauty, by the something fresh and of the woodland about her, by the utter unexpectedness of her appearance and the mystery it pleased him she should maintain, would so soon flicker out. In love, as in war, he had but one method—straight ahead. In war he had been beaten back sometimes; in love, never.

“Come,” he said, sitting up at last and slowly stretching out one hand. “Come, Diana, since Diana you will be.” (Again she started on hearing herself unwittingly called by her real name.) “Be Diana, if you please, to me. What if I am no Endymion? Bah, my dear goddess,” and he drew his lean frame out of the chair and came over to her with the same deliberate grace, “that was a little mistake of yours to be so ready to stoop to yonder youth! Endymion is but a callow rascal, a greenhorn. When such beings as you descend from your high celestial ways it should be for a man! Come, do you wish me to kneel at your feet, as your shepherd did even now? I will, an’ it please you.”

His arms were almost about her, when, with a fierce movement, she sprang up and thrust him from her.

“In the name of God,” she cried, “into what trap have I fallen?”

“Nay, do not scream,” he said, at one step placing himself between her and the door, and catching her wrist, without roughness, but with that steel-like grasp she had instinctively divined under his gentle movements. “Let us clear this strange matter between us two, madam.—Answer you first: What purpose had you in coming here to-night?”

“I?” she flashed back at him, panting. “Purpose?—Purpose, sir?… That young man found me in the snow, the coach had foundered, my servants ridden away for help, I was perished from cold. Purpose? Let me go, sir. Rather the snow! Oh, let me hence from your horrible house!”

He released her and stood looking at her in silence. Again, even in her turmoil of terror and passion, she was struck by the extraordinary dignity of his air. But to look thus, and to act thus!

“Oh, shame,” she said; “you who might be my father!”

A swift shadow came over his countenance, then passed, leaving it set into marble impassivity. His eyelids drooped. Forgetting her cloak on the chair, forgetting her shoeless feet, she thought she saw her chance, and made a rush for the door; but he arrested her with a gesture.

“No!” he said authoritatively. Then, fixing his eyes upon her with an altered look: “No, child,” he repeated. His voice was as much changed as his gaze. Gone from it the dangerous, even silkiness of his first speeches to her, as well as the quick sternness of the last words. This new voice, something said to her, was the voice of the real self that matched the noble countenance.

He put out his hand. After a pause she put hers on it. Later she wondered at herself that she had done so. But there are moments when some poignant emotion tears away the bodily mask, when souls are suddenly laid bare to each other. For some of us that is the moment when our belief in all that is good and beautiful dies. But Diana, in that flashing look into the soul of this unknown man (who had yet, within so short a measure of time, insulted her) read that to which her own soul leaped. The storm subsided in her heart. She suffered him to conduct her back to the chair by the fire, and watched him—wonderingly, yet no longer with fear—as he straightened himself and, with folded arms, stood yet a little while contemplating her.

In the hawk’s eyes there was a softened shadow. As he gazed the shadow deepened into tenderness.—He was looking at her as the exile might look at the receding shore of the land he will never see again; with a yearning that has passed beyond despair, and so grown serene. At length, sighing, he roused himself, and came forward, pushed the heavy table closer to her, and brought within her reach some of the viands that were spread upon it.

“You must eat,” he said. And, as she lifted her eyes again with her childlike, questioning look, his lips parted in a smile she thought beautiful, upon the gravity of his countenance: “You have not done with journeying yet to-night,” he explained.

He moved to the window as he spoke; and, as he drew the curtains aside, there came into the ruddy brown room a vision of a moonlit fairy world.

“There, too, I was wrong, you see,” he went on, speaking over his shoulder; “the snow-storms are passed, and there is your sister moon to show you the way—Diana.” Then, coming back again to the table, “You asked for a woman’s company. In this house there is no company fit for you.”

Her eyelid flickered over her startled glance. She gave a quick cry.

“Eat, then,” he went on in the same gentle tone, “while I make arrangements for your instant departure.”

The door was shut behind him. Diana involuntarily called after him; but his footsteps died away in the empty passages. The great silence of the house closed about her; and in the solitude her own thoughts seemed to clamour and crowd bodily upon her. She leaned her elbows on the table and buried her bright head in her hands.

Slighted … insulted … then served reverentially like a princess … looked at and spoken to like a beloved child. How was it that all the anger was dead in her heart, and that in its place reigned this feeling of pain and incomprehensible joy commingled? How was it that her fear was banished, that she would have trusted herself with him even in this house which his own lips had named evil?

IV

UNDER THE STARS

Presently she again heard steps without and rapid words; then his voice, uplifted sharp and strong. She smiled, broke a piece of bread and sipped at the wine; she was safe, she knew, where he was. And she would eat, if only because he bade her.

In a few minutes Rockhurst returned. He was now booted to the thigh, and carried a cloak on his arm. Once more he sat down facing her. His eye fell on the discarded shoes; he bent down and felt them.

“They are nearly dry,” he said, and lifted them closer to the flame. “In a little while you must be ready. You will have to ride on the same rustic steed that brought you, but I will see that she carries you to safety.” He paused a second or two, then added: “The inn—a very well-known, reputable place—is not far distant; and you will doubtless hear of your servants there. Our young host,” he hesitated, and his voice seemed to harden, “tells me that, even as he rode with you into the avenue, folk were hastening to your rescue from that direction.”

Diana’s glance still questioned, but she dared not put the question into words. What, then, had the young man with the narrow eyes and the uneasy glance meant by her? And how, if he had had some dark purpose, had she been thrust upon this other and left to his mercy? Ah, and what had this other at first fancied to see in her? The blood surged to her cheeks, her lips trembled. Rockhurst held her under his eye. As if in answer to her thoughts he bent down.

“My dear,” he said, but how differently the words, a while ago insolently familiar, were now spoken; “this is no house for you. It must never be breathed of one such as you that you have been under its roof—with one such as me. You said you did not know the ways of us of the Court—pray God you may never know them!”

Here he was silent again, his eye resting thoughtfully upon her hands, unadorned save for a single posy ring.

“When you marry,” he went on then, as with an effort, “keep in the sweet country, and of a surety,” a sad smile flickered upon his lip, “your lord will gladly keep there, too.”

She lifted her head with a quick impulse; her mouth parted to speak. But an inexplicable, invincible reluctance to tell him she was already wed thrust back the words.

Rockhurst turned, and taking the loose pieces of paper from the table, gazed at them thoughtfully for a moment, and thrust them into his pocket. Then he rose, and almost gaily:—

“Come, madam,” he said, “your palfrey waits in the cold. Put on your shoes.” As he spoke he took down his sword and buckled it on.

She went forth with him, her finger-tips lightly in his hold, without a word, through the passages of the lone house, through the hall. The door, open to the night, cut a square, brilliant silver upon the inner dimness. Cold, pure airs rushed against them.

The mare, black, steaming, stood patiently, her bridle hitched to a post. There was not a sound of another living thing, it seemed, in all the white-shrouded land. She rested one hand on the saddle-cloth, lifted her foot for his service, and he swung her up with practised ease. She felt the strength of a steel bow in his arm. He folded her in a huge horseman’s cloak; then, without a word, took the bridle to walk by her side.

She looked at him wistfully. Had she dared, she would have invited him to share the saddle. But, dark and grave, he went beside her, and the silence held them.

* * * * *

They moved as in a dream through a dreamland of beauty, a white purity beyond expression. Above, in the pine trees, the wind choired; far out over the waste it sighed. Somewhere very far away, yet strangely distinct, Christmas joy bells were ringing.

The starry sky that domed this wonderful world was still more wonderful. Diana neither felt the cold, nor measured the space she traversed, nor the flight of time. She was another self; she would have asked no greater boon than to journey on through all this splendour, with the vision of his face cut in grave beauty against the white world, to meet the glance of his watchful eye now and again, to have the touch of his hand, kind and steady, upon her knee, when the road was rougher and the mare stumbled. She knew that at that unknown inn door, down in the valley, would come the parting, and her heart contracted.

* * * * *

The little village seemed asleep. The inn itself looked deep in slumber, with barred windows, its every gable huddled under the thick blanket of snow; only a wreathing smoke from the chimney-stack to tell of some watchfulness within.

Rockhurst knocked, masterfully, sonorously. Then turning, the rein slung over his arm, he leaned against a pillar of the porch, removed his hat, and looked up smiling at her. There came sounds, answering sounds, indoor. Then he spoke:—

“Thank you,” he said.

“Do you thank me?” Her voice shook a little.

“Thank you,” he repeated, “for having shown me, once more, a vision of my youth such as I never thought to know again!”

The bars were now heard grating against the closed door. Rockhurst took a step forward. She read farewell in his eyes; and, flinging out both her hands, almost with a sob:—

“Ah, but shall we not meet again?” she said pleadingly. “Your name? Mine—nay, you know it already. It is indeed Diana. Diana—”

But he interrupted her with a quick gesture.

“Hush! My name? No, it is a name of no good report, and I would not have it dwell in your mind. And yours—it were best I should not know it.…” Then, after a slight pause: “You come as a dream to me, you go as a dream, perfect, sweet, beyond words. We shall never meet again, Diana.”

The inn doors were slowly drawing apart. He lifted his arms to help her down, held her a second between them to steady her, then, putting her gently aside, sprang into the saddle and forthwith spurred the mare to her heavy trot.

And Diana, looking after them, saw rider and mount passing from her, black against the snow. He never turned his head. She stood, bewilderment in her mind, pain at her heart.

“God-a-mercy, madam, ’tis you!” cried the familiar voice of her old servant in her ear. “In the Lord’s name, madam, where have you been?” old Geoffrey was tremblingly questioning.

She started, looking round at him as one suddenly awakened. Was it all indeed a dream of the snow? she asked herself, as the sheltering doors of the Anchor, at Liphook, closed upon her.

* * * * *

The sudden spurt of old Bess the mare soon gave place to her usual jog. Through the silent snow she carried her rider back to the door of Farrant Chace. The rhythmic jingle of her bit, the monotonous muffled plunge of her hoofs, the wail of the wind over the down, seemed to point the wide stillness, even as the sparse black firs pointed the immense whiteness of the waste.