Part 8

And so the mimic battle raged behind the eagle brows. In the end, not without a smile of grim humour, the Admiral offered a truce. He would not interfere with Roger. In any case, the lad might never have considered taking any step, and time would be wasted on the errand. His magisterial self the old seaman soothed by a promise of utmost haste. Instead of ordering the coach for after dinner, he would drive out at once, and eat from a hamper on the carriage seat. Having thus silenced the mental combatants, the Admiral kept his bargain to the letter. In a few minutes he was back at the house, giving orders to a flurried housekeeper.

Peter being absent on Charity's affairs, the Admiral was obliged to see to his change of garb himself. But here Elise proved herself uncommonly thoughtful. Hearing from Mrs. Curnow that the master was bound to Liskeard on urgent business, and would not be home till the morrow, and was in an uneasy temper because his man was out on an errand and he must fasten his own cloak and see to his pistols himself, Elise proceeded to the Admiral's room to offer such services as might be at her command. She found the door of the room ajar, and knew from neighbouring sounds that the Admiral was in the study. In his haste the sailor had thrown the fateful letter on the bed, with his work-a-day coat; the sharp eyes of Mademoiselle caught the red of the seals. A minute later she was out of the room again, her light step making no sound. When the Admiral was safely back in his bedchamber, she returned along the passage, her high heels clicking hard on the boards.

'I wanted to help you, if I might, sir,' came her voice at the door, and pleased at such thoughtfulness, the Admiral bade her enter. By that time the letter was in his pocket again.

As soon as the coach had left the courtyard, Elise stepped out, and crossing the pastures made her way towards the Manor Farm. A workman on the south fields was busy ditching, and from him, by dint of casual remarks, Elise learned that Master Roger had taken the fastest horse and ridden away some two hours ago.

Elise waited to hear no more. There was a light of triumph in her eyes as she trotted back to Garth. Presently an under groom was ordered to saddle Molly. Mademoiselle was bored by the inaction of life so lonely at Garth, and she was wishful to ride out to Bodmin and make a trifling purchase. She did not deem it necessary to add that it was her intention, while her escort was supping at the _King's Head_, to find means to send a few words to the Governor of Bodmin Gaol.

*CHAPTER X*

*FOREBODING*

It was the night of the ball in Kensington, and as if the heavens had conspired with Lady Fairfax to create a scene of loveliness, threatening clouds had passed with sunset to show a slip of a new moon and peeping stars. The dancing-rooms opened on to a long terrace at the south side of the house, and in the warm evening the windows were set wide. Just below the terrace lay my lady's rose bed, and near by a patch of mignonette and stock and heavy bushes of lavender joined their fragrance to the scent of the roses.

Lady Fairfax stepped out on to the terrace, seeking a minute's respite from her duties. The silver arc was just hovering above the trees, and Colonel Sampson, who had gone below for a lace scarf, emerged from the house in time to see his hostess gravely curtseying three times to the heavenly visitor. The rite performed, my lady received the shawl, and for a space the old friends walked along the terrace in silence. Through the open windows sounded low voices and laughter. The ball-room was thronged, and the two without could hear, close to the casement, the swish of brocaded robes on the shining oaken floor. From the raised gallery came the slow air of a minuet, the fiddlers' strains blending with the tones of the flute and the sweet tinkle of a harp.

The loiterers on the terrace had not taken many turns before Sir John Fairfax joined them.

'I may but stay a moment,' he said. 'The house should not be left thus.'

'The house is very well, dear lad,' said his wife serenely. 'My guests are never dull, for the reason that dull folk are never my guests. Are you playing cards below?'

'From what I see, no one has thought of anything save either dancing or watching the dance. But, my dear, I have news that will cause you some dismay.'

Lady Fairfax stopped in her walk. 'The Queen? I knew it!' she said grimly, as her husband nodded. 'Am I wanted this very hour?'

'To-morrow, to accompany Her Majesty to Tunbridge.'

Lady Fairfax walked on a pace or two, then stopped and looked upwards. 'Did I not curtsey humbly enough, fair maiden? Why such an ill reward?' She resumed her walk. 'La, la! 'tis an uncertain world. But I am mightily grateful to the powders for lasting so long as they did. I have been dreading this summons for a week past. Her Majesty has been looking vastly yellow again. But what am I to do with Marion?'

'Leave her with me?'

'Yes, Grandam, but what will you do with her?'

'Give her a few days' rest. She has had over much turmoil and excitement of late. She shall hem sheets and talk to Simone. I will see she takes the air. But I trust you may not be long away. My Lord Churchill is urging an expedition.'

'Secret, no doubt?'

'Ay, dear love--secret.'

'Should you be gone, I will take your place, Jack,' said Sampson. 'And I have not yet seen the little Simone, but from what I hear she is an excellent companion. Marion will not be lonesome.'

'I must go and see Martin a moment,' said Lady Fairfax, turning indoors. 'Pray excuse me, Colonel.'

The two men continued their walk.

'I wish the old Salt Eagle had been here to-night,' said Sampson, as his host paused outside one of the windows.

'But she was frightened out of her wits at first,' smiled the other. 'Her face was as white as yonder white roses in the bowl, when she stepped out for her first dance. Did you note it?'

'She is not nervous now. Look yonder!'

The two stood in the darkness without, watching. In the light of hundreds of candles beautiful women and richly clad men moved to and fro to the strains of the dance. Against the darkness of the panelled walls jewels flashed in a maze of colour, and behind the dancers, passing in and out of the doors, other figures filled in the brilliant pageant. All the youth and heyday of the Court were in Kensington this night. And stepping to and fro among them as she danced the minuet, Marion looked like a gold and white lily set amid tropical blooms. The spots of turquoise in her pearl necklace sought and found the blue-green touches in the embroideries of her dress. Trained along the wide cream skirt was a faint design of blue and gold. It was the only dress in the room so restrained in colour, and, surmounted by the white of bosom and neck, the warm paleness of the face and sudden glory of the hair, it drew from the eyes of both men and women an open or covert admiration.

The younger ladies became a trifle critical of their rich colours, their powder and rouge and patches--adornments which Marion had steadily refused; the matrons who were looking on recorded another instance of the faultless taste of Lady Fairfax: she had tuned the girl's appearance to the key-note of her personality. The men, knowing nothing of these subtleties, watching her serious face as she danced, her unlikeness to the women of London society, her quaint girlish dignity, felt the pleasure that novelty gives, and revelled in the new sensation.

Without knowing it, the 'little niece' was indeed a revelation to the dancers who shared her company that night. Having been brought up by the Admiral as simply as if she had been a boy, she was singularly free from self-consciousness; and not only was she outspoken and honest in her speech, but a vein of humour, clear gold, ran through her thoughts continually. Thus, as the night wore on, the gentlemen leading Marion to and fro in the dance, or sitting by her side in the rooms below, or walking by her on the terrace flags, found that their whispers of adulation, their extravagant utterances, which were commonplaces in the social intercourse of the day, were wasted on the young lady they had thought to please. Their choicest seeds fell on stony ground. Marion had never learned to simper and look coy in the face of outrageous flattery. She would listen for a while, amazed at such arrant foolishness, the twinkle in her eyes hidden under the long dark lashes about which the speakers failed not to wax so eloquent. Then the admiring ones, taking breath for a still higher flight, would see the grave, downward drooping lips suddenly betray her thoughts, her face break into an open merriment that shook the wind from their eloquence and tore into shreds their mounting self-conceit.

But Marion could not be human and not know the joy and intoxication of success. At the beginning of the evening, when her aunt's guests had been presented to her, and received her cold little fingers, she had felt outcast and forlorn, something to be hidden from the sight of all that beauty and grandeur. Then when the truth was borne home that she herself, and not any one of the Court damsels she envied, was the central figure; that each man there seemed to be a visitor merely to do her homage, first and throughout, Marion's mood changed. She had always loved to dance; the admiration in the eyes opposite as she came and went in the minuet set her own eyes all the brighter, and threw a lightness and glow into her being. She was sipping the wine of youth from a goblet of gold, and only later did she realise how sweet that first draught had been.

Just after supper she ran up stairs to ask Simone to cut a shred from her silk petticoat which an unwary foot had caught on the stairs. Her room was empty. As she went to the dressing-table for a pair of scissors, a letter caught her eye.

It was addressed in a laborious, unfamiliar hand. Wonderingly Marion broke the seal, and unfolded the sheet, looking first at the signature at the close of the letter.

'Little Charity! Of all persons in the world to have writ me! Can Jack have escaped again?'

Somewhat dazed at the suddenness with which the thought of Garth had leapt from some dim spot of memory direct to the immediate moment, Marion sat down and began to read Charity's letter. The writing was ungainly, in parts half illegible, the words ill spelt. Marion re-read several sentences before she began to grasp their meaning. It was something about Elise. Then she saw Roger's name. A chill of fear, the colder because it was shapeless, seized her, throttling the warm happiness that pulsed in her veins. She turned back to read the sentence again. Roger--what was this about Roger?

As she bent over the letter in the light of her dressing-table sconces, Lady Fairfax passed the door and looked in.

'Marion! Why are you up here?'

'There's a letter here from Charity,' said Marion absently, reading on as she spoke, 'and----'

Lady Fairfax crossed the room, and laid her hand on the girl's arm. 'My darling, you cannot behave thus. Listen: there is the music of the galliard which Londoners are dancing to-night in honour of my country maid. Do you not hear yonder Cornish air? They are waiting on you before they can begin. Who is your partner?'

Lady Fairfax gently took the letter from the girl's cold fingers, and bending down, pressed a kiss on her cheek.

'Captain Beckenham is my partner, Aunt Constance.'

The tone of the voice caught the ear of the older woman. She looked at the face reflected in the looking-glass.

'Come, come! What is this letter?'

''Tis something about Elise and--I like it not. But I had rather finish it, Aunt Constance.'

A grave rebuke flashed in and out of the lady's eyes.

'Elise can wait. She has waited thus long. And there are days and days to read it in. But to-night--this is _your_ ball, and your guests are waiting on your pleasure. Where is the smiling face I saw ten minutes ago?'

Marion got up, and taking the scissors cut the fragment from her petticoat. True to her character, she made no outward show of the unhappiness that had seized her. 'Where is Simone?'

'Helping Martin.'

'Why so, Aunt Constance?' With mechanical fingers, Marion tidied a tress of her bright hair.

'I will tell you later, my child. Run downstairs now; and remember this is your special dance. I am following, but I must attend to the older folk in the card-room.'

Obediently Marion went downstairs. The ballroom, which had seemed all brightness and music a little time before, now appeared full of alien presences whose voices jarred upon her. She was scarcely aware of the low bow of her partner, of his extended hand; with an unaccustomed heaviness in her step she took her place at the head of the long line. Then glancing towards the musicians' gallery as the fiddlers struck up the country air, she saw the wrinkled face of old Zacchary behind the performers, his eyes, full of pride and tenderness, watching the 'little maid' who was his delight. A sudden vision of her father came upon her. She rallied. Her head rose a little. She threw a smile to Zacchary, and holding her fingers to her partner, went lightly down between the ranks, curtseying and turning and retracing her steps in the maze of the country dance. Once begun, the movement left her no time for thought. Only when Captain Beckenham led her to her seat and handed her her fan, did she realise how heavy lay her heart, what bitter drops had marred the wine and dulled the sparkling rim of the goblet. Presently Colonel Sampson strolled up.

'I should guess my lady has told you the news, Mistress Marion. 'Tis writ in your sober look.'

'What news?' cried the young gentleman, rising to his feet as the old soldier spoke.

'Why, here is Lady Fairfax summoned to attend Her Majesty to Tunbridge on the morrow.'

Marion remained silent as the two talked a little of the Royal invalid, content that her gravity, which in spite of her efforts was evidently noticeable, should be set down to that cause. The news of her aunt's departure seemed to lay another weight upon her spirits, but she realised that much as she loved her aunt, the heaviness of the thought that she must be thus parted from her was slight compared with that other unformed, unnamed burden that threatened her; she had not had time to learn the meaning of Charity's letter.

Captain Beckenham glanced down at the girl. Her fingers were playing with the handle of her fan; her mind seemed elsewhere.

'I could wish Her Majesty's illness had waited another day,' he said with a deep sigh. ''Tis a most unkind cloud to spread itself over the face of the sun, and leave the earth desolate and dark. And quite possibly I shall be bidden, either in Her Majesty's suite, or to follow.'

Marion looked up with one of her mocking smiles as the young guardsman, with a meaning look, and his hand flourishing, bowed low. But the older eyes watching saw that something was amiss. Mr. Sampson drew up a vacant chair, and rewarded beforehand by a look from Marion, succeeded in maintaining an easy conversation in which the girl's share was light.

Presently Lady Fairfax appeared in the ball-room, and immediately, it seemed, became the centre of a lively group. Marion, watching her aunt, felt suddenly ashamed. The one glance Lady Fairfax had bestowed upon her told more than spoken words. 'A hostess in a ball-room has no place for private feelings,' said those challenging eyes.

Marion mentally shook herself afresh; turned to a young man who was hovering near, and indicated with her fan an empty seat. The new-comer, more bronzed than his fellows, had just left his ship at Greenwich. Marion smiled on him, and threw out a few sea-going phrases; and the young sailor, who had coveted the honour of speaking to the daughter of the old Salt Eagle, was rewarded by hearing stories of him from the lady herself. The two passed out on to the terrace, and the music of the next dance went by unheeded.

Presently others came to claim her attention. Somehow the evening wore away, and such was Marion's will upon herself, that no one besides Colonel Sampson and Lady Fairfax had any suspicion that her heart belied her face. With her uncle and aunt she stood at the head of the staircase as the guests took their leave. Presently all were gone but Sampson.

'Stay and have a glass of wine, Colonel,' said Lady Fairfax. 'I vow I am hungry again.'

But Mr. Sampson, with a low bow, declined the invitation, and turning to Marion, asked for the pleasure of her company on a drive the following day.

'Excellent!' said Lady Fairfax. 'The fresh air will be very beneficial.'

Marion gravely thanked the gentleman, and bending over her hand he contrived to throw into his gesture and parting look just the amount of friendliness she could bear.

'Then we will have our wine and cake together in your room,' said Lady Fairfax, passing her arm round Marion's waist. 'You can read yonder letter and tell me all about it. You have done bravely this last hour.'

*CHAPTER XI*

*AUNT AND NIECE*

Marion lay in her bed, staring through the drawn curtains into the dark night. Her window was ajar, and sweet cool airs played fitfully in the room. It was past three o'clock; soon the summer dawn would break; cocks crowed faintly in the farmyards that dotted the fields beyond Kensington village.

To and fro Marion turned, chafing at the hotness of her bed, trying to find a cool space for her body and a spot on the pillow that might tempt her throbbing head to lie still. The only ease she could gain was by turning a certain way, her eyes on the quiet vagueness of the sky. She kept telling herself there was no cause for this turmoil of mind; time after time she turned her thoughts back to the ball, thinking of the dances, of a certain melody that had pleased her so that she had sent to the fiddlers to play it again--of the men and women whose language and manners, still unfamiliar, fascinated her and gave her the pleasant feeling of being at home in a strange land. But behind their faces she saw that of Charity; running with the strains of the minuet was a phrase she could not forget--'i be afeered, Mistress Marion, mightilie afeered, and moste of al for Master Roger.'

'Who is this Charity?' Lady Fairfax had asked after she herself, at Marion's request, had read the sprawled sheet. On learning the story of the girl, and hearing of the hostile feeling of Garth for the Admiral's ward, the first instinct of Lady Fairfax had been to take the part of her own class against another that was uneducated, prejudiced, and superstitious to a degree.

'You can't get away from what is in your blood,' argued the lady. 'Those Cornish fisherfolk are the children of countless generations that have spent themselves in enmity with the French: a continual cross-channel warfare. They first hate the Devon men, because they are not Cornish, and then they hate the French because they are not English. To their way of thinking the only people who have any excuse to be alive, or have any hope to enter heaven, are English folk who have been born and bred in Cornwall.'

Marion smiled faintly. 'True enough, Aunt Constance. But you don't know Elise.'

'I don't know Elise, my dear. There you are right. But I do know that Elise, the daughter of Monsieur de Delauret and the granddaughter of the old Vicomte d'Artois, is bred and born a gentlewoman. You cannot turn your back on your own class and take the peasant view against them. And has not Elise been your companion and playfellow all these years? Leave for a moment this present problem--a difficult one, I grant you--and consider Elise in the light of a ten years' friendship. What have you against her?

'Nothing,' said Marion falteringly. 'That is, until Aunt Keziah came and made me somehow see Elise in a different way. And--besides----'

'The "besides,"' smiled Lady Fairfax, 'is generally the root of the whole matter.'

Marion's cream and gold lace dress had been taken off, and a light dressing-gown thrown about her, and Lady Fairfax, similarly disrobed, was tending the long russet hair.

With her brush swish swish through the shining tresses, Lady Fairfax waited. 'And besides?'

In as few words as possible Marion told the story of Jack Poole's arrest, and Elise's vindictive remarks at supper.

'What did your father say?'

'He was angry. I never saw him angry with her before. It was not only unkind of Elise, but 'twas a most dangerous thing to say, as Father explained. You don't know one hundredth part of the horror of that rising in the West, Aunt Constance. If one of the servants had heard her, and there had chanced to be a countryman, a tinker or a packman, in the kitchens--and of course you know passing folk are always welcomed by the servants--Roger might have been hanged on the strength of that.'

The lady was silent a moment. 'Well, well,' she resumed, 'Roger was not hanged. But, my dear love, for a girl coming to womanhood you are strangely blind. Have you not told me before that this youth Roger could not abide Elise?'

'No more he could. Well?'

'Is not that a reason for Elise's hating Roger? A woman can forgive a man almost everything except disliking her, and showing it.'

'Elise is only a girl.'

'A rose-bud is all the same a rose.'

Marion twined a stray wisp of hair round and round her fingers. 'Granted all that, Aunt Constance, why should Elise be continually going down to Haunted Cove, and to see such a horrible man?'

'Who says she is going continually?'

'Well--Charity says everybody says so.'

'Which means,' said Lady Fairfax tartly, 'that some one may have seen her twice. You don't know the Cornish as well as I do.'

'I will not hear another word against my people, Aunt Constance. You have naught but unkindness for them.' Marion tossed her hair free, and sprang to her feet.

'La, la!' said Lady Fairfax. 'Am I not "your own people?" And therefore theirs? Oh, my precious baby, what an infant you are!' The speaker suddenly caught the girl in her arms and drew her to a low seat. Marion's head fell on her shoulder, and her tears dropped.

'I am so unhappy, Aunt Constance.'

'But, my darling, I assure you there is nothing to be unhappy about.'

There was a silence for a few minutes. Then Marion slipped from her aunt's arms to the hearthrug, and laid her head against her knee. 'I am too big a baby to be nursed, dear Aunt Constance. I shall tire you.'

'I was not complaining,' said the childless woman, letting her arms fall.

'But why should she have gone even once down to Haunted Cove to meet that man?' Marion resumed after a while.

'There, my dear, is a question I cannot answer. But until you know more about it, is it not only fair to give Elise the benefit of the doubt? And as for the words she said: "He shall pay for this," why--the girl was furious, and let out the words in her spleen that she would otherwise have withheld. People spit out queer things when they are angry. Anger and madness are closely akin.'

'And another thing,' resumed Lady Fairfax, stroking the bright head. 'Your father is a shrewd man. He will not have forgotten that speech of Elise's. If he thinks in sober judgment there is anything against the maid, he will be watching her. Sooner or later these tales will reach him. If that little Charity had been worth her salt, she would have gone to him, and not writ that hysterical letter to you.'

'She would not dare, I am afraid, to seek my father.'