A FINALE
That figure stepped forth and seized her by the arm while saying, in tones quite loud enough for me to hear, "What are you making that noise for here? and who are you? and who, in the fiend's name, is Isidore?"
"O kind sir! O monsieur!" I heard the girl answer. "Oh! please, sir, don't kill me, and don't wake the Princess. Oh! what are you doing in her garden at this hour?"
"Who is Isidore?" the masked one asked sternly.
"O kind sir, he is the coachman. We are to be married soon, and we make a little tryst at night when it is fine above. O sir, if the Princess should wake?"
"Wake! How should she be asleep? Is she not entertaining some Englishman to supper to-night?"
"Ah, monsieur! Ah, mon Dieu! You believe that! 'Tis a cold supper then! Look, monsieur, at the salle-a-manger."
"Bah! She has a boudoir, I suppose?"
"Ah! monsieur, would you believe that of the Princess! And all because she played a little jest upon a foolish Englishman who pesters her with his attentions, a poor half-witted thing, who even now, at this moment, is dilly-dallying at the side-door, thinking he will be let in. Peste! he will wait a long while," and she began to sing a song out of Regnard's new comedy about a man waiting for a lady under an elm, and waiting a mighty long time too—
"Attendez-moi sous l'orme," she sang, "vous m'attendrez longtemps."
"A little jest," the cloaked and masked man said, turning round to his companion; "a little jest. And the animal is by the side-door. Is this the truth?" re-turning his face towards the girl.
"Ah! monsieur. The truth! How can it be aught else—when—when the Prince of Csaba and Miranda Vitoria honours her with his admiration."
"Come," the man said to his companion now. "Come. We, too, will go round to the side-door and see this ardent lover—and, perhaps, punish his insolence. These English are insupportable. As for you—go to your Isidore, your coachman."
"Oh! non, monsieur, non! He will not come now. There will be no Isidore to-night. He is timorous. If he has seen monsieur, he will have shrunk away."
"Go then to your bed, and stay in it; and, above all, say nothing to the Princess of our being in this garden to-night."
"For certain, monsieur, otherwise I should have to say I was here too. Good-night, monsieur." Then, as the man turned to move away, she suddenly stopped him by catching the end of his cloak, and, thereby, forcing him to turn; he saying somewhat haughtily, "What is it, good woman? What?"
"Only that monsieur will not laugh at the poor Englishman, will not deride him. They cannot bear that!"
"No," the other said, "I will not laugh at him. Rely on me. There will be no laughing," and again he turned and went upon his way, accompanied by the other.
"You have done a fine thing for poor Giles," I said to the Princess, as now she rejoined me in the great salle. "A fine thing. I must get back to him at once and lend a hand if I would not find him hacked to pieces by those two cut-throats sent out by your precious Prince."
"Why," she said calmly, "I thought you said he was a fighter. Is he not so?" she went on, while all the time she was unwrapping the hood from her head and—next—taking off the horrible Brittany cap which hid her beautiful hair that, now it was no longer obscured, gleamed a superb dark chestnut in the rays of the moon.
"He is that," I replied, "and a good one, as most men who have been soldier and sailor both, to say nothing of wandering about Europe as an adherent of an unhappy cause, are like to be. But the man is a good tilter who can hold his own against two."
"Perhaps he will not have to fight two of them," she said, still very calmly. "One has, I imagine, no fighting in him."
"What makes you think that?"
"Oh! Oh! Well, let us wait and see. Perhaps—well! I can't say."
"You observed that fellow well, anyhow. And heard his voice."
"Yes, yes!" she said; "yes, but it was no—— Come," she said, "let us go and look after the watchdog."
Whereon we now retraced our steps, passing out of the great hall and down the corridor towards where the side-door with the little wicket in it was.
And then, as we drew near that door, we heard (and more especially we did so because Damaris had forgotten to close the little wicket after she had looked through it at me, so that noises outside, if any, might plainly be distinguished) the clash of arms, a sound sweet enough to a soldier's ears.
"Hark!" I said, redoubling my pace as I did so, and catching hold of the girl's hand, whereby she was compelled also to move more swiftly, though, in sober truth, I think she was as anxious to reach the door and get it open as I was myself. "Hark! they have set upon him. And there were two. Oh! this is cowardly, murderous! I must take my share."
"Pray Heaven he, your man, kills not two of them. That would cause a terrible stir, and—and—and would part us for ever, Adrian."
"Nothing shall do that," I muttered determinately, perhaps grimly, through my lips. "Nothing!"
Then, we being by this time close to the door, I seized the latch and opened it, running out into the little open place in front of it, which was flooded by the glorious splendour of the full moon.
What a strange scene it was upon which my eyes lit, even as I heard my sweetheart murmur, "God be praised! he, at least, is not slain—yet."
A strange scene indeed, though with a ludicrous side to it; one that might have made me laugh, maybe, at any other time, and if I had not myself been concerned deeply in all that was a-doing. For there was my brave, courageous servitor, this man who had been a wandering sailor as well as soldier, and also a faithful follower of a hardly-treated race, standing up manfully against another swordsman who was making swift passes at him, they fighting across the body of a third who lay prone and prostrate with Giles's foot upon his body.
And that last was the fact which would have made me laugh in any other circumstance, for, swiftly, I recalled how in the days of my childhood this very Giles had taken me to see Barton Booth in one of Mr. Sotherne's beautiful tragedies at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and how, when the actor struck the villain down—exactly in the middle of the stage!—he had placed his foot upon his chest, and waved his triumphant sword over the fallen one. I recalled, too, how Giles had applauded, and had said, "O Master Adrian, Master Adrian, that is the way to conquer, to subdue a villain!"
"Fighting across the body of a third who lay prone
and prostrate with Giles's foot upon his body."
And now the poor faithful, honest fool had himself struck a villain down, and with his foot upon that villain's chest—in a splendid, tragic, and theatrical manner—was as like to strike another one down ere long; for, even as I tore open the little door, and rushed out followed by Damaris, he disarmed the other fighter, lunged at him, and, missing his heart, yet brought him to his knee, while he drew back his sword once more to plunge it through the other's body.
"Stop!" rang out the Princess's voice, clear and imperious; "stop, man, I command you. Adrian, forbid him. It is the Prince," she whispered in my ear; "I recognised his voice easily in the garden."
"Why?" I asked, hot and excited myself now, "why stop? Why should he, this midnight assassin, be spared?"
"'Tis Csaba, I tell you," she said. "'Tis the Prince. If he is slain there can never be," and she lowered her voice more deeply still, "any union betwixt England and Spain."
"Hold your weapon, Giles," I cried, understanding in a moment what she would convey, and, in honest truth, not deeming this contemptible Prince's life worth the cost of a broken union 'twixt an Englishman and a Spanish girl who loved each other. "Hold up. Be still, I say."
And, obedient to my command, perhaps obedient also to those earlier, haughtier commands uttered in the girl's clear tones, Giles did hold, yet muttering while doing so that he would have been through the other's lungs in a moment.
"So, monseigneur," my sweetheart said, addressing the masked Prince, who now rose from off the knee on to which he had been beaten, "you are content to play the part of murderer, are you? And on a serving-man! For shame!"
"He wore his master's cloak," a deep, muffled voice said. "Until that master appeared just now at your side I thought I was fighting with him."
"Therefore you and your confederate," and I glanced at the dead man at our feet, "sought to murder me. Wherefore?"
"Ay, wherefore?" repeated Damaris.
"Because you loved him, and—and I loved you."
"Nay," she said softly, "I did not love him then; I—I do not think I did, though, in honesty, I will say I deemed him the brightest, most worthy, pleasant man I have ever known. But now——"
"Now!" came from both our pairs of lips, from Csaba's and from mine.
"Now I love him, and no other man shall ever have my heart."
For a moment there was silence amongst us all, though I stole my hand towards that of Damaris, and, finding it, held it fast; yet but a little later Csaba muttered—
"It is impossible. He is beneath you."
Now, though I had heard those sweet words of the girl's only a moment before, these latter ones angered me, drove me beside myself, for I was weary of hearing so often that I, an Englishman, was unworthy to be the mate of any one, no matter how high that one might be placed. Wherefore, furious, and stepping up to this man, this prince who skulked about in the night with secret murder in his heart, I said, bending my face forward so that it was very near to his, and doing so with a desire to give weight to my words—
"Hark you, I have heard these words before. But now, unless you are an arrant cur—such as assassins always are—you shall retract them, or I will cram them down your throat. For if you say that not only I, but also any Englishman, high or low, gentle or simple, is not the equal of any foreigner, even though he be a prince of Austria or of Spain, then you lie. I say, you lie. Do you hear—you lie."
While, even as he started and staggered back, clutching his cloak convulsively with the hand that held its folds together, I continued—
"Now, if there is any fight left in you after the defeat you have received at the hands of this simple, honest English peasant, take your sword in hand and let us see whether you will justify your words or swallow mine." Then, turning to Giles, I said, "Pick up this fellow's weapon and give it to him."
"No," exclaimed Damaris; while, looking round as Giles did as I bade him, I saw her standing by me, pale, and like a statue, yet with her beautiful eyes ablaze. "No, you shall not fight with him, Adrian. Prince as he is, and, alas! of my land, he is unworthy to cross swords with you.—As for you," she said, addressing Csaba, "begone. Begone from off this place, which belongs to my hotel and is mine, and let me never see your face again. Go," she said, stamping her foot on the rough cobblestones; "go, I say."
Yet still he did not move, but, instead, stood there looking like some great black statue in his long cloak and mask, and with his head bent towards the ground, so that I concluded he knew not what to do, but, in his pride and rage, was determined not to quit the ground at her orders.
And she, seeing this, and, as she told me afterwards, understanding very well the tempest that must be raging in his heart, said, "Come, Adrian. Since he will not go, we must."
Wherefore we went back to her house followed by Giles, and leaving the Prince of Csaba and Miranda Vitoria still standing in the open space before the little door.
Now the story is done—done, that is, unless you would desire me to tell you what you doubtless can very well imagine; namely, that it was not long before the Princess and I became man and wife. Yet hard enough that marriage was in making, I can assure you, and one which I thought would never be completed. For, although my girl, having once acknowledged that she loved me, was as willing to be my wife as I was eager to have her, the forms and ceremonies we had to go through to get what Giles called "triced up" were enough to irritate one of Damaris's own saints; for there was the Consul of Spain—the Consul of the, by her, hated Philip V.—to be invoked, and the English ambassador to be consulted, who, since he represented King George, was not agreeable to me; and the permission of the Archbishop of Lyons, Primate of France, to be obtained, and a permission sent over from England from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of my church. And we went through all kinds of ceremonies, and were half-married a week before we were finally allowed to consider ourselves man and wife, while I became very irritable through it all, and Damaris muttered all kinds of strange little expletives in Spanish through her pretty teeth and scarlet lips, which, she told me afterwards, would not have sounded so nicely in English. Also, I should not forget to say that Giles signed countless papers and parchments as a witness, and looked very important over it all, and whispered lines of love-ballads to me at intervals to cheer me up, and ate enormously at every opportunity which offered.
However, done it was at last, and we were wedded. And, although my wife could not take me to any of her great possessions because she would not set foot in Spain while Philip ruled, and I could not take her to my home in Staffordshire (where the Trent rises) because of my political principles, we were very well content—since we were both young and hopeful!—and so we settled down in the old Paris house of the Carbajals in the Marais, and have, up to now, lived happy ever after, as the chapbooks say; a happiness which, you may be very sure, was not ruffled when we heard that the Prince of Csaba and Miranda Vitoria had married a princess of the ancient house of Ponte-Casoria (which is allied to the greater house of Bourbon), who was extremely rich, but as wizened as a monkey (as my wife told me), and who, report declared, led Csaba a terrible life.
[AN OUTLAW'S FORTUNES]
By W. C. WHISTLER
CHAPTER I