"I don't believe I can do it."
"No, no," answered he, bravely attempting cheerfulness; "we may as well give it up. I have had no hope from the first. I knew it could not be done, and it should not. I was both insane and criminal to think of permitting you to try it."
Brandon's forced cheerfulness died out with his words, and he sank into a chair with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. Mary ran to him at once. There had been a little moment of faltering, but there was no real surrender in her.
Dropping on her knee beside him, she said coaxingly: "Don't give up; you are a man; you must not surrender, and let me, a girl, prove the stronger. Shame upon you when I look up to you so much and expect you to help me be brave. I will go. I will arrange myself in some way. Oh! why am I not different; I wish I were as straight as the queen," and for that first time in her life she bewailed her beauty, because it stood between her and Brandon.
She soon coaxed him out of his despondency, and we began again to plan the matter in detail.
The girls sat on Brandon's cloak and he and I on the camp-stool and a box.
Mary's time was well occupied in vain attempts to keep herself covered with the cloak, which seemed to have a right good will toward Brandon and me, but she kept track of our plans, which, in brief, were as follows: As to her costume, we would substitute long trunks and jack-boots for shoes and hose, and as to doublet, Mary laughed and blushingly said she had a plan which she would secretly impart to Jane, but would not tell us. She whispered it to Jane, who, as serious as the Lord Chancellor, gave judgment, and "thought it would do." We hoped so, but were full of doubts.
This is all tame enough to write and read about, but I can tell you it was sufficiently exciting at the time. Three of us at least were playing with that comical old fellow, Death, and he gave the game interest and point to our hearts' content.
Through the thick time-layers of all these years, I can still see the group as we sat there, haloed by a hazy cloud of tear-mist. The figures rise before my eyes, so young and fair and rich in life and yet so pathetic in their troubled earnestness that a great flood of pity wells up in my heart for the poor young souls, so danger-bound and suffering, and withal so daring and so recklessly confident in the might and right of love, and the omnipotence of youth. Ah! If God had seen fit in his infinite wisdom to save just one treasure from the wreck of Eden, what a race of thankful hearts this earth would bear, had he saved us youth alone therewith to compensate us for every other ill.
As to the elopement, it was determined that Brandon should leave London the following day for Bristol, and make all arrangements along the line. He would carry with him two bundles, his own and Mary's clothing, and leave them to be taken up when they should go a-shipboard. Eight horses would be procured; four to be left as a relay at an inn between Berkeley Castle and Bristol, and four to be kept at the rendezvous some two leagues the other side of Berkeley for the use of Brandon, Mary and the two men from Bristol who were to act as an escort on the eventful night. There was one disagreeable little feature that we could not provide against nor entirely eliminate. It was the fact that Jane and I should be suspected as accomplices before the fact of Mary's elopement; and, as you know, to assist in the abduction of a princess is treason—for which there is but one remedy. I thought I had a plan to keep ourselves safe if I could only stifle for the once Jane's troublesome and vigorous tendency to preach the truth to all people, upon all subjects and at all times and places. She promised to tell the story I would drill into her, but I knew the truth would seep out in a thousand ways. She could no more hold it than a sieve can hold water. We were playing for great stakes, which, if I do say it, none but the bravest hearts, bold and daring as the truest knights of chivalry, would think of trying for. Nothing less than the running away with the first princess of the first blood royal of the world. Think of it! It appalls me even now. Discovery meant death to one of us surely—Brandon; possibly to two others—Jane and me; certainly, if Jane's truthfulness should become unmanageable, as it was so apt to do.