"'Tis very certain," the invalid interrupted from the couch on which he lay, "that 'tis Andrew. Here, Bridget, help me up, let me see him."
"It is he," the old woman said; "lie there, Master Philip, no need to rise. He will be here ere many moments have passed. Ha!" she exclaimed, thrusting open the lattice in her excitement, "he sees me, waves his hand--he has not forgotten the old nurse--I will go down and greet him, then bring him to you": while, excited and nervous, she unceremoniously quitted Philip Vause and ran down the broad polished staircase as fast as her old legs would carry her to where the hall door stood open to the evening air, and thus reached the stoop as the horseman drew up in front of it.
"So, Bridget," he said, leaping from his horse and flinging the reins to a serving-man who came from out the shrubbery hard by the house, "so, Bridget, 'tis you in very truth, and not a day older than when I went away, I do protest," and he stooped down over her and kissed her grey hair where it waved across her old and wrinkled forehead. And, pleased with his greeting, the woman smiled and cooed round the great man standing above her, and muttered:
"Why, Master Andrew, you are bigger than ever since you went away. What a man! What a man you are now! So great and stalwart--alas! that your poor brother Philip was as you."
Indeed, he at whom she gazed well merited the praise she lavished on his size and thews and sinews. Full six English feet in height stood Andrew Vause, and broad and deep in chest was he, with great muscular arms that looked as though it might be ill for any caught in their grip. And, though doubtless unconsciously so to their wearer, his garments themselves lent something to his powerful appearance. On his body he wore a brown buckskin tunic--good for riding in, or, perhaps, even for turning aside a rapier or dagger thrust--a tunic ornamented at the opening with quilted leather of the same kind, and fringed in the same manner below; his lower limbs were encased in stout hose, or, at least, so much of them as could be seen betwixt the ending of his jacket and the tops of his great riding boots of brown untanned leather that reached almost to his thighs. And the sword old Bridget had spoken of was there, its hilt reposing against one of those thighs, while its long length ran behind him. A wicked-looking, fighting rapier this, with its great pas d'âne and enormous quillons; a rapier that looked as though, once out of its sheath, mischief was meant and to be dreaded from it. For the rest, his handsome face was bronzed to copper hue, his brown moustache--Bridget's "beard on the upper lip"--hung down below his under jaw, his thick brown hair fell to his shoulders, and above it flapped a loose sombrero hat ornamented with a single black feather.
A vastly different-looking man this from the sickly elder brother above!
"Ay, Philip!" he said in answer to her mention of his brother's name, as he strode into the tiled hall, making it ring with the jangle of his brass spurs upon his heels. "Poor Philip! So he is sick--the messenger found me at the Duck in Westminster!--'sick unto death,' he wrote. Bridget, is this true, and if true what ails him? He was not strong--nor like to be, since he pored ever over those accursed books!--yet books need not kill a man. What ails him, Bridget?" he repeated.
"He is not well--seems to have no life nor strength in him. And--and you know, you have heard, even in those foreign lands to which he wrote you letters--he had a grievous sorrow fall upon him. Oh! he was treacherously served!"
"Ay, ay. And so he did write. Yet, fore gad! a man dies not for love of woman--not though she jilts him cruelly. Odd's faith! no woman ever jilted me--nor spoilt my rest o' nights. Yet," and he lowered his voice a little, and seemed graver as he asked, "who was she? He never told me that--seemed, indeed, in his letters to carefully refrain from writing her name."
"Let him tell you," the old woman said; "best hear it all from him."