“But these wars will not endure forever. The King will be in London in a few days; the Parliament will be at his feet; my friend will be no more a rebel, for all rebellion will have ceased to be.”
“How if your friend be killed before the King reaches London?” Halfman asked her, hoarsely. “The wheels of war do not turn from the path of a lover.”
“If he be killed,” she said, simply, “I do not think I shall long outlive him. My heart does not veer like a vane for every breath of praise or passion. First and last, I have found my mate in the world; first and last, I will be loyal while I live. But if he die, I hope God will deal gently with me, nor suffer me to grow gray in sorrow.”
She turned away from Halfman that he might not see the tears in her eyes, and so turning did not see the tears that stood in his. She moved towards the harpsichord and dropped into the chair that served it. Her fingers fluttered over the keys and a tinkling music answered them and underlined the words she sang:
“You ride to fight, my dearest friend,
I bide at home and sigh;
God only knows what God may send,
To test us, by-and-by.
If ’tis decreed that you must die,
So comes my world to end;
And I will seek beyond the sky
The features of my friend.
Come back from fight, my dearest friend,
The idol of my eye,
That hand in hand ourselves may bend
Before God’s altar high.
If death consent to pass you by,
How sweetly shall we wend
To the last home where we shall lie
Together, friend and friend.”
As Brilliana sat at the harpsichord playing the brave Cavalier ballad, Halfman, watching her, found his eyes dim with most unfamiliar water. Fierce memories of his life seemed to come before him sharply, vivid succeeding pictures, rich in evil. In a flash he tramped across forests, sack and battle and rapine new painted themselves upon his brain; deeds long dead and forgotten suddenly became instant agonies. He seemed like a prisoner before an invisible judge, and his startled spirit sought wildly and vainly for some good deed it might offer in plea for pity. If only he had spared that girl, that child unripe for love, who never dreamed of brutal hands. He seemed to see her in the room where he ran her down, her staring eyes; he seemed to hear her screams; he remembered how hot his blood was then, though now it ran like ice at the memory. If only he had not helped to torture the old Jew in San Juan; if only he could blot out his share in all those acts of lust and blood. And through all his horrid thoughts came the sweet voice of Brilliana singing the sweet, brave words, and he saw her curls sway as she sang, and he thought of her love for her kinsman which she had told him so simply, and he thought of his own mad love for her, which she would never know, which no one would ever understand. And then he thought of that grim sentry at the western gate whose hate was black, whose aim was fatal.
A fantastic purpose came into the man’s thought. His mind was ever like a stage with the lights lighted and the curtains drawn, upon whose boards himself played a thousand parts and played them to the top. Here was the part he had never played, the noblest, the most heroic, chiefly perhaps in this, that it was also the loneliest. The purpose had hardly pricked before he seized it, hugged it to his breast, made it incorporate with his being. Mingled with his tender pity for Brilliana there was now a splendid pity for himself, the noblest Roman of them all. But the purpose must not cool. His thoughts were all a-jumble. One of them seemed to assert to his feverish fancy that this way meant atonement; the quenching of his torch some measure of compensation for the candles he had puffed out.
Unseen he stretched his hands as if in benediction towards Brilliana, and then went noiselessly out of the room. On the stairs he met Evander descending to say farewell to his hostess, his hat in his hand and his cloak over his arm. Halfman stopped him. “She waits you in the garden-room,” he said; “I will hold your cloak and hat for you here while you make your adieus. A lover should not be cumbered.” Evander thanked him, surrendered cloak and hat, and entered the garden-room. He did not hear what Halfman said, though Halfman spoke it aloud, with all the lovers of all time for audience: “There goes the blessedest man in all the world.” Then, with Evander’s cloak about him and Evander’s hat upon his head, Halfman went out into the garden.