“Would that every day in summer were a haying-day,” cried Roger, “and that you and I—”
“Good-night, Mr. Egremont,” was Michelle’s reply.
Her figure melted away in the darkness under the trees, but Roger’s keen eyes saw her turn and look back at him, standing still where she had left him.
When she was out of sight Roger turned homeward, through the forest. He was glad to be alone, he disdained any other company after Michelle’s. He was in a kind of ecstasy, and his spirit was as light as a lark upon the wing. The forest was wrapped in the silence of the coming night and the owls were beginning to hoot. The harvest moon, a great, golden, smoky lamp, shone through the trees, but the west still held a faint glory of crimson and green and gold. The dusk of evening was descending fast, when Roger noticed, approaching him from a side avenue, a person, apparently a young and slender man, wrapped in a black cloak, with a black hat drawn down over the eyes. By the time Roger had made out the outlines of this figure, they were face to face; and then the stranger suddenly whipped out a sword from the folds of his cloak, and pointed it straight at Roger. It did not take Roger a second to seize the blade deftly in his left hand and wrench it away, while with his right he caught the stranger by the throat,—a throat as white as milk, and from which came gurgling sounds of laughter; and the hat falling off, he saw the laughing, upturned face of Bess Lukens, with her curly, reddish hair falling about her shoulders.
Not the appearance of Satan himself could have disconcerted Roger Egremont more at that moment than the sight of the woman whom he justly called his best friend. Like a blaze of lightning in a murky night, he saw in one flash all the difficulties of the case, the chiefest of which would be to make the little world of St. Germains believe in the perfect honesty of Bess’s character. He felt acutely for the shame the girl might suffer, and when he thought of Michelle, he likewise felt acutely for himself. But he was man enough to greet Bess warmly, after the first momentary astonishment, to kiss her hand—ah, it was not like kissing Michelle’s hand an hour ago!—and to lie to Bess like a gentleman.
“Dear Bess, how glad I am to see you!” he cried, and then he noticed, as she threw aside her cloak, that she was dressed in a man’s riding-suit. “And why this disguise?”
“Because,” said Bess, taking him by the arm affectionately, but not familiarly, “I an’t a bad-looking girl, and some of the mounseers might have bothered me, and I, not knowing the lingo, shouldn’t have known what to say. So I bought me this suit in Dover, and also this sword; ’tis nothing but a brass-handled thing, but it went well with the breeches. And I called myself Mr. Wat Jones. I don’t believe a soul on the vessel suspected me. I got here from a place they called Calais, by riding in country wagons and walking. Nobody troubled me, because they thought I was a poor young gentleman, driven out of England by the Whigs, and coming to my King at St. Germains, and I didn’t have anything in sight worth stealing,—maybe that’s why the mounseers was so honest; so that’s how I got here. I went to a tavern where the wagon stopped that I made the last stage by, and I determined to hang about the town until I could get private speech of you, for I came yesterday. I held my tongue about you, but I kept both eyes open. This afternoon I heard about the hay-making in the meadow—what queer things gentlefolks do by way of pleasure! I was afraid to go near the meadow, for fear you might see me, and cry, ‘Oh, Lord!’ or something of the sort; so I walked about the place they called the terrace, and saw you making hay in the meadow with a young lady. She wasn’t so beautiful; there were others comelier, I thought. Then, when you all started home, I walked toward the forest, and then into it; and it was growing so dark that I thought I should have to go back to the tavern. And then I saw you, and the devil put it into my head to stick this sword at you, but you didn’t flinch;” and Bess concluded by putting herself in an impossible attitude, and flourishing her sword with a kind of awkward gracefulness under Roger’s nose.
And Roger, gallantly fulfilling his obligations as a gentleman, lied and lied again.
“However you come, Bess, and whenever, I must ever be glad to see you;” and then he told the truth for a change: “and I, and all I have—not much of the last—are at your disposal.”
Being a gentleman, he did not ask her the question that disquieted him,—what she had come for,—but Bess relieved him by telling him.