The Sword of the King

by Ronald MacDonald

But, when Charley would have followed, I drew rein, kicked feet from stirrups, flung my right foot over his neck, and so slipped to ground; let slip the reins, and so sat me down forlorn by the roadside. So far I had acted of design, to the end that Ned should return, and I have my way to the full as the one price of proceeding further. But, when Roan Charley, having twice snuffed at my crouching figure, set off whinnying in pursuit of his fellow, I burst into tears wholly devoid of affectation, weeping for the loneliness that was my own making, and the stubbornness of a man's will that I could not break. And, the soft thud of hoofs on the wet and sandy road now seeming to die away with growing distance, I did begin to feel that the childish weapon I had taken in hand was indeed turned against myself. To set the coping on my misery, there came a great and sudden gust of wind, and with it, across the moon, a thick storm-cloud, from which fell a driving slant of heavy rain, shutting out at once all sight and sound, as it were with a thick blanket of cold and turbid wetness; so that, drenched to the skin, I soon shivered as much from cold as from the sobs that shook my overwrought body. Now that he could no longer hear my voice, I found some dismal comfort in leaping to my feet and crying aloud on Ned to come back; and, even as I called, fell to running with weary and staggering feet, in pursuit of him I believed far away, until I pitched well-nigh headlong, not into his arms, for they were stretched wide, holding a horse in either hand, but upon his broad breast, where I soon laid my head; crying, as I clutched him by the shoulders, that he had left me too long, and frightened me.

"Why, Phil!" he answered, "I heard your nag following, and, even when he drew abreast, it was not at once I knew you were not in the saddle." And here I felt his right arm move behind his back, to pass his horse's bridle to the left hand that already held Roan Charley's. "But when he pushed close," he continued, "and his swinging stirrup-iron struck my boot, I turned to find the voice and eyes I dreaded were no longer near. And then, sweetheart, the rain was upon us, and in the darkness it was little speed I could make returning, but must needs dismount and go gingerly, for fear of riding over you. How came he to throw you, Phil?"

Perceiving that alarm had brought back all his tenderness, for here his right arm came round my neck in an embrace most sweet and full of protection, I cast to the winds my facile repentance for the trick I had played him, and answered him thus, using what remnant of dignity I could muster: "'T was not my good Charley that did cast me off, Ned. But when I found you would not heed my prayers; when I found that for some fancy of what the world should say of us you would again leave me alone, with, this time, perhaps, no hope of a return; when I thought how bitter three years of waiting have proved for a half-fledged maid, and perceived how much worse a thing were waiting without hope or limit for a woman grown, I dismounted and sat me down by the roadside. For I said I would never return to Drayton to see go out again into the night, alone and unhappy, the man that has saved our honor, giving to us out of the abundance of his own." And I waited for him, but even yet he would not speak. "What! will you shame me, Ned?" I cried. "Must I even say more? Then I here solemnly vow that unless you now say to me all—ask of me all that you would were you now as famous as Marshal Schomberg, and as high in favor as Mr. William Bentinck, I will not budge from this spot." This, with voice and bearing no doubt vastly heroical, I said. But, fearing it yet insufficient, I added shudderingly, in a manner I have since thought most humorously bathetical: "And I almost die for cold."

Now, scarce even for my children, can I set down very particularly what followed. But there was much rain, and now two arms about me, and my head lay where it is not yet tired of lying, while my lover let flow in words the passion of his love that had so long been pent and dammed up in his heart. And I remember that when he kissed me, there came between his lips and mine a patch of mud, cast there doubtless by the feet of his horse in his flight from me; and also that we laughed together like children with no sorrow upon them, as he did try in the dark to wipe it away with his handkerchief, and how some of the soil did get in my mouth as I laughed. So strong in memory is often a little matter of this nature that when, not two days back from the time I sit here writing, being abroad with Colonel Royston to see some sport with Sir Giles Blundell's hounds, I received full in the teeth a hoof-shaped clod of earth, I was, for all the pain and discomfort of it, translated at once from the free air and pale, sweet winter sun back to that foul and bitter night and its dear core of love, red and glowing with the fire that shall comfort and illumine us both to the end of our days.

Now, how long we stood there, how long we talked, and how long we were silent I do not know. But Dame Nature the stepmother had become Mother Nature our friend; and wind, cold, and wet were but the veil she cast kindly to wrap our sacred hour in holier secrecy. And when again a little light showed from the moon, of course it was the woman that cried: "Why, Ned! where are the horses?"

I will not dwell on the labor to pursue and catch our nags. The charger, at length responding to a cry his master used, was caught, mounted, and ridden in chase of Roan Charley. So I was again for a while left solitary, but in a state of mind how different! Not now did I sit forlorn with my feet in the ditch, but tramped cheerily forward; for I had his promise not to leave me again, but to lay the whole matter before Sir Michael, and to abide by his advice. For Ned, notwithstanding the anguish of his disgrace, did in his modesty set so low a price on the action which had procured it, that I think it had not yet become clear to him how wholly my very just and most noble-minded father must be engaged to counsel all things in the interest of Philip's savior.

It was not long before I encountered all three returning to meet me, truant Charley grown reluctant and rebellious. And thence into Drayton village the way seemed short indeed. Only twice did Ned refer to his misfortune and the anger of His Highness of Orange; once, in saying it was strange a single night should hold the greatest joy and the greatest sorrow he had known; and again, when I said many hard things of the Prince, he would not hear me, saying he was not to blame; and then he asked me did I note the last words of M. de Rondiniacque as he bade us farewell. 'T was that gentleman's opinion, it appeared, that the Prince was in his heart not sorry to find in my importunity good occasion to avoid the scandal that must arise from a court-martial held upon an officer whose family was so well known in the neighborhood at present occupied by his army. M. de Rondiniacque had added, moreover, that he believed His Highness's anger much exacerbated by a lurking doubt as to the substantial guilt of one he had hitherto highly esteemed. All this I must have heard as one in a dream, and the narration of it now furnished me with material for the more sober thoughts that occupied the almost unbroken silence of our passage from the village of Drayton to the house.

It was now more than an hour past midnight, so that it was with no little surprise we beheld, through the ill-closed hangings of the windows, the great hall bright with candles and fire. As he lifted me, now well-nigh crippled with fatigue, from the saddle, I prayed Ned to enter quickly and engage whom he should find for a moment in talk, while I slipped quietly by to the refuge of my chamber. In the morning I had trifled with the fancy that it were better to be born a man; now I knew it was best of all to be a woman; and thus I had no mind, while I could still by some sense of lingering contact mark the places where my lover's kisses had fallen, to be seen in the garb I wore by any man or woman whatsoever. And Ned, acting most comfortably in accordance with my desire, I was soon fast in the haven of my room, of whose door I did that night but once again draw the bolt; and even then I do think it was rather from desire of the food and the posset that she carried, than from any need of her company, that I admitted Prudence; and of the torrent of questions with which my ears were assailed as she tenderly waited on me, I answered few and heeded none. I would have been alone to think of Ned, and of the change of so strange a sweetness that I now began to discover in myself. I was indeed in that temper of mind wherein a maid will find even the object of her thought a hindrance to the right management of her thinking; and so I got very quickly to bed, feigning sleep to escape little Prue's chatter, the while I hugged to my breast the memories of the journey homeward; cherishing the sweetest fragments for a perpetual possession.

But feigning passed very soon into reality, and the last I recall of that night is my dreamy watching of Prudence, as she busied herself, with a bearing of no little pique, in hanging out poor Rupert's clothes before the great fire, and muttering dark sayings of the folk that had secrets, and how, if that were the way of it, she could, nay, would, keep her own to herself.