Sir Mortimer

VIII

In a small withdrawing-room at Whitehall an agreeable young gentleman pensioner, in love with his own voice, which was in truth mellifluous, read aloud to a knot of the Queen's ladies. The room looked upon the park, and the pale autumn sunshine flooding it made the most of rich court raiment, purple hangings, green rushes on the floor, lengths of crimson velvet designed for a notable piece of arras, and kindled into flame the jewels upon white and flying fingers embroidering upon the velvet the history of King David and the wife of Uriah.

"'It is not the color that commendeth a good painter,'" read the gentleman pensioner, "'but the good countenance; nor the cutting that valueth the diamond, but the virtue; nor the gloze of the tongue that tryeth a friend, but the faith,'"

Mistress Damaris Sedley put the needle somewhat slowly through the velvet, her fancy busy with other embroidery, not so much listening to the spoken words as pursuing in her mind a sweet and passionate rhetoric of her own.

"'Of a stranger I can bear much,'" went on the Lydian tones, "'for I know not his manners; of an enemy more, for that all proceedeth of malice; all things of a friend if it be but to try me, nothing if it be to betray me. I am of Scipio's mind, who had rather that Hannibal should eat his heart with salt than that Laelius should grieve it with unkindness; and of the like with Laelius, who chose rather to be slain with the Spaniards than suspected of Scipio.'"

Damaris quite left her work upon Bathsheba's long gold tresses and sat with idle hands, her level gaze upon nothing short of the great highway of the sea and certain ships thereon. Where now was the ship?—off what green island, what strange, rich shore?

On went the gentleman pensioner. "'I can better take a blister of a nettle than a prick of a rose; more willing that a raven should peck out my eyes than a dove. To die of the meat one liketh not is better than to surfeit of that he loveth; and I had rather an enemy should bury me quick than a friend belie me when I am dead.'"

The reader made pause and received his due of soft plaudits. But Damaris dreamed on, the gold thread loose between her fingers. She was the fairest there, and the gentleman was piqued because she looked not at him, but at some fine Arachne web of her own weaving.

"Sweet Mistress Damaris—" he began; and again, "Fair Mistress Damaris—" but Damaris was counting days and heard him not. A lesser beauty left her work upon King David's crown to laugh aloud, with some malice and some envy in her mirth. "Prithee, let her alone! She will dream thus even in the presence. But I have a spell will make her awaken." She leaned forward and called "Dione!" then with renewed laughter sank back into her seat. "Lo! you now—"

The maid of honor, who at her own name stirred not, at the name of a poet's giving had started from her dream with widened eyes and an exquisite blush. The startled face which for one moment she showed her laughing mates was of a beauty so intelligent and divine that, was it so she looked, a many King Davids had found excuse for loving one Bathsheba. Then the inner light which had so informed every feature sought again its shrine, and Mistress Damaris Sedley, who was of a nature admirably poised and a wit most ready, lifted with the latest French shrug the jest from her own shoulders to those of another: "Oh, madam! was it you who spoke? Surely I thought it was your dead starling that you taught to call you by that name—but whose neck you wrung when it called it once too often!"

Having shot her forked shaft and come off victor, she smiled so sweetly upon the gentleman pensioner that for such ample thanks he had been reading still had she not risen, laid her work aside, and with a deep and graceful courtesy to the merry group left the room. When she was gone one sighed, and another laughed, and a third breathed, "O the heavens! to love and be loved like that!"

Damaris threaded the palace ways until she reached the chamber which she shared with a laughter-loving girl from her own countryside. Closed and darkened was the little room, but the maid of honor, moving to the window, drew the hangings and let the sunshine in. From a cabinet she took a book in manuscript, then with it in her hands knelt upon the window-seat and looked out upon the Thames. She did not read what was written upon the leaves; those canzones and sonnets that were her love-letters were known to her by heart, but she liked to feel them in her hands while her gaze went down the river that had borne his ship out to sea. Where was now the ship? Like a white sea-bird her fancy followed it by day and by night, now here, now there, through storm and sunshine. It was of the dignity of her nature that she could look steadfastly upon the vision of it in storm or in battle. There were times when she was sure that it was in danger, when her every breath was a prayer, and there were times, as on this soft autumnal day, when her spirit drowsed in a languor of content, a sweet assurance of all love, all life to come. His words lay beneath her hand and in her heart; she pressed her brow against the glass, and as from a watch-tower looked out upon the earth, a fenced garden, and the sea a sure path and Time a strong ally speeding her lover's approach. For a long time she knelt thus, lapped in happy dreams; then the door opened and in came her chamber-fellow. "Damaris!" she said, and again, "Oh, Damaris, Damaris!"

Damaris arose from the window-seat and laid her love-letters away. "In trouble again, Cecily?" she asked, and her voice was like a caress, for the girl was younger than herself. "I know thy 'Oh, Damaris, Damaris!'" She closed the cabinet, then turning, put her arm around her fellow maid. "What is't, sweeting?"

Cecily slipped to her knees, hiding her face in the other's shimmering skirts. "Thou'rt so dear, so good, and so proud.... As soon as I might I ran hither, for every moment I feared to see thee enter! Thou wouldst have died hadst thou heard it there in the great antechamber, where they crowd and whisper and talk aloud—and some, I know, are glad.... The ships, Damaris—yesternight two of the ships came home."

She spoke incoherently, with sobbing breath, but gradually the form to which she clung had grown rigid in her embrace. "Two of the ships have come home," repeated Damaris. "Which came not home?"

"The Cygnet and the Star."

The maid of honor, unclasping the girl's hands, glided from her reach. "Let me go, good Cis! Why, how stifling is the day!" She put her hand to her ruff, as though to loosen it, but the hand dropped again to her side. The silken coverlet upon the bed was awry; she went to it and laid it smooth with unhurried touch. From a bowl of late flowers crimson petals had fallen upon the table; she gathered them up, and going to the casement, gave them, one by one, to the winds outside.

"Damaris, Damaris, Damaris!" cried the frightened girl.

"Ay, I have heard him call me that," answered the other. "Sometimes Damaris, sometimes Dione. When did he die?"

"Oh, I bring no news of his death!" exclaimed Cecily. "Sir Mortimer Ferne is here—in London."

Damaris, swaying forward, caught at a heavy settle, sank to her knee, and laid her brow against the wood. Cecily, gazing down upon her, saw her cheek glow pure carnation, saw the quivering of the long eyelashes and the happy trembling of the lip. Presently the wave of color fled; she unclosed her eyes, raised her head. "But there was something, was there not, to be borne?... God forgive me, I had forgot that I have a brother!"

Cecily, whose courage was ebbing, began to deal in evasions. "Indeed I know not as to thy brother. I am not sure ... mayhap I did not hear him named.... They said so many things—all might not be true."

Damaris arose from the settle. "I will have thy meaning, Cis. 'They said so many things.'—Who are they'?"

Cecily bit her lip, and dashed away fast-starting tears. "Oh, Damaris, all who have heard—all the court—his friends and thine and his foes. The matter's all abroad. The Queen hath letters from Sir John Nevil—he hath been sent for to the Privy Council—"

"Sir John Nevil hath been sent for?—Why not Sir Mortimer Ferne?... Is he ill? Is he wounded?"

Cecily wrung her hands. "Now I must tell thee.... It is his honor that doth suffer. There is a thing that he did.—He hath confessed, or surely there were no believing ... Damans, they call him traitor.... Ah!"

"Ay, and I'll strike thee again an thou say that again!" cried Damaris.

The younger woman shrank before the angry eyes, the disdain of the smiling lips. Abruptly Damaris moved from the frightened girl. Upon the wall, above a dressing-table, hung a Venetian mirror. The maid of honor looked at her image in the glass, then with flying fingers undid and laid aside her ruff, substituting for it a structure of cobweb lace, between whose filmy walls were displayed her white throat and bosom. Around her throat she clasped three rows of pearls, and also wound with pearls her dark-brown hair. Her eyes were very bright, but there was no color in her face. Delicately, skilfully, she remedied this, until with shining eyes and that false bloom upon her oval cheeks one would have sworn she was as joyous as she was fair.

Cecily, watching her with a beating heart, at last broke silence: "Oh, Damaris, whither are you going?"

Damaris looked over her shoulder. "After a while I will be sorry that I struck thee, Cis.... I am going to talk with men." She clasped a gold chain about her slender waist, dashed scented water upon her hands, glanced at her full and sweeping skirts of green silk shot with silver. "I have broken my fan," she said; "wilt lend me thy great plumed one?" Cecily brought the splendid toy. The maid of honor took it from her; then, with a last glance at the mirror, swept towards the door, but on the threshold turned and came back for one moment to her chamber-fellow. "Forgive me, Cis," she said, and kissed the girl's wet cheek.

The great anteroom had its usual throng of courtiers, those of a day and those whose ghosts might come to haunt the floors that their mortal feet so oft had trodden. Men of note and worth were there, and men of no other significance than that wrought by rich apparel. Here men brought their dearest hopes and fears, and here they came to flaunt a feather or to tell a traveller's tale. It was the place of deferred hopes and the place of poisoned tongues, and the place in which to suck the last sweet drop in an enemy's cup of trembling. It was the haunt of laughter and of fevered wit and of rivalry in all things, and here the heaviest of heart was not unlike to be the lightest of wit. The spirit of party never left its walls, and Ambition was its chamberlain. The envied and the envious walked there, and there hung the sword of Damocles and the invisible balances. Here, in one corner, might lord it one on whom Fortune broadly smiled, while around him buzzed the gilded parasites, and here, ten feet away, his rival felt the knife turn in his heart. To-morrow—to-morrow's old trick of legerdemain! there the knife, here the smiling face, and for the cloud of sycophants mere change of venue. It was a land of air-castles and rainbow gold, a fool's paradise and the garden where grew most thickly the apples of Sodom. In it were caged all greed, all extravagance, all jealousies; hopes, fears, passions that may be born of and destroy the soul of man; and within it also flamed splendid folly and fealty to some fixed star, and courage past disputing, and clear love of God and country. Yonder glass of fashion and mould of form had stood knee-deep in an Irish bog keeping through a winter's night a pack of savages at bay; this jester at a noble's elbow knew when to speak in earnest; and this, a suitor with no present in his hand, so lightly esteemed as scarce to seem an actor in the pageant, might to-night take his pen and give to after-time a priceless gift. Soldiers, idle gallants, gentlemen and officers of the court; men of law and men of affairs; churchmen, poets, foreigners, spendthrifts, gulls, satellites, and kinsmen of great lords; the wise, the foolish, the noble and the base—up and down moved the restless, brilliant throng. Some excitement was toward, for the great room buzzed with talk. The courtiers drew together in groups, and it seemed that a man's name was being bandied to and fro, dark shuttlecock to this painted throng. Damans Sedley, entering the antechamber by a small side door, swam into the ken of a number of eager players gathered around a gentleman of flushed countenance, who, with much swiftness and dexterity, was wreaking old grudges upon the shuttlecock. One of the audience trod upon the player's toe; each courtier bowed until his sword stood out a straight line of steel; the maid of honor curtsied, waved her fan, let her handkerchief fall to the floor. To seize the piece of lawn all entered the lists, for the lady was very beautiful, and of a seductive, fine, and subtle charm; a favorite also of the Queen, who, Narcissus-like, saw only her own beauty, and believed that Sir Mortimer Ferne's veiled divinity was rather to be found on Olympus than upon the plains beneath. In sheer loveliness, with lips like a pomegranate flower, mobile face of clear pallor, and beneath level brows eyes whose color it was hard to guess at and whose depths were past all sounding, Mistress Damaris Sedley held her small head high and went her graceful way, moving as one enchanted over the thorny floor of the court. She had great charm. Once it had been said beneath a royal commissioner's breath that here in this portionless girl was a twin sorceress to the Queen who dwelt at Tutbury.

Sorceress enough, at least, was she to draw to herself speech and thought of this particular group; to make those who were ignorant of her relation to the shuttlecock think less of the treasure of Spain than of the treasure which their eyes beheld, and those who had been his friends, who guessed at whom had been levelled those fair arrows of song, to start full cry (when they had noted that she was merry) upon other matters than lost ships and men. It was not long that she would have it so. "As I entered, sir, I heard you name the Star. That was one of Sir John Nevil's ships. Is there news of his adventure?"

The man to whom she spoke, some mere Hedon of the court, fluttered in the frank sunshine of her look. "Fair gentlewoman," he began, pomander-ball in hand, "had you a venture in that ship? Then the less beauteous Amphitrite hath played highwayman to your wealth. Now if I might, drawing from the storehouse of your smiles inveterate Courage, dub myself your Valor, and so to the rescue—"

"Oh, sir, at once I dismiss you to Amphitrite's court!" cried the lady. "Master Darrell,"—to a dark-browed, saturnine personage,—"tell me less of Amphitrite and more of the truth. The Star—"

He whom she addressed loved not the shuttlecock, thought one woman but falser than another, and made parade of blunt speech. Now a shrug of the shoulder accompanied his answer. "The Star went down months ago, off the Grand Canary, in a storm by night."

"Alack the day!" cried Damaris. "But God, not man, sendeth the storm! Was none saved?"

"All were saved," went on her grim informant; "but well for them had they died with their ship, in the salt sea—Captain Robert Baldry and his men—"

A murmur ran through the group, which now numbered more than one who could have shrewdly guessed to whom this lady had given her love. Some would have stayed Black Darrell, but not the Queen herself could have bidden him on with more imperious gesture than did Damaris. "Saved from the sea—but better they had drowned! You speak in riddles, Master Darrell. Where are Captain Robert Baldry and his men?"

A young man hurriedly approached her from another quarter of the room. Men bowed low as he passed, and the circle about the maid of honor received him with a deference it scarce had shown to Beauty's self.

"Ha, Mistress Damaris!" he cried, with somewhat of a forced gayety, "my sister sends messages to you from Wilton! The day is fair—wilt walk with me in the garden and hear her letter?"

The maid of honor gave him no answer; stood smiling, the plumed fan waving, her eyes fixed upon Black Darrell, who scorned to budge an inch for any court favorite and friend of the shuttlecock's. Damaris repeated her question, and he answered it with relish.

"Betrayed to the Spaniard, madam,—they and many a goodly gentleman and tall fellow beside! If they died, they died with curses on their lips, and if they live, they bide with the Holy Office or in the galleys of Spain."

He who had joined the group interrupted him sternly. "This, sir, is no speech for gentle ears. Madam, beseech you, come with me into the long walk."

The courage of a fighting race looked from the maid of honor's darkening eyes. The small head and slender, aching throat were held with pride, and the hand scarce trembled with which she waved Cecily's plumed fan. "I have a venture in this voyage," she said. "Certes, the value of a pearl necklace, and I will know if I am beggared of it! Moreover, dear Sir Philip, English courage and English tragedy do move me more than all the tangled woes of Arcadia.... Master Darrell, I have hopes of thy being no courtier, thou dost speak so to the point. Again, again,—there were three ships, the Mere Honour, the Marigold, and the Cygnet—"

"They took a great galleon of Spain," said Black Darrell, "very rich,—enough so to have paid your venture a hundred times over, lady, and they stormed a town, and might have taken a great castle, for they landed all their forces, of which Sir John Nevil made admirable disposition. But there was an Achan in the camp, a betrayer high in place, who laid his body and his life in the balance against his honor. The Spanish guns mowed down the English; they fell into pits upon pointed stakes; Spanish horsemen rode them under. Meanwhile the Cygnet, traitorous as its Captain—"

"Traitorous as its Captain?" flamed the maid of honor. "But on, sir, on! Afterwards there will be accounting for so vile a falsehood!"

Another movement and murmur ran through the group, checked by Damaris's raised hand and burning eyes. "On, sir, on!"

Darrell shrugged. "Oh, madam, the loyal Cygnet would have it that that fair cockatrice the galleon was her own! So in flame and thunder they kissed, but now, quiet enough, they lie upon the sea-floor, they and the spilled treasure."

Damaris moistened her lips. "Where are the brave and gallant gentlemen who led this venture? Where is Sir John Nevil? Where is Sir Mortimer Ferne?"

Darrell would have answered blithe enough, but the man who had interfered now pushed the other aside, came close to the maid of honor, and spoke with decision. "Gentlemen, this lady had a brother of much promise who sailed upon the Cygnet.... Ah! you perceive that such converse in her presence is not gentle nor seemly." He took Damaris's hand; it was quite cold. "Sweet lady," he said, in a low voice, "come with me from out this gallimaufry." He bent nearer, so that none but she could hear. "I will tell you all. It fits not with the dignity of your sorrow that you should remain here."

Damaris's bosom rose and fell in a long shuddering sigh. The room that was so large and bright swam before her, appeared to grow narrow, dark, and stifling. A hateful and terrible presence overshadowed her; it was as though she had but to put forth her hand to touch a coffin-lid. She no longer saw the forms about her, scarce felt the pressure of Sidney's hand, knew not, so brave a lady was she, so fixed her habit of the court, that she smiled upon the group she was leaving and swept them a formal curtsy. She found herself in the deserted outer gallery with Sidney,—they were in the recess of a window, and he was speaking. She put her hand to her brow. "Is Henry Sedley dead?" she asked.

He answered her as simply: "Yes, lady, bravely dead—a good knight who rode steadfastly to that noblest Court of which all earthly courts are but flawed copies."

As he spoke he regarded her anxiously, fearing a swoon or a cry, but instead she smiled, looking at him with dazed eyes, and her white hand yet at her forehead. "I am his only sister," she said, "and we have no father nor mother nor brother. We have been much together—all our lives—and we are tender of each other.... Death! I never thought that death could touch him; no, not upon this voyage.—There was one who swore to guard him."

Her companion made no answer, and she stood for a few moments without further word or motion, slowly remembering Darrell's words. Then a slight lifting of her head, a gradual stiffening of her frame; her hand fell, and the expression of her face changed—no speech, but parted lips, and eyes that at once appealed and commanded. She might have been some dark queen of a statelier world awaiting tidings that would make or mar. He was the most chivalric, the best-loved, spirit of his time, and his heart ached that, like his own Amphialus, he must deal so sweet a soul so deadly a blow. Seeing that it must be so, he told quietly and with proper circumstance, not the wild exaggeration and tales of aforethought treason which rumor had caught up and flung into the court, but the story as Sir John Nevil had delivered it to the Privy Council. Even so, it was, inevitably, to this man and this woman, the story of one who had spoken where he should have bitten out his tongue; who, all unwillingly it might be, had yet betrayed his comrades, who had set a slur and a stain upon his order.

"He himself accuseth himself," ended the speaker, with a groan. "Avoweth that, wrung by their hellish torments, he made his honor of no account; prayeth for death."

Damaris stood upright against the mullioned window.

"Where is he?" she asked, and there was that in her voice which a man might not understand. He paused a moment as for consideration, then drew from his doublet a folded paper, gave it to her, and turned aside. The maid of honor, opening it, read:

To Sir Philip Sidney, Greeting:

Doubtless thou hast heard by now of how all mischance and disaster befell the adventure. For myself, who was thy friend, I will show thee in lines of thy own making what men hereafter (and justly) will say of me who am thy friend no longer:

"His death-bed peacock's folly.
His winding-sheet is shame.
His will, false-seeming wholly.
His sole executor blame."

Lo! I have given space enough to a coward's epitaph. Of our friendship of old I will speak no farther than to cry to its fleeing shadow for one last favor—then all's past.

I wish to have speech, alone, with Mistress Damaris Sedley. It must be quickly, for I know not what the Queen's disposition of me may be. For God's sake, Philip Sidney, get me this! I am not yet under arrest—I am hard by the Palace, at the Bell Inn.—You may effect it if you will. God knows you have a silver tongue and she a heart of gold! I trust her to give me speech with her as I trust you to find the way.

Time was, thy friend; time is, thy suppliant only.

MORTIMER FERNE.

O Sidney, Sidney! I am not altogether base!

The maid of honor folded the letter, keeping it, however, in her hand. Her companion, turning towards her, chanced to see her face of sombre horror, of wide, tearless eyes, and would look no more. To themselves the two were modern of the moderns, ranked in the forefront of the present; courtier, statesman, and poet of the day, exquisite maid of honor whose every hour convention governed,—yet the face upon which in one revealing moment he had gazed seemed not less old than the face of Helen—of Medea—of Ariadne; not less old and not less imperishably beautiful. Neither spoke of her idyll turned to a crowder's song. Knowing that there were no words which she could bear, he waited, his mind filled with deep pity, hers with God knows what complexity, what singleness of feeling, until at last a low sound—no intelligible word—came from her throat. The plumed fan dropped the length of its silken cord, and her hands went out for help that should yet be voiceless, assuming everything, expressing nothing. He met her call, as three years later he met, at Zutphen, the agony of envy, the appeal against intolerable thirst, in the eyes of a common soldier.

"No command concerning him has yet been given," he said, gently. "I sent him mask and cloak—he came by yonder way,—met me here.... There were few words.... His humor is that of glancing steel."

"That is as it should be," answered the maid of honor.

Her companion parted the hangings which separated the two from the gallery. "He awaits behind yonder door where stands the boy." Ceremoniously he took her hand and led her to an entrance beside which leaned a slender lad in a ragged blue jerkin and hose. "Robin, you will watch yonder at the great doors. Sweet lady, I stand here, and none shall enter. But remember that the time is short—at any moment the gallery may fill."

"There is no long time needed," said Damans. In her voice there was no anger nor shame nor poignant grief, but she spoke as in a dream, and her face when she turned it towards him was strange once more, like the face of Fatal Love rising clear from the crash of its universe. She had drunk the half of a bitter cup, and the remainder she must drink; but when all was said, she was going, after weary months, to see the face of the man she loved. Philip Sidney lifted the latch of the door, saw her enter, and let it fall behind her.

The room in which she found herself was ruddy with firelight, the flames coloring the marble chimney-piece and causing faint shadows to chase one another across an arras embroidered with a hunting scene. Upon a heavy table were thrown a cloak and mask.

The man who had worn them turned from the window, came forward a few paces, and stood still. Damans put forth her hand, and leaned for strength against the chimney-piece—a beautiful woman in the heart of the glow from the fire. At first she said no word, for she was thinking dully. "If he comes no nearer, it must be true. If he crosses not the shadow on the floor between us, it must be true." At last she asked, in a low voice,

"Is it true?"

In the profound silence that followed she made a step forward out of the red glow towards the bar of shadow. Ferne stayed her with a gesture of his hand.

"Yes, it is true," he said. "It is true, unless, indeed, there be no answer to Pilate's 'What is truth?' For myself, I walk in a whirling world and a darkness shot with fire. Did I do this thing? Yea, verily, I did! Then, seeing that I dwell not in Edmund Spenser's faerie-land nor believe that an enchanter's wand may make white seem black and black seem white, I now see myself nakedly as I am,—a man who knew not himself; a sword, jewel—hilted, with a blade of lath; a gay masker whom, his vizard torn away, the servants thrust forth into the cold! I am my own assassin, forger, abhorred fool!"

He paused, and the embers fell, growing gray in the silence. At last he spoke again, in a changed voice. "Thy brother, lady.... There will not lack those to tell thee that I tripped him with my foot, that I slew him with my dagger. It is not true, and yet I count myself his murderer.... See the shadow at thy feet, the heavy shadow that lies between you and me!... How may I say that I would have given my life for him who was thy brother and my charge, whom for his own sake I loved, when I gave not my life, when I bought my life with his and many another's?... Thou dost well to say no word, but I would that thou didst not press thy hands against thy heart, nor look at me with those eyes. A little longer and I will let thee go, and Sidney's sister will comfort thee and be kind to thee."

"What else?" said Damaris, beneath her breath. "What else? O God! no more!"

Ferne drew from his doublet a knot of soiled ribbon. Again he was speaking, but not with the voice he had used before. "Thy favor.... I have brought it back to thee—but not stainless, not worn in triumph.... There is a fortress and a town that I see sometimes in a dream, and the governor of them both is a nobleman of Spain—Don Luiz de Guardiola, Governor of Nueva Cordoba. He filched from me my honor, but left me life that I might taste death in life. He set me on the river sands that I might call to the ships I had not sunken and to the comrades I had not slain. He gave me back my sword that in the cabin of the Mere Honour, in my leader's presence, I might break the blade in twain. He restored me this when he had ground it beneath his heel!—No, no, I will not have you speak! But was he not a subtle gentleman?... Now, by your leave, I shall burn the ribbon."

He crossed to the great fireplace and threw the length of velvet ribbon into a glowing hollow. It caught and blazed and illuminated his face. Damaris moved also, groping with her hands for the chair beside the table. Finding it, she sank down, outstretched her arms upon the board, and bowed her head upon them. Through the faintness and the leaden horror that weighed her down she heard Ferne's voice, at first yet monotonous and low, at the last an irrepressible cry of passion:

"Now there is no longer troth between us, and all thy days, by summer and by winter, thou mayst listen unabashed to tales of such as I. If I am named to thee, thou needst not blush, for now I have seared away that eve above the river, that morn at Penshurst. And there will be no more singing, and men will soon forget, as thou too—as thou too must forget! I loved; I love; but to thy lips and thy dark, dark eyes, and thy whole sweet self I say farewell.... Farewell!"

She was aware of his step beside her; knew that he had lifted the cloak and mask from the table; thought that but for this all-enfolding heaviness she would speak.... The door opened, and Sidney's voice reached her in a low, peremptory "At once!" A pause that seemed filled with laboring breath, then footsteps passed her; the door closed. Alone, she rose to her feet, stood for a moment with her hands at her temples, then moved with an uncertain step to the fire, where she sank down upon the rushes and tried to warm herself. Something among the ashes drew her attention. In went her hand, and out came a charred end of velvet ribbon.

She sat before the fire for some time, dully conscious of sound and movement in the gallery without, but caring nothing. When at last she arose and left the room all was quiet enough, and she reached her own chamber unmolested. Towards evening Cecily, fluttering in after long hours of attendance, found her in her night-rail, half kneeling beside the bed, half fallen upon the floor.... The Countess of Pembroke was not at court, and there was none besides whom Cecily cared or dared to call; so, terrified, she watched out the night beside a Damaris she had never known.

Philip Sidney's low voice had been urgent, and the man who owed to him a perilous assignation made no tarrying. With his cloak drawn about his face, and his hand busy with the small black mask, he passed swiftly along the gallery towards the door through which he had obtained entrance and where Sidney now waited with an anxious brow. It was too late. Suddenly before him, at the head of a short flight of stairs, the massive leaves of the great doors swung open and halberdiers appeared—beyond them a confused yet stately approach of sound and color and indistinguishable forms. The halberdiers advanced, a double line forming an aisle for the passage of some brilliant throng, and cutting off the door of escape. Ferne looked over his shoulder. From doors now opened at the farther end of the gallery people were entering, were ranging themselves along the walls. There was a glimpse of a crowd without; beyond them, the palace stairs and the silver Thames. A trumpet blew, and the crowd shouted, God save the Queen!

The tide of color rolled through the great inner doors, down to the level of the gallery, and so on towards the river and the waiting barges. It caught upon its crest Philip Sidney, who, striving in vain to make his way back to where Ferne was standing, had received from the latter a most passionate and vehement gesture of dissuasion. On came the bright wave, with menace of discomfiture and shame, towards the man who, surrounded though he was by petty courtiers, citizens, and country knights, could hardly fail of recognition. Impossible now was his disguise, where every hat was off, where a velvet cloak swung from a shoulder was one thing, and a mantle of frieze quite another. He dropped the latter at his feet, crushed the light mask in his hand, and waited.

It was not for long. Down upon him swept the cortege—the heart of the court of a virgin Queen. At once keenly and as in a dream he viewed it. Not less withdrawn was it now than a fairy pageant clear cut against rosy skies and watched by him from the stony bases of inaccessible cliffs—and yet it was familiar, goodly, his old accustomed company. This face—and that—and that! how he startled from it laughter or indifference or vagrant thought. There were low exclamations, a woman's slight scream, pause, confusion, and from the rear an authoritative voice demanding reason for the delay. Past him, staring and murmuring, swept the peacock-tinted vanguard; then, Burleigh on one hand, Leicester on the other, encompassed and followed by the greatest names and the fairest faces of England, herself erect, ablaze with jewels, conscious of her power and at all times ready to wield it, came the daughter of Henry the Eighth.

A noble presence moving in the full lustre of sovereignty, a princess who, despite all womanish faults, was a wise king unto her people, a maiden ruler to whom in that aftermath of chivalry men gave a personal regard, rose-colored and fanciful; the woman not above coquetry, vanity, and double-dealing, the monarch whose hand was heavy upon the council board, whose will perverted law, whose prime wish was the welfare of her people—she drew near to the man to whom she had shown fair promise of settled favor, but to whose story, told by his Admiral and commented upon by those about her, she had that day listened between bursts of her great oaths and with an ominous flashing of jewels upon her hands.

Now her quick glance singled him out from the lesser folk with whom he stood. She colored sharply, took two or three impetuous steps, then, indignant, stayed with her lifted hand the progress of her train. Ferne knelt. In the sudden silence Elizabeth's voice, shaken with anger, made itself heard through half the length of the gallery.

"What make you here? Who has dared to do this—to place this man here?"

"Myself alone, madam," answered quickly the man at her feet. With a motion of his hand he indicated the long cloak beside him. "I had but made entrance into the gallery—I was taken unawares—"

"Hast a knife beneath your cloak?" burst forth the Queen. "I hear that right royally you gave my subjects' lives to the Spaniard. There's a death that would more greatly please those that mastered you!... Answer me!"

"I have no words," said Ferne, in a low voice. As he spoke he raised his head and looked Majesty in the face.

Again Elizabeth colored, and her jewels shook and sparkled. "If not that, what then?" she cried. "God's death! Is't the Spanish fashion to wear disgrace as a favor? Again, sir, what do you here?"

"I came as a ghost might come," answered Ferne. "Thinks not your Grace that the spirits of disgraced and banished men, or men whose fault, mayhap, brought forfeiture of their lives, may strain to make return to that spot where they felt no guilt, where they were greatly happy? As such an one might come and no man see him, hurt or to be hurt of him, so came I, restless, a thing of naught, a shade drawn to look once more upon old ways, old walls, the place where once I freely walked. None brought me; none stayed me, for am I not a ghost? I only grieve that your Grace's clear eyes should have marked this shade of what I was, for most unwittingly I, uncommanded, find myself in your Grace's presence." He bent lower, touched the hem of her magnificent robe, and his voice, which had been quite even and passionless, changed in tone. "For the rest—whether I am yet to hold myself at your Grace's pleasure, or whether you give me sentence now—God save your Majesty and prevent your enemies at home and abroad—God bring downfall and confusion upon the Spaniard and all traitors who abet him—God save Queen Elizabeth!"

There followed a pause, during which could be heard the murmur of the waiting throng and the autumnal rustle of the trees without the gallery. At last:

"Yours was ever an eloquent tongue, Sir Mortimer Ferne," said the Queen, slowly. "Hadst thou known when to hold it, much might have been different.... Thy father served us well, and once we slept at his ancient house of Ferne, rich only in the valor and loyal deeds of its masters, from old times until our own.... What is lost is lost, and other and greater matters clamor for our attention. Go! hold thyself a prisoner, at our pleasure, in thy house of Ferne! If thou art but a shade with other shadows, then seek the company of thy dead father and of other loyal and gallant gentlemen of thy name. Perchance, one and all, they would have blenched had the pinch but been severe enough. I have heard of common men—ay, of thieves and murderers—whose lips the rack could not unlock! It seems that our English knights grow less resolved.... My lords, the sun is declining. If we would take the water to-day, we must make no farther tarrying. Your hand, my Lord of Leicester."

Once more her train put itself into motion. Lords and ladies, lips that smiled and hearts all busy with the next link in Ambition's golden chain, on they swept into the pleasant outer air. The one man of the motley throng of suitors to whom Elizabeth had spoken rose from his knee, picked up his frieze coat, and turned a face that might have gone unrecognized of friend or foe towards the door by which he had entered the gallery.

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