Chapter II: Fatherly Wisdom

My Lord Rockhurst approached the wall of the upper terrace and looked down upon his son. His countenance, naturally grave, and stamped now with the pallor and fatigue of his lengthy ride, grew graver as he watched. Beside him, his sister threw up scandalised hands. But, as she was about to give voice to her feelings, he arrested her with a gesture, and went slowly to the top of the stairs. There he paused and called,—

“Harry!”

The boy started, wheeled round, rushed up the steps, and dropped on one knee before his father.

“My lord … my dear father!”

Lord Rockhurst raised him, looked a second keenly at the young face; then laying his hand upon his shoulder, walked down with him toward the bench, where, still without speaking, he took seat. Shaking her head at her nephew, Mistress Rockhurst followed them at some distance.

“Oh, sir,” cried Harry, impetuously, “’tis ten months and two days since I last beheld your countenance!”

So saying, he was about to cast himself upon his father’s breast; when, with the faintest motion of the hand, Rockhurst restrained him.

“And yet, didst show, even now, no undue haste to greet me. ’Tis the first time, Harry,” he proceeded in softer tones, “that thou hast failed to welcome me before the gates.… I had looked forward to that moment.”

“And indeed, nevvy,” added Mistress Alicia, as she halted, panting, before him, “’twas not pretty acted. ‘Where’s Harry?’ says his lordship. And ’twas old Giles held the stirrup, which had been thy privilege, Harry, since thou wert five years old.”

Blushes chased each other over the boy’s face. He could but stammer:—

“Oh, sir … oh, father!”

“Nay, no excuses!” bade the Lord Constable.

His son’s cheek grew a darker crimson still.

“The lady, sir,” he murmured, “the lady I wrote of—”

Mistress Rockhurst snorted with increased indignation, but Lord Rockhurst was now smiling dreamily.

“A lady! sayst thou?… Boy Harry and his lady! Nay, then, a petticoat is like charity and must needs cover a multitude of sins!”

“Petticoats, indeed,” ejaculated under her voice the irate dame—“The hussy!”

Lord Rockhurst had no thought to spare for his sister’s opinions just now. Holding Harry at arm’s length, he surveyed him with shining eyes.

“Thou art grown a goodly lad. In faith, well-nigh a man!”

He drew him into his embrace and held him close a second. Then, releasing him, fell back with a sigh of ease upon the bench; flung off his mantle and unbuckled his sword, both of which Harry respectfully received from his hand.

The traveller sighed, took off his hat, and ran his fingers through his hair with the gesture of contented weariness.

“Another drop of cordial, my lord,” cried his sister, rising, all eager for service.

“Nay,” said he, motioning her back; “I have all the cordial I need here, Alicia. Come close, Harry. Dost know,” proceeded the Lord Constable, as his son knelt beside him, “dost know I have ridden two hundred miles these days, with scarce as many minutes’ rest, to put order into thy business? That to-morrow I must e’en be jogging back again, for his Majesty has need of me? Thou presumptuous rogue!” He struck the lad on the shoulder as he spoke, and seriousness underlay his tone of banter. “Wouldst plot to make a grandsire of me already? Mark those pleading eyes, sister.… Even so did they look up at me when he stood no higher than my knee, and it was: ‘Father, John blacksmith has so fair a pony to sell,’ or ‘Giles vows he will drown the red setter pup! O father, I want it!’ Aye, child, thou hast a father, and ’tis well for thee!” His mouth twisted with a light contempt under the upturned moustache. “A widow!” he said.

“Aye,” put in Aunt Alicia vindictively, “and a delicate, fine lady to boot.—Ah, nephew, did I not tell thee his lordship would set order here? What doth Mistress Harcourt care for still-room or buttery? Could she brew a bottle of gilly water? Nay—much less turn thee a pasty—?”

“Peace, peace, sister,” rebuked his lordship. “Harry—” he turned tender, relentless eyes upon his son’s quivering face, “thou, who wouldst get thee to begetting heirs already, what dost thou know of life?”

The youth rose to his feet, withdrew a pace, and looked earnestly at him.

“As much, my lord,” he answered then, “as you have allowed me to know.”

A moment the elder man seemed struck. He gazed down at his linked hands and reflected. Then he, too, got up. It was with an air of finality:—

“Faith, aptly replied! Therefore, son—” he took the lad’s arm, “thou must still believe my will best for thee.”

Harry caught up his father’s hand.

“Nay, my lord, God forbid I should even question the wisdom of your dealings with me! Truly, I have never hankered after the town; and, if I have seen you ride forth alone with a heavy heart, it has only been because of the longing for your gracious company. But, father—” he clasped his other hand over the gloved one he held, “she loves the country, too, let Aunt Alicia say what she will.” He shot a flaming look of reproach at the buxom lady. “And … and, we should be full content to dwell here forever if we were married, sir.”

“Married!” echoed Rockhurst. He pulled his hand from his son’s clasp and passed it caressingly over the beardless chin. “Aye, there’s a cheek for a husband, truly!” (Mistress Alicia broke into good-humoured laughter and struck her knees in applause.) “When thy beard is grown, we’ll talk of such matters again.”

“Oh, my lord,” pleaded the lover. “What of my age?—since you yourself were married when no older than I am, as our Bible leaf shows. Say nothing, at least, till you have seen her! She is here, father, even now, in the rosary! Alack, she has ridden hither to bid farewell, for to-morrow she sets out for London town. And, oh, father, may I not escort her?”

“To London!” exclaimed the father. His face grew dark with a heavy frown. “To London! No, sir, not within fifty miles of the Babylon! How now, art grown so bold?”

“I thought not of the town,” stammered Harry; “I thought but of the perils of the road for her.” Then, gaining assurance, he proceeded: “Even here there is talk of Claud Du Vall and such bold ruffians. Sir Edward, her brother … Sir Edward, in truth, is a poor fool, my lord—And Mr. Ratcliffe, her cousin, who rides with them, him I mightily mistrust. You have given me your blood, father—will you blame me now because it will not run obediently when I think of danger to my lady?”

“Nay, if thy body kept pace with thy spirit,” mocked Rockhurst, “what a beard wouldst soon have, my callow son!” Yet, though he mocked, anger had fled from his glance to be replaced by fatherly pride.

The tears rose to Harry’s eyes. The young can endure severity better than irony.

“Indeed, I am a child no longer,—I am ever your dutiful son, sir,—but I cannot give up Diana. My lord, do but see her; see her now…!”

“Now?” cried the other, surprised. Then recollecting himself: “True, didst say she was in the garden.” His eye grew ever more indulgent. “See her, lad,” he went on, “aye, truly. For what other purpose had I ridden all these weary miles?”

With the youth, all was once more sunshine, where, before, there had been but clouds.

“Ah, father, I knew your indulgence would never fail me. Nay, I will conduct her to you, on the instant.”

He started to run, as he spoke. Rockhurst watched the figure out of sight, then laughed low to himself and turned to his sister.

“I will conduct her to you, on the instant,” he repeated. “Aha—and doubtless the pretty widow will come as meekly at his bidding to display herself as ever heifer to the fair. _O rustica simplicitas!_” And laughing, he came back to the bench and sat down.

“Indeed, my lord,” said Mistress Alicia, with as much disapproval as she dared to show to the head of the house, “here is no matter for laughing. ’Tis an excellent thing, my lord, that you should forbid Harry from marrying the Widow Harcourt. And truly, as you say, he’s not fit to wed for some four or five years to come. And, of a certainty, she’s scarce the woman to manage a household like this, brother; not such as I should care to trust with the keys. And I think you’ll not refuse me the credit to say, brother, that I have become them well these five years. Since, with his Majesty’s most happy Restoration, your lordship also has come to your own again, and placed me at the head of your house—I trust, I say, I have become the charge.”

“Indeed, none better,” said Rockhurst, absently.

The lady glanced at him sidelong. Her comely face took an air of indecision, almost of timidity, foreign to the massive severity of its lines. Something she had on her mind, that yet she feared to utter. But lack of courage could never be the failing of a Rockhurst.

“And, indeed, my lord, so long as you keep the lad mewed up here, as if he were a girl, ’tis not to be expected that he should get rid of such like maggots in his head. Why, the town’s the place for a gallant young gentleman like Harry. Your only son, my lord, your heir! Think on it. Why, Court’s the place for him, and you so rarely in his Majesty’s favour! He’d sing another song there, I warrant you.”

Once again the father’s face grew dark.

“’Tis my bird, sister; I’ll have him sing the song I choose.”

“But surely, brother,” argued the doughty lady, scarlet in the face, “with you to watch over him, with your example—”

“With my example!” He turned suddenly and fiercely on his sister: “No, by the Lord, not even with such valuable aid as that, will I trust my fine lad into that sink—that charnel-house—that pit! Ah, you think yourself so wise, and prate of what you know not—poor innocent old country virgin. I tell thee, woman, the taint is in the very air. Eyes, ears, nay, every pore, are channels for the poison—”

“Brother!” ejaculated Mistress Rockhurst, huffed and startled.

But Rockhurst proceeded, his eyes fixed more as if talking to himself than to her:—

“There, shame grows dearer than merit—vice becomes as a cloak, warm and soft, in which a man takes comfort. At the mere thought of cold virtue, of stern duty, of naked purity, ugh! we shiver and hug ourselves—”

His sister gave a faint, shocked cry, and flung out her hand:—

“But not you, not you, my lord! Surely these are strange words.”

“Harry shall be a man of better stuff,” the father cried. “He’s wholesome now, body and soul, and by the Lord, I say, I’ll keep him so! How now, Alicia, shall I not have pure-blooded, pure-hearted grandchildren, an I have the mind?”

For some unknown reason the excellent lady took deep umbrage at this last remark.

“Surely, surely!” she repeated, tossing her head, so that her grey curls danced.

“So let it be, then,” bade her brother. Then, in a changed voice he exclaimed:—

“Hush, now, here comes the country widow. Faith, the lad hath taste.”

But here he fell suddenly silent and sprang up. Mistress Rockhurst, surveying him in some anxiety, marked the extraordinary change that came over his countenance.

“As I am a sinful woman” (she afterward told her special gossip), “his lordship turned whey-white. And I do assure you, madam, his eyes blazed in his head—the like of which I have never seen before. ’Twas almost as if he and she had known each other and had never dreamed to meet again. And as for my fine young madam, she came along with her eyes on the ground—nay, the most bashful thing between this and York City. But when she looks up and sees my lord, as white as he went, she goes rosy, and, please you, gives a kind of cry with both her hands outstretched. That may have been artfulness. And if so, my lord met it even as I could have wished; for he but made her a deep bow, and, says he presently, in his very grand way, ‘It gives me pleasure, madam, to make your acquaintance.’ At which you should have seen how was taken aback the widow! ‘Make your acquaintance’ (mark me), says he, which shows he could not have known her before, after all.”

Harry, who had brought his lady in such pride beneath his father’s glance, stood somewhat dashed in the silence that followed Lord Rockhurst’s ceremonious greeting. By nature the most unsuspicious of youths, in his simple existence he had never felt the necessity of studying inner motives in those around him. He knew the tricks of bird and beast, but the secrets of his fellow-creatures he guessed not at. And so all the tokens that his aunt’s shrewd eye had noted were lost upon him. His father had been a trifle over-ceremonious toward a fair neighbour, let alone the mistress of his son’s heart. And she, his dear love, had blushed and grown pale, as was but natural.

“Well, sir,” he cried at last, anxiously, “now that you have seen Mistress Harcourt, do you not give me some reason?”

His father turned a singular glance upon him.

“Reason enough, lad,” he said, under his breath, “reason enough for any folly!”

Diana’s clear cheek had now resumed its usual pretty tint; but as her young lover spoke, it deepened; and at Rockhurst’s words, faded again slightly.

“Nay, my lord,” said she, speaking for the first time—her voice was low and troubled—“I know not what Master Harry hath been saying of me. It is his kindness that he will think so well of me, and—nay, I must say it, Harry—’tis his foolishness that he will not understand that he is over-kind.”

Rockhurst took Diana’s hand from his son’s hold, where it still rested unconsciously. Many thoughts were in his mind, as strangely conflicting as the forces in his nature. His keen knowledge of women and their ways told him that no woman who loved a man would have let her fingers lie so listlessly in his grasp. “My poor lad—she has no heart for him,” cried the father in him. But the man in him, as yet unsubdued by years or sorrow, rejoiced. Here was one who, nameless to him, had yet shone like a star in his troubled sky this many a month, for the sake of one hour, snatched, sweet, pure, sacred, out of an unworthily spent life. With all that was best in him, he had wished to keep her unknown, unattainable; and here she was, brought back by fate into his path!

No one could have guessed at the storm seething within him after his moment of self-betrayal. His usual polished composure governed face, voice, and gesture.

“My son has told me much about you, madam, truly,” he was saying; “and yet I see how little he has been able to tell me.”

’Twas the merest idle compliment. The words were as artificial as the tone. Diana courtesied in silence. Not thus did she remember her grave, chivalrous protector in an hour of doubt and peril. Nay, then, that memory had best be effaced from her mind, since it was his pleasure to deny it. Perchance (and the thought was more galling to her pride!) though she had so fondly kept his image in the deep recesses of her soul, hers had already faded from his thoughts.

“Indeed, my lord,” she began, rallying her spirits, “I too—” but she paused, for her brother and Lionel Ratcliffe were approaching, the latter with his cool air of indifference, the other all agape with curiosity.

Harry instantly took the younger man by the arm to present him to his father.

“One moment,” rebuked Rockhurst; “the lady is speaking. Pray, madam?”

“Oh, my lord,” said she, with formal grace, “the poor sentence was, certes, never worth such courteous attention. I was but about to say that I, too, have heard of your lordship often.”

“Aye? From what source?” he asked, and a shadow fell on his face.

But she was smiling.

“From this source,” she answered him, waving her roses toward Harry.

“Ah,” cried Rockhurst, laughing upon a sigh, “no doubt the rogue has full wearied you with the subject.”

“Alas,” she responded quickly, “must I not take this reproach to myself?”

Lionel Ratcliffe pulled young Rockhurst by the sleeve.

“What, all agaze and bewildered, Harry? Never fear, these are but Court wits in a friendly bout. Clink, clink, the sparks fly. But, hark to you, beware an unfoiled weapon.”

The boy withdrew from his touch with disfavour, and Rockhurst turned upon the whisperer a haughty look of enquiry.

“Well met again, my lord,” cried Ratcliffe, swaggering a step forward and saluting with a cavalier sweep of his hat.

Rockhurst returned the courtesy with a ceremonious inclination.

“Have we met before, sir?” he enquired.

No whit abashed, Ratcliffe replaced his felt with the very latest twist of the wrist.

“Does your lordship make it a practice, then, of not taking your memory out of town? To be sure, memory is a mighty inconvenient chattel at times. Natheless, ’tis a fact your lordship and my humble self have met at the same board. Did I not share with your lordship, last winter, the privilege of being the guest of the pretty Mantes?”

“Enough—I remember you, sir,” said his lordship.

“Egad,” laughed Ratcliffe, with elaborate geniality, “I, sure, did take special note of your lordship, that night, seeing you with the nymph, our hostess, whom, I mind me, you had but just whisked from under the very nose of Jove. Nay, not the first time (if report spoke truly) that Old Rowley has been cut out by the Rake—”

The words were arrested on his lips by a look as sharp as a sword:—

“You have too long a memory, sir. Shorten it.—My son,” added the speaker, turning his shoulder upon Ratcliffe, “you were about to introduce the young gentleman to me.”

“My brother, Sir Edward Hare, my lord,” said Diana, forestalling her lover.

The interlude with Ratcliffe had perturbed the group; and with gracious instinct she sought to cover her cousin’s insolence and young Rockhurst’s rising anger at insinuations incomprehensible to country dwellers, yet the hostile intent of which was but too transparent. Sir Edward, however, was far from assisting her purpose.

“Nay, brother, brother,” she whispered, as the bumpkin nodded sulkily. “Doff thy hat.”

“I tell thee, Di,” murmured the injured youth, “’tis he owes me two bows and a scrape. Ecod: ‘the lady’s speaking,’ quotha! And I with my best leg already drawn out for him!”

“Your lordship must excuse our rustic manners,” said Diana, with a pretty glance, half humorous, half pleading.

Rockhurst looked at her a second musingly.—Yes, grace, youth, sweetness, all were hers! And fate had so worked that it was she who was to embody his son’s young love dream! Dear lad … small blame to him! He gave an unconscious sigh. To his countenance came back that air of kindness which Harry had missed in it so singularly since the meeting with Diana.

“Of your leave, my son,” said he, then, “I will have a few minutes’ converse with Mistress Harcourt apart.”

Harry pressed his father’s hand in delighted response. He leant back against the sunny wall and watched his mistress go in grace beside the stately figure of the great Lord Rockhurst. Lionel took place beside him, and from narrowed lids looked smilingly at the young man’s happy countenance.

Mistress Rockhurst, who, solemnly seated at the end of her bench, had been a silent yet mightily observant witness of the whole scene, now, suddenly struck by the discontented expression of Edward Hare’s visage, addressed the youth:—

“What ails ye, Sir Edward?”

“I’m sick at stomach,” growled the candid baronet. “I hate a peacock.”

“Yet peacock is light fare,” said the lady, with a twinkle in her shrewd blue eye. “Sick at stomach, say you? There’s nothing better than a cup of marjoram water.”

Sir Edward flung the suggestion from him:—

“Water? Ugh!”

“When I say water,” amended she, “’tis strong water, aqua vitæ.”

“Aye,” quoth he, then, “that’s another matter. I’m not saying but a tass of it would warm the innards.”

She despised him heartily for a monstrous poor scion of a noble family; yet the housewife was too strong in her to resist the pleasure of ministering out of her store, even to an unworthy guest. She rose, chuckling, jingling her keys:—

“Oh, surely, surely,” she exclaimed, “this small comfort shall not be denied you here, Sir Edward. Come but with me.”