Chapter I: Farrant Chace

Storm without; and within, melancholy humours!—Without, fine, blinding, dry snow, driven in eddies against whatever obstacle it met: against the walls of Sir Paul Farrant’s Manor House: against the holly and clipped yews of his garden: against the serried ranks of firs which screened his estate from the wild blasts that ride from the Downs up the great rise of Hindhead. Never more wildly, never more triumphantly, did the winds ride than on this night of the winter solstice, this Christmas Eve, the fifth since the happy date of his Most Gracious Majesty’s Restoration.

Within, a fire of logs glowing under the huge mantelled chimney; rosy flicker on wainscot, glitter of crystal and silver on fair white napery, and a full-paunched bottle or two, dusty and cobwebbed; crocus flames of candles against the rose of the hearth-light and the brown of the oak. Cheerful enough surroundings, one would have deemed—a sort of room where a man might hug comfort with philosophic egotism and have the greater zest in it for the thought of the outside desolation; sip his glass to the tune of the wind; and toast his legs in luxury as he pictured to himself the circumstance of any poor devil who, upon such a night, still chanced to be on the road.

Yet, as it has been said, the temper that reigned within the oak parlour of Farrant Chace was no whit more cheerful than the weather on the moor. Indeed, my lord Viscount Rockhurst—on his way back from France, obliged to halt by stress of weather at the house of a fellow-traveller—looked more particularly disqualified than usual to wear the nickname bestowed upon him by the “merry Monarch” himself in mockery of his wild favourite’s invariable gravity. “Merry Rockhurst”—never less merry of aspect than to-night.

His long legs extended toward the embers, he lay rather than sat in the straight-backed chair of honour beside the hearth. His head with its chiselled features, worn, keen, witty, was sunken on his breast; his eyes were fixed abstractedly upon the darting flame, his hands inertly folded. For some ten minutes he had not uttered a word or altered his attitude, and the silent immobility of his guest was beginning to tell heavily upon the nerves of Sir Paul Farrant, his young host.

Sir Paul bit his lip, paced the room three or four times; then halted before the card-table, which stood askew against the wall, as if it had been thrust aside by an impatient hand. He took up the dice-box, dangled it, dropped it; flipped a few of the scattered cards, his eyes ever wandering back to his companion; a hesitating phrase, ever checked upon his lips. Now he went to the window, pulled the curtains aside and peered forth.

“More snow—more snow! Ugh, ’tis plaguey cold!” he cried, with exaggerated airiness, returning to the hearth and spreading his hands to the blaze.

“The drifts are rising higher and higher,” he pursued. “No hope for the road, ’tis not fit weather for a dog.”

The figure in the great chair stirred, a lazy voice was raised:—

“Certainly not weather for a gentleman.”

The other leaped to the symptom of restored companionship.

“As you say, my lord, very vile weather indeed. Not fit for us to travel in, for very truth.”

Lord Rockhurst’s long eyelids flickered.

“Sir,” said he, with marked deliberation, his gaze still fixed on the fire, “I spoke in the singular.”

Sir Paul’s hand, still stretched toward the glow, suddenly trembled. He had a young, smooth face, transparent to emotion; it grew scarlet.

“And what might your lordship mean by that?” he asked, breathing quicker.

Lord Rockhurst shifted his person to a more erect attitude, and turned his satiric face toward the speaker. The elder by some fifteen years, he had none of the genial gleam in his eye, none of the something almost fatherly with which the mature man of kindly mettle regards youth.—Lord Rockhurst’s gaze was colder than the wind that whistled in the leaves, bleaker than the moorland waste.

“I do not desire to qualify you,” said he.

From its uneasy flush, the young face went white.

“My lord, my lord!…”

But Rockhurst raised his hand with a commanding gesture.

“When a man enters upon a game of hazard with another, ’tis the very essence of honour that the chances should be equal between them. Now, my most excellent young host, had you played me with loaded dice to-night—”

The other broke out foaming at the mouth, with the acrid rage of the helplessly insulted.

“My lord Rockhurst—! I will suffer no man, nay, not even under my own roof, to dare such an insinuation. The dice, my lord—”

He made a frantic gesture toward the card-table. But, like the play of water upon red iron, Rockhurst’s cool voice fell upon his heat:—

“Nay—the dice are right enough—so are the cards. We were but us two, moreover, so you had no accomplice. These are the elements of honest play, as I was about to expound to you—since, indeed, your father’s only son, and a lad of your experience in court and camp, appears to require such expounding.”

He changed his tone for one more subtly keen, as the surgeon his blade at the delicate moment: “But another element in play, between gentlemen, is that one player should not stake against the other sums he does not possess.”

Farrant, wincing, ran his hands desperately through his fair locks; he fell into an arm-chair and, still clutching his love curls, drew them across his face. From behind this screen, after a long pause, he spoke muffled words:—

“Your lordship seems to forget the circumstances. To help your lordship to pass this time of tedium (since no horses that ever were foaled could take your coach on through these snows); having the responsibility of entertaining your lordship … since you can find little pleasure but in the cards … and having, in these cursed twenty-four hours, lost every stiver of money, every rood of the poor land I possess … zounds! my lord, that I should have risked a few more throws with nought but my ruin to back them … damnation, my lord Rockhurst, since but a turn of the dice might have set us even again!—these are hard words, it seemeth to me! Aye, and hard thoughts.”

Thus set forth, his own case seemed to the youth so strong that he lifted his head again and displayed his countenance as wrathful and full of reproach now as, a minute ago, it had been shamed.

Lord Rockhurst crossed one lean leg over the other, settled his elbows at the most comfortable angle the carven arms of the chair would afford, and let his brilliant hazel eye wander to the red embers and become dreamy once more.

* * * * *

For a long while silence reigned again in the oak parlour of Farrant Chace.

A resinous knot in the pine log exploded with miniature fierceness—a white flame jetted out, hissing, and dropped. The fire settled itself and the ashes slipped away, sighing. In the tense silence these small sounds made emphasis; while without, ever and anon, the blast came rolling up the slope from the far distance, dashed through the frantic swaying firs with screams of triumph, to hurl itself against the sturdy walls, there to break and part on either side and dash onward once more.

… So comes the charge of horse against the solid mass of foot with ever-gathering speed, rider and beast together, in one frenzied impetus, to break themselves against the serried pikes.…

* * * * *

“Your father fell beside me at Naseby,” said Rockhurst presently, as if speaking to himself.

The incisive note had vanished from his voice. Farrant rose from the table and came towards him, with something of the schoolboy’s mien, who half resents his master’s anger and half hopes to see him mollified. Rockhurst went on musingly:—

“He and I were neck and neck through Edgehill, Newbury, Marston Moor.… Until that hour I was young, younger than you are. And in those days I had mighty thoughts. But in my mightiest I never saw myself reaching to his level. If I could but keep my nag’s head close to his, and go where he led, leap where he leaped—’twas enough for me.… When he fell, struck down by Ireton’s pikes, I thought the world grew dark.… Then I was young, Master Paul. And now, sitting in this chair to-night”—Rockhurst slowly straightened himself and turned his head toward Farrant—“I find there is still something left in me of the old self that I had deemed to be dead this many a year. Enough to be glad to-night, sir, that your father is dead.—Paul Farrant,” went on the elder slowly, “speak: had the luck turned as you hoped, upon what foundation would you have built your winnings?”

The other hesitated, stammered, made a fresh abortive effort to brazen it out.

“Nay, my lord, the world hardly knows you so squeamish. If such rigid rules obtained at Whitehall we should be a dull lot, and many a merry hour lost. Did your lordship say you had charged Ireton’s men? By those tenets we might have dreamed that your place had rather been among the precisians.…”

A subtle change swept over Rockhurst’s countenance. The air of grave severity, the shadow of regretful tenderness, passed from him, to be replaced by the mocking glance, the expression at once reckless and cynical which, before the world’s eyes, characterised the man who had won for himself—among a company of reprobates—that second if scarcely more appropriate nickname of his, “Rakehell Rockhurst.”

“Nay, but you’re a promising lad!” said he, gibing. “And you’ll make your way, my son, I doubt me not. Time advances, old types die out, and manners change. The rules of honour which still shackle old fools like myself would chafe your gallant spirits.… Yet, hark ye, without being a precisian, Master Paul, in my day, a man—a gentleman—would no more have staked what he did not possess, would no more have dallied with the thought of selling a friend, than he would have forced a lady. But, sure, what dull fellows are we of the old days by the side of such sparks, such knights as yourself! Meanwhile,” and here a wide and uncontrolled yawn showed teeth as white as a wolf’s, “meanwhile, excellent young man, I have here in my pocket your signature to so much waste paper—I have it as a memento of a series of tedious games, a reminder of the prospect of another evening, with your company, for all delectation.—Gadzooks, sir, a man does not invite another to his house, in a snow-storm, if there is a tolerable inn at hand, when he, being himself green as a March lamb, has only a housekeeper old as sin!… The Gods preserve me from the green man and the withered woman! Add to this a cellar reduced to thin Rhenish and claret—a cellar no sane man could get drunk on, sir, and Christmastide!” Eye and voice became even more insolently provocative. “I have known many a one spitted for less provocation.”

“Would your lordship find some solace in having a try for my vitals?” cried the youthful host eagerly. His lip trembled; tears of mortification were not far from his eyes. The fleer at his dull entertainment cut him more keenly than the rebuke touching the honour of his play. He already saw himself held up to the ridicule of the Court by the Rakehell’s unsparing tongue.—Gad, his old housekeeper! his doubtful cellar! He, who had worked so hard to achieve a position of fashion and gallantry, who had plumed himself upon the distinction of playing the host to so high a courtier as Viscount Rockhurst, Lord Constable of the Tower—the King’s own close friend!… He flung his arm toward the swords that hung fraternally on the wall, side by side, in their royal crimson baldricks.

But Rockhurst’s laugh, low-pitched, arrested all further movement.

“Nay, good Sir Paul, I pray you! However you may relish the idea of spilling the blood of your guest, your guest cannot so far forget the rules of gentle behaviour as to cross swords with his host. Secondly, sir, you appear still to have to learn that a man may not fight with one to whom he owes money. And thirdly, now: when I had slain you, think you that your corpse would be more amusing than your live body?… Though, truth, it could scarce be less so.”

He laughed again, through his teeth, at his own gibe.

The boy, bated to desperation, stood clenching and unclenching his hands, fighting back the furious tears. The other, his back to the flames, stood looking at him some time in silence. Then, into his pitiless hawk’s eye came a gleam of humour—a slight softening of compassion, perhaps. The mind that once yields to humour can rarely continue to entertain the deadly earnestness of anger. Rockhurst yawned again, drew some crumpled sheets from his pocket and flung them on the table.

“Now, look you, Sir Paul,” said he, good-naturedly, “I care not for this mood. Devise me but something of an entertainment for this evening—an entertainment, mind you, that shall honestly entertain me—why then, I’ll stake again; I’ll stake these, which represent your indebtedness to me, against your inventiveness. Shorten but a couple of hours for me, and I’ll shorten my memory of this night’s business. Zounds, never stare so! Do you not understand? ’Tis your wit for your honour—and the chance of a lifetime to prove yourself a man of resource!”

For an instant Paul Farrant’s countenance became illumined; he made a hasty step forward. Then he hesitated, and, in renewed dismay, put his hand to his forehead. In the middle of the snow-drift, with a condemned cellar and an ugly housekeeper, debarred from gambling, debarred from fighting, his brain paralysed by a crushing sense of failure and folly—to devise amusement for this fastidious, caustic nobleman, what a task!

He moved to the window, in reality more to hide his fresh mortification than to examine the prospect of the weather. It was to find that there was a lull in the snowfall, that the wind had rent a gap between the brooding clouds and revealed a patch of starry sky ridden by the sickle of a young moon. Through the swaying trees gleamed fitfully a distant red fire, and beyond it, further down the waste, a steadier yellow light came and went, as the wind bowed and released some plumy fir branch: the iron-smelting forge of the Hammer Pond! The inn at Liphook! Now, he remembered him, the smelter was a man of infinite popularity, the jester of the countryside; one who could sing a rousing stave to the clank of his hammer, and crack you the drollest stories over the home-brewed, were it only strong enough. Failing him, there was the innkeeper of the Anchor, at Liphook. Mine host had the secret of a noted posset that his Majesty himself, halting on the Portsmouth Road, had once generously praised. Nay, at the inn he might possibly pick up some belated traveller, whose conversation—he bitterly thought—would prove more acceptable than his own. At any rate, ’twas all the hope he had to cling to. Rockhurst never spared.

“If your lordship will give me _congé_ for a short while,” he cried, turning back to the room, “I shall endeavour to meet your wishes.… We may not be so destitute of entertaining company at Farrant Chace as your lordship deems.”

He seized his cloak, flung it angrily about him, goaded by the sound of the faint laugh, and strode out. Rockhurst subsided into the chair, laughed a little yet, then sighed and fell a-brooding again.