“You hope they will not take him, Evelyn!” Her ladyship was outraged by such a sentiment. “The man is a dangerous and pernicious rebel. And they’ll take him, never fear.”
“I wonder!” said Captain Gaynor.
“Look at this,” she bade him, and held out The Courant.
He took the news-sheet, and followed the indication of her finger. But there was not the need of it. The bold announcement at the foot of the second column challenged every eye:
ADVERTISEMENT
WHEREAS it is reported to his Majesty’s Government that the notorious rebel and Jacobite spy and agent who is known as Captain Jenkyn is at this present time in England, his Majesty’s Secretary of State hereby gives notice that any who shall bring such information as will lead to the arrest and conviction of the said rebel shall receive from his Majesty’s Treasury the sum of TWELVE HUNDRED GUINEAS in REWARD.
“His value is increasing, it seems,” said the Captain, returning the sheet to her ladyship. “Poor devil!” he added, and soon afterwards found an excuse upon which he might withdraw and go to join Damaris in the garden.
“Madam,” he said, bowing formally before her, “I am come — alas! — to take my leave of you. But ere I go there is something I desire to say for your private ear, if you will so honour me.”
He saw the quick blood leap to her cheeks and ebb thence again, leaving her very white; he saw that droop of the brown eyes, the sudden agitation of her breast, the little quiver of her hand upon the briar from which she had been about to break a rose.
He knew then how she misunderstood his aims; knew that she cared; and the knowledge was as a sword in his flesh.
“Yes,” she answered faintly. “I am listening, Captain Gaynor.”
He hesitated yet a moment. Then: “Will you walk, madam?” he invited her, his voice oddly subdued, faltering a little even.
She turned at his bidding, and together they took their way at a gentle pace towards the plantation; they crossed the bridge, and followed the main valley of the glorious garden; and all this with no word spoken between them, yet such a communion of soul and soul as gladdened her and left him sick with fierce despair.
She imagined that she understood why he led her to the garden. She remembered how he had spoken of it as enchanted, a place wherein a man might be content to lay down ambition and have done with strife. It was here, too, that they had first talked to any purpose. It was almost as if they had met there, under the apple-blossom, for until that talk they had been as utter strangers. There it was that he had first revealed himself with all that stark honesty which she found so admirable in him, that it more than made amends for his avowed lack of great ideals. She was touched by his desire that they should talk now in such a place; that he should have chosen this garden of enchantment, in which he had erst revealed himself, to reveal himself yet more fully unto her alone.
Rejoicing, she went with him thither, as she would have gone with him wheresoe’er he bade her. Was she not his to claim? And in that hour she was glad indeed of the deception that had been practised, glad that he had not known her for the heiress, Damaris Hollinstone. For thus was she brought to the sweet and tranquil conviction that here was one who desired her for her own self and not for aught that she might have to give. She was glad, too, that she was Damaris Hollinstone and rich, and glad that he was poor. Thus should be increased the joy and blessing that would be hers in giving — for she was of those selfless ones who, where they love, desire to give and give. She knew that she was good to look upon; and in this too she took joy that morning, since this too had she to give.
She was dreaming as she stepped along beside him, a happy dream whose fulfilment she deemed impending. Why did he not speak? she wondered. Did he hesitate, poor lover? Did he doubt her? God wot, there was but little need for that. Furtively, shyly she glanced aside at him, to observe at last his haggard look and wrinkled brow.
Dear heart! How needlessly was he torturing himself! How fondly she longed for the uttered word that should give her the right to drive forth his fears, to transfigure his face and smooth away those lines. Yet she loved him the more for this most sweet timidity towards her in one whom she judged of a nature that normally was bold and fearless.
And then, at last, he spoke, his voice singularly small and quiet; and his first words shattered that dream-paradise of hers so abruptly that for an instant she was stunned and numb.
“It is of Sir John that I desire to speak to you, madam,” he said. “I have a message for him of gravest import — so grave that I dare not write it, lest an ill-chance should put it into hands that might use it against him.”
Mechanically she walked on. She was choking. Her face was deathly pale; her eyes seemed suddenly enlarged in it and very dark; her mouth was trembling. But he observed naught of this. He did not observe her at all. He was looking away through the sundrenched orchard on their right.
Followed a little spell of silence, in which they came to the first of those courts enclosed in their tall, boxwood settings. He stood aside to let her pass first through the narrow archway in that massive hedge. He followed, and they stood in the rose-garden, which was now all fire and snow with petals red and white.
“You will tell him, madam, that I am grieved beyond all mention that I may not stay another day for his return, to take my leave of him in person; that I dare not; that with every hour I tarry now in England the shadow of the gallows falls more heavily across my path.”
She came out of her stupor, awakened by the sinister image he had employed.
“The gallows?” she cried, horror in every line of her lovely face. “You are in danger!”
Deliberately had he spoken so, hoping that his words would convey not only the intended message to Sir John, but a message to her too that should explain his need to preserve silence upon the subject on which she looked to hear from him. Yet now that he saw and interpreted her alarm, his soul was torn with sobs unuttered. His eyelids flickered. But beyond that he gave no sign of the terrible ordeal he was sustaining, must sustain for honour’s sake. His every nerve and fibre shrieked imperatively that he should take her in his arms, and claim her — who stood so ready for surrender — for his own. But the calm, cold voice of Honour warned him not to heed those treacherous behests of heedless Nature — of Nature, who knows naught of honour and such human shibboleths.
What manner of knave would he be, Honour demanded, to return the good that Sir John had ever done him by the evil of such a deed? To repay the baronet’s trust and affection by stealing away his only child and bearing her with him upon his hapless wanderings?
Were Sir John here, things might be different. Captain Gaynor could have gone to him and loyally spoken what was in his heart, loyally abided by the baronet’s decision. But without the baronet’s consent — a consent which Gaynor deemed extremely unlikely — he must not speak to her of this thing with which his heart was bursting. And linger until Sir John’s return, he dared not; not merely for the danger that he ran — that danger he would have faced most gladly — but because his presence in England might place in jeopardy those arrested Jacobites, against whom little could be enacted if he remained undiscovered, he must depart at once. The voice of Honour was very clear, and not to be misunderstood. It bade him be silent, and so depart.
So in that swift flicker of his eyelids he determined. He brushed aside with a disdainful gesture the suggestion that the danger he ran was one to occasion concern.
“The danger is naught,” he said, “or will be naught so that I depart at once. And I mean not only danger to myself but danger to others who would be implicated were I taken. Please remember this that you may tell him. And that the principal ones of my master’s friends have been prematurely arrested; that no great harm threatens them, but that for the present I have been obliged to abandon my mission; that I shall not go to Rochester, nor indeed take any further steps, but shall return immediately to Rome.
“That, I think, is all th
at I need say. The rest he will infer. But add that there is a warrant out for my arrest — though not in my own name, as the Government is not yet assured that my identity and that of the person sought are one and the same. And before the Government has such assurance — if indeed it ever has it — I hope to be very far away. Bid him spare himself anxieties on my account. My plans are soundly laid, and I have a friend at Court upon whose offices I am depending.
“Tell him just that, madam,” he concluded, his eyes ever avoiding hers, “just that and my deep devotion. He will understand why I was forced to this precipitate flight, and he will know how to guard himself from any consequences of having sheltered me in the event of my being ultimately identified with — with the man for whom the warrant has been issued.”
“I will remember all,” she said — indeed, every word of it was seared upon her memory— “and I will tell him. But you, sir” — her voice dropped a little, and her tone by its gentleness seemed to belie the words she uttered— “you have deceived me.”
He looked up sharply. “Deceived you — I?”
“You represented yourself to me as an adventurer, a follower of Fortune’s banner, a mercenary who sold his sword to the highest bidder.”
“All this I have been — all this I am,” he answered. “I practised no deceit.”
“You practise it still,” she said, her pride in him increased a thousandfold by her discovery. “You spoke but now of a mission and of your master in Rome. You are a Jacobite, that much you have made plain — one who in the pursuit of an ideal imperils his life and moves, in your own words, under the shadow of the gallows. Yet,” she reproached him almost fondly, so caressingly protesting was her tone, “you represented yourself to me as a hireling; you provoked and submitted to my scorn.”
He trembled, looked at her, then looked away across the flaming roses. His first impulse was to say that in this too he was a mercenary; that what he did, he did for gold. First the falsehood stayed him; then the reflection that even that falsehood could not serve him now. He had won her love; her every word and look assured him of it. Should he then be so ungenerous as to maintain this hateful pretence that she was nothing to him? Could that serve any but a hurtful purpose? Was it not better that he, too, should let her see how it was with him? Was it not better that she should know that where unwittingly he had conquered he had been conquered also? That she should hold this knowledge would, he felt, comfort him; and her too it might comfort. Some day — who knew?
But there he went too fast. He would convey it, but not utter it. To utter it were to break down the barriers which Honour had raised up.
“You are right,” he said gently. “I crave your pardon.”
“My pardon?” she echoed. “My pardon — for being noble where I deemed you base!”
“Nay, for the deceit I put unworthily upon you.”
“Why did you?” she asked him, the intimacy between them growing now with an odd and alarming swiftness.
“To be consistent in the part I played. Had any known my secret, all must know it. Yet there was no untruth in my deceit. I was a mercenary in all other services but this. And of this I dared not speak — at least not then.”
“And now?” she asked him without shyness.
“Now?” He looked at her, full into her steadfast eyes that were drawing his very soul from him. “Now to make amends I will place my life in your gentle hands. God knows it is all I have to give.” He laughed a little ruefully. She was trembling. “I am he whom the Government knows by the name of Captain Jenkyn.”
She fell back with a little cry. She needed no explanation. She, too, had seen The Daily Courant that morning and the Secretary of State’s announcement. She turned white to the lips, realising at last to the full the overwhelming peril in which he stood. She clasped her hands.
“Oh, God of pity!” was her moan. And then, in an agony: “Why — oh, why did you tell me this?”
The appeal was more than he could endure. Impulse shattered Honour’s barriers at a blow, and struck Honour herself silent, whilst Nature swept on triumphant and irresistible.
He strode to her, caught her in his arms and crushed her to him. His voice shook with mingled pain and exultation.
“Because I love you, oh, my lady!” he cried. “Because all that I have, all that I am I would place in your sweet hands in pledge of it.”
“I asked not any pledge,” she sobbed in a gladness that mounted and overrode her terror. His head drooped to her upturned face, and they kissed. “Dear love,” she murmured, as she lay there happily upon his breast, “I, too, must make confession.”
“Confess, dear sinner,” he replied, “and be very sure of shrift.”
“I am glad that you deceived me, for I too have practised a deceit on you.”
“Deceit — thou?” his voice was scornful.
“I am not Evelyn,” she confessed, watching his face, observing the cloud that gathered on his brow. “I am Damaris Hollinstone.”
The cloud grew darker, then suddenly it vanished utterly and he laughed.
“Faith, then, I’m glad,” said he, “for Damaris is a sweeter and more fitting name.”
“And for no other reason?” she inquired.
“What other could there be? You are you under whatever name you please.”
And so they hung there, the world and all its perils sunk many a fathom deep into oblivion, conscious of naught but each other — just man and woman in a garden.
From behind the boxwood hedge stepped, soft-footed, a hidden watcher. Another — a golden-headed, fragile slip of womanhood, fled, shuddering and weeping softly in an agony of remorse at the catastrophe she had invoked, a catastrophe that overleapt her every expectation and spread grim tragedy where she had thought to set a comedy with a spice of malice.
Through the archway into that Eden stepped the inevitable Satan, wearing the handsome outward seeming of my Lord Pauncefort. He paused an instant, himself unobserved, to consider the idyll that he came to shatter with a bloody hand. And what time he paused, he set upon his seething rage the mask of a sardonic humour.
“Soho!” he announced himself. “Here is not merely a rebel, but a rebel in arms, it seems.”
Chapter 13. IN THE ROSE-GARDEN
Alarmed, confused, the lovers sprang apart; yet not so far apart that the Captain’s arm continued to encircle — protectingly now — the waist of Damaris.
There followed a spell of silence during which the two men measured each other with their eyes, like swordsmen about to engage. And there was something more in the Captain’s glance; there was satisfaction to see before him the man who was become his quarry. No need now to go afield in search of him. With a smouldering eye, with something that was almost a smile on his lips did Gaynor ponder now his enemy.
But it was Damaris, standing tense and white, who was the first to break the silence.
“By what right, sir, do you thus insolently thrust yourself in here?” she challenged the intruder.
“Do you, madam, question my right?” quoth he, eyebrows raised. It was Captain Gaynor who supplied the answer to her question.
“By the right of his nature, Damaris. He can no more help being a spy than the fox can help its smell.”
His lordship’s eyes swung back to the Captain’s face, and betrayed by their startled look how shrewdly this blow had caught him. But he made a swift recovery, throwing back his handsome black head in arrogance.
“What shall that mean, sir?”
“Mean, you base Judas!” The Captains passion was overmastering him at the sight of this man whose falseness had wrought such fearful havoc, had ruined for a season his beloved master’s every hope. Thus that fierce burst of rage escaped him. But he controlled himself almost at once.
“Let me present to you, Damaris,” said he, in a cold, sneering voice, “the most infamous spy in England, who in the discharge of that office has thrust himself here upon us. You may have conceived that in my Lord Pauncefort you be
held a nobleman, a gentleman, a man of honour. So have others thought to their undoing. Instead, you behold there a broken gamester who for a handful of gold has betrayed the men who trusted him and counted him their friend, has sold the Cause in which he himself believed, has bartered his honour and brought everlasting shame upon the name he bears.”
“Be silent!” thundered Pauncefort, advancing a step and checking there, his countenance writhing. “It is false, I say!”
“You perjured hound! False, is it? Ay, the deed was false and foul as hell, in which it shall be expiated.”
“Was it he betrayed you?” quoth Damaris, her voice most singularly calm and quiet.
“Ay was it. Look on him, Damaris.” He flung out an accusing arm. “Look on him, for you may never again see such another — a man who was born a gentleman and is reduced to infamy, a man who has pawned his soul to keep his body in luxury.”
Pauncefort was livid, stricken by the unexpectedness of this attack, for he had been very far from dreaming that his treachery was detected.
“And now, sir,” said Damaris, “now that you have received what was here your due, perhaps you will depart again?”
Her contempt struck him more keenly than the Captain’s bitter denunciation. It stirred him, awakened him from his stupor. Swiftly he mastered himself to play his part in this game; and he was suddenly heartened by the knowledge that he had a card in his pack should trump this whirling Captain’s trick.
He turned upon Gaynor very haughtily, every inch of him the great gentleman.
“Sir,” he said, “base as you are and as I know you to be, you have said that to me here which is not to be borne by any man, however high-placed, from another, however low. Elsewhere we will continue this discussion.”
“We shall, by God!” said Gaynor. “I so intend it.”
“And,” his lordship added, “you shall eat the lies you have uttered.” Upon that his gesture signified that he had done with him. “But you, Damaris — oh, that you should have lent an ear to this infamous defamer! that you should have believed these things against me, myself unheard! This is what stings and cuts me to the very soul!”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 262