II
HARBY
As he tramped the muddy hill-road his mind was busy. The scent fromthe wet weeds on either side of him, heavy with the yester rains,brought back his boyhood insistently, and his memory leaped betweenthen and now like a shuttlecock. He had dreamed dreams then; he wasdreaming dreams now, though he had thought he was done with dreams. Afew short months ago he had planned out his last part, the prosperousvillage citizen, the authority of the gossips, respectable andrespected. His fancy had dwelt so fondly upon the house where heproposed to dwell that he seemed to know every crimson eave of it,every flower in the trim garden, the settle by the porch where heshould sit and smoke his pipe and drain his can and listen to thebooming of the bees, while he complacently savored the after-taste ofdiscreditable adventures. He knew it so well in his mind that he hadhalf come to believe that it really existed, that he had always ownedit, that it truly awaited his home-coming, and his feeling as heentered the village that morning had been that he could walk straightto it, instead of abiding at the inn and going hither and thither dayafter day until he found in the market a homestead nearest to hispicture. And now he was walking away from it, walking fairly fast,too, and walking whither? What business was it of his, after all, ifsome sad-faced fellows from Cambridge tramped across country to laypuritan hands upon Harby. What business was it of his if monarchbrowbeat Parliament or Parliament defied king? He owed nothing toeither, cared nothing for either; what he owned he owed to his sharpsword, his dull conscience, his rogue's luck, and his player's heart.Why, then, was he going to Harby when he ought to be busy in thevillage looking for that house with crimson eaves and the bee-hauntedgarden?
He knew well enough, though he did not parcel out his knowledge intoformal answers. In the first place, if the country was bent uponthese civil broils, clearly his intended character of pipe-smoking,ale-drinking citizen was wholly unsuited to the coming play.Wherefore, in a jiff he had abandoned it, and now stood, mentally, asnaked as a plucked fowl while he considered what costume he shouldwear and what character he should choose to interpret. His sense ofhumor tempted him to the sanctimonious suit of your out-and-outParliament man; his love for finery and the high horse lured him tolovelocks and feathers. The old piratical instinct which he thoughthe had put to bed forever was awake in him, too, and asking whichside could be made to pay the best for his services. If he must takesides, which side would fill his pockets the fuller? It was in thethick of these thoughts that he found himself within a few feet ofthe walls of the park of Harby.
The great gates were closed that his boyhood found always open. Hesmiled a little, and his smile increased as a figure stepped frombehind the nearest tree within the walls, a sturdy, fresh-lookingserving-fellow armed with a musketoon.
"Hail, friend," sang out Halfman, and "Stand, stranger," answered theman with the musketoon. Halfman eyed him good-humoredly.
"You do not carry your weapon well," he commented. "Were I hostileand armed you would be a dead jack before you could bring butt toshoulder. Yet you are a soldierly fellow and wear a fighting face."
The man with the musketoon met the censure and the commendation withthe same frown as he surlily demanded the stranger's business at thegates of Harby.
"My business," answered Halfman, blithely, "is with the Lady ofHarby," and before the other could shape the refusal of his eyes intoan articulate grumble he went on, briskly, "Tell the Lady BrillianaHarby that an old soldier who is a Harby man born has some words tosay to her which she may be willing to hear."
"Are you a King's man," the other questioned, still holding hisweapon in awkward watchfulness of the stranger. Halfman laughedpleasantly.
"Who but a King's man could hope to have civil speech with the LadyBrilliana Harby?"
He plucked off his hat as he spoke and waved it in the air with aflourish. "God save the King!" he shouted, loyally, and for themoment his heart was as loyal as his voice, untroubled by any thoughtof a venal sword and a highest bidder. Just there in the sunlight,facing the red walls of Harby and the flapping standard of thesovereign, on the eve of an interview with a bold, devoted lady, itseemed so fitly his cue to cry "God save the King!" that he did sowith all the volume of his lungs.
The man with the musketoon seemed mollified by the new-comer'sspecious show of allegiance.
"We shall see," he muttered. "We shall see. Stay where you are, justwhere you are, and I will inquire at the hall. The gate is fast, soyou can do no mischief while my back is turned."
As he spoke he turned on his heel and, plunging among the trees inpursuit of a shorter cut than the winding avenue, disappeared fromview. Halfman eyed the gateway with a smile.
"I do not think those bars would keep me out long if I had a mind toclimb them," he said to himself, complacently. But he was content towait, walking up and down on the wet grass and running over in hismind the playhouse verses most suited to a soldier of fortune at thegate of a great lady. He had not to wait long. Before thejumble-cupboard of his memory had furnished him with the mostfelicitous quotation his ears heard a heavy tread through the trees,and the man with the musket hailed him, tramping to the gate. Hecarried a great iron key in his free hand, and this he fitted to thelock of the gate, which, unused to its inhospitable condition,creaked and groaned as he tugged at it. As at length it yielded theman of Harby opened one-half wide enough to admit the passage of ahuman body, and signalled to Halfman to come through. Halfman,smilingly observant, obeyed the invitation, and looked about himreflective while the gate was again put to and the key again turnedin the lock to the same protesting discord. Many years had fallenfrom the tree of his life since he last trod the turf of Harby. Allkinds of queer thoughts came about him, some melancholy, some full ofmockery, some malign. He was no longer a poor lad with the worldbefore him to whom the Lord of Harby was little less than theviceregent of God; he was a free man, he was a rich man, he hadmultiplied existences, had drunk of the wine of life from many casksand yet maintained through all a kind of cleanness of palate, readyfor any vintage yet unbroached, be it white or red. The rough voiceof his companion stirred him from his reverie.
"My lady will see you," he said. "Follow me."
As the man spoke he started off at a brisk pace upon the avenue withthe evident intention of making his words the guide-marks to thenew-comer's deeds. But Halfman, never a one to follow tamely, with aneasy stretch of his long limbs, swung himself lightly beside hisuncivil companion, and without breathing himself in the least keptsteadily a foot-space ahead of him. "I was ever counted a goodwalker," he observed, cheerfully. "I have taken the world's ways atthe trot; you will never outpace me."
The man of Harby slackened his speed for a second, and there came anugly look of quarrel into his face which made it plain as a map forHalfman that there was immediate chance of a brawl and a tussle. Hewould have relished it well enough, knowing pretty shrewdly how itwould end, but he contented himself for the moment, having otherbusiness in hand, with cheerful comment.
"Friend," he said, "if we are both King's men we have no leisure forquarrel, however much our fingers may itch. What is your name,valiant?"
The serving-man scowled at him for a moment; then his frown faded ashe faced the smile and the bright, wild eyes of Halfman.
"My name is Thoroughgood," he answered, and he added, civilly enough,as if conscious of some air of gentility in his companion, "JohnThoroughgood, at your service."
"A right good name for a right good fellow, if I know anything ofmen," Halfman approved. "And I take it that you serve a right goodlady."
"My lady is my lady," Thoroughgood replied, simply. "None like her asever I heard tell of."
Halfman endeavored by dexterous questionings to get some furtherinformation than this of the Lady of Harby from her sturdy servant,but Thoroughgood's blunt brevity baffled him, and he soon reconciledhimself to tramp in silence by his guide. So long as he rememberedanything he remembered that passage through the park, the sweet smellof the wet grass, the waning splendor
s, russet and umber, of Octoberleaves, the milky blueness of the autumn sky. This was, indeed,England, the long, half-forgotten, yet ever faintly remembered, inplaces of gold and bloodshed and furious suns, the place of peace ofwhich the fortune-seeker sometimes dreamed and to which thefortune-maker chose to turn. The place of peace, where every man wasarming, where citizens were handling steel with unfamiliar fingers,and where a rover like himself could not hope to let his sword lieidle. It was as he thought these thoughts that a turn of the roadbrought him face to face with Harby Hall, and all the episodes of abusy, bloody life seemed to dwindle into insignificance as he crossedthe moat and passed with John Thoroughgood through the guardedportals and found himself once again in the shelter of the greathall.
The great hall at Harby was justly celebrated in Oxfordshire and inthe neighboring counties as one of the loveliest examples of the richdomestic architecture which adorned the age of Elizabeth. "Thatprodigal bravery in building," which Camden commends, made no fairerdisplay than at Harby which had been designed by the great architectThorp. Of a Florentine favor externally, it was internally amagnificent illustration of what Elizabethan decorators could do, andthe great hall gave the note to which the whole scheme was keyed. Itswonderful mullioned windows looked out across the moat on theterrace, and beyond the terrace on the park. Its walls of panelledoak were splendid witnesses to the skill of great craftsmen. Itscarved roof was a marvel of art that had learned much in Italy andhad made it English with the hand of genius. Over the great fireplacetwo armored figures guarded rigidly the glowing shield of the founderof the house. Heroes of the house, heroines of the house, stared orsmiled from their canvases on the mortal shadows that flitted throughthe great place till it should be their turn to swell the company ofthe elect in frames of gold. At one end of the hall sprang the fairstaircase that was itself one of the greatest glories of Harby, withits wonderful balustrade, on which, landing by landing, stood theglorious carved figures of the famous angels of Harby.
The Lady of Loyalty House: A Novel Page 3