The Dark Frigate

"Ha!" He scowled darkly. "Methinks it concerns me nearly!"

  And then a high voice cried, "Who called my name?"

  They turned and Phil Marsham's face lighted, for she stood in the door. She was not so fair as he had pictured her—what lad's memory will not play such tricks as that?—and he thought that when he had taken her away from the inn she need never again wear a drabbled gown. But it was she, the Nell Entick who had so lightly given him her promise and kissed him as he fled, and he had come for her.

  "Back again, John? Nay, John was not thy name. Stay! No, it hath escaped me, but I remember well thy face. And shall I bring thee ale? Or sack? We have some rare fine sack."

  He stared at her as if he could not believe his ears had told him right. "I have come," he said, "to claim a certain promise—"

  She looked bewildered, puzzled, then laughed loudly. "Silly boy!" she cried. "I am these six months a wife."

  "A wife!"

  "Yea, and mine," cried Barwick. "Come, begone I I'll have no puppies sniffling at her heels."

  At something in the man's manner, the full truth dawned on Philip Marsham. "I see. And you have taken the inn?"

  "Yea, that I have! Must I split thy head to let in knowledge? Begone!"

  She laid her hand on Barwick's wrist. "The lad means no harm," she whispered. "Come, it is folly to drive trade away." And over Barwick's shoulder she cast Phil such a glance that he knew, maid or matron, she would philander still.

  But Phil had seen her with new eyes and the old charm was broken. (Perhaps if Tom Marsham had waited a year before he leaped into marriage, I had had no story to tell!) All that was best in the father had come down to the son, and Phil turned his back on the siren with the bold, bright eyes. He turned his back on the inn, too, and all the dreams he had built around it—a boy's imaginings raised on the sands of a moment's fancy. Nay, he turned his back on all the world he had hitherto known.

  With a feeling that he was rubbing from his face a spider's web of sordidness,—that he was cutting the last cord that bound him to his old, wild life,—stirred by a new and daring project, he went out of the inn and turned to the left and took the road in search of Sir John Bristol.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  AND OLD SIR JOHN

  Sir John Bristol! There, gentlemen, was a brave, honest man! A man of spirit and of a humour! If you crossed him, if you toyed with him, his mirth was rough, his hand was hard, he was relentless as iron. But for a man who stood his ground and fought a bold fight and met squarely the old man's eyes, there was nothing Sir John would not do.

  After all his weary travels by land and sea, Philip Marsham had at last come back to find a man whom he had seen but once and for a brief time. Yet in that man he had such complete confidence as he had never had in any other, and since Jamie Barwick had left the man's service and taken the inn—who knew?

  Striding over the same rolling country road that he had tramped with Martin long before, and coming soon to the park, he skirted it and pressed on, keeping meanwhile his eyes and wits about him, until he perceived a gate and a porter's lodge. He went to the gate and finding it ajar slipped through and made haste up a long avenue with overarching trees. A man from the lodge came out and angrily called after the intruder, but Phil never looked back. The avenue turned to the left and he saw at a distance the great house; he was of no mind to suffer hindrance or delay.

  The sunset sky threw long, still shadows across the grass, and countless wandering branches of ivy lay like a dark drapery upon the grey walls of the old house. A huge dog came bounding and roaring down the avenue, but when the lad smiled without fear and reached a friendly hand toward him, the beast stopped clamouring and came quietly to heel. Lights shone from the windows and softly on the still evening air the thin, sweet music of a virginal stole over the broad terraces and lawns.

  The clamour of the dog, it seemed, had attracted the attention of those within, for a grey-haired servant met the stranger in the door. He stood there suspiciously, forbiddingly, and with a cold stare searched the young man from head to heel.

  "I would have speech of Sir John Bristol," said Phil.

  The servant frowned. "Nay, you have blundered," he replied haughtily. "The servants' hall—"

  "I said Sir John."

  "Sir John? It is—ahem!—impossible."

  "I said Sir John."

  The servant moved as if to shut the door.

  "Come," said Phil quietly, "enough of that! I will have speech of Sir John Bristol."

  For a moment the servant hesitated, then from within a great voice cried, "Come, Cobden, what's afoot?"

  In haughty disapproval of the lad without, the servant turned his back, but to the man within he spoke with deference, as if apologizing. "Yea, Sir John. The fellow is insistent, but I shall soon have him off."

  "Go, Cobden. Leave him to me."

  The servant moved away and disappeared.

  The virginalling had ceased, and on the lawns and the avenue and the park, which stretched away into the dark valley, a deep silence had come with the twilight. The sun had set and the long shadows across the grass were lost in the greater shadow of evening. As the world without had grown darker, the lights within seemed to have grown brighter.

  "Come, fellow, come into the hall. So! Have I not seen thee before?"

  "Yea, Sir John."

  "Ha! I can remember faces. Aye, there are few that escape me. Let us consider. Why, on my life! This is the lad that gave Barwick such a tumbling that the fellow walked lame for a month. Speak up! Have I not placed thee right?"

  "Though I was faint for want of food, I was quicker on my feet than he."

  The old man laughed until his brave curls shook.

  "In faith, and it is said with moderation. And what now, lad? What hath brought thee hither?"

  "Since Barwick hath left your service—"

  "That he hath, that he hath!"

  "It seemed there might be a place for a keeper."

  "For a keeper? Ha, ha, ha! Nay, th' art too spirited a lad to waste away as keeper. Mark my word, lad, the King will shortly have need for such courageous gallants as thou. Unless I mistake thy spirit, we shall soon see thee riding among the foremost when we chase these dogs of Roundheads into the King's kennels and slit their noses and prick their ears as a warning to all of weak mind and base spirit."

  "I have a taste for such sport, and God knows I am the King's man."

  "Good, say I!" Sir John's clear eyes searched the frank eyes of the lad, and the old man was pleased with what he found. "Come, the cook shall fill thy belly and Cobden shall find thee a bed. Cobden! Cobden, I say!"

  "Yea, Sir John."

  "Make place for this good fellow in the servants' hall and see that he hath all that he can eat and drink."

  "Yea, Sir John."

  "But stay a moment. Thy name, fellow."

  "Philip Marsham."

  "Philip Marsham?" The heavy brows knotted and Sir John spoke musingly. "Philip Marsham! I once knew a man of that name."

  Silence fell upon the hall. Grey Cobden stood a little behind his master, and when Phil looked past Sir John he saw standing in a door the tall, quiet girl he had seen with the old knight that day in the wood so long since. Doubtless it was she who had played upon the virginal. Her dark eyes and fine dignity wove a spell around the lad—a spell of the magic that has come down from the beginning of time—the magic that is always young.

  Take such spells, such magic, as lightly as you please; yet they have overturned kingdoms and not once, but many times, have they launched a thousand ships.

  "Did you ever hear of Dr. Marsham of Little Grimsby?" Sir John asked, and he watched the lad very closely.

  "Yea."

  "And what have you heard of him?"

  "He is my grandfather."

  "So!" The old knight stepped back and bent his brows. "Verily," he said, "I believe the lad hath spoken truth. Go, Cobden. There is no place in the hall for this lad."

  The servant departed a
nd the girl stepped nearer.

  "Your father's name?" Sir John said.

  "My father's name was Thomas Marsham."

  "Doubtless he bred you to the sea."

  "He did."

  "He broke the hearts of his father and his mother."

  Phil stood silent in the hall and looked Sir John in the eye. Since there seemed to be no reply, he waited for the knight to speak again.

  "Tom Marsham's father and mother are dead, but within the year, lad, they stood where you are standing now. It was the last time I saw them."

  What could a young man say? Phil Marsham remembered well the one time he had himself seen them. Who knew what might have happened had he spoken? But the chance was gone, and for ever.

  "There is no place for Philip Marsham in my servants' hall," said Sir John. "His father—but no! Let the dead lie. There is no place for Philip Marsham in my servants' hall. Under my roof he is my guest."

  CHAPTER XXIV

  AND AGAIN THE ROSE OF DEVON

  The story of Philip Marsham and of Sir John Bristol, and of the fortune left by the good Doctor Marsham of Little Grimsby,—how it came to his grandson and was lost in the war that brought ruin to many a noble family,—is a tale that may some day be worth the telling. Of that, I make no promises.

  The years that followed were wild and turbulent, but during their passage Phil chanced upon one reminder and another of his earlier days of adventuring. He saw once again the long, ranting madman who had carried the great book. He might not have known the fellow, who was in a company of Brownists or Anabaptists, or some such people, had he not heard him crying out in his voice like a cracked trumpet, to the great wonder and admiration of his fellows, "Never was a man beset with such diversity of thoughts." There was Jacob, too, who had sneaked away like a rat on the eve of the day when Tom Jordan's schemes fell about his ears: Phil once came upon him face to face, but when their eyes met Jacob slipped round a corner and was gone. He was a subtle man and wise, and of no intention to be reminded of his days as a pirate.

  Philip Marsham went to the war with Sir John Bristol, and fought for the King, and rose to be a captain; and with the story of Philip Marsham is interwoven inseparably the story of Anne Bristol and of her father, Sir John. For Sir John Bristol died at the second battle of Newbury with his head on Philip Marsham's knees; and in his grief at losing the brave knight who had befriended him, the lad prayed God for vengeance on the Roundhead armies.

  And yet, though his grief was bitter, he had too just a mind to see only one side of a great war. Once, when they sent him from the King's camp on a secret mission, the enemy ran him to cover, and he escaped them only by doubling back and hiding in the garret of a cottage where he lay high under the thatch and watched through a dusty little window the street from the Red Boar Inn down the hill to the distant meadows, without being himself seen. He heard far away a murmur as of droning bees. Minutes passed and he heard the drone settle into a hollow rumble, from which there emerged after a time the remote sound of rattling drums and the occasional voices of shouting men. Then, of a sudden, there broke on the air a sound as of distant thunder, in which he made out a chorus:—

  "His staff and rod shall comfort me,

  His mantle e'er shall be my shield;

  My brimming cup I hold in fee

  Of him who rules the battlefield."

  The voices of the singing men came booming over the meadows. They were deep, strong voices and there was that in their volume and fierce earnestness which made a man shiver.

  Phil heard a dog barking; he saw a woman standing in the door of a cottage; he saw a cloud of dust rise above the meadow; then they came.

  First a band of men on foot in steel caps, with their firelocks shouldered, swinging out in long, firm strides. Then a little group of kettledrums, hammering away in a fierce rhythm. Then a number of horsemen, with never a glint of gold on their bridles and never a curl from under their iron helms. Then, rank behind rank, a solid column of foot that flowed along the dusty road over hillock and hollow, dark and sombre, undulating like a torpid stream of something thick and slow that mightily forces a passage over every obstacle in its way.

  They came up the hill, turning neither to right nor to left, up the hill and over it, and away to the north, where King Charles and all his armies lay.

  It was a fearful sight, for they were stern, determined men. There was no gallant flippancy in their carriage; there was no lordly show of ribbands and linen and gold and silver lace. They frowned as they marched, and looked about them little. They bore so steadily on, they made one feel they were men of tempered metal, men of no blood and no flesh, men with no love for the brave adventures of life, but with a streak of iron in their very souls.

  Philip Marsham had heard the men of the Rose of Devon go into battle with cries and shouting, and laugh when they killed; he had seen old Sir John Bristol throw back his head proudly and jest with the girls of the towns on their march; but these were men of another pattern.

  He became aware, as he watched them go by—and he then knew the meaning of fear, safely hidden though he was, behind the dirty and small window in the gable; for had one man of those thousands found him there, it would have ended the fighting days of Philip Marsham—he became aware that here was a courage so stubborn there was no mastering it; that here was a purposeful strength such as all the wild blades in his master's camp could never match. Their faces showed it; the marching rhythm of the never-ending column was alive with it.

  Behind the first regiments of infantry, horsemen came, and, at an interval in the ranks of the cavalry, five men rode together. The eyes of one, who led the four by a span or two, were bent on the road, and his face was stern and strong and thoughtful. As Phil watched him, the first hesitating surmisal became conviction, and long afterward he learned that he had been right. From his gable window he had seen Oliver Cromwell go by.

  All that afternoon the column streamed on, and in the early darkness Philip fell asleep to the sound of men marching. In the morning they were gone, and he went on his way and fulfilled his mission; but though the King's men fought with a gallantry that never lessened, the cause of the King was lost, and the day broke when Philip Marsham was ready to turn his back on England.

  So he came a second time to the harbour of Bideford, in Devon, and had it in his mind to take ship for some distant land where he could forget the years of his youth and early manhood. He was in the mood, then, to envy Sir John Bristol and all the gallant company that had died on the fields of Naseby and Newbury, and of many another great battle; for he was the King's man, and great houses of the country had fallen, and many lords and gentlemen whose estates had gone to pay the cost of Cromwell's wars had as much reason as he, and more, to wonder, at the sight of deep water, whether it were better to die by one's own hand or to seek new fortunes beyond the sea.

  There were many vessels in the harbour and his gaze wandered over them, ships and pinks and ketches and a single galliot from the Low Countries, until his eyes came at last to one of singularly familiar aspect. He looked at her a long time, then strolled down to the quay and accosted an aged man who was warming his rheumatic limbs in the sun.

  "What ship is that," said Captain Marsham, "which lies yonder, in line with the house on the farther shore to the right of the three trees?"

  The aged man squinted over the harbour to pick up the bearings his questioner had given him and cleared his throat with a husky cough.

  "Why, that," he said, "beës the frigate they call Rose of Devon."

  "The Rose of Devon—nay, she cannot be the Rose of Devon!"

  "Can and beës. Why does 'ee look so queer, sir?"

  "Not the Rose of Devon!"

  "Art 'ee addled?" He laughed like a cackling hen. "Aye, an' yon's her master."

  The master turned when the young captain accosted him, and replied, with reasonable civility, "Yea, the Rose of Devon, Captain Hosmer, at your service, sir. Passage? Yea, we can take you, but you're a qu
eer sort to ask passage ere you know whither she sails. Is it murder or theft?"

  "Neither. The old order is changing and I would go abroad."

  "To the colonies?"

  "They tell me all the colonies are of a piece with these Roundheads here, and that as many psalms are whined in Boston in New England as in all the conventicles in London."

  He laughed in good humour. "You are rash," said he. "Were I of the other side, your words might cost you your head. But we're going south to Barbados, and there you'll find men to your own taste."

  Captain Philip Marsham wished no more than that. So he struck a bargain for passage, and paid with gold, and sailed from England for the second time in the old Rose of Devon, the dark frigate that by God's grace had come back to Bideford in the hour when he most needed her.

  THE END