Part 23 (1/2)

Seal the bargain with a kiss”_

When he had ended, the Earl of Pevensey laughed and looked up into the Lady Ursula's face with a long, hungry gaze; and the Lady Ursula laughed likewise and spoke kindly to him, though the distance was too great for the eavesdroppers to overhear. Then, after a little, the Lady Ursula bent forward, out of the shade of the maple into the sun, so that the sunlight fell upon her golden head and glowed in the depths of her hair, as she kissed Pevensey, tenderly and without haste, full upon the lips.

3. _Falmouth Furens_

The Marquis of Falmouth caught Master Mervale's arm in a grip that made the boy wince. Lord Falmouth's look was murderous, as he turned in the shadow of a white-lilac bush and spoke carefully through sharp breaths that shook his great body.

”There are,” said he, ”certain matters I must immediately discuss with my lord of Pevensey. I desire you, Master Mervale, to fetch him to the spot where we parted last, so that we may talk over these matters quietly and undisturbed. For else--go, lad, and fetch him!”

For a moment the boy faced the half-shut pale eyes that were like coals smouldering behind a veil of gray ash. Then he shrugged his shoulders, sauntered forward, and doffed his hat to the Lady Ursula. There followed much laughter among the three, many explanations from Master Mervale, and yet more laughter from the lady and the earl. The marquis ground his big, white teeth as he listened, and he appeared to disapprove of so much mirth.

”Foh, the hyenas! the apes, the vile magpies!” the marquis observed. He heaved a sigh of relief, as the Earl of Pevensey, raising his hands lightly toward heaven, laughed once more, and departed into the thicket. Lord Falmouth laughed in turn, though not very pleasantly.

Afterward he loosened his sword in the scabbard and wheeled back to seek their rendezvous in the shadowed place where they had made sonnets to the Lady Ursula.

For some ten minutes the marquis strode proudly through the maze, pondering, by the look of him, on the more fatal tricks of fencing. In a quarter of an hour he was lost in a wilderness of trim yew-hedges which confronted him stiffly at every outlet and branched off into innumerable gravelled alleys that led nowhither.

”Swounds!” said the marquis. He retraced his steps impatiently. He cast his hat upon the ground in seething desperation. He turned in a different direction, and in two minutes trod upon his discarded head-gear.

”Holy Gregory!” the marquis commented. He meditated for a moment, then caught up his sword close to his side and plunged into the nearest hedge. After a little he came out, with a scratched face and a scant breath, into another alley. As the crow flies, he went through the maze of Longaville, leaving in his rear desolation and snapped yew-twigs. He came out of the ruin behind the white-lilac bush, where he had stood and had heard the Earl of Pevensey sing to the Lady Ursula, and had seen what followed.

The marquis wiped his brow. He looked out over the lawn and breathed heavily. The Lady Ursula still sat beneath the maple, and beside her was Master Mervale, whose arm girdled her waist. Her arm was about his neck, and she listened as he talked eagerly with many gestures. Then they both laughed and kissed each other.

”Oh, defend me!” groaned the marquis. Once more he wiped his brow, as he crouched behind the white-lilac bush. ”Why, the woman is a second Messalina!” he said. ”Oh, the trollop! the wanton! Oh, holy Gregory! Yet I must be quiet--quiet as a sucking lamb, that I may strike afterward as a roaring lion. Is this your innocence, Mistress Ursula, that cannot endure the spoken name of a spade? Oh, splendor of G.o.d!”

Thus he raged behind the white-lilac bush while they laughed and kissed under the maple-tree. After a s.p.a.ce they parted. The Lady Ursula, still laughing, lifted the branches of the rearward thicket and disappeared in the path which the Earl of Pevensey had taken. Master Mervale, kissing his hand and laughing yet more loudly, lounged toward the entrance of the maze.

The jackanapes (as anybody could see), was in a mood to be pleased with himself. Smiles eddied about the boy's face, his heels skipped, disdaining the honest gra.s.s; and presently he broke into a glad little song, all trills and shakes, like that of a bird ecstasizing over the perfections of his mate.

Sang Master Mervale:

_”Listen, all lovers! the spring is here And the world is not amiss; As long as laughter is good to hear, And lips are good to kiss, As long as Youth and Spring endure, There is never an evil past a cure And the world is never amiss.

”O lovers all, I bid ye declare The world is a pleasant place;-- Give thanks to G.o.d for the gift so fair, Give thanks for His singular grace!

Give thanks for Youth and Love and Spring!

Give thanks, as gentlefolk should, and sing, 'The world is a pleasant place!'”_

In mid-skip Master Mervale here desisted, his voice trailing into inarticulate vowels. After many angry throes, a white-lilac bush had been delivered of the Marquis of Falmouth, who now confronted Master Mervale, furiously moved.

4. _Love Rises from un-Cytherean Waters_

”I have heard, Master Mervale,” said the marquis, gently, ”that love is blind?”

The boy stared at the white face, that had before his eyes veiled rage with a crooked smile. So you may see the cat, tense for the fatal spring, relax and with one paw indolently flip the mouse.

”It is an ancient fable, my lord,” the boy said, smiling, and made as though to pa.s.s.

”Indeed,” said the marquis, courteously, but without yielding an inch, ”it is a very rea.s.suring fable: for,” he continued, meditatively, ”were the eyes of all lovers suddenly opened, Master Mervale, I suspect it would prove a red hour for the world. There would be both tempers and reputations lost, Master Mervale; there would be sword-thrusts; there would be corpses, Master Mervale.”

”Doubtless, my lord,” the lad a.s.sented, striving to jest and have done; ”for all flesh is frail, and as the flesh of woman is frailer than that of man, so is it, as I remember to have read, the more easily entrapped by the gross snares of the devil, as was over-well proved by the serpent's beguiling deceit of Eve at the beginning.”