The First of the English 2 – Gunter · Library Across
Literature · Romance
The First of the English 2Book 1 · The Lady of the Barge
18
Literature · Romance
The First of the English 2
Book 1 · The Lady of the Barge
GunterEnglish
No tones have ever thrilled Guy Chester so before, though in the almost impenetrable gloom of the night its witchery has no assistance from graceful figure, fascinating face, nor flashing eyes. It is the voice alone that charms him. It says: “Señor, are you an officer? Have you authority among these wild men?”
The speaking figure has risen at the commotion made by Chester’s springing into the boat. Perhaps even in the darkness the lady notes the salute from his men by which he is received. The tongue in which the lady speaks is Spanish, pure, refined; the exquisite Spanish of the Castilian.
“I have, señorita,” replies Guy, answering in the same language, though his accent and diction are almost barbarous beside her liquid idiom. The sound of the Spanish language seems to reassure the lady, who, stepping from beneath the awning that adorns and protects the stern of the boat, confronts Chester, and in tones that are part pleading and part commanding, says: “Tell me who you are?”
“A captain in Romero’s regiment of Sicilians. Not born in Spain, as you may note by my accent,” returns the young Englishman, adding, “My birthplace was in Hispaniola.”
“Ah! an officer of Spain,” cries the lady joyously; “then your ship is Spanish?”
“Certainly,” returns the Englishman, who, having made up his mind to deceive, does it with full hand and wholesome measure.
“Then,” replies the lady, her voice now growing strangely confident and commanding, “Señor Capitan, you will attend me at once to the city of Antwerp, guarding me on the way.” A moment after she continues: “And I hope you will have those wretched Hollander cut-throats, those insolent Sea Beggars, punished as soon as possible. They have murdered the captain and soldiers of my barge, they have drowned the poor secretary of the Marquis de Cetona, Chiapin Vitelli.”
At the name of Vitelli, Chester gives a sudden start. “Certainly, señorita,” he answers promptly. “Every ruffian of them shall be hanged to the yard-arm as soon as your barge is out of sight.”
“But you must go with me; I have commanded!”
“Your words are my orders,” says Guy gallantly, trying to keep down a smile, as he thinks that his fair captive assumes a strange authority. “The captain of the vessel will attend to the punishment of the marauders after we have left.”
“You will be ready to accompany me soon.” The tone coming to him in the darkness is that of one accustomed to command, though marvelously sweet and winning.
“In fifteen minutes,” answers Chester with soldierly promptness; then he continues, a touch of gallantry in his voice: “May I not send you some supper from the vessel? The night is very cold.”
“No, I am well wrapped up. My attendants can chafe my hands, and we have some excellent Spanish wine and other refreshments in the locker of the barge. Only be quick, or we shall not be in Antwerp before morning.”
“As soon as possible I will return.” With these words Guy springs lightly out of the boat and clambers over the gunwale of his own vessel.
Then hurriedly drawing aside his first officer, who has been looking over at this colloquy, he says: “It has all turned out as I wished. Besides, I know a little more. This dead man in the cabin (whom you will throw overboard as soon as possible) is the secretary of that accursed Chiapin Vitelli!”
“The scoundrel who is aiding Alva in his plans against the life of our sovereign!” interjects Dalton.
“Yes. This thing makes it doubly important that I go to Antwerp. I may even stay there some days. Keep the boat off and on near the dyke below Fort Lillo, as I have commanded.”
“You are taking desperate chances,” mutters his subordinate, dissentingly.
“But they are chances I must take. In case anything happens to me, in case I—I do not come back, tell my Queen it was for her sake. Return with the vessel, Dalton, to England and utter to our Sovereign these words: ‘Be more on your guard of Spanish poison or Spanish dagger than ever. It is the last warning you will hear from your devoted liegeman, Guy Stanhope Chester.’”
With this the young captain steps into his cabin, and within ten minutes, as he re-opens the door, the dim light displays him as a different man.
No longer the weather-beaten sailor in tarpaulin and sou’wester, but as gay and debonnaire a young gallant as ever flaunted with the court ladies of Hampton, or ruffled it in the tennis courts of Windsor or Westminster.
A light blue velvet cap surmounted by two long white plumes fastened by a diamond clasp is on his youthful head; round his neck a long Spanish collar of the lace of Venice; his velvet doublet slashed with silver and satin; his hose and trunks of the finest silk of France; his high Spanish boots of the softest bronze morocco leather. In this gallant garb, with his blue, flashing eyes, and laughing lips and curly hair, Guy Stanhope Chester makes as brave a figure as even Dudley, Earl of Leicester, himself, when he charmed the Queen of England and her maids of honor.
Perhaps even more so, for his face is honest and his smile sincere, though there is a determined expression in his face as he steps out of his cabin and examines carefully the priming of the two long pistols he has in his belt, and thrusts his hand in his bosom to be sure that the long, keen poniard is in its place, and claps his hand on sword hilt to assure himself that his trusty long Toledo cut-and-thrust rapier is right to his hand. For the chances of this visit to the great city of the Netherlands, which Alva holds in his grasp, mean to him the chances of not merely success nor failure, but the chances of life and death. With the caution of common sense, Guy has given himself the appearance of Catholic and Spanish cavalier; he has discarded the medal of the Gueux and wears instead, quite ostentatiously, a rosary of golden beads and ornamented cross.
In making this change he has displaced from his bosom a miniature set in diamonds, a portrait of a girl of wondrous Castilian beauty, upon which he has cast eyes of longing and muttered these curious words: “My only prize from all of Alva’s treasures I captured for my queen—if I could gain the original.”
Altogether the gallant array of Guy Chester makes a sensation on his quarter-deck, even affecting the imperturbable sea robber, Dirk Duyvel, who sits just outside the cabin calmly counting his three hundred florins. This worthy remarks: “Hel en duivel! but she must be a pretty wench!” And his first lieutenant, aye, even the second, venture to crack a joke or two upon his appearance, Dalton remarking: “By the Four Evangelists! This foray means love as well as blood!”
And the second mate, who is hardly more than a chunky round-faced boy, gives a wild guffaw as he whispers into his skipper’s ear: “Take me with you, please, Captain Chester, for your cruise on shore. There are other ladies in the boat besides the one for whom you are arrayed!”
“My poor boy, the run on shore would be the death of you,” remarks the captain, then he suddenly strides back into the cabin, muttering to himself: “By the Seven Champions of Christendom, that voice has nearly made me lose my common sense. I was going without any money; that would have been very dangerous.”
With these words he empties into his pocket from one of the lockers of his cabin a small bag of Spanish gold, and thrusts into the other a loose assortment of Spanish florins, Dutch crowns and Netherland stivers. As he turns away, catching view of himself in a small mirror of Venetian glass that is set in the cabin side between the two stern port holes, Guy Chester suddenly ejaculates: “And I was forgetting my boat cloak also. That would have been comfortable in this nor’wester.”
As he speaks he throws over his finery a long ample cloak of English wool, and the next second he is over the side of the ship into the Spanish barge, which, being cleared rapidly of his men, is now cast off from the ship.
At this he, going to the stern, takes the tiller in his hand and cries out in commanding Spanish: “Give way, ye dogs of rowers! The man who straightens his back or misses his stroke until we are at Antwerp dies by my hand.” For he fears that the slightest fault of cadence in the stroke may put the boat broadside to the wind and current, which would be fatal in this chop sea, rapid tide and strong gale.
“You seem to be a seaman as well as a soldier,” remarks the young Spanish lady, by whose side he is now seated.
“Yes, I have done a little of everything in the way of fighting, both by land and sea,” returns Guy, drawing somewhat closer to the alluring voice.
“I shall always look upon you,” murmurs the lady, “as my preserver of this night.”
Then she astounds and almost horrifies him, for she says patronizingly: “This has been a lucky night for you. Señor Capitan; for this I will have you made a Colonel!”
This assertion is made by the sweet voice beside him as confidently as if it came from the Queen of Spain herself. Its very assurance sends a cold thrill down the Englishman’s back. “Who the deuce can she be?” he wonders. “I am putting my head into Alva’s very hand in escorting her to Antwerp.”
But to turn back is now impossible. The boat is already in the main current; both wind and tide are now sweeping them to Antwerp on the flood, that bears beside them the bodies of drowned men and cattle, giving evidence of the devastation the ocean is working upon the Netherlands.
“And whom am I to thank for this wondrous promotion?” Guy ventures insinuatingly, for he is now desperately curious to know the name of the lady sitting beside him.
“You may call me Doña Hermoine,” answers the fair one in a tone that indicates that she is sufficiently well known to be recognizable without any further description or attachment. A moment after she speaks to one of her attendants, who is kneeling beside her, chafing her hands, for the night is very cold, saying quietly: “That will do, Alida, try to warm yourself.”
“Yes, Excelentisima,” answers the girl.
This high-sounding title only adds to a curiosity that Chester can gratify no further. He is compelled to devote every faculty of his mind, every muscle of his body, to keeping the boat dead before the wind and current as it flies up the Schelde. A single false movement of the rudder might cause it to broach, and that would be destruction on this wild night.
He can scarce find time to direct the attendants of the lady to place tarpaulins at her back and to protect her as much as possible from the spray that is following them; every other energy is employed in keeping the frail boat safe in her race with the wild waters round them. He has no trouble with the oarsmen; they row as if they knew their lives depended on their toil.
So they fly on.
A dark lowering mass upon his right hand indicates the grim Fort of Lillo. This passed Guy knows he is in the very hands of Alva, in the Spanish lines. But they dash ahead, passing ships that have broken from their moorings, and are drifting with the tide; others that have taken refuge in the various estuaries and coves of the Schelde. No boats are out this wild night; the storm has driven everything to shelter. No Spanish galleys patrol the river; but the lights upon the dykes show that the husbandmen are awake, trying to save their live stock and themselves.
A little later the lady, who all this time has been compelled to devote herself to keeping warm by many stampings of tiny feet and clappings of delicate hands, in which she has been assisted by her attendants, suddenly says: “Can you not take a little refreshment, Señor Capitan? Even a glass of wine? Your exertions for my safety have been untiring.”
“For God’s sake don’t take my attention from the boat!” mutters Guy between set teeth. “We’re running a bend of the river. The wind will be on our quarter. It is our lives that I’m fighting for.”
Then he settles himself again to the struggle, for the current and wind are not now exactly together, and it makes his task at the tiller even more difficult.
But after making this bend, which is just before they reach the water front of Antwerp, the wind, broken by the land, becomes less fierce, and the rising tide, which has almost reached its height, grows less violent and rapid.
“Thank God, we’re over the worst of it,” Guy says with a sigh of relief. “Now I’ll thank you for a glass of wine, fair lady; the night is fearfully cold;” this last comes from between chattering teeth.
“Oho!” almost laughs the fair one at his side. “Silk, satin and velvet are not as conducive to comfort, Señor Capitan, as your storm clothes and tarpaulins when you first boarded my barge. It is necessary to suffer in order to be beautiful. Your fine raiment is, I presume, for some fair lady of Antwerp, Capitan mio.”
“Yes, for a very fair one,” mutters Guy, whose boat cloak has blown from his shoulders, and whose lace cuffs have brushed the lady’s wrist, as he holds the silver goblet to his mouth and permits the very finest old Spanish wine that has ever trinkled down his throat to revive his circulation and reanimate his chilled form.
The elixir seems to bring his spirits back again, and he laughs.
“Another goblet, please, which I will drink to the fair lady’s health!” And this being given him, Guy says, with sailor audacity and youthful ardor, “To you!” looking with all his eyes at the fair one ministering to him, hoping that their flash will even pierce the darkness. For he has touched the hand that has tendered the goblet, and it is wondrously soft and dainty, and the whole bearing and demeanor of his fair companion is that of bright, vivacious, joyous youth; the youth that age may envy but never simulate; the youth the gods give but once; the youth that even inky darkness cannot hide.
Besides, thrown by a quick lurch of the boat, she has been close against his bosom—once; but in that fleeting touch he has discerned the figure of a Venus and the agile graces of a Hebe.
“Who in the name of all the saints can she be?” he wonders.
At his audacious toast the lady draws herself away quite hurriedly, with a subdued ejaculation, partly of surprise, partly of hauteur. A moment after she laughs the laugh of youth, enchanting, bewitching; and remarks: “Such toasts will draw upon you the wrath of my duenna.”
“Your duenna! She is not here!”
“Oh, yes. She has been present during our whole journey. My awful duenna lies on the seat immediately in front of you. The smell of powder always makes the Countess de Pariza faint. She always becomes insensible when her ward is in greatest danger. At the first fire by the Beggars of the Sea she fainted comfortably away, and has been insensible ever since. When we arrive at Antwerp she will probably have her sharp eyes open.”
“Then before they do open tell me about yourself,” whispers Guy gallantly, for he can now devote a little of his time to the lady, into whose face he would look with admiring eyes did the darkness permit.
“First tell me about yourself,” she answers a little hurriedly, a tone of interest in her voice that pleases the young gentleman. “The more I know about you the better I can aid you to become a colonel. What is your name?”
“Call me Captain Guido,” murmurs Chester in his tenderest voice.
“No other name?”
“I cannot give you my other name. I am absent from my regiment without leave.”
“Then it will be very difficult to promote you,” laughs the lady. Next she says: “But since you will not trust me with your name, tell me something about your former life.”
This Guy does, inventing a story of birth in Hispaniola, various combats by land and sea for the glory of the flag of Spain in Italy and the Netherlands, giving the lady beside him an idea that he is devoted to the Spanish cause, body and soul, a grand hater of all enemies of Mother Church, and weaving about himself a web of romance and a tissue of falsehoods that some day may rise up to strike him down; for his fair companion thinks him a true soldier of Philip of Spain and his viceroy, Don Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva and Huesca.
“Ah!” she murmurs, “a gallant soldier. I must make you a colonel!”
“And the full name of my benefactress?”
Perchance she would answer this; but at this moment the lights of Antwerp come into view. The whole city’s front is illuminated by moving lanterns, vessels are being transported to safe anchorages; the immense shipping of the port is on the alert this night to save themselves from the flood. The merchants of this, the richest city in all Europe, are busy on the quays trying to preserve the merchandise of the Indies and the produce of Northern Europe from damage and wreck from the rising tide that is sweeping over the half-submerged quays and docks of this great emporium of sixteenth century commerce.
“Where will you land?” says Guy hurriedly.
Her answer is such that it almost makes the strong man beside her tremble. She says nonchalantly: “I think you had better take me to the Citadel.”
“The Cit—a—del,” stammers Guy.
“Yes, Sancho d’Avila, its governor, will be proud to make me welcome to-night.”
“You can pass the sentries? You know the passwords of the night?” mutters Chester, feeling himself growing cold at the thought of entering Alva’s very garrison.
“Certainly. They sent me the words of to-night.”
“Give them to me, please, so that I may pass you through the guard.”
“That of to-night,” she says, “is Jemmingen.”
“And the countersign?”
“Santa Maria de la Cruz. You may need it, being an officer without leave,” she whispers; then adds with a slight laugh, “I have, perhaps, saved you from arrest. That is a little earnest of my gratitude.”
They are now speeding past the main town. The English quay is already behind them, and they are opposite the great middle dock, the huge warehouses of which are all alight, while gangs of men with waving torches are on the adjacent wharves and ships, trying to moor the vessels safe from the rushing flood and to salvage their cargoes, many of which are already half unloaded. A few Spanish war galleys are in motion, their slaves toiling at their immense oars towing to places of more secure anchorage some of the sailing galleons, now helpless in this heavy gale.
Above all this turmoil and commotion the shouts of sailors, the curses of captains, the screams of the galley slaves under the lash, the flashing lights of the town and harbor, for all Antwerp is up this night, come the silvery chimes of the grand cathedral, whose tower sounds the quarter of the hour before midnight.
As they pass they are hailed by a patrol boat, but giving the word of the night, Chester steers his barge upon its course unimpeded and unstayed.
So they fly past the city proper, skirting a further line of wooden wharves and quays, behind which can be seen the city walls and gates—not as strongly built, nor as elaborately fortified as those protecting the land side of the town, but still garrisoned and guarded, and their Spanish sentries on the alert, for this night of storm and flood has roused not only the burghers of Antwerp to save their wares and chattels, but the Spanish garrison of the place, to see that no outbreak occurs during this commotion produced by wind and tide.
A few moments after, beyond the Esplanade, or parade ground, that separates the citadel from the town, can be seen the flickering lights of the two river bastions of the vast fortification built by Alva, not to protect, but to dominate and crush this great commercial city which is now within his hands.
Gazing up the flood, Chester’s quick seaman’s eye discovers the danger of approaching the massive walls that line the moat. With the tide running as it does, and the wind blowing as it blows, their boat will be smashed like an eggshell against the stonework. He speaks hurriedly: “Is there not some other watergate? If I try to make the landing on this side it is death. Speak quick, for God’s sake—answer me!”
“Yes! A small sally-port beyond the second bastion.” The liquid voice beside him is nervous and agitated. The waves of the Schelde are foaming against the masonry of the Spaniard.
“That’s it!” cries Chester, and steering the boat with rare precision into the deep moat that surrounds the citadel, which the flood now makes a rushing torrent, they fly past the great somber Bastion of the Duke, and a moment later that named after Alva himself. Here, sheltered to a great extent from the wind behind the massive walls of this stronghold of Spanish power, the boat makes landing at a small sally-port situated on a little artificial island in the middle of the moat, and connected by a light, movable bridge with the main citadel between the huge bastions of Alva and Paciotto, the latter named after the great engineer who planned and built this great frowning pentagon with its five massive redoubts, considered the strongest fortress of its day.
As the boat makes its landing the sentry stationed there challenges, and receives as answer from the Englishman the word of the night. At this the drawbridge is let down and lights from flaming torches flash upon them, causing Chester to discover what darkness has heretofore concealed from him, that the boat he has been piloting all this night is evidently a State galley, whose fittings and awnings are decorated in exquisite art and ornamented with Spanish stamped leather bearing the arms of the Viceroy himself. But he has no time to speculate upon this.
“My duenna,” says the lady hurriedly. “We must rouse her for the sake of etiquette, Señor Capitan, we must rouse the Countess de Pariza!”
This is easily done, for the court dame has apparently been reviving for some little time, and a couple of goblets of the same Spanish wine that had cheered the young sailor bring almost immediate speech to the chaperone. She ejaculates, looking round with wild eyes: “Holy Virgin! I am alive. Santa Maria! The citadel of Antwerp. I am saved!”
Then this sentinel of etiquette and punctilio rises and puts a pair of haughty patrician eyes upon the Englishman, and exclaims hurriedly: “Who is this man?”
“The gentleman who has preserved us from the Beggars of the Sea,” answers the young lady of the barge.
On this Chester, not wishing further discussion as to his identity, suddenly offers his arm to the fair one, who is still cloaked and hooded, and who, as the lights have flashed upon her, has drawn over her face a Spanish veil. A moment later Guy feels a little thrill as his offer is accepted, and a tiny hand is slipped within his arm.
Another second and he has assisted her from the boat and is passing with her across the drawbridge, followed by the two attendants supporting the duenna, who is apparently not yet very strong upon her feet, and is in a state of semi-hysterics.
Just as they get to the last of the drawbridge Guy hears a sudden wild shriek behind him, and desperate as is his situation, before the very citadel of Alva, the open gate of which is waiting to engulf him, he cannot refrain from an hilarious chuckle as he discovers that the Spanish duenna has slipped upon the wet drawbridge and is now being pulled half drowned from the waters of the moat. As her attendants somewhat unskillfully assist her, the countess, falling into a wild rage, throws etiquette to the winds and, with chattering teeth, and mouth full of water, stammers that the two attendant hussies shall pay for their awkwardness.
But Chester’s laugh dies away as the sentries at the gate bar their passage by crossed pikes, and their ensign says hoarsely: “The countersign, señor!”
“Santa Maria de la Cruz” whispers Guy.
The pikes drop as the officer waves his sword, and they step past him through the heavy Gothic archway. At this moment a light flashing from a flambeau stuck into a niche in the heavy masonry falls upon the lady, outlining her figure more strongly. Catching sight of this the Spanish officer doffs his steel cap, and bowing to the very ground, says: “Had I known it was you, Excelentisima, my challenge would not have been so peremptory!”
“You but did your duty, señor,” says the unknown. A second later she has left Guy’s arm and having taken the young officer aside, who stands before her with uncovered bended head, is whispering something to him in Spanish very rapidly.
A portion of the ensign’s answer comes to Guy’s ear: “No,
Excelentisima, he has not arrived from Brussels.”
“Then papa will not be anxious for me this night,” says the lady quickly. Retaking Chester’s arm she says to the young officer: “You will attend us to the quarters of the Countess of Mansfeld.”
A moment later, preceded by the Spanish ensign, they pass through the gateway to the main parade ground of the Citadel, and passing between piles of cannon balls and all the vast implements of attack and defense of the great fortress, move towards what are apparently the officers’ quarters. From the windows of one of these, evidently much larger and more commodious and elegant than the rest, come the lights of festival and the music of the dance. Situated immediately in the rear of the bastion of Paciotto, the distance to this is quite short, and Guy has little chance of conversation with his companion, being compelled to speed by the storm, which is still cold and biting, and causes the lady to hug her wraps very tightly about her.
They enter at a little side door of the house, a man servant in gorgeous livery receiving them and immediately bowing to the earth.
“The countess expected me?” remarks Guy’s charge hurriedly.
“Yes, Excelentisima, the fête of this evening is in your honor. You have been detained? It is now near midnight,” answers the servitor, again bowing.
Any reply the lady might make to this is stopped by the entry of her dripping duenna, who says querulously: “What are you standing here for, Doña Hermoine? You are keeping the Countess de Mansfeld waiting upstairs and me dripping with water and chilled to the bone down here.” Then she cries: “Up, hussies, and help me change my raiment!” This last is emphasized by a fearful chatter of her teeth and a ferocious wave of her hand to the attendants, who scurry past the young Englishman and his immediate charge.
Under the lights of the hall Guy notes that the maid servants are young girls of lithe figures, pale olive complexions, and Moorish features, perhaps slaves, as was common in Spain in those days. A moment after these proceed up a little stairway with the Countess de Pariza, all punctilio having apparently been entirely washed out of this dragon of etiquette by the salt water of the Schelde, for she leaves Guy standing with her charge without further remark.
Then he turns his eyes on his companion, hoping her face will now be visible, but the heavy lace veil still guards her countenance, and her wraps are still drawn tightly about her, giving outline to an apparently exquisite figure beneath. While noting this the young Englishman also observes that the lady’s mantle is of the very finest royal sable, and fastened by jeweled ornaments of exceeding value.
“Had Dirk Duyvel known this,” cogitates Guy, smiling, “it would have taken more than three hundred Carolus guilders to have bought that cloak alone!”
But introspection is cut short; the sweet voice, even more beautiful now, mixed with the cadence of the music of lutes and stringed instruments from the adjoining part of the mansion, says: “My duenna has apparently forgotten hospitality, but I have not.” Then she commands the servitor: “Show Captain Guido at once to a refreshment room. Not the one of the fête, as he is evidently not arrayed for festivity.”
She laughs a little, and Chester can see a roguish flash in eyes too brilliant to be entirely shaded by the lace, as she glances at his long cloak that is draped around him, and murmurs: “Accept my hospitality; I have a missive to give you.”
Then with light graceful movement she sweeps up the stairs and is gone, Guy thinking complacently: “She does not guess my brave array; I have a surprise in store for this lady.”
“This way, Señor Capitan,” murmurs the soft-voiced flunkey, and the Englishman is shown into a private reception room, the regal luxury of which astounds him, for its tapestried walls and inlaid Flemish furniture excel those of his own Queen at Hampton Court and Westminster. Here in a few minutes is placed before him as dainty a repast as ever hungry sailor did justice to. The table is covered with snowy linen, massive silver and fairy Venetian glass, and the viands are oysters from the Schelde, cold partridge, a delicate salad of fresh lettuce with just a suspicion of garlic, and a bottle of the royal wine of Xeres itself.
“Egad, this costume à la Leicester will make my lady open her bright eyes,” thinks Guy, as he throws off his long boat cloak and displays himself in the gallant attire that he has assumed before leaving the ship. Though his handsome morocco boots have suffered somewhat from the sea water, the rest of his costume has been pretty well protected.
Altogether Master Guy Stanhope Chester is very well pleased with himself, as he sits down and makes short work of the repast in front of him, pouring down the wine of Xeres into his benumbed frame from a huge silver drinking beaker, and finding himself silently and deftly waited upon by the man servant. Thinking to discover more of the lady he has rescued, Chester suggests to the lackey, “A fine fête your mistress gives this night!”
“Yes!” answers the servitor, proud of the grandeur of his house. “We have for the entertainment of our guests, rederykers from Ghent who will give us declamation and farce, two gipsy girls imported from Andalusia, our own court fool to make us merry, also the daughter of the ex-burgomaster, who will dance for us in her father’s highest-priced silks. I shall contrive to get into the hall to see her prance; the Flemish wench has very pretty ankles, and the airs of a countess,” guffaws the fellow.
But he says naught of the lady of the barge, and, the meal being finished, the table is cleared by several flunkies in gorgeous liveries, the resources of the house being apparently princely.
“Odds doubloons!” soliloquizes the young man, watching the last of the lackeys disappear. “The Countess de Mansfeld’s hospitality is very taking!”
Then a sudden coldness flies through his veins, in spite of the generous wine, as he remembers that he is eating the salt of the Spaniard in the Citadel of Antwerp.
But now suddenly the cold jumps from his body; he springs up with a start, his eyes gazing for one moment in rapture and admiration, and the next in a kind of dazed surprise, his hand seeking his breast feeling something beneath his satin doublet as if to be sure that it is really there.
For a girlish form of wondrous beauty and grace, with the fair skin and deep, lustrous, languid, but vivacious eyes, peculiar to the purest blood and highest loveliness of Castile, arrayed in evening dress, of velvet court train and shimmering silk and lace stomacher, that shows ivory shoulders and arms, stands before him, and the soft voice that has charmed him all this night in a mixture of coquetry and shyness says: “I thought you might like to see the face of her whom to-night you saved from the Dutch pirates!” Then she laughs lightly and murmurs: “If they had only known who I was I suppose the Flemish outlaws would have cut my throat,” giving a little gesture across the white ivory column that supports her lovely head, “before even you could have recaptured me.”
“Who under heaven can she be?” gasps Guy to himself, clutching again at his bosom. “She is the lady of the miniature, but who—WHO?”
But surprise and admiration are not all on his side.
As he rises the lady standing before him sees a gallant, well-knit figure of six feet in height, stalwart shoulders, strong arms, active, lithe body; above all this a face of manly determination, bronzed by weather, giving almost the appearance of a brunette to a fair Saxon cheek, though this is contradicted by light chestnut hair, blue, but determined eyes, and a fair drooping mustache, which conceals a mouth remarkable for its firmness. Altogether a manly man—one fitted to make a woman’s heart beat a thousand to the minute; one fitted to love like a troubadour and fight like a paladin for what he wanted in this world, and standing a very good chance to get it; one who, at all events, for this evening, makes the blood of the lady who faces him rush very warmly through her veins, and brings even a greater brightness to her eyes, though these were bright enough before.
Not that she has never seen handsome men, for most of the Spanish chivalry of her age have bowed before her. But this new type, this Anglo-Saxon manliness, this wealth of brawn, these great big honest English eyes, this boy’s forehead and man’s face, make her heart beat a little differently than ever dark-eyed Spanish grandee or soft mustachioed Italian cavalier or knight of France or stolid Netherland noble had made it beat before.
The same motive seems to actuate them both—involuntarily their hands clasp.
But astonishment is too great in Chester—he forgets the Spanish salutation, and the lady, laughing lightly, draws her hand away, murmuring: “No kiss? You—you slight me!”
“Slight you! Is that a slight?” And in a second the lady utters a faint cry of astonishment, perhaps even of terror, for Guy Chester, forgetting the Spanish form of salutation, has given her a good, whole-souled honest English kiss, such as the son of the squire was wont to bestow on the fair lips of maids as they stood under the mistletoe bough at Christmas tide.
“Madre de Dios!” cries the girl, blushing with almost a ruby light, “I meant my hand. Holy Virgin! what a mistake. If the Countess had seen it”—then, in spite of herself, she laughs, though she droops and turns away her head.
Of this Guy takes advantage—for her beauty is of a kind to make men crazy. In an instant he has taken the soft, exquisite, patrician fingers in his, and has rectified the mistake of Anglo-Saxon fervor and impetuosity.
But just the same, this kiss on the lips has done his business, and also that of the lady, though at present she doesn’t know it. She says hurriedly: “I have told the Countess de Mansfeld of your service to me. She would have begged your attendance at the fête, but I had presumed you were not in the costume of ceremony. I see my mistake. You are gallantly arrayed. Will you not join in our festival?”
“I beg you not,” answers Guy more hurriedly, for he knows in the glittering throng he will have no such chance of a tête-à-tête as he has now.
“Ah, you fear your being absent without leave from Romero’s Sicilians. They are quartered at Middelburg, I believe. That accounts for your coming by ship. But,” the lady goes on earnestly, “I have thought about that. If you are questioned in Antwerp, say that you have come as their Eletto from the officers to demand when their back pay and arrears shall be made good. For since the Queen of England stole from us eight hundred thousand crowns, you know no soldier in Brabant, Flanders nor Friesland has had pay. Make such a statement as that, and it will probably save you from any further questioning on the subject of written leave of absence from Romero.”
“Egad!” thinks Guy, “I wonder what she would say if she knew I had had a great hand in stealing that eight hundred thousand crowns.” But he goes on very earnestly, for the lady has apparently forgotten her embarrassment and her eyes are looking straight into his: “Many thanks for your kind suggestion, Doña Hermoine. I will remember it if questioned by provost marshal. But,” here his eyes make hers droop before his, “I am more pleased than you can imagine at your suggestion—not that it may save me from arrest, but that it shows me that while away from me you had mind of me.”
“In that case permit me to show you that I thought of you more than you even now imagine,” answers the girl, blushing at the admiration with which the young gentleman is regarding her. “I also wrote a missive—this. After you have rejoined your command, at the first convenient opportunity present this at headquarters, and I think it will insure you a colonelcy.” With this she hands him a note, at which he starts astounded, for it is addressed to “Don Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, Viceroy of Spain.”
“Who the devil can she be?” thinks Guy, but he has no time to waste on queries; surprises come fast upon him. The girl says hurriedly: “The Countess de Mansfeld and her guests await me. This fête is in my honor;” then adds in a faltering tone that gives Guy one great gasp of hope: “To remain longer would invite comment,” touching a silver hand-bell on the table.
And he, hearing this knell of parting joy, knowing that it may mean death to him to see her more, and dominated by that wild passion which comes but once in a man’s life-time, and makes him know that she, of all the beings of this earth, is the one for whom, if necessary, he would die, mutters agitatedly: “Then there is but time to thank you with my whole heart for your kindness to an unknown one; to tell you—” but his eyes are speaking faster than his lips, and with an affrighted “Madre Mia!” she draws fluttering back, as he, made desperate by approaching footsteps, whispers three words: “I love you!”
To which she gasps: “No! no! you don’t know who I am!”
And he, dropping on one knee, whispers: “Were you the Queen of Spain I’d tell you that I loved you!” and presses on her jeweled hand the kiss of truth and devotion eternal.
But the servitor is entering, and she speaks, haughty and commanding, as if she were the Queen of Spain: “Order an ensign to escort Captain Guido with all due honor from the Citadel.”
A quick rush of silk and flutter of laces and she is at the door of the room, but turns as if regretful of her going.
And he, gazing at her, his heart in his eyes, sees a picture that he never forgets; for the girl stands in graceful attitude of fairest youth, arrayed in laces, silks and glittering gems, with bare white neck and snowy maiden bosom; one little Andalusian foot in fairy web of Brussels and tiny slipper of velvet advanced from under her short petticoat of lace and silk, and one white hand draping the tapestry of the door above her, the other motioning farewell.
He makes hurried steps towards her and whispers: “Is it eternal?”
“Eternal? How solemn!” she tries to laugh, “Remember me by this!” and, taking from her white finger a ring set with one bright flaming ruby, drops it into his astonished hand, and flits from view.
And as he turns away he gives one great, deep-drawn breath of hope. For in her eyes has come something that has answered to his words: “Were you the Queen of Spain I love you!”
