CHAPTER XIV. THE HEART OF CYNTHIA ASHBURN
Side by side stepped that oddly assorted pair along--the maiden whosesoul was as pure and fresh as the breeze that blew upon them from thesea, and the man whose life years ago had been marred by a sorrow, thequest of whose forgetfulness had led him through the mire of untold sin;the girl upon the threshold of womanhood, her life all before her andseeming to her untainted mind a joyous, wholesome business; the manmidway on his ill-starred career, his every hope blighted save the oneodious hope of vengeance, which made him cling to a life he had provedworthless and ugly, and that otherwise he had likely enough cast fromhim. And as they walked:
"Sir Crispin," she ventured timidly, "you are unhappy, are you not?"
Startled by her words and the tone of them, Galliard turned his headthat he might observe her.
"I, unhappy?" he laughed; and it was a laugh calculated to acknowledgethe fitness of her question, rather than to refute it as he intended."Am I a clown, Cynthia, to own myself unhappy at such a season and whileyou honour me with your company?"
She made a wry face in protest that he fenced with her.
"You are happy, then?" she challenged him.
"What is happiness?" quoth he, much as Pilate may have questioned whatwas truth. Then before she could reply he hastened to add: "I have notbeen quite so happy these many years."
"It is not of the present moment that I speak," she answeredreprovingly, for she scented no more than a compliment in his words,"but of your life."
Now either was he imbued with a sense of modesty touching the deedsof that life of his, or else did he wisely realize that no theme couldthere be less suited to discourse upon with an innocent maid.
"Mistress Cynthia," said he as though he had not heard her question, "Iwould say a word to you concerning Kenneth."
At that she turned upon him with a pout.
"But it is concerning yourself that I would have you talk. It is notnice to disobey a lady. Besides, I have little interest in MasterStewart."
"To have little interest in a future husband augurs ill for the timewhen he shall come to be your husband."
"I thought that you, at least, understood me. Kenneth will never behusband of mine, Sir Crispin."
"Cynthia!" he exclaimed.
"Oh, lackaday! Am I to wed a doll?" she demanded. "Is he--is he a man amaid may love, Sir Crispin?"
"Indeed, had you but seen the half of life that I have seen," said heunthinkingly, "it might amaze you what manner of man a maid may love--orat least may marry. Come, Cynthia, what fault do you find with him?"
"Why, every fault."
He laughed in unbelief.
"And whom are we to blame for all these faults that have turned you soagainst him?"
"Whom?"
"Yourself, Cynthia. You use him ill, child. If his behaviour has beenextravagant, you are to blame. You are severe with him, and he, in hisrash endeavours to present himself in a guise that shall render himcommendable in your eyes, has overstepped discretion."
"Has my father bidden you to tell me this?"
"Since when have I enjoyed your father's confidence to that degree? No,no, Cynthia. I plead the boy's cause to you because--I know not becauseof what."
"It is ill to plead without knowing why. Let us forget the valiantKenneth. They tell me, Sir Crispin"--and she turned her glorious eyesupon him in a manner that must have witched a statue into answeringher--"that in the Royal army you were known as the Tavern Knight."
"They tell you truly. What of that?"
"Well, what of it? Do you blush at the very thought?"
"I blush?" He blinked, and his eyes were full of humour as they met hergrave--almost sorrowing glance. Then a full-hearted peal of laughterbroke from him, and scared a flight of gulls from the rocks ofSheringham Hithe below.
"Oh, Cynthia! You'll kill me!" he gasped. "Picture to yourself thisCrispin Galliard blushing and giggling like a schoolgirl beset by herfirst lover. Picture it, I say! As well and as easily might you pictureold Lucifer warbling a litany for the edification of a Nonconformistparson."
Her eyes were severe in their reproach.
"It is always so with you. You laugh and jest and make a mock ofeverything. Such I doubt not has been your way from the commencement,and 'tis thus that you are come to this condition."
Again he laughed, but this time it was in bitterness.
"Nay, sweet mistress, you are wrong--you are very wrong; it was notalways thus. Time was--" He paused. "Bah! 'Tis the coward cries "timewas"! Leave me the past, Cynthia. It is dead, and of the dead we shouldspeak no ill," he jested.
"What is there in your past?" she insisted, despite his words. "Whatis there in it so to have warped a character that I am assured wasonce--is, indeed, still--of lofty and noble purpose? What is it hasbrought you to the level you occupy--you who were born to lead; youwho--"
"Have done, child. Have done," he begged.
"Nay, tell me. Let us sit here." And taking hold of his sleeve, she satherself upon a mound, and made room for him beside her on the grass.With a half-laugh and a sigh he obeyed her, and there, on the cliff, inthe glow of the September sun, he took his seat at her side.
A silence prevailed about them, emphasized rather than broken by thedroning chant of a fisherman mending his nets on the beach below, theintermittent plash of the waves on the shingle, and the scream of thegulls that circled overhead. Before the eyes of his flesh was stretcheda wide desert of sky and water, and before the eyes of his mind thehopeless desert of his thirty-eight years.
He was almost tempted to speak. The note of sympathy in her voiceallured him, and sympathy was to him as drink to one who perishes ofthirst. A passionate, indefinable longing impelled him to pour out thestory that in Worcester he had related unto Kenneth, and thus to sethimself better in her eyes; to have her realize indeed that if he wascome so low it was more the fault of others than his own. The temptationdrew him at a headlong pace, to be checked at last by the memory thatthose others who had brought him to so sorry a condition were her ownpeople. The humour passed. He laughed softly, and shook his head.
"There is nothing that I can tell you, child. Let us rather talk ofKenneth."
"I do not wish to talk of Kenneth."
"Nay, but you must. Willy-nilly must you. Think you it is only awar-worn, hard-drinking, swashbuckling ruffler that can sin? Does it notalso occur to you that even a frail and tender little maid may do wrongas well?"
"What wrong have I done?" she cried in consternation.
"A grievous wrong to this poor lad. Can you not realize how the onlydesire that governs him is the laudable one of appearing favourably inyour eyes?"
"That desire gives rise, then, to curious manifestations."
"He is mistaken in the means he adopts, that is all. In his heart hisone aim is to win your esteem, and, after all, it is the sentiment thatmatters, not its manifestation. Why, then, are you unkind to him?"
"But I am not unkind. Or is it unkindness to let him see that I mislikehis capers? Would it not be vastly more unkind to ignore them andencourage him to pursue their indulgence? I have no patience with him."
"As for those capers, I am endeavouring to show you that you yourselfhave driven him to them."
"Sir Crispin," she cried out, "you grow tiresome."
"Aye," said he, "I grow tiresome. I grow tiresome because I preach ofduty. Marry, it is in truth a tiresome topic."
"How duty? Of what do you talk?" And a flush of incipient anger spreadnow on her fair cheek.
"I will be clearer," said he imperturbably. "This lad is your betrothed.He is at heart a good lad, an honourable and honest lad--at times haplyover-honest and over-honourable; but let that be. To please a whim, acaprice, you set yourself to flout him, as is the way of your sex whenyou behold a man your utter slave. From this--being all unversed inthe obliquity of woman--he conceives, poor boy, that he no longer findsfavour in your eyes, and to win back this, the only thing that in theworld he values, he behaves
foolishly. You flout him anew, and becauseof it. He is as jealous with you as a hen with her brood."
"Jealous?" echoed Cynthia.
"Why, yes, jealous; and so far does he go as to be jealous even of me,"he cried, with infinitely derisive relish. "Think of it--he is jealousof me! Jealous of him they call the Tavern Knight!"
She did think of it as he bade her. And by thinking she stumbled upon adiscovery that left her breathless.
Strange how we may bear a sentiment in our hearts without so much assuspecting its existence, until suddenly a chance word shall so urge itinto life that it reveals itself with unmistakable distinctness. Withher the revelation began in a vague wonder at the scorn with whichCrispin invested the notion that Kenneth should have cause for jealousyon his score. Was it, she asked herself, so monstrously unnatural? Thenin a flash the answer came--and it was, that far from being a matter forderision, such an attitude in Kenneth lacked not for foundation.
In that moment she knew that it was because of Crispin; because of thisman who spoke with such very scorn of self, that Kenneth had become inher eyes so mean and unworthy a creature. Loved him she haply never had,but leastways she had tolerated--been even flattered by--his wooing.By contrasting him now with Crispin she had grown to despise him. Hisweakness, his pusillanimity, his meannesses of soul, stood out in sharprelief by contrast with the masterful strength and the high spirit ofSir Crispin.
So easily may our ideals change that the very graces of face and formthat a while ago had pleased her in Kenneth, seemed now effeminateattributes, well-attuned to a vacillating, purposeless mind. Far greaterbeauty did her eyes behold in this grimfaced soldier of fortune; theman as firm of purpose as he was upright of carriage; gloomy, proud, andreckless; still young, yet past the callow age of adolescence. Sincethe day of his coming to Castle Marleigh she had brought herself to lookupon him as a hero stepped from the romancers' tales that in secret shehad read. The mystery that seemed to envelop him; those hints at a pastthat was not good--but the measure of whose evil in her pure innocenceshe could not guess; his very melancholy, his misfortunes, and the deedsshe had heard assigned to him, all had served to fire her fancy and morebesides, although, until that moment, she knew it not.
Subconsciously all this had long dwelt in her mind. And now of asudden that self-deriding speech of Crispin's had made her aware of itspresence and its meaning.
She loved him. That men said his life had not been nice, that he wasa soldier of fortune, little better than an adventurer, a man of noworldly weight, were matters of no moment then to her. She loved him.She knew it now because he had mockingly bidden her to think whetherKenneth had cause to be jealous of him, and because upon thinking of it,she found that did Kenneth know what was in her heart, he must have morethan cause.
She loved him with that rare love that will urge a woman to the lastsacrifice a man may ask; a love that gives and gives, and seeks nothingin return; that impels a woman to follow the man at his bidding, be hisway through the world cast in places never so rugged; cleaving to himwhere all besides shall have abandoned him; and, however dire his lot,asking of God no greater blessing than that of sharing it.
And to such a love as this Crispin was blind--blind to the verypossibility of its existence; so blind that he laughed to scorn the ideaof a puny milksop being jealous of him. And so, while she sat, her soulall mastered by her discovery, her face white and still for very awe ofit, he to whom this wealth was given, pursued the odious task of wooingher for another.
"You have observed--you must have observed this insensate jealousy," hewas saying, "and how do you allay it? You do not. On the contrary, youexcite it at every turn. You are exciting it now by having--and I dareswear for no other purpose--lured me to walk with you, to sit here withyou and preach your duty to you. And when, through jealousy, he shallhave flown to fresh absurdities, shall you regret your conduct and thefruits it has borne? Shall you pity the lad, and by kindness induce himto be wiser? No. You will mock and taunt him into yet worse displays.And through these displays, which are--though you may not have bethoughtyou of it--of your own contriving, you will conclude that he is no fitmate for you, and there will be heart-burnings, and years hence perhapsanother Tavern Knight, whose name will not be Crispin Galliard."
She had listened with bent head; indeed, so deeply rapt by herdiscovery, that she had but heard the half of what he said. Now, of asudden, she looked up, and meeting his glance:
"Is--is it a woman's fault that you are as you are?"
"No, it is not. But how does that concern the case of Kenneth?"
"It does not. I was but curious. I was not thinking of Kenneth."
He stared at her, dumfounded. Had he been talking of Kenneth to her withsuch eloquence and such fervour, that she should calmly tell him as hepaused that it was not of Kenneth she had been thinking?
"You will think of him, Cynthia?" he begged. "You will bethink you tooof what I have said, and by being kinder and more indulgent with thisyouth you shall make him grow into a man you may take pride in. Dealfairly with him, child, and if anon you find you cannot truly love him,then tell him so. But tell him kindly and frankly, instead of using himas you are doing."
She was silent a moment, and in their poignancy her feelings went verynear to anger. Presently:
"I would, Sir Crispin, you could hear him talk of you," said she.
"He talks ill, not a doubt of it, and like enough he has good cause."
"Yet you saved his life."
The words awoke Crispin, the philosopher of love, to realities. Herecalled the circumstances of his saving Kenneth, and the price the boywas to pay for that service; and it suddenly came to him that it waswasted breath to plead Kenneth's cause with Cynthia, when by his ownfuture actions he was, himself, more than likely to destroy the boy'severy hope of wedding her. The irony of his attitude smote him hard,and he rose abruptly. The sun hung now a round, red globe upon the verybrink of the sea.
"Hereafter he may have little cause to thank me," muttered he. "Come,Mistress Cynthia, it grows late."
She rose in mechanical obedience, and together they retraced their stepsin silence, save for the stray word exchanged at intervals touchingmatters of no moment.
But he had not advocated Kenneth's cause in vain, for all that he littlerecked what his real argument had been, what influences he had evokedto urge her to make her peace with the lad. A melancholy listlessness ofmind possessed her now. Crispin did not see, never would see, what wasin her heart, and it might not be hers to show him. The life that mighthave signified was not to be lived, and since that was so it seemed tomatter little what befell.
It was thus that when on the morrow her father returned to the subject,she showed herself tractable and docile out of her indifference, and toGregory she appeared not averse to listen to what he had to advancein the boy's favour. Anon Kenneth's own humble pleading, allied to hiscontrite and sorrowful appearance, were received by her with that sameindifference, as also with indifference did she allow him later to kissher hand and assume the flattering belief that he was rehabilitated inher favour.
But pale grew Mistress Cynthia's cheeks, and sad her soul. Wistful shewaxed, sighing at every turn, until it seemed to her--as haply it hathseemed to many a maid--that all her life must she waste in vain sighsover a man who gave no single thought to her.