woman’s horse!” cried Lindley. “Is it possible that some woman has fallen victim to the Black Devil? Here, almost within earshot of our revelings? To the rescue!”
“Nay, we must think first of the Lady Barbara’s safety,” interrupted Ashley, holding back and barring the doorway with a peremptory arm. “We must not risk the Lady Barbara for the sake of some chance damsel. Rather let us mount and ride to meet the Gordon coach.”
“There is no sign whatsoever of foul play,” reported Marmaduke, coming in from the yard. “The lines are knotted loosely, and a tethering strap is broken. The beast has doubtless but strayed from some neighboring house.”
“If ’tis from some neighboring house, good Marmaduke, would you not know the horse and trappings?” queried Treadway. “Is there nothing to show the lady’s name or rank?”
“There’s no mark of any kind,” answered Marmaduke. “’Tis a white horse with a black star between the eyes, and the trappings are of scarlet. That is all I can tell you, your honor. In all likelihood some stable boy’ll be along shortly to claim the creature.”
The young men were again sitting about the table, and Ashley called for another round of wine.
“I, for one, have had wine enough and to spare,” declared Treadway. “The Lady Barbara must be here soon, and, to my thinking, ten minutes of sleep would not be amiss. You, too, my lord, could you not meet the lady with a better grace after at least forty winks?” He linked his arm in Lord Farquhart’s and led him toward a door at the side of the room. “Come to my room and we’ll pretend to imitate the lad with the good conscience and the good wine atop of it. Why, the lad’s gone! Slipped away like a frightened shadow, doubtless, when he found the company he’d waked into. Unless the Lady Barbara comes, give us fifteen minutes, Marmaduke. Not a second more, on your life. Fifteen minutes will unfuddle a brain that’s – that’s not as clear as it might be, but more than that will make it dull.”
Together the two men entered Treadway’s room, caroling aloud the love song that had been writ to Sylvia and changed to Barbara.
Ashley and Lindley, left alone over the table, sat for a moment in silence. Then the latter, forgetting his resentment toward Ashley as easily as it had been roused, spoke in a laughing, rallying voice.
“Cheer up, Hal! A fortnight’s a goodly time in which a slip may come between unwilling lips and a lagging cup. It seems to me that for a lover’s heart, yours is a faint heart. The Lady Barbara is unwon yet – by Percy, I mean.” The last words were added with a laugh at Ashley’s gloomy countenance.
“Yes, the lips are unwilling enough,” Ashley agreed, in a grudging voice, “and the cup lags, undoubtedly, but there’ll be no slip; old Gordon will force the lips, and old Gordon holds the handle of the cup. Mistress Barbara is but wax in her father’s hands, and as for Farquhart – well, unless he marries the Lady Barbara, Lord Gordon will ruin him. The old man has sworn that he will have his way, and have it he will, or I’m much mistaken.”
“But,” remonstrated Lindley, “wax can be molded by any hand that holds it. If the lady is wax in her father’s hands through fear, ’twould seem to me that – why, that love is hotter than fear, that love might mold as well, if not better, than fear.”
“Ay, if love had a chance to mold,” answered Ashley, with more animation, but the mask of reserve fell quickly over his features. “Enough of me and my affairs, though. How is it with you? Have you won the lady of your own heart’s desire? When last I saw you, you were lamenting, the obduracy of some fair one, if I remember right.”
“Alas and alack, no, I’ve not won her,” mourned Lindley, his Irish eyes and his Irish lips losing their laughter. “I’m in a fair way never to win her, I think. In my case, though, it’s the father that’s wax in the daughter’s hands. ’Tis a long time since he gave his consent to my wooing the maid, but the maid will not be wooed. She knows how to have her own way, and has always known it and always had it, too. She tyrannized over me when she was a lass of six and I was a lad of ten. Now she will not even meet me. When I visit at her house, she locks herself in her own chamber, and even I lose heart when it comes to wooing a maid through a wooden door. Ay, I tried it once, and only once. To my last letter, a hot, impassioned love letter, her only reply was to ask whether I still would turn white at a cock fight. The minx remembers well enough that I did turn white at a fight between two gamecocks, which she, mind you, had arranged in her father’s barnyard at that same time, when she was six and I was ten.”
“Well, I wish you luck,” answered Ashley, who had given little heed to Lindley’s words. “But to my mind such a maid would not be worth the wooing. ’Tis to be hoped that Treadway has cleared Farquhart’s addled wits as well as he has cleared his voice,” he added, after a moment’s silence.
Floating down from Lord Farquhart’s room came the last words of the song to Sylvia.
Hearts that beat with love so true!
Sylvia, sweet, I come to you!
Yet at that very instant, in young Treadway’s room, Lord Farquhart was snoring in unison with young Treadway. Lord Farquhart’s head was pillowed next to the head of young Treadway. And, stranger yet, at that very instant, too, there sprang from Lord Farquhart’s window a figure strangely resembling Lord Farquhart himself, decked out in Lord Farquhart’s riding clothes, that had been cast aside after the miry ride from London town, and tucked away in one corner of Lord Farquhart’s room were the dark riding coat and breeches of the youth who had slumbered before the hearth of The Jolly Grig.
About the figure, as it sped along the road, was a long black cloak, over its head was drawn a wide French cap, and over the face was a black mask, but on the lips, under the mask, were the words of Lord Farquhart’s song to Sylvia, the song wherein the name of Sylvia had so lately given place to Barbara.
Hearts that beat with love so true!
Barb’ra, sweet, I come to you!
IV
The exchange of confidences between the two young men lasted for a few moments more. Then Ashley, examining the fastenings of his sword belt, exclaimed:
“Assuredly the Lady Barbara must arrive soon, whatever the state of the roads may be. I will go and look to the men and horses. Doubtless the former are as mad as their masters, and, doubtless, too, they have consumed as much of Marmaduke’s heady wine.”
Lindley, left to himself, drew a letter from some place not far distant from his heart and read it.
It was written in a clerkly hand, and was, for the first part, clearly a dictation.
I regret to say, my dear Cecil, that I can give you no better word from my daughter, Judith. She declares roundly that she will have nothing to do with you, that she will not listen to your suit, and she commands me to advise you to put her out of your head for all time. I cannot, as you know, say aught against my girl.
“I should not let him if he would.”
In her duty to me she is all that I could ask, but in every other respect her madcap moods seem but to grow upon her. She spends much of her time shut up in her own room, and I have discovered quite recently that she rides much alone – through our own forests only, however. I would not for the world convey to you the idea that Judith is indiscreet. She has stripped from the trappings of her horse every sign of our name and station – or so the stable boys have reported to me. And not ten days since one of the maids ran to me in a great pother and told me that Mistress Judith was stamping
