The Nest of the Sparrowhawk

Did the first thought of fear, or misgiving cross her mind at this moment? It were impossible to say. The darkness which to her was so welcome was—had she but guessed it—infinitely cruel too, for it hid the look of triumph, of rapacity, of satisfied ambition which at her selfless surrender had involuntarily crept into Marmaduke's eyes.

CHAPTER XII

A WOMAN'S HEART

It is difficult, perhaps, to analyze rightly the feelings and sensations of a young girl, when she is literally being swept off her feet in a whirlpool of passion and romance.

Some few years later when Lady Sue wrote those charming memoirs which are such an interesting record of her early life, she tried to note with faithful accuracy what was the exact state of her mind when three months after her first meeting with Prince Amédé d'Orléans, she plighted her troth to him and promised to marry him in secret and in defiance of her guardian's more than probable opposition.

Her sentiments with regard to her mysterious lover were somewhat complex, and undoubtedly she was too young, too inexperienced then to differentiate between enthusiastic interest in a romantic personality, and real, lasting, passionate love for a man, as apart from any halo of romance which might be attached to him.

When she was a few years older she averred that she could never have really loved her prince, because she always feared him. Hers, therefore, was not the perfect love that casteth out fear. She was afraid of him in his ardent moods, almost as much as when he allowed his unbridled temper free rein. Whenever she walked through the dark bosquets of the park, on her way to a meeting with her lover, she was invariably conscious of a certain trepidation of all her nerves, a wonderment as to what he would say when she saw him, how he would act; whether chide, or rave, or merely reproach.

It was the gentle and pathetic terror of a child before a stern yet much-loved parent. Yet she never mistrusted him . . . perhaps because she had never really seen him—only in outline, half wrapped in shadows, or merely silhouetted against a weirdly lighted background. His appearance had no tangible reality for her. She was in love with an ideal, not with a man . . . he was merely the mouthpiece of an individuality which was of her own creation.

Added to all this there was the sense of isolation. She had lost her mother when she was a baby; her father fell at Naseby. She herself had been an only child, left helplessly stranded when the civil war dispersed her relations and friends, some into exile, others in splendid revolt within the fastnesses of their own homes, impoverished by pillage and sequestration, rebellious, surrounded by spies, watching that opportunity for retaliation which was so slow in coming.

Tossed hither and thither by Fate in spite of—or perhaps because of—her great wealth, she had found a refuge, though not a home, at Acol Court; she had been of course too young at the time to understand rightly the great conflict between the King's party and the Puritans, but had naturally embraced the cause—for which her father's life had been sacrificed—blindly, like a child of instinct, not like a woman of thought.

Her guardian and Mistress de Chavasse stood for that faction of Roundheads at which her father and all her relatives had sneered even while they were being conquered and oppressed by them. She disliked them both from the first; and chafed at the parsimonious habits of the house, which stood in such glaring contrast to the easy lavishness of her own luxurious home.

Fortunately for her, her guardian avoided rather than sought her company. She met him at meals and scarcely more often than that, and though she often heard his voice about the house, usually raised in anger or impatience, he was invariably silent and taciturn when she was present.

The presence of Richard Lambert, his humble devotion, his whole-hearted sympathy and the occasional moments of conversation which she had with him were the only bright moments in her dull life at the Court: and there is small doubt but that the friendship and trust which characterized her feelings towards him would soon have ripened into more passionate love, but for the advent into her life of the mysterious hero, who by his personality, his strange, secretive ways, his talk of patriotism and liberty, at once took complete possession of her girlish imagination.

She was perhaps just too young when she met Lambert; she had not yet reached that dangerous threshold when girlhood looks from out obscure ignorance into the glaring knowledge of womanhood. She was a child when Lambert showed his love for her by a thousand little simple acts of devotion and by the mute adoration expressed in his eyes. Lambert drew her towards the threshold by his passionate love, and held her back within the refuge of innocent girlhood by the sincerity and exaltation of his worship.

With the first word of vehement, unreasoning passion, the mysterious prince dragged the girl over that threshold into womanhood. He gave her no time to think, no time to analyze her feelings; he rushed her into a torrent of ardor and of excitement in which she never could pause in order to draw breath.

To-night she had promised to marry him secretly—to surrender herself body and soul to this man whom she hardly knew, whom she had never really seen; she felt neither joy nor remorse, only a strange sense of agitation, an unnatural and morbid impatience to see the end of the next few days of suspense.

For the first time since she had come to Acol, and encountered the kindly sympathy of Richard Lambert, she felt bitterly angered against him when, having parted from the prince at the door of the pavilion, she turned, to walk back towards the house and came face to face with the young man.

A narrow path led through the trees, from the ha-ha to the gate, and Richard Lambert was apparently walking along aimlessly, in the direction of the pavilion.

"I came hoping to meet your ladyship and to escort you home. The night seems very dark," he explained simply in answer to a sudden, haughty stiffening of her young figure, which he could not help but notice.

"I was taking a stroll in the park," she rejoined coldly, "the evening is sweet and balmy but . . . I have no need of escort, Master Lambert . . . I thank you. . . . It is late and I would wish to go indoors alone."

"It is indeed late, gracious lady," he said gently, "and the park is lonely at night . . . will you not allow me to walk beside you as far as the house?"

But somehow his insistence, his very gentleness struck a jarring note, for which she herself could not have accounted. Was it the contrast between two men, which unaccountably sent a thrill of disappointment, almost of apprehension, through her heart?

She was angry with Lambert, bitterly angry because he was kind and gentle and long-suffering, whilst the other was violent, even brutal at times.

"I must repeat, master, that I have no need of your escort," she said haughtily, "I have no fear of marauders, nor yet of prowling beasts. And for the future I should be grateful to you," she added, conscious of her own cruelty, determined nevertheless to be remorselessly cruel, "if you were to cease that system which you have adopted of late—that of spying on my movements."

"Spying?"

The word had struck him in the face like a blow. And she, womanlike, with that strange, impulsive temperament of hers, was not at all sorry that she had hurt him. Yet surely he had done her no wrong, save by being so different from the other man, and by seeming to belittle that other in her sight, against her will and his own.

"I am grieved, believe me," she said coldly, "if I seem unkind . . . but you must see for yourself, good master, that we cannot go on as we are doing now. . . . Whenever I go out, you follow me . . . when I return I find you waiting for me. . . . I have endeavored to think kindly of your actions, but if you value my friendship, as you say you do, you will let me go my way in peace."

"Nay! I humbly beg your ladyship's gracious forgiveness," he said; "if I have transgressed, it is because I am blind to all save your ladyship's future happiness, and at times the thought of that adventurer is more than I can bear."

"You do yourself no good, Master Lambert, by talking thus to me of the man I love and honor beyond all things in this world. You are blind and see not things as they are: blind to the merits of one who is as infinitely above you as the stars. But nathless I waste my breath again. . . . I have no power to convince you of the grievous error which you commit. But if you cared for me, as you say you do . . ."

"If I cared!" he murmured, with a pathetic emphasis on that little word "if."

"As a friend I mean," she rejoined still cold, still cruel, still womanlike in that strange, inexplicable desire to wound the man who loved her. "If you care for me as a friend, you will not throw yourself any more in the way of my happiness. Now you may escort me home, an you wish. This is the last time that I shall speak to you as a friend, in response to your petty attacks on the man whom I love. Henceforth you must chose 'twixt his friendship and my enmity!"

And without vouchsafing him another word or look, she gathered her cloak more closely about her, and walked rapidly away along the narrow path.

He followed with head bent, meditating, wondering! Wondering!

CHAPTER XIII

AN IDEA

The triumph was complete. But of a truth the game was waxing dangerous.

Lady Sue Aldmarshe had promised to marry her prince. She would keep her word, of that Sir Marmaduke was firmly convinced. But there would of necessity be two or three days delay and every hour added to the terrors, the certainty of discovery.

There was a watch-dog at Sue's heels, stern, alert, unyielding. Richard Lambert was probing the secret of the mysterious prince, with the unerring eye of the disappointed lover.

The meeting to-night had been terribly dangerous. Sir Marmaduke knew that Lambert was lurking somewhere in the park.

At present even the remotest inkling of the truth must still be far from the young man's mind. The whole scheme was so strange, so daring, so foreign to the simple ideas of the Quaker-bred lad, that its very boldness had defied suspicion. But the slightest mischance now, a meeting at the door of the pavilion, an altercation—face to face, eye to eye—and Richard Lambert would be on the alert. His hatred would not be so blind, nor yet so clumsy, as that of his brother, the blacksmith. There is no spy so keen in all the world as a jealous lover.

This had been the prince's first meeting with Sue, since that memorable day when the secret of their clandestine love became known to Lambert. Sir Marmaduke knew well that it had been fraught with danger; that every future meeting would wax more and more perilous still, and that the secret marriage itself, however carefully and secretively planned, would hardly escape the prying eyes of the young man.

The unmasking of Prince Amédé d'Orléans before Sue had become legally his wife was a possibility which Sir Marmaduke dared not even think of, lest the very thought should drive him mad. Once she was his wife! . . . well, let her look to herself. . . . The marriage tie would be a binding one, he would see to that, and her fortune should be his, even though he had won her by a lie.

He had staked his very existence on the success of his scheme. Lady Sue's fortune was the one aim of his life, for it he had worked and striven, and lied: he would not even contemplate a future without it, now that his plans had brought him so near the goal.

He had one faithful ally, though not a powerful one, in Editha, who, lured by some vague promises of his, desperate too, as regarded her own future, had chosen to throw in her lot whole-heartedly with his.

He was closeted with her on the following day, in the tiny withdrawing-room which leads out of the hall at Acol Court. When he had stolen into the house in the small hours of the morning he had seen Richard Lambert leaning out of one of the windows which gave upon the park.

It seemed as if the young man must have seen him when he skirted the house, for though there was no moonlight, the summer's night was singularly clear. That Lambert had been on the watch—spying, as Sir Marmaduke said with a bitter oath of rage—was beyond a doubt.

Editha too was uneasy; she thought that Lambert had purposely avoided her the whole morning.

"I lingered in the garden for as long as I could," she said to her brother-in-law, watching with keen anxiety his restless movements to and fro in the narrow room, "I thought Lambert would keep within doors if he saw me about. He did not actually see you, Marmaduke, did he?" she queried with ever-growing disquietude.

"No. Not face to face," he replied curtly. "I contrived to avoid him in the park, and kept well within the shadows, when I saw him spying through the window.

"Curse him!" he added with savage fury, "curse him, for a meddlesome, spying cur!"

"The whole thing is becoming vastly dangerous," she sighed.

"Yet it must last for another few weeks at least. . . ."

"I know . . . and Lambert is a desperate enemy: he dogs Sue's footsteps, he will come upon you one day when you are alone, or with her . . . he will provoke a quarrel. . . ."

"I know—I know . . ." he retorted impatiently, "'tis no use recapitulating the many evil contingencies that might occur. . . . I know that Lambert is dangerous . . . damn him! . . . Would to God I could be rid of him . . . somehow."

"You can dismiss him," she suggested, "pay him his wages and send him about his business."

"What were the use? He would remain in the village—in his brother's cottage mayhap . . . with more time on his hands for his spying work. . . . He would dog the wench's steps more jealously than eve. . . . No! no!" he added, whilst he cast a quick, furtive look at her—a look which somehow caused her to shiver with apprehension more deadly than heretofore.

"That's not what I want," he said significantly.

"What's to be done?" she murmured, "what's to be done?"

"I must think," he rejoined harshly. "But we must get that love-sick youth out of the way . . . him and his airs of Providence in disguise. . . . Something must be done to part him from the wench effectually and completely . . . something that would force him to quit this neighborhood . . . forever, if possible."

She did not reply immediately, but fixed her large, dark eyes upon him, silently for a while, then she murmured:

"If I only knew!"

"Knew what?"

"If I could trust you, Marmaduke!"

He laughed, a harsh, cruel laugh which grated upon her ear.

"We know too much of one another, my dear Editha, not to trust each other."

"My whole future depends on you. I am penniless. If you marry Sue. . . ."

"I can provide for you," he interrupted roughly. "What can I do now? My penury is worse than yours. So, my dear, if you have a plan to propound for the furtherance of my schemes, I pray you do not let your fear of the future prevent you from lending me a helping hand."

"A thought crossed my mind," she said eagerly, "the thought of something which would effectually force Richard Lambert to quit this neighborhood for ever."

"What were that?"

"Disgrace."

"Disgrace?" he exclaimed. "Aye! you are right. Something mean . . . paltry . . . despicable . . . something that would make her gracious ladyship turn away from him in disgust . . . and would force him to go away from here . . . for ever."

He looked at her closely, scrutinizing her face, trying to read her thoughts.

"A thought crossed your mind," he demanded peremptorily. "What is it?"

"The house in London," she murmured.

"You are not afraid?"

"Oh!" she said with a careless shrug of the shoulders.

"The Protector's spies are keen," he urged, eager to test her courage, her desire to help him.

"They'll scarce remember me after two years."

"Hm! Their memory is keen . . . and the new laws doubly severe."

"We'll be cautious."

"How can you let your usual clients know? They are dispersed."

"Oh, no! My Lord Walterton is as keen as ever and Sir James Overbury would brave the devil for a night at hazard. A message to them and we'll have a crowd every night."

"'Tis well thought on, Editha," he said approvingly. "But we must not delay. Will you go to London to-morrow?"

"An you approve."

"Aye! you can take the Dover coach and be in town by nightfall. Then write your letters to my Lord Walterton and Sir James Overbury. Get a serving wench from Alverstone's in the Strand, and ask the gentlemen to bring their own men, for the sake of greater safety. They'll not refuse."

"Refuse?" she said with a light laugh, "oh, no!"

"To-day being Tuesday, you should have your first evening entertainment on Friday. Everything could be ready by then."

"Oh, yes!"

"Very well then, on Friday, I, too, will arrive in London, my dear Editha, escorted by my secretary, Master Richard Lambert, and together we will call and pay our respects at your charming house in Bath Street."

"I will do my share. You must do yours, Marmaduke. Endicott will help you: he is keen and clever. And if Lambert but takes a card in his hand . . ."

"Nay! he will take the cards, mine oath on that! Do you but arrange it all with Endicott."

"And, Marmaduke, I entreat you," she urged now with sudden earnestness, "I entreat you to beware of my Lord Protector's spies. Think of the consequences for me!"

"Aye!" he said roughly, laughing that wicked, cruel laugh of his, which damped her eagerness, and struck chill terror into her heart, "aye! the whipping-post for you, fair Editha, for keeping a gaming-house. What? Of a truth I need not urge you to be cautious."

Probably at this moment she would have given worlds—had she possessed them—if she could but have dissociated herself from her brother-in-law's future altogether. Though she was an empty-headed, brainless kind of woman, she was not by nature a wicked one. Necessity had driven her into linking her fortunes with those of Sir Marmaduke. And he had been kind to her, when she was in deep distress: but for him she would probably have starved, for her beauty had gone and her career as an actress had been, for some inexplicable reason, quite suddenly cut short, whilst a police raid on the gaming-house over which she presided had very nearly landed her in a convict's cell.

She had escaped severe punishment then, chiefly because Cromwell's laws against gambling were not so rigorous at the time as they had since become, also because she was able to plead ignorance of them, and because of the status of first offense.

Therefore she knew quite well what she risked through the scheme which she had so boldly propounded to Sir Marmaduke. Dire disgrace and infamy, if my Lord Protector's spies once more came upon the gamesters in her house—unawares.

Utter social ruin and worse! Yet she risked it all, in order to help him. She did not love him, nor had she any hopes that he would of his own free will do more than give her a bare pittance for her needs once he had secured Lady Sue's fortune; but she was shrewd enough to reckon that the more completely she was mixed up in his nefarious projects, the more absolutely forced would he be to accede to her demands later on. The word blackmail had not been invented in those days, but the deed itself existed and what Editha had in her mind when she risked ostracism for Sir Marmaduke's sake was something very akin to it.

But he, in the meanwhile, had thrown off his dejection. He was full of eagerness, of anticipated triumph now.

The rough idea which was to help him in his schemes had originated in Editha's brain, but already he had elaborated it; had seen in the plan a means not only of attaining his own ends with regard to Sue, but also of wreaking a pleasing vengeance on the man who was trying to frustrate him.

"I pray you, be of good cheer, fair Editha," he said quite gaily. "Your plan is good and sound, and meseems as if the wench's fortune were already within my grasp."

"Within our grasp, you mean, Marmaduke," she said significantly.

"Our grasp of course, gracious lady," he said with a marked sneer, which she affected to ignore. "What is mine is yours. Am I not tied to the strings of your kirtle by lasting bonds of infinite gratitude?"

"I will start to-morrow then. By chaise to Dover and thence by coach," she said coldly, taking no heed of his irony. "'Twere best you did not assume your romantic rôle again until after your own voyage to London. You can give me some money I presume. I can do nothing with an empty purse."

"You shall have the whole contents of mine, gracious Editha," he said blandly, "some ten pounds in all, until the happy day when I can place half a million at your feet."

PART II

CHAPTER XIV

THE HOUSE IN LONDON

It stood about midway down an unusually narrow by-street off the Strand.

A tumble-down archway, leaning to one side like a lame hen, gave access to a dark passage, dank with moisture, whereon the door of the house gave some eighteen feet up on the left.

The unpaved street, undrained and unutterably filthy, was ankle-deep in mud, even at the close of this hot August day. Down one side a long blank wall, stone-built and green with mildew, presented an unbroken frontage: on the other the row of houses with doors perpetually barred, and windows whereon dust and grit had formed effectual curtains against prying eyes, added to the sense of loneliness, of insecurity, of unknown dangers lurking behind that crippled archway, or beneath the shadows of the projecting eaves, whence the perpetual drip-drip of soot water came as a note of melancholy desolation.

From all the houses the plaster was peeling off in many places, a prey to the inclemencies of London winters; all presented gray facades, with an air of eeriness about their few windows, flush with the outside wall—at one time painted white, no doubt, but now of uniform dinginess with the rest of the plaster work.

There was a grim hint about the whole street of secret meetings, and of unavowable deeds done under cover of isolation and of darkness, whilst the great crooked mouth of the archway disclosing the blackness and gloom of the passage beyond, suggested the lair of human wild beasts who only went about in the night.

As a rule but few passers-by availed themselves of this short and narrow cut down to the river-side. Nathless, the unarmed citizen was scared by these dank and dreary shadows, whilst the city watchman, mindful of his own safety, was wont to pass the mean street by.

Only my Lord Protector's new police-patrol fresh to its onerous task, solemnly marched down it once in twenty-four hours, keeping shoulder to shoulder, looking neither to right nor left, thankful when either issue was once more within sight.

But in this same evening in August, 1657, it seemed as if quite a number of people had business in Bath Street off the Strand. At any rate this was specially noticeable after St. Mary's had struck the hour of nine, when several cloaked and hooded figures slipped, one after another, some singly, others in groups of two or three, into the shadow of the narrow lane.

They all walked in silence, and did not greet one another as they passed; some cast from time to time furtive looks behind them; but every one of these evening prowlers seemed to have the same objective, for as soon as they reached the crippled archway, they disappeared within the gloom of its yawning mouth.

Anon when the police-patrol had gone by and was lost in the gloom there where Bath Street debouches on the river bank, two of these heavily cloaked figures walked rapidly down from the Strand, and like the others slipped quickly under the archway, and made straight for the narrow door on the left of the passage.

This door was provided with a heavy bronze knocker, but strangely enough the newcomers did not avail themselves of its use, but rapped on the wooden panels with their knuckles, giving three successive raps at regular intervals.

They were admitted almost immediately, the door seemingly opening of itself, and they quickly stepped across the threshold.

Within the house was just as dark and gloomy as it was without, and as the two visitors entered, a voice came from out the shadows, and said, in a curious monotone and with strange irrelevance: