The Courtship of Morrice Buckler. A. E. W. Mason
snatched the book from my hand, and flung it into a corner. "There!" said he. "It may go to the dust-hole and Pliny with it, to rot in company." And the Latin volume followed the note-book. Whereupon, with a sigh of relief, he lifted a brace of pistols from a shelf, and began industriously to scour and polish them, though indeed their locks and barrels shone like silver as it was. For my part, I plumped myself down before this very ode of Horace; and so for a while, each in his own way, we worked silently. Ever and again, however, he would look up and towards me, and then, with an impatient shrug, settle to his task again. At last he could contain no longer.
"Lord!" he burst out, "what a sick world it is! Here am I, fitted for a roving life under open skies, and plucked out of God's design by the want of a few pence."
"You may yet sit on the bench," said I, to console him.
"Ay, lad," he answered, "I might if I had sufficient roguery to supply my lack of wits." Then he suddenly turned on me. "And here are you," he said, "who could journey east and west, and never sleep twice beneath the same roof, breaking your back mewed up over a copy of Horace!"
At that moment I was indeed stretched full-length upon a sofa, but I had no mind to set him right. The tirade was passing old to me, and replies were but fresh fuel to keep it flickering. However, he had not yet done.
"I believe," he continued, "you would sooner solve a knot in Aristotle than lead out the finest lady in Europe to dance a pavan with you."
"That is true," I replied. "I should be no less afraid of her than you of Aristotle."
"Morrice," said he solemnly, "I do verily believe you have naught but fish-blood in your veins."
Whereat I laughed, and he, coming over to me:
"Why, man," he cried, "had I your fortune on my back----"
"You would soon find it a ragged cloak," I interposed.
"And your sword at my side----"
"You would still lack my skill in using it."
Larke stopped short in his speech, and his face darkened. I had touched him in the tenderest part of his pride. Proficiency in manly exercises was the single quality on which he plumed himself, and so he had made it his daily habit to repair to the fencing-rooms of a noted French master, who dwelt in Noort-Eynde by the Witte Poort. Thither also, by dint of much pertinacity, for which I had grave reason to thank him afterwards, he had haled me for instruction in the art. Once I got there, however, the play fascinated me. The delicate intricacy of the movements so absorbed brain and muscle in a common service as to produce in me an inward sense of completeness, very sweet and strange to one of my halting diffidence. In consequence I applied myself with considerable enthusiasm, and in the end acquired some nimbleness with the rapier, or, to speak more truly, the foil. For as yet my skill had never been put to the test of a serious encounter.
Now, on the previous day Larke and I had fenced together throughout the afternoon, and fortune had sided with me in every bout; and it was, I think, the recollection of this which rankled within him. However, the fit soon passed--'twas not in his nature to be silent long--and he broke out again, seating himself in a chair by the table.
"Dost never dream of adventures, Morrice?" he asked. "A life brimful of them, and a quick death at the end?"
"I had as lief die in my bed," said I.
"To be sure, to be sure," he replied with a sneer. "Men ever wish to die in the place they are most fond of;" and then he leant forward upon the table and said, with a curious wonder: "Hast never a regret that thy sword rusted in June?"
"Nay," I answered him quickly. "Monmouth was broken and captured before we had even heard he had raised his flag. And, besides, the King had stouter swords than mine, and yet no use for them."
But none the less I turned my face to the wall, for I felt my cheeks blazing. My words were indeed the truth. The same packet which brought to us the news of Monmouth's rising in the west, brought to us also the news of his defeat at Sedgemoor. But I might easily have divined his project some while ago. For early in the spring I had received a visit from one Ferguson, a Scot, who, after uttering many fantastical lies concerning the "Duke of York," as he impudently styled the King, had warned me that such as failed to assist the true monarch out of the funds they possessed might well find themselves sorely burdened in the near future. At the time I had merely laughed at the menace, and slipped it from my thoughts. Afterwards, however, the remembrance of his visit came back to me, and with it a feeling of shame that I had lain thus sluggishly at Leyden while this monstrous web of rebellion was a-weaving about me in the neighbouring towns of Holland.
"'Art more of a woman than a man, Morrice, I fear me," said Jack.
I had heard some foolish talk of this kind more than once before, and it ever angered me. I rose quickly from the couch; but Jack skipped round the table, and jeered yet the more.
"'Wilt never win a wife by fair means, lad," says he. "The Muses are women, and women have no liking for them. 'Must buy a wife when the time comes."
Perceiving that his aim was but to provoke my anger, I refrained from answering him and got me back to my ode. The day was in truth too hot for quarrelling. Larke, however, was not so easily put off. He returned to his chair, which was close to my couch.
"Horace!" he said gravely, wagging his head at me. "Horace! There are wise sayings in his book."
"What know you of them?" I laughed.
"I know one," he answered. "I learnt it yesternight for thy special delectation. It begins in this way:
"Quem si puellarum chore inseres."
He got no further in his quotation. For he tilted his chair at this moment, and I thrusting at it with my foot, he tumbled over backwards and sprawled on the ground, swearing at great length.
"'Wilt never win a wife by fair means for all that," he sputtered.
"Then 'tis no more than prudence in me to wed my books."
So I spake, and hot on the heels of my saying came the message which divorced me from them for good and all. For as Larke still lay upon the floor, a clatter of horse's hoofs came to us through the open window. The sound stopped at our door. Larke rose hastily, and leaned out across the sill.
"It is an Englishman," he cried. "He comes to us."
The next moment a noise of altercation filled the air. I could hear the shrill speech of our worthy landlady, and above it a man's voice in the English dialect, growing ever louder and louder as though the violence of his tone would translate his meaning. I followed Larke to the window. The quiet street was alive with peeping faces, and just beneath us stood the reason of the brawl, a short, thick-set man, whose face was hidden by a large flapping hat. His horse stood in the roadway in a lather of spume. For some reason, doubtless the excitement of his manner, our hostess would not let him pass into the house. She stood solidly filling the doorway, and for a little it amused us to watch the man's vehement gesticulations; so little thought had we of the many strange events which were to follow from his visit. In a minute, however, he turned his face towards us, and I recognised him as Nicholas Swasfield, the body-servant of my good friend, Sir Julian Harnwood.
"Let him up!" I cried. "Let him up!"
"Yes, woman, let him up!" repeated Larke, and turning to me: "He hath many choice and wonderful oaths, and I fain would add them to my store."
Thereupon the woman drew reluctantly aside, and Swasfield bounded past her into the passage. We heard him tumble heavily up the dark stairway, cursing the country and its natives, and then with a great bump of his body he burst open the door and lurched into the room. At the sight of me he brake into a glad cry:
"Sir Julian, my master," he gasped, and stopped dead.
"Well, what of him?" I asked eagerly.
But he answered never a word; he stood mopping his brows with a great blue handkerchief, which hid his face from us. 'Tis strange how clearly