“Mistress Rosamund bids you depart, sir. She will not see you.”
A moment Sir Oliver scanned the servant’s face—or appeared to scan it, for it is doubtful if he saw the fellow at all. Then for only answer he strode forward towards the door from which the man had issued. The servant set his back to it, his face resolute.
“Sir Oliver, my mistress will not see you.”
“Out of my way!” he muttered in his angry, contemptuous fashion, and as the man persistent in his duty stood his ground, Sir Oliver took him by the breast of his jacket, heaved him aside and went in.
She was standing in mid-apartment, dressed by an odd irony all in bridal white, that yet was not as white as was her face. Her eyes looked like two black stains, solemn and haunting as they fastened up on this intruder who would not be refused. Her lips parted, but she had no word for him. She just stared in a horror that routed all his audacity and checked the masterfulness of his advance. At last he spoke.
“I see that you have heard,” said he, “the lie that runs the countryside. That is evil enough. But I see that you have lent an ear to it; and that is worse.”
She continued to regard him with a cold look of loathing, this child that but two days ago had lain against his heart gazing up at him in trust and adoration.
“Rosamund!” he cried, and approached her by another step. “Rosamund! I am here to tell you that it is a lie.”
“You had best go,” she said, and her voice had in it a quality that made him tremble.
“Go?” he echoed stupidly. “You bid me go? You will not hear me?”
“I consented to hear you more than once; refused to hear others who knew better than I, and was heedless of their warnings. There is no more to be said between us. I pray God that they may take and hang you.”
He was white to the lips, and for the first time in his life he knew fear and felt his great limbs trembling under him.
“They may hang me and welcome since you believe this thing. They could not hurt me more than you are doing, nor by hanging me could they deprive me of aught I value, since your faith in me is a thing to be blown upon by the first rumour of the countryside.”
He saw the pale lips twist themselves into a dreadful smile. “There is more than rumour, I think,” said she. “There is more than all your lies will ever serve to cloak.”
“My lies?” he cried. “Rosamund, I swear to you by my honour that I have had no hand in the slaying of Peter. May God rot me where I stand if this be not true!”
“It seems,” said a harsh voice behind him, “that you fear God as little as aught else.”
He wheeled sharply to confront Sir John Killigrew, who had entered after him.
“So,” he said slowly, and his eyes grew hard and bright as agates, “this is your work.” And he waved a hand towards Rosamund. It was plain to what he alluded.
“My work?” quoth Sir John. He closed the door, and advanced into the room. “Sir, it seems your audacity, your shamelessness, transcends all bounds. Your. …”
“Have done with that,” Sir Oliver interrupted him and smote his great fist upon the table. He was suddenly swept by a gust of passion. “Leave words to fools, Sir John, and criticisms to those that can defend them better.”
“Aye, you talk like a man of blood. You come hectoring it here in the very house of the dead—in the very house upon which you have cast this blight of sorrow and murder. …”
“Have done, I say, or murder there will be!”
His voice was a roar, his mien terrific. And bold man though Sir John was, he recoiled. Instantly Sir Oliver had conquered himself again. He swung to Rosamund. “Ah, forgive me!” he pleaded. “I am mad—stark mad with anguish at the thing imputed. I have not loved your brother, it is true. But as I swore to you, so have I done. I have taken blows from him, and smiled; but yesterday in a public place he affronted me, lashed me across the face with his riding-whip, as I still bear the mark. The man who says I were not justified in having killed him for it is a liar and a hypocrite. Yet the thought of you, Rosamund, the thought that he was your brother sufficed to quench the rage in which he left me. And now that by some grim mischance he has met his death, my recompense for all my patience, for all my thought for you is that I am charged with slaying him, and that you believe this charge.”
“She has no choice,” rasped Killigrew.
“Sir John,” he cried, “I pray you do not meddle with her choice. That you believe it, marks you for a fool, and a fool’s counsel is a rotten staff to lean upon at any time. Why God o’ mercy! assume that I desired to take satisfaction for the affront he had put upon me; do you know so little of men, and of me of all men, that you suppose I should go about my vengeance in this hole-and-corner fashion to set a hangman’s noose about my neck. A fine vengeance that, as God lives! Was it so I dealt with you, Sir John, when you permitted your tongue to wag too freely, as you have yourself confessed? Heaven’s light, man; take a proper view; consider was this matter likely. I take it you are a more fearsome antagonist than was ever poor Peter Godolphin, yet when I sought satisfaction of you I sought it boldly and openly, as is my way. When we measured swords in your park at Arwenack we did so before witnesses in proper form, that the survivor might not be troubled with the
