In mid-skip Master Mervale here desisted, his voice trailing into inarticulate vowels. After many angry throes, a white-lilac bush had been delivered of the Marquis of Falmouth, who now confronted Master Mervale, furiously moved.
4.
'I have heard, Master Mervale,' said the marquis, gently, 'that love is blind?'
The boy stared at the white face, that had before his eyes veiled rage with a crooked smile. So you may see the cat, tense for the fatal spring, relax and with one paw indolently flip the mouse.
'It is an ancient fable, my lord,' the boy said, smiling, and made as though to pass.
'Indeed,' said the marquis, courteously, but without yielding an inch, 'it is a very reassuring fable: for,' he continued, meditatively, 'were the eyes of all lovers suddenly opened, Master Mervale, I suspect it would prove a red hour for the world. There would be both tempers and reputations lost, Master Mervale; there would be sword- thrusts; there would be corpses, Master Mervale.'
'Doubtless, my lord,' the lad assented, striving to jest and have done; 'for all flesh is frail, and as the flesh of woman is frailer than that of man, so is it, as I remember to have read, the more easily entrapped by the gross snares of the devil, as was over-well proved by the serpent's beguiling deceit of Eve at the beginning.'
'Yet, Master Mervale,' pursued the marquis, equably, but without smiling, 'there be lovers in the world that have eyes?'
'Doubtless, my lord,' said the boy.
'There also be women in the world, Master Mervale,' Lord Falmouth suggested, with a deeper gravity, 'that are but the handsome sepulchres of iniquity,—ay, and for the major part of women, those miracles which are their bodies, compact of white and gold and sprightly color though they be, serve as the lovely cerements of corruption.'
'Doubtless, my lord. The devil, as they say, is homelier with that sex.'
'There also be swords in the world, Master Mervale?' purred the marquis.
He touched his own sword as he spoke.
'My lord—!' the boy cried, with a gasp.
'Now, swords have at least three uses, Master Mervale,' Falmouth continued. 'With a sword one may pick a cork from a bottle; with a sword one may toast cheese about the Twelfth Night fire; and with a sword one may spit a man, Master Mervale,—ay, even an ambling, pink-faced, lisping lad that cannot boo at a goose, Master Mervale. I have no inclination, Master Mervale, just now, for either wine or toasted cheese.'
'I do not understand you, my lord,' said the boy, in a thin voice.
'Indeed, I think we understand each other perfectly,' said the marquis. 'For I have been very frank with you, and I have watched you from behind this bush.'
The boy raised his hand as though to speak.
'Look you, Master Mervale,' the marquis argued, 'you and my lord of Pevensey and I be brave fellows; we need a wide world to bustle in. Now, the thought has come to me that this small planet of ours is scarcely commodious enough for all three. There be purgatory and Heaven, and yet another place, Master Mervale; why, then, crowd one another?'
'My lord,' said the boy, dully, 'I do not understand you.'
'Holy Gregory!' scoffed the marquis; 'surely my meaning is plain enough! it is to kill you first, and my lord of Pevensey afterward! Y'are phoenixes, Master Mervale, Arabian birds! Y'are too good for this world. Longaville is not fit to be trodden under your feet; and therefore it is my intention that you leave Longaville feet first. Draw, Master Mervale!' cried the marquis, his light hair falling about his flushed, handsome face as he laughed joyously, and flashed his sword in the spring sunshine.
The boy sprang back, with an inarticulate cry; then gulped some dignity into himself and spoke. 'My lord,' he said, 'I admit that explanation may seem necessary.'
'You will render it, if to anybody, Master Mervale, to my heir, who will doubtless accord it such credence as it merits. For my part, having two duels on my hands to-day, I have no time to listen to a romance out of the Hundred Merry Tales.'
Falmouth had placed himself on guard; but Master Mervale stood with chattering teeth and irresolute, groping hands, and made no effort to draw. 'Oh, the block! the curd-faced cheat!' cried the marquis. 'Will nothing move you?' With his left hand he struck at the boy.
Thereupon Master Mervale gasped, and turning with a great sob, ran through the gardens. The marquis laughed discordantly; then he followed, taking big leaps as he ran and flourishing his sword.
'Oh, the coward!' he shouted; 'Oh, the milk-livered rogue! Oh, you paltry rabbit!'
So they came to the bank of the artificial pond. Master Mervale swerved as with an oath the marquis pounced at him. Master Mervale's foot caught in the root of a great willow, and Master Mervale splashed into ten feet of still water, that glistened like quicksilver in the sunlight.
'Oh, Saint Gregory!' the marquis cried, and clasped his sides in noisy mirth; 'was there no other way to cool your courage? Paddle out and be flogged, Master Hare-heels!' he called. The boy had come to the surface and was swimming aimlessly, parallel to the bank. 'Now I have heard,' said the marquis, as he walked beside him, 'that water swells a man. Pray Heaven, it may swell his heart a thousandfold or so, and thus hearten him for wholesome exercise after his ducking—a friendly thrust or two, a little judicious bloodletting to ward off the effects of the damp.'
The marquis started as Master Mervale grounded on a shallow and rose, dripping, knee-deep among the lily-pads. 'Oh, splendor of God!' cried the marquis.
Master Mervale had risen from his bath almost clean-shaven; only one sodden half of his mustachios clung to his upper lip, and as he rubbed the water from his eyes, this remaining half also fell away from the boy's face.
'Oh, splendor of God!' groaned the marquis. He splashed noisily into the water. 'O Kate, Kate!' he cried, his arms about Master Mervale. 'Oh, blind, blind, blind! O heart's dearest! Oh, my dear, my dear!' he observed.
Master Mervale slipped from his embrace and waded to dry land. 'My lord,—' he began, demurely.
'My lady wife,—' said his lordship of Falmouth, with a tremulous smile. He paused, and passed his hand over his brow. 'And yet I do not understand,' he said. 'Y'are dead; y'are buried. It was a frightened boy I struck.' He spread out his strong arms. 'O world! O sun! O stars!' he cried; 'she is come back to me from the grave. O little world! small shining planet! I think that I could crush you in my hands!'
'Meanwhile,' Master Mervale suggested, after an interval, 'it is I that you are crushing.' He sighed,—though not very deeply,—and continued, with a hiatus: 'They would have wedded me to Lucius Rossmore, and I could not —I could not—'
'That skinflint! that palsied goat!' the marquis growled.
'He was wealthy,' said Master Mervale. Then he sighed once more. 'There seemed only you,—only you in all the world. A man might come to you in those far-off countries: a woman might not. I fled by night, my lord, by the aid of a waiting-woman; became a man by the aid of a tailor; and set out to find you by the aid of such impudence as I might muster. But luck did not travel with me. I followed you through Flanders, Italy, Spain,—always just too late; always finding the bird flown, the nest yet warm. Presently I heard you were become Marquis of Falmouth; then I gave up the quest.'
'I would suggest,' said the marquis, 'that my name is Stephen;—but why, in the devil's name, should you
