Rafael Sabatini - The Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

“Are you afraid of me, Sir Crispin?”

“Beauty, madam, is wont to inspire courage rather than fear,” he answered, with a smile.

“That, sir, is an evasion, not an answer.”

“If read aright, Mistress Cynthia, it is also an answer.”

“That you do not fear me?”

“It is not a habit of mine.”

“Why, then, have you avoided me these three days past?”

Despite himself Crispin felt his breath quickening—quickening with a pleasure that he sought not to account for—at the thought that she should have marked his absence from her side.

“Because perhaps if I did not,” he answered slowly, “you might come to avoid me. I am a proud man, Mistress Cynthia.”

“Satan, sir, was proud, but his pride led him to perdition.”

“So indeed may mine,” he answered readily, “since it leads me from you.”

“Nay, sir,” she laughed, “you go from me willingly enough.”

“Not willingly, Cynthia. Oh, not willingly,” he began. Then of a sudden he checked his tongue, and asked himself what he was saying. With a half-laugh and a courtier manner, he continued, “Of two evils, madam, we must choose the lesser one.”

“Madam,” she echoed, disregarding all else that he had said. “It is an ugly word, and but a moment back you called me Cynthia.”

“Twas a liberty that methought my grey hairs warranted, and for which you should have reproved me.”

“You have not grey hairs enough to warrant it, Sir Crispin,” she answered archly. “But what if even so I account it no liberty?”

The heavy lids were lifted from her eyes, and as their glance, frank and kindly, met his, he trembled. Then, with a polite smile, he bowed.

“I thank you for the honour.”

For a moment she looked at him in a puzzled way, then moved past him, and as he stood, stiffly erect, watching her graceful figure, he thought that she was about to leave him, and was glad of it. But ere she had taken half a dozen steps:

“Sir Crispin,” said she, looking back at him over her shoulder, “I am walking to the cliffs.”

Never was a man more plainly invited to become an escort; but he ignored it. A sad smile crept into his harsh face.

“I shall tell Kenneth if I see him,” said he.

At that she frowned.

“But I do not want him,” she protested. “Sooner would I go alone.”

“Why, then, madam, I'll tell nobody.”

Was ever man so dull? she asked herself.

“There is a fine view from the cliffs,” said she.

“I have always thought so,” he agreed.

She inclined to call him a fool; yet she restrained herself. She had an impulse to go her way without him; but, then, she desired his company, and Cynthia was unused to having her desires frustrated. So finding him impervious to suggestion:

“Will you not come with me?” she asked at last, point-blank.

“Why, yes, if you wish it,” he answered without alacrity.

“You may remain, sir.”

Her offended tone aroused him now to the understanding that he was impolite. Contrite he stood beside her in a moment.

“With your permission, mistress, I will go with you. I am a dull fellow, and to-day I know not what mood is on me. So sorry a one that I feared I should be poor company. Still, if you'll endure me, I'll do my best to prove entertaining.”

“By no means,” she answered coldly. “I seek not the company of dull fellows.” And she was gone.

He stood where she had left him, and breathed a most ungallant prayer of thanks. Next he laughed softly to himself, a laugh that was woeful with bitterness.

“Fore George!” he muttered, “it is all that was wanting!”

He reseated himself upon the fallen tree, and there he set himself to reflect, and to realize that he, war-worn and callous, come to Castle Marleigh on such an errand as was his, should wax sick at the very thought of it for the sake of a chit of a maid, with a mind to make a mock and a toy of him. Into his mind there entered even the possibility of flight, forgetful of the wrongs he had suffered, abandoning the vengeance he had sworn. Then with an oath he stemmed his thoughts.

“God in heaven, am I a boy, beardless and green?” he asked himself. “Am I turned seventeen again, that to look into a pair of eyes should make me forget all things but their existence?” Then in a burst of passion: “Would to Heaven,” he muttered, “they had left me stark on Worcester Field!”

He rose abruptly, and set out to walk aimlessly along, until suddenly a turn in the path brought him face to face with Cynthia. She hailed him with a laugh.

“Sir laggard, I knew that willy-nilly you would follow me,” she cried. And he, taken aback, could not but smile in answer, and profess that she had conjectured rightly.

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Side by side stepped that oddly assorted pair along—the maiden whose soul was as pure and fresh as the breeze that blew upon them from the sea, and the man whose life years ago had been marred by a sorrow, the quest of whose forgetfulness had led him through the mire of untold sin; the girl upon the threshold of womanhood, her life all before her and seeming to her untainted mind a joyous, wholesome business; the man midway on his ill-starred career, his every hope blighted save the one odious hope of vengeance, which made him cling to a life he had proved worthless and ugly, and that otherwise he had likely enough cast from him. And as they walked:

“Sir Crispin,” she ventured timidly, “you are unhappy, are you not?”

Startled by her words and the tone of them, Galliard turned his head that he might observe her.

“I, unhappy?” he laughed; and it was a laugh calculated to acknowledge the fitness of her question, rather than to refute it as he intended. “Am I a clown, Cynthia, to own myself unhappy at such a season and while you honour me with your company?”

She made a wry face in protest that he fenced with her.

“You are happy, then?” she challenged him.

“What is happiness?” quoth he, much as Pilate may have questioned what was truth. Then before she could reply he hastened to add: “I have not been quite so happy these many years.”

“It is not of the present moment that I speak,” she answered reprovingly, for she scented no more than a compliment in his words, “but of your life.”

Now either was he imbued with a sense of modesty touching the deeds of that life of his, or else did he wisely realize that no theme could there be less suited to discourse upon with an innocent maid.

“Mistress Cynthia,” said he as though he had not heard her question, “I would say a word to you concerning Kenneth.”

At that she turned upon him with a pout.

“But it is concerning yourself that I would have you talk. It is not nice to disobey a lady. Besides, I have little interest in Master Stewart.”

“To have little interest in a future husband augurs ill for the time when he shall come to be your husband.”

“I thought that you, at least, understood me. Kenneth will never be husband of mine, Sir Crispin.”

“Cynthia!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, lackaday! Am I to wed a doll?” she demanded. “Is he—is he a man a maid may love, Sir Crispin?”

“Indeed, had you but seen the half of life that I have seen,” said he unthinkingly, “it might amaze you what manner of man a maid may love—or at least may marry. Come, Cynthia, what fault do you find with him?”

“Why, every fault.”

He laughed in unbelief.

“And whom are we to blame for all these faults that have turned you so against him?”

“Whom?”

“Yourself, Cynthia. You use him ill, child. If his behaviour has been extravagant, you are to blame. You are severe with him, and he, in his rash endeavours to present himself in a guise that shall render him commendable in your eyes, has overstepped discretion.”