The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini - HTML preview

The Heart Of Cynthia Ashburn

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 he 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."

"Has my father bidden you to tell me this?"

 

"Since when have I enjoyed your father's confidence to that degree? No, no, Cynthia. I plead the boy's cause to you because - I know not because of what."

"It is ill to plead without knowing why. Let us forget the valiant Kenneth. They tell me, Sir Crispin" - and she turned her glorious eyes upon him in a manner that must have witched a statue into answering her - "that in the Royal army you were known as the Tavern Knight."

"They tell you truly. What of that?"

 

"Well, what of it? Do you blush at the very thought?"

"I blush?" He blinked, and his eyes were full of humour as they met her grave - almost sorrowing glance. Then a full-hearted peal of laughter broke from him, and scared a flight of gulls from the rocks of Sheringham Hithe below.

"Oh, Cynthia! You'll kill me!" he gasped. "Picture to yourself this Crispin Galliard blushing and giggling like a schoolgirl beset by her first lover. Picture it, I say! As well and as easily might you picture old Lucifer warbling a litany for the edification of a Nonconformist parson."
Her eyes were severe in their reproach.

"It is always so with you. You laugh and jest and make a mock of everything. Such I doubt not has been your way from the commencement, and 'tis thus that you are come to this condition."

Again he laughed, but this time it was in bitterness.

"Nay, sweet mistress, you are wrong - you are very wrong; it was not always thus. Time was - " He paused. "Bah! 'Tis the coward cries "time was"! Leave me the past, Cynthia. It is dead, and of the dead we should speak no ill," he jested.

"What is there in your past?" she insisted, despite his words. "What is there in it so to have warped a character that I am assured was once - is, indeed, still - of lofty and noble purpose? What is it has brought you to the level you occupy - you who were born to lead; you who - "

"Have done, child. Have done," he begged.

"Nay, tell me. Let us sit here." And taking hold of his sleeve, she sat herself upon a mound, and made room for him beside her on the grass. With a half-laugh and a sigh he obeyed her, and there, on the cliff, in the glow of the September sun, he took his seat at her side.

A silence prevailed about them, emphasized rather than broken by the droning chant of a fisherman mending his nets on the beach below, the intermittent plash of the waves on the shingle, and the scream of the gulls that circled overhead. Before the eyes of his flesh was stretched a wide desert of sky and water, and before the eyes of his mind the hopeless desert of his thirty-eight years.

He was almost tempted to speak. The note of sympathy in her voice allured him, and sympathy was to him as drink to one who perishes of thirst. A passionate, indefinable longing impelled him to pour out the story that in Worcester he had related unto Kenneth, and thus to set himself better in her eyes; to have her realize indeed that if he was come so low it was more the fault of others than his own. The temptation drew him at a headlong pace, to be checked at last by the memory that those others who had brought him to so sorry a condition were her own people. The humour passed. He laughed softly, and shook his head.

"There is nothing that I can tell you, child. Let us rather talk of Kenneth."

 

"I do not wish to talk of Kenneth."

"Nay, but you must. Willy-nilly must you. Think you it is only a war-worn, harddrinking, swashbuckling ruffler that can sin? Does it not also occur to you that even a frail and tender little maid may do wrong as well?"
"What wrong have I done?" she cried in consternation.

"A grievous wrong to this poor lad. Can you not realize how the only desire that governs him is the laudable one of appearing favourably in your eyes?"

 

"That desire gives rise, then, to curious manifestations."

"He is mistaken in the means he adopts, that is all. In his heart his one aim is to win your esteem, and, after all, it is the sentiment that matters, not its manifestation. Why, then, are you unkind to him?"

"But I am not unkind. Or is it unkindness to let him see that I mislike his capers? Would it not be vastly more unkind to ignore them and encourage him to pursue their indulgence? I have no patience with him."

"As for those capers, I am endeavouring to show you that you yourself have driven him to them."

 

"Sir Crispin," she cried out, "you grow tiresome."

 

"Aye," said he, "I grow tiresome. I grow tiresome because I preach of duty. Marry, it is in truth a tiresome topic."

 

"How duty? Of what do you talk?" And a flush of incipient anger spread now on her fair cheek.

"I will be clearer," said he imperturbably. "This lad is your betrothed. He is at heart a good lad, an honourable and honest lad - at times haply over-honest and over-honourable; but let that be. To please a whim, a caprice, you set yourself to flout him, as is the way of your sex when you behold a man your utter slave. From this - being all unversed in the obliquity of woman - he conceives, poor boy, that he no longer finds favour in your eyes, and to win back this, the only thing that in the world he values, he behaves foolishly. You flout him anew, and because of it. He is as jealous with you as a hen with her brood."

"Jealous?" echoed Cynthia.

"Why, yes, jealous; and so far does he go as to be jealous even of me," he cried, with infinitely derisive relish. "Think of it - he is jealous of me! Jealous of him they call the Tavern Knight!"

She did think of it as he bade her. And by thinking she stumbled upon a discovery that left her breathless.

Strange how we may bear a sentiment in our hearts without so much as suspecting its existence, until suddenly a chance word shall so urge it into life that it reveals itself with unmistakable distinctness. With her the revelation began in a vague wonder at the scorn with which Crispin invested the notion that Kenneth should have cause for jealousy on his score. Was it, she asked herself, so monstrously unnatural? Then in a flash the answer came - and it was, that far from being a matter for derision, such an attitude in Kenneth lacked not for foundation.

In that moment she knew that it was because of Crispin; because of this man who spoke with such very scorn of self, that Kenneth had become in her eyes so mean and unworthy a creature. Loved him she haply never had, but leastways she had tolerated - been even flattered by - his wooing. By contrasting him now with Crispin she had grown to despise him. His weakness, his pusillanimity, his meannesses of soul, stood out in sharp relief by contrast with the masterful strength and the high spirit of Sir Crispin.

So easily may our ideals change that the very graces of face and form that a while ago had pleased her in Kenneth, seemed now effeminate attributes, well-attuned to a vacillating, purposeless mind. Far greater beauty did her eyes behold in this grimfaced soldier of fortune; the man as firm of purpose as he was upright of carriage; gloomy, proud, and reckless; still young, yet past the callow age of adolescence. Since the day of his coming to Castle Marleigh she had brought herself to look upon him as a hero stepped from the romancers' tales that in secret she had read. The mystery that seemed to envelop him; those hints at a past that was not good - but the measure of whose evil in her pure innocence she could not guess; his very melancholy, his misfortunes, and the deeds she had heard assigned to him, all had served to fire her fancy and more besides, although, until that moment, she knew it not.

Subconsciously all this had long dwelt in her mind. And now of a sudden that selfderiding speech of Crispin's had made her aware of its presence and its meaning.

She loved him. That men said his life had not been nice, that he was a soldier of fortune, little better than an adventurer, a man of no worldly weight, were matters of no moment then to her. She loved him. She knew it now because he had mockingly bidden her to think whether Kenneth had cause to be jealous of him, and because upon thinking of it, she found that did Kenneth know what was in her heart, he must have more than cause.

She loved him with that rare love that will urge a woman to the last sacrifice a man may ask; a love that gives and gives, and seeks nothing in return; that impels a woman to follow the man at his bidding, be his way through the world cast in places never so rugged; cleaving to him where all besides shall have abandoned him; and, however dire his lot, asking of God no greater blessing than that of sharing it.

And to such a love as this Crispin was blind - blind to the very possibility of its existence; so blind that he laughed to scorn the idea of a puny milksop being jealous of him. And so, while she sat, her soul all mastered by her discovery, her face white. and still for very awe of it, he to whom this wealth was given, pursued the odious task of wooing her for another.
"You have observed - you must have observed this insensate jealousy," he was saying, "and how do you allay it? You do not. On the contrary, you excite it at every turn. You are exciting it now by having - and I dare swear for no other purpose - lured me to walk with you, to sit here with you and preach your duty to you. And when, through jealousy, he shall have flown to fresh absurdities, shall you regret your conduct and the fruits it has borne? Shall you pity the lad, and by kindness induce him to be wiser? No. You will mock and taunt him into yet worse displays. And through these displays, which are - though you may not have bethought you of it - of your own contriving, you will conclude that he is no fit mate for you, and there will be heart-burnings, and years hence perhaps another Tavern Knight, whose name will not be Crispin Galliard."

She had listened with bent head; indeed, so deeply rapt by her discovery, that she had but heard the half of what he said. Now, of a sudden, she looked up, and meeting his glance:

 

"Is - is it a woman's fault that you are as you are?"

 

"No, it is not. But how does that concern the case of Kenneth?"

 

"It does not. I was but curious. I was not thinking of Kenneth."

He stared at her, dumfounded. Had he been talking of Kenneth to her with such eloquence and such fervour, that she should calmly tell him as he paused that it was not of Kenneth she had been thinking?

"You will think of him, Cynthia?" he begged. "You will bethink you too of what I have said, and by being kinder and more indulgent with this youth you shall make him grow into a man you may take pride in. Deal fairly with him, child, and if anon you find you cannot truly love him, then tell him so. But tell him kindly and frankly, instead of using him as you are doing."

She was silent a moment, and in their poignancy her feelings went very near to anger. Presently:

 

"I would, Sir Crispin, you could hear him talk of you," said she.

 

"He talks ill, not a doubt of it, and like enough he has good cause."

 

"Yet you saved his life."

The words awoke Crispin, the philosopher of love, to realities. He recalled the circumstances of his saving Kenneth, and the price the boy was to pay for that service; and it suddenly came to him that it was wasted breath to plead Kenneth's cause with Cynthia, when by his own future actions he was, himself, more than likely to destroy the boy's every hope of wedding her. The irony of his attitude smote him hard, and he rose abruptly. The sun hung now a round, red globe upon the very brink of the sea. "Hereafter he may have little cause to thank me," muttered he. "Come, Mistress Cynthia, it grows late."

She rose in mechanical obedience, and together they retraced their steps in silence, save for the stray word exchanged at intervals touching matters of no moment.

But he had not advocated Kenneth's cause in vain, for all that he little recked what his real argument had been, what influences he had evoked to urge her to make her peace with the lad. A melancholy listlessness of mind possessed her now. Crispin did not see, never would see, what was in her heart, and it might not be hers to show him. The life that might have signified was not to be lived, and since that was so it seemed to matter little what befell.

It was thus that when on the morrow her father returned to the subject, she showed herself tractable and docile out of her indifference, and to Gregory she appeared not averse to listen to what he had to advance in the boy's favour. Anon Kenneth's own humble pleading, allied to his contrite and sorrowful appearance, were received by her with that same indifference, as also with indifference did she allow him later to kiss her hand and assume the flattering belief that he was rehabilitated in her favour.

But pale grew Mistress Cynthia's cheeks, and sad her soul. Wistful she waxed, sighing at every turn, until it seemed to her - as haply it hath seemed to many a maid - that all her life must she waste in vain sighs over a man who gave no single thought to her.

Joseph's Return

On his side Kenneth strove hard during the days that followed to right himself in her eyes. But so headlong was he in the attempt, and so misguided, that presently he overshot his mark by dropping an unflattering word concerning Crispin, whereby he attributed to the Tavern Knight's influence and example the degenerate change that had of late been wrought in him.

Cynthia's eyes grew hard as he spoke, and had he been wise he had better served his cause by talking in another vein. But love and jealousy had so addled what poor brains the Lord had bestowed upon him, that he floundered on, unmindful of any warning that took not the blunt shape of words. At length, however, she stemmed the flow of invective that his lips poured forth.

"Have I not told you already, Kenneth, that it better becomes a gentleman not to slander the man to whom he owes his life? In fact, that a gentleman would scorn such an action?"

As he had protested before, so did he protest now, that what he had uttered was no slander. And in his rage and mortification at the way she used him, and for which he now bitterly upbraided her, he was very near the point of tears, like the blubbering schoolboy that at heart he was.

"And as for the debt, madam," he cried, striking the oaken table of the hall with his clenched hand, "it is a debt that shall be paid, a debt which this gentleman whom you defend would not permit me to contract until I had promised payment - aye, 'fore George!
- and with interest, for in the payment I may risk my very life."

"I see no interest in that, since you risk nothing more than what you owe him," she answered, with a disdain that brought the impending tears to his eyes. But if he lacked the manliness to restrain them, he possessed at least the shame to turn his back and hide them from her. "But tell me, sir," she added, her curiosity awakened, "if I am to judge, what was the nature of this bargain?"

He was silent for a moment, and took a turn in the hall - mastering himself to speak - his hands clasped behind his back, and his eyes bent towards the polished floor which the evening sunlight, filtered through the gules of the leaded windows, splashed here and there with a crimson stain. She sat in the great leathern chair at the head of the board, and, watching him, waited.

He was debating whether he was bound to secrecy in the matter, and in the end he resolved that he was not. Thereupon, pausing before her, he succinctly told the story Crispin had related to him that night in Worcester - the story of a great wrong, that none but a craven could have left unavenged. He added nothing to it, subtracted nothing from it, but told the tale as it had been told to him on that dreadful night, the memory of which had still power to draw a shudder from him.
Cynthia sat with parted lips and eager eyes, drinking in that touching narrative of suffering that was rather as some romancer's fabrication than a true account of what a living man had undergone. Now with sorrow and pity in her heart and countenance, now with anger and loathing, she listened until he had done, and even when he ceased speaking, and flung himself into the nearest chair, she sat on in silence for a spell.

Then of a sudden she turned a pair of flashing eyes upon the boy, and in tones charged with a scorn ineffable:

"You dare," she cried, "to speak of that man as you do, knowing all this? Knowing what he has suffered, you dare to rail in his absence against those sins to which his misfortunes have driven him? How, think you, would it have fared with you, you fool, had you stood in the shoes of this unfortunate? Had you fallen on your craven knees, and thanked the Lord for allowing you to keep your miserable life? Had you succumbed to the blows of fate with a whine of texts upon your lips? Who are you?" she went on, rising, breathless in her wrath, which caused him to recoil in sheer affright before her. "Who are you, and what are you, that knowing what you know of this man's life, you dare to sit in judgment upon his actions and condemn them? Answer me, you fool!"

But never a word had he wherewith to meet that hail of angry, contemptuous questions. The answer that had been so ready to his lips that night at Worcester, when, in a milder form the Tavern Knight had set him the same question, he dared hot proffer now. The retort that Sir Crispin had not cause enough in the evil of others, which had wrecked his life, to risk the eternal damnation of his soul, he dared no longer utter. Glibly enough had he said to that stern man that which he dared not say now to this sterner beauty. Perhaps it was fear of her that made him dumb, perhaps that at last he knew himself for what he was by contrast with the man whose vices he had so heartily despised a while ago.

Shrinking back before her anger, he racked his shallow mind in vain for a fitting answer. But ere he had found one, a heavy step sounded in the gallery that overlooked the hall, and a moment later Gregory Ashburn descended. His face was ghastly white, and a heavy frown furrowed the space betwixt his brows.

In the fleeting glance she bestowed upon her father, she remarked not the disorder of his countenance; whilst as for Kenneth, he had enough to hold his attention for the time.

 

Gregory's advent set an awkward constraint upon them, nor had he any word to say as he came heavily up the hall.

At the lower end of the long table he paused, and resting his hand upon the board, he seemed on the point of speaking when of a sudden a sound reached him that caused him to draw a sharp breath; it was the rumble of wheels and the crack of a whip.

"It is Joseph!" he cried, in a voice the relief of which was so marked that Cynthia noticed it. And with that exclamation he flung past them, and out through the doorway to meet his brother so opportunely returned.
He reached the terrace steps as the coach pulled up, and the lean figure of Joseph Ashburn emerged from it.

"So, Gregory," he grumbled for greeting, "it was on a fool's errand you sent me, after all. That knave, your messenger, found me in London at last when I had outworn my welcome at Whitehall. But, 'swounds, man," he cried, remarking the pallor, of his brother's face, "what ails thee?"

"I have news for you, Joseph," answered Gregory, in a voice that shook.

 

"It is not Cynthia?" he inquired. "Nay, for there she stands -and her pretty lover by her side. 'Slife, what a coxcomb the lad's grown."

 

And with that he hastened forward to kiss his niece, and congratulate Kenneth upon being restored to her.

"I heard of it, lad, in London," quoth he, a leer upon his sallow face - "the story of how a fire-eater named Galliard befriended you, trussed a parson and a trooper, and dragged you out of jail a short hour before hanging-time."

Kenneth flushed. He felt the sneer in Joseph's, words like a stab. The man's tone implied that another had done for him that which he would not have dared do for himself, and Kenneth felt that this was so said in Cynthia's presence with malicious, purpose.

He was right. Partly it was Joseph's way to be spiteful and venomous whenever chance afforded him the opportunity. Partly he had been particularly soured at present by his recent discomforts, suffered in a cause wherewith he had no, sympathy - that of the union Gregory desired 'twixt Cynthia and Kenneth.

There was an evil smile on his thin lips, and his crooked eyes rested tormentingly upon the young man. A fresh taunt trembled on his viperish tongue, when Gregory plucked at the skirts of his coat, and drew him aside. They entered the chamber where they had held their last interview before Joseph had set out for news of Kenneth. With an air of mystery Gregory closed the door, then turned to face his brother. He stayed him in the act of unbuckling his sword-belt.

"Wait, Joseph!" he cried dramatically. "This is no time to disarm. Keep your sword on your thigh, man; you will need it as you never yet have needed it." He paused, took a deep breath, and hurled the news at his brother. "Roland Marleigh is here." And he sat down like a man exhausted.

Joseph did not start; he did not cry out; he did not so much as change countenance. A slight quiver of the eyelids was the only outward sign he gave of the shock that his brother's announcement had occasioned. The hand that had rested on the buckle of his sword-belt slipped quietly to his side, and he deliberately stepped up to Gregory, his eyes set searchingly upon the pale, flabby face before him. A sudden suspicion darting through his mind, he took his brother by the shoulders and shook him vigorously.

"Gregory, you fool, you have drunk overdeep in my absence."

 

"I have, I have," wailed Gregory, "and, my God, 'twas he was my table-fellow, and set me the example."

"Like enough, like enough," returned Joseph, with a contemptuous laugh. "My poor Gregory, the wine has so fouled your worthless wits at last, that they conjure up phantoms to sit at the table with you. Come, man, what petticoat business is this? Bestir yourself, fool."

At that Gregory caught the drift of Joseph's suspicions.

 

"Tis you are the fool," he retorted angrily, springing to his feet, and towering above his brother.

"It was no ghost sat with me, but Roland Marleigh, himself, in the flesh, and strangely changed by time. So changed that I knew him not, nor should I know him now but for that which, not ten minutes ago, I overheard."

His earnestness was too impressive, his sanity too obvious, and Joseph's suspicions were all scattered before it.

 

He caught Gregory's wrist in a grip that made him wince, and forced him back into his seat.

 

"Gadslife, man, what is it you mean?" he demanded through set teeth. "Tell me."

And forthwith Gregory told him of the manner of Kenneth's coming to Sheringham and to Castle Marleigh, accompanied by one Crispin Galliard, the same that had been known for his mad exploits in the late wars as "rakehelly Galliard," and that was now known to the malignants as "The Tavern Knight" for his debauched habits. Crispin's mention of Roland Marleigh on the night of his arrival now returned vividly to Gregory's mind, and he repeated it, ending with the story that that very evening he had overheard Kenneth telling Cynthia.

"And this Galliard, then, is none other than that pup of insolence, Roland Marleigh, grown into a dog of war?" quoth Joseph.

 

He was calm - singularly calm for one who had heard such news.

"There remains no doubt of it." "And you saw this man day by day, sat with him night by night over your damned sack, and knew him not? Oddswounds, man, where were your eyes?"

"I may have been blind. But he is greatly changed. I would defy you, Joseph, to have recognized him."

 

Joseph sneered, and the flash of his eyes told of the contempt wherein he held his brother's judgment and opinions.

 

"Think not that, Gregory. I have cause enough to remember him," said Joseph, with an unpleasant laugh. Then as suddenly changing his tone for one of eager anxiety:

 

"But the lad, Gregory, does he suspect, think you?"

"Not a whit. In that lies this fellow's diabolical cunning. Learning of Kenneth's relations with us, he seized the opportunity Fate offered him that night at Worcester, and bound the lad on oath to help him when he should demand it, without disclosing the names of those against whom he should require his services. The boy expects at any moment to be bidden to go forth with him upon his mission of revenge, little dreaming that it is here that that tragedy is to be played out."

"This comes of your fine matrimonial projects for Cynthia," muttered Joseph acridly. He laughed his unpleasant laugh again, and for a spell there was silence.

"To think, Gregory," he broke out at last, "that for a fortnight he should have been beneath this roof, and you should have found no means of doing more effectively that which was done too carelessly eighteen years ago."

He spoke as coldly as though the matter were a trivial one. Gregory shuddered and looked at his brother in alarm.

"What now, fool?" cried Joseph, scowling. "Are you as cowardly as you are blind? Damn me, sir, it seems well that I am returned. I'll have no Marleigh plague my old age for me." He paused a moment, then continued in a quieter voice, but one whose ring was sinister beyond words: "Tomorrow I shall find a way to draw this your dog of war to some secluded ground. I have some skill," he pursued, tapping his hilt as he spoke, "besides, you shall be there, Gregory." And he smiled darkly. "Is there no other way?" asked Gregory, in distress.

"There was," answered Joseph. "There was in Parliament. At Whitehall I met a man - one Colonel Pride - a bloodthirsty old Puritan soldier, who would give his right hand to see this Galliard hanged. Galliard, it seems, slew the fellow's son at Worcester. Had I but known," he added