And now she spoke as when
The stars sang in their spheres.
—DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
His snowdrop was gazing straight at him from out great, wide eyes, her lips were parted as if she meant to speak, and her hand lay on the arm of her father, good Papa Legros, dressed all in black, and above whose sombre surcoat shone a kindly face almost distorted by its expression of anxiety and from which ran streams of perspiration which the poor man wiped off ever and anon with a bright-coloured handkerchief.
With a mechanical movement Michael passed his hand across his eyes. His brain returned from its long wandering in the realm of dreamland; the light ceased to flicker, the sea of grinning faces receded into the darkness. Michael now only saw Rose Marie. The devilish visions had been transformed into peaceful dreams of Heaven.
Though his mind—still feverish and numb—refused to believe that she was really there, yet his eyes took in every tiny detail of the golden picture which they saw.
There were the tiny curls that, ever rebellious, would break through the confines of the lace cap and flutter tantalisingly round her ear; there was the little mole just above the lip, which gave the perfect mouth, that otherwise had been accounted too serious, an exquisite air of piquancy; there was the delicate rise of the throat, peeping above the lace kerchief, a god-like snare wherein he had once dared to hope that his lips would be entrapped.
And all the while that Michael looked on his beloved, Daniel Pye was busy with his perjuries, and Master Oates stood up to corroborate these. Once or twice the Lord Chief Justice had turned to the accused, expecting a contradiction of such obvious lies. But the only word that ever escaped the latter's lips came mechanically as from one who had learned a lesson by heart.
"I am guilty—what these men say is true."
Once the Attorney-General had spoken quite irritably:
"The prisoner's attitude, my lord," he said, "is one of contempt for this Court. He must be made to answer more fully the charges that are preferred against him."
"Then 'tis for you to question him," retorted the Lord Chief Justice drily.
Emboldened by Michael's attitude of passive acquiescence, Pye and Oates surpassed themselves. Their story gained in detail, in circumstantial broiderings under cross-examination. Once or twice their imagination and impudence carrying them too far, they palpably contradicted one another. A man's voice then rose from the midst of the spectators: "These men are accursed liars!"
The voice was authoritative and loud, as of a man accustomed to be obeyed. And no one cried "Hush!" to the remark, since it came from royal lips.
After an examination which we know lasted nearly an hour, the two witnesses were dismissed. They left the great hall together and walked with an assured air of satisfaction across to the small room beyond the bench, where they were bidden to wait in case they were required again. To a sanely judicial mind the only point which would present itself in the evidence of these miscreants as being uncontradicted and unquestionably established by them, was that the treasonable converse between the accused and a minister of the King of France did take place at the tavern of the "Rat Mort" in Paris in the evening of the nineteenth day of April of this same year.
Beyond that it was a tangle which Michael, had he chosen, could easily have unravelled in his own favour. But this he did not mean to do; he was only anxious for the end.
While the lying informer spoke of that same nineteenth day of April his thoughts flew back on the sable wings of a dead past to all the memories that clung to that day.
The religious ceremony at St. Gervais, the dance on the dusty floor of the tailor's back shop, the ride through the darkness along the lonely road with his beloved clinging to him, the while his arm ached with an exquisite sense of numbness under the delicious burden which it bore.
These men spoke of the evening of that nineteenth day of April! Oh, the remembrance of every hour, every minute which the date recalled!
The darkened room in the old inn, the streaks of moonbeam which kissed the gold of her hair, the April breeze which caused her curls to flutter, and the sighing of the reeds and young acacia boughs like spirit whisperings that presaged impending doom!
Her voice, her eyes, so tender, for that one brief day! Would not the remembrance of it be graven on his heart when after so much joy, such hopeless abnegation, it would cease to beat at last.
Of a truth can you wonder that Michael was impatient for the end? He had seen his snowdrop through the gossamer veil of a day-dream across the crowded court and the vision had caused him to realise more fully than he had ever done before how impossible life would be without her.
Thank God, that he had pledged his life to his cousin! Thank God, that Rupert had accepted the pledge, and gave in exchange for the worthless trifle, his own loyalty to Rose Marie.
Then why so many parleyings, such long, empty talk, such tortuous questionings? Michael had pleaded guilty and almost asked for death.
Even as with an impatient sigh of intense weariness he had for the twentieth time that day spoken his mechanical "Guilty!" there was general movement amongst the spectators. Imagine a hive of bees swarming round their queen: the women leaned forward clutching their fans, forgetting the heat and the discomfort of those long hours. The men put up spy-glasses the better to see what went on in the centre of the stage, the while a murmur of excitement ran right through the assembly.
Papa Legros was being led by a gorgeously-clad usher in the direction of the bar, opposite to the prisoner, whilst his daughter walked by his side.
Dormant attention had indeed been roused, necks were craned to get a better view of the interesting witnesses.
"She is the wife of my lord of Stowmaries," came in whispers all round the hall, like the swish of the wind through poplar trees.
"What—of the prisoner?"
"No! No! Of the man whom he dispossessed and who will be Lord of Stowmaries again, once this man is hanged."
"She is very young."
"Ay—a girl-wife. 'Tis her whom the accused tried to murder, so that he might offer her blood in sacrifice to the devil."
But this statement obtained little credence now.
"The accused does not look like a wizard, or an emissary of the devil," commented the ladies.
"Yet the girl is there to testify against him."
"That is because she must hate him so. She is the wife of the man whom the accused hath dispossessed. They say she dearly loves her husband, yet did the accused try and steal her from him."
"She will make a handsome Countess of Stowmaries anon," quoth Lord Rochester with his wonted cynicism, and speaking in the ear of his royal master, "What think you, sire?"
"Odd's fish!" retorted Charles Stuart. "If she proved as big a liar as these damnable informers then is there no virtue writ plainly on any woman's face."
There certainly was something infinitely pathetic in the appearance of father and daughter: he in his clothes of deep black, and with the tears of anxiety and perturbation rolling slowly down his cheeks. She fragile and slender, with pale, delicate face and eyes wherein girlish timidity still fought against a woman's resolve.
No wonder that for the moment every unkind comment was hushed. The Countess of Stowmaries—as she was already universally called—seemed to command respect as well as sympathy. With a great show of kindness, the Lord Chief Justice himself spoke directly to the two witnesses, asking their names and quality, as was required for form's sake.
Rose Marie now no longer looked at the accused. She stood beside her father, tall and stately as the water-lilies to which the man who loved her so ardently had once compared her. The mud of the world had left her unsmirched; she carried her head high, for the slimy tendrils of men's unavowable passions, of trickery, of lies and deceit had not reached the high altitude whereon her purity sat enthroned.
Her father was the witness called on behalf of the Crown; he had made his statement on oath, and stood here now to repeat it before all the world. His daughter was his interpreter, since he was unacquainted with the English language.
Her voice was clear and firm as in answer to the questions put to her by the Lord Chief Justice she gave her father's humble name and quality and then her own as Mistress Kestyon, wife of Rupert Kestyon, erstwhile known as my Lord of Stowmaries and Rivaulx.