The Sword of Gideon. John Bloundelle-Burton

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СКАЧАТЬ star or-"

      "Or?"

      "She may lead to your undoing. Listen again."

      CHAPTER II

      Had there been any onlooker or any listener at that interview now taking place in the old house at Parson's Green, either the eyes of the one or the ears of the other could not have failed to be impressed by what they saw or heard.

      Above all, no observer could have failed to be impressed by the character of the elder man, Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough and Monmouth, who, although so outwardly calm, was in truth all fire within.

      For this man, who was now forty-seven years of age, had led-and was still to lead for another thirty years-a life more wild and stirring than are the dreams of ordinary men. As a boy he had seen service at sea against the Tripoli corsairs, he had next fought at Tangiers, and, on the death of Charles II., had been the most violent antagonist of the Papist King James. An exile next in Holland, he had proposed to the Prince of Orange the very scheme which, when eventually adopted, placed that ungracious personage on the English throne, yet, at the time, he had received nothing but snubs for his pains. He had, after this, escaped shipwreck by a miracle, and, later, lay a political prisoner in the Tower, from which he emerged to become not long afterwards Governor of Jamaica. In days still to come he was to capture Barcelona by a scheme which his allies considered to be, when it was first proposed to them, the dream of a maniac; he was to rescue beautiful duchesses and interesting nuns and other religieuses from the violence of the people, to be then sent back to England as a man haunted by chimeras, next to be given the command of a regiment, to be made a Knight of the Garter, and to be appointed an Ambassador. Nor was this all. He flew from capital to capital as other men made trips from Middlesex to Surrey; one of his principal amusements was planting the seeds and pruning the trees in his garden with his own hands; he would buy his own provisions and cook them himself in his beautiful villa, and he was for many years married to a young and lovely wife, who had been a public singer, and whom he never acknowledged until his death was close at hand.

      As still Lord Peterborough foraged among the mass of papers on the table, turning over one after the other, and sometimes half a dozen together, Bevill Bracton recognised that he was seeking for some particular scroll or document amidst the confused heap.

      "What is it, my lord?" the young man asked. "Can I assist you?"

      "Nay. If I cannot find what I want for myself, 'tis very certain none can do it for me. Ah!" he suddenly exclaimed, pouncing down like an eagle on a large, square piece of paper which was undoubtedly a letter. "Ah! here 'tis. A letter from the woman who is to give you your chance."

      "I protest I do not comprehend-"

      "You will do so in time. Bevill," his lordship went on, "do you remember some ten years ago, before you got your colours in the Cuirassiers and, consequently, before you lost them, a little child who played about out there?" and the Earl's eyes were directed towards the great tulip tree on the lawn.

      "Why, yes, in very truth I do. I played with her oft, though being several years older than she. A child with large, grey eyes fringed with dark lashes; a girl who promised to be more than ordinary tall some day; one well-favoured too. I do recall her very well. She was the child of a friend of yours, and her name was-was-Sophia, was it now? – or Susan? Or-"

      "Neither; her name was Sylvia, and is so still-Sylvia Thorne."

      "Sylvia Thorne-ay, that is it. She promised to become passing fair."

      "She is passing fair-or was, when I saw her last, two years ago. She is not vastly altered if I may judge by this," and Lord Peterborough went to a cabinet standing by one of the windows and, after opening a drawer, came back holding in his hand a miniature.

      "Regard her," he said to Bracton, as he handed him the miniature; "learn to know what Sylvia Thorne is like. Learn to know the form and features of the woman who may lead to restoring you to all you would have, or-you are brave, so I may say it-send you to your doom."

      "Why," Bracton exclaimed while looking at the miniature and, in actual fact, scarce hearing Lord Peterborough's words, so occupied was he, "she is beautiful. Tall, stately, queen-like, lovely. Can that little child have grown to this in ten years?"

      In absolute fact the encomiums the young man passed upon the form and features that met his eye were well deserved.

      The miniature, a large one, displayed a full, or almost full length portrait of a young woman of striking beauty. It depicted a young woman whose head was not yet disfigured by any wig, so that the dark chestnut hair, in which there was now and again a glint of that ruddy gold such as the old Venetians loved to paint, waved free and unconfined above her forehead. And the eyes were as Bevill Bracton recalled them, grey, and shrouded with long dark lashes. Only, now, they were the eyes of a woman, or one who was close on the threshold of womanhood, and not those of a little child; while a straight, small nose and a small mouth on which there lurked a smile that had in it something of gravity, if not of sadness, completed the picture. As for her form, she was indeed "more than common tall," and, since there was no suspicion of hoop beneath the rich black velvet dress she wore, Bracton supposed that it was donned for some ball or festival.

      "She is beautiful!" he exclaimed again. "Beautiful!"

      "Ay, and good and true," Lord Peterborough said. "Look deep into those eyes and see if any lie is hidden therein; look on those lips and ponder if they are highroads through which falsehood is like to pass."

      "It is impossible. If the eyes are the windows of the soul, as poets say, then truth, and naught but truth, shelters behind them. And this is Sylvia Thorne But still-still-I do not comprehend. How shall she bring me before my Lord Marlborough? How advance my hopes and desires? Stands she so high that she has power with him?"

      "She is a prisoner of France."

      "What? She, this beautiful girl, she a prisoner of France, of chivalrous France, for chivalrous France is, though our eternal foe?"

      "Yes, in company with some thousands of others, mostly Walloons-muddy Hollanders all-and mighty few English, if any. She is shut up in Liége, and the whole bishopric of Liége is in the hands of France under the command of De Boufflers."

      "What does she there-she, this handsome English girl, in a town of Flanders now possessed by the French-she whom, I take it, since now I begin to comprehend-and very well I do! – I am to rescue?"

      "One question is best answered at a time. Martin Thorne, her father, was my oldest friend. When James mounted the throne of England he, like your father and myself, was one of those honest adherents of the Stuarts who could not abide the practices James put in motion. He himself had been in exile with Charles and James while Cromwell lived, and he, again like your father, went into exile when James became a Papist."

      "My father never returned from abroad," Bevill remarked.

      "I know-I know. But Thorne returned only to go abroad again. Your father was, however, well to do. Thorne was not so. When a young exile during Cromwell's rule he had been in Liége, in a great merchant's house, since it was necessary he should find the means whereby to live. When he returned to Liége twenty-six years afterwards he had some means, and he became on this second occasion a merchant himself."

      "I begin to understand."

      "He thrived exceedingly. 'Tis true England was almost always at war with France, but war is good for commerce. Thorne profited by this state of affairs, and so grew rich. Sylvia is rich now, but the French hold Liége. She would escape from that city."

      "Will СКАЧАТЬ