Beau Brocade, Baroness Emmuska Orczy [great book club books TXT] 📗

Duke very gently raised her to her feet.

“Nay, fair lady… I pray you rise,” he said respectfully. “Odd’s my life! but ‘tis not beauty’s place to kneel…There! there!” he added, leading her to a chair and sitting beside her, “you know how to plead a cause; will you deign to confide somewhat more fully in your humble servant? We owe your family some reparation at any rate, and you some compensation for the sorrow you have endured.”

And speaking very low at first, then gradually gaining confidence, Patience began to relate the history of the past few days, the treachery, of which she had been a victim, the heroic self-sacrifice of the man who was about to lay down his life because of his devotion to her and to her cause.

His Highness listened quietly and very attentively, whilst she, wrapped up in the bitter joy of memory, lived through these last brief and happy days all over again. Even before she had finished, he had sent word to the Sergeant to bring both his other prisoners before him at once.

Sir Humphrey and Jack Bathurst were actually in the room before Patience had quite completed her narrative. Bathurst ill and pale, but with that strange air of aloofness still clinging about his whole person. He seemed scarce to live, for his mind was far away in the land of dreams, dwelling on that last exquisite memory of his beautiful white rose lying passive in his arms, the memory of that first and last, divinely passionate kiss.

The Duke looked up when the prisoners entered the room; although he knew neither of them by sight, he had no need to ask whose cause the beautiful girl beside him had been pleading so earnestly.

“What do you wish to say, sir?” he said, addressing Sir Humphrey Challoner first. “You are no doubt aware of her ladyship’s grievances against you. They are outside my province, and unfortunately outside the province of our country’s justice. But I would wish to know why you should have pursued the Earl of Stretton and that gentleman, your fellow-prisoner, with so much hatred and malice.”

“I have neither hatred nor malice against the Earl of Stretton,” replied Sir Humphrey, with a shrug of the shoulders, “but no doubt her ladyship would wish to arouse your Royal Highness’s sympathy for a notorious scoundrel. That gentleman is none other than Beau Brocade, the most noted footpad and most consummate thief that ever haunted Brassing Moor.”

The Duke of Cumberland looked with some surprise, not altogether unmixed with kindliness, at the slim, youthful figure of the most notorious highwayman in England. He felt all a soldier’s keen delight in the proud bearing of the man, the straight, clean limbs, the upright, gallant carriage of the head, which neither physical pain nor adverse circumstances had taught how to bend.

Then he remembered Lady Patience’s enthusiastic narrative, and said, smiling indulgently,—

“Odd’s my life! but I did not know gentlemen of the road were so chivalrous!”

“Your Royal Highness…” continued Sir Humphrey.

“Silence, sir!”

Then the Duke rose from his chair, and went up close to Bathurst, who, half-dreaming, had listened to all that was going on around him, but had scarce heard, for he was looking at Patience and thinking only of her.

“Your name, sir?” asked the Duke very kindly, for the look of love akin to worship which illumined Jack Bathurst’s face ahd made a strong appeal to his own manly heart.

“Jack Bathurst,” replied the young man, almost mechanically, and rousing himself with an effort in response to the Duke’s kind words, “formerly captain in the White Dragoons.”

“Bathurst?... Bathurst?” repeated the Duke, not a little puzzled. “Ah, yes!” he added after a slight pause, “who was condemned and cashiered for striking his superior officer after a quarrel.”

“The same your Royal Highness.”

“‘Twas Colonel Otway, who, we found out afterwards, was a scoundrel, a liar, and a cheat,” said His Highness with sudden eager enthusiasm, “and fully deserving the punishment you, sir, had been brave enough to give him.”

“Aye! he deserved all he got,” replied Jack, with a wistful sigh and smile, “I’ll take my oath of that.”

“But… I remember now,” continued the Duke, “a tardy reparation was to have been offered you, sir… but you were nowhere to be found.”

“I’d become a scoundrel myself by then, and moneyless, friendless, disgraced, had taken to the road, like many another broken gentleman.”

“Then take to the field now, man,” exclaimed His Highness, gaily. “We want good soldiers and gallant gentlemen such as you, and your country still owes you reparation. You shall come with me, and in the glorious future which I predict for you, England shall forget your past.”

He extended a kindly hand to Bathurst, who, still dreaming, still not quite realising what had happened, instinctively bent the knee in gratitude.

Chapter XXXVIII

The Joy of Re-union

On the green outside, the crowd of village folk were shouting themselves hoarse,—

“Three cheers for the Duke of Cumberland!”

Already the news had gone the round that Beau Brocade, the highwayman, had been granted a special pardon by His Royal Highness.

John Stich, half crazy with joy, was tossing his cap in the air, and in the fulness of his heart was stealing a few kisses from Mistress Betty’s pretty mouth.

The appearance of Sir Humphrey Challoner in the porch of the Royal George, looking as black as thunder and followed by his obsequious familiar, Master Mittachip, was the signal for much merriment and some quickly-suppressed chaff.

“Stand aside, you fool!” quoth Sir Humphrey, pushing Jock Miggs roughly out of his way.

“Nay, stand aside all of ye!” admonished John Stich, solemnly, “and mind if any of ye’ve got any turnips about … by gy! ...”

The Squire of Hartington raised his riding-crop menancingly.

“You dare!” he muttered.

But Mistress Betty interposed her pretty person ‘twixt her lover and his Honour’s wrath.

“Saving your presence, sir,” she said pertly, “my John was only going to tell the lads to keep their turnips for this old scarecrow.”

And laughing all over her dimpled little face she pointed to Master Mittachip, who was clinging terrified to Sir Humphrey’s coat-tails.

“Sir Humphrey…” he murmured anxiously, as Betty’s sally was received with a salvo of applause, “good Sir Humphrey … do not let them harm me… I’ve served you faithfully …”

“You’ve served me like a fool,” quoth Sir Humphrey, savagely, shaking himself free from the mealy-mouthed attorney. “Damn you,” he added, as he walked quickly out of the crowd and across the green, “don’t yap at my heels like a frightened cur.”

“God speed your Honour,” shouted Stich after him.

“Think you, John, he’ll come to our wedding?” murmured Betty, saucily, at which honest John hugged her with all his might before the entire company.

“Be gy! I marvel if the old fox’ll go to her ladyship’s and the Captain’s wedding, eh?”

“Lordy! Lordy! these be ‘mazing times,” commented Jock Miggs, vaguely.

But within the small parlour of the Royal George all this noise and gaiety only came as a faint, merry echo.

His Royal Highness had gone, followed by the Sergeant and soldiers, and Bathurst was alone with his beautiful white rose.

“And ‘tis to you I owe my life,” he whispered for the twentieth time, as kneeling at her feet he buried his head in the folds of her gown.

“I have done so little,” she murmured, “one poor prayer… when you had done so much.”

“And now,” he said looking straight into the exquisite depths of her blue eyes, “now you have robbed me of one great happiness, which may never come to me again.”

“Robbed you?... of happiness?...”

“The happiness of dying for you.”

But she looked down at him, smiling now through a mist of happy tears.

“Nay, sir,” she whispered, “and when the Duke has no longer need of you, will you not live ... for me?”

He folded her in his arms, and held her closely, very closely to his strong, brave heart.

“Always at your feet,” he murmured passionately, “and as your humble slave, my dream.”

And as his lips sought her once more, she whispered under her breath,—

“My husband!”

“My dream! My wife!”

Outside the crowd of villagers were shouting lustily,—

“Three cheers for the Duke of Cumberland!”

The End