Chapter XIV A Pair of Gloves
When Robin Freemantle left Prue, she ran to the mirror and critically examined her reflection in it.
“What a fright I look!” she exclaimed, “with my hair plastered down and my nose red and swollen. Peggie, I should not be surprised if that man were as disappointed with his bargain as I am with mine.”
“You don’t look much like yourself,” Peggie admitted frankly. “But even as you are, you must be a great deal prettier than the sort of women a highwayman would be used to.”
“Why, Peggie, do you think—do you suppose Robin has women-thieves for friends? Pick-pockets, perhaps—or Gipsies! Yet he looks like a gentleman. Highwaymen are sometimes brave and chivalrous—one hears of their doing generous things—they are not like common malefactors—”
“They get hanged, all the same,” said Peggie unthinkingly.
“Oh! Peggie, you wicked, cruel creature; how dare you say such things!” cried Prue indignantly. “Robin hanged! Never, never! I would rather go to the queen and implore a pardon for him on my knees. Peggie, you saw him yourself. He is handsome, is he not, and dignified? He made me feel very much ashamed of myself; yet I hate him! I would I had never set eyes on him! Do you suppose he despises me, Peggie?”
“I shouldn’t think he would have the impudence!” exclaimed Peggie. “A common adventurer, if no worse.”
“Adventurer, ’tis true, but which of us is not? Am I not an adventuress, Peggie? Aye, and not so very honest a one either. Say he will rob my Lord Bishop of his wig and my Lord Tomnoddy of his purse; what better do I when I buy what I can not pay for, and marry a man condemned to be hanged in order to cheat my creditors. Oh! my dear Peggie, there are many fine folk with their noses in the air, who can not glance into a mirror without seeing the reflection of an adventurer.”
“Not a doubt of it,” said Peggie philosophically. “but most people, when they look in a mirror, see nothing there but what they want to see.”
“Well, what I see is just the reverse of that,” said Prue, casting a dissatisfied glance at her own reflection, as she hurried away to rid herself of her somber dress and release her curls from their unaccustomed bonds. This was hardly accomplished to her satisfaction, when Sir Geoffrey Beaudesert arrived, in a state of great excitement.
“Good morning, fair ladies,” he cried, saluting them with less ceremony than usual. “No need to ask whether you have seen this morning’s Courant.”
“Why not?” inquired Prue innocently.
“Because you look too happy and unconcerned to have heard the disastrous news,” he said, with a portentous air. “I grieve to be a harbinger of misfortune.”
“You alarm us,” cried Prue. “What has happened? Speak!”
“Calm yourself, dearest Prudence, and remember that I will not suffer any harm to come to you.” Sir Geoffrey lowered his voice to a mysterious whisper, “The highwayman you wot of has escaped!”
“Is that all?” said Prue, with a shrug; “I thought you had news for us. We knew that an hour ago.”
“You knew it? How? Has the villain dared—”
“How did we know it?” Peggie interrupted quickly, to prevent a retort from her cousin. “Why, the same way you did,” and she displayed the printed sheet that, adorned with a rude cut of a gallows, gave a minute account of the morning’s executions, adding that the queen’s clemency had been extended to Robin Freemantle, through the influence of powerful friends in certain quarters, and that he had left Newgate with great secrecy late Sunday evening.
Sir Geoffrey was greatly vexed at having his surprise discounted. “I’m glad to find you taking it so unconcernedly,” he observed, looking anything but glad. “I feared that you would be crushed by such a calamity.”
“Did you, indeed, think us bloodthirsty enough to regret the saving of a fellow-creature’s life?” said Prue, with grave reproof. “I hoped that you had a better opinion of our humanity.”
“Humanity,” echoed the baronet, with ill-dissembled irritation. “Such angelic sentiments well become the cruel beauty whose path is strewn with bleeding hearts. But has my dear Prudence no pity to spare for the unhappy swain, condemned to worse than death by Robin, the highwayman’s, unexpected good luck?”
“On the contrary,” laughed Prue, “she congratulates you on your escape; believe me, a far greater piece of luck than Robin’s.”
“Do not jest, dear one, I implore you,” said Sir Geoffrey seriously. “You certainly have not considered the position this miscarriage of justice has placed you in. Let me lay before you the consequences—”
“Pray, do not,” interrupted Prue pettishly. “If I am resigned to the will of Heaven, why persecute me with reasons for rebellion?”
Sir Geoffrey, with his hand upon his heart, bowed to the ground.
“Before such piety, I am dumb,” he said. “Is it permitted to ask if you are reconciled to your creditors as well as to the means you took to rid yourself of them?”
“It is not,” replied Prue with overpowering dignity. “That is my private affair and I do not care to discuss it, even with Sir Geoffrey Beaudesert. By the by, Sir Geoffrey”—with an entire change of tone and manner—“you always know the latest news; do tell us why Mrs. Tewkesbury has gone home to her father, and whether her husband is going to fight a duel or will merely horsewhip her hair-dresser?”
The conversation drifted into safer channels, and Prue was soon her own bright, frivolous, enchanting self. Other guests dropped in; fashion, scandal, and the duchess’ masquerade were discussed, and Prue had a saucy answer for every compliment and a ready laugh for every jest, and beneath her dainty bodice such a tumult of fear and shame and sharp sense of defeat, and withal such strange, swift stabs of something that was not pain, and yet hurt her more than all the other emotions that quickened her pulse and sent the blood surging through her brain.
It was late in the afternoon, and Prue’s guests were making their adieux, when Robin’s messenger came—a rustic-looking youth with a ruddy complexion and a shock of tow-colored hair. He was dressed like the footboy of a prosperous tradesman, and carried an oilskin covered basket—and of a surety bore no resemblance to the crippled beggar who had followed Robin so persistently on his way to the conference in Lincoln’s Inn.
Yet it was the same man.
With an air of dense stupidity, he evaded such questions as James deigned to put to him, and reiterated his petition for a personal interview with Lady Prudence Brooke, for whom he had a message that was to be delivered to her, and to her alone. James, scenting a discreet but persistent dun, bade him wait in the library, and conveyed his request to Prue with the same air of respectful condolence with which he would have announced any other calamity. Although he disapproved of her youth and frivolity, James would have yielded to none in admiration of his beautiful young mistress, whom he had carried in his arms as a baby and conspired with every other member of Lady Drumloch’s household to indulge, spoil and flatter from the first hour that her blue eyes had opened on a world full of her adorers.
“A young man is waiting below, my Lady. He has a message for you which he will not send up. I told him you were engaged, but he said he would wait until you were at leisure.”
“What sort of a young man, James? Does he look as if he came for money?” Prue asked. “You know most of my duns better than I do.”
“He is a stranger to me, my Lady, but it is likely he may be a lawyer’s clerk in disguise.”
“I will see him, James; bring him up here,” she interrupted.
“The hair-dresser is here; shall I tell him to wait?” inquired James.
“No; send him up-stairs. Peggie, go and have your hair dressed first, and by that time I will be ready.”
She was alone when the young man was shown in. “You want to see me?” she said, as soon as the door was shut. “You come to fetch something, do you not?”
“The captain told me—” he began, then stopped and stared mutely at her.
“Well, what did the captain tell you?” she demanded impatiently.
“He told me I should see the most beautiful lady in the whole world, and that I should know her for the Lady Prudence Brooke, without asking her name,” said the lad.
“Your captain is a fool!” cried Prue. But, try as hard as she might to look indignant, she blushed divinely and a furtive smile played hide-and-seek among her dimples. Of all Prue’s many charms there was none to equal her smile. It was, perhaps, on that account that she smiled often and so maintained a reputation for good-nature that lured many an unsuspecting victim into disaster.
“That he is!” cried the messenger heartily. “For he said he’d done this beautiful lady a great injury, but for all that he would trust his life—and more than that—in her hands. Can any man be a worse fool than to trust a woman so far as that?”
“Said he that, in very truth?” asked Prue, turning very pale.
“Aye, and other things just as foolish,” said the man, with the same stupid air of rusticity. “Will it please your ladyship to give me what the captain left with you?”
She brought out the white silken packet from its hiding-place among the laces of her bodice, and held it out to him. “Tell your captain from me,” she said disdainfully, “that I scarce know which is the greater fool—he or his messenger.”
The man laughed very heartily, and having bestowed the packet safely, opened his basket and took out a parcel and a letter. “The captain bade me present these to your ladyship,” he said, and was bowing himself out, when she stopped him hurriedly.
“I forget the captain’s address,” she said; “I might want to—to send a message to him.”
“Any time your ladyship wants to send to him, a word to Steve Larkyn, at Pip’s Coffee-house, Essex Street, Strand, will find your ladyship’s humble servant, who will be most honored by any commands you lay upon him,” said the man. And before she could speak again, had disappeared.
Prue opened the parcel, which contained a long, narrow box of perfumed wood, lined with pink sarsenet. The next moment, she was flying up-stairs, two at a time, in her haste to display the contents to her cousin.
“Look, Peggie, did you ever see anything half so lovely?” she cried, holding out for her inspection a pair of long silk gloves as filmy as a cobweb and exquisitely embroidered with seed-pearls.
Peggie dared not move her head, for the coiffeur was busy with his tongs, but she rolled her eyes round until she saw the gloves, and then rolled them up as far as they would go to emphasize her one word of admiration, “Incomparable!”
Prue drew on one of the gloves. It was so elastic, and yet so clinging, that it clasped her slender fingers like another skin, giving them even a more tapering and delicate appearance than usual. She did not open her letter until she was alone in her own room, and then, tearing off the cover with more eagerness than she would have cared to own, found nothing inside but ten crisp, new Bank of England notes for one hundred pounds each.
She dropped them as though they had been so many adders, and a flush of anger rose to her cheek. “I suppose he has been waylaying and robbing some one!” she said half-aloud, “and hugs himself to think he can buy me with stolen money! Oh! he is just as base as the rest—”
There was a movement in the other room, so Prue snatched up the bank-notes and crumpled them into her jewel-box. Not even to Peggie did she wish to confide this fresh instance of Robin’s turpitude.