Chapter VII A Wedding-Ring for a Kiss
Robin had been alone half-an-hour or so, when the door was again opened, and another visitor announced.
“Here, Highwayman,” cried the jailer, “a lady wants to see you now. You Knights of the Road are always in favor with the women.”
“I know no women,” said Robin roughly. “Certainly none that would come here to see me.”
“Well, shall this one come in?” demanded the jailer. “I’ll warrant she’s young and pretty, and a real lady, too! She came in a chair!”
“Oh! let her in, let her in. Pray don’t keep a real lady waiting in the passage,” said Robin, who foresaw some begging petition, or, perhaps, the request of some frolicsome damsel for a lock of his hair for her album, or a bequest of the rope that hanged him, for luck! “Be seated, Madam,” he added, as a slender figure, wrapped in a heavy cloak and closely veiled, glided timidly into the cell. “What service can I render you?”
“Can I have a few words alone with you?” murmured the visitor. The jailer, who had been hanging round, curious to see and hear, withdrew, with a laugh and a coarse jest, and locked the door after him.
The lady threw off her veil, revealing the homely features and sparkling eyes of Margaret Moffat.
“You know me not,” she said. “Yet we have met before, Robin Freemantle.”
“I can not believe,” replied Robin gallantly, “that, once seen, you could ever be forgotten by me.”
“Well, possibly you did not see me; one far more attractive engrossed all your attention, and ’tis from her I come, to ask as favor from you, that which many of the highest in the land have offered in vain.”
“You puzzle me greatly,” said Robin. “What favor can any lady desire of a man as good as dead?”
“Why—that’s just where it is—an’ you were not condemned to die, you could do nothing for my lady.”
“My lady! And who is your lady, may I ask?”
“I’ll tell that presently; but first, before I reveal her name, tell me one thing truly. Are you married?”
“Married? No, the Saints be praised! but how can that concern your lady? Does she wish to marry me, perchance?” cried Robin ironically.
“That is just what she does wish,” said Margaret, as demurely as though she had really been the waiting-maid she feigned to be. “And for a token, she sends you this.” And she threw down before him the wallet he had flung into Prue’s lap on Bleakmoor.
He took it up, recognizing it with a whirling brain. The whole scene sprang up before him as under a sudden illumination—the gathering darkness and the falling rain—the old chariot, with its steaming horses and frightened servants—and by the light of his lantern, the lovely face of a girl, with her hood thrown back and a tangle of dark curls against the milky whiteness of her neck. He saw the round, bare arms and tapering hands extended, to show that she had no jewels about her, the roguish smile disclosing the little even teeth and sparkling in the depths of the starry eyes, and for a moment his lips once more brushed her scarlet mouth, and the perfume of her breath again clouded his brain.
Margaret watched him with amusement, as his face disclosed something of the varying emotions, over which amazement predominated.
“Does that surprise you?” she inquired mockingly. “Sure, ’tis no uncommon thing for a man to pay for a kiss with a wedding-ring!”
“There must be some other reason,” he said, more to himself than in reply to her. “That kiss meant nothing to her.”
“Did it mean anything to you?” asked Margaret, beginning to feel interested.
“To me?” His face was suddenly irradiated. “You, who bask in the light of that incomparable loveliness all the time, can never understand what it means to the man who sees it for the first time—and not only sees, but touches!—touches with his unworthy lips that cheek of down—those lips! Ah! how many times since have I felt the thrill of that kiss, and wondered if she could recall it without horror.”
“Well, horror can scarcely be the sentiment you inspired, since she wishes to marry you,” simpered Peggie.
The mist of passion suddenly cleared from his eyes, and he bent on her so steady and penetrating a glance, that her eyes fell, and she waited nervously for his next words to give the cue to his thoughts.
“Ha! she wishes to marry me?” he said slowly. “Is it an honest wish of her own, or is it a trap set by some one else?”
“Oh! indeed, it is entirely her own idea!” cried Margaret eagerly; “not a soul has any suspicion of it but herself and me, and if you refuse, you will not even know her name, and the secret will be buried in your grave.”
“Then give me a reason,” he said, apparently relieved by her unmistakable honesty. “Give me the real reason, for I see this is something more than a mere fine lady’s caprice.”
Margaret felt a little natural embarrassment—the man was so different from what she had expected, that the little plans she had devised on her way to the prison, did not fit into the circumstances.
“In truth Prue—I mean the Lady Prudence—is deeply in debt and much harassed by her creditors, who threaten her with the Fleet, and I know not what beside,” she blurted out. “Now, if she were your wife, her debts would be your debts, and as you, alack, must die on Monday, no one can make your widow pay your debts!”
“So ’tis my widow the Lady Prudence desires to be; not my wife!” said Robin, with a bitter smile.
“What difference does that make?” cried Margaret, greatly relieved at having got over the worst of her mission. “An’ if you think so much of a kiss, I’ll warrant my lady will not refuse one to her husband.”
“Aye, such a kiss as I snatched from her on Bleakmoor, with lips denied and cheek averted. Or such a kiss as she might leave on the face of a dead stranger; as cold as the corpse itself.”
“’Twill be your own fault if you get nothing better than that,” cried Peggie, with a glance that had something of challenge in it. “On Bleakmoor, Lady Prudence had not seen your face; how could she tell you were not some blackavised desperado? There is not a handsome young gallant behind every robber’s mask.”
Robin burst out laughing. “Thanks, sweetheart!” he cried. “I trust my bride-elect has as kind a disposition as her messenger. Yet what does it matter to me?
“‘Be she meeker, kinder than
Turtle-dove or pelican;
If she be not so to me,
What care I how kind she be?’”
His rich voice filled the squalid cell with burst of rollicking melody. “If she be a very Xantippe, I shall not suffer from her temper,” he went on. “And, by the way, I do not yet know the name of the lady who has honored me by the offer of her hand—in widowhood.”
“That I can not tell you, until I know your intentions,” said Margaret. “First, will you marry her?”
“Will I marry her? Surely, she is not accustomed to sue in vain for men’s hearts and hands! They must fall under her feet—as I do—when she but glances at them. Aye, I will marry her, though death himself ties the nuptial knot.”
“That is settled, then—” Peggie was beginning philosophically.
“Settled, perhaps, as far as I am concerned; but what about your lady? Will her caprice last out until you return, think you, or will she be likely to stay in the same mind until to-morrow? ’Tis nothing to her, mayhap, to set a poor prisoner’s brain afire, and bid him welcome death because it brings him five minutes of her company. I may dream myself her husband for a few hours, and forget everything else in the delicious hope of seeing her again; but what of her? By the time you go back to her, she may have changed her mind, or found some less objectionable way of paying her debts!”
“’Tis like enough,” she replied coolly. “You would not be the first she has served in that fashion. You must take your chance of that.”
“I’ll take my chance,” the prisoner acquiesced.
“Very well. Now, will you swear not to reveal the marriage to any one?—unless it be your father-confessor, if you have one.”
“That I will willingly swear. If she can keep the secret herself, it will be safe enough in my grave.”
“Now, I have only one more thing to ask. You must not be offended, but—is Robin Freemantie your true name? I know you ‘Knights of the Road’ do, sometimes, masquerade in name as well as in person, so perhaps you may have another name—not quite so—celebrated?”
“Aha! my lady wants a respectable grave to bury her debts in!” cried Robin, laughing sarcastically. “I am fortunate in being able to satisfy her even in this. I have another name, and a friend who will claim my body after I am hanged, and bury me where my disconsolate widow may, if she wish, raise a monument to commemorate my virtues and her woes.” He wrote the name on a sheet of paper and handed it to her.
“And have you no condition to make?” asked Peggie, rising.
“What condition should I make?” demanded Robin, somewhat sternly. “Will she try to save my life, who only seeks to profit by my death? No! it will be reward enough to hold her hand for five minutes, while the priest makes her my wife; for just so long as I can coax her to keep her carriage waiting! No conditions for me. Yet, stay; I’ll make one that will not hurt her pride or wound her vanity. Tell her I demand that she comes to me, looking her prettiest, as becomes a bride. I’ll feast my eyes upon her loveliness, and if she’ll but kiss me once, I’d thank them if they would take me out and hang me before the kiss had time to grow cold on my lips. Fare-thee-well, sweetheart, since you must go, and thanks for your company. Take my lady back my wallet, and let me first fill it with gold pieces for yourself.”
“No, no!” cried Peggie, not quite able to act up to the character of waiting-woman to the extent of accepting a fee for her mediation. “My lady would be vexed with me, if I took aught from you but your consent to marry her.”
“And this,” he cried, gaily kissing her. “I’ll warrant you know the old saw, ‘Kiss and never tell.’”
“For shame!” she remonstrated, without any great show of indignation, however. “Help me with my cloak and call the jailer, if you please. Alack, my reputation would suffer sadly, if ever this long visit should be heard of outside the walls of Newgate.”
He adjusted her cloak, not forgetting to steal another kiss before she tied the thick veil over her hood. “To-morrow,” she said, as she hurried out after the jailer, “some time in the forenoon.”
As she took her seat in the chair, she laughed softly to herself. “I must be a good actress,” she murmured, “or, maybe, there is not enough difference between an earl’s granddaughter and a waiting-maid to be perceptible to a robber! Odd’s life! he doesn’t know the bride’s name, even now! ’Tis a queer marriage, indeed!”