Simon Dale

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SIMON DALE

by

ANTHONY HOPE

T. Nelson & Sons
London and Edinburgh
Paris: 189, rue Saint-Jacques
Leipzig: 35-37 Koenigstrasse

[Illustration: "It is only that a low laugh echoes distantly in my
ear."]

[Illustration]

CONTENTS

I. The Child of Prophecy 3

II. The Way of Youth 18

III. The Music of the World 33

IV. Cydaria revealed 49

V. I am forbidden to forget 65

VI. An Invitation to Court 84

VII. What came of Honesty 103

VIII. Madness, Magic, and Moonshine 122

IX. Of Gems and Pebbles 140

X. Je Viens, Tu Viens, Il Vient 160

XI. The Gentleman from Calais 180

XII. The Deference of His Grace the Duke 201

XIII. The Meed of Curiosity 222

XIV. The King's Cup 244

XV. M. de Perrencourt whispers 263

XVI. M. de Perrencourt wonders 283

XVII. What befell my Last Guinea 303

XVIII. Some Mighty Silly Business 324

XIX. A Night on the Road 345

XX. The Vicar's Proposition 362

XXI. The Strange Conjuncture of Two Gentlemen 378

XXII. The Device of Lord Carford 396

XXIII. A Pleasant Penitence 414

XXIV. A Comedy before the King 434

XXV. The Mind of M. de Fontelles 451

XXVI. I come Home 468

SIMON DALE

CHAPTER I

THE CHILD OF PROPHECY

One who was in his day a person of great place and consideration, and
has left a name which future generations shall surely repeat so long as
the world may last, found no better rule for a man's life than that he
should incline his mind to move in Charity, rest in Providence, and turn
upon the poles of Truth. This condition, says he, is Heaven upon Earth;
and although what touches truth may better befit the philosopher who
uttered it than the vulgar and unlearned, for whom perhaps it is a
counsel too high and therefore dangerous, what comes before should
surely be graven by each of us on the walls of our hearts. For any man
who lived in the days that I have seen must have found much need of
trust in Providence, and by no whit the less of charity for men. In such
trust and charity I have striven to write: in the like I pray you to
read.

I, Simon Dale, was born on the seventh day of the seventh month in the
year of Our Lord sixteen-hundred-and-forty-seven. The date was good in
that the Divine Number was thrice found in it, but evil in that it fell
on a time of sore trouble both for the nation and for our own house;
when men had begun to go about saying that if the King would not keep
his promises it was likely that he would keep his head as little; when
they who had fought for freedom were suspecting that victory had brought
new tyrants; when the Vicar was put out of his cure; and my father,
having trusted the King first, the Parliament afterwards, and at last
neither the one nor the other, had lost the greater part of his
substance, and fallen from wealth to straitened means: such is the
common reward of an honest patriotism wedded to an open mind. However,
the date, good or bad, was none of my doing, nor indeed, folks
whispered, much of my parents' either, seeing that destiny overruled the
affair, and Betty Nasroth, the wise woman, announced its imminence more
than a year beforehand. For she predicted the birth, on the very day
whereon I came into the world, within a mile of the parish church, of a
male child who--and the utterance certainly had a lofty sound about
it--should love where the King loved, know what the King hid, and drink
of the King's cup. Now, inasmuch as none lived within the limits named
by Betty Nasroth, save on the one side sundry humble labourers, whose
progeny could expect no such fate, and on the other my Lord and Lady
Quinton, who were wedded but a month before my birthday, the prophecy
was fully as pointed as it had any need to be, and caused to my parents
no small questionings. It was the third clause or term of the prediction
that gave most concern alike to my mother and to my father; to my
mother, because, although of discreet mind and a sound Churchwoman, she
was from her earliest years a Rechabite, and had never heard of a King
who drank water; and to my father by reason of his decayed estate, which
made it impossible for him to contrive how properly to fit me for my
predestined company. "A man should not drink the King's wine without
giving the King as good," my father reflected ruefully. Meanwhile I,
troubling not at all about the matter, was content to prove Betty right
in point of the date, and, leaving the rest to the future, achieved this
triumph for her most punctually. Whatsoever may await a man on his way
through the world, he can hardly begin life better than by keeping his
faith with a lady.

She was a strange old woman, this Betty Nasroth, and would likely enough
have fared badly in the time of the King's father. Now there was bigger
game than witches afoot, and nothing worse befell her than the scowls of
her neighbours and the frightened mockery of children. She made free
reply with curses and dark mutterings, but me she loved as being the
child of her vision, and all the more because, encountering her as I
rode in my mother's arms, I did not cry, but held out my hands, crowing
and struggling to get to her; whereat suddenly, and to my mother's great
terror, she exclaimed: "Thou see'st, Satan!" and fell to weeping, a
thing which, as every woman in the parish knew, a person absolutely
possessed by the Evil One can by no means accomplish (unless, indeed, a
bare three drops squeezed from the left eye may usurp the name of
tears). But my mother shrank away from her and would not allow her to
touch me; nor was it until I had grown older and ran about the village
alone that the old woman, having tracked me to a lonely spot, took me in
her arms, mumbled over my head some words I did not understand, and
kissed me. That a mole grows on the spot she kissed is but a fable (for
how do the women know where her kiss fell save by where the mole
grows?--and that is to reason poorly), or at the most the purest chance.
Nay, if it were more, I am content; for the mole does me no harm, and
the kiss, as I hope, did Betty some good; off she went straight to the
Vicar (who was living then in the cottage of my Lord Quinton's gardener
and exercising his sacred functions in a secrecy to which the whole
parish was privy) and prayed him to let her partake of the Lord's
Supper: a request that caused great scandal to the neighbours and sore
embarrassment to the Vicar himself, who, being a learned man and deeply
read in demonology, grieved from his heart that the witch did not play
her part better.

"It is," said he to my father, "a monstrous lapse."

"Nay, it is a sign of grace," urged my mother.

"It is," said my father (and I do not know whether he spoke perversely
or in earnest), "a matter of no moment."

Now, being steadfastly determined that my boyhood shall be less tedious
in the telling than it was in the living--for I always longed to be a
man, and hated my green and petticoat-governed days--I will pass
forthwith to the hour when I reached the age of eighteen years. My dear
father was then in Heaven, and old Betty had found, as was believed,
another billet. But my mother lived, and the Vicar, like the King, had
come to his own again: and I was five feet eleven in my stockings, and
there was urgent need that I should set about pushing my way and putting
money in my purse; for our lands had not returned with the King, and
there was no more incoming than would serve to keep my mother and
sisters in the style of gentlewomen.

"And on that matter," observed the Vicar, stroking his nose with his
forefinger, as his habit was in moments of perplexity, "Betty Nasroth's
prophecy is of small service. For the doings on which she touches are
likely to be occasions of expense rather than sources of gain."

"They would be money wasted," said my mother gently, "one and all of
them."

The Vicar looked a little doubtful.

"I will write a sermon on that theme," said he; for this was with him a
favourite way out of an argument. In truth the Vicar loved the prophecy,
as a quiet student often loves a thing that echoes of the world which he
has shunned.

"You must write down for me what the King says to you, Simon," he told
me once.

"Suppose, sir," I suggested mischievously, "that it should not be fit
for your eye?"

"Then write it, Simon," he answered, pinching my ear, "for my
understanding."

It was well enough for the Vicar's whimsical fancy to busy itself with
Betty Nasroth's prophecy, half-believing, half-mocking, never forgetting
nor disregarding; but I, who am, after all, the most concerned, doubt
whether such a dark utterance be a wholesome thing to hang round a young
man's neck. The dreams of youth grow rank enough without such watering.
The prediction was always in my mind, alluring and tantalising as a
teasing girl who puts her pretty face near yours, safe that you dare not
kiss it. What it said I mused on, what it said not I neglected. I
dedicated my idle hours to it, and, not appeased, it invaded my seasons
of business. Rather than seek my own path, I left myself to its will and
hearkened for its whispered orders.

"It was the same," observed my mother sadly, "with a certain cook-maid
of my sister's. It was foretold that she should marry her master."

"And did she not?" cried the Vicar, with ears all pricked-up.

"She changed her service every year," said my mother, "seeking the
likeliest man, until at last none would hire her."

"She should have stayed in her first service," said the Vicar, shaking
his head.

"But her first master had a wife," retorted my mother triumphantly.

"I had one once myself," said the Vicar.

The argument, with which his widowhood supplied the Vicar, was sound and
unanswerable, and it suited well with my humour to learn from my aunt's
cook-maid, and wait patiently on fate. But what avails an argument, be
it ever so sound, against an empty purse? It was declared that I must
seek my fortune; yet on the method of my search some difference arose.

"You must work, Simon," said my sister Lucy, who was betrothed to
Justice Barnard, a young squire of good family and high repute, but
mighty hard on idle vagrants, and free with the stocks for revellers.

"You must pray for guidance," said my sister Mary, who was to wed a
saintly clergyman, a Prebend, too, of the Cathedral.

"There is," said I stoutly, "nothing of such matters in Betty Nasroth's
prophecy."

"They are taken for granted, dear boy," said my mother gently.

The Vicar rubbed his nose.

Yet not these excellent and zealous counsellors proved right, but the
Vicar and I. For had I gone to London, as they urged, instead of abiding
where I was, agreeably to the Vicar's argument and my own inclination,
it is a great question whether the plague would not have proved too
strong for Betty Nasroth, and her prediction gone to lie with me in a
death-pit. As things befell, I lived, hearing only dimly and, as it
were, from afar-off of that great calamity, and of the horrors that
beset the city. For the disease did not come our way, and we moralised
on the sins of the townsfolk with sound bodies and contented minds. We
were happy in our health and in our virtue, and not disinclined to
applaud God's judgment that smote our erring brethren; for too often the
chastisement of one sinner feeds another's pride. Yet the plague had a
hand, and no small one, in that destiny of mine, although it came not
near me; for it brought fresh tenants to those same rooms in the
gardener's cottage where the Vicar had dwelt till the loyal Parliament's
Act proved too hard for the conscience of our Independent minister, and
the Vicar, nothing loth, moved back to his parsonage.

Now I was walking one day, as I had full licence and leave to walk, in
the avenue of Quinton Manor, when I saw, first, what I had (if I am to
tell the truth) come to see, to wit, the figure of young Mistress
Barbara, daintily arrayed in a white summer gown. Barbara was pleased
to hold herself haughtily towards me, for she was an heiress, and of a
house that had not fallen in the world as mine had. Yet we were friends;
for we sparred and rallied, she giving offence and I taking it, she
pardoning my rudeness and I accepting forgiveness; while my lord and my
lady, perhaps thinking me too low for fear and yet high enough for
favour, showed me much kindness; my lord, indeed, would often jest with
me on the great fate foretold me in Betty Nasroth's prophecy.

"Yet," he would say, with a twinkle in his eye, "the King has strange
secrets, and there is some strange wine in his cup, and to love where he
loves----"; but at this point the Vicar, who chanced to be by, twinkled
also, but shifted the conversation to some theme which did not touch the
King, his secrets, his wine, or where he loved.

Thus then I saw, as I say, the slim tall figure, the dark hair, and the
proud eyes of Barbara Quinton; and the eyes were flashing in anger as
their owner turned away from--what I had not looked to see in Barbara's
company. This was another damsel, of lower stature and plumper figure,
dressed full as prettily as Barbara herself, and laughing with most
merry lips and under eyes that half hid themselves in an eclipse of
mirth. When Barbara saw me, she did not, as her custom was, feign not to
see me till I thrust my presence on her, but ran to me at once, crying
very indignantly, "Simon, who is this girl? She has dared to tell me
that my gown is of country make and hangs like an old smock on a
beanpole."

"Mistress Barbara," I answered, "who heeds the make of the gown when the
wearer is of divine make?" I was young then, and did not know that to
compliment herself at the expense of her apparel is not the best way to
please a woman.

"You are silly," said Barbara. "Who is she?"

"The girl," said I, crestfallen, "is, they tell me, from London, and she
lodges with her mother in your gardener's cottage. But I didn't look to
find her here in the avenue."

"You shall not again if I have my way," said Barbara. Then she added
abruptly and sharply, "Why do you look at her?"

Now, it was true that I was looking at the stranger, and on Barbara's
question I looked the harder.

"She is mighty pretty," said I. "Does she not seem so to you, Mistress
Barbara?" And, simple though I was, I spoke not altogether in
simplicity.

"Pretty?" echoed Barbara. "And pray what do you know of prettiness,
Master Simon?"

"What I have learnt at Quinton Manor," I answered, with a bow.

"That doesn't prove her pretty," retorted the angry lady.

"There's more than one way of it," said I discreetly, and I took a step
towards the visitor, who stood some ten yards from us, laughing still
and plucking a flower to pieces in her fingers.

"She isn't known to you?" asked Barbara, perceiving my movement.

"I can remedy that," said I, smiling.

Never since the world began had youth been a more faithful servant to
maid than I to Barbara Quinton. Yet because, if a man lie down, the best
of girls will set her pretty foot on his neck, and also from my love of
a thing that is new, I was thoroughly resolved to accost the gardener's
guest; and my purpose was not altered by Barbara's scornful toss of her
little head as she turned away.

"It is no more than civility," I protested, "to ask after her health,
for, coming from London, she can but just have escaped the plague."

Barbara tossed her head again, declaring plainly her opinion of my
excuse.

"But if you desire me to walk with you----" I began.

"There is nothing I thought of less," she interrupted. "I came here to
be alone."

"My pleasure lies in obeying you," said I, and I stood bareheaded while
Barbara, without another glance at me, walked off towards the house.
Half penitent, yet wholly obstinate, I watched her go; she did not once
look over her shoulder. Had she--but a truce to that. What passed is
enough; with what might have, my story would stretch to the world's end.
I smothered my remorse, and went up to the stranger, bidding her
good-day in my most polite and courtly manner; she smiled, but at what I
knew not. She seemed little more than a child, sixteen years old or
seventeen at the most, yet there was no confusion in her greeting of me.
Indeed, she was most marvellously at her ease, for, on my salute, she
cried, lifting her hands in feigned amazement,

"A man, by my faith; a man in this place!"

Well pleased to be called a man, I bowed again.

"Or at least," she added, "what will be one, if it please Heaven."

"You may live to see it without growing wrinkled," said I, striving to
conceal my annoyance.

"And one that has repartee in him! Oh, marvellous!"

"We do not all lack wit in the country, madame," said I, simpering as I
supposed the Court gallants to simper, "nor, since the plague came to
London, beauty."

"Indeed, it's wonderful," she cried in mock admiration. "Do they teach
such sayings hereabouts, sir?"

"Even so, madame, and from such books as your eyes furnish." And for all
her air of mockery, I was, as I remember, much pleased with this speech.
It had come from some well-thumbed romance, I doubt not. I was always an
eager reader of such silly things.

She curtseyed low, laughing up at me with roguish eyes and mouth.

"Now, surely, sir," she said, "you must be Simon Dale, of whom my host
the gardener speaks?"

"It is my name, madame, at your service. But the gardener has played me
a trick; for now I have nothing to give in exchange for your name."

"Nay, you have a very pretty nosegay in your hand," said she. "I might
be persuaded to barter my name for it."

The nosegay that was in my hand I had gathered and brought for Barbara
Quinton, and I still meant to use it as a peace-offering. But Barbara
had treated me harshly, and the stranger looked longingly at the
nosegay.

"The gardener is a niggard with his flowers," she said with a coaxing
smile.

"To confess the truth," said I, wavering in my purpose, "the nosegay was
plucked for another."

"It will smell the sweeter," she cried, with a laugh. "Nothing gives
flowers such a perfume." And she held out a wonderfully small hand
towards my nosegay.

"Is that a London lesson?" I asked, holding the flowers away from her
grasp.

"It holds good in the country also, sir; wherever, indeed, there is a
man to gather flowers and more than one lady who loves smelling them."

"Well," said I, "the nosegay is yours at the price," and I held it out
to her.

"The price? What, you desire to know my name?"

"Unless, indeed, I may call you one of my own choosing," said I, with a
glance that should have been irresistible.

"Would you use it in speaking of me to Mistress Barbara there? No, I'll
give you a name to call me by. You may call me Cydaria."

"Cydaria! A fine name!"

"It is," said she carelessly, "as good as any other."

"But is there no other to follow it?"

"When did a poet ask two names to head his sonnet? And surely you wanted
mine for a sonnet?"

"So be it, Cydaria," said I.

"So be it, Simon. And is not Cydaria as pretty as Barbaria?"

"It has a strange sound," said I, "but it's well enough."

"And now--the nosegay!"

"I must pay a reckoning for this," I sighed; but since a bargain is a
bargain I gave her the nosegay.

She took it, her face all alight with smiles, and buried her nose in it.
I stood looking at her, caught by her pretty ways and graceful boldness.
Boy though I was, I had been right in telling her that there are many
ways of beauty; here were two to start with, hers and Barbara's. She
looked up and, finding my gaze on her, made a little grimace as though
it were only what she had expected and gave her no more concern than
pleasure. Yet at such a look Barbara would have turned cold and distant
for an hour or more. Cydaria, smiling in scornful indulgence, dropped me
another mocking curtsey, and made as though she would go her way. Yet
she did not go, but stood with her head half-averted, a glance straying
towards me from the corner of her eye, while with her tiny foot she dug
the gravel of the avenue.

"It is a lovely place, this park," said she. "But, indeed, it's often
hard to find the way about it."

I was not backward to take her hint.

"If you had a guide now----" I began.

"Why, yes, if I had a guide, Simon," she whispered gleefully.

"You could find the way, Cydaria, and your guide would be most----"

"Most charitably engaged. But then----" She paused, drooping the corners
of her mouth in sudden despondency.

"But what then?"

"Why then, Mistress Barbara would be alone."

I hesitated. I glanced towards the house. I looked at Cydaria.

"She told me that she wished to be alone," said I.

"No? How did she say it?"

"I will tell you all about that as we go along," said I, and Cydaria
laughed again.

CHAPTER II

THE WAY OF YOUTH

The debate is years old; not indeed quite so old as the world, since
Adam and Eve cannot, for want of opportunity, have fallen out over it,
yet descending to us from unknown antiquity. But it has never been set
at rest by general consent: the quarrel over Passive Obedience is
nothing to it. It seems such a small matter though; for the debate I
mean turns on no greater question than this: may a man who owns
allegiance to one lady justify by any train of reasoning his conduct in
snatching a kiss from another, this other being (for it is important to
have the terms right) not (so far as can be judged) unwilling? I
maintained that he might; to be sure, my position admitted of no other
argument, and, for the most part, it is a man's state which determines
his arguments and not his reasons that induce his state. Barbara
declared that he could not; though, to be sure, it was, as she added
most promptly, no concern of hers; for she cared not whether I were in
love or not, nor how deeply, nor with whom, nor, in a word, anything at
all about the matter. It was an abstract opinion she gave, so far as
love, or what men chose to call such, might be involved; as to
seemliness, she must confess that she had her view, with which, may be,
Mr Dale was not in agreement. The girl at the gardener's cottage must,
she did not doubt, agree wholly with Mr Dale; how otherwise would she
have suffered the kiss in an open space in the park, where anybody might
pass--and where, in fact (by the most perverse chance in the world),
pretty Mistress Barbara herself passed at the moment when the thing
occurred? However, if the matter could ever have had the smallest
interest for her--save in so far as it touched the reputation of the
village and might afford an evil example to the village maidens--it
could have none at all now, seeing that she set out the next day to
London, to take her place as Maid of Honour to Her Royal Highness the
Duchess, and would have as little leisure as inclination to think of Mr
Simon Dale or of how he chose to amuse himself when he believed that
none was watching. Not that she had watched: her presence was the purest
and most unwelcome chance. Yet she could not but be glad to hear that
the girl was soon to go back whence she came, to the great relief (she
was sure) of Madame Dale and of her dear friends Lucy and Mary; to her
love for whom nothing--no, nothing--should make any difference. For the
girl herself she wished no harm, but she conceived that her mother must
be ill at ease concerning her.

It will be allowed that Mistress Barbara had the most of the argument if
not the best. Indeed, I found little to say, except that the village
would be the worse by so much as the Duchess of York was the better for
Mistress Barbara's departure; the civility won me nothing but the
haughtiest curtsey and a taunt.

"Must you rehearse your pretty speeches on me before you venture them on
your friends, sir?" she asked.

"I am at your mercy, Mistress Barbara," I pleaded. "Are we to part
enemies?"

She made me no answer, but I seemed to see a softening in her face as
she turned away towards the window, whence were to be seen the stretch
of the lawn and the park-meadows beyond. I believe that with a little
more coaxing she would have pardoned me, but at the instant, by another
stroke of perversity, a small figure sauntered across the sunny fields.
The fairest sights may sometimes come amiss.

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