Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/416

396 ply. I was to tell you that he waited for you in Christ His court."

"Then will he wait for aye," said the man who leaned so heavily against the door. "Or till Christ beckons in Iscariot."

They looked at him, thinking his mind distraught, not wondering that it should be so. He read their thought and smiled, but his eyes, that smiled not, met Arden's.

"Great God!" cried the latter, shrank back against the table and put out a shaking hand.

Slowly Ferne left the support of the wood and straightened his racked frame until he stood erect, a figure yet graceful, yet stately, but pathetic and terrible, bearing as it did deep marks of Spanish hatred. The face was ghastly in its gleaming pallor, in its effect of a beautiful mask fitted to tragedy too utter for aught but stillness. He wore no doublet, and his shirt was torn and stained with blood, but in last and subtlest mockery De Guardiola had restored to him his sword. He drew it now, held the blade across his knee, and with one effort of all his strength broke the steel in twain, then threw the pieces from him, and turned his sunken eyes upon the Admiral. "I beg the shortest shrift that you may give," he said. "It was I who, when they tormented me, told them all. Hang me now, John Nevil, in the starlight."

The Admiral's lips moved, but there came from them no sound, nor was there sound in the cabin of the Mere Honour. Not the Cygnet nor the Phoenix was more quiet far away, far below, on the gray levels of the sea. At last a voice—Ambrose Wynch's—broke the silence that had grown too great to bear. "It was Francis Sark," he said, and again, monotonously, "It was Francis Sark—it was Francis Sark." Another swore with a great oath, Tis as the boy says—they've crazed him with their torments!" Humphrey Carewe, a silent and a dogged man, who wore not his heart upon his sleeve, broke into a passionate cry: "Sir Mortimer Ferne! Sir Mortimer Ferne!"

To them all it seemed that the name broke the spell that was upon them. The name stood for very much. Carewe's outcry called up a cloud of witnesses—the deeds of a man's lifetime—and marshalled them against this monstrous accusation of a sick and whirling hour. "You know not what you say!" spoke Nevil, harshly. "Good and evil are blent in you as in all men, but God used no traitorous stuff in your making! Rest now,—speak to us to-morrow!"

Again he would have advanced, but the man at the door waved him back, smiled once more with his lips alone. "Ah, you all are dear to me! But do you know I prefer your hatred to your love. Give me your hatred and let me go. I am not mad nor do I lie to you Before the sunset, when I had borne torment through the day, I bore it no longer. They loosed me and dashed water in my face, and Luiz de Guardiola said over to me the words that I had spoken. Then he went forth and laid his snares And so Robert Baldry is lost, he and a hundred men besides? And Spaniards coming down the river took the Cygnet because they knew the word of the night?" A spasm distorted the masklike features, but in a moment it was gone. "I should be a madman," he said, "for once I walked before you with a high head and a proud heart. It seems that I knew not myself Now, John Nevil, enact Drake and send me to join Thomas Doughty!"

The Admiral answered not where he stood, covering his eyes with his hand.

"But Francis Sark—" began Wynch, in a shaking voice.

"I know naught of Francis Sark," Ferne replied. "As I have said so I did. I ask no other court than this, no farther mercy than my present death John Nevil, for the sake of all that's dead and gone forever, I pray you to keep me here no longer!"

He staggered as he spoke and put his hand to his head. "Mortimer, Mortimer, Mortimer!" cried the Admiral. "Oh, my God, let this dream pass!"

"Why, the matter needs not God," said Ferne, and laughed. "I am a traitor, am I not? Then do to me what was done to Thomas Doughty. Only hasten, for dead men wait to clutch me, and your looks do sear my very brain."

Again he reeled. With a cry Robin-a-dale sprang toward him. Arden, too, was there in time to support the sinking figure and guide it to the seat he had