Red Eve | Page 6

my purpose. Does Grey Dick watch yonder?"
"Ay, behind those willows, arrow on string, and God help him on
whom Dick draws! But what was that word, Eve?"
"One easy to understand," she replied, looking him in the eyes--
"Farewell!"
He shivered as though with the cold, and his face changed.
"An ill birthday greeting, yet I feared it," he muttered huskily, "but why
more now than at any other time?"
"Would you know, Hugh? Well, the story is short, so I'll let it out. Our
great-grandmother, the heiress of the de Cheneys, married twice, did
she not, and from the first husband came the de Cressis, and from the
second the Claverings. But in this way or in that we Claverings got the
lands, or most of them, and you de Cressis, the nobler stock, took to
merchandise. Now since those days you have grown rich with your
fishing fleets, your wool mart, and your ferry dues at Walberswick and
Southwold. We, too, are rich in manors and land, counting our acres by
the thousand, but yet poor, lacking your gold, though yonder
manor"--and she pointed to some towers which rose far away above the
trees upon the high land--"has many mouths to feed. Also the sea has
robbed us at Dunwich, where I was born, taking our great house and
sundry streets that paid us rent, and your market of Southwold has
starved out ours at Blythburgh."
"Well, what has all this to do with you and me, Eve?"
"Much, Hugh, as you should know who have been bred to trade," and

she glanced at his merchant's dress. "Between de Cressi and Clavering
there has been rivalry and feud for three long generations. When we
were children it abated for a while, since your father lent money to
mine, and that is why they suffered us to grow up side by side. But then
they quarrelled about the ferry that we had set in pawn, and your father
asked his gold back again, and, not getting it, took the ferry, which I
have always held a foolish and strife-breeding deed, since from that day
forward the war was open. Therefore, Hugh, if we meet at all it must be
in these frozen reeds or behind the cover of a thicket, like a village slut
and her man."
"I know that well enough, Eve, who have spoken with you but twice in
nine months." And he devoured her beautiful face with hungry eyes.
"But of that word, 'Farewell'----"
"Of that ill word, this, Hugh: I have a new suitor up yonder, a fine
French suitor, a very great lord indeed, whose wealth, I am told, none
can number. From his mother he has the Valley of the Waveney up to
Bungay town--ay, and beyond--and from his father, a whole county in
Normandy. Five French knights ride behind his banner, and with them
ten squires and I know not how many men-at-arms. There is feasting
yonder at the manor, I can tell you. Ere his train leaves us our winter
provender will be done, and we'll have to drink small beer till the wine
ships come from France in spring."
"And what is this lord's name?"
"God's truth, he has several," she answered. "Sir Edmund Acour in
England, and in France the high and puissant Count of Noyon, and in
Italy, near to the city of Venice--for there, too, he has possessions
which came to him through his grandmother--the Seigneur of Cattrina."
"And having so much, does he want you, too, as I have heard, Eve?
And if so, why?"
"So he swears," she answered slowly; "and as for the reason, why, I
suppose you must seek it in my face, which by ill-fortune has pleased
his lordship since first he saw it a month ago. At the least he has asked

me in marriage of my father, who jumped at him like a winter pike, and
so I'm betrothed."
"And do you want him, Eve?"
"Ay, I want him as far as the sun is from the moon or the world from
either. I want him in heaven or beneath the earth, or anywhere away
from me."
At these words a light shone in Hugh's keen grey eyes.
"I'm glad of that, Eve, for I've been told much of this fine fellow--
amongst other things that he is a traitor come here to spy on England.
But should I be a match for him, man to man, Eve?" he asked after a
little pause.
She looked him up and down; then answered:
"I think so, though he is no weakling; but not for him and the five
knights and the ten squires, and my noble father, and my brother, and
the rest. Oh, Hugh, Hugh!" she added bitterly, "cannot you understand