The Maid-At-Arms | Page 7

Ashby Farms, Helen of Ormond, Royal
Maid-at-Arms!"
Memory was stirring at last, and the gray legend grew from the past,
how a maid, Helen of Ormond, for love of her cousin, held prisoner in
his own house at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, sheared off her hair, clothed her
limbs in steel, and rode away to seek him; and how she came to the
house at Ashby and rode straight into the gateway, forcing her horse to
the great hall where her lover lay, and flung him, all in chains, across
her saddle-bow, riding like a demon to freedom through the Desmonds,
his enemies. Ah! now my throat was aching with the memory of the
song, and of that strange line I never understood--"Wearing the
ghost-ring!"--and, of themselves, the words grew and died, formed on
my silent lips:
"This for the deed she did at Ashby Farms, Helen of Ormond, Royal
Maid-at-Arms!
"Though for all time the lords of Ormond be Butlers to Majesty, Yet
shall new honors fall upon her Who, armored, rode for love to Ashby
Farms; Let this her title be: A Maid-at-Arms!
"Serene mid love's alarms, For all time shall the Maids-at-Arms,
Wearing the ghost-ring, triumph with their constancy. And sweetly
conquer with a sigh And vanquish with a tear Captains a trembling
world might fear.
"This for the deed she did at Ashby Farms, Helen of Ormond, Royal
Maid-at-Arms!"
Staring at the picture, lips quivering with the soundless words, such
wretched loneliness came over me that a dryness in my throat set me
gulping, and I groped my way back to the settle by the fireplace and sat
down heavily in homesick solitude.

[Illustration: "I SAT DOWN HEAVILY IN HOMESICK
SOLITUDE".]
Then hate came, a quick hatred for these Northern skies, and these
strangers of the North who dared claim kin with me, to lure me
northward with false offer of council and mockery of hospitality.
I was on my feet again in a flash, hot with anger, ready with insult to
meet insult, for I meant to go ere I had greeted my host--an insult,
indeed, and a deadly one among us. Furious, I bent to snatch my rifle
from the settle where it lay, and, as I flung it to my shoulder, wheeling
to go, my eyes fell upon a figure stealing down the stairway from above,
a woman in flowered silk, bare of throat and elbow, fingers scarcely
touching the banisters as she moved.
She hesitated, one foot poised for the step below; then it fell noiselessly,
and she stood before me.
Anger died out under the level beauty of her gaze. I bowed, just as I
caught a trace of mockery in the mouth's scarlet curve, and bowed the
lower for it, too, straightening slowly to the dignity her mischievous
eyes seemed to flout; and her lips, too, defied me, all silently--nay, in
every limb and from every finger-tip she seemed to flout me, and the
slow, deep courtesy she made me was too slow and far too low, and her
recovery a marvel of plastic malice.
"My cousin Ormond?" she lisped;--"I am Dorothy Varick."
We measured each other for a moment in silence.
There was a trace of powder on her bright hair, like a mist of snow on
gold; her gown's yoke was torn, for all its richness, and a wisp of lace
in rags fell, clouding the delicate half-sleeve of China silk.
Her face, colored like palest ivory with rose, was no doll's face, for all
its symmetry and a forgotten patch to balance the dimple in her
rounded chin; it was even noble in a sense, and, if too chaste for
sensuous beauty, yet touched with a strange and pensive sweetness, like

'witched marble waking into flesh.
Suddenly a voice came from above: "Dorothy, come here!"
My cousin frowned, glanced at me, then laughed.
"Dorothy, I want my watch!" repeated the voice.
Still looking at me, my cousin slowly drew from her bosom a huge,
jewelled watch, and displayed it for my inspection.
"We were matching mint-dates with shillings for father's watch; I won
it," she observed.
"Dorothy!" insisted the voice.
"Oh, la!" she cried, impatiently, "will you hush?"
"No, I won't!"
"Then our cousin Ormond will come up-stairs and give you what Paddy
gave the kettle-drum--won't you?" she added, raising her eyes to me.
"And what was that?" I asked, astonished.
Somebody on the landing above went off into fits of laughter; and, as I
reddened, my cousin Dorothy, too, began to laugh, showing an edge of
small, white teeth under the red lip's line.
"Are you vexed because we laugh?" she asked.
My tongue stung with a retort, but I stood silent. These Varicks might
forget their manners, but I might not forget mine.
She honored me with a smile, sweeping