AND so it came to pass that Peregrine again saw the hall, entered thereto garbed once more in cap and bells. Candour, so he decreed, should be far from his lips, having in his mind the memory of a day now some sixteen years old. It was not for these among whom he should pass his time. Guile, art, cynicism, anything but truth should be used wherewith to fashion the jests, the darts of speech which he should throw abroad. A Jester heedless of applause, of frowns, or smiles, thus he saw himself, wise for the moment in his own conceit.

Here you perceive youth, which sees itself strong to venture, disbelieving the prophecies of age. Yet were it not for venturesome youth we may well believe that little would be attained. The babe, who first totters on unsteady feet, may well lack the qualms, the anxieties of the mother who sees the fall imminent. Had the babe her mental tremors methinks there is no mother’s son of us would learn aught but to crawl.

Peregrine stood by the window in the great hall. He found himself alone. Rain, a thin mist of a rain, fell ceaselessly, insidiously from a leaden sky. The cloyed earth accepted it patiently. There was no joy in the acceptance, no eager thirst as for silver showers streaming downwards. Sodden and satiated it longed for the benign rays of the sun to awaken the half-drowned life within its bosom.

Peregrine looking across the park to the further reaches of the moorland saw it through a grey mist. The outlook accorded well with his mood. It lacked colour, buoyancy. The future appeared as skeleton as the bare branches of the trees flung against the sullen sky. If Nature’s spring were at hand she hid her face well. Mentally he had no glimpse of her, nor looked to have any. A morbid mood for a man you may well say, yet this was Peregrine’s at the moment.

Turning from the window he scanned the hall, his eyes roving from inlaid floor to domed ceiling, from arched doorway to carved fireplace. The daylight was waning. Shadows loomed in the corners, were flung trembling on the walls by the firelight,—tongued flames among great logs. The light caught the blazon of the house of Belisle among the carving of the overmantel.—On a field argent an inescutcheon azure set within an orle of roses gules.

He looked at it thoughtfully, memory astir. As a child the vivid bit of colour had pleased him as it flashed jewel-like in sunshine or firelight from the sombre shadows of the oak. It pleased his eye now no less, though memory pricking touched the old wound anew.

To him in this pensive mood entered a page, a slim lad in blue and silver. Peregrine engrossed in thought heard no sound till:

“Ahem!” coughed the page.

Peregrine started, looked up, met a pair of grey eyes, mischief lurking in their depths, saw a smooth-skinned, square-faced lad, wide-mouthed, with tip-tilted nose.

“Craving your pardon for breaking in upon your meditations,” quoth the lad with mock respect, “but the Lady Isabel desires your presence.”

Peregrine, returning to matters of the moment, experienced a heart beat. Here was his stage call, and his part by no means well-conned as yet. Save at a distance he had not set eyes upon the Lady Isabel since childhood, sole mistress now of the house of Belisle, since the Lady Clare, her mother, had been laid to rest. The Lord Robert de Belisle, her father, was in Gascony with his King subduing a rebellion.

“And she has sent you to demand my presence?” asked Peregrine lazily, his inward tremor well controlled.

“Since I am here,” grinned the boy.

“Where is she?” demanded Peregrine, less desirous of knowing than wishful to gain a moment’s respite.

“In the west chamber among her women,” replied the boy. “She is—weary.” A pause preceded the last word.

Peregrine lifted his tabor from the broad sill of the window.

“Take me to her,” he said.

Crossing the hall and mounting the stairs the boy eyed Peregrine, gave him the close scrutiny of childhood, summed up what he found there, and I fancy found it not amiss for all that it is not usual to pay a vast respect to fools. Peregrine caught the lad’s eye upon him.

“Well, what do you make of me?” he smiled.

The boy flushed scarlet from brow to chin. Having caught a glimpse of the man beneath the motley words halted on his tongue.

“Your name?” asked Peregrine still smiling.

“Antony Philip Delamore,” stuttered the lad. “They call me Pippo.”

“Pippo,” echoed Peregrine thoughtfully. And the boy heard the name pleasantly from his lips.

The stairs mounted they passed along a corridor, paused at an alcove curtain-hung with tapestry. Here Pippo, entering first, held aside the heavy draperies.

“Madam, the Jester awaits your pleasure.”

A voice smooth, flexible, yet holding, one would say, a ring of metal rather than a hint of silkiness, replied:

“Well, let him enter.”

Peregrine stepped across the threshold, and Pippo let the curtain fall behind him.

In the room lighted by candles, a woman sat beside the fireplace. Her dress was of crimson silk, a splash of colour against the darkness of the oak chair, and in the shadows of the room. She was tall and very slight, yet you could not call her thin. Her skin was of ivory whiteness. Her brow, low and broad, was framed in masses of dark hair glinting with vivid red lights. You caught the gleam of pearls among its darkness. Towards the chin the face narrowed sharply. The mouth, subtle-lipped, showed a hint of snowy teeth. The eyes brown, lustrous, with the blue whites of a child’s eyes, looked from beneath level brows towards the curtain.

Peregrine saw her eyes.

With her were her four women,—Mary Chester, the oldest, steady-eyed, smooth-haired, common sense well mingled with devoutness; Leonora Ashton, a well grown girl, built to be the mother of sons, healthy in mind and body alike; Monica Cardew, a willowy slip of a girl, dreamy, with little thought beyond her embroideries and her rosary; and last Brigid Carlisle, square-faced, merry, something boyish. Well-favoured women the first three, each after her own fashion, Brigid alone having no pretension to looks, though a pleasant face you would have found it, yet the beauty of the three maids dimmed beside that of the mistress.

Nature as a rule gives discreetly. Giving features she deems to have done well if she withholds colouring, giving colouring she withholds features. Giving brains she often withholds form, giving form she may pay but scant attention to brains. Of virtue I make no mention seeing it is a gift of grace rather than appertaining solely to Nature. Yet now and again, at rare moments truly, Nature becomes prodigal of her gifts, bestows open-handed. Thus her gifts to Isabel de Belisle. I have given you but the outline, you may fill in the detail, and add thereto that most subtle, elusive, and unaccountable of her gifts,—charm, personality, fascination—call it what you will.

Peregrine, I have told you, saw her eyes. Then remembering her presence bowed low before her.

Isabel scanned him, a quick glance, very comprehensive. Since we have here been dealing with Nature’s gifts we may well see those she has accorded our Jester. A lean-limbed man he was, tall, and very straight. The face, surrounded by the cap half black, half white, was bronzed with sun and open air. The hair hidden beneath it one might well guess to be dark, judging from the slight shadow on shaven lip and chin. The nose was straight, the nostrils sensitive. The eyes, black-lashed, were of an extraordinary blueness. Looking in his face you were aware of vivid colour, and saw that it lay in his eyes. The pupils were very black. The mouth, sensitive as the nostrils, was firm-lipped. The chin, square, was set at a fine angle with the jaw. Seeking for character you would have read determination in the line.

Isabel was not the only woman who scanned him. The four maids had their glances ready,—Mary Chester’s brief but sure; Leonora’s calm, somewhat indifferent; Monica’s swift, timid, eyes falling again to the frame of her embroidery; Brigid’s frank, boyish almost. But Peregrine’s eyes were still upon Isabel.

Isabel looking found novelty. Nor was it merely the novelty in a new-comer, a novelty enhanced by dreary weather, enforced sojourn within doors. In outward form she saw a Jester, good-looking enough, but merely a Jester such as his sire and grandsires before him. Yet for a brief space, swift as the tongued lightning which shoots across the darkened sky, she saw something more than mere fool. And having seen it she perceived in the fool the cloak to a riddle, a riddle perchance worth the solving. Yet she gave no hint of having seen.

“Your name, Sir Jester?” she demanded, her eyes now upon the fire, speaking of set purpose without looking at him, as one may speak to a servant.

“Peregrine, Madam.”

“Peregrine?” she dwelt on the syllables. “A bird?”

“A species of hawk, Madam.”

“Then a bird of prey?”

“Maybe; yet swift of flight, a wanderer.”

“Ah! And were you named for prey, flight, or wanderer?”

Peregrine lifted his shoulders, the merest suspicion of a shrug. “The last, so my mother told me.”

“Yet you have not wandered far, nor are likely to do so.”

“True, Madam; yet you speak now of the body.”

“The body?”

“The spirit may soar aloft, wander in realms of fancy. No man but the owner may clip the wings of that bird.”

“You speak seriously for a Jester.”

“Serious words, Madam, cloak light fancies. Light words cloak serious fancies. Therefore you perceive my fancies, being light of wing, can soar.”

“Ah!” She threw him a swift glance, read something sombre in his eyes; remembered, since a woman’s heart should surely hold some thought for others, that death’s hand had but lately touched one near to him.

Peregrine read her glance; had no mind for pity in that direction. Death had come as a good friend to his sire, had flung the cell door open. Yet how to turn her thought? How act the part it was his to play? Fate had indeed flung the rÔle upon him, garbed his body while poorly equipping his tongue. In this he perceived her irony. Seeking for words his hand touched his tabor.

“Madam, I know a song.”

“But one?” Her voice held a hint of mockery.

“For the moment.”

“A merry song? A sad song?”

“Madam, it will accord with the mood of the listener, therefore I will term it neither a merry song, nor a sad song, but an adaptable song.”

She leaned back in her chair. “An unusual song. Let us hear it.”

Peregrine struck a couple of chords on the tabor, then in a voice not large, but a sweet barytone, he sang:

The song ended a silence fell on the room. Mary Chester had heard it very sanely, the words lost for the most part in the melody that accompanied them. Leonora, dreaming, saw the goal of motherhood, though as yet distant. Monica pictured some peaceful cloister, heard the sweet tones of the Angelus. Brigid, half-smiling, sighed; saw, I fancy, further than did the others.

As for Isabel, she looked at the fire. Pippo, lying on the hearth, looked from her to Peregrine.

“Whose are the words?” asked Isabel.

“Madam, they come from realms of fancy.”

“Your own?”

“Those wherein I have occasionally wandered.”

“Find you many such songs there?”

“Now and again. They are, however, often elusive, escaping as soon as perceived.”

Isabel turned from the fire, looked full at him. She gave him now a smile, rare with her, though Peregrine was not to know that. His heart beat hotly.

“Methinks,” she said, “you are poet rather than Jester.”

The colour rushed to Peregrine’s face. Memory of his resolution surged towards him, yet was it driven back by the smile that trembled on her lips.

“Madam, I—” he stammered.

Isabel misunderstood the hesitation. She had seen his sire wince with the new jest ready on his tongue. Here was no jest ready, and strangely enough she would cloak the deficiency.

“I—I am not displeased.” The words fell softly from her lips.

And at that laughter sprang to Peregrine’s throat, a flash of mockery to his eyes, though he replied gravely enough and meekly, “Madam, I am at all times what you would desire me.”

“Ah!” breathed Isabel watching him. Then very sweetly, “Now I see in you courtier, yet I would have you poet; therefore, sir poet, sing again.”

And Peregrine sang.

Some hour or so later, Peregrine departed, Isabel asked carelessly of her women:

“What think you of our Jester?”

“A very proper man,” quoth Brigid demurely.

“He has a sweet voice,” ventured Monica timidly.

“He differs from his sire,” mused Leonora.

Mary Chester alone was silent.

“And you?” asked Isabel, looking directly at her.

“Madam, I have no opinion,” replied Mary; and took herself to task for the lie.