III
“IWILL not forgive him. No, I will not. I do not like his conduct with the lawyer’s daughter who has forty thousand pounds.” So said Lady Betty Stair to herself many times a day; yet within a week, after a five minutes’ talk with De Bourmont in the embrasure of a window, they both came forth with happy, glorified faces, and De Bourmont was indeed forgiven. He had told her that the Comte d’Artois had “voluntarily” given him permission to return to France and he only awaited a chance of a vessel sailing for Brittany, which was the only coast in France where a royalist could land without being clapped into prison before he had time to explain why he came. And then, looking searchingly at Lady Betty, De Bourmont had said:—
“I cannot tell the woman I love, that I love her, until I have my sword in my hand—but then—! Lady Betty, if I leave a letter for you when I go away, will you read it?”
“Yes,” answered Lady Betty, blushing and trembling very much.
And so it came that their faces had a look of Paradise in them. This was not the French way of proceeding, but the Scotch way; and it was De Bourmont’s fixed opinion that the Scotch way was best.
Only a few weeks more passed before De Bourmont left for France, but in that time many strange things happened. The first was, the news that Bastien had been left a considerable fortune, not in assignats, but in good English gold. Lady Betty, who could not forbear once in a while whetting her wit on Bastien, made him a laughing-stock the very night the great news came, while the ladies and gentlemen were awaiting in the salon the comingof their Royal Highnesses. Everybody was congratulating Bastien, and when it came to Lady Betty’s turn she said, courtesying low:—
“A thousand congratulations, Monsieur Bastien, and don’t betoogenerous with your fortune. You are not called upon to spend itallin the service of the royal cause, as the Macdonalds of Stair did with the Stuart cause.”
As Bastien was notoriously close with his money and had got more out of exiled royalty than he ever gave it, these words caused a smile to go around the circle,—not even Abbé de Ronceray being entirely free from suspicion,—and Bastien longed to clap his hand over Lady Betty’s rosy mouth.
A curious thing happened to Bastien at this time. When he had been nearly penniless, he had thought it both wicked and absurd that he should feel so acutely the fascination of a penniless Scotch girl like Lady Betty, and when hehad twenty thousand pounds, it seemed still more wicked and absurd. And as money seeks money, his thoughts turned instantly to Flora Mackenzie.
A few days after this, Counsellor Mackenzie made his way up the stairs of the gloomy palace, and on asking for De Bourmont was shown into the anteroom reserved for the gentlemen in waiting. There sat De Bourmont, who was delighted to see the honest counsellor.
“My friend,” presently said old Mackenzie, fixing his clear blue eyes on De Bourmont, “I have startling news in my family. Monsieur Bastien has asked for the hand of my daughter Flora.”
De Bourmont was surprised; this was quick work.
“And I have come to ask your opinion of this same Bastien, who”—here the counsellor brought his stick down on the floor with a thwack—“I believe to be as arrant a knave as God’s sun shines on!”
De Bourmont laughed at this novel way of asking advice.
“I have nothing against Monsieur Bastien,” he replied, “and if I had, I could not mention it, being a fellow exile with him.”
“Not to save my child?”
“My dear counsellor, I know of no man better able to take care of your lovely daughter than you are.”
“Then you will say nothing one way or the other?”
“Not a word.”
“That settles it,” responded the counsellor, getting upon his sturdy legs, “he shall not have my child. I beg your pardon for speaking ill of your fellow countryman, but, to my mind, Bastien has the word ‘rogue’ writ large all over him—and is a—supercilious dog besides! Could you have seen the air with which he asked for the honor of paying his addresses to Miss Mackenzie—very well—very well—I’ll be ready for this MonsieurBastien when he comes to-morrow to get his answer.”
“My faith! I would not be in Bastien’s shoes,” said De Bourmont, laughing; but becoming grave, he asked, “How does Miss Mackenzie stand toward him?”
“Hanged if I know,” responded Miss Mackenzie’s candid father; “good-morning.” And the counsellor, being a man of his word, Bastien got hiscongéthe very next day.
The ladies and gentlemen in waiting, having little to amuse them during the long days and longer evenings, got hold of Bastien’s unsuccessful suit, and gave him many a sly dig as he walked about, frowning and abstracted, and always thinking about his money. And Lady Betty, being a rash creature, was not behindhand in this sly sort of chaff, so that in a little while Bastien began to hate her a good deal harder than he had ever loved her. And then, he was fullypersuaded that he owed his ill luck with Flora Mackenzie to De Bourmont, and privately resolved to get even with him.
Meanwhile, as Bastien grew richer, De Bourmont grew poorer, and suddenly the tradesmen he owed became very pressing in their attentions. Being ignorant of the Scotch law of debtors, De Bourmont listened very attentively when Lady Betty described to their Royal Highnesses in the great salon, one evening, that peculiar institution of Holyrood Palace concerning “abbey lairds.”
“This palace remains still a sanctuary for debtors,” she said, “and any honest debtor, pursued by his creditors, who can reach that place outside the gate called the Strand, is safe from arrest as long as he remains within the demesne of Holyrood; and on Sunday he may walk abroad anywhere he likes, without fear of molestation. My father has told me that in his day it was a common enough thing to claim sanctuary here, and to see a man fleeing toward Holyrood was sure to start arabble at his heels, all, however, apt to be partisans of the fugitive,—for the people rather like to have the bailiffs outrun. Sanctuary is sometimes claimed now; but, as my father said, the devil is not so strong as he was forty years ago, and debtors are more honest, or creditors more careful whom they trust.”
Their Royal Highnesses listened and laughed, as did the Abbé de Ronceray, with whom Betty, for all her sauciness, was a great favorite; but the most interested among all the hearers was Bastien. He made so many and such minute inquiries about it that Betty asked him very innocently:—
“Why, Monsieur Bastien, areyouthinking of claiming sanctuary?”
It was only a few nights after that when De Bourmont, walking down the Cowgate in the moonlight and thinking of his proposed departure to France and of Lady Betty, and wondering how long it would be before he could come backand claim her, presently found two or three men slipping out of the dark “closes” on either side, and apparently following him. De Bourmont quickened his pace, and his mysterious friends quickened theirs. De Bourmont broke into a run—so did his unknown friends.
“Bailiffs, by all that’s holy!” said De Bourmont to himself; and then, remembering Lady Betty’s story, he laid his heels to the ground for Holyrood. A pack of idlers, standing on the street, suddenly sent up a cry: “Bailiffs! and he’s makkin’ for the palace!”
Straightway they all started in full cry after him. Not all of them really wanted to see him caught,—indeed, they rather impeded the bailiffs in the chase; they merely wanted to be in at the dénouement. Windows were flung up as the scurrying, shouting crowd followed after De Bourmont’s flying figure. A friendly voice, evidently belonging to some one who recognizedone of the exiles of Holyrood, shouted, “Gang it, Frenchy!”
This still further inclined the crowd toward De Bourmont, as, with swift justice, it was felt to be a peculiarly unhandsome thing to molest exiles and strangers within their gates. De Bourmont began to perceive that the mob was on his side,—always an exhilarating knowledge,—and he ran still faster toward the great gloomy pile that rose before him in the white glow of the moon. Windows in the palace were being raised, and two heads belonging to their two Royal Highnesses were seen at the great windows that face the Cowgate, watching the flight and the pursuit, which became exciting enough, with yells, shrieks, and laughter,—for these were occasions for public mirth. The palace courtyard was full of people, who overflowed beyond the gate, but who were careful to leave a clear space for the fugitive, now rapidly approaching. All the ladies in waiting had gotpermission to run down the stone stairs to see the sight, which was so excruciatingly humorous from the Edinburgh point of view, and Lady Betty was among them. As the flying figure neared the line of demarcation a great cry went up in English, French, and Scotch: “Hurrah!” “Brava!” “Weel done!” Everybody, clearly, was against the bailiffs, one of whom was almost on De Bourmont’s heels,—for Lady Betty, recognizing him, had shrieked out, “’Tis Monsieur de Bourmont!” The bailiff put out his arm and caught De Bourmont by the shoulder as the two crossed the line together, and then they both tumbled over in a heap, De Bourmont’s head and body well within the line, but his legs outside of it.
A loud groan went up,—the crowd thought De Bourmont had lost,—and some one came running down the palace stairs laughing stridently. It was Bastien. The other bailiff had then fallen upon De Bourmont, and all three werestruggling fiercely on the ground. Suddenly Lady Betty Stair advanced a step or two and cried out, in a shrill, sweet voice:—
“Let him go, you wretched bailiffs. Do you not know the law? If the debtor’s head falls over the line, as this gentleman’s did, he is safe, for the head is the noblest part of the body. And let him go, this instant, I say!”
A ringing cheer broke from the crowd, and a brawny Scotchman, taking hold of the uppermost bailiff, threw him aside like a bale of wool, saying gruffly:
“Dinna ye hear the leddy?”
The officers of the law, more out of respect to the temper of the mob than to Lady Betty’s words, let De Bourmont rise, who made her a low bow, and then proceeded to carefully dust his clothes. At this the crowd sent up a great cheer for Lady Betty, who, turning a beautiful rosy red, said to De Bourmont:
“‘Let him go, you wretched bailiffs!’”
“‘Let him go, you wretched bailiffs!’”
“Monsieur, you have lost your only chance of being a laird of Scotland,—anot inconsiderable honor. Do you not know the good old song?” Whereupon she sang, in a thrilling, sweet voice:
“When, bankrupt frae care,The fools are set free,Then we mak’ them all lairdsOf the Abbey, you see.”
“When, bankrupt frae care,The fools are set free,Then we mak’ them all lairdsOf the Abbey, you see.”
“When, bankrupt frae care,
The fools are set free,
Then we mak’ them all lairds
Of the Abbey, you see.”
The crowd then, quite wild with admiration for her beauty and spirit, shouted wildly for “Stair’s bonny lassie;” until Lady Betty, redder than the rose, flew back into the courtyard and up the stairs to her own room. The people then dispersed, well pleased with their evening’s entertainment, and guying the bailiffs, who went away sheepishly enough, followed by the multitude hooting and “heckling” them.
Next day the town rang with De Bourmont’s adventure and Lady Betty Stair’s share in it. It was rather embarrassing for De Bourmont, but Counsellor Mackenzie, hearing of it, came to the palace, and after ha-ha-ing over it plentifully with De Bourmont, cried:—
“Now, let me see the bills of those rascally tradesmen, who know not how to treat a stranger and a gentleman that has fallen upon evil days.”
De Bourmont produced his bills, which the counsellor examined. Every now and then a great roar of anger would burst from him, and finally he rose, shouting: “Thieves! cut-throats! highwaymen they are! You have been most cruelly swindled, Monsieur de Bourmont, and I will make these villains abate their overcharges; and I ask the honor of advancing you the money to pay what you owe, and you may return it when you like.”
“Sir,” replied De Bourmont, “I have spent my lifetime with kings and princes, but never saw I a more royal heart and soul than yours. And I accept of your generosity as gladly as you offer it.”
The next day the counsellor returned with a batch of receipted bills.
“And I can tell you who was at the bottom of that chase along the Cowgate.’Twas your precious friend Bastien, who told abroad that you were about leaving secretly for France.”
“The devil!” cried De Bourmont.
He went in hot haste to the anteroom of the gentlemen in waiting, and there sat Bastien at a table, playing patience, while two gentlemen of the suite lounged in a window. De Bourmont went up to Bastien and watched him silently while he worked out his game. Then he said:
“Lend me the cards, Monsieur Bastien. I know a trick worth two of that you are doing.”
Bastien handed him the cards, and De Bourmont, collecting them carefully together, promptly dashed them full in Bastien’s face. “That is for talking with my tradesmen,” he cried.
Of course, next morning, they went out at sunrise to a quiet place near Arthur’s Seat, and lunged at each other for the best part of an hour. De Bourmont escaped with a scratch or two, but Bastien came in for a smart rip in hisarm, and—worse luck—for a slight cut across his unfortunate nose, after which the whole party went back to town for breakfast.
De Bourmont had meant to keep it all from Lady Betty, but she got it out of him before twenty-four hours. She was full of contempt, saying:—
“For you to fight Bastien! You ought to have seen him that morning, seven years ago, at Versailles!” and then with blushes and sighs and smiles and lamentings over her own unruly temper, she told him the history of her assault on Bastien’s nose. De Bourmont laughed until he cried, and then, looking at Lady Betty, saw her speaking eyes watching him so gravely—nay, tenderly—that he suddenly stopped laughing and, seizing her hand, cried:—
“Ah, Mademoiselle, nothing but my duty to my country could drag me away from this or any other place, were it the dreariest on earth, so long as you are there.”
Now, Lady Betty was rash, very rash, and, having decided in her own mind that Bastien had long since forgotten that little encounter with her green fan, it suited her to say to him, when she met him alone soon afterward in the corridor:
“La! what has happened to your poor nose?”
It was only a little thing, but it was one of a long list that he had against her, and he hated De Bourmont, and saw in an instant that Lady Betty knew what had happened. And an evil thought came into his mind and straightway left his lips.
“Lady Betty Stair,” he said, “I believe that you and the gentleman who gave me this scratch think to be something more than friends; but you never can.” Lady Betty turned pale with rage at Bastien’s impertinence, and, for once, her nimble tongue and ready wit failed her. Bastien followed up his advantage.
“Do you want to know why? Becauseyour brother’s blood is on De Bourmont’s hands. Your lover, Mademoiselle, killed your brother.”
At this Lady Betty stepped up quite close to Bastien, and looking him full in the eye, said quietly:—
“I do not believe you, Monsieur Bastien.”
Bastien shrugged his shoulders.
“Do you not remember, Mademoiselle, the very first night you came to this place, while we were at supper in De Bourmont’s room, he said: ‘I was the Abbé de Ronceray’s first penitent, and I made him a confession that kept him awake, I can tell you’?”
Yes, Lady Betty remembered it perfectly, but she would not acknowledge it to Bastien; she merely turned to go, with a look of ineffable contempt at him. Bastien, however, placed himself in her way so that she could not pass, and continued speaking:—
“The Abbé de Ronceray’s first penitent was a murderer—and the murderer,as you would call it, of Angus Macdonald. You are sharp of wit, Lady Betty; you can find out all about this from the Abbé de Ronceray, without his suspecting what you are trying to learn. Trust a woman to ferret out what a man has no mind to tell her!”
“Monsieur Bastien,” said Lady Betty, in the same quiet voice in which she had first spoken, “you have offered me several affronts during the last few minutes, but the last is the greatest,—as if I could be induced to follow your advice in the smallest matter in the world! I shall lay the matter before their Royal Highnesses, and you will excuse me for declining your acquaintance hereafter,”—and Lady Betty walked off majestically.
This threat frightened Bastien. Being a trickster himself, he did not understand the directness of a straightforward nature, and could not persuade himself that Lady Betty would do so daring a thing as to appeal to the poor royalties they both served; still, he was undeniablynervous about it. As for Lady Betty, she was in such a storm of rage that she scarcely knew what she felt; but after the first palpitations of wrath, she hit upon one thing which completely reassured her. De Bourmont knew she was Angus Macdonald’s sister, and would he, knowing there was a bloody grave between them, offer her his love? Never!
But it is one thing to feel sure, and another thing to be certain. She wished and longed, with an extreme yearning, that she could hear some one deny the story. Of course she would not condescend to take Bastien’s advice and ask the Abbé de Ronceray, and she thought it a sharp trick of Bastien’s to suggest that she should do this, very well knowing she would not. At all events, she would put it out of her mind and never think of it again. Of that much she was certain.
But of course she did not. She thought of it all that day. The thought walked by her side, and whispered in herear, and lay down with her, and rose with her. Nevertheless, she did not once lose her courage, and resolving to show Bastien how little of a coward she was, that night she dressed her lovely form in the only splendid gown she had,—something white and shimmering,—and with her fair neck bare, and her eyes brilliant and restless, she looked so handsome in her glass that she was thrilled from head to foot with gratified vanity.
As she came daintily stepping down the stair, by the light of two candles in the lobby, she found De Bourmont waiting at the foot.
“Dear lady,” he said, “this is the night I go. The ship waits at Leith for the tide, and at midnight I take post to join her. And will you, as you promised, read the letter I shall leave for you?”
Lady Betty, blushing and trembling, made him a low courtesy, saying in a soft voice:—
“With pleasure.”
“And will you not kindly look out of your window on the courtyard at twelve o’clock, when I shall be leaving? And if I see a light there, ’twill be an illumination to my soul until we meet again.”
“Until we meet again,” whispered Lady Betty. At that moment there was the faint cry of a nightbird outside under the eaves—so faint that only sharp ears could have heard it at all. Lady Betty, who was as full of superstition as a whole clan of Highlanders might be, turned a little pale.
“Hear that!” she said. “It is a bad omen, I am afraid. You know there never was any fortunate love in this old palace; there seems to be a blight upon it.”
At which De Bourmont, respectfully taking her hand,—for it was in a ceremonious age,—answered, smiling, “Well, I have a presentiment—a presentiment that I shall one day have the bliss of looking into those dear eyes again.”
“‘Dear lady, this is the night I go.’”
“‘Dear lady, this is the night I go.’”
They were getting on quite fast in the Scotch fashion of courtship, when a tall figure in a cassock loomed before them, and the Abbé de Ronceray’s voice called out peremptorily:—
“Marie—Pierre—loitering here at this time of night? Oh, I beg you ten thousand pardons, Mademoiselle, and you, too, Monsieur de Bourmont. My eyesight is so bad—I took you at first for Marie, the maid, who is always being followed by my footboy, Pierre—the rascal is in love with her.”
The Abbé looked around blandly—Lady Betty was blushing, and De Bourmont was laughing—it was too bad! Lady Betty, turning her back on De Bourmont, walked on toward the salon and passed through the broad folding doors and the Abbé followed her. It was early yet—not quite nine o’clock—when the royalties usually entered the salon after dinner. No one was there but themselves.
“I am afraid I was a little awkwardjust now,” began the Abbé, good-humoredly. “I have spent so much more of my life in camps than in courts, that I cannot altogether learn the soft ways of people about a court. Sometimes I scold Pierre so loudly that I disturb the slumbers of their Royal Highnesses themselves.”
Here was a chance to ask a question or two—after having solemnly sworn she would not.
“Your first duties as a priest must have seemed strange,—confessions, for example, Monsieur l’Abbé.”
“Very strange they seemed. I was ordained the morning of the day that the mob entered Versailles, and before night I had heard my first penitent confess that he had killed a man.”
Lady Betty knew well enough how the secrets of the confessional were guarded, but in spite of herself, she burst out, leaning toward the Abbé:
“And he killed Angus Macdonald of the Scottish Guard!”
The Abbé de Ronceray, although soldier, courtier, and priest in one, was thoroughly disconcerted. He turned pale and then red. His lips opened to speak, but no word came forth. A duller mind than Lady Betty’s must have seen that she had hit the white.
“It is not worth while for you to try and deceive me,” cried Lady Betty, with tears pouring down her pale face, “I know—I know it all—Angus Macdonald was my brother—my only brother!”
The Abbé, much agitated, sank back in his chair. It is a very terrible thing for a priest to reveal, even inadvertently, the secrets of the confessional. He is pledged to die first—and many have died rather than reveal confessions. He was a straightforward man, accustomed to a soldierly plainness of speech. He knew not what to say, and could not restrain a slight groan, and this was the confirmation of Lady Betty’sfears. They had been quite alone until then, but the folding doors opened and several persons came in. Seeing the Abbé and Lady Betty sitting in silence at the other end of the room and plainly deeply moved, no one approached them. Lady Betty, rising quickly, said to him, in a broken voice:—
“You did not mean to tell; it was one of those dreadful coincidences that no one can guard against. But for me—it breaks my heart! it breaks my heart!” and without another word, she slipped away so quickly and noiselessly that she might have been one of the ghosts in that ghostly palace.
It was some hours afterward that Lady Betty, coming out of a dream as it were, found herself sitting on the steps of Queen Mary’s Bathhouse, at a distance from the palace. The night was raw and damp, and through a gloomy haze she could see the faint glimmer of lights below her in the town, and above her the great sombrepile of the palace, with here and there a gleaming window. All was strangely still, and the only distinct sound was the regular step of the sentry as he paced back and forth on the pathway above her. She wondered dully to herself how she managed to elude him,—for her present place was beyond the confines of the palace proper,—and how long had she been sitting in that dismal place? She remembered having on a white gown, which must have been visible even in the dusk of night. But to her surprise, as she came slowly out of the maze of pain and wonder, she realized that she was wrapped in her plaid, although her head was bare and she still had on her white satin slippers. She drew the plaid around her and cowered where she sat in the gloom, leaning her head against one of the stone pillars. The palace clock tolled out eleven. De Bourmont was to leave at twelve. He would wait as long as he could in the courtyard, hoping to see alight in her window. At that very moment he was searching for her, to give her the letter she had promised to take. And all the time he had known that Angus Macdonald was her brother! She could recall a dozen times that she had spoken of him, and De Bourmont’s face had been so tenderly sympathetic—he had seemed to feel so deeply for this terrible tragedy of her early life; and he knew, he knew so much more than she could tell him. As this thought struck her she uttered a half-articulate cry of anguish, that broke off suddenly. The sentry alone paused in his walk, listened and looked about, then, perfect silence succeeding, resumed his steady tramp. No other sound broke the quiet of the night.
At twelve o’clock the guard would be relieved, and a few minutes before, a dark figure crossed the sentry’s beat. The man cried “Halt!” and advancing at a run, seized hold of Lady Betty Stair, who turned on him a face sowhite and desperate that he almost dropped his musket. He recognized her in a moment, and anything more awkward for him never happened. Was he to take Lady Betty Stair to the guard-house? He began some blundering questions, holding on to her at the time, and she, looking into his eyes quietly, and remaining quite mute, as if she did not quite understand what he was saying, suddenly dropped the plaid, melting, as it were, out of the man’s grasp, and ran quickly and noiselessly toward the palace. The sentry was immensely relieved. He picked the plaid up and determined to make a clean breast of it to his officer. But he could not get over the uncanny look on Lady Betty’s face.
“Poor soul!” he said to himself over and over again. “Poor soul! she had the look and the walk of a ghost,—and of a tormented ghost, at that.”
And at that moment De Bourmontwith a sore heart, was on his way toward Leith, to embark for France. For there had been no light in Lady Betty’s window, and there was no letter of his in her hand.