The huddled figure in the great chair. The face of her that had so stout a heart, conquered in death—but less piteous, less awful sight than the living face of the French madam.
The huddled figure in the great chair. The face of her that had so stout a heart, conquered in death—but less piteous, less awful sight than the living face of the French madam.
… Then had begun their strange pilgrimage through the London streets, the long, long night. She went beside him, through the tangle of unknown, unlit ways; seeing him only ever and anon, painted as it were against the darkness by the glare of the smoky street fires in the more open spaces. In hiswhite hand, the sword drawn, guarding her from the prowling thieves of the night. Inhuman wretches, to whom the stricken city’s extremity was fortune’s boon, slinking after them like pariah dogs…! They had spoken little: mostly words of bare need. But once he had told her she was brave; and once that she was strong indeed.… She had at one moment noticed a great pity in his eyes.—Ah, he need never have pitied her; she had been happy, being with him.
She started from her heavy revery: some one was knocking at the casement.
Outside the window the lines of a man’s head and shoulders, a man hatless, with disordered periwig, were silhouetted blackly against the morning light. She sprang to her feet, terror stifling the scream in her throat. She remembered the marauders that had slunk after them in the night, more to be dreaded these desperate days than pestilence itself. But it was her own name that met her ear, urgently cried:—
“Diana, open!—’Tis I, Lionel.”
Before the words had penetrated to sense, she had recognised the voice. Upon the impulse of her relief, she hastened to the window and flung the casement apart.
“Cousin Lionel…!”
But this was a Cousin Lionel she had never before known. About his livid face the dank curls hung in wild dishevelment—he, whose person had ever seemed as sedately ordered as his mind. He motioned her from him so fiercely that she fell back in fresh alarm.
“Aye, Diana,” said he, answering her look, “you may well be afraid—’tis like enough I have it! And were it not that I am here to save you from worse than plague, for the sheer love I bear you, there should be leagues between us—Stand where you are, Diana! Come not a step nearer!”
He drew himself with effort up to the window-sill, from some ledge whereon he had climbed; then, seated, he looked in upon her again; and to his pallid countenance came a ghostly semblance of the old sarcastic smile:—
“Never enquire how I tracked you. I knew that the Rakehell, who chivalrously took you from the charge of your own kin—to rescue you from the plague, forsooth!—would find no shelter for you but that of his own honourable habitation!”
“Lionel…!”
Sudden anger drove all fear from her. He went on:—
“You would have been safer at Chillingburgh House, once the stricken Frenchwoman gone. And so my lord knew as well as I. Our grand dame never died of the sickness, child, but of a fit of anger—and not before her time, either! But let that pass. I saw thee on the Strand, Diana, a while ago—marked thee hither and knew the trick played on thee. A-tramp the whole night, till your body and your spirit be worn out. Is’t not so? And my lord … so tender, so protecting, so fatherly. Is’t not so?”
“Lionel…!”
The man changed his tone:—
“Diana, ’tis but a few hundred paces to her Majesty’s House of the Blue Nuns, in St. Martin’s Lane, where our kinswoman, Madam Anastasia, would shelter you in honour and safety. Come forth now, from this place; ’tis worse, I tell you, than the Pest-house! I will go before thee; I can yet protect thee along the street, if I may not approach thee.…”
Never had Diana heard that ring of passion from his lips; even when he had pleaded for her love, there had always run an undercurrent of mockery and cynicism in the tenderest word. Truly, these days changed all men’s nature. But Diana was notswayed: she was afire at the odiousness of the slander cast on him she loved.
“I thank you, cousin,” she returned coldly. “But I have placed myself under Lord Rockhurst’s protection; and since you have been pleased to watch me, sir, you will have seen the Lord Constable leave this house but a few moments ago. It was in search of a coach, and it is his purpose to escort me out of the town, even this day, to my own home.”
The man on the window-sill gave a fierce laugh.
“Art as simple, Diana, as thou wouldst fain make out? Dost really believe thy protector—’tis a fine name, in sooth—will find thee that coach?”
“Not a word more!” broke in the other. She had as strong a spirit as his own. “Who should know Lord Rockhurst better than I? Ah, who has better reason to know him? If all the world were to believe evil of him, yet would I still trust him with my life.”
“And is there naught you value more than life?”
“How dare you, cousin!”
“Is your good name nothing to you?” he insisted.
“How dare you!” she repeated.
“Nay, Diana, listen to me!—Shall I tell thee what’s to happen? The Rakehell will return to thee in a little while, dejected, aye, heart-broken! Farand wide, not a horse, not a coach, not a driver to be had for love or money. He has bargained, pleaded, threatened, in vain. So thou must even trust thyself to him further—to him who is as thy father.…”
Diana started, bit her lip. The words struck her; and vehemently she thrust them from her.
“Then, Diana,” went on Ratcliffe, ever more cuttingly, “will he discover something strange in the character of his protective feelings.… Thou, too, will read in thine own … filial … heart. Behold, the end is not difficult to guess!”
“Oh, foul-mouthed!” cried the young widow, recoiling.
Indignation and terror mixed were in her voice. To have the veil thus torn by sacrilegious hands from the innermost shrine; the sanctuary of her tender secret thus broken!… Ratcliffe clutched the window-frame with both hands and thrust his face into the room, his features working again with that unwonted passion:—
“Diana—ah, Diana, for heaven’s sake, you must understand! These days, it seems, all barriers are broken down, all laws violated with impunity. And even now, even you, Diana, will surely pay the price, if you accept the protection of Rakehell Rockhurst!”
Diana swept a gesture of final scorn:—
“Begone, Lionel! Away with you as you came! I pity you … thief of men and women’s good report. Alas! cousin, do I not know what purpose you have in this slander? Shame that these days of terror should wake you to no worthier mind!”
The man fixed her, a breathing space or two, without speaking. Had she been less incensed, she might have noted something in his look singularly belying the thoughts she imputed to him—might have seen a purpose as earnest as it was selfless.
“One word, then, and I go—Di, from the days when we were children together, I have loved thee. Dost remember how I called thee my little wife? You’ll have none of my warning now—so be it! In a little while you’ll want me, you’ll call on me. I shall be near, I shall hear thee.—Stay; here is the gold whistle you once gave me—that Easter—years ago! You have, of course, forgotten it. I have kept it close, you see.”
He hesitated a second, poising the bauble at the end of its long ribbon, frowning. Then he cast it into the room.
“Risk for risk—all is risk!… My lips have not touched it since the pestilence came so nigh them. Di, hark to me, Di. When you want myhelp this day, you have but to whistle, I’ll hear and help.… I go. Yet not so far but what I can guard my own.”
She stood, her head averted; her foot beating the floor, image of scornful defiance. He slipped down from his perch to the ledge and poised himself yet a second, looking in on her as when he had first appeared:—
“Thou, in the Rakehell’s hands—and the world gone mad around thee…! Ah, shall’t whistle sooner than thou thinkest!”
She wheeled to silence him; he was gone. A bitter conflict rose in her mind as she stood staring at the blank window space. In spite of herself, the memory of his look, of the deep earnestness of his voice, began to shake her sense of security.… He thought he had the sickness, yet he came to warn her!… Another man would have had little reck of aught but himself, with that shadow of doom spread over him.… Yet he hated Rockhurst—oh, how he hated him!—and had he not all but killed Rockhurst’s son for aspiring to her?… With the perspicacity of his relentless love for her, he had read her secret. Reason enough, then, that he should strive to poison her mind against one whom she knew so noble.… Yet again, unscrupulous, daring,cruel even in his very love for her, Ratcliffe had taken piteous pains to guard her against himself. Now, he was lurking in the lanes below, for her sake, instead of hying him to the nearest physician, so urgent did he believe her danger.… Was there, could there be danger?
Her ear caught the sound of the key in the lock; she knew it was Rockhurst returning. On a sudden impulse she picked up the whistle and thrust it into her bodice. Her heart beat to suffocation as she heard his hand on the door.
Rockhurst came in slowly and stood a moment, contemplating Diana before he spoke. The bronze of his face was singularly blanched; his grave eye was alight with a threatening of fire. Then he spoke, quickly:—
“I have beaten the neighbourhood. Whitehall is as a desert, the name of the King itself an empty sound. The whole town is fled, dying or dead.” He took her hand, clasping it with a pressure so fierce as almost to draw a cry from her. “For love or money, it is impossible to obtain horse, coach, or man.”
Her fluttering heart slowed down to the dull beat of misery; she sought to draw her hand from his.
“Oh, my lord!”
Unheeding, he went on:—
“Pestilence is rushing onward like a flood—There is no rock, no hilltop, that is not fated to beswallowed up in time. Diana, we are as those doomed by the Deluge, who have taken refuge on the mountain only to watch the deadly waters rise and count the hours left to them!”
He broke off; she had wrenched her hands from his grasp and had shrunk away from him, covering her face. Not the dreadful import of his words frightened her, but the fire of his glance, the mad exultation of the voice that thus pronounced their doom.
“What,” he exclaimed, his tones vibrating to a tenderness more terrible still to her ears, “have I scared thee?—Brave heart, afraid at last?”
“Yes, yes—I am afraid,” she murmured behind her clasped fingers. But, even as she spoke, her strong nature reacted against the folly of weakness. She dropped her hands, drew herself proudly up and turned, looking him steadily in the eyes:—
“No, my lord, ’twas but an evil thought!”
He returned her gaze fixedly, and she saw how the blood began to rise, slow, dark, in his cheek.
“Yet, why should I say we are doomed?” he went on, under his breath. “Why should not this house be as the ark of refuge? Diana,”—the dreadful joy broke out again in eye and accent,—“have you understood how it stands with us? There isno help for it; we are shut in together. Heaven itself has sealed the way that would divide us—”
So, it had come! That moment she had dreamt of, with a fierce abandonment to his ecstasy; that moment, the very thought of which she had prayed against with tears, as if the mere passage of its forbidden sweetness through her heart were a sin! It had come, in this bitterness, this shame, this shattering of the ideal she held so high! She moved from him without a word, let herself drop mechanically into the King’s chair, and sat, her hands clasping the carven arms, staring straight before her. Rockhurst fell on his knees beside her.
“Diana, Diana—I love you!—And ah, Diana, you love me—”
She flung out her hands to push him from her, and all her wounded heart spoke in her cry:—
“Do not say it, my lord! Oh, I have so dreaded to hear you say it!”
But her very pain was triumph in his ears. As masterfully as he caught and imprisoned her hands once again, so did his passion seize and crush her woman’s scruples:—
“We are alone in a dying world! Who knows if we shall see another dawn! Shall we not take theday that is given us, make use of life while life is still ours?”
And while she looked at him, speechless, her eyes dark in the sorrowful pallor of her face, he cried in a tone that pierced to her very marrow:—
“Diana—come to my arms and teach me, let me teach thee, how sweet life can be … how sweet death can be!”
She had ceased to struggle against him. Her hands lay inert in his.
He put his arm about her then; and, motionless, she submitted. But the tears slowly, slowly welled to her piteous eyes. Then he drew back from her, rose and stood again, gazing at her; the exultation, the fires of ecstasy, fading from his face, and something hard, ruthless, taking their place.
“I can get a priest to wed us, in Whitehall, ere the day be an hour older,” he said, frowning upon her.
Through the tears she would not shed, her great eyes dilated upon him.
“And what will you say—what shall we say—to your son, my lord?”
Rockhurst started as if he had been struck. A masterful man, who all his life had dominated others, he bent his brows with a terrible resentment on her who dared thwart him at this supreme hour of hiswill; dared lift against him the one weapon that could pierce his armour.
“You took the trust, my lord, even as I yielded my troth.…”
His anger broke forth, the more ruthlessly that he was, for the first time in his life, perhaps, abandoning himself to an unworthy part, a part of weakness. Broken phrases escaped his lips, contradictions lost in the irresistible logic of passion.
“My son, … my son?—I shall answer for myself to my son.—Nay, what account have I to render to my son! A beardless boy, shall he come between us?… Diana, your eyes have lied a thousand times, or you love me!… That promise to Harry was no promise, wrested from you, from me, because of a white face, pleading, because of a red wound! And, if he be true flesh of mine, he will have none of you, your heart being another’s.—Why, my dear,”—his voice changed,—“think you Harry will ever have his bride, will ever see his father again?”
So long as his eye flamed, as his voice harshly chid her, she felt strong. But against that note of tenderness she weakened. A sense of physical failing came over her; she thought of the moment when, in the darkness of the garden, she had awakened to find herself in his arms.… Perhaps, in truth,death was very near to them. To slip from the moorings of life, on the tide of his great love—ah, he had said it; it would be sweet! She clasped her hands to her breast; but at the touch of Lionel’s gold bauble, something in herself that Rockhurst’s words had lulled, started into vivid life again; something that would not let her accept the easier course. If death were, even at this moment, gloating upon them, the better reason to look on it with loyal eyes. Were Harry indeed fated never to meet bride or father again, then must father and bride remain sacred in noble memory! And not because she and Rockhurst were so fain to break it, was a promise less binding a promise. One sentence of Lionel’s rang in her ear: “Behold, the end is not difficult to guess”—and with it the echo of her own voice crying back to him, “Oh, foul-mouthed!”
Quickly she made her choice; and, brave in her pain, had a smile as she turned to speak.
“Once, my lord, you saved me, when I scarce knew myself in danger. To-day it is given to me to pay my debt. And I save you. Give me your arm again, kind, beloved friend, and through the hot contamination of these streets, as once through the pure snow, bring me to honourable shelter.”
For a second, the unexpected check, the unlooked-forstrength of her resistance, kept him silent. Then gently, as if to an unreasonable child:—
“And to what shelter? Poor Diana!”
Her smile took something of the divine, maternal pity which lurks in every good woman’s heart for the man she loves.
“But a stone’s throw from this place, my dear lord,—her Majesty’s House of the Blue Nuns will not refuse to open its doors to me,—as, indeed, I should have minded me sooner.”
She rose, and moved steadily toward the door, striving to seem as though she had no fear of his arresting her. But before she had time to raise the latch, his clasp of iron was on her wrist.
A cry rising from the street drove them apart like a sword:—
“Father—father!”
They looked at each other with starting eyes, blanched cheeks. Then the cry rose again:—
“My lord,—my Lord Rockhurst!—father, are you within?”
The colour rushed back to Diana’s face; a flame of joy leaped to her eye.
“This is no spirit-call, but good human sound. Harry, honest Harry here!—Ah, my lord, in time to save us!”
The revulsion of feeling, the unconscious admission of her words, a fierce flame of insane jealousy, suddenly kindled by the glad note in her voice, broke down the last shred of Rockhurst’s self-control. His passion escaped him, tigerish:—
“By the Lord God of Heaven or the Devil Lord of Hell, thou shalt not go to him!”
The young voice was uplifted again without.
“Knock once more, Robin; I hear stirring within.”
And a lusty shout succeeded:—
“Ho, Chitterley, ’tis I, Robin, with Master Harry Rockhurst!”
Rockhurst caught Diana in his arms.
“Mine, Diana, mine, and none shall come between us!”
He held her for a second against his breast, and she heard the great hammering of his heart; then she found herself thrust within a darkened room, heard the door close upon her, the shooting of a bolt. A prisoner—and darkness all about her, a strange suffocating darkness, thick with the fumes of a burnt-out lamp.
As the Lord Constable unbolted the outer door, he was met by the precipitate entrance of his son.
“Good heavens, Chitterley—” The broken words were cut short: “My lord … yourself in person! Thank God, thank God!”
Young Rockhurst cast himself impetuously upon his father’s breast, sobbing with excitement. The latter suffered the embrace in silence, supported the boy, as he clung to him in sudden weakness, into the room, led him to a chair. Then he stood a second in gloomy silence, staring at the young bowed figure, sitting where she had sat, his face hidden in his hands, even as hers had been. Tears! and this weakling would wed Diana!—Diana, who had not suffered hers to fall! Yet Rockhurst loved his son; and there was a strange rending pain at his heart.
Into the oppressive stillness, broken only by Harry’s catching breath, there came from the inner room a stir as of curtains wrenched apart, as of creaking easements thrust open; and next a stifled cry. Rockhurst, expecting the instant of revelation, braced himself as a man may for the meeting of his death-stroke. But nothing more was heard, save a long, sweet whistle—some call in the street, doubtless. Ah—Diana would not betray him!—Diana loved him! As if the shrill, sweet signal had roused him, Harry Rockhurst started, dashed the tears from his cheeks, and rising, seizedhis father’s hand to pour forth a torrent of words:—
“Alas, my lord, and how had you the heart to leave me in this ignorance of your peril?—Had not Lionel writ to me—Oh, father, never look so sternly on me! I know I have transgressed your command to remain in the country, but how could I keep away? ’Twas not in nature—Where is Diana? Oh, my God, Chillingburgh House is deserted, the doors open to the winds, the old lady abandoned, dead, stark in her chair! Where is Diana? Father—my Diana!”
His voice rose to a scream, as his father turned a terrible, set face upon him; his father, from whom he had scarce ever known but loving and joyful looks. Evil beyond words must be the tidings awaiting him. He clutched his breast with both hands.
“Harry, be a man!” cried Rockhurst, starting as he marked the livid change that spread over the young countenance. But he was too late.
“Dead?” cried the lad, and on a sudden gasped for breath. “A curse on this wound that will not heal.”
He tore at the lapels of his riding-coat, reeled and fell, barely caught, into his father’s arms.
“My God—I have killed my son!” Blood welledout between Rockhurst’s fingers, as he clasped the slight, inert form.
“Harry!” he cried frantically to the deaf ears, “Harry, no, she is not dead. She is not dead! You shall even see her!—Hither, Diana!”
He raised a loud call for her; then, with a groan, remembered him—the shot bolt! Had ever a man been so mad, had ever a man been so base—been so punished? He lowered the body to the ground; ’twas the old wound indeed, that wound taken in the defence of his father’s honour. A light word had been spoken of him to his son—his poor country lad, who had never heard, had never known, of one in the town nicknamed the Rakehell!
Again he raised a desperate cry for help:—
“Robin, there without…!”
And all at once the silent, abandoned house was full of voices and footsteps—here were the white face of his own old servant; the scared chubbiness of Yorkshire Robin—and another countenance, unknown and solemn. And behold, Chitterley was saying:—
“This way, good doctor!”
When the moment holds life and death in the balance, there is no room for surprise.
“Chitterley, ha, Chitterley,” cried Rockhurst.“Water and bandages, in Heaven’s name! This way, Sir Physician!—A physician by Divine mercy!”
The man of healing, who had been much occupied with his pomander, dropped it from his nostrils to stare on the unexpected scene. And Chitterley, whose dim eyes had only just become aware of his master, burst into a dismal wail:—
“My lord, fly!—Here is plague, here is death!” Then, in yet more piercing lamentation: “What! Master Harry, too! Merciful Heaven!”
“Sir,” said Rockhurst to the physician, “your attention hither!”
“Truly,” said the doctor, “this seems an urgent case.”
He was perhaps not displeased to find, instead of the plague-stricken patient he had been summoned to attend, a clean lad a-bleeding of a sword wound. Old Chitterley ran feebly hither and thither, as father and surgeon bent together over the unconscious form. Robin stared, voiceless.
“It is an old wound, ill-healed,” explained Rockhurst. “My faithful son—he fought, a month agone, one who impugned my good name—now, hearing I was in danger of the sickness, naught could keep him from me. All the way from Yorkshire …and he wasted with the fever of the hurt! When I saw him I chid him.” The father looked with dry eyes of agony at the physician’s thoughtful face.
“The bleeding has somewhat waned,” said the latter, then, without committing himself. Then, rising stiffly from his knees: “I could attend to the young gentleman better,” he pursued, “were he upon a couch. May I assist your lordship—?”
He had recognised the noble Lord Constable, the King’s friend, and was full of solicitude.
“Nay—I need no aid!” The father gathered his boy again into his arms. “Chitterley, unbolt the door—How now!” The old man had flung himself before his master and, with clasped hands, was motioning him desperately back. “The wretch has gone crazy!”
“Nay, my dear master, in God’s name, she lies there!”
“She?”
For one mad instant Rockhurst deemed his ancient servant stood at bay before his own threatened honour. Almost he laughed in scornful anger. What recked he now of aught except this bleeding burden on his breast? Aye, and if those purple lids, sealed in such death-like peace, were to unclose, andHarry were to behold Diana, the father knew—and was pierced as by a two-edged sword of ruth and tenderness at the thought—that yet his son would never doubt him. Chitterley was still speaking. The tale of retribution was not complete:—
“The French lady, your lordship, sick of the plague! She lies within, dying of the sickness. ’Twas for her I sought Mr. Burbage.…”
Rockhurst staggered, as one struck from an unexpected quarter. In haste the physician advanced, but just in time to seize the limp body from the father’s relaxing grasp. Here were strange events, enough to bewilder the ordinary, decorous man of science on his professional round! But, as times went, astonishment had no part in men’s lives. Catastrophe had ceased to shock. The Lord Constable and his servant, either or both, might be mad: few people were quite sane these days, but here was a young life hanging on a thread: enough for the moment, if skill of his could strengthen its hold. As for the creature with the plague yonder,—whoever she might be,—let her rot: ’twas only one added to the ten thousand bound to die that day! He laid the lad all his length on the floor, drew a phial of cordial from his breast, and set dazed Robin to bring him the water from the table; while Rockhurst stoodstaring at Chitterley, his face more stricken than that pallid one at his feet.
The old servant, on his side, still stretched out trembling arms in barrier; it seemed as if his mind had stopped on that effort of desperate warning. At last, tonelessly, Rockhurst spoke:—
“In my room—?”
“Aye, my lord. She was dying; I could not keep her out!”
“Sick of the plague, said you?”
“Aye, your lordship.”
The father gave a terrible cry:—
“O God, Thy vengeance is greater than my sin—Diana!”
He looked down at the physician, absorbed in ineffectual efforts to recall the wandering spirit to its fair young body; and in a voice that smote even that ear, so fully seasoned to sorrow’s plaint:—
“Sir—so has Heaven dealt with me this day, that if I must needs hear now that he is dead—my only son … ’twould be the best tidings … in very truth!”
THE RED DESOLATION
“I have seen many terrible sights in my life, Master Chitterley,—none so terrible as this.”
Thus old Martin Bracy, Sergeant-Yeoman of the Tower of London, to the Lord Constable’s body-servant.
His companion flung up trembling hands for all response. As old as the sergeant—whose head had grown white in the King’s service: at home in the civil wars, abroad in Charles’s regiment of Flanders—but of less solid metal, years had stricken him harder, and he had little breath to spare after his grievous ascent to the platform of the Beauchamp Tower. And as the two now stood, side by side, looking down from the great height over the stricken city, they might have served as types, one of green old age, the other of wintry senility.
The scene outspread below them was indeed suchas to strike awe to the stoutest heart. It was the fifth of September, third day of the great fire; and nothing, it seemed, was like to arrest the spread of the red desolation until it had embraced the whole of the town.
Under the canopy of black smoke, like some monster of nightmare, the fire crouched, spread, uncoiled itself; now it clapped ragged wings of flame high into the sky, now grasped new, unexpected quarters as with a stealthily outreached claw. The wind ran lightly from the east, so that, in cruel contrast, the sky was fair blue over their heads, while to the westward horizon it spread ensanguined, overhung with lurid clouds.
“If hell itself had broken open,” said Martin Bracy, “and were vomiting yonder, methinks it would scarce show us a more affrighting picture. Often these days, Master Chitterley, I have taken to minding me again of the Crop-Heads’ sayings—and I had a surfeit of them in my days of imprisonment, forever talking of Judgment! Aye, I would have my laugh at them, then. But now it comes back to me:—
“‘First the scourge of Plague; and thereafter(that is now)the scourge of Fire!’”
“‘First the scourge of Plague; and thereafter(that is now)the scourge of Fire!’”
He mused as the aged will, speaking his thought aloud:—
“There was one Jedediah Groggins—Smite-Them-Hip-and-Thigh was the name he gave himself, but Smit’em-Grogs they used to call him (aye, and a smiter he was!)—who had charge of the jail at York, where I was caged awhile, ye wot, after Marston Moor—”
Chitterley nodded his palsied head; his faded eyes looked out with scarce a flicker of comprehension on the present vision that so impressed the soldier; but his brain was still to be stirred by memories of the past.
“Marston Moor … aye! ’Twas at Marston my Lord Rockhurst took the pike-push in his thigh—and he and I in hiding long days after in a burnt-out farm-house on the wolds. Scarce bite or sup had I for him. And he fretting for the death of his gallant friend, Sir Paul Farrant, killed at his side—Aye, aye, good Sir Paul—”
The sergeant’s gaze was still roaming out to where the great heart of the city throbbed in agony.
“‘There went up a smoke in his wrath and a fire flamed forth from his face,’” he went on. “Truly, I mind me, that was one of this Jedediah’s favourite texts. Yes—I had my laugh at it then: littlethought I should ever see it come true, as I have done these days!… I was young then, and made mock of such things. But, sure, the sins of this land began with the Crop-Heads themselves, when they took up arms against his sacred Majesty.” He raised his hand to his velvet cap. “But they were right in this, friend Chitterley: the wrath of the Lord is an awful thing.—Hark ye at that!”
A dull explosion had rent the air. A belching column of white smoke, fringed with black, sprang up at the extremity of the fiery picture. The sergeant moved to the corner of the parapet to peer forth:—
“See yonder … our lads at work! Blowing up houses ahead of the fire. Aye, truly, Master Chitterley, I would his lordship had let me take the mining party to-day. But one would think—in all respect—there was a very devil in him, since this outbreak began. ’Tis ever to the hottest with him. And the men must after him, though the flames be as greedy as hell’s.—’Tis hard on a soldier,” added the old campaigner, with a philosophic sigh, “to be driven to burn before his time!”
The other’s clouded perception caught but the hint of danger to a beloved master.
“His lordship?” he cried; “and whither went he to-day, Sergeant?”
“Toward Bishopsgate. See, where I point; there, where ’tis like looking upon a pit of fire.”
Chitterley curved his withered hands over his eyes and strove to fix them in the direction indicated.
“God save him,” he muttered.
“Amen,” echoed Bracy earnestly, “for he carries those white hairs of his whither he would scarce have ventured his raven locks! ’Tis beyond all reason. Aye, and Master Harry with him.… Lord, Lord, how it doth burn!”
Bracy seated himself upon the sill of an embrasure, and drawing a stump of pipe from his pocket, proceeded to strike flint and kindle thetabaco, with all the old soldier’s habit of making the most of a spare hour of rest. The other remained standing; forlorn, pathetic figure enough, beaten about by the light wind that flapped the skirts of his coat against the wasted limbs, and set sparse strands of white hair dancing as in mockery about his skull.
Sergeant Bracy rolled another text upon his tongue as two or three fresh explosions, closely following each other, shocked even the mighty masonry of the Tower:—
“‘The earth shook and trembled, because He was angry with them.’ Aye, ’twould seem to fit in singularly!—Yet, as you and I know, ’tis but our men atwork of salvage. They must even destroy to save!—There went the last house in Shoreditch!” He made a gesture with his pipe-stem. “Ha, now the Hall falls upon itself like a house of cards!… Pray Heaven none of our boys be caught beneath the dropping masonry, as was honest Corporal Tulip yester-eve! ’Tis no marvel to me, Master Chitterley,” he went on, settling himself more comfortably on his narrow seat, “that the men like not the work. Nay, were it with other than my Lord Constable, or young Harry—or one such as I am, Master Chitterley—we might well expect a show of rebellion among them. To see death, you may say, be soldier’s life,—aye, give death, lay siege, waste, burn and slay,—all in the way of glorious war, friend Chitterley, and service of King—wholesome heat of blood to keep the horrors off—But this business, there is neither glory nor plunder in it. No—no, I’ve seen sour looks and lagging feet, as much as dare be, at least, under my lord’s eye or Master Harry’s.”
“My lord—Master Harry—” repeated Chitterley, as in a kind of dream. “Do not mock me, sergeant, but there be days now when I scarce know them apart … remembering.… Or rather—”
“Aye,” interrupted the soldier, good-humoured, yet impatient of the other’s maundering, “I catchyour meaning. Young Master Harry that was a boy has grown marvellous quick a man these troublous times. ’Tis his gallant father all over again as you and I knew him. And, on the other hand, my Lord Constable is changed—oh, damnably changed! An old man in one year!—Hark in your ear! ’Tis never plague horrors, nor fire horrors, that have worked on him so sorely; ’tis the mind, Master Chitterley. Trouble of the mind!”
He tapped his forehead with the pipe-stem, nodded his head, and thereafter puffed awhile in sagacious meditation.
“In faith,” said Chitterley, with piteous trembling of the lip, “my dear lord’s hair has grown as white as mine own.”
“Ah, it is trouble changes a man,” pursued the sergeant, presently. He cast a look of kindly pity at Chitterley. “And in sooth, poor soul,” muttered he under his breath, “who should prove it better than yourself, who have been a doddering poor wight ever since yon fearful morning when Master Harry was like to die of his reopened wound and my lord to go mad—and plague in the very house?—Aye, aye,” his voice waxed loud again, “shall I ever forget the hour when you all came back to the Tower, and none knew if the lad was not dead already? ’Twas thenthe Lord Constable’s hair began to turn white.” He gave a kind of sniff, his teeth clenched on the pipe, and touched Chitterley on the arm to call back his wandering attention. “I was on guard, man, the day his Majesty returned to the city (upon the subsidence of the great sickness), and I was present at the first meeting between him and the Lord Constable.His Majesty did not know him!”
He emphasised each word of this last remarkable statement by a separate tap of the pipe-bowl upon his open palm.
Chitterley turned troubled eyes upon him.
“His Majesty hath ever had great love for my lord,” he protested.
“He—did—not—know—him,” repeated Sergeant Bracy, scanning his words. “I was as near his Majesty as I am to you.—‘What,’ says the King, staring, ‘this is never my merry Rockhurst?’—‘Always your Majesty’s devoted servant,’ says my lord, bowing that white head, ‘but your merry Rockhurst never again.’ ‘Oh, damn!’ says his Majesty.—Ho, ho, ho! I heard him with these ears!”
There was no smile on old Chitterley’s lips. It was a question whether he followed his more sturdy comrade’s gossip or whether, in the dimness of his mind, he was only aware of the pity of many things.
“Aye, in truth, and as you say,” the yeoman went on after a while, “Master Harry hath changed even as much as his father. Faith, ’twas but a lad when we laid him on his bed here; he rose from it a man. Sooth, Death’s a grim teacher! I’ve seen many a boy soldier turned to a man by a single battle.—But there’s secret trouble there, too.… Pity that so gallant a youth should ever wear so sober a brow! Again a word in your ear, Master Chitterley: They say a lady was lost in the plague days, none knowing where or how she died—is it true?”
Chitterley drew back and flung a cunning glance at the genial, inquisitive countenance. Old? None so old yet, nor so foolish, that he would betray his master’s secret!
“Aye, the plague! the plague!” he mumbled. “As you say, good sergeant—those were terrible times.”
“Sho!” said the sergeant; knocked the ashes of his pipe with an irritable tap and turned his keen blue eyes out once more to the red westward glare. Even at that instant there rose from the gateway tower the blare of a trumpet, the roll of drums. The sounds caught up and repeated from different quarters.
“God be praised,” said he; “’tis the party home again from the work!”
Back went the pipe into Sergeant Bracy’s pocket. He drew himself from his seat; fell, unconsciously, once more into military bearing, and made for the stairs to seek his officer. Chitterley followed, stirred into a fleeting return of energy.
The Lord Constable halted on the first platform and flung from his head the hat with the singed plumes. His son looked at him in some anxiety: he had felt his father’s hand press ever more heavily on his shoulder as they came up the winding steps. Between the ash-powdered white locks, the handsome face struck him as more than usually drawn and pallid.
“A cup of wine for his lordship, Chitterley.—Haste!” cried he.
Rockhurst staggered slightly and sank down upon a stone bench; then looked up at his son and smiled.
“’Tis but a passing giddiness. All thanks, good lad!”
Even as he spoke the smile was succeeded by a heavy sigh. Scarce twenty-two, and his boy to wear so careworn a countenance! But a year ago, before their great trouble, he had tenderly mocked the boyfor his over-youthfulness…! Here was a man with sad, haunted eyes, and features set with silent endurance of pain. And all the boyhood that had been the father’s delight was lost forever.
“’Tis as if the patience of God were worn out,” he went on, as though speaking to himself, after a while, during which he had gazed wistfully at the distant conflagration. “Well for those who can say in their heart that no sin of theirs has cried aloud for vengeance.”
And again the heavy sigh escaped his lips.
The anxiety grew deeper in Harry Rockhurst’s eyes; he took the cup of wine from Chitterley’s hand (half crazed his fellow-retainers deemed him, but alert enough still in all that concerned his master’s service):—
“Drink, my lord,” said he, “you need it. Human strength will not bear more of the work you have done to-day … indeed, all these days!”
But Rockhurst’s eyes having fallen upon Chitterley, he beckoned him to his side before lifting the wine to his lips. Full of secret importance, the old servant hurried to him.
Harry drew back. In many ways he felt as if his father still treated him like a child; in none more than these secret interviews with Chitterley. TheLord Constable seemed to make his servant sole confidant and instrument in the matter of some urgent and troublous private business; one which necessitated frequent absences on both sides. The secrecy pained the young man, but he bore the slight in silence; he had not been brought up to question the parental actions.
“Didst go where I bade thee?” whispered Rockhurst.
“Aye, my lord.”
“No news?”
“No news, no news!”
Rockhurst sat awhile, moodily gazing on the red of the wine. Rousing himself at last, he drank wearily, handed the empty cup to the old man and, with a wave of the hand, dismissed him. Then he sat awhile longer yet, watching his son—There were those who said that my Lord Rockhurst’s eyes could look at naught else, when his heir was by him. Harry was engaged in receiving the sergeant yeoman’s report. The father did not speak till he saw Bracy salute and withdraw. Then he lifted his voice:—
“Harry!”
The young man started, and in an instant was by his father’s side. There was something of womanlysolicitude in his air. ’Twas a vast pity (the soldiers said among themselves) to see a young man so set upon an old one!—“Clean against nature,” Corporal Tulip had vowed, whose own amorous heart was now ashes beneath the ashes of the Thames Street Hall, while his sweetheart already thought of walking o’ sunsets with Anspessade Strongitharm.
Rockhurst rose and placed his hand on his son’s shoulder. The two looked affectionately into each other’s eyes: sad men both, and deadly worn this evening hour after the fierce work of the day.
“Harry, it is borne in on me that not many days will be given us of company together thus—”
“How, my lord—would you wish me from you again?”
“Nay—this time, Harry, it will be thy father who leaves thee.”
The young man started. Look and tone left no doubt of the meaning of the words.
“Ah, father,” he cried, with the irritability born of keen anxiety; “if you would but listen to me! Indeed you expose yourself unduly—”
“When death threatens from without, a man may smile at it. But when death knocks from within, Harry, thrice fool who does not hearken!”
“Sir, you alarm me.” Harry’s voice shook. “Oh,I have been blind! Your white hairs, your altered demeanour, are sure signs of suffering—some hidden sickness!”
“Even so, lad. Sickness incurable! A secret pain that gives no rest, night nor day. Nay, nay, Harry, no physician can avail, no remedy ease—”
“Ah,” exclaimed the son in bitter accents, “now I understand much. You have never given me your confidence, yet methinks I might have been as true to help you in your need, as wise in my devotion to advise, as old Chitterley. This sickness is the secret between you. ’Tis for physician or remedy that Chitterley journeys forth daily in such mystery while you toil. Can you not see, my lord, that to be shut out from your counsel has but added deeper grief to me? And methinks that I might have proved as true to help, as wise to counsel, as yonder old man.… But it has always been your pleasure to treat me as a child.”
Rockhurst fixed deep eyes of melancholy on his son.
“My illness is not of the body, Harry; it is of the mind. But the canker works, never ceasing, eats from soul to flesh.”
“You speak in riddles, sir.”
“Alas! you shall read my riddle soon enough.Hast ever heard—thou canst never have known it—of that sickness of the spirit which is called … remorse? In sooth, ’tis uglier than the pestilence.”
At the look of sudden fear his son cast upon him the Lord Constable laughed,—a laugh sadder than tears.
“Sit you down with me, Harry, and listen; for I have much to tell you, and it is, as I said, borne in upon me that it must be told now.”
The young man obeyed in silence; but for a moment or two neither spoke.
The western sky before them had become an image of flaming immensity, almost beyond the power of realisation. Glow of sunset mingled with glow of fire and painted the volutes of smoke massed on the horizon with every shade of fierce magnificence and lurid threat.
“’Twould seem as if the whole town were doomed,” muttered Rockhurst at last.
“The powers of hell let loose upon us,” said his son, gloomily.
“Say, rather, my son, the wrath of God! Look at me, lad! The last time, perchance, that you will look upon your father’s face with love and reverence.”
Words froze on the young man’s lips. The LordConstable folded his arms; his voice grew stern, ironic:—
“You believe me—do you not?—a sober, godly gentleman, as true to his duty as Christian as he has been to his king as subject—”
“Indeed, my lord, I know you as such,” quickly interrupted Harry, in deep offence.
“Aye, Harry, aye,” laughed Rockhurst, bitterly, “I had but one part to act toward thee, and it seems I did it well!—I never let thee know but the father in me, the stern yet loving father.” His voice suddenly broke on a note of tenderness. “Nay, never doubt that, whatever else you may come to doubt: I loved you well. You were my delight—My son, you’ve had a sore heart against me many a time for that I treated you, in sooth, as a child, kept you far from me, in the country; that I so sternly forbade you the town and the life of the Court. Even now you have the plaint that you are excluded from my counsel. Well, such as I planned, I have made thee. Where I have failed in life, thou art strong. Thou hast kept thy manhood pure and clean, where thy father rioted, wasted—”
“Gracious heavens! my lord! What words are these?”
“Ah, ’tis not the sound man that praises the gloryof health, but the sick. Not the sober Christian sees the full radiance of the jewel of purity, but the libertine. I never let thee guess that here, in this town, now dissolving in fire, I had won me the name of Rakehell Rockhurst.”
With paling cheek and a starting eye, the son had listened. Now he winced as if his father had struck him.
“Rakehell Rockhurst—Rakehell! And I smote Lionel Ratcliffe on the mouth for daring to couple the name to yours—!” Then, on a fierce revulsion of feeling, he caught the pale hand close to him and kissed it passionately. “Wherefore tell me this? Father, as I have ever known you, so must I ever love and honour you.”
“The Rakehell—” repeated the Lord Constable; and once more, out of the very pain of his avowal, came harshness into his tone—“that was my name in men’s mouths. His Majesty had another, a kinder one, for me; he called me in jest his merry Rockhurst. You have been reared in ripe veneration of the King’s Grace; yet, had you known life by my side (as once you yearned), you would have learned that the one name and the other meant, in Whitehall, at least, the same thing. Rakehell—aye, I may have had black perdition in my heart many atime; yet believe this, Harry, that when like Lucifer I fell, I sinned like Lucifer with pride, arrogance, recklessness, what you will—never with baseness. Merry, my good liege called me. To find me so mad, yet see me wear so grave a face, it gave him a spur to laughter. Merry? Nay; he loved me, in chief, because in his sad heart he knew mine. Both sad hearts, sickened of life. Forever striving to find a blossom in the dust, a jest in the weary round, to taste of a fruit that was not ashes on the tongue. And there you have the secret of my life and his.… Then came Diana.”
“Ah, hush, my lord!” Harry rose from his seat, in violent agitation, and stood a second, pressing his hands against his breast. “With me, you know, wounds heal slowly,” he went on, striving to speak calmly. “Do not touch upon that hurt, lest the bleeding begin afresh.”
The father rose, too, followed his son to the parapet, and, again laying a hand upon his shoulder, compelled his attention. The splendour of the sunset pageant had faded, and with it all beauty from the sky. Only the glow, the gloom, the belching smoke remained.
“I knew her ere ever you did,” said the Lord Constable, his eye fixed as upon an inner vision, fairand fresh and pure. “Aye, you never knew it. She spoke not of it again, nor did I; for you had come between us!… She entered into my life one winter’s night; and across the snow I set her again on her sheltered way, knowing what I was—and seeing what she was. But from the instant of our parting (’twas all in the snow, lad, and above us a sky of stars; scarce I touched her hand; not a word exchanged but a God be wi’ ye), from that instant she was never from my thoughts—She, the might-have-been, the one woman for me! Aye, you stare, your grave father! Your old father! I was a strong man, then, and life ran potent in my veins. Dost remember how I met her again, in the Peacock Walk at home, and you prating of your love for her, with beardless lip?”
“Oh, father, father, father!” cried the poor lad. “For God’s sake!… You are all I have left!”
“Hush! Look on these white hairs, sign among so many that life has done with me. Nay, I know full well I am not old in years, scarce double thine own; but the vital spring is dying. Listen, Harry, you are a man; I have a trust to lay upon you. Since that terrible dawn, when, crying out, ‘Diana’s dead!’ you fell, bleeding of your old wound, into swoon upon swoon, and thereafter into mortal sickness, youknow her name has never passed your lips nor mine. It was better, in sooth, you should believe her dead.”
The young man caught at the parapet behind him for support; and the sweat broke on the father’s brow as he looked at him. There was a tense silence. Then, fiercely, Harry Rockhurst said:—
“Now, my lord, you must speak!”
A moment longer Rockhurst kept silence. Curious reversal of the wheel of fate! Here stood he, who had always been as a god to his son, now as one in the dock before his judge. He, Rockhurst, whose will the King himself could not bend, ordered to speech; and because of his own just mind, just through all injustice wrought, unresentful—aye, submissive. The moment of agony of a little while ago had passed.
Already it seemed to him the things of life were receding so quickly that he looked on them from afar. Passion had gone from his voice as he spoke; only a mighty sadness was left.
“It was even to speak, Harry, that I kept thee by me here. Know, then, that until the night of Lady Chillingburgh’s death,—the night which found Diana without a shelter,—in my daily intercourse with your promised bride the father was ever strongerin me than the man. Aye, and when her brother fled from the plague-stricken house and there was none but me to protect her (for her kinsman Lionel was, as thou hast good cause to know, my poor wounded boy, no guardian for thy bride) ’twas as a father I cared for her all through the livelong night as we wandered, vainly seeking a refuge. I brought her at length to my house, and went forth to seek the means of conveying her home. That was even the very morning of your arrival. Alack, nor horse nor man could fugitive then find in the waste of the doomed city! I came back to her.… Oh, my son, before you judge me, remember: men knew not what they did those terrible days. Question any who passed through them. Staid citizens became drunken reprobates, greybeards rioted horribly with the madness of youth, priests denied their God—”
“But Diana, Diana—”
“Aye, Diana! I deemed Fate itself had given her to me. The madness of the horror about me had turned my brain. Madness of my love for her, of my long self-denial! I would have wedded her, even that hour. But she, she had yielded her troth to thee … to thy father she gave her scorn! At that most cursed moment thy voice rose from the street, thou, my son whom I deemed far away, in the heart of thecountry! I would have killed her rather than yield her. Remember, I was mad. I thrust her from thy sight into an inner room. Ah, God, in that room!”
“In that room?”
“The plague lay in wait for her.”
“The plague—”
“Unknown to me one lay there, a woman who had crept in, sick—to die!”
Harry gave a deep groan, covered his face with his hands, and fell upon the bench.
“Whilst I lay raving, did she die of the plague, there, in your room? O my Diana!”
“My son, I know not. When I sought for her she was gone, vanished. The window was opened into the garden. The woman lay dead upon the bed.”
Harry sprang to his feet, clapped his hands together in a sudden agony of joy, more dreadful at that moment than all his sorrow to the father’s eyes.
“She escaped? She may be living yet! There is mercy in heaven!”
“No mercy for such as I—nor for thee, being my son. For my moment’s madness, what retribution! Harry, this whole long year I have looked for her, night and day. There is not a corner of the town we have not scoured, old Chitterley and myself. Aye, that was the mystery you fretted not to share!”
Harry looked at his father speechlessly, with fierce dry eyes.
“Alas!” Rockhurst went on stonily, “she must even be dead, stricken by the contagion—fallen at the street corner perchance, swept into the common pit as so many others! And yet, if she were not dead—There is not a burning house I pass but I fear she may be in the flames. Food is as ashes, drink as gall upon my tongue. And now, with the presage of death upon me, I lay the hideous burden upon thee, my son, my innocent son!”
He stretched his hand. But, drawing back, the latter turned a red glance upon him.
“And you let me believe her dead that morning—that morning! I could have saved her!” He flung his arms in the air and shook them; a terrible menace on his face.
“God!” he called, “God—!”
Rockhurst gave a loud cry:—
“My son, do not curse your father!”
The young man’s arms dropped by his side. He looked at the bent white head, at the countenance worn, wan, patient; then he cast himself upon his father’s breast, sobbing:—
“God help us all!”