Something in the sweet, assumed archness of her tone stirred him as could no outburst of feminine terror.
“Diana, child, I cannot permit this! You must not remain exposed to such peril. I will no longer be withheld from speaking to Lady Chillingburgh.”
“Believe me, my lord,” she prayed him earnestly, “you would but anger her; you would but be banishedthis house, and nothing gained indeed. Oh, do not speak!”
He took both her hands as she involuntarily flung them out.
“Then will I speak to you only. Diana, think of yourself, of Harry. The whole town is in flight. The departure of the Court has given the final signal for panic—”
She smiled as she slowly withdrew her hands.
“And you, my lord, when do you join the fugitives?”
“I?” He started. “Why, surely, madam, you know I have a post to keep! ’Tis one I would not desert if I might. My men, poor devils, look to me—”
“Ah,” she interrupted, “and have I no post to hold against the same enemy? How many servants would my grandmother retain if I set the example?”
“Diana!” The word escaped him in an uncontrollable impulse of tenderness. But he checked himself again on the very leap of passion. “Ah,” he murmured, “I shall have a brave daughter!”
She smiled, as a woman smiles at the hurt inflicted by the best-beloved.
There came from without the sound of voices, uplifted in the pleasant, artificial accents that markthe social meeting, and Lionel Ratcliffe ushered a couple of elderly visitors into the room with his elaborate, if ironic, courtesy.
“You are not the first, gentlemen, you perceive. Indeed, my worthy ancestress is somewhat behind-hand in her usual punctilio. But she has been engaged (with my assistance) in the dismissal of a saucy footman who has had the insolence to remark to her upon these red crosses with which it hath become the rage to adorn the doors of certain houses these days.”
Both the men laughed uneasily.
“Tut, tut!” cried the elder and stouter, and sniffed surreptitiously at his pomander box.
“Quite so,” assented Lionel, suavely.
Whereupon the other guest broke out, as in anger:—
“A monstrous nuisance, ’pon honour! Gad, sirs, I am here straight from a crony’s house—my Lord Vernon’s and no other. What think you greets me from the door-step—a nobleman’s door, mark you! The cross, sir, the cross! and by my soul, the text, ‘Lord have mercy on us!’ writ beneath in chalk!”
“Lord ’a’ mercy!” exclaimed the stout man, starting back involuntarily. “You did not cross the threshold?”
“No, Mr. Foulkes,” returned the younger severely. Then he burst forth again, a man mightily offended by the indelicacy of events: “Gad, sir, I’m not fond of the country, but I’m for it to-morrow!”
Foulkes again sniffed his spice-box, this time openly.
“Why, so am I, Sir John!—Ah, Mistress Harcourt, your humble devoted!”
Ratcliffe, who had anxiously looked round the room for Madame de Mantes, while the guests exchanged greetings, now saw her emerge from the window recess, and threw her a keen, enquiring glance. Without meeting his eyes, she came forward with a great rustle of ballooning silk so that all turned toward her.
“Pray, Mr. Ratcliffe,” said she, in a gay and coquettish voice, “you have not yet presented me to your kinswoman.”
Ratcliffe shot swift scrutiny from beneath his drawn brows at Diana’s surprised face, at Lord Rockhurst’s dark, impassive countenance and the Frenchwoman’s crimson cheeks and haggard eyes, imperceptibly shrugged his shoulders, and complied:—
“Cousin Diana—Madame de Mantes, who is kind enough to add her charming presence to ourdwindling company to-night. Agreeably to our grandmother’s wish, I have been acting herald to her hospitality.”
Jeanne sank into the centre of her amber and blue draperies; emerged languorous, extended with queenly grace a hand to Foulkes and another to Sir John, and from the very sweep of her courtesies flung a condescending phrase at her rival:—
“Monsieur, your handsome cousin, has been so eloquent about you, madam, that ’tis almost as if I knew you already.”
“He is very kind,” faltered Diana, ill at ease, she scarce knew why. Then, mindful of her duty as hostess, “You know my Lord Rockhurst?”
The lady looked beyond them into the night of the garden.
“Wehavemet,” she said in dreamy tones, and sailed into a third obeisance.
The two gentlemen of the Court instinctively drew together.
“What has come to that pretty piece from France? Her looks are oddly altered, think you not? And her manner is somewhat singular to-night. What makes she in this prim circle? She should be at Salisbury,” whispered Foulkes.
Sir John Farringdon jerked his thumb knowinglytoward the Lord Constable; both looked, laughed, and wagged their heads. Rockhurst stepped forward and unostentatiously drew Diana away from Madame de Mantes. Lionel seized his moment:—
“What did you, from the room?” he whispered hurriedly in his ally’s ear. “You had your chance, and let it slip! I had not brought you here—” He stopped suddenly, staring at her askance. The great enamel clasp, that held the artfully careless draperies at her breast, rose and fell with her over-quick breathing, yet her mood was strangely cheerful; nay, incomprehensible, for he marked that her eyes were red. She had wept, he angrily thought, and robbed herself well-nigh of all her beauty. “You’ve lost the trick for both of us,” he muttered bitterly.
“Don’t be too sure,” she bade him, drawing closer to him. “Look at them!” she cried, tossing her curls in the direction of Rockhurst and Diana. “Ha! you’d have me believe Rockhurst in love—in love with that white, bloodless, fireless country stock! Oh, sir, I have seen Rockhurst in love!”
A smile twisted his lips; he looked at her cruelly.
She proceeded with a mixture of exultation and bitterness:—
“I watched them; they thought themselves alone.I tell you he made no attempt to do more than kiss her finger-tips! Ah,mon Dieu!” Her laughter was like a flame running through her. “With me—Ah, you men! do I not know you?”
“Pshaw!” said Ratcliffe, deliberately. “Something you may know of us, and know well. But you know not what a virtuous woman can make of us.”
She wheeled on him, clenching her hands as though to strike him.
“Indeed!” she panted. “And have I not had as much virtue as any woman—once?” Then, finding his gaze fixed upon his cousin, she halted upon precipitate speech, watched him keenly for a second, and broke into loud laughter.
“Hush!” he cried, starting at the wanton sound.
“Excellent Lionel,” she said, catching him with her small, burning fingers, “if friends are to help each other, they should be frank. But now I know your secret, I know where I am. As Heaven is good to me,” her laugh rang out again, “’tis not for the money; why, ’tis for love! You’re in love with the widow!”
He looked at her for an instant as if he could have stabbed her willingly, but the next fell back into his cynic mood.
“Congratulate yourself, then,” he retorted drily, “since I have all the more reason to have my way. But, pray you, here comes my grandam. She cares not for such loud mirth.”
“Trust me,” she tittered. “I await but the ripe moment. The unmasking shall yet be played to your liking, and—” She faltered; into her eyes came the vagueness, into her voice the singular change, that once or twice already had aroused Ratcliffe’s attention. In a kind of toneless whisper, rapid and jerky, she added: “Unmask? Oh, yes, milord. No doubt—after supper!”
Lionel fell back with a frown of dismay.
The folding doors were thrown apart; two footmen entered, bearing candelabra which they deposited upon the centre card-table. There was an abrupt cessation of talk among the guests, and all turned in formal expectation of the venerable hostess’s entry. Into which stillness Lady Chillingburgh, seated very upright in her chair, was wheeled by a negro boy.
Through the fantastic mists that circled in her brain to-night, now shrouding her faculties in gloom like the sinister fog that hung without, now shot as with many-coloured fires, Madame de Mantes gazed upon this extraordinary personality.
Paralysed to the waist though the old lady was, a fierce vitality, an indomitable will, looked out of the sunken black eyes, spoke in the cavernous voice, imposed itself in the gesture of the shriveled hand. Here was one, in spite of age and infirmity, strong enough to bid defiance to universal calamity, to look Pestilence in the face, and choose to ignore it; who, in the midst of a terror akin to that of the scriptural last day—when the abomination of desolation seemed to have fallen upon the city, and he that was on the housetop might scarce come down to take anything out of his house—could still give her weekly card-party and find guests to obey the summons.
As her chair was brought to a stand in the middle of the room, Lady Chillingburgh drew her eyebrows together and swept a slow, severe glance over the circle.
“I was informed the company had assembled. How now! Are these all my guests?”
There was a kind of apologetic stir, as if each person felt responsible for the paucity of the gathering. Then Rockhurst and the other men advanced and gravely paid their devoirs. Diana drew her grandmother’s chair to a more suitable position by the big card-table, and stood behind her, in attendance. Ratcliffe instantly proceeded to the introduction of the new guest. He was once more suave, to glibness:—
“The Court has left this morning, dear madam; hence this unwonted emptiness of your rooms. Nevertheless, here is a lady of the royal circle. Madame de Mantes, of the house of Madame Henriette de France, and honoured by their Majesties’ particular regard—she still prefers the advantages of the town.”
The aged face became wreathed in smiles.
“I trust their Majesties were in good health, madam, when last you saw them,” said my Lady Chillingburgh in stately condescension.
Jeanne courtesied mechanically. She felt of a sudden childishly afraid of the figure in the chair, old, old and nearly dead, yet so alive!
The faint, hollow voice went on, as from the recesses of a tomb:—
“You play cards, of course, Madame de Mantes!” To which the other made answer feebly, into space:—
“Yes … yes, milady. I came to play.”
A slight shade of surprise appeared in the hostess’s eyes; but after a second, she made another gesture with the clawlike hand, and turned with an unerring precision of politeness to her friends:—
“Sir John, I rejoice to see you; you had failed us of late. Ah, Mr. Foulkes, you indeed are ever faithful! But where is your good lady?”
“She deemed it wiser—hem,” Foulkes coughed, a-sweat with embarrassment, “I mean, she had accepted an invitation to the country, and left this morning with our family.”
“Indeed!” commented the venerable hostess, regally. “My Lord Rockhurst, you prefer basset, I know. So does Sir John. Will you be seated yonder? Grandson, to my left. Madame, will you face me, if you please? Mr. Foulkes, sir, to my right. Diana, child, shuffle the cards.”
They fell into their places as she willed them; and for a little while round the greater table there was naught but the business of the moment: the necessary words of the game, the rattle of the dice, the whisper of sliding cards. Diana, her fresh young beauty drawn close in startling contrast to her grandmother’s awe-inspiring face, held the cards for the trembling fingers, flung the dice.
In the window recess, the two men, under cover of a languid contest, conversed gravely in undertones. But ever and again the Lord Constable’s gaze, charged with anxiety, sought Diana’s radiant head. Jeanne had flung herself feverishly into the game, which seemed to her all at once a matter of colossal importance.
“I marvel extremely,” quoth Lady Chillingburgh, “that my Lord Marsham should be so late. You are acquaint with my Lord Marsham, madame? He is much at Whitehall. We are indeed a small party to-night. Let us hope my lord will presently appear.”
Foulkes, who had shown increasing agitation during this speech, now dropped his cards with a muffled “Mercy be good to us!”
Ratcliffe kicked him under the table, the while addressing his bland tones to his grandmother.
“Do not expect his lordship to-night, madam. I hear he has convened a party of his own.”
Sir John Farringdon, straining startled ears and eyes from the other table, caught Ratcliffe’s glance, and mouthed at him with dumb lips, “Gone?”—jerking heavenward with his thumb.
“Gone,” asserted Ratcliffe’s nod, while his thumb pointed grimly down.
Lady Chillingburgh turned her quick glance, her high pyramid of lace and white curls, in daunting enquiry toward Sir John. But her grandson, diabolically fluent, was once more ready with his irony:—
“Sir John is offended at having received no invitation.”
“’Tis very strange,” said Lady Chillingburgh. “My Lord Marsham is not wont to be discourteous.”
“’Twas such a sudden inspiration,” soothed Lionel.
His grandmother fixed him with stern disapproval. Diana sometimes thought that, though it was the old woman’s fancy to be humoured, not a jot of their elaborate pretence escaped her; that she fiercely resented the mocking manner with which Lionel acted his rôle.
“And your cousin, sir? Where lurks he? Your brother Edward, I mean, Diana?”
And as Diana had no answer but a look of dumbdistress, the old lady finished the phrase for herself:—
“I fear young Edward can find little time for the duties he owes to his grandmother, for the claims of a genteel society, so eager is he, since he is come to London, for less reputable amusements!” Again the fiery eyes wandered, seeking. “And Mistress Hill? ’Tis the first time in seven years that Mistress Hill has failed me.”
Sir John Farringdon, who had been unaccountably nettled by Ratcliffe’s mocking remark, here lifted his voice somewhat overloudly:—
“I can give tidings of Mistress Hill, madam. I happen to know that this evening she was driven out in state. No doubt, Mr. Ratcliffe, ’twas to join that gathering of my Lord Marsham’s to which, as you were good enough to inform the company, I was not asked.”
Rockhurst rose, frowning. And, laughing, not pleasantly, at his own wit, Sir John gathered the neglected stakes and slipped them into his pocket. Madame de Mantes echoed the laugh, shrilly, hysterically.
“Mon Dieu!How amusing you all are!” she cried, and furtively wiped her forehead, wet with unaccountably cold clamminess this sultry night.
A dark flush crept to the old hostess’s bleached cheek. Desultory talk or grim jest failed alike to relieve the tension. The game languished; scarce passed a card or rang a die; the ever-shadowing Horror hung, nightmare-dark, ever closer, ever more palpable, over all.
“The game, madam! The game, gentlemen!”
But it was idle, even for the bravest spirit among her guests, to deny the invisible Presence in their midst. And when, following upon a confused rumour on the stairs, a great cry of anguish and terror was raised at the very door of the room; when, staggering and wringing his hands, a distraught youth rushed in, it was almost as if his voice was that of the unacknowledged Fear; his livid face its very countenance.
“For the Lord’s sake, a cup of the plague water!”
“Brother!” cried Diana. She sprang toward him. But hastily, even roughly, Rockhurst thrust her on one side, and the boy collapsed into the nearest chair.
Whereupon Lionel, coming forward with his usual coolness, ran his fingers, with a movement the sinister significance of which most people had learned to interpret these days, under the fair curls of the bent head, feeling behind the ears.
“Pshaw—’tis nothing!… Sheer poltroonery,” cried he, and laughed loudly, and struck his cousin’s hunched shoulders with no gentle hand. “Art a pretty fellow to come thus, bellowing like a calf, into the presence of ladies!”
“Curse it!” moaned the lad. “I have just knocked against two women carrying a coffin! They howled like sick cats.” Sinking his head on his hands once more, he rocked himself backward and forward. “Oh, this wicked London! Oh, the judgment of God!”
“Edward!” cried Lady Chillingburgh imperiously. Her voice dominated the horrified whispers of Sir John and Foulkes, Madame de Mantes’s hysterical cries, young Edward’s obtrusive groans.
But there was a force stronger than her in her house that night. Sir John Farringdon unceremoniously poured himself a bumper of wine, drank it hastily, his eye on the door toward which Foulkes was already uneasily edging. Madame de Mantes, who had been sobbing out inarticulate words in her own tongue, broke into babbling laughter.
Edward sprang to his feet, thrusting aside his cousin’s restraining hand.
“I will speak! Grandam shall hear the truth at last! ’Tis everywhere! Every one is getting it!Lord Marsham, ill at noon, dead at four! Mistress Hill, well yesterday, buried to-night!”
“I command you to silence, Edward!”
The quavering voice rose high, catching painfully at lost authority; the palsied hand aimed a feeble blow at the table.
“Why must we stay, because of the old woman’s whimsy?” continued the boy in fury. “Zounds! I go to-night, and sister with me. D’ye hear, grandam! I’m only come here to get the travel money from you, and I’ll have it. I’ll go, and sister with me!”
But the aged queen was not yet dethroned. Her spirit asserted itself in a supreme effort. Life seemed to come back to her paralysed limbs; she flung out one hand in a gesture of authority; this time it scarce trembled.
“Diana, your brother is drunk. I order him to be expelled. Mr. Foulkes, the game is not concluded; resume your seat!”
She broke off. Sir John Farringdon had made a sudden unmannerly dash from the room. Foulkes stood at command with a sickly smile; but his friend’s example, the open passage, were too much for him; stealthily the door closed upon his retreat.
Only by a rigid aversion of her head did LadyChillingburgh betray her knowledge of this double defection.
“Grandson Lionel, your cousin Edward is drunk. Conduct him, I say, from this apartment and let him be physicked. Madam, I am surprised you find amusement in such an indecorous scene. Foh! It seems truly that we shall have no cards to-night. Diana, child, take your guitar and sing for us. Sing that old sweet song of Master Herrick’s.—My Lord Rockhurst, have you yet heard this new instrument?”
But the Lord Constable had followed Diana as she moved across the room to seek the guitar. They stood together a second; he saw her hand tremble over the olive-wood case.
“Nay, child, you can never sing to-night!” he whispered.
“My lord, I must—anything to soothe her. Oh, the physicians have ever warned us of the danger of agitation for her!”
“Diana!” Lady Chillingburgh’s voice was weak and strained; her face seemed to have suddenly shrunk; extinct was the fire in the eyes. Yet the will still struggled. “Sing!”
Rockhurst stood behind Diana, a strong, quiet presence, watchful, comforting. She smiled at himover her shoulder. He bent to her, and under cover of the first chords:—
“You, at least, are not afraid?” he asked.
“No, my lord.”
Lionel Ratcliffe had taken no pains to fulfil his grandmother’s behest; and already she seemed to have forgotten it; but he had soothed Edward Hare after his own fashion—by a bumper of wine and a whispered promise to provide the travel money himself. Now in the lull he took a seat behind Madame de Mantes and, his eyes on Rockhurst and Diana, began in a fierce undertone:—
“Do you not see how it is with them? Why, in this evening’s folly everything conspires to give them to each other. You wait the ripe moment, say you? Gad! Look there, I say: there is that other woman with the man you love—claim him now! ’Tis your last chance!”
Madame de Mantes, who, since Lady Chillingburgh’s rebuke, had been sitting, her chin propped up on her hands, her curls concealing her face, turned slowly toward him. He started. For all his fortitude a shudder ran through him.—Through her mad eyes the Pestilence was looking upon him!
Diana’s voice rose faint but sweet:—
Ask me why I send you hereThis sweet infanta of the year?Ask me why I send to youThis Primrose thus bepearled with dew?
Ask me why I send you hereThis sweet infanta of the year?Ask me why I send to youThis Primrose thus bepearled with dew?
Ask me why I send you here
This sweet infanta of the year?
Ask me why I send to you
This Primrose thus bepearled with dew?
Lady Chillingburgh, with closed lids, beat time vaguely on the arm of her chair; Edward Hare pondered over his last mouthful of wine; the Frenchwoman was muttering to herself and drawing, under the shadow of the curls, restless patterns on the table with her forefinger. Lionel sat beside her, his starting eyes upon her face.
I will whisper to your ears:The sweets of Love are mixed with tears!
I will whisper to your ears:The sweets of Love are mixed with tears!
I will whisper to your ears:
The sweets of Love are mixed with tears!
sang Diana, in a voice that had grown firmer and clearer.
And now, so faintly at first as to be almost imperceptible, something began to mingle itself with the music. The clang of a bell struck at intervals, followed by a long, monotonous call. The sound drew ever nearer. Diana faltered, took up her song again bravely, failed once more, struck a broken note; then hand and voice fell mute. Stillness held them all within the great room, which seemed to wait doom the more inevitably for its bright lights, for its futile air of indifference and gaiety.
Through the open window, out of the darkness, gathered a heavy rumble of wheels; then again uprose the call of the bell, the cry of the hoarse voice:—
“Bring out your dead!”
In the breathless pause, Lady Chillingburgh, rising upon those feet that had been dead to motion so long, stood erect, and flung out her arm with an angry cry; and then it seemed there was naught in the big chair but a huddled heap of drapery. The Terror, petrified on young Hare’s lip, broke out roaring:—
“She’s dead also! Grandam’s dead! The plague! She’s dead of the plague!” He made one leap for the door, his screams awaking confusion in the house.
Within Lady Chillingburgh’s drawing-room the drama was quickly played.
Diana bent in anguish over her grandmother, crying:—
“She has swooned! For Heaven’s sake, madame, as you are a woman, give me your assistance!”
But Lionel had sprung to her side:—
“Back, Diana! Away out of this room. Our grandmother is dead.”
“The—the sickness?” she faltered, with white lips.
“The plague? Not here—” he answered her. “But there!” He flung his pointing finger toward Jeanne de Mantes, who turned her face with a crazy laugh toward them.
Diana recoiled a pace, threw out her hands as if seeking support, and Rockhurst, ever close to her, caught her in his arms as she swooned. A sudden, blind, all-encompassing fury fell upon Ratcliffe.
“Stay, my Lord Constable!” he cried fiercely, and made a spring to wrest the unconscious burden from the hated man’s embrace. “Ah, Rakehell Rockhurst, not so fast!”
The table was between them. He was wrenching at his sword as he dashed round it, pushing Jeanne de Mantes aside; when, with her soft, bare arms, she clutched his throat from behind.
It was perhaps his horror of the embrace that robbed him of the power of resistance; perhaps it was the strength lent by the delirium that rendered her burning clasp irresistible. He struggled, yet was powerless. His starting eyes beheld the Lord Constable pass out of the room to the garden, bearing Diana into the night. He gathered his energy for a last shout in the hope of raising the household to his help; but the hot arms were writhing closer about him, the scented curls beat softly against hischeek. The creature was laughing, pressing upward her disfigured face, devouring him with her mad, unseeing eyes, striving to reach his lips for the kiss of death.—And she was raving:—
“At last, O Rockhurst!…O mon beau Démon!”
He never knew how he loosed himself—that moment was blank, stamped with too deep a horror to be ever recalled.
He found himself as in a nightmare rushing blindly through the blackness of the fields, feeling as if he could never escape from that lingering touch of contamination, as if no waters could ever lave him from the taint!
It was only when he was brought to a standstill by the edge of the river, by the Essex stairs, that he realised where his frenzy was taking him, and awoke, as it were, to sanity. But it was with a trembling in every limb and a weakness that forced him to sit on the steps. The water lapped at his very feet, shivering in a little circle of light cast by the stair lantern. He dipped his hand in the dark ripple and began mechanically to lave his brow—to lave, above all, his lips.
Thought took coherent shape again.—This wasthe end of his close-set plans. Madame de Mantes had failed him with a completeness it seemed that must have required Satan’s own ingenuity to devise. Lord Rockhurst had not been unmasked, Diana was with him in his power,—and he, Lionel Ratcliffe (God, with what appalling reason!), was at last afraid of the plague!
BROKEN SANCTUARY
A red dawn was breaking over London; through the undrawn curtains of the parlour in Lord Rockhurst’s small house in Whitehall, abutting by the Holbein gateway, the first rays darted in to mingle with the dying gleam of a pair of candles that guttered in their sockets.
Chitterley—my lord’s old confidential servant, who had shared with him all fortune’s vicissitudes, through prosperity and peace, through war and exile, since the last reign—rose from the high-backed chair upon which he had been dozing, and stretched his stiffened limbs wearily. Muttering to himself, as old people will, he fell with sudden alacrity to replenishing (only just in time, for it was fast going out) the small cresset which burned at his hand.
“All good spirits praise the Lord!… Now I pray no misfortune may have happened this night!…Heaven be merciful to us; these be times of terror!”
He flung a new handful of herbs upon the rekindled embers, and watched with satisfaction the column of fragrant smoke that rose circling, now blue, now white, to hang in clouds under the ceiling. “’Twas your only remedy against the tainted air,” had said Dr. Garth; and Dr. Garth was the King’s physician.
“Morning already—and no sign of his lordship! Had it been a year gone, now, I had got me to my bed, and ne’er a qualm. But these be no times for frolic—and e’en if they were, my lord has had little stomach for it these weeks agone.”
He shook his head, moved to the window, groaning for the aches in his joints, and peered into the street, in the hope of catching at last a glimpse of his beloved master, striding down Whitehall. Dim though Chitterley’s eyes might be, he would know a furlong away the swing of the tall figure, the cock of the sword under the folds of the cloak, the proud tilt of the hat. But the street was deserted.
It seemed as if the day was rising again over the stricken city but to make visible its desolation. The unwholesome mists of the night still stagnated under the reddening light; there was none of that air of rejuvenescence, of waking life-cheer, which morningought to bring. The stillness was not of repose, but of hopeless expectancy.
One of those street fires, which were kept burning at all cross-roads, to combat the pollution, could be seen in the distance, toward Charing Cross, smouldering fitfully, unattended, the last thin shafts of tar smoke rising straight, dismal, through the heavy air. Somewhere in the palace, behind the banquet hall, a bell rang the hour—it sounded like a knell for those that were that day to die. Presently, in this solitude, a woman’s figure appeared, creeping round a corner, holding on to the walls, dragging herself painfully; the only living creature, it seemed, left besides himself in this vast city. Presently even she disappeared from the purview.
Chitterley shuddered; and muttering his haunting “Lord have mercy upon us!” drew back from the windows to go tease again the reeking herbs in the cresset, and shift needlessly my lord’s chair.
“Not even a pomander could I persuade him to take with him…!”
He went over to extinguish the candles and stood awhile painfully musing.
There came a knock at the outer door. Hardly trusting his deaf ears, he turned to listen—everything, anything, was an added terror these days ofterror. The knock was repeated, faintly, then vehemently.
“’Tis not my lord—he hath the house key. Pray heaven this be no ill news!—Coming, coming!” he cried shrilly, as yet another summons rang.
Hardly had the door rolled back under his feeble hands when he found himself thrust on one side: a woman in low-cut dress, with dishevelled laces hanging in shreds at her shoulders, brushed past him and walked tottering into the room beyond, to sink upon the great chair.
Like an old watch-dog’s, Chitterley’s first thought was of his duty.
“Madam—madam!” he protested. “His lordship is not within—” Then, as she turned upon the querulous sound, and looked vacantly at him, he staggered back, “God ’a’ mercy; Madam Mantes!”
An ice-cold clutch seemed to be at his heart. Madame de Mantes it certainly was, the grand French lady of the Court, whom Lord Rockhurst had many a time entertained in days (alack, how far off they seemed!) when people laughed and made merry; and among the gay she had been the gayest, among the bright and beautiful the brightest and most fair. Chitterley could remember how, in this very room, in that very chair—which they calledthe King’s chair, for his Majesty always sat in it when he visited, as he loved to do, his neighbour, “my Merry Rockhurst,” for an hour of pleasant converse—she had sung fit to make his old heart young again.
Yet, in sooth, this was Madame de Mantes. Torn and haggard, through the strands of her uncurled hair, her glazed eyes looked at him from red and swollen lids, piteously, scarcely as if she could see. Except for a patch of rouge, her face was livid.
He thought of the figure he had seen crawling along the walls, and dread was upon him.
“How hot it is—” she complained, in a dry, whispering voice. “Fires, fires everywhere!—Give me to drink!”
The man hesitated a moment, upon the blind impulse of flight. But the long habit of fidelity was stronger even than fear of the pestilence. He took up a flask from a table,—theen casafter the foreign manner, awaiting the master’s return,—poured out a glass of wine and tendered it to her.
“Hot? Eh—but your hand is cold, my lady!”
She drank; seemed to gain a little strength.
“Cold?” she took up the word with an inconsequent laugh. “So would you be,mon ami, had you been roaming the streets, for months … years …as I have been, to-night! You are a kind old man. The others ran from me … one robbed me and beat me, then he, too, ran away.…”
And then Chitterley marked how cruelly, in sooth, the woman had been dealt with; her gown and bodice rent where seemingly the jewels had been snatched; and there was blood on her neck, trickling from the torn lobe of her little ear.
“Mon beau Rockhurst!” she went on, in that loud whisper, as of one light-headed. “I drink to you, to you.” She lifted the cup again, but stopped, catching at her throat: “It is fire—why did you give me fire to drink?”
He seized the glass from her failing hand.
“God ’a’ mercy! you are raving, madam!—you must.…”
She turned her red glance to him, then beat the air with a fierce gesture, imposing silence, and seemed to strain her ear to sounds inaudible:—
“Oh, don’t laugh, Rockhurst, don’t laugh…! Oh, if you like not a salt cheek, I can be merry—”
Chitterley had drawn back, step by step, to the farther end of the room. Then, of a sudden, very loud and angrily, he spoke:—
“Madam, you are ailing. You are ill. You must go home!”
She came back to her surroundings with a start and a cry:—
“Mon Dieu, where am I? Ill? Yes, I am ill! I am strangling, I can’t breathe!” She clutched at her throat with both hands, feeling for something with frantic fingers; then, with a scream that rose and seemed to circle about the silent room like some phantom bird: “Miséricorde!they are there!…La peste!I have thepeste.…”
Chitterley’s grey hair bristled on his head.
“A physician!” he cried, and turned to fly.
But, in her delirium, she was quicker than he in his senile confusedness. She caught him by the wrist with both her hands, now burning as though, indeed, she had drunk fire:—
“No! You shall not leave me! I am dying.… I will not die alone!” The fleeting of madness returned to her fever-wasted brain: “We are put in this world with five senses—and ’tis but common sense to pleasure them. Aye, Rockhurst … but when it comes to dying!…” Her grip relaxed; she wrung her hands. “How can such as we die? Old man, a priest, a priest!”
He felt that he would be less than man if he did not help her. Priest and physician, she should have both,—poor soul, poor soul!
He tried to make her understand him—speaking loud as to the deaf, in little words as to a child. The priest, the physician—aye, she should have them—quickly—she might trust to him. But she looked at him, uncomprehending, with eyes ever wilder. A step farther on her awful journey; she seemed already a world away from her fellow-humans.
Then, as if his meek, aged countenance, all puckered in distress, were a spectacle of unspeakable horror, she flung out both arms to ward him from her; stared round the room like a hunted thing, and, ere he could call or arrest her, had darted through the half-open door of the inner room and flung it, clapping, into the lock between them.
“My lord’s own room!”
Chitterley stood a second helplessly; then came a groan from within; the sound of a heavy fall. The old man called upon Heaven and ran on his errand of mercy.
The wretched woman found herself in a darkened room, with heavy curtains closely drawn, illumined only by a dying night-lamp. She staggered toward a couch, fought for a moment vainly for breath. Then strength, and with it, mercifully, consciousness,gave way; she fell face downward, clutching the silken hangings.
It seemed as if it had become suddenly broad day in that room where Chitterley had kept his night’s vigil—that room, famed once in Whitehall for those gatherings of wit and beauty, convened for his Majesty’s pleasure. A shaft of sunshine, yellow through the sullen mists, struck the chair where Charles had been wont to sit; where but a few moments ago had agonised one whose gay winsomeness and bird-song he had so often commended.
The vapour of Sir George Garth’s sovereign remedy rose but in feeble wisp-like exhalations, ever fainter and wider apart—like to the breath of some dying thing. Occasionally a sigh, or a groan and a muffled word or two, came dully from the neighbouring room. But after a while these ceased; and the only sound to be heard was that of a blue fly, bloated and busy, circling about, emphasising the stillness, to settle ever and anon with a heavy buzz on the wine which Jeanne de Mantes had spilled from her last cup.
Presently there approached, along the flags of Whitehall, the sound of steady footfalls. They mounted the steps and halted before the door; a key grated in the lock, and Lord Rockhurst led Mistress Diana Harcourt across the threshold.
She entered without a word, let herself fall in her turn like one worn out, into the King’s chair, and lifted her face toward him—a face blanched indeed with the miseries of the night, its terrors, the long vigil, the weary wandering, yet full of a brave, sweet strength.
None of her serenity was reflected on Rockhurst’s countenance. His face was dark as with an inner conflict; he averted his eyes as hers sought them. There was a moment’s heavy silence. He broke it, at length, standing over the fireless hearth, without looking at her.
“Now that you are under my roof, Diana, I trust you will consider yourself as if already—” he hesitated,and then brought out the words harshly, “as if already in your father’s house.—I fear me,” he went on, after a pause, “you are dead weary after our wanderings this night … fruitless search for shelter—the flaming cross barring us from every threshold … when it was not mean selfishness and childish fears that drove us to the street again!—Your brother fled basely.…”
She interrupted, wincing under the bitterness of his accents.
“Ah, poor Ned,” she pleaded; “he is but a boy. And his wits are never of the strongest.… In his way, he loves me. And, truly, I am glad he has escaped.”
“You have a strong heart, child!”
Though the words were kind, voice and look were hard. She shivered and drooped her head.
“You are cold,” he went on, with a sudden softening in his tone. “Indeed, ’tis the chill hour of the day.” He glanced hastily round the room, and catching sight of the spilt wine and the soiled cup, frowned, then laughed contemptuously. “So—even old Chitterley hath forgot his duty! These, in sooth, are days of test. I will rouse him, and you shall have fire and refreshment.”
She heard his tread on the stairs, the opening andshutting of doors within the house. Quickly he came back to her.
“Aye, even my old Chitterley gone! …” he cried, with a bitter twist of the lip. “Neither brotherly love, nor life-long service and companionship.… Nay, what should still hold, these times, when no man knows the hour when his life will be withdrawn? Oh, are you human—you, Diana, who sit so still and have no woman’s plaint?”
His voice broke with sudden passion. She raised her eyes and strove to smile; but the shudder of fatigue seized her.
Without another word he lifted the cresset of charcoal from its stand, blew upon the expiring glow, cast fresh fuel upon it; then, the flame once more enkindled, flung the whole on the hearth. She watched him, and gave a little feminine cry of protest as he next seized the first thing at hand, a couple of books, and tore them up ruthlessly to feed the fire.
“O, my lord!” she began, as the flame roared up the chimney. But the faint laugh died on her lips when she met his glance.
“I must leave you,” he said, when he had thrown in a couple of logs. “I must leave you; it will go ill indeed, if, within the hour, I return not with coachand horses. If I have to plead King’s Service, I shall carry you out of the infection.”
The door closed on him. Left alone, Diana sighed deeply. All the bright look of courage faded from her face. How harshly he had spoken! how coldly he had looked upon her—when not averting his eyes as from something troubling!…
Diana Harcourt, widow of twenty, bound by a freak of fate, through the merest impulse of womanly pity, to Rockhurst’s young son,—so faithful a lover, so gallant a youth,—knew her heart given to Rockhurst himself! What shame—what treachery! Moments were when she thought to guess her hidden love as returned; and then she felt herself strong and proud, and took a kind of high spiritual glory in the thought of how true they both would remain to honour and plighted troth. “Loved he not honour more,” as the chivalrous song had it, she would have none of his love.… But, to feel it in this sacred silence, in this noble self-denial, that was a kind of pain more exquisite than any joy she had ever known.
Yet moments were, again, such as this, when his formal manner, the sombreness of his gaze, smote her with distressing conjecture. Was his solicitude butfor his boy’s sake, after all? Was the self-betrayal—sweet and terrible—that had so often seemed to hover on his lips, but the gallantry of the high-bred courtier? Or—worse suspicion yet!—had he read her folly, and was it but compassion that spoke in his lingering gaze?
As she sat staring dully into the fire he had kindled for her, vividly the troubled scenes of this night of catastrophe rose before her.
Her grandmother’s great card-room, lit and decked as usual; the dwindled company, each with the heavy knowledge of the peril without and about stamped upon his countenance, each with his hypocrite smile for my Lady Chillingburgh, who glared upon them from out her chair, and forbade the pestilence to exist, since she would have none of it.…
Next, the fair French lady from the Court courtesying in her waves of amber satin, and fixing her, Diana,—aye, and the Lord Constable, too,—with such singular eyes. She recalled to mind, truly, how those fierce eyes had followed Rockhurst, and how Cousin Lionel had smiled as he watched.… Tush, the poor creature knew not what she was doing—was she not stricken ill and in fever?—She might well have mad eyes.…
It was Lionel who had brought her. Lady Chillingburgh’s own grandson who had given the citadel to the enemy it had so long defied! In rapid succession the horrid events reënacted themselves in Diana’s brain:—
She heard her brother screaming on the stairs, saw him break in upon them, a foolish country lad, frenzied in his panic.
She saw the frightened faces of their guests, and Lionel’s ever-mocking smile—“Sheer poltroonery!”—he was saying. And ever and again she sought and found the comfort of Rockhurst’s strong protective glance.
And then came the end.… The huddled figure in the great chair. The face of her that had had so stout a heart, conquered in death—but less piteous, less awful sight than the living face of the French madam. “The plague is there—” She heard Lionel’s cry of warning, and then all is black about her.
And now she relived the moment when she had awakened from her swoon; darkness and silence all about her. She thought that the nightmare of the card-room had given way to some exquisite dream.… Rockhurst’s arm was supporting her, her head rested on his shoulder, and the solitude of a sombrenight held them safe. Above their heads, outstretched tree branches swayed murmurously as the breeze stirred. She heard his heart-beats beneath her ear, and an unknown joy ran like music in her veins: life, reality, seemed thrust as far away from her as yonder flickering lights in the black distance. It seemed indeed a dream, and surely one may accept happiness in a dream! Sighing, she had yielded herself to it one moment—one moment—alas, even as she stirred, lo, it was hers no longer! Beneath her hands was fine turf, in her nostrils the scent of fading roses; she knew where she was—somewhere under the beeches of Chillingburgh House gardens. She remembered, she understood. He had snatched her, unconscious, from the danger of the infected house. And as she moved, his clasp relaxed; he spoke to her, coldly enough, she thought:—
“You are better? It is well.”