Then the floodgates were loosed. Foaming, the tide of passion leaped from Enguerrand’s mouth with an eloquence that betrayed his race. Usually silent, the Vidame de Joncelles, encompassed with an almost northern reserve, yet was through his mother a child of the south; and at this hour all the exuberance of the warm land, all the acrid passion that only its children can feel and which, felt, must find word expression, broke from him in torrentsof imprecations and curses, half French, half English:—
“Go thy way, then, my merry Rockhurst—go, Rakehell Rockhurst! Ha, Rakehell thou mayst be, but forget not then that I am Little Satan, and you but the servant of my Great Father!… Go thy way, sanctimonious hypocrite, you of the grave face and grey-sprinkled hair, hoary in corruption! You, put me out of your path…! My hour will come, my hour will come, my hour will come! Faugh! I spit at thee; my clean blade was too fair for thee, thou coward, thou bully, hiding behind thy state and thy years…! And that prate of paternity! I, like thy son?… Had I within my veins a drop of thy coward, hateful blood, I’d drain them and die laughing that I was rid of thee! Look at the great man…! Look! Watch the reverend seigneur! See how yonder wretches make way for my Lord Constable!—My Lord Coward!… Look you, Sir Paul, is it not an admirable spectacle? The King’s friend, the mighty in council, the example to the Court! Hi, my Lord Rockhurst—Hi, thou pattern of nobility—what of my sister, what of Jeanne de Mantes?… And afraid to fight the brother! Look, look, friends! Ha, he’s old enough to be my father, and my sister—’tishis boast! I, like his son, forsooth? And my sister has but a year of life more than mine!O, que l’âge a ses privilèges!Oh, how that paternal heart beats to high thoughts! Curse thee, burn thee, drown thee … coward!”
Stragglers in the garden, attracted by the wild clamours, had now begun to gather. Up the slimy steps, from the ’Friars, like obscene beasts venturing furtively from their lairs, the frowzy, arrogant heads of thieving bullies,—“Knights of the Posts” and “Copper Captains,”—scenting a profitable quarrel, began to emerge. And these were shadowed by dismal shapes of womanhood, such as in those haunts were never far from the scenes of strife, like to the hovering carrion bird.
The Vidame, in his paroxysm, cared as little whether his words were flung to the solitary winds or to a thousand listeners. As the Lord Constable’s cloaked figure disappeared altogether from view under the Hall archway of the Inner Temple, the boy’s outburst culminated in an almost eastern flight of malediction:—
“May your shadow bring a blight wherever it falls…! May your loves, your hopes, your desires be bitter as ashes…! May your own flesh and blood turn against you! May you blastthe life of your own son till he wishes he had never been born! Curse you…! May your own flesh and blood curse you! May you want and never get—seek and never find! May your pillow be haunted and your waking a horror! May your wine-cup poison you and the pest follow you and break out under your footsteps! May fire consume your pride and your hair grow white in misery, in dishonour, and then may Death be deaf to your call—!”
He fell back against a tree, breath failing on his lips; flung one arm against the bole and rested his brow upon it. Then the tears which his fire of rage had burned from his eyelids threatened to overwhelm him in the weakness that follows on all such unnatural paroxysms.
Sir Paul Farrant stood a moment, dubious. He glanced from the figure against the lime tree to the dingy rabble that were drawing ever closer in grinning curiosity and unholy expectation.—In sooth (was the thought gathering strength in his mind) the little new star of Court favour seemed like to be quenched! Yonder was the lucky youth (to dare to beard the Lord Constable.… It had been safer, almost, to have affronted the King!) broken by a mere twist of that strong hand!
A couple of Templars, grave-looking young men,had halted a few paces away; and now, with a low-voiced murmur to one another and an angry glance of scorn flung at the gentry that the clamour had gathered from below the steps into their trim gardens, they passed on their way.
Farrant was quick to read the omen. Henceforth, it seemed, Enguerrand de Joncelles, the King’s favourite, would have to seek associates in such doubtful and dangerous company rather than among gentlemen of standing who had a care for their reputation and advancement.—The sprightly Vidame … threatened with a whipping—aha!
So Sir Paul replaced his beaver with a hasty gesture and, cautiously treading, took path across the turf toward the water-gate, where he reckoned to find his skiff in waiting. The while his friend wept corrosive tears against the bark of the lime tree.
The “Brothers of the Huff,” the Daughters of Joy, and other good companions of Alsatia, who had awaited, expecting sport, glanced at each other in disappointment. Upon the disappearance of the Templars, one of their number made a dash for the silver hilt on the ground; closely hustled by a second, swift to perceive the intention. This latter had to be content, however, with the brokenblade, and a scuffle would have ensued had not a burly personage, who seemed to have authority among them, put an end to the dispute by possessing himself of the spoils and hustling the others back to the stairway.
A girl in tawdry finery now tripped stealthily toward the young man, who was so completely lost in the abstraction of his misery to all his surroundings, that he never felt the nimble touch that drew from his pocket the laced handkerchief, nor woke to actuality until her screech of laughter rang into his ears.
Here another woman sprang from the watchful group at the head of the stairs and flung herself between the pilferer and the Vidame, as he stood staring, white-faced and shaken.
“As for you,” cried she, “march!”
The outflung gesture that accompanied the words seemed to cow the thieving strumpet.
As the girl slunk away, cursing “French Joan and her tantrums,” yet in evident awe of her, the newcomer put forth her hand and touched the Vidame’s wrist.
Looking at her, dazed, he recognised Laperrière’s black-browed sister: a strange, sinister figure of uncertain age, and with sullen remains of whatmust have been great beauty, who was wont to sit moodily stitching in the little antechamber to the fencing master’s room. She had never a word for him as he passed daily to and fro, but a long, deep look: the same look was now plunging into his eyes. Having gained his attention, she dropped her hand from his and, folding her arms with a gesture of some dignity, began, in French, low-voiced and rapid:—
“Hate! Hatred! Oh,la haine…! I have known it, my young lord! But nothing my brother can teach or do will help you here! What use is the sword and the skill of it against him who will not fight?”
Enguerrand stared at her. Then into his fixed glance of despair sprang a sudden kindling flash, in response to the strong, devouring gaze that still held his.
“You cursed too loud,mon joli seigneur. Oh, too loud…! When one wants revenge, one must be silent!”
“Revenge…!” echoed Enguerrand, with such a cry as a despairing lover might give as he echoed his mistress’s call.
“Hush!” said she whom Alsatia called French Joan, two brown fingers on her lips.
She bent forward, lowering her voice still more, although the mocking rabble that pressed about them, only kept at bay by her hard and watchful eyes, could have made nothing of her foreign speech:—
“Yet you spoke well,” she went on. “‘May the wine-cup poison you!—May the pest follow you and break out under your footsteps…!’ A man may find that in his cup which will give him quick passage … as quick and quicker than the pest, believe me. He might have drunk, and the wine have lain as pleasant on his tongue as ever; and, lo!—before he can call for his second draught the pest, it seems, has stilled his heart—or so will every one say in these days: swooning, mortal sweat and burning fire, death, all within the hour.… The pest, indeed, all who had seen it would swear. Not a sign lacking: except that it strikes so quick, so quick—no time for remedies! And yet ’tis not the pest. It holds within a small thimble.He, mon joli seigneur.A treasure for those who understand hate. My brother brought back his best sword-passes from Italy—I brought back better … theacquetta… eh, my pretty lord? TheTofanadrops, for them you hate…! You may trust me …they have been tried: else, maybe, we should not be here … and your luck would thereby be the less. If fate gave you the chance of mixing such a cup for the one you curse, what would you give to fate?”
“All I possess,” whispered the Vidame, hotly. “Anything she asked!”
Again the deep, inscrutable eyes brooded upon him. Then French Joan showed her white teeth in a smile that gave a kind of lurid beauty to her dark face.
“Well, we shall see,” she said; “maybe I shall ask much, maybe I shall ask little.… Give me your hand, my pretty gentleman,” she cried, raising her voice into sonorousness again, and speaking in broken English: “I will lead you back to my brother’s. I have a cordial for such weakness.—Lean on me!”
Jeers and shouts responded from the greasy steps.
“Lean on French Joan, Master Frenchman! French Joan has a cordial for weak gentlemen!”
“Marry!” cried the girl who had stolen the kerchief, “will he come out alive again, think ye, masters?”
“Rather him than me, with French Joan!” roared the youngest ruffler, clapping his arms around her waist.
“Little Satan,” said Charles, “a plague on all women, I say!”
The King’s page started from the gloomy muse in which he had been gazing out of the window recess of the royal room in Whitehall, at the flowing tide below.
“Amen—your Majesty!” he answered, with an attempt at sprightliness, the impotence of which brought a frown to the discontented face turned upon him. “As the times go, your Majesty’s wish carries the charm of possibility.… If all one hears be true, the plague hath taken already not a few—”
“Little Satan,” said the King, “many sins can be pardoned to your infernal reputation; but there is one, Odd’s fish! unforgivable.… You are growing monstrous dull, you are tedious. You lack tact, too, by the Lord! Fie, is it page’s business to put his master in mind of what he had better forget?—Theveriest young cit would know better than to prate in our ears of what they would fain be deaf to.… Gadzooks, little boy, did we pick you out, think you, French and pert and joyous, for our Page of the Bottle, that you might ape our long-faced puritan ways and go mooning about our person, clapping your hand to your heart, sighing like furnace or lover?”
Here a chuckle shook the long, lazy figure sunk in the Flemish chair.
“Is it love? Marry, it can be but love! Little Satan in love!” cried the King, avid, in the deep weariness of his existence, for the slightest pretence of amusement. “Come, confess—Dan Cupid has shot his arrow into that sulphureous young heart of thine! My little devil’s in love—and being in love, has been as dull company, these three weeks, as any angel that ever flapped wings.”
The Vidame had left the window recess and now stood before the King. His hand had indeed gone to his heart, with what seemed an habitual gesture. He dropped it by his side and hung his head; a dull colour crept into his cheeks and faded again. Never burdened with any superfluity of flesh, he yet had grown noticeably thin these three weeks, and the healthy pallor of his face had been replacedby feverish tints as of one wasted by haunting, unsatisfied fires.
His royal master surveyed him, half irritably, half concernedly:—
“Come, little Enguerrand—the name of the cruel, the obdurate one?”
The page again arrested with a jerk the involuntary motion of his hand to his breast, flung back his head and suddenly laughed.
“Your Majesty, she is beautiful, if dark; and I believe that I shall kiss her on the lips before long.”
But Charles, though the most easy-going of monarchs, could rebuke undue liberty by a mere upraising of one heavy eyebrow. This sign of displeasure and the silence with which he received his page’s seemingly pert answer brought the blood leaping again into Enguerrand’s wasted cheek. If he could hate, this passionate youth, he could also love; and he loved Charles with an intensity only second to his hatred for the Lord Constable. He shook his curls over his face to hide his confusion.
Charles yawned and sank a fraction lower in his great chair. For a man who demanded but one thing of life,—that it should run even,—fate was playing him sorry tricks these days. Sickness and discontent were growing apace in the kingdom,money difficulties were pressing increasingly upon him, the progress of the war was doubtful, the quarrels of the Stewart and the Castlemaine made Whitehall a place of vast discomfort; and, besides, there were the interlacing circles of intrigue spun about him by consort, children, brother, ministers, divines, ruined loyalists, aspiring mistresses.
“Odd’s fish! Little Satan,” he resumed, good-humoured even in his exacerbation, “can you not consult your Great Father and find me an hour’s diversion?”
“Will your Majesty be pleased to survey the present of Venetian glass sent by his Majesty of France?—The chandelier has been suspended from the ceiling of the small supper room, the great mirror hung upon the wall, and the drinking vessels laid out on the buffet—according to your Majesty’s order. I saw it done this morning.”
“Pshaw!” said the King.
When these instructions had been given, he had planned a discreet party in the newly adorned chamber. But, two had heard of an invitation that one only had received. And the royal temper was still smarting from the consequent recriminations. He thought back on the distasteful scene, now, with renewed injury:—
“Gad, I’ll banish the petticoats … though, by the Mass, the periwigs are little better! I shall have Buckingham drawing on Hamilton for the privilege of annexing my Venetian glass!” He chuckled bitterly at the sense of his own too easy good nature. “I trust they’ve nailed the mirror fast,” he cried aloud; “I am told it is mighty fine.”
Yet there was one of his chosen companions who had never sought for either advancement or booty, and who had a humour that fitted well with his own in these moods of reaction, when the voluptuary yielded to cynical melancholy.
“Why,” exclaimed Charles, suddenly lifting himself in his seat with an animation he had not hitherto shown, “it is a week or more since I have seen my ‘Merry Rockhurst.’ Get you to the Tower, Little Satan, as fast as your black wings can carry you. Bid my Lord Constable to the rescue. Tell him I am dull,que je m’ennuie, Vidame, et qu’il vienne s’ennuyer avec moi, for I am persuaded he is as dull as I am. ’Tis the fate of good wit in a weary world. How now—not gone?”
“Sire,” said the lad, in a toneless voice, “Lord Rockhurst is at Whitehall. I saw him at his writingbut just now, as I passed the Window of his apartment.”
“All the better fortune! Haste, then,” said the King. “But hark ye, Little Satan: Rockhurst alone! God forbid there should be a flounce near our presence to-night! Bid the Lord Constable come and crack a bottle with us as in the old days of Flanders.”
A rueful grin spread over his saturnine countenance. Castlemaine and Stewart had been overmuch for him this morning in their division: united, against a new rival—no, the thought was beyond the pale of contemplation!
Once outside, in the great corridor, filled already with evening gloom, Enguerrand paused:—
“Bid the Lord Constable come and crack a bottle with us…!” The boy flung back his head and breathed sharply, through dilated nostrils, as if scenting ecstasy. His moment,—so long brooded upon, desired with such acrid ardour,—was it at last within his grasp? His hand went up to his breast with that gesture that had attracted the King’s notice. Aye, there it lay over his heart, the tiny phial of French Joan! Day and night he felt it, burning, biting into his soul; day and night he heard it whispering, urging, at once tormenting and delighting.Since that horrible hour in the Temple Gardens, it was all he had left to look for in the world. His life, shamed in his own eyes, was a worthless thing. That other life once swept away, nothing would matter that could befall him, be it death or disgrace. He went to sleep every night holding the phial against his heart.… His Vengeance, dark and beautiful…! as the lover holds his lady’s guerdon. The moment, was it actually drawing at hand when he was to kiss her on the lips?
He gave a sudden laugh—secret-sounding yet triumphant, the abandoned laugh of the madman over his obsession—which startled a sleeping page at the end of the passage as with a sense of terror in the air, and he set off running on his errand, past the astonished servants.
When he reached the Lord Constable’s Whitehall apartment, by the Holbein gateway, his lordship was still sitting at his table in the dusk, apparently absorbed in some deep revery; so deep indeed that he stared at Enguerrand with unseeing eyes. The white-haired servant had twice to repeat the announcement: “The King’s page, my lord, with a command from his Majesty,” before his master roused himself to attention. Then the Lord Constableturned his fine head questioningly toward the messenger.
Enguerrand bowed low, tasting, in a kind of inner intoxication, the full sense of his own irony:—
“His Majesty bids you to supper, my lord, to crack—these are his Majesty’s own words—a bottle of Rhenish, as in the old days of Flanders. His Majesty is melancholy and—commands that you come and be melancholy with him.”
The faintest shadow of a smile passed over the grave, listening countenance. Any one who once came under the gaze of those brilliant, haunting eyes of the Lord Constable’s could well conceive that such an order was of easy obedience. He sat in melancholy, as his royal master sat in tedium: hence the subtle pleasantry of ‘my Merry Rockhurst.’
“Thank you, Vidame,” said he, half rising, with a formal inclination of the head. “Inform his Majesty, if you please, that I attend instantly.”
The French boy had to pause outside the gateway door, to battle with the suffocating rage that suddenly invaded him. Rather would he have received fresh insults from his enemy than this perfect courtesy—a courtesy which at once seemed to remember and to pass over. In that last glance that rested upon him, in that deep, brooding look, there had almost lurked(or so he thought) pity. Pity! Enguerrand tore open the ruffle at his throat and gasped for breath.
Then, as swiftly as it had come, the paroxysm passed. Weakling, to waste his energies on fruitless curses! Was not his hour nigh, and did he not need the cool head, the steady hand, the quick eye?… He once had offered his honour and his sword for a chivalrous test … they both had been broken and cast from him.… Vastly well! Now would he pass the secret thrust for which there is no parry! He fastened his ruffle again with fingers that now scarcely trembled. And, as he ran back to the royal apartment, he broke shrilly into a stave of song: that samefrondeurlilt that had tickled the royal ears from Sister Jeanne’s lips on yonder night when she had met fortune and jilted her—at the King’s supper party:—
“La Tour, prends garde, la Tour, prends garde,De te laisser abattre…!”
“La Tour, prends garde, la Tour, prends garde,De te laisser abattre…!”
“La Tour, prends garde, la Tour, prends garde,
De te laisser abattre…!”
rose the high notes.
“Master Page,” said a yeoman sternly, “have you taken leave of your wits? The King is within.…”
“I know, I know,” said Enguerrand, poising himself for a moment on one springing foot, and looking back over his shoulder like some light Mercuryin satin and ringlet. “I know, good old greybeard, and ’tis I serve his Majesty’s supper to-night!”
Then, as he leaped forward again, he took up the song, under his breath, this time, and in English,—
“Tower, have a care, O Tower, beware!”
“Tower, have a care, O Tower, beware!”
“Tower, have a care, O Tower, beware!”
Halfway down the corridor he paused once more, and once more looked back:—
“Look out for my Lord Constable of the Tower, you, Master Beefeater … for he sups with the King to-night!”
His laugh echoed as he disappeared in the antechamber.
“A murrain on these French crickets to whom his Majesty is fain to give what should belong to honest English lads!” grumbled the yeoman, as he ordered his halbert with a thud. “’Tis mercy we have such gentlemen as my Lord Constable about the person—to keep balance. And here indeed comes my noble lord.”
Rockhurst halted a second beside the old yeoman. The gnarled hand that grasped the halbert had lost one finger: Rockhurst knew in what fight. Kings may forget what leal subjects have suffered for them, and ladies what lovers have sighed and served, but the captain forgets not the man who has stood inhis ranks. Rockhurst’s hair was turning grey and the yeoman’s was white—but they had been young together in the days of Edge Hill.
“A sultry evening, good Ashby,” said the Lord Constable, with his kind, sad eyes on the rugged face that crimsoned with joy under the honour.
“Aye, my lord—aye!” muttered the yeoman in gruff tones. (For the more your Englishman’s heart is touched, the gruffer rings his voice.) “There’s storm brewing, or so my old wounds tell me, my lord.”
“Aye, aye,”—Rockhurst took up the sound, as he walked on,—“the storm keeps brewing, and our old wounds keep aching.”
The veteran looked after him:—
“God save your honour!”
The bunches of wax candles were lit in the parlour reserved for the King’s intimate gatherings. Across the outside vision of lowering sky and of black water, spangled with tossing lights, citron-yellow curtains were drawn.
The new Venetian chandelier sparkled with delicate opalescent tints as it hung over the supper table: there were pink roses and green leaves, amber flowers and blue, most wondrously wrought in glass upon its twisted branches. The cluster of goblets on the buffet, shot with gold, had the glow of jewels. Two cups stood out from the rest: each had a fantastic sea-horse with dragon tail for its base, supporting on its grotesque head—gaping-jawed with red-curved tongue—a bowl as fine and as miraculously coloured as a bubble. This delicate, magic array of colour and sheen was reflected in a great mirror which filled the panel of the wall behind the table.
This last of the Venice gifts was of severer art than the rest; and where it did not hold the bubble splendour repeated in its depths, it shone coldly, crystal and silver, from the dark wainscot.
Charles was momentarily lifted out of his heavy mood by amusement and curiosity.
“Marry!” he said, “if these be our cousin of France’s leavings, what must be the treasure he has kept! Look up, my lord, this mirror—’tis a curious and pretty piece, and reflects the light a hundred times more gaily than our silver and bronze. And the drinking gear yonder…! The Apocalypse itself in glass!”
He strode to the side-table and laid a finger against the fair cheek of one of the goblets—then he glanced up and caught sight of his own dark visage in the new mirror. The gleam of satisfaction instantly vanished from the long and melancholy countenance.
“And gad, my lord,” he cried, “if you think I shall be left as much as this little tass, within a week! Oh—there’ll be one whose face will look vastly better than mine in yonder mirror; and another whose tiring-room can never be bright again without such a toy as yon!”
He turned and snapped his fingers impatientlytoward the soft-footed servants who came and went between the door and the sideboard with viands and flasks.
“Away with them, away with them! We’ll sit together as in old times—eh, my merry Rockhurst?—and keep but Little Satan there to fill a cup.”
“I oft waited on you, alone, in Holland and elsewhere, sire,” responded the Lord Constable’s deep voice.
“Aye, aye,” said the King, in the same half-testy, half good-humoured manner. “But we have a demon handy to-night. Tush, man,” proceeded he, flinging himself into the leathern chair and shaking out the Flemish napkin, “things are better with us, and things are worse with us; let us drink and remember—and drink and forget! Ha, my lord, we oft had neither pasty nor capon in those days—but I’ll say that for thee, Harry, you were master cellarer, and you never let me lack decent wine—”
“My liege,” said Rockhurst, a note of tenderness creeping in through his grave tones, “we had to pledge a great cause, and the wine had to be worthy of the cup!”
“Truly,” said Charles. “I mind me of a certain yellow Rhenish: it had a smack—where you got it I never knew, Harry, but it had a smack!—Thecause, say you? Plague on your hypocritical gravity…! Tush, man, we drank to black eyes and blue, to trim ankles and laughing tongues. Those were the days of that jade Lucy … ha, the pair of eyes! And what shall we pledge to-night?”
“Why, then, the old days, your Majesty.”
“Aye—the old days, good days … and all the better, being past! None can say I am an ambitious sovereign—eh, my solemn Constable? I ask no more of my people than that they should never send me on my travels again.… ’Tis modest, patriarchal—a home-keeping sovereign! No one can accuse me of not spending my substance among my subjects!”
“Indeed and indeed, no, sire!” said Rockhurst, without the slightest twinkle in his straight look. “As for spending, my liege, your Majesty has indeed a royal mastery of the art.”
“Go to!” said the King. “Wet that too dry humour of thine with a draught.—Nay, Little Satan, none of your dark-liveried claret to-night; we’ll have the merry yellow wine in yonder long flagon. Away with this dull glass, too.—Go, play with the Apocalypse. Those dragon beakers, I’ll swear they’ll hold half the flagon apiece.—And you shallhave a brimmer and drink it to the last drop, my Lord Constable, for if I’m never to have you a merry dog again, by the Lord, I’ll have you a drunk one!—Vidame, I say you shall see my reverend Lord Constable drunk, and have something to laugh at to your dying day—for ’tis then the solemnest villain that ever staggered on human legs.”
Enguerrand had been a presence in the room as noiseless as a spirit. Yet every word that passed between the two men—the sovereign and his old comrade—had added intensity to his murderous passion. The boy loved the King. Unhappy, abnormal creature! He could neither love nor hate in reason, was as much racked with jealousy of his master’s regard as a lover of his mistress’s favour. Every look of old familiar friendship that Charles flung at Lord Rockhurst, every easy word, proclaiming a sympathy and confidence that placed them almost on brotherly equality, was as a lash on the raw wound of his pride—a spur to his leaping hatred.
At the King’s command he filled one of the dragon beakers from the long-necked bottle with a singular precision, though his hand was cold as ice, and his pulse beat to suffocation in his throat. He set the wonderful glass—more wonderful than ever now,with the golden liquid shining within its flanks—beside the King’s plate.
“Odd’s fish—a truly royal cup! As I live, the fair half of the bottle!… Now, boy, the other half to my Lord Constable.”
Over by the sideboard, under the cold gleam of the mirror, the King’s page paused a second, and his hand went a last time to his breast. Out, little phial! It lay in the hollow of his palm, no larger than a lady’s thimble. Break, silken thread! His moment had come: the lover would kiss his dark mistress on the lips! There was buzzing as of a thousand angry bees in his ears.… He never noted how still the room had grown. Now his hand hovered over the rim of the full beaker—a strange gesture, as of the priest blessing the cup…!
“Little Satan.…” said the King.
Though neither loud nor sharp, there was something so singular in Charles’s voice that Rockhurst started from his wonted abstraction.
As for Enguerrand, he was struck full into his heart. Involuntarily he straightened his hand and the empty phial fell lightly on the carpet. He remained a moment staring into nothingness; thenslowly raised his eyes, and met the King’s eyes in the Venetian mirror.
Charles’s face in the glass … his glance was terrible! Terrible, too, was his voice as he spoke again, though it was lower than usual, and very distinct, very quiet:—
“Bring me that cup, Little Satan.”
And as the boy mechanically lifted the dragon goblet and turned round, holding it in both hands, for it was brimming, Charles leaned across the table and passed the twin cup, his own, toward Rockhurst, who sat in wonder.
“The King should have the fuller draught,” he said. “Why do you wait there, Little Satan?—Bring me that cup, that I may pledge my noble friend the Lord Constable.”
With this Enguerrand heard his doom. Had the King ordered him to torture and death he could not have punished him so mortally as by this quiet order.
A second more he stood, with fascinated eyes, staring at his beloved master: there was not the faintest answer in Charles’s relentless gaze. Then a dreadful smile broke on the young face. Without a word Enguerrand de Joncelles lifted the beaker to his own lips and drank.
It was a long draught, and every gulp was an effortto the constricted throat. Yet there was no interruption; and for a seemingly endless span of silence and tension the boy stood and drew the death into himself—his eyes, over the lovely, fragile rim, fixed in agony upon the King.
Charles made no sign, but waited.
When the last drop was drained, Enguerrand unclasped his fingers on either side. The dragon glass fell and was shivered.
Here Rockhurst leaped to his feet.
“Good God, your Majesty!” he exclaimed. “What is this?”
“Sit down again,” said the King, coldly. “The Vidame de Joncelles has voluntarily assumed to-night a new service about our person. It is a service which hath fallen into desuetude at the Court of England. And the young gentleman has proved a greedy taster and a clumsy one.—I am still waiting for my wine.”
Rockhurst’s gaze went in deep uneasiness from Charles’s face, set in lines of unwonted severity, to the livid countenance of the boy, who leaned back against the sideboard, scarce able to support himself.
“Your pardon, sire,” he began, pushing back his own cup—“the matter can scarce remain.…”
But his sovereign again interrupted him, this timewith the royal peremptoriness which admits of no discussion:—
“There is but one thing we will not pardon, and it is that you add to our tedium: we commanded your presence here to-night that you might share it, not to increase it. But, meanwhile we are waiting,—Monsieur de Joncelles,”—and for the first time he raised his voice sharply,—“we are waiting.”
The boy passed his hand across his forehead and dashed back the curls that were already growing damp. That the King should have no pity on him, and yet spare him thus—it was befitting one whom he had worshipped from the very first for his true royalty. A kind of fierce pride awoke in him and spurred him to meet his death in a manner worthy of such clement cruelty. Though the lights were beginning to swim before his eyes and he rather groped than saw, he contrived to open a second flask and fill another of the Venetian beakers.
Then—for French Joan had been faithful, and swift was the working of her gift—he had to make a heroic effort to bring the glass to the King. But the very fierceness of the effort, final flare of an indomitable spirit, carried the failing body through.
Enguerrand came to the table with measured step, although it seemed to him he trod illimitableair; went down slowly on one knee and uplifted his rigid hands, clasping the substance he no longer felt. The ultimate action of his life was the yielding of the cup into the King’s hand.
As the King took and drank, the boy fell.
“Why, the lad has swooned…! some aqua vitæ!” exclaimed Rockhurst.
But Charles flung out his hand with his rare gesture of command:—
“Nay, my lord.—He is dead, or dying. Little Satans do not do their work by halves. He is dead or soon will be.—Odd’s fish!” added the King, after a moment’s frowning meditation, “when you lured that linnet, his sister, to sing for you in the Tower, Harry, you little thought her song was to have such an echo!”
Rockhurst stared for a moment horror-stricken—his glance roamed from the broken beaker to the cups on the table and thence to Enguerrand’s convulsed face. A glimmering of the truth began to dawn upon him; the mystery was dissolving before a tragic and dreadful light. Even in the midst of the King’s words he dropped on one knee to raise the prone figure. The livid head fell limply back over his arm. The King cast one look down and averted his eyes.
“Away with him!” he cried, in an explosion of nervous irritability. “Away with him! Call whomsoever you want to carry him, do what you list, get what physician you wish,—the lad’s dead, and ’tis the end of it! You understand, I’ll not hear another word about the matter.… Gadzooks! what a finish to a tedious day! Away with him, I command you, my Lord Rockhurst!”
Rockhurst, who had half risen at the King’s sharp tones, now bent once more down and gathered the inert form into his arms.
“Will your Majesty, then, open the door for me?” he said, in a low voice.
The King sprang up from his chair, dashing his napkin on one side, and flung open the door with an angry hand.
The slam of its closing echoed down the great corridors. So would Charles ever shut the unpleasant episode out from his life. Yet he had not quite succeeded: as he went moodily back to the table, his foot struck against the empty little phial. With precaution, placing the napkin between it and his palm, he held it to the light. It was wrought of Italian glass, with twisted lines of blue and red, not much larger than a filbert nut.
A vision swam before his eyes: Rockhurst’sface, upturned as he had but just now seen that of his French page; and, like it, livid in the hues of death.
“Little Satan! …” he said aloud.
It was the last time that the words were ever to cross his lips. He cast the phial out through the open window and heard the faint splintering crash echo from the flags below.
Rockhurst had taken but a few steps down the passage, when some inexplicable impression bade him pause and glance down at his sad burden.
The light from one of the wall sconces fell full on the boy’s face: a subtle change, that was scarcely so much a quiver as a composing of all the features, was passing over it, driving away the terrible pinched look of agony and restoring something of its youthful beauty. Then Enguerrand opened his eyes and stared up into the Lord Constable’s countenance. Rockhurst had never before met those eyes but that he had found hatred in them. At this supreme moment there was no hatred, only a kind of desolate wonder. Then, even as their gaze met, the soul that seemed to seek his was gone; the eyes wondered no more.
Rockhurst stood still, an intolerable pain at hisheart. It was almost as if he held his own son’s dead body on his breast. The ring of the yeoman’s halbert, the tramp of his heavy foot, roused him from the revery. He strode forward a few steps more.
“Ho, Ashby,” he called, “I have need of thee!”
“Nay, in God’s mercy,” cried the old man, drawing near, “that is never the French lad!”
He laid the halbert against the wall, and hastened to relieve his captain from the burden. Then, as he felt one of the small hands, cold and limp:—
“Dead, and dead in very surety! Why, ’tis not an hour since he passed me, singing like a swallow on the wing, and hopping for all like a squirrel.”
Very serious was the face of the King’s physician, and pale his cheek, as he lifted himself suddenly from the examination of the corpse that had been laid on my Lord Constable’s bed, in the room by the gateway.
He turned hastily and, forgetting all decorum, pushed not only the yeoman, who was awaiting his orders, but my lord himself, from the chamber.
“We can do nothing—the boy is dead!”
Then he leaned over and breathed rather than spoke into Rockhurst’s ear the single word, “Plague.”Adding aloud, the while fumbling in his pocket for his pomander box:—
“One of those monstrous, sudden cases we are told of—but which I confess I have never seen! Merciful heavens … in Whitehall! Your lordship must submit instantly to fumigation. Aye, and yonder yeoman, too, who carried the body.” This between prolonged sniffs at the pierced lid of his pomander box. “Pray, my lord, inhale of this, deep—and you, too, fellow, after his lordship! And the burial must be early in the morn—poor lad! And, my lord, I beseech let it be in secret. Oh, we must hold our tongues about this, my Lord Constable! The sickness in Whitehall, and in his Majesty’s very apartment!… Not a word to his Majesty! The lad has died of a fit—a rush to the head. Tut, tut—the truth must be kept secret indeed!”
Rockhurst had listened with immovable countenance.
“Aye,” he said gravely, “it shall be kept secret.”
And, after inhaling the pomander box with due solemnity, he handed it to yeoman Ashby. But as soon as the physician, taking a hurriedcongé, had left the anteroom, he laid his hand on the old soldier’s shoulder:—
“Never fear, man, neither you nor I shall catch the sickness whereof this poor youth died, you can take your captain’s word for warrant. Nevertheless, I charge thee, speak no word, but, as the physician hath it—a rush to the head!”
Yet rumour ran abroad, as rumour will. And Sir Paul Farrant, hearing of his whilom friend’s tragic death, had never a doubt that it was in those haunts of Alsatia that he had first met the distemper—and himself started off to the pure airs of Farrant Chace, where he spent a dismal month watching for symptoms.
Over the grave, in Tothill Fields, where the passionate, revengeful heart lay now in quietude, a stone was erected by the Lord Constable’s order, which set forth the Vidame de Joncelle’s names and titles, and recorded he had died in the flower of his age, honoured by the King’s regard.
LADY CHILLINGBURGH’S LAST CARD-PARTY
Lionel Ratcliffe closed behind him the gate of the house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields where he had his lodging. He crossed the road, then paused to survey the desolate scene.
The day was drawing to a close, but sullen fires of sunset were still burning low under a leaden, cloudy sky. Beneath his feet the grass was parched, the ground everywhere leprous grey. Though it was only early July, the foliage of the trees hung limp and sick-hued; there was not a flicker of life among the branches—indeed, hardly a stir anywhere in the languid atmosphere. Sky seemed to brood over earth, earth to lie paralysed, awaiting some moment of catastrophe, and heavy vapours to be fusing them together. The heat was a palpable presence. An anguished expectation caught the throat as with an actual pressure. The plague held all London in its grip.
Men can walk with fortitude under the wings of the Angel of Destruction, when the death he brings is a clean one, honourable, seemly; but this horrible Demon of Corruption that now spread its shadow over the world made its victims loathsome in each other’s eyes and infected them with coward selfishness and panic fears.
The Court had gone at last, though Charles was no poltroon. Half the population was in flight along country roads; blind terror was upon most of those whom circumstances retained within the doomed circle. Among the well-to-do only three classes still lingered in the town: those whom a sense of duty kept at their post; those again who, with a strange but not unknown faculty of self-deception, chose to ignore the visitation rather than to face the appalling presence; and lastly, those few strong natures who, for purposes of their own, found it worth while to set danger at defiance.
To these last belonged Lionel Ratcliffe. Fully aware of the peril, he challenged it deliberately. He knew that those yellow vapours were the very breath of the pestilence; that the smell everywhere meeting his nostrils was that of death; that among yonder prostrate figures reclining beneath the trees many were doubtless stricken, dying, or dead. Hekept on, nevertheless, calm if wary, at a masterful gait, across the fields.
In his hand he swung a loaded cane of such proportions as almost to rival a watchman’s staff—one which could keep at a distance or at one stroke lay low the sturdiest onslaught. For it was well known that many of the pest-stricken in their delirium rushed into the street to die; that the passer-by might at any moment be confronted by some miserable wretch who, seized with madness, would rise and clasp him in an embrace of hideous contagion.
As for the mumpers and rufflers, who were wont to emerge at the darkening hours in the Fields—like night-moths, no one knew where from—one glance of this gentleman’s eye, not to speak of the knowing gesture of the staff hand, would have sufficed to bid even the stoutest of them pause and be wiser than to meddle.
And so Lionel Ratcliffe passed on, without undue haste, leaving the closed theatre on his left, making westward toward Arch Row. And presently, as he emerged from the shadow of the trees, he sighted the mansion that was his goal, Chillingburgh House, with its sharp roof, its coping balustrade and urns rising in relief, black against the lurid orange of the sky.
As he approached the gateway a sedan chair, escorted by a couple of armed footmen, was just depositing a lady voluminously wrapped in a silk cloak before the double flight of steps. He halted for a second to watch her begin the ascent on the right. She went slowly, as one fatigued; he swiftly entered the flagged courtyard, took the opposite side of the stairs, and reached the landing just before her.
“Madame de Mantes! … your servant—! Punctual to the moment!” cried he, bowed and clapped the feathered hat against his breast.
She halted on the last step and raised her handsome head slowly toward him, ignoring his hand. The light was growing dim, and the rosy folds of her hood looked grey; but even under its shadows and in spite of the rouge on her cheek he had an uncomfortable impression of her pallor.
“Oui,” she said tonelessly, “me voici.” Then, with sudden petulance, “Ouf! but one suffocates in this air!”
She caught at the strings of her cloak and tore them apart; the light silken thing slipped from her shoulders, but she hurried into the house as one unseeing. Ratcliffe picked up the garment alertly, and followed, just in time to offer his hand again at the foot of thegreat staircase. The touch of her fingers struck chill. His first misgivings deepened; but he quickly dismissed the rising thoughts. Bah! a woman in love (what was there about this Rockhurst, curse him! that all the fair should thus run mad upon him?)—a woman hopelessly in love, and a Frenchwoman at that! There would sure be scenes with the faithless lover, and she was even now rehearsing them in her agitated imagination. Well might her hands be cold.
“Are you ill at ease?” he whispered, with a perfunctory show of solicitude as they passed a couple of anxious-looking servants and drew closer together on the stairs.
“Mon Dieu!but not at all!” she mocked him irritably. “Neither ill in my ease, nor my heart, nor—oh, tranquillise yourself—nor in my head! Besides, who could be but well and happy in this merry London of yours?”
They had reached the gallery. She snapped her hand from his and dropped him a courtesy. He wondered to have thought her pale; now she seemed to him unwontedly flushed. Her heavy eyes shot fire. Appraising her critically, he approved. There were jewels at her ears and throat; her gown had the impress of French taste, and became her every beauty.
The grey-haired butler who flung open the doors of the drawing-room at her approach looked after the swaying, shimmering figure with melancholy approval.
“’Tis almost like old times, Master Lionel,” he whispered, as Ratcliffe passed in, “to see a Court lady about the place again.”
“Aye, from Court she is,” said Lady Chillingburgh’s grandson, halting on the threshold to let his gaze roam thankfully over the great white-and-gold room, which had a sense of coolness and repose about it, even on such a night. “But she had her reasons for not hasting off with the rest of them this morning.”
“Eh—but they must be weighty reasons!” murmured the old servant, with a sigh.
“No doubt the lady thinks them so,” said Lionel Ratcliffe, with his detached laugh.—“We are full early here, ’twould seem,” he added in louder tones, advancing toward the card-table in the window before which the Frenchwoman had already taken seat.
But she disdained to cast toward him even the flutter of an eyelid. Her fingers were moving restlessly among the cards and dice.
“Zero … zero! Hein? Non-zero. Ah … mal-chance!”
The man stood over her a second or two in silence. Then sat down in his turn and faced her. His voice rang out with a kind of empty cheeriness:—
“What! to the dice already?—Nay,” here he leaned across the narrow space and whispered, “Remember, it was to play another game that I brought you here.”
She turned petulantly from him; then her eye became fixed, staring out through the unshuttered window.
“What a strange red moon is rising!” she cried. “Would to God, Monsieur Ratcliffe, you had never come to me this morning, tempting, tempting.… My boxes were packed: I should be now far from this pit of pestil—”
“Hush! hush!” he warned, finger on lip. “Not here! Do not forget my instructions.” Then, in his low, mock-gallant accents: “How now? Is the game, then, no longer worth the hazard?”
She caught up the dice-box again, feverishly:—
“Yes—yes. But I have no luck to-night!”
She muttered and cast. “Naught again!”
“Expect you luck at the game of chance,” quoth he, catching the dice-box from her hand, “when you are so lucky at the game of love?”
“I? I, lucky?”
“Yes,” proceeded he; “and have you not had Cupid’s best cards in your hand, since the very hour of your landing with Madame de France? First the King—King of Trumps himself, and eke the Queen.—Gad, she’d have loved you, were it but to spite the Castlemaine.—Then—”
“Tush!” she interrupted angrily. “Cards?—’Tis not all to hold the cards—one must play them. I held them all, in truth—” she put her hand to her throat with a little choking sob. “But—”
“You threw them all down!” he laughed.
“Ah,ciel!—When the heart begins to take a part in this game of love, then all goes astray.”
“Aye,” repeated the man, steadily, his hard eyes upon her, “you threw your cards away—and all for love of this Rockhurst, the greatest knave in the pack.”
She turned with sudden anger:—
“Knave, sir? Sho!… King of you all!” Then, with equally sudden change of mood, “Oh, heisa villain!” she moaned, and her lip trembled upon tears.
“And so you have not seen him,” said he, altering his tone to one of elaborate sympathy, “since he returned to town, escorting to his house my fair cousin, Diana Harcourt? What—not once, afterall you have given up for him?—Faith, ’tis ungallant of him!”
Her elbows on the table, her chin sunk in her hands, she was now staring fiercely into his eyes.
“Your promise, sir, that I meet him here to-night?…”
“Nay, I can only tell you, my fair Jeanne, that he journeys hither from the Tower or Whitehall twice a day—when ’tis not thrice.”
“Mon Dieu!…” she breathed between her clenched teeth.
Satisfied with the temper he had aroused in her, the man withdrew his eyes, turned sideways on his chair, and crossed his legs.
“I fear you’ve been too cool with him,” he remarked airily. “Our ‘merry Rockhurst,’ as his Majesty calls him, is used to a vast deal of warmth.”
“I—too cool!” She laughed hysterically. “Oh, yes, it was that, of course, with this heart and brain of mine on fire!”
“Then I fear,” said Ratcliffe, on the edge of a yawn, “you’ve been too hot. The Lord Constable of his Majesty’s Tower is a man of niceties.”
“Monsieur Ratcliffe,” cried Jeanne de Mantes,beating the table with her palm and darting her head toward him like a pretty serpent, “you are the Devil!”
“And your very good friend, madam.” He smiled with a charming bow. “Come, come! Smooth that fair brow. Do you doubt but you can hold your own against a mere country widow?”
She fixed him with suspicious eyes.
“Aye, and now it comes to me,” she cried resentfully. “What is your motive in all this, Monsieur Ratcliffe? Not simply sympathy for me?”
“Come, come! Be calm.” There was authority under his blandness. “Be calm,” he repeated, “and let me whisper in your ear.—I will even trust you with my innermost thought. Diana Harcourt shall not be for my Lord Rockhurst, but for your humble servant.”
“Aye,” she commented, a twist of scorn upon her lips; “the lady, I was told, is passing rich.”
“Even so,” returned he, unmoved. “’Twould indeed be impossible to conceal aught from your perspicacity!—Now Mistress Harcourt, by an odd trick of fate, has become affianced to Harry Rockhurst, the virtuous, innocent country son of this most reprobate nobleman. The which, however, would be but a small matter (for she loves not thegreen lad, mark you, nor ever will), were it not the spur to other feelings.”
“I fail to follow you, sir,” she said wearily.
“Nay, a moment’s patience, pretty huntress, then you will come full on the scent. My Lord Rockhurst has had the singular maggot of playing a game of parental virtue with his heir.—But you are not listening.”
She was pressing her temples with the tip of her fingers, as one who fights a stabbing pain. At his words, she looked up again and nodded; and he went on:—
“He has pledged himself to guard the goddess for his lad in the maze of the town. Mistress Diana has seen naught of my Lord Constable but the high-souled knight, the King Arthur of romance, and so he would fain remain in her eyes even as in those of his son; and thus he, whom the town has dubbed Rakehell Rockhurst, caught in his own springe, must go on playing the pattern of chivalry, the virtuous gentleman, the devoted father—play his part out, in fact, or else be dubbed now prince of hypocrites! Aye, and the cream of the jest is that they have fallen both so mad in love with each other, aha! that each can scarce breathe in the other’s presence for the weight of the secret!”
He laughed, but she brooded darkly, nibbling at her little finger.
“And so,” she said after a pause, “you count upon me to lure back my lord?”
“Aye,” retorted he, with a great show of ease. “That—or else to pluck the mask of grave virtue from his face … in Mistress Harcourt’s presence. Was it not agreed? Either course, I take it, will serve your purpose as well as mine. Why—I deemed you subtler, madam! Upon my Lord Constable’s discomfiture; upon the opening of my fair prude’s eyes, strikes my hour, I say. And, zounds, I take it!—Strikes your moment, too, so you know how to clutch it! Do you not see that?”
She made no answer. A meaningless laugh was on her lips; it died in a sigh. A strange feeling as of soaring and undulation had come upon her, and a splitting of her thoughts as though she were in two places at once. Her mind was wandering oddly, beyond her control, to the cool meadows of her childhood’s home, to the days when she plucked daisies with her baby brother in the dew-wet grass. Lionel Ratcliffe was still speaking; she caught a word here and there. One phrase at last fixed her attention.
“’Twill go hard,” he was saying, “if Lionel Ratcliffe comes not to his own to-night!”
“And Jeanne de Mantes to hers!” she cried then, in a kind of high-strained voice, rousing herself. And, falling back into her abstraction: “What a wicked mist there rises from the garden,” she went on, complaining. “Aye, would I were far from here!”
“And let pious Mistress Harcourt convert my Lord Constable?”
“A plague on you!” she shrieked in a sudden frenzy.
“Hush, hush! That word—have you forgot?”
A shadow fell on them as they leaned together. She looked up in terror. It was only the old butler, with a whispered message from Lady Chillingburgh to her grandson.
Lionel frowned: the interruption was unwelcome. He glanced at the clock, it was the hour of the reception; the guests would presently arrive, and he mistrusted the Frenchwoman’s tact, above all to-night, in this unwonted vapourish mood. He rose with ill humour.
“Some whimsy of my grandam about the tables, no doubt,” he muttered, as he sauntered from the room, pausing at the door to cast a last look of warning.And, truly,—for Fate plays such tricks upon those who would guide her,—scarce had his footsteps died away, when Lord Rockhurst himself entered unannounced upon the solitary guest, as enters the familiar of the house.
He reached the middle of the room before he caught sight of her. An angry frown suddenly overcast features which, in repose, were at once singularly dignified and melancholy.
“How now?” he said harshly. “How come you here?”
Whatever illusion Jeanne de Mantes might have cherished as to her power over the man she loved, that frown, the cutting tones, all too quickly dispelled it. She felt as one who, stretching her cheek for a kiss, receives a blow. Ingrate! And she who, this day, was braving death to see him once more! Quick upon the smart of pain, her fury rose. Squaring her elbows, she looked at him insolently.
“Why, in my sedan chair, milord.”
“Who brought you, then?”
But she had not the strength for the fight. What had come to Jeanne de Mantes? She found herself faltering:—
“Nay, saywhatbrought me, Rockhurst, and I will tell you. It was to see you.” Her voice deepened, the tears she would not shed wept in it. “I was packing, if you would know, for country and safety, even this morning. And when Mr. Ratcliffe told me—”
“Ha!” he interrupted, speaking half to himself, “I might have known who had baited this trap.”
She went on with rising plaint:—
“Oh! What have I done to thee, my friend—?”
“This is no place for you, madam,” he said, coming close to her and speaking very low. “A house you have no right to enter.”
The colour flamed up again to her face.
“Nay, if you are here, milord,” she retorted, “why not I, then?”
He stood a few seconds, his dark eye upon her, deeply thinking; then, as though upon a sudden, wilful mood, a complete change came over him. The stateliness, the air of command, the something unapproachable as of one set apart, gave place to mockery, to languor. He let himself sink upon the chair that Ratcliffe had vacated; and, running his fingers through the black curls that lay on his shoulders, scrutinised her again insolently through half-closed lids.
“Lionel Ratcliffe,” quoth he then, “is a gentleman of birth and parts. And if he hath not much of this world’s goods, he hath wits, which is nigh as good. Mightest do worse, Jinny!”
“And is it for this,” cried she, laughing loudly, “that I gave up a king?” But in the midst of her laughter tears welled and ran down her cheeks.
“By the Lord Harry!” he said, wilfully hard, “but this becomes a wearisome refrain of thine! What now, Old Rowley is forgiving. Finish that packing of thine, and hie thee to Salisbury. You might still—”
She caught her kerchief from her bosom and set her teeth in it.
“Might I, indeed, my lord? Oh, you are gallant!” Then the tears came on that hysteric outburst: “You will break my heart!”
He glanced anxiously toward the door.
“Tush!—Hearts?” he cried impatiently. “We are set with five senses in this world, and ’tis but common wisdom to take note of them. But hearts? What have you and I to do with hearts?”
“And, indeed,” she sobbed—“and, indeed, I never knew I had one, till you had taken it from me!”
“Dry your eyes, Jinny,” said he then, not unkindly. “When will ye women learn it?—tears are daggerswith which ye slay your charms.… Enough! I for one never could abide a salt cheek.”
She thrust back the sob rising in her throat, and strove to smile upon him.
“Time was you thought me handsome,” she murmured with catching breath.
“I think thee handsome still,” he answered; stretched out a languid finger and touched her chin. Then a bitter laugh shook him. “A morsel fit for a king, as I said!”
With her snakelike movement she rose, and stood a second, glaring down at him. Then to her ears came a rustle along the oaken boards of the passage. Her rival! And she,la belleJeanne de Mantes, tear-stained, a hideous thing to be mocked at! Like a hunted thing, she turned and dashed through the open window out upon the terrace that overlooked the gloom of the garden.
No fresh air there to cool her fevered temples, to revive that heart so strangely labouring. But stronger than all physical discomfort was the galling interest of her jealousy. She returned close to the window by which she had fled.… The mischief of it was that, with this hammering of her pulses, she could scarce catch a word of what passed withinthe room. But she could see! And the whole life power in her became concentrated in her burning eyes. Pshaw! it was but a pale girl when all was said and done! And the hair, positive red!… Aye, and overlong in the limb—an English gawk! She would call herself slender, no doubt—thin was the word for her. Not a jewel, not even a pearl, on the forehead! If Jeanne de Mantes knew milord—him so travelled, so fastidious, soraffiné—this dish of curds and whey would mighty soon pall upon his palate. Yet, through all this tale of her rival’s disabilities, a relentless voice, far away in her soul, yet clear as judge’s sentence, repeated that Diana was beautiful and held Rockhurst’s love. In her despair, something like madness ran hot through her veins. Very well, at any rate, as Lionel Ratcliffe had it, her moment was at hand! A shuddering fit came over her that seemed to shake her ideas away, as an autumn wind the leaves.… Her moment? What moment…?
In the yellow candle-light within, Lord Rockhurst had ceremoniously greeted his son’s betrothed. Silently she courtesied. Then, as they drew closer to each other, the man saw traces of tears on the fair cheek.
“What is this?” he exclaimed. “You have been weeping!”
“Truly, my lord,” said she, smiling, yet with a little catch in her breath, “I should be ashamed to show you this disfigured countenance.”
“Disfigured?” he echoed. “Nay—transfigured!”
He took a quick step toward her as she spoke; but she drew back.
“I have a letter from Harry,” she said constrainedly; and Rockhurst drew himself up, darkening.
“Aye,” said he, and then approached her again, his whole manner delicately, indescribably altered. “Good news, I trust?”
“Oh, vastly,” she answered, with a small, flustered laugh, drawing a folded sheet from her bosom. There was a deep pause. “I am glad to have heard from Harry,” she declared of a sudden, bravely.
“So glad,” he said, low-voiced, “that you wept.”
“My lord!” There was fear and warning in her cry.
“Ah, Diana, do not grudge me your tears, since ’tis all I may ever have from you!” He took a hasty turn about the room,—his eyes averted, not to read in her countenance the effect of this cry of revelation. When he came back to her, iron composurewas once more upon him. “I, too, heard from my son. Harry clamours to be allowed to join us. That may not be. Less than ever now!” A church bell rang mournfully into his last words. “Why, hark! the very bells ring out the words, plague, plague!”
“Oh, my good lord!” she exclaimed, her finger on her lip.
“Aye, and is my Lady Chillingburgh still so mad?”
“Mad? No; but all London is gone mad, is labouring under a monstrous illusion. We, in this house, alone are sane. There never was such an ailment as the—” she dropped and formed the evil word only with a movement of the lips. “And if, as you see, our friends grow scarcer each Wednesday night, there are a thousand indifferent good reasons to explain their absence.”