Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: My Lady]
THE LADY OF THE MOUNT
_By_
FREDERIC S. ISHAM
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
LESTER RALPH
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1908
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
FEBRUARY
BY FREDERIC S. ISHAM
BLACK FRIDAY
Illustrated by Harrison Fisher
12mo, Cloth $1.50
UNDER THE ROSE
Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy
12mo, Cloth $1.50
THE STROLLERS
Illustrated by Harrison Fisher
12mo, Cloth $1.50
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I A CHANCE ENCOUNTER
II AN ECHO OF THE PAST
III A SUDDEN RESOLUTION
IV A DANCE ON THE BEACH
V AN INTERRUPTION
VI A MESSAGE FOR MY LADY
VII A DISTANT MENACE
VIII THE OLD WATCH-TOWER
IX A DISCOVERY
X THE CLOISTER IN THE AIR
XI THE GOVERNOR IS SURPRISED
XII AT THE COCKLES
XIII THE SEETHING OF THE SEA
XIV THE PILGRIMAGE
XV THE VOICE FROM THE GROUP
XVI THE MOUNTEBANK AND THE PEOPLE
XVII THE MOUNTEBANK AND THE HUNCHBACK
XVIII THE MOUNTEBANK AND MY LADY
XIX THE MOUNTEBANK AND THE GOVERNOR
XX THE MOUNTEBANK AND THE SOLDIER
XXI THE STAIRWAY OF SILVER
XXII THE WHIRLING OF THE WHEEL
XXIII AT THE VERGE OF THE APERTURE
XXIV THE HALL OF THE CHEVALIERS
XXV THE UNDER WORLD
XXVI A NEW ARRIVAL
XXVII A STROLL ON THE STRAND
XXVIII THE HESITATION OF THE MARQUIS
XXIX THE MARQUIS INTERVENES
XXX A SOUND AFAR
XXXI THE ATTACK ON THE MOUNT
XXXII NEAR THE ALTAR
XXXIII ON THE SANDS
XXXIV SOME TIME LATER
THE LADY OF THE MOUNT
CHAPTER I
A CHANCE ENCOUNTER
"Don't you know, boy, you ought not to get in my way?"
The tide was at its ebb; the boats stranded afar, and the lad addressed
had started, with a fish--his wage--in one hand, to walk to shore,
when, passing into the shadow of the rampart of the Governor's Mount,
from the opposite direction a white horse swung suddenly around a
corner of the stone masonry and bore directly upon him. He had but
time to step aside; as it was, the animal grazed his shoulder, and the
boy, about to give utterance to a natural remonstrance, lifted his eyes
to the offender. The words were not forthcoming; surprised, he gazed
at a tiny girl, of about eleven, perched fairy-like on the broad back
of the heavy steed.
"Don't you know you ought not to get in my way?" she repeated
imperiously.
The boy, tall, dark, unkempt as a young savage, shifted awkwardly; his
black eyes, restless enough ordinarily, expressed a sudden shyness in
the presence of this unexpected and dainty creature.
"I--didn't see you," he half stammered.
"Well, you should have!" And again the little lady frowned, shook her
disordered golden curls disapprovingly and gazed at him, a look of
censure in her brown eyes. "But perhaps you don't know who I am," she
went on with a lift of the patrician doll-like features. "I don't
think you do, or you wouldn't stand there like a booby, without taking
off your hat." More embarrassed, he removed a worn cap while she
continued to regard him with the reverse of approval. "I am the
Comtesse Elise," she observed; "the daughter of the Governor of the
Mount."
"Oh!" said the boy, and his glance shifted to the most important and
insistent feature of the landscape.
Carrying its clustered burden of houses and palaces, a great rock
reared itself from the monotony of the bare and blinding sands. Now an
oasis in the desert, ere night was over he knew the in-rushing waters
would convert it into an island; claim it for the sea! A strange
kingdom, yet a mighty one, it belonged alternately to the land and to
the ocean. With the sky, however, it enjoyed perpetual affiliation,
for the heavens were ever wooing it; now winding pretty ribbons of
light about its air-drawn castles; then kissing it with the tender,
soft red glow of celestial fervor.
"Yes; I live right on top among the clouds, in a castle, with dungeons
underneath, where my father puts the bad people who don't like the
nobles and King Louis XVI. But where," categorically, "do you live?"
His gaze turned from the points and turrets and the clouds she spoke
of--that seemed to linger about the lofty summit--to the mainland,
perhaps a mile distant.
"There!" he said, and specifically indicated a dark fringe, like a
cloud on the lowlands.
"In the woods! How odd!" She looked at him with faint interest. "And
don't the bears bother you? Once when I wanted to see what the woods
were like, my nurse told me they were filled with terrible bears who
would eat up little girls. I don't have a nurse any more,"
irrelevantly, "only a governess who came from the court of Versailles,
and Beppo. Do you know Beppo?"
"No."
"I don't like him," she confided. "He is always listening. But why do
you live in the woods?"
"Because!" The reason failed him.
"And didn't you ever live anywhere else?"
A shadow crossed the dark young face. "Once," he said.
"I suppose the bears know you," she speculated, "and that is the reason
they let you alone. Or, perhaps, they are like the wolf in the
fairy-tale. Did you ever hear of the kind-hearted wolf?"
He shook his head.
"My nurse used to tell it to me. Well, once there was a boy who was an
orphan and everybody hated him. So he went to live in the forest and
there he met a wolf. 'Where are you going, little boy?' said the wolf.
'Nowhere,' said the boy; 'I have no home.' 'No home!' said the
kind-hearted wolf; 'then come with me, and you shall share my cave.'
Isn't that a nice story?"
He looked at her in a puzzled manner. "I don't know," he began, when
she tossed her head.
"What a stupid boy!" she exclaimed severely. A moment she studied him
tentatively through her curls, from the vantage point of her elevated
seat. "That's a big fish," she remarked, after the pause.
"Do you want it?" he asked quickly, his face brightening.
"You can give it to Beppo when he comes," she said, drawing herself up
loftily. "He'll be here soon. I've run away from him!" A sudden
smile replaced her brief assumption of dignity. "He'll be so angry!
He's fat and ugly," more confidentially. "And he's so amusing when
he's vexed! But how much do you ask for the fish?"
"I didn't mean--to sell it!"
"Why not?"
"I--don't sell fish."
"Don't sell fish!" She looked at the clothes, frayed and worn, the
bare muscular throat, the sunburned legs. "You meant to give it to me?"
"Yes."
The girl laughed. "What a funny boy!"
His cheek flushed; from beneath the matted hair, the disconcerted black
eyes met the mocking brown ones.
"Of course I can't take it for nothing," she explained, "and it is very
absurd of you to expect it."
"Then," with sudden stubbornness, "I will keep it!"
Her glance grew more severe. "Most people speak to me as 'my Lady.'
You seem to have forgotten. Or perhaps you have been listening to some
of those silly persons who talk about everybody being born equal. I've
heard my father, the Governor, speak of them and how he has put some of
them in his dungeons. You'd better not talk that way, or he may shut
you up in some terrible dark hole beneath the castle."
"I'm not afraid!" The black eyes shone.
"Then you must be a very wicked boy. It would serve you right if I was
to tell."
"You can!"
"Then I won't! Besides, I'm not a telltale!" She tossed her curls and
went on. "I've heard my father say these people who want to be called
'_gentilhomme_' and 'monsieur' are low and ignorant; they can't even
read and write."
Again the red hue mantled the boy's cheek. "I don't believe you can!"
she exclaimed shrewdly and clapped her hands. "Can you now?" He did
not answer. "'Monsieur'! '_Gentilhomme_'!" she repeated.
He stepped closer, his face dark; but whatever reply he might have made
was interrupted by the sound of a horse's hoofs and the abrupt
appearance, from the direction the child had come, of a fat,
irascible-looking man of middle age, dressed in livery.
"Oh, here you are, my Lady!" His tone was far from amiable; as he
spoke he pulled up his horse with a vicious jerk. "A pretty chase
you've led me!"
She regarded him indifferently. "If you _will_ stop at the inn,
Beppo--"
The man's irate glance fell. "Who is this?"
"A boy who doesn't want to sell his fish," said the girl merrily.
"Oh!" The man's look expressed a quick recognition. "A fine day's
work is this--to bandy words with--" Abruptly he raised his whip.
"What do you mean, sirrah, by stopping my Lady?"
A fierce gleam in the lad's eyes belied the smile on his lips. "Don't
beat me, good Beppo!" he said in a mocking voice, and stood, alert,
lithe, like a tiger ready to spring. The man hesitated; his arm
dropped to his side. "The very spot!" he said, looking around him.
A moment the boy waited, then turned on his heel and, without a word,
walked away. Soon an angle in the sea-wall, girdling the Mount, hid
him from view.
"Why didn't you strike him?" Quietly the child regarded the man.
"Were you afraid?" Beppo's answering look was not one of affection for
his charge. "Who is he?"
"An idle vagabond."
"What is his name?"
"I don't know."
"Don't you?"
A queer expression sprang into his eyes. "One can't remember every
peasant brat," he returned evasively.
She considered him silently; then: "Why did you say: 'The very spot'?"
she asked.
"Did I? I don't remember. But it's time we were getting back. Come,
my Lady!" And Beppo struck his horse smartly.
CHAPTER II
AN ECHO OF THE PAST
Immovable on its granite base, the great rock, or "Mount," as it had
been called for centuries, stood some distance from the shore in a vast
bay on the northwestern coast of France. To the right, a sweep of
sward and marsh stretched seaward, until lost in the distance; to the
left, lay the dense Desaurac forest, from which an arm of land, thickly
wooded, reached out in seeming endeavor to divide the large bay into
two smaller basins. But the ocean, jealous of territory already
conquered, twice in twenty-four hours rose to beat heavily on this dark
promontory, and, in the angry hiss of the waters, was a reminder of a
persistent purpose. Here and there, through the ages, had the
shore-line of the bay, as well as the neighboring curvatures of the
coast, yielded to the assaults of the sea; the Mount alone, solidly
indifferent to blandishment or attack, maintained an unvarying aspect.
For centuries a monastery and fortress of the monks, at the time of
Louis XVI the Mount had become a stronghold of the government, strongly
ruled by one of its most inexorable nobles. Since his appointment many
years before to the post, my lord, the Governor of the rock, had ever
been regarded as a man who conceded nothing to the people and pursued
only the set tenure of his way. During the long period of his reign he
committed but one indiscretion; generally regarded as a man confirmed
in apathy for the gentler sex, he suddenly, when already past middle
age, wedded. Speculation concerning a step so unlooked for was
naturally rife.
In hovel and hut was it whispered the bride Claire, only daughter of
the Comtesse de la Mart, had wept at the altar, but that her mother had
appeared complacent, as well she might; for the Governor of the Mount
and the surrounding country was both rich and powerful; his ships swept
far and wide, even to the Orient, while the number of _metayers_, or
petty farmers that paid him tribute, constituted a large community.
Other gossips, bending over peat fires within mud walls,
affirmed--beneath their breath, lest the spies of the well-hated lord
of the North might hear them!--that the more popular, though
impoverished Seigneur Desaurac had been the favored suitor with the
young woman herself, but that the family of the bride had found him
undesirable. The Desaurac fortune, once large, had so waned that
little remained save the rich, though heavily encumbered lands, and, in
the heart of the forest, a time-worn, crumbling castle.
Thus it came to pass the marriage of the lady to the Governor was
celebrated in the jeweled Gothic church crowning a medley of palaces,
chapels and monastery on the Mount; that the rejected Seigneur
Desaurac, gazing across the strip of water--for the tide was at its
full--separating the rocky fortress from the land, shrugged his
shoulders angrily and contemptuously, and that not many moons later, as
if to show disdain of position and title, took to his home an orphaned
peasant lass. That a simple church ceremony had preceded this step was
both affirmed and denied; hearsay described a marriage at a neighboring
village; more malicious gossip discredited it. A man of rank! A woman
of the soil! Feudal custom forbade belief that the proper sort of
nuptial knot had been tied.
Be this as it may, for a time the sturdy, dark brown young woman
presided over the Seigneur's fortunes with exemplary care and patience.
She found them in a chaotic condition; lands had either been allowed to
run to waste, or were cultivated by peasants that so long had forgotten
to pay the _metayage_, or owner's due, they had come to regard the
acres as their own--a delusion this practical helpmate would speedily
have dispelled, save that the Seigneur himself pleaded for them and
would not permit of the "poor people" being disturbed. Whereupon she
made the best of an anomalous situation, and all concerned might have
continued to live satisfactorily enough unto themselves, when
unfortunately an abrupt break occurred in the chain of circumstances.
In presenting the Seigneur with a child, half-peasant, half-lord, the
mother gave up her own life for his posterity.
At first, thereafter, the Seigneur remained a recluse; when, however, a
year or two had gone by, the peasants--who had settled in greater
numbers thereabouts, even to the verge of the forest--noticed that he
gradually emerged from his solitude, ventured into the world at large,
and occasionally was seen in the vicinity of the Mount. This
predilection for lonely walks clearly led to his undoing; one morning
he was found stabbed in the back, on the beach at the foot of the Mount.
Carried home, he related how he had been set upon by a band of
miscreants, which later, coming to the Governor's ears, led to an
attempt to locate the assailants among the rocky isles to the
northwest, haunts of privateersmen, rogues and those reformers who
already were beginning to undermine the peace of Louis XVI's northern
provinces. In the pursuit of these gentry, the Governor showed himself
in earnest. Perhaps his own sorrow at the rather sudden death of his
lady, occurring about this time, and leaving him, a morose widower,
with a child, a little girl, led him to more relentless activities;
perhaps the character of the crime--a noble stabbed!--incensed him.
Certainly he revenged himself to the full; not only raked the rocks for
runagates, but dragged peasants, inclined to sullenness, from their
huts; clapped some in dungeons and hanged the rest. In the popular
mind his name became synonymous with cruelty, but, on his high throne,
he continued to exercise his autocratic prerogative and cared not what
the people thought.
Meanwhile, the Seigneur Desaurac, recovering, became a prey to greater
restlessness; no sooner was he able to get about, than, accompanied by
a faithful servant, Sanchez, he left the neighborhood, and, for a
number of years, led a migratory existence in continental capitals.
The revolt of the colonies in America and the news of the contemplated
departure of the brave Lafayette for the seat of hostilities, offered,
at least, a pretext to break the fetters of a purposeless life. At
once, he placed his sword at Lafayette's disposal, and packed himself
and servitor--a fellow of dog-like fidelity--across the ocean. There,
at the seat of war's alarms, in the great conflict waged in the name of
liberty, he met a soldier's end, far from the fief of his ancestors.
Sanchez, the man, buried him, and, having dutifully performed this last
task, walked away from the grave and out of the army.
During this while, the son by the peasant woman, intrusted to an old
fishwife who had been allowed to usurp a patch of his father's lands,
received scanty care and attention, even when the stipulated fees for
his maintenance had continued to come; but when, at the Seigneur's
death, they ceased, any slight solicitude on the caretaker's part
soured to acrimony. An offspring of dubious parentage, she begrudged
him his bread; kept him from her own precious brood, and taught them to
address him as "brat," "pauper," or by terms even more forcible. Thus
set upon, frequently he fought; but like young wolves, hunting in
packs, they worried him to the earth, and, when he continued to
struggle, beat him to unconsciousness, if not submission.
One day, after such an experience at the hands of those who had
partaken of the Seigneur's liberality, the boy, all bruised and aching,
fled to the woods, and, with the instinct of an animal to hide, buried
himself in its deepest recesses. Night came; encompassed by strange
sounds, unknown terrors, he crept to the verge of the forest, and lying
there, looked out across the distance toward the scattered habitations,
visible through the gloom. One tiny yellow dot of light which he
located held his glance. Should he return? That small stone hut,
squalid as it was, had been his only remembered home. But the thought
of the reception that awaited him there made him hesitate; the stars
coming out, seemed to lend courage to his resolution, and, with his
face yet turned toward the low long strip of land, sprinkled with the
faint, receding points of light, he fell asleep.
The earliest shafts of morn, however, awaking him, sent him quickly
back into the dark forest, where all day he kept to the most shadowy
screens and covers, fearing he should be followed, and, perhaps,
captured. But the second night was like the first, the next like the
second, and the days continued to pass with no signs of pursuit.
Pinched by hunger, certain of the berries and roots he ate poisoned
him, until in time he profited by his sufferings and learned to
discriminate in his choice of the frugal fare about him. Not that his
appetite was ever satisfied, even when he extended his explorations to
the beach at night, digging in the sand with his fingers for cockles,
or prowling about the rocks for mussels.
Yet, despite all, he hugged to his breast a compensating sense of
liberty; the biting tooth of autumn was preferable to the stripes and
tongue-lashings of the old life; and, if now frugal repasts were the
rule, hunger had often been his lot in the past. So he assimilated
with his surroundings; learned not to fear the animals, and they, to
know him; indeed, they seemed to recognize him by that sharp unsated
glint of the eye as one of their kind. When the days grew bleaker and
the nights colder, he took refuge in a corner within the gray walls of
the moss-grown castle of his ancestors, the old Seigneurs. No cheerful
place, above all at night, when the spirits of the dead seem to walk
abroad, and sobs, moans, and fierce voices fill the air! Then,
creeping closer to the fire he had started in the giant hearth,
wide-eyed he would listen, only at length through sheer weariness to
fall asleep. Nevertheless, it was a shelter, and here, throughout the
winter, the boy remained.
Here, too, Sanchez, the Seigneur's old servant, returning months later
from long wanderings to the vicinity of the Mount--for no especial
reason, save the desire once more to see the place--had found him. And
at the sight the man frowned.
In the later days, the Seigneur Desaurac had become somewhat unmindful,
if not forgetful, of his own flesh and blood. It may be that the
absorbing character of the large and chivalrous motives that animated
him left little disposition or leisure for private concerns; at any
rate, he seemed seldom to have thought, much less spoken of, that
"hostage of fortune" he had left behind; an absent-mindedness that in
no wise surprised the servant--which, indeed, met the man's full,
unspoken approval! The Seigneur, his master, was a nobleman of
untarnished ancestry, to be followed and served; the son--Sanchez had
never forgiven the mother her low-born extraction. He was, himself, a
peasant!
CHAPTER III
A SUDDEN RESOLUTION
After his chance encounter with my lady, the Governor's daughter, and
Beppo, her attendant, the boy walked quickly from the Mount to the
forest. His eyes were still bright; his cheeks yet burned, but
occasionally the shadow of a smile played about his mouth, and he threw
up his head fiercely. At the verge of the wood he looked back, stood
for a moment with the reflection of light on his face, then plunged
into the shadows of the sylvan labyrinth. Near the east door of the
castle, which presently he reached, he stopped for an armful of
faggots, and, bending under his load, passed through an entrance,
seared and battered, across a great roofless space and up a flight of
steps to a room that had once been the kitchen of the vast
establishment. As he entered, a man, thin, wizened, though active
looking, turned around.
"So you've got back?" he said in a grumbling tone.
"Yes," answered the boy good-naturedly, casting the wood to the
flagging near the flame and brushing his coat with his hand; "the storm
kept us out last night, Sanchez."
"It'll keep you out for good some day," remarked the man. "You'll be
drowned, if you don't have a care."
"Better that than being hanged!" returned the lad lightly.
The other's response, beneath his breath, was lost, as he drew his
stool closer to the pot above the blaze, removed the lid and peered
within. Apparently his survey was not satisfactory, for he replaced
the cover, clasped his fingers over his knees and half closed his eyes.
"Where's the fish?"
The boy, thoughtfully regarding the flames, started; when he had left
the child and Beppo, unconsciously he had dropped it, but this he did
not now explain. "I didn't bring one."
"Didn't bring one?"
"No," said the boy, flushing slightly.
"And not a bone or scrap in the larder! Niggardly fishermen! A small
enough wage--for going to sea and helping them--"
"Oh, I could have had what I wanted. And they are not niggardly!
Only--I forgot."
"Forgot!" The man lifted his hands, but any further evidence of
surprise or expostulation was interrupted by a sudden ebullition in the
pot.
Left to his thoughts, the boy stepped to the window; for some time
stood motionless, gazing through a forest rift at the end of which
uprose the top of an Aladdin-like structure, by an optical illusion
become a part of that locality; a conjuror's castle in the wood!
"The Mount looks near to-night, Sanchez!"
"Near?" The man took from its hook the pot and set it on the table.
"Not too near to suit the Governor, perhaps!"
"And why should it suit him?" drawing a stool to the table and sitting
down.
"Because he must be so fond of looking at the forest."
"And does that--please him?"
"How could it fail to? Isn't it a nice wood? Oh, yes, I'll warrant
you he finds it to his liking. And all the lands about the forest that
used to belong to the old Seigneurs, and which the peasants have
taken--waste lands they have tilled--he must think them very fine to
look at, now! And what a hubbub there would be, if the lazy peasants
had to pay their metayage, and fire-tax and road-tax--and all the other
taxes--the way the other peasants do--to him--"
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing!" The man's jaw closed like a steel trap. "The porridge is
burned."
And with no further word the meal proceeded. The man, first to finish,
lighted his pipe, moved again to the fire, and, maintaining a
taciturnity that had become more or less habitual, stolidly devoted
himself to the solace of the weed and the companionship of his own
reflections. Once or twice the boy seemed about to speak and did not;
finally, however, he leaned forward, a more resolute light in his
sparkling black eyes.
"You never learned to read, Sanchez?"
At the unexpected question, the smoke puffed suddenly from the man's
lips. "Not I."
"Nor write?"
The man made a rough gesture. "Nor sail to the moon!" he returned
derisively. "Read? Rubbish! Write? What for? Does it bring more
fish to your nets?"
"Who--could show me how to read and write?"
"You?" Sanchez stared.
"Why not?"
"Books are the tools of the devil!" declared Sanchez shortly. "There
was a black man here to-day with a paper--a 'writ,' I think he called
it--or a 'service' of some kind--anyhow, it must have been in Latin,"
violently, "for such gibberish, I never heard and--"
The boy rose. "People who can't read and write are low and ignorant!"
"Eh? What's come over you?"
"My father was a gentleman."
"Your father!--yes--"
"And a Seigneur!--"
"A Seigneur truly!"
"And I mean to be one!" said the boy suddenly, closing his fists.
"Oh, oh! So that's it?" derisively. "You! A Seigneur? Whose
mother--"
"Who could teach me?" Determined, but with a trace of color on his
brown cheek, the boy looked down.
"Who?" The man began to recover from his surprise. "That's not so
easy to tell. But if you must know--well, there's Gabriel Gabarie, for
one, a poet of the people. He might do it--although there's talk of
cutting off his head--"
"What for?"
"For knowing how to write."
The lad reached for his hat.
"Where are you going?"
"To the poet's."
"At this late hour! You are in a hurry!"
"If what you say is true, there's no time to lose."
"Well, if you find him writing verses about liberty and equality, don't
interrupt him, or _you'll_ lose _your_ head," shouted the man.
But when the sound of the boy's footsteps had ceased, Sanchez's
expression changed; more bent, more worn, he got up and walked slowly
to and fro. "A fine Seigneur!" The moldering walls seemed to echo the
words. "A fine Seigneur!" he muttered, and again sat brooding by the
fire.
In the gathering dusk the lad strode briskly on. A squirrel barked to
the right; he did not look around. A partridge drummed to the left;
usually alert to wood sound or life, to-night he did not heed it. But,
fairly out of the forest and making his way with the same air of
resolution across the sands toward the lowland beyond, his attention,
on a sudden, became forcibly diverted. He had but half completed the
distance from the place where he had left the wood to the objective
point in the curvature of the shore, when to the left through the
gloom, a great vehicle, drawn by six horses, could be seen rapidly
approaching. From the imposing equipage gleamed many lamps; the moon,
which ere this had begun to assert its place in the heavens, made
bright the shining harness and shone on the polished surface of the
golden car. Wondering, the boy paused.
"What is that?"
The person addressed, a fisherman belated, bending to the burden on his
shoulders, stopped, and, breathing hard, looked around and watched the
approaching vehicle intently.
"The Governor's carriage!" he said. "Haven't you ever heard of the
Governor's carriage?"
"No."
"That's because he hasn't used it lately; but in her ladyship's day--"
"Her ladyship?"
"The Governor's lady--he bought it for her. But she soon got tired of
it--or perhaps didn't like the way the people looked at her!" roughly.
"_Mon dieu!_ perhaps they did scowl a little--for it didn't please
them, I can tell you!--the sight of all that gold squeezed from the
taxes!"
"Where is he going now?"
"Nowhere himself--he never goes far from the Mount. But the Lady
Elise, his daughter--some one in the village was saying she was going
to Paris--"
"Paris!" The lad repeated the word quickly. "What for?"
"What do all the great lords and nobles send their children there for?
To get educated--married, and--to learn the tricks of the court! Bah!"
With a coarse laugh the man turned; stooping beneath his load, he moved
grumblingly on.
The boy, however, did not stir; as in a dream he looked first at the
Mount, a dark triangle against the sky, then at the carriage. Nearer
the latter drew, was about to dash by, when suddenly the driver, on his
high seat, uttered an exclamation and at the same time tugged hard at
the reins. The vehicle took a quick turn, lurched dangerously in its
top-heavy pomp, and, almost upsetting, came to a standstill nearly
opposite the boy.
"Careless dog!" a shrill voice screamed from the inside. "What are you
doing?"
"The _lises_, your Excellency!" The driver's voice was thick; as he
spoke he swayed uncertainly.
"_Lises_--quicksands--"
"There, your Excellency," indicating a gleaming place right in their
path; a small bright spot that looked as if it might have been
polished, while elsewhere on the surrounding sands tiny rippling
parallels caressed the eye with streaks of black and silver. "I saw it
in time!"
"In time!" angrily. "Imbecile! Didn't you know it was there?"
"Of course, your Excellency! Only I had misjudged a little, and--"
The man's manner showed he was frightened.
"Falsehoods! You have been drinking! Don't answer. You shall hear of
this later. Drive around the spot."
"Yes, your Excellency," was the now sober and subdued answer.
Ere he obeyed, however, the carriage door, from which the Governor had
been leaning, swung open. "Wait!" he called out impatiently, and tried
to close it, but the catch--probably from long disuse--would not hold,
and, before the liveried servant perched on the lofty carriage behind
had fully perceived the fact and had recovered himself sufficiently to
think of his duties, the boy on the beach had sprung forward.
"Slam it!" commanded an irate voice.
The lad complied, and as he did so, peered eagerly into the capacious
depths of the vehicle.
"The boy with the fish!" exclaimed at the same time a girlish treble
within.
"Eh?" my lord turned sharply.
"An impudent lad who stopped the Lady Elise!" exclaimed the fat
man--surely Beppo--on the front seat.
"Stopped the Lady Elise!" The Governor repeated the words slowly; an
ominous pause was followed by an abrupt movement on the part of the
child.
"He did not stop me; it was I who nearly ran over him, and it was my
fault. Beppo does not tell the truth--he's a wicked man!--and I'm glad
I'm not going to see him any more! And the boy wasn't impudent; at
least until Beppo offered to strike him, and then, Beppo didn't!
Beppo," derisively, "was afraid!"
"My lady," Beppo's voice was soft and unctuous, "construes forbearance
for fear."
"Step nearer, boy!"
Partly blinded by the lamps, the lad obeyed; was cognizant of a
piercing scrutiny; two hard, steely eyes that seemed to read his inmost
thoughts; a face, indistinguishable but compelling; beyond, something
white--a girl's dress--that moved and fluttered!
"Who is he?"
"A poor boy who lives in the woods, papa!"
But Beppo bent forward and whispered, his words too low for the lad to
catch. Whatever his information, the Governor started; the questioning
glance on an instant brightened, and his head was thrust forward close
to the boy's. A chill seemed to pass over the lad, yet he did not
quail.
"Good-by, boy!" said the child, and, leaning from the window, smiled
down at him.
He tried to answer, when a hand pulled her in somewhat over-suddenly.
"Drive on!" Again the shrill tones cut the air. "Drive on, I tell
you! _Diable_! What are you standing here for!"
A whip lashed the air and the horses leaped forward. The back wheels
of the vehicle almost struck the lad, but, motionless, he continued
staring after it. Farther it drew away, and, as he remained thus he
discerned, or fancied he discerned, a girl's face at the back--a ribbon
that waved for a moment in the moonlight, and then was gone.
Eight years elapsed before next he saw her.
CHAPTER IV
A DANCE ON THE BEACH
The great vernal equinox of April 178-, was the cause of certain
unusual movements of the tide, which made old mariners and
coast-fishermen shake their heads and gaze seaward, out of all
reckoning. At times, after a tempest, on this strange coast, the
waters would rise in a manner and at an hour out of the ordinary, and
then among the dwellers on the shore, there were those who
prognosticated dire unhappiness, telling how the sea had once devoured
two villages overnight, and how, beneath the sands, were homes intact,
with the people yet in their beds.
Concerned with a disordered social system and men in and out of
dungeons, the Governor had little time and less inclination to note the
caprices of the tide or the vagaries of the strand. The people! The
menacing and mercurial ebb and flow of their moods! The maintenance of
autocratic power on the land, and, a more difficult task, on the
sea--these were matters of greater import than the phenomena of nature
whose purposes man is powerless to shape or curb. My lady, his
daughter, however, who had just returned from seven years' schooling at
a convent and one year at court where the Queen, Marie Antoinette, set
the fashion of gaiety, found in the conduct of their great neighbor,
the ocean, a source of both entertainment and instruction for her
guests, a merry company transported from Versailles.
"Is it not a sight well worth seeing after your tranquil Seine, my
Lords?" she would say with a wave of her white hand toward the restless
sea. "Here, perched in mid air like eagles, you have watched the
'grand tide,' as we call it, come in--like no other tide--faster than a
horse can gallop! Where else could you witness the like?"
"Nowhere. And when it goes out--"
"It goes out so far, you can no longer see it; only a vast beach that
reaches to the horizon, and--"
"Must be very dangerous?"
"For a few days, perhaps; later, not at all, when the petites tides are
the rule, and can be depended on. Then are the sands, except for one
or two places very well-known, as safe as your gardens at Versailles.
But remain, and--you shall see."
Which they did--finding the place to their liking--or their hostess;
for the Governor, who cared not for guests, but must needs entertain
them for reasons of state, left them as much as might be to his
daughter. She, brimming with the ardor and effervescence of eighteen
years, accepted these responsibilities gladly; pending that period she
had referred to, turned the monks' great refectory into a ball-room,
and then, when the gales had swept away, proposed the sands themselves
as a scene for diversion both for her guests and the people. This,
despite the demur of his Excellency, her father.
"Is it wise," he had asked, "to court the attention of the people?"
"Oh, I am not afraid!" she had answered. "And they are going to dance,
too!"
"They!" He frowned.
"Why not? It is the Queen's own idea. 'Let the people dance,' she has
said, 'and they will keep out of mischief.' Besides," with a prouder
poise of the bright head, "why shouldn't they see, and--like me?"
"They like nothing except themselves, and," dryly, "to attempt to evade
their just obligations."
"Can you blame them?" She made a light gesture. "Obligations, _mon
pere_, are so tiresome!"
"Well, well," hastily, "have your own way!" Although he spoke rather
shortly, on the whole he was not displeased with his daughter; her
betrothal with the Marquis de Beauvillers, a nobleman of large
estates,--arranged while she was yet a child!--promised a brilliant
marriage and in a measure offered to his Excellency some compensation
for that old and long-cherished disappointment--the birth of a girl
when his ambition had looked so strongly for an heir to his name as
well as to his estate.
And so my lady and her guests danced and made merry on the sands below,
and the people came out from the mainland, or down from the houses in
the town at the base of the rock, to watch. A varied assemblage of
gaunt-looking men and bent, low-browed women, for the most part they
stood sullen and silent; though exchanging meaning glances now and then
as if to say: "Do you note all this ostentation--all this glitter and
display? Yes; and some day--" Upon brooding brows, in deep-set eyes,
on furrowed faces a question and an answer seemed to gleam and pass.
Endowed with natural optimism and a vivacity somewhat heedless, my lady
appeared unconscious of all this latent enmity until an unlooked-for
incident, justifying in a measure the Governor's demur, broke in upon
the evening's festivities and claimed her attention.
On the beach, lighted by torches, a dainty minuet was proceeding gaily,
when through the throng of onlookers, a young man with dark head set on
a frame tall and powerful, worked his way carefully to a point where he
was afforded at least a restricted view of the animated spectacle.
Absorbed each in his or her way in the scene before them, no one
noticed him, and, with hat drawn over his brow, and standing in the
shadow of the towering head-dresses of several peasant women, he seemed
content to attract as little attention to himself as possible. His
look, at first quick and alert, that of a man taking stock of his
surroundings, suddenly became intent and piercing, as, passing in
survey over the lowly spectators to the glittering company, it centered
itself on the young mistress of festivities.
In costume white and shining, the Lady Elise moved through the graceful
numbers, her slender supple figure now poised, now swaying, from head
to foot responsive to the rhythm of that "pastime of little steps."
Her lips, too, were busy, but such was the witchery of her motion--all
fire and life!--the silk-stockinged cavaliers whom she thus regaled
with wit, mockery, or jest, could, for the most part, respond only with
admiring glances or weakly protesting words.
"That pretty fellow, her partner," with a contemptuous accent on the
adjective, "is the Marquis de Beauvillers, a kinsman of the King!" said
one of the women in the throng.
"_Ma foi_! They're well matched. A dancing doll for a popinjay!"
The young man behind the head-dresses, now nodding viciously, moved
nearer the front. Dressed in the rough though not unpicturesque
fashion of the northern fisherman, a touch of color in his apparel lent
to his bearing a note of romance the bold expression of his swarthy
face did not belie. For a few moments he watched the girl; the
changing eyes and lips, shadowed by hair that shone and flashed like
bright burnished gold; then catching her gaze, the black eyes gleamed.
An instant their eyes lingered; hers startled, puzzled.
"Where have I seen him?" My lady, in turning, paused to swing over her
shoulders a glance.
"Whom?" asked her companion in the dance--a fair, handsome nobleman of
slim figure and elegant bearing.
"That's just what I can't tell you," she answered, sweeping a courtesy
that fitted the rhythm of the music. "Only a face I should remember!"
"Should?" The Marquis' look followed hers.
But the subject of their conversation, as if divining the trend of
their talk, had drawn back.
"Oh, he is gone now," she answered.
"A malcontent, perhaps! One meets them nowadays."
"No, no! He did not look--"
"Some poor fellow, then, your beauty has entrapped?" he insinuated.
"Humble admirer!"
"Then I would remember him!" she laughed as the dance came to an end.
Now in a tented pavilion, servants, richly garbed in festal costume,
passed among the guests, circulating trays, bright with golden dishes
and goblets, stamped with the ancient insignia of the Mount, and once
the property of the affluent monks, early rulers of the place. Other
attendants followed, bearing light delicacies, confections and
marvelous frosted towers and structures from the castle kitchen.
"The patron saint in sugar!" Merry exclamations greeted these examples
of skill and cunning. "Are we to devour the saint?"
"Ah, no; he is only to look at!"
"But the Mount in cake--?"
"You may cut into that--though beware!--not so deep as the dungeons!"
"A piece of the cloister!"
"A bit of the abbey!"
"And you, Elise?"
The girl reached gaily. "A little of the froth of the sea!"
Meanwhile, not far distant, a barrel had been broached and wine was
being circulated among the people. There, master of ceremonies, Beppo
dispensed advice with the beverage, his grumbling talk heard above the
light laughter and chatter of the lords and ladies.
"Drink to his Excellency!" As he spoke, the Governor's man, from the
elevated stand upon which he stood, gazed arrogantly around him.
"Clods! Sponges that sop without a word of thanks! Who only think of
your stomachs! Drink to the Governor, I say!"
"To the Governor!" exclaimed a few, but it might have been noticed they
were men from the town, directly beneath the shadow of his Excellency's
castle, and now close within reach of the fat factotum's arm.
"Once more! Had I the ordering of wine, the barrels would all be empty
ones, but her ladyship would be generous, and--"
Beppo broke abruptly off, his wandering glance, on a sudden, arrested.
"_Hein!_" he exclaimed, with eyes protruding.
A moment he stammered a few words of surprise and incredulity, the
while he continued to search eagerly--but now in vain! The object of
his startled attention, illumined, for an instant, on the outskirts of
the throng, by the glare of a torch, was no more to be descried. As
questioning the reality of a fleeting impression, his gaze fixed itself
again near the edge of flickering lights; shifted uncertainly to the
pavilion where servants from the Mount hurried to and fro; then back to
the people around him. His jaw which had dropped grew suddenly firm.
"Clear a space for the dance!" he called out in tones impatient,
excited. "It is her ladyship's command--so see you step blithely! And
you fellows there, with the _tambourin_ and _hautbois_, come forward!"
Two men, clad in sheepskin and carrying rude instruments, obediently
advanced, and at once, in marked contrast to the recent tinkling
measures of the orchestra, a wild, half-barbaric concord rang out.
But the Governor's man, having thus far executed the orders he had
received, did not linger to see whether or not his own injunction, "to
step blithely," was observed; some concern, remote from _gaillarde_,
_gavotte_ or _bourree_ of the people, caused him hastily to dismount
from his stand and make his way from the throng. As he started at a
rapid pace across the sands, his eyes, now shining with anticipation,
looked back.
"What could have brought him here? Him!" he repeated. "Ah, my fine
fellow, this should prove a lucky stroke for me!" And quickening his
step, until he almost ran, Beppo hurried toward the tower gate of the
Mount.
CHAPTER V
AN INTERRUPTION
"They seem not to appreciate your _fete champetre_, my Lady!" At the
verge of the group of peasant dancers, the Lady Elise and the Marquis
de Beauvillers, who had left the other guests to the enjoyment of fresh
culinary surprises, paused to survey a scene, intended, yet failing, to
be festal. For whether these people were too sodden to avail
themselves of the opportunity for merrymaking, or liked not the notion
of tripping together at Beppo's command, their movements, which should
have been free and untrammeled as the vigorous swing of the music, were
characterized only by painful monotony and lagging. In the half-gloom
they came together like shadows; separated aimlessly and cast misshapen
silhouettes--caricatures of frolicking peasants--on the broad surface
of the sands beyond. These bobbing, black spots my lady disapprovingly
regarded.
"They seem not in the mood, truly!" tapping her foot on the beach.
"Here--and elsewhere!" he laughed.
But the Governor's daughter made an impatient movement; memories of the
dance, as she had often seen it, when she was a child at the Mount,
recurred to her. "They seem to have forgotten!" Her eyes flashed. "I
should like to show them."
"You? My Lady!"
She did not answer; pressing her red lips, she glanced sharply around.
"Stupid people! Half of them are only looking on! When they can
dance, they won't, and--" She gave a slight start, for near her,
almost at her elbow, stood the young seaman she had observed only a
short time before, when the minuet was in progress. His dark eyes were
bent on her and she surprised on his face an expression half derisory,
half quizzical. Her look changed to one of displeasure.
"You are not dancing?" severely.
"No, my Lady." Too late, perhaps, he regretted his temerity--that too
unveiled and open regard.
"Why not?" more imperiously.
"I--" he began and stopped.
"You _can_ dance?"
"A little, perhaps--"
"As well as they?" looking at the people.
"Wooden fantoccini!" said the man, a flicker of bold amusement
returning to his face.
"Fantoccini?" spoke the girl impatiently. "What know _you_ of them?"
"We Breton seamen sail far, on occasion."
"Far enough to gain in assurance!" cried my lady, with golden head
high, surveying him disdainfully through half-closed, sweeping lashes.
"But you shall prove your right."
"Right?" asked the fellow, his eyes fixed intently upon her.
"The right of one who does not dance--to criticize those who do!" she
said pointedly, and made, on the sudden, an imperious gesture.
He gave a start of surprise; audacious though he was, he looked as if
he would draw back. "What? With you, my Lady?"
A gleam of satisfaction, a little cold and scornful, shone from the
girl's eyes at this evidence of his discomfiture. "Unless," she added
maliciously, "you fear you--can not?"
"Fear?" His look shot around; a moment he seemed to hesitate; then a
more reckless expression swept suddenly over his dark features and he
sprang to her side.
"At your Ladyship's command!"
My lady's white chin lifted. The presumptuous fellow knew the dance of
the Mount--danced it well, no doubt!--else why such ease and assurance?
Her lids veiled a look of disappointment; she was half-minded curtly to
dismiss him, when a few words of low remonstrance and the sight of my
lord's face decided her. She drew aside her skirts swiftly; flashed
back at the nobleman a smile, capricious and wilful.
[Illustration: The presumptuous fellow knew the dance of the Mount]
"They," indicating the peasants, "must have an example, my Lord!" she
exclaimed, and stood, with eyes sparkling, waiting the instant to catch
up the rhythm.
But the Marquis, not finding the reason sufficient to warrant such
condescension, gazed with mute protest and disapproval on the two
figures, so ill-assorted: my lady, in robe of satin, fastened with
tassels of silver--the sleeves, wide and short, trimmed at the elbow
with fine lace of Brussels and drawn up at the shoulder with glistening
knots of diamonds; the other, clad in the rough raiment of a seaman!
The nice, critical sense of the Marquis suffered from this spectacle of
the incongruous; his eyes, seeking in vain those of the Governor's
daughter, turned and rested querulously on the heavy-browed peasants,
most of whom, drawing nearer, viewed the scene with stolid
indifference. In the gaze of only a few did that first stupid
expression suffer any change; then it varied to one of vague wonder,
half-apathetic inquiry!
"Is he mad?" whispered a clod of this class to a neighbor.
"Not so loud!" breathed the other in a low tone.
"But he," regarding with dull awe the young fisherman, "doesn't care!
Look! What foolhardiness! He's going to dance with her!"
"Witchcraft! That's what I call it!"
"Hush!"
My lady extended the tips of her fingers. "Attack well!" runs the old
Gallic injunction to dancers; the partner she had chosen apparently
understood its significance. A lithe muscular hand closed on the small
one; whirled my lady swiftly; half back again. It took away her breath
a little, so forcible and unceremonious that beginning! Then, obeying
the mad rhythm of the movement, she yielded to the infectious measure.
An arm quickly encircled her waist; swept the slender form
here,--there. Never had she had partner so vigorous, yet graceful.
One who understood so well this song of the soil; its wild symbolism;
the ancient music of the hardy Scandinavians who first brought the
dance to these shores.
More stirring, the melodies resounded--faster--faster. In a rapid
turn, the golden hair just brushed the dark, glowing face. He bent
lower; as if she had been but a peasant maid, the bold eyes looked now
down into hers; nay, more--in their depths she might fancy almost a
warmer sparkle--of mute admiration! And her face, on a sudden,
changed; grew cold.
"_Certes_, your Ladyship sets them an example!" murmured the audacious
fellow. "Though, _pardi!_--one not easy to imitate!"
She threw back her head, proudly, imperiously; the brown eyes gleamed,
and certain sharp words of reproof were about to spring from her lips,
when abruptly, above the sound of the music, a trumpet call, afar, rang
out. My lady--not sorry perhaps of the pretext--at once stopped.
"I thank your Ladyship," said the man and bowed low.
But the Governor's daughter seemed, or affected, not to hear, regarding
the other dancers, who likewise had come to a standstill--the two
musicians looking up from instruments now silent. A moment yet the
young fisherman lingered; seemed about once more to voice his
acknowledgments, but, catching the dull eye of a peasant, stepped back
instead.
"_Sapristi_! They might, at least, have waited until the end of the
dance!" he muttered, and, with a final look over his shoulder and a low
laugh, disappeared in the crowd.
"Where are the enemy?" It was the Marquis who spoke--in accents he
strove to make light and thereby conceal, perhaps, possible annoyance.
Coming forward, he looked around toward the point whence the sound had
proceeded. "If I mistake not," a note of inquiry in his tone, "it
means--a call to arms!"
My lady bit her lips; her eyes still gleamed with the bright cold light
of a topaz. "Why--a call to arms?" she asked somewhat petulantly,
raising her hand to her hair, a little disarranged in the dance.
"Perhaps, as a part of the military discipline?" murmured the Marquis
dubiously. "See!" With sudden interest, he indicated a part of the
Mount that had been black against the star-spangled sky, now showing
sickly points of light. "It does mean something! They are coming
down!"
And even as the Marquis spoke, a clatter of hoofs on the stone pavement
leading from the Mount to the sand ushered a horseman into view. He
was followed by another and yet another, until in somewhat desultory
fashion, owing to the tortuous difficulties of the narrow way that had
separated them above, an array of mounted men was gathered at the base
of the rock. But only for a moment; a few words from one of their
number, evidently in command, and they dispersed; some to ride around
the Mount to the left, others to the right.
"Perhaps Elise will enlighten us?" Of one accord her guests now
crowded around the girl.
"Does the Governor intend to take us prisoners?"
"You imply it is necessary to do that--to keep you?" answered my lady.
"Then why--"
Her expression, as perplexed as theirs, answered.
"Beppo!" She waved her hand.
The Governor's servitor, who was passing, with an anxious, inquiring
look upon his face, glanced around.
"Beppo!" she repeated, and beckoned again.
The man approached. "Your Ladyship wishes to speak with me?" he asked
in a voice he endeavored to make unconcerned.
"I do." In her manner the old antipathy she had felt toward him as a
child again became manifest. "What do the soldiers want? Why have
they come down?"
His eyes shifted. "I--my Lady--" he stammered.
The little foot struck the strand. "Why don't you answer? You heard
my question?"
"I am sorry, my Lady--" Again he hesitated: "_Le Seigneur Noir_ has
been seen on the beach!"
"_Le Seigneur Noir?_" she repeated.
"Yes, my Lady. He was caught sight of among the peasants, at the time
the barrels were opened, in accordance with your Ladyship's command. I
assure your Ladyship," with growing eagerness, "there can be no
mistake, as--"
"Who," interrupted my lady sharply, "_is_ this Black Seigneur?"
Beppo's manner changed. "A man," he said solemnly, "his Excellency,
the Governor, has long been most anxious to capture."
The girl's eyes flashed with impatience, and then she began to laugh.
"Saw you ever, my Lords and Ladies, his equal for equivocation? You
put to him the question direct, and he answers--"
The loud report of a carbine from the other side of the Mount, followed
by a desultory volley, interrupted her. The laughter died on her lips;
the color left her cheek.
"What--" The startled look in her eyes completed the sentence.
Beppo rubbed his hands softly. "His Excellency takes no chances!" he
murmured.
CHAPTER VI
A MESSENGER FOR MY LADY
"So you failed to capture him, Monsieur le Commandant?"
The speaker, the Marquis de Beauvillers, leaned more comfortably back
in his chair in the small, rather barely furnished barracks'
sitting-room in which he found himself later that night and languidly
surveyed the florid, irate countenance of the man in uniform before him.
"No, Monsieur le Marquis," said the latter, endeavoring to conceal any
evidence of mortification or ill humor in the presence of a visitor so
distinguished; "we didn't. But," as if to turn the conversation, with
a gesture toward a well-laden table, "I should feel honored if--"
"Thank you, no! After our repast on the beach--however, stand on no
ceremony yourself. Nay, I insist--"
"If Monsieur le Marquis insists!--" The commandant drew up his chair;
then, reaching for a bottle, poured out a glass of wine, which he
offered his guest.
"No, no!" said the Marquis. "But as I remarked before, stand on no
ceremony!" And daintily opening a snuff-box, he watched his host with
an expression half-amused, half-ironical.
That person ate and drank with little relish; the wine--so he said--had
spoiled; and the dishes were without flavor; it was fortunate Monsieur
le Marquis had no appetite--
Whereupon the Marquis smiled; but, considering the circumstances, in
his own mind excused the commandant, who had only just come from the
Governor's palace, and who, after the interview that undoubtedly had
ensued, could hardly be expected to find the pate palatable, or the
wine to his liking. This, despite the complaisance of the young
nobleman whom the commandant had encountered, while descending from the
Governor's abode, and who, adapting his step to the other's had
accompanied the officer back to his quarters, and graciously accepted
an invitation to enter.
"Well, you know the old saying," the Marquis closed the box with a
snap, "'There's many a slip'--but how," airily brushing with his
handkerchief imaginary particles from a long lace cuff, "did he get
away?"
"He _had_ got away before we were down on the beach. It was a
wild-goose chase, at best. And so I told his Excellency, the
Governor--"
"A thankless task, no doubt! But the shots we heard--"
"An imbecile soldier saw a shadow; fired at it, and--"
"The others followed suit?" laughed the visitor.
"Exactly!" The commandant's face grew red; fiercely he pulled at his
mustache. "What can one expect, when they make soldiers out of every
dunderpate that comes along?"
"True!" assented the Marquis. "But this fellow, this Black
Seigneur--why is the Governor so anxious to lay hands on him? Who is
he, and what has he done? I confess," languidly, "to a mild curiosity."
"He's a privateersman and an outlaw, and has done enough to hang
himself a dozen times--"
"When you capture him!" interposed the visitor lightly. A moment he
studied the massive oak beams of the ceiling. "Why do they call him
the Black Seigneur? An odd sobriquet!"
"His father was a Seigneur--the last of the fief of Desaurac. The
Seigneurs have all been fair men for generations, while this fellow--"
"Then he has noble blood in him?" The Marquis showed surprise. "Where
is the fief?"
"The woods on the shore mark the beginning of it."
"But--I don't understand. The father was a Seigneur; the son--"
Bluntly the commandant explained; the son was a natural child; the
mother, a common peasant woman whom the former Seigneur had taken to
his house--
"I see!" The young nobleman tapped his knee. "And that being the
case--"
"Under the terms of the ancient grant, there being no legal heir, the
lands were confiscated to the crown. His Excellency, however, had
already bought many of the incumbrances against the property, and, in
view of this, and his services to the King, the fief, declared
forfeited by the courts, was subsequently granted and deeded, without
condition, to the Governor."
"To the Governor!" repeated the Marquis.
"Who at once began a rare clearing-out; forcing the peasants who for
years had not been paying metayage, to meet this just requirement,
or--move away!"
"And did not some of them object?"
"They did; but his Excellency found means. The most troublesome were
arrested and taken to the Mount, where they have had time to
reflect--his Excellency believes in no half-way measures with peasants."
"A rich principality, no doubt!" half to himself spoke the Marquis.
"I have heard," blurted the commandant, "he's going to give it to the
Lady Elise; restore the old castle and turn the grounds surrounding it
into a noble park."
The visitor frowned, as if little liking the introduction of the lady's
name into the conversation. "And what did the Black Seigneur do then,"
he asked coldly, "when he found his lands gone?"
"Claimed it was a plot!--that his mother was an honest woman, though
neither the priest who performed the ceremony nor the marriage records
could be found. He even resisted at first--refused to be turned
out--and, skulking about the forest with his gun, kept the deputies at
bay. But they surrounded him at last; drove him to the castle, and
would have captured him, only he escaped that night, and took to the
high seas, where he has been making trouble ever since!"
"Trouble?"
"He has seriously hampered his Excellency's commerce; interfered with
his ships, and crippled his trade with the Orient."
"But--the Governor has many boats, many men. Why have they failed to
capture him?"
"For a number of reasons. In the first place he is one of the most
skilful pilots on the coast; when hard pressed, he does not hesitate to
use even the Isles des Rochers as a place of refuge."
"The Isles des Rochers?" queried the nobleman.
"A _chevaux-de-frise_ on the sea, my Lord!" continued the commandant;
"where fifty barren isles are fortified by a thousand rocks; frothing
fangs when the tide is low; sharp teeth that lie in wait to bite when
the smiling lips of the treacherous waters have closed above! There,
the Governor's ships have followed him on several occasions, and--few
of them have come back!"
"But surely there must be times when he can not depend on that retreat?"
"There are, my Lord. His principal harbor and resort is a little isle
farther north--English, they call it--that offers refuge at any time to
miscreants from France. There may they lie peacefully, as in a cradle;
or go ashore with impunity, an they like. Oh, he is safe enough there.
Home for French exiles, they designate the place. Exiles! Bah! It
was there he first found means to get his ship--sharing his profits, no
doubt, with the islander who built her. There, too, he mustered his
crew--savage peasants who had been turned off the lands of the old
Seigneur; fisher-folk who had become outlaws rather than pay to the
Governor just dues from the sea; men fled from the _banalite_ of the
mill, of the oven, of the wine-press--"
"Still must he be a redoubtable fellow, to have done what he did
to-night; to have dared mingle with the people, under the Governor's
very guns!"
"The people! He has nothing to fear from them. An ignorant, low,
disloyal lot! They look upon this fellow as a hero. He has played his
cards well; sends money to the lazy, worthless ones, under pretext that
they are poor, over-taxed, over-burdened. In his company is one
Gabriel Gabarie, a poet of the people, as he is styled, who keeps in
touch with those stirring trouble in Paris. Perhaps they hope for an
insurrection there, and then--"
"An insurrection?" The Marquis' delicate features expressed ironical
protest; he dismissed the possibility with an airy wave of the hand.
"One should never anticipate trouble, Monsieur le Commandant," he said
lightly and rose. "Good night."
"Good night, Monsieur le Marquis," returned the officer with due
deference, and accompanied his noble visitor to the door.
At first, without the barracks, the Marquis walked easily on, but soon
the steepness of the narrow road, becoming more marked as it approached
the commanding structures at the top of the Mount, caused his gait
gradually to slacken; then he paused altogether, at an upper platform.
From where he stood, by day could be seen, almost directly beneath, the
tiny habitations of men clinging like limpets to the precipitous sides
of the rocks at the base; now was visible only a void, an abysm, out of
which swam the sea; so far below, a boat looked no larger than a gull
on its silver surface; so immense, the dancing waves seemed receding to
a limit beyond the reach of the heavens.
"You found him?" A girl's clear voice broke suddenly upon him. He
wheeled.
"Elise! You!"
"Yes! why not? You found him? The commandant?"
"At your command, but--"
"And learned all?"
"All he could tell."
"It is reported at the castle that the man escaped!" quickly.
"It is true. But," in a voice of languid surprise, "I believe you are
glad--"
"No, no!" She shook her head. "Only," a smile curved her lips, "Beppo
will be so disappointed! Now," seating herself lightly on the low wall
of the giant rampart, "tell me all you have learned about this Black
Seigneur."
The Marquis, considered; with certain reservations obeyed. At the
conclusion of his narrative, she spoke no word and he turned to her
inquiringly. Her brows were knit; her eyes down-bent. A moment he
regarded her in silence; then she looked up at him suddenly.
"I wonder," she said, her face bathed in the moonlight, "if--if it was
this Black Seigneur I danced with?"
"The Black Seigneur!" My lord started; frowned. "Nonsense! What an
absurd fancy! He would not have dared!"
"True," said the girl quickly. "You are right, my Lord. It is absurd.
He would not have dared."
CHAPTER VII
A DISTANT MENACE
But guests come and guests go; pastimes draw to a close, and the hour
arrives when the curtain falls on the masque. The friends of my lady,
however reluctantly, were obliged at last to forgo further
holiday-making, depart from the Mount, and return to the court. An
imposing cavalcade, gleaming in crimson and gold, they wended down the
dark rock; laughing ladies, pranked-out cavaliers who waved their
perfumed hands with farewell kisses to the grim stronghold in the
desert, late their palace of pleasure, and to the young mistress
thereof.
"Good-by, Elise!" The Marquis was last to go.
"Good-by."
He took her hand; held it to his lips. On the whole, he was not
ill-pleased. His wooing had apparently prospered; for, although the
marriage had been long arranged, my lady's beauty and capriciousness
had fanned in him the desire to appear a successful suitor for her
heart as well as her hand. If sometimes she laughed and thus failed to
receive his delicate gallantries in the mood in which they were
tendered, the Marquis' vanity only allowed him to conclude that a woman
does not laugh if she is displeased. It was enough that she found him
diverting; he served her; they were friends and had danced and ridden
through the spring days in amicable fashion.
"Good-by," he repeated. "When are you coming to court again? The
Queen is sure to ask. I understand her Majesty is planning all manner
of brilliant entertainments, yet Versailles--without you, Elise!"
"Me?" arching her finely penciled brows. "Oh, I'm thinking of staying
here, becoming a nun, and restoring the Mount to its old religious
prestige."
"Then I'll come back a monk," he returned in the same tone.
"If you come back at all!" provokingly. "There, go! The others will
soon be out of sight!"
"I, too--alas, Elise!"
He touched his horse; rode on, but soon looked back to where, against a
great, grim wall, stood a figure all in white gleaming in the sunshine.
The Marquis stopped; drew from his breast a deep red rose, and, gazing
upward, gracefully kissed the glowing token. Beneath the aureole of
golden hair my lady's proud face rewarded him with a faint smile, and
something--a tiny handkerchief--fluttered like a dove above the
frowning, time-worn rock. At that, with the eloquent gesture of a
troubadour, he threw his arm backward, as if to launch the impress on
the rose to the crimson lips of the girl, and then, plying his spurs,
galloped off.
And as he went at a pace, headlong if not dangerous and fitting the
exigencies of the moment, my lord smiled. Truly had he presented a
perfect, dainty and gallant figure for any woman's eyes, and the Lady
Elise, he fancied, was not the least discerning of her sex. And had he
seen the girl, when an unkind angle of the wall hid him from sight, his
own nice estimate of the situation would have suffered no change. The
Mount, which formerly had resounded to the life and merriment of the
people from the court, on a sudden to her looked cold, barren, empty.
"Heigh-ho!" she murmured, stretching her arms toward that point where
he--they--had vanished. "I shall die of ennui, I am sure!" And
thoughtfully retraced her steps to her own room.
But she did not long stay there; by way of makeshift for gaiety,
substituted activity. The Mount, full of early recollections and
treasure-house mystery, furnished an incentive for exploration, and for
several days she devoted herself to its study; now pausing for an
instant's contemplation of a sculptured thing of beauty, then before
some closed door that held her, as at the threshold of a Bluebeard's
forbidden chamber.
One day, such a door stood open and her curiosity became cured. She
had passed beneath a machicolated gateway, and climbing a stairway that
began in a watch-tower, found herself unexpectedly on a great platform.
Here several men, unkempt, pale, like creatures from another world,
were walking to and fro; but at sight of her, an order was issued and
they vanished through a trap--all save one, a misshapen dwarf who
remained to shut the iron door, adjust the fastening and turn a
ponderous key. For a moment she stood staring.
"Why did you do that?" she asked angrily.
"The Governor's orders," said the man, bowing hideously. "They are to
see no one."
"Then let them up at once! Do you hear? At once!"
And as he began to unlock the door, walked off. After that, her
interest in the rock waned; the Mount seemed but a prison; she,
herself, desired only to escape from it.
"Have my saddle put on Saladin," she said to Beppo the next day, toward
the end of a long afternoon.
"Very well, my Lady. Who accompanies your Ladyship?"
"No one!" With slight emphasis. "I ride alone."
Beppo discretely suppressed his surprise. "Is your Ladyship going far?
If so, I beg to remind that to-night is the change of the moon, and the
'grand,' not the 'little' tide may be coming in."
"I was already aware of it, and shall keep between the Mount and the
shore. Have my horse sent to the upper gate," she added, and soon
afterward rode down.
The town was astir, and many looked after her as she passed; not
kindly, but with the varying expressions she had of late begun to
notice. Again was she cognizant of that feeling of secret antagonism,
even from these people whose houses clung to the very foundations of
her own abode, and her lips set tightly. Why did they hate her? What
right had they to hate her? A sensation, almost of relief, came over
her, when passing through the massive, feudal gate, she found herself
on the beach.
Still and languorous was the day; not a breath stirred above the tiny
ripples of the sand; a calm, almost unnatural, seemed to wrap the world
in its embrace. The girl breathed deeper, feeling the closeness of the
air; her impatient eyes looked around; scanned the shore; to the left,
low and flat--to the right, marked by the dark fringe of a forest.
Which way should she go? Irresolutely she turned in the direction of
the wood.
Saladin, her horse, seemed in unusually fine fettle, and the distance
separating her from the land was soon covered; but still she continued
to follow the shore, swinging around and out toward a point some
distance seaward. Not until she had reached that extreme projection of
land, where the wooing green crept out from the forest as far as it
might, did she draw rein. Saladin stopped, albeit with protest,
tossing his great head.
"You might as well make an end of that, sir!" said the girl, and,
springing from the saddle, deftly secured him. Then turning her back
toward the Mount, a shadowy pyramid in the distance, she seated herself
in the grass with her eyes to the woods.
Not long, however, did my lady remain thus; soon rising, she walked
toward the shadowy depths. At the verge she paused; her brows grew
thoughtful; what was it the woods recalled? Suddenly, she
remembered--a boy she had met the night she left for school so long
ago, had told her he lived in them. She recalled, too, as a child, how
the woman, Marie, who had been maid to her mother, had tried to
frighten her about that sequestered domain, with tales of fierce wild
animals and unearthly creatures, visible and invisible, that roamed
within.
She had no fear now, though faint rustlings and a pulsation of sound
held her listening. Then, through the leafy interstice, a gleaming and
flashing, as if some one were throwing jewels to the earth, lured her
on to the cause of the seeming enchantment--a tiny waterfall!
The moment passed; still she lingered. Around the Mount's high top,
her own home, only transcendent silence reigned; here was she
surrounded by babbling voices and all manner of merry creatures--lively
little squirrels; winged insects, romping in the twilight shade; a
portly and well-satisfied appearing green monster who regarded her
amicably from a niche of green. A butterfly, poised and waving its
wings, held her a long time--until she was suddenly aroused by the wood
growing darker. Raising her eyes, she saw through the green foliage
overhead that the bright sky had become sunless. At the same time a
rumbling detonation, faint, far-off, broke in upon the whisperings and
tinklings of that wood nook. Getting up, she stood for a moment
listening; then walked away.
Near the verge of the sand, Saladin greeted her with impatience,
tossing his head toward the darkening heavens. Nor did he wait until
she was fairly seated before starting back at a rapid gait along the
shore. But the girl offered no protest; her face showed only
enjoyment. A little wild he might be at times, as became one of rugged
ancestry, but never vicious, only headstrong! And she didn't mind
that--
Already had he begun to slack that first thundering pace when something
white--a veil, perhaps, dropped from the cavalcade of lords and ladies
some days before on the land and wafted to the beach--fluttered like a
live thing suddenly before him. In his tense mood, Saladin,
affrighted, sprang to one side; then wheeling outright, madly took the
bit in his teeth. Perforce his mistress resigned herself, sitting
straight and sure, with little hands hard and firm at the reins.
Saladin was behaving very badly, but--at least he was superb, worth
conquering, if--
A brief thrill of apprehension seized her as, again drawing near the
point of land, he showed no signs of yielding; resisted all her
attempts to turn, to direct him to it. With nostrils thrust forward
and breathing strong, he continued to choose his own course; to whirl
her on; past the promontory; around into the great bay beyond--now a
vast expanse, or desert of sand, broken only, about half-way across, by
the small isle of Casque. Toward this rocky formation, a pygmy to the
great Mount from which it lay concealed by the intervening projection
of land, the horse rushed.
On, on! In vain she still endeavored to stop him; thinking uneasily of
stories the fishermen told of this neighboring coast; of the sands that
often shifted here, setting pitfalls for the unwary. She saw the sky
grow yet darker, noted the nearer flashings of light, and heard the
louder rumblings that followed. Then presently another danger she had
long been conscious of, on a sudden became real.
She saw, or thought she saw, a faint streak, like a silver line drawn
across the sky where the yellow sands touched the sombrous horizon.
And Saladin seemed to observe it, too; to detect in it cause for
wonder; reason for hesitation. At any rate, that headlong speed now
showed signs of diminishing; he clipped and tossed the sand less
vigorously, and looked around at his mistress with wild, uneasy eyes.
Again she spoke to him; pulled with all her strength at the reins, and,
at once, he stopped.
None too soon! Great drops of rain had begun to fall, but the girl did
not notice them. The white line alone riveted her attention! It
seemed to grow broader; to acquire an intangible movement of its own;
at the same time to give out a sound--a strange, low droning that
filled the air. Heard for the first time, a stranger at the Mount
would have found it inexplicable; to the Governor's daughter, the
menacing cadence left no room for doubt as to its origin.
The girl's cheek paled; her gaze swung in the opposite direction,
toward the point of land, now so distant. Could they reach it? She
did not believe they could; indeed, the "grand" tide coming up behind
on the verge of the storm, faster than any horse could gallop, would
overtake them midway. And Saladin seemed to know it also; beneath her,
he trembled. Yet must they try, she thought, and had tightened the
reins to turn, when looking ahead once more, she discerned a break in
the forbidding cliffs of the little island of Casque, and, back of the
fissure, a shining spot which marked a tiny cove.
A moment she hesitated; what should she do? Ride toward the isle and
the white danger, or toward the point of mainland and from it? Either
alternative was a desperate one, but the isle lay much nearer; and
quickly, the brown eyes gleaming with sudden courage, she decided;
touched her horse and pressed him forward.
But fast as she went the "grand" tide came faster; struck with a loud,
menacing sound the seaward side of the isle and swung hungrily around.
My lady cast over her shoulder a quick glance; the cove, however, was
near; only a line of small rocks, jutting from the sand, separated her
from it. If they could but pass, she thought; they had passed, she
told herself joyfully, when of a sudden the horse stumbled; fell.
Thrown violently from his back, a moment was she cognizant of a
deafening roar; a riotous advance of foam; above, a hundred birds that
screamed distractedly; then all these sounds mingled; darkness
succeeded, and she remembered no more.
CHAPTER VIII
THE OLD WATCH-TOWER
A wall! A window--a prison-like interior! As her eyes opened, the
Governor's daughter strove confusedly to decipher her surroundings.
The wall seemed real; the narrow window, too, high above, framing,
against a darkening background, a slant of fine rain! Again she closed
her eyes, only to be conscious of a gentle languor; a heaviness like
that of half-sleep; of bodily heat, and also a little bodily pain. For
an indefinite period, really a moment or two, she resigned herself to
that dreamy torpor; then, with an effort, lifted her lashes once more.
As she gazed before her, something bright seemed leaping back and
forth; a flame--that played on the wall; revealing the joints between
the stones of massive masonry; casting shadows, but to wipe them out;
paling near a small window, the only aperture apparent in the cell-like
place. Turning from the flickerings, her glance quickly sought their
source--a fire in a hearth, before which she lay--or half-sat, propped
against a stone.
But why? The spot was strange; in her ears sounded a buzzing, like the
murmur of a waterfall. She remembered now; she had lingered before
one--in the woods; and Saladin had run away, madly, across the sands,
until--my lady raised her hand to her brow; abruptly let it fall. In
the shadow on the other side of the hearth some one moved; some one who
had been watching her and who now stepped out into the light.
"Are you better?" said a voice.
She stared. On the bold, swarthy features of a young man now standing
and looking down at her, the light flared and gleamed; the open shirt
revealed a muscular throat; the down-turned black eyes were steady,
solicitous. His appearance was unexpected, yet not quite strange; she
had seen him before, but, in the general surprise and perplexity of the
moment, did not ask herself where. The interval between what she last
remembered on the beach--the rush and swirl of water--and what she woke
to, absorbed the hazy workings of her mind.
The young man stopped; stirred the fire, and after a pause, apparently
to give her time to collect her thoughts, repeated his question: "Are
you better, now?"
"Oh, yes," she said, with an effort, half sitting up. And then
irrelevantly, with rather a wild glance about her: "Isn't--isn't it
storming outside?"
"A little--not much--" A smile crossed the dark features.
"I remember," she added, as if forcing herself to speak, "it had just
begun to, on the beach, when it--the 'grand' tide--" The words died
away; mechanically she lifted her hand, brushed back the shining waves
of hair.
"Why think of it now?" he interposed gently.
"But," uncertainly she smoothed her skirt; it was damp and warm; "I
suppose this is the island of Casque?"
"Yes."
"And this place?"
"The old watch-tower."
"But how--" Then she noticed that his hands, long, brown and
well-formed, were cut and bruised; bore many jagged marks as from a
fierce struggle. "How did you hurt your hands?"
He thrust them into his pockets.
"Was it from the rocks--and the waves? How did I get here?"
"Oh, I was standing on the cliff," he answered carelessly, "and--saw
your horse running away!"
"You did? And then--came down?"
"What else was there to do?" he said simply.
Her gaze returned to the fire. "But the tide was rushing in--rushing!
it was right upon me!"
[Illustration: "But the tide--it was right upon me!"]
She looked again toward the pockets into which his hands were thrust;
observed his shirt, torn at the shoulder; then arose unsteadily. "I
know--it was not so easy!" she said. "It was brave of you--"
"Your Ladyship is no coward!" he interrupted, a sparkle in his eyes.
"When you turned the horse toward the tide, I was watching; hoping you
would dare, and you did!"
About to reply, she became once more aware she was still very dizzy
from the fall on the sand; the shapely figure swayed and she put out
her hand with a gesture of helplessness. At the same time, the man
reached forward quickly and caught her. A moment was she conscious of
a firm grasp; a dark, anxious gaze bent upon her; then, slid gently
back to the stone seat.
A brief interval, and gradually she began to see again more
distinctly--a man's face, not far from hers; a face that drew back as
her own look cleared. At a respectful distance he now stood, his
bearing at once erect and buoyant, and more curiously she regarded him.
A distinct type, here pride and intelligence stamped themselves
strongly on the dark, handsome features; courage and daring were
written on the bold, self-reliant brow. And with this realization of
something distinctive, compelling, in his personality, came another.
"I have seen you--spoken with you before! On the beach--the night of
the dance!"
The young man turned. "Your Ladyship so far honored me--as to dance
with me!" he said, in his eyes a touch of that brightness that had
caused her to regard him imperiously, as he had swung her to the
measure of the music, on the occasion in question.
"Started to!" She corrected him, straightening suddenly at the
recollection of that evening, when humility and modesty were virtues
conspicuously wanting in his demeanor.
"Your Ladyship is right," he said quietly. "An alarm from the Mount
interrupted."
She glanced at him quickly. His eyes met hers with a look of unconcern.
"Are you--a fisherman?" she asked abruptly.
"On occasions."
"And when you are not one--what are you then?"
"At times--a hunter."
"Ah!" Her eye lingered on something bright on the ledge beneath the
window. "And that is the reason you have--pistols?"
"Exactly, my Lady!"
She continued to regard the weapons, of finest workmanship, inlaid with
a metal that gleamed dully, like gold, in the light from the fire. His
glance followed hers; she was about to speak, when quickly he
interrupted.
"Has your Ladyship thought how she is going to get back to the Mount?"
My lady's questioning, along the line of personal inquiry, ceased; the
Governor's daughter looked a little blank. "No--that is, haven't you a
boat?"
"Not here."
"Then you walked over?"
He neither affirmed, nor denied.
"And the tide will not be out for hours!" Her look showed
consternation; she glanced toward the opening in the wall. "Isn't it
becoming dark now?"
"Yes, my Lady."
"Of course, it was almost sundown when-- But I must return at once!
Don't you understand?"
He regarded her silently; the beautiful, impatient eyes; the slim,
white fingers that tapped restlessly, one against another. "I will do
what I can!" he said at last slowly.
"But what?" she demanded. "What can you do?"
He did not answer; my lady made a gesture.
"How ridiculous! A prisoner on an island!"
"There may be a way," he began.
"My horse?" she said quickly. "What became of him?"
"He was swept away by the tide!"
Into the proud eyes came a softer light--of regret, pain.
"Your Ladyship should remember it might have been worse," he added, in
tones intended to reassure her. "After all, it was only a horse--"
"Only a horse!" she exclaimed indignantly. "But, I suppose you can't
understand--caring for a horse!"
"I can understand caring for a ship!" he answered quickly, a flash of
amusement, hardly concealed, in his bold, dark eyes.
"A ship!" scornfully; "dead wood and iron."
"Live wood and iron! Beautiful as--" The simile failed him; he looked
at my lady. "Something to be depended on, with a hand to the wheel,
and an eye keen for mad dancings and curvetings."
"I might appreciate them better," she interrupted dryly, with delicate
brows uplifted, "an they brought me nearer to the Mount. That, and not
idle opinions," in accents that conveyed surprise at the temerity of
one in his position to express them, "is of most moment!"
He accepted the reproof with a readiness that further surprised her.
"Your Ladyship is right," he said. "I will see what may be done. The
storm has passed. There is yet daylight, and"--an expression, almost
preoccupied, came to his features--"a boat may be sighted."
"To be sure!" At the prospect, all other considerations passed from my
lady's mind. "A boat may be sighted! Why did you not think of it
before? Come! Too much time has already been lost." And she rose.
"One moment!" His voice was quiet; respectful; although, she fancied,
constrained. "I had better go alone. The way to the cliff is rough,
and--"
"I shall not mind that!"
"Besides, your clothes--"
"Are dry!"
"No!" She flushed at the abrupt contradiction. "I mean, I don't see
how they could be!" he went on hurriedly, "and," his tone assumed a
certain obduracy, "I assure your Ladyship, it will be best."
"Best?" She looked at him more sharply. "Is that your only reason?"
"Why?" A trace of embarrassment, for an instant, crossed his dark
features. "What other reason, my Lady?"
"That I know not!" quickly, assured her words had struck home. "Only I
am certain there is one!"
"Then, if your Ladyship must know," he spoke slowly. "I did not wish
to alarm you. But this is a rough coast, with--many rough people
about--smugglers, privateersmen--"
"Whom you, perhaps, are expecting?" she cried suddenly.
"I!" with a careless laugh. "A fisherman! Your Ladyship is
imaginative--" he began, when a sudden, hasty footstep clinked on the
stones without; a hand caught at the fastenings of the door; flung it
open.
"I thought I should find you here, Seigneur!" exclaimed a voice.
"Since--"
The young man made a movement and the speaker stopped; caught sight of
my lady, just beyond, in the fading light. And at the picture--her
figure behind that other one--the fine, patrician features, framed by
the disordered golden hair, the widely opened eyes, bright, expectant,
the intruder started back.
"The Governor's daughter! You, Seigneur!" he stammered, and, raising
his hand, involuntarily crossed himself.
CHAPTER IX
A DISCOVERY
"Why did you do that?" It was Lady Elise who now spoke, lifting her
head haughtily to regard the new-comer, as she stepped toward him.
"Cross yourself, I mean?"
"This good fellow, my Lady, is surprised to see you here, and small
wonder he forgets his manners!" said the young man coolly, speaking for
the other. "But he is honest enough--and--intends no disrespect!"
"None whatever!" muttered the intruder, a thin, wizened, yet still
active-looking person.
My lady did not reply; her gaze, in which suspicion had become
conviction, again met the young man's, whose black eyes now gleamed
with a sudden, challenging light.
"With your permission, my Lady, I will speak with this fellow," he
said, and abruptly strode from the tower; walked a short distance away,
followed by the man, when he stopped.
"_Certes_, your tongue betrayed you that time, Sanchez!" he said
confronting the other.
The man made a rough gesture. "_C'est vrai_!" regretfully. "But when
I saw you two together I thought I had seen a--" He stopped. "She is
so like--"
"Nay; I don't blame you; the sight was certainly unexpected! I had
thought to come down and prepare you, but--'tis done!"
"And I knew what it meant." The old servant looked over his shoulder
toward the tower.
"Call it magic!" with a short laugh.
"_Diablerie_!" muttered the other.
"Well, have your way! Why," abruptly, "did you not meet me here last
night at high tide, as we had planned?"
"The priest came not in time; fearing he was watched, waited until
night to leave his hiding-place at Verranch."
"And after missing me last night, you thought to find me here to-day?"
"I knew you were most anxious to see him; that upon him depended your
chance to undo some of his Excellency, the Governor's, knavery! And,
then, to find you here with the daughter of the man who has wrought you
so much wrong; robbed you of your lands--your right to your name!" A
cloud shadowed the listener's bold brow. "I know not how it came
about, Seigneur, but be assured, no good can come of it!"
From where she stood, at the distance to the tower, the Governor's
daughter saw now the two men descend; she perceived, also, at a turn in
the path, coming up slowly, as one whose years had begun to tell upon
him, another figure, clad in black; a priest. This last person and the
Black Seigneur accosted each other; stopped, while the other man, who
had crossed himself at sight of her, drew aside. At length, somewhat
abruptly, they separated, the priest and Sanchez going down the hill
and the young man starting to walk up. Then quickly leaving the
ancient, circular structure for observation, she stepped toward the
cliff, not far to the right; and in an attitude of as great unconcern
as she could summon, waited.
Below the ocean beat around the rock, and her eyes seemed to have
rested an interminable period on the dark surface of the water, when at
length she heard him; near at hand; directly behind. Still she did not
stir; he, too, by the silence, stood motionless. How long? The little
foot moved restlessly; why did he not speak? She knew he was looking
at her--the Governor's daughter who had inadvertently looked into a
forbidden chamber; was possessed of dangerous knowledge.
Again she made a movement. When was he going to speak? It was
intolerable that he should stand there, studying, deducing! That she,
accustomed to command; to be served; to have her way at court and
Mount, should now be judged, passed upon, disposed of, by--whom?
Quickly she looked around; the flashing brown eyes met the steady black
ones.
"Well?"
"The man will take you back." His manner was quiet; composed; implied
a full cognizance of what she knew, and an absence of any further
desire to attempt to disguise the truth.
"Back! Where?" She could not conceal her surprise.
"To the Mount."
For the moment she did not speak; she had not known what to
expect--certainly not that.
"Why not?" A smile, slightly forced, crossed his face. "Does your
Ladyship think I make war on women? Only, before your Ladyship
departs, it will be necessary for you to agree to a little condition."
"Condition?" She drew her breath quickly.
"That you will say nothing to incriminate him. He is an old servant of
mine; has broken none of the _laws_ of the land," with a somewhat
contemptuous accent, "works his bit of ground; pays _metayage_, and a
tax on all the fish he brings in. Only in a certain matter to-day has
he served me."
"You mean I must say nothing about meeting him? You?"
"For his sake!"
"And your own!"
"Mine?" He made a careless gesture. "I should not presume! For
myself I should exact, or expect, from your Ladyship no promise.
To-night I shall be far away. But this good fellow remains behind;
should be allowed to continue his peaceful, lowly occupation. I would
not have anything happen to him on my account."
"And if I refuse to promise?" she asked haughtily. "To enter into any
covenant with--you!"
"But you will not!" he said steadily. "Your Ladyship, for her own
sake, should not force the alternative."
"Alternative?"
"Why speak of it?"
"What is the alternative?" she demanded.
"If your Ladyship refuses to promise, it will be necessary for the man
to return alone."
"You mean," in spite of herself, she gave a start, "you would make
me--a prisoner?"
"It should not be necessary."
"But you would not dare!" indignantly.
"Not dare! Your Ladyship forgets--"
"True!" with a scornful glance. After a pause: "But suppose I _did_
promise? Are you not reposing a good deal of confidence in me?"
"Not too much!"
"I presume," disdainfully, "I should feel flattered in being trusted
by--" She did not finish the sentence.
But the young man apparently had not heard. "I'll take the chance on
your own words," he added unexpectedly.
"My words?"
"That you are no telltale."
The girl started. "Telltale?" she repeated.
"You once told me you were not!"
"I--told you!" She stared at him.
"Told me you were no telltale," he repeated. "And--when Beppo lied,
you told the truth--about a ragged vagabond of a boy."
"Beppo!" The look in her eyes deepened; cleared. "I remember now,"
she said slowly. "You were the boy with the fish, who said he lived in
the woods. I met you while riding, and again that night, as a child,
leaving for Paris; but I did not know, then, you would become--"
The young man's face changed. "An outlaw!" he said coolly.
"Yes; an outlaw," she repeated firmly. Angered by his unflinching
gaze, she went on: "Who dares not fly the flag of his king! Who dares
not come openly into any honest port!"
She ended, her brown eyes flashing. His own darkened; but he only
remarked coldly; "My Lady, at any rate, dares much!"
"Oh, I've no doubt you don't care to hear--"
"From you!" He looked at her oddly, from the golden hair to the small,
dainty foot. "From your Ladyship!" he repeated, as if amused. An
instant he regarded her silently, intently; but his voice when at
length he again spoke was cool and slightly mocking: "My Lady speaks,
of course, from the standpoint of her own world--a very pretty world!
A park of _plaisance_, wherein, I can vouch for it, my Lady dances very
prettily."
She started; a flush of resentment glowed and faded on her cheek; a
question his words suggested trembled on her lips.
"Why did you come to the beach that night of the dance? How dared you,
knowing that if--"
"Why?" His eyes lost their ironical light. "Why?" he repeated; then
laughed with sudden recklessness. "I wished to see your Ladyship."
"Me?" She shrank back.
"You!" he repeated, his gaze fastened on the startled, proud face.
"Though I looked not forward to a dance--with your Ladyship!" The
black eyes glowed. "_Pardi_! It was worth the risk." A moment he
waited; then his manner changed. "I will leave your Ladyship now," he
said quietly. "You will have opportunity to consider"--she did not
answer--"whether you will give me your promise, or not," he added, and,
wheeling abruptly, walked away.
Some time later, in the fast-gathering darkness, from the cove a small
boat put out, with Sanchez, gloomy and sullen, in the stern; at the
bow, the Governor's daughter. As the isle receded and the point of
land loomed bigger before them, the girl gazed straight ahead; but the
man looked back: to the sands of the little cove, a pale simitar in the
dragon-like mouth of the rock; toward the tower, near which he fancied
he could see a figure, turned from them--seaward--where, far out, a
ship might just be discerned, a dim outline on the horizon.
CHAPTER X
THE CLOISTER IN THE AIR
Irrespective of environment, the cloister of the Mount would have been
a delight to the eye, but, upheld in mid air, with the sky so near and
the sands so far below, it seemed more an inspiration of fancy than a
work of hand. Dainty, delicate, its rose-colored columns of granite
appeared too thin for tangible weight; the tympan's sculptured designs,
fanciful as the carvings in some palace of a poet's dreams. Despite,
however, this first impression of evanescence, it carried a charm
against the ravages of time, and ethereal though it was, had rested
like a crown on the grim head of the rock through the ages.
Once a place for quiet meditation, the cloister had, through a
whirligig of change, become the favorite resort of the Governor, for
_dejeuner_, or after-dinner dram, and, on occasions, for the
transaction of much profane though necessary labor pertaining to his
office and private concerns. He busied himself there now; or had been
busying himself, but paused to look up from the large book before him,
whose pages were inscribed with items and figures. His finger,
following the mental computation, remained stationary. _Fouage_--tax
upon fires; _banvin_--duties on wine; _vingtain_--the lord's right to
his share of the produce; _minage_--his due from each _mine_ or half
_setier_ of coin--consideration of these usually all-important matters
seemed for the moment to have been forgotten.
He leaned back, and as he sat thus, the light and shadow playing on
him, the dark, steely eyes looked the more sunken, the hard, cynical
lips beneath the white mustache, the more cruel, the spare figure the
more alert and ready, as if to grapple with some hidden danger.
"_J'arrive en ce pays
De Basse Normandie--_"
At one of the apertures looking out to the barren waste of sand stood
the Lady Elise; the words of the old Norman chant she was singing in
desultory fashion rang softly, oddly, in that spot, where black-clad
brethren for centuries had been wont to tread. Mechanically the
Governor listened, but the voice soon ceased abruptly and again, after
the manner of one of orderly habits, he bent over the big book; once
more the curving finger slid up and down, and parsimony, the vice of
the aged, had begun to shine from his pinched features, when a footstep
rang on the marble pavement.
"Your Excellency sent for me?" The commandant stood respectfully near.
The Governor closed the book with deliberation; lifted his eyes. "The
prisoners that were taken last night are safely housed?"
"Housed? Yes, your Excellency! But we have little room. The upper
cells are all occupied; the dungeons, fairly full! Even the _In-pace_
and _Les Deux Jumeaux_ have been pressed into service."
"Hum!" The long hand tapped restlessly a moment; the cold eyes
gleamed, then shot an inquiring look. "There are no new particulars
about last night's encounter with this--Black Seigneur?"
"None, your Excellency, except," the commandant drew a paper from his
breast pocket, "I have here in writing the detailed account of the
officer in charge of your Excellency's boat, who was wounded himself in
the encounter."
"Read it."
The commandant obeyed. "'Our schooner, belonging to his Excellency,
the Governor, was returning last night to the Mount with
troops--reinforcements for the garrison from St. Dalard--when it
happened quite by accident near a ship, maneuvering at a respectful
distance from the island of Casque. The night was dark and cloudy, but
our men got a look at her and suspecting who she was and knowing her
armament, against our will, we felt obliged to bear away. She, having
no reason to think us other than a fishing schooner, or that we were
freighted with troops instead of cod, did not follow and we had passed
out of sight, and were rounding the island when we ran into two small
sail-boats that had just set out from there.'"
"To join the ship of this outlaw!" interposed the Governor. "Go on!"
shortly.
"'We hailed; their answer was unsatisfactory; we ordered them to halt,
whereupon they tried to sail away. We followed and overtaking them,
commanded them to surrender. Their leader, who was the Black Seigneur
himself, refused, and we attacked'--"
"_Bien_! 'We attacked!' But what then? Eh, what then?"
"'With fury they responded; in spite of their inferiority of numbers
tried to board us. Bravely our men repulsed them; yet still they
persisted; led by their captain, the Black Seigneur, had gained the
deck when a chance shot struck him. As he fell back, the others tried
to escape; one boat was sunk'--"
"And the other, bearing their leader, got away!" interrupted the
Governor harshly.
"In the confusion--yes, your Excellency."
The Governor waved his hand impatiently.
"'By this time the ship of the Black Seigneur had drawn nearer and our
men put about and made for the Mount with a number of prisoners.
Several shots were sent after us, but we managed to reach port.'"
"The officer in charge of the troops thinks this fellow, their leader,
was wounded severely--fatally perhaps?"
"He thinks it most probable, your Excellency."
For some time the Governor, with frowning brows, sipped silently from a
glass of liquor at his elbow, and, stiff, motionless, the commandant
waited; close at hand, a dove plumed itself on the roof of the cloister
walk; beyond, the girl again began to sing fitfully.
Out of the corner of his eye the commandant dared look at her, leaning
now against the wall, the clear-cut, white features outlined against an
illimitable blue background.
"_Les amours--_"
Involuntarily he started to raise a hand to his warlike mustache, when
abruptly was his wandering attention recalled. "The man ashore I spoke
to you about, has been taken into custody?"
"Yes, your Excellency; and is now at the barracks."
"Send him here. One moment--" The commandant paused, vaguely
conscious the girl had moved away from the wall. "You spoke of there
being a lack of room--these new prisoners must be confined in the
dungeons; if necessary, crowd more of the others in the upper cells,
and--there is still the Devil's Cage."
"The Devil's Cage?" Through the rose-tinted columns, above the
Governor's head, the commandant could discern the figure of the Lady
Elise, who had approached and now was gazing inquiringly at them.
"Your Excellency would use that? One can neither lie down in it, nor
sit in it, upright?"
"Well," the cold eyes flashed, "it is not intended for upright people!
But the man you were ordered to arrest!" with sudden sharpness; "the
man from the shore! Send him to me!"
"At once, your Excellency!" And responding promptly to his superior's
mood, the commandant saluted briskly, and retired.
"What man?" The drapery of her gown drawn back, the Lady Elise stood
poised on the court's low coping between the fairy-like pillars.
"No one you know, my dear."
"Which means--it is none of my concern?"
"Not at all." His voice was now perfunctory; and his expression, as he
surveyed her, slightly questioning. "You are looking somewhat pale
to-day?"
"Am I?" carelessly. "I--I feel very well." As she spoke, she went to
him and leaned over the back of his chair. "_Mon pere_, won't you do
something for me?"
"What?"
"Promise first." With her hand on his shoulder.
He reached up; the long, cold fingers stroked the shapely, warm ones.
"One should never leap into the dark with a promise," he answered.
"Especially to a woman."
"Not even when that woman is one's own daughter?" she asked, sliding to
the arm of the chair.
He regarded the bright face now thoughtful; the lips, usually laughing,
set sensitively. "Is it another trip to the court, or do you wish to
turn this stern old Mount again into a palace of pleasure? To invite
once more the Paris lords and ladies--the King, himself, perhaps? It
would not be the first time a monarch has been entertained at the
Mount--or a Marquis, either, eh? Shall we ask the Marquis?"
She made an impatient movement. "I want you to promise to break up the
terrible iron cage, and--"
"Tut!" Jocosely he pinched the fair cheek. "A girl's thoughts should
be of the court and the cavaliers."
She turned away her head. "You treat me like a child," she said with a
flash in her eyes.
"No, no! Like a woman," he laughed. "But the Marquis--perhaps he
could not come here; perhaps he is too much concerned with the gaieties
of Paris!" Her figure straightened; she was about to walk away, when--
"You ride this afternoon?" he asked.
"I had not thought of it."
"If you do I desire that some one accompany you." Her face changed;
she looked at him quickly, and half turned. "Remember Saladin as well,
and--keep closer to the Mount in the future."
"Poor Saladin!" she breathed, with averted glance.
"He got his deserts!" answered the Governor harshly. "An ugly trick
that of his--to bolt and leave you stranded at the extreme point of the
mainland where the bay swings around!"
"The 'grand' tide--it came in so fast--and made so much noise--"
"It frightened him! Well, fortunate it was, indeed, you were not on
his back; that you had already reached the point, and had had time to
dismount! An unpleasant experience, nevertheless--with the water
separating you from the Mount, and a great curve of land to be walked
before you could arrive at a human habitation!"
"I--it wasn't a very comfortable feeling," she acknowledged, flushing.
"And if the fisherman hadn't subsequently seen you and taken you across
in his little boat, you would have been more uncomfortable later. You
rewarded him well, I trust?"
"He--wouldn't take anything."
"And you neglected to inquire his name?"
"I--did not think."
"You were so glad to get back?" remarked the Governor, regarding her
closely. "What sort of man was he?" abruptly.
"Old."
"And--"
"That--is all I remember."
"Hum! Not very lucid. No doubt you were too overwrought, my dear, to
be in an observant mood." His voice sank absently; his fingers sought
among the papers, and, as his glance fell, the girl walked away. Again
she leaned on the parapet, and once more regarded the barren waste
below--the figures of the cockle-seekers, mere specks, the shadow of
the Mount, stamped on the sand, with the saint, a shapeless form,
holding up a tapering black line--a sword--at the apex.
"She is keeping back something. What?" Above an official-looking
document the Governor watched her, his lips compressed, his eyes keen;
then shrugged his shoulders and resumed his occupation. The death-like
hush of an aerial region surrounded them; the halcyon peace of a
seemingly chimerical cloister; until suddenly broken by an indubitable
clangor--harsh, hard!--of a door, opening; shutting. The Governor
lifted his head in annoyance; the dove on the roof of the cloister-walk
flew away, and a short, fat man, breathing hard, appeared.
"Pardon, your Excellency! But the drafts! They seem sometimes to
sweep up from the very dungeons themselves, and--"
"Well?"
Beppo cut short excuse, or explanation. "A prisoner is waiting
without. The man, Sanchez, from the shore! Monsieur le Commandant,
who brought him, told me to inform you."
The Governor considered a moment with down-bent brows. "You may show
him in, but first," he glanced up with a frown, "I have a question to
put to you."
"Your Excellency?"
"This morning you thought fit to apprise me," Beppo looked
uncomfortable, "in view of the events of last night--that you saw
yesterday this fellow, Sanchez, setting out in a sail-boat, accompanied
by a priest--a fact that might have been of great service to me, had I
been aware of it in season!" The Governor paused to allow the full
weight of his disapproval to be felt. "At what hour did you see them
start out?"
"About dusk, the time of the 'grand' tide," was the crestfallen answer.
"I was following the shore, feeling anxious on account of the Lady
Elise, who, I knew, had gone in the direction of the forest, when I saw
them, some distance out, but not too far to recognize this fellow's
boat and in it two men, one of them in the black robes of a priest. I
attached no importance to the incident until--"
The Governor interrupted. "You may send the prisoner in," he said
shortly. "No--wait!" Toward the spot where the girl had been standing
the Governor glanced quickly, but that post of observation was now
vacant, and his Excellency more deliberately looked around; caught no
sight of her. "You may send him in here," he said, "alone. I will
speak with the prisoner in private."
CHAPTER XI
THE GOVERNOR IS SURPRISED
But the Lady Elise had not gone. Passing from the cloister through the
great arched doorway leading to the high-roofed refectory, she had
stopped at the sight of a number of people gathered near the entrance.
At first she had merely glanced at them; then started, as, in the
somewhat dim light prevailing there, her eyes became fixed upon one of
their number.
Obviously a prisoner, he stood in the center of the group, with head
down-bent, a hard, indifferent expression on his countenance. Amazed,
the girl was about to step forward to address him--or the
commandant--when Beppo appeared from the cloister, walked toward the
officer, and, in a low ill-humored tone, said something she could not
hear. Whatever it was, the commandant caused him to repeat it; made a
gesture to the soldiers, who drew back, and spoke himself to the
prisoner.
The latter did not reply nor raise his eyes, and the commandant laid a
heavy hand on his shoulder, whereupon the prisoner moved forward
mechanically, through the doorway.
"You are sure his Excellency said 'alone'?" asked the commandant.
"As sure as I have ears," answered Beppo. "But her ladyship--see! She
is walking after him."
Beppo shrugged his shoulders. "_She_ always does what she pleases; no
orders apply to her."
In the shadow of the cloister roof, at a corner where the double row of
pillars met, the girl paused; looked out through the columns, her hand
at her breast. The Governor was unconcernedly writing; not even when
the prisoner stepped forward did he turn from his occupation; at his
leisure dotted an "i" and crossed a "t"; sprinkled sand lightly over
the paper; waited a moment; then tapped the fine particles from the
letter. For his part, the prisoner displayed equal patience, standing
in an attitude of stolid endurance.
"Your name is Sanchez?" At length the Governor seemed to notice the
other's presence.
"Yes."
"And you formerly served the Seigneur Desaurac? Followed him to
America?"
"As your Excellency knows." The servant's tone was veiled defiance.
A trace of pink sprang to the Governor's brow, though the eyes he
lifted were impassive. "You will answer 'yes' or 'no'!" He reached
for a stick of wax, held it up to the tiny flame of a lamp; watched the
red drops fall. "When you returned, it was to live in the forest
with--a nameless brat?"
"My master's son!"
"By a peasant woman, his--"
"Wife!"
The Governor smiled; applying a seal, pressed it hard. "The courts
found differently," he observed in a mild, even voice, as speaking to
himself and extolling the cause of justice.
"The courts! Because the priest who married them had been driven from
Brittany! Because he could not be found then! Because--" The man's
indignation had got the better of his taciturnity, but he did not
finish the sentence.
"Either," said the Governor quietly, "you are one of those
simple-minded people who, misguided by loyalty, cherish illusions, or
you are a scheming rogue. No matter which, unfortunately," in crisp
tones, "it is necessary to take time to deal with you."
"At your Excellency's service!" And the man folded his arms but, again
turning to his table, the Governor apparently found some detail of
employment there of paramount importance; once more kept the prisoner
waiting.
The silence lengthened; in the dim light of the walk noiselessly the
girl drew nearer; unseen, reached the old abbot's great granite chair
with its sheltering back to the court and close to the Governor's
table. Into the capacious depths of this chilly throne, where once the
high and holy dignitary of the church had been accustomed to recline
while brethren laved his feet from the tiny stone lavatorium before it,
she half sank, her cheek against one of its cold sides; in an attitude
of expectation breathlessly waited. Why was it so still? Why did not
her father speak? She could hear his pen scratch, scratch!
They were again speaking; more eagerly she bent forward; listened to
the hard, metallic voice of the Governor.
"You left the castle at once when the decree of the court, ordering it
vacated, was posted in the forest?"
"My master told me to, pretending he was going, but--"
"Remained to resist; to kill." The Governor's tones, without being
raised, were sharper. "And when, after the crime against these
instruments of justice, he escaped to the high seas, why did you not go
with him?"
"He wouldn't have it."
"Thinking you would be more useful here? A spy?"
"He said he would be held an outlaw; a price put on him, and--he
dismissed me from his service."
"Dismissed you? An excellent jest! But," with sudden incisiveness,
"what about the priest, eh? What about the priest?"
The man straightened. "What priest?" he said in a dogged tone.
"You are accused of harboring and abetting an unfrocked fellow who has
long been wanted by the government, a scamp of revolutionary
tendencies; you are accused of having taken him to sea," the prisoner
started, "to some rendezvous--a distant isle--to meet some one; to wait
for a ship; to be smuggled away--?"
The man did not reply; with head sunk slightly, seemed lost in thought.
"Speak--answer!"
"Who accuses me?"
From the stone chair the girl sprang; looked out. Her face white,
excited, peering beneath the delicate spandrils and stone roses, seemed
to come as an answer.
"Have I not told you--" began the Governor sternly, when--
"Bah!" burst from the prisoner violently. "Why should I deny what your
Excellency so well knows? I told my master not to trust her; that she
would play him false; and that once out of his hands--"
"Her? Whom do you mean?" The Governor's eyes followed the man's;
stopped. "Elise!"
"I think," her eyes very bright, the girl walked quickly toward them,
"I think this man means me."
"Elise!" the Governor repeated.
"Forgive me, _mon pere_; I didn't intend to listen, but I couldn't help
it--because--"
"How long," said the Governor, "have you been there?"
"Ever since--he came in. I suppose," proudly turning to the man, "it
is useless to say that I did not play this double role of which you
accuse me, and that I did keep, in every particular, the promise I
made--"
"Oh, yes; you could say it, my Lady!" with sneering emphasis.
"But you reserve to yourself the right not to believe me? That is what
you mean?" The man's stubborn, vindictive look answered. "Then I will
deny nothing to you; nothing! You may think what you will."
His face half-covered by his hand, the Governor gazed at them; the
girl, straight, slender, inflexibly poised; the prisoner eying her with
dark, unvarying glance.
"_Dieu!_" he muttered. "What is this?" and concern gave way to a new
feeling. _Her_ concern for something--somebody--held him. A promise!
"You can step back a few moments, my man!" to Sanchez. "A little
farther--to the parapet! I'll let you know when you're wanted." And
the prisoner obeyed, moving slowly away to the wall, where he stood out
of ear-shot, his back to them. "You spoke of a promise?" the Governor
turned to his daughter. "To whom?"
A suggestion of color swept her face, though she answered at once
without hesitation: "To the Black Seigneur."
The slight form of the Governor stirred as to the shock of a battery.
"There is no harm in telling now," hurriedly she went on. "He saved me
from the 'grand' tide--for I was on Saladin's back when he bolted and
ran. I had not dismounted, though I allowed you to infer so, and he
had carried me almost to the island of Casque when we heard and saw the
water coming in. The nearest place was the island--not the point of
the mainland, as I felt obliged to lead you to think, and we started
for it; we might have reached the cove, had not Saladin stumbled and
thrown me. The last I remembered the water came rushing around, and
when I awoke, I was in a watch-tower, with him--the Black Seigneur!"
The Governor looked at her; did not speak.
"I--I at first did not know who he was--not until this man came--and
the priest! And when he, the Black Seigneur, saw I had learned the
truth, he asked me to promise--not for himself--but because of this
man!--to say nothing of having met him there, or the others! And I did
promise, and--he sent me back--and that is all--"
"All!" Did the Governor speak the word? He sat as if he had hardly
comprehended; a deeper flush dyed her cheek.
"You--you can not blame me--after what he did. He saved me--saved my
life. You are glad of that, mon pere, are you not? And it must have
been hard doing it, for his clothes were torn, and his hands were
bleeding--he can't be all bad, _mon pere_! He knew who I was, yet
trusted me--trusted!"
The Governor looked at her; touched a bell; the full-toned note
vibrated far and near.
"What are you going to do?" Something in his face held her.
Again the tones startled the stillness. "Remember, it is I who am
responsible for--"
"Your Excellency?" Across the court appeared Beppo, moving quickly
toward them. "Your Excellency?"
"One moment!" The servant stepped back; the Governor looked first at
the girl; then toward the entrance of the cloister.
"You want me to go?" Her voice was low: strained; in it, too, was a
hard, rebellious accent. "But I can't--can't--until--"
"What?"
"You promise to set him free! This man who brought me back! Don't you
see you must, _mon pere_? Must!" she repeated.
His thin lips drew back disagreeably; he seemed about to speak; then
reached among the papers and, turned them over absently. "Very well!"
he said at length without glancing up.
"You promise," her voice expressed relief and a little surprise, "to
set him free?"
"Have I not said so?" His eyelids veiled a peculiar look. "Yes, he
shall be liberated--very shortly."
"Thank you, _mon pere_." A moment she bent over him; the proud, sweet
lips brushed his forehead. "I will go, then, at once." And she
started toward the door. Near the threshold she paused; looked back to
smile gratefully at the Governor, then quickly went out.
CHAPTER XII
AT THE COCKLES
A rugged mass of granite, rent by giant fissures, and surrounded by
rocks and whirlpools, the Norman English isle, so-called "Key to the
Channel," one hundred miles, or more, northwest of the Mount, had from
time immemorial offered haven to ships out of the pale of French ports.
Not only a haven, but a home, or that next-best accommodation, an
excellent inn. Perched in the hollow of the mighty cliff and reached
by a flight of somewhat perilous stone stairs, the Cockles, for so the
ancient tavern was called, set squarely toward the sea, and opened wide
its shell, as it were, to all waifs or stormy petrels blown in from the
foamy deep.
Good men, bad men; Republicans, royalists; French-English,
English-French, the landlord--old Pierre Laroche, retired sea-captain
and owner of a number of craft employed in a dangerous, but profitable,
occupation--received them willingly, and in his solicitude for their
creature comforts and the subsequent reckoning, cared not a jot for
their politics, morals, or social views. It was enough if the visitor
had no lenten capacity; looked the fleshpots in the face and drank of
his bottle freely.
The past few days the character of old Pierre's guests had left some
room for complaint on that score. But a small number of the crew of
the swift-looking vessel, well-known to the islanders, and now tossing
in the sea-nook below, had, shortly after their arrival toward dusk of
a stormy day, repaired to the inn, and then they had not called for
their brandy or wine in the smart manner of seamen prepared for
unstinted sacrifice to Bacchus. On the contrary, they drank quietly,
talked soberly, and soon prepared to leave.
"Something has surely gone wrong," thought their host. "Why did not
your captain come ashore?" he asked. "Not see his old friend, Pierre
Laroche, at once! It is most unlike him."
And on the morrow, the islanders, or English-French, more or less
privateersmen themselves, were equally curious. Where had the ship
come from? Where was it going? And how many tons of wine, bales of
silk and packages of tobacco, or "ptum," as the weed was called, had it
captured? Old Pierre would soon find out, for early that day, despite
the inclemency of the weather, he came down to the beach, and, followed
by a servitor, got into a small boat moored close to the shore.
"He is going aboard!"
"Who has a better right? His own vessel!"
"No; Andre Desaurac--the Black Seigneur's! They say he long ago paid
for it from prizes wrested from the Governor of the Mount."
"At any rate, old Pierre entered into a bargain to build the boat for
him--"
"And added to his wealth by the transaction."
Later that morning the old man came ashore, but, according to habit,
preserved a shrewd silence; in the afternoon a small number of the crew
landed to take on stores and ammunition--of which there was ever a
plentiful supply at this base; that night, however, all, including
their master, betook themselves to the Cockles.
"Glad to see you ashore, _mon capitaine_!" Pierre Laroche, standing at
the door, just beyond reach of the fierce driving rain, welcomed the
Black Seigneur warmly; but the young man, one of whose arms seemed
bound and useless, cut short his greetings; tossed bruskly aside his
dark heavy cloak, and called for a room where he might sit in private
with a companion. This person the landlord eyed askance; nevertheless,
with a show of bluff heartiness, he led the way to a small chamber,
somewhat apart, but overlooking the long low apartment, the general
eating and drinking place of the establishment, now filled by the crew
and a number of the islanders.
"Your _capitaine_ has been hurt? How?" A strapping, handsome girl,
clad in red and of assured mien, passing across the room, paused to
address a man of prodigious girth, who drank with much gusto from a
huge vessel at his elbow.
"Did not your father, Pierre Laroche, tell you?"
"He? No; all he thinks of is the money."
"Then must _le capitaine_ speak for himself, Mistress Nanette."
"You are not very polite, Monsieur Gabarie," she returned, tossing her
head; "but I suppose there is a reason; you have been beaten. In an
encounter with the Governor's ships? Did you sink any of them? It
would be good news for us islanders."
"_You_ islanders!" derisively.
"Yes, islanders!" she answered defiantly. "But tell me; a number of
you wear patches, which make you look very ugly. They were
acquired--how?"
"In a little clerical argument!" growled the poet.
She glanced toward the secluded apartment; its occupants--the subject
of their conversation, and a priest, a feeble-looking man of about
seventy, whose delicate, sad face shone white and out-of-keeping in
that adventuresome company. "At any rate, the Black Seigneur hasn't
lost his good looks!"
"Take care _you_ don't lose your heart!"
"Bah!" Her strong bold eyes swept back. "Much good it would do me!"
"And for that reason--"
"Messieurs!" the landlord's voice broke in upon them; "behold!" it
seemed to say, as pushing through the company, he preceded a lanky lad
who bore by their legs many plucked fowls and birds--woodcock, wild
duck, cliff pigeons--and made his way to the great open fireplace at
one end of the room. There, bending over the glowing embers, the
landlord deliberately stirred and spread them; then, reaching for a bar
of steel, he selected a poulet from the hand of the lanky attendant and
prepared to adjust it; but before doing so, prodded it with his finger,
surveyed it critically, and held it up for admiring attention.
"Who says old Pierre Laroche doesn't know how to care for his friends?
What think you of it, my masters?"
"Plump as the King's confessor," muttered the poet.
"Or your King himself!" said one of the islanders.
"On with the King! Skewer the King!" exclaimed a fierce voice.
"And then we'll eat him!" laughed the girl, showing her white teeth.
"Thoughtless children!" From his place at the table in the small room
adjoining, the priest, attracted by the grim merriment of the
islanders, looked down to regard them; the red fire; the red gown.
"Here, at least, will you find a safe asylum, Father," said his
companion, the Black Seigneur, in an absent tone; "a little rough,
perhaps, to suit your calling--"
"The rougher, the more suitable--as I've often had occasion to learn
since leaving Verranch."
"Since being driven from it, you mean!" shortly.
"Ah, those revolutionary documents--placed in my garden!"
"To make you appear--you, Father!--a sanguinary character!" But the
other's laugh rang false.
"Alas, such wickedness! But I was too content; the rose-covered
cottage too comfortable; its garden, an Eden! It was more meet I
should be driven forth; go out into the highways, where I found--such
misery! I reproached myself I had not sought it sooner--voluntarily.
From north to south peasants dying, women and children starving, no one
to administer the last rites--on every side, work, work for the outcast
priest! For ten years it has occupied him--a blessed privilege--"
"And then," the young man, who had seemed absorbed in other thoughts,
hardly listening, looked mechanically up, "you came back?"
"A weakness of age! To see the old place once more! The little
church; God's acre at its side; to stand on the hill at Verranch and
look out a last time over the beautiful vale toward the Mount!"
Briefly he paused. "Yet I am glad I yielded to the temptation;
otherwise should I not have met your old servant, Sanchez; who told me
all--how you had long been looking for me, and arranged our meeting for
that day--on the island of Casque!"
"But not," the young man's demeanor at once became intent; his eyes
gleamed with sudden fierce lights, "for what followed!"
The priest sighed. "Shall I ever forget it? The terrible night, the
troop-ship, the killed and wounded. And the poor fellows taken
prisoners! I can not but think of them and their fate. What will it
be?"
The other did not answer; only impatiently moved his injured arm and,
regarding him, the down-turned, dark countenance, the knit brows,
quickly the priest changed the subject of conversation.
In the large room some one began to play, and before the fire, where
now the birds were turning and the serving-lad, with a long spoon was
basting, the dark-browed girl started to dance. At the side of the
hearth old Pierre smoked stolidly, gazed at the coals, and
dreamed--perhaps of the past, and dangers he had himself encountered,
or of the present, and his ships scattered--where?--on profitable, if
precarious errands. Somberly, in no freer mood than on the occasion of
their first visit to the inn, the crew looked on; but a tall,
savage-appearing islander soon matched her step; a second took his
place; from one partner to another she passed--wild, reckless men whose
touch she did not shun; yet it might have been noticed her eyes turned
often, through wreaths of smoke, mist-like in the glare and glimmer of
dips and torches, toward the Black Seigneur.
Why--her gaze seemed to say--did he not join them, instead of sitting
there with a priest? She whirled to the threshold; her flushed face
looked in. "Are you saying a mass for the souls of your men who were
captured?"
"I see," he returned quietly, "you have been gossiping."
"A woman's privilege!" she flashed back. "But how did it happen? And
not only your arm," more sharply regarding him, "but your head! I
fancy if I were to push back a few locks of that thick hair I should
discover--it must have been a pretty blow you got, my Seigneur
Solitude!" He made no reply and she went on. "You, who I thought were
never beaten! By a mere handful of troops, too! Did you have to run
away very fast? If I were a man--"
"Your tongue would be less sharp," he answered coolly, the black eyes
indifferent.
"Much you care for my tongue!" she retorted.
"No?"
"No!" she returned mockingly, when above the din of voices, the
crackling of the fire, and the wild moaning of the wind in the chimney,
a low, but distinct and prolonged call was heard,--from somewhere
without, below.
"What is that?" Quickly Nanette turned; superstitious, after the
fashion of most of her people, a little of the color left her cheek.
Again was it wafted to them, nearer, plainer! "The voices of dead men
from the sea!"
"More like some one on the steps who would like to get in--some
fisherman who has just got to shore!" said old Pierre Laroche, waking
up and emptying his pipe. "Throw open the door. The stones are
slippery--the night dark--"
One of the crew obeyed, and, as the wind entered sharply, and the
lights flickered and grew dim, there half staggered, half rushed from
the gloom, the figure of a man, wild, wet, whose clothes were torn and
whose face was freshly cut and marked with many livid signs of violence.
"Sanchez!" From his place the Black Seigneur rose.
The others looked around wonderingly; some with rough pity. "What's
the matter, man?" said one. "You look as if you had had a bad fall."
"Fall!" Standing in the center of the room, where he had come to a
sudden stop, the man gazed, bewildered, resentful, about him; then
above the circle of questioning faces, his uncertain look lifted;
caught and remained fixed on that of the Black Seigneur. "Fall?" he
repeated, articulating with difficulty. "No; I had--no fall--but I
will speak--with my master--alone!"
CHAPTER XIII
THE SEETHING OF THE SEA
"'I have concluded to deal leniently with you,' said the Governor; 'set
you free!' I could not believe."
Alone in the little chamber, the door of which now was closed, shutting
them from sight of the company in the general eating and drinking room
adjoining, Sanchez and the Black Seigneur sat together. Before them
the viands that had been placed on the table were untouched; the filled
glasses, untasted. As he spoke, the man bent forward, his words
disjointed; his eyes gleaming.
"'But,' the Governor added, 'the criminal must be taught not to
forget'; then turned to his soldiers. 'Beat me this fellow from the
Mount!' he commanded."
"What!" The blood sprang to the dark face of the listener; he half
started from his chair. "And they did! A merry chase, down the
streets, across the sands! I, an old soldier!" His voice choked.
"Beaten like a dog!"
For some moments the young man looked at him; then again sank back;
stared straight ahead. Without, the laughter and harsh voices of the
islanders had become louder; within the little chamber, the only sound
now was the hard, persistent ticking of the clock on the shelf.
"But how," at length Desaurac made a movement, "did he--"
"Learn!" violently. "The way I told you he would!"
"You mean--"
"That I was betrayed and you were--by the Lady Elise--"
"Impossible!" the Black Seigneur exclaimed with sudden violence.
"Because she has a pretty face!" sneered the other.
"Silence! Or--"
"That is it!" The servant's voice rose stridently. "Beaten at one
end, threatened at the other!"
The arm the young man had reached out fell to his side. "Hush! You're
mad; you don't know what you're saying!"
"And you did not know what you were doing! Oh, I dare say it--I tell
you now I little liked the task of taking her back; expecting some sort
of treachery, and, when it came, was not surprised! Any more than,
when they had brought me before the Governor, I saw her at the
cloister--watching, hiding--"
"Hiding!"
"Behind the coping to listen when he, her father, was questioning me!
And, when I looked up and caught her, she walked out--to show me I
might as well confess!"
"She did that?"
"Then tried to cozen me into believing it was not through her," went on
the man bitterly, as if speaking to himself. "But I know the lying
blood--none better--and when she saw it was no use," he paused and
looked up, the marks of the stripes on his face seeming suddenly to
burn and grow livid, "she acknowledged it to my face! 'I won't deny.'
Those were her words! And when she left the place, she turned around
to look back at me--and laugh--"
"You are not mistaken?"
"Perhaps," said the man, a venomous light in his obstinate eyes, "it
was all a fancy; or--I am lying!"
Outside, the wind, blowing sharper, whistled about the eaves, beat at
the window and shook the blinds angrily; far below, a steady monotone
to those other sounds, could be heard the rush and breaking of the surf.
"Why did I cross myself that day on the island, when I saw her--behind
you?" Sanchez's taciturnity--the reticence of years--suddenly burst
its bonds. "Because she made me think of the former lady of the
Mount--the Governor's wife--who betrayed the Seigneur, your father! I
promised him to keep the secret--he would have it, for the sake of the
lady; but now--to you! Your father was stabbed at the foot of the
Mount by the Governor!--"
"Stabbed! By him!"
"It was given out," sourly, "by rogues--again to shield her!"
"But--"
"That same day he had a letter--from her. As evening fell he walked
near the Mount--was followed by the Governor, who sprang, struck in the
back and left him for dead! I found him and took him home. But before
he recovered, it was reported my lady had died--"
"How?"
"I know not; a punishment, perhaps! She was always delicate--or liked
to be considered such--a white-faced, pretty, smiling thing whose
beauty and treachery this other one, the daughter, inherits. It was
the ghost of herself looking over your shoulder that day on the island,
with the same bright, perfidious eyes--"
"Enough!" Angrily the Black Seigneur brought down his hand. "I will
hear no more!"
"Because she has caught your fancy! Because you--"
"No more, I say! Think you I would not avenge your wrongs at once,
were it possible? That I would not strike for you, on the instant?
But now? My hands are tied. Another matter--of life, or
death--presses first!"
Sanchez looked at him quickly; said no more; between them, the silence
grew. The servant was the first to move; turning to the table, he
began to eat; at first mechanically; afterward faster, with the
ravenous zest of one who has not tasted food for many hours. The
other, for his part, showed no immediate desire to disturb that
occupation; for some time waited; and it was not until the servant
stopped; reached out his arm for a glass, to drink, that the young man
again spoke.
"The palace? The plan of the Mount? Did you notice? Tell me
something of it--how it is laid out--"
Sanchez swallowed; set down the glass hard. "Yes, yes! I saw much--a
great deal!" he answered with eager zest. "Oh, I kept my eyes open,
although I seemed not to, and was mindful of learning all I could!"
"Here!" From his pocket the young man took a note-book; pencil. "Set
it down; everything! I know something, already, from the old
monks--the rough diagrams in their books. You entered where? Take the
pencil and--"
The minutes passed and still Sanchez traced; seemed almost to forget
his injuries in his interest in the labor. Plan after plan was made;
torn up; one finally remained in the hand of the Black Seigneur.
"You think--" Anxiously the servant watched his master's face; but the
latter, straight, erect, with keen eyes fixed, did not answer.
"You think--" again began the man when the ancient time-piece, beating
harshly the hour, interrupted.
"Eleven o'clock! High tide!" The Black Seigneur pushed back his chair
and rose.
"Good!" Sanchez's alacrity indicated a quick comprehension of what the
movement portended.
"You--had better remain here!" shortly.
"Me?" said the servant with a hoarse laugh. "Me?"
"Have you not had enough of my family--my service?" the young Seigneur
demanded bitterly.
"Bah!" muttered the other. "The dog that's beaten springs at the
chance to bite! You go to rescue your comrades. I--will go with you!"
"In which case, death--not vengeance--will most likely be your reward!"
"I care not!" stubbornly.
A moment the Black Seigneur regarded him; then made a gesture.
"Well, have your way!" He listened. "The wind is in the west."
"A little south of west," answered the man.
"A rough night for your boat to have crossed!"
"Oh, I was bound to come! And if you hadn't been here, I'd have gone
on, on,--till I found you--"
The hand of the young man touched the other's shoulder. "Come!" he
said, and threw open the door.
"You are going in the storm?" The girl, Nanette, intercepted them.
The Black Seigneur nodded shortly.
"It must be an important mission to take you to sea on such a night.
Why don't you stay where it's warm and comfortable? Or," with a laugh,
"at least until Monsieur Gabarie," indicating the corpulent figure
intrenched behind a barricade of dishes and bottles on a small table
near the fire, "has finished the little puppet play he is writing."
"It _is_ finished!" As he spoke, the poet rose. "I had but written
'curtain' when you spoke. Your wine, fair Nanette, hath a rarely
inspiring quality!"
"Oh, I care not for your compliments!" she returned. "Your
_capitaine_," again studying the Black Seigneur with dark sedulous
eyes, "has not found it so much to his liking! He has neither asked
for more, nor drunk what he ordered; and now would venture out--"
Unmindful of her words the young man called to old Pierre.
"Well," she went on, throwing back her head, "if you lose your ship,
come to me, and--I'll see you have another!"
Above in his chamber at the inn, not long thereafter, the priest,
looking out of the window, saw a line of men file down the narrow
stairs; embark in the small boats from the sheltered nook where they
lay, and later, in the light of the moon, breaking from between
scudding clouds and angry vapors, a ship that got under way--glided
like a phantom craft from the haven and set seaward through the foam.
CHAPTER XIV
THE PILGRIMAGE
From far and near the peasants and the people of the towns and
villages, joined in the customary annual descent upon--or ascent
to--the Mount. None was too poor, few too miserable, to undertake the
journey. A pilgrimage, was the occasion called; but although certain
religious ceremonies were duly observed and entered into by some with
fanatical warmth, many there were, who, obliged to pay tithes,
nourished the onerous recollection of the enforced "ecclesiastical
tenth" to the exclusion of any great desire to avail themselves of the
compensating privilege of beholding and bowing before the sacred
relics. To these recalcitrant spirits, license and a rough sort of
merrymaking became the order of the hour.
Early in the morning the multitude began to arrive--in every manner of
dilapidated vehicle, astride starved-looking donkeys and bony horses,
or on foot. Many who had camped out the night before, by wayside or in
forest, brought with them certain scanty provisions and a kitchen pot
in which to boil thin soup, or some poor makeshift mess; others came
empty-handed, "pilgrims" out at the elbow and shoeless, trusting to
fortune for their sustenance, and looking capable even of having
poached in one of the wide forests they had traversed, despite a
penalty, severe and disproportionate to the offense, for laying hand on
any lord's wild birds or rabbits.
Savage men; sodden men--good, bad and indifferent! Like ants thronging
about the hill, they straightway streamed to the Mount; took possession
of it, or as much as lay open to them; for around the top, chosen abode
of the Governor, extended a wall; grim, dark and ominous; bristling
with holes which seemed to look blackly down; to watch, to listen and
to frown. Without that pretentious line of encircling masonry, the
usual din, accompaniment to the day and the presence of so many people,
prevailed; within, reigned silence, a solemn hush, unbroken by even a
sentinel's tread.
"I shall be glad when it's all over!" Standing at the window of her
chamber the Lady Elise had paused in dressing to look out upon the
throng--a thousand clots upon the sand, dark moving masses in the
narrow byways, and motionless ones near the temporary altars.
"Oh, my Lady!" Her companion, and former nurse, a woman about fifty
years of age, ventured this mild expostulation.
"There, Marie! You can go!"
"Yes, your Ladyship--"
"One moment!" The slender figure turned. "This fastening--"
In an instant the woman was by her side.
"Have you heard anything more about the prisoners, Marie?" abruptly.
"Those who were tried, I mean?"
"Nothing--only Beppo said they are to be hanged day after
to-morrow--when the pilgrimage is over."
"Day after to-morrow!" The brown eyes looked hard and bright; the
small white teeth pressed her lip. "And the man my fa--the Governor
had--whipped from the Mount--you have heard nothing more of him--where
he has gone?"
"No, my Lady; he seems to have disappeared completely; fled this
country, perhaps, for those islands where so many like him," half
bitterly, "have gone before!"
The girl looked up in a preoccupied manner. "Poor Marie! Your only
sister died there, didn't she?"
"Yes, my Lady; I never saw her after she left France with her husband
and baby girl. He was an unpatriotic fellow--Pierre Laroche!"
"No doubt," said the Governor's daughter absently, as the other
prepared to leave the room.
Alone, the girl remained for several moments motionless before the
great Venetian mirror; then mechanically, hardly looking at the
reflection the glass threw back at her, she finished her toilet. This
task accomplished, still she stood with brows closely drawn; afar the
flute-like voices of the choir-boys arose from different parts of the
Mount, but she did not seem to hear them; made a sudden quick gesture
and walked toward the door in the manner of one who has arrived at some
resolution.
Passing down a corridor, she reached an arched opening whose massive
door swung easily to her touch, and let herself out by a private way,
which had once been the ancient abbot's way, to an isolated corner of a
small secluded platform. From this point a stairway led up to a
passage spanning a great gulf. Below and aside, where the red-tiled
houses clung to the steep slope of the rock, fluttered many flags; yet
the girl did not pause either to contemplate or admire. Only when her
glance passed seaward and rested on the far-away ocean's rim of light,
did she stop for an instant--mid-way on the bridge--then, compressing
her lips, moved on the faster; down the incline on the other side; up
winding stairs between giant columns, reaching, at length, that bright
and grateful opening, the cloister. With an unvarying air of
resolution she stepped forward; looked in; the place was empty--silent
save for the tinkling of the tiny fountain in the center.
"Are you looking for some one, my Lady?"
The voice was that of Beppo, who was regarding her from an angle in the
cloister walk.
"I am looking for his Excellency. I suppose he is--"
"In the apartments of state, my Lady. But--"
The girl frowned.
"But, but!" she said. "But what?"
"His Excellency has left word--he was expecting a minister from
Paris--that no one else was to be admitted; the matter was so important
that he wished no interruptions."
She had already turned, however; moved on past him without answer. At
the inner entrance to the "little castle" or chatelet, which presently
she reached, the girl stopped. Here, without, in the shadow of two
huge cylindrical towers, that crowned the feudal gate-house, a number
of soldiers, seated on the steps, clinked their swords and talked;
within, beneath the high-vaulted dome of the guard-room lolled the
commandant and several officers on a bench before a large window.
Immediately on her appearance they rose, but, merely bowing stiffly,
she started toward a portal on the left. Whereupon the commandant
started forward, deferentially would have spoken--stopped her, when at
the same moment, the door she was approaching opened, and the Governor
himself appeared. At the sight of her he started; a shade of annoyance
crossed his thin features, then almost immediately vanished; his cold
eyes met hers expectantly.
"I have been told you were very busy, yet I must see you; it is very
important--"
A fraction of a moment he seemed to hesitate; then with an absent air:
"Certainly, I was very busy; nevertheless--" he stepped aside;
permitted her to pass, and softly closed the door. With the same
preoccupied air he walked to his table before one of the large
fireplaces whose pyramidal canopies merged into the ribs of the
vaulting of a noble chamber, and, seating himself in a cushioned chair,
looked down at a few embers.
"I came," standing, with her fingers straight and stiff on the cold
marble edge of the table, the girl began to speak hurriedly,
constrainedly, "I wanted to see you--about the prisoners--"
He did not answer. Gently stroking his wrist, as if the dampness from
some subterranean place had got into it, he evinced no sign he had
heard; and this apathy and his apparent disregard of her awoke more
strongly the feeling she had experienced so often since that day in the
cloister, when he had promised to set free the servant of the Black
Seigneur; had kept his word, indeed, but--
"Can't you see," she forced herself to continue, "after what the man
Sanchez thought--suspected about me, what he said that day at the
Mount, after what he, the Black Seigneur, did for me"--the Governor
started--"that you, if you care for me at all," he looked at her
strangely, "at least, should--"
"As I told you the other day," his accents were cold, "why concern
yourself about outlaws and peasants clamoring for 'rights'!"
"But it _is_ my concern," she said passionately. "Unless--"
"Neither yours nor mine," he answered in the same tone. "Only the
law's!"
"The law's!" she returned. "_You_ are the law--"
"Its servant!" he corrected.
"But--you could spare their lives! You could deal with them more
mercifully!"
"The law is explicit. In the King alone rests the power to--"
"The King! But before word could reach him--"
"Exactly!" As he spoke, the Governor rose. "And now--"
"You will not hear me?"
"If there is anything else--"
Her figure straightened. "Why do you hate him so?" she asked
passionately. "You have hastened their trial, and would carry out the
sentence before there is time for justice. And the man whom that day
you ordered whipped from the Mount--after letting me think him safe!
After all that his master did for me! Why was he lashed? Because of
him he served or of the old Seigneur before that? I heard you ask
about him--of his having gone to America? Why did you care about that?"
"You seem to have listened to a great deal!"
[Illustration: "You seem to have listened to a great deal."]
"And why did he go to America?" she went on, unheeding. "Did you hate
him, too? What for?"
"If you have nothing else to talk about--" He glanced at the door.
"And the lands!" she said. "They were his; now they are yours--"
"Unjustly, perhaps _you_ think."
"No, no!" she cried. "I didn't mean--I didn't imply that. Of course
not! Only," putting out her hands, "I try to understand, and--you have
never taken me into your confidence, _mon pere_! You have been
indulgent; denied me nothing, but--I don't want to feel the way I have
felt the last week, as if--" quickly she stopped. "No doubt there are
reasons--although I have puzzled; and if I knew! Can't you," abruptly,
"treat me as one worthy of your confidence?"
"You!" he said with quiet irony. "Who--_listen_!"
The girl flushed. "I had to, because--"
"And who misrepresent facts, as in the case of--Saladin!"
"But--"
"How long," standing over her, "were you on the island?"
"I--don't know!"
"You don't?" His voice implied disbelief.
"Part of the time I was unconscious--"
"In the watch-tower with him!"
She made a gesture. "Would you rather--"
"What did he say?"
The girl's eyes, that had been so steadfast, on a sudden wavered.
"Nothing--much."
"And you? Nothing, too? Then how was the deception devised--the pact
entered into--"
Her figure stiffened. "There was no pact."
"Treason, then? The law holds it treason to--"
"You are cruel; unjust!" she cried. "To me, as you were to him. That
old man you had whipped! I wonder," impetuously, "if you are so to all
of them, the people, the peasants. And if that is the reason they have
only black looks for me--and hatred? As if they would like to curse
us!"
He turned away. "I am very busy."
"_Mon pere_!"
He walked to the door.
"Then you won't--won't spare them?"
He opened wide the door. Still she did not move, until the sight of
the commandant without, the curious glance he cast in their direction,
decided her. Drawing herself up, she walked toward the threshold, and,
bowing perfunctorily, with head held high, crossed it.
CHAPTER XV
THE VOICE FROM THE GROUP
"No one from the household is allowed through without an order!"
"You will, however, let me pass."
"Because you have a pretty face?" The sentinel at the great gate
separating the upper part of the Mount from the town, answered roughly.
"Not you, my girl, or--"
But she who importuned raised the sides of the ample linen head-dress
and revealed fully her countenance.
"My Lady!" Half convinced, half incredulous, the soldier looked;
stared; at features, familiar, yet seeming different, with the
rebellious golden hair smoothed down severely above; the figure garbed
in a Norman peasant dress, made for a costume dance when the nobles and
court ladies had visited the Mount.
"You do not doubt who I am?" Imperiously regarding him.
"No, my Lady; only--"
"Then open the gate!" she commanded.
The man pushed back the ponderous bolts; pressed outward the mass of
oak and iron, and, puzzled, surprised, watched the girl slip through.
Of course it was none of his affair, my lady's caprice, and if she
chose to go masquerading among the people on such a day, when all the
idle vagabonds made pretext to visit the Mount, her right to do so
remained unquestioned; but, as he closed the heavy door, he shook his
head. Think of the risk! Who knew what might happen in the event of
her identity being revealed to certain of those in that heterogeneous
concourse without? Even at the moment through an aperture for
observation in the framework to which he repaired upon adjusting the
fastenings, he could see approaching a procession of noisy fanatics.
The apprehension of the soldier was, however, not shared by the girl,
who, glad she had found a means to get away from the chilling
atmosphere of her own world, experienced now only a sense of freedom
and relief. In her tense mood, the din--the shouting and unwonted
sounds--were not calculated to alarm; on the contrary, after the
oppressive stillness in the great halls and chambers of the summit,
they seemed welcome. Her pulses throbbed and her face still burned
with the remembrance of the interview with her father, as she eyed
unseeingly the approaching band, led by censer- and banner-bearers.
"_Vierge notre esperance--_" Caught up as they swept along, she found
herself without warning suddenly a part of that human stream. A
natural desire to get clear from the multitude led her at first to
struggle, but as well contend with the inevitable. Faces fierce,
half-crazed, encompassed her; eyes that looked starved, spiritually and
physically, gleamed on every side. Held as in a vise, she soon ceased
to resist; suddenly deposited on a ledge, like a shell tossed up from
the sea, she next became aware she was looking up toward a temporary
altar, garish with bright colors.
"_Etends sur nous--_" Louder rose the voices; more uncontrollable
became the demeanor of the people, and quickly, before the unveiling of
the sacred relics had completely maddened them, she managed to
extricate herself from the kneeling or prostrate throng; breathless,
she fled the vicinity.
Down, down! Into the heart of the village; through tortuous footpaths,
where the pandering, not pietistic, element held sway; where, instead
of shrines and altars, had been erected booths and stands before which
vendors of nondescript viands or poor trumpery vented their loquacity
on the pilgrims:
"All hot! All hot!"
"_A la barque_! _A l'ecaille_!"
"_La vie_! Two drinks for a _liard_!"
"_Voila le plaisir des dames_!"
The Mount, in olden times a glorious and sacred place for royal
pilgrimages, where kings came to pray and seek absolution, seemed now
more mart than holy spot. But those whom the petty traders sought to
entice--sullen-looking peasants, or poorly clad fishermen and their
families--for the most part listened indifferently, or with stupid
derision.
"Bah!" scoffed one of them, a woman dressed in worn-out costume of
inherited holiday finery. "Where think you we can get sous for
gew-gaws?"
"Or full stomachs with empty pockets?" said another. "The foul fiend
take your Portugals!"
The nomadic merchants replied and a rough altercation seemed impending,
when, pushing through the crowd, the girl hurried on.
Down, down, she continued; to the base of the rock where the sand's
shining surface had attracted and yet held many of the people. Thither
they still continued to come--in bands; processions; little streams
that, trickling in, mingled with and augmented the rabble. An
encampment for the hour--until the "_petite_" tide should break it up,
and drive it piecemeal to the shore or up the sides of the Mount--it
spread out and almost around the foundations of the great rock. Only
the shadows it avoided--the chilling outlines of pinnacles and towers;
the cold impress of the saint, holding close to the sunlit strand and
basking in its warmth.
Some, following the example of their sea-faring fellows, dug
half-heartedly in the sands in the hope of eking out the meager evening
meal with a course, salt-flavored; others, abandoning themselves to
lighter employment, made merry in heavy or riotous fashion, but the
effect of these holiday efforts was only depressing and incongruous.
"Won't you join?" Some one's arm abruptly seized my lady.
"No, no!"
Unceremoniously he still would have drawn her into the ring, but with a
sudden swift movement, she escaped from his grasp.
"My child!" The voice was that of a wolfish false friar who, seeing
her pass quickly near by, broke off in threat, solicitation and appeal
for sous, to intercept her. "Aren't you in a hurry, my child?"
"It may be," she answered steadily, with no effort to conceal her
aversion at sight of the gleaming eyes and teeth. "Too much so, to
speak with you, who are no friar!"
"What mean you?" His expression, ingratiating before, had darkened,
and from his mean eyes shot a malignant look; she met it with fearless
disdain.
"That you make pretext of this holy day to rob the people--as if they
are not poor enough!"
"Ban you with bell, book and candle! Your tongue is too sharp, my
girl!" he snarled, but did not linger long, finding the flashing
glance, the contemptuous mien, or the truth of her words, little to his
liking. That he profited not by the last, however, was soon evident,
as with amulets and talismans for a bargain, again he moved among the
crowd, conjuring by a full calendar of saints, real and imaginary, and
professing to excommunicate, in an execrable confusion of monkish
gibberish, where the people could not, or would not, comply with his
demands.
"So they _are_--poor enough!" Leaning on a stick, an aged fishwife who
had drawn near and overheard part of the dialogue between the thrifty
rogue and the girl, now shook her withered head. "Yet still to be
cozened! Never too poor to be cozened!" she repeated in shrill
falsetto tones.
"And why," sharply my lady turned to the crone, "why are they so poor?
The lands are rich--the soil fertile."
"Why?" more shrilly. "You must come from some far-off place not to
know. Why? Don't you, also, have to pay _metayage_ to some great
lord? And _banalite_ here, and _banalite_ there, until--"
"But surely, if you applied to your great lord, your Governor; if you
told him--"
"If we told him!" Brokenly the woman laughed. "Yes; yes; of course;
if--"
"I don't understand," said the Governor's daughter coldly.
Muttering and chuckling, the woman did not seem to hear; had started to
hobble on, when abruptly the girl stopped her.
"Where do you live?"
"There!" A claw-like finger pointed. "On the old Seigneur's lands--a
little distance from the woods--"
"The old Seigneur? You knew him?"
"Knew him! Who better?" The whitened head wagged. "And the Black
Seigneur? Wasn't he left, as a child, with me, when the old Seigneur
went to America? And," pursing her thin lips, "didn't I care for him,
and bring him up as one of my own?"
"But I thought--I heard that he, the Black Seigneur, when a boy, lived
in the woods."
"That," answered the old creature, "was after. After the years he
lived with us and shared our all! Not that we begrudged--no, no! Nor
he! For once when I sent word, pleading our need, that we were
starving, he forgave--I mean, remembered me--all I had done and," in a
wheedling voice, "sent money--money--"
"He did?" Swiftly the girl reached for her own purse, only to discover
she had forgotten to bring one. "But of course," in a tone of
disappointment at her oversight, "he couldn't very well forget or
desert one who had so generously befriended him."
"There are those now among his friends he must needs desert," the crone
cackled, wagging her head.
A shadow crossed the girl's brow. "Must needs?" she repeated.
"Aye, forsooth! His comrades--taken prisoners near the island of
Casque? His Excellency will hang them till they're dead--dead, like
some I've seen dangling from the branches in the wood. He, the Black
Seigneur, may wish to save them; but what can he do?"
"What, indeed?" The girl regarded the Mount almost bitterly. "It is
impregnable."
"Way there!" At that moment, a deep, strong voice from a little group
of people, moving toward them, interrupted.
CHAPTER XVI
THE MOUNTEBANK AND THE PEOPLE
In the center walked a man, dressed as a mountebank, who bent forward,
laden with various properties--a bag that contained a miscellany of
spurious medicines and drugs, to be sold from a stand, and various
dolls for a small puppet theater he carried on his back. It was not
for the Governor's daughter, or the old woman, however, his call had
been intended. "Way there!" he repeated to those in front of him.
But they, yet seeking to detain, called out: "Give the piece here!"
CHAPTER XVI
THE MOUNTEBANK AND THE PEOPLE
In the center walked a man, dressed as a mountebank, who bent forward,
laden with various properties--a bag that contained a miscellany of
spurious medicines and drugs, to be sold from a stand, and various
dolls for a small puppet theater he carried on his back. It was not
for the Governor's daughter, or the old woman, however, his call had
been intended. "Way there!" he repeated to those in front of him.
But they, yet seeking to detain, called out: "Give the piece here!"
Like a person not lightly turned from his purpose, he, strolling-player
as well as charlatan, pointed to the Mount, and, unceremoniously
thrusting one person to this side and another to that, stubbornly
pushed on. As long as they were in sight the girl watched, but when
with shouts and laughter they had vanished, swallowed by the shifting
host, once more she turned to the crone. That person, however, had
walked on toward the shore, and indecisively the Governor's daughter
gazed after. The woman's name she had not inquired, but could find out
later; that would not be difficult, she felt sure.
Soon, with no definite thought of where she was going, she began to
retrace her steps, no longer experiencing that earlier over-sensitive
perception for details, but seeing the picture as a whole--a vague
impression of faces; in the background, the Mount--its golden saint
ever threatening to strike!--until she drew closer; when abruptly the
uplifted blade, a dominant note, above color and movement, vanished,
and she looked about to find herself in the shadow of one of the rock's
bulwarks. Near by, a scattering approach of pilgrims from the sands
narrowed into a compact stream directed toward a lower gate, and,
remembering her experience above, she would have avoided the general
current; but no choice remained. At the portals she was jostled
sharply; no respecters of persons, these men made her once more feel
what it was to be one of the great commonalty; an atom in the rank and
file! At length reaching the tower's little square, many of them
stopped, and she was suffered to escape--to the stone steps swinging
sharply upward. She had not gone far, however, when looking down, she
was held by a spectacle not without novelty to her.
In the shadow of the Tower of the King stood the mountebank she had
seen but a short time before on the sands. Now facing the people
before his little show-house, which he had set up in a convenient
corner, he was calling attention to the entertainment he proposed
giving, by a loud beating on a drum.
Rub-a-dub-dub! "Don't crowd too close!" Rub-a-dub-dub! "Keep order
and you will see--"
"Some trumpery miracle mystery!" called out a jeering voice.
"Or the martyrdom of some saint!" cried another.
"I don't know anything about any saint," answered the man,
"unless,"--rub-a-dub-dub!--"you mean my lord's lady!"
And truly the piece, as they were to discover, was quite barren of that
antique religious flavor to which they objected and which still
pervaded many of the puppet plays of the day. _The Petit Masque of the
Wicked Peasant and the Good Noble_, it was called; an odd designation
that at once interested the Lady Elise, bending over the stone
balustrade the better to see. It interested, also, those official
guardians of the peace, a number of soldiers and a few officers from
the garrison standing near, who, unmindful of the girl, divided their
attention between the pasteboard center of interest and the people
gathered around it.
Circumspectly the little play opened; a scene in which my lord, in a
waistcoat somewhat frayed for one of his station, commands the lazy
peasant to beat the marsh with a stick that the croaking of the frogs
may not disturb at night the rest of his noble spouse, seemed designed
principally to show that obedience, submission and unquestioning fealty
were the great lord's due. On the one hand, was the patrician born to
rule; on the other, the peasant, to serve; and no task, however
onerous, but should be gladly welcomed in behalf of the master, or his
equally illustrious lady. The dialogue, showing the disinclination of
the bad peasant for this simple employment and the good lord's noble
solicitude for the nerves of his high-born spouse, was both nimble and
witty; especially those bits punctuated by a cane, and the sentiment:
"Thus all bad peasants deserve to fare!" and culminating in an
excellent climax to the lesson--a tattoo on the peasant's head that
sent him simultaneously, and felicitously, down with the curtain.
"What think you of it?" At my lady's elbow one of the officers turned
to a companion.
"Amusing, but--" And his glance turned dubiously toward the people.
Certainly they did not now show proper appreciation either for the
literary merits of the little piece or the precepts it promulgated in
fairly sounding verse.
"The mountebank!" From the crowd a number of discontented voices rose.
"Come out, Monsieur Mountebank!"
"Yes, Monsieur Mountebank, come out; come out!"
With fast-beating heart the Lady Elise gazed; as in a dream had she
listened--not to the lines of the puppet play; but to a
voice--strangely familiar, yet different--ironical; scoffing; laughing!
She drew her breath quickly; once more studied the head, in its white,
close-fitting clown's covering; the heavy, painted face, with red,
gaping mouth. Then, the next moment, as he bowed himself
back--apparently unmindful of a missile some one threw and which struck
his little theater--the half-closed, dull eyes met hers; passed,
without sign or expression!--and she gave a nervous little laugh. What
a fancy!
"Act second!" the tinkling of a bell prefaced the announcement, and
once more was the curtain drawn, this time revealing a marsh and the
bad peasant at work, reluctantly beating the water to the _Song of the
Stick_.
"Beat! beat!
At his lordship's command;
For if there's a croak,
For you'll be the stroke,
From no gentle hand."
A merry little tune, it threaded the act; it was soon interrupted,
however, during a scene where a comical-looking devil on a broomstick,
useful both for transportation and persuasion, came for something which
he called the peasant's soul. Again the bad peasant protested; would
cheat even the devil of his due, but his satanic Majesty would not be
set aside.
"You may rob your master," he said, in effect; "defraud him of
_banalite_, _bardage_ and those other few taxes necessary to his
dignity and position; but you can't defraud _Me_!" Whereupon he
proceeded to wrest what he wanted from the bad peasant by force--and
the aid of the broomstick!--accompanying the rat-a-tat with a
well-rhymed homily on what would certainly happen to every peasant who
sought to deprive his lord of feudal rights. At this point a growing
restiveness on the part of the audience found resentful expression.
"That for your devil's stick!"
"To the devil with the devil!"
"Down with the devil!"
The cry, once started, was not easy to stop; men in liquor and ripe for
mischief repeated it; in vain the mountebank pleaded: "My poor dolls!
My poor theater!" Unceremoniously they tumbled it and him over; a few,
who had seen nothing out of the ordinary in the little play took his
part; words were exchanged for blows, with many fighting for the sake
of fighting, when into the center of this, the real stage, appeared
soldiers.
"What does it mean?" Impressive in gold adornment and conscious
authority, the commandant himself came down the steps. "Who dares make
riot on a day consecrated to the holy relics? But you shall pay!" as
the soldiers separated the belligerents. "Take those men into custody
and--who is this fellow?" turning to the mountebank, a mournful figure
above the wreckage of his theater and poor puppets scattered,
haphazard, like victims of some untoward disaster.
"It was his play that started the trouble," said one of the officers.
"_Diable!_" the commandant frowned. "What have you to say for
yourself?"
"I," began the mountebank, "I--" he repeated, when courage and words
alike seemed to fail him.
The commandant made a gesture. "Up with him! To the top of the Mount!"
"No, no!" At once the fellow's voice came back to him. "Don't take me
there, into the terrible Mount! Don't lock me up!"
"Don't lock him up!" repeated some one in the crowd, moved apparently
by the sight of his distress. "It wasn't his fault!"
"No; it wasn't his fault!" said others.
"Eh?" Wheeling sharply, the commandant gazed; at the lowering faces
that dared question his authority; then at his own soldiers. On the
beach he might not have felt so secure, but here, where twenty,
well-armed, could defend a pass and a mob batter their heads in vain
against walls, he could well afford a confident front. "Up with you!"
he cried sternly and gave the mountebank a contemptuous thrust.
For the first time the man's apathy seemed to desert him; his arm shot
back like lightning, but almost at once fell to his side, while an
expression, apologetically abject, as if to atone for that momentary
fierce impulse, overspread his dull visage. "Oh, I'll go," he said in
accents servile. And proceeded hurriedly to gather up the remains of
his theater and dolls. "I'm willing to go."