Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer
THE LION'S SKIN
By Rafael Sabatini
I. THE FANATIC
II. AT THE “ADAM AND EVE”
III. THE WITNESS
IV. Mr. GREEN
V. MOONSHINE
VI. HORTENSIA'S RETURN
VII. FATHER AND SON
VIII. TEMPTATION
IX. THE CHAMPION
X. SPURS TO THE RELUCTANT
XI. THE ASSAULT-AT-ARMS
XII. SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
XIII. THE FORLORN HOPE
XIV. LADY OSTERMORE
XV. LOVE AND RAGE
XVI. Mr. GREEN EXECUTES HIS WARRANT
XVII. AMID THE GRAVES
XVIII. THE GHOST OF THE PAST
XIX. THE END OF LORD OSTERMORE
XX. Mr. CARYLL'S IDENTITY
XXI. THE LION'S SKIN
XXII. THE HUNTERS
XXIII. THE LION
THE LION'S SKIN
CHAPTER I. THE FANATIC
Mr. Caryll, lately from Rome, stood by the window, looking out over the
rainswept, steaming quays to Notre Dame on the island yonder. Overhead
rolled and crackled the artillery of an April thunderstorm, and Mr.
Caryll, looking out upon Paris in her shroud of rain, under her pall of
thundercloud, felt himself at harmony with Nature. Over his heart,
too, the gloom of storm was lowering, just as in his heart it was still
little more than April time.
Behind him, in that chamber furnished in dark oak and leather of a reign
or two ago, sat Sir Richard Everard at a vast writing-table all a-litter
with books and papers; and Sir Richard watched his adoptive son with
fierce, melancholy eyes, watched him until he grew impatient of this
pause.
“Well?” demanded the old baronet harshly. “Will you undertake it,
Justin, now that the chance has come?” And he added: “You'll never
hesitate if you are the man I have sought to make you.”
Mr. Caryll turned slowly. “It is because I am the man that you--that God
and you--have made me that I do hesitate.”
His voice was quiet and pleasantly modulated, and he spoke English with
the faintest slur--perceptible, perhaps, only to the keenest ear--of
a French accent. To ears less keen it would merely seem that he
articulated with a precision so singular as to verge on pedantry.
The light falling full upon his profile revealed the rather singular
countenance that was his own. It was not in any remarkable beauty that
its distinction lay, for by the canons of beauty that prevail it was not
beautiful. The features were irregular and inclined to harshness,
the nose was too abruptly arched, the chin too long and square, the
complexion too pallid. Yet a certain dignity haunted that youthful
face, of such a quality as to stamp it upon the memory of the merest
passer-by. The mouth was difficult to read and full of contradictions;
the lips were full and red, and you would declare them the lips of a
sensualist but for the line of stern, almost grim, determination in
which they met; and yet, somewhere behind that grimness, there appeared
to lurk a haunting whimsicality; a smile seemed ever to impend, but
whether sweet or bitter none could have told until it broke. The eyes
were as remarkable; wide-set and slow-moving, as becomes the eyes of an
observant man, they were of an almost greenish color, and so level in
their ordinary glance as to seem imbued with an uncanny penetration.
His hair--he dared to wear his own, and clubbed it in a broad ribbon
of watered silk--was almost of the hue of bronze, with here and there a
glint of gold, and as luxuriant as any wig.
For the rest, he was scarcely above the middle height, of an almost
frail but very graceful slenderness, and very graceful, too, in all
his movements. In dress he was supremely elegant, with the elegance of
France, that in England would be accounted foppishness. He wore a suit
of dark blue cloth, with white satin linings that were revealed when he
moved; it was heavily laced with gold, and a ramiform pattern broidered
in gold thread ran up the sides of his silk stockings of a paler blue.
Jewels gleamed in the Brussels at his throat, and there were diamond
buckles on his lacquered, red-heeled shoes.
Sir Richard considered him with anxiety and some chagrin. “Justin!” he
cried, a world of reproach in his voice. “What can you need to ponder?”
“Whatever it may be,” said Mr. Caryll, “it will be better that I ponder
it now than after I have pledged myself.”
“But what is it? What?” demanded the baronet.
“I am marvelling, for one thing, that you should have waited thirty
years.”
Sir Richard's fingers stirred the papers before him in an idle, absent
manner. Into his brooding eyes there leapt the glitter to be seen in the
eyes of the fevered of body or of mind.
“Vengeance,” said he slowly, “is a dish best relished when 'tis eaten
cold.” He paused an instant; then continued: “I might have crossed to
England at the time, and slain him. Should that have satisfied me? What
is death but peace and rest?”
“There is a hell, we are told,” Mr. Caryll reminded him.
“Ay,” was the answer, “we are told. But I dursn't risk its being false
where Ostermore is concerned. So I preferred to wait until I could brew
him such a cup of bitterness as no man ever drank ere he was glad to
die.” In a quieter, retrospective voice he continued: “Had we prevailed
in the '15, I might have found a way to punish him that had been worthy
of the crime that calls for it. We did not prevail. Moreover, I was
taken, and transported.
“What think you, Justin, gave me courage to endure the rigors of the
plantations, cunning and energy to escape after five such years of it as
had assuredly killed a stronger man less strong of purpose? What but the
task that was awaiting me? It imported that I should live and be free
to call a reckoning in full with my Lord Ostermore before I go to my own
account.
“Opportunity has gone lame upon this journey. But it has arrived
at last. Unless--” He paused, his voice sank from the high note of
exaltation to which it had soared; it became charged with dread, as did
the fierce eyes with which he raked his companion's face. “Unless you
prove false to the duty that awaits you. And that I'll not believe! You
are your mother's son, Justin.”
“And my father's, too,” answered Justin in a thick voice; “and the Earl
of Ostermore is that same father.”
“The more sweetly shall your mother be avenged,” cried the other, and
again his eyes blazed with that unhealthy, fanatical light. “What
fitter than the hand of that poor lady's son to pull your father down in
ruins?” He laughed short and fiercely. “It seldom chances in this world
that justice is done so nicely.”
“You hate him very deeply,” said Mr. Caryll pensively, and the look in
his eyes betrayed the trend of his thoughts; they were of pity--but of
pity at the futility of such strong emotions.
“As deeply as I loved your mother, Justin.” The sharp, rugged features
of that seared old face seemed of a sudden transfigured and softened.
The wild eyes lost some of their glitter in a look of wistfulness, as he
pondered a moment the one sweet memory in a wasted life, a life wrecked
over thirty years ago--wrecked wantonly by that same Ostermore of whom
they spoke, who had been his friend.
A groan broke from his lips. He took his head in his hands, and, elbows
on the table, he sat very still a moment, reviewing as in a flash the
events of thirty and more years ago, when he and Viscount Rotherby--as
Ostermore was then--had been young men at the St. Germain's Court of
James II.
It was on an excursion into Normandy that they had met Mademoiselle
de Maligny, the daughter of an impoverished gentleman of the chetive
noblesse of that province. Both had loved her. She had preferred--as
women will--the outward handsomeness of Viscount Rotherby to the sounder
heart and brain that were Dick Everard's. As bold and dominant as any
ruffler of them all where men and perils were concerned, young Everard
was timid, bashful and without assertiveness with women. He had
withdrawn from the contest ere it was well lost, leaving an easy victory
to his friend.
And how had that friend used it? Most foully, as you shall learn.
Leaving Rotherby in Normandy, Everard had returned to Paris. The affairs
of his king gave him cause to cross at once to Ireland. For three years
he abode there, working secretly in his master's interest, to little
purpose be it confessed. At the end of that time he returned to Paris.
Rotherby was gone. It appeared that his father, Lord Ostermore, had
prevailed upon Bentinck to use his influence with William on the errant
youth's behalf. Rotherby had been pardoned his loyalty to the fallen
dynasty. A deserter in every sense, he had abandoned the fortunes of
King James--which in Everard's eyes was bad enough--and he had abandoned
the sweet lady he had fetched out of Normandy six months before his
going, of whom it seemed that in his lordly way he was grown tired.
From the beginning it would appear they were ill-matched. It was her
beauty had made appeal to him, even as his beauty had enamoured her.
Elementals had brought about their union; and when these elementals
shrank with habit, as elementals will, they found themselves without a
tie of sympathy or common interest to link them each to the other. She
was by nature blythe; a thing of sunshine, flowers and music, who craved
a very poet for her lover; and by “a poet” I mean not your mere rhymer.
He was downright stolid and stupid under his fine exterior; the worst
type of Briton, without the saving grace of a Briton's honor. And so she
had wearied him, who saw in her no more than a sweet loveliness that had
cloyed him presently. And when the chance was offered him by Bentinck
and his father, he took it and went his ways, and this sweet flower
that he had plucked from its Normandy garden to adorn him for a brief
summer's day was left to wilt, discarded.
The tale that greeted Everard on his return from Ireland was that,
broken-hearted, she had died--crushed neath her load of shame. For it
was said that there had been no marriage.
The rumor of her death had gone abroad, and it had been carried to
England and my Lord Rotherby by a cousin of hers--the last living
Maligny--who crossed the channel to demand of that stolid gentleman
satisfaction for the dishonor put upon his house. All the satisfaction
the poor fellow got was a foot or so of steel through the lungs, of
which he died; and there, may it have seemed to Rotherby, the matter
ended.
But Everard remained--Everard, who had loved her with a great and almost
sacred love; Everard, who swore black ruin for my Lord Rotherby--the
rumor of which may also have been carried to his lordship and stimulated
his activities in having Everard hunted down after the Braemar fiasco of
1715.
But before that came to pass Everard had discovered that the rumor
of her death was false--put about, no doubt, out of fear of that same
cousin who had made himself champion and avenger of her honor. Everard
sought her out, and found her perishing of want in an attic in the
Cour des Miracles some four months later--eight months after Rotherby's
desertion.
In that sordid, wind-swept chamber of Paris' most abandoned haunt, a son
had been born to Antoinette de Maligny two days before Everard had come
upon her. Both were dying; both had assuredly died within the week but
that he came so timely to her aid. And that aid he rendered like the
noble-hearted gentleman he was. He had contrived to save his fortune
from the wreck of James' kingship, and this was safely invested in
France, in Holland and elsewhere abroad. With a portion of it he
repurchased the chateau and estates of Maligny, which on the death of
Antoinette's father had been seized upon by creditors.
Thither he sent her and her child--Rotherby's child--making that noble
domain a christening-gift to the boy, for whom he had stood sponsor at
the font. And he did his work of love in the background. He was the god
in the machine; no more. No single opportunity of thanking him did he
afford her. He effaced himself that she might not see the sorrow she
occasioned him, lest it should increase her own.
For two years she dwelt at Maligny in such peace as the broken-hearted
may know, the little of life that was left her irradiated by Everard's
noble friendship. He wrote to her from time to time, now from Italy, now
from Holland. But he never came to visit her. A delicacy, which may
or may not have been false, restrained him. And she, respecting what
instinctively she knew to be his feelings, never bade him come to her.
In their letters they never spoke of Rotherby; not once did his name
pass between them; it was as if he had never lived or never crossed
their lives. Meanwhile she weakened and faded day by day, despite all
the care with which she was surrounded. That winter of cold and want in
the Cour des Miracles had sown its seeds, and Death was sharpening his
scythe against the harvest.
When the end was come she sent urgently for Everard. He came at once in
answer to her summons; but he came too late. She died the evening before
he arrived. But she had left a letter, written days before, against the
chance of his not reaching her before the end. That letter, in her fine
French hand, was before him now.
“I will not try to thank you, dearest friend,” she wrote. “For the thing
that you have done, what payment is there in poor thanks? Oh, Everard,
Everard! Had it but pleased God to have helped me to a wiser choice
when it was mine to choose!” she cried to him from that letter, and
poor Everard deemed that the thin ray of joy her words sent through his
anguished soul was payment more than enough for the little that he had
done. “God's will be done!” she continued. “It is His will. He knows why
it is best so, though we discern it not. But there is the boy; there
is Justin. I bequeath him to you who already have done so much for him.
Love him a little for my sake; cherish and rear him as your own, and
make of him such a gentleman as are you. His father does not so much as
know of his existence. That, too, is best so, for I would not have him
claim my boy. Never let him learn that Justin exists, unless it be to
punish him by the knowledge for his cruel desertion of me.”
Choking, the writing blurred by tears that he accounted no disgrace to
his young manhood, Everard had sworn in that hour that Justin should
be as a son to him. He would do her will, and he set upon it a more
definite meaning than she intended. Rotherby should remain in ignorance
of his son's existence until such season as should make the knowledge a
very anguish to him. He would rear Justin in bitter hatred of the foul
villain who had been his father; and with the boy's help, when the time
should be ripe, he would lay my Lord Rotherby in ruins. Thus should my
lord's sin come to find him out.
This Everard had sworn, and this he had done. He had told Justin the
story almost as soon as Justin was of an age to understand it. He had
repeated it at very frequent intervals, and as the lad grew, Everard
watched in him--fostering it by every means in his power--the growth of
his execration for the author of his days, and of his reverence for the
sweet, departed saint that had been his mother.
For the rest, he had lavished Justin nobly for his mother's sake. The
repurchased estates of Maligny, with their handsome rent roll, remained
Justin's own, administered by Sir Richard during the lad's minority and
vastly enriched by the care of that administration. He had sent the
lad to Oxford, and afterwards--the more thoroughly to complete his
education--on a two years' tour of Europe; and on his return, a grown
and cultured man, he had attached him to the court in Rome of the
Pretender, whose agent he was himself in Paris.
He had done his duty by the boy as he understood his duty, always with
that grim purpose of revenge for his horizon. And the result had been a
stranger compound than even Everard knew, for all that he knew the
lad exceedingly well. For he had scarcely reckoned sufficiently upon
Justin's mixed nationality and the circumstance that in soul and mind
he was entirely his mother's child, with nothing--or an imperceptible
little--of his father. As his mother's nature had been, so was
Justin's--joyous. But Everard's training of him had suppressed all
inborn vivacity. The mirth and diablerie that were his birthright had
been overlaid with British phlegm, until in their stead, and through
the blend, a certain sardonic humor had developed, an ironical attitude
toward all things whether sacred or profane. This had been helped on
by culture, and--in a still greater measure--by the odd training in
worldliness which he had from Everard. His illusions were shattered ere
he had cut his wisdom teeth, thanks to the tutelage of Sir Richard,
who in giving him the ugly story of his own existence, taught him the
misanthropical lesson that all men are knaves, all women fools. He
developed, as a consequence, that sardonic outlook upon the world. He
sought to take vos non vobis for his motto, affected to a spectator in
the theatre of Life, with the obvious result that he became the greatest
actor of them all.
So we find him even now, his main emotion pity for Sir Richard, who sat
silent for some moments, reviewing that thirty-year dead past, until
the tears scalded his old eyes. The baronet made a queer noise in
his throat, something between a snarl and a sob, and he flung himself
suddenly back in his chair.
Justin sat down, a becoming gravity in his countenance. “Tell me all,”
he begged his adoptive father. “Tell me how matters stand precisely--how
you propose to act.”
“With all my heart,” the baronet assented. “Lord Ostermore, having
turned his coat once for profit, is ready now to turn it again for the
same end. From the information that reaches me from England, it would
appear that in the rage of speculation that has been toward in London,
his lordship has suffered heavily. How heavily I am not prepared to say.
But heavily enough, I dare swear, to have caused this offer to return to
his king; for he looks, no doubt, to sell his services at a price that
will help him mend the wreckage of his fortunes. A week ago a gentleman
who goes between his majesty's court at Rome and his friends here in
Paris brought me word from his majesty that Ostermore had signified to
him his willingness to rejoin the Stuart cause.
“Together with that information, this messenger brought me letters from
his majesty to several of his friends, which I was to send to England
by a safe hand at the first opportunity. Now, amongst these
letters--delivered to me unsealed--is one to my Lord Ostermore, making
him certain advantageous proposals which he is sure to accept if his
circumstances be as crippled as I am given to understand. Atterbury and
his friends, it seems, have already tampered with my lord's loyalty to
Dutch George to some purpose, and there is little doubt but that this
letter”--and he tapped a document before him--“will do what else is to
be done.
“But, since these letters were left with me, come you with his majesty's
fresh injunctions that I am to suppress them and cross to England at
once myself, to prevail upon Atterbury and his associates to abandon the
undertaking.”
Mr. Caryll nodded. “Because, as I have told you,” said he, “King James
in Rome has received positive information that in London the plot is
already suspected, little though Atterbury may dream it. But what has
this to do with my Lord Ostermore?”
“This,” said Everard slowly, leaning across toward Justin, and laying
a hand upon his sleeve. “I am to counsel the Bishop to stay his hand
against a more favorable opportunity. There is no reason why you should
not do the very opposite with Ostermore.”
Mr. Caryll knit his brows, his eyes intent upon the other's face; but he
said no word.
“It is,” urged Everard, “an opportunity such as there may never be
another. We destroy Ostermore. By a turn of the hand we bring him to the
gallows.” He chuckled over the word with a joy almost diabolical.
“But how--how do we destroy him?” quoth Justin, who suspected yet dared
not encourage his suspicions.
“How? Do you ask how? Is't not plain?” snapped Sir Richard, and what
he avoided putting into words, his eloquent glance made clear to his
companion.
Mr. Caryll rose a thought quickly, a faint flush stirring in his cheeks,
and he threw off Everard's grasp with a gesture that was almost of
repugnance. “You mean that I am to enmesh him....”
Sir Richard smiled grimly. “As his majesty's accredited agent,” he
explained. “I will equip you with papers. Word shall go ahead of you to
Ostermore by a safe hand to bid him look for the coming of a messenger
bearing his own family name. No more than that; nothing that can
betray us; yet enough to whet his lordship's appetite. You shall be
the ambassador to bear him the tempting offers from the king. You will
obtain his answers--accepting. Those you will deliver to me, and I shall
do the trifle that may still be needed to set the rope about his neck.”
A little while there was silence. Outside, the rain, driven by gusts,
smote the window as with a scourge. The thunder was grumbling in the
distance now. Mr. Caryll resumed his chair. He sat very thoughtful,
but with no emotion showing in his face. British stolidity was in the
ascendant with him then. He felt that he had the need of it.
“It is... ugly,” he said at last slowly.
“It is God's own will,” was the hot answer, and Sir Richard smote the
table.
“Has God taken you into His confidence?” wondered Mr. Caryll.
“I know that God is justice.”
“Yet is it not written that 'vengeance is His own'?”
“Aye, but He needs human instruments to execute it. Such instruments are
we. Can you--Oh, can you hesitate?”
Mr. Caryll clenched his hands hard. “Do it,” he answered through set
teeth. “Do it! I shall approve it when 'tis done. But find other hands
for the work, Sir Richard. He is my father.”
Sir Richard remained cool. “That is the argument I employ for insisting
upon the task being yours,” he replied. Then, in a blaze of
passion, he--who had schooled his adoptive son so ably in
self-control--marshalled once more his arguments. “It is your duty to
your mother to forget that he is your father. Think of him only as the
man who wronged your mother; the man to whom her ruined life, her early
death are due--her murderer and worse. Consider that. Your father, you
say!” He mocked almost. “Your father! In what is he your father? You
have never seen him; he does not know that you exist, that you ever
existed. Is that to be a father? Father, you say! A word, a name--no
more than that; a name that gives rise to a sentiment, and a sentiment
is to stand between you and your clear duty; a sentiment is to set a
protecting shield over the man who killed your mother!
“I think I shall despise you, Justin, if you fail me in this. I have
lived for it,” he ran on tempestuously. “I have reared you for it, and
you shall not fail me!”
Then his voice dropped again, and in quieter tones
“You hate the very name of John Caryll, Earl of Ostermore,” said he, “as
must every decent man who knows the truth of what the life of that satyr
holds. If I have suffered you to bear his name, it is to the end that it
should remind you daily that you have no right to it, that you have no
right to any name.”
When he said that he thrust his finger consciously into a raw wound. He
saw Justin wince, and with pitiless cunning he continued to prod that
tender place until he had aggravated the smart of it into a very agony.
“That is what you owe your father; that is the full extent of what lies
between you--that you are of those at whom the world is given to sneer
and point scorn's ready finger.”
“None has ever dared,” said Mr. Caryll.
“Because none has ever known. We have kept the secret well. You display
no coat of arms that no bar sinister may be displayed. But the time
may come when the secret must out. You might, for instance, think of
marrying a lady of quality, a lady of your own supposed station. What
shall you tell her of yourself? That you have no name to offer her; that
the name you bear is yours by assumption only? Ah! That brings home your
own wrongs to you, Justin! Consider them; have them ever present in your
mind, together with your mother's blighted life, that you may not shrink
when the hour strikes to punish the evildoer.”
He flung himself back in his chair again, and watched the younger man
with brooding eye. Mr. Caryll was plainly moved. He had paled a little,
and he sat now with brows contracted and set teeth.
Sir Richard pushed back his chair and rose, recapitulating. “He is your
mother's destroyer,” he said, with a sad sternness. “Is the ruin of that
fair life to go unpunished? Is it, Justin?”
Mr. Caryll's Gallic spirit burst abruptly through its British glaze.
He crushed fist into palm, and swore: “No, by God! It shall not, Sir
Richard!”
Sir Richard held out his hands, and there was a fierce joy in his gloomy
eyes at last. “You'll cross to England with me, Justin?”
But Mr. Caryll's soul fell once more into travail. “Wait!” he cried.
“Ah, wait!” His level glance met Sir Richard's in earnestness and
entreaty. “Answer me the truth upon your soul and conscience: Do you in
your heart believe that it is what my mother would have had me do?”
There was an instant's pause. Then Everard, the fanatic of vengeance,
the man whose mind upon that one subject was become unsound with excess
of brooding, answered with conviction: “As I have a soul to be saved,
Justin, I do believe it. More--I know it. Here!” Trembling hands took up
the old letter from the table and proffered it to Justin. “Here is her
own message to you. Read it again.”
And what time the young man's eyes rested upon that fine, pointed
writing, Sir Richard recited aloud the words he knew by heart, the words
that had been ringing in his ears since that day when he had seen her
lowered to rest: “'Never let him learn that Justin exists unless it be
to punish him by the knowledge for his cruel desertion of me.' It
is your mother's voice speaking to you from the grave,” the fanatic
pursued, and so infected Justin at last with something of his
fanaticism.
The green eyes flashed uncannily, the white young face grew cruelly
sardonic. “You believe it?” he asked, and the eagerness that now
invested his voice showed how it really was with him.
“As I have a soul to be saved,” Sir Richard repeated.
“Then gladly will I set my hand to it.” Fire stirred through Justin now,
a fire of righteous passion. “An idea--no more than an idea--daunted me.
You have shown me that. I cross to England with you, Sir Richard, and
let my Lord Ostermore look to himself, for my name--I who have no right
to any name--my name is judgment!”
The exaltation fell from him as suddenly as it had mounted. He dropped
into a chair, thoughtful again and slightly ashamed of his sudden
outburst.
Sir Richard Everard watched with an eye of gloomy joy the man whom he
had been at such pains to school in self-control.
Overhead there was a sudden crackle of thunder, sharp and staccato as a
peal of demoniac laughter.