There fell a clear September night, when the moon was radiant over town
and country, over cobbled streets and winding roads. From the fields the
mists rose slowly, and the air was mild and fragrant, while distances
were white and full of mystery. All of Bath that pretended to fashion or
condition was present that evening at a fete at the house of a country
gentleman of the neighborhood. When the stately junket was concluded, it
was the pleasure of M. de Chateaurien to form one of the escort of Lady
Mary's carriage for the return. As they took the road, Sir Hugh Guilford
and Mr. Bantison, engaging in indistinct but vigorous remonstrance with
Mr. Molyneux over some matter, fell fifty or more paces behind, where
they continued to ride, keeping up their argument. Half a dozen other
gallants rode in advance, muttering among themselves, or attended laxly
upon Lady Mary's aunt on the other side of the coach, while the happy
Frenchman was permitted to ride close to that adorable window which
framed the fairest face in England.
He sang for her a little French song, a song of the voyageur who dreamed
of home. The lady, listening, looking up at the bright moon, felt a warm
drop upon her cheek, and he saw the tears sparkling upon her lashes.
“Mademoiselle,” he whispered then, “I, too, have been a wanderer, but my
dreams were not of France; no, I do not dream of that home, of that dear
country. It is of a dearer country, a dream country--a country of gold
and snow,” he cried softly, looking it her white brow and the fair,
lightly powdered hair above it. “Gold and snow, and the blue sky of a
lady's eyes!”
“I had thought the ladies of France were dark, sir.
“Cruel! It is that she will not understan'! Have I speak of the ladies
of France? No, no, no! It is of the faires' country; yes, 'tis a
province of heaven, mademoiselle. Do I not renounce my allegiance to
France? Oh, yes! I am subjec'--no, content to be slave--in the lan' of
the blue sky, the gold, and the snow.
“A very pretty figure,” answered Lady Mary, her eyes downcast. “But does
it not hint a notable experience in the making of such speeches?”
“Tormentress! No. It prove only the inspiration it is to know you.”
“We English ladies hear plenty of the like sir; and we even grow
brilliant enough to detect the assurance that lies beneath the
courtesies of our own gallants.”
“Merci! I should believe so!” ejaculated M. de Chateaurien: but he
smothered the words upon his lips.
Her eyes were not lifted. She went on: “We come, in time, to believe
that true feeling comes faltering forth, not glibly; that smoothness
betokens the adept in the art, sir, rather than your true--your true--”
She was herself faltering; more, blushing deeply, and halting to a full
stop in terror of a word. There was a silence.
“Your--true--lover,” he said huskily. When he had said that word both
trembled. She turned half away into the darkness of the coach.
“I know what make' you to doubt me,” he said, faltering himself, though
it was not his art that prompted him. “They have tol' you the French
do nothing always but make love, is it not so? Yes, you think I am like
that. You think I am like that now!”
She made no sign.
“I suppose,” he sighed, “I am unriz'nable; I would have the snow not so
col'--for jus' me.”
She did not answer.
“Turn to me,” he said.
The fragrance of the fields came to them, and from the distance the
faint, clear note of a hunting-horn.
“Turn to me.”
The lovely head was bent very low. Her little gloved hand lay upon the
narrow window ledge. He laid his own gently upon it. The two hands were
shaking like twin leaves in the breeze. Hers was not drawn away. After
a pause, neither knew how long, he felt the warm fingers turn and clasp
themselves tremulously about his own. At last she looked up bravely and
met his eyes. The horn was wound again--nearer.
“All the cold was gone from the snows--long ago,” she said.
“My beautiful!” he whispered; it was all he could say. “My beautiful!”
But she clutched his arm, startled.
“'Ware the road!” A wild halloo sounded ahead. The horn wound loudly.
“'Ware the road!” There sprang up out of the night a flying thunder of
hoof-beats. The gentlemen riding idly in front of the coach scattered to
the hedge-sides; and, with drawn swords flashing in the moon, a party of
horsemen charged down the highway, their cries blasting the night.
“Barber! Kill the barber!” they screamed. “Barber! Kill the barber!”
Beaucaire had but time to draw his sword when they were upon him.
“A moi!” his voice rang out clearly as he rose in his stirrups. “A moi,
Francois, Louis, Berquin! A moi, Francois!”
The cavaliers came straight at him. He parried the thrust of the first,
but the shock of collision hurled his horse against the side of the
coach. “Sacred swine!” he cried bitterly. “To endanger a lady, to make
this brawl in a lady's presence! Drive on!” he shouted.
“No!” cried Lady Mary.
The Frenchman's assailants were masked, but they were not highwaymen.
“Barber! Barber!” they shouted hoarsely, and closed in on him in a
circle.
“See how he use his steel!” laughed M. Beaucaire, as his point passed
through a tawdry waistcoat. For a moment he cut through the ring and
cleared a space about him, and Lady Mary saw his face shining in the
moonlight. “Canaille!” he hissed, as his horse sank beneath him; and,
though guarding his head from the rain of blows from above, he managed
to drag headlong from his saddle the man who had hamstrung the poor
brute. The fellow came suddenly to the ground, and lay there.
“Is it not a compliment,” said a heavy voice, “to bring six large men to
subdue monsieur?”
“Oh, you are there, my frien'! In the rear--a little in the rear, I
think. Ha, ha!”
The Frenchman's play with his weapon was a revelation of skill, the more
extraordinary as he held in his hand only a light dress sword. But the
ring closed about him, and his keen defense could not avail him for more
than a few moments. Lady Mary's outriders, the gallants of her escort,
rode up close to the coach and encircled it, not interfering.
“Sir Hugh Guilford!” cried Lady Mary wildly, “if you will not help him,
give me your sword!” She would have leaped to the ground, but Sir Hugh
held the door.
“Sit quiet, madam,” he said to her; then, to the man on the box, “Drive
on.”
“If he does, I'll kill him!” she said fiercely. “Ah, what cowards! Will
you see the Duke murdered?”
“The Duke!” laughed Guilford. “They will not kill him, unless--be easy,
dear madam, 'twill be explained. Gad's life!” he muttered to Molyneux,
“'Twere time the varlet had his lashing! D'ye hear her?”
“Barber or no barber,” answered Molyneux, “I wish I had warned him. He
fights as few gentlemen could. Ah--ah! Look at that! 'Tis a shame!”
On foot, his hat gone, his white coat sadly rent and gashed, flecked,
too, with red, M. Beaucaire, wary, alert, brilliant, seemed to transform
himself into a dozen fencing-masters; and, though his skill appeared
to lie in delicacy and quickness, his play being continually with
the point, sheer strength failed to beat him down. The young man was
laughing like a child.
“Believe me,” said Molyneux “he's no barber! No, and never was!”
For a moment there was even a chance that M. Beaucaire might have the
best of it. Two of his adversaries were prostrate, more than one were
groaning, and the indomitable Frenchman had actually almost beat off the
ruffians, when, by a trick, he was overcome. One of them, dismounting,
ran in suddenly from behind, and seized his blade in a thick leather
gauntlet. Before Beaucaire could disengage the weapon, two others threw
themselves from their horses and hurled him to the earth. “A moi! A moi,
Francois!” he cried as he went down, his sword in fragments, but his
voice unbroken and clear.
“Shame!” muttered one or two of the gentlemen about the coach.
“'Twas dastardly to take him so,” said Molyneux. “Whatever his
deservings, I'm nigh of a mind to offer him a rescue in the Duke's
face.”
“Truss him up, lads,” said the heavy voice. “Clear the way in front of
the coach. There sit those whom we avenge upon a presumptuous lackey.
Now, Whiffen, you have a fair audience, lay on and baste him.”
Two men began to drag M. Beaucaire toward a great oak by the roadside.
Another took from his saddle a heavy whip with three thongs.
“A moi, Francois!”
There was borne on the breeze an answer--“Monseigneur! Monseigneur!”
The cry grew louder suddenly. The clatter of hoofs urged to an anguish
of speed sounded on the night. M. Beaucaire's servants had lagged sorely
behind, but they made up for it now. Almost before the noise of their
own steeds they came riding down the moonlit aisle between the mists.
Chosen men, these servants of Beaucaire, and like a thunderbolt they
fell upon the astounded cavaliers.
“Chateaurien! Chateaurien!” they shouted, and smote so swiftly that,
through lack of time, they showed no proper judgment, discriminating
nothing between non-combatants and their master's foes. They charged
first into the group about M. Beaucaire, and broke and routed it
utterly. Two of them leaped to the young man's side, while the other
four, swerving, scarce losing the momentum of their onset, bore on upon
the gentlemen near the coach, who went down beneath the fierceness of
the onslaught, cursing manfully.
“Our just deserts,” said Mr. Molyneux, his mouth full of dust and
philosophy.
Sir Hugh Guilford's horse fell with him, being literally ridden over,
and the baronet's leg was pinned under the saddle. In less than ten
minutes from the first attack on M. Beaucaire, the attacking party
had fled in disorder, and the patrician non-combatants, choking with
expletives, consumed with wrath, were prisoners, disarmed by the
Frenchman's lackeys.
Guilford's discomfiture had freed the doors of the coach; so it was that
when M. Beaucaire, struggling to rise, assisted by his servants, threw
out one hand to balance himself, he found it seized between two small,
cold palms, and he looked into two warm, dilating eyes, that were doubly
beautiful because of the fright and rage that found room in them, too.
M. le Duc Chateaurien sprang to his feet without the aid of his lackeys,
and bowed low before Lady Mary.
“I make ten thousan' apology to be' the cause of a such melee in your
presence,” he said; and then, turning to Francois, he spoke in French:
“Ah, thou scoundrel! A little, and it had been too late.”
Francois knelt in the dust before him. “Pardon!” he said. “Monseigneur
commanded us to follow far in the rear, to remain unobserved. The wind
malignantly blew against monseigneur's voice.”
“See what it might have cost, my children,” said his master, pointing
to the ropes with which they would have bound him and to the whip lying
beside them. A shudder passed over the lackey's frame; the utter horror
in his face echoed in the eyes of his fellows.
“Oh, monseigneur!” Francois sprang back, and tossed his arms to heaven.
“But it did not happen,” said M. Beaucaire.
“It could not!” exclaimed Francois.
“No. And you did very well, my children--” the young man smiled
benevolently--“very well. And now,” he continued, turning to Lady Mary
and speaking in English, “let me be asking of our gallants yonder what
make' them to be in cabal with highwaymen. One should come to a polite
understanding with them, you think? Not so?”
He bowed, offering his hand to conduct her to the coach, where Molyneux
and his companions, having drawn Sir Hugh from under his horse, were
engaged in reviving and reassuring Lady Rellerton, who had fainted. But
Lady Mary stayed Beaucaire with a gesture, and the two stood where they
were.
“Monseigneur!” she said, with a note of raillery in her voice, but
raillery so tender that he started with happiness. His movement brought
him a hot spasm of pain, and he clapped his hand to a red stain on his
waistcoat.
“You are hurt!”
“It is nothing,” smiled M. Beaucaire. Then, that she might not see
the stain spreading, he held his handkerchief over the spot. “I am a
little--but jus' a trifling--bruise'; 'tis all.”
“You shall ride in the coach,” she whispered. “Will you be pleased, M.
de Chateaurien?”
“Ah, my beautiful!” She seemed to wave before him like a shining
mist. “I wish that ride might las' for always! Can you say that,
mademoiselle?”
“Monseigneur,” she cried in a passion of admiration, “I would what you
would have be, should be. What do you not deserve? You are the bravest
man in the world!”
“Ha, ha! I am jus' a poor Frenchman.”
“Would that a few Englishmen had shown themselves as 'poor' tonight.
The vile cowards, not to help you!” With that, suddenly possessed by her
anger, she swept away from him to the coach.
Sir Hugh, groaning loudly, was being assisted into the vehicle.
“My little poltroons,” she said, “what are you doing with your
fellow-craven, Sir Hugh Guilford, there?”
“Madam,” replied Molyneux humbly, “Sir Hugh's leg is broken. Lady
Rellerton graciously permits him to be taken in.”
“I do not permit it! M. de Chateaurien rides with us.”
“But--”
“Sir! Leave the wretch to groan by the roadside,” she cried fiercely,
“which plight I would were that of all of you! But there will be a
pretty story for the gossips to-morrow! And I could almost find pity
for you when I think of the wits when you return to town. Fine gentlemen
you; hardy bravos, by heaven! to leave one man to meet a troop of horse
single-handed, while you huddle in shelter until you are overthrown and
disarmed by servants! Oh, the wits! Heaven save you from the wits!”
“Madam.”
“Address me no more! M. de Chateaurien, Lady Rellerton and I will
greatly esteem the honor of your company. Will you come?”
She stepped quickly into the coach, and was gathering her skirts to make
room for the Frenchman, when a heavy voice spoke from the shadows of the
tree by the wayside.
“Lady Mary Carlisle will, no doubt, listen to a word of counsel on this
point.”
The Duke of Winterset rode out into the moonlight, composedly untieing a
mask from about his head. He had not shared the flight of his followers,
but had retired into the shade of the oak, whence he now made his
presence known with the utmost coolness.
“Gracious heavens, 'tis Winterset!” exclaimed Lady Rellerton.
“Turned highwayman and cut-throat,” cried Lady Mary.
“No, no,” laughed M. Beaucaire, somewhat unsteadily, as he stood,
swaying a little, with one hand on the coach-door, the other pressed
hard on his side, “he only oversee'; he is jus' a little bashful,
sometime'. He is a great man, but he don' want all the glory!”
“Barber,” replied the Duke, “I must tell you that I gladly descend to
bandy words with you; your monstrous impudence is a claim to rank
I cannot ignore. But a lackey who has himself followed by six other
lackeys--”
“Ha, ha! Has not M. le Duc been busy all this evening to justify me? And
I think mine mus' be the bes' six. Ha, ha! You think?”
“M. de Chateaurien,” said Lady Mary, “we are waiting for you.”
“Pardon,” he replied. “He has something to say; maybe it is bes' if you
hear it now.”
“I wish to hear nothing from him--ever!”
“My faith, madam,” cried the Duke, “this saucy fellow has paid you the
last insult! He is so sure of you he does not fear you will believe the
truth. When all is told, if you do not agree he deserved the lashing we
planned to--”
“I'll hear no more!”
“You will bitterly repent it, madam. For your own sake I entreat--”
“And I also,” broke in M. Beaucaire. “Permit me, mademoiselle; let him
speak.”
“Then let him be brief,” said Lady Mary, “for I am earnest to be quit of
him. His explanation or an attack on my friend and on my carriage should
be made to my brother.”
“Alas that he was not here,” said the Duke, “to aid me! Madam, was your
carriage threatened? I have endeavored only to expunge a debt I owed to
Bath and to avenge an insult offered to yourself through--”
“Sir, sir, my patience will bear little more!”
“A thousan' apology,” said M. Beaucaire. “You will listen, I only beg,
Lady Mary?”
She made an angry gesture of assent.
“Madam, I will be brief as I may. Two months ago there came to Bath a
French gambler calling himself Beaucaire, a desperate fellow with the
cards or dice, and all the men of fashion went to play at his lodging,
where he won considerable sums. He was small, wore a black wig and
mustachio. He had the insolence to show himself everywhere until the
Master of Ceremonies rebuffed him in the pump-room, as you know, and
after that he forbore his visits to the rooms. Mr. Nash explained (and
was confirmed, madam, by indubitable information) that this Beaucaire
was a man of unspeakable, vile, low birth, being, in fact, no other than
a lackey of the French king's ambassador, Victor by name, de Mirepoix's
barber. Although his condition was known, the hideous impudence of the
fellow did not desert him, and he remained in Bath, where none would
speak to him.”
“Is your farrago nigh done, sir?”
“A few moments, madam. One evening, three weeks gone, I observed a very
elegant equipage draw up to my door, and the Duke of Chateaurien was
announced. The young man's manners were worthy--according to the French
acceptance--and 'twere idle to deny him the most monstrous assurance. He
declared himself a noble traveling for pleasure. He had taken lodgings
in Bath for a season, he said, and called at once to pay his respects
to me. His tone was so candid--in truth, I am the simplest of men, very
easily gulled--and his stroke so bold, that I did not for one moment
suspect him; and, to my poignant regret--though in the humblest spirit
I have shown myself eager to atone--that very evening I had the shame of
presenting him to yourself.”
“The shame, sir!”
“Have patience, pray, madam. Ay, the shame! You know what figure he hath
cut in Bath since that evening. All ran merrily with him until several
days ago Captain Badger denounced him as an impostor, vowing that
Chateaurien was nothing.”
“Pardon,” interrupted M. Beaucaire. “'Castle Nowhere' would have been so
much better. Why did you not make him say it that way, monsieur?”
Lady Mary started; she was looking at the Duke, and her face was white.
He continued: “Poor Captain Badger was stabbed that same day.--”
“Most befitting poor Captain Badger,” muttered Molyneux.
“----And his adversary had the marvelous insolence to declare that he
fought in my quarrel! This afternoon the wounded man sent for me, and
imparted a very horrifying intelligence. He had discovered a lackey whom
he had seen waiting upon Beaucaire in attendance at the door of
this Chateaurien's lodging. Beaucaire had disappeared the day before
Chateaurien's arrival. Captain Badger looked closely at Chateaurien at
their next meeting, and identified him with the missing Beaucaire beyond
the faintest doubt. Overcome with indignation, he immediately proclaimed
the impostor. Out of regard for me, he did not charge him with being
Beaucaire; the poor soul was unwilling to put upon me the humiliation of
having introduced a barber; but the secret weighed upon him till he sent
for me and put everything in my hands. I accepted the odium; thinking
only of atonement. I went to Sir John Wimpledon's. I took poor Sir
Hugh, there, and these other gentlemen aside, and told them my news. We
narrowly observed this man, and were shocked at our simplicity in not
having discovered him before. These are men of honor and cool judgment,
madam. Mr. Molyneux had acted for him in the affair of Captain Badger,
and was strongly prejudiced in his favor; but Mr. Molyneux, Sir Hugh,
Mr. Bantison, every one of them, in short, recognized him. In spite of
his smooth face and his light hair, the adventurer Beaucaire was
writ upon him amazing plain. Look at him, madam, if he will dare the
inspection. You saw this Beaucaire well, the day of his expulsion from
the rooms. Is not this he?”