CHAPTER IX

TELLS HOW NORTHMOUR CARRIED OUT HIS THREAT

I should have the greatest difficulty to tell you what followed next

after this tragic circumstance. It is all to me, as I look back upon

it, mixed, strenuous, and ineffectual, like the struggles of a sleeper

in a nightmare. Clara, I remember, uttered a broken sigh and would have

fallen forward to earth, had not Northmour and I supported her

insensible body. I do not think we were attacked; I do not remember

even to have seen an assailant; and I believe we deserted Mr.

Huddlestone without a glance. I only remember running like a man in a

panic, now carrying Clara altogether in my own arms, now sharing her

weight with Northmour, now scuffling confusedly for the possession of

that dear burden. Why we should have made for my camp in the Hemlock

Den, or how we reached it, are points lost for ever to my recollection.

The first moment at which I became definitely sure, Clara had been

suffered to fall against the outside of my little tent, Northmour and I

were tumbling together on the ground, and he, with contained ferocity,

was striking for my head with the butt of his revolver. He had already

twice wounded me on the scalp; and it is to the consequent loss of

blood that I am tempted to attribute the sudden clearness of my mind.

I caught him by the wrist.

“Northmour,” I remember saying, “you can kill me afterwards. Let us

first attend to Clara.”

He was at that moment uppermost. Scarcely had the words passed my lips,

when he had leaped to his feet and ran towards the tent; and the next

moment, he was straining Clara to his heart and covering her

unconscious hands and face with his caresses.

“Shame!” I cried. “Shame to you, Northmour!”

And, giddy though I still was, I struck him repeatedly upon the head

and shoulders.

He relinquished his grasp, and faced me in the broken moonlight.

“I had you under, and I let you go,” said he; “and now you strike me!

Coward!”

“You are the coward,” I retorted. “Did she wish your kisses while she

was still sensible of what she wanted? Not she! And now she may be

dying; and you waste this precious time, and abuse her helplessness.

Stand aside, and let me help her.”

He confronted me for a moment, white and menacing; then suddenly he

stepped aside.

“Help her then,” said he.

I threw myself on my knees beside her, and loosened, as well as I was

able, her dress and corset; but while I was thus engaged, a grasp

descended on my shoulder.

“Keep your hands off her,” said Northmour fiercely. “Do you think I

have no blood in my veins?”

“Northmour,” I cried, “if you will neither help her yourself, nor let

me do so, do you know that I shall have to kill you?”

“That is better!” he cried. “Let her die also, where’s the harm? Step

aside from that girl! and stand up to fight”

“You will observe,” said I, half rising, “that I have not kissed her

yet.”

“I dare you to,” he cried.

I do not know what possessed me; it was one of the things I am most

ashamed of in my life, though, as my wife used to say, I knew that my

kisses would be always welcome were she dead or living; down I fell

again upon my knees, parted the hair from her forehead, and, with the

dearest respect, laid my lips for a moment on that cold brow. It was

such a caress as a father might have given; it was such a one as was

not unbecoming from a man soon to die to a woman already dead.

“And now,” said I, “I am at your service, Mr. Northmour.”

But I saw, to my surprise, that he had turned his back upon me.

“Do you hear?” I asked.

“Yes,” said he, “I do. If you wish to fight, I am ready. If not, go on

and save Clara. All is one to me.”

I did not wait to be twice bidden; but, stooping again over Clara,

continued my efforts to revive her. She still lay white and lifeless; I

began to fear that her sweet spirit had indeed fled beyond recall, and

horror and a sense of utter desolation seized upon my heart. I called

her by name with the most endearing inflections; I chafed and beat her

hands; now I laid her head low, now supported it against my knee; but

all seemed to be in vain, and the lids still lay heavy on her eyes.

“Northmour,” I said, “there is my hat. For God’s sake bring some water

from the spring.”

Almost in a moment he was by my side with the water. “I have brought it

in my own,” he said. “You do not grudge me the privilege?”

“Northmour,” I was beginning to say, as I laved her head and breast;

but he interrupted me savagely.

“Oh, you hush up!” he said. “The best thing you can do is to say

nothing.”

I had certainly no desire to talk, my mind being swallowed up in

concern for my dear love and her condition; so I continued in silence

to do my best towards her recovery, and, when the hat was empty,

returned it to him, with one word—“More.” He had, perhaps, gone several

times upon this errand, when Clara reopened her eyes.

“Now,” said he, “since she is better, you can spare me, can you not? I

wish you a good night, Mr. Cassilis.”

And with that he was gone among the thicket. I made a fire, for I had

now no fear of the Italians, who had even spared all the little

possessions left in my encampment; and, broken as she was by the

excitement and the hideous catastrophe of the evening, I managed, in

one way or another—by persuasion, encouragement, warmth, and such

simple remedies as I could lay my hand on—to bring her back to some

composure of mind and strength of body.

Day had already come, when a sharp “Hist!” sounded from the thicket. I

started from the ground; but the voice of Northmour was heard adding,

in the most tranquil tones: “Come here, Cassilis, and alone; I want to

show you something.”

I consulted Clara with my eyes, and, receiving her tacit permission,

left her alone, and clambered out of the den. At some distance of I saw

Northmour leaning against an elder; and, as soon as he perceived me, he

began walking seaward. I had almost overtaken him as he reached the

outskirts of the wood.

“Look,” said he, pausing.

A couple of steps more brought me out of the foliage. The light of the

morning lay cold and clear over that well-known scene. The pavilion was

but a blackened wreck; the roof had fallen in, one of the gables had

fallen out; and, far and near, the face of the links was cicatrised

with little patches of burnt furze. Thick smoke still went straight

upwards in the windless air of the morning, and a great pile of ardent

cinders filled the bare walls of the house, like coals in an open

grate. Close by the islet a schooner yacht lay to, and a well-manned

boat was pulling vigorously for the shore.

“The _Red Earl_!” I cried. “The _Red Earl_ twelve hours too late!”

“Feel in your pocket, Frank. Are you armed?” asked Northmour.

I obeyed him, and I think I must have become deadly pale. My revolver

had been taken from me.

“You see I have you in my power,” he continued. “I disarmed you last

night while you were nursing Clara; but this morning—here—take your

pistol. No thanks!” he cried, holding up his hand. “I do not like them;

that is the only way you can annoy me now.”

He began to walk forward across the links to meet the boat, and I

followed a step or two behind. In front of the pavilion I paused to see

where Mr. Huddlestone had fallen; but there was no sign of him, nor so

much as a trace of blood.

“Graden Floe,” said Northmour.

He continued to advance till we had come to the head of the beach.

“No farther, please,” said he. “Would you like to take her to Graden

House?”

“Thank you,” replied I; “I shall try to get her to the minister’s at

Graden Wester.”

The prow of the boat here grated on the beach, and a sailor jumped

ashore with a line in his hand.

“Wait a minute, lads!” cried Northmour; and then lower and to my

private ear: “You had better say nothing of all this to her,” he added.

“On the contrary!” I broke out, “she shall know everything that I can

tell.”

“You do not understand,” he returned, with an air of great dignity. “It

will be nothing to her; she expects it of me. Good-bye!” he added, with

a nod.

I offered him my hand.

“Excuse me,” said he. “It’s small, I know; but I can’t push things

quite so far as that. I don’t wish any sentimental business, to sit by

your hearth a white-haired wanderer, and all that. Quite the contrary:

I hope to God I shall never again clap eyes on either one of you.”

“Well, God bless you, Northmour!” I said heartily.

“Oh, yes,” he returned.

He walked down the beach; and the man who was ashore gave him an arm on

board, and then shoved off and leaped into the bows himself. Northmour

took the tiller; the boat rose to the waves, and the oars between the

thole-pins sounded crisp and measured in the morning air.

They were not yet half-way to the _Red Earl_, and I was still watching

their progress, when the sun rose out of the sea.

One word more, and my story is done. Years after, Northmour was killed

fighting under the colours of Garibaldi for the liberation of the

Tyrol.

A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT

A STORY OF FRANCIS VILLON

It was late in November 1456. The snow fell over Paris with rigorous,

relentless persistence; sometimes the wind made a sally and scattered

it in flying vortices; sometimes there was a lull, and flake after

flake descended out of the black night air, silent, circuitous,

interminable. To poor people, looking up under moist eyebrows, it

seemed a wonder where it all came from. Master Francis Villon had

propounded an alternative that afternoon, at a tavern window: was it

only Pagan Jupiter plucking geese upon Olympus? or were the holy angels

moulting? He was only a poor Master of Arts, he went on; and as the

question somewhat touched upon divinity, he durst not venture to

conclude. A silly old priest from Montargis, who was among the company,

treated the young rascal to a bottle of wine in honour of the jest and

the grimaces with which it was accompanied, and swore on his own white

beard that he had been just such another irreverent dog when he was

Villon’s age.

The air was raw and pointed, but not far below freezing; and the flakes

were large, damp, and adhesive. The whole city was sheeted up. An army

might have marched from end to end and not a footfall given the alarm.

If there were any belated birds in heaven, they saw the island like a

large white patch, and the bridges like slim white spars, on the black

ground of the river. High up overhead the snow settled among the

tracery of the cathedral towers. Many a niche was drifted full; many a

statue wore a long white bonnet on its grotesque or sainted head. The

gargoyles had been transformed into great false noses, drooping towards

the point. The crockets were like upright pillows swollen on one side.

In the intervals of the wind, there was a dull sound of dripping about

the precincts of the church.

The cemetery of St. John had taken its own share of the snow. All the

graves were decently covered; tall white housetops stood around in

grave array; worthy burghers were long ago in bed, benightcapped like

their domiciles; there was no light in all the neighbourhood but a

little peep from a lamp that hung swinging in the church choir, and

tossed the shadows to and fro in time to its oscillations. The clock

was hard on ten when the patrol went by with halberds and a lantern,

beating their hands; and they saw nothing suspicious about the cemetery

of St. John.

Yet there was a small house, backed up against the cemetery wall, which

was still awake, and awake to evil purpose, in that snoring district.

There was not much to betray it from without; only a stream of warm

vapour from the chimney-top, a patch where the snow melted on the roof,

and a few half-obliterated footprints at the door. But within, behind

the shuttered windows, Master Francis Villon the poet, and some of the

thievish crew with whom he consorted, were keeping the night alive and

passing round the bottle.

A great pile of living embers diffused a strong and ruddy glow from the

arched chimney. Before this straddled Dom Nicolas, the Picardy monk,

with his skirts picked up and his fat legs bared to the comfortable

warmth. His dilated shadow cut the room in half; and the firelight only

escaped on either side of his broad person, and in a little pool

between his outspread feet. His face had the beery, bruised appearance

of the continual drinker’s; it was covered with a network of congested

veins, purple in ordinary circumstances, but now pale violet, for even

with his back to the fire the cold pinched him on the other side. His

cowl had half fallen back, and made a strange excrescence on either

side of his bull neck. So he straddled, grumbling, and cut the room in

half with the shadow of his portly frame.

On the right, Villon and Guy Tabary were huddled together over a scrap

of parchment; Villon making a ballade which he was to call the “Ballade

of Roast Fish,” and Tabary spluttering admiration at his shoulder. The

poet was a rag of a man, dark, little, and lean, with hollow cheeks and

thin black locks. He carried his four-and-twenty years with feverish

animation. Greed had made folds about his eyes, evil smiles had

puckered his mouth. The wolf and pig struggled together in his face. It

was an eloquent, sharp, ugly, earthly countenance. His hands were small

and prehensile, with fingers knotted like a cord; and they were

continually flickering in front of him in violent and expressive

pantomime. As for Tabary, a broad, complacent, admiring imbecility

breathed from his squash nose and slobbering lips: he had become a

thief, just as he might have become the most decent of burgesses, by

the imperious chance that rules the lives of human geese and human

donkeys.

At the monk’s other hand, Montigny and Thevenin Pensete played a game

of chance. About the first there clung some flavour of good birth and

training, as about a fallen angel; something long, lithe, and courtly

in the person; something aquiline and darkling in the face. Thevenin,

poor soul, was in great feather: he had done a good stroke of knavery

that afternoon in the Faubourg St. Jacques, and all night he had been

gaining from Montigny. A flat smile illuminated his face; his bald head

shone rosily in a garland of red curls; his little protuberant stomach

shook with silent chucklings as he swept in his gains.

“Doubles or quits?” said Thevenin. Montigny nodded grimly.

“_Some may prefer to dine in state_,” wrote Villon, “_On bread and

cheese on silver plate_. Or—or—help me out, Guido!”

Tabary giggled.

“_Or parsley on a golden dish_,” scribbled the poet.

The wind was freshening without; it drove the snow before it, and

sometimes raised its voice in a victorious whoop, and made sepulchral

grumblings in the chimney. The cold was growing sharper as the night

went on. Villon, protruding his lips, imitated the gust with something

between a whistle and a groan. It was an eerie, uncomfortable talent of

the poet’s, much detested by the Picardy monk.

“Can’t you hear it rattle in the gibbet?” said Villon. “They are all

dancing the devil’s jig on nothing, up there. You may dance, my

gallants, you’ll be none the warmer! Whew! what a gust! Down went

somebody just now! A medlar the fewer on the three-legged

medlar-tree!—I say, Dom Nicolas, it’ll be cold to-night on the St.

Denis Road?” he asked.

Dom Nicolas winked both his big eyes, and seemed to choke upon his

Adam’s apple. Montfaucon, the great grisly Paris gibbet, stood hard by

the St. Denis Road, and the pleasantry touched him on the raw. As for

Tabary, he laughed immoderately over the medlars; he had never heard

anything more light-hearted; and he held his sides and crowed. Villon

fetched him a fillip on the nose, which turned his mirth into an attack

of coughing.

“Oh, stop that row,” said Villon, “and think of rhymes to ‘fish’.”

“Doubles or quits,” said Montigny doggedly.

“With all my heart,” quoth Thevenin.

“Is there any more in that bottle?” asked the monk.

“Open another,” said Villon. “How do you ever hope to fill that big

hogshead, your body, with little things like bottles? And how do you

expect to get to heaven? How many angels, do you fancy, can be spared

to carry up a single monk from Picardy? Or do you think yourself

another Elias—and they’ll send the coach for you?”

“_Hominibus impossibile_,” replied the monk, as he filled his glass.

Tabary was in ecstasies.

Villon filliped his nose again.

“Laugh at my jokes, if you like,” he said.

“It was very good,” objected Tabary.

Villon made a face at him. “Think of rhymes to ‘fish’,” he said. “What

have you to do with Latin? You’ll wish you knew none of it at the great

assizes, when the devil calls for Guido Tabary, clericus—the devil with

the hump-back and red-hot finger-nails. Talking of the devil,” he added

in a whisper, “look at Montigny!”

All three peered covertly at the gamester. He did not seem to be

enjoying his luck. His mouth was a little to a side; one nostril nearly

shut, and the other much inflated. The black dog was on his back, as

people say, in terrifying nursery metaphor; and he breathed hard under

the gruesome burden.

“He looks as if he could knife him,” whispered Tabary, with round eyes.

The monk shuddered, and turned his face and spread his open hands to

the red embers. It was the cold that thus affected Dom Nicolas, and not

any excess of moral sensibility.

“Come now,” said Villon—“about this ballade. How does it run so far?”

And beating time with his hand, he read it aloud to Tabary.

They were interrupted at the fourth rhyme by a brief and fatal movement

among the gamesters. The round was completed, and Thevenin was just

opening his mouth to claim another victory, when Montigny leaped up,

swift as an adder, and stabbed him to the heart. The blow took effect

before he had time to utter a cry, before he had time to move. A tremor

or two convulsed his frame; his hands opened and shut, his heels

rattled on the floor; then his head rolled backward over one shoulder

with the eyes wide open; and Thevenin Pensete’s spirit had returned to

Him who made it.

Everyone sprang to his feet; but the business was over in two twos. The

four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashion;

the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a singular and

ugly leer.

“My God!” said Tabary; and he began to pray in Latin.

Villon broke out into hysterical laughter. He came a step forward and

ducked a ridiculous bow at Thevenin, and laughed still louder. Then he

sat down suddenly, all of a heap, upon a stool, and continued laughing

bitterly as though he would shake himself to pieces.

Montigny recovered his composure first.

“Let’s see what he has about him,” he remarked; and he picked the dead

man’s pockets with a practised hand, and divided the money into four

equal portions on the table. “There’s for you,” he said.

The monk received his share with a deep sigh, and a single stealthy

glance at the dead Thevenin, who was beginning to sink into himself and

topple sideways of the chair.

“We’re all in for it,” cried Villon, swallowing his mirth. “It’s a

hanging job for every man jack of us that’s here—not to speak of those

who aren’t.” He made a shocking gesture in the air with his raised

right hand, and put out his tongue and threw his head on one side, so

as to counterfeit the appearance of one who has been hanged. Then he

pocketed his share of the spoil, and executed a shuffle with his feet

as if to restore the circulation.

Tabary was the last to help himself; he made a dash at the money, and

retired to the other end of the apartment.

Montigny stuck Thevenin upright in the chair, and drew out the dagger,

which was followed by a jet of blood.

“You fellows had better be moving,” he said, as he wiped the blade on

his victim’s doublet.

“I think we had,” returned Villon with a gulp. “Damn his fat head!” he

broke out. “It sticks in my throat like phlegm. What right has a man to

have red hair when he is dead?” And he fell all of a heap again upon

the stool, and fairly covered his face with his hands.

Montigny and Dom Nicolas laughed aloud, even Tabary feebly chiming in.

“Cry baby,” said the monk.

“I always said he was a woman,” added Montigny with a sneer. “Sit up,

can’t you?” he went on, giving another shake to the murdered body.

“Tread out that fire, Nick!”

But Nick was better employed; he was quietly taking Villon’s purse, as

the poet sat, limp and trembling, on the stool where he had been making

a ballade not three minutes before. Montigny and Tabary dumbly demanded

a share of the booty, which the monk silently promised as he passed the

little bag into the bosom of his gown. In many ways an artistic nature

unfits a man for practical existence.

No sooner had the theft been accomplished than Villon shook himself,

jumped to his feet, and began helping to scatter and extinguish the

embers. Meanwhile Montigny opened the door and cautiously peered into

the street. The coast was clear; there was no meddlesome patrol in

sight. Still it was judged wiser to slip out severally; and as Villon

was himself in a hurry to escape from the neighbourhood of the dead

Thevenin, and the rest were in a still greater hurry to get rid of him

before he should discover the loss of his money, he was the first by

general consent to issue forth into the street.

The wind had triumphed and swept all the clouds from heaven. Only a few

vapours, as thin as moonlight, fleeting rapidly across the stars. It

was bitter cold; and by a common optical effect, things seemed almost

more definite than in the broadest daylight. The sleeping city was

absolutely still: a company of white hoods, a field full of little

Alps, below the twinkling stars. Villon cursed his fortune. Would it

were still snowing! Now, wherever he went, he left an indelible trail

behind him on the glittering streets; wherever he went he was still

tethered to the house by the cemetery of St. John; wherever he went he

must weave, with his own plodding feet, the rope that bound him to the

crime and would bind him to the gallows. The leer of the dead man came

back to him with a new significance. He snapped his fingers as if to

pluck up his own spirits, and choosing a street at random, stepped

boldly forward in the snow.

Two things preoccupied him as he went: the aspect of the gallows at

Montfaucon in this bright windy phase of the night’s existence, for

one; and for another, the look of the dead man with his bald head and

garland of red curls. Both struck cold upon his heart, and he kept

quickening his pace as if he could escape from unpleasant thoughts by

mere fleetness of foot. Sometimes he looked back over his shoulder with

a sudden nervous jerk; but he was the only moving thing in the white

streets, except when the wind swooped round a corner and threw up the

snow, which was beginning to freeze, in spouts of glittering dust.

Suddenly he saw, a long way before him, a black clump and a couple of

lanterns. The clump was in motion, and the lanterns swung as though

carried by men walking. It was a patrol. And though it was merely

crossing his line of march, he judged it wiser to get out of eyeshot as

speedily as he could. He was not in the humour to be challenged, and he

was conscious of making a very conspicuous mark upon the snow. Just on

his left hand there stood a great hotel, with some turrets and a large

porch before the door; it was half-ruinous, he remembered, and had long

stood empty; and so he made three steps of it and jumped into the

shelter of the porch. It was pretty dark inside, after the glimmer of

the snowy streets, and he was groping forward with outspread hands,

when he stumbled over some substance which offered an indescribable

mixture of resistances, hard and soft, firm and loose. His heart gave a

leap, and he sprang two steps back and stared dreadfully at the

obstacle. Then he gave a little laugh of relief. It was only a woman,

and she dead. He knelt beside her to make sure upon this latter point.

She was freezing cold, and rigid like a stick. A little ragged finery

fluttered in the wind about her hair, and her cheeks had been heavily

rouged that same afternoon. Her pockets were quite empty; but in her

stocking, underneath the garter, Villon found two of the small coins

that went by the name of whites. It was little enough; but it was

always something; and the poet was moved with a deep sense of pathos

that she should have died before she had spent her money. That seemed

to him a dark and pitiable mystery; and he looked from the coins in his

hand to the dead woman, and back again to the coins, shaking his head

over the riddle of man’s life. Henry V. of England, dying at Vincennes

just after he had conquered France, and this poor jade cut off by a

cold draught in a great man’s doorway, before she had time to spend her

couple of whites—it seemed a cruel way to carry on the world. Two

whites would have taken such a little while to squander; and yet it

would have been one more good taste in the mouth, one more smack of the

lips, before the devil got the soul, and the body was left to birds and

vermin. He would like to use all his tallow before the light was blown

out and the lantern broken.

While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he was feeling,

half mechanically, for his purse. Suddenly his heart stopped beating; a

feeling of cold scales passed up the back of his legs, and a cold blow

seemed to fall upon his scalp. He stood petrified for a moment; then he

felt again with one feverish movement; and then his loss burst upon

him, and he was covered at once with perspiration. To spendthrifts

money is so living and actual—it is such a thin veil between them and

their pleasures! There is only one limit to their fortune—that of time;

and a spendthrift with only a few crowns is the Emperor of Rome until

they are spent. For such a person to lose his money is to suffer the

most shocking reverse, and fall from heaven to hell, from all to

nothing, in a breath. And all the more if he has put his head in the

halter for it; if he may be hanged to-morrow for that same purse, so

dearly earned, so foolishly departed! Villon stood and cursed; he threw

the two whites into the street; he shook his fist at heaven; he

stamped, and was not horrified to find himself trampling the poor

corpse. Then he began rapidly to retrace his steps towards the house

beside the cemetery. He had forgotten all fear of the patrol, which was

long gone by at any rate, and had no idea but that of his lost purse.

It was in vain that he looked right and left upon the snow: nothing was

to be seen. He had not dropped it in the streets. Had it fallen in the

house? He would have liked dearly to go in and see; but the idea of the

grisly occupant unmanned him. And he saw besides, as he drew near, that

their efforts to put out the fire had been unsuccessful; on the

contrary, it had broken into a blaze, and a changeful light played in

the chinks of door and window, and revived his terror for the

authorities and Paris gibbet.

He returned to the hotel with the porch, and groped about upon the snow

for the money he had thrown away in his childish passion. But he could

only find one white; the other had probably struck sideways and sunk

deeply in. With a single white in his pocket, all his projects for a

rousing night in some wild tavern vanished utterly away. And it was not

only pleasure that fled laughing from his grasp; positive discomfort,

positive pain, attacked him as he stood ruefully before the porch. His

perspiration had dried upon him; and though the wind had now fallen, a

binding frost was setting in stronger with every hour, and be felt

benumbed and sick at heart. What was to be done? Late as was the hour,

improbable as was success, he would try the house of his adopted

father, the chaplain of St. Benoît.

He ran there all the way, and knocked timidly. There was no answer. He

knocked again and again, taking heart with every stroke; and at last

steps were heard approaching from within. A barred wicket fell open in

the iron-studded door, and emitted a gush of yellow light.

“Hold up your face to the wicket,” said the chaplain from within.

“It’s only me,” whimpered Villon.

“Oh, it’s only you, is it?” returned the chaplain; and he cursed him

with foul unpriestly oaths for disturbing him at such an hour, and bade

him be off to hell, where he came from.

“My hands are blue to the wrist,” pleaded Villon; “my feet are dead and

full of twinges; my nose aches with the sharp air; the cold lies at my

heart. I may be dead before morning. Only this once, father, and before

God I will never ask again!”

“You should have come earlier,” said the ecclesiastic coolly. “Young

men require a lesson now and then.” He shut the wicket and retired

deliberately into the interior of the house.

Villon was beside himself; he beat upon the door with his hands and

feet, and shouted hoarsely after the chaplain.

“Wormy old fox!” he cried. “If I had my hand under your twist, I would

send you flying headlong into the bottomless pit.”

A door shut in the interior, faintly audible to the poet down long

passages. He passed his hand over his mouth with an oath. And then the

humour of the situation struck him, and he laughed and looked lightly

up to heaven, where the stars seemed to be winking over his

discomfiture.

What was to be done? It looked very like a night in the frosty streets.

The idea of the dead woman popped into his imagination, and gave him a

hearty fright; what had happened to her in the early night might very

well happen to him before morning. And he so young! and with such

immense possibilities of disorderly amusement before him! He felt quite

pathetic over the notion of his own fate, as if it had been some one

else’s, and made a little imaginative vignette of the scene in the

morning when they should find his body.

He passed all his chances under review, turning the white between his

thumb and forefinger. Unfortunately he was on bad terms with some old

friends who would once have taken pity on him in such a plight. He had

lampooned them in verses, he had beaten and cheated them; and yet now,

when he was in so close a pinch, he thought there was at least one who

might perhaps relent. It was a chance. It was worth trying at least,

and he would go and see.

On the way, two little accidents happened to him which coloured his

musings in a very different manner. For, first, he fell in with the

track of a patrol, and walked in it for some hundred yards, although it

lay out of his direction. And this spirited him up; at least he had

confused his trail; for he was still possessed with the idea of people

tracking him all about Paris over the snow, and collaring him next

morning before he was awake. The other matter affected him very

differently. He passed a street corner, where, not so long before, a

woman and her child had been devoured by wolves. This was just the kind

of weather, he reflected, when wolves might take it into their heads to

enter Paris again; and a lone man in these deserted streets would run

the chance of something worse than a mere scare. He stopped and looked

upon the place with an unpleasant interest—it was a centre where

several lanes intersected each other; and he looked down them all one

after another, and held his breath to listen, lest he should detect

some galloping black things on the snow or hear the sound of howling

between him and the river. He remembered his mother telling him the

story and pointing out the spot, while he was yet a child. His mother!

If he only knew where she lived, he might make sure at least of

shelter. He determined he would inquire upon the morrow; nay, he would

go and see her too, poor old girl! So thinking, he arrived at his

destination—his last hope for the night.

The house was quite dark, like its neighbours; and yet after a few

taps, he heard a movement overhead, a door opening, and a cautious

voice asking who was there. The poet named himself in a loud whisper,

and waited, not without some trepidation, the result. Nor had he to

wait long. A window was suddenly opened, and a pailful of slops

splashed down upon the doorstep. Villon had not been unprepared for

something of the sort, and had put himself as much in shelter as the

nature of the porch admitted; but for all that, he was deplorably

drenched below the waist. His hose began to freeze almost at once.

Death from cold and exposure stared him in the face; he remembered he

was of phthisical tendency, and began coughing tentatively. But the

gravity of the danger steadied his nerves. He stopped a few hundred

yards from the door where he had been so rudely used, and reflected

with his finger to his nose. He could only see one way of getting a

lodging, and that was to take it. He had noticed a house not far away,

which looked as if it might be easily broken into, and thither he

betook himself promptly, entertaining himself on the way with the idea

of a room still hot, with a table still loaded with the remains of

supper, where he might pass the rest of the black hours, and whence he

should issue, on the morrow, with an armful of valuable plate. He even

considered on what viands and what wines he should prefer; and as he

was calling the roll of his favourite dainties, roast fish presented

itself to his mind with an odd mixture of amusement and horror.

“I shall never finish that ballade,” he thought to himself; and then,

with another shudder at the recollection, “Oh, damn his fat head!” he

repeated fervently, and spat upon the snow.

The house in question looked dark at first sight; but as Villon made a

preliminary inspection in search of the handiest point of attack, a

little twinkle of light caught his eye from behind a curtained window.

“The devil!” he thought. “People awake! Some student or some saint,

confound the crew! Can’t they get drunk and lie in bed snoring like

their neighbours? What’s the good of curfew, and poor devils of

bell-ringers jumping at a rope’s end in bell-towers? What’s the use of

day, if people sit up all night? The gripes to them!” He grinned as he

saw where his logic was leading him. “Every man to his business, after

all,” added he, “and if they’re awake, by the Lord, I may come by a

supper honestly for this once, and cheat the devil.”

He went boldly to the door and knocked with an assured hand. On both

previous occasions, he had knocked timidly and with some dread of

attracting notice; but now when he had just discarded the thought of a

burglarious entry, knocking at a door seemed a mighty simple and

innocent proceeding. The sound of his blows echoed through the house

with thin, phantasmal reverberations, as though it were quite empty;

but these had scarcely died away before a measured tread drew near, a

couple of bolts were withdrawn, and one wing was opened broadly, as

though no guile or fear of guile were known to those within. A tall

figure of a man, muscular and spare, but a little bent, confronted

Villon. The head was massive in bulk, but finely sculptured; the nose

blunt at the bottom, but refining upward to where it joined a pair of

strong and honest eyebrows; the mouth and eyes surrounded with delicate

markings, and the whole face based upon a thick white beard, boldly and

squarely trimmed. Seen as it was by the light of a flickering

hand-lamp, it looked perhaps nobler than it had a right to do; but it

was a fine face, honourable rather than intelligent, strong, simple,

and righteous.

“You knock late, sir,” said the old man in resonant, courteous tones.

Villon cringed, and brought up many servile words of apology; at a

crisis of this sort, the beggar was uppermost in him, and the man of

genius hid his head with confusion.

“You are cold,” repeated the old man, “and hungry? Well, step in.” And

he ordered him into the house with a noble enough gesture.

“Some great seigneur,” thought Villon, as his host, setting down the

lamp on the flagged pavement of the entry, shot the bolts once more

into their places.

“You will pardon me if I go in front,” he said, when this was done; and

he preceded the poet upstairs into a large apartment, warmed with a pan

of charcoal and lit by a great lamp hanging from the roof. It was very

bare of furniture: only some gold plate on a sideboard; some folios;

and a stand of armour between the windows. Some smart tapestry hung

upon the walls, representing the crucifixion of our Lord in one piece,

and in another a scene of shepherds and shepherdesses by a running

stream. Over the chimney was a shield of arms.

“Will you seat yourself,” said the old man, “and forgive me if I leave

you? I am alone in my house to-night, and if you are to eat I must

forage for you myself.”

No sooner was his host gone than Villon leaped from the chair on which

he had just seated himself, and began examining the room, with the

stealth and passion of a cat. He weighed the gold flagons in his hand,

opened all the folios, and investigated the arms upon the shield, and

the stuff with which the seats were lined. He raised the window

curtains, and saw that the windows were set with rich stained glass in

figures, so far as he could see, of martial import. Then he stood in

the middle of the room, drew a long breath, and retaining it with

puffed cheeks, looked round and round him, turning on his heels, as if

to impress every feature of the apartment on his memory.

“Seven pieces of plate,” he said. “If there had been ten, I would have

risked it. A fine house, and a fine old master, so help me all the

saints!”

And just then, hearing the old man’s tread returning along the

corridor, he stole back to his chair, and began humbly toasting his wet

legs before the charcoal pan.

His entertainer had a plate of meat in one hand and a jug of wine in

the other. He set down the plate upon the table, motioning Villon to

draw in his chair, and going to the sideboard, brought back two

goblets, which he filled.

“I drink to your better fortune,” he said, gravely touching Villon’s

cup with his own.

“To our better acquaintance,” said the poet, growing bold. A mere man

of the people would have been awed by the courtesy of the old seigneur,

but Villon was hardened in that matter; he had made mirth for great

lords before now, and found them as black rascals as himself. And so he

devoted himself to the viands with a ravenous gusto, while the old man,

leaning backward, watched him with steady, curious eyes.

“You have blood on your shoulder, my man,” he said. Montigny must have

laid his wet right hand upon him as he left the house. He cursed

Montigny in his heart.

“It was none of my shedding,” he stammered.

“I had not supposed so,” returned his host quietly.

“A brawl?”

“Well, something of that sort,” Villon admitted with a quaver.

“Perhaps a fellow murdered?”

“Oh no, not murdered,” said the poet, more and more confused. “It was

all fair play—murdered by accident. I had no hand in it, God strike me

dead!” he added fervently.

“One rogue the fewer, I dare say,” observed the master of the house.

“You may dare to say that,” agreed Villon, infinitely relieved. “As big

a rogue as there is between here and Jerusalem. He turned up his toes

like a lamb. But it was a nasty thing to look at. I dare say you’ve

seen dead men in your time, my lord?” he added, glancing at the armour.

“Many,” said the old man. “I have followed the wars, as you imagine.”

Villon laid down his knife and fork, which he had just taken up again.

“Were any of them bald?” he asked.

“Oh yes, and with hair as white as mine.”

“I don’t think I should mind the white so much,” said Villon. “His was

red.” And he had a return of his shuddering and tendency to laughter,

which he drowned with a great draught of wine. “I’m a little put out

when I think of it,” he went on. “I knew him—damn him! And then the

cold gives a man fancies—or the fancies give a man cold, I don’t know

which.”

“Have you any money?” asked the old man.

“I have one white,” returned the poet, laughing. “I got it out of a

dead jade’s stocking in a porch. She was as dead as Cæsar, poor wench,

and as cold as a church, with bits of ribbon sticking in her hair. This

is a hard world in winter for wolves and wenches and poor rogues like

me.”

“I,” said the old man, “am Enguerrand de la Feuillée, seigneur de

Brisetout, bailly du Patatrac. Who and what may you be?”

Villon rose and made a suitable reverence. “I am called Francis

Villon,” he said, “a poor Master of Arts of this university. I know

some Latin, and a deal of vice. I can make chansons, ballades, lais,

virelais, and roundels, and I am very fond of wine. I was born in a

garret, and I shall not improbably die upon the gallows. I may add, my

lord, that from this night forward I am your lordship’s very obsequious

servant to command.”

“No servant of mine,” said the knight; “my guest for this evening, and

no more.”

“A very grateful guest,” said Villon politely; and he drank in dumb

show to his entertainer.

“You are shrewd,” began the old man, tapping his forehead, “very

shrewd; you have learning; you are a clerk; and yet you take a small

piece of money off a dead woman in the street. Is it not a kind of

theft?”

“It is a kind of theft much practised in the wars, my lord.”

“The wars are the field of honour,” returned the old man proudly.

“There a man plays his life upon the cast; he fights in the name of his

lord the king, his Lord God, and all their lordships the holy saints

and angels.”

“Put it,” said Villon, “that I were really a thief, should I not play

my life also, and against heavier odds?”

“For gain, but not for honour.”

“Gain?” repeated Villon with a shrug. “Gain! The poor fellow wants

supper, and takes it. So does the soldier in a campaign. Why, what are

all these requisitions we hear so much about? If they are not gain to

those who take them, they are loss enough to the others. The

men-at-arms drink by a good fire, while the burgher bites his nails to

buy them wine and wood. I have seen a good many ploughmen swinging on

trees about the country, ay, I have seen thirty on one elm, and a very

poor figure they made; and when I asked some one how all these came to

be hanged, I was told it was because they could not scrape together

enough crowns to satisfy the men-at-arms.”

“These things are a necessity of war, which the low-born must endure

with constancy. It is true that some captains drive over hard; there

are spirits in every rank not easily moved by pity; and indeed many

follow arms who are no better than brigands.”

“You see,” said the poet, “you cannot separate the soldier from the

brigand; and what is a thief but an isolated brigand with circumspect

manners? I steal a couple of mutton chops, without so much as

disturbing people’s sleep; the farmer grumbles a bit, but sups none the

less wholesomely on what remains. You come up blowing gloriously on a

trumpet, take away the whole sheep, and beat the farmer pitifully into

the bargain. I have no trumpet; I am only Tom, Dick, or Harry; I am a

rogue and a dog, and hanging’s too good for me—with all my heart; but

just you ask the farmer which of us he prefers, just find out which of

us he lies awake to curse on cold nights.”

“Look at us two,” said his lordship. “I am old, strong, and honoured.

If I were turned from my house to-morrow, hundreds would be proud to

shelter me. Poor people would go out and pass the night in the streets

with their children, if I merely hinted that I wished to be alone. And

I find you up, wandering homeless, and picking farthings off dead women

by the wayside! I fear no man and nothing; I have seen you tremble and

lose countenance at a word. I wait God’s summons contentedly in my own

house, or, if it please the king to call me out again, upon the field

of battle. You look for the gallows; a rough, swift death, without hope

or honour. Is there no difference between these two?”

“As far as to the moon,” Villon acquiesced. “But if I had been born

lord of Brisetout, and you had been the poor scholar Francis, would the

difference have been any the less? Should not I have been warming my

knees at this charcoal pan, and would not you have been groping for

farthings in the snow? Should not I have been the soldier, and you the

thief?”

“A thief!” cried the old man. “I a thief! If you understood your words,

you would repent them.”

Villon turned out his hands with a gesture of inimitable impudence. “If

your lordship had done me the honour to follow my argument!” he said.

“I do you too much honour in submitting to your presence,” said the

knight. “Learn to curb your tongue when you speak with old and

honourable men, or some one hastier than I may reprove you in a sharper

fashion.” And he rose and paced the lower end of the apartment,

struggling with anger and antipathy. Villon surreptitiously refilled

his cup, and settled himself more comfortably in the chair, crossing

his knees and leaning his head upon one hand and the elbow against the

back of the chair. He was now replete and warm; and he was in nowise

frightened for his host, having gauged him as justly as was possible

between two such different characters. The night was far spent, and in

a very comfortable fashion after all; and he felt morally certain of a

safe departure on the morrow.

“Tell me one thing,” said the old man, pausing in his walk. “Are you

really a thief?”

“I claim the sacred rights of hospitality,” returned the poet. “My

lord, I am.”

“You are very young,” the knight continued.

“I should never have been so old,” replied Villon, showing his fingers,

“if I had not helped myself with these ten talents. They have been my

nursing mothers and my nursing fathers.”

“You may still repent and change.”

“I repent daily,” said the poet. “There are few people more given to

repentance than poor Francis. As for change, let somebody change my

circumstances. A man must continue to eat, if it were only that he may

continue to repent.”

“The change must begin in the heart,” returned the old man solemnly.

“My dear lord,” answered Villon, “do you really fancy that I steal for

pleasure? I hate stealing, like any other piece of work or of danger.

My teeth chatter when I see a gallows. But I must eat, I must drink, I

must mix in society of some sort. What the devil! Man is not a solitary

animal—_Cui Deus fæminam tradit_. Make me king’s pantler—make me abbot

of St. Denis; make me bailly of the Patatrac; and then I shall be

changed indeed. But as long as you leave me the poor scholar Francis

Villon, without a farthing, why, of course, I remain the same.”

“The grace of God is all-powerful.”

“I should be a heretic to question it,” said Francis. “It has made you

lord of Brisetout and bailly of the Patatrac; it has given me nothing

but the quick wits under my hat and these ten toes upon my hands. May I

help myself to wine? I thank you respectfully. By God’s grace, you have

a very superior vintage.”

The lord of Brisetout walked to and fro with his hands behind his back.

Perhaps he was not yet quite settled in his mind about the parallel

between thieves and soldiers; perhaps Villon had interested him by some

cross-thread of sympathy; perhaps his wits were simply muddled by so

much unfamiliar reasoning; but whatever the cause, he somehow yearned

to convert the young man to a better way of thinking, and could not

make up his mind to drive him forth again into the street.

“There is something more than I can understand in this,” he said at

length. “Your mouth is full of subtleties, and the devil has led you

very far astray; but the devil is only a very weak spirit before God’s

truth, and all his subtleties vanish at a word of true honour, like

darkness at morning. Listen to me once more. I learned long ago that a

gentleman should live chivalrously and lovingly to God, and the king,

and his lady; and though I have seen many strange things done, I have

still striven to command my ways upon that rule. It is not only written

in all noble histories, but in every man’s heart, if he will take care

to read. You speak of food and wine, and I know very well that hunger

is a difficult trial to endure; but you do not speak of other wants;

you say nothing of honour, of faith to God and other men, of courtesy,

of love without reproach. It may be that I am not very wise—and yet I

think I am—but you seem to me like one who has lost his way and made a

great error in life. You are attending to the little wants, and you

have totally forgotten the great and only real ones, like a man who

should be doctoring a toothache on the Judgment Day. For such things as

honour and love and faith are not only nobler than food and drink, but

indeed I think that we desire them more, and suffer more sharply for

their absence. I speak to you as I think you will most easily

understand me. Are you not, while careful to fill your belly,

disregarding another appetite in your heart, which spoils the pleasure

of your life and keeps you continually wretched?”

Villon was sensibly nettled under all this sermonising. “You think I

have no sense of honour!” he cried. “I’m poor enough, God knows! It’s

hard to see rich people with their gloves, and you blowing in your

hands. An empty belly is a bitter thing, although you speak so lightly

of it. If you had had as many as I, perhaps you would change your tune.

Any way I’m a thief—make the most of that—but I’m not a devil from

hell, God strike me dead. I would have you to know I’ve an honour of my

own, as good as yours, though I don’t prate about it all day long, as

if it was a God’s miracle to have any. It seems quite natural to me; I

keep it in its box till it’s wanted. Why now, look you here, how long

have I been in this room with you? Did you not tell me you were alone

in the house? Look at your gold plate! You’re strong, if you like, but

you’re old and unarmed, and I have my knife. What did I want but a jerk

of the elbow and here would have been you with the cold steel in your

bowels, and there would have been me, linking in the streets, with an

armful of gold cups! Did you suppose I hadn’t wit enough to see that?

And I scorned the action. There are your damned goblets, as safe as in

a church; there are you, with your heart ticking as good as new; and

here am I, ready to go out again as poor as I came in, with my one

white that you threw in my teeth! And you think I have no sense of

honour—God strike me dead!”

The old man stretched out his right arm. “I will tell you what you

are,” he said. “You are a rogue, my man, an impudent and a

black-hearted rogue and vagabond. I have passed an hour with you. Oh!

believe me, I feel myself disgraced! And you have eaten and drunk at my

table. But now I am sick at your presence; the day has come, and the

night-bird should be off to his roost. Will you go before, or after?”

“Which you please,” returned the poet, rising. “I believe you to be

strictly honourable.” He thoughtfully emptied his cup. “I wish I could

add you were intelligent,” he went on, knocking on his head with his

knuckles. “Age, age! the brains stiff and rheumatic.”

The old man preceded him from a point of self-respect; Villon followed,

whistling, with his thumbs in his girdle.

“God pity you,” said the lord of Brisetout at the door.

“Good-bye, papa,” returned Villon with a yawn. “Many thanks for the

cold mutton.”

The door closed behind him. The dawn was breaking over the white roofs.

A chill, uncomfortable morning ushered in the day. Villon stood and

heartily stretched himself in the middle of the road.

“A very dull old gentleman,” he thought. “I wonder what his goblets may

be worth.”

THE SIRE DE MALÉTROIT’S DOOR

Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted himself a

grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. Lads were

early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has been in a

pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one’s man in an honourable

fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a certain

swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up his horse

with due care, and supped with due deliberation; and then, in a very

agreeable frame of mind, went out to pay a visit in the grey of the

evening. It was not a very wise proceeding on the young man’s part. He

would have done better to remain beside the fire or go decently to bed.

For the town was full of the troops of Burgundy and England under a

mixed command; and though Denis was there on safe-conduct, his

safe-conduct was like to serve him little on a chance encounter.

It was September 1429; the weather had fallen sharp; a flighty piping

wind, laden with showers, beat about the township; and the dead leaves

ran riot along the streets. Here and there a window was already lighted

up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry over supper within, came

forth in fits and was swallowed up and carried away by the wind. The

night fell swiftly; the flag of England, fluttering on the spire-top,

grew ever fainter and fainter against the flying clouds—a black speck

like a swallow in the tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky. As the night

fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under archways and roar amid the

tree-tops in the valley below the town.

Denis de Beaulieu walked fast and was soon knocking at his friend’s

door; but though he promised himself to stay only a little while and

make an early return, his welcome was so pleasant, and he found so much

to delay him, that it was already long past midnight before he said

good-bye upon the threshold. The wind had fallen again in the

meanwhile; the night was as black as the grave; not a star, nor a

glimmer of moonshine, slipped through the canopy of cloud. Denis was

ill-acquainted with the intricate lanes of Chateau Landon; even by

daylight he had found some trouble in picking his way; and in this

absolute darkness he soon lost it altogether. He was certain of one

thing only—to keep mounting the hill; for his friend’s house lay at the

lower end, or tail, of Chateau Landon, while the inn was up at the

head, under the great church spire. With this clue to go upon he

stumbled and groped forward, now breathing more freely in open places

where there was a good slice of sky overhead, now feeling along the

wall in stifling closes. It is an eerie and mysterious position to be

thus submerged in opaque blackness in an almost unknown town. The

silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window

bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad;

the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a

piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the

pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and

bewildering appearances, as if to lead him farther from his way. For

Denis, who had to regain his inn without attracting notice, there was

real danger as well as mere discomfort in the walk; and he went warily

and boldly at once, and at every corner paused to make an observation.

He had been for some time threading a lane so narrow that he could

touch a wall with either hand, when it began to open out and go sharply

downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of his inn; but

the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to reconnoitre. The

lane ended in a terrace with a bartizan wall, which gave an out-look

between high houses, as out of an embrasure, into the valley lying dark

and formless several hundred feet below. Denis looked down, and could

discern a few tree-tops waving and a single speck of brightness where

the river ran across a weir. The weather was clearing up, and the sky

had lightened, so as to show the outline of the heavier clouds and the

dark margin of the hills. By the uncertain glimmer, the house on his

left hand should be a place of some pretensions; it was surmounted by

several pinnacles and turret-tops; the round stern of a chapel, with a

fringe of flying buttresses, projected boldly from the main block; and

the door was sheltered under a deep porch carved with figures and

overhung by two long gargoyles. The windows of the chapel gleamed

through their intricate tracery with a light as of many tapers, and

threw out the buttresses and the peaked roof in a more intense

blackness against the sky. It was plainly the hotel of some great

family of the neighbourhood; and as it reminded Denis of a town house

of his own at Bourges, he stood for some time gazing up at it and

mentally gauging the skill of the architects and the consideration of

the two families.

There seemed to be no issue to the terrace but the lane by which he had

reached it; he could only retrace his steps, but he had gained some

notion of his whereabouts, and hoped by this means to hit the main

thoroughfare and speedily regain the inn. He was reckoning without that

chapter of accidents which was to make this night memorable above all

others in his career; for he had not gone back above a hundred yards

before he saw a light coming to meet him, and heard loud voices

speaking together in the echoing narrows of the lane. It was a party of

men-at-arms going the night round with torches. Denis assured himself

that they had all been making free with the wine-bowl, and were in no

mood to be particular about safe-conducts or the niceties of chivalrous

war. It was as like as not that they would kill him like a dog and

leave him where he fell. The situation was inspiriting but nervous.

Their own torches would conceal him from sight, he reflected; and he

hoped that they would drown the noise of his footsteps with their own

empty voices. If he were but fleet and silent, he might evade their

notice altogether.

Unfortunately, as he turned to beat a retreat, his foot rolled upon a

pebble; he fell against the wall with an ejaculation, and his sword

rang loudly on the stones. Two or three voices demanded who went

there—some in French, some in English; but Denis made no reply, and ran

the faster down the lane. Once upon the terrace, he paused to look

back. They still kept calling after him, and just then began to double

the pace in pursuit, with a considerable clank of armour, and great

tossing of the torchlight to and fro in the narrow jaws of the passage.

Denis cast a look around and darted into the porch. There he might

escape observation, or—if that were too much to expect—was in a capital

posture whether for parley or defence. So thinking, he drew his sword

and tried to set his back against the door. To his surprise, it yielded

behind his weight; and though he turned in a moment, continued to swing

back on oiled and noiseless hinges, until it stood wide open on a black

interior. When things fall out opportunely for the person concerned, he

is not apt to be critical about the how or why, his own immediate

personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest

oddities and resolutions in our sublunary things; and so Denis, without

a moment’s hesitation, stepped within and partly closed the door behind

him to conceal his place of refuge. Nothing was further from his

thoughts than to close it altogether; but for some inexplicable

reason—perhaps by a spring or a weight—the ponderous mass of oak

whipped itself out of his fingers and clanked to, with a formidable

rumble and a noise like the falling of an automatic bar.

The round, at that very moment, debouched upon the terrace and

proceeded to summon him with shouts and curses. He heard them ferreting

in the dark corners; the stock of a lance even rattled along the outer

surface of the door behind which he stood; but these gentlemen were in

too high a humour to be long delayed, and soon made off down a

corkscrew pathway which had escaped Denis’s observation, and passed out

of sight and hearing along the battlements of the town.

Denis breathed again. He gave them a few minutes’ grace for fear of

accidents, and then groped about for some means of opening the door and

slipping forth again. The inner surface was quite smooth, not a handle,

not a moulding, not a projection of any sort. He got his finger-nails

round the edges and pulled, but the mass was immovable. He shook it, it

was as firm as a rock. Denis de Beaulieu frowned and gave vent to a

little noiseless whistle. What ailed the door? he wondered. Why was it

open? How came it to shut so easily and so effectually after him? There

was something obscure and underhand about all this, that was little to

the young man’s fancy. It looked like a snare; and yet who could

suppose a snare in such a quiet by-street and in a house of so

prosperous and even noble an exterior? And yet—snare or no snare,

intentionally or unintentionally—here he was, prettily trapped; and for

the life of him he could see no way out of it again. The darkness began

to weigh upon him. He gave ear; all was silent without, but within and

close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a faint sobbing rustle, a

little stealthy creak—as though many persons were at his side, holding

themselves quite still, and governing even their respiration with the

extreme of slyness. The idea went to his vitals with a shock, and he

faced about suddenly as if to defend his life. Then, for the first

time, he became aware of a light about the level of his eyes and at

some distance in the interior of the house—a vertical thread of light,

widening towards the bottom, such as might escape between two wings of

arras over a doorway. To see anything was a relief to Denis; it was

like a piece of solid ground to a man labouring in a morass; his mind

seized upon it with avidity; and he stood staring at it and trying to

piece together some logical conception of his surroundings. Plainly

there was a flight of steps ascending from his own level to that of

this illuminated doorway; and indeed he thought he could make out

another thread of light, as fine as a needle and as faint as

phosphorescence, which might very well be reflected along the polished

wood of a handrail. Since he had begun to suspect that he was not

alone, his heart had continued to beat with smothering violence, and an

intolerable desire for action of any sort had possessed itself of his

spirit. He was in deadly peril, he believed. What could be more natural

than to mount the staircase, lift the curtain, and confront his

difficulty at once? At least he would be dealing with something

tangible; at least he would be no longer in the dark. He stepped slowly

forward with outstretched hands, until his foot struck the bottom step;

then he rapidly scaled the stairs, stood for a moment to compose his

expression, lifted the arras and went in.

He found himself in a large apartment of polished stone. There were

three doors; one on each of three sides; all similarly curtained with

tapestry. The fourth side was occupied by two large windows and a great

stone chimney-piece, carved with the arms of the Malétroits. Denis

recognised the bearings, and was gratified to find himself in such good

hands. The room was strongly illuminated; but it contained little

furniture except a heavy table and a chair or two, the hearth was

innocent of fire, and the pavement was but sparsely strewn with rushes

clearly many days old.

On a high chair beside the chimney, and directly facing Denis as he

entered, sat a little old gentleman in a fur tippet. He sat with his

legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine stood by

his elbow on a bracket on the wall. His countenance had a strongly

masculine cast; not properly human, but such as we see in the bull, the

goat, or the domestic boar; something equivocal and wheedling,

something greedy, brutal, and dangerous. The upper lip was inordinately

full, as though swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the

peaked eyebrows, and the small, strong eyes were quaintly and almost

comically evil in expression. Beautiful white hair hung straight all

round his head, like a saint’s, and fell in a single curl upon the

tippet. His beard and moustache were the pink of venerable sweetness.

Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no

mark upon his hands; and the Malétroit hand was famous. It would be

difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in

design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of Leonardo’s

women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance when closed;

the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness.

It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable, that a man with hands

like these should keep them devoutly folded in his lap like a virgin

martyr—that a man with so intense and startling an expression of face

should sit patiently on his seat and contemplate people with an

unwinking stare, like a god, or a god’s statue. His quiescence seemed

ironical and treacherous, it fitted so poorly with his looks.

Such was Alain, Sire de Malétroit.

Denis and he looked silently at each other for a second or two.

“Pray step in,” said the Sire de Malétroit. “I have been expecting you

all the evening.”

He had not risen, but he accompanied his words with a smile and a

slight but courteous inclination of the head. Partly from the smile,

partly from the strange musical murmur with which the Sire prefaced his

observation, Denis felt a strong shudder of disgust go through his

marrow. And what with disgust and honest confusion of mind, he could

scarcely get words together in reply.

“I fear,” he said, “that this is a double accident. I am not the person

you suppose me. It seems you were looking for a visit; but for my part,

nothing was further from my thoughts—nothing could be more contrary to

my wishes—than this intrusion.”

“Well, well,” replied the old gentleman indulgently, “here you are,

which is the main point. Seat yourself, my friend, and put yourself

entirely at your ease. We shall arrange our little affairs presently.”

Denis perceived that the matter was still complicated with some

misconception, and he hastened to continue his explanations.

“Your door . . . ” he began.

“About my door?” asked the other, raising his peaked eyebrows. “A

little piece of ingenuity.” And he shrugged his shoulders. “A

hospitable fancy! By your own account, you were not desirous of making

my acquaintance. We old people look for such reluctance now and then;

and when it touches our honour, we cast about until we find some way of

overcoming it. You arrive uninvited, but believe me, very welcome.”

“You persist in error, sir,” said Denis. “There can be no question

between you and me. I am a stranger in this countryside. My name is

Denis, damoiseau de Beaulieu. If you see me in your house, it is only—”

“My young friend,” interrupted the other, “you will permit me to have

my own ideas on that subject. They probably differ from yours at the

present moment,” he added with a leer, “but time will show which of us

is in the right.”

Denis was convinced he had to do with a lunatic. He seated himself with

a shrug, content to wait the upshot; and a pause ensued, during which

he thought he could distinguish a hurried gabbling as of prayer from

behind the arras immediately opposite him. Sometimes there seemed to be

but one person engaged, sometimes two; and the vehemence of the voice,

low as it was, seemed to indicate either great haste or an agony of

spirit. It occurred to him that this piece of tapestry covered the

entrance to the chapel he had noticed from without.

The old gentleman meanwhile surveyed Denis from head to foot with a

smile, and from time to time emitted little noises like a bird or a

mouse, which seemed to indicate a high degree of satisfaction. This

state of matters became rapidly insupportable; and Denis, to put an end

to it, remarked politely that the wind had gone down.

The old gentleman fell into a fit of silent laughter, so prolonged and

violent that he became quite red in the face. Denis got upon his feet

at once, and put on his hat with a flourish.

“Sir,” he said, “if you are in your wits, you have affronted me

grossly. If you are out of them, I flatter myself I can find better

employment for my brains than to talk with lunatics. My conscience is

clear; you have made a fool of me from the first moment; you have

refused to hear my explanations; and now there is no power under God

will make me stay here any longer; and if I cannot make my way out in a

more decent fashion, I will hack your door in pieces with my sword.”

The Sire de Malétroit raised his right hand and wagged it at Denis with

the fore and little fingers extended.

“My dear nephew,” he said, “sit down.”

“Nephew!” retorted Denis, “you lie in your throat;” and he snapped his

fingers in his face.

“Sit down, you rogue!” cried the old gentleman, in a sudden, harsh

voice, like the barking of a dog. “Do you fancy,” he went on, “that

when I had made my little contrivance for the door I had stopped short

with that? If you prefer to be bound hand and foot till your bones

ache, rise and try to go away. If you choose to remain a free young

buck, agreeably conversing with an old gentleman—why, sit where you are

in peace, and God be with you.”

“Do you mean I am a prisoner?” demanded Denis.

“I state the facts,” replied the other. “I would rather leave the

conclusion to yourself.”

Denis sat down again. Externally he managed to keep pretty calm; but

within, he was now boiling with anger, now chilled with apprehension.

He no longer felt convinced that he was dealing with a madman. And if

the old gentleman was sane, what, in God’s name, had he to look for?

What absurd or tragical adventure had befallen him? What countenance

was he to assume?

While he was thus unpleasantly reflecting, the arras that overhung the

chapel door was raised, and a tall priest in his robes came forth and,

giving a long, keen stare at Denis, said something in an undertone to

Sire de Malétroit.

“She is in a better frame of spirit?” asked the latter.

“She is more resigned, messire,” replied the priest.

“Now the Lord help her, she is hard to please!” sneered the old

gentleman. “A likely stripling—not ill-born—and of her own choosing,

too? Why, what more would the jade have?”

“The situation is not usual for a young damsel,” said the other, “and

somewhat trying to her blushes.”

“She should have thought of that before she began the dance. It was

none of my choosing, God knows that: but since she is in it, by our

Lady, she shall carry it to the end.” And then addressing Denis,

“Monsieur de Beaulieu,” he asked, “may I present you to my niece? She

has been waiting your arrival, I may say, with even greater impatience

than myself.”

Denis had resigned himself with a good grace—all he desired was to know

the worst of it as speedily as possible; so he rose at once, and bowed

in acquiescence. The Sire de Malétroit followed his example and limped,

with the assistance of the chaplain’s arm, towards the chapel door. The

priest pulled aside the arras, and all three entered. The building had

considerable architectural pretensions. A light groining sprang from

six stout columns, and hung down in two rich pendants from the centre

of the vault. The place terminated behind the altar in a round end,

embossed and honeycombed with a superfluity of ornament in relief, and

pierced by many little windows shaped like stars, trefoils, or wheels.

These windows were imperfectly glazed, so that the night air circulated

freely in the chapel. The tapers, of which there must have been half a

hundred burning on the altar, were unmercifully blown about; and the

light went through many different phases of brilliancy and

semi-eclipse. On the steps in front of the altar knelt a young girl

richly attired as a bride. A chill settled over Denis as he observed

her costume; he fought with desperate energy against the conclusion

that was being thrust upon his mind; it could not—it should not—be as

he feared.

“Blanche,” said the Sire, in his most flute-like tones, “I have brought

a friend to see you, my little girl; turn round and give him your

pretty hand. It is good to be devout; but it is necessary to be polite,

my niece.”

The girl rose to her feet and turned towards the new comers. She moved

all of a piece; and shame and exhaustion were expressed in every line

of her fresh young body; and she held her head down and kept her eyes

upon the pavement, as she came slowly forward. In the course of her

advance, her eyes fell upon Denis de Beaulieu’s feet—feet of which he

was justly vain, be it remarked, and wore in the most elegant

accoutrement even while travelling. She paused—started, as if his

yellow boots had conveyed some shocking meaning—and glanced suddenly up

into the wearer’s countenance. Their eyes met; shame gave place to

horror and terror in her looks; the blood left her lips; with a

piercing scream she covered her face with her hands and sank upon the

chapel floor.

“That is not the man!” she cried. “My uncle, that in not the man!”

The Sire de Malétroit chirped agreeably. “Of course not,” he said; “I

expected as much. It was so unfortunate you could not remember his

name.”

“Indeed,” she cried, “indeed, I have never seen this person till this

moment—I have never so much as set eyes upon him—I never wish to see

him again. Sir,” she said, turning to Denis, “if you are a gentleman,

you will bear me out. Have I ever seen you—have you ever seen me—before

this accursed hour?”

“To speak for myself, I have never had that pleasure,” answered the

young man. “This is the first time, messire, that I have met with your

engaging niece.”

The old gentleman shrugged his shoulders.

“I am distressed to hear it,” he said. “But it is never too late to

begin. I had little more acquaintance with my own late lady ere I

married her; which proves,” he added with a grimace, “that these

impromptu marriages may often produce an excellent understanding in the

long-run. As the bridegroom is to have a voice in the matter, I will

give him two hours to make up for lost time before we proceed with the

ceremony.” And he turned towards the door, followed by the clergyman.

The girl was on her feet in a moment. “My uncle, you cannot be in

earnest,” she said. “I declare before God I will stab myself rather

than be forced on that young man. The heart rises at it; God forbids

such marriages; you dishonour your white hair. Oh, my uncle, pity me!

There is not a woman in all the world but would prefer death to such a

nuptial. Is it possible,” she added, faltering—“is it possible that you

do not believe me—that you still think this”—and she pointed at Denis

with a tremor of anger and contempt—“that you still think _this_ to be

the man?”

“Frankly,” said the old gentleman, pausing on the threshold, “I do. But

let me explain to you once for all, Blanche de Malétroit, my way of

thinking about this affair. When you took it into your head to

dishonour my family and the name that I have borne, in peace and war,

for more than three-score years, you forfeited, not only the right to

question my designs, but that of looking me in the face. If your father

had been alive, he would have spat on you and turned you out of doors.

His was the hand of iron. You may bless your God you have only to deal

with the hand of velvet, mademoiselle. It was my duty to get you

married without delay. Out of pure goodwill, I have tried to find your

own gallant for you. And I believe I have succeeded. But before God and

all the holy angels, Blanche de Malétroit, if I have not, I care not

one jack-straw. So let me recommend you to be polite to our young

friend; for upon my word, your next groom may be less appetising.”

And with that he went out, with the chaplain at his heels; and the

arras fell behind the pair.

The girl turned upon Denis with flashing eyes.

“And what, sir,” she demanded, “may be the meaning of all this?”

“God knows,” returned Denis gloomily. “I am a prisoner in this house,

which seems full of mad people. More I know not; and nothing do I

understand.”

“And pray how came you here?” she asked.

He told her as briefly as he could. “For the rest,” he added, “perhaps

you will follow my example, and tell me the answer to all these

riddles, and what, in God’s name, is like to be the end of it.”

She stood silent for a little, and he could see her lips tremble and

her tearless eyes burn with a feverish lustre. Then she pressed her

forehead in both hands.

“Alas, how my head aches!” she said wearily—“to say nothing of my poor

heart! But it is due to you to know my story, unmaidenly as it must

seem. I am called Blanche de Malétroit; I have been without father or

mother for—oh! for as long as I can recollect, and indeed I have been

most unhappy all my life. Three months ago a young captain began to

stand near me every day in church. I could see that I pleased him; I am

much to blame, but I was so glad that any one should love me; and when

he passed me a letter, I took it home with me and read it with great

pleasure. Since that time he has written many. He was so anxious to

speak with me, poor fellow! and kept asking me to leave the door open

some evening that we might have two words upon the stair. For he knew

how much my uncle trusted me.” She gave something like a sob at that,

and it was a moment before she could go on. “My uncle is a hard man,

but he is very shrewd,” she said at last. “He has performed many feats

in war, and was a great person at court, and much trusted by Queen

Isabeau in old days. How he came to suspect me I cannot tell; but it is

hard to keep anything from his knowledge; and this morning, as we came

from mass, he took my hand in his, forced it open, and read my little

billet, walking by my side all the while. When he had finished, he gave

it back to me with great politeness. It contained another request to

have the door left open; and this has been the ruin of us all. My uncle

kept me strictly in my room until evening, and then ordered me to dress

myself as you see me—a hard mockery for a young girl, do you not think

so? I suppose, when he could not prevail with me to tell him the young

captain’s name, he must have laid a trap for him: into which, alas! you

have fallen in the anger of God. I looked for much confusion; for how

could I tell whether he was willing to take me for his wife on these

sharp terms? He might have been trifling with me from the first; or I

might have made myself too cheap in his eyes. But truly I had not

looked for such a shameful punishment as this! I could not think that

God would let a girl be so disgraced before a young man. And now I have

told you all; and I can scarcely hope that you will not despise me.”

Denis made her a respectful inclination.

“Madam,” he said, “you have honoured me by your confidence. It remains

for me to prove that I am not unworthy of the honour. Is Messire de

Malétroit at hand?”

“I believe he is writing in the salle without,” she answered.

“May I lead you thither, madam?” asked Denis, offering his hand with

his most courtly bearing.

She accepted it; and the pair passed out of the chapel, Blanche in a

very drooping and shamefast condition, but Denis strutting and ruffling

in the consciousness of a mission, and the boyish certainty of

accomplishing it with honour.

The Sire de Malétroit rose to meet them with an ironical obeisance.

“Sir,” said Denis, with the grandest possible air, “I believe I am to

have some say in the matter of this marriage; and let me tell you at

once, I will be no party to forcing the inclination of this young lady.

Had it been freely offered to me, I should have been proud to accept

her hand, for I perceive she is as good as she is beautiful; but as

things are, I have now the honour, messire, of refusing.”

Blanche looked at him with gratitude in her eyes; but the old gentleman

only smiled and smiled, until his smile grew positively sickening to

Denis.