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 subsequent 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 off 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," I replied; "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, be-nightcapped 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 backwards over one shoulder with the

eyes wide open; and Thevenin Pensete's spirit had returned to Him who

made it.

Every one 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 off 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, fleeted 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 he 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. Benoit.

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 in massive 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 daresay," 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 daresay 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 Caesar, 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 Feuillee, 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 overhard; 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 foeminam 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 MALETROIT'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, war-faring 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 outlook

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 revolutions 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 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 Maletroits. 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 Maletroit 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 dimple 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 Maletroit.

Denis and he looked silently at each other for a second or two.

"Pray step in," said the Sire de Maletroit. "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 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 Maletroit 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 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 Maletroit.

"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 Maletroit 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 newcomers. 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 is not the man!"

The Sire de Maletroit 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 Maletroit, 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 threescore 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 Maletroit, 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 Maletroit; 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

Maletroit 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 shamefaced condition, but Denis strutting and ruffling

in the consciousness of a mission, and a boyish certainty of

accomplishing it with honour.

The Sire de Maletroit 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.