seemed so empty when they were pronounced, “we may not be so destitute
of entertaining company at Farrant Chace as your lordship deems,” came
back to his mind, and with a new, cynical meaning. Fair company in sooth!
But, how, here “out of the snow,” lured by what prospect of light
amusement, what offered guerdon, he could only surmise. Possibly some
traveller from the inn, ready with all the ease of these times to snatch
at pleasure where it offered itself.…
A lady, by every movement of eye and limb. A lady! Bah! was it not the
fashion among ladies now to be as eager of base adventure as the gallants
themselves?
He stood on one side while, with an exaggerated gallantry, Farrant
conducted the stranger to Rockhurst’s just vacated seat, helped her to
loosen her cloak, and pressed some wine upon her from the neglected
goblets on the table.
When the lady had sipped, and returned the glass into his hand, she spoke
at last.
“I thank you,” she said, smiling. “But, my servants…?”
Her voice was a little faint and plaintive yet, from the numbing of the
cold, but it had a grave ring in it that fell pleasantly on Rockhurst’s
fastidious ear.
“Another taste, madam; we will inquire about your servants anon. The
mistress must first be waited upon,” cried young Paul, all agog in
ostentatious attendance, and ever flinging a restless glance of inquiry
at his Rockhurst. “Fie! Your cloak is heavy with wet. Let me move these
dripping folds away from you. And your feet, oh, I protest!” He was
down on his knees now, his young head glinting in the glow as he bent
assiduously over his new task. “Your feet—ice!”
Even as he spoke, he drew the little doeskin shoe from her foot; and,
as she instinctively lifted it toward the blaze, knelt back so that
Rockhurst might see the firelight play upon its delicate shape.
The warmth of the wine and of the hearth had stirred her chilled blood. A
flush, like the tint of a seashell, crept into her face; into her dazed
eyes appeared a light to which the blue shadows of weariness on the lids
gave a singular brilliancy; she very simply stretched her other foot for
the kindly office.
As Farrant rose at last, with the second shoe dangling in his hand, his
exultation broke out. He drew close, and whispered:—
“Say, my lord, shall we not be right well entertained to-night?”
“We?” echoed Rockhurst, aloud.
The single contemptuous exclamation fell like the cut of a whip. He
turned, and bowing to the visitor, who had turned startled eyes toward
him:—
“Madam,” he said, “I heard you express some anxiety about your
attendants. Our young friend is about to fulfil your request … whatever
it may be.—Go,” added he, turning upon the disconcerted youth. And as
Farrant hesitated he took a swift step nearer to him, and whispered in
his turn, “Go—to the devil or where you will, so long as it is out of
this!”
His eye commanded more insolently yet than his words. The young man fell
back, flung a look of hesitation toward the crumpled notes on the table;
another glance at the lady, his fair treasure-trove. Then, with a meaning
smile, he bowed profoundly, so that all his shining curls fell over his
face, and withdrew.
Rockhurst caught the smile and the look; and the memory of a dead face,
that of his old brother in arms, the boy’s father, in its last stern
serenity rose up before him. His own eyes were hard as he looked again
upon the woman who had been found so promptly willing to come and relieve
the tedium of his snow-bound evening.
[Illustration: The single contemptuous exclamation fell like the cut of a
whip.]
Diana Harcourt, with the return of physical comfort about her, had begun
to feel a strange uneasiness gather in her mind. Country-bred, and
country-wed to an old man who had little taste for company, she had yet
had some opportunities of learning the way of courts; she, for instance,
had no doubt that the youth who had saved her from the snow was of gentle
birth, and that this grave-looking being, with whom she now found herself
alone in the strange, silent house, was a very fine gentleman indeed.
Nevertheless, something singular, something not quite open, clandestine
almost, in the situation began to force itself upon her. What was the
relationship between these two men? The eyes of the elder, who might have
been the other’s father, were cold to dislike as he had gazed upon him.
And the young man’s febrile excitement came back upon her memory with an
impression of distaste amounting to repulsion. What had lurked behind
his smile, his furtive, appraising glance? She recalled how innocently
she had allowed him to touch her feet, and, flushing hotly, she cast her
mantle over them and turned her head with a little movement, at once
dignified and shy, to gaze upon Rockhurst. But suspicion fell from her on
the instant.—Noble-looking, grave, high-bred, old enough to be her own
father, what could she have to fear?
“Sir,” she said boldly, “will you not have the kindness now to tell me
where I am, and with whom?”
Rockhurst drew up a chair and sat him down, deliberately facing her. Then
he crossed his fine white hands upon his knee, letting his eyes rest upon
hers.
“Madam,” he said at last, “do you not hear how the wind begins again to
moan outside? I warrant you, behind the thick walls of this old house
the snow is whirling in great white drifts. It must be parlous cold
without. Here, madam, the firelight is rosy; do you not think we are very
well together? ’Tis a quaint hour, stolen from dull old Time’s grudging
casket. We do not know each other—why, that has a marvellous charm of its
own! Let us not dispel it. We may never meet again; and to-morrow you
go back … to the white snow. And I to the fever of the town. And that,
perhaps, will be well, too.”
Her eyes dilated as she listened, scarce with fear, but again with the
unexplained foreboding.
“Sir,” she said, after a pause, “your words are very strange; I do not
understand them.”
“My dear,” said Rockhurst, his languid lids drooping a little now over
the first keenness of his gaze, which seemed to narrow his scrutiny to
something cruel as a blade, “I have just said it, ’tis a dull world. Will
you complain of its strangeness once in a way? Why have you covered up
your pretty foot? I vow I thought of Diana in the woodland glades when
I saw the arch of its instep.” And, saying this, he opened his brilliant
glance once more full upon her. “Diana did I say?” he cried. “Nay, no
cold goddess! Far from me the omen!… A nymph. Aurora, with the sun in her
hair, and all the roses in her cheeks!”
The blood which had rushed violently to Diana Harcourt’s temples ebbed
away as quickly, leaving her white as the drifts without.
These were, no doubt, but idle words of gallantry; and all her woman’s
instinctive pride warned her against the shame of seeming to attach any
other significance to them. Yet whether glinting between half-closed
lids or widely open upon her, the man’s eyes seemed to her to have some
terrible, some merciless thought in them—a thought strangely at variance
with the dignity of his appearance, the gravity, almost the sadness of
his countenance; horribly at variance with the grey which besprinkled the
raven of his locks.
“I am not of the town, and not accustomed to fine speeches and
compliments.…”
She framed the phrase in pitiful attempt to stem the panic that was
gaining upon her. He still sat motionless, his hands crossed, half
smiling.
“Sir,” she cried, now angrily, “are there no women in this place? Will
you not, in courtesy, allow me the company of one, till my servants
arrive?”
“My dear,” he answered her sarcastically, “will my company not really
suffice?”
Rockhurst had had Heaven or Hades knew what vast experience of women, of
the women of Second Charles’s Court, whether in exile or in Whitehall.
Scarce a challenging beauty of the posy that he had not measured swords
with; and, as the practised fencer will, he knew every trick of the
play, every line of assault and defence, every feint and every parry.
And women, being proverbially unfair fighters, pretty dears! he had a
smile as well as a wary eye for the tricky pass and the treacherous
thrust. Of all the feints, that of innocence in straits, of outraged
modesty, was the most elementary. This divine young creature with the
copper-glowing hair and the wide-dilating eyes; whose blood ran so richly
and so quickly; who had come in leaning familiarly on the arm of that
prince of petty rakes, Paul Farrant, come willingly, it seemed, across
the snows, to his bidding; who had suffered herself to be unshod with all
the unblushing ease of any Whitehall coquette—why, if it now pleased her
to play the pretty Puritan, he had no objection, save that, as he knew
himself, he was apt to be swiftly wearied. The spark of interest kindled
by her unaccustomed kind of beauty, by the something fresh and of the
woodland about her, by the utter unexpectedness of her appearance and the
mystery it pleased him she should maintain, would so soon flicker out. In
love, as in war, he had but one method—straight ahead. In war he had been
beaten back sometimes; in love, never.
“Come,” he said, sitting up at last and slowly stretching out one hand.
“Come, Diana, since Diana you will be.” (Again she started on hearing
herself unwittingly called by her real name.) “Be Diana, if you please,
to me. What if I am no Endymion? Bah, my dear goddess,” and he drew his
lean frame out of the chair and came over to her with the same deliberate
grace, “that was a little mistake of yours to be so ready to stoop to
yonder youth! Endymion is but a callow rascal, a greenhorn. When such
beings as you descend from your high celestial ways it should be for a
man! Come, do you wish me to kneel at your feet, as your shepherd did
even now? I will, an’ it please you.”
His arms were almost about her, when, with a fierce movement, she sprang
up and thrust him from her.
“In the name of God,” she cried, “into what trap have I fallen?”
“Nay, do not scream,” he said, at one step placing himself between
her and the door, and catching her wrist, without roughness, but
with that steel-like grasp she had instinctively divined under his
gentle movements. “Let us clear this strange matter between us two,
madam.—Answer you first: What purpose had you in coming here to-night?”
“I?” she flashed back at him, panting. “Purpose?—Purpose, sir?… That
young man found me in the snow, the coach had foundered, my servants
ridden away for help, I was perished from cold. Purpose? Let me go, sir.
Rather the snow! Oh, let me hence from your horrible house!”
He released her and stood looking at her in silence. Again, even in
her turmoil of terror and passion, she was struck by the extraordinary
dignity of his air. But to look thus, and to act thus!
“Oh, shame,” she said; “you who might be my father!”
A swift shadow came over his countenance, then passed, leaving it set
into marble impassivity. His eyelids drooped. Forgetting her cloak on the
chair, forgetting her shoeless feet, she thought she saw her chance, and
made a rush for the door; but he arrested her with a gesture.
“No!” he said authoritatively. Then, fixing his eyes upon her with an
altered look: “No, child,” he repeated. His voice was as much changed
as his gaze. Gone from it the dangerous, even silkiness of his first
speeches to her, as well as the quick sternness of the last words. This
new voice, something said to her, was the voice of the real self that
matched the noble countenance.
He put out his hand. After a pause she put hers on it. Later she wondered
at herself that she had done so. But there are moments when some poignant
emotion tears away the bodily mask, when souls are suddenly laid bare
to each other. For some of us that is the moment when our belief in all
that is good and beautiful dies. But Diana, in that flashing look into
the soul of this unknown man (who had yet, within so short a measure of
time, insulted her) read that to which her own soul leaped. The storm
subsided in her heart. She suffered him to conduct her back to the chair
by the fire, and watched him—wonderingly, yet no longer with fear—as he
straightened himself and, with folded arms, stood yet a little while
contemplating her.
In the hawk’s eyes there was a softened shadow. As he gazed the shadow
deepened into tenderness.—He was looking at her as the exile might look
at the receding shore of the land he will never see again; with a
yearning that has passed beyond despair, and so grown serene. At length,
sighing, he roused himself, and came forward, pushed the heavy table
closer to her, and brought within her reach some of the viands that were
spread upon it.
“You must eat,” he said. And, as she lifted her eyes again with her
childlike, questioning look, his lips parted in a smile she thought
beautiful, upon the gravity of his countenance: “You have not done with
journeying yet to-night,” he explained.
He moved to the window as he spoke; and, as he drew the curtains aside,
there came into the ruddy brown room a vision of a moonlit fairy world.
“There, too, I was wrong, you see,” he went on, speaking over his
shoulder; “the snow-storms are passed, and there is your sister moon to
show you the way—Diana.” Then, coming back again to the table, “You asked
for a woman’s company. In this house there is no company fit for you.”
Her eyelid flickered over her startled glance. She gave a quick cry.
“Eat, then,” he went on in the same gentle tone, “while I make
arrangements for your instant departure.”
The door was shut behind him. Diana involuntarily called after him; but
his footsteps died away in the empty passages. The great silence of the
house closed about her; and in the solitude her own thoughts seemed to
clamour and crowd bodily upon her. She leaned her elbows on the table and
buried her bright head in her hands.
Slighted … insulted … then served reverentially like a princess … looked
at and spoken to like a beloved child. How was it that all the anger was
dead in her heart, and that in its place reigned this feeling of pain and
incomprehensible joy commingled? How was it that her fear was banished,
that she would have trusted herself with him even in this house which his
own lips had named evil?
IV
UNDER THE STARS
Presently she again heard steps without and rapid words; then his voice,
uplifted sharp and strong. She smiled, broke a piece of bread and sipped
at the wine; she was safe, she knew, where he was. And she would eat, if
only because he bade her.
In a few minutes Rockhurst returned. He was now booted to the thigh, and
carried a cloak on his arm. Once more he sat down facing her. His eye
fell on the discarded shoes; he bent down and felt them.
“They are nearly dry,” he said, and lifted them closer to the flame.
“In a little while you must be ready. You will have to ride on the
same rustic steed that brought you, but I will see that she carries
you to safety.” He paused a second or two, then added: “The inn—a very
well-known, reputable place—is not far distant; and you will doubtless
hear of your servants there. Our young host,” he hesitated, and his voice
seemed to harden, “tells me that, even as he rode with you into the
avenue, folk were hastening to your rescue from that direction.”
Diana’s glance still questioned, but she dared not put the question into
words. What, then, had the young man with the narrow eyes and the uneasy
glance meant by her? And how, if he had had some dark purpose, had she
been thrust upon this other and left to his mercy? Ah, and what had this
other at first fancied to see in her? The blood surged to her cheeks, her
lips trembled. Rockhurst held her under his eye. As if in answer to her
thoughts he bent down.
“My dear,” he said, but how differently the words, a while ago insolently
familiar, were now spoken; “this is no house for you. It must never be
breathed of one such as you that you have been under its roof—with one
such as me. You said you did not know the ways of us of the Court—pray
God you may never know them!”
Here he was silent again, his eye resting thoughtfully upon her hands,
unadorned save for a single posy ring.
“When you marry,” he went on then, as with an effort, “keep in the sweet
country, and of a surety,” a sad smile flickered upon his lip, “your lord
will gladly keep there, too.”
She lifted her head with a quick impulse; her mouth parted to speak. But
an inexplicable, invincible reluctance to tell him she was already wed
thrust back the words.
Rockhurst turned, and taking the loose pieces of paper from the table,
gazed at them thoughtfully for a moment, and thrust them into his pocket.
Then he rose, and almost gaily:—
“Come, madam,” he said, “your palfrey waits in the cold. Put on your
shoes.” As he spoke he took down his sword and buckled it on.
She went forth with him, her finger-tips lightly in his hold, without a
word, through the passages of the lone house, through the hall. The door,
open to the night, cut a square, brilliant silver upon the inner dimness.
Cold, pure airs rushed against them.
The mare, black, steaming, stood patiently, her bridle hitched to a
post. There was not a sound of another living thing, it seemed, in all
the white-shrouded land. She rested one hand on the saddle-cloth, lifted
her foot for his service, and he swung her up with practised ease. She
felt the strength of a steel bow in his arm. He folded her in a huge
horseman’s cloak; then, without a word, took the bridle to walk by her
side.
She looked at him wistfully. Had she dared, she would have invited him
to share the saddle. But, dark and grave, he went beside her, and the
silence held them.
* * * * *
They moved as in a dream through a dreamland of beauty, a white purity
beyond expression. Above, in the pine trees, the wind choired; far
out over the waste it sighed. Somewhere very far away, yet strangely
distinct, Christmas joy bells were ringing.
The starry sky that domed this wonderful world was still more wonderful.
Diana neither felt the cold, nor measured the space she traversed, nor
the flight of time. She was another self; she would have asked no greater
boon than to journey on through all this splendour, with the vision
of his face cut in grave beauty against the white world, to meet the
glance of his watchful eye now and again, to have the touch of his hand,
kind and steady, upon her knee, when the road was rougher and the mare
stumbled. She knew that at that unknown inn door, down in the valley,
would come the parting, and her heart contracted.
* * * * *
The little village seemed asleep. The inn itself looked deep in slumber,
with barred windows, its every gable huddled under the thick blanket
of snow; only a wreathing smoke from the chimney-stack to tell of some
watchfulness within.
Rockhurst knocked, masterfully, sonorously. Then turning, the rein slung
over his arm, he leaned against a pillar of the porch, removed his hat,
and looked up smiling at her. There came sounds, answering sounds,
indoor. Then he spoke:—
“Thank you,” he said.
“Do you thank me?” Her voice shook a little.
“Thank you,” he repeated, “for having shown me, once more, a vision of my
youth such as I never thought to know again!”
The bars were now heard grating against the closed door. Rockhurst took a
step forward. She read farewell in his eyes; and, flinging out both her
hands, almost with a sob:—
“Ah, but shall we not meet again?” she said pleadingly. “Your name?
Mine—nay, you know it already. It is indeed Diana. Diana—”
But he interrupted her with a quick gesture.
“Hush! My name? No, it is a name of no good report, and I would not have
it dwell in your mind. And yours—it were best I should not know it.…”
Then, after a slight pause: “You come as a dream to me, you go as a
dream, perfect, sweet, beyond words. We shall never meet again, Diana.”
The inn doors were slowly drawing apart. He lifted his arms to help her
down, held her a second between them to steady her, then, putting her
gently aside, sprang into the saddle and forthwith spurred the mare to
her heavy trot.
And Diana, looking after them, saw rider and mount passing from her,
black against the snow. He never turned his head. She stood, bewilderment
in her mind, pain at her heart.
“God-a-mercy, madam, ’tis you!” cried the familiar voice of her old
servant in her ear. “In the Lord’s name, madam, where have you been?” old
Geoffrey was tremblingly questioning.
She started, looking round at him as one suddenly awakened. Was it all
indeed a dream of the snow? she asked herself, as the sheltering doors of
the Anchor, at Liphook, closed upon her.
* * * * *
The sudden spurt of old Bess the mare soon gave place to her usual jog.
Through the silent snow she carried her rider back to the door of Farrant
Chace. The rhythmic jingle of her bit, the monotonous muffled plunge of
her hoofs, the wail of the wind over the down, seemed to point the wide
stillness, even as the sparse black firs pointed the immense whiteness of
the waste.
Rockhurst stepped in again into the warmth of the parlour, snow sodden on
his boots, hoar frost pricking his hair, and found Paul Farrant.
* * * * *
To the young man’s frenzied anxiety it seemed interminable nights that
he had been thus waiting, waiting for release or doom; nights that he
had paced the brown parlour from end to end; that he had stood shivering
in the window recess, gazing out upon the white emptiness, straining
his ears for a sound of life in the awful stillness. The uncertainty
of Rockhurst’s moods, of his intentions, the mystery that had to-night
surrounded his movements, added to the waiting misery. To what end had
Rakehell set forth, at midnight through the snow, with the lady whom he
had so cynically received? Was it a sudden whim of chivalrous courtesy?
His scorching anger upon their last brief meeting might lead him to
that preposterous conclusion—Knight Errant Rakehell, out through the
snowdrifts on a farm mare for the sake of country virtue! (What tale
might he not make of it for supper merriment at Whitehall!) Or Rakehell,
jealous of his host’s fair looks and smooth cheek, carrying off
elsewhere the prize of grace and beauty.…
At such a point Farrant’s uneasy tread would lead him back to the hearth,
to seek vain comfort by the embers, to fling fresh logs on the reddening
pile. What was he to do if Rockhurst were to pass away from his road like
this? Dare he, so long as those damning notes were in that pitiless hold,
ever present himself within earshot of Court?
* * * * *
Then all at once, as he sat staring into his uncertain future, his guest
was back upon him—those were his steps without, that was his hand on the
latch! Farrant sprang to his feet, and flung a look of piteous inquiry at
the great lord’s face.
Rockhurst did not speak. He went to the hearth and stood for an
appreciable pause gazing at the lad; in his eyes there was none of the
former scorn—nothing but a kind of sad wonder. Then, deliberately, he
drew the damning slips of paper from his pocket, turned, and, one by one,
with a musing air, threw them into the fire.
Farrant drew a quivering breath of relief. The “debt of honour” was
cancelled.
THE ENIGMA OF THE LOCKET
THE ENIGMA OF THE LOCKET
I
LITTLE SATAN
Enguerrand de Joncelles—_Monsieur le Vidame de Joncelles_, as he
preferred to be called—was new to courts. To the court of Whitehall, _la
cour de Witalle_ he had it, he was yet altogether a stranger.
From the noble monotony of Joncelles, the great poverty-stricken chateau
which raised its pepper-box turrets above meagre apple orchards, a league
south of Caen, to the excitement of the Louvre and Versailles; from the
rigidity of the maternal rule at home (in her retirement, Madame de
Joncelles, a confidant and friend of the late Queen Mother of France, had
never compromised on matters of discipline, and had cherished theories on
the education of young men) to complete emancipation—here had been steps
high enough to upset the balance of any quick-blooded and good-looking
youth of eighteen. But the little Vidame had found his feet, as the
saying goes, with astonishing ease, as soon as the austere old lady,
departing for a better world, left him to face this one by himself.