before the whole youth himself had become a different being. There are
some whom a single glass of wine intoxicates; Enguerrand de Joncelles was
intoxicated at the very first sip of life.… Such a flutter of silk and
curls; such constellations of eyes, brilliant or melting or mockingly
challenging; such lightning of wit; such whispers, such sighs! In one
day he had learned to return, with interest, an _œillade_ that, within
the precincts of Caen Cathedral, would have made him drop a modest
lid—and set him dreaming for a week. Within a very little while more
he had mastered the art of capturing a soft hand and holding it hidden
in tender pressure, the while presenting a decorous front to stately
company. He had also learned to look down in the right measure of disdain
upon the burgher; to bandy, in all delicacy, audacious pleasantry with
his equals on the Grand Staircase of the Louvre, or in the _Galérie de
l’Œil-de-Bœuf_. He could whip out his new-mode small-sword with as swift
a grace as the best noted ruffler. He was able to be more obviously
dazzled by the splendour of the _Roy-Soleil_ than many a past-master
sycophant—withal cultivating a fine insensibility of outward aspect,
keeping the delicate beauty of his features set as in a fine white mask,
his voice low-toned—only now and again permitting the wide-pupilled black
eyes to betray by a flash the constant alertness of the inner mind.
These demure airs gave a singular piquancy to the boldness of his words
and deeds, one which was not without its special effect in that court of
solemn sham and wearisome etiquette. Heaven only knows where the precious
only son of Madame de Joncelles had found such sudden knowledge of the
world, such astuteness and such recklessness combined. It was a merciful
Providence that spared his pious mother the sight of the ultimate
blossoming of her carefully pruned young tree!
Attached (together with his sister, Madame de Mantes, a noted beauty
of Versailles) to the train of Madame Henriette d’Orléans, on the
occasion of that princess’s first journey to England since the happy
restoration of her royal brother, he now was ushered to the court of
Whitehall. What the apt youth here saw and learned filled him deep
with surprise—a surprise, however, which he was careful not to betray.
Beyond doubt it was a merry place, this court of Charles—if its methods
were a trifle astonishing. Enguerrand was not one who would let pass a
single opportunity for self-instruction, and now and again, despite his
impassive attitude where the natural acuteness of his wits failed him, he
condescended to ask for information.
* * * * *
He was in a questioning mood, this night at Whitehall, when, for the
first time, he was admitted to the King’s more private circle. By good
adventure, he found himself beside a gentleman who seemed to possess an
intimate knowledge of the royal ways as well as an amiable readiness
to impart it. This was an elderly little man of the name of Petherick,
who once, evidently, had been handsome, and was still à la mode. As
Enguerrand was to learn later, Mr. Petherick justified his established
position at Court by a notable ingenuity in discovering fresh sources
of amusement for the easily wearied Charles. Now the acute person’s eye
rested critically upon the elegance of the foreign boy; his Majesty liked
new faces and new fashions, and his Majesty especially liked the French.
“Aye,” said Petherick, as if pursuing his thought aloud, “the King is
vastly fond of your country, Vidame—and of your countrywomen, just now.
See—that divine dark creature that came with Madame Henriette; I’ve
laid a wager, to wit, that her Royal Highness will have to leave her
lady-in-waiting behind, when she returns to France.”
“Sir—you mean, I see, Madame de Mantes,” said Enguerrand, coolly. “My
sister.”
“Monsieur de Joncelles…? Ah, of course, Madame de Mantes is married. And
M. de Mantes?”
“Say was married—happily widowed within a few months,” said the little
Vidame, with elaborate coolness. And from his post slightly in the
background he gazed at the brilliant royal circle and singled out the
familiar dark curly head, the peach-like cheek, the childlike lustrous
eyes with quite a new interest.
Mr. Petherick had too good an experience of the Court not to be more than
ever gracious to a newcomer, who proved to be the brother of a beauteous
sister.
Following the direction of the Vidame’s eyes, he pointed out the
personalities of major importance—handsome Castlemaine, sullen and
aggressive to-night; and fair Stewart with her childish face and her
studied coldness of demeanour, and put Master Enguerrand _au courant_ of
some spicy snippets. Buckingham proclaimed himself by his magnificence,
his insolence, and his gaiety.
“But pray,” put in the Vidame, “who may the tall, dark gentleman be,
who sits in such silence behind his Majesty, and who, even when the
King speaks, seems to have forgot how to smile.… He has a handsome
presence—although no longer young, at all.” (Thus, the superb arrogance
of his own springtime!) “Do you mark, Monsieur Petherick, how my little
sister keeps seeking his notice with languishing eyes—aye, even with
his Majesty’s own gaze upon her … the perverse one! Pray, who is the
gentleman?”
“How!” cried Mr. Petherick, “a whole week already in Whitehall, and
not yet acquainted with the Rakehell? Why, sir, it is our King’s own
familiar, an old comrade of the wars and of exile. His Majesty can
do nought without my lord Viscount Rockhurst—my merry Rockhurst, he
has dubbed his lordship, in a raillery, you will understand, of that
countenance which keeps its gravity through the maddest freak. And mad
he can be, sir; hence that nickname of Rakehell, which no doubt has
astonished your French elegancy.—Nay, but in truth there is an eye that
wanders, as you say, prodigious languorously upon my lord Constable!” Mr.
Petherick went on, narrowing his own watchful gaze: “I congratulate you,
Vidame, upon your fair sister … yet, I trust she is as wise as she is
fair.… Aye, you say true, and your young wits are quicker than mine; the
Lord Constable—my lord Rockhurst is constable, I should inform you, of
his Majesty’s Tower and captain of the Yeomen of the Guard—and in sooth
the one gentleman about the presence who would dare, and for the mere
deviltry of it, to place himself in rivalry with the King … to nip the
quarry, as it were, from under Old Rowley’s nose!”
“Old Rowley?” questioned Enguerrand, his dark eyes flashing wide. He had
a side smile, as he spoke, for his sister and her astuteness. He could
trust Jeanne to be wise.
Petherick coughed behind a lean hand.
“Oh, a name, sir. A name, by which his Majesty’s intimates dare, now and
then, to call him—ahem! when not in the presence—a foolish habit. I know
not how the absurdity slipped from my tongue.”
“Nay, neither do I,” said the little cool Vidame.
His glance wandered back with sharper set curiosity to the royal circle.
Charles had a languid hand amid the curls of the proud, fair beauty, who
sat, erect and triumphant, beside him; the young courtier’s thoughts ran
back to his own gorgeous monarch, set up as upon an altar, never to
be approached save with bent spine, with double-distilled compliments,
spoken of with awe, in whispers, as befitted his august essence. _Le Roy
Soleil_.… Old Rowley!
* * * * *
Jeanne de Mantes had a pretty, round face with a pointed chin, wide-set,
very innocent dark eyes, piquantly contradicted by the dainty, wicked
mouth, by every vivacious art and grace that proclaimed one deeply
learned already in the art of pleasing. Charles, in truth, looked more
often to-night at his sister’s pretty _dame d’honneur_ than at the blond,
chill beauty who sat at his right hand; and presently, as he looked,
the King’s sardonic face relaxed into a smile. He leaned forward and
addressed the lady in French:—
“I hear mounts and marvels, madam, of your skill upon the guitar. Will
you not pleasure us with some sweet air of your fingers?”
Instantly every glance fell upon the Frenchwoman; and she, with a start,
brought her eyes from their absent fixing of the Lord Constable to the
visage of the King. She fluttered. She smiled:—
“Your Majesty commands? ’Tis scarce worthy of such ears.”
Curiously enough the guitar had been brought to-night, by the wish of
Madame herself, who deemed that his Majesty might be pleased to hear it.
She stretched out a white hand, half turning the head with its wreath of
soft black curls toward the young man behind her:—
“My brother!… Vidame!”
It was a languid, sweet call, like the pipe of a waking bird, which
augured well for the louder warble. The Vidame was alert; in a twinkling
he was at his sister’s side, presenting the guitar with the arrogant
grace peculiar to him.
But Charles, full of that curious interest in small things which seems so
marked a characteristic of sovereigns—their lives being by fate ordained
in view of wide issues—signified by a gesture his desire to examine the
new-fashioned instrument, and the Vidame approached the presence.
The silent, grave personage whose seat behind the King, apart from the
table, threw him into shadow, looked at the young man at first with
indifference; then, of a sudden, piercingly.
With one arm thrown familiarly on the back of the royal chair, he had
shown himself mighty indifferent either to the challenging glances
lavished upon him, or to the pleasantries that circled round the table,
the most audacious winged with a subtle flattery for the royal attention.
For the monarch himself, who dropped him ever and anon a confidential
word, Lord Rockhurst had but a perfunctory, if quite courteous attention.
A deep mood of abstraction had held him. But, now, his interest was
vivid, unmistakable. He stared at the Vidame; and, as he stared, surprise
seemed to pass into distaste, almost into pain.
The lad paused in his advance, as if held by that intent gaze. Then he
tossed his black locks; a sudden fire of resentment leaped and died in
his eyes, and with crimson cheeks he came swaggering round the table, and
dropped on one knee before the King. Charles glanced curiously from him
to his Lord Constable; Rockhurst’s gaze was still resting inscrutably
upon the lad.
“Odd’s fish, my lord Rockhurst!” cried the King. “You look at the pretty
boy as if you saw a spectre!”
“Even so, your Majesty.”
The sonority of the voice, the strange words, fell impressively in that
light atmosphere. Again Enguerrand’s black pupils shot fury. Rockhurst,
with the same absorbed air, laid his fingers on a slender chain that hung
round his neck, and drew from his breast a gold locket.
Opening and holding it in his hand so that none could view it but
himself, he appeared to be contrasting some portrait concealed in it with
the countenance of the still kneeling boy.
“Ha!” cried the King, “take heed, ladies; for, as we live, the mystery of
my lord Rockhurst’s locket is at length to be solved. A spectre, did you
say, my lord?”
The Lord Constable closed the locket with a snap, slipped it back among
the laces on his breast, and turned easily upon the King; his frown had
vanished.
“Nay, no spectre, sire; the merest passing fantasy!”
Charles was shaken with laughter, a noiseless laugh which scarcely wrote
itself upon his melancholy features.
“Methought, from your lenten face,” said he, “that you were struck by
some memory of past misdeeds.”
“Your Majesty mistakes. No memory; but a warning!”
The King looked puzzled; then, with his usual distaste for prolonged
discussion, made a gesture as if he would put the matter on one side.
“But that locket?” And with the words Madame de Mantes flung out a small
olive finger. Since English etiquette, it seemed, permitted every one
to speak, then she would speak. The matter had become all at once of
palpitating interest to her. The portrait in the locket—it was evidently
a portrait—he had smiled at it. And such a smile! She took a vow that one
day this man should be made to smile thus on her.
“True, true,” said Charles. “Let us see into the secret at last, my merry
Rockhurst.”
The Lord Constable flung himself back into his chair.
“Nay, sire,” said he, and the deference of the words became mockery in
view of the attitude of the speaker. “Your Majesty has every jurisdiction
over me—my goods, my services, my life, are irrevocably yours to dispose
of; but my thoughts are mine own. And this locket belongs to my most
secret thoughts.”
Curiosity flickered once more for a moment in the royal eye. But through
drooping lids the Lord Constable’s gaze was steel-like, and the King
shrugged his shoulders with the foreign gesture that cleaved to him
through life.
“God’s mercy, my lieges, that ye keep your thoughts to yourselves, at
least!” he cried, with an assumed rueful air; “for, between your lost
goods and your past services, our exchequer has enough to meet.” He
stretched out his hand for the guitar as he spoke, and twanged ignorantly
at the strings.
Enguerrand rose with a grin. Charles’s ingratitude toward his ruined
loyalists was no secret in France, and the cold gibe was after his heart.
“Then we shall not see the locket?” cried the Frenchwoman, disappointment
ringing through her fluted tones.
“How the bird twitters!” cried Charles, good-naturedly. “Nay, my dear,
curiosity was ever fatal to your sex. Let us remain in paradise for an
hour or so. Sing!”
Jeanne de Mantes had a voice that matched her looks: small, insinuating,
sweet; creeping into favour, rather than storming it; docile to a
thousand modulations and graces. Now it was the very gaiety of music;
anon just a hint of pathos; and every word distinct as a dropping gem.
And this accompanied with here a dreamlike fixity of gaze, there an arch
roll of the eyes; here again a punctuating dimple, a flash in the peachy,
dark face of the whitest teeth in all the world; there a drooping of the
lip that positively demanded the consolation of a kiss.
Charles had not been so stirred to enthusiasm for a considerable time. He
called for a second ditty, and yet another. This last had an audacious
lilt, with a refrain so infectious that the royal listener began to hum
it midway and sadly out of tune. Toward the last verse, however, under
strokes waxing ever smarter, a string broke with a plaintive sob.
“Ah, _diable_!” involuntarily exclaimed the singer; and his Majesty
laughed delightedly. Then his face changed again as he noted the
compressed lips of Lady Castlemaine and the glacial anger of Miss
Stewart. He rose and broke up the circle. His arm on Rockhurst’s
shoulder, he was about to retire, when he paused and hummed a few notes
of the last song once more.
“A linnet,” he said, “a positive linnet! Odd’s fish! but we’d have her
pipe to us when we might give her our whole attention.”
He spoke low, and flung back a look, that held a certain apprehension,
toward Miss Stewart. This latter stood very erect, and bore a studied air
of indifference.
“If your lordship will look to it—” he went on, then broke off petulantly
under the glance that Rockhurst turned upon him. “Good lack, man! I
forget how much of the Puritan there is in thee at times.”
“Your Majesty,” said Rockhurst, in his most stately manner, “will find
with ease an apter messenger.”
“Aye,” said the King, cynically. His narrow, dark eye roamed a moment
about the room, then rested reflectively upon the fair mask of
Enguerrand’s face. The boy turned quickly. Charles raised a beckoning
hand.
“Vidame,” said the King, “a word in the hollow of your ear!”
The two drew apart, while Rockhurst moved away to the door to await the
King’s pleasure. Charles rejoined him, laughing.
“Faith, if I had such subjects as my cousin Louis, I should be well
served. Yes, ’tis your French finger you want for true lightness of
touch. My honest Britons are all thumbs. The pretty singer’s brother.…
Her own brother, no less! ’Tis a positive little Satan!”
“Aye,” assented Rockhurst, briefly.
The two went down the corridor in silence; then Rockhurst spoke with some
abruptness.
“Your Majesty,” said he, “has before this, I think, found it add to his
interest in … bird-catching that he should not be the only fowler in the
field.”
“How now?” said Charles, halting. The group of attendant pages halted
likewise at the end of the gallery.
“I have thought,” said Rockhurst, steadily, “I, also, that I should like
that linnet to sing to me.”
Charles frowned; but his favourite pursued unmoved:—
“As I have only my _beaux yeux_, as we used to say abroad, to stake
against your Majesty’s overwhelming attractions, I should be flattered
indeed, however, were you to have me banned as a marauder.”
Touched upon the string of his humour, Charles was ever easily appeased.
The very impudence of his grave constable’s proposal tickled him. It was
not the first time that they had found themselves opposed in rivalry,
though scarcely ever before so avowedly. On the last occasion (the King
remembered this pleasantly) Rockhurst, for all his _beaux yeux_, had
been notoriously displaced; and this, doubtless, was a little stroke of
revenge. That was Rockhurst’s way.
“Beware of boasting, my lord Constable!” he exclaimed banteringly.
They were on the threshold of the apartment. Rockhurst made a deep
_congé_.
“I never boast, as your Majesty knows. But your Majesty was wont to love
a fair wager.”
Charles’s smile widened. He nodded assent, and Rockhurst pursued after a
moment’s reflection:—
“Will your Majesty stake the payment of all the arrears due to my
yeomen’s company that the linnet’s first song will not be for me? I would
wager in return their immediate settlement, out of my own estate, unless
your Majesty would impose on me any other stake.”
“Admirable!” said the King. “Yet we would have a more immediate, a more
personal, token of victory—if we succeed against your _beaux yeux_,” he
put in with a little mockery, “and that is, in addition to the paltry
coin, a view of the contents of that locket, my merry Rockhurst.”
Rockhurst hesitated, then bowed. “So be it, sire,” said he.
And hereupon Charles retired, laughing, in cynical anticipation of a good
stroke of business. That ever-present question of arrears of pay was a
persistent annoyance to the royal conscience.
II
WHITEHALL STAIRS
“Little Satan”—bestowed from lips royal in terms of favour, the nickname
cleaved congenially to Enguerrand—entered, into the rôle of King’s
Mercury with all the _verve_ expected of him. But he was considerably
surprised at the manner in which his embassy was received. To place the
most unworthy motives invariably foremost was, he flattered himself, to
display a thorough knowledge of woman. He had yet to learn the thousand
sensibilities that distinguish even the frail of that elusive sex from
the unscrupulous gallant.
As he paused on his announcement, fully expecting to descry in the new
recipient of the royal favour at least as much gratification as he
himself experienced in being singled out as confidential messenger, he
was met by a sudden pouncing movement, expressive only of wrath, by a
dark look, actually by a flush.
Had Jeanne de Mantes ever blushed? It might be a matter of doubt. But
she could colour high with displeasure; and very becoming it was.
“What, sir?” she cried. “I cannot have understood aright. Is this the
Vidame de Joncelles, the French gentilhomme, the servant of Madame
Henriette de France—is this my compatriot, my own brother, who comes to
make me such a proposition?—It is really not to credit one’s ears!…”
Brother and sister faced each other, strangely alike now in their anger:
nostrils quivering over fierce, quick breaths, black eyes flashing into
black eyes.
It was the Vidame who could scarce credit his ears. Here was he, the
messenger of the King, come to open before one whose devouring ambition,
he believed, if anything, exceeded his own, a perspective of boundless
possibilities—and he was thus received! He sat before her in the small
parlour allotted to her in Whitehall,—an exiguous rounded corner room
overlooking the river,—his mouth opened in astonishment, deserted for the
nonce by all his pert airs of assurance.
“Nay, Jeanne,” he said at length, “keep this pretty scene for his
Majesty, if you will; or rather,” he amended, restored by the sound of
his own glib speech, “take my advice, and hold your fits of virtue as
cured and over, once for all, for they say that King Charles becomes very
easily _ennuyé_. For, with me, whom do you expect to take in?”
Whereupon, at a tangent, Madame de Mantes flew into a new rage.
“And it is this little man who is my brother!” she cried, clasping her
hands and surveying Enguerrand from head to foot, with flashing fury;
“_this_ is the child who knelt beside me at our mother’s knee!”
She thrust out a lip of utter contempt: “Take thee in? Thou—thou little
withered fruit … a stone inside, hard skin without; what art thou to me?”
“What am I to thee—Jeanne? To-day,” he cried, “the stepping-stone to thy
fortune, if thou wilt only see it! Now listen to me.”
But even as he spoke, of a sudden his anger cooled before the expression
of her face. What if she was in earnest, what of his fortunes then? It
was no time to quarrel. He caught his sister round the waist and advanced
his lips toward the smooth cheek. But a masterly slap met the endearment.
“I’ll be no stepping-stone to you, nor creature of the English King,”
Jeanne announced, half laughing, half crying. “There’s better in London,
Master Enguerrand.”
He looked at her with wicked eyes, his face whiter than usual against the
three scarlet stripes.
“You’ve had a visit this morning before me!” he cried suddenly; then,
with a diabolic flash of intuition, he recalled the long, soft looks she
had cast upon Lord Rockhurst.
“A visit?” said the Frenchwoman, swinging herself upon her heel. “Why,
yes, that might well be.” She had a private smile, as to the memory of
something singularly pleasant.
“I warrant me that it is your purpose to visit before long that
interesting pile they call the Tower of London. Have a care, _ma sœur_,”
and his trembling lips could scarce articulate the sneer,—had he not
hated that man at very first sight,—“it is there, they say, that heads
are lost in England!”
“Out of my room!” she ordered.
He laughed in what was almost a convulsion of rage. To what post, to what
favours, might he not have aspired, with such a beginning! Meanwhile
it is always the messenger of unwelcome news who bears the blame.
_Malédiction!_ His hand on the door-latch, he sent his last shaft with
deadly purport to wound:—
“O Jeanne, and I had never thought thee the woman to submit to a rival!
Call to mind, _ma toute belle_, milord’s smile as he gazed at the face
in the locket.”
Madame de Mantes heard the furious laughter echo down the passage as
the door closed. She stood in the middle of her little room nibbling
at her finger. ’Twas true! He had smiled at the locket, and with what
tenderness! Ah, that was very different from the mocking twist of the
lips with which he had wittily courted her only an hour ago. How! a king
was to be sacrificed to him, and the man dared to haggle over the full
surrender of his heart! ’Twould be monstrous!
* * * * *
“Ah, there’s my Little Satan,” said the King. But his long, gloomy
face relaxed into no mirth: he had had a tedious morning, and of all
things Charles could least endure tedium. The lady who had been first in
favour so long that her chain had become well-nigh as heavy as that of
matrimony itself, had made him such a scene as his own good and faithful
queen would never have permitted herself to make. And another lady, whom
for some time the volatile royal fancy had pursued in vain, had shown
herself more hopelessly obdurate than usual. Between chiding Palmer and
elusive Stewart, Charles was as near ill-humour as his easy temper would
allow—and he was therefore, characteristically, ready for any diversion
to this unwonted hue of his sky. The sight of the little Vidame’s pallid,
handsome face at the end of the audience room put him in mind at once
of the whim he had indulged in overnight for the lady of the guitar; a
linnet that trilled, a little quail for roundness and compactness.