Enguerrand, I pray you that I be your second!”
“Why, you shall so, then.” The words dropped from the other’s lips in
careless condescension.
Enguerrand’s eyes were lost in space. Across the river, between the
merry, white, flying clouds and the green fields of Surrey, he saw Heaven
knows what bloody vision of triumph.
“And he—the man, the enemy?” asked Sir Paul, after a while.
“Him whom I shall kill … with that little escaping thrust of our
Laperrière … yes, it shall be that … the great man? Yet none so great,
Sir Paul, but that he must himself defend his honour … and none so old
but that he be as much man as I—even as I am none so young but that I am
as much man as he.…”
At which cryptic utterance he folded his delicate lips on silence.
Farrant stared. There was one to whom the words applied; one to whom the
brother of Madame de Mantes, as all Whitehall was aware, might well
owe grudge. But, forsooth, that one was so high placed, a personage of
so much importance, that he dismissed the idea as preposterous. Farrant
indeed had many a secret grudge himself against this powerful being,
against his haughtiness and the lash of his cold mockery; but he would as
soon have dreamed of seeking satisfaction from his Majesty’s own person.
Enguerrand had fallen into a deep muse. His comrade began to find the
silence tedious, and took to counting the passage of the barges through
the opening of the Temple water-gate, chattering in comment:—
“Yonder went the fat master of the Curriers, Tyrrell, with his pretty
daughter—would I had as good a chance with her as that stout prentice
who sits behind the good man’s back…! Ah, and yonder went Master Lionel
Ratcliffe—mark how his men pull as if life and death depended on their
oars. I’ll wager you, he’s bound for Chillingburgh House.… But, no, the
skiff keeps its nose down-stream.… The tide will soon be on the turn.—Eh,
as I live, here comes a royal barge—mark the swing of the scarlet oars!
Old Rowley himself, perchance—nay, sink me, it is but the Lord Constable!
Odd! I was thinking of him but a moment awhile … I.… ’Slife, there’s
no mistaking that dark figure! I vow he casts a shade over the royal
scarlet itself. Merry Rockhurst, quotha! Has any one ever seen him
smile, except in mockery? How now? Why, the barge heads for the Temple
stairs!—What may the Constable of the Tower be seeking in the Temple?”
The babble died abruptly on his lips, so singular a change had he marked
coming over his companion’s face: a spasm of vindictiveness followed by a
slow, evil smile. A chill ran through Farrant’s frame. He was no coward,
but he would have given much to recall his rash offer of a few minutes
ago; for he had read in the Vidame’s eyes the name of his enemy.
The barge swung with masterly ease to the landing. A quick word rang out
from the head waterman, and the glistening oars were tossed in the air.
The red of the men’s jackets, the crimson of the barge’s drapery, stained
to rich depths and unexpected tints of orange by weather and usage,
made a gay picture amid the sparkle of the water, the dancing shine and
shadow, in which the figure of the Lord Constable was indeed a note of
striking gravity.
The wind-ruffled feathers of the beaver were black, even as the curls
that fell on his shoulders. A black cloak, silver-trimmed, was cast
loosely back as he stepped from the barge, revealing a body-dress of so
sombre a purple as to seem, if possible, of more severe a tone than the
cloak. The keen, pale face, with the hawk’s eyes, the silver amid the
raven-black of the cavalier moustache and beard,—which it was the great
Lord Rockhurst’s pleasure to preserve in spite of the newer, clean-shaven
fashion,—all combined to produce a singularly impressive personality.
Paul Farrant felt upon himself that sense of obtrusive inferiority, of
almost physical discomfort, which the presence of the Lord Constable
scarcely ever failed to evoke. His lips formed themselves for a soundless
whisper. He twirled his grey beaver on the end of his cane; and, upon a
second thought, tossed it to his head as giving him an air of greater
ease and self-possession.
The French boy’s countenance, on the contrary, seemed now to have become
lit by a kind of inner fire that was almost like inspiration. Sir
Paul heard him speak to himself, in French—a tongue which he knew but
imperfectly:—
“He has come! Why not now … why not this moment!… _Pardi_, why not, my
Lord Rockhurst?”
As he muttered the words the Vidame laid his hat and stick deliberately
on the bench and rose. Farrant, his discomposure increasing well-nigh
to horror, watched him step forward, tossing back his heavy locks, as
raven-black as Rockhurst’s own; and in the pallid, fine-cut young face he
noted for the first time an odd resemblance to Rockhurst himself.
In the minutes that next followed, while his English friend remained
sitting as if spellbound, Enguerrand, the stranger in the land, went
through the crisis of his life.
So swiftly did the scene pass that the men in the barge below had but the
time to push off once more and swing but a single stroke on the return
journey to the humour of the tide.
Rockhurst, walking sedately up the alley, with a sweep of his tall cane
to every other step, halted as he saw the young man approach; and into
his gaze, which had been somewhat abstractedly fixed upon the fair green
of the garden, there flashed a strange look.
Sir Paul Farrant was scarce a man of nice observation, yet he could have
sworn that my lord’s eyes had for a second held a gleam of indulgence
almost approaching to tenderness, as they had lighted upon the lad.
“Well met, my Lord Viscount!” cried Enguerrand, in a high, excited voice.
“Aye—well met!”
If Lord Rockhurst’s glance had been kindly, it was swiftly and
marvellously altered. Intolerably mocking now and cold it became, to
match the tone of the response:—
“Well met … Little Satan!”
Enguerrand had been holding his passion upon a frail leash. With a bound
it now leaped. This man, by whom, at their first meeting in Whitehall, he
had conceived himself, in his hypersensitive French punctilio of vanity,
to have been slighted, and who had treated him from the height of his
crushing superiority, who had thwarted and humiliated him, robbed him (as
he held) of his sister and his preferment at one swoop—how dare he now
address him in this tone of contemptuous familiarity? It was well met at
last, indeed! The moment he had dreamed of, sleeping or waking, these two
months was within his grasp!
“My lord,” he cried still more shrilly, “his Majesty’s familiar name for
me, on any other lips becomes a liberty, an insolence! An insolence, sir,
a liberty I will not permit!”
To his mortification he found himself trembling from head to foot. For
an appreciable moment Rockhurst ran his glance up and down the slight
figure. Then he made answer; and the indifference, the placidity, of his
manner was inconceivably galling:—
“True—I should not usurp his Majesty’s great privileges. But, pray, let
me pass, Vidame—I have business with Master Sergeant Stafford, and I am
already late, I fear, for my tryst.”
“Nay, milord, you shall not pass!—My lord, this is my tryst. It has been
your pleasure to heap injuries on me, and on more than one score you owe
me redress. We meet, at last, oh, at last! upon ground where the royal
ordinance no longer stands between us. My Lord Viscount Rockhurst—” He
was feverishly stripping his glove from his left hand as he spoke; but
the Lord Constable, with a single gesture, swept him and his argument
from the path with no more emotion than that of a man who rids himself
of an importunate fly. With the same measured step he then resumed his
course up the garden alley.
For a second the Vidame stood, staring after him, paralysed with rage.
A faint snigger—of mingled relief and amusement—from the watcher on the
bench started him to fresh action, as the prick of the spur starts the
mettled horse. In a couple of leaps he had overtaken the stately figure,
and Sir Paul Farrant wheeled round to gaze after the pair, astonishment
as much as prudence keeping him rooted to his place. Enguerrand dashed
the glove at Lord Rockhurst’s feet. The first impulse had aimed it at the
face; but something stronger than himself, which the while only increased
his fury, prevented the youth from offering this supreme insult to one
whom years and honours and personal dignity placed apart even in the
King’s presence.
“My lord, you—because I am a stranger, because I am, forsooth, young
enough to be your son (_à Dieu ne plaise!_), you imagine you can treat me
at your will and pleasure; insult me at your mood.… I stand, however, a
man before you, my Lord Constable—with a name as good as yours. I demand
my satisfaction.… My lord, I charge you, defend yourself!”
The young heart beat so fast, rose so high in his throat, that the words
pulsed from his lips in jerks, broken with quick breaths. He drew his
rapier with an almost frenzied gesture as he spoke; dashing baldrick
and scabbard on one side; falling back to swing the blade with dire
menace and then springing forward again, high-poised, tiptoe, only the
elementary rules of honour keeping him from assault until his enemy
should have likewise unsheathed.
A second or two, marked by the lad’s panting, Lord Rockhurst fixed him
through half-closed eyelids. Then, without a word, with a dexterous,
irresistible, upstroke of his cane, he knocked the weapon from the fierce
hand. The springy steel fell and bounded like a live thing on the flagged
path, to drop again, quivering, close to Rockhurst, who, with a lightning
swiftness unexpected from one of such majestic bearing, instantly clapped
his foot upon it.
Then the whole precincts of the garden, it seemed, were filled with the
thunder of his voice:—
“Malapert…!” The Lord Constable’s brows were now drawn over his keen eyes
in a withering frown. “This cane of mine should teach your youthship
better manners were it not for this same strangerhood of yours, on
which you thus presume! Aye, and you should have remembered this day,
even with stripes, but that some freak of your Maker’s hath given you,
graceless lad as you are, Vidame, a singular look of my own gracious son.
For his so sweet sake … thou varlet … I spare thee. Yet will this hour
have taught thee that his Majesty’s officers are not to be molested
with impunity—that the Page of the Wine Flagon can have no satisfaction
to demand of the King’s Lord Constable, what though his petty vanity
may be a-smarting from some imagined slights.—Slights, quotha! Young
master,—there can be no slights from me to you…! And for this insolence
of yours to me, take you home this memento.”
With another of his startlingly sudden movements, Rockhurst stooped for
the hilt of the sword that lay bent under his foot; and snapped the blade
in twain, with as much ease as one may snap a twig. Tossing the hilt back
at the Vidame’s feet, he went on—and it seemed that his anger had but
gathered in intensity with the action:—
“Hang yonder stump of steel in your bedchamber: it may serve to
remind you of a fruitful lesson learned in the Temple Gardens—how the
satisfaction fit for a pert page’s receiving is a sound whipping, and how
you, of my mercy, escaped receiving it!”
He stepped from the broken blade, passed the boy’s rigid figure so
closely and indifferently as to brush him with his cloak, and set his
deliberate way again toward the Temple Hall.
* * * * *
The Vidame stood stricken with impotent passion, sick well-nigh to
swooning with the violence of his fury in conflict with his complete
helplessness; white as wax, his boyish face distorted, his eyes
blood-injected, swimming in tears; a white foam at the corners of his
mouth, his lips drawn back in voiceless execration. The nails of his
clenched hands drove themselves into the flesh. It was not until Paul
Farrant rose and laid his hand on his shoulder that the palsy was broken.
The Vidame shook the touch furiously from him. His bloodshot eyes rolled
from the broken weapon on the path to the other’s face, on which a
malicious pleasure in his successful friend’s mortification was but ill
concealed by a scarcely more tolerable air of sympathy. Had it not been
for the mutilation of his weapon, Paul Farrant’s life’s blood might well
have assuaged the Frenchman’s ecstasy of hatred at that moment.
Then the floodgates were loosed. Foaming, the tide of passion leaped from
Enguerrand’s mouth with an eloquence that betrayed his race. Usually
silent, the Vidame de Joncelles, encompassed with an almost northern
reserve, yet was through his mother a child of the south; and at this
hour all the exuberance of the warm land, all the acrid passion that
only its children can feel and which, felt, must find word expression,
broke from him in torrents of imprecations and curses, half French, half
English:—
“Go thy way, then, my merry Rockhurst—go, Rakehell Rockhurst! Ha,
Rakehell thou mayst be, but forget not then that I am Little Satan,
and you but the servant of my Great Father!… Go thy way, sanctimonious
hypocrite, you of the grave face and grey-sprinkled hair, hoary in
corruption! You, put me out of your path…! My hour will come, my hour
will come, my hour will come! Faugh! I spit at thee; my clean blade was
too fair for thee, thou coward, thou bully, hiding behind thy state and
thy years…! And that prate of paternity! I, like thy son?… Had I within
my veins a drop of thy coward, hateful blood, I’d drain them and die
laughing that I was rid of thee! Look at the great man…! Look! Watch
the reverend seigneur! See how yonder wretches make way for my Lord
Constable!—My Lord Coward!… Look you, Sir Paul, is it not an admirable
spectacle? The King’s friend, the mighty in council, the example to the
Court! Hi, my Lord Rockhurst—Hi, thou pattern of nobility—what of my
sister, what of Jeanne de Mantes?… And afraid to fight the brother! Look,
look, friends! Ha, he’s old enough to be my father, and my sister—’tis
his boast! I, like his son, forsooth? And my sister has but a year of
life more than mine! _O, que l’âge a ses privilèges!_ Oh, how that
paternal heart beats to high thoughts! Curse thee, burn thee, drown thee
… coward!”
Stragglers in the garden, attracted by the wild clamours, had now begun
to gather. Up the slimy steps, from the ’Friars, like obscene beasts
venturing furtively from their lairs, the frowzy, arrogant heads of
thieving bullies,—“Knights of the Posts” and “Copper Captains,”—scenting
a profitable quarrel, began to emerge. And these were shadowed by dismal
shapes of womanhood, such as in those haunts were never far from the
scenes of strife, like to the hovering carrion bird.
The Vidame, in his paroxysm, cared as little whether his words were flung
to the solitary winds or to a thousand listeners. As the Lord Constable’s
cloaked figure disappeared altogether from view under the Hall archway
of the Inner Temple, the boy’s outburst culminated in an almost eastern
flight of malediction:—
“May your shadow bring a blight wherever it falls…! May your loves, your
hopes, your desires be bitter as ashes…! May your own flesh and blood
turn against you! May you blast the life of your own son till he wishes
he had never been born! Curse you…! May your own flesh and blood curse
you! May you want and never get—seek and never find! May your pillow be
haunted and your waking a horror! May your wine-cup poison you and the
pest follow you and break out under your footsteps! May fire consume your
pride and your hair grow white in misery, in dishonour, and then may
Death be deaf to your call—!”
He fell back against a tree, breath failing on his lips; flung one arm
against the bole and rested his brow upon it. Then the tears which his
fire of rage had burned from his eyelids threatened to overwhelm him in
the weakness that follows on all such unnatural paroxysms.
Sir Paul Farrant stood a moment, dubious. He glanced from the figure
against the lime tree to the dingy rabble that were drawing ever closer
in grinning curiosity and unholy expectation.—In sooth (was the thought
gathering strength in his mind) the little new star of Court favour
seemed like to be quenched! Yonder was the lucky youth (to dare to beard
the Lord Constable.… It had been safer, almost, to have affronted the
King!) broken by a mere twist of that strong hand!
A couple of Templars, grave-looking young men, had halted a few paces
away; and now, with a low-voiced murmur to one another and an angry
glance of scorn flung at the gentry that the clamour had gathered from
below the steps into their trim gardens, they passed on their way.
Farrant was quick to read the omen. Henceforth, it seemed, Enguerrand de
Joncelles, the King’s favourite, would have to seek associates in such
doubtful and dangerous company rather than among gentlemen of standing
who had a care for their reputation and advancement.—The sprightly Vidame
… threatened with a whipping—aha!
So Sir Paul replaced his beaver with a hasty gesture and, cautiously
treading, took path across the turf toward the water-gate, where he
reckoned to find his skiff in waiting. The while his friend wept
corrosive tears against the bark of the lime tree.
The “Brothers of the Huff,” the Daughters of Joy, and other good
companions of Alsatia, who had awaited, expecting sport, glanced at each
other in disappointment. Upon the disappearance of the Templars, one
of their number made a dash for the silver hilt on the ground; closely
hustled by a second, swift to perceive the intention. This latter had to
be content, however, with the broken blade, and a scuffle would have
ensued had not a burly personage, who seemed to have authority among
them, put an end to the dispute by possessing himself of the spoils and
hustling the others back to the stairway.
A girl in tawdry finery now tripped stealthily toward the young man,
who was so completely lost in the abstraction of his misery to all his
surroundings, that he never felt the nimble touch that drew from his
pocket the laced handkerchief, nor woke to actuality until her screech of
laughter rang into his ears.
Here another woman sprang from the watchful group at the head of the
stairs and flung herself between the pilferer and the Vidame, as he stood
staring, white-faced and shaken.
“As for you,” cried she, “march!”
The outflung gesture that accompanied the words seemed to cow the
thieving strumpet.
As the girl slunk away, cursing “French Joan and her tantrums,” yet in
evident awe of her, the newcomer put forth her hand and touched the
Vidame’s wrist.
Looking at her, dazed, he recognised Laperrière’s black-browed sister:
a strange, sinister figure of uncertain age, and with sullen remains of
what must have been great beauty, who was wont to sit moodily stitching
in the little antechamber to the fencing master’s room. She had never a
word for him as he passed daily to and fro, but a long, deep look: the
same look was now plunging into his eyes. Having gained his attention,
she dropped her hand from his and, folding her arms with a gesture of
some dignity, began, in French, low-voiced and rapid:—
“Hate! Hatred! Oh, _la haine_…! I have known it, my young lord! But
nothing my brother can teach or do will help you here! What use is the
sword and the skill of it against him who will not fight?”
Enguerrand stared at her. Then into his fixed glance of despair sprang
a sudden kindling flash, in response to the strong, devouring gaze that
still held his.
“You cursed too loud, _mon joli seigneur_. Oh, too loud…! When one wants
revenge, one must be silent!”
“Revenge…!” echoed Enguerrand, with such a cry as a despairing lover
might give as he echoed his mistress’s call.
“Hush!” said she whom Alsatia called French Joan, two brown fingers on
her lips.
She bent forward, lowering her voice still more, although the mocking
rabble that pressed about them, only kept at bay by her hard and watchful
eyes, could have made nothing of her foreign speech:—
“Yet you spoke well,” she went on. “‘May the wine-cup poison you!—May
the pest follow you and break out under your footsteps…!’ A man may find
that in his cup which will give him quick passage … as quick and quicker
than the pest, believe me. He might have drunk, and the wine have lain
as pleasant on his tongue as ever; and, lo!—before he can call for his
second draught the pest, it seems, has stilled his heart—or so will every
one say in these days: swooning, mortal sweat and burning fire, death,
all within the hour.… The pest, indeed, all who had seen it would swear.
Not a sign lacking: except that it strikes so quick, so quick—no time for
remedies! And yet ’tis not the pest. It holds within a small thimble.
_He, mon joli seigneur._ A treasure for those who understand hate. My
brother brought back his best sword-passes from Italy—I brought back
better … the _acquetta_ … eh, my pretty lord? The _Tofana_ drops, for
them you hate…! You may trust me … they have been tried: else, maybe,
we should not be here … and your luck would thereby be the less. If fate
gave you the chance of mixing such a cup for the one you curse, what
would you give to fate?”
“All I possess,” whispered the Vidame, hotly. “Anything she asked!”
Again the deep, inscrutable eyes brooded upon him. Then French Joan
showed her white teeth in a smile that gave a kind of lurid beauty to her
dark face.
“Well, we shall see,” she said; “maybe I shall ask much, maybe I shall
ask little.… Give me your hand, my pretty gentleman,” she cried, raising
her voice into sonorousness again, and speaking in broken English:
“I will lead you back to my brother’s. I have a cordial for such
weakness.—Lean on me!”
Jeers and shouts responded from the greasy steps.
“Lean on French Joan, Master Frenchman! French Joan has a cordial for
weak gentlemen!”
“Marry!” cried the girl who had stolen the kerchief, “will he come out
alive again, think ye, masters?”
“Rather him than me, with French Joan!” roared the youngest ruffler,
clapping his arms around her waist.
II
THE VENETIAN GLASS
“Little Satan,” said Charles, “a plague on all women, I say!”
The King’s page started from the gloomy muse in which he had been gazing
out of the window recess of the royal room in Whitehall, at the flowing
tide below.
“Amen—your Majesty!” he answered, with an attempt at sprightliness,
the impotence of which brought a frown to the discontented face turned
upon him. “As the times go, your Majesty’s wish carries the charm of
possibility.… If all one hears be true, the plague hath taken already not
a few—”
“Little Satan,” said the King, “many sins can be pardoned to your
infernal reputation; but there is one, Odd’s fish! unforgivable.… You
are growing monstrous dull, you are tedious. You lack tact, too, by the
Lord! Fie, is it page’s business to put his master in mind of what he had
better forget?—The veriest young cit would know better than to prate in
our ears of what they would fain be deaf to.… Gadzooks, little boy, did
we pick you out, think you, French and pert and joyous, for our Page of
the Bottle, that you might ape our long-faced puritan ways and go mooning
about our person, clapping your hand to your heart, sighing like furnace
or lover?”
Here a chuckle shook the long, lazy figure sunk in the Flemish chair.
“Is it love? Marry, it can be but love! Little Satan in love!” cried the
King, avid, in the deep weariness of his existence, for the slightest
pretence of amusement. “Come, confess—Dan Cupid has shot his arrow into
that sulphureous young heart of thine! My little devil’s in love—and
being in love, has been as dull company, these three weeks, as any angel
that ever flapped wings.”
The Vidame had left the window recess and now stood before the King. His
hand had indeed gone to his heart, with what seemed an habitual gesture.
He dropped it by his side and hung his head; a dull colour crept into his
cheeks and faded again. Never burdened with any superfluity of flesh, he
yet had grown noticeably thin these three weeks, and the healthy pallor
of his face had been replaced by feverish tints as of one wasted by
haunting, unsatisfied fires.
His royal master surveyed him, half irritably, half concernedly:—
“Come, little Enguerrand—the name of the cruel, the obdurate one?”