the single word, “Plague.” Adding aloud, the while fumbling in his
pocket for his pomander box:—
“One of those monstrous, sudden cases we are told of—but which I confess
I have never seen! Merciful heavens … in Whitehall! Your lordship must
submit instantly to fumigation. Aye, and yonder yeoman, too, who carried
the body.” This between prolonged sniffs at the pierced lid of his
pomander box. “Pray, my lord, inhale of this, deep—and you, too, fellow,
after his lordship! And the burial must be early in the morn—poor lad!
And, my lord, I beseech let it be in secret. Oh, we must hold our tongues
about this, my Lord Constable! The sickness in Whitehall, and in his
Majesty’s very apartment!… Not a word to his Majesty! The lad has died of
a fit—a rush to the head. Tut, tut—the truth must be kept secret indeed!”
Rockhurst had listened with immovable countenance.
“Aye,” he said gravely, “it shall be kept secret.”
And, after inhaling the pomander box with due solemnity, he handed it to
yeoman Ashby. But as soon as the physician, taking a hurried _congé_, had
left the anteroom, he laid his hand on the old soldier’s shoulder:—
“Never fear, man, neither you nor I shall catch the sickness whereof
this poor youth died, you can take your captain’s word for warrant.
Nevertheless, I charge thee, speak no word, but, as the physician hath
it—a rush to the head!”
* * * * *
Yet rumour ran abroad, as rumour will. And Sir Paul Farrant, hearing of
his whilom friend’s tragic death, had never a doubt that it was in those
haunts of Alsatia that he had first met the distemper—and himself started
off to the pure airs of Farrant Chace, where he spent a dismal month
watching for symptoms.
Over the grave, in Tothill Fields, where the passionate, revengeful heart
lay now in quietude, a stone was erected by the Lord Constable’s order,
which set forth the Vidame de Joncelle’s names and titles, and recorded
he had died in the flower of his age, honoured by the King’s regard.
LADY CHILLINGBURGH’S LAST CARD-PARTY
LADY CHILLINGBURGH’S LAST CARD-PARTY
I
LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS
Lionel Ratcliffe closed behind him the gate of the house in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields where he had his lodging. He crossed the road, then paused to
survey the desolate scene.
The day was drawing to a close, but sullen fires of sunset were still
burning low under a leaden, cloudy sky. Beneath his feet the grass was
parched, the ground everywhere leprous grey. Though it was only early
July, the foliage of the trees hung limp and sick-hued; there was not
a flicker of life among the branches—indeed, hardly a stir anywhere in
the languid atmosphere. Sky seemed to brood over earth, earth to lie
paralysed, awaiting some moment of catastrophe, and heavy vapours to be
fusing them together. The heat was a palpable presence. An anguished
expectation caught the throat as with an actual pressure. The plague held
all London in its grip.
Men can walk with fortitude under the wings of the Angel of Destruction,
when the death he brings is a clean one, honourable, seemly; but this
horrible Demon of Corruption that now spread its shadow over the world
made its victims loathsome in each other’s eyes and infected them with
coward selfishness and panic fears.
The Court had gone at last, though Charles was no poltroon. Half the
population was in flight along country roads; blind terror was upon most
of those whom circumstances retained within the doomed circle. Among the
well-to-do only three classes still lingered in the town: those whom a
sense of duty kept at their post; those again who, with a strange but not
unknown faculty of self-deception, chose to ignore the visitation rather
than to face the appalling presence; and lastly, those few strong natures
who, for purposes of their own, found it worth while to set danger at
defiance.
To these last belonged Lionel Ratcliffe. Fully aware of the peril, he
challenged it deliberately. He knew that those yellow vapours were the
very breath of the pestilence; that the smell everywhere meeting his
nostrils was that of death; that among yonder prostrate figures reclining
beneath the trees many were doubtless stricken, dying, or dead. He kept
on, nevertheless, calm if wary, at a masterful gait, across the fields.
In his hand he swung a loaded cane of such proportions as almost to rival
a watchman’s staff—one which could keep at a distance or at one stroke
lay low the sturdiest onslaught. For it was well known that many of the
pest-stricken in their delirium rushed into the street to die; that the
passer-by might at any moment be confronted by some miserable wretch who,
seized with madness, would rise and clasp him in an embrace of hideous
contagion.
As for the mumpers and rufflers, who were wont to emerge at the darkening
hours in the Fields—like night-moths, no one knew where from—one glance
of this gentleman’s eye, not to speak of the knowing gesture of the staff
hand, would have sufficed to bid even the stoutest of them pause and be
wiser than to meddle.
And so Lionel Ratcliffe passed on, without undue haste, leaving the
closed theatre on his left, making westward toward Arch Row. And
presently, as he emerged from the shadow of the trees, he sighted the
mansion that was his goal, Chillingburgh House, with its sharp roof, its
coping balustrade and urns rising in relief, black against the lurid
orange of the sky.
As he approached the gateway a sedan chair, escorted by a couple of
armed footmen, was just depositing a lady voluminously wrapped in a silk
cloak before the double flight of steps. He halted for a second to watch
her begin the ascent on the right. She went slowly, as one fatigued; he
swiftly entered the flagged courtyard, took the opposite side of the
stairs, and reached the landing just before her.
“Madame de Mantes! … your servant—! Punctual to the moment!” cried he,
bowed and clapped the feathered hat against his breast.
She halted on the last step and raised her handsome head slowly toward
him, ignoring his hand. The light was growing dim, and the rosy folds
of her hood looked grey; but even under its shadows and in spite of the
rouge on her cheek he had an uncomfortable impression of her pallor.
“_Oui_,” she said tonelessly, “_me voici_.” Then, with sudden petulance,
“Ouf! but one suffocates in this air!”
She caught at the strings of her cloak and tore them apart; the light
silken thing slipped from her shoulders, but she hurried into the house
as one unseeing. Ratcliffe picked up the garment alertly, and followed,
just in time to offer his hand again at the foot of the great staircase.
The touch of her fingers struck chill. His first misgivings deepened; but
he quickly dismissed the rising thoughts. Bah! a woman in love (what was
there about this Rockhurst, curse him! that all the fair should thus run
mad upon him?)—a woman hopelessly in love, and a Frenchwoman at that!
There would sure be scenes with the faithless lover, and she was even now
rehearsing them in her agitated imagination. Well might her hands be cold.
“Are you ill at ease?” he whispered, with a perfunctory show of
solicitude as they passed a couple of anxious-looking servants and drew
closer together on the stairs.
“_Mon Dieu!_ but not at all!” she mocked him irritably. “Neither ill in
my ease, nor my heart, nor—oh, tranquillise yourself—nor in my head!
Besides, who could be but well and happy in this merry London of yours?”
They had reached the gallery. She snapped her hand from his and dropped
him a courtesy. He wondered to have thought her pale; now she seemed
to him unwontedly flushed. Her heavy eyes shot fire. Appraising her
critically, he approved. There were jewels at her ears and throat; her
gown had the impress of French taste, and became her every beauty.
The grey-haired butler who flung open the doors of the drawing-room at
her approach looked after the swaying, shimmering figure with melancholy
approval.
“’Tis almost like old times, Master Lionel,” he whispered, as Ratcliffe
passed in, “to see a Court lady about the place again.”
“Aye, from Court she is,” said Lady Chillingburgh’s grandson, halting
on the threshold to let his gaze roam thankfully over the great
white-and-gold room, which had a sense of coolness and repose about it,
even on such a night. “But she had her reasons for not hasting off with
the rest of them this morning.”
“Eh—but they must be weighty reasons!” murmured the old servant, with a
sigh.
“No doubt the lady thinks them so,” said Lionel Ratcliffe, with his
detached laugh.—“We are full early here, ’twould seem,” he added in
louder tones, advancing toward the card-table in the window before which
the Frenchwoman had already taken seat.
But she disdained to cast toward him even the flutter of an eyelid. Her
fingers were moving restlessly among the cards and dice.
“_Zero … zero! Hein? Non-zero. Ah … mal-chance!_”
The man stood over her a second or two in silence. Then sat down in his
turn and faced her. His voice rang out with a kind of empty cheeriness:—
“What! to the dice already?—Nay,” here he leaned across the narrow space
and whispered, “Remember, it was to play another game that I brought you
here.”
She turned petulantly from him; then her eye became fixed, staring out
through the unshuttered window.
“What a strange red moon is rising!” she cried. “Would to God, Monsieur
Ratcliffe, you had never come to me this morning, tempting, tempting.… My
boxes were packed: I should be now far from this pit of pestil—”
“Hush! hush!” he warned, finger on lip. “Not here! Do not forget my
instructions.” Then, in his low, mock-gallant accents: “How now? Is the
game, then, no longer worth the hazard?”
She caught up the dice-box again, feverishly:—
“Yes—yes. But I have no luck to-night!”
She muttered and cast. “Naught again!”
“Expect you luck at the game of chance,” quoth he, catching the dice-box
from her hand, “when you are so lucky at the game of love?”
“I? I, lucky?”
“Yes,” proceeded he; “and have you not had Cupid’s best cards in your
hand, since the very hour of your landing with Madame de France? First
the King—King of Trumps himself, and eke the Queen.—Gad, she’d have loved
you, were it but to spite the Castlemaine.—Then—”
“Tush!” she interrupted angrily. “Cards?—’Tis not all to hold the
cards—one must play them. I held them all, in truth—” she put her hand to
her throat with a little choking sob. “But—”
“You threw them all down!” he laughed.
“Ah, _ciel_!—When the heart begins to take a part in this game of love,
then all goes astray.”
“Aye,” repeated the man, steadily, his hard eyes upon her, “you threw
your cards away—and all for love of this Rockhurst, the greatest knave in
the pack.”
She turned with sudden anger:—
“Knave, sir? Sho!… King of you all!” Then, with equally sudden change
of mood, “Oh, he _is_ a villain!” she moaned, and her lip trembled upon
tears.
“And so you have not seen him,” said he, altering his tone to one of
elaborate sympathy, “since he returned to town, escorting to his house my
fair cousin, Diana Harcourt? What—not once, after all you have given up
for him?—Faith, ’tis ungallant of him!”
Her elbows on the table, her chin sunk in her hands, she was now staring
fiercely into his eyes.
“Your promise, sir, that I meet him here to-night?…”
“Nay, I can only tell you, my fair Jeanne, that he journeys hither from
the Tower or Whitehall twice a day—when ’tis not thrice.”
“_Mon Dieu!_ …” she breathed between her clenched teeth.
Satisfied with the temper he had aroused in her, the man withdrew his
eyes, turned sideways on his chair, and crossed his legs.
“I fear you’ve been too cool with him,” he remarked airily. “Our ‘merry
Rockhurst,’ as his Majesty calls him, is used to a vast deal of warmth.”
“I—too cool!” She laughed hysterically. “Oh, yes, it was that, of course,
with this heart and brain of mine on fire!”
“Then I fear,” said Ratcliffe, on the edge of a yawn, “you’ve been too
hot. The Lord Constable of his Majesty’s Tower is a man of niceties.”
“Monsieur Ratcliffe,” cried Jeanne de Mantes, beating the table with her
palm and darting her head toward him like a pretty serpent, “you are the
Devil!”
“And your very good friend, madam.” He smiled with a charming bow. “Come,
come! Smooth that fair brow. Do you doubt but you can hold your own
against a mere country widow?”
She fixed him with suspicious eyes.
“Aye, and now it comes to me,” she cried resentfully. “What is your
motive in all this, Monsieur Ratcliffe? Not simply sympathy for me?”
“Come, come! Be calm.” There was authority under his blandness. “Be
calm,” he repeated, “and let me whisper in your ear.—I will even trust
you with my innermost thought. Diana Harcourt shall not be for my Lord
Rockhurst, but for your humble servant.”
“Aye,” she commented, a twist of scorn upon her lips; “the lady, I was
told, is passing rich.”
“Even so,” returned he, unmoved. “’Twould indeed be impossible to conceal
aught from your perspicacity!—Now Mistress Harcourt, by an odd trick of
fate, has become affianced to Harry Rockhurst, the virtuous, innocent
country son of this most reprobate nobleman. The which, however, would be
but a small matter (for she loves not the green lad, mark you, nor ever
will), were it not the spur to other feelings.”
“I fail to follow you, sir,” she said wearily.
“Nay, a moment’s patience, pretty huntress, then you will come full on
the scent. My Lord Rockhurst has had the singular maggot of playing a
game of parental virtue with his heir.—But you are not listening.”
She was pressing her temples with the tip of her fingers, as one who
fights a stabbing pain. At his words, she looked up again and nodded; and
he went on:—
“He has pledged himself to guard the goddess for his lad in the maze of
the town. Mistress Diana has seen naught of my Lord Constable but the
high-souled knight, the King Arthur of romance, and so he would fain
remain in her eyes even as in those of his son; and thus he, whom the
town has dubbed Rakehell Rockhurst, caught in his own springe, must go
on playing the pattern of chivalry, the virtuous gentleman, the devoted
father—play his part out, in fact, or else be dubbed now prince of
hypocrites! Aye, and the cream of the jest is that they have fallen both
so mad in love with each other, aha! that each can scarce breathe in the
other’s presence for the weight of the secret!”
He laughed, but she brooded darkly, nibbling at her little finger.
“And so,” she said after a pause, “you count upon me to lure back my
lord?”
“Aye,” retorted he, with a great show of ease. “That—or else to pluck the
mask of grave virtue from his face … in Mistress Harcourt’s presence.
Was it not agreed? Either course, I take it, will serve your purpose as
well as mine. Why—I deemed you subtler, madam! Upon my Lord Constable’s
discomfiture; upon the opening of my fair prude’s eyes, strikes my hour,
I say. And, zounds, I take it!—Strikes your moment, too, so you know how
to clutch it! Do you not see that?”
She made no answer. A meaningless laugh was on her lips; it died in a
sigh. A strange feeling as of soaring and undulation had come upon her,
and a splitting of her thoughts as though she were in two places at once.
Her mind was wandering oddly, beyond her control, to the cool meadows of
her childhood’s home, to the days when she plucked daisies with her baby
brother in the dew-wet grass. Lionel Ratcliffe was still speaking; she
caught a word here and there. One phrase at last fixed her attention.
“’Twill go hard,” he was saying, “if Lionel Ratcliffe comes not to his
own to-night!”
“And Jeanne de Mantes to hers!” she cried then, in a kind of
high-strained voice, rousing herself. And, falling back into her
abstraction: “What a wicked mist there rises from the garden,” she went
on, complaining. “Aye, would I were far from here!”
“And let pious Mistress Harcourt convert my Lord Constable?”
“A plague on you!” she shrieked in a sudden frenzy.
“Hush, hush! That word—have you forgot?”
A shadow fell on them as they leaned together. She looked up in
terror. It was only the old butler, with a whispered message from Lady
Chillingburgh to her grandson.
Lionel frowned: the interruption was unwelcome. He glanced at the clock,
it was the hour of the reception; the guests would presently arrive,
and he mistrusted the Frenchwoman’s tact, above all to-night, in this
unwonted vapourish mood. He rose with ill humour.
“Some whimsy of my grandam about the tables, no doubt,” he muttered, as
he sauntered from the room, pausing at the door to cast a last look of
warning. And, truly,—for Fate plays such tricks upon those who would
guide her,—scarce had his footsteps died away, when Lord Rockhurst
himself entered unannounced upon the solitary guest, as enters the
familiar of the house.
II
LOVE’S REPROACH
He reached the middle of the room before he caught sight of her. An
angry frown suddenly overcast features which, in repose, were at once
singularly dignified and melancholy.
“How now?” he said harshly. “How come you here?”
Whatever illusion Jeanne de Mantes might have cherished as to her power
over the man she loved, that frown, the cutting tones, all too quickly
dispelled it. She felt as one who, stretching her cheek for a kiss,
receives a blow. Ingrate! And she who, this day, was braving death to see
him once more! Quick upon the smart of pain, her fury rose. Squaring her
elbows, she looked at him insolently.
“Why, in my sedan chair, milord.”
“Who brought you, then?”
But she had not the strength for the fight. What had come to Jeanne de
Mantes? She found herself faltering:—
“Nay, say _what_ brought me, Rockhurst, and I will tell you. It was to
see you.” Her voice deepened, the tears she would not shed wept in it.
“I was packing, if you would know, for country and safety, even this
morning. And when Mr. Ratcliffe told me—”
“Ha!” he interrupted, speaking half to himself, “I might have known who
had baited this trap.”
She went on with rising plaint:—
“Oh! What have I done to thee, my friend—?”
“This is no place for you, madam,” he said, coming close to her and
speaking very low. “A house you have no right to enter.”
The colour flamed up again to her face.
“Nay, if you are here, milord,” she retorted, “why not I, then?”
He stood a few seconds, his dark eye upon her, deeply thinking; then,
as though upon a sudden, wilful mood, a complete change came over him.
The stateliness, the air of command, the something unapproachable as of
one set apart, gave place to mockery, to languor. He let himself sink
upon the chair that Ratcliffe had vacated; and, running his fingers
through the black curls that lay on his shoulders, scrutinised her again
insolently through half-closed lids.
“Lionel Ratcliffe,” quoth he then, “is a gentleman of birth and parts.
And if he hath not much of this world’s goods, he hath wits, which is
nigh as good. Mightest do worse, Jinny!”
“And is it for this,” cried she, laughing loudly, “that I gave up a
king?” But in the midst of her laughter tears welled and ran down her
cheeks.
“By the Lord Harry!” he said, wilfully hard, “but this becomes a
wearisome refrain of thine! What now, Old Rowley is forgiving. Finish
that packing of thine, and hie thee to Salisbury. You might still—”
She caught her kerchief from her bosom and set her teeth in it.
“Might I, indeed, my lord? Oh, you are gallant!” Then the tears came on
that hysteric outburst: “You will break my heart!”
He glanced anxiously toward the door.
“Tush!—Hearts?” he cried impatiently. “We are set with five senses in
this world, and ’tis but common wisdom to take note of them. But hearts?
What have you and I to do with hearts?”
“And, indeed,” she sobbed—“and, indeed, I never knew I had one, till you
had taken it from me!”
“Dry your eyes, Jinny,” said he then, not unkindly. “When will ye women
learn it?—tears are daggers with which ye slay your charms.… Enough! I
for one never could abide a salt cheek.”
She thrust back the sob rising in her throat, and strove to smile upon
him.
“Time was you thought me handsome,” she murmured with catching breath.
“I think thee handsome still,” he answered; stretched out a languid
finger and touched her chin. Then a bitter laugh shook him. “A morsel fit
for a king, as I said!”
With her snakelike movement she rose, and stood a second, glaring down
at him. Then to her ears came a rustle along the oaken boards of the
passage. Her rival! And she, _la belle_ Jeanne de Mantes, tear-stained, a
hideous thing to be mocked at! Like a hunted thing, she turned and dashed
through the open window out upon the terrace that overlooked the gloom of
the garden.
* * * * *
No fresh air there to cool her fevered temples, to revive that heart so
strangely labouring. But stronger than all physical discomfort was the
galling interest of her jealousy. She returned close to the window by
which she had fled.… The mischief of it was that, with this hammering
of her pulses, she could scarce catch a word of what passed within
the room. But she could see! And the whole life power in her became
concentrated in her burning eyes. Pshaw! it was but a pale girl when all
was said and done! And the hair, positive red!… Aye, and overlong in
the limb—an English gawk! She would call herself slender, no doubt—thin
was the word for her. Not a jewel, not even a pearl, on the forehead!
If Jeanne de Mantes knew milord—him so travelled, so fastidious, so
_raffiné_—this dish of curds and whey would mighty soon pall upon his
palate. Yet, through all this tale of her rival’s disabilities, a
relentless voice, far away in her soul, yet clear as judge’s sentence,
repeated that Diana was beautiful and held Rockhurst’s love. In her
despair, something like madness ran hot through her veins. Very well,
at any rate, as Lionel Ratcliffe had it, her moment was at hand! A
shuddering fit came over her that seemed to shake her ideas away, as an
autumn wind the leaves.… Her moment? What moment…?
* * * * *
In the yellow candle-light within, Lord Rockhurst had ceremoniously
greeted his son’s betrothed. Silently she courtesied. Then, as they drew
closer to each other, the man saw traces of tears on the fair cheek.
“What is this?” he exclaimed. “You have been weeping!”
“Truly, my lord,” said she, smiling, yet with a little catch in her
breath, “I should be ashamed to show you this disfigured countenance.”
“Disfigured?” he echoed. “Nay—transfigured!”
He took a quick step toward her as she spoke; but she drew back.
“I have a letter from Harry,” she said constrainedly; and Rockhurst drew
himself up, darkening.
“Aye,” said he, and then approached her again, his whole manner
delicately, indescribably altered. “Good news, I trust?”
“Oh, vastly,” she answered, with a small, flustered laugh, drawing a
folded sheet from her bosom. There was a deep pause. “I am glad to have
heard from Harry,” she declared of a sudden, bravely.
“So glad,” he said, low-voiced, “that you wept.”
“My lord!” There was fear and warning in her cry.
“Ah, Diana, do not grudge me your tears, since ’tis all I may ever have
from you!” He took a hasty turn about the room,—his eyes averted, not to
read in her countenance the effect of this cry of revelation. When he
came back to her, iron composure was once more upon him. “I, too, heard
from my son. Harry clamours to be allowed to join us. That may not be.
Less than ever now!” A church bell rang mournfully into his last words.
“Why, hark! the very bells ring out the words, plague, plague!”
“Oh, my good lord!” she exclaimed, her finger on her lip.
“Aye, and is my Lady Chillingburgh still so mad?”
“Mad? No; but all London is gone mad, is labouring under a monstrous
illusion. We, in this house, alone are sane. There never was such an
ailment as the—” she dropped and formed the evil word only with a
movement of the lips. “And if, as you see, our friends grow scarcer each
Wednesday night, there are a thousand indifferent good reasons to explain
their absence.”
Something in the sweet, assumed archness of her tone stirred him as could
no outburst of feminine terror.
“Diana, child, I cannot permit this! You must not remain exposed to such
peril. I will no longer be withheld from speaking to Lady Chillingburgh.”
“Believe me, my lord,” she prayed him earnestly, “you would but anger
her; you would but be banished this house, and nothing gained indeed.
Oh, do not speak!”