“Then will I speak to you only. Diana, think of yourself, of Harry. The
whole town is in flight. The departure of the Court has given the final
signal for panic—”
She smiled as she slowly withdrew her hands.
“And you, my lord, when do you join the fugitives?”
“I?” He started. “Why, surely, madam, you know I have a post to keep!
’Tis one I would not desert if I might. My men, poor devils, look to me—”
“Ah,” she interrupted, “and have I no post to hold against the same
enemy? How many servants would my grandmother retain if I set the
example?”
“Diana!” The word escaped him in an uncontrollable impulse of tenderness.
But he checked himself again on the very leap of passion. “Ah,” he
murmured, “I shall have a brave daughter!”
She smiled, as a woman smiles at the hurt inflicted by the best-beloved.
There came from without the sound of voices, uplifted in the pleasant,
artificial accents that mark the social meeting, and Lionel Ratcliffe
ushered a couple of elderly visitors into the room with his elaborate, if
ironic, courtesy.
“You are not the first, gentlemen, you perceive. Indeed, my worthy
ancestress is somewhat behind-hand in her usual punctilio. But she has
been engaged (with my assistance) in the dismissal of a saucy footman who
has had the insolence to remark to her upon these red crosses with which
it hath become the rage to adorn the doors of certain houses these days.”
Both the men laughed uneasily.
“Tut, tut!” cried the elder and stouter, and sniffed surreptitiously at
his pomander box.
“Quite so,” assented Lionel, suavely.
Whereupon the other guest broke out, as in anger:—
“A monstrous nuisance, ’pon honour! Gad, sirs, I am here straight from
a crony’s house—my Lord Vernon’s and no other. What think you greets
me from the door-step—a nobleman’s door, mark you! The cross, sir, the
cross! and by my soul, the text, ‘_Lord have mercy on us!_’ writ beneath
in chalk!”
“Lord ’a’ mercy!” exclaimed the stout man, starting back involuntarily.
“You did not cross the threshold?”
“No, Mr. Foulkes,” returned the younger severely. Then he burst forth
again, a man mightily offended by the indelicacy of events: “Gad, sir,
I’m not fond of the country, but I’m for it to-morrow!”
Foulkes again sniffed his spice-box, this time openly.
“Why, so am I, Sir John!—Ah, Mistress Harcourt, your humble devoted!”
Ratcliffe, who had anxiously looked round the room for Madame de Mantes,
while the guests exchanged greetings, now saw her emerge from the window
recess, and threw her a keen, enquiring glance. Without meeting his eyes,
she came forward with a great rustle of ballooning silk so that all
turned toward her.
“Pray, Mr. Ratcliffe,” said she, in a gay and coquettish voice, “you have
not yet presented me to your kinswoman.”
Ratcliffe shot swift scrutiny from beneath his drawn brows at Diana’s
surprised face, at Lord Rockhurst’s dark, impassive countenance and the
Frenchwoman’s crimson cheeks and haggard eyes, imperceptibly shrugged his
shoulders, and complied:—
“Cousin Diana—Madame de Mantes, who is kind enough to add her charming
presence to our dwindling company to-night. Agreeably to our
grandmother’s wish, I have been acting herald to her hospitality.”
Jeanne sank into the centre of her amber and blue draperies; emerged
languorous, extended with queenly grace a hand to Foulkes and another to
Sir John, and from the very sweep of her courtesies flung a condescending
phrase at her rival:—
“Monsieur, your handsome cousin, has been so eloquent about you, madam,
that ’tis almost as if I knew you already.”
“He is very kind,” faltered Diana, ill at ease, she scarce knew why.
Then, mindful of her duty as hostess, “You know my Lord Rockhurst?”
The lady looked beyond them into the night of the garden.
“We _have_ met,” she said in dreamy tones, and sailed into a third
obeisance.
The two gentlemen of the Court instinctively drew together.
“What has come to that pretty piece from France? Her looks are oddly
altered, think you not? And her manner is somewhat singular to-night.
What makes she in this prim circle? She should be at Salisbury,”
whispered Foulkes.
Sir John Farringdon jerked his thumb knowingly toward the Lord
Constable; both looked, laughed, and wagged their heads. Rockhurst
stepped forward and unostentatiously drew Diana away from Madame de
Mantes. Lionel seized his moment:—
“What did you, from the room?” he whispered hurriedly in his ally’s ear.
“You had your chance, and let it slip! I had not brought you here—” He
stopped suddenly, staring at her askance. The great enamel clasp, that
held the artfully careless draperies at her breast, rose and fell with
her over-quick breathing, yet her mood was strangely cheerful; nay,
incomprehensible, for he marked that her eyes were red. She had wept, he
angrily thought, and robbed herself well-nigh of all her beauty. “You’ve
lost the trick for both of us,” he muttered bitterly.
“Don’t be too sure,” she bade him, drawing closer to him. “Look at them!”
she cried, tossing her curls in the direction of Rockhurst and Diana.
“Ha! you’d have me believe Rockhurst in love—in love with that white,
bloodless, fireless country stock! Oh, sir, I have seen Rockhurst in
love!”
A smile twisted his lips; he looked at her cruelly.
She proceeded with a mixture of exultation and bitterness:—
“I watched them; they thought themselves alone. I tell you he made
no attempt to do more than kiss her finger-tips! Ah, _mon Dieu_!” Her
laughter was like a flame running through her. “With me—Ah, you men! do I
not know you?”
“Pshaw!” said Ratcliffe, deliberately. “Something you may know of us, and
know well. But you know not what a virtuous woman can make of us.”
She wheeled on him, clenching her hands as though to strike him.
“Indeed!” she panted. “And have I not had as much virtue as any
woman—once?” Then, finding his gaze fixed upon his cousin, she halted
upon precipitate speech, watched him keenly for a second, and broke into
loud laughter.
“Hush!” he cried, starting at the wanton sound.
“Excellent Lionel,” she said, catching him with her small, burning
fingers, “if friends are to help each other, they should be frank. But
now I know your secret, I know where I am. As Heaven is good to me,” her
laugh rang out again, “’tis not for the money; why, ’tis for love! You’re
in love with the widow!”
He looked at her for an instant as if he could have stabbed her
willingly, but the next fell back into his cynic mood.
“Congratulate yourself, then,” he retorted drily, “since I have all the
more reason to have my way. But, pray you, here comes my grandam. She
cares not for such loud mirth.”
“Trust me,” she tittered. “I await but the ripe moment. The unmasking
shall yet be played to your liking, and—” She faltered; into her eyes
came the vagueness, into her voice the singular change, that once or
twice already had aroused Ratcliffe’s attention. In a kind of toneless
whisper, rapid and jerky, she added: “Unmask? Oh, yes, milord. No
doubt—after supper!”
Lionel fell back with a frown of dismay.
The folding doors were thrown apart; two footmen entered, bearing
candelabra which they deposited upon the centre card-table. There was
an abrupt cessation of talk among the guests, and all turned in formal
expectation of the venerable hostess’s entry. Into which stillness Lady
Chillingburgh, seated very upright in her chair, was wheeled by a negro
boy.
III
THE PLAGUE-CART
Through the fantastic mists that circled in her brain to-night, now
shrouding her faculties in gloom like the sinister fog that hung without,
now shot as with many-coloured fires, Madame de Mantes gazed upon this
extraordinary personality.
Paralysed to the waist though the old lady was, a fierce vitality, an
indomitable will, looked out of the sunken black eyes, spoke in the
cavernous voice, imposed itself in the gesture of the shriveled hand.
Here was one, in spite of age and infirmity, strong enough to bid
defiance to universal calamity, to look Pestilence in the face, and
choose to ignore it; who, in the midst of a terror akin to that of the
scriptural last day—when the abomination of desolation seemed to have
fallen upon the city, and he that was on the housetop might scarce come
down to take anything out of his house—could still give her weekly
card-party and find guests to obey the summons.
As her chair was brought to a stand in the middle of the room, Lady
Chillingburgh drew her eyebrows together and swept a slow, severe glance
over the circle.
“I was informed the company had assembled. How now! Are these all my
guests?”
There was a kind of apologetic stir, as if each person felt responsible
for the paucity of the gathering. Then Rockhurst and the other men
advanced and gravely paid their devoirs. Diana drew her grandmother’s
chair to a more suitable position by the big card-table, and stood behind
her, in attendance. Ratcliffe instantly proceeded to the introduction of
the new guest. He was once more suave, to glibness:—
“The Court has left this morning, dear madam; hence this unwonted
emptiness of your rooms. Nevertheless, here is a lady of the royal
circle. Madame de Mantes, of the house of Madame Henriette de France,
and honoured by their Majesties’ particular regard—she still prefers the
advantages of the town.”
The aged face became wreathed in smiles.
“I trust their Majesties were in good health, madam, when last you saw
them,” said my Lady Chillingburgh in stately condescension.
Jeanne courtesied mechanically. She felt of a sudden childishly afraid of
the figure in the chair, old, old and nearly dead, yet so alive!
The faint, hollow voice went on, as from the recesses of a tomb:—
“You play cards, of course, Madame de Mantes!” To which the other made
answer feebly, into space:—
“Yes … yes, milady. I came to play.”
A slight shade of surprise appeared in the hostess’s eyes; but after a
second, she made another gesture with the clawlike hand, and turned with
an unerring precision of politeness to her friends:—
“Sir John, I rejoice to see you; you had failed us of late. Ah, Mr.
Foulkes, you indeed are ever faithful! But where is your good lady?”
“She deemed it wiser—hem,” Foulkes coughed, a-sweat with embarrassment,
“I mean, she had accepted an invitation to the country, and left this
morning with our family.”
“Indeed!” commented the venerable hostess, regally. “My Lord Rockhurst,
you prefer basset, I know. So does Sir John. Will you be seated yonder?
Grandson, to my left. Madame, will you face me, if you please? Mr.
Foulkes, sir, to my right. Diana, child, shuffle the cards.”
They fell into their places as she willed them; and for a little while
round the greater table there was naught but the business of the moment:
the necessary words of the game, the rattle of the dice, the whisper of
sliding cards. Diana, her fresh young beauty drawn close in startling
contrast to her grandmother’s awe-inspiring face, held the cards for the
trembling fingers, flung the dice.
In the window recess, the two men, under cover of a languid contest,
conversed gravely in undertones. But ever and again the Lord Constable’s
gaze, charged with anxiety, sought Diana’s radiant head. Jeanne had flung
herself feverishly into the game, which seemed to her all at once a
matter of colossal importance.
“I marvel extremely,” quoth Lady Chillingburgh, “that my Lord Marsham
should be so late. You are acquaint with my Lord Marsham, madame? He is
much at Whitehall. We are indeed a small party to-night. Let us hope my
lord will presently appear.”
Foulkes, who had shown increasing agitation during this speech, now
dropped his cards with a muffled “Mercy be good to us!”
Ratcliffe kicked him under the table, the while addressing his bland
tones to his grandmother.
“Do not expect his lordship to-night, madam. I hear he has convened a
party of his own.”
Sir John Farringdon, straining startled ears and eyes from the other
table, caught Ratcliffe’s glance, and mouthed at him with dumb lips,
“Gone?”—jerking heavenward with his thumb.
“Gone,” asserted Ratcliffe’s nod, while his thumb pointed grimly down.
Lady Chillingburgh turned her quick glance, her high pyramid of lace
and white curls, in daunting enquiry toward Sir John. But her grandson,
diabolically fluent, was once more ready with his irony:—
“Sir John is offended at having received no invitation.”
“’Tis very strange,” said Lady Chillingburgh. “My Lord Marsham is not
wont to be discourteous.”
“’Twas such a sudden inspiration,” soothed Lionel.
His grandmother fixed him with stern disapproval. Diana sometimes thought
that, though it was the old woman’s fancy to be humoured, not a jot of
their elaborate pretence escaped her; that she fiercely resented the
mocking manner with which Lionel acted his rôle.
“And your cousin, sir? Where lurks he? Your brother Edward, I mean,
Diana?”
And as Diana had no answer but a look of dumb distress, the old lady
finished the phrase for herself:—
“I fear young Edward can find little time for the duties he owes to his
grandmother, for the claims of a genteel society, so eager is he, since
he is come to London, for less reputable amusements!” Again the fiery
eyes wandered, seeking. “And Mistress Hill? ’Tis the first time in seven
years that Mistress Hill has failed me.”
Sir John Farringdon, who had been unaccountably nettled by Ratcliffe’s
mocking remark, here lifted his voice somewhat overloudly:—
“I can give tidings of Mistress Hill, madam. I happen to know that this
evening she was driven out in state. No doubt, Mr. Ratcliffe, ’twas to
join that gathering of my Lord Marsham’s to which, as you were good
enough to inform the company, I was not asked.”
Rockhurst rose, frowning. And, laughing, not pleasantly, at his own wit,
Sir John gathered the neglected stakes and slipped them into his pocket.
Madame de Mantes echoed the laugh, shrilly, hysterically.
“_Mon Dieu!_ How amusing you all are!” she cried, and furtively wiped her
forehead, wet with unaccountably cold clamminess this sultry night.
A dark flush crept to the old hostess’s bleached cheek. Desultory talk
or grim jest failed alike to relieve the tension. The game languished;
scarce passed a card or rang a die; the ever-shadowing Horror hung,
nightmare-dark, ever closer, ever more palpable, over all.
“The game, madam! The game, gentlemen!”
But it was idle, even for the bravest spirit among her guests, to deny
the invisible Presence in their midst. And when, following upon a
confused rumour on the stairs, a great cry of anguish and terror was
raised at the very door of the room; when, staggering and wringing his
hands, a distraught youth rushed in, it was almost as if his voice was
that of the unacknowledged Fear; his livid face its very countenance.
“For the Lord’s sake, a cup of the plague water!”
“Brother!” cried Diana. She sprang toward him. But hastily, even roughly,
Rockhurst thrust her on one side, and the boy collapsed into the nearest
chair.
Whereupon Lionel, coming forward with his usual coolness, ran his
fingers, with a movement the sinister significance of which most people
had learned to interpret these days, under the fair curls of the bent
head, feeling behind the ears.
“Pshaw—’tis nothing!… Sheer poltroonery,” cried he, and laughed loudly,
and struck his cousin’s hunched shoulders with no gentle hand. “Art a
pretty fellow to come thus, bellowing like a calf, into the presence of
ladies!”
“Curse it!” moaned the lad. “I have just knocked against two women
carrying a coffin! They howled like sick cats.” Sinking his head on his
hands once more, he rocked himself backward and forward. “Oh, this wicked
London! Oh, the judgment of God!”
“Edward!” cried Lady Chillingburgh imperiously. Her voice dominated the
horrified whispers of Sir John and Foulkes, Madame de Mantes’s hysterical
cries, young Edward’s obtrusive groans.
But there was a force stronger than her in her house that night. Sir John
Farringdon unceremoniously poured himself a bumper of wine, drank it
hastily, his eye on the door toward which Foulkes was already uneasily
edging. Madame de Mantes, who had been sobbing out inarticulate words in
her own tongue, broke into babbling laughter.
Edward sprang to his feet, thrusting aside his cousin’s restraining hand.
“I will speak! Grandam shall hear the truth at last! ’Tis everywhere!
Every one is getting it! Lord Marsham, ill at noon, dead at four!
Mistress Hill, well yesterday, buried to-night!”
“I command you to silence, Edward!”
The quavering voice rose high, catching painfully at lost authority; the
palsied hand aimed a feeble blow at the table.
“Why must we stay, because of the old woman’s whimsy?” continued the boy
in fury. “Zounds! I go to-night, and sister with me. D’ye hear, grandam!
I’m only come here to get the travel money from you, and I’ll have it.
I’ll go, and sister with me!”
But the aged queen was not yet dethroned. Her spirit asserted itself
in a supreme effort. Life seemed to come back to her paralysed limbs;
she flung out one hand in a gesture of authority; this time it scarce
trembled.
“Diana, your brother is drunk. I order him to be expelled. Mr. Foulkes,
the game is not concluded; resume your seat!”
She broke off. Sir John Farringdon had made a sudden unmannerly dash from
the room. Foulkes stood at command with a sickly smile; but his friend’s
example, the open passage, were too much for him; stealthily the door
closed upon his retreat.
Only by a rigid aversion of her head did Lady Chillingburgh betray her
knowledge of this double defection.
“Grandson Lionel, your cousin Edward is drunk. Conduct him, I say, from
this apartment and let him be physicked. Madam, I am surprised you find
amusement in such an indecorous scene. Foh! It seems truly that we shall
have no cards to-night. Diana, child, take your guitar and sing for us.
Sing that old sweet song of Master Herrick’s.—My Lord Rockhurst, have you
yet heard this new instrument?”
But the Lord Constable had followed Diana as she moved across the room to
seek the guitar. They stood together a second; he saw her hand tremble
over the olive-wood case.
“Nay, child, you can never sing to-night!” he whispered.
“My lord, I must—anything to soothe her. Oh, the physicians have ever
warned us of the danger of agitation for her!”
“Diana!” Lady Chillingburgh’s voice was weak and strained; her face
seemed to have suddenly shrunk; extinct was the fire in the eyes. Yet the
will still struggled. “Sing!”
Rockhurst stood behind Diana, a strong, quiet presence, watchful,
comforting. She smiled at him over her shoulder. He bent to her, and
under cover of the first chords:—
“You, at least, are not afraid?” he asked.
“No, my lord.”
Lionel Ratcliffe had taken no pains to fulfil his grandmother’s behest;
and already she seemed to have forgotten it; but he had soothed Edward
Hare after his own fashion—by a bumper of wine and a whispered promise to
provide the travel money himself. Now in the lull he took a seat behind
Madame de Mantes and, his eyes on Rockhurst and Diana, began in a fierce
undertone:—
“Do you not see how it is with them? Why, in this evening’s folly
everything conspires to give them to each other. You wait the ripe
moment, say you? Gad! Look there, I say: there is that other woman with
the man you love—claim him now! ’Tis your last chance!”
Madame de Mantes, who, since Lady Chillingburgh’s rebuke, had been
sitting, her chin propped up on her hands, her curls concealing her face,
turned slowly toward him. He started. For all his fortitude a shudder ran
through him.—Through her mad eyes the Pestilence was looking upon him!
* * * * *
Diana’s voice rose faint but sweet:—
_Ask me why I send you here_
_This sweet infanta of the year?_
_Ask me why I send to you_
_This Primrose thus bepearled with dew?_
Lady Chillingburgh, with closed lids, beat time vaguely on the arm of
her chair; Edward Hare pondered over his last mouthful of wine; the
Frenchwoman was muttering to herself and drawing, under the shadow of the
curls, restless patterns on the table with her forefinger. Lionel sat
beside her, his starting eyes upon her face.
_I will whisper to your ears:_
_The sweets of Love are mixed with tears!_
sang Diana, in a voice that had grown firmer and clearer.
And now, so faintly at first as to be almost imperceptible, something
began to mingle itself with the music. The clang of a bell struck at
intervals, followed by a long, monotonous call. The sound drew ever
nearer. Diana faltered, took up her song again bravely, failed once more,
struck a broken note; then hand and voice fell mute. Stillness held them
all within the great room, which seemed to wait doom the more inevitably
for its bright lights, for its futile air of indifference and gaiety.
Through the open window, out of the darkness, gathered a heavy rumble of
wheels; then again uprose the call of the bell, the cry of the hoarse
voice:—
“Bring out your dead!”
In the breathless pause, Lady Chillingburgh, rising upon those feet that
had been dead to motion so long, stood erect, and flung out her arm with
an angry cry; and then it seemed there was naught in the big chair but a
huddled heap of drapery. The Terror, petrified on young Hare’s lip, broke
out roaring:—
“She’s dead also! Grandam’s dead! The plague! She’s dead of the plague!”
He made one leap for the door, his screams awaking confusion in the house.
Within Lady Chillingburgh’s drawing-room the drama was quickly played.
Diana bent in anguish over her grandmother, crying:—
“She has swooned! For Heaven’s sake, madame, as you are a woman, give me
your assistance!”
But Lionel had sprung to her side:—
“Back, Diana! Away out of this room. Our grandmother is dead.”
“The—the sickness?” she faltered, with white lips.
“The plague? Not here—” he answered her. “But there!” He flung his
pointing finger toward Jeanne de Mantes, who turned her face with a crazy
laugh toward them.
Diana recoiled a pace, threw out her hands as if seeking support, and
Rockhurst, ever close to her, caught her in his arms as she swooned. A
sudden, blind, all-encompassing fury fell upon Ratcliffe.
“Stay, my Lord Constable!” he cried fiercely, and made a spring to wrest
the unconscious burden from the hated man’s embrace. “Ah, Rakehell
Rockhurst, not so fast!”
The table was between them. He was wrenching at his sword as he dashed
round it, pushing Jeanne de Mantes aside; when, with her soft, bare arms,
she clutched his throat from behind.
It was perhaps his horror of the embrace that robbed him of the power
of resistance; perhaps it was the strength lent by the delirium that
rendered her burning clasp irresistible. He struggled, yet was powerless.
His starting eyes beheld the Lord Constable pass out of the room to the
garden, bearing Diana into the night. He gathered his energy for a last
shout in the hope of raising the household to his help; but the hot arms
were writhing closer about him, the scented curls beat softly against
his cheek. The creature was laughing, pressing upward her disfigured
face, devouring him with her mad, unseeing eyes, striving to reach his
lips for the kiss of death.—And she was raving:—
“At last, O Rockhurst!… _O mon beau Démon!_”
He never knew how he loosed himself—that moment was blank, stamped with
too deep a horror to be ever recalled.
He found himself as in a nightmare rushing blindly through the blackness
of the fields, feeling as if he could never escape from that lingering
touch of contamination, as if no waters could ever lave him from the
taint!
* * * * *
It was only when he was brought to a standstill by the edge of the river,
by the Essex stairs, that he realised where his frenzy was taking him,
and awoke, as it were, to sanity. But it was with a trembling in every
limb and a weakness that forced him to sit on the steps. The water lapped
at his very feet, shivering in a little circle of light cast by the stair
lantern. He dipped his hand in the dark ripple and began mechanically to
lave his brow—to lave, above all, his lips.