plans. Madame de Mantes had failed him with a completeness it seemed
that must have required Satan’s own ingenuity to devise. Lord Rockhurst
had not been unmasked, Diana was with him in his power,—and he, Lionel
Ratcliffe (God, with what appalling reason!), was at last afraid of the
plague!
BROKEN SANCTUARY
BROKEN SANCTUARY
I
THE HAVEN OF REFUGE
A red dawn was breaking over London; through the undrawn curtains of the
parlour in Lord Rockhurst’s small house in Whitehall, abutting by the
Holbein gateway, the first rays darted in to mingle with the dying gleam
of a pair of candles that guttered in their sockets.
Chitterley—my lord’s old confidential servant, who had shared with him
all fortune’s vicissitudes, through prosperity and peace, through war and
exile, since the last reign—rose from the high-backed chair upon which he
had been dozing, and stretched his stiffened limbs wearily. Muttering to
himself, as old people will, he fell with sudden alacrity to replenishing
(only just in time, for it was fast going out) the small cresset which
burned at his hand.
“All good spirits praise the Lord!… Now I pray no misfortune may have
happened this night!… Heaven be merciful to us; these be times of
terror!”
He flung a new handful of herbs upon the rekindled embers, and watched
with satisfaction the column of fragrant smoke that rose circling, now
blue, now white, to hang in clouds under the ceiling. “’Twas your only
remedy against the tainted air,” had said Dr. Garth; and Dr. Garth was
the King’s physician.
“Morning already—and no sign of his lordship! Had it been a year gone,
now, I had got me to my bed, and ne’er a qualm. But these be no times for
frolic—and e’en if they were, my lord has had little stomach for it these
weeks agone.”
He shook his head, moved to the window, groaning for the aches in his
joints, and peered into the street, in the hope of catching at last
a glimpse of his beloved master, striding down Whitehall. Dim though
Chitterley’s eyes might be, he would know a furlong away the swing of
the tall figure, the cock of the sword under the folds of the cloak, the
proud tilt of the hat. But the street was deserted.
It seemed as if the day was rising again over the stricken city but to
make visible its desolation. The unwholesome mists of the night still
stagnated under the reddening light; there was none of that air of
rejuvenescence, of waking life-cheer, which morning ought to bring. The
stillness was not of repose, but of hopeless expectancy.
One of those street fires, which were kept burning at all cross-roads,
to combat the pollution, could be seen in the distance, toward Charing
Cross, smouldering fitfully, unattended, the last thin shafts of tar
smoke rising straight, dismal, through the heavy air. Somewhere in the
palace, behind the banquet hall, a bell rang the hour—it sounded like a
knell for those that were that day to die. Presently, in this solitude,
a woman’s figure appeared, creeping round a corner, holding on to the
walls, dragging herself painfully; the only living creature, it seemed,
left besides himself in this vast city. Presently even she disappeared
from the purview.
Chitterley shuddered; and muttering his haunting “Lord have mercy upon
us!” drew back from the windows to go tease again the reeking herbs in
the cresset, and shift needlessly my lord’s chair.
“Not even a pomander could I persuade him to take with him…!”
He went over to extinguish the candles and stood awhile painfully musing.
There came a knock at the outer door. Hardly trusting his deaf ears, he
turned to listen—everything, anything, was an added terror these days of
terror. The knock was repeated, faintly, then vehemently.
“’Tis not my lord—he hath the house key. Pray heaven this be no ill
news!—Coming, coming!” he cried shrilly, as yet another summons rang.
Hardly had the door rolled back under his feeble hands when he found
himself thrust on one side: a woman in low-cut dress, with dishevelled
laces hanging in shreds at her shoulders, brushed past him and walked
tottering into the room beyond, to sink upon the great chair.
Like an old watch-dog’s, Chitterley’s first thought was of his duty.
“Madam—madam!” he protested. “His lordship is not within—” Then, as she
turned upon the querulous sound, and looked vacantly at him, he staggered
back, “God ’a’ mercy; Madam Mantes!”
An ice-cold clutch seemed to be at his heart. Madame de Mantes it
certainly was, the grand French lady of the Court, whom Lord Rockhurst
had many a time entertained in days (alack, how far off they seemed!)
when people laughed and made merry; and among the gay she had been
the gayest, among the bright and beautiful the brightest and most
fair. Chitterley could remember how, in this very room, in that very
chair—which they called the King’s chair, for his Majesty always sat
in it when he visited, as he loved to do, his neighbour, “my Merry
Rockhurst,” for an hour of pleasant converse—she had sung fit to make his
old heart young again.
Yet, in sooth, this was Madame de Mantes. Torn and haggard, through the
strands of her uncurled hair, her glazed eyes looked at him from red and
swollen lids, piteously, scarcely as if she could see. Except for a patch
of rouge, her face was livid.
He thought of the figure he had seen crawling along the walls, and dread
was upon him.
“How hot it is—” she complained, in a dry, whispering voice. “Fires,
fires everywhere!—Give me to drink!”
The man hesitated a moment, upon the blind impulse of flight. But the
long habit of fidelity was stronger even than fear of the pestilence.
He took up a flask from a table,—the _en cas_ after the foreign manner,
awaiting the master’s return,—poured out a glass of wine and tendered it
to her.
“Hot? Eh—but your hand is cold, my lady!”
She drank; seemed to gain a little strength.
“Cold?” she took up the word with an inconsequent laugh. “So would you
be, _mon ami_, had you been roaming the streets, for months … years … as
I have been, to-night! You are a kind old man. The others ran from me …
one robbed me and beat me, then he, too, ran away.…”
And then Chitterley marked how cruelly, in sooth, the woman had been
dealt with; her gown and bodice rent where seemingly the jewels had been
snatched; and there was blood on her neck, trickling from the torn lobe
of her little ear.
“_Mon beau Rockhurst!_” she went on, in that loud whisper, as of one
light-headed. “I drink to you, to you.” She lifted the cup again, but
stopped, catching at her throat: “It is fire—why did you give me fire to
drink?”
He seized the glass from her failing hand.
“God ’a’ mercy! you are raving, madam!—you must.…”
She turned her red glance to him, then beat the air with a fierce
gesture, imposing silence, and seemed to strain her ear to sounds
inaudible:—
“Oh, don’t laugh, Rockhurst, don’t laugh…! Oh, if you like not a salt
cheek, I can be merry—”
Chitterley had drawn back, step by step, to the farther end of the room.
Then, of a sudden, very loud and angrily, he spoke:—
“Madam, you are ailing. You are ill. You must go home!”
She came back to her surroundings with a start and a cry:—
“_Mon Dieu_, where am I? Ill? Yes, I am ill! I am strangling, I can’t
breathe!” She clutched at her throat with both hands, feeling for
something with frantic fingers; then, with a scream that rose and seemed
to circle about the silent room like some phantom bird: “_Miséricorde!_
they are there!… _La peste!_ I have the _peste_.…”
Chitterley’s grey hair bristled on his head.
“A physician!” he cried, and turned to fly.
But, in her delirium, she was quicker than he in his senile confusedness.
She caught him by the wrist with both her hands, now burning as though,
indeed, she had drunk fire:—
“No! You shall not leave me! I am dying.… I will not die alone!” The
fleeting of madness returned to her fever-wasted brain: “We are put in
this world with five senses—and ’tis but common sense to pleasure them.
Aye, Rockhurst … but when it comes to dying!…” Her grip relaxed; she
wrung her hands. “How can such as we die? Old man, a priest, a priest!”
He felt that he would be less than man if he did not help her. Priest and
physician, she should have both,—poor soul, poor soul!
He tried to make her understand him—speaking loud as to the deaf, in
little words as to a child. The priest, the physician—aye, she should
have them—quickly—she might trust to him. But she looked at him,
uncomprehending, with eyes ever wilder. A step farther on her awful
journey; she seemed already a world away from her fellow-humans.
Then, as if his meek, aged countenance, all puckered in distress, were a
spectacle of unspeakable horror, she flung out both arms to ward him from
her; stared round the room like a hunted thing, and, ere he could call or
arrest her, had darted through the half-open door of the inner room and
flung it, clapping, into the lock between them.
“My lord’s own room!”
Chitterley stood a second helplessly; then came a groan from within; the
sound of a heavy fall. The old man called upon Heaven and ran on his
errand of mercy.
* * * * *
The wretched woman found herself in a darkened room, with heavy curtains
closely drawn, illumined only by a dying night-lamp. She staggered toward
a couch, fought for a moment vainly for breath. Then strength, and
with it, mercifully, consciousness, gave way; she fell face downward,
clutching the silken hangings.
* * * * *
It seemed as if it had become suddenly broad day in that room where
Chitterley had kept his night’s vigil—that room, famed once in Whitehall
for those gatherings of wit and beauty, convened for his Majesty’s
pleasure. A shaft of sunshine, yellow through the sullen mists, struck
the chair where Charles had been wont to sit; where but a few moments
ago had agonised one whose gay winsomeness and bird-song he had so often
commended.
The vapour of Sir George Garth’s sovereign remedy rose but in feeble
wisp-like exhalations, ever fainter and wider apart—like to the breath
of some dying thing. Occasionally a sigh, or a groan and a muffled word
or two, came dully from the neighbouring room. But after a while these
ceased; and the only sound to be heard was that of a blue fly, bloated
and busy, circling about, emphasising the stillness, to settle ever and
anon with a heavy buzz on the wine which Jeanne de Mantes had spilled
from her last cup.
II
THE GOLD WHISTLE
Presently there approached, along the flags of Whitehall, the sound of
steady footfalls. They mounted the steps and halted before the door; a
key grated in the lock, and Lord Rockhurst led Mistress Diana Harcourt
across the threshold.
She entered without a word, let herself fall in her turn like one worn
out, into the King’s chair, and lifted her face toward him—a face
blanched indeed with the miseries of the night, its terrors, the long
vigil, the weary wandering, yet full of a brave, sweet strength.
None of her serenity was reflected on Rockhurst’s countenance. His
face was dark as with an inner conflict; he averted his eyes as hers
sought them. There was a moment’s heavy silence. He broke it, at length,
standing over the fireless hearth, without looking at her.
“Now that you are under my roof, Diana, I trust you will consider
yourself as if already—” he hesitated, and then brought out the words
harshly, “as if already in your father’s house.—I fear me,” he went on,
after a pause, “you are dead weary after our wanderings this night …
fruitless search for shelter—the flaming cross barring us from every
threshold … when it was not mean selfishness and childish fears that
drove us to the street again!—Your brother fled basely.…”
She interrupted, wincing under the bitterness of his accents.
“Ah, poor Ned,” she pleaded; “he is but a boy. And his wits are never of
the strongest.… In his way, he loves me. And, truly, I am glad he has
escaped.”
“You have a strong heart, child!”
Though the words were kind, voice and look were hard. She shivered and
drooped her head.
“You are cold,” he went on, with a sudden softening in his tone. “Indeed,
’tis the chill hour of the day.” He glanced hastily round the room,
and catching sight of the spilt wine and the soiled cup, frowned, then
laughed contemptuously. “So—even old Chitterley hath forgot his duty!
These, in sooth, are days of test. I will rouse him, and you shall have
fire and refreshment.”
She heard his tread on the stairs, the opening and shutting of doors
within the house. Quickly he came back to her.
“Aye, even my old Chitterley gone! …” he cried, with a bitter twist
of the lip. “Neither brotherly love, nor life-long service and
companionship.… Nay, what should still hold, these times, when no man
knows the hour when his life will be withdrawn? Oh, are you human—you,
Diana, who sit so still and have no woman’s plaint?”
His voice broke with sudden passion. She raised her eyes and strove to
smile; but the shudder of fatigue seized her.
Without another word he lifted the cresset of charcoal from its stand,
blew upon the expiring glow, cast fresh fuel upon it; then, the flame
once more enkindled, flung the whole on the hearth. She watched him, and
gave a little feminine cry of protest as he next seized the first thing
at hand, a couple of books, and tore them up ruthlessly to feed the fire.
“O, my lord!” she began, as the flame roared up the chimney. But the
faint laugh died on her lips when she met his glance.
“I must leave you,” he said, when he had thrown in a couple of logs. “I
must leave you; it will go ill indeed, if, within the hour, I return not
with coach and horses. If I have to plead King’s Service, I shall carry
you out of the infection.”
* * * * *
The door closed on him. Left alone, Diana sighed deeply. All the
bright look of courage faded from her face. How harshly he had spoken!
how coldly he had looked upon her—when not averting his eyes as from
something troubling!…
Diana Harcourt, widow of twenty, bound by a freak of fate, through the
merest impulse of womanly pity, to Rockhurst’s young son,—so faithful a
lover, so gallant a youth,—knew her heart given to Rockhurst himself!
What shame—what treachery! Moments were when she thought to guess her
hidden love as returned; and then she felt herself strong and proud, and
took a kind of high spiritual glory in the thought of how true they both
would remain to honour and plighted troth. “Loved he not honour more,”
as the chivalrous song had it, she would have none of his love.… But, to
feel it in this sacred silence, in this noble self-denial, that was a
kind of pain more exquisite than any joy she had ever known.
Yet moments were, again, such as this, when his formal manner, the
sombreness of his gaze, smote her with distressing conjecture.
Was his solicitude but for his boy’s sake, after all? Was the
self-betrayal—sweet and terrible—that had so often seemed to hover on his
lips, but the gallantry of the high-bred courtier? Or—worse suspicion
yet!—had he read her folly, and was it but compassion that spoke in his
lingering gaze?
As she sat staring dully into the fire he had kindled for her, vividly
the troubled scenes of this night of catastrophe rose before her.
* * * * *
Her grandmother’s great card-room, lit and decked as usual; the dwindled
company, each with the heavy knowledge of the peril without and about
stamped upon his countenance, each with his hypocrite smile for my Lady
Chillingburgh, who glared upon them from out her chair, and forbade the
pestilence to exist, since she would have none of it.…
Next, the fair French lady from the Court courtesying in her waves
of amber satin, and fixing her, Diana,—aye, and the Lord Constable,
too,—with such singular eyes. She recalled to mind, truly, how those
fierce eyes had followed Rockhurst, and how Cousin Lionel had smiled as
he watched.… Tush, the poor creature knew not what she was doing—was she
not stricken ill and in fever?—She might well have mad eyes.…
It was Lionel who had brought her. Lady Chillingburgh’s own grandson
who had given the citadel to the enemy it had so long defied! In rapid
succession the horrid events reënacted themselves in Diana’s brain:—
She heard her brother screaming on the stairs, saw him break in upon
them, a foolish country lad, frenzied in his panic.
She saw the frightened faces of their guests, and Lionel’s ever-mocking
smile—“Sheer poltroonery!”—he was saying. And ever and again she sought
and found the comfort of Rockhurst’s strong protective glance.
And then came the end.… The huddled figure in the great chair. The
face of her that had had so stout a heart, conquered in death—but less
piteous, less awful sight than the living face of the French madam. “_The
plague is there_—” She heard Lionel’s cry of warning, and then all is
black about her.
And now she relived the moment when she had awakened from her swoon;
darkness and silence all about her. She thought that the nightmare of
the card-room had given way to some exquisite dream.… Rockhurst’s arm
was supporting her, her head rested on his shoulder, and the solitude
of a sombre night held them safe. Above their heads, outstretched
tree branches swayed murmurously as the breeze stirred. She heard his
heart-beats beneath her ear, and an unknown joy ran like music in her
veins: life, reality, seemed thrust as far away from her as yonder
flickering lights in the black distance. It seemed indeed a dream, and
surely one may accept happiness in a dream! Sighing, she had yielded
herself to it one moment—one moment—alas, even as she stirred, lo, it
was hers no longer! Beneath her hands was fine turf, in her nostrils
the scent of fading roses; she knew where she was—somewhere under the
beeches of Chillingburgh House gardens. She remembered, she understood.
He had snatched her, unconscious, from the danger of the infected house.
And as she moved, his clasp relaxed; he spoke to her, coldly enough, she
thought:—
“You are better? It is well.”
[Illustration: The huddled figure in the great chair. The face of her
that had so stout a heart, conquered in death—but less piteous, less
awful sight than the living face of the French madam.]
* * * * *
… Then had begun their strange pilgrimage through the London streets, the
long, long night. She went beside him, through the tangle of unknown,
unlit ways; seeing him only ever and anon, painted as it were against the
darkness by the glare of the smoky street fires in the more open spaces.
In his white hand, the sword drawn, guarding her from the prowling
thieves of the night. Inhuman wretches, to whom the stricken city’s
extremity was fortune’s boon, slinking after them like pariah dogs…!
They had spoken little: mostly words of bare need. But once he had told
her she was brave; and once that she was strong indeed.… She had at one
moment noticed a great pity in his eyes.—Ah, he need never have pitied
her; she had been happy, being with him.
* * * * *
She started from her heavy revery: some one was knocking at the casement.
Outside the window the lines of a man’s head and shoulders, a man
hatless, with disordered periwig, were silhouetted blackly against the
morning light. She sprang to her feet, terror stifling the scream in her
throat. She remembered the marauders that had slunk after them in the
night, more to be dreaded these desperate days than pestilence itself.
But it was her own name that met her ear, urgently cried:—
“Diana, open!—’Tis I, Lionel.”
Before the words had penetrated to sense, she had recognised the voice.
Upon the impulse of her relief, she hastened to the window and flung the
casement apart.
“Cousin Lionel…!”
But this was a Cousin Lionel she had never before known. About his livid
face the dank curls hung in wild dishevelment—he, whose person had ever
seemed as sedately ordered as his mind. He motioned her from him so
fiercely that she fell back in fresh alarm.
“Aye, Diana,” said he, answering her look, “you may well be afraid—’tis
like enough I have it! And were it not that I am here to save you from
worse than plague, for the sheer love I bear you, there should be leagues
between us—Stand where you are, Diana! Come not a step nearer!”
He drew himself with effort up to the window-sill, from some ledge
whereon he had climbed; then, seated, he looked in upon her again; and
to his pallid countenance came a ghostly semblance of the old sarcastic
smile:—
“Never enquire how I tracked you. I knew that the Rakehell, who
chivalrously took you from the charge of your own kin—to rescue you from
the plague, forsooth!—would find no shelter for you but that of his own
honourable habitation!”
“Lionel…!”
Sudden anger drove all fear from her. He went on:—
“You would have been safer at Chillingburgh House, once the stricken
Frenchwoman gone. And so my lord knew as well as I. Our grand dame never
died of the sickness, child, but of a fit of anger—and not before her
time, either! But let that pass. I saw thee on the Strand, Diana, a while
ago—marked thee hither and knew the trick played on thee. A-tramp the
whole night, till your body and your spirit be worn out. Is’t not so? And
my lord … so tender, so protecting, so fatherly. Is’t not so?”
“Lionel…!”
The man changed his tone:—
“Diana, ’tis but a few hundred paces to her Majesty’s House of the Blue
Nuns, in St. Martin’s Lane, where our kinswoman, Madam Anastasia, would
shelter you in honour and safety. Come forth now, from this place; ’tis
worse, I tell you, than the Pest-house! I will go before thee; I can yet
protect thee along the street, if I may not approach thee.…”
Never had Diana heard that ring of passion from his lips; even when he
had pleaded for her love, there had always run an undercurrent of mockery
and cynicism in the tenderest word. Truly, these days changed all men’s
nature. But Diana was not swayed: she was afire at the odiousness of the
slander cast on him she loved.
“I thank you, cousin,” she returned coldly. “But I have placed myself
under Lord Rockhurst’s protection; and since you have been pleased to
watch me, sir, you will have seen the Lord Constable leave this house but
a few moments ago. It was in search of a coach, and it is his purpose to
escort me out of the town, even this day, to my own home.”
The man on the window-sill gave a fierce laugh.
“Art as simple, Diana, as thou wouldst fain make out? Dost really believe
thy protector—’tis a fine name, in sooth—will find thee that coach?”
“Not a word more!” broke in the other. She had as strong a spirit as his
own. “Who should know Lord Rockhurst better than I? Ah, who has better
reason to know him? If all the world were to believe evil of him, yet
would I still trust him with my life.”
“And is there naught you value more than life?”
“How dare you, cousin!”
“Is your good name nothing to you?” he insisted.
“How dare you!” she repeated.
“Nay, Diana, listen to me!—Shall I tell thee what’s to happen? The
Rakehell will return to thee in a little while, dejected, aye,
heart-broken! Far and wide, not a horse, not a coach, not a driver to be
had for love or money. He has bargained, pleaded, threatened, in vain. So
thou must even trust thyself to him further—to him who is as thy father.…”
Diana started, bit her lip. The words struck her; and vehemently she
thrust them from her.
“Then, Diana,” went on Ratcliffe, ever more cuttingly, “will he discover
something strange in the character of his protective feelings.… Thou,
too, will read in thine own … filial … heart. Behold, the end is not
difficult to guess!”
“Oh, foul-mouthed!” cried the young widow, recoiling.
Indignation and terror mixed were in her voice. To have the veil thus
torn by sacrilegious hands from the innermost shrine; the sanctuary of
her tender secret thus broken!… Ratcliffe clutched the window-frame with
both hands and thrust his face into the room, his features working again
with that unwonted passion:—
“Diana—ah, Diana, for heaven’s sake, you must understand! These days, it
seems, all barriers are broken down, all laws violated with impunity. And
even now, even you, Diana, will surely pay the price, if you accept the
protection of Rakehell Rockhurst!”
Diana swept a gesture of final scorn:—
“Begone, Lionel! Away with you as you came! I pity you … thief of men and
women’s good report. Alas! cousin, do I not know what purpose you have
in this slander? Shame that these days of terror should wake you to no
worthier mind!”
The man fixed her, a breathing space or two, without speaking. Had she
been less incensed, she might have noted something in his look singularly
belying the thoughts she imputed to him—might have seen a purpose as
earnest as it was selfless.