together, I have loved thee. Dost remember how I called thee my little
wife? You’ll have none of my warning now—so be it! In a little while
you’ll want me, you’ll call on me. I shall be near, I shall hear
thee.—Stay; here is the gold whistle you once gave me—that Easter—years
ago! You have, of course, forgotten it. I have kept it close, you see.”
He hesitated a second, poising the bauble at the end of its long ribbon,
frowning. Then he cast it into the room.
“Risk for risk—all is risk!… My lips have not touched it since the
pestilence came so nigh them. Di, hark to me, Di. When you want my help
this day, you have but to whistle, I’ll hear and help.… I go. Yet not so
far but what I can guard my own.”
She stood, her head averted; her foot beating the floor, image of
scornful defiance. He slipped down from his perch to the ledge and poised
himself yet a second, looking in on her as when he had first appeared:—
“Thou, in the Rakehell’s hands—and the world gone mad around thee…! Ah,
shall’t whistle sooner than thou thinkest!”
She wheeled to silence him; he was gone. A bitter conflict rose in her
mind as she stood staring at the blank window space. In spite of herself,
the memory of his look, of the deep earnestness of his voice, began
to shake her sense of security.… He thought he had the sickness, yet
he came to warn her!… Another man would have had little reck of aught
but himself, with that shadow of doom spread over him.… Yet he hated
Rockhurst—oh, how he hated him!—and had he not all but killed Rockhurst’s
son for aspiring to her?… With the perspicacity of his relentless love
for her, he had read her secret. Reason enough, then, that he should
strive to poison her mind against one whom she knew so noble.… Yet again,
unscrupulous, daring, cruel even in his very love for her, Ratcliffe had
taken piteous pains to guard her against himself. Now, he was lurking
in the lanes below, for her sake, instead of hying him to the nearest
physician, so urgent did he believe her danger.… Was there, could there
be danger?
Her ear caught the sound of the key in the lock; she knew it was
Rockhurst returning. On a sudden impulse she picked up the whistle and
thrust it into her bodice. Her heart beat to suffocation as she heard his
hand on the door.
III
NEMESIS
Rockhurst came in slowly and stood a moment, contemplating Diana before
he spoke. The bronze of his face was singularly blanched; his grave eye
was alight with a threatening of fire. Then he spoke, quickly:—
“I have beaten the neighbourhood. Whitehall is as a desert, the name of
the King itself an empty sound. The whole town is fled, dying or dead.”
He took her hand, clasping it with a pressure so fierce as almost to draw
a cry from her. “For love or money, it is impossible to obtain horse,
coach, or man.”
Her fluttering heart slowed down to the dull beat of misery; she sought
to draw her hand from his.
“Oh, my lord!”
Unheeding, he went on:—
“Pestilence is rushing onward like a flood—There is no rock, no hilltop,
that is not fated to be swallowed up in time. Diana, we are as those
doomed by the Deluge, who have taken refuge on the mountain only to watch
the deadly waters rise and count the hours left to them!”
He broke off; she had wrenched her hands from his grasp and had shrunk
away from him, covering her face. Not the dreadful import of his words
frightened her, but the fire of his glance, the mad exultation of the
voice that thus pronounced their doom.
“What,” he exclaimed, his tones vibrating to a tenderness more terrible
still to her ears, “have I scared thee?—Brave heart, afraid at last?”
“Yes, yes—I am afraid,” she murmured behind her clasped fingers. But,
even as she spoke, her strong nature reacted against the folly of
weakness. She dropped her hands, drew herself proudly up and turned,
looking him steadily in the eyes:—
“No, my lord, ’twas but an evil thought!”
He returned her gaze fixedly, and she saw how the blood began to rise,
slow, dark, in his cheek.
“Yet, why should I say we are doomed?” he went on, under his breath. “Why
should not this house be as the ark of refuge? Diana,”—the dreadful joy
broke out again in eye and accent,—“have you understood how it stands
with us? There is no help for it; we are shut in together. Heaven itself
has sealed the way that would divide us—”
* * * * *
So, it had come! That moment she had dreamt of, with a fierce abandonment
to his ecstasy; that moment, the very thought of which she had prayed
against with tears, as if the mere passage of its forbidden sweetness
through her heart were a sin! It had come, in this bitterness, this
shame, this shattering of the ideal she held so high! She moved from him
without a word, let herself drop mechanically into the King’s chair, and
sat, her hands clasping the carven arms, staring straight before her.
Rockhurst fell on his knees beside her.
“Diana, Diana—I love you!—And ah, Diana, you love me—”
She flung out her hands to push him from her, and all her wounded heart
spoke in her cry:—
“Do not say it, my lord! Oh, I have so dreaded to hear you say it!”
But her very pain was triumph in his ears. As masterfully as he caught
and imprisoned her hands once again, so did his passion seize and crush
her woman’s scruples:—
“We are alone in a dying world! Who knows if we shall see another dawn!
Shall we not take the day that is given us, make use of life while life
is still ours?”
And while she looked at him, speechless, her eyes dark in the sorrowful
pallor of her face, he cried in a tone that pierced to her very marrow:—
“Diana—come to my arms and teach me, let me teach thee, how sweet life
can be … how sweet death can be!”
She had ceased to struggle against him. Her hands lay inert in his.
He put his arm about her then; and, motionless, she submitted. But the
tears slowly, slowly welled to her piteous eyes. Then he drew back from
her, rose and stood again, gazing at her; the exultation, the fires of
ecstasy, fading from his face, and something hard, ruthless, taking their
place.
“I can get a priest to wed us, in Whitehall, ere the day be an hour
older,” he said, frowning upon her.
Through the tears she would not shed, her great eyes dilated upon him.
“And what will you say—what shall we say—to your son, my lord?”
Rockhurst started as if he had been struck. A masterful man, who all his
life had dominated others, he bent his brows with a terrible resentment
on her who dared thwart him at this supreme hour of his will; dared lift
against him the one weapon that could pierce his armour.
“You took the trust, my lord, even as I yielded my troth.…”
His anger broke forth, the more ruthlessly that he was, for the first
time in his life, perhaps, abandoning himself to an unworthy part, a part
of weakness. Broken phrases escaped his lips, contradictions lost in the
irresistible logic of passion.
“My son, … my son?—I shall answer for myself to my son.—Nay, what account
have I to render to my son! A beardless boy, shall he come between us?…
Diana, your eyes have lied a thousand times, or you love me!… That
promise to Harry was no promise, wrested from you, from me, because of a
white face, pleading, because of a red wound! And, if he be true flesh
of mine, he will have none of you, your heart being another’s.—Why, my
dear,”—his voice changed,—“think you Harry will ever have his bride, will
ever see his father again?”
So long as his eye flamed, as his voice harshly chid her, she felt
strong. But against that note of tenderness she weakened. A sense of
physical failing came over her; she thought of the moment when, in the
darkness of the garden, she had awakened to find herself in his arms.…
Perhaps, in truth, death was very near to them. To slip from the
moorings of life, on the tide of his great love—ah, he had said it; it
would be sweet! She clasped her hands to her breast; but at the touch of
Lionel’s gold bauble, something in herself that Rockhurst’s words had
lulled, started into vivid life again; something that would not let her
accept the easier course. If death were, even at this moment, gloating
upon them, the better reason to look on it with loyal eyes. Were Harry
indeed fated never to meet bride or father again, then must father and
bride remain sacred in noble memory! And not because she and Rockhurst
were so fain to break it, was a promise less binding a promise. One
sentence of Lionel’s rang in her ear: “Behold, the end is not difficult
to guess”—and with it the echo of her own voice crying back to him, “Oh,
foul-mouthed!”
Quickly she made her choice; and, brave in her pain, had a smile as she
turned to speak.
“Once, my lord, you saved me, when I scarce knew myself in danger. To-day
it is given to me to pay my debt. And I save you. Give me your arm again,
kind, beloved friend, and through the hot contamination of these streets,
as once through the pure snow, bring me to honourable shelter.”
For a second, the unexpected check, the unlooked-for strength of her
resistance, kept him silent. Then gently, as if to an unreasonable child:—
“And to what shelter? Poor Diana!”
Her smile took something of the divine, maternal pity which lurks in
every good woman’s heart for the man she loves.
“But a stone’s throw from this place, my dear lord,—her Majesty’s House
of the Blue Nuns will not refuse to open its doors to me,—as, indeed, I
should have minded me sooner.”
She rose, and moved steadily toward the door, striving to seem as though
she had no fear of his arresting her. But before she had time to raise
the latch, his clasp of iron was on her wrist.
A cry rising from the street drove them apart like a sword:—
“Father—father!”
They looked at each other with starting eyes, blanched cheeks. Then the
cry rose again:—
“My lord,—my Lord Rockhurst!—father, are you within?”
The colour rushed back to Diana’s face; a flame of joy leaped to her eye.
“This is no spirit-call, but good human sound. Harry, honest Harry
here!—Ah, my lord, in time to save us!”
The revulsion of feeling, the unconscious admission of her words, a
fierce flame of insane jealousy, suddenly kindled by the glad note in her
voice, broke down the last shred of Rockhurst’s self-control. His passion
escaped him, tigerish:—
“By the Lord God of Heaven or the Devil Lord of Hell, thou shalt not go
to him!”
The young voice was uplifted again without.
“Knock once more, Robin; I hear stirring within.”
And a lusty shout succeeded:—
“Ho, Chitterley, ’tis I, Robin, with Master Harry Rockhurst!”
Rockhurst caught Diana in his arms.
“Mine, Diana, mine, and none shall come between us!”
He held her for a second against his breast, and she heard the great
hammering of his heart; then she found herself thrust within a
darkened room, heard the door close upon her, the shooting of a bolt.
A prisoner—and darkness all about her, a strange suffocating darkness,
thick with the fumes of a burnt-out lamp.
* * * * *
As the Lord Constable unbolted the outer door, he was met by the
precipitate entrance of his son.
“Good heavens, Chitterley—” The broken words were cut short: “My lord …
yourself in person! Thank God, thank God!”
Young Rockhurst cast himself impetuously upon his father’s breast,
sobbing with excitement. The latter suffered the embrace in silence,
supported the boy, as he clung to him in sudden weakness, into the room,
led him to a chair. Then he stood a second in gloomy silence, staring
at the young bowed figure, sitting where she had sat, his face hidden
in his hands, even as hers had been. Tears! and this weakling would wed
Diana!—Diana, who had not suffered hers to fall! Yet Rockhurst loved his
son; and there was a strange rending pain at his heart.
Into the oppressive stillness, broken only by Harry’s catching breath,
there came from the inner room a stir as of curtains wrenched apart, as
of creaking easements thrust open; and next a stifled cry. Rockhurst,
expecting the instant of revelation, braced himself as a man may for the
meeting of his death-stroke. But nothing more was heard, save a long,
sweet whistle—some call in the street, doubtless. Ah—Diana would not
betray him!—Diana loved him! As if the shrill, sweet signal had roused
him, Harry Rockhurst started, dashed the tears from his cheeks, and
rising, seized his father’s hand to pour forth a torrent of words:—
“Alas, my lord, and how had you the heart to leave me in this ignorance
of your peril?—Had not Lionel writ to me—Oh, father, never look so
sternly on me! I know I have transgressed your command to remain in the
country, but how could I keep away? ’Twas not in nature—Where is Diana?
Oh, my God, Chillingburgh House is deserted, the doors open to the
winds, the old lady abandoned, dead, stark in her chair! Where is Diana?
Father—my Diana!”
His voice rose to a scream, as his father turned a terrible, set face
upon him; his father, from whom he had scarce ever known but loving and
joyful looks. Evil beyond words must be the tidings awaiting him. He
clutched his breast with both hands.
“Harry, be a man!” cried Rockhurst, starting as he marked the livid
change that spread over the young countenance. But he was too late.
“Dead?” cried the lad, and on a sudden gasped for breath. “A curse on
this wound that will not heal.”
He tore at the lapels of his riding-coat, reeled and fell, barely caught,
into his father’s arms.
“My God—I have killed my son!” Blood welled out between Rockhurst’s
fingers, as he clasped the slight, inert form.
“Harry!” he cried frantically to the deaf ears, “Harry, no, she is not
dead. She is not dead! You shall even see her!—Hither, Diana!”
He raised a loud call for her; then, with a groan, remembered him—the
shot bolt! Had ever a man been so mad, had ever a man been so base—been
so punished? He lowered the body to the ground; ’twas the old wound
indeed, that wound taken in the defence of his father’s honour. A light
word had been spoken of him to his son—his poor country lad, who had
never heard, had never known, of one in the town nicknamed the Rakehell!
Again he raised a desperate cry for help:—
“Robin, there without…!”
And all at once the silent, abandoned house was full of voices and
footsteps—here were the white face of his own old servant; the scared
chubbiness of Yorkshire Robin—and another countenance, unknown and
solemn. And behold, Chitterley was saying:—
“This way, good doctor!”
When the moment holds life and death in the balance, there is no room for
surprise.
“Chitterley, ha, Chitterley,” cried Rockhurst. “Water and bandages, in
Heaven’s name! This way, Sir Physician!—A physician by Divine mercy!”
The man of healing, who had been much occupied with his pomander, dropped
it from his nostrils to stare on the unexpected scene. And Chitterley,
whose dim eyes had only just become aware of his master, burst into a
dismal wail:—
“My lord, fly!—Here is plague, here is death!” Then, in yet more piercing
lamentation: “What! Master Harry, too! Merciful Heaven!”
“Sir,” said Rockhurst to the physician, “your attention hither!”
“Truly,” said the doctor, “this seems an urgent case.”
He was perhaps not displeased to find, instead of the plague-stricken
patient he had been summoned to attend, a clean lad a-bleeding of a
sword wound. Old Chitterley ran feebly hither and thither, as father and
surgeon bent together over the unconscious form. Robin stared, voiceless.
“It is an old wound, ill-healed,” explained Rockhurst. “My faithful
son—he fought, a month agone, one who impugned my good name—now, hearing
I was in danger of the sickness, naught could keep him from me. All the
way from Yorkshire … and he wasted with the fever of the hurt! When I
saw him I chid him.” The father looked with dry eyes of agony at the
physician’s thoughtful face.
“The bleeding has somewhat waned,” said the latter, then, without
committing himself. Then, rising stiffly from his knees: “I could attend
to the young gentleman better,” he pursued, “were he upon a couch. May I
assist your lordship—?”
He had recognised the noble Lord Constable, the King’s friend, and was
full of solicitude.
“Nay—I need no aid!” The father gathered his boy again into his arms.
“Chitterley, unbolt the door—How now!” The old man had flung himself
before his master and, with clasped hands, was motioning him desperately
back. “The wretch has gone crazy!”
“Nay, my dear master, in God’s name, she lies there!”
“She?”
For one mad instant Rockhurst deemed his ancient servant stood at bay
before his own threatened honour. Almost he laughed in scornful anger.
What recked he now of aught except this bleeding burden on his breast?
Aye, and if those purple lids, sealed in such death-like peace, were to
unclose, and Harry were to behold Diana, the father knew—and was pierced
as by a two-edged sword of ruth and tenderness at the thought—that yet
his son would never doubt him. Chitterley was still speaking. The tale of
retribution was not complete:—
“The French lady, your lordship, sick of the plague! She lies within,
dying of the sickness. ’Twas for her I sought Mr. Burbage.…”
Rockhurst staggered, as one struck from an unexpected quarter. In haste
the physician advanced, but just in time to seize the limp body from the
father’s relaxing grasp. Here were strange events, enough to bewilder
the ordinary, decorous man of science on his professional round! But,
as times went, astonishment had no part in men’s lives. Catastrophe had
ceased to shock. The Lord Constable and his servant, either or both,
might be mad: few people were quite sane these days, but here was a young
life hanging on a thread: enough for the moment, if skill of his could
strengthen its hold. As for the creature with the plague yonder,—whoever
she might be,—let her rot: ’twas only one added to the ten thousand bound
to die that day! He laid the lad all his length on the floor, drew a
phial of cordial from his breast, and set dazed Robin to bring him the
water from the table; while Rockhurst stood staring at Chitterley, his
face more stricken than that pallid one at his feet.
The old servant, on his side, still stretched out trembling arms in
barrier; it seemed as if his mind had stopped on that effort of desperate
warning. At last, tonelessly, Rockhurst spoke:—
“In my room—?”
“Aye, my lord. She was dying; I could not keep her out!”
“Sick of the plague, said you?”
“Aye, your lordship.”
The father gave a terrible cry:—
“O God, Thy vengeance is greater than my sin—Diana!”
He looked down at the physician, absorbed in ineffectual efforts to
recall the wandering spirit to its fair young body; and in a voice that
smote even that ear, so fully seasoned to sorrow’s plaint:—
“Sir—so has Heaven dealt with me this day, that if I must needs hear
now that he is dead—my only son … ’twould be the best tidings … in very
truth!”
THE RED DESOLATION
THE RED DESOLATION
I
THE WATCHERS
“I have seen many terrible sights in my life, Master Chitterley,—none so
terrible as this.”
Thus old Martin Bracy, Sergeant-Yeoman of the Tower of London, to the
Lord Constable’s body-servant.
His companion flung up trembling hands for all response. As old as the
sergeant—whose head had grown white in the King’s service: at home in the
civil wars, abroad in Charles’s regiment of Flanders—but of less solid
metal, years had stricken him harder, and he had little breath to spare
after his grievous ascent to the platform of the Beauchamp Tower. And as
the two now stood, side by side, looking down from the great height over
the stricken city, they might have served as types, one of green old age,
the other of wintry senility.
* * * * *
The scene outspread below them was indeed such as to strike awe to the
stoutest heart. It was the fifth of September, third day of the great
fire; and nothing, it seemed, was like to arrest the spread of the red
desolation until it had embraced the whole of the town.
Under the canopy of black smoke, like some monster of nightmare, the
fire crouched, spread, uncoiled itself; now it clapped ragged wings of
flame high into the sky, now grasped new, unexpected quarters as with a
stealthily outreached claw. The wind ran lightly from the east, so that,
in cruel contrast, the sky was fair blue over their heads, while to the
westward horizon it spread ensanguined, overhung with lurid clouds.
* * * * *
“If hell itself had broken open,” said Martin Bracy, “and were vomiting
yonder, methinks it would scarce show us a more affrighting picture.
Often these days, Master Chitterley, I have taken to minding me again
of the Crop-Heads’ sayings—and I had a surfeit of them in my days of
imprisonment, forever talking of Judgment! Aye, I would have my laugh at
them, then. But now it comes back to me:—
“‘_First the scourge of Plague; and thereafter_ (that is now)
_the scourge of Fire_!’”
He mused as the aged will, speaking his thought aloud:—
“There was one Jedediah Groggins—Smite-Them-Hip-and-Thigh was the name he
gave himself, but Smit’em-Grogs they used to call him (aye, and a smiter
he was!)—who had charge of the jail at York, where I was caged awhile, ye
wot, after Marston Moor—”
Chitterley nodded his palsied head; his faded eyes looked out with scarce
a flicker of comprehension on the present vision that so impressed the
soldier; but his brain was still to be stirred by memories of the past.
“Marston Moor … aye! ’Twas at Marston my Lord Rockhurst took the
pike-push in his thigh—and he and I in hiding long days after in a
burnt-out farm-house on the wolds. Scarce bite or sup had I for him. And
he fretting for the death of his gallant friend, Sir Paul Farrant, killed
at his side—Aye, aye, good Sir Paul—”
The sergeant’s gaze was still roaming out to where the great heart of the
city throbbed in agony.
“‘_There went up a smoke in his wrath and a fire flamed forth from his
face_,’” he went on. “Truly, I mind me, that was one of this Jedediah’s
favourite texts. Yes—I had my laugh at it then: little thought I should
ever see it come true, as I have done these days!… I was young then, and
made mock of such things. But, sure, the sins of this land began with
the Crop-Heads themselves, when they took up arms against his sacred
Majesty.” He raised his hand to his velvet cap. “But they were right in
this, friend Chitterley: the wrath of the Lord is an awful thing.—Hark ye
at that!”
A dull explosion had rent the air. A belching column of white smoke,
fringed with black, sprang up at the extremity of the fiery picture. The
sergeant moved to the corner of the parapet to peer forth:—
“See yonder … our lads at work! Blowing up houses ahead of the fire. Aye,
truly, Master Chitterley, I would his lordship had let me take the mining
party to-day. But one would think—in all respect—there was a very devil
in him, since this outbreak began. ’Tis ever to the hottest with him. And
the men must after him, though the flames be as greedy as hell’s.—’Tis
hard on a soldier,” added the old campaigner, with a philosophic sigh,
“to be driven to burn before his time!”
The other’s clouded perception caught but the hint of danger to a beloved
master.
“His lordship?” he cried; “and whither went he to-day, Sergeant?”
“Toward Bishopsgate. See, where I point; there, where ’tis like looking
upon a pit of fire.”
Chitterley curved his withered hands over his eyes and strove to fix them
in the direction indicated.
“God save him,” he muttered.
“Amen,” echoed Bracy earnestly, “for he carries those white hairs of his
whither he would scarce have ventured his raven locks! ’Tis beyond all
reason. Aye, and Master Harry with him.… Lord, Lord, how it doth burn!”
Bracy seated himself upon the sill of an embrasure, and drawing a
stump of pipe from his pocket, proceeded to strike flint and kindle
the _tabaco_, with all the old soldier’s habit of making the most of
a spare hour of rest. The other remained standing; forlorn, pathetic
figure enough, beaten about by the light wind that flapped the skirts of
his coat against the wasted limbs, and set sparse strands of white hair
dancing as in mockery about his skull.
Sergeant Bracy rolled another text upon his tongue as two or three fresh
explosions, closely following each other, shocked even the mighty masonry
of the Tower:—