’twould seem to fit in singularly!—Yet, as you and I know, ’tis but our
men at work of salvage. They must even destroy to save!—There went the
last house in Shoreditch!” He made a gesture with his pipe-stem. “Ha, now
the Hall falls upon itself like a house of cards!… Pray Heaven none of
our boys be caught beneath the dropping masonry, as was honest Corporal
Tulip yester-eve! ’Tis no marvel to me, Master Chitterley,” he went on,
settling himself more comfortably on his narrow seat, “that the men
like not the work. Nay, were it with other than my Lord Constable, or
young Harry—or one such as I am, Master Chitterley—we might well expect
a show of rebellion among them. To see death, you may say, be soldier’s
life,—aye, give death, lay siege, waste, burn and slay,—all in the way of
glorious war, friend Chitterley, and service of King—wholesome heat of
blood to keep the horrors off—But this business, there is neither glory
nor plunder in it. No—no, I’ve seen sour looks and lagging feet, as much
as dare be, at least, under my lord’s eye or Master Harry’s.”
“My lord—Master Harry—” repeated Chitterley, as in a kind of dream. “Do
not mock me, sergeant, but there be days now when I scarce know them
apart … remembering.… Or rather—”
“Aye,” interrupted the soldier, good-humoured, yet impatient of the
other’s maundering, “I catch your meaning. Young Master Harry that was
a boy has grown marvellous quick a man these troublous times. ’Tis his
gallant father all over again as you and I knew him. And, on the other
hand, my Lord Constable is changed—oh, damnably changed! An old man in
one year!—Hark in your ear! ’Tis never plague horrors, nor fire horrors,
that have worked on him so sorely; ’tis the mind, Master Chitterley.
Trouble of the mind!”
He tapped his forehead with the pipe-stem, nodded his head, and
thereafter puffed awhile in sagacious meditation.
“In faith,” said Chitterley, with piteous trembling of the lip, “my dear
lord’s hair has grown as white as mine own.”
“Ah, it is trouble changes a man,” pursued the sergeant, presently. He
cast a look of kindly pity at Chitterley. “And in sooth, poor soul,”
muttered he under his breath, “who should prove it better than yourself,
who have been a doddering poor wight ever since yon fearful morning
when Master Harry was like to die of his reopened wound and my lord to
go mad—and plague in the very house?—Aye, aye,” his voice waxed loud
again, “shall I ever forget the hour when you all came back to the
Tower, and none knew if the lad was not dead already? ’Twas then the
Lord Constable’s hair began to turn white.” He gave a kind of sniff, his
teeth clenched on the pipe, and touched Chitterley on the arm to call
back his wandering attention. “I was on guard, man, the day his Majesty
returned to the city (upon the subsidence of the great sickness), and I
was present at the first meeting between him and the Lord Constable. _His
Majesty did not know him!_”
He emphasised each word of this last remarkable statement by a separate
tap of the pipe-bowl upon his open palm.
Chitterley turned troubled eyes upon him.
“His Majesty hath ever had great love for my lord,” he protested.
“He—did—not—know—him,” repeated Sergeant Bracy, scanning his words. “I
was as near his Majesty as I am to you.—‘What,’ says the King, staring,
‘this is never my merry Rockhurst?’—‘Always your Majesty’s devoted
servant,’ says my lord, bowing that white head, ‘but your merry Rockhurst
never again.’ ‘Oh, damn!’ says his Majesty.—Ho, ho, ho! I heard him with
these ears!”
There was no smile on old Chitterley’s lips. It was a question whether he
followed his more sturdy comrade’s gossip or whether, in the dimness of
his mind, he was only aware of the pity of many things.
“Aye, in truth, and as you say,” the yeoman went on after a while,
“Master Harry hath changed even as much as his father. Faith, ’twas but
a lad when we laid him on his bed here; he rose from it a man. Sooth,
Death’s a grim teacher! I’ve seen many a boy soldier turned to a man by
a single battle.—But there’s secret trouble there, too.… Pity that so
gallant a youth should ever wear so sober a brow! Again a word in your
ear, Master Chitterley: They say a lady was lost in the plague days, none
knowing where or how she died—is it true?”
Chitterley drew back and flung a cunning glance at the genial,
inquisitive countenance. Old? None so old yet, nor so foolish, that he
would betray his master’s secret!
“Aye, the plague! the plague!” he mumbled. “As you say, good
sergeant—those were terrible times.”
“Sho!” said the sergeant; knocked the ashes of his pipe with an irritable
tap and turned his keen blue eyes out once more to the red westward
glare. Even at that instant there rose from the gateway tower the blare
of a trumpet, the roll of drums. The sounds caught up and repeated from
different quarters.
“God be praised,” said he; “’tis the party home again from the work!”
Back went the pipe into Sergeant Bracy’s pocket. He drew himself from
his seat; fell, unconsciously, once more into military bearing, and made
for the stairs to seek his officer. Chitterley followed, stirred into a
fleeting return of energy.
II
THE TESTAMENT
The Lord Constable halted on the first platform and flung from his head
the hat with the singed plumes. His son looked at him in some anxiety:
he had felt his father’s hand press ever more heavily on his shoulder as
they came up the winding steps. Between the ash-powdered white locks, the
handsome face struck him as more than usually drawn and pallid.
“A cup of wine for his lordship, Chitterley.—Haste!” cried he.
Rockhurst staggered slightly and sank down upon a stone bench; then
looked up at his son and smiled.
“’Tis but a passing giddiness. All thanks, good lad!”
Even as he spoke the smile was succeeded by a heavy sigh. Scarce
twenty-two, and his boy to wear so careworn a countenance! But a year
ago, before their great trouble, he had tenderly mocked the boy for his
over-youthfulness…! Here was a man with sad, haunted eyes, and features
set with silent endurance of pain. And all the boyhood that had been the
father’s delight was lost forever.
“’Tis as if the patience of God were worn out,” he went on, as though
speaking to himself, after a while, during which he had gazed wistfully
at the distant conflagration. “Well for those who can say in their heart
that no sin of theirs has cried aloud for vengeance.”
And again the heavy sigh escaped his lips.
The anxiety grew deeper in Harry Rockhurst’s eyes; he took the cup of
wine from Chitterley’s hand (half crazed his fellow-retainers deemed him,
but alert enough still in all that concerned his master’s service):—
“Drink, my lord,” said he, “you need it. Human strength will not bear
more of the work you have done to-day … indeed, all these days!”
But Rockhurst’s eyes having fallen upon Chitterley, he beckoned him to
his side before lifting the wine to his lips. Full of secret importance,
the old servant hurried to him.
Harry drew back. In many ways he felt as if his father still treated him
like a child; in none more than these secret interviews with Chitterley.
The Lord Constable seemed to make his servant sole confidant and
instrument in the matter of some urgent and troublous private business;
one which necessitated frequent absences on both sides. The secrecy
pained the young man, but he bore the slight in silence; he had not been
brought up to question the parental actions.
* * * * *
“Didst go where I bade thee?” whispered Rockhurst.
“Aye, my lord.”
“No news?”
“No news, no news!”
Rockhurst sat awhile, moodily gazing on the red of the wine. Rousing
himself at last, he drank wearily, handed the empty cup to the old man
and, with a wave of the hand, dismissed him. Then he sat awhile longer
yet, watching his son—There were those who said that my Lord Rockhurst’s
eyes could look at naught else, when his heir was by him. Harry was
engaged in receiving the sergeant yeoman’s report. The father did not
speak till he saw Bracy salute and withdraw. Then he lifted his voice:—
“Harry!”
The young man started, and in an instant was by his father’s side. There
was something of womanly solicitude in his air. ’Twas a vast pity (the
soldiers said among themselves) to see a young man so set upon an old
one!—“Clean against nature,” Corporal Tulip had vowed, whose own amorous
heart was now ashes beneath the ashes of the Thames Street Hall, while
his sweetheart already thought of walking o’ sunsets with Anspessade
Strongitharm.
Rockhurst rose and placed his hand on his son’s shoulder. The two looked
affectionately into each other’s eyes: sad men both, and deadly worn this
evening hour after the fierce work of the day.
“Harry, it is borne in on me that not many days will be given us of
company together thus—”
“How, my lord—would you wish me from you again?”
“Nay—this time, Harry, it will be thy father who leaves thee.”
The young man started. Look and tone left no doubt of the meaning of the
words.
“Ah, father,” he cried, with the irritability born of keen anxiety; “if
you would but listen to me! Indeed you expose yourself unduly—”
“When death threatens from without, a man may smile at it. But when death
knocks from within, Harry, thrice fool who does not hearken!”
“Sir, you alarm me.” Harry’s voice shook. “Oh, I have been blind! Your
white hairs, your altered demeanour, are sure signs of suffering—some
hidden sickness!”
“Even so, lad. Sickness incurable! A secret pain that gives no rest,
night nor day. Nay, nay, Harry, no physician can avail, no remedy ease—”
“Ah,” exclaimed the son in bitter accents, “now I understand much. You
have never given me your confidence, yet methinks I might have been as
true to help you in your need, as wise in my devotion to advise, as old
Chitterley. This sickness is the secret between you. ’Tis for physician
or remedy that Chitterley journeys forth daily in such mystery while you
toil. Can you not see, my lord, that to be shut out from your counsel has
but added deeper grief to me? And methinks that I might have proved as
true to help, as wise to counsel, as yonder old man.… But it has always
been your pleasure to treat me as a child.”
Rockhurst fixed deep eyes of melancholy on his son.
“My illness is not of the body, Harry; it is of the mind. But the canker
works, never ceasing, eats from soul to flesh.”
“You speak in riddles, sir.”
“Alas! you shall read my riddle soon enough. Hast ever heard—thou canst
never have known it—of that sickness of the spirit which is called …
remorse? In sooth, ’tis uglier than the pestilence.”
At the look of sudden fear his son cast upon him the Lord Constable
laughed,—a laugh sadder than tears.
“Sit you down with me, Harry, and listen; for I have much to tell you,
and it is, as I said, borne in upon me that it must be told now.”
The young man obeyed in silence; but for a moment or two neither spoke.
The western sky before them had become an image of flaming immensity,
almost beyond the power of realisation. Glow of sunset mingled with glow
of fire and painted the volutes of smoke massed on the horizon with every
shade of fierce magnificence and lurid threat.
“’Twould seem as if the whole town were doomed,” muttered Rockhurst at
last.
“The powers of hell let loose upon us,” said his son, gloomily.
“Say, rather, my son, the wrath of God! Look at me, lad! The last time,
perchance, that you will look upon your father’s face with love and
reverence.”
Words froze on the young man’s lips. The Lord Constable folded his arms;
his voice grew stern, ironic:—
“You believe me—do you not?—a sober, godly gentleman, as true to his duty
as Christian as he has been to his king as subject—”
“Indeed, my lord, I know you as such,” quickly interrupted Harry, in deep
offence.
“Aye, Harry, aye,” laughed Rockhurst, bitterly, “I had but one part to
act toward thee, and it seems I did it well!—I never let thee know but
the father in me, the stern yet loving father.” His voice suddenly broke
on a note of tenderness. “Nay, never doubt that, whatever else you may
come to doubt: I loved you well. You were my delight—My son, you’ve had
a sore heart against me many a time for that I treated you, in sooth, as
a child, kept you far from me, in the country; that I so sternly forbade
you the town and the life of the Court. Even now you have the plaint that
you are excluded from my counsel. Well, such as I planned, I have made
thee. Where I have failed in life, thou art strong. Thou hast kept thy
manhood pure and clean, where thy father rioted, wasted—”
“Gracious heavens! my lord! What words are these?”
“Ah, ’tis not the sound man that praises the glory of health, but
the sick. Not the sober Christian sees the full radiance of the jewel
of purity, but the libertine. I never let thee guess that here, in
this town, now dissolving in fire, I had won me the name of Rakehell
Rockhurst.”
With paling cheek and a starting eye, the son had listened. Now he winced
as if his father had struck him.
“Rakehell Rockhurst—Rakehell! And I smote Lionel Ratcliffe on the mouth
for daring to couple the name to yours—!” Then, on a fierce revulsion of
feeling, he caught the pale hand close to him and kissed it passionately.
“Wherefore tell me this? Father, as I have ever known you, so must I ever
love and honour you.”
“The Rakehell—” repeated the Lord Constable; and once more, out of the
very pain of his avowal, came harshness into his tone—“that was my name
in men’s mouths. His Majesty had another, a kinder one, for me; he called
me in jest his merry Rockhurst. You have been reared in ripe veneration
of the King’s Grace; yet, had you known life by my side (as once you
yearned), you would have learned that the one name and the other meant,
in Whitehall, at least, the same thing. Rakehell—aye, I may have had
black perdition in my heart many a time; yet believe this, Harry, that
when like Lucifer I fell, I sinned like Lucifer with pride, arrogance,
recklessness, what you will—never with baseness. Merry, my good liege
called me. To find me so mad, yet see me wear so grave a face, it gave
him a spur to laughter. Merry? Nay; he loved me, in chief, because in
his sad heart he knew mine. Both sad hearts, sickened of life. Forever
striving to find a blossom in the dust, a jest in the weary round, to
taste of a fruit that was not ashes on the tongue. And there you have the
secret of my life and his.… Then came Diana.”
“Ah, hush, my lord!” Harry rose from his seat, in violent agitation, and
stood a second, pressing his hands against his breast. “With me, you
know, wounds heal slowly,” he went on, striving to speak calmly. “Do not
touch upon that hurt, lest the bleeding begin afresh.”
The father rose, too, followed his son to the parapet, and, again laying
a hand upon his shoulder, compelled his attention. The splendour of the
sunset pageant had faded, and with it all beauty from the sky. Only the
glow, the gloom, the belching smoke remained.
“I knew her ere ever you did,” said the Lord Constable, his eye fixed
as upon an inner vision, fair and fresh and pure. “Aye, you never knew
it. She spoke not of it again, nor did I; for you had come between us!…
She entered into my life one winter’s night; and across the snow I set
her again on her sheltered way, knowing what I was—and seeing what she
was. But from the instant of our parting (’twas all in the snow, lad,
and above us a sky of stars; scarce I touched her hand; not a word
exchanged but a God be wi’ ye), from that instant she was never from my
thoughts—She, the might-have-been, the one woman for me! Aye, you stare,
your grave father! Your old father! I was a strong man, then, and life
ran potent in my veins. Dost remember how I met her again, in the Peacock
Walk at home, and you prating of your love for her, with beardless lip?”
“Oh, father, father, father!” cried the poor lad. “For God’s sake!… You
are all I have left!”
“Hush! Look on these white hairs, sign among so many that life has done
with me. Nay, I know full well I am not old in years, scarce double thine
own; but the vital spring is dying. Listen, Harry, you are a man; I have
a trust to lay upon you. Since that terrible dawn, when, crying out,
‘Diana’s dead!’ you fell, bleeding of your old wound, into swoon upon
swoon, and thereafter into mortal sickness, you know her name has never
passed your lips nor mine. It was better, in sooth, you should believe
her dead.”
The young man caught at the parapet behind him for support; and the
sweat broke on the father’s brow as he looked at him. There was a tense
silence. Then, fiercely, Harry Rockhurst said:—
“Now, my lord, you must speak!”
* * * * *
A moment longer Rockhurst kept silence. Curious reversal of the wheel of
fate! Here stood he, who had always been as a god to his son, now as one
in the dock before his judge. He, Rockhurst, whose will the King himself
could not bend, ordered to speech; and because of his own just mind, just
through all injustice wrought, unresentful—aye, submissive. The moment of
agony of a little while ago had passed.
Already it seemed to him the things of life were receding so quickly that
he looked on them from afar. Passion had gone from his voice as he spoke;
only a mighty sadness was left.
“It was even to speak, Harry, that I kept thee by me here. Know, then,
that until the night of Lady Chillingburgh’s death,—the night which found
Diana without a shelter,—in my daily intercourse with your promised bride
the father was ever stronger in me than the man. Aye, and when her
brother fled from the plague-stricken house and there was none but me to
protect her (for her kinsman Lionel was, as thou hast good cause to know,
my poor wounded boy, no guardian for thy bride) ’twas as a father I cared
for her all through the livelong night as we wandered, vainly seeking
a refuge. I brought her at length to my house, and went forth to seek
the means of conveying her home. That was even the very morning of your
arrival. Alack, nor horse nor man could fugitive then find in the waste
of the doomed city! I came back to her.… Oh, my son, before you judge
me, remember: men knew not what they did those terrible days. Question
any who passed through them. Staid citizens became drunken reprobates,
greybeards rioted horribly with the madness of youth, priests denied
their God—”
“But Diana, Diana—”
“Aye, Diana! I deemed Fate itself had given her to me. The madness of the
horror about me had turned my brain. Madness of my love for her, of my
long self-denial! I would have wedded her, even that hour. But she, she
had yielded her troth to thee … to thy father she gave her scorn! At that
most cursed moment thy voice rose from the street, thou, my son whom I
deemed far away, in the heart of the country! I would have killed her
rather than yield her. Remember, I was mad. I thrust her from thy sight
into an inner room. Ah, God, in that room!”
“In that room?”
“The plague lay in wait for her.”
“The plague—”
“Unknown to me one lay there, a woman who had crept in, sick—to die!”
Harry gave a deep groan, covered his face with his hands, and fell upon
the bench.
“Whilst I lay raving, did she die of the plague, there, in your room? O
my Diana!”
“My son, I know not. When I sought for her she was gone, vanished. The
window was opened into the garden. The woman lay dead upon the bed.”
Harry sprang to his feet, clapped his hands together in a sudden agony
of joy, more dreadful at that moment than all his sorrow to the father’s
eyes.
“She escaped? She may be living yet! There is mercy in heaven!”
“No mercy for such as I—nor for thee, being my son. For my moment’s
madness, what retribution! Harry, this whole long year I have looked
for her, night and day. There is not a corner of the town we have not
scoured, old Chitterley and myself. Aye, that was the mystery you fretted
not to share!”
Harry looked at his father speechlessly, with fierce dry eyes.
“Alas!” Rockhurst went on stonily, “she must even be dead, stricken by
the contagion—fallen at the street corner perchance, swept into the
common pit as so many others! And yet, if she were not dead—There is not
a burning house I pass but I fear she may be in the flames. Food is as
ashes, drink as gall upon my tongue. And now, with the presage of death
upon me, I lay the hideous burden upon thee, my son, my innocent son!”
He stretched his hand. But, drawing back, the latter turned a red glance
upon him.
“And you let me believe her dead that morning—that morning! I could have
saved her!” He flung his arms in the air and shook them; a terrible
menace on his face.
“God!” he called, “God—!”
Rockhurst gave a loud cry:—
“My son, do not curse your father!”
The young man’s arms dropped by his side. He looked at the bent white
head, at the countenance worn, wan, patient; then he cast himself upon
his father’s breast, sobbing:—
“God help us all!”
[Illustration: Harry gave a deep groan, covered his face with his hands,
and fell upon the bench.]
Night was falling apace. Father and son sat together over the supper
table. The meal, such as it was, was over; each had made a pretence
at eating, lest he add to the other’s burden. In silence Harry’s eyes
ever sought his father, striving to reconcile the man he had known and
reverenced above all manhood with the man who had harmed him to the
shattering of his life. Yet he could now find nothing in his heart but
a deeper tenderness. Nay, as he gazed at the noble silvered head, the
countenance, beautiful, diaphanous, it was with no jot of reverence
abated, rather a kind of awe added to a climbing apprehension. His own
words of that terrible moment of revelation rang in his ears as a tolling
bell: “_Father! You are all I have left!_”
At last he rose and went restlessly to the open window. When he looked
up, there was the pure sky overhead with a star or two, very peaceful;
and when he looked forth between the towers, there raged the flames,
yonder hung the murk the blacker for the fire lurid below. It seemed an
image of his own life.’
“At least there can be peace,” he told himself.
* * * * *
The door opened behind him; he heard Chitterley’s shuffling feet, and
next the quavering voice; but, lost in his contemplation, he never
turned his head.
“Harry!” came Lord Rockhurst’s voice of a sudden.
The young man leaped at his tone. Rockhurst thrust a crumpled sheet into
his hand.
“Read it, Harry! A messenger has brought it, hotfoot, and is gone as he
came.”
As he spoke, the Lord Constable strode to the door.
“Ho there!” he called to the sentinel in the passage. “Call out the
guard! Have the assembly sounded!”
His voice rang out, clarion clear. Harry, holding the paper, stared,
astounded; the old fire had come back to his father’s eye, the old life
to his step; under the very whiteness of his locks his face looked young
again.
“Read, lad, read!” ordered Rockhurst, “and be in readiness.”
His step was already clanking down the stone stairs ere his son, hurrying
to the window, could read the sheet in the waning light. Then a great cry
broke from the young man: “Diana! Diana!”
“My lord” (so ran the hasty writing on the note), “the convent
of St. Helen’s, Bishopgate, within where my kinswoman, Madam
Anastasia Bedingfield, has given me shelter, though none of
her faith, is even now attacked by the rabble; and we are in
parlous danger. Send succour, as you still remember poor Diana!”
From below was heard the roll of drum; then the tramp of feet and the
clank of firelock. And over all the Lord Constable’s voice:—
“Steady, lads, and haste. We’ve urgent work to-night!”
Hurriedly Harry set out to join them. His knees trembled as he went. He
thought, in the confusion of his mind: My father goeth like a young man
again to the rescue, and I like an old one. What will happen between us
when we see Diana again?
III
THE LAST COMMAND
Ten frightened ladies, of various ages and comeliness, were gathered
round the Mother Abbess in the great stone refectory of St. Helen’s
House. Queen Catherine’s convent—removed since the subsidence of the
great sickness from its original home in St. Martin’s Lane—was thus far
outside the track of the fire, yet the “Blue Nuns” jostled one another
like so many frightened children, each in the endeavour to get the closer
to the large, firm comfort of her presence. Adown the long table, between
the platters of untouched food, burned the four candles in high brazen
candlesticks, scantily illumining the room.
The atmosphere was oppressively close, for all the windows were shuttered
and barred. And, save for the whimpering of some of the nuns, the
mouthing prayerful whispers of others, there was a heavy stillness
within, in contrast to the sounds that beat round the walls without: the
voice of a mob in a fury.