over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again
from leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the land. Day by day
closer around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked from
their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white, that towered twenty
feet above their heads. It became more and more difficult to replenish
their fires, even from the fallen trees beside them, now half hidden in
the drifts. And yet no one complained. The lovers turned from the dreary
prospect and looked into each other's eyes, and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst
settled himself coolly to the losing game before him. The Duchess, more
cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother
Shipton--once the strongest of the party--seemed to sicken and fade. At
midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her side. "I'm going,"
she said, in a voice of querulous weakness, "but don't say anything
about it. Don't waken the kids. Take the bundle from under my head, and
open it." Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother Shipton's rations for
the last week, untouched. "Give 'em to the child," she said, pointing to
the sleeping Piney. "You've starved yourself," said the gambler. "That's
what they call it," said the woman querulously, as she lay down again,
and, turning her face to the wall, passed quietly away.
The accordion and the bones were put aside that day, and Homer was
forgotten. When the body of Mother Shipton had been committed to the
snow, Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside, and showed him a pair of
snow-shoes, which he had fashioned from the old pack-saddle. "There's
one chance in a hundred to save her yet," he said, pointing to Piney;
"but it's there," he added, pointing toward Poker Flat. "If you can
reach there in two days she's safe." "And you?" asked Tom Simson. "I'll
stay here," was the curt reply.
The lovers parted with a long embrace. "You are not going, too?" said
the Duchess, as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to accompany
him. "As far as the cañon," he replied. He turned suddenly and kissed
the Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame, and her trembling limbs
rigid with amazement.
Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm again and the
whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found that some one
had quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few days longer.
The tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them from Piney.
The women slept but little. In the morning, looking into each other's
faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke, but Piney, accepting the
position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the
Duchess's waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That
night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the
protecting vines, invaded the very hut.
Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which
gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept
closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: "Piney, can you
pray?" "No, dear," said Piney simply. The Duchess, without knowing
exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney's shoulder,
spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer pillowing the
head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they fell asleep.
The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of snow,
shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white winged birds, and
settled about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted clouds
looked down upon what had been the camp. But all human stain, all trace
of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully
flung from above.
They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices and
footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers
brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from
the equal peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned. Even
the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them
still locked in each other's arms.
But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine-trees, they
found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie-knife. It bore
the following, written in pencil in a firm hand:--
[Symbol: dagger]
BENEATH THIS TREE
LIES THE BODY
OF
JOHN OAKHURST,
WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK
ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER 1850,
AND
HANDED IN HIS CHECKS
ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.
[Symbol: reversed dagger]
And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet in his
heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at
once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.
THE SIRE DE MALÉTROIT'S DOOR
Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted himself a
grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. Lads were
early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has been in a
pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one's man in an honorable
fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a certain
swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up his horse
with due care, and supped with due deliberation; and then, in a very
agreeable frame of mind, went out to pay a visit in the gray of the
evening. It was not a very wise proceeding on the young man's part. He
would have done better to remain beside the fire or go decently to bed.
For the town was full of the troops of Burgundy and England under a
mixed command; and though Denis was there on safe-conduct, his
safe-conduct was like to serve him little on a chance encounter.
It was September, 1429; the weather had fallen sharp; a flighty piping
wind, laden with showers, beat about the township; and the dead leaves
ran riot along the streets. Here and there a window was already lighted
up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry over supper within came
forth in fits and was swallowed up and carried away by the wind. The
night fell swiftly; the flag of England, fluttering on the spire top,
grew ever fainter and fainter against the flying clouds--a black speck
like a swallow in the tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky. As the
night fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under archways and roar amid
the tree-tops in the valley below the town.
[Illustration: ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON]
Denis de Beaulieu walked fast and was soon knocking at his friend's
door; but though he promised himself to stay only a little while and
make an early return, his welcome was so pleasant, and he found so much
to delay him, that it was already long past midnight before he said
good-by upon the threshold. The wind had fallen again in the meanwhile;
the night was as black as the grave; not a star, nor a glimmer of
moonshine, slipped through the canopy of cloud. Denis was ill-acquainted
with the intricate lanes of Chateau Landon; even by daylight he had
found some trouble in picking his way; and in this absolute darkness he
soon lost it altogether. He was certain of one thing only--to keep
mounting the hill; for his friend's house lay at the lower end, or tail,
of Chateau Landon, while the inn was up at the head, under the great
church spire. With this clew to go upon he stumbled and groped forward,
now breathing more freely in the open places where there was a good
slice of sky overhead, now feeling along the wall in stifling closes. It
is an eerie and mysterious position to be thus submerged in opaque
blackness in an almost unknown town. The silence is terrifying in its
possibilities. The touch of cold window bars to the exploring hand
startles the man like the touch of a toad; the inequalities of the
pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser darkness
threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the pathway; and where the air is
brighter, the houses put on strange and bewildering appearances, as if
to lead him further from his way. For Denis, who had to regain his inn
without attracting notice, there was real danger as well as mere
discomfort in the walk; and he went warily and boldly at once, and at
every corner paused to make an observation.
He had been for some time threading a lane so narrow that he could touch
a wall with either hand, when it began to open out and go sharply
downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of his inn; but
the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to reconnoitre. The
lane ended in a terrace with a bartizan wall, which gave an outlook
between high houses, as out of an embrasure, into the valley lying dark
and formless several hundred feet below. Denis looked down, and could
discern a few tree-tops waving and a single speck of brightness where
the river ran across a weir. The weather was clearing up, and the sky
had lightened, so as to show the outline of the heavier clouds and the
dark margin of the hills. By the uncertain glimmer, the house on his
left hand should be a place of some pretensions; it was surmounted by
several pinnacles and turret-tops; the round stern of a chapel, with a
fringe of flying buttresses, projected boldly from the main block; and
the door was sheltered under a deep porch carved with figures and
overhung by two long gargoyles. The windows of the chapel gleamed
through their intricate tracery with a light as of many tapers, and
threw out the buttresses and the peaked roof in a more intense blackness
against the sky. It was plainly the hotel of some great family of the
neighborhood; and as it reminded Denis of a town house of his own at
Bourges, he stood for some time gazing up at it and mentally gauging the
skill of the architects and the consideration of the two families.
There seemed to be no issue to the terrace but the lane by which he had
reached it; he could only retrace his steps, but he had gained some
notion of his whereabouts, and hoped by this means to hit the main
thoroughfare and speedily regain the inn. He was reckoning without that
chapter of accidents which was to make this night memorable above all
others in his career; for he had not gone back above a hundred yards
before he saw a light coming to meet him, and heard loud voices speaking
together in the echoing narrows of the lane. It was a party of
men-at-arms going the night round with torches. Denis assured himself
that they had all been making free with the wine bowl, and were in no
mood to be particular about safe-conducts or the niceties of chivalrous
war. It was as like as not that they would kill him like a dog and leave
him where he fell. The situation was inspiriting but nervous. Their own
torches would conceal him from sight, he reflected; and he hoped that
they would drown the noise of his footsteps with their own empty voices.
It he were but fleet and silent, he might evade their notice altogether.
Unfortunately, as he turned to beat a retreat, his foot rolled upon a
pebble; he fell against the wall with an ejaculation, and his sword rang
loudly on the stones. Two or three voices demanded who went there--some
in French, some in English; but Denis made no reply, and ran the faster
down the lane. Once upon the terrace, he paused to look back. They still
kept calling after him, and just then began to double the pace in
pursuit, with a considerable clank of armor, and great tossing of the
torchlight to and fro in the narrow jaws of the passage.
Denis cast a look around and darted into the porch. There he might
escape observation, or--if that were too much to expect--was in a
capital posture whether for parley or defence. So thinking, he drew his
sword and tried to set his back against the door. To his surprise it
yielded behind his weight; and though he turned in a moment, continued
to swing back on oiled and noiseless hinges until it stood wide open on
a black interior. When things fall out opportunely for the person
concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or why, his own
immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason for the
strangest oddities and revolutions in our sublunary things; and so
Denis, without a moment's hesitation, stepped within and partly closed
the door behind him to conceal his place of refuge. Nothing was further
from his thoughts than to close it altogether; but for some inexplicable
reason--perhaps by a spring or a weight--the ponderous mass of oak
whipped itself out of his fingers and clanked to, with a formidable
rumble and a noise like the falling of an automatic bar.
The round, at that very moment, debouched upon the terrace and proceeded
to summon him with shouts and curses. He heard them ferreting in the
dark corners; the stock of a lance even rattled along the outer surface
of the door behind which he stood; but these gentlemen were in too high
a humor to be long delayed, and soon made off down a corkscrew pathway
which had escaped Denis' observation, and passed out of sight and
hearing along the battlements of the town.
Denis breathed again. He gave them a few minutes grace for fear of
accidents, and then groped about for some means of opening the door and
slipping forth again. The inner surface was quite smooth, not a handle,
not a moulding, not a projection of any sort. He got his finger nails
round the edges and pulled, but the mass was immovable. He shook it, it
was as firm as a rock. Denis de Beaulieu frowned and gave vent to a
little noiseless whistle. What ailed the door? he wondered. Why was it
open? How came it to shut so easily and so effectually after him? There
was something obscure and underhand about all this, that was little to
the young man's fancy. It looked like a snare, and yet who could suppose
a snare in such a quiet by-street and in a house of so prosperous and
even noble an exterior? And yet--snare or no snare, intentionally or
unintentionally--here he was, prettily trapped; and for the life of him
he could see no way out of it again. The darkness began to weigh upon
him. He gave ear; all was silent without, but within and close by he
seemed to catch a faint sighing, a faint sobbing rustle, a little
stealthy creak--as though many persons were at his side, holding
themselves quite still, and governing even their respiration with the
extreme of slyness. The idea went to his vitals with a shock, and he
faced about suddenly as if to defend his life. Then, for the first time,
he became aware of a light about the level of his eyes and at some
distance in the interior of the house--a vertical thread of light,
widening toward the bottom, such as might escape between two wings of
arras over a doorway.
To see anything was a relief to Denis; it was like a piece of solid
ground to a man laboring in a morass; his mind seized upon it with
avidity; and he stood staring at it and trying to piece together some
logical conception of his surroundings. Plainly there was a flight of
steps ascending from his own level to that of this illuminated doorway,
and indeed he thought he could make out another thread of light, as fine
as a needle and as faint as phosphorescence, which might very well be
reflected along the polished wood of a handrail. Since he had begun to
suspect that he was not alone, his heart had continued to beat with
smothering violence, and an intolerable desire for action of any sort
had possessed itself of his spirit. He was in deadly peril, he believed.
What could be more natural than to mount the staircase, lift the
curtain, and confront his difficulty at once? At least he would be
dealing with something tangible; at least he would be no longer in the
dark. He stepped slowly forward with outstretched hands, until his foot
struck the bottom step; then he rapidly scaled the stairs, stood for a
moment to compose his expression, lifted the arras and went in.
He found himself in a large apartment of polished stone. There were
three doors, one on each of three sides, all similarly curtained with
tapestry. The fourth side was occupied by two large windows and a great
stone chimneypiece, carved with the arms of the Malétroits. Denis
recognized the bearings, and was gratified to find himself in such good
hands. The room was strongly illuminated; but it contained little
furniture except a heavy table and a chair or two; the hearth was
innocent of fire, and the pavement was but sparsely strewn with rushes
clearly many days old.
On a high chair beside the chimney, and directly facing Denis as he
entered, sat a little old gentleman in a fur tippet. He sat with his
legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine stood by his
elbow on a bracket on the wall. His countenance had a strong masculine
cast; not properly human, but such as we see in the bull, the goat, or
the domestic boar; something equivocal and wheedling, something greedy,
brutal and dangerous. The upper lip was inordinately full, as though
swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the peaked eyebrows,
and the small, strong eyes were quaintly and almost comically evil in
expression. Beautiful white hair hung straight all round his head, like
a saint's and fell in a single curl upon the tippet. His beard and
mustache were the pink of venerable sweetness. Age, probably in
consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands;
and the Malétroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine
anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the taper, sensual
fingers were like those of one of Leonardo's women; the fork of the
thumb made a dimpled protuberance when closed; the nails were perfectly
shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness. It rendered his aspect
tenfold more redoubtable, that a man with hands like these should keep
them devoutly folded like a virgin martyr--that a man with so intent and
startling an expression of face should sit patiently on his seat and
contemplate people with an unwinking stare, like a god, or a god's
statue. His quiescence seemed ironical and treacherous, it fitted so
poorly with his looks.
Such was Alain, Sire de Malétroit.
Denis and he looked silently at each other for a second or two.
"Pray step in," said the Sire de Malétroit. "I have been expecting you
all the evening."
He had not risen, but he accompanied his words with a smile and a slight
but courteous inclination of the head. Partly from the smile, partly
from the strange musical murmur with which the sire prefaced his
observation, Denis felt a strong shudder of disgust go through his
marrow. And what with disgust and honest confusion of mind, he could
scarcely get words together in reply.
"I fear," he said, "that this is a double accident. I am not the person
you suppose me. It seems you were looking for a visit; but for my part,
nothing was further from my thoughts--nothing could be more contrary to
my wishes--than this intrusion."
"Well, well," replied the old gentleman indulgently, "here you are,
which is the main point. Seat yourself, my friend, and put yourself
entirely at your ease. We shall arrange our little affairs presently."
Denis perceived that the matter was still complicated with some
misconception, and he hastened to continue his explanation.
"Your door," he began.
"About my door?" asked the other raising his peaked eyebrows. "A little
piece of ingenuity." And he shrugged his shoulders. "A hospitable fancy!
By your own account, you were not desirous of making my acquaintance. We
old people look for such reluctance now and then; when it touches our
honor, we cast about until we find some way of overcoming it. You arrive
uninvited, but believe me, very welcome."
"You persist in error, sir," said Denis. "There can be no question
between you and me. I am a stranger in this countryside. My name is
Denis, damoiseau de Beaulieu. If you see me in your house it is only--"
"My young friend," interrupted the other, "you will permit me to have my
own ideas on that subject. They probably differ from yours at the
present moment," he added with a leer, "but time will show which of us
is in the right."
Denis was convinced he had to do with a lunatic. He seated himself with
a shrug, content to wait the upshot; and a pause ensued, during which he
thought he could distinguish a hurried gabbling as of a prayer from
behind the arras immediately opposite him. Sometimes there seemed to be
but one person engaged, sometimes two; and the vehemence of the voice,
low as it was, seemed to indicate either great haste or an agony of
spirit. It occurred to him that this piece of tapestry covered the
entrance to the chapel he had noticed from without.
The old gentleman meanwhile surveyed Denis from head to foot with a
smile, and from time to time emitted little noises like a bird or a
mouse, which seemed to indicate a high degree of satisfaction. This
state of matters became rapidly insupportable; and Denis, to put an end
to it, remarked politely that the wind had gone down.
The old gentleman fell into a fit of silent laughter, so prolonged and
violent that he became quite red in the face. Denis got upon his feet at
once, and put on his hat with a flourish.
"Sir," he said, "if you are in your wits, you have affronted me grossly.
If you are out of them, I flatter myself I can find better employment
for my brains than to talk with lunatics. My conscience is clear; you
have made a fool of me from the first moment; you have refused to hear
my explanations; and now there is no power under God will make me stay
here any longer; and if I cannot make my way out in a more decent
fashion, I will hack your door in pieces with my sword."
The Sire de Malétroit raised his right hand and wagged it at Denis with
the fore and little fingers extended.
"My dear nephew," he said, "sit down."
"Nephew!" retorted Denis, "you lie in your throat;" and he snapped his
fingers in his face.
"Sit down, you rogue!" cried the old gentleman, in a sudden, harsh voice
like the barking of a dog. "Do you fancy," he went on, "that when I had
made my little contrivance for the door I had stopped short with that?
If you prefer to be bound hand and foot till your bones ache, rise and
try to go away. If you choose to remain a free young buck, agreeably
conversing with an old gentleman--why, sit where you are in peace, and
God be with you."
"Do you mean I am a prisoner?" demanded Denis.
"I state the facts," replied the other. "I would rather leave the
conclusion to yourself."
Denis sat down again. Externally he managed to keep pretty calm, but
within, he was now boiling with anger, now chilled with apprehension. He
no longer felt convinced that he was dealing with a madman. And if the
old gentleman was sane, what, in God's name, had he to look for? What
absurd or tragical adventure had befallen him? What countenance was he
to assume?
While he was thus unpleasantly reflecting, the arras that overhung the
chapel door was raised, and a tall priest in his robes came forth, and,
giving a long, keen stare at Denis, said something in an undertone to
Sire de Malétroit.
"She is in a better frame of spirit?" asked the latter.
"She is more resigned, messire," replied the priest.
"Now the Lord help her, she is hard to please!" sneered the old
gentleman. "A likely stripling--not ill-born--and of her own choosing,
too? Why, what more would the jade have?"
"The situation is not usual for a young damsel," said the other, "and
somewhat trying to her blushes."
"She should have thought of that before she began the dance! It was none
of my choosing, God knows that; but since she is in it, by our Lady, she
shall carry it to the end." And then addressing Denis, "Monsieur de
Beaulieu," he asked, "may I present you to my niece? She has been
waiting your arrival, I may say, with even greater impatience than
myself."