Part 16

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:—

“‘_The earth shook and trembled, because He was angry with them._’ Aye, ’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.