Part 5

Rockhurst stepped in again into the warmth of the parlour, snow sodden on his boots, hoar frost pricking his hair, and found Paul Farrant.

* * * * *

To the young man’s frenzied anxiety it seemed interminable nights that he had been thus waiting, waiting for release or doom; nights that he had paced the brown parlour from end to end; that he had stood shivering in the window recess, gazing out upon the white emptiness, straining his ears for a sound of life in the awful stillness. The uncertainty of Rockhurst’s moods, of his intentions, the mystery that had to-night surrounded his movements, added to the waiting misery. To what end had Rakehell set forth, at midnight through the snow, with the lady whom he had so cynically received? Was it a sudden whim of chivalrous courtesy? His scorching anger upon their last brief meeting might lead him to that preposterous conclusion—Knight Errant Rakehell, out through the snowdrifts on a farm mare for the sake of country virtue! (What tale might he not make of it for supper merriment at Whitehall!) Or Rakehell, jealous of his host’s fair looks and smooth cheek, carrying off elsewhere the prize of grace and beauty.…

At such a point Farrant’s uneasy tread would lead him back to the hearth, to seek vain comfort by the embers, to fling fresh logs on the reddening pile. What was he to do if Rockhurst were to pass away from his road like this? Dare he, so long as those damning notes were in that pitiless hold, ever present himself within earshot of Court?

* * * * *

Then all at once, as he sat staring into his uncertain future, his guest was back upon him—those were his steps without, that was his hand on the latch! Farrant sprang to his feet, and flung a look of piteous inquiry at the great lord’s face.

Rockhurst did not speak. He went to the hearth and stood for an appreciable pause gazing at the lad; in his eyes there was none of the former scorn—nothing but a kind of sad wonder. Then, deliberately, he drew the damning slips of paper from his pocket, turned, and, one by one, with a musing air, threw them into the fire.

Farrant drew a quivering breath of relief. The “debt of honour” was cancelled.

THE ENIGMA OF THE LOCKET

THE ENIGMA OF THE LOCKET

I

LITTLE SATAN

Enguerrand de Joncelles—_Monsieur le Vidame de Joncelles_, as he preferred to be called—was new to courts. To the court of Whitehall, _la cour de Witalle_ he had it, he was yet altogether a stranger.

From the noble monotony of Joncelles, the great poverty-stricken chateau which raised its pepper-box turrets above meagre apple orchards, a league south of Caen, to the excitement of the Louvre and Versailles; from the rigidity of the maternal rule at home (in her retirement, Madame de Joncelles, a confidant and friend of the late Queen Mother of France, had never compromised on matters of discipline, and had cherished theories on the education of young men) to complete emancipation—here had been steps high enough to upset the balance of any quick-blooded and good-looking youth of eighteen. But the little Vidame had found his feet, as the saying goes, with astonishing ease, as soon as the austere old lady, departing for a better world, left him to face this one by himself.

The new mourning had scarce had time to be fitted to his comely figure before the whole youth himself had become a different being. There are some whom a single glass of wine intoxicates; Enguerrand de Joncelles was intoxicated at the very first sip of life.… Such a flutter of silk and curls; such constellations of eyes, brilliant or melting or mockingly challenging; such lightning of wit; such whispers, such sighs! In one day he had learned to return, with interest, an _œillade_ that, within the precincts of Caen Cathedral, would have made him drop a modest lid—and set him dreaming for a week. Within a very little while more he had mastered the art of capturing a soft hand and holding it hidden in tender pressure, the while presenting a decorous front to stately company. He had also learned to look down in the right measure of disdain upon the burgher; to bandy, in all delicacy, audacious pleasantry with his equals on the Grand Staircase of the Louvre, or in the _Galérie de l’Œil-de-Bœuf_. He could whip out his new-mode small-sword with as swift a grace as the best noted ruffler. He was able to be more obviously dazzled by the splendour of the _Roy-Soleil_ than many a past-master sycophant—withal cultivating a fine insensibility of outward aspect, keeping the delicate beauty of his features set as in a fine white mask, his voice low-toned—only now and again permitting the wide-pupilled black eyes to betray by a flash the constant alertness of the inner mind.

These demure airs gave a singular piquancy to the boldness of his words and deeds, one which was not without its special effect in that court of solemn sham and wearisome etiquette. Heaven only knows where the precious only son of Madame de Joncelles had found such sudden knowledge of the world, such astuteness and such recklessness combined. It was a merciful Providence that spared his pious mother the sight of the ultimate blossoming of her carefully pruned young tree!

Attached (together with his sister, Madame de Mantes, a noted beauty of Versailles) to the train of Madame Henriette d’Orléans, on the occasion of that princess’s first journey to England since the happy restoration of her royal brother, he now was ushered to the court of Whitehall. What the apt youth here saw and learned filled him deep with surprise—a surprise, however, which he was careful not to betray. Beyond doubt it was a merry place, this court of Charles—if its methods were a trifle astonishing. Enguerrand was not one who would let pass a single opportunity for self-instruction, and now and again, despite his impassive attitude where the natural acuteness of his wits failed him, he condescended to ask for information.

* * * * *

He was in a questioning mood, this night at Whitehall, when, for the first time, he was admitted to the King’s more private circle. By good adventure, he found himself beside a gentleman who seemed to possess an intimate knowledge of the royal ways as well as an amiable readiness to impart it. This was an elderly little man of the name of Petherick, who once, evidently, had been handsome, and was still à la mode. As Enguerrand was to learn later, Mr. Petherick justified his established position at Court by a notable ingenuity in discovering fresh sources of amusement for the easily wearied Charles. Now the acute person’s eye rested critically upon the elegance of the foreign boy; his Majesty liked new faces and new fashions, and his Majesty especially liked the French.

“Aye,” said Petherick, as if pursuing his thought aloud, “the King is vastly fond of your country, Vidame—and of your countrywomen, just now. See—that divine dark creature that came with Madame Henriette; I’ve laid a wager, to wit, that her Royal Highness will have to leave her lady-in-waiting behind, when she returns to France.”

“Sir—you mean, I see, Madame de Mantes,” said Enguerrand, coolly. “My sister.”

“Monsieur de Joncelles…? Ah, of course, Madame de Mantes is married. And M. de Mantes?”

“Say was married—happily widowed within a few months,” said the little Vidame, with elaborate coolness. And from his post slightly in the background he gazed at the brilliant royal circle and singled out the familiar dark curly head, the peach-like cheek, the childlike lustrous eyes with quite a new interest.

Mr. Petherick had too good an experience of the Court not to be more than ever gracious to a newcomer, who proved to be the brother of a beauteous sister.

Following the direction of the Vidame’s eyes, he pointed out the personalities of major importance—handsome Castlemaine, sullen and aggressive to-night; and fair Stewart with her childish face and her studied coldness of demeanour, and put Master Enguerrand _au courant_ of some spicy snippets. Buckingham proclaimed himself by his magnificence, his insolence, and his gaiety.

“But pray,” put in the Vidame, “who may the tall, dark gentleman be, who sits in such silence behind his Majesty, and who, even when the King speaks, seems to have forgot how to smile.… He has a handsome presence—although no longer young, at all.” (Thus, the superb arrogance of his own springtime!) “Do you mark, Monsieur Petherick, how my little sister keeps seeking his notice with languishing eyes—aye, even with his Majesty’s own gaze upon her … the perverse one! Pray, who is the gentleman?”

“How!” cried Mr. Petherick, “a whole week already in Whitehall, and not yet acquainted with the Rakehell? Why, sir, it is our King’s own familiar, an old comrade of the wars and of exile. His Majesty can do nought without my lord Viscount Rockhurst—my merry Rockhurst, he has dubbed his lordship, in a raillery, you will understand, of that countenance which keeps its gravity through the maddest freak. And mad he can be, sir; hence that nickname of Rakehell, which no doubt has astonished your French elegancy.—Nay, but in truth there is an eye that wanders, as you say, prodigious languorously upon my lord Constable!” Mr. Petherick went on, narrowing his own watchful gaze: “I congratulate you, Vidame, upon your fair sister … yet, I trust she is as wise as she is fair.… Aye, you say true, and your young wits are quicker than mine; the Lord Constable—my lord Rockhurst is constable, I should inform you, of his Majesty’s Tower and captain of the Yeomen of the Guard—and in sooth the one gentleman about the presence who would dare, and for the mere deviltry of it, to place himself in rivalry with the King … to nip the quarry, as it were, from under Old Rowley’s nose!”

“Old Rowley?” questioned Enguerrand, his dark eyes flashing wide. He had a side smile, as he spoke, for his sister and her astuteness. He could trust Jeanne to be wise.

Petherick coughed behind a lean hand.

“Oh, a name, sir. A name, by which his Majesty’s intimates dare, now and then, to call him—ahem! when not in the presence—a foolish habit. I know not how the absurdity slipped from my tongue.”

“Nay, neither do I,” said the little cool Vidame.

His glance wandered back with sharper set curiosity to the royal circle. Charles had a languid hand amid the curls of the proud, fair beauty, who sat, erect and triumphant, beside him; the young courtier’s thoughts ran back to his own gorgeous monarch, set up as upon an altar, never to be approached save with bent spine, with double-distilled compliments, spoken of with awe, in whispers, as befitted his august essence. _Le Roy Soleil_.… Old Rowley!

* * * * *

Jeanne de Mantes had a pretty, round face with a pointed chin, wide-set, very innocent dark eyes, piquantly contradicted by the dainty, wicked mouth, by every vivacious art and grace that proclaimed one deeply learned already in the art of pleasing. Charles, in truth, looked more often to-night at his sister’s pretty _dame d’honneur_ than at the blond, chill beauty who sat at his right hand; and presently, as he looked, the King’s sardonic face relaxed into a smile. He leaned forward and addressed the lady in French:—

“I hear mounts and marvels, madam, of your skill upon the guitar. Will you not pleasure us with some sweet air of your fingers?”

Instantly every glance fell upon the Frenchwoman; and she, with a start, brought her eyes from their absent fixing of the Lord Constable to the visage of the King. She fluttered. She smiled:—

“Your Majesty commands? ’Tis scarce worthy of such ears.”

Curiously enough the guitar had been brought to-night, by the wish of Madame herself, who deemed that his Majesty might be pleased to hear it. She stretched out a white hand, half turning the head with its wreath of soft black curls toward the young man behind her:—

“My brother!… Vidame!”

It was a languid, sweet call, like the pipe of a waking bird, which augured well for the louder warble. The Vidame was alert; in a twinkling he was at his sister’s side, presenting the guitar with the arrogant grace peculiar to him.

But Charles, full of that curious interest in small things which seems so marked a characteristic of sovereigns—their lives being by fate ordained in view of wide issues—signified by a gesture his desire to examine the new-fashioned instrument, and the Vidame approached the presence.

The silent, grave personage whose seat behind the King, apart from the table, threw him into shadow, looked at the young man at first with indifference; then, of a sudden, piercingly.

With one arm thrown familiarly on the back of the royal chair, he had shown himself mighty indifferent either to the challenging glances lavished upon him, or to the pleasantries that circled round the table, the most audacious winged with a subtle flattery for the royal attention. For the monarch himself, who dropped him ever and anon a confidential word, Lord Rockhurst had but a perfunctory, if quite courteous attention. A deep mood of abstraction had held him. But, now, his interest was vivid, unmistakable. He stared at the Vidame; and, as he stared, surprise seemed to pass into distaste, almost into pain.

The lad paused in his advance, as if held by that intent gaze. Then he tossed his black locks; a sudden fire of resentment leaped and died in his eyes, and with crimson cheeks he came swaggering round the table, and dropped on one knee before the King. Charles glanced curiously from him to his Lord Constable; Rockhurst’s gaze was still resting inscrutably upon the lad.

“Odd’s fish, my lord Rockhurst!” cried the King. “You look at the pretty boy as if you saw a spectre!”

“Even so, your Majesty.”

The sonority of the voice, the strange words, fell impressively in that light atmosphere. Again Enguerrand’s black pupils shot fury. Rockhurst, with the same absorbed air, laid his fingers on a slender chain that hung round his neck, and drew from his breast a gold locket.

Opening and holding it in his hand so that none could view it but himself, he appeared to be contrasting some portrait concealed in it with the countenance of the still kneeling boy.

“Ha!” cried the King, “take heed, ladies; for, as we live, the mystery of my lord Rockhurst’s locket is at length to be solved. A spectre, did you say, my lord?”

The Lord Constable closed the locket with a snap, slipped it back among the laces on his breast, and turned easily upon the King; his frown had vanished.

“Nay, no spectre, sire; the merest passing fantasy!”

Charles was shaken with laughter, a noiseless laugh which scarcely wrote itself upon his melancholy features.

“Methought, from your lenten face,” said he, “that you were struck by some memory of past misdeeds.”

“Your Majesty mistakes. No memory; but a warning!”

The King looked puzzled; then, with his usual distaste for prolonged discussion, made a gesture as if he would put the matter on one side.

“But that locket?” And with the words Madame de Mantes flung out a small olive finger. Since English etiquette, it seemed, permitted every one to speak, then she would speak. The matter had become all at once of palpitating interest to her. The portrait in the locket—it was evidently a portrait—he had smiled at it. And such a smile! She took a vow that one day this man should be made to smile thus on her.

“True, true,” said Charles. “Let us see into the secret at last, my merry Rockhurst.”

The Lord Constable flung himself back into his chair.

“Nay, sire,” said he, and the deference of the words became mockery in view of the attitude of the speaker. “Your Majesty has every jurisdiction over me—my goods, my services, my life, are irrevocably yours to dispose of; but my thoughts are mine own. And this locket belongs to my most secret thoughts.”

Curiosity flickered once more for a moment in the royal eye. But through drooping lids the Lord Constable’s gaze was steel-like, and the King shrugged his shoulders with the foreign gesture that cleaved to him through life.

“God’s mercy, my lieges, that ye keep your thoughts to yourselves, at least!” he cried, with an assumed rueful air; “for, between your lost goods and your past services, our exchequer has enough to meet.” He stretched out his hand for the guitar as he spoke, and twanged ignorantly at the strings.

Enguerrand rose with a grin. Charles’s ingratitude toward his ruined loyalists was no secret in France, and the cold gibe was after his heart.

“Then we shall not see the locket?” cried the Frenchwoman, disappointment ringing through her fluted tones.

“How the bird twitters!” cried Charles, good-naturedly. “Nay, my dear, curiosity was ever fatal to your sex. Let us remain in paradise for an hour or so. Sing!”

Jeanne de Mantes had a voice that matched her looks: small, insinuating, sweet; creeping into favour, rather than storming it; docile to a thousand modulations and graces. Now it was the very gaiety of music; anon just a hint of pathos; and every word distinct as a dropping gem. And this accompanied with here a dreamlike fixity of gaze, there an arch roll of the eyes; here again a punctuating dimple, a flash in the peachy, dark face of the whitest teeth in all the world; there a drooping of the lip that positively demanded the consolation of a kiss.

Charles had not been so stirred to enthusiasm for a considerable time. He called for a second ditty, and yet another. This last had an audacious lilt, with a refrain so infectious that the royal listener began to hum it midway and sadly out of tune. Toward the last verse, however, under strokes waxing ever smarter, a string broke with a plaintive sob.

“Ah, _diable_!” involuntarily exclaimed the singer; and his Majesty laughed delightedly. Then his face changed again as he noted the compressed lips of Lady Castlemaine and the glacial anger of Miss Stewart. He rose and broke up the circle. His arm on Rockhurst’s shoulder, he was about to retire, when he paused and hummed a few notes of the last song once more.

“A linnet,” he said, “a positive linnet! Odd’s fish! but we’d have her pipe to us when we might give her our whole attention.”

He spoke low, and flung back a look, that held a certain apprehension, toward Miss Stewart. This latter stood very erect, and bore a studied air of indifference.

“If your lordship will look to it—” he went on, then broke off petulantly under the glance that Rockhurst turned upon him. “Good lack, man! I forget how much of the Puritan there is in thee at times.”

“Your Majesty,” said Rockhurst, in his most stately manner, “will find with ease an apter messenger.”

“Aye,” said the King, cynically. His narrow, dark eye roamed a moment about the room, then rested reflectively upon the fair mask of Enguerrand’s face. The boy turned quickly. Charles raised a beckoning hand.

“Vidame,” said the King, “a word in the hollow of your ear!”

The two drew apart, while Rockhurst moved away to the door to await the King’s pleasure. Charles rejoined him, laughing.

“Faith, if I had such subjects as my cousin Louis, I should be well served. Yes, ’tis your French finger you want for true lightness of touch. My honest Britons are all thumbs. The pretty singer’s brother.… Her own brother, no less! ’Tis a positive little Satan!”

“Aye,” assented Rockhurst, briefly.

The two went down the corridor in silence; then Rockhurst spoke with some abruptness.

“Your Majesty,” said he, “has before this, I think, found it add to his interest in … bird-catching that he should not be the only fowler in the field.”

“How now?” said Charles, halting. The group of attendant pages halted likewise at the end of the gallery.

“I have thought,” said Rockhurst, steadily, “I, also, that I should like that linnet to sing to me.”

Charles frowned; but his favourite pursued unmoved:—

“As I have only my _beaux yeux_, as we used to say abroad, to stake against your Majesty’s overwhelming attractions, I should be flattered indeed, however, were you to have me banned as a marauder.”

Touched upon the string of his humour, Charles was ever easily appeased. The very impudence of his grave constable’s proposal tickled him. It was not the first time that they had found themselves opposed in rivalry, though scarcely ever before so avowedly. On the last occasion (the King remembered this pleasantly) Rockhurst, for all his _beaux yeux_, had been notoriously displaced; and this, doubtless, was a little stroke of revenge. That was Rockhurst’s way.

“Beware of boasting, my lord Constable!” he exclaimed banteringly.

They were on the threshold of the apartment. Rockhurst made a deep _congé_.

“I never boast, as your Majesty knows. But your Majesty was wont to love a fair wager.”

Charles’s smile widened. He nodded assent, and Rockhurst pursued after a moment’s reflection:—

“Will your Majesty stake the payment of all the arrears due to my yeomen’s company that the linnet’s first song will not be for me? I would wager in return their immediate settlement, out of my own estate, unless your Majesty would impose on me any other stake.”

“Admirable!” said the King. “Yet we would have a more immediate, a more personal, token of victory—if we succeed against your _beaux yeux_,” he put in with a little mockery, “and that is, in addition to the paltry coin, a view of the contents of that locket, my merry Rockhurst.”

Rockhurst hesitated, then bowed. “So be it, sire,” said he.

And hereupon Charles retired, laughing, in cynical anticipation of a good stroke of business. That ever-present question of arrears of pay was a persistent annoyance to the royal conscience.

II

WHITEHALL STAIRS

“Little Satan”—bestowed from lips royal in terms of favour, the nickname cleaved congenially to Enguerrand—entered, into the rôle of King’s Mercury with all the _verve_ expected of him. But he was considerably surprised at the manner in which his embassy was received. To place the most unworthy motives invariably foremost was, he flattered himself, to display a thorough knowledge of woman. He had yet to learn the thousand sensibilities that distinguish even the frail of that elusive sex from the unscrupulous gallant.

As he paused on his announcement, fully expecting to descry in the new recipient of the royal favour at least as much gratification as he himself experienced in being singled out as confidential messenger, he was met by a sudden pouncing movement, expressive only of wrath, by a dark look, actually by a flush.

Had Jeanne de Mantes ever blushed? It might be a matter of doubt. But she could colour high with displeasure; and very becoming it was.

“What, sir?” she cried. “I cannot have understood aright. Is this the Vidame de Joncelles, the French gentilhomme, the servant of Madame Henriette de France—is this my compatriot, my own brother, who comes to make me such a proposition?—It is really not to credit one’s ears!…”

Brother and sister faced each other, strangely alike now in their anger: nostrils quivering over fierce, quick breaths, black eyes flashing into black eyes.

It was the Vidame who could scarce credit his ears. Here was he, the messenger of the King, come to open before one whose devouring ambition, he believed, if anything, exceeded his own, a perspective of boundless possibilities—and he was thus received! He sat before her in the small parlour allotted to her in Whitehall,—an exiguous rounded corner room overlooking the river,—his mouth opened in astonishment, deserted for the nonce by all his pert airs of assurance.

“Nay, Jeanne,” he said at length, “keep this pretty scene for his Majesty, if you will; or rather,” he amended, restored by the sound of his own glib speech, “take my advice, and hold your fits of virtue as cured and over, once for all, for they say that King Charles becomes very easily _ennuyé_. For, with me, whom do you expect to take in?”

Whereupon, at a tangent, Madame de Mantes flew into a new rage.