Part 7

What is it, she asked herself; his fair one, in some well-known boat? Ah! the owner perhaps of that face in the locket, which even his King was not to see? What in the name of all decent pride was Jeanne de Mantes doing here? Yet even as she moved again to leave him, with what dignity she might, the incomprehensible being turned to her again—turned with a smile so winning, a glance so warm and caressing, a voice so tender, that the young woman lost her footing on her momentary plane of dignity, and found herself floundering again between a tearful desire for surrender and that hot anger which only a real love is able to kindle.

“How now! Adieu, say you? From your lips, sweet, that is a word I hope never to hear.”

“Why should I remain, milord?” she said feebly. “You care not to keep me.”

“I care so much that I will not let you go.” He came after her quickly into the room. “Why, you foolish child, how can you escape from the Tower so long as its constable means to hold you? Do you not know, I have but to call a word, and the drawbridge is raised, the portcullis dropped over the waterway—that I have the right of imprisonment here, that there are secret places where I can hide my wilful prisoners? Nay, sweet one, are we not well together here?—You shall sing to me!”

Stirred with an emotion which, hitherto only playing with life, she had never known before, she murmured, blushing and trembling:—

“Sing! _Eh, mon Dieu_, you hold to it, then?”

“Why,” he answered her, “was it not singing that you caught my heart?”

Delicately flattered, she suffered herself to be led to a cushioned seat by the deep hearth; and she was already stretching out her arms to receive the guitar, when something in his air struck her quick apprehension, something at once of eagerness for her compliance, yet of indifference toward herself. He shot restless glances toward the window, seemed to strain his ear as if for some expected signal. When his eye swept over her, it was with an impatience other than that of the fond lover. She took the instrument from his hand, and watched him with a new, critical closeness as he flung himself upon the settle opposite to her.

In a tone which ill concealed irritability, he cried to her:—

“Begin—begin, little bird!”

Here was some odd mystery. She folded her hands across the polished olive-wood.

“Heavens!” she exclaimed, and it was her turn now to mock. “What a passion for music has your lordship!”

His eye shot anger upon her, beneath contracted brow. She felt at last that she had power, and her smile widened.

“You and your song,” said he, “are inseparable. By your graciousness I hold you mine for a little while, nor will I be defrauded of any of the sweetness you can give.”

The words seemed charmingly chosen; but again the underlying, unknown purpose was perceptible. A quick inspiration came to her: here was the moment to bargain; and Enguerrand, the little impertinent one, should know of her easy triumph before this grey English day had turned to the murky English night.

“If I sing,” she said, “I must have my guerdon.”

Amusement and relief sprang together into his look:—

“Nay, then, pretty one; make your own terms. Pearls for those shell-like ears—gems for that throat—”

She shook her head till the ringlets danced.

“Speak, then,” he went on impatiently. “What jewel, what bauble?”

She bent forward with a new, adorable softness, coaxing.

“A mere trifle, indeed, milord. I but ask for that locket of yours with which you were pleased to excite the curiosity of Whitehall last night.”

“How now!” said Rockhurst. He started, and turned the lightning of his glance, the thunder-cloud of his brow, upon her, a man whom it was not good to offend, and she quailed an instant. Then her hot blood rose in jealous passion:—

“So vastly precious? Why, then, generous milord Constable, suppose I put a high price upon my song; are you so ungallant?”

“Little madame,” retorted he, drily, “since you set a price on your favour, you would be as vastly disappointed with this poor trinket as Eve with the taste of her apple. Continue to desire it,” he went on, falling back into his tone of light cynicism. “To long for anything unattainable is one of the spices of existence.”

The firelight leaped on her angry face. She sprang to her feet, dashing aside the guitar, which fell on the stone floor with sonorous wail.

“If I could flatter myself I was helping to provide milord’s tedium with such a spice,” she cried, “my immediate departure would have a double charm!”

She reached a trembling hand toward her cloak. He, outstretched on the settle, watched her, without moving. At this moment, grave sounds, a trumpet call, followed by dull roll of kettledrum, rose from without into the momentary silence of the room. Stone wall and vault gave back the echo. There was a hurried tramp of feet, sharp cries of command. The Frenchwoman’s hand was arrested in mid-air. She looked in startled query at her host, who was slowly gathering his long limbs together preparatory to rising. He met her glance with one that struck her excited fancy as sinister, and she gave a cry like a child:—

“Let me out of this horrible place! You have no right to keep me here!”

He caught her wrist with a grasp gentle yet relentless.

“Your password, Jeanne, shall be a song—however short, but one stave, a few notes! Your song I must have!”

He picked up the guitar, and again pressed it upon her. She put her hand to her throat with a sob, flung a piteous glance around her like a trapped thing, and struck a faltering chord. Then, in a sudden revulsion, her courage rose again.

“Pah!” she cried, “’tis out of tune! _Eh, bien non!_ I will not sing! I am French; you have no right to hold me here!”

“By the Lord!” said Rockhurst, a gleam of genuine admiration leaping to his eye, “but I like your spirit! Be dumb, then, sweetheart. You shall pay me by and by. Nay,” he added, smiling on her bewilderment, “let thy mantle lie where it is; for, prithee, I would have thee assist me to receive his Majesty.”

“His Majesty?” she cried, in fresh amazement.

“Aye,” he laughed. “Didst not hear the royal tucket sound without? Charles in person, who always finds the world but a dull place, even under the same roof with an old friend, if there be not the flutter of a petticoat to liven it. But you have made me dally, little Madame Mischief, and even my indulgent monarch expects some pretence of ceremony.”

His hand was on the bolt of the latchet as he spoke; his last words were almost lost in the echoes of the vaulted passage.

* * * * *

Charles paused on the threshold, his sallow face seeming darker than usual in the grim light. His lips smiled, but there was a certain displeasure in his eye as it roamed from Jeanne’s crimsoning countenance to the guitar on the seat. From the gloom of the passage Enguerrand’s white face shone out, composed save for the deep reproach of his glance when it met that of his sister. Rockhurst alone, bowing the King into his apartment, wore a pleasant air of unconcern.

“We verily believe our visit is inopportune,” said Charles, with sarcastic courtesy. “We have interrupted, we fear, some dulcet music, my Lord Constable?”

Rockhurst closed the heavy door behind his guests, then advanced to the King’s side.

“Nay, sire,” said he, with fine geniality, “the bird came to the lure, it is true, but no art of mine or persuasion could call forth a song.… Your Majesty, no doubt, will prove more successful.”

“Odd’s fish!” cried Charles, with one of his rare, hearty laughs. “Say you so, indeed, invincible Constable? Say you so, indeed, my merry Rockhurst? Beaten? And under such auspices—alone with your fair! But how, then, are we to put our own skill now to the test, before so many witnesses? For we would not win our wager on the royal authority, but in all equality, my good Lord Constable, even as in that merry moment we entered upon it.”

Wager? Here, then, was the word of the riddle! A wager between two irresponsible men of pleasure: who should first obtain of a woman the petty guerdon of a song! ’Twas for that she had been wooed by both—both! And she, who had been uplifted on a wave of magnanimous feeling, who had flattered herself to be giving up a king for the love of a subject! Jeanne de Mantes had grown white to the lips. She caught at the table behind her for support, yet never had her wits been clearer. To sing for neither would serve them both well. Aye, but to sing for Charles would best punish him who had deepest offended. She flung one look of fury at Rockhurst, and then turned to the King, who had let himself sink upon the settle in front of the fire:—

“May the poor object of your Majesty’s wager inquire what are the stakes that were set upon her favour?” she asked, with a deadly sweetness, taking up the guitar and beginning to tune it with little, fierce hands.

Charles, who saw himself on the point of success, answered thoughtlessly, with a schoolboy look of triumph at the constable:—

“I but bargained for a sight of the contents of that mysterious locket which was so contumaciously denied to my curiosity last night, and—” Then he hesitated, with a faint flush of confusion.

“His Majesty,” said Rockhurst, gravely, “with his usual magnanimity, opposed a large guerdon to my trifling stake.”

The King, both spared and taunted by this reminder, moved uneasily on his seat. But already the twang of the guitar in harmonious cadence brought his light humour back to amusement again. If hesitation had still lurked in Jeanne’s mind, the first mention of the locket had swept it away. Her voice rose, robbed perhaps of some of its delicate sweetness, but vibrating with unwonted fire and incisiveness. She chose a bellicose ditty, which a Frondeuse mother had sung to her baby ears. And when she paused, panting, on the last refrain, with a furious sweep across the strings, Charles broke into delighted applause. Enguerrand, flushing with triumph, caught the guitar from his sister’s hand, as with a hysterical gesture she was about to cast it on the floor.

“I have sung!” she cried loudly, with almost a viperine movement, rising from the seat on which she had crouched to play. “Milord Rockhurst has lost his wager. Let him now pay!”

Rockhurst bowed urbanely toward her, drew the locket from its hiding-place, and with a second profound obeisance, handed it, open, to the King. As he looked, the mischievous curiosity on Charles’s face changed to an expression of profound astonishment.

“Odd’s fish!” he cried.

He shot a lightning glance at Enguerrand, then at his Lord Constable, and then at the picture again. And once more his expressive countenance altered.

“Yours?” he queried.

“Yes, your Majesty,” said Rockhurst.

Charles’s eye remained pensive for a further span. But suddenly it wandered to the Frenchwoman, and the mercurial King burst into laughter.

“Odd’s my life, but look at your sweetheart, my lord! The wench is on the very coals of jealousy—a live trout in the frying-pan were in comfort compared to her. Nay, we’ll have no torture in our presence. Fain would you look at your rival, madame?”

Rockhurst made no effort to interfere, and with trembling fingers Jeanne took the trinket from the King’s hand. In her turn she gave a cry; and Charles laughed heartily at the amazement, relief, and disappointment of her air.

“Why, ’tis naught but a boy!”

“Naught but a boy, indeed,” echoed Charles, “yet, we’ll go warrant what our Lord Constable holds dearest upon earth. A likely lad! Aye, and with a strange resemblance to Little Satan there.”

“God forbid!” ejaculated Rockhurst.

And “God forbid!” echoed Enguerrand, pertly, sharp as lightning.

Charles, who had been in high good humour, flung the lad a cold look, under which he fell back abashed and crimsoning—only to glance up again with a spasm of anger and hatred at the Lord Constable, as soon as the sovereign’s head was averted.

“We knew you had an heir,” said the King; then, turning with dignity to his host, “but, my lord Rockhurst, you have let us forget it. How is it? He should be at our Court.”

Bowing deeply, Rockhurst answered in a low voice:—

“My son is brought up in the country, sire.”

“Nay, fie!” said Charles. “Is not that even what we would reproach you with? So fair a stripling should never grow a mere rustic. We’ll have him about us,” insisted the King.

Again there was that moment’s silence. Jeanne looked up from the picture at which she had been absently gazing. This son of Rockhurst interested her not at all; not had he been twice as handsome as the fair, spirited face, with its odd resemblance of features and its odder dissimilitude of expression to her own brother. She felt humiliated to have played so foolish a part of jealousy, and more than ever baffled by the strange personality of the man she had elected to love.

Rockhurst took back the locket, gazed at it again, closed it, and replaced it on its chain.

“Will your Majesty forgive me,” said he, at length, “nor deem me ungrateful if, in spite of your condescension, I yet hold that my son is best in the country?”

“We would at least hear your reason,” said Charles, with some weariness.

“In the country, your Majesty,” replied Rockhurst, then, “my lad will continue to revere his father, to honour womanhood, to live wholesomely … and think purely.”

Charles’s swarthy cheek became suddenly impurpled under a pulse of anger.

“And at our Court can your paragon practise none of these virtues?”

Rockhurst turned his glance deliberately upon the Vidame de Joncelles, who stood behind the King, his handsome chin uptilted, his eyes insolently ready to return the constable’s gaze; then he swept a look upon Jeanne de Mantes. That look said more eloquently than words the thought that was in the father’s brain. Then, at last, he spoke:—

“Let me remind your Majesty of a phrase you made use of last night—‘And he, her brother, the Little Satan!’”

The corners of Charles’s lips twitched humorously at the recollection; his transient anger evaporated. It was the misfortune of his life that he was always most prone to see the light side of the most serious questions.

Enguerrand, with his implike quickness, caught the relaxation of the royal profile, and his own lips quivered with mirth. Upon Rockhurst’s face came an expression of disdain mingled with deep melancholy.

“Your Majesty smiles,” said he, “and so does the lad yonder. Ah, your Majesty, look at him! ’Tis a fine lad, even as my own. And you are right! there is some resemblance, a great resemblance, between them; and your Majesty, who saw me start at it last night, deemed I had seen a spectre. I saw this, sire—what a court makes of youth.”

Charles’s foot had been tapping restlessly. He moved once or twice uneasily in his chair: his merry Rockhurst had not used him to such wearisome moods. Yet he loved the man.

“Nay, nay,” he explained at length; “I’d have you remember, my lord, that it is my cousin of France who is responsible for our Little Satan yonder. Nay, Rockhurst,” he went on, in his easy kindness and his sense of royal prerogative, unable to grasp the fact that any one could be in earnest in refusing the favour of his personal interest; “I’ll have the lad with my own sons. We’d keep our eye upon him, man.”

Rockhurst’s glance rested on the King’s countenance now with an unwonted tenderness.

“Alas, my beloved liege! …” he said gently.

Their gaze commingled; then the amazed displeasure in Charles’s eyes gave place to unwilling amusement, as Rockhurst went on once more in his usual indifferent tone:—

“The poor child would at least, your Majesty will admit, find it hard to practise at Court the fourth commandment.… How should he honour his father? And yet ’tis my wish that his days should be long in the land.”

“Why, then,” said the King, shortly, “there is no more to be said.”

He rose and looked a second keenly at Jeanne. Then, upon one of those generous impulses which none could carry more gracefully into effect than himself:—

“You lost your wager to me, my lord, with all the gallantry I expected of so good a cavalier. But, Odd’s fish! I do not carry away altogether a clear conscience on the subject. If you have lost in the letter, it strikes me you have won in the spirit. I will take it, if you please, that we have both won; I will indite forthwith an order on the exchequer for those greedy yeomen of yours who contrive to be always under arrears of pay.… Though, upon my life, Rockhurst, you and your fellows put me in mind of those callow birds we used to watch, in our wandering days: it boots little how big the last mouthful—ever a squawk for more!”

Rockhurst folded his lips upon the obvious retort. He took the sheet from the King’s hand with an air of profound obligation:—

“Your Majesty’s veterans will be deeply gratified.”

But already Charles was weary of the subject, weary of his present company.

“Madame,” he said, bowing toward Jeanne as he hastily got up, “we shall importune you no longer with our presence.”

The little Frenchwoman understood very well that in these words all royal pretensions to her favour were finally abandoned, and, in her infatuation for Rockhurst, cared as little for the fact as for the furious look cast upon her afresh by Enguerrand.

“Come, Vidame,” said the King. Then he added, with a malicious gesture that pointed from Jeanne to Rockhurst, “Come, you are as much out of place in this atmosphere of virtue as ourself!”

THE PEACOCK WALK

THE PEACOCK WALK

I

JUNE ROSES

The peacock, picking his stilted way along the lower terrace walk, conscious of his magnificence with the sunshine on his burnished breast, rejoiced at the sound of approaching steps: here, at last, was some one to see and to admire.

But in vain did Juno’s bird spread and parade, advance and retreat, and display for the newcomers the glories of his outspread tail, which defied the sun with its fifty iridescent eyes. The elder of the two young men interrupted but for a second an emphatic speech to cast an indifferent glance upon the strutting splendour; while the younger poked at it idly with the stock of his whip. Offended, and with discordant protest, the peacock flapped on to the stone lion that heraldically guarded the terrace stairs and swept over their heads the fall of his unappreciated train.

Lionel Ratcliffe, the emphatic speaker, turned to survey with sullen eyes the scene which spread away beneath the balustrade of the Peacock Walk. It was the ripest hour of an early June day. The wood-crowned slopes, dropping down from the garden, were bathed in mellow light. Farther away, rich pastures, gently swelling into knolls, melted into purple haze, until they were gathered into the distant amethystine moors. Almost as far as the eye could reach, the land and all that stood on it—timber, meadow, homestead, hamlet—belonged to Rockhurst, fit appanage to those massy castle walls that rose clear-cut against the blue air, in all the majesty of ancient power. And as he gazed, Lionel Ratcliffe’s heart grew sombre even as his glance. A keen-faced man, old-looking for his thirty years, somewhat below the middle height, with marked features, cold blue eyes and thin lips that betrayed the working of an intellect as sharp as the steel that hung by his side.

His companion was of vastly different stamp. Country bumpkin was written on the face of Edward Hare, on every seam of his oversmart suit; country wits stared from his prominent eye, were heralded by the laugh ever ready upon his mouth—a mouth, one dared swear, that had known no better taste in life than the rim of an ale can, the hard cheek of some bouncing Dorcas.

Waking from his abstraction, Ratcliffe wheeled upon his cousin, and resumed his indictment:—

“It is even as I tell you,” quoth he. “They are both as apt as tinder: it needs but a spark now to set the glow. ’Slife, Ned, I little thought thine would be the hand to strike flint!”

“Mine, Cousin Lionel?” broke in the other, whining. “Nay, nay—”

But the first, flinging out an accusing forefinger, bore down the plaintive interruption:—

“Then why didst bring her over here to-day?—Come now, ’tis plain enough. Dost favour my suit, or young Rockhurst’s?”

“Why, you know I’ll have none but you,” bellowed Edward Hare. “Harry Rockhurst …?” he cried. “Phew!”

He snapped his fingers and blew through them, threw himself into an attitude of defiance and, so doing, stumbled into his new-fangled sword which, carry it at whatever angle he tried, seemed ever in his way. Ratcliffe steadied his kinsman, then, still holding him by the elbow, drew him toward the stone bench, overhung by climbing roses. Having jerked his companion down upon it, he let himself subside beside him, crossed his legs and proceeded, contemptuously, good-humoured yet incisive:—

“If I wed Mistress Harcourt, your sister, is’t not a bargain? Shalt not continue to have bed and board and bottle beneath her roof? Aye, and many more of old Harcourt’s round pieces to chirp in thy pockets at cockfight and hammer fair? And when we go to Whitehall …” He paused impressively.

Edward Hare was touched; his soft face became moved as by not distant tears.

“Good Lionel … dear coz! Odd’s babers! Do I not tell thee thou shalt have her?”

Ratcliffe resumed, casting his words into space with a sidelong watchfulness as to their effect.

“Whereas, mark, if Diana wed another, what of thee, then, my cock? ’Tis back to the bare ancestral acres with Sir Edward Hare. ’Tis farthing toss and small ale. For thou art poor, lad, damned poor! And a poor baronet—fie!”

The poor baronet made a wry face. He pushed his plumed hat off his forehead to scratch his perplexed head.

“Aye, small ale, plague on it! Farthing toss—pooh!”

“’Twill ne’er do, eh, Ned!” laughed the other.

“No, split me, ’twill ne’er serve a man like me!”

Sir Edward Hare rose, in his indignation, and promptly tripped again over his sword. Somewhat abashed, and trying the comfort of a new angle, he dropped his high tone once more for one of plaint:—

“But, Lord, coz, what can I do? Di is like the bay filly: she’ll neither lead nor drive. Ain’t I always a-singing your praises? ‘There’s the husband for you, Di,’ say I. ‘There’s the lad for me,’ say I, twenty times a day.”

Ratcliffe cursed his cousin in secret, as, rising in his turn, he clapped him affectionately on the shoulder.

“I marvel at you,” he bantered. “And will you walk your filly to the gate and expect her to take it on the standstill? Is that the way to deal with a woman? Shouldst say to her: ‘Hast noticed Cousin Lionel’s squint?… Prithee, sister, have ne’er a thing to do with Cousin Lionel: ’tis a sad bad man! Ah, there are tales, sister, terrible tales!’”

Edward gaped.

“Oh, and what will she do then?”

“Why, look into mine eyes the very next time; and, not finding the squint, perhaps find something else, something in them she never marked before.”

The young oaf nodded portentously.

“Aye,” cried he, “and then—”

“And then—Why, I see you take me. Hast sharp wits, coz!—Then will she begin to ponder on those dark deeds of mine, and wonder about Cousin Lionel, and think him a very different man after all from the kinsman who played with her and teased her all her life. But, zounds, man, such a cock of the walk as thou art need not be lectured on the art of love! Why, when we get that figure of thine to Court, what a stir will there be among the beauties!”

The poor youth made no attempt to disguise his flattered emotion.

“Ecod,” he smirked, looking down at his legs, “I’ll not say but I can hold my own among the petticoats. He, he—a word in thine ear, Lionel: Moll, you know—” he whispered into his cousin’s curls, laughing immoderately. “And little Prudence Prue, down at the Red Lion—” Here he whispered again and guffawed: “Odd’s babers, she did! But Di must not hear of it.”