“A wager? I’ll wager all I am possessed of. What do you lay against it?”
She was silent for a spell, and, turning half from me, she looked through the open window into the gathering dusk. Then : “You have oft wooed me, Jocelyn,” she murmured, “have you not?”
“Why, yes; and until this milksop appeared it seemed that I did not do so quite in vain.”
“And are you still of the same mind concerning me?” she asked.
The throb of my pulses quickened. I took an eager, yet hesitant, step in her direction, for with my sudden hopes were blended fears and doubt of her.
“Annabel!” I cried. But she waved me back, growing of a sudden very chill, and her answer fell calm and deliberate.
“So sure am I of Master Steele’s high spirit, Jocelyn, that I am willing to wager myself against whatever you may incline to lay as of equal value that his courage will be proof against any test that you may apply to it.”
“Done!” I cried hotly. “By my soul. I have naught of equal value, yet all I have I’ll stake.”
“You will be a poor man to-morrow, Jocelyn,” she laughed.
“Mayhap,” I answered, turning to depart in quest of Master Steele, “and, mayhap, a passing rich one.”
From Sir Andrew himself did Steele receive his parting injunctions, and anon we saw him leave the castle by the postern-gate, despite his fears and tremors, and vanish into the darkness of the lowering night.
Now, the news that I had said we had of Rupert had been brought us by one Richard Cartwright — a nephew of Sir Andrew’s — who had ridden from Stafford to reassure us with word that the Prince was moving to our relief, and should reach Penhilgon on the morrow. Since this Cartwright was unknown to Steele, I entrusted to him the leading part in the comedy that was about to be enacted, giving him for companions a half-dozen men taken from the stables, and likewise unknown to our coxcomb. We had tricked the men out in plain cuirasses and steel-pots, over scarlet coats, to give them the air of soldiers of the Commonwealth. And these knaves, having left the castle in advance of Master Steele, brought him back within a half-hour of his departure bound and blindfolded. They carried him to one of the lower rooms of the castle, which we had prepared with furnitures of a Puritanical severity, and where, with more troopers of a Parliamentarian aspect, Sir Andrew and I, in cloaks and steeple hats, awaited him. To the uncertain light and our shadowing headgear we trusted to go unrecognised; and, the better to ensure this, we stood not forward, but mingled in the crowd of men-at-arms. Annabel, too, was there by her own desire, but well in the background and the shadows, and wearing also a broad-brimmed hat and a long cloak.
We had strewn the place with accoutrements; and at a littered table Dick Cartwright — looking as sour and solemn a Puritan as ever discoursed through his nose — took his seat and ordered the bandage to be taken from the prisoner’s eyes.
“Thy name, fellow?” Cartwright arraigned him harshly.
“Roland Steele, sir,” faltered the poet.
“Art well named, you that come stealing here in the night like a devouring lion bearing down upon the fold of Israel. Confess art a spy sent out by that blasphemous, drunken, swaggering knight of hell, Sir Andrew Penhilgon — is’t not so?” he roared.
“He’s an eloquent man, on my soul,” grunted Sir Andrew at my elbow.
As for the miserable Master Steele, who had more the look of a mouse than a lion, he fell to trembling very violently, and his eyes were open wide in affright.
“You are in error, sir,” he cried. “By my every hope of heaven I swear I am no spy!”
“Are you not from the ogre’s castle?”
“From Penhilgon? Yes, sir. But — but — I am a servant there, and —”
“A servant, thou, and in those garments?” bellowed Cartwright, the veins on his forehead swelling with the rage he simulated. “Liar, dost think to catch me with such a falsehood? Go capture an eagle with birdlime! ’Twill prove easier.”
“You see,” whispered Annabel, “that he is no Parliamentarian spy, else had he made himself known to them.”
“I confess I had realised thus much,” I answered. “Yet your wager with me touches his mettle rather than his loyalty. They are about to apply the test.”
Already Cartwright was speaking. With much mention of the Lord of Hosts, and here and there a proverb interlarded, he was giving Steele the reassuring news that he was to be hanged at once.
“Take him away,” he ended, with a wave of the hand, “and get it over speedily.”
Then a wild, blood-curdling shriek rang through the apartment, and the coxcomb had fallen on his knees, and was mumbling an incoherent prayer for mercy, swearing with great readiness of oaths that he was no spy.
“Take him away,” Cartwright repeated more peremptorily; and a couple of men advanced and laid rough hands upon him.
“Spare me, my masters,” he shrieked. “I’ll buy my life from you. I’ll buy it with information that may be of value to you.”
Cartwright raised his hand.
“Stay,” he commanded, and the men fell back from the prisoner. “Now, sir, you grow more reasonable. What information have you? Come, sir.”
“First promise me,” said Steele, “that I shall go free if I tell you all I know.”
“If you do that, and answer faithfully such further questions as I may put you, you shall go free,” Cartwright promised.
Having received that assurance, Master Steele recounted how hard pressed we were, and so at the end of our tether that he was on his way to Stafford to urge Prince Rupert to hasten to our relief. He assured Cartwright that, did he press the castle without delay, it must fall, adding that on the northern side lay our weakness.
“The dastard!” Annabel breathed fiercely in my ear.
“Wait,” said I. “It is not ended yet. He is to drink the cup of Judas to the dregs.”
“Before I release you,” said Cartwright to the prisoner, “there is a service of incalculable value you can render us, and which will satisfy me of your good intentions. You say that you left Penhilgon Castle by the postern-gate. Could you re-enter it by the same means?”
“Assuredly. If I make myself known to them they will readmit me.”
He was speaking more calmly now that the shadow of impending doom was lightening.
“You shall do so then, and we will go with you. You shall return to the postern, and you shall announce that you have information of value for that ruffianly Sir Andrew’s ear — news of importance to that godless, bottle-emptying Amalekite.”
“His stock of epithets is passing vast,” . . . snorted Sir Andrew.
“They will open for you,” pursued Cartwright, “and as they do so we will rush their gates. Thus shall the chosen ones of the Lord triumph over these Babylonians. You agree to this?” he demanded sharply.
Steele bowed his head in silence.
“Go, then,” said the pseudo-Roundhead, rising. But, as the troopers made shift to lead him out, “Stay!” he commanded, “It were best to blindfold him. Once a traitor, always a traitor; and should he by any chance escape us, it will be best he shall have seen naught that he may anon betray.”
I was with with them at the postern when, presently, after having borne him three times round the castle, we halted at the little gate, and the bandage was again removed from his eyes.
“’Tis here, is it not?” whispered Cartwright.
He peered about him in the gloom.
“Yes,” he answered softly. “It is here.” And, urged by Cartwright, who was on his right, he stepped up to the gate and knocked noisily. I myself was close upon his other side, confident that in the dark, and my face all hidden by my Puritan hat, he would not know me.
He was hailed from within, and in reply he called upon them to open.
“Who are you?” demanded the sentry, and as he seemed to hesitate I gripped him suddenly by the arm to urge him.
He shuddered in my grasp; for a second he falt
ered; then, to our ineffable amazement, “Let Sir Andrew look to his gates!” he cried in a loud voice. “The enemy is here! God save His Majesty!”
That said, he stood in an attitude of fearsome expectancy, as well he might; for had we been the Roundheads we represented ourselves, a dozen sword-thrusts had laid him stark at once.
For a moment the surprise of it had robbed me of speech. When at last I recovered, I did a thing in which I take pride to this day. I clapped him on the shoulder, and, “Bravely spoken, Master Steele,” quoth I warmly. “I crave your pardon for the wrong I have done you in holding you a coward, and submitting you to this test.”
And then the door of the postern swung open, and lanterns gleamed within, disclosing — among the men-at-arms assembled there — Sir Andrew and Annabel awaiting us. On our shoulders we bore him into the castle, acclaiming him a hero as we went; and that same night a banquet was held at Penhilgon, whereat he sat in the place of honour, ’twixt Sir Andrew and Annabel, flushed with victory, and acknowledging with smiles the toasts that again and again were drunk in his honour and to his heroism. Annabel sat beside him, smiling and treating him with a kindness perchance the greater because she sought to make amends for the moment’s doubt that she, too, had entertained. On every hand was laughter, mirth, and song, for wine flowed over-freely, until the only glum countenance at that jovial board was mine. For what manner of wager had I not lost? And how much had I not stood to win?
At last, towards midnight, the company rose, and the men sought their beds, the greater part of them lurching uncertain ’neath their load of wine. I was going by way of the southern rampart to my own apartments when suddenly I came upon our hero giving Annabel “Good-night.” I was in too sombre a mood to desire aught but to escape unobserved, and so I flattened myself in the angle of a buttress, waiting for them to leave me a clear way to depart. But as it chanced they turned and came in my direction, so that I was forced to overhear what passed. Steele’s loud voice and the thickness of his utterance placed his condition beyond doubt.
“It may be a goodly thing to have thews and sinews and a knowledge of arms,” he was boasting, “but meseems I’ve proven it a greater thing to have a generous share of mother-wit and a quick brain.”
“How so?” she asked.
“Why, ’slife,” he laughed, with a hiccough, “when that jealous dog Jocelyn Varley gripped my arm at the postern, a slow-reasoning, dull-witted clod would have profited nothing. But on the instant I knew the touch of that maimed stump of his, and detected the two missing middle fingers. I tell you, sweet Annabel —”
“More than enough you have already told me!” she broke in, with a fierceness of which even I hardly thought her capable — and heaven knows I had tasted the edge of her temper more than once. “You craven, you cheat, you hound!” she cried. “And you sat at table and let them make a hero of you! Why, you —”
“Nay, nay! I vow I’ll —” he began, all of a sudden all subdued, and awake to the indiscretion he had committed.
“I vow you’ll leave Penhilgon Castle at daybreak,” she cried firmly. “Else will I tell them what you are; and you may come to know the sting of a rope-end, or worse, ere you are driven forth. Now go, and never let me see you —”
“On my soul, blood and wounds, you go too far!” His voice grew threatening and he stepped towards her,
“You would dare? Go!” I heard her say again; and, thinking it high time to show myself, I stepped out into the moonlight.
“Did I hear this lady bid you go, good Master Steele?” I asked him sweetly. “I pray you obey her.” And so, prompted, maybe, by the generous share of mother-wit he boasted, he took his departure without more ado.
When he was gone Annabel turned to me, and hung her head.
“It seems, that, after all, I have lost my wager,” said she.
“Annabel,” said I very tenderly — for methought that haply she might have cared a little for Master Steele, and that his vileness had hurt her — “if you regret your wager we will forget you made it.”
Her eyes flashed me a sudden look I could not understand.
“Fool!” she said, and, turning on her heel, she would have left me, but that I put forth my hand and caught her.
“Annabel,” I pleaded, “Annabel!”
“Would you have the wager forgotten?” she asked and her voice trembled never so lightly.
“Would I? I stand to gain much, Annabel. The best there is to be gained in life. But you —”
“Think you I had risked so much had I not been disposed to chance the losing?” she broke in.
With a cry I drew her to me, forgetting the wager and how else I had come to wring that confession from her lips; for when we have gained what we desire it is the way of our weak nature to forget the means by which we have gained it.
THE DUPES
CHAPTER I
I was kept waiting for nigh upon an hour at my illustrious client’s hôtel, in a room of surpassing elegance, sadly out of tune with the rags I wore.
Had the insolent lacquey who escorted me suited his own taste and judgment, I should have been less pleasantly lodged until the Seigneur de Launay arrived; but I had a word or two to say as to where I would wait, and when the fellow remonstrated, a threat to thrash him on the spot and have him dismissed anon, silenced him effectively.
As my ill-shod feet trod the soft carpet, and as I gazed about me at the different articles of value wherewith the room was furnished, I was sorely puzzled to understand how my cousin — whose means I knew to be far from ample — came to be so admirably lodged. To sustain such wealthy surroundings as those I contemplated, must soon bring him into a state of destitution akin to my own.
But still greater was my wonderment at the intimacy wherein, to judge by his position in the cavalcade which I had stood to see go by in the Rue St. Honoré, he was held by Louis XIII.
Was the Cardinal asleep that he detected not this wolf in sheep’s clothing? Or had the Seigneur de Launay abandoned the interests of that arch-plotter, the Duke of Orléans, and attached himself in soul as well as in body to the King?
I could not tell — for ’twas two years since my disgrace and banishment from Court — two years since I started on that downward route at a headlong pace which had brought me into the tatters that hung about me. I knew not what had taken place at Court during the period, but I did know that when I turned my back upon the Louvre, Ferdinand de Launay was already deep in the mire of half a score of Orléaniste plots, which, I had thought, would have earned him a dungeon in the Bastille long before the day whereof I write.
My speculations were ended at last by his arrival. It was announced to me by a clatter of hoofs in the courtyard below, followed by a bustle which would have honoured a prince of the blood.
There was a quick step in the ante-room beyond, then the door opened, and my cousin, handsome, flushed and breathless, stood before me.
I had expected that, seeing me in my sorry plight, chivalry would have bidden him forget our feuds, and that his greeting, if not cousinly, would at least be friendly — especially when considered that ’twas he, not I, who sought this interview.
Not so, however. The right hand, which still clasped his hat and riding whip, remained at his side, the other rested on the pummel of his sword, and his eyes travelled over me, from my unkempt head to my well-worn boots, with a disdainful curiosity which made my gorge rise.
“So Verville,” he said at length, in a scornful tone, “’tis to this that your profligate’s career has brought you!”
“Even as your treachery has earned you that suit of velvet,” I retorted, towering grimly above him in my rage.
Notre Dame! How my words smote home! How I chuckled inwardly to see the flush die from the boy’s face, and his teeth catch at his nether lip.
“What do you mean?” he enquired.
“Pah,” I answered; “you understand me well enough.”
He gazed at me intently for a moment, as if searchi
ng in my bold eyes to read how much I really knew. Then, flinging down his hat and whip, he advanced toward me with outstretched hand, and a false, courtier’s smile upon his lips.
“Forgive me, Eugéne,” he said, “if I was brusque, but the sight of your garments pained me deeply, and —”
“A truce to all this, master courtier,” I broke in surlily, and putting my hands behind me, “my temper is passing short and has been greatly tried this morning. Will you explain, I pray you, why I have been forced hither without being asked if I chose to come?”
He fell back a pace, and his face assumed a look of sorrow.
“Believe me, Eugène,” he exclaimed, “I would have sought you out, but that I believed you dead.”
“And had not some evil angel bidden me to gape at you,” I retorted sharply, “your thoughts would have been correct ere this, for to-day I am houseless and foodless, and I was on my way to the Seine to put a fitting end to a mis-spent life, when I stopped to see the Royal cavalcade go by. Sangdieu! but you cut a bold figure at the King’s side,” I continued, with a wild laugh that startled him. “You reminded me of Cinq-Mars — ’twas thus I saw him ride by the King; ’twas thus I saw him smile at the monarch’s vapid jests; may you have the courage to mount the scaffold, when your turn comes, with as firm a tread!”
He went white to the very lips.
“For God’s sake, Eugéne, be silent!” he said, scarce above a whisper. “I mean you well.”
“Then you have altered greatly since last we parted,” I rejoined coldly.
But, say what I would, I could not anger him as I thought to — for I was bent upon ascertaining the reason of his increasing friendliness, and I knew that in anger a man’s tongue will oft betray him.
He persisted in his protestations that he meant me well, and he did but desire to help me retrieve my fortunes.
It sounded marvellous from the lips of scheming, selfish de Launay; but, in the end, when, among other things, he told me that he was about to marry, I, remembering how often the influence of a good woman will make a rogue honourable, and a traitor true, recognised the change that had been wrought in my cousin’s character, and believed in his sincerity.
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