Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman
Page 247
The girl had not long looked out before her pale complexion, which the fire had scarcely warmed, grew hot. She started, and looked into the room behind her nervously: then looked out again. She had seen standing in a nook of the wall opposite her, a figure she knew well. It was that of her lover, and he seemed to be watching the house. Timidly she waved her hand to him, and he, after looking up and down the lane, advanced to the window. He could do this safely, for it was the only window in the Toussaints’ house which looked that way.
“Are you alone?” he asked softly, looking up at her.
She nodded.
“And my sisters?” he continued.
“Have gone to Philip Boyer’s. He lives in one of the cottages on the left of the Duchess’s yard.”
“Ah! And you? Where is your father, Madeline?” he murmured.
“He has gone to take them. I am quite alone; and two minutes ago I was melancholy,” she added, with a smile that should have made him happy.
“I want to talk to you,” he replied gravely. “May I get up if I can, Madeline?”
She shook her head, which of course meant no. And she said, “It is impossible.” But she still smiled.
There was a pipe which ran up the wall a couple of feet or so on one side of the casement. Before she well understood his purpose, or that he was in earnest he had gripped this and was halfway up to the window.
“Oh, do take care,” she cried. “Do not come, Felix. My father will be so angry!” Woman-like she repented now, when it was too late. But still he came on, and when his hand was stretched out to grasp the sill, all her fear was only lest he should fall. She seized his wrist, and helped him in. Then she drew back. “You should not have done it, Felix,” she said severely.
“But I wanted to see you so much, Madeline,” he urged, “and the glimpse I had of you this morning was nothing.”
“Well then, you may come to the stove and warm yourself, sir. Oh! how cold your poor hands are, my boy! But you must not stay.”
But stolen moments are sweet and apt to be long drawn out. She had a great deal to say, and he had a great deal, it seemed, to ask — so much to ask indeed, that gradually a dim sense that he was thinking of other things than herself — of her father and the ways of the house, and what guests they had, came over her.
It chilled her to the heart. She drew away from him, and said, suddenly, “Oh, Felix!” and looked at him.
Nothing more. But he understood her and colored; and tried to ask, but asked awkwardly, “What is the matter, dearest?”
“I know what you are thinking of,” she said with grave sorrow, “Oh! it is too bad! It is base of you, cruel! You would use even me whom you love to ruin my friends!”
“Hush!” he answered, letting his gloomy passion have vent for the moment, “they are not your friends, Madeline. See what they have done for me. It is they, or the troubles they have set on foot, that have killed my father!” And he swore solemnly — carried away by his mistaken resentment — never again to spare a Huguenot save her father and one other.
She trembled and tried to close her ears. Her father had told her a hundred times that she could not be happy with a husband divided from her by a gulf so impassable. She had said to him that it was too late. She knew it. She had given Felix her heart and she was a woman. She could not take it back, though she knew that nothing but unhappiness could come of it.
“God forgive you!” she moaned in that moment of strained insight; and sank in her chair as though she would weep.
He fell on his knees by her with a hundred words of endearment, for he had conquered himself again. And she let him soothe her. She had never loved him more than now, when she knew the price she must pay for him. She closed her eyes — for the moment — to that terrible future, and he was holding her in his arms, when without warning a heavy footstep rang on the stairs by the door.
They sprang apart. If even then he had had presence of mind, he might have reached the window. But he hesitated, looking in her startled eyes. “Is it your father?” he whispered.
She shook her head. “He cannot have returned. We should have heard the gates opened. There is no one in the house,” she murmured faintly.
But still the footsteps came on: and stopped at the door. Felix looked round in despair. Close beside him, and just behind the stove was the door of a closet. He took two strides, and before he or she had thought of the consequences, was within it. Softly he drew the door to again; and she sank terrified on a chair, as the door of the room opened.
He who came in was a man of thirty-five, a stranger to her. A man with a projecting chin. His keen gray eyes wore at the moment of his entrance an impatient expression, but when he caught sight of her, this passed away. He came across the floor smiling. “Pardon me,” he said — but said it as if no pardon were needed, “I found the stables insupportably dull. I set out on a voyage of discovery. I have found my America!” And he bowed in a style which puzzled the frightened girl.
“You want to see my father?”’ she said tremulously. “He — —”
“Has gone to the Duchess’s. I know it. And very ill-natured it was of him to leave me in the stable, instead of intrusting me to your care, mistress. La Nouë,” he continued, “is in the stable still, asleep on a bundle of hay, and a pretty commotion there will be when he finds I have stolen away!”
Laughing with an easy carelessness that struck the citizen’s daughter with fresh astonishment, the stranger drew up the big armchair, which was commonly held sacred to M. Toussaint’s use, and threw himself into it; lazily disposing his booted feet in the glow which poured from the stove, and looking across at his companion with open and somewhat bold admiration in his eyes. At another time she might have been offended: or she might not. Women are variable. Now her fears lest Felix should be discovered dulled her apprehension.
Yet the name of La Nouë had caught her ear. She knew it well, as all France and the Low Countries knew it in those days, for the name of the boldest and staunchest warrior on the Huguenot side.
“La Nouë?” she murmured, misty suspicions beginning to take form in her mind.
“Yes, pretty one,” replied he laughing. “La Nouë and no other. Does Bras-de-fer pass for an ogre here in Paris that you tremble so at his name? Let me — —”
But whatever the proposition he was going to offer, it came to nothing. The dull clash of the gates outside warned both of them that Nicholas Toussaint and his party had returned. A moment later a hasty tread sounded on the stairs; and an elderly man wearing a cloak burst in upon them.
His eyes swept the room while his hand still held the door, and it was clear that what he saw did not please him. He came forward stiffly, his brows knitted. But he said nothing; seeming uncertain and embarrassed.
“See!” the first comer said, looking quietly up at him, but not offering to move. “Now what do you think of your ogre? And by the rood, he looks fierce enough to eat babes! There, old friend,” he continued speaking to the elder man in a different tone, “spare your lecture. This is Toussaint’s daughter, and as staunch I will warrant as her father.”
The old noble — he had but one arm she saw — still looked at her with disfavor. “Girls have sweethearts, sire,” he said shrewdly.
For a moment the room seemed to go round with her. Though something more of reproach and playful defence passed between the two men, she did not hear it. The consciousness that her lover was listening to every word and that from this moment La Nouë’s life was in his hands, numbed her brain. She sat helpless, hardly aware that half a dozen men were entering, her father one of them. When a lamp was called for — it was growing dark — she did not stir: and Toussaint, not seeing her, fetched it himself.
But by the time he came back she had partly recovered herself. She noted that he locked the door carefully behind him. When the lamp was set on the table, and its light fell on the harsh features of the men, a ray passed between them, and struck her pale face. Her father saw her.
“Nay, stop!” interposed La Nouë. “Your daughter knows too much. We cannot let her go thus.”
“Knows too much? How?” and the citizen tossed his head like a bull balked in his charge.
“His majesty — —”
“Nay, let his majesty speak for himself — for once,” said the man with the gray eyes — and even in her terror and confusion Madeline saw that all turned to him with a single movement. “Mistress Toussaint did but chat with La Nouë and myself, during her father’s absence. But she knows us; or one of us. If any be to blame it is I. Let her stay. I will answer for her fidelity.”
“Nay, but she is a woman, sire,” some one objected.
“Ay, she is, good Poulain,” and he turned to the speaker with a singularly bright smile. “So we are safe, for there is no woman in France would betray Henry of Bourbon!”
A laugh went round. Some one mentioned the Duchess.
“True!” said Henry, for Henry it was, he whom the Leaguers called the Béarnais and the Politiques the King of Navarre, but whom later generations have crowned as the first of French kings — Henry the Great. “True! I had forgotten her. I must beware of her gold scissors. We have two crowns already, and want not another of her making. But come, let us to business without ceremony. Be seated, gentlemen; and while we consider whether our plans hold good, Mistress Toussaint—” he paused to look kindly at the terrified girl— “will play the sentry for us.”
Madeline’s presence within a few feet of their council-board was soon forgotten by the eager men sitting about it. And in a sense she forgot them. She heard, it is true, their hopes and plans, the chief a scheme to surprise Paris by introducing men hidden in carts piled with hay. She heard how Henry and La Nouë had entered, and who had brought them in, and how it was proposed to smuggle them out again; and many details of men and means and horses; who were loyal and who disaffected, and who might be bought over, and at what price. She even took note of the manner of each speaker as he leaned forward, and brought his face within the circle of light, marking who were known to her before, substantial citizens these, constant at mass and market, and who were strangers; men fiercer-looking, thinner, haughtier, more restless, with the stamp of constant peril at the corners of their eyes, and swords some inches longer than their neighbors’.
She saw and heard this and reasoned dully on it. But all the time her mind was paralyzed by a dreadful sense of some great evil awaiting her, something with which she must presently come face to face, though her faculties had not grasped it yet. Men’s lives! Ah, yes, men’s lives! The girl had been bred in secret as a Huguenot. She had been taught to revere the great men of the religion, and not the weakness of the cause, not even her lover’s influence had sapped her loyalty to it.
Presently there was a stir about the table. The men rose. “Then that arrangement meets your views, sire,” said La Nouë.
“Perfectly. I sleep to-night at my good friend Mazeau’s,” the king answered, “and leave to-morrow about noon by St. Martin’s gate. Yes, let that stand.”
He did not see — none of them saw — how the girl in the shadow by the stove started; nor did they mark how the last trace of color fled from her cheeks. Madeline was face to face with her fate, and knew that her own hand must work it out. The men were separating. Henry bade farewell to one and another, until only three or four beside Toussaint and La Nouë remained with him. Then he prepared himself to go, and girt on his sword, talking earnestly the while. Still engaged in low converse with one of the strangers, he walked slowly lighted by his host to the door, forgetting to take leave of the girl. In another minute he and they would have disappeared in the passage, when a hoarse cry escaped from Madeline’s lips.
It was little more than a gasp, but it was enough for men whose nerves were strained. All — at the moment they had their backs to her, their faces to the king — turned swiftly. “Ha!” cried Henry at once, “I had forgotten my manners. I was leaving my most faithful sentry without a word of thanks, or a keepsake by which to remember Henry of France.”
She had risen, and was supporting herself — but she swayed as she stood — by the arm of the chair. Never had her lover been so dear to her. As the king approached, the light fell on her face, on her agonized eyes, and he stopped short. “Toussaint!” he cried sharply. “Your daughter is ill. Look at her!” But it was noticeable that he laid his hand on his sword.
“Stay!” she cried, the word ringing shrilly through the room. “You are betrayed! There is some one — there — who has heard — all! Oh, sire, mercy! mercy!”
As the last words passed the girl’s writhing lips she clutched at her throat: seemed to fight a moment for breath: then with a stifled shriek fell senseless to the ground.
A second’s silence. Then a whistling sound as half a dozen swords were snatched from the scabbards. The veteran La Nouë sprang to the door: others ran to the windows and stood before them. Only Henry — after a swift glance at Toussaint, who pale and astonished, leaned over his daughter — stood still, his fingers on his hilt. Another second of suspense, and before any one spoke, the cupboard door swung open, and Felix Portail, pale to the lips, stood before them.
“What do you here?” cried Henry, restraining by a gesture those who would have flung themselves upon the spy.
“I came to see her,” Felix said. He was quite calm, but a perspiration cold as death stood on his brow, and his distended eyes wandered from one to another. “You surprised me. Toussaint knows that I was her sweetheart,” he murmured.
“Ay, wretched man, to see her! And for what else?” replied Henry, his eyes, as a rule, so kindly, bent on the other in a gaze fixed and relentless.
A sudden visible quiver — as it were the agony of death — shot through Portail’s frame. He opened his mouth, but for a while no sound came. His eyes sought the nearest sword with horrid intentness. He gasped, “Kill me at once, before she — before — —”
He never finished the sentence. With an oath the nearest Huguenot lunged at his breast, and fell back, foiled by a blow from the King’s hand. “Back!” cried Henry, his eyes flashing as another sprang forward, and would have done the work. “Will you trench on the King’s justice in his presence? Sheath your swords, all save the Sieur de la Nouë, and the gentlemen who guard the windows!”
“He must die!” cried several voices, as the men still pressed forward viciously.
“Think, sire! Think what you do,” cried La Nouë himself, warning in his voice. “He has the life of every man here in his hand? And they are your men, risking all for the cause.”
“True,” replied Henry, smiling; “but I ask no man to run a risk I will not take myself.”
A murmur of dissatisfaction burst forth. Several drew their swords again. “I have a wife and child!” cried one recklessly, bringing his point to the thrust. “He dies!”
“He does not die!” exclaimed the King, his voice so ringing through the room that all fell back once more; fell back not so much because it was the King who spoke as in obedience to the voice which two months before had rallied the flying squadrons at Arques, and years before had rung out hour after hour and day after day above the long street fight of Cahors. “He does not die!” repeated Henry, looking from one to another, with his chin thrust out, “I say it. I! And there are no traitors here!”
“Your majesty,” said La Nouë after a moment’s pause, “commands our lives.”
“Thanks, Francis,” Henry replied instantly changing his tone. “And now hear me, gentlemen. Think you that it was a light thing in this girl to give up her lover? She might have let us go to our doom, and we none the wiser! Would you take her gift and make her no requital? That were not royal. And now for you, sir” — he turned to Fe
lix who was leaning half-fainting against the wall— “hearken to me. You shall go free. I, who this morning played the son to your dead father, give you your life for your sweetheart’s sake. For her sake be true. You shall go out alive and safe into the streets of Paris, which five minutes ago you little thought to see again. Go! And if you please, betray us, and be damned! Only remember that if you give up your king and these gentlemen who have trusted you, your name shall go down the centuries — and stand for treachery!”
He spoke the last words with such scorn that a murmur of applause broke out even among those stern men. He took instant advantage of it. “Now go!” he said hurriedly. “You can take the girl there with you. She has but fainted. A kiss will bring her to life. Go, and be silent.”
The man took up his burden and went, trembling; still unable to speak. But no hand was now raised to stop him.
When he had disappeared La Nouë turned to the king. “You will not now sleep at Mazeau’s, sire?”
Henry rubbed his chin. “Yes; let the plan stand,” he answered. “If he betray one, he shall betray all.”
“But this is madness,” urged La Nouë.
The king shook his head, and smiling clapped the veteran on the shoulder. “Not so,” he said. “The man is no traitor: I say it. And you have never met with a longer head than Henry’s.”
“Never,” assented La Nouë bluntly, “save when there is a woman in it!”
The curtain falls. The men have lived and are dead. La Nouë, the Huguenot Bayard, now exist only in a dusty memoir and a page of Motley. Madame de Montpensier is forgotten; all of her, save her golden scissors. Mayenne, D’Aumale, a verse preserves their names. Only Henry — the “good king” as generations of French peasants called him — remains a living figure: his strength and weakness, his sins and virtues, as well known, as thoroughly appreciated by thousands now as in the days of his life.