Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  They did not use the modern game of hazard, but simply cast the dice, each taking it in turn to throw, and a nick counting as a drawn battle. The two staked sums higher than were usual in the company about them, and one by one, the other gamblers forsook their tables, and came and stood round. As the game proceeded, the young stranger’s face grew more and more pale, his eyes more feverish. But he played in silence. Not so his backers. A volley of oaths and exclamations almost as thick as the wood smoke that in part shrouded the game, began to follow each cast of the dice. The air, one moment still and broken only by the hollow rattle of the dice in the box, rang the next instant with the fierce outburst of a score of voices.

  The place, known as Simon’s, was a gaming-house of the second class: frequented, as the shabby finery of some and the tarnished arms of others seemed to prove, by the poorer courtiers and the dubious adventurers who live upon the great. It was used in particular by the Guise faction, at this time in power; for though Henry of Valois was legal and nominal King of France, Henry of Guise, the head of the League, and the darling of Paris, imposed his will alike upon the King and the favourites. He enjoyed the substance of power; the King had no choice but to submit to his policy. In secret Henry the Third resented the position, and between his immediate servants and the arrogant followers of the Guises there was bitter enmity.

  As the game proceeded, a trifle showed that the young player was either ignorant of politics, or belonged to a party rarely represented at Simon’s. For some time he and his opponent had enjoyed equal luck. Then they doubled the stakes, and fortune immediately declared herself against him; with wondrous quickness his bag grew lank and thin, the pile at the other’s elbow a swollen sliding heap. The perspiration began to stand on the young man’s face. His hand trembled as he shook out the last coins left in the bag and shoved them forward amid a murmur half of derision half of sympathy; for if he was a stranger from the country — that was plain, and they had recognized it at his first appearance among them three days before — at least he played bravely. His opponent, whose sallow face betrayed neither joy nor triumph, counted out an equal sum, and pushed it forward without a word. The young man took up the box, and for the first time seemed to hesitate; it could be seen that he had bitten his lip until it bled. “After you,” he muttered at last, withdrawing his hand. He shrank from throwing his last throw.

  “It is your turn,” the other replied impassively, “but as you will.” He shook the box, brought it down sharply on the table and raised it. “The Duke!” he said with an oath — he had thrown the highest possible. “Twelve is the game.”

  With a shiver the lad — he was little more than a lad, though in his heart, perhaps, the greatest gambler present — dashed down his box. He raised it. “The King!” he cried; “long life to him!” He had also thrown twelve. His cheek flushed a rosy red, and with a player’s superstitious belief in his luck he regarded the check given to his opponent in the light of a presage of victory. They threw again, and he won by two points — nine to seven. Hurrah!

  “King or Duke,” the tall man answered, restraining by a look the interruption which more than one of the bystanders seemed about to offer, “the money is yours; take it.”

  “Let it lie,” the young man answered joyously. His eyes sparkled. When the other had pushed an equal amount into the middle of the table, he threw again, and with confidence.

  Alas! his throw was a deuce and an ace. The elder player threw four and two. He swept up the pile. “Better late than never,” he said. And leaning back he looked about him with a grin of satisfaction.

  The young man rose. The words which had betrayed that he was not of the Duke’s faction, had cost him the sympathy the spectators had before felt for him; and no one spoke. It was something that they kept silence, that they did not interfere with him. His face, pale in the light of the candles which burned beside him, was a picture of despair. Suddenly, as if he bethought him of something, he sat down again, and with a shaking hand took from his neck a slender gold chain with a pendant ornament. “Will you stake against this?” he murmured with dry lips.

  “Against that, or your sword, or your body, or anything but your soul!” the other answered with a reckless laugh. He took up the chain and examined it. “I will set you thirty crowns against it!” he said.

  They threw and the young man lost.

  “I will stake ten crowns against your sword if you like,” the victor continued, eyeing the curiously chased pommel.

  “No,” the young man replied, stung by something in the elder’s tone. “That I may want. But I will set my life against yours!”

  A chuckle went round. “Bravo!” cried half a dozen voices. One man in the rear, whose business it was to enlist men in the Duke’s guard, pressed forward, scenting a recruit.

  “Your life against mine! With these?” the winner answered, holding up the dice.

  “Yes, or as you please.” He had not indeed meant with those: he had spoken in the soreness of defeat, intending a challenge.

  The other shook his head. “No,” he said, “no. No man can say that Michel Berthaud ever balked his player, but it is not a fair offer. You have lost all, my friend, and I have won all. I am rich, you are poor. ’Tis no fair stake. But I will tell you what I will do. I will set you your gold chain and seventy crowns — against your life if you like.”

  A roar of laughter hailed the proposal. “A hundred!” cried several, “a hundred!”

  “Very well. The gold chain and a hundred. Be it so!”

  “But my life?” the young man muttered, gazing at him in bewilderment. “Of what use will it be to you, M. Berthaud?”

  “That is my business,” was the dry answer. “If you lose, it is forfeit to me. That is all, and the long and the short of it. To be frank, I have a service which I wish you to perform for me.”

  “And if I will not perform it?”

  “Then I will take your word as a gentleman that you will kill yourself. Observe, however, that if I win I shall allow you a choice, my friend.”

  He leaned back with that, meeting with a faint smile and half-lowered eye-lids, the various looks bent on him. Some stared, some nodded secret comprehension, some laughed outright, or nudged one another and whispered. For four evenings they, the habitués of the place, had watched this play duel go on, but they had not looked for an end so abnormal as this. They had known men stake wives and mistresses, love and honour, ay, their very clothes, and go home naked through the streets; for the streets of Paris saw strange things in those days. But life? Well, even that they had seen men stake in effect, once, twice, a hundred times; but never in so many words, never on a wager as novel as this. So with an amazement which no duel, fought as was the custom in that day, three to three, or six to six, would have evoked, they gathered round the little table under the candles and waited for the issue.

  The young man shivered. Then, “I accept,” he said slowly. In effect he was desperate, driven to his last straits. He had lost his all, the all of a young man sent up to Paris to make his fortune, with a horse, his sword, and a bag of crowns — the latter saved for him by a father’s stern frugality, a mother’s tender self-denial. A week ago he had never seen a game of chance. Then he had seen; the dice had fallen in his way, the devil of play, cursed legacy of some long-forgotten ancestor, had awoke within him, and this was the end. “I accept,” he said slowly.

  His opponent, still with his secretive smile, took up the caster. But a short, sturdy man, who was standing at his elbow, and who wore the colours of the Duke of Guise, intervened. “No, Michel,” he said, with a good-natured glance at the young player. “Let the lad choose his bones, and throw first or last as he pleases.”

  “Right,” said Berthaud, yawning. “It is no matter. My star is in the ascendant to-night. He will not win.”

  The young man took up the box, shook it, hesitated, swallowed, and threw seven!

  Berthaud threw carelessly — seven!

  Some shouted, some dre
w a deep breath, or whispered an oath. These wild spirits, who had faced death often in one form or another, were still children, and still in a new thing found a new pleasure.

  “Your star may be in the ascendant,” the man muttered who had intervened before, “but it — well, it twinkles, Michel.”

  Berthaud did not answer. The young man made him a sign to throw. He threw again — eight.

  The young man threw with a hand that scarcely dared to let the dice go. Seven! He had lost.

  An outburst might have been expected, some cry of violence, of despair. It did not come. And a murmur passed round the circle. “Berthaud will recruit him,” growled one. “A queer game,” muttered another, and thought hard. Nor did the men go back to their tables. They waited to see what would follow, what would come of it. For the young man who had lost sat staring at the table like one in a dream; until presently his opponent reaching out a hand touched his sleeve. “Courage!” Berthaud said, a flicker of triumph in his eye, “a word with you aside. No need of despair, man. You have but to do what I ask, and you will see sixty yet.”

  Obedient to his gesture the young man rose, and the other drawing him aside began to talk to him in a low voice. The remaining players loitering about the deserted table could not hear what was said; but one or two by feigning to strike a sudden blow, seemed to pass on their surmises to those round them. One thing was clear. The lad objected to the proposal made, objected fiercely and with vehemence; and at last submitted only with reluctance. Submit in the end, however, he did, for after some minutes of this private talk he went to his cloak, and avoiding, as it seemed, his fellows’ eyes, put it on. Berthaud accompanied him to the door, and the winner’s last words were audible. “That is all,” he said; “succeed in what I impose, M. de Bazan, and I cry quits, and you shall have fifty crowns for your pains. Fail, and you will but be paying your debt. But you will not fail. Remember, half an hour after midnight. And courage!”

  The young man nodded sullenly, and drawing his cloak about his throat, went through the passage to the street. The night was a little older than when he had entered, otherwise it was unchanged. The rain was still falling; the wind still buffeted the creaking shutters and the swinging sign-boards. But the man? He had entered, thinking nothing of rain or wind, thinking little even of the horse and furniture, and the good clothes made under his mother’s eye, which he had sacrificed to refill his purse. The warmth of the play fever coursing through his veins had clad him in proof against cold and damp and the depression of the gloomy streets, even against the thought of home. And for the good horse, and the laced shirts and the gold braid, the luck could not run against him again! He would win all back, and the crowns to boot.

  So he had thought as he went in. And now? He stood a moment in the dark, narrow chasm of a street, and looked up, letting the rain cool his brow; looked up, and, seeing a wrack of clouds moving swiftly across the slit of stormy sky visible between the overhanging roofs, faced in a dull amazement the fact that he who now stood in the darkness, bankrupt even in life, was the same man who had entered Paris so rich in hope and youth and life a week — only a week — before. He remembered — it was an odd thing to occur to him when his thoughts should have been full of the events of the last hour — a fault of which he had been guilty down there in the country; and of which, taking advantage of a wrathful father’s offer to start him in Paris, he had left the weaker sinner to bear the brunt. And it seemed to him that here was his punishment. The old grey house at home, quaint and weather-beaten, rose before him. He saw his mother’s herb-garden, the great stackyard, and the dry moat, half filled with blackberry bushes, in which he had played as a boy. And on him fell a strange calm, between apathy and resignation. This, then, was his punishment. He would bear it like a man. There should be no flinching a second time, no putting the burden on others’ shoulders, no self-sparing at another’s cost.

  He started to walk briskly in the direction of the Louvre. But when he had gained the corner of the open space in front of the palace, whence he had a view of the main gate between the two tennis courts, he halted and looked up and down as if he hesitated. A watch-fire smouldering and sputtering in the rain was burning dully before the drawbridge; the forms of one or two men, apparently sentinels, were dimly visible about it. After standing in doubt more then a minute, Bazan glided quickly to the porch of the church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, and disappeared in the angle between it and the cloisters.

  He had been stationary in this position for some half-hour — in what bitterness of spirit, combating what regrets and painful thoughts it is possible only to imagine — when a slight commotion took place at the gate which faced him. Two men came out in close converse, and stood a moment looking up as if speaking of the weather. They separated then, and one who even by that uncertain light could be seen to be a man of tall, spare presence, came across the open space towards the end of the Rue des Fosses, which passed beside the cloisters. He had just entered the street, when Bazan, who had been closely watching his movements, stepped from the shadow of the houses and touched his sleeve.

  The tall man recoiled sharply as he turned. He laid his hand on his sword and partly drew it. “Who are you?” he said, trying in the darkness to make out the other’s features.

  “M. de Crillon, is it not?” the young man asked.

  “Yes. And you, young sir?”

  “My name is Claude de Bazan, but you do not know me, I have a word to say to you.”

  “You have chosen an odd time, my friend.”

  “Some things are always timely,” the young fellow answered, the excitement under which he laboured and the occasion imparting a spice of flippancy to his tone. “I come to warn you that your life is in danger. Do not go alone, M. de Crillon, or pass this way at night! And whatever you do, walk for the future in the middle of the street!”

  “For the warning I am obliged to you,” the tall man answered, his voice cool and satirical, while his eyes continued to scan the other’s features. “But, I say again, you have chosen a strange time to give it, young sir. Moreover, your name is new to me, and I do not know your face.”

  “Nor need you,” said Bazan.

  “Ay, but I think I need, craving your pardon,” replied the tall, spare man with some sternness. “I am not wont to be scared by little things, nor will I give any man the right to say that he has frightened me with a lighted turnip.”

  “Will it convince you if I tell you that I came hither to kill you?” the young man cried impetuously.

  “Yes, if you will say also why you did not — at least try?” Crillon answered drily.

  Bazan had not meant to explain himself; he had proposed to give his warning, and to go. But on the impulse of the moment, carried away by his excitement, he spoke, and told the story, and Crillon, after leading him aside, so that a building sheltered them from the rain, listened. He listened, who knew all the dark plans, all the scandals, all the jealousies, all the vile or frantic schemings of a court, that, half French, half Italian, mingled so grimly force and fraud. Nay, when all was told, when Bazan, passing lightly over the resolution he had formed to warn the victim instead of attacking him, came suddenly and lamely to a stop, he still for a time stood silent. At last, “And what will you do now, my friend?” he asked.

  “Go back,” the young man answered.

  “And then?”

  “Pay my debt.”

  The courtier swore a great oath — it was his failing — and with sudden violence he seized his companion by the arm, and hurried him into the roadway, and along the street. “To Simon’s!” he muttered. “To Simon’s, my friend. I know the place. I will cut that villain Berthaud’s throat.”

  “But what shall I be the better of that?” the young man answered, somewhat bitterly. “I have none the less lost, and must pay.”

  Crillon stopped short, the darkness hiding alike his face and his feelings. “So!” he said slowly, “I did not think of that! No, I did not think of that. But do you
mean it? What, if I kill him?”

  “I have played for my life, and lost,” Bazan answered proudly. “I promised, and I am a gentleman.”

  “Pheugh!” Crillon whistled. He swore again, and stood. He was a great man, and full of expedients, but the position was novel. Yet, after a minute’s thought, he had an idea. He started off again, taking Bazan’s arm, and impelling him onwards, with the same haste and violence. “To Simon’s! to Simon’s!” he cried as before. “Courage, my friend, I will play him for you and win you: I will redeem you. After all, it is simple, absolutely simple.”

  “He will not play for me,” the young man answered despondently. Nevertheless he suffered himself to be borne onwards. “What will you set against me?”

  “Anything, everything!” his new friend cried recklessly. “Myself, if necessary. Courage, M. de Bazan, courage! What Crillon wills, Crillon does. You do not know me yet, but I have taken a fancy to you, I have!” — He swore a grisly oath. “And I will make you mine.”

  He gave the young man no time for further objection, but, holding him firmly by the arm, he hurried him through the streets to the door below the two gables. On this he knocked with the air of one who had been there before, and to whom all doors opened. In the momentary pause before it yielded Bazan spoke. “Will you not be in danger here?” he asked, wondering much.

  “It is a Guise house? True, it is. But there is danger everywhere. No man dies more than once or before God wills it! And I am Crillon!”

  The superb air with which he said this last prepared Bazan for what followed. The moment the door was opened, Crillon pushed through the doorway, and with an assured step strode down the passage. He turned the corner of the screen and stood in the room; and, calmly smiling at the group of startled, astonished faces which were turned on him, he drew off his cloak and flung it over his left arm. His height at all times made him a conspicuous figure; this night he was fresh from court. He wore black and silver, the hilt of his long sword was jewelled, the Order of the Holy Ghost glittered on his breast; and this fine array seemed to render more shabby the pretentious finery of the third-rate adventurers before him. He saluted them coolly. “It is a wet night, gentlemen,” he said.