Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  He would have fallen on that, but the men caught him in their arms and held him up, amid a murmur of horror; to many brave men death in this special form is appalling. Here and there a woman shrieked; one fainted. Meanwhile, the young man’s face was becoming livid; his neck seemed to stiffen, his eyes to protrude. The king looked at him and shuddered. “Saint Denis!” he muttered, the perspiration standing on his brow, “what an escape! What an escape! Can nothing be done for him?”

  “I will try, Sire,” Crillon answered, abandoning for the first time his attitude of watchfulness. Drawing a small phial from his pocket, he directed one of the guards to force open the lad’s teeth, and then himself poured the contents of the bottle between them.

  “Good lad,” he muttered to himself, “he has drained the cup. I bade him drink only half. It would have been enough. But he is young and strong. He may surmount it.”

  The rest looked on, some in curiosity, some in pity, some in secret apprehension. It was the Duke of Guise who put into words the thoughts of many. “Those,” he said scornfully, “who find the antidote, may know the poison, M. de Crillon.”

  “What do you mean, Duke?” Crillon replied passionately, as he sprang to his feet. “That I was in this? That I know more than I have told of it? If so, you lie, sir; and you know it!”

  “I know it?” the Duke cried, his eyes aflame, his cheeks reddening. Never had he heard such words. “Do you dare to insinuate — that I know more of this plot than yourself — if plot there be?”

  “Enough!” said the king, rising in great haste, and with a face which betrayed his emotion. “Silence, gentlemen! silence! And you, my cousin, not another word, I command you! Who poured out the wine?”

  “A villain called Berthaud,” Crillon answered promptly and fiercely, “who was in attendance upon the Duke of Guise.”

  “He was not in attendance on me!” the duke answered, with spirit.

  “Then on Madame de Sauves.”

  “I know nothing of him!” cried that lady, hysterically. “I never spoke to the man in my life. I do not know him!”

  “Enough!” the king said with decision; but the gloom on his brow grew darker. “Enough. Until Berthaud is found, let no more be said. Cousin,” he continued to the Count of Soissons, “you will see us home. D’Ornano, we return at once, and you will accompany us. For M. de Crillon, we commit to him the care of this young man, to whom we appear to be indebted, and whose thought for us we shall not forget. Madame, I kiss your hand.”

  Guise’s salutation he acknowledged only by a grave bow. The last of the Valois could at times exert himself, could at times play again the hero of Jarnac and Montcontour, could even assume a dignity no whit less than that of Guise. As he retired all bowed low to him, and the greater part of the assemblage — even those who had not attended him to the house — left in his train. In three minutes Crillon, a couple of inferior officers, and a handful of guards alone remained round the young man.

  “He will recover,” Crillon said, speaking to the officer next him. “He is young, and they did not dare to make the dose too strong. We shall not, however, convict any one now, unless Berthaud speaks.”

  “Berthaud is dead.”

  “What?”

  “As dead as Clovis,” the lieutenant repeated calmly. “He is lying in the passage, M. de Crillon.”

  “Who killed him?” cried Crillon, leaping up in a rage. “Who dared to kill him? Not those fools of guards when they knew it was his evidence we wanted.”

  “No, no,” said the other coolly. “They found him dead not twenty paces from the house. He was a doomed man when he passed through the door. You understand, M. de Crillon? He knew too much to live.”

  “Mort de Dieu!” cried Crillon, raising his hands in admiration. “How clever they are! Not a thing forgotten! Well, I will to the king and tell him. It will put him on his guard. If I had not contrived to try the draught there and then, I could not have convinced him; and if I had not by a lucky hazard won this young man last night, I might have whistled for one to try it! But I must go.”

  Yet he lingered a minute to see how the lad progressed. The convulsions which had for a time racked Bazan’s vigorous frame had ceased, and a profuse perspiration was breaking out on his brow.

  “Yes, he will recover,” said Crillon again, and with greater confidence.

  As if the words had reached Bazan’s brain, he opened his eyes.

  “I did it!” he muttered. “I did it. We are quits, M. de Crillon!”

  “Not so!” cried the other, stooping impetuously and embracing him. “Not quits! The balance is against me now, but I will redress it. Be easy; your fortune is made, M. de Bazan. While James Berthon de Crillon lives you shall not lack a friend!”

  He kept his word. There can be little doubt that the Laurence de Bazan who held high office under the Minister Sully, and in particular rose to be Deputy Superintendent of the Finances in Guienne, was our young Bazan. This being so, it is clear that he outlived by many years his patron: for Crillon, “le brave Crillon,” whose whim it was to dare greatly, and on small occasion, died early in the seventeenth century — in his bed — and lies under a famous stone in the Cathedral of Avignon. Whereas we find Bazan still flourishing, and a person of consequence at Court, when Richelieu came to the height of his power. Nevertheless on him there remains no stone; only some sketch of the above, and a crabbed note at the foot of a dusty page in a dark library.

  FOR THE CAUSE

  I

  Paris had never seemed to the eye more peaceful than on a certain November evening in the year 1591: and this although many a one within its walls resented the fineness of the night as a mockery, as a scoff alike at the pain of some and the fury of others.

  The moonlight fell on roofs and towers, on the bare open space of the Place de Grève, and the dark mass of the Louvre, and only here and there pierced, by chance, a narrow lane, to gleam on some foul secret of the kennel. The Seine lay a silvery loop about the Ile de la Cité — a loop cut on this side and that by the black shadows of the Pont au Change, and the Petit Pont, and broken again westward by the outline of the New Bridge, which was then in building.

  The city itself lay in profound quiet in the depth of the shadow. From time to time at one of the gates, or in the vaulted lodge of the Châtelet, a sentinel challenged or an officer spoke. But the bell of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, which had rung through hours of the past day, was silent. The tumult which had leaped like flame from street to street had subsided. Peaceful men breathed again in their houses, and women, if they still cowered by the hearth, no longer laid trembling fingers on their ears. For a time the red fury was over: and in the narrow channels, where at noon the mob had seethed and roared, scarcely a stray wayfarer could now be found.

  A few however were abroad: and of these some, who chanced to be threading the network of streets between the Châtelet and the Louvre, heard behind them the footsteps of one in great haste. Turning, they saw pass by them a youth, wearing a sword and a student’s short cloak and cap — apparently he was a member of the University. He was pale of face, and for his part looked neither to right nor left: saw not one of them, and seemed bent only on getting forward.

  He slackened his pace however near the corner of the Rue de Tirchape, where it shoots out of the Rue de Béthisy; and then turning the corner impulsively, he caught his foot in some obstacle, and, plunging forward, would have fallen, if he had not come against a man, who seemed to be standing still in the shadow of the corner house.

  “Hold up!” exclaimed this person, withstanding the shock better than could have been expected, for he was neither tall nor bulky. “You should have a pretty mistress, young man, if you go to her at this pace!”

  The student did not answer — did not seem to hear. He staggered against the wall, and stood propping himself up by it. His face, pale before, was ghastly, as he glared, horror-struck, at something beyond the speaker. The latter, after muttering angrily, “What the plague, then, do y
ou go dashing about the streets like a Shrove Tuesday ox for?” turned also and glanced behind him.

  But not at that to which the student’s eyes were directed. The stranger seemed constrained to look first and by preference at the long, low casement of a house nearly opposite them. This window was on the first floor, and projected somewhat over the roadway. There seemed to be no light in the room within; but the moonlight reached it, and showed a woman’s head bent on the sill — a girl’s head, if one might judge from its wealth of hair. One white wrist gleamed amid the coil, but her face was hidden on her arms and showed not. In the whole scene — in the casement open at this inclement time, in the girl’s attitude, in her abandonment, there was something which stirred the nerves. It was only after a long look that the stranger averted his eyes, and cast a casual glance at a queer, dark object, which a few paces away swung above the street, dimly outlined against the sky. It was clear that it was that which had fascinated his companion.

  “Umph!” he ejaculated in the tone of a man who should say “Is that all?” And he turned to the youth again. “You seem taken aback, young man?” he said. “Surely that is no such strange sight in Paris nowadays. What with Leaguers hanging Politiques, and Politiques hanging Leaguers, and both burning Huguenots, I thought a dead man was no longer a bogey to frighten children with!”

  “Hush, sir, in Heaven’s name!” the young man exclaimed, shuddering at his words. And then, with a gesture of despair, “He was my father!”

  The stranger whistled. “He was your father, was he!” he replied more gently. “I dare swear too that he was an honest man, since the Sixteen have done this. There, steady, my friend. These are no times for weeping. Be thankful that Le Clerc and his crew have spared your home, and your — your sister. That is rare clemency in these days, and Heaven only knows how long it may last. You wear a sword? Then shed no tears to rust it. Time enough to weep, man, when there is blood to be washed from the blade.”

  “You speak boldly,” said the youth, checking his emotion somewhat, “but had they hung your father before his own door — —”

  “Good man,” said the stranger with a coolness that bordered on the cynical, “he has been dead these twenty years.”

  “Then your mother?” the student suggested with the feeble persistence by which weak minds show their consciousness of contact with stronger ones, “you had then — —”

  “Hung them all as high as Haman!”

  “Ay, but suppose there were among them some you could not hang,” objected the youth, in a lower tone, while he eyed his companion narrowly, “some of the clergy, you understand?”

  “They had swung — though they had all been Popes of Rome,” was the blunt answer.

  The young man shook his head, and drew off a pace. He scanned the stranger curiously, keeping his back turned to the corpse the while; but he failed by that light to make out much one way or the other. Scarcely a moment too was allowed him before the murmur of voices and the clash of weapons at the farther end of the street interrupted him. “The watch are coming,” he said roughly.

  “You are right,” his companion assented, “and the sooner we are within doors the better.”

  It was noticeable that throughout their talk which had lasted some minutes no sign of life had appeared in any of the neighbouring houses. Scarce a light shone from doorway or window though it was as yet but nine o’clock. In truth fear of the Sixteen and of the mob whom they guided was overpowering Paris — was a terror crushing out men’s lives. While the provinces of France were divided between two opinions, and half of them owned the Huguenot Henry the Fourth — now for two years the rightful sovereign — Paris would have none of him. The fierce bigotry of the lower classes, the presence of some thousands of Spanish soldiers, and the ambition and talents of the Guise family combined at once to keep the gates of Paris closed to him, and to overawe such of the respectable citizens as from religious sympathy in rare cases, more often out of a desire to see the re-establishment of law and order, would have adopted his cause. The Politiques, or moderate party, who were indifferent about religion as such, but believed that a strong government could be formed only by a Romanist king, were almost non-existent in Paris. And the events of the past day, the murder of three magistrates and several lower officials — among them poor M. Portail, whose body now decorated the Rue de Tirchape — had not reassured the municipal mind. No wonder that men put out their lights early, and were loth to go to their windows, when they might see a few feet from the casement the swollen features of a harmless, honest man, but yesterday going to and from his work like other men.

  Young Portail stole to the door of the house and knocked hurriedly. As he did so, he looked, with something like a shiver of apprehension, at the window above his head. But the girl neither moved nor spoke, nor betrayed any consciousness of his presence. She might have been dead. It was a young man, about his own age or a little older, who, after reconnoitring him from above, cautiously drew back the door. “Whom have you with you?” he whispered, holding it ajar, and letting the end of a stout club be seen.

  “No one,” Portail replied in the same cautious tone. And he would have entered without more ado, and closed the door behind him had not his late companion, who had followed him across the street like his shadow, set his foot against it. “Nay, but you are forgetting me,” he said good-humouredly.

  “Go your way! we have enough to do to protect ourselves,” cried Portail, brusquely.

  “The more need of me,” was the careless answer.

  The watch were now but a few houses away, and the stranger seemed determined. He could scarcely be kept out without a disturbance. With an angry oath Felix Portail held the door for him to enter; and closed it softly behind him. Then for a minute or so the three stood silent in the darkness of the damp-smelling passage, while with a murmur of voices and clash of weapons, and a ruddy glimmer piercing crack and keyhole, the guard swept by.

  “Have you a light?” Felix murmured, as the noise began to die away.

  “In the back room,” replied the young man who had admitted them. He seemed to be a clerk or confidential servant. “But your sister,” he continued, “is distraught. She has sat at the window all day as you see her now — sometimes looking at it. Oh, Felix,” in a voice shaken by tears, “this has been a dreadful day for this house!”

  The young Portail assented by a groan. “And Susanne?” he asked.

  “Is with Mistress Marie, terrified almost to death, poor child. She has been crouching all day beside her, hiding her face in her gown. But where were you?”

  “At the Sorbonne,” Felix replied, in a whisper.

  “Ah!” the other exclaimed, something of hidden meaning in his tone. “I would not tell her that, if I were you. I feared it was so. But let us go upstairs.”

  They went up; the stranger following, with more than one stumble by the way. At the head of the staircase the clerk opened a door and preceded them into a low-roofed panelled room, plainly but solidly furnished, and lighted by a small hanging lamp of silver. A round oak table on six curiously turned legs stood in the middle, and on it some food was laid. A high-backed chair, before which a sheep-skin rug was spread, and two or three stools, made up, with a great oak chest, the furniture of the room.

  The stranger turned from scrutinizing his surroundings, and stood at gaze. Another door had opened silently; he saw framed in the doorway and relieved by the lamplight against the darkness of the outer room the face and figure of a tall girl; doubtless the one whom he had seen at the window. A moment she stood pointing at them with her hand, her face white — and whiter in seeming by reason of the black hair which fell round it; her eyes were dilated, the neckband of her dark red gown was torn open that she might have air. “A Provençal!” the intruder murmured to himself. “Beautiful and a tigress.”

  At any rate, for the moment, beside herself. “So you have come at last!” she said, panting, glaring at Felix with scorn, passionate scorn in word and gestu
re. “Where were you while these slaves of yours did your bidding? At the Sorbonne with the black crows! Thinking out fresh work for them? Or dallying with your Normandy sweetheart?”

  “Hush!” he said, lowering his eyes, and visibly quailing before her. “There is a stranger here.”

  “There have been many strangers here to-day!” she retorted with undiminished bitterness. “Hush, you say? Nay, but I will not be silent for you, for any! They may tear me limb from limb, but I will accuse them of this murder before God’s throne. Coward! Parricide! Do you think I will ask mercy from them? Come, look on your work! See what the League have done — your holy League! — while you sat plotting with the black crows!”

  She pointed into the dark room behind her, and the movement disclosed a younger girl clinging to her skirts, and weeping silently. “Come here, Susanne,” Felix said; he had turned pale and red and shifted from one foot to another, under the lash of the elder girl’s scorn. “Your sister is not herself. You do no good, Marie, staying in there. See, you are both trembling with cold.”

  “With cold?” was the fierce rejoinder. “Then do you warm yourselves! Sit down and eat and drink and be comfortable and forget him! But I will not eat nor drink while he hangs there! Shame, Felix Portail! Shame! Have you arms and hands, and will let your father hang before his own door?”

  Her voice rang shrill to the last word audible far down the street; that said, an awkward silence fell on the room. The stranger nodded twice, almost as if he said, “Bravo! — Bravo.” The two men of the house cast doubtful glances at one another. At length the clerk spoke. “It is impossible, mistress,” he said gently. “Were he touched, the mob would wreck the house to-morrow.”