A red dawn was breaking over London; through the undrawn curtains of the parlour in Lord Rockhurst’s small house in Whitehall, abutting by the Holbein gateway, the first rays darted in to mingle with the dying gleam of a pair of candles that guttered in their sockets.

Chitterley—my lord’s old confidential servant, who had shared with him all fortune’s vicissitudes, through prosperity and peace, through war and exile, since the last reign—rose from the high-backed chair upon which he had been dozing, and stretched his stiffened limbs wearily. Muttering to himself, as old people will, he fell with sudden alacrity to replenishing (only just in time, for it was fast going out) the small cresset which burned at his hand.

“All good spirits praise the Lord!… Now I pray no misfortune may have happened this night!… Heaven be merciful to us; these be times of terror!”

He flung a new handful of herbs upon the rekindled embers, and watched with satisfaction the column of fragrant smoke that rose circling, now blue, now white, to hang in clouds under the ceiling. “’Twas your only remedy against the tainted air,” had said Dr. Garth; and Dr. Garth was the King’s physician.

“Morning already—and no sign of his lordship! Had it been a year gone, now, I had got me to my bed, and ne’er a qualm. But these be no times for frolic—and e’en if they were, my lord has had little stomach for it these weeks agone.”

He shook his head, moved to the window, groaning for the aches in his joints, and peered into the street, in the hope of catching at last a glimpse of his beloved master, striding down Whitehall. Dim though Chitterley’s eyes might be, he would know a furlong away the swing of the tall figure, the cock of the sword under the folds of the cloak, the proud tilt of the hat. But the street was deserted.

It seemed as if the day was rising again over the stricken city but to make visible its desolation. The unwholesome mists of the night still stagnated under the reddening light; there was none of that air of rejuvenescence, of waking life-cheer, which morning ought to bring. The stillness was not of repose, but of hopeless expectancy.

One of those street fires, which were kept burning at all cross-roads, to combat the pollution, could be seen in the distance, toward Charing Cross, smouldering fitfully, unattended, the last thin shafts of tar smoke rising straight, dismal, through the heavy air. Somewhere in the palace, behind the banquet hall, a bell rang the hour—it sounded like a knell for those that were that day to die. Presently, in this solitude, a woman’s figure appeared, creeping round a corner, holding on to the walls, dragging herself painfully; the only living creature, it seemed, left besides himself in this vast city. Presently even she disappeared from the purview.

Chitterley shuddered; and muttering his haunting “Lord have mercy upon us!” drew back from the windows to go tease again the reeking herbs in the cresset, and shift needlessly my lord’s chair.

“Not even a pomander could I persuade him to take with him…!”

He went over to extinguish the candles and stood awhile painfully musing.

There came a knock at the outer door. Hardly trusting his deaf ears, he turned to listen—everything, anything, was an added terror these days of terror. The knock was repeated, faintly, then vehemently.

“’Tis not my lord—he hath the house key. Pray heaven this be no ill news!—Coming, coming!” he cried shrilly, as yet another summons rang.

Hardly had the door rolled back under his feeble hands when he found himself thrust on one side: a woman in low-cut dress, with dishevelled laces hanging in shreds at her shoulders, brushed past him and walked tottering into the room beyond, to sink upon the great chair.

Like an old watch-dog’s, Chitterley’s first thought was of his duty.

“Madam—madam!” he protested. “His lordship is not within—” Then, as she turned upon the querulous sound, and looked vacantly at him, he staggered back, “God ’a’ mercy; Madam Mantes!”

An ice-cold clutch seemed to be at his heart. Madame de Mantes it certainly was, the grand French lady of the Court, whom Lord Rockhurst had many a time entertained in days (alack, how far off they seemed!) when people laughed and made merry; and among the gay she had been the gayest, among the bright and beautiful the brightest and most fair. Chitterley could remember how, in this very room, in that very chair—which they called the King’s chair, for his Majesty always sat in it when he visited, as he loved to do, his neighbour, “my Merry Rockhurst,” for an hour of pleasant converse—she had sung fit to make his old heart young again.

Yet, in sooth, this was Madame de Mantes. Torn and haggard, through the strands of her uncurled hair, her glazed eyes looked at him from red and swollen lids, piteously, scarcely as if she could see. Except for a patch of rouge, her face was livid.

He thought of the figure he had seen crawling along the walls, and dread was upon him.

“How hot it is—” she complained, in a dry, whispering voice. “Fires, fires everywhere!—Give me to drink!”

The man hesitated a moment, upon the blind impulse of flight. But the long habit of fidelity was stronger even than fear of the pestilence. He took up a flask from a table,—the en cas after the foreign manner, awaiting the master’s return,—poured out a glass of wine and tendered it to her.

“Hot? Eh—but your hand is cold, my lady!”

She drank; seemed to gain a little strength.

“Cold?” she took up the word with an inconsequent laugh. “So would you be, mon ami, had you been roaming the streets, for months … years … as I have been, to-night! You are a kind old man. The others ran from me … one robbed me and beat me, then he, too, ran away.…”

And then Chitterley marked how cruelly, in sooth, the woman had been dealt with; her gown and bodice rent where seemingly the jewels had been snatched; and there was blood on her neck, trickling from the torn lobe of her little ear.

“Mon beau Rockhurst!” she went on, in that loud whisper, as of one light-headed. “I drink to you, to you.” She lifted the cup again, but stopped, catching at her throat: “It is fire—why did you give me fire to drink?”

He seized the glass from her failing hand.

“God ’a’ mercy! you are raving, madam!—you must.…”

She turned her red glance to him, then beat the air with a fierce gesture, imposing silence, and seemed to strain her ear to sounds inaudible:—

“Oh, don’t laugh, Rockhurst, don’t laugh…! Oh, if you like not a salt cheek, I can be merry—”

Chitterley had drawn back, step by step, to the farther end of the room. Then, of a sudden, very loud and angrily, he spoke:—

“Madam, you are ailing. You are ill. You must go home!”

She came back to her surroundings with a start and a cry:—

“Mon Dieu, where am I? Ill? Yes, I am ill! I am strangling, I can’t breathe!” She clutched at her throat with both hands, feeling for something with frantic fingers; then, with a scream that rose and seemed to circle about the silent room like some phantom bird: “MisÉricorde! they are there!… La peste! I have the peste.…”

Chitterley’s grey hair bristled on his head.

“A physician!” he cried, and turned to fly.

But, in her delirium, she was quicker than he in his senile confusedness. She caught him by the wrist with both her hands, now burning as though, indeed, she had drunk fire:—

“No! You shall not leave me! I am dying.… I will not die alone!” The fleeting of madness returned to her fever-wasted brain: “We are put in this world with five senses—and ’tis but common sense to pleasure them. Aye, Rockhurst … but when it comes to dying!…” Her grip relaxed; she wrung her hands. “How can such as we die? Old man, a priest, a priest!”

He felt that he would be less than man if he did not help her. Priest and physician, she should have both,—poor soul, poor soul!

He tried to make her understand him—speaking loud as to the deaf, in little words as to a child. The priest, the physician—aye, she should have them—quickly—she might trust to him. But she looked at him, uncomprehending, with eyes ever wilder. A step farther on her awful journey; she seemed already a world away from her fellow-humans.

Then, as if his meek, aged countenance, all puckered in distress, were a spectacle of unspeakable horror, she flung out both arms to ward him from her; stared round the room like a hunted thing, and, ere he could call or arrest her, had darted through the half-open door of the inner room and flung it, clapping, into the lock between them.

“My lord’s own room!”

Chitterley stood a second helplessly; then came a groan from within; the sound of a heavy fall. The old man called upon Heaven and ran on his errand of mercy.

The wretched woman found herself in a darkened room, with heavy curtains closely drawn, illumined only by a dying night-lamp. She staggered toward a couch, fought for a moment vainly for breath. Then strength, and with it, mercifully, consciousness, gave way; she fell face downward, clutching the silken hangings.

It seemed as if it had become suddenly broad day in that room where Chitterley had kept his night’s vigil—that room, famed once in Whitehall for those gatherings of wit and beauty, convened for his Majesty’s pleasure. A shaft of sunshine, yellow through the sullen mists, struck the chair where Charles had been wont to sit; where but a few moments ago had agonised one whose gay winsomeness and bird-song he had so often commended.

The vapour of Sir George Garth’s sovereign remedy rose but in feeble wisp-like exhalations, ever fainter and wider apart—like to the breath of some dying thing. Occasionally a sigh, or a groan and a muffled word or two, came dully from the neighbouring room. But after a while these ceased; and the only sound to be heard was that of a blue fly, bloated and busy, circling about, emphasising the stillness, to settle ever and anon with a heavy buzz on the wine which Jeanne de Mantes had spilled from her last cup.

II
THE GOLD WHISTLE

Presently there approached, along the flags of Whitehall, the sound of steady footfalls. They mounted the steps and halted before the door; a key grated in the lock, and Lord Rockhurst led Mistress Diana Harcourt across the threshold.

She entered without a word, let herself fall in her turn like one worn out, into the King’s chair, and lifted her face toward him—a face blanched indeed with the miseries of the night, its terrors, the long vigil, the weary wandering, yet full of a brave, sweet strength.

None of her serenity was reflected on Rockhurst’s countenance. His face was dark as with an inner conflict; he averted his eyes as hers sought them. There was a moment’s heavy silence. He broke it, at length, standing over the fireless hearth, without looking at her.

“Now that you are under my roof, Diana, I trust you will consider yourself as if already—” he hesitated, and then brought out the words harshly, “as if already in your father’s house.—I fear me,” he went on, after a pause, “you are dead weary after our wanderings this night … fruitless search for shelter—the flaming cross barring us from every threshold … when it was not mean selfishness and childish fears that drove us to the street again!—Your brother fled basely.…”

She interrupted, wincing under the bitterness of his accents.

“Ah, poor Ned,” she pleaded; “he is but a boy. And his wits are never of the strongest.… In his way, he loves me. And, truly, I am glad he has escaped.”

“You have a strong heart, child!”

Though the words were kind, voice and look were hard. She shivered and drooped her head.

“You are cold,” he went on, with a sudden softening in his tone. “Indeed, ’tis the chill hour of the day.” He glanced hastily round the room, and catching sight of the spilt wine and the soiled cup, frowned, then laughed contemptuously. “So—even old Chitterley hath forgot his duty! These, in sooth, are days of test. I will rouse him, and you shall have fire and refreshment.”

She heard his tread on the stairs, the opening and shutting of doors within the house. Quickly he came back to her.

“Aye, even my old Chitterley gone! …” he cried, with a bitter twist of the lip. “Neither brotherly love, nor life-long service and companionship.… Nay, what should still hold, these times, when no man knows the hour when his life will be withdrawn? Oh, are you human—you, Diana, who sit so still and have no woman’s plaint?”

His voice broke with sudden passion. She raised her eyes and strove to smile; but the shudder of fatigue seized her.

Without another word he lifted the cresset of charcoal from its stand, blew upon the expiring glow, cast fresh fuel upon it; then, the flame once more enkindled, flung the whole on the hearth. She watched him, and gave a little feminine cry of protest as he next seized the first thing at hand, a couple of books, and tore them up ruthlessly to feed the fire.

“O, my lord!” she began, as the flame roared up the chimney. But the faint laugh died on her lips when she met his glance.

“I must leave you,” he said, when he had thrown in a couple of logs. “I must leave you; it will go ill indeed, if, within the hour, I return not with coach and horses. If I have to plead King’s Service, I shall carry you out of the infection.”

The door closed on him. Left alone, Diana sighed deeply. All the bright look of courage faded from her face. How harshly he had spoken! how coldly he had looked upon her—when not averting his eyes as from something troubling!…

Diana Harcourt, widow of twenty, bound by a freak of fate, through the merest impulse of womanly pity, to Rockhurst’s young son,—so faithful a lover, so gallant a youth,—knew her heart given to Rockhurst himself! What shame—what treachery! Moments were when she thought to guess her hidden love as returned; and then she felt herself strong and proud, and took a kind of high spiritual glory in the thought of how true they both would remain to honour and plighted troth. “Loved he not honour more,” as the chivalrous song had it, she would have none of his love.… But, to feel it in this sacred silence, in this noble self-denial, that was a kind of pain more exquisite than any joy she had ever known.

Yet moments were, again, such as this, when his formal manner, the sombreness of his gaze, smote her with distressing conjecture. Was his solicitude but for his boy’s sake, after all? Was the self-betrayal—sweet and terrible—that had so often seemed to hover on his lips, but the gallantry of the high-bred courtier? Or—worse suspicion yet!—had he read her folly, and was it but compassion that spoke in his lingering gaze?

As she sat staring dully into the fire he had kindled for her, vividly the troubled scenes of this night of catastrophe rose before her.

Her grandmother’s great card-room, lit and decked as usual; the dwindled company, each with the heavy knowledge of the peril without and about stamped upon his countenance, each with his hypocrite smile for my Lady Chillingburgh, who glared upon them from out her chair, and forbade the pestilence to exist, since she would have none of it.…

Next, the fair French lady from the Court courtesying in her waves of amber satin, and fixing her, Diana,—aye, and the Lord Constable, too,—with such singular eyes. She recalled to mind, truly, how those fierce eyes had followed Rockhurst, and how Cousin Lionel had smiled as he watched.… Tush, the poor creature knew not what she was doing—was she not stricken ill and in fever?—She might well have mad eyes.…

It was Lionel who had brought her. Lady Chillingburgh’s own grandson who had given the citadel to the enemy it had so long defied! In rapid succession the horrid events reËnacted themselves in Diana’s brain:—

She heard her brother screaming on the stairs, saw him break in upon them, a foolish country lad, frenzied in his panic.

She saw the frightened faces of their guests, and Lionel’s ever-mocking smile—“Sheer poltroonery!”—he was saying. And ever and again she sought and found the comfort of Rockhurst’s strong protective glance.

And then came the end.… The huddled figure in the great chair. The face of her that had had so stout a heart, conquered in death—but less piteous, less awful sight than the living face of the French madam. “The plague is there—” She heard Lionel’s cry of warning, and then all is black about her.

And now she relived the moment when she had awakened from her swoon; darkness and silence all about her. She thought that the nightmare of the card-room had given way to some exquisite dream.… Rockhurst’s arm was supporting her, her head rested on his shoulder, and the solitude of a sombre night held them safe. Above their heads, outstretched tree branches swayed murmurously as the breeze stirred. She heard his heart-beats beneath her ear, and an unknown joy ran like music in her veins: life, reality, seemed thrust as far away from her as yonder flickering lights in the black distance. It seemed indeed a dream, and surely one may accept happiness in a dream! Sighing, she had yielded herself to it one moment—one moment—alas, even as she stirred, lo, it was hers no longer! Beneath her hands was fine turf, in her nostrils the scent of fading roses; she knew where she was—somewhere under the beeches of Chillingburgh House gardens. She remembered, she understood. He had snatched her, unconscious, from the danger of the infected house. And as she moved, his clasp relaxed; he spoke to her, coldly enough, she thought:—

“You are better? It is well.”

… Then had begun their strange pilgrimage through the London streets, the long, long night. She went beside him, through the tangle of unknown, unlit ways; seeing him only ever and anon, painted as it were against the darkness by the glare of the smoky street fires in the more open spaces. In his white hand, the sword drawn, guarding her from the prowling thieves of the night. Inhuman wretches, to whom the stricken city’s extremity was fortune’s boon, slinking after them like pariah dogs…! They had spoken little: mostly words of bare need. But once he had told her she was brave; and once that she was strong indeed.… She had at one moment noticed a great pity in his eyes.—Ah, he need never have pitied her; she had been happy, being with him.

She started from her heavy revery: some one was knocking at the casement.

Outside the window the lines of a man’s head and shoulders, a man hatless, with disordered periwig, were silhouetted blackly against the morning light. She sprang to her feet, terror stifling the scream in her throat. She remembered the marauders that had slunk after them in the night, more to be dreaded these desperate days than pestilence itself. But it was her own name that met her ear, urgently cried:—

“Diana, open!—’Tis I, Lionel.”

Before the words had penetrated to sense, she had recognised the voice. Upon the impulse of her relief, she hastened to the window and flung the casement apart.

“Cousin Lionel…!”

But this was a Cousin Lionel she had never before known. About his livid face the dank curls hung in wild dishevelment—he, whose person had ever seemed as sedately ordered as his mind. He motioned her from him so fiercely that she fell back in fresh alarm.

“Aye, Diana,” said he, answering her look, “you may well be afraid—’tis like enough I have it! And were it not that I am here to save you from worse than plague, for the sheer love I bear you, there should be leagues between us—Stand where you are, Diana! Come not a step nearer!”

He drew himself with effort up to the window-sill, from some ledge whereon he had climbed; then, seated, he looked in upon her again; and to his pallid countenance came a ghostly semblance of the old sarcastic smile:—

“Never enquire how I tracked you. I knew that the Rakehell, who chivalrously took you from the charge of your own kin—to rescue you from the plague, forsooth!—would find no shelter for you but that of his own honourable habitation!”

“Lionel…!”

Sudden anger drove all fear from her. He went on:—

“You would have been safer at Chillingburgh House, once the stricken Frenchwoman gone. And so my lord knew as well as I. Our grand dame never died of the sickness, child, but of a fit of anger—and not before her time, either! But let that pass. I saw thee on the Strand, Diana, a while ago—marked thee hither and knew the trick played on thee. A-tramp the whole night, till your body and your spirit be worn out. Is’t not so? And my lord … so tender, so protecting, so fatherly. Is’t not so?”

“Lionel…!”

The man changed his tone:—

“Diana, ’tis but a few hundred paces to her Majesty’s House of the Blue Nuns, in St. Martin’s Lane, where our kinswoman, Madam Anastasia, would shelter you in honour and safety. Come forth now, from this place; ’tis worse, I tell you, than the Pest-house! I will go before thee; I can yet protect thee along the street, if I may not approach thee.…”

Never had Diana heard that ring of passion from his lips; even when he had pleaded for her love, there had always run an undercurrent of mockery and cynicism in the tenderest word. Truly, these days changed all men’s nature. But Diana was not swayed: she was afire at the odiousness of the slander cast on him she loved.

“I thank you, cousin,” she returned coldly. “But I have placed myself under Lord Rockhurst’s protection; and since you have been pleased to watch me, sir, you will have seen the Lord Constable leave this house but a few moments ago. It was in search of a coach, and it is his purpose to escort me out of the town, even this day, to my own home.”

The man on the window-sill gave a fierce laugh.

“Art as simple, Diana, as thou wouldst fain make out? Dost really believe thy protector—’tis a fine name, in sooth—will find thee that coach?”

“Not a word more!” broke in the other. She had as strong a spirit as his own. “Who should know Lord Rockhurst better than I? Ah, who has better reason to know him? If all the world were to believe evil of him, yet would I still trust him with my life.”

“And is there naught you value more than life?”

“How dare you, cousin!”

“Is your good name nothing to you?” he insisted.

“How dare you!” she repeated.

“Nay, Diana, listen to me!—Shall I tell thee what’s to happen? The Rakehell will return to thee in a little while, dejected, aye, heart-broken! Far and wide, not a horse, not a coach, not a driver to be had for love or money. He has bargained, pleaded, threatened, in vain. So thou must even trust thyself to him further—to him who is as thy father.…”

Diana started, bit her lip. The words struck her; and vehemently she thrust them from her.

“Then, Diana,” went on Ratcliffe, ever more cuttingly, “will he discover something strange in the character of his protective feelings.… Thou, too, will read in thine own … filial … heart. Behold, the end is not difficult to guess!”

“Oh, foul-mouthed!” cried the young widow, recoiling.

Indignation and terror mixed were in her voice. To have the veil thus torn by sacrilegious hands from the innermost shrine; the sanctuary of her tender secret thus broken!… Ratcliffe clutched the window-frame with both hands and thrust his face into the room, his features working again with that unwonted passion:—

“Diana—ah, Diana, for heaven’s sake, you must understand! These days, it seems, all barriers are broken down, all laws violated with impunity. And even now, even you, Diana, will surely pay the price, if you accept the protection of Rakehell Rockhurst!”

Diana swept a gesture of final scorn:—

“Begone, Lionel! Away with you as you came! I pity you … thief of men and women’s good report. Alas! cousin, do I not know what purpose you have in this slander? Shame that these days of terror should wake you to no worthier mind!”

The man fixed her, a breathing space or two, without speaking. Had she been less incensed, she might have noted something in his look singularly belying the thoughts she imputed to him—might have seen a purpose as earnest as it was selfless.

“One word, then, and I go—Di, from the days when we were children together, I have loved thee. Dost remember how I called thee my little wife? You’ll have none of my warning now—so be it! In a little while you’ll want me, you’ll call on me. I shall be near, I shall hear thee.—Stay; here is the gold whistle you once gave me—that Easter—years ago! You have, of course, forgotten it. I have kept it close, you see.”

He hesitated a second, poising the bauble at the end of its long ribbon, frowning. Then he cast it into the room.

“Risk for risk—all is risk!… My lips have not touched it since the pestilence came so nigh them. Di, hark to me, Di. When you want my help this day, you have but to whistle, I’ll hear and help.… I go. Yet not so far but what I can guard my own.”

She stood, her head averted; her foot beating the floor, image of scornful defiance. He slipped down from his perch to the ledge and poised himself yet a second, looking in on her as when he had first appeared:—

“Thou, in the Rakehell’s hands—and the world gone mad around thee…! Ah, shall’t whistle sooner than thou thinkest!”

She wheeled to silence him; he was gone. A bitter conflict rose in her mind as she stood staring at the blank window space. In spite of herself, the memory of his look, of the deep earnestness of his voice, began to shake her sense of security.… He thought he had the sickness, yet he came to warn her!… Another man would have had little reck of aught but himself, with that shadow of doom spread over him.… Yet he hated Rockhurst—oh, how he hated him!—and had he not all but killed Rockhurst’s son for aspiring to her?… With the perspicacity of his relentless love for her, he had read her secret. Reason enough, then, that he should strive to poison her mind against one whom she knew so noble.… Yet again, unscrupulous, daring, cruel even in his very love for her, Ratcliffe had taken piteous pains to guard her against himself. Now, he was lurking in the lanes below, for her sake, instead of hying him to the nearest physician, so urgent did he believe her danger.… Was there, could there be danger?

Her ear caught the sound of the key in the lock; she knew it was Rockhurst returning. On a sudden impulse she picked up the whistle and thrust it into her bodice. Her heart beat to suffocation as she heard his hand on the door.

III
NEMESIS

Rockhurst came in slowly and stood a moment, contemplating Diana before he spoke. The bronze of his face was singularly blanched; his grave eye was alight with a threatening of fire. Then he spoke, quickly:—

“I have beaten the neighbourhood. Whitehall is as a desert, the name of the King itself an empty sound. The whole town is fled, dying or dead.” He took her hand, clasping it with a pressure so fierce as almost to draw a cry from her. “For love or money, it is impossible to obtain horse, coach, or man.”

Her fluttering heart slowed down to the dull beat of misery; she sought to draw her hand from his.

“Oh, my lord!”

Unheeding, he went on:—

“Pestilence is rushing onward like a flood—There is no rock, no hilltop, that is not fated to be swallowed up in time. Diana, we are as those doomed by the Deluge, who have taken refuge on the mountain only to watch the deadly waters rise and count the hours left to them!”

He broke off; she had wrenched her hands from his grasp and had shrunk away from him, covering her face. Not the dreadful import of his words frightened her, but the fire of his glance, the mad exultation of the voice that thus pronounced their doom.

“What,” he exclaimed, his tones vibrating to a tenderness more terrible still to her ears, “have I scared thee?—Brave heart, afraid at last?”

“Yes, yes—I am afraid,” she murmured behind her clasped fingers. But, even as she spoke, her strong nature reacted against the folly of weakness. She dropped her hands, drew herself proudly up and turned, looking him steadily in the eyes:—

“No, my lord, ’twas but an evil thought!”

He returned her gaze fixedly, and she saw how the blood began to rise, slow, dark, in his cheek.

“Yet, why should I say we are doomed?” he went on, under his breath. “Why should not this house be as the ark of refuge? Diana,”—the dreadful joy broke out again in eye and accent,—“have you understood how it stands with us? There is no help for it; we are shut in together. Heaven itself has sealed the way that would divide us—”

So, it had come! That moment she had dreamt of, with a fierce abandonment to his ecstasy; that moment, the very thought of which she had prayed against with tears, as if the mere passage of its forbidden sweetness through her heart were a sin! It had come, in this bitterness, this shame, this shattering of the ideal she held so high! She moved from him without a word, let herself drop mechanically into the King’s chair, and sat, her hands clasping the carven arms, staring straight before her. Rockhurst fell on his knees beside her.

“Diana, Diana—I love you!—And ah, Diana, you love me—”

She flung out her hands to push him from her, and all her wounded heart spoke in her cry:—

“Do not say it, my lord! Oh, I have so dreaded to hear you say it!”

But her very pain was triumph in his ears. As masterfully as he caught and imprisoned her hands once again, so did his passion seize and crush her woman’s scruples:—

“We are alone in a dying world! Who knows if we shall see another dawn! Shall we not take the day that is given us, make use of life while life is still ours?”

And while she looked at him, speechless, her eyes dark in the sorrowful pallor of her face, he cried in a tone that pierced to her very marrow:—

“Diana—come to my arms and teach me, let me teach thee, how sweet life can be … how sweet death can be!”

She had ceased to struggle against him. Her hands lay inert in his.

He put his arm about her then; and, motionless, she submitted. But the tears slowly, slowly welled to her piteous eyes. Then he drew back from her, rose and stood again, gazing at her; the exultation, the fires of ecstasy, fading from his face, and something hard, ruthless, taking their place.

“I can get a priest to wed us, in Whitehall, ere the day be an hour older,” he said, frowning upon her.

Through the tears she would not shed, her great eyes dilated upon him.

“And what will you say—what shall we say—to your son, my lord?”

Rockhurst started as if he had been struck. A masterful man, who all his life had dominated others, he bent his brows with a terrible resentment on her who dared thwart him at this supreme hour of his will; dared lift against him the one weapon that could pierce his armour.

“You took the trust, my lord, even as I yielded my troth.…”

His anger broke forth, the more ruthlessly that he was, for the first time in his life, perhaps, abandoning himself to an unworthy part, a part of weakness. Broken phrases escaped his lips, contradictions lost in the irresistible logic of passion.

“My son, … my son?—I shall answer for myself to my son.—Nay, what account have I to render to my son! A beardless boy, shall he come between us?… Diana, your eyes have lied a thousand times, or you love me!… That promise to Harry was no promise, wrested from you, from me, because of a white face, pleading, because of a red wound! And, if he be true flesh of mine, he will have none of you, your heart being another’s.—Why, my dear,”—his voice changed,—“think you Harry will ever have his bride, will ever see his father again?”

So long as his eye flamed, as his voice harshly chid her, she felt strong. But against that note of tenderness she weakened. A sense of physical failing came over her; she thought of the moment when, in the darkness of the garden, she had awakened to find herself in his arms.… Perhaps, in truth, death was very near to them. To slip from the moorings of life, on the tide of his great love—ah, he had said it; it would be sweet! She clasped her hands to her breast; but at the touch of Lionel’s gold bauble, something in herself that Rockhurst’s words had lulled, started into vivid life again; something that would not let her accept the easier course. If death were, even at this moment, gloating upon them, the better reason to look on it with loyal eyes. Were Harry indeed fated never to meet bride or father again, then must father and bride remain sacred in noble memory! And not because she and Rockhurst were so fain to break it, was a promise less binding a promise. One sentence of Lionel’s rang in her ear: “Behold, the end is not difficult to guess”—and with it the echo of her own voice crying back to him, “Oh, foul-mouthed!”

Quickly she made her choice; and, brave in her pain, had a smile as she turned to speak.

“Once, my lord, you saved me, when I scarce knew myself in danger. To-day it is given to me to pay my debt. And I save you. Give me your arm again, kind, beloved friend, and through the hot contamination of these streets, as once through the pure snow, bring me to honourable shelter.”

For a second, the unexpected check, the unlooked-for strength of her resistance, kept him silent. Then gently, as if to an unreasonable child:—

“And to what shelter? Poor Diana!”

Her smile took something of the divine, maternal pity which lurks in every good woman’s heart for the man she loves.

“But a stone’s throw from this place, my dear lord,—her Majesty’s House of the Blue Nuns will not refuse to open its doors to me,—as, indeed, I should have minded me sooner.”

She rose, and moved steadily toward the door, striving to seem as though she had no fear of his arresting her. But before she had time to raise the latch, his clasp of iron was on her wrist.

A cry rising from the street drove them apart like a sword:—

“Father—father!”

They looked at each other with starting eyes, blanched cheeks. Then the cry rose again:—

“My lord,—my Lord Rockhurst!—father, are you within?”

The colour rushed back to Diana’s face; a flame of joy leaped to her eye.

“This is no spirit-call, but good human sound. Harry, honest Harry here!—Ah, my lord, in time to save us!”

The revulsion of feeling, the unconscious admission of her words, a fierce flame of insane jealousy, suddenly kindled by the glad note in her voice, broke down the last shred of Rockhurst’s self-control. His passion escaped him, tigerish:—

“By the Lord God of Heaven or the Devil Lord of Hell, thou shalt not go to him!”

The young voice was uplifted again without.

“Knock once more, Robin; I hear stirring within.”

And a lusty shout succeeded:—

“Ho, Chitterley, ’tis I, Robin, with Master Harry Rockhurst!”

Rockhurst caught Diana in his arms.

“Mine, Diana, mine, and none shall come between us!”

He held her for a second against his breast, and she heard the great hammering of his heart; then she found herself thrust within a darkened room, heard the door close upon her, the shooting of a bolt. A prisoner—and darkness all about her, a strange suffocating darkness, thick with the fumes of a burnt-out lamp.

As the Lord Constable unbolted the outer door, he was met by the precipitate entrance of his son.

“Good heavens, Chitterley—” The broken words were cut short: “My lord … yourself in person! Thank God, thank God!”

Young Rockhurst cast himself impetuously upon his father’s breast, sobbing with excitement. The latter suffered the embrace in silence, supported the boy, as he clung to him in sudden weakness, into the room, led him to a chair. Then he stood a second in gloomy silence, staring at the young bowed figure, sitting where she had sat, his face hidden in his hands, even as hers had been. Tears! and this weakling would wed Diana!—Diana, who had not suffered hers to fall! Yet Rockhurst loved his son; and there was a strange rending pain at his heart.

Into the oppressive stillness, broken only by Harry’s catching breath, there came from the inner room a stir as of curtains wrenched apart, as of creaking easements thrust open; and next a stifled cry. Rockhurst, expecting the instant of revelation, braced himself as a man may for the meeting of his death-stroke. But nothing more was heard, save a long, sweet whistle—some call in the street, doubtless. Ah—Diana would not betray him!—Diana loved him! As if the shrill, sweet signal had roused him, Harry Rockhurst started, dashed the tears from his cheeks, and rising, seized his father’s hand to pour forth a torrent of words:—

“Alas, my lord, and how had you the heart to leave me in this ignorance of your peril?—Had not Lionel writ to me—Oh, father, never look so sternly on me! I know I have transgressed your command to remain in the country, but how could I keep away? ’Twas not in nature—Where is Diana? Oh, my God, Chillingburgh House is deserted, the doors open to the winds, the old lady abandoned, dead, stark in her chair! Where is Diana? Father—my Diana!”

His voice rose to a scream, as his father turned a terrible, set face upon him; his father, from whom he had scarce ever known but loving and joyful looks. Evil beyond words must be the tidings awaiting him. He clutched his breast with both hands.

“Harry, be a man!” cried Rockhurst, starting as he marked the livid change that spread over the young countenance. But he was too late.

“Dead?” cried the lad, and on a sudden gasped for breath. “A curse on this wound that will not heal.”

He tore at the lapels of his riding-coat, reeled and fell, barely caught, into his father’s arms.

“My God—I have killed my son!” Blood welled out between Rockhurst’s fingers, as he clasped the slight, inert form.

“Harry!” he cried frantically to the deaf ears, “Harry, no, she is not dead. She is not dead! You shall even see her!—Hither, Diana!”

He raised a loud call for her; then, with a groan, remembered him—the shot bolt! Had ever a man been so mad, had ever a man been so base—been so punished? He lowered the body to the ground; ’twas the old wound indeed, that wound taken in the defence of his father’s honour. A light word had been spoken of him to his son—his poor country lad, who had never heard, had never known, of one in the town nicknamed the Rakehell!

Again he raised a desperate cry for help:—

“Robin, there without…!”

And all at once the silent, abandoned house was full of voices and footsteps—here were the white face of his own old servant; the scared chubbiness of Yorkshire Robin—and another countenance, unknown and solemn. And behold, Chitterley was saying:—

“This way, good doctor!”

When the moment holds life and death in the balance, there is no room for surprise.

“Chitterley, ha, Chitterley,” cried Rockhurst. “Water and bandages, in Heaven’s name! This way, Sir Physician!—A physician by Divine mercy!”

The man of healing, who had been much occupied with his pomander, dropped it from his nostrils to stare on the unexpected scene. And Chitterley, whose dim eyes had only just become aware of his master, burst into a dismal wail:—

“My lord, fly!—Here is plague, here is death!” Then, in yet more piercing lamentation: “What! Master Harry, too! Merciful Heaven!”

“Sir,” said Rockhurst to the physician, “your attention hither!”

“Truly,” said the doctor, “this seems an urgent case.”

He was perhaps not displeased to find, instead of the plague-stricken patient he had been summoned to attend, a clean lad a-bleeding of a sword wound. Old Chitterley ran feebly hither and thither, as father and surgeon bent together over the unconscious form. Robin stared, voiceless.

“It is an old wound, ill-healed,” explained Rockhurst. “My faithful son—he fought, a month agone, one who impugned my good name—now, hearing I was in danger of the sickness, naught could keep him from me. All the way from Yorkshire … and he wasted with the fever of the hurt! When I saw him I chid him.” The father looked with dry eyes of agony at the physician’s thoughtful face.

“The bleeding has somewhat waned,” said the latter, then, without committing himself. Then, rising stiffly from his knees: “I could attend to the young gentleman better,” he pursued, “were he upon a couch. May I assist your lordship—?”

He had recognised the noble Lord Constable, the King’s friend, and was full of solicitude.

“Nay—I need no aid!” The father gathered his boy again into his arms. “Chitterley, unbolt the door—How now!” The old man had flung himself before his master and, with clasped hands, was motioning him desperately back. “The wretch has gone crazy!”

“Nay, my dear master, in God’s name, she lies there!”

“She?”

For one mad instant Rockhurst deemed his ancient servant stood at bay before his own threatened honour. Almost he laughed in scornful anger. What recked he now of aught except this bleeding burden on his breast? Aye, and if those purple lids, sealed in such death-like peace, were to unclose, and Harry were to behold Diana, the father knew—and was pierced as by a two-edged sword of ruth and tenderness at the thought—that yet his son would never doubt him. Chitterley was still speaking. The tale of retribution was not complete:—

“The French lady, your lordship, sick of the plague! She lies within, dying of the sickness. ’Twas for her I sought Mr. Burbage.…”

Rockhurst staggered, as one struck from an unexpected quarter. In haste the physician advanced, but just in time to seize the limp body from the father’s relaxing grasp. Here were strange events, enough to bewilder the ordinary, decorous man of science on his professional round! But, as times went, astonishment had no part in men’s lives. Catastrophe had ceased to shock. The Lord Constable and his servant, either or both, might be mad: few people were quite sane these days, but here was a young life hanging on a thread: enough for the moment, if skill of his could strengthen its hold. As for the creature with the plague yonder,—whoever she might be,—let her rot: ’twas only one added to the ten thousand bound to die that day! He laid the lad all his length on the floor, drew a phial of cordial from his breast, and set dazed Robin to bring him the water from the table; while Rockhurst stood staring at Chitterley, his face more stricken than that pallid one at his feet.

The old servant, on his side, still stretched out trembling arms in barrier; it seemed as if his mind had stopped on that effort of desperate warning. At last, tonelessly, Rockhurst spoke:—

“In my room—?”

“Aye, my lord. She was dying; I could not keep her out!”

“Sick of the plague, said you?”

“Aye, your lordship.”

The father gave a terrible cry:—

“O God, Thy vengeance is greater than my sin—Diana!”

He looked down at the physician, absorbed in ineffectual efforts to recall the wandering spirit to its fair young body; and in a voice that smote even that ear, so fully seasoned to sorrow’s plaint:—

“Sir—so has Heaven dealt with me this day, that if I must needs hear now that he is dead—my only son … ’twould be the best tidings … in very truth!”

THE RED DESOLATION