* * *
HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
BY
BERNARD CAPES
AUTHOR OF "A JAY OF ITAIT " *TC
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
1910
(All rights reserved.)
CONTENTS
PAGE
GEORGE I. . . . . . .7
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE . . . . .21
THE QUEEN'S NURSE . . . . -35
LOUIS xiv. . . . 47
NAPOLEON . . . . . . -57
LEONORA OF TOLEDO ..... 69
CHARLES IX. . . . . . -85
THE KING'S CHAMPION ..... 97
QUEEN ELIZABETH ...... IO7
JANE SHORE ...... 117
THE CHAPLAIN OF THE TOWER . . . .129
LADY GODIVA ...... 14!
THE HERO OF WATERLOO . . . . .151
MAID MARIAN ...... 163
THOMAS PAINE ...... 173
FAIR ROSAMOND . . . . . .185
2081397
6 CONTENTS
PAGE
THE GALILEAN ...... 197
THE BORGIA DEATH ..... 2O7
"DEAD MAN'S PLACK " ..... 217
THE EXECUTIONER OF NANTES .... 227
THE LORD TREASURER ..... 237
MARGARET OF ANJOU ..... 249
"KING COLLEY" ...... 261
THE SURGEON OF GOUGH SQUARE . . . 273
THE PRIOR OF ST. COME ..... 285
CAPTAIN MACARTNEY ..... 297
THE DUC DE GUISE ...... 309
HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
GEORGE I
" HALT ! " The voice of an officer rang out in
the heavy twilight, and with a sudden scream of
brakes and jangle of harness the cavalcade
came to a stand.
'* Tell the Herr von Gastein his Majesty
desires to speak with him." The name ran up
the long line, quick and sharp, like a rattle of
musketry, and passed out of hearing of him who
had uttered it. " Tell the Herr Captain to
come at once."
The Herr Captain was already, on the word,
spurring back from the head of the cortege,
which was of royal extent. It stood upon a flat
road in a flat country, covering more ground than
and including almost as many human souls as a
modern mail-train. There was the King's coach
for principal item a veritable little room slung
8 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
on straps and drawn by eight horses ; and there
were carriages seven or eight, and each hold-
ing as many people for his retinue, and baggage-
wagons, and a troop of fifty sabres to escort
the whole. It took so much, or more, to carry
this little corpulent apoplectic on his annual visit
to Herrenhausen, whither he had already
travelled to within a league or so of Osnabriick
and a much-needed night's rest.
The Captain von Gastein, having dismounted
and thrown his reins to a groom, stood at stiff
attention by the coach door. He was a patient,
somewhat exhausted-looking man of fifty, spare -
bodied, and with stone -blue eyes which rather
matched the dusty Hanoverian blue of his
uniform. His expression at the moment was
one of a quiet fatality, as if the summons had
not been altogether unforeseen by him.
A preternatural silence seemed to have
succeeded the tumult of hoofs and wheels. There
was a soundless blink of lightning in the sky,
and a windmill on the flat roadside blackened
and paled alternately in its flicker, as if it pal-
pitated. It was late June, and the air seemed
to have come out of a limekiln. The dust
rolled up into it began to settle down sluggishly.
GEORGE I 9
The door of the great travelling -coach opened,
and a little bewigged gentleman, who had been
peering from behind the glass, descended. His
manner was dry, self-important, professional ; he
was the King's English physician.
" His Majesty, my dear Captain," he
whispered, "is in a strange mood. You are
commanded to ascend and converse with him
you may guess why. The affair of last year
you understand? Old associations are re-
awakened, old injuries re -exposed you were
intimately acquainted with their subject. Bear
in mind that this sad event has interposed itself
between his last departure from and his present
revisit to his paternal dominions, and venture
upon nothing in the nature of a reminder. If
you find him fanciful, excited "
A querulous voice, breaking from the interior
of the carriage, interrupted him :
" Der Herr Jesus ! What is all this chatter?
Tell the man to enter."
The physician, placing a warning finger on his
lips, skipped to one of the supplementary
coaches ; the Captain von Gastein climbed into
the royal vehicle. A postillion put up the steps ;
the door was closed, the word given, and the
10 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
cavalcade lurched on. " Sit," motioned the
King ; and the Herr Captain, with what steadi-
ness he could command, settled himself on the
edge of the broad seat backing upon the horses,
and awaited, rigid and upright.
He was quite alone with his Majesty, and
there was plenty of room for them both. The;
interior of the coach was like a cabinet, and
luxuriously upholstered. There were accommo-
dations for writing, card-playing, shaving, coffee-
making, and other conveniences. The pace was
leisurely, the motion restful ; the great wheels
turned outside the windows with little apparent
sound. The King of England lay in his padded
corner opposite, a very, weary, moodish little old
man. His cheeks bagged, his eyes goggled,
strained, and anxious ; the silk travelling-cloak
in which he was wrapped only partly concealed
his immense corpulence, and his thick legs
and stumpy feet dangled short of the floor. His
head was unwigged, and enveloped in IP close
cap with a fur border which came down over
his eyes.
The officer, observant of everything, for all
the respectful rigidity of his vision, could not
but be conscious of a certain feeling of repulsion
GEORGE I 11
in this his first close contact with the prince
to whose unwelcome service, in one most tragic
direction, he had devoted the best twenty-five
years of his life. Twenty-five years it was since
he had been ordered, a young impecunious
captain, to the lonely castle of Ahlden on the
Aller, where lived, already seven years incarcer-
ated, the beautiful young wife of the then electoral
Prince George Sophia Dorothea, accused, rightly
or wrongly, of misconduct with a Swedish
adventurer. She was fair; unhappy; her
husband had not loved her ; the cold cruelty of
his temperament had been confessed in this his
consignment of her to a living grave. Had she
not lain in his arms, borne him children ? Gastein
had needed no more to inflame his chivalry.
Thenceforth he had given himself to the service of
this lady, to ameliorate, to the best of his power,
her bitter fate. His partiality, his sympathy,
being, no doubt, reported, had kept him poor
and unpromoted. For a .quarter of a century he
had shared his princess's exile, and had only
returned to the world when death had ended that,
less than a twelvemonth ago. After thirty-two;
years ! And this was the unlovely Rhadamanthus
who had condemned her, this little wheezy, pot-
12 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
bellied old frog of a man, who had become
Elector of Hanover and King of England in
the interval I The Captain had been educated
to the right divine succession ; but something
monstrous in the picture struck him. His convic-
tions and his emotions hurt one another in their
efforts at a reconciliation. It was somehow
not right that tragic beauty should lie at the
mercy of this commonplace. He sat as stiff as
a ramrod.
It is one of the most grotesque privileges
of royalty to command silence. No one must
address it unless addressed. Then, at its word,
its gesture, the empty brass pot ceases to tinkle
or the golden vessel overflows. This seems an
unnatural impost, like taxing a man's daylight
or his drinking-water. It gives an uncanny self-
possession to the mortal who levies it. The
little swollen tub of a creature, glowering in his
corner, mutely discussed the figure opposite for
as long as it pleased him, with no more concern,
probably less, than he would have shown in re-
garding a black-beetle ; and when he spoke at
last it was even with some grudging in his cold,
guttural voice.
"You are of the escort, then, mein Herr?"
GEORGE I 13
The Captain, stiffening yet a trifle, saluted.
" As your Majesty commanded," he said.
The other shrugged fretfully.
"I am glad," he said, " to find something
surviving to your sense of duty."
Von Gastein made no answer. He ought not ;
he could not, indeed. That sense of warring
emotions hurt him like a violent indigestion.
The King, for some minutes, condescended
to speak no more, but sat looking out of the
window upon the darkening flats and the white
ribbon of the road reeling under him. What was
in his mind? He had always declared, for some
reason, that he would not long survive his wife ;
and she had died six months ago. Had he some-
how cheated Fate or might he have cheated
it had he remained in England? This was his
first visit to his patrimony since her death. Her
death, her released spirit turn the coach !
No, his beloved Herrenhausen ! The stout
little Guelph was no coward for all his love of
life and good-living. A: murrain on this old
wives' trash of spectres and premonitions ! He
glanced at the figure opposite it sat up rigid
and grey like a signpost and, with a scowl,
looked out of the window again.
14 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
Thirty-two years a woman of sixty, and she
had been a fresh, blooming young wife of
twenty-eight when he had consigned her to her
living death 1 Much water, as they said in
England, had flowed under London Bridge
during that interval the highways of life had
been paved and repaved. Thirty-two years ! The
Schloss was a dead, dreary place, situated in a
dead, dreary country a mere lonely manor-house
in the wilds, good enough for a month's stay ;
but thirty-two years ! Gott in Himmel I And
she had been vivacious, worldly, sparkling with
the glory of being and doing when he had last
seen her 1
A vision of the castle, as he had known it
once or twice in the old, far-off days, rose before
him. He saw again the leagues of flat marsh-
land which surrounded it, the reedy, river crawl-
ing by its walls, the grey alders shivering in
the wind, and the wheeling of lonely plovers.
He saw the sad towers, the cold, undecorated
rooms, the windows looking out upon the life-
less waste of road. The road ! the livid unfruit-
ful highway, upon which, for hours at a time,
it had been said, dry burning eyes had been
set, despairing for the mercy, the deliverance,
GEORGE I 15
which never came ! For thirty-two years ! God
in heaven ! while the frost of age slowly settled
on the beautiful eyes, the deep black hair, the
breaking heart ! With a writhe, as of physical
suffering, the old man turned from his window.
"The life was dull at Schloss Ahlden?" he
said.
"Dull, sire."
The correct, impassive attitude of the Captain
maddened while it half cowed him. For a
minute he held his breath only to release it in
a gudden question, unexpected, astounding :
" In your eyes, soldier, she was innocent ? "
Von Gastein started under the shock and re-
covered himself.
" During the twenty-five years, sire, I had
the privilege of attending on her the Princess of
Ahlden did not fail weekly to take the Sacra-
ment, and on each occasion to avow her
innocence before the altar."
The King stared, then mumbled from loud to
low.
" They will avow it," he began, and broke off
.quickly. Some words reported to him, as having
been uttered by her to one seeking to bring
about a reconciliation before his enthronement,
16 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
recurred to his mind : "If I am guilty, I am
not worthy to be your Queen ; if I am innocent,
your King is not worthy to be my husband."
A casuistry, feminine, non-committinghedg-
ing, in the true sporting sense. He hardened.
This fate had not after all seemed so merciless to
one so guilty.
" She had liberty," he said, as if appealing to
his own conscience.
The Captain made a frigid reverence, acqui-
escing in the enormous lie.
" I say, she had liberty," repeated the King
" permission to drive abroad."
" For six miles, sire, back and forth," answered
the soldier, as if he accounted himself addressed :
" for six miles west, to the old stone bridge on
the Hayden road. So much and no more. At
the bridge the escort turned her. On fine days
she would drive herself fast and faster, till the
stones spun from the wheels. She would seem
to madden for freedom, to outstrip her misery.
Many times she would traverse the distance, the
lady-in-waiting sitting, the troop spurring at her
side ; and at the stone bridge it would be always
the same. ' No further? ' ' No further, madam.'
' Ah ! but death will release me ! ' "
GEORGE I 17
He stopped, conscious of his own emotion.
He had served the lovely sorrow so long, that
its tragedy had become part of himself.
" I crave your Majesty's forgiveness," he
muttered in a broken voice.
The King spoke up harshly :
" She was limited to that road by necessity."
" During life, sire."
The response came swift and involuntary.
The soldier gasped, having made it.
' You will stop the coach, and return to your
duty," said the King, blue in the face.
The former commotion was repeated ; the
physician returned to his patient ; the cavalcade
rolled on. His Majesty spoke not a single word
further, but sat staring from the window. It was
deep dusk now without, and the lightning
flickered with a ghastlier brilliancy. But still
the King would give no order to have the lamps
lighted. Instead, he lay with his livid face and
protruding eyes addressed to the heavens, and
the horror of a thought incessant in his mind.
The road was open to her at last, and she was
driving to cut him off from Osnabrtick, the city in
which he had been born. She knew that a man
could not die in the room where he was born ;
2
18 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
and she was coming to forestall him with the
dread summons to appear before his Maker, and
answer for the thing he had done.
* *
Much agitated, von Gastein remounted his
horse, and spurred on to his place in the front.
He did more ; he drove ahead of all, and took
the lead on the solitary road making for Osna-
briick. The lights of the city were already
faintly starring the distance, when a sound
coming from in front startled and then thrilled
him. Swift wheels, and the hoofs of a tearing
horse ! There was nothing uncommon in that ;
and yet his heart went cold to hear it. " God
have mercy on me 1 " he muttered : ' I am a
fool ! "
Nearer and nearer came the sound it was
close it was upon him and there rushed past
the shadow of a cabriolet, with a wild woman on
the seat flogging a wild black horse. The night
of her hair streamed behind like a thin cloud
dusted with diamonds, and there was a frenzy
of triumph in her eyes, and on her lips a smile.
And so she passed and was gone.
The Captain turned his horse's head, and
drove back upon the van.
GEORGE I 19
11 Stop her ! " he yelled. " In God's name
stop her Highness before too late ! "
They were jogging on leisurely, and thought
him drunk or demented.
'What Highness, Captain?" they said.
' There has been none passed this way."
And on the word there came a loud cry from
the rear, and for the third time the cavalcade
halted. But von Gastein had sped by like the
wind, and reached to where the royal carriage
was stopped amid a little cloud of equerries ;
and a dismayed, small figure stood upon the
step by the open door.
" His Majesty," said the physician, gasping
over his words, " has had a stroke, and is dead ! "
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE
"IF your life has ever known one act of
self-sacrifice, bear, for your consolation,, its
memory to the scaffold."
With a stiff smile on his lips, and those words
of the President of the reconstituted Court in
his ears, Antoine Quentin Fouquier de Tinville,
late Public Prosecutor to the Revolutionary
Tribunal, turned to follow his guard.
This was at seven o'clock of a May evening,
and twelve or fourteen hours remained to him
in which to collect his thoughts and settle his
affairs. At ten on the following morning the
tumbrils would arrive at the archway to the Cour
du Mai, and he and his fifteen condemned jury-
men would start on their long road of agony
to the Place de la Revolution, whither, or else-
where, on a like errand, he himself had already
despatched so many thousands .
21
22 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
Those words of the President somehow
haunted him.
So many thousands dismissed to their deaths,
without remorse or pity, from that same salle
de la libert^ in which he had just stood his own
trial ! How familiar it had all seemed, how
matter-of-course, how inevitable ! the relentless
hands of the clock, creeping on to the pre-
meditated doom -stroke ; the hungry, bestial
faces lolling at the barriers ; the voices of the
street entering by the open windows, and seeming
to comment derisively on the drawling evidence,
selected to convict. He had known the pro-
cedure so well, had been so instrumental in
creating it, that any defence had well seemed
a mockery of the methods of the Palais de
Justice.
" I have been a busy man," he had said. ' I
forget things. Are we to be held accountable
for every parasite we destroy in crushing but
the life of a monster ? "
That had appeared a reasonable plea. What
did not seem reasonable was the base sums he
had personally amassed out of the destruction
of the parasites, the bribes he had accepted, his
subornation of witnesses, his deafness to the just
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE 23
pleas of unprofitable virtue, his neglect of the
principles of brotherhood. 'He had held one
of the first offices of the fraternal State, and
had made of it a wholly self-seeking vehicle.
He had seen his chance in the mad battle of
a people for liberty, and had used it to rob the
dead. There was, in truth, no more despicable
joint in that " tail of Robespierre " which Sanson
was busily engaged just now in docking than
this same Antoine Quentin. And yet he believed
himself aggrieved.
That night he wrote to his second wife, from
his cell in the Conciergerie, to which he had
been returned, the following words :
" I shall die, heart and hands pure, for having
served my country with too much zeal and
activity, and for having conformed to the wishes
of the Government."
It bettered Wolsey's cry in the singleness of
its reproach.
The problem of all villainy is that it regards
itself with an obliquity of vision for which
it seems hard to hold it accountable. Given
a lack of the moral sense, and how is
a man to make an honest living? Tinville
or de Tinville, mark you became an attorney
24 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
because he was poor, and then a rascal because
he was an attorney. There are always many
thousands living in an odour of respectability
whom fortune alone saves from a like revela-
tion of themselves. But that is not to say that,
in the general purification of society, the lethal
chamber is not the best answer to the problem.
This man was by nature a callous, coarse-
grained ruffian, constitutionally insensible to the
pleas of humanity, and with the self-protective
instinct prominently developed in him as in
brutes. You could not regard his sallow, grim-
jawed face -structure, his staring, over-bushed
black eyes, his thin-lipped mouth, perpetually
mobile in sneers and spitting scorns and
cynicisms, and affect to read in them any under-
suggestion of charity or benevolence. Numbers,
poor obsequious wretches, had essayed the
monstrous pretence, and had pitiably retracted
their heresy under the axe. He was forty-seven
years of age ; he had lived every day of his
later manhood in secret scorn and abuse of the
principles he had hired himself to advocate ; and
only where his personal interests were not
affected had it ever been possible to credit him
with a deed of grace, or, at the best, of passive
indifference .
FOUQUIER-T1NVILLE 25
" // your life has ever known one act of self-
sacrifice! "
'He had done kind things in his time, two or
three ; but had they ever included " one act of
self-sacrifice " ? Had he not conceded them,
rather, for the very contrary reason? He tried
to think it out. The question worried him oddly
and persistently ; it seemed to have absorbed
every other ; he groped perpetually for an
answer to it through the whirling chaos of his
mind. There had been the wife and daughters
of the Marquis de Miranion, whom he had
shielded in their peril because once, when he
had been a young man contemplating Orders,
they had shown him kindness. He suddenly
remembered the case, and remembered too that
his condescension had occurred at a time when
the despotic nature of his office had held him
virtually immune from criticism or misrepre-
sentation. Again, there had been the young
virgins of Verdun, condemned and executed for
offering sweetmeats to the King of Prussia. He
had pitied them ; but pity was inexpensive, and,
at the moment, not unpopular. There had been
what else had there been? He flogged his
brains for a third instance, and, not being
26 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
successful, had to fall back upon the minor
amenities. Little convivial generosities (for he
had been a camarade, a joyeux-vivant, in his
rough way), little family indulgences, and
sensual concessions he had these to set against
the habitual inhuman greed which had made him
the most squalid, soulless Harpagon of his tribe.
Insolent to weakness, truckling to power, his
interest in the awful part he had played had
never risen above self-interest. The very list
of the great names he had extinguished repre-
sented nothing to his ignoble mind but so many
opportunities seized by him to acquire personal
gain or personal safety. Vergniaud the ineffable,
Corday the magnificent, Lavoisier the gentle,
Hubert the dastard, Danton the tremendous
these, to take but a handful, he had despatched
to their graves with a like indifference to the
principles which had brought them subject to
his chastisement. There were no principles in
his creed but self -gain and self-preservation.
From the poor Austrian " plucked hen " at one
limit of the tale to Robespierre at the other,
he had been always as ready to cut short a
saint as a rogue in the vindication of that creed.
He simply could not understand any other ; and
FOUQUIER-TINV1LLE 27
yet the words of the President were worrying
him horribly.
'He had answered them, at the time, after his
nature that is to say, with servility while a
thread of hope remained, and afterwards with
loud scorn and venomous defiance. Brazen by
constitution, he was not to reveal himself soft
metal at the last. Trapped and at bay, he
snarled like a tiger, confessing his yellow fangs
at their longest. Hope might exist for other
men ; but he knew too well it was ended . He
himself had stabbed it to death with a thousand
wounds .
And yet he was racked with a sense of
grievance .
And yet those words of the President
tormented him.
He spoke, and wrote, and raged through-
out the brief interval of life which remained to
him he was seldom still. But always the one
sentence floated in letters of dim fire in the back-
ground of his mind. He had a mad feeling
that if only once he could recall the necessary
instance, he would be equipped with the means
to defy his enemies to defy heaven and hell
and earth. That was a strange obsession for
28 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
a sceptic and atheist, but it clung to him. The
words, and the rebuke that they implied, were
for ever in his brain, crossing its dark wastes
like a shaft of light peopled with tiny travelling
motes, which bore some relation, only in an
insignificant form, to the tremendous business
of the day, and yet seemed to have survived
that business as its only realities. Thus through
the texture of the ray came and went little absurd
memories of a cut that juryman Vilate, a fellow -
prisoner, had made upon his chin in shaving, of
an early queen-wasp that had come and droned
about the presidential desk during the droning
indictment, of the face of an old shrewd, wintry
hag which had peered out, white and momentary,
from among the crowd of spectators, and had
been as swiftly absorbed back into it.
The face ! His wandering mind brought up
on the recollection of it with an instant shock.
The hate, the tumult, all other foam -white faces
of the court, seemed in one moment to drop and
seethe away from it like a spent wave, and to
leave it flung up alone, stark, motionless,
astounding .
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE 29
At ten came the tumbrils, together with the
prescriptive guard of sixty gendarmes to escort
them to the scaffold. The ex-Public Prose-
cutor mounted to his place, dogged, baleful,
heroic, according to his lights. He could not
help bullying even his fellow-sufferers ; but
from the outset there was a strange, searching
gleam in his eyes, which never left them until
they were closed for ever.
From the Quai de 1'Horloge came the first
roar of the mob, as rabid to flesh its teeth in-
the accuser as it had ever been in the accused.
Already, as the Pont Neuf was reached, a
running, howling valetaille of blackguards and
prostitutes was travelling with the procession.
Lumbering onwards, between ranks of many-
windowed houses alive with screaming faces and
waving hands, the carts traversed the rues la
Monoie and du Roule, and turned into the long
stretch of the rue St. Honore, which ended only
at the bend into the great square of the
guillotine .
They cursed him all the way ; he cursed them
back. The habit of his lips spat venom, while
his brain ignored and his vision overlooked
them.
30 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
' Where are thy batches now, Antoine ? " they
screamed.
" Ravening curs ! '* he thundered ; "is thy
bread cheaper lacking them ? "
All the time his eyes were going with the
running crowd, searching it, beating it like
covert, hunting for something on which they
hungered to fasten. And suddenly they found
it the figure of a little withered old woman,,
bearing a gross green umbrella in her hand.
She was there in a moment, moving in pace
with the carts, a dead twig borne on the living
stream, now afloat, now under, but always re-
appearing bobbing out grotesque and vital, and
dancing on her way. She was of the poorest
class, bent, lean, tattered, and her face was .quite
hidden behind the wings of a frowsy cap. No
one seemed to observe her ; only the eyes of
the condemned gloated on her movements,
followed them, watched her every step with an
intense greed that never wavered. For she it
was who stood to him, at last, for that single
act of self-sacrifice with the instance of which
he was to refute his slanderers and defy the
grave.
It had come upon him, all at once, with the
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE 31
memory of that face, projected, livid and instant,
from the mist of faces that had walled him in.
He had recalled how, on a certain wet and dismal
evening months ago, he had been crossing the
Pont St. Michel on his way home after an
exhausting day, when the gleam of a gold coin
lying in the kennel had arrested his attention.
Avaricious in the most peddling sense, he had
been stooping eagerly to grasp his find, when the
interposition of a second body had halted him
unexpectedly on his way.
"Bon Dieu, little citizen, let the old rag-
sorter be happy for once ! "
He had heard the febrile plea ; had checked
himself and had looked. It was an old, old
woman, grotesque, battered, drenched with rain.
In her trembling claw, nevertheless, she had
borne a shapeless green umbrella, an article
sufficiently preposterous in that context of
poverty and sans-culottism. No doubt the dis-
location of the times accounted for her possession
of it. It had burst open as she grabbed at the
coin, and out had rolled a sodden red cabbage,
fished from some mixen. It had borne an un-
canny resemblance to a severed head, and had
made him start for the moment.
32 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
' Let the old rag-sorter be happy for
once."
And, with a laugh, he had let her clutch the
gold, restore the cabbage to its receptacle, and
hobble off breathing benedictions on his head.
God knew why he had let her God would know.
And yet God was a cipher in the scheme of
things. Only, from the moment when the Presi-
dent had uttered those words, he had been
looking he knew it now for the old rag -sorter
to refute them. She could testify, if she would,
that his life had not been entirely devoid of
disinterested self-sacrifice. -He had once, for
another's sake, refused a ten -franc piece.
>How had she risen, and whence followed?
There had been something unearthly in the
apparition ; there was something unearthly in
his present possession by it. Yet, from the
moment of his mental identification of the face,
he had expected to renew the vision of it, to
take it up somewhere between the prison and
the scaffold, and he would have been perplexed
only to find his expectation at fault. His
witnesses were not wont to fail him, and this,
the most personal of any, he could not afford
to spare. He dwelt upon the flitting figure with
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE 33
a passion of interest which blinded him to the
crowd, deafened him to its maledictions. Auto-
matically he roared back blasphemy for hate ;
subliminally he was alone in Paris with his old
rag-sorter.
He could never see her face ; yet he knew
it was she as surely as he knew himself. She
went on and on, keeping pace with the cart,
threading the throng, and always, it seemed,
unobserved by it.
And then, all in a moment, the guillotine
and he was going up the steps to it !
He turned as he reached the platform. For
an instant, tumult and a sense of mad disaster
hemmed him in. There was a foam of upturned
faces, vaster than anything he had yet realised ;
there was the tall, lean yoke, with its wedge of
dripping steel swung up between ; there was the
lunette, the little window, and the corners, just
visible, of the deep basket beyond into which
he was to vomit his life. They were hauling
away the trunk of the last victim, a ludicrous,
flabby welter, into the red cart adjacent. What
a way to treat a man soulless, obscene ! For
one instant a deadly sickness overpowered him ;
he turned his head away and saw her panting
3
34 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
up the steps, confessed, but yet unnoticed,
a jocund leer on her withered old face.
Then suddenly something happened. The
thundering voice of the crowd rose to an
exultant pitch ; there was a crash, a numbing
jerk and he was erect again, amazed and flung
at liberty.
But even in that supreme moment his vision
sought out his old rag-sorter, and was for her
alone. She was down on her knees, eager and
mumbling, stuffing something into her green
umbrella. What was it a red cabbage a
head? He caught a glimpse of it as it went
in and it was his own head the head of
Antoine Quentin Fouquier de Tinville, ex-Public
Prosecutor to the Revolutionary Tribunal.
THE QUEEN'S NURSE
FRIVOLOUS she may have been, shallow and
light-hearted as a brook, but not heartless. Her
nurse she who, in modern parlance, had " taken
her from the month " and had fed and bred
her in the house of her father, Sir John Seymour,
of Wiltshire, knight would always defend her
tooth and nail from that charge. And when at
last, having followed her nursling's dancing
career through the Courts of the old gloomy
Louvre and the more splendid Whitehall, she
came to see her supplant in the royal caprice
the unhappy Queen whose maid-of-honour she
had been, she would allow in her presence no
breath of detraction to slur the good fame of
her darling, but would constantly aver that she
had fought against the inevitable with all the
desperation of which her buoyant nature was
capable. Jane could never say nay to the least
plausible beggar in the world, she would declare ;
35
36 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
and what was her chance when that suppliant
was King Harry himself? She loved life, to be
sure, the sweet butterfly who would not with
such a disposition? And when the alternative
was to be broken on a wheel I How many,
though deeper ones, would have chosen that in
her place, she would like to know? And here
was she about to justify her monarch's choice by
presenting him with a male heir the heir for
whom he had been growling and raging these
twenty years past. She had no doubt it would
be a male, since her bird always gave every one
what he asked. And she had come to nurse her
nursling through her first troublous days in this
the new great palace of Hampton that the red
Cardinal had built.
So she believed up to the last, and at that
last the King, the least plausible beggar, sat all
alone one wild October evening in the great oriel
window of the great hall at the Court. It blew
and rained boisterously without, and the wet, red
leaves were dashed against the glass, where they
ran down like gouts of blood. Their hue was
reflected in the royal eyes, which stared out
upon the desolate prospect between wrath and
anxiety. Henry's conscience was gnawing at
THE QUEEN'S NURSE 37
his heart , in truth, and despot -like he resented
the pain.
The tapers burned under that vaulted gloom
like glow-worms in a dark avenue ; the residue
of a discarded feast lay tumbled about the tables .
Apart from the golden dishes, the piles of fruit,
the crusted goblets and great flagons of wine,
he sat in his tremendous isolation, and fought
the fight between desire and humanity. It was
never, alas ! but a brief struggle with him. He
rose in a moment, a heavy, butcher-like figure
of a man, a huge common hulk made formidable
by padded doublet and " blistered " sleeves
all roped and starred with gems, and, his lips
puffing, the scant ginger hair bristling on his
swollen neck and jowls, thundered an order into
space. Instant to it an obsequious page leaped
into the Presence.
" Sir Anthony Denny summon him."
The page vanished ; the King strode up and
down. At the fourth turn he paused to see
a figure bow before him. This figure, for con-
trast, was robed all in black, with a tight coif
on its head, and, hanging from its shoulders, a
long, sleeveless gown edged with brown fur.
It was the figure, livid and drawn-faced, of the
38 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
chief barber -surgeon attending on her Majesty
the Queen's confinement.
" Sir Anthony," said the King, " make note
of our decision. Meseemeth in this realm of
ours that wives be plenty, but heirs most sorely
lack. Poor Jane must suffer for the succession.
If one must perish He paused.
; ' It is even so, your Majesty," murmured the
physician .
The King stamped his foot, and turned
away.
" I must have my heir," he said. " God's
blood, I must and will ! "
But that night, as he was crossing a corridor
to his cabinet, an old woman broke upon him
with tears and lamentations.
" They are killing my bird ! "
" Peace, fool ! " said the King, harsh and
lowering. " I must have mine heir, though all
birds fell dumb from this moment."
She clung to him, but he shook her off
roughly, and went on his way. She followed,
importunate and beyond fear.
" Spare my nursling I She is one and only ;
thou canst not renew her ; but many shall be
her gifts of love to thee."
THE QUEEN'S NURSE 39
He turned like a goaded bull, and the woman
was dragged away.
That night the little Prince was born ; and
thereafter the wreck from which he had been
delivered settled down, and on the twelfth day
it sank into the fathomless deeps.
The King was sorry for a while ; but he had
his heir to reward him for the sacrifice he had
made. Mary Tudor, a girl of twenty, and
already as sour as crabs, was the little dead
queen's chief mourner. The trumpets brayed
her obsequies, the laureate sang them in exe-
crable verse, the baby a pinched atom
screamed them. Only the old nurse sat dumb
and dry-eyed, taking no notice of anything.
She would have nothing to do with the Prince,
craved or claimed no part in his rearing. But
presently she took her spinning-wheel to the
little dark room by the chapel which had been
allotted her ; and there she would sit all day
drawing flax from the distaff.
One noon, the door being open, the King
in passing saw her thus occupied, and went in.
She neither moved nor acknowledged his pre-
sence, but went on with her spinning. His eyes
began to redden in the way all knew.
40 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
'What spinnest thou?" he demanded.
" Flax," she answered, grim and quiet, without
stopping in her work.
"For what?" he roared.
' Thy shroud," she said, " and that of all
thy house."
Those with him thought the roof would have
fallen. He raised his own blazing eyes to it, as
if in momentary doubt of his omnipotence. But
when he spoke at last it was noted with amaze-
ment that his words were temperate.
' That shall we see, old dotard," he said.
" Dispart her wheel and her."
She stood up, with a smile on her thin lips,
as they snatched her wheel away.
" Dispose them," said the King, " where
neither may avail the other. And, for her, take
her incontinent in her sorcery, and put her where
she may weave a shroud of darkness for ever-
more."
He spoke, and passed out ; and, as he had
ordered, so was it done. The spinning-wheel
was cast into a cupboard under the great stair-
case, and the nurse disappeared from human ken.
Nothing more was heard of her for ten long
years .
THE QUEEN'S NURSE 41
At the end of that time the King's majesty
lay ill. His huge bombard of a body was swollen
with gout and dropsy ; a mere rust of hair re-
mained to his gross head ; his hearing was
capricious, and his eyes rheumy with half-
blindness . He had grown slovenly in his dress ;
his every breath bullied the sweet air for ease
and comfort ; and, to cap all, his temper had
grown with his deformities till hardly a man
durst meet his eye.
Lying at Whitehall, he had a dream one night
which troubled him. He sent for Sir Anthony
Denny, always now in close attendance, and,
heaving himself on his elbow, glared at the
physician through a mist of anguish.
" Give me," he said, " to mend this whirring
in my brain."
Sir Anthony, quaking in his list slippers, pre-
scribed and administered a febrifuge. It availed
little. Day and night the buzzing noise went
on until it grew to madness. One morning the
King groaned in torture : "It droneth, droneth
for ever like a wheel ! " and of a sudden sat
up as if stricken.
" The old beldame's ! " he whispered. " What
of it?"
42 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
It was some time before the alarmed leech
could gather the import of his question, and
then he hurried to have inquiries made. A
special courier was despatched boot and spur
to Hampton Court. But in these full years the
very memory of the incident had vanished, and
none knew where the wheel had been deposited.
Only it seemed that others there had been
haunted of late by a mysterious sound, so that
none dared venture by the great staircase whence
it appeared to proceed. And that was the
message returned, in fear and trembling, to the
tyrant.
He raged : " I will have no mysteries in my
house. Pluck the stairway down."
A despot's will is law. In preparing to obey
it the masons came upon the wheel. The King,
being informed of the discovery, roared like a
wounded tiger.
" Burn the thing to ashes ! " he thundered,
and, on the very word, turned white and
mumbled. " Nay," he said, in a fallen voice,
" put it where the arts of Satan may not prevail
with it ; hide it away in my royal chapel, and the
fiend shall be baffled. And look you that
none comes near me in the night again to choke
me in my shroud."
THE QUEEN'S NURSE 43
His mind was impaired ; it was evident that
he was approaching his end ; yet through all
his desperation and mental anguish the inflexible
will, which had surmounted all other wills of
half the world, remained true, as history knows,
to its dogged traditions. Almost his last breath
was given to confirm the death sentence passed
on a great subject. If one bitterer pang than
another rent his released spirit, it must have
been that which showed him his final vengeance
unaccomplished .
And, in the meanwhile, none dared approach
him with the truth of his nearing dissolution.
He had killed men in the past for prophesying
his mortality. He had held death so cheaply,
had carried it so lightly in the hollow of his
hand, that he could not believe it capable of
striking at his omnipotence.
But there came a time when the truth could
be no longer withheld from him, and Sir Anthony
Denny was the one deputed to break it. He
approached his task with a very natural appre-
hension, the more so as his Majesty had that
morning shown some increased signs of con-
fidence in his own recovery. He greeted the
physician's return with a distorted smile.
44 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
' I shall live to plague mine enemies yet,"
he said, "so I can pluck this cursed hornet
from my brain. Look you, man, I see a cause.
It is my mind accusing me of an over-harshness
in the past. Poor Jane her nurse, that old de-
mented fool 1 Well, she loved her ; the debt is
paid ; let her go free, I say."
The physician stood aghast. He had been
half expecting this thunderbolt ever since the
King's sick fancy had raised the dust of a long-
forgotten sentence.
" Your Majesty," he whispered, " your
Majesty ! The beldame died in prison this very
day se'nnight."
" This day ! " The King struggled into a
sitting posture. His face was like nothing
human. " This day se'nnight 1 " He battled for
breath. " It was when the sound began. God's
mercy 1 the wheel ! "
" Alas, your Majesty ! " half whimpered the
leech ; " there be those who say they cannot
hear themselves pray for its whirring. The
chapel is deserted."
The King fell back, and raised his hands
feebly, as if drawing something over his face.
For an instant it appeared to the agitated
THE QUEEN'S NURSE 45
physician as if a shroud of white had actually
hidden it ; but, on nearer approach, he saw that
it was the frost of death that had fallen.
Long years after, a tradition which had for
ages associated a muffled., incomprehensible dron-
ing with the occurrence of any death in the
palace received, " in the white winter of its age,"
a curious justification. Some workmen, in
breaking through a wall of the old chapel, came
upon an ancient spinning-wheel hidden away
behind the panelling.
LOUIS XIV
LOOKING over the inner Cour de Marbre at
Versailles Palace were two little rooms, in the
main pile of the building, which constituted the
very core of privacy in the Petits Appartements
du Roi. One was his Majesty's " den," the other
his wig-room, and both were elegantly simple,
almost severe, in their appointments. In the
Galerie des Glaces adjoining, marble, paint,
crystal, and silver, in lavish profusion, repre-
sented to the public eye the habitual equipage
of a Grand Monarch ; these more restful sur-
roundings represented to the monarch himself
his secret possession of some emotions felt in
common with the vulgar herd, to wit, the joys
of a retreat where he could do just as he liked,
without the necessity of posing to himself or
others. A few chairs, a table, a secretaire all
profusely painted and be-ormolued, it was true,
but for the simple reason that beauty unadorned
48 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
was unprocurable in the Paris of the period
sober hangings, a quiet picture or so such was
the furniture of the little apartment appropriated
by Louis XIV. to his inmost meditations.
We find him in this distinguished snuggery
on a certain afternoon of the year 1704 the
twenty-first of August, to be exact. It is within
three days of St. Bartholomew, a feast which
his Most Catholic Majesty makes a particular
point of solemnising. He is, in fact, pondering
a minor detail of its observances at this very
moment .
As he sits, his eyes fixed on nothingness in
crinkled abstraction, we will seize the fearful
opportunity to scrutinise him. He is sixty-six
years of age, and in suggestion, we think, more
like a queen-dowager than a monarch. His
minute stature, his old-matronly face, worldly,
shrewd, not unkindly ; his immense falling wig,
resembling a cap with hanging wattles ; his
feminine particularities and prejudices, all com-
bine to convey that false impression of his sex.
He has a woman's tastes for dainty clothes and
china and gossip ; I am convinced that, were
it possible to conceive him stooping to the con-
descension, he would play the part of Madame
LOUIS XIV 49
more realistically than the Chevalier d'Eon him-
self came to play it.
He is attired (for monarchs do not dress) in
a full-skirted coat of apricot velvet, with silver
frogs. The coat is left unbuttoned from neck
to waist, revealing an ample breast of cambric
and a rich lace cravat. His white silk stockings
are rolled back over their garters, which are
fastened above the knee, and embrace breeches
of the same velvet material ; and stiff diamond -
buckled shoes, with square toes, long tongues,
and very high silver heels, complete the exquisite
picture.
So he poses, and posed, as punctilious in his
homage to himself as any courtier. If he did not
appear, in bulk, a star of the first magnitude, he
was as brilliant a centre as his own dazzled system
need desire.
An odd train of thought was in Louis's mind
as he sat thus gazing into vacancy. The near-
ness of the Feast of St. Bartholomew was its
central subject, since it entailed the repetition
of a custom long practised by him to significant
effect. Or had there been any connection
between the custom and the effect? That was
just the .question in his mind. He was
4
50 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
inclining, for some extraordinary reason, to
doubt for the first time their relationship. It
had come upon him all in an instant at what,
adopting the fashion, we must call a psycho-
logic moment in his career.
He was not, according to some people, a
really wise man ; but there was no denying that
he was a supremely self -sufficient . It had never
occurred to him, in all his life, that his judgment
could possibly be surpassed by another. That
was the queer thing. He had tacitly, almost
unconsciously, it seemed, permitted, in one
curious instance, his mental supremacy to sub-
ordinate itself to a superstition. He appeared
to recognise the fact all at once, and with an
amazement that was like one of those sudden
developments of reason which a child will
exhibit between a single night's sleeping and
waking. Something had happened to him, and
he saw himself in a moment not a fool ; that
were impossible but, in a certain solitary direc-
tion, a dupe to his own modesty. Quality,
kingship, all his greatness as it stood, he had
let be accounted, by default, less to the essence
of divinity in himself than to a paltry charm,
in the accidental possession of which any quack-
LOUIS XIV 51
salver might boast himself omniscient. He felt
strangely small all of a sudden.
Presently he stirred, and threw out his chest.
Small ! He, Louis ? Had he not made France
what she was ? Had he not in the blood of
two great wars, prolonged, triumphant, deadly,
cemented the fabric of state of which he stood,
golden, sacrosanct, the supreme expression ? Was
he not at this date the most powerful monarch,
the most glorious, the most dreaded that a
dazzled world had ever worshipped? And since
some there remained who questioned his pre-
eminence, were not his armies at this moment
opening a third victorious campaign in order to
re-convince the recalcitrants? And to what was
all this success to be attributed to his own
mastering genius, inspired, stupendous, or to his
possession of a trumpery talisman, whose favour,
even, was conditional?
He drew in his breath, with a slight hissing
sound, as if he had been stung. Superstition?
an aberration, to which the mightiest were
subject. He thanked his majestic stars only
that the knowledge of it was private to
himself.
He half rose, and sank into his chair again,
52 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
with a frown. It was his custom, he told him-
self haughtily, to command Destiny, not truckle
to it. How had he come to concede even this
single exception to his custom? There was a
blind spot, it was said, in every eye ; perhaps
there was some like defect in every kingly con-
stitution. The heel of Achilles ! Or, maybe
what else?
Age!
The word seemed to smite him out of the
depths. 'He almost jumped where he sat. This
business, so childish in its credulity 1 Merciful
Heaven I was it possible he could be verging
on his second childhood he, Louis, who had
almost come to convince himself that he was
destined to the fiery chariot? Of late the sun
discs, the emblems of the Roi soleil, had
increased in number on his walls and ceil-
ings. Perhaps they, too, were a sign of his
dotage .
He hesitated no longer, but, rising hastily,
sought the secretaire against the wall, and, feel-
ing in a very remote and secret little recess of
it, brought out a tiny packet, somewhat like a
'Hebrew phylactery in suggestion. It was no
more than a couple of inches or so square, of
LOUIS XIV 53
vellum, flattish in form, and closely sealed with
an odd, incomprehensible device. A number of
pin -pricks perforated it.
As he stood, holding the thing in his hand,
the time and occasion on which he had consented
to its acceptance rose vividly before him. It
had been a black night in a certain October
long past, when a dark Italian monk, a famed
astrologer, had waited on him by appointment
in his Sevres villa. He recalled how, conse-
quent on his casting of the royal horoscope, this
sardonic Genethliac had offered him (for a
weighty consideration), as a defence against
certain threatened complications in his royal
ecliptic, the very talisman he now regarded, and
which, saddled with a condition, was to procure
him consistent happiness and prosperity through-
out his reign. And he recalled how he had
accepted the terms, covenanting, on pain of
disaster, to preserve the charm intact, and,
moreover, to plunge, on the occasion of every
notable Church festival, a pin through its
sides .
A na'ive undertaking, perhaps, yet seeming
justified in its results. Half credulous, half con-
temptuous, and entirely good-humoured, he had
54 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
been faithful to the conditions, and had certainly
prospered. The thing had become a habit with
him, and his conscience had never felt a scruple
in its performance. Why should it? Was not
the bestower of the gift a consecrated priest?
'He could find a hundred reasons for tolerating
his superstition, and not one for condemning it.
Probably, if the truth were known, the packet
contained what might be called a black, or con-
trary relic a lock of Judas's hair, a shaving of
Ananias's toe-nail, a scale of Saladin's liver, or
one shed by the devil himself when he struggled
in St. Dunstan's tongs. Or more likely it con-
tained nothing at all, and had served for a mere
trick to extort money.
He held it out at arm's length, with a smile
on his face. The absurdity of his compliance
had struck him all at once acutely. That his
destiny, through all these long years, could have
hung at the mercy of so ridiculous a trifle I He
was great because he was great, a conqueror
by force of inherent genius. Away for once
and for ever with the imposture !
One moment he held the packet up to the
light, and saw a hundred tiny stars shine through
the punctures he had made in it on successive
LOUIS XIV 55
feasts ; the next he broke the seals, unfolded
the vellum, stared, dropped the whole on the
floor, and staggered back as if stricken to the
heart .
There, at his feet, it lay revealed before him
the thing that he had done ; and hie knew
that he, the most Christian King, he who had
revoked the Edict of Nantes, he who had rooted
up the tares and made all France one crop of
catholicity, he who stood for Heaven's vicegerent,
its high priest, its super-pope, had been for years
stabbing the Blessed Host, the consecrated
wafer !
As he thus dwelt, motionless, aghast, a knock
came at his door. He collected himself by a
wrenching effort, and bade the intruder into his
presence .
It was a courier from the Marechal de
Villeroy, introduced by a favoured courtier.
Both men were agitated and death-pale. They
came to inform his Majesty that his entire army,
under Marshal Tallard, had been destroyed, or
had capitulated to the Duke of Marlborough at
Blenheim, in Bavaria.
The King at first answered nothing ; but his
eyes were observed to wander towards a scrap
56 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
of vellum, apparently insignificant, which lay
upon the floor. And then he recovered
himself, with a courageous smile.
" But that is very bad news, my friend," he
said.
NAROLEON
IT was the fourth of July, 1809, and a
thunderous, close evening. In Lobau, the
largest of the five islands on the Danube,
where were the imperial headquarters, the huge
machinery of war, human and insentient, was
getting up steam, so to speak, for the morrow's
milling, and eliciting, as its flywheel slowly
revolved, an automatic response in all its myriad
parts from Pressburg to Vienna. The occasion,
it might be said, was an emergency occasion.
If the Emperor, himself commanding, had not
been thrashed by the Austrians, under the
Archduke Charles, a couple of months earlier
at Aspern, his retreat upon the islands had
looked so much like a defeat, that for the
moment his supremacy, moral and material,
hung in the balance. For the first time the
Grand Army had suffered a shock to its amour-
propre and its hitherto invincible faith in its
57
58 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
leader. A little might turn the scale, and send
all its disintegrated legions scuttling back to
Strasburg.
That the impenetrable " Antichrist " himself
was fully aware of the nature of the hazard there
is no reason to doubt, or that he was concen-
trating all the deepest faculties of his genius
on the delivery of a blow which should be
immense and final. He was much alone in his
tent, and his orders were laconic and momen-
tous. The ordinary mind cannot picture such
a situation, and dismiss its surrounding distrac-
tions one might say its hauntings. There were
the arsenals, the forges, the rope walks, the sheds
for boat-mending, the canteens and parks of
artillery all over the five islands ; there were
the boats themselves in the river, scores of them,
and the massive chains which bound them into
bridges ; there were the ammunition wagons and
their loaded boxes, the forests of piled arms,
the tossed oceans of tents, the miles of tethered
horses, the ring-fences of palisades ; and there
were the troops for last, enough to people a
great city, and each man of them as cheerily
busy as if he were one of an exodus of Israelites
picketing on his way to the promised land. Seven
NAPOLEON 59
weeks before this same island of Lobau had
been littered with the legs and arms of those
wounded at Aspern limbs hastily severed and
flung helter-skelter among the grass of its
meadows. Its soil was soaked with blood ;
thousands of mangled men and horses had sunk
screaming in the waters which thundered by its
shores ; a hail of iron had smashed into it and
its even more luckless neighbours ; fire from
burning mills had roared down upon its bridges,
melting men and metal into one horrible anneal-
ing ; it had heaved and vomited with the filth
of war. And had all that hideous picture a
place in the background of the master-mind, or
had its present aspect, of busy preparation for
another scene as sickening, or worse? One
sorrow may have haunted him, one bloody ghost
out of all the multitudes the figure of his old
comrade Marshal Lannes, as he had seen him
borne hither on a litter of branches and muskets
on the fatal day one shattered horror more to
feed the carnage. He had been moved a
moment, had wept, and kissed the dying man.
An unconscious thought of him may have lin-
gered still like a melancholy shadow in his soul.
But, for the rest, one may be sure that he looked
60 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
over and beyond all these things, as a great archi-
tect sees through the maze of scaffolding the
glory of the fabric his soul has raised. This man,
it is to be supposed, ever regarded a battlefield
but as a map, so clear to his mind, that, as the
opposing troops manoeuvred on it, he could check
or reinforce them, show them the way to defeat
or victory with his eyes shut. He was a calcu-
lating " freak," and as such superhuman or
superdiabolic.
As the dark gathered, lit only by the flickering
lightnings, an immense hush fell over the islands.
Every lamp and fire was extinguished ; the multi-
tudinous tramp of moving hosts mingled with
the boom of the river, and became part with it ;
the song of the bugles, soft and short, mounted
on the wind, and fled with its shrilling through
the branches of the trees. One might never
have guessed the universal movement that was
taking itself cover, as it were, under these
silences, as if the islands themselves had been
unmoored, and were drifting soundlessly, with
their freight of death, towards the shores.
In the midst, a little cry, sharp and sudden,
rang out in the neighbourhood of the Emperor's
tent it might have been a trodden bird's ; it
NAPOLEON 61
passed, and was not repeated. A young officer,
de Sainte Croix, of the personal staff, hurried
towards the spot. It was he, vigorous and
enthusiastic, who had often gained the Emperor's
approval by climbing tall trees on the island to
watch the Austrian preparations on the distant
plain. 'He found a sentry standing by a clump
of bushes, and another, one of the Old Guard,
lying prone at his feet.
" Malediction ! " he whispered. " Who had
the daring?, "
The man saluted.
" It is Corporal Lebrun, Monsieur. He gave
one cry thus ; and I saw him fall. He was hit
over the heart at Essling", and only his cartouchier
saved him ; but he has complained since of
an oppression. I think the closeness, the
thunder "
The officer interrupted him :
' That will do. You had no right to leave
your post. Return to it."
The soldier saluted again, wheeled, and re-
treated. De Sainte Croix bent over the fallen
man.
" How is it, Lebrun ?j "
The corporal lay with a ghastly face, his breath
62 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
labouring, his chest lifting in spasms. He was not
a young man, yet prematurely aged, toughened,
grizzled, tanned like old leather in the service
of his god. There was a wild, lost look in his
eyes which betokened the coming end. He
struggled to speak.
" Lift me up, monsieur, in God's name 1 "
De Sainte Croix took the livid head on his
knee. The posture somewhat eased the fighting
heart.
" Courage, comrade ! This fit will pass with
the oppression. Why, I myself feel it I. When
the storm breaks "
The blue lips caught at the word.
" When the storm breaks 1 What will he have
answered?, "
" Heft Who ? " said the young officer.
The dying corporal, twisting in his arms,
made an awful gesture towards the Emperor's
tent.
" As always," said de Sainte Croix, " with the
cry to victory."
The other clutched his hand with a grip like
madness.
" I believe it, monsieur. He will have
renewed the compact."
NAPOLEON 63
' What compact, my poor friend? "
"With the red man."
De Sainte Croix could hardly catch the
answer.
He laughed men must laugh, though they
died for it and spoke a soothing: word. He
believed the poor fellow delirious.
'* I have laughed too, I have scorned, I have
feigned to disbelieve," said Lebrun, thickly and
passionately. " I laugh no longer. Marengo,
Hohenlinden, Jena, Austerlitz what mortal brain
unassisted could have so added victory to victory,
could so, and for so long a time, have held the
world's destinies in the hollow of one hand? I
am a soldier, monsieur, a simple, uneducated
man, and yet I know thing's and I have seen
things that would make the wise falter in their
wisdom."
' This red man, amongst others," said the
young officer conciliatingly.
A quiver of lightning at the moment glazed
the dying face. Great drops stood on it ; the
fallen cheeks were filling with shadow ; the eye-
balls shone like porcelain. In spite of himself,
a shiver ran down de Sainte Croix's spine.
There was certainly something uncanny in the
64 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
night, even to war-toughened nerves. Lebrun's
voice had sunk to a whisper as he answered :
" Didst thou never hear of the General's
proclamation in Egypt to the Ulemas and
Shereefs? He stood then on shifting sand
the English sea-captain had just beaten us. A
false step, and he were engulfed for ever. And,
to gain the people, he told them that their God
had sent him to destroy the enemies of Islam
and to trample on the cross."
" Policy, Lebrun," said de Sainte Croix,
lifting his hand to wipe his own wet forehead.
" He never meant it."
" Then why, monsieur, did this blasphemy
follow immediately on the visit of the red man?
There had been no hint of it before and after-
wards he swore to them that their false bible
was the true word."
De Sainte Croix snapped somewhat fret-
fully :
"This red man? Who the devil is he?"
A shudder quite convulsed the corporal.
" Thou hast spoken it, monsieur."
" A figment of your excited fancy, soldier."'
" With these eyes I saw him, monsieur. It
was ten years ago. I was on guard in a corridor
NAPOLEON 65
of the palace at Cairo, and there came out of
the Generals cabinet one who had never gone
in. Little he was, like a child of a hundred
years, and he had on a blood-red bernous, and
his face was black as a Nubian's. Only at
the lips it pulsed with fire, and fire, dim and
wavering, travelled under his cheeks. One
moment thus he stood I could have touched him
and, behold 1 he was a little draped black
figure of bronze that stood on a pedestal by a
red curtain. It had always been there I rubbed
my eyes "
" Voila la chose I "
" Monsieur, I dared. I listened at the
General's door, and I heard him laugh softly to
himself he who never laughs and he said :
4 Greet thee, Zamiel ! Ten years I have given
thee to make me a god, or our compact is
ended ! ' Monsieur, the ten years are passed,
and to-night he stands again, as he stood then,
at the parting of the ways."
A flash, more brilliant than any that had yet
shown, weltered and was gone. The dying
soldier lifted his head quickly, with a fearful
cry :
" Ne savoir a quel saint se vouer ! I saw
5
66 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
him again but now, before I fell, I saw the red
man again, and he passed into the Emperor's
tent ! "
The thunder followed on his word, with a
rolling slam that shook the island.
" Lebrun 1 " cried the young officer. " Le-
brun ! "
The head was like a stone in his hands ; he
peered down sickly ; the soul of the corporal
had been shaken out of him with the crash.
And, even as de Sainte Croix rose, the storm
broke, and under cover of it, and of the tear-
ing wind and rain, began the first of those
silent movements which were to precipitate the
gathered hosts of the French upon the opposite
shore and victory.
A moment later the young man was back at
his post, amid a shadowy flurry of equerries and
staff officers. All seemed confusion, but it was
the kaleidoscopic agitation which falls into place
and order. As he stood, the enemy's guns,
startled into action, flashed deep and melancholy
from the distant blackness, their roar mingling
with the thunder's.
It was in an instant of quivering light that,
looking down, he was aware of something strange
NAPOLEON 67
and red standing by his side. It might have been
a child, a dwarf, a cuirassier's scarlet cloak,
grotesquely alive. In the momentary blinding
darkness which followed it was lost to him. He
heard, as his eyes recovered their focus, a
measured voice speaking close by :
" I think we have them, M. de Sainte Croix,
since I have resolved to renew my compact with
Destiny."
<He started violently, saluted instinctively. It
was the Emperor himself.
" By God's favour, sire," he said.
" Precisely," said the Emperor dryly, and
walked away.
LEONORA OF TOLEDO
" FOR the fruit of the blood belongs to those
who bring the price of love."
So, but in a less rapt and mystical sense than
that in which the holy virgin of Siena had
poured out her soul, thought the young Duchess
Leonora, wife of Pietro, second son of Cosimo
da Medici, Grand Duke of Florence.
The price of love, the price of love ! For
eleven days she had wept, burning to pay it
indignant, passionate, heart-broken, she had told
herself. And now that the altar was ready and
the blade bared, what was her desire? Only for
mercy only for life, shameful and abandoned
if needs must be, but life on any terms, the
least regarded, the most despised. She was so
young, so untutored ; she had been so led astray
by the casuistries of gallantry in this city of
profligates. She would confess her sin, plead
its extenuations, abase herself before the knees
70 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
of the father of her child. That at least existed
in pledge of her wifely loyalty ; no man else
could boast so much of her. She had borne
that agony, that rapture, with a pure conscience.
Surely the father would not murder the mother
of his babe I So monstrous a deed would cry
aloud for vengeance even in this place of
monsters !
And even while she sat with white face and
staring eyes, gnawing a tumbled strand of her
beautiful auburn hair, she knew that all the
extenuations she could plead were but so many
aggravations of her crime ; that the reptile she
had been forced into marrying had insidiously
encouraged her infidelity with this very purpose
of ridding himself of her ; that all the light and
flower of her youth were but incentives to the
lustful cruelty of one destitute of compassion
and nobility. She was to die, somewhere, some-
how,; and in all that city she had no one
courageous friend to whom to turn, no hope
anywhere of refuge or escape. Policy, the policy
of the devil in this cursed Gehenna, must turn
a deaf ear, a blind eye to her peril. The Duke
himself -
She shuddered from the very poison of his
LEONORA OF TOLEDO 71
name. The base emotions it recalled robbed
death for the moment of its worst terrors,
picturing its shadowy, arms the sole merciful
asylum from memories too dreadful for
endurance. Death, no grisly phantom, but the
kind mother, lulling to eternal forgetfulness !
Ah ! but she was so young, so young ! She
buried her face in her hands, and rocked herself
to and fro, moaning.
* * * *
Cosimo, the first of the junior branch of the
house of Medici, had come to reign in Florence
as absolute Duke in 1537. His wife, Leonora
(daughter of Don Pedro de Toledo, Spanish
viceroy at Naples), had died twenty-five years
later, after having borne him several children,
of whom Pietro was the second son. Within a
month or two of her death the Duke was involved
in an intrigue with a second Leonora de Toledo,
niece of the first, a beautiful child who had been
placed at the Tuscan Court under her aunt's
care. The circumstances of the liaison being
revealed caused such a scandal that Cosimo, in
order to quiet it, married the girl to his son
Pietro, a libertine of the sickliest odour. The
inevitable result followed in that city of furious
72 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
passions and perverted morals . The young wife,
despised and neglected by her husband, robbed,
moreover, of her self-respect, accepted the usual
cavalier e-servente in this case one Alessandro
Gagi more, it would seem, out of pique than
inclination. At least, when, the flirtation having
been noted, Gagi, privately warned of its danger,
had elected to resolve a poignant difficulty by
retiring into a monastery, Leonora had had no
difficulty in transferring her affections to an
object more daring, or less discreet, than her
melancholy new-fledged young Capuchin. The
fresh fancy was a youthful blood of Saint-
itienne, and this time it was a case of genuine
passion into which she rushed headstrong. She
may have affected to believe that indifference
was the worst thing she had to fear from her
husband ; if she did, she lied to herself, as
women will when their desire runs ahead of
their prudence. The case of Alessandro Gagi
was her sufficient admonition. The dog was not
asleep because his eyes were shut.
The lovers met ; and this time there was no
hint of espionage vouchsafed. But .quite sud-
denly St. litienne, as we must call him, was
ordered off to the Island of Elba. The pretext
LEONORA OF TOLEDO 73
for his banishment was a fatal duel in which
he had lately been engaged with a young noble-
man, Francesco Ginori ; the real object, un-
doubtedly, was the procuring of incriminating
evidence of the liaison in the shape of
written correspondence. St. jfctienne, recklessly
enamoured, was not long in providing this, or
the spies of the husband in intercepting! it.
The guilty lover was seized, brought back
privately to the prison of the Bargello, and
there at dead of night strangled. The
news of his death was conveyed to Leonora,
whether in malice or sympathy, by Eran-
cesco, her brother-in-law; and for eleven
days thereafter she wept, heedless of conse-
quences, abandoned to her grief. She dreamed
in that time that she had the stuff of heroism in
her ; and her illusionment only came to vanish
utterly with the withdrawal of the envoy who,
on the twelfth day, had brought her a message
from her husband.
This envoy's voice, his figure, each as chill,
as precise, as faultless as the other, still vividly
haunted her as she sat. Not a word or tone!
of his had been ill-considered ; not a hair had
been out of place in his little pointed black
74 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
beard, which had lain upon a ruff like biscuit
china. 'His cold, exquisite hands, his jerkin and
trunk hose of white silver-sprigged satin, his
ivory sword-scabbard all had been so many
graduated harmonies in a picture of icy perfec-
tion. He had looked a man built out of frost ;
and from the heart of frost had come his words,
keen, dispassionate, killing :
" His Grace, Madonna, much concerning him-
self with a distemper into which he hears you
reported to be fallen, entreats your company at
his Villa of Cafaggiodo, where he is in hopes the
silence and the sweeter air will restore to you.
your health."
And she had looked at him, with a sudden
catch at her heart, though the flame of defiance
in her still flickered.
" I thank you, Messer. For when is my doom
pronounced ? "
Whereat the envoy had raised one white hand
ineffably.
" Alas, Madonna 1 Is our dear prince's tender
consideration so hurtful? Even now he waits
to welcome you.* 1
Then she had put out entreating arms to him.
" Messer a little time to prepare to say
LEONORA OF TOLEDO 75
goodbye. I have a son, Messer, a very little 1
child. Look, this is the Vecchio, is it not the
Duke's palace? I am quite alone in my corner
of it, caged, shunned like a leper, yet my every
exit from it is guarded. Give me this night
in which to part seemingly with all I have left
to love on earth."
'His laugh had sounded like the tinkle of ice
on glass.
"Love? You wilfully postpone it, madam.
Yet will I venture to enlarge upon my creden*
tials to the extent your Grace demands.
To -morrow ' '
" I will deliver myself without fail to the
sacrifice, Messer."
And, with a patient, deprecating shrug, in
which shoulders, eyebrows, and lips were all in-
cluded, he had made his profound obeisance,
and left her. And then I <
It came upon her like a stroke, electric,
instant, agonising out of numbness, She did
not want to die ; she had only been trickinjg
herself in the trappings of tragedy ; like the
spoiled beauty she was, she had believed her-
self irresistible though playing with devils ; and
each day's grace had but confirmed her in her
76 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
wilful self-delusion. And now at last she was
awake and mad with fear confessed now to her-
self for the unheroic creature of selfishness and
vanity which her deeds had already proclaimed
her to the world.
Passion, indeed, often speaks big until it finds
itself trapped. Its artificial heat is very suscep-
tible to chills. Then, in proportion as it has
burned furious, is the abjectness of its relapse.
I speak of it as an emotion apart from love.
This poor Leonora, in her craven frenzy, con-
doned in her mind the offences of the monster
in whose relentless grasp she now felt herself
writhing. Her leaning towards him, her desire
to propitiate, was like a lust. She would swear
herself his creature, his sympathiser, his fellow-
passionist, if only he would accept and spare
her as such. Do not blame her over-harshly.
The spirit crazed with fear of darkness has no
volition but towards the light. Moreover, the
catalogue of the deadly sins was much confused
in her time, and some crimes which in our day
would be held unpardonable were avowed
pleasantries. The butterfly bred to carrion is
not easily weaned to honey our own fair Purple -
Emperor is an example and grapes fattened on
LEONORA OF TOLEDO 77
bullocks' blood wither deprived of it. What
wonder that this poor lovely creature, bred on
corruption, confessed her tastes vitiated ? It was
life she wanted, and, at the last, even with Pietro
da Medici for her boon -fellow. The woman was
debased ; yet the mother remained. It had been
already dusk when the envoy withdrew. Now,
with streaming eyes and labouring bosom, she
hurried to spend her last night on earth by the
cradle of her little Cosimo.
*****
With dawn came hope, came the jocund re-
assurance of the sun, of the familiar greetings
and services and customs. It seemed impossible
that tragedy could be lurking behind that kindly
commonplace. Leonora's spirits rose with the
morning, heightened with the glowing day. Had
the conquering glory of her beauty served her
hitherto so implicitly to fail her now? If
jealousy were at the bottom of this resentment,
she carried the sweetest antidote to it in her
bosom. Imploring eyes, lovely submission and
lovely solicitation so she acted the part of a
prostitute in her soul, and almost counted the
hours to the end.
In the late afternoon she was informed, un-
78 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
asked, that a carriage and escort awaited her in
the court by the Via de Leone. Half hysterical,
she sought her little boy for the last time, and
her tears ran salt over his face as she kissed
him.
" Love mummia, bambinetto, always, al-
ways I "
It was the attitude of her escort that first
struck a chill into her, and caused a declension
in her high spirits. They may have been
ignorant of her purposed fate ; but she was
under a ban, and they were under orders.
These, it was evident, included uncommunica-
tiveness, rigid surveillance, impassive force.
The Villa Cafaggiodo lay at some distance
beyond the walls in a lonely country. The
young Duchess employed every artifice to delay
the journey, now a purchase she must make,
now a friend she must speak to, now a church
she must visit . She was never denied ; she
was humoured and watched in everything. A
subtler treatment had, perhaps, allayed her
alarms entirely, as it was evidently the pbject
of the escort to evade attention or suspicion ;
but these common minds had not the savoir faire
to throw off the weight of responsibility tinder
LEONORA OF TOLEDO . 79
which they laboured. At length they left the
city behind, and came into the open country
an abandonment which the girl had dreaded
unspeakably, and resisted as long; as possible.
And here Madama must alight to pick the
wayside flowers for the month was July and
again, and yet again when she saw one more
beautiful than the rest ; so that dusk was
beginning to fall, windless and melancholy, when
they came in sight of the villa. But there was
no thought of flowers in her soul, then or a,t
any time ; and the loveliest of all the blossoms
lay crushed in her little hand when at last the
carriage rolled into the courtyard of the Villa
Cafaggiodo, and the attendants came round to
the door to help her alight.
She looked up at the frowning portal, at the
lifeless galleries, and shrank back.
" My lord does not entertain? " she whispered.
"It is his will to be alone, Madonna," they
answered low.
Hardly conscious of her limbs, swaying a
little, she mounted the steps, and saw an open
door before her. Standing there, as in a fear-
ful dream, she heard a sudden sound below,
and started and turned. The carriage, the
80 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
escort, were all in retreat, returning by the road
they had come. She tried to call to them her
dry throat would not articulate ; she made a
panic move as if to descend, and paused again.
They had closed and bolted the gates behind
them ; she was left quite alone and unprotected
in that deserted place.
There was no voice of anything but a little
garrulous fountain, which giggled and choked in
the courtyard. The cold, grey house-front rose
above her ; behind and to either side the
cypresses reared their inky minarets against an
empty sky. In the spaces between, the bushes
and flowering shrubs were already clouds of
impenetrable shadow, palpitating with sugges-
tion. What might not be beyond or within
them, watching for her descent eyes, horrible
eyes ! With a shudder she turned to the door,
and saw the vast spaces of the vestibule, melan-
choly, cavernous, waiting to engulf her. But
not a sound came from them, or from anywhere.
The place seemed wholly vacant and deserted.
Hush ! a whisper a footstep creeping on the
stones of the court below. Without pausing to
look or convince herself, she fled into the great
hall, and found herself at the foot of the stair-
LEONORA OF TOLEDO - 81
case, breathing in a mortal fear, clutching at
the balustrade for support. A faint glow from
the dying day smeared the marble walls, and
illumined the limbs of a dozen statues as if with
phosphorescence. But the pits of blackness
between, more dense in consequence, were
dreadfully potential of evil, and, half swooning,
she turned to the staircase as her only resource.
There was a room above a room she knew and
had slept in and thither, as to her one ark of
refuge in that mad flight, she instinctively made.
If she could only reach it before she died of
terror !
She was there, had put out a shaking hand to
part the tapestry on the wall, when something,
unfamiliar to her even in her blind agitation,
made her shrink back with a shock like
death. She knew the woven picture Herodias's
daughter, and the dark arm of the executioner
holding the bleeding head over the charger. But
now the poised hand seemed empty the head
had run to a point in a sudden sick fascina-
tion she peered forward to examine it.
God in heaven ! the arm was actual and
living ; the fingers gripped a dagger !
And, even as she uttered a little whining cry,
6
82 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
' Pero ! per pietk ! " she saw a mad gleam at
the crevice, and the arm struck down.
Her scream was still echoing through the
empty house as a grinning, soft-snarling beast
parted the arras, and, leaping over the prostrate
body, turned and bent gloatingly to view it. His
poniard stood buried to the hilt in the soft flesh
of the shoulder-blade.
" Pietro's tooth ! " he shrieked ; " Pietro's
tooth ! " His laugh reeled and babbled among
the galleries as if scores of invisible feet were
suddenly running down to the scene of the crime.
He paused, he listened ; with an awful look
he suddenly cast himself on his knees by the
murdered child, and, raising his bloody hands,
besought, in a shaking voice and with tears
streaming down his cheeks, Heaven's pardon for
his crime, vowing, in expiation of it, never to
marry again.
With moans and sobs he then raised the poor
body, silent to his remorse as to his hate, and,
passionately kissing the lips, grown desirable to
him only in death, with his own hands laid it
in the coffin he had ready prepared for it in the
very chamber to which the living soul had fled,
in thought, for refuge.
LEONORA OF TOLEDO . 83
That same night it was secretly conveyed to
Florence, and buried in the Church of San
Lorenzo. The murderer married Beatrice de
Menesser seventeen years later. But, no doubt,
by then, as a great romancer remarked, he had
not only forgotten his vow, but that any reason
had ever existed for his making one. God, in
mediaeval Italy, was credited with as short a
memory as man, and with a much more amiable
credulity.
CHARLES IX
" SCATTER them, scatter them ere the Death
cometh! They are like black crows seeking
carrion, and where they watch some soul is
doomed to hell. From afar they spy their prey,
and on the roof they gather, waiting till it fall."
These words of a fanatic priest, denouncing
the Huguenots, were for ever in his brain from
the moment of the rising of the dark bird. They
had rung in its haunted corridors before, had
he known it ; but it was the rising of the bird
which had doomed it to their eternal possession.
It had happened in this way :
With the first weak breaking of dawn, three
pallid, guilty figures came stealing into a little
chamber of the Louvre which overlooked the
basse-cour notched into that angle of the palace
which faced towards St. Germain 1'Auxerrois.
They were the King, his mother, and his brother
the Due D'Anjou. An unnatural quiet brooded
86 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
over the city. It suggested the paralysed horror
of a sleeper awakened to sudden consciousness
of some ghastly presence in his room. They
stood, in a little quaking group, peering from
the window upon the courtyard and the quay
of the Louvre, both in seeming dark and empty,
and in seeming uncannily close beneath.
What if some tigerish bound were to clear that
interval, and they, the gloating Caesars of the
arena, be made the sport of their own blood-
lust? The King's hand twitched on the musque-
toon he carried.
The river, a livid tongue, lapped up the
blackness ; the wind fell all in a moment, like
a shot bird, and rustling its wings a little on
the pavement, died and gave place to silence
utter and profound. Suddenly in the distance
a pistol rattled out.
It was followed by the bells. At first it was
only the tocsin of St. Germain 1'Auxerrois, the
shattering boom of the great bronze dome shout-
ing death from its tower. But soon other bells
took up the tale, the signal leaping on from height
to height, as warning beacons are fired, and in
the same breath the streets were full of armed
men. They seemed to spring from the ground,
CHARLES IX 87
like the dragon men of Thebes, and to fall as
instantly to slaughter and destruction, Every
second they gathered, and roaring and sweeping
on, crashed in the last defences of sleep and
woke the city to pandemonium. And then came
the King's madness.
He had fought against it to the end. Even
in the little ghostly chamber his soul had risen,
in a final revolt of sanity, against the merciless
policy which had set itself deliberately to under-
mine his reason. But he had not the strength
to escape. His hand, with the dagger in it,
had been held from first to last by his mother
Catherine, as mothers of a human mould direct
the little stumbling hands of their children in
forming letters with a pen ; and not to him was
due the significance of the characters which that
bloody stylus had written upon the wall. His old
nurse, indeed, whom next to Marie Touchet and
her child he most dearly loved, was a staunch
Huguenot. And he kept the wit to save her;
but he could not save the good Admiral Coligny
whom he honoured. His mother had her way
with him at last, and was herself panic -struck
by the fury of the blaze she had fuelled.
Having once tasted blood, he cried for it,
for more and more until the gutters choked ;
insulted the fallen who appealed to him for
mercy ; decoyed the partisans of Conde" and
Navarre into his toils with cunning messages,
and chuckled to see them butchered in the Court
below. The roar, the rushing tumult of the
quays, the yells of the pursuers, the screams of
agony of the smitten, the bells and the guns,
all danced in his mad veins and wrought him
to frenzy. He outscreamed the victims ; he fired
at the corpses floating in the river ; he laughed
and stared alternately. Once, early in the
business, a boatful of Huguenots, coming across
the water from the opposite faubourg, was
emptied out in a twinkling, and its human load
dragged for slaughter across the stones. They
had believed it all an affair of the Guisea, and
had come to beg protection of the King. The
King 1 what shadow of justification was theirs ?
A King of shreds and patches 1 He cursed their
monstrous credulity ; he pointed his piece and
fired straight into the breast of the tallest fool
of them all, who had fallen on his back on the
stones immediately below. With the sound of
his shot a great black bird rose straight from
out the dead man, and flapping upwards with
CHARLES IX 89
solemn wings, disappeared over the roof of the
Louvre. The King threw down his musquetoon,
and stood staring.
They said that it was a raven, its master's
constant companion, his pet, his mascot, which
he seldom let from his bosom when he went
abroad. The King did not contradict them ;
the mortal distress in him found even some
solace in the fable. But in his deep heart he
knew that the apparition had been none other
than the black soul of the Huguenot, and that
it had flown to settle on the roof, to watch for
the passing of another soul, his own, already
doomed by it to hell. " Ere the death cometh! "
From that moment, as he believed, he was
marked down ; and the thought of how he might
elude the bird on the roof never left him. If
he could only circumvent it, he might yet be
saved.
He was sitting with his suite, days after the
massacre, in a chamber of the palace, when a
sudden uproar overhead startled them all. It
was evening, but the tapers were not yet lit.
The sound was hideous a sound as of a multi-
tude of lost spirits screaming and blaspheming
in the upper air. It was the eve of St. Bartholo-
90 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
mew all over again, the pent-up terrors of it
broken loose and re-enacted. Even in their
graves, It seemed, the ghosts could not be held
down, but had burst their bloody cerements and
risen in an uncontrollable agony of memory.
Where would it end? Where could it? There
was no mowing down spirits by sword and fire ;
they had the upper hand now, and the minds
and reasons of the living were their ghastly prey.
Rising, as they looked at one another with grey
faces, the group one and all sought the open
air.
.What was it? A black cloud of crows, no
more ; a flock in constant motion, circling,
settling and resettling calling for a second glut
of victims. They, had learned to imitate the voices
of the massacre, screeching, sobbing, praying
a horrible thing. They were the souls of the
murdered, ministers of hell, come to await their
turn on the roof. The King said no word, but
that same night, after he had slept a little from
exhaustion, he rose suddenly in a horror too
great for speech, and sat staring and listening.
His good old nurse hurried to him ; he whispered
to her, Did she not hear it? Those haunted
chambers of his brain were full of wild tramp-
CHARLES IX 91
ings, and execrations, and the hubbub of a mad
conflict. He declared there was a riot in the
town, that he would have his guard dispatched
to end it, that he wanted no more murder.
They returned in a little to say that the whole
city slept peaceful in the moonlight, though it
was true that the air was curiously agitated,
as by the hot vapour above an oven. He dis-
missed them, and dropped his weary head upon
his nurse's bosom. He was her child again, her
nursling, her little frightened dreamer waking
in the dark.
" They shall not touch thee, Chariot," she
whispered. " Thou didst not mean it, thou."
For seven nights was this repeated, the noises,
the horror, the collapse ; and then the crows
departed. Like a black cloud they gathered in
a moment, and drifted away northwards to wait
for the coming of the Armada.
" Are they all gone? " asked the pallid King.
He would trust to nobody but his nurse. She
went out, and looked along the ridge of the
roof, and returned.
" All but one," she said ; " and he is hurt
belike, and will not last out the night."
" That is the one," he answered, " and he
92 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
will last out the night of my life. O, nurse !
he waiteth for my soul, and, so he marketh its
passage hence, he will seize it, and I am damned
for ever."
" That then shall he never do, Chariot," she
exclaimed ; " for I will have him shot here and
now."
The King shook his head ; and, indeed,
he expressed what he knew. The crow was
never shot ; the bird seemed to bear a
charmed life ; but all of a sudden one day it
was gone.
To say that he breathed again would imply
but a qualified respite, inasmuch as his every
breath was a pain to him. Through all that
autumn and through all the ensuing year he
was a dying man, and in the May that followed
he lay down on his bed for the last time. At
the end he spoke little but with the shapes that
haunted him. He lay on his couch, wrapped
in a robe that, for all its lightness, it hurt his
chest to lift. He suffered intolerably, both
mentally and physically. His faithful little wife,
whose love he had neglected, came and sat by
his side, silent, with large haunted eyes, and
prayed for him, and wept secretly, and blew
CHARLES IX 93
her little red nose softly to explain her need for
a handkerchief. And Marie Touchet came with
their child, and wondered how, at the last, the
wreck of sweet royalty differed so little from
all other human wrecks. He made his peace
with these, but he could not with himself. The
vision of the crow was eternally in his mind ;
his atom of trust in the strong faith of his nurse
was his solitary grain of comfort in a world of
terrors. He floated in crimson streams, and rose
choking from them, foul and horrible. " Ah,
nurse," he sighed perpetually, " what blood and
what murders ! "
She was always ready with the faith, with
the triumphant word that touched like a healing
judgment.
" Let them that called the feast answer for
the reckoning."
And so the hours crept on to the end.
One day, as she watched alone beside him, he
fell asleep. He had made his testament that
morning, had committed the sore destinies of
his kingdom to his mother and his brother of
Navarre, and, exhausted with the effort, had
fallen back on his pillow, breathing out the
last words he was ever to utter on earth :
94 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
' I thank my God that I leave no male child
behind me to wear my crown ! "
It was as still as death. The sunshine came
through the open window, and threw a patch
of light on the floor. As the tired nurse sat
watching this, half hypnotised by the glow, of a
sudden she saw it blotted by a soft shadow. She
raised her eyes quickly, and there on the window-
sill, black and motionless, was perched a great
crow.
She did not even start ; but she turned her
head and looked at the King's face. The sign
Of the awful change was overspreading it ; the
nostrils pulsed ; the fingers below picked feebly
at the silken robe. In a few moments, she saw,
he would be gone. She rose quickly, and moved
across to the window. The dark bird never
stirred. There seemed a deep, unearthly move-
ment in the sleek gloom of its eyes, and that
was all. It was absorbed in watching, but
not her. She flung out her hands, and caught
it in a grip of iron.
" Chariot 1 " she cried, " my babe ! Die while
I hold him ! "
There was a rustle behind her, a sudden cry,
a drumming as of feet running, speeding from
CHARLES IX 95
the earth and life ; and then all fell silent . But
not the bird. He leaped and battled in her hands.
His beak was an inky dagger, his talons rakes
of steel. His screams seared her heart they
seemed uttered in it ; his pinions beat on her
brain. But she held on, driving in her nails, her
teeth set and her resolution. She felt the blood
pouring down her wrists, and she cared no whit,
so long as she could keep the horror from
pursuing her nursling. And presently the
struggles slackened, and she felt the bird die
in her hands.
Holding it thus away from her, she went to
the window and flung it forth. It dropped with-
out sound, like a shadow that had suddenly been
blown from her brain. She looked at her hands
they were unhurt ; at the King he lay with a
smile on his dead lips.
THE KING'S CHAMPION
" AND now, schentelmen, about that little
inzident at the goronation ? "
It was his Majesty King William III. who
spoke, crumpled back into his big chair. His
eyes, bright as a sparrow's, peered from the nest
of an enormous wig. His small, shrewd features,
diminutive frame, and legs like cribbage-pegs,
were the least adapted, one might have thought,
to carry the extravagant vesture of his day. He
appeared, indeed, to be always lost in it, and as
if just on the point of finding his way out. Yet
the clothes of a Daniel Lambert would hardly
have sufficed for his spirit.
The Marquis of Halifax, his Lord Privy Seal,
smiled, and shrugged his stout shoulders depre-
catingly. There were four others present in this
his Majesty's somewhat melancholy little Cabinet
at Whitehall : Lord Denby, his President of the
7 ' w
98 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
Council, and three solemn Dutch mynheers
D'Auverquerque, Schomberg, and Zuylestein,
who had been appointed respectively the King's
Masters of Horse, Ordnance, and the Robes.
These last were all as grave as mustard-pots,
and the subject, long-expected and broached at
last, made them graver.
It turned upon an incident, slight in itself,
significant only in its context, which had struck
a discordant note in the tremendous ceremonial
of the day before. When the King's Champion,
riding in by the great door of Westminster, had
cast his gage upon the floor, offering to prove
in person upon the body of whomsoever should
challenge the right of King William and Mary
his Queen to reign as sovereign inheritors of
the realm that that same dissentient lied in his
throat and was a false traitor, a most unexpected
response had followed. A little old lady, dressed
in a watered tabby and mittens, and having
large spectacles on her nose and a stiff three-
storied commode of lace perched on her white
hair, had darted from among the spectators, and,
whipping up. the steel glove, had returned it to
the Champion with a whispered word or two, and
then fairly run away, melting into the crowd
THE KING'S CHAMPION 99
which thronged about the entrance before any
one could think of interposing.
The affair had caused a momentary stir, and
even a titter, instantly subdued to the august
occasion, as Sir Charles Dymoke, the Champion,
had ridden up the Hall, his face as red as fire,
to deliver and re-deliver his cartel.
But it had not passed unobserved by the King
himself or by those around him. Extinguished
as he had appeared to be in his panoply of
purple and ermine and embroidered scarlet,
looking, as he had risen at the great table to
drink his Champion's health, for all the world
like a little over-swaddled Greek Icon elevated
against a background of glittering stained glass,
his diminutive Majesty had had an ear and an
eye for everything within the longest range of
either. His birdlike optics, bright as twin
buttons sunk amid that pomp of raiment, had
been fully cognisant of the little episode, and
had watched the after-approach of his Champion
with an unwinking interest, which had seemed
to concentrate itself to such a challenging focus
on the flushed face of the knight as he came
near, that that doughty Paladin had fallen into
confusion and had something botched the busi-
100 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
ness of the toast that followed. However, he
had managed, though crestfallen, to retire
presently with sufficient aplomb and his per-
quisite of a golden beaker ; and there for the
moment the matter had ended.
" Sir Charles Dymoke," began Lord
Halifax
'Who is dat man?" interrupted the King.
" Vat is his title to the bost? "
"It is claimed by him, sire," answered the
peer, "in his right of the Manor of Scrivelsby.
The office was originally deputed, I understand,
to Sir Richard de Marmyon by the Conqueror,
and hath descended by virtue of that tenure to
this day. Sir Charles is its legitimate repre-
sentative."
" Well," said the King, " broduce him before
us."
" Why," said the Marquis feebly, " that is the
odd thing. Sir Charles is nowhere to be found."
The three Dutch mynheers uttered guttural
sounds in their throats, and looked at one another
and at the King significantly.
His Majesty's brows knotted.
" Dat is very vonny," he said. " Not to be
vound, mein vrent ? '
THE KING'S CHAMPION 101
" It has been ascertained, your Majesty," said
Lord Deriby wearily he was a picked white bone
of a man, with no stomach and yet a perpetual
stomach-ache, which naturally aggrieved him :
" that Sir Charles rode, immediately after the
ceremony, to the ' Cock ' hostelry in Tothill
Street, whence, having disencumbered himself of
his panoply, he continued his way to the riding-
*
school of one Dobney, near Islington, where he
delivered up his horse and disappeared. Since
when he has neither returned to his inn nor
vouchsafed the least token of his existence."
The King considered the matter very glumpily
within himself. It appeared a trifle ; yet trifles
might easily be under-estimated in the existing
state of things. The incident was something
or nothing a mere meaningless frolic, or a
challenge to his title bearing a certain signifi-
cance. The land swarmed with Jacobites of
more or less power and prominence. What if
one of them were to meet and defeat his
Champion ? How, in that event, would his claim
stand? What was the procedure? It was an
odd contingency, and he put it rather acridly
to my Lord Privy Seal.
" He drow de gage ; anodder agcept it ; dey
102 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
.vight ; my man vail. Vat is to vollow?" he
demanded.
11 Ja ! Dat is vat strike idself into me bom-
bom," said Schomberg the warrior.
Lord Halifax smiled rather sheepishly. 'He
was a large, tolerant soul of sixty, repudiating all
sentiment and subject to much. He had been
called the " Trimmer " ; but, then, no man of
humour can ever be a man of convictions . Kind,
witty, and cynical, he was yet so fond of Reason
that he could make a fool of himself with her.
He was even worked upon to do so in the present
case.
" There is positively no precedent, sire," he
said. " To my certain knowledge the thing has
never happened before."
" Bot zhould it jost zo happen? " insisted his
master .
" Ach ! " said D'Auverquerque penetratingly.
" With deference, sire," said his lordship,
"is it not something premature to assume any
hostile intent in the matter ? The good lady
" Posh 1 " put in the King irritably. " Neither
goot nor lady."
" Zo it strike itself into mein head bom-bom,"
said Schomberg.
THE KING'S CHAMPION 103
" Dat dress vas a masgerade," said William:
" a vact, we zhould haf gonsidered, blain to the
stupidest indelligence."
" Certainly, certainly," agreed Lord 'Halifax
nervously.
"Veil, sir vat den?"
" Ach ! vat den?" demanded D'Auver-
querque cunningly.
" I vill dell your lordship," said Schom'berg.
'* Dere was a vine swordsman gonzealed under
dose bettigoats."
The Lord Privy Seal, considering the subject,
woke to a certain trepidation.
"It is impossible," he admitted, " to avoid
attaching a measure of importance to the affair,
or to gauge its consequences should it be carried
through. Surely Sir Charles could not be so
foolish as to risk a serious encounter? But he
must be found and warned at all costs."
His mood communicated itself to the others.
The matter began to assume with them all an
increasingly sinister aspect. Majesty was not
yet so safe on its throne that omens could be
disregarded. The King, prompt and tireless, for
all his sickly constitution, in business the little
man who was to regain for England her reputa-
104 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
tion for workaday sanity had yet, at this
beginning, a vast estate to recover from chaos,
and his path was beset with perils. The country
was still in two minds, and each distracted ; a
trifle might upset the balance. Deliberating in
this sort, a species of hysteria communicated
itself after a time from one to another of the
little Council, until it definitely came to perceive
in the episode a daring ruse for bringing about
a reaction in popular sentiment. What if the
meeting were actually to occur, and the
Champion to be overthrown? It was not to be
doubted that the event would have been pro-
vided for, and those engaged in bringing it about
forearmed. Defeat might result in riot, and riot
in revolution. Arrived at that pitch of the
debate, the six gentlemen, including his Majesty,
were all speaking together in considerable
agitation .
It was the personality of the mysterious
Mohock, once convicted of masculinity, which
most exercised their minds. He was certainly
an individual of importance, as so momentous a
mission would hardly have been entrusted to a
nonentity. But who? A dozen names suggested
themselves. Berwick, Tyrconnel, Lord Henry
THE KING'S CHAMPION 105
Fitzjames, the ex -monarch's natural son, Marl-
borough himself, and others. It was Zuylestein,
speaking for the first and last time, who finally
put the spark to all this accumulating tow.
' Vat," he said, " if it is James himselv, zegretly
gom over from St. Germains and resolved upon
venturing dis bigduresque abbeal to de poblic? "
" Bom-bom ! " said Schomberg.
He rose, Halifax rose, they all rose, and faced
the King.
'* Ik dank U, mijnheer," said his Majesty ;
" it is a very blausible suggestion."
The words were equivalent to a bid to action.
The Council broke up hurriedly, and within an
hour the Dutch troops had been beaten to arms,
the militia called out, the magistrates warned,
and the whole city placed under a surveillance
of the most searching description. It was at this
momentous pass, when panic was in the air, that
Sir Charles Dymoke walked unconcerned into
the " Cock " tavern, in Tothill Street, and was
immediately arrested by the guard set to watch
that hostelry, and conveyed in a state of complete
stupefaction to Whitehall . He was taken at once
before the King sitting in Council.
" Vere haf you been ? " demanded William
sternly.
106 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
" Your Majesty 1 " gasped the Champion, a
sturdy gallant of middle age.
" Answer, sir," said the monarch" and
vidout eguivocation."
" I have been with a friend," stammered Sir
Charles, all amazement.
" Ach 1 " exclaimed his Majesty sarcastically.
' The vrow, vas it, vat returnt you your gage
in the Hall yesterday ? "
" Certainly not, sire," said the Champion, the
flush of outrage on his cheek.
" Not? " said the King. " Who vas she, den,
dat voman? "
' The wife of Dobney, the horse-tamer, sire."
" The vife vat ! Vat had she said to you? "
" She said, your Majesty, ' Didn't I warn you
not to throw it down in front of her nose, unless
you want her to kneel and pick it up ? '
"She? Who?"
" The mare, sire. She performs at Islington."
" Your Majesty," said the Lord Privy Seal
very softly, " shall we thank Sir Charles and
proceed to the order of the day? "
" Bom-bom ! " said Schomberg under his
breath.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
" WHAT was that? "
" Madam, it was the snow falling from the
roof."
" Methought it was a footstep."
" No, madam."
' There, heard you it not the sound of some
one running? "
" But a rat behind the wainscot. Your Grace's
ears deceive you."
" What, for ever ? Poor ears, so curst to lies
and flattery ! "
" Your Highness is overwrought."
' Will some one speak the truth to me before
I die ? God, how my bones ache ! No step ?
Go look in the gallery, child."
The girl to whom she spoke, leaving her em-
broidery-frame, stepped lightly to the door,
glanced this way and that, and returned. Her
young eyes shone humid between pity and awe.
107
108 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
' No, indeed, madam," she said low. " The
corridor is empty."
The Queen, without answering, crossed to the
window and stood staring from it. It looked
upon the privy garden of Whitehall, now one
carpet of quiet, sad-coloured snow with the river
ruled across its far end like an inky mourning
border. A motionless fog brooded over the
trees and over the palace buildings trooped to
right and left. There seemed no sign of life
anywhere.
Within, a glare of fire burning on a great
stone -hooded hearth dashed the wainscoting with
red, and crimsoned the hands and faces of the
figures in the panels of tapestry, and touched
the gold groining of the ceiling and the fresh
rushes on the floor with smears like blood. The
old eyes, gazing so fixedly across the snow,
seemed streaked with the same ruddy hue, but
reflected from another and an inward fire . As to
the first, she was ever disdainfully insensible to
cold, this gaunt, strong old Tudor woman.
Two ladies-in-waiting, a mother and her
daughter, had their places by the hearth, where
they embroidered together, the former seated,
the child bending over. They were the Queen's
QUEEN ELIZABETH 109
only attendants for the moment, since her
Majesty was in that tortured frame of mind when
her own sole company was but less terrible to
her than the thought of an officious suite, veiling
curiosity under devotion. Human neighbour-
hood, silent, tactful, unobtrusive, was the balm
her torn soul most needed ; any ostentatious
sympathy would have maddened her. She could
abandon herself to herself beside this gentle pair,
as if they were no more than inarticulate animals
wistful dumb affections on which she could
lean her voluble heart, certain of their un-
conscious understanding .
Now the younger lady, returning to her place,
stood awe -struck a moment, then bent and
whispered to her mother : " O, madam, the
Tower gun ! How shall we close her Grace's
ears to it? "
The Queen, hearing the whisper but not its
import, started, and, with a deep flurried sigh,
turned round. The wild tumult of thoughts in
her mind found expression in detached and
broken questions, abstractions, self-communings.
" ' All wounds have scars but that of fantasy,
all affections their relenting but that of woman-
kind.' Who writ those words ? Not the mutinous
110 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
boy. Twas Raleigh he that saw us like Dian,
the gentle wind blowing the hair from our face.
Essex never spoke such balm. He was no
courtier the worse for him. Am I like Dian? "
The elder lady had arisen hurriedly, and stood,
her daughter clinging to her arm, to answer to
the voice, which appeared to have addressed her.
' Yes, madam," she whispered low.
" He never flattered, I say," went on the
Queen. " He was too honest the devil damn
honesty 1 What day is it ? "
' Your Highness," was the tremulous answer,
" it is the twenty-fifth day of February."
She had known it well enough. All night
within her haunted brain the horror of this
coming day had brooded this ghastly morning
when on Tower Hill the young Earl of Essex
he was but thirty-four was to pay the penalty
of his madness. She stood staring before her,
like one tranced.
" Never flattered," she repeated" a bad
policy where a woman reigns. The twenty-fifth,
is it? Let us know if my Lord of Essex sends
or writes."
" Yes, madam O, yes, indeed I "
The girl, leaning to her mother, buried her
pale face in her shoulder.
QUEEN ELIZABETH 111
" Hush ! " whispered the Queen ; " was not
that a step? "
" Indeed, madam, I cannot hear a sound."
" A stubborn, relentless dog ! " muttered the
Queen hoarsely. " Let the axe convince him.
He will see clearer being dead no longer dub
my mind as crooked as my body ; learn that
the soul's glory waxeth with the years, striving
to slough its vesture, like a snake. A fool, that
cannot penetrate that crackling veil, and see,
other than a boy, how Truth abhors externals.
Raleigh is older ; Raleigh can look deeper .
Shall I not be Dian still to him? "
She faced her frightened witnesses with the
enormous challenge an old, arid, charmless
woman of sixty-eight. Her withered, clay-white
face was latticed with countless wrinkles ; her
nose was high and pinched ; her thin, bloodless
lips parted to show a ruin of blackened teeth
little spoiled and broken gravestones recording
dead memories . Her gullet pursed ; her eyes
were bloodshot ; the red periwig on her poll
glowed like a dull flame over expiring ashes.
Even her sloven dress betrayed the sickness of
her spirit.
" Yes, indeed, madam," said the mother.
112 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
" You lie ! " cried Elizabeth fiercely. " He is
false like the rest. His eyes betray his lips.
Their love-light is the gilding on my crown.
When he looks beneath I see mine image in
them, an old and loveless woman barren, and
old, and loveless. Do you not hear my heart
cry? It turns on a dry axle. O, I would
give my queenhood to weep ! So utterly alone
no child, no heir, no hope. They say that
Charles of Valois wasted and died of poison.
What could he expect? Was he not a prince
and curst to flattery?"
She strode up and down once or twice in
intolerable anguish.
" Truth 1 " she cried" truth ! And yet when
it was mine at last, I turned and struck it down."
" Not truth, your Grace, but jealousy," ven-
tured the trembling lady.
" Jealousy 1 " exclaimed the Queen, stopping
suddenly. She stared at the speaker, her breath
falling from hard to soft. " Was he jealous,
think you? "
" O I madam," said the other, " is it not
thy player, Master Shakespeare, that calleth
jealousy ' green-eyed,' like as with sour bile that
clouds the vision. The distempered speak dis-
QUEEN ELIZABETH 113
tempered thoughts, and often turn the most
against their most-beloved. I count it green-
eyed jealousy with him because he saw your
Highness so distorted not to extenuate the
grievous crimes upon which his passions launched
him. O, pardon me, madam ! "
The Queen stood with her eyes still fixed upon
the speaker, but it was evident that their vision
took no heed of her, though her ears regarded
the import of her speech.
' Jealous ! " she said, with a tremulous sigh.
;< Mayhap like a silly quean I gave him cause,
sporting with my troth -ring till it rolled into the
well. He was too sure and bold, forgetting who
had lifted him, and who could cast him down.
But, jealous? Does not his hair curl sweetly
on his forehead, child?"
" O, madam ! Your Grace ! "
" And his eyes so frank and fearless. Fear !
He knows it not, the rash and headstrong fool !
To think to overbear us ! teach our displeasure
a lesson ! O, a venture once too often ! Be-
cause he can boast a strain of royal blood in his
veins to dare to lift his head at us ! to stamp,
and cry : ' Now, madam, do you hear me ? '
or ' I would have it thus, or thus and thus.'
8'
114 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
Such presumption ! And yet to see the pretty
lord his lip thrust out in scorn of sycophancy
a man of men, brave, honest, generous, and a
fool."
" Rash and foolish indeed, your Highness."
' Those are but virtues in reverse. Had he
no cause to doubt the love that made him but
to ruin? "
' I cry your Grace's mercy."
"What for?"
' The ruin followed on the treachery."
" Was he a traitor ? "
" O, Madam I did he not curry favour with
the King of Scotland, and plot and league to
win him the succession?"
" Yes, he's a traitor."
* Your Grace forgive me."
" And I'm a woman."
" Madam I "
" At the last I yield him all my pride and
self-will. He hath so much of me, 'twere idle
to reserve that little. Who is that coming? "
" 'Twas but the wind in the corridor, Madam."
*' I swear I heard him."
" No, Madam."
" Pride ! Will he not meet us so far but
QUEEN ELIZABETH 115
to crave our clemency? He knows the way,
and, not taking it, must die. What o'clock is
it ? O, God, he shall not die ! Send for my
lord Keeper ; have horses ready. Hush ! he's
coming ! Should I not know his footfall? "
She drew herself erect and away ; a flush
came to her withered cheek ; she was the Queen
again, aloof, haughty, self-contained. The two
terrified women, shrunk together into the
shadows by the hearth, saw her eyes gaze into
vacancy, heard her lips address some appari-
tion beyond their ken :
" What imports this visit, my Lord of Essex?
Who gave you leave to come? Our Constable
of the Tower shall be roundly questioned, trust
to us. What ! are you so pale at last to meet
offended majesty? Will you not speak? Will
you not pray the mercy you have abused in
us too long? A viper in our bosom O, my
lord, that loved and trusted you ! What can we
think or say, God help us ! But we will hear
what is to hear. So pale? the sickness of the
stones hath chilled thy fiery blood. Why, I would
have come to you, you know well, if you had
sent it. Why did you not send it prouder than
thy Queen? Where is the ring? Give it me.
116 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
O, I have waited, dear my love have waited
dying for this token. Speak utter one word
of sorrow, and I will forgive thee. Aye, kneel
so and bow thy comely head "
A burning log on the hearth fell with a crash
and a spurt of flame ; a shrill agonised cry
broke from the lips of the Queen ; she flung her
hands before her eyes :
" O, God in heaven 1 The falling head 1 They
are killing my love ! "
Weeping and trembling, the two women crept
from their corner. At that instant a dull boom,
coming from down the river, shook the glass
of the casement. The Queen dropped her hands.
"What was that?" she crowed. Her face
was all distorted.
" Your Majesty ! "
" What was that, I say ? My Lord of Essex !
'He was here but now 1 Where is he? "
" In heaven, by God's mercy, madam. It
was the Tower gun."
The Queen sank down moaning where she
stood.
IT was a bitter Sunday in January, 1484. A
little dry snow fell from time to time, and, so
surely as its chill dust whitened the stones about
St. Paul's Church, a wind, like an officious tip-
staff, would come and drive it away right and
left, sweeping the pavement for bare footsteps
that were to follow.
It was all sad and grey and wintry. The
over-gabled houses seemed to totter with cold ;
the signboards cried with it ; only the church
itself, half-shrouded in mist, loomed like some
mighty mountain -crag, soaring into one solitary
pinnacle, spectral, stupendous, in its midst. The
Sabbath folk in the streets below, released from
Mass, wrung their frosty ringers as they lingered
in dull excitement, waiting for the show that
was to follow. They gathered in a swarm about
the great west door.; but mostly they {flocked
towards the north side, where in an open place
117
118 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
stood the cross of St. Paul's, surmounting the
leaden roof of a little timber pavilion. This
bothy, or pulpit, was like a dovecot in shape,
hexagonal, and with a window in each of jits
six sides. That facing west was furnished with
a lectern for the preacher ; and the whole build-
ing was reared on a triple platform of stone,
hexagonal like the other, and forming steps
to it.
Whether from the weather, or the day, or the
occasion, the crowd was a curiously .quiet one.
The weight of the new King's authority, no
doubt, rested upon it heavily. A general air
of numbness and stupefaction appeared to pre-
vail. Events of late had come, matured, and
yielded to others so rapidly. Edward's death in
April ; the disappearance of the young princes,
his sons, in June ; the new coronation in July ;
Buckingham's short abortive conspiracy and
execution in October ; finally, in this very first
month of the new year, the passing of the Titulus
Regius, or Act which bastardised the late King's
issue and confirmed the crown to his usurper
such was the astonishing tale. Nothing was
evident for the moment but that this crooked
fellow could see clearly and strike quickly ;
JANE SHORE 119
that he was bold, unscrupulous, and strong. He
was not unpopular for that, or for certain manly
attributes which the crowd admire. The diffi-
culty was, as in all sudden coups d'etat, to adapt
oneself politicly to the fresh conditions, while
awaiting security from retaliation by the old.
The twisted King was not so firm in his seat as
a Pope of Rome. There was a certain risk in
subscribing even to his pleasantries, among
which the present show might be counted.
No one had properly believed in the worser
guilt of poor Mistress Shore, the late Prince's
naughty, good-hearted mistress. The indictment
which charged her with complicity in the asserted
attempt of Lord Hastings, her second protector,
to destroy the present King's life by witchcraft,
had succeeded in proving nothing but her lovable
.qualities of mind and heart ; whereby the Court
was obliged to fall back upon her frailty, which
was notorious and undeniable . It made no point,
indeed, of the real tragedy of her sinning, which
lay in her desertion of a young husband a good,
honest, uncorrupt fellow, a prosperous goldsmith
of Lombard Street whose happiness she had
done her best to wreck, and whose name ,she
had not had the grace to exchange for another.
120 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
It was really only concerned, at bottom, with
proving what an obnoxious libertine had been
the fourth Edward, and how sweetly the crooked
one shone by contrast. And so, to make all
this clear, it washed, Pilate -like, its hands of the
beautiful frailty, and handed her over to the
Churchmen for chastisement . They were prompt
to deliver it, and not altogether inhumanly. The
concubine was sentenced to make public con-
fession of her fault, in the prescriptive deshabille
of sheet and candle, and thereafter depart in
peace and mend her ways . The penalty, in fact,
was in process at the moment.
There was not much gossip. The crowd,
penned within the multitude of low buildings
which surrounded the old Cathedral, showed
more curiosity, even sympathy, than hostility
towards the delinquent. Its constituents were
much the same as when it had listened six
months before to Dr. Shaw's famous sermon at
the Cross, and that truckling divine had first
broached the .question of the last two Edwards'
illegitimacy. It had acquiesced then, in the in-
sensibility following exhaustion ; it had not yet
recovered from that condition. This present
matter, or the sin which had procured it, was
JANE SHORE 121
not of a nature wont to excite much comment
or reproof ; but the undoubted popularity of the
usurper was confusing all issues. It supposed
he had a reason for humiliating pretty Mrs.
Shore, who had been as notable for her kindness
as her beauty ; and so it accepted his ruling as
part of the perplexity of things, which some day
must be going to lighten.
She came out in a minute, a half-dozen of
acolytes preceding, a group of priests following
her. As she appeared on the steps, a waft pf
wind took the hem of the white sheet, which
was her sole drapery, and blew it aside from,
her knees. Her face, which had been deadly
pale, flushed to an instant pink, which never
thereafter deserted it. She clapped down her
hand in a haste which extinguished the taper
she held; whereat a cold voice halted the pro-
cession, and she must stand in her shame while
the light was being rekindled. And as they
came on again she hung her head and her lip
trembled.
" -Her stature," says an eye-witness, " was
meane [ signifying short ] ; her haire of a dark
yellow.; her face round and full ; her eye grey,
delicate harmony between each part's proper-
122 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
tion, and each proportion's colour ; her body
white and smooth . . . she went in counten-
ance and pase demure, so womanlie, that albeit
she were out of all araie save her kirtle onlie,
yet went she so faire and lovelie, namelie, while
the woondering of the people cast a comelier rud
in her cheeks (of which she before had most
misse), that hir great shame was hir much praise
among those that were more amorous of hir
bodie than curious of hir soule. And manie
good folks that hated hir living (and glad were
to see sin corrected), yet pitied they more hir
penance than rejoised therein, when they con-
sidered that the King procured it more of a
corrupt intent, than anie virtuous affection."
" Proper she was and fair ; nothing in her
body that you would have changed, but if you
would, have wished her somewhat higher" no
romancer can better that description, and so it
shall stand.
She came down the steps so shamed that she
seemed insensible to the weather. It was
snowing again, and the flakes kissed her pink
feet as if in pity, and kissed her neck, and cried
into her cold bosom. She tried to shake her
long, loose hair before her face.
JANE SHORE 123
Round by the north side they turned ; and
so to the pulpit, where she knelt ; and all the
way the people were silent. And the Bishop
mounted into the tribune, and, sheltered in his
snuggery, delivered a long harangue on the
iniquity of loose living. And at the end Jie,
demanded of her if she confessed and repented ;
whereat she answered, in a voice all little and
shrunken : " I do own my fault, and ask pardon
for it." At which he raised his tone and bade
her depart where she would, and mend her ways
and live cleanly ; only first he pronounced the
King's mandate, that no man should relieve or
succour her on pain of death, which set many
marvelling over the reason which could deliver
with one hand and deprive with the other.
Now, Jane Shore rose like one dazed, and
the lighted taper fell from her hand, and she
looked hither and thither, as if seeking where she
could escape in her misery and confusion. And
all of a sudden the cold seemed to smite her,
and she gathered the sheet about her tender
limbs and gave a single cry like a lamb. And
in its very utterance she had a desperate inspira-
tion, which was to follow a tall man who all this
time had stood close by among the crowd.
124 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
Something the shadow of a gesture, the look
in his eyes, close under which his hand had
gathered his cloak had seemed to invite her,
and when he moved, without appearing to pursue
him she followed on the road to clean living.
But was she the first or the only woman help-
lessly abandoned to the paradoxes of life?
The crowd made way for her, and no |man
durst follow. Soon she was upon the outskirts
of the throng, soon quit of it altogether. Some
whispered ribaldries, some rude touches she had
to endure, and that was all. She believed that
the lure would not have let her lose sight of
him ; and sure enough there he was going on
in front, a noble by token of his jewelled bonnet,
with the long pendant gathered from it about
his neck, and the rich scarlet hose which showed
under his cloak. She thought well, desperate
as she was, not to compromise him, and she
followed at a distance. He went round by the
deserted east end of the church, through the
place that was called Old Change, and so,
turning sharp down towards the river, made a
sudden twist among the confusion of buildings
there, and wheeled into a narrow way known
as Sermon Lane, where he loitered just sufn-
JANE SHORE 125
ciently to enable her to see him disappear into
a certain house. Clutching her sheet about her,
and watchful of suspicious eyes, she stole on,
hesitated a moment, and hurried in his foot-
steps . She may have been observed or not ; in
any case she was a contagion whom all avoided.
The door closed behind her as she entered and
sank against the wall.
" Rise, madam," he whispered. He was close
beside her. His voice was quick and strange.
She burst into tears at once, passionate, heart-
rending, exhausting. He let her weep herself
out, while she crouched against the wall.
Presently, the storm subsiding, she looked
half up.
'Will you not give me your cloak?" she
said. " I am cold."
" For no other reason? " he asked.
She slunk down again.
" No," she said. " That were a poor pretence,
and meet for your mockery. I must barter a
private place with you against raiment. Even
a whore must go covered."
He stooped and took her, unresisting, in his
arms, though she held her face averted. He
carried her impassive up the stairs of that dark,
126 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
unknown house, and all the way there was
passion in his hold and grief in his labouring 1
sighs. She knew that they had entered a warm
room, that he had shut the door, had placed her
gently on a couch by the fire.
" Jane I " he said.
She uttered a quick, wild cry, and started
erect, so that the sheet fell from her shoulders.
" Cover them, in mercy to me," he said.
She stared at him a moment, then went into
a sudden hysteric laugh. It stabbed him to
the heart to hear her, for her voice had ever
been merry and sweet.
" O ! " she cried, " that a woman should be
so used by her own husband ! "
" Nay," said he" but that I might know you
still not dead to shame."
The ripple of her laugh stopped as it had
begun.
" Why are you so richly dight, Harry? " she
said.
" A lure," he answered, " to lead thee hither.
Who would win a King's mistress must borrow
peacock's plumes."
She shivered a little, looking down, then
whispered hoarse :
JANE SHORE 127
" Well, I am well answered. Yet you look
like a noble. O, Harry, speak like one ! "
" God forbid it, Jane ! I will speak like Harry
Shore."
" He loved me once."
" Aye; he is risking death to prove it."
She looked up quickly ; but before she could
speak the door opened, and a little boy peeped
into the room. He was caught away in a
moment by an unseen hand, and the door closed ;
but in that instant the woman had snatched her
drapery about her nakedness, shamed as she had
never been yet.
" A wretch ! " she said, her face on fire.
" Saw'st thou his blue eyes and pretty curls ? "
said the goldsmith. " He is son to my master -
setter, whose house this is. I had dreamed once
of such a babe, mine own and thine."
She rose and crept to him, looking in his
face. It was a bronzed and honest one, though
drawn with pain.
" Harry," she whispered, " find me clothes and
bid me begone in memory of our once kisses,
Harry." ..''
" They are here," he said. " Everything is
prepared for thee the means to lead a blame-
128 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
less life henceforth. Summon the woman when
I'm gone. I would not have them say ,1 left
my wife to starve."
'He put out his arms, passion in his eyes, but
withdrew them resolutely.
" Nay," he said ; " in heaven not yet."
He fell back a little, and cried out suddenly :
" Your foot, Jane ! Poor foot ; it bleeds ! ' ?
He motioned her to the couch, knelt, lifted
the wounded limb, and with his napkin
staunched the trickling blood. He held it to
his breast, and at last, with a long, yearning
sigh, put his lips to it.
" This hath atoned," he said " so far I shame
myself," and he rose. " Little sinful wife," he
whispered, " he loved thee once ; he loves thee
ever ; else could he leave thee thus ? Now, let
me never hear thy name again for love's sake
do I ask it."
She had buried her face in the cushions. And
there she lay, long after he had gone, weeping
out her soul.
THE CHAPLAIN OF THE TOWER
" MY son ! "
The kneeling figure started slightly, hearing
the whisper in its ear, and half turned its face.
" Do mine salvum fac Re gem nostrum Ricar-
dum, my son."
The Benedictine had stolen list-footed from
among the shadows of the great pillars, and
stood, a blacker shadow, bending over the
solitary worshipper in the darkening chapel of
St. John. It was a breathless August evening
of the year 1483, and not a sound penetrated to
this remote fastness of the Keep.
" God save the King, Father 1 " answered the
suppliant. It was Brackenbury himself, Lieu-
tenant of the Tower, and a sore matter of con-
science had brought him to this place. He rose
instantly to his feet.
" I say it with all my heart," quoth he. "God
9 129
130 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
save the King from numbering himself among
his worst enemies."
" Sh sh ! " whispered the chaplain. " Sh
sh I good Sir John." He put a finger to his lips,
and, motioning the other forth, held him on the
outer threshold.
' To ensure the pure succession," he said low.
' This bastard boy, Sir John a canker that
would eat into the State. No safety but in his
excision."
" For the second time," replied the knight
sternly, " take my answer. Question, if you will,
the blood that courses in his veins ; question
not mine. That stoops to no midnight butchery."
He waved his hand, as if in appeal or pro-
test, towards the chapel, and turned to go. But
the priest detained him.
" A moment, good Sir John. The King wills
it."
" He must find a baser instrument."
" Well so," said the Benedictine, " well so,
good Sir John. Only keep your back to us,
saving your honour, and see nothing for a little
space."
The Lieutenant, without another word, strode
away, his harness clanging in the vaults.
THE CHAPLAIN OF THE TOWER 131
The covert priest stood listening, a smile, small
and hungry, on his lips. He hungered, indeed,
had always hungered, for many things pre-
ferment, power, the good immoral gifts of
life and indulgences other than Papal. And
suddenly, amazingly, it appeared, they were
all come within his grasp. He had only to
persuade this master of his to a certain deed,
by absolving him for it before committed, and a
mitre awaited him. It had been whispered ,in
his ear, as he had whispered in Sir John's. The
abbot of his own Order at Westminster was
deeply involved with the Queen -Do wager, to
whom he had given sanctuary. The crooked
King disliked people who sheltered his enemies.
A motion of his hand and the chaplain was in
the abbot's place. The seat awaited him it was
stupendous, actual and, while reaching for it,
to be baulked by a scruple of conscience not his
own ! The thing was intolerable.
Abbot of St. Peter's ! His lips watered, think-
ing of it ; his eyelids blinked and reddened .
He was a lean, famished-looking body, with
sharp-set features, and a smile perpetually on
his mouth between propitiatory and craving . One
might have counted his ribs, and never guessed
132 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
at the dreams of surfeit that wantoned under
them. He turned and crept away.
That night a messenger rode from the Tower,
following hi the wake of the royal progress north-
wards. He found the King where he lay at
Warwick Castle, and, entering to him at mid-
night, whispered of Sir John's obstinate density
and of the chaplain's better understanding. A'
few minutes later Sir James Tyrrell, Master of
the King's Horse, started on his way back to
London. He took with him a brace of con-
fidants, fat trusty fellows, whose names should
be pilloried throughout the ages. They were
John Dighton and Miles Forrest, sinewy mis-
creants, as callous to suffering as Smithfield
butchers. He took also a royal warrant, en-
trusting to him, for one night only, the custody
of the fortress, its keys and passwords ; and
finally he took, for his personal comfort in the
business, a sure conviction of his own damnation .
Reaching the Tower, he displayed his commis-
sion, locked away all troublesome witnesses,
emptied the outer ward, to which the public
had access, of its loiterers, and had the place
to himself. Having done which, he hastened
with his two ruffians to the gate -house where
the princes lay.
THE CHAPLAIN OF THE TOWER 133
It was a close, windless night, with thunder
brooding over the river. Every stone that
slipped under the assassin's feet jarred his
nerves intolerably. He muttered to himself as
he walked, wringing his wet forehead. The
shadow of a figure that rose upon him from
the shadowy porch brought an oath from his
lips.
' Who's that ? Answer, and be damned ! "
" Hist, good Sir James ! " whispered the crawl-
ing priest. " Curse not thine own absolver."
" A blasphemy," answered Tyrrell ; " or God
Himself is a villain. Come," he said intoler-
antly: " show us the way to hell."
The Benedictine crossed himself.
" Ostende nobis, Domine, misericordium
tuam" he murmured. " Direct our stumbling
feet who seek the light by dubious ways. Give
me the key, soldier. It were well that I ascended
first to report if the children sleep. The better
for them, the better for us."
Bending under a low doorway in the wall
of the passage, he disappeared. Tyrrell let out
a quaking groan.
" Trip his heels, trip his heels, O, devil my
master ! " he sighed between his teeth.
134 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
The shadow went up the stairs, paused at
a certain door, fitted a key into its lock with
stealthy caution, listened, and glided into the
room beyond. It was small, and fast locked in
stone ten feet in thickness. There were windows
front and back. Through the former a cresset
burning on St. Thomas's Tower across the ward
cast a red flicker upon a couple of pallets stand-
ing near side by side against the wall. A sound
of unconscious breathing came from these. The
evil shadow crept on and stooped.
Blood on the young white face ! Fool ! it was
the painting of the cresset. This deed might
seem a pitiful thing were it not for the hunger
that seemed a pitifuller. To be abbot to be
bishop to be cardinal even ! Who knew ? He
glanced down. His own inky cassock was
smeared with the scarlet fire. To wade through
blood to the Sacred College ! Why not ? The
end expiated all means thereto. There were a
score of precedents to justify him. The Abbacy
once gained, his power for good would be
multiplied a hundredfold. He raised his eyes.
The red glare seemed to fill them from within.
Something in his interposing shadow appeared
to make the younger child behind him uneasy.
THE CHAPLAIN OF THE TOWER 135
He stirred and moaned in his sleep. Presently
he murmured, with a whimper :
" Take it away, mother ! "
He was always her Saxon darling, with the
head of gold. She used to call his eyes like
cockles in the corn. The shadow stole apart,
and, with a sigh, he breathed warm again.
To be abbot ! What surer justification of
his right than to dispatch these innocent
souls to God? They would thank him in the
end for much peril spared them. He hesitated
no longer, but, leaving the door ajar, descended
as he had come.
The human dogs below were straining in their
leashes. At a sign Tyrrell motioned them to
their work. The two stole up, while their master
remained to hold the door. And then came the
awful interval.
The blood on the white face ! The priest
blinked at the cresset flaming high across the
yard. Surely it burned with a lurider glow?
It was the wind fanning it. Wind? there was
no breath of wind in all the dead night. What,
then, if not the pipe of wind in passage or key-
hole, was that sudden whine which rose upon;
the silence? With the sweat breaking out on
136 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
his forehead, he seized a mattock, one of several
which had been laid ready, and began frenziedly
striking at the ground under the wall. Tyrrell,
with a gasping oath, came hurrying to join him.
They dug like madmen, against their own
terror and the vision to come. And when at
last it announced itself with heave, and shuffle,
and the grunting of brute lungs, they would
not pause for a moment, but, reinforced, wrought
and wrought until the grave was made, and
closed in, and their sin covered. And then
Tyrrell, summoning his vile grooms, delivered up
his trust and rode away for York, with his soul
rattling like a dried kernel within him.
The chaplain thought of a prayer for the dead,
and bending, with an abject face, to kneel by
the grave, saw dark stains on his sandalled feet.
He glanced at the burning cresset, stooped and,
touching them, looked at his ringers. To wade
through blood ! With a shudder he thrust his
hands out of sight into the wide sleeves of his
cassock, and went hurriedly away, drifting across
the open ward like the black shadow of a cloud.
But the morning found him restored and un-
repentant .
Abbot of St. Peter's ! Day by day, while
THE CHAPLAIN OF THE TOWER 137
that preferment was delayed,, the hunger ravened
in him and the conscience hardened, until his
crime, going unrewarded, filled him with an in-
sane and rageful joy. But one evening there
came a secret message to him that the King,
superstitious after the fashion of the sceptical
and world -serving, had taken exception to the
place of burial, and desired that the dead should
be privately exhumed and reinterred in a place
less unconsecrate. Flushed with renewed hope,
then, he hugged his confidence, and went with
burning eyes about his task.
God knows how he managed to perform it,
and alone, and without exciting suspicion. He
was lord of his own sacred domain. But, work-
ing with demoniac energy, hie got out the spoiled
young bodies, and conveyed them one by one
to the new grave he had himself opened for
them under the chapel stairs . There they might
repose within sound of the Mass, at peace and
at rest for evermore. His imagination, as with
monomaniacs, could flow only in one direction.
Each day he trod upon the stones that hid his
secret, and never faltered or feared. And each
day he waited, hungering, for his summons to
Westminster.
138 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
It came at last the prize for which he had
wrought, and suffered, and bartered his priestly
soul. He was in the chapel at the time, and
he heard the voice of the Lieutenant calling to
him. He hurried out, and saw Sir John standing,
citation in hand, at the foot of the stairs.
" Hail, Father Abbot ! " quoth the knight, in
that derisory tone he had ever assumed towards
him since their last interview.
The chaplain, his thin lips chewing out a
smile, lingered on the top of the flight. And
then, all in a moment, his eyes were seen to
fix themselves in a stare of horror, as if some
terrific vision opposed them.
"What's this?" he whispered. "Who put
it here?"
The other answered, startled : " I see naught."
" Ah-ha ! "
He threw up his hands with a screech and
fell headlong. His neck, as he pitched, doubled
under him with a crack, and the body, bowling
down, was flung at Sir John's feet. There, with
its head fallen back upon the very stone which
locked away its secret, it relaxed and settled.
He had received the wages and paid the price
of blood in one and the same instant.
THE CHAPLAIN OF THE TOWER 139
So died that chaplain of the Tower who alone,
out of all the kingdom, could have solved the
mystery of the tragic dead. -When, on the
accession of Henry, it became necessary, for
reasons of high policy, to disinter the bodies,
the grave under the wall was found to have
been violated only rumour could whisper by
whom . One of the actual murderers was dead ;
the other, together with the late Master of the
Horse, being seized and questioned, could throw
no light upon the matter. Not until two hundred
years had passed was the secret to be unearthed
by some masons engaged in repairing the chapel
stairs .
And the priest? There was a legend once
current of an odd little detail connected with
his end. And that was that the body, when
.picked up, exhibited no marks of injury about
the head and neck, only the feet were bloody.
It might well have been, seeing whereon they
had trodden those many days past.
LADY GODIVA
" WILL you not, Leofric? "
11 Hence I You weary me."
" Dear lord?"
" Dear lady. So you plead like a child, the
gold circlet in thy hair, the gold hem at thy
robe, the gold garters about thy knees. Remis-
sion of these dues, quotha ! Are gems got with
forbearance? Go to! you talk. Wouldst
sacrifice one garnet in thy brooch to ease these
churls of mine? "
" O, yes 1 and more."
" More, more 1 What more ? The garnets
of thy lips, perchance, thine eyes' amethysts,
the whole treasury of thy love? "
" Nay, for that is my dear lord's."
"What so? You are considerate."
" Leofric, they come crying at my stirrup :
' While you lie soft, O lady, we cannot sleep for
cold ; while you toy with profusion, our
142 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
children moan for bread. We toil to keep, not
pay, a tithe of what we earn. We may not eat
the swine we rear, the eels we net. The taxes
crush us ; pray you our good lord to lift the
heavy burden. Our lives are his.' '
" Do they say so ? They shall answer for it
for thus importuning you."
" God forbid ! Leofric, hear me ! For the
love of God, Leofric."
" Away ! "
" Of the sweet Virgin "
" Will you tempt me too much ! "
" For thy love of poor Godiva."
The Earl turned with a roar.
" My love 1 What of thine, so to scheme to
rob me? "
" O, not rob, but give. I would have them
love thee as I love."
" By robbing me. That is a one-sided com-
pact. I see naught but my own loss in it."
" Alas ! I would give my all."
" A vain boast. What is thine to give? '
She sighed.
" My love, perhaps? " he said, mocking.
She shook her head.
" What is thy dearest possession? " he asked,
LADY GODIVA 143
still bantering'. " Most women count their
modesty. Wouldst thou give that? "
She said, weeping, " I would trust in Mary."
He stamped down his foot.
' Trust, then ! Strip off thy robe, ride naked
through the town so then I will believe thee."
She looked up at him amazed. The colour
flushed and waned in her round cheek, leaving! it
a lily white.
" But will you give me leave to do so? " she
whispered.
" Aye," he said, breathing scorn.
" And, being done, remit the tolls and set thy
people free?. "
" On my knightly oath," he swore, and, in
a sudden tickle of humour, chucked her soft
chin, and went off between anger and hard
laughter.
She was of the stock of Thorold, this young]
wife, sheriffs of Lincolnshire and a devout and
noble family. It had been like garlanding of
a bull with flowers, this wedding! of her sweet
gentleness with the stormy Saxon earl. Yet from
the first she had had influence with him. He
bore her humorously, one moment reverencing
her, the next loving to bring the shameful scarlet
144 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
to her cheek, and then to crush her about with
his arms in mighty protection and ownership.
She had a soft white beauty like a rose, and it
was good thus to hold her full fragrance
against his breast.
Now, trembling a little and her eyes cast down,
she sought Father Thomas, the chaplain of the
house, and told him all. Was she justified in
the venture? she asked him, her voice scarcely
audible.
The man was young and erotic, under his habit
a sickly craver of emotions. He would often
in his inmost soul gloat upon a dream, a thought
wild and scarce conceivable ; yet the authority
of his cloth was potent. It was a swooning
experience to him to be near her day by day, to
feel the leaning of her soul towards his, to handle
the soft places of her conscience. Accepting
what was regard for his office as regard for the
priest, he would whisper to himself : " Even
greater miracles have come to pass." Wherefore
now, moistening his dry lips and thinking of her
loveliness, he answered her with the Greek pro-
verb : "A little evil is a great good. You are
justified, my daughter."
She turned and fled from him with a strangled
LADY GODIVA 145
cry. Perhaps she had hoped against hope to
find her venture banned by Mother Church ; per-
haps, unrecognised by herself, the pure spirit in
her had recoiled from contact with a thing
unclean. Yet he was God's servant, and he
had spoken.
For days after, awaiting" the ordeal, she walked
as in a nightmare, a rose of fever in her cheek.
She named the hour of her trial, and sent her
herald forth to cry it, and to pray all human
creatures of their love to spare her shame, since
she was consecrating her womanhood to their
salvation, and offering herself for their sakes to
be exposed on this pillory. And a sound like a
wind went throughout the town, and each soul
there, from thrall to freedman, kindled like dull
fire blown upon, and dropped upon his knees to
call the bitter curse of Heaven on him that should
prove a traitor to such trust. And Godiva heard
and sighed ; yet she could not escape that sense
of soilure in her, since to a spotless soul it is
defilement enough to be outraged in a dreamer's
thought. " O, Mother Mary, ward and hide
me 1 " she prayed perpetually.
Her lord learned the truth amazed. She was
resolved, then, after all?. She would take him at
10
146 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
his word to browbeat and defy him? Yet he
would not interfere, nor move one step to control
her. But ever in his frowning eyes was a shadow
like death, and on his lips a muttered curse :
" Will she do it? Will she do it? A wanton-
no wife of mine." And, thinking so, he let her
have her way, even to the brief command of
all his house and borough.
Now, on that day of sacrifice, by noon all
Coventry was like a city of the dead. The last
step had echoed from its streets ; the voice of
lean barter was hushed ; behind veiled windows
a thousand ears were strained in thrill and ecstasy
to hear the tinkle of a palfry's feet upon the
stones without. Only one sacrilegious hound,
doomed to eternal infamy, could be found to
slur the honest record a small, livid-faced man,
slinking like a fearful thief, his cowl pulled over
his eyes, up the steps of the By ward tower by the
castle gate. Father Thomas it was, who had
left Godiva in the chapel prostrate before the
figure of the Virgin, praying for strength to do
her part. It was only right, he told himself,
licking his pale lips, that the Church should
sanction this live-offering by its presence.
The Castle had fallen as silent as the town.
LADY GODIVA 147
Its inmates whispered apart, or wept if they were
women. Its great gate was flung open, its battle-
ments were deserted, its windows stopped and
eyeless ; only in the courtyard a single creamy
jennet, fastened to a pillar, champed and fretted
for her rider.
The frowning Leofric, his ear bent to a curtain
close at hand, fingered his sword-hilt as he
waited listening). His fair Saxon face, clean-
shaved but for the corn-coloured beard which
forked from its chin like a swallow's tail, was
flushed a deep red ; the muscles of his bare arms
and thighs, white against his purple gold-hemmed
tunic, twitched spasmodically ; the leggings of
twisted gold upon his calves seemed to undulate
like snake -skin.
" She shall die first ! " he kept muttering to
himself. " She shall die first ! "
A soft step whispered on the stones ; he
heard the mare whinny, her trappings clinked.
" Now 1 " he muttered, and, drawing his blade,
parted the curtain noiselessly and looked forth.
In the very act he staggered and flung his hand
across his face.
His wife no question of it ! But so ethereal-
ised, so remote from his carnal conception of
148 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
her, that his soul shrank abashed before the spirit
his ruthless challenge had evoked. Her hair
was down, veiling her from crown to pearly thigh.
A nimbus, painted by the sunlight in its gos-
samer, seemed to hang about her head. Through
golden mist budded a rose of lips, a thought
of blue eyes flowered, like little eyes of heaven
seen through a haze of dawn. So glorified in
her sacrifice, seen, but unseeing, she went by him
and disappeared, silent as a figure in a glass.
He stood like one turned suddenly to stone.
Eull ten minutes must have passed before,
coming again to consciousness, as it were, he
bethought himself that she would be returning in
a little, her task accomplished.
" Introibo ad altare Marice! " he sighed,
amazed. " I will pray my love's forgiveness.
I am not worthy to kiss her little latchet."
He clanked his sword into its scabbard, and,
going like a blind man, sought the chapel. The
lamp before the altar shone like a star ; all the
dusk air seemed thick with scent of roses ; and
before the shrine of the Virgin lay his wife pros-
trate on the stones.
He stood a moment as if death-smitten ; the
blood about his heart seemed to stagnate and
LADY GODIVA 149
leave him grey as ashes. Then fury was born
in him, and flamed to fire.
" A trick 1 " he stormed within. " She hath
bribed another to take her place."
; He strode roughly forward, bent, and seized
the body to his arms. She never moved or
spoke. Looking in her face, he saw its eyes
closed, its cheek stone-white. No breath came
from the parted lips.
" Dead 1 " he whispered. " My God ! have
I killed her?, "
Raising his eyes in anguish, he saw the shrine
empty. The painted figure of the Virgin proper
to it was gone. At that moment a sound of
horse's hoofs striking upon the stones outside
came to his ear. She was returning ! She
who? An awe as of immortality smote into his
veins. The body in his arms stirred, and a deep
sigh issued from its lips.
" Mother so dear, Mother without stain, pro-
tect and cover me thy child with the mantle of
thy chastity. I am ready, Mother."
Her fingers trembled to her belt. L'eofric,
with a gasp of emotion, caught and held them.
" Mother?. " he choked, and, looking up, saw
the figure in its place once more.
150 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
There was a distant cry of jubilance, swell-
ing to a roar, and then near at hand another, on
a new and startled note. Something had befallen
in the castle something as unexpected as it was
very fearful in its revelation. In a chamber of
the Byward tower they had come upon the body
of the priest. There was an augur in its crooked
clutch, and in the boarded shutter of the window
a hole to correspond. The body lay decently,
and undefiled of blood, but where the eyes should
have been were two burnt and blackened sockets.
A judgment, said the people ; but only Leofric
and Godiva ever knew of what tremendous
import. Divine is beauty, and those who would
view it unveiled must risk Actseon's fate.
THE HERO OF WATERLOO
COLONEL MANTON put up his rod and demanded
to be set ashore. It had been his first experi-
ence of coarse fishing; on the river, and it had
not proved to his taste. It was not that the
perch had been distant or the chub unapproach-
able. On the contrary, the place having been
ground -baited overnight, the sport had been
excellent. It was the worms and one other thing
which decided him. He had been present at
Talavera, at Ciudad Rodrigo, at Badajos, at Vit-
toria, at Quatre Bras, at Waterloo ; he had seen
as much carnage as most men, but this blood-
less impaling of lob -worms on hooks, and then
casting them, so transfixed, to lie writhing on
the river bottom for an indefinite period at the
end of a ledger-line, offended his sense of fitness.
It was not, it seemed to him, playing the game.
The worms had no chance, and they could not
bite back. He hated to sit there and think of
151
152 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
what was going on under the quiet water, and
the reflection gained nothing in relish from the
fact that, by refusing to soil his own hands with
the viscous contortions of the creatures, he must
appear, in delegating that operation to the boat-
man, to torture by deputy, like the most cowardly
of Eastern despots. And so when, as presently
happened, this same stolid deputy, in " disgorg-
ing " an obstinate hook from a barbel's throat
tore away But it is enough to say that the
Colonel put down his rod and demanded there
and then to be set ashore.
There was no gainsaying him, of course. It
was sufficient that he was the guest of a distin-
guished General living at Datchet ; but in addi-
tion to this the Colonel's personal actions invited
no criticism. He fished as he walked, as he
rode, as he appeared on all secular occasions
in a dark blue wasp-waisted frock-coat with frogs,
in tight nankeen trousers strapped under neat
insteps, in a stiff collar and full black stock, in
a tall hat with a brim so crescented that its front
peak looked like the " nasal " of a Norman
helmet. And for the rest he carried himself
and his white moustache with the conscious
authority of a cock of a hundred fights.
THE HERO OF WATERLOO 153
The boatman put him ashore on the river -bank
some half-mile below Datchet, towards which
village he immediately addressed his steps. The
path was lonely and unfrequented, and it gave
the Colonel some surprise to observe, as he
turned a clump of bushes, a fashionable old
beau toddling along it in front of him. In a few
moments the latter paused, nonplussed, at a stile,
and the Colonel came up with him.
The pedestrian was a man of uncouth bulk
but distinguished mien. He wore a black frock-
coat of a somewhat military cut, with a rich
fur collar. Curly auburn locks, obviously
artificial, showed beneath the brim of his glossy
hat, and accented somewhat ghastfully the puffy
pallor of a face whose texture betrayed its age.
His eyes had a glutinous, half -blind appearance ;
his loose lower lip perpetually trembled. He
peered at the newcomer, panting a good deal,
as if the sudden apparition had shaken his
nerves.
" If I may venture, sir," said Colonel Manton,
and proffered his arm. The other accepted it
to mount the stile. It was an ungraceful
business, and, once over, he stood, with his hands
to his sides, vibrating heavily, like a worn-out
154 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
engine, to his own respirations. Presently he was
sufficiently recovered to speak.
" A damned obstruction a damned obstruc-
tion ! Cannot I leave my carriage a moment
to walk round by the water but this annoyance
must appear in my path I "
" A villainous stile/' said the Colonel. ' We
will indict it for a trespass."
He was a reasonable man, and he felt the
absurdity of the complaint. But, to his surprise,
his sarcasm missed fire.
" Do so, do so," said the old gentleman, and
took his arm again, as it might have been his
own walking-stick. They went on together,
and in a little the stranger had opened a
conversation with all the effrontery in the
world.
" My boy, what's your rank? " said he. 'I
perceive you are a soldier."
The officer stared, and drew himself up.
11 Colonel Manton, sir, at your service," he
answered distantly.
He was surprised ; but the man was old, near
seventy by his appearance, and very possibly
from his cut a retired veteran like himself.
Familiarity from a general, say, would be par-
THE HERO OF WATERLOO 155
donable, and even kindly. Besides, he did not
dislike the implied suggestion of juniority.
" -Hey ! " said the stranger" retired? "
' Yes sir, retired."
" Brevet rank? "
" Brevet be damned ! " said Colonel Manton
hotly. " I owe my promotion, sir, if you wish
to know, to Waterloo."
The stranger glanced at him with a curiously
sly look, and pinched the arm on wMch his own
fingers rested.
" What ! " he said, " were you there? "
" I had the honour, sir," said the Colonel
grandiloquently, " of playing my little part in
that Homeric contest."
" Whose division, hey? "
" Picton's Pack's brigade. You are a little
you will excuse my saying it particular."
" Certainly I will, my boy. Wounded
hey? "
A distinct flush suffused the Colonel's cheek.
" Wounded yes," he replied shortly.
The old fellow nudged him confidentially.
" Tell me," he said" how? "
" Look here you must forgive me, you
know," exploded the Colonel ; " but I must point
156
out that we are strangers. Still as a fellow-
campaigner if that is the case may I ask, sir,
if you, were at Waterloo? "
The other laughed enjoyingly.
" Was I? " he said. " To be sure I was.
You had all good reason for knowing it."
Colonel Manton's eyes opened. Here was a
momentous implication. Evidently he had to
do with some great general of division, though
the boast sounded a little extravagant and un-
military. He ran over in his mind a dozen
possible names, but without success. And then
the thought occurred to him : " Good reason for
knowing it? What the devil ! Is it possible he
was on the other side? '
The idea seemed too preposterous for belief ;
the stranger was so obviously British. Who, in
wonder's name, could he be, then? Hill,
Macdonnell, Saltoun, Uxbridge, Vandeleur,
Somersett, Hackett all divisional or brigadier-
generals? He could not identify him, of his
knowledge, with any one of these. The Iron
Duke himself? He had never been brought into
very close personal contact with the great man,
but naturally he was familiar with his features.
Could it be possible that time had so fused and
THE HERO OF WATERLOO 157
blunted those that their characteristic contour had
degenerated into this scarce distinguishable pulp?
Prosperity, he knew, could play strange tricks
with countenances, yet a volte-face so revolu-
tionary seemed incredible. And yet who else
but the Duke had been on that day as indis-
pensable as implied? But it was conceivable
that some might have so regarded themselves
that certain heads might have been turned by
their share in the success of so stupendous a
victory.
Colonel Manton had been living; abroad on
his half -pay for some years, and, until the occa-
sion of this visit during the summer of 1830,
had dwelt for long a stranger to his native land.
He could but suppose that he had in a measure
lost the clue, through subsequent develop-
ments, to old events. It remained clear only
that he was in the presence of one who had, or
believed himself to have, contributed signally to
the success of the epoch-making battle. And that
must be enough for him. He spoke thenceforth
as a subordinate to his commanding officer.
" I beg your indulgence, sir," he said. " I
have been absent from my country for a con-
siderable time, and features once familiar elude
158 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
me. You asked about my wound. It is a
ridiculous matter, and I recall it without en-
thusiasm. The fact is that, when d'Erlon's guns
were pounding us before the advance, a ball
smashed the head of a sergeant standing near
me, and one of the fellow's cursed double-teeth
was driven into my neck. It was not enough
to cripple my fighting -power, but I would have
given a dozen of my own to boast a more honour-
able scar."
The stranger chuckled.
" Scars are not the only guarantee of valour,"
he said.
The Colonel ventured : " You brought away
some of your own, sir? "
" No," said the old fellow. " No ; Wellington
and I got off scot-free."
The Colonel dared again : ' Were you, may
I ask, on his personal staff? '
" Well, yes," said the stranger, chuckling still
more, " I suppose you might call it that."
Suppose? Colonel Manton gaped. It was
positively a matter of history that not one of that
staff had escaped death or mutilation. The other
may have noticed his perplexity, for he turned
on him with an air of sudden annoyance.
THE HERO OF WATERLOO 159
" You haven't the assurance to question my
word, I hope, sir? " he demanded.
" Certainly not," answered the Colonel.
" I could give you convincing proof," said
the stranger. " Did the Commander -in-Chief
now did he or did he not visit General Bliicher
at Wavre the night before the battle to make
sure of his co-operation? '
" It is a disputed point, sir," said the Colonel.
I believe that even his Grace has been known
to contradict himself in the matter, saying at one
time that he would never have fought without
Bliicher's explicit promise to back him up, at
another flatly contradicting the report that he
saw the Prussian general on the night before the
battle."
" And he did not, my boy," sniggered the
old fellow triumphantly, " for his interview with
him was after midnight, and therefore on the
day of the battle. I ought to know, for I sent
him off there ntyself."
He cackled into such a spasm of laughter that
the convulsion caught his wind.
" O, my chest ! " he wheezed and gasped,
" my miserable chest I I'm the most wretched
creature on earth. But it's nothing, nothing
160 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
the youngest fellows are subject to it." He
coughed and wiped his eyes with a heavily-
scented handkerchief. " Yes," he said presently,
" yes, Wellington was a sound workaday general,
a fine soldier, an inspired commissary, but, of
genius h'm I We need only suggest, Manty my
boy, that he was well advised. The man at
his elbow, hey? You need not mention it, you
know, but the real hero of Waterloo hey, d'ye
see? Keep it to yourself ; there were reasons
against its being divulged you understand?
What, my boy ! "
The Colonel stared before him as if hypno-
tised ; he stumbled in his walk. Was it possible
to mistake the implication that the laurels ought
by rights to have adorned the brow of this
stranger beside him? He felt like one whose
faith had suddenly exploded of its own intensity,
leaving his breast a blackened shell. Could there
actually have been another, of whom he had
never heard, at the Duke's right hand on that
tremendous day, the presiding but unconfessed
genius of it? He had heard speak of the Cor-
sican's little red familiar. Was his great rival,
were possibly all commanding intellects, so
supernaturally provided?
THE HERO OF WATERLOO 161
He was really a simple man, with a mind
ruled to certain prescriptive lines of conduct.
He glanced askance at his companion, who was
smiling and murmuring to himself. Who in
Heaven's name could he be, and why had he
selected him for his astounding: confidences? For
all his own fearless rectitude, an uncanny feeling
began to possess him. He was glad, in turning
a corner, to see the end of the path, and the head
of a waiting coachman showing above the hedge.
And the next moment they had emerged on to the
village green.
A barouche stood there, with a bareheaded
gentleman standing at its door. The liveries of
the servants were scarlet, and a mounted man
in a scarlet embroidered coat waited a little apart.
The gentleman came forward.
' Will your Majesty be pleased to ascend? '
he asked.
The King dropped the Colonel's arm, and
appeared on the instant to forget all about him.
" Yes, Watty ; yes, certainly, my boy," he
said. "Is that the fiery chariot? "
11
MAID MARIAN
" MASTER KAY, are you my friend? "
; ' Hear me vow it, madam."
" Alas ! what vow ? "
" That I am your friend."
" Can you so perjure yourself? Are you not
the King's friend? "
" O, yes, indeed 1 "
" How can you be his friend and mine? "
" Why, as the bee's the flower's friend. I
carry messages of love."
" Does he ask mine of me ? "
' Just that, madam only your love, no more."
" No more? You say well. Why, truly my
love were a little thing to be valued at no more
than a man's base desire."
" The man is the King, madam. His desire
is great like himself."
" The King is the man, sir, and the man is
hateful to me. Will you tell him so, and be
indeed my friend? "
" It would serve you ill, madam."
163
164 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
" Will he force me ? Alack ! I will kill
myself."
" Nay, that you shall not, save you hold your
breath and die of your own sweetness like a
rose. No other way, be assured. He will wear
you in his bosom first."
" God ! Dear Master Kay, good Master Kay,
sweet, gentle friend, let me kill myself I "
" I must not."
" But to leap from the wall I It is a little
way but a step, and to save me hell? You
would not have me burn for ever?"
" I would have you reasonable, madam."
She had fallen on her knees to him, this Maud
Fitzwalter, fair daughter of Robert the Baron,
who was to come to head the revolt against the
infamous King. Her long white fingers plucked
at his sleeves ; her eyes sought his eyes
imploringly. He drank of them, lusting in their
passionate appeal. She was called Madelon la
Belle, and to see her was to think of spring,
with its crab -blossoms against a blue sky, its
glow and youth and waywardness. There is a
lack of the sense of symmetry in Love that
makes his sweetest faces out of drawing ; and
yet one never doubts but that they are Love's
MAID MARIAN 165
faces, as endearing as they are faulty, and for
their very faultiness most lovable. His draw-
ing, I say, may be defective, but he knows the
trick of lip and eyelash to a curve and how to
snare men's hearts thereby. And so, while we
criticise his work, saying that this or that line
goes astray, we would not have it turned by
a hair's breadth nearer the truth, lest we should
miss love in aiming at perfection.
Such a face was Maud's, framed in its yellow
braids so long that, parted from her forehead
and plaited in with a cord of gold, they almost
touched the ground when she stood up. For
the rest her simple tunic was green, and clasped
loosely at the hips by a belt of jewelled gold,
the slack of which hung low. Madelon la Belle
she was called, or Passerose, for the sweetness
of her Saxon face and the Saxon blue of her
eyes. But most of all she herself loved her
name of Maid Marian, given her in those green
holts and brakes of Sherwood whither she had
followed her own true love, the outlawed Earl,
and whence, in a dire moment, she had been
ravished by the cursed King. *He had seen her
loveliness and coveted it, and where John coveted
was no safety for wife or virgin. And so it
166 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
had befallen that once, when abiding in her
father's castle of Dunmow, the Baron being
absent, he had come, shedding in his hot haste his
smooth phrases and courtly wiles, and had torn
her from her shelter and carried her to London
to his Tower on the Thames. And there he kept
her fast, not doubting but that she would yield
to him in time, and glooming ever a little and a
little more as her obduracy held him aloof.
This Kay was one of the King's minions, whom
he would send to bribe or threaten the lovely
captive into surrender. The fellow was no
better than a maquereau, who tasted passion
by deputy. He was confident, in the soft per-
suasiveness of his voice, in the irresistibility of
his figure and finery, of the ultimate success of
his mediation. His hair, rolled about his ears,
was scented ; his tunic, short beyond custom,
was of gold-embroidered crimson, and his hose
were like-hued. A curt-manteau, of cloth of
gold lined with green, hung about his shoulders,
and on his feet were boots of green cloth, the
upper part of lattice-work, embossed at each
crossing with a little leopard's head in gold. He
had no real heart of tenderness or mercy. He
was a mere painted mask, as bowelless as the
Elf -maiden herself.
MAID MARIAN 167
" I would have you reasonable, madam/' he
said.
She rose and stood away from him.
" Is it not in reason to guard one's virtue? "
she said, panting.
" Nay," he answered ; " but if you guard it
alone and weaponless, and the thief come in well-
armed and strong of body ? It were reason better
to yield it with a good grace."
She threw herself upon a bench wailing, " O,
hence, thou beast ! " And so she lay writhing*
" Only to die and they will not let me die ! "
She sought and cried for death perpetually ;
she knew she was lost, lacking that kind friend.
Was it not pitiful? she whom life had so
favoured and love so moulded. She sought him,
moaning and wringing her hands, at barred
windows, in dusky corners ; she entreated her
gaolers to have pity on her, to put poison into
her food, to lend her a weapon, or a pathway to
the battlements whence she might cast herself
down. Her every prayer but increased their watch-
fulness ; Death was excluded from her as jealously
as if he had been her outlawed lover himself.
On this day her desperation had risen to a
pitch scarce endurable. There had been signs
168 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
that the royal patience was near exhausted.
'And it was late spring without she could see
it through her window across the green flats
that stretched beyond the moat, beyond her
prison. Its sweetness reminded her of past days
in the forest, so that her heart came near to
breaking. Her lips whispered the words of the
little glad song that she and her Robin had often
sung together :
"Summer is a comin' in,
Loud sing cuckoo.
Groweth seed and bloweth mead,
And springeth the wood now.
Sing cuckoo, cuckoo."
" Sing cuckoo," she wept, " the wanton's
shame ! O, Robin, my Robin ! " She would
never see him again could never wish to. In
a few hours, perhaps, she would be a thing for
his scorn, a thing that not death, found too late,
could cleanse.
In the evening came the King himself, with
his frowning eyes and grim jaw that, with the
thick beard clipped close on it, looked like a
bulldog's . He was in a furious mood, his Queen
having vexed him, and flashed and scintillated
like a scaled devil in the light of the dozen
torches he brought.
MAID MARIAN 169
" 'How now," he thundered, " thou rever's
doxy ! Still obdurate ? "
Her very heart shook ; but she stood up to
him bravely.
" Plunge thy knife into my breast, Sir King,"
she said, " and with my last sigh I will praise
thee."
" What ! " he snarled " so much in love with
Death? We'll see to it thy desire's whetted in
his fondling. He shall prick thee here and there
before ye close. Away with her to the Watch
Tower ! "
It was at least a respite, and she had dreaded
the instant worst. This Watch, or Round Turret,
rose from the north-east angle of the great Keep.
He had her there at his mercy. Her cries might
rise to heaven, but could not penetrate the dense
fabric below. In this chill, high dungeon they
imprisoned the girl. Its cold, its dreadful
loneliness, scant food, and the silent guard
should break her spirit, the wretch thought.
He would taste her submission to the dregs, then
fling her to his lackeys to teach her what it
meant to flout her King. She answered by
starving herself ; on which came Kay, the silky-
tongued, and warned her smoothly that such con-
170 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
tumacy could only invite its swift reprisal. She
would not be permitted so to slip through her
royal lover's hands. Whereat she ate all that
they would give her, and despaired the more.
There was no escape, none. Locked in as
she was, she knew that her every movement was
canvassed by hidden eyes, her every sigh
recorded. And Robin made no sign.
One day it moved her to hear unwonted
sounds rising from the outer ward below, into
which the public were admitted on occasion of
State festivities, executions, and so forth. The
multitudinous jollity of voices, soaring above the
whine of bugle and tap of drum, proclaimed
it a May-day revel, when the whole place was
delivered over to sport and merriment.
She could not see from her high, narrow
window, sunk deep in the wall ; but the babble
flowing in on a shaft of sunlight made her heart
warm as it had never felt for days. Some spirit
of release seemed to ride in on the happy music,
some emotion that made her bosom heave and
her eyes fill thick with tears.
She was standing, drinking in the merry noise,
when her lids blinked involuntarily, and, with
a swish and smack on the ceiling of her cell,
something alighted at her feet. She fancied on
MAID MARIAN 171
the instant that a bird had flown in and struck
against the stone ; but, looking down quickly,
she saw that it was a broken arrow one of a
dear, familiar pattern. With a gasp she stooped,
snatched at it, and stood listening. There was
no sign of any one having observed. With swift
trembling fingers she detached a strand of green
worsted which was knotted about the shaft under
the quill, and found beneath a folded scrap of
parchment, which, on being opened, revealed a
glutinous smear of brown substance, and just
these four woeful words written above :
" Poor Robin's Pledge. Farewell."
It was her death-warrant.
So sweet and tragic, her heart near stopped
from its sorrow as she read it. She knew at
once what it was a mortal Arab poison, given
long years ago to her woodland lover by a
follower of the Lion King. It might serve him
in a sore need, had been the words accompany-
ing the gift to taste it was death. And once
Robin had shown it to her, proposing, half -play-
fully, that they should pledge one another in
its Lethe were Fate ever to dispart them.
And so she knew that her last hope was dead
before her. Robin could not come. He was
hurt ; he was ill ; the guards were too many
172 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
for them, the Fates too strong, and their only
refuge at last was in death. He had sent some
one of his cunning archers, Will Scarlet belike,
to take advantage of this merrymaking to speed
the message, and, when she had realised all that
it meant to her, she fell on her knees with a
bursting prayer of gratitude to the Providence,
to the dear lover, between whom her honour
was held safe from the despoiler.
She never doubted that her Robin meant to
share the pledge. Likely his dear spirit was
waiting for her now, eager to link with hers
in the green woods where first their loves were
spoken. Fearful of interruption, she put her lips
to the poison, and died with his name on them.
That evening came Master Kay to the cell,
with a sick smile on his mouth, and in his hands
a tray of comfortable things, including a flask
of drugged wine. The King's patience was
exhausted.
But when he saw what had happened he stole
out, and fled to join the refractory Barons, of
whom was Fitz waiter, father of Madelon la Belle.
'And in the meantime Robin did not die. The
poison that was to kill him came years later
from the hand of his kinswoman, the Prioress
of Kirklees. Women will take things so literally.
THOMAS PAINE
" AH, monsieur ! " said the tall, nervous prisoner
with the ravaged face, " the rights of one man
are very well the wrongs of another that is a
new discovery ; but you did not make it . Even
God who, nevertheless, does not exist just
at present could not invent a gale that would
favour all ships ; and yet you have thought
yourself cleverer than God."
" I do not know you," interrupted his hearer
and fellow -captive peevishly. ' Why do you
,presume to address yourself to me?"
"Why?" The other lifted a little broken
plaque or medallion which hung by a spoiled
tricolour ribbon from his neck. " Do you
observe this, M. Paine? I am one Garat, ex-
President of the Sectional Committee of the
Bonnet -Rouge, and this is my badge of office
or what remains of it. It represented the table
of the law, en precis, as revealed to Mr. Paine
on Sinai. Wearing it, I symbolised the Rights
174 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
of Man. Well, what I say is, * Damn the Rights
of Man ! ' "
" O 1 certainly, if you wish," responded Mr.
Paine coolly.
' They are fragile, are they not ? " said the
ex-President, with feverish derision ; " they are
apt to be broken in any scuffle. And where is
there not a scuffle where opinions differ which
they always do? The Rights of Man have not,
I perceive, altered the nature of man, which is
to have his way wherever he can get it.
Observe : I desired to do justice according to
this tablet, but the mob would not permit me.
Instead they haled a.way their suspect, unheard ;
and I, because I would not commit him unheard,
was pronounced a traitor to the principles I
represented and was despatched to this Luxem-
bourg, where, to my profound amazement, I find
incarcerated before me the lawgiver himself !
Now I think I begin to understand everything.
Your Rights of Man could not even save your-
self. What the devil did you want redeeming 1
others with them? For me, I would welcome
all my ancient wrongs to find myself once more
a prosperous barber in the Marche Neuf."
THOMAS PAINE 175
In Paris on the 28th July, 1794, at six o'clock
in the evening, ended at a stroke the Terror,
lopped off by the head. It had been virile and
active up to that last moment, prepared with
its daily fournee, all chosen and set out for the
baking ; only in the result the order had been
somewhat changed. Messieurs the Triumvirs
and their following had been called upon to take
the place of their destined victims that was the
difference.
But the evening before the death -carts had
jolted as usual on their monotonous way to the
Place du Trone ; and therein surely the in-
sensate tragedy of the guillotine had found its
crowning expression. Eor at that time the dis-
solution of the Terror had actually begun, and
the smallest gift of fortune or of foresight might
have saved the lives of a half -hundred innocents.
There is no sorrier fate than to perish in the
lash of a just expiring monster's tail.
There was one man appointed to figure in
those tragic last tumbrils who had the best
reason in the world for considering himself a
spoilt child of Fortune. This was Mr. Deputy
Thomas Paine, some time fallen from his popular
estate, and since January imprisoned in the
176 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
Luxembourg. We see him, as he stands in the
courtyard of the old palace nominally taking
exercise, an aloof, self-complacent little man of
fifty-seven, dressed in plain brown, and wearing
his own brown hair, which nature has curled.
His eyes are large, dreamy, and bagged under-
neath ; his drooping nose has a suggestion of
red in its fall ; he has a moist, temulent mouth,
rather weighed down at the corners by pursey
cheeks .
It is evening of the 26th July, and the
prisoners, their brief liberty ended, are filing back
to their cells. There is an unwonted excitement
abroad. Some rumour of it has penetrated the
walls, and fluttered the breasts of the poor caged
birds within . A change is imminent ; they know
not what ; but scarce any could be for the worse.
Meanwhile, nevertheless, Fouquier's emissary is
up above, condemned list in hand, waiting to
prick off the names for the morrow's batch. The
procedure is quite simple ; it consists in a
chalk-mark made on the door of each victim's
cell, whence on the following morning its inmate
will pass to the Conciergerie, to the Revolu-
tionary Tribunal, back to the Conciergerie, and
thence the same evening to the scaffold. That
THOMAS PAINE 177
is a predestined course, which much treading
has made monotonous and much philosophy
smoothed. It is possible even to walk it with
a gay fatalism under prescriptive circum-
stances. Supposing, however, that there be
truth in the reports ; that the Triumvirs are
threatened and the Terror itself doomed? What
tragedy on tragedy, then, to drown in the turn
of the tide ! The prisoners, yesterday resigned,
to-day are pacing their cells like wild beasts.
Yet nothing will avail them. The last tumbrils
must have their load.
Paine was sensible of their misery ; he
believed in the imminence of a political volte -
face, and he pitied them. For himself he had
not, nor ever had had, the least apprehension.
As he lingered in abstraction, the last to with-
draw, his own security, his own importance, were
the first of convictions in his mind. As a
moderate, he was unacceptable to the extremists
it amounted to no more than that. He had
been put out of the way because he was in the
way. But they would never dare more than to
coerce into silence so notable an apostle of
liberty. He reviewed, with some smug satisfac-
tion, the processes of his own career. By origin
12
178 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
a Norfolk staymaker, by chance an exciseman,
by nature a demagogue, his inherent force of
character had lifted him to a position which
suffered at the moment only a temporary eclipse.
Was it to be believed that he who had forcibly
contributed to the Declaration of American
Independence, who had been honoured and re-
warded by the Legislature of Pennsylvania, who
had earned Franklin's friendship and Burke's
hostility, who had been elected by the Depart-
ment of Calais to sit in the French Convention,
and whose bold assertion of the Rights of Man
had been accepted for the very ritual of the
Revolution, would be let to be snuffed out by
the dirty ringers of a murdering attorney?
Fouquier dare not do it ; Robespierre, Couthon,
St. Just, the all-powerful Triumvirate, were not
assured enough for such a venture. Besides,
they represented, in an age of reason, the crown-
ing expression of reason that government by
minority which had always been a pet theory
of his.
He frowned, then lifted his eyebrows with
a smile. Something in the connection, a memory
of his own once discomfiture on a certain occa-
sion, had recurred to him. It had happened in
THOMAS PAINE 179
London, in a Fleet Street tavern, two or three
years before. How remote it all seemed ! Dr.
Wolcot he who called himself Peter Pindar-
had been there a huge, overbearing old volup-
tuary, with flashing eyes, and a flashing wit, and
a scurrilous tongue. Paine had been discoursing
to an admiring audience on the reasonableness
of deciding questions in Parliament by minorities
instead of majorities, " since," said he, " the
proportion of men of sense to ignoramuses is
but as one to ten. Wherefore the wisest portion
of mankind are always in the minority in
debate "a statement which the Doctor dis-
puted. " Still," said the latter, " I will assert
nothing for myself, but leave the question to the
company."
Now, at that, Paine, confident of his surround-
ings, had risen, and put the question to the vote,
those who agreed with him to hold up their
hands . Whereupon every hand had gone up, and
the Doctor had arisen, with a bow. " Gentle-
men," he said, " I thank you for this decision
in my favour. The wise minority, as represented
in my person, carries the vote. I pronounce
Mr. Paine wrong." And he had swallowed his
glassful and lumbered out.
180 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
Somehow the prisoner remembered that
occasion with pleasure. It suggested a form
of liberty much more in accord with his real
nature than a world of abstract utilitarianisms.
The wine in the Luxembourg was thin ; indul-
gences were few ; they often dined off stale
sprats. The end of his own nose, touched by a
ray of the slanting sun, caught his eye as with
the glint of a ruby. He pished under his breath.
" Bah ! " he muttered. " He was a domineer-
ing beast ; but I wish I were with him now at
Dick's in Fleet Street."
He sighed and stirred ; and it was at that
moment that the stranger of the broken plaque
had approached and accosted him. He was a
newcomer, and unknown to the ex-Deputy.
" To the devil with your Rights of Man ! "
ended the tall prisoner. He caught at Paine,
who had turned an angry shoulder to him and
was going. "Is it not so?" he demanded.
' They are just one's right, it appears, to run
with the crowd the crowd's way. If one takes
the Liberty to pause a moment for reflection,
one is trampled underfoot by 'Fraternity and
packed off to discuss Equality with the other
heads in the basket."
THOMAS PAINE 181
" I would have you observe," said Paine
frigidly, " that the turnkey is summoning us to
return to our cells."
'He moved away, but the other followed close
beside him, agitated and voluble.
" Cells ! " he cried" cells 1 But is not that
a fine comment on your propaganda ? I interpret
your Rights according to the tables, and you
send me to the guillotine for it."
" I ? " said Paine. He stopped in desperation.
" Is not your emissary up there now," cried
Garat, " marking off 'the doomed? "
" My emissary? " said Paine.
" You are as responsible as any for him," said
the ex-President, kneading his damp palms
together. " If you would try to blow east and
west at once, meddling with unknown forces.
You should have remembered, monsieur, that the
first right of man is to existence. There would
have been a fine air of originality about jthat
precept. It has always been the easiest thing in
the world to solve h,uman problems by killing. 1 '
The demagogue took refuge behind derision.
" I perceive you are simply a coward," he
said.
" Yes," cried Garat, his lips trembling. " I
182 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
am simply that. What can you expect, who have
decreed us annihilation for our despair? Our
ancient wrongs conceded us a heaven after all ;
your modern rights have taken it away. It is
all very well for you, safeguarded by your posi-
tion, to pretend to despise death ; it would be
another matter, I expect, if you feared, like me,
to find the chalk-mark on your door."
" Rest assured," said Paine contemptuously.
" If you have sought to serve Justice, Justice will
not destroy her own."
"But there are accidents."
' I answer for her, I say," insisted the dema-
gogue, with an air of pompous finality. " You
may trust to my own share, citizen grossly as
you libel it in her modern scheme, which pro-
vides against such possibilities. No trick of
Fortune is permitted nowadays to spare the
guilty or condemn the innocent."
"But are you sure, monsieur? Monsieur, in
God's name ! "
Paine waved the creature aside with a peremp-
tory gesture, and continued his way across the
yard. They were the last to enter the prison,
and they mounted the naked stairs almost
together. In the same corridor above were their
cells situated, and Torne, the surly gaoler, was
THOMAS PAINE 183
already holding half -closed the door of Carat's,
which came first. It was bare of the fatal sign,
and Garat ran into his fold with a bleat like a
comforted sheep.
Mr. Thomas Paine, with a shrug and sneer,
tripped on his way to his own cell. Reaching
it, he raised his eyes, staggered slightly, and
gave a single gasp. Its door was flung back
against the outer wall, and the mark was on it.
Inside! He had but to close it upon himself,
and the mark would vanish. Eouquier's hurry-
ing emissary, not being of the wise minority,
had overlooked that contingency.
Torne, having locked in Garat, was coming
down the corridor. Screening the sign with his
arm, the ex-Deputy swung round the door and
shut himself in.
He died a dozen deaths before he heard the
key turn in the lock outside a hundred before
the news of next day's coup d'etat came to restore
life to ten thousand withering hopes.
But the tumbrils went on the morrow, and
for the last time, all the same only he was not
a passenger by them. It was just his luck that
Fortune was offered such a characteristic way of
retaliating upon him for his boasted command
of her.
FAIR ROSAMOND
A UADY, accompanied by a small armed retinue,
rode out of a forest glade near Woodstock, and,
pausing beside the waters of the Glyme, which
here came tumbling in a little weir, smooth as
a barrel of glass, over an artificial dam, reined
in her steed, and sat gazing, in the full glow,
of noon, upon the scene before her.
It was a scene of perfect pastoral .quiet-
woodland and meadow as far as the eye could
reach, broken by green hillocks and dominated
by a solitary keep of stone set on a leafy height
in the foreground. To the right a film of floating
vapour showed where a hidden hamlet smoked.
There was no other token of human life or
habitation anywhere.
The lady, halting a little in advance of her
party, made a preoccupied motion with her hand,
whereupon there pushed forward to her a certain
horseman, who dragged with him a churl roped
185
186
to his saddle-bow. The knight was in bascinet
and chain -mail like the others, but his shield
and pavon were emblazoned with arms betoken-
ing his higher rank.
'* Messer de Polwarth," said the lady, " is not
this in sooth Love's paradise?"
" Certes, madam," he answered grimly ; " it
is the King's Manor of Woodstock."
She laughed ; then, stiffening suddenly in her
saddle, pointed upwards.
" Look I " she said.
A poising kite, as she spoke, had dropped to
the wood-edge, and thence rose swiftly with a
dove beating in its talons.
" Behold a fruitful omen," she cried, and
turned on the hind : " Dog ! where lies the
garden ? "
De Polwarth struck the fellow a steely blow
across the scruff.
" Answer, beast ! "
The man, a sullen, unkempt savage, pointed
with an arm like a snag.
" Down yon, a bowshot from the lodge.
Boun by the waterside."
The lady nodded, her eyes fixed in a sort of
smiling trance. She was Eleanor of Aquitaine,
FAIR ROSAMOND 187
no less, the divorced wife of France, the
neglected and embittered Queen of England, and
she was at this moment on the verge of flight
to those rebellious sons of hers who conspired
in Guienne against their father.
But, before she fled, she had just one deed
of savage vengeance to perpetrate, and of that
she would not be baulked, though to accom-
plish it she must ride across half England.
Somewhere, she knew, in this place was situated
that " house of wonderful working wrought
like unto a knot in a garden," where lived her
hated child -rival, that beautiful frail rose of
the Cliffords who had borne the King a son.
So much the worse for her so much the
worse.
The Queen descended to earth, spiritually and
literally. She was dressed like a queen in a
belted blue robe latticed with gold, and a long
purple cloak over. A jewelled coronet embraced
her headcloth and the headcloth her face. The
rim of hair that showed under was still, for all
her fifty odd years, crow black. Her colour
was high, her frame masculine ; the prominence
of her lower lip gave her a cruel expression,
and without belying her.
188 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
" Nay, de Polwarth," she said, as the knight
made a movement to dismount. " No hand in
this but mine."
He retorted gruffly : ' The place is reputed
impenetrable."
She smiled. " Hate will find out a way.
Rest you here till I return."
Never to be gainsaid, she went off alone by
the streamside, and soon disappeared among the
trees beyond.
Her way took her under the slope of the hill
which ran up to the King's Manor. At first,
looking through the branches, she could catch
glimpses of the strong, irregular pile, butting
like a mountain crag from the forehead of the
green height ; but, in a little, the density of
the trees increasing, the house was hidden from
her view, and she had only the thick, towering
woods and the little stream for company.
On and on she went, resolute to her purpose,
thrilled with some presentiment of its near
accomplishment and suddenly a white rabbit
ran out from the green almost under her feet.
She stopped dead on the instant, and, as she
stood motionless, the thicket parted near the bole
of a great beech-tree hard by, and a little boy
FAIR ROSAMOND 189
slipped out into the open. He was pink-cheeked,
Saxon -haired and eyed a shapely manikin of
five or so. Intent on recapturing his pet, he
did not at first notice the stranger ; but when
he turned, with the bunny hugged in his arms,
he stood rosily transfixed. In a swift stride or
two the Queen was upon him, cutting off his
retreat.
She stooped, with a little exultant laugh.
' What is thy name, sweet imp? " she said.
He pouted, half -frightened, but still essaying
the man, rubbing one foot against the opposite
calf.
" Willie Clifford, madam," he said, wondering
for a moment at her crown ; but then panic
overtook him.
" Nay, Willie," said the Queen, holding him
with a hand that belied its own softness ; "I
like thy tunic of white lawn and thy pretty shoon
so latched with gold. Hast a fond mother,
Willie whose name I will guess of thee for
Rosamond ? And for thy father, Willie do you
see him often ? "
" He hath a crown like thine, but finer," said
the child ; " and when he comes he puts it on
my head." Something in the staring face above
190 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
him awoke his sudden fear. He began to
struggle.
" Let me go I " he cried" I want to go back
to my minny."
'Thy minny?" said the Queen. "One
moment, child. Is that thy secret way behind
the tree there ? "
" I will not tell thee," cried the boy. " I
want my minny ! Let me go 1 "
With one swift movement she tore the rabbit
from his arms, and holding it aloft with her
left hand, with her right whipped a jewelled
bodkin from its sheath at her waist, and stabbed
the little white body, stabbed it, stabbed it.
Then she flung the convulsed encrimsoned thing
to the ground, and, resheathing the weapon, held
the child with a stare of fury.
The swiftness, the savagery, the dreadful
novelty of the act had had their purposed effect
on him. His eyes widened, his throat swelled;
but the scream to which he was on the instant
impelled never came. His little soul was
paralysed ; he was utter slave to horror. If
she had told him at that moment to lie down
and go to sleep, he would have tried to obey
her will, though the unuttered sobs were half-
bursting his bosom.
FAIR ROSAMOND 191
"Now," she said, "now!" panting 3. little.
" Seest, thou harlot's whelp? Cross me again,
and so shalt thou be served. Wait here move
one step hence an thou darest until I come
again."
She cast one final look of menace at him,
then, stepping to the beech-tree, parted the
green and disappeared.
It was a cunning blind, as she had expected.
The great trunk was so packed amongst the
thickets of the hillside that none would have
guessed its concealment of a scarce-discernible
track which threaded the matted growths above
and behind it. Mounting by this, the malign
creature came suddenly upon a broken opening
in the rock, so mossy and so choked with foliage
that its presence would have been quite un-
suspected from the glade below. She stopped;
she uttered a little gloating exclamation ; for
there, looped over a projection of the stone, was
the end of a strong green thread hanging out
of the darkness. The clue, of which she had
heard whisper with but small faith, was actually
in her hand . Providence had doomed the foolish
mother to permit her child to sport with the very
means designed against her own destruction.
192 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
The cavity led into a ramification of passages,
roughly trenched and hewn out of the calcareous
slate of the hill. Occasionally roofed, mostly
open, always tangled in foliage, and so cunningly
devised to mislead that it had been near humanly
impossible to resolve its intricacies without such
guide to follow, the labyrinth led the Queen by
a complicated course to a sense of approaching
light and release. And then all in a moment
the thread had come to an end against a stake
to which it was fastened ; and there was a
pleasant garden sunk in a hollow of the hill,
and a fair young woman, with an awaiting, some-
what troubled expression on her face, standing
hard by. She had evidently spun the clue, and
returned the first by it from the glade, to make
sport for her little man.
The intruder took all in at a glance
the expectant figure, the quiet, inaccessible
pleasaunce, the roof of a gilt pavilion rising,
a long stone's -throw away, above the branches
of a flowering orchard ; dominating all, and
hiding this lovely secret in its lap, the wooded
hill crowned by its protecting keep.
The young woman, with one startled glance,
turned to fly; but in the very act, staggered
FAIR ROSAMOND 193
by a recollection, turned, and came towards the
Queen, a hand pressed to her bosom. She was a
frail thing, in the ethereal as well as the worldly
sense fragile, it seemed, as china, and as
delicately tinted. All pink and cream, with pale
golden hair, her darker eyebrows were the only
definite note of colour in a thin face. Even
her long robe of pale green suggested the
anaemia of tulip-leaves forced into premature
growth.
" A weak craft to have borne so huge a sin,"
said Eleanor, as the girl approached. She eyed
her with malignant scorn, her under lip pro-
jecting. " So, wanton," she said, " dost know
the wife thou hast wronged? "
The other gave a little mortal start and cry :
' The Queen ! " and could utter no more.
A small, hateful laugh answered her.
' The wife, fool ! the she -wolf against whom
you thought to guard your fold with straws.
Why, look at you I could peel you in my hands
a bloodless stalk, without heat or beauty 1 "
" Spare me 1 "
" Aye, as the wolf spares the lamb, the hawk
the wren. Let me look on you. So this is a
King's fancy. I could have wrought him better
13
194 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
from a kitchen-scrub. Quick ! I am in ; I have
no time to lose, and thine has come. Poison or
steel make thy choice."
" O, madam, in pity ! My heart I have
been weak and ill I shall not vex thee long I "
"God's blood! And baulk my vengeance?
Come poison "
" O ! What poison ? "
" Why, that thou art betrayed supplanted.
Another leman lies in thy bed wife to one
Blewit, a willing cuckold. Drink it, thy
desertion, to the dregs."
" Sin must not beshrew sin. It is bitter to
the death; but I drink it."
" O, thou toad ! Thou wilt not die, for
all thy stricken heart? Will this kill thee
then?"
She whipped out the red stiletto. Rosamond
uttered a faint shriek.
" Blood 1 "
The Queen brandished it before her eyes.
" I met thy whelp in the glade. It was he
who betrayed the way to me."
The girl gasped and tottered forward.
'I let him to his death. Monster, thou hast
killed my Willie my boy, my one darling 1 "
FAIR ROSAMOND 195
She made an effort to leap forward swayed
and fell her full length upon the grass.
The Queen, softly replacing her blade, stood
staring down. No sound or movement followed
on the fall. Stooping, she gazed long and
silently into the thin face, then, without a word,
turned and retreated as she had come.
The boy was standing, white and tearless, by
his dead rabbit as she parted the leaves and
slunk forth.
" Go to thy mother, child," she whispered,
hoarse and small. " She is ill."
THE GAEILEAN
A 1 SOLITARY goatherd sat crouched on a slope
above the Sea of Galilee. It was approachingi
morning,, and he had lit a little fire on the rocks
in order to roast his breakfast of fish. It was
still dark, though the embroidered velvet canopy
overhead was beginning to reveal a grape -like
bloom along its eastern verge. Seven miles
across, on the opposite shore, the lamps of
Tiberias, minute and liquid, dripped threads of
gold into the motionless lake ; to the north the
snows of Mount Hermon lay like a pillow to the
quiet hills ; everywhere was the swoon and still-
ness which characterise that last deep hour of
slumber when sleep itself sleeps.
The smoke of the goatherd's fire rose in a
thin, unbroken shaft ; the hiss and explosion of
its thorns were uttered in a subdued voice $ he
himself sat like a figure carved in old ivory.
His arms and legs were bare ; his only garment
197
198 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
was a tunic of brown sackcloth ; he was the
gauntest man of his race in all Galilee. He
suggested some grotesque vulturine fledgling
rather than a human being, in his leathery skin,
denuded scalp, prominent eyes, and great horny
beak of a nose . Whatever juice there was in him
must have been as brown and acrid as a walnut's.
He had laid his sticks upon a little ledge or
plateau where the green of the banks, rising
some fifty feet or so from the margin of the
lake, first strayed to lose itself among the waste
and tumble of the sandstone heights above.
Scattered among the bents and yellow boulders
from which he had descended lay his silent flock.
He was the only soul awake, it seemed, in all
that heaped-up solitude.
Suddenly he raised his head. The sound of
a footstep, distant at first, but regularly approach-
ing, penetrated to his ears. It fell low and loud,
unmistakably human, until it resolved itself into
the tramp of a worried man coming over the
hills from the south. The goatherd was not
interested or concerned. He sat apathetic, even
when the traveller, appearing round a bend of
the rocks, walked grunting into the firelight and
revealed himself a Roman soldier.
THE GALILEAN 199
The newcomer had a heavy, colourless face
with thick black eyebrows. The close chin-piece
of his small cap-like helmet gave his lower jaw
a bulldog look. His body to the hips was cased
in a laminated cuirass of brass, epaulets of which
covered his shoulders, and his short tunic was
garnished with hanging straps of leather plated
with strips of the same metal. Skin-tight drawers
descended to the middle of his calves, and were
succeeded by puttees of pliant felt, which ended
in military caligas with spiked soles. A short,
double-edged sword hung in a sheath at his right
side, and in his hand he carried a javelin of about
his own height, the shaft of which had served
him for a staff. -Weary and benighted as he
appeared to be, his speech and bearing expressed
the arrogance of the dominant race.
" Ho ! " he said, " ho ! " and stretched him-
self relieved. " Food and fire, and a respite at
least from his cursed chase. What lights are
yon across the lake, goatherd? "
"Tiberias."
It might have been an automaton speaking.
The soldier swore by all his gods.
" Eighty miles from Jerusalem a land of
rogues and fools ! Now directed this way, now
200 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
that, mountains where I was told valleys, and
torrents for fords, and to find at last that I have
taken the wrong bank ! Harkee, thou wooden
Satyrus : my horse fell foundered among the
hills, and I saw thy fire and made for it on foot.
Well, I carry despatches for thy Tetrach, and
thou tellest me that is Tiberias yonder. Should
I not do well to beat thee for it? "
The large eyes of the goatherd conned the
speaker immovably.
" Tiberias," he repeated. And then he added :
" With dawn will come the fishermen."
The soldier cursed : " What, calf ! " and
checked himself. ' Thou meanest," he said, " a
boat to carry me across ? " He heaved out a
sigh. " Well, goatherd, so be it ; and while I
wait I starve. Dost thou not hunger too? "
" Aye," said the goatherd, " always and for
ever."
The fish were spluttering on the embers. The
soldier speared one with his javelin, and, blow-
ing on it, began to eat unceremoniously.
" I would not concede so much to my Fates,"
he said. " I would rob sooner. Besides, here
is proof plenty that you lie, old goatherd."
The goatherd bent forward, and prodded
THE GALILEAN 201
the speaker once with a finger like a crooked
stick.
" How old wouldst call me? " he said.
" A' hundred."
" I am seven and twenty, Roman."
The soldier laughed and stared.
" Bearest thy years ill. Since when beganst to
age? "
" Since I began to starve."
" And when was that? "
' When one said to me : ' Feed on the illusions
of the flesh until I come again.' '
" One one? What one ? "
" A strange white man. They called him
Jesus of Nazareth about here."
The soldier, his cheek bulged with fish,
stopped masticating 1 a moment to stare, then
burst into a hoarse laugh.
" Ho ho ! my friend ! Art in a sorry case
indeed ! Thou shalt starve and starve, by Caesar.
Tell me the story, goatherd."
The gaunt creature mused a little.
" Why, there is none, Roman, but just this.
I had heard of him and scoffed I, a practical
man and one day (it was many seasons back)
he came across the water to these hills, and
202 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
a great multitude followed and gathered to him
from all sides. And they brought with them
a number that were maimed and sick, and the
man touched them and they appeared healed,
rising and blessing his name, so that I, though
counting it an illusion of the spirit, could not
but marvel in his magic and the people's blind-
ness. Now the crowd abode here into the third
day, and they felt neither thirst nor hunger ;
but I, that durst not leave my flock, wait-
ing for them to go, was like a ravenous
wolf. And on the third day this Jesus
called for food to give to his followers, and
some that were his went down to the boat, and
I with them. And, lo ! there were but a few
loaves and fishes nothing at all for such a multi-
tude. But I helped to carry these up, and on the
way the largest fish of all I hid beneath my
tunic, for I thought : ' Great he may be, but
nothing is lost that I take precautions against
his failure to assuage my hunger.' Then did
he bid us all to sit upon the ground, and he
blessed and brake the fish and bread ; and so it
happened account it to what you will for every
soul there was a meal and to spare. But when
it came to my turn he would give me none ;
THE GALILEAN 203
only, gazing on me, he bade me, since faith I
had not, to feed on the illusions of the flesh
until he came again. And I laughed to myself,
thinking of the fish ; but, Roman, that fish when
I came to devour it was like a shadow in the
water, having form but no substance, and so
it is with all food to me since. Though I be-
hold it, handle it, I put a shadow to my lips.
Yet every day do I prepare my meal, hoping the
curse removed, and knowing always it shall not
be until he come again."
The soldier broke into a roar of laughter.
'' Until he come again ! " he cried, " until he
come again ! O, a jockeyed Jew, a poor
deluded Jew ! "
He was so gloriously tickled that he had to
gasp and choke himself into sobriety.
" Harkee, goatherd," he said presently ;
" there was a day, not long past, in Jerusalem
a lamentable day for thee. It thundered
gods, how it thundered, rattling the Place of
Skulls ! I ought to remember, seeing I was on
duty there. Nazareth was it, now? Why, to
be sure I know my letters, and it was writ
plain enough and high enough. Jesus of
Nazareth, who saved others, but could not save
204 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
himself that was it one of three rogues con-
demned. Well, he laid an embargo on thee, did
he? You see this spear-
He paused, in the very act of lifting his
javelin, and sat staring stupidly at it. Its point
was tipped with crimson.
' The rising sun ! " muttered the goatherd,
and, getting suddenly to his feet, stood gazing
seawards. The soldier came and stood beside
him.
The whole wide valley, while they spoke, had
opened to the morning like a rose, the clustered
hills its petals, its calyx the deep lake, the lights
upon it dewdrops shining at its heart. And there
upon the dim waters, swinging close inshore,
was a fisherman's boat, its crew gathering in
an empty net.
Now the two on the hill stood too remote to
distinguish sounds or faces, while the conforma-
tion of the rocks hid the shore from their view.
But of a sudden, as they looked, the forms in
the boat started erect, and, all standing in a
huddled group, appeared to gaze landwards.
And instantly, as if they had received therefrom
some direction, they seized and cast their net
the other side of the boat and drew on it, and
THE GALILEAN 205
the watchers saw by their straining muscles that
the net was full. Perceiving which, one of the
fishermen, a burly fellow, quitted his hold of
the cords, and, leaping into the water, floundered
for the shore and disappeared.
" What now? " said the soldier. " Do they
spy and seek us?, " He muttered vacantly, and
glanced again at his spear -head, and shook the
haft impatiently. But the sunrise would not be
detached from it.
Now the goatherd ran to a cleft which com-
manded the shore below, and, glaring a moment,
returned swiftly, his face alight.
" Rabboni," he said excitedly, "it is the man
of Nazareth himself come back, and he ascendeth
the hill towards us, and the spell will be removed
from me so that I shall taste fish once more."
But the words were hardly out of his mouth
when the soldier seized his arm, and, dragging
him to the shelter of a great boulder at a distance,
forced him to crouch with him behind it, so
that they might see without being seen. And
so hidden, they were aware of a shape that came
into the firelight, and it was white like a spirit
of the hills and waters, and it stretched its hands
above the embers, so that they leaped again.
206 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
And the goatherd heard the soldier mutter in
his ear :
" A practical man you say you are a prac-
tical man ! Now, who is it ? "
1 Jesus of Nazareth," he answered.
But the soldier looked at his javelin and it ran
with sunrise.
' That cannot be," he said, " for seven days
ago I opened his side with this spear as he hung
upon the cross, and there is the blood to testify
to it."
" I know nothing about that," said the goat-
herd; " my palate is sufficient evidence for me.
Look where they come and lay their fish upon my
embers. The very savour of their cooking tells
me I can taste again. It is Jesus, sure enough ! "
THE BORGIA DEATH
' THIS is the house, father," muttered the Bene-
dictine .
His companion, like himself, wore the black
habit of the Order, and his cowl so shrouded his
face that little of that was visible but a short
white beard fringing a mouth and jaw of singular
grimness.
The two stood before the door of a common
dwelling situated in a block of buildings near
the Ponte Sisto, and almost under the shadow
of the Castle of the Capoferri. It was a June
evening of the year 1504, and already the seven
hills of Rome were like seven burning kilns.
The heat radiated from them, even at midnight,
would have sufficed a reasonable land for its
summer.
The door was opened to the low knock of the
friar by a scared-looking young girl. She wore
a simple dress of green frieze, the bodice of
207
208 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
which, unlaced to the heat, had slipped about
her shoulders. The light of the lamp she carried
rounded upon her full lower lip, and gave a
dusky mystery to her wide animal eyes. The
older man, regarding the child a moment, raised
his hand and fondled her chin and neck, deliber-
ately, and like a privileged connoisseur.
" Balatrone's daughter? " he asked.
The girl answered " Yes " with a motion of
her lips. Taking him for the prior of some great
community, she never even thought of resenting
his caress.
' It may count to thy father for a score of
indulgences," said the monk. " We shall see.
Now take us to him."
She went before, and they followed her into
a little stifling chamber looking on a small court-
yard where a scrap of fountain tinkled. Tiny
as its voice was, it conveyed a thought of re-
freshment to the sick man who lay on a couch
against the wall beside.
The face of this man already bore the shadow
of coming dissolution. He had been fat once,
and so recently that his skin had had no time
to adapt itself to the waste within, but hung in
folds like wrinkled tripe. His eyes had a
THE BORGIA DEATH 209
haunted, pathetic look in them, for he had lived
his later time with a damning secret for company,
and he dreaded unspeakably the mortal moment
which should find him still unrelieved of its
burden. Wherefore he had provisionally, and
with a reservation in favour of his own possible
recovery, confided to his confessor enough of
the business to awaken that cleric's lively in-
terest, and to send him off in search of one more
fitted, by virtue of his canonical rank and
authority, to accept contrition and deliver judg-
ment on a momentous matter. The two lost no
time in preliminaries.
' This is one, Balatrone," said the friar, " en-
dowed with the highest gift for absolution. I
am about to make known to him the substance
of the report you have committed to me."
" Bene, bene" said the sick man, nodding
exhaustedly. " I ask the good father to purge
my soul."
The " good father " mentioned had seated
himself in an obscure corner, his face bowed and
concealed by his hood. The other monk took
a parchment from his bosom, and referred to it.
" These are the depositions," he said softly,
" of one Andrea Sfondrati, late page to his
14
210 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
Holiness Alexander VI. The man died recently
under suspicion of poison, and the document
came into the hands of Balatrone here."
" I stole it from his chamber," declared the
patient, in a tremulous but resolved voice, " after
I had poisoned him. None but I and he knew
of its existence. It is all true. No alternative
was left me."
" Continue," said the seated monk passion-
lessly. " Continue, brother. So far this implies
nothing beyond your province."
The Benedictine, unperturbed, unfolded the
parchment .
' The statement, Father," he said, " covers
the night of his late Holiness's mortal sickness,
which in a few hours left the throne of St. Peter
vacant." He glanced significantly towards the
other, who silently motioned him to proceed.
' There were present with his Holiness on that
occasion," he went on, " his son the Don Cesare
Borgia and his Eminence the Cardinal Adriano
of Corneto. The narrator takes up the tale at
the moment when a certain dish was placed
before his Eminence during the feast served
privately in his honour."
He shifted, so as to get the light upon the
THE BORGIA DEATH 211
document, and began to read in a clear, low
voice :
' We all knew well enough/ says Sfondrati,
' what was going to happen . When I took the dish
from Torelli at the door, I thought to myself,
" Here ensues a vacancy in the Sacred College."
There had been so much purring and fondling,
such solicitude about the Cardinal's health, such
brotherly frankness, such plans for the morrow.
That was the Borgia way, the one they always
followed by choice. Though they might cut
throats under provocation, to take a man by the
hand, to praise and flatter and applaud him,
to caress his prosperous fatness, as it were, while
studying in his face the working of the poison
they had already insinuated into his belly that
was the sport of sports to them. And this
Cardinal had loggias and vineyards and much
oil and corn. He was a wealthy prince, a
succulent mouthful, and it was his turn to be
swallowed. " How," I thought, " can any one,
not a credulous ass, be brought to commit him-
self to these gloved tigers ? Has not Corneto
heard, like the rest of us, of the Orsini, of
Vitellozzo, of Oliverotto, of brother Gandia and
brother-in-law Biseglia, of Peroto, the Holy
212
Father's little favourite, whose wisand was split
by Cesare as he clung screaming to the arms of
his old patron? Has he not heard of these and
a hundred others ; of the mysterious illnesses,
of the stabs in the dark, of the bodies tipped
into the Tiber, of that charcoal-burner, witness
to Gandia's murder, who excused himself for
not having reported the matter to the Governor
on the ground that such affairs had grown too
common o' nights to excite interest? Has he
not heard, in short, of these Spaniards their little
ways, that he can thus voluntarily venture him-
self within reach of their covetous grip? Or
does he throw up the game in despair, and yield
his money-bags incontinent to the Vatican ex-
chequer? "
' ' I judged his Eminence wrongly, as the
sequel will show ; but the belief was in me at the
moment, and pretty contemptuously, that the man
was a fool.
" ' Well, I took the dish, I say, from Torelli,
and Nicandro took it from me. We were supping
in the garden-house, in Apollo's bower, for the
month was August ; and Nicandro was our
Ganymede and little Lisetta our Hebe. They
made a pretty couple, and may have shared
THE BORGIA DEATH 213
something less than a shirt between them.
Nicandro placed the dish before his Eminence.
It was confetti of creamed fruit, and a perfume
like ambrosia rose from it. I had never seen
the handsome, devilish face of Don Cesare look
more gentle and ingratiatory than it did at that
moment. Its expression put to rebuke the Holy
Father's, which was as sick and flabby as a
skinned calf's. The old devil had not the nerve
of his whelp that is the truth. The dish was
placed before his Eminence, I say, and its fellow
before each of the other two.' "
" He was the very maestro of confetti, that
cook," broke out the sick man feebly from his
couch. " His designs in gilt and coloured sugar
were sheer masterpieces ! "
The monk glanced dumbly at him a moment,
then continued his reading :
" ' Lisette hung over the Cardinal, with the
flagon of wine in her hand. Her bosom pressed
his neck ; she laid her cheek upon his bald head,
and, so standing, filled his glass. But Corneto
put neither his hand to the dish nor his lips to the
beaker. Instead he rose, and so suddenly that
he bruised the child's lips.
" ' " Blood ! " said Caesar softly, and with a
smile. " That is a harsh retort on love, Prince."
214 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
' Then, in one instant, I recognised that I
had misjudged his Eminence, that he knew or
guessed, and that a crisis was upon us. His
eyes were like black glass in stone ; he looked
into the black, excited eyes of his host. The
two white, black-eyed faces, the one awful, the
other wet and piteous, opposed each other.
" ' " Is it your will, Borgia, that I eat of this
dish? " he said.
" ' The Pope strove to reply, and no word
could he articulate. But his son answered for
him : " What distemper is this, Corneto ? Come,
rally thee, man, nor leave the feast uncrowned.
One effort more ; see, we will give thee the
lead ! "
" ' He ate himself, and made his father eat.
When the two were finished, the Cardinal
addressed the Pope. " God forgive thee,
Borgia," he said, " and prosper thy design for
all its worth." And he, in his turn, ate of his
sweet, and flung the dish from him. " Con-
summatum est" he said. " I have my peace to
make with Heaven. I crave your Holiness's
permission to withdraw."
" ' Now Don Cesare rose laughing, and rally-
ing their guest for his weak stomach, saw him
THE BORGIA DEATH 215
for a distance through the gardens and then
himself returned. And there were we, the
frightened witnesses, whispering half tearful now
the thing was done, yet dreading that he should
see and resent our tremors.
' But the Pope sat staring with a ghastly
face ; and Don Cesare sat down beside him, and
the two fell murmuring together. And suddenly,
in one moment, his Holiness uttered a mortal
cry : " Corneto, I am poisoned ! He hath re-
torted on us with our own ! "
' It was true. The Cardinal, well foresee-
ing his fate, had prevailed, by bribes and prayers
and promises, over the conscience of his Holi-
ness's cook, and had induced the man to serve
to his masters the poison intended for himself.
The Borgia took the Borgia's own prescription,
and died that night in torture. Caesar hung
between hell and earth awhile, and presently
escaped. This is all true as I record it.' '
The monk ceased reading, and looked towards
the couch. For a little no sound broke the
stillness but the faint gasping of the patient and
the noisome droning of a fly about the room.
"Balatrone?" whispered the Benedictine.
" I was that cook ! " cried the dying man in a
fearful voice. " Sfondrati read my secret, and
216
recorded it, and bled me with it till he ruined
me. I had to poison him to still his tongue
and secure the record."
The seated monk arose, and came with a fierce
stride to the bed.
" Thou hast killed a Pope," he said. " Yield
up the secret of that poison the Borgia death."
" Absolve me first."
" None but a Pope can do that."
' Then I must take it with me to the grave."
" Hark ye, fellow I am Julius ; I am the
Pope."
" It is his Holiness indeed, Balatrone," cried
the friar.
The man screamed and writhed.
" It is the foam of swine, poisoned with arsenic
and then whipped to frenzy. Absolve me, Holy
Father, absolve me ! "
" Ha I " exclaimed the Pontiff, in the voice
of a long -covetous man satisfied.
He heard a choke behind him, and turned to
find the girl close by. His face softened.
"What, little Hebe," he said. " Wouldst like
to come and serve the wine to Papa Julius ?
But, wait."
He turned, with hand uplifted, to give the
blessing ; but Balatrone was dead.
"DEAD MAN'S PLACK "
ELFRIDA, wife of Athelwold, the King's favourite,
and daughter and heiress to Olgar Earl of
Devonshire, was a beauty of the true Helena
complexion. To see her, for most men, was
to covet ; to possess her, for the one, was to
wear a crown of exquisite thorns. The orchard
needs most watching when the fruit is ripe, and
Elfrida hung at perpetual ripeness, maddening
to parched lips without. The keeper of this
garden of sweet things might hardly enjoy it
for his fear of robbers. And the worst of it
was that, to maintain so ravishing a possession
in its perfection, no warning as to its own irre-
sistible witchery must be so much as hinted to
it, lest the blue innocence of two of the most
lovely wondering eyes in the world should be
impaired thereby, and self-consciousness usurp
in them the place of naivete . Gazing into those
artless depths, if one had the privilege, one
217
218 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
presently recognised in their little floating motes
and shadows the souls of the many who had
drowned themselves therein. Was Elfrida con-
scious of the tragic secrets hidden away under
those azure waters? Her husband at least
thought her the most loving, the most unsophisti-
cated, the most trustworthy of wives ; and if
the wish was very particularly the father to the
thought, the thought was none the less for that
sincere .
One noon the young wife sat, yawning and a
little ennuye, in her bower of the Thanage
house by Harewood Forest in Hampshire.
Athelwold was with the Court at Winchester,
and time hung heavy on her hands. She leaned
back in her seat, listlessly conning the crumpled
figure of Daukin, the Earl's clerk or bookes-
man, as he squatted on his stool monotonously
mouthing the Canons of Eusebius from an illu-
minated manuscript the light literature of
England when Dunstan was Primate. Like
many ethereal women, Elfrida found a fascina-
tion in the deformed and grotesque. She petted
little harsh Daukin ; and he, while he took his
full sardonic change of the licence allowed him,
for ever in spirit kissed the beautiful feet that
"DEAD MAN'S PLACK " 219
trampled on his soul. So, he thought, must feel
the writhing, adoring, hopeless serpent under
Mary's feet in the chapel.
She broke in upon his reading, suddenly and
irrelevantly.
' Will our lord return this night, think you,
Master Bookesman ? "
The dwarf, closing the manuscript, accepted
grimly the moral of his own eloquence.
" Will a star shoot out of the east? " he said.
" I'll tell thee when the night hath come and
gone."
" Nay, say that you think he will say it,
say it ! "
" The King loves the Earl, lady, and thou
desirest him. Which passion shall pull the
stronger? "
" Do not / love him, thou toad? "
" Well, then, pull, and in double harness ; so,
belike, the King, that holds to him, shall be
drawn too."
" I do not desire the King."
" God give him strength to bear it ! "
She laughed musically : " Insolent ! " and so
fell into thought.
" Thou knowest, Daukin," she said presently,
220 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
" I have never been to Court nor desired it
indeed. Of what complexion is the King? "
"Hot."
' Is he not very young? "
" -He hath learned to lisp and help himself
to what he wants. The young husbands in his
suite observe discretion."
" Poor husbands ! O, Daukin, O, waly me,
how the day loiters ! If my love could draw
so strong, I'd e'en take the worser for the better's
sake."
"Which first?"
" Peace, fool 1 "
" Well, the comfort is the King's heard pf
thee, and heard enough to satisfy him, it seems.
He'll not trouble thee with a visit."
" He has not heard."
" What ! Did he not use his influence with
the Earl thy father to promote this match? "
" Aye, on grounds of policy and fortune.
Thank Heaven I am not beautiful I "
" It listens and will record."
She sighed : " Alack, a doleful day ! O, I
wish my lord would come ! "
A bugle sounding without answered on her
word. There was a thud of racing hoofs, &
"DEAD MAN'S FLACK" 221
sudden turmoil in the court, a mingling of many
voices, servile or peremptory. Elfrida rose
ecstatic, clasping her hands.
Tis he himself ! " she cried, and advancing,
as the curtain parted, almost ran into the arms
of her husband Athelwold.
'He was tall, sinewy, pale-haired and lashed.
His tunic of fine cramasie was torn, his gold
garters trailed ; he looked like a man in the
last extreme of haste and agitation. He took
the wondering beauty in his arms, and gazed
into her face, searchingly, passionately.
' Wife," he said, " I have something of wild
urgency for thy ear. I must speak it ere my
blood cools. Tell me that thy heart is mine? "
" Athelwold ! What questions I "
" Tell it, tell it ! "
" Am I not thy wife? "
" Priests' business. I speak of love."
" Why, did I not swear to love thee ? "
" Elfrida, thy love's my heaven ; without it
hell. Hear my confession. There's no moment
to lose."
' Thou strange husband ! "
' When I first saw thee in thy father's house
I saw my destiny. Such immortal beauty, child
222 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
God, I was just man ! Forgive the mad
cunning jealousy that would deceive thee even
in thyself. ' I must possess/ I thought, ' this
immortal thing or die.' I bid for thy rank, thy
fortune, in pretence, the King upholding my suit.
His interest turned the scale, and we were wed.
Elfrida, wife, dear love I wronged the King
in all ; I was no more at first than his deputy
for thy hand."
A little spot of white had come to her cheek ;
but she smiled on him, not stirring.
" How, Athelwold ? "
" I must confess it," he said. " Edgar had
heard speak of this lovely Devon rose ; and,
toying, only half-inclined, with a thought of
matrimony, sent me, on some feigned mission,
to discover if the lady's beauty really matched
her nobility in which case "
"Yes, Athelwold?"
He held her convulsively. " O, forgive me,
Elfrida, that I made thee Queen of love, not
England ! Thy wealth, thy name, I told him,
were the charms that gilded servile eyes-
enough, perhaps, for such as I, but for him,
lacking the first and best of recommendations.
And he believed me, and yielded thee to me.
"DEAD MAN'S PLACK " 223
And now, and now " he held her from him,
his chest heaving, his voice breaking " my sin
hath found me out some one hath betrayed me
and he is coming in person to put my report
to the proof. Feigning to prepare for his visit,
I fled but in time to forestall him by a few hours .
Ah, love ! all is lost unless thou lovest me."
She answered quite softly : " What am I to
do, Athelwold?"
" Do, be, anything but Elfrida. Dress
slovenly, speak rudely, soil and discredit thine
own perfection."
" Substitute another for thy lady."
They both started, and fell apart. The dwarf,
forgotten by the one, unnoticed by the other,
had risen from his stool. The Thane's hand
whipped furiously to his sword-hilt.
" Nay," said the girl, interposing " Daukin
is imy dog ; Daukin loves me ; Daukin shall
speak."
" Let the Thane," said the dwarf, cool and
caustic, " seek his couch on pretence of fever,
and let Alse, the cookmaid, receive the King.
We be all devoted servants of our house. A
little persuasion, a little guile, and the thing is
carried."
224 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
" I will go instruct the wench," said Elfrida
hurriedly.
She seemed charmed with the idea. She
drove her lord to his hiding, with a peremptory
laughing injunction that he was not to issue
therefrom until summoned by herself ; she re-
fused to linger a moment by his side in her
excitement. Her eyes had never looked so
heavenly-bright and blue.
At eve came the King, with a little brilliant
retinue .
But Alse did not receive him. Instead there
advanced and knelt at his feet one of the most
radiant young beauties his eyes had ever
encountered. The violet Saxon hood fell back
from her face as she raised it, revealing a sun
of little curls bound by a golden fillet. The
slender lifted hands, the bright parted lips, most
of all the eyes, blue as lazulite and wide with
innocence, seemed all as if posed for a picture
of Love's ecstasy. The King, young, and lustful,
and handsome, with his strong, clean-cut face,
stood the speechless one.
" Welcome, lord King," she said in a half-
articulate voice, like a child murmuring a lesson.
He raised and kissed her. " Welcome, wife
"DEAD MAN'S PLACK " 225
of Athelwold ! " he said, and let out a sigh like
a man restored from drowning.
But apart stood the dwarf, amazed and
sorrowful .
" She hath deceived us," he thought. " What
is to be the end? "
That night was spent in feasting ; and in the
morning came Elfrida to her husband's couch.
Worn with fatigue and anxiety since she had
given orders that none was to approach him!
he had fallen asleep at last.
" Up, up, my Thane ! " she cried. " The King
is bent on hunting, and awaits thee in the court.
Say nothing. All goes well."
She would not linger, lest, as she whispered,
she should risk discovery ; but, running from
him, sought her bower. There listening, a hand
upon her bosom, she heard the chase ride forth ;
and presently the dwarf stole in to her.
" Thou hast done it," he said. " The King
will kill him."
She began : " Dog ! Thou darest " but,
checking herself, put her hands a moment to
her face, then went up and down, up and down,
like one distracted.
" Well, he wronged the King," said Daukin.
15
226 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
She stopped before him, and his soul struggled
against the fascination of the blue waters.
" What was that to his wrong of me ? " she
said passionately ; and, as he gazed, he saw
the waters brim. " O, Daukin ! " she wept;
" cannot you, understand me ? "
" Yes," he said.
" And love me still? "
" I can love the truth," he said, with a heart-
broken sigh. " I have found it at last in the
depths I have studied so long."
When the King returned, the sternness of his
white face belied his uttered commiseration.
The Thane, he told his lady, had stumbled on
his own boar-spear, and met with a mortal hurt.
" Long live the Queen ! " said Daukin.
Edgar started, and his hand went to his
dagger. Elfrida stumbled forward.
" No," she said, in a weak voice, "it is my
dog, lord King. I will not have him killed
because he barks."
WHEN Carrier, commissioned by Heraut Sey-
chelles, acting on behalf of the Committee of
Public Safety in Paris, to purge Nantes, arrived
in that town, he found all ready to his hand a
Revolutionary Committee such as his heart, or
whatever deformity represented that organ, could
most desire. There were Goullin, Grandmaison,
Chaux, Jolly, Perrochaux, and a score others,
all " intrepid " Mountain men, and all scoundrels
of the most atrocious antecedents. His task was
consequently a simple one. He had merely to
produce his credentials and authorise his instru-
ments, and the depopulating process started, as
it were, automatically. One need not recapitu-
late, for the thousandth time, a selection from
the infernal wickednesses perpetrated by these
fiends. Such were being enacted, in more or
less degree, in a hundred other districts of the
tortured land, and these were noteworthy in
227
228 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
nothing but their multitude. What was note-
worthy, however, was the fact that Nantes pro-
duced the solitary instance so far as one may
gather throughout the entire Revolution of a
butchering devil succumbing to a sense of his
own enormities. But, even so, there was to be
observed a particular judgment in the case.
Carrier's theories of political economy were
simplicity itself. The population of France,
he declared, was out of all proportion with the
amount of food the land could produce ; where-
fore he proposed, for his individual part, to pare
down the population until it corresponded with
the yield. But this decimating process was
fatiguing, and called for some compensation. It
was only decent that the killers should be
allowed to extract what profit and enjoyment
they could from their task. And, in fact, they
enjoyed a glut, which was the reason why a
good many personable women, not of the first
order of attractiveness, were allowed to escape
to the scaffold, or to the drownings.
Amongst these came one day to the Place
du Buffay, where the guillotine was erected, a
mother and her five daughters and their little
maid, all, according to a chronicler, jeunes et
THE EXECUTIONER OF NANTES 229
belles, condamnees sans jugement. There was a
good batch that noon, and the seven were kept
waiting for a long half -hour at the foot of the
scaffold before their turn came. The populace
was not yet so hardened but that it could
witness this tragedy with emotion. " Ah, the
poor infants ! But what is their crime ? "
" 'Hush ! they were taken with arms in their
hands ! " " My God ! but it is outrageous !
Are knitting-needles arms? " " I know not, I.
It is Carrier who decides."
The six encouraged one another amidst tears
and embraces . Most of all they sought to fortify
the little bonne, who, a mere large-eyed child,
stood .quite stunned with the turn affairs had
taken. When at length the period came to their
agony, they mounted the steps in succession,
faltering to one another sweet hymns of con-
solation, their voices fading away one by one
like the lights in Tenebrae. The spectators were
dissolved in tears ; in the midst of a weeping*
silence the rush and thud of the axe was the
only sound audible. Stolidly, monotonously,
Jules Garreau, the executioner, a powerful,
black -bearded man, sliced off the heads as they
came through the " little window." He might
230 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
have been cutting chaff for any concern he
showed.
The little maid came last. She understood
things least of all at that moment, and only cried
like a child when the assistants jerked her
roughly down on the board and slid her under
the yoke. And then, in the very instant that
Garreau mechanically touched off the knife, the
man was seen to stagger and fall back, his hands
flung to his face.
He died the next day in a raving delirium.
" It is no wonder," whispered the less inhumane
of those who had witnessed the execution. " The
pity of it would have killed a wolf's heart."
That was the truth, but not the whole of the
truth. The full explanation was not given until
years afterwards, when the story was communi-
cated to a priest to whom one of Garreau's
assistants came to unburden himself. He knew
all about the man and the reason for his death.
It had been actually due, he declared, to an in-
stantaneous realisation of the terrific part he was
playing, and of the mortal hazards he had invited
in lending himself to it. In that moment he
had known his soul as surely lost as if he had
heard God's voice in his ear, and the shock had
THE EXECUTIONER OF NANTES 231
killed him. But it will be well to give the story
in the narrator's own words :
" I had known this Garreau since we were
young men together. We were in the same
office, a wine merchant's, in the Isle Feydeau.
Garreau was a very handsome fellow, but as
headstrong as the devil . He had a great tenacity
of purpose, and when once he had set his heart
on a thing, he would pursue it, as a weasel
follows a rabbit, until he could set his teeth
in its neck. We had no .quarrel with the existing
order, and our lives were, for our position,
prosperous and content. For my part, I was
always a slave to the stronger will of my
comrade .
" We were at that time good children of the
Church, which was indeed our misfortune, for
the change in us dated from the moment pf
Garreau's return from a week's retreat in the
monastery of St. Pierre de la Roche. He had
acquired therein something other than the
religious serenity he had gone to seek, had
meditated a passion remote from that of the
Testament. It happened in this way.
" Attached to the monastery was the Convent
of the Bon Secours, whose sisters washed the
232 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
linen of the ghostly fathers. To one of these
sisters, a beautiful neophyte, Jules found him-
self instantly attracted. His interest ripened into
desire, and his desire into a devouring passion.
From that moment all was decided. He never
rested until he had secured its object to himself.
" He would have married the lovely apostate,
but the Church refused to sanction their union.
It was that refusal which first inspired his
recusancy, and in consequence mine. I admired
and looked up to him in all things. A child,
a girl, was born to the thus ostracised pair, and
it was remarked that a little torn heart,
emblematic of her birthright of sin, was printed
on the innocent's neck under her hair. It was
the rending of the Sacred Heart which she was
thus made to symbolise in her birth.
" But Garreau loved her, and far more than
her mother did. If he had been great, aristo-
cratic, he would have experienced no difficulty
in sheltering his mistress from slander and
persecution ; but he was neither, and he could
give her little of the protection that she craved.
So in the end she sought and found it in the
arms of the Comte de Chasles, son of a marquis,
who carried her off to Paris. It was then that
THE EXECUTIONER OF NANTES 233
Jules and I attached ourselves to the party of
the advanced thinkers.
" He followed the seducer, and for years I
lost sight of him. In the meanwhile all that
I knew of his affairs was that the infant had
been claimed as their perquisite by the sisters
of the Bon Secours, and that they were training
her, ignorant of her parentage, to service. Then,
in a clap, came the Revolution.
" All society was disintegrated in that shock.
Institutions ceased to exist and order resolved
itself into chaos. The religious houses were the
first to suffer. The hour of the great retribu-
tion had struck, and I sided with the extremists.
And presently arrived Carrier.
'* I was out of employment, as who was not?
The beneficent Republic provided idleness for
us all ; but, alas ! idleness begot no bread . At
this juncture the Revolutionary Tribunal called
for candidates for the post of executioner. It
was their purpose to strip the office of prejudice,
and exalt it to a State dignity. This headsman
was to be entitled for the future the People's
Avenger .
" There were many applicants, and among
them came one whom I had difficulty in recog-
234 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
nising at first for my old friend and leader Jules
Garreau. It was thirteen years since we had
met. Most of that time he had spent in the
prison of la Force in Paris, whither he had been
conveyed on a process for debt ingeniously
devised against him by the Comte de Chasles.
When released at length by the Revolution, he
went, like that weasel before -mentioned, straight
for the neck of his enemy. It was at the Abbaye
that he found him, and he took what revenge
he could for that long term of suffering out of
the September massacres. Afterwards he drank
blood awhile in Paris, and then came on to his
native town to surfeit his hatred on the social
order which had been responsible for his ruin.
He was by then rabid among the rabid. His
deadly sense of wrong had killed whatever spirit
of humanity had once existed within him. His
only desire was to kill, and kill, and yet kill.
This post offered him such an opportunity for
the satisfaction of his lust as could be found
nowhere else, and he applied for it. He was
elected unanimously and with enthusiasm by the
National Representatives. All lesser candidates,
among whom I figured, waived their claims in
view of his, which were irresistible. But he
THE EXECUTIONER OF NANTES 235
made me his assistant, and I resumed my natural
position of subordinate to him.
' Jules lacked from that moment no food to
satiate his vengeance ; and yet it hungered per-
petually. He was a dark, powerful man, wholly
inexorable, yet in seeming more stern than
wrathful. He appeared the Avatar of sans-
culottism, a soulless, sightless idol, to whom
human flesh had to be sacrificed. Of his child,
the pledge of that lost passion, he never seemed
to think. Indeed, in the utter annihilation of
the religious houses which had occurred it would
have been impossible to discover whether she
lived or were dead. And perhaps even, one
might assume, he did not care. His soul was
by now delivered completely over to the one
lust of destruction.
" On the day of the execution of the Marce
family we wrought consciously in an unsympa-
thetic atmosphere. It is so sometimes on that
platform of the guillotine, as on the stage, when
the actor is aware, he does not know why, of an
antagonistic presence in the house. One plays
then with caution and deprecation, fearing to
give offence . I was very sensitive to a throbbing
in the popular pulse ; but, as for Jules, he
236 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
showed no more sign of feeling than was his
wont. Indeed, I observed even an increased
callousness in the way in which, noting that the
heads were seven, he ticked off each one as it
fell with a day from the little nursery proverb
uttered sub voce, as thus :
' Monday, fair of face ; Tuesday, full of
grace ; Wednesday, full of woe ; Thursday, far
to go ; Friday, loving and giving ; Saturday,
work for a living ; Sunday '
" With the word on his lips, and his hand in
the very act of touching off the bolt, he sud-
denly paled and staggered. I ran to catch him,
and looked straight into the face of one that
was damned.
" It was the last head, and we conveyed
Garreau to his lodging. He was by then in a
raving fever, from which he never recovered.
But in one of the few lucid intervals that came
to him he recognised me, and, catching at my
hand, whispered in a voice, whose exquisite
horror I shall never forget, the secret of his
awakening.
" In the very moment that his fingers released
the knife, he had caught sight of a little torn
heart printed on the neck beneath him."
THE LORD TREASURER
" PHINEAS," said the Lord Treasurer" my
breeches ! "
The attendant, stooping to the august legs,
reverentially relieved them of their small-clothes,
and his lordship stood up in his shirt with his
back to the fire. Even so denuded, he could
never have conceived himself as anything less
than a hero to his valet no, not when, with
a comfortable rearward shrug of his shoulders,
he lifted the veil of his unspeakableness to the
gratifying warmth.
" Let me see, Phineas," said the Lord
Treasurer. " To-morrow is Wednesday the
black velvet with the plain falling band, is it
not? Very well. Empty that pocket of its
papers, Phineas ."
"Yes, my lord."
Sir Richard Weston, Baron of Exchequer and
Lord High Treasurer to his Majesty King
237
238 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
Charles I., was disrobing for the night in his
official residence off Chancellor's or Chancery
Lane. He was a man of inflexible routine, who
changed his raiment, parcelled out his duties,
and pigeon-holed his correspondence with an un-
swerving regularity from which nothing could
ever make him deviate but a bribe. He had a
suit of clothes for Monday, a suit for Wednesday,
another for Friday, and so on a change on every
third day ; and in the doublet of each suit was
a little pocket below the waist, into which it
was his custom to slip all memoranda of affairs
requiring his early attention. This pocket it
was the valet's duty to explore upon every
occasion of exchange into fresh habiliments.
Now, system has this drawback, that it entices
those who practise it into a confidence in their
inability to err, which is in itself an error.
Pigeon-holes are useful things, if one is con-
vinced that every article in them is docketed
under its obvious letter. But, alas ! in actual
fact the short cut too often proves itself the
longest way round, and the pigeon has an
amazing way of hiding in the unexpected com-
partment. He may fail to answer to his own
name or his firm's, and leave one in the last
THE LORD TREASURER 239
resort only his subject or his business by which
to trace him if, indeed, one can identify either
under a capital letter. We have known an
orderly man to tear the heart out of a nest of
pigeon-holes from " B " to " Z," only at length
to find what he sought under " Anonymous."
Yet he remained no less convinced than the
Treasurer that he had eliminated confusion from
his category of affairs. System, in short, may
provide against everything but the bad memory
which most trusts to it.
Sir Richard, pleasantly conscious of his calves
and upwards, reared himself on his toes and
yawned and sank down again.
"Is aught there, varlet?" he demanded.
" Bring me whatsoever it containeth."
The man laid down the discarded doublet.
" Naught, my lord," he said, " but a single
scrap of paper."
" Give it me."
The servant crossed the room, and presented
the memorandum with an obeisance . The master
accepted it, glanced down, and stood suddenly
rigid.
" Remember Ccesar! "
That was all just those two words, written
240 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
bold in ink in an unknown hand. " Remember
Caesar ! "
Sir Richard was holding the paper in his
right hand ; dropping the veil, he brought his
left to the front and stood staring in a sort of
stupor. A consciousness as of chill, as of a
sense of warmth and security suddenly and
shockingly withdrawn, tingled through his veins.
It was succeeded by a faint thrill of grievance
or self-pity. He had been so exceedingly com-
fortable and happy a moment ago.
" Remember Caesar ! " just those two words,
no more, but how voluminous in terrific import !
" Remember Caesar 1 " Remember the retribu-
tion that always waited on " vaulting ambition."
A vision of a vast Senate-Hall, of a throng of
passionate figures holding aloft blood-stained
daggers, of a silent, prostrate form in their midst,
rose before him. " Remember Caesar 1 " Re-
member Caesar's fate : remember what came to
befall the greatest soldier, statesman, jurist of
his time possibly of all time.
A certain flattery in the analogy for an instant
restored the colour to Sir Richard's cheek.
Perhaps the comparison was not so extravagant
a one after all. The position of Lord Treasurer
THE LORD TREASURER 241
was so exalted, that, looking down from it,
all lesser offices and all lesser men appeared
dwarfed. It needed surely a stupendous intel-
lect to preserve its equilibrium at that altitude.
And yet, such the height, such the fall. The
Treasurer's momentary heroics came down with
an anticipatory thwack which left him gasping.
If he could only avoid Caesar's fate while
admitting the soft analogy ! The illustrious
Imperator had also, if he remembered rightly,
received his warning, and had ignored it. To
ape the foolhardinesses of the great was surely
not to justify one's relation to them in the best
sense.
A shrill wind blew upon the casement. Its
voice had but now awakened a snug response
in the Treasurer's breast. All in a moment it
spoke to him of the near approach of the Idesi
of March, and he shivered and dropped the
paper to the floor.
" Phineas," he said in an agitated voice,
" Phineas 1 How came that into my pocket? "
The valet, busy about his affairs, approached
deferentially but curiously, and, at a sign from
his master, lifted and examined the billet, and
shook his head.
16
242 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
"You don't know?"
" No, indeed, my lord."
' How do you read it, man? How do you
read it?"
Phineas scratched his poll, and grinned and
was silent.
' You are just an intolerable ass," cried his
master. He danced in his excitement. His
dignity was all gone ; he was simply a man
in a shirt. " Fetch master secretary ! " he cried.
" Fetch master comptroller ! Rouse the house-
hold, and warn the porter at the gate ! Send
every one in to me, here and at once."
The valet hesitated.
"Do you hear?" shouted Sir Richard.
" Why do you wait? "
' It doesn't come down to your knees, my
lord," said Phineas.
The Treasurer leaped to a press and tore out a
robe. " Go ! " he screamed over his shoulder.
In a minute they all came hurrying in comp-
troller, secretary, clerks, grooms, and underlings
in dress or in undress, a motley crew, as the
occasion had found them.
" What is it, my lord ? " asked the first, in
an astonished voice. He was a tall, pallid man,
THE LORD TREASURER 243
so inured to method and routine that a rat
behind the wainscot was enough to throw him
into a flutter.
" Master Hugh," cried the Treasurer
" Master Hugh ! I found that in my pocket
when I came to strip a thing that I had never
put there, or put unconsciously. What do you
make of it, my friend? What does it import? "
They all gathered round the comptroller to
read the billet, and, having examined it, fell
apart with grave, inquiring faces.
The comptroller looked up, his lips trembling.
" My lord," he said, " it can signify but one
thing."
" My assassination? "
" Without doubt, my lord."
The Treasurer turned pale to the bare dome
of his head. He had to the last hoped to have
his worst apprehensions refuted ; but it was
plain that only one construction could be put
upon the missive.
"How did it reach me?" he said dismally.
" How did it get there? "
" Probably, my lord," ventured the secretary,
a sleek, apologetic man, " it was slipped into
your lordship's hand by one whom your lord-
244 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
ship mistook for a chance importunate suitor,
and your lordship accepted and pouched and
forgot it."
" It may have represented a threat or a
friendly warning," said the comptroller.
' Your lordship hath many and mighty
enemies," said the secretary, " as who hath not
among the great and influential?"
' Your power, your imperious will, your favour
in high places, my lord," said the comptroller
" these be all incitements to the envious and
unscrupulous. Without question there is some
conspiracy formed against your life."
" I could almost suspect you all of collusion
in it," cried the Treasurer bitterly, " for the
relish with which you dispose of me."
The comptroller murmured distressfully,
" O, my lord, my lord 1 "
Sir Richard broke out, moved beyond fen-
durance :
" What the devil do you all, moaning and
croaking? I am not food yet for your commis-
eration. The plot may be already forward while
you babble. Look under the bed, Phineas."
The valet dived, rose, scoured the room,
examined into every possible lurking-place.
THE LORD TREASURER 245
"Shall I set a guard, my lord?" inquired
the comptroller.
The Treasurer exploded :
11 Set a guard when the thief is in ! A house-
hold of braying jackasses ! Go, dolt, and remedy
your oversight. Shut the gates and warn the
porter ; beat up every hole and corner first.
See that not a soul is allowed entrance on any
pretext whatever. And, hark ye, Master Hugh,
no eye to-night shall be shut on penalty of my
high displeasure. An unwinking vigil, an un-
winking vigil, Master Hugh, on the part of all.
See to it. And if any one asks an audience,
save of the first consequence and character, I
am indisposed, Master Hugh I am indisposed,
do you hear? "
He was so, in very truth, as he drove them
all out, and locked the door upon himself, and
sank into a seat before the fire. A sickness of
apprehension stirred in his bile and made his
face like yellow wax. This business had given
him such a shock as he had never before ex-
perienced. What did it mean what could it
mean? No doubt the secretary's theory was
the right one : he was incessantly being im-
portuned by petitioners, and often, to get rid
246 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
of them, he would accept their memorials, and
pocket and forget all about them. So must it
have been with this paper, thrust into his hand
amidst a crowd. It was merciful chance alone
that had restored it to his notice before too late.
But, accepting all that, why was his life
threatened? His heart was full of an emotional
complaint and protest against destiny. He was
not an unjust man as things went certainly not
so signally as to merit this fatal distinction.
He passed a terrible night, shrinking from
every shadow, starting at every sound. Morn-
ing when it came only added to his sick per-
plexity. What course was he to pursue, fearful
of the lurking terror, to preserve his dignity
and his life at once? He dressed in a sort of
mental palsy, crept breakfastless to his library,
and sent for the comptroller's report. So far,
it appeared, the night had passed without event.
No doubt the deed was destined for the open air.
As he stood, trying to deliberate his policy, a
visitor, the Earl of Tullibardine, was announced
as craving an audience. His lordship was a
personal friend of his, and beyond suspicion.
Reluctantly Sir Richard gave the order for his
admittance .
THE LORD TREASURER 247
The nobleman came in breezily, and with much
concern expressed over the report of the
Treasurer's indisposition. " Which/' said he,
" maketh me loth to trouble your lordship on
a personal matter, which, saving the pressure of
the occasion, I would forbear. But the business
calls for dispatch, and your lordship had prom-
ised me an answer." <
Sir Richard put a hand to his forehead.
" Not well," he murmured, " and overtaxed.
You must pardon me, my lord. What busi-
ness?"
" Why," cried the Earl, " have you forgot
how you promised me three days ago to speak
to the King about appointing my kinsman,
Robert Caesar, to a vacant clerkship of the
Rolls, and how, asking me for a memorandum of
the matter, I writ ' Remember Ccesar ' on a slip
of paper and gave it you?"
Sir Richard stood staring a moment, then
burst into an uproarious laugh.
MARGARET OF ANJOU
THE sun was setting over Hexham in Northum-
berland as the last remnants of the Lancastrian
force broke and scattered before the explosive
charges of the Yorkists under Montacute, Warden
of the East Marches. Thenceforth all was mad
flight and frenzied pursuit. No quarter was given
or expected. The hurtling fragments of the rout
flew in a thousand directions, to be pursued and
overtaken and stamped to extinction where they
fell. Steel and flesh and harness, swept into
mangled heaps, dotted acres of the country,
like manure laid ready for its potent dressing.
Hardly a cry or a movement issued from these
fermenting masses. Montacute had ordered his
work thoroughly, and the chase as it swept on
and away had seen to it that the fallen should
yield no hangman's perquisites. Only a spark
struck out from steel here and there witnessed to
249
250 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
the sharp eviction of a soul betrayed through its
agony.
The young May moon stole up and out, and,
in sickness at the sight, drew a passing cloud
across her face. The horse that, miles away,
carried a frantic woman and her child, stumbled
in the shadow, and, half recovering itself, and
again sinking, pitched its riders upon the turf.
They rose immediately, to find themselves upon
the fringe of a dense wood, remote, unknown,
but a haven of desperate refuge in their plight.
'* Art thou hurt, child? " whispered the breath-
less woman.
" No, mother."
" Come, then. No other choice is ours but
death and outrage. We must take shelter where
we can."
She seized his hand he was a pretty, delicate
boy of eleven and together they entered among
the trees. All was strange and voiceless there,
yet the leaves were not so full-grown but that
the moonlight penetrating might help them a
little on their way. It sparkled softly on the
woman's girdle, and on her little turbaned cap,
and on the jewels, which she had not thought
in her haste to remove or hide, clasped about her
MARGARET OF ANJOU 251
white neck ; it peopled the glades with moving
phantoms, mystic and watchful. She felt the
little hand in hers clutch and quiver, and squeezed
it, drearily responsive.
" Better," she said, " these thousand spectres
than a single sword of the usurper."
She was only thirty-four, and of those years
she had spent five in the Tower. Yet, born as
she was a child of sorrow, always the sport of
faction, her baby rattle the roll of drums, her
games real warriors and real warfare, her indomi-
table spirit, wasting itself for ever in fruitless
struggles and on timorous souls, refused still
to acknowledge its own eclipse. She had fought,
had she known it, her weak husband's cause to
within sight of the end, but the fire in her heart,
though in the full front of this disaster, was not
yet wholly extinguished. Only a tragic woe
lined her beautiful face, and she clung half
'hysterically to this one shadow out of all her
dreams which remained to her.
She had been a child herself when her gentle
boy was born. They were even now more like
brother and mothering sister than son and parent.
What hope remained to her was centred entirely
in him and his passionate preservation. She
252 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
carried him into the woods, as a frightened wood-
cock bears its fledgling, with one only instinct
to put as far and as obscure an interval as possible
between their enemies and themselves.
Yet, in the end, worn with grief and terror
and the actual fatigues of that bloody day, they
faltered and sunk down exhausted at the lip of
a little clearing situated but a few hundred yards
within the forest -edge. There was a mossy bank
there, and on it, under the shadow of a spreading"
oak-tree, they fell and clung together.
" Neddy, my babe, my little woeful prince ! "
wept the mother. " There, hide thee thy face
within my bosom, and try to sleep. It shall
force my bursting heart to still itself to be thy
quiet pillow."
The boy obeyed, crying silently. Yet, so it
happened that, spent with emotion, in a little a
merciful oblivion overtook him, and, listening
to his regular breathing as to soft music, the
woman too sank presently drowned in a sea
of forgetfulness. And there they lay at peace
in the quiet night, with moss for their bedding
and green leaves for their canopy.
A sense of light, of human neighbourhood,
awoke them almost at the same moment, and
MARGARET OF ANJOU 253
they sat up together with a start. It was bright
morning in the forest, and three evil, uncouth
men stood gloating down upon them.
The woman's heart seemed to stop. The rose
and warmth of slumber, mortal lures to villainy,
froze upon her cheek. Instinctively her hand
stole to the haft of a little dagger stuck at her
waist. For minutes dead silence prevailed, and
then she spoke, in a voice which strove vainly
to command itself :
" Pray you mercy, gentle sirs ! What would
you with us? O, not to betray our weakness ! "
Her very plea was provocation to such cattle
a reassurance and an invitation. She had sup-
posed them, in the first shock of discovery, to
be Yorkist soldiers, but a moment's thought had
undeceived her. Shaggy, unkempt, grossly
attired and rudely armed, there was nothing to
associate these with the bearing of regular troops.
They were mere prowling revers of the woods,
beasts and marauders, who took their toll of
lonely travellers, and ravished and murdered as
the chance came to them.
One of the three, a huge, bull -like ruffian, in
hood and battered breastplate, rose from the bow
on which he leaned, and turned to his comrades.
254 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
' What say you, gossips a pretty finch to
pull ? Their weakness, sooth 1 Do we not love
all weakness in such guise?"
One, who stood behind in a high scarlet cap,
peering over his friend's shoulders, clucked in
his throat, and cracked his fingers. He was
grotesquely tall, lean, misshapen, with long,
hungry chaps and a frosty nose.
" Gossips," he said, in a thin, sharp-set voice,
" shall we not pluck this pigeon ere we feast on
her?, My blood is cold, and sack would be very
warming."
The Queen wrenched a gold chain from her
arm, and, rising hurriedly, flung it to the ground.
" Take it, in God's pity," she said, " and let
us go ! Gentlemen sweet gentlemen ! a broken
woman throws herself upon your charity. O,
teach her that some mercy still remains to men ! "
" A's unprotected," said the third fellow, his
eyes burning " likely some little sow that flees
and squeaks before the boars of York."
" We'll make her squeak, I warrant," said the
first speaker.
The lank creature skipped to the front, and
snatched up the chain.
" Drink first," he cried, " drink, drink ! I'll
MARGARET OF ANJOU 255
with this to the ' Chequers ' and return anon
with sack."
The bull-headed man threw himself on him
in a fury ; in a second they were all fighting
together for possession of the chain. The
strongest, the first -mentioned, secured it.
" Drink," he roared. " Much drink, I trow,
for those remaining. Trust thee the chain, Jake
Andrews ? Marry I will when Tib's eve is come."
The other wriggled, cracking his finger -joints.
' Take it thyself, then, Cuckoo, only speed
fast and bring us good store."
They wrangled yet awhile, but in the end the
holder of the chain went off, with threats of
fierce reprisals should the two remaining venture
to take advantage of his absence. They leered
at one another oddly as he disappeared.
" A' 11 claim, as ever, the first and the best of
everything," growled the short, thick -set man
under his breath.
"Shall he now, Thomas Kite, shall he?"
answered the long scarecrow eagerly. Bending
with a grotesque writhe, he jerked himself
suddenly stiff again, a staring smile on his face.
" Cometh our chance long sought, Thomas Kite,"
he whispered. " Shall the Cuckoo always claim
256 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
the Cuckoo's share? Not if one be quick and
clever, gossip."
He squeaked, and leaping, dodged and
screwed behind the other. The Queen, knife in
hand, her teeth set, her muscles rigid, was almost
upon them. As she lifted her arm, the stubby
rogue ran under, and caught her round the waist.
She struck and struck at him, but her shortened
blows fell harmless. She could not get one home
so long as he held her thus, and he knew it and
cried out, straining :
" Cut me the whelp's throat, Jake Andrews,
and so get behind her."
The boy, terror-struck and whimpering, held
to his mother's skirts. -With a mortal effort, she
wrenched herself free from her captor, and,
throwing down her blade, which Jake instantly
secured, seized the child convulsively into her
clutch.
" No, no ! " she cried, " I am disarmed. In
God's name spare him I See, we will stand like
the wretched sheep, dumbly beseeching your
mercy. There, take all I have my jewels '
She began, with feverish fingers, to unclasp
the collet from her neck. Jake, leering and
humping his shoulders, stopped her mid-way.
MARGARET OF ANJOU 257
' What now," growled the Kite ; " shall they
not be ours, then? "
" Patience, good gossip, patience ! " said the
other softly in his ear. " Would not the Cuckoo,
returning, note at once their absence, and so be
moved to fury? No suspicion, Thomas Kite
none. Lull him, lull him, and then one blow,
and all is ours wine, jewels, gold, and hum ! "
He hugged himself, gluttonously contorted. " Is
not a half share better than a third," he said,
" or none at all? And as for the little pretty,
pleasant tit -bit "
The Kite roared out suddenly on the captives :
" Down with ye both asquat on grass bank
yonder, and move so much as an eyelid at your
peril ! "
Trembling and distraught, the Queen dragged
the boy to a place beside her on the turf, and so,
clasped together, they cowered, awaiting the end.
Despair was in her heart. So remote, so
utterly unfriended, she knew not where to look
for hope or remedy. Cursed and proscribed in
the thick of enemies, no self -confession that she
might venture but must prove her worst damna-
tion. Outlawed herself, she was the natural prey
to outlaws. To reveal her identity were to forgo
17
258 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
the smallest consideration a threat of vengeful
justice might otherwise perhaps enforce were
to unmuzzle these ravening beasts finally and
effectively. And yet she dared not threaten
justice, lest passions so reckless should be fired
thereby to instant retaliation.
She could only pray to her gods in a dumb
agony of supplication to contrive some means
for their escape ; for herself she could think of
no possible way, unless at the last to snatch death
from some ill -guarded weapon.
What long torture of mind she endured while
sitting there facing her brutal captors, awaiting
the Cuckoo's return and thereafter the final
struggle, one may imagine in a measure. A
suffocating lump seemed to rise in her throat
when at length she heard his footsteps on the
twig-strewn turf, and her arm tightened con-
vulsively about her boy.
The returned ruffian, when he hove into sight,
had been obviously priming himself for the
affray. He was not drunk, but his huge cheeks
were blistered red and a fire blinked in his eyes.
He carried over his shoulder a net containing a
jar of sack and a couple of curved drinking-
horns, and, striding across to his comrades, he
MARGARET OF ANJOU 259
bent, with a fierce inquiring oath, to sling his
burden to the grass. As he thus stooped, Jake
and the Kite, standing on either side of him,
drove each a sudden knife, handle -deep, into
the thick of his neck. The monster, with one
slobbering choke, heaved forward and went down
like an ox. His fingers raked, his legs jerked
for a little, and then the whole welter relaxed
and subsided. Simultaneously with its cessation
of movement the two murderers, as if by one
impulse, made for the wine-jar. Their hands
were shaking, their cheeks spotted with white.
They spilled as much as they gained, but each
in the end succeeded in gulping a hornful
between his chattering teeth. And then I
The woods echoed with their screeches ; they
writhed like scalded snakes upon the grass. Kor
the Cuckoo, coveting not a half but the whole
of the spoil, had gone even a step further than
his confederates, and had poisoned the wine he
brought them with some swift corrosive acid
snatched up from the " Chequers " harness-
room.
Was the biter bit ever mangled with a longer
tooth?, The pale Queen, risen throughout this
bloody drama, watching half -paralysed its course,
260 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
with but reason enough left to hold the child's
face hidden from it, was even minutes in guess-
ing the truth. But when at length she realised it,
with a sob of thankfulness she seized her boy's
hand, and, avoiding those prostrate, faintly-gasp-
ing horrors, fled deep and deeper into the forest,
until, as history relates, she found that chivalrous
one whose generosity was to obtain her means
to cross the water.
"KING COLLEY'
* WE will now, my dear people," said Mr.
Gibber, " proceed to investigate the ecclesiastical
Phcenix which has reared its giant head from
the ashes of the conflagration, and to criticise
its claims to a greatness commensurate with its
bulk."
He spoke of St. Paul's Cathedral, which, in
this summer of 1721, had stood some years com-
pleted, the stupendous " monument without a
tomb " to its creator's genius.
Mr. Gibber had been entertaining a party of
provincial actors and actresses to luncheon at
the " Globe " tavern, in Fleet Street, where,
amongst other things, they had consumed a
half-gallon of arrack punch at six shillings
the quart. The company was in consequence
very merry, and, though still properly im-
pressed with the magnitude of the occasion,
a little more inclined than heretofore, per-
261
262 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
haps, to familiarity with its host, and even
to a touch of that professional sportive-
ness whose cheap but characteristic quality
seems somehow to this day to suggest the
missing link, much sought and unaccountably
overlooked, between men and monkeys. Mr.
Gibber, however, genial as always in self-suffi-
ciency, recked nothing of the change. He
walked at the height of pompous good -humour,
his usually pasty countenance flushed, his hat
under his arm, and his full wig pushed a trifle
back from his forehead. He wore a heavily
embroidered claret-coloured coat with stiff
skirts, buttoned at the waist alone, black velvet
breeches, ruffles, and a " bosom " of Mechlin
lace, pearl silk stockings with gold clocks, and
scarlet heels to his shoes. His magnificence put
into the shade the somewhat meretricious finery
of his companions, and that was exactly as it
should have been. King Colley would have
wished to impress upon the public in general
the fact that he was merely acting cicerone, in
a spirit of tolerant condescension, to certain
country insignificances whom it was his humour
to patronise, and that there was something a
little fine in his taking these humble, unsophisti-
"KING COLLEY' 263
cated souls under his personal protection, and
exhibiting to them the lions of the Metropolis.
The party, chattering, laughing, and gaping,
went down Fleet Street, and paused a moment
at the ruined gateway on Ludgate Hill. It had
been gutted by the great fire, but the mutilated
statues of King Lud and his sons still remained
to its west front. Mr. Gibber pointed out the
middle figure.
" King L'ud," he said.
" Lud ! " responded Mrs. Lightfoot, and Mr.
Barney Bellingham, low comedian, laughed
suddenly, and then looked preternaturally
solemn .
They were some five or six in all, including
a " heavy father " and spouse, " Sweet Corinna,"
so called, the most affectedly rapturous of
ingtnu.es, and the two above-mentioned. Mrs.
Lightfoot, a faded coquette in a soiled
" paysanne," had once played Hypolita in the
Laureate's own " She Would and She Would
Not," and could claim some kinship with genius.
" A fabulous monarch," said Mr. Gibber
grandiloquently, " and therefore figuring not
inappropriately on the portal, as one might call
it, to Pretence. Your servant, sir."
264 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
'He addressed a little old gentleman who at
that moment had alighted from a chair which
had been deposited close beside the speaker.
The stranger was the most withered small
creature it was possible to conceive a nona-
genarian at least by his looks a fledgling of
second childhood, his head, naked and skinny,
in a great wig like a nest. His eyes were dim,
his nose was a rasped claw, his fingers were
horny talons. He was dressed very plainly,
almost like a farmer, in a drab -coloured coat
and breeches ; and something of rustic vigour
showed in the positive sprightliness with which,
in spite of his years, he stepped out upon the
stones. Mr. Gibber, a practised reader of
character, distinguished the country cousin in
him at once, and was moved to some affable
patronage .
" If you are going our way, sir," he said,
" and an arm would be of any service to you ?
My name is Gibber Colley Gibber, sir, of whom
it is just possible you may have heard."
" O, indeed ! " said the old gentleman, with
a kindly, nervous lift of his eyes. " Mr. Gibber
is it? A very gratifying accident. I must live
remote beyond conception, sir, to be ignorant
"KING COLLEY' 265
of that name. Thank you, Mr. Gibber. You
were saying, sir, as I alighted ? "
" I was saying, sir," said the Laureate, " that
a fabulous monarch, like him above, fittingly
adorns the portal to pretence."
"Meaning ?" said the old gentleman,
pointing forward with his stick.
" Yes, sir," said Mr. Gibber " meaning the
vast but ineffective fane towards which we are
now directing our steps."
"Ah!" said the old gentleman. "It will
have its faults, no doubt."
" -We will consider them," said the poet loftily.
" Is this possibly your first visit, sir? Well,
better late than never, as old Heywood has it.
You will find much to surprise and more to dis-
approve, or I am mistaken in myself. I am
doing showman at the moment, sir, to a party
of country cousins " he whispered, " plain, un-
sophisticated folk, but respectable and if you
care to join us "
" With pleasure, Mr. Gibber," said the old
fellow. " It is a most happy chance for me
and not less for the support of your arm than of
your opinion. I thought I should like to
approach the Cathedral on foot to have its
266 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
dimensions gradually revealed to me ; but I find
in good truth the hill trying to my old bones.
I am eighty-nine, Mr. Gibber. Would you
believe it ? **
' It is a creditable venture, sir," said the poet.
" Ulysses himself in his old age never made a
bolder.* 1
They approached, as he spoke, the extended
space on which the building stood, and divers
exclamations of wonder broke from the lips of
the little party " My stars ! " " Prodigious fine,
on my word ! '* " Tis mighty likeable ! "
' Why why, the sweetest regale ! " " Are you
not properly struck, Barney, my boy? " " Mum,
mum," and so on. Mr. Gibber, with the air of
one magnificently responsible for the show, stood
leaning familiarly against one of the posts which
encompassed the paved area before the west
door, and remained silent pending the recovery
of his company. But he took snuff, and laughed
patronisingly from time to time over the fervour
of its ejaculations .
" Rat me, my dears," he said by and by, when
the volume of enthusiasm had spent itself ; " but
your artlessness refreshes me upon my soul and
honour, it refreshes me. This is the very
"KING COLLEY' 267
respectable work of a journeyman builder, and
as full of holes as poor Tom's coat."
" La, Mr. Gibber I " said the sweet Corinna,
with a giggle, " I always thought the gentle-
man was at the top of his trade."
" ' They say best men are moulded out of
faults,' " murmured Mr. Bellingham, with a wink
at the heavy mother.
The poet saw the wink, and waxed a little
emphatic. It was Dr. Johnson who had once
said of his art of conversation that " he had
but half to furnish, since one-half was oaths.'*
But he was after all a good-natured man.
" Then, God judge me," he cried, straining
his voice, which was none of the strongest, " if
he hadn't a title to be called perfection 1 "
Mrs. Lightfoot, alarmed by his heat, stopped
a levity on her lips half-way, and addressed the
great man very soberly.
" I prithee, sir," she said, " to correct our
untutored visions, naturally dazzled in their first
contemplation of so unaccustomed a sight."
" Why, my dear," said the Laureate, molli-
fied at once, " I can quite understand your
naive enthusiasm ; but it is a fact that in order
to criticise an achievement one must know some-
268 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
thing of the principles of the art which designed
it."
" No greater architect of his own fortune than
King Colley ! " cried Mr. Bellingham.
' I thank you, sir," answered Mr. Gibber
stiffly ; then added, blazing out again, " You will
oblige me by holding your damned tongue ! "
The old gentleman, anxious and conciliatory,
put in a word :
" Your professional knowledge, sir, must make
your comments doubly instructive. Pray inform
us to what details of the building you take
particular exception."
' That is a very reasonable demand, sir,"
answered the Laureate, daring the offending and
rather elated low comedian from the corner of
his eye. ' I have no doubt that to the unin-
formed in such matters the magnitude of this
conception palliates, or even overpowers, the
meretriciousness of its details. But you mistake
me on one point. My profession, though it
embodies all the arts, specialises in none, and
if I claim a dictatorial right in this instance,
it is simply because as an actor I represent the
trinity in unity of the creative faculty."
" I see, I see," said the old gentleman. " It
"KING COLLEY' 269
is merely accident which has kept dormant your
architectural proclivities."
' Well, sir," said the poet, with a smile, " I
flatter myself I could have evolved, under com-
pulsion, a more faultless erection than this."
The stranger nodded with an air of satisfied
acquiescence .
" I shall be really grateful to Mr. Gibber,"
he said, "if he will help me to the right point
of view. To my uninstructed intelligence, I
confess, the pile seems to stand well."
The poet laughed tolerantly.
" A good fortune it owes to its site. O,
you must really pardon me, sir ! It is in truth
a cold, heavy, tasteless affair, imposing in no
more than bulk, lacking the inspiration of
sacramentality. Bear with me, now bear with
me, while I strip off for your edification a little
of the monster's pretence. You will observe its
most prominent feature, the dome? Very well,
sir ; that dome sums up in itself the hollowness
of the entire conception. It violates the first
principles of the art it professes, with a monstrous
impertinence, to crown. Its height bears no
relation to the proportions of the structure
within, and is fixed thus arbitrarily for no other
purpose than effect. "
270 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
" But is not the effect good? " ventured the
old gentleman.
' Why, stap my vitals, sir 1 " said Mr. Gibber,
" have you the assurance to condone a whited
sepulchre? The greater the audacity, the worse
the pretence. The cupola proper to this design
lies within that external sham like a head under
a steel basinet. What we look on is a mere
exuberance, supporting nothing but itself. Will
you tell me that that is in accordance with the
principles of art, which demand that each part
should naturally progress in lines of beauty from
the parent stock ? "
" No," said the stranger " no. You teach
me much, sir."
' That pretence," continued the poet trium-
phantly, " is not confined to the head, though
naturally it finds there its most swollen expres-
sion."
" By the Lord, that's true," murmured Mr.
Bellingham, and the sweet Corinna choked a
little laugh into her handkerchief.
1 Those side elevations, for instance," went
on Mr. Gibber, with a doubtful glance askance,
at the lady, " concealing as they do the buttresses
and clerestory windows of the nave, constitute
"KING COLLEY' 271
in their upper order a mere mask to the real
form and construction of the building. Now,
in a perfect design there should be no screen-
ing of structural necessities, but an ingenious
adaptation of all such to the general concep-
tion. These, sir, are a few of the most patent
defects, upon which, saving your patience, I
could enlarge at pleasure. But I trust I have
said enough to correct your point of view to its
necessary focus ; and if some disenchantment
is the result "
" Well, well, Mr. Gibber," interrupted the old
gentleman " well, well. But I don't know that
I can quite confess to that."
" O, very good, sir I " cried the poet
ironically. " And according to what impene-
trable illusion, if you please, do you persist in
your faith? "
' Why," said the old gentleman " why, you
see, Mr. Gibber, I designed the thing myself."
" Sir Christopher, Sir Christopher I " cried a
breathless gentleman who came hurrying up at
the moment. " We had lost you, sir. This was
naughty of you to venture up the hill alone."
Mr. Bellingham, with one look at the rueful
Laureate, sat flat down upon the pavement and
delivered himself to hysterics.
THE SURGEON OF GOUGH SQUARE
HE was a young man, but appearing careworn
and prematurely aged. His face had a spoiled
and dingy look such as an actor's bears by day-
light, when for the paint and glow and glamour
of the boards are substituted the grey and
gripping realities of existence. The fruitless-,
ness of all hope, of all cheery effort, Deemed
typified for him in the stagnant November fog
which brooded over the City without. As he
gazed through his window into the dreary murk,
the dull roar which reached his ears from Fleet
Street and its adjacent market sounded to him'
like the boom of surf to a castaway in a desolate
land. He was stranded, he felt, among the waste
places of life, and no prospect of release was
ever more to be his.
He had started his professional career with
high expectations and a confidence born of
capital possession. They had all, hopes and
18 273
274 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
confidence and capital, gone to wreck on the
shoals of a giant fraud. What solace to him
was it that the law had ended by claiming its
own? It had been a greater mercy had it
remained eternally blind, and left him, one of
many victims, to live on content in his fool's
paradise. Though his substance had been dissi-
pated, the interest, regularly paid, had served him
for his needs. It had been all the sinews he
desired in his wrestle with fortune. Was it not
in the bitter irony of things that his high rectitude
should be expected to rejoice in that vindication
of justice which had left him a pauper ?
He recalled, in a sudden impotent fury, the
occasion, or the suspected occasion, which had
marked him down for ruin. His capital had
been all invested in Bank of England stock,
and the securities had been deposited with
Fauntleroy, the now notorious banker of Berners
Street. It had been this villain's practice to
forge powers of attorney enabling him to dispose
of his clients' property, and the man's cool
audacity had even, it was said, carried him so
far as to the occasional appending of a customer's
name to a fraudulent deed in the customer's own
presence, and the then sending it, with its ink still
SURGEON OF GOUGH SQUARE 275
wet, as though from the visitor's hand, into the
clerks' department.
Such, he fully believed, had been the case
with him during a business call he had made
one day upon the head of the house. He remem-
bered, cursing the memory, the sleek, plausible
figure in its black tights and broadcloth, the
spotless frill at its bosom, the smile on its pros-
perous face, the pen travelling in its plump
fingers while the voice went on, even, polite,
and interested. To be signing away so in-
humanly the fortune, the happiness, the soul of
a fellow-creature, and never all the while to flush
or falter. Damn him !
Well, he was damned maybe. A glutton, a
sybarite, a voluptuary, he had come to the end
of his feasting, and only for Lazarus remained
the scraps and dregs of the banquet.
A rap at the door broke in upon his miserable
reverie, and a small servant entered the room.
Two gentlemen, she said, desired particularly to
see him. Who were they? She did not know,
they would give no name. Where were they?
In the surgery, which opened on the back.
They had brought something with them, some-
thing on a hand -cart, and then other men, who
276 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
had deposited the something, had left. She was
used to the traffic, or had been, and showed no
agitation or alarm.
Resurrection-men I He had no desire to pay
their price, and, if he had, no means. The very
house in which he lived, an inheritance, was
already under treaty for sale. Frowning and
compressing his lips, he descended to the room
below. The something, stark and obvious under
a black cloth, was laid already on the dissecting -
table. Two gentlemen turned to greet him.
They were both grave, formal, unconvincing ;
yet perfectly refined in manner. One, who con-
stituted himself the spokesman, began to address
him at once in a low voice :
" You will please to pardon, sir, on the ground
of extreme urgency, this unceremonious visit. I
must say at once that we do not wish to state our
names, and I will admit unhesitatingly that we
are disguised. This " he signified the silent
shape " is the subject of our visit. We desire
your acceptance of it in the interests of science.
No return is required, and no condition made,
save that you undertake to convince yourself,
beyond the possibility of a doubt, and before
proceeding to extremities, that no flicker of life
survives to it."
SURGEON OF GOUGH SQUARE 277
Professionally self-possessed, the young doctor
had yet to rally all his nerve -power to meet
so amazing a charge. He delayed to answer for
some moments.
. i
"And if it did?" he said.
' Then you will have no reason to regret your
caution/' answered the gentleman.
" I cannot pretend to understand you."
" I must urge upon you the necessity of a
quick decision/' said the stranger. " Will it
satisfy you to be told that the subject " he again
pointed to the hidden form " expressly desired
that this task should be deputed to you ? "
"Are you mad?" said the young surgeon,
" or am I, or do you think me so? What task
and who desired it ? "
" The task," said the gentleman, " of ascer-
taining, in the first instance, that life is indisput-
ably extinct, and of then devoting the remains, at
your complete discretion, to the interests of
science. I may tell you " he seemed to hesitate
a moment " that the subject suffered under a
morbid apprehension of premature burial."
" 'His apprehensions," said the surgeon,
" could be easily set at rest."
" I hope so," answered the stranger.
278 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
" But but," cried the surgeon in desperation
he made a movement as if clutching at his
hair " you must see, gentlemen, that I cannot
possibly undertake the responsibility on these
vague premises."
" Question me, sir, if you will, and I will
endeavour to answer to your satisfaction."
' Tell me then . Who is this man ? What was
his complaint presumably mortal? Was he a
patient of mine that he selected me for this
extraordinary business ? "
The gentleman again seemed to hesitate.
" He was," he said, " yes, I may call him
a patient of yours, inasmuch as you attended him
during the course of a distemper or aberration
with which he was seized. He considered that
he owed you a return for his somewhat cavalier
exploitation of your services, and, at the last,
these were the only means he could devise for
giving some effect to well, shall we call it his
remorse? The sentiment, combined with the fact
that his demise, or his assumed demise, occurred
in this neighbourhood, decided our choice."
The young surgeon, forcing all his wits to a
focus, fixed his eyes searchingly on the speaker.
" He was murdered," he said. " Is that it? "
SURGEON OF GOUGH SQUARE 279
The other shrugged his shoulders, with a
scarce perceptible smile.
" O, sir," he said, " if you take that view !
But a moment's examination will convince you."
" Let me make it, then."
The stranger interposed his body, quietly but
resolutely.
" After we are gone."
'Why will you not give me your names?"
" Because, sir, we do not wish to associate our-
selves with an act which might prove difficult
of explanation, and which, given publicity, must
most certainly defeat its own object. You must
accept our word for it that we were both close
personal friends of the deceased, and that we
have undertaken this difficult charge out of pure
regard for an intimacy which contains for us
many endearing recollections."
' What was the cause of death? Will you
tell me so much? "
" It was the result of a fall."
The surgeon, wavering between conscience
and professional acquisitiveness, gnawed his
forefinger in an agitated way.
" But why," he said " why should not a post-
mortem examination at his own house have
sufficed for his apprehensions?"
280 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
* There is no calculating," answered the
stranger, " the lengths to which such diseased
imaginativeness will carry a man. Safety, no
doubt, to his mind, consisted in nothing short of
dismemberment." 'He looked at his watch in
a hurried way. ' Time, sir," he said, " presses.
If our natural scruples shrink, as I say, from
association with this business, no such sentiment
need apply to you. Gentlemen of your profes-
sion, I understand, are not expected to be over-
inquisitive as to the material provided for their
anatomical studies. You may rest completely
satisfied that nothing discreditable to ourselves
or harmful to you attaches to this case. Very
well. Subjects, I believe, are costly. Here is
one to your hand for nothing. But should our
friend's terrors prove actually justified, and this
to be a case of suspended animation, in that
event, sir, I will answer for it that the patient's
gratitude would take a form upon which you
would have plentiful reason to congratulate your-
self. And in the meantime every wasted minute
is a reproach to us . Answer, sir, will you accept
the conditions or not?"
" You will not tell me your name ? "
" No."
SURGEON OF GOUGH SQUARE 281
" Nor his there?"
" I must not, indeed."
" Nor where to communicate with you, in
case ? "
" No purpose would be served thereby. We
have done what he desired of us, and there our
duty to him ends. The rest lies between you
and him."
The surgeon, with a gesture which might have
implied resignation or repudiation, turned his
back. When he looked round again he was
alone.
He made a movement towards the door, as
if in a pretence to himself to recall his visitors,
but stopped on the instant, biting his lip.
" I will not be such a hypocrite," he muttered.
He knew perfectly well, indeed, what was at the
bottom of his heart hope ; a vague, indefinable
feeling that all here was not as intimated ; that
out of the very strangeness and mystery of the
affair might come profit and perhaps salvation
to himself, a desperate man.
With a somewhat haggard face he moved on
tiptoe to lock both the surgery door and that
leading into the yard at the back. Then, feeling
awed against his will, he turned to the hidden
form.
282 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
It was still early morning, but the fog made
a thick, dingy twilight in the room. Not a sound
broke the dead stillness ; nothing moved.
Yes, something the thing under the cloth !
Was he overwrought victim to some wild
delusion ? He could have sworn it ; and yet the
motion had been so slight, so hardly perceptible,
it might have been the mere contraction or
dilation of a shadow.
Again !
With a gasp of horror he leaped to the table,
tore away the cloth, and revealed the face,
blotched and livid, of Fauntleroy the forger.
The truth rushed upon him as he stood there,
pallid and staring, and with it an understanding
of each one of his visitor's studied ambiguities.
The great criminal, he remembered now, was
to have been executed that morning. Where
had he heard it that whisper, that incredible
rumour, hinting of a hangman extravagantly
bribed by friends of the criminal, and of a silver
tube to be passed into the condemned gullet?
A thing impracticable preposterous he had
dismissed it as a canard ; yet, somehow, it
appearedj accomplished. Either that way or
another what did it matter? The man had been
SURGEON OF GOUGH SQUARE 283
hanged, patently on the evidences before him,
and as patently he still lived only as yet the
merest flicker of vitality, expressed in the pulsing
of the purple cedematous swelling about the
throat. A little either way, and the spark were
coaxed into flame or quenched for ever.
Which way, then? He stood for minutes, quite
rigid, battling with his emotions. His wrongs ;
his diabolical opportunity ; his perfect immunity
from detection ; his justification, inasmuch as
this life was already forfeit to the law. 'Hyde
roared in him, and Jekyll pleaded. The very
clothes of the thing, unaltered in their black
neatness, sleekness, hypocrisy, filled him with an
indescribable loathing. He stepped forward, his
fingers crooked.
At that moment the laugh of a baby sounded
in the yard outside. He paused, and stood
listening. Suddenly his face lightened :
" Not guilty I " he cried, " not guilty, little
one I " and hurried to the succour of his enemy.
THE PRIOR OF ST. COME
A CADAVEROUS, hump -shouldered man paced a
walk of the Louvre garden. He would have
been pronounced old, though, in fact, his years
were no more than fifty. In form and expres-
sion he was the typical miser, lean and grey
from abstinence, morose from suspicion, bent
from persistent crouching over insufficient
embers . His face was tallow grey ; the whites
of his eyes and the orifices of his long, pinched
nose were tinged with red. He was dressed
in a short, waistless jerkin, once black, and
trimmed at the hem with mangy fur, once brown.
Black, ill -gartered hose covered to the hips a
couple of legs like hurdle-stakes, and his stooped
head was cased in a greasy calotte, surmounted
by that form of cap known as the cap of main-
tenance, the brim of which, peaking to the front
and raised behind, supported a number of little
286 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
cheap leaden figures of saints. In contradic-
tion to all this ostentatious shabbiness, a collar
of gold shells and costly jewels hung about his
neck.
As he paced deliberately, his hands clasped
behind his back, his lips perpetually working
without sound, he would glance up with a
stealthy leer from time to time at a figure that
walked beside him. This figure, sufficiently
jocund and prosperous for contrast, was that of
a healthy priest in cape and cassock, with a
crisp, golden beard and blue eyes, a certain craft
in which rather belied their conscious merriment.
An odd broadness of the skull above the ears,
which were gross and misshapen, betokened in
this person a development of what Spurzheim
would have called an " affective propensity to
acquisitiveness." He was, however, a notoriously
holy man, and one of the King's chaplains to
boot. The other was the King himself, Louis XI .
Presently the latter, pausing beside a pedestal
on which stood a statuette, none too unsugges-
tive, of the Paphian Venus, looked up in an
abstracted way.
" Still vacant, still vacant ? " he said, lisping
a little between his toothless gums. " That was
THE PRIOR OF ST. COME 287
what you remarked, was it not, Pere Bonaven-
ture ? "
" Not in so many words, son Louis," answered
the chaplain. " But in very truth the Priory
of St. Come remains to this day a body without
a head. The severance, moreover, hath endured
so long that I doubt if any reunion of the parts,
were that conceivable, could restore its healthy
circulation to the community. The good prior
and his monks have become estranged in this
dull interval. His authority is out of date.
Were he yet to return a wild hypothesis he
would think to take them up where he left them,
and, being disillusioned, chaos would result."
' You are convinced he is dead ? "
" Either that, or held by the infidels in a
captivity doomed to be perpetual. No reason-
able man can doubt it."
" Pasque-Diea! " said Louis, "that same
reason is a good servant to one's interests. I
myself am never so reasonable as when I cut
off a head that annoys me."
He glanced, rasping his frosted chin, at the
chaplain and down. He could gauge this jocund
suitor well enough ; he knew him to be at heart
a libertine and self-seeker ; but, inasmuch as
288 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
his own faith was a conglomeration of
hypocrisy and abject superstition, he dreaded
always to question the casuistries of its anointed
ministers. One could never tell what might
befall.
The matter under discussion turned upon the
wisdom of appointing a new head to the Priory
of St. Come, an important foundation in the
southern quarters of the city. Long months past
the King had granted a reluctant permission to
its aged chief to make a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land ; and the old man had gone and he had
not returned . Time went by ; no news had
ever been received of the wayfarer ; by degrees
it had come to be concluded that death or
captivity had terminated his pious adventure.
The young monks of St. Come, freed from his
restraining hand, had begun to break bounds ;
scandals were getting rife ; interested observers
impressed upon the King the moral certainty of
the old prior's death, and the necessity of his
bringing the monastery again under the discip-
linary control of a head. Amongst these the
most pertinacious, and, as possessing the royal
ear, the most hopeful, was the Chaplain Pere
Bonaventure, who greatly coveted for himself the
THE PRIOR OF ST. COME 289
desirable office. It promised him almost illimit-
able opportunities for the sort of life he favoured.
' This dream, father, of which you spoke,"
said the King, without raising his eyes " it
seemed to have its significance, you would imply
some bearing on the case ? "
" I would imply nothing of the sort," answered
the chaplain. " We are expressly warned
against attaching a prognostic value to these
figments though, to be sure, we might claim
our justification in Holy Writ."
" Given the seer," said Louis. ' Well, well;
relate thy dream."
" Methought," said the priest, " that thou and
I stood beside a church, in the walls of which
hard by appeared a little threatening fissure.
And the monks, instead of attending to their
office, kept revelry ; and always with the sound
of their roystering the fissure extended. But
thou, while I still urged upon thee the neces-
sity of seeking and amending from within the
ever-widening evil, would persist in holding me
in converse, saying, ' Patience yet a little, father,
and we will enter.' And suddenly there came
a clap of song surmounting all in blasphemy,
and with a roar the breach burst and the tower
19
290 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
rocked and the walls sank down upon us both,
crushing out our lives."
He ended, his eyes slewed craftily upon the
other. " From Joseph, through the royal succes-
sion," he said, " descends the gift of interpreta-
tion. To me it was just a dream."
The King looked up. " Pasque-Dieu! " he
said " and to us a providence, since it gives
us a pretext for disposing of a pest. Go, go,
in God's name " he paused to raise his hat
" and be Prior of St. Come."
>He was rid at last of an importunity, though
he was only to exchange it for a worse.
He was walking in his garden one day weeks
later, when there came towards him an old,
blanched figure, feverishly paddling with a
pilgrim's crossed staff and mumbling as he
approached. It was the aged Prior of St. Come,
delayed in his return by cross winds and crosser
ailments .
Louis, coming to a stop, stood conning the
apparition half -petrified. For a moment, indeed,
he fancied it to be a veritable wraith, so whitely
emaciated looked the face, set in its cloudy fleece
of beard and hair, with the eyes like two black
borings .
THE PRIOR OF ST. COME 291
" Ad juva nos, Domine, adjuva nos!" he
muttered, crossing himself.
The old man tottered forward, and cried in
a shrill tone : " Restore to me my fold, son
Louis restore to me my fold I "
The voice, and, more than it, the words, broke
the spell. The King's lips tightened, shrewd and
caustic. Not on such worldly interests were a
spirit bent.
" Welcome, father," he said " thou art
welcome home."
" No welcome," cried the old man. " My
children disown me ; another sits in my place.
I but carried my pitcher to the well, and lo I
when I returned with it brimming, the door was
locked against me . They feign to know me not ;
they stand and revile me ; let me in to them
that I may afford good evidence of my identity."
'He was a spirited ancient, and he shook his
staff meaningly.
" That may not be," said Louis smoothly,
" since you are pronounced deceased."
"By whom?"
" By the King."
" I am, nevertheless, very much alive."
" Impossible, when the King himself has
292 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
ruled you dead. Why else should he have filled
your office? As Prior, father, believe us, you
are hopelessly defunct ; as priest and man you
may yet exist on our sufferance. We do not hold
it altogether a capital offence, your thus pre-
suming to refute our conclusions by being alive ;
yet, Pasque-Dieu! the inconvenience you cause
us by your inconsiderateness is little less than
monstrous. We should have liked to hear some
note of apology from you, some hint of regret
for your unconscionable survival ; but there, it
is a self-seeking world."
The old man stood amazed and speechless ;
nor was his bewilderment lessened by the kind-
ness with which the King presently took his arm
and walked him off up the garden.
" A monarch's word, father," said Louis, " is
sacred, as much to himself as to another. Any-
thing else that it is in our power to bestow upon
you we shall be happy to consider in the light
of your palpable deserts. Now we shall place
you in the hands of M. de Comines, our Secre-
tary of State, with orders to him to attend to
your interests."
So, with a hundred questions as to the Grand
Turk and the pilgrim's adventures by the way,
THE PRIOR OF ST. COME 293
he led him to the palace and got rid of
him.
For good and all, as he supposed ; but in
that he was very quickly disillusioned. The
deposed prior was by no means the man to take
his cashiering meekly. Stubborn and masterful
by nature, the authority of his late achievement
had but consolidated his sense of righteousness.
His interview with M. de Comines left him with
no delusions . The Secretary bowed him out with
a whole bouquet of flowery phrases, which, beingj
cut for decorative purposes, were destined to
bear no fruit. Eere Bonaventure, lolling in his
chair at St. Come, laughed securely. " Rira
bien qui rira le dernier! " chanted his prede-
cessor with a bitter grimness.
-He appeared at the next royal leve"e, and re-
newed his petition ; his Majesty was gentle but
expostulatory. He sought to penetrate once
more into the Louvre garden, generally open
to men of piety, but, being repulsed by the
guard, took his station at likely exits, and
clamoured when the King went by. His perse-
cution of his monarch became by degrees
persistent and intolerable. Louis grew to
dread the inevitable apparition with its wail,
294 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
monotonous and eternal, '* Restore to me my
fold ! " The creature got upon his nerves, and
even threatened to spoil his sleep. Then one
day, quite suddenly and characteristically, he
resolved to rid himself of the incubus. He sum-
moned his provost -marshal, Tristan 1'Hermite,
and sitting humped in his chair, closed one eye,
and f ocussed the other shrewdly on his favourite .
" Tristan," he said, " divinity utters itself in
the mouths of kings is it not so? "
The officer, a thick-set, beetle-browed boar
of a man, whose body was encased in steel
covered by a blue tabard embroidered with
fleurs-de-lys, grunted in reply. Louis remained
silent.
"Why waste words, gossip?" said Tristan.
" Tell me the job and the man."
His eyes, red and projecting, rolled in their
sockets. He gave his flock of coarse hair a
contemptuous shake.
" Wherefore," went on the other, contempla-
tive, *' to traverse a royal decision is to commit
treason against Heaven a crime even the more
abhorrent in one who professes himself a minister
of religion. 11
" The man? " repeated Tristan.
THE PRIOR OF ST. COME 295
" 'Hast thou heard speak, Tristan," said the
King, " of this troublesome prior of St.
Come?"
The Provost-Marshal turned and made for the
door .
' Tristan ! " cried the King ; but without
effect. He uncoiled himself with a smile.
" Pasque-Dieu" he said, " what a precipitate
fellow ! But at least I can sleep to-night with
a peaceful conscience."
And yet, when taking the air the next morning
in company of this very confidant, there, slipped
in by the relaxed guard, was the familiar, hated
figure, pleading and clamouring.
" Hog ! Dolt ! " cried the King, maddened
beyond all subterfuge, turning on his hench-
man : " Did I not tell thee to rid me of the
prior of St. Come? "
" Hig;hty - tighty, gossip ! " answered the
Provost " what's all this to-do ? And have I
not?"
" The prior, I say the prior? "
" Fast in a sack, gossip, and lying these ten
hours past at the bottom of the Seine."
" Fool 1 But I meant this one ! "
" Phew ! Why didn't you say so? The prior,
296 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
quotha. This is not the prior. But rest easy;
the mistake is soon amended."
" No," said the King, who after all had a
sense of humour ; " this is Heaven's hand, and
I but the poor tool in it. The prior claim is
his " and he turned to the suppliant. " Go,"
he said, " in peace, old man. Return to thy flock.
The seat is once more vacant, and thy petition
is granted."
CAPTAIN MACARTNEY
ONE dark November afternoon in the year 1712
a horseman, riding westwards from Cobham
village, in Surrey, pulled up at the junction of
the road with the Kingston and Guildford
highway, and dismounted in order that he might
read the terms of a proclamation pasted upon
the signpost there.
" Whereas," ran the advertisement, " Bernard
Macartney, Captain in her Majesty's forces,
stands charged with the wilful murder of James
Douglas, Duke of Hamilton, in Hyde Park on
the 1 5th of this present month, a reward of
two hundred pounds is hereby offered to any
person or persons who shall discover and appre-
hend, or cause to be discovered or apprehended,
the said Captain Bernard Macartney, to be paid
by the Lords Commissioners of her Majesty's
Treasury upon his being apprehended and lodged
in any one of her Majesty's gaols."
297
298 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
The traveller rose from his perusal with a
grin.
" And so they bell the cat," said he. " Now,
if / were this Macartney I say // I were me-
thinks I should feign to be one of my own
pursuers lusting to gain the reward. There's
no disguise for some men like honesty, nor, in
certain cases, no self-help like self-sacrifice."
He remounted and pushed leisurely on his
way, cutting across the high-road, and taking
the track for By fleet, which ran herefrom over
Cobham Heath, a lonely and near treeless waste.
Naturally, as he rode, his mind was busy over
the event which had produced the proclamation
the recent fatal duel, that is to say, between
the Lords Hamilton and Mohun. The sensation
the affair had caused was due as much to the
reputed foul play which had characterised it as
to the exalted rank of its principals and its tragic
termination. The meeting ostensibly the result
of a dispute concerning some family property
had taken place at seven in the morning near
the Ring in Hyde Park that fashionable " dusty
mill-horse drive " which lay off Tyburn Lane,
about mid-way between the Tyburn and Hyde
Park Gate turnpikes and there were six con-
CAPTAIN MACARTNEY 299
cerned in it, three of a side. The provocation,
given and accepted, had been, it was rumoured
rightly or wrongly, a mere blind to a premedi-
tated murder. His Grace of Hamilton then on
the eve of his departure for Paris as the Queen's
Ambassador, and the holder of a watching brief,
as it were, on behalf of St. Germains was
notoriously obnoxious to Marlborough and the
Whigs, and the quarrel, the whisper went, had
been thrust upon him at the hands of a creature
of the Duke's, a discredited brute and libertine,
whose challenge, under the circumstances, he
might very well have ignored. But his Grace
had an invincible spirit, and the desire, perhaps,
to rid the world of an intolerable ruffian ; and
so the meeting had occurred. At its outset,
without any feint of punctilio, the two had rushed
at one another more like hyenas than men, a
world of long-smothered exasperation, no doubt,
nerving their hands ; and, amidst the rain of
stabs and blows that followed, Mohun had been
the first to fall. And while he had lain on the
ground, gasping out his life, the other, also sorely
wounded, leaning above him, Macartney, it was
said, had run up behind and, giving the Duke
his death-blow, had escaped with his surviving
300 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
companion in iniquity. The Duke had been
helped towards the Cake -house that little, pretty
rustic lodge, with its green trees and pond,
whither fashion was used to resort for its sylla-
bubs and " pigeon-pie puff " but had died on
the grass before he could reach it. And so the
matter had ended for all but the absconding
seconds .
" And those," thought the traveller, " can spell
out proclamations, no doubt, with the best of
their pursuers. I put my money on Macartney."
He was a spare, small -boned man, with a
delicate, invalidish face and an expression on it
of impudent temerity. His voice cracked when he
raised it, and he was prone to spasms of laughter
which hurt his chest. His hat, his heavy surtout,
his great jack-boots seemed all too large for him,
like a preposterous shell to a very little tortoise ;
but he rode with spirit, making small account
of his trappings and the lonely road and sinister
weather. In fact, as with many sickly con-
stitutions, his elasticity and muscular strength
were, relatively, abnormal .
The heath, desolation manifest, rolled on
before him in brown, wind-shivered billows ; the
sky was like a slab of grey stone, roofing a
CAPTAIN MACARTNEY 301
dead world. There was a wolfish snarl in the
air, a threat of coming snow.
Suddenly, without a note of warning, a burst
and ring of hoofs sounded in the road close
behind him. Wheeling on the instant, he
observed a stranger, the noise of whose approach
had evidently fallen deadened on the spongy
turf -side by which he had ridden.
" How now 1 " demanded the traveller, in his
quick little voice : " what the devil do you,
springing upon me like this?"
" Pardon, pardon," cried the stranger. He
rode up, breathing as if winded. " I am a timid
man, sir, and the prospect looked wicked, and,
seeing you going before, I ventured to push on
to crave your company. This place hath a dreary
notorious reputation, I am told, and I am very
nervous."
His jovial face, twinkling, for all the cold, with
perspiration, seemed to belie his assertion. It
was broad, and flat of surface, with the features
in low relief ; and its mouth was so wide that,
when distended in a smile, all above appeared
detachable, like the lid of a comic tobacco -jar.
By the tokens of his greasy jasey, with the little
soiled round hat on top, and the clerical cut of
302 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
his coat, he might have been a damaged parson,
who had taken the wrong turning and missed
his way to paradise.
The other conned him speculatively.
' What made you ride on the grass? " said he.
" Why, I feared to alarm ye," answered the
newcomer, " and so miss the chance of a way-
fellow."
" Gad-so ! " exclaimed the traveller. " And
whither, by your leave, may your road lead you
over this same wicked heath?"
" Sir," said the stranger, " if the question is
scarce pertinent, the candour of my cloth re-
sponds. I am riding to seek preferment of the
Queen's own Majesty at Windsor. Is the con-
fidence to be reciprocal ? "
*' I am escaping from my creditors," said the
small man. " Shall I turn out my pockets, that
you may witness to their emptiness ? "
The stranger endeavoured to look grave.
' This suspicion," he said, " is unworthy."
"Of whom?"
" Of us both, sir. You make me fear I have
misplaced my confidence."
" In the richness of the bone you proposed to
pick? Very possibly you have."
CAPTAIN MACARTNEY 303
They were slowly pacing their horses all this
time side by side. The road was utterly
deserted, the prospect of the dreariest. A
straggle of withered thorns, running darkly up
the slope of a low hill to the left, alone broke
the almost treeless desolation.
" Ride on, sir, ride on," said the stranger
in an offended voice. " Better my own fearful
company than a comrade so mistrustful."
He pulled on his rein and fell back. The
other did the same.
" Great God ! " cried the stranger. " Who's
this?"
Almost without a sound, it seemed, a horse-
man had broken from the shelter of the thorns,
and drawn up in the middle of the track, barring
their way. In the same instant, the clerical
gentleman, who had fallen again behind, whipped
a pistol from his skirt-pocket and shot his com-
panion's horse dead. The bullet entered behind
the shoulder, and the beast, doubling up its fore-
legs, pitched and collapsed. Its rider, flung over
its head, gathered his wits with agility, and sat
up to encounter the vision of a couple of rascal
faces looking down upon him.
" Do me the justice to attest," he said to the
304 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
pseudo-parson, " that I never for a moment be-
lieved in you."
The other beamed over him, his pistol still
smoking in his hand.
" And be damned to your scepticism ! " said
he. " For may I never launch soul on its flight
again if I am not what I look, a broken hedge -
parson."
" Enough of that, Tom," said the second
rogue, a most butchering, determined-looking
scoundrel. " His Honour's swollen head calls
for some blood-letting. Stand away while I give
him t'other barrel."
" What I are you going to murder me ? " cried
the victim.
" Aye, we are that," answered the ruffian. " A
dead man's easier stripped than a live one, and
makes less complaint after."
" I'll give you a hundred reasons for sparing
me?"
"Hold, Jemmy!" said the parson. "The
pick of a hundred will do. What reason of
reasons, Mr. Bankrupt?"
" Why, the money in my pocket, which, if it's
more than a beggarly five guineas, may I eat
my words."
CAPTAIN MACARTNEY 305
' That you shall, and well peppered, I warrant
you."
" I'll give you my bond for fifty, to be paid
on personal presentation."
' A bird in the hand,' mister. Is that your
best ? "
1 You'd never murder a man for five
guineas? " cried the traveller, his voice cracking.
" Five guineas ! " echoed the parson with an
oath : " five testers ; five groats ; five copper
farthings what life is worth more ? Give him
the lead, Jemmy."
" Hold ! I'm Captain Macartney ! "
" Captain- - ! Phew w w ! "
A moment's intense silence followed. The two
amazed ruffians looked at one another with eyes
into which a gleeful cupidity was slowly born.
" Captain ! " Their gaze was transferred to the
sitting figure. Jemmy lowered his pistol. The
parson was all one ineffable smile.
" It fits, by God ! " said he. " Why did it
never occur to me? Two hundred pound,
Jemmy, my boy ! There's Sir Townley Shore
handy. We must risk it. Up with him before
you. You've given us the best reason the last,
Captain, my love. And you prefer the gallows
20
306 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
to a bullet? Well, that's just a matter of
taste."
They bound his arms behind him, and Jemmy
set him before him on the big Flanders mare that
he rode ; and so they carried their prize, choosing
the obscure ways in preference, to the house
of Sir Townley Shore, the great county magis-
trate and magnate of Stoke d'Abernon, which
lay a couple of miles the other side of Cobham.
There was a fine excitement in the Court when
it was known that the notorious Captain was
apprehended. Sir Townley, who was just come
in and sitting down to his dinner, ordered in
his staff, with a stout ranger or two for extra
support, and sent for the prisoner and his guard.
But the moment he clapped eyes on the former :
" Why, Jack," cried he in astonishment, " what
the plague do you in this company?"
The two rogues, at that cry, stiffened aghast ;
but their captive advanced with a grin.
" I'll tell you, Townley," said he. " I'd not
left you and the White Lion Inn a quarter of an
hour, when, going on my way, these two gentle-
men shot my horse, and, falling upon me, would
have murdered me too had I not thought of
the expedient of calling myself Macartney;
CAPTAIN MACARTNEY 307
whereby I not only incited them, hoping for
the reward, to carry me into a place of safety,
but I have the pleasure of presenting you with
a couple of very complete gallows-birds for your
trussing."
He turned on the paralysed ex-cleric with a
little gasp of laughter.
" You have come the right road for prefer-
ment, parson," said he. " You are going to
be exalted like Haman."
THE DUG DE GUISE
THE Queen-Mother, Catherine de Medici, was
giving a ball, characteristically insolent in its
conception, at the royal palace of the Louvre.
All the principal ladies of the Court were invited
to attend it, and each was to be accompanied
by her cavaliere-servente, wearing her mistress's
livery.
" I beg you, madam, to excuse yourself," said
the Due de Guise to his wife. " It is a cen-
sorious age, and your condescensions might be
misconstrued."
'He was a tall, well -figured man, with a some-
what supercilious expression, emphasised by a
prominent underlip. The cut of his face, cold
and aquiline, against his ruff, suggested a cameo
in high relief. 'His beard, of a bright brown, was
" stilettoed " ; a scar defaced his left cheek near
the eye, and, in its fading or flushing, betrayed
the degree of his emotions. It was curiously
309
310 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
in evidence now, though his voice and manner
kept their measured quiet.
" Condescensions to whom, mon cheri? "
asked the Duchess, whisking round as she sat
under the hands of her tire -woman. She was a
beauty, once a princess of Cleves, and as saucy
and wilful as she was bewitching. Her husband,
with a wave of his hand, dismissed the attendant.
' To M. Saint-Mesgrin, madam," he said.
She laughed. " Thou hast named my chosen
cavalier, Henri. What an odd chance ! "
Saint-Mesgrin was one of the King's mignons,
and his name and the lovely Duchess's were too
often associated of late for the Guise's toler-
ance.
" Is it not?" he said. "I cannot imagine
what suggested it."
He took a sweetmeat from a little gold box,
in shape like a shell, that he carried, and put it
between his lips.
" I could not believe," said the lady, pouting
and in an aggrieved voice, *' that the Due de
Guise would condescend to jealousy."
" Nor does he, madam," answered the Duke.
" It is his honour for which he is concerned."
She flounced a shoulder on him.
THE DUG DE GUISE 311
" O, very well, monsieur I You know best
what is worth your consideration. But, if I were
a man, I should not, I think, consign my
honour to the keeping of a despised wife. Will
you be pleased to call back my maid?"
'* You persist, then, in going? "
"Will you call Celestine?"
' Your mere presence there, and in such com-
pany, will be construed, you must understand,
into a justification for all the calumnies and
slanders which have pursued your name of late."
' What matter, if you do not so construe it ?
You are not jealous, grace a Dieii. And as to
that great matter of your honour, I will put it
for safe custody into the hands of Saint-Mesgrin,
and you can ask him for an account of it when
you please."
"To be sure I shall, and very soon perhaps.
You will go to the ball, then, madam?"
" You know I must not disappoint the Queen -
Mother," she said hotly ; but a certain trepida-
tion was beginning to flutter her heart.
" You are resolved? "
"Will you stop me?"
" By no means."
She laughed defiantly.
312 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
" O, most certainly I shall go then ! "
The Duke rose, and bowed very gravely.
' I wish you a good night, madam," he said.
14 Go, and enjoy yourself while you may."
She bit her lip as he left the room. For a
moment she was half resolved to yield her pride
to the panic fear that had seized her ; but the
perverse demon prevailed, and she called back
her woman.
She went to the questionable ball, and the
night passed for her in a sort of conscious
delirium peopled with shapes of gaudy terror.
The King, the Queen-Mother, even Saint-
Mesgrin himself, seemed forms of demoniac
malice, luring her on to her damnation. She
longed, and yet feared, to fly the unreal pande-
monium. Her own peaceful bed figured to her
as something pathetic beyond words a haven
of dear refuge which she had forfeited for ever.
At length, at five o'clock in the morning, the
ball broke up, and she hurried home with what
feverish haste the crowd would permit her. At
bed, in the Hotel de Guise, she cowered beneath
the coverlets, and, the attendants dismissed, lay
shivering like a mouse in a trap. She hardly
dared to breathe, for fear of evoking some
THE DUG DE GUISE 313
menacing echo. She could have thought that
something horrible, like a monstrous cat,
crouched outside her door.
All of a sudden her heart seemed to stop.
Quick, soft steps were coming down the corridor,
and the next moment her door opened, and the
Duke, followed by a servitor bearing a bowl of
broth on a salver, entered the room.
She uttered a little stifled cry. There was
something even horrible and suggestive in the
choice of the attendant, who was a small, vacant-
faced deaf-mute much employed by her
husband on secret services. She sat up in her
dishevelled beauty, white and panting.
" O, Henri, tnon anti" she whispered, " you
have frightened me so ! "
He locked the door behind him and came
forward, his eyes brilliant, his lips smiling.
" That is a sad result of my consideration,"
he said. " I foresaw very well that your heated
blood would prevent you from sleeping, and that
a counter caloric would be necessary for your
rest. Thank my foresight, madam, and drink
down this broth."
" No, Henri no, no ! "
" Peste,! this is a peevish return, nta mie.
314 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
Are you such a child to cry at your draught,
and when it comes in so pleasant a disguise?
Why, it needs no physician to see the excited
wakefulness in your eyes. Down with it, and
you will sleep take my word for it."
'* Henri, before God I have done no harm ! "
' What resistance out of all proportion with
the act ! Who said you had done harm or,
if he thought it, would dream of retaliating with
such kindness. Come, shut your eyes and gulp."
" I will not indeed."
Desperate to run, she put a foot over the
bedside. He held her back with a force gentle
but irresistible.
" Henri 1 " she cried in agony, " I was
wretched all the evening O, believe me ! "
" Ah ! I thought you did a mistaken thing in
going. What a pity you rejected my advice ! "
She shrank from him, her throat gulping, her
eyes clouded with horror.
" Your voice is cold," she whispered" cold,
cold as your eyes, as your heart. O, Death !
Will you have no mercy ? Henri ! "
" Why, you are overwrought, lady. This is
foolish. Come, the broth is cooling."
" Must I drink it? "
THE DUC DE GUISE 315
' To please me."
" My confessor first only for five minutes."
' What ! for a dose of medicine ? You speak
as though it were poison the morceau Italianize!
And even were it, what could lie to confess in
so clear a conscience ? "
' You never loved me. Give me the bowl."
" I will hold it to your lips."
" No, no, you cannot, you will not."
' You make me obstinate, madam. I am not
wont to be disobeyed."
" O, horror ! "
" I never loved you, you say. Do you love
me?"
" Before God, yes ! "
" A little thing to refuse your love. Come
now, it must be done ! "
A shudder convulsed her whole frame ; and
then suddenly she stiffened, white as ashes.
" I will drink it," she said, " and then perhaps
you will believe in me."
With a hand as steady as a rock he held the
bowl to her lips. Her teeth chattered on its
rim a moment, and then she drank, and stopped.
" To the dregs," he said quietly.
She took the cup from his hand, and, looking
316 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
him straight in the eyes, drained it, threw it from
her, and closing her lids, lay back.
One moment he stood gazing down, then,
beckoning to his attendant, very softly left the
room, locking the door behind him.
She never moved, she never opened her eyes.
Still, as though death had already seized her,
she lay there, a creeping rigor seeming to para-
lyse her limbs. Only her brain was busy,
deliriously, unceasingly, gnawing like a rat in
an empty house. What conscious reason it
possessed was absorbed exclusively in the coming
horror of her passing. She was stunned beyond
any thought of eternity, or of the part her sinful
soul must play in it. Uove the love of earth,
of man, of power was a thing shrunk to in-
significance, a dreary, discredited enchantment.
The thought of the poison that possessed her
absorbed her whole being. She had nothing
left in common with that sweet, fantastic conceit,
a desirable woman. She was gold turned grey
and acrid from contact with mercury a thing
preposterous and contaminated. How was the
bane about to act, to assert its hideous mastery?
Already strange stings and tremors were apparent
in her veins. Was she to be drugged into a
THE DUG DE GUISE 317
merciful oblivion, or wrenched and distorted
out of all semblance to humanity? Fearful
memories of tales she had heard whispered
thronged into her mind. He would not have
spared her the worst ; why should he, a
vengeance revealed so soulless, so calculatingly
diabolic ?
She felt the poison creeping up her veins.
When it reached her heart, it would seize on
there, she knew, and tear her to death with
its red-hot fangs. A mortal terror throttled her ;
she was dying, helpless, abandoned, alone to
all eternity. With a supreme effort she struggled
momentarily out of the shadows, and uttered a
choking scream.
The key turned in the lock and her husband
entered.
' What is it, ma mie? " he said, and hurried
to her side.
She turned a grey and ghastly face to him.
1 The poison O, the poison ! "
"What poison?"
" The broth ! "
" Foolish I It was just broth, no more. I
swear it on my honour."
"Henri!" Her hands began to tremble. He
caught them in his own.
318 HISTORICAL VIGNETTES
" I had hoped it would cure thy fever," he
said.
"It is cured," she answered, and burst into
overwhelming tears.
He took her into his arms. "Hush!" he
said. * We have passed some unhappy hours,
mignonne, each for the other's sake. Now shall
we call .quits? "
NOTE
THESE sketches, with a single exception,
appeared originally, under the covering title
" 'Historical Vignettes," in Truth, to whose
Editor the author's thanks, for most kind
.permission to reprint, are given.
The fancy entitled " Fouquier-Tinville " was
first published in the English Review, and is
here included with due acknowledgments to the
Editor.
319
Ube Orcsbam press,
CNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED,
WOKIXG AND LONDON.
University of California Library
Los Angeles
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
Phone Hbnswsis
310/826-9188
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