Chapter III: The Plague-Cart

Through the fantastic mists that circled in her brain to-night, now shrouding her faculties in gloom like the sinister fog that hung without, now shot as with many-coloured fires, Madame de Mantes gazed upon this extraordinary personality.

Paralysed to the waist though the old lady was, a fierce vitality, an indomitable will, looked out of the sunken black eyes, spoke in the cavernous voice, imposed itself in the gesture of the shriveled hand. Here was one, in spite of age and infirmity, strong enough to bid defiance to universal calamity, to look Pestilence in the face, and choose to ignore it; who, in the midst of a terror akin to that of the scriptural last day—when the abomination of desolation seemed to have fallen upon the city, and he that was on the housetop might scarce come down to take anything out of his house—could still give her weekly card-party and find guests to obey the summons.

As her chair was brought to a stand in the middle of the room, Lady Chillingburgh drew her eyebrows together and swept a slow, severe glance over the circle.

“I was informed the company had assembled. How now! Are these all my guests?”

There was a kind of apologetic stir, as if each person felt responsible for the paucity of the gathering. Then Rockhurst and the other men advanced and gravely paid their devoirs. Diana drew her grandmother’s chair to a more suitable position by the big card-table, and stood behind her, in attendance. Ratcliffe instantly proceeded to the introduction of the new guest. He was once more suave, to glibness:—

“The Court has left this morning, dear madam; hence this unwonted emptiness of your rooms. Nevertheless, here is a lady of the royal circle. Madame de Mantes, of the house of Madame Henriette de France, and honoured by their Majesties’ particular regard—she still prefers the advantages of the town.”

The aged face became wreathed in smiles.

“I trust their Majesties were in good health, madam, when last you saw them,” said my Lady Chillingburgh in stately condescension.

Jeanne courtesied mechanically. She felt of a sudden childishly afraid of the figure in the chair, old, old and nearly dead, yet so alive!

The faint, hollow voice went on, as from the recesses of a tomb:—

“You play cards, of course, Madame de Mantes!” To which the other made answer feebly, into space:—

“Yes … yes, milady. I came to play.”

A slight shade of surprise appeared in the hostess’s eyes; but after a second, she made another gesture with the clawlike hand, and turned with an unerring precision of politeness to her friends:—

“Sir John, I rejoice to see you; you had failed us of late. Ah, Mr. Foulkes, you indeed are ever faithful! But where is your good lady?”

“She deemed it wiser—hem,” Foulkes coughed, a-sweat with embarrassment, “I mean, she had accepted an invitation to the country, and left this morning with our family.”

“Indeed!” commented the venerable hostess, regally. “My Lord Rockhurst, you prefer basset, I know. So does Sir John. Will you be seated yonder? Grandson, to my left. Madame, will you face me, if you please? Mr. Foulkes, sir, to my right. Diana, child, shuffle the cards.”

They fell into their places as she willed them; and for a little while round the greater table there was naught but the business of the moment: the necessary words of the game, the rattle of the dice, the whisper of sliding cards. Diana, her fresh young beauty drawn close in startling contrast to her grandmother’s awe-inspiring face, held the cards for the trembling fingers, flung the dice.

In the window recess, the two men, under cover of a languid contest, conversed gravely in undertones. But ever and again the Lord Constable’s gaze, charged with anxiety, sought Diana’s radiant head. Jeanne had flung herself feverishly into the game, which seemed to her all at once a matter of colossal importance.

“I marvel extremely,” quoth Lady Chillingburgh, “that my Lord Marsham should be so late. You are acquaint with my Lord Marsham, madame? He is much at Whitehall. We are indeed a small party to-night. Let us hope my lord will presently appear.”

Foulkes, who had shown increasing agitation during this speech, now dropped his cards with a muffled “Mercy be good to us!”

Ratcliffe kicked him under the table, the while addressing his bland tones to his grandmother.

“Do not expect his lordship to-night, madam. I hear he has convened a party of his own.”

Sir John Farringdon, straining startled ears and eyes from the other table, caught Ratcliffe’s glance, and mouthed at him with dumb lips, “Gone?”—jerking heavenward with his thumb.

“Gone,” asserted Ratcliffe’s nod, while his thumb pointed grimly down.

Lady Chillingburgh turned her quick glance, her high pyramid of lace and white curls, in daunting enquiry toward Sir John. But her grandson, diabolically fluent, was once more ready with his irony:—

“Sir John is offended at having received no invitation.”

“’Tis very strange,” said Lady Chillingburgh. “My Lord Marsham is not wont to be discourteous.”

“’Twas such a sudden inspiration,” soothed Lionel.

His grandmother fixed him with stern disapproval. Diana sometimes thought that, though it was the old woman’s fancy to be humoured, not a jot of their elaborate pretence escaped her; that she fiercely resented the mocking manner with which Lionel acted his rôle.

“And your cousin, sir? Where lurks he? Your brother Edward, I mean, Diana?”

And as Diana had no answer but a look of dumb distress, the old lady finished the phrase for herself:—

“I fear young Edward can find little time for the duties he owes to his grandmother, for the claims of a genteel society, so eager is he, since he is come to London, for less reputable amusements!” Again the fiery eyes wandered, seeking. “And Mistress Hill? ’Tis the first time in seven years that Mistress Hill has failed me.”

Sir John Farringdon, who had been unaccountably nettled by Ratcliffe’s mocking remark, here lifted his voice somewhat overloudly:—

“I can give tidings of Mistress Hill, madam. I happen to know that this evening she was driven out in state. No doubt, Mr. Ratcliffe, ’twas to join that gathering of my Lord Marsham’s to which, as you were good enough to inform the company, I was not asked.”

Rockhurst rose, frowning. And, laughing, not pleasantly, at his own wit, Sir John gathered the neglected stakes and slipped them into his pocket. Madame de Mantes echoed the laugh, shrilly, hysterically.

“_Mon Dieu!_ How amusing you all are!” she cried, and furtively wiped her forehead, wet with unaccountably cold clamminess this sultry night.

A dark flush crept to the old hostess’s bleached cheek. Desultory talk or grim jest failed alike to relieve the tension. The game languished; scarce passed a card or rang a die; the ever-shadowing Horror hung, nightmare-dark, ever closer, ever more palpable, over all.

“The game, madam! The game, gentlemen!”

But it was idle, even for the bravest spirit among her guests, to deny the invisible Presence in their midst. And when, following upon a confused rumour on the stairs, a great cry of anguish and terror was raised at the very door of the room; when, staggering and wringing his hands, a distraught youth rushed in, it was almost as if his voice was that of the unacknowledged Fear; his livid face its very countenance.

“For the Lord’s sake, a cup of the plague water!”

“Brother!” cried Diana. She sprang toward him. But hastily, even roughly, Rockhurst thrust her on one side, and the boy collapsed into the nearest chair.

Whereupon Lionel, coming forward with his usual coolness, ran his fingers, with a movement the sinister significance of which most people had learned to interpret these days, under the fair curls of the bent head, feeling behind the ears.

“Pshaw—’tis nothing!… Sheer poltroonery,” cried he, and laughed loudly, and struck his cousin’s hunched shoulders with no gentle hand. “Art a pretty fellow to come thus, bellowing like a calf, into the presence of ladies!”

“Curse it!” moaned the lad. “I have just knocked against two women carrying a coffin! They howled like sick cats.” Sinking his head on his hands once more, he rocked himself backward and forward. “Oh, this wicked London! Oh, the judgment of God!”

“Edward!” cried Lady Chillingburgh imperiously. Her voice dominated the horrified whispers of Sir John and Foulkes, Madame de Mantes’s hysterical cries, young Edward’s obtrusive groans.

But there was a force stronger than her in her house that night. Sir John Farringdon unceremoniously poured himself a bumper of wine, drank it hastily, his eye on the door toward which Foulkes was already uneasily edging. Madame de Mantes, who had been sobbing out inarticulate words in her own tongue, broke into babbling laughter.

Edward sprang to his feet, thrusting aside his cousin’s restraining hand.

“I will speak! Grandam shall hear the truth at last! ’Tis everywhere! Every one is getting it! Lord Marsham, ill at noon, dead at four! Mistress Hill, well yesterday, buried to-night!”

“I command you to silence, Edward!”

The quavering voice rose high, catching painfully at lost authority; the palsied hand aimed a feeble blow at the table.

“Why must we stay, because of the old woman’s whimsy?” continued the boy in fury. “Zounds! I go to-night, and sister with me. D’ye hear, grandam! I’m only come here to get the travel money from you, and I’ll have it. I’ll go, and sister with me!”

But the aged queen was not yet dethroned. Her spirit asserted itself in a supreme effort. Life seemed to come back to her paralysed limbs; she flung out one hand in a gesture of authority; this time it scarce trembled.

“Diana, your brother is drunk. I order him to be expelled. Mr. Foulkes, the game is not concluded; resume your seat!”

She broke off. Sir John Farringdon had made a sudden unmannerly dash from the room. Foulkes stood at command with a sickly smile; but his friend’s example, the open passage, were too much for him; stealthily the door closed upon his retreat.

Only by a rigid aversion of her head did Lady Chillingburgh betray her knowledge of this double defection.

“Grandson Lionel, your cousin Edward is drunk. Conduct him, I say, from this apartment and let him be physicked. Madam, I am surprised you find amusement in such an indecorous scene. Foh! It seems truly that we shall have no cards to-night. Diana, child, take your guitar and sing for us. Sing that old sweet song of Master Herrick’s.—My Lord Rockhurst, have you yet heard this new instrument?”

But the Lord Constable had followed Diana as she moved across the room to seek the guitar. They stood together a second; he saw her hand tremble over the olive-wood case.

“Nay, child, you can never sing to-night!” he whispered.

“My lord, I must—anything to soothe her. Oh, the physicians have ever warned us of the danger of agitation for her!”

“Diana!” Lady Chillingburgh’s voice was weak and strained; her face seemed to have suddenly shrunk; extinct was the fire in the eyes. Yet the will still struggled. “Sing!”

Rockhurst stood behind Diana, a strong, quiet presence, watchful, comforting. She smiled at him over her shoulder. He bent to her, and under cover of the first chords:—

“You, at least, are not afraid?” he asked.

“No, my lord.”

Lionel Ratcliffe had taken no pains to fulfil his grandmother’s behest; and already she seemed to have forgotten it; but he had soothed Edward Hare after his own fashion—by a bumper of wine and a whispered promise to provide the travel money himself. Now in the lull he took a seat behind Madame de Mantes and, his eyes on Rockhurst and Diana, began in a fierce undertone:—

“Do you not see how it is with them? Why, in this evening’s folly everything conspires to give them to each other. You wait the ripe moment, say you? Gad! Look there, I say: there is that other woman with the man you love—claim him now! ’Tis your last chance!”

Madame de Mantes, who, since Lady Chillingburgh’s rebuke, had been sitting, her chin propped up on her hands, her curls concealing her face, turned slowly toward him. He started. For all his fortitude a shudder ran through him.—Through her mad eyes the Pestilence was looking upon him!

* * * * *

Diana’s voice rose faint but sweet:—

_Ask me why I send you here_
_This sweet infanta of the year?_
_Ask me why I send to you_
_This Primrose thus bepearled with dew?_

Lady Chillingburgh, with closed lids, beat time vaguely on the arm of her chair; Edward Hare pondered over his last mouthful of wine; the Frenchwoman was muttering to herself and drawing, under the shadow of the curls, restless patterns on the table with her forefinger. Lionel sat beside her, his starting eyes upon her face.

_I will whisper to your ears:_
_The sweets of Love are mixed with tears!_

sang Diana, in a voice that had grown firmer and clearer.

And now, so faintly at first as to be almost imperceptible, something began to mingle itself with the music. The clang of a bell struck at intervals, followed by a long, monotonous call. The sound drew ever nearer. Diana faltered, took up her song again bravely, failed once more, struck a broken note; then hand and voice fell mute. Stillness held them all within the great room, which seemed to wait doom the more inevitably for its bright lights, for its futile air of indifference and gaiety.

Through the open window, out of the darkness, gathered a heavy rumble of wheels; then again uprose the call of the bell, the cry of the hoarse voice:—

“Bring out your dead!”

In the breathless pause, Lady Chillingburgh, rising upon those feet that had been dead to motion so long, stood erect, and flung out her arm with an angry cry; and then it seemed there was naught in the big chair but a huddled heap of drapery. The Terror, petrified on young Hare’s lip, broke out roaring:—

“She’s dead also! Grandam’s dead! The plague! She’s dead of the plague!” He made one leap for the door, his screams awaking confusion in the house.

Within Lady Chillingburgh’s drawing-room the drama was quickly played.

Diana bent in anguish over her grandmother, crying:—

“She has swooned! For Heaven’s sake, madame, as you are a woman, give me your assistance!”

But Lionel had sprung to her side:—

“Back, Diana! Away out of this room. Our grandmother is dead.”

“The—the sickness?” she faltered, with white lips.

“The plague? Not here—” he answered her. “But there!” He flung his pointing finger toward Jeanne de Mantes, who turned her face with a crazy laugh toward them.

Diana recoiled a pace, threw out her hands as if seeking support, and Rockhurst, ever close to her, caught her in his arms as she swooned. A sudden, blind, all-encompassing fury fell upon Ratcliffe.

“Stay, my Lord Constable!” he cried fiercely, and made a spring to wrest the unconscious burden from the hated man’s embrace. “Ah, Rakehell Rockhurst, not so fast!”

The table was between them. He was wrenching at his sword as he dashed round it, pushing Jeanne de Mantes aside; when, with her soft, bare arms, she clutched his throat from behind.

It was perhaps his horror of the embrace that robbed him of the power of resistance; perhaps it was the strength lent by the delirium that rendered her burning clasp irresistible. He struggled, yet was powerless. His starting eyes beheld the Lord Constable pass out of the room to the garden, bearing Diana into the night. He gathered his energy for a last shout in the hope of raising the household to his help; but the hot arms were writhing closer about him, the scented curls beat softly against his cheek. The creature was laughing, pressing upward her disfigured face, devouring him with her mad, unseeing eyes, striving to reach his lips for the kiss of death.—And she was raving:—

“At last, O Rockhurst!… _O mon beau Démon!_”

He never knew how he loosed himself—that moment was blank, stamped with too deep a horror to be ever recalled.

He found himself as in a nightmare rushing blindly through the blackness of the fields, feeling as if he could never escape from that lingering touch of contamination, as if no waters could ever lave him from the taint!

* * * * *

It was only when he was brought to a standstill by the edge of the river, by the Essex stairs, that he realised where his frenzy was taking him, and awoke, as it were, to sanity. But it was with a trembling in every limb and a weakness that forced him to sit on the steps. The water lapped at his very feet, shivering in a little circle of light cast by the stair lantern. He dipped his hand in the dark ripple and began mechanically to lave his brow—to lave, above all, his lips.

Thought took coherent shape again.—This was the end of his close-set plans. Madame de Mantes had failed him with a completeness it seemed that must have required Satan’s own ingenuity to devise. Lord Rockhurst had not been unmasked, Diana was with him in his power,—and he, Lionel Ratcliffe (God, with what appalling reason!), was at last afraid of the plague!

BROKEN SANCTUARY

BROKEN SANCTUARY