Chapter I: The Haven of Refuge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She drank; seemed to gain a little strength.

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

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

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

He seized the glass from her failing hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chitterley’s grey hair bristled on his head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“My lord’s own room!”

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

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

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

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