Chapter III: Nemesis

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

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

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

“Oh, my lord!”

Unheeding, he went on:—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And to what shelter? Poor Diana!”

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

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

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

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

“Father—father!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

The young voice was uplifted again without.

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

And a lusty shout succeeded:—

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

Rockhurst caught Diana in his arms.

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again he raised a desperate cry for help:—

“Robin, there without…!”

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

“This way, good doctor!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“She?”

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

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

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

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

“In my room—?”

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

“Sick of the plague, said you?”

“Aye, your lordship.”

The father gave a terrible cry:—

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

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

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

THE RED DESOLATION

THE RED DESOLATION