Kitabı oku: «The Duke's Motto: A Melodrama», sayfa 4

V
THE PARRY TO THE THRUST OF NEVERS

There was a heavy stillness in the room when Lagardere came to the end of his tale. "This sounds serious," Cocardasse said, gloomily, and those about him were gloomily silent.

Lagardere resumed his story: "I pondered that thrust for a month. At last I mastered it. I tried it on the Baron de Brissac with perfect success."

A general laugh at this remark relieved the tension of the bravos’ nerves. Æsop took advantage of the more cheerful atmosphere again to address Lagardere. "Matchless cavalier," he asked, with a wry assumption of politeness, "would you show me that thrust you esteem so highly?"

Lagardere looked at the speaker with a whimsical smile. "With pleasure," he said, and drew his sword. Æsop did likewise, and while the bravos drew back towards the wall to allow a free space for the lesson the two swordsmen came on guard. Lagardere explained while he fenced, naming each feint and lunge and circle of the complicated attack as he made it. With the last word of his steel-illuminated lecture his sword, that had illustrated the words of the fencer, seemed suddenly to leap forward, a glittering streak of light.

Æsop leaped back with a yell, and clapped his left hand to his forehead. "Damnation!" he cried.

Cocardasse, who had been following the proceedings with the keenest attention, hurried out of the circle of spectators. "Splendid!" he cried. "What is the parry?"

"It is as clear as day," Lagardere answered. "This is how the trick is done," and again, as he spoke, his blade explained his text, gleaming and twisting in the cunning evolutions of the riposte.

Cocardasse, who had drawn his own sword, repeated Lagardere’s words and parodied Lagardere’s gestures faithfully. "I see," he said, and turned to the others, who had lost nothing of the lesson. "Have you caught it, boys? It might serve – "

Lagardere interrupted him, indifferent to the evil appreciation on the faces of the spectators. "It will serve at once. I am going to try it on its master."

"On Nevers?" queried Staupitz, hoarsely.

Lagardere nodded. "On no less a man. I should have told you that I plagued him until he promised me my revenge. When I was exiled I wrote to remind him." Lagardere drew a letter from his breast and held it up for a moment before returning it to its lodging. "In this letter he accepts my challenge, names the time, the place – "

Cocardasse interrupted: "What time?"

"To-night at ten," Lagardere replied.

"The place?" asked Passepoil.

"The moat of Caylus," Lagardere answered. He pointed to the window at which Æsop had been sitting so long. "You can see it from that window."

There was a general look of astonishment on the faces of all the bravos. Passepoil, quick with his Norman caution, glanced at Staupitz and the group about him, and put his finger cautiously to his lips.

Cocardasse was still inquisitive. "Why there?" he questioned.

Lagardere explained, amiably: "Because such is the good duke’s pleasure. When I sent him my cartel I made it plain that I had little time on my hands, as I was anxious, on account of the king’s fire-new zeal against duelling, to cross the frontier as speedily as might be. I knew the duke was staying on his estates near by, and I suggested, with a fine show of gravity, that possibly his highness was acquainted with some quiet place in the neighborhood of the Castle of Caylus where we might settle our little difference. Oh, the words were solemnly couched, but I swear to you that I laughed heartily when I wrote them."

Lagardere laughed again in memory of that former mirth as he made an end of speaking. Cocardasse scratched an ear and glanced at Passepoil. Passepoil scratched an ear and glanced at Cocardasse. The rest of the bravos stared with a sullen curiosity at Lagardere, who paid no heed to their gaze.

"Why did you laugh?" Cocardasse asked, after a short pause.

Lagardere answered him affably: "Because I knew that my allusion to Caylus would fret my excellent enemy. There is, it seems, a beauty hidden in that gloomy castle, Gabrielle de Caylus, whom my duke adores in spite of the ancient feud between the two houses of Caylus and Nevers. It should please him to fight under the eyes of his lady love, whom I can console if I win."

The idea seemed to please Lagardere, for he again began to laugh softly to himself after he had finished speaking. But Cocardasse did not seem to think it was a laughing matter, for his voice was almost solemn as he asked: "Did you speak of the lady in your letter to Nevers?"

Lagardere interrupted his mirth to reply: "Of course. The situation is so humorous. I suggested playfully that there was a lovely princess imprisoned in the castle of a wicked old ogre named Caylus, and I hinted that if things turned out as I hoped, I might be fortunate enough to carry solace and freedom to the captive damsel." He paused for a moment and then asked in wonder: "Why do you pull such long faces?"

For, indeed, the faces of the swashbucklers were almost funereal in their solemnity. Passepoil, relying upon his Norman cunning, took it upon himself to explain a ticklish situation. "It is lucky we are here to help you," he said, knowingly.

Lagardere’s laughter became more pronounced. "To help me?" he cried, and he shook with amusement at the absurdity of the words.

Passepoil insisted: "It’s no laughing matter. Nevers is the lady’s husband."

He spoke with a portentous solemnity against which Lagardere protested, laughing louder than before. "On the contrary, it is more laughable than ever. A secret marriage. A romance. Perhaps I shall have to soothe a widow when I hoped to woo a maid."

"Better have a sword or two to back you," Cocardasse suggested, cunningly.

Lagardere frowned. "No, thank you. I do my own fighting."

Passepoil whispered, insinuatingly: "Could I help to carry off the lady?"

Lagardere’s frown deepened. "No, thank you. I do my own love-making. Clear out and leave me alone. That is all I want of you, my friends."

Cocardasse sighed. "I’d do anything in the world to oblige you, but – " He paused and looked helplessly at his former pupil, whom his faltering speech, his hesitating manner began to anger.

"But what?" said Lagardere, sharply.

Cocardasse made an apologetic gesture. "Every man to his trade. We also are waiting for some one."

Lagardere raised his eyebrows. "Indeed, and that some one?"

The bravos looked at one another uneasily, trying to seem devil-may-care and failing wofully. Nobody appeared to want to speak. At last Passepoil spoke. "That some one is Louis de Nevers," he said, and wished heartily that he did not have to say it.

Lagardere at first appeared to be puzzled by the answer. Then the full meaning of it seemed to fall upon him like a blow, and his face blazed at the insult. "Nevers! You! Ah, this is an ambuscade, and I have sat at drink with assassins!"

Cocardasse protested: "Come, captain, come."

Lagardere’s only answer was to spring back clear of the nearest swordsmen and to draw his sword again. The bravos gathered together angrily about Staupitz, buzzing like irritated bees.

Lagardere flung his comely head back, and his bright eyes flamed with a royal rage. His words came quick and clear in his anger: "It was for this you sought to learn Nevers’s thrust, and I – Oh, it would make the gods laugh to think that I taught it to you! You have the best of the joke so far, excellent assassins, but if any one of you touches a hair of Nevers’s head he will find that the joke is two-edged, like my sword. If Nevers must die, it shall be in honorable battle and by my hands, but not by yours, while Lagardere lives."

Æsop commented, sneeringly: "Lagardere is not immortal."

Staupitz grunted, angrily: "Shall one man dictate to nine?" and made an appealing gesture to his comrades, inciting them against their censor.

Lagardere faced their menaces with the contemptuous indifference with which a mastiff might have faced as many rats. He commanded, imperiously: "Pack off, the whole gang of you, and leave Nevers to me!"

The bravos still buzzed and grumbled: Cocardasse rubbed his chin thoughtfully; Passepoil pinched his long nose. The situation was becoming critical. Lagardere was Lagardere, but he was only one man, after all, in a narrow room, against great odds. Truly, the odds would be diminished if the quarrel came to actual blows, for Cocardasse was resolved, and he knew that Passepoil was resolved also, to side with Lagardere in such an emergency. But even with the situation thus altered the result could only be unnecessary bloodshed, which would be bad, for, if Lagardere was their dear Little Parisian, the others were also their comrades. Further, it would mean the postponing, probably the abandonment, of their enterprise against Nevers, which would be much worse. Cocardasse plucked the Norman to him with a strong finger and thumb, and whispered in his ear: "Get the boys away and shift the keys."

Passepoil nodded, and glided discreetly among the bravos huddled together at the table, whispering the words of Cocardasse in the ears of each.

Lagardere frowned at this mystery. "What are you whispering?" he asked, angrily.

Cocardasse explained, plausibly. "Only that if you wanted to keep Nevers to yourself – "

Passepoil interrupted, concluding: "It mattered little who did the job."

By this time the bravos, who at the beginning of the quarrel had unhooked their rapiers from the wall, were now pulling their cloaks about them and making for the main door. The Italian, the Breton, the Spaniard, the Biscayan, and the Portuguese filed out into the passage, followed by Æsop, who turned to pay Lagardere a mocking salutation and to say, tauntingly: "So good-night, gallant captain."

Staupitz, with an air of surly carelessness, sauntered down to the only other door in the room, the door that led to the domestic offices of the Inn. While he did so, Cocardasse held out his hand to Lagardere in sign of amity, but Lagardere refused it. "I am no precisian," he said. "I have kept vile company. I would not deny my hand to a hang-man. But the most tolerant philosopher has his dislikes, and mine are assassins."

Cocardasse sighed, and made for the main door, followed by Passepoil, who said, wistfully, "Adieu, Little Parisian," a greeting of which Lagardere took no notice.

Now, while Æsop had been saying his taunting farewell to Lagardere he had been standing with his back to the door, and with his left hand had dexterously abstracted the key. Also, while Cocardasse had been endeavoring to gain a clasp of the hand from Lagardere, Staupitz had quietly locked the door leading to the kitchen and put that key in his pocket. Now Staupitz, Cocardasse, and Passepoil went in their turn through the main door and drew it behind them.

Lagardere seated himself at the table with a sigh of relief as he heard the heavy feet trampling down the passage, but his relief did not last long. His quick ears caught a sound that was undoubtedly the click of a key in a lock, followed by the shuffle of cautiously retiring feet. He instantly sprang to his feet, and, rushing to the main door, caught at the handle and found the door firmly locked.

"Damn them!" he cried; "they have locked the door." Then he began to shout, furiously, calling first upon Cocardasse, and then upon Passepoil by name to open the door immediately, knowing these two to be his friends among the gang of rascals. But no answer came to his cries, and, vigorous though he was, his efforts had no effect upon the solid strength of the door. Turning, he hurried to the door which led to the kitchen and tried that, only to find that it, too, was locked against him, and that it, too, was impregnable. He looked about him hurriedly. He knew it was no use calling for the people of the Inn, who would be sure to side with their truculent customers, and he knew also that, if he did not succeed in making his escape from the trap into which he had blundered, Nevers would be murdered.

He rushed to the window and looked out. The sight was not pleasing. The rugged rock on which the Inn was perched dropped beneath him thirty feet to the moat below, and, though his eyes eagerly scanned the face of the cliff, he could see no possibility, even for one so nimble as himself, of climbing down it successfully. To jump such a height would be to end as a jelly and be of no service to Nevers. For a few wild moments he cursed his folly in having been deluded by the bravos, and then his native high spirits and his native humor came to his assistance, reminding him that he always made it his business to look upon the diverting side of life, and that it was now clearly his duty to seek for the entertaining elements of the present predicament. Undoubtedly, these were hard to find. The jest was decidedly a bitter one, and could only be turned to his taste if he succeeded in getting out. But how was he to succeed? He tried the door again, despairingly and unsuccessfully as before. He reflected that perhaps there might be a rope in the room, and anxiously he looked in every corner. No rope was to be found.

Clapping his hands to his sides in his vexation at being thus baffled, he touched the soft substance of his silken sash, and instantly an idea kindled at the touch. "Perhaps this will do," he thought, and hurriedly proceeded to unwind it. It was a long sash, for it went from his shoulder to his waist and then three times round his middle, where it was tied in a large bow with long ends. It was at least fifteen feet long, and as tough as any hemp that was ever twisted. He fastened one end of it quickly round a bar in the window, and let the long crimson streamer drop down the side of the cliff. Using this as a means of descent, it would bring him half-way down the rock. Hanging by his arms, he would cover much of the remaining distance, and the drop thence to the ground would be easy. In another moment he was outside the window, and, grasping the silk firmly in his strong fingers, began his perilous descent.

VI
THE MOAT OF CAYLUS

The descent into the moat of Caylus was rather a ticklish business, even with the aid of an improvised rope, for the face of the cliff was, for the most part, smooth, and afforded little in the way of foothold, but Lagardere was a trained athlete and a man of great physical strength, one that could use his feet with skill for purchase against the face of the rock, and he made his way dexterously to the end of his tether. Even when he had got thus far, and was swinging by his hands from the end of his taut sash, he was a considerable distance from the ground. But Lagardere let go with as light a heart as if he were a new Curtius leaping into a new gulf; and, indeed, if he had been of a mind to make the parallel, he would have counted his stake as great as the safety of Rome. Dropping like a plummet, he alighted on his hands and knees on the ground. Quickly he picked himself up, dusted the earth from his palms, and, after carefully feeling himself all over to make sure that he was none the worse, save for the jar of his tumble, he looked about him cautiously. It was late evening now, and the hot day knew no cooler dusk.

As he looked up from the strange vault in which he stood, the vault that was formed by the moat of Caylus between the rock on which the castle rose and the rock on which the Inn of the Seven Devils was perched, he saw above him the late evening sky painted with the strangest pageant. To the right of the spot where the sun had declined the purple melancholy of the heavens was broken by a blaze of gold, such as might have flashed from the armor of some celestial host marshalled and marching against the Powers of Darkness. To the left, under lowered eyelids of sable clouds, there ran a band of red fire that seemed as if it must belt the earth with its fury, a red fire that might have flamed from the mouth of the very pit. Lagardere was not over-imaginative, but the strangeness of the contrast, the fierce splendor of the warring colors, touched the player’s heart beneath the soldier’s hide. "The gold of heaven," he murmured, and saluted the sky to the right. "The rod of hell," he thought, and pointed towards the left, where distant trees stared, black, angry outlines against those waves of livid fire. Was not this contest in the clouds a kind of allegory of the quarrel in which he was now engaged, and was not his cause very surely, in its righteousness, its justice, its honor, gilded and invigorated by those noble rays to strive against and overthrow the legionaries of evil?

Even as he thought such unfamiliar thoughts, the pageant of opposing forces dimmed and dwindled. The darkness was gathering swiftly, investing the world with its legion of gloom; and in the shadow of the great Castle of Caylus, rising like a rock itself out of the solid rock behind Lagardere, the moat was soon very dark indeed. There was little light in the moonless sky; there came none from the castle, which in its dim outline of towers and battlements might have been the enchanted palace of some fairy tale, so soundless, so lightless, so unpeopled did it seem. There was a faint gleam discernible in the windows of the Inn on the other side of the gorge from which he had just succeeded in escaping.

Lagardere looked up at the Inn and laughed; Lagardere looked up at the castle and smiled. What was she like, he wondered, that beautiful Gabrielle de Caylus, whom it had been his impudent ambition to woo, and whom he now knew to be married to Nevers, his appointed antagonist? He had come all that way with the pleasant intention of killing Nevers, but he felt more friendly towards his enemy since he had learned of the plot against his life, and he wondered who was the instigator of that plot, who was the paymaster of the, as he believed, baffled assassins. For in a sense he believed them to be baffled, and this for two reasons. The first was that he heard no sound of stealthy footsteps creeping across the bridge. The second was that when he glanced up at the Inn window he saw that the dim glow in the distant window was suddenly occulted, and then as suddenly became visible again. It was plain to Lagardere that some one had entered the room and had looked out of the window for an instant. Therefore some one had already discovered his absence, probably the maid of the Inn. No doubt she would send word to the bravos, and it might very well chance that the bravos would not think the odds in their favor sufficiently good when they knew that they had to deal with Henri de Lagardere as well as with Louis de Nevers.

Lagardere whistled cheerfully the lilt of a drinking-song as he reflected thus, for he considered himself quite equal to handling the whole batch of rascallions if only he had a wall of some kind to back him. He was fondling the possibility that they had given up the whole business in disgust at his interruption of their purpose, when it suddenly stabbed his fancy that they might ambush Nevers on his way. But he dismissed that fear instantly. He hoped and believed that if they knew he was free they would give him the first chance to kill Nevers for them. In any case, all that he could do was to wait patiently where he was and see what the creeping minutes brought.

The moat of Caylus did not appear to him to be, under the existing conditions, by any means the ideal field for a duel. In the darkness it seemed to him to be more happily adapted for a game of blindman’s-buff. There was a half-filled hay-cart in the moat, and bundles of hay were scattered hither and thither on the ground and littered the place confusingly. Lagardere began to busy himself in clearing some of this hay out of the way, so as to afford an untroubled space for the coming combat. While he was thus engaged he heard for the first time a faint sound come from the direction of the castle. It was the sound of a door being turned cautiously upon its hinges. Crouching in the shadow of the rock down which he had lately descended, Lagardere looked round and saw dimly two forms emerge like shadows from the very side of the castle. The new-comers had come forth from a little postern that gave onto the moat, to which they descended by some narrow steps cut in the rock, and they now walked a little way slowly into the darkness. Lagardere, all watchfulness, could hear one of the shadows say to the other, "This way, monseigneur," and the word "monseigneur" made him wonder. Was he going to be brought face to face with the Marquis of Caylus, the old ogre whose grim tyranny had been talked of even in Paris?

The shadow addressed as monseigneur answered, "I see no one," and the voices of both the shadows were unfamiliar to the listener. But the voice of the shadow that was saluted as monseigneur sounded like the voice of a young man.

The leading shadow seemed to be peering into the darkness in front of him. "I told them to place a sentinel," he said to his companion; and as he spoke he caught sight of Lagardere, who must have looked as shadowy to him as he looked to Lagardere, and he pointed as he added: "Yes, there is some one there, monseigneur."

"Who is it?" the second shadow questioned, and again the voice sounded youthful to Lagardere’s ears.

"It looks like Saldagno," said the first shadow; and, coming a little farther forward, he called dubiously into the gloom: "Is that you, Saldagno?"

Now, as Saldagno was the name of one of the swordsmen who had met at the Inn in menace of Nevers, Lagardere came to the swift conclusion that the two shadows now haunting him had something to do with that conspiracy, and that, if it were possible, it would be as well to learn their purposes. He was, therefore, quite prepared to be Saldagno for the occasion, and it was with a well-affected Lusitanian accent that he promptly answered, "Present," and came a little nearer to the strangers.

The first shadow spoke again, craning a long neck into the darkness. "It is I, Monsieur Peyrolles. Come here."

Lagardere advanced obediently, and the second shadow, coming to the side of his companion, questioned him. "Would you like to earn fifty pistoles?"

Although both the voices were strange to Lagardere, the voice of this second shadow seemed to denote a person of better breeding than his companion, a person accustomed to command when the other was accustomed to cajole. Also, it was decidedly the voice of a young man. Whoever the speaker might be, he certainly was not the crabbed old Marquis de Caylus. Lagardere endeavored eagerly but unsuccessfully to see the face of the speaker. Night had by this time fallen completely. The moat was as black as a wolf’s mouth, and the shadow that was muffled in a cloak held a corner of it so raised that it would have concealed his visage if the gorge had been flooded with moonlight.

"Who would not?" Lagardere answered, with a swagger which seemed to him appropriate to a light-hearted assassin.

The shadow gave him commands. "When ten o’clock strikes, tap at this window with your sword." He pointed as he spoke to the wall of the castle, and in that wall Lagardere, peering through the obscurity, could faintly discern a window about a man’s height from the moat. The speaker went on: "A woman will open. Whisper very low, ’I am here.’"

Involuntarily Lagardere echoed the last words, "I am here," and added, "The motto of Nevers."

There was annoyance in the well-bred voice as it questioned, sharply: "What do you know of Nevers?"

Peyrolles respectfully answered for the sham Saldagno: "Monseigneur, they all know whom they are to meet. How they know I cannot tell, but they do know. But they are to be trusted."

The shadow shrugged his shoulders and resumed his instructions: "The woman will hand you a child, a baby a few months old. Take it at once to the Inn." He paused for a moment and then said, slowly: "I trust you are not tender-hearted."

Lagardere protested with voice and gesture. "You pain me," he declared.

Apparently satisfied, the shadow went on: "If the girl should die in your arms, no one will blame you, and your fifty pistoles will be a hundred. ’Tis but a quick nip of finger and thumb on an infant’s neck. Do you understand?"

"What I do not understand," retorted Lagardere, "is why you do not do the job yourself and save your money."

It was now Peyrolles’s turn to be annoyed. "Rascal!" he exclaimed, angrily. But the man he called monseigneur restrained him.

"Calm, Peyrolles, calm! For the very good reason, inquisitive gentleman, that the lady in question would know my voice or the voice of my friend here, and as I do not wish her to think that I have anything to do with to-night’s work – "

Lagardere interrupted, bluffly: "Say no more. I’m your man."

Even as he spoke the plaintive sound of a horn was heard far away in the distance. Peyrolles spoke: "The first signal. The shepherds have been told to watch and warn at the wood-ends and the by-path and the causeway to the bridge. Nevers has entered the forest."

The noble shadow gave a little laugh. "He is riding to his death, the fool amorist. Come."

Then the two shadows flitted away in the darkness as nebulously as they had come, and the castle swallowed them up, and Lagardere was alone again in the moat among the bundles of hay.

"May the devil fly away with you for a pair of knaves!" he said beneath his breath, apostrophizing the vanished shadows. "But I’ll save the child and Nevers in spite of you." For in those moments of horrid colloquy all his purpose had been transmuted. These unknown plotters of murder had confirmed him in his alliance to the man he had come to slay. So long as Nevers was in peril from these strange enemies, so long Lagardere would be his friend, free, of course, to rekindle his promise later. But now even Nevers’s life was not of the first importance. There was a child threatened, a child to be saved. Who were these devils, these Herods, that sought to slay a baby?

Even as he asked himself this question he could hear through the clear air the striking of a clock in the distant village. He counted the strokes from one to ten. This was the time that had been fixed by the master shadow. Lagardere made his way carefully across the moat till he stood beneath the designated window. He drew his sword and tapped with the blade thrice against the pane. Then he sheathed his sword and waited upon events.