DANGER CLOSE AT HAND
By now it was half after one o'clock, and I, leaning out of my salon window in the Lion d'Or, knew that it was time for me to be away; to reach Damaris—"my Damaris" I called her now, since I had resolved that mine she had got to be—and see what sort of a supper she proposed to offer me. For my part, I thought the dishes were as like as not to consist of some unwholesome cold steel, or a leaden bullet out of a Spanish trabuco or musquetoon—that is to say, offered but not accepted, if I was to have any word in the matter.
Dallying idly over the window-sill, I thought, I say, of all this, while at the same time there rose ever before me the beauteous features and the laughing eyes of the Princess. And I wondered if she would laugh if she heard the clash of arms outside her side-door in the Rue des Fleurs. Likewise, I wondered if she would laugh, too, when she learnt, after this pleasing little entertainment of the small hours was over, of how masterful an individual I could be—it was her own term, you will please to remember; her very own!—and how I was the sort of man who would know how to turn this "playing" at being her lover into being her lover in true and actual fact. Poor Damaris! Poor, stately, yet roguish Damaris, what a come-down it would seem to her!—to give up her great position to become my wife.
But would it? Would it? Well! I did not quite know. She was a Spaniard, and the Spaniards had the reputation of being very firm in their affections when once they were set in a certain direction. And I thought, only thought—though, perhaps, I hoped too—that those affections were set more or less in my direction. And now, to-night, I was going to see.
I had brought back to Paris from England with me a servant: a rough, queer creature, with an enormous appetite and a desire for sleep which I had never seen equalled; yet one who had served my dear father for many years, and had followed him about over Europe in those pilgrimages which I once told you he had been in the habit of making, in the footsteps of our King, James III. At Rome this man had been, also in Spain, and in these places he had picked up a smattering of tongues other than his own, as well as having the French very well; while, as he had earlier ridden trooper in the regiment of Blues, and, still earlier, had been a sailor for a time, he was a brave and valiant fellow. A rough kind of spaniel thing he was, which would cling close to its master's heels, yet yap and snap and sniff at every one a-nigh that master until sure that such person boded no ill to him. Now, I went to wake him—for, as always, he slept when he had no work to do—from his slumbers in a cupboard on the landing.
"Get up, Giles" (for Giles Bates was his name, and a good honest English one, too, though it had no spot of Norman in it), I cried, stamping on the floor at the same time to wake him. "Get up at once."
"Is the house afire?" he asked, yawning and rubbing his eyes all the time. "I would not be surprised if 'twere so in this silly land. Or is the breakfast ready? I am mortal hungry. Oh!" he exclaimed, seeing me, his master, "it is you, my lord. What is to do now, my lord?"
"I am going to supper at a lady's house, or, at least, I am going to a lady's house. Don't roll your eyes up like that, you fool! the lady will be my wife ere long, I hope. Meanwhile, I have enemies, rivals, and may be attacked, and I want your company."
In a minute he was up off his pallet and had seized his sword and was buckling it on to him, his gooseberry-looking eyes gleaming with delight; for Giles Bates loved a fight as well as any of our island breed, and was ever ready for one.
For myself, I needed no buckling on of my blade. I had, since I returned from the Hôtel d'Aragon, changed my clothes, putting off my fashionable suit of black, and assuming a plainer one in which I travelled. My Flamberg was also already on my thigh, wherefore I felt equal to meeting any of the Prince of Csaba's Spanish asesinos whom he might see fit to send out to attack me in the neighbourhood of my sweetheart's house. That they would be Spanish I felt sure, for more reasons than one; the first of many such reasons being that the Prince was surrounded by a train of Spaniards; and the second, that he would have had no time to procure Frenchmen, even if Frenchmen would have served him, which, since the French are not midnight cut-throats, whatever their other failings may be, I did not think very likely.
"I want your company."
A little later and we drew near to where the Paris mansion of the Carbajals stood in the Marais, it being by this time hard on two o'clock of the morning, and all the streets around very still beneath the light of the moon as she sailed above. The revellers and wassailers seemed to have gone to their beds, and we scarce passed any one as we approached nearer and nearer to the spot we were making for, and all was very calm except for the barking of a dog once and again. Yet, notwithstanding the peacefulness of the night and the desolation of the streets, I observed my mastiff keeping his eyes ever open warily, and glinting first one and then the other into dark corners and up alleys and ruelles.
"A sweet fine night," he muttered to himself, "for a fight. Oh! 'twould make a shark sob" (he had been a sailor, amongst other things, as I have said) "to think we should not come to loggerheads with some one on such a night as this."
"Be still," I said; "we draw near to the house, to——"
"My lady's bower!" he murmured, regarding me with his fish-like eyes, so that I knew not whether he meant to be impertinent—which I did not think he did—or was quoting from some of the sheets of love-ballads I had more than once caught him poring over. "Oh, love! love! love!"
"Peace, fool!" I said, "and hold your silly tongue. We are there."
And so we were; we being now outside a small oak door let into the side of the Carbajal mansion, which stood up grey and solemn in the moonlight.
"Now," I continued, "to get in."
"Ay, my lord," said Giles; "and to get out again afterwards. Do I enter with you?"
"You shall know later. Meanwhile, stand back in the shadow. And take my cloak; 'twill but encumber me if there should be any sword-play inside."
"And serve as guard for my arm if twisted round it," said Giles, as he took the cloak, "if there should be any outside. 'Tis four years since I fleshed a Spaniard. 'Twas by the Puerta del Sol, and he was attacking a Northumbrian Jacobite gentleman, who, alas! was lurching about like the Royal Sovereign in a gale——"
"Silence," I said. "See, the wicket opens;" as in truth it did, and through the bars I saw a moment or so later a pair of soft roguish eyes glistening in the moonlight—eyes that I knew well and loved to see, they making then, as always they have made, a summer in my heart by their glances.
"Are you alone, Adrian?" a gentle voice, equally dear to me as the eyes, whispered.
"Alone," I whispered back, "except for a fool mastiff creature, who is, however, faithful, and can fight as well as be trusted."
"Ay, he can," I heard my follower mutter to himself, "and will not be contented if he fight not to-night."
"Come in," Damaris said, opening now the door (in which the wicket was) about half a foot, so that I might squeeze in, "and leave your watchdog there. He may be attacked——"
"So much the better," growled Giles, he hearing all.
"You understand?" I said to him; "you understand? You may be attacked."
"Ay, my lord, I understand. I am not afeard. Yet I wish I had the wherewithal for supper. I am parlous hungry——"
"Bah! Keep watch well." Whereon I entered by the half-open door, and joined Damaris.
It was quite dark in the passage when I got there—except for the rays of the moon, which glinted and glistened from windows on high—there being no lights in the house so far as I could see. Then, while I was noting this, my girl whispered to me, "There are two in the garden now. I have seen them! have been close to them! Do you know what they are here for, in their long cloaks and vizard-masks?"
"I can guess well enough. Who are they?"
"Menials, I take it. Menials come to—to—O Adrian!"
"I understand. Damaris, you have got to pay me for this service."
"I thought," she whispered, "that English gentlemen, English noblemen, did not ask payment from ladies for services rendered."
"One payment it is always permissible to ask. I mean to have it too."
"It is impossible," she said—"impossible."
"I intend to make it possible. You told me I was very masterful, and I shall be—if I live through this night."
Whereon she only whispered again, "O Adrian!" and then said, "Come and see these men; and—and—loosen your sword in its sheath."
"Never fear," said I. "That's ready."
After which I followed her along the dark corridor or passage, and through a hall, large and lofty—they had built good houses in the old days in that portion of Paris known as the Marais—from out of which there opened the reception saloons, as well as a great salle or banqueting-room. Now, into that hall there shone, from two great windows high up on either side of it, the full moon, so that I could perceive the form of my young princess almost as clearly as I might have done in daylight, and to my intense astonishment I observed that she was very little like a princess now, if such personages are to be judged by the garb they wear. For, now, she was arrayed in the dark Nîmes serge of a waiting-maid; upon her head was the provincial cap worn by so many of those women, hers being the head-dress of Brittany, which, as all the travelled world knows, hides every hair upon a woman's head and quite destroys any good looks that a serving-girl may happen to possess. And I noticed, too, that her hands were no longer adorned with flashing gems; nor were they either the little white snowflakes I had always gazed upon with such rapture—since now they were of a discoloured yellow-brown hue, and the nails discoloured also.
"More play-acting," I said to her, "more play-acting. 'Tis like the night in Toulouse when you played a part."
"Ay, 'tis," she answered; "and, I protest, as necessary now as then that I should play it well. And," she went on, "I am going to play one, and you shall see me do it. Now," she continued, "I must leave you, as I am about to go into the garden."
"Then I go too," I said. "Why! suppose one is Csaba—the Prince."
"Well! he would not hurt me. He pretends to love me—does love me."
"He might carry you off."
"Might he! What! with my faithful Adrian looking at him out of the darkness of this room, and ready to spring forth like a great fierce English lion—that great lion that is so dominating and contemptuous over all the other beasts and fowls of Europe. Might he? Not he. Nor will he while I have this," and, in the moonbeams, I saw her draw a little stiletto from out the pocket of her serving-woman's gown. "Now," she said, "you stay here till I come back. Be a good boy, Blue Eyes, and do what I tell you."
"You do love me, don't you, Damaris? That's understood."
"It is understood that you do as I tell you. Now I go."
Whereon she went through the door from the hall and into the great salle, and then down the huge steps leading from the verandah on to the broad walk, on which there stood large tubs, having in them oleanders and orange and lemon trees. And be sure that, creeping after her, I followed as far as I might without exposing myself to the view of any who might be in the garden; and then, from behind the heavy window-hangings, I gazed out, while listening with all my ears.
Now, no sooner had my girl gotten down some yards upon the broad walk—she having, as she went, thrown a common kind of hood, such as Spanish peasant women wear in the streets over her head—than she commenced, gently, but still audibly, to say, "Hst! hst! Isidore. I am here. Isidore, where are you? Have you kept tryst? Isidore, I say!" and then gave a little kind of muffled shriek as a figure, enshrouded in a cloak and wearing a mask (and followed by another attired in a similar manner), stepped out from behind a lemon-tree tub and seized her by the arm.
CHAPTER IV