Isham Frederic Stewart
The Lady of the Mount

CHAPTER XXV
THE UNDER WORLD

A coterie of brilliant folk soon followed in the wake of my lord, the Marquis' retinue; holy-day banners were succeeded by holiday ribbons; the miserere of the multitude by pæans of merriment. Hymen, Io Hymen! In assuming the leading rôle to which circumstances now assigned her, the Governor's daughter brought to the task less energy than she had displayed on that other occasion when visitors had sojourned at the rock. Her manner was changed – first, lukewarm; then, almost indifferent; until, at length, one day she fairly waived the responsibility of planning amusements; laid before them the question: What, now, would they like to do?

"Devise a play," said one.

"With shepherds and shepherdesses!"

The Marquis, however, qualified the suggestion. "A masque! that is very good; but, for this morning – I have been talking with the commandant – and have another proposal – "

"Which is?"

"To visit the dungeons."

"The dungeons?" My lady's face changed.

"And incidentally inspect their latest guest! Some of you heard of him when we were here before —Le Seigneur Noir– the Black Seigneur!"

"Le Seigneur Noir!" They clapped their hands. "Yes, let us see him! Nothing could be better. What do you say, Elise?"

She started to speak, but for the instant her lips could frame no answer; with a faint, strained smile, confronted them, when some one anticipated her reply —

"Did she not leave it to us? It is we who decide."

And a merry party, they swept along, bearing her with them; up the broad stairway, cold, gray in the morn; beneath the abbot's bridge – black, spying span! – to the church, and thence to the isolated space before the guard-house to the dungeons. Here, at the sound of their voices, a man, carrying a bunch of keys – but outwardly the antithesis to the hunchback – peered from the entrance.

"Unless I am mistaken, the new jailer!" With a wave of his hand, the Marquis indicated this person. "The commandant was telling me his Excellency had engaged one – from Bicêtre, or Fort l'Evêque, I believe?"

"Bicêtre, my Lord!" said the man gravely. "And before that, the Bastille."

"Ah!" laughed the nobleman. "That pretty place some of the foolish people are grumbling about! As if we could do without prisons any more than without palaces! But we have come, my good fellow, to inspect this lower world of yours!"

The man's glance passed over the paper the Marquis handed him; then silently he moved aside, and unlocked the iron doors.

"Are you not coming?" At the threshold the Marquis looked back. When first they had approached the guard-house, involuntarily had the Governor's daughter drawn aside to the ramparts; now, with face half-averted, stood gazing off.

"Coming?" Surprised, the Marquis noted her expression; the fixed brightness of her eyes and her parted lips. "Oh, yes!" And turning abruptly, she hastened past him.

Would they have to be locked in? – the half-apprehensive query of one of the ladies caused the jailer at first to hesitate and then to answer in the negative. He would leave the doors from the outer room open, and himself await there the visitors' return. With which reassuring promise, he distributed lights; called a guardsman, familiar with the intricate underground passages, and consigned them to his care.

One of the gay procession, the Lady Elise stepped slowly forward; the guide proved a talkative fellow, and seemed anxious to answer their many inquiries concerning the place. The salle de la question? Yes, it existed; but the ancient torture devices for the "interrogatory ordinary" and the "interrogatory extraordinary" were no longer pressed into service; the King had ordered them relegated to the shelves of the museum. The cabanons, or black holes? Louis XI built them; the carceres duri and vade in pace, however, dated from Saint Mauritius, fourth abbot of the Mount.

"And the Black Seigneur? How have you accommodated him?"

"In the petit exil; just to the left! We are going there now."

"I – am going back!" A hand touched the arm of the Marquis, last of the file of visitors, and, lifting his candle, he held it so that the yellow glimmer played on the face of the Governor's daughter. Her eyes looked deeper; full of dread, as if the very spirit of the subterranean abode had seized her. He started.

"Surely you, Elise, are not afraid?"

"I prefer the sunlight," she said hurriedly in a low tone. "It – it is not cheerful down here! No; do not call to the guide – or let the others know. I'll return alone, and – wait for you at the guard-house."

He, nevertheless, insisted upon accompanying her; but, indicating the not distant door through which they had come, she professed to make light of objections, and when he still clung to the point, replied with a flash of spirit, sudden and passionate. It compelled his acquiescence; left him surprised for a second time that day; a little hurt, too, perhaps, for heretofore had their intimacy been maintained on a strictly ethical and charming plane. But he had no time for analysis; the others were drawing away to the left, into a side passage; and, with a last backward glance toward the retreating figure, the Marquis reluctantly followed the majority.

Despite, however, her avowed repugnance for that under-world, my lady showed now no haste to quit it; for scarcely had the others vanished than she stopped; began slowly to retrace her way in the direction they had taken. When the narrow route to the petit exil connected with the main aisle, a sudden draft of air extinguished her light; yet still she went on, led by the voices, and a glimmer afar, until reaching a room, low, massive, as if hewn from the solid rock, again she paused. Drawing behind a heavy square pillar, she gazed at the lords and ladies assembled in the forbidding place; listened to a voice that ran on, as if discoursing about some anomalous thing. Again was she cognizant of their questions; a jest from my lord, the Marquis; she saw that several stole forward; peered, and started back, half afraid.

But, at length, they asked about the oubliettes, and, chatting gaily, left. Their garments almost touched the Governor's daughter; lights played about the gigantic pillars, and like will-o'-the-wisps whisked away. Now, staring straight ahead toward the chamber they had vacated, my lady's attention became fixed by a single dot of yellow – a candle placed in a niche by the jailer's assistant. It seemed to fascinate; to draw her forward; across the portals – into the room itself!

How long she stood there in the faint suggestion of light, she did not realize; nor when she approached the iron-barred aperture, and what she first said! Something eager, solicitous, with odd silences between her words, until the impression of a motionless form, and two steady, cynical eyes fastened on her, brought her to an abrupt pause. It was some time before she continued, more coherently, an explanation about her apprehension on account of her father, which had entirely left her when she had peered through the window of the guard-house.

"You thought me, then, but a common assassin?" a satirical voice interposed.

"My father hates you, and you – "

"My Lady has, perhaps, a standard of her own for judging!"

Unmindful of ironical incredulity, she related how she had been forced to take refuge in the wheel-house; how, when Sanchez had seen her, alarmed she had fled blindly down the passage; waited, then hearing them all coming, at a loss what else to do, had opened the wheel-house door; run into the store-room! What she had seen from there, disconnectedly, also she referred to; his rescue of the others; his remaining behind to bear the brunt – as brave an act as she knew of! Her tone became tremulous.

"Who betrayed me?" His voice, bold and scoffing, interrupted.

She answered. It was like speaking to some one in a tomb. "The soldier you bound gave the alarm."

From behind the bars came a mocking laugh.

"You don't believe me?" She caught her breath.

"Believe? Of course."

"You don't!" she said, and clung tighter to the iron grating. "And I can't make you!"

"Why should your Ladyship want to? What does it matter?"

"But it does matter!" wildly. "When your servant accused me that day in the cloister I did not answer nor deny; but now – "

"Your Ladyship would deny?"

"That I betrayed you at Casque? Here? Yes, yes!"

"Or at the wheel-house when you called to warn the soldiers?"

"You were about to – to throw yourself over!" she faltered.

"And your Ladyship was apprehensive lest the Black Seigneur should escape?"

"Escape?" she cried. "It was death!"

"And the alternative? My Lady preferred to see the outlaw taken – die like a felon on the gallows!"

"No; no! It was not that."

"What then?" His eyes gleamed bright; her own turned; shrank from them. A moment she strove to answer; could not. Within the black recess a faint light from the flickering candle played up and down. So complete the stillness, so dead the very air, the throbbings of her pulses filled the girl with a suffocating sense of her own vitality.

"I spoke to my father to try to get your cell changed," she at last found herself irrelevantly saying; "but could do nothing."

"I thank your Ladyship! But your Ladyship's friends will be far away. Your Ladyship may miss something amusing!"

"I did not bring them – did not want them to come!"

"No?"

Her figure straightened.

"Perhaps, even, they are not aware you are here?"

"They are not, unless – "

"Elise!" From afar a loud call interrupted; reverberating down the main passage, was caught up here and there. "Elise! Elise!" The whole under-world echoed to the name.

"I promised to meet them at the guard-house," she explained hurriedly. And hardly knowing what she did, put out her hand, through the bars, toward him. In the darkness a hand seized hers; she felt herself drawn; held against the bars. They bruised her shoulder; hurt her face. The chill of the iron sent a shudder through her; though the pain she did not feel; she was cognizant only of a closer view of a figure; the chains from him to the wall; the bare, damp floor – then, of a voice low, tense, that now was speaking:

"Your Ladyship, indeed, found means to punish a presumptuous fellow, who dared displease her. But ma foi! she should have confined her punishment to the offender. Those stripes inflicted on him, my old servant! Think you I knew not it was my Lady's answer to the outlaw, who had the temerity to speak words that offended – "

"You dream that! You imagine that!"

The warmth of his hand seemed to burn hers; her fingers, so closely imprisoned, to throb with the fierce beating of his pulses.

"I do not want you to think – I can't let you think," she began.

"Elise!" The searchers were drawing nearer.

She would have stepped back, but the fingers tightened on her hand.

"They will be here in a moment – "

Still he did not relinquish his hold; the dark face was next hers; the piercing, relentless eyes studied the agitated brown ones. The latter cleared; met his fully an instant. "Believe!" that imploring wild glance seemed to say. Did his waver for a moment; the harshness and mockery soften on his face?

"Elise!" From but a short distance came the voice of the Marquis.

A moment the Black Seigneur's hand gripped my lady's harder with a strength he was unaware of. A slight cry fell from her lips, and at once, almost roughly, he threw her hand from him.

"Bah!" again he laughed mockingly. "Go to your lover."

Released thus abruptly she wavered, straightened, but continued to stand before the dungeon as if incapable of further motion.

"Elise! Are you there?"

"There!" Caverns and caves called out.

"There!" gibed voices amid a labyrinth of pillars, and mechanically she caught up the candle; fled.

"Here she is!" Coming toward her quickly out of the darkness, the Marquis uttered a glad exclamation. "We have been looking for you everywhere. Did I not say you should not have attempted to return alone? Mon dieu! you must have been lost!"

CHAPTER XXVI
A NEW ARRIVAL

Thrice had the old nurse, Marie, assisting her mistress that night for the banquet, sighed; a number of times striven to hold my lady's eye and attention, but in vain. Only when the adorning process was nearly completed and the nurse knelt with a white slipper, did she, by a distinctly detaining pressure, succeed in arresting, momentarily, the other's bright strained glance.

"Is anything the matter?" My lady's absent tone did not invite confidences.

"My Lady – " the woman hesitated; yet seemed anxious to speak. "I – my Lady," she began again; with sign of encouragement from the Governor's daughter, would have gone on; but the latter, after waiting a moment, abruptly withdrew the silken-shod foot.

"The banquet! It is past the hour!"

An instant she stood, not seeing the other or the expression of disappointment on the woman's countenance; then quickly walked to the door. Nor, as the Governor's daughter moved down the long corridor, with crimson lips set hard, was she cognizant of another face that looked out from one of the many passages of the palace after her – the face of a younger woman whose dark, spying eyes glowed and whose hands closed at sight of the vanishing figure!

The sound of gay voices, however, as she neared the banqueting hall, perforce recalled my lady to a sense of her surroundings; at the same time a figure in full court dress stepped from the widely opened doors. An adequate degree of expectancy on his handsome countenance, my lord, the Marquis, who had been waiting, lover-fashion, for the first glimpse of his mistress that evening, now gallantly tendered his greetings.

Seldom, perhaps, had the ancient banqueting hall presented a more festive appearance. Fruits and flowers made bright the tables; banners medieval, trophies of many victories, trailed from the ceiling; a hundred lights were reflected from ornaments of crystal and dishes of gold. On every hand an almost barbaric profusion impressed the guests with the opulence of the Mount; that few could sit in more state than this pale lord of the North, or few queens preside over a scene of greater splendor than their fair hostess, his daughter!

With feverish semblance of spirit, she took her place; beneath the keen eyes of his Excellency responded to sallies of wit, and only when between courses the music played, did her manner relax. Then, leaning on her elbow, with cheeks aflame and downcast eyes, she professed to listen to dainty strains – the sighing of the old troubadours, as imitated by a group of performers in costume on a balcony at one end of the hall.

"Charming!" The voice was the Marquis'; she looked at him, though her eyes conveyed but a shadowy impression. "You have quite recovered from your trip to the dungeons?"

"Quite!" With a sudden lift of the head.

"The dungeons?" His Excellency's gaze was on them. "I understand," looking at Elise, "you had a slight adventure?"

The glow on her cheek faded. "Yes." She seemed to speak with difficulty. "It – was too stupid!"

"To get lost? Say, rather, it was venturesome to have attempted to return alone."

"Just what I said to the Lady Elise!" broke in the Marquis. "And to have left us at a most interesting moment!"

"Interesting?" The Governor's steel-gray eyes regarded the speaker inquiringly.

"We were about to visit the Black Seigneur!"

"Ah!" A look flashed from his Excellency to his daughter; her glance failed to meet it.

Yet paler, she turned over-hurriedly to the Marquis. "What is that air they are playing now?" His response she heard not, was only conscious that, across the board, the eyes of her father still scrutinized; studied!

At length, however, the evening wore away; a signal from his Excellency, and of one accord they rose and crossed to the star-illumined cloister adjoining. There at the entrance, my lady, who toward the last had listened with an air of distraction, hardly concealed, to her noble suitor's graceful speeches, held back, and, as the others went in, quickly effected her escape and hastened to her own apartments.

"At last!" She threw back her arms; breathed deeper. "Ah, mon père, you are hard – unyielding as the iron doors and bars of your dungeons!" She pressed her hand to her forehead. "And I can do nothing – nothing!" she repeated; stood for a moment motionless and then mechanically moved toward the bell-rope at the other end of the chamber. But the hand she started to raise was arrested; through the slightly opened door to the adjoining apartment, she heard voices; words that caused her involuntarily to listen.

"I have made up my mind to tell her ladyship, Nanette!" The old nurse was speaking, in tones that betrayed excitement and anxiety. "It is, to say the least, embarrassing for me – your coming here! You, the daughter of Pierre Laroche, who emigrated to the English Isles! Who has always shown disloyalty for the monarchy at home!"

My lady, surprised, drew nearer; caught the answer, which came in tones, deep and strong.

"At least, aunt, you are frank!"

"I must be! Under ordinary circumstances, I should be glad; of course, the child of my dead sister ought to be welcome."

"So I thought," dryly, "when I stopped off a few days ago to see you, on my way to Paris."

"If you had let me know, it is I who would have gone somewhere, near by, to have seen you!" was the troubled reply. "His Excellency – what would he say if he knew? Pierre Laroche, who has been called friend of privateersmen, perhaps even of the Black Seigneur, himself! I should have gone to his Excellency at once and asked if he objected, only you begged me not, and – "

"Were you so anxious to be rid of me?" quickly.

"I shouldn't speak as I do now, perhaps, only – "

"Only?"

"Your conduct, since you have been here – "

"What do you mean?" The other's tone had a sudden defiant ring.

"It is not seemly for a girl of your age and condition to be out alone so late, nights!"

"I just went down into the town to get something," was the careless response, "and the sands looked so attractive – "

"That's no excuse! And now," the old nurse's voice showed a trace of embarrassment, "we've had our visit, and you had better carry out your plan of going to Paris."

"You want me to leave here – at once?" The girl drew her breath sharply.

"Perhaps it would be as well."

"You treat me as if – I were a spy!" angrily.

"I don't wish to do that," returned the woman in a constrained tone. "But now, after so many years of service with her ladyship! And her mother, the former lady of the Mount! If I should incur the Governor's displeasure – " the words died away. "If I can be of any help to you, if you need assistance – money – "

"Money!" Nanette's derisive laugh rang out; was suddenly hushed by the tinkling of a bell!

"Her ladyship!"

For a few moments the Governor's daughter, now standing in the center of her apartment, heard no sound from the other room; then a timid footstep approaching the door was followed by an indecisive rap.

"Your Ladyship rang?" inquired Marie, turning a half-guilty glance on her mistress.

"Yes! Did I hear voices, as I came in?"

"Did your Ladyship? I mean, I was going to speak to your Ladyship. It's my niece!" suddenly. "On her way to Paris!"

"Your niece!" The Governor's daughter looked at the other. "And you – are pleased?"

"Your Ladyship – " The woman flushed.

"Of course, though, you must be! She is out there? Show her in!" quickly.

"But – "

"At once!"

"Very well, my Lady!" Marie's manner, however, was depressed, as, stepping to the threshold, reluctantly she beckoned.

Erect, with mien almost antagonistic, Nanette entered and stood before the Lady Elise. The latter did not at once speak; for a few moments the observant brown eyes passed in quick scrutiny over her visitor; noting the aggressive brows; the broad, strong face; the self-assertive pose of the well-developed figure. A woman to do – to dare! – What?

"You wished to see me?" Nanette first spoke.

Marie lifted an expostulatory hand. What bad manners, thus to dare! But my lady did not seem to notice. "You are from one of the islands?" she began.

"Yes."

"Say 'my Lady'!" broke in the old nurse. "I trust your Ladyship will pardon – "

"Never mind, Marie!" with a quick gesture. "Your aunt tells me you are on your way to Paris?"

"Yes – my Lady!" with the slightest hesitation before the last two words. "To seek a situation as lady's maid!"

"When are you leaving?"

"To-morrow morning, your Ladyship!" interposed Marie quickly.

"So soon?" My lady continued to address the girl. "You have had experience?"

"No, my Lady!"

"Then how can you secure what you wish?"

"How? At least, I can try!"

"To be sure! You can try." My lady's eyes fell; she seemed to be thinking. "Still, it may be difficult; Paris is far away. And if you should fail," her fingers tapped nervously on the chair, "we are very busy at the Mount just now," she added suddenly, directing her glance full upon the other, "and there may be something here – "

"Here! Your Ladyship will keep me here!"

Marie made a movement as if to speak, but her niece intercepted her.

"I will do my best, my Lady!"

"Very well! Then shall you have a trial!"

"Your Ladyship!" interposed Marie.

The Governor's daughter got up quickly. "I am very tired, Marie, and wish now to be alone! You need not remain – I shall not want you again to-night."

The old nurse murmured a dejected response; turned away.

"I thank your Ladyship!" The girl's last look was one of indubitable satisfaction ere she followed her aunt from the room.

My lady stared after them. "'Daughter of Pierre Laroche! Friend of the Black Seigneur!'" Marie's words continued to ring in her ears. She threw herself into a chair; sat long very still, her eyes bent straight before her, on either cheek now a bright spot of color.