The House of the Wolf: A Romance by Stanley John Weyman (best books to read for young adults TXT) 📖

Yet the Vidame seemed to be put out by the interruption. Muttering a string of oaths he strode from us to the window and back again. The cool cynicism, with which he was wont to veil his anger and impose on other men, while it heightened the effect of his ruthless deeds, in part fell from him. He showed himself as he was—masterful, and violent, hating, with all the strength of a turbulent nature which had never known a check. I quailed before him myself. I confess it.

"Listen!" he continued harshly, coming back and taking his place in front of us at last, his manner more violent than before the interruption. "I might have left you to die in that hell yonder! And I did not leave you. I had but to hold my hand and you would have been torn to pieces! The wolf, however, does not hunt with the rats, and a Bezers wants no help in his vengeance from king or CANAILLE! When I hunt my enemy down I will hunt him alone, do you hear? And as there is a heaven above me"—he paused a moment—"if I ever meet you face to face again, M. de Pavannes, I will kill you where you stand!"

He paused, and the murmur of the crowd without came to my ears; but mingled with and heightened by some confusion in my thoughts. I struggled feebly with this, seeing a rush of colour to Croisette's face, a lightening in his eyes as if a veil had been raised from before them. Some confusion—for I thought I grasped the Vidame's meaning; yet there he was still glowering on his victim with the same grim visage, still speaking in the same rough tone. "Listen, M. de Pavannes," he continued, rising to his full height and waving his hand with a certain majesty towards the window—no one had spoken. "The doors are open! Your mistress is at Caylus. The road is clear, go to her; go to her, and tell her that I have saved your life, and that I give it to you not out of love, but out of hate! If you had flinched I would have killed you, for so you would have suffered most, M. de Pavannes. As it is, take your life—a gift! and suffer as I should if I were saved and spared by my enemy!"

Slowly the full sense of his words came home to me. Slowly; not in its full completeness indeed until I heard Louis in broken phrases, phrases half proud and half humble, thanking him for his generosity. Even then I almost lost the true and wondrous meaning of the thing when I heard his answer. For he cut Pavannes short with bitter caustic gibes, spurned his proffered gratitude with insults, and replied to his acknowledgments with threats.

"Go! go!" he continued to cry violently. "Have I brought you so far safely that you will cheat me of my vengeance at the last, and provoke me to kill you? Away! and take these blind puppies with you! Reckon me as much your enemy now as ever! And if I meet you, be sure you will meet a foe! Begone, M. de Pavannes, begone!"

"But, M. de Bezers," Louis persisted, "hear me. It takes two to—"

"Begone! begone! before we do one another a mischief!" cried the Vidame furiously. "Every word you say in that strain is an injury to me. It robs me of my vengeance. Go! in God's name!"

And we went; for there was no change, no promise of softening in his malignant aspect as he spoke; nor any as he stood and watched us draw off slowly from him. We went one by one, each lingering after the other, striving, out of a natural desire to thank him, to break through that stern reserve. But grim and unrelenting, a picture of scorn to the last, he saw us go.

My latest memory of that strange man—still fresh after a lapse of two and fifty years—is of a huge form towering in the gloom below the state canopy, the sunlight which poured in through the windows and flooded us, falling short of him; of a pair of fierce cross eyes, that seemed to glow as they covered us; of a lip that curled as in the enjoyment of some cruel jest. And so I—and I think each of us four saw the last of Raoul de Mar, Vidame de Bezers, in this life.

He was a man whom we cannot judge by to-day's standard; for he was such an one in his vices and his virtues as the present day does not know; one who in his time did immense evil—and if his friends be believed, little good. But the evil is forgotten; the good lives. And if all that good save one act were buried with him, this one act alone, the act of a French gentleman, would be told of him—ay! and will be told—as long as the kingdom of France, and the gracious memory of the late king, shall endure.

I see again by the simple process of shutting my eyes, the little party of five—for Jean, our servant, had rejoined us—who on that summer day rode over the hills to Caylus, threading the mazes of the holm-oaks, and galloping down the rides, and hallooing the hare from her form, but never pursuing her; arousing the nestling farmhouses from their sleepy stillness by joyous shout and laugh, and sniffing, as we climbed the hill-side again, the scent of the ferns that died crushed under our horses' hoofs—died only that they might add one little pleasure more to the happiness God had given us. Rare and sweet indeed are those few days in life, when it seems that all creation lives only that we may have pleasure in it, and thank God for it. It is well that we should make the most of them, as we surely did of that day.

It was nightfall when we reached the edge of the uplands, and looked down on Caylus. The last rays of the sun lingered with us, but the valley below was dark; so dark that even the rock about which our homes clustered would have been invisible save for the half-dozen lights that were beginning to twinkle into being on its summit. A silence fell upon us as we slowly wended our way down the well-known path.

All day long we had ridden in great joy; if thoughtless, yet innocent; if selfish, yet thankful; and always blithely, with a great exultation and relief at heart, a great rejoicing for our own sakes and for Kit's.

Now with the nightfall and the darkness, now when we were near our home, and on the eve of giving joy to another, we grew silent. There arose other thoughts—thoughts of all that had happened since we had last ascended that track; and so our minds turned naturally back to him to whom we owed our happiness—to the giant left behind in his pride and power and his loneliness. The others could think of him with full hearts, yet without shame. But I reddened, reflecting how it would have been with us if I had had my way; if I had resorted in my shortsightedness to one last violent, cowardly deed, and killed him, as I had twice wished to do.

Pavannes would then have been lost almost certainly. Only the Vidame with his powerful troop—we never knew whether he had gathered them for that purpose or merely with an eye to his government—could have saved him. And few men however powerful—perhaps Bezers only of all men in Paris would have dared to snatch him from the mob when once it had sighted him. I dwell on this now that my grandchildren may take warning by it, though never will they see such days as I have seen.

And so we clattered up the steep street of Caylus with a pleasant melancholy upon us, and passed, not without a more serious thought, the gloomy, frowning portals, all barred and shuttered, of the House of the Wolf, and under the very window, sombre and vacant, from which Bezers had incited the rabble in their attack on Pavannes' courier. We had gone by day, and we came back by night. But we had gone trembling, and we came back in joy.

We did not need to ring the great bell. Jean's cry, "Ho! Gate there! Open for my lords!" had scarcely passed his lips before we were admitted. And ere we could mount the ramp, one person outran those who came forth to see what the matter was; one outran Madame Claude, outran old Gil, outran the hurrying servants, and the welcome of the house. I saw a slender figure all in white break away from the little crowd and dart towards us, disclosing as it reached me a face that seemed still whiter than its robes, and yet a face that seemed all eyes—eyes that asked the question the lips could not frame.

I stood aside with a low bow, my hat in my hand; and said simply—it was the great effect of my life—"VOILA Monsieur!"

And then I saw the sun rise in a woman's face.

The Vidame de Bezers died as he had lived. He was still Governor of Cahors when Henry the Great attacked it on the night of the 17th of June, 1580. Taken by surprise and wounded in the first confusion of the assault, he still defended himself and his charge with desperate courage, fighting from street to street, and house to house for five nights and as many days. While he lived Henry's destiny and the fate of France trembled in the balance. But he fell at length, his brain pierced by the ball of an arquebuse, and died an hour before sunset on the 22nd of June. The garrison immediately surrendered.

Marie and I were present in this action on the side of the King of Navarre, and at the request of that prince hastened to pay such honours to the body of the Vidame as were due to his renown and might serve to evince our gratitude. A year later his remains were removed from Cahors, and laid where they now rest in his own Abbey Church of Bezers, under a monument which very briefly tells of his stormy life and his valour. No matter. He has small need of a monument whose name lives in the history of his country, and whose epitaph is written in the lives of men.

NOTE.—THE CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF VIDAME DE BEZERS, AS THEY APPEAR IN THE ABOVE MEMOIR FIND A PARALLEL IN AN ACCOUNT GIVEN BY DE THOU OF ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE INCIDENTS IN THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW: "AMID SUCH EXAMPLES," HE WRITES, "OF THE FEROCITY OF THE CITY, A THING HAPPENED WORTHY TO BE RELATED, AND WHICH MAY PERHAPS IN SOME DEGREE WEIGH AGAINST THESE ATROCITIES. THERE WAS A DEADLY HATRED, WHICH UP TO THIS TIME THE INTERVENTION OF THEIR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS HAD FAILED TO APPEASE, BETWEEN TWO MEN—VEZINS, THE LIEUTENANT OF HONORATUS OF SAVOY, MARSHAL VILLARS, A MAN NOTABLE AMONG THE NOBILITY OF THE PROVINCE FOR HIS VALOUR, BUT OBNOXIOUS TO MANY OWING TO HIS BRUTAL DISPOSITION (ferina natura), AND REGNIER, A YOUNG MAN OF LIKE RANK AND VIGOUR, BUT OF MILDER CHARACTER. WHEN REGNIER THEN, IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT GREAT UPROAR, DEATH MEETING HIS EYE EVERYWHERE, WAS MAKING UP HIS MIND TO THE WORST, HIS DOOR WAS SUDDENLY BURST OPEN, AND VEZINS, WITH TWO OTHER MEN, STOOD BEFORE HIM SWORD IN HAND. UPON THIS REGNIER, ASSURED OF DEATH, KNELT DOWN AND ASKED MERCY OF HEAVEN: BUT VEZINS IN A HARSH VOICE BID HIM RISE FROM HIS PRAYERS AND MOUNT A PALFREY ALREADY STANDING READY IN THE STREET FOR HIM. SO HE LED REGNIER—UNCERTAIN FOR THE TIME WHITHER HE WAS BEING TAKEN—OUT OF THE CITY, AND PUT HIM ON HIS HONOUR TO GO WITH HIM WITHOUT TRYING TO ESCAPE. AND TOGETHER, WITHOUT PAUSING IN THEIR JOURNEY, THE TWO TRAVELLED ALL THE WAY TO GUIENNE. DURING THIS TIME VEZINS HONOURED REGNIER WITH VERY LITTLE CONVERSATION; BUT SO FAR CARED FOR HIM THAT FOOD WAS PREPARED FOR HIM AT THE INNS BY HIS SERVANTS: AND SO THEY CAME TO QUERCY AND THE CASTLE OF REGNIER. THERE VEZINS TURNED TO HIM AND SAID, "YOU KNOW