Vayenne Part 24

Christine, stood by the window as the dwarf let himself hang by the creeper.

"A still tongue, mademoiselle, will make this place safer than it otherwise might be."

"I know, Jean."

"Good-night, mademoiselle."

"Good-night, Jean."

The dwarf paused in his descent, and Christine leaned from the window.

"Jean," she whispered, "you may say to Roger Herrick that I trust him."

"Obedience and trust," murmured the dwarf as he dropped into the garden, and the ghost of a laugh floated up to Christine as she closed the window.

CHAPTER XIV

THE DUKE'S FOOL

The towers and spires of the city were silhouetted against the early grey of the dawn when Jean stood knocking at the postern beside the great gates of the castle.

The dwarf had hurried through the dark and deserted streets from the Place Beauvoisin to the Rue St. Romain, and had watched Herrick closely as he gave him the message, the promise of obedience and trust. By neither look nor word did Herrick betray whether the promise were more or less than he had hoped for; he seemed entirely absorbed in the events which must shortly come to pa.s.s. First with Herrick alone, and then with Father Bertrand, who joined them, Jean sat through the night discussing revolution and the fighting spirit that was in the people of Vayenne. At dawn he was at the castle to learn what was to happen to Gaspard Lemasle.

"You!" exclaimed the soldier as Jean stepped in.

"I've come to see the Count. It's no good to laugh and refuse me admittance. He wants to see me; has sent all over the city for me, I hear."

"That's true enough, and last night when they found you, you slipped away."

"And that's true, too, comrade," answered the dwarf.

"The Count heard of it, and you'll find him in no good mood this morning, I warrant."

"He'll listen to reason, and there was no reason in last night's affair," Jean returned. "Come, comrade, think of it yourself. Here was I, peaceably walking along a street, counting the moments that brought me nearer to my love, when----"

"Love!" laughed the soldier.

"Did I not speak plainly, or is it that your head is full of sleep yet and you are somewhat deaf?"

"Do you mean a girl?"

"Faith, friend, this is full early to be full of liquor," answered the dwarf. "What should a man love but a girl?"

The soldier nearly choked with laughter, and this brought two other men out of the guard-house to see what it was that so amused him.

"A girl! He says there's a girl who loves--who loves him," spluttered the soldier.

The dwarf looked from one to the other, an expression of blank dismay on his face.

"He laughs because a man courts a girl," Jean said to the other men.

"Where is the humor in it? What goes he after when he goes courting? A talking parrot in a cage or a cat mow-wowing on a wall?"

"How long have you called yourself a man?" asked one of the soldiers, laughing.

"About as many years as you have. I warrant there were not many months between the time that you and I began to run alone," answered the dwarf; and then as though a reason for their mirth had only just occurred to him, Jean looked down at his deformed limbs. "Ah, now I see! That's the humor of it!" And he began to laugh uproariously too.

"You'd forgotten what you were like, eh, Jean?" they said in chorus.

The question only made the dwarf laugh the more, and his companions were astonished into seriousness.

"To think--to think that you are such fools!" Jean cried. "Do you suppose all girls love such men as you? Why, set you in a row, marching in step round the court-yard, and there aren't a dozen women in Vayenne who could pick out their own man. You're all alike, comrades, there are girls, mark you, who favor men more distinguished, men there is no mistake about, and care not a jot for just a sample of the ordinary kind, which look as though they had been turned out of the same mould by the dozen. My girl's of that sort."

"Pretty, Jean?" asked one.

"What's the color of her eye?" asked another; "for surely she can only have one, and that defective, if she looks with favor upon you."

"Last night I climbed to her balcony," said Jean solemnly. "My lady looked down from her window, as an angel might from an open door in heaven, and all the world seemed flooded with silver light. There was music in the air, music that thrilled my soul, her voice and her laughter. There was a sense of holiness about me as when incense rises from before an altar, and the prayers of saints meet sinners' prayers and, mingling, float upward to the throne of G.o.d. Her eyes were twin stars, afire with truth, to guide me in the way that leads to the hereafter; her hair an aureole like to the crown that I may win; and her breath, the essence of all the perfumes that cling about the fair fields of Paradise."

The men were silent, and laughed no more, for the dwarf looked almost inspired as he spoke.

"'Twas in St. Etienne. Surely he saw a vision last night," whispered one man to his companions.

"Wouldn't you have rushed from half a dozen miserable soldiers when such a love was awaiting your coming?" asked the dwarf, turning sharply to them. "It was not that I minded visiting the Count. He is hardly out of bed yet, eh, comrades, and I scent the perfume of coffee through the doorway there. Will you welcome me? The chill of the morning is in my bones."

"Come you in. I'll risk it," said the soldier who had opened the postern. "I ought to lock you up lest you escape again. Look you, Jean, the Count's in the mood to hang me if you run away."

"You shall not hang, comrade; my hand on it."

"They lost you last night, but they captured a bigger prize," said one man.

"That may easily be," the dwarf returned. "There are men of more inches than I am in plenty. Who was it they captured?"

"Captain Lemasle."

"Ah! a truculent man, but a brave soldier," said Jean. "What's his crime, and what will they do with him?"

"I know not the crime, but he's like to end there," was the answer as the man pointed to the top of the gate.

"That will be waste of good material," said Jean. "I must speak to the Count about it. Meanwhile the smell of that coffee haunts me." And he moved toward the door.

The man who told Count Felix that the dwarf had come to the castle, told him also that Jean was strange and talked of visions he had seen.

"Bring him to me here, at once. I will see him alone."

It was in a superst.i.tious frame of mind that Felix had had the dwarf searched for. Deep in his schemes, with enemies constantly about him, and living in hourly uncertainty of what might happen, he was in the mood to augur good or ill from dreams and visions.