The Man in Black

by Stanley John Weyman

  CHAPTER III.

  MAN AND WIFE.

  It is a pleasant thing to be warmly clad and to lie softly, and atnight to be in shelter and in the day to eat and drink. But all thesethings may be dearly bought, and so the boy Jehan de Bault soon found.He was no longer beaten, chained, or starved; he lay in a truckle bedinstead of a stable; the work he had to do was of the lightest. Buthe paid for all in fears--in an ever-present, abiding, mastering fearof the man behind whom he rode: who never scolded, never rated, noreven struck him, but whose lightest word--and much more, his longsilences--filled the lad with dread and awe unspeakable. Somethingsinister in the man's face, all found; but to Jehan, who never doubtedhis dark powers, and who shrank from his eye, and flinched at hisvoice, and cowered when he spoke, there was a cold malevolence in theface, an evil knowledge, that made the boy's flesh creep and chainedhis soul with dread.

  The astrologer saw this, and revelled in it, and went about toincrease it after a fashion of his own. Hearing the boy, on anoccasion when he had turned to him suddenly, ejaculate "_Oh, Dieu!_"he said, with a dreadful smile, "You should not say that! Do you knowwhy?"

  The boy's face grew a shade paler, but he did not speak.

  "Ask me why! Say, 'Why not?'"

  "Why not?" Jehan muttered. He would have given the world to avert hiseyes, but he could not.

  "Because you have sold yourself to the devil!" the other hissed."Others may say it; you may not. What is the use? You have soldyourself--body, soul, and spirit. You came of your own accord, andclimbed on the black horse. And now," he continued, in a tone whichalways compelled obedience, "answer my questions. What is your name?"

  "Jehan de Bault," the boy whispered, shivering and shuddering.

  "Louder!"

  "Jehan de Bault."

  "Repeat the story you told at the fair."

  "I am Jehan de Bault, Seigneur of--I know not where, and Lord ofseventeen lordships in the County of Perigord, of a most noble andpuissant family, possessing the High Justice, the Middle, and the Low.In my veins runs the blood of Roland, and of my forefathers were threemarshals of France. I stand here, the last of my race; in tokenwhereof may God preserve my mother, the King, France, and thisProvince."

  "Ha! In the County of Perigord!" the astrologer said, with a suddenlightening of his heavy brows. "You have remembered that?"

  "Yes. I heard the word at Fecamp."

  "And all that is true?"

  "Yes."

  "Who taught it you?"

  "I do not know." The boy's face, in its straining, was painful to see.

  "What is the first thing you can remember?"

  "A house in a wood."

  "Can you remember your father?"

  "No."

  "Your mother?"

  "No--yes--I am not sure."

  "Umph! Were you stolen by gypsies?"

  "I do not know."

  "Or sold by your father's steward?"

  "I do not know."

  "How long were you with the man from whom I took you?"

  "I do not know."

  "I do," the astrologer answered, in the same even tone in which he hadput the questions. And the boy never doubted him. "Beware, therefore,"the man in black continued, with a dreadful sidelong glance, "how youseek to deceive me! You can fall back now. I have done with you forthe present."

  I say "the boy never doubted him." This was not wonderful in an age ofspells and _diablerie_, when the wisest allowed the reality of magic,and the learned and curious could cite a hundred instances of itspower. That La Brosse warned Henry the Great he would die in hiscoach, and that Thomassin read in the stars the very day, hour, andminute of the catastrophe, no man of that time questioned. That MichelNotredame promised a crown to each of Catherine de Medici's threesons, and that Sully's preceptor foretold in detail that Minister'scareer, were held to be facts as certain as that La Riviere cast thehoroscope of the thirteenth Louis while the future monarch lay in hiscradle. The men of the day believed that the Concini swayed hermistress by magic; that Wallenstein, the greatest soldier of his time,did nothing without his familiar; that Richelieu, the greateststatesman, had Joseph always at his elbow. In such an age it was notwonderful that a child should accept without question the claims ofthis man: who was accustomed to inspire fear in the many, and in thefew that vague and subtle repulsion which we are wont to associatewith the presence of evil.

  Beyond Rouen, and between that city and Paris, the two companionsfound the road well frequented. Of the passers, many stood to gaze atthe traveller in black, and some drew to the farther side of the roadas he went by. But none laughed or found anything ridiculous in hisappearance; or if they did, it needed but a glance from his long, paleface to restore them to sobriety. At the inn at Rouen he was wellreceived; at the _Grand Cerf_ at Les Andelys, where he seemed to beknown, he was welcomed with effusion. Though the house was full, aseparate chamber was assigned to him, and supper prepared for him withthe utmost speed.

  Here, however, he was not destined to enjoy his privacy long. At thelast moment, as he was sitting down to his meal, with the boy inattendance, a bustle was heard outside. The voice of someone ratingthe landlord in no measured terms became audible, the noise growinglouder as the speaker mounted the stairs. Presently a hand was laid onthe latch, the door was thrown open, and a gentleman strode into theroom whose swaggering air and angry gestures showed that he wasdetermined to make good his footing. A lady, masked, and in atravelling habit, followed more quietly; and in the background couldbe seen three or four servants, together with the unfortunatelandlord, who was very evidently divided between fear of hismysterious guest and the claims of the newcomers.

  The astrologer rose slowly from his seat. His peculiar aspect, hisstature and leanness and black garb, which never failed to impressstrangers, took the intruder somewhat aback. He hesitated, andremoving his hat, began to utter a tardy apology. "I crave yourpardon, sir," he said ungraciously, "but we ride on after supper. Westay here only to eat, and they tell us there is no other chamber witheven a degree of emptiness in it."

  "You are welcome, M. de Vidoche," the man in black answered.

  The intruder started and frowned. "You know my name," he said, with asneer. "But there, I suppose it is your business to know thesethings."

  "It is my business to know," the astrologer answered, unmoved. "Willnot madame be seated?"

  "THE ASTROLOGER ROSE SLOWLY FROM HIS SEAT" (_p_. 52).]

  The lady bowed, and taking off her mask with fingers which trembled alittle, disclosed a fair, childish face, that would, have been pretty,and even charming, but for an expression of nervousness which seemedhabitual to it. She shrank from the astrologer's gaze, and, sittingdown as far from him as the table permitted, pretended to busy herselfin taking off her gloves. He was accustomed to be met in this way, andto see the timid quake before him; but it did not escape his noticethat this lady shrank also at the sound of her husband's voice, andwhen he spoke, listened with the pitiful air of propitiation which maybe seen in a whipped dog. She was pale, and by the side of her husbandseemed to lack colour. He was a man of singularly handsome exterior,dark-haired and hard-eyed, with a high, fresh complexion, and asneering lip. His dress was in the extreme of the fashion, his fallingcollar vandyked, and his breeches open below the knee, where they weremet by wide-mouthed boots. A great plume of feathers set off his hat,and he carried a switch as well as a sword.

  The astrologer read the story at a glance. "Madame is perhaps fatiguedby the journey," he said politely.

  "Madame is very easily fatigued," the husband replied, throwing downhis hat with a savage sneer, "especially when she is doing anythingshe does not like."

  "You are for Paris," Notredame answered, with apparent surprise. "Ithought all ladies liked Paris. Now, if madame were leaving Paris andgoing to the country----"

  "The country!" M. de Vidoche exclaimed, with an impatient oath. "Shewould bury herself there if she could!" And he add
ed something underhis breath, the point of which it was not very difficult to guess.

  Madame de Vidoche forced a smile, striving, woman-like, to cover all."It is natural I should like Pinatel," she said timidly, her eye onher husband. "I have lived there so much."

  "Yes, madame, you are never tired of reminding me of that!" M. deVidoche retorted harshly. Women who are afraid of their husbands saythe right thing once in a hundred times. "You will tell this gentlemanin a moment that I was a beggar when I married you! But if I was----"

  "Oh, Charles!" she murmured faintly.

  "That is right! Cry now!" he exclaimed brutally. "Thank God, however,here is supper. And after supper we go on to Vernon. The roads arerutty, and you will have something else to do besides cry then."

  The man in black, going on with his meal at the other end of thetable, listened with an impassive face. Like all his profession, heseemed inclined to hear rather than to talk. But when supper came upwith only one plate for the two--a mistake due to the crowded state ofthe inn--and M. de Vidoche fell to scolding very loudly, he seemedunable to refrain from saying a word in the innkeeper's defence. "Itis not so very unusual for the husband to share his wife's plate," hesaid coolly; "and sometimes a good deal more that is hers."

  M. de Vidoche looked at him for a moment, as if he were minded to askhim what business it was of his; but he thought better of it, andinstead said, with a scowl, "It is not so very unusual either forastrologers to make mistakes."

  "Quacks," the man in black said calmly.

  "I quite agree," M. de Vidoche replied, with mock politeness. "Iaccept the correction."

  "Yet there is one thing to be said even then," the astrologercontinued, slowly leaning forward, and, as if by chance, movingone of the candles so as to bring it directly between madame andhimself. "I have noticed it, M. de Vidoche. They make mistakessometimes in predicting marriages, and even births. But never inpredicting--deaths."

  M. de Vidoche, who may have had some key in his own breast whichunlocked the full meaning of the other's words, started and lookedacross at him. Whatever he read in the pale, sombre countenance whichthe removal of the candle fully revealed to him, and in which theeyes, burning vividly, seemed alone alive, he shuddered. He made noreply. His look dropped. Even a little of his high colour left hischecks. He went on with his meal in silence. The four tall candlesstill burned dully on the table. But to M. de Vidoche they seemed on asudden to be the candles that burn by the side of a corpse. In a flashhe saw a room hung with black, a bed, and a silent covered form onit--a form with wan, fair hair--a woman's. And then he saw otherthings.

  Clearly, the astrologer was no ordinary man.

  He seemed to take no notice, however, of the effect his words hadproduced. Indeed, he no longer urged his attentions on M. de Vidoche.He turned politely to madame, and made some commonplace observation onthe roads. She answered it--inattentively.

  "You are looking at my boy," he continued; for Jehan was waitinginside the door, watching with a frightened, fascinated gaze hismaster's every act and movement. "I do not wonder that he attracts theladies' eyes."

  "He is a handsome child," she answered, smiling faintly.

  "Yes, he is good-looking," the man in black rejoined. "There is onething which men of science sell that he will never need."

  "What is that?" she asked curiously, looking at the astrologer for thefirst time with attention.

  "A love-philtre," he answered courteously. "His looks, like madame's,will always supply its place."

  She coloured, smiling a little sadly. "Are there such things?" shesaid. "Is it true?--I mean, I always thought that they were a child'stale."

  "No more than poisons and antidotes, madame," he answered earnestly,"the preservative power of salt, or the destructive power ofgunpowder. You take the Queen's herb, you sneeze; the drug ofParacelsus, you sleep; wine, you see double. Why is the powder ofattraction more wonderful than these? Or if you remain unconvinced,"he continued more lightly, "look round you, madame. You see young menloving old women, the high-born allying themselves with the vulgar,the ugly enchanting the beautiful. You see a hundred inexplicablematches. Believe me, it is we who make them. I speak without motive,"he added, bowing, "for Madame de Vidoche can never have need of otherphiltre than her eyes."

  Madame, toying idly with a plate, her regards on the table, sighed."And yet they say matches are made in heaven," she murmured softly.

  "It is from heaven--from the stars--we derive our knowledge," heanswered, in the same tone.

  But his face!--it was well she did not see that! And before morepassed, M. de Vidoche broke into the conversation. "What rubbish isthis?" he said, speaking roughly to his wife. "Have you finished? Thenlet us pay this rascally landlord and be off. If you do not want tospend the night on the road, that is. Where are those fools ofservants?"

  He rose, and went to the door and shouted for them, and came backand took up his cloak and hat with much movement and bustle.But it was noticeable in all he did that he never once met theastrologer's eye or looked his way. Even when he bade him a surly"Good-night"--casually uttered in the midst of injunctions to his wifeto be quick--he spoke over his shoulder; and he left the room in thesame fashion, completely absorbed, it seemed, in the fastening of hiscloak.

  Some, treated in this cavalier fashion, might have been hurt, and somemight have resented it. But the man in black did neither. Left alone,he remained by the table in an expectant attitude, a sneering smile,which the light of the candles threw into high relief, on his grimvisage. Suddenly the door opened, and M. de Vidoche, cloaked andcovered, came in. Without raising his eyes, he looked round theroom--for something he had mislaid, it seemed.

  "Oh, by the way," he said suddenly, and without looking up.

  "_My address?_" the man in black interjected, with a devilishreadiness. "The end of the Rue Touchet in the Quartier du Marais, nearthe river. Where, believe me," he continued, with a mocking bow, "Ishall give you madame's horoscope with the greatest pleasure, or anyother little matter you may require."

  "I think you are the devil!" M. de Vidoche muttered wrathfully, hischeek growing pale.

  "Possibly," the astrologer answered. "In that or any other case--_aurevoir!_"

  When the landlord came up a little later to apologise to M. SolomonNotredame de Paris for the inconvenience to which he had unwillinglyput him, he found his guest in high good-humour. "It is nothing, myfriend--it is nothing," M. Notredame said kindly. "I found my companygood enough. This M. de Vidoche is of this country; and a rich man, Iunderstand."

  "Through his wife," the host said cautiously. "Ah! so rich that shecould build our old castle here from the ground again."

  "Madame de Vidoche was of Pinatel."

  "To be sure. Monsieur knows everything. By Jumieges to the north. Ihave been there once. But she has a house in Paris besides, andestates, I hear, in the south--in Perigord."

  "Ha!" the astrologer muttered. "Perigord again. That is odd, now."