Roads of Destiny

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"Listen!" exclaimed the lady, rising and resting her hands upon the
table; "in a garret of this house lives a youth from the provinces
as guileless and tender as the lambs he tended there. I have met him
twice or thrice upon the stairs. I questioned him, fearing that he
might dwell too near the room in which we are accustomed to meet. He
is mine, if I will. He writes poems in his garret, and I think he
dreams of me. He will do what I say. He shall take the message to
the palace."

The marquis rose from his chair and bowed. "You did not permit me to
finish my sentence, countess," he said. "I would have said: 'Your
devotion is great, but your wit and charm are infinitely greater.'"

While the conspirators were thus engaged, David was polishing some
lines addressed to his _amorette d'escalier_. He heard a timorous
knock at his door, and opened it, with a great throb, to behold her
there, panting as one in straits, with eyes wide open and artless,
like a child's.

"Monsieur," she breathed, "I come to you in distress. I believe you
to be good and true, and I know of no other help. How I flew through
the streets among the swaggering men! Monsieur, my mother is dying.
My uncle is a captain of guards in the palace of the king. Some one
must fly to bring him. May I hope--"

"Mademoiselle," interrupted David, his eyes shining with the desire
to do her service, "your hopes shall be my wings. Tell me how I may
reach him."

The lady thrust a sealed paper into his hand.

"Go to the south gate--the south gate, mind--and say to the guards
there, 'The falcon has left his nest.' They will pass you, and you
will go to the south entrance to the palace. Repeat the words, and
give this letter to the man who will reply 'Let him strike when he
will.' This is the password, monsieur, entrusted to me by my uncle,
for now when the country is disturbed and men plot against the
king's life, no one without it can gain entrance to the palace
grounds after nightfall. If you will, monsieur, take him this letter
so that my mother may see him before she closes her eyes."

"Give it me," said David, eagerly. "But shall I let you return home
through the streets alone so late? I--"

"No, no--fly. Each moment is like a precious jewel. Some time," said
the lady, with eyes long and cozening, like a gypsy's, "I will try
to thank you for your goodness."

The poet thrust the letter into his breast, and bounded down the
stairway. The lady, when he was gone, returned to the room below.

The eloquent eyebrows of the marquis interrogated her.

"He is gone," she said, "as fleet and stupid as one of his own
sheep, to deliver it."

The table shook again from the batter of Captain Desrolles's fist.

"Sacred name!" he cried; "I have left my pistols behind! I can trust
no others."

"Take this," said the marquis, drawing from beneath his cloak a
shining, great weapon, ornamented with carven silver. "There are
none truer. But guard it closely, for it bears my arms and crest,
and already I am suspected. Me, I must put many leagues between
myself and Paris this night. To-morrow must find me in my _chateau_.
After you, dear countess."

The marquis puffed out the candle. The lady, well cloaked, and the
two gentlemen softly descended the stairway and flowed into the
crowd that roamed along the narrow pavements of the Rue Conti.

David sped. At the south gate of the king's residence a halberd was
laid to his breast, but he turned its point with the words; "The
falcon has left his nest."

"Pass, brother," said the guard, "and go quickly."

On the south steps of the palace they moved to seize him, but again
the _mot de passe_ charmed the watchers. One among them stepped
forward and began: "Let him strike--" but a flurry among the guards
told of a surprise. A man of keen look and soldierly stride suddenly
pressed through them and seized the letter which David held in his
hand. "Come with me," he said, and led him inside the great hall.
Then he tore open the letter and read it. He beckoned to a man
uniformed as an officer of musketeers, who was passing. "Captain
Tetreau, you will have the guards at the south entrance and the
south gate arrested and confined. Place men known to be loyal in
their places." To David he said: "Come with me."

He conducted him through a corridor and an anteroom into a spacious
chamber, where a melancholy man, sombrely dressed, sat brooding in a
great, leather-covered chair. To that man he said:

"Sire, I have told you that the palace is as full of traitors and
spies as a sewer is of rats. You have thought, sire, that it was my
fancy. This man penetrated to your very door by their connivance. He
bore a letter which I have intercepted. I have brought him here that
your majesty may no longer think my zeal excessive."

"I will question him," said the king, stirring in his chair. He
looked at David with heavy eyes dulled by an opaque film. The poet
bent his knee.

"From where do you come?" asked the king.

"From the village of Vernoy, in the province of Eure-et-Loir, sire."

"What do you follow in Paris?"

"I--I would be a poet, sire."

"What did you in Vernoy?"

"I minded my father's flock of sheep."

The king stirred again, and the film lifted from his eyes.

"Ah! in the fields!"

"Yes, sire."

"You lived in the fields; you went out in the cool of the morning
and lay among the hedges in the grass. The flock distributed itself
upon the hillside; you drank of the living stream; you ate your
sweet, brown bread in the shade, and you listened, doubtless, to
blackbirds piping in the grove. Is not that so, shepherd?"

"It is, sire," answered David, with a sigh; "and to the bees at the
flowers, and, maybe, to the grape gatherers singing on the hill."

"Yes, yes," said the king, impatiently; "maybe to them; but surely
to the blackbirds. They whistled often, in the grove, did they not?"

"Nowhere, sire, so sweetly as in Eure-et-Loir. I have endeavored to
express their song in some verses that I have written."

"Can you repeat those verses?" asked the king, eagerly. "A long time
ago I listened to the blackbirds. It would be something better than
a kingdom if one could rightly construe their song. And at night you
drove the sheep to the fold and then sat, in peace and tranquillity,
to your pleasant bread. Can you repeat those verses, shepherd?"

"They run this way, sire," said David, with respectful ardour:


"'Lazy shepherd, see your lambkins
Skip, ecstatic, on the mead;
See the firs dance in the breezes,
Hear Pan blowing at his reed.

"Hear us calling from the tree-tops,
See us swoop upon your flock;
Yield us wool to make our nests warm
In the branches of the--'"


"If it please your majesty," interrupted a harsh voice, "I will ask
a question or two of this rhymester. There is little time to spare.
I crave pardon, sire, if my anxiety for your safety offends."

"The loyalty," said the king, "of the Duke d'Aumale is too well
proven to give offence." He sank into his chair, and the film came
again over his eyes.

"First," said the duke, "I will read you the letter he brought:


"'To-night is the anniversary of the dauphin's death. If he
goes, as is his custom, to midnight mass to pray for the soul
of his son, the falcon will strike, at the corner of the Rue
Esplanade. If this be his intention, set a red light in the
upper room at the southwest corner of the palace, that the
falcon may take heed.'


"Peasant," said the duke, sternly, "you have heard these words. Who
gave you this message to bring?"

"My lord duke," said David, sincerely, "I will tell you. A lady gave
it me. She said her mother was ill, and that this writing would
fetch her uncle to her bedside. I do not know the meaning of the
letter, but I will swear that she is beautiful and good."

"Describe the woman," commanded the duke, "and how you came to be
her dupe."

"Describe her!" said David with a tender smile. "You would command
words to perform miracles. Well, she is made of sunshine and deep
shade. She is slender, like the alders, and moves with their grace.
Her eyes change while you gaze into them; now round, and then half
shut as the sun peeps between two clouds. When she comes, heaven
is all about her; when she leaves, there is chaos and a scent of
hawthorn blossoms. She came to see me in the Rue Conti, number
twenty-nine."

"It is the house," said the duke, turning to the king, "that we have
been watching. Thanks to the poet's tongue, we have a picture of the
infamous Countess Quebedaux."

"Sire and my lord duke," said David, earnestly, "I hope my poor
words have done no injustice. I have looked into that lady's eyes.
I will stake my life that she is an angel, letter or no letter."

The duke looked at him steadily. "I will put you to the proof," he
said, slowly. "Dressed as the king, you shall, yourself, attend mass
in his carriage at midnight. Do you accept the test?"

David smiled. "I have looked into her eyes," he said. "I had my
proof there. Take yours how you will."

Half an hour before twelve the Duke d'Aumale, with his own hands,
set a red lamp in a southwest window of the palace. At ten minutes
to the hour, David, leaning on his arm, dressed as the king, from
top to toe, with his head bowed in his cloak, walked slowly from
the royal apartments to the waiting carriage. The duke assisted him
inside and closed the door. The carriage whirled away along its
route to the cathedral.

On the _qui vive_ in a house at the corner of the Rue Esplanade was
Captain Tetreau with twenty men, ready to pounce upon the
conspirators when they should appear.

But it seemed that, for some reason, the plotters had slightly
altered their plans. When the royal carriage had reached the Rue
Christopher, one square nearer than the Rue Esplanade, forth from
it burst Captain Desrolles, with his band of would-be regicides,
and assailed the equipage. The guards upon the carriage, though
surprised at the premature attack, descended and fought valiantly.
The noise of conflict attracted the force of Captain Tetreau,
and they came pelting down the street to the rescue. But, in the
meantime, the desperate Desrolles had torn open the door of the
king's carriage, thrust his weapon against the body of the dark
figure inside, and fired.

Now, with loyal reinforcements at hand, the street rang with cries
and the rasp of steel, but the frightened horses had dashed away.
Upon the cushions lay the dead body of the poor mock king and poet,
slain by a ball from the pistol of Monseigneur, the Marquis de
Beaupertuys.



THE MAIN ROAD

_Three leagues, then, the road ran, and turned into a puzzle.
It joined with another and a larger road at right angles. David
stood, uncertain, for a while, and then sat himself to rest upon
its side._

Whither these roads led he knew not. Either way there seemed to lie
a great world full of chance and peril. And then, sitting there, his
eye fell upon a bright star, one that he and Yvonne had named for
theirs. That set him thinking of Yvonne, and he wondered if he had
not been too hasty. Why should he leave her and his home because a
few hot words had come between them? Was love so brittle a thing
that jealousy, the very proof of it, could break it? Mornings always
brought a cure for the little heartaches of evening. There was yet
time for him to return home without any one in the sweetly sleeping
village of Vernoy being the wiser. His heart was Yvonne's; there
where he had lived always he could write his poems and find his
happiness.

David rose, and shook off his unrest and the wild mood that had
tempted him. He set his face steadfastly back along the road he had
come. By the time he had retravelled the road to Vernoy, his desire
to rove was gone. He passed the sheepfold, and the sheep scurried,
with a drumming flutter, at his late footsteps, warming his heart by
the homely sound. He crept without noise into his little room and
lay there, thankful that his feet had escaped the distress of new
roads that night.

How well he knew woman's heart! The next evening Yvonne was at the
well in the road where the young congregated in order that the
_cure_ might have business. The corner of her eye was engaged in a
search for David, albeit her set mouth seemed unrelenting. He saw
the look; braved the mouth, drew from it a recantation and, later,
a kiss as they walked homeward together.

Three months afterwards they were married. David's father was shrewd
and prosperous. He gave them a wedding that was heard of three
leagues away. Both the young people were favourites in the village.
There was a procession in the streets, a dance on the green; they
had the marionettes and a tumbler out from Dreux to delight the
guests.

Then a year, and David's father died. The sheep and the cottage
descended to him. He already had the seemliest wife in the village.
Yvonne's milk pails and her brass kettles were bright--_ouf!_ they
blinded you in the sun when you passed that way. But you must keep
your eyes upon her yard, for her flower beds were so neat and gay
they restored to you your sight. And you might hear her sing, aye,
as far as the double chestnut tree above Pere Gruneau's blacksmith
forge.

But a day came when David drew out paper from a long-shut drawer,
and began to bite the end of a pencil. Spring had come again and
touched his heart. Poet he must have been, for now Yvonne was
well-nigh forgotten. This fine new loveliness of earth held him
with its witchery and grace. The perfume from her woods and meadows
stirred him strangely. Daily had he gone forth with his flock, and
brought it safe at night. But now he stretched himself under the
hedge and pieced words together on his bits of paper. The sheep
strayed, and the wolves, perceiving that difficult poems make easy
mutton, ventured from the woods and stole his lambs.

David's stock of poems grew larger and his flock smaller. Yvonne's
nose and temper waxed sharp and her talk blunt. Her pans and kettles
grew dull, but her eyes had caught their flash. She pointed out to
the poet that his neglect was reducing the flock and bringing woe
upon the household. David hired a boy to guard the sheep, locked
himself in the little room at the top of the cottage, and wrote more
poems. The boy, being a poet by nature, but not furnished with an
outlet in the way of writing, spent his time in slumber. The wolves
lost no time in discovering that poetry and sleep are practically
the same; so the flock steadily grew smaller. Yvonne's ill temper
increased at an equal rate. Sometimes she would stand in the yard
and rail at David through his high window. Then you could hear her
as far as the double chestnut tree above Pere Gruneau's blacksmith
forge.

M. Papineau, the kind, wise, meddling old notary, saw this, as
he saw everything at which his nose pointed. He went to David,
fortified himself with a great pinch of snuff, and said:

"Friend Mignot, I affixed the seal upon the marriage certificate of
your father. It would distress me to be obliged to attest a paper
signifying the bankruptcy of his son. But that is what you are
coming to. I speak as an old friend. Now, listen to what I have to
say. You have your heart set, I perceive, upon poetry. At Dreux, I
have a friend, one Monsieur Bril--Georges Bril. He lives in a little
cleared space in a houseful of books. He is a learned man; he visits
Paris each year; he himself has written books. He will tell you when
the catacombs were made, how they found out the names of the stars,
and why the plover has a long bill. The meaning and the form of
poetry is to him as intelligent as the baa of a sheep is to you. I
will give you a letter to him, and you shall take him your poems and
let him read them. Then you will know if you shall write more, or
give your attention to your wife and business."

"Write the letter," said David, "I am sorry you did not speak of
this sooner."

At sunrise the next morning he was on the road to Dreux with the
precious roll of poems under his arm. At noon he wiped the dust from
his feet at the door of Monsieur Bril. That learned man broke the
seal of M. Papineau's letter, and sucked up its contents through his
gleaming spectacles as the sun draws water. He took David inside to
his study and sat him down upon a little island beat upon by a sea
of books.

Monsieur Bril had a conscience. He flinched not even at a mass
of manuscript the thickness of a finger length and rolled to an
incorrigible curve. He broke the back of the roll against his knee
and began to read. He slighted nothing; he bored into the lump as a
worm into a nut, seeking for a kernel.

Meanwhile, David sat, marooned, trembling in the spray of so much
literature. It roared in his ears. He held no chart or compass for
voyaging in that sea. Half the world, he thought, must be writing
books.

Monsieur Bril bored to the last page of the poems. Then he took off
his spectacles, and wiped them with his handkerchief.

"My old friend, Papineau, is well?" he asked.

"In the best of health," said David.

"How many sheep have you, Monsieur Mignot?"

"Three hundred and nine, when I counted them yesterday. The flock
has had ill fortune. To that number it has decreased from eight
hundred and fifty."

"You have a wife and home, and lived in comfort. The sheep brought
you plenty. You went into the fields with them and lived in the
keen air and ate the sweet bread of contentment. You had but to be
vigilant and recline there upon nature's breast, listening to the
whistle of the blackbirds in the grove. Am I right thus far?"

"It was so," said David.

"I have read all your verses," continued Monsieur Bril, his eyes
wandering about his sea of books as if he conned the horizon for a
sail. "Look yonder, through that window, Monsieur Mignot; tell me
what you see in that tree."

"I see a crow," said David, looking.

"There is a bird," said Monsieur Bril, "that shall assist me where I
am disposed to shirk a duty. You know that bird, Monsieur Mignot; he
is the philosopher of the air. He is happy through submission to his
lot. None so merry or full-crawed as he with his whimsical eye and
rollicking step. The fields yield him what he desires. He never
grieves that his plumage is not gay, like the oriole's. And you have
heard, Monsieur Mignot, the notes that nature has given him? Is the
nightingale any happier, do you think?"

David rose to his feet. The crow cawed harshly from his tree.

"I thank you, Monsieur Bril," he said, slowly. "There was not, then,
one nightingale among all those croaks?"

"I could not have missed it," said Monsieur Bril, with a sigh. "I
read every word. Live your poetry, man; do not try to write it any
more."

"I thank you," said David, again. "And now I will be going back to
my sheep."

"If you would dine with me," said the man of books, "and overlook
the smart of it, I will give you reasons at length."

"No," said the poet, "I must be back in the fields cawing at my
sheep."

Back along the road to Vernoy he trudged with his poems under his
arm. When he reached his village he turned into the shop of one
Zeigler, a Jew out of Armenia, who sold anything that came to his
hand.

"Friend," said David, "wolves from the forest harass my sheep on the
hills. I must purchase firearms to protect them. What have you?"

"A bad day, this, for me, friend Mignot," said Zeigler, spreading
his hands, "for I perceive that I must sell you a weapon that will
not fetch a tenth of its value. Only last I week I bought from
a peddlar a wagon full of goods that he procured at a sale by a
_commissionaire_ of the crown. The sale was of the _chateau_ and
belongings of a great lord--I know not his title--who has been
banished for conspiracy against the king. There are some choice
firearms in the lot. This pistol--oh, a weapon fit for a prince!--it
shall be only forty francs to you, friend Mignot--if I lose ten by
the sale. But perhaps an arquebuse--"

"This will do," said David, throwing the money on the counter. "Is
it charged?"

"I will charge it," said Zeigler. "And, for ten francs more, add a
store of powder and ball."

David laid his pistol under his coat and walked to his cottage.
Yvonne was not there. Of late she had taken to gadding much among
the neighbours. But a fire was glowing in the kitchen stove. David
opened the door of it and thrust his poems in upon the coals. As
they blazed up they made a singing, harsh sound in the flue.

"The song of the crow!" said the poet.

He went up to his attic room and closed the door. So quiet was the
village that a score of people heard the roar of the great pistol.
They flocked thither, and up the stairs where the smoke, issuing,
drew their notice.

The men laid the body of the poet upon his bed, awkwardly arranging
it to conceal the torn plumage of the poor black crow. The women
chattered in a luxury of zealous pity. Some of them ran to tell
Yvonne.

M. Papineau, whose nose had brought him there among the first,
picked up the weapon and ran his eye over its silver mountings with
a mingled air of connoisseurship and grief.

"The arms," he explained, aside, to the _cure_, "and crest of
Monseigneur, the Marquis de Beaupertuys."




II

THE GUARDIAN OF THE ACCOLADE


Not the least important of the force of the Weymouth Bank was Uncle
Bushrod. Sixty years had Uncle Bushrod given of faithful service
to the house of Weymouth as chattel, servitor, and friend. Of the
colour of the mahogany bank furniture was Uncle Bushrod--thus dark
was he externally; white as the uninked pages of the bank ledgers
was his soul. Eminently pleasing to Uncle Bushrod would the
comparison have been; for to him the only institution in existence
worth considering was the Weymouth Bank, of which he was something
between porter and generalissimo-in-charge.

Weymouth lay, dreamy and umbrageous, among the low foothills
along the brow of a Southern valley. Three banks there were in
Weymouthville. Two were hopeless, misguided enterprises, lacking the
presence and prestige of a Weymouth to give them glory. The third
was The Bank, managed by the Weymouths--and Uncle Bushrod. In the
old Weymouth homestead--the red brick, white-porticoed mansion,
the first to your right as you crossed Elder Creek, coming into
town--lived Mr. Robert Weymouth (the president of the bank), his
widowed daughter, Mrs. Vesey--called "Miss Letty" by every one--and
her two children, Nan and Guy. There, also in a cottage on the
grounds, resided Uncle Bushrod and Aunt Malindy, his wife. Mr.
William Weymouth (the cashier of the bank) lived in a modern, fine
house on the principal avenue.

Mr. Robert was a large, stout man, sixty-two years of age, with
a smooth, plump face, long iron-gray hair and fiery blue eyes.
He was high-tempered, kind, and generous, with a youthful smile
and a formidable, stern voice that did not always mean what it
sounded like. Mr. William was a milder man, correct in deportment
and absorbed in business. The Weymouths formed The Family of
Weymouthville, and were looked up to, as was their right of
heritage.

Uncle Bushrod was the bank's trusted porter, messenger, vassal, and
guardian. He carried a key to the vault, just as Mr. Robert and Mr.
William did. Sometimes there was ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand
dollars in sacked silver stacked on the vault floor. It was safe
with Uncle Bushrod. He was a Weymouth in heart, honesty, and pride.

Of late Uncle Bushrod had not been without worry. It was on account
of Marse Robert. For nearly a year Mr. Robert had been known to
indulge in too much drink. Not enough, understand, to become tipsy,
but the habit was getting a hold upon him, and every one was
beginning to notice it. Half a dozen times a day he would leave the
bank and step around to the Merchants and Planters' Hotel to take a
drink. Mr. Robert's usual keen judgment and business capacity became
a little impaired. Mr. William, a Weymouth, but not so rich in
experience, tried to dam the inevitable backflow of the tide, but
with incomplete success. The deposits in the Weymouth Bank dropped
from six figures to five. Past-due paper began to accumulate, owing
to injudicious loans. No one cared to address Mr. Robert on the
subject of temperance. Many of his friends said that the cause of
it had been the death of his wife some two years before. Others
hesitated on account of Mr. Robert's quick temper, which was
extremely apt to resent personal interference of such a nature. Miss
Letty and the children noticed the change and grieved about it.
Uncle Bushrod also worried, but he was one of those who would not
have dared to remonstrate, although he and Marse Robert had been
raised almost as companions. But there was a heavier shock coming to
Uncle Bushrod than that caused by the bank president's toddies and
juleps.

Mr. Robert had a passion for fishing, which he usually indulged
whenever the season and business permitted. One day, when reports
had been coming in relating to the bass and perch, he announced his
intention of making a two or three days' visit to the lakes. He was
going down, he said, to Reedy Lake with Judge Archinard, an old
friend.