CHAPTER XXI
THE STAIRWAY OF SILVER
The stillness of the moment that followed was tense; then thickly theyoung man answered something irrelevant about a clown, a bottle and aloaf; with cap drawn down and half-averted face, he lurched a littleforward in the darkness, and the sentinel's weapon fell. "Oh, that'syou, is it, Henri?" he said in a different tone, stepping back. "Howdid you leave the fellow?"
"Eating the bread and calling for more!" As he spoke, the otherstopped, swaying uncertainly; above the arch, the wick, ill-trimmed,brightened and darkened to the drafts of air through break and slit ofthe old lamp; and briefly he awaited a favorable moment, when the flameblew out until almost extinguished; then with hand near sword-hilt,somewhat over-briskly, but in keeping with the part, he stepped towardthe arch; through it, and quickly past the sentinel.
"You seem to have been feasting and drinking a little yourself,to-night, comrade?" called out the latter after him. "I noticed itwhen you went in, and-- But aren't you taking the wrong way?" As theother, after starting toward the barracks, straightened, and thenabruptly wheeled into the road, running up the Mount.
"Bah!" A moment the young man paused. "Can't a soldier," articulatingwith difficulty, "go to see his sweetheart without--"
"_Eh bien_!" The sentinel shrugged his shoulders. "It isn't mybusiness. I think, though, I know where they'll put you to-morrow,when they find out through the guard at the barracks."
To this ominous threat the other deigned no response, only, after thefashion of a man headstrong in insobriety, as well as in affairs ofgallantry, continued his upward way; at first, speedily; afterward,when beyond hearing of the man below, with more stealth and as littlenoise as possible, until the road, taking a sudden angle, brought himabruptly to an open space at the foot of a great flight of stone stairs.
Broad, wide, broken by occasional platforms, these steps, reachingupward in gradual ascent, had designedly, in days gone by, been madeeasy for broken-down monarchs or corpulent abbots. Also they had beenplanned to satisfy the discerning eye, jealous of every addition oralteration at the Mount. My lord, the ancient potentate, leisurelyascending in ecclesiastical gown, while conscious of an earthly powerreaching even into England, could still fancy he was going up a Jacob'sladder into realms supernal. Saint Louis, with gaze benignly benttoward the aerial _escalier de dentelle_ of the chapel to the left,might well exclaim no royal road could compare with this inspiring andholy way; nor is it difficult to understand a sudden enchantment here,or beyond, that drew to the rock on three pilgrimages that other Louis,more sinner than saint, the eleventh of his name to mount the throne ofFrance.
But those stones, worn in the past by the footsteps of the illustriousand the lowly, were deserted now, and, for the moment, only the moon,which had escaped from the cloud, exercised there the right of way;looking squarely down to efface time's marks and pave with silver fromtop to bottom the flight of stairs. It played, too, on facades, towersand battlements on either side, and, at the spectacle--the diskdirectly before him--the Black Seigneur, about to leave the dark andsheltering byway, involuntarily paused. Angels might walk unseen upand down in that effulgence, as, indeed, the old monks stoutly averredwas their habit; but a mortal intrusion on the argent way could befraught only with visibility.
To reach the point he had in mind, however, no choice remained; thesteps had to be mounted, and, lowering his head and looking down,deliberately he started. As he proceeded his solitary figure seemed tobecome more distinct; his presence more obtrusive and his echoingfootsteps to resound louder. No indication he had been seen or heard,however, reached him; to all appearances espionage of his movements waswanting, and only the saint with the sword at the top of thesteeple--guardian spirit of the rock--looked down, as if holding high agleaming warning of that unwonted intrusion.
Yet, though he knew it not, mortal eye had long been on him, peeringfrom a window of the abbot's bridge spanning the way and joiningcertain long unused chambers, next to the Governor's palace, with mylady's abode. Against the somber background of that covered passage ofgranite, the face looking out would still have remained unseen, evenhad the young man, drawing near, lifted his glance. This, however, hedid not do; his eyes, with the pale reflections dancing in them, hadsuddenly fastened themselves lower; toward another person, not farbeyond the bridge; some one who had turned in from a passage on theother side of the overhead architectural link, and had just begun tocome down. An old man, with flowing beard, from afar the new-comerlooked not unlike one of the ancient Druids that, in days gone by, hadlighted and watched the sacred fires of sacrifice on the rock. He,too, guarded his light; but one set in the tall, pewter lamp of themedieval watchman.
"Twelve o'clock and all's--" he began when his glance, sweeping down,caught sight of the ascending figure, and, pausing, he leaned on hisstaff with one hand and shaded his eyes with the other.
A half-savage exclamation of disappointment was suppressed on the youngman's lips; had he only been able to attain that parallelogram ofdarkness, beneath the abbot's passage, he would have been bettersatisfied, his own eyes, looking ahead, seemed to say; then gleamedwith a bolder light.
"A sword and blade A drab and a jade; All's one to the King's men of the army!"
he began to hum softly, as with a more reckless swing, quickly he wentup in the manner of a man assigned some easy errand. At the same timethe patriarch slowly and rather laboriously resumed his descent, andjust below the bridge, without the bar of shadow, the two came together.
"Think you it is too late for his Excellency, the Governor, to receivea message?" at once spoke up the younger, breaking off in that dashing,but low-murmured, song of the barracks.
"That you may learn from the guard at the palace," was the deliberateanswer, as, raising his lamp, the watchman held it full in hisquestioner's face.
"Thanks! I was going to inquire." As he answered, at the old abbot'swindow in the bridge above, the face, looking out, bent forward moreintently; then quickly drew back. "Good night!"
But the venerable guardian of the inner precinct was not disposed thuslightly to part company. "I don't seem to know you, young man," heobserved, the watery, but keen and critical eyes passing deliberatelyover the other's features.
"No?" Unflinching in the bright glare of the lamp, the seeming soldiersmiled. "Do you, then, know _all_ at the Mount--even the soldiers?"
"I should remember even them," was the quiet reply.
"Those, too, but lately brought from St. Dalard?"
"True, true! There may be some of those--" uncertainly.
"No doubt! So if you will lower your lamp, which smells rathervilely--"
"From the miscreants it has smelled out," answered the old man grimly,but obeyed; stood as if engrossed in the recollections his own responseevoked; then turned; walked on, and, a few moments later, his call,suddenly remembered, rang, belated, in the drowsy air: "Twelve o'clockand all's well! A new day, and St. Aubert guard us all!"
"A sword and a blade; A drab and a jade--"
The words, scarcely begun, above his breath, died away on the seemingsoldier's lips, as the watcher on the bridge, looking down to followfirst the departing figure of the old custodian, crossed quickly to theopposite window, and, from this point of vantage, gazed up after theyoung man rapidly vanishing in the track of the moonlight. A momentthe onlooker stood motionless; then, ere the figure, so vividly definedin shine and shimmer, had reached the top of the stairway, made anabrupt movement and swiftly left the window and the passage.
At the head of the steps, which without further incident orinterruption, he reached, the Black Seigneur, stepping to the shadow ofa small bush against the wall, glanced about him; with knit brows andthe resolute manner of one who has come to some definite conclusion, heleft the spot for observation, almost the apex of the Mount, andplunged diverging to the right. From glint and shimmer to darknessunfathomable! For some time he could only grope and feel his way,a
fter the fashion of the blind; fortunately, however, was the pathnarrow; although tortuous, fairly well paved, and no serious mishapbefell him, even when he walked forward regardlessly, in feverishhaste, beset with the conviction that time meant all in all, and delaythe closing of the toils and the failure of a desperate adventure.Several times he struck against the stones; once fell hard, but pickedhimself up; went on the faster, only, after what seemed an interminableperiod, to stop.
"Am I, can I be mistaken?"
But the single star he could see plainest from the bottom of the deepalley, and to which he looked up, answered not the fierce,half-muttered question; coldly, enigmatically it twinkled, and, halfrunning, he continued his way, to emerge over-suddenly into a coolerwell of air, and--what was more to be welcomed!--an outlook whereof thedetails were in a measure dimly shadowed forth.
On one side the low wall obscured not the panorama below--a ghost-likeearth fading into the mist, and nearer, the roof of the _auberge desvoleurs_, a darkened patch on the slope of the rock; but in thisdirection the man hardly cast a glance. Certain buildings ahead,austere, Norman in outline, absorbed his attention to the exclusion ofall else, and toward them, with steps now alert and noiseless, hestole; past a structure that seemed a small _salle des gardes_ whosewindow afforded a view of four men nodding at a table within; across aspace to another passage, and thence to a low door at the far corner ofa little triangular spot, alongside the walk and near a great wall. Atonce the young man put out his hand to the door; tried it; pushed itback and entered. Before him a wide opening looked out at the sky,framing a multitude of stars, and from the bottom of this aperture rana strand, or rope, connecting with an indistinct object--a great wheel,which stood at one side!