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Chapter I The Napoleon Feather

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Woe betide us,—all is lost!”

These words, uttered in an ominous, despairing shriek, pierced on mine ear with prophetic force, and I knew my glorious hopes were doomed to disappointment.

“Ha!” I thought silently to myself; “who hath spoken? Who, with a bold disregard of time and place, hath dared thus to utter his fateful conviction?” I glanced cautiously about me.

The scene was a dazzling one, and right merry withal. The spacious ball-room, hung with posy garlands and twinkling with a myriad wax-lights, formed a fitting field for many a gay bud and blade who danced away the hours all unwitting of their approaching doom. Ah, thus had there been a sound of revelry by night when the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, and sic semper tyrannis.

I hesitated for the millionth part of a second, and then, for I was ever impetuous, I dashed across the room and seated myself in a red velvet armchair. Red velvet, did I say? Red! nay, by my troth, ‘twas blue,—blue as the violets nodding by the mere; blue as the noble blood that coursed through the royal veins of Francis, England’s greatest king.

It was foolhardy, that mad dash across the apartment; but as I had foreseen, the manoeuvre outwitted my enemies, and, all aglow with satisfaction, I addressed myself to Lady Alys Allardyce, who gazed at me over her peacock-feather fan with eyes of not unfathomable meaning.

“Hist!” said she, lifting a warning forefinger, “listen thou, but speak no word.”

“Aye, madam,” I murmured in return, for I was ever obedient; “I am dumb before thee; thine shall be the discourse, thine the explanation. Mine is it silently and humbly to obey thy orders, even though they lead through Danger to Death. At thy bidding I embrace the direst Danger; at thy behest I rush eagerly to darkest Death. “Queen of my heart, accept the proffered aid of thine humblest servant and give me the straight tip.”

“’Tis well said,” quoth Lady Alys Allardyce; and in silence I proceeded to adjust my purple velvet cloak, which hung in graceful folds over my white satin doublet slashed with cloth-of-gold.

“But,” said my ill-fated companion, and her clarion-like voice sank to a faint falsetto, “the time is ripe; yet ’tis an evil hour when I, a daughter of the House of Harlech, shall betray such gruesome secrets to an alien ear.”

“And shall the vaulted chamber remain forever locked?” I cried.

“Alas, no,” she answered, “the Curse of the Clurichaune must fall—must fall!”

She spoke the last words with a Cassandra-like look that sent shivers to my spine, but I replied,—

“The Curse of the Clurichaune will fall, but only after the Cyprian scorpion shall have strewn the desert with the bones of his traitorous-hearted victims.”

This moved her, and I looked up to see the Lady Alys smiling at me from the other side of the room.

Shivering with cold, I drew my plaid more closely about me and strode onward across the Scottish moor. The night was dark, and the storm came in fitful gusts, bending the old sycamores until they snapped from their stems and lay prone in the dense shadows of the forest.

My heart was filled with a black bitterness of woe, and ever in my ear a demon seemed relentlessly to hiss, “Revenge! Revenge!”

I had traversed perhaps a dozen leagues of misty moorland when I heard a sound behind me.

Grasping my rapier, I looked back, but I saw nothing, so dark was the night.

’Twas only by listening intently I heard the sound of wheels and the clatter of horses’ hoofs on the asphalt.

“Who comes?” I cried, as I valiantly drew sword, and prepared to defend my life against hostile attack.

A piercing shriek was the only answer.

But such a shriek! It made my very heart stand still with mingled joy and grief.

For it was a noble, educated, aristocratic shriek; a polished, cultured shriek; a gentle, refined, musical, and altogether-to-be-admired shriek. Such a shriek, in fact, as could proceed only from the ruby lips and pearly teeth of a fair damsel in distress. Surely some beauteous maid of noble birth had exercised her patrician lungs in bewailing some troubles of her own.

And, again, her mishap or misfortune, if mishap or misfortune it were, was dire, sudden, and unexpected.

For the shriek, though of enchanting sweetness of tone, was pitched in that high key, and phrased in that staccato accent which always betokens fear, terror, or distress.

By a series of swift mental computations relating to the square of the sound plus the distance, I arrived at the conclusion that the beautiful unfortunate must be exactly two miles and a half away from me in a northeasterly direction.

“By the helmet of St. Swibert!” I exclaimed, “the prowess of this single arm shall serve to rescue suffering Beauty from aught that may assail,” and in tones of hope and reassurance I called to the unknown Fair One:—

“Fear not; a sword and lance are at thy service, O Damsel in distress! I will protect thee.”

I paused only to gird my gabardine more closely round me, and then set off hot-foot for the scene of carnage.

There are few more imposing bits of scenery in all France than the castle-yard at Coningsburgh, where, well defended by walls and ditches, rises the ancient edifice, which was, previous to the Conquest, a residence for the royal kings of England.

Eagerness and excitement acted as wings to my feet, and I fairly flew across the moor, and arrived on the spot just in time to see a coach and four come tearing madly round a turn in the road.

The horses galloped at such a pace that the coach rocked from side to side; the postillions, pale with fright, shook in their saddles, while the outriders clapped spurs to their horses and disappeared round the edge of the cliff.

The coach was a brave one, gilded and painted in the style of Louis XIV., and the servants’ liveries betokened a house of rank.

But ere I could more than glance at the fair, frightened face in the coach window, I perceived the cause of the hubbub to be a dozen or more attacking brigands, who on coal-black stallions pursued the fleeing coach.

“Halt!” I cried in stentorian tones, and held up my right hand with a menacing gesture.

The chief of the brigands advanced with a bold front, but I thought I detected a quiver of his left eyelash.

“Varlet! who art thou?” he cried, and lunged at me with his naked sword.

“I am Claude Kildare,” I replied, “and right dearly shalt thou pay for daring to attack a Kildare of Kildare.”

So saying, I dashed at him, and ere he might so much as wink an eye, I sent my sword through his heart, and drew back the flashing weapon dripping with the fiend’s gore.

A yell of rage broke from his companions.

Roused to fury by the death of their chief, they attacked me with cries of vengeance and I had great to-do to parry all their thrusts at once.

But by a clever bit of sword-play I killed two of the brutes and struck the swords from the hands of three others.

Then with my left hand I fired my revolver six times in quick succession. This did for six more, after which I had only four to contend with.

Infuriated to the verge of frenzy, these demons in human shape flew at me.

One clutched my throat, but with a swift, clean cut I severed his arm, and then turned sharply on the others who were attacking me from behind.

“Come on!” I cried, for my spirit was roused, and another glimpse of the fair face at the coach window urged me on to grand-stand play.

They came on, since I insisted, and one behind another approached me with fell intent.

“Dogs!” I cried, and with a blood-curdling yell of triumph, I ran my trusty sword straight through the five,—aye, spitted the rogues as a cook runs a skewer through reed-birds.

They fell, weltering in their own gore, and then, resuming my courtly air, I turned to the damsel in the coach. I bowed before her, sweeping the ground with my plumed chapeau, and said simply: “Lady of the Starry Hair, Glory of Three Realms, if that my trifling aid hath shown thee aught of my devotion, grant me but one glance of thy Heaven-beaming eye, that the memory may be to my future life a fountain of exhaustless joy.”

“Nay, bold cavalier,” said the lady, “though in no wise do I underrate the assistance thy good sword hath rendered me, yet I am the Princess Berenice of Bois-Bracy, and the daughters of my house may not so much as glance upon one of lower birth and less boodle.”

Chagrined and humiliated beyond words, I exclaimed: “Ha! how report hath lied! Full oft have I heard of the beauty of the Princesses of Bois-Bracy, but even through thy thick veil of black bombazine can I see thy hard-featured and ill-favored countenance.”

The ruse was successful. With a slow sudden gesture, the Lady Berenice flung aside the bamboozling bombazine and disclosed such marvellous beauty as was never seen, save and except in advertisements of certain soaps and dentifrices.

Oh, that face! that face that gazed out from the coach window as from a frame of gold! Heaven forfend that I should attempt to describe its glorious beauty! The pen of a Watteau were all too poor to give even a faint inkling of those angelic features.

The pure Greek profile outlined a classic brow and a nose which Mr. Micawber might have waited for; while the fair cheeks were like new pink satin pincushions.

Masses of golden hair rose from the ivory temples like clouds of incense, and the lips of carven coral might well have served as a model for Cupid’s bow.

All this I saw ere the downcast eyes were raised, but when the dark-fringed eyelids lifted and the Orient orbs of Lady Berenice thrilled to mine own, I knew that my life had at last begun. For love is life, and they be not alive who be not alove.

Still ’neath the spell of that glistening glance, I opened the coach door and my lady stepped forth.

Till then I had seen but her face; now I perceived that her form was equally fair and noble. Tall as an Amazonian goddess, yet not too tall to be called petite, her straight, arrow-like figure was full of graceful curves.

Her robe was of orange wool, with a kirtle of pale crimson silk looped at the side. Her outer garment, or toga, was of maroon mohair with gilt fringe. Bracelets of beaten gold adorned her beautiful arms, which were bare to the shoulder, and on her feet were sandal-wood sandals.

“Most Radiant Blossom from the Garden of Paradise,” I began, for I was ever plain and simple of speech, “behold before thee thy humble grovelling slave, whose only greatness is his unbounded devotion to thee and to thy service. Goddess, accept my homage; grant only that I may bow in the dust before thee, and when thou liftest thy dainty foot, oh, graciously permit that I may get it in the neck.”

The Lady Berenice was touched, but bravely concealing her agitation, she whispered,—

“An thou lovest me, drive me post-haste to the Inn of the Royal Rogue, over Borneilshire way.”

“Pride of the Universe, I live but to obey,” quoth I, as I handed Milady into her coach, touching her fingers awesomely, for who was I that this great honor should come to me?

But as the Lady Berenice glided into her cushioned nest, something fell to the ground from the folds of her garments.

Only two or three tiny, almost imperceptible fragments, yet as I saw them, my heart stood still in my breast, and then beat fiercely with a mad passion which I could not quell.

Anger, wrath, indignation, resentment, bitterness, animosity, exasperation, rage, fury, pique, umbrage, dudgeon, acerbity, virulence, and spleen strove for mastery in my infuriated brain.

Not for me this fair Marvel of Maidenliness, not for me this Miracle of Magnificence; and with a horrisonous groan, wrung from the very subway of my aching, breaking heart, I forcefully brought down my heavy heel and ground deep in the dust those three grains of rice.