The Intentions of Raoul

by H. C. Bailey

THE INTENTIONS OF RAOUL

BEING AN EPISODE IN THE CAREER OF A GENTLEMAN OF FORTUNE

By H. C. BAILEY

 

IN a muniment room in the West Country there is one bulky manuscript three hundred years old. It is written in a jargon of some four languages and there are weird words in it which seem to be Flemish slang of the sixteenth century. It tells of a certain Raoul, and the author has called it in an effort at Latin Historia de Me Ipso. This is the Raoul who appears in the Devonshire county records as Raoul Bonfortune, He was not a grammarian, but he was, if you believe him, something of a man.

The first thing in his life that Raoul remembered was sitting in the gutter. While he sat he felt that it was unprecedented and illegal. But his father did not care. His father was lying in the gutter beside him, still and quiet. When Raoul pulled at his father's hand, the arm moved away from the shoulder and a red hole came, very curious to see. Raoul had never known that his father was made like that. He cuddled that still body, talking to it, wondering; and then he was rolled over by a dog. It was white with black spots, a long, lean beast, but Raoul when he had turned face upward again was pleased with it and held out his small hand. There was a click of teeth as the brute snapped and missed,

A man, who looked as wide as he was long, came swaggering down the alley. Fur cloaks were flung over his left shoulder and beneath them his corselet glittered dull. Chains of gold and jewels were twisted about his left arm carelessly. This man saw the dog and the dead and the little child. He said something and he kicked. The dog fled yelping and Raoul flung himself on the man's leg and beat it and bit it—because he had liked the dog. The man gave a laugh and tossed Raoul up to his shoulder among the furs and swaggered on.

That must have been at the sack of St. Quentin, after Coligny had fought at hand-grips with a score, and Philip the Spaniard had had all the men of the township slain. Raoul's wide man was Taddeo of Brescia, condottiere and complete scoundrel. Taddeo's deeds make a grewsome chapter in the grewsome history of the days when Alva was trying to drown the Dutchmen in their own blood. And Raoul was his page for sixteen years.

That is the way Raoul was made.

In the autumn of 1573, in the days when the Dutchmen first made head against Alva's fury, Raoul considered himself a man. Taddeo did not agree, and Raoul wore an unhealed wound on his temple as he rode a horse's length behind Taddeo under the bare poplars. The Spaniards were drawing back into winter quarters and Taddeo led the vanguard. A brace of laden wagons labored ostentatiously across the line of march, and Taddeo who despised no booty, howled to them to halt. But the peasant wagoners urged their teams on. So Taddeo cursed and charged down upon them. Only Raoul with the slash raw red in his temple saw no need to follow. Taddeo's men and the fleeing wagoners came in a heap between two dikes, two dikes that suddenly blazed yellow and roared with musketry. In a few minutes all was done. Taddeo's company was a tumbled mass on the wet, brown earth,

"So Messer Taddeo has gone to the devil," said Raoul. "I do not envy the devil." Raoul shaded his eyes and surveyed the situation. Those efficient musketeers who had settled Messer Taddeo's account with this world were now giving all their energy to retreat; the main body of the Spaniards was hurrying up; but Raoul had the time he needed. He rode on to plunder the dead.

They were unsatisfactory. "As mean dead as alive," grunted Raoul, rising with aching back. You may see him, a small man of long arm and leg, black-haired and swarthy. His buff coat and his boots were dirty and ragged. He stood over his dead master and counted a poor handful of ducats, weighed two golden chains and a crucifix, and pouched them with a sneer. Then, for the Spaniards were now coming close, he removed himself.

Beyond a clump of willows he found fortune. It was a little party of wayfarers, two women and a man, muddy and limping. Raoul struck in front of them, reined up and laughed, "Halt!" says he. "I only want all you have."

The man, with a muttered something in Dutch, heaved up a bill hook. Raoul still laughing (that was a trick of Taddeo's) leaned forward with his pistol clear of his horse's ears. "Are you ready for hell, my friend?" he asked.

One of the women embraced Raoul's right leg.

"Save us!" she cried, "save us! we have money."

"There is the less reason to save you, my fair," said Raoul.

"Oh, save us and we will pay!"

"That is certain in any case, my fair," said Raoul, and looked down at her laughing. She was dressed in a peasant girl's frieze, but she was small of body as a peasant should not be and her little hands and her brow were milk white. The coil of maidenhood lay on her brown hair.

"But let us be amiable," Raoul concluded. "From whom do you wish to be saved?"

"From the Spaniards."

"Oho!" says Raoul, "that will cost you dear, my dear."

"I will give you all I have," the girl cried.

"You spare me the pains of taking it," said Raoul and held out his hand.

The man and the other woman started forward crying "Mistress! Mistress!" but she thrust a silken purse into Raoul's hand. Raoul dandled it and was shrugging his shoulders at the weight of it when:

"I trust you, sir," she said.

"'Tis foolish in you, my fair," Raoul laughed.

"I trust you," she said again.

Raoul stood up in his stirrups and surveyed circumstances. The Spaniards were close now and the little willow clump could not avail to hide them. The only hope was the falling twilight and the mist. "Come!" said Raoul and led on toward the shadow of the long dike.

One wonders what he meant to do and suspects that he did not himself know. His very curious History of Myself protests that what he did was "inevitable, even to him." That is the charitable view. At least it was not wholly his fault.

They had scarce begun to move when the older woman protested that she could move no more and to show her good faith sat down in the mud. The girl hung over her, begging her take heart and toil on till dark at least. But she would not.

"Eh, leave her," cried Raoul.

"To them, sir?" the girl turned on him fiercely. "To Spaniards?"

"She is not beautiful. They will only kill her," said Raoul.

"Never!"

"On the contrary soon," laughed Raoul. For now they had been seen, now a quartet of horsemen was galloping down upon them. "So. This game is played," said Raoul, and made up his mind. He shouted a Spanish welcome to the Spaniards.

"Ah! They—they are Spaniards?" the girl gasped, starting up.

Raoul nodded.

"And they will take us?"

Raoul laughed.

"Yes, they will take us and then——"

"Ah, then—" said Raoul, calmly, and shrugged.

She ran to him and tried to snatch his hand. "Oh, save us, save us!"

Raoul shrugged his shoulders.

Then in a very pitiful voice: "But you promised," she cried, "you promised!"

"No, corbleu!"

She staggered back, caught at the man with the bill hook, a square, solid Hollander. "Jan," she sobbed, "Jan, save me, kill me!"

The fellow groaned out something and plucked at his knife. It was raised, it was at her white throat and she plucked her dress away to welcome it when Raoul smote with his pistol butt on the man's head and the man reeled sideways a pace and fell. "A meddlesome person," said Raoul, and caught the girl as she staggered and would have fled. And he held her, sobbing wildly, struggling; he held her till the Spaniards were upon them and snatched her away.

"A good day, gentlemen," said Raoul.

"In the name of the devil who are you?"

"I am Messer Taddeo's company."

"Then where are the rest of you?"

"They grill with the devil."

The Spaniards looked at each other. "The devil has them all?"

"Yes, poor fellow," said Raoul, sadly.

There was a grim laugh and: "What is this white piece of goods then?" as one of them shook the girl.

Before Raoul could answer, "She is for your master," said a new voice. The Spaniards turned in their saddles. It was the older woman, risen now from the mud, in aspect well content. And while they stared:

"But certainly," Raoul chimed in: "I convey her to Don Julian. He has a taste."

"You!" the girl shrieked (Raoul here records that her eyes were gray-blue, like steel.) "Ah, you knave, you knave!"

Raoul bowed to her.

The Spaniards laughed loud, while she struggled, crimson and panting in their grip.

She cried madly for help, she cried to the woman and then to God, and the woman answered smoothly:

"It were best to be quiet, mistress. They say Don Julian is gentle."

That stirred the Spaniards to mirth again. They wheeled round and the girl, sobbing out her shame, was dragged on between two of them. Her woman, quite composed, followed behind. And Raoul led the way with the air (he says it himself) of a conqueror.

The Spanish tents were rising in the gloom, foul, tattered brown canvas, ill pitched. Fires crackled and sputtered and smoked. A swearing throng beset the food wagons, and men fought each other for their rations. All was ill-found, ill-ordered, and the curse of Babel was on the army. Spanish, German, Flemish, French, Italian—each company had a different tongue and scarce knew three words of its neighbor's.

A halberdier lounged on his weapon before the general's tent. The little troop dismounted and men in their shirts, bare-necked, bare-armed, came scrambling up to jeer at the women. Dead weight on two men's arms, the girl was dragged in to Don Julian d'Oquendo, and from without came the soldiers' guffaw. Don Julian, fair-haired, lean of face, sat in gorgeous attire by a pasty and a flask of wine.

Raoul strode in front: "I have the honor to offer to your Excellency—" and he waved his hand to the girl. But he did not look at her.

Don Julian stared at him with an instant's contempt. Then, "Who are you, knave?" he said, carelessly, as he rose and walked to the girl.

"I aspire to be the servant of your Excellency."

Don Julian took the girl's chin in his hand and tilted her thin face to the light. She tried to shrink away, but the two Spaniards thrust her forward. She quivered like a branch in the wind. And he laughed.

"I hope that I please your Excellency's taste," said Raoul.

Don Julian stepped back and looked at the girl through half-closed eyes as if she were a picture.

Then he laughed again. "What is her price?" he asked.

"Less than fifty ducats would insult your Excellency's love of beauty."

Raoul says that the girl turned and looked at him. He saw her eyes and moved back. He was very glad of that afterwards.

"Señor Don Julian—" it was a Flemish voice. The older woman hurried forward. "He is a rogue, I——"

"Ah, Mother Martha!" cried Don Julian. "What? Is it your lass?" His eyes brightened and he tapped the girl's white cheek. "And so you are Elsa Sonoy, my dear."

"If it please you, Señor," cried Mother Martha. "And I brought her, not this rogue, and——"

"Martha! You!" the girl's voice rang wild in the last anguish of broken trust.

Don Julian's thin lips drew back from his teeth.

"Your faithful foster mother, maiden Elsa, who values you at five hundred ducats. Madre Dios! but it is a little dear."

Mother Martha began to protest. The girl was worn out with a long journey. She needed rest and food. In the morning—in the morning—and Elsa at last hung limp on the Spaniard's arms, fainting.

Don Julian shrugged his shoulders.

"There is too little blood in her," said he, then turned to the soldiers. "Clear the next tent, you, and bear her in. Comfort her, Mother Martha. By the Virgin, you should do it well."

Two of them lifted the girl, and as they turned Don Julian thought again of Raoul. "Now, rascal, what are you?"

"A poor gentleman, Excellency, who needs fifty ducats."

"Ugh, the knave!" Mother Martha turned her honest head. "Why, Señor, he would have helped her to the Dutch."

"So," said Don Julian. "Lash me the——"

But Raoul had drawn back before. Raoul was nearest of them all to the outer air, and he sprang away and flung himself on a horse and flogged it through the camp. Scattering camp fires, riding down men, he thundered on till he was lost in the mist and the blackness.

Then he checked and listened, hand to his ear. There was no following sound, none hunted him. He was not worth hunting. Raoul sat still in the mist and thought.

You are not to suppose him fired by the maiden's plight, consumed with chivalric wrath. "I was never," says he, and you fancy him proud of it, "I was never a man of indignations." The girl's aspen bosom, the gray face and the eyes that stabbed—perhaps they were with him there in the mist, but Raoul was not the man to go to death for a stray girl's shame. One fancies that if Don Julian had but given him those fifty ducats Raoul would have ridden happily off, a paid scoundrel. At least Raoul himself thanks God after his own fashion that Don Julian denied him. "Had he paid me, my life had never begun. And so my salutes to Don Julian—who is where he is—" says Raoul. Don Julian would give nothing; a man owed it to himself to take. Raoul sat thinking.

"Always," says he in that History of Myself, "always I had an eye and a mind for ground. Once seen I knew it forever, or by day or by night." He had, in fact, a dog's sense of place and direction. Wrapped in the wet darkness, he saw clear all around him, the line of poplars close by, the willow clump a gunshot off, the dikes and the sluggish river. He knew the oblong camp, the post of the cavalry on either horn, the park of the guns and powder in the midst of the rearward line.

At last Raoul gathered up his reins and rode down to Taddeo's dead company. There he dismounted and stooping low, reins over his arm, wandered about till he found two good muskets. With these flung about him he rode off, the scattered, riderless horses of Taddeo's men neighing at him out of the mist. And then something bulky leaped at him, big hands gripped his bridle arm, a great weight dragged him down. "Butcher, I have you now," growled a hoarse Dutch voice.

"I was looking for you," said Raoul, placidly, as he put his dagger to the man's throat and let him feel the point of it. "Do not make me kill you."

The man dropped off him and Raoul reined swiftly away. He remembered the bill hook. "If you will not be so stupid you shall save her."

"You are a liar and a rogue. And the Spaniards have taken her."

"I am what I am. And you shall take her again."

"It is now no use," the Dutchman groaned; "they have had her in their camp. Ach, Gott! Why did you not let me kill her?"

"It is always worth while to live, corbleu. Also you can kill her yet. That is her affair. I suppose you have not had the sense to catch a horse."

"I do not want a horse," said the Dutchman, dully.

"An ass would be more akin," muttered Raoul, and then whistled low.

The horses knew him, there was a scurry of hoofs and soon he had a pair of bridles in his hands. "Suit yourself, my friend—and follow."

"I do not trust you," growled the Dutchman.

"At last you show sense," said Raoul, and went off into the dark. The Dutchman lumbered after him.

Raoul fetched a wide compass round the camp and, come to rearward, halted and gazed. The damp wood fires were dying. Silence was falling upon the tents. The men had gorged like beasts and like beasts were drowsy. Raoul stooped and behind the Dutchman's width struck a spark and caught it on a slow match and blew till the red glow came. Then he hid it and stealthily moving behind the poplars, they two drew nearer. A gunshot off the rearward tents Raoul halted and dismounted and put his bridle in the Dutchman's hand and crept on with his muskets. It was a true mercenaries' camp. Scarce one sentry stood at his post, and nearer and nearer came Raoul, silent, unseen. The powder wagons loomed large before him. Beneath the canvas he could make out the curve of the barrels. He flung himself down and cuddled a musket stock into his shoulder. One bulging barrel came clear in line, he touched the slow match and the musket flashed and spoke. And then as he caught the other and fired at a venture, a great flame belched from the powder wagon, a dull roar came, and Raoul cast muskets away and ran like a hare to his horse and sprang to the saddle, and muttering "Follow!" went off at speed.

Roaring, flaming tumult he left behind. Yellow fire shot up through the mist, and the tents leaped sudden into view. Over them, about them, blazing splinters hurled and hissed, maddened horses broke from their pickets and charged over tents and men, and still the powder shot forth fresh flame and roar and the soldiers fled hither and hither, cursing in many tongues.

But Raoul had galloped round the camp and he sprang down and tethered his horse to a poplar and ran in on foot. And the Dutchman went with him still. No one heeded them. All men were running wildly in that hour. Only Raoul was quite sure of his purpose. He held the Dutchman's arm as he ran and: "Kill her or save her, there she is," he muttered and jerked him round at the tent where Elsa lay. Then Raoul himself ran. He sought things more profitable.

Raoul peeped into Don Julian's tent. It was empty of men, and he sprang in—then through a bustling minute feared it was empty of money, too. At last he found saddle bags. They were weighty. They jingled. Raoul chuckled and ran with his pay.

And then he came upon fate. The Dutchman had found Elsa, had borne her out, but Mother Martha clung to him and screamed; and as she screamed a pair of Walloon troopers came running and caught at Elsa. Raoul had to make the choice of his life and no time to make it. He saw that white face tortured again. He flung his money away, his rapier flamed.

One man went down with a hiss and a cough, the other sprang back yelling for help. Raoul tore Elsa from the Dutchman's arms, cast her over his shoulder and ran. And the Dutchman flung Martha at the Walloon and lumbered after him.

Tents and men stood out black against the yellow glare and the light spread over the plain, but beneath the long dikes the mist loomed in darker shadow. Raoul mounted and made for the blackness of it, spurring, ventre à terre. There were frenzied horses galloping every way, there was no man in time to see which way he had gone and soon he had left a mile behind.

Then he drew rein and, as the speed checked, the Dutchman came up alongside.

"Mistress," he gasped, "is it well?"

"Oh, now he will want to kill her, I suppose," thought Raoul, and moved the little body till he could come at his dagger.

The girl leaned over, her face white in the gloom: "Oh, Jan, thank God, thank God! I——"

"In fact," says Raoul, pushing his dagger home, "in fact God has been something to-night."

"And you, sir—" her arm clasped him closer, "you——"

"I also," said Raoul, modestly.

Her brown hair, all disordered, fell rippling fragrant over his arm, but still she was crowned with the coif of her maidenhood. Her arm was about him, he clasped her close. So they rode on through the night.

The Dutchman rolled in his saddle, dozing, wearied out, but still Raoul led on erect and lithe. The easy motion lulled the girl to rest in his arms. Her head drooped back and showed him the gentle curve of her throat; he felt the slow, deep surge of her bosom. And again and again Raoul looked down at her, his pulses tingling. She was fair and fit for a man's desire and he held her at his will. The darkness wrapped him round.

"Halt and speak!" a Dutch challenge ran sharp.

The girl started in his arms as Raoul reined up. "Vive le gens!" Raoul shouted, the Dutchman's own war cry.

And the wide Dutchman beside him awoke and roared, "Vive le gens!"

There was a sound of hurrying feet and a quick, low parley. Then: "Forward, one!"

"Go you," said Raoul, and the Dutchman went.

"Is all well, sir?" the girl whispered.

Raoul looked down into her eyes. "Yes. By chance."

"Ah, sir, not by chance, indeed."

"Well—I am certainly very remarkable," said Raoul.

In front in the darkness there was much talk, and a lantern came and was held aloft. At last they cried to Raoul and Raoul rode on sedate, stately. The man with the lantern took his bridle and led to a room in a house that stood apart.

The bright reflection from the light of the camp fires without displayed to Raoul and the maid and the Dutchman a little, wiry man in buff coat and breeches. His hair was cropped closer than most and his beard, his keen face was tanned to the tint of his hair, and out of it looked two green-gray eyes very bright.

"Whom," inquired Raoul, "have I the honor to behold?"

"Colonel Newstead," said the little man: and at once Raoul understood the fate of Taddeo. The English free lance had dealt with greater soldiers than Messer Taddeo. Raoul bowed to him as to a master of craft. The Englishman did not appear grateful.

His curious eyes were set upon Elsa. "You, lady, are Mistress Elsa Sonoy?" he asked, and the girl courtesied to him.

"Diedrich Sonoy's daughter is honored in my camp and honored," he bowed, "for her own sake." A blush stole up under her curls. "But you should have been safe in Leyden, Mistress Elsa."

"I was. I was. But they told me—Martha—Martha said that Eric was sick—and—and—" she blushed darker.

"I do hope that she is now joyous with Don Julian," Raoul remarked.

"And—and I was going——"

Buff coat flying loose, hair all awry, a sturdy young fellow broke into the room crying "Elsa!" and she turned and swayed and fell into his arms sobbing and laughing. Raoul watched. Raoul saw the girl he had held to his breast kissed on her mouth and eyes and answering her love's kisses.

"I always meant it," said Raoul, slowly. "I always meant it, mordieu," and moving saw that Newstead's curious eyes examined him.

"I continue the history—" said Raoul in a hurry: and did so with an artistic scarcity of detail.

"So," he concluded, "I attended till dark. I devised a little camisade. Colonel, here are we. But we should like some supper. At least," he looked sideways at the lovers. "I——"

The Dutchman fell asleep over the meat and Raoul slept till the sun was high.

It was the next day that Newstead asked him his name. "I call myself Raoul. My father was in such haste to die that he told me no other."

"There is something," said Newstead, looking Raoul in the eye, "something I do not offer to every man." He tapped the faded rosette of orange and white and blue that he wore on his left breast. "Will you take service with me?"

Raoul waited a while. "With you, sir, before any man. But with no man at all. I have taken service with the wide world."

And Newstead looked at him a long time (says Raoul) and nodded at last. Then: "You are what will some day be a man."

Which somewhat annoyed Raoul.