"It"s bad to p.r.o.nounce, is it?" asked Casimir, smiling and touching her hand. "Ah, well, good or bad, I couldn"t p.r.o.nounce it, so to me it is nothing."
"They"d all say it was terrible--a mesalliance."
"I fear only one voice on earth saying that."
"And the fraud I am--de Gruche!" She caught his hand tightly. Never before had it occurred to her to defend or to excuse the transparent fiction.
"I know stars fall," he said, with his pretty gravity, not too grave. "I wish that they may rise to their own height again--and I rise with them."
The sun sank behind the horizon. A gentle afterglow of salmon-pink rested over the palace and city; the forest turned to a frame of smoky, brownish black. Casimir waved a hand towards it and laughed merrily.
"Before we were, it was--after we are, it shall be! I sound as old as Scripture! It has seen old masters--and great mistresses! Saving the proprieties, weren"t you Montespan or Pompadour?"
"De la Valliere?" she laughed. "Or Maintenon?"
"For good or evil, neither! Do I hurt you?"
"No; you make me think, though," answered Sophy. "Why?"
"They niggled--at virtue or at vice. You don"t niggle! Neither did Montespan nor Pompadour."
"And so I am to be--Marquise de--?"
"Higher, higher!" he laughed. "Madame la Marechale--!"
"It is war, then--soon--you think?" She turned to him with a sudden tension.
He pointed a Frenchman"s eloquent forefinger to the dark ma.s.s of the chateau, whose chimneys rose now like gloomy interrogation-marks to an unresponsive, darkened sky. "He is there now--the Emperor! Perhaps he walks in his garden by the round pond--thinking, dreaming, balancing."
"Throwing b.a.l.l.s in the air, as conjurers do?"
"Yes, my star."
"And if he misses the first?"
"He"ll seek applause by the second. And the second, I think, would be war."
"And you would--go?"
"To what other end do I love the Lady of the Red Star--alas! I can"t see it--save to bring her glory?"
"That"s French," said Sophy, with a laugh. "Wouldn"t you rather stay with me and be happy?"
"Who speaks to me?" he cried, springing to his feet. "Not you!"
"No, no," she answered, "I have no fear. What is it, Casimir, that drives us on?"
"Drives us on! You! You, too?"
"It"s not a woman"s part, is it?"
He caught her round the waist, and she allowed his clasp. But she grew grave, yet smiled again softly.
"If all life were an evening at Fontainebleau--a fine evening at Fontainebleau!" she murmured, in the low clearness which marked her voice.
"Mightn"t it be?"
"With war? And with what drives us on?"
He sighed, and his sigh puzzled her.
"Oh, well," she cried, "at least you know I"m Sophy Grouch, and my father was as mean as the man who opens your lodge-gate."
The sky had gone a blue-black. A single star sombrely announced the coming pageant.
"And his daughter high as the hopes that beckon me to my career!"
"You"ve a wonderful way of talking," smiled Sophy Grouch--simple Ess.e.x in contact with Paris at that instant.
"You"ll be my wife, Sophie?"
"I don"t think Lady Meg will keep me long. Pharos is working hard--so Marie Zerkovitch declares. I should bring you a dot of two thousand five hundred francs!"
"Do you love me?"
The old question rang clear in the still air. Who has not heard it of women--or uttered it of men? Often so easy, sometimes so hard. When all is right save one thing--or when all is wrong save one thing--then it is hard to answer, and may have been hard to ask. With Casimir there was no doubt, save the doubt of the answer. Sophy stood poised on a hesitation. The present seemed perfect. Only an unknown future cried to her through the falling night.
"I"ll win glory for you," he cried. "The Emperor will fight!"
"You"re no Emperor"s man!" she mocked.
"Yes, while he means France. I"m for anybody who means France." For a moment serious, the next he kissed her hand merrily. "Or for anybody who"ll give me a wreath, a medal, a toy to bring home to her I love."
"You"re very fascinating," Sophy confessed.
It was not the word. Casimir fell from his exaltation. "It"s not love, that of yours," said he.
"No--I don"t know. You might make it love. Oh, how I talk beyond my rights!"
"Beyond your rights? Impossible! May I go on trying?"
He saw Sophy"s smile dimly through the gloom. From it he glanced to the dying gleam of the white houses dropped among the trees, to the dull ma.s.s of the ancient home of history and kings. But back he came to the living, elusive, half-seen smile.
"Can you stop?" said Sophy.
He raised his hat from his head and stooped to kiss her hand.
"Nor would nor could," said he--"in the warmth of life or the cold hour of death!"