"Madame, madame!" he cried. "Wait! Hear me."
She paused, half-turned, and looked at him over her shoulder, scorn in her glance, a sneer on her scarlet mouth, insolence in every line of her.
"I think, monsieur, that I have heard a little more than enough," said she. "I am a.s.sured, at least, that in you I have but a fair-weather friend, a poor lipserver."
"Ah, not that, madame," he cried, and his voice was stricken. "Say not that. I would serve you as would none other in all this world--you know it, Marquise; you know it."
She faced about, and confronted him, her smile a trifle broader, as if amus.e.m.e.nt were now blending with her scorn.
"It is easy to protest. Easy to say, "I will die for you," so long as the need for such a sacrifice be remote. But let me do no more than ask a favour, and it is, "What of my good name, madame? What of my seneschalship? Am I to be gaoled or hanged to pleasure you?" Faugh!" she ended, with a toss of her splendid head. "The world is peopled with your kind, and I--alas! for a woman"s intuitions--had held you different from the rest."
Her words were to his soul as a sword of fire might have been to his flesh. They scorched and shrivelled it. He saw himself as she would have him see himself--a mean, contemptible craven; a coward who made big talk in times of peace, but faced about and vanished into hiding at the first sign of danger. He felt himself the meanest, vilest thing a-crawl upon this sinful earth, and she--dear G.o.d!--had thought him different from the ruck. She had held him in high esteem, and behold, how short had he not fallen of all her expectations! Shame and vanity combined to work a sudden, sharp revulsion in his feelings.
"Marquise," he cried, "you say no more than what is just. But punish me no further. I meant not what I said. I was beside myself. Let me atone--let my future actions make amends for that odious departure from my true self."
There was no scorn now in her smile; only an ineffable tenderness, beholding which he felt it in his heart to hang if need be that he might continue high in her regard. He sprang forward, and took the hand she extended to him.
"I knew, Tressan," said she, "that you were not yourself, and that when you bethought you of what you had said, my valiant, faithful friend would not desert me."
He stooped over her hand, and s...o...b..red kisses upon her unresponsive glove.
"Madame," said he, "you may count upon me. This fellow out of Paris shall have no men from me, depend upon it."
She caught him by the shoulders, and held him so, before her. Her face was radiant, alluring; and her eyes dwelt on his with a kindness he had never seen there save in some wild daydream of his.
"I will not refuse a service you offer me so gallantly," said she. "It were an ill thing to wound you by so refusing it."
"Marquise," he cried, "it is as nothing to what I would do did the occasion serve. But when this thing "tis done; when you have had your way with Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye, and the nuptials shall have been celebrated, then--dare I hope--?"
He said no more in words, but his little blue eyes had an eloquence that left nothing to mere speech.
Their glances met, she holding him always at arm"s length by that grip upon his shoulders, a grip that was firm and nervous.
In the Seneschal of Dauphiny, as she now gazed upon him, she beheld a very toad of a man, and the soul of her shuddered at the sight of him combining with the thing that he suggested. But her glance was steady and her lips maintained their smile, just as if that ugliness of his had been invested with some abstract beauty existing only to her gaze; a little colour crept into her cheeks, and red being the colour of love"s livery, Tressan misread its meaning.
She nodded to him across the little distance of her outstretched arms, then smothered a laugh that drove him crazed with hope, and breaking from him she sped swiftly, shyly it almost seemed to him, to the door.
There she paused a moment looking back at him with a coyness that might have become a girl of half her years, yet which her splendid beauty saved from being unbecoming even in her.
One adorable smile she gave him, and before he could advance to hold the door for her, she had opened it and pa.s.sed out.
CHAPTER II. MONSIEUR DE GARNACHE
To promise rashly, particularly where a woman is the suppliant, and afterwards, if not positively to repent the promise, at least to regret that one did not hedge it with a few conditions, is a proceeding not uncommon to youth. In a man of advanced age, such as Monsieur de Tressan, it never should have place; and, indeed, it seldom has, unless that man has come again under the sway of the influences by which youth, for good or ill, is governed.
Whilst the flush of his adoration was upon him, hot from the contact of her presence, he knew no repentance, found room in his mind for no regrets. He crossed to the window, and pressed his huge round face to the pane, in a futile effort to watch her mount and ride out of the courtyard with her little troop of attendants. Finding that he might not--the window being placed too high--gratify his wishes in that connection, he dropped into his chair, and sat in the fast-deepening gloom, reviewing, fondly here, hurriedly there, the interview that had but ended.
Thus night fell, and darkness settled down about him, relieved only by the red glow of the logs smouldering on the hearth. In the gloom inspiration visited him. He called for lights and Babylas. Both came, and he dispatched the lackey that lighted the tapers to summon Monsieur d"Aubran, the commander of the garrison of Gren.o.ble.
In the interval before the soldier"s coming he conferred with Babylas concerning what he had in mind, but he found his secretary singularly dull and unimaginative. So that, perforce, he must fall back upon himself. He sat glum and thoughtful, his mind in unproductive travail, until the captain was announced.
Still without any definite plan, he blundered headlong, nevertheless, into the necessary first step towards the fulfilment of his purpose.
"Captain," said he, looking mighty grave, "I have cause to believe that all is not as it should be in the hills in the district of Montelimar."
"Is there trouble, monsieur?" inquired the captain, startled.
"Maybe there is, maybe there is not," returned the Seneschal mysteriously. "You shall have your full orders in the morning.
Meanwhile, make ready to repair to the neighbourhood of Montelimar to-morrow with a couple of hundred men."
"A couple of hundred, monsieur!" exclaimed d"Aubran. "But that will be to empty Gren.o.ble of soldiers."
"What of it? We are not likely to require them here. Let your orders for preparation go round tonight, so that your knaves may be ready to set out betimes to-morrow. If you will be so good as to wait upon me early you shall have your instructions."
Mystified, Monsieur d"Aubran departed on his errand, and my Lord Seneschal went down to supper well pleased with the cunning device by which he was to leave Gren.o.ble without a garrison. It was an astute way of escape from the awkward situation into which his attachment to the interests of the dowager of Condillac was likely to place him.
But when the morning came he was less pleased with the idea, chiefly because he had been unable to invent any details that should lend it the necessary colour, and d"Aubran--worse luck--was an intelligent officer who might evince a pardonable but embarra.s.sing curiosity. A leader of soldiers has a right to know something at least of the enterprise upon which he leads them. By morning, too, Tressan found that the intervening s.p.a.ce of the night, since he had seen Madame de Condillac, had cooled his ardour very considerably.
He had reached the incipient stages of regret of his rash promise.
When Captain d"Aubran was announced to him, he bade them ask him to come again in an hour"s time. From mere regrets he was pa.s.sing now, through dismay, into utter repentance of his promise. He sat in his study, at his littered writing-table, his head in his hands, a confusion of thoughts, a wild, frenzied striving after invention in his brain.
Thus Anselme found him when he thrust aside the portiere to announce that a Monsieur de Garnache, from Paris, was below, demanding to see the Lord Seneschal at once upon an affair of State.
Tressan"s flesh trembled and his heart fainted. Then, suddenly, desperately, he took his courage in both hands. He remembered who he was and what he was the King"s Lord Seneschal of the Province of Dauphiny.
Throughout that province, from the Rhone to the Alps, his word was law, his name a terror to evildoers--and to some others besides. Was he to blench and tremble at the mention of the name of a Court lackey out of Paris, who brought him a message from the Queen-Regent? Body of G.o.d! not he.
He heaved himself to his feet, warmed and heartened by the thought; his eye sparkled, and there was a deeper flush than usual upon his cheek.
"Admit this Monsieur de Garnache," said he with a fine loftiness, and in his heart he pondered what he would say and how he should say it; how he should stand, how move, and how look. His roving eye caught sight of his secretary. He remembered something--the cherished pose of being a man plunged fathoms-deep in business. Sharply he uttered his secretary"s name.
Babylas raised his pale face; he knew what was coming; it had come so many times before. But there was no vestige of a smile on his drooping lips, no gleam of amus.e.m.e.nt in his patient eye. He thrust aside the papers on which he was at work, and drew towards him a fresh sheet on which to pen the letter which, he knew by experience, Tressan was about to indite to the Queen-mother. For these purposes Her Majesty was Tressan"s only correspondent.
Then the door opened, the portiere was swept aside, and Anselme announced "Monsieur de Garnache."
Tressan turned as the newcomer stepped briskly into the room, and bowed, hat in hand, its long crimson feather sweeping the ground, then straightened himself and permitted the Seneschal to take his measure.
Tressan beheld a man of a good height, broad to the waist and spare thence to the ground, who at first glance appeared to be mainly clad in leather. A buff jerkin fitted his body; below it there was a glimpse of wine-coloured trunks, and hose of a slightly deeper hue, which vanished immediately into a pair of huge thighboots of untanned leather. A leather swordbelt, gold-embroidered at the edges, carried a long steel-halted rapier in a leather scabbard chaped with steel. The sleeves of his doublet which protruded from his leather casing were of the same colour and material as his trunks. In one hand he carried his broad black hat with its crimson feather, in the other a little roll of parchment; and when he moved the creak of leather and jingle of his spurs made pleasant music for a martial spirit.
Above all, this man"s head, well set upon his shoulders, claimed some attention. His nose was hooked and rather large, his eyes were blue, bright as steel, and set a trifle wide. Above a thin-lapped, delicate mouth his reddish mustachios, slightly streaked with grey, stood out, bristling like a cat"s. His hair was darker--almost brown save at the temples, where age had faded it to an ashen colour. In general his aspect was one of rugged strength.
The Seneschal, measuring him with an adversary"s eye, misliked his looks. But he bowed urbanely, washing his hands in the air, and murmuring:
"Your servant, Monsieur de--?"