There was a moment"s silence. The Dowager shot him a glance; then her eyes fell. Her bosom stirred as if some strange excitement moved her. Fear and shame were her emotions; for a way she knew by which mademoiselle might be induced to go with him--not only willingly, but eagerly, she thought--to the altar. But she was his mother, and even her harsh nature shuddered before the task of instructing him in this vile thing. Why had the fool not wit enough to see it for himself?
Observing her silence Marius smiled sardonically.
"You may well ponder it," said he. "It is an easy matter to tell me what I should do. Tell me, rather, how it should be done."
His blindness stirred her anger, and her anger whelmed her hesitation.
"Were I in your place, Marius, I should find a way," said she, in a voice utterly expressionless, her eyes averted ever from his own.
He scanned her curiously. Her agitation was plain to him, and it puzzled him, as did the downcast glance of eyes usually so bold and insolent in their gaze. Then he pondered her tone, so laden with expression by its very expressionlessness, and suddenly a flood of light broke upon his mind, revealing very clearly and hideously her meaning. He caught his breath with a sudden gasp and blenched a little. Then his lips tightened suddenly.
"In that case, madame," he said, after a pause, and speaking as if he were still without revelation of her meaning, "I can but regret that you are not in my place. For, as it is, I am thinking we shall have to make the best of the hovel in Touraine."
She bit her lip in the intensity of her chagrin and shame. She was no fool, nor did she imagine from his words that her meaning had been lost upon him. She knew that he had understood, and that he chose to pretend that he had not. She looked up suddenly, her dark eyes blazing, a splash of colour in either cheek.
"Fool!" she snapped at him; "you lily-livered fool! Are you indeed my son? Are you--by G.o.d!--that you talk so lightly of yielding?" She advanced a step in his direction. "Through your cowardice you may be content to spend your days in beggary; not so am I; nor shall I be, so long as I have an arm and a voice. You may go hence if your courage fails you outright; but I"ll throw up the bridge and entrench myself within these walls. Florimond de Condillac sets no foot in here while I live; and if he should come within range of musket-shot, it will be the worse for him."
"I think you are mad, madame--mad so to talk of resisting him, as you are mad to call me coward. I"ll leave you till you are come to a more tranquil frame of mind." And turning upon his heel, his face on fire from the lash of her contempt, he strode down the hall and pa.s.sed out, leaving her alone.
White again, with heaving bosom and clenched hands, she stood a moment where he had left her, then dropped into a chair, and taking her chin in her hand she rested her elbow on her knee. Thus she remained, the firelight tinting her perfect profile, on which little might be read of the storm that was raging in her soul. Another woman in her place would have sought relief in tears, but tears came rarely to the beautiful eyes of the Marquise de Condillac.
She sat there until the sun had pa.s.sed from the windows behind her and the corners of the room were lost in the quickening shadows. At last she was disturbed by the entrance of a lackey, who announced that Monsieur le Comte de Tressan, Lord Seneschal of Dauphiny, was come to Condillac.
She bade the fellow call help to clear the board, where still was set their interrupted noontide meal, and then to admit the Seneschal.
With her back to the stirring, bustling servants she stood, pensively regarding the flames, and a smile that was mocking rather than aught else spread upon her face.
If all else failed her, she told herself, there would be no Touraine hovel for her. She could always be Comtesse de Tressan. Let Marius work out alone the punishment of his cowardice.
Away in the Northern Tower, where mademoiselle was lodged, she sat in eager talk with Garnache, who had returned un.o.bserved and successful from his journey of espionage.
He had told her what from the conversation of Marius and his mother he had learned touching the contents of that letter. Florimond lay as near as La Rochette, detained there by a touch of fever, but promising to be at Condillac by the end of the week. Since that was so, Valerie opined there was no longer the need to put themselves to the trouble of the escape they had planned. Let them wait until Florimond came.
But Garnache shook his head. He had heard more; and for all that he accounted her at present safe from Marius, yet he made no false estimate of that supple gentleman"s character, was not deluded by his momentary show of niceness. As the time of Florimond"s arrival grew nearer, he thought it very possible that Marius might be rendered desperate. There was grave danger in remaining. He said naught of this, yet he convinced mademoiselle that it were best to go.
"Though there will no longer be the need of a toilsome journey as far as Paris," he concluded. "A four hours" ride to La Rochette, and you may embrace your betrothed."
"Did he speak of me in his letter, know you, monsieur?" she inquired.
"I heard them say that he did not," Garnache replied. "But it may well be that he had good reason. He may suspect more than he has written."
"In that case," she asked--and there was a wounded note in her voice--"Why should a touch of fever keep him at La Rochette? Would a touch of fever keep you from the woman you loved, monsieur, if you knew, or even suspected, that she was in durance?"
"I do not know, mademoiselle. I am an old man who has never loved, and so it would be unfair of me to pa.s.s judgment upon lovers. That they think not as other folk is notorious; their minds are for the time disordered."
Nevertheless he looked at her where she sat by the window, so gentle, so lissome, so sweet, and so frail, and he had a shrewd notion that were he Florimond de Condillac, whether he feared her in durance or not, not the fever, nor the plague itself should keep him for the best part of a week at La Rochette within easy ride of her.
She smiled gently at his words, and turned the conversation to the matter that imported most.
"Tonight then, it is determined that we are to go?"
"At midnight or a little after. Be in readiness, mademoiselle, and do not keep me waiting when I rap upon your door. Haste may be of importance."
"You may count upon me, my friend," she answered him, and stirred by a sudden impulse she held out her hand. "You have been very good to me, Monsieur de Garnache. You have made life very different for me since your coming. I had it in my mind to blame you once for your rashness in returning alone. I was a little fool. You can never know the peace that has come to me from having you at hand. The fears, the terrors that possessed me before you came have all been dispelled in this last week that you have been my sentry in two senses."
He took the hand she held out to him, and looked down at her out of his grimy, disfigured face, an odd tenderness stirring him. He felt as might have felt a father towards his daughter--at least, so thought he then.
"Child," he answered her, "you overrate it. I have done no less than I could do, no more than any other would have done."
"Yet more than Florimond has done--and he my betrothed. A touch of fever was excuse enough to keep him at La Rochette, whilst the peril of death did not suffice to deter you from coming hither."
"You forget, mademoiselle, that, maybe, he does not know your circ.u.mstances."
"Maybe he does not," said she, with a half-sigh. Then she looked up into his face again. "I am sad at the thought of going, monsieur," she surprised him by saying.
"Sad?" he cried. Then he laughed. "But what can there be to sadden you?"
"This, monsieur: that after to-night it is odds I shall never see you more." She said it without hesitation and without coquetry, for her upbringing had been simple and natural in an atmosphere different far from that in which had been reared the courtly women he had known. "You will return to Paris and the great world, and I shall live out my life in this, little corner of Dauphiny. You will forget me in the bustle of your career, monsieur; but I shall always hold your memory very dear and very gratefully. You are the only friend I have ever known since my father died excepting Florimond, though it is so long since I have seen him, and he never came to me in times of stress as you have done."
"Mademoiselle," he answered, touched despite himself more touched than he could have believed possible to his callous, world-worn nature--"you make me very proud; you make me feel a little better than I am, for if I have earned your regard and friendship, there must be some good in old Garnache. Believe me, mademoiselle, I too shall not forget."
And thereafter they remained a spell in silence, she sitting by the window, gazing out into the bright October sky, he standing by her chair, thoughtfully considering her brown head so gracefully set upon her little shoulders. A feeling came to him that was odd and unusual; he sought to interpret it, and he supposed it to mean that he wished that at some time in the dim past he might have married some woman who would have borne him for daughter such a one as this.
CHAPTER XV. THE CONFERENCE
The matter that brought Monsieur de Tressan to Condillac--and brought him in most fearful haste--was the matter of the courier who had that day arrived at the chateau.
News of it had reached the ears of my Lord Seneschal. His mind had been a prey to uneasiness concerning this business of rebellion in which he had so rashly lent a hand, and he was anxious to know whence came this courier and what news he brought. But for all his haste he had paused--remembering it was the Marquise he went to visit--to don the gorgeous yellow suit with the hanging sleeves which he had had from Paris, and the crimson sash he had bought at Taillemant"s, all in the very latest mode.
Thus arrayed, his wig well curled and a clump of it caught in ribbon of flame-coloured silk on the left side, his sword hanging from belt and carriages richly wrought with gold, and the general courtier-like effect rather marred by the heavy riding-boots which he would have liked to leave behind yet was constrained to wear, he presented himself before the Dowager, hiding his anxiety in a melting smile, and the latter in the profoundest of bows.
The graciousness of his reception overwhelmed him almost, for in his supreme vanity he lacked the wit to see that this cordiality might be dictated by no more than the need they had of him at Condillac. A lackey placed a great chair for him by the fire that he might warm himself after his evening ride, and the Dowager, having ordered lights, sat herself opposite him with the hearth between them.
He simpered awhile and toyed with trivialities of speech before he gave utterance to the matter that absorbed him. Then, at last, when they were alone, he loosed the question that was bubbling on his lips.
"I hear a courier came to Condillac to-day."
For answer she told him what he sought to learn, whence came that courier, and what the message that he brought.
"And so, Monsieur de Tressan," she ended, "my days at Condillac are numbered."
"Why so?" he asked, "since you say that Florimond has adopted towards you a friendly tone. Surely he would not drive his father"s widow hence?"
She smiled at the fire in a dreamy, pensive manner.