"Madame, this is your door."
The Chevalier stepped aside and uncovered.
"Monsieur, you have lost a valuable art." There was a fleeting glance, and she vanished within, leaving him puzzled and astonished by the unexpected softening of her voice. How long he stood there, with his gaze fixed upon the vacant doorway, he never knew. What did she mean?
"Well, Paul?" And Victor, having come up behind, laid his hand on the Chevalier"s arm. "Do you know her, then?" nodding toward the door.
"Know her?" The Chevalier faced his comrade. "Would to G.o.d, lad, I did not, for she has made me the most unhappy of men."
The poet trembled in terror at the light within. "She is . . . ?"
"Yes, Diane; Diane, whose name I murmur in my dreams, waking or sleeping."
"She?" in half a whisper. "Her name?"
"Her name? No! I know her as a mystery; as Tantalus thirsting for the fruit which hangs ever beyond the reach, I know her; as a woman who is not what she seems, always masked, with or without the cambric. Know her?" with a laugh full of despair.
Victor was a man of courage and resource. "I know where there"s a two-quart bottle of burgundy, Paul. Bah! life will look cheerful enough through that mellow red. Come with me."
The Chevalier followed him to the lower town, where, in a room in one of the warehouses, they sat down to the wine.
"Let the women go hang, lad, one and all!" cried the Chevalier, after his sixth and final gla.s.s.
"Let them go hang!" But Victor did not confide; not he, loyal friend!
And when he held his emptied gla.s.s on high, sighed, and dropped it on the earthen floor, the Chevalier did not know that his comrade"s heart lay shattered with the gla.s.s. Gallant poet!
As madame threaded her way through the dim corridor, but one thought occupied her mind. It echoed and re-echoed--"Or, rather, what you pretend to be." What did D"Herouville mean by that? To what did the Chevalier pretend? Her foot struck something. It was a book.
Absently she stooped and picked it up, carrying it to her room. "Or, rather, what you pretend to be." If only she had heard the first part of the sentence, or what had led to it! The Chevalier was gradually becoming as much of a mystery to her as she was to him. There had been a sea-change; he was no longer a fop; there was grey in his hair; he was a man. In her room there was light from the sun. Carelessly she glanced at the book. It was grey with dust, which she blew away.
Evidently it had lain some time in the corridor. She flapped the covers. The t.i.tle, dim and worn, smiled drolly up. She blushed, and abruptly laid the offending volume on the table. The merry Vicar of Meudon was not wholly acceptable to her woman"s mind. To whom did it belong, this foundling book? With a grimace which would have caused Rabelais to smile, she turned back the cover.
"The Chevalier"s!" To what did he pretend? "I shall send it back to his room. Gabrielle, Gabrielle, thou wert a fool, and a fool"s folly has brought you to Quebec! A nun? I should die! Why did I come? In mercy"s name, why? . . . A letter?" An oblong envelope, lying on the floor, attracted her attention. She took it up with a deal more curiosity than she had the book. "To Monsieur le Marquis de Perigny,"
she read, "to be delivered into his hands at my death." She studied the scrawl. It was not the Chevalier"s; and yet, how strangely familiar to her eyes! Should she send it directly to the marquis or to the son? She debated for several moments. Then she touched the bell and summoned the woman whom the governor had kindly placed at her service.
"Take this book and letter to Monsieur du Cevennes, and if he is not there, leave it in his room." Her lack of curiosity saved her. Some women would have opened the letter, read, and been destroyed. But madame"s guiding star was undimmed.
It was just before the evening mess that the Chevalier, on entering his room, saw the volume and the letter. He gave his attention immediately to the letter; and, became strangely fascinated. It was addressed to his father! "To Monsieur le Marquis de Perigny, to be delivered into his hands at my death." Whose death? The Chevalier rested the letter on the palm of his hand. How came it here? He inspected the envelope.
It was unsealed. He balanced it, first on one hand, then, on the other. Was it the wine that caused the shudder? Whose death? kept ringing through his brain. How the G.o.ds must have smiled as they played with the fate of this man! Terror and tragedy, and only an opaque sheet of paper between! Whose death? The envelope was old, the ink was faded. What was written within? Did the contents in any way concern him? It was within a finger"s reach. But he hesitated, as a blind man hesitates when the guiding hand is suddenly withdrawn. "To Monsieur le Marquis de Perigny, to be delivered into his hands at my death."
"It is his, not mine; let him read it. Breton, lad, here"s your Rabelais, come back I know not how. But here is a letter which you will deliver to Jehan, who in turn will see that it reaches its owner."
Thus, the G.o.ds, having had their fill of play, relented.
CHAPTER XXIII
A MARQUIS DONS HIS BALDRIC
They were men, the marquis and his contemporaries. They were born in rough times, they lived and died roughly. They were men who made France what it was in life and is to-day in history, resplendent. The marquis never went about his affairs impetuously; he calculated this and balanced that. When he arrived at a conclusion or formed a purpose, it was definite. He never swerved nor retreated. To-night he had formed a purpose, and he proceeded toward it directly, as was his custom.
"Jehan, my campaign rapier," he said.
"Campaign rapier, Monsieur!" repeated the astonished lackey. Monsieur le Marquis had not worn that weapon in almost ten years.
"Take care, Jehan; you know that I am not particularly fond of repeating commands. Certainly my old basket-hilt took the journey with me."
Jehan went rummaging among his master"s personal effects, and soon returned. He buckled on the marquis"s shoulder a worn baldric pendent to which was the famous basket-sword which had earned for its owner the sobriquet of "Prince of a hundred duels."
"It has grown heavy since the last time I put it on," observed the marquis, thoughtfully, weighing the blade on his palms. "Those were merry days," reminiscently.
"Monsieur goes abroad to-night?" essayed the lackey, experiencing an old-time thrill.
"Yes, but alone. Now, a cup of wine undiluted. Monsieur de Leviston is still in the hospital?"
"Yes, Monsieur."
"Through the kindly offices of Monsieur de Saumaise."
"Who is a gallant fellow."
To this Monsieur le Marquis readily agreed. "But Monsieur d"Herouville is no longer confined. I saw him abroad this afternoon."
"They say that he is a furious swordsman, Monsieur," ventured Jehan, trembling.
The marquis threw a keen glance at his servant. "What did they say of me, even ten years ago?"
"You had no peer in all France, Monsieur . . . ten years ago."
The marquis smiled. "I have grown thin in ten years, that is all."
"Shall you leave any commands, Monsieur?"
"You may have the evening to yourself, and don"t return till midnight."
Jehan bowed. There was nothing for him to say.
At dinner the marquis was unusually brilliant and witty. He dazzled the governor and his ladies, and unbent so far as to accept four gla.s.ses of burgundy. On one side sat Anne de Vaudemont, on the other the governor"s son, and directly opposite, Madame de Brissac, an unnamed mystery to them all save Anne. Madame, despite her antagonism and the terror lest she be discovered and unmasked by those remarkable grey eyes, found herself irresistibly drawn toward and fascinated by this remarkable exponent of a past epoch. She forgot the stories she had heard regarding his past, she forgot the sinister shadow he had cast over her own life, she forgot all save that without such men as this there would and could be no history. And she was quite ignorant of the fact that her scrutiny was being returned in kind.
"Madame," he asked, "have I not met you somewhere in wide and beautiful France?"
"France is wide, as you say. I do not recollect having seen you before taking pa.s.sage on the Henri IV."
He felt instinctively that she had immediately erected a barrier between them; not from her words, but from their hidden sense. He at once turned to Anne and recounted an anecdote relating to her distinguished grandsire. But covertly he watched madame; watched the half-drooping eyelids, the shadow of a dimple in her left cheek, the curving throat, the shimmering ringlet which half obscured the perfect ear. He had seen this face before, or one as like it as the reflection of the moon upon placid water is like the moon itself. Now and then he frowned, remembering his purpose. But why was this young woman, who was fit to grace a palace, why was she here incognito? Ah!
"Madame, have you met Monsieur le Chevalier du Cevennes, my son?"
Anne trembled for her friend.