"Have you anything to say, Monsieur ?" asked Brother Jacques.
The marquis stirred and drew his hand across his lips. "Where is Monsieur le Comte?"
"He is waiting in the hall. Shall I call . . . ?"
"Wait!" interrupted the marquis. Presently he cleared his throat and said in a thin, dry voice: "Tell Monsieur le Comte for me that I am sleeping and may not be disturbed."
"Monsieur," said Jehan that night, "pardon, but do you ever . . . do you ever think of Margot Bourdaloue?"
The marquis raised himself as though to hurl a curse at his luckless servant. But all he said was; "Sometimes, Jehan, sometimes!"
CHAPTER XXV
OF ORIOLES AND WOMAN"S PREROGATIVES
"Tell Monsieur le Comte for me that I am sleeping and may not be disturbed!"
All through the long night the marquis"s thin, piercing voice rang in the Chevalier"s ears, and rang with sinister tone. He could find no ease upon his pillow, and he stole quietly forth into the night. He wandered about the upper town, round the cathedral, past the Ursulines, under the frowning walls of the citadel, followed his shadow in the moonlight and went before it. Those grim words had severed the last delicate thread which bound father and son. To have humiliated himself! To have left open in his armor a place for such a thrust! He had gone with charity and forgiveness, to be repulsed! He had held forth his hand, to find the other"s withdrawn!
"Tell Monsieur le Comte for me that I am sleeping and may not be disturbed!"
Mockery! And yet this same father had taken up the sword to drive it through a man who had laughed. Only G.o.d knew; for neither the son understood the father nor the father the son. Well, so be it. He was now without weight upon his shoulders; he was conscience free; he had paid his obligations, obligations far beyond his allotted part. It was inevitable that their paths should separate. There had been too many words; there was still too much pride.
"Tell Monsieur le Comte for me that I am sleeping and may not be disturbed!"
He had stood there in the corridor and writhed as this blade entered his soul and turned and turned. Rage and chagrin had choked him, leaving him utterly speechless. So be it. Forevermore it was to be the house divided. . . . It was after two o"clock when the Chevalier went back to his bed. The poet was in slumber, and his face looked careworn in repose.
"Poor lad! He is not happy, either. Only the clod knows content as a recompense for his poverty. Good night, Madame; to-morrow, to-morrow, and we shall see!"
And the morrow came, the rarest gem in all the diadem of days. There was a ripple on the water; a cloudless sky; fields of corn waving their ta.s.seled heads and the broad leaf of the tobacco plant trembling, trembling.
"What!" cried Victor in surprise; "you have a new feather in your hat?"
"Faith, lad," said the Chevalier, "the old plume was a shabby one. But I have not destroyed it; too many fond remembrances cling to it. How often have I doffed that plume at court, in the gardens, on the balconies and on the king"s highways! And who would suspect, to look at it now, that it had ever dusted the mosaics at the Vatican? And there have been times when I flung it on the green behind the Luxembourg, my doublet beside it."
"Ah, yes; we used to have an occasional affair." And Victor nodded as one who knew the phrase. "But a new feather here? Who will notice it?
Pray, glance at this suit of mine! I give it one month"s service, and then the Indian"s clout. I can"t wear those skins. Pah!"
"Examine this feather," the Chevalier requested.
"White heron, as I live! You are, then, about to seek the war-path?"
laughing.
"Or the path which leads to it. I am going a-courting."
"Ah!"
"Yes. Heigho! How would you like a pheasant, my poet, and a bottle of Mignon"s bin of "39?"
"Paris!" Victor smacked his lips drolly.
"Or a night at Voisin"s, with dice and the green board?"
"Paris!"
"Or a romp with the girls along the quays?"
"Horns of Panurge! I like this mood."
"It"s a man"s mood. I am thinking of the chateau of oak and maple I shall some day build along some river height. What a fireplace I shall have, and what cellars! Somehow, Paris no longer calls to me."
"To me," said the poet, "it is ever calling, calling. Shall I see my beloved Paris again? Who can say?"
"Mazarin will not live forever."
"But here it is so lonesome; a desert. And you will make a fine seigneur, you with your fastidious tastes, love of fine clothes and music. Look at yourself now! A silk shirt in tatters, tawdry buckskin, a new hero"s feather, and a dingy pair of moccasins. And you are going a-courting. What, fortune?"
""Tis all the same."
"So you love her?" quietly.
"Yes, lad, I love her; and I am determined to learn this day the worth of loving."
"Take care," warned the poet.
"Victor, some day you will be going back to Paris. Tell them at court how, of a summer"s morn, Monsieur le Chevalier du Cevennes went forth to conquest."
"Hark!" said Victor. "I hear a blackbird." He sorted his papers, for he was writing. "I will write an ode on your venture. What shall I call it?"
"Call it "Hazards," comrade; for this day I put my all in the leather cup and make but a single throw. Who is madame?"
"Ask her," rather sharply.
"She is worthy of a man"s love?"
"Worthy!" Victor half rose from his chair. "Worthy of being loved?
Yes, Paul, she is worthy. But are you sure that you love her?"
"I have loved her for two years."
"Two years," repeated the poet. "She is a strange woman."
"But you know her!"
"Yes, I know her; as we know a name and the name of a history."