Suzanne shuddered, brave girl though she was.
"Unless you can conceive thoughts of a pleasanter complexion," she said, "I should prefer your silence, M. d"Ombreval."
He laughed in his disdainful way--for he disdained all things, excepting his own person and safety--but before he could make any answer they were joined by the Marquis and his son.
In the courtyard the horseman was now dismounting, and a moment or two later they heard the fall of feet, upon the stairs. A soldier threw open the door, and holding it, announced:
"The Citizen-deputy La Boulaye, Commissioner of the National Convention to the army of General Dumouriez."
"This," mocked Ombreval, to whom the name meant nothing, "is the representative of a Government of strict equality, and he is announced with as much pomp as was ever an amba.s.sador of his murdered Majesty"s."
Then a something out of the common in the att.i.tude of his companions arrested his attention. Mademoiselle was staring with eyes full of the most ineffable amazement, her lips parted, and her cheeks whiter than the sleepless night had painted them. The Marquis was scowling in a surprise that seemed no whit less than his daughter"s, his head thrust forward, and his jaw fallen. The Vicomte, too, though in a milder degree, offered a countenance that was eloquent with bewilderment. From this silent group Ombreval turned his tired eyes to the door and took stock of the two men that had entered. One of these was Captain Juste, the officer in command of the military; the other was a tall man, with a pale face, an aquiline nose, a firm jaw, and eyes that were very stern--either of habit or because they now rested upon the man who four years ago had used him so cruelly.
He stood a moment in the doorway as if enjoying the amazement which had been sown by his coming. There was no mistaking him. It was the same La Boulaye of four years ago, and yet it was not quite the same. The face had lost its boyishness, and the strenuous life he had lived had scored it with lines that gave him the semblance of a greater age than was his.
The old, poetic melancholy that had dwelt in the secretary"s countenance was now changed to strength and firmness. Although little known as yet to the world at large, the great ones of the Revolution held him in high esteem, and looked upon him as a power to be reckoned with in the near future. Of Robespierre--who, it was said, had discovered him and brought him to Paris--he was the protege and more than friend, a protection and friendship this which in "93 made any man almost omnipotent in France.
He was dressed in a black riding-suit, relieved only by the white neck-cloth and the tricolour sash of office about his waist. He removed his c.o.c.ked hat, beneath which the hair was tied in a club with the same scrupulous care as of old.
Slowly he advanced into the salon, and his sombre eyes pa.s.sed from the Marquis to Mademoiselle. As they rested upon her some of the sternness seemed to fade from their glance. He found in her a change almost as great as that which she had found in him. The lighthearted, laughing girl of nineteen, who had scorned his proffered love when he had wooed her that April morning to such disastrous purpose, was now ripened into a stately woman of three-and-twenty. He had thought his boyish pa.s.sion dead and buried, and often in the years that were gone had he smiled softly to himself at the memory of his ardour, as we smile at the memory of our youthful follies. Yet now, upon beholding her again, so wondrously transformed, so tall and straight, and so superbly beautiful, he experienced an odd thrill and a weakening of the stern purpose that had brought him to Bellecour.
Then his glance moved on. A moment it rested on the supercilious, high-bred countenance of the Vicomte d"Ombreval, standing with so proprietary an air beside her, then it pa.s.sed to the kindly old face of Des Cadoux, and he recalled how this gentleman had sought to stay the flogging of him. An instant it hovered on the Marquis, who--haggard of face and with his arm in a sling--was observing him with an expression in which scorn and wonder were striving for the mastery; it seemed to shun the gaze of the pale-faced Vicomte, whose tutor he had been in the old days of his secretaryship, and full and stern it returned at last to settle upon the Marquis.
"Citizen Bellecour," he said, and his voice, like his face, seemed to have changed since last the Marquis had heard it, and to have grown more deep and metallic, "you may marvel, now that you behold the Commissioner who sent a company of soldiers to rescue you and your Chateau from the hands of the mob last night, what purpose I sought to serve by extending to you a protection which none of your order merits, and you least of any, in my eyes."
"The times may have wrought sad and overwhelming changes," answered the Marquis, with cold contempt, "but it has not yet so utterly abased us that we bring ourselves to speculate upon the purposes of the rabble."
A faint crimson flush crept into Caron"s sallow cheeks.
"Indeed, I see how little you have changed!" he answered bitterly. "You are of those that will not learn, Citizen. The fault lies here," he added, tapping his head, "and it will remain until we remove the ones with the other. But now for the business that brings me," he proceeded, more briskly. "Four years ago, Citizen Bellecour, you laid your whip across my face in the woods out yonder, and when I spoke of seeking satisfaction action you threatened me with your grooms. I will not speak of your other brutalities on that same day. I will confine myself to that first affront."
"Be brief, sir," cried the Marquis offensively. "Since you have the force to compel us to listen to you, let me beg that you will at least display the generosity of detaining us no longer than you need."
"I will be as brief as it lies within the possibility of words,"
answered Caron coldly. "I am come, Citizen Bellecour, to demand of you to-day the satisfaction which four years ago you refused me."
"Of me?" cried the Marquis.
"Through the person of your son, the Vicomte, as I asked for it four years ago," said Caron. "You are am old man, Citizen, and I do not fight old men."
"I am yet young enough to cut you into ribbons, you dog, if I were minded to dishonour myself by meeting you." And turning to Ombreval for sympathy, he vented a low laugh of contemptuous wonder.
"Insolence!" sneered Ombreval sympathetically, whilst Mademoiselle stood looking on with cheeks that were growing paler, for that this event would end badly for either her father or her brother she never doubted.
"Citizen Bellecour," said Caron, still very coldly, "you have heard what I propose, as have you also, Citizen-vicomte."
"For myself," began the youth "I am--"
"Silence, Armand!" his father commanded, laying a hand upon his sleeve. "Understand me, citizen-deputy, or citizen-commissioner, or citizen-blackguard or whatever you call your vile self, you are come on a fruitless journey to Bellecour. Neither I nor my son is so lost to the duty which we owe our rank as to so much as dream of acceding to your preposterous request. I think, sir, that you had been better advised to have left the mob to its work last night, if you but restrained it for this purpose."
"Is that your last word?" asked La Boulaye, still calmly weathering that storm of insults.
"My very last, sir."
"There are more ways than one of taking satisfaction for that affront, Citizen Bellecour," rejoined La Boulaye, "and if the course which I now pursue should prove more distasteful to you than that which I last suggested, the blame of it must rest with you." He turned to the bluecoat at the door. "Citizen-soldier, my whip."
There was a sudden movement among the aristocrats--a horrified recoiling--and even Bellecour was shaken out of his splendid arrogance.
"Insolent cur!" exclaimed Ombreval with withering scorn; "to what lengths is presumption driving you?"
"To the length of a horsewhip," answered La Boulaye pleasantly.
He received the whip from the hands of the soldier and he now advanced towards Bellecour, unwinding the lash as he came. Ombreval barred his way with an oath.
"By Heaven: you shall not!" he cried.
"Shall not?" echoed La Boulaye, his lips curling. "You had best stand aside--you that are steeped in musk and fierceness." And before the stern and threatening contempt of La Boulaye"s glance the young n.o.bleman fell back. But his place was taken by the Vicomte de Bellecour, who advanced to confront Caron.
"Monsieur la Boulaye," he announced, "I am ready and willing to meet you." And considering the grim alternative with which the Republicans had threatened him, the old Marquis had not the courage to interfere again.
"Ah!" It was an exclamation of satisfaction from the Commissioner. "I imagined that you would change your minds. I shall await you, Citizen, in the garden in five minutes" time."
"I shall not keep you waiting, Monsieur," was the Vicomte"s answer.
Very formally La Boulaye bowed and left the room accompanied by the officer and followed by the soldier.
"Mon Dieu!" gasped the Marquise, fanning herself as the door closed after the Republicans. "Open me a window or I shall stifle! How the place reeks with them. I am a calm woman, Messieurs, but, on my honour, had he addressed any of you by his odious t.i.tle of "citizen" again, I swear that I had struck him with my own hands."
There were some that laughed. But Mademoiselle was not of those.
Her eyes travelled to her brother"s pale face and weakly frame, and her glance was such a glance as we bend upon the beloved dead, for in him she saw one who was going inevitably to his death.
CHAPTER VII. LA BOULAYE DISCHARGES A DEBT
Along the northern side of the Chateau ran a terrace bordered by a red sandstone bal.u.s.trade, and below this the Italian garden, so called perhaps in consequence of the oddly clipped box-trees, its only feature that suggested Italy. At the far end of this garden there was a strip of even turf that might have been designed for a fencing ground, and which Caron knew of old. Thither he led Captain Juste, and there in the pale sunshine of that February morning they awaited the arrival of the Vicomte and his sponsor.
But the minutes went by and still they waited-five, ten, fifteen minutes elapsed, yet no one came. Juste was on the point of returning within to seek the reason of this delay when steps sounded on the terrace above.
But they were accompanied by the rustle of a gown, and presently it was Mademoiselle who appeared before them. The two men eyed her with astonishment, which in the case of La Boulaye, was tempered by another feeling.
"Monsieur la Boulaye," said she, her glance wandering towards the Captain, "may I speak with you alone?"
Outwardly impa.s.sive the Commissioner bowed.
"Your servant, Citoyenne," said he, removing his c.o.c.ked hat. "Juste, will you give us leave?"
"You will find me on the terrace when you want me, Citizen-deputy,"