The Trampling of the Lilies.
by Rafael Sabatini.
CHAPTER I. MONSIEUR THE SECRETARY
It was spring at Bellecour--the spring of 1789, a short three months before the fall of the Bastille came to give the n.o.bles pause, and make them realise that these new philosophies, which so long they have derided, were by no means the idle vapours they had deemed them.
By the brook, plashing its glittering course through the park of Bellecour, wandered La Boulaye, his long, lean, figure clad with a sombreness that was out of harmony in that sunlit, vernal landscape.
But the sad-hued coat belied that morning a heart that sang within his breast as joyously as any linnet of the woods through which he strayed.
That he was garbed in black was but the outward indication of his clerkly office, for he was secretary to the most n.o.ble the Marquis de Fresnoy de Bellecour, and so clothed in the livery of the ink by which he lived. His face was pale and lean and thoughtful, but within his great, intelligent eyes there shone a light of new-born happiness. Under his arm he carried a volume of the new philosophies which Rousseau had lately given to the world, and which was contributing so vastly to the mighty change that was impending. But within his soul there dwelt in that hour no such musty subject as the metaphysical dreams of old Rousseau. His mood inclined little to the "Discourses upon the Origin of Inequality" which his elbow hugged to his side. Rather was it a mood of song and joy and things of light, and his mind was running on a string of rhymes which mentally he offered up to his divinity. A high-born lady was she, daughter to his lordly employer, the most n.o.ble Marquis of Bellecour. And he a secretary, a clerk! Aye, but a clerk with a great soul, a secretary with a great belief in the things to come, which in that musty tome beneath his arm were dimly prophesied.
And as he roamed beside the brook, his feet treading the elastic, velvety turf, and crushing heedlessly late primrose and stray violet, his blood quickened by the soft spring breeze, fragrant with hawthorn and the smell of the moist brown earth, La Boulaye"s happiness gathered strength from the joy that on that day of spring seemed to invest all Nature. An old-world song stole from his firm lips-at first timidly, like a thing abashed in new surroundings, then in bolder tones that echoed faintly through the trees
"Si le roi m"avait donne Paris, sa grande ville, Et qui"il me fallut quitter L"amour de ma mie, Je dirais au roi Louis Reprenez votre Paris.
J"aime mieux ma mie, O gai!
J"aime mieux ma mie!"
How mercurial a thing is a lover"s heart! Here was one whose habits were of solemnity and gloomy thought turned, so joyous that he could sing aloud, alone in the midst of sunny Nature, for no better reason than that Suzanne de Bellecour had yesternight smiled as--for some two minutes by the clock--she had stood speaking with him.
"Presumptuous that I am," said he to the rivulet, to contradict himself the next moment. "But no; the times are changing. Soon we shall be equals all, as the good G.o.d made us, and--"
He paused, and smiled pensively. And as again the memory of her yesternight"s kindness rose before him, his smile broadened; it became a laugh that went ringing down the glade, scaring a noisy thrush into silence and sending it flying in affright across the scintillant waters of the brook. Then that hearty laugh broke sharply off, as, behind him, the sweetest voice in all the world demanded the reason of this mad-sounding mirth.
La Boulaye"s breath seemed in that instant to forsake him and he grew paler than Nature and the writer"s desk had fashioned him. Awkwardly he turned and made her a deep bow.
"Mademoiselle! You--you see that you surprised me!" he faltered, like a fool. For how should he, whose only comrades had been books, have learnt to bear himself in the company of a woman, particularly when she belonged to the ranks of those whom--despite Rousseau and his other dear philosophers--he had been for years in the habit of accounting his betters?
"Why, then, I am glad, Monsieur, that I surprised you in so gay a humour--for, my faith, it is a rare enough thing."
"True, lady," said he foolishly, yet politely agreeing with her, "it is a rare thing." And he sighed--"Helas!"
At that the laughter leapt from her young lips, and turned him hot and cold as he stood awkwardly before her.
"I see that we shall have you sad at the thought of how rare is happiness, you that but a moment back were--or so it seemed--so joyous.
Or is it that my coming has overcast the sky of your good humour?" she demanded archly.
He blushed like a school-girl, and strenuously protested that it was not so. In his haste he fell headlong into the sin of hastiness--as was but natural--and said perhaps too much.
"Your coming, Mademoiselle?" he echoed. "Nay but even had I been sad, your coming must have dispelled my melancholy as the coming of the sun dispels the mist upon the mountains."
"A poet?" She mocked him playfully, with a toss of black curls and a distracting glance of eyes blue as the heavens above them. "A poet, Monsieur, and I never suspected it, for all that I held you a great scholar. My father says you are."
"Are we not all poets at some season of our lives?" quoth he, for growing accustomed to her presence--ravished by it, indeed--his courage was returning fast and urging him beyond the limits of discretion.
"And in what season may this rhyming fancy touch us?" she asked.
"Enlighten me, Monsieur."
He smiled, responsive to her merry mood, and his courage ever swelling under the suasion of it, he answered her in a fearless, daring fashion that was oddly unlike his wont. But then, he was that day a man transformed.
"It comes, Mademoiselle, upon some spring morning such as this--for is not spring the mating season, and have not poets sung of it, inspired and conquered by it? It comes in the April of life, when in our hearts we bear the first fragrant bud of what shall anon blossom into a glorious summer bloom red as is Love"s livery and perfumed beyond all else that G.o.d has set on earth for man"s delight and thankfulness."
The intensity with which he spoke, and the essence of the speech itself, left her a moment dumb with wonder and with an incomprehensible consternation, born of some intuition not yet understood.
"And so, Monsieur, the Secretary," said she at last, a nervous laugh quivering in her first words, "from all this wondrous verbiage I am to take it that you love?"
"Aye, that I love, dear lady," he cried, his eyes so intent upon her that her glance grew timid and fell before them. And then, a second later, she could have screamed aloud in apprehension, for the book of Jean Jacques Rousseau lay tumbled in the gra.s.s where he had flung it, even as he flung himself upon his knees before her. "You may take it indeed that I love--that I love you, Mademoiselle."
The audacious words being spoken, his courage oozed away and anti-climax, followed. He paled and trembled, yet he knelt on until she should bid him rise, and furtively he watched her face. He saw it darken; he saw the brows knit; he noted the quickening breath, and in all these signs he read his doom before she uttered it.
"Monsieur, monsieur," she answered him, and sad was her tone, "to what lengths do you urge this springtime folly? Have you forgotten so your station--yes, and mine--that because I talk with you and laugh with you, and am kind to you, you must presume to speak to me in this fashion?
What answer shall I make you, Monsieur--for I am not so cruel that I can answer you as you deserve."
An odd thing indeed was La Boulaye"s courage. An instant ago he had felt a very coward, and had quivered, appalled by the audacity of his own words. Now that she a.s.sailed him thus, and taxed him with that same audacity, the blood of anger rushed to his face--anger of the quality that has its source in shame. In a second he was on his feet before her, towering to the full of his lean height. The words came from him in a hot stream, which for reckless pa.s.sion by far outvied his erstwhile amatory address.
"My station?" he cried, throwing wide his arms. "What fault lies in my station? I am a secretary, a scholar, and so, by academic right, a gentleman. Nay, Mademoiselle, never laugh; do not mock me yet. In what do you find me less a man than any of the vapid caperers that fill your father"s salon? Is not my shape as good? Are not my arms as strong, my hands as deft, my wits as keen, and my soul as true? Aye," he pursued with another wild wave of his long arms, "my attributes have all these virtues, and yet you scorn me--you scorn me because of my station, so you say!"
How she had angered him! All the pent-up gall of years against the supercilia of the cla.s.s from which she sprang surged in that moment to his lips. He bethought him now of the thousand humiliations his proud spirit had suffered at their hands when he noted the disdain with which they addressed him, speaking to him--because he was compelled to carve his living with a quill--as though he were less than mire. It was not so much against her scorn of him that he voiced his bitter grievance, but against the entire n.o.blesse of France, which denied him the right to carry a high head because he had not been born of Madame la d.u.c.h.esse, Madame la Marquise, or Madame la Comtesse. All the great thoughts of a wondrous transformation, which had been sown in him by the revolutionary philosophers he had devoured with such appreciation, welled up now, and such sc.r.a.ps of that infinity of thought as could find utterance he cast before the woman who had scorned him for his station. Presumptuous he had accounted himself--but only until she had found him so. By that the presumption, it seemed, had been lifted from him, and he held that what he had said to her of the love he bore her was no more than by virtue of his manhood he had the right to say.
She drew back before him, and shrank in some measure of fear, for he looked very fierce. Moreover, he had said things which professed him a revolutionist, and the revolutionists, whilst being a cla.s.s which she had been taught to despise and scorn, dealt, she knew, in a violence which it might be ill to excite.
"Monsieur," she faltered, and with her hand she clutched at her riding-habit of green velvet, as if preparing to depart, "you are not yourself. I am beyond measure desolated that you should have so spoken to me. We have been good friends, M. La Boulaye. Let us forget this scene. Shall we?" Her tones grew seductively conciliatory.
La Boulaye half turned from her, and his smouldering eye fell upon "The Discourses" lying on the gra.s.s. He stooped and picked up the volume.
The act might have seemed symbolical. For a moment he had cast aside his creed to woo a woman, and now that she had denied him he returned to Rousseau, and gathered up the tome almost in penitence at his momentary defection.
"I am quite myself, Mademoiselle," he answered quietly. His cheeks were flushed, but beyond that, his excitement seemed to have withered. "It is you who yesternight, for one brief moment and again to-day--were not yourself, and to that you owe it that I have spoken to you as I have done."
Between these two it would seem as the humour of the one waned, that of the other waxed. Her glance kindled anew at his last words.
"I?" she echoed. "I was not myself? What are you saying, Monsieur the Secretary?"
"Last night, and again just now, you were so kind, you--you smiled so sweetly--"
"Mon Dieu!" she exclaimed, angrily interrupting him. "See what you are for all your high-sounding vaunts of yourself and your attributes! A woman may not smile upon you, may not say one kind word to you, but you must imagine you have made a conquest. Ma foi, you and yours do not deserve to be treated as anything but va.s.sals. When we show you a kindness, see how you abuse it. We extend to you our little finger and you instantly lay claim to the whole arm. Because last night I permitted myself to exchange a jest with you, because I chance to be kind to you again to-day, you repay me with insults!"
"Stop!" he cried, rousing himself once more. "That is too much to say, Mademoiselle. To tell a woman that you love her is never to insult her.
To be loved is never to be slighted. Upon the meanest of His creatures it is enjoined to love the same G.o.d whom the King loves, and there is no insult to G.o.d in professing love for Him. Would you make a woman more than that?"
"Monsieur, you put questions I have no mind to answer; you suggest a discussion I have no inclination to pursue. For you and me let it suffice that I account myself affronted by your words, your tone, and your manner. You drive me to say these things; by your insistence you compel me to be harsh. We will end this matter here and now, Monsieur, and I will ask you to understand that I never wish it reopened, else shall I be forced to seek protection at the hands of my father or my brother."
"You may seek it now, Suzanne," quoth a voice from the thicket at her back, a voice which came to startle both of them though in different ways. Before they had recovered from their surprise the Marquis de Bellecour stood before them. He was a tall man of some fifty years of age, but so powerful of frame and so scrupulous in dress that he might have conveyed an impression of more youth. His face, though handsome in a high-bred way, was puffed and of an unhealthy yellow. But the eyes were as keen as the mouth was voluptuous, and in his carefully dressed black hair there were few strands of grey.
He came slowly forward, and his lowering glance wandered from his daughter to his secretary in inquiry. At last--
"Well?" he demanded. "What is the matter?"