Scaramouche (23 page)

"Among several others," said André-Louis airily. He finished his wine, dusted some crumbs of cake from his neckcloth, and got up. "I am relieved to have been so readily understood."

The Citizen Junius rose in his turn; his brother followed his example.

"You do not trouble," said the elder Frey, "to seek my, answer."

"Your answer? But your answer to what? I have asked no question, citizen. I have merely indicated a situation."

"And you are not even curious to know how I shah act in it?"

"I place my trust entirely in your intelligence," said the affable André-Louis and took his leave with many expressions of the satisfaction it had afforded him to become acquainted with two such exemplary patriots as the brothers Frey.

"That's a damned impudent fellow." said Junius to Emmanuel when André-Louis had gone.

"In these days," said Emmanuel, "only those who are safe venture to be impudent. And those who are safe are always dangerous. I think we should be careful with the Citizen Moreau. What shall you do, Junius?"

"Ah! What?" wondered Junius.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE GENIUS OF D'ENTRAGUES

André-louis' heart would never have been as light as it was whilst he pursued his preparations for the blasting of republican reputations as an important preliminary to the blasting of the Republic itself and the restoration of the House of Bourbon if he could have guessed how the events at Hamm were conspiring towards the blasting of his own future.

We have seen the Count of Provence persuaded that it was his duty to bear what consolation he could to Mademoiselle de Kercadiou for the bereavement which the service of himself and his house had brought to her; and we have seen the diligent and far-sighted Count d'Entragues confirming Monsieur in that persuasion.

It was a duty to which Monsieur devoted himself assiduously and his assiduity increased in a measure as the necessity for it mercifully diminished.

Once the shock had spent itself and the realization of her loss had fully overtaken her, Mademoiselle de Kercadiou braced herself to face life again as bravely as she might. The abiding wound to her spirit betrayed itself only in a wistfulness that served to heighten the appeal of her delicate loveliness and the more violently to stir those longings secretly harboured by the Regent. His attendance upon her became soon a daily habit. Daily he would escape from his labours of correspondence, so that he might wait upon Mademoiselle de Kercadiou, leaving his affairs more and more to d'Avaray and d'Entragues, and doing little besides holding the balance between the continual disagreements of these two. Almost daily now, when the weather was fine, the inhabitants of Hamm would meet the portly, strutting Regent of France and the slender golden-headed Mademoiselle de Kercadiou walking abroad alone like any bourgeois couple.

Just as d'Entragues' confidence in the issue increased, so did d'Avaray's misgivings grow heavier. His uneasiness on the score of his friend Madame de Balbi drove him to write strongly to her in Brussels where she was installed. But the Countess, a child of pleasure who had found a pretext to depart from Turin because of the dullness of the court there, was not moved to quit the gaieties of Brussels for the monastic severity and penury of life at Hamm. Besides, her confidence in herself would not admit the uneasiness for which d'Avaray's letters so insistently stressed the reason. Let Monsieur by all means beguile the tedium of existence at Hamm by amusing himself with the insipidities of the Lord of Gavrillac's niece. Madame de Balbi would know how to resume her empire when life at the Regent's side demanded fewer sacrifices than those imposed by his Westphalian environment. She was not quite so explicit as this in her letters. But d'Avaray read the plain truth more and more clearly between the lines, and he was distressed. He did not share her opinion that Mademoiselle de Kercadiou was insipid, and it was quite evident to him that Monsieur was very far from sharing it. There were signs actually that Monsieur was discussing affairs of State with the Lord of Gavrillac's little niece, and than this nothing could have afforded a graver index of the depth of his feelings for her.

It was perhaps less significant than d'Avaray supposed. It was merely a measure of subtle flattery, which the Regent, rendered crafty by the unusual difficulties of the approach, was employing so as to avoid alarming Mademoiselle de Kercadiou.

Just as everything, was flowing precisely as d'Entragues could wish, the courier from Pomelles, who had left Paris within some hours of Langéac's departure, arrived at Hamm a fortnight behind time, having been delayed on the way by a fall from his horse which had left him suffering from concussion. Fortunately for him he was across the frontier when this happened, and so he remained in friendly hands, his papers untouched, until he was in case to resume his journey.

These papers delivered to Monsieur d'Entragues gave this subtle gentleman a bad quarter of an hour. There was the news in the letter from Pomelles of the survival of this Moreau, whom they had so confidently been accounting dead, and, what was worse, there was the letter from this cursed Moreau himself to Mademoiselle de Kercadiou. But d'Entragues rang for a servant, and into his hands delivered the newly arrived and dusty courier.

"You will be weary, monsieur," he said to the latter. "You will find a room at your disposal above-stairs. You are at liberty to rest. What food you require will be sent to you there. I must ask you in the interests of State not to leave that room or hold conversation of any kind with any person until I send for you again."

Monsieur at that very moment was at one of his daily promenades with Mademoiselle. Monsieur de Kercadiou was at work in a neighbouring chamber in the chalet. D'Entragues sat frowning, considering the sealed letter from Moreau, which had been enclosed in the package from his Paris agent. This was a damned inconvenient resurrection. He turned the letter over; he studied the seal; he was moved to break it, and see what the fellow found to say to his lady; but he resisted the temptation. He would wait until Monsieur returned. For whatever he did, and he began to have a shrewd suspicion of what it would be, he must have Monsieur's authority.

Meanwhile Monsieur, with little suspicion indeed of the disagreeable surprise awaiting him at home, was chatting amiably, insinuatingly, with the gentle lady, who, pitying his loneliness and his misfortunes, was so ready to afford him the companionship he sought with such condescending deference.

"You do not know, child," he was saying in that thick, purring voice of his, "what strength and comfort I gather from our discussions; how they help me in my difficulties."

It was not by any means the first time that he had used some such words during the last of the three weeks that were sped since Langéac's return with his sinister tidings.

They chanced to be walking by the Lippe. It was the first time they had gone that way, by the very path which she and André-Louis had trodden in February last, when the countryside had lain white in the grip of frost. Now all was vernal green, the meadows jewelled with flowers, the shrunken river flowing cool and clear in the shade of willows heavy with feathery leaf.

Mademoiselle de Kercadiou, in a long coat of dark green with wide lapels and a broad black hat to render her whiteness the more startling, stepped daintily beside the sluggish portly prince whose height was shorter than her own by an inch or so.

"These talks have helped me, too," she said thoughtfully.

He checked, and turned to her, leaning upon his gold-headed cane. They were quite alone here in the meadows by the river, within sight of that very stile where André-Louis and she had paused on that day of their last week together. High overhead, invisible in the blue, a lark was pouring out its liquid song.

"If I could believe that, my dear child!"

Wistfully she smiled upon the sudden gravity of his florid countenance.

"Is it difficult to believe? In your preoccupations, monseigneur, I have found some refuge from my own."

"Do you conceive the joy with which I hear you say it? It makes me of some account, of some use in this world where nowadays there seems to be no place for me or need of me."

"You exaggerate, monseigneur, to express the kindness you have always shown me."

"Kindness? How inadequately that describes my feelings, Aline. I have studied in my mind how I might serve you. Hence the inexpressible satisfaction borne me by what you have now said. If it could but be given to me to comfort you, to bring you abiding consolation, then I should be the proudest, the happiest of men."

"You should be that, monseigneur, who are the noblest." Her gentle eyes considered him almost in wonder. He winced a little under that clear regard. The colour deepened in his cheeks.

"I had not deserved," she added, "so great a condescension."

"What have you not deserved of me, Aline?" He took her arm in the grip of his plump white fingers. "What is there that you may not command of me? Of my love for you?"

Watching her keenly with his full eyes, that one handsome feature of his otherwise dull face, he read in her troubled glance that he had been premature. This delicious fruit had not yet ripened under the covert ardour of his cautious wooing. She was timid as a gazelle, and he scared her by the clumsiness of his approach. He perceived the necessity to restore at once her confidence. Gently, but resolutely, she was disengaging her arm from his grip, a slight contact, yet one which did not make it easier for him now to retreat. But retreat he did in the best, order he could summon. Looking deep into her eyes, he smiled very gently.

"You suspect perhaps that I but indulge an idle gallantry. My dear! My affection for you is very real, very deep and very sincere, as it was for your Uncle Etienne whose memory I shall ever cherish."

This, of course, gave a new meaning to his declaration, and in effacing the suspicion she had conceived made her almost ashamed of it. Hence a reaction in his favour which brought a flush to her cheeks and made her falter in her reply.

"Monseigneur, you do me a great honour; too great an honour."

"No honour could be too great for you. I am but a prince by birth, whilst you are a princess by nature: noble in your soul with a nobility loftier than any that is of human conferring."

"Monseigneur, you leave me confused."

"Your modesty does that. You have never realized yourself. That is the way of rare natures such as yours. It is only the worthless who harbour notions of their worth."

She battled feebly against this tide of flattery. "Monseigneur, your own nobility lends a kindliness to your vision. There is little worth in me."

"You shall not decry yourself. With me it is idle. I have too much evidence of your goodness. Who but a saint would so compassionate my loneliness as to give so freely of herself to mitigate it?"

"What are you saying, monseigneur!"

"Is it less than the truth? Am I not lonely? Lonely and unfortunate, almost friendless nowadays, reduced to poverty, living in sordidness?" Thus he stirred her sympathy which was ever at the call of those in need of it, her sweet womanly instinct to solace the afflicted. "It is in such times as these that we know our true friends. In this hour I can count my own upon the fingers of one hand. I live here upon grudging charity, at once a prince and a pauper, forsaken by all but a very faithful few. Can I do less than repay in love the disinterested devotion which I can scarcely contemplate without tears?"

They were retracing now their steps, moving slowly along the river's brink, Mine deeply stirred by his lament and flattered to be the recipient of his princely confidences, to have him lay bare to her his secret and humiliating thoughts. She was conscious, too, that these confidences were forging a stronger link between them. As they moved, he continued to talk, passing to still deeper intimacies.

"A prince's is never an enviable estate, even in the happiest times. He is courted not for himself but for that which his favour can bestow. He is ever in danger of mistaking sycophancy for love; and if that happens which tests the relations he has formed, if there comes a time when he must depend upon the merits of his own self rather than upon the glitter of his rank, bitterness is commonly his portion. How many of those whom I trusted most, whose affection I deemed most sincere, stand by me to-day? There was one of whom I believed that she would have remained at my side when all others had forsaken me. Where is she now? Her affection for me when put to the test is not strong enough to envisage poverty."

She knew that he alluded to Madame de Balbi, and at the pathos in his voice her pity for him deepened.

"Is it not possible, monseigneur, that, aware of your straitened circumstances, your friends hesitate to encroach upon them?"

"How charitable you are! How everything you say reveals a fresh beauty of your soul! I have sought to flatter my vanity by just such a conclusion. But the evidences deny it." He sighed ponderously. Then his liquid eyes sought her countenance and he smiled sadly into it. "Ah, but there are consolations. Your friendship, my dear Aline, is the greatest of them. I hope that I am not destined to lose it with the rest."

Her eyes were misty. "Since you value this poor friendship of mine, monseigneur, you may be sure that it will never fail you."

"My dear!" he said, and paused to take her hand, and bear it to his lips.

Thus he effected in good order his retreat from a position towards which he had prematurely advanced. He stood once more upon the solid ground of friendship thence later, to direct an attack for which experience told him that the opportunity would not now be indefinitely postponed. And in the meantime her own sympathy should be employed to undermine her defences.

But back at the chalet that evening he was to be informed by the waiting d'Entragues of that other obstacle which he had been accounting so definitely surmounted.

"He lives!" Monsieur had cried, and in that cry, in its pitch, and the suddenly disordered appearance of him, he had completely betrayed himself to his astute minister.

"Not only does he live; but he is well and active."

"My God!" said the Regent, and sat down heavily, taking his head in his hands. There was a pause.

"I have a letter from him for Mademoiselle de Kercadiou," d'Entragues softly informed him. Monsieur said nothing. He sat on, like a man stunned. D'Entragues waited in silence, watching him, the ghost of a smile at the corners of his tight mouth. At last: "Does your highness desire it to be delivered?" he asked.