"You speak French not like a Breton or Norman," she added. "What
is your province?"
"I am an Auvergnian."
She said no more, but motioned to me, enjoining silence also by
a sign, and I stood with her beside the panel. Before it was a
piece of tapestry which was mere gauze in one place, and I could
see through and hear perfectly. The room we were in was at least
four feet higher than the other, and we looked down on its
occupants.
"Presently, holy Mother," said I, "all shall be told true to
you, if you wish it. It is not your will to watch and hear; it
is because you love the lady. But I love her, too, and I am to
be trusted. It is not business for such as you."
She saw my implied rebuke, and said, as I thought a little abashed,
"You will tell me all? And if he would take her forth, give me alarm
in the room opposite yonder door, and stay them, and--"
"Stay them, holy Mother, at the price of my life. I have the
honour of her family in my hands."
She looked at me gravely, and I assumed a peasant openness of
look and honesty. She was deceived completely, and, without further
speech, she stepped to the door like a ghost and was gone. I never
saw a human being so noiseless, so uncanny. Our talk had been
carried on silently, and I had closed the panel quietly, so that we
could not be heard by Alixe or Doltaire. Now I was alone, to see
and hear my wife in speech with my enemy, the man who had made a
strong, and was yet to make a stronger fight to unseat me in her
affections.
There was a moment's compunction, in which I hesitated to see
this meeting; but there was Alixe's safety to be thought on, and
what might he not here disclose of his intentions!--knowing which,
I should act with judgment, and not in the dark. I trusted Alixe,
though I knew well that this hour would see the great struggle in
her between this scoundrel and myself. I knew that he had ever had
a sort of power over her, even while she loathed his character;
that he had a hundred graces I had not, place which I had not, an
intellect that ever delighted me, and a will like iron when it was
called into action. I thought for one moment longer ere I moved
the panel. My lips closed tight, and I felt a pang at my heart.
Suppose, in this conflict, this singular man, acting on a nature
already tried beyond reason, should bend it to his will, to which
it was, in some radical ways, inclined? Well, if that should be,
then I would go forth and never see her more. She must make her
choice out of her own heart and spirit, and fight this fight alone,
and having fought, and lost or won, the result should be final,
should stand, though she was my wife, and I was bound in honour to
protect her from all that might invade her loyalty, to cherish her
through all temptation and distress. But our case was a strange one,
and it must be dealt with according to its strangeness--our only
guides our consciences. There were no precedents to meet our needs;
our way had to be hewn out of a noisome, pathless wood. I made up my
mind: I would hear and see all. So I slid the panel softly, and put
my eyes to the tapestry. How many times did I see, in the next hour,
my wife's eyes upraised to this very tapestry, as if appealing to
the Madonna upon it! How many times did her eyes look into mine
without knowing it! And more than once Doltaire followed her
glance, and a faint smile passed over his face, as if he saw and
was interested in the struggle in her, apart from his own passion
and desires.
When first I looked in, she was standing near a tall high-backed
chair, in almost the same position as on the day when Doltaire told
me of Braddock's death, accused me of being a spy, and arrested me.
It gave me, too, a thrill to see her raise her handkerchief to her
mouth as if to stop a cry, as she had done then, the black sleeve
falling away from her perfect rounded arm, now looking almost like
marble against the lace. She held her handkerchief to her lips for
quite a minute; and indeed it covered more than a little of her
face, so that the features most showing were her eyes, gazing at
Doltaire with a look hard to interpret, for there seemed in it
trouble, entreaty, wonder, resistance, and a great sorrow--no fear,
trepidation, or indirectness.
His disturbing words were these: "To-night I am the Governor of
this country. You once doubted my power--that was when you would
save your lover from death. I proved it in that small thing--I saved
him. Well, when you saw me carried off to the Bastile--it looked
like that--my power seemed to vanish: is it not so? We have talked
of this before, but now is a time to review all things again. And
once more I say I am the Governor of New France. I have had the
commission in my hands ever since I came back. But I have spoken of
it to no one--except your lover."
"My husband!" she said steadily, crushing the handkerchief in
her hand, which now rested upon the chair-arm.
"Well, well, your husband--after a fashion. I did not care to
use this as an argument. I chose to win you by personal means
alone, to have you give yourself to Tinoir Doltaire because you
set him before any other man. I am vain, you see; but then vanity
is no sin when one has fine aspirations, and I aspire to you!"
She made a motion with her hand. "Oh, can you not spare me this
to-day of all days in my life--your Excellency?"
"Let it be plain 'monsieur,'" he answered. "I can not spare you,
for this day decides all. As I said, I desired you. At first my
wish was to possess you at any cost: I was your hunter only. I am
still your hunter, but in a different way. I would rather have you
in my arms than save New France; and with Montcalm I could save it.
Vaudreuil is a blunderer and a fool; he has sold the country. But
what ambition is that? New France may come and go, and be forgotten,
and you and I be none the worse. There are other provinces to
conquer. But for me there is only one province, and I will lift my
standard there, and build a grand chateau of my happiness there.
That is my hope, and that is why I come to conquer it, and not the
English. Let the English go--all save one, and he must die. Already
he is dead; he died to-day at the altar of the cathedral--"
"No, no, no!" broke in Alixe, her voice low and firm.
"But yes," he said; "but yes, he is dead to you forever. The
Church has said so; the state says so; your people say so; race and
all manner of good custom say so; and I, who love you better--yes,
a hundred times better than he--say so."
She made a hasty, deprecating gesture with her hand. "Oh, carry
this old song elsewhere," she said, "for I am sick of it." There
were now both scorn and weariness in her tone.
He had a singular patience, and he resented nothing. "I understand,"
he went on, "what it was sent your heart his way. He came to you
when you were yet a child, before you had learnt the first secret
of life. He was a captive, a prisoner, he had a wound got in fair
fighting, and I will do him the credit to say he was an honest man;
he was no spy."
She looked up at him with a slight flush, almost of gratitude.
"I know that well," she returned. "I knew there was other cause
than spying at the base of all ill treatment of him. I know that
you, you alone, kept him prisoner here five long years."
"Not I; the Grande Marquise--for weighty reasons. You should not
fret at those five years, since it gave you what you have cherished
so much, a husband--after a fashion. But yet we will do him
justice: he is an honourable fighter, he has parts and graces of a
rude order. But he will never go far in life; he has no instincts
and habits common with you; it has been, so far, a compromise,
founded upon the old-fashioned romance of ill-used captive and
soft-hearted maid; the compassion, too, of the superior for the
low, the free for the caged."
"Compassion such as your Excellency feels for me, no doubt," she
said, with a slow pride.
"You are caged, but you may be free," he rejoined meaningly.
"Yes, in the same market open to him, and at the same price of
honour," she replied, with dignity.
"Will you not sit down?" he now said, motioning her to a chair
politely, and taking one himself, thus pausing before he answered
her.
I was prepared to see him keep a decorous distance from her. I
felt he was acting upon deliberation; that he was trusting to the
power of his insinuating address, his sophistry, to break down
barriers. It was as if he felt himself at greater advantage, making
no emotional demonstrations, so allaying her fears, giving her time
to think; for it was clear he hoped to master her intelligence, so
strong a part of her.
She sat down in the high-backed chair, and I noted that our
batteries began to play upon the town--an unusual thing at night.
It gave me a strange feeling--the perfect stillness of the holy
place, the quiet movement of this tragedy before me, on which
broke, with no modifying noises or turmoil, the shouting cannonade.
Nature, too, it would have seemed, had forged a mood in keeping
with the time, for there was no air stirring when we came in, and a
strange stillness had come upon the landscape. In the pause, too, I
heard a long, soft shuffling of feet in the corridor--the evening
procession from the chapel--and a slow chant:
"I am set down in a wilderness, O Lord, I am alone. If a strange
voice call, O teach me what to say; if I languish, O give me
Thy cup to drink; O strengthen Thou my soul. Lord, I am like a
sparrow far from home; O bring me to Thine honourable house.
Preserve my heart, encourage me, according to Thy truth."
The words came to us distinctly yet distantly, swelled softly,
and died away, leaving Alixe and Doltaire seated and looking at
each other. Alixe's hands were clasped in her lap.
"Your honour is above all price," he said at last in reply to
her. "But what is honour in this case of yours, in which I throw
the whole interest of my life, stake all? For I am convinced that,
losing, the book of fate will close for me. Winning, I shall begin
again, and play a part in France which men shall speak of when I
am done with all. I never had ambition for myself; for you, Alixe
Duvarney, a new spirit lives in me.... I will be honest with you.
At first I swore to cool my hot face in your bosom; and I would
have done that at any price, and yet I would have stood by that
same dishonour honourably to the end. Never in my whole life did I
put my whole heart in any--episode--of admiration: I own it, for
you to think what you will. There never was a woman whom, loving
to-day,"--he smiled--"I could not leave to-morrow with no more than
a pleasing kind of regret. Names that I ought to have recalled I
forgot; incidents were cloudy, like childish remembrances. I was
not proud of it; the peasant in me spoke against it sometimes. I
even have wished that I, half peasant, had been--"
"If only you had been all peasant, this war, this misery of
mine, had never been," she interrupted.
He nodded with an almost boyish candour. "Yes, yes, but I was half
prince also; I had been brought up, one foot in a cottage and
another in a palace. But for your misery: is it, then, misery? Need
it be so? But lift your finger and all will be well. Do you wish to
save your country? Would that be compensation? Then I will show you
the way. We have three times as many soldiers as the English, though
of poorer stuff. We could hold this place, could defeat them, if we
were united and had but two thousand men. We have fifteen thousand.
As it is now, Vaudreuil balks Montcalm, and that will ruin us in the
end unless you make it otherwise. You would be a patriot? Then shut
out forever this English captain from your heart, and open its doors
to me. To-morrow I will take Vaudreuil's place, put your father
in Bigot's, your brother in Ramesay's--they are both perfect and
capable; I will strengthen the excellent Montcalm's hands in every
way, will inspire the people, and cause the English to raise this
siege. You and I will do this: the Church will bless us, the State
will thank us; your home and country will be safe and happy, your
father and brother honoured. This, and far, far greater things I
will do for your sake."
He paused. He had spoken with a deep power, such as I knew he
could use, and I did not wonder that she paled a little, even
trembled before it.
"Will you not do it for France?" she said.
"I will not do it for France," he answered. "I will do it for
you alone. Will you not be your country's friend? It is no virtue
in me to plead patriotism--it is a mere argument, a weapon that I
use; but my heart is behind it, and it is a means to that which
you will thank me for one day. I would not force you to anything,
but I would persuade your reason, question your foolish loyalty
to a girl's mistake. Can you think that you are right? You have no
friend that commends your cause; the whole country has upbraided
you, the Church has cut you off from the man. All is against
reunion with him, and most of all your own honour. Come with me,
and be commended and blessed here, while over in France homage
shall be done you. For you I would take from his Majesty a dukedom
which he has offered me more than once."
Suddenly, with a passionate tone, he continued: "Your own heart is
speaking for me. Have I not seen you tremble when I come near you?"
He rose and came forward a step or two. "You thought it was fear
of me. It was fear, but fear of that in you which was pleading for
me, while you had sworn yourself away to him who knows not and can
never know how to love you, who has nothing kin with you in mind or
heart--an alien of poor fortune, and poorer birth and prospects."
He fixed his eyes upon her, and went on, speaking with forceful
quietness: "Had there been cut away that mistaken sense of duty to
him, which I admire unspeakably--yes, though it is misplaced--you
and I would have come to each other's arms long ago. Here in your
atmosphere I feel myself possessed, endowed. I come close to you,
and something new in me cries out simply, 'I love you, Alixe, I
love you!' See, all the damnable part of me is burned up by the
clear fire of your eyes; I stand upon the ashes, and swear that
I can not live without you. Come--come--"
He stepped nearer still, and she rose like one who moves under
some fascination, and I almost cried out, for in that moment she
was his, his--I felt it; he possessed her like some spirit; and I
understood it, for the devilish golden beauty of his voice was
like music, and he had spoken with great skill.
"Come," he said, "and know where all along your love has lain.
That other way is only darkness--the convent, which will keep you
buried, while you will never have heart for the piteous seclusion,
till your life is broken all to pieces; till you have no hope, no
desire, no love, and at last, under a cowl, you look out upon the
world, and, with a dead heart, see it as in a pale dream, and die
at last: you, born to be a wife, without a husband; endowed to be
the perfect mother, without a child; to be the admired of princes,
a moving, powerful figure to influence great men, with no salon but
the little bare cell where you pray. With me all that you should be
you will be. You have had a bad, dark dream; wake, and come into the
sun with me. Once I wished for you as the lover only; now, by every
hope I ever might have had, I want you for my wife."
He held out his arms to her and smiled, and spoke one or two low
words which I could not hear. I had stood waiting death against
the citadel wall, with the chance of a reprieve hanging between
uplifted muskets and my breast; but that suspense was less than
this, for I saw him, not moving, but standing there waiting for
her, the warmth of his devilish eloquence about him, and she
moving toward him.
"My darling," I heard him say, "come, till death...us do part,
and let no man put asunder."
She paused, and, waking from the dream, drew herself together,
as though something at her breast hurt her, and she repeated his
words like one dazed--"Let no man put asunder!"
With a look that told of her great struggle, she moved to a shrine
of the Virgin in the corner, and, clasping her hands before her
breast for a moment, said something I could not hear, before she
turned to Doltaire, who had now taken another step towards her.
By his look I knew that he felt his spell was broken; that his
auspicious moment had passed; that now, if he won her, it must
be by harsh means.
For she said: "Monsieur Doltaire, you have defeated yourself.
'Let no man put asunder' was my response to my husband's 'Whom God
hath joined,' when last I met him face to face. Nothing can alter
that while he lives, nor yet when he dies, for I have had such a
sorrowful happiness in him that if I were sure he were dead I would
never leave this holy place--never. But he lives, and I will keep my
vow. Holy Church has parted us, but yet we are not parted. You say
that to think of him now is wrong, reflects upon me. I tell you,
monsieur, that if it were a wrong a thousand times greater I would
do it. To me there can be no shame in following till I die the man
who took me honourably for his wife."
He made an impatient gesture and smiled ironically.
"Oh, I care not what you say or think," she went on. "I know not
of things canonical and legal; the way that I was married to him
is valid in his country and for his people. Bad Catholic you call
me, alas! But I am a true wife, who, if she sinned, sinned not
knowingly, and deserves not this tyranny and shame."
"You are possessed with a sad infatuation," he replied
persuasively. "You are not the first who has suffered so. It will
pass, and leave you sane--leave you to me. For you are mine; what
you felt a moment ago you will feel again, when this romantic
martyrdom of yours has wearied you."
"Monsieur Doltaire," she said, with a successful effort at
calmness, though I could see her trembling too, "it is you who are
mistaken, and I will show you how. But first: You have said often
that I have unusual intelligence. You have flattered me in that, I
doubt not, but still here is a chance to prove yourself sincere. I
shall pass by every wicked means that you took first to ruin me, to
divert me to a dishonest love (though I knew not what you meant at
the time), and, failing, to make me your wife. I shall not refer to
this base means to reach me in this sacred place, using the King's
commission for such a purpose."
"I would use it again and do more, for the same ends," he rejoined,
with shameless candour.
She waved her hand impatiently. "I pass all that by. You shall
listen to me as I have listened to you, remembering that what I say
is honest, if it has not your grace and eloquence. You say that I
will yet come to you, that I care for you and have cared for you
always, and that--that this other--is a sad infatuation. Monsieur,
in part you are right."
He came another step forward, for he thought he saw a foothold
again; but she drew back to the chair, and said, lifting her hand
against him, "No, no, wait till I have done. I say that you are
right in part. I will not deny that, against my will, you have
always influenced me; that, try as I would, your presence moved me,
and I could never put you out of my mind, out of my life. At first
I did not understand it, for I knew how bad you were. I was sure
you did evil because you loved it; that to gratify yourself you
would spare no one: a man without pity--"
"On the contrary," he interrupted, with a sour sort of smile,
"pity is almost a foible with me."
"Not real pity," she answered. "Monsieur, I have lived long enough
to know what pity moves you. It is the moment's careless whim; a
pensive pleasure, a dramatic tenderness. Wholesome pity would make
you hesitate to harm others. You have no principles--"
"Pardon me, many," he urged politely, as he eyed her with
admiration.
"Ah no, monsieur; habits, not principles. Your life has been one
long irresponsibility. In the very maturity of your powers, you use
them to win to yourself, to your empty heart, a girl who has tried
to live according to the teachings of her soul and conscience. Were
there not women elsewhere to whom it didn't matter--your abandoned
purposes? Why did you throw your shadow on my path? You are not,
never were, worthy of a good woman's love."
He laughed with a sort of bitterness. "Your sinner stands between
two fires--" he said. She looked at him inquiringly, and he added,
"the punishment he deserves and the punishment he does not deserve.
But it is interesting to be thus picked out upon the stone, however
harsh the picture. You said I influenced you--well?"
"Monsieur," she went on, "there were times when, listening to
you, I needed all my strength to resist. I have felt myself weak
and shaking when you came into the room. There was something in you
that appealed to me, I know not what; but I do know that it was not
the best of me, that it was emotional, some strange power of your
personality--ah yes, I can acknowledge all now. You had great
cleverness, gifts that startled and delighted; but yet I felt
always, and that feeling grew and grew, that there was nothing in
you wholly honest, that by artifice you had frittered away what
once may have been good in you. Now all goodness in you was an
accident of sense and caprice, not true morality."
"What has true morality to do with love of you?" he said.
"You ask me hard questions," she replied. "This it has to do
with it: We go from morality to higher things, not from higher
things to morality. Pure love is a high thing; yours was not high.
To have put my life in your hands--ah no, no! And so I fought you.
There was no question of yourself and Robert Moray--none. Him I
knew to possess fewer gifts, but I knew him also to be what you
could never be. I never measured him against you. What was his was
all of me worth the having, and was given always; there was no
change. What was yours was given only when in your presence, and
then with hatred of myself and you--given to some baleful
fascination in you. For a time, the more I struggled against it
the more it grew, for there was nothing that could influence
a woman which you did not do. Monsieur, if you had had Robert
Moray's character and your own gifts, I could--monsieur, I could
have worshiped you!"
Doltaire was in a kind of dream. He was sitting now in the
high-backed chair, his mouth and chin in his hand, his elbow resting
on the chair-arm. His left hand grasped the other arm, and he leaned
forward with brows bent and his eyes fixed on her intently. It was a
figure singularly absorbed, lost in study of some deep theme. Once
his sword clanged against the chair as it slipped a little from its
position, and he started almost violently, though the dull booming
of a cannon in no wise seemed to break the quietness of the scene.
He was dressed, as in the morning, in plain black, but now the star
of Louis shone on his breast. His face was pale, but his eyes, with
their swift-shifting lights, lived upon Alixe, devoured her.
She paused for an instant.
"Thou shalt not commit--idolatry," he remarked in a low, cynical
tone, which the repressed feeling in his face and the terrible new
earnestness of his look belied.
She flushed a little, and continued: "Yet all the time I was
true to him, and what I felt concerning you he knew--I told him
enough."
Suddenly there came into Doltaire's looks and manner an astounding
change. Both hands caught the chair-arm, his lips parted with a sort
of snarl, and his white teeth showed maliciously. It seemed as if,
all at once, the courtier, the flaneur, the man of breeding, had
gone, and you had before you the peasant, in a moment's palsy from
the intensity of his fury.
"A thousand hells for him!" he burst out in the rough patois of
Poictiers, and got to his feet. "You told him all, you confessed
your fluttering fears and desires to him, while you let me play upon
those ardent strings of feelings, that you might save him! You used
me, Tinoir Doltaire, son of a king, to further your amour with a
bourgeois Englishman! And he laughed in his sleeve, and soothed away
those dangerous influences of the magician. By the God of heaven,
Robert Moray and I have work to do! And you--you, with all the gifts
of the perfect courtesan--"
"Oh, shame! shame!" she said, breaking in.
"But I speak the truth. You berate me, but you used incomparable
gifts to hold me near you, and the same gifts to let me have no
more of you than would keep me. I thought you the most honest, the
most heavenly of women, and now--"
"Alas!" she interrupted, "what else could I have done? To draw
the line between your constant attention and my own necessity!
Ah, I was but a young girl; I had no friend to help me; he was
condemned to die; I loved him; I did not believe in you, not in
ever so little. If I had said, 'You must not speak to me again,'
you would have guessed my secret, and all my purposes would have
been defeated. So I had to go on; nor did I think that it ever
would cause you aught but a shock to your vanity."
He laughed hatefully. "My faith, but it has, shocked my vanity,"
he answered. "And now take this for thinking on: Up to this point I
have pleaded with you, used persuasion, courted you with a humility
astonishing to myself. Now I will have you in spite of all. I will
break you, and soothe your hurt afterwards. I will, by the face of
the Madonna, I will feed where this Moray would pasture, I will
gather this ripe fruit!"
With a devilish swiftness he caught her about the waist, and
kissed her again and again upon the mouth.
The blood was pounding in my veins, and I would have rushed in
then and there, have ended the long strife, and have dug revenge
for this outrage from his heart, but that I saw Alixe did not move,
nor make the least resistance. This struck me with horror, till,
all at once, he let her go, and I saw her face. It was very white
and still, smooth and cold as marble. She seemed five years older
in the minute.
"Have you quite done, monsieur?" she said, with infinite quiet
scorn. "Do you, the son of a king, find joy in kissing lips that
answer nothing, a cheek from which the blood flows in affright and
shame? Is it an achievement to feed as cattle feed? Listen to me,
Monsieur Doltaire. No, do not try to speak till I have done, if
your morality--of manners--is not all dead. Through this cowardly
act of yours, the last vestige of your power over me is gone. I
sometimes think that, with you, in the past, I have remained true
and virtuous at the expense of the best of me; but now all that is
over, and there is no temptation--I feel beyond it: by this hour
here, this hour of sore peril, you have freed me. I was
tempted--Heaven knows, a few minutes ago I was tempted, for
everything was with you; but God has been with me, and you and I
are no nearer than the poles."
"You doubt that I love you?" he said in an altered voice.
"I doubt that any man will so shame the woman he loves," she
answered.
"What is insult to-day may be a pride to-morrow," was his quick
reply. "I do not repent of it, I never will, for you and I shall
go to-night from here, and you shall be my wife; and one day, when
this man is dead, when you have forgotten your bad dream, you will
love me as you can not love him. I have that in me to make you love
me. To you I can be loyal, never drifting, never wavering. I tell
you, I will not let you go. First my wife you shall be, and after
that I will win your love; in spite of all, mine now, though it is
shifted for the moment. Come, come, Alixe"--he made as if to take
her hand--"you and I will learn the splendid secret--"
She drew back to the shrine of the Virgin.
"Mother of God! Mother of God!" I heard her whisper, and then she
raised her hand against him. "No, no, no," she said, with sharp
anguish, "do not try to force me to your wishes--do not; for I, at
least, will never live to see it. I have suffered more than I can
bear I will end this shame, I will--"
I had heard enough. I stepped back quickly, closed the panel,
and went softly to the door and into the hall, determined to bring
her out against Doltaire, trusting to Gabord not to oppose me.