The Duke Swims
Something over an hour after d'Argenson's return, Richelieu, in full
dress, glittering with jewels and orders, left the palace in his
coach, bound for the Rue d'Anjou. He was committing the curious
_faux-pas_ of being too early. It was barely half past six when he
left the Boulevard de la Reine, whence it was less than five minutes
to his destination. But Richelieu, under his gayety, his frequent
laughs, and his flood of brilliant conversation, so witty that
d'Epernon, seeing him in his rooms, fancied that he had been
drinking, was desperate. Until a month ago he had not realized how
much his life meant to him. He was now forty-eight years old, and,
since his fourteenth year, he had never lived out of the atmosphere
of the Court. That atmosphere was part of him. It clung about his
every gesture and about his speech, punctuated as that still was with
the low patois in which he had delighted as a young rake. His
garments and his wigs were of set and fashion so inimitable that the
Jew to whom he sold them realized a profit equal to their original
cost in selling them to members of the _haute bourgeoisie_ with Court
ambitions. It was Richelieu who had made Louis XV. and his Court
what they were. It was Richelieu who was at all times King of the
King's house. To the last inch of what soul he had, he was imbued
with Court manners, Court love, Court lordliness. And now--now, at
the simple word of a woman of yellow hair and twenty-seven years--his
name was struck from the Court list! He had been in straits before,
but never one wherein he was so apparently helpless. This was
incredible, monstrous, impossible--true. Yes, the great Richelieu
was falling. Whom to turn to? Berryer? Machault? The King
himself? No. Instinct, with one of its incomprehensible turns, was
leading him, unresisted, to that house in the Rue d'Anjou where dwelt
a little girl from the American colonies, with her husband, the
cousin of the woman who thought to ruin him.
Unable to rid himself of this curious notion, Richelieu alighted from
his vehicle in the Rue d'Anjou, was admitted by the porter, and
proceeded up the stairs to the de Mailly apartment. Claude was not
there. Richelieu knew that from his own statement. Madame alone was
within. How much depended on the next few moments the Duke could not
surmise. Nevertheless, he gently tried the door from the hall,
without knocking. It was open. Noiselessly he entered the
antechamber, and, crossing it, would have passed into the salon but
for a sight which halted him on its threshold, in the shadow of the
hangings.
The room before him was half lighted, and contained one person, who
stood motionless, her back towards the antechamber, on the other side
of the room. It was Deborah, fully dressed for the evening, if
Richelieu judged correctly; but in an attitude which threatened to
destroy the elegant simplicity of her coiffeur. She was in front of
a little cabinet which stood against the wall beside the
mantel-piece, her two elbows, in their cloudy lace ruffles, resting
upon one of the shelves. Her powdered head lay upon her arms; and
now and again her slight frame could be seen to quiver with the depth
of a long-drawn sob. What was the matter? What was she doing? What
was it that the cupboard contained? Richelieu wondered and waited.
Then he was struck with a welcome notion. Here was she in a
sorrowful, therefore tender, mood. He alone was near her. Their
growing friendship--why not cement it with a delicate passage,
delicately arranged? Who so able to manage this successfully as
Richelieu? For Richelieu believed that he knew all women.
Silently, then, though without especial effort to make no sound, he
began moving towards her by leisurely degrees. She heard nothing,
and seemed to feel no presence near her. Indeed, at that moment she
was very far away, among the memories which the bottles had conjured
up for her--ghosts of many things and people: home, Virginia, Dr.
Carroll, Sir Charles, black Sambo, the warm sunlight, the river, and
the free, wild woods that were her own.
"Chère Comtesse!"
The words were so delicately murmured that they could not startle
her. She only lifted her head like one awaking from sleep and looked
slowly about. Seeing Richelieu at her side, and remembering the
evening, she suddenly straightened, forced herself back into the
present, and began, with an effort: "Pardon, I beg of you, mons--"
"Ah! You to demand pardon of me? Impossible! I am early to-night,
dear friend. We have much time. See--you grieve for something--some
one. You will confide the grief to me? You will accept my sympathy?"
As Deborah looked for an instant into the large, limpid brown eyes of
the man before her, her own fell. Her mood also changed. She was
suddenly inclined to be on her guard with this man, whom she knew
best as Claude's mentor.
"My grief was for many persons and things. 'Twas for home, my own
people, my old friends--there--across the water--" and she pointed
whimsically into the cabinet at her former treasures.
Richelieu, with unfeigned curiosity, moved towards the shelf.
Picking up one of the bottles, with its neatly written label, he
examined it, not very closely, his eyes questioning the girl before
him. Deborah, with an absent smile, looked at the crystal phial and
its white, oily contents, with the inch of gray sediment at the
bottom.
"That is from the _Spartium scoparium_," she said.
"Really?" muttered Richelieu, considerably puzzled. The turn which
the scene was taking, if not as he had planned it, was none the less
interesting. "And is this some new cordial or liqueur which you and
Claude have discovered together?"
"Heaven forbid!" was the half-laughing, half-serious reply.
"Eh!--You mean--"
"Thirty drops have been fatal. M-medicine and--alkaloids were my
tastes, sir, when I had my still-room."
"And these," the Duke pointed to the contents of the shelf--"all
these are--medicines--or alkaloids?"
"They are both," she replied, with a hint of troubled hesitation in
her tone.
"Tell me of them. I am interested," he asked, quietly.
She shook her head. "There is not time. Besides--"
"Ah! And these!--Now these are, indeed, curious, Mme. de Mailly!
What are they?"
In the rear of the shelf he had spied the box of fungi. Drawing it
towards him, he took from it one of the shrivelled brown things and
examined it on all sides. Deborah watched him in silence, her
feeling of uneasiness growing.
"What is it?" he repeated, smiling.
"It is the _Amanita muscaria_--poison mushrooms, that we use
sometimes in Maryland for fly-poison."
"And how do they kill?"
"Monsieur, will you not put them up? I think it is time to go."
"Instantly, madame; but--tell me first how they kill."
He was regarding her in such apparent amusement that, for the moment,
she was nettled by the suspicion of mockery. "They are now five
months old--what I have there. But two of them would kill a grown
man to-day. There is no perceptible effect till from four to nine
hours after eating. Then--then, monsieur," she said, dryly, "the
agony is not pretty to behold."
"Um--and do they taste?"
"No. They are like leather now. Will you replace them in the
cupboard, monsieur?--and we will speak of other things."
Without further protest Richelieu obeyed her, putting the fungi
carefully away, replacing the _scoparium_ among the other bottles,
and closing the little door of the cabinet after him. Its key was in
the lock. He turned it. And then--then--Deborah was wrapping a
cloudy veil about her head; she was turned from him--he suddenly drew
the key from the lock and slipped it into his pocket. It was
instinct that bade him do it--perhaps. Five minutes later a coach
rolled away from the house in the Rue d'Anjou and entered upon the
Paris road.
"Who--are to be with us this evening?" asked Deborah, as she settled
back in a corner of the roomy vehicle.
"Marshal Coigny, Mme. d'Egmont, Mme. de Chaulnes, and d'Aiguillon
will join us at the opera. Afterwards supper will be served us in my
salon at Versailles. These long drives--I trust they will not
fatigue you. Were it not for the hunt to-morrow, we might have
remained overnight in Paris. As it is, however, it will be necessary
to return. Will you be at Choisy to-morrow afternoon, when the hunt
goes there for its famous refreshment?"
"I was asked to go. Claude--" She stopped suddenly.
"He did not wish it?" asked Richelieu, gently.
"I am going," was the unexpected reply.
In the darkness Richelieu smiled.
"Jephté" proved to be a decided success. The opera-house was
crowded, both Queen and Dauphin were present, and most of Versailles
were gathered into the badly lighted and wretchedly aired building.
Richelieu's party were found to be fairly congenial, and the Duke,
who had exerted himself almost beyond his powers, during the drive,
to banish from Deborah's thoughts the incident of the cabinet, now
allowed d'Aiguillon to hold full sway over the conversation, and
himself sat almost entirely silent during that part of the evening.
How try to imagine the gradual trending of his thoughts? How surmise
their final concentration? It is something that no mortal of
inexperience has ever been able to conceive, no anthropologist
capable of analyzing--that secret, stealthy working of the brain
faculties round and round one point; how they approach it nearer and
nearer, retreat a little, hesitate, advance again, till the point has
suddenly been reached; the idea and the will are one; determination
is born.
The party of six returned, after the opera, to Versailles, in one
wide-seated coach. Arrived at the palace and Richelieu's apartment
within it, supper was found awaiting them; and the evening progressed
with all possible gayety. Later the Maréchal de Coigny escorted Mme.
de Mailly home; and, at four o'clock in the morning, long before the
December dawn, Deborah Travis slept.
His Grâce de Richelieu was not so happy. Before his salon was
cleared of the remains of supper and set to rights again, Grachet,
his valet, had put him gently to bed, all pomaded, perfumed,
silken-gowned, and capped. But the warming-pan had made the sheets
too hot; and the champagne had more than usually heated his head. He
turned and tossed and twisted like any mortal, the great Richelieu,
for the two heavy hours which constituted his night; and it was
during that time that the Determination was born. The idea and the
will--the little bronze key and the desire to use it--had met.
Crime, or the planning of crime, hovered there in the darkness over
the heavy canopy. Satan, cloven-hoofed, laughing, reclined in a
chair near his new friend. Richelieu fell gradually into a drowsy
state. Strange whispers poured from his lips. Such a night he had
not spent before, such would never spend again.
Morning came, finally. The Duke rose, with relief, at a little past
six, and dressed by candle-light. Grachet wondered in sleepy silence
as he prepared the chocolate at such an unheard-of hour, but came
near to the unpardonable false step of an exclamation, when his
master, toying idly with an egg, said, suddenly: "Grachet, go and ask
Mouthier--his Majesty's chef--to come to me at once if he can. Rouse
him, if he is not yet up."
When the man had left the room upon his unprecedented errand,
Richelieu flung down his napkin and sprang to his feet. To have seen
his face and heard his hoarse breathing would have been to judge him
physically in pain. He walked in great strides up and down the
apartment, refusing to struggle against his impulses, crushing out
the final prompting of a long-weakened Other Nature. Presently he
came to a halt before his chamber door, just as Grachet re-entered,
bringing with him an imposing personage, somewhat dishevelled as to
wig, but attired in a very neat black suit, with waistcoat of cherry
silk, and the blue ribbon of his order elaborately arranged thereon.
"M. Mouthier, my lord."
"Good-morning, Mouthier--good-morning--good-morning," observed the
Duke, staring hard at the new-comer, and monotonously repeating his
words. "You're early," he added, at length.
"Your Grace, in one hour, in company with my staff, I depart for
Choisy," responded the great cook, with reproachful respect and
something of the manner of a world-famed general announcing the
opening move of the campaign to his sovereign.
"Ah--Choisy." Richelieu smiled as he drew out his words.
Grachet stared at his master, and Mouthier instantly resolved to be
eccentric of a morning--if possible.
"Mouthier, you are, to-day, going to allow his Majesty to create a
_vol-au-vent royal à la Châteauroux_--is it not so?"
"His Majesty has informed your Grace?"
"No. The gods whispered it. But, Mouthier, the gods refused to go
further than the name. Therefore I come to you, that I may learn
more of a dish which a king will prepare for a duchess. Tell me, oh,
prince of thy art, is this dish of kings sweet or sour, thick or
thin, cold or hot? I would match my coat to its consistency. What
ingredients does it contain? Of what is it compounded?"
"Your Grace--" The cook hesitated painfully, but found his
professional instinct stronger than his reverence for rank. "Your
Grace--if I might be assured that Marin--had nothing to do with this
affair--"
"Marin? Oh! I see! But you cannot deem Marin your rival?
Mouthier, between us, Marin is a no one, a second-rate man, unfit
even for the taste of M. de Soubise. How the _cordon bleu_ ever came
to be delivered to him--bah! Mouthier, you would not imagine me as
intriguing with--with a Marin, eh?"
"Ah, Monseigneur, Monseigneur, forgive! My suspicions were base,
false. Monseigneur, the _vol-au-vent royal à la Châteauroux_ is a
_pâtê_, a round pastry case, filled with a delightful compound of--of
chicken, of sweetbreads, of truffles, of cock's-combs, of mushrooms--"
"Ah! You may go, Mouthier. You may go, I say!"
Grachet stole a terrified glance at the Duke. Mouthier, cut short at
the very beginning of a recitation delicious to his creative soul,
looked with pathetic appeal at the great man, saw him point
relentlessly to the antechamber door, with unmistakable command in
his face, and so, thoroughly disappointed, and scarcely, in that
disappointment, finding time to wonder, began reluctantly backing,
and, still murmuring raptly, "seasoned with salt, with black butter,
delicate spice, with bay-leaves, and covered with the sauce
_à--la--_," disappeared through the doorway and was visible no more.
"Ah! That is settled, then. Grachet, a cloak and hat."
"M--M--Monsieur?"
"A cloak and hat! Diable! What has got you?"
The valet, stumbling with awkward haste, obeyed him. Richelieu
wrapped himself in the cloak, took up the hat, and, before he left
the room, tossed his man a louis d'or. "There. I am not mad,
Grachet--except in giving you that, perhaps. But be silent about
Mouthier. You understand?"
Gold quickens the understanding. Grachet's eyes grew bright again as
he murmured quickly: "Mouthier was never here, Monsieur le Duc."
Richelieu laughed. "Very well. Have a good hunting-suit out when I
return, and I will ride Graille to the meet."
Then Richelieu left his apartment and strode away through the dim,
deserted corridors, carrying along with him a hollow, dreary echo.
Descending the grand staircase where yesterday he had waited for
d'Argenson's return, he passed the drowsy guards in the vestibule,
and entered into the gray, chilly morning. It was very cold. In the
night the rain had turned to snow, and the Great Cross Canal lay
before him frozen to ice. The esplanade, the star, and the park were
covered with soft white, still unbroken, for it was too early as yet
for marring footprints. With blood quickening in his veins, and
breath smoking in the frosty air, Richelieu hurried into the desolate
park, emerging at length on the Avenue de Paris, on the edge of the
town of Versailles. The little city was barely awake. The
dwelling-streets were still. Nevertheless, two or three men whom
Richelieu knew, and who took as much pains as he could have wished to
avoid notice, were moving dismally, on foot or in chairs, to their
respective rooms. Shutters of shops were being taken down, and a
single church clock boomed a quarter to eight when the Duke halted
before the house in the Rue d'Anjou.
Richelieu had some difficulty in rousing the _concièrge_. When the
door was finally opened to him by a man in a red nightcap, he pulled
his own hat so far over his face and his cloak so much about his ears
as to be unrecognizable, and hastened up-stairs. At the door of the
de Mailly apartment he stopped, hesitating. Was any one up within?
He was, perhaps, ruining himself by coming so early; yet it was the
only thing to be done. From an inner pocket he pulled the little
bronze key to the cabinet in the salon so near at hand. The sight
gave him courage, and he tapped at the door. There was a pause. His
heart beat furiously now. Presently he tapped again. Thereupon, as
much to his surprise as to his relief, the door was thrown open by a
tired-looking lackey. Richelieu walked swiftly into the antechamber,
passed through it, and paused in the salon, where the servant,
astonished and mistrustful, came up with him. Here the Duke removed
his hat.
"Your Grace! Pardon!" muttered the man. "Monsieur le Comte is
risen," he added. "Shall I announce you?"
"By no means! I have simply come to ask Mme. de Mailly if
this--which was found in my salon this morning--could have been
dropped by her during supper last evening. It is somewhat valuable,
I believe. Will you inquire of her maid?"
Richelieu held out to the man a pearl pin containing stones of some
rarity, which, as a matter of fact, belonged to himself. The servant
looked at it and slightly shook his head, but, catching a peremptory
glance from the Duke, he went off, wondering why such a man as
Richelieu had not sent a servant on his errand.
The moment that he was left alone, the man who bore the family name
of Louis XIII.'s great minister turned sharply towards the little
black cabinet by the wall. With a cold hand, his limbs stiffened,
all apprehension stifled by his eagerness, he unlocked the door,
thrust his hand inside to that little box that lay just where he had
placed it on the night before, extracted therefrom four of the small,
round, dry mushrooms, placed them in an inner pocket of his coat,
closed the door again, relocked it, put the key on the mantel, in the
shadow of a porcelain vase, and was sitting down, tapping the floor
impatiently with his foot, when the lackey returned--empty-handed.
"The pin does belong to madame, Monsieur le Duc. Her maid tells me
that she wore it for the first time last evening, and will thank you
much for returning it."
Richelieu came very near to laughing. Only by making a strong effort
did he control his expression. "I am delighted that it was found,"
he murmured; and thereupon he rapidly departed from that small
apartment where, it seemed, dwelt more people than M. and Mme. de
Mailly.
After all, du Plessis could not have disposed of his pearls to better
advantage. He had not been designed by nature for such a part as he
was playing now; and the affair could scarcely have been conducted
with less prudence. Providence--or Satan--had favored him in a most
unexpected way; for who was there now to tell of his early and
unwonted visit to the de Mailly household? Certainly not the clever
person who had made five or ten thousand livres out of it. On his
return walk towards the palace, Monsieur le Duc mused appreciatively
on the past incident.
"I wonder if it behooves me quietly to signify to Claude that such a
man as his first lackey is wasting a valuable life in his present
position? No. On the contrary, I will let Claude discover that for
himself. When that man is discharged, I should very much like to
employ him. Grachet--is getting--a little--old."