With what fictions I could call to mind I put off Andrea's questions
touching the peculiar fashion of St. Auban's leave-taking. Tell him
the truth and expose to him the situation whereof he was himself the
unconscious centre I dared not, lest his high-spirited impetuosity
should cause him to take into his own hands the reins of the affair, and
thus drive himself into irreparable disaster.
Andrea himself showed scant concern, however, and was luckily content
with my hurriedly invented explanations; his thoughts had suddenly found
occupation in another and a gentler theme than the ill-humour of men,
and presently his tongue betrayed them when he drew the conversation to
the ladies to whom he had resigned his apartments.
“Pardieu! Gaston,” he burst out, “she is a lovely maid--saw you ever a
bonnier?”
“Indeed she is very beautiful,” I answered, laughing to myself at the
thought of how little he dreamt that it was of Yvonne St. Albaret de
Canaples that he spoke, and not minded for the while to enlighten him.
“If she be as kind and gentle as she is beautiful, Gaston, well--Uncle
Giulio's plans are likely to suffer shipwreck. I shall not leave
Choisy until I have spoken to her; in fact, I shall not leave until she
leaves.”
“Nevertheless, we shall still be able to set out, as we had projected,
after dining, for in an hour, or two at most, they will proceed on their
journey.”
He was silent for some moments, then:
“To the devil with the Cardinal's plans!” quoth he, banging his fist on
the table. “I shall not go to Blois.”
“Pooh! Why not?”
“Why not?” He halted for a moment, then in a meandering tone--“You have
read perchance in story-books,” he said, “of love being born from the
first meeting of two pairs of eyes, as a spark is born of flint and
steel, and you may have laughed at the conceit, as I have laughed at
it. But laugh no more, Gaston; for I who stand before you am one who has
experienced this thing which poets tell of, and which hitherto I have
held in ridicule. I will not go to Blois because--because--enfin,
because I intend to go where she goes.”
“Then, mon cher, you will go to Blois. You will go to Blois, if not as
a dutiful nephew, resigned to obey his reverend uncle's wishes, at least
because fate forces you to follow a pair of eyes that have--hum, what
was it you said they did?”
“Do you say that she is going to Blois? How do you know?”
“Eh? How do I know? Oh, I heard her servant speaking with the hostler.”
“So much the better, then; for thus if his Eminence gets news of my
whereabouts, the news will not awaken his ever-ready suspicions. Ciel!
How beautiful she is! Noted you her eyes, her skin, and what hair, mon
Dieu! Like threads of gold!”
“Like threads of gold?” I echoed. “You are dreaming, boy. Oh, St. Gris!
I understand; you are speaking of the fair-haired chit that was with
her.”
He eyed me in amazement.
“'T is you whose thoughts are wandering to that lanky, nose-in-the-air
Madame who accompanied her.”
I began a laugh that I broke off suddenly as I realised that it was not
Yvonne after all who had imprisoned his wits. The Cardinal's plans were,
indeed, likely to miscarry if he persisted thus.
“But 't was the nose-in-the-air Madame, as you call her, with whom you
spoke!”
“Aye, but it was the golden-haired lady that held my gaze. Pshaw! Who
would mention them in a breath?”
“Who, indeed?” said I, but with a different meaning.
Thereafter, seeing him listless, I suggested a turn in the village to
stretch our limbs before dining. But he would have none of it, and when
I pressed the point with sound reasoning touching the benefits which
health may cull from exercise, he grew petulant as a wayward child.
She might descend whilst he was absent. Indeed, she might require some
slight service that lay, perchance, in his power to render her. What
an opportunity would he not lose were he abroad? She might even depart
before we returned; and than that no greater calamity could just
then befall him. No, he would not stir a foot from the inn. A fig for
exercise! to the devil with health! who sought an appetite? Not he. He
wished for no appetite--could contrive no base and vulgar appetite for
food, whilst his soul, he swore, was being consumed by the overwhelming,
all-effacing appetite to behold her.
Such meandering fools are most of us at nineteen, when the heart is
young--a flawless mirror ready to hold the image of the first fair maid
that looks into it through our eyes, and as ready--Heaven knows!--to
relinquish it when the substance is withdrawn.
But I, who was not nineteen, and the mirror of whose heart--to pursue my
metaphor--was dulled, warped, and cracked with much illusage, grew sick
of the boy's enthusiasm and the monotony of a conversation which I could
divert into no other channel from that upon which it had been started
by a little slip of a girl with hair of gold and sapphire eyes--I use
Andrea's words. And so I rose, and bidding him take root in the tavern,
if so it pleased his fancy, I left him there.
Wrapped in my cloak, for the air was raw and damp, I strode aimlessly
along, revolving in my mind what had befallen at the Connétable that
morning, and speculating upon the issue that this quaint affair might
have. In matters of love, or rather, of matrimony--which is not quite
the same thing--opposition is common enough. But the opposers
are usually members of either of the interested families. Now the
families--that is to say, the heads of the families--being agreed and
even anxious to bring about the union of Yvonne de Canaples and Andrea
de Mancini, it was something new to have a cabal of persons who, from
motives of principle--as St. Auban had it--should oppose the alliance so
relentlessly as to even resort to violence if no other means occurred
to them. It seemed vastly probable that Andrea would be disposed of by
a knife in the back, and more than probable that a like fate would be
reserved for me, since I had constituted myself his guardian angel. For
my own part, however, I had a pronounced distaste to ending my days in
so unostentatious a fashion. I had also a notion that I should prove an
exceedingly difficult person to assassinate, and that those who sought
to slip a knife into me would find my hide peculiarly tough, and my hand
peculiarly ready to return the compliment.
So deeply did I sink into ponderings of this character that it was not
until two hours afterwards that I again found myself drawing near the
Connétable.
I reached the inn to find by the door a coach, and by that coach Andrea;
he stood bareheaded, despite the cold, conversing, with all outward
semblances of profound respect, with those within it.
So engrossed was he and so ecstatic, that my approach was unheeded, and
when presently I noted that the coach was Mademoiselle de Canaples's, I
ceased to wonder at the boy's unconsciousness of what took place around
him.
Clearly the farrier had been found at last, and the horse shod afresh
during my absence. Loath to interrupt so pretty a scene, I waited,
aloof, until these adieux should be concluded, and whilst I waited
there came to me from the carriage a sweet, musical voice that was not
Yvonne's.
“May we not learn at least, Monsieur, the name of the gentleman to whose
courtesy we are indebted for having spent the past two hours without
discomfort?”
“My name, Mademoiselle, is Andrea de Mancini, that of the humblest
of your servants, and one to whom your thanks are a more than lavish
payment for the trivial service he may have been fortunate enough to
render you.”
Dame! What glibness doth a tongue acquire at Court!
“M. Andrea de Mancini?” came Yvonne's voice in answer. “Surely a
relative of the Lord Cardinal?”
“His nephew, Mademoiselle.”
“Ah! My father, sir, is a great admirer of your uncle.”
From the half-caressing tone, as much as from the very words she
uttered, I inferred that she was in ignorance of the compact into which
his Eminence had entered with her father--a bargain whereof she was
herself a part.
“I am rejoiced, indeed, Mademoiselle,” replied Andrea with a bow, as
though the compliment had been paid to him. “Am I indiscreet in asking
the name of Monsieur your father?”
“Indiscreet! Nay, Monsieur. You have a right to learn the name of
those who are under an obligation to you. My father is the Chevalier de
Canaples, of whom it is possible that you may have heard. I am Yvonne de
Canaples, of whom it is unlikely that you should have heard, and this is
my sister Geneviève, whom a like obscurity envelops.”
The boy's lips moved, but no sound came from them, whilst his cheeks
went white and red by turns. His courtliness of a moment ago had
vanished, and he stood sheepish and gauche as a clown. At length he
so far mastered himself as to bow and make a sign to the coachman, who
thereupon gathered up his reins.
“You are going presumably to Blois?” he stammered with a nervous laugh,
as if the journey were a humorous proceeding.
“Yes, Monsieur,” answered Geneviève, “we are going home.”
“Why, then, it is possible that we shall meet again. I, too, am
travelling in that direction. A bientôt, Mesdemoiselles!”
The whip cracked, the coach began to move, and the creaking of its
wheels drowned, so far as I was concerned, the female voices that
answered his farewell. The coachman roused his horses into an amble; the
amble became a trot, and the vehicle vanished round a corner. Some few
idlers stopped to gaze stupidly after it, but not half so stupidly as
did my poor Andrea, standing bareheaded where the coach had left him.
I drew near, and laid my hand on his shoulder; at the touch he started
like one awakened suddenly, and looked up.
“Ah--you are returned, Gaston.”
“To find that you have made a discovery, and are overwhelmed by your
error.”
“My error?”
“Yes--that of falling in love with the wrong one. Hélas, it is but one
of those ironical jests wherewith Fate amuses herself at every step
of our lives. Had you fallen in love with Yvonne--and it passes my
understanding why you did not--everything would have gone smoothly with
your wooing. Unfortunately, you have a preference for fair hair--”
“Have done,” he interrupted peevishly. “What does it signify? To the
devil with Mazarin's plans!”
“So you said this morning.”
“Yes, when I did not even dream her name was Canaples.”
“Nevertheless, she is the wrong Canaples.”
“For my uncle--but, mille diables! sir, 't is I who am to wed, and I
shall wed as my heart bids me.”
“Hum! And Mazarin?”
“Faugh!” he answered, with an expressive shrug.
“Well, since you are resolved, let us dine.”
“I have no appetite.”
“Let us dine notwithstanding. Eat you must if you would live; and unless
you live--think of it!--you'll never reach Blois.”
“Gaston, you are laughing at me! I do not wish to eat.”
I surveyed him gravely, with my arms akimbo.
“Can love so expand the heart of man that it fills even his stomach?
Well, well, if you will not eat, at least have the grace to bear me
company at table. Come, Andrea,” and I took his arm, “let us ascend to
that chamber which she has but just quitted. Who can tell but that we
shall find there some token of her recent presence? If nothing more, at
least the air will be pervaded by the perfume she affected, and since
you scorn the humble food of man, you can dine on that.”
He smiled despite himself as I drew him towards the staircase.
“Scoffer!” quoth he. “Your callous soul knows naught of love.”
“Whereas you have had three hours' experience. Pardieu! You shall
instruct me in the gentle art.”
Alas, for those perfumes upon which I had proposed that he should feast
himself. If any the beautiful Geneviève had left behind her, they had
been smothered in the vulgar yet appetising odour of the steaming ragoût
that occupied the table.
I prevailed at length upon the love-lorn boy to take some food, but I
could lead him to talk of naught save Geneviève de Canaples. Presently
he took to chiding me for the deliberateness wherewith I ate, and
betrayed thereby his impatience to be in the saddle and after her.
I argued that whilst she saw him not she might think of him. But
the argument, though sound, availed me little, and in the end I
was forced--for all that I am a man accustomed to please myself--to
hurriedly end my repast, and pronounce myself ready to start.
As Andrea had with him some store of baggage--since his sojourn at Blois
was likely to be of some duration--he travelled in a coach. Into this
coach, then, we climbed--he and I. His valet, Silvio, occupied the seat
beside the coachman, whilst my stalwart Michelot rode behind leading
my horse by the bridle. In this fashion we set out, and ere long the
silence of my thoughtful companion, the monotonous rumbling of the
vehicle, and, most important of all factors, the good dinner that I had
consumed, bred in me a torpor that soon became a sleep.
From a dream that, bound hand and foot, I was being dragged by St. Auban
and Malpertuis before the Cardinal, I awakened with a start to find
that we were clattering already through the streets of Etrechy; so that
whilst I had slept we had covered some six leagues. Twilight had already
set in, and Andrea lay back idly in the carriage, holding a book which
it was growing too dark to read, and between the leaves of which he had
slipped his forefinger to mark the place where he had paused.
His eyes met mine as I looked round, and he smiled. “I should not have
thought, Gaston,” he said, “that a man with so seared a conscience could
have slept thus soundly.”
“I have not slept soundly,” I grumbled, recalling my dream.
“Pardieu! you have slept long, at least.”
“Out of self-protection; so that I might not hear the name of Geneviève
de Canaples. 'T is a sweet name, but you render it monotonous.”
He laughed good-humouredly.
“Have you never loved, Gaston?”
“Often.”
“Ah--but I mean did you never conceive a great passion?”
“Hundreds, boy.”
“But never such a one as mine!”
“Assuredly not; for the world has never seen its fellow. Be good enough
to pull the cord, you Cupid incarnate. I wish to alight.”
“You wish to alight! Why?”
“Because I am sick of love. I am going to ride awhile with Michelot
whilst you dream of her coral lips, her sapphire eyes, and what other
gems constitute her wondrous personality.”
Two minutes later I was in the saddle riding with Michelot in the wake
of the carriage. As I have already sought to indicate in these pages,
Michelot was as much my friend as my servant. It was therefore no more
than natural that I should communicate to him my fears touching what
might come of the machinations of St. Auban, Vilmorin, and even,
perchance, of that little firebrand, Malpertuis.
Night fell while we talked, and at last the lights of Étampes, where we
proposed to lie, peeped at us from a distance, and food and warmth.
It was eight o'clock when we reached the town, and a few moments later
we rattled into the courtyard of the Hôtel de l'Épée.
Andrea was out of temper to learn that Mesdemoiselles de Canaples had
reached the place two hours earlier, taken fresh horses, and proceeded
on their journey, intending to reach Monnerville that night. He was even
mad enough to propose that we should follow their example, but my sober
arguments prevailed, and at Étampes we stayed till morning.
Andrea withdrew early. But I, having chanced upon a certain M. de la
Vrillière, a courtier of Vilmorin's stamp, with whom I had some slight
acquaintance, and his purse being heavier than his wits, I spent a
passing profitable evening in his company. This pretty gentleman hailed
my advent with a delight that amazed me, and suggested that we should
throw a main together to kill time. The dice were found, and so clumsily
did he use them that in half an hour, playing for beggarly crowns, he
had lost twenty pistoles. Next he lost his temper, and with an oath
pitched the cubes into the fire, swearing that they were toys for
children and that I must grant him his révanche with cards. The cards
were furnished us, and with a fortune that varied little we played
lansquenet until long past midnight. The fire died out in the grate, and
the air grew chill, until at last, with a violent sneeze, La Vrillière
protested that he would play no more.
Cursing himself for the unluckiest being alive, the fool bade me
good-night, and left me seventy pistoles richer than when I had met him.