THE KING’S COMMISSION
ANDRÉ was not the only person at Versailles who, tortured with
perplexity and fear, must now choose between loyalty to a cause or
loyalty to the dictates of the heart. Poor Denise, whose womanhood,
nobility, and devotion to her neglected and insulted Queen made her
so bitter a foe of Madame de Pompadour, whose sensitive self-respect
and self-reverence, whose ideal of purity so strange in the world of
Versailles, whose indignation at André’s desertion to the side of the
ambitious mistress, had combined to make her despise and twice reject
the hero of her girlhood; yes, poor Denise had at last been driven by
a cruel necessity to acknowledge to herself and to the Chevalier that
she really loved André, and that she could not sacrifice him even to
victory over Madame de Pompadour. Ever since that hour of misery she
had bitterly blamed herself for her selfish weakness. She had not only
been untrue to her own cause, but perhaps had ensured its defeat--and
for what? Because she loved, despite all, one who did not love her. And
unless she made atonement for this folly and sin she must forfeit her
own self-respect for ever and be punished as well. Denise, therefore,
goaded by remorse, by a dim hope of saving André at the last hour, had
steeled herself to conquer her pride and her modesty and to speak to
André himself.
He, too, oppressed with misgivings and fears, had returned early in
the morning to Versailles, and when he found himself alone in the
antechamber with Denise, pale and resolute, instinct warned him as it
warned her that both their lives might now turn on silence or speech.
“Will you answer a question?” she began with nervous directness.
He bowed with a singularly poor attempt at resolute indifference.
“Why,” she demanded in a low voice, “why did you say you were going to
Nérac when you really meant to visit a low cabaret in Paris?”
André had no answer ready, for it was not the question he had been
expecting from Denise.
“I see,” he said, after a pitiful pause, “that you are well informed,
Mademoiselle.”
Denise looked round the room as if to make sure they were not being
spied on. Then she walked towards him, her trembling fingers revealing
her emotion.
“I will tell you why I ask,” she said. “This morning, at three o’clock,
in the gutter outside the cabaret--where you were seen at midnight--one
of the King’s messengers was discovered by the police, gagged and
bound, and his despatches gone--stolen, of course, by the traitor who
has done this felon’s work before.”
“Good God!” The horror in his face was unmistakable, but was it due to
guilty knowledge or innocent surprise? The crystal-gazer’s last words,
“There will be news in the morning for you at Versailles,” were ringing
in his ears, and now he stared dully and confused at the girl’s pale
face.
“You do not wish to tell me,” Denise continued, “why you went to that
cabaret?”
With the memory of the night still painfully vivid, aware how his path
was beset by pitfalls, André was trying to decide whether Denise was
asking as the agent of his implacable foes or for herself alone.
“You,” she began again, “are the Captain of the Queen’s Guards; you
visit by stealth at an inn a wench called Yvonne, you refused to
present our petition to the King, you visit a cabaret frequented by a
foreigner suspected of being an English spy, under whose walls foul
treason is committed, and you professed to have gone to Nérac”--she
paused, and looked at him wistfully. “Why do you do these things?”
“To discover the traitor; that is my reason,” he answered.
“At the request of His Majesty?” she asked swiftly and significantly.
Should he lie to Denise? André’s troubled eyes passionately sought her
face.
“I can say no more,” he replied slowly, and Denise, though she knew
that he had admitted her accusation, was glad he had not told her a
falsehood.
“Do you know that you are in extreme danger?” she asked.
“Yes, I know it.” He spoke with great gravity.
“I have been unjust to you,” she said quickly; “unjust and unkind. I am
more than grateful for your generosity and honour in saving me by that
duel. I am ready now to believe your word just because it is yours.
They tell me you are the lover of Madame de Pompadour and at heart a
traitor, but it is a lie--a lie!”
“Ah!”--it was a true lover’s cry of joy--“a lie, Denise!”
“Yes, a lie. I say so to you because I have said it to them. André,
will you for your own sake--I cannot and will not ask for mine--will
you not refuse now and henceforth to be the servant and ally of Madame
de Pompadour? Will you not help me instead in the cause which is the
cause of your nobility and mine--of honesty and honour?”
“I could wish,” he answered earnestly, “for your sake, Denise, that
you would refuse to have any part in this squalid struggle for power.
Believe me, it is no task for a woman such as we--I--would have you be.”
“Do not I know it?” she answered wearily. “To the woman I would be it
is hateful. It soils--it soils,” she cried in a low voice of anguish.
“But take my place, André, and I promise you I will leave Versailles
for Beau Séjour till”--she looked up timidly, unable to check the
tender radiance in her appealing eyes--“till you come to tell me you
are victorious and she has gone for ever.”
André had taken her outstretched hands. Her words were like wine to
a fainting man. Denise loved him--Denise loved him! Last night with
another woman’s hands on his shoulders, a woman promising him love,
success, glory, the great secret whose fascination was so irresistible,
he had refused to succumb to temptation, and Denise’s look even more
than her words was now his reward. He had only to promise and she would
be in his arms for ever. And so for a few blissful moments of oblivion
to the perils that beset them both he stood with her dear hands in his,
her face close to his, supremely happy, as she was.
Suddenly they both stepped back. Some one had stealthily entered--only
a lackey peeping cautiously, but a lackey, they both recognised at
once, of Madame de Pompadour.
“Whom do you seek?” Denise demanded haughtily.
The man had obviously expected to find André alone. He now tried to
sidle away.
“If,” said the Marquise de Beau Séjour, “you have a message for
Monsieur le Vicomte de Nérac, give it to him.”
The man, thus sternly commanded, reluctantly handed André a small note
and fled.
“Read it, I beg,” Denise urged, her tone unconsciously cold and severe.
It was sealed with the crest of the Marquise de Pompadour, and André
read these words:
“I must see you at once.--A. DE P.”
The crumpled note fell from his fingers. Ah! Sooner or later he had
known even in his great bliss that he must answer Denise’s appeal, but
this message made a decision imperative.
“Will you save me as I asked you?” Denise said, and once again she came
close to him.
“And if I cannot promise to take your place?” he questioned to gain
time.
“Then I must go on alone--alone,” she answered, “and God knows what I
may do.”
Ambition, loyalty, love, his pledged oath to Madame de Pompadour, fear,
remorse, and pain struggled within him.
“I will promise anything, anything but that,” he cried in despair.
“It is the only thing that can help,” she said very quietly: “but it is
well I should know the truth. I thank you for that.” Tears were in her
voice. “Do not think the worse of me if--” she stopped. Words failed
her. Fate and the mistakes of the past of each were too strong for him
and for her.
And then, André, unable to endure the misery longer, without a syllable
of explanation or justification, left her.
Denise’s eye fell on the note from the woman who she felt had ruined
her life and his. For one minute she held it in her fingers. Her
friends would give much for this damning evidence of his guilt. If she
desired revenge, here was the chance; and she was, alas! racked by the
jealousy and curiosity of a woman who loved and had been rejected; but
it was only for a moment that she wavered, then with a proud sadness
tore the note into fragments and threw them on the fire. Not till the
last had been burnt did she take refuge in the hopeless loneliness of
her own room.
* * * * *
“_Mon Dieu!_” exclaimed Madame de Pompadour, as André stepped from
behind the curtains of the secret door, “_Mon Dieu!_ my friend, I am
not the devil, that you should look at me like that.”
“Madame,” André replied, “I am here to receive your commands.”
A jest, a taunt, a direct question, hovered on the lady’s lips. But
after another searching look, instead she held out a hand of swift and
strong sympathy.
“Courage, Vicomte,” she said softly, “do not despair. I am not beaten
yet, nor are you. No woman can forget a man’s loyalty, certainly not I.”
Madame de Pompadour was a selfish and ambitious woman, yet to a few
such nature has granted the mysterious power of expressing in word
and look what they do not really feel. Then, as always in her unique
career, it proved the most potent of her many gifts.
“I thank you, Marquise,” André replied, deeply touched.
“You have heard the news,” she said, wisely returning to business.
“Yes? Could anything be worse? But thank Heaven the messenger was
carrying only public despatches. Had it been one of the King’s secrets
you and I would not be talking here.”
“And His Majesty?”
“Is one moment furiously angry, at another plunged in the deepest
dejection, at another jesting. This accursed treachery appalls him.
No wonder. But, as the business of last night affects the ministers
more than himself, he is angry with them alone. Cursed dullards, he
called them in this very room, infamous bunglers. I think,” she added,
smiling, “His Majesty will presently see it is his interest to give
some of them change of air and occupation. Who knows, the Vicomte de
Nérac may be Minister for War yet.”
André laughed grimly. That would be a triumphant retort indeed to the
Court that hoped to prove him a traitor and a libertine.
Madame de Pompadour ceased to smile. Fear and anxiety made her voice
and eyes grave. “‘No. 101,’” she said, “has given the King occasion to
call his ministers dullards and bunglers. If to-morrow, thanks to ‘No.
101,’ the King should have reason to call me that and worse, you and I
are ruined. You follow me?”
“Perfectly, Madame.”
“_Eh bien!_ it is necessary for His Majesty to communicate with the
Jacobites. That, unhappily, is not my affair. His Majesty wills it so,
and I, who alone know this, must obey. This is the despatch.”
André took the sheet of paper. “It is in your handwriting, Madame!” he
exclaimed, in sharp astonishment.
“Yes, I wrote it at the King’s dictation this morning. Have you
forgotten I, alone, am his confidential secretary now?” She quietly
folded the paper, sealed it with her own private seal, and wrote a
direction on the cover.
“You wish me to be the bearer?” André asked quickly.
“Three persons alone,” she replied quietly, “know of this despatch and
its contents--the King, you, and I. The King cannot deliver it. It
must, therefore, be you or I. With ‘No. 101’ out there or here in the
palace we cannot trust any messenger. That is the price you and I have
to pay for the power we have won.”
“I will take it,” André said at once.
“Reflect, my friend,” she answered. “If that despatch is found on
your person, or stolen, it reveals an intrigue with the Jacobites in
defiance of the King’s public promise and the policy of his ministers,
and you will go to the Bastille as a traitor. It is in my handwriting,
sealed with my seal, and the King will disavow us both; therefore, I
shall follow you to prison and death. This is a more dangerous errand
than my commission at Fontenoy. You can risk it and will, but is it
fair?”
“Madame, if you were not involved, I should welcome the Bastille and
the scaffold,” he replied.
She flashed a swift look, piercing to the marrow, and she read how
the iron of some unknown fate had entered into his soul; but with
marvellous self-restraint she suppressed her curiosity.
“I thank you,” she said; “no, I cannot thank you, but some day I will.”
It is not given to many men to see in such a woman’s eyes what André
saw then. He wrenched himself into asking an obvious question.
“The agent of the Jacobites will be at midnight at ‘The Cock with the
Spurs of Gold,’” she answered. “Do not be surprised; it is not I who
have chosen that place; it is the King, and we must obey. Paris is too
far off; the road and the city are as we know only too full of dangers.
Remember that before you deliver the despatch the agent will give you
the password, ‘_Discret et fidèle_,’ and show you a seal like this.
Yes, keep it.” She handed him an impression of the private royal seal.
“And now I will sew the paper into your inside pocket; it is the safest
way I can think of.”
For a couple of minutes she stitched in the most businesslike way, but
neither he nor she could make the operation other than it was.
What a beautiful woman! André was only human, indeed more susceptible
than most to physical charm. The flutter of her eyelids, the lights
that unconsciously came and went in her eyes, the dimple in the cheek,
the rounded curve of neck, shoulder, and arm--veritably a _morceau de
roi_.
“They say,” she whispered, with a roguish laugh, “that poor fool of a
messenger was cajoled off his errand by a petticoat. Women, you know,
are often surprised at the extraordinary weakness of even strong men. I
wonder if any woman could make you, Vicomte, betray yourself. Perhaps?”
“I hope not.” André found it wiser to jest too.
“_Ma foi!_ I should like to try.”
André kissed her fingers with the unconscious grace that was vainly
imitated by all the young courtiers of Versailles. “I could only
succumb to your equal, Marquise,” he said, “but such a woman does not
exist. Therefore I shall succeed.”
“You must; you must.”
“Madame, the paper will be delivered safely or I shall never return.”
The thoughts of both had soared away in the sudden silence, and across
the unconquerable dreams of ambition and love there fell the sinister,
blood-stained mystery of the unknown traitor and darkened the room.
“God keep you, my friend,” Madame murmured. “God keep you safe!”