ONE DEFENDER
Cyrène passed down her favourite oleander path at sunset to the great
vinery in the Noailles garden. The oleanders were covered with their
roseate blooms, and their beauty and that of the garden in the soft
sunset light mysteriously deepened with an undefined regret the sadness
and fears which were hers of late.
"Why do you not come to me, Germain? Why have you not at least written
me a few words in reply to mine? Only a few words, my dear one--only the
least line," she murmured to herself.
She passed on to the vinery, where sitting down under the interlaced
green she became still more abstracted.
"Oh Germain, some great danger is above you. Who are those enemies of
whom the Instrument of Vengeance spoke? What is this web of murder and
madness in which they are involving you? I pray God to keep you safe, my
love. Ah, what bliss to have you mine, _mine_, and be yours. At last, at
last we shall have somewhere a sweet _chez nous_ to ourselves."
The loveliness of the oleander blossoms and the sunset over the garden
made a harmony with her dream. To the widow who had been no wife, the
girl who had seen no girlhood, the child who had never had a home, the
lady who was losing her life in gilded servitude, that dream was dear.
The sound of a silver bell broke in, the signal that she was in request
by old Madame l'Etiquette. A sigh escaped her, and she hastened to the
house.
To de Lotbinière, to have effected his point had not been enough. To
humiliate Lecour with the ladies with whom he had ingratiated himself
was yet, in the opinion of this vindicator of public interests, demanded
by justice to society, so he had wended his way that afternoon to the
Hôtel de Noailles and applied at the portal of the Maréchale. There he
was kept waiting while his name was sent in.
"The person is not on my list," she said. "Present my regrets." Covering
his irritation with a smiling face, as courtiers must ever learn to do,
he asked for ink and paper and patiently wrote her on the spot a
respectful and pointed warning on the danger to Cyrène. His missive
struck the dominant chord in the breast of Madame.
"What," she cried on reading it "de Lincy a cheat! No questionable
person shall ally himself with the royal blood of the Noailles and
Montmorencys! This is what comes of relaxing the old rules, the old
customs, and admitting new people. It is what comes of this Austrian
Queen." Ah--she glanced around quickly to see that none but her
lady-in-waiting heard those last words.
"Show the man in," she added. The lady-in-waiting transmitted the order.
De Lotbinière appeared, and at Madame's request began his narrative.
He had not proceeded far when the Maréchale sent for Cyrène. It was the
kind of opportunity in which de Lotbinière gloried. As soon as he
commenced she scanned him with intense attention, saying to herself,
"This is one of Germain's enemies." As he told his tale he too watched
her closely. The courage with which she listened to the development of a
story so deeply affecting her honour and her heart, and her perfect
dignity, unexpected by him, baffled him, from point to point of his
careful narration, where he had expected to produce effects.
"Of all women," he thought, "she is the strangest. Are my skill and
effort to be wasted on a girl?" But guessing correctly all at once and
rightly attributing her reticence to preparation and distrust of
himself, he stopped and said--
"He has doubtless told Madame a very different version."
"He has told me nothing of these things, sir," she answered quietly.
De Lotbinière was nonplussed, but he had not yet come to the duels. He
now mentioned them.
"There have been two duels."
"_Mon dieu!_"
"I hope that your nephew punished him sharply," La Maréchale
interrupted.
"The brute, unfortunately, has wounded my nephew, Madame."
"Is your brother-in-law, the Marquis de Répentigny, whom you mentioned,
he who killed a man named Philibert in Quebec?" now demanded Cyrène.
It was as if a thunderbolt struck de Lotbinière.
"Who spoke to you of that?" he exclaimed hastily.
"Do you hear?" Cyrène cried excitedly, turning to La Maréchale. "Do you
hear this admission of murder?"
"It was no murder!" de Lotbinière interrupted, trembling with feeling.
"You apparently wish some finer term to describe it," she retorted.
"Sir, any charges made to me against my affianced must be supported by
individuals more free of terrible records. _I_ shall trust his innocence
through eternity." And with these words, uttered frigidly, she left the
room, the Maréchale looking after her astonished.
Now Germain, having fled from Troyes, came to the hôtel. He entered one
of the great salons, and, miserable and desperate, sent up his name to
Cyrène for a last interview. While he waited to be ushered up, to his
surprise, she herself appeared at the end of the salon, advancing with a
tearful expression. The sight of her, dragged down into his pit of
misery, sent him distracted. All was forgotten for a few moments, as she
tearfully clasped him in her arms and murmured--
"Germain, you are no adventurer, no Sillon. Though all the world be
against you, I shall die with you."
Intoxicated with surprise that she did not repel him, yet overcome with
the belief that it was to be their last embrace, he lost himself for the
time in mingled remorse and mad bliss. They clung to each other as so
many others have clung in those short moments which are the attar of a
lifetime. At length he grew more conscious, and the delirium of holding
that face and golden hair to his breast triumphed over the pain of
guilt. At that moment they simultaneously perceived a shadow and
started.
"Baroness," said a severe voice, "you make me blush for my house."
Cyrène and Germain sprang apart in alarm.
"_You_," Madame l'Etiquette said, addressing Germain, "have dared to
enact such a scene here. You, the apothecary's apprentice----"
"Madame," Cyrène cried, her eyes flashing, "withdraw those words! I
demand it!"
The situation aroused all his faculties.
"Madame la Maréchale," said he quite coolly, "has taken, I observe, the
word of my enemies without asking for the facts. I shall not fatigue her
with arguments, as I am on my way to produce the proofs."
With two profound bows, the first to Cyrène, the other to Madame de
Noailles, he withdrew.