OUT-MANŒUVRED
Captain George was not the only soldier of France whom a visit to the
Hôtel Montmirail affected that morning with the slighter and premonitory
symptoms of fever, such as dry mouth, irregular pulse, and a tendency to
flush without physical exertion. While the Musketeer was visiting his
outposts in anything but a warlike frame of mind, his former general
was working his temper up to a state of nervous irritation more trying
than usual to the valets and other domestics of his household. The
Prince-Marshal busied himself to-day with preparations for his grand
attack, and, contrary to the whole practice of his lifetime, in the event
of failure, had made no disposition for retreat.
He felt, indeed, a good deal more agitated now than when he led a
forlorn-hope of Black Musketeers at twenty, an exploit from which he
came off with three flesh wounds and a broken collar-bone, owing to the
usual mistake of too short a scaling-ladder; but he consoled himself by
reflecting how this very agitation denoted that the fountain of youth was
not yet dried up in his heart.
He rose early, though he could not decently present himself at the Hôtel
Montmirail for hours to come. He stormed and swore because his chocolate
was not ready, though he hardly tasted it when it was served, and indeed
broke his fast on yolk of egg and pounded sugar, mixed up with a small
glass of brandy.
This stimulating refreshment enabled him to encounter the fatigue of
dressing, and very careful the veteran was to marshal his staunch old
forces in their most imposing array.
The few teeth he could boast were polished up white and glistening. Their
ranks indeed had been sadly thinned, but, like the last survivors of a
beleaguered garrison, though shattered and disordered, they mustered
bravely to the front. His wrinkled cheeks and pointed chin were shaved
trim and smooth, while the moustaches on his upper lip, though nearly
white, were carefully clipped and arranged in the prevailing fashion.
More than once during the progress of the toilet, before a mirror
which, he cursed repeatedly for a dull and unbecoming glass, his heart
misgave him, and he treated his valets to a few camp compliments current
amongst the old _die-hards_ of Turenne; but when at last his cravat was
fastened—his frills adjusted, his _just au corps_ fitted on, his delicate
ruffles pulled over his wasted hands, with their swollen knuckles and
magnificent rings, his diamond-hilted rapier hung exactly at his hip, and
his laced hat, cocked jauntily _à la Mousquetaire_, he took one approving
survey in the mirror, unbecoming as it was, and marched forth confident
and resolved to conquer.
His carriage was waiting for him at the porter’s lodge of his hotel. A
nobleman of those days seldom walked afoot in the streets, and it took
four horses at least, one coachman, one postilion, and two or three
footmen in laced coats, to convey a single biped the distance of a couple
of hundred metres.
As the door of his heraldry-covered coach closed on him with a bang,
quoth Auguste, who had dressed him, to Etienne, who had handed the
clothes and shared impartially in his master’s maledictions—
“Come, that’s not so bad, Etienne! Hein? What would you have at
sixty-three? And without _me_, Bones of St. Martin! what is he? A monkey,
a skeleton, a heap of rugs and refuse! Ah! What it is! the toilet!—when a
man is really master of his work.”
The Prince-Marshal, you see, like other heroes, was none to his _valet
de chambre_; but Auguste, a true artist, having neglected none of the
_minutiæ_, on which success depended, looked to general results, and
exulted in the masterpiece that he felt was a creation of his own genius.
Now it fell out that the Prince de Chateau-Guerrand, hereditary Grand
Chasseur to the King, Master of the Horse to the Dauphin, State Exon to
the sons and daughters of France, Marshal of its armies, and chevalier of
half-a-dozen orders in his own and other countries, with no decoration on
earth left to wish for but the Golden Fleece of Spain, which he coveted
greedily in consequence, and prized above them all, arrived at the Hôtel
Montmirail almost in the moment when Abbé Malletort quitted it at the
front entrance, and Captain George of the Grey Musketeers left it by the
garden door.
Though the Prince’s chance of victory must have been doubtful at any
time, I do not think he could have chosen a more unfavourable moment to
deploy into line, as it were, and offer battle in the open field. His
fair enemy had already been skirmishing with one foe, and caught sight of
another, whom she would willingly have engaged. Her trumpets had sounded
the _Alerte_, her colours were displayed, her artillery was in advance,
guns unlimbered, matches lighted, front cleared, all her forces ready
and quivering for action—woe to the veteran when he should leave his
entrenchments, and sally forth to hazard all his past successes on the
rash issue of one stand-up fight!
His instincts told him he was wrong, even while he followed the
obsequious lackey, in the Montmirail livery, through the glittering suite
of rooms that led him to his fate. Followed, with cold hands and shaking
knees, he who had led stormers and commanded armies! Even to himself
there was a something of ridicule in the position; and he smiled, as a
man smiles who is going to the dentist, while he whispered—“Courage, my
child! It is but a quarter of an hour, after all! and yet—I wish I had
put that other glass of brandy into my _Lait de Poule_!”
The Marquise received him more graciously than usual, and this, too, had
he known it, was an omen of ill-success. But it is strange how little
experience teaches in the campaigns of Cupid, how completely his guerilla
style of warfare foils all regular strategy and established system of
tactics. I believe any school-girl in her teens to be a match for the
most insidious adversary of the opposite sex; and I think that the older
the male serpent, and the oftener he has cast his skin, the more easily
does his subtlety succumb to the voice of the innocent and unconscious
charmer. What chance then had an honest, conceited, thick-headed old
soldier, with nothing of the snake about him but his glistening outside,
and labouring under the further disadvantage of being furiously in
earnest, against such a proficient as the Marquise—a coquette of a dozen
years’ standing, rejoicing in battle, accustomed to triumph, witty,
scornful, pitiless, and to-day, for the first time, doubtful of her
prowess, and dissatisfied with herself?
She had never looked better in her life; the flushed cheeks, the
brilliant eyes, the simple white dress, with its scarlet breast-knots,
these combined to constitute a very seductive whole, and one that, had
there been a mirror in which she could see it reflected, might have
gone far to strengthen the Abbé’s arguments, and to convince her that
his schemes, aspiring though they seemed, were founded on a knowledge
of human nature, experience, and common sense. Neither, I imagine, does
a woman ever believe in her heart that any destiny can be quite beyond
her reach. Though fortune may offer man something more than his share
of goods and tangible possessions on this material earth, nature has
conferred on woman the illimitable inheritance of the possible; and no
beggar maiden is so lowly but that she may dream of King Cophetua and his
crown-matrimonial laid at her shoeless feet.
To see the chance, vague, yet by no means unreasonable, of becoming Queen
of France looming in the future—to entertain a preference, vague, yet by
no means doubtful, for a handsome captain of Grey Musketeers—and to be
made honourable love to at a little past thirty by a man and a marshal
a little past sixty—was not all this enough to impart a yet deeper
lustre to the glowing cheeks and the bright eyes, to bid the scarlet
breast-knots heave and quiver over that warm, wilful, and impassioned
heart?
It was not a fair fight; far from it. It was Goliath against David, and
David, moreover, with neither stone nor sling, nor ruddy countenance, nor
the mettle of untried courage, nor youthful confidence in his cause.
He came up boldly, however, when he confronted his enemy, and kissed her
hand with a ponderous compliment to her good looks, which she cut short
rudely enough.
Then he took his hat from the floor, and began to smooth its lace
against his heavy coat-cuff. She knew it was coming, and though it made
her nervous, she rather liked it, notwithstanding.
“Madame!” said the Prince-Marshal, and then he stopped, for his voice
sounded so strange he thought he had better begin again.
“Madame, I have for a long period had the honour and advantage of your
friendship. Nay, I hope that I have, in all that time, done nothing to
forfeit your good opinion?”
She laughed a little unmeaning laugh, and of course avoided a direct
answer to the question.
“I always stand up for my friends,” said he, “and yourself, monsieur,
amongst the number. It is no light task, I can assure you!”
The veteran had opened fire now, and gained confidence every moment. The
first step, the first plunge, the first sentence. It is all the same.
Fairly in deep water, a brave man finds his courage come back even faster
than it failed him.
“Madame,” he resumed, laying his hat on the floor again, and sitting bolt
upright, while his voice, though hoarser than usual, grew very stern,
“madame, I am in earnest. Seriously in earnest at present. Listen. I have
something of importance to say to you!”
In spite of herself she was a little cowed. “One moment, Prince!” she
exclaimed, rising to shut the door and window of her boudoir, as if
against listeners. It was a simple feminine manœuvre to gain time; but,
looking into the garden, she spied a remnant of the Stephanotis left
where George had trodden it, and when she sat down again she was as brave
as a lioness once more. Her change of position rather disordered her
suitor’s line of battle, and as she had skilfully increased the distance
between them, his tactics were still further impeded. In his love affairs
the Prince-Marshal’s system had always been to come as soon as possible
to close quarters; but it was so long since he had made a regular formal
proposal of marriage, that he could not for the life of him remember
the precise attitude in which he had advanced. Some vague recollection
he entertained, strengthened by what he had seen on the stage, of going
down on his knees, but the floor was very slippery, and he was not
quite confident about getting up again. It would be ridiculous, he felt,
to urge his suit on all-fours, and he knew the Marquise well enough,
besides, to be quite sure her paroxysms of laughter in such a difficulty
would render her incapable of returning an intelligible answer.
Altogether, he decided on sitting still, and though it was obviously a
disadvantage, doing his love-making at arm’s length.
“Madame!” he repeated for the fourth time, “I am a soldier; I am a man of
few words; I am, I hope, a gentleman, but I am no longer young. I do not
dissemble this; I am even past my prime. Frankly, madame, I am getting an
old man.”
It was incontestable. She smothered a smile as she mentally conceded the
position, but in reply she had nothing to say, and she said it.
The Prince-Marshal, expecting the disclaimer that perhaps politeness
demanded, seemed here a little bothered. He had no doubt gone through
many rehearsals of the imaginary scene, and it confused him to lose his
anticipated cue. Seeking inspiration once more, then, from his hat, he
proceeded rather inconsequently. “Therefore it is that I feel emboldened
in the present instance to lay before you, madame, the thoughts, the
intentions, the wishes, in brief—the anticipations that I had formed of
my own future, and to ask your opinion, and, indeed, your advice, or
perhaps, I should say, your approval of my plans.”
What a quick ear she had! Far off, upstairs, she heard the door of
her daughter’s bedroom shut, and she knew that Cerise, after stopping
at every flower-stand in the gallery, would as usual come straight to
her mamma’s boudoir. Such a diversion would be invaluable, as it must
for the present prevent any decided result from her interview with the
Prince-Marshal. She had resolved not to accept him for a husband, we
know, and sooner or later, she must come to a definite understanding with
her faithful old suitor; but she seemed in this instance strangely given
to procrastination, and inclined from time to time to put off the evil
day.
Why she did not prefer to have done with it once for all, why she could
not wait calmly for his proposal and refuse him with a polite reverence,
as she had refused a score of others, it is not for me to explain.
Perhaps she would not willingly abdicate a sovereignty that became year
by year more precious and more precarious. Perhaps she loved a captive,
as a cat loves a mouse, allowing it so much liberty as shall keep it
just within reach of the cruel velvet paw. Perhaps she shrunk from any
decided step that would force her own heart to confess it was interested
elsewhere. A woman’s motives may be countless as the waves on the shore,
her intention fathomless as mid-ocean by the deep-sea lead.
Hearing the march of her auxiliaries, she made light of an engagement at
closer quarters now. Looking affectionately in the Prince-Marshal’s face,
she drew her chair a little nearer, and observed in a low voice—
“I am pretty sure to approve of any plan, my Prince, that conduces to
your comfort—to your welfare, nay”—for she heard the rustle of her
daughter’s dress, and the lock of the door move—“to your happiness!”
The tone and accompanying glance were irresistible. Any male creature
must have fallen a victim on the spot. The Prince-Marshal, sitting
opposite the door, dropped his hat, sprang from his chair a yard at a
bound, made a pounce at the white hand of the Marquise, and before he
could grasp it, stopped midway as if turned to stone, his mouth open,
his frame rigid, his very moustaches stiffening, and his eyes staring
blankly at the figure of Cerise in the doorway, who, although a good deal
discomposed, for she thought to find mamma alone, rose, or rather _sank_,
to the occasion, and bestowed on him the lowest, the most voluminous,
and the longest reverence that was ever practised for months together
at their _pension_ by the best brought-up young ladies in France. The
Prince-Marshal was too good a soldier to neglect such an opportunity for
retreat, and retired in good order, flattering himself that though he had
suffered severely, it might still be considered a drawn battle with the
Marquise.
When he had made his bow with a profusion of compliments to the fresh and
beautiful Mademoiselle, whom he wished at a worse place than back in her
convent, mother and daughter sat down to spend the morning together.
Contrary to custom, the pair were silent and preoccupied; each, while
she tried to seem at ease, immersed in her own thoughts, and yet, though
engrossed with the same subject or meditation, it was strange that
neither of them mentioned it to the other.