“You sent for me, madame,” said the girl, seeming to hesitate upon the
threshold of the room, and her voice--a pleasant, boyish contralto--was
very cold and conveyed a suggestion of disdain.
The Marquise detected that inauspicious note, and was moved by it to
regret her already of having embarked upon so bold a game as to confront
Monsieur de Garnache with Valerie. It was a step she had decided upon
as a last means of convincing the Parisian of the truth of her statement
touching the change that had taken place in mademoiselle’s inclinations.
And she had provided for it as soon as she heard of Garnache’s arrival
by informing mademoiselle that should she be sent for, she must tell
the gentleman from Paris that it was her wish to remain at Condillac.
Mademoiselle had incontinently refused, and madame, to win her
compliance, had resorted to threats.
“You will do as you consider best, of course,” she had said, in a voice
that was ominously sweet. “But I promise you that if you do otherwise
than as I tell you, you shall be married before sunset to Marius,
whether you be willing or not. Monsieur de Garnache comes alone, and if
I so will it alone he shall depart or not at all. I have men enough at
Condillac to see my orders carried out, no matter what they be.
“You may tell yourself that this fellow will return to help you. Perhaps
he will; but when he does, it will be too late so far as you shall be
concerned.”
Terrified by that threat, Valerie had blenched, and had felt her spirit
deserting her.
“And if I comply, madame?” she had asked. “If I do as you wish, if I
tell this gentleman that I no longer desire to go to Paris--what then?”
The Dowager’s manner had become more affectionate. She had patted the
shrinking girl upon the shoulder. “In that case, Valerie, you shall
suffer no constraint; you shall continue here as you have done.”
“And has there been no constraint hitherto?” had been the girl’s
indignant rejoinder.
“Hardly, child,” the Dowager had returned. “We have sought to guide you
to a wise choice--no more than that. Nor shall we do more hereafter if
you do my pleasure now and give this Monsieur de Garnache the answer
that I bid you. But if you fail me, remember--you marry Marius before
nightfall.”
She had not waited for the girl to promise her compliance. She was too
clever a woman to show anxiety on that score. She left her with that
threat vibrating in her mind, confident that she would scare the girl
into obedience by the very assurance she exhibited that Valerie would
not dare to disobey.
But now, at the sound of that chill voice, at the sight of that calm,
resolved countenance, madame was regretting that she had not stayed
to receive the girl’s promise before she made so very sure of her
pliability.
She glanced anxiously at Garnache. His eyes were upon the girl. He was
remarking the slender, supple figure, moderately tall and looking taller
in its black gown of mourning; the oval face, a trifle pale now from the
agitation that stirred her, with its fine level brows, its clear,
hazel eyes, and its crown of lustrous brown hair rolled back under the
daintiest of white coifs. His glance dwelt appreciatively on the slender
nose, with its delicate nostrils, the charming line of mouth and chin,
the dazzling whiteness of her skin, conspicuous not only in neck and
face but in the long, slender hands that were clasped before her.
These signs of breeding, everywhere proclaimed, left him content that
here was no imposture; the girl before him was, indeed, Valerie de La
Vauvraye.
At madame’s invitation she came forward. Marius hastened to close the
door and to set a chair for her, his manner an admirable suggestion of
ardour restrained by deference.
She sat down with an outward calm under which none would have suspected
the full extent of her agitation, and she bent her eyes upon the man
whom the Queen had sent for her deliverance.
After all, Garnache’s appearance was hardly suggestive of the role of
Perseus which had been thrust upon him. She saw a tall, spare man,
with prominent cheek-bones, a gaunt, high-bridged nose, very fierce
mustachios, and a pair of eyes that were as keen as sword-blades and
felt to her glance as penetrating. There was little about him like
to take a woman’s fancy or claim more than a moderate share of her
attention, even when circumstances rendered her as interested in him as
was now Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye.
There fell a silence, broken at last by Marius, who leaned, a supple,
graceful figure, his elbow resting upon the summit of Valerie’s chair.
“Monsieur de Garnache does us the injustice to find a difficulty in
believing that you no longer wish to leave us.”
That was by no means what Garnache had implied; still, since it really
expressed his mind, he did not trouble to correct Marius.
Valerie said nothing, but her eyes travelled to madame’s countenance,
where she found a frown. Garnache observed the silence, and drew his own
conclusions.
“So we have sent for you, Valerie,” said the Dowager, taking up her
son’s sentence, “that you may yourself assure Monsieur de Garnache that
it is so.”
Her voice was stern; it bore to the girl’s ears a subtle, unworded
repetition of the threat the Marquise had already voiced. Mademoiselle
caught it, and Garnache caught it too, although he failed to interpret
it as precisely as he would have liked.
The girl seemed to experience a difficulty in answering. Her eyes roved
to Garnache’s, and fell away in affright before their glitter. That
man’s glance seemed to read her very mind, she thought; and suddenly
the reflection that had terrified her became her hope. If it were as she
deemed it, what matter what she said? He would know the truth, in spite
of all.
“Yes, madame,” she said at last, and her voice was wholly void of
expression. “Yes, monsieur, it is as madame says. It is my wish to
remain at Condillac.”
From the Dowager, standing a pace or two away from Garnache, came the
sound of a half-sigh. Garnache missed nothing. He caught the sound,
and accepted it as an expression of relief. The Marquise stepped back a
pace; idly, one might have thought; not so thought Garnache. It had this
advantage: that it enabled her to stand where he might not watch her
face without turning his head. He was content that such was her motive.
To defeat her object, to show her that he had guessed it, he stepped
back, too, also with that same idleness of air, so that he was once more
in line with her. And then he spoke, addressing Valerie.
“Mademoiselle, that you should have written to the Queen in haste is
deplorable now that your views have undergone this change. I am a stupid
man, mademoiselle, just a blunt soldier with orders to obey and no
authority to think. My orders are to conduct you to Paris. Your will
was not taken into consideration. I know not how the Queen would have me
act, seeing your reluctance; it may be that she would elect to leave you
here, as you desire. But it is not for me to arrogate to determine the
Queen’s mind. I can but be guided by her orders, and those orders
leave me no course but one--to ask you, mademoiselle, to make ready
immediately to go with me.”
The look of relief that swept into Valerie’s face, the little flush
of colour that warmed her cheeks, hitherto so pale, were all the
confirmation that he needed of what he suspected.
“But, monsieur,” said Marius, “it must be plain to you that since the
Queen’s orders are but a compliance with mademoiselle’s wishes, now that
mademoiselle’s wishes have altered, so too would Her Majesty’s commands
alter to comply with them once more.”
“That may be plain to you, monsieur; for me, unfortunately, there are
my orders for only guide,” Garnache persisted. “Does not mademoiselle
herself agree with me?”
She was about to speak; her glance had looked eager, her lips had
parted. Then, of a sudden, the little colour faded from her cheeks
again, and she seemed stricken with a silence. Garnache’s eyes, directed
in a sidelong glance to the Marquise’s face, surprised there a frown
that had prompted that sudden change.
He half-turned, his manner changing suddenly to a freezing civility.
“Madame la Marquise,” said he, “I beg with all deference to suggest that
I am not allowed the interview you promised me with Mademoiselle de La
Vauvraye.”
The ominous coldness with which he had begun to speak had had a
disturbing effect upon the Dowager; the words he uttered, when she had
weighed them, brought an immense relief. It seemed, then, that he but
needed convincing that this was Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. This argued
that for the rest he was satisfied.
“There, monsieur, you are at fault,” she cried, and she was smiling into
his grave eyes. “Because once I put that jest upon you, you imagine--”
“No, no,” he broke in. “You misapprehend me. I do not say that this is
not Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye; I do not say that--”
He paused; he was at the end of his resources. He did not know how
to put the thing without giving offence, and it had been his
resolve--realizing the necessity for it--to conduct this matter with a
grave courtesy.
To feel that after having carried the affair so far with a for
him--commendable lightness of touch, he should be at a loss for a
delicate word to convey a harsh accusation began to anger him. And once
Garnache began to be angered, the rest followed quickly. It was just
that flaw in his character that had been the ruin of him, that had
blighted what otherwise might have been a brilliant career. Astute and
wily as a fox, brave as a lion, and active as a panther, gifted with
intelligence, insight and resource, he had carried a dozen enterprises
up to the very threshold of success, there to have ruined them all by
giving way to some sudden excess of choler.
So was it now. His pause was but momentary. Yet in that moment, from
calm and freezing that he had been, he became ruffled and hot. The
change was visible in his heightened colour, in his flashing eyes, and
in his twitching mustachios. For just a second he sought to smother
his wrath; he had a glimmer of remembrance of the need for caution and
diplomacy in the darkness of anger that was descending over him. Then,
without further warning, he exploded.
His nervous, sinewy hand clenched itself and fell with a crash upon the
table, overturning a flagon and sending a lake of wine across the board,
to trickle over at a dozen points and form in puddles at the feet of
Valerie. Startled, they all watched him, mademoiselle the most startled
of the three.
“Madame,” he thundered, “I have been receiving dancing-lessons at your
hands for long enough. It is time, I think, we did a little ordinary
walking, else shall we get no farther along the road I mean to go and
that is the road to Paris with mademoiselle for company.”
“Monsieur, monsieur!” cried the startled Marquise, placing herself
intrepidly before him; and Marius trembled for her, for so wild did the
man seem that he almost feared he might strike her.
“I have heard enough,” he blazed. “Not another word from any here in
Condillac! I’ll take this lady with me now, at once; and if any here
raises a finger to resist me, as Heaven is my witness, it will be the
last resistance he will ever offer any man. Let a hand be laid upon me,
or a sword bared before my eyes, and I swear, madame, that I’ll come
back and burn this dunghill of rebellion to the ground.”
In the blindness of his passion all his fine keenness was cast to the
wind, his all-observing watchfulness was smothered in the cloud of anger
that oppressed his brain. He never saw the sign that madame made to her
son, never so much as noticed Marius’s stealthy progress towards the
door.
“Oh,” he continued, a satirical note running now through his tempestuous
voice, “it is a fine thing to cozen each other with honeyed words,
with smirks and with grimaces. But we have done with that, madame.” He
towered grimly above her, shaking a threatening finger in her very face.
“We have done with that. We shall resort to deeds, instead.”
“Aye, monsieur,” she answered very coldly, sneering upon his red-hot
fury, “there shall be deeds enough to satisfy even your outrageous
thirst for them.”
That cold, sneering voice, with its note of threat, was like a hand
of ice upon his overheated brain. It cooled him on the instant. He
stiffened, and looked about him. He saw that Marius had disappeared,
and that mademoiselle had risen and was regarding him with singularly
imploring eyes.
He bit his lip in mortified chagrin. He cursed himself inwardly for a
fool and a dolt--the more pitiable because he accounted himself cunning
above others. Had he but kept his temper, had he done no more than
maintain the happy pretence that he was a slave to the orders he
had received--a mere machine--he might have gained his ends by sheer
audacity. At least, his way of retreat would have remained open, and he
might have gone, to return another day with force at his heels.
As it was, that pretty whelp, her son, had been sent, no doubt, for men.
He stepped up to Valerie.
“Are you ready, mademoiselle?” said he; for little hope though he might
still have of winning through, yet he must do the best to repair the
damage that was of his making.
She saw that the storm of passion had passed, and she was infected by
the sudden, desperate daring that prompted that question of his.
“I am ready, monsieur,” said she, and her boyish voice had an intrepid
ring. “I will come with you as I am.”
“Then, in God’s name, let us be going.”
They moved together towards the door, with never another glance for the
Dowager where she stood, patting the head of the hound that had risen
and come to stand beside her. In silence she watched them, a sinister
smile upon her beautiful, ivory face.
Then came a sound of feet and voices in the anteroom. The door was flung
violently open, and a half-dozen men with naked swords came blundering
into the room, Marius bringing up the rear.
With a cry of fear Valerie shrank back against the panelled wall, her
little hands to her cheeks, her eyes dilating with alarm.
Garnache’s sword rasped out, an oath rattled from his clenched teeth,
and he fell on guard. The men paused, and took his measure. Marius urged
them on, as if they had been a pack of dogs.
“At him!” he snapped, his finger pointing, his handsome eyes flashing
angrily. “Cut him down!”
They moved; but mademoiselle moved at the same moment. She sprang before
them, between their swords and their prey.
“You shall not do it; you shall not do it!” she cried, and her face
looked drawn, her eyes distraught. “It is murder--murder, you curs!” And
the memory of how that dainty little lady stood undaunted before so much
bared steel, to shield him from those assassins, was one that abode ever
after with Garnache.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, in a quiet voice, “if you will but stand aside
there will be some murder done among them first.”
But she did not move. Marius clenched his hands, fretted by the delay.
The Dowager looked on and smiled and patted her dog’s head. To her
mademoiselle now turned in appeal.
“Madame,” she exclaimed, “you’ll not allow it. You’ll not let them
do this thing. Bid them put up their swords, madame. Bethink you that
Monsieur de Garnache is here in the Queen’s name.”
Too well did madame bethink her of it. Garnache need not plague himself
with vexation that his rash temper alone had wrought his ruin now. It
had but accelerated it. It was just possible, perhaps, that suavity
might have offered him opportunities; but, for the rest, from the moment
that he showed himself firm in his resolve to carry mademoiselle to
Paris, his doom was sealed. Madame would never willingly have allowed
him to leave Condillac alive, for she realized that did she do so he
would stir up trouble enough to have them outlawed. He must perish here,
and be forgotten. If questions came to be asked later, Condillac would
know nothing of him.
“Monsieur de Garnache promised us some fine deeds on his own account,”
she mocked him. “We but afford him the opportunity to perform them. If
these be not enough for his exceeding valour, there are more men without
whom we can summon.”
A feeling of pity for mademoiselle--perhaps of no more than decency--now
overcame Marius. He stepped forward.
“Valerie,” he said, “it is not fitting you should remain.”
“Aye, take her hence,” the Dowager bade him, with a smile. “Her presence
is unmanning our fine Parisian.”
Eager to do so, over-eager, Marius came forward, past his men-at-arms,
until he was but some three paces from the girl and just out of reach of
a sudden dart of Garnache’s sword.
Softly, very warily, Garnache slipped his right foot a little farther to
the right. Suddenly he threw his weight upon it, so that he was clear of
the girl. Before they understood what he was about, the thing had taken
place. He had leaped forward, caught the young man by the breast of his
shimmering doublet, leaped back to shelter beyond mademoiselle, hurled
Marius to the ground, and planted his foot, shod as it was in his
thickly mudded riding-boot, full upon the boy’s long, shapely neck.
“Move so much as a finger, my pretty fellow,” he snapped at him, “and
I’ll crush the life from you as from a toad.”
There was a sudden forward movement on the part of the men; but if
Garnache was vicious, he was calm. Were he again to lose his temper now,
there would indeed be a speedy end to him. That much he knew, and kept
repeating to himself, lest he should be tempted to forget it.
“Back!” he bade them in a voice so imperative that they stopped, and
looked on with gaping mouths. “Back, or he perishes!” And dropping the
point of his sword, he lightly rested it upon the young man’s breast.
In dismay they looked to the Dowager for instruction. She craned
forward, the smile gone from her lips, a horror in her eyes, her bosom
heaving. A moment ago she had smiled upon mademoiselle’s outward signs
of fear; had mademoiselle been so minded, she might in her turn have
smiled now at the terror written large upon the Dowager’s own face.
But her attention was all absorbed by the swiftly executed act by which
Garnache had gained at least a temporary advantage.
She had turned and looked at the strange spectacle of that dauntless
man, erect, his foot upon Marius’s neck, like some fantastic figure of
a contemporary Saint George and a contemporary dragon. She pressed her
hands tighter upon her bosom; her eyes sparkled with an odd approval of
that brisk deed.
But Garnache’s watchful eyes were upon the Dowager. He read the anxious
fear that marred the beauty of her face, and he took heart at the sight,
for he was dependent upon the extent to which he might work upon her
feelings.
“You smiled just now, madame, when it was intended to butcher a man
before your eyes. You smile no longer, I observe, at this the first of
the fine deeds I promised you.”
“Let him go,” she said, and her voice was scarce louder than a whisper,
horror-laden. “Let him go, monsieur, if you would save your own neck.”
“At that price, yes--though, believe me, you are paying too much for so
poor a life as this. Still, you value the thing, and I hold it; and so
you’ll forgive me if I am extortionate.”
“Release him, and, in God’s name, go your ways. None shall stay you,”
she promised him.
He smiled. “I’ll need some security for that. I do not choose to take
your word for it, Madame de Condillac.”
“What security can I give you?” she cried, wringing her hands, her eyes
on the boy’s ashen face ashen from mingling fear and rage--where it
showed beyond Garnache’s heavy boot.
“Bid one of your knaves summon my servant. I left him awaiting me in the
courtyard.”
The order was given, and one of the cut-throats departed.
In a tense and anxious silence they awaited his return, though he kept
them but an instant.
Rabecque’s eyes took on a startled look when he had viewed the
situation. Garnache called to him to deprive those present of their
weapons.
“And let none refuse, or offer him violence,” he added, “or your
master’s life shall pay the price of it.”
The Dowager with a ready anxiety repeated to them his commands.
Rabecque, understanding nothing, went from man to man, and received from
each his weapons. He placed the armful on the windowseat, at the far
end of the apartment, as Garnache bade him. At the other end of the long
room, Garnache ordered the disarmed men to range themselves. When that
was done, the Parisian removed his foot from his victim’s neck.
“Stand up,” he commanded, and Marius very readily obeyed him.
Garnache placed himself immediately behind the boy. “Madame,” said he,
“no harm shall come to your son if he is but wise. Let him disobey me,
or let any man in Condillac lift a hand against us, and that shall be
the signal for Monsieur de Condillac’s death. Mademoiselle, it is your
wish to accompany me to Paris?”
“Yes, monsieur,” she answered fearlessly, her eyes sparkling now.
“We will be going then. Place yourself alongside of Monsieur de
Condillac. Rabecque, follow me. Forward, Monsieur de Condillac. You will
be so good as to conduct us to our horses in the courtyard.”
They made an odd procession as they marched out of the hall, under
the sullen eyes of the baulked cut-throats and their mistress. On the
threshold Garnache paused, and looked over his shoulder.
“Are you content, madame? Have you seen fine deeds enough for one
day?” he asked her, laughing. But, white to the lips with chagrin, she
returned no answer.
Garnache and his party crossed the anteroom, after having taken
the precaution to lock the door upon the Marquise and her men, and
proceeding down a gloomy passage they gained the courtyard. Here Marius
was consoled to find some men of the garrison of Condillac a half-score,
or so--all more or less armed, surrounding the horses of Garnache and
his lackey. At sight of the odd group that now appeared those ruffians
stood at gaze, surprised, and with suspicions aroused by Garnache’s
naked sword, ready for anything their master might demand of them.
Marius had in that instant a gleam of hope. Thus far, Garnache had been
master of the situation. But surely the position would be reversed
when Garnache and his man came to mount their horses, particularly
considering how hampered they must be by Valerie. This danger Garnache,
however, was no less quick to perceive, and with a dismaying promptness
did he take his measures.
“Remember,” he threatened Monsieur de Condillac, “if any of your men
show their teeth it will be the worse for you.” They had come to a halt
on the threshold of the courtyard. “You will be so good as to bid them
retreat through that doorway across the yard yonder.”
Marius hesitated. “And if I refuse?” he demanded hardily, but keeping
his back to Garnache. The men stirred, and stray words of mingling
wonder and anger reached the Parisian.
“You will not,” said Garnache, with quiet confidence.
“I think you make too sure,” Marius replied, and dissembled his
misgivings in a short laugh. Garnache became impatient. His position was
not being improved by delay.
“Monsieur de Condillac,” said he, speaking quickly and yet with an
incisiveness of tone that made his words sound deliberate, “I am a
desperate man in a desperate position. Every moment that I tarry here
increases my danger and shortens my temper. If you think to temporize
in the hope of gaining an opportunity of turning the tables upon me, you
must be mad to dream that I shall permit it. Monsieur, you will at once
order those men to leave the courtyard by that doorway, or I give you my
word of honour that I shall run you through as you stand.”
“That would be to destroy yourself,” said Marius with an attempted note
of confidence.
“I should be no less destroyed by delay,” answered Garnache; and added
more sharply, “Give the word, monsieur, or I will make an end.”
From the movement behind him Marius guessed almost by instinct that
Garnache had drawn back for a lunge. At his side Valerie looked over her
shoulder, with eyes that were startled but unafraid. For a second Marius
considered whether he might not attempt to elude Garnache by a wild and
sudden dash towards his men. But the consequences of failure were too
fearful.
He shrugged his shoulders, and gave the order. The men hesitated a
moment, then shuffled away in the direction indicated. But they went
slowly, with much half-whispered, sullen conferring and many a backward
glance at Marius and those with him.
“Bid them go faster,” snapped Garnache. Marius obeyed him, and the men
obeyed Marius, and vanished into the gloom of the archway. After
all, thought Monsieur de Condillac, they need go no farther than that
doorway; they must have appreciated the situation by now; and he was
confident they would have the sense to hold themselves in readiness for
a rush in the moment of Garnache’s mounting.
But Garnache’s next order shattered that last hope.
“Rebecque,” said he, without turning his head, “go and lock them in.”
Before bidding the men go that way, he had satisfied himself that
there was a key on the outside of the door. “Monsieur de Condillac,”
he resumed to Marius, “you will order your men in no way to hinder my
servant. I shall act upon any menace of danger to my lackey precisely as
I should were I, myself, in danger.”
Marius’s heart sank within him, as sinks a stone through water. He
realized, as his mother had realized a little while before, that in
Garnache they had an opponent who took no chances. In a voice thick with
the torturing rage of impotence he gave the order upon which the grim
Parisian insisted. There followed a silence broken by the fall of
Rabecque’s heavily shod feet upon the stones of the yard, as he crossed
it to do his master’s bidding. The door creaked on its hinges; the key
grated screaming in its lock, and Rabecque returned to Garnache’s side
even as Garnache tapped Marius on the shoulder.
“This way, Monsieur de Condillac, if you please,” said he, and as Marius
turned at last to face him, he stood aside and waved his left hand
towards the door through which they had lately emerged. A moment stood
the youth facing his stern conqueror; his hands were clenched until the
knuckles showed white; his face was a dull crimson. Vainly he sought
for words in which to vent some of the malicious chagrin that filled
his soul almost to bursting-point. Then, despairing, with a shrug and an
inarticulate mutter, he flung past the Parisian, obeying him as the cur
obeys, with pendant tail and teeth-revealing snarl.
Garnache closed the door upon him with a bang, and smiled quietly as he
turned to Valerie.
“I think we have won through, mademoiselle,” said he, with pardonable
vanity. “The rest is easy, though you may be subjected to some slight
discomfort between this and Grenoble.”
She smiled back at him, a pale, timid smile, like a gleam of sunshine
from a wintry sky. “That matters nothing,” she assured him, and strove
to make her voice sound brave.
There was need for speed, and compliments were set aside by Garnache,
who, at his best, was not felicitous with them. Valerie felt herself
caught by the wrist, a trifle roughly she remembered afterwards, and
hurried across the cobbles to the tethered horses, with which Rabecque
was already busy. She saw Garnache raise his foot to the stirrup and
hoist himself to the saddle. Then he held down a hand to her, bade her
set her foot on his, and called with an oath to Rabecque to lend her his
assistance. A moment later she was perched in front of Garnache, almost
on the withers of his horse. The cobbles rattled under its hooves, the
timbers of the drawbridge sent up a booming sound, they were across--out
of Condillac--and speeding at a gallop down the white road that led to
the river; after them pounded Rabecque, bumping horribly in his
saddle, and attempting wildly, and with awful objurgations, to find his
stirrups.
They crossed the bridge that spans the Isere and took the road to
Grenoble at a sharp pace, with scarce a backward glance at the grey
towers of Condillac. Valerie experienced an overwhelming inclination to
weep and laugh, to cry and sing at one and the same time; but whether
this odd emotion sprang from the happenings in which she had had her
part, or from the exhilaration of that mad ride, she could not tell. No
doubt it sprang from both, owing a part to each. She controlled herself,
however. A shy, upward glance at the stern, set face of the man whose
arm encircled and held her fast had a curiously sobering effect upon
her. Their eyes met, and he smiled a friendly, reassuring smile, such as
a father might have bestowed upon a daughter.
“I do not think that they will charge me with blundering this time,” he
said.
“Charge you with blundering?” she echoed; and the inflection of the
pronoun might have flattered him had he not reflected that it was
impossible she could have understood his allusion. And now she bethought
her that she had not thanked him--and the debt was a heavy one. He
had come to her aid in an hour when hope seemed dead. He had come
single-handed--save for his man Rabecque; and in a manner that was
worthy of being made the subject of an epic, he had carried her out
of Condillac, away from the terrible Dowager and her cut-throats. The
thought of them sent a shiver through her.
“Do you feel the cold?” he asked concernedly; and that the wind might
cut her less, he slackened speed.
“No, no,” she cried, her alarm waking again at the thought of the
folk of Condillac. “Make haste! Go on, go on! Mon Dieu! if they should
overtake us!”
He looked over his shoulder. The road ran straight for over a half-mile
behind them, and not a living thing showed upon it.
“You need have no alarm,” he smiled. “We are not pursued. They must
have realized the futility of attempting to overtake us. Courage,
mademoiselle. We shall be in Grenoble presently, and once there, you
will have nothing more to fear.”
“You are sure of that?” she asked, and there was doubt in her voice.
He smiled reassuringly again. “The Lord Seneschal shall supply us with
an escort,” he promised confidently.
“Still,” she said, “we shall not stay there, I hope, monsieur.”
“No longer than may be necessary to procure a coach for you.”
“I am glad of that,” said she. “I shall know no peace until Grenoble is
a good ten leagues behind us. The Marquise and her son are too powerful
there.”
“Yet their might shall not prevail against the Queen’s,” he made reply.
And as now they rode amain she fell to thanking him, shyly at first,
then, as she gathered confidence in her subject, with a greater fervour.
But he interrupted her ere she had gone far, “Mademoiselle de La
Vauvraye,” said he, “you overstate the matter.” His tone was chilling
almost; and she felt as she had been rebuked. “I am no more than the
emissary of Her Majesty--it is to her that your thanks are due.”
“Ah, but, monsieur,” she returned to the assault, “I owe some thanks
to you as well. What other in your place would have done what you have
done?”
“I know not that, nor do I greatly care,” said he, and laughed, but
with a laugh that jarred on her. “That which I did I must have done, no
matter whom it was a question of saving. I am but an instrument in this
matter, mademoiselle.”
His thought was to do no more than belittle the service he had rendered
her, to stem her flow of gratitude, since, indeed, he felt, as he said,
that it was to the Queen-Regent her thanks were due. All unwitting was
it--out of his ignorance of the ways of thought of a sex with which he
held the view that it is an ill thing to meddle--that he wounded her by
his disclaimer, in which her sensitive maiden fancy imagined a something
that was almost contemptuous.
They rode in silence for a little spell, broken at last by Garnache in
expression of the thoughts that had come to him as a consequence of what
she had said.
“On this same subject of thanks,” said he--and as she raised her eyes
again she found him smiling almost tenderly--“if any are due between us
they are surely due from me to you.”
“From you to me?” she asked in wonder.
“Assuredly,” said he. “Had you not come between me and the Dowager’s
assassins there had been an end to me in the hall of Condillac.”
Her hazel eyes were very round for a moment, then they narrowed, and
little humorous lines formed at the corners of her lips.
“Monsieur de Garnache,” said she, with a mock coldness that was a faint
echo of his own recent manner, “you overstate the case. That which I did
I must have done, no matter whom it was a question of saving. I was but
an instrument in this matter, monsieur.”
His brows went up. He stared at her a moment, gathering instruction from
the shy mockery of her glance. Then he laughed with genuine amusement.
“True,” he said. “An instrument you were; but an instrument of Heaven,
whereas in me you but behold the instrument of an earthly power. We are
not quite quits, you see.”
But she felt, at least, that she was quits with him in the matter of his
repudiation of her own thanks, and the feeling bridged the unfriendly
gap that she had felt was opening out between them; and for no reason in
the world that she could think of, she was glad that this was so.