On the morrow, which was a Friday and the tenth of November--a date to
be hereafter graven on the memory of all concerned in the affairs of
Condillac--the Dowager rose betimes, and, for decency’s sake, having in
mind the business of the day, she gowned herself in black.
Betimes, too, the Lord Seneschal rode out of Grenoble, attended by
a couple of grooms, and headed for Condillac, in doing which--little
though he suspected it--he was serving nobody’s interests more
thoroughly than Monsieur de Garnache’s.
Madame received him courteously. She was in a blithe and happy mood that
morning--the reaction from her yesterday’s distress of mind. The world
was full of promise, and all things had prospered with her and Marius.
Her boy was lord of Condillac; Florimond, whom she had hated and who had
stood in the way of her boy’s advancement, was dead and on his way to
burial; Garnache, the man from Paris who might have made trouble for
them had he ridden home again with the tale of their resistance, was
silenced for all time, and the carp in the moat would be feasting by
now upon what was left of him; Valerie de La Vauvraye was in a dejected
frame of mind that augured well for the success of the Dowager’s
plans concerning her, and by noon at latest there would be priests at
Condillac, and, if Marius still wished to marry the obstinate baggage,
there would be no difficulty as to that.
It was a glorious morning, mild and sunny as an April day, as though
Nature took a hand in the Dowager’s triumph and wished to make the best
of its wintry garb in honour of it.
The presence of this gross suitor of hers afforded her another source
of satisfaction. There would no longer be the necessity she once had
dreaded of listening to his suit for longer than it should be her
pleasure to be amused by him. But when Tressan spoke, he struck the
first note of discord in the perfect harmony which the Dowager imagined
existed.
“Madame,” said he, “I am desolated that I am not a bearer of better
tidings. But for all that we have made the most diligent search, the
man Rabecque has not yet been apprehended. Still, we have not abandoned
hope,” he added, by way of showing that there was a silver lining to his
cloud of danger.
For just a moment madame’s brows were knitted. She had forgotten
Rabecque until now; but an instant’s reflection assured her that in
forgetting him she had done him no more than such honour as he deserved.
She laughed, as she led the way down the garden steps--the mildness of
the day and the brightness of her mood had moved her there to receive
the Seneschal.
“From the sombreness of your tone one might fear your news to be of the
nature of some catastrophe. What shall it signify that Rabecque eludes
your men? He is but a lackey after all.”
“True,” said the Seneschal, very soberly; “but do not forget, I beg,
that he is the bearer of letters from one who is not a lackey.”
The laughter went out of her face at that. Here was something that had
been lost sight of in the all-absorbing joy of other things. In calling
the forgotten Rabecque to mind she had but imagined that it was no more
than a matter of the tale he might tell--a tale not difficult to refute,
she thought. Her word should always weigh against a lackey’s. But that
letter was a vastly different matter.
“He must be found, Tressan,” she said sharply.
Tressan smiled uneasily, and chewed at his beard.
“No effort shall be spared,” he promised her. “Of that you may be very
sure. The affairs of the province are at a standstill,” he added, that
vanity of his for appearing a man of infinite business rising even in
an hour of such anxiety, for to himself, no less than to her, was
there danger should Rabecque ever reach his destination with the papers
Garnache had said he carried.
“The affairs of the province are at a standstill,” he repeated, “while
all my energies are bent upon this quest. Should we fail to have news of
his capture in Dauphiny, we need not, nevertheless, despond. I have
sent men after him along the three roads that lead to Paris. They are to
spare neither money nor horses in picking up his trail and effecting his
capture. After all, I think we shall have him.”
“He is our only danger now,” the Marquise answered, “for Florimond is
dead--of the fever,” she added, with a sneering smile which gave Tressan
sensations as of cold water on his spine. “It were an irony of fate if
that miserable lackey were to reach Paris now and spoil the triumph for
which we have worked so hard.”
“It were, indeed,” Tressan agreed with her, “and we must see that he
does not.”
“But if he does,” she returned, “then we must stand together.” And with
that she set her mind at ease once more, her mood that morning being
very optimistic.
“Always, I hope, Clotilde,” he answered, and his little eyes leered up
out of the dimples of fat in which they were embedded. “I have stood by
you like a true friend in this affair; is it not so?”
“Indeed; do I deny it?” she answered half scornfully.
“As I shall stand by you always when the need arises. You are a little
in my debt concerning Monsieur de Garnache.”
“I--I realize it,” said she, and she felt again as if the sunshine were
gone from the day, the blitheness from her heart. She was moved to
bid him cease leering at her and to take himself and his wooing to the
devil. But she bethought her that the need for him might not yet
utterly be passed. Not only in the affair of Garnache--in which he stood
implicated as deeply as herself--might she require his loyalty, but also
in the matter of what had befallen yesterday at La Rochette; for despite
Fortunio’s assurances that things had gone smoothly, his tale hung none
too convincingly together; and whilst she did not entertain any serious
fear of subsequent trouble, yet it might be well not utterly to banish
the consideration of such a possibility, and to keep the Seneschal her
ally against it. So she told him now, with as much graciousness as she
could command, that she fully realized her debt, and when, encouraged,
he spoke of his reward, she smiled upon him as might a girl smile upon
too impetuous a wooer whose impetuosity she deprecates yet cannot wholly
withstand.
“I am a widow of six months,” she reminded him, as she had reminded him
once before. Her widowhood was proving a most convenient refuge. “It is
not for me to listen to a suitor, however my foolish heart may incline.
Come to me in another six months’ time.”
“And you will wed me then?” he bleated.
By an effort her eyes smiled down upon him, although her face was a
trifle drawn.
“Have I not said that I will listen to no suitor? and what is that but a
suitor’s question?”
He caught her hand; he would have fallen on his knees there and then, at
her feet, on the grass still wet with the night’s mist, but that he in
time bethought him of how sadly his fine apparel would be the sufferer.
“Yet I shall not sleep, I shall know no rest, no peace until you have
given me an answer. Just an answer is all I ask. I will set a curb upon
my impatience afterwards, and go through my period of ah--probation
without murmuring. Say that you, will marry me in six months’ time--at
Easter, say.”
She saw that an answer she must give, and so she gave him the answer
that he craved. And he--poor fool!--never caught the ring of her voice,
as false as the ring of a base coin; never guessed that in promising she
told herself it would be safe to break that promise six months hence,
when the need of him and his loyalty would be passed.
A man approached them briskly from the chateau. He brought news that a
numerous company of monks was descending the valley of the Isere towards
Condillac. A faint excitement stirred her, and accompanied by Tressan
she retraced her steps and made for the battlements, whence she might
overlook their arrival.
As they went Tressan asked for an explanation of this cortege, and she
answered him with Fortunio’s story of how things had sped yesterday at
La Rochette.
Up the steps leading to the battlements she went ahead of him, with
a youthful, eager haste that took no thought for the corpulence and
short-windedness of the following Seneschal. From the heights she looked
eastwards, shading her eyes from the light of the morning sun, and
surveyed the procession which with slow dignity paced down the valley
towards Condillac.
At its head walked the tall, lean figure of the Abbot of Saint Francis
of Cheylas, bearing on high a silvered crucifix that flashed and
scintillated in the sunlight. His cowl was thrown back, revealing his
pale, ascetic countenance and shaven head. Behind him came a coffin
covered by a black pall, and borne on the shoulders of six black-robed,
black cowled monks, and behind these again walked, two by two, some
fourteen cowled brothers of the order of Saint Francis, their heads
bowed, their arms folded, and their hands tucked away in their capacious
sleeves.
It was a numerous cortege, and as she watched its approach the Marquise
was moved to wonder by what arguments had the proud Abbot been induced
to do so much honour to a dead Condillac and bear his body home to this
excommunicated roof.
Behind the monks a closed carriage lumbered down the uneven mountain
way, and behind this rode four mounted grooms in the livery of
Condillac. Of Marius she saw nowhere any sign, and she inferred him to
be travelling in that vehicle, the attendant servants being those of the
dead Marquis.
In silence, with the Seneschal at her elbow, she watched the procession
advance until it was at the foot of the drawbridge. Then, while the
solemn rhythm of their feet sounded across the planks that spanned the
moat, she turned, and, signing to the Seneschal to follow her, she went
below to meet them. But when she reached the courtyard she was surprised
to find they had not paused, as surely would have been seemly. Unbidden,
the Abbot had gone forward through the great doorway and down the
gallery that led to the hall of Condillac. Already, when she arrived
below, the coffin and its bearers had disappeared, and the last of the
monks was passing from sight in its wake. Leaning against the doorway
through which they were vanishing stood Fortunio, idly watching that
procession and thoughtfully stroking his mustachios. About the yard
lounged a dozen or so men-at-arms, practically all the garrison that was
left them since the fight with Garnache two nights ago.
After the last monk had disappeared, she still remained there,
expectantly; and when she saw that neither the carriage nor the grooms
made their appearance, she stepped up to Fortunio to inquire into the
reason of it.
“Surely Monsieur de Condillac rides in that coach,” said she.
“Surely,” Fortunio answered, himself looking puzzled. “I will go seek
the reason, madame. Meanwhile will you receive the Abbot? The monks will
have deposited their burden.”
She composed her features into a fitting solemnity, and passed briskly
through to the hall, Tressan ever at her heels. Here she found
the coffin deposited on the table, its great black pall of velvet,
silver-edged, sweeping down to the floor. No fire had been lighted that
morning nor had the sun yet reached the windows, so that the place wore
a chill and gloomy air that was perhaps well attuned to the purpose that
it was being made to serve.
With a rare dignity, her head held high, she swept down the length of
that noble chamber towards the Abbot, who stood erect as a pikestaff: at
the tablehead, awaiting her. And well was it for him that he was a man
of austere habit of mind, else might her majestic, incomparable beauty
have softened his heart and melted the harshness of his purpose.
He raised his hand when she was within a sword’s length of him, and
with startling words, delivered in ringing tones, he broke the ponderous
silence.
“Wretched woman,” he denounced her, “your sins have found you out.
Justice is to be done, and your neck shall be bent despite your stubborn
pride. Derider of priests, despoiler of purity, mocker of Holy Church,
your impious reign is at an end.”
Tressan fell back aghast, his face blenching to the lips; for if justice
was at hand for her, as the Abbot said, then was justice at hand for
him as well. Where had their plans miscarried? What flaw was there that
hitherto she had not perceived? Thus he questioned himself in his sudden
panic.
But the Marquise was no sharer in his tremors. Her eyes opened a trifle
wider; a faint colour crept into her cheeks; but her only emotions were
of amazement and indignation. Was he mad, this shaveling monk? That was
the question that leapt into her mind, the very question with which she
coldly answered his outburst.
“For madness only,” she thought fit to add, “could excuse such rash
temerity as yours.”
“Not madness, madame,” he answered, with chill haughtiness--“not
madness, but righteous indignation. You have defied the power of Holy
Church as you have defied the power of our sovereign lady, and justice
is upon you. We are here to present the reckoning, and see its payment
made in full.”
She fancied he alluded to the body in the coffin--the body of her
stepson--and she could have laughed at his foolish conclusions that
she must account Florimond’s death an act of justice upon her for her
impiety. But her rising anger left her no room for laughter.
“I thought, sir priest, you were come to bury the dead. But it rather
seems you are come to talk.”
He looked at her long and sternly. Then he shook his head, and the
faintest shadow of a smile haunted his ascetic face.
“Not to talk, madame; oh, not to talk,” he answered slowly. “But to act,
I have come, madame, to liberate from this shambles the gentle lamb you
hold here prisoned.”
At that some of the colour left her cheeks; her eyes grew startled: at
last she began to realize that all was not as she had thought--as she
had been given to understand.--Still, she sought to hector it, from very
instinct.
“_Vertudieu_!” she thundered at him. “What mean you?”
Behind her Tressan’s great plump knees were knocking one against the
other. Fool that he had been to come to Condillac that day, and to be
trapped thus in her company, a partner in her guilt. This proud Abbot
who stood there uttering denunciations had some power behind him,
else had he never dared to raise his voice in Condillac within call of
desperate men who would give little thought to the sacredness, of his
office.
“What mean you?” she repeated--adding with a sinister smile, “in your
zeal, Sir Abbot, you are forgetting that my men are within call.”
“So, madame, are mine,” was his astounding answer, and he waved a hand
towards the array of monks, all standing with bowed heads and folded
arms.
At that her laughter rang shrill through the chamber. “These poor
shavelings?” she questioned.
“Just these poor shavelings, madame,” he answered, and he raised his
hand again and made a sign. And then an odd thing happened, and it
struck a real terror into the heart of the Marquise and heightened that
which was already afflicting her fat lover, Tressan.
The monks drew themselves erect. It was as if a sudden gust of wind had
swept through their ranks and set them all in motion. Cowls fell back
and habits were swept aside, and where twenty monks had stood, there
were standing now a score of nimble, stalwart men in the livery of
Condillac, all fully armed, all grinning in enjoyment of her and
Tressan’s dismay.
One of them turned aside and locked the door of the chamber. But his
movement went unheeded by the Dowager, whose beautiful eyes, starting
with horror, were now back upon the grim figure of the Abbot, marvelling
almost to see no transformation wrought in him.
“Treachery!” she breathed, in an awful voice, that was no louder than
a whisper, and again her eyes travelled round the company, and suddenly
they fastened upon Fortunio, standing six paces from her to the right,
pulling thoughtfully at his mustachios, and manifesting no surprise at
what had taken place.
In a sudden, blind choler, she swept round, plucked the dagger from
Tressan’s belt and flung herself upon the treacherous captain. He had
betrayed her in some way; he had delivered up Condillac--into whose
power she had yet had no time to think. She caught him by the throat
with a hand of such nervous strength as one would little have suspected
from its white and delicate contour. Her dagger was poised in the air,
and the captain, taken thus suddenly, was palsied with amazement and
could raise no hand to defend himself from the blow impending.
But the Abbot stepped suddenly to her side and caught her wrist in his
thin, transparent hand.
“Forbear,” he bade her. “The man is but a tool.”
She fell back--dragged back almost by the Abbot--panting with rage and
grief; and then she noticed that during the moment that her back had
been turned the pall had been swept from the coffin. The sight of the
bare deal box arrested her attention, and for the moment turned aside
her anger. What fresh surprise did they prepare her?
No sooner had she asked herself the question than herself she answered
it, and an icy hand seemed to close about her heart. It was Marius who
was dead. They had lied to her. Marius’s was the body they had borne to
Condillac--those men in the livery of her stepson.
With a sudden sob in her throat she took a step towards the coffin. She
must see for herself. One way or the other she must at once dispel this
torturing doubt. But ere she had taken three paces, she stood arrested
again, her hands jerked suddenly to the height of her breast, her lips
parting to let out a scream of terror. For the coffin-lid had slowly
raised and clattered over. And as if to pile terror for her, a figure
rose from the box, and, sitting up, looked round with a grim smile; and
the figure was the figure of a man whom she knew to be dead, a man
who had died by her contriving--it was the figure of Garnache. It
was Garnache as he had been on the occasion of his first coming to
Condillac, as he had been on the day they had sought his life in this
very room. How well she knew that great hooked nose and the bright,
steely blue eyes, the dark brown hair, ash-coloured at the temples where
age had paled it, and the fierce, reddish mustachios, bristling above
the firm mouth and long, square chin.
She stared and stared, her beautiful face livid and distorted, till
there was no beauty to be seen in it, what time the Abbot regarded her
coldly and Tressan, behind her, turned almost sick with terror. But not
the terror of ghosts was it afflicted him. He saw in Garnache a man who
was still of the quick--a man who by some miracle had escaped the fate
to which they supposed him to have succumbed; and his terror was the
terror of the reckoning which that man would ask.
After a moment’s pause, as if relishing the sensation he had created,
Garnache rose to his feet and leapt briskly to the ground. There was
nothing ghostly about the thud with which he alighted on his feet before
her. A part of her terror left her; yet not quite all. She saw that she
had but a man to deal with, yet she began to realize that this man was
very terrible.
“Garnache again!” she gasped.
He bowed serenely, his lips smiling.
“Aye, madame,” he told her pleasantly, “always Garnache. Tenacious as
a leech, madame; and like a leech come hither to do a little work of
purification.”
Her eyes, now kindling again as she recovered from her recent fears,
sought Fortunio’s shifty glance. Garnache followed it and read what was
in her mind.
“What Fortunio has done,” said he, “he has done by your son’s authority
and sanction.”
“Marius?” she inquired, and she was almost fearful lest she should hear
that by her son he meant her stepson, and that Marius was dead.
“Yes, Marius,” he answered her. “I bent him to my will. I threatened him
that he and this fellow of his, this comrade in arms so worthy of his
master, should be broken on the wheel together unless I were implicitly
obeyed. If they would save their lives, this was their chance. They were
wise, and they took it, and thus afforded me the means of penetrating
into Condillac and rescuing Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye.”
“Then Marius--?” She left her question unfinished, her hand clutching
nervously at the bosom of her gown.
“Is sound and well, as Fortunio truthfully will have told you. But he is
not yet out of my grasp, nor will be until the affairs of Condillac are
settled. For if I meet with further opposition here, broken on the wheel
he shall be yet, I promise you.”
Still she made a last attempt at hectoring it. The long habit of
mastership dies hard. She threw back her head; her courage revived now
that she knew Marius to be alive and sound.
“Fine words,” she sneered. “But who are you that you can threaten so and
promise so?”
“I am the Queen-Regent’s humble mouthpiece, madame. What I threaten, I
threaten in her name. Ruffle it no longer, I beseech you. It will prove
little worth your while. You are deposed, madame, and you had best take
your deposition with dignity and calm--in all friendliness do I advise
it.”
“I am not yet come so low that I need your advice,” she answered sourly.
“You may before the sun sets,” he answered, with his quiet smile. “The
Marquis de Condillac and his wife are still at La Rochette, waiting
until my business here is done that they may come home.”
“His wife?” she cried.
“His wife, madame. He has brought home a wife from Italy.”
“Then--then--Marius?” She said no more than that. Maybe she had no
intention of muttering even so much of her thoughts aloud. But Garnache
caught the trend of her mind, and he marvelled to see how strong a habit
of thought can be. At once upon hearing of the Marquis’s marriage her
mind had flown back to its wonted pondering of the possibilities of
Marius’s wedding Valerie.
But Garnache dispelled such speculations.
“No, madame,” said he. “Marius looks elsewhere for a wife--unless
mademoiselle of her own free will should elect to wed him--a thing
unlikely.” Then, with a sudden change to sternness--“Mademoiselle de La
Vauvraye is well, madame?” he asked.
She nodded her head, but made no answer in words. He turned to Fortunio.
“Go fetch her,” he bade the captain, and one of the men unlocked the
door to let Fortunio out upon that errand.
The Parisian took a turn in the apartment, and came close to Tressan.
He nodded to the Seneschal with a friendliness that turned him sick with
fright.
“Well met, my dear Lord Seneschal. I am rejoiced to find you here. Had
it been otherwise I must have sent for you. There is a little matter
to be settled between us. You may depend upon me to settle it to your
present satisfaction, if to your future grief.” And, with a smile, he
passed on, leaving the Seneschal too palsied to answer him, too stricken
to disclaim his share in what had taken place at Condillac.
“You have terms to make with me?” the Marquise questioned proudly.
“Certainly,” he answered, with his grim courtesy. “Upon your acceptance
of those terms shall depend Marius’s life and your own future liberty.”
“What are they?”
“That within the hour all your people--to the last scullion--shall have
laid down their arms and vacated Condillac.”
It was beyond her power to refuse.
“The Marquis will not drive me forth?” she half affirmed, half asked.
“The Marquis, madame, has no power in this matter. It is for the Queen
to deal with your insubordination--for me as the Queen’s emissary.”
“If I consent, monsieur, what then?”
He shrugged his shoulders, and smiled quietly.
“There is no ‘if,’ madame. Consent you must, willingly or unwillingly.
To make sure of that have I come back thus and with force. But should
you deliver battle, you will be worsted--and it will be very ill for
you. Bid your men depart, as I have told you, and you also shall have
liberty to go hence.”
“Aye, but whither?” she cried, in a sudden frenzy of anger.
“I realize, madame, from what I know of your circumstances that you will
be well-nigh homeless. You should have thought of how one day you might
come to be dependent upon the Marquis de Condillac’s generosity before
you set yourself to conspire against him, before you sought to encompass
his death. You can hardly look for generosity at his hands now, and so
you will be all but homeless, unless--” He paused, and his eyes strayed
to Tressan and were laden with a sardonic look.
“You take a very daring tone with me,” she told him. “You speak to me as
no man has ever dared to speak.”
“When the power was yours, madame, you dealt with me as none has ever
dared to deal. The advantage now is mine. Behold how I use it in your
own interests; observe how generously I shall deal with you who deal in
murder. Monsieur de Tressan,” he called briskly. The Seneschal started
forward as if some one had prodded him suddenly.
“Mu--monsieur?” said he.
“With you, too, will I return good for evil. Come hither.”
The Seneschal approached, wondering what was about to take place. The
Marquise watched his coming, a cold glitter in her eye, for--keener of
mental vision than Tressan--she already knew the hideous purpose that
was in Garnache’s mind.
The soldiers grinned; the Abbot looked on with an impassive face.
“The Marquise de Condillac is likely to be homeless henceforth,” said
the Parisian, addressing the Seneschal. “Will you not be gallant enough
to offer her a home, Monsieur de Tressan?”
“Will I?” gasped Tressan, scarce daring to believe his own ears, his
eyes staring with a look that was almost one of vacancy. “Madame well
knows how readily.”
“Oho?” crowed Garnache, who had been observing madame’s face. “She
knows? Then do so, monsieur; and on that condition I will forget your
indiscretions here. I pledge you my word that you shall not be called to
further account for the lives that have been lost through your treachery
and want of loyalty, provided that of your own free will you lay down
your Seneschalship of Dauphiny--an office which I cannot consent to see
you filling hereafter.”
Tressan stared from the Dowager to Garnache and back to the Dowager. She
stood there as if Garnache’s words had turned her into marble, bereft of
speech through very rage. And then the door opened, and Mademoiselle de
La Vauvraye entered, followed closely by Fortunio.
At sight of Garnache she stood still, set her hand on her heart, and
uttered a low cry. Was it indeed Garnache she saw--Garnache, her brave
knight-errant? He looked no longer as he had looked during those days
when he had been her gaoler; but he looked as she liked to think of him
since she had accounted him dead. He advanced to meet her, a smile in
his eyes that had something wistful in it. He held out both hands to
her, and she took them, and there, under the eyes of all, before he
could snatch them away, she had stooped and kissed them, whilst a murmur
of “Thank God! Thank God!” escaped from her lips to heaven.
“Mademoiselle, mademoiselle!” he remonstrated, when it was too late to
stay her. “You must not; it is not seemly in me to allow it.”
He saw in the act no more than an expression of the gratitude for what
he had done to serve her, and for the risk in which his life had been
so willingly placed in that service. Under the suasion of his words she
grew calm again; then, suddenly, a fear stirred her once more in that
place where she had known naught but fears.
“Why are you here, monsieur? You have come into danger again?”
“No, no,” he laughed. “These are my own men, at least for the time
being. I am come in power this time, to administer justice. What shall
be done with this lady, mademoiselle?” he asked; and knowing well the
merciful sweetness of the girl’s soul, he added, “Speak, now. Her fate
shall rest in your hands.”
Valerie looked at her enemy, and then her eyes strayed round the room
and took stock of the men standing there in silence, of the Abbot who
still remained at the table-head, a pale, scarce-interested spectator of
this odd scene.
The change had come so abruptly. A few minutes ago she had been still a
prisoner, suffering tortures at having heard that Marius was to return
that day, and that, willy-nilly, she must wed him now. And now she was
free it seemed: her champion was returned in power, and he stood bidding
her decide the fate of her late oppressors.
Madame’s face was ashen. She judged the girl by her own self; she had no
knowledge of any such infinite sweetness as that of this child’s nature,
a sweetness that could do no hurt to any. Death was what the Marquise
expected, since she knew that death would she herself have pronounced
had the positions been reversed. But--
“Let her go in peace, monsieur,” she heard mademoiselle say, and she
could not believe but that she was being mocked. And as if mockery were
at issue, Garnache laughed.
“We will let her go, mademoiselle--yet not quite her own way. You must
not longer remain unrestrained, madame,” he told the Marquise. “Natures
such as yours need a man’s guidance. I think you will be sufficiently
punished if you wed this rash Monsieur de Tressan, just as he will be
sufficiently punished later when disillusionment follows his present
youthful ardour. Make each other happy, then,” and he waved his arms
from one to the other. “Our good Father, here, will tie the knot at
once, and then, my Lord Seneschal, you may bear home your bride. Her son
shall follow you.”
But the Marquise blazed out now. She stamped her foot, and her eyes
seemed to have taken fire.
“Never, sir! Never in life!” she cried. “I will not be so constrained. I
am the Marquise de Condillac, monsieur. Do not forget it!”
“I am hardly in danger of doing that. It is because I remember it that
I urge you to change your estate with all dispatch; and cease to be the
Marquise de Condillac. That same Marquise has a heavy score against
her. Let her evade payment by this metamorphosis. I have opened for you,
madame, a door through which you may escape.”
“You are insolent,” she told him. “By God, sir! I am no baggage to be
disposed of by the will of any man.”
At that Garnache himself took fire. Her anger proved as the steel
smiting the flint of his own nature, and one of his fierce bursts of
blazing passion whirled about her head.
“And what of this child, here?” he thundered. “What of her, madame? Was
she a baggage to be disposed of by the will of any man or woman? Yet you
sought to dispose of her against her heart, against her nature, against
her plighted word. Enough said!” he barked, and so terrific was his mien
and voice that the stout-spirited Dowager was cowed, and recoiled as he
advanced a step in her direction. “Get you married. Take you this man
to husband, you who with such calmness sought to drive others into
unwilling wedlock. Do it, madame, and do it now, or by the Heaven above
us, you shall come to Paris with me, and you’ll not find them nice
there. It will avail you little to storm and shout at them that you are
Marquise de Condillac. As a murderess and a rebel shall you be tried,
and as both or either it is odds you will be broken on the wheel--and
your son with you. So make your choice, madame.”
He ceased. Valerie had caught him by the arm. At once his fury fell from
him. He turned to her.
“What is it, child?”
“Do not compel her, if she will not wed him,” said she. “I
know--and--she did not--how terrible a thing it is.”
“Nay, patience, child,” he soothed her, smiling now, his smile as the
sunshine that succeeds a thunderstorm.
“It is none so bad with her. She is but coy. They had plighted their
troth already, so it seems. Besides, I do not compel her. She shall
marry him of her own free will--or else go to Paris and stand her trial
and the consequences.”
“They had plighted their troth, do you say?”
“Well--had you not, Monsieur le Seneschal?”
“We had, monsieur,” said Tressan, with conscious pride; “and for myself
I am ready for these immediate nuptials.”
“Then, in God’s name, let Madame give us her answer now. We have not the
day to waste.”
She stood looking at him, her toe tapping the ground, her eyes sullenly
angry. And in the end, half-fainting in her great disdain, she consented
to do his will. Paris and the wheel formed too horrible an alternative;
besides, even if that were spared her, there was but a hovel in Touraine
for her, and Tressan, for all his fat ugliness, was wealthy.
So the Abbot, who had lent himself to the mummery of coming there to
read a burial service, made ready now, by order of the Queen’s emissary,
to solemnize a wedding.
It was soon done. Fortunio stood sponsor for Tressan, and Garnache
himself insisted upon handing the Lord Seneschal his bride, a stroke
of irony which hurt the proud lady of Condillac more than all her
sufferings of the past half-hour.
When it was over and the Dowager Marquise de Condillac had been
converted into the Comtesse de Tressan, Garnache bade them depart in
peace and at once.
“As I have promised, you shall be spared all prosecution, Monsieur de
Tressan,” he assured the Seneschal at parting. “But you must resign at
once the King’s Seneschalship of Dauphiny, else will you put me to the
necessity of having you deprived of your office--and that might entail
unpleasant consequences.”
They went, madame with bowed head, her stubborn pride broken at last as
the Abbot of Saint Francis had so confidently promised her. After them
went the Abbot and the lackeys of Florimond, and Fortunio went with
these to carry out Garnache’s orders that the men of the Dowager’s
garrison be sent packing at once, leaving with the Parisian, in the
great hall, just Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye.