Along the northern side of the Chateau ran a terrace bordered by a
red sandstone balustrade, and below this the Italian garden, so called
perhaps in consequence of the oddly clipped box-trees, its only feature
that suggested Italy. At the far end of this garden there was a strip of
even turf that might have been designed for a fencing ground, and which
Caron knew of old. Thither he led Captain Juste, and there in the
pale sunshine of that February morning they awaited the arrival of the
Vicomte and his sponsor.
But the minutes went by and still they waited-five, ten, fifteen minutes
elapsed, yet no one came. Juste was on the point of returning within to
seek the reason of this delay when steps sounded on the terrace above.
But they were accompanied by the rustle of a gown, and presently it
was Mademoiselle who appeared before them. The two men eyed her with
astonishment, which in the case of La Boulaye, was tempered by another
feeling.
“Monsieur la Boulaye,” said she, her glance wandering towards the
Captain, “may I speak with you alone?”
Outwardly impassive the Commissioner bowed.
“Your servant, Citoyenne,” said he, removing his cocked hat. “Juste,
will you give us leave?”
“You will find me on the terrace when you want me, Citizen-deputy,”
answered the officer, and saluting, he departed.
For a moment or two after he was gone Suzanne and Caron stood
confronting each other in silence. She seemed smitten with a sudden
awkwardness, and she looked away from him what time he waited, hat in
hand, the chill morning breeze faintly stirring a loose strand of his
black hair.
“Monsieur,” she faltered at last, “I am come to intercede.”
At that a faint smile hovered a second on the Republican's thin lips.
“And is the noblesse of France fallen so low that it sends its women to
intercede for the lives of its men? But, perhaps,” he added cynically,
“it had not far to fall.”
Her cheeks reddened. His insult to her class acted upon her as a spur
and overcame the irresoluteness that seemed to have beset her.
“To insult the fallen, sir, is worthy of the new regime, whose
representative you are, Enfine! We must take it, I suppose, as we take
everything else in these disordered times--with a bent head and a meek
submission.”
“From the little that I have seen, Citoyenne,” he answered, very coldly,
roused in his turn, “it rather seems that you take things on your knees
and with appeals for mercy.”
“Monsieur,” she cried, and her eyes now met his in fearless anger, “if
you persist in these gratuitous insults I shall leave you.”
He laughed in rude amusement, and put on his hat. The spell that for a
moment her beauty had cast over him when first she had appeared had been
attenuating. It now broke suddenly, and as he covered himself his whole
manner changed.
“Is this interview of my seeking?” he asked. “It is your brother I
am awaiting. Name of a name, Citoyenne, do you think my patience
inexhaustible? The ci-devant Vicomte promised to attend me here. It was
the boast of your order that whatever sins you might be guilty of you
never broke your word. Have you lost even that virtue, which served you
as a cloak for untold vices? And is your brother fled into the woods
whilst you, his sister, come here to intercede with me for his wretched
life? Pah! In the old days you aroused my hatred by your tyrannies
and your injustices; to-day you weary and disgust me by your ineffable
cowardices, from that gentleman in Paris who now calls himself
Orleans-Egalite downwards.”
“Monsieur,” she began But he was not yet done. His cheeks were flushed
with a reflection of the heart within.
“Citoyenne, I have a debt to discharge, and I will discharge it in full.
Intercessions are vain with me. I cannot forget. Send me your brother
within ten minutes to meet me here, man to man, and he shall have--all
of you shall have--the chance that lies in such an encounter. But woe
unto every man at Bellecour if he should fail me. Citoyenne, you know my
mind.”
But she overlooked the note of dismissal in his voice.
“You speak of a debt that you must discharge,” said she, with no whit
less heat than he had exhibited. “You refer to the debt of vengeance
which you look to discharge by murdering that boy, my brother. But do
you not owe me a debt also?”
“You?” he questioned. “My faith! Unless it be a debt of scorn, I know of
none.”
“Aye,” she returned wistfully, “you are like the rest. You have a long
memory for injuries, but a short one for benefits. Had it not been for
me, Monsieur, you would not be here now to demand this that you call
satisfaction. Have you forgotten how I--”
“No,” he broke in. “I well remember how you sought to stay them when
they were flogging me in the yard there. But you came too late. You
might have come before, for from the balcony above you had been watching
my torture. But you waited overlong. I was cast out for dead.”.
She flashed him a searching glance, as though she sought to read his
thoughts, and to ascertain whether he indeed believed what he was
saying.
“Cast out for dead?” she echoed. “And by whose contrivance? By mine,
M. la Boulaye. When they were cutting you down they discovered that you
were not dead, and but that I bribed the men to keep it secret and carry
you to Duhamel's house, they had certainly informed my father and you
would have been finished off.”
His eyes opened wide now, and into them there came a troubled look--the
look of one who is endeavouring to grasp an elusive recollection.
“Ma foi,” he muttered. “It seems to come to me as if I had heard
something of the sort in a dream. It was--” He paused, and his brows
were knit a moment. Then he looked up suddenly, and gradually his face
cleared. “Why, yes--I have it!” he exclaimed. “It was in Duhamel's
house. While I was lying half unconscious on the couch I heard one of
the men telling Duhamel that you had paid them to carry me there and to
keep a secret.”
“And you had forgotten that?” she asked, with the faintest note of
contempt.
“Not forgotten,” he answered, “for it was never really there to be
remembered. That I had heard such words had more than once occurred to
me, but I have always looked upon it as the recollection of something
that I had dreamt. I had never looked upon it as a thing that had had a
real happening.”
“How, then, did you explain your escape?”
“I always imagined that I had been assumed dead.”
There was a brief spell of silence. Then--
“And now that you know, Monsieur--?”
She left the question unfinished, and held out her hands to him in a
gesture of supplication. His face paled slightly and overclouded. Her
influence, against which so long he had steeled himself, reinforced
by the debt in which she had shown him that he stood towards her,
was prevailing with him despite himself. Stirred suddenly out of the
coldness that he had hitherto assumed, he caught the outstretched hands
and drew her a step nearer. That was his undoing. Strong man though he
unquestionably was, like many another strong man his strength seemed to
fall from him at a woman's touch. He had led so austere and stern a life
during the past four years; of women he had but had the most passing of
glances, and intercourse with none save an old female who acted as his
housekeeper in Paris. And here was a woman who was not only beautiful,
but the woman who years ago had embodied all his notions of what was
most perfect in womanhood; the woman who ever since, and despite all
that was past, had reigned in his heart and mind almost in spite of
himself, almost unknown to him.
The touch of her hand now, the closeness of her presence, the faint
perfume that reached him from her, and that was to him as a symbol of
her inherent sweetness, the large blue eyes meeting his in expectation,
and the imploring half-pout of her lips, were all seductions against
which he had not been human had he prevailed.
Very white in the intensity of the long-quiescent passion she had
resuscitated, he cried:
“Mademoiselle, what shall I say to you?”
The four years that were gone seemed suddenly to have slipped away. It
was as if they stood again by the brook in the park on that April
morn when first he had dared to word his presumptuous love. Even the
vocabulary of the Republic was forgotten, and the interdicted title of
“Mademoiselle” fell naturally from his lips.
“Say that you can be generous,” she implored him softly. “Say that you
prefer the debt you owe to the injury you received.”
“You do not know the sacrifice you ask,” he exclaimed still fighting
with himself. “I have waited four years for this, and now--”
“He is my brother,” she whispered, in so wonderful a tone that words
which of themselves may have seemed no argument at all became the
crowning argument of her intercession.
“Soit!” he consented. “For your sake, Mademoiselle, and in payment
of the debt I owe you, I will go as I came. I shall not see the
Citizen-marquis again. But do you tell him from me that if he sets any
value on his life, he had best shake the dust of France from his feet.
Too long already has he tarried, and at any moment those may arrive
who will make him emigrate not only out of France but out of the world
altogether. Besides, the peasantry that has risen once may rise again,
and I shall not be here to protect him from its violence. Tell him he
had best depart at once.”
“Monsieur, I am grateful--very, very deeply grateful. I can say no
more. May Heaven reward you. I shall pray the good God to watch over you
always. Adieu, Monsieur!”
He stood looking at her a moment still retaining his hold of her hands.
“Adieu, Mademoiselle,” he said at last. Then, very slowly--as if so
that realising his intent she might frustrate it were she so minded--he
raised her right hand. It was not withdrawn, and so he bent low, and
pressed his lips upon it.
“God guard you, Mademoiselle,” he said at last, and if they were strange
words for a Republican and a Deputy, it must be remembered that his
bearing during the past few moments had been singularly unlike a
Republican's.
He released her hand, and stepping back, doffed his hat. With a final
inclination of the head, she turned and walked away in the direction of
the terrace.
At a distance La Boulaye followed, so lost in thought that he did not
observe Captain Juste until the fellow's voice broke upon his ear.
“You have been long enough, Citizen-deputy,” was the soldier's greeting.
“I take it there is to be no duel.”
“I make you my compliments upon the acuteness of your perception,”
answered La Boulaye tartly. “You are right. There is to be no
encounter.”
Juste's air was slightly mocking, and words of not overdelicate banter
rose to his lips, to be instantly quelled by La Boulaye.
“Let your drums beat a rally, Citizen-captain,” he commanded briskly.
“We leave Bellecour in ten minutes.”.
And indeed, in less than that time the blue-coats were swinging briskly
down the avenue. In the rear rode La Boulaye, his cloak wrapped about
him, his square chin buried in his neck-cloth, and his mind deep in
meditation.
From a window of the Chateau the lady who was the cause of the young
Revolutionist's mental absorption watched the departing soldiers. On
either side of her stood Ombreval and her father.
“My faith, little one,” said Bellecour good-humouredly. “I wonder what
magic you have exercised to rid us of that infernal company.”
“Women have sometimes a power of which men know nothing,” was her
cryptic answer.
Ombreval turned to her with a scowl of sudden suspicion.
“I trust, Mademoiselle, that you did not--” he stopped short. His
thoughts were of a quality that defied polite utterance.
“That I did not what, Monsieur?” she asked.
“I trust you remembered that you are to become the Vicomtesse
d'Ombreval” he answered, constructing his sentence differently.
“Monsieur!” exclaimed Bellecour angrily.
“I was chiefly mindful of the fact that I had my brother's life to
save,” said the girl, very coldly, her eye resting upon her betrothed in
a glance of so much contempt that it forced him into an abashed silence.
In her mind she was contrasting this supercilious, vacillating weakling
with the stern, strong man who lode yonder. A sigh fluttered across her
lips. Had things but been different. Had Ombreval been the Revolutionist
and La Boulaye the Vicomte, how much better pleased might she not have
been. But since it was not so, why sigh? It was not as if she had loved
this La Boulaye. How was that possible? Was he not of the canaille,
basely born, and a Revolutionist--the enemy of her order--in addition?
It were a madness to even dream of the possibility of such a thing, for
Suzanne de Bellecour came of too proud a stock, and knew too well the
respect that was due to it.