It was a bright, sunny morning when De Beaurepaire drew rein in the
long, dirty street of Charenton, and, turning his horse's head,
directed it towards the hamlet of Saint Mandé where his Lodge was. The
Lodge that, enshrouded in trees, stood on the edge of the Forest of
Vincennes and was one of the many which, wherever there was a royal
forest, were the residences of the Grand Veneur of the time being.
Leading his animal to the stables, while observing that already the
heavy curtains were drawn apart and the inmates stirring, he tethered
it in a stall and fetched a feed for it from the bin near at hand.
After which he locked the stable door with the key he had drawn from
his pocket, retraced his steps to the garden, and, mounting to the
verandah, went towards the window.
If, however, he did this with the intention of tapping on it and thus
attracting the notice of whosoever might be, within that room, this
intention was anticipated.
As his heavy riding-boots sounded on the crushed shell path and his
gilt spurs rang at his heels, he heard the _frou-frou_ of a woman's
long robe on the parquet of the room and saw the thick folds of the
stamped leather hangings drawn aside by a slim white hand, and, next,
one side of the window opened.
A moment later he was in the room, and the woman who called herself
Emérance de Villiers-Bordéville stood before him.
"So," she exclaimed in a whisper, the very murmur of which told of her
joy at having him with her once more; "so you are back once more. And
almost to the moment, as you promised. Ah! I have so longed to see you
since you quitted Paris for Fontainebleau." Then she said, "Come, see,
a meal is prepared. Come, refresh yourself, eat and drink and let us
be merry. We meet once more."
Yet, as she spoke and while gazing up into the handsome face of the
man before her, she saw something in that face, something in the dark
eyes that were looking down into hers, that startled her.
"What is it?" she asked in a low voice, a voice that was almost hoarse
in its depth. "What?"
"I will tell you," De Beaurepaire answered, "but first a drink of
wine. I am parched and dry with my ride, and also with a fever that
consumes me within. Give me the drink."
Obeying him, the woman went over to the table which stood at one side
of the room; a table set out with cold meats, a pasty and some salads
and, also, with a large flask of wine, when, pouring out some into a
goblet, she brought it to the man she loved. As he drank, eagerly,
thirstily, she let her eyes rest on him till he had finished the
draught. After which she said again, "What is it?"
"This. Humphrey West is alive. La Truaumont has either lied to me or
been deceived."
"Alive!" Emérance repeated, her face blanching as she spoke, while the
softness of it seemed to vanish, to leave it in a moment, and her \
eyes became dim. "Humphrey West--the man who heard--as they all
thought--what was said in that room at Basle."
"Yes. Alive and--at Fontainebleau."
"_Malheur!_" while, as Emérance spoke, the goblet she had taken from
his hand after he had finished drinking fell to the floor and shivered
into a dozen pieces on the parquet. "At Fontainebleau! Where the King
is. So," and she shuddered as though the room had suddenly grown cold.
"You are undone. Lost. Oh!"
"You are undone. Lost," she had said. She had not said, "We are
undone." And, as she said it, the man knew, if he had never known
before, how strong her love was for him. There had been no thought of,
no fear for, herself springing quickly to her mind in learning the
danger that overhung them both, though there could have been no
possibility of her failing to understand that what threatened him
threatened her also; she had thought only of him. She had not said,
"We are undone." Her wail, her terror had been for him alone.
"Emérance," De Beaurepaire said, taking her to his arms now and
kissing her, while--whatever the man's faults were, and they were many
and grievous!--indifference to the self-abnegation of this thing that,
he now knew, loved him so, could not be counted among them. "Emérance,
I think not of myself but you. I have staked and lost. I must stand
the hazard. _Les battus payent l'amende_."
"No, no," Emérance wailed. "What! You think of me! Of me the schemer,
the adventuress--the woman who is herself of Normandy, who hoped to
see this proud, masterful ruler beaten down by the Normans he
despises and treats evilly. The woman who hoped to see the man she
loves, the man she worships, help in the work and, perhaps, assume
that ruler's place. Who am I that you should think of me? Yet,
nevertheless, this sunders our lives. Or! no--no!" she went on, a wan
smile stealing on to her face. "For though we go out of each other's
lives it may be that we shall set out from each other together, at the
same time--though we go different dark roads at parting."
Excited, overmastered, by what her imagination conjured up, at what
must be their fate if their conspiracy was known by now to the King,
she went toward the table again and, filling another glass, drank it
to the dregs. After which, as though inspirited by what she had drunk,
she came back to where the other stood, while saying:--
"Tell me all. Have you seen him at Fontainebleau?"
"Five hours past. Ill, white, like a man who has been close to, who
has knocked at, death's door, yet has been refused admittance. In the
great avenue, on his road to the château."
"You could not have been mistaken?"
"I was not mistaken. Our eyes did not meet as he looked out of the
crazy conveyance in which he sat. But in seeing him, I learnt all."
"Was La Truaumont deceived in what he repeated to you--or--or is that
wretch, Van den Enden, a double traitor? Yet--yet--you told me ere you
went to Fontainebleau that the former said La Preaux forced Humphrey
West to fight with him and slew him, leaving the blame to fall on
Boisfleury. That he saw the young man slain."
"La Truaumont was not deceived nor did he lie. He saw the fight: he
saw the other fall. Yet, now, I have seen him alive. This very day.
Alive and making his way to the King."
"And ere the Englishman was killed he had killed Boisfleury?" Emérance
asked meditatively.
"Nay. La Truaumont thought not so but that he only wounded him
sorely."
"They should have killed him ere they left Basle. They should have
killed them both. They should have made sure of their silence for
ever. Thus, too, when they were found they would have been thought to
have slain each other; their lips would have been sealed--you would
have been safe."
"Emérance, think not of me alone. I am but one."
"But one! You are the only one of whom I can think. What are a
thousand lives, a thousand murders, to me so long as you are safe!"
Before this overmastering passion of the woman for him, this love
that, like the love of the tigress for its mate or its young, would
have swept the lives of all in the world away to preserve the one
thing precious to it, De Beaurepaire stood speechless. In truth it
startled him--startled even him who had known so much of women's love
yet had never known such love as this.
"Nevertheless," Emérance went on, fearing that the violence of her
passion, of her fears for her lover, might make him deem her what she
was not, "I would have had no blood shed, and treacherously shed, too,
had you been safe. Had I known before what I know now since La
Truaumont and I have met again in Paris, had I guessed that this
Englishman had overheard all, the attempt to do him cruelly to death
should not have been made. At least, that ruffian, La Preaux, who
masquerades under his buffoon's name of Fleur de Mai, should not have
tried his treacherous _botte_ on him. I would have seen the
eavesdropper, have sworn him to secrecy, and have saved him."
"La Truaumont would have saved him if he could. He endeavoured to
swear him to silence, to make him give a promise to breathe no word.
Had the other consented all would be well. But----"
"But?"--with an inward catching of her breath.
"But he refused scornfully. He boasted how, that very night, he would
be on his road to Louis to divulge all. Therefore it had to be. His
blood was on his own head. If he had slain Fleur de Mai, as it appears
he went near to doing, La Truaumont would have slain him." And De
Beaurepaire muttered, "it had to be," while adding, "and still it was
not done."
Shrugging her shoulders the woman exclaimed, "Yes, and--alas!--still
it was not done. He is alive and the King by now knows all. Only--will
he believe upon this man's testimony alone? Will he act at once,
without further proof or corroboration, ere he is sure?"
When Emérance de Villiers-Bordéville, as she called herself, asked
this question, she did not know, could not know that there had already
come a letter from England from Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of
Portsmouth--herself a spy of France--to Louis, telling him as much as,
if not more than, Humphrey West could tell him of the Norman plot
against him. Nor could she also know that, from Basle, had come
another letter from the Duchesse de Castellucchio telling him in more
guarded language (since she, at least, could not betray De
Beaurepaire) of what she had gathered, and bidding him beware of Spain
and Holland.
"I know not what he will do, nor what he will believe, nor if any name
is yet divulged," the Prince replied, "though, when he spoke with me
last evening ere I left him, he dwelt strangely, ay! and strongly too,
on our boyhood's companionship and my command of all his guards. But,
Emérance, tell me what was said of me that night in your room. Was my
name spoken so that this man listening in the next one might easily
catch it; was my share in all laid bare? Think, recall; and speak
boldly to me. For if it was----"
"Yes; if it was, what then?"
"Then there is but one thing left. Flight----"
"Ah! From me?"
"Nay, never. But flight together. I will never part from you in life.
As man and wife we fly together."
"Ah!"
"Never otherwise! Now, Emérance, speak. Tell all."
"If," Emérance said, after meditating deeply for some moments, while
there was on her face the look which all have seen when those with
whom they converse are thinking carefully, or endeavouring to recall
some once spoken words; "if--if--this man overheard me and La
Truaumont the first night, then--_he_--heard your name. Because La
Truaumont said that you might rise to even higher flights than the
proud position of a De Beaurepaire."
"_Dieu des Dieux!_ If he did hear! Well! On the next night?"
"On the next night," Emérance continued, "ah! let me recall. Yes. On
the next night your name was again uttered. By me--accursed be my
tongue!--when I spoke of rejoining you here in Paris, and by La
Truaumont by the sobriquet I love to hear applied to you, that of '_Le
Dédaigneux_.' For disdainful you are to all--except to me," her voice
sinking to a murmur as she added those last two words.
"Ha!" De Beaurepaire said with a grim smile, "if Humphrey West heard
no mention of my name by you, he would scarce know that I am '_Le
Dédaigneux'_."
"Alas," the woman almost wailed, "'twas touched upon that the King's
guards had been despatched to join the main body of the army: that _Le
Dédaigneux_ had taken heed for that. _Le Dédaigneux_--their colonel."
"Enough. With this he knows all. And by now Louis and De Louvois, too,
who never leaves his master's side, know it also. It is enough, more
than enough. When the Court returns from Fontainebleau four days hence
La Reynie will know it as well."
"Four days! You have four days in which to escape, to hide yourself,
to put some frontier between you and the King's wrath! Ah! heaven! you
are saved."
"And lost also. Once I cross any frontier I shall never recross it,
never return to France. Never. Never. And I am a De Beaurepaire; my
blood, my life is drawn from France and I shall never see it more."
"Nay. With time the King will forgive. You have often said his heart
is kindly, that he is never cruel. That he has forgiven much to both
women and men who have deceived him."
"Ay, to both women and men. But the women were false to his heart
alone, and there are thousands of other women in France as fair as
they: a king woos and wins where he will. And the men he has forgiven
have but forgotten for a moment the difference between him and them;
but when it is his throne, his crown, that is in danger, he never
forgives."
"Seize then upon these four days; fly to Holland or Switzerland, or
Italy, and escape. Sell your charges to those whom you have oft told
me would buy them, and fly."
"And you? You--my love?"
"As you bid me I will do. If you will have me by your side, or go
before you or stay behind, you must but say the word and I obey. Do
with me as you would with your favourite dog; leave me or take me.
"I will never leave you," her lover murmured. "Never. We escape
together----"
"Or we fall together. Is it not so?"
"It is so. And, remember, our danger and our safety go hand in hand.
If either of us is found in Paris when once La Reynie's blood-hounds
are let loose, there will be but one end for both."
"No matter so that we share that end. Yet," she said suddenly,
recalling what both had forgotten. "There is La Truaumont. Also Van
den Enden and the bully, La Preaux. The former, at least, should be
warned."
"La Truaumont shall be. As for the Jew and La Preaux, let them look to
themselves."
"Nay! nay! That is madness. If they are taken ere we are safe they
will divulge all. To save ourselves we must save them."