St. Martin's Summer Part 40

Once she reproved Valerie for her lack of appet.i.te, and there was in her voice a kindness Valerie had not heard for months--not since the old Marquis died, nor did she hear it now, or, hearing it, she did not heed it.

"You are not eating, child," the Dowager said, and her eyes were gentle.

Valerie looked up like one suddenly awakened; and in that moment her eyes filled with tears. It was as if the Dowager's voice had opened the floodgates of her sorrow and let out the tears that hitherto had been repressed. The Marquise rose and waved the page and an attendant lackey from the room. She crossed to Valerie's side and put her arm about the girl's shoulder.

"What ails you, child?" she asked. For a moment the girl suffered the caress; almost she seemed to nestle closer to the Dowager's shoulder.

Then, as if understanding had come to her suddenly, she drew back and quietly disengaged herself from the other's arms. Her tears ceased; the quiver pa.s.sed from her lip.

"You are very good, madame," she said, with a coldness that rendered the courteous words almost insulting, "but nothing ails me save a wish to be alone."

"You have been alone too much of late," the Dowager answered, persisting in her wish to show kindness to Valerie; for all that, had she looked into her own heart, she might have been puzzled to find a reason for her mood--unless the reason lay in her own affliction of anxiety for Marius.

"Perhaps I have," said the girl, in the same cold, almost strained voice. "It was not by my own contriving."

"Ah, but it was, child; indeed it was. Had you been reasonable you had found us kinder. We had never treated you as we have done, never made a prisoner of you."

Valerie looked up into the beautiful ivory-white face, with its black eyes and singularly scarlet lips, and a wan smile raised the corners of her gentle mouth.

"You had no right--none ever gave it you--to set constraint and restraint upon me."

"I had--indeed, indeed I had," the Marquise answered her, in a tone of sad protest. "Your father gave me such a right when he gave me charge of you."

"Was it a part of your charge to seek to turn me from my loyalty to Florimond, and endeavour to compel me by means gentle or ungentle into marriage with Marius?"

"We thought Florimond dead; or, if not dead, then certainly unworthy of you to leave you without news of him for years together. And if he was not dead then, it is odds he will be dead by now." The words slipped out almost unconsciously, and the Marquise bit her lip and straightened herself, fearing an explosion. But none came. The girl looked across the table at the fire that smouldered on the hearth in need of being replenished.

"What do you mean, madame?" she asked; but her tone was listless, apathetic, as of one who though uttering a question is incurious as to what the answer may be.

"We had news some days ago that he was journeying homewards, but that he was detained by fever at La Rochette. We have since heard that his fever has grown so serious that there is little hope of his recovery."

"And it was to solace his last moments that Monsieur Marius left Condillac this morning?"

The Dowager looked sharply at the girl; but Valerie's face continued averted, her gaze resting on the fire. Her tone suggested nothing beyond a natural curiosity.

"Yes," said the Dowager.

"And lest his own efforts to help his brother out of this world should prove insufficient he took Captain Fortunio with him?" said Valerie, in the same indifferent voice.

"What do you mean?" the Marquise almost hissed into the girl's ear.

Valerie turned to her, a faint colour stirring in her white face.

"Just what I have said, madame. Would you know what I have prayed?

All night was I upon my knees from the moment that I recovered consciousness, and my prayers were that Heaven might see fit to let Florimond destroy your son. Not that I desire Florimond's return, for I care not if I never set eyes on him again. There is a curse upon this house, madame," the girl continued, rising from her chair and speaking now with a greater animation, whilst the Marquise recoiled a step, her face strangely altered and suddenly gone grey, "and I have prayed that that curse might be worked out upon that a.s.sa.s.sin, Marius. A fine husband, madame, you would thrust upon the daughter of Gaston de La Vauvraye."

And turning, without waiting for an answer, she moved slowly down the room, and took her way to her own desolate apartments, so full of memories of him she mourned--of him, it seemed to her, she must always mourn; of him who lay dead in the black waters of the moat beneath her window.

Stricken with a sudden, inexplicable terror, the Dowager, who for all her spirit was not without a certain superst.i.tion, felt her knees loosen, and she sank limply into a chair. She was amazed at the extent of Valerie's knowledge, and puzzled by it; she was amazed, too, at the seeming apathy of Valerie for the danger in which Florimond stood, and at her avowal that she did not care if she never again beheld him. But such amazement as came to her was whelmed fathoms-deep in her sudden fears for Marius. If he should die! She grew cold at the thought, and she sat there, her hands folded in her lap, her face grey. That mention of the curse the Church had put upon them had frozen her quick blood and turned her stout spirit to mere water.

At last she rose and went out into the open to inquire if no messenger had yet arrived, for all that she knew there was not yet time for any messenger to have reached the chateau. She mounted the winding staircase of stone that led to the ramparts, and there alone, in the November suns.h.i.+ne, she paced to and fro for hours, waiting for news, straining her eyes to gaze up the valley of the Isere, watching for the horseman that must come that way. Then, as time sped on and the sun approached its setting and still no one came, she bethought her that if harm had befallen Marius, none would ride that night to Condillac. This very delay seemed pregnant with news of disaster. And then she shook off her fears and tried to comfort herself. There was not yet time. Besides, what had she to fear for Marius? He was strong and quick, and Fortunio was by his side. A man was surely dead by now at La Rochette; but that man could not be Marius.

At last, in the distance, she espied a moving object, and down on the silent air of eventide came the far-off rattle of a horse's hoofs. Some one was riding, galloping that way. He was returned at last. She leaned on the battlements, her breath coming in quick, short gasps, and watched the horseman growing larger with every stride of his horse.

A mist was rising from the river, and it dimmed the figure; and she cursed the mist for heightening her anxiety, for straining further her impatience. Then a new fear was begotten in her mind. Why came one horseman only where two should have ridden? Who was it that returned, and what had befallen his companion? G.o.d send, at least, it might be Marius who rode thus, at such a breakneck pace.

At last she could make him out. He was close to the chateau now, and she noticed that his right arm was bandaged and hanging in a sling. And then a scream broke from her, and she bit her lip hard to keep another in check, for she had seen the horseman's face, and it was Fortunio's.

Fortunio--and wounded! Then, a.s.suredly, Marius was dead!

She swayed where she stood. She set her hand on her bosom, above her heart, as if she would have repressed the beating of the one, the heaving of the other; her soul sickened, and her mind seemed to turn numb, as she waited there for the news that should confirm her fears.

The hoofs of his horse thundered over the planks of the drawbridge, and came clatteringly to halt as he harshly drew rein in the courtyard below. There was a sound of running feet and men sprang to his a.s.sistance. Madame would have gone below to meet him; but her limbs seemed to refuse their office. She leaned against one of the merlons of the embattled parapet, her eyes on the spot where he should emerge from the stairs, and thus she waited, her eyes haggard, her face drawn.

He came at last, lurching in his walk, being overstiff from his long ride. She took a step forward to meet him. Her lips parted.

"Well?" she asked him, and her voice sounded harsh and strained. "How has the venture sped?"

"The only way it could," he answered. "As you would wish it."

At that she thought that she must faint. Het lungs seemed to writhe for air, and she opened her lips and took long draughts of the rising mist, never speaking for a moment or two until she had sufficiently recovered from this tremendous revulsion from her fears.

"Then, where is Marius?" she asked at last.

"He has remained behind to accompany the body home. They are bringing it here."

"They?" she echoed. "Who are they?"

"The monks of Saint Francis of Cheylas," he answered.

A something in his tone, a something in his s.h.i.+fty eyes, a cloud upon his fair and usually so ingenuous looking countenance aroused her suspicions and gave her resurrected courage pause.

She caught him viciously by the arms, and forced his glance to meet her own in the fading daylight.

"It is the truth you are telling me, Fortunio?" she snapped, and her voice was half-angry, half-fearful.

He faced her now, his eyes bold. He raised a hand to lend emphasis to his words.

"I swear, madame, by my salvation, that Monsieur Marius is sound and well."

She was satisfied. She released his arm.

"Does he come to-night?" she asked.

"They will be here to-morrow, madame. I rode on to tell you so."

"An odd fancy, this of his. But"--and a sudden smile overspread her face--"we may find a more useful purpose for one of these monks."

An hour ago she would willingly have set mademoiselle at liberty in exchange for the a.s.surance that Marius had been successful in the business that had taken him over the border into Savoy. She would have done it gladly, content that Marius should be heir to Condillac. But now that Condillac was a.s.sured her son, she must have more for him; her insatiable greed for his advancement and prosperity was again upon her. Now, more than ever--now that Florimond was dead--must she have La Vauvraye for Marius, and she thought that mademoiselle would no longer be difficult to bend. The child had fallen in love with that mad Garnache, and when a woman is crossed in love, while her grief lasts it matters little to her where she weds. Did she not know it out of the fund of her own bitter experience? Was it not that--the compulsion her own father had employed to make her find a mate in a man so much older than herself as Condillac--that had warped her own nature, and done much to make her what she was?

A lover she had had, and whilst he lived she had resisted them, and stood out against this odious marriage that for convenience' sake they forced upon her. He was killed in Paris in a duel, and when the news of it came to her, she had folded her hands and let them wed her to whom they listed.