St. Martin's Summer Part 43

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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances 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 encompa.s.s 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 impa.s.sive 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 Seneschals.h.i.+p 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 s.n.a.t.c.h them away, she had stooped and kissed them, whilst a murmur of "Thank G.o.d! Thank G.o.d!" 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 grat.i.tude 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, w.i.l.l.y-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 p.r.o.nounced 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sion 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 G.o.d's name, let Madame give us her answer now. We have not the day to waste."