The Maid of Honour Volume Ii Part 3

"Their governess is devoted to the little ones and loves them," mused Gabrielle, sadly sighing. "Were I not a.s.sured of that I should do something desperate. It would be too much--I could not bear it!"

"Excuse my disrespectful merriment," laughed Pharamond, "but your project is too funny. What! A convent! A mouse trap! My dear, you need rousing to revive your mental tone, which has dropped too low. A commingling of new pleasures and fresh interests is vastly beneficial.

In your despondent state you would, within the living tomb of the cloister, become in a month a hysterical _convulsionaire_--fit subject for Mesmer's tub! No, no, The world shall not lose its fairest ornament, hidden away out of reach too long. I am here now as your true friend to administer timely counsel. Residence in France is, for the time being, fraught with peril. I propose to escort you to a place of security where you will be free from molestation. There will be no one to worry or torment you as those two have done. Your father learning that you have been induced to fly from an impossible existence, will doubtless join us, and I pledge my honour that the little ones shall follow."

Gabrielle had been listening drearily, her head supported on her hand, as one listens to a tale too often told. But at mention of the children she started, and the abbe flattered himself that he had hit the bull's-eye. How to secure the infants he had not considered, but if their presence was essential as a tempting bait, why, they could easily be kidnapped.

"You see, dear Gabrielle," the abbe whispered drawing his chair close and laying a persuasive hand upon her arm, "that I have thought of everything. We will make for Switzerland, where you and I and the angels will dwell in paradise. The marechal is not strait-laced, heaven save the mark, how should he be? and seeing you quite happy, will be satisfied. You are too mopish to act for yourself. Say the delicious word and I will see it all settled in a twinkling."

He awaited a reply, but it came not. The marquise, engrossed in his word-picture, was gently smiling. She was out of sorts--too much depressed for decision. This was the instant for a tiny twist of the screw, like a microscopic p.r.i.c.k from a spur.

"I see that you have reflected, and that you have made the best selection. That is well. You recall my words before I went away? I meant them then, and mean them still. My will is iron, Gabrielle. A resolve once taken hardens into adamant. Mine you are to be, and mine you will be; so further struggling is useless."

Still no answer; yet she had had time enough in all conscience to see that there was no escape. The abbe, quite certain of his prey, edged nearer yet till he could inhale the perfume on her hair.

"It is indeed I, and no other, who am to teach you love, my Gabrielle," he whispered tenderly. "It is written! Mine too shall be the privilege to return the children to your keeping. You bear me no malice in that I parted you from them for awhile? You know right well that what I have done I can undo. Ha! Your bosom heaves! You yield at last! Was ever woman so strangely wooed----and won!"

It was a favourite theory of the abbe's (which, like many plausible theories, had a crack in it) that in a tussle of two, the weaker must inevitably go under. A female heart, he argued, must perforce be flattered when it finds its citadel besieged with unflagging perseverance. The abbe was radiant, for he had no doubt that his sharp attack must tell on ramparts undermined by prolonged strategy, and that he would reap the reward of his efforts.

Gabrielle rose slowly from her seat, with flushed cheeks and eyes that sparkled; but not to fall into his outstretched and expectant arms.

"Abbe," she said, clasping her bosom with her hands, "you admit that it was you who parted us. What your ingenious cruelty will invent next I dread to think. You did well to name my dear ones. But for them you might have had your way, perhaps, since I care not what becomes of me.

You would persuade me to fly with you, and hold them out as a lure? A grievous error, abbe; they are my buckler! They will grow up, a blooming youth and maiden, will learn by degrees to gauge this sordid world. What would their opinion be, think you, of a mother who abandoned her home and her honour to gratify a son of the Church?"

The beacon of green-gray light, which the chevalier knew so well, shone out for an instant and was gone. It began to strike the abbe, with a surge of impotent rage, that he might have been wrong in his calculations; that some long-suffering and apparently defenceless women possess an occult strength against which a will of tempered steel may beat in vain; and a suspicion of defeat at the moment of expected victory sent a fume of wrath into his brain that made him dizzy.

"Take care!" he muttered, hoa.r.s.ely. "That I have already done is nothing! I have wooed you long, and in the end you shall give way--I swear it!"

"Wickedness and conceit disturb your reason," Gabrielle replied, with a calm which increased his fury. "The crafty and unscrupulous often over-reach themselves. Therein lies the salvation of those who have naught but innocence for armour."

She looked him in the face with such steady scorn, that his s.h.i.+fty eyes lowered before hers. It came upon Pharamond with a shock, that she whom he had thought to dominate by a skilful mixture of the bitter and the sweet was not the least afraid of him, although she realised too well that to gratify his pa.s.sions he would stick at nothing. One by one he had cut off from her the joys of life, and the slow cruel process had turned his sword edge. He was nettled and humiliated by the conviction that his boasted knowledge of the feminine organism was moons.h.i.+ne, and that the error into which he had fallen--and which must lie at his own door--was possibly irremediable. To be baffled now, when he had deemed all secure; to be shown with withering contempt, that he would never have his way! It was too late to turn a new leaf and commence again at the beginning. And the immediate future so ominously dark! A resistance so cool and deliberate and unexpected, s.h.i.+vered his plans at a blow. Well. Baffled he might be, but she should rue the day. If in the duel, she was to prove victorious, with a bitterness as of gall would he execrate this woman! Is it possible to love and hate at the same time? As Pharamond glanced at the tall figure and defiant bearing of the marquise, his desire for her tingled along each nerve, and yet he hated her for that mien of stubborn scorn. She should rue that day--oh, yes, she should rue it! Some excruciatingly ingenious retaliation should be devised. The proud beauty should be whipped till each limb quivered. She had confessed to apprehension of his inventive powers; she should feel their effect, and speedily.

Gabrielle was able apparently to read his white and vindictive visage.

Without blenching, she observed, mournfully, "I spoke at random, when I said I dreaded you; what is there left for me to dread? I have pa.s.sed along the stony path of the black valley of the shadow, and, thanks to you, nothing can affect me now. I defy you to do your worst.

Having bereft me of children and husband, what is there left for me to bear? Whatever you may devise, I shall thank heaven for the burthen as a merciful atonement for my sin."

"You scoff at my love and brave my hate!" returned the abbe, striving hard to control his voice. "You have finally refused the one, and for the first time shall know the other."

"I despise both. To me you are more vile a reptile than the bloated hideous toad from which by instinct we recoil. Your poisonous breath infects the air; your vampire face insults G.o.d's image. In place of the abject thing which you call love, and which I rightly spurned, you offer hate? So much the better. As the more honest I accept it."

"You have spoken your own sentence. A day will come when you shall sue for mercy and find none!"

"Never! Go!"

With a frown and a superb motion of her matchless arm, Gabrielle pointed at the door. In the excitement of indignation and defiance, the marquise was more beautiful than ever. Pharamond fairly writhed in his desire and his rage. She should be his--by force, if need be; but his--his! And after that, to revenge this scorn, he would fling her in the gutter to rot there! Stung to the quick--torn by ravening pa.s.sions, evil both--the abbe bowed mechanically, and, scowling, left the room.

If he had seen how swiftly she collapsed when the door closed, he might have hoped again, for she was a fragile creature, borne up by pride and a pure love that was beyond his sordid ken.

"What will he do? What will he do?" she moaned, trembling, as she crouched down upon a seat. "What hideous form will his revenge take?

Shall I implore the protection of my husband?"

And then she reflected moodily about that said husband, as she had at last learned to know him. Selfish and self-indulgent to the core--heartless, too, or he could not survey his wife's sufferings with such perfect equanimity. True, he knew little about her, and troubled less. If he had not again dismissed her from his mind he could not but perceive her suffering. He was infatuated by that dreadful woman, and further beguiled astray by his insidious brother.

No help was to be expected from him, or, indeed, from any one. She had boldly defied the abbe. Would she be given strength to fight? Alas, alas! Did she not know too well that she was not made for fighting?

Where, then, to look for a.s.sistance? Rising, she slowly paced the room, and thought Heaven was cruel. Why not have let her die? Sure 'tis a venial sin to put off what one cannot bear? We can feel for ourselves with the instinct with which we are endowed, that the burthen is too great. Heaven is busy with other things--too indifferent to know or care what we poor pigmies feel. She paused in her walk before a mirror and shook her head at the pale and drawn reflexion. "Oh! fatal gift of beauty," she murmured, "which men pretend to wors.h.i.+p, swearing that 'tis a glimpse of paradise. It is a devil's gift; for its province is to stir the foulest lees of the base human soul and set them festering."

What was she to do--what to expect? Perhaps he had already invented and set going some new plan to torture her. Would she have done better, being but a helpless, tempest-tossed sport of destiny, to have surrendered, pleading her weakness and his strength? Had he not touched on the cherubs, she might have given way for very weariness; but they, as she had declared, were her buckler. They wist not of her, nor cared, being transferred to other hands, and yet they stood 'twixt her and the precipice. Then she fell a thinking of Victor and pretty Camille. When they grew up they would seek their mother. Would they not? If not, why live? Better--better far--to die. Yes: Heaven had been cruel--very, very cruel!

Suspecting nothing of the abbe's move, Mademoiselle Brunelle resolved on that very self-same morning to operate on her own account. She made her way boldly to the boudoir, and without knocking, entered.

Gabrielle started, and dried her eyes. The woman dared to invade her sanctuary. For what purpose? In her highly-strung condition of despairing nervousness, it seemed to Gabrielle that the governess looked as wicked and as menacing as the abbe.

In truth there was a sour curl about her lips that was not becoming.

The marquise, as white as a sheet, in tears? Crying her eyes out in solitude--the whining idiot! That so weak and contemptible an obstacle should be allowed to stand between herself and her ambition was preposterous. Well, the victim should be given the wrench which should impel her to retire from the scene.

"I want to talk to you about affairs," Aglae began. "Since you do not ask me to sit, I will choose a chair myself."

So saying, she subsided into the most inviting fauteuil and a.s.sumed a pose of studied insolence.

"I congratulate madame on her humility," observed the governess, in her rolling ba.s.s, with a condescending headshake. "The Christian virtues are rare, alas, just now in persons of your birth and breeding."

"To what do I owe this visit?" demanded the marquise, stretching her hand towards the bell-rope.

"Do not ring; you will regret it," returned the other. "For all our sakes, I would not have you despised by the domestics, if I can help it. You are so apathetic to the stirring history which is being made under your very nose that I am compelled to enlighten your lamentably darkened mind. It is quite on the cards that we may find it convenient to leave Lorge until the storm that threatens is past. By the dear marquis's wish I and the sweet children will accompany him into temporary banishment, and it becomes necessary to know what madame will do in that contingency. Of course she is a free agent to go where she pleases, and the marquis is too good and generous not to see that she is well provided for. It is best for madame to know that her presence with us would, for various reasons, be inconvenient--calculated, indeed, to produce scandal, which, for the sake of monsieur and the little ones, madame will desire to avoid."

What snake was there rustling beneath the leaves?

"Is this an amba.s.sage from the Marquis de Gange?" enquired Gabrielle.

"His interests and mine have become identical," drawled mademoiselle, "as madame is no doubt aware, and when I speak it is for both."

"I will go to him myself!" exclaimed the outraged marquise with trembling lips, "He should know that betwixt himself and his wife no amba.s.sador is needed."

Aglae raised her bushy brows and critically contemplating the aspen figure before her, laughed.

"How lamentable that madame should take no interest in what is pa.s.sing," she exclaimed. "She knows so little of her husband as to be unaware that he has gone to Blois on business and will not return until to-morrow."

Could Clovis really have been base enough to confide such a mission as this to the governess, running off meanwhile himself like a coward?

Was he bent on withering every leaf of her true love that still struggled for existence? She could scarce believe it even now.

"Madame had better listen and be calm," suggested Aglae. "It is always better to be calm."

"Wherever they may go, my place is with my husband and my children,"

the marquise replied with dignity.

"Cannot madame perceive a troublesome _nuance_, which, in another place, might make her position uncomfortable?"

"Enough of this impertinence," returned the other, sternly. "You forget that you are my servant, to be dismissed at pleasure. Speak plainly and briefly, or I will have you ejected by the valets."

"Impertinent, am I?" cried mademoiselle, losing her temper. "Since you wish it, I will speak plainly. Here, within these gaunt grey walls, what pa.s.ses within concerns n.o.body without; but if we should have to fly--which may or may not prove expedient--we shall be dwelling in a public place, where others will criticise our acts. It will be said that the Marquise de Gange is a mean-spirited creature to eat her bread on sufferance at the table of a man who hates her, and of his mistress who treats her with contumely. That is what will be said of the pretty, empty-headed doll who was too stupid to hold her place as the reigning belle of Paris. They will also say that she is bad, as well as mean, to have abandoned her own offspring to the mistress to mould according to her fancy. Madame will probably now perceive that her presence with us anywhere except in the privacy of Lorge, will be an abiding source of scandal."

His mistress! The brazen wretch!--confessed--nay, gloried--in her shame; and the unhappy wife had striven so hard to believe that there was nothing but _camaraderie_ between them.