The intensity with which he spoke, and the essence of the speech itself, left her a moment dumb with wonder and with an incomprehensible consternation, born of some intuition not yet understood.
“And so, Monsieur, the Secretary,” said she at last, a nervous laugh quivering in her first words, “from all this wondrous verbiage I am to take it that you love?”
“Aye, that I love, dear lady,” he cried, his eyes so intent upon her that her glance grew timid and fell before them. And then, a second later, she could have screamed aloud in apprehension, for the book of Jean Jacques Rousseau lay tumbled in the grass where he had flung it, even as he flung himself upon his knees before her. “You may take it indeed that I love — that I love you, Mademoiselle.”
The audacious words being spoken, his courage oozed away and anti-climax, followed. He paled and trembled, yet he knelt on until she should bid him rise, and furtively he watched her face. He saw it darken; he saw the brows knit; he noted the quickening breath, and in all these signs he read his doom before she uttered it.
“Monsieur, monsieur,” she answered him, and sad was her tone, “to what lengths do you urge this springtime folly? Have you forgotten so your station — yes, and mine — that because I talk with you and laugh with you, and am kind to you, you must presume to speak to me in this fashion? What answer shall I make you, Monsieur — for I am not so cruel that I can answer you as you deserve.”
An odd thing indeed was La Boulaye’s courage. An instant ago he had felt a very coward, and had quivered, appalled by the audacity of his own words. Now that she assailed him thus, and taxed him with that same audacity, the blood of anger rushed to his face — anger of the quality that has its source in shame. In a second he was on his feet before her, towering to the full of his lean height. The words came from him in a hot stream, which for reckless passion by far outvied his erstwhile amatory address.
“My station?” he cried, throwing wide his arms. “What fault lies in my station? I am a secretary, a scholar, and so, by academic right, a gentleman. Nay, Mademoiselle, never laugh; do not mock me yet. In what do you find me less a man than any of the vapid caperers that fill your father’s salon? Is not my shape as good? Are not my arms as strong, my hands as deft, my wits as keen, and my soul as true? Aye,” he pursued with another wild wave of his long arms, “my attributes have all these virtues, and yet you scorn me — you scorn me because of my station, so you say!”
How she had angered him! All the pent-up gall of years against the supercilia of the class from which she sprang surged in that moment to his lips. He bethought him now of the thousand humiliations his proud spirit had suffered at their hands when he noted the disdain with which they addressed him, speaking to him — because he was compelled to carve his living with a quill — as though he were less than mire. It was not so much against her scorn of him that he voiced his bitter grievance, but against the entire noblesse of France, which denied him the right to carry a high head because he had not been born of Madame la Duchesse, Madame la Marquise, or Madame la Comtesse. All the great thoughts of a wondrous transformation, which had been sown in him by the revolutionary philosophers he had devoured with such appreciation, welled up now, and such scraps of that infinity of thought as could find utterance he cast before the woman who had scorned him for his station. Presumptuous he had accounted himself — but only until she had found him so. By that the presumption, it seemed, had been lifted from him, and he held that what he had said to her of the love he bore her was no more than by virtue of his manhood he had the right to say.
She drew back before him, and shrank in some measure of fear, for he looked very fierce. Moreover, he had said things which professed him a revolutionist, and the revolutionists, whilst being a class which she had been taught to despise and scorn, dealt, she knew, in a violence which it might be ill to excite.
“Monsieur,” she faltered, and with her hand she clutched at her riding-habit of green velvet, as if preparing to depart, “you are not yourself. I am beyond measure desolated that you should have so spoken to me. We have been good friends, M. La Boulaye. Let us forget this scene. Shall we?” Her tones grew seductively conciliatory.
La Boulaye half turned from her, and his smouldering eye fell upon “The Discourses” lying on the grass. He stooped and picked up the volume. The act might have seemed symbolical. For a moment he had cast aside his creed to woo a woman, and now that she had denied him he returned to Rousseau, and gathered up the tome almost in penitence at his momentary defection.
“I am quite myself, Mademoiselle,” he answered quietly. His cheeks were flushed, but beyond that, his excitement seemed to have withered. “It is you who yesternight, for one brief moment and again to-day — were not yourself, and to that you owe it that I have spoken to you as I have done.”
Between these two it would seem as the humour of the one waned, that of the other waxed. Her glance kindled anew at his last words.
“I?” she echoed. “I was not myself? What are you saying, Monsieur the Secretary?”
“Last night, and again just now, you were so kind, you — you smiled so sweetly—”
“Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed, angrily interrupting him. “See what you are for all your high-sounding vaunts of yourself and your attributes! A woman may not smile upon you, may not say one kind word to you, but you must imagine you have made a conquest. Ma foi, you and yours do not deserve to be treated as anything but vassals. When we show you a kindness, see how you abuse it. We extend to you our little finger and you instantly lay claim to the whole arm. Because last night I permitted myself to exchange a jest with you, because I chance to be kind to you again to-day, you repay me with insults!”
“Stop!” he cried, rousing himself once more. “That is too much to say, Mademoiselle. To tell a woman that you love her is never to insult her. To be loved is never to be slighted. Upon the meanest of His creatures it is enjoined to love the same God whom the King loves, and there is no insult to God in professing love for Him. Would you make a woman more than that?”
“Monsieur, you put questions I have no mind to answer; you suggest a discussion I have no inclination to pursue. For you and me let it suffice that I account myself affronted by your words, your tone, and your manner. You drive me to say these things; by your insistence you compel me to be harsh. We will end this matter here and now, Monsieur, and I will ask you to understand that I never wish it reopened, else shall I be forced to seek protection at the hands of my father or my brother.”
“You may seek it now, Suzanne,” quoth a voice from the thicket at her back, a voice which came to startle both of them though in different ways. Before they had recovered from their surprise the Marquis de Bellecour stood before them. He was a tall man of some fifty years of age, but so powerful of frame and so scrupulous in dress that he might have conveyed an impression of more youth. His face, though handsome in a high-bred way, was puffed and of an unhealthy yellow. But the eyes were as keen as the mouth was voluptuous, and in his carefully dressed black hair there were few strands of grey.
He came slowly forward, and his lowering glance wandered from his daughter to his secretary in inquiry. At last —
“Well?” he demanded. “What is the matter?”
“It is nothing, Monsieur,” his daughter answered him. “A trifling affair ‘twixt M. la Boulaye and me, with which I will not trouble you.”
“It is not nothing, my lord,” cried La Boulaye, his voice vibrating oddly. “It is that I love your daughter and that I have told her of it.” He was in a very daring mood that morning.
The Marquis glanced at him in dull amazement. Then a flush crept into his sallow cheeks and mounted to his brow. An inarticulate grunt came from his thick lips.
“Canaille!” he exclaimed, through set teeth. “Can you have presumed so far?”
He carried a riding-switch, and he seemed to grasp it now in a manner peculiarly menacing. But La Boulaye was nothing daunted. Lost he already accounted himself, and
on the strength of the logic that if a man must hang, a sheep as well as a lamb may be the cause of it, he took what chances the time afforded him to pile up his debt.
“There is neither insolence nor presumption in what I have done,” he answered, giving back the Marquis look for look and scowl for scowl. “You deem it so because I am the secretary to the Marquis de Bellecour and she is the daughter of that same Marquis. But these are no more than the fortuitous circumstances in which we chance to find ourselves. That she is a woman must take rank before the fact that she is your daughter, and that I am a man must take rank before the fact that I am your secretary. Not, then, as your secretary speaking to your daughter have I told this lady that I love her, but as a man speaking to a woman. To utter that should be — nay, is — the right of every man; to hear it should be honouring to every woman worthy of the name. In a primitive condition—”
“A thousand devils!” blazed the Marquis, unable longer to contain himself. “Am I to have my ears offended by this braying? Miserable scum, you shall be taught what is due to your betters.”
His whip cracked suddenly, and the lash leapt serpentlike into the air, to descend and coil itself about La Boulaye’s head and face. A cry broke from the young man, as much of pain as of surprise, and as the lash was drawn back, he clapped his hands to his seared face. But again he felt it, cutting him now across the hand with which he had masked himself. With a maddened roar he sprang upon his aggressor. In height he was the equal of the Marquis, but in weight he seemed to be scarce more than the half of his opponent’s. Yet a nervous strength dwelt unsuspected in those lean arms and steely wrists.
Mademoiselle stood by looking on, with parted lips and eyes that were intent and anxious. She saw that figure, spare and lithe as a greyhound, leap suddenly upon her father, and the next instant the whip was in the secretary’s hands, and he sprang back from the nobleman, who stood white and quivering with rage, and perhaps, too, with some dismay.
“That I do not break it across your back, M. le Marquis, said the young man,” as he snapped the whip on his knee, “you may thank your years.” With that he flung the two pieces wide into the sunlit waters of the brook. “But I will have satisfaction, Monsieur. I will take payment for this.” And he pointed to the weal that disfigured his face.
“Satisfaction?” roared the Marquis, hoarse in his passion. “Would you demand satisfaction of me, animal?”
“No,” answered the young man, with a wry smile. “Your years again protect you. But you have a son, and if by to-morrow it should come to pass that you have a son no more, you may account yourself, through this” — and again he pointed to the weal— “his murderer.”
“Do you mean that you would seek to cross swords with the Vicomte?” gasped the nobleman, in an unbelief so great that it gained the ascendency over his anger.
“That is what I mean, Monsieur. In practice he has often done so. He shall do so for once in actual earnest.”
“Fool!” was the contemptuous answer, more coldly delivered now, for the Marquis was getting himself in hand. “If you come near Bellecour again, if you are so much as found within the grounds of the park, I’ll have you beaten to death by my grooms for your presumption. Keep you the memory of that promise in mind, Sir Secretary, and let it warn you to avoid Bellecour, as you would a plague-house. Come, Suzanne,” he said, turning abruptly to his daughter, “Enough of this delightful morning have we already wasted on this canaille.”
With that he offered her his wrist, and so, without so much as another glance at La Boulaye, she took her departure.
The secretary remained where they had left him, pale of face — saving the fortuitous crimson mark which the whip had cut — and very sick at heart. The heat of the moment being spent, he had leisure to contemplate his plight. A scorned lover, a beaten man, a dismissed secretary! He looked sorrowfully upon his volume of “The Discourses,” and for the first time a doubt crossed his mind touching the wisdom of old Jean Jacques. Was there would there ever be any remedy for such a condition of things as now prevailed?
Already the trees had hidden the Marquis and his daughter from La Boulaye’s sight. The young revolutionist felt weary and lonely — dear God, how lonely! neither kith nor kin had he, and of late all the interest of his life — saving always that absorbed by Jean Jacques — had lain in watching Suzanne de Bellecour, and in loving her silently and distantly. Now that little crumb of comfort was to be his no more, he was to go away from Bellecour, away from the sight of her for all time. And he loved her, loved her, loved her!
He tossed his arms to Heaven with a great sigh that was a sob almost, then he passed his hands over his face, and as they came in contact with the swollen ridge that scored it, love faded from his mind, and vindictiveness came to fill its room.
“But for this,” he cried aloud. “I shall take payment — aye, as there is a God!”
Then turning, and with “The Discourses” held tightly to his side, he moved slowly away, following the course of the gleaming waters.
CHAPTER II. LORDS OF LIFE AND DEATH
One friend did La Boulaye count in the village of Bellecour. This was old Duhamel, the schoolmaster, an eccentric pedant and a fellow-worshipper of the immortal Jean Jacques. It was to him that La Boulaye now repaired intent upon seeking counsel touching a future that wore that morning a singularly gloomy outlook.
He found Duhamel’s door open, and he stepped across the threshold into the chief room of the house. But there he paused, and hesitated. The chamber was crowded with people in holiday attire, and the centre of attraction was a well-set-up peasant with a happy, sun-tanned face, whose golden locks were covered by a huge round hat decked with a score of gaily-coloured ribbons.
At sight of him La Boulaye remembered that it was Charlot’s wedding-day. Popular amongst the women by virtue of his comeliness, and respected by the men by virtue of his strength, Charlot Tardivet was a general favourite of the countryside, and here, in the room of old Duhamel, the schoolmaster, was half the village gathered to do him honour upon his wedding morn. It was like Duhamel, who, in fatherliness towards the villagers, went near out-rivalling M. le Cure, to throw open his house for the assembling of Charlot’s friends, and La Boulaye was touched by this fresh sign of kindliness from a man whose good heart he had not lacked occasion to observe and appreciate. But it came to the secretary that there was no place for him in this happy assemblage. His advent would, probably, but serve to cast a gloom upon them, considering the conditions under which he came, with the signs of violence upon his face to remind them of the lords of life and death who dwelt at the Chateau up yonder. And such a reminder must fall upon them as does the reminder of some overhanging evil clutch suddenly at our hearts in happy moments of forgetfulness. To let them be happy that day, to leave their feasts free of a death’s head, La Boulaye would have withdrawn had he not already been too late. Duhamel had espied him, and the little, wizened old man came hurrying forward, his horn-rimmed spectacles perched on the very end of his nose, his keen little eyes beaming with delight and welcome.
“Ah, Caron, you are very choicely come,” he cried, holding out both hands to La Boulaye. “You shall embrace our happy Hercules yonder, and wish him joy of the wedded life he has the audacity to exploit.” Then, as he espied the crimson ridge across the secretary’s countenance, “Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed, “what have you done to yourself, Caron?”
“Pish! It is nothing,” answered La Boulaye hurriedly, and would have had the subject dismissed, but that one of the onlooking peasants swore by the memory of some long-dead saint that it was the cut of a whip. Duhamel’s eyes kindled and his parchment-like skin was puckered into a hundred evil wrinkles.
“Who did it, Caron?” he demanded.
“Since you insist, old master,” answered the secretary, still endeavouring to make light of it, “learn that is the lord Marquis’s signature to his order of my dismissal from his service.”
“The dog!” ejaculated the school-master
.
“Sh! let it be. Perhaps I braved him overmuch. I will tell you of it when these good folks have gone. Do not let us cast a gloom over their happiness, old master. And now to embrace this good Charlot.”
Though inwardly burning with curiosity and boiling with indignation, Duhamel permitted himself to be guided by La Boulaye, and for the moment allowed the matter to rest. La Boulaye himself laughingly set aside the many questions with which they pressed him. He drank the health of the bride-elect — who was not yet of the party — and he pledged the happiness of the pair. He embraced Charlot, and even went so far as to urge upon him, out of his own scanty store, a louis d’or with which to buy Marie a trinket in memory of him.
Then presently came one with the announcement that M. le Cure was waiting, and in answer to that reminder that there was a ceremony to be gone through, Charlot and his friends flung out of the house in joyous confusion, and went their way with laughter and jest to the little church of St. Ildefonse.
“We will follow presently — M. la Boulaye and I — Charlot,” Duhamel had said, as the sturdy bridegroom was departing. “We shall be there to shake Madame by the hand and wish her joy of you.”
When at last they were alone in the schoolmaster’s room, the old man turned to La Boulaye, the very embodiment of a note of interrogation. The secretary told him all that had passed. He reddened slightly when it came to speaking of his love for Mlle. de Bellecour, but he realised that if he would have guidance he must withhold nothing from his friend.
Duhamel’s face grew dark as the young man spoke, and his eyes became sad and very thoughtful.
“Alas!” he sighed, when La Boulaye had ended. “What shall I say to you, my friend? The time is not yet for such as we — you and I — to speak of love for a daughter of the Seigneurie. It is coming, I doubt it not. All things have their climax, and France is tending swiftly to the climax of her serfdom. Very soon we shall have the crisis, this fire that is already smouldering, will leap into a great blaze, that shall lick the old regime as completely from the face of history as though it had never been. A new condition of things will spring up, of that I am convinced. Does not history afford us many instances? And what is history but the repetition of events under similar circumstances with different peoples. It will come in France, and it will come soon, for it is very direly needed.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 64
