M. de Corbigny surprised her by a little laugh. “Faith, mademoiselle, almost you set me an example.”
“An example?”
“You suggest things...” He broke off. “No, no. I had thought of it. It is not worth while.” He pushed wide the door, and the glow of light from within smote them with almost blinding violence.
“Be welcome to Corbigny, mademoiselle.”
She stepped ahead of him into the spacious and rather shabby stone hall. He paused a moment to close and make fast the door, then turned, and his eyes, now accustomed to the light, beheld her clearly for the first time. Her grey blouse was stained and in places ragged. She had doffed the shabby hat, which looked as if it might have been filched from a scarecrow. She had cut her hair, and it hung loose and ragged now about her neck and ears, just as a peasant lad’s might hang, but the light smote from its golden sheen an aureole about her little head, so admirably poised, and the finely-featured face gave the lie to the rest of her.
M. de Corbigny gazed upon her, lost in a rapture of wonder such as he had never known. So intent was the gaze of his sombre, dark eyes that at last her glance fell away before him, and she shifted a little uncomfortably.
But still he gazed and gazed, and the natural wistfulness deepened in his countenance. When at last he spoke, it was cryptically, employing the old formula of the gladiator meeting death. “Moriturus te salutat!” He bowed a little. “Yet it is good to have seen you first.” And then the instincts of his blood asserting themselves, he put aside all considerations but those due to a guest.
“You will require garments, mademoiselle. I will call my housekeeper. Perhaps she may...”
“Ah, no!” she checked him. “Clean linen if you will. Give it me yourself, or send it to me by a man if you wish. But for the rest, leave me as I am, nor disclose me to be other. The citizen Chauvinière is a thought too close for any risks.”
“You know the citizen Chauvinière?”
She smiled. It was wonderful, he thought, that she should smile so. “I have heard of his activities.”
He nodded. “You are wise perhaps. Come, then, you shall have what you require.”
Himself he conducted her to a room above, procured for her the linen she required, and left her, to inform and instruct his household touching the presence of a boy who was his guest.
Deep dejection sat upon that little company gathered there to supper in the great kitchen, and Filomène, as she waited upon them, showed eyes that were red from weeping in a face unusually white. They had heard the day’s events before the Tribunal and the doom that overhung their master. Filomène herself was outraged in her every sensibility by the offensive alternative to death which had been offered the Vicomte. Corbigny alone appeared unmoved by the sword suspended over him.
“MADEMOISELLE remain yet another day with us. The more complete now your rest, the better speed will you make hereafter; so that the time will not be lost.”
Mademoiselle de Montsorbier demurred at the proposal. She could not think of subjecting M. de Corbigny to the risk of her discovery under his roof.
At this M. de Corbigny laughed with such evident amusement as to pique her a little, for she could not conceive in what she was ridiculous. But he explained his laughter. “Mademoiselle, I am in the enviable position of a man for whom risks have ceased to exist, whom fear can no longer touch. This is Tuesday, and on Thursday next I am to die. That is why I laugh at the notion of danger to me from harbouring you.”
“Monsieur! How is this possible? You amuse yourself at my expense! How can it be that you, who are free...”
“I will explain,” he interrupted her, and he did so.
She heard his tale in growing distress and also in growing admiration for his intrepid calm, for the almost humorous outlook with which he viewed his desperate situation.
“The beast!” she said, when he had done. “The cruel, mocking beast! Why do you not seek safety in flight?”
“I thought of it, of course. But it would be useless, and there’s a degradation in failure to which I will not submit. I’ll be no quarry for these revolutionary dogs. If succumb I must, I’ll succumb as my blood demands.”
She looked at him in silence with an infinite compassion, an infinite tenderness. “Is there,” she asked after a moment, “no third course possible? Have you thought well, monsieur?”
Something of her tender concern escaped her in her voice. He halted before her, and his dark solemn eyes considered her. His face grew pale as if with fear, and a deeper wistfulness crept into the lines of it. At last he answered her very slowly. “Yes, I have thought. And a third course offers. But I hesitate from fear of being misunderstood.”
She almost smiled as she looked up at him. “To a man in your case can it matter to be misunderstood? Speak freely, then.”
He spoke, but not freely. He faltered and stumbled awkwardly in an utterance that normally was precise and scholarly. “You will not see, mademoiselle, I beseech you, a lack of...of homage in what I am to say. In other circumstances...But here time presses. Bear with me, mademoiselle, though I may seem to you outrageous. Doubt what you will, but not my truth and sincerity.
“When first I saw you there in the light last night, it seemed to me...as if my soul leapt from me to embrace your soul. I utter crudities, perhaps. I can express it in no other way. But so spontaneous, so...so inevitable was this thing, that it has seemed to me...It is not a presumption, mademoiselle. It is an instinct, I think. It has seemed to me that something reciprocal, something mutual must have taken place. It seemed impossible that a man’s spirit could...experience so much...unsupported. Mademoiselle, I am ashamed of my poor words. They do not...”
She interrupted him at last. She had risen, and, unbelievable miracle, as it seemed to him, her breast was leaning on his own, her face, all white and piteous was upturned to him.
“Ashamed!” she cried. “Ashamed!” There was a music of tenderness in her voice that dazed his senses. “Your words leave nothing unsaid. Nothing that is not true, at least. Your instincts were at no fault, my dear.”
His arms went round her. His voice was the voice of a man in pain. “Love is the fulfilment of every living thing, and I might have died unfulfilled if you had not come to me at the eleventh hour.”
She shuddered. “I had forgotten. Oh, my dear!” she lay faint against him.
“No, no,” he cried, to hearten her. “You make life possible. If I had been wrong, nothing further would have mattered. I should still have died the richer, the nobler for what you brought me. But since you care...Listen, my dear. The decree is only that I marry. So that I marry within three days I fulfil the requirements of this grotesque mockery which they call a law. Filomène was proposed to me, because I would make no choice for myself. But Filomène or another, it is all one to them. If you, then, come with me before the Tribunal, in peasant dress — that will be safer — as a girl whom I prefer, whom I have chosen for myself. We can invent your place of origin. That will not be difficult. If, then...”
She broke away from him, and stepped back. “Oh, you don’t know what you are saying!” she cried out in deep distress.
He stood crestfallen, his soaring hopes all checked. “But if...if...we love each other?” he faltered. “What difficulty, then? Need the notion of an immediate marriage be so repugnant?”
“It isn’t that. It isn’t that. Chauvinière!” she said significantly.
“Chauvinière?” he echoed, not understanding at first. Then light broke suddenly upon him. “It was he? It was he who...?”
She nodded, her little features twisted in a bitter smile.
There was a tap at the door. Filomène came in with a scared countenance. “It is the Citizen-Representative,” she announced. “He is here. He asks to see you.”
Mademoiselle de Montsorbier shrank back in fear. Corbigny came to his feet, very stiff and straight and suddenly of a preternatural calm.
“He comes most opportunely.” Corbigny’s voice had resu
med its normal, pleasant tone. “I was considering going in quest of him. Detain him a moment or two in the hall, Filomène. Then bring him in.”
Before Filomène was out of the room, Corbigny was at a tall cupboard of polished mulberry that stood against the wall. He found Mademoiselle de Montsorbier at his elbow. “Will you hide me in there?”
He lost a second in staring at her. Then he smiled and shook his head. “I have no thought to hide you.” He took a mahogany case from a shelf in the cupboard.
“But if he finds me here!”
“It is what I desire.” He took up a powder horn and a little linen bag, and closed the door of the cupboard. “The confident, overbearing fool!” He crossed to his writing-table, and opened the box.
ESCORTED by Filomène, Chauvinière swaggered presently into the library, lithe and active in his long grey coat, tricolour sash from which a sabre now dangled. Within the threshold he halted, irony in every line of him. “I am here, my dear ci-devant, to exhort you in the fraternal spirit...”
He broke off. A slight movement in the corner on his right drew his glance aside.
“Why? Who’s this that...” Again he checked, leaning forward, and staring. He took a quick step, and stopped again. Then an oath escaped him, and on the heels of that a laugh, loud and full of relish. “Why here’s a meeting!” He swept off his hat. “It becomes necessary to uncover.” He bowed. “And how long may you have been here, my dear secretary?”
“Since last night, citizen,” said the lady simply, so simply and calmly that it staggered him.
“Oh since last night, citizen!” he mimicked her. “Since last night, eh? Name of a name! I find more than I sought.” He moved to advance towards her.
“Stand where you are!”
The cold, crisp tone arrested him. He stiffened as he confronted Corbigny across half the room. There was in that gentleman’s attitude, in his very calm, something sinister and menacing. Instantly Chauvinière scented danger, and as instantly would he have forestalled it, but that he was undone by the mockery in which he dealt so lavishly. His absurd gesture of mock-deference, cumbered now his right hand with his doffed hat. Before he could slip that hand into his bosom to pluck thence the pistol which he carried ready for just such emergencies, it was necessary to be rid of the hat. He tucked it swiftly under his left arm. But got no farther.
It was the danger signal to Corbigny, and Corbigny now covered him with a heavy duelling pistol, steadied upon his left forearm. “Move a finger, Citizen-Representative, and I’ll kill you.”
Chauvinière obeyed, but none too literally. He planted his feet wide, and folded his hands behind him. Then he laughed.
“Really! Really! My dear ci-devant! Why should you desire to intimidate me?”
“You misapprehend me. I am not proposing to intimidate you.”
“What then?”
“To kill you.”
Again Chauvinière laughed, but he paled a little under his tan.
“Let us be practical, citizen. How can my death serve you?”
Corbigny remained unperturbed. “You are forgetting that my life being already forfeit, I can lose nothing by killing you.”
“You mean that you intend to murder me in cold blood! It is inconceivable. After all, you are a gentleman, not an assassin.” There was no mockery now in Chauvinière’s voice. It was warmly earnest. “At least, let us exchange shots, here in this room — at ten paces, or any distance that you please elsewhere. You cannot do less than that.”
Monsieur de Corbigny resumed his urbanity. “I am desolated to refuse you even that. If it were a question only of myself, I would accede gladly. But there is Mademoiselle de Montsorbier. I cannot allow her fate to depend upon luck or marksmanship.”
“Wait!” said the lady sharply, and she advanced a step. “Let us be practical, as the Citizen-Representative suggested. Let us...”
Two pistol-shots ringing out almost simultaneously cropped short her speech.
Her sudden intervention, and perhaps even more the little forward movement that she made, momentarily drew Corbigny’s eyes to her. In that moment the ever-watchful Chauvinière perceived his opportunity. Into the bosom of his broad-lapelled coat flashed his right hand, and out again with a pistol, which he discharged at the Vicomte, almost without aiming. But swift as was the movement, it was not swift enough; for, perceiving it, the Vicomte fired no more than a fraction of a heart-beat later.
Corbigny stepped back, white and shaken, but unharmed. The other’s bullet had grazed his shoulder. Chauvinière reeled to the wall, pressing over his left breast a hand which grew red almost at once with the blood oozing between the fingers.
“At least, I’ve had my shot,” he said, and his features twisted into a grin. “I hope I’ve given better than I’ve received. You’ll...”
He broke off to cough. His features writhed, his limbs twitched, and finally he slid down the wall into a little heap from which his knees protruded sharply.
The Vicomte stepped sharply across to screen him. “Please go,” he said over his shoulder. “Please go at once.”
Mademoiselle de Montsorbier hesitated, made as if she would disregard the command, then ended by obeying.
Ten minutes later Monsieur de Corbigny came to her in the hall. He was grave, but quite composed. He found her alone with Filomène. The Fougereots, he knew, were at work out of doors. She was beside him at a bound. “We have no time to lose.”
“I could not permit that he should continue to live.” Thus spoke the lover, showing his jealousy.
“He would have served us better living.”
“I desired no service of him; not even a service that might have saved my life.”
“Oh, will you listen! My life, too, is at issue. We might have constrained from him three lines of writing to inform the members of the Tribunal that he had suddenly been called away to Nevers or Paris. Then we could have locked him in the cellar to give us time to get away. Your hastiness spoilt all.”
He stood suddenly contrite before her.
“Now we must repair the thing as best we can. I’ll try when I am calmer, when I have ceased to shake if I ever do. Oh, I am a little coward, when all is said.”
He took her in his arms to comfort her and to still her tremors as well as further to question her. But she presently withdrew, bidding him to make ready for a journey. “You think that it can profit me to attempt to escape?” he asked her.
“I think it can, if you’ll be guided by me this time.”
She issued orders which he did not understand. But in his penitence he bowed to them, nor probed their significance in view of her assurance. She desired to be made free of his wardrobe, and she further desired that Fougereot be summoned at once and sent to her.
When, more than an hour later, she rejoined him, he was waiting for her, spurred and booted, a cloak and a valise on the settle beside him.
From his wardrobe she had contrived to adapt herself garments which gave her very much the appearance she had worn on her first flight from Paris as Chauvinière’s secretary. She was brisk and determined in manner, so that Corbigny’s wonder grew ever as he watched and listened. He was beginning to perceive something of the spirit in her.
Her first question was for Fougereot, who waited there with his master. “You have made all ready?”
“Everything as mademoiselle commanded.”
“And your family?”
“Waiting out of doors with Filomène.”
“The scarf and hat?”
“Here, mademoiselle.” He pointed to the tricolour sash and the plumed hat, lying on a chair.
She took them up and proffered them to the Vicomte. “My friend, you must wear these.” He shrank a little. “It is a necessity,” she insisted. “Henceforth, you are the Citizen-Representative Chauvinière.”
She spent a moment in assisting Corbigny to assume the sash of office, then led him out, Fougereot following. Came brief but very touching farewells between the seigneu
r and his shrunken family.
“You will care for the land,” Mademoiselle de Montsorbier told them, “and count it your own until Monsieur the Vicomte comes to claim it again.”
Corbigny, still half-bemused, mounted his waiting horse, and she hers; and presently by a path that skirted the little town of Poussignot they were trotting through the dusk, their faces set towards Burgundy.
“By dawn we shall be far away,” she said. “Henceforth you are the Representative Chauvinière on a mission to Switzerland, and I am your secretary Antoine. You had better carry these. They are the passports of the Committee of Safety to the Representative and his secretary, enjoining upon all to aid and none to hinder them in the name of the Republic One and Indivisible. And there are some other papers, too, of importance, enjoining obedience upon all civil functionaries.”
He was silent a long time in sheer wonder. “I should have known that you did not hope to strike blindly across the frontier. This makes assured! Oh, it is as incredible as you are, Cléonie!”
Her laughter answered him, but this time very soft and tender. And the marriage followed a week later, when they found themselves amid friends.
THE END
The Short Stories
Sabatini with his wife, Ruth Goad Dixon, whom he married in 1905.
LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
THE HONOUR OF VARANO
THE TEST
FERRANTE’S JEST
GISMONDl’S WAGE
THE SNARE
THE LUST OF CONQUEST
THE PASQUINADE
THE URBINIAN
THE PERUGIAN
THE VENETIAN
THE RED MASK
THE CURATE AND THE ACTRESS
THE FOOL’S LOVE STORY
THE SPIRITUALIST
MR. DEWBURY’S CONSENT
THE BAKER OF ROUSILLON
WIRGMAN’S THEORY
THE ABDUCTION
MONSIEUR DELAMORT
THE FOSTER LOVER
THE BLACKMAILER
THE ORDEAL
THE TAPESTRIED ROOM
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 569
