‘Come’ he said harshly, after two or three minutes of gloomy reflection on his part and burning humiliation on mine, ‘is there anyone here who can identify you, or in any other way confirm your story, sir? Until I know how the matter stands I can do nothing.’
I shook my head in sullen shame. I might protest against his brutality and this judgment of me, but to what purpose while he sheltered himself behind his master?
‘Stay!’ he said presently, with an abrupt gesture of remembrance. ‘I had nearly forgotten. I have some here who have been lately at the King of Navarre’s Court at St. Jean d’Angely. If you still maintain that you are the M. de Marsac to whom this commission was entrusted, you will doubtless have no objection to seeing them?’
On this I felt myself placed in a most cruel dilemma if I refused to submit my case to the proposed ordeal, I stood an impostor confessed. If I consented to see these strangers, it was probable they would not recognise me, and possible that they might deny me in terms calculated to make my position even worse, if that might be. I hesitated but, Rosny standing inexorable before me awaiting an answer, I finally consented.
‘Good!’ he said curtly. ‘This way, if you please. They are here. The latch is tricky. Nay, sir, it is my house.’
Obeying the stern motion of his hand, I passed before him into the next room, feeling myself more humiliated than I can tell by this reference to strangers. For a moment I could see no one. The day was waning, the room I entered was long and narrow, and illuminated only by a glowing fire. Besides I was myself, perhaps, in some embarrassment. I believed that my conductor had made a mistake, or that his guests had departed, and I turned towards him to ask for an explanation. He merely pointed onwards, however, and I advanced; whereupon a young and handsome lady, who had been seated in the shadow of the great fireplace, rose suddenly, as if startled, and stood looking at me, the glow of the burning wood falling on one side of her face and turning her hair to gold.
‘Well!’ M. de Rosny said, in a voice which sounded a little odd in my ears. ‘You do not know madame, I think?’
I saw that she was a complete stranger to me, and bowed to her without speaking. The lady saluted me in turn ceremoniously and in silence.
‘Is there no one else here who should know you?’ M. de Rosny continued, in a tone almost of persiflage, and with the same change in his voice which had struck me before; but now it was more marked. ‘If not, M. de Marsac, I am afraid — But first look round, look round, sir; I would not judge any man hastily.’
He laid his hand on my shoulder as he finished in a manner so familiar and so utterly at variance with his former bearing that I doubted if I heard or felt aright. Yet I looked mechanically at the lady, and seeing that her eyes glistened in the firelight, and that she gazed at me very kindly, I wondered still more; falling, indeed, into a very confusion of amazement. This was not lessened but augmented a hundredfold when, turning in obedience to the pressure of de Rosny’s hand, I saw beside me, as if she had risen from the floor, another lady — no other than Mademoiselle de la Vire herself! She had that moment stepped out of the shadow of the great fireplace, which had hitherto hidden her, and stood before me curtseying prettily, with the same look on her face and in her eyes which madame’s wore.
‘Mademoiselle!’ I muttered, unable to take my eyes from her.
‘Mais oui, monsieur, mademoiselle,’ she answered, curtseying lower, with the air of a child rather than a woman.
‘Here?’ I stammered, my mouth open, my eyes staring.
‘Here, sir — thanks to the valour of a brave man,’ she answered, speaking in a voice so low I scarcely heard her. And then, dropping her eyes, she stepped back into the shadow, as if either she had said too much already, or doubted her composure were she to say more. She was so radiantly dressed, she looked in the firelight more like a fairy than a woman, being of small and delicate proportions; and she seemed in my eyes so different a person, particularly in respect of the softened expression of her features, from the Mademoiselle de la Vire whom I had known and seen plunged in sloughs and bent to the saddle with fatigue, that I doubted still if I had seen aright, and was as far from enlightenment as before.
It was M. de Rosny himself who relieved me from the embarrassment I was suffering. He embraced me in the most kind and obliging manner, and this more than once; begging me to pardon the deception he had practised upon me, and to which he had been impelled partly by the odd nature of our introduction at the inn, and partly by his desire to enhance the joyful surprise he had in store for me. ‘Come,’ he said presently, drawing me to the window, ‘let me show you some more of your old friends.’
I looked out, and saw below me in the courtyard my three horses drawn up in a row, the Cid being bestridden by Simon Fleix, who, seeing me, waved a triumphant greeting. A groom stood at the head of each horse, and on either side was a man with a torch. My companion laughed gleefully. ‘It was Maignan’s arrangement,’ he said. ‘He has a quaint taste in such things.’
After greeting Simon Fleix a hundred times, I turned back into the room, and, my heart overflowing with gratitude and wonder, I begged M. de Rosny to acquaint me with the details of mademoiselle’s escape.
‘It was the most simple thing in the world,’ he said, taking me by the hand and leading me back to the hearth. ‘While you were engaged with the rascals, the old woman who daily brought mademoiselle’s food grew alarmed at the uproar, and came into the room to learn what it was. Mademoiselle, unable to help you, and uncertain of your success, thought the opportunity too good to be lost. She forced the old woman to show her and her maid the way out through the garden. This done, they ran down a lane, as I understand, and came immediately upon the lad with the horses, who recognised them and helped them to mount. They waited some minutes for you, and then rode off.’
‘But I inquired at the gate,’ I said.
‘At which gate?’ inquired M. de Rosny, smiling.
‘The North-gate, of course,’ I answered.
‘Just so,’ he rejoined with a nod. ‘But they went out through the West-gate and made a circuit. He is a strange lad, that of yours below there. He has a head on his shoulder, M. de Marsac. Well, two leagues outside the town they halted, scarcely knowing how to proceed. By good fortune, however, a horse-dealer of my acquaintance was at the inn. He knew Mademoiselle de la Vire, and, hearing whither she was bound, brought her hither without let or hindrance.’
‘Was he a Norman?’ I asked,
M. de Rosny nodded, smiling at me shrewdly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘he told me much about you. And now let me introduce you to my wife, Madame de Rosny.’
He led me up to the lady who had risen at my entrance, and who now welcomed me as kindly as she had before looked on me, paying me many pleasant compliments. I gazed at her with interest, having heard much of her beauty and of the strange manner in which M. de Rosny, being enamoured of two young ladies, and chancing upon both while lodging in different apartments at an inn, had decided which he should visit and make his wife. He appeared to read what was in my mind, for as I bowed before her, thanking her for the obliging things which she had uttered, and which for ever bound me to her service, he gaily pinched her ear, and said, ‘When you want a good wife, M. de Marsac, be sure you turn to the right.’
He spoke in jest, and having his own case only in his mind. But I, looking mechanically in the direction he indicated, saw mademoiselle standing a pace or two to my right in the shadow of the great chimney-piece. I know not whether she frowned more or blushed more; but this for certain, that she answered my look with one of sharp displeasure, and, turning her back on me, swept quickly from the room, with no trace in her bearing of that late tenderness and gratitude which I had remarked.
CHAPTER XIII. AT ROSNY.
The morning brought only fresh proofs of the kindness which M. de Rosny had conceived for me. Awaking early I found on a stool beside my clothes, a purse of gold containing a hundred crowns; and a youth presently entering to ask me
if I lacked anything, I had at first some difficulty in recognising Simon Fleix, so sprucely was the lad dressed, in a mode resembling Maignan’s. I looked at the student more than once before I addressed him by his name; and was as much surprised by the strange change I observed in him for it was not confined to his clothes — as by anything which had happened since I entered the house. I rubbed my eyes, and asked him what he had done with his soutane. ‘Burned it, M. de Marsac,’ he answered briefly.
I saw that he had burned much, metaphorically speaking, besides his soutane. He was less pale, less lank, less wobegone than formerly, and went more briskly. He had lost the air of crack-brained disorder which had distinguished him, and was smart, sedate, and stooped less. Only the odd sparkle remained in his eyes, and bore witness to the same nervous, eager spirit within.
‘What are you going to do, then, Simon?’ I asked, noting these changes curiously.
‘I am a soldier,’ he answered, ‘and follow M. de Marsac.’
I laughed. ‘You have chosen a poor service, I am afraid,’ I said, beginning to rise; ‘and one, too, Simon, in which it is possible you may be killed. I thought that would not suit you,’ I continued, to see what he would say. But he answered nothing, and I looked at him in great surprise. ‘You have made up your mind, then, at last?’ I said.
‘Perfectly,’ he answered.
‘And solved all your doubts?’
‘I have no doubts.’
‘You are a Huguenot?’
‘That is the only true and pure religion,’ he replied gravely. And with apparent sincerity and devotion he repeated Beza’s Confession of Faith.
This filled me with profound astonishment, but I said no more at the time, though I had my doubts. I waited until I was alone with M. de Rosny, and then I unbosomed myself on the matter; expressing my surprise at the suddenness of the conversion, and at such a man, as I had found the student to be, stating his views so firmly and steadfastly, and with so little excitement. Observing that M. de Rosny smiled but answered nothing, I explained myself farther.
‘I am surprised,’ I said, ‘because I have always heard it maintained that clerkly men, becoming lost in the mazes of theology, seldom find any sure footing; that not one in a hundred returns to his old faith, or finds grace to accept a new one. I am speaking only of such, of course, as I believe this lad to be — eager, excitable brains, learning much, and without judgment to digest what they learn.’
‘Of such I also believe it to be true,’ M. de Rosny answered, still smiling. ‘But even on them a little influence, applied at the right moment, has much effect, M. de Marsac.’
‘I allow that,’ I said. ‘But my mother, of whom I have spoken to you, saw much of this youth. His fidelity to her was beyond praise. Yet her faith, though grounded on a rock, had no weight with him.’
M. de Rosny shook his head, still smiling.
‘It is not our mothers who convert us,’ he said.
‘What!’ I cried, my eyes opened. ‘Do you mean — do you mean that Mademoiselle has done this?’
‘I fancy so,’ he answered, nodding. ‘I think my lady cast her spell over him by the way. The lad left Blois with her, if what you say be true, without faith in the world. He came to my hands two days later the stoutest of Huguenots. It is not hard to read this riddle.’
‘Such, conversions are seldom lasting,’ I said.
He looked at me queerly; and, the smile still hovering about his lips, answered ‘Tush, man! Why so serious? Theodore Beza himself could not look dryer. The lad is in earnest, and there is no harm done.’
And, Heaven knows, I was in no mood to suspect harm; nor inclined just then to look at the dark side of things. It may be conceived how delightful it was to me to be received as an equal and honoured guest by a man, even then famous, and now so grown in reputation as to overshadow all Frenchmen save his master; how pleasant to enjoy the comforts and amiabilities of home, from which I had been long estranged; to pour my mother’s story into Madame’s ears and find comfort in her sympathy; to feel myself, en fin, once more a gentleman with an acknowledged place in the world. Our days we spent in hunting, or excursions of some kind, our evenings in long conversations, which impressed me with an ever-growing respect for my lord’s powers.
For there seemed to be no end either to his knowledge of France, or to the plans for its development, which even then filled his brain, and have since turned wildernesses into fruitful lands, and squalid towns into great cities. Grave and formal, he could yet unbend; the most sagacious of counsellors, he was a soldier also, and loved the seclusion in which we lived the more that it was not devoid of danger; the neighbouring towns being devoted to the League, and the general disorder alone making it possible for him to lie unsuspected in his own house.
One thing only rendered my ease and comfort imperfect, and that was the attitude which Mademoiselle de la Vire assumed towards me. Of her gratitude in the first blush of the thing I felt no doubt, for not only had she thanked me very prettily, though with reserve, on the evening of my arrival, but the warmth of M. de Rosny’s kindness left me no choice, save to believe that she had given him an exaggerated idea of my merits and services. I asked no more than this. Such good offices left me nothing to expect or desire; my age and ill-fortune placing me at so great a disadvantage that, far from dreaming of friendship or intimacy with her, I did not even assume the equality in our daily intercourse to which my birth, taken by itself, entitled me. Knowing that I must appear in her eyes old, poor, and ill-dressed, and satisfied, with having asserted my conduct and honour, I was careful not to trespass on her gratitude; and while forward in such courtesies as could not weary her, I avoided with equal care every appearance of pursuing her, or inflicting my company upon her. I addressed her formally and upon formal topics only, such, I mean, as we shared with the rest of our company; and I reminded myself often that though we now met in the same house and at the same table, she was still the Mademoiselle de la Vire who had borne herself so loftily in the King of Navarre’s ante-chamber. This I did, not out of pique or wounded pride, which I no more, God knows, harboured against her than against a bird; but that I might not in my new prosperity forget the light in which such a woman, young, spoiled, and beautiful, must still regard me.
Keeping to this inoffensive posture, I was the more hurt when I found her gratitude fade with the hour. After the first two days, during which I remarked that she was very silent, seldom speaking to me or looking at me, she resumed much of her old air of disdain. For that I cared little; but she presently went farther, and began to rake up the incidents which had happened at St. Jean d’Angely, and in which I had taken part. She continually adverted to my poverty while there, to the odd figure I had cut, and the many jests her friends had made at my expense. She seemed to take a pleasure positively savage in these, gibing at me sometimes so bitterly as to shame and pain me, and bring the colour to Madame de Rosny’s cheeks.
To the time we had spent together, on the other hand, she never or rarely referred. One afternoon, however, a week after my arrival at Rosny, I found her sitting alone in the parlour. I had not known she was there, and I was for withdrawing at once with a bow and a muttered apology. But she stopped me with an angry gesture. ‘I do not bite,’ she said, rising from her stool and meeting my eyes, a red spot in each cheek. ‘Why do you look at me like that? Do you know, M. de Marsac, that I have no patience with you.’ And she stamped her foot on the floor.
‘But, mademoiselle,’ I stammered humbly, wondering what in the world she meant, ‘what have I done?’
‘Done?’ she repeated angrily. ‘Done? It is not what you have done, it is what you are. I have no patience with you. Why are you so dull, sir? Why are you so dowdy? Why do you go about with your doublet awry, and your hair lank? Why do you speak to Maignan as if he were a gentleman? Why do you look always solemn and polite, and as if all the world were a preche? Why? Why? Why, I say?’
She stopped from sheer lack of breath, leaving me as much a
stonished as ever in my life. She looked so beautiful in her fury and fierceness too, that I could only stare at her and wonder dumbly what it all meant.
‘Well!’ she cried impatiently, after bearing this as long as she could, ‘have you not a word to say for yourself? Have you no tongue? Have you no will of your own at all, M. de Marsac?’
‘But, mademoiselle,’ I began, trying to explain.
‘Chut!’ she exclaimed, cutting me short before I could get farther, as the way of women is. And then she added, in a changed tone, and very abruptly, ‘You have a velvet knot of mine, sir. Give it me.’
‘It is in my room,’ I answered, astonished beyond measure at this sudden change of subject, and equally sudden demand.
‘Then fetch it, sir, if you please,’ she replied, her eyes flashing afresh. ‘Fetch it. Fetch it, I say! It has served its turn, and I prefer to have it. Who knows but that some day you may be showing it for a love-knot?’
‘Mademoiselle!’ I cried, hotly. And I think that for the moment I was as angry as she was.
‘Still, I prefer to have it,’ she answered sullenly, casting down her eyes.
I was so much enraged, I went without a word and fetched it, and, bringing it to her where she stood, in the same place, put it into her hands. When she saw it some recollection, I fancy, of the day when she had traced the cry for help on it, came to her in her anger; for she took it from me with all her bearing altered. She trembled, and held it for a moment in her hands, as if she did not know what to do with it. She was thinking, doubtless, of the house in Blois and the peril she had run there; and, being for my part quite willing that she should think and feel how badly she had acted, I stood looking at her, sparing her no whit of my glance.
‘The gold chain you left on my mother’s pillow,’ I said coldly, seeing she continued silent, ‘I cannot return to you at once, for I have pledged it. But I will do so as soon as I can.’
‘You have pledged it?’ she muttered, with her eyes averted.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 88
