CHAPTER XXIII. THE JUDGMENT OF
GARNACHE
On the morrow, which was a Friday and the tenth of
November—a date to be hereafter graven on the memory of all concerned in the
affairs of Condillac—the Dowager rose betimes, and, for decency’s sake, having
in mind the business of the day, she gowned herself in black.
Betimes, too, the Lord Seneschal rode out of
Grenoble, attended by a couple of grooms, and headed for Condillac, in doing
which—little though he suspected it—he was serving nobody’s interests more
thoroughly than Monsieur de Garnache’s.
Madame received him courteously. She was in a
blithe and happy mood that morning—the reaction from her yesterday’s distress
of mind. The world was full of promise, and all things had prospered with her
and Marius. Her boy was lord of Condillac; Florimond, whom she had hated and
who had stood in the way of her boy’s advancement, was dead and on his way to
burial; Garnache, the man from Paris who might have made trouble for them had
he ridden home again with the tale of their resistance, was silenced for all
time, and the carp in the moat would be feasting by now upon what was left of
him; Valerie de La Vauvraye was in a dejected frame of mind that augured well
for the success of the Dowager’s plans concerning her, and by noon at latest
there would be priests at Condillac, and, if Marius still wished to marry the
obstinate baggage, there would be no difficulty as to that.
It was a glorious morning, mild and sunny as an
April day, as though Nature took a hand in the Dowager’s triumph and wished to
make the best of its wintry garb in honour of it.
The presence of this gross suitor of hers afforded
her another source of satisfaction. There would no longer be the necessity she
once had dreaded of listening to his suit for longer than it should be her
pleasure to be amused by him. But when Tressan spoke, he struck the first note
of discord in the perfect harmony which the Dowager imagined existed.
“Madame,” said he, “I am desolated that I am not a
bearer of better tidings. But for all that we have made the most diligent
search, the man Rabecque has not yet been apprehended. Still, we have not
abandoned hope,” he added, by way of showing that there was a silver lining to
his cloud of danger.
For just a moment madame’s brows were knitted. She
had forgotten Rabecque until now; but an instant’s reflection assured her that
in forgetting him she had done him no more than such honour as he deserved. She
laughed, as she led the way down the garden steps—the mildness of the day and
the brightness of her mood had moved her there to receive the Seneschal.
“From the sombreness of your tone one might fear
your news to be of the nature of some catastrophe. What shall it signify that Rabecque
eludes your men? He is but a lackey after all.”
“True,” said the Seneschal, very soberly; “but do
not forget, I beg, that he is the bearer of letters from one who is not a
lackey.”
The laughter went out of her face at that. Here
was something that had been lost sight of in the all-absorbing joy of other
things. In calling the forgotten Rabecque to mind she had but imagined that it
was no more than a matter of the tale he might tell—a tale not difficult to
refute, she thought. Her word should always weigh against a lackey’s. But that
letter was a vastly different matter.
“He must be found, Tressan,” she said sharply.
Tressan smiled uneasily, and chewed at his beard.
“No effort shall be spared,” he promised her. “Of
that you may be very sure. The affairs of the province are at a standstill,” he
added, that vanity of his for appearing a man of infinite business rising even
in an hour of such anxiety, for to himself, no less than to her, was there
danger should Rabecque ever reach his destination with the papers Garnache had
said he carried.
“The affairs of the province are at a standstill,”
he repeated, “while all my energies are bent upon this quest. Should we fail to
have news of his capture in Dauphiny, we need not, nevertheless, despond. I
have sent men after him along the three roads that lead to Paris. They are to
spare neither money nor horses in picking up his trail and effecting his
capture. After all, I think we shall have him.”
“He is our only danger now,” the Marquise
answered, “for Florimond is dead—of the fever,” she added, with a sneering
smile which gave Tressan sensations as of cold water on his spine. “It were an
irony of fate if that miserable lackey were to reach Paris now and spoil the
triumph for which we have worked so hard.”
“It were, indeed,” Tressan agreed with her, “and
we must see that he does not.”
“But if he does,” she returned, “then we must
stand together.” And with that she set her mind at ease once more, her mood
that morning being very optimistic.
“Always, I hope, Clotilde,” he answered, and his
little eyes leered up out of the dimples of fat in which they were embedded. “I
have stood by you like a true friend in this affair; is it not so?”
“Indeed; do I deny it?” she answered half
scornfully.
“As I shall stand by you always when the need
arises. You are a little in my debt concerning Monsieur de Garnache.”
“I—I realize it,” said she, and she felt again as
if the sunshine were gone from the day, the blitheness from her heart. She was
moved to bid him cease leering at her and to take himself and his wooing to the
devil. But she bethought her that the need for him might not yet utterly be
passed. Not only in the affair of Garnache—in which he stood implicated as
deeply as herself—might she require his loyalty, but also in the matter of what
had befallen yesterday at La Rochette; for despite Fortunio’s assurances that
things had gone smoothly, his tale hung none too convincingly together; and
whilst she did not entertain any serious fear of subsequent trouble, yet it
might be well not utterly to banish the consideration of such a possibility,
and to keep the Seneschal her ally against it. So she told him now, with as
much graciousness as she could command, that she fully realized her debt, and
when, encouraged, he spoke of his reward, she smiled upon him as might a girl
smile upon too impetuous a wooer whose impetuosity she deprecates yet cannot
wholly withstand.
“I am a widow of six months,” she reminded him, as
she had reminded him once before. Her widowhood was proving a most convenient
refuge. “It is not for me to listen to a suitor, however my foolish heart may
incline. Come to me in another six months’ time.”
“And you will wed me then?” he bleated.
By an effort her eyes smiled down upon him,
although her face was a trifle drawn.
“Have I not said that I will listen to no suitor?
and what is that but a suitor’s question?”
He caught her hand; he would have fallen on his
knees there and then, at her feet, on the grass still wet with the night’s
mist, but that he in time bethought him of how sadly his fine apparel would be
the sufferer.
“Yet I shall not sleep, I shall know no rest, no
peace until you have given me an answer. Just an answer is all I ask. I will
set a curb upon my impatience afterwards, and go through my period of ah—probation
without murmuring. Say that you, will marry me in six months’ time—at Easter,
say.”
She saw that an answer she must give, and so she
gave him the answer that he craved. And he—poor fool!—never caught the ring of
her voice, as false as the ring of a base coin; never guessed that in promising
she told herself it would be safe to break that promise six months hence, when
the need of him and his loyalty would be passed.
A man approached them briskly from the chateau. He
brought news that a numerous company of monks was descending the valley of the
Isere towards Condillac. A faint excitement stirred her, and accompanied by
Tressan she retraced her steps and made for the battlements, whence she might
overlook their arrival.
As they went Tressan asked for an explanation of
this cortege, and she answered him with Fortunio’s story of how things had sped
yesterday at La Rochette.
Up the steps leading to the battlements she went
ahead of him, with a youthful, eager haste that took no thought for the
corpulence and short-windedness of the following Seneschal. From the heights
she looked eastwards, shading her eyes from the light of the morning sun, and
surveyed the procession which with slow dignity paced down the valley towards
Condillac.
At its head walked the tall, lean figure of the
Abbot of Saint Francis of Cheylas, bearing on high a silvered crucifix that
flashed and scintillated in the sunlight. His cowl was thrown back, revealing
his pale, ascetic countenance and shaven head. Behind him came a coffin covered
by a black pall, and borne on the shoulders of six black-robed, black cowled
monks, and behind these again walked, two by two, some fourteen cowled brothers
of the order of Saint Francis, their heads bowed, their arms folded, and their
hands tucked away in their capacious sleeves.
It was a numerous cortege, and as she watched its
approach the Marquise was moved to wonder by what arguments had the proud Abbot
been induced to do so much honour to a dead Condillac and bear his body home to
this excommunicated roof.
Behind the monks a closed carriage lumbered down
the uneven mountain way, and behind this rode four mounted grooms in the livery
of Condillac. Of Marius she saw nowhere any sign, and she inferred him to be
travelling in that vehicle, the attendant servants being those of the dead
Marquis.
In silence, with the Seneschal at her elbow, she
watched the procession advance until it was at the foot of the drawbridge.
Then, while the solemn rhythm of their feet sounded across the planks that
spanned the moat, she turned, and, signing to the Seneschal to follow her, she
went below to meet them. But when she reached the courtyard she was surprised
to find they had not paused, as surely would have been seemly. Unbidden, the
Abbot had gone forward through the great doorway and down the gallery that led
to the hall of Condillac. Already, when she arrived below, the coffin and its
bearers had disappeared, and the last of the monks was passing from sight in
its wake. Leaning against the doorway through which they were vanishing stood
Fortunio, idly watching that procession and thoughtfully stroking his
mustachios. About the yard lounged a dozen or so men-at-arms, practically all
the garrison that was left them since the fight with Garnache two nights ago.
After the last monk had disappeared, she still
remained there, expectantly; and when she saw that neither the carriage nor the
grooms made their appearance, she stepped up to Fortunio to inquire into the
reason of it.
“Surely Monsieur de Condillac rides in that coach,”
said she.
“Surely,” Fortunio answered, himself looking
puzzled. “I will go seek the reason, madame. Meanwhile will you receive the
Abbot? The monks will have deposited their burden.”
She composed her features into a fitting
solemnity, and passed briskly through to the hall, Tressan ever at her heels.
Here she found the coffin deposited on the table, its great black pall of
velvet, silver-edged, sweeping down to the floor. No fire had been lighted that
morning nor had the sun yet reached the windows, so that the place wore a chill
and gloomy air that was perhaps well attuned to the purpose that it was being
made to serve.
With a rare dignity, her head held high, she swept
down the length of that noble chamber towards the Abbot, who stood erect as a
pikestaff: at the tablehead, awaiting her. And well was it for him that he was
a man of austere habit of mind, else might her majestic, incomparable beauty
have softened his heart and melted the harshness of his purpose.
He raised his hand when she was within a sword’s
length of him, and with startling words, delivered in ringing tones, he broke
the ponderous silence.
“Wretched woman,” he denounced her, “your sins
have found you out. Justice is to be done, and your neck shall be bent despite
your stubborn pride. Derider of priests, despoiler of purity, mocker of Holy
Church, your impious reign is at an end.”
Tressan fell back aghast, his face blenching to
the lips; for if justice was at hand for her, as the Abbot said, then was
justice at hand for him as well. Where had their plans miscarried? What flaw
was there that hitherto she had not perceived? Thus he questioned himself in
his sudden panic.
But the Marquise was no sharer in his tremors. Her
eyes opened a trifle wider; a faint colour crept into her cheeks; but her only
emotions were of amazement and indignation. Was he mad, this shaveling monk?
That was the question that leapt into her mind, the very question with which
she coldly answered his outburst.
“For madness only,” she thought fit to add, “could
excuse such rash temerity as yours.”
“Not madness, madame,” he answered, with chill
haughtiness—“not madness, but righteous indignation. You have defied the power
of Holy Church as you have defied the power of our sovereign lady, and justice
is upon you. We are here to present the reckoning, and see its payment made in
full.”
She fancied he alluded to the body in the
coffin—the body of her stepson—and she could have laughed at his foolish
conclusions that she must account Florimond’s death an act of justice upon her
for her impiety. But her rising anger left her no room for laughter.
“I thought, sir priest, you were come to bury the
dead. But it rather seems you are come to talk.”
He looked at her long and sternly. Then he shook
his head, and the faintest shadow of a smile haunted his ascetic face.
“Not to talk, madame; oh, not to talk,” he
answered slowly. “But to act, I have come, madame, to liberate from this
shambles the gentle lamb you hold here prisoned.”
At that some of the colour left her cheeks; her
eyes grew startled: at last she began to realize that all was not as she had
thought—as she had been given to understand.—Still, she sought to hector it,
from very instinct.
“Vertudieu!” she thundered at him. “What mean
you?”
Behind her Tressan’s great plump knees were
knocking one against the other. Fool that he had been to come to Condillac that
day, and to be trapped thus in her company, a partner in her guilt. This proud
Abbot who stood there uttering denunciations had some power behind him, else
had he never dared to raise his voice in Condillac within call of desperate men
who would give little thought to the sacredness, of his office.
“What mean you?” she repeated—adding with a
sinister smile, “in your zeal, Sir Abbot, you are forgetting that my men are
within call.”
“So, madame, are mine,” was his astounding answer,
and he waved a hand towards the array of monks, all standing with bowed heads
and folded arms.
At that her laughter rang shrill through the
chamber. “These poor shavelings?” she questioned.
“Just these poor shavelings, madame,” he answered,
and he raised his hand again and made a sign. And then an odd thing happened,
and it struck a real terror into the heart of the Marquise and heightened that
which was already afflicting her fat lover, Tressan.
The monks drew themselves erect. It was as if a
sudden gust of wind had swept through their ranks and set them all in motion.
Cowls fell back and habits were swept aside, and where twenty monks had stood,
there were standing now a score of nimble, stalwart men in the livery of
Condillac, all fully armed, all grinning in enjoyment of her and Tressan’s
dismay.
One of them turned aside and locked the door of
the chamber. But his movement went unheeded by the Dowager, whose beautiful
eyes, starting with horror, were now back upon the grim figure of the Abbot,
marvelling almost to see no transformation wrought in him.
“Treachery!” she breathed, in an awful voice, that
was no louder than a whisper, and again her eyes travelled round the company,
and suddenly they fastened upon Fortunio, standing six paces from her to the
right, pulling thoughtfully at his mustachios, and manifesting no surprise at
what had taken place.
In a sudden, blind choler, she swept round,
plucked the dagger from Tressan’s belt and flung herself upon the treacherous
captain. He had betrayed her in some way; he had delivered up Condillac—into
whose power she had yet had no time to think. She caught him by the throat with
a hand of such nervous strength as one would little have suspected from its
white and delicate contour. Her dagger was poised in the air, and the captain,
taken thus suddenly, was palsied with amazement and could raise no hand to
defend himself from the blow impending.
But the Abbot stepped suddenly to her side and
caught her wrist in his thin, transparent hand.
“Forbear,” he bade her. “The man is but a tool.”
She fell back—dragged back almost by the
Abbot—panting with rage and grief; and then she noticed that during the moment
that her back had been turned the pall had been swept from the coffin. The
sight of the bare deal box arrested her attention, and for the moment turned
aside her anger. What fresh surprise did they prepare her?
No sooner had she asked herself the question than
herself she answered it, and an icy hand seemed to close about her heart. It
was Marius who was dead. They had lied to her. Marius’s was the body they had
borne to Condillac—those men in the livery of her stepson.
With a sudden sob in her throat she took a step
towards the coffin. She must see for herself. One way or the other she must at
once dispel this torturing doubt. But ere she had taken three paces, she stood
arrested again, her hands jerked suddenly to the height of her breast, her lips
parting to let out a scream of terror. For the coffin-lid had slowly raised and
clattered over. And as if to pile terror for her, a figure rose from the box,
and, sitting up, looked round with a grim smile; and the figure was the figure
of a man whom she knew to be dead, a man who had died by her contriving—it was the
figure of Garnache. It was Garnache as he had been on the occasion of his first
coming to Condillac, as he had been on the day they had sought his life in this
very room. How well she knew that great hooked nose and the bright, steely blue
eyes, the dark brown hair, ash-coloured at the temples where age had paled it,
and the fierce, reddish mustachios, bristling above the firm mouth and long,
square chin.
She stared and stared, her beautiful face livid
and distorted, till there was no beauty to be seen in it, what time the Abbot
regarded her coldly and Tressan, behind her, turned almost sick with terror.
But not the terror of ghosts was it afflicted him. He saw in Garnache a man who
was still of the quick—a man who by some miracle had escaped the fate to which
they supposed him to have succumbed; and his terror was the terror of the
reckoning which that man would ask.
After a moment’s pause, as if relishing the
sensation he had created, Garnache rose to his feet and leapt briskly to the
ground. There was nothing ghostly about the thud with which he alighted on his
feet before her. A part of her terror left her; yet not quite all. She saw that
she had but a man to deal with, yet she began to realize that this man was very
terrible.
“Garnache again!” she gasped.
He bowed serenely, his lips smiling.
“Aye, madame,” he told her pleasantly, “always
Garnache. Tenacious as a leech, madame; and like a leech come hither to do a
little work of purification.”
Her eyes, now kindling again as she recovered from
her recent fears, sought Fortunio’s shifty glance. Garnache followed it and
read what was in her mind.
“What Fortunio has done,” said he, “he has done by
your son’s authority and sanction.”
“Marius?” she inquired, and she was almost fearful
lest she should hear that by her son he meant her stepson, and that Marius was
dead.
“Yes, Marius,” he answered her. “I bent him to my
will. I threatened him that he and this fellow of his, this comrade in arms so
worthy of his master, should be broken on the wheel together unless I were
implicitly obeyed. If they would save their lives, this was their chance. They
were wise, and they took it, and thus afforded me the means of penetrating into
Condillac and rescuing Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye.”
“Then Marius—?” She left her question unfinished,
her hand clutching nervously at the bosom of her gown.
“Is sound and well, as Fortunio truthfully will
have told you. But he is not yet out of my grasp, nor will be until the affairs
of Condillac are settled. For if I meet with further opposition here, broken on
the wheel he shall be yet, I promise you.”
Still she made a last attempt at hectoring it. The
long habit of mastership dies hard. She threw back her head; her courage
revived now that she knew Marius to be alive and sound.
“Fine words,” she sneered. “But who are you that
you can threaten so and promise so?”
“I am the Queen-Regent’s humble mouthpiece,
madame. What I threaten, I threaten in her name. Ruffle it no longer, I beseech
you. It will prove little worth your while. You are deposed, madame, and you
had best take your deposition with dignity and calm—in all friendliness do I
advise it.”
“I am not yet come so low that I need your
advice,” she answered sourly.
“You may before the sun sets,” he answered, with
his quiet smile. “The Marquis de Condillac and his wife are still at La
Rochette, waiting until my business here is done that they may come home.”
“His wife?” she cried.
“His wife, madame. He has brought home a wife from
Italy.”
“Then—then—Marius?” She said no more than that.
Maybe she had no intention of muttering even so much of her thoughts aloud. But
Garnache caught the trend of her mind, and he marvelled to see how strong a
habit of thought can be. At once upon hearing of the Marquis’s marriage her
mind had flown back to its wonted pondering of the possibilities of Marius’s
wedding Valerie.
But Garnache dispelled such speculations.
“No, madame,” said he. “Marius looks elsewhere for
a wife—unless mademoiselle of her own free will should elect to wed him—a thing
unlikely.” Then, with a sudden change to sternness—“Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye
is well, madame?” he asked.
She nodded her head, but made no answer in words.
He turned to Fortunio.
“Go fetch her,” he bade the captain, and one of
the men unlocked the door to let Fortunio out upon that errand.
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
passed 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
circumstances 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 encompass 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
impassive 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 Seneschalship 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 snatch them away, she had
stooped and kissed them, whilst a murmur of “Thank God! Thank God!” 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 gratitude 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, willy-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
pronounced 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 God, 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 passion 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 sunshine 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 God’s name, let Madame give us her
answer now. We have not the day to waste.”
She stood looking at him, her toe tapping the
ground, her eyes sullenly angry. And in the end, half-fainting in her great
disdain, she consented to do his will. Paris and the wheel formed too horrible
an alternative; besides, even if that were spared her, there was but a hovel in
Touraine for her, and Tressan, for all his fat ugliness, was wealthy.
So the Abbot, who had lent himself to the mummery
of coming there to read a burial service, made ready now, by order of the
Queen’s emissary, to solemnize a wedding.
It was soon done. Fortunio stood sponsor for
Tressan, and Garnache himself insisted upon handing the Lord Seneschal his
bride, a stroke of irony which hurt the proud lady of Condillac more than all
her sufferings of the past half-hour.
When it was over and the Dowager Marquise de
Condillac had been converted into the Comtesse de Tressan, Garnache bade them
depart in peace and at once.
“As I have promised, you shall be spared all
prosecution, Monsieur de Tressan,” he assured the Seneschal at parting. “But
you must resign at once the King’s Seneschalship of Dauphiny, else will you put
me to the necessity of having you deprived of your office—and that might entail
unpleasant consequences.”
They went, madame with bowed head, her stubborn
pride broken at last as the Abbot of Saint Francis had so confidently promised
her. After them went the Abbot and the lackeys of Florimond, and Fortunio went
with these to carry out Garnache’s orders that the men of the Dowager’s
garrison be sent packing at once, leaving with the Parisian, in the great hall,
just Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye.
