CHAPTER XI. VALERIE’S GAOLER
My child, said the Dowager, and her eyes dwelt on Valerie with a look of studied gentleness, “why will you not be reasonable?”
The constant reflection that Garnache was at large, making his way back to Paris to stir up vengeance for the outrage put upon him, was not without a certain chastening effect upon the Dowager. She had a way of saying that she had as good a stomach for a fight as any man in France, and a fight there should be if it came to it and Garnache should return to assail Condillac. Yet a certain pondering of the consequences, a certain counting of the cost—ordinarily unusual to her nature led her to have recourse to persuasion and to a gentleness no less unusual.
Valerie’s eyes were raised to hers with a look that held more scorn than wonder. They were standing in the antechamber of Valerie’s room. Yonder at his post lounged the recruit “Battista,” looking a trifle cleaner than when first he had been presented to the Marquise, but still not clean enough for a lady’s antechamber. He was leaning stolidly against the sill of the window, his eyes on the distant waters of the Isere, which shone a dull copper colour in the afterglow of the October sunset. His face was vacant, his eyes pensive, as he stood there undisturbed by the flow of a language he did not understand.
Fortunio and Marius had departed, and the Marquise—played upon by her unusual tremors—had remained behind for a last word with the obstinate girl.
“In what, madame,” asked Valerie, “does my conduct fall short of reasonableness?”
The Dowager made a movement of impatience. If at every step she were to be confronted by these questions, which had in them a savour of challenge, she was wasting time in remaining.
“You are unreasonable, in this foolish clinging to a promise given for you.”
“Given by me, madame,” the girl amended, knowing well to what promise the Dowager referred.
“Given by you, then; but given at an age when you could not understand the nature of it. They had no right to bind you so.”
“If it is for any to question that right, it is for me,” Valerie made answer, her eyes ever meeting the Dowager’s unflinchingly. “And I am content to leave that right unquestioned. I am content to fill the promise given. In honour I could not do less.”
“Ah! In honour!” The Dowager sighed. Then she came a step nearer, and her face grew sweetly wistful. “But your heart, child; what of your heart?”
“My heart concerns myself. I am the betrothed of Florimond—that is all that concerns the world and you. I respect and admire him more than any living man, and I shall be proud to become his wife when he returns, as his wife I shall become in spite of all that you and your son may do.”
The Dowager laughed softly, as if to herself.
“And if I tell you that Florimond is dead?”
“When you give me proof of that, I shall believe it,” the girl replied. The Marquise looked at her, her face manifesting no offence at the almost insulting words.
“And if I were to lay that proof before you?” she inquired, sadly almost.
Valerie’s eyes opened a trifle wider, as if in apprehension. But her answer was prompt and her voice steady. “It still could have no effect upon my attitude towards your son.”
“This is foolishness, Valerie—”
“In you it is, madame,” the girl broke in; “a foolishness to think you can constrain a girl, compel her affections, command her love, by such means as you have employed towards me. You think that it predisposes me to be wooed, that it opens my heart to your son, to see myself gaoled that he may pay me his court.”
“Gaoled, child? Who gaols you?” the Dowager cried, as if the most surprising utterance had fallen from Valerie’s lips.
Mademoiselle smiled in sorrow and some scorn.
“Am I not gaoled, then?” she asked. “What call you this? What does that fellow there? He is to lie outside my door at nights to see that none holds communication with me. He is to go with me each morning to the garden, when, by your gracious charity I take the air. Sleeping and waking the man is ever within hearing of any word that I may utter—”
“But he has no French!” the Dowager protested.
“To ensure, no doubt, against any attempt of mine to win him to my side, to induce him to aid me escape from this prison. Oh, madame, I tell you you do but waste time, and you punish me and harass yourself to little purpose. Had Marius been such a man as I might have felt it in my nature to love—which Heaven forbid!—these means by which you have sought to bring that thing about could but have resulted in making me hate him as I do.”
The Dowager’s fears were banished from her mind at that, and with them went all thought of conciliating Valerie. Anger gleamed in her eyes; the set of her lips grew suddenly sneering and cruel, so that the beauty of her face but served to render it hateful the more.
“So that you hate him, ma mie?” a ripple of mockery on the current of her voice, “and he a man such as any girl in France might be proud to wed. Well, well, you are not to be constrained, you say.” And the Marquise’s laugh was menacing and unpleasant. “Be not so sure, mademoiselle. Be not so sure of that. It may well betide that you shall come to beg upon your knees for this alliance with a man whom you tell me that you hate. Be not so sure you cannot be constrained.”
Their eyes met; both women were white to the lips, but it was curbed passion in the one, and deadly fear in the other; for what the Dowager’s words left unsaid her eyes most eloquently conveyed. The girl shrank back, her hands clenched, her lip caught in her teeth.
“There is a God in heaven, madame,” she reminded the Marquise.
“Aye—in heaven,” laughed the Marquise, turning to depart. She paused by the door, which the Italian had sprung forward to open for her.
“Marius shall take the air with you in the morning if it is fine. Ponder meanwhile what I have said.”
“Does this man remain here, madame?” inquired the girl, vainly seeking to render her voice steady.
“In the outer anteroom is his place: but as the key of this room is on his side of the door, he may enter here when he so pleases, or when he thinks that he has reason to. If the sight of him displeases you, you may lock yourself from it in your own chamber yonder.”
The same she said in Italian to the man, who bowed impassively, and followed the Dowager into the outer room, closing the door upon mademoiselle. It was a chamber almost bare of furniture, save for a table and chair which had been placed there, so that the gaoler might take his meals.
The man followed the Marquise across the bare floor, their steps resounding as they went, and he held the outer door for her.
Without another word she left him, and where he stood he could hear her steps as she tripped down the winding staircase of stone. At last the door of the courtyard closed with a bang, and the grating of a key announced to the mercenary that he and his charge were both imprisoned in that tower of the Chateau de Condillac.
Left alone in the anteroom, mademoiselle crossed to the window and dropped limply into a chair. Her face was still very white, her heart beating tumultuously, for the horrid threat that had been conveyed in the Dowager’s words had brought her her first thrill of real fear since the beginning of this wooing-by-force three months ago, a wooing which had become more insistent and less like a wooing day by day, until it had culminated in her present helpless position.
She was a strong-souled, high-spirited girl, but tonight hope seemed extinguished in her breast. Florimond, too, seemed to have abandoned her. Either he had forgotten her, or he was dead, as the Dowager said. Which might be the true state of things she did not greatly care. The realization of how utterly she was in the power of Madame de Condillac and her son, and the sudden chance discovery of how unscrupulously that power might be wielded, filled her mind to the exclusion of all else.
By the window she sat, watching, without heeding them, the fading colours in the sky. She was abandoned to these monsters, and it seemed they would devour her. She could hope for no help from outside since they had as she believed—slain Monsieur de Garnache. Her mind dwelt for a moment on that glimpse of rescue that had been hers a week ago, upon the few hours of liberty which she had enjoyed, but which only seemed now to increase the dark hopelessness of her imprisonment.
Again with the eyes of her mind she beheld that grim, stalwart figure, saw his great nose, his greying hair, his fierce mustachios and his stern, quick eyes. Again she heard the rasp of his metallic voice with its brisk derision. She saw him in the hall below, his foot upon the neck of that popinjay of Condillac daring them all to draw a breath, should he forbid it; again in fancy she rode on the withers of his horse at the gallop towards Grenoble. A sigh escaped her. Surely that was the first man who was indeed a man she had ever set eyes on since her father died. Had Garnache been spared, she would have felt courage and she would have hoped, for there was something about him that suggested energy and resource such as it is good to lean upon in times of stress. Again she heard that brisk, metallic voice: “Are you content, madame? Have you had fine deeds enough for one day?”
And then, breaking in upon her musings came the very voice of her day-dream, so suddenly, sounding so natural and lifelike that she almost screamed, so startled was she.
“Mademoiselle,” it said, “I beg that you’ll not utterly lose heart. I have come back to the thing Her Majesty bade me do, and I’ll do it, in spite of that tigress and her cub.”
She sat still as a statue, scarce breathing, her eyes fixed upon the violet sky. The voice had ceased, but still she sat on. Then it was slowly borne in upon her that that was no dream-voice, no trick of her overburdened mind. A voice, a living, actual voice had uttered those words in this room, here at her elbow.
She turned, and again she almost screamed; for there, just behind her, his glittering eyes fixed upon her with singular intentness, stood the swarthy, black-haired Italian gaoler they had given her because he had no French.
He had come up so quietly behind her that she had not heard his approach, and he was leaning forward now, with an odd suggestion of crouching in his attitude, like a beast about to spring. Yet his gaze riveted hers as with a fascination. And so, while she looked, his lips moved, and from them, in that same voice of her dreams, came from this man who had no French, the words:
“Be not afraid, mademoiselle. I am that blunderer, Garnache, that unworthy fool whose temper ruined what chance of saving you he had a week ago.”
She stared like one going mad.
“Garnache!” said she, in a husky whisper. “You Garnache?”
Yet the voice, she knew, was Garnache’s and none other. It was a voice not easily mistaken. And now, as she looked and looked, she saw that the man’s nose was Garnache’s, though oddly stained, and those keen eyes, they were Garnache’s too. But the hair that had been brown and flecked with grey was black; the reddish mustachios that had bristled like a mountain cat’s were black, too, and they hung limp and hid from sight the fine lines of his mouth. A hideous stubble of unshorn beard defaced his chin and face, and altered its sharp outline; and the clear, healthy skin that she remembered was now a dirty brown.
Suddenly the face smiled, and it was a smile that reassured her and drove away the last doubt that she had. She was on her feet in an instant.
“Monsieur, monsieur,” was all that she could say; but her longing was to fling her arms about the neck of this man, as she might have flung them about the neck of a brother or a father, and sob out upon his shoulder the sudden relief and revulsion that his presence brought.
Garnache saw something of her agitation, and to relieve it he smiled and began to tell her the circumstances of his return and his presentation to Madame as a knave who had no French.
“Fortune was very good to me, mademoiselle,” said he. “I had little hope that such a face as mine could be disguised, but I take no pride in what you see. It is the handiwork of Rabecque, the most ingenious lackey that ever served a foolish master. It helped me that having been ten years in Italy when I was younger, I acquired the language so well as to be able to impose even upon Fortunio. In that lay a circumstance which at once disarmed suspicion, and if I stay not so long as it shall take the dye to wear from my hair and beard and the staining from my face, I shall have little to fear.”
“But, monsieur,” she cried, “you have everything to fear!” And alarm grew in her eyes.
But he laughed again for answer. “I have faith in my luck, mademoiselle, and I think I am on the tide of it at present. I little hoped when I made my way into Condillac in this array that I should end, by virtue of my pretended ignorance of French, in being appointed gaoler to you. I had some ado to keep the joy from my eyes when I heard them planning it. It is a thing that has made all else easy.”
“But what can you do alone, monsieur?” she asked him; and there was a note almost of petulance in her voice.
He moved to the window, and leaned his elbow on the sill. The light was fast fading. “I know not yet. But I am here to contrive a means. I shall think and watch.”
“You know in what hourly peril I am placed,” she cried, and suddenly remembering that he must have overheard and understood the Dowager’s words, a sudden heat came to her cheeks to recede again and leave them marble-pale. And she thanked Heaven that in the dusk and in the shadow where she stood he could but ill make out her face.
“If you think that I have been rash in returning—”
“No, no, not rash, monsieur; noble and brave above all praise. I would indeed I could tell you how noble and brave I account your action.”
“It is as nothing to the bravery required to let Rabecque do this hideous work upon a face for which I have ever entertained some measure of respect.”
He jested, sooner than enlighten her that it was his egregious pride had fetched him back when he was but a few hours upon his journey Pariswards, his inability to brook the ridicule that would be his when he announced at the Luxembourg that failure had attended him.
“Ah, but what can you do alone?” she repeated.
“Give me at least a day or two to devise some means; let me look round and take the measure of this gaol. Some way there must be. I have not come so far and so successfully to be beaten now. Still,” he continued, “if you think that I overrate my strength or my resource, if you would sooner that I sought men and made an assault upon Condillac, endeavouring to carry it and to let the Queen’s will prevail by force of arms, tell me so, and I am gone tomorrow.”
“Whither would you go?” she cried, her voice strained with sudden affright.
“I might seek help at Lyons or Moulins. I might find loyal soldiers who would be willing to follow me by virtue of my warrant to levy such help as I may require, if I but tell them that the help was refused me in Grenoble. I am not sure that it would be so, for, unfortunately, my warrant is for the Seneschal of Dauphiny only. Still, I might make the attempt.”
“No, no,” she implored him, and in her eagerness to have him put all thought of leaving her from his mind, she caught him by the arm and raised a pleading face to his. “Do not leave me here, monsieur; of your pity do not leave me alone amongst them. Think me a coward if you will, monsieur: I am no less. They have made a coward of me.”
He understood the thing she dreaded, and a great pity welled up from his generous heart for this poor unfriended girl at the mercy of the beautiful witch of Condillac and her beautiful rascally son. He patted the hand that clutched his arm.
“I think, myself, that it will be best if I remain, now that I have come so far,” he said. “Let me ponder things. It may well be that I shall devise some way.”
“May Heaven inspire you, monsieur. I shall spend the night in prayer, I think, imploring God and His saints to show you the way you seek.”
“Heaven, I think, should hear your prayers, mademoiselle,” he answered musingly, his glance upon the white, saintly face that seemed to shine in the deepening gloom. Then, suddenly he stirred and bent to listen.
“Sh! Some one is coming,” he whispered. And he sped quickly from her side and into the outer room, where he sank noiselessly on to his chair as the steps ascended the stone staircase and a glow of yellow light grew gradually in the doorway that opened on to it.
CHAPTER XII. A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE
That he might inspire the more confidence in the Dowager and her son Garnache organized and performed a little comedy at Condillac a couple of nights after his appointment as mademoiselle’s gaoler. He gave an alarm at dead midnight, and when half-clad men, followed presently by madame and Marian, rushed into the anteroom where he stood, a very picture of the wildest excitement, he drew their attention to two twisted sheets, tied end to end, hanging from the window which overlooked the moat; and in answer to the marquise’s questions he informed her that he had been disturbed by sounds of movements and upon entering the chamber he had discovered mademoiselle making these preparations for departure.
Valerie, locked in the inner chamber, refused to come forth as the Marquise bade her, but her voice reassured Madame de Condillac of her presence, and so, since her attempt had failed, madame was content to let her be.
“The little fool,” she said, peering down from the window into the night; “she would have been killed for certain. Her rope of sheets does not reach more than a third of the way down. She would have had over thirty feet to fall, and if that had not been enough to finish her, she would of a certainty have, been drowned in the moat.”
She signified her satisfaction with the faithful “Battista’s” vigilance by a present of some gold pieces in the morning, and since the height of the window and the moat beneath it did not appear sufficient obstacles to mademoiselle’s attempts at effecting her escape, the Dowager had the window nailed down. Thus, only by breaking it could egress be obtained, and the breaking of it could not be effected without such a noise as must arouse “Battista.”
Under Garnache’s instructions the comedy was carried a little further. Mademoiselle affected for her gaoler a most unconquerable aversion, and this she took pains to proclaim.
One morning, three days after her attempted escape, she was taking the air in the garden of Condillac, “Battista,” ever watchful, a few paces behind her, when suddenly she was joined by Marius—a splendid, graceful figure in a riding-suit of brown velvet and biscuit-coloured hose, his points tipped with gold, his long boots of the finest marroquin leather, his liver-coloured hound at his heels. It was the last day of October, but the weather, from cold and wet that it had been for the past fortnight, had taken on a sudden improvement. The sun shone, the air was still and warm, and but for the strewn leaves and the faint smell of decay with which the breath of autumn is ever laden, one might have fancied it a day of early spring.
It was not Valerie’s wont to pause when Marius approached. Since she might not prevent him from walking where he listed, she had long since abandoned the futility of bidding him begone when he came near her. But, at least, she had never stopped in her walk, never altered its pace; she had suffered what she might not avoid, but she had worn the outward air of suffering it with indifference. This morning, however, she made a departure from her long habit. Not only did she pause upon observing his approach, but she called to him as if she would have him hasten to her side. And hasten he did, a new light in his eyes that was mostly of surprise, but a little, also, of hope.
She was gracious to him for once, and gave him good morning in a manner that bordered upon the pleasant. Wondering, he fell into step beside her, and they paced together the yew-bordered terrace, the ever-vigilant but discreet “Battista” following them, though keeping now a few paces farther in the rear.
For a little while they appeared constrained, and their talk was of the falling leaves and the grateful change that had so suddenly come upon the weather. Suddenly she stopped and faced him.
“Will you do me a favour, Marius?” she asked. He halted too, and turned to her, studying her gentle face, seeking to guess her mind in the clear hazel eyes she raised to his. His eyebrows lifted slightly with surprise. Nevertheless—
“There is in all the world, Valerie, nothing you could ask me that I would not do,” he protested.
She smiled wistfully. “How easy it is to utter words!” she sighed.
“Marry me,” he answered, leaning towards her, his eyes devouring her now, “and you shall find my words very quickly turned to deeds.”
“Ah,” said she, and her smile broadened and took on a scornful twist, “you make conditions now. If I will marry you, there is nothing you will not do for me; so that, conversely, I may take it that if I do not marry you, there is nothing you will do. But in the meantime, Marius, until I resolve me whether I will marry you or not, would you not do a little thing that I might ask of you?”
“Until you resolve?” he cried, and his face flushed with the sudden hope he gathered from those words. Hitherto there had been no suggestion of a possible modification of attitude towards his suit. It had been repulsion, definite and uncompromising. Again he studied her face. Was she fooling him, this girl with the angel-innocence of glance? The thought of such a possibility cooled him instantly. “What is it you want of me?” he asked, his voice ungracious.
“Only a little thing, Marius.” Her glance travelled back over her shoulder to the tall, limber fellow in leather jerkin and with cross-gartered legs who lounged a dozen steps behind them. “Rid me of that ruffian’s company,” said she.
Marius looked back at “Battista,” and from him to Valerie. Then he smiled and made a slight movement with his shoulders.
“But to what end?” he asked, as one who pleadingly opposes an argument that is unreasonable. “Another would replace him, and there is little to choose among the men that garrison Condillac.”
“Little, perhaps; but that little matters.” Sure of her ground, and gathering from his tone and manner that the more ardently she begged this thing the less likely would it be that she should prevail, she pursued her intercessions with a greater heat. “Oh,” she cried, in a pretended rage, “it is to insult me to give me that unclean knave for perpetual company. I loathe and detest him. The very sight of him is too much to endure.”
“You exaggerate,” said he coldly.
“I do not; indeed I do not,” she rejoined, looking frankly, pleadingly into his face. “You do not realize what it is to suffer the insolent vigilance of such as he; to feel that your every step is under surveillance; to feel his eyes ever upon you when you are within his sight. Oh, it is insufferable!”
Suddenly he gripped her arm, his face within a hand’s breadth of her own, his words falling hot and quickly on her ear.
“It is yours to end it when you will, Valerie,” he passionately reminded her. “Give yourself into my keeping. Let it be mine to watch over you henceforth. Let me—”
Abruptly he ceased. She had drawn back her head, her face was white to the lips, and in her eyes, as they dwelt on his at such close quarters, there appeared a look of terror, of loathing unutterable. He saw it, and releasing her arm he fell back as if she had struck him. The colour left his face too.
“Or is it,” he muttered thickly, “that I inspire you, with much the same feeling as does he?”
She stood before him with lowered eyelids, her bosom heaving still from the agitation of fear his closeness had aroused in her. He studied her in silence a moment, with narrowing eyes and tightening lips. Then anger stirred in him, and quenched the sorrow with which at first he had marked the signs of her repulsion. But anger in Marius de Condillac was a cold and deadly emotion that vented itself in no rantings, uttered no loud-voiced threats or denunciations, prompted no waving of arms or plucking forth of weapons.
He stooped towards her again from his stately, graceful height. The cruelty hidden in the beautiful lines of his mouth took instant prominence in the smile that flickered round it.
“I think that Battista makes a very excellent watchdog,” he said, and you would have thought him amused, as if at the foolish subterfuge of some little child. “You may be right to dislike him. He knows no French, so that it may not be yours to pervert and bribe him with promises of what you will do if he assists you to escape; but you will see that this very quality which renders him detestable to you renders him invaluable to us.”
He laughed softly, as one well pleased with his own astuteness, doffed his hat with a politeness almost exaggerated, and whistling his dog he abruptly left her.
Thus were Marius and his mother—to whom he bore the tale of Valerie’s request—tricked further into reposing the very fullest trust in the watchful, incorruptible “Battista.” Realizing that this would be so, Garnache now applied himself more unreservedly to putting into effect the plans he had been maturing. And he went about it with a zest that knew no flagging, with a relish that nothing could impair. Not that it was other than usual for Garnache to fling himself whole-heartedly into the conduct of any enterprise he might have upon his hands; but he had come into this affair at Condillac against his will; stress of circumstances it was had driven him on, step by step, to take a personal hand in the actual deliverance of Valerie.
It was vanity and pride that had turned him back when already he was on the road to Paris; not without yet a further struggle would he accept defeat. To this end had he been driven, for the first time in his life, to the indignity of his foul disguise; and he, whose methods had ever been direct, had been forced to have recourse to the commonest of subterfuges. It was with anger in his heart that he had proceeded to play the part he had assumed. He felt it to be a thing unworthy of him, a thing that derogated from his self-respect. Had he but had the justification of some high political aim, he might have endured it with a better resignation; the momentous end to be served might have sanctioned the ignoble means adopted. But here was a task in itself almost as unworthy of him as the methods by which he now set about accomplishing it. He was to black his face and dye his beard and hair, stain his skin and garb himself in filthy rags, for no better end than that he might compass the enlargement of a girl from the captivity into which she had been forced by a designing lady of Dauphiny. Was that a task to set a soldier, a man of his years and birth and name? He had revolted at it; yet that stubborn pride of his that would not brook his return to Paris to confess himself defeated by a woman over this woman’s business, held him relentlessly to his distasteful course.
And gradually the distaste of it had melted. It had begun to fall away five nights ago, when he had heard what passed between Madame de Condillac and Valerie. A great pity for this girl, a great indignation against those who would account no means too base to achieve their ends with her, a proper realization of the indignities she was suffering, caused him to shed some of his reluctance, some of his sense of injury to himself.
His innate chivalry, that fine spirit of his which had ever prompted him to defend the weak against the oppressor, stirred him now, and stirred him to such purpose that, in the end, from taking up the burden of his task reluctantly, he came to bear it zestfully and almost gladly. He was rejoiced to discover himself equipped with histrionic gifts of which he had had no suspicion hitherto, and it delighted him to set them into activity.
Now it happened that at Condillac there was a fellow countryman of “Battista’s,” a mercenary from Northern Italy, a rascal named Arsenio, whom Fortunio had enlisted when first he began to increase the garrison a month ago. Upon this fellow’s honesty Garnache had formed designs. He had closely observed him, and in Arsenio’s countenance he thought he detected a sufficiency of villainy to augur well for the prosperity of any scheme of treachery that might be suggested to him provided the reward were adequate.
Garnache went about sounding the man with a wiliness peculiarly his own. Arsenio being his only compatriot at Condillac it was not wonderful that in his few daily hours of relief from his gaoler’s duty “Battista” should seek out the fellow and sit in talk with him. The pair became intimate, and intercourse between them grew more free and unrestrained. Garnache waited, wishing to risk nothing by precipitancy, and watched for his opportunity. It came on the morrow of All Saints. On that Day of the Dead, Arsenio, whose rearing had been that of a true son of Mother Church, was stirred by the memory of his earthly mother, who had died some three years before. He was silent and moody, and showed little responsiveness to Garnache’s jesting humour. Garnache, wondering what might be toward in the fellow’s mind, watched him closely.
Suddenly the little man—he was a short, bowlegged, sinewy fellow—heaved a great sigh as he plucked idly at a weed that grew between two stones of the inner courtyard, where they were seated on the chapel steps.
“You are a dull comrade to-day, compatriot,” said Garnache, clapping him on the shoulder.
“It is the Day of the Dead,” the fellow answered him, as though that were an ample explanation. Garnache laughed.
“To those that are dead it no doubt is; so was yesterday, so will to-morrow be. But to us who sit here it is the day of the living.”
“You are a scoffer,” the other reproached him, and his rascally face was oddly grave. “You don’t understand.”
“Enlighten me, then. Convert me.”
“It is the day when our thoughts turn naturally to the dead, and mine are with my mother, who has lain in her grave these three years. I am thinking of what she reared me and of what I am.”
Garnache made a grimace which the other did not observe. He stared at the little cut-throat, and there was some dismay in his glance. What ailed the rogue? Was he about to repent him of his sins, and to have done with villainy and treachery; was he minded to slit no more gullets in the future, be faithful to the hand that paid him, and lead a godlier life? Peste! That was a thing that would nowise suit Monsieur de Garnache’s ends just then. If Arsenio had a mind to reform, let him postpone that reformation until Garnache should have done with him. So he opened his lips and let out a deep guffaw of mockery.
“We shall have you turning monk,” said he, “a candidate for canonization going barefoot, with flagellated back and shaven head. No more wine, no more dice, no more wenches, no more—”
“Peace!” snapped the other.
“Say ‘Pax,”’ suggested Garnache, “‘Pax tecum,’ or ‘vobiscum.’ It is thus you will be saying it later.”
“If my conscience pricks me, is it aught to you? Have you no conscience of your own?”
“None. Men wax lean on it in this vale of tears. It is a thing invented by the great to enable them to pursue the grinding and oppression of the small. If your master pays you ill for the dirty work you do for him and another comes along to offer you some rich reward for an omission in that same service, you are warned that if you let yourself be tempted, your conscience will plague you afterwards. Pish! A clumsy, childish device that, to keep you faithful.”
Arsenio looked up. Words that defamed the great were ever welcome to him; arguments that showed him he was oppressed and imposed upon sounded ever gratefully in his ears. He nodded his approval of “Battista’s” dictum.
“Body of Bacchus!” he swore, “you are right in that, compatriot. But my case is different. I am thinking of the curse that Mother Church has put upon this house. Yesterday was All Saints, and never a Mass heard I. To-day is All Souls, and never a prayer may I offer up in this place of sin for the rest of my mother’s soul.”
“How so?” quoth Garnache, looking in wonder at this religiously minded cut-throat.
“How so? Is not the House of Condillac under excommunication, and every man who stays in it of his own free will? Prayers and Sacraments are alike forbidden here.”
Garnache received a sudden inspiration. He leapt to his feet, his face convulsed as if at the horror of learning of a hitherto undreamt-of state of things. He never paused to give a moment’s consideration to the cut-throat’s mind, so wonderfully constituted as to enable him to break with impunity every one of the commandments every day of the week for the matter of a louis d’or or two, and yet be afflicted by qualms of conscience at living under a roof upon which the Church had hurled her malediction.
“What are you saying, compatriot? What is it that you tell me?”
“The truth,” said Arsenio, with a shrug. “Any man who wilfully abides in the services of Condillac”—and instinctively he lowered his voice lest the Captain or the Marquise should be within earshot—, “is excommunicate.”
“By the Host!” swore the false Piedmontese. “I am a Christian man myself, Arsenio, and I have lived in ignorance of this thing?”
“That ignorance may be your excuse. But now that you know—” Arsenio shrugged his shoulders.
“Now that I know, I had best have a care of my soul and look about me for other employment.”
“Alas!” sighed Arsenio; “it is none so easy to find.”
Garnache looked at him. Garnache began to have in his luck a still greater faith than hitherto. He glanced stealthily around; then he sat down again, so that his mouth was close to Arsenio’s ear.
“The pay is beggarly here, yet I have refused a fortune offered me by another that I might remain loyal to my masters at Condillac. But this thing that you tell me alters everything. By the Host! yes.”
“A fortune?” sneered Arsenio.
“Aye, a fortune—at least, fifty pistoles. That is a fortune to some of us.”
Arsenio whistled. “Tell me more,” said he.
Garnache rose with the air of one about to depart.
“I must think of it,” said he, and he made shift to go. But the other’s hand fell with a clenching grip upon his arm.
“Of what must you think, fool?” said he. “Tell me this service you have been offered. I have a conscience that upbraids me. If you refuse these fifty pistoles, why should not I profit by your folly?”
“There would not be the need. Two men are required for the thing I speak of, and there are fifty pistoles for each. If I decide to undertake the task, I’ll speak of you as a likely second.”
He nodded gloomily to his companion, and shaking off his hold he set out to cross the yard. But Arsenio was after him and had fastened again upon his arm, detaining him.
“You fool!” said he; “you’d not refuse this fortune?”
“It would mean treachery,” whispered Garnache.
“That is bad,” the other agreed, and his face fell. But remembering what Garnache had said, he was quick to brighten again. “Is it to these folk here at Condillac?” he asked. Garnache nodded. “And they would pay—these people that seek our service would pay you fifty pistoles?”
“They seek my service only, as yet. They might seek yours were I to speak for you.”
“And you will, compatriot. You will, will you not? We are comrades, we are friends, and we are fellow-countrymen in a strange land. There is nothing I would not do for you, Battista. Look, I would die for you if there should come the need! Body of Bacchus! I would. I am like that when I love a man.”
Garnache patted his shoulder. “You are a good fellow, Arsenio.”
“And you will speak for me?”
“But you do not know the nature of the service,” said Garnache. “You may refuse it when it is definitely offered you.”
“Refuse fifty pistoles? I should deserve to be the pauper that I am if such had been my habits. Be the service what it may, my conscience pricks me for serving Condillac. Tell me how the fifty pistoles are to be earned, and you may count upon me to put my hand to anything.”
Garnache was satisfied. But he told Arsenio no more that day, beyond assuring him he would speak for him and let him know upon the morrow. Nor on the morrow, when they returned to the subject at Arsenio’s eager demand, did Garnache tell him all, or even that the service was mademoiselle’s. Instead he pretended that it was some one in Grenoble who needed two such men as they.
“Word has been brought me,” he said mysteriously. “You must not ask me how.”
“But how the devil are we to reach Grenoble? The Captain will never let us go,” said Arsenio, in an ill-humour.
“On the night that you are of the watch, Arsenio, we will depart together without asking the Captain’s leave. You shall open the postern when I come to join you here in the courtyard.”
“But what of the man at the door yonder?” And he jerked his thumb towards the tower where mademoiselle was a captive, and where at night “Battista” was locked in with her. At the door leading to the courtyard a sentry was always posted for greater security. That door and that sentry were obstacles which Garnache saw the futility of attempting to overcome without aid. That was why he had been forced to enlist Arsenio’s assistance.
“You must account for him, Arsenio,” said he.
“Thus?” inquired Arsenio coolly, and he passed the edge of his hand significantly across his throat. Garnache shook his head.
“No,” said he; “there will be no need for that. A blow over the head will suffice. Besides, it may be quieter. You will find the key of the tower in his belt. When you have felled him, get it and unlock the door; then whistle for me. The rest will be easy.”
“You are sure he has the key?”
“I have it from madame herself. They were forced to leave it with him to provide for emergencies. Mademoiselle’s attempted escape by the window showed them the necessity for it.” He did not add that it was the implicit confidence they reposed in “Battista” himself that had overcome their reluctance to leave the key with the sentry.
To seal the bargain, and in earnest of all the gold to come, Garnache gave Arsenio a couple of gold louis as a loan to be repaid him when their nameless employer should pay him his fifty pistoles in Grenoble.
The sight and touch of the gold convinced Arsenio that the thing was no dream. He told Garnache that he believed he would be on guard-duty on the night of the following Wednesday—this was Friday—and so for Wednesday next they left the execution of their plans unless, meantime, a change should be effected in the disposition of the sentries.
