Chantemerle

Château-Foix passed under the escutcheoned gateway into the street. Madame Gaumont and Lucienne’s maid, appearing on his frantic ringing of the bell, had turned him somewhat ignominiously out of the room, until the former, reissuing, had allayed his anxiety with the news that the dear child had recovered her senses, that there was nothing to fear, but that it would obviously be wiser for him not to see her again at present. The good lady gave him to understand how profound was her sympathy with the emotional crisis which had produced so moving a result.

So Gilbert left the Hôtel de la Séguinière. He was concerned and anxious, and could not blame himself sufficiently for allowing Lucienne to have heard the truth about Louis. He had better have lied. And he had turned into the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux when suddenly he stopped, and put his hand across his eyes. A vision had abruptly presented itself of Lucienne, white and quivering with excitement, uttering those words that rang with terror and passion, “Why ‘if you can’? Why ‘if you can’? You are hiding something. . . .” He felt her again in his arms, inanimate the one moment, the next—— And this—this at the mention of Louis’ name, of Louis’ danger. . . . The hideous suspicion was impossible, and yet—— He would know the truth at once, he would go back and ask Lucienne herself. He swung on his heel, and stopped, won by wiser counsels. Did he purpose to make a fool of himself, to play the jealous lover, and at such a time, when the balances of life and death were weighing? The poor child would naturally be anxious; her passion was conjured up by his own disordered imagination; she was tired; how could he have dreamed such a thing! Once more he turned his face westward and walked rapidly on.

But alas! to drive away a thought is not to slay it. The terrible idea, which had sprung full-panoplied into being, was immortal, and he knew it. The sting had been dealt, and the poison was ineradicable. The street seemed to lengthen and contract, to be gripping his heart. It came back the second time like a harpy—“What guarantee have you that Louis has not played you false, that Lucienne has not deceived you?” He cast it away the second time, still walking on, though he was unconscious of movement, for it seemed as if the world stood still. But it was like fighting the sea. For the third time it surged back upon him—“Suppose, suppose . . .” And then round a corner, in that network of little streets, he came face to face with D’Aubeville.

“A moment!” said the latter in a low voice, gripping him by the arm without an apology. He was rather pale, and his breath came short as though he had been running. “Give me a moment!” He drew the Marquis up an alley. “You know he has been arrested?”

“Louis?” asked the Marquis. “Yes. Do you know where he is?”

“If you can get him released,” said D’Aubeville rapidly, without replying to the question, “I can get him out of Paris.”

“But where is he?” exclaimed Gilbert impatiently. “I can get him out of Paris myself, if I can find him.”

“She must know, if no one else does,” returned D’Aubeville. “Go to her—to Madame d’Espaze. She knows, and she could get Lecorrier to release him.”

“Madame d’Espaze,” repeated the Marquis. “She knows, you say—but would she do it?”

The young man shrugged his shoulders. “It is a chance—the only one. At least, if she would do it for any one, she would do it for Saint-Ermay.”

“Give me her address,” said Château-Foix. “I can but try. If we knew where he is it would be something.”

D’Aubeville nodded, scribbling meanwhile in a pocket-book. “There is her address. Get Saint-Ermay released before to-morrow evening—I can do nothing myself, I should merely be taken too—and send him to the address I have written beneath it. . . . No, you say you can manage that part yourself. It is all over; I must go and see if any of us are left—and you should not be seen talking to me. Good luck to you!”

“Tell me one thing,” interposed Gilbert hastily. “This woman—I know nothing of Louis’ relations with her—can I bribe her?”

D’Aubeville turned. “I should doubt it. I cannot tell you how to prevail upon her; I must leave that to you. She is a devil, but she has a heart sometimes. And at any rate she knows where he is.” He disappeared in the dusk.

The Marquis stood still, collecting his thoughts. A moment or two ago Louis’ peril had sunk forgotten beneath his possible treachery. Now the full realisation of his imminent danger swept like the incoming tide over a shore of suspicion that would be bared again at ebb. The flood carried Château-Foix along with it. He summoned a passing vehicle, sprang in, and drove at once across the river to Madame d’Espaze’s house in the Rue de Tournon.

The rush of feeling had borne him up to the very door of the enchantress before he began to consider what he should say to her. Should he plead or threaten, argue or bribe? Not knowing the lady he concluded (perhaps not unwisely) that it was useless to arrange a plan of campaign until he had seen her, and rang the bell on this resolution.

Alas, Madame was not at home to any one. No, she had given positive orders. And then only did Gilbert realise that it was something late for a visit. Would she receive him to-morrow morning? Sped by a handsome gratuity, the lackey went back with the Marquis’ card. He returned to say that the Comtesse would gladly receive Monsieur at ten. With this consolation Gilbert, baffled, went slowly down the steps between the flowering shrubs and through the gay little courtyard out again into the street.

And gradually the tide began to ebb. There was nothing to be done till morning—nothing but think. Once back in his room at the hotel there seemed indeed to be every likelihood of his doing that till daybreak, the more so that a certain merciless clearness of vision was beginning to bathe past and present in a dreadful illumination. Everything was patent to him now. That he should not have known better! That he could have had the incredible folly to trust Louis near Lucienne; to believe that there was at least one woman in the world whom he would respect. Fool! it had probably made the prize but the more desirable!

The horrible source of light in Gilbert’s brain brought back incident after incident in the past, all pointing to the one goal. No sooner had one swept before him than another rushed upon its heels. “And I! and I!” they cried to him, ghosts of his unutterable folly, of Louis’ treachery, of Lucienne’s weakness. He had trusted so completely that a revulsion so complete stripped instantly every rag of faith from him, and left him naked to the storm. For a little while he was able to regard the event from almost an impersonal standpoint; then the kaleidoscope shifted, and his proud and writhing spirit beheld himself as the victim, laughed at, perhaps, or worse, pitied; till at last, passing by the image of Lucienne with averted face, his mind fixed on the thought of Louis in a passion of hatred. As yet he would not, could not examine her position; it was Louis who was guilty; it was Louis who had entrapped her; it was Louis, curse him, curse him!—with his beauty and his grace, his ready tongue, his gay smile, and just that reputation for gallantry likely to render him more attractive still.

And suddenly, as the bells of Notre Dame des Victoires behind the hotel chimed the quarter past nine, a thought, scarifying in its intensity, tore shuddering across the night of his mind. He had revenge in his very hands. He could leave Louis where he was—leave him to rot in the prison to which his philandering with another woman had brought him—leave him to be hanged on a lamp-post like the Marquis de Favras, to be torn in pieces like De Launay, to have his handsome, insolent head paraded along the streets on a pike point, like Foulon—like him, perhaps, with a wisp of grass between the lips which had lied and kissed. . . .

It was not at once that Gilbert realised to what voice he was listening. The shock of the image he had conjured up for himself told him. O God! was he like that! His head fell forward on his arms. . . .

Ten o’clock had struck before he lifted it. The bitter shame and conflict of that three-quarters of an hour had brought the pendulum back with a swing. What shadow of proof had he? Lucienne had been overwrought; how had he dared to think such a thing of her? It was a nightmare out of which he would awaken with the dawn.

But when the dawn came he had not awakened; only, haggard and doubt-ridden, he threw himself on his bed to gain a little respite ere he set out to play his last desperate stake for the life of the kinsman who had—or had not?—done him so foul an injury.

CHAPTER XIII
“HOURS IN THE RAIN”

Some two hours after Gilbert was repulsed from Madame d’Espaze’s door an old man and a young girl were sitting in the Hôtel de la Force playing backgammon by a scanty fire. The large, bare room was empty but for themselves, for La Force had not then the crowd of captives of which it was to be relieved in so bloody a fashion just two months later. Nevertheless there ran across the apartment a long trestle table void of a cloth, and the old man looked up every now and again from his game as though expecting an arrival.

“Our guests and the supper are alike late to-night, my dear,” he remarked at last, pushing away the board and the pieces. He wore the cross of Saint Louis on a faded and old-fashioned coat; the snuff-box between his long blanched fingers was of common horn, and a network of darning obscured the original Mechlin of the lace at his wrists. For the Chambre des Victoires, where he sat, was on the debtors’ side of La Force, itself pre-eminently a debtors’ prison, though already opening to receive political offenders.

A moment after his observation a key turned in the door, and three men came in. Two of them were quite young, the third about thirty-five, and all, after saluting the occupants of the room with some ceremony, fell to conversation with them with the ease and humour of old acquaintances. Indeed it was now some months since the five had been accustomed to take their evening meal in common—for though they always called the Chevalier de Maisonfleur their host, the title was one of courtesy only, belonging more properly to the State, which provided apartment, food, and service, and was willing, in return for a small extra payment, to save its officials the trouble of dishing up separate repasts.

“Mademoiselle, your hands are cold,” said one of the younger men. “In July too. I fear the Chambre des Victoires is chilly even in summer.”

“They were late in lighting the fire, Monsieur,” replied the girl, “and perhaps I am tired to-day.” The ghost of a sigh checked on her white lips.

“I trust our host will not think me a boor,” said his companion, bowing to the old man where he sat with crossed legs in his chair, an air of contentment on his lined and high-bred features. “But I should like to suggest that his domestics are behindhand with the banquet also.”

The Chevalier de Maisonfleur smiled. “You have my sincere apologies, M. Chanzeau. I must really speak sharply to my maître d’hôtel. Ah, here is the rogue.”

Again the key turned, the door was butted violently open, and a shock-headed jailor hurried in with a tray, while some unseen agency closed the door behind him. “Now, no complaints, my little pigeons. I know you are grumbling because poor Jacques is five minutes late. Always meals—always eating—always trays to carry about and dishes to wash up.” He set down the tray with a crash. “There is stew to-night. Are you pampered, hein?” As he proceeded noisily to set spoon and platters on the bare board, the prisoners regarded him and each other with indulgent smiles. They esteemed themselves fortunate in the attendance of the noisy Jacques, the best-hearted jailor in La Force.

“No, we are not grumbling, my dear Jacques,” said the girl in her gentle, tired voice. “You have so much to do, have you not? Shall I set out those spoons for you?” And she went to his assistance.

“Let us all help,” said one of the young men, laughing, and he and his companion, leaving their elders by the fire, crowded to the table, despite the remonstrances of Jacques, who asserted with some truth that they were merely hindering him. Thus it was that the key turned, and the door opened a third time unnoticed, and it was the girl who, first looking up, cried in surprise, “Who is that?” A handsome youth in a violet-blue suit of extreme elegance and the latest cut was standing just inside the door looking at the scene with interest.

“Bless me!” grunted Jacques, coming hastily round the table, “I had forgotten. Citizen Maisonfleur, I have a new guest for you. Didn’t you notice that I brought in six covers. The citizen only arrived this morning.”

“And is very welcome,” observed the Chevalier, getting up from his chair with much dignity. “Sir, we shall be much obliged to you if you will do us the favour of supping with us.”

Louis bowed and came over to him. “Had I known that I was intruding on a private party——” he apologised between jest and earnest. “However, I was not in reality offered an alternative, and that must be my excuse.”

“None, my dear sir, is needed, I assure you,” said the old man, evidently favourably impressed. “You are only too welcome to our little circle. Let me present you to my daughter, Mademoiselle Jeanne-Céleste-Valentine de Maisonfleur.”

Louis, supplying his name, kissed the little cold hand, and was duly made acquainted with MM. Chanzeau and Lagrange, who had abandoned the laying of the table to Jacques. But before he was introduced to the elder man, the latter, wrinkling up a pair of short-sighted eyes, asked abruptly: “Are you the Saint-Ermay who was in the bodyguard, compagnie Villeroy?”

“Yes,” said Louis, puzzled. “Were you there? Pardon me if I have had the pleasure of meeting you and the bad manners to forget it——”

The other gave a short laugh. “On my soul, Vicomte, you must have a short memory. Or else it is over-burdened with such meetings. Have you really forgotten a certain morning behind the Luxembourg two and a half years ago? It is true that I have more reason to remember it than you!”

“Des Essars!” exclaimed Louis. “How could I not know you again!—But it was such a horribly dark morning,” he added, in such a tone that they all laughed in spite of themselves.

“And I have altered, eh?” said Des Essars, with a grim little smile. “Well, I have been in here nearly ever since. As we settled our little difference finally on that occasion I must not say that I am glad to see you.” He held out his hand with a friendly gesture, and Louis took it as frankly.

“Well, gentlemen,” observed M. de Maisonfleur, taking snuff in high good-humour, “this is all very satisfactory and as it should be. And here is our good Jacques with some culinary triumph. M. de Saint-Ermay, I will ask you to give your arm to my daughter. . . .”

When Louis, back in his own cell, reviewed his evening, he found it a dream-like memory, at once ludicrous and pathetic. It was not easy to do the honours of a badly-made stew, eaten in wooden platters with pewter spoons on a deal table without a cloth, but M. de Maisonfleur had accomplished it. It was not easy—and Louis had guessed it—for a girl who was tired and heart-sick to behave as though her shabby dress were new and fashionable, and she the chatelaine entertaining her father's guests, but Mademoiselle de Maisonfleur had done it. He had sat by her side and helped her. Opposite to him, too, was the man whom he had last seen senseless on the frosty grass in the Luxembourg gardens—all for the sake of a hasty word. Now it was as though they had never crossed swords.

It was indeed as like a dream as the rest of the solitary day had been, as this very straw-covered pallet on which he sat was like a dream.

“Devilish more like a nightmare!” exclaimed the dreamer aloud, surveying the couch with disfavour. “Well, perhaps if I really go to sleep I shall wake up;” and slowly divesting himself of his coat and waistcoat he lay down in the straw.

The curious semi-stoical strain which underlay Louis de Chantemerle’s levity had served him well in the last twelve hours, but it had not the potency of a soporific. Having nothing else to do, he had perforce spent a considerable amount of time already in reflection on his position, and had not intended to resume the subject for the present. He had looked his danger in the face. His chances were not good, and he knew it. He was there to be made an example of; the example would probably be made. In that case nothing remained to do but to meet his fate with courage. But as he lay wide-eyed in the gloom, and watched the tiny square of night sky through the barred window there seized him—strangely enough, for the first time—not the realisation of impending death, but the horrible sense that he was caged. It began to be impossible to lie still any longer. He sprang up with an exclamation, combating an insensate impulse to batter at the barred door, to beat with bare hands against the walls. Instead, biting his lips, and for the sake of doing something, he dragged the little table from the middle of the room to the window, and climbed up on it. But the bars were still above his head, and he got down again to stand a moment motionless, his back against the wall, the sweat on his forehead, fighting with all the powers of his nature against the nameless fear that closes round any trapped creature with youth and health in its veins. Then he went back to his pallet, lay down and covered himself up very deliberately with his coat. Sleep did not come for many hours, but the unsuspected strength of will on which he could call at pleasure enabled him at least to seek it. In the end he slept soundly enough.

He did not wake, indeed, till the bolts of his cell door, noisily withdrawn about six o'clock, brought him back from the region of dreams to reality. He stirred, and the rustle of the straw told him instantly where he was.

“Breakfast, ci-devant,” said a gruff voice succinctly, and something was set down on the floor.

“Stop a minute, my friend,” commanded Louis sleepily. “I want some water—for washing—and a razor too.”

The jailor exploded. “Name of a name! What next? Water—I don’t say, if you choose to pay for it—but a razor!”

The Vicomte was by this time sitting up, and studying the hairy visage in the doorway. “True,” he observed reflectively. “Razors don't seem to be much in fashion here.”

“No, nor won’t ever be, my young sprig,” retorted the man. “However, don’t trouble yourself. You won’t be here long enough to grow a beard.”

“I sincerely trust not,” replied the captive, without pausing to enquire the exact meaning of this ambiguous prediction. “Well, bring me some water then—a livre's worth.”

When the man returned Saint-Ermay was standing in the middle of the little room picking bits of straw off his ruffles. His guardian set down a broken jug and a small basin on the table under the window. “Been trying to look out?” he asked, grinning.

“No; trying to hang myself with this,” said Louis coolly, untying his hair and holding up the ribbon. “Ah, thanks for the water. Now, about that razor——”

“Haven’t I told you, miserable aristo, that you can’t have it?” cried the jailor, exasperated.

Saint-Ermay’s money had been returned to him when he was searched on arrival, though he would most willingly have parted with it could it have spared him that distasteful proceeding. He now drew a five-livre piece from his breeches pocket and looked at it. “What do you suppose I should do, then, with a razor, my friend?”

“Why, cut my throat,” retorted the jailor with an oath. But his eyes were fastened on the big silver coin.

“And what advantage,” asked the prisoner, “do you conceive that I should reap from such an action? Try to be sensible about this matter. I propose to give you five livres and the word of a gentleman that I will not lay a finger on your razor. You shall shave me yourself—and then you will be far more likely to cut my throat than I yours, especially as I doubt whether you have ever had much practice with the implement.”

Cupidity struggled for a moment with respect for regulations and came off victorious, with the result that about an hour afterwards Louis surrendered his chin to ministrations not of the most skilful. After the crown-piece had changed hands and the jailor was gathering up his shaving materials, he observed in a significant tone: “You seem mighty free with your money, aristo. Isn't there any other use you could put it to, now?”

“I'm afraid, Barber, that your speech is too dark for me,” returned Saint-Ermay, dabbing at a cut on his chin. “Do you mean that you would like to powder my hair for me?”

“Isn't there anybody outside,” asked the man, sinking his voice, “who would be glad to have a line from you? It's done, sometimes, with the help of a louis or two. . . .”

The Vicomte stood silent, with his handkerchief to his chin, but his heart suddenly beat fast. Was it possible? Gilbert did not even know where he was. It might make all the difference. And Lucienne. . . .

“All very fine,” he said, not wishing to appear too eager. “But supposing I have a fancy to write a letter, how am I to know that you will ever deliver it?”

“Oh, you may trust me for that, ci-devant. I'll deliver it safe enough, and not ask you for the money till I can prove I have done it. See, here is paper and pencil, but be quick.” The eagerness was his, not Saint-Ermay’s, as he dragged out a grimy piece of paper and a stump of pencil. “Write quickly, and give it to me now, for I shan't be able to come in again this morning.”

Louis looked very hard at his dirty, leering face as he took the pencil and paper, shrugged his shoulders, and turned away to the table. The man hastily placed a stool for him.

“Thanks,” said the Vicomte rather coldly, “but you need not supervise my composition. You can read it afterwards if you have a mind to.” And as his Mercury retired grumbling to the door he began to write to Gilbert—in English.

At the end of a line and a half he stopped dead. It was not the difficulties of a foreign tongue which gave him pause, it was the sudden unpleasant suspicion that he was walking into a trap, destined not, indeed, for his own undoing, but for that of the recipient of his missive, if he sent one. The demeanour of his would-be messenger, even now fidgeting with impatience, his eagerness to carry a letter, his convenient production of the means of communication, might indeed be due to cupidity, but were capable of a darker explanation. Another voice told him that his fear was born of imagination, and that when the Fates had put such a chance in his way he was a fool not to snatch at it. You are throwing away your life, perhaps, for a scruple, said Reason. Gilbert was not suspect. But Gilbert’s name, by accident or design, had figured with his own in the list of conspirators. Of what avail, too, to have refrained, in the face of strong desire, from leaving him a verbal message yesterday morning if he meant to compromise him now far more deeply by writing to him?—No, he dared not do it. He ran his pencil through the words, crushed the paper together in his hand, and rose.

“I have changed my mind, M. Figaro,” he said carelessly. “There will be no letter, after all. I have forgotten my correspondent’s address.”

The man looked for a second as if he were about to break out into a string of curses. Then, mastering himself, he picked up the shaving materials from the floor, observing acidly: “As the citizen pleases. I think he will be sorry before long that he refused an honest man’s offer of help.”

“The price was too high,” said Louis enigmatically.

“Nevertheless you will regret it, ci-devant,” repeated the other in a menacing tone. Watching the door close on him, Louis thought it very probable.

The morning dragged by. Last night's horror had not wholly relaxed its grip, but the presence of daylight had the effect of company, and the Vicomte de Saint-Errnay would rather have died a thousand times than allow any human eye to witness his private emotions. He walked up and down reflecting, till he tired himself by the constant turning that the narrow limits of his cell required. He wondered what Gilbert was doing—what he had done when he found out. And D’Aubeville, De Périgny, and the rest—what of them? How many of them had been taken? There might be some in La Force. He had not asked because he was sure that he would not be told the truth. At any rate, their scheme was shattered for ever.

And something else was ended too. Lucienne should be starting for England to-morrow. Would she go now? Why not? There was all the more reason for her departure. He should never see her again . . . and even in his hour of renunciation, the highest of his life, he had never contemplated exactly that. The jailor was right. He wished that he had sent a message—not to Gilbert, but to her. It might have been in her hands by now. He smoothed out the crumpled ball of paper, then threw it away with a gesture half anger, half regret. Of what use—of what use! With Lucienne he had had his chance—and had chosen not to take it. It looked now inconceivable folly; for when he had turned his back on what honour forbade him to take he had known—or at least he had recognised afterwards—that there were other things still left for him in life. But since he was to end like this the sacrifice seemed barren beyond the power of speech. He was to die without having known the best that life could give him. It would have been some comfort to remember at the last that he had had his heart’s desire. It was the very poorest kind of consolation to feel that he might have known it, and had not. It seemed to the young man that he could better have borne to see Gilbert and Lucienne together with his own living eyes (as indeed he had schooled himself to realise that he must see them) than that their union should date from an epoch when he, blown somewhere about the winds of the world, could no longer behold it. He had an extreme reluctance to die, in any case; but this thought stung him to the most passionate revolt. It raged in him for a little while, and then the very vehemence with which he dashed himself in thought against the implacable barrier of Death restored him to a former mood. He had to die like a gentleman. It was perhaps, after all, good that in this matter he had lived like one too. He had no other creed.

The Chevalier de Maisonfleur and his daughter were alone when Saint-Ermay’s turnkey threw open the door of the Chambre des Victoires. The old man laid aside his book, the girl her knitting, with alacrity at his entrance.

“A very pleasant surprise, Monsieur le Vicomte,” exclaimed the former as he welcomed him. “It is not yet nine o’clock. We are unduly favoured.”

“It is I who am favoured,” returned Louis. “I had no conception of how long a solitary morning and afternoon could be.”

A shadow swept over the Chevalier’s face. “So, too, are four years, with only an old man for company,” he said, sighing. His daughter’s cheek, half concealed by a pale curl as she bent hastily to pick up her ball of wool, flushed scarlet for a moment. Louis looked away in an embarrassed pity; there was nothing to say, and he was glad when M. de Maisonfleur, resuming his usual cheerful, courteous self, set out in pursuit of other topics. Five minutes later M. des Essars came in.

“Have you heard,” said the newcomer, shaking hands with Louis, “that—so my jailor tells me—Vergniaud made a great speech yesterday morning, full of denunciations, and especially of the so-called chevaliers du poignard?”

“I had not,” said his late adversary. “If it be true, however, it no doubt accounts for my having the pleasure of your renewed acquaintance.”

“I feared it might,” returned the other gravely. “I hoped, however, that you might be here for something less—less——”

“Less damning than loyalty,” finished Louis gaily. “Well, you know, Des Essars, if you have got to be in prison, it doesn’t make much odds what you are there for.” Privately he thought, however, that it did. “Do you know if there were many arrests?”

“About thirty, the jailor said. He knew no names.”

Louis bit his lip. “Thirty! Nearly all of us! Damned fools we were—I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle——”

“Surely, Monsieur,” broke in the Chevalier with a certain lofty sympathy, “you do not consider yourselves fools for taking the side that every gentleman would take—if he were free?”

“No, not for that,” returned the young man, “but for trusting the Gironde, who tricked us into believing their protestations of friendship, and then betrayed us.”

Anger and disillusionment lent a new tone to his voice, for he knew now that he was still cherishing hopes of the schemes which for days he had known to be doomed. Suddenly it occurred to him that Des Essars, from the way in which he was looking at him, knew something more. Apologising to the father and daughter, he drew him over to the other side of the room.

“Tell me the rest,” he said peremptorily. “You know something else, I can see.”

“My dear Vicomte, there is nothing to tell. Besides, I know nothing—it is all hearsay.”

“Let me have the hearsay, then. Your jailor had heard something more. You know quite well what I mean.”

Des Essars looked him in the eyes, and turned away his own. “He said that they were voting in the Assembly for a long rope and a short shrift,” he replied unwillingly. “But for God's sake remember——”

Louis stopped him. “It is exactly what I wanted to know, and what I expected to hear. I am infinitely obliged to you, and I regret the Luxembourg more than ever.” He shook hands, smiling. “Shall we go back to Mademoiselle?”

The girl and her father had been watching the little colloquy with something like alarm, and the knitting had rolled to the ground again. Louis stooped and picked it up.

“M. des Essars has been relieving my mind about small matter,” he said lightly, drawing up a chair. “Mademoiselle, I wish you would teach me to knit. I am sure it is soothing to the temper.”

“And have you a bad one, Monsieur?” asked Jeanne de Maisonfleur. “I should not have suspected it.”

“You have pardoned me, then, my little exhibition of it a moment ago. You are very generous, Mademoiselle. May I not do something to show my gratitude—hold this for you, for instance?” He took up an unwound skein of wool.

The girl paid no heed to his request. “There is an anger which does not claim forgiveness, but—admiration,” she said in a low voice. “If you have lost, Monsieur, you have at least fought for the cause which we, here, cannot aid, but for which we pray night and morning. If my poor father . . . if I had a brother . . .” She broke off there and threw a look at her father and Des Essars, but they were deep in converse on the other side of the hearth. “Monsieur, it is very bitter to lose before one has fought, and to suffer, but not for the cause for which one would so gladly bear anything!”

“Mademoiselle, I had guessed that,” said the Vicomte, dropping his voice also. “But since you give your prayers——”

“Ah, do you believe in prayers!” she retorted—and to tell the truth her interlocutor did not—“No! I think Heaven is deaf—to us, at least. Have you not had some one to pray for you and for France, and yet you are here . . . And France . . . where is she going? And tell me,” she went on, without giving him time to reply, “what was M. des Essars saying to you just now?”

Louis looked down at the long skein of coarse wool still lying across his palm. “M. des Essars and I were making up our old quarrel,” he said at length. “How does one undo the end of this thing, Mademoiselle?—for I insist on holding it for you.”

The girl searched his face with her tragic eyes. “You will not tell me. . . . Then I know!”

Louis was still holding out the skein, smiling. “I shall have time for this,” he said gently.

She took it mechanically, her eyes still fixed on his; then, without a word, steadied perhaps by his own self-command, she began to unfasten the end.

“You are very kind, M. de Saint-Ermay,” came the Chevalier’s voice. “Are you sure that my daughter is not trespassing unwarrantably on your good nature?”

“It was M. de Saint-Ermay who insisted, mon père,” replied Mademoiselle de Maisonfleur, and a desolate little smile twitched her mouth for an instant.

“The fact is that I really know how to hold it properly,” said Louis, half to the girl and half to the others, as he held out his hands and she put the skein in position. “I advise you to take a lesson from me, Des Essars.”

“Ah, but could you do it the other way round?” asked Des Essars. “Could you make the ball if Mademoiselle held the skein?”

Whether Louis would have taken up this challenge was to remain unknown, for at that instant the turning of a key in the lock reminded them all that their circle was still incomplete.

“Here are our missing guests,” said the Chevalier, tapping his snuff-box, “or else, indeed, Jacques with the supper.”

It was neither. The door swung open to reveal an unfamiliar figure—an official from the guichet of the prison, with a large bunch of keys in one hand and a paper in the other. A dead silence fell on the room.

“Citizen Chantemerle!” said the man.

Louis looked up for a moment, but he did not stir, and went on placidly holding the skein, though the hands that had held the ball were twisted together in their owner’s lap.

The guichetier referred to his paper. “Louis-Adrien Chantemerle, ci-devant Vicomte de Saint-Ermay. You, there, is not that your cursed name?”

“A portion of it,” responded Louis lazily. “Your information appears fragmentary. However, I do recognise myself.” He rose from the chair. “Mademoiselle, to our next meeting. I regret infinitely that the skein is not finished after all.” He slipped the wool off his hands and slid it gently into her lap, and then catching her shaking fingers, he kissed them with his most courtly air. “Good-bye, Monsieur le Chevalier. Good-bye, Des Essars.”

“Good-bye, Vicomte,” said the old man, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I am sorry—I am very sorry.” And he added, in a voice not free from emotion: “Though our acquaintance has been so short, we shall greatly miss you.”

Louis loosed Des Essars’ hand and bowed to him. “I wish no more flattering epitaph,” he said with his charming smile. “Adieu.”

He followed the jailor out of the room, and the girl broke into hysterical sobbing.

CHAPTER XIV
CIRCE AND ULYSSES

No woman like Madame d’Espaze, with her notoriety, her lovers, her political intriguery, her secret power (how great, a matter for speculation), had ever crossed Gilbert’s path in life. He had time this morning, as he threaded the streets, to make some picture of her to himself. Two types of beauty presented themselves to his imagination; the one dark, voluptuous, imperious, a sort of empress of vice, the other of that fair and child-like mould which rules by cajolery. At the door of the Comtesse’s salon he was still speculating which class would claim her, for his success might depend upon it.

But she belonged to neither. The Marquis beheld, on a small sofa covered with yellow damask, a woman—a girl almost—wearing a simple virginal gown of light Indian muslin, made after the new mode. She rose as Château-Foix was announced, and he was struck with her grace, her height, and the grave, nunlike style of her beauty. Here were no meretricious enhancements; she was not painted, and her beautiful brown hair, gathered simply into a knot, was innocent of powder or of any sort of adornment. The trailing folds of white fell from breast to foot. Gilbert was taken aback, he scarcely knew why. The Comtesse threw him a look of calm enquiry out of her long placid eyes, ere she responded to his bow.

“You have come to see me on business, Monsieur, I understand,” she said, as she rose from her curtsy. “I regret that I could not receive you last night. Be seated, I pray.”

Gilbert bowed again slightly, but remained standing. “I have come, Madame,” he said, with great directness, “to know if you can give me any news of my unfortunate cousin, the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay.”

Madame d’Espaze’s delicate eyebrows went up. “Mon Dieu! Monsieur le Marquis, you take away my breath,” she said. “Is M. de Saint-Ermay lost, then?”

“He has been arrested,” replied Château-Foix shortly. Little versed as he was in the ways of women, he saw that she was going to play with him, and the prospect was not alluring.

“Ah, he has been arrested, the poor Saint-Ermay?” queried the Comtesse. “I am desolated, but what would you have? Politics is a dangerous game.” She breathed out a light little sigh, and sank down on the sofa. “You should have kept him out of it, Monsieur le Marquis.”

To this remark, delivered with an indescribable airy malice, Gilbert made no answer for the moment. But he took the chair which his hostess had previously indicated to him, and, once seated, he observed coldly: “You will pardon me for saying, Madame, that this is not a case for levity.”

“But, Monsieur,” retorted the lady, “I am all seriousness. Though I do not quite see,” she added, pursing her lips, “why it should be demanded of me.”

“You did not know then, Madame, that M. de Saint-Ermay was in prison?” asked Gilbert, looking at her steadily.

Madame d’Espaze shrugged her shoulders. “How should I?”

“Then I must tell you about it,” replied Château-Foix. “I found, a short time ago, that my cousin was becoming entangled in a scheme which did not commend itself to me—a scheme which I need not particularise to you, Madame, and one in which, to be frank, I suspected a trap. I therefore came to Paris; I endeavoured to dissuade him from further compromising himself, and especially from continuing his visits to the chief meeting-place of the two parties—your house. I failed; and the Vicomte attended your salon last Saturday night, as he had intended. This morning he was arrested, and I am ignorant even of the place of his imprisonment.”

Madame d’Espaze had listened quite gravely to this recital, and now said, without any particular expression in her lazy voice: “I do not know, Monsieur le Marquis, why you are telling me all this.”

“You do not, then,” retorted her guest, “see any connection between the constant meetings of Vergniaud and his followers with these young men at your house, his denunciation of them yesterday in the Manège, and their almost simultaneous arrest? I do.”

The attack was so direct, and in all probability so unexpected, that the Comtesse for the first time showed signs of discomposure. She got up and moved away, her white robe trailing softly on the shining floor. Half over her shoulder she said: “You talk very strangely, M. de Château-Foix.”

“Yet I think that what I say is just,” replied Gilbert, on his feet.

“I wonder——” said the Comtesse. Then she turned and faced him. “But even if it were, it is not a way in which I should allow many people to speak to me in my house.”

“But not many people come on my mission.”

“Mon Dieu, no, fortunately!” exclaimed Madame d’Espaze with vivacity. “Fortunately, people do not often come to me and expect me to make myself responsible for every young hothead who gets himself into trouble with the authorities. Fortunately, that chair has not often served as a pulpit nor this sofa as a bench for the congregation. . . . Never mind, Monsieur le Marquis, but resume your sermon!”

“I was not aware, Madame, that I was preaching,” said Château-Foix a trifle stiffly. “It was not my intention. I come rather as a suppliant.”

“With what a menacing tone!” exclaimed the Comtesse, with a little laugh and a shrug of her beautiful shoulders. She trailed slowly back to the sofa and sank on the cushions. “And for what, pray, are you supplicating?”

“For my cousin’s release,” said the Marquis.

Half leaning back among the yellow cushions the Comtesse d’Espaze surveyed him indolently as he stood before her, very straight, his hand on the back of his chair. “Why not ask for the moon, Monsieur le Marquis?” she said at last.

“I do not admit the suitability of the metaphor,” retorted Gilbert, controlling himself with difficulty. “I am asking for the life of a friend of your own, Madame. Surely my request is not a very strange one.”

“And what makes you think that M. de Saint-Ermay is a friend of mine?” she asked at that. “You abound in strange suppositions, Monsieur.”

“Because I know my cousin rather well, Madame,” answered the Marquis. “And since I have seen you——” he concluded, bowing.

“Merci, Monsieur!” cried the lady. “And because, as I am to understand, Monsieur le Vicomte has done me the honour to admire me, I am to feel that his blood is on my head?”

“If not responsibility, I should expect you to feel interest,” retorted Gilbert sternly. “But if you have no concern for the boy, I am only wasting your time and my own.” He made a movement as if to take his leave.

Madame d’Espaze put out her hand. “Stay a moment, M. de Château-Foix. I am not as insensible as you think to the fate of my friends. But you must see that I cannot afford to sacrifice my party to my personal friendships. You will say that politics is not a game for a woman—I am sure that is one of your ideas—but since I have taken it up I must play it. And these people are not friends; they only come here to pay me compliments, and I have had my fill of those for more years than I should care to acknowledge to you. Those are not the stakes for which I play now. . . . I wonder why I am saying these things to you. . . . You have come to the wrong person; it is nothing to me—not the snap of a finger—if all these young fools pay the penalty of their folly.” She was on her feet by now, walking rapidly about. “You have come to the wrong person,” she reiterated.

“Madame, I do not think I have,” said Gilbert quietly.

Suddenly she turned on him. “You credit me, I suppose, with being Louis’ mistress?”

“That is not a matter which concerns or interests me, Madame. I want my cousin’s life, not an account of the way in which he spends it.”

The Comtesse stopped in her restless walk as if struck by a sudden idea. “Then you do not know—you do not consider yourself his mentor?”

“Most certainly not.”

She looked at him with an interest which, undisguised as it was, held something more concealed behind it.

“Have you seen much of him lately?—No, I know that you have not. Do you know that he fought the Comte de Bercy the morning after you came to Paris?”

“Yes,” said Gilbert, wondering whither this was tending, “I do know it.”

“But do you know why?”

“No.”

“You are a singular person, M. de Château-Foix,” said his hostess slowly. “If you will take my advice—but of course you will not—do not try to find out!” She turned away again and said, after a moment’s pause: “And now, if I cannot help you, what will you do?”

“Ah, no, Madame,” returned Gilbert, shaking his head with the glimmer of a smile. “If you will not help me, I dare not reveal to you such poor resources as I may have, independent of your aid.”

“In other words, I must be ally or enemy? You have no liking for half-measures, I see, Monsieur le Marquis. . . . Well, no more have I. And I am convinced, from what I have already seen, that I prefer you when you smile to when you frown at me. So . . . let us be allies. Will that satisfy you?”

“Madame——” began Gilbert, scarcely daring to believe her words, accompanied by that brilliant and half-mocking smile.

Madame d’Espaze held up both her slim hands. “No thanks, Monsieur, I beg. But instead of them, tell me, since you are so clear-sighted, how I am to set about this business of Monsieur le Vicomte?”

And under her malicious gaze Château-Foix had the certain conviction that she meant to see how he would avoid saying in so many words: “You have but to ask your lover for his release.” He began a careful phrase full of generalities about influence, but ere he had finished it she seemed to have lost interest in the reply to her question, and he stopped and looked at her, as she stood in the middle of the white and gold room with her head bent and a hand to her cheek. It seemed to him quite a long time that she stood thus, till she said reflectively: “Yes, I think I can do it. It will not be easy, however. You shall have an order of release to-day if I can possibly procure it. Do I know where you are staying?”

The Marquis told her.

“There is one condition—one thing you must promise me—both for Louis’ sake and . . . that of others. Once he is out of prison he must leave Paris immediately.”

It was the least that could be expected, and a condition that did not displease Gilbert at all—or would not have done so two days ago. “I promise it on my honour,” he said. “What can I do—what can I possibly do—to show my gratitude?”

The Comtesse spread out her hands. “You can keep a better eye on your scapegrace of a cousin,” she said lightly. “I make him over to you. . . . Next time, too, that you are in Paris, my friend, come and see me on your own account. You have just seen how amenable I am to good influence.” She floated nearer to him, and gave him her hand, bare of rings and incredibly small and white.

Gilbert raised it to his lips. “I shall be only too happy, Comtesse. There is no means by which I can thank you sufficiently.”

“You have only yourself to thank, M. de Château-Foix, for I assure you that I have not that good heart to which I have been afraid you would refer. Yet if it is any consolation to you, Marquis, reflect that, in this changing world, I may some day be needing help from you. . . . But that is not why I am your ally now.” She smiled at him charmingly.

CHAPTER XV
HAPPY REUNION OF TWO KINSMEN