St. Martin's Summer Part 18

CHAPTER X. THE RECRUIT

In the great hall of the Chateau de Condillac sat the Dowager, her son, and the Lord Seneschal, in conference.

It was early in the afternoon of the last Thursday in October, exactly a week since Monsieur de Garnache all but broken-hearted at the failure of his mission--had departed from Gren.o.ble. They had dined, and the table was still strewn with vessels and the fragments of their meal, for the cloth had not yet been raised. But the three of them had left the board--the Seneschal with all that reluctance with which he was wont to part company with the table, no matter how perturbed in spirit he might to--and they had come to group themselves about the great open fireplace.

A shaft of pale October suns.h.i.+ne entering through the gules of an escutcheon on the mullioned windows struck a scarlet light into silver aid gla.s.s upon the forsaken board.

Madame was speaking. She was repeating words that she had uttered at least twenty times a day during the past week.

"It was a madness to let that fellow go. Had we but put him and his servant out of the way, we should be able now to sleep tranquil in our beds. I know their ways at Court. They might have marvelled a little at first that he should tarry so long upon his errand, that he should send them no word of its progress; but presently, seeing him no more, he would little by little have been forgotten, and with him the affair in which the Queen has been so cursedly ready to meddle.

"As it is, the fellow will go back hot with the outrage put upon him; there will be some fine talk of it in Paris; it will be spoken of as treason, as defiance of the King's Majesty, as rebellion. The Parliament may be moved to make outlaws of us, and the end of it all--who shall foresee?"

"It is a long distance from Condillac to Paris, madame," said her son, with a shrug.

"And you will find them none so ready to send soldiers all this way, Marquise," the Seneschal comforted her.

"Bah! You make too sure of your security. You make too sure of what they will do, what leave undone. Time will show, my friends; and, mor-dieu! I am much at fault if you come not both to echo my regret that we did not dispose of Monsieur de Garnache and his lackey when we had them in our power."

Her eye fell with sinister promise upon Tressan, who s.h.i.+vered slightly and spread his hands to the blaze, as though his s.h.i.+ver had been of cold. But Marius did not so readily grow afraid.

"Madame," he said, "at the worst we can shut our gates and fling defiance at them. We are well-manned, and Fortunio is seeking fresh recruits."

"Seeking them, yes," she sneered. "For a week has the fellow been spending money like water, addling the brains of half Gren.o.ble with the best wine at the Auberge de France, yet not a single recruit has come in, so far."

Marius laughed. "Your pessimism leads you into rash conclusions," he cried. "You are wrong. One recruit has come in."

"One!" she echoed. "A thousand devils! A brave number that! A fine return for the river of wine with which we have washed the stomachs of Gren.o.ble."

"Still, it is a beginning," ventured the Seneschal.

"Aye, and, no doubt, an ending," she flashed back at him. "And what manner of fool may this one be, whose fortunes were so desperate that he could throw them in with ours?"

"He is an Italian--a Piedmontese who has tramped across Savoy and was on his way to Paris to make his fortune, when Fortunio caught him and made it clear to him that his fortune was made for him at Condillac. He is a l.u.s.ty, stalwart fellow, speaking no word of French, who was drawn to Fortunio by discovering in him a fellow-countryman."

Mockery flashed from the Dowager's beautiful eyes.

"In that you have the reason of his enrolling himself. He knew no word of French, poor devil, so could not learn how rash his venture was.

Could we find more such men as this one it might be well. But where shall we find them? Pis.h.!.+ my dear Marius, matters are little mended, nor ever will be, for the mistake we made in allowing Garnache to go his ways."

"Madame;" again ventured Tressan, "I think that you want for hopefulness."

"At least, I do not want for courage, Monsieur le Comte," she answered him; "and I promise you that while I live--to handle a sword if need be--no Paris men shall set foot in Condillac."

"Aye," grumbled Marius, "you can contemplate that, and it is all you do contemplate. You will not see, madame that our position is far from desperate; that, after all, there may be no need to resist the King. It is three months since we had news of Florimond. Much may happen in three months when a man is warring. It may well be that he is dead."

"I wish I knew he was--and d.a.m.ned," she snapped, with a tightening of her scarlet lips.

"Yes," agreed Marius, with a sigh, "that were an end to all our troubles."

"I'm none so sure. There is still mademoiselle, with her new-formed friends in Paris--may a pestilence blight them all! There are still the lands of La Vauvraye to lose. The only true end to our troubles as they stand at present lies in your marrying this headstrong baggage."

"That the step should be rendered impossible, you can but blame yourself," Marius reminded her.

"How so?" she cried, turning sharply upon him.

"Had you kept friends with the Church, had you paid t.i.thes and saved us from this cursed Interdict, we should have no difficulty in getting hither a priest, and settling the matter out of hand, be Valerie willing or not."

She looked at him, scorn kindling in her glance. Then she swung round to appeal to Tressan.

"You hear him, Count," said she. "There is a lover for you! He would wed his mistress whether she love him or not--and he has sworn to me that he loves the girl."

"How else should the thing be done since she opposes it?" asked Marius, sulkily.

"How else? Do you ask me how else? G.o.d! Were I a man, and had I your shape and face, there is no woman in the world should withstand me if I set my heart on her. It is address you lack. You are clumsy as a lout where a woman is concerned. Were I in your place, I had taken her by storm three months ago, when first she came to us. I had carried her out of Condillac, out of France, over the border into Savoy, where there are no Interdicts to plague you, and there I would have married her."

Marius frowned darkly, but before he could speak, Tressan was insinuating a compliment to the Marquise.

"True, Marius," he said, with pursed lips. "Nature has been very good to you in that she has made you the very counterpart of your lady mother.

You are as comely a gentleman as is to be found in France--or out of it."

"Pis.h.!.+" snapped Marius, too angered by the reflection cast upon his address, to be flattered by their praises of his beauty. "It is an easy thing to talk; an easy thing to set up arguments when we consider but the half of a question. You forget, madame, that Valerie is betrothed to Florimond and that she clings faithfully to her betrothal."

"Vertudieu!" swore the Marquise, "and what is this betrothal, what this faithfulness? She has not seen her betrothed for three years. She was a child at the time of their fiancailles. Think you her faithfulness to him is the constancy of a woman to her lover? Go your ways, you foolish boy. It is but the constancy to a word, to the wishes of her father.

Think you constancy that has no other base than that would stand between her and any man who--as you might do, had you the address--could make her love him?"

"I do say so," answered Marius firmly.

She smiled the pitying smile of one equipped with superior knowledge when confronted with an obstinate, uninformed mind.

"There is a droll arrogance about you, Marius," she told him, quietly.

"You, a fledgling, would teach me, a woman, the ways of a woman's heart!

It is a thing you may live to regret."

"As how?" he asked.

"Once already has mademoiselle contrived to corrupt one of our men, and send him to Paris with a letter. Out of that has sprung our present trouble. Another time she may do better. When she shall have bribed another to a.s.sist her to escape; when she, herself, shall have made off to the shelter of the Queen-mother, perhaps you will regret that my counsel should have fallen upon barren ground."

"It is to prevent any such attempt that we have placed her under guard,"

said he. "You are forgetting that."

"Forgetting it? Not I. But what a.s.surance have you that she will not bribe her guard?"

Marius laughed, rose, and pushed back his chair.