St. Martin's Summer Part 30

"Who is there?" she inquired from within.

"It is I--Marius. Open, I have something I must say to you."

"Will it not keep till morning?"

"I shall be gone by then," he answered impatiently, "and much depends upon my seeing you ere I go. So open. Come!"

There followed a pause, and Garnache in the outer room set his teeth and prayed she might not anger Marius. He must be handled skillfully, lest their flight should be frustrated at the last moment. He prayed, too, that there might be no need for his intervention. That would indeed be the end of all--a s.h.i.+pwreck within sight of harbour. He promised himself that he would not lightly intervene. For the rest this news of Marius's intended departure filled him with a desire to know something of the journey on which he was bound:

Slowly mademoiselle's door opened. White and timid she appeared.

"What do you want, Marius?"

"Now and always and above all things the sight of you, Valerie," said he, and the flushed cheek, the glittering eye, and wine-laden breath were as plain to her as they had been to Garnache, and they filled her with a deeper terror. Nevertheless she came forth at his bidding.

"I see that you were not yet abed," said he. "It is as well. We must have a talk." He set a chair for her and begged her to be seated; then he perched himself on the table, his hands gripping the edges of it on either side of him, and he turned his eyes upon her.

"Valerie," he said slowly, "the Marquis de Condillac, my brother, is at La Rochette."

"He is coming home!" she cried, clasping her hands and feigning surprise in word and glance.

Marius shook his head and smiled grimly.

"No," said he. "He is not coming home. That is--not unless you wish it."

"Not unless I wish it? But naturally I wish it!"

"Then, Valerie, if you would have what you wish, so must I. If Florimond is ever to come to Condillac again, you must be my wife."

He leaned towards her now, supported by his elbow, so that his face was close to hers, a deeper flush upon it, a brighter glitter in his black eyes, his vinous breath enveloping and suffocating her. She shrank back, her hands locking themselves one in the other till the knuckles showed white.

"What--what is it you mean?" she faltered.

"No more than I have said; no less. If you love him well enough to sacrifice yourself," and his lips curled sardonically at the word, "then marry me and save him from his doom."

"What doom?" Her voice came mechanically, her lips seeming scarce to move.

He swung down from the table and stood before her.

"I will tell you," he said, in a voice very full of promise. "I love you, Valerie, above all else on earth or, I think, in heaven; and I'll not yield you to him. Say 'No' to me now, and at daybreak I start for La Rochette to win you from him at point of sword."

Despite her fears she could not repress a little smile of scorn.

"Is that all?" said she. "Why, if you are so rash, it is yourself, a.s.suredly, will be slain."

He smiled tranquilly at that reflection upon his courage and his skill.

"So might it befall if I went alone," said he. She understood. Her eyes dilated with horror, with loathing of him. The angry words that sprang to her lips were not to be denied.

"You cur, you cowardly a.s.sa.s.sin!" she blazed at him. "I might have guessed that in some such cutthroat manner would your vaunt of winning me at the sword-point be accomplished."

She watched the colour fade from his cheeks, and the ugly, livid hue that spread in its room to his very lips. Yet it did not daunt her. She was on her feet, confronting him ere he had time to speak again. Her eyes flashed, and her arm pointed quivering to the door.

"Go!" she bade him, her voice harsh for once. "Out of my sight! Go! Do your worst, so that you leave me. I'll hold no traffic with you."

"Will you not?" said he, through setting teeth, and suddenly he caught the wrist of that outstretched arm. But she saw nothing of immediate danger. The only danger that she knew was the danger that threatened Florimond, and little did that matter since at midnight she was to leave Condillac to reach La Rochette in time to warn her betrothed. The knowledge gave her confidence and an added courage.

"You have offered me your bargain," she told him. "You have named your price and you have heard my refusal. Now go."

"Not yet awhile," said he, in a voice so odiously sweet that Garnache caught his breath.

He drew her towards him. Despite her wild struggles he held her fast against his breast. Do what she would, he rained his hot kisses on her face and hair, till at last, freeing a hand, she smote him with all her might across the face.

He let her go then. He fell back with an oath, a patch of fingermarks showing red on his white countenance.

"That blow has killed Florimond de Condillac," he told her viciously.

"He dies at noon to-morrow. Ponder it, my pretty."

"I care not what you do so that you leave me," she answered defiantly, restraining by a brave effort the tears of angry distress that welled up from her stricken heart. And no less stricken, no less angry was Garnache where he listened. It was by an effort that he had restrained himself from bursting in upon them when Marius had seized her. The reflection that were he to do so all would irretrievably be ruined alone had stayed him.

Marius eyed the girl a moment, his face distorted by the rage that was in him.

"By G.o.d!" he swore, "if I cannot have your love, I'll give you cause enough to hate me."

"Already have you done that most thoroughly," said she. And Garnache cursed this pertness of hers which was serving to dare him on.

The next moment there broke from her a startled cry. Marius had seized her again and was crus.h.i.+ng her frail body in his arms.

"I shall kiss your lips before I go, ma mie," said he, his voice thick now with a pa.s.sion that was not all of anger. And then, while he still struggled to have his way with her, a pair of arms took him about the waist like hoops of steel.

In his surprise he let her free, and in that moment he was swung back and round and cast a good six paces down the room.

He came to a standstill by the table, at which he clutched to save himself from falling, and turned bewildered, furious eyes upon "Battista," by whom he now dimly realized that he had been a.s.sailed.

Garnache's senses had all left him in that moment when Valerie had cried out. He cast discretion to the winds; reason went out of him, and only blind anger remained to drive him into immediate action. And as suddenly as that flood of rage had leaped, as suddenly did it ebb now that he found himself face to face with the outraged Condillac and began to understand the magnitude of the folly he had committed.

Everything was lost now, utterly and irretrievably--lost as a dozen other fine emprises had been by his sudden and ungoverned frenzy. G.o.d!

What a fool he was! What a cursed, drivelling fool! What, after all, was a kiss or two, compared with all the evil that might now result from his interference? Haply Marius would have taken them and departed, and at midnight they would have been free to go from Condillac.

The future would not have been lacking in opportunities to seek out and kill Marius for that insult.

Why could he not have left the matter to the future? But now, with Florimond to be murdered on the morrow at La Rochette, himself likely to be murdered within the hour at Condillac, Valerie was at their mercy utterly.

Wildly and vainly did he strive even then to cover up the foolish thing that he had done. He bowed apologetically to Marius; he waved his hands and filled the air with Italian phrases, frenziedly uttered, as if by the very vigour of them he sought to drive explanation into his master's brain. Marius watched and listened, but his rage nowise abated; it grew, instead, as if that farrago of a language he did not understand were but an added insult. An oath was all he uttered. Then he swung round and caught Garnache's sword from the chair beside him, where it still rested, and Garnache in that moment cursed the oversight. Whipping the long, keen blade from its sheath, Marius bore down upon the rash meddler.

"Par Dieu!" he swore between his teeth. "We'll see the colour of your dirty blood, you that lay hands upon a gentleman."

But before he could send home the weapon, before Garnache could move to defend himself, Valerie had slipped between them. Marius looked into her white, determined face, and was smitten with surprise. What was this hind to her that she should interfere at the risk of taking the sword herself?