The Chevalier d'Auriac Part 6

'Paris! You are surely not--' and she stopped.

'Why not, madame?'

'Oh! I don't know,' and hastily, 'one sometimes says things that don't exactly convey one's meaning. But I can imagine why you go to Paris--you are tired of Bidache, and pine for the great city.'

'It is not that; but,' and I pointed to the rolling woods and wide lands that spread before us, 'I have no responsibilities like these--and Auriac, which stands by the sea, takes care of itself--besides, I have my way to make as yet.'

'You have friends?'

'One at any rate, and that was restored to me by you,' and I glanced to the hilt of my sword.

'Man does not want a better; but you have another--here at Bidache, and I shall be in Paris soon, too, and--this place is dull. It kills me.'

'And yet you have not been here for three years--madame, are all the masques at the Louvre so attractive that you can desert your home, where your name is honoured as that of the King, for the follies of the court?'

I spoke with some bitterness, for I was sore at what I had heard at dinner, and she glanced up at me in a slight surprise. Then her lips parted in a half smile. 'Chevalier, will you answer me a question or so?'

'Why not?'

'You like gaiety, cheerfulness, light, do you not?'

'a.s.suredly.'

'You sometimes amuse yourself by gaming, do you not--and losing more than you can afford?'

I bowed in simple wonder.

'That friend of yours at your side has not been drawn only in battle, has it?'

De Gonnor's white face rose up before me, and I felt my forehead burn.

I could make no answer. Madame looked at me for a moment, and then dropped a stately little courtesy. 'Monsieur, you are very good to advise me, and I take your reproof. But surely what is sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose. Is not the Chevalier d'Auriac a little hasty? How is it that he is not at home at Auriac, instead of hastening to Paris as fast as he can--to the masques at the Louvre, and the salons of Zamet?'

'It is different,' I stammered.

'Ah, yes, it is different,' with a superb scorn; 'I saw you pull a half league of face as I talked at dinner. Monsieur can go here.

Monsieur can go there. He may dance at a revel from curfew till c.o.c.kcrow, he may stake his estates on a throw of the dice, he may run his friend through for a word spoken in jest--it is all _comme il faut_. But, Madame--she must sit at home with her distaff, her only relaxation a _preche_, her amus.e.m.e.nt and joy to await Monsieur's return--is not that your idea, Chevalier?' She was laughing, but it was with a red spot on each cheek.

'Madame,' I replied, 'when I was but fifteen I joined the Cardinal de Joyeuse, and from that time to now my life has been pa.s.sed in the field; I am therefore but a soldier, rough of speech, unused to argument, apt to say what is in my mind bluntly. I was wrong to make the remark I did, and ask your pardon; but, madame, brush away the idea that in this case the sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose--I use your own words--think what it would be if all womankind acted on what you have preached--think what would happen if the illusions that surround you, and which are now your strength, are dispelled. The worst of men have some memory of a home made happy by a woman, sister, mother, or wife, and the return to which was like a glimpse into heaven--the thought of which often made them better men--do not destroy this. And, madame, there is yet another thing--man is a fighting animal, and the final issues of an affair come to the sword--where would a struggle between this hand and mine end?--'in my eagerness I took her small white fingers in mine as I spoke, and shut them within my palm--'Madame,' I continued, 'rest a.s.sured that the glory and strength of a woman is in her weakness, and when she puts aside that armour she is lost. Think not that you have no mission--it is at a mother's knee that empires have been lost and won, that generations have, and will be, cursed or blessed.'

I stood over her as I spoke; I was a tall man then and strong, and whether it was my speech or what I know not, but I felt the hand I held tremble in mine, and her eyes were turned from me.

'Let me say good-bye now,' I continued, 'and thank you again for what you have done.'

She shook her head in deprecation.

'Very well, then, I will not recall it to you; but I can never forget--life is sweet of savour, and you gave it back to me. We will meet again in Paris--till then good-bye.'

'At the Louvre?' As she glanced up at me, trying to smile, I saw her eyes were moist with tears, and then--but the wide lands of Bidache were before me, and I held myself in somehow.

'Good-bye.'

'Good-bye.'

I turned, and without another look pa.s.sed out of the hall. As I went down the stairway I saw on the terrace to my right the figure of d'Ayen. He had changed his costume to the slashed and puffed dress which earned for the gay gentlemen of Henry's court the nickname of 'Bigarrets,' from M. de Savoye's caustic tongue, and his wizened face stood out of his snowy ruff in all the glow of its fresh paint. With one foot resting on the parapet, he was engaged in throwing crumbs to the peac.o.c.ks that basked on the turf beneath him. I would have pa.s.sed, but he called out.

'M. le Chevalier--a word.'

'A word then only, sir, I am in haste.'

'A bad thing, haste,' he said, staring at me from head to foot; 'these woods would fetch a good price, would they not?' and he waved his hand towards the wide-stretching forest.

'You mistake, M. d'Ayen, I am not a timber merchant.'

'Oh! a good price,' he went on, not heeding my reply. 'M. le Chevalier, I was going to say I will have them down when I am master here. They obstruct the view.'

I could have flung him from the terrace, but held myself in and turned on my heel.

'Adieu! Chevalier,' he called out after me, 'and remember what I have said.'

I took no notice. The man was old, and his gibing tongue his only weapon. I ran down the steps to where Jacques was, ready for me with the horses. Springing into the saddle, I put spurs to the beast, and we dashed down the avenue, but as I did so I yielded to an impulse, and glanced up to the window--it was empty.

CHAPTER V

A GOOD DEED COMES HOME TO ROOST

We dashed through the streets of Bidache, arousing the village dogs asleep in the yellow-sunlight to a chorus of disapprobation. About a dozen sought to revenge their disturbed slumbers, and, following the horses, snapped viciously at their heels; but we soon distanced them, and flinging a curse or so after us, in dog language, they gave up the pursuit, and returned to blink away the afternoon. It was my intention to keep to the right of Ivry, and after crossing the Eure, head straight for Paris, which I would enter either by way of Versailles or St. Germains; it mattered little what road, and there was plenty of time to decide.

I have, however, to confess here to a weakness, and that was my disappointment that Madame had not stayed to see the last of me.

Looking back upon it, I am perfectly aware that I had no right to have any feeling in the matter whatsoever; but let any one who has been placed similarly to myself be asked to lay bare his heart--I would stake my peregrine, Etoile, to a hedge crow on the result.

Madame knew I loved her. She must have seen the hunger in my eyes, as I watched her come and go, in the days when I lay at Ste. Genevieve, wounded to death. She must have felt the words I crushed down, I know not how, when we parted. She knew it all. Every woman knows how a man stands towards her. I was going away. I might never see her again. It was little to have waved me G.o.dspeed as I rode on my way, and yet that little was not given.

In this manner, like the fool I was, I rasped and fretted, easing my unhappy temper by letting the horse feel the rowels, and swearing at myself for a whining infant that wept for a slice of the moon.

For a league or so we galloped along the undulating ground which sloped towards the ford near Ezy; but as we began to approach the river, the country, studded with apple orchards, and trim with hedgerows of holly and hawthorn, broke into a wild and rugged moorland, intersected by ravines, whose depths were concealed by a tall undergrowth of Christ's Thorn and hornbeam, whilst beyond this, in russet, in sombre greens, and greys that faded into absolute blue, stretched the forests and woods of Anet and Croth-Sorel.

In the flood of the mellow sunlight the countless bells of heather enamelling the roadside were clothed in royal purple, and the brown tips of the bracken glistened like shafts of beaten gold. At times the track took its course over the edge of a steep bank, and here we slackened pace, picking our way over the crumbling earth, covered with gra.s.s, whose growth was choked by a network of twining cranesbill, gay with its crimson flowers, and listening to the dreamy humming of the restless bees, and the cheerful, if insistent, skirl of the gra.s.s crickets, from their snug retreats amidst the yarrow and sweet-scented thyme.

As we slid rather than rode down one of these banks, my horse cast a shoe, and this put a stop to any further hard riding until the mishap could be repaired.

'There is a smith at Ezy, monsieur,' said Jacques, 'where we can get what we want done, and then push on to Rouvres, where there is good accommodation at the _Grand Cerf_.'

'I suppose Ezy can give us nothing in that way?'

'I doubt much, monsieur, for the place sank to nothing when Monseigneur the Duc d'Aumale was exiled, and the King, as monsieur is aware, has given the castle to Madame Gabrielle, for her son, little _Cesar Monsieur_--the Duc de Vendome.'