Petticoat Rule Part 41

"But surely, milor . . ." protested M. de Belle-Isle, a little taken aback.

"Would you be so kind as to explain? . . . if it is necessary."

"Necessary? Pardi, I should not have thought that it had been necessary. You, milor, in yourself also and through Madame la Marquise your wife have insulted M. le Comte de Stainville and Madame la Comtesse too. We represent M. le Comte de Stainville in this affair, wherein we presume that you are prepared to give him satisfaction. And we have come to-night, milor, to ask you kindly to name your own representatives so that we may arrange the details of this encounter in the manner pre-eminently satisfactory to M. le Comte de Stainville, since he is the aggrieved party."

Gradually M. de Belle-Isle had raised his voice. His feeling of bashfulness had entirely left him and he felt not a little wrathful at this strange _role_ which he was being made to play. It was quite unheard of that a gentleman who had so grossly insulted another, as Lord Eglinton had insulted M. de Stainville, should require such lengthy explanations as to what the next course of events would necessarily be.

"Therefore, milor," he continued with some acerbity as Lord Eglinton had vouchsafed no reply to his tirade, "we pray you to name your seconds to us, without delay, so that we may no longer intrude upon your privacy."

"I need not do that, M. le Marquis," said milor quietly. "I require no seconds."

"No seconds?" gasped the two gentlemen with one breath.

"I am not going to fight M. de Stainville."

If Lord Eglinton had suddenly declared his intention of dethroning King Louis and placing the crown of France on his own head, he could not more have astonished his two interlocutors. Both M. de Belle-Isle and M. de Lugeac were in fact absolutely speechless: in all their vast experience of Court life such a situation had never occurred before, and literally neither of them knew exactly how to deal with it. M. de Lugeac, young and arrogant, was the first to recover his presence of mind. Like his successful relative Jeanne Poisson de Pompadour he had been born in the slums of Paris, his exalted fortune, following so quickly in the wake of the ex-victualler's wife, had given him an a.s.surance and an amount of impudence which the older de Belle-Isle lacked, and which stood him in good stead in the present crisis.

"Are we to look on this as a formal refusal, milor?" he now asked boldly.

"As you please."

"You will not give M. le Comte de Stainville the satisfaction usually agreed upon between men of honour?"

"I will not fight M. de Stainville," repeated milor quietly. "I am busy with other things."

"But milor," here interposed M. de Belle-Isle testily: "you cannot have reflected on the consequences of such an act, which I myself at this moment would hardly dare to characterize."

"You will excuse me, gentlemen," said Lord Eglinton with seeming irrelevance, "but is there any necessity for prolonging this interview?"

"None at all," sneered M. de Lugeac. "It is not our business to comment on milor's conduct . . . at present," he added with audacious significance.

But M. de Belle-Isle, who, in spite of his undignified adherence to the Pompadour and her faction, was a sprig of the old n.o.blesse of France, was loath to see the humiliation of a high-born gentleman--whatever his faults might be--before such an upstart as de Lugeac. A kindly instinct, not altogether unexplainable, caused him to say encouragingly:

"Let me a.s.sure you, milor--though perhaps in this I am overstepping my official powers--that M. le Comte de Stainville has no desire to deal harshly with you. The fact that he is the most noted swordsman in France may perhaps be influencing you at this moment, but will you trust to my old experience when I a.s.sure you that M. le Comte's noted skill is your very best safeguard? He will be quite content to inflict a slight punishment on you--being a past master with his sword he can do that easily, without causing you graver injury. I am telling you this in confidence of course, because I know that these are his intentions. Moreover he starts on an important journey to-morrow and would propose a very brief encounter with you at dawn, in one of the spinneys of the Park. A mere scratch, I a.s.sure you, you need fear no more. Less he could not in all honour concede."

A whimsical smile played round the corners of milor's mouth, chasing momentarily the graver expression of his face.

"Your a.s.surance is more than kind, M. de Belle-Isle," he said with perfect courtesy, "but I can only repeat what I said just now, that I will not fight M. de Stainville."

"And instead of repeating what I said just now, milor . . ." said de Lugeac with a wicked leer.

"You will elect to hold your tongue," said M. de Belle-Isle authoritatively, placing his hand on the younger man's wrist.

De Lugeac, who lived in perpetual fear of doing or saying something which would inevitably betray his plebeian origin, meekly obeyed M. de Belle-Isle's command. The latter, though very bewildered, would be sure to know the correct way in which gentlemen should behave under these amazing circ.u.mstances.

Lord Eglinton standing beside his secretaire, his face in shadow, was obviously waiting for these intruders to go. M. de Belle-Isle shrugged his shoulders partly in puzzlement, partly in contempt; then he nodded casually to milor, turned on his heel, and walked out of the doorway into the octagonal room beyond, whilst M. de Lugeac imitated as best he could the careless nod and the look of contempt of his older friend. M. Achille stepping forward now closed the study doors behind the two gentlemen, shutting out the picture of that grave, haughty man who had just played the part of coward with such absolute perfection.

"Bah! these Englis.h.!.+" said young de Lugeac, as he made the gesture of spitting on the ground. "I had not believed it, _par tous les diables!_ had I not heard with mine own ears."

But de Belle-Isle gravely shook his head.

"I fear me the young man is only putting off the evil day. His skin will have to be tough indeed if he can put up with . . . well! with what he will get when this business becomes known."

"And it will become known," a.s.serted de Lugeac spitefully. He had always hated what he called the English faction. Madame Lydie always snubbed him unmercifully, and milor had hitherto most conveniently ignored his very existence. "By G--d I hope that my glove will be the first to touch his cheek."

"s.h.!.+--s.h.!.+--s.h.!.+" admonished de Belle-Isle, nodding toward Achille who was busy with the candelabrum.

"Nay! what do I care," retorted the other; "had you not restrained me I'd have called him a dirty coward then and there."

"That had been most incorrect, my good Lugeac," rejoined de Belle-Isle drily, and wilfully ignoring the language which, in moments of pa.s.sion, so plainly betrayed the vulgar origin. "The right to insult Lord Eglinton belongs primarily to Gaston de Stainville, and afterward only to his friends."

And although M. le Marquis de Belle-Isle expressed himself in more elegant words than his plebeian friend, there was none the less spite and evil intent in the expression of his face as he spoke.

Then giving a sign to Achille to precede them with the light, the two representatives of M. le Comte de Stainville finally strode out of the apartments of the ex-Comptroller General of Finance.

M. Durand, with his bulky books and his papers under his arms, followed meekly, repeatedly shaking his head.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

THE FINAL DISAPPOINTMENT

Lydie waited a few moments while her father's brisk steps died away along the stone-flagged corridors. In the silence of the evening, the quietude which rested on this distant portion of the palace, she could hear his brief word of command to the valet who had been stationed in the antechamber; then the Duke's quick, alert descent down the marble staircase, and finally the call for his coach oft repeated, when he reached the terrace and began skirting the building on his way to the main paved yard, where, no doubt, his horses were awaiting his return.

When everything in and around the palace seemed quiet again, Lydie rang for her maid.

"A dark hood and cloak," she ordered as soon as the girl appeared, and speaking very rapidly.

"Madame la Marquise goes out again?" asked the maid a little anxiously, seeing that the hour was late and she herself very sleepy.

"Only within the palace," replied Lydie. "Quick, girl! the cloak!"

Within two or three minutes she was enveloped from head to foot in a cloak of dark woollen material, that effectually hid the beautiful gown beneath. Then she bade the girl wait for her in her boudoir, and, not heeding the latter's anxious protestations, she walked quickly out of the room.

The corridors and reception halls were now quite deserted. Even from the main building of the palace, where the King himself was wont to sup copiously and long, there no longer came the faintest echo of revelry, of laughter or of music. The vast chateau built at the cost of a nation's heart's blood, kept up at the cost of her tears and her humiliation, now lay wrapped in sleep.

In this remote West Wing the silence was almost oppressive. From her own apartments Lydie could reach those occupied by milor, without going through the ante-chamber and corridors, where a few night-watchmen were always stationed. Thus she could pa.s.s unperceived; a dark, ghost-like figure, silent and swift, gliding through an enchanted castle, inhabited mayhap only by a sleeping beauty and her Court. From outside not a sound, save the occasional hoot of an owl or the flap of a bat's wings against the projecting masonry.

Lydie drew her cloak closely round her figure; though the August night was hot and heavy with the acrid scent of late summer flowers she felt an inward s.h.i.+vering, whilst her temples throbbed and her eyes seemed made of glowing charcoal. A few more rooms to traverse, a few moments longer wherein to keep her trembling knees from giving way beneath her, and she would be in milor's rooms.

She was a little astonished to find them just as deserted as the rest of the palace. The great audience chamber with its monumental bed, the antechamber wherein M. Durand's wizened figure always sat enthroned behind the huge secretaire, and the worthy Baptiste himself was wont to hold intrusive callers at bay, all these rooms were empty, silent and sombre.

At last she reached the octagonal room, out of which opened the study.

Here, too, darkness reigned supreme save for a thin streak of light which gleamed, thin and weird, from beneath the study door. Darkness itself fought with absolute stillness. Lydie came forward, walking as if in her sleep.