The Black Wolf's Breed Part 20

He now settled himself upon a divan near Madame, with all the complacency of a man whose own foresight has saved him a serious trouble, and said after mature deliberation, gazing thoughtfully at the sportive cherubs on the ceiling:

"Well, it could not have been so bad after all, for I observed the caution to prepare a warning for our friends across the frontier, and had arranged for a friend of ours to be entrapped by Orleans, betraying misleading dispatches to him. A fine plan, think you? Menezes you know is devoted to me, and I have promised him a patent."

"Who did your grace say was to be this friend?"

"Menezes."

"Why Menezes?"

"I have done much for the fellow, and he is not over clever; clever enough for the purpose, you know, but--"

"Does my lord not remember Menezes is a brother of the Perrault whom you had hanged some years ago? I fear you have been badly advised."

"No! I do not recall him."

"The rogue who cast a stone at your horse?"

"Ah, I bring him to mind. Short, thick-set fellow, who whined something about hunger, children, and the cold. Ugh! What concern have I with the rabble? But how do you know this, Celeste?"

"I have long mis...o...b..ed him, and had the rascal overlooked. He is of Picardy, and his father was attached to St. Andre, who likes not His Grace, the Duke of Maine."

"No, by my faith, he hates me. Ah, I see it all. Celeste, you should have been a man, a man's wit almost you have. Really, so much brain is wasted in that pretty head of yours. Madame will come to comprehend she does not know it all--yet she torments me till I give in. I think I shall take firmer hold, and manage my own affairs to better advantage than she. Ugh! What a sc.r.a.pe she was like to get me in."

He gradually regained the expression of complete satisfaction with himself, and prepared now to show the masterpiece of his work, the contract with Antonio of Modena, the money-lender.

"Here are our financial plans; the usury is high, but there is great risk, so thinks Antonio; egad! perhaps he is right, though it is possible we may pay him. Altogether a most excellent plan, my own work----."

Madame interrupted him, thinking perhaps it was wise that he should not be committed too far that he could not throw the blame on other shoulders. She took advantage of a pause to examine the doc.u.ment with apparent care.

"Yes, excellent, but let us see. Three, seven, twelve, fourteen, twenty-three--here is some mistake. Let us go over it again. Yes, here it is. This is not your accounting. The miserly Lombard would cozen you of your honor if he could but sell it again. Here is an error of near ten thousand livres; let me correct it for you."

And while he stared at her she deftly copied the correct amounts from the slip she held concealed in her hand. She knew the figures were his own, but gave no token.

"I doubt not you would have looked over it more carefully before you signed it, and these matters would have been detected by your own eyes."

"Yes, yes," he replied nervously, reaching out his hand for the paper lest she observe--what her quick eyes had at first seen--that the contract already bore his signature and seal. She gave it him and he replaced it carefully in his breast.

"I will give those careless secretaries a lesson they sorely need," and in this disturbed condition of mind he bl.u.s.tered out of the apartment, forgetting his usual gallantries, which Madame so diplomatically put aside without giving too serious offense.

Jerome leaned against the window-facing, his unseeing eyes resting on the park beyond the little garden at our feet. His brow lowered, not as of a storm, but with the murkiness of a settled and dismal day.

Perchance his thoughts wandered with his childhood's sweetheart amid the fertile vales of far away Anjou. Nothing was more distant from him than the gilded furnis.h.i.+ngs, the frescoes, the marble Venus at his elbow. Beside her table, alone, and abstracted as Jerome, the woman toyed with a dainty fan; her impa.s.sive beauty, born of rigid training, betrayed not the inner desolation. Her face was calm and serious enough, the skin lay smooth and glowed with all those delicate tints that women love.

Her quietude reminded me of the slumbering ocean, gla.s.sy and tranquil, whose unmarred surface conveyed no hint of sunken s.h.i.+ps beneath, of cold dumb faces tossing in the brine, of death-abysses where wrecks abandoned lie.

I slipped away without rousing a protest from Jerome, and closing the door softly left them to their meditations and to each other.

CHAPTER XV

NEW HOPES

Now, that I was well out of their way, it came to me to wonder what I should do with myself until Jerome might please to seek me again, but accident favored me with occupation. Pa.s.sing through the hall I heard a woman's shrill voice, lifted in anger, berating some unfortunate attendant.

"You wretched hussy, to speak rudely to a guest of mine, who did but make to you a pretty speech. I'd have you be most charming to Monsieur Viard. Remember, you are only a hireling, and need give yourself no such fine and unseemly airs."

The door just ahead of me was thrown violently open, and out strutted a tiny lady in a most disproportionate rage. She was beautiful neither in face nor figure; she was diminutive, and petulant of manner, but bore herself with an air of almost regal pride. It was she whom I came to know as Madame du Maine, a daughter of the proud and princely Condes. Following her, weeping bitterly, came the sweet maid who had spilled the tray of flowers on me at the door. I stepped back into an alcove, lest, perchance, she look behind, and aimlessly I straggled out into the gardens as best I might. The Villa being a strange ground, it fretted me to be alone therein, with nothing to think of but this trouble of my friends. And Madame de Chartrain, did I blame her?

Blame Jerome? Yes--no. I hardly knew. Viewed at a distance and impartially, such things strike us with aversion, and we are quick to condemn. But the more I thought the nearer I came to concluding it took something more than a mere mummery to make a wife. All the ceremonials and benedictions and lighted candles and high-sounding phrases could not bind a woman's heart, where that heart was free, or called some other man its lord. Yet the bare fact remained, this woman was a wife, and to me, at least, that name had always been a sacred and holy one.

To what vain or wise conclusions my cogitations may have led me, I conceive not, for another small matter now quite absorbed my whole attention. It was the beginning of that one dear hope which speedily banished all others. It is said the trippant tread of Fate doth leave no print upon the sand to mark its pa.s.sage, nor doth she sound a note of warning that the waiting hand may grasp her garments as she flies.

A gleam of white in one of the summer houses caught my roving eye, and quite aimlessly I pa.s.sed the door. A chit of a child crouched upon the floor, and leaned forward on the benches, weeping as though each sob were like to burst her little heart. I grant it was no affair of mine, yet my tears were ever wont to start, and eyes play traitor to mine arm at sight of woman's trouble. Without thinking one whit, I stepped in beside her, and laying my hand gently upon the la.s.sie's shoulder, implored that she weep no more.

Up she sprang to face me, flushed and indignant. Verily was I abashed.

Yet there was that of sympathy and sincerity in my voice and mien--or so she told me after--which turned her wrath aside.

"You, Monsieur; I thought it was old Monsieur Viard, he pursues me so."

It was the same little maid I had seen in the hall, and that was why I trembled. She wept now for the scolding she had got. I caught my breath to inquire why she wept.

"Oh, Madame, Madame--it is the humor of Madame to humiliate me of late; she reminds me ever of my dependent position. And Monsieur," the child straightened up proudly till she was quite a woman. "Monsieur, I come of a race as old as her own--and as honored." "Charles is poor--the Chevalier de la Mora, you know. But now he goes to the colonies, and will take me with him."

It was a silly enough thing to do, but about here I stalked most unceremoniously off, leaving her to her sorrow and her tears. Since that day I have often smiled to think how foolishly do the wisest men deport themselves when they first begin to love. Their little starts of pa.s.sion, their petty angers and their sweet repentances--all were unexplored by me, for Love to me was yet an unread book.

At the door of the house M. Leroux hailed me graciously:

"Well met, my dear Captain; we go to the park, and would have you bear us company. Where is M. de Greville?"

I explained as best I might his absence, and followed them in lieu of better employment, forgetting for the time the threatened fete. Before I could extricate myself, these new friends had led me into a brilliant circle, and duly presented me to Madame, who sat on a sort of raised platform in the center.

She showed no traces of her recent anger and spite, vented upon that patient girl who now claimed all my thought. Her ladies, some languis.h.i.+ng literary notables of the day, and officers, stood about discussing the news, and talked of naught but some fetching style or popular play, through all of which I struggled as bravely as my dazed condition would permit. It seemed I would never grow accustomed to the like, though it is said many men find great delight in such gatherings.

But one thing I searched for most eagerly.

Behind Madame's chair, after a little, appeared the sweet shy face of my weeping Niobe of the park. I felt she saw and recognized me, and my face grew warmer at the thought. I made bold to ask one of the gentlemen standing near me who the lady might be, and not desiring to point at her, simply described her as well as possible, and as being in attendance upon Madame.

"That, Monsieur, is Madame Agnes, wife of the Chevalier de la Mora; the wittiest and most beautiful woman at Sceaux, and the chilliest."

Noting the change of countenance which I sought in vain to control, he went on banteringly.

"Beware M. le Capitaine, half the men at Sceaux are in love with her, but she has the execrable taste to prefer her own husband. Such women destroy half the zest of living. Beside, the Chevalier has a marvelous sword and a most unpleasant temper. Bah! how ludicrous it is for men to anger at trifles."

"But," I faltered, "she seems a mere child."

"Yes, but none the less charming," and he turned away to continue his interrupted conversation with the daring young Arouet, the same who was to acquire universal fame under the name Voltaire.

Thus rudely were my new-awakened hopes of love cast down. A wife, and the wife of a friend! She had spoken to me of "Charles," and of going with him to the colonies. A wife, yet for all that, I knew I loved her.