He ceased. Valerie had caught him by the arm. At once his fury fell from him. He turned to her.
“What is it, child?”
“Do not compel her, if she will not wed him,” said she. “I know — and — she did not — how terrible a thing it is.”
“Nay, patience, child,” he soothed her, smiling now, his smile as the sunshine that succeeds a thunderstorm.
“It is none so bad with her. She is but coy. They had plighted their troth already, so it seems. Besides, I do not compel her. She shall marry him of her own free will — or else go to Paris and stand her trial and the consequences.”
“They had plighted their troth, do you say?”
“Well — had you not, Monsieur le Seneschal?”
“We had, monsieur,” said Tressan, with conscious pride; “and for myself I am ready for these immediate nuptials.”
“Then, in God’s name, let Madame give us her answer now. We have not the day to waste.”
She stood looking at him, her toe tapping the ground, her eyes sullenly angry. And in the end, half-fainting in her great disdain, she consented to do his will. Paris and the wheel formed too horrible an alternative; besides, even if that were spared her, there was but a hovel in Touraine for her, and Tressan, for all his fat ugliness, was wealthy.
So the Abbot, who had lent himself to the mummery of coming there to read a burial service, made ready now, by order of the Queen’s emissary, to solemnize a wedding.
It was soon done. Fortunio stood sponsor for Tressan, and Garnache himself insisted upon handing the Lord Seneschal his bride, a stroke of irony which hurt the proud lady of Condillac more than all her sufferings of the past half-hour.
When it was over and the Dowager Marquise de Condillac had been converted into the Comtesse de Tressan, Garnache bade them depart in peace and at once.
“As I have promised, you shall be spared all prosecution, Monsieur de Tressan,” he assured the Seneschal at parting. “But you must resign at once the King’s Seneschalship of Dauphiny, else will you put me to the necessity of having you deprived of your office — and that might entail unpleasant consequences.”
They went, madame with bowed head, her stubborn pride broken at last as the Abbot of Saint Francis had so confidently promised her. After them went the Abbot and the lackeys of Florimond, and Fortunio went with these to carry out Garnache’s orders that the men of the Dowager’s garrison be sent packing at once, leaving with the Parisian, in the great hall, just Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye.
CHAPTER XXIV. SAINT MARTIN’S EVE
Uneasy in his mind, seeking some way to tell the thing and acquit himself of the painful task before him, Garnache took a turn in the apartment.
Mademoiselle leaned against the table, which was still burdened by the empty coffin, and observed him. His ponderings were vain; he could find no way to tell, his story. She had said that she did not exactly love this Florimond, that her loyalty to him was no more than her loyalty to her father’s wishes. Nevertheless, he thought, what manner of hurt must not her pride receive when she learned that Florimond had brought him home a wife? Garnache was full of pity for her and for the loneliness that must be hers hereafter, mistress of a vast estate in Dauphiny, alone and friendless. And he was a little sorry for himself and the loneliness which, he felt, would be his hereafter; but that was by the way.
At last it was she herself who broke the silence.
“Monsieur,” she asked him, and her voice was strained and husky, “were you in time to save Florimond?”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” he answered readily, glad that by that question she should have introduced the subject. “I was in time.”
“And Marius?” she inquired. “From what I heard you say, I take it that he has suffered no harm.”
“He has suffered none. I have spared him that he might participate in the joy of his mother at her union with Monsieur de Tressan.”
“I am glad it was so, monsieur. Tell me of it.” Her voice sounded formal and constrained.
But either he did not hear or did not heed the question.
“Mademoiselle,” he said slowly. “Florimond is coming—”
“Florimond?” she broke in, and her voice went shrill, as if with a sudden fear, her cheeks turned white as chalk. The thing that for months she had hoped and prayed for was come at last, and it struck her almost dead with terror.
He remarked the change, and set it down to a natural excitement. He paused a moment. Then:
“He is still at La Rochette. But he does no more than wait until he shall have learned that his stepmother has departed from Condillac.”
“But — why — why — ? Was he then in no haste to come to me?” she inquired, her voice faltering.
“He is—” He stopped and tugged at his mustachios, his eyes regarding her sombrely. He was close beside her now, where he had halted, and he set his hand gently upon her shoulder, looked down into that winsome little oval face she raised to his.
“Mademoiselle,” he inquired, “would it afflict you very sorely if you were not destined, after all, to wed the Lord of Condillac?”
“Afflict me?” she echoed. The very question set her gasping with hope. “No — no, monsieur; it would not afflict me.”
“That is true? That is really, really true?” he cried, and his tone seemed less despondent.
“Don’t you know how true it is?” she said, in such accents and with such a shy upward look that something seemed suddenly to take Garnache by the throat. The blood flew to his cheeks. He fancied an odd meaning in those words of hers — a meaning that set his pulses throbbing faster than joy or peril had ever set them yet. Then he checked himself, and deep down in his soul he seemed to hear a peal of mocking laughter — just such a burst of sardonic mirth as had broken from his lips two nights ago when on his way to Voiron. Then he went back to the business he had in hand.
“I am glad it is so with you,” he said quietly. “Because Florimond has brought him home a wife.”
The words were out, and he stood back as stands a man who, having cast an insult, prepares to ward the blow he expects in answer. He had looked for a storm, a wild, frantic outburst; the lightning of flashing, angry eyes; the thunder of outraged pride. Instead, here was a gentle calm, a wan smile overspreading her sweet, pale face, and then she hid that face in her hands, buried face and hands upon his shoulder and fell to weeping very quietly.
This, he thought, was almost worse than the tempest he had looked for. How was he to know that these tears were the overflow of a heart that was on the point of bursting from sheer joy? He patted her shoulder; he soothed her.
“Little child,” he whispered in her ear. “What does it matter? You did not really love him. He was all unworthy of you. Do not grieve, child. So, so, that is better.”
She was looking up at him, smiling through the tears that suffused er eyes.
“I am weeping for joy, monsieur,” said she.
“For joy?” quoth he. “Vertudieu! There is no end to the things a woman weeps for!”
Unconsciously, instinctively almost, she nestled closer to him, and again his pulses throbbed, again that flush came to overspread his lean countenance. Very softly he whispered in her ear:
“Will you go to Paris with me, mademoiselle?”
He meant by that question no more than to ask whether, now that here in Dauphiny she would be friendless and alone, it were not better for her to place herself under the care of the Queen-Regent. But what blame to her if she misunderstood the question, if she read in it the very words her heart was longing to hear from him? The very gentleness of his tone implied his meaning to be the one she desired. She raised her hazel eyes again to his, she nestled closer to him, and then, with a shy fluttering of her lids, a delicious red suffusing her virgin cheek, she answered very softly:
“I will go anywhere with you, monsieur — anywhere.”
With a cry he broke from her. There was no fancying now; no possibility of misunderstanding.
He saw how she had misread his question, how she had delivered herself up to him in answer. His almost roughness startled her, and she stared at him as he stamped down the apartment and back to where she stood, seeking in vain to master the turbulence of his feelings. He stood still again. He took her by the shoulders and held her at arms’ length, before him, thus surveying her, and there was trouble in his keen eyes.
“Mademoiselle, mademoiselle!” he cried. “Valerie, my child, what are you saying to me?”
“What would you have me say?” she asked, her eyes upon the floor. “Was I too forward? It seemed to me there could not be question of such a thing between us now. I belong to you. What man has ever served a woman as you have served me? What better friend, what nobler lover did ever woman have? Why then need I take shame at confessing my devotion?”
He swallowed hard, and there was a mist before his eyes — eyes that had looked unmoved on many a scene of carnage.
“You know not what you do,” he cried out, and his voice was as the voice of one in pain. “I am old.”
“Old?” she echoed in deep surprise, and she looked up at him, as if she sought evidence of what he stated.
“Aye, old,” he assured her bitterly. “Look at the grey in my hair, the wrinkles in my face. I am no likely lover for you, child. You’ll need a lusty, comely young gallant.”
She looked at him, and a faint smile flickered at the corners of her lips. She observed his straight, handsome figure; his fine air of dignity and of strength. Every inch a man was he; never lived there one who was more a man; and what more than such a man could any maid desire?
“You are all that I would have you,” she answered him, and in his mind he almost cursed her stubbornness, her want of reason.
“I am peevish and cross-grained,” he informed her, “and I have grown old in ignorance of woman’s ways. Love has never come to me until now. What manner of lover, think you, can I make?”
Her eyes were on the windows at his back. The sunshine striking through them seemed to give her the reply she sought.
“To-morrow will be Saint Martin’s Day,” she told him; “yet see with a warmth the sun is shining.”
“A poor, make-believe Saint Martin’s Summer,” said he. “I am fitly answered by your allegory.”
“Oh, not make-believe, not make-believe,” she exclaimed. “There is no make-believe in the sun’s brightness and its warmth. We see it and we feel it, and we are none the less glad of it because the time of year should be November; rather do we take the greater joy in it. And it is not yet November in your life, not yet by many months.”
“What you say is apt, perhaps,” said he, “and may seem more apt than it is since my name is Martin, though I am no saint.” Then he shook off this mood that he accounted selfish; this mood that would take her — as the wolf takes the lamb — with no thought but for his own hunger.
“No, no!” he cried out. “It were unworthy in me!”
“When I love you, Martin?” she asked him gently.
A moment he stared at her, as if through those clear eyes he would penetrate to the very depths of her maiden soul. Then he sank on to his knees before her as any stripling lover might have done, and kissed her hands in token of the fact that he was conquered.
MISTRESS WILDING
OR, ANTHONY WILDING
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. POT-VALIANCE
CHAPTER II. SIR ROWLAND TO THE RESCUE
CHAPTER III. DIANA SCHEMES
CHAPTER IV. TERMS OF SURRENDER
CHAPTER V. THE ENCOUNTER
CHAPTER VI. THE CHAMPION
CHAPTER VII. THE NUPTIALS OF RUTH WESTMACOTT
CHAPTER VIII. BRIDE AND GROOM
CHAPTER IX. MR. TRENCHARD’S COUNTERSTROKE
CHAPTER X. THEIR OWN PETARD
CHAPTER XI. THE MARPLOT
CHAPTER XII. AT THE FORD
CHAPTER XIII. “PRO RELIGIONE ET LIBERTATE”
CHAPTER XIV. HIS GRACE’ IN COUNSEL
CHAPTER XV. LYME OF THE KING
CHAPTER XVI. PLOTS AND PLOTTERS
CHAPTER XVII. MR. WILDING’S RETURN
CHAPTER XVIII. BETRAYAL
CHAPTER XIX. THE BANQUET
CHAPTER XX. THE RECKONING
CHAPTER XXI. THE SENTENCE
CHAPTER XXII. THE EXECUTION
CHAPTER XXIII. MR. WILDING’S BOOTS
CHAPTER XXIV. JUSTICE
An early edition
CHAPTER I. POT-VALIANCE
Then drink it thus, cried the rash young fool, and splashed the contents of his cup full into the face of Mr. Wilding even as that gentleman, on his feet, was proposing to drink to the eyes of the young fool’s sister.
The moments that followed were full of interest. A stillness, a brooding, expectant stillness, fell upon the company — and it numbered a round dozen — about Lord Gervase’s richly appointed board. In the soft candlelight the oval table shone like a deep brown pool, in which were reflected the gleaming silver and sparkling crystal that seemed to float upon it.
Blake sucked in his nether-lip, his florid face a thought less florid than its wont, his prominent blue eyes a thought more prominent. Under its golden periwig old Nick Trenchard’s wizened countenance was darkened by a scowl, and his fingers, long, swarthy, and gnarled, drummed fretfully upon the table. Portly Lord Gervase Scoresby — their host, a benign and placid man of peace, detesting turbulence — turned crimson now in wordless rage. The others gaped and stared — some at young Westmacott, some at the man he had so grossly affronted — whilst in the shadows of the hall a couple of lacqueys looked on amazed, all teeth and eyes.
Mr. Wilding stood, very still and outwardly impassive, the wine trickling from his long face, which, if pale, was no paler than its habit, a vestige of the smile with which he had proposed the toast still lingering on his thin lips, though departed from his eyes. An elegant gentleman was Mr. Wilding, tall, and seeming even taller by virtue of his exceeding slenderness. He had the courage to wear his own hair, which was of a dark brown and very luxuriant; dark brown too were his sombre eyes, low-lidded and set at a downward slant. From those odd eyes of his, his countenance gathered an air of superciliousness tempered by a gentle melancholy. For the rest, it was scored by lines that stamped it with the appearance of an age in excess of his thirty years.
Thirty guineas’ worth of Mechlin at his throat was drenched, empurpled and ruined beyond redemption, and on the breast of his blue satin coat a dark patch was spreading like a stain of blood.
Richard Westmacott, short, sturdy, and fair-complexioned to the point of insipidity, watched him sullenly out of pale eyes, and waited. It was Lord Gervase who broke at last the silence — broke it with an oath, a thing unusual in one whose nature was almost woman-mild.
“As God’s my life!” he spluttered wrathfully, glowering at Richard. “To have this happen in my house! The young fool shall make apology!”
“With his dying breath,” sneered Trenchard, and the old rake’s words, his tone, and the malevolent look he bent upon the boy increased the company’s malaise.
“I think,” said Mr. Wilding, with a most singular and excessive sweetness, “that what Mr. Westmacott has done he has done because he apprehended me amiss.”
“No doubt he’ll say so,” opined Trenchard with a shrug, and had caution dug into his ribs by Blake’s elbow, whilst Richard made haste to prove him wrong by saying the contrary.
“I apprehended you exactly, sir,” he answered, defiance in his voice and wine-flushed face.
“Ha!” clucked Trenchard, irrepressible. “He’s bent on self-destruction. Let him have his way, in God’s name.”
But Wilding seemed intent upon showing how long-suffering he could be. He gently shook his head. “Nay, now,” said he. “You thought, Mr. Westmacott, that in mentioning your sister, I did so lightly. Is it not so?”
“You mentioned her, and that is all that matters,” cried Westmacott. “I’ll not have her name on your lips at any time or
in any place — no, nor in any manner.” His speech was thick from too much wine.
“You are drunk,” cried indignant Lord Gervase with finality.
“Pot-valiant,” Trenchard elaborated.
Mr. Wilding set down at last the glass which he had continued to hold until that moment. He rested his hands upon the table, knuckles downward, and leaning forward he spoke impressively, his face very grave; and those present — knowing him as they did — were one and all lost in wonder at his unusual patience.
“Mr. Westmacott,” said he, “I do think you are wrong to persist in affronting me. You have done a thing that is beyond forgiveness, and yet, when I offer you this opportunity of honourably retrieving...” He shrugged his shoulders, leaving the sentence incomplete.
The company might have spared its deep surprise at so much mildness. There was but the semblance of it. Wilding proceeded thus of purpose set, and under the calm mask of his long white face his mind worked wickedly and deliberately. The temerity of Westmacott, whose nature was notoriously timid, had surprised him for a moment. But anon, reading the boy’s mind as readily as though it had been a scroll unfolded for his instruction, he saw that Westmacott, on the strength of his position as his sister’s brother, conceived himself immune. Mr. Wilding’s avowed courtship of the lady, the hopes he still entertained of winning her, despite the aversion she was at pains to show him, gave Westmacott assurance that Mr. Wilding would never elect to shatter his all too slender chances by embroiling himself in a quarrel with her brother. And — reading him, thus, aright — Mr. Wilding put on that mask of patience, luring the boy into greater conviction of the security of his position. And Richard, conceiving himself safe in his entrenchment behind the bulwarks of his brothership to Ruth Westmacott, and heartened further by the excess of wine he had consumed, persisted in insults he would never otherwise have dared to offer.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 160