“I — I should be charmed,” mumbled the Vicomte, “but — but, unfortunately, I am travelling in the opposite direction.”
The men looked at the Vicomte in some surprise.
“’Tis a long way round to the Château by any other road save that which takes you through the village. You had better follow it — moreover, you would be obliging a friend.”
“But the coach is full,” shrieked Vilmorin, mad with rage and terror.
“Then, of course, I must crave the permission of your companions to travel on the box,” was the ready answer, and stepping up to the vehicle, Gaston laid his hand upon the door. But Vilmorin was there before him, and caught him by the arm.
“You shall not! you shall not! Help, you knaves!” he cried, turning to the men.
They did not budge. When the coach came into the yard with a wobbling wheel, Vilmorin had alighted and closed the door, which had not since been opened. To them it seemed just now that the coach might contain something which should not be there. The coachman alone made shift to obey the Vicomte’s summons, but at that moment he was seized from behind by Moret, who had come up with them.
Hurling the Vicomte aside, with an angry oath, Gaston wrenched the door open, and seizing a lantern from the ground, he held it so that the interior of the coach was lighted by its yellow rays. The men, craning their necks, saw what Gaston saw. And by the words which fell from their lips it was like to go hard with the Vicomte. Within the coach sat a woman securely pinioned and with a thick cloth tied about her face and gagging her.
There was a fierce cry behind him, and Brissac was thrust roughly back by Moret, who took the woman in his arms and lifted her to the ground. To cut her bonds and remove the cloth from her face was the work of an instant. Then, as the poor, frightened creature gave vent to a burst of hysterical sobbing, she was gathered close to her husband’s breast, and words of comfort were whispered by a beloved voice.
In one of the rooms of the Château de Taillandier a tall, heavily-built man of florid countenance, paced up and down in an impatient fashion, glancing at the clock each time he turned and going ever and anon to the window. He was stripped of his doublet, and his right arm was thickly bandaged and carried in a sling.
“Ventegris!” he exclaimed, “what has happened to delay the fool? He should have been here four hours ago. I trust Madame la Marquise has not — .” He stopped to listen. “At last,” he cried, as the rumble of wheels caught his ears. He stood at the window for a moment, then turning, he strode across to the door, and passed hurriedly out.
As the coach drew up at the foot of the terrace the Marquis had also reached the spot. The door swung open, and a man sprang lightly to the ground. He was taller than the Vicomte by two inches — which the Marquis noted in a puzzled way — but as he raised his head and showed his face, Taillandier started forward in surprise.
“Brissac!” he gasped, incredulously. Before he could add more, the gay chevalier turned to assist his companion to alight.
“Vilmorin is indisposed,” he said, “and so has been obliged to leave Autune somewhat suddenly. Being an old friend of his, I was glad to facilitate his departure by relieving him of the duty of accompanying this lady to the Château. The carriage met with an accident, otherwise it would have been here four hours ago, though possibly,” he added, with a laugh, “its occupants might not have been the same.”
The Marquis did not reply. His eyes were fastened upon the woman now standing beside Gaston. Surprise, anger, bewilderment were all mingled in his glance. At last Madame de Taillandier broke the silence.
“I could not endure the thought of leaving you here a sufferer, Henri,” she murmured. “I have ventured in spite of the smallpox.”
Taillandier scowled for a moment, then turning to the servant who stood by:
“Charles,” he said, “escort Madame la Marquise indoors. I will see you presently, madame, if it be your pleasure to await me.”
With an inclination of her head to Brissac — who answered it with a low bow, and a magnificent sweep of his plumed hat — she left them. When she was gone and they stood alone at some little distance from the coach, the Marquis turned furiously upon Gaston. “What does this mean, monsieur?”
“It means that that is the coach which should have brought you Monsieur le Vicomte de Vilmorin and Antoine Moret’s wife,” answered Brissac suavely. “Instead, it has brought you — .”
“A curse on what it has brought me,” the Marquis broke in passionately. “What am I to understand?”
“You had much better ask your wife,” suggested Gaston, naively.
“Do you dare to laugh at me?” roared Taillandier.
Brissac drew himself up with that formal hauteur he could so easily assume.
“I do not permit men to ask me what I dare,” he said coldly. “And let me add that if your sword arm were not broken I should take the liberty of calling you a scoundrel — .”
“Monsieur!”
“As it is, I shall await your return to Paris to impart the information to you. Good-night!”
And turning on his heel, he strode away with his hat slightly on one side, and the faintest suspicion of a swagger in his walk.
Taillandier called something after him, but receiving no answer, let fly a volley of imprecations — then went within to interview the Marquise.
What passed between them was never clearly known, but the servant who assisted the Marquis to undress that night has been heard to say that his spirit was as badly broken as his arm.
Brissac left Autune next day. So did Moret and his wife.
THE METAMORPHOSIS OF COLIN
Ainslee’s, September 1904
Colin Hartington came home to find himself famous.
He had left England four years ago, giving out that he was going abroad for pleasure — the pleasure, scandalmongers had it, being that peculiarly immoral delight which some people find in the evasion of clamorous and insistent creditors.
He had done himself pretty well, had Colin Hartington, in the three years that lay between his coming of age and his abrupt departure from England. He had done a little — a very little — work, made a little love, and spent a little money — the “little” in the latter case representing all that had been left him by the none too wealthy gentleman who had the honor of being his father.
Abroad he had worked. Lacking the means to devote himself to the enjoyable idleness ever dear to his heart, he had turned to the cultivation of the gifts he unquestionably possessed, though mainly latent. He had sent his work home. It had found a ready market, grown in value, and in four little years brought him enough fame to turn the head of any ordinary young man of twenty-seven. But Colin was not an ordinary young man. Success left him cold and unchanged, not even going the length of straightening out the moral obliquity of his character concerning his debts. He overlooked them one and all — if indeed the word may be employed to express an attitude wherein accident had no part.
And so it chanced that a few of his creditors, who had hailed his triumphs and his home-coming as the heralds of a settlement, discovered that they had run before their horse to market. Some went the length of bearding him with their claims; but he wriggled and slipped through their hands, as he wriggled and slipped through every other unpleasant thing that life offered him.
He was sorry — there were at times tears in his voice when he protested it — he was desperately sorry for the inconvenience they were suffering, but he besought them — and here his accents would grow seductive as a siren’s — to give him time. He had no means to speak of, and if they pressed him they would only disgrace him to no purpose, while if they waited and gave him an opportunity of earning something he would satisfy them. Fame was his. In the wake of fame, fortune has been known to journey.
“Give me a chance and you will see,” was his manner of winding up his conciliatory, patience-inspiring addresses.
The last thing they thought they were likely to see was their money.
But — realizing perhaps what a broken reed for a creditor to lean upon is the law — they reluctantly agreed to wait.
And while they waited, Colin Hartington spent his not inconsiderable earnings with that delightful recklessness characteristic of his happy-go-lucky nature.
How long this atrocious state of things might have prevailed but for the intervention of Mary Escott, there is no saying with any degree of certainty, though we might hazard a guess that it would have prevailed until a second flitting from England became imperative.
She, however, was destined to work his metamorphosis, to arrest his progress along the road of unconscious dishonesty that leads to perdition in the abstract and the County Court in the concrete.
In the years of his adolescence Colin had been very fond of Mary Bishop — Bishop was her maiden name. There had been certain tender passages between them, and the building of a love that Colin’s financial shortcomings had cruelly nipped. Abroad he learned that she had married. At the news he had sighed prettily, and smiled with fond, retrospective amusement, for he had known one or two other, and even greater, passions since that which Mary had inspired. Later he had learned that her husband was dead, and this time he had sighed perfunctorily and without smiling, believing himself genuinely affected by the picture of her widowhood which his mind had conjured up. Thereafter he had forgotten her, which platitude-monging cynics tell us is human nature’s vile way.
And now of a sudden he came face to face with her once more. It was at a regimental dance in his native town of Stollbridge, and the colonel’s wife had hustled him across and presented him as the lion of the hour.
They had smiled upon each other the quiet smile, fraught with never so little sadness, that is peculiar to souls stripped of their illusions.
The colonel’s wife had gone far away, and Colin, seating himself beside her, was scribbling hieroglyphs on her dance card with a clumsiness that would never have led you to suspect his penmanship to be worth something like sixpence a word. Then he looked at her for a moment, and, in words robbed by the genuineness of their intonation of the last vestige of impertinence, whispered:
“Molly, how beautiful you have grown!”
“Colin,” she mocked back, “how clever you have become!” And they laughed together.
“Tell me,” said she presently, “how does it feel to be a lion?”
“One longs for the mouse to come and gnaw the cords and allow one to get up and stretch.”
She knit her brows.
“What an artificial speech!” she cried. “Why do you talk like that?”
“It’s expected of me, I suppose, and it illustrates my meaning when I refer to the cords that bind a lion and the stretching of the limbs so ardently desired.”
“I have read your books, Colin,” said she, after a pause.
“Can you see anything in them?” he asked, contemptuously.
“I can see you in them, Colin. They reflect you constantly, they sound like you.”
He flushed with pleasure, not at the words, but at the laudatory tone in which they were uttered.
“No? Do they, though? Molly, I’m glad at last that I wrote them. I never thought much of them until now, but if they served to bring me to your memory, my work has not been wasted.”
His fine, dark eyes were bent ardently upon her. She laughed and set herself to gently move her fan.
“You mustn’t stare at me like that, Colin. People are looking at us.”
But Colin was not to be repressed. The whole world might look on, for all that he cared. The old feelings of some four years ago were being resuscitated. He was quite conscious of the fact. “Love,” he murmured rhapsodically, “is a flame difficult of reignition, where once it has been quenched. But let that reignition take place, and its blaze is all-consuming.”
“Is this apropos of boots?” she inquired with a puzzled air.
“Perhaps,” he answered boldly, “but it is something that I have just realized. I have cultivated the habit of thinking aloud.”
“How uncomfortable!” she commented, nervously.
But however fully Colin realized his statement, he was to realize it more fully still when some two hours later — toward the close of the evening — he found himself at Molly’s side in the conservatory. He rejoiced his eyes in the contemplation of the perfect curve of her white throat and the glistening masses of her ebony hair, while in the clear depths of her frank gaze his soul at last was drowned. His hand closed upon hers, his fine, foolish, young head was bent until he felt her tresses aginst his cheek.
“Molly,” he stammered, before he knew what he was saying, “I — I love you.”
She moved her head from the dangerous propinquity of his. The action was a rebuff, but the soft, seductive laughter that rippled from her lips negated what effect it might have had upon hot-headed Colin. He took it for a challenge, and upon the instant his arm was about her, and he was seeking to draw her to him. But she broke from his clasp, and pushing him forcibly backward, she stood up suddenly. She laughed no longer. Her breath came quickly, and her tone was one of stern rebuke.
“Colin, I am very disappointed in you.”
Poor Colin sat morally crushed and defeated, where a moment ago he had tasted the joyous anticipation of victory. He felt extremely foolish and annoyed with himself and with her. It became now a matter of extricating himself from a situation that he realized to be extremely undignified. A retreat from the position he had taken up would, he felt, be more ridiculous still. At all costs he must push on.
“What have I dared that should offend you?” he demanded, in accents of beautifully modulated aggrievance. “Is it an insult to tell a woman that you love her?”
She made as if to answer, but before she had time, he was on his feet, close beside her, speaking very fast.
“There are some things in life that endure as long as life itself, things that we cannot blot out, strive as we will. My love for you, Molly, is one of those things. When four years ago I left England you cannot dream how it hurt me to go from you. But I hoped — I — I don’t know what I hoped. Then I heard abroad of your marriage, and I never wished to return home. I was crushed — broken-hearted, people call it. Then, later, I heard of your widowhood, and in my selfishness — for what love worthy of the name is not selfish? — I was almost glad of it. Success came at last, and thinking ever of you, I determined to come home and lay my laurels at your feet, asking you, as I ask you now, Molly, to do me the honor to become my wife.”
Her attitude during that lengthy address of his had been one of forebidding iciness. But as he brought it to a conclusion with the offer of his hand and name, a change seemed suddenly to come over her. She bent towards him, and on her face he might have read surprise, wonder and some pleasure too — or perhaps it was amusement. You see, she knew him so very well.
“Molly!” he cried, and put forth his arms. But she drew back again. Some one had entered the conservatory.
“Come and see me to-morrow,” she had murmured, and slipping her hand through his arm, impelled him to conduct her back to the ballroom.
When he reviewed the scene in the sober light of the following day, Colin was not a little surprised at himself. He had made a mistake, and to get out of offending her he had lied like a gentleman and asked her to marry him — than which nothing could have been farther from his intentions. Her beauty, however, tempered his dismay, and pursuing his reflections he concluded that he might do much worse than wed her. He came to the conclusion — among others — that it was just by such accidents of a momentary concession to the emotions that half the world’s matches were effected.
In the afternoon he called upon her. She welcomed him as though there had been no such scene as that of the night before between them, and seating him in a wicker chair she gave him tea under the beeches on the lawn. He dissembled as best he might the nervousness that despite himself possessed him, sipped his tea and talked small talk in his best society manner, Gradually h
er admirable self-control thawed him, and at length, as he set down his cup, he opened his batteries.
“Molly, I have come for my answer.”
“Answer?” Her eyebrows went up and her blue eyes looked at him in silent surprise.
“To my last night’s — er — question,” he enlightened her.
Her gaze fell and became engrossed in the white, shapely hands so demurely folded in her lap.
“You were in earnest, then?”
He murmured some triteness about the earnestness — the solemnity — of the subject, which entailed a lifetime of devotion. He attempted to tell her how much she was to him; failed in a masterly manner, and broke down with a touching suggestion that no words could do justice to his feelings.
“You do me a great honor, Colin. I — I never thought that you felt like that.”
“How could you mistake me?” he cried, reproachfully
“Before I answer you, Colin,” she said, disregarding his outcry, “I have something to say to you. You see I am not like a foolish young girl, ignorant of the world and its ways. Matrimony has taught me a certain wisdom which prompts me — cold and sordid though it may appear — to remind you that your reputation is in rather a bad way and requires mending.”
“My reputation?” he cried, aghast. She nodded.
“But what can anyone say against it? I have only been a week or so at home, and during the time, I can assure you that my circumspection has been in every way above reproach.”
“Oh, I know all that. We are at cross-purposes perhaps. I refer to your debts.”
“Oh!” said Colin, and his jaw fell. She had touched the weak spot in his armor.
“You do not deny them?”
“Deny them?” he echoed, with a touch of satire. “No fear of that. My creditors might proceed to extremes if I did.”
“You speak with a levity that hurts me, Colin.”
“Good Lord! Molly, we are not discussing religion.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 500