Chapter 36 Scaramouche The Kingmaker by Rafael Sabatini
THE INTERRUPTION
Aline sat in the room above stairs which for nearly a year now she and her uncle had occupied at the Bear Inn. Never in her life had she felt more alone than on this evening of that day on which Monsieur de Kercadiou had set out on his long ride to Conde in Belgium. The loneliness of it seemed to renew the sense of bereavement which had been with her in those black weeks just after she had received the news of the death of André-Louis. She was weary at heart and despondent. Life seemed a dreary emptiness.
She had supped alone, very sparingly and mechanically. The table had been cleared, and the candles snuffed. In a kindly sympathetic apprehension of her loneliness, the landlord had come in person to perform this little service and solicitously to inquire if there was anything still lacking for her comfort.
She sat sadly dreaming, a book of Horace in her lap, a translation of the Odes. It was not a volume she would have chosen for her own entertainment. Yet it had been her constant companion in these last five months. It had been a favourite with André-Louis; and she read what he had so often read, merely so that she might turn her mind into channels in which his own had flowed. Thus she sought the fond delusion of a spiritual communion.
But to-night the words she had read remained meaningless. Loneliness weighed too heavily upon her. To dispel it, at last, towards ten o'clock, came the Regent.
He entered quietly and unheralded. He had been a frequent visitor in this unconventional manner, coming upon her at all hours of the day in the last three months.
Softly he closed the door, and from the threshold stood observing her. He had removed his round hat; but he was still heavily cloaked, and his shoulders were lightly powdered with snow.
From the street below at that moment rose the hoarse voice of the night watchmen calling the hour of ten. Rising slowly to receive him, that call prompted the form of her greeting.
"It is late for your highness to be abroad."
A smile softened the stare of the prominent eyes. "Late or early, my dear Aline, I exist to serve you." He loosened his cloak, slipped it from his shoulders, and moved forward to fling it across a chair. Then the heavy, paunchy figure marched upon her with its lilting strut. He came to a halt very close to her upon the hearth, and mechanically spread one of his podgy white hands to the blaze; for the solicitudinous landlord had lately made up the fire.
He considered her in silence. He seemed tongue-tied, and an odd nervousness, an indefinable apprehension began to creep upon her.
"It is late," she said again. "I was about to retire. I am none so well to-night, and very weary."
"Ay, you are pale. My poor child. You will be lonely, too. It was this decided me to seek you, despite the hour. I feel myself to blame." He sighed. "But, child, necessity knows no laws. I had to send to Conde and there was none left at hand but your uncle whom I could employ."
"My uncle, monseigneur, was very willing. We are dutiful. Your highness has no ground for self-reproach."
"Not unless you have reproaches for me."
"I, monseigneur? If I have a reproach for you it is for having given yourself concern on my behalf. You should not have troubled to seek me so late. And it is snowing. You should not have come."
"Not come? Knowing you lonely here?" Very gently, yet with an odd ardour he complained. "How far you still are from understanding me, Aline." He took her hands. "You are cold. And how pale!" He lowered his eyes from her face to continue his survey of her. She wore a taffeta gown of apple green cut low in the bodice as the mode had prescribed when it was made. "I vow your cheeks put your breast to shame for whiteness."
For this, it seemed, he could have found no better medicine than his words. A flush overspread her pallid face, and gently she sought to disengage her hands. But he maintained his grip.
"Why, child, will you be afraid of me? This is unkind. And I have been so patient. So patient that I scarcely know myself."
"Patient?" There was a kindling in her eyes, a frown between them. All timidity left her, to be replaced by dignity.
"Monseigneur, it grows late. I am here alone. I am sensible of your interest. But you do me too much honour."
"Not half the honour I desire to do you. Aline, why will you be cruel? Why will you be indifferent to my suffering? Does this soft white bosom hold a heart of stone? Or is it that you do not trust me? They have told you that I am fickle. They malign me, Aline. Or else, if I have been fickle, it is yours to cure me of that. I could be constant to you, child. Constant as the stars."
He loosed one of her hands, to set his ponderous arm about her shoulders. He sought to draw her to him, but found in her an unsuspected strength which the soft, flabby fellow could not subdue.
"Monseigneur, this is not worthy." She wrenched herself free, and stood straight and tense before him, her head high. He watched the play of the candlelight in her hair of gold, the ebb and flow of colour in her delicate cheeks, the curve of her lovely throat, and became exasperated by her unreasonableness. Was he not a prince of the blood? Who, after all, was she? The daughter of a rustic Breton nobleman, the child of a house of no account; yet she fronted him with the airs of a duchess. Worse. For there was no duchess in France, he was convinced, would have offered such cold reserves to his wooing. Of all the princes of the blood he stood nearest to the throne and was likely to be king one day. Did she overlook this in her silly prudishness? Was she insensible to the honour which he did her, to the honours which might be hers?
But he gave utterance to none of these unanswerable arguments. There was a cold rustic virtue here that was not to be melted by them. In his anger his passion was in danger of transmutation. Indeed, it stood delicately poised upon the borderline. He was moved almost to a desire to hurt her. Obeying it, he might have taken a short way with the little fool; but he loathed all violent action. He was too overburdened with flesh and too scant of breath; and from the manner in which she had disengaged herself from his grasp he actually doubted if his strength would prove a match for hers.
He must have recourse to subtlety. He had always more faith in his wits than in his sinews.
"Not worthy?" he echoed. He looked at her sadly, his big liquid eyes full of a pathetic pleading. "So be it, child. You shall school me in worth. For if there is one thing in this world of which I would be worthy, you are that thing. I set worthiness of that above worthiness of the throne itself." Thus he reminded her how near the throne he stood. But it seemed to have no weight with the little fool.
She continued wrapped in a dignity which made her seem of ice.
"Monseigneur, I am alone here," she was beginning and there she checked to look at him more keenly, the throb of a sudden thought perceptible in her quickening glance.
She reviewed in a flash the past months in which he had imposed his companionship upon her; remembered the esteem in which she had held it, the flattery which she had accounted it. She recalled occasional attempts of his to overstep the boundaries of a platonic friendship, but how quickly on each occasion he had retreated the moment she had shown it to be unwelcome. Reviewing all those lapses now in the aggregate, she blamed herself for having lacked the wit to perceive whither he was ultimately aiming. In her blindness and in her very listlessness, it seemed to her now that she had encouraged him by continuing a companionship in which such lapses had been repeated. Not a doubt but he had classed her with those who, like the woman in the song, vowing that she would ne'er consent, consented. Perhaps he had thought her restrained by the lack of proper opportunity. And now he had created it.
"Was it for this," she asked him, "that you sent my uncle on a mission to the Prince de Conde? To leave me here defenceless?"
"Defenceless? What a word, Aline! What defence do you need other than that of your will? Would any dare do violence to it? Not I, at least."
"You reassure me, monseigneur." Was she ironical, he wondered. And then, with an inclination of her dainty head, she added: "I beg, monseigneur, that you will leave me."
But he remained squarely planted on his stout legs, and with his head a little on one side surveyed her, archly smiling. "I am not used to be dismissed," he reminded her.
She put a hand to her brow in a gesture of weariness. "Your highness will forgive me. But etiquette here..."
"You are right, and I am wrong. What need to regard etiquette between us, my dear?"
"I understood that you insisted upon the rights of your rank."
"With you? As if I should! Have I ever done so? Have I ever been the Prince to you?"
"You have always been the Prince to me, monseigneur."
"Then it has not been by my insistence. To you I have never desired to be more than just a man; the man for whom you might come to care, Aline; the man whose devotion might melt you into perceiving some worth in him. Does it offend you, child, to hear me say I love you? Does it offend you that I offer you my worship, as I offer you my destiny, my very life?"
He was the suppliant now. The fat voice was softly modulated. There was something akin to a tear in it. And he went on without giving her time to answer him.
"You have aroused in me feelings that seem to have changed my nature. I have no thought but of you, no care but to be near you, no fear but the fear of losing you. Is all this nothing to you? Nothing it may be. But offend you it cannot. If you are indeed a woman, and God knows you are that, Aline, it must move you to compassion for me. I suffer. Can you be insensible? Will you see a man so tortured that he must end by being false to himself, false to his mission, false to his very duty because you have made him mad?"
"This is wild talk, monseigneur!" she cried out, and then abruptly presented him with the question: "What does your highness want of me?"
"What I want?" he faltered. Plague take the girl. Could a man be more explicit? Did she think to checkmate him by asking him to express the inexpressible? "What I want!" He opened wide his arms. "Aline!"
But here was no eagerness to respond to the invitation and fling herself upon that portly, royal bosom. She continued to regard him with a quizzically bitter little smile.
"If you will not say it, monseigneur, why, then, I will. Thus we shall be clear. You are asking me to become your mistress, I think."
If she thought to abash him by thus reducing to its precise terms the relationship he sought, she was profoundly at fault. His great liquid eyes opened a little wider in astonishment.
"What else can I offer you, my dear? I am already married. And if I were not, there would still be my rank. Though I swear to you that it should count for little with me if it were an obstacle in my way to you. I would barter all for you, and count myself the gainer. I swear I should."
"That is easily sworn, monseigneur."
Gloom descended upon him. "You do not believe me. You do not believe even the evidence of your own senses. Why am I here? Why do I tarry in Hamm at such a time as this? For many weeks now it has daily been dinned into my ears that my place is in Toulon with those who are making a stand there for throne and altar. Three days ago there arrived here a gentleman sent to me by the royalist committee in Paris, who permitted himself to point out to me my duty, to demand in the name of the nobility of France that I should render myself at once to Toulon and place myself at the head of the forces there. The terms of the demand were presumptuous. And yet I was robbed of even the satisfaction of resenting them, because in my heart I knew that they were justified. I know that I have been false to my duty, to myself, to my house, and to the brave defenders of Toulon. And why have I been false? Because my love for you has put trammels upon me which will not permit me to move. I am chained here, chained to the spot that holds you, Aline. My house may be destroyed, my chances of succeeding to the throne may perish, my honour may go hang before I will be false to my love for you. Does that tell you nothing? Does it afford you no proof of my sincerity? Does it give you no glimpse into the depth of it? Can you still, when you consider this, suppose that I am offering you some trivial and transient passion?"
That she was deeply moved, deeply shaken, he perceived at once. The mantle of dignity in which she had so coldly wrapped herself was permitted to slip from her shoulders. She was pale, and her eyes no longer met his ardent glance with their earlier defiant fearlessness. Although her words still sought to fence him off, they lacked their former bold uncompromising tone.
"But that is all over now. You have conquered this unworthy weakness, monseigneur. You start for Toulon on the day after to-morrow."
"Do I? Do I, indeed? Who will guarantee that? Not I, by my soul."
"What do you mean?" She was looking at him in alarm, leaning forward towards him. He was instantly aware of it; instantly aware that what he had alarmed was her sense of what was due, her concern for those men of her own aristocratic class who had raised the royal standard at Toulon and who were depending upon his presence amongst them. He was quick to perceive how her loyalties were aroused, how intolerable to her must be the thought that those gentlemen should look for him in vain.
"What do I mean?" he answered slowly, a crooked smile on his full sensuous lips. "I mean, Aline, that the fate of Toulon, the fate of the royalist cause itself is in your hands at this moment. Let that prove to you the depth of my sincerity."
She drew nearer by a step. Her breath quickened. "Oh, you are mad!" she cried. "Mad! You are a prince, the representative of France. Will you allow a whim, a caprice, to make you false to your duty, false to those brave souls who count upon you, who are exposing their lives for you and your house?"
She had come so near to him in her intentness that he was scarcely under the necessity of moving so as to place his left arm round her. He drew her close. Passively she suffered it, listening for his reply, so engrossed in it perhaps as scarcely to be conscious of what he did, or, at least, scarcely caring.
"At need I will do no less," he answered her. "What do I care for anything in this world compared with the care I have for you? My conduct shall prove it. I'll throw away the chances of a throne at need, to show you how little a thing is a throne to me when set against your love, Aline."
"Ah, but you must not. You must not! Oh, this is madness."
She struggled within the coil of his arm. But it was a feeble protesting struggle, very different from that masterful wrench with which earlier she had disengaged herself. "Do you mean that you will not go to Toulon?" There was a horror in her voice as she asked the question.
"That is what I mean, at need. It is in your hands, Aline."
"How in my hands? How in my hands? What are you saying? Why will you put this thing—this dreadful thing—upon me?"
"To afford you the proof you need."
"I need no proof. You owe me no proof of anything. There is nothing between us to be proved. Nothing. Let me go, monseigneur! Ah, let me go!"
"Why so I will, if you insist." But he held her firmly to him. His face was within an inch or two of her own, so white and piteous, so distractingly lovely. "But first hear me, and understand me. I will not go to Toulon—I take oath here that I will not go—that I will not leave Hamm—unless I have assurance of your love, unless I have proof of it, my Aline; proof of it, do you understand?"
As he ended his right arm went round her to reinforce his left, he drew her closer still against him, and his lips descended upon hers and held them.
Under that kiss she shivered, and thereafter lay limp in his embrace. Thus for a few heart-beats she suffered him to hold her, and in that time her thoughts travelled far down the past and far into the future, for thought knows naught of time and is not to be held within its narrow confines. André-Louis, her lover, the man for whom she would have kept herself, and to keep herself for whom none could ever have robbed her of her strength, had been dead these six months. She had mourned him, and she had entered into the resignation without which life on earth would be unbearable to so many. But something had gone from her which had left her without definite orientation. What did she matter now? To whom could she matter ever again? If this gross Prince desired her; if his desire of her pushed him to such mad lengths that unless he had his way he would betray those of her class and blood who depended upon him, then for their sake, for the sake of her loyalties, for the sake of all that she had been reared to reverence let her sacrifice herself.
Thus, in some nebulous way, during that dreadful moment of his embrace, did her thoughts travel. And then she grew conscious of a sound behind and beyond him. For a moment thereafter his arms continued to enfold her, his lips still pressed her own which were so cold and unresponsive, suffering him in such deadly indifference to have his will upon them. Then he, too, became aware of that movement. He broke away from her abruptly, and turned.
The door had opened, and on the threshold two gentlemen stood at gaze. They were the Comte d'Entragues and the Marquis de La Guiche. The Count's mobile countenance wore a faint, cynical smile of complete understanding. The Marquis, spurred and booted and splashed from travelling, looked on with a black scowl on his hawk-face. And it was he who spoke, his voice harsh and rasping, void of all the deference in which royalty is to be addressed.
"We interrupt you, monseigneur. But it is necessary. The matter is urgent, and cannot wait."
The Regent, at a disadvantage, sought to array himself in frosty dignity. But in such an emergency his figure did not assist the operation. He achieved pompousness.
"What is this, messieurs? How dare you break in upon me?"
D'Entragues presented his companion and his explanations in a breath. "This is Monsieur le Marquis de La Guiche, monseigneur. He has just arrived in Hamm. He is from Toulon with urgent messages."
He might have said more, but the furious Regent gave him no time.
"There is no urgency can warrant such an intrusion when I am private. Am I become of no account?"
It was the Marquis de la Guiche who answered him, his voice stingingly incisive. "I begin to think so, monseigneur."
"What's that?" The Regent could not believe that he heard correctly. "What did you say?"
La Guiche, dominant, masterful, his face wicked with anger, ignored the question.
"The matter that brings me cannot wait."
The Regent, in increasing unbelief, looked down his nose at him. "You are insolent. You do not know your place. You will wait upon my convenience, sir."
But the other's voice, growing more harshly vibrant, flung back at him: "I wait upon the convenience of the royalist cause, monseigneur. Its fate is in the balance, and delays may wreck it. That is why I insisted with Monsieur d'Entragues that he should bring me to you instantly wherever you might be." And without more, contemptuous, peremptory, he added the question: "Will you hear me here, or will you come with us?"
The Regent gave him a long arrogant stare before which the other's intrepid glance never wavered. Then his highness waved him out with one of his plump white hands.
"Go, sir. I follow."
De La Guiche bowed stiffly and went, d'Entragues accompanying him and closing the door.
The Regent, white and trembling, turned again to Mademoiselle de Kercadiou. There was a black rage in his heart. But he mastered it to speak to her.
"I will return presently, child," he promised her. "Presently."
He took his strutting way to the door, leaving his cloak where it lay.
Dazed with fear and shame, for she had read the thoughts of La Guiche as if they had been printed on his face, she watched Monsieur depart. She stood, with one hand clutching at her heaving bosom, until his footsteps, accompanied by those of his two companions, had faded on the stairs. Then she span round, went down on her knees by a chair, and burying her face in her hands lay there convulsed by sobs.