Chapter 45 Scaramouche The Kingmaker by Rafael Sabatini
BACK TO HAMM
André-Louis carried away from the Casa Gazzola a bitterness that choked him. For all the calm self-command he had exhibited to the end, he had that day torn open again the dreadful wound in his soul so that the Regent might behold it. And the compensating satisfaction to him had been less than he had thought to find in the discharge of that scornful errand upon which de Batz had sent him.
He had failed, he knew, to pierce the armour of egotism in which Monsieur was empanoplied. Monsieur, whilst affronted and angry, had yet remained untouched in his conscience by any sense of having merited the outrage to his dignity which André-Louis Moreau had perpetrated. He resented the words uttered in his presence much as he might have resented an offensive gesture from some urchin in the streets of Verona. Fools and egotists remain what they are because of their self-complacency and lack of the faculty of self-criticism. It is not within their power to view their actions in the light in which they are revealed to others. Blind to the cause which they may have supplied, they have only indignation for effects which are hostile to themselves.
Something of this André-Louis considered as he rode back to the Two Towers. It did not sweeten his mood or provide balm for his suffering. His vengeance had failed because the man at whom it was aimed could not perceive that it was deserved. It required more than words to hurt such men as the Comte de Provence. He should have given them more. He should have insisted upon satisfaction from that fool d'Avaray. Or, better still, he should have put a quarrel upon d'Entragues, that sly scoundrel who had played the pander to the extent of suppressing his letters, or, at least, of being a party to their suppression. He had forgotten d'Entragues' part in the business in the concentration of his resentment against the chief and unassailable offender. But, after all, it was no great matter. What real satisfaction could lie in visiting upon those lackeys, d'Entragues and d'Avaray, the sins of their master?
As he dismounted in the courtyard of the Two Towers he was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of his aimlessness. It was as if his life had suddenly come to an end. He knew not whither now to turn his steps, for nowhere did any purpose await him.
The landlord met him on the threshold with the information that a room had been prepared for him, and at the same time with a message from Madame de Plougastel, requesting him to wait upon her at the earliest moment.
"Conduct me to her," he said indifferently.
Still with the dust of travel upon him and his fast unbroken, he was ushered into that same room in which a couple of hours ago he had left her. She was alone when he entered, standing by the window, from which she had witnessed his return. She turned eagerly as the door opened, and came some little way to meet him. Her manner was strained and anxious.
"You are kind to come so promptly, André-Louis. I have so much to say to you. You left so hurriedly before I could even begin. Where have you been?"
"To the Casa Gazzola to let them know that I am still alive."
"It was what I feared. You have not been imprudent? You have done nothing hasty or rash, André-Louis?" She was trembling.
His lips writhed as he answered her. "There was nothing I could do, madame. The harm is past repairing. I could only talk. I doubt if I impressed them."
He saw relief in her face.
"Tell me about it. Ah, but sit down, child."
She waved him to one of two chairs that stood by the window, and herself took the other one. He sank down wearily, dropping hat and whip upon the floor beside him, and turned all the misery of his haggard eyes upon her gentle, wistful face.
"You saw Monsieur?" she asked him.
"I saw him, madame. I had a message for him from Monsieur de Batz." Briefly he repeated what he had told the Regent. She heard him out, a little colour creeping into her cheeks, a bitter little smile gradually taking shape about her sensitive lips. When at last he had done, she nodded.
"It was merited. All of it was merited. Although in doing what you did in Paris you betrayed a cause, yet I cannot blame you. And I am glad with you that you had the satisfaction of telling him. Never think that the bitterness of it will not penetrate to his heart, or that he will not understand how his own treachery and disloyalty have brought this failure upon him. He is very fitly punished."
"I am not so easily satisfied, madame. I doubt if any punishment I could have visited upon him would have been enough to satisfy me for the ruin he has wrought in wantonness."
"Ruin?" she echoed. She was staring at him with widening eyes. "The ruin he has wrought?"
"Is that too much to call it?" He was bitter. "Can any power undo it, or repair it?"
She paused before replying. Then quietly asked him, "What has been reported to you, André?"
"The vile truth, madame; that he made Aline his mistress; that he—"
"Ah, no! That, no!" she cried, and came to her feet as she spoke. "It is not true, my André."
He raised his head, and looked at her with his weary eyes. "Pity misleads you into deceiving me. I have it on the word of a witness, and he a man of honour."
"You must mean Monsieur de La Guiche."
"How well you know. Yes, it was La Guiche who told me, without knowing how much he was telling me; La Guiche who discovered her in the Regent's arms, when he—"
Again he was interrupted. "I know, I know. Ah, wait, my poor André! Listen to me. What La Guiche reported that he had seen is true. But all the rest, all the assumptions from it are false. False! And you have been tortured by this dreadful belief. My poor child!" She was beside him, her hand upon his head, soothing, caressing, gathering to her starved mother's heart some comfort for the comfort that she brought him. And whilst she went on to speak, to give him the facts within her knowledge, he held his breath and kept his body rigid.
"How could you have thought that your Aline is of those who yield. Not even the belief in your death could have robbed her of her pure strength. Long and patiently Monsieur laid siege to her. In the end, I suppose, that patience wearied. He was required elsewhere. They were demanding his presence in Toulon. So, to be rid of Monsieur de Kercadiou, he sent him to Brussels on a pretexted errand, and went that night to bear Aline company in her loneliness. Feeling herself helpless because alone there, and terrified by his vehemence, she suffered the embrace which Monsieur de La Guiche surprised, and which Monsieur de La Guiche interrupted. Wait, André! Hear the end. The Regent left her upon the insistence of Monsieur de La Guiche, who was very angry, and, I believe, very unmeasured in his terms, wanting even in respect to his highness. They went into another room, so that Monsieur might hear the message of which the Marquis was the bearer. No sooner had they gone than Aline came down to me with the tale of what had passed. She was filled with horror and loathing of Monsieur, and between terror of what had been and the fear of its repetition, she implored me to keep her with me and to shelter her." A moment Madame de Plougastel paused, and then added slowly and solemnly: "And she did not leave my side again until two days later, after Monsieur had departed from Hamm."
André-Louis came to his feet. He stood before her, his eyes level with her own, his sight blurred.
"Madame! Madame! Is this the truth?" His tone was piteous.
She took his hands in hers. She spoke wistfully. "Could I deceive you, André-Louis? You know that whoever might lie to you, I never should. Not even out of charity, my child, in such a matter as this."
There were tears in his eyes. "Madame," he faltered, "you give me life."
She smiled upon him with an ineffable sadness. "Then I give it to you for the second time. And I thank God that it is in my power to give it." She leaned forward and kissed him. "Go to your Aline, André-Louis. Go with confidence. Give no further thought to Monsieur. You have punished him for the evil of his intentions. Be thankful that there was no more to punish."
"Where is she? Aline?" he asked.
"At Hamm. When we left to follow the Regent to Turin, Monsieur de Kercadiou had not yet returned from Brussels, so that she was compelled to await him there. Besides, she had nowhere to go, poor child. I left her money enough to suffice them for some time. Make haste to her, André-Louis."
He set out next day, fortified by the blessing and prayers of the gentle lady who was his mother, and who took consolation for the thought that perhaps she might never see him again in the reflection that he went at last to his happiness.
He spared on that journey neither himself nor horseflesh. He was well supplied with money. In addition to a bundle of assignats with which he had paid his way in France, he had received from de Batz at parting a belt containing fifty louis in gold to which he had scarcely yet had recourse. But he had recourse to it freely now. It went prodigally on horseflesh, and to surmount all obstacles and smooth all difficulties.
Within a week, on a fair April day, he came worn and jaded, but with his heart aglow, into the little Westphalian town on the Lippe. He rolled almost exhausted from the saddle at the door of the Bear Inn, and staggered across the threshold looking like the ghost for which he was presently to be taken.
When the gaping landlord in answer to his questions had told him that Monsieur de Kercadiou and his niece were above stairs, André-Louis bade him go tell the Lord of Gavrillac that a courier had just arrived for him.
"Say no more than that. Do not mention my name to him, within Mademoiselle's hearing."
Then he reeled to a chair and sank into it. But he was on his feet again a few moments later when his godfather came down in answer to the summons.
Monsieur de Kercadiou checked at sight of him, and changed colour; then uttered his name in a voice that rang through the inn, and came running to embrace him, repeating his name again and again between tears and laughter.
André-Louis babbled foolishly in his godfather's arms.
"It is I, monsieur my godfather. It is indeed I. I have come back. I have done with politics. We are going farming. We are going to my farm in Saxony. I always knew that farm would be useful to us one day. Now let us go and find Aline, if you please."
But there was no need to go in quest of her. She was there mid-way upon the stairs. Her uncle's voice pronouncing André-Louis' name had drawn her forth. Her lovely face was piteously white, and she was trembling so violently that she could scarcely stand.
At sight of her André-Louis disengaged himself from the arms of Monsieur de Kercadiou, and casting off his weariness as if it had been a cloak, he leapt up to meet her. He came to a halt a step below her, his upturned face on a level with her throat. She put her arms round his neck, and drew his dark head against her breast. Holding him so, she whispered to him, "I was waiting for you, André. I should always have been waiting for you. To the end."
THE END