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Chapter 10 The Nuptials of Corbal by Rafael Sabatini

Seated out there in the chill gloom of the hall, on a high-backed wooden settle ranged against the grey wall, Mademoiselle de Montsorbier presently recovered command of herself.

She looked from Filomène, who, without illusions now on the score of her sex, knelt at her feet, chafing one of her hands, to Monsieur de Corbal, who leaned over her in a solicitude that made him momentarily oblivious of all else.

"My friend, forgive this weakness, it is not the time to yield to it. Tears are a luxury for those who are secure." She dried her eyes. "We are in grave peril, now, and it will need all our resource to win out of it."

But Monsieur de Corbal smiled confidently. "Your resource has already provided for that, my dear. The note which you made him write to the members of the Tribunal will sufficiently explain his absence, whilst his removal raises the only obstacle to...to the nuptials which are required of me, provided that...that you..."

She interrupted him, raising her eyes to his, a wan smile on her white face. "You may take that for granted now, Raoul."

"Then let us lose no time. Filomène will find you such garments as you need, and we'll present ourselves to the Tribunal at once. Its members are all friendly towards me in themselves. It was only Chauvinière's influence and the fear of him which stiffened them against me in the matter of these Revolutionary nuptials. In Chauvinière's absence they'll be willing enough to let me choose my own bride so that I comply with the decree. Indeed, not Chauvinière himself could have pushed matters so far as to constrain my choice of a wife, so long as I was willing to take one, especially if she were of humble origin as you'll pretend to be. Come, then. We'll invent the origin, together with a name for you, as we go."

"How you run on!" she said, and almost laughed for all her heart-sickness and abiding horror of the thing so lately done.

"It is necessary. Time presses. Come."

"Wait! Wait!" She was imperative. "Do not let haste drive us into rashness. Consider first what must follow. Chauvinière's note will satisfy the Tribunal now, no doubt. But for how long? In a day or two there will be questions..."

He broke in upon her fears. "You do not know Poussignot. I do. I have lived here all my days. Trust my judgment in this. Chauvinière's presence has been a nightmare upon the place. His absence will bring relief, a reaction to the normal which will steadily grow whilst that absence is protracted. Very soon Poussignot's concern only will be lest Chauvinière should return. Poussignot will do nothing to encourage that, and will rest content so long as it does not occur."

"You are very confident."

"I have cause to be."

He was persuading her.

"And the note?" she asked. "How will you convey it to the Tribunal?"

"Oh, I've thought of that, too. The ostler at the inn where Chauvinière lodges is my man Fougereot's nephew, a Godfearing lad to whom all sans-culottes are detestable. Fougereot will convey the note to him, and he will deliver it: a natural enough messenger."

Her face brightened at last. "You've thought of everything," she approved him. "Chauvinière's death, then..."

"Is the best thing that could have happened for the world in general and ourselves in particular. And he brought it on himself, overreaching himself in his trickiness. Fetch Fougereot from the fields, Filomène. Meanwhile I'll get the note."

The girl departed on her errand, and the vicomte returned to the library. Alone with her thoughts. Mademoiselle de Montsorbier fell momentarily to shuddering again, and again covered her face with her hands to shut out the sight of Chauvinière as she had last seen him. Thus Monsieur de Corbal found her on his return. She heard him close the door of the library and turn the key in the lock. Then, seeing her huddled there, he hastened to her side.

"My dear, my dear! Courage! Courage!"

"I need it, yes." Her pale lips were twisted into a smile half-grim, half-whimsical. "I am not used to killing men."

"If I could have spared you that!" he cried. "But you have no grounds for self-reproach." And he reasoned with her long to banish from her mind the horror by which he perceived her to be beset. At last his fond efforts prevailed.

"Yes, yes. You are right. This is sheer weakness. And it's out of season. You have the note." He held it up in silence. "Read it to me. Let us know exactly what he has written."

The daylight was beginning to fade. He strode across to the mullioned window, and with his shoulder turned towards her raised the sheet so as to hold it to the light. In that attitude he remained for a long while immovable and silent, until at last her patience ended.

"Well?" she urged him. "Read it to me."

He turned to her, still in silence, and she saw that his face was of the colour of chalk.

"What is it?" she cried in immediate alarm.

He uttered a little laugh of bitterness, of hopelessness.

"I seem to remember that the rascal said the trick was his. A trick, indeed. Come here." She crossed to his side at once. "See for yourself what he has written, the bitter jester."

She took the sheet from his hand, and read:

"My dear ci-devant—This is to assure you that within the next twenty-four hours two things of interest to you will happen: you will be guillotined and the dainty, slippery Montsorbier will at last belong to me. I shall have cause to thank you for the entertainment provided for me here to-day."

She looked up at Monsieur de Corbal in blank dismay. The vicomte nodded, smiling bitterly. "He counted confidently upon tricking me with it as he did, the resourceful dog; so confidently that he didn't hesitate to indulge his wicked humour even with my pistol at his head."

"Yes," she said. "He was like that. And his humour was the death of him."

They looked at each other helplessly, almost despairingly, bereft of the staff upon which they had so confidently looked to lean.

They were back, it seemed, in the situation which had been theirs that afternoon before the advent of Chauvinière, save that now they were additionally burdened with the representative's dead body. There could no longer be any question of those Revolutionary nuptials upon which they had been counting. For in the absence of any acceptable explanation for it, Chauvinière's disappearance must very soon give rise to inquiry. At any moment almost that inquiry might begin. Even if he had not announced to any his intention of visiting Corbal, some there must have been who had seen him come that way. He was not a man whose movements went unnoticed. He could not pass anywhere unperceived. The trail, even if weak in places, would presently lead to the Château de Corbal. The vicomte would be asked questions which he could not answer. To hide the body could not avail him. He would be required to produce the living Chauvinière. And failing that, the conclusion was foregone. It needed no words between them to expound all this. Each saw it clearly.

"There is one thing only now," said the vicomte. "I must go. I must set out at once before the hunt is up."

She looked at him, her bright face resolute.

"We must go, you mean."

He shook his head. "Do you think I'll link you to a hunted man?"

"You will be hunted for the thing I did."

"What, then? The thing you did was done to save me. It was made necessary by my own carelessness. The responsibility for the deed is mine. The intention to kill him in any case was mine. Only an accident, my own stupidity, prevented it."

"All that is not worth discussion," said she. "There are more important things to consider." And that she was considering them her knit brows bore witness.

"Yes, yes," he agreed. "You must shift for yourself now, my dear. It would not be wise in you to remain. I'll try to think of something for you. All that I can think at the moment—though it breaks my heart to say it—is that in no case must you come with me."

Again she looked at him, and now she was faintly, sadly smiling.

"How far do you think that you will get in your flight through this mad land?"

"That's why; that's why," he answered passionately. "I know I stand hardly a chance at all."

"Without me you stand none. That is why you need me more than ever. We are to be married. That was agreed between us. Shall I let a husband slip through my fingers without an effort."

"Can you jest, Cléonie." His voice was shaken with pain.

"Ah, but I can be serious, too," she said, now oddly tender. She set her hands upon his shoulders and looked up into his pale, distressed countenance. "Do you believe in Destiny, my dear?"

"I don't know what I believe."

"Consider, then. Do you think it is just blind chance that you and I, who without knowing it have been seeking each other from the beginning of our lives, should have been brought together in this odd manner, at this odd time, in circumstances which left us no leisure for ordinary wooing? My dear, don't you see that it is Destiny which has linked us now? If I had not come when I came, you would certainly have perished. If I had not found you when I did, it is probable that I should have perished too. Perceiving this, can you suppose that our lives are to end here, now that we have met?"

Her earnestness shook him, and partly he succumbed as men will—especially men in desperate case—to the suggestion that behind all human fortunes there is a guiding Intelligence which may not be thwarted. Nevertheless, for her sake, because of the risk he perceived for her, he still resisted, though more weakly now, her intention to join him in his flight.

"But if we separate," she said with sad conviction, "we separate forever; there is no chance for either of us. I feel it. I know it. Together we may win out. If we do not, at least we shall be together to the end, as Destiny intends for us. And it is my strong belief that we are intended for a happier union than the crazy republican nuptials with which you would have been content."

He looked at her in heavy silence, looked down into those clear, steady, fearless eyes, and surrendered at last to her dauntless spirit. He drew her close and kissed her gently.

"So be it, my dear. I leave myself to you; to you and Destiny."

She flashed him a quick smile, and at once became brisk and practical. She demanded to be made free of his wardrobe that she might find herself male garments better suited to the part she meant to play. Naturally he desired to know what part this was, what plan was in her mind.

Lightly she mocked him. "You thought, of course, that I should be a party to a blind, blundering flight that would land us headlong in destruction. But I am proposing an orderly retreat. I have it here." She tapped her golden head. "The details are yet to be thought out. That while I change my clothes. Ask me no questions, now, my friend. Trust me and leave yourself to me, as you said just now you would do."

It was generous of him to thrust aside a momentary vexation at this half-confidence. "Have your way, then, Madame Destiny," he said, "I have made unconditional surrender."

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Chapter 8 The Nuptials of Corbal by Rafael Sabatini

"Mademoiselle, remain yet another day with us. The more complete now your rest, the better speed will you make hereafter, so that the time will not be lost."

Thus Monsieur de Corbal to his guest on the following afternoon.

They sat in the library, whither he had earlier conducted her; an untidy, dusty room, panelled in soiled white on all sides but one, which was packed from floor to ceiling with serried ranks of books. Its furnishings were handsome and as massive as anything produced in the reign of Louis XV, but they wore, like all else in that house, an air of dilapidation. The litter on the spacious writing-table testified at once to a studious industry and to negligence.

Mademoiselle de Montsorbier, occupying a window-seat along which was stretched one of her slim, pantalooned legs, demurred at the proposal, expressed the opinion that she had best push on at dusk; that, in fact, she could not think of subjecting monsieur le vicomte to the risk of her discovery under his roof.

At this Monsieur de Corbal laughed with such evident amusement as to pique her a little, for she could not conceive in what she was ridiculous. But he did not leave her long in conjecture. He paced the chamber as he talked, upright and handsome, looking more like a nobleman and less like other things than usual. Not only had he resumed to-day the ceremonious dress in which yesterday he had attended the Tribunal—the only suit of its kind in his wardrobe—but he had improved upon it. There was a foam of lace at his neck, and ruffles at his wrists to veil the hands which labour in the open had burnt brown; and he had brought out of their neglect a pair of lacquered shoes with paste buckles and red heels, shoes which in those days would have imperilled any man's neck.

He explained his laughter. "Mademoiselle, I am in the enviable position of a man for whom risks have ceased to exist, whom fear can no longer touch. This is Tuesday, and on Thursday next I am to die. That is why I laugh at the notion of danger to me from harbouring you."

She swung her leg from the window-seat and sat bolt upright, confronting him, her eyes wide.

"Monsieur! How is this possible? You amuse yourself at my expense! How can it be that you, who are free..."

"I will explain," he interrupted her, and he did so.

She heard his tale in growing distress and also in growing admiration for his intrepid calm, for the almost humorous outlook with which he viewed his desperate situation. Again she was reminded of another whose outlook was ever humorous too. But the difference!

"The beast!" she said, when he had done. "The cruel, mocking beast!"

The vicomte nodded. "That describes him, I think. He is facetiously malign. Well, well! He may have my head. But he will not make me bow it to his humorous will."

Her hands twisting and untwisting between her knees in her agitation of concern, she began to urge him to seek safety in flight.

He cut her short at the very outset.

"I thought of it, of course. But it would be useless, and there's a degradation in failure to which I will not expose myself. I'll be no quarry for these Revolutionary dogs to hunt. If succumb I must, I'll succumb in dignity, as my blood demands. You agree, I hope, that the alternative is unthinkable; that every dead Corbal would shudder in his grave if I were guilty of any baseness to save my useless life?"

She pondered him in silence with an infinite compassion, an infinite tenderness. She was little addicted normally to seek the feminine relief of tears. Yet now it was only by an effort of will that she repressed them.

"Is there," she asked after a moment, "no third course possible? Have you thought well, monsieur?"

Perhaps more of her tender concern escaped in her voice than she intended. He halted before her, and his dark, solemn eyes considered her. The pallor deepened in his face as if he were suddenly beset by fear, and a deeper wistfulness crept into the lines of it. At last, very slowly, he answered her.

"Yes, I have thought. And a third course does offer. But..." He broke off with a little gesture of despair.

"But what, monsieur? Express it freely. It is the way to test a thought."

"You know that, too! How wise you are!" Admiration flashed in his eyes. "The thing, however, is not in need of the test of expression. I hesitate only from the fear of being misunderstood."

She almost smiled as she looked up at him. "To a man in your case can it matter to be misunderstood? And misunderstood by whom? By me? For what does my opinion count in this?"

"For everything." he answered, and set her staring and a little breathless, stirred by something quite indefinable.

He swung away from her abruptly, paced to the book-lined wall, and back again, with bowed head, to come to a halt once more before her.

"I may be suspected of having found here no more than something to supply my need. That is my great fear. Will you believe me, mademoiselle, if I swear that I shall utter no word that is not true? I am a man in his last hours. There may be little good in me; but never in life have I soiled myself by falsehood."

"That is how I should judge you, monsieur. Speak freely, then."

He spoke, but not freely. He faltered and stumbled awkwardly in a manner utterly unusual to him, whose utterance normally was precise and scholarly.

"You will not see, mademoiselle, I beseech you, a lack of...of homage in what I am to say. In other circumstances...But here time presses. I am a man who has lived much alone. My books and my land have been my only concerns, and my little family almost my only company in years. It is this aloofness from the world which has made possible my survival until now. Many things that make up the life of my kind have passed me by. I have not missed them, because I have not desired them. No woman...I beg you to believe me...no woman has ever touched my life. Until now."

Mademoiselle de Montsorbier stiffened. She was very white, and the grey woollen smock shuddered under the heave of her slight breasts. The vicomte paused there, watching her almost in fear, he who had contemplated death with such tranquillity. He clasped his hands in his nervousness and found them moist.

"I...I have read the poets, of course. Yet I do not know how these things come to a man. I know only that love has come to me like a lightning stroke out of heaven. Bear with me, mademoiselle, though I may seem to you outrageous. Doubt what you will, but not my truth and sincerity."

Again he paused. But still she said nothing. Of the two it would have been hard to say which was possessed by the deeper fear.

"When first I saw you there in the light last night, it seemed to me...as if my soul leapt from me to embrace your soul. I utter crudities, perhaps. I can express it in no other way. But so spontaneous, so...so inevitable was this thing, that it has seemed to me...It is not a presumption, mademoiselle. It is an instinct, I think. It has seemed to me that something reciprocal, something mutual must have taken place. It seemed impossible that a man's spirit could...experience so much...unsupported.

"Mademoiselle, I am ashamed of my poor words. They do not..."

She interrupted him at last. She had risen, and, unbelievable miracle as it seemed to him, her breast was leaning on his own, her face, all white, and piteous was upturned to him.

"Ashamed!" she cried. "Ashamed!"

There was a music of tenderness in her voice that dazed his senses. "Your words leave nothing unsaid. Nothing that is not true, at least. Your instincts were at no fault, my dear."

His arms went round her. His voice was the voice of a man in pain.

"Love is the fulfilment of every living thing, and I might have died unfulfilled if you had not come to me at the eleventh hour."

She shuddered. "Oh, my dear!" She lay faint against him.

"Ah! But all that is changed," he cried, to hearten her. "You make life possible. If I had been mistaken, if you had not cared, nothing further would have mattered. I should still have died the richer, the nobler for what you brought me. But since you care...Listen, my dear. The decree of the Revolutionary Tribunal is only that I marry. So that I marry within three days I fulfill the requirements of this grotesque mockery which they call a law. Filomène was proposed to me, because I would make no choice for myself. But Filomène or another, it is all one to them. If you, then, come with me before the Tribunal, in peasant dress—that will be safer—as a girl whom I prefer, whom I have chosen for myself...We can invent your place of origin. That will not be difficult. If, then..."

She broke away from him, and stepped back. "Oh, you don't know what you are saying!" she cried out in deep distress.

He stood crestfallen, his soaring hopes all checked.

"But if...if...we love each other?" he faltered. "What difficulty, then? Need the notion of an immediate marriage be so repugnant?"

"It isn't that! It isn't that!"

"What then?"

She laughed without mirth. The situation, after all, was not without mirthless humour.

"Chauvinière!" she said significantly.

"Chauvinière?" he echoed, misunderstanding her, of course. "What of him, then? Even Chauvinière will be silenced since his demand that I marry will be satisfied. He named Filomène as the only bride at hand. But one woman will do as well as another for him; or, if not for him, at least for the Tribunal. So that I obey the decree, they can hardly compel me in the matter of my choice. That were too dangerous a precedent."

"What you say would be true in the case of any woman but myself."

"But yourself?" He gazed bewildered.

"Because I am the one woman of whom Chauvinière will not permit you to make choice. It is sadly, cruelly ironical, my friend. If you disclose me, you merely destroy me with yourself."

"If I disclose you as Mademoiselle de Montsorbier. But that is not the intention. As a peasant, a girl of the people..."

She interrupted him, to make all plain at last.

"That might serve for the others. But not for Chauvinière. Chauvinière was the deputy who smuggled me out of Paris."

It was a long moment before he completely understood, and understanding brought a curious horror. "It was he? It was he...?"

She nodded, her little features twisted in a bitter smile.

He shuddered, and put his hands to his face to shut out the picture which the sight of her now evoked. He stepped back, and sat down abruptly in a chair. He groaned as he sat there, and at first she misunderstood the source of his pain, imagined it to lie only in the sudden sense of defeat which her disclosure brought him. But his words enlightened her.

"Chauvinière!" he muttered. "That ineffable beast! His foul eyes crawling over your purity and grace!" He set his teeth. "That he should have dared! That he should have soiled you by his glance!"

"My dear, is it worth while to think of that? At such a moment?"

"What else is there to think of? What else can matter by comparison? My life!" he laughed. "I would give it freely to have spared you!"

There was a tap at the door. Filomène came in with a scared countenance. "It is the citizen-representative," she announced. "He is here. He asks to see you."

Mademoiselle de Montsorbier shrank back in fear.

Corbal uncovered his face, and came slowly to his feet.

"The citizen-representative?" he questioned dully. "Chauvinière?" Then, abruptly, he cast off his dejection. He squared his shoulders and stood stiff and straight, his face alight with purpose. Mademoiselle de Montsorbier, observing him, instead of distress beheld in him only a preternatural calm. And when presently he spoke again, not only had his voice resumed its natural level tone, but it was faintly charged with a note that was almost derisive.

"The citizen-representative Chauvinière, eh? Is he alone?"

"Yes, monsieur. I saw no one else."

The vicomte nodded. He was smiling. "But how very good. How very condescending of the citizen-representative to honour my house again! And so very opportunely! Almost it is as if he had guessed my need to see him, and desired to spare me the trouble of going in quest of him. Let him wait a moment or two in the hall, Filomène. Detain him there if you can. Then bring him in."

Between surprise and relief at the vicomte's manner, Filomène departed.

Before she was out of the room, Corbal was at a tall cupboard of polished mulberry that stood against the wall. He found Mademoiselle de Montsorbier at his elbow.

"Will you hide me in there?"

He lost a second in staring at her. Then he smiled and shook his head. "I have no thought to hide you." He took a mahogany case from a shelf in the cupboard.

"But if he finds me here!"

"It is what I desire." He took up a powder horn and a little linen bag, and closed the door of the cupboard. "The confident, overbearing fool!"

He crossed to his writing-table, and opened the box. It contained a brace of duelling pistols bedded in its red velvet lining.

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Chapter 9 The Nuptials of Corbal by Rafael Sabatini

Filomène had her attractions, and a man of so enterprising a nature as the citizen-representative does not allow feminine attractions to go unheeded.

When she returned to him where he waited in the hall, he took her softly rounded chin in his lean hand and considered her approvingly. His words, however, suggested that he did so dispassionately, in a spirit of critical detachment.

"Does he perceive your graces yet, my dear, this fastidious ci-devant? Faith, in his place, I should not wait to be bidden twice. I'll make a ci-devant vicomtesse of you yet," he promised, and kissed her by way of sealing the bargain. Detachment, after all, may be pushed too far; and he had a way with him, the citizen-representative Chauvinière.

He released her chin and bade her conduct him to the reluctant bridegroom. But Filomène remembered her orders to detain him, and he, himself, had afforded her the pretext. More than this, it was suddenly revealed to her how she might even save the vicomte for whom her affection was of the exalted kind that desires to express itself only in service.

"It's not only the bridegroom who is reluctant," said she, her winsome face grown sullen. "You make very free with a poor girl, you gentlemen of the Revolutionary Tribunal. You bid a man marry me without so much as a 'by-your-leave' to me. You take it for granted that I've no mind in the matter. 'Marry Filomène on Thursday, or we guillotine you on Friday.'" She sniffed her angry scorn. "You think that's all there is to it. And what if Filomène doesn't want the man you order to become her husband?"

Chauvinière was scowling at her. He remembered the soft glances he had seen her bestow upon Corbal, which had first suggested to him the course he had taken. His scowl became a smile of mockery.

"What game do you play with me, my girl?"

"No game, citizen-representative. It's deadly earnest as you and your Tribunal will discover. I'm not to be handed over like a cow or a sheep, and I don't belong to you to be bestowed by you. Liberty, eh? That's your notion of Liberty, is it? Why, the aristocrats would never have dared so much, and you'll not dare it where I'm concerned."

"But of course not, if you say so."

"I do say so." Her voice grew shrill. She had wrought herself into a fine mimic passion. "You'd better understand me clearly, and save yourselves the trouble of pushing this imbecile business any further. I do not take a husband at your bidding, and certainly not the citizen Corbal. I refuse to marry."

Chauvinière was smiling tolerantly upon the vehemence.

"You do?" quoth he.

"Flatly," she announced, not without a flash of exultation, conceiving that thus she had checkmated Chauvinière and saved her beloved vicomte from the peril that assailed him.

Chauvinière, still smiling, fetched a sigh. "A pity!" he said. "A thousand pities! He will now, if he wishes to live, have to find some one for himself; and I cannot hope that he will find any one half so agreeable." He sighed again, inwardly relishing the joke. "Now lead me to him, if you please."

Filomène shrank back, aghast to find her weapons so easily shivered. She choked down her tears of rage, eyeing the citizen-representative with a malevolence that but increased his secret mirth.

Then, nothing else being left to do, she conducted him in silence and announced him to the waiting vicomte. Lithe and active in his long grey coat, tricolour sash from which a sabre now dangled, and cockaded plumed hat which he did not trouble to remove, Chauvinière swaggered into the library. Within the threshold he halted, irony in every line of him, to survey the vicomte, who with hands behind him stood placidly by the empty fireplace. He jerked a thumb after the retreating Filomène.

"A juicy pullet, my friend; not to be boggled over by a man of taste."

"Perhaps I am not a man of taste—by Revolutionary canons."

"In your own interests I hope you'll prove so. You've offended the child by your reluctance, and she declares that you shall not marry her now if you would. But that's to be overcome by a little persuasive wooing. In your place, I should offer it. You'll find her arms warmer about your neck than the collar of the guillotine. But it's for you to choose between maid and widow."

"You repeat yourself, citizen. Is that the only purpose of your visit."

Chauvinière's light eyes drew narrow. Here was one who dealt in a mockery that was deadlier than his own and just as elusive.

"You misapprehend me." His tone was dry and crisp. "It is the fault of your class to want for understanding. It is the emptiness of aristocrat heads that has brought so many of them to the basket. I am here, my dear ci-devant, to exhort you in the fraternal spirit..."

He broke off. A slight movement in the corner on his right drew his glance aside, to discover there a slim lad in peasant blouse and pantaloons.

"Why? Who's this that..." Again he checked a sudden quickening in his glance. He leaned forward, staring hard; took a short step, and stepped again. Then an oath of amazement escaped him, and on the heels of that a laugh, loud and full of relish. "Why, here's a meeting!" He swept off his hat. "It becomes necessary to uncover." He bowed. "And how long may you have been at Corbal, my dear secretary?"

Mademoiselle de Montsorbier came forward a little, miraculously preserving her composure.

"Since last night, citizen," she answered simply, so simply and calmly that it staggered him.

"Oh, since last night, citizen!" he mimicked her. "Since last night, eh? Name of a name! I find more at Corbal than I should have dreamed of seeking. Life is full of surprises. But they are seldom as pleasant." He moved to advance towards her.

"Stand where you are!"

It was Corbal who spoke, in a cold, crisp tone that effectively arrested the representative. He stiffened as he confronted the vicomte across half the room.

"Life is full of surprises, as you say, citizen-representative. This one may not prove quite so pleasant as you are supposing."

There was in the vicomte's attitude, in his very calm, something sinister and menacing.

Instantly Chauvinière scented danger and as instantly would he have forestalled it; but he was hampered and undone by the mockery in which he dealt so lavishly. His absurd gesture of mock-deference, cumbered now his right hand with his doffed hat. Before he could slip that hand into his bosom to pluck thence the pistol which he carried ready for just such emergencies, it was necessary to be rid of the hat. He tucked it swiftly under his left arm. But he got no farther.

His movement was the danger signal to Corbal, and Corbal now covered him with a heavy duelling pistol, steadied upon his left forearm.

"Move a finger, citizen-representative, and I'll dispatch you into hell."

Chauvinière obeyed, but none too literally. He planted his feet wide, and folded his hands behind him. Then he laughed. He seemed entirely unperturbed, dissembling by an easy bearing the watchfulness of those light eyes of his.

"Surprise upon surprise!" said he. "And this from you, my dear ci-devant! I was far, indeed, from expecting it of you. Hitherto you have been of so charming and unfailing a courtesy that I should never have thought you capable of such a grossness. Why should you desire to intimidate me?"

"You misapprehend me. I am not proposing to intimidate you."

"What then?"

"To kill you."

Again Chauvinière laughed, although he paled a little under his tan.

"But what words! Come, citizen: let us be practical. How can my death serve you? Will it, do you suppose, save you from the obligation of complying with the decree of the Revolutionary Tribunal, or, in the alternative, of leaving your head on the guillotine? A little reflection, my friend, will show you that it will merely precipitate your doom."

The vicomte remained unperturbed. "And a little reflection on your side will show you that my life being already forfeit, I can lose nothing by killing you."

"But an act of such puerile and fruitless vindictiveness!" Chauvinière seemed shocked and hurt. "Besides, my friend, I have two men with me, out there. If you imagine that to shoot me will afford you a chance of escape, you are wrong. The sound of the shot will bring in my men, and that will be the end of you."

"If that were true—which I know it not to be—the intervention would still come too late to prevent the end of you. And Mademoiselle de Montsorbier, at least, will have been made safe. Also you will have expiated the unforgivable presumption which led you to raise your rascal's eyes to her. You son of a dog! You gutter-begotten rogue! Your very glance has been a defilement to her. A slug crawling over the white purity of a lily's petal."

"We become lyrical!" said Chauvinière, but there was a snarl in his voice, for inwardly his arrogant soul was writhing under the lash of the nobleman's contemptuous insults. "I understand, I think. Well, well, you have me at a disadvantage. I must make terms, I suppose."

"There are no terms to be made. It but remains that you give the only payment you can afford."

"You mean that you intend to murder me in cold blood! It is inconceivable. After all, you are a gentleman, not an assassin." There was no mockery now in Chauvinière's voice. It was warmly earnest. "At least, let us exchange shots, here in this room—at ten paces, or any distance that you please elsewhere. You cannot do less than that."

Monsieur de Corbal resumed his urbanity. "I am desolated to refuse you even that. If it were a question only of myself, of my own life and liberty, I would accede gladly. Indeed, I doubt if I should be at even so much trouble to preserve them. But there is Mademoiselle de Montsorbier. I cannot allow either her fate or the punishment of the insult your attentions have put upon her to lie at the mercy of luck or marksmanship."

Chauvinière's face had turned grey. "I am to be murdered, then?"

"Not murdered. Executed."

"A fine distinction!"

"You have dealt a little freely yourself in fine distinctions where the anguish of others was concerned. It is just that a man should sometimes drink as he has poured." The vicomte's cold sternness left little doubt of the measure of his resolve. Without moving his eyes from Chauvinière, he spoke to Mademoiselle de Montsorbier. "Mademoiselle, may I beg you to withdraw?"

"My God!" broke in a groan from the representative's bloodless lips, his arrogant spirit now subdued entirely. Only the vicomte's fixed stare and the conviction that his least movement must hasten the approaching doom prevented him from taking the chance of reaching for that pistol in his bosom. Though fear might have him now in an icy grip, yet his wits retained their clarity. To the last second he would wait and watch for his opportunity. Therefore was he still careful to do nothing to precipitate an end that might yet be averted.

"If you please, mademoiselle!" the vicomte repeated almost peremptorily, for mademoiselle had made no movement to obey him.

She moved at last, but not to depart.

"A moment, please," she said. She strove with her agitation. "Let us be practical, as the citizen-representative himself began by suggesting."

Touched though she might be by the terrible intransigent demands of the vicomte's devotion, she realized the futility of sacrificing a chance of escape and safety, which she dimly perceived, to the exploitation of a romantic vindictiveness. She saw more clearly and farther than the vicomte. She had less resentment to blind her. To be desired by a man, however unworthy, can never be quite so unpardonable an offence in the eyes of a woman as in those of her accepted lover. Therefore her thirst for Chauvinière's blood was less fierce than the vicomte's. It might go unslaked so that his life should serve them better than his death.

Calmly now she expounded her proposals.

"The citizen-representative spoke just now of making terms. Let him write three lines, informing the Revolutionary Tribunal of Poussignot that he has found it necessary suddenly to pay a visit to Nevers, which will keep him absent until to-morrow. After that, let him consent to be confined here for twenty-four hours, so as to give us that measure of start in our escape. Those are the terms on which you will, no doubt, agree, Vicomte, to spare his life."

The vicomte's face darkened. "I should prefer..."

She interrupted him, her tone persuasively insistent. "I have told you, my friend, what I desire. It is, believe me, better, safer so; nor do I want you to soil your hands unnecessarily."

If he yielded grudgingly, at least he wasted no words.

"It is for you to command. Be it so. You have heard mademoiselle's proposal, citizen. What do you say?"

Chauvinière breathed more freely. The tide of his courage flowed again, bringing with it at once a resumption of his normal manner. If he accepted this chance of life, he certainly should not be suspected of snatching at it.

He took now his time in answering, let It be seen that he pondered the proposal in dignified calm.

"As I have already said, you have me at a disadvantage." He shrugged. "I must therefore capitulate on the terms you offer. But I'll first require some guarantee that when I have fulfilled my part, you will not fail to perform yours."

"My word is your guarantee," said Corbal curtly.

Chauvinière pursed his lips. "A little meagre," he deprecated.

"It has never yet been so accounted. And only a fellow of your own base origin. Ignorant of the ways of men of honour, could suppose it."

Chauvinière looked at him, and sneered. "It Is evidently among the ways of men of honour to insult the man at whose head you hold a pistol. That is noble. That inspires confidence. That assures one that the word of such a man is a sufficient guarantee of anything!" He was bitterly derisive. "But I must take my chance of your keeping faith. I see that plainly. Tell me this, at least: When you have departed, and the twenty-four hours shall have come to an end, who is to restore me to liberty?"

"I shall arrange for that."

"You'll forgive my importunity in desiring to know something of those arrangements before I surrender completely to your wishes. You'll realize my reluctance to be left to starve in the cellar into which you'll lock me if you should forget, or find it difficult, to take the necessary steps to procure my release."

It was mademoiselle who answered him. "At this hour to-morrow the key of your prison shall be delivered to the president of the Revolutionary Committee, together with a note containing the information necessary to procure your enlargement."

He inclined his head. "That will do excellently, of course. But who will carry the key and the note?"

"You may depend upon us to find a messenger, wherever we may be. There is no difficulty in that."

"But messengers are sometimes unreliable. If this one should delay or neglect entirely to discharge his errand?"

"We shall do our best to procure a messenger entirely trustworthy, and we shall assure him of a handsome reward at your hands to quicken his zeal. That is the utmost we can do. The rest is your risk."

He shrugged and spread his hands. "I must accept it, I suppose. You leave me little choice."

"About it, then," Corbal commanded him. "Write your note here. You will find quills, ink, and paper."

Chauvinière stepped forward as he was bidden, drew up a chair and sat down at the writing-table, across which the vicomte faced him with his ever-levelled pistol.

His pen scratched industriously for some moments, but not half so industriously as his nimble rascally wits, seeking for him a way out of this trap, a way of breaking faith and turning the tables on these two who made a mock of him.

At last he signed with a flourish, flung down the pen, and rose. He took up the note and thrust it under the eyes of Monsieur de Corbal at close quarters; at such close quarters that his left hand which held it was not more than three inches from the vicomte's right with its levelled pistol.

"Read for yourself," he said harshly.

Momentarily Monsieur de Corbal's glance was lowered to read. But in that moment the sheet waved and fell away under his eyes; and before he realized what was happening, the fingers of the hand which had held it had pounced upon his wrist and their paralyzing grip was bending it aside so that the vicomte's weapon was now harmlessly deflected.

He saw the representative's right hand slide into the bosom of his broad-lapelled coat for the pistol which he kept here, and heard the representative's mocking voice.

"I take this trick, I think, my dear ci-devant. Opportunity never fails the man who knows how to seize it."

And his laughter rang out clear and sharp to be suddenly lost in the report of a shot which filled the room with its reverberations.

Chauvinière choked on his laugh, loosed his hold of the vicomte's wrist and reeled backwards, whilst the pistol which he had been in the act of drawing dropped from his nerveless grasp. He brought up with his shoulders to the wall, pressing to his left side a hand which grew red almost at once with the blood oozing between the fingers.

Steadying himself there, his features twisted into a spasmodic grin. He attempted to speak; but broke into a cough, with the acrid taste of powder-smoke in his throat and nostrils. The cough deepened. It became a frantic effort to clear his lungs so that he might breathe, and a foam of blood appeared upon his lips. He writhed yet an instant, his limbs twitched convulsively, and finally he slid down the panelled wall into a quiet heap from which his knees protruded sharply.

It had all happened so quickly that the vicomte had never moved from his place beyond the table, nor mademoiselle from the other end of the room, where she stood staring white-faced upon her work, the pistol still smoking in her hand.

It is curious that the first thing calling for comment from Monsieur de Corbal should have been the least important.

"Death caught him with laughter on his lips," he said on a note of horror.

"I seem to remember," said mademoiselle, "that once he predicted something of the kind for himself." Her voice was oddly strained.

The vicomte pursued his train of thought.

"He might be laughing still, and with good reason, if you had not insisted upon taking the second pistol for your own possible emergencies. I never dreamed that the emergency would be mine. You were only just in time, Cléonie. Already I was looking in the face of death."

"That," she answered unsteadily, "was my only justification." She shuddered, let her pistol fall to the ground at last, covered her face with her hands, and fell to sobbing convulsively.

Instantly the vicomte was at her side, his arms round her slim shoulders, his head bending to hers, his voice soothing and heartening her. Thus he drew her from the room, closing the door upon the thing it contained, and out into the hall, where Filomène with a scared face awaited them.

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Chapter 7 The Nuptials of Corbal by Rafael Sabatini

At the leisurely pace of a man who meditates, Monsieur de Corbal took his way home up the hill through the April dusk. He did not relish the thought of dying. Even less, however, did he relish the thought of the horrible mésalliance by which he might save his life, which shows that Chauvinière was right and that Monsieur de Corbal's republican sentiments were not of the proper depth. The notion of supplying future Corbals with such an ancestress as Filomène was entirely repulsive to him, however much he may have esteemed Filomène in her proper place. Aristocratic sentiments, after all, die hard.

He reflected that he was confronted with a choice of evils, and he was philosopher enough to know that in such a case he must accept the less. The futility of flight was too apparent. He would be hunted down, and at a time when it was impossible to move openly in the country without papers, he would soon be overtaken and brought back in ignominy. Let him at least preserve his self-respect. Reluctant though he might be to die, life, after all, was not so delectable in these days, and the Hereafter, if the priests were right, should not be without interest.

He mounted a stile over a wall bordering one of his meadows, and as he leapt lightly down upon the turf, he was suddenly aware of a figure crouching there in the gloom. A moment he stood at gaze, then called out, challenging, whereupon the figure came upright, detached itself from the wall, and was off at speed across the narrow strip of meadowland towards the woods.

Here, thought Monsieur de Corbal, was an eccentricity of behaviour that called for investigation. He was swift of foot, and he was upon the fugitive before the latter had covered half the distance to his goal. He clutched the shoulder of a stripling, clad in the blouse, loose pantaloons, and wooden shoes of a peasant.

"A word with you, my friend. You are too fleet for honesty, to say nothing of your skulking behind a wall."

"Let me go," snarled a boyish voice. "I have done you no harm." The figure writhed in his grasp. "Don't dare to detain me!"

"Dare!" Corbal laughed. "Here's fury!"

There was more fury than the vicomte reckoned. Something bright gleamed suddenly in the boy's hand. On the instant Corbal had him in a wrestler's grip which pinned his arms helplessly to his sides. He hugged the murderous rascal close, intending to throw him. Instead, as if contact with that young body had burnt him, he thrust it sharply from him, and stepped back.

"Name of God!" he ejaculated.

The supposed stripling stood before him, breathing hard with head a little bowed, making no further attempt to escape.

"Who are you? What are you? And why are you dressed as a man? Answer me. I will not hurt you."

The sudden gentleness of his voice, more, its high-bred inflection, wrought a change in the other's attitude. He threw back his head, showing a face that gleamed white and ghostly in the half-light.

"Who are you? What is your name?" came the counter-questions, in a voice and delivered on a note which left Corbal little doubt of the masquerader's quality.

"Until lately I was known as the Vicomte Corbigny de Corbal. Since then I have enjoyed a certain peace as a ci-devant. At the moment I scarcely know how to describe myself. But this land is still mine, and that house up yonder, in which I am prepared to afford you shelter if you will deal frankly with me."

"You are a gentleman!"

"You may call me that, I hope."

"A gentleman at large in France!" Almost she seemed to laugh. "But it is a bewildering encounter."

"Mutually bewildering," said he. "I was not, myself, expecting to meet a lady."

He heard the sharp intake of her breath.

"How do you know that?"

"How? I have my intuitions. They are not to be deceived by rude garments and eccentric manners. I am at your service, madame—or, is it mademoiselle?"

She hesitated long before passionately answering him: "Oh, if you are a trickster, play your vile trick. It's all one to me. I am sick and weary. I should welcome even such rest as the guillotine brings. I am Cléonie de Montsorbier."

He repeated the name in accents of surprise.

"You are incredulous. You have heard of us in prison in Paris. We are a Nivernais family, and there should be interest in us hereabouts. You have heard perhaps that monsieur my father and madame my mother have already perished on the scaffold. You may even have heard that I was removed to a house of lunatics, but not that I was removed thence by a Revolutionary gentleman who desired to befriend me, because possibly that is not yet known even in Paris. It's a long story, monsieur le vicomte."

"Tell it me as we walk," said he, and, taking her by the arm, he turned her about to face the distant house whose windows glowed ruddily in the deepening night.

As they went she told him briefly of her pseudo-secretaryship, and of her escape at La Charité from her republican protector whom she left unnamed. She had hoped to shelter at the Château de Blesson, with her cousins there. But to her dismay on reaching it in the dawn, she had found it closed and shuttered, the family gone. Thence on a weary horse, she had plodded on to Vermes, ten miles away, where another cousin dwelt. She found Vermes a blackened ruin, and in her exhaustion and despair, she sat down before it and gave way to tears.

Thus she was surprised by a group of scared peasants, a half-dozen members of a family moving out to labour in the fields. She staked all upon their being people not yet infected by Revolutionary notions, and disclosed herself to them. The disclosure increased their fear. They were folk who still believed in God and the King; but who kept the belief secret lest it should bring evil days upon them. Nevertheless, it was not in their simple hearts to let a gentlewoman suffer. They gave her shelter for some days, until beginning to fear the consequences to them of her being discovered there, and also because to lie in hiding was too temporary a measure to suit her impatient, eager spirit, she procured from them the peasant garments in which she stood, and departed, hoping to make her way on foot across the Nivernais and Burgundy, and thence slip over the frontier into Switzerland. The Nivernais she had almost crossed, for Poussignot was only a few miles distant from the confines of Burgundy. But the journey had been one of hardships beyond all that she had feared. And this notwithstanding that Fortune had singularly befriended her. She had made a practice of travelling only by night, never venturing upon roads until they were deserted. By day she would sleep hidden in some wood or buried in the straw of a barn or the hay of a stack. Twice she had been discovered, but each time by charitably disposed peasants, who, without suspecting her sex or quality, had given her food and shelter. Commonly she had suffered hunger, and once at least had been driven to steal so that she might still the pangs of it. Once she had lost her way, and for two days travelled north instead of east. Nor would she have known of her error but that in the neighbourhood of Verzy she was taken ill as the result of a drenching endured whilst endeavouring to sleep under a hedge. Here again she owed her salvation to the charity of peasants. A farm lad had found her staggering weakly along in prey to fever, and accepting the risk of yielding to his invitation she had accompanied him to his homestead, and there, since her spent condition left her no choice, she had disclosed to the mother of the household her sex and quality. For ten days she had remained there recovering health and strength, sheltered, befriended, and used with every consideration. Then she had set forth once more upon her perilous journey. That was a week ago, since when her progress had been slow. She had heard of the presence in the Nivernais of the representative Chauvinière and the consequent rousing there of Revolutionary activity. Consequently she had deemed it more important to move with caution than with speed. She was upon the road by which Corbal was coming from Pous-signot when she became aware of his advance. Because it was not yet quite dark, out of an excessive caution she had slipped over the wall to avoid him, and thus had not only been discovered, but had been discovered in circumstances which naturally aroused his suspicions. It was the one error of judgment of which she had been guilty in her travels.

"Yet Fortune has again befriended you," said the vicomte, moved at once to compassion for her suffering and admiration of her spirit. "Here at Corbal you may take a night's rest in security and comfort."

"Every such night diminishes my chances of ultimate security," he was answered on a sigh. "It is by night that I should be on my travels."

Monsieur de Corbal halted in the porch and surprised her by a little laugh. "Faith, mademoiselle, almost you set me an example."

"An example?"

"You suggest things..." He broke off. "No, no. I had thought of it. It is not worth while." He pushed wide the door, and the glow of light from within smote them with almost blinding violence.

"Be welcome to Corbal, mademoiselle."

She stepped ahead of him into the spacious and rather shabby stone hall. He paused a moment to close and make fast the door, then turned, and his eyes, now accustomed to the light, beheld her clearly for the first time. Her grey blouse was stained and in places ragged. She had doffed the shabby hat, which looked as if it might have been filched from a scarecrow. She had cut her hair and it hung loose and ragged now about her neck and ears, just as a peasant lad's might hang, but the light smote from its golden sheen an aureole about her little head, so admirably poised, and the finely featured, high-bred face gave the lie to the tatterdemalion rest of her.

Monsieur de Corbal gazed upon her lost in a rapture of wonder such as he had never known. So intent were those sombre dark eyes of his that at last her glance fell away before them, and she shifted a little uncomfortably.

"You were saying, monsieur," quoth she, perhaps to break the spell. "Something of an example, was it not?"

But still he gazed and gazed, and the natural wistfulness deepened in his countenance. When at last he spoke, it was cryptically, employing the old formula.

"Moriturus te salutat!" He bowed a little. "Yet it is good to have seen you first."

She stared at him with closer scrutiny, startled by that well-known Latin phrase.

"What do you say? Who is it that is about to die?"

"Are we not all in that case?" he evaded, "all who are of your class and mine? Is not France to us as the arena to the Roman gladiator who hailed Caesar in those words. But I keep you standing."

The instincts of his blood asserting themselves, he remembered the duties of a host and put aside all other considerations.

"You will require garments, mademoiselle. I will call my housekeeper. Perhaps she may..."

"Ah, no!" she checked him. "Clean linen if you will. Give it me yourself, or send it to me by a man if you wish. But for the rest, leave me as I am, nor disclose me to be other. The citizen Chauvinière is a thought too close for any risks."

"You know the citizen Chauvinière?"

She smiled. It was wonderful, he thought, that she should smile so. Not to alarm him unnecessarily she evaded his question. "I have heard of his activities."

He nodded. "You are wise, perhaps. Come, then, you shall have what you need."

Himself he conducted her to a room above, procured for her the linen she required, and left her, to go and inform and instruct his household touching the presence of a peasant boy whom it pleased him to befriend.

The household, openly loyal and faithful to the vicomte and secretly faithful to the old order, treated the visitor at table with an equality touched by deference. They had no doubt of her quality, although it is possible that her sex remained unsuspected, so slim was she and so boyish her voice. By her request the vicomte called her Antoine, which was the name she had worn with Chauvinière.

Deep dejection sat that night upon the little company gathered there to supper in the great kitchen, and Filomène as she waited upon them showed eyes that were red from weeping in a face unusually white. They had heard the day's events before the Revolutionary Tribunal and of the doom that now overhung their master. Filomène herself was outraged in her every sensibility by the offensive alternative to death which had been offered the vicomte whom she served and worshipped.

Corbal alone appeared unmoved and indifferent to the sword suspended over his head. Indeed, he was far less silent than his wont, and there was even a touch of gaiety, of exaltation in his bearing. He ministered solicitously to the needs of his guest, from whose face his eyes were removed only when she showed herself too conscious of his glance.

At first Mademoiselle de Montsorbier experienced a sense of discomfort. Those great sombre eyes riveted so ecstatically upon her evoked a memory which of all memories she desired to bury. They reminded her of another pair of eyes that smoulderingly had pondered her across another table, scorching her soul with the insult of their glance. But that sense of parallel was short-lived. The vicomte's eyes reflected wonder and a sort of ecstasy, but all of homage. They inspired confidence, evoked a responsive kindliness, where those other eyes had awakened only fear, and somehow, before the meal was done, before the Fougereots and Filomène had retired, leaving the vicomte and his guest alone, she had the full measure of this man. She had seen in his bearing towards his people, and their bearing towards him, his fundamental gentleness, his engaging simplicity in externals, his true nobility of heart, and the devotion he was capable of inspiring. The pale, handsome face under its neatly dressed, lustrous, brown hair was the face of a loyal, generous man, in whom no woman need hesitate to repose her trust.

He took no advantage of the circumstances to seek to detain her there alone in talk. Himself, soon after the departure of the others, he escorted her to the chamber set apart for her. He set down her candle, requested her commands, and withdrew after wishing her a good rest with an austerity which left nothing to be desired, and without so much as an attempt to kiss her finger-tips, which in all the circumstances would have been no more than proper.

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