Chapter 18 The Gamester by Rafael Sabatini
THE LETTER
Three days later, Mr Law was back in Paris with his two captives, seeking the Abbé Dubois at the Palais Royal.
It was two o'clock on a cold, winter morning when he arrived there, and the Abbé was already abed. Mr Law, however, insisted upon his being awakened, and whilst rearing his night-capped head, and hissing and growling like an angry cat, yet Dubois consented to receive this untimely visitor.
"Devil take you, Baron, couldn't your business wait until morning?"
"You shall be the judge of that," was the cool reply by a man in whom the Abbé discerned a certain jauntiness oddly at variance with his habitual impassivity.
Mr Law set down his large sable muff, and from under his fur-lined pelisse produced a black leather satchel bearing a coat of arms in gold and two broken seals.
At the sight of this Dubois' face lengthened and his eyes dilated. In his excitement he tore off his nightcap. "My God, what have you done?" he croaked. "Have you dared, after all, and despite my warnings?"
"Here," said Mr Law, "is the answer." He poured the contents of the satchel on to the bed. "But for me all would have gone snugly to Madrid under the embassy seals. Instead, there you have the lot."
It was not quite true, for Mr Law had abstracted, for ends of his own, the Count of Horn's incriminating letter.
In an anxiety that left no breath for further questions, the Abbé pounced with trembling hands upon the papers. As he read the first of them he sucked in his hollow cheeks into which the colour came slowly creeping. When he had read the last he looked up. His pale eyes were glittering. He grinned. "Pardieu! You've been lucky," he cried. "For you might have had to pay with a broken neck for these broken seals."
"I am always charged with luck when I prevail by calculation. Bah, my dear Abbé, I never gambled on a greater certainty, because for once in my life I cogged the dice. You see, I did not go after Monsieur de Porto-Carrero, but after an absconding bankrupt. I overtook him at Poitiers, travelling as the servant of a Spanish abbé. Of course I arrested him as well as his companion, the Abbé, and another gentleman. And, of course, I went through their luggage, solely in the hope of recovering some of the plunder. Could I have done less? In such a case, dealing with detected criminals, I could not be restrained by an embassy seal which might have been counterfeited. And here you have what I providentially discovered."
"So that's the tale, is it?"
"Unless your reverence can think of a better."
"Not I, faith! It will serve. It will serve admirably. Where art your prisoners?"
"Monsieur de Porto-Carrero and his companion are in the cellar of the Hôtel de Nevers, at your orders. As for the bankrupt, he unfortunately escaped during the night."
"Ah! That would be the Spaniard for whom you had me supply a passport. How vexatious that he should have slipped through your fingers."
"Vexatious, of course. But he's no matter. He served his purpose. Without him all this would never have been discovered. So that we are in his debt. All we need remember is that he has proved the agent of Providence."
Dubois thrust a bony leg from the bed, swathed himself in a bed gown, and gathered up the papers. "Come to His Highness, Monsieur Providence," he said.
But Mr Law shook his head. "Not I. You may have all the credit, Abbé. I have no wish to appear in the role of policeman, and there's no need to mention my name. You will allude to me simply as your agent, which is what in effect I was. Monsieur l'Abbé!" He made a leg, and went out.
An hour later, the Regent, rolling from supper, unbuttoned, and with a deep flush on his face, discovered Dubois in his anteroom, shivering in a bed gown, by the fire.
The Abbé was annoyed by the mirth his appearance provoked. "I am not here to amuse Your Highness."
"It is on such occasions that you best achieve it." His Highness hiccoughed. "And why the devil are you here?"
Dubois flourished the satchel. "To bring you a packet of treason."
"At three o'clock in the morning? That's treason in itself. For shame! There will never be a cardinal's hat for you by these crude methods. Never. Go to bed."
"Will Your Highness be pleased to realize that I should not be here at this hour if the matter were not of fearful urgency?"
But the Regent, who seldom knew how to be grave, certainly carried too much wine for gravity now. "What is of fearfuller urgency, is that I should get to bed. To the devil with you and your treasons, Monsieur l'Abbé. Good night."
Laughing and bawling for his valet, the Duke staggered into his bedchamber, leaving the Abbé scandalized and fuming at having deprived himself of sleep merely to witness this levity.
His revenge came, however, on the following morning, when closeted with the Regent in the room known as the Winter Cabinet, at the end of the Little Gallery, he spread before him the ambassadorial papers.
His Highness, freshly shaved, perfumed and powdered, brisk and debonair, had turned from the fire by which he was standing to greet the Abbé flippantly. Had his reverence, he asked, really been so discourteous as to try to keep him from his bed last night or had he merely dreamed it. But his manner changed when he had glanced through Cellamare's letter. By the time the other exhibits had been examined he was more serious than Dubois had ever known him, a thundercloud darkened the fleshy, fresh-complexioned face.
The rest of this Cellamare affair, whose discovery was so signally to enhance Dubois' credit, both at home and abroad, is in the history books. King Philip's ambassador, coming suavely to request the return of his satchel, was placed under arrest that same day; his papers were seized and closely examined by Dubois, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Le Blanc, the Secretary of State for War, after which the Prince was escorted under guard to the frontier. On the following morning a detachment of musketeers was sent down to Sceaux to arrest the Duke and Duchess of Maine, and a good deal of china was broken by the tempestuous Duchess, who stood on her toes to increase her child-like height, and screamed that she was a granddaughter of the great Condé, in the vain hope of intimidating the officer who demanded her surrender.
"You may arrest me," she declared, "but you will never subdue me."
She was packed off--like Eve, as one chronicler has it, expelled from her terrestrial Paradise--to Dijon, there to cool down and think things over, and thence, a few months later, subdued or not, to be pestering the Regent with letters in which, derisorily, she protested loyalty.
Her feeble Duke, inveighing passionately against his wife for having led him by the nose into this treasonable quagmire, was locked up in the fortress of Donkers in Picardy.
As for the others, those betrayed by Cellamare's list and those yet more signally betrayed by their own letters, they were, with the exception of some who contrived to escape, rounded up and lodged in the Bastille to await the Regent's pleasure.
The Count of Horn was not of these, because his letter to King Philip remained in Mr Law's possession. Equipped with it, very late at night, following upon the day that had seen the Regent unleash the hounds of his justice, the Scot had himself conveyed in a sedan chair borne by men in plain liveries and preceded by a lantern-bearer to the house in the Rue d'Argenteuil that was tenanted by the Countess of Horn. Perhaps in an excess of prudence he announced himself to the porter as Monsieur du Jasmin, begging to be received by the Countess despite the lateness of the hour.
As he conceived, the name did not mystify her for more than an instant. After all, it was an easy guess that "Monsieur du Jasmin" must stand for "Jessamy John." Less easy was it to guess why he should come seeking her. She was already abed, and there was a moment of tremor and hesitation before she consented to rise and receive him.
He was conducted by a footman, not to the salon, but to her boudoir, a graciously intimate room as seen in the subdued candlelight. Its rococo panels framed a brocade of a faded rose-colour and it was furnished with a deal of chinoiserie, of lacquered cabinets and choice porcelains. There was a clavichord in satinwood and a tall harp beside it. An Indian carpet covered most of the floor.
She came to him in a peignoir of white silk that clothed her from neck to heel and lent height to her slim stature. Her russet hair, piled high, was without cap or powder. There was surprise and something akin to alarm in the dark eyes that intently considered him as he made his bow. He was urbanely formal.
"You are gracious to receive me, madame. I trust that my errand will justify the intrusion and excuse the hour of it. Had I not been detained this evening by the Regent I would have come much earlier."
Her questioning eyes continued to regard him in silence, waiting, whilst he loosened his pelisse and let it hang open, disclosing the richness of his dress, of stone-coloured velvet with narrow gold lace.
She spoke at last, formal in her turn. "Put off your cloak. Come nearer to the fire. The night is cold."
He drew a paper from his muff, then left it with his pelisse and tricorne on a chair, and went forward as he was bidden, but ignored the hand that waved him to a kidney-shaped settee. "I have come to discharge a debt," he announced.
She smiled. "I am aware of none."
"I should be insensible, indeed, if I were not. Pray look at this." Frowning, she took the paper, and the frown deepened as she read that letter in her husband's hand to the King of Spain. She raised bewildered eyes. "I do not understand."
Very briefly he told her of the plot which history knows as the Cellamare Conspiracy. "There are several such letters at this moment in the Regent's possession, for which those reckless penmen will be fortunate if they do not pay with their heads. That can happen only if His Highness should display a clemency rare in princes when dealing with such plots against them. Meanwhile, the writers of those letters, saving only de Nesle and Pompadour, who have fled and are being hunted, and Monsieur de Horn, whose letter I have been able to subtract from the package before it reached the Regent, are already in the Bastille."
"But..." She broke off, and it was a moment before she again found words. "You are singularly generous. Indeed, I do not understand why you should do this for the Count of Horn. I can hardly suppose that you love him."
"But I must suppose that you do."
"Is that your reason?"
"It should suffice. But I have said that I discharge a debt. You may have forgotten that I owe you my life. I am glad to be able to repay in kind."
"Your life?" Her eyes were round; her expression so startled as to puzzle him.
"When you warned me of what the Parliament intended."
"Oh, that!" She seemed to breathe more freely. It was as if she had supposed him to allude to something else.
"I do not exaggerate. Return that letter to your husband. Thus we are quits."
"To your great relief, no doubt."
"Naturally. I have always, I hope, been scrupulous to pay my debts." He paused a moment, and then added: "There is no reason to prolong this intrusion. If possible it will be best if you do not tell your husband how you have recovered the letter for him. You will suffer me to take my leave, madame."
He bowed and was already turning aside to recover cloak and hat when she checked him. "A moment, John. This letter...If it should be discovered that you abstracted it...would you not be compromised?"
"If it were discovered. But there is no fear of that so long as you do not tell the Count that you had it from me, and no need for concern."
"But there is. There must be. Is it not treason to conceal treason?" She was suddenly resolute. "I will not have you do it."
"Not do it? You have not understood that nothing less will save your husband?"
"My husband!" The curling lip, and the slow scorn with which she invested the ejaculation, took him by surprise. "You know my husband. You used to be a judge of men, John. Can you suppose that I would have you put perhaps your very life in peril for such a man?"
His amazement deepened and brought discomfort with it. He was reminded of something that Lady Stair had said, and words and tones that had vaguely mystified him on the day when Margaret had carried him in her coach to the Palais Royal. He answered lamely, "It is not for the Count of Horn that I do this. It is for you."
"Ah, yes. For me. Once before you put your life in danger for me, to deliver me from the vile designs of a worthless man. Let that suffice. It is not a sacrifice I could accept twice in a lifetime, and certainly not for the sake of the Count of Horn. Take back this letter."
"Madame, I beg you to reflect..."
"It needs no reflection. Oh, I see. I shock you by my lack of wifely duty, my sheer disloyalty. There are other loyalties in life. There is loyalty to one's own self, to one's own heart and soul and dignity. Other loyalties must be earned before these can be subdued."
His face had darkened. "I hear you with regret," he said. "Oh, and with reluctance..."
"Reluctance to have me unveil my life to you. I understand."
"No, no. It is just that I hoped you had found happiness."
"Happiness?" She uttered a little mirthless laugh. "I have come to wonder what it might be," she said, and reminded him of something he had said once to his brother in much the same words. "I caught a fleeting glimpse of it once; a mirage, a will-o'-the-wisp that flashed and vanished."
Because he thought that he understood the allusion his discomfort deepened.
"Oh, to be sure I have not been lucky in my husbands," she went on, "for which I have only my sorry wits to blame. I am paid as a fool should be. Once, John, you thought well of me."
Emotion caught him and betrayed him out of his aloofness. "Once I loved you," he amended, and saw the colour flood into her pallid face.
"How deceived you must have been in me. For I am just a poor creature to be so easily deceived by outward glitter." She sank to the chair, by which she had been standing, and leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, she continued reflectively, a quiet bitterness in her words.
"Ned Wilson should have sufficed to cure me. Yet when the Count of Horn wooed me I was so foolish as to hope that with him I might yet repair the wreckage of my life. My brother Stephen warned me. You remember Stephen. He was your friend. He warned me, but I preferred to trust my silly intuitions.
"Only when I was fast in wedlock did I come to know the Count of Horn to be what Stephen said and what you know he is: a profligate, a fortune-hunter, an animal, who wooed me because he believed me to be a wealthy woman. He was not wrong, for I am wealthy; very wealthy; and yet he was wrong because my wealth is beyond his reach, protected from him by an entail. You see, I have a son."
The announcement was as a sword through his flesh. She saw him wince and lose some colour. "Does that hurt?" she asked with a sudden plaintive tenderness, as if sorry for the wound she dealt. "You did not know?"
"I did not," he answered, and asked: "King William's son?"
The pain in her eyes showed him that he had stabbed her in his turn. The ghost of a smile fluttered on her lips. "Did you suppose that I had known other lovers? Yes. King William's son. The estates of Harpington are entailed upon him. I enjoy in them no more than a life interest."
He was master of himself again. "In that at least, then, I may congratulate you."
"And commiserate me in all the rest. Now that I've laid so much bare to you. But then I wanted you to know. I wanted you to understand why I will not have you take a risk for the Count of Horn. That you should have wished to do so for my sake is a thought that I shall treasure, John; perhaps the greatest treasure I shall ever have now. Do not deny it me by insisting that you merely sought to pay a debt. Confess that this was not altogether true."
The pleading note was more than he could resist. "Not altogether true, perhaps," he gently agreed.
"You thought to save me sorrow, supposing this man Horn to be dear to me." She stood up. "Instead..." She choked on the word. It became a sob, and for a moment afterwards she was silent, steadying herself. "Forgive me. Your action has stirred depths that I thought were stilled for ever. Was there ever, I wonder, so much irony in any woman's life. To have been the wife of two men and the mistress of a third, and yet in all my life to have loved but one man, to whom I have been neither."
Between longing and indignation he was sorely shaken. "I hear you say it, and yet how to believe it? When once it was in your hands to choose, you chose otherwise."
"It was never in my hands to choose. What help had I?" she demanded almost fiercely. "What help when...?"
There, abruptly, she broke off. She turned from him to stare into the fire, so that he could no longer see her eyes.
"When what?" he asked.
"When..." She seemed to grope. Then in a low voice she added: "When you had killed my husband."
"Was that why you did not follow me to Holland? Why you ignored my appeal, left even my letters unanswered?"
She took time to answer, as if she hesitated. "Was it not enough?" she asked at last. "What would the world have said?"
"The world! Need we have been concerned with the world? And what, after all, could it have said? That I had killed your husband because for his own foul profit he was complacently ready to procure you to the King and all but made a jest of it in his cups."
Still she did not meet his glance. "That...that would have been accounted a pretext," she faltered.
For a moment he stared at her in silent amazement. "Am I really to believe that such a thought prevailed? Yours was an intrepid, self-reliant soul. You were all courage, Margaret."
"Perhaps it needed courage to let you go." As abruptly as she had turned aside, she swung to face him again. "Oh, do not let us pursue it. It wounds too deeply. You must take back this letter, John, for I will not have you place yourself in danger."
"There is no danger."
"Do you think to deceive me? You may be a great man in France today, the close friend of the Regent, courted by the noblesse, dispenser of millions, invested with almost kingly power, but all that would not suffice to shield you from the consequences of treason."
He shrugged. "Let me take the risk of it. I am used to risks. I have lived by them, and prospered. Besides--reflect!--what can I do now? You'll see that I have burnt my boats. Can I go to the Regent and say 'here is a letter which I purloined from the packet'? That would be ruin, indeed, for he would be left wondering how many more I had purloined. If I were to take back that letter it could only be to destroy it."
"I see," she acknowledged gravely.
"And dismiss your fears; for the only risk I run is that you or the Count of Horn should denounce my theft; and that," he added with a smile, "of course you dare not."
"Had I not better burn it, then?"
"If you wish, but it would be wiser first to show it to the Count, so that he may have proof that it has not reached the Regent's hands."
She stood for a moment still hesitating; then she loosed the neck of her peignoir, folded the paper and slipped it into her bosom.
His eyes, intent upon her graceful movements, were hungry, and his face was drawn as if with pain.
Meeting his glance again she gave him a wistful smile. "What you have done, John, is magnanimous, all things considered. It is worthy of you."
"It might be magnanimous if it were done to serve the Count of Horn."
She shook her head. "I would not deny myself the consolation of knowing that it was done for me."
"Nor I the satisfaction of having done it. And now...if you will give me leave...It is very late."
He waited for her to offer him her hand. Instead she stood straight and stiff before him, her eyes dim, her lips tremulous. "It is not likely that you will come again. And I dare not ask it, unless you should ever need me. Nor is that likely. But if ever it should be..." She made a pathetic little gesture of arms and body that was fully expressive, and abruptly held out her hand. "There is nothing I would not do for you, John."
He was bearing her hand to his lips when it was suddenly snatched away. Startled, he straightened himself to find her gazing at him through tears.
"I wonder, John, would you bestow a crumb of comfort on a poor, lonely woman to whom you are very dear; leave her a memory to cherish, a heartbeat about which to weave her daydreams. Take me in your arms, John, and hold me close for just a little moment. Throw just an instant's bridge across the abyss between us. Could you?"
"Margaret!"
He strained her against him so that every line of her became impressed upon him. He bent his head and kissed her on quivering lips that were very readily surrendered.
"It will be fifteen years next month since you so held me," she murmured. '"We were almost children then. Do you remember?"
"Do I remember!" He kissed her again before she gently put him from her.
"Now go," she said.
His obedience was instant. "Goodbye, Margaret. God have you in His keeping."
She watched him as he gathered up cloak and hat and muff and went quickly from the room, and it was for long thereafter that he was so to remember her, standing like a straight, white pillar, sad-eyed, where he had left her.