Book I Chapter 10 The Marquis of Carabas by Rafael Sabatini
MADAME DE BELLANGER
They set out, Quentin and his new-found uncle, very early on the following morning, and so that the lawyer might make the better speed on a journey to Port Malo which he represented as urgent, they travelled on horseback. Thus Quentin was under the necessity of leaving the greater part of his belongings at his uncle's house, taking with him no more than he could pack into a small valise, strapped to the saddle behind him. Never a marquis who was owner of half a province travelled in more modest fashion.
Elsewhere in France the display of a tricolour cockade would have been a prudent measure; but here, in a country infested by Chouans, the tricolour would be as dangerous on the one hand as the white cockade on the other. So they eschewed devices of political significance, leaving themselves free, according to Lesdiguières, to cry either, "Vive la République," or "Vive le Roi," according to their challengers.
By riding hard they reached and lay that night at Châteaubriant, and on the next at Ploermel. Here they put up at the Inn of the Cicogne, whose tubby little landlord, Cauchart, welcomed Lesdiguières as an old friend.
They were visited there by two members of the local Revolutionary Committee who came to demand their papers. When the demand had been satisfied, they practised a civility which in the past two years had been unknown in such functionaries. Almost they excused themselves for troubling these travellers, explaining that the brigands--by which term they designated the Chouans--had of late been of an increasing activity.
On the morrow they set out to cover the dozen miles or so to Coëtlegon. The September day was overcast and cooled by a strong westerly wind, and in the grey light the empty moorlands looked bleak and desolate. Across these they made their way by tracks that grew ever steeper and less defined. Over the summit, however, they descended into a district of forests of an ever-increasing density. They met no travellers other than occasional peasants, men and women, who called a greeting to them in a tongue unknown to Quentin.
Towards noon they emerged from these woodlands, through which they had wound their way as through a maze, into a wide valley that was sparsely planted, dominated by a massive flat-fronted mansion, grey, four-square and severe, which seemed to take that wide valley for its park.
At the foot of the balustraded terrace upon which it stood they dismounted, left their nags to the care of a stable-boy who came to meet them, and went up a broad flight of lichened steps.
Crossing the terrace, Quentin had a fleeting impression of a face at one of the tall windows, hastily withdrawn as he raised his glance. An elderly man-servant out of livery stood to receive them on the wide threshold, and conducted them to a lofty spacious salon of faded glories, where presently they were joined by the ladies of Coëtlegon.
For Lesdiguières there was a greeting of a warmth that seemed to annihilate all barriers of rank. It was followed by an amazement that bordered on incredulity when the old lawyer presented his companion as the new Marquis of Chavaray, and the amazement endured even when incredulity had been conquered by explanations and an insistent display of the young man's credentials.
They studied him with an interest equal to that with which in his turn he considered them. In the Marquise du Bot du Grégo he beheld a tall, faded beauty, angular and shrivelled, but gentle-mannered and kindly. Her daughter, the Vicomtesse de Bellanger, as tall as her mother, was of a beauty neither faded nor shrivelled, but of an almost startling opulence. A coil of her luxuriant hair, black and glossy as velvet, lay alluringly on her neck as if to stress its warm ivory whiteness. Against that same warm pallor of her face her full sensuous lips were vividly red. Her eyes were large and dark and languorous, and all her features of a miraculous regularity. The clinging lines of her riding-habit, of iron-grey velvet laced with gold, revealed a beauty of shape to match her splendid countenance.
In returning the papers the Marquise spoke in a voice as faded as her person, a voice gentle to the point of plaintiveness.
"I recall that the old Marquis Bertrand made a mésalliance late in life." There was no shade of malice in her melancholy utterance of the ill-chosen words.
"He married my sister, Madame," Lesdiguières answered without embarrassment. "Hence my interest in her son."
"Your sister? To be sure. I remember now. Her name was Lesdiguières, and she was accounted a great beauty; beautiful enough, I suppose, to make amends in a man's eyes for her humble birth. That was before you were born, Louise. But I did not know that the union had borne fruit."
The fruit of it submitted himself impassively to her scrutiny. In the lithe upright carriage, the elegance of the riding-coat, with the sword worn through the pocket, the proud poise of the head, and the masterfulness of the long, lean countenance under the queued chestnut hair, her myopic old eyes may have found something to admire.
"Not much of the Chesnières in you," she commented. "You'll favour your mother, I suppose." Softly she invited him to sit. "Is Armand de Chesnières aware of your existence?"
"Oh, yes, Madame. And of my succession. We met in London."
"In London!" exclaimed the daughter, with an increase of interest in him, which Quentin perfectly understood. "So you come from England."
But it was her mother who pinned his attention. "And what had Armand to say to it?" she was inquiring.
"It was his advice that I should come to France to make good my claim." He explained at length the situation in which he found himself towards the law, going on to acquaint them briefly with his general circumstances.
They heard him out with every sign of friendly interest, blent in Madame de Bellanger with a certain amusement, of which she made it clear that the Chevalier de St. Gilles was the object.
Then Lesdiguières took up the tale, to inform them of Besné's proposal. "Whether," he said in conclusion, "you can supply the sum, as a repayment of your debt to the late Marquis or simply as a loan, would be, Madame, of your own determining. But in either case Monsieur de Chavaray, as he will tell you, will be profoundly obliged."
Quentin fancied that the warmth of their attitude was a little diminished. Madame du Grégo looked slightly more wistful. "I should wish it to be towards the repayment of the debt, of course. Should we not, Louise?"
"Naturally." The Vicomtesse was definite. "We must see what we can do. I will consult our steward at once."
"At the same time, sir," the mother added, "you will understand that in these unhappy days, with revenues not merely shrunken but so difficult to collect at all, it is no easy matter to lay hands upon so large a sum."
"My mother means," explained the Vicomtesse, "that we may require a little time, a few days. But you may depend upon us not to keep you waiting longer than we must. Meanwhile, of course, you will do us the honour to remain the guests of Coëtlegon."
Quentin looked to Lesdiguières for direction. It was promptly given.
"You relieve me of concern for Monsieur le Marquis, Mesdames. Myself, I am on my way to Saint Malo, and in haste to reach it. I shall be happy to think of Monsieur de Chavaray in such hospitable hands meanwhile."
Nevertheless the lawyer allowed them to persuade him to stay to dine, and at the well-served table the conversation soon became political, as was inevitable in those days. It resolved itself mainly into a dialogue between Lesdiguières, who in that aristocratic household did not scruple to reveal his strongly monarchical sentiments, and the Vicomtesse, who almost shocked Quentin by the opposition which she offered to them. She argued strongly that the Terror being now overpast and succeeded by a spirit of moderation, which, developing as was to be expected, held out the promise of sane government under which all might live at peace, one must deplore the renewed activities of the chouannerie, which were provoking in Brittany a state of civil war under which all must suffer.
They had endured enough at the hands of the terrorists, she insisted. She and her mother had been gaoled, had suffered unutterable indignities, and had stood in imminent peril of the guillotine. To stifle by futile revolt the present spirit of moderation, might well be to bring back those evil days.
Less, as it seemed to Quentin, from conviction than from deference, Lesdiguières allowed her to have the last word, whereupon, conscious of the silence in which Quentin had followed the debate, she turned to challenge him.
"Do you not agree with me, Monsieur le Marquis?"
Had he answered truthfully, he must have expressed amazement that the wife of an émigré who in his London exile was preparing to take his place in the Royalist army about to invade the West, should utter sentiments so republican. He wondered what that pure royalist, the pompous Bellanger--for news of whom she had not yet troubled to seek--would say if he could hear her.
"Madame," he replied, "I am hardly in case to hold an opinion."
"By which I suppose you mean that gallantry prevents you from uttering one that is in disagreement with a lady's."
"Indeed, Madame, all that I mean is that I am too indifferently informed in these matters. It happens that I am not politically minded."
Her magnificent eyes glowed upon him in a smile. "It shall be my privilege to instruct you, sir, during the time you are to honour us here."
Lesdiguières seems to have found that promise suspect. For at parting he had a word to say to Quentin about it.
"There are, no doubt, many matters in which Madame la Vicomtesse would find amusement in instructing you. But I doubt if you will discover politics to be amongst them. Keep a guard on yourself, my lad. Women sometimes have their own way of paying debts, and your need at the moment is a thousand louis. Once you have the money make haste back to Angers, and should I not have returned before you get there, await me before seeing Besné again. God prosper you, my lad."
He rode away, leaving Quentin to make the discovery that the shrewdness of Lesdiguières' countenance was the faithful mirror of his mind.
Madame du Grégo, as aimless and ineffective as her plaintive exterior suggested, left all matters of consequence to her daughter; and it was Louise who that very evening sent for the steward and shut herself up with him to consider--as she afterwards told Quentin--measures for raising the money required.
She told him of this on the following morning. It broke fair after a night of rain, and sky and earth sparkling with a new-washed air, drew them out of doors as soon as breakfast was done.
She did not think that after two long days in the saddle Quentin would care to ride, and in the vast park it was too wet underfoot for walking. But they could take the morning air on the terrace, and there she lingered with him almost until the hour of dinner.
The matter of the money was soon dismissed. It was entrusted to the steward, and he was to exert himself to collect it. Almost as soon did she dismiss the matter of her husband when Quentin brought it up.
"The Vicomte de Bellanger happens to be known to me, Madame."
She tossed her head. "Then you know a good-for-naught," she shocked him by replying. I am told that Englishwomen are notorious for their frailty. Monsieur de Bellanger should be happy amongst them."
"At present I think he is more concerned with the Royalist army that is forming."
"Then he's greatly changed since last I saw him. Shall we find a less dreary topic?"
She plunged headlong into those politics upon which she had promised to instruct him, and poured scorn upon the petty jealousies among the leaders of the chouannerie which made impossible that cohesion which alone could ensure any success against the arms of the Republic. She spoke of the Vendée, where it had been the same, and where the great forces serving under Stofflet and Charette were being destroyed piecemeal by the Blues simply because their jealousy of one another prevented them from combining. Hence her conviction that no good could come of the present Chouan activities, and that all that would result from them would be to distress the country with civil strife, in which the greatest sufferers must be those who occupied the land. There might even be a repetition in Brittany of the horrors seen in the Vendée, when, so as to stamp out the ill-conducted rebellion, the land was systematically laid bare by the fire and sword of the Infernal Bands, as the Republican troops detailed for that work of extermination by incendiarism and wholesale massacre, had been designated.
Quentin listened with interest to the information all this contained for him. But neither the rich, musical voice nor the superb muliebrity of his companion could dull his perception of the fundamental egotism that shaped her views. The cause in which her birth should have enlisted all her sympathies, even at some sacrifice of reason, was of little account when weighed against apprehensions for her personal well-being.
She sought next to draw him to talk of himself and his life in London and in particular of the émigrés he had known there, and thus there came again a mention of her husband. This time she did not dismiss it as summarily as before. She sighed, fell into thought, then sighed again, and unburdened herself.
"Ah, my dear Marquis, you behold in me a woman to be commiserated."
"Say a woman to be admired, envied, desired even. But never to be commiserated."
She smiled upon him wistfully. "You do not know. Married as a child, without any voice in the matter, a marriage of convenience, arranged for me in the usual way, I am neither wife nor maid, and have been so for years." With increasing frankness she ran on. "I am a woman made for love; a woman in whom loving is a need; life's greatest need. And I am tied to a name, fettered to a worthless man whom I have not seen in years, and whom it would be a pleasure never to see again."
Quentin shrank a little. These were confidences that he did not desire. Mechanically he answered: "The times, no doubt, are to blame for that." And he thought that courtesy demanded the addition: "Only the force of cruel circumstances could keep a husband from your side, Madame."
Mockery thrilled in her laugh. "Not such a husband as mine. And then the different conditions in which we live. He is at large, moving freely amongst the men and women of his class, and finding consolation in abundant measure, whilst I am wasting here in solitude and even in danger. Do not despise me, Marquis, for pitying myself a little."
He could only repeat himself. "The times, Madame! The times are to blame for all."
"Neither the times nor his emigration. Bellanger married my fortune, not me."
They had come to lean upon the granite balustrade. Quentin turned his head to consider her: her splendid height, her noble shape and the beauty and vitality of her countenance.
"That is not to be believed, Madame, when one beholds you."
The languorous eyes smiled wistfully into his. Her fine hand fell caressingly upon his arm. "I thank you for that, my friend. Almost you restore me some self-respect. For a woman neglected by her husband is in danger of despising herself. Do you know that he desired me to share his emigration as little as I desired to accompany him?"
"Of what do you complain, then? It seems to me that you are quits."
A sort of horror filled her glance. "You laugh at me," she reproached him. "Perhaps I deserve it for inviting your pity. But you deceived me."
"I, Madame?"
"You seemed sympathetic. Your eyes are kind. I thought you would understand, or I should not have ranted so. Forgive me."
Contritely he abased himself, comforting her with assurances of liveliest feeling for so sad a case. But as if his attitude had chilled her, she gave him no more of her confidences that day.
Neither, however, did she deny him her company. Assiduous in her attentions and solicitous for his entertainment, she seemed in the days that followed to have no other thought or care. She rode with him mornings, now through the woodlands beyond the immense meadows of Coëtlegon, now farther afield, over the wide moorland of Menez, empty of all save gorse and broom, reaching it by way of a country wasting for lack of cultivation and through villages of mud huts with unglazed windows, tenanted by grim-faced men and women.
He was drawn to perceive in this squalor the justification of the Revolution against a system that permitted it. Unconvincingly she would answer him that much of the present indigence was a result of the chouannerie. Fields remained indifferently cultivated because the peasantry under arms abandoned them at the first summons to the brigandage composing the warfare they conducted.
Daily, after dinner, she would take him to the estang of Coëtlegon, a pleasant little artificial lake contrived for irrigation purposes and fed by waters of the Liè, to fish for the monster carp that inhabited it; and in the evenings she taught him backgammon, whilst her melancholy, self-effacing mother sat eternally knitting.
She was not only of a superb, alluring beauty, but gay and witty when not concerned to parade her unfortunate circumstances; and even when engaged in this, she seemed to employ subtlest arts of seduction, as if inviting Quentin to make free with treasures neglected by their lawful lord. She was not to suspect that the eyes of his mind setting beside her the chaste image of Germaine de Chesnières, found the rich muliebrity of Louise du Grégo excessive and almost repellent. Assigning to timidity his reticences, she displayed herself with an increasing boldness, which still had no power to move him from his restrained and formal courtliness. Under cover of this he grew impatient of the delay, and ventured at last, on the evening of the fifth day of his visit, gently to approach the subject of his purpose there.
They were alone in the library of the château, a chamber which owed its existence and equipment to the late Marquis du Bot du Grégo, who had been a man of studious habits. She had brought him there to show him the illuminated missals and the incunabula which her father had taken pride in collecting, and which in value represented so considerable a fortune that she had more than ordinary cause for thankfulness that Coëtlegon had not shared the fate of so many Breton châteaux during the days of revolutionary incendiarism.
He turned from the last of the missals she had displayed. "Madame, I begin to grow conscious of my monstrous abuse of your hospitality."
"Have you not every claim upon it? Do you forget the great debt we owe you? But perhaps you grow impatient here. You find us dull." She confronted him wistfully, at close quarters, beside the heavy oaken table, on which the ponderous volumes lay.
"How can you suppose it? I grow impatient only of my own encroachments."
"That you may certainly dismiss. Our steward is proving dilatory, I know. Can you blame me if I am not distressed by it? It is ordinarily so lonely for me here. I have been so . . . so happy in your companionship. Why should I conceal it? I have hardly given a thought to the matter of the money. I avoid unpleasant thoughts, having had too many of them. And that thought is unpleasant because bound up with the thought of your departure."
She had drawn nearer still as she spoke, and the rich swell of her breast was within an inch of his own. Her moist, red lips were parted in a gentle smile.
"Madame, you are too good."
"Too good? Too good for what?" She turned aside with a sigh. "Caradec has gone to Ploermel, to endeavour to collect what is still needed of the money for you. But rents in these days are difficult to obtain. Hence a delay, which I say that I cannot deplore. Content you, however, that no effort will be spared to satisfy you." She lowered her voice to a gentle murmur, her eyes played over him with an increasing languor. "To satisfy you must always be our aim. We owe so much to the late Marquis. Oh, and for your own sake as well. You are a man to whom a woman could deny nothing."
He drew back a step, out of the enveloping aura of her seductiveness, and parried so direct a thrust by a jest and a laugh. "Madame, you give me news of myself." Then, turning aside, and moving slowly towards the window he added: "I recognize in it another proof of your great goodness towards me."
Hungrily her dark eyes followed the lithe, graceful figure.
"You might recognize more than that," she breathed.
"Only if I were a coxcomb."
She was silent for a long moment. When next she spoke there was a hint of hoarseness in her voice. "How terrible is your self-restraint."
He thought it well that one of them should practise it. "How terrible," he evaded, "is the necessity that imposes it."
She caught her breath. "Ah! What necessity is that?"
Because he did not know, himself, he answered darkly: "Madame, there are things of which I cannot speak."
That hint of a mystery raised a barrier for a moment. In the next her feminine wit and persistence were overcoming it. She rustled to his side again, and stood with him looking out upon a sweep of lawn to the tall yew hedge that enclosed a garden. The lawn was unkempt, almost a field, and the hedge was ragged; for Coëtlegon, which in normal times had maintained a dozen gardeners, now employed but one. The Revolution had served to prove that if you destroy the rich, you destitute those who live upon them.
"My friend, what is it that oppresses you?" Her voice was rich in sympathy. "Confide in me. A burden shared is a burden halved. Let me help you. Regard me as a friend who would spare herself nothing where she might serve you."
The caressing hoarseness of her muted voice, her touch upon him, the consciousness of her warm, palpitating, sensuous loveliness, the very perfume that hung about her, a subtle distillation as of lilac, began to trouble his senses. He fought sternly against these impalpable tentacles that were laying hold of him, yet ever with a chivalrous reluctance to bruise her feelings.
"Madame, I have no words in which to mark my sense of the honour that you do me."
"No words are needed." It was almost a whisper. She leaned against him. He had but to turn, and she would be in his arms. And it was only by doing violence to himself that he succeeded in drawing away from that alluring contact.
"You are right, Madame. Words will not serve. It is by deeds that I must prove my gratitude, my awareness of the debt in which your friendship places me. And when occasion offers you shall not find me wanting."
He scarcely knew what he was saying. But whilst he spoke mechanically, he obeyed the need again to be widening the distance between them. As he ceased, there was a silence in which she stood curiously regarding him. There was a flush on her normally pallid cheeks, and her quickened breathing showed itself in the heave of the lovely breast, so generously displayed by the low square cut of her corsage. Then she laughed a little, softly, on a rather jangled note.
"I wonder what it is that makes you afraid of me?"
"Perhaps it is the fear of myself," he answered just as boldly, and added quickly: "By your gracious leave, Madame, I think I will take the air before we sup."
On that, and in the best order that he could command, he made his retreat.
An hour later, Lazare Hoche, the General commanding the Republican Army of Cherbourg, arrived unexpectedly at Coëtlegon, to crave its hospitality and to create a diversion and procure Quentin the relief which had become an urgent necessity.