A Blot on the Scutcheon Part 22

"Yes, I," she replied--"Mademoiselle de Varenac. You will see they will listen to me as well as to Morice, and if the worst came, and they made mock of a woman's command, I would don man's dress and proclaim myself the Marquis."

Wild words, but daring spirit.

How different to gentle, shy Cecile!

Yet the young Count had nothing but reverence and admiration in his heart as he looked into the beautiful face animated with that kindred courage which made of her sweet comrade as well as fair lady. But Michael Berrington's brow was knit in a frown of perplexity.

"It is impossible, Mistress Gabrielle," he said. "How could you journey thither alone and unattended, even if there were not a hundred other dangers?"

"Dangers!" she scoffed, flushing. "How can one talk of dangers after the news you bring?"

Her eyes challenged him.

"Did you not yourself tell me that honour is above everything?" she demanded.

"A man's honour----"

"You are scarcely complimentary, Mr. Berrington. I see you find that of a woman poor stuff which needs no defending."

"Mistress, indeed you wholly mistake----"

"Besides, I shall not go alone," she added, with a smile succeeding the frown. "You will both be with me."

She held out her hands.

It was here that her cousin interposed.

"Nay, Gabrielle," he said--and Michael, with a jealous pang, noted how his voice lingered over her name--"you yourself know well that we are not proper escort for you without another----"

"Chaperon?" she asked quickly. "Oh, if that is all, I will take Nurse Bond. But go I _shall_, and at once."

"Mistress Gabrielle, think----"

She paused, her dark eyes raised to Michael's perplexed and shadowed face.

"I do think," she replied softly. "And that is why I am going. I may save Varenac, I may save a very n.o.ble cause; still, it is true I may fail in all that, yet I vow to succeed in one thing--I will save my brother."

Long he looked into the sweet, childish face, which had grown so inexpressibly dear to him, and, reading there the purpose of high resolve, bowed low and stood aside.

At least she had bidden him ride with her, and he would be at hand to protect her with his life against those dangers which before had been without reality.

But de Quernais, claiming the right of cousinship, must needs have the last word.

"Ma cousine," he whispered, catching at her hand, and raising it to his lips, "what shall I say? From despair springs hope, and you are the angel who brings it. Yes, yes. They will listen to you. My heart tells me so. They will listen to you, and Brittany will save not only herself but all France. We will save the King and our fair Queen too.

Ah, ciel! could I think otherwise I should go mad. And la Rouerie will thank you himself for the n.o.ble part you play."

He spoke as though that last were reward enough for all.

But Gabrielle cared nothing for la Rouerie. It was her brother, her only brother, whom she went to save,--his honour which he, too weak to hold it, must give into her keeping.

Thus she would act as Michael himself acted, and he would approve.

Seeing that, shining through the trouble in his face, she herself could afford to smile.

They would save Morry together, save Varenac too, and come home as the heroes and heroines of gilded romance ever did, to live happily ever after.

No wonder that sweet seventeen, seeing dangers and difficulties _couleur de rose_ under love's glamour, ran singing softly upstairs to acquaint Nurse Bond of the journey before her.

CHAPTER XIV

ON BRETON SOIL

A solitary traveller along a bleak and desolate road--solitary, that is, to all intents and purposes, since he could comprehend scarcely a word spoken by the st.u.r.dy Breton peasant who jogged along on foot by his horse's side.

Morice Conyers was in anything but good humour.

Away from the merry throng at Almack's and Arthur's, things in general presented a vastly different complexion.

In a certain set it had been fashionable to talk glibly of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and to drink b.u.mpers to the health of those who strove for them across the Channel. The young bloods of the coffee-houses--though only that particular coterie, mind you--found it easy and amusing to toast such an upheaval of law and order.

And the Ma.r.s.eillaise was a demned catchy tune. Thus the pigeons prepared themselves for roasting.

And French chefs were not lacking.

That was how Morry Conyers became a member of the London Corresponding Society, a membership which consisted in talking very largely on a score of subjects of which he knew nothing, and vowing, by tremendous oaths, to a.s.sist the French Republic as far as lay in his power.

Empty phrases, emptier oaths. But the day of reckoning had most unexpectedly come. Marcel Trouet knew to a hair how to play his mouse.

Flattery and high-sounding jargon of binding vows had succeeded admirably, and Morice, reluctant at first, had begun to look upon himself as a fine hero, whose name would be spoken in every London coffee-house and club before history--and Marcel Trouet--had done with him. Twinges of conscience had been sternly repressed, drowned in the "flowing bowl," to whose honour every wit and poet sang.

But ghosts will rise at night, and they were rising now on every side--impalpable, shadowy creatures, less tangible than the brooding mists which floated over the desolate lande before him, like the fleeing spirits of a phantom army.--Ghosts of memories, ghost of honour, ghost of his better self, ghost of little Gabrielle, whom he loved well enough in his crooked, careless way,--all ready to taunt him and upbraid him as he rode onwards to Varenac.

How oppressive the silence was! How wild and dreary the scene around him!

Half Breton himself by birth, his mother's native land was calling to him with that strange, mysterious voice which can be heard only by Celtic ears.

A strange, indefinable longing had stirred within him as he strode through the narrow streets of St. Malo; it was quickening now into stronger life as he listened to the moaning of the wind as it swept across from the coast and over the purple moorland.

A minor note it struck; yet who shall deny that truest sweetness lingers in that key?

Nature calling to her child, not through the beautiful but the sorrowful.

Grey crags, heather-crowned landes, lines of yellow sand-dunes, the fading light of an autumn evening, and through all, above all, the melancholy charm which allures rather than repels, crying aloud of sorrow, yet singing its wild music as melodiously as any Lorelei on charmed rock.

Not that Morice Conyers heard it all; only vaguely it struck his heart, reproaching him in that he, a son of Brittany, came, as a thief in the night, to betray his land and add to her burden of lament.