St. Martin's Summer Part 42

With a rare dignity, her head held high, she swept down the length of that n.o.ble chamber towards the Abbot, who stood erect as a pikestaff: at the tablehead, awaiting her. And well was it for him that he was a man of austere habit of mind, else might her majestic, incomparable beauty have softened his heart and melted the harshness of his purpose.

He raised his hand when she was within a sword's length of him, and with startling words, delivered in ringing tones, he broke the ponderous silence.

"Wretched woman," he denounced her, "your sins have found you out.

Justice is to be done, and your neck shall be bent despite your stubborn pride. Derider of priests, despoiler of purity, mocker of Holy Church, your impious reign is at an end."

Tressan fell back aghast, his face blenching to the lips; for if justice was at hand for her, as the Abbot said, then was justice at hand for him as well. Where had their plans miscarried? What flaw was there that hitherto she had not perceived? Thus he questioned himself in his sudden panic.

But the Marquise was no sharer in his tremors. Her eyes opened a trifle wider; a faint colour crept into her cheeks; but her only emotions were of amazement and indignation. Was he mad, this shaveling monk? That was the question that leapt into her mind, the very question with which she coldly answered his outburst.

"For madness only," she thought fit to add, "could excuse such rash temerity as yours."

"Not madness, madame," he answered, with chill haughtiness--"not madness, but righteous indignation. You have defied the power of Holy Church as you have defied the power of our sovereign lady, and justice is upon you. We are here to present the reckoning, and see its payment made in full."

She fancied he alluded to the body in the coffin--the body of her stepson--and she could have laughed at his foolish conclusions that she must account Florimond's death an act of justice upon her for her impiety. But her rising anger left her no room for laughter.

"I thought, sir priest, you were come to bury the dead. But it rather seems you are come to talk."

He looked at her long and sternly. Then he shook his head, and the faintest shadow of a smile haunted his ascetic face.

"Not to talk, madame; oh, not to talk," he answered slowly. "But to act, I have come, madame, to liberate from this shambles the gentle lamb you hold here prisoned."

At that some of the colour left her cheeks; her eyes grew startled: at last she began to realize that all was not as she had thought--as she had been given to understand.--Still, she sought to hector it, from very instinct.

"Vertudieu!" she thundered at him. "What mean you?"

Behind her Tressan's great plump knees were knocking one against the other. Fool that he had been to come to Condillac that day, and to be trapped thus in her company, a partner in her guilt. This proud Abbot who stood there uttering denunciations had some power behind him, else had he never dared to raise his voice in Condillac within call of desperate men who would give little thought to the sacredness, of his office.

"What mean you?" she repeated--adding with a sinister smile, "in your zeal, Sir Abbot, you are forgetting that my men are within call."

"So, madame, are mine," was his astounding answer, and he waved a hand towards the array of monks, all standing with bowed heads and folded arms.

At that her laughter rang shrill through the chamber. "These poor shavelings?" she questioned.

"Just these poor shavelings, madame," he answered, and he raised his hand again and made a sign. And then an odd thing happened, and it struck a real terror into the heart of the Marquise and heightened that which was already afflicting her fat lover, Tressan.

The monks drew themselves erect. It was as if a sudden gust of wind had swept through their ranks and set them all in motion. Cowls fell back and habits were swept aside, and where twenty monks had stood, there were standing now a score of nimble, stalwart men in the livery of Condillac, all fully armed, all grinning in enjoyment of her and Tressan's dismay.

One of them turned aside and locked the door of the chamber. But his movement went unheeded by the Dowager, whose beautiful eyes, starting with horror, were now back upon the grim figure of the Abbot, marvelling almost to see no transformation wrought in him.

"Treachery!" she breathed, in an awful voice, that was no louder than a whisper, and again her eyes travelled round the company, and suddenly they fastened upon Fortunio, standing six paces from her to the right, pulling thoughtfully at his mustachios, and manifesting no surprise at what had taken place.

In a sudden, blind choler, she swept round, plucked the dagger from Tressan's belt and flung herself upon the treacherous captain. He had betrayed her in some way; he had delivered up Condillac--into whose power she had yet had no time to think. She caught him by the throat with a hand of such nervous strength as one would little have suspected from its white and delicate contour. Her dagger was poised in the air, and the captain, taken thus suddenly, was palsied with amazement and could raise no hand to defend himself from the blow impending.

But the Abbot stepped suddenly to her side and caught her wrist in his thin, transparent hand.

"Forbear," he bade her. "The man is but a tool."

She fell back--dragged back almost by the Abbot--panting with rage and grief; and then she noticed that during the moment that her back had been turned the pall had been swept from the coffin. The sight of the bare deal box arrested her attention, and for the moment turned aside her anger. What fresh surprise did they prepare her?

No sooner had she asked herself the question than herself she answered it, and an icy hand seemed to close about her heart. It was Marius who was dead. They had lied to her. Marius's was the body they had borne to Condillac--those men in the livery of her stepson.

With a sudden sob in her throat she took a step towards the coffin. She must see for herself. One way or the other she must at once dispel this torturing doubt. But ere she had taken three paces, she stood arrested again, her hands jerked suddenly to the height of her breast, her lips parting to let out a scream of terror. For the coffin-lid had slowly raised and clattered over. And as if to pile terror for her, a figure rose from the box, and, sitting up, looked round with a grim smile; and the figure was the figure of a man whom she knew to be dead, a man who had died by her contriving--it was the figure of Garnache. It was Garnache as he had been on the occasion of his first coming to Condillac, as he had been on the day they had sought his life in this very room. How well she knew that great hooked nose and the bright, steely blue eyes, the dark brown hair, ash-coloured at the temples where age had paled it, and the fierce, reddish mustachios, bristling above the firm mouth and long, square chin.

She stared and stared, her beautiful face livid and distorted, till there was no beauty to be seen in it, what time the Abbot regarded her coldly and Tressan, behind her, turned almost sick with terror. But not the terror of ghosts was it afflicted him. He saw in Garnache a man who was still of the quick--a man who by some miracle had escaped the fate to which they supposed him to have succ.u.mbed; and his terror was the terror of the reckoning which that man would ask.

After a moment's pause, as if relishing the sensation he had created, Garnache rose to his feet and leapt briskly to the ground. There was nothing ghostly about the thud with which he alighted on his feet before her. A part of her terror left her; yet not quite all. She saw that she had but a man to deal with, yet she began to realize that this man was very terrible.

"Garnache again!" she gasped.

He bowed serenely, his lips smiling.

"Aye, madame," he told her pleasantly, "always Garnache. Tenacious as a leech, madame; and like a leech come hither to do a little work of purification."

Her eyes, now kindling again as she recovered from her recent fears, sought Fortunio's shifty glance. Garnache followed it and read what was in her mind.

"What Fortunio has done," said he, "he has done by your son's authority and sanction."

"Marius?" she inquired, and she was almost fearful lest she should hear that by her son he meant her stepson, and that Marius was dead.

"Yes, Marius," he answered her. "I bent him to my will. I threatened him that he and this fellow of his, this comrade in arms so worthy of his master, should be broken on the wheel together unless I were implicitly obeyed. If they would save their lives, this was their chance. They were wise, and they took it, and thus afforded me the means of penetrating into Condillac and rescuing Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye."

"Then Marius--?" She left her question unfinished, her hand clutching nervously at the bosom of her gown.

"Is sound and well, as Fortunio truthfully will have told you. But he is not yet out of my grasp, nor will be until the affairs of Condillac are settled. For if I meet with further opposition here, broken on the wheel he shall be yet, I promise you."

Still she made a last attempt at hectoring it. The long habit of mastership dies hard. She threw back her head; her courage revived now that she knew Marius to be alive and sound.

"Fine words," she sneered. "But who are you that you can threaten so and promise so?"

"I am the Queen-Regent's humble mouthpiece, madame. What I threaten, I threaten in her name. Ruffle it no longer, I beseech you. It will prove little worth your while. You are deposed, madame, and you had best take your deposition with dignity and calm--in all friendliness do I advise it."

"I am not yet come so low that I need your advice," she answered sourly.

"You may before the sun sets," he answered, with his quiet smile. "The Marquis de Condillac and his wife are still at La Rochette, waiting until my business here is done that they may come home."

"His wife?" she cried.

"His wife, madame. He has brought home a wife from Italy."

"Then--then--Marius?" She said no more than that. Maybe she had no intention of muttering even so much of her thoughts aloud. But Garnache caught the trend of her mind, and he marvelled to see how strong a habit of thought can be. At once upon hearing of the Marquis's marriage her mind had flown back to its wonted pondering of the possibilities of Marius's wedding Valerie.

But Garnache dispelled such speculations.

"No, madame," said he. "Marius looks elsewhere for a wife--unless mademoiselle of her own free will should elect to wed him--a thing unlikely." Then, with a sudden change to sternness--"Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye is well, madame?" he asked.

She nodded her head, but made no answer in words. He turned to Fortunio.

"Go fetch her," he bade the captain, and one of the men unlocked the door to let Fortunio out upon that errand.