The Maid of Honour Volume I Part 11

"Nice enough. Your father had good taste," the governess remarked, with another portentous yawn. "But what do I want with your trinkets?

Eh? I have only to say the word to be bedecked with the family jewels."

First pin, plunged well into the flesh. Gabrielle turned white, but did not abandon her purpose.

"What harm have I ever done you?" she asked, quietly.

"Harm!" echoed Aglae. "The harm of coming into the world, and making of yourself a perpetual nuisance. n.o.body here wants you. Why can't you go out of it?"

"I wish to be taught about Mesmer and his theories," pursued Gabrielle, with a courage which should have compelled respect. "Give me lessons and I will pay you."

"_You_ pay me?" laughed Aglae amused. "My price might be too high for your purse."

The marquise looked at the governess in mild surprise. Could it be that she did not know how the case stood with regard to money? It was not for her to enlighten the interloper. The fact was, that as the marquis received what he wanted, the subject of filthy lucre was never mentioned in the household.

"The carriage has been ordered, and I will go with you to-day." She decided quietly.

"What!" shrieked Aglae, tired of the interview. "You want to go to Montbazon? Do you know that we are going to operate upon old de Vaux?

My poor soul! You would only be most desperately in the way, seeing how ignorant and in experienced you are. Come. Saints prefer the truth, I'm told, though I don't find it always pleasant; but then I'm not a saint, you see. I would have you realise that your method is deplorable. You have managed so ill as to drive the marquis from his own breakfast-table with your ridiculous woful airs. The luckless master of the house has been hunted from the dining-hall. For a saint, I call that ungenerous." Pin No. 2.

"I may be incompetent to amuse--that is my misfortune," sighed the marquise; "but it is strange that one with so good a heart as he, should treat her so harshly who loves him with all her soul."

"Love!" laughed the governess with insolence, much tickled. "You don't know what it means. How just it is that one so fair should be so brainless! All you could give him was the clammy affection of a fish.

No wonder that anything so chilly should be returned with thanks."

Gabrielle's cheeks began to burn, her eyes to sparkle. "It is not for you who eat my bread to shower insults on me! Till you came," she said, "we got on well enough. I took what he had to give with grat.i.tude. I have endured too much from you, and know now that you are wicked. Beware lest you push me to extremity."

"Till I came?" echoed the governess. "Till then it was the worthy abbe's tact that kept things going, no thanks to you. One of the few just rules of this bad world is that as we make our bed we lie on it.

Your bed is full of creases? Too late, my dear, to smooth them. So I am the kill-joy, am I? Ask your husband whether he was ever so happy as since my coming? You poor, puling, whining bat!" pursued Aglae, surveying her victim with withering scorn. "You could not perceive that natures such as his require a master--a strong hand to lead, an iron will to guide, a whip to drive, if need be. Here is the hand to which he has learnt to cling and shall cling to--to the end."

Mademoiselle flourished the large square-fingered hand so close to the marquise's face that she recoiled.

"Why, even your children care more for me than you," she scoffed. Pin No. 3. "No doubt I have bewitched them? You should get me burned as a sorceress, and start your life afresh. I freely give you this advice, so never say I am ill-natured. Puling and whining adds loathing to indifference. Cheerfully accept the fate you've carved, and make the best of it. Now you must really excuse me; I must dress, for I never keep the marquis waiting;" and with that she firmly pushed the marquise from the room and slammed the door in her face.

It was cruelly put, but true--all of it. With sinking heart the pale chatelaine admitted it was true. Too late now for remedy. The woman had taken Clovis in that powerful hand of hers, and twisted him round her little finger. Would it be of any use to make the appeal to him from which she had shrunk so long? No. The woman had laid stress on the fact that he had come actually to avoid her presence, would not even sit at table with her. Nothing short of absolute aversion could deprive her thus of every privilege of wife and mother. What had she done to deserve it?

Painfully the chatelaine reviewed her empty life. If she had gone too far with one of the Paris swains she could not have been more completely ostracised. He was indifferent even then, heeding not her incomings or outgoings, and yet he must once have cared a little for his young wife, for then his eyes were sometimes fixed on her with genuine satisfaction. Never now. By what intangible, invisible degrees had things come to this grievous pa.s.s? Must she take the woman's advice, and strive to look with cheerfulness on the inevitable? A wife, yet no wife! What was to be the end of it? Only twenty-five years old. How wide a waste of barren dreariness in front ere she might hope for rest.

A sound of wheels on the gravel--the carriage was gone. On the box was a wondrous array of parcels. Clovis and Aglae were engaged in so animated a discussion that the children on the front seat crowed and clapped hands with glee, marking the gesticulations of papa and the dear, funny, brown woman. Their elfin laughter reverberated among the grim pinnacles and turrets, and as the carriage turned into a woody glade, Gabrielle saw from her seat in the moat-garden little Camille climb upon the woman's knee and press her rosy face against the brown one. The action smote the marquise as with a knife-stab, and she moaned as if in bodily pain. "She usurps my place completely,"

murmured the hapless lady, deadly pale. "I am as little a mother as a wife. Oh, G.o.d grant me strength to endure! Though I be without the gate, teach me to be thankful that they are happy."

She was aware of a long shadow on the gra.s.s, and a gentle voice by her side echoed her own thought.

"Alone--always alone," the suave abbe said, scrutinizing with lazy satisfaction the delicacy and whiteness of his hands. "How is it, dear marquise, that you only of our coterie are heavy-hearted? You need rousing. What will you gain by moping except a loss of beauty and a bad digestion? They've gone off to Montbazon, Clovis and his affinity and the babes--twittering like so many sparrows. I should like to survey the scene there, it will be most entertainingly ridiculous, but they won't let us miserable scoffers a.s.sist at the incantation. Our presence would annul the charm. What a divine day!" he continued, flinging himself on the gra.s.s in a graceful att.i.tude at the feet of the chatelaine. "How swiftly the seasons pa.s.s! These glorious summer days! How we enjoy the sun although we seek the shade, apparently ungrateful. We forget that the leaves will turn sallow and swirl down and die, and that we shall pine for warmth in vain. Why not? Why trouble about the future when the present is br.i.m.m.i.n.g with delight?"

The abbe, his hands clasped behind his head, was peering straight up into the blue, and what he saw there must have been pleasing, for he seemed as satisfied with everything in general as the cat that purrs before the fire.

"Why so dismal, my dear Gabrielle, on so perfect a morning as this; it savours of ingrat.i.tude to heaven?"

Gabrielle glanced down at him. Was he playing with her in malice, as the cat does with the mouse? Dismal, forsooth, when your heart overflows with misery!

Pharamond was in a retrospective mood, and dreamily surveyed the past as he might some moving panorama.

"Let me see," he said. "How long have we dwelt here a model family? A year and a half--rather more than a year and a half."

"Only that?" sighed Gabrielle. "It seems a lifetime."

"You are discontented? Yearn for the frippery of court life? I am not surprised. It is horribly selfish of us all to lock up such peerless beauty as yours to gloat over among ourselves."

"A worse than useless gift," remarked Gabrielle, with conviction, "bestowed on us by nature in her most malicious mood. Happiness is given to the ugly ones."

"At least they are saved the pang that accompanies the first wrinkle,"

a.s.serted Pharamond. "You refer to Mademoiselle Brunelle, I suppose; our charming Aglae. She appears to be happy enough indeed. Those large women of stoutish build possess a power of a.s.similation--of selecting what is best, and chewing the cud of its enjoyment. Ages ago, before I appeared on the scene, you were discontented. Yes, you were, dear Gabrielle. It was my privilege then to bring back sunshine to this gloomy spot. You might have rewarded me but you were unkind. I did not complain, but endured your cruelty without a murmur. It was my solicitude that unwrinkled your rose-leaves. You might have rewarded me, I say, and you would not, and yet I bore no malice."

A foreboding of new evil darkened around Gabrielle's heart. "Why refer to that episode that was condoned, and dead, and buried?"

Without changing his att.i.tude, the abbe pursued purringly--

"For those halcyon days you had me to thank--me only, remember that, and you could not be grateful. Ingrat.i.tude must be gently chidden, for it goes ill with beauty--as a mother gently chides a well-beloved one.

I crumpled the leaves again, deliberately squeezed them into tiny roughnesses, that you might learn how much you owed me. I confess it was my doing. It was for your own good I did it."

The marquise sat like stone. What was this new gulf slowly yawning--and she who looked to him for help!

"Did you never guess that it was I? No? How singular. Your intellect works slowly. I never say what I don't mean, and I warned you, unless I mistake sadly, that it depended on yourself whether I was to be friend or foe. Does you memory serve you? Yes? So glad."

"I had learned to trust you as a friend," murmured Gabrielle, huskily.

"A dear friend on whom to lean in trouble. Alas--alas! my only one!"

"Why, alas? You are, excuse me, so very foolish. As our sensible Aglae is so fond of saying, 'We do nothing for nothing in this world.' To sit at these dainty feet is in itself a privilege, but ardent men, made of hot flesh and blood, crave more. It's human nature to be grasping."

"If you have mercy, peace!" implored the pale lady in growing terror.

The abbe raised himself on his elbow and surveyed Gabrielle--as lovely as a startled fawn in her distress--with a smile that was quite paternal, and belied the green glitter from beneath the lids. "What a naughty girl," he chuckled, "to tempt a weak mortal with such charms.

I swear to you that with that marble skin, and those widely-opened eyes of violet, like eyes that see a phantom, and ruby lips just slightly parted, and that fluttering heaving bosom, you are ten times more beautiful than I have ever seen you yet! Tut, tut! Calm yourself.

Do not take me for that uncomfortable thing, a basilisk. I am not going to touch you, so don't look horrified. I am going away. That is why I spoke. I wished you to know how matters stand, and to reflect during my absence. It is desirable that you should quite comprehend that for weal or woe your future depends on me."

"Going away," echoed Gabrielle, relieved, and yet dismayed.

"It is necessary. Was it not delicately imagined to speak, as I had to speak, just on the eve of departure? Am I not considerate? We have lately had letters of strange purport from Paris. Outrageous rumours are abroad, which, if a whit of them is true, may mean serious peril to our cla.s.s. Over the affair of the Bastile the king was lamentably misguided. He and his ministers know now and bitterly regret their lack of purpose, for the sc.u.m, as was to be expected, has taken heart of grace and waxes impudent with impunity. So I am going to make a little trip to the capital, just to reconnoitre. Do not be alarmed. I think that the agitation is all moonshine. Reflect on what I have said, and remember that there's a limit to man's patience. Your future, whether for comfort or the reverse, depends entirely on me. I repeat it for the sake of emphasis. I gave you peace, then at my whim withdrew it. Have I made it clear that what I have done I can undo?"

"There are limits to a woman's patience as well as a man's," Gabrielle observed, grimly.

"Quite so," acquiesced the other. "Mademoiselle Brunelle has been a thorn in your flesh, which I regret. You have endured its irritation with fort.i.tude, for which you deserve all praise. It depends upon yourself whether or no the thorn be pruned away. For that you need my aid, which shall be freely tendered--on conditions that you wot of.

During my absence I have instructed the chevalier to watch, that you may be shielded from a.s.saults of the enemy. A useful watchdog is the chevalier, faithful and obedient, who will report to me everything that pa.s.ses. It is a sad pity that he takes to drink. I have observed lately that he takes more and more to the bottle. Of that by and by he must be cured. Meanwhile, I would have you consider the case from every point of view, and yourself deliver the verdict."

The Abbe Pharamond rose to his feet, and kissing his finger tips, departed.

Pressure from all quarters to the same end. You have made your bed--make the best of it; accept the inevitable cheerfully. What the fates decree we fight against in vain. Unfortunate Gabrielle.

Patience? Good heavens--how long-suffering was hers! And what had she gained by it? Rebuff. Persecution. Torture. Out of the labyrinth they had planted about her there were two exits. She might appeal to the marechal for protection, return to the shelter of his roof. But to let him learn that her life was shattered, that the marriage he had himself arranged had turned out so disastrously; it would break the old man's heart.