The Maid of Honour Volume Ii Part 8

"Madame! They will tear you in pieces!" implored Gabrielle, clinging to her skirts.

"So be it," returned the queen proudly, and drawing herself up to her imperial height, she opened the door with steady hand and went forth with her two children. Unrecognized, she penetrated as far as the council chamber where a group of Grenadiers hastily surrounded and pushed her into the embrasure of a window which they barricaded with a table. For the present, to attempt to reach the king was hopeless. The palace was flooded with a ragged rout, who, in intervals of yelling pocketed such portable property as was handy. They were covered with dirt and blood, and, for the most part, wore the red cap recently introduced by Collot d'Herbois as the orthodox symbol of the free.

Meanwhile a messenger had rushed to the a.s.sembly to announce the danger of the palace, and a number of deputies hastened thither with all speed, to slay the wreckers and prevent a tragedy. The mob, drunk with too potent a dose of liberty, had committed a deplorable outrage, and were on the threshold of a great crime without definite purpose.

Exhorted to sobriety, upbraided for excesses which stained the holy cause in the face of Europe, the rabblement sulkily withdrew, gnashing their teeth and snarling with gestures of menace, as they filed past the queen; and she watched them go in gloomy silence, with a heart that welled with horror and eyes that swam in tears.

For the moment peril was averted, the palace safe; but who might tell when the unreasoning flood, lashed by the agitators into foam, would, in caprice, flow back and drown its inmates? General indignation prevailed among all grades of the better cla.s.ses. Though to the new way of thinking kings and queens might be objects of dislike, yet, so long as they existed, it was not fair that at any moment their privacy should be invaded by the unwashed, their furniture broken, their children terrified. The a.s.sembly was ashamed. The partisans of the court were unwise enough to bl.u.s.ter. Rumours were abroad that, in consequence of the outrage, the royal servants were to be armed; that the Swiss Guard would be ordered to fire upon the first sans-culotte who ventured within shot. So far was this from the truth that his majesty had determined to dismiss from about his person those untrustworthy friends, who, without possessing the power to save, had so often compromised him. The queen, too, was firmly resolved that she would not have upon her head the blood of those who were not directly in her service. Gently, but without wavering, she bade adieu, amongst others, to the Marquise de Gange, who begged hard for permission to remain.

"No," said Marie Antoinette, gloomily, "you have duties of your own from which I must no longer keep you. Heaven bless you, my dear friend. To such calumnies as may reach your ears you will give no credence, but will pray for an unhappy woman who has not deserved her fate. Give me your thoughts and prayers, for we shall meet no more on earth."

Her forebodings were but too soon realized. Only seven weeks later the Palace of the Tuileries was stormed, and the devoted guards ma.s.sacred under circ.u.mstances of peculiar atrocity. Soon afterwards the royal family were removed to the Temple, whence, in the course of a long drawn martyrdom, the unfortunate queen was transferred to a squalid hole in the Conciergerie on her rough road to the scaffold and release.

CHAPTER XVII.

GABRIELLE HAS AN IDEA.

Loth as she was to leave her benefactress in so critical a plight, there was no denying that the Marquise de Gange was an inc.u.mbrance in the royal dwelling; yet another helpless female for the men to protect; and that there were duties with regard to others, that demanded the attention of the heiress.

Clovis had valid reason for his impatience to be off. The prisons were opening their maws to swallow the blue-blooded, who tumbled in by shoals on frivolous and ridiculous charges. Paris was becoming so disagreeably warm, that self-preservation bade all and sundry to depart unless tied by special reasons. Now, as the abbe pointed out (who grew almost as impatient as his brother, in his enforced idleness), there was nothing whatever to detain the provincials from returning to their chateau, since the queen had dismissed the marquise.

Gabrielle agreed that the time was come for a journey, and even made an attempt to induce the aged marechale to join the party. It would be nice to have her mother with her, and perhaps the suburban residence might be fraught with unknown drawbacks. But at the suggestion, the old lady lifted up her voice in such querulous screechings that her daughter was silenced.

"You should know, but for your innate selfishness," complained the old dame, "that I can't bear the place. Its crepuscular corridors and frowning front give me the shivers. I wonder you can endure it yourself, but you always were so peculiar and inconsiderate. I will visit you for a week or so some day, if I pluck up courage; but, live there? The family vault with a pile of coffins for furniture, would be more cheerful as a dwelling-place."

Then Gabrielle's mind went through a curious and unexpected phase. The queen's reference to their horoscopes had set the marquise thinking.

The prophecy regarding her majesty was being fulfilled, slowly but surely, to the letter. A friend informed her with grief and lamentations, that Louise de Savoye, Princesse de Lamballe, had been seized and confined at La Force. At this moment, the least secure refuges in France were the prisons, for the blood-drunken populace had a way of making raids upon the jails, and maltreating incarcerated aristos, out of pure devilry. First, Her Majesty; then Madame de Lamballe. Who was she, Marquise de Gange, that she should hope to escape her doom? She was, like the others, predestined to misfortune.

True. She had suffered deeply already, and Heaven had relented for awhile; but there was nothing to justify her in face of the prophecy, in supposing that it was more than a respite. Try to grapple with it as she would, Gabrielle, as the time for moving approached, was oppressed by a growing presentiment of ill. From what quarter it was to come she could not guess, but it was her bounden duty to take such precautions as were possible. Were the darlings to be stricken down and die? Or was the impending misfortune to consist in the sacking of the chateau? It was impossible to foresee and avert the trouble. In contrast to the storm that had blown over, the family outlook was fair enough. Though the domestic sky was cloudflecked, there was no specially black bank of vapour striding up the vault. Clovis was bearish and ill-humoured. That was nothing new. The abbe was all smiles and benevolence, his leisure much occupied in a laudable and Christian endeavour to break the chevalier of tippling. Toinon wrote that, summoned to Blois by his party, Jean Boulot was gone for awhile, and for her part she rejoiced at the riddance, for was it not too bad that he should prefer his vulgar noisy Jacobin clubs and fustian nonsense to the charming society of his betrothed?

Strive as she would to argue with and laugh at herself, Gabrielle could not shake off her gloom. The gamekeeper--who had saved her life--was gone away to Blois, and Toinon hoped that he would stop there? Why should she feel as if a staunch and trusty friend had left her side? The chatelaine had every right to feel angry that a paid servant should throw up his place with such scant ceremony, and yet was not the abruptness of the act strictly in tune with the man's independent principles and the spirit of the time?

He was a rough, honest, warm-hearted, wrong-headed fellow, with whom Toinon was justly annoyed in that she had failed to reform his ways.

All this was true enough, but Gabrielle could not shake off a sense of loneliness, of vague uneasy dread, a conviction of impending calamity; and suddenly something whispered that before leaving Paris it would be well to execute a testament.

History is full of strange presentiments which come like warnings, but which have the peculiar property of defeating themselves; for they exercise sometimes a fatal fascination akin to that of the snake over the bird, which paralyses the victim's efforts to escape the threatened peril.

Trying to argue down her fears, she made it the more evident to herself that whatever came of it, duty pointed in the direction of Lorge. The grim chateau was her own now; the fields were her own fields; the peasants her own va.s.sals. In the interests of the darlings she would be very energetic, learn to farm, improve the property, and draw the bonds closer than heretofore between mistress and tenants.

But what if the clever abbe's prognostications were to be realized, and the flames which she had seen burning so fiercely in Paris, were indeed to spread dismay and ruin even to remote Touraine? Was he right in the advice which she had resented so warmly--the unwelcome advice to be content with the money-bags at Geneva, and abandon the chateau to the wreckers? No. She had always disapproved the craven conduct of the fugitives. It was not in the nature of things for the present cataclysm to go on for ever. Temporary insanity would give way to reason; the mob, glutted by impunity and gorged by excess, would calm down again, and those who had had presence of mind to hold their own while pa.s.sively bowing before the storm would reap the reward of their bravery.

The chatelaine knew herself to be a favourite with the people and that her presence at the chateau would go far in the event of a revolutionary wave, to save it from destruction. She could not believe that the shadow she felt approaching could come from that quarter.

Whence then? It was probably a bugaboo, born of nervousness, resulting from sympathy with the desperate condition of the queen. Dismissed by Marie Antoinette, her place was at Lorge on the estates, and since flesh is gra.s.s, it was only right to make a will.

While revolving these things, Gabrielle's attention was naturally turned upon her husband. It was odd that he should resent so deeply her one act of independence. We know that what the const.i.tutionally weak resent the most, is being openly convicted of their weakness.

Could that humiliating quarter of an hour with the family solicitor have left so deep an impression on his easy-going soul? and, while her repulsed affection had faded into indifference, was his unconcern growing into positive aversion? It occurred to her now for the first time, as singular that when he wanted money of late the abbe had always been the spokesman. Did he feel his dependent position so acutely that he could not bring himself to mention the sordid subject, or was it that he had come to dislike his wife so much, that he could not bring himself to speak to her at all? She resolved to open her mind to the abbe about it, for Clovis must be infatuated and purblind indeed, not to feel a.s.sured that, though she was resolved to carry out her father's wishes and keep a firm hold of the purse strings, they would not be drawn too tight.

The abbe's thin features relaxed into a whimsical smile, and he slyly nodded, as with some stammering and much circ.u.mlocution she exposed her suspicions to him. Was it, or not, abominably wicked of her to have such suspicions at all? How girlish and how lovely she looked in her blushing confusion, as she enlarged on the unsavoury topic, excusing herself for harbouring such thoughts.

"You dear guileless dove of a Gabrielle!" he laughed. "Yet not so simple as you seem, for you have guessed aright. Alack, yes!

Unpardonably sensitive as he may appear to you, your little escapade--you will allow me to call it an escapade?---cut him so completely to the quick that he has never recovered it, but crouches down and winces still like a well-whipped hound, dreading another scourging. You deem yourself proud? Learn that an honest man's pride is of more delicate texture than a woman's. And it _is_ hard, you know, for a proud man to be placed before witnesses in so equivocal a position as that in which you placed your husband."

The position in which _she_ had placed _him?_ What of the intolerable one in which _he_ had chosen to place _her?_ Men always start with the absurd premise that they must be in the right. Gabrielle was deeply offended that one on whom she had vainly squandered all the treasures of her love could think this meanly--read her so amiss!

Tears of mortification due to insulted womanhood were in her eyes, and as he marked the colour, like that of an opening moss rose, that flooded plastic neck and sh.e.l.l-like ear, the blood of Pharamond throbbed so fiercely that he had much ado to maintain his impa.s.sible demeanour.

"Since you forgave me, I take Heaven to witness," he purred, bending as near to her as he dared, "that I have striven to heal your differences."

"Differences? There need be none; my love for him is dead," Gabrielle remarked slowly, so absorbed in the contemplation of shattered Penates as to pa.s.s unheeded the gleam of triumph on the face that was so near her shoulder. "You may tell him, if you like, that I shall not behave ill to him, because he has outraged me. A fair allowance shall be regularly paid to him, or to you if he prefers it. Monsieur Galland is coming here this afternoon about my testament, and the arrangement shall be carried out at once." Then after a gloomy pause, she added with a sigh, "To think he could ever suppose that I should want him to ask me favours!"

So her unrequited and too persistent love had perished of starvation!

It was dead--quite, quite dead, at last! With its last struggle how great a barrier was swept away, and how much better was the chance for one who had obstinately persevered!

Excellent! The empty sh.e.l.l was ready for the hermit crab! Pharamond could see ultimate triumph, within measurable distance, and after that a ripe revenge. A fair allowance regularly paid? Gilded, degrading slavery! Clovis would repudiate the plan; refuse to have anything to do with it.

But what was this about a will?

"M. Galland--about your will, this afternoon?" the abbe echoed with raised brows. "On whose advice are you acting? I declare you are marvellously changed, every inch a woman of business. Pooh, pooh! Is there not ample time? For a beautiful young creature like yourself to prate of such grisly things seems like an untimely invitation to the worms."

"Little I care for life, G.o.d knows!" sighed Gabrielle, wearily, "were it not for----"

"Yes, yes, I know--the cherubs. About this will. It takes me by surprise, and you have deigned to trust me. Your pardon if I seem importunate. I scarcely dare to ask, and yet----"

"What its conditions are to be? There need be no secret as to that, since my mind is quite made up. I intend to leave my dear father's fortune to my mother, in trust for Victor and Camille?"

Here was a sledge-hammer blow, full on the skull from behind. For an instant Pharamond was paralysed, then his nimble brain took in at a glance all the facets of this new and unpalatable situation. Who could have put into her shapely head so inconvenient an idea as this? Good heavens! If this project were not nipped in the bud, averted somehow, the future position of the three brothers promised to be a worse one even than in the days of the marechal! What the abbe had himself looked upon as a scarcely possible contingency, and had held up to the marquis as a mere red rag to inflame his feelings withal against his wife, might at any moment become an actual and horrible fact. At this rate the marquis and his brothers were not to be provided for at all; were in the event of this woman's death to be pitched out like so much lumber! And she had the brazen presumption to expatiate on their lot to their faces. A gush of ungovernable rage, bubbled into the abbe's brain, an unreasoning whirl, which he vainly endeavoured to master, as he strode up and down the room.

"Clovis is to be made a laughing stock to suit your malice!" he exclaimed hotly, as he turned on the astonished marquise. "He counts for nothing, although your lawful husband. No wonder if you have earned his hate as well as mine, since you are resolved to pour insult upon insult."

"Of course, he will have his allowance secured until his death,"

Gabrielle explained, with a red spot of annoyance on either cheek.

"Pah! Allowance! Allowance! A pittance for a schoolboy, which he will fling back into your face. If he takes my advice, he will toss your paltry allowance in your lap, since you treat him like a baby! A dole of charity to a beggar!"

The marquise sat dumb with hands before her, petrified, for this man would fain persuade her that she was a monster of iniquity, on the threshold of a stupendous crime, and yet she knew that her motives were of the purest.

He continued, biting his nails in his agitation, addressing his words half to himself and half to her.

"Women's horizon is so circ.u.mscribed, her stream of thought so narrow, that if left alone she rarely avoids being ungenerous. Engrossed by trivialities how can it be otherwise? Sly, too, and double-faced. So this is your sublime forgiveness, in which I was fool enough to trust!

A trap! A trick! You were but biding your time, till you could injure me by maltreatment of my brother. My first duty is to him, and I tell you plainly, that never with my consent will he accept your ign.o.ble terms."

Gabrielle made no answer but sat dumb.

"Eh, bien, madame," he cried, suddenly wheeling round and standing in front of her, his thin lips curled into a snarl. "The result of your insensate acts be on your head. Mark that the fault is yours if, after all my efforts to annihilate the past, you force me to be your enemy.

Here below we must be judged by acts, madame, not by sugared words that mean nothing. Why compel me to war when I would fain bring peace?

If you execute so iniquitous an instrument as you propose, you will have made thereby three implacable enemies; and a woman without friends should think twice before making one. Your husband never wronged you with that governess, you foolish girl; you were racked by your own silly phantom jealousy. If you must have revenge, wreak it upon me, whose only fault was loving you too much. No need to start.

Cards down! Why should I deny that I loved you? The more fool I! But as your love for him has been crushed out, so, too, has mine for you, as to your sorrow you will learn."