Under the Red Robe
S >>
Stanley Weyman >> Under the Red Robe
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 | 14
And yet the flesh was weak. A day, twenty-four hours, two days,
might make the difference between life and death, love and death;
and I wavered. But at last I settled what I would do. At noon
the next day, the time at which I should have presented myself if
I had not heard this news, at that time I would still present
myself. Not earlier; I owed myself the chance. Not later; that
was due to him.
Having so settled it, I thought to rest in peace. But with the
first light I was awake, and it was all I could do to keep myself
quiet until I heard Frison stirring. I called to him then to
know if there was any news, and lay waiting and listening while
he went down to the street to learn. It seemed an endless time
before he came back; an age, when he came back, before he spoke.
'Well, he has not set off?' I asked at last, unable to control
my eagerness.
Of course he had not; and at nine o'clock I sent Frison out
again; and at ten and eleven--always with the same result. I was
like a man waiting and looking and, above all, listening for a
reprieve; and as sick as any craven. But when he came back, at
eleven, I gave up hope and dressed myself carefully. I suppose I
had an odd look then, however, for Frison stopped me at the door,
and asked me, with evident alarm, where I was going.
I put the little man aside gently.
'To the tables,' I said, 'to make a big throw, my friend.'
It was a fine morning, sunny, keen, pleasant, when I went out
into the street; but I scarcely noticed it. All my thoughts were
where I was going, so that it seemed but a step from my threshold
to the Hotel Richelieu; I was no sooner gone from the one than I
found myself at the other. Now, as on a memorable evening when I
had crossed the street in a drizzling rain, and looked that way
with foreboding, there were two or three guards, in the
Cardinal's livery, loitering in front of the great gates. Coming
nearer, I found the opposite pavement under the Louvre thronged
with people, not moving about their business, but standing all
silent, all looking across furtively, all with the air of persons
who wished to be thought passing by. Their silence and their
keen looks had in some way an air of menace. Looking back after
I had turned in towards the gates, I found them devouring me with
their eyes.
And certainly they had little else to look at. In the courtyard,
where, some mornings, when the Court was in Paris, I had seen a
score of coaches waiting and thrice as many servants, were now
emptiness and sunshine and stillness. The officer on guard,
twirling his moustachios, looked at me in wonder as I passed him;
the lackeys lounging in the portico, and all too much taken up
with whispering to make a pretence of being of service, grinned
at my appearance. But that which happened when I had mounted the
stairs and came to the door of the ante-chamber outdid all. The
man on guard would have opened the door, but when I went to
enter, a major-domo who was standing by, muttering with two or
three of his kind, hastened forward and stopped me.
'Your business, Monsieur, if you please?' he said inquisitively;
while I wondered why he and the others looked at me so strangely.
'I am M. de Berault,' I answered sharply. 'I have the entree.'
He bowed politely enough.
'Yes, M. de Berault, I have the honour to know your face,' he
said. 'But--pardon me. Have you business with his Eminence?'
'I have the common business,' I answered sharply. 'By which many
of us live, sirrah! To wait on him.'
'But--by appointment, Monsieur?'
'No,' I said, astonished. 'It is the usual hour. For the matter
of that, however, I have business with him.'
The man still looked at me for a moment in seeming embarrassment.
Then he stood aside and signed to the door-keeper to open the
door. I passed in, uncovering; with an assured face and
steadfast mien, ready to meet all eyes. In a moment, on the
threshold, the mystery was explained.
The room was empty.
CHAPTER XV
ST MARTIN'S SUMMER
Yes, at the great Cardinal's levee I was the only client! I
stared round the room, a long, narrow gallery, through which it
was his custom to walk every morning, after receiving his more
important visitors. I stared, I say, from side to side, in a
state of stupefaction. The seats against either wall were empty,
the recesses of the windows empty too. The hat sculptured and
painted here and there, the staring R, the blazoned arms looked
down on a vacant floor. Only on a little stool by the farther
door, sat a quiet-faced man in black, who read, or pretended to
read, in a little book, and never looked up. One of those men,
blind, deaf, secretive, who fatten in the shadow of the great.
Suddenly, while I stood confounded and full of shamed thought--
for I had seen the ante-chamber of Richelieu's old hotel so
crowded that he could not walk through it--this man closed his
book, rose and came noiselessly towards me.
'M. de Berault?' he said.
'Yes,' I answered.
'His Eminence awaits you. Be good enough to follow me.'
I did so, in a deeper stupor than before. For how could the
Cardinal know that I was here? How could he have known when he
gave the order? But I had short time to think of these things,
or others. We passed through two rooms, in one of which some
secretaries were writing, we stopped at a third door. Over all
brooded a silence which could be felt. The usher knocked,
opened, and, with his finger on his lip, pushed aside a curtain
and signed to me to enter. I did so and found myself behind a
screen.
'Is that M. de Berault?' asked a thin, high-pitched voice.
'Yes, Monseigneur,' I answered trembling.
'Then come, my friend, and talk to me.'
I went round the screen, and I know not how it was, the watching
crowd outside, the vacant ante-chamber in which I had stood, the
stillness and silence all seemed to be concentrated here, and to
give to the man I saw before me a dignity which he had never
possessed for me when the world passed through his doors, and the
proudest fawned on him for a smile. He sat in a great chair on
the farther side of the hearth, a little red skull-cap on his
head, his fine hands lying still in his lap. The collar of lawn
which fell over his cape was quite plain, but the skirts of his
red robe were covered with rich lace, and the order of the Holy
Ghost, a white dove on a gold cross, shone on his breast. Among
the multitudinous papers on the great table near him I saw a
sword and pistols; and some tapestry that covered a little table
behind him failed to hide a pair of spurred riding-boots. But as
I advanced he looked towards me with the utmost composure; with a
face mild and almost benign, in which I strove in vain to read
the traces of last night's passion. So that it flashed across me
that if this man really stood (and afterwards I knew that he did)
on the thin razor-edge between life and death, between the
supreme of earthly power, lord of France and arbiter of Europe,
and the nothingness of the clod, he justified his fame. He gave
weaker natures no room for triumph.
The thought was no sooner entertained than it was gone.
'And so you are back at last, M. de Berault,' he said gently. 'I
have been expecting to see you since nine this morning.'
'Your Eminence knew, then--' I muttered.
'That you returned to Paris by the Orleans gate last evening
alone?' he answered, fitting together the ends of his fingers,
and looking at me over them with inscrutable eyes. 'Yes, I knew
all that last night. And now, of your business. You have been
faithful and diligent, I am sure. Where is he?'
I stared at him and was dumb. In some way the strange things I
had seen since I had left my lodgings, the surprises I had found
awaiting me here, had driven my own fortunes, my own peril, out
of my head--until this moment. Now, at this question, all
returned with a rush, and I remembered where I stood. My heart
heaved suddenly in my breast. I strove for a savour of the old
hardihood, but for the moment I could not find a word.
'Well,' he said lightly, a faint smile lifting his moustache.
'You do not speak. You left Auch with him on the twenty-fourth,
M. de Berault. So much I know. And you reached Paris without
him last night. He has not given you the slip?'
'No, Monseigneur,' I muttered.
'Ha! that is good,' he answered, sinking back again in his
chair. 'For the moment--but I knew that I could depend on you.
And now where is he? What have you done with him? He knows
much, and the sooner I know it the better. Are your people
bringing him, M. de Berault?'
'No, Monseigneur,' I stammered, with dry lips. His very good-
humour, his benignity, appalled me. I knew how terrible would be
the change, how fearful his rage, when I should tell him the
truth. And yet that I, Gil de Berault, should tremble before any
man! With that thought I spurred myself, as it were, to the
task. 'No, your Eminence,' I said, with the energy of despair.
'I have not brought him, because I have set him free.'
'Because you have--WHAT?' he exclaimed. He leaned forward as he
spoke, his hands on the arm of the chair; and his eyes growing
each instant smaller, seemed to read my soul.
'Because I have let him go,' I repeated.
'And why?' he said, in a voice like the rasping of a file.
'Because I took him unfairly,' I answered.
'Because, Monseigneur, I am a gentleman, and this task should
have been given to one who was not. I took him, if you must
know,' I continued impatiently--the fence once crossed I was
growing bolder--'by dogging a woman's steps and winning her
confidence and betraying it. And whatever I have done ill in my
life--of which you were good enough to throw something in my
teeth when I was last here--I have never done that, and I will
not!'
'And so you set him free?'
'Yes.'
'After you had brought him to Auch?'
'Yes.'
'And, in point of fact, saved him from falling into the hands of
the Commandant at Auch?'
'Yes,' I answered desperately to all.
'Then, what of the trust I placed in you, sirrah?' he rejoined,
in a terrible voice; and stooping still farther forward he probed
me with his eyes. 'You who prate of trust and confidence, who
received your life on parole, and but for your promise to me
would have been carrion this month past, answer me that? What of
the trust I placed in you?'
'The answer is simple,' I said, shrugging my shoulders with a
touch of my old self. 'I am here to pay the penalty.'
'And do you think that I do not know why?' he retorted, striking
one hand on the arm of his chair with a force that startled me.
'Because you have heard, sir, that my power is gone! Because you
have heard that I, who was yesterday the King's right hand, am
to-day dried up, withered and paralysed! Because you have heard
--but have a care! have a care!' he continued with
extraordinary vehemence, and in a voice like a dog's snarl. 'You
and those others! Have a care, I say, or you may find yourselves
mistaken yet.'
'As Heaven shall judge me,' I answered solemnly, 'that is not
true. Until I reached Paris last night I knew nothing of this
report. I came here with a single mind, to redeem my honour by
placing again in your Eminence's hands that which you gave me on
trust, and here I do place it.'
For a moment he remained in the same attitude, staring at me
fixedly. Then his face relaxed somewhat.
'Be good enough to ring that bell,' he said.
It stood on a table near me. I rang it, and a velvet-footed man
in black came in, and gliding up to the Cardinal, placed a paper
in his hand. The Cardinal looked at it; while the man stood with
his head obsequiously bent, and my heart beat furiously.
'Very good,' his Eminence said, after a pause which seemed to me
to be endless, 'Let the doors be thrown open.'
The man bowed low, and retired behind the screen. I heard a
little bell ring somewhere in the silence, and in a moment the
Cardinal stood up.
'Follow me!' he said, with a strange flash of his keen eyes.
Astonished, I stood aside while he passed to the screen; then I
followed him. Outside the first door, which stood open, we found
eight or nine persons--pages, a monk, the major-domo, and several
guards waiting like mutes. These signed to me to precede them
and fell in behind us, and in that order we passed through the
first room and the second, where the clerks stood with bent heads
to receive us. The last door, the door of the ante-chamber, flew
open as we approached, voices cried, 'Room! Room for his
Eminence!' we passed through two lines of bowing lackeys, and
entered--an empty chamber.
The ushers did not know how to look at one another; the lackeys
trembled in their shoes. But the Cardinal walked on, apparently
unmoved, until he had passed slowly half the length of the
chamber. Then he turned himself about, looking first to one side
and then to the other, with a low laugh of derision.
'Father,' he said in his thin voice, 'what does the Psalmist say?
"I am become like a pelican in the wilderness and like an owl
that is in the desert!"'
The monk mumbled assent.
'And later in the same psalm, is it not written, "They shall
perish, but thou shalt endure?"'
'It is so,' the father answered. 'Amen.'
'Doubtless though, that refers to another life,' the Cardinal
said, with his slow wintry smile. 'In the meantime we will go
back to our books, and serve God and the King in small things if
not in great. Come, father, this is no longer a place for us.
VANITAS VANITATUM OMNIA VANITAS! We will retire.'
And as solemnly as we had come we marched back through the first
and second and third doors until we stood again in the silence of
the Cardinal's chamber--he and I and the velvet-footed man in
black. For a while Richelieu seemed to forget me. He stood
brooding on the hearth, his eyes on a small fire, which burned
there though the weather was warm. Once I heard him laugh, and
twice he uttered in a tone of bitter mockery the words,--
'Fools! Fools! Fools!'
At last he looked up, saw me, and started.
'Ah!' he said, 'I had forgotten you. Well, you are fortunate,
M. de Berault. Yesterday I had a hundred clients; to-day I have
only one, and I cannot afford to hang him. But for your liberty
that is another matter.'
I would have said something, pleaded something; but he turned
abruptly to the table, and sitting down wrote a few lines on a
piece of paper. Then he rang his bell, while I stood waiting and
confounded.
The man in black came from behind the screen.
'Take this letter and that gentleman to the upper guard-room,'
the Cardinal said sharply. 'I can hear no more,' he continued,
frowning and raising his hand to forbid interruption. 'The
matter is ended, M. de Berault. Be thankful.'
In a moment I was outside the door, my head in a whirl, my heart
divided between gratitude and resentment. I would fain have
stood to consider my position; but I had no time. Obeying a
gesture, I followed my guide along several passages, and
everywhere found the same silence, the same monastic stillness.
At length, while I was dolefully considering whether the Bastille
or the Chatelet would be my fate, he stopped at a door, thrust
the letter into my hands, and lifting the latch, signed to me to
enter.
I went in in amazement, and stopped in confusion. Before me,
alone, just risen from a chair, with her face one moment pale,
the next crimson with blushes, stood Mademoiselle de Cocheforet.
I cried out her name.
'M. de Berault,' she said, trembling. 'You did not expect to see
me?'
'I expected to see no one so little, Mademoiselle,' I answered,
striving to recover my composure.
'Yet you might have thought that we should not utterly desert
you,' she replied, with a reproachful humility which went to my
heart. 'We should have been base indeed, if we had not made some
attempt to save you. I thank Heaven, M. de Berault, that it has
so far succeeded that that strange man has promised me your life.
You have seen him?' she continued eagerly and in another tone,
while her eyes grew on a sudden large with fear.
'Yes, Mademoiselle,' I said. 'I have seen him, and it is true,
He has given me my life.'
'And--?'
'And sent me into imprisonment.'
'For how long?' she whispered.
'I do not know,' I answered. 'I fear during the King's
pleasure.'
She shuddered.
'I may have done more harm than good,' she murmured, looking at
me piteously. 'But I did it for the best. I told him all, and
perhaps I did harm.'
But to hear her accuse herself thus, when she had made this long
and lonely journey to save me, when she had forced herself into
her enemy's presence, and had, as I was sure she had, abased
herself for me, was more than I could bear.
'Hush, Mademoiselle, hush!' I said, almost roughly. 'You hurt
me. You have made me happy; and yet I wish that you were not
here, where, I fear, you have few friends, but back at
Cocheforet. You have done more for me than I expected, and a
hundred times more than I deserved. But it must end here. I was
a ruined man before this happened, before I ever saw you. I am
no worse now, but I am still that; and I would not have your name
pinned to mine on Paris lips. Therefore, good-bye. God forbid I
should say more to you, or let you stay where foul tongues would
soon malign you.'
She looked at me in a kind of wonder; then, with a growing
smile,--
'It is too late,' she said gently.
'Too late?' I exclaimed. 'How, Mademoiselle?'
'Because--do you remember, M. de Berault, what you told me of
your love-story under the guide-post by Agen? That it could have
no happy ending? For the same reason I was not ashamed to tell
mine to the Cardinal. By this time it is common property.'
I looked at her as she stood facing me. Her eyes shone under the
lashes that almost hid them. Her figure drooped, and yet a smile
trembled on her lips.
'What did you tell him, Mademoiselle?' I whispered, my breath
coming quickly.
'That I loved,' she answered boldly, raising her clear eyes to
mine. 'And therefore that I was not ashamed to beg--even on my
knees.'
I fell on mine, and caught her hand before the last word passed
her lips. For the moment I forgot King and Cardinal, prison and
the future, all; all except that this woman, so pure and so
beautiful, so far above me in all things, loved me. For the
moment, I say. Then I remembered myself. I stood up, and stood
back from her in a sudden revulsion of feeling.
'You do not know me!' I cried, 'You do not know what I have
done!'
'That is what I do know,' she answered, looking at me with a
wondrous smile.
'Ah! but you do not!' I cried. 'And besides, there is this
--this between us.' And I picked up the Cardinal's letter. It
had fallen on the floor. She turned a shade paler. Then she
cried quickly,--
'Open it! open it! It is not sealed nor closed.'
I obeyed mechanically, dreading with a horrible dread what I
might see. Even when I had it open I looked at the finely
scrawled characters with eyes askance. But at last I made it
out. And it ran thus:--
'THE KING'S PLEASURE IS THAT M. GIL DE BERAULT, HAVING MIXED
HIMSELF UP IN AFFAIRS OF STATE, RETIRE FORTHWITH TO THE DEMESNE
OF COCHEFORET, AND CONFINE HIMSELF WITHIN ITS LIMITS UNTIL THE
KING'S PLEASURE BE FURTHER KNOWN.
'THE CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU.'
We were married next day, and a fortnight later were at
Cocheforet, in the brown woods under the southern mountains;
while the great Cardinal, once more triumphant over his enemies,
saw with cold, smiling eyes the world pass through his chamber.
The flood tide of his prosperity lasted thirteen years from that
time, and ceased only with his death. For the world had learned
its lesson; to this hour they call that day, which saw me stand
alone for all his friends, 'The Day of Dupes.'
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 | 14