The Grey Cloak, Harold MacGrath [smart books to read TXT] 📗

had returned that evening from Three Rivers, if not happy, at least in a contented frame of mind . . . to learn that a lie had sent him into the wilderness, a lie crueler in effect than the accepted truth! . . . to learn that the woman he loved was about to become a nun! No! She should not become a nun. He would accept his father's word, resume his titles long grown dusty, and set about winning this mysterious beauty. For she was worth winning, from the sole of her charming foot to the glorious crown on her brow. He would see her again; Quebec was indeed small. He would cast aside the mantle of gloom, become a good fellow, laugh frequently, sing occasionally; in fine, become his former self.

Here Victor rushed in, breathless.

"Paul, lad," he cried, "have you heard the astonishing news?"

"News?"

"Monsieur le Marquis is here!"

"I have seen him, Victor, and spoken to him,"

"A reconciliation? The Virgin save me, but you will return to France!"

"Not I, lad," with a gaiety which deceived the poet. "I will tell you something later. Have you had your supper?"

"No."

"Then off with us both. And, a bottle of the governor's burgundy which I have been saving."

"Wine?" excitedly.

"Does not the name sound good? And, by the way, did you know that that woman with the grey mask, who was at the Corne d'Abondance . . ."

"I have seen her," quietly.

"What is her name, and what has she done?" indifferently.

"Her name I can not tell you, Paul."

"Can not? Why not 'will not'?"

"Will not, then. I have given my promise."

"Have I ever kept a secret from you, Victor?"

"One."

"Name it."

"That mysterious mademoiselle whom you call Diane. You have never even told me what she looks like."

"I could not if I tried. But this woman in the mask; at least you might tell me what she has done."

"Politics. Conspiracy, like misery, loves company. . . . Who has been burning paper?" sniffing.

"Burning paper?"

"Yes; and here's the ash. You've been burning something?"

"Not I, lad," with an abrupt laugh. "Hang it, let us go and eat."

"Yes; I am anxious to know why Monsieur le Marquis is here."

"And the burgundy; it will be like old times." There was sweat on the Chevalier's forehead, and he drew his sleeve across it.


From an obscure corner of the council chamber the figure of a man emerged. He walked on tiptoe toward the table. The black ash on the table fascinated him. For several moments he stared at it.

"'I kiss your handsome grey eyes a thousand times'," he said, softly. He touched the ash with the tip of his finger, and the feathery particles sifted about, as if the living had imparted to the inanimate the sense of uneasiness. "For a space I thought he would kiss her. In faith, there is more to Monsieur du Cévennes than I had credited to his account. It takes power, in the presence of that woman, to resist the temptation to kiss her. But here's a new element, a new page which makes interesting reading."

The man twirled the ends of his mustache.

"What a curious game of chess life is! Here's a simple play made complicated. How serenely I moved toward the coveted checkmate, to find a castle towering in the way! I came in here to await young Montaigne. He fails to appear. Chance brings others here, and lo! it becomes a new game. And D'Hérouville will be out of hospital to-morrow or next day. Quebec promises to become as lively as Paris. Diane, he called her. What is her object in concealing her name? By all the gargoyles of Notre Dame, but she would lure a bishop from his fish of a Friday!"

He gathered up a pinch of the ash and blew it into the air.

"Happily the poet smelt nothing but paper. Lockets and love-letters; and D'Hérouville and I for cutting each other's throats! That is droll. . . . My faith, I will do it! It will be a tolerably good stroke. 'I kiss your handsome grey eyes a thousand times'! Chevalier, Chevalier! Dip steel into blood, and little comes of it; but dip steel into that black liquid named ink, and a kingdom topples. She is to become a nun, too, she says. I think not."

It was the Vicomte d'Halluys; and when, shortly after this soliloquy, Montaigne came in, he saw that the vicomte was smiling and stabbing with the tip of his finger some black ash which sifted about on the table.


CHAPTER XX

A DEATH WARRANT OR A MARRIAGE CONTRACT

"Well, Gabrielle," said Anne, curiously, "what do you propose to do?"

Madame went to the window; madame stared far below the balcony at the broad river which lay smooth and white in the morning sunshine; madame drummed on the window-casing.

"It is a mare's nest," she replied, finally.

"First of all, there is D'Hérouville. True, he is in the hospital," observed Anne, "but he will shortly become an element."

Madame shrugged.

"There's the vicomte, for another."

Madame spread the most charming pair of hands.

"And the poet," Anne continued.

Madame tucked away a rebel curl above her ear.

"And last, but not least, there's the Chevalier du Cévennes. The governor was very kind to permit you to remain incognito."

Madame's face became animated. "What an embarrassing thing it is to be so plentifully and frequently loved!"

"If only you loved some one of these noble gentlemen!"

"D'Hérouville, a swashbuckler; D'Halluys, a gamester; Du Cévennes, a fop. Truly, you can not wish me so unfortunate as that?"

"Besides, Monsieur du Cévennes does not know nor love you."

"I suppose not. How droll it would be if I should set about making him fall in love with me!-to bring him to my feet and tell him who I am-and laugh!"

"I should advise you not to try it, Gabrielle. He might become formidable. Are you not mischief endowed with a woman's form?"

"A mare's nest it is, truly; but since I have entered it willingly . . ."

"Well?"

"I shall not return to France on the Henri IV," determinedly.

"But Du Cévennes and the others?"

"I shall avoid Monsieur du Cévennes; I shall laugh in D'Hérouville's face; the vicomte will find me as cold and repelling as that iceberg which we passed near Acadia."

"And Monsieur de Saumaise?" Anne persisted.

"Well, if he wishes it, he may play Strephon to my Phyllis, only the idyl must go no further than verses. No, Anne; his is a brave, good heart, and I shall not play with it. I am too honest."

"Well, at any rate, you will not become dull while I am on probation. And you will also become affiliated with the Ursulines?"

Madame smiled with gentle irony. "Oh, yes, indeed! And I shall teach Indian children to speak French as elegantly as Brantôme wrote it, and knit nurses' caps for the good squaws. . . . Faith, Anne, dear, if I did not love you, the Henri IV could not carry me back to France quick enough." Madame leaned from the window and sniffed the forest perfumes.

"You will be here six months, then."

"That will give certain personages in France time to forget."

"You were very uncivil to Monsieur le Marquis on board."

"I adore that race, the Pérignys," wrathfully. "Twenty times I had the impulse to tell him who I am."

"But you did not. And what can he be doing here?"

"Doubtless he intends to become a Jesuit father: or he is here for the purpose of taking his son back to France. Like the good parent he is, he does not wait for the prodigal's return. He comes after him."

"Monsieur le Marquis was taken ill last night, so I understand."

"Ah! perhaps the prodigal scorned the fatted calf!"

"Yon are very bitter."

"I have been married four years; my freedom is become so large that I know not what to do with it. Married four years, and every night upon retiring I have locked the door of my bedchamber. And what is the widow's portion? The menace of the block or imprisonment. I was a lure to his political schemes, and I never knew it till too late. Could I but find that paper! Writing is a dangerous and compromising habit. I shall never use a pen again; not I. One signs a marriage certificate or a death-warrant."

Anne crossed the room and put her arms round her companion, who accepted the caress with moist eyes.

"You will have me weeping in a moment, Gabrielle," said Anne.

"Let us weep together, then; only I shall weep from pure rage."

"There is peace in the convent," murmured Anne.

"Peace is as the heart is; and mine shall never know peace. I have been disillusioned too soon. I should go mad in a convent. Did I not pass my youth in one,-to what end?"

"If only you loved a good man."

"Or even a man," whimsically. "Go on with the thought."

"The mere loving would make you happy."

Madame searched Anne's blue eyes. "Dear heart, are you not hiding something from me? Your tone is so mournful. Can it be?" as if suddenly illumined within.

"Can what be?" asked Anne, nervously.

"That you have left your heart in France."

"Oh, I have not left my heart in France, Gabrielle. Do you not feel it beating against your own?"

"Who can he be?" musingly.

"Gabrielle, Gabrielle!" reproachfully.

"Very well, dear. If you have a secret I should be the last to force it from you."

"See!" cried Anne, suddenly and eagerly; "there is Monsieur du Cévennes and his friend coming up the path. Do you not think that there is something manly about the Chevalier's head?"

"I will study it some day; that is, if I feel the desire."

"Do you really hate him?"

"Hate him? Faith, no; that would be admitting that he interested me."

The Chevalier and the poet carried axes. They had been laboring since five o'clock that morning superintending the construction of a wharf. In truth, they were well worth looking at: the boyishness of one and the sober manliness of the other, the clear eyes, tanned skin, the quick, strong limbs. The poet's eye was always roving, and he quickly saw the two women in the window above.

"Paul, is not that a woman to be loved?" he said; with a gaiety which was not spontaneous.

"Which one?" asked the Chevalier, diplomatically.

"The one with hair like the haze in the morning."

"The simile is good," confessed the Chevalier. "But there is something in the eye which should warn a man."

"Eye? Can you tell the color