Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 5

  “M. de Luynes,” he murmured at last, “you appear to find entertainment in making enemies, and you do it wantonly.”

  “Have you brought me aside to instruct me in the art of making friends?”

  “Possibly, M. de Luynes; and without intending an offence, permit me to remark that you need them.”

  “Mayhap. But I do not seek them.”

  “I have it in my heart to wish that you did; for I, M. de Luynes, seek to make a friend of you. Nay, do not smile in that unbelieving fashion. I have long esteemed you for those very qualities of dauntlessness and defiance which have brought you so rich a crop of hatred. If you doubt my words, perhaps you will recall my attitude towards you in the horse-market yesterday, and let that speak. Without wishing to remind you of a service done, I may yet mention that I stood betwixt you and the mob that sought to avenge my friend Canaples. He was my friend; you stood there, as indeed you have always stood, in the attitude of a foe. You wounded Canaples, maltreated Vilmorin, defied me; and yet but for my intervention, mille diables sir, you had been torn to pieces.”

  “All this I grant is very true, Monsieur,” I made reply, with deep suspicion in my soul. “Yet, pardon me, if I confess that to me it proves no more than that you acted as a generous enemy. Pardon my bluntness also — but what profit do you look to make from gaining my friendship?”

  “You are frank, Monsieur,” he said, colouring slightly, “I will be none the less so. I am a frondeur, an anti-cardinalist. In a word, I am a gentleman and a Frenchman. An interloping foreigner, miserly, mean-souled, and Jesuitical, springs up, wins himself into the graces of a foolish, impetuous, wilful queen, and climbs the ladder which she holds for him to the highest position in France. I allude to Mazarin; this Cardinal who is not a priest; this minister of France who is not a Frenchman; this belittler of nobles who is not a gentleman.”

  “Mort Dieu, Monsieur—”

  “One moment, M. de Luynes. This adventurer, not content with the millions which his avaricious talons have dragged from the people for his own benefit, seeks, by means of illustrious alliances, to enrich a pack of beggarly nieces and nephews that he has rescued from the squalor of their Sicilian homes to bring hither. His nieces, the Mancinis and Martinozzis, he is marrying to Dukes and Princes. ‘T is not nice to witness, but ‘t is the affair of the men who wed them. In seeking, however, to marry his nephew Andrea to one of the greatest heiresses in France, he goes too far. Yvonne de Canaples is for some noble countryman of her own — there are many suitors to her hand — and for no nephew of Giulio Mazarini. Her brother Eugène, himself, thinks thus, and therein, M. de Luynes, you have the real motive of the quarrel which he provoked with Andrea, and which, had you not interfered, could have had but one ending.”

  “Why do you tell me all this, Monsieur?” I inquired coldly, betraying none of the amazement his last words gave birth to.

  “So that you may know the true position of affairs, and, knowing it, see the course which the name you bear must bid you follow. Because Canaples failed am I here to-day. I had not counted upon meeting you, but since I have met you, I have set the truth before you, confident that you will now withdraw from an affair to which no real interest can bind you, leaving matters to pursue their course.”

  He eyed me, methought, almost anxiously from under his brows, as he awaited my reply. It was briefer than he looked for.

  “You have wasted time, Monsieur.”

  “How? You persist?”

  “Yes. I persist. Yet for the Cardinal I care nothing. Mazarin has dismissed me from his service unjustly and unpaid. He has forbidden me his nephew’s company. In fact, did he know of my presence here with M. de Mancini, he would probably carry out his threat to hang me.”

  “Ciel!” cried St. Auban, “you are mad, if that be so. France is divided into two parties, cardinalists and anti-cardinalists. You, sir, without belonging to either, stand alone, an enemy to both. Your attitude is preposterous!”

  “Nay, sir, not alone. There is Andrea de Mancini. The boy is my only friend in a world of enemies. I am growing fond of him, Monsieur, and I will stand by him, while my arm can wield a sword, in all that may advance his fortunes and his happiness. That, Monsieur, is my last word.”

  “Do not forget, M. de Luynes,” he said — his suaveness all departed of a sudden, and his tone full of menace and acidity— “do not forget that when a wall may not be scaled it may be broken through.”

  “Aye, Monsieur, but many of those who break through stand in danger of being crushed by the falling stones,” I answered, entering into the spirit of his allegory.

  “There are many ways of striking,” he said.

  “And many ways of being struck,” I retorted with a sneer.

  Our words grew sinister, our eyes waxed fiery, and more might have followed had not the door leading to the staircase opened at that moment to admit Andrea himself. He came, elegant in dress and figure, with a smile upon his handsome young face, whose noble features gave the lie to St. Auban’s assertion that he had been drawn from a squalid Sicilian home. Such faces are not bred in squalor.

  In utter ignorance of the cabal against him, he greeted St. Auban — who was well known to him — with a graceful bow, and also Vilmorin, who stood in the doorway with Malpertuis, and who at the sight of Mancini grew visibly ill at ease. In coming to Choisy, the Vicomte had clearly expected to do no more than second St. Auban in the duel which he thought to see forced upon Andrea. He now realised that if a fight there was, he might, by my presence, be forced into it. Malpertuis looked fierce and tugged at his moustachios, whilst his companions returned Andrea’s salutation — St. Auban gravely, and Vilmorin hesitatingly.

  “Ha, Gaston,” said the boy, advancing towards me, “our host tells me that two ladies who have been shipwrecked here wish to do me the honour of occupying my apartments for an hour or so. Ha, there they are,” he added, as the two girls came suddenly forward. Then bowing— “Mesdames, I am enchanted to set the poor room at your disposal for as long as it may please you to honour it.”

  As the ladies — of whose presence St. Auban had been unaware — appeared before us, I shot a glance at the Marquis, and, from the start he gave upon beholding them, I saw that things were as I had suspected.

  Before they could reply to Andrea, St. Auban suddenly advanced:

  “Mesdemoiselles,” quoth he, “forgive me if in this miserable light I did not earlier discover your presence and offer you my services. I do so now, with the hope that you will honour me by making use of them.”

  “Merci, M. de St. Auban,” replied the dark-haired one — whom I guessed to be none other than Yvonne de Canaples herself— “but, since this gentleman so gallantly cedes his apartments to us, all our needs are satisfied. It would be churlish to refuse that which is so graciously proffered.”

  Her tone was cold in the extreme, as also was the inclination of her head wherewith she favoured the Marquis. In arrant contrast were the pretty words of thanks she addressed to Andrea, who stood by, blushing like a girl, and a damnable scowl did this contrast draw from St. Auban, a scowl that lasted until, escorted by the landlord, the two ladies had withdrawn.

  There was an awkward pause when they were gone, and methought from the look on St. Auban’s face that he was about to provoke a fight after all. Not so, however, for, after staring at us like a clown whilst one might tell a dozen, he turned and strode to the door, calling for his horse and those of his companions.

  “Au révoir, M. de Luynes,” he said significantly as he got into the saddle.

  “Au révoir, M. de Luynes,” said also Malpertuis, coming close up to me. “We shall meet again, believe me.”

  “Pray God that we may not, if you would die in your bed,” I answered mockingly. “Adieu!”

  CHAPTER VI. OF HOW ANDREA BECAME LOVE-SICK

  With what fictions I could call to mind I put off Andrea’s questions touching the peculiar fashion of St. Auban’s leave-taking. Tell him the truth and expose to hi
m the situation whereof he was himself the unconscious centre I dared not, lest his high-spirited impetuosity should cause him to take into his own hands the reins of the affair, and thus drive himself into irreparable disaster.

  Andrea himself showed scant concern, however, and was luckily content with my hurriedly invented explanations; his thoughts had suddenly found occupation in another and a gentler theme than the ill-humour of men, and presently his tongue betrayed them when he drew the conversation to the ladies to whom he had resigned his apartments.

  “Pardieu! Gaston,” he burst out, “she is a lovely maid — saw you ever a bonnier?”

  “Indeed she is very beautiful,” I answered, laughing to myself at the thought of how little he dreamt that it was of Yvonne St. Albaret de Canaples that he spoke, and not minded for the while to enlighten him.

  “If she be as kind and gentle as she is beautiful, Gaston, well — Uncle Giulio’s plans are likely to suffer shipwreck. I shall not leave Choisy until I have spoken to her; in fact, I shall not leave until she leaves.”

  “Nevertheless, we shall still be able to set out, as we had projected, after dining, for in an hour, or two at most, they will proceed on their journey.”

  He was silent for some moments, then:

  “To the devil with the Cardinal’s plans!” quoth he, banging his fist on the table. “I shall not go to Blois.”

  “Pooh! Why not?”

  “Why not?” He halted for a moment, then in a meandering tone— “You have read perchance in story-books,” he said, “of love being born from the first meeting of two pairs of eyes, as a spark is born of flint and steel, and you may have laughed at the conceit, as I have laughed at it. But laugh no more, Gaston; for I who stand before you am one who has experienced this thing which poets tell of, and which hitherto I have held in ridicule. I will not go to Blois because — because — enfin, because I intend to go where she goes.”

  “Then, mon cher, you will go to Blois. You will go to Blois, if not as a dutiful nephew, resigned to obey his reverend uncle’s wishes, at least because fate forces you to follow a pair of eyes that have — hum, what was it you said they did?”

  “Do you say that she is going to Blois? How do you know?”

  “Eh? How do I know? Oh, I heard her servant speaking with the hostler.”

  “So much the better, then; for thus if his Eminence gets news of my whereabouts, the news will not awaken his ever-ready suspicions. Ciel! How beautiful she is! Noted you her eyes, her skin, and what hair, mon Dieu! Like threads of gold!”

  “Like threads of gold?” I echoed. “You are dreaming, boy. Oh, St. Gris! I understand; you are speaking of the fair-haired chit that was with her.”

  He eyed me in amazement.

  “‘T is you whose thoughts are wandering to that lanky, nose-in-the-air Madame who accompanied her.”

  I began a laugh that I broke off suddenly as I realised that it was not Yvonne after all who had imprisoned his wits. The Cardinal’s plans were, indeed, likely to miscarry if he persisted thus.

  “But ‘t was the nose-in-the-air Madame, as you call her, with whom you spoke!”

  “Aye, but it was the golden-haired lady that held my gaze. Pshaw! Who would mention them in a breath?”

  “Who, indeed?” said I, but with a different meaning.

  Thereafter, seeing him listless, I suggested a turn in the village to stretch our limbs before dining. But he would have none of it, and when I pressed the point with sound reasoning touching the benefits which health may cull from exercise, he grew petulant as a wayward child. She might descend whilst he was absent. Indeed, she might require some slight service that lay, perchance, in his power to render her. What an opportunity would he not lose were he abroad? She might even depart before we returned; and than that no greater calamity could just then befall him. No, he would not stir a foot from the inn. A fig for exercise! to the devil with health! who sought an appetite? Not he. He wished for no appetite — could contrive no base and vulgar appetite for food, whilst his soul, he swore, was being consumed by the overwhelming, all-effacing appetite to behold her.

  Such meandering fools are most of us at nineteen, when the heart is young — a flawless mirror ready to hold the image of the first fair maid that looks into it through our eyes, and as ready — Heaven knows! — to relinquish it when the substance is withdrawn.

  But I, who was not nineteen, and the mirror of whose heart — to pursue my metaphor — was dulled, warped, and cracked with much illusage, grew sick of the boy’s enthusiasm and the monotony of a conversation which I could divert into no other channel from that upon which it had been started by a little slip of a girl with hair of gold and sapphire eyes — I use Andrea’s words. And so I rose, and bidding him take root in the tavern, if so it pleased his fancy, I left him there.

  Wrapped in my cloak, for the air was raw and damp, I strode aimlessly along, revolving in my mind what had befallen at the Connétable that morning, and speculating upon the issue that this quaint affair might have. In matters of love, or rather, of matrimony — which is not quite the same thing — opposition is common enough. But the opposers are usually members of either of the interested families. Now the families — that is to say, the heads of the families — being agreed and even anxious to bring about the union of Yvonne de Canaples and Andrea de Mancini, it was something new to have a cabal of persons who, from motives of principle — as St. Auban had it — should oppose the alliance so relentlessly as to even resort to violence if no other means occurred to them. It seemed vastly probable that Andrea would be disposed of by a knife in the back, and more than probable that a like fate would be reserved for me, since I had constituted myself his guardian angel. For my own part, however, I had a pronounced distaste to ending my days in so unostentatious a fashion. I had also a notion that I should prove an exceedingly difficult person to assassinate, and that those who sought to slip a knife into me would find my hide peculiarly tough, and my hand peculiarly ready to return the compliment.

  So deeply did I sink into ponderings of this character that it was not until two hours afterwards that I again found myself drawing near the Connétable.

  I reached the inn to find by the door a coach, and by that coach Andrea; he stood bareheaded, despite the cold, conversing, with all outward semblances of profound respect, with those within it.

  So engrossed was he and so ecstatic, that my approach was unheeded, and when presently I noted that the coach was Mademoiselle de Canaples’s, I ceased to wonder at the boy’s unconsciousness of what took place around him.

  Clearly the farrier had been found at last, and the horse shod afresh during my absence. Loath to interrupt so pretty a scene, I waited, aloof, until these adieux should be concluded, and whilst I waited there came to me from the carriage a sweet, musical voice that was not Yvonne’s.

  “May we not learn at least, Monsieur, the name of the gentleman to whose courtesy we are indebted for having spent the past two hours without discomfort?”

  “My name, Mademoiselle, is Andrea de Mancini, that of the humblest of your servants, and one to whom your thanks are a more than lavish payment for the trivial service he may have been fortunate enough to render you.”

  Dame! What glibness doth a tongue acquire at Court!

  “M. Andrea de Mancini?” came Yvonne’s voice in answer. “Surely a relative of the Lord Cardinal?”

  “His nephew, Mademoiselle.”

  “Ah! My father, sir, is a great admirer of your uncle.”

  From the half-caressing tone, as much as from the very words she uttered, I inferred that she was in ignorance of the compact into which his Eminence had entered with her father — a bargain whereof she was herself a part.

  “I am rejoiced, indeed, Mademoiselle,” replied Andrea with a bow, as though the compliment had been paid to him. “Am I indiscreet in asking the name of Monsieur your father?”

  “Indiscreet! Nay, Monsieur. You have a right to learn the name of those who are under an oblig
ation to you. My father is the Chevalier de Canaples, of whom it is possible that you may have heard. I am Yvonne de Canaples, of whom it is unlikely that you should have heard, and this is my sister Geneviève, whom a like obscurity envelops.”

  The boy’s lips moved, but no sound came from them, whilst his cheeks went white and red by turns. His courtliness of a moment ago had vanished, and he stood sheepish and gauche as a clown. At length he so far mastered himself as to bow and make a sign to the coachman, who thereupon gathered up his reins.

  “You are going presumably to Blois?” he stammered with a nervous laugh, as if the journey were a humorous proceeding.

  “Yes, Monsieur,” answered Geneviève, “we are going home.”

  “Why, then, it is possible that we shall meet again. I, too, am travelling in that direction. A bientôt, Mesdemoiselles!”

  The whip cracked, the coach began to move, and the creaking of its wheels drowned, so far as I was concerned, the female voices that answered his farewell. The coachman roused his horses into an amble; the amble became a trot, and the vehicle vanished round a corner. Some few idlers stopped to gaze stupidly after it, but not half so stupidly as did my poor Andrea, standing bareheaded where the coach had left him.

  I drew near, and laid my hand on his shoulder; at the touch he started like one awakened suddenly, and looked up.