The Trampling of the Lilies. Rafael Sabatini
she echoed. “I was not myself? What are you saying, Monsieur the Secretary?”
“Last night, and again just now, you were so kind, you—you smiled so sweetly—”
“Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed, angrily interrupting him. “See what you are for all your high-sounding vaunts of yourself and your attributes! A woman may not smile upon you, may not say one kind word to you, but you must imagine you have made a conquest. Ma foi, you and yours do not deserve to be treated as anything but vassals. When we show you a kindness, see how you abuse it. We extend to you our little finger and you instantly lay claim to the whole arm. Because last night I permitted myself to exchange a jest with you, because I chance to be kind to you again to-day, you repay me with insults!”
“Stop!” he cried, rousing himself once more. “That is too much to say, Mademoiselle. To tell a woman that you love her is never to insult her. To be loved is never to be slighted. Upon the meanest of His creatures it is enjoined to love the same God whom the King loves, and there is no insult to God in professing love for Him. Would you make a woman more than that?”
“Monsieur, you put questions I have no mind to answer; you suggest a discussion I have no inclination to pursue. For you and me let it suffice that I account myself affronted by your words, your tone, and your manner. You drive me to say these things; by your insistence you compel me to be harsh. We will end this matter here and now, Monsieur, and I will ask you to understand that I never wish it reopened, else shall I be forced to seek protection at the hands of my father or my brother.”
“You may seek it now, Suzanne,” quoth a voice from the thicket at her back, a voice which came to startle both of them though in different ways. Before they had recovered from their surprise the Marquis de Bellecour stood before them. He was a tall man of some fifty years of age, but so powerful of frame and so scrupulous in dress that he might have conveyed an impression of more youth. His face, though handsome in a high-bred way, was puffed and of an unhealthy yellow. But the eyes were as keen as the mouth was voluptuous, and in his carefully dressed black hair there were few strands of grey.
He came slowly forward, and his lowering glance wandered from his daughter to his secretary in inquiry. At last—
“Well?” he demanded. “What is the matter?”
“It is nothing, Monsieur,” his daughter answered him. “A trifling affair 'twixt M. la Boulaye and me, with which I will not trouble you.”
“It is not nothing, my lord,” cried La Boulaye, his voice vibrating oddly. “It is that I love your daughter and that I have told her of it.” He was in a very daring mood that morning.
The Marquis glanced at him in dull amazement. Then a flush crept into his sallow cheeks and mounted to his brow. An inarticulate grunt came from his thick lips.
“Canaille!” he exclaimed, through set teeth. “Can you have presumed so far?”
He carried a riding-switch, and he seemed to grasp it now in a manner peculiarly menacing. But La Boulaye was nothing daunted. Lost he already accounted himself, and on the strength of the logic that if a man must hang, a sheep as well as a lamb may be the cause of it, he took what chances the time afforded him to pile up his debt.
“There is neither insolence nor presumption in what I have done,” he answered, giving back the Marquis look for look and scowl for scowl. “You deem it so because I am the secretary to the Marquis de Bellecour and she is the daughter of that same Marquis. But these are no more than the fortuitous circumstances in which we chance to find ourselves. That she is a woman must take rank before the fact that she is your daughter, and that I am a man must take rank before the fact that I am your secretary. Not, then, as your secretary speaking to your daughter have I told this lady that I love her, but as a man speaking to a woman. To utter that should be—nay, is—the right of every man; to hear it should be honouring to every woman worthy of the name. In a primitive condition—”
“A thousand devils!” blazed the Marquis, unable longer to contain himself. “Am I to have my ears offended by this braying? Miserable scum, you shall be taught what is due to your betters.”
His whip cracked suddenly, and the lash leapt serpentlike into the air, to descend and coil itself about La Boulaye's head and face. A cry broke from the young man, as much of pain as of surprise, and as the lash was drawn back, he clapped his hands to his seared face. But again he felt it, cutting him now across the hand with which he had masked himself. With a maddened roar he sprang upon his aggressor. In height he was the equal of the Marquis, but in weight he seemed to be scarce more than the half of his opponent's. Yet a nervous strength dwelt unsuspected in those lean arms and steely wrists.
Mademoiselle stood by looking on, with parted lips and eyes that were intent and anxious. She saw that figure, spare and lithe as a greyhound, leap suddenly upon her father, and the next instant the whip was in the secretary's hands, and he sprang back from the nobleman, who stood white and quivering with rage, and perhaps, too, with some dismay.
“That I do not break it across your back, M. le Marquis, said the young man,” as he snapped the whip on his knee, “you may thank your years.” With that he flung the two pieces wide into the sunlit waters of the brook. “But I will have satisfaction, Monsieur. I will take payment for this.” And he pointed to the weal that disfigured his face.
“Satisfaction?” roared the Marquis, hoarse in his passion. “Would you demand satisfaction of me, animal?”
“No,” answered the young man, with a wry smile. “Your years again protect you. But you have a son, and if by to-morrow it should come to pass that you have a son no more, you may account yourself, through this”—and again he pointed to the weal—“his murderer.”
“Do you mean that you would seek to cross swords with the Vicomte?” gasped the nobleman, in an unbelief so great that it gained the ascendency over his anger.
“That is what I mean, Monsieur. In practice he has often done so. He shall do so for once in actual earnest.”
“Fool!” was the contemptuous answer, more coldly delivered now, for the Marquis was getting himself in hand. “If you come near Bellecour again, if you are so much as found within the grounds of the park, I'll have you beaten to death by my grooms for your presumption. Keep you the memory of that promise in mind, Sir Secretary, and let it warn you to avoid Bellecour, as you would a plague-house. Come, Suzanne,” he said, turning abruptly to his daughter, “Enough of this delightful morning have we already wasted on this canaille.”
With that he offered her his wrist, and so, without so much as another glance at La Boulaye, she took her departure.
The secretary remained where they had left him, pale of face—saving the fortuitous crimson mark which the whip had cut—and very sick at heart. The heat of the moment being spent, he had leisure to contemplate his plight. A scorned lover, a beaten man, a dismissed secretary! He looked sorrowfully upon his volume of “The Discourses,” and for the first time a doubt crossed his mind touching the wisdom of old Jean Jacques. Was there would there ever be any remedy for such a condition of things as now prevailed?
Already the trees had hidden the Marquis and his daughter from La Boulaye's sight. The young revolutionist felt weary and lonely—dear God, how lonely! neither kith nor kin had he, and of late all the interest of his life—saving always that absorbed by Jean Jacques—had lain in watching Suzanne de Bellecour, and in loving her silently and distantly. Now that little crumb of comfort was to be his no more, he was to go away from Bellecour, away from the sight of her for all time. And he loved her, loved her, loved her!
He tossed his arms to Heaven with a great sigh that was a sob almost, then he passed his hands over his face, and as they came in contact with the swollen ridge that scored it, love faded from his mind, and vindictiveness came to fill its room.
“But for this,” he cried aloud. “I shall take payment—aye, as there is a God!”
Then turning, and with “The Discourses” held tightly to his side, he